The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Survives Massive Sell-Off & Coinbase Attacks The SEC | Huge Week For Crypto

Starting point is 00:00:00 As the old saying goes, there are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. And it feels like we're in one of those rare weeks where decades happen. On the positive side, the SEC and Gary Gensler are having an absolutely awful time. Yesterday may have been one of the worst days Gary Gensler could ever imagine, and I think we can all celebrate that. On the flip side, we had an abortion of a presidential debate and we have a whole lot of selling pressure from Mount Docks, the German government, the United States government. Man, there is a lot to unpack this week. I'm so glad that I have NLW to bear that burden for me because I would not know what to do by myself today, guys. This is going to be a hell of a Friday Five. Let's go.

Starting point is 00:01:02 What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of Wall Street. Before we get Let's go. hard to narrow it down to five stories or where there's one or two that are so compelling that we could probably spend hours talking about them. Wow, man. Crazy one. Crazy one. Okay. So we have to unfortunately start with the debate, giving the broad strokes, crypto unmentioned at first 2024 US presidential debate. We had betting markets that were saying the odds were that they would mention Bitcoin or crypto. It was going to be a real opportunity for Donald Trump to catch Joe Biden off guard. Obviously, if he said something about Bitcoin, it was unlikely that Joe Biden would have a defensible position or have much knowledge. This was an echo chamber narrative. It didn't get mentioned at all. Yeah, I think if I would have handicapped it at

Starting point is 00:02:07 like, under 5% even coming into this, I just think that, you know, 90 minutes feels like a long time, you know, watching it, it was a long time, but it's not when it comes to actually getting into discussions, right? There were so many things that the average CNN viewer is going to want to hear about above and beyond crypto. And it was almost inevitably going to devolve into a war of people talking about who was the worst president in history. And that's exactly what it became. So yeah, the crypto wasn't there, probably not surprisingly, but certainly not the big story of the event. Well, clearly the story here, Biden's disastrous debate accelerates doubts over candidacy. I don't care who you are. It was a sad, sad exhibition of our country, of our presidency, of our institutions. He walked

Starting point is 00:03:01 up there objectively looking confused. He couldn't even get through his first prepared statements it only got worse from there and frankly i know people aren't going to like this trump looked better in comparison trump was more measured i guess and with it than we would have expected but he also lied endlessly yeah i mean listen there's so much to unpack here the we're not a political show, so I'll avoid getting into some of the details there. I think that the reality was that the second that Biden came out and shuffled across the stage and you couldn't hear him in his opening statement, there was a crushing realization among people who had been trying to deny the

Starting point is 00:03:47 Biden is getting too old sort of discussion that this was really going to be a game changing moment. And that just continued throughout the debate. I think that the reality is, it's likely that today we're going to see a bunch of democratic spin that tells the other side of the story because the immediate reactions were so uncontained from democrat media that they're going to have to walk it back i mean we saw a little bit if you watch the cnn postgame interview um you know they had a panel of you know nine panelists or something like that up there van jones was near tears for near tears for how bad it was. Shambles.

Starting point is 00:04:26 These guys were in shambles. I've never seen Cope. It was astounding. Well, and the interesting thing was after 15 minutes in an ad break, Van had basically made a point that he needs to go, and he was very sad because Biden was a mentor and a good friend of his. And he came back on the air after the ad break and had been clearly slapped around. But he said

Starting point is 00:04:52 he had been slapped around and he completely shifted back to the, no, we have to rally behind our president narrative. So it's going to be chaos for a little while. I think that from the standpoint of the crypto industry, there's two things to pay attention to. One is the extent to which Trump continues to use crypto as a wedge issue from here on. One of the things that you and I talked about last week is at what point has he sufficiently wrung the blood out of that stone so that it's just sort of on the books and he doesn't have to go there anymore. For a while, he's been very proactively, continuously trying to, you know, kind of double down on that story. But then the second thing is there is going to be a lot of speculation about who comes next if the Democrats can convince Biden

Starting point is 00:05:40 to step down. And I think that's really what it'll be about. You know, the concern is that he's extremely stubborn. That's always been his sort of political asset, but it may be the big political liability here. The contender that everyone is looking at is Gavin Newsom. That's been waiting in the wings for a while. Now, Newsom and Spin said that they were not thinking about that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if you are in crypto, if you're interested in this, and you think that there's any chance that a second, you know, Democrat candidate could win, it may, you know, it may be worth spending some time looking at the, the crypto history of a couple of the contentious, you know, contender candidates. Literally what you had your research do last night in advance of starting your day, correct?

