The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Short Squeeze! Bears In Trouble? | Crypto Town Hall With Gareth Soloway, Benjamin Cowen, Jason Pizzino & Others

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

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Hi man, can you hear me? I can hear you. Cool. I'm a Bluetooth, so I'm just giving you a close invite. Yeah, I'm up. Wild Spaces yesterday. How was your show today? Because I know you kind of rode that wave, hex wave. It was good, constructive. I had Gary and Guy Rags to Riches, Brandon, two of the, I would say, more level-headed people that we spoke with yesterday just to sort of continue the conversation. in this space when we just wildly accuse everyone of being an idiot or a scammer or a you know a uh

whatever the tribalism so it was good to sort of get to the bottom of some of that so what's your conclusion do you still think hex is a scam or it's just a project you don't like or it doesn't make sense to you i don't i don't throw the word scam around lightly so um you don't you don't you don't i would call i'll just say they're a scam you don't throw the word scam around lightly so um you don't you don't you don't i wouldn't call us anything a scam you don't throw the word scam lightly yeah i mean i don't think it's appropriate to call something a scam unless you have a hell of a lot of proof that someone's literally trying to steal money from people and i don't know that that was the case the the bigger question i had for them actually was like at let's assume the worst about Richard, which I'm not doing, of course, right? I don't like the SEC. I don't like their tactics. So I remain open-minded,

but let's assume that there's some major criminal case comes out and he's prosecuted on very clear evidence and guilty. Does that change their community's sort of opinion of him? And these guys are kind of on the fence about him anyways. But in the comments, it was all like, no, Richard's a martyr. He'll save. Someone is something. Yeah. By the way, someone did call him a martyr yesterday, didn't they?

Now space. Yeah, he did. I mean, listen, when they invested in Pulse or whatever, it was called a sacrifice. And they're calling him a martyr. I mean, those terms ring true of certain religious fervor right so um but like i said that that makes us all say listen to all these people who follow this thing or follow this guy or you know i think eric wall literally like called them trailer trashers yeah right i must say guys i was guys, I was taken aback by the Hicks community.

I mean, it's a cult. I mean, I was taken aback by how, you know, when we started getting into discussions around the fact that it's okay for one person to have the cheese and they were comfortable with it, and I was trying to explain to them that it's not okay, and they just yeah they just tend they have so many reasons and excuses for that by the way i addressed that today and and it just

gets sort of danced around in my opinion it's coping listen i think everybody's been there but i think it's important to note that there are a huge swath of that community and others who approach these like a cult or religious fervor. And then there's people who are just reasonable, intelligent people who see things differently than us and are investing in these things for financial gain or a different level of belief. And it's important not to lump all those people together just because they like the same asset. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And before we kick off today's show i just wanted you guys you know we were meant to cover curve yesterday and the drama there the kind of hex took over the show um so

maybe we can touch on that briefly and i think uh ryan you talked about it in your show so maybe you can update us what happened yesterday um how uh you know how would it impact the rest of the defi ecosystem and then the latest today? Yeah, I think I'll address it now. I think pretty much the worst is over, or it seems to be over. But for those of you who don't know what happened, Curve, which is a DeFi protocol,

and specifically what Curve is very good at, is it's a place where you can exchange a stable coin for another stable coin with very low slippage. So it's like if you're holding USDT and you want to buy DAI or USDC, probably the best place to trade that is is on curve um now curve was hacked and it was hacked through a vulnerability in the compiler which i don't want to get too into what that means technically but the result is that the hacker had seven million crave tokens who by the way the hacker hasn't million Curve tokens, who by the way, the hacker hasn't

started moving those tokens around yet. So that's not where the story ends. Because if the story ended there, it would have been just another DeFi hack and we would have been able to move on. The problem is that the founder of Curve had a loan, a $100 million loan against his Curve tokens. And there's not much, that's quite a normal thing. And it's actually quite a smart thing. So if you're a founder of a protocol and you believe that your protocol is going to do

really, really well, then you don't want to sell your tokens. But at the same time, you do want to enjoy a good lifestyle and buy things. And so what sometimes founders do, and they do it sometimes, they did with shares. And in this case, I've done it with tokens, is the founder took his tokens, used them as collateral, and loaned $100 million. And part of what he bought with $100 million is he bought an $80 million mansion in Australia. Two. Two. Two mansions. Two mansions. Anyway, long story short- So you have to have one for the wife and one for the girlfriend, just in case. Long story short, long story short, the problem is that as the um as the price of curve came down and the price

of curve came down initially because people were scared that the hacker first of all it's not a good look when you get hacked but second of all people were scared that the hacker would dump his tokens on the market and so people got really scared and that started to take the price of curve down problem is that as the price of curveve down. The problem is that as the price of Curve went down, the founder's stash nearly got to the levels of being liquidated. And the problem with that is that if the founder's stash got liquidated, it doesn't get liquidated slowly and he can't really phone anyone like in a centralized transaction because this is a decentralized protocol which just basically implements a liquidation.

And so that would have destroyed, not only destroyed the price of Curve, but it would have destroyed the price of Aave where you had the biggest loan and FraxLend where you had the second biggest loan. And that could have basically hit the DeFi protocols very, very, very, very hard. So what did he do?

He started to repay his loan, as much of the loan as he could. And he repaid it by moving all his USDT, all his USDC. He started selling a whole lot of his tokens, including Lido and a whole lot of others, and started to repay the debt. But even that was the end up, and even with that repaying of the debt, the problem is that the interest rates

kept going higher and higher and higher. I'm not going to get into the reason why the interest rates kept going higher and higher. It's got to do with the pool utilization in these protocols. Suffice to say that the liquidation price got higher and higher and higher. So he landed up selling a lot of his Curve tokens

in over-the-counter transactions to people like Justin Sun, Maki Big Brother, and a lot of other people. And for now, it feels like everything is under control and he's nowhere near liquidation. But I would keep my eyes on Curve. And if the price of Curve goes down again, anywhere near the low 50s and maybe late 40s, then there is a possibility that he may get liquidated again. Okay, now what happens if he does get liquidated? Let's just talk about what happens if he does get liquidated. It doesn't really affect the protocol in any way. The protocol continues to function as normal, but a whole lot of tokens are going to hit the market. And that's going to affect the DeFi protocols that actually lend him money.

So the protocols like Aave or Frax, which lend him money, they're going to take a bad debt. So that's kind of like what's going to happen here or what could happen here. For now, it seems like it's under control. I've been watching this all day because we've got positions in curve.

We've got long positions and short positions in curve. So we have been watching this all day because we've got positions in curve. We've got long positions and short positions in curve. So we have been watching this all day. And for now, it looks like everything's under control and probably going to blow. That's the story. But isn't there kind of a deeper narrative here about how problematic this is systematically? First of all, these are all handshake deals with people saying, oh, you can't sell it. I'm going to give you this. It'll be locked up. But like these people can violate those deals. Right. Nonspecific. So somebody could still easily dump this down. I'm not trying to create fear. I don't think he's going to get liquidated. I think that has largely been avoided. But like, did we not learn last time that shit coins from founders are not pristine collateral for loans even if it's over collateralized?

