The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin To $40K? Saylor's Big Bet Is Breaking - Ran Neuner

Episode Date: May 23, 2026

Bitcoin's chart is flashing the same bear flag pattern that preceded the 2022 collapse, and Ran Neuner w/ Crypto Banter breaks down exactly why that should concern you. We dive deep into the STRC problem nobody is talking about - how Saylor's window to raise capital is shrinking month by month and what happens when the biggest buyer in the market can no longer buy. Plus, Hyperliquid just surpassed Coinbase in valuation, SpaceX and OpenAI IPOs could drain liquidity from every market, and treasury yields are screaming that someone is lying. This is one of the most important conversations we've had this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bitcoin looks terrifying right now. At least that's what Rand Newner says as the charts are flashing the same bare flag pattern that preceded the brutal 2022 collapse. And if history repeats, Bitcoin could be heading back to the $40,000 range. But that's not even the craziest part. According to Rand, Michael Saylor may be the only thing holding Bitcoin up right now. And the entire trade depends on one obscure financial product, continuing to peg at $100.

If that breaks, Bitcoin could lose its biggest buyer overnight. If we carry on like last month, then we have another month where he can't raise money. Eventually, the market's going to start discounting the fact that sale is not in the market anymore on STRC. Your biggest buyer at the moment is not in the market anymore. At the same time, Hyper Liquid is exploding to all-time highs. Hype is at a $60 billion fully diluted valuation. And Coinbase is at a $51.3 billion fully diluted valuation. So SpaceX and Open AI are preparing monster IPOs that can drain liquidity from crypto.

Treasury yields are screaming higher. And Wall Street may be. setting up for a major reckoning. Trump and Besant have lost the ability to talk down treasury yields. That to me is very scary. It shows that the people that we trust to have control over the markets basically have lost control of the markets. So is Bitcoin about to collapse or is this the final shakeout before the next massive move higher? Let's get into it.

I guess I'll make a confession since just a minute ago you told me your biggest positions are Zee Cash hype, you know, Salana, Bitcoin, of course. I've been watching Z-Cash and hype, and I have so much, I think, PTSD from previous markets or just disbelief that anything can actually go up that I just haven't participated, even though my gut. You know, Scott. I had Arthur Hayes on last week, and hype was like in the 30s, and we're recording this on Thursday. It'll come out Saturday.

And he was like, you can just buy some now. You didn't miss anything. And it then, like, hit 62 today or something. Scott, I'm surprised because the last time that we were on together, I remember we had the whole Z-Cash discussion. You told me. And I told you. And I told you that, and I told you it.

And that's like 7 to 250 or something, you know. So I guess that was the dip I should have bought, but, you know. Yeah. Look, I mean, you know, luckily, I was actually looking at my portfolio today. And luckily, I mean, I think all crypto portfolios are down because Bitcoin's down. And I think, you know, because that Bitcoin rules the roost. But I think my portfolio has done really, really well. When I looked at it, the reason why I think it's done really, really well is because my, my portfolio was Bitcoin, Solana, hype.

Zcash and then a couple of others, ETH, et cetera, et cetera. And I think I was quite insulated by the hype, the Zcash positions. I have a position in a token called Canton, which actually held very steady. And a couple of other ones that actually did very well. My Solana positions are down. My ETH positions are down. Obviously my Bitcoin positions are down. But I think net net, given where we are in this bear market,

it's quite weird to see that you actually got tokens hitting all-time highs. You know, so it's like, you know, I think it hasn't been as bad as previous cycles, which just shows me that this time I was. was actually focused on quality. I was in much better tokens. Tokens that have a thesis that I believe in, et cetera, and it's actually paid dividends. Now, this time the thesis actually holds weight.

That's the difference, right? In past cycles, we could have a thesis, but it was entirely theoretical. With something like hype, you can literally see that the tokenomics are working. Yeah, with those tokens, with each token, I've got like a reason for holding it. Like, for example, the reason why I'm holding the Zcash

is because I really do believe in private money, and I do believe that private money. money's going to be a narrative. I also believe that the people that are behind Zcash are like the same, they're made of the same fabric that was the people that got me into Bitcoin, right? So, like, you get, it's Naval, it's Barry Silbert, it's, it's the Winkelbos brothers. And so I believe the thesis and I believe the people behind it. When I say the people behind it, obviously it's not the team, but it's the people that are backing this new mission, right? So that's the reason why I took a position on Zcash. You remember I actually said that to you in the last time that we

actually met. hype I've had that's been one of my biggest positions for a long time I don't say I didn't expect it to be at $60 where it is right now but about $59 is where it is right now but I think that the thesis of trading real world assets in real time is incredible I don't know if you if you noticed yesterday but we're recording this today and yesterday the Nvidia results came out and I don't know if you saw but the DGens on Hyper Liquid actually went and degened into the Nvidia results where the traditional markets were closed

and the venue where people were trading it. In fact, let me actually try and pull it up for the viewers so the viewers can actually see it. I should have a hyperliquid screen open somewhere. I mean, I know that at the point here, hyperliquib is doing $700 million a day in volume on oil contracts. I mean, that's starting to compete with the big boys. Well, let me just quickly share the screen over here

so that the viewers actually can see it. So that's hyperliquid. You can actually see that I've been playing the Open AI pre-market, the Open-AIPI is not even out yet, and I'm already trading the pre-market here. You can kind of do the same thing with SpaceX, right? That's SpaceX. That's SpaceX.

It's at a $2.1 trillion valuation. You can kind of buy it here. But what I wanted to show you was, Nvidia results came out, and if you go back and you look at the Nvidia results, and you go on to, I mean, this is a one-hour time frame. I wonder if you can actually even pay it. So if you look at that's when the results actually came out.

