The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Makes A New All Time High. What Happens Next? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

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The all-time high day to all who celebrate Bitcoin currently trading at $111,000 almost hitting $112,000 already today. Beautiful breakout for a new all-time high yesterday basically and today. It keeps making them really getting more firmly above that level today on nice increasing volume through that all time high, things looking exceptionally good for Bitcoin at the moment. Perhaps the bigger story is how exceptionally good things are looking for Bitcoin at the moment while exceptionally rocky things are looking basically everywhere else.

Obviously the 30 year yield, the long bond to the United States made a high of 5.15% today, still trading at 5.1%. That's usually a screaming signal from the bond market that there's a lack of trust in the United States economy and in what's happening in general. And yesterday in particular, as Bitcoin pushed to new all-time highs, we had oil down, dollar down, stocks down, Bitcoin way up. Now, if you've

listened to me harp on this for years, I've always said that Bitcoin is an uncorrelated asset. I've never really changed from that. I've argued the point a million times. Yesterday, a beautiful example, at least, of how that can be the case at certain moments and really worth diving into why that is happening. David's unbelievable. The buying pressure right now, you and I kind of were joking on X. I kept saying, listen, there's these technical signals. We're going to get a draw down.

Yeah. We get them for like 20 minutes. Yeah. I mean, I, people didn't realize I was joking with the Batman. I know you know, joking. But it's not that surprising. I mean, you say it's surprising, but it isn't. I mean, we know the buyers and it is really important to understand the note nature of buying is different.

When buying is coming from speculative forces, and by the way, funding rates and the perpetuals are still rock bottom, so that's not what's going on. When buying is coming from these sources, it's just the way that buying algorithms work is they're more patient. They're willing to buy more on dips. They're going to sit on bids, but they're not going to ratchet up. They're going to buy more on dips, they're going to sit on bids, but they're not going to ratchet up, they're going to wait for participation. And when a lot of volume prints at a price, it will follow that volume.

And so your notation about volume matters, and that's why we're seeing the sawtooth a little bit more extreme today. Yesterday the individual one minute candles were really small. Today they're much bigger. Why? Because more volume is trading and so algorithmic buying will in fact participate more. And so that's what you're seeing. Now why am I stressing this?

Well because it's more of that rotation from, I hate to say it, either dumb or frustrated money to smart money. And it's not dumb or frustrated really, that's not fair because there's a lot of Bitcoin OGs out there that are, to use your terms, Scott, paying for their life, because they have life-changing money, so it changed their life, okay, I understand that.

But it feels like that supply is petering off, and as a result, will end up at some level of price discovery. Now that said, what has been the dominant theme on X over the last two days Don't be afraid to take profits Okay, that's cool. If you're trading that's fine But the most important thing about profit-taking is you have to have a plan when you enter into a trade if you enter into a trade

And and you expect to be making a short-term scalp then by all means take profits if you enter into a trade Making a short-term scalp then by all means take profits if you enter into a trade expecting longer-term value Then that profit taking you're paying taxes on then when you want to try to buy back in later You're gonna buy back in at a higher price and so it really really depends on what you're buying for and That that matters and so looking at this market. I mean It feels to me like you know, we're still you know, just slightly over the top of the range, basing out. I think going into price discovery is reasonable. Frankly, I'd be a lot more bullish if the Bitcoin conference were in next week because

it always seems to me that that- You get it, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So do I think that that's going to happen? Am I trading that? No. Well, do I think it probably? Am I trading it?

No, for exactly that reason. I mean, all I have to say is I'm looking forward to Monday morning when we can have our little conversation because if at this point we haven't seen positive divergence from Bitcoin vis-a-vis macro, I don't know what is. One last point on the bond market. Yes, the 30-year bond market in the US is a bit concerning. Yes, the 10-year yield being over 4.5 is a bit concerning, but it's still well within operating parameters. The one that's really concerning

is Japan, and that is a non-trivial problem. There is a huge debt to GDP there. They have really, really low short rates there. We talk about what could happen if things really kind of blow up there. My guess is Japan will go into quantitative easing, and that could be a big spark for assets, including Bitcoin. I think that's the one to watch, because what's happening in the US, look, the news cycles and the financial media is so ridiculously biased depending on which side of the aisle they're on. It's kind of crazy. But, you know, I'm kind of with the people who say the doomsayers ultimately will regret

it. I don't know if the Senate is going to pass the big beautiful bill and they'll get it through reconciliation, but it feels like the answer is yes. And if the answer is yes, then effectively all the people whining about tariffs and all that stuff, you have to understand no tax on tips and overtime is a very politically popular thing. And so yeah, you could spin it however you want to spin it, but what does this mean? Well, it means that any thought and every time that whether it was Mike or others who talked about austerity, ain't happening.

But what is happening is making the tax code permanent and doing things to help the working class is going to give political air cover for the things they will do down the road. But it seems really clear that Congress is not in a mood to cut anything. And so deficits as far as the eye can see, printing, QE, here and in Japan, that seems to be the base case now. Dan. Yeah, morning fellas. I just want to rewind a little bit to raise a point I wanted to raise because they've

covered quite a lot there. With regards to buying and selling Bitcoin, at first I was like, I bought the ETF products or whatever because I was always complaining saying, you know, it's quite hard to buy Bitcoin. It's like really hard. Like what you're gonna do, where you gonna store it. These days, buying Bitcoin is not my problem. Turns out, selling Bitcoin is a lot harder than buying Bitcoin. It's very easy to do it, technical-wise, you can just click some buttons,

but like, when to sell it? Because I don't think I'll ever sell all my Bitcoin. I, you know, a buddy of mine, one of my best friends, he sent me a bunch of, well, he had me help him sell a bunch of Bitcoin about two weeks ago, when it was at 102. And he sold quite a substantial amount again to fund his lifestyle. He bought a house in Abu Dhabi, but he's the worst trader in the world.

