The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Oversold? | Abra | Hinman Papers | Blackrock’s Bitcoin ETF Application

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

I am joined by James Murphy aka MetaLawMan to discuss Hinman's papers, Abra, Blackrock’s Bitcoin ETF Application, and more! Follow James Murphy aka MetaLawMan: https://twitter.com/MetaLawMan ►��OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $60,000!  👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

The last couple of weeks have absolutely been chaos in the crypto news flow, starting a week ago on Monday with the Binance news, rolling into the Coinbase news. Somehow we now have hashtag fire Gary Gensler trending and everybody seems to be pushing back finally against the SEC. Now, a lot of people believe that the SEC, if they actually continue to pursue this against Coinbase and it gets to court, will probably lose. And that's based on things that Gary Gensler has said in the past. Today's guest, who's going to review a lot of this news to me, with me, you know that we rant on Fridays, James Murphy, Meta Lawman on Twitter. He has a great premise there and also has a lot of information on what's happening with the BlackRock ETF, which is also obviously the

hottest story of the day. Guys, we have a lot to cover here on this Friday. Excited to have yet another lawyer who can correct me when I say stupid things on the show. You guys don't want to miss this. Let's go. what is up everybody i'm scott melker also known as the wolf of all streets before we get started please subscribe the channel hit that like button down below and when you're done hitting the light button read the scrolly bottomy thingy that tells you that you could potentially get sixty thousand dollars by signing up for okx because that's how we keep the lights on. But guys, guys, you might have missed it. Yesterday, they brought me on Yahoo Finance. I've now become the Yahoo Finance guy. They call me anytime there's something extremely controversial happening at the SEC or with legislators because they know that I'll yell and then repost it and get them a lot of likes. And that is what happened once again. You guys might remember they baited me the last time I

went on the show by putting Brad Sherman on as the interview ahead of me talking about CobraCoin, MongooseCoin, and crypto being snakes in the grass. And I said that right into his face that Congress was the actual snakes in the grass. So I'm pretty bad at keeping myself out of the gulag, which is inevitably where I'm going to end up if I keep trying to get Gary Gensler fired. But they asked me the question. I'm not going to show you the video. You guys can go watch on Yahoo Finders. What could be corrected at the SEC? And I went on a long raving rant about firing Gary Gensler, SEC Stabilization Act, which of course we will talk about, and a lot else. So guys, it's been a crazy week between Crypto Town Hall, YouTube, the newsletter. There's been endless amounts of cover. I really don't remember having to think this hard since

college when I actually didn't think hard at all. So maybe this is the most that I've ever had to think in my entire life. But the good news is we have amazing guests who we can bring on to think for us today. I've got James Murphy, AKA Metal Lawman, becoming quite famous on Twitter for his threads. How's it going, James? Fantastic. Wolf, so great to be on your show. I love your show. I've really been looking forward to this. Awesome. Well, thank you. And by the way, you'll be welcome back anytime. But I want to dive in right from the beginning here. This is one of my favorite threads of yours. It's from May before we actually saw this action, right? This was when Coinbase had been delivered a Wells notice,

which of course meant we knew something was coming. But before the storm that we've seen over the last 10 days, as you said here, if the SEC follows through on its threat to Coinbase, I believe the SEC will lose. We all love that. The SEC case has a fatal flaw, and the problem is entirely of Gary Gensler's own making. Let me explain. You post a video, we're going to watch it. It's really quick, and then we're going to get into this. So here it is,

everyone. I do think that working with Congress, I think it's all in Congress that could really address it and be good to consider, if you would ask my thoughts, to consider whether to bring greater investor protection to the crypto exchanges. And I think if that were to be the case, because right now the exchanges trading in these crypto assets do not have a regulatory framework, either at the SEC or our sister agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, that could instill greater confidence. Right now, there's not a market regulator around these crypto exchanges,

and thus there's really not protection against fraud and manipulation in our country. I love how that video had terrible sound there, but that's actually how I imagine Gensler's voice sounds. Really tinny and like a cartoon character. But okay, let's dig into this a bit more, right? Because we've seen the legal system actually pushing back quite a bit against the SEC. And

I think there's a misconception that just because the SEC says something, it's all of a sudden law and true. And that's clearly not the case. But let's dig into that video right there and why that means that Coinbase has a legitimate chance of winning. Great. Yeah. The SEC trots out their win percentage at the drop of a hat and a towel. They really never lose. So I guess I'm out on a limb here and saying that I think they will lose in their case against Coinbase. So Gary Gensler, that testimony was one month in. He was the chairman. This wasn't private citizen Gary Gensler. It was chairman Gary Gensler. And he was very clear that the SEC does not have authority to regulate crypto exchanges. And now he has done a 180 degree turn and said, turns out we have all of the authority we need to go after crypto exchanges.

