The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Maxis VS Everyone Else | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

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Hey man, how are you? I'm good, how are you doing today? Good, good, my audio's fine. Is my audio good? Yeah, you're like the ghost inside the machine. Yeah. Yes, your audio is fine. How's your weekend?

I was literally just going to go sit in a bathtub for the spaces and tell you that I was biohacking so you'd hear some kind of weird echohacking. So you hear a weird echo. There's a bit of a weird echo, is there? No, it's fine. You'll be fine. You'll be fine.

We're in a good market. So if people are pretty happy, there'll be more understanding. Yeah. How was your weekend? Man, my life hasn't been the best since the war started. Bad sleeping pattern, missing a lot of biohacking, have no idea what the crypto market does until I start looking into it before the space. And at least that brings a smile to my face.

You know, seeing what we're close to 35K. And you should see how I do technical analysis, man. Like just to say how behind I am. I go on CoinMarketCap. I go to the chart i click max i'm like i think it looks good i think it's not gonna drop that's how far i look at the max charts probably better honestly yeah probably that's probably the best approach that the best approach is actually the one that you are taking which is to ignore it altogether and just check back in

every six months or so yeah i think but think I need to dig deeper into the news. Like today, it was a pretty quiet day, but it's good news across the board, at least from what I read. Obviously, you've got the ETF news, you've got the DeFi market recovering pretty well, seeing adoption, further adoption, got the Thailand's second largest bank buying crypto exchange. And obviously, we've got the metrics, Bitcoin's dominance and the the open interest everything's just pointing in the right direction how's the news looking to you yeah i feel the same way um i think that uh just generally positive i would say that

right now no major news is good news right usually when we're getting major news unless it's etf related it's uh some sort of funUD. I think it's interesting. I was talking about this this morning, but I don't know if you saw the executive order on AI today. Did you see that by chance? No, I knew it came out. I didn't actually read. Actually, I did see it. Hold on.

The team was asking whether we should tweet about it. Yeah, I mean, it's not this conversation. We talked about it actually a bit this morning on your finance spaces. I just found it interesting how much it echoes of the Bitcoin FUD that we heard for years, right? It just seems like the United States government regulators, obviously this administration, approach all new innovation the same, which is I think it's just their gerontocracy gerontocracy and they're fearful of uh you know things they don't understand and try and fail to regulate it away but it's even even seeing ai mentioned that it's going to boil the oceans and the energy load it just it really just echoes so closely to all the things that uh that we've been hearing about blockchain and bitcoin even donish this morning mario said i finally know what it's been like for you blockchain bros.

I think that's exactly what he said. I don't know if he's listening now, but I'm glad he knows how it feels to be at the targets of the SECs and the government. It requires that developers of AI systems that pose a risk to U.S. national security, the economy, public health, or safety, share the results of safety tests with the U.S. national security, the economy, public health, or safety, share the results of safety tests with the U.S. government in line with the Defense Productions Act before they are released to the public. It also directs agencies to set standards for that testing and address

related chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and cybersecurity risks, according to the White House. This is going to be so fun to watch. This is going to be so fun to watch this is going to be so fun to watch i'm just reading it now yeah i agree 100 yeah i was trying i was messaging to see uh friend was coming up i was having an issue oh jimmy good you're up uh jimmy i was sure we were trying to invite you as well i didn't know if you saw the invite so good to have you uh mario you want to go ahead and kick it off i guess we're not talking about ai So we are talking about the fact that we've obviously seen some exceptionally positive price movement from Bitcoin, which is a good thing. I think makes everybody happy. I think those who have been around a while kind of indifferent, right? Know uh it's at least makes for a good narrative to see it moving particularly well as the other markets wobble you know um james i want to ask you actually really quickly because uh we we spoke last week has anything changed on for inflows

outflows more institutional interest at the moment because i know you said that yes we've sort of been seeing institutional inflows but still seems most people are sidelined, probably waiting for that ETF approval. It's been huge inflows. So last week, if we added up the full total, $326 million of inflows, which, you know, prior weeks, we've been averaging about sort of 20, 30 million. So this is a, it's quite a big deal last week. When we spoke last, last week, it was 300 on the year. That's right. Yeah. So in the last few days of last week, there were huge trunks of inflows. Interestingly, predominantly Canada and Europe, only around 11% of the flows, those flows are from the United States. I'm guessing there's just a load of money sitting on the sidelines

wanting to add in the US, but they want the Fiske back product. They don't want to buy the future space products, the only thing available for them now. Yeah, that makes sense. Jimmy, you know, I'm actually curious to hear your thoughts on the ETF. I'm assuming that your thought is that all these people can just go ahead and buy Bitcoin right now. What are you waiting for? No, I mean, I get why it's important.

There's a lot of pension funds and places like that that can't directly hold keys or whatever. But I mean, honestly, like it's sort of a double edged sword because the whole idea of an ETF is that you can make it shorted and that sort of increases the supply. And what we're banking on with something like an ETF is the naked shorters on this um and you don't have enough bitcoin to sort of like um uh you know uh you know um i guess when they recall the uh the shares when the price gets too high like they they they have the ability to, you can have some serious face-ripping rallies because of the ability to make it short. But, I mean, it's really a question of, you know, the capitalization or, you know, how much dry powder or the ability to leverage

that some of these players are going to have. So, I mean, we've already seen some of that in the futures markets or whatever. There's this desire to manipulate Bitcoin through the futures markets. And in a weird way, it's much easier on futures markets because it's cash settled. But with this one, you have the ability to redeem it for real Bitcoin and get it off chain. And, you know, I suspect that at least initially there will be some, you know, a lot of pension funds and so on that will get in because this is just sort of like the proven thing to do, given the history or whatever. But it'll only take one of these ETFs

completely blowing up or showing their insolvency. It's not really them that'll be insolvent. It'll be the naked shorters. But it'll be interesting to watch that dynamic because it'll really be sort of like fiat versus Bitcoin going head to head. I'd say naked short selling is the futures market, which already exists. An important difference here is that it's physically backed. And that means it's bankruptcy remote. So if one of these ETP issuers goes bust, then there is a path to

claiming the actual underlying assets. And that's a problem with the futures market at the moment, there isn't that path. Actually, naked short selling has been quite small in terms of total amounts. So I don't actually be quite quite be the problem you expect it to be. Yeah, I think interestingly, I think a lot of people are obviously fearful of the Bitcoin spot ETF approval because we saw the CME futures approval and CBOE futures approvals be the top of the market. And because we saw the Bitcoin futures ETF effectively be the top of the market. But I mean, Jimmy, I guess to answer you, the hope would be that anyone who wants to short with any size already has the ability to do that with or without an ETF.

I mean, James, is that effectively true, do you think? You don't need to wait for an ETF at this point to short. So maybe it's not the top like the other products. Yeah, that's right. I mean, I don't think we're suddenly going to see a flood of short sellers. I mean, there will be people doing it like in any other market. And, you know, it has been a problem at times in the equities market in particular. But these things tend to sort of naturally correct themselves. A few future ETF issues, ETP issues might go bust,

so to speak. But I think it's just the natural gyrations of the market. And I'd be, I just can't see quite how it would just take over Bitcoin and really influence the supply that much. I mean, we've had the same problem in the past with, if you look at gold and gold miners, a lot of people couldn't buy gold. And so they decided to buy gold miners instead. And it got to the ridiculous position where actually the ETF issuers of gold miners were four times the size of the actual gold

miners market cap. And that situation was quite unusual. I'd just be hugely surprised in such a liquid and massive market like Bitcoin where that could happen. Alex, what do you think has been driving this current run? I mean, do you think it's primarily this ETF hype? Is it spot buying? Do you think it's leveraged trading? I mean, do you think it's primarily this ETF hype? Is it spot buying? Do you think it's leveraged trading?

