The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Reversal Or Bull Trap? | Crypto Town Hall
Episode Date: August 9, 2024Crypto Town Hall is a daily X Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in crypto and bring the biggest names in the space to share their insight. ... ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. USE CODE ‘2MONTHSOFF’ WHEN VISITING MY LINK. 👉 https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker ►► 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 $10,000! 👉 https://www.okx.com/join/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 ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/  ►►NORD VPN GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker  Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io  Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe  Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c  #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Wow. Mega glitch. I'm not sure if anyone started talking or if you guys have had a conversation,
but I got on and off about nine times. And every time I hit the mic button,
it would tell me to request to speak. Classic. It's amazing that space is still so incredibly
glitchy. Sorry about the delay, everybody. We tried. Tried hard. Had to reset everything
three times. But here we are.
And obviously the topic of the day for some reason is that Bitcoin broke $60,000 as Bitcoin
currently trades at $60,500.
Maybe we should make the topic Olympic breakdancing starts today, because to me, that's the most
compelling story that we have.
But here we are.
Let's change it. I'll change it when I stop talking to Bitcoin at 60k. And I guess we can
start by talking about the price action, what's going on here, the sort of massive drop going into
the weekend, and then on Monday, which had Bitcoin trading below 50,000,
only to have one of our biggest daily candles over 10% in history yesterday, putting prices
high as around 62,000. Are you not entertained? The words of Russell Crowe in Gladiator.
Mike McGlone, what do you make of the big bounce in markets here?
I know what you're going to say, but I'm teeing it up anyways.
Well, I appreciate that, Scott.
Well, let's bottom line, think of what's really what's happening here is we have stock market volatility recovering from a multi-year low.
Interest rates, we all know the Fed's going to start easing in September, but the Fed is unlikely to go much more than 50, might only go 25, because they maybe do have a vested interest in reducing the elevated level of stock market about two times GDP. historical averages one times um and i like to look at it from historical context is this whole
big last um pump in and i would say experiment in financial markets since the um quantity easing
really kicked in in 2009 was basically the um birth of bitcoin And Bitcoin's had a great run,
and it put in a great peak with ETFs,
and now it's just in a normal correction,
I would say, hangover pair.
And the question is, where does it end?
So I would say it would be wonderful
to see Bitcoin show divergent strength versus equities,
but we're seeing what's going to happen.
We'll just look at it this way.
If we have something happens this weekend,
and Bitcoin is the only thing that's trading
and it's somewhat bearish for equities or anything,
you know people are going to just hit the bits
because that's the only thing they can sell.
So overall, I think what's happening in the macro
is we're seeing the normal U.S. recession
that didn't happen over a year ago
starting to kick in.
All the data, most of my data is tilting that way.
I look at the bottom line as a key thing
that helped me make a lot of money in 2008 bottoming stock market volatility that's starting to go up
and bitcoin's leading indicator which hope it can lead the other way show divergence strength
like treasury bonds are breaking out higher prices are gold is sustaining that 2400 level
and bitcoin is great here at 60 000 but the first time it traded 60,000 was basically 2021.
And the NASDAQ is much higher than those levels.
So it's been showing a little bit of weakness for a while.
But the way I look at it is, and I'll end with this, is this leading indicator is showing it's the only one of the major indicators.
Like now, if you use gold, S&P 500.
Bitcoin's the only one below its 200-day moving average at the moment.
It's not a lot, but it's showing what it should do in a normal reversion of rapidly advancing risk assets that are going down now.
So I think the whole thing has turned lower.
I think everything has shifted towards that recession.
Risk assets are still very expensive.
And we're heading that recession. Risk assets are still very expensive. And we're heading that way. So
maybe Bitcoin can lead the way up and get us out of this. But I think it's more likely to see a
continued reversion of this massive wealth creation. And hopefully we'll see signs of
otherwise. But that's more, I enjoyed the nickname I earned last year, McGloom. I just make facts.
This is facts of markets from people who don't have a vested interest and are overweight long NESs.
This is my just outright view of where I think markets are going.
Bitcoin should go lower.
All stock markets should go lower.
And interest rates should go a lot lower.
And that's why I still think one of the best assets will be U.S. Treasury long bonds and gold.
Ming, do we repeat my macro Mondays and do I call on Dave now?
Thank you.
I knew he was going to come in anyways, whether I liked it or not.
So there you go.
Well, look, I mean, you know, when you cherry pick a period of time from all time highs,
that if you look at my favorite chart, which is, you know, just go to blockchain.com and
type in total, you know, Bitcoin hash rate.
And look at hash rate versus price.
And look at that chart, you know, from, you know, forever.
And you see the, you know, you see a bubble in 2021, 2022, the double top that is just dramatic and insane.
And you pick the top of that period to now, it's divergent weakness.
If you pick any other period of time since Bitcoin started, you don't see that. In point of fact,
we're now well below that. And one would argue or could make an argument that if we ever got to
anything close to that exuberance, that's where, you know, it's that's where I have my 240 price target is I think that we will get to that exuberance when things get
going. But it all boils down to the fundamental place where Mike and I disagree is I think that
in the short term, Bitcoin trades like a risk asset in the long term, it trades like an option.
And the fact is, we've had more positive news on the optionality and the likelihood of that option paying off in Bitcoin in the last six months than we probably had in the previous five years.
Over the last six months, we have the opening up of Bitcoin as an investment to the entirety or will be soon.
You know, I don't want to say it hasn't actually happened yet.
With Morgan Stanley, it's starting to happen, but certainly the opening up processes started to U.S. investors. We've had
the world's largest asset manager proselytizing for it. We have a major presidential candidate
and a minor presidential candidate that some of us hope would be more major, both saying it should
be a reserve asset. We've had Russia legalizing mining, which if you don't
believe that's because they're already accumulating it as a reserve asset, then you're smoking
something. And likelihood that China, which has had mining and we never really knew what it was,
is accumulating as a reserve asset is all there. Remember, for Bitcoin to become digital gold and
surpass it, it needs to have it. There are n number of qualities of money, the single most important of which is acceptance.
And Bitcoin has not had acceptance among normal people, but is starting to get there.
So to say that there's no catalyst is wrong.
And to say that, you know, everything Mike said, it's like it's true from a trading perspective.
But the market is not
priced in any of what I'm talking about. And it's basically the same thing kind of said differently,
but the same basic story that a lot of other very prominent Bitcoiners are saying. So that's where
our disagreement. As far as everything else goes, yeah, I mean, stock markets are overvalued,
but the financialization of the economy is necessary. The one thing I will say is Bitcoin
wasn't born. I mean, it was theoretically born because of quantitative easing. of the economy is necessary. The one thing I will say is Bitcoin wasn't born.
I mean, it was theoretically born because of quantitative easing,
but the truth is the seeds of it were planted in 1971
when we went off gold and sound money disappeared.
And people have tried many times to do something.
It's just Bitcoin seemingly is succeeding.
