The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin PUMPS As U.S. Banks Finally Get Crypto Trading Approval! Is The Bottom In?

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

Bitcoin enters a historic new era as U.S. regulators officially approve banks to act as crypto intermediaries, allowing them to custody digital assets and process blockchain transactions, an institutional green light that could fundamentally reshape the market. At the same time, traders are watching Bitcoin and Ethereum climb on rising Fed rate-cut expectations, while Washington advances a major crypto market-structure bill and the SEC signals a sweeping overhaul to “future-proof” digital-asset regulation. Globally, Argentina has now authorized domestic banks to offer crypto services, and Binance expands its regulated offerings as volatility builds ahead of the FOMC.

Crypto made a nice move pumping overnight to above $94,000 before settling back around $92,000 on a number of bullish catalysts, including the fact that banks are finally getting approval to do everything they want in the crypto industry. And this is not just in the United States. We also have news that Argentina is going to let domestic banks transfer using crypto between domestic banks, something we've never seen anywhere. The tailwinds continue to increase will prices follow? When I want to unpack everything that's happening in this market

and how it's operating in context of other markets, we bring in one of my favorite guests. Of course, that is Peter Chair, who we've got here today. Let's go. Good morning, everybody, and happy Wednesday. I hope you're all having a good one. We are going to bring on Peter right now, and we're going to start to unpack everything that's happening here in the markets.

Good morning, Peter. How are you? Great. How are you doing, Scott? I am doing wonderfully. All right. So first, maybe we should talk about what's happening in the macro, because I don't think we can talk about crypto anymore without discussing that.

We've got a relatively big day. Here we go, crypto markets today. Fed rate cut hopes lift Bitcoin, Eath as traders brazed for volatility. I'm not sure that it's the rate cut hopes that are moving crypto day to day right now. I think everybody knows that we have a over 90% chance of a rate cut coming today from Jerome Powell. I guess the question on some people's minds, whether it could actually be 50 bips instead of 25. But I'm putting my bets on 25. Yeah, I'd be shocked if it's 50.

I think he goes 25. I think he tries to sound hawkish. I think a couple of hawks try and put their dots in such way to create a hawkish message. If the market listens to that, I think they'll give up within a day or two and realize there's going to be an entire new kind of mentality come the new year. And I think it's going to affect how the Fed behaves. I think it's going to affect how the Treasury Department behaves. And I think it's going to be very supportive for markets, bonds, equities, and crypto.

Yeah, I mean, we kind of have Trump playing cute games by preempting Powell making announcements of his own on what's likely to come with the Fed chair. I think it's going to be a asset. I don't know if we ever got the clarity on that. I thought there was going to be an announcement either last night or today, it's pretty clear exactly what's coming when Powell is gone. So makes it hard to care much about Powell in the short term when you know that six months, everything is going to change.

Yeah, exactly. And I think it's even going to start changing before that. I think Trump has been relatively quiet in terms of his, you know, annoyance with the Fed. I think all that picks back up in January. I think they try and do things with the Fed governors. maybe they try and say some of the governors were, you know, there's now chatter that maybe they were signed by Autopan. I think he's going to make a wholehearted effort to get these rate cuts done long before the market's pricing. And the market doesn't have two rate cuts priced in next year

until September. I think we get that by the May meeting June at the latest. I think it's going to be much more aggressive than market does. Why would the market be pricing in cuts in September when we know we're going to have a new Fed chair and you literally have the president saying we're going to cut and want to get this thing back down to zero? Why would there be that gap between May? in September. How are people missing that? You know, I think to some degree, people are still stuck in this mindset that, oh, well, you know, the Fed's going to listen to this. They're going to be data dependent. And I don't think they completely understand how aggressive this administration will be. They were very aggressive in crypto. They've been very aggressive with Venezuela, right?

If Trump and Bessons say they want rates at 3%, I think it's foolish to bet against them getting that wrong before, you know, they want it by the summer too, because they want an extremely hot economy. They want an extremely stock market coming into the midterm elections. So that means everything's kind of got to be going July, August, September. Yeah, I agree. So some of the catalysts, I guess, that we have immediately in the market. At this point, we have so many bullish news pieces that I just consider them all like stepping stones on a very long path. But we are getting all the things I think that we could have ever dreamed up for this market.

