The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Testing 100K - But Ethereum Outperforms | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Crypto Town Hall is a daily Twitter Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in the crypto and bring the biggest names in the crypto space to share their opinions.►►OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $60,000!  👉  https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL  - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets    ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/    Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor.  Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Crypto Town Hall on this Thursday, May 8th. We are here every single weekday at 10, 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Dave, can I just start calling you my co-host? Is that fair at this point? Well, it certainly seems like that, but that's okay. With my co-host Dave Weisberger here with the ghost of Mario and brand newner, Dave and I here to talk about everything happening obviously in the market.

And Dave, I mean, you look at price, and that's all anyone wants to talk about, right? Bitcoin trading right now, 99,400 or so, pushed right up under 100,000 before retracing a bit this morning. This is the moment when everybody gets euphoric, of course, because you can smell that big psychological level. But maybe the story, if we want to talk markets before news, is that for once, Ethereum is up 8% in the last 24 hours while Bitcoin is up 2.2%.

A lot of technical indicators, I've been sharing it pretty aggressively because I hate fun and I hate people liking me and I want everybody to troll my posts. So I've been saying Ethereum had this incredible monthly candle, looked technically massively oversold. I think that the FUD is overstated. Ethereum obviously does have problems, but it's going to zero and it's dead situation we've been having meant that maybe Ethereum was due for a little bit of a rally, but Ethereum looking really good. Obviously, Solana up 5% in the last 24 hours,

Sui up 13%, which is a chart that I love, had beautiful bull flag under resistance, it's breaking out. So maybe that's a long-winded way of saying, Bitcoin pushed up and altcoins pushed up more, which hasn't really been a thing in a while. Yeah, I mean, look, there's a few things going on here, right? You know, the Bitcoin is a hated rally, you know, and it's funny because I've been, you know,

I've got people have called me a permable so many times over the last month. I just laugh. I thought that the triple bottom in the high 70s was important. I thought that the institutional buying was manifesting and is slow and patient and the kind of thing that crypto people aren't used to. But this is so obviously spot led and continues to be spot led that it's funny. I mean, I posted this morning about the funding rates. I mean, we're seeing no derivative speculation, no froth.

There's no mention from retail on Google, none of that. All of this from a Bitcoin perspective is just, there are patient accumulators who are, I'm not gonna say price insensitive, are not gonna push the price consistently, but they're not gonna let it go down either, they're just going to float with the market and participate. We used to call those participation algorithms, which for those who understand stock trading tend to be over time the best way to dollar cost average into positions when you want

to accumulate them. You're seeing that behavior in a variety of different ways play out in Bitcoin. At the same time, we've said that people have been selling Bitcoin in the crypto sphere and using it to potentially speculate or sell what they had to. I would think that the money that they've raised is now going from the sidelines into alts. And I think Ethereum, from a trading point of view, I've always thought that you're right on the trading point of view.

I just don't know enough about what Ethereum will do and where the use cases will be for the long-term view, but in the short-term view, I mean, yeah, it looks oversold. There's no two ways about it. It has looked oversold. And you're pointing out the bullish divergence last month is seemed absolutely right as well

Yeah, maybe Don we've got you up here man was great seeing you obviously at the banter party speaking of random in Token, this is a great catch up there in Dubai First question that's the most important that I asked everyone at token. Are you sick? Or did you survive Donnie there Or did you survive? Not either. So sick that the mic button doesn't work. Okay, we're going to go ahead and continue on and move into the news that we have because there's actually quite a lot of news at the moment right now that's extremely bullish and is getting, I think, is getting drowned by price and obviously

trade talks. But we have some very crypto specific news that I think is incredible. First of all, Coinbase to acquire Daribit for roughly $2.98 billion in cash and stock expanding into crypto derivatives. Daribit is the largest futures platform in crypto by far has the bulk of global trading is a massive move for a coin base. Obviously, we can talk about inflows on spot ETFs, but I think we know that when price is up, we generally have these massive inflows.

We got approval of the second. Go ahead, Dave. I was just going to say you glitched out a bunch. I missed a lot of it today. Did anybody hear everything Scott was just saying? I did. Okay, then it must be for some reason. So you never know if it's you or the machine,

but and then continuing on, Strive Asset Management plans to merge with asset entities to form the first publicly traded Bitcoin asset management company, facilitating tax-free stock for Bitcoin exchanges. So this is a micro strategy type strategy, so to speak, but specifically for asset management company. We also have the CEO of Bitcoin magazine who's here often, David Bailey, to raise 300 million to launch a Bitcoin focused investment firm. And then on top of all that,