So once he had me help them sell, that's when I kind of realized that the Bitcoin bulls got legs to run yet. BC. Yeah, no, just, just made me chuckle on that one, actually. I think good point from Dan. I think Dave always brings a lot of good points to this as well. I think, look, I think people are really focused on the bond markets. I think there's a lot of noise around it, right? But a lot of crypto Twitter noise, people that really don't understand it. Like Dave said, in terms of the 30 year, yeah, there's concerns kind of raising their head, but the

US have kind of known about that for a while. If you look at capital flows, exposure to risk markets at the moment, I think in my mind, I really don't think that there's a question whether this can run. I think it can really run. I also think that a lot of the things we're seeing coming through really haven't washed through yet from the things like the tariffs. There's still a lot of noise that's decanting. I think S&P 500 and the NASDAQ looks very strong as well. Going back to Dave's point about Japan, I think that could be a massive stimulus for this. Obviously, with the US as well, I think there's a little bit of confusion at the moment. There's the bond buybacks that are going on. The US probably are going to have to go through some kind of quantitative easing,

right? There's going to be some kind of fiscal stimulus. And if you see that, you see that aligned with Japan. I mean, this thing could really, really rock it. I think the bigger question comes into how long this can last, right? Because if you look down the line a little bit, obviously all of this prosperity comes at a cost, and that is rising inflation. How that's measured, true inflation, if you look at it, I mean, there's different ways to look at inflation. I won't bore everybody with that,

but realistically, when you look at how inflation is certainly measured by the major banks and funds, central banks, et cetera, I think the issue comes with that raising its head. I think it's higher than it's being projected typically. So I think really, you know, there's almost an argument that is kind of building into this bubble-esque scenario. I don't think it is at the moment. I think we're seeing Bitcoin run hot. I think we've got, you know, a good several months ahead of us for risk assets. And I think any major stimulus that comes into that is gonna obviously play a big role.

But I think the ticking time bomb in here is inflation really kind of really starting to creep up again. And that I think is gonna, you know, put a little bit of a cap on that, but very hard to say when that will be. Douglas. Well, I think one of the things that people aren't realizing maybe this week is that the genius act and the fact that it continues to move forward is going to be very, very important.

People expect that this could drive the stablecoin market to two to $4 trillion within the next couple of years. Well, that means essentially $2 trillion of demand for US treasuries because obviously it's backed one to one with Treasuries. But this sort of puts a cap on US yields. It also puts a heck of a lot of dollars into the economy and it should drive Bitcoin much, much higher. I think that the Genius Act sort of moving forward is really the bigger news this week in terms of why is Bitcoin now hammering forward because the US has realized that, you know what, there is going to be demand for treasuries. And we don't care if Japan gets

out of our treasuries or China because the demand for treasuries by stablecoin holders, and remember Tether right now is already the seventh largest holder of US treasuries, is going to explode in the next couple of years. going to explode in the next couple of years. Anyone thoughts on that? I think that when when you look at stable coins, people and it's tiresome that it happens. But so many people are looking at the first move in the game of chess or really just playing checkers or saying, well, you know, stable coins can't pay yield. So

no big deal. What will stable coins do? Stable coins will speed up the financial system. Stable coins will become ubiquitous, meaning that if you are a broker, if you are coin, you know, you're on Coinbase, all of a sudden Coinbase is interoperable with every bank. Operation choke point won't be over at that point. Operation choke point will be, it won't matter

because that interoperability matters. The ability for service providers, whether that is our neo-banks, fintech firms that aren't banks, crypto exchanges, people kind of morphing, these business lines will start to blur. What does it mean? It means that people who are saving money will be able

to use just-in-time checking, just-in-time stablecoins. So we move things into stablecoins from a tokenized asset instantly and pay your bills. That means that the amount of money that's to sit dormant not being used is going to go down precipitously. Keep in mind, there are $6 trillion in money in there are six trillion dollars in money, in savings that pay no interest, and checking that pay interest less than half a percent a year. All of that money will become unlocked.

Not only that, because the profit, because the interest on that money, it will flow into the real economy, even if it's just into yield bearing, which eventually it will go, that's 20 billion dollars into the real economy, even if it's just into yield bearing, which eventually it will go, that's $20 billion into the real economy. And so some of that money is going to end up finding its way into what people in the Bitcoin space, and I don't like the aphorism, but I kind of understand the point that Bitcoin

is the apex predator. Okay, call it whatever it is. Some of that money is going to end up in Bitcoin investments and crypto investments and more risk investments. Some is just going to end up, as you say, in US treasuries. Either way, it's a wall of money that right now is sitting in that's relatively unproductive, being used by community banks to make risky loans. And of those loans, less than 20% of it are for mortgages and whatnot, because that's being served and repackaged in financial markets. So it's a big unlock. And it's non-trivial. And the other thing we know about economics is when you make things faster, you get more of it. You make it faster and cheaper to do, you get more of it. And so all of that is a very

big deal. I do agree that it's a big deal, but it's not a big deal for today. It's just another one of the big tailwinds that we have. Can you hear me, Scott? I think I'm in the glitch today. No, you're good. All right, cool. I hear you and see you, which is like seeing a unicorn on the moon. Well, that was my nickname in high school.