Yeah, but how doesic breakdancing affect that
but i don't know mike go ahead yeah i just have to follow up um dave and i agree a lot more than
we disagree and one thing we agree on is and we have to point out the facts is i just um
reminds of the classic phrase dave is praising the bitcoin Lord. I get it. I say pass the ammunition.
This is, I remember, you know, and this one thing I have to point out about on this space,
and when I get into different spaces, this space, I fully expect most people on this crypto town hall are either bullish or long or have a vested interest in Bitcoin going up.
But you're all smart. And I've seen this before. I remember seeing this in 1999 in the trading desk.
We started joking around.
I was in the trading desk.
Everybody's in it for a long haul as long as it goes up.
Let's just be careful of the confirmation bias you get at conferences and things.
And I'd like to say, let me finish.
Let me finish.
Dave, you win this argument.
I will let the markets decide.
I want you to win.
My point is, when everybody gets together who has a vested interest in a price going up and talk about it going up i say good luck with that one the key
thing is we have had etfs launch some of us expected this five years ago it was the key thing
we're looking for to sell into we got that now it's in the mainstream everything you said is
stuff that you know everybody gets in this space so let's focus on the more immediate past the
ammunition the market's getting shot at and i I would say right now, still, you're going to look at it again this weekend.
It's hanging below its 200-day moving average. It looks like the Nasdaq just bounced on that.
Things are tilting lower. We could easily have a 50% correction in Bitcoin. It means nothing in
the big picture. But a lot of people in this space will get hurt bad. So I'd just like to
point out from a market standpoint, expect all risk assets to go down and Bitcoin's a risk. Yeah, I don't just, well, I mean, I think that I'm not
as gloomy as you are on risk assets, but I certainly am cautious. The first thing is,
if Bitcoin drops a huge amount, then yeah, people will get hurt. There'll be lots of liquidations.
And if you've ever listened to me and you have many times, I immediately tell people not to use leverage on an asset that effectively trades like an option,
because you actually have a lot more leverage than you think. And that's always a very bad thing.
But, you know, let's not get into that. The point that I'm making is, look,
there's no doubt the Bitcoin market is dominated by trading and liquidity.
And I've been nothing that happens this summer,
as long as it stays roughly in this trading range is going to surprise me.
I mean, look at what happened.
We got overly exuberant on the Trump news and the patient buyers that,
that have been accumulating Bitcoin didn't participate.
And so the route run up to 70,000 kind of dropped into dropped into you know the mid to higher 60 000s
then trump started to lose in the polls and now it's back to 50 50 from 70 and that took it down
to more or less the range roughly where we are right now and at the same time we had all risk
assets sell off you know none of these moves are all that surprising under the circumstances. But the
one thing I will say is the fact that Bitcoin is under its moving average and has corrected more
is actually, you know, as a contrarian, I'm much happier being long that than being long assets
that have not corrected in the face of the same stimuli. And that's the only other point that I
would make on the trading side. But, you know, generally, you're right. I mean, I'm giving a long-term position trading around it. I got
very bullish down when, well, no, we were on this space. And I basically said, yeah,
we'll see 56,000 will be the median thing that it's bound to bounce to based on basic Fibonacci
numbers. We went well beyond that. Could we go back down
toward the bottom of that range, toward that level? Yeah, of course we could. And none of
that would surprise me. Interesting that when you look at the price action, the bottom of that drop,
pretty significant down to, I mean, it depends on the exchange, about 49,000, really retraced the entire ETF approval move to the upside, right?
I mean, we obviously had major hype coming into the ETF that it would be approved,
which you could argue drove us from the 20s all the way up to 47,
and then 49 on the day of the approval, the trading in the first place.
But pretty telling to retrace the entire thing and bounce from there as a technical trader to
look at sort of resistance and support play out in that manner. I mean, it literally erased the
entire thing in a matter of hours and then bounced sort of back up into the other range. But
anybody else have any major thoughts? I mean, Matthew, I know you're always looking at charts.
What do you think of Bitcoin here now that's kind of struggling? Well,
depending on how you look at it but trading right under 60 yeah i think it's uh we need to take into
account um time frames very very important so if you look at the volatility you as you say i look
at charts so just looking since 2017 volatility bitcoin volatility has been on a gradual consistent decline ever since, well,
ever since inception, actually, back in 2009. So this spike in volatility is actually way lower
than multiple spikes, multiple spikes over the past few years. So I don't think that's a major
concern. So I think we need to recognize that Bitcoin is clearly on that evolution I mentioned before, from being purely a risk asset,
speculative risk asset, through to gradually becoming digital gold. And I think the next
big stock market crash is going to be the time when, yes, Bitcoin will crash along with the rest
of the market, but Bitcoin is going to rise out of the ashes as true digital gold at that time.
So looking at the timeframes that we're looking at,
short term, I think that we're in a bull flag. So we've got some kind of wedge pattern,
which is trending down from the previous all-time high of 73,000 or whatever.
And it's very much a wedge pattern. So I believe that we're going to break to new all-time highs
relatively soon. And I think we're actually on the beginning of that run.
The recent bit of a crisis we had, bit of a sell-off, was obviously a combination of the bad employment figures after America, which changed the interest rate expectations on its head.
You know, we weren't expecting an increase at all, a decrease at all then all of a sudden it's nailed on that we're
maybe even getting 50 basis points reduction in September so that was a big change and then we
obviously got Japan surprisingly raising interest rates and causing the unwind of the carry trade
but Japan have since come out the Ministry of Finance have come out and said this isn't going
to be a trend they're actually going to maintain loose monetary policy. And we started to see things rebound back quite
nicely. Now, we're still not completely out of the woods. And I look at correlations across markets.
So I look at the S&P 500. And we had three waves down. But we're still not actually clear. It's
moved up really nicely. We've got a nice strong bounce, as some people said, stronger than expected.
But we still haven't crossed that previous low of 5,400-ish, somewhere around there.
That was the previous wave down.
We need to cross that to be confident that that was just an ABC correction to the downside.
It could still turn into an impulse to the downside.
So the jury is still out.
But I just think looking at,
again, I love correlation between assets. So I look at Solana, for example,
I cannot count that as five waves down from the top, we've got five waves. But with the overlapping that we've got, and the fact that even if it's a leading diagonal, wave three is the shortest,
in Elliott wave terms, that's not possible. So it gives me a confidence that we're actually quite bullish.
I'm bullish now.
So I do believe we are going to break to new all-time highs on Bitcoin
and new local highs for a lot of other cryptocurrencies.
So I'm reasonably confident, reasonably bullish.
Florian, I would love your opinion.
Obviously, you kind of look at the entire market and metals as well
as to what you think is happening in the short term.
Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me.
Well, I have been expecting a pullback in Bitcoin over the summer months into September, October, and it's been playing out rather beautifully.
I wanted to see those 50k to 52,000k kind of range and yeah i mean once again like in july we've seen this very fast
reflex and bitcoin is quickly up more than 10 000 bucks so that's a nice bounce i still believe that
bitcoin and crypto is very much correlated with the tech stocks with the stock market in general
and i believe the stock market will have a little bit more of a problem into autumn,
like every year.