Arizona passed its second attempt at a Bitcoin strategic reserve law. It fell short of, I think, what a lot of people would like. It's pretty defined as to how they can do it. But after seeing the governor veto one just a few days ago, the second bill that came across was approved. This, of course, right after New Hampshire approving their own strategic Bitcoin reserve. And then you have, obviously, Basant continuing the roadshow for digital assets

in the United States, saying that the United States needs to be the capital of digital assets and to dominate the world in that space. It's just, it's insane how much, oh, and finally, US banks can buy and sell customers crypto assets on their behalf, OCC says, that's one of the bank regulators. So that's all in the last 36 hours, all of that. So Bitcoin should be going up. Right. I don't think it's as strange as it would be. I mean, Sasha, what do you make of all of this news? Jump on in. I mean, I think it's exciting where we're waiting to see everybody flocking back to the US after everybody left. And like even CZ now is asking for presidential pardon so that he can

be involved in a management capacity with a Binance US entity, right? So I think that's really exciting. I think, well, I always try to stay a bit more distance to the price changes in the market because that's a bit more short-term. But yeah, I think a lot of unlocks that we were waiting for and that are starting to come up and it's going to be an exciting conference season. Do you have credence to all those news stories for this move up to 100K? Do you think that this is more related to Trump announcement of an announcement on a trade deal with the UK and then of course, them coming together for talks in China? I guess the question is, do you think that right now we're being driven primarily by

macro or do you think that this is unique to crypto move? I think there was a scare, right? I mean, there is still a lot of macro uncertainty. Jake Powell keeps saying they don't have the data to know what to do right now. And they all get wait and see mode to try and see what's going on. We don't know what's going on with the tariffs.

But obviously, what everybody expects with the tariffs is sudden inflation and prices to reflect tariffs, and then as a one-off, and then no more inflation. And so I think the scare in the market with the tariffs is you kind of diminish the US brand as somewhere where you can predictably do business because you completely inflate the uncertainty. And so it's hard to invest. Investor gets scared. And so that created a lot of flows out of those positions, which, as we know, correlations go to ones, so that impacted the crypto markets.

But now, I think, perhaps, people are starting to realize that there is a lot of uncertainty. The dollar has gone down quite a bit. And what's the hedge? And in these days, what we're seeing is we're in 2020, we're in 2008, we're like the dollar was a flight to safety, we're not yet really seeing this in this market. And so I think Bitcoin has a role to play there. Is that what's driving the market? Perhaps not, but I think

that's an interesting thing to keep pushing forward. Rest of the panel jump in. We'd love your thoughts on this. Hey, JW here. I'd say the regulatory news that you just cited is, you know, it's two or three years ago would have been mega ultra bullish during the dark days of the Biden administration for crypto. And I think we're probably getting a little bit too complacent about how important all those things are. So long-term bullish and it should have more price reaction.

But in terms of, from my view as a cypher punk lawyer, what I don't see yet that I still want to see, I'm glad to see in the Senate negotiations of the stablecoin bill, I'm glad to see John Thune looking the Democrats in the face who are trying to bluff him and say they're going to kill the stablecoin bill if he doesn't add more AML. Their mantra is more AML, more cowbell, always more AML, the more AML, the better. And soon looks in looks at him and says, I call your bluff. I'm bringing it to the floor today.

I hope that wins. I hope that that we have more momentum from national security Republicans losing and pro crypto Republicans and pro crypto Democrats, letting crypto grow in a way that doesn't tolerate within the AML BSA regime, the stablecoin bill as is, would be fine. crypto Democrats, letting crypto grow in a way that doesn't tolerate within the AML BSA regime, the stablecoin bill as is, would be fine. There's some AML stuff at the issuer level, but then in the market stablecoins can exist without AML KYC, at least as per now. So I'm pleased to see that I'm pleased to see Thune sticking to his guns and pushing back on that.

I am hopeful. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. I think just maybe for the benefit of the thousands of people here who might not be following it as close as you, can you maybe just give us the quick TLDR on what's actually happening today?

Because it's meaningful. That's really happening. Yeah, sure. So stablecoins are going on to the Senate calendar to get voted on. Democrats can stop it. You need a bipartisan vote. And so some of these Democrats who've claimed that they're going to vote against cloture on the stablecoin bill, who previously supported it, who've been previously supported by the crypto industry in their election have gone with Elizabeth Warren asking for more AML and threatening not to vote for Clochert. Thune's called their bluff and said,

okay, I'm putting it on the calendar. We'll see if you go ahead with what you claim you do, given what's on the line, which is to say any future support from the crypto community. So I'm proud of Thune for putting his chips on the table there. There's a little bit of risk with it. But I think it's important because look, if crypto legislation, the future market structure legislation, current stablecoin bills, if it all gets wrapped into the AML KYC regime, and eventually if that's applied to DeFi, let's all go home.

There's no point to crypto. Yeah. And if they give an inch today, if they give an inch today, that's just going to be an opportunity for the last remnants of the anti crypto army, right? Exactly. And KYC DeFi is not DeFi. DeFi can't have a chief compliance officer. And without DeFi, there's no point to any of these L1s except Bitcoin. So if that comes to a vote today,

what does that mean for it moving forward? Obviously, we have one act in Congress. This is the act that's in the Senate. And this is genius, right? And the stable side, the stable act is coming out of the Congress. What's the next step? Congress. What's the next step? Well, I think if it passes the Senate, I think it'll pass the House in largely the frame that it passes the Senate. When the Senate goes first, the Senate says, look, House, we couldn't pass anything other than this, so take it or leave it. And that usually gets forced down the House's throat. So that's probably what will happen, which is fine. As it exists now, it's fine. Hopefully that we won't get, you know, more cowbell, more AML, the better amendments from Democrats that are successful. Hopefully we get the successful cloture vote today in the Senate