So but yeah, everyone should call their local TikTok astrologer. We hit 111. It's a big moment. But yeah, I think that everything here is just spot on. I think the thing that is also a big looming question for a lot of people when it comes to capital deployment is the value abstraction and extraction as a result of AI. There was a great meme that was posted yesterday in my team Slack that was saying, when your startup is just a bullet point in Google's presentation.

I mean, and the same goes with chat GPT. So it's like, this is just gonna continue to happen. We've got big AI sort of just continually innovating. If anyone saw the flurry of content of Google's video product, that is now like almost indistinguishable from anything else in real life, it's just getting really, really crazy. So I want to think you look at this. And when I look at Bitcoin, I look at like a kind of an oh shit moment for technology where it goes, okay, I don't actually know where to put this capital. Everything is so risky.

Everything's innovating so quickly that Bitcoin is a safe, reliable place to do it, which I think is a positive signal for Bitcoin, but a looming signal for kind of how we address this innovators dilemma that we're currently in. Dan. Hey, yeah, coming back to stable coins point. I remember I spoke to you guys a while ago, a couple of weeks ago, maybe, how I live my life on stable coins and I consult for companies, they pay me in stable coins.

I put them straight onto this platform that I use, can spend it immediately on my card. So I'm already living all that stablecoin life. But just by means of update, they've recently added the functionality where you can wire in US dollars in and out, like using ACH or Fedwire. And it automatically converts into stablecoins. So you can get your salary paid if you're working in the US, you get your salary paid in there or you can pay your bills out from there. So I think that's the next evolution.

Moving away from banks, I don't use my bank anymore. As I said before, when I lived in Bali during COVID, I didn't use a bank for two years, just lived a complete stablecoin life. So that Neobank stuff that's kind of joining in between the banking system and the crypto system, I would choose that over my bank any day. So yeah, the ability now to receive US dollars in and pay US dollars out from bank account in your name as well, which is important for some places that don't accept you paying money and if the wire is not in your name, this is the future.

I think this has changed everything. So Dan, now imagine the entire US economy being able to make the choices that you've made without any of the frictional cost. Yeah, as I say, I think this is the future. It's a very big deal. I mean, it really is. I mean, I remember trying to use Zelle and anyone who uses Zelle or any of these things,

you can't send more than $5,000, some TD Bank. So lame. Even more, it's so lame. It's like a thousand bucks a day on TD Bank or something, 1200. Exactly, exactly, yeah, it's something stupid. People are like, pay me on Zelle. I'm like, do you have a week?

And considering that we're gonna have to do this every day. That gets worse and worse. Now all of a sudden you open it up and you also don't have to have, hold all your money in your checkouts, your auto pays, all the things that you're doing, everything that people do. I hate this expression, but you're not bullish enough.

If we get there. And the opportunities for businesses expression, but you're not bullish enough. You know, if we get there. And the opportunities for businesses and for, you know, even for businesses that spend Bitcoin are large. So there's a lot here. Douglas. Well, I think everyone's sort of concentrating on what US demand for stable coins is going to be as opposed to the international demand for stable coins.

I think that as you look through emerging markets, there already is a demand for a US product. They don't really care about yield in emerging markets. They just want to get out of whatever currency they're in so they can have the dollar which they see as less stable compared to their currency. The demand I think that's going to come from all of these countries globally is going to be astounding. And that's the demand. It's absolutely new demand. It's going to increase M2 significantly, which obviously is going to decrease the value of the dollar and is going to be great for Bitcoin. Well, I don't see how it decreases the value

of the dollar if the rest of the world, if it becomes easier to dollarize for it. Well, debasement of the dollar doesn't help the dollar on a purchasing power basis. Oh, no, no. That part is right. But I think for our audience, people should understand the difference between what you're saying, which I completely agree with, which is assets go up because denominator goes down, and the dollar relative to other currency,

they're two different things. But yes, I think we're on the same page. Yeah, there's gonna be tremendous demand for a US stablecoin, but if Japan wants to fix, how do we get more Japanese people or more people to start buying Japanese long end JGBs, well, they're going to have to do a stable coin as well. It's sort of like this whole brand new demand for stable coins is going to be brand new

and it's not really shifting someone that's right now in their US deposits and they switch out of their bank account now into a stable coin. This is going to be an international movement where people start on their phones grabbing stablecoins and keeping their savings in stablecoins rather than their local currencies. I think that it's going to be very good for the United States. It's going to keep the US obviously as the dominant reserve currency. It's going to be tremendous for Bitcoin because it's going to see a huge growth in M2. Now it's pivoting slightly. I know, Carlo, I asked you to come on because one of the bigger stories today is SUI. I'm not going to call

it a hack or an exploit or a bug because I have no idea, but it's worth discussing that there's something strange afoot at the Circle K for SUI at the moment. Good morning, Scott. Good morning, Carl. Here's what we know so far. Cetus is a protocol, it's a DEX and a liquidity provider for the SUI blockchain. It was reported early this morning on Cointelegraph that there was some kind of an exploit.

Initial estimates were 11 million in SUI was drained via USDC liquidity pool. That's escalating now according to Decrypt. We're talking about potentially over 200 million and 60 million of that being funneled through USDC on chain to Ethereum. The theory is that this might be an oracle exploit.

