The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Shaky On Mixed Fed Sentiment #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

This episode of Crypto Town Hall dives deep into macroeconomic trends impacting Bitcoin and the broader crypto market, with a focus on Fed policy, market sentiment, the flow of capital into precious metals, and the ongoing debate over utility versus store of value within blockchain assets. The hosts and their panel explore how shifts in market psychology, recent moves in gold and silver, and upcoming regulatory policies are shaping the future landscape for both crypto and traditional assets. Participants weigh in on whether Bitcoin's perceived volatility and potential for utility can match its narrative against gold, discuss the role of memecoins and network effects, and highlight the challenges regulatory uncertainty poses for smaller crypto firms.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall every day here on X-10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. I currently see the ghost of Mario Nafel on stage. I see my good friends Mike Colon and Dave Weisberger, Adam, Douglas, and Paul. So if there's anybody else on... I'm just going to make a habit of telling you guys who I see so that if I don't see you, you'll raise your hand or do something. We can bring you down and up because generally we can't see the entire panel. Title today, Bitcoin's shaky on mixed Fed sentiment. We had the classic Bitcoin pumps at the beginning of the conference, then retraces the entire move. We always joke here that the first move is usually the wrong one, and the market seemed to show us that. But where did we end up? Right back where we started. And now we can move on to obsessing for no reason about the next Fed meeting or a piece of data that nobody's going to pay attention to 24 hours after it drops. Yeah, finding, remember Dorian finding Nemo?

Yes, that's, that's all of us. All of us. About, I seen about it. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, it is, it is funny in a way. I mean, Bitcoin is trading differently. When you look at the rest of, forget Bitcoin for a heartbeat. I know it's Crypto Town Hall.

But I find, I find some of the other moves fascinating, right? You know, the first of all, the thing you have, to look at if you're trying to understand what's going on in Bitcoin is you have to look at silver. You just have to. You know, we've talked about this before, that hotball of money that used to go into all coins in, you know, in cycles when it has gone into silver and we're now, you know, up over 3% again today, over $63, gold, pushing back again towards 4,300. You know, this, this, it's not a zero sum game because obviously there's money coming into, you know, know, different assets from different places. But if you're trying to understand where the hot money

is going, it's going into the precious metals, in particularly into silver, which is, you know, Mike and I have had a flip up on this one. I'm actually more bullish in the short to medium term on both gold and silver than he is, because I see that hotball of money and I don't really see where the selling's going to come from until there's, you know, something major gets to like critical levels, like 75 in silver and 5,000 in gold. And that, That takes away a lot of the steam from Bitcoin. And we've been talking about that since October. You know, there's plenty of money in the world for that not to be the case.

But right now, it seems to be that's the money that's moving the market. We got Mike. We're talking about the Fed. Let's use him. Mike, unpack it for us. Is it as forgettable as I described? Yeah, I love the way you described it. And certainly appreciate your comments and Dave's comments about silver and pressurial.

is metals. The key thing about the Fed is it's so much in your face. You can de-eye it, deliberately ignore it, and that's all you need to know, because you're just to hear it about it everywhere. The bottom line for me is what's happening in expectations for Fed funds. So when they first cut rates in September, we went to that September 26 Fed funds, and it was running, expecting, you know, futures. We're running expecting Fed funds next year at this time, or September, or a year from then, to be around 3%. Actually, it was running below 3%. Now there's no place. on the curve in Fed funds, you get below 3%. So you just look out September next year. It's at

323. You go a year from now, December 312. So it's basically the Fed's, market's taking Fed easy out of the picture, maybe a couple more. They said they might price for more to next year. The market's price for two more cuts next year. Those are 25 base points. And it's just about what's going to take for the Fed to cut more. Obviously, we're getting a new chairman, but we have a pretty, you know, He's got to deal with a board that, you know, not going to be happy about cutting rates aggressively. And to me, it's what's going to take to go for Fed to cut more. And this is why I think we've reached a bit of that endgame. And it was to remember that on the day that Bitcoin reached $80, that morning, Fed wasn't even priced for a cut at the meeting that we had yesterday.

And then once Bitcoin dropped and the stock market dropped, automatically, we figured out, oh, we might be cutting 25 base points. You see what's driving here? I think this is part of what's happening now is I think now at the stage the only reason that really make the Fed to cut is if unemployment goes up a lot, inflation drops, which is not going to happen, but this is, you know, inflation is sticky. Or number one reason to make the Fed cut, which is historically the case, is risk assets go down in cryptos and Bitcoins at the tip of the iceberg of risk assets. But to me, that's the key thing that Dave pointed out that's happening this year.

And I'm starting to get inklings of what I saw in cryptos last year. You're getting a bit of that in precious metals. You get that pile on factor. You get the very stretched extremes. Everybody jumps on board. And those have been bullish and long forever, realize, yeah, okay, it's not the price to lighten up. It is the place to lighten up. It's not the place to double down.