I mean, U.S. bank regulator says banks can act as crypto intermediaries. I mean, this is just the stuff of dreams for the crypto industry when you look back at the Gary Gensler and Elizabeth Warren days of what was happening. Choke Point 2.0, the Office of the Comptroller of the currency issued new guidance, saying that banks can engage in what are known as riskless principal transactions that involve crypto assets and would not receive scrutiny from the regulator. This is all systems go from one more federal regulator. Now, we've had a lot of this news already, FDIC and elsewhere, but this is all systems go saying you can. custody, you can offer these services. You can basically do whatever we want. Banks are clear to participate in crypto as long as they manage their risk. Yeah, and I think banks certainly are, I know our bank, we're a small broker dealer, a veteran-owned firm, but we are starting to look

how we can participate with these new rules, right? It's an area that's exciting. Our senior management been involved in crypto for quite a while, one of our board members. Chris Perkins, I think you know, is obviously very evolved with this. So it's an exciting area. And I think it's a potential new revenue stream for Wall Street as well. So we had this interesting situation, obviously, when we had Sab 121 and the SEC was very anti-crypto and we got the launch of the ETFs and basically by default, Coinbase got to custody all of them because the banks were basically banned from being able to participate in these activities. And then they said, hey, what the hell? When the rules started the change, they said, we still can't participate in this. Actually, the, I guess, unintended effect was that the crypto industry got to capture all of that value, basically Coinbase Gemini themselves as well.

Well, now we're going to see the BNY Mellons, the state streets, the everybody, not only as custodians, of course, who don't have to keep that, you know, as a liability on their balance sheet, but now we're going to see other, I think, signs of adoption. I mean, we've got news today. PNC banks has launched spot Bitcoin trading for PNC private bank clients directly within its digital banking platform, making it the first major U.S. bank to do so. I mean, this is crazy. And they're doing it with Coinbase, right?

you've got Brian Armstrong here pointing that out. I think, you know, as I dig into it mentally, and I've been saying this for a while, there's going to be two approaches. There's going to be either we approach it with speed and just use Coinbase or Gemini or Cracken or someone. We do a deal. We get this done, right?

We can offer this. We can just API it right in from a third party, or we build it ourselves, right? And so I think some banks are going to take the approach where, hey, we're going to build some native crypto services. The others are going to say, hell, we got to win. We got to be fast. Let's just go to Coinbase.

Yeah, I think you've kind of nailed it, right? There's going to be kind of some of the early adopters who are going to try and take as much of the systems they can so they can get the trading flows and see that. And I think there are going to be ways that people look at, okay, how does a big bank, if you think how they trade bonds, right, they inventory the bonds, it's harder to do with crypto. Will they figure out ways where they can actually make it more seamless they trade and maybe you only settle and get your crypto at the end of the day? But something that makes it faster, cheaper. I think all of this will actually be very good for the trading. It should make it more efficient. You know, the 24-7 that exists right now, you know, for those of us who are not deep in the weeds,

and I'm kind of at the, you know, not deep in the weed stage, it's harder to trade over the weekend. All of a sudden, I think with all these new features, it's going to become easier and easier to make it a true 24-7 market. I think people will get more comfortable. I think you'll see some of the costs go down as well. So we're going to dive into why this hasn't moved price in a minute, but I just want to kind of cook through some of these stories before we do that because I mentioned this one in the intro as well. Argentina ways allowing domestic banks to offer crypto service. When you actually dig into it, it seems like pretty much a done deal.

They're not actually necessarily weighing if there's something that's going to happen. I mean, this is bank to bank transfers, customers being able to move money between banks, all on crypto rails, using crypto. This is basically a country finally disrupting the legacy system. This would be like in the United States if all of a sudden, instead of sending a wire or an ACH or Swift, from bank to bank, you just sent crypto from bank to bank, not from person to person. I mean, this is, Argentina, obviously, has been ahead of the curve, but like, these things are happening all over the world. Yeah, it's, you know, the adoption rate's growing again.