So you see that that candle over there is where the results came out. And that was when the markets had already closed. And look at the volume because there was no one trading. You couldn't trade it on traditional markets, right? So people came to hyperliquid as a venue. So you've got this, like hyperliquid is this magic mix of crypto, real world assets combined, and people being able to trade 24-7 with a gambler mentality because they can trade it on leverage, right?

And so it's got all the makings of this, like, amazing product. And that's why I think it's doing really well. And now it has an ETF, which has been successful. And now you have the CFTC, I mean, excuse me, the CME and the New York Stock Exchange going to the CFTC to complain about it. So you know that they're, you know, poking the Hornets Nest right now. They're stepping into somebody else's, somebody else's yard. Yeah, exactly.

So I think Hypes doing a great job. I mean, I don't know if you can justify. how much you can justify it at a $60 billion valuation. I mean, it is at a $60 billion billion valuation fully diluted. I mean, let's look at what Coinbase is, just to give people a comparison. So hype is at a $60 billion fully diluted valuation, and Coinbase is at a $51.3 billion fully diluted valuation.

So I think, you know, it's very hard to compare a decentralized protocol to a listed company, but I think when you put them side by side and you say Coinbase at a 51 billion and hype at a 60 billion, to me it becomes a little bit more difficult to justify how much higher hype can go. Yeah, I mean, it's, that's hard to handicap, actually, when you think about it, because Coinbase has been around forever,

you know they will be around forever, right? So I think that that plays into their long-term valuation. They have multiple revenue streams, but I have to imagine that hype on a month-to-month basis just because of their lack of employees and their size is probably making a lot more money than Coinbase month to month, like per employee or whatever the metric is. Maybe just purely. I haven't looked at it, but I've got to imagine their Russian. So when you're buying hyperliquid, you're buying the decks, the decentralized protocol,

the decentralized exchange, but you're also buying the layer one or the protocol, which, you know, the theory is that the layer one will be a protocol that everyone uses for to settle financial transactions. And then as you correctly say, here all the revenue is protocol revenue, which doesn't have expenses set off it. Whereas with Coinbase, you're trusting on management and expenses, et cetera, et cetera. So it's very hard to compare a decentralized protocol side by side with a company. I just use this as a comparison to almost show like the value. Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

You can't take for granted. There's a that Hyperliquid will be here in two years, right? Coinbase will. That's where I struggle with those valuations. And I'm not saying that hyperliquid won't, but you know, you see them kind of being threatened by regulators and legislators, and, you know, I'm assuming some, what, the operations and team and stuff can be a bit opaque. I don't, I'm not saying specifically.

I don't know. Once again, PTSD of previous exchange situation. Yeah, I think, I think it is, from your side, it sounds like it's a bit of PTSD. I don't think, I think hype is a legitimate protocol, which is, which can be, it's not fairly decentralized now, but it can easily be fairly decentralized, if you know what I'm saying. Did you buy Canton because of the DTCC news and because of their institutional level of adoption? No, we're Canton actually because when they launched, there was a lot of hype around it, and the price dipped pretty low.

I think it dipped to something like $0.00. I think it dipped to something like that these prices, you've got to take a stab at it, and then I started going up, and I just started adding to my position. Again, it's one of those institutional plays, which I think is going to be, it's either going to work or not work, and I managed to just get some kind of position in it. Right. So Canton is trading now at what? 17 cents, I think?

16 cents, roughly. Yeah. Yeah, that's an easy two and a half X. So yeah, it's incredible that you've been making money. I mean, but let's talk about Bitcoin, right? I think there are probably a lot of theories as to why Bitcoin does what it does at this point. You and I kind of discuss one very briefly in Miami that I definitely ascribed to, which was the STRC involvement there.

So maybe you can break that down. I mean, maybe we should just stock Bitcoin and just go back to the charts because I believe, you know, and I know at height you're also a chartist. I mean, let's just look at the charts. The charts will tell us what the move's going to be, and then we should maybe just find the news that could cause the moves. So, I mean, if you look at the Bitcoin structure,

very scary structure. I'm not happy about the structure at all. Don't like it at all. I think if you look at it, basically you've got that bare flag that everyone's been talking about. And in a bull market, generally you get, you know, you get a bull market,

you get, in a bare market, you get a drop down, you get a bare flag, it sucks everybody back in, it breaks down, it breaks down below the bear flag, it sucks everybody back in and unless it broke up over here which was that this little fake out over here you got to make the assumption that we're kind of copying 2022 right so if you look at 22 again you

had like the drop you had the bear flag you had the drop you had a bear flag and then you had the then you actually had the very big drop now interestingly when you overlay the chart of let's just get the 200 the 200 day moving average right and you put the 200 day moving average what you can see is that when bitcoin tested the 200 day moving average the next time it actually broke down below the bare flag and actually that drop was much more severe than the first drop. So if you look at the first drop from the top all the way down to, let's call them the mid-level over here, it was about a 43% drop. If you look at the second drop from the top of the bear flag to the bottom of the market, that was about another 62% drop. So the bigger drop actually came

after Bitcoin retested or nearly broke out of the bear flag, touched the 200-day moving average and broke down. Now let's go back to today's chart. And unfortunately, it looks like a mirror image, right? So you've got Bitcoin going down, then going back up, testing the bare flag over there, breaking down, going up, testing the bare flag over here, just kissing the 200-day moving average, and now we're back in the bear flag. Now, if history repeats, right, then we should break down or could break down below this, right? Right now, as it looks, as it stands, if you're looking at the charts,