I mean, I would love everyone's sort of opinion on this. Yeah, I think it's a combination of excitement and preps for if an ETF gets approved. Obviously, I think there was a very strong time correlation last week with where you saw at least i'll say speculation around substantial movements coming in with um you know the ticker filings and whatnot um i think you have seen bitcoin over the last few months move less correlated with like with equities um and that's continuing here so we might actually really be starting to see it move

in the inflation hedge, you know, counter cyclical kind of way, which I think would be very exciting for a lot of folks. So, but yeah, I think, especially over the last week, the biggest driver has just been, I think, expectation around an approval and what that's going to mean for the long-term future. Jimmy, do you agree? What do you think's been driving this?

I mean, that's part of it. I personally think it's the price has been suppressed significantly by, you know, a lot of the opinion that altcoins especially and, you know less tainted Bitcoin in a way in the sort of normal investor's mind significantly. So as some of that cruft clears, I think the price has been moving up as a response to, you know, and you can kind of see it in the price movements uh uh you know bitcoin is you know outpacing a lot of these all coins and you know part part of that is uh people finally beginning to realize especially sort of the veterans of the last three to six years that okay like bitcoin really is different and you know it, it's not the same as altcoins. All these altcoins are centralized pieces of shit that you've seen with this FTX stuff.

So I think that has a lot to do with it. I mean, the ETF, yeah, there's probably some of it, you know, sort of a lot of traders anticipate other people thinking that it's going to be a significant event. And in a fiat economy, this sort of thing tends to happen where enough anticipation of what other people might be thinking is enough to rally things and things like that. But I think overall, the price was suppressed largely because of the bad behavior from, you know, altcoin founders and so on. Guys, I've got a question, Scott.

And actually, I'm going to ask you that question, Scott. And I would like Alex's thoughts on it. So, Bitcoin is looking great. You know, dominance is up, what, 54%, which is two and a half year high. We've got Bitcoin Wales purchased 30,000 BTC in the last five days. It's worth a billion dollars. The open interest in bitcoin futures is at 15 billion dollars it's the highest level since early june 2022 so what are we going to see how is that going to trickle through to the rest of the crypto economy so we're going to see that it'll be delayed as usual take a

few months until the market as a whole recovers and and are we seeing any movements in altcoins are we seeing any movements in other other sectors Are we seeing any movements in other sectors of the crypto economy? Yeah, I mean, if we're just looking at it objectively, a lot of things are slightly outperforming Bitcoin. But if you look at the altcoin market as a whole, to Jimmy's point, it's just getting slaughtered, right? And I think, you know, we talked about what the next cycles will look like, or what's happening right now. I still continue to think that Bitcoin dominance is a slightly misleading metric, especially as we add thousands and thousands and thousands of altcoins seemingly daily, maybe minus stables and at a certain market cap would make for a better metric to give us an idea. But I think it's whether you agree that any of them are quality or are not there's a perception that the higher quote-unquote quality altcoins are right now to some degree

before outperforming uh you can have like you haven't linked solana a lot of these coins have done have done quite well at this part of the cycle i would argue it's just because they were so wildly oversold and eventually people think they're going to try to buy the bottom. But, you know, by just looking at Bitcoin dominance, you would think that literally every single altcoin is getting slaughtered by Bitcoin. And in this right now, that hasn't necessarily been the case. And I think that's an indication, something we talked about last week, that there's actually new market and new money coming into the market for the first time. Yeah. Go ahead, Alex. Oh, yeah. I i was gonna say i think scott's on there the um i think the we were seeing until a week ago we were seeing a lot more a lot more of the bitcoin

price appreciation i think coming at the you know from flows from other altcoins, right? Like the total global crypto market cap was not moving very much. But as of like the 23rd, when we started the real pump start on Bitcoin, most recently, a lot of that did appear to be new money. And you've seen a lot of the other coins, at least, you know, if you're looking at like the top 100, have moved in price in a way that they didn't over the you know couple months prior so i you know there's a funny thing

that i was thinking about jimmy as you were talking and talking about you know the overhang from spf and stuff so now i'm just wondering is there is it potential that like spf being on trial right now and the end of the trial being in sight, that that's almost bringing like some sort of closure to the entire 2022 run. And that once he is hopefully convicted and in prison for a very long time, it just, you know, puts an end cap on that and makes people want to move on to the next phase. I think, well, I mean, do you think we have some overhang still from DCG and Binance and such.

Go ahead, Jimmy. Sorry. Yeah. What the SPF and DCG and Celsius and all of this crap, right, Luna, all the altcoins that have been essentially eating, like basically enriching themselves at Bitcoin's reputational expense. I mean, this is all sort of like clearing out. And I think it's those things that have suppressed the Bitcoin price for years. And, you know, I mean, going all the way back to, you know, 2013, even like it's been the

pattern in the altcoin industry for a long time. You have these VCs and altcoin influencers that continue to pump these things and they make it seem like these things are similar to Bitcoin in some way. And that's how they get the price bumps. I mean, even the few that you mentioned that are outperforming Bitcoin in the last week or whatever, this is exactly what they do. You have people like multi-coin capital, like pumping Solana, like at every chance that they get, and they go and talk to these large hedge funds that don't really understand Bitcoin. Oh, these things are similar or whatever. Of course, they're not. They're in no way, shape or form similar. It's just like one is centralized, one is decentralized. And they take Bitcoin's reputation and try to use it for their own gain. And that's what's happened with

Luna, Celsius, all down the line to FTX and so on. So that's the price suppression that we've been seeing. And I think there are more people waking up to the fact that, okay, these are all scammers and they've been, you know, they, they've been doing this stuff. I, I, I don't know if they like, too many people have come around to my position, which, you know, I've said this for a long time that, you know, all of these things are scams other than Bitcoin. which, you know, I've said this for a long time that, you know, all of these things are scams other than Bitcoin. And, you know, they'll be shown to be that, you know, as time goes on.

And you've seen this with all these altcoins. They all fall 90, 95% against Bitcoin versus their all-time high. And very few of them ever reach another all-time high unless you have Elon Musk pumping it or something like that. Yeah. So this reputational damage that these altcoins have done to Bitcoin, some of that is finally getting reversed as people realize, okay, like FTX and Celsius, these things aren't the same

thing. And you can't just diversify into crypto and expect to gain anything because all of these things are crap compared to Bitcoin. So I think there's a class of people that are finally realizing that Bitcoin is the real thing. And they're starting to come into that. But that's not to say that there won't be an altcoin pump. I'm pretty sure there will be because there'll be all these newbies. But right now in the market, what we have are people that have been around a while.

You're not getting too many new people coming in. But the people that have been in this industry for five years or whatever, they're finally realizing, okay, all of this other stuff that I own is crap. And they've done terrible against Bitcoin. And there's no guarantee that the coins I hold are going to be the ones that pump in the next cycle. Let's, let's move to Bitcoin. I think that's what's happening. And that price suppression from the altcoin scamminess is starting to clear out. And that's what's causing the price of Bitcoin to go up.

Do you have a question, Scott? Because I've got one about, so Jimmy, the question that I have is about, so are you a bigger believer or a bigger believer of Bitcoin after what you saw in the last few years and the shit show that we saw in the last bear market? Or is there any specific use cases, any specific tokens that have impressed you? Because you've got to look at Bitcoin.