I mean, look. I mean, hold on. Here's the problem. I mean, for one, you want to call it a shitcoin and it's a very, very, very solid exchange with a very, very strong... Yes, but the coin...

I'm not speaking about the protocol or the platform, but the coins are extremely volatile. Is there anyone on the planet who would be surprised if any coin went down relatively quickly 50% in the crypto world? No, but that's why the collateral ratios are way above 2 to 1. What's the collateral ratio, Ryan? I'm not sure.

I think you're at 3 to 1 or 4 to 1. I think right now he has $ million worth for like 60 million. What's the issue, Scott? It's a risk reward. I don't see it. It's not a shit coin with no liquidity. The risk is exactly this. It's the unknown unknowns in the real world, I guess we'll call it, or whatever. When a bank takes a collateralized, over-collateralized loan, they don't have to worry about a

hack destroying the underlying protocol. This all works until somebody hacks it exactly as we saw, and then you have to literally go out to Justin's son and friends and find a way to not get collateralized and collapse all of DeFi.

Look, full disclosure, all of DeFi, because of a single guy's loan on his own founder tokens is wildly problematic to me. Full disclosure, we reached out to them yesterday on Twitter and we started doing a deal with them and they eventually got to a point where they said, okay, we sold too much, we don't want to sell anymore. So, I mean, if we could get our hands on to those tokens at 40 cents, I would have taken them at half. Who wouldn't? Like they're getting a massive discount OTC on a token. I don't fault anybody for stepping in. That's

not my point. My point is that this guy took a quote-unquote safe loan because of the perception of the over-collateralization on founders' tokens. And yes, we can praise him for not selling them on the open market, but he couldn't sell them. He couldn't sell them.

There was no liquidity. Right. But a loan that large, in theory, could literally collapse all of DeFi. So it should not be a fail. Hold on. It could collapse all of DeFi. What do you mean collapse all of DeFi the prices are going up so much liquidity and so much volume of so many tokens on so many

platforms being dumped all at once by the smart contract that has to liquidate that it could literally fundamentally change maybe let me explain it let me just explain it a little bit different the

the curve tokens would get dumped on the market a little bit different. Curve tokens would get dumped on the market. As a result of the curve tokens being dumped on the market, probably Aave would have to then realize a bad debt, right? Because remember, Aave held this token on a collateral of 3 to 1 or whatever it is. But at some point, you know, when you're selling that aggressively and that quickly,

you'll get into expectation that the protocol would have to take a knock. Now, the protocol has a pool to fund these kind of knocks. Just so you understand. But the protocol has a

pool to fund these countries. It's like the insurance funds on leverage exchanges. Correct. So they would also take all of these NOCs. Let's put it that way. Yeah, I don't see it to be that big of an issue. I just think it's DeFi doing its thing. It's people taking risks.

Lack of liquidity in the markets. If there's enough liquidity, this won't even be an issue. Yeah, Mario, I just want to say people forget very quickly that, I mean, I think it was the 2020 drop in Bitcoin, March 12, 2020, that BitMEX, literally because their engine was so aggressively liquidating loans, if they had not had a mysterious down for maintenance when Bitcoin went under 4,000 on BitMEX, even Bitcoin, the most liquid asset we have, would have literally gone to zero if they had allowed those liquidations to continue. Insurance fund be damned. So even on the most highly liquid asset we have literally on Bitcoin in March of 2020,

an exchange and their singular practices put at least... But the set plans you have will apply to traditional financial markets. The only difference is there's enough liquidity there, but then again, if the risk... The only difference is there's somebody to come in and step in and prevent a backstop, which I'm not saying is the better thing. This is, of course, a free market, but I'm saying... I'm saying that the protocol should

not be used in a manner where if the black swan or worst case happens, it collapses the entire market with systemic risk. That's all I'm saying. I'm a proponent of DeFi. I just don't understand how you could now at this point put tens or hundreds of millions of dollars into these loan products in good conscience, knowing that there might be some hack that you don't even understand. I mean, Curve should have been effectively ran, correct me if I'm wrong,

one of the least hackable protocols. This should never have happened. They're considered one of the safest. So what would you say is a solution for this? And we'll move on right after this last question. What is the solution? Smaller loans. So people taking less.

So humans... Smaller less. So humans. Smaller loans. So humans. Humans. Just take Ethereum. So humans taking less risk in a decentralized financial system. Is that what you're saying? I know that that sounds ridiculous, but I don't think you should be able to take unlimited risk with any asset.

Welcome to decentralization. But guys, we should work at the SEC, Scott. Yeah, it looks like it. I forgot to tell you, I applied. I applied. You're the critical guy. The most critical guy. I should know, Rand beats you. Before we get into

the order of the day, we've got some big brains here. We've got Ben Kahn. Ben, you should check your telegram. I sent you a telegram. I don't know if you got some big brains here. We've got Ben Khan. Ben, you should check your telegram. I sent you a telegram. I don't know if you've looked at your telegram. We've got Don, which is a very cool account. Jason, Pazino, Gareth.

We've got some big speakers here today. What do you guys think of these rumors that the SEC is going to start coming after crypto influencers? Wondering if anybody's heard anything about it and what your thoughts are. I'll kick it off. I think this is great news. I think this is a long time coming.

I don't know if Scott agrees with me, but I think this is needed. I think this is where they should have started years ago because it just pisses me off significantly. But haven't they started already? There's been the narrative for a while. Didn't they crack down on a bunch of influences earlier the year?

I think it's on the back of Richard Hart but yeah go ahead whoever's going to speak Yeah so it's me Alex, hi guys Yeah so we basically saw this already and not specifically for crypto influencers but in general influencers that were promoting crypto scams

take for example Kim, Logan Paul, his brother Jake Paul, where they actually got indicted for and they tried to get after them. So for now, nothing really came out of this. Hold on, Logan. Sorry, bro. Logan and Jake Paul got indicted?

At least? No. No, I have for sure read something that said... Floyd Mayweather, Floyd Mayweather, Kim Kardashian, DJ Khaled, Paul Pierce, all largely for Ethereum Max. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Because just to be clear, it was not because any of these things, maybe they were scams, but none of them were deemed scams. What they got in trouble for was not disclosing and specifically not only disclosing they were paid, but the specific amount. Kim Kardashian actually openly disclosed that she was getting paid by Ethereum Max. And then she was charged by the

SEC or sued for promoting an unregistered security. And the reasoning they gave was because she didn't say how much she was- So you're promoting- Big jump. And yeah. And then Mario, not only that, Ethereum Max has never been actually deemed an unregistered security. They never went after Ethereum Max for an unregistered security offering or defined it as that. But Kim Kardashian was made an example of for not sharing how much she was compensated for. I never thought I'd say it,

but this does seem like it's a bit too much. They ask you if you need to disclose that you you've been sponsored that you've been paid that makes complete sense but to disclose exactly how much you've been paid does anyone think that's a good idea yeah no no makes it makes it makes no sense I wouldn't disclose to somebody how much I get paid I think Rand would do the same. He would never go and say, I got amount X epsilon from Binance or whatever. That's why I live in the U.S. I think the U.S. is ridiculous. I mean, you know what?

