The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin RESURGES at $72,000. All-Time High Today? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

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All right, let's do this. How's my audio? Who's on? All right. No one's on except the host. Douglas, can you hear me? I hear you. Yeah.

So we got Bitcoin surges at $72,000 all-time high today. Not today. Take it easy. Let me fix that all-time high today. We get too excited sometimes as a team all-time high this week. I'm going to blame Scott for this one. Joe, I want to start with you, man, you man because you know we always give us recaps we do the roundtable spaces together where you focus a lot on altcoins which are pumping right now um as with every bull market

we've seen before joe can you just give us a general overview on the altcoin market um how is that performing recently and i'll give you my experience which obviously a lot you know i've got a lot less insight than you and other panelists but obviously idos are crazy pumping and i'm sorry something we're heavily focusing on we invest heavily in idos about two a day idos obviously for anyone new in crypto just projects launching they raise money privately early on um and then they list it's like every startup becomes a public company in crypto but this space is not for beginners so we invest heavily in idos and folks have pretty much on everything like i know there's narratives that are gaining more traction right now but we don't tend to follow the whole narrative approach because a narrative that's gaining traction right now

is not a narrative that will be gaining traction in the next bull market it's a narrative that could you know we saw the play to earn hype of the last bull cycle they crashed the most the metaverse hype they crashed the most so right now we're seeing gaming which i think this hype phase is very different to previous ones because we're seeing games launch we're seeing metrics pick up we're seeing daily active users make sense when it comes to valuations at least make more sense and then we've got ai pumping right as well second thing is i obviously changed my whole perspective on meme coins we even had a speaker i can't remember who it is they said that the last the 2017 narrative was led by icos the 2020 narrative was led by ICOs. The 2020 narrative was led by NFTs, obviously DeFi and NFTs.

But let's go with NFTs. And this cycle is going to be led by meme coins. It's another way of saying they're here to stay. ICOs, 2017, obviously they're part of crypto right now. NFTs, while they're not pumping, ordinals are doing incredibly well. We're very heavy in ordinals. NFTs are here to stay. But meme coins are here to stay but kind of meme coins are here to stay so i've obviously shifted and

and you know compared the risk versus reward in our long-term view of similar to you william a long-term view of meme coins and we kind of went all in on this we're partnered with a few we're partnered with one of the biggest meme coins right now we'll be announcing soon um and you know we're working with projects on a regular basis understanding the risk so we have certain requirements etc so meme coins ideas obviously you know, Scott is not here. So we'll kind of touch, have a discussion with Dave looking at Bitcoin, ETFs and institutional interests as well. But Joe, I've given my quick recap.

But look, we had three projects on our end launch today. All three of them did well. Planet, I think it's called Planet Mojo, did the best. That was a pretty hyped up project. And there was two others all listing literally on the same time, exactly the same time today. That's in one day. So it seems full-blown bull market. Your thoughts, Joe, what are you seeing? And are we just getting started or are we getting close to the peak in your opinion? Yeah, GM, GM. A lot going on right now in the market you know from bitcoin you know even in the last month here bitcoin's actually only up about seven percent

um you know then you've got altcoins kind of moving up a lot more than that but you do have some of the old layer ones kind of being laggards you know arbitrum's down 30 percent matic down 20 percent um it eats down six percent on the month uh but you But I think just to touch on the coins that are actually launching and new coins, obviously, you've got this whole narrative of meme coins, and that's just going to be a fever pitch of craziness that's going on. And if you want to dabble over there, there are some good plays. But just be very, very careful because there's a lot of noise over there. But just to touch on, actually, the projects that you're probably investing in, that a lot of the's a lot of noise over there but just to touch on actually you know the projects

that you're probably investing in that a lot of the you know the venture is investing in you know what i'm seeing this time that's a little bit different is that we have been through a couple of cycles of icos and defy and a lot of tokens have been launched and you know a lot of the teams that are launching projects it's not their first rodeo you know they they have this could be their third or fourth like major project that, you know, they're trying to actually build utility in. That's not just a meme coin. And they're, you know, the thought process and they're being a lot more thoughtful around

the tokenomics of what's going on, even the gaming sector, where before play to earn was like, hey, we just, you know, it's kind of like an early start problem. You know, hey, we have to give away a lot of these tokens. Let's get people in. And then what do we do? Right. And I think what's happened this time around is that folks have really a longer term plan. There's longer vesting schedules, like way longer vesting goals before it was like six, eight, nine months. You know, you're seeing four or five years. In some cases, the team, the founding teams are taking huge cliffs and longer vesting periods on the quality projects.

And so you're really going to start to see, I think, a little bit more longevity in some of the projects that are out there that actually have utility. What are some narratives that you think have a lot more room to grow? So Rand did say that AI is kind of leech. He said that about a month ago, you know, 70% of the way through. My team is starting to think that gaming is getting too saturated. I don't disagree, but don't agree either. And obviously, RWAs, I think they still have a long way to go, especially after the BlackRock announcement.

