The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin To Reach $120,000 By The End 2024 | Dan Gunsberg & Alessio Rastani

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

Standard Chartered forecasts Bitcoin could reach $120K by the end of 2024. How real is this forecast? I talk to my favorite guests: Dan Gunsberg (Hxro) and Alessio Rastani, who will cover the markets and provide his own forecast.  Dan Gunsberg: https://twitter.com/hxrobtc Alessio Rastani: https://twitter.com/alessiorastani ►►MELD MELD will bring to bear the full power of decentralized financial instruments to the masses. Banks are at the heart of the economy, MELD will become a new set of banking tools that are by the people and for the people. 👉 https://www.meld.fi/early-access-apply?source=crypto_banter ►►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.

Standard Chartered Bank says that Bitcoin could go to $120,000 by the end of 2024. That's just next year. They had originally said $100,000, also thinking we could go to nearly $50,000 by the end of 2023. And that in the face of a whole lot of global economic problems. We're going to talk about that today and a lot of other news. We've got two amazing guests, Dan Gunsberg from Hero and of course, Lesio Rastani, to talk about trades today and a lot of other news. We've got two amazing guests, Dan Gunsberg from Hero and of course, Lesio Rastani to talk about trades at the end of the stream. You guys don't want to miss it. We're back. Let's go. What is up everybody i am scott melker also known as the wolf of wall street before we get started please subscribe to the channel and tap your mclaren formula one hat on that like button i'm like a huge formula one fan guys now i wasn't a huge Formula One fan before you guys know I went

uh in Singapore last year I met back Max Verstappen shook his hand took a picture and then I turned around someone was like who is Max Verstappen like what and then on the way back from Singapore I watched Drive to Survive on Netflix and I was like, that guy is like the greatest racer of all time right now. And I should probably care more about Formula One. And then I got invited to come out to London this week alongside OKX, of course. You can see him on the back. Right? And, dude, it was epic.

So, of course, much like my experience at the Kentucky Derby, we had pretty good access. But then we just made it happen, talked our way into things, ended up literally in the garage when they were pulling the cars out. Lando was getting ready. He sprayed me with champagne like we were in the full everywhere. I interviewed Zach Brown, the CEO of McLaren. I raced Lucas Blakely, the F1 eSports champion. He smoked me, but he rides for McLaren. But I did put in a 129 lap on the simulator, which basically makes me a professional F1 driver now. So I'm driving for McLaren.

You guys didn't see that. I'm quitting crypto. Yeah, that's sad. But for real, guys, it was an absolutely epic weekend with those guys. Huge thanks to everybody at OKEx for bringing me out. That's the experience you can't really get elsewhere in this world. And so absolutely, absolutely epic. Also today, guys, see right there, that new sponsor, Meld.

If you've been listening, of course, to Crypto Town Hall, we had their CEO on last week while I was in England. Absolutely incredible project. They're a neobank in Europe, so they have full actual banking access and then a Web3 side that's going to integrate basically everything you could possibly want in DeFi with an actual legitimate real bank. If you guys were following the newsletter last week, I talked about them quite a lot, but really, really, really, really excited to have them on board.

So the link is down in the description for you guys. Check them out. But now guys, you don't want to hear about I'm now Formula One driver anymore. Probably I am basically a professional Formula One driver. We're going to dig into the news here and then I'm going to go bring up our guests. So guys, without further ado, let's see what we got going on today. First, I think just a really quick market update.

I was in a car with Ran Nooner for like 400 hours this weekend. Silverstone is like 50 miles maybe north of London. Each, it was like two to three hours there and like three to four hours back each day. So we spent literally 28 hours in the car together in two days. I mean, 14 hours in the car together in two days. And it convinced me to switch over from crypto bubbles to banter bubbles. You can check that out here. Actually quite a lot of green in the market right now. But to me, we're just basically had the move from the ETF and everything is sideways. We'll obviously discuss that more with the guests as we go on.

Moving on with the news. Bitcoin retreats to 30.6K as blowout ADP report strengthens Fed rate hike bets. This is so dumb. And I just want to tell you why it's dumb because you know that I think basically everything is dumb. This is the Automatic Data Processing, Inc. They issue the report. They handle payroll for about one fifth of all privately employed individuals in the US. And they reported 497,000 private sector jobs added in June when there was the expectation of 220,000. Of course, meaning that the economy is incredibly strong, which is bad, right?