This is probably a good time to talk about the U.S. downgrade. I don't think they would just come for the U.S. influencers, by the way. Same here. I mean, I asked a few people. I don't think being in the US the SEC views that as protective the names, and I will not share but that I've heard thrown out are not

generally US I'll tell you I'll tell you privately and I think a lot of it would be, they would be more focused on people that launch Toketh I think they lot of it would be, they would be more focused on people that watch Toketh. Can you?

Right. I think they're going for an Australian. And I don't think it's the Australian that is on our panel here today. Who would it be? If I give you. No, I don't know. I don't know. Who's an Australian who's not on our panel?

I don't know of many Australian influences. Do you, Scott? There's really no reason to go down this path. Let me ask you. Before you, Scott? There's really no reason to go down this path. Let me ask you before you go to the downgrade. It's not BitBoy. Yeah, I never thought it was BitBoy. BitBoy, didn't he make a video about getting the SEC letter

a few months ago now? Someone sent me a video, unless I'm misunderstood, of him attacking the SEC after they sent him a letter. But I could be wrong. But either way, this is expected. So hold on. If Kim Kardashian...

Okay, so if any influencer... Can we move on to... Can we move on? Yeah, I was enjoying this. Go ahead with the downgrade. Go ahead, go ahead. You know what? I want to just segue before we go into, I guess,

let's talk about this US deaths death downgrade yesterday and i like as an outsider to the u.s i look at this and i think to myself this is so obvious it's so obvious that you're going to get downgraded because the u.s is like it's a it's a shit show it's a mess you've got you've got a huge debt you've got increasing interest rates there's no way that they're going to be able to to continue to service debt. Soon, Japan and China aren't going to want their debt anymore. It's being run like a shit show. Honestly, it's non-commercial. It's too political.

The whole thing around the debt ceiling and the shenanigans that go before the debt ceiling. For me, I'm surprised this never happened earlier. I'm wondering if anybody else feels the same way. I'm also wondering why the markets haven't responded. The last time that the US got downgraded, the S&P went down 15%. Can we go to basics? JC, can you

tell us more exactly what that means? What does a downgrade mean? When did it happen last? Why has the market been pretty mute? Yeah, and I think Ron made a bunch of good points. I think it's most people I speak to, and I talk to a lot of portfolio managers and traders and a lot of people on the street. I've been doing this for a living every day for more than two decades.

I didn't know Fitch still existed. I don't think anybody else did either. I don't think anybody cares. You know, it's like, really? These guys are still around? So, and a lot of what Rand was saying, we know, you know, the shit show, the debt ceiling. And I'm a technician. And, you know, I don't really watch the news.

And even I know all these things, right? Like, everybody knows, the rest of the world knows. It's no big deal. So, in terms of, like, why the market's not reacting more is anybody really surprised by it right uh and and for me i'm no expert again i didn't even know these people existed so the fact that the market doesn't care to me it's not surprising at all right like theoretically the market theoretically the market should care right like in theory on paper the fact that it doesn't reiterate a couple of things, number one, doesn't matter. Number two, the market's got bigger fish to fry, right? The market's interested

in more important things, clearly. And I think that the reason that the S&P and the NASDAQ are a little bit under pressure and kind of have been for a couple of weeks and haven't really been able to make much progress is because their biggest leaders of the year, you know, are running into some former levels of overhead supply where they failed last time they were here. Things like Microsoft, things like the XLK in general, the technology index. So the indexes themselves have overhead supply. It doesn't mean they need to crash. It doesn't mean that the bull market is over.

It just means that these markets need time to digest. So I think what the market is looking at is forward-looking, right? The market is a discounting mechanism. There's a reason that the new 52-week lows list peaked 14 months ago, right? And things have gotten progressively better, not just in the United States, but around the world. Greece is making new five-year highs. European banks are making new 52-week highs.

This is a global bull market, not the United States. In fact, the United States is underperforming in this particular cycle, which if you're an American, you might not see it that way. People around the world, it's quite obvious. And if you'd study bull markets throughout history, the U.S. underperforms in a lot of them. So, you know, people with their recency bias, how just because in the last bull market,

the U.S. dominated because of the amount of tech exposure that it had, the countries around the world, like the U.K., for example, has zero tech exposure. So they weren't able to benefit from that last bull market in the same way that something like the United States did. So let's keep in mind the composition. So the question is, do we continue to see the rotation that we've already gotten so far in the first month of the back half of the year, which is now behind us? The best performing sectors were energy, materials, right? Financials. These are the best performing. Those were the worst performing sectors in the first half, right? They were the better performing sectors off the initial lows last summer. So the question is, does the rotation continue into some of these different sectors that

do not have anywhere near the weightings in the s p 500 in the nasdaq like something like tech and communications and consumer discretionary which is what got us here over the last six seven months while those other areas underperformed look at something like caterpillar making new all-time highs the us industrial sector making new all-time highs the u.s energy sector represents four percent of the s p 500 it represents zero percent of the nasdaq So these energy stocks could double and triple, and their market caps are so little, and the weighting in these indexes is so irrelevant, they're not going to make a dent in the overall markets. So we can very easily, and so

far we've already seen that over the last few weeks, be in a scenario where the indexes, particularly the S&P and the NASDAQ, the Dow's got more exposure to some of those, the other value areas, but particularly the S&P and the NASDAQ could have a got more exposure to some of those the other value areas but particularly the s&p and the nasdaq could have a very difficult time going up over the next several months but underneath the surface you have monster winners monster individual stock but what about what about what about the fact that the dollar is actually stronger after 100 i could 100 so that's the key that that's it you nailed it you're 100 right and it's the key. That's it. You nailed it. You're 100% right.

And it's not even that the dollar's been up after the downgrade. The dollar was already rallying before that, FYI, quite some time. So we are now back above 101.5 and the U.S. dollar over the past six, seven years has been very, very strongly negatively correlated. Stronger dollar, you have weak stock market. Weaker dollar, stocks are doing very well. The dollar's gotten hit hard over the last several quarters. Stocks are doing great, right? When did the dollar peak? Dollar peaked at the end of September, right before the fourth quarter started british pound bottoms on september the 26th euro bottom two days later japanese yen and emerging markets bottomed a couple of weeks later s&p was up seven and a half percent in the

fourth quarter last year another seven percent in the first quarter i still don't understand i still understand like i mean why why has the market completely, completely, completely shrugged itself? One theory that I heard is that it's not actually about economic activity as much as it is around liquidity. And right now, the dollar and dollar-denominated debt is the most liquid. And for as long as an asset is the most liquid, people are going to shrugdle everything else because what the investor in the US dollar is looking at is just liquidity. What's your take? It's positioning. It's positioning is the answer, right?