And let's pretend like I never said that. And by the way, he also says it's been crystal clear for years. These exchanges knew for years. And what they're saying about, boy, we really wanted to comply and come in and register, that's all bogus. What they want to do is operate illegally. That's what they want to do. And let's just pretend like I didn't tell Congress that we don't have this authority. In reality, everybody knew the opposite was true. And Scott, I think what's important here and what was helpful, I think, in the Hinman emails is this stuff doesn't

happen by accident. His statement is testimony. That's the word for it. It's testimony in Congress in an oversight committee hearing of oversight of the SEC, and they testify. And it's been vetted throughout the SEC. Here's what the chairman is going to say. It's vetted more than what the head of the Division of Corporate Finance, Bill Hinman, what is he going to say, which was heavily vetted. What the chairman says to Congress, very heavily vetted, and he said, we have no authority over and the other

exchanges. Yeah. Not only did he say that, do you think that that's why he's been so, I would say, purposefully vague in all other congressional hearings since? I mean, we've all obviously seen the clip. I played like five Gensler clips. You mentioned private citizen. We all know that he was bullish on blockchain technology and specific coins as a private citizen. That's neither here or there, but the is Ethereum a security or commodity over and over and over question and the dodging the bullet and just refusing to give any clarity. To me, it feels like being vague is his strategy that's absolutely yeah 100 scott um and and by the way that's wrong that is inconsistent with our concept of the rule of law under the constitution it's supposed to be really really clear to citizens what the law requires what it permits and what it prohibits it's supposed

to be really clear so that we citizens can order our lives and decide what we do to comply with the law. So vague is the antithesis of kind of the underlying premise of our law and the rule of law. And this goes back, by the way, 800 years to the Magna Carta, the king could just say, you know what? I'm going to put you in jail for doing X. Hey, wait a minute. I had no idea X was illegal. Answer, not my problem. You're going to jail for X. Well, the Magna Carta changed that. And we've had 800 years of English common law saying citizens are entitled to know clearly what is prohibited. And so, you know, this idea in the in many emails

that, hey, Bill, don't go say explicitly that Ethereum is not a security because, you know, we might decide to change our minds and say it is a security sometime later. You know, so this is crazy. This is not consistent with the rule of law it is crazy and you have to wonder what the angle is i i hate to go down the tin hat theory i did it pretty aggressively yesterday i was on yahoo but i really believe that we were on a decent path for at least some sort of regulatory clarity on crypto before ftx and it feels like now they're throwing the book at everyone as an overreaction to what happened there. Because this is not, as you just pointed out, I mean, this is not the same tone that Gary Gensler and other regulators, even legislators,

had before last November. It seems like last summer we were getting Lummis Gillibrand proposed some sensible ideas about stable coins. People were actually listening to Hester Purse a bit, right? And so it just feels like this is now carpet bombing, like just blanket destruction to kind of hide or hide the shame of what was happening before. Yeah, that's right. And I tell you, you do get a sense, Scott, that there's some sort of political um uh alliance here because what what

we've heard i think two or three weeks ago i found really fascinating on the same day uh this crypto bro term was was used by uh elizabeth warren brad sherman and the president of the united states choreographed events what a coincidence all on the coordinated all on the same day and i have to believe there must be some polling data that says that's a vote getter and that's going to get campaign contributions or they wouldn't be saying it i mean in the in the cop think of it in the context of is this government going to default on our debt the president introduces introduces a, you know, it's really important that these crypto bros pay their taxes. You know, I mean, it's... One side was crypto bros pay their taxes and the other one was like feed starving children.

Right. Crypto bros are starving the kids, you know, poor kids. That's literally what they made it look like as hyperbolic as that sounds, you're right. I just don't understand where they're getting that data. I mean, maybe they know better than me, and maybe there are that many people on one side of the aisle that like this rhetoric. But you have to imagine, like you said, that's speaking to their donor base and not their constituency.

And we all know that banks are a huge part of the donor base. So I would have to imagine that that's where that sort of coordinated effort is from. But to me, it also feels like sort of whitewashing the events of last year and just, you know, I can say in their defense, which I hate to do,

it'd probably be pretty embarrassing to come out super pro-crypto after all that happened if you were meeting with SBF. And so there's probably, we've heard anecdotally that there are plenty of Democrats and plenty of people on both sides of the aisle who are very pro-cry pro crypto or just kind of keeping it to themselves, I think, until they see how this play out plays out and where that will land with the constituency. up your tweet again. BlackRock files for Bitcoin ETF. Now that's interesting. Why? Because under

CEO Larry Fink, who by the way, I could go get his videos of how much he has hated Bitcoin in the past, but has become the world's foremost proponent of the ESG movement in investing. The E in ESG stands for environmental. So BlackRock has apparently concluded that Bitcoin mining and trading is entirely consistent with its pro-environment values. That's great. But who's going to break this news to Senator Warren? Now we're going to get into the ESG side really quick, but let's talk about the very fact that we're seeing a BlackRock ETF proposal, which curiously will be custodied by Coinbase. So there are some very inconsistent there. If the SEC is trying to crush Coinbase, but allow BlackRock to come in and use Coinbase as a custodian. But we've seen, I believe, 22 rejected applications already for ETFs.