So I believe we might see some more pressure to the downside towards September,
October,
but I believe that will be a buying opportunity because down the road,
the only way forward for this whole financial system is to print more money and
that will happen.
And then Bitcoin will react to that.
That is still missing.
That narrative will come rather quickly, probably immediately similar like what we've seen last year when the Fed printed over one weekend 400 billion base money.
If that happens, you will see Bitcoin being on the way to 100K.
And right now it's just to be patient.
You need to have your orders in the system.
That's also something I think we talked a few times about it here.
These moves are so fast.
If you start to think about it on Monday or Tuesday, then the time you made the decision, the move has been done already.
So maybe we've seen another test of those 50,000, maybe even 45,000.
But I don't think that Bitcoin is going to be much lower until
september october and any further pullback is a buying opportunity gloria and the crypto natives
we call those stink bids if you're wondering for the vernacular you when you put a bid down
somewhere you never know if it's going to fill or not and one day you wake up and some wick
hit it so you know when you're talking to the
crypto natives just say you throw in your stink bids and i'll know exactly what you're talking
right right right yeah we had orders in place at 50k so they they got nicely filled directly on
monday and i i would have not been able to do this in in real time myself yeah you couldn't
have done it in real time because inevitably your platform would have collapsed and you couldn't buy the dip on stocks either because all of those platforms were offline.
Funny how that works as well.
So beyond the fact that you even need to have impeccable timing, you have to actually have a platform that's up and running to be able to do it on.
Yeah, and it's also the psychology, you know.
I mean, on Monday, we've been on this space here, I think, for five, six hours and lots of stuff happened and i mean the market kept tanking and um it's it's difficult to make this decision while everything's crashing
yeah on march 12th of 2020 when bitcoin was trading around 6 000 and did it come down from
10 or something whatever it was i went to sleep and i was having conversations with my wife and
literally never talked about bitcoin trading but i was man, this thing kind of looks like it could crash. I'm just going
to put bids in at $4,000. Woke up the next morning, 12 hours later, Bitcoin price was $6,000
as it was when I went to sleep. And it took me about 5 hours to actually look at my account
and realize that I had filled and was 50% up on all my bids that when Bitcoin had crashed that day down below 4,000
and then was back at 6,000.
I didn't even know.
Yep, similar experience here.
I remember it very well, the COVID crash,
when it went down to, I think, 3,800
and then turned around and went up to 65,000
over the next one and a half years.
That all happened in like a 12-hour candle.
So I put the bids in and it happened soon after I went to bed and I woke up at 6,000
and was like, yeah, that was what I expected.
I didn't expect it to have moved.
Go ahead, Jonathan.
Sure.
Looking at the typical cycle moves that you've seen post-halving. I mean, 2012, six months after the halving, 66% up.
2016, 38% up.
2020, 83% up.
You get to the 12-month post-halving.
2012, 259% up.
2016, 283% up.
2020, 562% up, 2016, 283% up, 2020, 562% up.
So we're four months, almost four total months into or past having.
I mean, when I'm looking at the charts too, I mean, on the daily chart,
we're using the Ichimoku system.
We're stuck inside the cloud.
And if you don't know anything about Ichimoku,
you just have to know the cloud is where everything bad
exists.
It is a source of...
Things can be even worse under the cloud, my friend.
Yes, but the cloud itself
from a trading perspective is
where trading accounts go to die.
It's like if something's in the cloud
and you trade it, you just walk on, go somewhere
else, wait for it to leave
one direction or the other. But this could go on for another four more days of this up and down stuff until you get
closer to between the 15th and the 17th when the clouds changes, the Kumo twist.
Nick Neumanis If Bitcoin's trading around $62.5, sometimes when things move towards where the Kumo twist occurs, it's like hitting a mushroom in Mario Kart.
There's a significant boost in the direction that it breaks.
I like the Mario Kart reference.
That was really quality.
That was high, high quality.
I love that.
I've been waiting weeks to use that ever since I wrote it in the light paper and people had a good thing.
I had an opportunity to talk about it now.
So I feel fulfilled.
Jonathan's doing mushrooms as Bitcoin goes up.
That's what I've surmised from the conversation.
That's what I got here.
Good job, Jonathan.
Love it.
When I see him, I hit him.
Yeah.
You have to.
Anyone else have strong feelings on Bitcoin price action, what's happening here?
Otherwise, move on to some other topics.
We've had some crazy ones.
I'm not sure if this is the panel to unpack this, but Trump, senior, junior.
Okay, Shadon, I'll let you jump into it.
Give your thought before I move on to all of the Trump madness.
Shadan, you can go ahead.
Yeah, thanks, Scott.
Sorry.
So, you know, I'm not an expert trader like you guys.
I just wanted to add one comment is that, you know, somebody said that, you know, Bitcoin is acting more and more like the options market than than than the gold market.
And that's absolutely true. I mean, what you're seeing really here is just leverage trade.
And, you know, that just follows what the markets do. coins that you can't leverage that have any substance, like Litecoin and Monero, they've
been staying steady for the last two years and really just accumulating and just slightly
increasing, very similar to gold.
So I think that's something to keep in mind, that the crowd that is really buying crypto
as a safe harbor asset, there is a trend there as well that underlies all of this.
I think that's a great point. And there's been actually sort of this interesting bipolarity,
I think, when you talk about who's buying and why. There was a narrative this week,
obviously, at the store of value once again had failed. It was in mainstream media that
Bitcoin isn't digital gold if it's going to crash in situations like this. But if you actually sort of bifurcate the market and
look at the ETF flows and such, I mean, first of all, ETH had inflows somehow, the ETFs.
But Bitcoin had pretty major outflows from GBTC, but the others still ended up roughly with net
inflows. BlackRock was pretty much flat.
The people who actually are buying the ETFs and buying Bitcoin to add to their portfolios
who maybe were not crypto natives have been far more actually diamond-handed
and have treated it more as a store of value or at least an asset that they hold through the storm
than even the crypto natives.
But that was a really interesting...
I mean, that was my expectation. I think that to some
degree, people who buy ETFs
and put them into a
retirement account probably
are unaware that the asset
is even crashing half the time. Maybe on
Monday, it was a big enough news story. But a 5%
move in Bitcoin probably isn't even something they
noticed. They wouldn't think to sell.
But also, I think these are the type of people who have
a much longer time horizon. So whether they viewing it you know as digital gold or store value
they are buying it and holding it it's just interesting to see that they've been somewhat
more diamond-handed even than the the crypto bros so to speak um now moving on and we'll probably
change it yeah go ahead shadan you mentioned Litecoin and Monero.
The other hard fork crypto that looks really...
It has been doing very well lately is Zcash.
And on the StockTwits platform, I noticed that there was...
I don't know if you guys know this.
We have a sentiment and message volume indicators on there now,
which are just not tooting stock puts because I work there and that I help make it.
But it's just like I have my own personal opinion on it.
It's like one of the closest things to a cheat code you're going to find.
But I saw the message volume popping up on Zcash very gradually.
And our sentiment started flipping into neutral territory for the first time in
forever.
