The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Rally: Here Is Why It Is Not Too Late To Buy Crypto Now

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

I am joined by David Duong, Head Of Institutional Research at Coinbase, and Dan from The Chart Guys, who are coming to my show to discuss the recent Bitcoin rally and why it is still not too late to buy crypto!  David Duong: https://twitter.com/Dav1dDuong The Chart Guys: https://www.youtube.com/@ChartGuys ►► Sponsored by DevvE DevvE is a next-generation cryptocurrency - DevvE addresses Bitcoin’s most significant weaknesses—regulatory compliance, energy consumption, costs and speed! 👉 Follow DevvE on X for Updates: https://twitter.com/DevveEcosystem  👉 Join the DevvE Telegram group to stay in the know! https://t.me/DevveOfficial  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   ►►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  ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. USE CODE ‘25OFF’ FOR 25% OFF WHEN VISITING MY LINK.  👉 https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker     ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd  ►►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   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  Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:15 Market update 3:00 Meme coins 4:55 Bitcoin rally 7:30 ETFs 10:00 Bitcoin is Bitcoin narrative 10:55 Dencun Ethereum update 14:34 Spot ETH ETFs 21:00 Crypto narratives  25:20 Funding rates 26:00 AI, gaming 30:00 Bitcoin chart 33:24 Nvidia 35:45 Psychedelics  37:14 Ethereum: crazy moves are coming 39:40 Wrap up 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 Bitcoin rally has a lot of people believing that the top could possibly be in. They're scared. We're ahead of the schedule. They think another major correction is coming. But it's my feeling that this is just getting started. And there are quite a few reasons to continue taking a look at this market. I have one of my favorite guests today, Dave Young from Coinbase. We're going to talk about Bitcoin all-time highs. Of course, the Ethereum Dancun upgrade that nobody is seemingly talking about. And everything else going on in the market. And I've got Dan from ChartGuys on the back half to break down the charts. Can't wait to talk to these two amazing guests, guys.

Let's go. Let's go. like button. Going to try something a little bit new today that we used to do, which is to give you guys a very quick market update before I bring the guests on. Just let you know exactly what's happening so that we can set the table for the conversations. This is CoinMarketCap. Bitcoin effectively flat, but trading at 67,000. As you know, guys, it went to 69, slightly broke the all-time high live on this show two days ago, immediately jumped to $59,000, and now all the way back to $67,000. We call that a Tuesday in crypto, but man, it lit the TradFi world on fire. They couldn't believe that we saw a $10,000 daily candle. I think that's something we're going to have to start to get used to as prices get higher. As you can see here,

a lot of things looking flat, but Solana booming once again up to $144.43, up 12% on the day. We've had two huge narratives, I think, over the past week outside of Bitcoin. Of course, one of them being top meme coins here by Token Capitalization. Over the week, these are up massively. I mean, Shiba Inu up 123%, Dog with hat, 114%. Floki, Flocky, Flacky up 128%. Guys, I think you get the idea. Dogs have been pumping. Pepe, pumping. But as you can see over the last 24 hours and actually kind of this week, they're down. And I think there's been a rotation into AI coins once again. Some of these are not necessarily AI really, but near up 24%, render 26%, making all-time highs. FET up 28%, AGIX up 29%. So it seems like we're doing that old crypto thing right now where we do the washing machine and everybody spazzes and goes from one

narrative to another. So maybe it's still meme coins. Maybe we're just rotating back into AI. I happen to think that it's kind of absurd that memes are pumping and that AI coins catch a bid just because Nvidia is going up. But hey, guys, welcome to crypto. I'm going to go ahead and bring on David now. right man you know the perception i literally went on yahoo finance yesterday um and they had cynthia lummis on before me and i was forced to watch them ask the united states senator about meme coins i'm glad i was embarrassing yeah i'm glad you and i mean you know she and she broke it down you know the bitcoin and the importance of the etf and regulation but then you know that nobody has an answer for why this casino continues to pump. It's funny because we were talking about it on Spaces, and I had people say, meme coins are proof that we have new money in the system and new entrants. And I just laughed and said, this is the same old degens from the last cycle pumping and dumping coins to make money.

There is no new retail coming in to trade dog with hat, in my opinion. Yeah, I think it's a, I actually agree with you. It's a recycling of capital. The only thing I would say about meme coins though, is I don't have a good investment thesis for meme coins, but I also don't have a good investment thesis against meme coins, which kind of just traps me in the like, I'm just kind of like neutral on it.

But yeah, i don't know how you were able to follow up cynthia lummis by the way and feel comfortable talking about this yeah luckily they asked me more about the etf and some other things so i didn't have to go too deeply into it but it was definitely just awkward to watch that and it gives me the that sort of uh feeling of btsd where it's embarrassing to the market to have to talk about these things with serious people and to see what's happening. But yeah, I don't have an investment thesis on meme coins either. It's funny. You always see these stories that are like, man, invest $100 worth $275,000 now, but nobody's sharing the story of the other

99.9% of people who invested $1,000 and it's worth 1%. But hey, I guess we can move on from here. Listen, Bitcoin made an all-time high, in my opinion. Some people are saying because it didn't close a candle. It made a higher price. To me, that's an all-time high. Obviously, we had that massive leverage flush after that, but this big bounce. So what do you make of the Bitcoin market now? The fact that we're ahead of schedule on the four-year cycle and the halving, I think many anticipated we wouldn't see another all-time high for another eight or nine months, myself included. Yeah. I mean, I thought at best, we'd probably get it around the end of the first half of this year. So this is well ahead of schedule. And I was pretty optimistic.