I've made the point that I think that they're clearing the way for Wall Street. And here comes BlackRock with a Bitcoin ETF. I mean, what do you make of this? We were talking about the banks supporting them. I mean, do you think that that's what's happening? They're not so negative against crypto. They just want Coinbase and Binance out of the way for the fact that they've rejected everyone that's come before. You know, there's speculation, you know, based on what we've seen with the communication between Hinman and Vitalik Buterin, there's I think reasonable speculation that maybe Larry Fink got a nod or some body language from the SEC that maybe this would not be a waste of his time

maybe he wouldn't be number 23 rejected or maybe he just saw uh what happened in the grayscale hearing in the court of appeals and that the judges were a little um unimpressed uh by some of the arguments by the SEC. Understand it. Yeah. They've been pushed back hard. Yeah. And therefore, if approvals are coming, BlackRock wants to be in line for that.

Yeah, but I just wonder if they're at the back of the line where they should be, or if they will magically appear at the front of the line here. I mean, this has been one of the most contentious issues. I think everybody who understands what an ETF would mean, it means a safe way for institutions to finally invest. It means less fees than the GBTC. They can go 40% negative against NAV. It means that we would actually have a stable,

highly liquid, high volume asset for everyone to safely invest in and we have etfs for everything in this country yeah yeah you're right you're absolutely right it would open up um the ability to gain exposure to bitcoin risk uh to institutions who now are kind of restricted if you want bitcoin risk some of them under their investment policy, they can only invest in microstrategy or Bitcoin miners, you know, which have their own idiosyncratic risks.

So this would be a pure play. And so, yeah, I think it would be significant if it got approved. Yeah, I think it would be hugely significant. I just, I can't wait to see how this plays out because I just, I don't see them rejecting BlackRock. I think BlackRock knows something that we don't, obviously. And they're just, I've said,

I just think they're clearing the path for Fidelity, Schwab, BlackRock to take control of this industry and do it in a way that they view as compliant. I mean, let's talk about this esg side because i mean this is crazy your tweet is so accurate but this prevailing narrative from a certain side of government that bitcoin is boiling the ocean obviously not the case if blackrock's coming in and blackrock has been kind of leading that charge to some degree. No, I don't think it's to some degree, Wolf. I think they are really driving.

They are the primary driver, and they can threaten public companies. You want us to acquire some of your stock and hold it in some of our funds? They're the largest money manager on earth. They advise pension plans and they've come up with the ESG scorecard. And if you don't score well, you're not getting the money. And so they are big. This is a force in the world, not just in the United States. They're a force at the World Economic Forum. This ESG existed as a concept before larry think got on it but he gave it rocket fuel and now uh maybe he uh sincerely the money to be made by i i i have my doubts about

that maybe he sincerely believes in in the elements of that but uh in any event it's become very political you know in florida they passed a law that prohibits the pension funds for the, you know, the firefighters and the police and the municipal workers from considering those who manage that money from considering this ESG component. And they shouldn't focus on, you know, the overall wisdom of the investment and the risk return of each investment they make for the pension. And so they prohibited consideration of ESG. wisdom of the investment and the risk return of each investment they make for the pension. And so they prohibited consideration of ESG. So that makes it political because Ron DeSantis is running for president. It's already political, but it's going to be, I think, one of the issues that people talk about running into 2024. Yeah, not news that I was sharing, but Mayor Francis Suarez from Miami, who's obviously also very pro-Bitcoin, has announced that he's running for president as well as of yesterday. We have a lot of pro-Bitcoin presidential candidates, it would seem.

For anybody who's curious, you can go to SEC.gov. I'm showing you here is the form S1 for the actual filing. Now, there's been a lot of confusion. A lot of people said, no, man, this is just a trust when you read it. It's a Bitcoin trust like GBTC and not an ETF. Now, Eric Balkan is from Bloomberg, who we're going to have on Spaces later. He's clarified that. He says, although saying the BlackRock filing is a trust and not an ETF, do you consider GLD to be an ETF? Well, this is the same thing. A lot of structures under ETF umbrella, nothing like GBTC. This is the real deal. So just

for clarity, since we have a lot of armchair quarterbacks, myself included, from the experts, this is much more like an ETF than a trust. Here are a couple other takes on Twitter that were similar to ours, right? It's interesting that BlackRock is going for the ETF in the midst of the SEC attack. The optimistic perspective is that the SEC