So maybe good to get your thoughts on these three narratives and any other narratives that I haven't mentioned that probably people are not paying enough attention to. Obviously, meme coins is one we've talked a lot about.

Yeah, I think gaming will have a little bit of a renaissance this cycle um just like i said because the the teams actually know what they're going after whether they're going for you know uh you know hey we're gonna just churn out a bunch of different games each month and it's gonna be exciting and like that's our model or we're trying to build a little bit more like a hardcore game that has storyline that's out there i mean real world assets i mean that's just another name for security tokens right like we kind of have almost gone through this a little bit in previous cycles people weren't sure how this was going to land just because the word security

token so it's been rebranded to real world assets and now you're seeing blackrocket in a game i i think it like i'm still up in the air on on that i mean obviously there's a lot of excitement but can people actually turn this stuff into something real, right? Like there's an awesome app called Rally Road, where you can buy a small percentage of like a 69 Camaro or a 72 Chevelle, right? I'd love to see things like that actually move on to the blockchain and people actually build applications or different things off of those.

I think that would be cool. Like, hey, could I have access actually to that car for five days a year if I live in this area? So I'd love to see more applications there. And AI, it's just so broad. And I think based on the fact that there's this massive influx of excitement on AI and Web 2, I guess we can call it Web 2 over there. It's just kind of leaking into Web 3, but I'm not seeing, I'm not seeing the world application too much yet. I mean, there's things like that. I'm really excited about like, you know, something like a bit tensor, right. And, and the sub, the subnets that are there, I think there's actually really smart development that's happening outside. And

some of the smartest people in our industry that are building over there where they're, you know, crowdsourcing. It's not so much like, hey, there's decentralized AI that's happening over there, they're just basically the incentive and governance model around decentralized AI or AI in general. And so I like that because it's actually a play into Web two that uses Web three as the incentive and governance model, which is cool. And then as far as other sectors that are out there,

I mean, I think, you know, we're not talking about it enough, but looking at Runes on Bitcoin, which is the new fungible token standard on Bitcoin, you know, BRC20 was kind of the first iteration of that, had some, you know, maybe some miniature flaws in there around, hey, you know, people were just minting out all of these BRC20s. You know, it's almost like having websites where, hey, everyone is going and squatting on stuff and so i think this will be interesting and i love the by the way massive shout out to lunar crush which we're invested in in your

platform we use it a lot for for uh for various forms of analysis for a lot of altcoins in the markets in general and so i appreciate that uh joe just for the audience we unfortunately have do have scott he thought he can't join today but he can. So Scott, since you were able to join, maybe give us a quick recap on what you covered in your show. Then I do want to go. We've got a pretty varied panel. So we've got like Solana Sweeper that can touch on the Solana ecosystem compared to ETH. We've got Dave and William touch on the markets in general. Andrew probably got some leaks as always. But Scott, what did you cover on your show today? And what do you think are the key stories of the weekend? It's funny, you'll have to ask Dave Weisberger that because I was traveling to Paris, just landed and kind of in route at the moment. And he covered my show for me this morning.

So actually, it was a macro show, obviously. But I'm assuming that there was a lot of conversation about Bitcoin pushing here, what it means in context. yeah i'm pretty much out of pocket today and i'm here trying to catch up just like everyone else yeah news i cancelled my trip to paris i just don't have the time so i know you and emmy emmy messaged me i forgot to reply i feel really bad tell her not to block me but but yeah i can't make it to paris but hopefully you know give us a recap from your time there and make sure you come to dubai if we're talking 2049 yeah you're coming to paris tomorrow don't lie. I promise you I'm not. I'll be coming to Dubai next week to see you.

I'm listening, I'm here. Let's go to Dave. Since Dave, you did the show today, maybe a quick recap on the stories of the weekend, the markets in general, and what you covered today on Scott's show, because I'm sure the numbers were pretty... Did you have record high numbers today since you took over? Well, actually, Noelle

Atchison was the moderator, guest host. She's terrific. I think you must know Noelle. Look, we were talking about – it's a macro show, so we were talking about what's actually going on. And I think the reality is we all believe that what we're seeing is a very prolonged, very early death rattles of what's going on in the fiat world is the easiest way to explain it. When you start looking at what's happening in terms of treasury issuance, you know, you know, I made the point this morning that the job data that came out was so remarkably different than what the mainstream media classified it as. I mean, effectively, I think it's since August, there have been 3 million full-time jobs lost, but some very large

number of part-time jobs added. And so what's actually happening is people are needing to work multiple jobs to keep afloat, and that's in the face of inflation, et cetera. And all of this is in a backdrop of a world where we still have massive fiscal deficits, use James Lavish's words, that are neutering the Fed. So the Fed could have interest rates here. But as long as we're printing $2 trillion a year to keep up with the fiscal deficits, it doesn't really matter what the Fed does. Certainly they could, I suppose, you know, crush the economy.