People getting jobs in the United States is a terrible thing because the government hates you and they want you to lose your job immediately. Because if you lose your job, then the economy, they can stop raising rates. So what this means, though, basically, is that since we have seen a double of the expectation of rates of jobs, excuse me, that it's very, very likely that the Fed, and I think we know that is going to continue to hike, which apparently is bad. But the reason I say this is stupid, there's literally an article about Bitcoin retreating to $30,600 when it's basically been in a $400 range for the last few weeks. To make an argument that Bitcoin went down because of these numbers when it's basically been in a $400 range for the last few weeks. To make an argument that Bitcoin went down because of these numbers when it's off the high by like $200 is just absolutely

stupid. And once again, just the media sort of looking for a narrative to explain when nothing, absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing is happening with price. Crypto can't be used as money due to inherent flaws. BIS tells G20. Now, if you guys aren't familiar with the BIS, it's the organization that is the central bank for central banks led by the guy whose name I will never remember, but who looks like Jabba the Hutt,

looks like he ate all of the central banks, if you have seen him before. Surprisingly, guys, the central bank of all central banks, if you have seen them before. Surprisingly, guys, the central bank of all central banks thinks that the competitor to central banks is that. I know that I'm shocked. I'm sure that you're shocked. They're obviously pushing for international regulation, consistent international regulation for all countries of crypto. But very clearly, these are the same guys who say you'll own nothing and like it, who think we need a central bank digital currency for the world. Are we really surprised that maybe they're not deeply in love with our industry? I don't think

so. Next story, because God, who wants to talk about those guys? What's that guy's name? The big guy's huge. Anyways, U.S. Senator Tuberville asked DOJ SEC to investigate crypto broker Prometheum. This is one of those stories where I was hesitant to talk about it because I just don't like Tommy Tuberville at all. Guy was the coach of Auburn, competitor of the Gators, has no business being a politician, but hey, whatever, man, he's on our side now. Basically says, if you guys have been following the Promethean story, which I know you have because we've talked about it a million times here already, Promethean effectively is this crypto exchange that got a license out of nowhere and then all of a sudden was on the floor of

Congress just spewing talking points that were probably handed to him by Elizabeth Warren. And they're basically, if you look back, funded by the CCP. I mean, it's the craziest story ever. You can listen to my old streams. But Tuberville, Thomas, Thomas Tuberville, not Tommy anymore. He wants the SEC and DOJ to investigate this because clearly there's a tie to China. Clearly they are a fake company that's been propped up by the United States to say, hey, look, guys, you can come in and register. It's easy to get compliant. So guys dig into this more.

But problems are coming for. And also, by the way, this guy looks like a classic, like Steven Seagal, kind of bad guy from a 1990s movie. That's Aaron Kaplan, the CEO, whose brother is also the CEO, whose dad is like the CFO or something. This company is a complete and absolute sham that they've put up to show us that it's easy to be a crypto exchange in the United States. By the way, you cannot trade any crypto assets on this regulated exchange, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, because they might be securities. But it's easy to register. Very easy. Grayscale Bitcoin Trust discount narrows to lowest since

May 2022 at about 27% right now. It was trading at 46%, I believe, just a couple of weeks ago when I had both Big Cheds and Mike Alford on the show. And Mike Alford, for all the things people say about him, he clearly came out here and said i just bought like 200,000 more shares of gbtc this discount is closing it's a better trade than bitcoin and has been proven right like if you're trading bitcoin you uh gbtc instead of bitcoin not only do you get the same sort of price appreciation as bitcoin you also get the benefit of this massive discount in NAV, which is net asset value, closing. So a lot of people think that this is closing because Grayscale might win their case. They think it could be closing because BlackRock might get an ETF and that might force the SEC to convert GBTC into an ETF,