attack is to clear out the low-level peasant tier scammers so they can rebuild the same game with elite tier USA boomer scammers a couple more if you're scoring at home operation choke point 2.0 sec sues gemini coinbase finance us crack and fed shutters silvergate and signature banks denies allows deadline to pass for crypto friendly banks custodia bank blackrock files for bitcoin etf right i mean it does when you dig in, really make it seem like this is the case. And then I love from Caitlin Long, who's one of my favorites, the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF application is approved before all other pending Bitcoin ETF applications at the SEC. You would consider the SEC as corrupt,

safe and sound because incumbents, but she went with 81.3%. I mean, any final words on BlackRock before we move on? Well, you know, if this is what opens the door, then I guess net, it's good, you know, for more institutions to have access. But, you know, I'm not using the word corrupt, but it's a little, I think the legal term is, is fishy. It's a little fishy if they get approval after all of, uh, all of these disapprovals. Yeah. I mean, McKenry, the Congressman McKenry tweeted something to effect yesterday of, okay, Gary, here's your

chance. You're picking winners and losers. What's going to happen here, right? I mean, everybody knows now I sort of, to her point that if blackrock all of a sudden gets to the front of the line we're gonna it's gonna be a seriously seriously a fishy thing listen i i know you're on limited time but have you looked at this promethean thing at all i i i've read up on it a little bit it is such a crazy story uh and figure this out and this the twitter hive mind is just undefeated in terms of turning this all up like in real time within minutes and hours of this guy coming on and testifying uh it doesn't look like this is a real broker dealer uh and the chinese money involvement how it got past the sec is really puzzling scott I think it didn't get past the

SEC is sort of the claim. I don't know if you guys have seen this, right? If you, you guys should absolutely go check this thread by Matt Walsh. There's another one, Adam Cochran, where he says this Promethean storyline has got to be the strangest thing I've seen in a while in this industry, by the way, that's saying a lot. Okay. So to give you, he just gave, James just actually gave you the broad strokes well, right? But this company has existed for quite a while. When you dig into it, they raise a ton of capital, but it was all through investment banks and not through the normal VC channels that you see. They've basically been approved overnight with this ATS and are then on Congress floor within a week doing a pre-planned testimony. There's pictures of the guys like getting the questions from Congress. I don't know if you've seen that, right? And then completely

going on all of the SEC talking points that we've heard here about how easy it is to register. You can just come in. This is the right way to do it. Now, the CEO are two brothers who went to a now unaccredited law school who are supposed to be experts and their dad. Everybody who works at the company is in some way an ex-regulator or they're all getting paid like a bunch of SEC guys and CFTC guys, all this stuff. And they can't list literally anything on this exchange because it's only for securities. Right. And as you said, all the funding comes from a Chinese company that they paid like $1.5 million.

They paid a company in New Jersey that works with Chinese companies. Excuse me. These are the guys behind this company that they hired are the guys behind Long Island Blockchain Ice Tea. If you guys remember that in the last cycle, there was the Long Island Ice Tea and they just added blockchain to their name to make a ton of money. But clearly, I mean, they literally

gave these guys a license, paraded them out the day later in Congress just to make their talking points and now are hoping they're just going to disappear. This is the wildest story I think I've seen. Yeah, I'll tell you what. And when you contrast it with, you know, Coinbase has a broker dealer license from the SEC.

And what they've said is they repeated Coinbase is a public company with audited financial statements and a lot of transparency. And the SEC will not allow them to activate it to trade anything. And it's a public company. It contrasts with this Prometheum, which is so odd in structure and purpose, and it went through. So it looks like it was a setup. And what's kind of offensive is apparently the SEC thought nobody would catch on. This is not a legitimate player in the space, but rather, you know, a put up job to mouth some talking points and that they would get away with it is astounding.

I mean, this tweet, the Promethean guys want us to believe that all L1s are securities and we'll need to come in and trade on Promethean. Not happening. But enter Promethean chain. What is that you say? These guys have their own chain. Yes. And a token. So not only that, they created a competitive chain.

They have a token. And who did they pre-sell the tokens to? This company, Wang Sheng, which is literally a CCP affiliate in China. I don't understand. I literally, I can't get there. I mean, if you guys want, I'm asking you in the audience, I have a four-minute video here of Representative Mike Flood questioning the guy.

Have you watched this? Yes. It's pretty, do you have four minutes? Do you have four more minutes? Oh, absolutely. Oh, we're going to watch this video. We got to watch it, guys. Watch this if you need to figure this out. Now recognize myself for five minutes. I'd like to start by a question from a comment letter that Promethean sent in response

to the SEC's December 2020 special purpose broker-dealer framework. Quote, the definition of a digital asset security as used in the proposal is a digital asset that meets the definition of a security under the federal securities laws. This definition puts a burden on the industry to determine which digital assets are securities. As a result, we believe the clarity is needed to understand the regulatory framework they must comply with, end quote. That was in a letter dated April 26 from Promethean, specifically signed by Benjamin S. Kaplan, co-CEO of the company. Let's just offer this into the record without objection.