the bare flag's basically saying you'll probably stay in the bear flag. At some point you'll either break up or break down. probability has it that if we follow the previous cycle, then we'll probably break down, unfortunately. Obviously, everyone wants it to break up, but unfortunately, you kind of got to say, okay, well, hold on a second. It looks like, it looks, you know, if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then you've got to make an assumption that it's probably a duck. Right. So, so maybe we get the bear flag breakdown, that's where we get the 40s and 50s target, probably 40s or lower, right? It's like, yeah, high 30s, or 40s, it matches those

percentages. I hate saying it because, like, I don't even want to admit. admit it to myself, but I mean, definitely it's going down to the 40s or 50s if that happens. So then you've got to ask yourself, okay, what could cause the flag to either break up or break down? And I think that's just we can talk about what could get the flag to actually break up, right? Or break down, because those are the risks that you actually want to want to account for. In my mind, there are a couple of risks that are in play right now which could lead for this thing to happen. The first risk is the war, right? So the war, I think everybody knows that the war's basically gone on for much longer than expected.

The problem is that the war started on the 28th of Feb, or whenever it was. We've had March, April, and now we're at the end of May. And if you look at the oil prices, barring some news that came out a few minutes ago, oil prices are pretty much still above $100 a barrel. Now, I think that when Trump got into this, he didn't take into account that this was going to be a three or four month thing. I think he thought it was going to be a quick in and out. problem is that now as I say we're three months nearly four months later and the oil prices are still above $100 a barrel so what's the problem with that the problem is that you've got CPI which is at 3.8% which is on the increase that's not the biggest problem the biggest problem is that you've got PPI at 6%

the problem with PPI is that for people that don't know PPI is the producer inflation index and that filters into CPI so in other words if producers are buying this plastic bottle, the plastic to manufacture this bottle today, by the time it gets into the supermarkets onto the shelves, et cetera, that lags PPI basically. Yeah, by about three to four months. So there's about a three to four month lag. So according to Khabisi data, which I think, which I think are pretty reliable in this kind of space, they published a thing which is exactly what I was worried about. And what that is, is that they're saying that within, by the end of the year, CPI inflation is on track. to get to 5%.

Now, also towards the end of this year, you've got the midterms, right? So I think the first risk that we have here is that inflation now becomes sticky. You've got Kevin Wash coming in. Kevin Wash cannot reduce interest rates when inflation is about 5% or inflation is setting to 5%. And the market was counting on the fact that Kevin Wash is coming in and going to, at some point, reduce interest rates. Interestingly, right now, when you look at what the market's calling for,

the market is looking at the next move from the Fed being an increase in rate. not a decrease in rates, which is, which I think a far cry from where we started this whole discussion, we were talking about reducing interest rates. So you've got, I mean, here's the, here's the chart over here, but you can kind of see that now the biggest probability is actually for an interest rate increase. That's the one thing that that worries me. To be honest, not the biggest concern in the whole world, and the reason why I say not the biggest concern in the whole world, there is a proposal now, again, that the war may end pretty soon. In other words, I don't know how recently you've checked your news, but if you look here, and I know this is probably going to come out a day or two later, but this news has just come out, that there's a draft deal on the table, that they may agree, they may not agree, et cetera, et cetera.

So if this war does end soon, then I think that maybe that risk can actually be eliminated, and that's not one of the big risks. And that risk, in my mind, also feeds into the next risk. And the next risk is when you look at the U.S. Treasury bills, now U.S. Treasury bills are going through the roof. I think everybody's been watching this the 30 year went over 5% to 5.2% the 10 years also exploding. And I think the biggest problem with this is that Trump and Bessent have lost the ability to talk down treasury yields. That to me is very scary.

It shows that the people that we trust to have control over the markets basically have lost control of the markets because Trump has been trying to get the treasury yield down. Oh, we were going to attack Iran. We didn't quite attack Iran, et cetera, et cetera. and the Treasury yield didn't actually respond, which means that the Treasury yield and the markets are not believing what they're saying is going to happen, is going to happen. And that's the second thing that worries me.

I mean, the market didn't even believe Powell when he cut rates before the election, right? I mean, we've had interest rates, we've had yields go up when the Fed has cut. So the market has never really believed any policy in the last few years, seemingly. But the stock market keeps going up. Exactly. Well, that's a big problem. Why? Because you can't have the 30 year or the yields going up on treasuries and the stock market going up. One of them has to give it. One of them is lying. One of them is lying. I have a question. What do you think about the SpaceX IPO? Because it's blowing my mind right now. I think it's going to suck liquidity from everywhere else in the stock market. So I want to get there, but I want to show you, before I get there, I want to show you the biggest risk.

I want to get the SpaceX up here because I actually do have a big view about it. Yeah, maybe we should finish Bitcoin first. I don't know. I jump the shark there. Let's get to the biggest risk. And this is the one that I think no one's paying attention to, right? So I love Michael Saylor. I think we both love Michael Saylor, and I love what he's done for Bitcoin.

And I love the fact that he owns a lot of Bitcoin. I don't love the fact that he nearly owns 5% of the Bitcoin supply. And the truth is that he owns much more than 5% of the Bitcoin supply, because he owns about 850,000 Bitcoin. And if you remove all the lost and hidden coins and coins that will never be accessed, again, he owns probably 800,000 over 15 million coins, which is, you know, it's way over 5%. Now, here's the problem, right? The way that he's raising money now, he used to raise money by raising debt, convertible debt. We know that he stopped raising debt because debt has a recall

and a liquidation price, and that was a problem. And he started raising money via these prefs, right? And the preff that he's using the most is this STRC pref, right? Now, this is the, this, for me, when I speak about it, actually gives me the shivers, right? Because I don't get it. And maybe you can help me get it, right? So there's this thing called STRC. Every month towards the middle of the month that trades back towards 100 on the promise that micro strategy will pay you a interest rate. The interest rate started in August 2025 at 9% and has gradually increased to 11.5% to keep the STRC edging towards 100, right? So I think we're all clear on that, right? That's pretty basic maths. The only thing is that if you look at this chart over here, it shows you how close to the X-Div date