which is what that case is about. If that happened, obviously, this discount would go to zero. Fees would go from 2% to a few bits. And GBTC could be the trade of the century. But the thing is, I still see this carrying a ton of risk. Actually, in a minute, we're going to talk to Dan about it. So I want to ask Gunsberg what he thinks about this. But the final story before we get to that and the standard chart, of course, Starbucks teams up with Micah Johnson, Aku NFT project. I'm literally like attempting to talk and yeah, he said he can't and get Micah on the show. Like while we were doing this, he literally was just texting me. You guys know I'm a good friend of Micah. I went to his wedding a couple of years ago. I love Aku. It's the only NFT project that I've ever collected, held through all of this. So I was like sitting on the plane yesterday, flying back from London, saw this Starbuck News pinged him. Absolutely amazing. Starbuck Odyssey obviously has their Odyssey rewards program, the Web3 loyalty program. And this will give people with access to that the ability to go on a voyage with Aku. Guys, it's really worth checking out, but I very much believe in the mission. I've followed Micah around to a bunch of events. Very,

very, very cool. The final story here, Bitcoin could rise to 120K by end of 2024. This coming from Standard Chartered. This is what I want to talk to our guests about today, whether it's actually possible. Why did they say this will happen? They said the main factor driving the price increase is increased miner profitability. I like this because the only thing we're hearing is BlackRock ETF. These guys took a different tack at it, said it's because increased minor profitability, that means they'll have to sell less as the price goes up, meaning less supply on the market, meaning price will continue to go up. There are a few risks to this price prediction. One is that the banking sector crisis that Standard Charter is banking on does not materialize.

So a lot of this counting on more issues in the banking system. That was my cooking through the news as fast as humanly possible so I could get to Dan. I'm going to go ahead and bring him up now. He's only been on the show like 7,000 times. Dude, what's up? How are you man by the way um that ceo of promethean mike barnes karate kid the villain in karate he's literally in in the yeah yeah that's it was like ponytail and complete doppelganger i actually was in the first question i was gonna

ask you is like i have a ponytail wait didn't they bring he does and didn't they bring him on uh like the karate kid show like isn't he one of the bad guys on was going to ask you is, like, I have a ponytail. Wait, didn't they bring, he does, and didn't they bring him on, like, the Karate Kid show? Like, isn't he one of the bad guys on the Karate Kid? I think he is, on Netflix. Oh, that was an outing pleasure that I, like, cooked through on a flight one time or something, but I think it's literally the same guy. I was looking for his name when I was backstage,

and I found it, and there was one of the Google questions was, apparently he was banned from life for karate. It's one of the sujits, was he, apparently he was banned from life for karate. It's one of the sujets of, uh, of the karate kid show. So, um, yeah, it, it, it's very fitting. And I think he hit the nail on the head with that. That's that Steven Seagal kind of, uh, have you followed that story though? I mean, listen, you can say you, you run an exchange, right?

So, uh, well, you know, you see this guy walk in, you've never heard of them. They've been around for years but all of a sudden they're registered, they're on the floor of Congress, he's like spewing these talking points that he's literally reading, you can tell someone prepared it for him and you can't even use this exchange. Absolutely insane, I don't quite understand it and again just feels like multiple steps backwards in terms of what we've all been grinding up this mudslide for the last number of years. What a shocker, though.

But let's talk about something more positive. We have obviously this prediction from Standard Chartered, a huge bank in the UK, saying $120K by the end of 2024. They had it at $ 100K very recently. So actually to see them raise it by 20%, I think it's sort of the big eye-opener versus the actual number. I think we all know that we get left looking like big dummies when we make price predictions, especially when they're attached to time. But I guess the question is, are we actually that bullish right now? Or is this end of 2024 will be seven, eight months post halving. So I could see that 50K this year, I was a little more surprised. I'm about it.

I think it's very doable and and look at we're we've been we've been in this in this business and watched this market long enough to know that it is like the most virally reflexive market ever and at the end of the day higher prices beget higher prices i i was talking with a uh with uh somebody that it is in my network who um was actually managing accounts for some large macro uh hedge funds and it interestingly enough a lot of these hedge funds um my understanding from them and we talked about this a little bit when we were doing the uh the spaces a couple weeks ago and i think you kind of asked me you're like i heard macros getting in but a lot of these funds were actually getting they i think they put the low in actually and they're getting out they were getting out that's what steve mcclurg told me from

balpary i asked him and he was like dude everyone i know has either left the u.s or just packed it they packed it they threw the towel literally threw the white towel and into the rain and were like i'm i'm out and i think it was one of these things where it was a bit of like it became a nuisance to that because it was like a maybe it was one to these things where it was a bit of like, it became a nuisance to them because it was like a, maybe it was one to 2% of their assets. And then they just, and it, and they watched it go parabolic and then watched it go parabolic, go whatever the,