And dad. This concern, which Promethean themselves raised in 2020, probably sounds familiar for those who track this committee closely. It is the exact same concern we've heard from witnesses in front of this committee before. How can a broker-dealer register if they don't know which assets are a security and which are not? Further, it makes the same argument that other firms have made that the lack of clarity from the SEC puts an undue burden on the industry. Mr. Kaplan, in your testimony, you were very confident that no new legislation is needed in the digital asset space to clarify this question.

What has changed between the date of this letter, 2021, and the one called for clarity? And now, what has changed look at this guy the two plus years since that time there's been additional enforcement actions and statement by the secs which have clarified any questions that we had in regards to the designation of a digital asset as a security mr kaplan promethean website says that Amazon ATS supports, quote, many tokens that mostly trade on crypto exchanges, end quote. I'd like to dig in on that just a little bit. Can Promethean customers trade in Ether? If your answer is yes, please explain how. Not currently.

Can Promethean customers trade in Bitcoin? If your answer is yes, please explain how. No. Just for the audience at home's benefit, Ether and Bitcoin make up more than 60% of the digital asset market. Now, Mr. Kapling, given that either Ether and Bitcoin make up more than 60% of the digital asset market, if the current system is working,

why can't your customers trade the most popular and widely used digital assets? Regulation and new ATSs and custodians should take a crawl, walk, run approach. And essentially, they will proceed to add additional assets and abilities as time goes on. I'd like to point out when the... I'm going to reclaim my time. Mr. Kaplan, did Promethean receive any additional exemptive relief from the SEC that has not been publicly shared? No. No. Thank you, Mr. Kaplan. Promethean's special purpose broker-dealer license does not address the core issue. There is not a consistent definition of a digital asset security within current law. This point was

made obvious when Chair Gensler could not say definitively whether Ether is a digital asset security when asked by Chairman McHenry in this very room a couple months ago. In other words, that same question that Promethean themselves raised in their 2021 comment letter is still unanswered. That's why legislation is needed. That's the problem that the chairman's bill works to solve. To testify in front of our committee that your company's charter, which only allows for trading in a very small subset of assets, is evidence that no legislation is needed just doesn't make sense. If anything, the fact that Promethean's customers cannot trade some of the most popular digital assets is an illustration of the broader problem, Mr. Kaplan. I yield back. I mean, that guy is like the guy they had.

He's like a cartoon villain. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. Out of central casting, as they say. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what to make of this. I just think that this season of crypto news has been very entertaining, I guess,

because, yeah, what do you make it it's so obvious right and and these uh these congress people keep coming up and making it so obvious you watch warren davidson and emmer mckenry they all happen to be on one side right now but richie richie torres okay richie torres on the other side there you go he's a Democrat. Yeah. I'll tell you what, Scott. I think some people are missing the magnitude of this issue of, is it a security? As you look at Coinbase and Binance and Bittrex, the thought is, oh, well, if they're trading securities, I guess we can't use those platforms anymore. That would suck, but not the end of the world actually um if tokens traded on secondary markets are unregistered securities it is a violation of criminal law to sell them okay and people don't really talk about that if there is a determination a final

determination from a court um you know with with all appeals exhausted that, you know, these 20 plus tokens that the SEC has identified in these three cases, if they're all unregistered securities, then it's safe to say that virtually all of them are, you know, 99% are unregistered securities, which means it's illegal to sell those tokens. And there are a lot of people that I know, well, who own a lot of these tokens. I'm one of them. And so I don't think people fully understand the ramifications. Because, Scott, if a court decides it's a unregistered security it doesn't mean it's on that day and going forward an unregistered security it means

it's been an unread way back the whole time so all of your sales um if you know if done knowingly there is that component of it it's not what we call a strict liability. You have to know or be reckless about whether that was a security. Right, and you're doing it on an exchange that has made it seem that it's right. I doubt that the individual consumer would be problematic, but you think about every single platform that's ever sold these in history. Yeah, I doubt it too, but you know what? If there's political advantage to go after some significant crypto figures criminally for selling unregistered securities, I'm no longer sure that that would not happen. Furthermore, if there's securities, that means insider trading is illegal.