But in an election year, that isn't going to happen. And so what we just see, this is Bitcoin is still in a trading range. It bounced off the bottom of the trading range. And now it's towards the top of its recent range. But effectively, it's the same coiled spring that's going on and on and on and on. And that's what we really talked about. There really wasn't news other than whoever was selling stopped and buyers are naturally there. And the market is in this trading range. And I don't see anything terribly exciting, but it does mean that there's a bid. Sorry, I was muted. And are we still being led by institutional inflows from ETFs? Is that still the main narrative right now? Or is that being

taken over by the pre-harving dump versus rally or consolidation versus rally? In my humble opinion, we have a consistent bid from strong new investors that's a trickle. It's small. It's likely to increase later this year. And there just isn't that many people interested in selling. The hot money is still moving around from thing to thing. I mean, that's where meme coins are. And we had the whole discussion last week. My contrary opinion that meme coins are no different than meme stocks. You know, people are going to move in and out and some are going to make sense and some are going to be absolutely absurd. And the market will rinse it all out in

the end. But the fact is, there's new money consistently coming into the crypto sphere. Some of that stays in Bitcoin. Some of that shakes out to people who say, OK, this is boring. Let's move to something new. And so you're seeing a lot of that. And the longer that this continues, the bigger the rally will be. The thing about the halving, look, the most important thing about the halving is it continues to prove the monetary policy of Bitcoin is successful. We continue to see, and here's a fun stat for you. If you look at the last all-time high, you know, when we hit 65-ish around, you know, a couple of times in 2021, the double top. Back then, the average exahash rate of the Bitcoin network was around 160, and now it's almost 600. So if you really want to understand

the euphoria in the Bitcoin market, we are so non-euphoric right now, it's crazy. Literally, the market could almost quadruple. It would take a quadrupling. It would literally take over $250,000 to $260,000 to be the same level of euphoria we had back at that all-time high. So understand that we have a long way to go. That's really kind of the point. And so the market coiling around here is just bullish for Bitcoin. That's an interesting take. I want to go to Nick and Douglas before kind of pivoting to E eth and solano and other l1s douglas nick just pretty much on the comments that dave made do you agree with uh yeah you know i really agree um with with what dave is saying here on on the coiling and the lack of euphoria i i completely agree with that i see that from the qualitative and the quantitative side. On the qualitative side, no headlines that are, you know, Bitcoin in a bubble. We don't see any

of that. We don't see Bitcoin getting front page attention really, despite the ETF flows. And in terms of the quantitative side, looking at my favorite on-chain metric, which is just the basic relationship between Bitcoin's market price and its realized price, its on-chain cost basis, that ratio trading at about two and a half on the raw ratio just represents basically a bull market, but not euphoria. If you look at previous cycles being in the four to 10 range on that multiple at two and a half, it really seems like this Bitcoin market is in a bull, but early non-euphoric stage. And that gives it a lot of room, putting a number on and a timing on how much room it has to go and how much time it has to go it's really that's the job for the for the traders um but from a researcher's side i'm looking at this as the early bull market and douglas i would love your comments on this and kind of pivoting to to two topics i want to kind of move to towards and that's eth and solana um

and the battle we're seeing right now and the essentially boom, the meme coin boom on Solana. And the second point is just any narratives that are interesting to you right now. Well, I got to agree with the narrative that Bitcoin is rallying here without, I guess, against huge headwinds against it. So normally, I'd expect Bitcoin to rally with the dollar weakening. And yet the dollar is making all-time highs against the yen, even though the Japanese are complaining. I think normally, you'd see Bitcoin rallying when interest rates are dropping, but interest

rates are at highs. And so you've got this accumulation of Bitcoin happening, even though the macro headwinds are against it. And certainly, the halvening is a great marketing ploy right now, I think, for newbies. But I don't think that anyone's really buying Bitcoin because of the halvening, any of the new money coming in. And so you have this huge accumulation that's happening from folks, thanks to the ETFs. And yet it's happening even though the interest rate environment and the dollar environment is against it. And I think that's extremely bullish for Bitcoin because we all expect the dollar will start to weaken. We all expect that interest rates will start to drop. And when they do, we'll have had the halvening. important metric for me before going to william and then kind of pivoting to eath versus solano and joe i've got a question for you

after william and that's retail interest because i know that's a metric you watch on social media engagement go ahead william yes go ahead so yeah so what what's getting me excited right now is uh again uh meme coins and the l33s because the barriers are getting much lower for creating your own chain so we're going to see a lot of L3s happening over the next few months now the barriers are getting lower to create them but it doesn't mean that it's becoming easier to make them useful so there's going to be a rush to everybody's going to want to create their own chain, but it won't be as easy to make it useful and to get traction on it.