side. So yeah, I think, yeah, it's amazing how fast this is all happening. I mean, the about, you know, the, the, the SEC completely obviously reversing course was been huge and at an astounding rate. The fact that we're actually getting stablecoins on the floor, Operation Chokepoint 2.0 being rescinded, this OCC news just today, I mean, you can't really have asked for much more in the past couple hundred days. No, I mean, to me, this is the Christmas. This is what I've asked for for Christmas for five years. The other thing I'm watching that I hoping is successful is killing the cases against samurai wallet and tornado cash. That's another privacy threat. Long term if Bitcoin is going to become more significant, it's going to replace gold, if

it's going to become a payment mechanism even, we need some kind of privacy, the only way to get privacy now, really in Bitcoin, some level of privacy is with coin joints, or with there's some privacy inherent in lightning. But the operator of the best coin joint protocol Samurai wallet got indicted by the Southern District of New York for money laundering and operating unlawful operation of a money transmitter without a license and conspiracy to commit both.

So they're looking at 20 years. But hopefully that case goes away. Maine justice has said they're no longer to bring cases like this in a memo. The defense has said, hey, we have evidence now that you went to treasury and said, is this illegal? And treasury said no, and you withheld that exculpatory evidence from the defense,

which is a big violation in criminal law. So hopefully that case dies, the Samurai guys get out and we get Samurai wallet up and running again, because without some similar privacy, Bitcoin doesn't really have a future. So hopefully we're gonna win that fight too. Yeah, we had Zach on here yesterday who broke that down really thoroughly.

And it's pretty scary that that's still happening. So we definitely need that. That would be a huge step. Every lawyer who's come on stage in the past few days has pointed to that samurai case. Which I find fantastic. It's not the big one on people's radar. It's my obsession, man. When they got these guys, I probably generated 100 pictures of

samurai standing against an army on my Twitter feed just in solidarity and donated and guys look for the links to donate to their defense fund. You can you can Google that pretty easily. Alright, so let's talk more about Coinbase and Deribit. Dave, are you back? Are you working? Yes, I had to reboot my phone. Yeah, I do that at least once a spaces, unfortunately, when I'm in the dark.

Yeah, I've been luckier than that. I mean, look, if you look at, what are your markers for bull markets? The markers for bull markets are smart money starts accumulating, smart firms start the M&A processing. This is a big deal. People don't understand how big a deal it is

because the playbook for all the biggest financial firms in the world is, in the US, is that options are one of the biggest products to be able to sell, right? So we have a lot of options exchanges, almost every retail broker does more money in options. Now there's very good reason to believe in crypto. That won't be the case because options are very important products for a lot of reasons, but the dominant reason, 80% probably of volume is to get leverage for Delta, just for a lot of reasons but the dominant reason 80% probably a

volume is to get exposed get leverage for you know Delta you know just for the ups and downs straight stuff and crypto has perpetual swaps which are incredibly efficient and therefore not as important but it is very important and Coinbase jumping in here and getting this done before NASDAQ or the CME group or CBOE group or the ICE could is given the green light by compliance to go after targets like Deribit to me just shows how smart Brian Armstrong is because there would have been a bidding war had he waited six months. And that is a very big deal for crypto for a lot of things. Now, I have a very strong personal reason to care about this because I think the M&A

hysteria will come and therefore, you know, my company, CoinRoutes, will probably be one of those that people will want because, you know, find profitable companies that are market leaders in very important parts of the ecosystem, that's going to be very, very, you know, vanishingly rare. And that's cool. But Deribit was in a really interesting position because it's where pretty much all the options they've had the critical mass. And Coinbase saw that and grabbed it.

And they were not out competing other crypto firms, or maybe they were, but they were certainly trying to jump the gun on traditional finance. And that matters. That's my take on it. I mean, I don't know. What do you think? I 100% agree. I would love the panel's thoughts because that's exactly what I think. Matteo, go ahead. Yeah. I mean, I think the thing that's really remarkable here is like, Deribit is an exchange that we, if Trump hadn't won, we'd probably be seeing sanctions and levies over

and all sorts of attacks against. And now we're seeing Coinbase move in and acquire them. I agree, Dave, that M&A being back is a huge signal to the market. And I think that the price action today is a hope that we get some tariff global economic stability starting to come out of all the chaos, which allows for more capital deployment. But I think Coinbase jumping on this is not only really exciting and a huge marker of kind of what's to come and this portion of the season or the cycle. I know we say cycles are broken, but

you know this version of it. But I think the thing that's just most remarkable to me is that this is even happening and that this would happen in the regulatory environment and just shows what a complete change of sentiment is around these platforms that Coinbase would feel emboldened to be able to do such a thing on a futures and perpetual platform. Yeah, I guess a big question, then Sasha, I'll go to you. It becomes whether this is a play to bring these products to the United States or whether it's a function of Coinbase's international expansion

because Deribate cannot operate in the United States for anyone who doesn't know, or both, or you know, or both. And I guess it will remain to be seen. Sasha, go ahead and then JW. Yeah, so yeah, I think it's, to me, it's a huge signal. And it's like in the long term, like, typically, the way the way it works in traditional financial markets is you build the liquidity on the futures market then you start building your options market on top of the equity you built with the futures market and you start having those futures market. Everybody expected the CME to completely leave that market but the truth is today people

are still pricing options and derivatives based on derivative datait data. And it's not very accessible for us investors. So people have different ways of trying to like getting access to those instruments. But if Deribit can get with, now that it's part of Coinbase, the golden mode in financial services is liquidity, right? So that's what, that's the biggest, most liquid platform for these types of instruments. And if Coinbase can take that, grow it, make it more compliant, give easier access to their services and bridge the liquidity that they currently have to that platform, have that part of their derivative offering.