Starting point is 00:06:23 Correct. Yeah, we, we, we looked into, you know, got a little reminder of what Newsom's voting record around crypto was like. So here we have it. Trump's odds of victory surged to 67% on Polymarket post-presidential debate. But I think the more interesting thing here, to your point, is Gavin Newsom's odds jumped to 15%,

Starting point is 00:06:41 which is not a non-zero chance that he would be it. I mean, I can't imagine Kamala Harris being the candidate for the Democrats. The way this ties to crypto for me, as I'm sort of suffering through this for the last 12 hours trying to parse it and think about what it means, it really makes a hell of a lot of sense when you watch something like this, why Gen Z and millennials are so disillusioned and why they love crypto so much and why they gamble on meme stocks and why they gamble on memes because they don't have a chance. Watching these two octogenarians on television comparing their golf handicaps couldn't be further from the reality of a young person in the United States. And when you look at the data,

Starting point is 00:07:33 this is the first time that 30-year-olds are doing worse than their parents. These people never have a chance to buy a house. They can't afford anything because of inflation. Jobs suck. Men are disillusioned. Girls are being beaten down by a fake vision of what their life should be on social media. And you look at these two guys, they're not the problem. They're a symptom of a much larger problem, which is that all of the wealth, policy control, everything is with 70 and 80-year-old people who have no idea what it's like to be 20 or 30 in this phone-based age of social media where you don't have a chance. So for me, the crypto story is that more people are going to see this and just say, I need to opt out of all of this garbage. Yeah. I mean, listen, unfortunately,

Starting point is 00:08:21 it is affirming of both the cynical crypto story and the positive crypto story. The positive crypto story that it is an opt-out, that the monetary policy behind the currency that you use doesn't have to be dictated by these people. But also, to your point, it really is when people wonder why financial nihilism has become such a powerful force. Elon Musk tweeted last night, the winner of the debate was memes. And that's just as true a statement as you could have had. But it's, it's, you know, it is memes that are from a place to your point of desperation and of an utter lack of knowledge about where the, you know, a better future is going to come from. And it's a very dangerous thing to have an entire generation

Starting point is 00:09:05 or multiple generations start to feel hopeless. If you look back through history, it almost has never been a good thing on the other side of that when that starts to happen. Yeah. I didn't get a chance to watch it in its entirety, but the Kennedy commentary on the debate had quite a bit of buzz on X, obviously. So that's something I'm looking forward to digging more into. Not that the guy has a chance, but man, I just, you know, I'm in these group chats with friends. There's a lot of Democrats and the cope and realization that I witnessed last night, the things that I've been saying forever was astounding. You know, I have friends saying, I can't believe that the Democrats blew it like this with their strategy, that they dared roll him out in a debate when they know that he's like this.

Starting point is 00:09:55 They have him as the president when they know that he's like this. I don't care that they've rolled him out for a debate. I care that he has control of the nuclear codes and can put him and Coherent's thought together. That's why it's an unignorable thing for a lot of people. I mean, this is the thing that's, look, to the extent, you know, I always try to do this, but to the extent that you're looking for a bright side of this, this is a serious problem. And a lot more people have a sense of how serious it is outside of partisan politics this morning than they did yesterday morning. And to the extent that it's going to be solved, it's a better thing. But it's a depressing moment for us and certainly one that will, I think, be remembered for a very long time.