The reason the stocks have done so well. I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why real quick. The reason the stock market has done so well this year, it's not because the fundamentals are so different or the economy is so much better, is that investors came into the year very short, very heavy cash. And the unwind of that is what you've seen. We're coming up some of the most pessimistic levels in history. The U.S. dollar has been the only safe haven asset. You talked about liquidity. There's been for a long time, U.S. treasury bonds were a safe haven asset.

They did worse than stocks last year. Japanese yen was also because of the yen carry trade was also safe haven. Nope. Last year, the yen was making new 20-year lows. The only safe haven asset was the U.S. dollar. So a weaker dollar is just evidence of a flight to risk appetite and no need for safe haven assets, which is why the dollars come down. But the fact that the dollars bid up even before this news, if the U.S. dollar index is above 101.5, I think stocks in general are going to have a difficult time going up in the same way that they did in the first half of the year. No problem. Gareth, I see your hands up. Let's go to you. Yeah. So I disagree. I don't think this market's shrugging it off. Now, you're not seeing a crash

in the market, but the NASDAQ's down 1.75%. Now, granted, it's been up endlessly this entire year, but for the most part, we are seeing something. And the question going back to why the dollar is stronger, the dollar is stronger today simply because if the US is getting downgraded, then everyone else in the world is in even worse shape. Therefore, the flight to safety is in the dollar, right? I mean, that's what we see. So everyone's looking and saying, wow, the US just got downgraded. What about Japan who has a debt to GDP of 250%? Why would the US be downgraded first? Not sure how that works. Oh, I mean, yeah. I mean, that's...

There's only 10 countries around the world with a perfect rating, right? So the US was one of the last ones. Right. Right, exactly. So it's kind of like the worst house on a bad block or whatever you want to call it, right? But I think when you look at things, right, so you are seeing a reaction in the market, and people have to understand is the simplicity of it, basically what this downgrade is. And it's not a huge downgrade, but it's the symbolism that means something, right? That's where it comes down to, where, you know, essentially the credit score for countries is measured in this rating system. And, you know, when you drop the credit score, when one of us has a lower credit score, you're going to have to pay more in interest. Right. And interest rates go up. So this is another kind of nail in the coffin of saying higher for longer.

Right. So the lower that goes, the more people say, you know, how can the U.S. be paying a trillion dollars in interest now going forward on a yearly basis? Because that's where we are, $32 trillion in debt. You have corporate bonds rolling over something like a trillion dollars in the next six or eight months. I mean, there's massive debt here. So every little downgrade is going to put more pressure on interest rates staying higher or going higher for longer. And you can even see today, the 10-year is at 4.10%. It's now breaking above a key resistance, right? We hit it back in March. March, by the way, the high was 4.10. That coincided with Silicon Valley bank failure and all the banking crisis. And now we, again, are breaking above that. So I do think that while we're not in a collapse mode, I do think this is something that could escalate very, very quickly. And I think people have to be on alert. And by the way, with the rates going, think about what that does to

growth in tech. What Garrett was just talking about now, higher rates, that's why the NASDAQ is the index that's underperforming for these kind of stocks. Ben, I want to go to you. I saw you tweeted something earlier about NASDAQ's performance in August of a pre-election year, or the S&P's

performance in August of a pre-election year, August, September. You also tweeted something around Bitcoin's performance in August on a pre-halving year. And if I remember correctly, I think you said that it's usually 20% down in the August pre-halving. Is that right? Yeah, that's correct. If you include all three pre-halving years, if you just include the last two, the average is negative 12% or so. Okay, so the two correlate. If I get this right, we've got a downgrade.

I think what you're trying to say is that the S&P 500 usually goes down in the August-September period of the pre-election year, and Bitcoin goes down. Now, Bitcoin hasn't been correlated to markets on the way up. But I think probably your theory is that Bitcoin will be correlated to traditional markets on the way down, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, this is nothing normal. People keep saying, why is Bitcoin not following the S&P higher? I mean, plenty of times the S&P put in new highs. Late 2018, it was putting in new highs. Late 2019, the S&P was putting in new highs. Bitcoin was not putting in new highs during that time. And I think, again, it's more so because crypto is a function of that excess liquidity. I just want to quickly say what Scott was saying earlier, I think people should be paying more attention to because I think he absolutely had the nail on the head. There is systemic risk, I think, in the DeFi space. And I think that it will lead to a lot of risk in, I mean, yes, in Bitcoin,

but more so I think it'll hit Ethereum, it'll hit a lot of these DeFi protocols. And that's ultimately what leads to the end of the altcoin carnage that we've seen over the last 18 months. Oh, wow. So hold on, Benjamin, you think there's going to be a final leg down that's going to be led by DeFi? And that's because there's systemic risks which are not uncommon in any financial market. But there's no third party. There's no government to bail out to avoid a complete collapse. And we're going to see that final collapse that will kind of mark the end of the carnage. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, exactly. The Ethereum Bitcoin valuation is, I mean, if you look at it on a monthly time frame, it looks like just a massive distribution phase over the last two years, just like it did last cycle as well. I think you'll likely see a huge windfall on the Ether Bitcoin pair from where it is now to that 0.03 to 0.04 range. And that's exactly what I think will mark the end of the cartage in the altcoin market. I don't think the reckoning is over in altcoins until the collapse of Ether Bitcoin occurs. I think Ethereum will go on to put in new eyes, don't get me wrong, but I still think we're at that phase of the cycle. And by the way, on average, from um from june to december the ether bitcoin pair is red i mean it's just

we're in a very seasonal time for crypto to not really do that well especially the altcoin market against bitcoin and i i mean you know i i keep wondering exactly what is this what is the event going to be that causes that dominance of bitcoin to go to 60 because that's sort of the that's what that's what the models say is going to happen. And I mean, I think maybe Scott's onto something. Maybe that is the ultimate risk. Because listen, the altcoin market has been struggling to do anything, right? Look at total three. It's struggling to do anything, even on days when Bitcoin goes up three to 4%. So what happens if we go into a risk-off environment?

We've been in a risk-on environment for the last seven to eight months in crypto, where Bitcoin has generally moved higher, and it's kept these higher-risk assets, like these altcoins, from really going into price discovery to the downside. I mean, yes, some of them have gone down, but I think the depression phase is almost here for the altcoin market um so so and and with us getting closer to the halving you don't think like what is there a certain period like in the next three months let's say in the next five months if you don't see that carnage you'll be like all right cool maybe we've seen the worst like what

do you need to see to be like okay maybe i'm wrong and maybe we've seen the worst already yeah i mean i guess if if time goes by and and we're close i mean i mean you also have a lot of other other things going on right you have an inverted yield curve you have so many other metrics that point to bad things are likely going to come before this business cycle is over um remember last cycle i i know the bitcoin having is is getting closer last cycle many altcoins were putting in their final lows only two months before the halving. You're talking about this time that would correspond to February. So I think if we can get to the Bitcoin halving and the yield curve un-inverts and there's no

real movement in the unemployment rate, then maybe I would throw in the towel. But I think we are approaching the phase where we normally see this. By the way, if you look at Bitcoin seasonality, in Q3 of every pre-habbing year, it has found approximately at least a 50% correction before the habit. Okay, if Bitcoin goes down even 30%, what happens to DeFi?