And that's what I think people are doing in things like silver and gold. And silver is known as the devil's medal for reason. It trades two times of volatility of gold. I didn't think it'd get this high this year. And full disclosure, I'm long, a lot of precious metals. I have been for a long time. related those out of cryptos last year. But to me, the inklings and precious metals and gold are very similar to what I sensed in

cryptos last year. You get the pile on, prudent traders realized, great, it's towards the end of the bull market, and then you're supposed to lighten up and be careful. And that's what I'm really concerned about for next year, that when the bottom line, I like to say, when gold grabs alpha, looks like it did this year, I get cautious, I get worried. And it's absolutely grabbed alpha and silver too. But the history of silver, and Dave can dig into this a lot, is when it gets this stretched, a 50% correction is nothing. It can actually still go up two or three times, but it'll rip your face off.

That silver is the devil metal for a reason I used to have hair before I started trading. So, Mike, are you saying that you don't think silver bugs who may have been holding for years now are kind of de-leveraging at this point? I do. I think they're lightning up. That's my point. The smart ones and the ones who've been lucky enough to be long and forever, including myself, Because you just know how these things work. You just hang on to you hang on to and all of a sudden you get two to three Xs in a heartbeat.

You're supposed to be lightening up on that. It's just a history of when you get this stretch versus any type of mean and gold and silver for new longs at these levels is very poor. And that's why I say to me, it's looking to me very similar to like Bitcoin looked like last year. Yeah, it went up another from these levels last year, went up another 30%. And now we're down. That's what I think is happening in precious metals. And the bottom line for me, I think now, is the number one thing is what you're seeing today, even like for Bitcoin, is the crypto market, Bitcoin is so completely dependent on that stock market going up. And yesterday it proved it just cannot close above that 94 level.

And that to me, I'm surprised it's not down more this morning, which is great. It isn't. But overall, the macro big picture is you're supposed to be selling when they're yelling. And Dave and I love to use that in common. And there's a lot of yelling in silver at these levels. I think that, you know, you and I aren't all that far apart. I mean, you said 30%, I say 75. I think that, you know, look, I have some silver sitting in a box here where, you know, I noticed something that I've never seen before.

You know, how you see in your local stores, you know, cash for gold. I actually saw in our local jewelry store cash for silver, which I haven't seen before. So that, we know we're getting close to that level. if we're not already there. The only thing that reason I think it can go farther is because, look, you know, markets could be irrational longer than you could be solvent. It makes sense to kind of ride the wave a little bit, especially when you understand the geopolitics involved.

I mean, you know, silver going up is not a good thing for, you know, we're not happy about it. People in the U.S. don't like this. And China actually does. So there is some geopolitical stuff. But I do think you're right, Mike. I think we, you know, silver has, is very volatile. There's going to be a lot of money going in and out. I just don't think that the trend has, there's any reason for the trend to reverse before January.

But if it gets to 75 or so, I'm out. I'm not going to lie. I've been, I have some silver I've held since $4. So, you know, it's, it is what it is. But it's, it is important to understand, though. If we get to a clear we're out kind of moment in silver, I think that hot money's starts looking elsewhere. I like how you describe to you the end of the year.

We're at that psychological stage now to shift the sentiment, which we all know is completely shift to derisking in cryptos and completely bullish in precious metals. You typically need some kind of least demarcation line. Oftentimes the beginning or end of the year will do it. So right now, that's why looking at towards the end of this year, this is such a significant couple weeks we have left. And this is where I keep pointing out is the stock market

absolutely has to go up because if it goes down, the iterations of it going down from here. I would say this S&P drops 5%. It looked very similar to 2007. It would follow cryptos. It would follow things like gold warning us and crude oil going the other way. So the sentiment shift now is unlikely and that's why I put everything so narrow now that, you know, just to show a little bit of recovery in any type of risk gases, Bitcoin's got to close above 94,000. And that's purchased up on there. I think that, you know, you're focused on price levels, though. You know, it's, you know, I don't, I'm not, I'm looking for signals.

My bias is the same. I think the whole thing is tipping over. I think the whole Bitcoin is going to 50,000. I think we're due for a deep, a down year in the stock market next year, next year. And then I put my traders hat, what are the inflection points? What are the signals? And that's why I'm just looking for the signals. Yeah, it's funny.

I mean, you and I obviously disagree dramatically on Bitcoin, but I actually think the single most bullish scenario for Bitcoin would be. the stock market getting crunched. Bitcoin will go down with it when that happens, although I don't think nearly with the beta that you think. But I think that forces the hand in terms of dissent and whoever is the next Fed chair. Because you're right.

When you say can't go down, what you mean to say is budget deficit blows out crazily. Huge problems in the economy, huge problems going into the midterms, just a massive economic problem. that I think it's met by the same sort of bazooka of liquidity that we saw, you know, that we've seen before. And to me, that's the most bullish scenario for Bitcoin in the longer term. But, you know, when I say longer, I mean months.