Starting point is 00:10:41 People are saying in the comments, obviously, that I have tds and have to give trump credit to trump annihilated biden in that debate my nine-year-old also could have annihilated biden in that debate and there's issues with both candidates but biden cannot be president if you're asking for my opinion she's not functional anyways we have the negative side of all this but then you know there's some positive things happening as i alluded alluded to before, Gary Gensler had arguably the worst day of his life yesterday, politically or for his career. We obviously have Coinbase suing the U.S. SEC and the FDIC. We'll get into that. That's the bigger story to me. For improperly blocking document requests on the same day, we saw a Solana ETF filed, which we will talk about

Starting point is 00:11:25 later. And we also saw the Supreme Court rule against the SEC. And then Gensler had to suffer through that debate where literally his political life is probably dependent on the victor in that presidential election. But let's unpack more specifically this Coinbase case against the SEC and FDIC. So simply put, this was a pivot moment from crypto being on the defensive to crypto being on the offensive. I mean, this smells like, you know, your opponent is reeling and you go into, you know, for the kill, not the other way around. Basically, Coinbase is trying to use freedom of information requests to point out or to validate their argument that the SEC is acting arbitrarily and capriciously, that they have had a policy of trying to use enforcement rather than actually articulate any meaningful rules, that they've basically just had a strategy of trying to destabilize the industry rather than

Starting point is 00:12:28 regulate it. And they're going after a variety of different contexts for that, basically where the Freedom of Information Act requests have been denied for various reasons that Coinbase says are total BS, effectively, they were denied for a while on the basis of there being an ongoing investigation sort of around Ethereum, but then Coinbase went back because that's clearly closed now. And so, you know, it's a, they're trying to avail themselves of the legal system to basically get the type of documents that they couldn't get during discovery through the Freedom of Information Act and really put it to the legal system to determine just how messed up the SEC has been acting. Yeah. Like I said, I think the SEC is

Starting point is 00:13:14 one story, but I think we've gotten probably uncomfortably used to people attacking the SEC, which by the way, a year ago would have never happened. The SEC, I think, and Elizabeth Warren pushed the crypto industry so far that we were forced to go on the offensive and fight back. And that's why we've seen all these suits. To me, the FDIC is the bigger story because this really goes at a different regulatory regime. It's the bank regulators. People have not been attacking the FDIC. And this goes to the heart of Operation Chokepoint 2.0 and the things that retail who have had crypto exchange accounts closed have felt, but also any company even superficially attached to crypto. I was talking to Zach Shapiro yesterday on Spaces, who's a lawyer, not a crypto lawyer, but has crypto mentioned on their website, couldn't get a bank account, right? Because they had questions about crypto, all these things. Going after the FDIC when the FDIC

Starting point is 00:14:08 has not once, but twice effectively rejected this freedom of information. If that comes out, that the banking system was willfully cutting off an entire industry, it would be more devastating, I think, for the United States government and more of a win for our industry than anything that could happen here with the SEC. And then, of course, when you just need a good laugh, you go to Eric Voorhees. The US government declared Coinbase an illegal brokerage and then proceeded to use Coinbase as its brokerage, which will be our next story. But before we move on to the US selling crypto, let wrap a bow on this SEC and FDIC story. Yeah, I mean, listen, on the FDIC side, this is Coinbase explicitly articulating the practicalities

Starting point is 00:14:54 of Operation Chokepoint 2.0. That's a term that they used 21 times in this complaint, by the way. So it is very, very explicit. The reason that the FDIC has rejected these FOAI requests is they basically say that they would compromise the banking system by revealing which banks were targeted basically as part of this, to which Coinbase is basically responding, well, if this was just a form letter like you say it was, then how could that possibly be? It's sort of a contrast in terms. I don't know. Unfortunately, I am a little more cynical perhaps than you if this does go through. Operation Chokepoint 1.0 didn't stop them from doing

Starting point is 00:15:38 Operation Chokepoint 2.0, even though everyone saw it. The difference is that as crazy as it is to say, the crypto industry is radically more radicalized, better funded, and now better organized than even those other industries were during Operation Chokepoint 1.0. And so to the extent that we can actually get these things out in the open, we can probably make more hay out of them. But I don't know. Ultimately, this is all I think trying to put, it's trying to reclaim power and it's trying to do this in a lot of different ways. I think one thing that we're not talking about, but feels pretty clear to me is that there is an increasingly coordinated effort behind the scenes among the crypto legal core. These people who are chattering together on Twitter, I don't believe are just chattering on Twitter. I think that even if one party is doing things on their own, they are talking with others about the strategy