this thing actually traded at 100. So in February, it hit on the 25th of Feb, it hit 100, which means that Michael Saylor had from the 25th of Feb until the 15th of March, when the stock went ex-dividend to sell shares at market and raise money to buy Bitcoin. And he did, and he made some big purchases, 2.3 billion, 1.2 billion, 1.6 billion. The same thing happened in March. On the 25th of March, it reached 100. And he had from the 25th of March the 15th of April to raise money, right? Because that was it was trading from the 25th of March until the 15th of April when it was trading ex-div, he could raise money. In May, the thing only got to 100 on the 11th of May,

which gave him four days until the stock went X-Div to raise money. So you can kind of see that the window is starting to close. Now, I have a question for you. Why does this thing trade at 100? Why does it ever go back to 100? You can't redeem it for 100. So why does it trade at 100? Because they financially engineer it to trade at 100.

And what happens when it doesn't trade at 100? Then what do you do? you increase the dividend, right? Of course, yeah. I mean, you have to play with the dividend, but that becomes obviously risky because then people assume a higher dividend indefinitely, which is not going to be the case.

So there's two problems with a high dividend. The first problem with a higher dividend is at some point, the market kind of says, hold in a second. You know, if Scott's offering me, if Scott's offering me 80% a month to borrow money from me or 80% a year to borrow money from me, how financially stable is Scott, right?

That's pretty much what the market's going to start asking. there's going to come a point where the market actually realizes that he's just keeping ratcheting up interest rates, and this thing's actually not worth 100. The second concern that I have is that why is it pegged to 100? I just can't in my mind understand why it's pegged to 100. It's not like you can redeem it for 100. You can keep increasing interest rates and just hope that the market takes it to 100, where you can sell it at market. But there's no real reason why this thing should trade at 100, right?

It's not like it's pegged. it's not like it's backed by $100 worth of Bitcoin. It's just backed by a dividend. And so you have to keep increasing the dividend to make it back at 100. Now, if you look at last month, only four days before the X dividend date did it go back to 100.

What does that say? It says that investors are trading in and out just to get the dividend, right? So as soon as the dividend happens, it dumped. Now, if you look at where it dumped to this month, it actually dumped like 98. So I'll actually call that the trade. I thought it was low 99s. But I thought the expectation is basically it floats from 99 to, you know, 101.

And went to below par. They're obviously not buying Bitcoin and then people buy it. There's an incredible arbitrage trade there for people, by the way, you know, who could just buy it at 99, sell it at 101 or, you know, 99. Well, yeah, it doesn't really get, I think that doesn't be relatively stable. It doesn't get really to 101. I mean, if you can, if you look at it yet, it gets like 100.4 at the max, right? And that's because people are just grabbing the last day of the dividends. That was probably like the 14th. Yeah, that's always like the last day of the dividend. Now, when it goes down, what you can see is that it can actually go down, like it's gone down to 90. But what's to stop this thing from going down to 70? And so, you know, you say there's an incredible arbitrage. Your arbitrage is

that you could make 1% by buying at 99 and getting it at 100 or 98 and a half and getting out at 100. But your downside is that this thing goes to 70. And then what? I mean, it's technically, I guess it's not technically directly backed by Bitcoin, but it's backed by micro strategy and indirectly backed by Bitcoin. But I don't see what mechanic would send it to $70 unless there's a major black swan. Well, what if people just don't pay it at $100? What if you get to a point where people look at the interest and say, like basically Michael Saylor's got to sell a lot of Bitcoin in order to pay the dividend?

Right, I mean, but they would only go to $70 if you had a specific, fear that he was going to have to liquidate Bitcoin or that, you know, credit markets were frozen. I don't know. Some black swan. But, uh, or the price of Bitcoin just went down by mistake. And then when the price of Bitcoin went down quite a bit, the price of STRC went down. And then all of a sudden, STRC can't raise money in the market anymore. And therefore, you've got a buyer who's been buying two and a half billion dollars a week or two and a half billion dollars or three billion dollars a month or whatever the number is, not in the market anymore. Well, he's definitely a only up the price of Bitcoin. I mean, there's no question.

So there's no Michael Saylor, I don't know what price would be trading at. And he's only holding up the price because STRC keeps trading at 100. And what happens when STRC stops trading at 100? I just don't see the reason that it would stop trading at 100 unless there's either a major market event, which could happen. Bitcoin drops massively and for some reason he's seen as being forced to liquidate. Or I guess because there's something wrong with micro strategies. Ballad sheet. Now, hold on.

That's why he came out and said, I would be willing to sell Bitcoin, right? Because that keeps the peg because the SEC and retail hears that he'd be willing to sell Bitcoin to keep this thing near par, I assume. So the one thing that it's not about STRC trading at 100. It's about STRC trading at 100 for many days below the X dividend days so he can actually go out and raise money, right? If it only trades at 100 for 10 minutes prior the dividend, he doesn't have enough time to go and sell STRC. And buy Bitcoin, right. Yeah, last month, he only got four days. Last month, people were too scared to get in until four days before the event.

Right? Last month in May, it only pegged at 100 on the 11th of May, when the exit of date was the 15th of May. Whereas in the previous months, it pegged on the 25th of the previous month. So it should have pegged, if it was going to keep the trend, it should have pegged in the 25th of April. It only pegged on the 11th of May, right, which meant that he only had four days to raise money. And that's why we never broke out of the flag because he didn't have enough firepower to break us out of the flag. And that's the concern. The concern is if we carry on like last month and we have another month where he can't raise money, eventually

the market's going to start discounting the fact that sailors not in the market anymore on STRC. And that means that your biggest buyer at the moment is not in the market anymore. And I don't know how the market reacts to the fact that the biggest buyer is not in the market anymore. That would be bad. Exactly. It would be bad. I just don't know. What about the upside? SCRC goes by monthly.