Dominos is up. But at the same time, the DeFi markets are hitting pretty impressive numbers. I think the total value locked across DeFi protocols is at, what, 40-something billion. So it's recovering from the lows and that we saw previously um you know we're still seeing what if you you know i'm not sure if you went to singapore but we're still seeing a lot of you know projects being built on all these different chains you got you got uh all these games being built so like they're still they're still developers building throughout the bear market they're still use cases we're starting to see users leverage crypto and

obviously you're gonna have the discussion of centralization versus decentralization. It's not secret I'm a big fan of games, for example, and you're starting to see games where the concept of digital ownership plays a central role within those games and then discussions of interoperability. Is there anything outside of Bitcoin today that excites you? Are you even more pessimistic on anything but Bitcoin? Well, my opinion hasn't changed in many years. All of this stuff is to get money from retail. And it's complete scamminess. It's marketing driven. And it lines the pockets of VCs and altcoin influencers. And that's been the case for a long time. Whatever numbers you put in front of DeFi or the quote unquote developers

that are developing or whatever, guess who they're getting paid by? It's almost always the altcoin foundations that give them a grant and say, okay, here's a million dollars, go build something for us. And then you get like 15 users or whatever. And then they, you know, claim success or something. Really, it's a narrative to get people to buy their bets. And that's been the case for every single thing. I don't know what the next sort of like narrative is going to be. But you know, the last cycle was DeFi, NFT. Before that, it was ICO and IEOs and things like that. And before that, it was World Computer or decentralized autonomous organizations or whatever. I mean, these people in these altcoin foundations literally sit in a boardroom and go, okay,

what's the next narrative that we're going to push so we can pump our bags and dump it on retail? I mean, this is literally the conversation that they have. And you know, I don't know, like the Web 3.1 from the last cycle seems to have sputtered a bit. I mean, even Ryan Selkis, who's a shitcoin pumper has conceded that it didn't really do anything. Hey, all of this stuff is just fake activity. And the sad thing is, people like you guys that aren't developers, that aren't coders, can't see past sort of like the press releases that these altcoin communities put out. in any way, right? Like with a critical eye and you realize like these are all artificial numbers and it's more or less like people pumping it because they hold the token.

And it's not about usage at all. And this has been the case for many, many years now. And the thing is like the people that pump a lot of this stuff, they make a tremendous amount of money by pumping it. And there's a lot of suck stuff, they make a tremendous amount of money by pumping it. And, you know, there's a lot of suckers that end up getting hurt. And it's the saddest thing because

they get into a token thinking, okay, like this is going to be like the next Bitcoin. And because Bitcoin has done all of this stuff that all of these other coins have the same potential or whatever, when that's not the case at all like bitcoin programmers they you know when you're building on bitcoin you're not getting paid by a foundation to do stuff the incentives are completely different whereas you you built you build on like eos or something like that they'll give you like a million dollars to go build right quote unquote an app and then you you do a crappy job, but they say, oh, look, there's all this developer activity or whatever.

And, you know, people like you guys probably can't tell the difference between a legit app and, you know, something fake that somebody made. And, you know, the numbers that are completely fake, it's all fake. And that's the key is that all of these altcoins, they subsist on fake narratives that people can't tell the difference between what's real and fake because they don't want to read the code. They want to believe that their tokens are going to pump. So they have this

mental slavery to the people that actually control this stuff. It's no better than fiat. It's fiat 2.0. You mentioned building on Bitcoin. Where do you mentioned building on bitcoin where do you stand then on ordinals and building alex you guys can have this conversation perhaps obviously

because you're building on bitcoin where do you stand on building similar things but on bitcoin i think they're centralized crap and they i mean you you've already seen like a 90 drop on like uh and any of that ordinals and i i don't know what it would drc 20 or whatever it was uh all of that it it's a pump and dump and that that's what all of these things are all of these altcoins are pump and dumps and they have been for a long time and all and these are affiliate scammer uh affiliate scammers they're associating themselves with Bitcoin, hoping to capture some of the Bitcoin people and say, oh, you know, we're the same as Bitcoin.

And this is the most unconscionably immoral thing, is people like Stacks saying, oh, you know, we're building on Bitcoin and we're not an altcoin, even though we just issued like 17 different tokens or whatever. This is the really sad thing is all of these people get hurt.

They're really gambling, thinking that, okay, well, like I can make money doing no work and, you know, just trading a few things here and there. And this is the great lie of fiat money. And unfortunately, that's been the case for a long time. Within fiat money, there's a lot of rent seekers. There's just as many rent seekers, probably more in the altcoin space. And it's a really sad thing to see so many people get suckered. So many people lose their, you know, shirt on this stuff. And the people that benefit, it's the altcoin influencers, it's the VCs, it's the people that, the people that have this ability to blast it out and get people to pump.

It's the Bitboys of the world. It's the Alex Muszynskis. It's the Doquans. They're the people that try to make a lot of, that are able to capture a lot of this value when it's really all scamming. And it's unconscionable to me how many people think that this stuff is legit because they they really have no no clue how to evaluate technical stuff or even economic and monetary stuff that and this this what i wrote about in

this new book uh yeah it ruins everything the entire last section is about this altcoin, you know, scamming that happens as a result of and trying to take Bitcoin's reputation and use it for their own gain. This is finally unwinding. And that's what I'm seeing. Jimmy, how do you really feel? I'm just kidding.

Alex, you're building on Bitcoin. He talked about stacks. I guess that gives you the first right of response here yeah i mean i look i think the funny thing here is i think jimmy and i probably don't disagree on 95 percent of what's out there and what he's talking about i mean uh the vast vast majority certainly of coins that have been created are just pump and dump schemes of people trying to grab things. I think the only the place where we differ is when it comes back to, I think, the degree of interesting that the programmability of Bitcoin and crypto presents for the future i come down in the camp simply of like the for it to really be fully useful to people around the world and to scale the chain um since bitcoin is only ever going to run so many transactions on the core l1 like we need to figure out ways to scale it up um and so that's

like what i've spent the last few years and things working on um because i want to see it more accessible to people but i'm gonna agree like we have to get past this culture that has like clearing out all of this crap that has happened with people just you know yeah throwing millions of dollars at people to create some sort of fake idea of activity and influence that's going on so that retail money comes flooding in and pumps it and they can dump it on it. There's a huge number of incredibly unethical VCs and influencers that have been playing in this space for years.

Thankfully, I think a lot of them maybe left after 2022 and i really fucking hope they all don't come back to it there no they didn't come on listen for for better or for worse and i i can appreciate where money should be or whatever but the next cycle will be probably bigger and can i can i just respond to that because humans will human go Go ahead, Jimmy. Yeah. So I hear this a lot, right? Almost every all-coiner says, I agree with that 95% of all coins are crap and that they're scammy and all that. Like this is a line I hear every single time. And guess what? They always say, except for my bags, right? It's always, you know, everything is crap except for my bags. And it's kind of like college football. You know, it's you know, my I enjoy my team, but everyone else, you know, I root against or something like that.

Of course, that's what everyone's going to say in the altcoin space. Yeah. Ninety five percent of altcoins are stuff that I don't own. And of course, they're crap. Otherwise, I would have it. But the five percent that I do own, you know, those are fine. Right. This is a stupid justification. They're all scams, and everyone is going to say exactly the same thing. Yeah, you agree on 95%. What's that?

Honestly, you can't say they're all scams. I mean, that's rubbish. No, they are. They are. Show me one useful case. I mean, this is the thing. Everyone likes to argue with me on this stuff and say, oh, no, but my bags are okay. My bags are fine.

Here's evidence. And then they say the exact same arguments. Look at the developer activity. Look at all these people that are in it. And this is the same argument that you go against all of the stuff that you think are crap. It is all crap. And if you don't believe me, look at the, look at the charts, look at, look at how all of this, look, do you,

do you even know that the early all coins from 2011, you don't think the same people said the same thing in 2011. Do you even know what IX coin or Geist scale or tenant bricks are probably not because you've never heard of that. of these none of this stuff it like ever carries over the long term these are scams and if you don't understand that then you don't understand the tech you don't understand any of this stuff and you're probably not a coder you're a vc you're a marketer you're a tech writer or whatever you but you don't understand what the hell is going on and that that that's been my position and the thing is if you if you are one of these scammers you're going to make you you're going to try to confuse people as much as you can and say oh no but these things

are not scams the five percent that i own those are not scams the thing is people like you are the are the problem it's it's always oh it's all crap. There has to be something, you know, in this trash bin somewhere that's actually legit. The fact of the matter is... I'll let you finish. This is the argument that I hear every single time.