I think I was on this show probably about a month ago where I said, I'm constructive. And at that time, people were pushed back on that. They were like, oh, what are you guys seeing? There's all these X, Y, and Z factors. We obviously didn't get the boost we wanted to right after the ETFs were launched. And I was saying that we actually saw a lot of the technical debt actually kind of get removed from the equation and the inflows were going to take us higher. Even then though, the numbers that we're getting are just like staggering. Like to see that we're at like $9 billion of net inflows in the spot Bitcoin ETFs, like that's such an impressive number that I don't think people truly appreciate what we're actually getting here. Because one of the obstacles to actually

getting us to higher levels has been liquidity. We haven't gotten liquidity that's necessary to sustain the positive momentum. But here, the ETFs really present that opportunity. And going into the halving, where we're going to see the reduction in supply or at least the disinflation of Bitcoin. I think that this is going to be a massive kind of combination that's going to just continue taking us higher in the medium long term. And I don't say that like, you know, I've come on this show before and said what I think if like, I think things are going down, I'll say it. But in this case, I really am very optimistic. Yeah, I agree. I was actually just looking up the market cap of GLD. It says $56.78 billion as I'm looking at it here. And then I pull up the... I thought it

was higher. Then I pull up this dashboard on ETFs. Total market cap of ETFs and Bitcoin is $53 billion right now. I mean, you're talking about, so obviously we have $27 billion for GBTC. A lot of people have said to me, wow, I thought they were at $27 billion before. I can't believe they haven't seen outflows. Guys, when the price of Bitcoin goes up massively, the market cap, right, obviously goes up when you're looking at this number. So they've had massive outflows. It's just being accounted for a market cap by a rise in price. But $12 billion for iBit, for BlackRock right now, almost $8 billion for Fidelity, ARK 2.5. Each one of these would effectively at this point have been the biggest ETF launch in years. Individually.

Absolutely. I mean, it takes something like GLD, like three years to get to the same amount that we've seen for just a bit alone. Yeah. Yeah. The numbers to me are just mind blowing and impressive. And like you said, I think people just don't believe it. Right. We've looked at it because I think we've spent so much time in crypto looking at charts or looking at history without really anything forward looking. You always get the criticism. How do we value this?

There's no way to value Bitcoin. It doesn't have intrinsic value. You're just looking at it because in the last four years, this is what it did. So you assume it's going to happen. This is as fundamental a metric we can look at to understand what's happening in Bitcoin that we've ever had or that any asset has ever had. You can literally see exactly how much being bought and flowing in on every single day. Well, that's because the reality is we don't really have competitors to centralize monetary policy. So oftentimes,

we rely, of course, on governments and central banks to create the currencies that we use, and that's fine. But I mean, like outside of like cryptocurrencies, like what else is out there that really kind of competes against, you know, central bank interference inside of monetary systems? There's none. I mean, like, I think that's what makes Bitcoin so powerful, both as a macro asset and as an alternative, because you actually have something that's not controlled by anyone. Like, and I've said before, like it's a super national asset, like no government controls that, which makes it really important because then it operates on its own dynamics. So, I mean, in some ways gold can kind of take that place, but it's, you know, it doesn't function

well. It also doesn't have the same characteristics because here we have programmatically disinflationary supply. Whereas gold, to be honest with you, if you wanted to, and I'm not saying it's easy. If you wanted to, you can mine more gold. If gold prices go up as they are right now, like someone can say, actually, you know what? Let's buy some more equipment. Let's go mine some gold. Like that supply can actually increase. It's not easy.

Again, you can do it. And also the additional overlay of a growth network, the fact that you have people using the stuff in Bitcoin, that's also an ancillary benefit that you're not getting when you invest in gold. So people make that comparison all the time and it's not a direct one-to-one. Bitcoin is actually unique. I agree. I tweeted something exactly like that. It's been a sort of thesis I've been sharing on this show. I'm sick of the digital gold narrative. I'm sick of the trades like a tech stock narrative. I'm sick of the it's a currency narrative. I actually think we've been doing Bitcoin a disservice over all of these years, trying to explain it in terms that mainstream will understand. I think it's time that we start pushing Bitcoin is Bitcoin. And it's all of those things and more,

right? And that we get this rotation of narratives, but it's all of the things you just described. And I think people are going to start to see that as they see what it does to their portfolio as they add these ETFs. But I want to talk about another asset because you and I have been, it's got to be over a year now of having conversations about how Ethereum should be going up and how Ethereum has been trailing and how that's an opportunity. I know you're one of the other sort of ETH bulls out there, but we have the Denkun upgrade coming. Nobody's talking about it and it's in a week, right? You remember the merge, we had six months of hype about what was going to happen in the merge and it's in a week, right? You remember the merge, we had six months of hype about what