You know, a lot of that fear is gone. It becomes just an absolute Bitcoin printing machine, and he buys us right out of the flag. What about that side? So look, I mean, the ups, so the third downside is also an upside, and that's the stock market. Stock market's on a generational run.

Now, you've got to take a view on what's going to happen. If your view is that this AI market continues, and by the way, my view is that it is going to continue for a while, then you'll have a market where there's so much exuberance and there's so much profits being made and you get this blow off top. And if you get this blow off top, I don't see a world where Bitcoin doesn't run

when you've got this blow off top, right? And, you know, if you look at the previous cycles and previous bubbles and stuff like that, what you'll realize is that bubbles go on for much longer than people expect them to go. People go to a bubble for a long, long, long, long time. Actually, I did a show which kind of forecast that the AI bubble only pops in 233.

You know, you could sit here for the next seven years saying this AI bubble is going to pop. I'm not talking about like 20, 30% corrections. I'm talking about actual bare markets that last a couple of years, you know, which the markets have seen a few of. Yeah. What are the other upside cases in your mind? Or is it just we get dragged by the stock market? Clarity Act, strategic Bitcoin Reserve, I don't know, any of our old narratives.

By the way, I think a strategic Bitcoin Reserve actually passing or the government showing that they actually bought Bitcoin, which I do not think is going to happen. I think that would be a catalyst, but I don't think that's happening. I've heard whispers. I've heard whispers. I think they're based on Cynthia Loomis' proposal to buy a million Bitcoin in a budget. I think the ARMA Act was presented, the American Reserve Modernization Act or something, but it just sounded like the act she had being proposed by someone else to make it.

Exactly. So I don't see the U.S. actually going out and proactively buying Bitcoin. I mean, I wish that they would, but I don't see it. I don't see them having a mechanism to buy Bitcoin in a budget neutral way. Although there's that account, Patrick, the advisor, what's his name? Patrick Witt, is that his name? Yeah, I just add. Yeah, so he hinted at something like that.

I think the Clarity Act is to a greater or less extent actually priced in, to be honest. And I don't think that the Clarity Act actually impacts Bitcoin, to be honest. I think if anything, it impacts everything else. So, yeah, I must say I'm disappointed by the Clarity Act. Act. I think the banks got a big win. And I think I watched your clips that are going viral with Arthur, where he says he wishes Trump would actually veto the Clarity Act. Trump's never going to do that, but because Trump wants the Clarity Act. But, I mean, I don't think it's a great clarity act, to be honest.

Yeah, I agree. I think it's a act that mostly helps the banks. But, you know, the silver lining is it could be revised and at least, you know, people would feel confident that they can operate in the United States. Yeah, I mean, Patrick Witt said that to me in our interview about the strategic Bitcoin Reserve announcement coming soon. So I take him at his word that there will be an announcement. I just can't handicap how meaningful that announcement will be. I mean, usually they're letdowns, right? Yeah, I mean, I must say, I think if anything's going to take Bitcoin up,

it's not anything that we know about. Because I think everything that we know about and we speak about is already in the markets. Like, I think the Clarity Act is fully priced in. I think anything with a strategic reserve short of America actually proactively going out and buying is proactive, is already priced in. I think the stock market running is already priced in.

So I think what we, what would drive the market is not something that, that is out in the market at the moment. Yeah, I think that's fair. Now can we talk about SpaceX? Hmm. I mean, yeah, I mean,

so it's not only SpaceX. So if you think about this, Elon Musk and Sam Altman are clearly going at each other, right? You saw that, right? Yeah, of course. Elon lost the court case on a technicality. He didn't file in time or something like that. He's appealing now.

Elon announces the SpaceX IPO, and then Open AI announced the next day that they're going to IPO as well, right? So now that there's Open AI and there's SpaceX IPOs coming in. I think you've got to take a view as to whether these IPOs extract or suck money out or actually bring wealth into the into the market right now again i i don't know what the view is but whatever the outcome is i know we're going to find out very very very soon what i know is that usually ipos happen at market tops

if you look at like i think i had a chart about this uh which i'll see if i can actually find let me see if i can get us this chart uh my research is i'm sure online hold on let me see if i can find for us. Send me the chart of IPOs happening at tops. So I know that IPOs usually happen when markets are heated. Now the question is whether they happen when markets are heated or whether they suck

liquidity out of the market, right? Because on the one hand, you know, if SpaceX comes onto the market at a, I don't know, two or three trillion dollar valuation, no one knows where this thing's going to come onto the market. But if it comes onto the market at a two or three trillion dollar valuation, that's two or three trillion dollars of money that wasn't in the market and that's two or three people feeling two or three trillion dollars richer than they were right that's that's the one the one side of it the other side of it says you need a buyer now i'm assuming these things are going to come on with relatively low float

in terms of tradable um i think 75 billion is how much they're raising so yeah yeah so yeah so yeah i'm gonna tell you're about the rambcoe which was the biggest ever before which was under 30 or something yeah yeah so then you got to take a view you need to take a view as to whether whether whether think that these IPOs suck money, suck liquidity out the market, or create more paper money in the market and create more liquidity. So I mean, here's the largest IPOs in history. You can kind of see that most of them actually happened on or around market tops. So, you know, that's SpaceX Open AI. You've got Saudi Aramco here. You can see exactly what happened to the market after Saudi Aramco, sending a soft bank. Alibaba caused a little bit of a thing. Facebook caused a little bit

of a thing. So I don't know, you know, again, you've got to take a view as to whether they suck liquidity out or whether they add exponential wealth into the economy? I wonder what's your view there, Scott? I think it's going to suck liquidity out of the market personally, but I have no idea. I think right now that people are pretty deployed, and I think anyone who's holding SpaceX pre-IPO

is a seller, not a buyer, and I think anyone who's going to be a buyer is FOMO retail who wants a piece of something Musk that they couldn't get a piece of before, which means selling everything else to get into this. Okay, fair, fair point. Fair point. And where do you think that the-