Yeah. And very important point that Ben is making, a lot of people just sort of academically think, hey, if Bitcoin dominance goes up, it means price is going up. Actually, the worst case scenario, which is more common, is Bitcoin goes down and people flee alts and they go down more. Exactly. So Bitcoin dominance rises while the price of Bitcoin goes down and you lose both against dollars and against Bitcoin. Exactly. So that's been the theory all along is that the dominance rally is accompanied from 40% to 50%. It's accompanied by a Bitcoin rally, but from 50% to 60%, it's accompanied by a Bitcoin dump. I mean, look at last cycle. That's exactly what happened.

Last cycle dominance is 39 to 52 on a Bitcoin pump and then 52 to 62 on a Bitcoin dump. And Ben, also like in historical past cycles, and I don't believe that things have to repeat exactly, but Bitcoin after putting in the low pre-halving always visits almost that low and makes, you know, whether it's a higher low or something but we always do get that correction that puts sort of the scare in people when when do we usually get it scott it ranges from i mean the last two we had we had one in aug q3 of the pre-halving year so till q1 of the halving year so i would say we yeah now now we've entered the window over the next like six to seven months where that secondary scare should occur.

And that's why, you know, we talk about the halving and what normally happens is the price that Bitcoin halves. And then we joke about that. And then after the halving, Bitcoin goes up. Yeah, Mario, historically, you'd be talking about those something like, I mean, it can be ranging sideways and you can visit the lows or the highs. Obviously, last time we had sort of March 2020 as well, which was different.

But we're talking about kind of a big wick, maybe that taps 20,000, bumps right back up to 25K, gets that final washout. It doesn't have to be a sustained thing. And again, it doesn't have to... It would probably be very brief. But if we do go into a risk-off environment

where Bitcoin wicks down, that's where that systemic risk-off... What does that do to DeFi? And that is, I think that's why I was really appreciating what Scott was saying earlier, and I think it's probably worth all that to spend for people to at least think about that outcome. Ben, I'm curious, the Litecoin

halving happens now. Half an hour. Literally, wait a minute, it's in the stream. Yeah, so I mean, I'm curious if you have a have if you believe watching the Litecoin halving has any relevance or impact or comparison to the Bitcoin halving. So Litecoin and I said this a month ago to every every halving for Litecoin Litecoin tops out in June or July and then going into into the halving, it fades. And then after the halving, it basically either goes sideways or down until Bitcoin's post-halving

year, so 2025. So normally, the risk-off environment occurs after Litecoin. For crypto overall, it occurs after Litecoin's halving, but before Bitcoin's halving. I think the reason is because when you go into the into the pre halving year, we just get out of a year long bear market, right? So we get this sort of natural flex back up to the upside. But we're still you know, it's still almost away from the next Bitcoin halving. There's not really a whole lot to look forward to. And I think just interest sort of wanes over the next six months. And then finally, once we get closer to the Bitcoin having an interest rate cut, I think crypto will do well again. But I think that's where...

I've got one more question for you, Ben, before going to Dan. What about the two narratives of finally getting regulatory clarity, not only really the US is lagging, but in other countries in Europe and East Asia and Australia, we're getting more clarity, something we've been waiting for for a long time, and we're starting to get it in the US as well. And as well as the herd being here, traditional in the BlackRock, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, does that change anything? Because these are two massive bullish signals. Does that change your expectations for the next few months?

Or could that change if we continue seeing improvements, the ETF is approved, for example, or we keep seeing the SEC get blue-eyes? I mean, I think a lot of that stuff is bullish long-term, for sure. And I think that crypto will make an incredible recovery next year. I don't think it's going to make a change anything in the next few months, especially with the altcoin market. I mean, there's a higher chance they could affect Bitcoin in a positive way. But I still think that crypto... Look, guys, the truth about the cryptoverse is that 99.9% of the altcoins are completely useless, right? And so they're only fueled by just excess liquidity. That's what they need. They need liquidity. They don't have profit margins. They don't have profit margins.

They don't have products they're generally putting out. A lot of them are just garbage. And so the only reason they ever go up is because there's excess liquidity. And if you look at the central bank balance sheet worldwide, it's going down. And with the dollar going up, if you denominate all the balance sheets in the US dollars, liquidity is getting sucked out. So yes, the narratives are great. And I think it's long-term bullish for crypto. But I think there's going to be another event before the halving that really scares people before the bull run to new highs can actually begin. Dan, we'd love you to jump in here. I'm not sure if you're a bit more bullish than Ben,

at least in the short term, pre-halving over the next three to six months. And Pizzino as well. I want to hear Pizzino. Pizzino's got some very strong views. I watch his videos a lot. I'd want the more bullish person to speak. So whoever's more bullish, unmute.

I think Pizzino is the one. I think Pizzino is a little bit more bullish. I'm quite neutral, so not sure if I'm the one. Yeah, I think that's the first time I've ever heard your voice in all of our communication. Great to very well be, yeah. You gave us a neutral recently. So, Dan, how are you neutral? In terms of what Ben was saying earlier,

that we could see DeFi trigger the final bloodshed for altcoins before halving kicks in. And looking at history, that could even be expected. It's not too surprising. Scott said that this is the period. The period is now over the next three to six months. Would you agree? Yeah, possibly. It feels like the market is really just waiting for some kind of catalyst to really push it somewhere. Because if I got the Bitcoin chart in front of me, and you've probably already all seen, we're not getting the BART moves we them Burj Khalifa's like the building in Dubai.

So all we see is just shorts getting squeezed. Now from there on, we see a lot of selling, the entire move retraces and we rinse and repeat. So right now it just seems to be like all about liquidity. What about, you tweeted, I don't know if it was yesterday or today but i think i covered on my show today but you tweeted something about the fact that we haven't had volatility for for a long time and it usually when you have periods of no volatility for a long time that usually means that the the corresponding move is usually much more aggressive yeah exactly yeah i you probably already seen everyone tweeting about something like volatility measure.

That's like a yearly lows or even multi-year lows. So usually when we get that, we have the same like at the end of last year. When we finally break out of this range, then the move that occurs will usually be quite big and usually not want to pay it sadly doesn't say anything about direction of course but so Dan so I said you said what you're saying it's a sure run refer to is that he's saying we're waiting for something some news it doesn't have to be black swan event yeah something to take us somewhere but whenever whatever that something is wherever it take up takes us it will be very very. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, I think that's likely because you can just imagine all these positions that have built up throughout this range, both longs and shorts. So when there's something that pushes it over the edge, there's like a lot. So it could be some major hack that kind of leads to another curve-like event over the next few months, or it could be the ETF getting approved. But Mario, it could also, yeah, I was going to say, yeah, I feel like the ETF pushed it up, and so now people are just holding their breath, waiting to see what happens

with the ETF. There's no reason for it to go up more on the ETF news, and there's no reason for it to go down more on the ETF news. When is the ETF decision? Yeah. Okay, it's on my email probably. I'd be in two weeks. Bloomberg, Eric and James from Bloomberg Intelligence are saying there's a 65% chance of a Bitcoin approval this year.