was going to happen in the merge and that was in the depths of the bear market. So maybe people were looking for that to be the singular catalyst to get the market going again. It ended up being the ETF, but this is a huge upgrade that should have a massive impact on the Ethereum network. Can you talk a little bit about what Denkun is and maybe why you don't think everyone's talking about it yeah the value prop to ethereum and eth itself is actually somewhat debatable and i say that because mainly this benefits the like the value or the cheapness of layer 2 networks so the layer 2s that are being built to scale Ethereum proper will benefit from this. And their fees are going to drop by anywhere between 2 to 10x. Because the core of the Dancun upgrade is something called proto-Dansharni.

It's part of EIP-4844. And really what that does is creates a new data type called blob space that's going to go on to our data blobs that are going to go on to each block. And that's going to be reserved mainly for the L2s. And that will be temporary space that I think gets deleted every three weeks or so. So that is important because, of course, that means more people can theoretically use L2s. But the question becomes, if that happens, does this become dilutive to ETH itself? Because then activity gets absorbed by the L2s and moves away from Ethereum mainnet. And we've seen over the course of this week that that's not necessarily a bad thing, because when ETH gets really expensive, as it is right now and

starting to go up, it gets really hard and really expensive to transact on the mainnet. So I think that that's a reminder for people of like, oh yeah, that's right. This is why we need that. But the other thing is that there's another, like there's a bunch of EIPs that actually go into Dancun.

The one that I think really directly translates to what's happening for ETH and the tokenomics for ETH and the like the tokenomics for ETH itself is actually 7514. And I don't want to like throw a ton of like numbers on there. It gets confusing. You don't need to remember the numbers. But the point is that what this does introduces a cap on the maximum term limit for new validators per epoch. What that means is that right now, the term limit in terms of new validators becoming like validators or people, prospective validators, I should say, trying to get onto the network and becoming full validators. The churn limit is somewhere around 13. It's variable. But right now it'sing new validators, and that becomes a potential risk for the system.

Like we are trying to find ways as a community to actually limit that. So this is one way to do it by actually reducing that 13 number to eight. So when that happens, it's going to be slower to get new validators on the system. That's important because that affects the yield that you earn as a validator. That affects also like just, you know, the demands that in terms of ETH that gets locked up in the system. So that actually does have real effects on tokenomics. And no one's really talking about that. I think that is more important for me in terms of the direct impact that we see on ETH value. I see that macro Monday favorite Dave Weisberger is here in the audience. He said, thoughts about yesterday's hearing where CFTC said working with SEC to classify ETH as a security.

Actually, that's not how I read it. And as I saw that, I pulled it up. I believe he said the opposite. I believe Benham actually was criticizing Prometheum and the SEC and said very clearly, I get it, maybe you guys can see this, but both Bitcoin and Ether are commodities. He went to say, moreover, he highlighted that considering Ethereum as a commodity has proven effective for market functionality over the years, hence requests by Prometheum shouldn't be accepted. So it looks like we have a battle now. Once again, we know Gensler will never tell you if he thinks Ethereum is a security or commodity or not, but the CFTC actually coming

out very clearly, this is a CFTC chairman, he's Gary Gensler's equivalent at an equally large regulator that we talk about a lot less saying this is a commodity. I mean, I think that this, it's going passed over in the news, but it's a big deal. That's actually part of the thesis about why I saw the probability for spot ETFs being much higher than what the markets were pricing. Because I think that markets are pricing this at 50% at best, maybe 40%, honestly. I think the odds are closer to 60%, 70% that this is going to get done. And I think a lot of people were talking up like, oh, but Prometheum, which is, you know, backdoor, the SEC's preferred kind of exchange, but like listed ETH and they only list securities. So what does that mean? I think that was kind of reading too much into it. Honestly, it still comes back to this uh you know question between the sec and the cftc

because when the sec i'm sorry excuse me when the cftc approved cme futures they did it as standard futures not security futures and granted that was done in february of 2021 before like i think that was two months before gary gensler came on board on the SEC. But I mean, for them now to pick a fight here, like the SEC really has to outright say, ETH is a security. Come at me, bro. And I really don't think that they want to do that. Yeah. And listen, we all know that Promethean is a sham.