So that's when we're going to see some that will be the winners and some that will not make it. And for those that are criticizing the meme coins, I think Dave just mentioned it. Yeah, over time, there will be winners and losers, not any different than what we saw with NFTs. There was a big surge, winners and losers. DeFi, the same thing. The big ones emerged, Aave and others. So that's the same thing is going to happen. And that's what I see. I'll come back and talk about Ethereum. Mario, can I say something real quick on the macro side of things? Go ahead. Yeah. So I just want to mention one thing about going back to macro and this narrative that Bitcoin could only have survived in a zero interest rate environment. I think that's a very important narrative to squash over the past several months as we see Bitcoin rallying back to all time highs,

despite policy rates being at 5% for a sustained period of time. I think that's very important. But on the other side of that, it's also important to note that Bitcoin is doing well with fiscal deficits in the trillions. Right now, it did very well with fiscal deficits in the trillions in 2020 as the pandemic money started to hit checking accounts. But in the middle there in 2022, when we still had fiscal deficits of trillion plus, Bitcoin was in a massive bear market. So it is surviving through different regimes, both monetary and fiscal. Right now we are in a QT environment. Bitcoin is doing well. We all think about Bitcoin doing well in a QE environment. So it's doing well everywhere

you look and it really is living as its own asset but how what sense can we make of this is that essentially just bitcoin decoupling from previous uh correlation well and narrative the reason i'm sorry nick the reason i ask is that we have a lot of data coming out this week obviously we've got the the cpi and ppi coming in and we've got the fed minutes as well this week as far as i i think it's this week um so how important are those versus the halving coming in in 11 days or less than 11 days? The traditional markets still move Bitcoin and you can still see on an intraday basis, strong correlation with the stock market. On a weekly basis, you can see good correlation with the stock market. So Bitcoin still, it is plugged in now

to traditional markets in that it's written into the algorithm. So when you see the CPI print and you sell rates and you buy stocks or vice versa, Bitcoin is in those trades. So you see it move with everything. So macro will affect Bitcoin on the minutia level. But if you zoom out and you look at a Bitcoin all time high of 20 grand, then 70 grand, and then whoever, you know, maybe 150, 200 grand in the next year or so, you're looking at an asset that is living its own life. Zooming in, you can make all you want of CPI, stock correlation, Fed balance sheet. But zooming out, this is a technology, Bitcoin specifically, not crypto and the rest of the landscape, which can shuffle in and out as we see. But Bitcoin rises to new highs every three to four years. And this is the greatest macro trend of our time.

And that's what we're doing. And last question for you, Nick. And I do want to go to Joe, just some social media metrics, and then get into Solana and Ethereum. But just look at the ETF inflows. First point is that the inflows, let me just see the numbers here. But they're not slowing. I know someone mentioned earlier, I can't remember if it was you, Andrew, or someone else, that said that they are slowing and we are seeing a bit of a trickle.

It's sort of the opposite where ETF inflows start with a trickle, then pick up, and then you finally see the boom. Essentially, here they said that we're seeing a boom, then things slowing down, essentially kind of getting slowly moving towards a trickle. I disagree. I think we're far from a trickle. Inflows, let me see the numbers. Net inflows yesterday were 203 million. that's the fourth day of of net inflows and obviously gbtc is selling but you know they can only sell once um so just those metrics i think are just important to keep an eye on but um there's a question i keep asking nick and i've

been doing i've been asking it a lot especially to dave i've asked it today multiple times through spaces and for the audience i'm asking it for selfish reasons. And we're planning ahead, like how much capital to deploy now versus later and how aggressive we should be investing. And the question is, how long do you think this bull market will last? Initially, a lot of people were saying that this bull market will be shorter because of how fast it kind of rallied to all-time highs prior to the halving. But then slowly that argument kind of rallied to all-time highs prior to the halving. But then slowly, that argument kind of started losing steam as we saw consolidation. And Dave made a point, I remember it very clearly, he said, the longer we consolidate, the longer the bull market will be.

Nick, I've never asked you that question, but do you think that bull market will be shorter than previous cycles or about the same since history is repeating itself or longer, considering now we've got institutional money coming in? I'd love you and Douglas to answer that question before going to Joel. Sure. I mean, it's of course, it's really hard to know the way that I'm thinking about it is, well, definitely the longer the consolidation, the better and the healthier. That is for sure. That's just a classic market technician approach there. But in terms of the ETF flows and how long this bull market can last, it is really about getting overheated versus not. Because if the ETF flows continue consistently and we don't get overheated markets, then it can continue to last.