the opposite of parabolic. Inverse parabolic. Inverse parabolic. Yeah. The inverse parabolic. And, and, and basically through the Talon,

but like literally right after they threw the towel in you got Larry Finn coming out talking about BlackRock TF which kind of changed so what's interesting is what he said is he's like look they'll get back in but they're going to get back in when Bitcoin's at 40,000 and so I think you're going to have this combination of like

you know obviously derivatives play a big part there's a couple things that I'm looking at one is you get these kind of like short option players that just sell like super out of the money calls that have, that provides a good steady stream income for large Bitcoin holders. And eventually when those start getting squeezed, when you get faster moves up, those people, you get this like kind of like gamma squeeze where they have to come in and start buying, they're buying the market back up. And that's what generally propels us from like 36,000, suddenly we're at 50,000 in like three days.

Sounds very GameStop-y. Very GameStop-y. Reflexivity is what GameStop is exactly what, right? It just becomes viral. It's like social media same type of same type of volume so um i think they're i look at that and then also like the smartest money to me always seems to look at um yeah you know looks at the the entirety of the bitcoin futures curve and right now it's it's in contango and when we every the the last 10 times i've been on this show

i almost always talk about it but it's such a good indicator. It's almost like you can say the smart money is looking there, because maybe that's miners. I don't know what it is, but whatever it is, when that curve is in contango, which basically means price is higher further into duration, it is a really good proxy of what's going on up in the front month. And generally, that does correlate highly with rallies. So even in these last little pullbacks or when volume just died out or things got quiet, we pulled back into 30,000, that curve is not moving. If that curve was to go flat or suddenly go inverted or backward dated, then I would be bearish.

And usually usually when you see that, it always is a good indicator that maybe the sentiment's changing. But the sentiment has gone from having a completely flat curve to now, you can carry Bitcoin and get five plus percent interest on it, which is not great. That's a cash and carry trade, guys. For anybody who isn't aware of that, you're effectively buying spot and shorting the futures and you capture the yield in between that's it so that's and and by the way that was the uh that was the free money trade that most of c5 was doing for all of those years uh when it collapsed they collapsed there were two there were two especially like the block fives of the world i

know for a fact i don't know a lot of them you know celsius i think was more in defy and doing these things but block five was somewhat notorious for that trade and the gbtc premium trade and when gbtc premium went from oh i don't know like a 40 premium to negative in what felt like overnight obviously it wasn't that's when that collapsed that's also one of the hidden stories of why three arrows capital collapsed because they were the biggest holder of gbtc at that point and you guys gotta remember genesis was giving loans to people to buy gbtc to do this trade and there was this crazy incestuous thing going on over at at dcg but i mean that bridges us to gbtc right we we saw a 50 plus percent discount at the dead bottom of gbtc now it's 27 it was% just a few weeks ago.

I kind of felt like that trade was over in the 30s, and here we are at 27%. Is that even a more aggressive version of this cash and carry trade? Because you can do it with GBTC and get the closing of the discount. So instead of buying the spot Bitcoin, you can buy the GBTC and short the futures. 100%. I'd be interested to see

what people are doing to lever that up as well. Because I know in the cash and carry trade, because it's generally the... You're either trading spot to HERP and you're rolling it every day or you're trading spot to some future, further dated future. But usually

those are because they're correlated assets. It's basically Bitcoin to Bitcoin future. You can lever those trades up quite a bit. And that does usually help perpetuate these moves. And it might be what you're seeing in the GBTC discount right now. And just Bitcoin being overall bullish, these are just second order long exporters. So every single one of them is just basically a signal of how bullish people are in the background.