It's huge because it's not just crypto, I think, down the line. It's better tech, more efficient ways like perpetuals. If that at some point gets the regulatory green light in the next 10 years. And you can then apply this to any kind of financial instrument, not just crypto, right? Also equity is it. And anything you can then apply this to any kind of financial instrument, not just crypto, right? Also, equity is it and anything you can think of. So I think that's the big picture, why this is a huge move by Coinbase. David?

Yeah, look, in this weird world of crypto exchanges and sexes interacting with TradFi and the different iterations of those combinations that the future will hold, and there's some interesting speculation about how that will look for the last couple of years in the Sare's annual thesis. It's exciting. On the one hand, it's always good to see TradFi intersections with CIFI joint ventures and TradFi products. Anything that buys my bags is great, pumps my bags is great. But at the same time, I want to keep it cypher pumped. And that makes me a little nervous sometimes when I see these joint

ventures and stuff. So I am happy to see when Coinbase is in the driver's seat, when Coinbase is the acquirer, rather than having a crypto, it's the acquired firm, strongly prefer to see our kind of cypher pump culture aligned buyers in the driver's seat doing the acquisition rather being acquired. The day I read about Goldman Sachs buying a crypto exchange, I'm going to cry, but I'm really happy to read this news that portends well for trying to keep its Cypher pump, which is the key. If we lose that, we lose everything. Every CIFMA conference I've gone to and talked to a crypto about people, there is not a single soul there that gets it, not a person. I'm glad Coinbase is the acquirer here. So I'm glad Coinbase is the acquirer here. I think the one thing I would add, Scott, is I think it's under- people underestimate

in the traditional financial world, he just mentioned, you know, JW just mentioned SIFMA. You know, I hang out with those guys. I was in multiple committees at SIFMA for many years. And I think that it has been assumed for the last decade, not decade, but the last five years when when you're looking at Coinbase's stock valuation that yeah yeah yeah they're playing now as they got good margins but don't worry when ICE and NASDAQ and SIBO and and and some of the big international stock exchanges get involved they're gonna swamp this thing and then they'll you know, and they'll be buying coinbase

Coinbase is setting themselves up to go into tokenized equities and go the other way. What if What if rather than the big financial firms perpetuating their monopolies? The large crypto firms grow to a position where they're actually dwarfing them or out competing them what if it's true disruption and that this this move actually makes that more likely and Signals that that that it's game on and I think that people don't necessarily know what's coming I think that's kind of the point that I think JW is kind of getting to other than then, you know philosophically Yeah, that's a great point. We haven't talked tokenized equity yet.

Coinbase eating TradFi is a great future. I love that idea. I think everybody does. Donnish jumped on stage. What's up, man? How are you? Hey, what's up? Thanks for having me.

Oh, we have Don and Donnish. Oh, you said Donnie. It's fine. Don, you missed me before. I was trying to talk to you. I don't know if you were glitching. Yeah, I think I did. Yeah, I didn't know if you were there.

Yeah, let me tell. We'll go to Donnish and then we'll go back to the market. I would love your thoughts there. Donnish, what's happening? I think the world where we think that Coinbase is going to take over TradFi markets is highly unusual given the fact that TradFi markets have been built to keep themselves in power. So I think we're a little bit far away from that reality. But I just wanted to make a quick comment on Bitcoin that people are interested. I think this is a very interesting time for Bitcoin. I think the momentum is

actually being driven by a very important narrative, which is adoption from government. I think people are perhaps thinking technically, they're thinking four-year cycle, they're thinking many different reasons. But this one is one that will work on new potential buyers of Bitcoin. I think that's what we, there's a lot of smart money that's coming in currently. You can tell from a variety of different technical. It's being announced.

I mean, it's drive asset management, $300 million fund being raised by David Baylor. It's strategy upticking. You have everybody at that conference. Institutions are going to buy more, not less. And it seems as though we're going to see ultra high networks come in, but more importantly, family offices will now have a real conversation around. If you're a family office based in the great state of New Hampshire, which went first again, you might say, well, the state's going to be backing this. We should probably start having that conversation and we're going to actually start seeing tons

of activity from TradFi. And if you think that you saw some entry of people taking some portion of their 401k and coming in, that is nothing compared to what we're about to see in terms. So Gary and I, for the first time, really disagreed. Gary was telling me that, hey, this is going to take time. You know, Gary, I think this is the first time I've been right against you. I think it's going to be a lot faster than people think.