I don't tend, I don't tend foil hat often. But when you see Aaron Kaplan, the CEO who looks straight at like an extra out of a Steven Seagal movie, who can't answer a single question, who says that he got licensed, but Promethean can't actually offer anything on their exchange because none of these things have been qualified as securities. He's a patsy that was put up there to answer questions in front of Congress and to make Gensler look good. But this, like you said, this is not a fight they want to pick. And if they do pick this fight, if Gensler rejects an Ethereum spot ETF, or let me see,

the SEC, even though we know it's Gensler, we're just going to get sued again and lose. Yeah. I mean, it's unfortunate that so much of this stuff has to get litigated in the court system rather than just having pipes that work. You know, like, but I think the fact that what we saw with the spot Bitcoin ETFs is that they don't have necessarily a new standard. In fact, they said so. They said that, OK, we got rejected on the idea of surveillance sharing agreements. Let's, you know, pivot now towards the correlation between futures and spot. I think that some people are now kind of looking at this and saying, well, the ETH futures market, well, ETH spot market as well, isn't quite as large as the Bitcoin market. Does that present a problem for the SEC? They haven't told us the reality is, but if you look at the correlation, it is equally as high

between spot and futures ETH versus what we saw with Bitcoin in the spot and futures market. So if that is what they said, it should be good. Yeah, I think there's a lack of understanding. No, that's my bad, of what people mean

by a market of significant size or surveillance sharing agreement. The fact is they've approved, like you said, CME has Ether futures. We have an Ethereum futures ETF. So if we have an Ethereum futures ETF approved and there's CME futures, then obviously it answers the manipulation question that was the key question as to whether a Bitcoin spot ETF would be approved. And this is still BlackRock, right? I've seen the argument that BlackRock is 576 and one now in ETF approvals. Of course, they're going to get it.

They could withdraw and not get rejected, which is sort of a loophole in those numbers. But everything here, the exact same path exists. And I, man, how amazing we saw ARKs filing. Would it be to see an Ethereum spot ETF get filed that can take advantage of staking and offer a yield to people who purchase it? I don't think Yeses is going to prove that, just to be clear. But how amazing would that be? Definitely not in the first instance. I don't think that they're going to get it. But I mean, mechanically, by the way, I think there's pushback that, you know, this would be complicated to do. We've seen it. I mean, there are ETFs in Europe right now that include for ETH, that include staking as part of it. So the tax concerns, the custody

concerns, like they have been resolved in other places. So we could, but mechanically, it's not really the issue. I think it's just like there, you know, it's, it's more of a philosophical issue from the perspective of the SEC. So I think from that, from those grounds, I don't think it's going to get done, but by the way, this isn't really even part of my core thesis about why I've been bullish on ETH. Like I've been bullish on the large cap names. And we talked about meme coins. We talked about,

we haven't talked about altcoins yet, but you know, like, I do think that like for the most part, like we're going to see large cap names like Bitcoin we talked about meme coins. We haven't talked about altcoins yet. But I do think that for the most part, we're going to see large cap names like Bitcoin and ETH perform this year. But I think it's just performing this right now because we're getting the formalization of cryptos and asset class with spot Bitcoin ETFs. It's really hard not to have ETH in your portfolio if that's the case, because whether you like it or not, there's two big crypto names in the space. That's Bitcoin and that's ETH. And if you don't have ETH, that's career risk. And I'd say that right now, DeFi is booming. DeFi is coming back.

We're seeing new primitives, restating primitives that previously weren't there. This is a new resurgence for the system. So that all benefits ETH. And I think that's what's contributing to the rally. We haven't even priced in the possibility of these ETF flows yet. Yeah, I agree. I think that maybe Denkun is going to be the trigger and not the Ethereum spot ETF because it's coming faster. But also, I think we just have the natural rotation. I'm not saying that it's going to happen every single time, but Bitcoin goes up, makes a huge move. It chills that Ethereum, which has been beaten down, tends to follow. Maybe the meme coins going crazy right now is a bit out of order and having sort

of the Solana ecosystem, but we've seen it. I keep saying this, so I apologize for being redundant to my audience, but the minute the SEC fake tweet about the Bitcoin spot ETF hit, Ethereum pumped, not Bitcoin, massively against Bitcoin and on the approval. So you can tell that the crypto degens, or at least the hedge funds and traders who are looking at this market, were just waiting for a new narrative, right? Spot ETF trade's done, let's move to Ethereum. So I think that there's just incredible tailwinds. There's definitely a bifurcation between institutional flows versus retail flows. And by the way, I think the retail flows are just kind of stepping in here. I think that some of that has been kind of shy,

like we said in the beginning. What we've been seeing for some of the meme coins, I think it's been more capital rotation rather than new money kind of stepping in. But it's starting to happen right now. But institutions, of course, don't really play in that. Institutions are going to play in the names that they know. They know Bitcoin. They know ETH. There might be a few for the crypto native guys that will be further down the risk curve. But for the most part, I think this is why I think this particular cycle, it's going to look a little bit different. I think there's still going to be that movement that we're familiar with in

terms of Bitcoin to ETH to, to altcoins, for example. But I mean, in large part, they're going to be looking for the Bitcoin and ETH. And I think ETH definitely pumped in part because it was under own. So, I mean, like it's, it's not that I want a fundamental basis. I want to say one is better than the other.

It's just that their value is there. Yeah. I keep coming across as this massive ETH bull, but I hate their gas fees. I hate the speed of it. I'd rather use Solana from a UX UI perspective. It's not to me about the chain itself fundamentally it's about the trade right yeah we're still in the middle of trying to even resolve the modular versus monolithic debate like we're nowhere near kind of figuring that all out and i think that you know what we've been seeing coming out of solana has been fantastic kind of new developments you know like i'm really excited to see what's going to happen from like version 1.18 for like Salon Labs new client.