And I'm like,
okay,
what is going on with this chart?
I looked at the chart and it still looked ugly,
but my God,
on the weekly chart for the,
in the Ichimoku system,
if it stays where it's at,
it's going to close above the cloud for the first time on the,
on its weekly chart since December of 2020.
Zcash.
Zcash.
I'm nerding out because of how awesome it looks.
You know what's interesting?
I think somebody was on this show.
I don't want to steal the idea, but made the point.
Somebody said, wow, privacy coins outperformed on this dip.
And, you know, very few people, I think, watch them.
But most of them are also, yeah.
But didn't we talk about the fact that most of them are also delisted
and you can't even trade them in the first place?
Monero's been delisted.
I'm just saying, if you're rushing to sell something on Sunday
and you go to your friendly centralized exchange
and you're somehow holding Z-dash or Monero somewhere, you literally, it's not one of the things that has liquidity that you
can sell on a weekend. Right.
So there's some interesting nuance there. I'm not saying it's a right or wrong, but you know,
it's a lot harder to sell. Probably better for those assets actually when you consider them in
context. So let's say we debate sort of whether to discuss these things.
Obviously, we know the massive Trump pivot, the Harris campaign, in theory, trying to
catch up, having their roundtable, another roundtable discussion yesterday.
But in the meantime, with all of this, talking about Bitcoin becoming a global reserve asset
or a strategic reserve
asset for the United States and all this serious conversation. On the other side, we have Donald
Trump Jr. and Eric Trump hinting with tweets how they've fallen in love with DeFi and they've got
big announcements soon and a Justin Sun style announcements of announcements. And then Donald Trump Jr. saying they're launching a DeFi program platform at some point feels very 2020.
But I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.
And then while all of that is happening, somebody basically grifts and launches a meme coin and pretends it's an official Trump coin.
And then the Trump children have to publicly say it's not madness. It's the most crypto possible situation ever where you have a presidential candidate talking about it very
seriously and Bitcoin and what an important asset is. And on the flip side, members of his family
having to go on to social media to disavow meme coins that people thought they were hinting at, right? Go ahead,
David. You know, I've been listening to this conversation. And you know, both Shadan and I
have been in the crypto space very early from the early days of Coinbase. And I just think,
you know, you can, there's two ways you're in the crypto market, either, you know, you're part of these like get rich quick schemes and people that are selling their services to basically use it as gambling, or you're actually building and you're building something that's going to allow for on ramps and off ramps and something real. And I think that whether Bitcoin goes down to 25 or 30,000, where, you know, I was meeting
with Mario in Dubai, and we were, you know, at that point, Portal Gaming was fully subscribed,
and nobody cared that Bitcoin was at 30,000. I just think the conversation is, I probably know
over 50 neo banks that are building right now, you know, proper on ramps and off ramps, and really being
able to spend your crypto and use it in everyday life. So at the end of the day, crypto is not
going away. Bitcoin is going to become this reserve asset. And you're going to have this
level of gambling that's going to go on. And it's fine. I think we're all degenerates in our own way.
But crypto will go on. And just like
when people told me Coinbase was going bankrupt at $30 about two years ago, that didn't happen
either. And markets are cyclical. That's what it is. It's a bit rigged and you just got to ride
the wave. It's a bit rigged, certainly, but the meme coin situation is a bit more rigged,
it would seem
go ahead jonathan i would just like to note that uh dave i just followed you and i noticed that
you have a mushroom in your description there that's all oh this is uh compelling he does
okay what do i not you dave the other david sorry dave dave dave and i see dave you change Okay. Not you, Dave. The other David. Sorry, Dave. Dave W.
Dave, you changed your name to Dave W.
Now you went from Dave to D-W.
Mario persuaded me.
You got bullied, man. Come on.
You do what you want.
I think if you go back to the early days of Coinbase and Y Combinator,
there were a lot of mushrooms being used when they were building these products.
So, you know, I always refer back to 20 Mission in San Francisco.
So you got to have the mushroom and you have to have the Bitcoin.
Wow. Deep. I didn't realize that there was such a deep correlation there.
Jonathan, I saw you lift your mic. You've got something.
I was just going to apologize for bringing up psychedelics, psilocybin
and drugs in general.
My bad. Jonathan, you're still
doing it.
I'm done now.
I do want to know people's
I don't even know if
the question is opinion
or thoughts on
the Trump kids,
the Trump sons, I guess they're not kids, the Trump sons,
I guess they're not children, the Trump men,
not named Donald Trump senior coming into DeFi.
We don't necessarily need to talk to death,
the sort of situation that happened with the meme coin around it.
But what do you guys think?
Is anyone bold enough to give an opinion?
Matt, thank you guys think? Is anyone bold enough to give an opinion? Matt,
thank you guys.
Don't we all think it's a little weird,
the timing of it and like the bullishness of it.
Like what I,
I just imagine what are the ulterior motives here?
They're going to talk about how good of a team they have around them.
Like politics aside. I just think I, I. Politics aside, it sounds a little fishy.
It's super random.
Why now, all of a sudden?
I guess my question to you is, do you like to make money?
Nothing random about it.
The Trump family knows how to make money, and they want to make money.
And we all have that epiphany one day where we want to be in the crypto space.
Do you think that...
Yeah, but the way he skinned it, David, is that he's been debanked and needs to create a parallel financial system.
It's like listening to...
And listen, I credit people if they're on the path, right?
All of us.
I came in for the speculation first, like everyone else.
I literally came into crypto as a trader.
I fell in love with it because I was catching the doge waves
and I was trading Ethereum at 30 bucks and all these things.
But eventually I went down the path and got orange pilled
and realized that this is actually an important asset class.
I think that's the path of most people.
I doubt most people come in because they deeply have done the work and understand how important Bitcoin is an asset.
There are people to their credit that have done that.
So maybe they're just on the path.
But it's very, it's just strange.
Like we have a million DeFi platforms that exist.
I'm just curious to see what they're going to build.
And David, if you think it's just about making money,
that's not really in confluence with the way that it was presented as saying an
alternate financial system.
And they've been on bank to want to provide that for the people.
So just shows a lack of understanding. But I
can't speak to whether that's just because they're on the path to understanding or if it's like
pure grift, some people would say, Matthew. Oh, it's it's absolutely pure grift. It's no
different than DJT is a stock that trades, you know, billions of dollars in market capitalization
and $13 million in revenue.
Like these people, if you read anything about the work he did with Deutsche Bank, like,
it's just entirely a grift. And it's easy for them in the crypto space to say,
oh, it's not us, we didn't know, or, you know, this isn't associated with us. It's just so easy for them to do that. And on the other side, it's very easy for them to just pump and dump a coin,
or pump and dump the NFTs that they've produced as well.
This isn't about them trying to change the financial system.
This is about them trying to raise money because they don't have a lot of it and they need to.
Yeah, I mean, when you talk about the financial system that apparently they're raging against, it's been so bad to them.
I mean, you just hinted at Deutsche Bank.
Yeah, why would they?
All the loans.