And so you go on YouTube and you hear all the time, hey, I was talking to the people at this project and they told me they're rolling out blah, blah, blah, which is going to drive up the price. So therefore, I bought some. Or, hey, I found out that it's going to be listed. I got this confidential source who told me, hey, it's going to be listed on a major exchange. And so I bought some so if these are which was like i mean which is literally how like every coin ever listed on coinbase moved if you look at the price action right the coinbase listing pump right so so my my point is you had you had john deaton on yesterday people you know recognize this guy is a heroic figure in in crypto but i don't think they get the half of it

because if he doesn't prevail and convince these judges that the tokens themselves trade into the secondary market are not securities, the ramifications are quite enormous. I mean, if you've been running a hedge fund, then your entire business

is trading these tokens. And you've pitched to your investors your limited partners that hey we have good connections with a lot of these projects and so we're able to to get you some alpha you know in this market it's insider trading i mean people really need to get behind and you know the john de, John Deaton, I love the guy. He's a former Marine. You know, I don't pick heroes, you know, willy-nilly.

This guy's a heroic figure. He's not getting paid for doing this. We need to figure out a way to fund what he's doing because you need to do exactly what he did in Ripple with the XRP holders for every single token that's been put in play by the fcc and that that's not and all the others because they will be

like you said if if those 67 coins are deep securities we know that by proxy so is literally everything else i love what you said there because he was so i didn't even realize i guess how deep this goes myself and i'm pretty deep in it but that's why he was so adamant about getting clarity on library the secondary sales not being the sales of securities which i think we're getting some clarity on but man that is that's scary stuff yeah i think people in the in the crypto community may need to do a little bit more than say hey thank you john yeah i agree i think people in the in the crypto community may need to do a little bit more than say hey thank you john yeah i agree i think he needs some real uh some real significant support and it's amazing he needs to have the guys somebody yeah yeah yeah for sure i i mean he i talked to him he told told me he had he came out of pocket himself to pay because you have to have a local council

when you go into jurisdiction where you're not admitted so to go up to the library which i get a lawyer yeah it was up there i don't know new hampshire vermont wherever it was he had to hire a lawyer out of his own pocket to to be you know counsel uh to get him into that court so he could speak um and this is this is crazy and and the industry associations and individuals who've made a ton of money in crypto and and currently hold a big bag uh need to figure out a way to help john out wow man you just uh exploded my brain and i've had the idea sort of in my head when people ask me who do you think the SEC comes for next? Right.

I don't think they come after someone huge. I've been saying, I think they're going to come after low to mid range hedge funds and VCs. And what you just said aligns exceptionally well for them making the case that these secondary sales will be securities. I think now they're just going to go for a whole bunch of wins they can get on settlement without having to put a massive team behind it. I think they've poked enough of the huge beast. So I guess we'll see James, by the way, I don't know if you're available, but we do, we are doing Twitter spaces at 10 15. I know you have a job, you're an actual lawyer and probably have things to do, but if you'd be interested in

joining, we're probably going to talk through these things much more thoroughly. And we do it every day. I tell you what, I love your show. I've really been looking forward to being on with you. You really take this flood of information and news that comes out every day and kind of make it accessible to non-lawyers and everybody else who's really desperate to understand what does this mean? What is important in all of this and where's it going? So I love your show, love your content. And yeah, I'd be delighted to be on Twitter spaces with you anytime. Yeah, I'll ping you offline about that. I really appreciate your words, but you will notice that I've started bringing lawyers on. Because you guys really can

give clarity. I mean, you just gave a master class here and the real implications of what this can mean down the road. And in all of my digging, I never even really considered that aspect. So I got to thank you very much, guys. Everybody follow Metta Lawman on Twitter. Really, his threads are incredible. Also kind of the same, right? Well thought out and not necessarily spoken in legalese so that everyone like myself could actually understand. So James, I'm going to ping you after this about spaces, but thank you so much for your time, guys. We're going to keep going on here with the news. Absolutely. Thank you.

Have a good one, man. There you go, guys. Wow. That's pretty intense. Pretty intense. I feel like I need to send John Deaton a fruit basket and a really nice bottle of bourbon or something. So I'm going to do that after. I actually, the first thing I just did while if you guys saw me typing is I typed my producer and said, please edit the part where James just praised John so I can post it on Twitter and try to get John some more support. So I think we'll try to do that and share that video. Guys, digging in a bit more to the news, obviously, believe it or not, all that we covered, that ain't even it. Of course, we just talked about Caitlin Long's take on BlackRock. You know that Caitlin's a friend. I've had her on the show 15, 20 times. I've sat down, interviewed her in person quite a few times. I just wanted to point out Caitlin Long, CEO of Wyoming-based Custodian Bank named Top American Banking Innovator. And I think it's just incredible to see her receive this award and the pushback that this award coming in the face of her getting rejected