I'm sick of it because these people are taking Bitcoin's reputation and using it for their own gain, for their own marketing to benefit at the expense of Bitcoin. And this is unconscionably immoral. And I stand by that. And I and you know, this guy's going to say stuff like, oh, Jimmy, you're wrong and whatever. Probably not technical, doesn't understand a single thing about this stuff. He just knows other people and trusts other people, usually the people that are in the...

Yeah, Jimmy, I'll let James, I'll let you respond. Obviously, you've got a lot to say. I think it's absolutely right. I mean, the thing is, he interrupted me, so I don't want to... Come on. No, no, he tried. He tried. He interrupted me. He started saying that. He tried. He tried your mic your mic is like

six times louder than his so we couldn't hear anything he said that's your credit so so you want yeah but still he's the one that interrupted me and now you're like giving him the floor i just want to point out that like you know this is the game that every all-coin plays oh oh we need to be fair here after he interrupts me. What the hell? I think he was quiet now. Yeah, James, I'll let you respond, James, and then if Jimmy speaks afterwards, I'll make sure to let you know.

James, your mic is a bit quiet, so if there's any way to turn it off. Yeah, we can't hear you. Barely hear you, James. Yeah, sorry about that. I mean, the main point I'd like to make is that we're in a growth industry. It's a bit like the internet in 1997 there are things that could grow out of all of this back in like back in 1997 we didn't know what would work on the internet now we know and it's the same thing with bitcoin and other

protocols i think we need to give some of these protocols of benefit of the doubt i totally agree with jimmy there is a lot of scammers there, but we shouldn't tar everyone with the same brush. I think there are some really interesting initiatives out there. That's all I've got to say on the matter. No hard feelings, Jimmy. I didn't mean to interrupt, but you've banged on for quite a long time. The fact is

it is all rubbish. This is an argument I hear all the time and have been hearing since 2011. There's something in there. We don't know what's going to work. We just need to let it run. This is how you get the Doquans and the Bitboys and the Alex Wyszynskis and the Sam Bank and Freedons. Right. This is this is how you let evil run amok is by saying, oh, these are you know, we need to give them room or whatever. This is how people get, you know, scammed out of billions and billions of dollars of their money.

It's people like you that enable them and saying, oh, there's got to be something good here. So we have to let all of these things run when they're really running scams. That's what's been happening for a very long time. And until you realize that you don't understand anything about this industry, and that this is not the internet, this is money. And once you realize it's money, there's a network effect, it's better when it doesn't change. And that blockchain is this very difficult thing to manage and things like that, and to upgrade it and stuff is just unconscionably stupid i've been in this industry

25 years in investment management industry i've seen similar sort of fads with technology and inequities yeah and you're using the wrong paradigm you're fighting the last war buddy you don't really understand anything i consider a lot of investment professionals like you rent seekers anyway you play these pump and dump games, which were fantastic in the fiat world. This is, this is sound money. And this is, I mean, this is what you've been taking advantage of. This is what you guys do is you pump various things. You get people to buy it, you dump it on retail and you make, you know,

a lot of money on your leverage trades or whatever and and this is it's people like you that are the problem it's it's people like you that are saying okay well we got to let these things run uh we got to give them room to innovate and then you get the alex mishinsky's and the bit boys and the brand all of these scammers and saying uh i mean this is the stupidest justification for scamming is by saying, oh, no, there might be something in this piece of garbage, you know, this garbage landfill that might actually have something useful in it. It's people like you that allow for all of this stuff by saying, OK, this guy said he wouldn't interrupt me and he keeps interrupting. But Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, let's give him a chance to respond, Jimmy. And then we'll go to Peruvian Bull as well. Go ahead, Jimmy, let's give him a chance to respond, Jimmy, and then we'll go to

Peruvian Bull as well. Go ahead, James, let you respond and then Peruvian Bull. Yeah, you're flying out all these accusations saying

I'm a scammer and a pump and dump scheme, all those sort of things. Who sent me not to respond to that? I think I have integrity and so

does CoinShares, you know. CoinShares is here democratizing Bitcoin just like they really did with gold. It's actually, for an investor, it's a very

difficult thing to access. People can't just buy stuff on it, you know, use a ledger device. And so that's the way I see it. We don't offer anything that's leveraged, by the way. We're one for one Bitcoin, one for one Ethereum and other altcoins. And it's totally up to those people whether they want to buy or not. We're not sort of doing a pump and dump scheme. And it's a very jaded view, Jimmy, you have.

And I think it's a shame you have this kind of opinion i've seen way too many things i've seen way too many things where there have been scams for for me to think the thing is you're spinning things so that this audience will buy your bags and that that's been the case for a while and i don't know maybe you're selling picks and shovels to this scamming industry, but I still consider that a scam. Whatever the case. The thing is, you want to let me finish, or are you just going to respond to it? No, no, I'm sorry, guys.

I wanted, guys, James and Jimmy, I just want Peruvian Bull to jump in as well, and then we'll go back to you, Jimmy. Peruvian Bull? Yeah, I was going to add on to a little bit what jimmy is saying um essentially so i think a little bit of background that that has been missed here is the reason why there's been so much you know grifting and um overall just scams in in the altcoin industry you know money is i, it's a completely different technology than just, you know, a social media site or even, you know, an app.

It is the ultimate network effect. It's the mother of all network effects. And so once Bitcoin gained adoption in 2011, 2012, all these other altcoins that tried to, you know, supersede it have to come up with some sort of narrative, have to come up with some sort of, you know, I guess, bull case to beat it. And to do that, and to have all the development, and, you know, technology, technological know-how to do that, you need a massive amount of investment, which is why all these VCs started coming in. Because if you're making an altcoin and you're trying to say hey it's more it's uh you know um more permissionless or it's more it's as better scalability or better finality than bitcoin faster finality then you need to have developers to help you build that and you also

by default because of what's called the blockchain blockchain trilemma which is this basically it's a triangle between you know scalability security and convenience where if you if you start to decentralize or centralize more then you do get more scalability you do get more transaction throughput but you're giving up that decentralization and so in order to beat the decentralization nature of bitcoin they have to market themselves as something else and what they end And what all these altcoins end up becoming is not actually money. It's more of like a security because of that initial investment needed to build out the base protocol, to build out the technology. But most of them are not marketing. You look at all these altcoins and I can't name a single one that didn't have investment to start it.

I don't know a single one. The question have investment to start it i don't know a single one like if you can get themselves as money like are they saying that their money i know that trust me i know that there's people who are who say it's ultrasound money i'm not going to get into opinions on that but most of most of these are not claiming that they are money a lot of them are a lot of them are a lot of them are and i'll of them are. And I'll also give this advice to everyone. The entire point of financial markets is that they are an abstraction of the real economy. Right? Like, you buy equities because they are an abstraction of the company that you're buying. You buy an options contract because they're an abstraction of the equity.