Training at 94, at 1.5 to 1.75, it's about 94x their 20-25 earnings, if you even count them as earnings because they actually lost money. I mean, at the top, Nvidia was 30x, right? So it's three times bigger than Nvidia at the peak of the AI hype bubble. I think space stocks, which I don't view this at, I don't know, 4x, so you're at 20-something times that. There's just no rational valuation where this makes sense unless you want to get in now to price it perfectly for the best case scenario for five years

down the road. I think I saw in 2031, the estimates were by 2031 they'd have to be making 80, 85 billion a year, right? Which is like Apple. And right now they're losing money. So they have to go from losing money in five years to being as profitable as Apple just to justify today's valuation. Yes. So, so I hear you. And imagine if our Open AI comes in the next week or the next month. Then I mean that's, so again, if your theory is that these things suck liquidity out of the markets, then then brace yourself. Because of Sam and Elon's, because of Sam and Elon's feud, they could suck all the liquidity out the markets. I don't know, man. And the funny thing is you can go on, you know, hyperliquid or OKX or finance right now,

and you can trade, as you said, these pre-IPO right now. You've got to imagine that sucking liquidity out of some other places. I mean, I think the volumes are very small. I think in the big scheme of things are pretty insignificant, to be honest. I mean, what else is on your radar right now? And what are you thinking about? You know, it's pretty clear where you're focused as far as the crypto market and what you believe is going to happen with Bitcoin.

I mean... Yeah, so I think, I mean, I think, look, Firstly, in terms of Bitcoin, I'm playing majors only. I'm really, really not going down below unless there's a good reason because I know the team and they're building something amazing. And then I consider that a VC investment. But I mean, largely I'm focused on the majors because I think that that's where you want to be. I'm pretty nervous about the market.

And I will be pretty nervous until that bare flag resolves one way or another. I'm hoping it resolves up, just like everyone else in the crypto world. But, you know. Yeah, I mean, if that drops, that hyper liquid position probably looks. very ugly for a while. I think it'll still outperform Bitcoin, funny enough. I think that still lands up outperforming Bitcoin. Yeah, I mean, so that's really where it is.

And then, I mean, I'm watching the macro and the stock markets. I'm watching Treasury yields and I'm watching the stock markets. Because, as I say, one of them has to be lying. Like, you cannot have Treasury yields going up to 5, 6, 7%, and the stock markets at all time high. I just like, which one gives first? But one of them has to give. I mean, you know, Treasury yields could give if Trump does,

crazy if the war ends tomorrow, if, I don't know, Kevin Warsh can manage the short-term rates and the long-term rates somehow. You know, the one thing that that we need to remember is that Trump's now surrounded himself by two of the best. He's got Scott Bessent, who's probably one of the best financial engineers in the world, and he's got Kevin Warsh, which is probably also another one of the best financial engineers in the world. So he's got... Kevin Warsh was on the, you know, Fed Board of Governors, 2000, what, 6 to 11? So he was there for the entire. Great Recession, TARP failouts. This guy knows how to keep the cronies rich and keep the system going.

Exactly. So this is what I'm saying. So I mean, you've got to imagine that there's some kind of plan. But again, I say if they cannot reduce the long term treasury, the long term T-Bill rate, and the stock market in the T-Bels cannot continue to go up together. It just cannot. It just can't work. So one of them has to give.

I'm hoping it's going to be the T-Bull, but I think the higher. probability is that we get SpaceX, we get open AI, but the two of them together give a toxic cocktail to the market and that's the end of it. And right in the middle of the summer, you know? Like we all know how boring and kind of just trickling down you get in the summer. So nobody would be surprised if those things hitting in the summer makes her kind of an uncomfortable few months. Yeah. I mean, I know people say sell in May and go away, but the truth is we did the numbers and you actually shouldn't sit in May. The data says do not sell in May. Now, the data says just keep buying the dips and wait a while.

That's what's on your radar? I'm keen to know. You're interviewing a lot of big people. You're speaking to a lot of big people. You're making waves. You're a hub of information. What's on your radar? I mean, I've been just kind of Bitcoin-Eth Solana because it's obvious and I don't have time to do the work.

But I've obviously missed the bigger players, you know, bigger runners as a result of that. But I mean, I think that they'll all do well. You know, I think my kind of base case, was I'm not even really looking deeply at all coins, and I'll just buy the things that have some level of institutional adoption and call it a day. But I think that might end up being a very boring and vanilla way to approach the market.