over and over and over again by the Fed and pushback from the SEC, simply because she wants to be a fully backed one-for-one bank that services the cryptocurrency industry. Now think of that. She went and applied for a Fed master account, which would allow her access to the Fed banking system with the proposal that her bank, Custodia, not be fractionally reserved, not do lending like that and be literally fully backed. And they said, no, they said no. So obviously we know that this was the beginning of this entire fight in January before we've seen all this SEC enforcement action. She's been on the front lines. I just love the

fact that one of my favorite people is being recognized for that, even when she's not having so much success on the actual business. Now, of course, next, we're going to talk about price action just a little bit. Bitcoin Ether moved toward oversold territory in post-FOMC downturn. Now, Rand Neuner was on SpaceX yesterday and he said, actually, if you look, the Bitcoin move after FOMC, that $1,000 drop that happened very quickly, actually was almost exactly at the same time as all of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Tether hit the market. You guys may have seen it. We're not going to dive deeply into it, but basically the pool on Curve where people use stable coins is supposed to be 33% DAI, 33% USDC, 33% tether, shot up to 70% tether, effectively meaning that people were selling their tether into this pool to exit it into other stable coins, caused a string of people

projecting ideas that maybe somebody knew something they didn't. Tether became unpegged by like 0.3% on a couple exchanges, which is not actually a de-peg. And that's when Bitcoin dropped, right? That was a long, long way of saying it probably has nothing to do with FOMC. And on Sunday, you'll see I recorded an interview with Paolo Arduino from Tether yesterday when I heard this news which will be out on Sunday he makes it very obvious that nothing untoward happened there as

usual you might have seen actually Tether now has addressed the request that's been there for years from Coindesk and others to give full transparency and they have given full transparency into their books going back a couple years it was announced yesterday to Coindesk and to others so I think we're going to get a lot of clarity on Tether's backing and books. But yes, Bitcoin Ether moved toward oversold. They're talking about

Bollinger Bands. I don't really see much here. That's what they're talking about. But I will just really briefly looking at Bitcoin, because I've been saying it over and over and over again. Listen, technical analysis is astrology for men. You guys know how I feel about it. I do it. I love it. It's a hobby. But guys, it's a risk management tool.

It's not a crystal ball telling you what's going to happen. But I've been yelling about 25,212 area literally since it broke in March, right? We had this sort of series of lower highs, lower lows of the bear market. You started a new bull trend when you break above that last lower high. And that's what happened. And I kept saying, guys, don't get excited up here at 30. We're probably going back to 25 rationally, but market was overbought. There was way too much. Hey, we're going to a hundred thousand because we made it to 30 talk, which was nonsense. Well, here we are. Yeah, we're on a hundred to 200 MA. But if you guys look, there's an inverse head and shoulders targets up here around 41,000. We bounced right below 2512. For now, I don't see any reason to be panicked. ETH, same thing, kind of getting wrecked a little bit more, but 200 MA right there on the daily. I just don't see anything here to scare me off yet. Next story, speaking of

John Deaton and the Hinman documents, XRP drops 5% as markets digest Hinman documents, SEC court case. I think that's because people realize that the Hinman documents were a bit of a nothing burger, or at least this new episode in the series of the Hinman documents didn't really show anything new. If you guys want all the context, as James said, I just had John Deaton on with Eleanor Tarrant to talk about this. So just go back and watch that. I think it was two days ago. Can't remember what day it is at this point. But the Hinman document's huge, really, for the personal defense of Brad Darlinghouse, not as much for XRP, but certainly a bigger context for the Ethereum conversation that is

coming. But yeah, take a look at the XRP chart, right into resistance, dropping rock down. I don't see any reason to get particularly excited about XRP right now. And I also showed this video, which you guys can go back and watch on that day, showing why these Hinman documents are considered somewhat important in this context. So I'm kind of cooking through it there here

because we got 30 minutes, obviously, until I'm going to be on Twitter spaces. Maybe the biggest news of the week, Representative Davidson introduces SEC Stabilization Act to remove Chair Gary Gensler. Of course, Majority Whip Tom Emmer also was a part of this conversation. We immediately had Warren Davidson on Crypto Town Hall the next day, and he made the very obvious argument that we've been making here over and over and over and over again, which is that the SEC, as James said, as well as acting in bad faith, right? It would be one thing if we believe that the SEC was doing this in our best interest, if they were actually digging in and had a genuine case that these things were securities.

But the fact is they're a bad faith regulator who's acting in an activist manner, huge power grab, trying to take control, make sure the CFTC and legislators don't have time to catch up. And we finally have people pushing back. Now, do I believe the SEC Stabilization Act is going to pass? Absolutely not. Do I believe that any law can pass in this broken ass country? No, I don't. So the fact that we have something this specific, maybe even if it gets to the floor of Congress, it could pass because that's Republican dominated. But do we believe that this is going to the Elizabeth Warren Democrat dominated Senate is going to pass, hit Biden's desk? No, this is a PR move, PR move. And I'm here for it, to be honest.