I'm not talking years here. But yeah, I mean, you know, it could happen. I just don't think it's going to happen. I mean, I think that, you know, we're still seeing the trend of weak labor, strong corporate profit. And that trend has confounded because of, you know, because of. that the corporate profits have moved up as a percentage of GDP so much, it's confounded a lot of the people who talk about bubbles and seeing what's going on. I mean, you know, make my mistake, I mean, Powell wasn't wrong yesterday when he said that he thinks the labor market is weaker than

the data has basically been showing. And he expects that to be persistent. And then we saw, you know, more jobless claims this morning. I mean, the Fed's trying to navigate, he's trying to navigate a, you know, kind of a tightrope. And his successor, is going to basically be pushed into run it hot. I think that's what's going on here. I've been talking a lot. I mean, I'd be curious what other people think. Well, just to follow up on that.

I think what you're seeing happening is the lessons of Jeff Booth and the price tomorrow kicking in. The significant deflationary forces of rapidly advancing technology. I mean, we see youth unemployment or a young person out of college unemployment now is some near the highest ever, around 10% being replaced by AI. some of us has seen this in different cycles in the past and then also there's a fear if anybody in in any business doesn't have a fear of you know losing out a little bit to AI or not adopting it there we all know you got to be careful but to me that's what's happening that's what kicking in you and unemployment should continue to go up we all know it's historically it's always gone up to 6% after it bottom like it did in 2003 now it hasn't done that yet but it's heading that way and cutting 25 base points is not going to make a difference to me now we're at the point where the only thing that matters is that all that's stuff is just on a scale one to 10, there are like two to three. The number one thing is evaluation of this U.S. stock market. Just a few days ago is almost 2.4 times GDP. That's all

that matters. And Bitcoin is the best leading indicator for that. And that's why I think the next year will be the third down year for the stock market since 2008. And that's just signals that are very profound from things like what's happening. We've just never had moves like this in gold with crude oil going down and you know that all these ratios i watch are just breaking down like the one i really like the most is the um the stock market s mp 500 divided by gold right now it's 1.62 ounces of gold the high was 2.6 the historical average is one and it's breaking down and the number one of my favorite ratio is bitcoin to gold cross at 21 it's basically at its mean median mode right now since since 2020 and it's got a hold there but to me i just

I'm just anticipating it's going to break below that level. Well, I mean, we can anticipate a lot of things. And we'll talk about it in detail on Monday. So I'd like to let other people talk. But the one thing that you said that I just always confounds me, I understand it on Saturday and Sunday. But why would anybody think of why is the notion that Bitcoin leading, you know, a $2 trillion asset leading a $70 trillion global stock market, I don't understand it when markets are

open. It just doesn't make sense to me. I think that that's just kind of a historical thing, you know, it happens on weekends, but during the week, why would Bitcoin be a leading indicator? I think Bitcoin is trading based on a series of factors in a trading range, like there's distribution overhead in the hundreds from OGs, and there's an entire crypto, you know, general buying force, you know, whatever you want to call the crypto community, believing the four-year cycle means it needs to drop almost as far as you're saying. needs to drop. So at the same time, we have new buyers. So it seems like we're in this range. And, you know, we're in the, we're at between 90 and 94, it's like, probably going to fail here

until there's a catalyst, although one never knows what that'll happen. When we get down toward 80, it's probably going to bounce here because, you know, there aren't any more sellers. The sellers are exhausted. And so you go back and forth and back and forth. And how we consider that leading the stock market, I don't understand. I just don't. well i don't want to like you said you want other people to speak i you know we we can agree to disagree in it i just always looking for indicators like i said that the uh ancient store value versus this hot and heavy speculative digital asset with a lot of you know the present involved is to me it's just a great indicator it's been that's what i it's been working i do love the pushback

on it but you know we can let other people speak to yeah anybody thoughts go ahead dav yeah no no i was And the other thing, when you just said that, I don't know what people think. I mean, I know, Adam, you and I agree on this one. I think that that Trump meme coin and Melania meme coin set back the industry a lot. And actually, and the reason I say that, and I've been saying that for a while, but I think that we're seeing it come to fruition. Eleanor Territ reporting on the market structure bill, the fact that Democrats are insisting on making crypto more constrained. trained from family member trading, then stocks is one of those things. I mean, it's an obvious starter.

It'll never get signed, but it basically could, it's threatening to derail the entire notion of regulatory clarity, which, you know, we'll turn it into an issue in the midterms for sure, but, you know, and unfortunately, Republicans aren't stupid, and they kind of know that if they can make it an issue in the midterms, it might help them in the midterms. And so unfortunately, the political calculus could well get to the point where we get nothing on the legislative side. I mean, that risk is very, very real right now. I mean, there's a real chance that we get another government shutdown in a month. Yeah, a shutdown probably.

I think that Mike Lawler just introduced something which has a bunch of Republicans that are for it, which would take the wind out of the sales of that. We'll see how it goes. I mean, the problem is that politicians care about getting reelected far more than they care about doing their job. And so every piece of their political job is their job is their job is how they make issues sound, not what do they actually do. And that is an incredibly cynical, but sadly, I think, the very realistic view of why our politics is so dysfunctional. And all of that, unfortunately, from a crypto point of view, that matters. Now, what does that mean?