Every one of these things, you said it before, it's funny I always have Mike McGlone on and he hates the sort of idea that price goes up because price goes up, but it's 100% true. Why fight it? It just works. But then that sort of begs the question, price has gone up. I mean, we're double. We're double the bottom from the beginning of this year, effectively. It put in the lows, I guess, in November, just sub $16,000. We topped almost mid $ mid 31s here. At what point do higher prices stop

getting higher prices? Is a move from 25 to 31 in a week enough? Because now it's almost like you feel like you need to actually see the BlackRock ETF approved. We've seen the bullishness of the sentiment. So do we need to see an approval to continue? So now the market has, I guess the question is, has the market priced in the probability of a BlackRock ETF habit or something like that? I think in short, the answer is they've increased the probability. I don't think it's 100% baked in. And back to the question about standard charter, I absolutely think Bitcoin could see $120,000. Oh, in a year and a half, I have no idea. I would almost be surprised if it's not in six figures eight months after a halving. Unless

we're literally in the Great Depression. Correct. Then what are we doing here? Then things might look bad. Then there's the then there's the endless argument over if that does happen can bitcoin go the other way could it be uncorrelated as it somewhat has been and continue to rise in the face of you know they tighten to i mean i think all this fed tightening is priced in i think because who cares like what's another 50 bit who cares right and i think and i think also that we've proven that the bad news in crypto has priced it. Everybody's like, Bitcoin will go to 15K if the DOJ comes after Binance.

And everybody and their mother thinks the DOJ is coming after Binance. Right. Right. It's almost to the point of you cut my leg off, you cut my hand off. Okay. Take my hand off. Okay. Take my other hand. Yeah, it's like the guy in

Monty Python. You cut your leg off. It's about a flesh wound. What's another arm when you already can't walk and can't hold food? Yeah, no, I think that we possibly become somewhat more immune to to

negative news and it which is kind of a signal that the maybe the the um you know the aircraft carriers turning up port here and uh it you know and and maybe more buy programs coming in than sell programs. Like the risk in the market is definitely to the upside. Yeah, I keep hearing people like, yeah, hearing. I make the mistake sometimes of actually reading Twitter instead of just throwing grenades in and walking away, which is my normal strategy. But like, there's a ton of people who are like, I'm just waiting to buy 25,000

and then price was 25,000 for like two weeks a month ago. They wanted it. Right. But if it went from 20, like, is that just cognitive dissonance? I mean, if you go from 25 to 31 in a week, what's the belief that you're going to 25 again? Not, it doesn't make any sense to me that at all unless you were stuck in some some established range but i don't think technically that's what's happening yeah i thought now i think we're in a range from like 31 to 29 and so we see what happens there but

i which is not bad because like it it's it's building value at higher and higher levels. And I think it's interesting. The market's gotten so smart. It used to just be so noise-driven. And there is this element because of more professional traders getting into the market that i would see if the black rock etf was not going to happen you would see an immediate flattening of the curve you may see you literally saw a thousand dollar drop on that wall street uh journal headline that was just simply like the sec asking more questions right and everyone thought maybe it wasn't and that was a thousand

dollars in like an hour so we know right that's that we got so um i think you'll see some some of those of those warning signs you have flattening of the curve you're gonna see like you see those immediate like re the immediate repricing i mean it's it's it's a it's a vac right like because just at the end of the day, Bitcoin liquidity across the entire ecosystem, the entire spectrum of Walmart derivatives including relative to what exists and what is incumbent markets, it's non-existent. Pimp on the ass of an elephant, absolutely. So it just immediately reprices. It just is like a quick jump. To me, though, that's an argument that it could easily decorrelate because it's just so small that it's irrelevant. Even if it goes up 50 percent while other things go down, it would still be a pimple on the ass of an elephant.

I still find it crazy that that it has tied itself so heavily to like the strength or weakness of the dollar it's just like it that bitcoin has just become such a macro asset okay but what so here's the next question we cheer i think most people are cheering for the blackrock etf i mean listen there's blackrock's cut its issues maybe it's not in the ethos of bitcoin but at this point it's great news right it's the biggest asset manager in the world. Does that just flatten the volatility? Like, does exactly what you sort of just described, does it just become more and more and more correlated as it becomes more and more and more of a sort of validated Wall Street asset? It gets hard thinking about like, oh, we're going to a million in three years if there's an ETF and Wall Street's trading it like they're trading any other stock or it's yet.