Oracles provide external data, price feeds on smart contracts, and what they think may have happened here is that false data on some spoof tokens was fed through an oracle, which misrepresented asset prices on a bunch of suey meme coins, which triggered a huge liquidity drain on those meme coins. Both Cetus and SUI have announced that they're looking into the exploit.

I think an important caveat to say off the top is while this is certainly concerning for the SUI ecosystem, I think that an Oracle exploit like this can happen to any L1, any L1 that does liquidity and DeFi is subject to these potential exploits. The thing here is that we have a newer L1, which has not been as battle tested as others like Ethereum. However, if handled correctly, and if they get to the bottom of this, I think they can

recover from this. We just need more facts. We don't know the extent of the exploit and we don't know how they pulled off this exploit, but it certainly is dominating the timeline and impacting SUI's price. Yeah, but I'm looking at the price. It's down 0.51% in 24 hours. I mean, I'm looking at the candle. it's down 0.51% in 24 hours. I mean, I'm looking at the candle, it's a Darth Maul. So it went up, it went down and came right back to where it started the day.

I mean, this could be just like those Solana. That doesn't indicate how bullish the crypto market is. Right. Like there's nothing that makes people want to sell right now. This makes me think of those times where we had those Solana blockchain shutdowns. Solana is down, everybody would freak out, price would plummet and then immediately recover. And yeah, you got to realize too, when it comes to the SUI chart, it was on a massive run-up before this announcement. Yeah, a great summary there, really thorough.

The one thing I'd add is as a result of the liquidity pools being pulled, it was the liquidity pools that were powering a lot of the meme coins on SUI. So the meme coins on SUI, while SUI itself hasn't moved that much, are down 70 to 90% and the liquidity just keeps getting drained out. There is assets that are now being proven on chain to be bridged into ETH. So I think the initial kind of shock response was this is an Oracle issue, we're looking into it. And then once the asset started to bridge and move and purchase ETH, it started to get real that this is something probably a lot more malicious and is being

reported as such. And it actually keeps continuing. So as a result of that, the USDC on SUI as a result of these liquidity pools completely de-pegged and went to zero just because everything is being pulled and drained. It's actually pretty significant and pretty crazy. So quite a story that's developing. You guys just said a lot and what I heard and I am not a maxi was buy Bitcoin and crypto is garbage.

That's what I heard. That was the summary of what you just said. Well, you just sent the signal from Gary. Who on the planet wants to deal with this fucking stupidity? I'm sorry, It pisses me off every time. I'm not trying to get like whatever. I like all coins. I believe they're speculative VC investments, but I do not know how you can reasonably risk manage or even assess the risk of something like this, given the token's not even going down. So who cares? But like, you know, you can be as passionate about one of these projects as possible. And then all of a sudden North Korea comes in and just completely screws you over. It's just mind boggling. Like I

really I trade on coins, I have a deep investments, I believe a lot of these projects are the future, but you should not be overexposed to any. I'm sorry. It's unbelievable. Is my summary correct? If you're a suey believer, developer, any of those things, how can you properly risk manage liquidity pools getting hacked or whatever happened? I think that assumes that you believe these people understand what risk management is and deploy those kinds of strategies when they're in the casino. You don't go to crap. That's right. So how do you but you're not supposed to be in a casino when you're building fundamentally important things on a new protocol.

Understand something Scott. It's not the suey token holders money, right? You know, that's that. I mean, and nor was it the salon nor did the salon a holder care that you know, it went through a period of time over a couple of years where the network literally shut down four times. If you're buying layer ones, you're placing your bets on the tokens, the ecosystems you think will ultimately mature and be the basis for significant total addressable markets of value transfers. By the way, Dave, that's my entire premise to investing in all coins. So I agree with you.

So I'm being hyperbolic, but man. No, no, I understand that. But there's a difference between investing in the layer ones or investing in infrastructure picks and shovels and investing in the stuff that people trade on them, right? There is a big difference and I think it's pretty well understood that there's huge risks investing in a lot of these decks relative to everything else and that's different. I'm just trying to be a little less hyperbolic than you. We all know I'm not a maxi, I'm a 90 percent-y, you know, okay, you know, whatever.

Yeah, I'm like 75 percent-y, but always agree. Whatever the number is, it depends on the day, but it's somewhere between 80 and 90 in my case, but that's okay. But it is worth understanding that, you know, there's different things. Like, you know, you're gonna have a sponsor in a little bit or a guest in a little bit,

and you're gonna be talking about a protocol specifically that's underlying stable coins and where that's gonna grow. And those are things that you look at that addressable market and you evaluate it as such. SUI is something similar to that. Hell, Solana, we say, well, it's the best casino, but are you really buying it because of the casino? No, you're buying it because you think the casino is proving that when you're going to

automate equities or this or that, that it might win. That's what that's the investment thesis. So I do think. Guys, I just wanted to bounce in here on this subject because I think the the alt market is getting ready. Well, I think it's already been taken over by the stock market. I don't know if anybody's watching like meta planet. The spread between meta planet in the United States today and Germany was

$2 and 50 cents at one point. Now it's come in hard. You have a 38% decline in MetaPlanet in Germany, and you have a 41% decline from yesterday. Well, probably even this morning down to 908 on MetaPlanet. So I don't know why anyone's going to trade altcoins when every week we are going to have an announcement about some public company converting its strategy to a Bitcoin play. The spreads between these companies, I mean, this is, I've never seen stuff like this when

you have a $250 spread in a stock. Gary, can I comment on that? Yeah, yeah, that's 30% of the underlying. I mean, it's fucking massive. So go ahead. Yeah, please. But it's because but this is really important because MetaPlanet is going to keep coming up. And the reason that I'm a holder of the actual Japanese stock is because it's infinitely more liquid than the what is being traded on the US exchange is an ADR. It's an American Depository