Starting point is 00:16:33 for it. I think that the entire crypto legal space is now on the offensive and is trying to push back in a way that is not just about walking back policy and creating more space for crypto, but ensuring that the industry can claim power from a legal way that insulates us from whoever the next administration is if they ever try to do things like this again. Yeah, I think it's important to note in that vein that this isn't going to get resolved, most likely, before we even resolve who the president of the United States will be, who will be leading these regulators. Also, going after the SEC here effectively for clarity that they'd asked for on whether Ethereum is or is not a security when we've already now gotten an Ethereum spot ETF makes it more symbolic,

Starting point is 00:17:20 obviously, than about that actual declaration at this point. I think, as you said, there's just very little downside if you have the money and the will to attack a weak regulatory regime right now and make a point and try to get wins while we can. But I still go back to a year ago when it was desperation and despair and pain and the courts had not pushed back. We didn't have the grayscale win or the ripple win, however you want to skin it. We're in a completely different place. Everything has changed. It's largely tailwinds. And I think you have to cheer for that. Oh, yeah. I think it's a... I mean, listen, I would much rather us be on the offensive for sure. Yeah, I love it. So listen, we've got a lot of selling pressure on the market.

Starting point is 00:18:07 I'm going to go on a limb and say I don't think any of it's that meaningful, especially when you look at volumes and such. But they're big stories. U.S. files notice to sell 130 million Bitcoin linked to Silk Road agent. That was what Eric Voorhees was alluding to. They've declared Coinbase an illegal brokerage, but that's where they go sell their Bitcoin. Of course, we have Germany in a few tranches here starting to sell off Bitcoin. These are much smaller, 15 million, that one, this one, 170 million. And then, of course, Mt. Gox creditors will be starting to get their money back in July, some in coin, some in cash,

Starting point is 00:18:40 some in BCH. Three sort of big stories that one alone in an earlier cycle of Bitcoin would have maybe been a huge story. But in my mind, when we have ETF demand and institutionalization and larger volumes, I don't think it's going to rock the market beyond the narrative. Yeah. I mean, listen, I think that these stories are always, there's always some version of it if we want to go look for it as a nice FUD during an otherwise gloomy time. And that's exactly what this is, right? You know, things have been gloomy for a little while. It's mostly summer doldrums with a little sprinkle of, hey, did this cycle burn itself

Starting point is 00:19:18 too early, you know, burn itself out too early. And then we have this government selling pressure, which conveniently creates another reason for fear. And then of course, the Mt. Gox overhang has been the longest running FUD in the industry, right? For a while that was sort of China mining ban type stuff, but Mt. Gox is now the longest running FUD. I think that the upshot or the upside of this is that when those on you know, when those selling opportunities become actually available, and they happen in radically fewer cases than people think they're going to or where they're going to, it is going to have the complete opposite effect, the you know,

Starting point is 00:19:58 alleviation of this fear, you know, will get people excited again. And I think the idea that, you know, people who have been forced to hold for a decade now, who have seen the value of their assets go up incredibly because of that are likely to just run out on mass and sell, especially when there's been a robust and active market for being able to sell claims already. And a lot of the claim selling has happened. Like, it's just, it is extremely unlikely to me that this is actually going to be a meaningful, you know, problematic, you know, factor. And ultimately, even if it is, it goes away fast. You know, it's a one-time event. Oh, no, it crashes the price of Bitcoin by 20% for a month. Who cares?