To me, when I look at this and why I kind of want to own this market is you have the president of the United States who's very involved, his family is very involved. They seem to back it. They seem to like it. I see, I don't think we're ever going to get this kind of big sovereign wealth fund, but I think there's going to be chatter about that. But all of this to me, you know, if you want to kind of almost go under a virtual signaling, right? you have a president who likes this you're supposed to figure out ways to adopt it take advantage of it and by the way the profit margins for trading this for wall street are probably much bigger than when you trade equities which are measured and you know fractions of a cent per thousand shares so

i think the opportunity is there it's going to keep going i think there were some issues with the you know dats that maybe were causing some of the pressure i think that was a bit of a rude awakening that if they don't if they're not in the indices you might get some force selling but as that gets out of the way. I think you come back to, okay, what's the adoption rate? The adoption rate is growing, so you're supposed to own this. Yeah, I mean, let's talk about that topic, because it obviously continues to be the hottest one. You and I have talked about this in the past. I was pretty vocal in the position that it was going to be a disaster, right? They were going to launch. We saw them. I was not the most popular person in the industry when I was critical of it. I think we've

seeing that come true. Yeah, I think we had a conversation in, you know, I tried to point out I think free money rarely ever exists. So when you could issue something for a million dollars and some of you're worth $5 million, that tends not to last long. So now you've seen these things come back to NAV. And I think there are going to be something you can pick and choose from if you want to go that direction where, okay, what are they doing that you can't get your own? For me right now, I'm primarily just going to invest correctly. So for me, I'll admit it's easier with my job in compliance to do it through the ETFs because it's simple that way. So it's not direct ownership, but I don't feel the need to own the DATs right now.

I'm still looking for the one that gives me some sort of real edge that I don't think I can get myself. So you talked about that unwind being a potential headwind, I guess. What does that unwind look like to you? So obviously my initial skepticism or criticism was these things are going to blow up. They're going to dump their Bitcoin. It's going to be a massive sell-off. Now I just think that it's going to get shifted around from company to company. we'll see acquisitions like Strive,

who's obviously looking at an acquisition of similar, maybe the bigger players absorb the smaller ones because who wouldn't want to buy Bitcoin at a discount, right? If you're capitalized, you're already a treasury company, just go buy the ones in a discount with some, you know, preferential terms and call it a day. Yeah, and this is going to be a bit simplistic, but I almost viewed a little bit like closed-end funds.

So you can trade the closed-end funds, especially on the bond side. You know, if they get to a 20% discount, you want to buy them. If they get to a 5% premium, you want to sell. them. So until you kind of find something that has a real nascent sort of extra value, I think it's a big gambling once you get outside that range. But having said that, I think MSDR clearly did a very good job not to become a poor seller. So I think those fears are overdone. I think we're kind of at this balance stage where let's get back to the other good news. And that other good news, I think, can outweigh, you know, what we've seen from the debts. I mean, isn't there some clear

signal there when you look at a micro strategy or even a bit mine, you know, with Tom Lee? there are companies that we've seen continue to be able to buy the dip just like you would want to, right? I'm a guy who likes cheaper Bitcoin prices and I want to have some money on the side when Bitcoin is trading at a cheaper price. That doesn't seem like such a complex idea to me.

Sailor has continued to find ways to do that, including effectively a billion this week when people didn't think he had pennies left in the couch cushions, right? So it really seems like you can see who the serious operators are right now and who's just hanging on for deer life and praying for the market to return.

Yeah, I would agree, right? Again, you know, MSDR has a whole series of tools at their disposal. They've, you know, they figured out a lot out, right? This is not a naive company. He is well aware of the risks of being forced out, of over collateralizing, of having payment due date. So I think they've done a pretty good job. You look at the preferred shares, and they're pretty punitive if he doesn't pay the dividends.

So he's going to be cautious about how much they issue because they have to pay that dividend. They can give up board seats. So I think it's a reasonable structure. I think there's growth. I just feel that I can manage my exposure fine directly rather than through a dat right now. I think that's fair. I think we'd have to be intellectually honest about what they are and they're basically actively managed funds, right?