Receipt. It's a representation of the actual Japanese stock. So it's not the actual thing. So of course there's gonna be a short squeeze because there's not any liquidity in this stuff. You can't trade options on it, it's very not liquid. And that's the reason you see this crazy pump and dump. So if you are interested in getting involved in MetaPlanet and you have access to like Fidelity or Schwab,

you can go into their institutional like space and trade an international stock, which is what I recommend because the stock is up today. If you're in Japan, Matt, what's the symbol for the Japanese? JP 3350 colon JP. It's trading at $6 and 50 cents trades for about 75,000 yen a share. Uh, and it was up 20% yesterday. It's the most, it's the single most shorted. The trading to write the second $6 and 50 cents. And it was where yesterday, uh, $5 and 80 cents. Yeah. So just for just a word of caution out there, it's not like when you see MetaPlanet trading. Yeah, this was my point.

Yeah, this was my point. I think people are going to chase some of these charts and they don't have a clue what they're buying. Absolutely. It's an ADR. It's an American Depository Receipt, probably the most boring thing that you could think of in finance and people are going to try to squeeze in there and get wrecked. So please be careful.

People in crypto are going to squeeze into something and get wrecked. Wow. Breaking news. It's what we do guys. What we do unless you just simply buy Bitcoin. Such a weird, I'm such a maxi non maxi. It's so weird. There is one point I want to make here because it's really important in the long term. If

you want to understand why all equities will be tokenized, this conversation is it in a nutshell. In other words, crypto, we're used to assets that apart from the Kim Chi premium where we had artificial capital controls, we understand that you can trade Bitcoin in every currency and it's fully fungible. Whereas at equities, you have to do these things called ADRs, which of course the banks make a spread on too, the trading is a spread, etc. Imagine a world where corporations can list and effectively, because they're tokenized, it can trade globally in every single currency.

And these sorts of spreads won't be there. Right now, people don't understand. You're right. They have no freaking clue. And look, I grew up when Royal Dutch Shell in Amsterdam, the British one had an arbitrage, and God forbid, trading to the ADR in America, they were literal whole people. That's all they did was arbitrage, Royal Dutch Shell among the three different trading vehicles because there was that much stupidity.

That was during the 80s and early 90s when things were moving. But this is something crypto is going to fix. And ultimately, whatever the rails are that do it, we'll have some value as well. Just a quick note there, Dave. It's also gonna work in the reverse too, because we're actually working to do a depository receipts with Bitcoin and XRP so that you could have representations of your digital assets on a brokerage, on an exchange, and potentially do like treasury laddering,

fixed income laddering. Imagine putting your Bitcoin, holding your Bitcoin in custody with a secure qualified custodian, exchange and potentially do like treasury laddering, fixed income laddering. Imagine holding your Bitcoin in custody with a secure qualified custodian and then having that represented at Schwab so that you could trade treasury ladders or trade fixed income ETFs and earn additional yield without putting it at risk by holding Misty, for example. Yeah, Misty is also, I don't even, I never even looked deeply into that. And then all of a sudden saw it everywhere. Maybe you could break that down. So I mean, that's just a yield max product. Basically, what they're doing is taking volatility from the micro strategy stock, and then they're trading covered calls and a number of options

and strategies on it. Dave talks about this a lot in a very eloquent way. And they're able to generate income from it. But as we've seen, and Gary mentioned this earlier this morning on Donnish's face, the price doesn't move because every alpha that they get from this, they just pour back as a distribution, as income, which is one strategy. But if you're in a taxable investment account, you're getting taxed as income. So this is probably not ideal. The only real rational strategy for holding Misty is if you have a Roth IRA where you're paying.

I'm thinking about this correctly, right? Tax-free, you're getting those tax-free. So that's probably the only real good use case for it. Otherwise it's a good way to compound MSTY, which could be you know shit show in the future, but yeah, that's basically it We have a lot of compounding shit shows right now It's the early innings of the compounding shit shows, but we have a lot of them in my humble opinion You know what scott it is the early innings and i'm beginning to wonder too many of these Uh strategy copycats all come into the market too fast.

I hate it. It concerns me a little bit. I got to say there's so many of these guys, another group, they're going to buy a thousand bitcoins. I mean, that's their entry position from China. Okay. So like we all, I think, love Sailor. I think we understand that he's managing his risk relatively well.

He's first to market. He's going to remain the biggest. I think he has a goal in mind. I was pretty excited about Cantor and Jack Mahler and SoftBank. I think that was a big signal. Nakamoto, I think Bailey and those guys know what they're doing. We go beyond these three. If they're going to be big, it starts to really worry me. I think that Bitcoin hits 120, 30, 50. And at that point, we get 20, 30 of these copycats, which are just, you know, Bitcoin hedge funds, LARPing is Bitcoin treasury companies. And they're going to be a bunch of speculators who don't know how to manage their treasuries.