Functionally, what it means is the large, it gives huge benefits to the incumbent large crypto firms who already have some who already have the chops to resist a future SEC that goes after them. And they'll have a lot of case law on their point, you know, when they get, have exemptive relief from this SEC. So it, but smaller firms can't really take. those risks. And so what does it mean? It means that smaller firms will have a much more difficult time competing with Coinbase and Robin Hood and Cracken and Ripple Labs and Gemini, etc. And that's not

very good, but that is where we're at. It doesn't mean that the crypto industry is going to go back into a shell and do nothing, nothing of the sort. But it does mean that we do have a competitive problem. I still see Adam, Paul. Is there anybody else on stage? But I would love your guys' thoughts on this as we kind of keep going. Go ahead. Yeah, you know, I'm not really a macro guy and understanding a lot of the different markets that you guys have great expertise on. But Mike said one interesting thing. It's this newfangled digital money versus old school store of value. And I'm assuming, Mike, you're referring to gold as the old school store value versus Bitcoin. And people keep giving Bitcoin the narrative of store of value, but looking at gold, realize that it had a

utility well before it was considered just raw store of value. And I think if you look at the crypto markets, this is where we're struggling to really get past the level that we've had for the past five years. I mean, Bitcoin is kind of the main asset, and it only has store of value. If you look at it as a company and what its revenue generation is, it's far below its market cap. Just looking at the different chains and what they generate in revenue, we've got hyperlick at $128 million in fees, ranked number one for Q3 and Bitcoin only at $40 million. And so it's a very inverted kind of ranking that we have in the crypto market where the utility doesn't have the market cap of the store of value. And unlike gold, which for a thousand of years had utility

before turning the store of value, we kind of miss that boat. And hence, we're fragmented. And if you talk to anyone, it's like, well, where can I use Bitcoin? How can I use Bitcoin? They don't quite see, and they don't see that store value narrative because, A, they don't have enough money to be storing. Everyone's kind of struggling right now. And then B, gold is kind of taken that within this cycle.

So fundamentally, I feel like what the industry really needs is either, A, taking one of the utility chains and using that as a store value, which I'm sure everyone here on this panel will say, no, no way in hell that can happen because everyone here is a Bitcoin maxi in that sense. Or B, we need to drive utility to Bitcoin and stop talking about all of the advantages of great. It got listed for this ETF. Oh, great. You know, we have regulation that lets all these centralized companies advance. And Dave, you're just mentioning how, you know, we are making it difficult for the smaller companies

to compete against Coinbase Crack and all the established players. Well, from at least whatever called in a lot of the regulation, so long as the small players are dealing in true self-custody and utility and not just, hell, let's hold this thing, put it in a treasury, then you can compete. And that's actually the true utility of crypto. No one ever seems to be talking about, especially not here on this panel. And that's what we need to get to if we want to achieve what gold was able to achieve for the past thousand years. Well, I'd push back on a couple things there. Most importantly, you know, gold's utility. is for thousands of years was jewelry.

That's it. You know, there's some other, today we have, there's some electronics. I mean, silver has dramatically more utility. Silver definitely. It definitely does, although gold had it purely from a viewpoint of simply commerce, means of exchange,

and we've never had that for Bitcoin. Unit of account, mainly unit of account. That's one of the biggest things. We actually measured things in units of gold for almost. Well, the reason you don't have, yeah, but, you know, there's a tail wagging the dog, and this fee thing is kind of silly because if you put block rewards and Bitcoin's fees are dramatically larger than that, but I don't want to, because it's just the way it is.

But, you know, a lot more's going down over time. Yeah, I can understand that right now with taxes being what they are, using Bitcoin as a immediate, meaning of exchange when you believe it's undervalued. Yeah, it's fighting two very important things. It's fighting people believe it's undervalued because of, gold's monetary, you know, value versus its utility value. And monetary value is at least 80%. You could make an argument that it's higher. I suppose you could get down a little bit lower, but not much based upon gold versus platinum, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, it's the thing

is, is the tax rules are non-trivial, right? If you, you know, if you have Bitcoin and you've had it for a while and you spend it, you're paying capital gains taxes on it. You know, forget to minimis exemption, it says if you spend it, you pay capital gains. Well, people don't tend to use things. This space was downloaded via spaces down.com. Visit to download your spaces today. With capital gains and, you know, being charged. Now, theoretically, gold would have it too, but people don't use gold as a medium of exchange anymore. They used to, but when it was true as a medium of exchange, remember, there were no such thing as capital gains taxes because gold was at a fixed rate. There was almost no taxes. So, so, it was a,

You know, comparing the two, it's just there's massive friction for using Bitcoin. And only if that changed, would that happen? Now, look, if Bitcoin gets to a certain static price, that seems reasonable. I mean, I personally don't have any belief that Bitcoin will go well beyond digital gold. I think gold will continue to go up, so there's some upside. But this notion that could go up perpetually, I think, is insane. Where that Bitcoin can go perpetually? Well, versus depreciating Fiat, sure, but in real terms, there is a terminal price in real terms for Bitcoin in the global economy.