And then when Fire Dancer kind of launches, it's going to create more resilience for the network. But that's not to say that that's going to resolve all the questions that we have for the ecosystem. Not talking about like Salon's ecosystem,

I'm talking about for the crypto ecosystem because there are a lot of benefits as well for having these modular layers kind of stripped out and saying like, I can execute on an L2 and then I can settle on the L1, but I also have data availability, like all that stuff. I mean, there's some good things about it. So those questions I think are going to remain probably through the rest of the year. Did this V-shaped recovery on Bitcoin surprise you? I know we talked about it at the beginning, but I mean, that was a pretty hell of a bounce and it happened fast. $10,000 daily candle is no joke. Yeah. I mean, like I could kind of see more again towards that top that a lot of that short covering was just about to be done.

You know, I, you know, I watched the long short ratios every day to kind of see where we are with that. And I can kind of see that the equilibrium levels were closer to like 1.4, 1.45, and we were still at like 1.2. So I knew there was going to be room to catch up. So when it broke, I was kind of like, well, there we go. But what was interesting to me was that a lot of that move that we saw on the downside then actually was more spot driven and not like, you know, in the derivative side of things that only did that did come later, obviously. And we saw the liquidations actually occur. And that's kind of like and then the rebound. But, yeah, I mean, like the trajectory didn't surprise me. It was the pace at which things have been moving.

That has been insane. Now we get our 15% corrections in the bull market in hours, right? I mean, it's pretty insane. I just happened to look. I mean, funding rates, actually, there was a flush, a billion dollars, obviously. They're still pretty high here on CoinGlass, 0.05 per eight hour period. I mean, these are still pretty high. So I would say that just looking at that objectively, which you can't in a vacuum, I would still say there's

room for somebody else to flush this again. It'll probably bounce right back. I know that now we're at time, but since you're here, you can't leave also because it would be awkward. So I want to ask you another question. Is there anything else that I missed outside of ETH and Bitcoin, since you're obviously in the weeds so heavily with institutions, et cetera, and researching? Is there anything else you're really excited about coming into this cycle? Yeah, I think that the narratives here are definitely booming in a way that looks very different to what we saw in the previous cycle. And I think that the crypto native use cases on decentralized physical infrastructure deepen. That's definitely a big theme. I was at East Denver, for example, like outside of like the modular monolithic debate, I think a lot of people were talking

about AI, which as a theme, I'm a little bit sheepish about because I think the way it's being expressed right now, it seems more narrative driven than actual fundamentally driven. But, you know, you kind of said it like NVIDIA pumps and like this does well. So you still have that kind of moving. But I think there are some real things that are being built out in Deepin, even just away from the AI side. And it's super interesting to me right now. Gaming, I think like any day now, I'm waiting for a really big AAA game to drop because these things have been invested in over the last two, three years. Like that would put us like, it takes two, three years to build a AAA game. That will be around now for seeing that launch. And we are starting to see that already happen. I'm waiting to see if one of those are going to gain traction,

but I think that's definitely a big sector I'm kind of watching out for. Yeah, I love it. I think we've got a lot of narratives from last cycle maturing that we were early on, you know, like gaming, even AI and those. And then I think we have some that weren't really talked about, but we're maturing last cycle, like Deepin, the helium networks of the world

that actually have use cases in their building that are going to really, I think, come to that. And we're still early on Deepin too, by the way. I mean, it was a resurgence of a theme, but we're still early in the development cycle for seeing these projects really mature and then take off. Yeah, totally agree. Well, everybody, you can follow David on Twitter because he has an awesome new Twitter name. I say it every time, but he had the funniest old Twitter name that he never used. And so we just had to bully him. You're the only reason I post on Twitter. And every time I do now, the worst thing is I hear your voice in my mind like, David, you need to post more. I'm like, damn it.

Dude, you have a lot to say and that's a free place to say it all. What can I say? So I highly encourage you guys to follow him. It's down in the description. David, always a pleasure, man. Thank you so much for taking your time. And we'll speak soon. Thanks for having me. All right, guys. Great insight, as always, from one of the top researchers in the crypto space and beyond, David, who's the head of institutional research at Coinbase. Think about that job. That's quite an important job. Before we move on to Dan, we got to talk about... Guys, I did it. The mirrored. I usually point the wrong way

because my brain doesn't work properly. But we've got Debbie, of course. We've talked about them quite a lot. We've been talking about them at least once a week in the newsletter and on YouTube. But man, they are booming, things going exceptionally well there. If you guys aren't already familiar with Debi, which you probably are because you watch my show, you know that Debi is a hyperscale blockchain platform that's flexible to the regulatory compliant in every legal jurisdiction of the world. Short way of saying they've gotten licenses to operate in places like France where nobody else has. Governments are building on this. Huge corporations are building on this. It's faster, it's cheaper and better for the environment.