Starting point is 00:20:45 Bitcoin will or won't survive not based on one batch of selling. Speaking of claims, did you see the story that CoinShares, this is completely off the docket, but CoinShares successfully sold their FTX claim for more than it was worth, like 116% net? I had only seen that the price of some of these had gone up above where they started. But talk about a turnaround for certain creditors, man, and brutal if you were selling your claims at 15, 20, 30 cents on the dollar at the beginning, which is what people assumed would be

Starting point is 00:21:22 the case. But that's not a story. That was my ADD kicking in and thinking of something else. The next story, which is very much a Bitcoin story in my mind, is Julian Assange. He returns home as a free man to Australia after a plea deal with the US. Effectively, the deal is that he's allowed to plead guilty, to my understanding, to reduce charges of mishandling classified information rather than espionage. We all know that he spent seven years in an Ecuadorian embassy in London. I mean, he's been fighting extradition for years. This is a huge, huge win for Assange, a huge win, I think, for freedom of information. And we can get into why it's also sort of a Bitcoin adjacent story. Yeah. I mean, you know, Assange is, I think, more complex than he is presented from either side. You have one side which views him as just an absolute threat to America and deserving of everything that he's had and even worse. And then you have the other side who holds him up as a folk hero with no

Starting point is 00:22:26 reservations whatsoever. I think a lot of thoughtful people are more in the middle on this one and a little bit more circumspect about just how heroic he may be while also thinking that the way that his case has been handled, and that the implications for freedom of press and freedom of information, even if you don't like Assange are extremely troubling. And I think that if you take it from that angle, you know, the man has effectively been, you know, jailed in hard circumstances for, you know, 11 or 12 years at this point. And this is where Australia got, frankly. Australia basically just got to the point

Starting point is 00:23:08 where they were like, all right, enough is enough. You know, he served his time. And that's basically what the plea deal said. The plea deal basically worked backwards from exactly the amount of time he had spent in this London prison. And that was the deal. So, you know, I think it was time

Starting point is 00:23:22 for this story to be done. I think what's interesting is that a lot of probably younger folks might not have a, have a personal memory of how tied together Assange's story was with the, you know, mid 2000s Iraq war, Afghanistan, like that, that sort of whole period in American history, you know, post 9-11, post Iraq War, he was a key figure in shaping how an entire generation thought about politics and the U.S.'s place in politics for good and bad. that there wasn't fake news because there was, but it was before the free proliferation and spread of fake news on every social media channel everywhere in the world. So getting this out that was factual in this manner

Starting point is 00:24:12 was something we'd never seen before and can never see again because nobody will believe anything. Yeah. It's really crazy. But for those who missed it, a single Bitcoin donation nearly covered Julia Assange's jet and recovery costs.

Starting point is 00:24:25 Cool story. Eight Bitcoin, 496,000. I highly recommend if you want to get a better history of Assange, how Bitcoin is involved. He was a cypherpunk, a hacker, posted a Bitcoin address on WikiLeaks in 2011 to help with funding. But you should read this article

Starting point is 00:24:43 or this thread here by Pete Rizzo. Really, really powerful and really speaks to why this is also a Bitcoin story and a freedom story. And then, of course, we have this final story here, which was kind of off my radar, to be honest. Well, not final. We have the Salon ETF after this, but in politics, crypto industry cheers Bowman loss, Curtis victory in key election primaries. Of course, we have this tweet from AOC, people everywhere need to understand how disgusting and abnormal it is for special interests to dump nearly 15 million to unseated member of Congress in a primary to which Tyler Winklevoss said politicians everywhere need to understand that this is what happens when you pick a fight with the crypto army. Did we really swing this election? No. So one more thing about assange is for people who uh who might be

Starting point is 00:25:30 interested um satoshi one of the one of the few things that he weighed in on before he he left actually days before he disappeared was he begged basically uh sanj and wLeaks not to ask for Bitcoin donations. He said that the heat that that would bring to Bitcoin was so huge. And there were so few people using Bitcoin at that time that they would basically likely kill the project for pennies. So there is a fascinating history there. So Bowman, no, we did not swing this election. The New Yorkers weren't happy with him. Also, when it comes to spending, the Fair Shake PAC, we spent meaningfully. It was $2.5 million or something like that.