But listen, you can't even think about getting a bill passed unless you propose it. So I'm here for it, to be honest. But listen, you can't even think about getting a bill passed unless you propose it. So I'm glad that they did it, but no, I don't think that we're going to see in the next few months the SEC flipping and Gary Gensler gone. I would love to see enough political pressure to see that conversation continue, though.

On to the next story, guys. Listen, this is yet another heartbreaker for me. Crypto lender Abra has been insolvent for months, state months state regulators say now we don't have all the facts around this and i refuse to pass judgment until we do you'll ask why because in a long line of people that i've been friends with in the crypto industry i don't want to see bill bar height uh go down or to find out that there was anything untoward here uh and it's not as damning as some of the other cases yet. We were just talking about yesterday on Crypto Town Hall, the news broke, not this news, the news broke that Abra was going to be unavailable as of yesterday to all Americans.

I reached out to Bill immediately and said, man, this sucks. And he said, Abra will be fine. Yet another blow to Americans from the irrational regulator, something to this sucks. And he said, Abra will be fine. Yet another blow to Americans from the irrational regulators, something to that effect. But then Abra was pulling back from Americans because of regulatory pressure. Well, now we have the state of Texas basically coming out and saying that Abra was fraudulent, insolvent, and hiding that fact from investors. That is obviously what we somewhat saw from the Celsius's and BlockFi's and others of the world that they've been insolvent since March 31st, 2023.

We were saying that Abra was impressive because they were kind of the last man standing here. So listen, even if they are insolvent, I'm obviously hoping that there's nothing here against Bill, who's been a friend of the show and has been on Crypto Town Hall more times already than I can count. And we've only been doing it there for a couple of weeks. Next story, moving on.

Dimitri Cherniak's The Goose NFT sold for $6.5 million at Sotheby's auction. I still don't understand how anyone's buying an NFT for $6.5 million, right? Generative art. But the real story here is that this was owned by Three Arrows Capital, right? And their NFT collection entirely sold for $11 million. That's money that will theoretically, I believe, some of it, whatever Sotheby's doesn't keep, go back to creditors. So there is some good news there, I think, along this side that they are getting this much money for them. Kyle Davies from 3AC quickly tweeted that this was like a historic option, but that when his new exchange, OpenX, becomes the biggest in the world, he's going to buy this back at any price because it has to come home.

Delusions of grandeur, man. Impressive thing. You guys know that I met with Kyle when I was in Dubai. Kyle didn't know that I was meeting with Kyle. I crashed a meeting with him as a Voyager creditor because I was pissed off. But I can tell you that those delusions of grandeur, whatever they are, I think he really believes it. I think he really believes he's creating the biggest exchange in the world and that he

will be buying this back. You can see that Sotheby's has auctioned off quite a bit of Dimitri's art. I'm really actually just impressed that they're still getting this much at Sotheby's for NFTs. I wouldn't have expected it. And listen, guys, the last story I had here was the Promethean, which we already dug into. So not much left to discuss on that front. Guys, what a whirlwind. What a whirlwind. And like I said, Twitter spaces in 25 minutes. Obviously, we are going to be beating the Black Rock story to death. We're going to take out a broom and a couple bats, and we're going to be beating the black rock story to death and take out a broom and a

couple of bats and we're going to put it on the ground like we do every single day, beat these stories to death. But it's a big story. It's a big story. And we will have a couple ETF experts from Bloomberg joining to really give their position on what this means for the industry, whether it is a trust, whether it is an ETF. And of course, I'm going to go bother James and try to get him to come on and give us his legal perspective. Because listen, there's a couple hundred, we'll get, you know, five to 10,000 people will watch this video. But if we go on Twitter, Twitter spaces, well, it'll be like 700,000 people have listened to your conversation. So kind of operating on a different scale over there, guys, I will be back, of course, with macro

Monday on Monday, which is always a good time. I hope you guys enjoyed this week of content. It's been a lot. Been a lot. Sleep has been a little more challenging this week, I would say. And the other thing about Twitter Spaces is that Ran and his massive team are in South Africa, and Mario and his team are in Dubai. So coordinating and preparing these shows

on three different time zones has been really challenging and requires a lot of us to not sleep nearly as much. But I really think it's worth it. I know I try to stay like non-political and try to stay calm, but I think you guys can see that I've been a little bit pissed off

and what we're seeing from the SEC. And I really believe that right now we have to fight. And know, and so there's going to be these times where we're not going to sleep as much and we're going to work a little harder and we're going to push to share information, but listen, there may not be much you guys can do. Call your Congressman, call your Senator, start writing letters. But the one thing I know that you can all do, no matter how small your presence is, is just go ahead and tweet hashtag fire gary densler that's all i've got for you guys thank you so much see you next week bye let's go let's go