I'm not a Bitcoin environmental flutter, but it's very good for the environment also. And it's being built by some of the most prolific names in and outside of crypto. Obviously, the former head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency. Yes, you heard that correctly. The guy who invented the Kindle, former CIO of Starbucks, some pretty big names obviously involved in this. And they're getting, like I said, licenses where other people have been unable to. There's no affiliate link. There's nothing to do to sign up. There's nothing crazy like that. I'm just asking you guys to check them out because this is one of those new blockchains that could really be huge in the future and that people will be talking about moving forward. Now I'm going to go ahead.

I feel like it's been a while, Dan. I think we haven't talked in a while. It's been a couple of weeks. We were off for a week and then I was off for a week. And in that time, Bitcoin went from like 40 something to 70, right? A lot has changed, yeah. So what are you thinking now with this move, right? We tapped that all-time high.

So I'm saying we double-topped it, which by the way, a double-top would require us breaking down below 15, guys. So it's not a double-top to me. But double-topped it or that we touched it or that we didn't make a new all-time high. To me, we went above 69,000. We made a new all-time high. To me, we went above 69,000. We made a new all-time high. Yeah. And I have to admit this move over the last month plus is definitely more significant than I thought it would be. And yesterday, you know that flush is coming. You know there's going to be significant pullbacks

along the way, but what's encouraging to see is that it was first hourly oversold conditions and that bulls bought it. So again, we're always wondering supply and demand. Clearly, demand is outweighing supply when that's the dip. When you get that kind of flush and you hit that low, if you bounce and drop below that low, that's a red flag for bulls. But when that marks the low, I call it a sucker punch where the bulls are in full control. They have nothing to worry about. The bears sucker punch them out of nowhere, big drop, and then the bulls are ready to fight. And if when the bulls are ready to fight, they recover, they're still winning. And if the, you know, they're

ready to fight, but then we drop to the lower low, then the bears start winning. So, you know, that's perfectly normal price action at this point. And here we are, as we speak, testing the multiple tops from yesterday and just keeping control right now, we're just walking up four hour higher lows. And that all time high is back in sight at this moment. And a lot of this has to do, obviously, Bitcoin is bullish, ETFs, the narrative and all that, but not losing sight that the last four months, the stock market is having the most bullish four months that I've ever seen. And that sentiment is definitely bleeding over to crypto as well. And so that's worth paying attention to. It's not a coincidence that the NASDAQ had its biggest red day in four months, the same day that

Bitcoin flushes that, gets some of those aggressive longs liquidated. So it's worth paying attention to both just for sentiment's sake, but nothing to worry about for the bulls at the moment. Yeah, I think that to me, that's just a lot of tailwinds. We have all the fundamental things happening within crypto, and then it's in the context of a broader bull market. It just aligns exceptionally well. Personally, I don't think that if we didn't have the Bitcoin spot ETF and we didn't have all these things, I don't think that Bitcoin would be performing this exceptionally well, even in the context of the bull market. I'm not saying it would be bad, but I think we'd be in like the 30s or 40s and kind of waiting for the halving and it would be seven more months. We'd be waiting for the cycle.

This just got us ahead of schedule in the perfect environment. Yeah, perfect. You're right. Perfect environment for sure. And as you mentioned recently at the beginning of the show, the AI narrative, I'm going to be watching for the possibility that when we see weekly consolidation next, which again, you know, pull up the weekly chart, it'll be just fine. Don't fear weekly consolidation, we can pull back 10, 20% and still form a healthy, you know, weekly high or low. But I'm going to be watching for if that aligns with NVDA and semiconductors, because I do think there is some parallels in terms of the amount of euphoria that we're seeing in these different spaces.

And as you mentioned, the AI names were some of the best performers from the lows on that dip. And so I think that the crypto AI narrative stays strong as long as NVIDIA keeps hitting all-time highs, which it is doing as we speak yet again. So it's worth paying attention. Pay attention to both sides for sure, because there are clues to be had. It's the bubble that never pops. It will. It will. Of course. Of course. I mean, everything gets its fair market, right? And eventually it trails. But man, that last NVIDIA earnings was a real eye-opener. No matter how high the estimates

and the pundits try to go on what could possibly happen, it just has been smashing. Yeah. And people from crypto might look at this and be like, well, I mean, it's only up 100% over the last couple of months. No big deal. But when you're talking about market cap, I mean, this name is gaining an entire Tesla market cap in a month or like it's just it's an insane. You know, you see a list where today NVIDIA gained the market cap of at least like eight major companies. And it's just it's insane. And it's still going up. So that narrative is going to stay alive as long as that's the case. Yeah. I mean, I just, I won't say hate, but I just find it annoying when crypto things that are superficially adjacent just pump in mass

because of one stock, but it's an opportunity as a trader. So I guess I should like it. I just think that a lot of people will end up buying these FETs and renders and stuff at some local top and just get flushed 50% or something if NVIDIA goes down 2% in a day. They will. And you can't fall in love with the story and the narrative. And that's why you've got to remain not emotionally... Don't get emotionally attached to the story because that's how you become a bag holder. And here we are. We started the show and Bitcoin was 67 and now it's basically 68. So we're obviously seeing some strong movement again coming into this. So it's, you know, those inflows catch up.