Obviously, he's a commercial real estate magnet, right? I mean, bank loans is the lifeblood of the state debtor. He's a commercial
real estate debtor that is well underwater on all the commercial real estate that he owns.
So he's not I don't I don't I don't I don't believe that at all. I think the man has a lot
of cash. He doesn't need to be running for president. I candidly I don't want to get into
this topic. But I don't think this is a political conversation. Listen, we're invested
in probably north of 400 projects. If when somebody gets interested in crypto, they should
jump in. We all have interests. The public markets are no better. There's tons of companies that
trade at huge multiples that shouldn't. And yeah, the whole thing is rigged.
At the end of the day, we're talking about Bitcoin.
This is a product that can bring some kind of equitable parity
to the market.
That's all I really care about.
Yeah, but that's the problem.
I'm not trying to make it political,
but that's what his dad's doing, and they're doing the opposite.
That's the point.
That's OK.
I mean, listen, my son trades meme coins.
I trade Bitcoin. More power to them. I think it's okay. I mean, listen, my son, my son trades meme coins, I trade Bitcoin, you know, more power to them. I think it's fine. I think it's absolutely about money. I love it when people pitch me ideas and tell me, oh, this is for a purpose. Sure. It's 50% purpose, but it's also 50% about making money. No investor invests just to invest and not make money. I don't know investors like
that. So the sons want to make money. They should. But there's a difference between making money and
grifting people. And they're finding a very easy way to grift people. And that's my point.
Okay. When they grift people, we'll talk about it. They're not grifting anybody else.
David, I think the speculation is whether they had any way to...
The question is whether they had anything to do with the meme coins. I mean, listen, when I talked to you about like 20 mission and 20 some years ago in San Francisco, Kamala Harris was grifting people and putting people in jail for dime bags.
OK, so again, we were part of the cannabis movement 25 years ago, and we watched all that happen. There's a lot of grifters in politics.
There's a lot of grifters in public equities.
And there's a lot of grifters in the crypto space.
So that's par for the course.
You're looking for that 1% of people that are going to do right by people and build
awesome companies.
Case in fact, Coinbase, Blockchain.com, Bitcoin, you know, BitPanda, there are companies
that are building awesome products. And, and I would tell you, because we know a lot of people
associated with the Trump organization, that they are looking at this very seriously, and they want
to build good products within the space. Okay, let me let me present a silver lining regardless, that's non political.
If the Trump sons actually launch a DeFi platform, and Trump wins, you can 1000% guarantee
that the United States government will not be attacking DeFi anymore.
And I will be using their platform,
and I'll be using my own platform. Yes, absolutely. So if you want somebody that's
putting people in jail for dime bags of weed, vote for Kamala Harris.
Yeah, I appreciate the politics. It's a different conversation.
Totally. So I'm looking to vote for somebody, a family and people that actually believe in
this product, and they want
to get involved. I think people have had enough. I was reading Peter Smith's tweet yesterday from
blockchain.com. He's very early in the space. We work with them. Like, you know, action speak,
look at people's actions. The last four years has been terrible for the crypto space. So
I'm not looking to give anybody another chance.
And some of the best... Wait, wait, wait, wait, David, I don't disagree with that. And listen,
God, I hate doing this because guys, I have to moderate. So I have to jump in is not a
political position by me. But you can make the same argument for the previous four years with
crypto. The United States government has never been favorable to crypto.
We don't I don't understand that. Now, we were not we were not objectively the Biden White House
has been exponentially worse. Objective. We you talked about you talked about buying crypto during
the COVID crash, so to say, we saw that we We were still long-term holders. At the end of the day,
we were not evolved enough. No region of the world was evolved enough, not even the UAE.
We're in a different time right now. And right now, just like Russia is obviously already mining we need to evolve where the world is going to and move fast and i
appreciate that of that about the trump administration and their family they understand
that crypto is a very big deal i don't want to be i don't want to have to travel to dubai to be in a
pro crypto space i agree with that yeah david, the other big story from yesterday that you didn't
mention and goes right to this topic is the customer's story. And in fact, when you dig
into the weeds, and Tyler and Cameron have posted it, Caitlin has posted it, the fact that it was material that they were working with crypto companies is a very very very
big deal because you could talk about aml uh completely independent of the type of business
that people are doing in fact there's basically zero in literally zero in fact negative information
or negative facts that say that crypto companies are more likely, the ones that they're talking about, are more likely to be involved in money laundering because,
in fact, the nature of the blockchain, it can be traced, et cetera, et cetera. We can have that
debate. We've done that. But the simple fact that they are still biased against crypto companies in
exactly the same way that they were biased against cannabis companies. In the case of cannabis, they relied on the fact, the 70s Act, which
represents marijuana as a Title I substance, which is insane, but whatever. But the fact
that they're still doing that now, after they're supposedly pivoting, clearly they're not.
And that's the policy. And it's a very, very big deal. Because, you know, it's the soft power that gets done by the administration that people don't realize.
The two bugaboo ones, Caitlin has that as her bugaboo, and she's right. It's a very big deal.
The other one is there's still not been one broker dealer who can trade Bitcoin as a non-security.
They can't touch spot Bitcoin if you're if you have a broker dealer license.
And there's no rule that says they can't. In fact, it's just guidance and the fact that the SEC has told FINRA not to approve it.
None of that has changed.
All of that could change literally in an instant if Kamala opened her mouth and said,
I don't think this should be the case.
It would literally change.
And so people who say that they can't do it, you know, the, quote, pivot stuff, it's a big deal.
And you don't have to change policy.
She doesn't have to fire anybody. She doesn't say, I don't believe this is right, because that would be breaking with people.
And that's why she didn't attend the Zoom call, because she doesn't want to be forced into saying yes or no on that.
Maybe I tend to agree with you. We talk about this all the time.
I think that there's always a situation and not crypto specific where like the party in power has to do and the party that's not in power has the
luxury of saying and criticizing and making promises, right? So for Harris, if they want to
quote unquote pivot or soften, you're going to have to see some sort of action. Some say firing
Gary Gensler, or as you always say, like not a point to Carolyn Crenshaw, pushback against Elizabeth Warren, whatever it is. But I think there are also cases
where this customer's bank thing, probably not even on the Harris campaign's radar and probably
a part of Chokepoint 2.0 from a year ago. Honestly, I tried to dig into this because
I like to, from a journalistic
perspective, understand both sides.
And I know that our knee jerk reaction is the industry is this is a crypto bank.
It's an attack on crypto.
But as I have read through it, it seems like customers bank didn't really disagree.
And it was more about getting in line with some risk management policies.
I'm not saying that this isn't because of crypto,
but that maybe they have admitted
that they need to do a bit more for compliance.
I don't know, because they're not shutting the bank down
and they're not telling them not to deal with crypto
in this case, which is what happened in the past.
Well, no, actually they did.
That's the problem.
The problem was in the order it basically restricts and specifically
talks about that. It's not about the accusations. I mean, look, there have been some great threads
written. I think Austin Campbell's may have been one of my favorites because it was extremely clear.