And I think that most people don't realize how quickly the dominoes will fall. The fast followers are coming. I think we're going to expect. The narrative for this cycle seems like it's going to be the entry of government leading to dominoes for TradFi. It seems like the obvious narrative for this and we're going to hear more and more about this very quickly. Derry, what do you think before we move on? Well, I'm most certainly the most bearish person on Bitcoin. I've been so unsupported

Well, I'm most certainly the most bearish person on Bitcoin. I've been so unsupported. Obviously. Thinking it was moving at such slow speed. I think this is fucking lightning fast, man. What we are doing on the world stage is it's amazing. People are going to look back at this and go, how stupid were you? I mean, I was just watching Sailor's Deal. You know, he quoted this beautiful quote by

Peter Taylor. He said, there's less courageous people than there are geniuses on this planet. And that explains where we are with Bitcoin right now. People have been scared to stick their neck out. And your point, Scott, I think, and maybe Donnish's, I think people are going to be scared not to stick their beak into the Bitcoin pool for risk of what it might mean for their career because I think it's going to be devastating. I mean, look at what the lady did in Arizona.

We can say that I think she backpedaled. I think the lobby team that worked on her did a really good job of presenting three or four different solutions bills for her. They backed her into a corner and I'll take the crypto just sitting in Arizona. That is an awesome first step. And everybody's showing, the enemy is showing their hand through this process. I think that is really, really helpful for us to start marking down who is stopping this.

I'm not an Arizonian, but if my governor resisted something that made a lot of sense to Senate and Congress and the population, and then they still vetoed it, I think she's probably part of the problem. Yeah. So, Bill, take a look at that. If you are a registered investment advisor that works with ultra high networks and you are not having this conversation right now, you will be fired by the end of this year.

This is like, this is clearly trad FI's expectation. You will be fired. Like, it is not even like a question. In fact, you should already be fired because they don't have an allocation. Like that's kind of where people are going to play catch up and people don't know. You think there's FOMO and crypto. The thing about FOMO and crypto is there, there's a lot of early adopters, but the thing about TradFi that many of us know is that there is a giant early majority.

That early majority is, is coming. And I think we may cross the chasm in the next few weeks. And I think that crossing the chasm is happening. And they don't sell. And they don't sell. They don't do years of due diligence to buy an asset and to just get shaken out by the first candle down. So it's just not the same as retail. Hey Scott, if I could just bounce in also.

Look, BlackRock, think, less than one year ago, I was in a space like this, and we were theorizing, postulating, you know, wondering what would happen if BlackRock ever said, hey, put half a percent of allocation into Bitcoin. We thought Bitcoin would go to $8 trillion overnight and you'd have gamma, omega, super cycle candles. I mean, some new bizarre nomenclature we pop up with. He just said 2%. That is a 400% increase over what we were begging for, hoping for, believing that at half a percent, it would be the best thing ever. And we're way above half a percent, guys.

And that only continues. And he's been saying it. And now he really, as you said, that was a very solidified 2%, right? We had kind of a maybe one to three, one to four, now he said 2%. And they're telling this to every registered investment advisor in the country that has exposure to BlackRock. Absolutely. This isn't just telling your average people. So Don, now that we got you here and your mic is working, what do you make of this move up towards 100k conversation so far? I feel like we do have this euphoria resistance here for the technical traders, but I think all bets are off long term as Donnish and Gary are sort of saying.

Yeah, yeah, feels that way, surely, because obviously this move was mainly driven by Sailor, who keeps buying all these billions throughout these resistances. It doesn't really matter. ETF flows have really ticked up again the past few weeks. And obviously, we saw BTC being extremely strong the last few weeks of all the tariff drama. And I think it only needed some kind of catalyst, in this case, all the other markets going

up as well, to really follow the trajectory gold has already set. I think it just took some time to churn all these coins, switch them from one end to the other and it took us a while to build a base around this 80-ish area. And now we're back into this range. Looks pretty strong obviously, the sentiment has kind of flipped pretty quickly here because the altcoins have finally started moving. So I mean for long term I think it looks good. I'm still of the assumption that we are yet to see new highs on especially BTC. Not sure about all the altcoins but good to see some action back in the markets again at least.

And as we're speaking Bitcoin is at 99.830 so it's pushing pretty hard right now towards 100. It would be pretty likely I think that we're going to at least get that test. Once again people seemingly very euphoric here but it's, Dave, that you and I were talking about a tradeable bottom, what is it, a month ago? Literally 30 days ago, we were at 74,000? Yep. A while. I mean, I called it at 78.

I mean, I thought the best tweet back in that week was Billy Barhart, who's I can't tell if you're a speaker or a listener. He's a piano. Yeah. Your liquidity tweet back then was was was perfect. And I think that it's playing out exactly as you said. Bill, come collect your flowers. I think you tried to invite me.

I got to say this, this this software has just got to be rewritten. That's great. I just wasted I just wasted 15 minutes trying to get up here. Yeah, so look, I think we'd be a little bit higher if it wasn't for the tariff narrative vis-a-vis the money supply discussion. And there's really not much to discuss. I think that the tariff discussion is still a bit of a weight on the money supply, which is clearly a balloon. And it's not going to go straight up, but clearly,

that trade is working and I hope people are paying attention. I mean, I was recording a couple of videos last night and was doing some homework. I think we've got 9 trillion ish that needs to be reset by September. That will cause about two trillion in new money printing when you factor in incremental interest, incremental debt, higher interest rates to refinance. And that is going to cause just a flood of cash, you know, all our COVID markets to come into the system and, you know, repo facilities being reset, replenished. It's just a time of, you know, on the one hand, it's nice to see Doge is basically causing maybe a little bit less borrowing than would have been otherwise undertaken with new issuances.