So this is what they're... And that's up from... They went up from 50%... They were at 50-50. Yeah, 50 without a timeframe. Without a time... What changed? Yeah, they said it on the speech.

What changed was they cited Gary Gensler losing power at the SEC, losing political preference, too much pressure on him. And almost like if I kind of read between the lines, what they're saying is he might just give something to take more kind of thing. And the one thing that he can give because he doesn't have much control over it is bitcoin and yeah and he'll get you get the get the etf i want to go to because i we haven't heard that australian accent where where hold on i don't know where you from pazino where from australia uh oh sick lucky you all All right, man, go ahead. I think there's no worries. We're going with the bullish narrative here.

I mean, what I've heard today, I agree with a lot of it. When it comes to what Ben's saying with the altcoins, yeah, I'm not bullish on altcoins at all. Like, I still see them heading further down. Why, Jason? To keep them going. Why? Like, if there's more liquidity in the industry as a whole like doesn't it you know starts off with bitcoin then go to to

eth and then other major top 100 coins and then starts bleeding into alts as well if we start seeing a bull market no oh yeah if we get a bull market but i don't think that's going to happen for alt coins at least you know another 12 18 months away um it's it's pretty much just going to flow into bitcoin as it always does and the same deal with ethereum and i mean look i'm more so a pure technician where i focus a lot on charts and when you when you check the charts of basically almost every single altcoin against its bitcoin pair is just in a downtrend and when bitcoin moves a little to the downside the altcoins move more when bitcoin moves up a little bit most of the altcoins don't move up as much sure there'll be the outliers that some of them do move up a

little more but when this bull market comes for altcoins yeah the altcoins will move and there'll be bigger gains but it probably bets to get into the new altcoins the new hopes and dreams all the old altcoins everything from 2021 i think is the hopes and dreams have been crushed you know the poor bag holders that still have them or uh dumped them recently probably still going to be feeling the pain and they won't want to get back into those crypto. Same sort of thing happened in 2017. So when you look at those altcoins from 2017 and that cycle, I mean, most of the breaking to new lows

extends their Bitcoin value. We don't need to go through the names because I don't think anyone's going to remember them. And I think that's going to happen again. Yeah, so can you... Jason, can we go back just back to 2017, 2018, the bear market after that? How did, how did ALTS do? Like when did ALTS, so they corrected heavily as they did this time. And then how long did it take them to recover the next bull market? And I know like whatever,

five, 10% of them recover and the rest die out. But how long did it take for the ALTS, for those gems that we're building through? And I'm talking about the alts alts, the startups that are building in the ecosystem. How long before money started flowing back into those? And that also includes VC funding. I think from memory, just looking at some of those charts, if I use the broad picture, your total three chart,

some of those cryptos basically only had that first pump that was late 2020 into early 2021. And that was it. That was the extent of the pump that they got. And then no one was interested in them anymore. So when we got that second alt coin waved through the second half of 2021 2021 those old altcoins were basically flatlining or dead against their btc values so they had their initial pump early on and then when you look at the chart they had a lower high for that second wave of altcoin season and so essentially it's interesting so what you're saying is that coins that launched in the previous bull market tend to do significantly worse and they might get a little pump and that's it, it's more pump.

But generally when the money starts flowing back into those startups, it's in startups that launch in this new bear market, fresh startups, in this new bull market, sorry, fresh startups, correct? Yes, correct. Mostly because of the narratives that come through. And it's not only, it doesn't just happen in crypto, it happens in traditional markets as well. We've all seen what's happening with AI and that's continued on. So if that keeps going, then we're going to see that fuel into this next stage of the bull markets that the stock markets have bottomed they are heading up there is there's no way they're going back to the cycle low of october like this is the start of a new trend which probably has a couple of years left in it and so there's always this new narrative that keeps

uh that'll spur on that next bull market and then they just want to ask about one industry that we don't talk a lot about here is NFTs does anyone have any thoughts on that? Do you treat them just like alts and that new projects will do well if any and then existing projects will struggle to do well similar to what we saw with alts in the

last bull market? Yeah I think so I don't know a lot about them but that's typically what I've seen I mean this cycle we saw crypto punks come back but we didn't see was a crypto kitties you know that's pretty much dead so yeah it's

pretty much the majority of them if you want to play it safe the old stuff is not going to have a same sort of pump as the new stuff but you'll still get a good trading opportunity interesting okay um am crypto chris do you agree um i i agree partially so uh when when we talk about our coins and dollar value then i think a lot of them at least out of the good ones out there they have already bottomed when it comes to

um to the dollar value uh in terms of bitcoin value i definitely agree there is definitely more downside um to be made here before we go go up we have seen that in trivial previous cycles as also was previously already said that into free normally we get like this final take out and then we finally go up into the halving so i definitely agree with that and i was actually when uh when bitcoin went down when was it like two days ago or something where i had that quick week down i was actually expecting her breaks way lower and i i think that that pump that we got back up now to 30k it feels like um like a debt can bounce to me so i i don't see bitcoin now in the immediate short term rallying to over 32 000 and even if it would do that and would break that

resistance it would be for me just uh just a bull trap but we then see actually a half rejection back down then maybe something like 25 26k but um but I cannot remember who said this earlier. With the 20k level, I don't believe that we will see 20k in the next coming months again. I think 24, 25, there's the line in the sand and that we will not go any lower than that. Do you have any thoughts on VC funding?

When do you think we'll start seeing liquidity get back into the VC funding? So I actually see already now a lot of VCs getting more active in the space right now, again, where they're ending out private rounds and seed rounds. So here and there, they are popping already up. But for my personal risk appetite, it's still too early. So I want to see that final takeout lag that we normally get in Q3 before I even start looking at new projects.

And Alex, last question I have for you, man. Is the NFT ecosystem, would you just treat them just like alts? Do you think we'll see interest there again? I think with Bitcoin rising back to the upside and Ethereum going in tandem we definitely

going to see another run in entities but nfts i don't know enough about nfts in the last cycle that that is for me just a massive massive casino because um i i don't understand on on what basis which nft is going up in value and which not and we also saw a lot of articles um in the previous nft hype where it's basically was senseless wash trading and money laundering with with nft but we saw the same thing with alts as well in the last bull market and the one before in 2017 and i'm sure in the last one as well um i do want to fair point fair points yeah i do want to just quickly before going to um uh to go to to smiley as well and uh david to get their thoughts i just want to remind the audience there is a show called killer whales and i've got to shout them out in the last few shows

and that's a it's like a shark tank like show me and ran were there we flew to la i flew if anyone remembers my russia the mutiny space that i did right after that one hours after that one almost missed my flight i flew out to la to film with ran and anthony's camera which he was there and a few others um a shark tank like show for krypton like a real show not like some random people with cameras and they have a whole production they've got the they did it in where batman was filmed it's a really cool show i think it's coming out later this year or next year. Not sure exactly where, but if you want to check it out, again, it's really entertaining.