And so can you manage it better than them? I think that I can manage it better than the guys who all top blasted the top with every penny that they possibly had. Call me crazy. Yeah. So we also continuing on, and I do want to dig more into the market. But I think it's just important to note these kind of endless catalyst that we seem to have here in the narratives that we're getting. I mean, Atkins has been out there on an absolute crypto roadshow right now. The SEC chair says he looks to future-proof overhaul of crypto regulation.

I played a clip of him yesterday on the news where he said he thinks that all markets will be on blockchain rails within two years with tokenization, which I think is absurd. But I love to hear him saying it. We just all know that that's like a decade-long process. but him being very cognizant of the fact that if this SEC loses control or if we don't get legislation, that there is very much a future where things just reverse. The pendulum swings back. So he's actively looking for ways to either set regulation in stone or get legislation that can't be changed just because we get a less favorable regime.

And alongside that, also he's out here saying that he doesn't think anything to security. He's basically saying, unless you've token. If you read what he said here, he's saying that digital collectibles, all these things are not securities. And the only thing that really is is if you tokenize an actual security that also becomes a security. I mean, this is bullish stuff. Yeah, I think it's great. It's, you know, we'll wait and see. I'd like to see some of that all come to fruition.

You know, my business has been the credit derivative market and the SEC and the CFTC fought for years, if not decade, over who controlled it. So hopefully successful in getting that. One thing we haven't really mentioned that I do think is important, right, is. is this administration is really trying to rely on stable coins as a way to help fund the deficit, right? They view that if we can get stable coins out there to other current countries, I think Argentina is probably a top priority. The people there will want to invest in U.S. dollar, right? A lot of countries, especially Argentina, right, they would rather have their exposure in dollars. It's difficult to do right now. If we can get those stable coins out there, those stable coins become part of the national

security sort of mandate, the treasury mandate to tie people to the dollar, but more importantly, the stable coins tie them to T-bills and help fund our deficit. So I think there's a real push on that and that almost has a national security element, which is probably what's also helping push, you know, the SEC and all these, right? If you get something that's coming almost from a national security slash treasury level that this is important for these reasons, it flows down quite well. Yeah. Do you think they're sort of saying the quiet part out loud about stable coins at this point when they're admitting that? Because at first it was, you know, superior way to move money. any faster, cheaper, whatever. Now it's like, who's going to buy our debt? Oh.

Yeah. And I think we are on, since all the trade war discussions, right, we are on full economic kind of confrontation or friction with China. And right, China's done a lot to create trading in one away from the dollars. We all know, like the SWIF system's painful for people to use. It's always been viewed as fairly expensive, fairly awkward, takes time. So I think stable coins is kind of the U.S. government's attempt to derail China's progress that they've been making on the wand. So I think you can bring some of this really back to a national security level, which is why I get this comfort that is going to go beyond just this administration. But I think we're going to jumpstart it so much. It would be hard to reverse anyways. Yeah, I'm pulling up the

article right now because I would love your opinion on it. We talked about it at length here, but it just mash as well with this conversation. IMF warn stable coins may accelerate currency substitution week in central bank control. I'm sure that you saw this report recently from the IMF on stable coins. I find this one so interesting because I see it from two sides. Like as a Bitcoiner, good. Like it was less central bank control, of course, like less games with monetary policy, especially in central banks that hyperinflate their currency and all this. But the flip side is that if we're just basically exporting stable coins and our monetary policy to the rest of the world, what we end up is that the Fed is the central bank for the entire planet because of stable

points, right? And I'm not sure that that's the future that we want either. I think that's definitely a risk. I do think other currencies, they're going to have to develop Euro stable coins, right? And have them adopted, right? I just don't tell why people would use them if you have direct access to the dollar. Right. And you're going to want to be competitive, right? And you're going to look at monetary policy.