That's the crazy thing is you see the report of like, you know, 700 million into BlackRock or something like that, but those get bought, you know, after hours of the next day. So it's almost like you get, you have this information in advance of the actual purchase coming. Yeah. There's a, there's a very clear pattern of stock market opens, Bitcoin bulls make their move. And that's been great. Another sector,

a little change of topic here, psychedelics. So the cannabis sector is fading. I've been shifting my focus. Psychedelic sector, big news today. So this is MNMD and you can see the monster move today on news. And essentially they had a 12 week trial for LSD to treat general anxiety disorder. And it had extremely promising results and CNB or CNN's already picking up the headline, but the FDA gave them breakthrough status, which means, you know, the results are encouraging compared to anything else that's on the market right now. And so, you know, I'm just watching to see with you for again, the market environments perfect right now. Is this a tailwind? You know, I wish I was on 10 minutes ago to talk about this at the open. Now we're up 20, 30 percent from the open, but

it's worth paying attention to this sector just because there is such little interest. And, you know, a little bit you're talking about $10 billion in a Bitcoin ETF. These psychedelic ETFs have like $9 million assets under management right now. So if volume comes in, things get exciting. And the fact that it's already on CNN this morning, this is going to get some eyes. So some other names in the space, ATAI, I have a position in. Can that act as a laggard and get a cup and handle kind of move going? These names are extremely thinly traded. They're volatile. But again, this is the kind of market environment to take some chances on this kind of volatile

stuff. So it has my attention in the short term, as long as NMD, which is now leading the pack, as long as that stays strong, going to keep an extra eye on this sector. Anything else you're looking at? You're talking about ETH, of course. For me, ETH, BTC, this has to break. We just got a tightening range here. If this breaks, it's game on. And so pay attention to this over the next couple of weeks, because that for me is the... I'm just imagining I'm a spotlight. Am I looking at Bitcoin or Ethereum? Obviously a bit of both, but is my attention going to go to Ethereum if this breaks bull? Absolutely. So. And if that breaks bull, then I think there's going to be pretty crazy movement in the Ethereum

ecosystem and other altcoins. We always get the trickle down effect of bullish Ethereum. Yeah. Like ENS and all that, you know, more thinly traded things. Absolutely. So definitely worth paying attention to that as well. I mean, I even saw, not on the psychedelics, but I saw an Elizabeth Warren video, everybody's favorite Elizabeth Warren video talking about how they need to reschedule marijuana. Yeah. I mean, cannabis has been fading recently and it's just because the market is now realizing, are we really going to do this again? Is the DEA about to drag their feet on a schedule three ruling for three months?

And it's just honestly- Sell the rumors, sell the news. I mean, those are classic, right? Until you actually, we haven't had the news, but yeah, people were buying that rumor. Yeah. Yeah. I got it. Unless you get that news fast. Yeah.

Unless you get that news fast, you always see those fade. You know, you always see the retracement of a huge rumor purchase. But like you said, I think fundamentally that has a lot of legs. Anything else that you're watching? That's it for now. Of course, yeah, just as semiconductors, broader market, extreme euphoria mode. And cautious, definitely as a full-time trader, this environment, be cautious, not fighting the bulls, but starting to get a little protective because I look around and say, it's been a great January and February. I really like these gains. A newer trader has a mindset, man, at this rate, I'm going to make this much money

this year. And my mindset is this is not going to keep up. I need to protect those gains. And so just being a little bit protective. Your mindset should be, I've made this amount of money this year, not I'm going to make this amount of money this year because you're giving it all back every single time. But hey, that's what I got. All right, man. Thank you so much. Always appreciate it, guys. Check out obviously his channels and his Twitter chart guys linked down below. Always great alpha, great information. And if you have been following, he's given us some massive, massive ideas on this show in the past. So I love it, man. Thank you so much. Good to finally catch up again. Yeah, man. See you soon, Scott. Awesome guys. So I listened before we go, I wanted to talk to you about, uh, one more quick thing. Well, maybe two. So, uh, I've got market Mavericks this

afternoon with Mike McGlone, who was not a macro money this week. So looking forward to catching up with him and Gareth Soloway, uh, the two big bears. It's funny because people are like, why do you talk to these bears? They give such bad information. For A, it's fun to be on the other side of a bunch of bears. And I've remained bullish on Market Mavericks. And B, it's good to get opinions from both sides. But curious to catch up with them on where they're thinking. I can't imagine, and maybe I'll be wrong, I can't imagine that McGlone is still going to say that Bitcoin is a leading indicator to the downside because the argument was always that the market was lagging because stocks were making all-time highs and Bitcoin hadn't.