And obviously, if they're still in a Fiat standard, then, you know, whatever, but it's infinite. But the point is, is that if it gets to a terminal price and the Fiat standard starts to fall apart, then its use becomes absolutely possible, right? If tax policies change, then its use becomes possible. Well, tax, so the complication of tax and usage is an algebraic problem. This is literally like seventh grade algebra, something that software can trivially solve. So it's difficult, especially in early days when we didn't have any software that can handle this, and you're dealing with, gosh, where the hell was my transaction, what was the basis when I received it versus when I spent it?

And while tools have gotten pretty far, you're right. They're not there yet, and it is quite difficult. But this is a simple, like I said, simple algebraic formula to figure out, okay, boom, I spent everything in Bitcoin. And if I did at the end of the year, push one button, that's what I owe. Simple as that. Right. Yeah, but to Dave's point, people don't want to do that, Paul, right? I mean, people just don't want to do that with that asset.

Yeah. And by the way, unless, look, they can make a simple rule. They could make a simple change. They could say, they could say you can anytime you spend Bitcoin or spend an asset. you can use, you know, LIFO accounting or tax lot accounting automatically, meaning that if you buy Bitcoin and sell Bitcoin, you don't, there's no taxes because you're buying it at the new higher level. But if you own some from $10,000 and Bitcoin is at $200,000, you're going to be paying capital gains taxes on $190,000 of gains, right? You know, if you spend, that's what you spend. That, as long as that is the case, it will never be used by, it just won't. Now, until the first of next year, to my understanding, you can choose to spend the most recently acquired Bitcoin.

So if you earn it and then spend it, you're minimis. Trying doing that without spending a lot on software and dealing with your tax accountants. It's very hard. That is very simple software, right. And the amount that you spend in software is only because there's not many options out there, and they're milking the few people that are actually using it. In mass, this is a very trivial problem to solve. This is.

It would be. it would be, but you still, yeah. So, but look, you know, the problem is that this whole notion of utility drives me for CERC, because when you do financial assets, you have to think about it. I like, you know, I get into arguments. I poke the XRP army again today because, you know, people keep saying, well, you need XRP as a liquidity layer. And I'm like, well, why? You need it as a liquidity layer until all FX is tokenized. Once all FX is tokenized, why would you need one, if you're going from, for example, dollars to pesos, right now you can do dollars to pesos of your institutional bank and you want to do a trade, you can do it easily. If you're a retail person, it is painful. There's no good way to do it. So Ripple Labs created a way and they said, okay, well, we'll use XRP as an intermediate asset. You can sell your dollars for XRP and then buy your pesos for XRP. And it'll be cheaper than Western Union charges because you can drive, you know. But the truth is, is once you have tokenized pesos, tokenized pesos trading against tokenized dollars will be a much easier market for market.

makers and there's no need for an intermediary layer. So people who talk about utility, you have to understand, utility has to be, to use the aphorism, if you like hockey, skate to where the puck is going, right? You know, in a tokenized world, you won't need that. Now the layer ones that are gonna be used for it will be valuable, sure, but how much

and how much goes to the underlying tech versus the companies that are trading or utilizing in the market. And people in crypto have to figure this stuff out. There's all sorts of verticals where there's all sorts of enabling technologies that become very, very valuable. Look how valuable stripe is, for example, right? You know, and so there's a lot of valuation conversations that can happen. And many things will be valuable and many things will not be.

Old models are going to have to break. And I think a large part of what this cycle is doing without a, there was no old tone cycle. Why? Because people started to realize, well, wait a minute, what the hell is? is going to be the value here. You know, where are people, where's money going to come from? And so, you know, it's like other than buying what's a cool cartoon character, you know, what is it? I think the Trump and Melania, if nothing else, exploded meme coins, you know, in this cycle. Doesn't mean memes won't come back because, hell, you know, what's the size of that, that new toy?

You know, I don't even know, because my kids are older, so I'm not following it. But, you know, the new toy with the surprise boxes and stuff, I mean, that's a $42 billion market. I mean, people push for all sorts of crap. Are you talking about the boo-boos now? This is this a lobooboo town? Yeah, there you know. I couldn't remember the name of it. Yeah.

I mean, you know, when you look at that in the real world, obviously, there's going to be plenty of that stuff's going to happen. So I'm not against memes, but what I am against is people who believe that, well, because something is worth something now, it obviously has to increase when the market increases. It's like, no, only if it captures value. You're actually speaking my language there. And so I'm not a big believer in meme coins myself, but you just mentioned, like, the value of Stripe. Well, Stripe is an intermediary that then facilitates the transfer of value. That's what every L1 is. In a way, it is the intermediary that facilitates a transfer of value.

And like you said, well, where does XRP sit? Why would XRP go up in value if people are just sending a Philippine Paiso stable coin? Well, it is the intermediary that facilitates the transfer of value. And it does require a fee, just like Stripe goes and charges a fee. Bitcoin charges a fee. Ethereum charges a fee to transfer value. Now, what are people using? Are people using Striper?