The Bitcoin 80% crashes come when you have extreme parabolic moves coupled with euphoria, coupled with so many scam type projects getting the headlines over Bitcoin. That is the danger zone. That's what I'll continue to watch for. And trying to put a time on it is really, really difficult. What I'll say about the ETF flows is that you are correct in that GBTC can only sell once. That is an important dynamic here. The other important dynamic here is wealth houses that basically have the accounts of the country's 401ks are not technically allowed to have those Bitcoin ETFs in them. They're not technically on the menu yet. They're being purchased by institutional money and pure retail money on their own.

But that whole RIA world, the registered investment advisor world, the 401k managed world is not in the market. And they will be joining the market over the next three, six, 12 months. That will bring a lot of capital into Bitcoin and should support the bull market. Let me go to, sorry, I'm just going through the audience because a lot of big names listening today. But Douglas, I want to ask you the same question is how long do you think this market will go on for? And then we can slowly pivot after you answer that question, is just the Ethereum. Ethereum is kind of losing its shine in some people's eyes. Everyone's excited for the ETH ETF, and we're going to see a similar rally we saw in Bitcoin by an ETH. But obviously, Solana kind of took that shine away. Your thoughts on Ethereum and

maybe Solana as well, and then we can pivot to Solana Sweeper for a different DGN take, and obviously, Joe, for the similar question question and then some social metrics on whether retail is coming in. Douglas? Yeah, so I think that the longer we're here, the better. Every single day, a new person buys the ETF. That new person is a voter and adds to the voter block that Bitcoin has and that crypto has that helps keep this moving forward in the space. So I think then the longer we consolidate, the better, obviously, before we have this rally higher. As to Ethereum, I think there's been a heck of a lot of FUD over the last couple of weeks. Folks that have been very negative on Ethereum and hoping to get it pushed lower and then overnight, obviously,

we had a nice big rally on it i think ethereum is going to be sort of that silent sleeper that just starts moving up dramatically and you know i wouldn't be surprised if we see 4 000 i think by june july for ethereum very bullish on ethereum very bullish on bitcoin and bullish on solana as, or not as much as everyone else? Could you hear me? Sorry, I might have been muted. Did you hear my question, Douglas? I said, are you bullish as well on Solana? Or do you think he's being overhyped the same way as overfuddled a year or two? My focus really is on Bitcoin and Ethereum. And Solana, I'm seeing a lot of it, but it's not something I'm really involved in personally. Okay.

Well, let's go to Joe. Joe, that same question to you, but also getting some social metrics. Are we seeing retail finally come in? Like I always ask Ryan and Scott for the metric of subscriber growth and just growth in views as a metric on whether retail is coming in.

Because I feel like Twitter is very, people that are deep in the space use Twitter a lot more people that are new in the space go to YouTube. So would like to get your thoughts there, Joe. Yeah, no, great. And I posted and pinned some, some posts up there with some charts on Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana on Lunar Crush. And so those are all six month charts, where basically I've highlighted the number of posts created for each of those uh tickers and then keywords and you know we aggregate a lot of data we aggregated across uh twitter um tick tock reddit and youtube and so we're looking at the number of posts created number of interactions

and what you're seeing you know there were just as many people posting about bitcoin at you know 30 000 um as there are now posting maybe a little bit more at 71,000. And yes, we've seen a couple of little spikes in there, obviously, for like the halving that went on and that really big price movements up. But all in all, retail, you know, seems to be pretty flat. You know, looking at Ethereum, very similar, you know, there's 20,000 people posting a day back in October, Ethereum at 1700. You know, today, we might eclipse that number, maybe a little bit less over the, you know, under 15,000 over the last week. And so, you know, what this is telling me is that retail is not back yet. Not your average white collar retail purse retail, you know, Robin Hood trader that was

out there. You know, this is a lot of, you of you know insiders this is us all pushing the market talking about the market excited about bitcoin and then it's a lot of insiders launching tons of meme coins to try and get attention that's a very bullish indicator then and essentially those meme coins do you think those meme coins will onboard so we're kind of seeing three different buckets here we've got the the crypto d gens or the ogs have been around for a while from the previous cycles um and obviously we're very active we're the first ones in and with the etfs now we've got the institutions or at least the ria rias um coming into the market and then third we've got retail you're saying that you know institutional or tradifiers coming in through the etf you've got

um crypto d gens already in the market We've been there for a while. We led this rally, initial rally before institutions or before the ETFs boosted that rally even further. And now we're waiting for retail coming in. So for retail metrics, not to show that they're in, is a bullish metric. There's a lot more to go. We've seen all-time highs without retail entering the market. That's a very bullish indicator. Is that that a fair assessment that's what the data is telling me yes cool i like it well let's go a bit more dgen uh solana sweeper man let's give us a give us an overview on the solana ecosystem and um you know it's actually it's being led like solana and again please do correct me if i get anything wrong don't be shy in the last cycle solana was led by gaming um and it was the one of the main blockchains