Do you still have a thesis on ETH? Like I've got a small position in ETH, but I mean, do you still have a real thesis as to why you're holding ETH? Yeah, because it has an ETF and Tom Lee and cheerleaders. Right? I think once you get the institutional level of adoption, there's kind of just a structural bid there

that's not in existence for other things. you know, like if it's going to be, if you can be able to buy it in your Morgan Stanley account, I think sometimes we get too deep in the weeds of like the crypto narratives and why it matters to us and forget that, you know, some 65-year-old guy right now is opening his Morgan Stanley account. And he's like, I've got Bitcoin Ethereum and E-Trade in this case. You know, Bitcoin Ethereum and Salon are available to me. I should have some of that, right? But based on that, based on that, based on that, then you'd probably need some XRP in your portfolio

because isn't there this whole narrative around how XRP is a very institutionalized coin in the United States, right? What's that meme? That's bait? I did this on some other show. I was on a webinar. Luckily, it wasn't recorded. I just can't, listen, it's nothing against any of them. Like, I just, you know, I don't view XRP through that lens, right? I just personally, when I look at that XRP specifically, I see that there would be theoretically an opportunity

to own Ripple shares. There's no Ethereum shares or Solana shares or Bitcoin shares. And I would rather personally be invested in Ripple the company than in XRP the token, given the opportunity. You're a very smart guy, Scott. You're a very smart guy. You know, like where does the value accrue and how do they fund the company? I don't know. Well, I know how they fund the company. They fund the company by setting the XRP token to token holders. That's how they fund the company. So, right. So like I get why people believe it can still go up. I personally am not comfortable with being on the wrong side of that. Yeah, I don't, I don't touch that.

Like you've got sailor buying on one side and then you know who's selling to you with that one. Are you not absolutely petrified or you're not absolutely petrified about, about STRC? Like, there's things holding up the Bitcoin market. I mean, everybody's, I hear a lot of fear about it. I'm not comfortable if he's actually the only demand that we have. That makes me uncomfortable, more so than STRC failing, because I think these products exist and there's a lot of incentives.

I want to show you something. I want to show you something because this is actually pretty interesting. So let's look at the Bitcoin price and let's actually look at when Bitcoin ran and when Bitcoin didn't run in the month. Okay, just quickly. Let's just look at the numbers here. I think this will show you what's going on. So remember I said to you that for the previous two months, the price of STRC pegged, you know, 15, 20 days before the 15th. And then STRC started buying. And when STRC started buying, so did the Bitcoin price go out. Because they were the big buyer in the market, right?

So if you go back and you look at like the price move, let's say from the 25th of March, 25th of March for three weeks and the 25th of February for three weeks. So let's go back here and go to the March, 25th of March. Here's the 25th of, 28th of March is here, right? Okay. And look at what happens to the price from the 28th of March. I definitely think All the way up, just look at when it gets to it gets the 5th, the 17th of April, right?

And then it dumps again, right? And let's go back to the month before, 25th of February. That's the 25th of Fab, over there. And as you can see, price of Bitcoin goes up and up and up all the way up until the 15th of March. And then it dumps again. Right, but that makes sense, right? Because when you know there's a buyer in the market, you're naturally going to front-run them. There's some traders who are going to trade around STRCS dividend, X dividend all the time.

Now watch this. Look what happened here. Here, the price started running very early. Why? Before STRC pegged. Yeah. Because people were anticipating the STRC peg. So people started to try and front run the sale of purchases here.

And then they realized by the 11th of May that this thing, by the 7th of May, they started realizing that this thing hadn't pegged yet. And they started selling. And so this is the problem. These got, the first, in the first two months, 25th of February, 25th of March and 25th of March and 25th of March to April, Saylor was buying up because he had 20 days to actually buy the price of Bickwood up. And you can clearly, clearly see it in the chart that he actually bought up the chart. And you can see that the chart stopped going up on the day that he stopped buying.

Here, people started to front run the move because they thought, but the price didn't peg until four days before. So what happened is the price. I thought the price was going to peg much faster when I was first, you know, talking about this a month ago. I was like, yeah, I'll be mine in two weeks. And he wasn't. Scott, mark my words here. There's going to be one more, one or two months in a row where this thing doesn't peg within enough time.

And people are going to completely forget about this thing pegging. And they're going to say, hold on, this thing pegs one day before. And also, I would rather buy it at 98 cents and get the dividend, then buy it at a dollar. And so eventually there's no reason for this to actually peg. There's no reason for STRRC to be at $100. you still get a dividend if it's at 99 or 98 or 97 or even 50 you still get the dividend so why does it need to be at 100? Yeah people aren't going to people are going to dump it off if it's going down that far

which then again causes cascade obviously yes and what how is the market how is the market going to react to the fact that that STRC is no longer in the market last month they were in the market for four days maybe next month they in the market for two days then how are the people are going to react to the fact that STRC is no longer in the market? You need people. Your biggest buyer is my advice. Everybody go buy STRC right now and save the market. Thank you.

Get it to $100. Please. Repag us. I want to talk about repegs, not deepags in this market for once. You know, I mean, I'm not comparing it directly to this, but it's probably worth discussing how the Lunar Stable Coin was always pegged to 100 until one day it just wasn't pegged to 100 anymore. And then that was the end of the... That was Finita la Comedia, you know?

That's it. So, I mean, it's not Luna, and Luna was backed by nothing, and it was an algorithmic. This actually does have Bitcoin backing the dividend. So it's not the same, but I'm just saying, you know, things are always pegged until they become unpegged. And then you realize, like, maybe they can be pegged yourself. I think your Luna story, like, you know,

I went through that with you, obviously. And you shared it on the podcast when we got together in Austin, I think. but now you see all this Jane Street stuff coming out. Like, I mean, it's all alleged, right? But like Bryce's secret telegram chat and then basically dumping all their UST on inside information and then shorting Luna. I mean, listen, you know what? When you're in the Wild West, you knew what the rules of the game were.

You're playing in an unregulated market. You were playing in an unregulated market. You're playing an algorithmic stable coin. You knew that we all knew the rules of the game. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Anything else on your mind before I let you go? I think that's it, man. I think that's it, man. I'm glad to see you. We need to do it more often. I know we always say it, and we have been at least relatively steady,

but it gives me like, see, now I have to think about STRC, and I was drinking Kool-Aid. Yeah, I just, I mean, I need someone to explain to me why STRC needs to trade at 100. I just, I don't know. I just can trade at 70 as well, and you still get a dividend. Everyone still gets a dividend. I didn't watch it, but the guy from Strive apparently really broke it down for coffee Zilla. Or at least for the... I watched the thing with Jeff. It was with Jeff, and I watched, I watched it.