Starting point is 00:26:18 But the pro-Israel PAC spent about $13 million in this case. It was the most money ever spent in a primary election in the US. So there was a significant amount of external funding, but it was more from the standpoint of his position on Israel and Gaza than it was around crypto. In fact, Fairshake's ads didn't say anything about crypto. Now, that said, obviously, Fairshake and crypto in general are, you know, it is politically advantageous right now for the crypto lobbying sector to make it appear as though there is a political cost for going against crypto. And so, you know,

Starting point is 00:27:00 I continue to expect them to be highly engaged in these battles. I also think that the crypto industry can exact a political cost from people without it being about crypto. Like, Fairshake made an assessment that the way that he was vulnerable was not talking about his crypto policy, it was other issues. And so they used their crypto resources to go after those other issues. So in that sense, the crypto industry did contribute to this loss, but it is the first time or the second time really that we've seen the crypto industry's influence have at least be a part of a story of someone who sort of was an active part of the anti-crypto army going the other direction. Jason Lowery Either way, I think it puts people on notice

Starting point is 00:27:44 with the narrative that maybe the anti-crypto army is not as popular as. Either way, I think it puts people on notice with the narrative that maybe the anti-crypto army is not as popular as they thought, which I think is already the case. But when they see money coming in from the crypto industry to try to impact an election, you've got to imagine that a lot of these politicians are going to be paying a hell of a lot of attention to this. What's sad for me is that you know i think that a lot of you see that aoc tweet like that that is inevitably going to be her tweet right i you know whatever i think that the the the sad thing would be if she actually believes that that this is like she wouldn't take the money yeah well that this is just a a factor of of money right you know When people can blame things on some external force, some big industry lobby,

Starting point is 00:28:28 it allows them to not be self-reflective if their positions are unpopular. And dude's positions were completely unpopular in his district. Yeah, totally true. So listen, the final story and wow. FedEx files for Solana ETF. Solana rises 8%. I remember when that would have been like an 80% move in an altcoin, but here we are in this part of the cycle. Solana rises 8%. The filing is the first Solana ETF to be filed in the US and follows six days after a similar product filing in Canada. I'm not sure if you saw this, but I want to show you a quick video from my show on Wednesday where I coincidentally had Matthew Siegel from VanEck on just as

Starting point is 00:29:06 the guest talking about ETH ETFs and such. And I said this really quick, we saw a Solana ETF floated in Canada. I don't think that's coming to the United States anytime soon, do you? You may be surprised, Scott. Oh my God. You may be surprised. You heard it here first, folks. I would be surprised. I would be surprised if it happens under, my God. You may be surprised. You heard it here first, folks. I would be surprised.

Starting point is 00:29:25 I would be surprised if it happens under Gensler, I should say. Nothing would surprise me if we see regime change and things change. I think the floodgates could obviously open. His face, man. That's excellent. That's excellent to have on film. He was dying to say it. It was just like, it was unplanned.

Starting point is 00:29:43 I hadn't talked to him about it. I just happened to mention the one in Canada. But I mean, that take is being shared kind of around the market. Slot ETFs and huge sole gains, a real possibility under Trump. Major crypto trader says that's coming from GSR. And of course, VanEck dunking here saying we're the first to do this. I mean, listen, I still don't think this is a real possibility right now, but I think it is an indication of just how far we've come that VanEck knows this is an appropriate time to put that out there and even make the statement that it would be a possibility. Yeah. I mean, listen, so I agree. I don't think it's happening

Starting point is 00:30:23 in the short term or even probably in the mini like mini medium term. However, two things that I think are important about this. One, it's provoking a conversation around what constitutes sort of sufficient surveillance of a spot market, right? With Bitcoin and Ethereum, it's been the CME futures market that has given them confidence that there's sort of like enough regulated spot market or regulated futures market that they can look at. The question is whether there's going to be, if there was a surveillance sharing agreement with Coinbase, would that be sufficient, right?