And again, if you're stable coin, if you're invested in the wrong currency, it's going to do worse than if you were, right? So it definitely in some ways, and it kind of ties Fiat back to, you know, know, crypto because you've got that. I think the IMF is also a little bit, I look at, if we want to talk, we can get to Fed policy in a sec, but, you know, we used to use the dollar in sanctions, right? Sanctions haven't worked in decades because there's so many ways around sanctions. Cryptocurrency certainly help, but also the Juan helped. And just the fact that countries don't even bother really listening to the sanctions, right? Since Russia sanctions went

on, Kazakhstan is a huge exporter. They put gasoline export, you know, they put issues on a gas prom and Rossnet, their production dropped by 1.1 million barrels per day, but apparently some of the lesser companies rose by a million barrels a day. So I think they overstate their control. And in the Fed, we tinker around with the front end rates, yet I believe 77% of mortgages are all like under 3.5%. So whatever we're doing at the front end is not affecting that because people were very smart and locked in long term yields. I think monetary policy is way behind the times. Yeah, I tend to agree. I want to talk about the market a little more a few days ago. I can actually probably check the date.

So Friday, November 21st, you and I had a DM conversation where you reached out to me and you said, thinking about buying. Like, I'm finally, I don't have the exact words in front of me. It was basically, I'm finally interested in buying this market, right? I'm going to go ahead and do that today. What do you think? I mean, you basically called the dead bottom, right?

I mean, I think this was what I failed to buy it up in the late 80s. And I was like, yeah, I failed to catch the dead bottom, but I did reasonably well. And I think I'm going to accumulate here. I think this narrative feels like all that negativity played out. And you asked a question earlier. I think we talked like, why has been the selling pressure? I do think part of it when I look, there's a community that tends to own ARKKK, so kind of the disruptive stocks.

They tend to own TQQQQ. And I feel like those investors were all getting hit on the same thing, whether they were getting hit on their debts, their crypto, ARKK, TQQQQQ, so that puts some pressure on everything. Because, you know, people always wind up selling what they can, not necessarily what they should. should when they feel pressure. I think there's that leverage community that was really into what you call it disruption, but across all asset classes, now that I think you're seeing these things stabilize, people can go back and reallocate their money more aggressively. Right, but I love the fact that when I'm hearing the narrative that Bitcoin's going to 75, then 65, then 55, by the way, totally possible. I'm not saying any of those things,

that you have seasoned investors reaching out to people they trust and saying, saying, this feels overblown. Maybe this is a time to buy. And I was saying the same thing. I think right around that time. And recently last week, I said, listen, I think the micro strategy hysteria is overblown. This seems like a glaring buy, at least for a trade. That was in the 150s. I don't know where it is now, 180s, something like that. And that kind of signal is my favorite. I remember when Elon Musk smoked weed on Joe Rogan and Tesla dipped to 180, and I very aggressively, with almost no followers, was screaming into the void that I was buying as much Tesla as I could because this is dumb. Like the guy smoked weed, it's not going to zero.

And people were saying it's going to zero. He's irresponsible. This company will not exist. That's how I kind of felt when you were messaging me about this, about sentiment on crypto across the board. I tend to be a contrarian. So I think there was that element. And it also went from, you know, three months ago, if you tried to say anything about these nabs being unsustainable at these premiums, everyone said you're an idiot. Then all of a sudden, if you said they were sustainable and they could do something, everyone's now you're an idiot the other direction. So it just felt like too many people became closet experts on how these things work on the impacts of, you know, getting in or getting kicked out of the indices. And everyone seemed to be, had the rest of the

news flow not been so positive? Maybe you don't buy that dip. But the rest of the news flow has been nothing but positive. It really does blow my mind that we're looking back on 2025 as a lost year for Bitcoin after all of the positive catalyst. I mean, yesterday I sent a tweet kind of joking. It was a, you know, Bitcoin, breaking news, Bitcoin up 1% on the year, right? Because at like 94,000 yesterday, we were up 1% on the exact price of Bitcoin a year ago. I think obviously it's a bit disingenuous to peg prices to arbitrary dates.

And I think if you want to peg the price of Bitcoin to a real catalyst, we just go back to last November in the election, right? And we're obviously still massively up from then. I think that's when everything changed for this market. But it's crazy that we can pound through all of these stories about bank adoption, SEC legislation, and we're just at the same price. It is a little shocking. And, you know, that last... It's supposedly had a good story, just get everything got kind of taken out. I do think there are going to be a limited number of cryptocurrencies that do well.