But there's no denying that we've got a couple of trillion dollars that's going to need to be, I'm using air quotes here, printed in order to deal with interest rates being higher and COVID short-term borrowings coming due. Ironically, I think Trump had a tweet during COVID which said, why aren't we doing 100-year bonds? And if he had done that, then Bitcoin might be at 85K right now. But he didn't, and it didn't happen.

So anyway, yeah, it looks like the balloon that is crypto is being slightly weighted down by the anvil that is tariff negotiations. But I think that anvil will go away in short order. So is this, at this point in the cycle, if we believe in it, usually we have a sell in May and go away situation before a down summer. This time difference?

I don't think that way. It's possible. But I just look at what the macros are telling me. It's telling me the dot plots are saying that we're going to get a cut in July. If that cut doesn't happen, I would be concerned, just because everybody's pricing it in. I don't think it really matters, per se,

in terms of liquidity, but it does matter in terms of the news and the narrative. But it's not going to be straight up. I mean, look, there were clearly some blips in liquidity over the past couple of months, but it's by and large up and to the right. And so again, I think the interruptions will be news driven. Does peace break out in Ukraine? Right? That's another balloon. Or does war break out in India and Pakistan? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think the one thing that even the libs have to give Trump is just the president of peace and he just desperately wants peace

everywhere. And so there should be a dividend for that at some point. I will see. But if it pushes oil down sub-50, which is certainly possible, markets will scream even higher because it'll offset inflation fears. And I think that's the other thing. I think inflation is drastically lower than what the talking heads would have you believe. And that's...

Bill, totally, dude. Where is all this inflation bullshit noise coming from? Other than housing and t-shirts that no one needs, like if t-shirts go to 38 bucks, I don't call that inflation because it's not absolutely needed. Where the hell is inflation coming from? Because I see crude oil down, I see gasoline down, and I see no reason why I or those would see a big reversal.

Well, I can give you my explanation, but then I'm accused of being just whatever you want to call it, like a doomsday guy or some, I mean, look, I think they make it up. I think they make up the numerator on unemployment. I think they basically pick and choose the data that they want to report against. I think clearly Powell is playing a game of kindergarten chicken with Trump and it's the American people that that well the world now because of the way treasuries work, but it's the world that suffers as a result. And it's it's insane. But that's the world we live in.

But that said, Bill, we had obviously the before the pause, we did have a pivot and the Fed cut and rates didn't go down. So could we argue that right now even though maybe people disagree on what Powell is doing that maybe the fed has been somewhat neutered anyways and what they do is going to be less impactful. I think that was pricing in demand for future new issuances and the resetting of short-term expirations coming in 25 and markets knew that the 2550 basis points of cuts and bank rates were not going to address the demand issue for those new issuances and that's an ongoing problem.

If the tariff discussions somehow don't include international buyers of our debt, stable coins are not going to solve that problem. So it's a supply and demand problem. There's only so much debt the market can absorb before it says you got to pay me more. And that's what's going on. And at the time, everybody was, oh, inflation is coming higher. And I kept saying, no, inflation is not going higher. This is a supply and demand problem.

No one wants to buy your worthless debt. And so I think I think that's played out a little bit. And I think we're getting a little bit of a benefit now for the markets perception that maybe Doge is working a little. We'll see. But, you know, the real sign will come when the refinancings begin in the next few weeks and the market has to absorb a couple of trillion dollars in new bonds. We'll see.

Lou, then Amiteo. Yes, I'm obviously a big fan of Bill's, but I will say in terms of one thing that the Libs don't have to admit, Trump is not the president of peace. He's the president from the perspective. By the way, I think they all suck. Yeah, it wasn't like I was a Biden fan. He seems to be the president of appeasement to me. If he had been president during World War II, he would have given Russia or he would have given Germany, England.

Um, but that's another thing. Um, you know, I think, you know, also the reason that people expect inflation, there's this book called wealth nation written, I think 1776, maybe something like that, um, which says, if you want to build a wealth nation, trade with other people who are better at building stuff that you are, and you can send them stuff that you're better at building. And when you do that, you get stuff cheaper. When you stop doing that, then the price of stuff goes up.

It is just math. That is going to happen by definition The awesome thing though is at any day and I assume he will at any time he wants he can end the whole disaster and sign a trade deal With with China the Bob be worse than the one that we had But my guess is he will relent and do that at some point because the longer deal He will relent and do that at some point. Because the longer, yeah. When. I lost Lou there.

Was that on my end or is it Lou? I lost Lou. Same. Yeah, go ahead, Emmett. Yeah, go ahead, Emmett. Yeah. You know, kind of to Lou's point, it's quite relevant. Trump is speaking right now to this big announcement that just went live.