There have been some really good threads written about this on X, which described it. The simple fact is that it is smoking gun proof that choke point 2.0 is still
alive. There's no argument there. The argument is whether they're going to change it. And obviously,
we all hope that they do. And frankly, it shouldn't be partisan, yada, yada. I mean,
I agree with Brian. Yesterday, I agree with him. I mean, it shouldn't be partisan. It just is for different reasons.
Yeah. I think it's very clear that nobody's going to buy a pivot from the Harris administration unless we see action, right? I mean, that's the bottom line here,
whether it's with the banks or with the SEC or what it is. I just remind people as an apolitical person that Bitcoin was built so we didn't have to
talk about any of this shit.
Right.
And I hope that nobody has gotten to the point where they view a political party, a political
person, any of them as sort of the savior or person that's going to push Bitcoin
forward when the entire point was to opt out of this entire system entirely, right? So just kind
of, you know, David, I'm sure you know, I don't, I don't necessarily believe that. I believe that
Trump and the family has been has has spoken words and has taken action to say that they're on board.
And nobody else besides, you know, RFK has said that.
I'm not disagreeing with you.
I'm just saying, like, people make promises, political promises.
It's not their fault.
You know, people create platforms and then they get into the office.
Reality hits and they can only do so many of the things that they promised.
And I'm just like, I believe that they have realized this is a hot button issue.
I believe that they are saying the right things.
I just don't believe politicians because I don't think they believe themselves.
And it's nothing against Trump.
It's nothing against anything.
RFK, I believe, because that dude put a material part of his net worth into Bitcoin.
Right?
So, like, that is a little
bit different, but I'm, like I said,
I'm willing to give the benefit, the doubt that these people
are on the spectrum. I'm just reminding people that
you need to love this asset class
regardless of the politicians
or their opinions. It's helpful
that they're here, but let's not
count on them. That's all
I'm saying. Don't be disappointed if it doesn't go your way.
Mario, are you here? I thought I saw his mic. I thought I saw his mic lift up. Go ahead, David.
No, it'd be great for Mario to come back to the U.S. and have an incredible organization in the US under Trump's power.
I'd love to bring all my friends back from the UAE that are phenomenal crypto people,
which I talked to the top CEOs of the top exchanges, they would love nothing more than
to come back to the US. So for me, that's what it's all about. I saw some story today,
I don't want to quote it, but it was Bloomberg or something that said like hundreds or maybe it was Coindesk.
Hundreds of crypto companies planning to open offices in New York City.
Did you see that?
I was surprised.
I don't think New York City, but I think Miami.
That's what it said.
No, it said.
I'm going to look it up because I don't want to miss.
That's what shocked me.
Well, do you believe everything you read in those types of journals?
I believe everything I read everywhere, David. It's my job.
Exactly. I would say that confirmed, I've spoken to two of the top 10 CEOs in the exchange space
that are actively looking at expanding into the Miami region. So I would love nothing more than
to bring those companies that have decided to go down the UAE and GCC route back to the United States.
That's all I'm about.
Hey, Mario.
I saw you waving.
Mario was waving and he still can't respond.
I guess he's not.
I can see him now.
Hey.
Yeah.
If regulation is friendly, I would love to move to the U.S.
Can you bring Ran with you?
Can you bring Ran with you?
He loves it here.
Big Daddy just spoke.
He'd like to come to the U.S.
When you get here, Mario, I'll pick you up.
Anyone is foolish not to.
It's one of the most beautiful countries in so many aspects.
And I love how people, I get annoyed when people like Ryan shit on the country.
I know he does.
Actually, I was surprised.
I was with Ryan and I used to hate when he used to talk about the,
for example, the homelessness problem in the US.
But then we were in LA together and he forces me to go for a walk.
So I usually never go for walks and stuff.
Pretty introverted.
He forced me to go for a walk.
And we go and there's homeless people in downtown LA.
As we walk like a two minute walk for him to get a shitty ass protein shake.
And I'm like, holy shit.
And even when driving the car to go film Killer Whales, I'm like, hold on a second.
The problem is real, just like what we see in Twitter.
So he was, of course, trying to always over exaggerate.
But I was pretty shocked by what I saw.
And because obviously when I lived in the US, I was in Marina del Rey.
There wasn't any problem there and I didn't go the u.s i was in marina del rey and there wasn't
any problem there and i didn't go out much so i was pretty pretty surprised but um no in general
um nothing compares to the u.s and i think anyone that says otherwise either it's being foolish
lying or hasn't spent enough time in the u.s that's my take
dude america fuck yeah i'm not sure how we got here.
How did you get here, Scott?
How did I get here to America?
My grandparents emigrated from... From where?
Through Ellis Island.
All over the place.
Mostly Minsk, which I guess is Belarus now,
was Russia at the time.
A lot of Polish, all over the place.
Eastern Europe.
Your grandparents are from Belarus.
Uh, great grandparents.
Oh, wow.
That's fascinating.
I was meant to interview the Belarusian president a while ago, but I've never been.
But at the time it wasn't.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Time.
It was very different.
Of course.
Machine.
Yeah.
Uh, cool.
And let's kick off the discussion, man.
I'm glad David and Shadana here, you know, me and you, Scott,
we went on a run a yacht and that's where we met the guys and where he was there too. And we'll learn about DeFi gold, um,
which I assumed it was just gold backed stable coin.
As soon as we're here to choose for the DeFi gold, I'm like,
please not another gold backed stable coin. Um,
that's been there since the end of, Oh shit. Frank is here as well. It's been there since the end of... Oh, shit, Frank is here as well.
Been there for so long.
But yeah, and then I learned that it wasn't the case.
So Shadan, David, I'll let you kick it off with,
instead of me explaining what DeFi Gold is,
let us know, by the way, Nasser,
you want to change the title to a discussion with DeFi Gold, please.
But kick it off, guys.
What is DeFi Gold?
Just for the audience, anyone that doesn't know.
Yeah, thanks. So, you know, around
2020, I kind of got disillusioned with crypto
and left the scene because, you know, to me, it just
didn't seem like it was a viable thing that they could keep going
with the path that it was on, the only coins that i that i mentioned earlier that that were actually used as currencies
to a small degree were uh monero and and litecoin and and you know if you look at bitpay and all
these payment processors and what they do the the bulk of what they process is actually those coins. It's not the other ones.
And that was a small community.
I saw that dying out.
DeFi was exciting when it came out, but it was obvious that it was more of a dream than reality.
It could be front-run really easily.
It was not really that off-ramp that I was hoping for
as far as replacing the current system.
Can you actually elaborate on that point?
Why do you think DeFi in its current form is not enough to replace the current system?
Well, just because of the way that Ethereum is, and Ethereum was the major DeFi platform,
the privacy wasn't there, and front- running is very easy on Ethereum. And manipulating the markets was always easy because, you know, there's so many whales in the area.
But because of the way the smart contracts are, you can actually not do be the only people that are trading there at the end of the day.
And it just becomes something for bots and wouldn't be really useful just by the very nature of the fact that all these transactions are visible and you could front run things,
the problems with Mev and whatnot,
and the scalability.