I think a lot of the alt coins are going to, you know, that to me, I don't really even pay attention. I've lost track of what alt coins are interesting or not, as that's not going to be part of my core thesis going forward, certainly. Yeah, I don't see how most of those come back. I think there will be some very select winners. I think there's going to be things created we haven't even heard of that we'll do exceptionally well on the all coin side, but really hard to pin your hopes on an alt season or the

cross-the-board rallies on every single token that we've seen in the past. I didn't actually ask your opinion on this at the beginning. Do you think there's a chance we get a 50-ip cut? No, I think Powell is going to get forced to do the 25. I think you're going to get some dissenters who say they should not have cut. You might get some dissenters who say they're going to go 50. None of the neighbors would surprise us if we get the dissent. I think he's going to try and send this hockey's message and that we're careful,

we're data-dependent, blah, blah, blah. I think we can just look through that. I do think it's going to be Kevin Hassett. I think he is going to work very closely with Treasury and the admin to set policy. And I think they are going to work very quickly. There's all this talk, well, if we cut too much, long end yields are going to go higher, blah, blah, blah, which in general would happen. But that's assuming the Fed and does nothing. Howard Lucknick did control one of the biggest bond firms out there.

They were primarily an interdealer broker, Bessence's bond market experience. I think they are going to jump to Operation Twist very quickly. which is they would sell their short data treasuries to buy long data treasuries to support treasury yields. If that's not working, I think they would jump to QE next where they would actually just buy them outright. And if finally they might start going all the way down towards the old crew of control where they will set ranges like Japan did on where the 10 years allowed to trade and they will just back it up with government money. So I think we just still aren't thinking enough out of the box on what the new Fed will look like. And I do think there will be a new

Fed in terms of its mindset in terms of how it works with the government. Whether I like it or not, That's not my job. My job is trying to figure out what's going to happen, what that means for markets. And again, I think that's going to be very aggressive for growth situations. The new Fed is going to be what Trump says happens. That's the new Fed. I think there's definitely a lot. Putting in a stooge, like he's not putting in the guy who he wants to be a free thinker

and challenge his ideas. You know what? I will caveat that on say it's whatever Besson's thinking. So when Besson goes on TV, he talks about 3%. He doesn't talk about 1% or 300 basis points cuts. He talks about 3%, so that seems reasonable, and he talks about keeping the 10-year-under-under-4%. So a three-handle, that seems reasonable. So I listen to what Besson says more than what Trump.

I think Trump will say whatever. Besson's kind of the one who hones it to a message that's actually deliverable. I like that. I think that that makes a lot of sense. So you mentioned, obviously, people being passionate about these disruptive stocks and indexes and that Bitcoin, to some degree, was fitting into that. We do have a clip here from Kathy Wood that I brought up, which was pretty explosive. I mean, she basically went on TV and said Bitcoin four-year cycle is completely dead, something I tend to agree with, and institutional adoption is going to send it parabolic. We can just watch it. We've got it right here.

Is behaving more like a risk on asset? That didn't work, did it? See? I'm not, this is what happens when I'm on my own producer. Here we go. It is behaving more like a risk on asset. It has played the risk off role at different times during the European sovereign debt crisis during our regional bank crisis. But right now, it's risk on. We, this is, it is climbing another wall of worry. And that is the four year cycle. We think the four year cycle is, is going to be disrupted. And what I mean by that is Bitcoin regularly dropped 75 to 90% in its early days. The volatility is going down.

It's down about 30 some odd percent. And I think there's a fear of the, four-year cycle. We think that the move by institutions into this new asset class is going to prevent much more of a decline. We may have seen the low a couple of weeks ago. Okay, so she kind of agrees with us. Yeah, and I'm definitely not hugely afraid of that four-year cycle. Again, I think there may be another opportunity for a sell-off. I'm having an issue here. Go ahead. But I'm not immediately. concerned about that. And again, to me, it's always about the leverage in the system. It's always