And there's just a few developments on these trade deals. That includes the rare earth deal with Ukraine. We knew about that, but it is signed including rare earth minerals, which that coupled with the investments in the US obviously brings a lot to chip and battery manufacturing. So that's significant. He also mentioned that a breakthrough deal with the UK has been reached. That's gonna include fast tracking US goods

through customs into the UK, so creating a really big alliance in trade with the UK. The additional details are coming up, and then obviously we have the meeting with China, which he says will be interesting. So, but that there's just meetings planned with every country. So it looks like there is progress being made

and that there is results coming out of the pressure that was applied via tariffs and that, you know, global trade is being just renegotiated as a part of this, I think it's been very chaotic. Not the way that I would have handled it, but hey, these trade deals are coming around full circle. So curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this. Anyone can jump in.

Anyone can jump in. Go ahead, Bill. Sorry, it's a microphone is glitching again. Hey, so on trade deals, I think somebody, I don't know where to start. Two things. One, to say that Trump would have just capitulated in World War II is just pure insanity. Well, maybe you want to give Ukraine back pieces of Ukraine, too. Yeah, I'm not going to argue with you. I'm not arguing with you. So anyway, and in terms of the tariff negotiations, look, I think people thought that they were flying by the seat of their pants and were acting nuts. I know I'm not in the sausage factory, but I will say that I fully expect the mainstream media

to give the administration zero credit. And I'm not here to just pump Trump, but that they will give him zero credits for any deals that put the American trade situation in a better place than when it was when he took office. It's just not going to happen. And so luckily, bond markets won't be confused by that, but certainly the public will be because the mainstream media will basically create their own narrative around this as they always do. So damned if he does and damned if he doesn't from my perspective. But look, I mean, the bottom line is that when it comes to crypto right now, go walk on grass because if you're over trading,

it's not going to help because it's clear where this is going. So that's my take. And Matteo, do you agree with that? Yeah. I mean, I think that the trade deals weren't even a part of the conversation between administrations and foreign countries. It was all backroom deals and very little actual exposure to what was going on. So I mean, I think that this is positive. I don't know exactly what we're going to see from the initial market reaction. I think in general, the market in crypto has just become comfortably numb to progress and developments. I don't think all of the regulatory infrastructure, stable coin developments are all priced in. I don't think the markets have the ability to digest this because of all of this macro pressure that's just been keeping the basketball underwater.

And I think that the macro headwinds, hopefully, you know, I'm one global piece. I think that's super essential because it seems like this thing that just keeps popping up, creating more pressure on the markets. But assuming we can figure out a piece of amongst ourselves and resolve issues in a different way. Seems like some of this dark pressure is clearing and it's depressurizing with upward momentum and I just don't see that stopping anytime soon and it's exciting to see. Dave, you're allowed to jump at any time without raising your hand officially by the way.

Okay. To the co-host, Dave. So the, I don't think it's intentional or was intentional, but if you had a if you basically set out two months ago to create a market scenario where smart people could accumulate at a lower price knowing where it was going to go and at the same time increase the number the amount of FOMO when the price does start to rally, you would have done exactly what this administration did. Now, as I said, I don't think it was intentional. I don't think it's 4-D chess or any of that crap.

I think that the tariff presentation in the Rose Garden was badly mishandled. I think that Scott Bessent, on the other hand, knows exactly what he's doing. And there's a lot going on here. mishandled. I think that Scott Bessent, on the other hand, knows exactly what he's doing. And there's a lot going on here. I do agree with Bill that I think that ultimately we'll get to the place where we probably want to go. And I certainly agree with Bill that the mainstream media is doing everything they can to effectively resist, I mean, whatever the hell that means. And what Lou said about Ukraine, I mean, we could go down that one, Lou, but just remember Obama was the president when-

I hate them all. I hate them all. They're all horrendous people. We don't- Yeah, I agree on that. My thing is we don't have to like- We don't have to like anything. We agree on that. We agree on- we agree on that. I don't trust any politicians, and I'm particularly disgusted with Speaker Johnson and the House that they haven't even thought about codifying the executive orders that would stop the corruption and fraud that Doge is finding. But the reason for that is obvious. There are lots of Republican

congressmen and congresspeople and families that are making money off of that crap too, but that's a different story. But if you really just look at Bitcoin, the fact that MicroStrategy now has, you can complain, and Donnish and I are gonna debate this one out, you can complain about things that MicroStrategy is doing as much as you want, but empirically, this is now four straight weeks

where their weekend buying was below the price that it traded on Friday, the following Friday. And that is very different than what normal pyramiding looks like. So it is really interesting what's happening here in this market. I do not believe that supply... So, David, I'm sorry. I didn't catch what that's indicative of?

It's indicative of a rising market where liquidity is there and people that have been selling are going to end up regretting those sales and buying back in higher. That's what's happening. It feels pretty clear that it continues to happen. And, you know, look, we're at a critical technical level. Sure. You know, whatever that means. The vast majority of people who are accumulating Bitcoin today are buying it believing that it's 90% plus undervalued. Just remember that. So those are not people who sell when Bitcoin drops $10,000. Traders are the ones who have been net short. Investors, accumulators have been net long. And that dynamic has yet to change. And I don't think it changes for quite a while So so what happened can I can I can I ask you or maybe comment and you respond? I I think there's something related to this which is this narrative around