Well, now Bitcoin has. So I can't imagine that. And curious to hear where Garrett's at, as he's obviously been shorting this market repeatedly. I do see people over here talking about Garrett's 12K prediction. Guys, it went to 15, and he was bearish the whole market. I don't fault him for that. I'm just curious. I want to know from the bears at this point, and those are my friendly bears, what's going to switch and change their mind? What has to happen for you to fundamentally decide that things are bullish? Because the thing is, I have been on the recession has to come bandwagon. I'm just not going to fight it until it does. Why miss all the gains on a recession yet to come? We don't even know what will happen.

Also, one more thing. You guys may have missed it. I was on Yahoo Finance yesterday. They asked me a question. I was going to just tell you the answer, but I'll just play the video because I thought that this was pretty sweet. And you guys couldn't see their face because they cut away from him. But the woman was absolutely shocked at my response here. But this was my answer. You'll just see. I'll show you what I played. Out there have price targets. And I wonder for investors, should they think of a Bitcoin target the same way they would think of a stock target, for example, because modeling Bitcoin can be kind of tricky. Well, my Bitcoin target is to die and hand it off to my kids and hold it forever

because I truly believe in the asset. That's not necessarily true of the rest of the market. I view the rest of the market as speculative VC investments, which I think is totally fine, but they're better for trading. Bitcoin, I believe, is better for holding. I'm in the Michael Saylor camp on that. So giving targets, obviously, is dangerous. I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know better than anyone else.

But if we look at past halving cycles, you generally do many multiples of the previous all-time high. Each cycle has been more muted than the last as the asset matures, as the market cap obviously increases, it's harder to move. But last time, say we had a 20,000 top. You get the idea. I don't need to give you guys my predictions. We talk about it all the time here. That's funny. You guys are saying, look, it's Scott hitting the big time. I get press requests once a day. You guys might remember I used to go on Fox Business all the time. I used to go on Making Money with Charles Payne. I've been on all the channels. To be honest, I'm so busy making my own content that my schedule is never clear. And frankly, I don't give a shit. They ask me all the time to come on

these shows. And I'm like, whatever, man. I talk to you guys enough. And I think it's great, obviously, to go on these and to give a voice at Main Street. But I'm exhausted, man. I did like five shows yesterday or something. But the point that I want to make is that I don't think that I frame the context of my views on the market often enough. A, that is how I feel about Bitcoin, right? But that doesn't mean you have to feel that way about Bitcoin. And I'm in the fortunate position where I can hold my Bitcoin forever because I've put in money, I've made money, and I don't have to sell it to live my life. But I think it's important to note, you should never, ever feel guilty, feel like it's a violation against the grand wizards of Bitcoin maximalism.

If every once in a while you want to sell something, especially Bitcoin, to better your life, right? If you're living paycheck to paycheck every single day and you need Bitcoin to feed your family and you've made some money, sell it and feed your family. Don't be a zealot and keep it forever just because Michael Saylor or Scott Melker or anybody else told you that that's what you're supposed to do. And also, I think it's really important to get the framing of how I view the market as a whole, because Bitcoin to me is the most important asset ever created. I keep making this point. Bitcoin is Bitcoin. It's not digital gold.

It's none of these things. I want my kids to have my Bitcoin. They'll probably sell it and buy something nice. I have no idea. I can't control what kids do. But I want them to understand it. I think it's a great life lesson about the irresponsibility of governments, which I said at the end of that clip. Here, I'll play that part because that part's pretty sweet. And a half-act.

But for me, I'm looking much beyond this cycle. I don't care what happens in the next two years. I don't care what happens in the next 10 years. I think this asset's going to $500,000, a million eventually because we know how irresponsible the government is with their money. We know how irresponsible the government is with their money, right? And so to me, it's worth holding it forever to see if that premise plays out. But I do view the rest of the market, Ethereum and otherwise. I'm a huge Ethereum bull, but I said it on the show. It's not about the tech. It's not because I believe that the world financial system will be built on Ethereum. I may be used to believe things like that in the past. To me, these are long-term swing trades. And if it turns into something

more fundamentally important, great. But I think that the rest of the market are largely VC tech investments. There's a lot of money to be made. You should go ahead and make it. But there comes a time to sell almost all of those things and there will be future cycles. So I trigger maxis when I talk about these other things. I trigger Ethereum people when I talk about Bitcoin being the only important asset. You can't win with everybody. And the final message, I didn't even intend to have this little rant, but the final message there is do whatever is best for you. View these assets however works in the framework of your actual life and experience and needs. Yes, we all want to opt out of the fiat system, but you have to pay your fucking bills and you have to buy some food and you need

to get your kids books for school. And you can't do that without dollars. So every once in a while, you need to go into that horrible system that's ever collapsing that's full of Inflation to be able to do that and nobody Nobody should guilt you or fault you for doing what's best for you and for your family. That's it That's it. That's all I got for you guys today I'll be back of course tomorrow with the friday five and this afternoon with market mavericks guys I don't care what whatever you think of mike whatever you think of gareth, whatever you think of me, it makes for a much better and more constructive conversation. And if you want me to ask them those questions, I will ask them those questions

and you can hear their answers. That's all I got for you guys. See you tomorrow. Peace. Let's go.