And the minute Bitcoin drops 15, 20%, which it always will, they're going to puke and cause a liquidation cascade. And it will be the next reason that we should have had a 20% drawdown or 25%. We get a 45% or 50% drawdown because they're late to the game and they FOMO in. So I think that there's a proper amount, Gary, of these Bitcoin treasury companies utilizing the strategy who understand it. But you can't have everybody raising convertible debt all the time endlessly and just having their sole business be that without at some point that tax becoming due every time. I'm also worried about miners after talking to you,

by the way, and now we have miners who are underwater doing the exact same thing. Great. Well, I mean, you need to look at the size of the markets, right? When we had the top in 21, and I'm always pointing this out, the leverage in the system was immense. The volume traded and the open interest in perpetual swaps dwarfed the spot market volume and the amount that was actually available for trade. That leverage was huge. When that, because of Luna, started cascading liquidations, it got forced down to $16,000. We all know what happened, but it was a massive deleveraging.

Today we have none of that. Literally it's a fraction of what it was. So now we have some treasury companies add it all up outside of the three that you mentioned. It won't amount to a hill of beans. It's worrisome because no one likes pyramiding. If you think this is a short-term top, if you think that it's going to revert to some rational valuation based upon the overall adoption and scaling, well, then it won't matter.

There's no question in my mind that I would far rather see a thousand companies saying, you know what, Bitcoin should be part of my treasury than 10 companies saying I want to raise more debt. I agree with that. We want everyone buying Bitcoin. Yeah. It's just all at one time and they're all selling the same story. And I'm not sure they're prepared for it to Scott's point.

We just don't need financial engineering to buy Bitcoin. That's what concerns me. Like everybody wants the Tesla block strategy for every company, institution, sovereign individual in the world. Buy, take 5% of what you have and buy Bitcoin with your cash spot. That's not going to hurt anyone. Yeah, do we know if anybody's actually doing any innovation? I haven't really looked at it too deeply. But is Jack Mahler doing any innovation? And by the way, I think if you think where is the value added here,

it's not the value added. I don't know if anybody can buy Big Time. Connected. Lou, I don't know what you're doing there, buddy. You sound like you're underwater and you're like... Oh my God. Sorry. Lou, we couldn't hear you, man.

You sounded like you were diving 1000 feet deep, and your iPhone was screaming that your headphones were connected at the same time. So if you can fix that, that would be awesome. Yeah, sorry. Amitai, were you jumping up? Yeah, I was just gonna say I think Lou's asking is anyone actually innovating? Or are they just financially engineering? And I? I think financially engineering. What innovation can there be? Raise debt by Bitcoin, raise debt by Bitcoin, and it's repeat, right? That's right.

That's right. I think that that is the big concern because right now, the whole story is accumulating and balance sheet optimization. There's no actual conversation on profit taking, managing the bottom line, how they'll continue to accrue and build. So I think it becomes increasingly problematic down the line. And just like anything else,

it's so opportunistic that the more that do it, the less savvy that they'll be and the less sophisticated the actual financial engineering that will go into this. And that just means a crude risk in the system. Yeah, listen, it might be great. I also don't think that it's going to be the thing that causes the top per se, just to be clear, as I said, I think it's the thing that makes a bigger drawdown just to be clear, as I said, I think it's the thing that makes a bigger drawdown than you would have maybe naturally had when the financial engineering unwinds and they're for sellers. That's what concerns me. I don't think there's a big glaring contagion top signal yet of any sort. I think the top gets marked when no one's willing to pick up this debt. Right. So I think when all of a sudden more and more companies are trying to do this and no one's actually willing to finance it, that's when the writing starts to get on the wall.

Yeah, I personally see this as an opportunity for people that are well schooled in Bitcoin. This is going to continue the volatility. And to me, that is awesome. It allows me to prepare. We know these guys are going to fuck this up. Their fees are going to get jacked up. They're going to make a mistake. Somebody is going to get breached.

The whole group will get sold off. Bitcoin will get sold off and we'll build a buy cheaper. That's awesome. I've never seen an opportunity where the more people come in, the more opportunities the beginners have. It's truly fascinating. Hey, I just wanted to like, and I know some people picked up United Healthcare, and this is my point about all this volatility, and I'm really like anybody picked up UnitedHealthcare

at $250, they got $50 in the money. It's awesome. But a week ago, you could have bought Bitcoin at about $100,000, too. So I look at these two trades and I'm like, man, Bitcoin could run here a long way without any risk to, not much risk to the downside. And when I look at a UnitedHealthcare, it's so obvious how starkly different these investments are.

I have no DOJ exposure whatsoever, no fraud, no human error, three CEOs go missing. I mean, it's just the difference in this investment is I don't know how you can't be super concentrated on this because it's such a safe trade. I hate to be so bullish all the time, but it's really spectacular. I agree. Well said, Gary.

We do have a sponsor today. It's Velo Official, the account down there with the nice pink logo. I've also pinned up a post of theirs in the nest if anyone tuning in wants to click their profile. But before we get started, just a disclaimer. So, Mario's company has become one of the eighth largest social media platforms in the world. And his company, IBC, does marketing, incubation, and investing. Sponsors on the show are sponsors working directly with IBC, not necessarily Crypto Town Hall, myself or Scott.

But before we get started, Velo, why don't we do a mic check and try to do a bit of an elevator pitch here? I'm sorry. I was offline for a second. Were you talking to me, Buzz? I apologize. No, I wasn't talking to you, Carlo. I was talking to our sponsor, Velo.

Okay. Thanks, man. I appreciate you filling the void here. I'm not sure if anyone else can hear him. Negative. Negative. Okay. I don't see him coming off mute either.