Yeah. I mean, look, you traded equities prior to crypto. I traded traditional markets for decades prior to crypto. I think you're going to be in one of these situations that traders are going to be baffled like it will it will reach these you know it'll get into the hundreds of thousands and most traders will have no idea how it price in a way that the semi-pro or the smaller trader, there's a reason that nine out of every 10 traders fail. And it's because they'll sit there from 30,000 Bitcoin to 120,000 Bitcoin and have no idea how it just moved back to $10,000. And then they'll buy the top at $230,000 and sell the bottom at $100,000 when it's going back down. And we'll be so excited to buy Bitcoin at $100,000 on the dip. I really believe that's going to happen. It'll go to like $300,000 and then it's literally going. Matt, you and I have to see how300,000 and then it's literally going.

It'll go to like $300,000 and it'll be at like $95,000 and they'll be like, it broke at $100,000. It's over. It's going to lose you. You're like, I'll never buy it at $100,000 on the way up. But when it's at $120,000, you got your bids at $100,000. People are so dumb.

It is the reason that this all fails. I want to actually listen to let's talk about Euro. Like, just give me the quick update. Obviously, we've done like 15 podcasts, but it's been a while since we've really talked about what you're doing. And really in context, I guess, maybe on top of that, of the regulatory challenges, because you're already sort of like we're not even touching the U S and it's gotten so much worse. Still, still, uh,

completely, you know, uh, shut off from the U S but we, but you know, everything with hero now is, is fully focused on defy, uh,

infrastructure. So, uh, we built, uh, uh, on top of Solana, which obviously is seems,

feels like it's kind of coming out of its uh it's its own hurricane that it dealt with for for quite a while but uh building uh derivatives architecture or infrastructure so um uh risk risk engine order book things like that that uh are all on fully on chain and uh the way that it's built is that there is... So we actually launched, the ecosystem launched its protocols in beta about seven months ago, and currently 18 projects building on top of it. So Dapps.com,s come, they share order book liquidity very much like how maybe for people that are familiar with salon ecosystem, like how serum works with spot

markets is what heroes really focused on in derivatives and but fully on chain and Dapps come built to it. They're it. They share they share liquidity and what is otherwise a highly fragmented space in terms of you have lots of

different DEXs that are competing for liquidity. Not any one of them has enough liquidity to facilitate trading in those size. Right. Any type of real size. And so what Hero really focuses on is just having all of that liquidity bottom out into its order books. And then those steps are really the user-facing applications that users are using to access the market. And you might have more insight than most, obviously, because of what you're doing. Has any of this sort of CeFi collapse and then the regulatory crackdown, market makers leaving the US, clearly volume leaving the US? I mean, Binance US effectively doesn't exist anymore. Coinbase, you can tell that the order books are thin, the liquidity, every metric.

Has that actually been a boon for DeFi or is that just a narrative? I mean, we've seen Uniswap do more volume than Coinbase. I think that it's definitely helped the narrative become a little bit more of a reality. The reality, and I think that the next evolution, though, is really just being able to give the masses a way to start utilizing what is otherwise fairly complex technology. So even though that's as simple and crude as something like Uniswap is for spot markets, the average crypto enjoyer, investor, whatever it is. The 5Os, enjoyer. The enjoyer with the five O's, exactly, are still not given a very easy route

or applications to access those types of protocols. And it's scary for the average person to use that. But for people that have been in the space, it's kind of just like a common way of doing business. And so I think on that note, maybe Web3 really hasn't had its mobile moment yet. And I think we have a couple of large projects in the Euro ecosystem that are building to mobile first now, which is really cool because it's kind of introducing a DeFi backend infrastructure

to something that can actually be used by the masses. So excited to see where that goes. And I think that's the type, you need those Robinhood type dApps that have that level of UX. Do you think the US is going to crack down on DeFi next? I mean, that's sort of been of ux do you think the u.s is gonna crack down on defy next

i mean that's sort of been the big rumors like somehow the sec will now go after def i mean we did see the sushi swap action so it's not crazy yeah sushi library was one that obviously there was you know um uh what was the other there's i forgot the name of the other one UGA maybe that was called um yeah something like that but yeah I I think that uh I think it's something that uh you know everybody stays very much on top of and uh you know it's it's just again it you know it's maybe it's kind of part of the evolution of of frontiering these types of uh youing these types of disruptive technologies. But for you, you've sort of transitioned from being so retail-focused to now working up We're very top-of-funnel, focused on more of those exotic gaming-level applications. And look, we always wanted to build

open source and wanted to build on-chain infrastructure. I think that's really where the rubber met the road in terms of disrupting traditional finance. Once Solana came online, it kind of proved that you could do things with ultra-fast

throughput and get a fairly close UX to Web2 off-chain infrastructure that now you can build. And so the project went down that path and the developer community has expanded massively. And we have open- open sourced our protocols and we'll continue to move in that path and decentralize it. And it's been on a... Considering what we've been dealing with in the market as a whole, there's been quite a bit of really exciting building going on. So it's been very cool to see. And they say the best things are built in the bear market, right? At least you don't have to worry about the price of your token or this.