It's different this time for altcoins because the money is going into ETFs. I haven't spent hours Analyzing this but I've't spent hours analyzing this, but I've certainly spent enough time to look at this to believe that maybe 20% of the new money globally is going into exchange traded products for Bitcoin. And the rest is no different than the last cycle. So, and I think you may have speculated that it was more, and if I'm associating that with you, David,

and with somebody else, sorry about that, but someone said it. And I'm curious to know if people still think that's true because my take is that 20% of new money coming into Bitcoin via exchange traded products is not enough to prevent the traditional grab for what we call alt season. No, I think you're right, Bill. I think that what we call alt season though happens because the people in the crypto world

have made a lot of money on a Bitcoin run. And then they take their profits and put it into it. That's my point. But I don't think that's that I actually don't think that that's what's going on. I think that new money, whether or not it's micro strategy, oh, I see 79 other companies buying it, you know, whether through exchange traded funds or spot Bitcoin, I mean, this is very clearly spot led, very clearly. Yeah, yeah, 100%, there's very little leverage.

I agree with you, I agree with you earlier. And so I think that most of those buyers are long-term buyers, not flippers. I think the flippers will come. I think that today, especially if we get an impulse higher between now and tomorrow, I think you'll start to see flippers buying in, hoping for follow through. But the truth is, I don't you'll start to see flippers buying in, hoping for follow-through.

But the truth is, I don't think that it's the flippers. But that said, it's really important to understand something that you and I both know, which is there's a lot of value being created across the crypto system. And yeah, there's also a lot of crap. But there's a lot of value there. Sure. But in the short term... I think that money is going to get deployed. And so I think we're at a lot of value there. And sure. But in the short term, money is going to get deployed.

And so I think we're at a different. Yeah, I'm ultimately all about the use cases and I'm super bullish on a whole bunch of them right now, which is why I make mostly make my bets. But in the short term, I like to follow the flows and I'm wondering, okay, I understand how we got to four 20 or 300, wherever Solana was because of Trump and people had to buy Solana. I get all that. But now, if we're creeping back up 20% on certain alts, I think Sui is up like 70% from its lows.

Where's that money coming from? Is it new money? Is it reallocations from Bitcoin? Is it people having to Is it is it reallocations from Bitcoin? Is it people having to close levered positions? You know, how would you how would you frame that? I wish I had the data on this. But my strong suspicion is the marginal I think a lot of marginal crypto dollars got despondent and left. And that does tend to be the case at capitulation bottoms. I mean, Scott, you look

at this stuff all the time. Didn't some of these alt charts all look like capitulation bottoms? Yeah, that's right. A thousand times. But we've gone from capitulation bottom to small bounce to capitulate a bottom on things like ETH over and over again. So I think a lot of people just kind of gave up. But a lot of these altcoins look great. I mean, to Bill's point, right? I mean, a lot of these had hugely tradable bottoms. They were great. They just got lost in the 98% of all coin charts looked horrible and are dead. So it's just people stop looking entirely, I think. Yeah, the other thing related to that, that I've been worried about is that there's this

emerging narrative about Bitcoin dominance basically not coming back in favor of Alps. And I think there the issue is just the outweigh, the fact that Ethereum far outweighs everything else. Right? So my understanding is that the standard Bitcoin dominance number does include Ethereum. If you factor out Ethereum, we're clearly seeing a big bounce in huge bounce in alt versus Bitcoin. Then the question is, will it matter enough to the point where they gain enough traction and enough market cap to potentially mute the impact of Ethereum, which is clearly still

down significantly over the last several months? Yeah, it's my view. I'm bullish on the alts. I have a word that I use to describe the tendency of Marx's swing between bubble and crash and bubble again. I call that capitalism. That's just what the market does. It hits lows. Sometimes it hits new lows. Alts aren't going away. Yeah, they're just in an extended bear market. Yeah, that makes sense. I can't believe we're right up here against time. Don, before we go, you're looking at altcoin charts every single day.

This conversation, what do you make of it? Yeah, I really do. Well, I think a lot of these altcoin moves are also justified by just a lot of shorts closing out. There's some of these beaten down coins that are, I'm just going to name one like Eigenlayer or whatever. It's up like 20% today. And I think a lot of people were just perpetually short on these things for like a year because it has basically been down only on a lot of these things.

So it makes sense that the moves up are pretty fighting now. I think it will be pretty key from here on out on a lot of these things. So it makes sense that the moves up are pretty vital now. I think it will be pretty key from here on out on a lot of these coins if they really want to turn this trend around that you see some kind of higher low mate and then to really see the bit come in and not it just being a short squeeze in the end and the same counts of course for EAT. It's nice that it's catching up, but yeah, we got a long way to go for this to actually turn this trend around on the high time frame. Very long way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, EAD B2C is now at 0.02. I think last year, somewhere in the summer, just a year ago, it was at like 0.06. So it's a 3x. Not saying it's going to get there, but just to, it's down so much. It's insane.

People were already unhappy about it. People weren't even happy at 0.06. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it's a long way to go, but let's see. Awesome. Perfect way to conclude everybody. That was another great, great conversation. Give everybody on stage a follow. If you're out there in the audience, there's like almost 5,000 of you. If you're bothering to listen to us, you should bother to follow all these people

because then you can get insight outside of this hour every single day. Otherwise we will be back tomorrow, of course, for the last Crypto 10 haul of the week at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Everybody have a good one. See you tomorrow. Bye.