So I didn't think it was going to be
what everybody was making it out to be in 2020
as far as a really viable platform
beyond using a Uniswap.
So I was excited about the latest advancements in cryptography and potentially one
day that would change things, but I didn't see it happening anytime soon. So fast forwarding that to
about a year and a half ago, I became aware of some technologies on Bitcoin that could actually
enable DeFi on Bitcoin, enable privacy on Bitcoin and extreme sharding as far as bringing
all kinds of assets to it and enabling building of these kinds of really decentralized exchanges
that were true decentralized exchanges that couldn't be front run any more than the real world could.
And that, you know, gives everybody a playing field.
You can't, you know, in the real world, you can still go and, you know,
speak with NASDAQ and get preferential treatment to other people
as far as your trading abilities go.
But, you know, a crypto space where you have an open network, an open API that anybody can use,
and the fees are reasonable, prevents that actually.
So that became very exciting again.
And the more we explored it, that's when the four of us actually decided to start a business around that. So what DeFi Gold does in a nutshell
is we're developing a DEX, an NFT marketplace and a launchpad that are fully decentralized
on the Bitcoin blockchain. We base this on RGB and top root assets. We've now incorporated
runes and ordinals as well, but that's just more because the
market exists today.
And we really bet on RGB as being the future platform for enabling DeFi on Bitcoin.
And during this time, by the way, Ethereum has evolved.
They've kind of admitted to the fact that they can't be that platform.
And that whole L2 space world really popped up.
And what you're seeing is Ethereum is becoming a minimal chain like Bitcoin.
And you're having all these L2s around it.
And their job will be to actually enable DeFi.
And it's a bit of a mess.
It's still a bit of a story because it's going to be very hard to coordinate and communicate between those L2s, right?
So Ethereum is now looking more like Bitcoin,
and Bitcoin has actually found a solution that can potentially make real DeFi happen on blockchains.
Bitcoin's not the only chain, I think.
I think there's others.
So the whole sharding and so Bitcoin, you can say, is kind of following the state channel model
that Ethereum originally wanted to follow that could have potentially solved
all these problems. And then you can look at it
from other blockchains like the Tonnetwork, which we're very much involved with,
that enable the scaling and
the other features you need, like even privacy.
And I can talk about how it enables that, like the TUM network.
And they've gone the sharding route and still keeping global state, right?
So I think what you're seeing is that this year you have an exciting opportunity to actually
rebuild DeFi, so DeFi 2.0, that's much more scalable, that's much more private and fair.
And you can do that on the Bitcoin blockchain
and you can do that on some other blockchains as well, right?
So DeFi is a startup.
Let me take a step back because you just put a lot of information there.
To some, it's not a surprise
obviously me and scott are not surprised by this because we talked about it in that interview we
did uh scott about bitcoin being remember the famous quote by brock pierce saying when you're
king you're like that and you always use it you've heard me use it many times it was a really good
quote yeah yeah i always butcher it but brock goes like, hey, you know, Bitcoin, you know, when you're king, you don't need to be first.
So Bitcoin, you know, lets everyone do everything initially.
You have the arrows in their back as the innovators.
And then when you're king, you don't give a fuck.
You can come in late and dominate.
It's Bitcoin's time to shine.
And we did that interview early, close to the Bitcoin ETF launch.
But going to the first question, Shadam, for many now, it's a bit surprising
when you started talking about DeFi and Bitcoin.
And I think the main issue,
you kind of touched on the solution,
is scalability.
Can you talk about the various solutions
that Bitcoin has introduced,
whether on the L1 itself or various L2s?
Obviously, you talked about,
you mentioned RGB and Taproot, and of course, Runes and
Ordinals, everyone's talked about.
But can you talk about these different solutions and how they differ?
And is there any, you know, playing devil's advocate, is there any other problems that
the Bitcoin ecosystem still faces that haven't been solved yet by your optimism that will
be solved?
Yeah, I think the list of problems is infinite and there will always be problems and hopefully
there will always be solutions, right? You can't discount human ingenuity and especially with
software, it's very easy to use that ingenuity compared to other fields, obviously. So I'm very bullish from
that perspective. So the different solutions, I mean, everybody knows about ordinals and runes.
Great. It brings some awareness that, you know, to people that people are actually interested in
Bitcoin being more gambling on Bitcoin, playing on Bitcoin and having assets on Bitcoin. They're
not scalable solutions.
They're solutions that have been known since almost day one.
And people just didn't do it because it doesn't scale and it actually makes everything slow and expensive at the end of the day.
Now, the technologies that companies like Bitfinex are really innovating on
are things like RGB, where you're actually
doing everything off-chain and you're just using the chain as a database for timestamping
things and proving things, but all the actual smart contracts are running off-chain.
So when they released Tether this summer, at the end of September, close to then, it changes everything because
then they're going to be releasing Tether on that platform that we're building on, which
is that protocol we're building on, which is really RGB.
And with that, you can actually do everything off-chain.
You can do all the smart contracts off-chain, yet prove that you've actually done everything that you were supposed to.
And that's a really big deal, right?
Yeah, so that's just kind of a claim for the audience.
So before we dig into the next one, which is Taproot,
you mentioned Roos and Ordinals.
Most people know how those work.
Ordinals, you kind of inscribe it on Satoshis,
which there's I don't know how many, 100 million Sat, you kind of inscribe it on Satoshi's, which there's a hundred million
Satoshi's per Bitcoin or whatever it is. And the inscriptions done on those Satoshi's themselves
as like an NFT, obviously the difference here is it's on Bitcoin, it's finite on Ethereum,
it's technically infinite. Runes essentially allows the creations like an ERC20
protocol on Bitcoin. I'm oversimplifying it, Shadan, for the audience.
Anyone too technical, I'll just probably skip through that part.
But essentially, it allows the creation of tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain.
And then you've got RGB, which actually is the settlement layer is Bitcoin,
but all the transactions are done off-chain and then settled on the Bitcoin blockchain.
That's the best way to describe it, in my opinion.
Is that a fair simplification, Shadan, before you dig into the fourth solution?
It is.
So, I mean, with RGB and TopRoot, and they're essentially the same thing.
It's just two different groups building it.
So, Lightning Labs is really leading TopRoot assets.
And RGB is, I believe, the lead company there is Bitfinex right now with Tether and a few other startups like us.
So with RGB and Taproot, you're still doing Bitcoin transactions per transaction because you need proof that you've done that transaction.
But the smart contracts are being run off chain right so within within that
transaction time you you still have the ability to run you know uh infinitely scalable uh smart
contracts essentially that that's just you know bound by by the physical laws of computers pretty
much not not not not by the network protocol and consensus and all of that so essentially
it's very similar to optimistic roll-ups on ethereum it's it's it's not so optimistic roll-ups
on ethereum that that whole l2 people are using some of the other properties of taproot to to
build l2s but but the point is you don't really need it. You can actually run those smart contracts
completely off-chain and not have the blockchain network
verify that those smart contracts are possible.