No, neither do I. I just wasn't sure if it was a UI bug there. Karli, you can go ahead if you had any other point to what Gary just said and we can maybe wait for Velo to come online here. Yeah, look, I cannot argue with anything that Gary is saying. I think that we're going to see as this continues to evolve as a trading arbitrage, putting Bitcoin on your balance sheet, putting Bitcoin on your stockholder balance sheet. These things are going to inevitably result in reckless behavior and people getting over

their skis. And I have to agree, that's going to probably be long-term bullish for Bitcoin, although it's going to be disruptive in the short term. People who are quick to pull the trigger and panic trade on negative news about some of these stock liquidations could get burned. You've got to be very mindful of the bigger target here, which is Bitcoin is the asset that outperforms everything. These stocks are transitory. And these stocks that are essentially leveraged on Bitcoin are subject to volatility. And I agree with Dave, it's a little alarming to see a lot of companies trying to play the

micro strategy approach. They were first in, they were in early, and they definitely have a mover advantage in this. Other people that are chasing that shiny object and don't get the big picture like Sailor does may get over their skis. Gary, question for you. Do you think that we're in for any sort of double tops like we had last cycle?

A lot of people are saying in my circles at least that the macro is a little bit weak and they're kind of nervous about a similar double top as last cycle. What would be your thoughts to that? You mean right here? Right here. Yeah. Nah, no chance.

We're in a double cycle here. Dude, the momentum on this thing is like robust. I've not seen momentum like this on Bitcoin. Like this is different momentum than any time I've not seen momentum like this on Bitcoin. Like this is different momentum than any time I've ever watched it. This is real money coming in here. So I don't see the double top here, not even close. Grinding, hated rally, climbing a wall of worry. Bitcoiners all talking about taking profits all at the same time this is happening.

Well, and just to the point you made about the macro picture, this couldn't be better for Bitcoin. This macro fuck up complete cartoon show of debt. So I don't see how we get to it. To me, this should be the most robust bull cycle for Bitcoin in its entire history. What could go wrong? Hi, sorry. I just joined again just now.

I have trouble with my microphone. Hey, no worries. Who do we have behind the mic with the Velo team? Yeah, so my name is Pat. I'm representing Velo for the Crypto Town Hall. Thanks for having me again here. Yeah, no problem. Welcome to the show, Velo, or Pat, rather. I did, for people who are tuning in, I did pin one of the Velo tweets up into the nest, and of course their profile is up here if anyone wants to click on it and follow along their website throughout the AMA. But why don't we start off with just an elevator pitch. I know Dave, you eloquently kind of set the tone for who our sponsor would be today earlier

in the space, but we'd love to hear it directly from the source. Yeah. So in short, Velo Protocol is a blockchain powered pay fine network. We're actually building the infrastructure for the next generation of global finance. Our mission is to make financial services faster, more inclusive, and more programmable, especially for users in emerging markets. So some of the services we're talking about here are instant cross border payments, virtual trading and liquidity, on-chain tokenized assets, and lower cost and remittance all within a unified sort of one platform ecosystem.

Our goal is to bridge the gap between traditional finance and Web3 network economy or infrastructure which include products like the Nova for smart contract operations and WARF for interoperability. We're enabling financial superhighway that and war for interoperability. We're enabling financial superhighway that is supposed to supercharge the movement of funds for both fiat and crypto, and they're backed by real world adoption and partnerships with licensed institutions.

So at the end of the day, we're not here to innovate. We're actually trying to build a rail or infrastructure for a new pay-fi financial era. I had the pleasure of interviewing you guys the last time that you were on the show. And I remember from that show, a lot of the excitement was really in those rails that you were talking about in the tech roadmap, if you will, of what you guys were going to be able to accomplish. Can you maybe touch on maybe in the last few months what you guys have done and

where you are now? Yeah, there's been a few bigger milestones. We've advanced our RWA tokenization efforts. One of the standard projects involves tokenizing gold reserve in Laos using the Solana blockchain. This is something that we are collaborating with our partners in Laos and the government involvement as well. We've also enhanced, as I mentioned, the Nova infrastructure, which now supports more efficient and compliant smart contract deployment for PayFi applications. This sort of becomes a backbone for other builders to create

remittance, trading, and yield solutions within our ecosystem. We've also deepened our presence across Southeast Asia, expanding different corridors, partnerships with local entities, onboarding new institutions and merchant partners to facilitate sort of our payment ecosystem. That's awesome. How did you guys pick Laos to do that, the Bitcoin deal there with the mining? So this is something that there was, I guess, the introduction that we met somebody who

were looking to work on. Laos, as some of you may know, is one of the largest gold deposits in the world. They also have encountered certain issues with their currency being devalued so heavily, fluctuation. So with all of this, I think, you know, some of the solutions we talked about could really well benefit Laos in terms of

the users there, but also we benefit from access into real gold reserve that we can possibly tokenize and bring them on chain. Very cool. I love talking to projects that are actually doing things in the real world. It's certainly a breath of fresh air. But I know the big news of today and why you guys are on the show is you're working with Paxos. Can you maybe break the news there and what the nature of the relationship is with Paxos and what that means for you guys?

Yeah, this certainly goes with some of the topics that were mentioned earlier in the session. So this collaboration with Paxos really is a step forward for us. At the heart of it is bringing regulated yield-bearing stable coin into our ecosystem. Paxos, as some may or may not know, is an issuer of USDL, or the Lyft dollar, which is a stable coin that's regulated

under the FSRA in Abu Dhabi. By working with them, we're aligning on two major things basically, which is access to regulated digital dollar and tokenizing railroad assets that can be used within our financial ecosystem. So this is our chance to deliver stable, trusted digital assets directly to our users within our ecosystem, whether that's be that will be trading or reading remitting. If any other speakers are here, can you guys hear them? No, thumbs down. Pat, we might have to get you to cycle back or maybe try muting or oh, I heard something there.