He does, it's not a punsy for sure. It's taking financial risk and it's financial engineering. I fully agree with that. I don't think that it's a punsy or there's anything illegal or unethical. I just, again, and I think that, that estuary. is a great instrument, but I don't know why it has to trade at 100. And at some point, people are going to say it doesn't need to trade it 100. And then Saylor can't use it to raise money.

And I'm worried that that point is coming much sooner than we think. All right. Well, that'll give you that bare flag. I'll be honest, though. Right now, I think I would be just as happy with Bitcoin at 50 as I would with Bitcoin at 90 or 100. Tell me why? Because I want to buy more.

I'm glad you've got tripod on. the side and i don't know where you got your dry part of from bro i just want to buy more i'll find something to sell how do you feel about the fact that that we've been in bitcoin and we've been these loyal you know crypto people and you know i don't know about you but 85% of my mindset my work mine share has been on bitcoin and crypto and at the same time what's what's happened is that the nasdaq has given investors The NASDAQ, you know, the boring NASDAQ, the boring stock market has given investors a return that looks like that. I mean, just like some quick numbers, you know, since 2024, the NASDAQ has given investors, I don't know, 100% return on equities.

You could have got 100% on equities. If you were trading the South Korea and Kaspi, you would have got 100% this year. It's pretty. But, okay, so like, I say this night and glown every day. He's like, Bitcoin's leading. And I'm like, the stock market's all the way up. What if Bitcoin's trailing, dude? What if we just break out and follow stocks to Valhalla?

From your mouth, Scott, from your mouth to God's ears. Because right now, I must say, as a crypto, I've got to be honest, I feel like a little bit of an idiot. Because, you know, I got into crypto for the big returns. And I got into crypto because the stock market was too boring for me. And yeah, it's not what was promised. Even hyperliquid, right, somewhat 100% this year? Like, that's a day. That's the entire Korean stock market.

Like, that's not a lot. That's the entire Korean stock market. I could have just put my money into the Korean ETF. I could have chilled on a beach. I wouldn't have to check my trading view every 15 minutes. And I would have had the same return. Yeah, brutal. Instead, I would have been a happy pill.

Instead, I've been looking at a happy pill. on-chain data. I've been studying, I've been studying the number of traders, the volume, doing calculations. I could have just put money into an ETF, paid zero fees. You know, you're the first guy who told me, though, it was about the real long-term implications of 10-10. I think you were absolutely right. I think anyone who was here and actually cared, like, just nobody left. You know, like, we can overthink hyperliquid and Z-cash. This is where I think my brain's not working, but like, it's like as if there's anyone left to trade against. Like, there's a consensus, and there's like a thousand

people here total and they're all in the thing. So you should probably be in the thing. There are very few people trading crypto because crypto doesn't give you the returns. It doesn't give you the dopamine. There's no one. You can also trade all the other stuff on crypto exchanges now. So why would you trade crypto in the same manner you can now trade everything else? Exactly, exactly. Good times, man. How's everything else? You're good? I'm fantastic, bro. It was very good to see you. It's actually very cool to see in in Miami-Num recently. It was so, so, so, so good to see you. It was so, so, so good to see. you, it's good to see what you're doing.

It's good to see how you've like, I want to say come out of your shell. Like, there was a time when I, you know, my friend Scott was like too scared to act and too scared to do anything. And it's like, it's almost like you've like shaken all that off and you've decided that you're going to, you're going for gold. I went to, uh, to Singapore with you. And you invited me to a race. Uh, I had never been to an F1 race.

I knew nothing about F1. We went in the bi-bit box. And we were sitting there having a conversation and you said basically that to me. And you said something. I'll never forget. You said something to the effect of. You said that I was like a guy with who thought that like a little rain cloud was following me around, but looked outside, it's actually really sunny. Yeah. I'm, you know. I was having like the Voyager PTSD and everybody was mad at us, you know, and like we had crashed the whole market and, you know, we promoted scams and all that

stuff. And so I just was trying not to really do much. And you were like, dude, it's sunny outside. I remember, I remember that conversation very, very clearly. I remember, I think for some reason you couldn't come to the race or you only came to the practice or something in Singapore. And I remember we had the discussion and I said to you, Scott, like, you keep acting like the whole world's watching you and actually like it's sunny outside. Like you should, we should give it a good shot. Yeah, it was very, that was a, that was a moment. I was like, damn it.

He's right. Yeah. And since then, I mean, you've been, you've been killing it. I mean, between interviews, all the biggest people in the world, I think your content must be one of the most clipped content in the world, like in the crypto world right now. I started, it's funny because I joke this, I don't know when clipping became such a big thing, but it seems to have reached over a tipping point of late

because I'm like, now I scroll my feet and I see my face without credit. So, you know, when I see clips of me, or like from my interviews with me cut out that never mentioned me. So what you should do is you should watermark the interviews with the logo. So like put the Wolf of Wall Street logo on,

if you're doing the clipping, obviously. And if not, then in the corner of the screen in the interview, just always keep your logo consistent. No way. If it gets clipped, it still goes back to channel. But, I mean, it doesn't matter whether it's clipped or not. I mean, it's great content, and I think people know the source eventually. Appreciate it, man. Thank you. Well, it's been good catching up.

I know it's late at night for you, man. So we'll call it until the next one. Thank you. Thank you, buddy. Chat soon.