They're a derivative of the equity. They're a derivative of the equity. The entire point of all of cryptocurrency, of this entire ecosystem, is supposed to be an abstraction of money. It's supposed to be money first, and then financial contracts, swaps, exchanges, locking money in time contracts, earning interest. All of that is supposed to come secondary to the base reality of money. And if we don't get the money right, then what's the point of owning, you know, an options contract or futures contract in something that isn't even used in the real economy. So if you look at like, you know, just name something like AVAX, for example, AVAX has better finality than Bitcoin. AVAX is extremely fast. It's extremely fast transaction throughput, better than Bitcoin. But there's no base layer adoption of AVAX. No one is using AVAX to buy groceries. No one is using AVAX to buy clothes. You can't use it in anything in

the real economy. So what's the point of collecting all this AVAX other than just to post it somewhere and gain interest in some DeFi know, DeFi liquid protocol. So Bitcoin, I think, is doing the strategy the right way, which is you need to build out the base layer adoption. You need to start using these things in the real economy first. Bitcoin is, you know, properly following this with, you know, El Salvador adoption, but also just merchant adoption from, you know, Fold and from other Bitcoin fintechs where they're trying to force more and more people or get more appropriately, just convince more and more people to get into the Bitcoin ecosystem at the base layer.

So you can use it in the real economy. I agree with everything you said. I just want to then bring out another point. And again, it's not an opinion. We just saw a report today that in Brazil, stablecoin transactions on Tether eclipse all other crypto combined. Right. So I think a lot of the things that Bitcoiners believe, I consider myself one, Bitcoiners believe people should be doing in countries of hyperinflation or economic problems, obviously, is buying Bitcoin to store their wealth.

But what we generally see is that they're buying stable coins because they want access to dollars because they can't get access to dollars outside of the black market. And so we're seeing actually this widespread adoption of stable coins in a lot of these countries. And to further make your point about how little your average person cares about the trilemma or security, they're doing it on Tron. Right. And I don't think you can find a single TRX Tron maxi who really cares. But what your average person, for better or for worse, in one of these countries that's desperately seeking to get their money out of their hyperinflating currency is doing is buying and sending dollars using Tron, digitized dollars.

Exactly. And that only adds to my argument. I mean, money is the ultimate network effect. And currently the dollars, the world reserve currency, is 80% of interregional trade. It's over 50% of trade invoices. It's over 60% of global forex reserves. If you are the dominant money in a system, you're not the dominant by just a little bit. You're the dominant by a fucking lot. And so the hangover from the current fiat system is this all have problems, obviously. We're reaching the end of a massive debt super cycle globally. This isn't just isolated to the US or the UK or Europe. Everyone is facing the same problem. The difference is the dollar is the only currency in the world

that has demand outside of its own borders in any reasonable quantity. The yuan, the euro, the yen, no one really uses it for trade outside of their own borders, outside of the borders of that host country. The dollar is the only one. And so I'm not denying the fact that as this global currency crisis continues, as countries start to have inflation problems and recession starts to hit, people are going to flood into dollars because, of course, dollars are safer than their home currency. Because the dollar is the the pen yeah they're yeah it's the only it's the only currency with global demand i mean that's the best way to put it and if bitcoin supersedes the dollar it'll have the same effect it'll suck all other monetary instruments into it and again that's what people don't understand it's the ultimate it's the king daddy of all network effects this

is why the dollar will take all it'll take a long time it'll be hard to replace because it has this persistent network effect and has this you know latent demand that's built in the system and so yeah i expect i expect more people to jump into stables as as things go as uh you know things go awry in their home countries because simply put it's safer being there than it is in their own currency but um you know they probably don't understand a lot of the risks that come with stablecoin issuers, that come with capital and reserve requirements by the stablecoin issuer. And we might see, I mean, Tether, everyone's been flooding Tether for how many years? And it still hasn't blown up.

Yeah, exactly. I think there's a perception that tether... People want to believe in... People want to hold something that they believe has value, and currently the predominant paradigm is that the dollar still has value, and it does, but that won't be the case forever. They said David Towle.

Do you have any comments? No, I jumped in too late on this to know the context. But there's a pretty heated discussion going on. We need to know which side you stand on. Carlo, you've been here. I want to just make sure you guys. Never, never, hold on, hold on. I never thought, David, you'd be a coward.

I've seen that photo of you beaten up and still taking it as a man i got i'm surprised that i expected more i got on the space too late i don't even know what's being discussed no you did it you were you were listening in the audience i'm watching you david but it's okay i'll let this one slip through but on on scott i think i think we've covered it well um i think there's not much more yeah to discuss can i speak on the yeah please yeah go ahead jimmy go ahead yeah so i mean this is this is another sort of like argument that a lot of uh a lot of altcoiners like to point out is okay well uh you know the all altcoins can't be bad because, you know, there's Tether and that's an altcoin or whatever. Actually, what Tether and all of these stables are is sort of like a full reserve bank for people outside the United States.

Anyone that wants a U.S. dollar bank account has to do something within the United States. I guess there are some Euro banks that will issue the Euro dollar and do those on a fractional reserve basis or whatever, but those are still all very heavily regulated. And really what Tether and all of these other stables are, it's a way to get a bank account. And they've found sort of like this regulatory niche where they they they can be very strict with actual people that are depositing dollars and getting issued tether or redeeming tether and getting issued dollars uh you know through through the banking system they they found this sort of like weird middle where they they have this regulatory um uh sort of murkiness that they're taking advantage of to do this. I don't consider those things like proper altcoins, right? Like Peruvian Bull was saying,

there is a network effect to money and the demand from that comes for money. And I would like to disagree with you on all of these altcoins saying that they're money. Actually I would like to disagree with you on the, you know, like, are all of these altcoins saying that they're, they're money? Actually, a lot of them, almost all of them go on this narrative of, we're a better Bitcoin. And that's been the case throughout the entire history of altcoins starting in 2011, that, okay, we're, we're, we're going to be better than Bitcoin because of X or Y or whatever. But there is this network effect. And the fact of the matter is all of these other things have this centralization problem. They're all centralized. And as a result, they don't have

the main property that makes Bitcoin interesting, which is decentralization. You are sovereign over your own coins. You are not with all of this other stuff. I was not, by the way, just for clarification, I was not claiming that Tether itself is an altcoin. Obviously, I actually agree with your assessment of what that is. It's just enabled, obviously, by other protocols. I would frankly love to see that on Bitcoin if it was going to happen. Mick, we'll go ahead and then David.

Yeah, I just, I feel like this narrative of nothing can be important in this space other than Bitcoin is really disrespectful to the underlying technology here that blockchain technology is bringing to the world. I mean, to think that the only thing blockchain technology is ever going to amount to is sending one coin from one wallet to another, I just think is a severe underappreciation of what's being created here. The whole idea of an internet of value is the ability to bring all forms of value onto the internet, tokenize it, and be able to move that value instantaneously all over the world. It's a brand new financial system. And what we're learning over time is there's multiple protocols that are going to be very important to creating this internet of value.

So this whole idea that we can only have Bitcoin and everything else is a scam is just not what the market is saying. I mean, just look at things like Filecoin. Filecoin is doing an excellent job of making storage cheaper. And that is very important. It's getting adoption. And then you have things like XRP, which is being used for institutions to move money all around the world. There is clear uses of things like Chainlink to bring data on chain. So these are obviously not scams and big institutions are starting to adopt them. But I think when you have people coming on here and just screaming that everything's a scam, and nothing else can be touched, and the technology is broken, it's a massive disrespect to what's being built in this space. This technology is not only going

to be money, it's going to be used for value to move all around the world. And different protocols in this space are going to be used to transform the financial system. That's really all I have to say here. And I have a feeling I'm about to be barraged on my technical knowledge of this space. But for me, just looking at what's happening, these trends seem fairly obvious. David, go ahead. Okay. So I now know where we are in the conversation. Yeah, go David and then Jimmy. I've been able to grab my bearings now. I'm certainly less emotional about this than a lot of people on this space, and that's not better or worse. I just need to

make money for my investors regardless. I do believe that there is a world out there for blockchain and ledgers beyond Bitcoin. I think there are use cases. I feel bad. Ran is not on this space today to go ahead and continue to echo his statement about he wants to see more use cases. But there are use cases, Filecoin, Helium, I actually think is an interesting use case as well. And, you know, it's going to need different protocol, different crypto to go ahead and support that. I still believe we're in early, early innings of all of this. And so therefore, you know, I certainly think being singularly focused certainly, you know, on Bitcoin will certainly make you a lot of money, I believe. But it certainly will not bring you to what this asset class or industry will eventually look like. And so look, I think everybody here is going to get rich. That's a great thing. So congratulations to all. It's just a question of is your wealth going to begin and end with Bitcoin or is it going to go ahead and develop and progress into other assets? That's kind of really where I come out.