Are they using some other intermediary? So that begs the question within all the chains and rankings, who's collecting the fees? Who are we paying the fees to be an intermediary? And right now the ranking is very lopsided from the viewpoint of market cap. Shouldn't Stripe have a high market cap because it is collecting a lot of fees to be the intermediary? Yes. Well, in crypto, it's not that way. Bitcoin is barely collecting any fees.

And you can't consider the blocker words because the block words are only going down. You just mentioned skate to where the puck is going. Well, in Bitcoin, the puck is going where that is going down and down and down. However, other chains, the puck is going where they are collecting fees. That's where it's headed. To some degree, that's true, Paul. But the problem is that they're probably based on that metric, so already overvalued based on speculation, that the fair price, even if they're gaining more adoption, is probably below where they are now.

They're all overpriced. Because price only got to where it is based on speculation now, not. based on those metrics. So like, what's the fair value even of one of those chains at full capacity if you're only valuing it on that metric? Probably lower than what it's priced at now. Realize that all of them, though, all of them have the capacity and ability to also be a store of value as soon as that simply is a mentality switch. The utility is the one that the technology actually can inhibit or enable. The store value piece is the one that is just a mentality switch and just say, you know something? I'd rather store ETH. I'd rather hold that. I like the

financial model of even if it is infinitely inflationary, it's small enough and can be deflationary at times. And so that, I think, is the challenge is this fragmentation of utility versus store value. And we keep talking about Bitcoin. We keep talking about Bitcoin. And in that sense, it's overvalued from the viewpoint. It has no, it has so little of the utility of the other chains. And that's what we need to fix. Yeah, I don't want to turn this into a debate on that topic. I would just say there are a lot of people who would make the argument that a Bitcoin as as sound money is unique in the way it is structured, the way it is set up, the way it has been created, the lack of control, et cetera, et cetera, and you could go through it. I mean, ether as money is, is difficult. XRP as money with the control ripple labs have is laughable.

And so when you start looking at things, I mean, Justin Bonds will make the argument that's a lot. Salana is better than all of us. Salana's money, Dave. That's what it really is. I actually think you guys are agreeing here. Maybe Paul's vision is going to take more time to kind of play out. But I do agree with him that, you know, try. And there are obviously lots of teams trying to bring utility to Bitcoin. I don't know. Maybe the utility of Bitcoin is just as a collateral vehicle. I don't know. I kind of think you guys are saying the same thing. Paul just maybe has a little bit longer term vision of where this is going to go. Well, I mean, I think of it slightly differently, but I don't care.

I mean, I don't think it really matters. What is interesting is that whenever we get, whenever you're in, if you want to understand mentality and what happens, most of the building and most of the really interesting questions get asked in crypto winters, not when number is flying up every day when everyone is staring at what's going on. And so a lot of really interesting conversations, a lot of really interesting building is going on right now. And I think that will continue. The real question is, you know, in this world where, you know, the governments kind of have no choice but to continue to pump liquidity in, will

crypto be a leading vehicle for that liquidity or not? And if the answer is not, okay, where is it? Right now, the leading vehicle in the world for where liquidity is going, where hot money is going is silver. You know, and you can't, that's just factual, you know, whatever you want to. saying now who knows where it will go but i think that's a large part of what's going on silver definitely has the history and to a degree the utility and so i give a credit for that and that's something that i would love to capture for bitcoin and we talk a lot about the the regulatory framework the environment we advocate for regulatory clarity and usability and i don't think we're advocating for the right thing is what i'd like to point out um and you'd mention gosh if we could just have a

diminutive exemption and so that people don't have to worry about it great but But there's no talk of that. No one's made so much as an application. Paul, when we do have talks like the minimis exemptions, right? I think that's a fairly new, a fairly new topic with respect to crypto regulation. I was, I was saying Lummis has been chattering about it. There's some talks about it.

Yeah. To my understanding, it's, it's bottom of the barrel compared to everything else. I would imagine that's true. Yeah. But, yeah, it, I just wanted to clarify because Lammis has been kind of pounding the table on that been even as recently as yesterday. But whether it's anywhere close to happening is, who knows? That, to me, would be one of the biggest buy signals, right?

Not the, you know, this company now makes it a, you know, another store value, sticks it in the treasury. If we get a de minimis exemption and we see that we can actually start using it, that to me is the major, major signal. The thing is, Paul, though, like, that demand is this exemption is very U.S. focused, right? And we have plenty of jurisdictions where people don't have to pay taxes to use small amounts of Bitcoin to buy things, and they're still not using small amounts of Bitcoin to buy things. But we're still obviously like a huge, huge part of the economy globally. And so it

sends a pretty massive statement. I'm just saying I don't think even in like a vacuum, we've seen it proven that that's actually what people want to do with their Bitcoin. Fair enough as far as I can mess. All right. Although I think the, the, the, usability of Bitcoin, and I think that's what I'm arguing is Bitcoin doesn't quite have its usability. The technology isn't there. And that's where we actually have the technology and other chains, so it needs to catch up in that regard. Yeah. Well, I mean, Paul, if I could just ask Paul, like what you think, I mean, obviously, Ordinals kicked off kind of, I don't know, 130 medical protocols, L2, side chains, whatever. And realistically, none of them really got