Starting point is 00:30:55 So there's a very sort of procedural practical question that it brings up around what the sort of minimum qualifications are for this type of ETF. That's a little wonky, but it is important because it has a pretty big impact on what assets in the future might be included in this. I think that the much more significant thing that this does is, and because we kind of all assume that it would be Solana, I don't think that people are quite understanding or giving credit for the fact that this has very much cemented Solana as the next thing, as the third leg of the mainstream crypto stool. I think that you're likely to see, it would be very surprising to me if there was any meaningful competition beyond Solana for the next thing to sort of get an ETF. And that is hugely significant for the Solana ecosystem. I mean, just massively significant. Yes, it is unlikely that this particular, you know, thing goes through, but the flag has been

Starting point is 00:31:56 planted. And, you know, there's going to be analysts now at a huge number of firms who are tasked with going and doing some research on this thing. And there's a fair bit of self-fulfilling prophecy here that I think is very powerful for the Solana ecosystem. Yeah. I mean, how many more of these filings do we see in the coming one, two, three months when we know that now the SEC is more inclined to just blindly approve all at once when they do it than one at a time? Interestingly, Matt Siegel, when I was talking to him, because we were talking about the Ethereum spot ETF, he kept saying the SEC should do the right thing and approve ours first and not approve everyone else the way that they've done it forever. Basically saying we filed first, we should get this first. What the hell were they

Starting point is 00:32:36 doing in the coin tunky derby with the Bitcoin spot ETFs in the first place? And that should not become precedent that everyone who files even late just gets the approval at once to keep from playing favorites. That's a debate for another time. I think, I mean, that creates an incentive, like, okay, then I'm going to go file an Aptos and a SWE ETF now. It gets dicey. We're going to get a it's coming. Yeah. Market ETF in incoming. Yeah. Like that, that was always my idea. I thought they would stop at Bitcoin and Ethereum because once you go beyond that line, you're really opening the flood. And let's be real.

Starting point is 00:33:14 This happens when BlackRock files for their Solana. Yeah. 100%. That's when we get this. I do think, I do think that this, what, another thing that this reinforces though, is that I think that in many ways, Ethereum being approved will be a more significant moment for crypto in some ways than Bitcoin. Because the challenge for the rest of the crypto industry is that Bitcoin is so completely untouchable

Starting point is 00:33:38 in terms of precedent. The fact that it has this pseudonymous founder who disappeared from the asset 13 years ago, who exerts no control over the thing, it is more decentralized than anything we've ever seen known and who doesn't exert influence or undue influence on the space, but is still around, what an Ethereum ETF demonstrates is that the idea that a thing can proceed from a measure of centralization to a comfortable measure of decentralization that makes it not a security anymore. That precedent, I think, matters more in some ways. And it creates the opening for Solana, which still has its founding team very involved, to potentially be on that same trajectory. So even though Solana's founding team is far more involved at this point than, for example, is the case in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Starting point is 00:34:50 What matters is the trajectory, right? And so I think it's fairly significant, not unexpected, but still fairly significant. Yeah, that reeks of Hester Peirce safe harbor, right? The idea that you could start in one way, you're given effectively a three-year period or whatever they determined to be the appropriate amount of time to become sufficiently decentralized by a fixed set of rules that you can then innovate and exist. And it's worth noting that if Trump wins, most likely Hester Peirce would at least for a very short time become the chair of the SEC before they appointed someone if they chose to appoint someone else. And we could see some serious fireworks if she was in charge. Yeah. I mean, her ideas have the benefit of being reasonable and obvious and intellectually coherent. So I'm all for it.

Starting point is 00:35:37 Smart ideas from the government. It's wild. And after last night, man, I'll take any breath of fresh air I can get in that department. Well, thanks for unpacking this with me and suffering through it. I can't imagine what the hell we'll possibly be talking about next week. But looking forward, I don't even know if we'll be here. It's going to be the holiday, right? Yeah, I think we're off next week and then we'll be back. Probably off next week because we all need it, man. We all need the break.

Starting point is 00:36:01 Thank you, guys. It's always a pleasure. We will see you back soon. And I'll tell you guys, follow the breakdown. I'm sure you're going to. It's always a pleasure. We will see you back soon. And I'll tell you guys, follow the breakdown. I'm sure you're going to, it's going to be a good one today. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:36:09 Right on guys. Thanks guys. Bye.

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