Go ahead, Jimmy. All right. So Mikkel is obviously a complete technical stupid person. He doesn't know anything about this stuff. Guys, I think it's just a bit of an issue no one can hear anyone so so jimmy's speaking i think it's glitching so if anyone can't hear jimmy just put your hand up so i know it's glitching for you go ahead i can hear him i can hear him so go ahead jimmy hey jimmy you there scott is he speaking or no? I don't hear anything now. I lost my head for a second.

Yeah, I think, all right, cool. Somebody muted me, I think. Yeah, I don't know what happened. Yeah, all yours. All yours, all yours. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. All right.

Yeah, 2015 would like to have its narrative back, Mikkel. Didn't hear it. Hello? Yeah, just Peruvian. Yeah, I'm just going to remove him and bring him back up. It's a glitch. I knew he couldn't hear you. Go ahead peruvian guys yeah i'm just gonna remove him bring him back it's a glitch i knew he couldn't go ahead jimmy okay all right so so it's funny because what mickle's saying that this was exactly the narrative in 2014 and 2050 it's been like eight or nine years guys this hasn't happened all of this stuff about blockchain technology being useful or whatever. I wrote an article back in 2018, outlining all of the technical reasons why it doesn't make any sense for any of this technology that supposedly has all this utility. You look at it, it's slow, it's hard to upgrade, it has to be decentralized, it imposes all kinds of enormous costs. I wrote a follow-up article after that about all of the different ways, all of the existing technology that you can use if one of these particular things were the things that you wanted.

Blockchain technology is a buzzword. And like most investors that aren't technical, they just go with these narratives and it's funny because these two guys uh that just spoke uh they're they're pumping the things that all the vcs are saying file coin and uh i i forget the xrp and all of this stuff they uh and these are the ones that have the most marketing push behind them it's it's not the actual technically interesting things at least zcash has some technically technically interesting things. At least Zcash has some technically interesting things. You know, Decred, I actually know the developers, so I know they're smart and they actually do things.

But from a technical standpoint, okay, there's actually something interesting there. Now, I'm not saying that they have value. I don't think they do. But they have some interesting technical stuff. And this guy's so stupid on the technical stuff that he's just parroting whatever the pumpers of these coins are saying. Just spitting out the same narratives that the Filecoin founders and the VCs that are doing helium or whatever. I mean, it's not a coincidence that these guys are pumping the same things that have the most marketing money behind them, because it is all a fiat game. It's a game of

getting people to buy something and then being able to dump it on them, whether they recognize that is what they're doing or not. The fact is, all of this stuff does not make sense from a technological perspective. And the way you can tell is the question I always ask all of these people when they say, okay, like, we need to make this coin and whatever is okay, if it is that useful, first of all, why? Why aren't you doing it on Bitcoin? And second, why aren't you just using a central database like a normal website or a normal app? And the reason why they don't is because they want a coin to pump. And the pumping and dumping, the issuance of the token itself is always the indicator that it is not technically interesting.

It is a narrative around which to get the token to pump. And that's how you can always tell because they take like 50, 60, 70% pre-mines and then dump it on retail when it's convenient so they can make back their money. It's the most immoral and unconscionable way to make money. And sadly, these guys have fallen for that narrative. Maybe even they're lying to themselves. But really, I think deep down,

they recognize that this is going to wreck a lot of the people that are in retail. And I completely disagree that everyone's going to get rich. There's a whole bunch of people in this chat right now that will get scammed in the next cycle that if they persist in these narratives, this VC and altcoin founder stupidity that they continue to pump, that they will all get wrecked instead of actually making money and being able to save the value that you've created by keeping it in Bitcoin. Instead of using it as a better money, they're going to get scammed by the people that are promising you the moon for doing nothing or promising you rent-seeking positions.

Mikko, I'd love you to respond. Yeah, I mean, right before I finished speaking, at the end of me speaking, I predicted that Jimmy would instantly just insult my intelligence because I didn't agree with his narrative. But that's the Bitcoin maxi way, right? They don't want to actually argue about what I was saying. Instead, it was just I'm too. I let you go through your entire rant with insulting me. I didn't cut you off. So I'd appreciate if I could get a couple words in here.

So like I was saying, I knew he was just going to go to that because he didn't want to discuss the underlying thing of what we are talking about. It's much easier just to insult my intelligence and say everything I'm saying is bogus rather than hitting on the fundamentals. But it's a dumb argument at the end of the day. We're seeing the adoption of these other protocols. It clearly hasn't been just Bitcoin. There are other blockchain technologies

that have clearly carved out a use case in this world we're heading into. So to argue otherwise is just ignoring the reality of what's happening. Other than that, I have a feeling this discussion will be like yelling at a brick wall. So that's all I have to say for now. Can I respond now? discussion will be like yelling at a brick wall so that's all i have to say for now can you hear us now yeah hold on just two sec peruvian i'll let you jump in on this and look i've got a simple question a very simple one uh jimmy jimmy if the market outside of bitcoin

is a scam or there's no value to it it's not decentralized then why is it still alive why are the metrics continuing to increase there's ups ups and downs, there is scams within it. You can always refer to, obviously FTX and all the others. I don't want to say they're naming them. But then the market still exists. The adoption is increasing. You've got a lot of TradFi coming into it. The narrative around it is changing.

You can't say the market outside of Bitcoin hasn't improved to what it was in 2017. That's in terms of TVL, in terms of general narrative, in terms of different use cases. Doesn't that essentially, without getting into the technical details, that alone should mean there's life. It's been long enough. It's stood the test of time. It survived 2018, 2019, and here we are today, more developers within the ecosystem and more things being built on top of it. And VC money, we all like to shit on VCs, but they do follow what creates value.

They invest in a lot of things that go to zero. They make mistakes and invest in scams. But at the end of the day, they are looking for an exit. So they do invest in things that they believe will bring value to the ecosystem. Would love your thoughts on that argument before going to Peruvian. All right.

So first of all, let me answer Nicola. I definitely hit on the technical points. And of course, he doesn't respond to them and acts like I didn't respond to any of it. I wrote an article in 2018 about why blockchain is hard, how it's very difficult, how it doesn't make sense and all of that stuff. I wrote a follow-up article about alternatives to blockchain if you actually wanted to do these things. So for him to characterize what I said as just sort of like not responding to the substance of what he was saying, it's completely bogus. I've written a ton of articles on this stuff. It is a very difficult

technical thing to understand what a blockchain actually is. This guy clearly does not understand it. And he's trying to spin it so that, oh, you know, his bags are okay. And when in fact, he is carrying bags, he's trying to get you to buy them, the people in the audience. He's pumping and dumping. He's pumping Filecoin. He's pumping XRP.