adopted. I mean, you know, what's your feeling on that? Do you feel like it's just, well, they haven't had time to kind of really reach out or get adoption, but I haven't really seen anything. Nothing is going to get really adopted except for stable coins. I think the fragmentation is the challenge and the sable coins have been well adopted. And guess what? Like none of them on Bitcoin. Right. And so maybe one of the L2s, when it finally, when things finally consolidate, get some stable coin volume on it, that'll give Bitcoin some utility, much like Strike has, I'm sorry, Stripe has utility. So that can at least start off the narrative of,

okay, well, I need to hold Bitcoin to pay fees to be able to send dollars. That's the kickoff. And then from there, we can go into, okay, actually using Bitcoin. But utility is in a multifaceted term. One is to pay fees to do something else, and one is to actually use it as a medium of exchange, unit of account, and right now it has none of those. So it's purely just store a value.

And it's a multifaceted approach, both improve the technology, push for better regulations such as de minimis exemption. But we need to get there. Otherwise, I think Bitcoin is stagnant. I don't think it's a good investment, period, over the next 10 years, unless we have some level of utility in one of these facets. I disagree, but I understand your point. I don't think that 99% of people buy any financial asset because they care what it does. Call me a cynic, but I also don't think most people are trading stocks on those metrics.

I think a good amount of NVIDIA's, you know, market cap is because it has a utility. I agree. I'm not saying that stocks don't have value. I'm saying that your average retail investor doesn't buy them because of those metrics. Well, they buy it because someone else bought it and the price went up, right? That's right. So you have the institutional investors that bought it because they realize, holy shit, this company is making money. Like, they are collecting fees, right?

And so they buy it. And then all the retail investors, FOMO into it, following the trend, not knowing. what the hell Nvidia is. They think, is that a graphics card gaming company? Well, it's going up. I'll buy it. And so, yes, you're right. Most retail doesn't, but the smart money does. And that's where the smart money is leaving crypto because we don't have a utility. Well, there's truth there. But understand what crypto is and what crypto could be and what Bitcoin is and what Bitcoin could be. They're very different. And I always say this because you know, you have, we have this world of Bitcoin Maxis, and we have a world of, you know,

of Ethereum Maxis or crypto folks who only care about the technology. And there's a middle ground. And the middle ground is, look, you know, gold, good old gold, you know, is, you know, platinum is 30 times rarer. And for most of my lifetime before the last 10 years was dramatically more valuable and valued in jewelry than gold. And yet gold right now is two and a half times the price of platinum. and probably going higher. Why? Because the monetary component of gold from central bank buying

and hot money following the central banks. That has nothing to do with utility, literally nothing. And whenever you start claiming it, it's crazy. Because if you really want to talk about what's utility, utility means it's useful and provides a service. Well, Bitcoin stabilizing electric grids in a world of AI is dramatically more utility than gold looking nice on a pair of earrings. It just is. And so I have a really hard time with that. Now, as far as the rest of crypto is concerned, I agree with you completely. I think that, that, you know, there is a world where we are going digital and there will be value accrued to the networks that support that. And that will, and by the way, that's in so many different verticals. And I think a lot of them haven't even, don't, you know, haven't really been fully explored yet. And so there will be major winners. They will be. I just think that we don't know what those winners. are necessarily now and everything we're doing is speculating and so about what will happen and that's kind of an interesting mental model if there are analysts out there who will tell you that there are multiple you know crypto focused you know tokens that actually do have value and can be

measured and are undervalued right now and there are others will tell you that there are massively overvalue and I don't know which is which well I do I have some sense but let's bring those analysts on because a Trump token is obviously under Bitcoin Bitcoin Bitcoin Bitcoin Bitcoin Bitcoin Fed, Fed, Fed, gold, gold, gold. Let's bring on the animals that actually can analyze the different chains, which ones are undervalued, which ones aren't. I wish I was one of those people, but I like to just kind of build the tech personally.

And so I'd love to hear what some of that insight is. The point is that it's not, it's sort of like, the winning tech is not the winning company. No, I get it. I get to win for a very very long time. Within, it's not just beta max versus VHS. It's not, there are many examples, but in an AI world, the winning chips will win.

and the winning chip makers will win because the market's going to demand it. It's not a commercial, it's not a retail good. So it's not like it never matters. Tech matters a lot, but it depends on what you're talking about. And so the thing is, is that when you go under the car, there was an old expression that was so true for the, at the end, you know, in the last upward impulse for the last year in the internet bubble,

that the death knell for an internet company was to actually have revenue. And it's true. I mean, Mike probably remembers it. I don't know if that was before or after he had hair. But, you know, when you have an internet, these internet companies, when they started showing revenue, and the revenue was all of a sudden, you had an E. It's the best, it's the best clip ever from the show Silicon Valley. Everybody's saying that we've played at revenue. On revenue.