Killer Whales TV. Killer Whales TV is on Twitter. Highly recommend you check him out. And this is me shouting them out just because I like him. And I think Ryan would agree. Hey, Mario, can I ask you a question? And guys, you should definitely check. Scott is not there as well. So if you finally want to watch

me and Ryan speak with us, yeah. I actually have a question though with how fast crypto moves that's coming out like, you know, end of this year, beginning of next year. Do those projects have to wait to launch until the show? I don't know.

I don't know if I'm allowed to actually talk about that. I wanted to talk about one of the projects and there's... My bad. No, all good, all good. I actually was pretty keen because one of the projects

is one I can't wait to talk about such a it's not even it's actually a physical product um that you would probably buy um that's crypto focus well the water right yeah we're not going to talk about it and so we're not going to make it we're not going to mention names but it is it is man yeah they i was just thinking about it and someone reached out to me from there as well like a few days ago i missed the message i just spotted it i think yesterday or two days ago um but yeah man like this is such a it's such a cool product it is a tokenized lab no it's a tokenized slab shop it's a very it's uh did you you gave it a you gave it a thumbs up didn't you i don't know if we're gonna talk about that but yeah it's a really cool show a really cool product

but uh and ran you want to talk about by. But yeah, it's a really cool show. A really cool product. But Enran, you want to talk about Bybit as well and the $8 million in prizes in brief. Let me just kind of do it in a very brief overview and mention the key points and then Enran can add on to it. Bybit is giving away $8 million for a trading competition. So we've got a team.

We've got a roundtable team that's been acquired by Crypto Banter. And if you want to join it and be part of the prizes check the pinned tweets if you can scroll through them there's three there and it's the third one by crypto town hall you can go there and there's a link so if you want to be part of the competition there's a lot of money being given away highly recommend you check it out so everyone in the audience go to your phone go up scroll up and check that and if you want to come on the show as a sponsor, I think we've got sponsors starting again tomorrow. Oh no, we've got Bybit tomorrow.

Next week, we've got a couple of new ones. But yeah, if you want to come on as a sponsor or we're doing our own Shark Tank show, and we've been talking about this for a really, really long time, and we've got a call about it today. If you want to come on our Shark Tank show, it's me, Rand, Scott, and Anthony.

And Scaramucci, You can hit us up. That's obviously for projects. And you could apply. But Ran, anything to add for Bybit? Cool. Great pitch, bro. I'll go to Smiley and David. Smiley, I'd love to give you the mic unless Ran wants to add for anything else for Bybit.

Oh, great. Smiley, how are you? Cool. Just, great. Smiley, how are you? Cool, just like Rand. Smiley and Rand are really very talkative. No joking. Go ahead, man. Yeah, I want to get you up quick. No, no, no.

Oh, I'm just messing with you, man. Get your thoughts, man. I know you've heard the thoughts of various other panelists. We'd like to get your thoughts on what we can expect over the next three to six months. Just for anyone that's listening, whether someone's an investor who's a project trying to raise money, trying to survive, trying to decide whether to be conservative or not. And obviously for traders. OK, so, well, what I've heard for the past 30 minutes, I have to agree with most points when it comes to like altcoin and BTC performance.

But let me just go through all the points individually. So the last point, why doesn't everyone, does anyone have any, does anyone have a bullish thing to say about altcoins? It's like the cool thing now is to shit on altcoins. I need a speaker to come up next time to be positive about altcoins. But go ahead, Smosh. I mean, it's part of the cycle. It's part of the cycle it's part of the cycle where altcoins are just not doing good because of the it's not enough liquidity the altcoins

usually do good when there's a wealth effect from bitcoin and wealth effect is created by bitcoin going into new all-time highs you know the euphoria the last time when we broke twenty thousand dollars 30 40 50 that's when the wealth effect is created that's when people start degening into altcoins. But before that, it's really not much. It's only maybe select few altcoins that you see around, maybe AI sector, whatever, LSD sector, et cetera. But that's just a handful of altcoins.

99% of them are not going to perform, in my opinion, for the next one year or so. I don't think it's a price-based capitulation. I think we saw that already for the entire year of 2022. I think it's a time based capitulation ahead of us. And I have a similar approach to towards NFTs. But I'm a bit more bullish on NFTs when it comes to like, like, on long term. Okay, but more than I see our bullish on NFTs and out points. Yes, actually, that's kind of unpopular.

No, I don't think it's unpopular. Which NFTs? That's very broad. I think it's unpopular. No, hold on. Let's see what NFTs. So you're referring to the PFPs or just general digital ownership,

like gaming assets or whatever? I have two different answers to that. First is the digital ownership one. I think that's kind of underlooked. Is that the way people don't look at it enough? Yeah, it's kind of an underlooked aspect of the crypto. And I think it's a catalyst maybe for next bull run or bull run in the future, where digital ownership, AI is going to be really important,

like people selling music, video games, whatever. I think that is one big part, but we still don't have those products. So it's really nothing I can really say, Hey, this is going to do good, this is going to do good. But it's something to keep an eye on for the future where like ownership and visualization comes AI, video games, music, etc, products, online products, clothes, whatever it is. I think that's a... I want in. Go ahead.

CZ just tweeted... I was just going to say the same. Yeah, CZ just tweeted four, which usually means that there's fight incoming. So I think what we should be on alert for now is something coming out which is very negative against Biden. So I think he's pre-empting it by tweeting.

How is Boyk going to just break that thing? Why have we? Okay, so number one, now I know that you both talk CZ. Number two, my question to you guys is what have we seen already? What's left? What are we anticipating? I can't keep up anymore. Do you know? We've seen the

DOJ diamond. Well, DOJ is the thing that everybody's been conjecturing. Yeah, but have we the DOJ diamond. Well, DOJ is the thing that everybody's been conjecturing. Yeah, but have we seen DOJ? He wouldn't have created four before. I mean, DOJ is not four. When the DOJ comes after you, it's not four. Why isn't it four? Because you never win.