that a lot of gaming is like solana or polygon for all these games we're investing in now we're seeing more the kind of the solana rally being led by essentially meme coins um am i am i missing you know is that is that a fair assessment on solana as an ecosystem and your thoughts on the on the rally we're seeing now obviously you're kind of the handle gives away your bias uh sorry for saying Solana sweeper oh sorry sweeper Solana but yeah we'd love to get your thoughts either way GMG Mario it's been a while since we last talked can anyone hear Solana sweeper unless it's good you hear me uh you can hear him I can't hear you so I'm gonna come back what we're gonna do is uh Dave as soon as Dave you could take over uh a back and forth with Solano Sweeper for a bit and then just give me the mic when it's done because I can't hear him and I won't bring him down just not to lose the momentum.

Go ahead, Solano Sweeper. It looks like he dropped Mario. Oh, cool. So I thought you guys could hear him and I couldn't hear him. So we'll get Solano Sweeper back up. But let's go to Andrew and Simon. I wanted to, we had, I think one of the attorneys on stage earlier and he dropped out

because I wanted to get an update on CZ. We haven't talked about CZ for a long time, unless someone else has an update on CZ here on stage. I know he's still in the US. When can we expect him to be here? Is there any updates on that? You guys can hear me now? Yeah, Sweeper, go ahead. Then we'll go to Andrew for an update on CZ if he's got that hear me now? Yes, Sweeper, go ahead.

Then we'll go to Andrew for an update on CZ if he's got that information. But go ahead, Sweeper. Perfect. So, GMG and Mario, it's been a while since we talked to the bear. For Solana, I would say in 2021, it was mainly led by the NFT bull run. If you go look back at the charts, you can see when DJ and Ape Academy minted. You definitely had Star Atlas and Aurori that did really well as well.

But definitely NFTs let that bull run from like $30 to $250. True, D-Gods, et cetera. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know how I missed the NFTs. I think it's NFTs and gaming, but we were too heavy in the gaming ecosystem and IDOs. So we weren't investing in NFTs back then.

So that's probably why I missed it, my bad. But yeah, I appreciate the clarification there and now we're definitely leading um with meme coins on solano obviously you had bunk during the bear that came then you had uh you have bonk with you have all these new meme coins that have come out whiff literally went from like a million to a rug token that they derugged. And it went from literally nothing to like four or five billion dollars or four billion dollars. I don't know the exact market cap it went to. But then obviously Solana had the issues with FTX and only the true believers were still on the chain. Me and myself and a few other, you know, maybe a couple thousand people stayed and just with all the innovation you had on solana it truly is what most people think crypto is you talk to normies i have a lot of

people that have come to solana for meme coins it's i would i heard someone say retail is not here yet i would say retail that isn't that was involved in crypto in the past have come back a little bit not full retails come back, but definitely I have people asking me what meme coins to buy, asking me for calls, telling me they'll tip me, and asking me for refunds when the calls don't go well. Obviously, I stay away from it. Not really interested in doing that. Yeah, interesting.

And Andrew, I want to ask you the question about CZ. It's got to pivot away from the market, and obviously you can come out on the market and Solana and meme coins and altcoins. Is there any updates on CZ, Andrew? And also, as always, we'd love to get your thoughts on the discussion. basically locking him down even further. He's effectively landlocked. And they've said even if he's making, you know, doing any travel within the United States that they have to be notified. That doesn't bode well for the long-term prospects of his quote-unquote freedom. I think we're a couple months out for actual sentencing. But there was a moment, I think maybe two months ago, where there was a motion and a possibility that he may be able to kind of confine him a little bit more and reduce his travel even here in the United States. And that was passed. So those things don't bode well for, you know, his long-term freedom and what may come down. It's a very intriguing process because if you were to ask me, I think

there's a twinge of politics behind it. We've seen, I think over just the last 72 hours, there's been some conversations and some announcements with the DOJ or the Fed associated with cracking down on quote-unquote financial crimes. And there's been some collaboration between the United States and China. Again, very, very interesting stuff as it plays in relation to Binance and CZ. So we'll see what comes of that. Can I ask you one more question? Sorry, just before pivoting to the markets and your general thoughts,

you talked about CZ. Can you also give us an update on the exchanges? Because that's something we've discussed for over a year, me and you, since the FTX days. We saw the charges on the founders of KuCoin and we got here a heading by Decrypt that says crypto investors flee KuCoin following U.S. criminal conspiracy charges. You know, I see KuCoin still operational.