The only people that need to verify
whether a smart contract ran on RGB
would be the two parties that are actually
or the multi-parties that are involved
with that smart contract at that time. Nobody else within the network needs to verify it so that's
that's how it becomes different okay understood it's just the outcomes this
is just the the initial transaction and the final transaction have to be posted
and then just digging into tap room by the way David you can jump in anytime
I'll ask this question to the both of you.
You guys feel free to jump in, whoever.
And then maybe touch on Taproot very quickly.
And that kind of shows the audience your expertise in the space and how long you've been in crypto for a very long time.
And well before me, just kind of putting a disclaimer out there.
And then I think we've got to pivot on why DeFi Gold is the solution.
Maybe talk about who your investors are, what your strategy is moving forward, what your launch date is.
Because obviously you're not the only one doing what you're doing.
There's not too many in the space, at least
not enough, in my opinion.
But there's a reason that me and Scott are both on your cap table.
So I'd love you to kind of explore that reason.
Yeah, we have some of the most amazing investors,
namely you
two, right? So I'm
very happy about that.
Yeah, sorry. So what was the question?
We've talked about RGB runes, originals, maybe touch on Taproot very briefly and then dig into
your cap table, who your team is, etc.
Digging into why DeFi Gold, you guys are the best in building a launchpad
and decks in NFT marketplace on Bitcoin.
Yeah, so Taproot is very similar to RGB.
They're essentially the same protocol.
It's just that one is being led by Lightning Labs, as I said.
Oh, yes, yes.
By Bitfinex.
And with RGB, they've decided to add full Turing-complete smart contract capabilities.
But for whatever reason, with Tapics, they decided not to.
And they just, two different crowds, really, that's all.
Yeah, I think it's more of a security debate there, yeah?
I don't know where the debate really is.
I think it's just one is just more associated with Maxis.
The Maxis, yeah.
The Maxis and the Maxis.
Yeah.
I think the reasoning there was as long as you can do
stocks, bonds, you know, stable coins and things like that,
then that's fine.
You shouldn't add any other ability to it really,
which we disagree with.
So I'm more bullish on RGB myself personally.
Yeah.
And let's dig into DeFi Gold.
Can you tell me more about what you guys,
why you guys are the best solution to,
what are the best guys to build a launchpad,
a DEX and an NFT marketplace on Bitcoin?
David, go ahead. Yeah, so what...
Oh, Shadad.
Sorry, David, go ahead.
I mean, you know, for...
Go ahead, Shadad.
Okay, so for me and David, like we talked about this a lot.
I don't think it's good to take one protocol and work with that one protocol, right?
I think it's too early.
And what we do is we holistically incorporate all these protocols.
And I believe I, you know, I have a preferred one, obviously,
as I've said, as a winner, but you can't make that choice now. And you have to make it seamlessly
between all of them. Now, even, you know, the guys, the, you know, Runes and Ordinals guys
are working on their own VM and their own, you know, L2 solution, which I don't think is the
way to go. But, you know, we will definitely integrate that into our solution as well and
let the markets decide at the end of the day who the winner is, right? And who will make DeFi
happen. It's very cumbersome and difficult to work with ordinals today. That's why I don't think it
will take off. And I think that's part of the protocol, really, right? And it's expensive, right? When you have something that's as cheap as Solana, and you have that with
Taproot assets and RGB, people will gravitate towards it. You know, that's the real bottleneck
for people. And I think that's why I'm personally betting on that. But DeFi Gold is not betting on
that. DeFi Gold is the only exchange that's supporting all these protocols and will support
more protocols. Furthermore, you know, we can talk about the games that we're developing in the
company and our ton relationships and what we're doing there. But I can tell you right now, DeFi
Gold is going to be, in my opinion, the first exchange that also is a cross-chain exchange between the Telegram open network and the world of Bitcoin.
And I think with that and other great solutions like ThorChain and ChainFlip out there, where you can chain all these DEXs together, it's actually going to give you that amazing DeFi world where pretty
much any asset can be traded for any other asset. Any asset can be leveraged for any other asset.
Some of those coins that I said that are not leverageable today, right? Like again,
the Litecoins and the Monero will be leverageable. It'll be usable within DeFi and not in a fake way
where you have a custodian that actually holds it for you
and you're bound by trusting them for all kinds of things, right?
Politically, you know, them not losing it, whatever, right?
And that's going to be a very big deal, I think, too.
So if people are interested in this, you should definitely check out our website,
join DeFi.gold, join our telegram and speak to us. We'd love to have you
on board as well. Yeah, man. And look, Shadan, David
kind of got carried away already past 15 minutes. I appreciate you being
patient as well. Kind of last thing, maybe tell us some of your investors and
advisors that you have on your cap table and the exchanges, launchpads that you have confirmed
as a final question?
Yeah, so we're
definitely at a minimum
listing on MEXC October 15th.
There's a chance we'll be listing
on a few other exchanges as well.
Tier 1 exchanges
that we're in negotiations with.
We'll be
launching on a launchpad
earlier than that. We'll be making announcements on it. We'll be launching on a launchpad and earlier than that, we'll be making announcements on it.
And that's really it. So this, you know, our liquidity events are very close. And I think
being one of the only people in this space gives everybody a great opportunity to get very early exposure to DeFi on Bitcoin.
And, you know, so can we just talk about the games a bit as well, Mario?
Yeah, we'll keep it brief.
Go ahead, man.
Yeah.
So we, through DeFi Gold's company, DG Labs, we've also funded two games. One of them is being led by the father of the gaming industry and arguably the whole computing industry, which is Nolan Bushnell.
He created Pong.
He was the founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese.
And he's decided to build with an amazing team of developers a game on the Telegram network.
And we're very excited and thrilled to be supporting him.
And the lead developer of that game has built one of the top games in the world already,
modern games.
And likewise, we're also working with another group who, again,
is a very seasoned gaming developer who's building the first
MOBA game on the TAN network.
Because of this, we've also decided to integrate Telegram into our offering.
That's another blockchain we really believe in that can actually make DeFi happen as well.
And I think that vision of having Bitcoin as the general DeFi protocol, but having specialized blockchains that can do a lot more.
And in my opinion, TUN actually fits that perfectly is a great vision.
So you'll be able to trade your TUN tokens.
Those are the same as ERC20s with any token on the RGB network without even a room, and you'll be able to do it in
a decentralized fashion.
You'll be able to use Lightning Network to pay for your fees and bring your Bitcoin over
to the TUN ecosystem without wrapping it, essentially its value.
And that's something we're very excited about with DeFi Gold.
To get exposure to those games, if you purchase our tokens now, actually,
you do gain exposure to those gaming tokens as well,
because we're doing an airdrop of them to all holders of DeGold tokens as well.
I appreciate you sharing that.
For anyone else who wants to learn more about DeFi Gold,
I think the website will be on their Twitter page.
And it's a pleasure to speak to you both.
Really appreciate it. And thanks for having speak to you both. Really appreciate it.
And thanks for having me on your podcast.
Really appreciate it.
Thanks a lot, Shadan and David as well.
Thanks, guys.
Bye, everyone.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.