He's pumping all of this stuff saying there's adoption. I bet you he doesn't know a single thing about the actual technical stuff underneath. So of course he's going to say stuff like, oh, there's money going to it or whatever. And so to answer your question, Mario, about the VC investment or whatever. OK, let's talk about a few technologies that have gotten a significant amount of investment over the years that haven't produced anything that a lot of these marketing and investment guys keep saying, oh, you know, there has to be something coming out of it. There's so much money going into it. Actually, that's a very terrible indicator of whether or not something's going to get produced from a particular industry. So let me give you a few examples. For example,

cold fusion. That was a big thing, big theme in the 80s and 90s. And, you know, if you actually study the physics of it, it turns out that it is extremely difficult. No one's figured out how to do a lot of this stuff that that was theorized or whatever. So the engineering reality is that nothing's happened. Let's look at quantum computing. There are so many labs right now, so many startups right now that are supposedly doing something in quantum. Except if you actually study the physics underneath and the actual engineering problems that come along with it, you realize that this, you know, if you're even slightly technical and understand a little bit of the physics that are involved in doing something like getting, you know, particles down to, you know, micro degrees above absolute zero and keeping

them in that state and using some of these quantum effects to do this supposed computing, you realize that this is completely infeasible. And the thing is, people like Nickler and David or whoever else is here that really work in the world of money don't understand any of that stuff. They just trust other people to do the due diligence. You realize very quickly that almost nobody does the due diligence or needs to do the due diligence except you realize very quickly that almost nobody does the due diligence or needs to do the due diligence if you can dump on retail and that's what they're doing this is this is the the curse of being sort of financial is that you don't understand stuff so

you trust other people and you shout out numbers like oh there's adoption here or there or whatever well go look at the actual adoption from like six or seven years ago there's none of it right like that hey you could say okay well ripple is good because they're centralized and people are moving things or whatever yeah i guess i guess you've read the press releases from ripple congratulations you're you're uh sort of like confirming what you already believe but i mean you you look at the actual thing they're just getting around security laws i mean they they've issued billions of ripple for themselves this has been the case with every single altcoin and if you don't if you just follow the money look at what what this stuff is and actually learn some of the technical stuff instead of listening to these quote-unquote investment gurus that are

all really trying to get in on this game of pump and dump. So few people do this. And I'm a technical guy. I've actually written books on this stuff. And for him to say, oh, he's just going to... Yeah, I am insulting your intelligence because you clearly don't understand the technical stuff. And you act't that stuff doesn't matter or that you you can outsource it to somebody and make it uh and understand it or something that that's not the case and you can't just rely on other people's behavior as an indicator of whether or not something is good or not that's simply simply not the case. Peruvian.

Yeah, I'll just throw this in here again, like, money is the king daddy of all network effects. So okay, you know, you have two cryptocurrencies, one's going to become a next global reserve currency. And another one is a cool way to use a VPN and get paid for being a VPN node and pay others for using their VPN node? Which one is going to have more value at the end of the day? It's clearly the former. I mean, Apple's market cap is what?

800 billion, maybe a trillion. And global currency and debt markets are north of 400 trillion. And that's not even including euro dollars or, you know, off balance sheet derivatives, which is somewhere north of one quadrillion, if you take in the notional amounts, like we're talking about replacing the, you know, I guess the nuclear heart of the Death Star versus like some little appendage that does some cool thing

on the side, on the far corner that is like an AC unit. It's like, yes, of of course i'm not going to argue that there aren't uh you know use cases outside of money but money is the most important use case for this stuff it is it is the you know changing and fixing our broken money system will completely revolutionize our entire economy it'll fix the cost of capital it'll fix the permanently low interest rates and the manipulation of interest rates that the Fed has done for the last 20, 30 years. It'll help correct some of the excesses in capital markets, some of the froth and the exuberance that occurs because the Fed decides to pump in trillions of dollars of liquidity

and lower rates to zero to respond to every single crisis. You know, the Fed is essentially prioritizing the financial economy over the real economy every single time they do this. And so there's no wonder that all this capital, you know, gets generated that flows into these things, because the Fed creates it. Because the Fed's idea is that if they stimulate the financial economy, it'll somehow flow into the real economy, and that will boost economic growth. And then therefore, any debt or any risks that they create in the system will be paid for because there'll be fundamental growth to compensate for it so yeah like this is the there's a there's a huge huge difference between

replacing our broken money system and getting a more efficient or cooler way to run a vpn and to compensate people for it i'm not saying you know, that use case doesn't exist or it shouldn't be invested in and people shouldn't buy that coin. If you want to do that, fine, go for it. But just understand that there's a magnitude of order difference in potential gain between replacing money and being a cool VPN. David and then Carlo as we head towards wrapping. Jimmy, we've never spoken before.

You're catching me on a day when I'm otherwise emotionally out of this space due to my son fighting in the IDF in Israel and my daughter being harassed to no end on campus at the University of Pennsylvania for being Jewish. So it might be good that you're catching me on a day like today, because I got to tell you, man, I mean, you're an all eggs in one basket type of guy. I respect that. OK, and you're the most technical guy. I'll give that to you. Fine. You can have that. I know nothing about the technicals, but for you to be so confident as to say that the best mousetrap, which you believe is the best mousetrap, by the

way, there's no proving it's the best mouse trap. What you believe is the best mouse trap is going to carry the day, I think, is I would never be so wholeheartedly bet on that. I've been around industries, so I'm not a technical person. I can't talk to you about cold fusion. I can't tell you why quantum computing is an impossibility. But what I can tell you is I've been around other industries for long enough and have seen enough industries develop to tell you that the best mousetrap, even if you believe it is, doesn't always carry the day and win. So if I, Mario, if you want to go ahead and put a bet here, in sense in terms of i don't know how long from now that bitcoin is the only survivor here versus anything else i'm happy to play into that bet because i

i'm certainly happy to put money on the fact that jimmy sounds like i don't want to put words in his mouth he can respond but jimmy believes that bitcoin is the only solution here. And that crypto is a one trick pony. Can I respond? Sure. Yes, go ahead, Jimmy. So first of all, if you are going to make that bet, then I want you to take five that you think will outperform Bitcoin. If any of those five outperform Bitcoin in the next 10 or five years or something like that, I'll take a bet something like that. But I never said that all of these will go away. I think in the long term, maybe like 30, 40 years.

Yes, I think that'll be true. But there's always pumps and dumps and things like that so 30 40 years of utility you can't get you can't say no no no no no no it's not utility that's that's pumping and that always happens no no no no no no no no you you have to pick five right now you have to pick five right now and if they they survive, if they hit a new all time high against Bitcoin, then you win. If they don't, then I would write like that. That I think is a much fairer way to do that. But regardless, like the thing is, what what what David is saying is basically like, I don't understand any of this. Is there about better mousetrap or whatever? And this is a very common sort of like fighting the last war mentality of a lot of investors.

He's also saying, OK, like you're not diversified. This is heresy or whatever. The thing that David doesn't get is that this is a new money. This is not a new technology. It's not about better mousetraps. It's not about better features. The thing that makes money good is that it is a new money. This is not a new technology. It's not about better mouse traps. It's not about better features. The thing that makes money good is that it doesn't change. And adding new features is actually a detriment

to doing stuff like that. What you want is something that stays steady. This is why we call it savings. It's so that it keeps its value over time. And David doesn't really seem to grasp the fact that Bitcoin is new money and not as much new technology. If you're looking at it through a tech lens, of course, that's how you're going to think of it, right? Like if it's a garbage can or something like that, then yeah, it has this new feature of being able to take it out the bottom or something like that, that may very well

be true. But this is money. With money, what you want is something that is steady over time, that you can easily predict what's going to happen in the future and not have it completely upended like you see with all of these altcoins like, oh, we're going to move to proof of stake now. Oh, we're going to make everybody upgrade and we're going to change the emission schedule and we're going to do this. That is not good money at all. And that's the thing. All of these things are competing against Bitcoin, whether they admit it or not. Now, they're going to say we have this other utility, blah, blah, blah. And we're going to make things better because of this this and this is how we're going to beat bitcoin this is a this is a narrative that every single altcoin has had but there is a network effect