No, because four is usually stuff that he believes is non-factual. Doesn't he create four after every single bit of four? I don't know. I'm genuinely asking. I don't know. Yeah, but this is before there's been anything unique. I think we should just be on standby for an article coming out. I mean, usually

it's the same media outlet. It's the New York Times or it's Forbes. I think we should just keep an eye open for these narratives. And this is just at 40 kilos and he's just counting. What did four stand for again? Do you remember what it was? It was in his list of things

to keep in mind and number four was ignore FUD and keep building something to that effect. Alright, well four it is. And I want to go back to David. David, I would love to get your thoughts. If there's any breaking news, guys, just jump in. As long as you're not allowed to jump in and say,

I don't want to interrupt. You can't do that. It's not allowed anymore. And David, go ahead. Sure, no problem. Thank you very much. First of all, I want to give a shout out. I don't think I've ever done this and it should be done every day. Mario, Ran, Scott, always

informative, always entertaining, really just incredible stuff, incredible content, good conversations and good guidance. In terms of altcoins, I'd actually like to go ahead and say, frankly, because sentiment is so bad. And I think I said this a couple of days ago, because sentiment is so bad, I'm actually a little bit of a buyer accumulator of some altcoins. Certainly, this may not be the bottom and it may not be a beautiful line chart from here, but I believe that the sentiment, I'm generally a contrarian by nature. I think the sentiment is so bad at this point that, frankly, it's worthwhile nibbling away. The second thing is, you know, the downgrade of the United States in terms of credit rating to me is very important. 2012 and 2013 were my best trading years ever. Obviously, circumstance is different, but you know, election coming up, we may get a Republican in the White House who knows.

We could be off to the races once again in terms of spending, you know, in the right places, letting private sector do things. And so therefore, there may very well be euphoria. I wouldn't go ahead and say automatically altcoins are dead for 12 months. I think 12 months is a very long time, six months maybe. But certainly, I think it's a good opportunity here. The last thing I'll say regarding... Let me just say one thing. Yeah, go ahead.

David, you've complimented us. Go ahead. The credit downgrade, borrowing money in the United States is going higher. That is very important. That's very important for interest rate sensitive assets, such as real estate of all kinds, and also highly levered garbage companies in the Russell 2000. That is where I'm looking for purposes of shorts. I think those companies are going to come under incredible stress, whether there is an economic slowdown or not, just the balance sheet difficulties of refinancing and rolling over debt is going to be insurmountable. Okay. So I've got one question for you. David,

I'm not going to ask you the question just because your audio is bad, despite the compliment. The audio is just too bad to ask you a question, but I appreciate the compliment. Ben, I want to ask you a question first. Just because you worried me about the whole DeFi narrative and the final leg of capitulation. So I'm just curious, does that just really depend on the markets like if we start seeing the market pick up then no one's going to get margin called and we should be fine but then if we see the market continue on the downtrend

that's what will trigger it so it's all going to be dependent on the market the market itself will trigger that final leg of capitulation if it drops again to new lows or near new lows is that am I right yeah I think that's a fair assessment it's more, do we go into a risk-off environment? I'm not joking, I'm just kidding. Go ahead, Ben.

Just kidding. Yeah, no, I mean, it's more so if we go into a risk-off environment, which could be underway right now. As I said earlier, this tends to be the season when the S&P gets a correction in pre-election years. And it's always been this correction in August, September that has knocked Bitcoin off of its 20-week estimate. And by the way, historically, once Bitcoin falls below the 20-week, within a few weeks, that's normally when alt-Bitcoin pairs finally bottom out. So I don't, I mean, it might not even be that much longer for all Bitcoin pairs like we could be in striking distance. I mean, like, a lot of them bottomed out in September of 2019. They went lower on their USD pairs after that. But I don't think

it's that much further out. But I think you're right. Like, I mean, if the S&P doesn't get a seasonal correction, an example of that would be 1995, where it did not get a seasonal correction in the pre-election year in August and September, then perhaps we avoid it. But if it plays out like 80 to 90% of the other pre-election years, then I think the final flush is coming. Well, I'm going to ask you for a favor. The correction could also just be a sideways time for the market to digest the moves to the upside as well. So it doesn't necessarily have to be a significant correction. And what we see in bull markets is typically single digit corrections. So if we saw a 3% or 4% or 5% from where we are with the S&P, it would still only put us back to the previous tops

that we just broke out of around that 40, so 4,500 points. Yeah, but Jason, I'm not talking about the S&P. I'm talking about like even a 5% to 10% correction by the S&P could not crypto into a downtrend for the rest of the year. That's what's happened every pre-habbing year from now until December.

It doesn't take much. You're right. It doesn't have to be a massive drop by the S&P. Even a 5% to 10% correction is typically enough to get that final flash in crypto. Can I... Yeah, so you're referring specifically to altcoins, not necessarily Bitcoin as well. Well, I mean, I think that Bitcoin will likely have a secondary scare before the halving. But I think the altcoins are going to get hit a lot harder than Bitcoin. But

again, like as I said, it can happen quickly with the altcoin market. Like someone, I don't know who was talking, but he was saying, you know, it's getting very bearish, you know, for the altcoin market. I mean, it's been very bearish for the altcoin market for 18 months. I mean, I mean, the sentiment has been pretty awful. And it hasn't stopped prices from putting in lows for many of the altcoins. But I would just say, like, if you if you just look at the context of history, a lot of the altcoins bottom out against Bitcoin, if they're going to survive, right, if they're not going to survive, they'll just go down forever. But for the ones that will survive, they tend to bottom out around that Q3, Q4 time frame of the pre-having year. So I don't think their Bitcoin bottoms are that much further away.

Their USD bottoms, who knows where they are? I mean, they could still be early next year. But I think just going back to the original question, I do think you're right. I think it's dependent on if there is a broader correction in the S&P p 500 i don't really think crypto drops uh if if the s p doesn't get that seasonal correction necessarily um benjamin i'm just gonna ask you for a small favor um uh if we don't know each other well um i don't i don't know if we've spoken privately but i've seen my number if we if you start if your worry diminishes or gets worse over the next few months defy capitulation just hit me up on whatsapp i just i just someone really worried me something never never even crossed my mind till now um so so got me a bit worried but um otherwise guys i know we've got the

then ran can you hear me because i know you can't hear you couldn't hear benjamin earlier all right you can't hear me either um scott we've got i know we got that number four from um from cz but um i think we'll just wait to see how major it is could just be that up in the future and now etc if there's something major you'll see us pop up as always we'll be up if there's breaking news otherwise we'll be up again tomorrow at the same time and we do have that team meeting scott so probably should jump off and get that done. Anything to add Scott? No, I think we covered it. I think that was a great breadth of... I think we should do this on a weekly basis. I really enjoy those conversations

and I kind of expand them. Today we kept it a bit short, but try to expand it to what do you think the markets will do and start digging into different asset classes within crypto. We did a bit of it today. Benjamin talked about DeFi and others, Jason as well. We had Smiley, David, et cetera, talk about NFTs, Alex as well. So I think it'd be good to look at the different narratives, AI and metaverse, et cetera. Yeah, I agree. My mic's not working. I think it was great. A really good conversation. And I think you have to have the right panel to do it appropriately, to be quite honest, because the market conversations can go in some wild directions. So I think this is perfect. Yeah. So tomorrow we'll do Hex as well as after tomorrow. Monday's Hex as well. So I think we'll do three to four days a week about Hex. And then the other day or two will be about... Deep analysis of the one-minute Hex chart.

All right, guys. Thank you so much. We'll see you again tomorrow. And enjoy your day. Bye.