Yeah, I've thought it a couple of times now. And it's also like the competition for people's limited attention is, you know, when there's a bull market, everyone's just trying to make the next buck. Kind of hate it there. Yeah, and sometimes as a builder, it can get rough kind of trying to balance that. I mean, in your mind, you've got to be like,

holy shit, my balance. Looking at the portfolio while trying to build something. And so I made it. You try not. Look, I've been through it for a while now. And I've been through a couple of these and, you know, weathered storms in the past with it. And I think, you know, it's interesting that the announcement from BlackRock, you know, although very much a U.S.-focused thing and,-focused thing and Hero Network is not something that really does anything US-related, it felt like the breaking of...

You were kind of right in the eye of the hurricane post-FTX. There was just such an aggressive move by regulators and just the attitudes were changing so rapidly. To see it kind of, it just like, it went, you know, the major downgrade from hurricane to tropical storm to actually breaking up and becoming, you know, seeing some calmer waters ahead. So I'm really excited about this. And our community really just focused on keeping our heads down and building as much as we can and building for trying to think about what this world looks like five years, seven years from now. Yeah. I love it. Last question. Do you think the BlackRock ETF gets approved? Yes.

You just think, all right, they're 575 in one, right? Pretty much. Seems like that's what they're going to get a pick. I have my idea who the real boss is, right? I think we know now. I just found it so amazing

that it happened within days of the SEC, Coinbase, and Binance action. What a rollercoaster. What a rollercoaster. And I think it gave a real insight into how business at that level works sometimes. Pretty interesting. Yeah. I have a very glass half full attitude on it. And I think this is what, you know,

this is what this industry has been building towards on some level. Look, it's, I think from the idealistic standpoint, it's not, it's not where you, the, I don't think Satoshi thought it was going to,

Satoshi's vision of my life. We're all just, I don't think thatoshi thought it was going to... Satoshi's vision of my life. I don't think that was the premise of Bitcoin initially. Just ask Craig Wright. He knows. Apparently he's Satoshi Wright. What happened to that guy? I don't know. I think he's still

out there suing people and saying that he's BSV. Have you looked at the BSV chart? No, I don't know. They create gas swim bananas of late though, so maybe there's a chance. Yeah, the villain arcs in crypto are something that somebody should make.

Absolutely astounding. Well, dude, thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time. Obviously, welcome back to time. See you on Spaces soon, I'm sure. Let's go, man. Thank you so much. Thanks, Scott. Thanks, buddy. Talk to you soon. Guys, we're waiting for Alessio to show up. Hasn't popped in, so I'm not sure

if he's going to make it. He was supposed to be here about 10 minutes ago, so Leo, you just get me. You just get me. We'll give him a couple more minutes and see if he's going to be here, but we did have him as a confirmed guest. Sometimes these things happen, guys. Sometimes people just ghost us they troll us they play jokes on us not cool or maybe he just had uh something else going on but loving the perspective there from dan he's

been around a very very very very long time the trading for 25 30 years he was the second person I think I ever had on my podcast. Third. First was Catherine Coley from Binance US. Second was Chris Bukowski from The Bachelor, who is a huge crypto fan. And third was Dan Gunsberg, who's become a really good friend. We have some very mutual friends.

They're always great to get his perspective. You guys think we should listen? Since Alessio has not showed up. I'll still take a look at the Bitcoin chart really quick. We can do it ourselves. We don't need guests. Do it ourselves. Oh, by the way, guys, space is today, obviously, at 10, 15 a.m.