We're pretty close to KuCoin. We invest a lot of projects listing there. Your thoughts on these charges? You know, kind of the KuCoin coin, you know, kind of reacted in a pretty mild way. Should we be concerned either with Qcoin or other exchanges with more charges incoming? Yeah, I think the exchanges are going to continue to be neutered. I think the charges and the legal issues are probably going to slow down anytime soon. The United States in particular feels pretty

emboldened to go ahead and take action against, you know, any and all exchanges that they feel are involved in, you know, the trading of unregistered securities, right? That's been the opportunity du jour that they're using to go after exchanges. My guess is that here in the United States, there's going to be two or three that survive that are going to be, frankly, not all that different than investing in a place like Fidelity or others. That's the way that the United States wants it. So, you know, I would be very careful on any exchanges that aren't considered, you know, the top end of the class. Right. So Coinbase, you're safe. Right. Gemini, you're safe. These are places that have taken, you know, extraordinary steps to, quote unquote, be in compliance and still be harassed by law enforcement.

So here's the other thing, too. You know, the prices associated with a Bitcoin or an Ethereum are just simply not tied to those exchanges in a meaningful way anymore. You know, six months to a year ago, if there was, you know, movement, you know, within Binance associated with the balance of Bitcoin that they held or leverage that they held, whatever it happened to be, those would move the markets in meaningful ways. Those narratives are effectively gone. The Qcoin stuff came out and nothing flinched, literally nothing flinched. So, you know, on a broader scale, everybody on this call knows that the narratives associated specifically with Bitcoin, you know, sit at the feet of Larry Fink and Fidelity. And here's the metric that I think matters the absolute most as

it relates to price. One, we're 2% away from an all-time high as we sit right now. That's remarkable. But more important than that, you've got over the past month, you have almost $4.5 billion of selling at grayscale, right? Four and a half billion dollars of Bitcoin has been sold. And the price has not been materially affected. It just hasn't. Again, we're sitting at 2% away from all-time highs. That is the difference at this point is they are able to absorb a move like that, a dumping like that, that's a massive dump, right? Think about if Binance announced a year ago, hey, we're going to go ahead and sell $4.5 billion worth of Bitcoin

over the next 30 days. What would that have done to the price of Bitcoin a year ago? Okay? Exactly. Yeah. I think the different points of failure or single points of failures in crypto have diminished. Just one question for you. And Dave, I'm going to ask you that question first before Andrew. I didn't know we're 2% away from all-time highs. I obviously got my math wrong because I've changed the title back to all-time high today rather than this week. Didn't know we're that close. Dave, if we break all-time highs, because I know me and you and other panelists are excited for that consolidation.

Douglas mentioned it as well. What do you think that means for the markets dave florian andrew i'd love your thoughts on it dave go ahead well i mean my my personal thought is the i kind of hope that it will hang out here for longer uh because the longer you know for all the reasons we've talked about i, at some point in the not too distant future, you end up in what we would normally call price discovery, where there's no people hanging out saying, Oh, God, I got out of this place. I mean, the truth is, is from here to the all time high, which was only, you know, not very long ago. There's no real sellers here. I mean, how many people really bought at the all time high that are saying, Oh, I bought at the all time high three weeks ago, and now I can get out who that sort of support

that sort of resistance happens when people bought, you know, in a previous cycle, I've been waiting years place limit orders out there. And you're there. So it meaningfully, I just don't think there's any particular resistance. Now. It's a question of just is there enough new money to push in? And there are people out in the Bitcoin space who are like, well, to not sound like a Bitcoin maxi, but I can't help it. There are people who are trying to manufacture more Bitcoin by trading in altcoins and trading

in meme coins. And I think that that's the money that's coming off the table. Yeah, there's some rotation from Grayscale to other etfs and there's some other things going on but it's all in a backdrop of and you have to mention it you know gold is pushing all-time highs and gold has been moving higher there's clearly been central bank buying and a lack of confidence in the overall fiat currency world even the dollar has been performing better than most and in in dollar terms even gold is an all-time high So yeah, I don't really see meaningful resistance

I don't think you know, I don't know what the catalyst will be But when it starts moving it could move very far because there really isn't any resistance here. That's kind of the point I want to I want to agree in the Florida. I want to quickly got a shout out here because late last week You know, he put out a tweet that said the real flippening is when BlackRock's iBit product flips Grayscale's GBTC. And by the way, that's just about two weeks away. the quote-unquote adult control of movements in Bitcoin and who has their hands, quote-unquote, steering the proverbial ship. I know we hate as Bitcoin guys to think about that, but I'd rather have Larry Fink, who, by the way, is significantly invested in seeing Bitcoin at $150K or $200K or $250K. These guys didn't get into this game to meander along

and slowly move from point A to point B and make a few dollars. They're in this to make lots and lots and lots of money. So the fact that we're moments away from iBit taking over in terms of assets under management, GBTC, that's a seminal moment. I agree. It's a real seminal moment. Let me go to, I agree.