about the leverage in the weird ways. And I think the DATs trading at those high multiples to NAV were kind of an inherent leverage. That's been reduced. So I think we need to see the leverage build back into the system before you can get another kind of sharp decline. Not to say that we can't go back down, but I think we need to rebuild leverage to get to a sharp decline. And I don't see that in the system right now. Too many people got shaking out, I believe. It's been pretty crazy. to see how much leverage there still is to some degree after we saw that kind of 20 billion in a day in October 10th. I was like, my prediction at that time, totally wrong, was like, we'll see small, you know,

de-leveraging and liquidations. And it seems that now, even if we get a small move, we still get these a billion and a random day, $2 billion. Like an average Tuesday now on a 4% or 5% Bitcoin move is the same as FTX was years ago, still even after all that. I didn't think there was anything left in the system. No, to me it's amazing. I'm still trying to figure out who feels the need to own crypto with that high degree of leverage.

I just, that to me still blows me a little bit away. Yeah. Your thoughts on the four-year cycle specifically. I mean, I think that it was one of those things. If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. And then it broke. So you kind of move on. Like, you know, I'll believe it as long as it seems to be playing out.

I think when we preempted the all-time high by so far because of the ETFs, it was already broken. and all coins never moved, which people seemed to forget was a part of the four-year cycle, was that if Bitcoin actually made a bullish move, went somewhere consolidated, all coins would go absolutely nuts. Besides Tom Lee screaming about Ethereum on TV, we haven't seen much of that, right? Right. It's been a much more focused, and again, it seems like a much more mature industry. That I think I would agree with Kathy, that this is moving beyond kind of a day trading,

sort of gambling mentality that it might have had eight years ago or, 12 years ago into something that's a little bit more robust. Again, I do think there's a potential downside, but it's a very different crowd that's invested, how it's trading, the number of vehicles you can trade in. I think the ease of moving it around to the extent you want to is much more difficult. And we're nowhere near as dependent on any one or two entities.

Right back four years ago, you could look at FTX, you could look at a couple of the hedge funds that were very involved. And there was this kind of very dominant group. It's, you know, if you looked at Bitcoin, My understanding this has improved a lot, but it's, geez, the Julie co-efficiency, you look at how much wealth is concentrated. Crypto at one time was incredibly concentrated. The wealth was as disparate as it was in North Korea.

That's shifting, right? You're getting more people, more types of people involved. I think that helps change that cycle sort of mentality. So to be honest, I don't even really think about the cycle. Yeah, well, that's good. I think that that's the right frame because there's so many. people, she's right in this regard. I think if you're crypto-native, there's a mentality that the top has to be in because the Reddit posts at October 6 is the right date and it happened. And here

we are. Right. But I don't think 90% of the money that's participating in this market at this point, even knows there was a four-year cycle. I think it's just such a crypto bubble narrative. She's probably on TV and that anchor is probably like, what is a four-year cycle? What hell is you talking about? Right. I get the having more than the, you know, the having to me is always more interesting, I think, than the four-year cycle. That seems more of a coincidence than a anything to trade on. Yeah, I was talking to Dave Weisberger yesterday on Cryptotown Hall. And I haven't seen the tweet, but I know he wrote a basically long thread on this very idea that people think now because the top is in or that we are in the four-year cycle that we have to get a 75 to 90% drawdown, you know, the usual bear market that we have three years. of pain. That seems to be the consensus for those who believe in the four-year cycle. But he pointed out very wisely that if we didn't get the explosive upside, why would you expect the explosive downside? So even if you believe that the four-year cycle is real, we didn't even 2x the previous

all-time high, right? So why would you get a 75% drawdown? Maybe you're just, this 35% drawdown is the bear market because it's, you know, commensurate with the limited upside and the lack of volatility. And I'll go back, this goes back all the way to 2007, 2008, GFC, and one of the biggest, you know, funds in the world, you know, billions of dollars under AUM at the time was talking to me. And what they said they had the most difficulty dealing with was government policy shifts. They were very quant in many ways. They could do a lot of quant things, but they're like, nothing we do with government policy works because government policy can be so big that it just drives all other factors. And to be honest, I think that's where we are in crypto, right?