Oh, sorry. Sorry. What was I muted earlier? You cut out for maybe 15 or 20 seconds there. Oh, sorry. So in short, I don't know when I was cut off, but essentially, partnership with Paxos brings in a regulated stablecoin, dere're regulated in Abu Dhabi. It allows us access to regulated digital dollar,

but also tokenized reward assets that can be used within our ecosystem. This goes beyond, just helps us bring in more trust from institutions and users. I know Paxos is pretty well known for just its regulatory rigor. And I also know that I think it was the SEC put out a report maybe a month or so ago talking about how yield bearing stablecoins might not fit in the American framework. Can you talk about that and how important it is to be working with a company that takes regulation

seriously like Paxos and what that means for you guys? So, yeah, so regulations are still very important, especially for us, which aim to create use cases that touch in the real world, especially in Fiat. Paxos has different entities that are regulated by different authorities. So some of their entities are regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services,

some that are more regulated by the MAS in Singapore, and some that are regulated in Abu Dhabi. This sort of gives us different flexibility in terms of usage, but also in terms of usage, but also in terms of how we cater or use some of their products and incorporate into our service offering in different corridors or different countries. So if to comment on your question, which is if the US has an opinion that a yield-bearing stable coin does not fit into them, perhaps we would have to exclude certain US areas, use cases that touch the US soil in other jurisdictions,

which does not have these restrictions, and we can offer this service. That's awesome. Congratulations on that partnership. In working with Paxos, how does that really fit into your long-term goals? I know what you guys are really looking to build is that global financial system with Velo. What does that mean for the long-term goals with Velo? Yeah, so somebody, I'm sorry I didn't catch the name of the person who said it earlier, but it really is reiterating what he said, right? Which is you're, where accessing to USDL by Paxos allows us to be able to offer this a yield bearing stable coin that is USD denominated to other users that may not have this access

to. So our users within the developing and underbanked regions can have access to a USD denominated assets that can have access to passive income, a global settlements tool. These are countries, as I mentioned earlier in Laos, they have a very fluctuated currency and it would really benefit by holding on assets that are denominated in other currencies that are more stable. Well said. I mean, when you look at Circle filing for IPO, I think it was a couple months ago, and you look at their financial performance of what they're able to generate in terms of revenue

from the yield on those stablecoins, it really is a shame that none of that is being passed off to users right now. So I hope that you guys are able to offer that. It's certainly a product that has a clear market fit and a clear opportunity. Yeah, yes, definitely. So there are some specific use cases that we're looking to roll up with them. So again, USDL is backed by short-term US groceries. That's why they can offer the yield bearing for holders. So that means our users and businesses or entities within our ecosystem can have access to hold this value that generates a daily yield. So we're actually rolling out different pilot programs

within the Southeast Asian region, where we'll be the gateway for USDL expansions within the region, leveraging our different network that we've built so far, which includes merchants, banks, and payment service providers and loyalty programs. So we're really enabling real time stable points settlements and deep on-demand liquidity

for various financial activities. So that's a good segue to my next question. With this new partnership with Paxos, what other new use cases or rollouts can your users and partners look forward to on the roadmap here? on the roadmap here? So we can use it in different ways. So the USEL is regulated. That means we can provide daily use. So that will be for entities in terms of treasury management as well. What we're looking to help incorporate, for example,

within the remittance is there are certain corridors that are certain jurisdictions which have a more restrictions on financial movements or even just financial difficulties. Earlier, I think somebody mentioned in the US, the difficulty of transferring large amount of funds out of bank banking services. So we're looking to incorporate USEL into solving this sort of issue., allowing more bigger fund movements to happen easier than what is currently in practice. Appreciate that.

And as we're wrapping up here, any final thoughts or messages that you'd like to leave with the audience? We have about 4,200 people in here who are listening today. Is there any kind of call to action or anything that they can look forward to? Yeah, so first of all, thank you for having me. Thank you for everyone for turning in and hearing about us, whether you're a long-time supporter or just discovering Velo Protocol or Paxos.

I think we're at a very exciting point in Web3 where the conversation is shifting from speculation to how we can actually connect to the real world, having a real world utility. So this collaboration between us, Velo and Paxos is more just new features, it's about creating a lasting infrastructure, to create a more open, inclusive

and efficient financial system. So, you know, I think we're developing something very exciting here and the call to action is to follow our social media, our social network, whether on X or Telegram, to learn about exciting new things, different use cases that we're building. Appreciate it. The Velo account is up here in a speaker spot,

so if you're tuning in, the username is at Velo Protocol. You can also access it from the pin nest here. I've pinned up a post with their Paxos partnership. And I really appreciate you for joining. And it's a great day to do so with the Bitcoin all-time highs. So I'm hoping that everyone has a great day,

celebrates the Bitcoin all-time high. And I'm sure there's a lot of folks in here who are hoping for an alt season coming soon. So thanks for joining again, Pat. Thank you for having me. Take care, everyone. Have a great day. We'll be back tomorrow morning at 10, 15 a.m. Eastern time with another episode of Crypto

Town Hall. So thanks, everyone. Take care.