Florian, I want to ask you the same question. And look, while I was speaking, I wasn't planning to ask that question. I just went through my notifications and just see what the team is tweeting, et cetera. And the first tweet I see is Hezbollah saying, first ever attack onanian soil israel must pay and there's a reason i mentioned those two things like okay shit that's not good escalation in the middle east and i see a bridge imploding there's another tweet right after it's like a bridge imploding in in russia and let me see here so essentially all these different things we used to talk about in previous spaces at least maybe when when the markets were a lot slower. But do they matter still?

Dave talked about gold hitting all-time highs. Do these geopolitical tensions and uncertainty we're seeing around the world that don't seem to be improving, they're being ignored right now. We're never talking about them. Should we kind of pay more attention to them? Could that have an impact, a macro impact that could impact crypto as well and then your thoughts on gold and and as a commodities and bitcoin analyst would be good to get your thoughts on the gold and bitcoin performance yeah thanks for having me well i think it's important to understand that the gold rally started in early october uh basically after the weekend of the Hamas invasion. We still have an open gap at 1835 from, I think, the 4th of October to the 6th of October on Monday.

And since then, yeah, gold has been rallying strongly. I have expected that rally at some point because gold has been consolidating for the last three and a half years. It's been running against the $2,075 level for many, many times and finally broke out in early December, came quickly back. And now in mid of February, that move really materialized and we are now touching $2,350 this morning. So it's a massive rally. It's also ending the nearly 13-year-old consolidation pattern because since the summer of 2011, when gold touched its all-time high at 19.20, the following 12.5 years, we've seen a large cup and handle pattern developing in the gold market. And that came to an end. That chapter is over and gold is in a new chapter. It's beautiful to see this massive rally. It was expected. I have written about it many, many times in the past.

It's also beautiful to see that it's completely uncorrelated from Bitcoin. That's something I always have said, that these two asset classes are not correlated. You want to own both of them. It's a great combination. They complement each other beautifully. And yeah, I think gold, of course, is driven as well by geopolitical problems all over the world. It's driven, of course, by the situation in Israel and Iran, as well as in the Ukraine. But the main driver over the last few weeks and months is central bank buying and the massive physical demand in China.

We are seeing massive premiums in the chiang hai gold exchange that's where the gold is traded physically and you can see that in the end of the day uh the the east asia is controlling the gold market just and just just moving away from gold and also big passion to yours and then in your thoughts on bitcoin yes um so the last sentence to that the very important thing you need to understand. Gold has been a paper market for the last 20, 30 years, basically. Basically, since the introduction of the futures, the same thing that they're now doing to Bitcoin has happened to gold since the 1980s.

So there has been a massive paper gold market, 200 ounces of paper gold traded for one real physical ounce of gold. And that's how they made the prices over the last two, three, four decades. This is coming to an end. The Chinese physical demand is destroying that pattern. That also means that the buying power is moving to the east. That's happening. That's big geopolitical topics, actually.

And I think this rally in gold has still a little bit more fuel maybe another two three four or five weeks moving it before and then if you can and then bitcoin i i would love the deep deep analysis into gold i think we should join our finance spaces as well when they discuss it a lot further and then for all the crypto traders like all right cool if gold you don't think it's correlated to crypto then then what do you think bitcoin is going to do yeah i mean look bitcoin is is right around the halving we had a massive rally i think it's probably has a little bit more space to go maybe we can see 90k until let's say end of may or early june usually then you have a few weak months seasonality wise so i think 90k is the best case and then you should probably

get a pullback and i think the next really good buying opportunity will come in between mid september and mid-october so um i'm a little bit cautious now because we just had such a massive rally in bitcoin yeah we look at the price i kind of retrace after breaking 72K. Now it's sitting at 71.1K. I think it went up all the way to $72,500. Does anyone know what the all-time high was? I don't pay attention to these things too much. In Bitcoin? Can anyone on stage tell us?

Yeah. 74. Okay, cool. So about what? 3%, 4% off the all-time highs. Cool. Well, I think this is it. I think it's a great space.

We've covered a lot of topics from the markets in general to to to looking to ethereum salana different narratives the ideas and we'll see everyone you know we're doing a lot of countdown spaces again we did one for planet mojo earlier that was pretty good because we've seen a lot of projects launched i think we're doing one daily uh crypto town hall if you want to meet scott he's in paris i decided not to go but he's in paris right now if you're coming to Dubai talking 2049 me and Scott will be here I'm sure Ryan will be here he's having a party with his team as well

my whole team will be here so if you want to catch up with us DM me if you're a project DM me as well we could catch up me and the team here in Dubai otherwise we'll see you again

tomorrow same time panel thanks a lot for coming appreciate it everyone bye everyone