the government policy change is so much that you are now fighting the Fed. You are fighting this kind of machine that is bigger than crypto itself. So that's kind of how I would tie it. I think people underestimate now that you have this entity, the U.S. government, caring deeply, it's changed the game, I think. And that's without money coming in directly. That's just rule changes, everything else. Yeah, I mean, I think that most people now are viewing crypto as a function of global liquidity.

right? Or maybe that that's what those cycles were in the first place. But we talk about that liquidity. We already talked about the Fed, obviously, which is the hot button topic today and I guess moving forward with the new chair. But I think many would argue that we're still in a fiscally dominant environment. And actually, Bessent, who you shouted out before is much more important than Powell right now. So do you think that we're going to see a significant bump in liquidity? Are you seeing signs of that? I mean, how are you viewing 2026 from a liquidity perspective? I think we'll get some small bumps. I don't think we're going to get this massive debasement trade. I do think this administration is cautious on prices. I think we're finally starting to realize, too, right? We can all talk about inflation and the rate of change. I think what's hit everyone is this realization, price levels are so high, they are painful. Whether your cup of coffees now, $4, almost no matter where you go, all these things are hitting. So I think the administration is a little bit cautious about cost of living. So I think they're going to be somewhat careful if they can about providing too much liquidity. I don't think they want to spark inflation. I think they're comfortable with tax cuts. They're comfortable with policy that's aggressive. But I think they're going to be really reluctant to truly add a lot of liquidity in the market because they do not want an inflation spike coming into the election. Yeah, this is going to be a really interesting year and a very difficult needle to thread, I think, for the administration politically, right? Because this is,

like dance between inflation and the cost of goods and stock market remaining up. And there's a lot of evidence that we're in a bit of a stagflationary environment. And if things keep getting more expensive and the stock market drops, it's over for this administration at the midterms. Yeah. I think that's one of the reasons they had to start coming out. Dubbish. You saw the major averages on the stock side reached the 200-day moving average.

Then they kind of started getting a little bit more dubbish. And we have a very ambitious plan, I think, as a country, you know, in terms of what we've been calling ProSec or production for security, right? We need to build out the chip industry. We need to build out electricity production. All those things are going to put some pressure on commodity prices upwards as the demand for that goes. It's going to create a lot of need for debt financing from the AI, from the data centers, from the electricity production. You know, I think the big beautiful bill and things like that help. But it is really what it's designed in such a way to actually increase the budget this year.

So it is going to be a very difficult tightrope to walk maybe. And listen, I do think there are some tariff pressures creeping through on some prices. So you're starting to see some of that. I think companies have been very reluctant to pass any of it on. So there's a lot going on behind the scenes. And to me, we're still in what I've been calling this little eye-shaped economy. We have this dot that's doing phenomenally well and the stick that's doing okay. So I don't think you get better than the K.

I'm kind of sick of the K, so I'm like, I think it's like, lower case, lower K's eye-shaped economy. Yeah. So the dots doing great. Everything else is like, yeah. I just don't see how that plays out favorably. I think it's going to be tough. The whole market is like seven stocks, right? I mean, it's pretty crazy.

Yes. And, you know, there's a circularity in some of those stocks, it seems, and who's investing in who, how the growth occurs. I still think we are heavily underestimating the change. chance that China has some interesting chip developments that shake how we're thinking about AI to the core. Yeah, it's going to be a crazy year. Peter, anything else on your radar I might have missed? No, I think that's about it. Again, I think we'll see a bit more focus on the Fed, sovereign wealth funds, all those things come the new year. I think we're kind of in this breathing part where Trump wants to relax, try and close down Russia, Ukraine, if he can, fix Venezuela or deal with that.

And then we'll move back to markets come January February because I think he knows now's not the best time to talk about Marcus when half of Wall Street just wants to be on vacation. Yeah, everybody's going to celebrate Christmas and heading to their lodge in Aspen. This is not the time. I agree. Peter, thank you so much. As always, incredible insight, incredible guest. Everybody else, obviously, we'll be back tomorrow for another show and then Friday for the Friday 5. We will see you all soon. Thanks again, Peter. Thanks again for having me. Today's video is sponsored by Rain Protocol, a decentralized platform for prediction markets

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