the of money that makes it so that it congregates into one and uh you know we we saw this historically during the gold standard where you know every country there were there were silver countries and gold countries everybody standardized around gold for a reason. There's a network effect to money. So, I mean, like the thing is, like a lot of people in this space think that diversification into all coins is like somehow useful or something like that. It's not. They're all centralized crap. They're all taking Bitcoin's reputation and its history and using it for their own gain to pump and dump,

to dump on retail. And if you listen to any of these guys that are on stage that clearly have bags, that clearly own a lot of this stuff that was severely pre-mined and used for various purposes to enrich the founders, then don't listen to these people. Follow the money. See where they're going. That's the thing. I have none of that. My portfolio is entirely liquid. It's mark to market every day. I don't have any of those investments. And so therefore, to go ahead and throw those again you you seem i i professionally will say what i do is i'm an investor you can tell me david you've invested in absolute shit you don't know what you've got one asset in your portfolio that's worth anything everything else is eventually and

eventually here by the way qualifying it with a 30 40 year timeline is pretty long i must say i'm happy to own something that eventually goes to zero but for 30 or 40 years i make money um but at the end of the day too it's no no no i i i just want to clarify i didn't say that i said that this like all coin pump and dumps will happen for 30, 40 years. I'm not saying, I think a lot of this stuff will die in like two years, right? Like I didn't say that any particular assets going to last 30, 40 years or whatever. I just want to clarify. Oh, I'm sorry. I very much misunderstood you.

You think the overall theme of pumping and dumping last 30, I just want to make sure I get this right, 30 to 40 years, but particular assets are going to burn out in a much shorter timeframe. I'm going to take the other side of that. I really am. And it's, again, I'm not going to get emotional about this. I believe that the sole victor in this

is not going to be Bitcoin. Essentially, that's the bet we're making, which is, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the bet we're making. I'll take the other side. That's fine. Okay, so 10 years from now, Bitcoin still has the largest market cap of,

or five years from now, Bitcoin has the largest market cap of any crypto. No, no, no. Because you said something will be Bitcoin, right? That's what any crypto. No, no, no, no. Because you said something will beat Bitcoin, right? That's what you said. Putting words into my mouth. You said the soul, I said the soul victor. That was the words I said. Right. You're saying now, no, maybe other stuff is going to exist. Again, I'll defer to you. I'll give this to you. Exist in a real substantive manner as opposed to in a pump and dump scheme, right? But I believe that there is going to be an entire ecosystem here, not a single cryptocurrency.

Is that what we're agreeing on? Is that the bet? I want you to pick five right now. That's not that instead of picking five later, you know what I mean? Like if you believe that something is going to be all these projects, if you believe in them or that they're doing something, then pick five right now and we'll see their performance against Bitcoin because they should go up against Bitcoin.

I'll take the top five alts by cap. And you believe that those will... Well, so Tether doesn't count because that's a stable coin. But I think that would be Ethereum and Binance Coin. I don't know. Somebody look up Ethereum, Binance, whatever it is. XRP, Solana, and Cardano. Okay, so those versus Bitcoin, the performance five years from now no no no you keep putting words into my mouth man no those five exist five years

from now you're telling me they're gonna burn out because they're all pump and dump schemes well i mean they're they're they're burning like, then how do you quantify that? Because like, I'm sure they'll be still traded somewhere. But like, you know, like, I mean, that I mean, like you want them all delisted off of every exchange. That's a very unfair. No, no, we both I think we're both old enough and mature enough to agree that their existence in terms of relevance to the world and relevance to value, right, is what we're talking about. Don't worry.

David, you guys may have a different definition that can't be settled on with that as well. I love this debate, guys, but I'm going to move on to Carlo, and then we need to wrap soon. So I can introduce the two of you private. I was enjoying this bet, Scott. I was listening to this. I was enjoying this bet. I said to end it, if they remain in the top 50 coins, then that would, I think, determine relevance to the world.

What they'll tell you is that, you know, whatever. I'm done. Go ahead. I'm going top 50 coins and i'm gonna remember this bet i love this shit but go ahead sorry i love the bet as well but i don't think we were gonna i uh nail nail down yeah i don't i don't think top 50 means anything if like they're all like crap right like yeah if if top 50 is uh bitcoin's night and i'm not saying this will happen but you know if it was 99 of% of the market cap is Bitcoin exists a top 50,

that doesn't work, right? So yeah, Carlo, go ahead. Yeah, so look, I've got to jump on a call soon. But I just wanted to say, I think it's, it's, it's a disservice to blockchain technology to say that it has to be one or the other. Because we can agree that there's elegance and beauty in what Bitcoin is, purely decentralized. It is a serious and very, very, very legitimate hedge against fiat currency. And if it has a massive market cap in 10 years, but it is the only chain standing, then that's a massive failure for blockchain technology. Because what Ethereum and other alternatives to Bitcoin are building is they are building the internet of the future.

They are enabling the ability for this technology to create streams of commerce and dApps over the internet. And if you're looking at what's happening with things like L2s, including Polygon, what Coinbase is launching, yes, they're not purely decentralized chains, but they are offering a more elegant, a more sophisticated and faster means of exchanging on the internet that frankly, Bitcoin was not built to solve. So I don't know why it has to be one or the other. You can respect the beauty and elegance of Bitcoin as a pure fiat, as a hedge, as the digital gold, but you can also have room for blockchain technology to develop the next iteration of the internet. So I just, I want to say, to say that

this is all a matter of black and white and absolutes, I think ultimately is bad for the technology and very dismissive of what things like zero knowledge proofs are building. I mean, we're going to have an entire world of identity and verification built on zero knowledge proofs that frankly can't be built on the back of Bitcoin. There just isn't enough there to do that. So I think we can have both. I hate to be the meme in the room here, but why not both? That's my closing thought, Scott. A little girl. Can I respond to that?

This is exactly the word salad that you would expect from a VC or somebody that doesn't understand the technicals. It is nothing. I don't want any bags in this game, but fine. Are you technical? Are you a developer? Do you understand what it is? I don'm not a VC. It is nothing. I don't want any bags in this game, but fine. Are you technical? Are you a developer?

Do you understand what it is? Because I don't think you do. I don't have to be. I don't have to be. I don't have to be a technical developer. Yes, you do. You do. Okay, guys.

Sorry. Sorry. Too much screaming. We just muted everybody, not my host. I'm going to open it again. But I think, Jimmy, I think we know exactly what the response is going to be. I think we've been down the road and we've litigated this. I don't think we're coming to a heartfelt agreement anytime.

And so I just don't want to be repetitive. Scott, hold on. Scott, are you an MC? If you're not an MC, why are you moderating this fight? Hold on. Why are you moderating this fight? I know how to yell over a mic over loud people. So I've got that going. I enjoyed the conversation, Jimmy.

I appreciate you coming on and having that discussion and Mikko, Carlo, for pushing back Peruvian and David and others. It was a good discussion, but I went way over time, Scott. So I think it's a good time to wrap. Jimmy, you're welcome to come back again. I'm sure the debate is going to continue for this year, next year, and for the next. Until literally the end of time, Mario. But before you guys go, please follow crypto underscore town hall, that big red logo up on stage. Obviously, this is where we've been hosting the spaces from.

And so also, if you check that account, you'll see it's actually really good for breaking news and updates as well. You don't need to tell them to follow anymore because now it's hosting. So they actually get a notification. Everyone gets a notification to follow. So it's like a given. Yeah, but, but, but, but follow, follow Scott, follow Scott, follow Scott. And I didn't understand that. Follow Scott though. It means a lot to him. Make sure you follow Scott. Cause that's, you know,

that's what makes us happy every day is getting those followers. I don't want, I don't want you to have too many people that you're following. So unfollow Mario and follow me. Yeah. All right. On that note, appreciate you all. Thanks for the panel for joining. And it was a great discussion.

Unexpected one. Thanks a lot, everyone.