Then they start asking you about earnings. Yeah. I mean, you don't want revenue. Right. Exactly. Pre-revenue. But there's nothing worse than having a P.A. a PE ratio on your screen, on your retail stock screen, saying NA doesn't deter people,

but a PE ratio of a thousand makes people go, oh, my God. And so it happened time after time. So I understand what you're saying, Paul, but there are a lot of projects in crypto who really don't, they want to deflect from the fact that these ratios would make them look so incredibly overvalued that no one would want them. And that's why you're at this level that you're at. So then don't you want to just look, Dave, to network effects, right? You just want to look to, well, who's got the network effects?

It's Ethereum, it's Solana, it's Bitcoin. I mean, do you look beyond that right now? Personally, no. The only other one I like is Tao or, you know, that and that's on the come. But, you know, who knows? I could be wrong. You know, I, you know, whatever. But that's what, that's exactly how I'm looking at it.

It's really all about network effects. And, you know, when you look at that, it really matters. to where the world is which way the world is moving to and everyone keeps talking about stable coins as the killer app because table coins are the killer entry app but understand that underneath stable coins are still the same fiat it just means you can now process it better you know companies out there mean we saw the western union with salana deal a blah blah blah the friction in our current financial system is going to get is going to be changed by crypto and that decreasing that friction is going to put a lot of money back into the real economy and there will be value to

be extracted from that just less than the current banking cartel is extracting right you know these are the sorts of things that people think about because you know when you look at like we were talking the other day about collateral and bitcoin and blah blah blah blah blah blah the one thing you have to understand about defy or why and why this is being fought inside the back rooms in Washington is because if you're J.P. Morgan, if you're a city group, if you're, you know, what is it, UBS now, you know, which is now both Swiss banks combined, you know, if you're a big prime broker, you're making a lot of money, a lot of money by holding on to effectively cartels in securities financing of a variety, and across a variety of businesses.

And once that becomes completely open and transparent, those margins are going to collapse. And of course, volumes will therefore explode because it'll become easier, but those margins will collapse. In the collapsing of those margins, it doesn't mean that the overall wallet's going to decrease because the volumes could go up, but it does mean that their stranglehold on it will go away. And we've seen this in financial markets time and time again over the last 30 years. And so that's why this is being fought. And yes, as Paul says, the chains that ultimately end up being key to that transformation, we'll have a lot of value. That is true. I just don't know which ones will be there or when it will happen. Well, you can definitely use what you'd

mentioned with, you know, network effect being a large piece of that value and a big indicator as to which ones already have network effect and already have the value transfer and the fee collection. And that from the speculator's point of view is probably their best bet. and sure i mean that thing could come out of nowhere you just said you just basically you know explained kind of in reverse tom tom lee's thesis which which i don't necessarily disagree with uh you know i think that he's is wearing a little bit too much of a cheerleader shirt because of his CEO role but the truth is that that is the thesis it's network effects and the need to go into that direction and trust and people in financial companies

you know, there used to be an expression. You don't get fired by choosing at the time it was IBM, you know, you don't get fired choosing, even though it was obvious that they didn't perform as well as many other tech platforms for a very long period of time. But so, in theory, has an enormous edge. There's no doubt. Now, how will that work out? I don't know.

I guess we'll see. But the, I can't say fact. the likelihood that we will have at some point in the next decade or so, some version of a decentralized finance system that multiple players and new competitors can utilize to break the cartel and actually bring costs of financing down and transparency up is high. And when that happens, value will be created and taken away from existing players. That's, I just said basically digital, the same thing you could have said about Kodak versus digital. The difference is, is unlike Kodak, every one of the banks understands what I said is true.

Therefore, they're going to fight it from happening to delay it and try to co-opt it when it happens. That's the difference. They're already actively trying to co-opt it, if not having a good amount of success, but very good point. Yeah, so anyway, that's my thoughts for today. Meanwhile, we managed to talk about stuff other than the Fed for a few minutes, so that's good. Nobody wants to talk about the Fed. I think we can wrap. I had enough of the Fed.

I mean, it's forgettable, as Mike said, to deliberately ignore list. Hi on it. Yeah, we got what's going on. I think that Mike and I, weirdly, are in agreement that we're in this range, whichever way it breaks, is going to tell us a lot. I just think that the entire world thinks that the range is going to break to the downside. I don't know many people who are willing to say they think it's other than Mike Alfred and me.

Me. I say up. Okay, well, maybe there's too much up. I don't know. I mean, when we all agree on up, then it tends to go down. If we all agree on down, then it tends to go up. That tends to be what happens.

But, you know, I guess we'll see. 91,000 forever. That's my prediction. 90,000 forever. Just stay here. good times I'll actually agree on the up at least for you know

2026 I just think it's going to be pretty boring up in the sense that we're going to hit some ceilings that'll make bitcoin just not that interesting to a lot of people I don't I don't disagree with that I definitely don't disagree with that all right guys well thank you to

Dave Paul Mike Adam and whoever else may have graced our stage for five seconds here and there can't see them anyways we enjoyed it We'll be back tomorrow, of course, for another Cryptotown, All 1015 AM Eastern Standard Time. Thank you very much, gentlemen. See you tomorrow. Bye. Visit to download your spaces today.