But I don't know if you saw this before we looked at charts. But this is kind of a big thing. We will be discussing Freedom Money, Bitcoin, CBDC's Privacy and More with Robert Kennedy Jr. on July 26th at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. I'm going to be hosting a Spaces with

RFK. And then Mark Moss, Robert Breedlove, Marty Bent, and Natalie Brunel will be the other guests asking him questions. Yeah, that's happening. Tell you, I'm going to get every under 80 year old presidential candidate on the podcast. We'd love to have Suarez back again as well. Obviously, I've talked to him a few times, but very interesting to discuss with RFKk people are asking me over here if

i met lando and oscar i gave him like a pound i didn't do the like please take a selfie thing um and i had met them actually like one time before when i went to formula one um yeah i mean i was literally you guys can check it out on my youtube on my uh twitter i mean i was like in the garage when they pulled out for the race i mean really nuts i'll show you here i mean you kind of see it on here probably well like i mean i'm crazy where i can hear it if you can in the car then secured i mean we were right there. These are the guys from Selling Sunset, some other show on Netflix. Yeah. I mean, pretty, pretty, pretty crazy. Yes. It was, it was pretty nuts. I mean, I was really, really in there.

Anyways, monthly chart for Bitcoin right here. Listen, I told you guys there were kind of two ranges. This one's kind of ugly, but you know, I've been talking about 25,212 and 28,600 for as long as I can remember. It was either above one or below the other. I think we're back in that much larger range now very securely. So I think that we're going to be playing above 28,600. I could just see Alessio's here guys. Um, So I'll be able to bring him on. Someone's saying, please adopt me, Oscar. Yeah, dude, I couldn't bring my kids or anything. They were actually with me in London.

It was pretty awesome. But I wish I'd been able to bring them myself. I'm going to go ahead and bring Alessio on, bring my charts down. Hey, man, how are you? Hi there, Scott. Good to see you. Sorry about to see you as well. Listen, if you're not 15 minutes late, you're early, I figure.

But we're talking to Chet here about the market, the topic. And I was talking to the other guests before, Dan Gunsberg. Obviously, we had this news break, which you saw. I'll just go ahead and bring it up one more time. But Bitcoin could rise to $120K by the end of 2024. That's from the English bank standard charter. They had first said 100,000. Now they're predicting 120,000 based on minor profitability increasing and basically less minor supply on the market and price rising.

They're also saying 50,000 by the end of this year. So maybe give me the broad strokes where you're at on Bitcoin. Yeah, I always get a little bit cautious. By the way, thanks, Scott, for having me on. I appreciate you having me. I always get a little bit cautious when you hear these, suddenly, you hear these... Point to a million. Yeah, exactly. When media papers and all these different journals start talking about these, I mean, a lot of these guys, you have to take it a pinch of salt. A lot of these guys want eyeballs on their articles, just like how a lot of YouTubers nowadays want just a viral video, someone to click and watch. watching with a little bit of skepticism. Over the last several months, as yourself and your viewers will know, since January of this year, all I've seen on the feed on my YouTube channel

has been, oh, devastation. Bitcoin is going to crash at 10K, 9K, no, 7K, no, 3K. Everyone outdoing each other about how low they can call it. And all a bunch of analysts, or as I call them, analysts because they talk out of their backside

because they just want to get the next viral video. And they've got nothing else to talk about. So they just want to make the video just for content and clickbait. I'm not saying... If you don't do that, you literally...

I'm not even kidding. If you're willing to do that, I think it, by the algorithm, doubles your views. Yeah. I mean, the thumbnails are hilarious too. Don't get me wrong here. I've done a few thumbnails where... Yeah, play the game, mate.

I'm bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if I do it, the thing is, if I make some kind of video talking about some ridiculous target, I'm serious about it. And it's not just some ridiculous nonsense for clickbait. And since January of this year, by the way, I'm not talking about everybody out there on YouTube. There's some good people out there, yourself included.

Yeah, there's some good people out there. There's a lot of, I would say 95% of analysts. I don't want to even call them analysts, but you know these people on YouTube, they're just putting out a video purely for the clickbait, purely to get the AdSense from Google, from YouTube, and all that. There is zero value to their content in my view. So what's an unrealistic target?

If we're being cautious about this, the fact that we're starting to see these, does that mean uh-oh? No, it's fine. Basically, here's what I would say. I've got a couple of charts if I want to show it to you. Please, yeah. You can go ahead. You hit present down at the bottom. Share your screen there, and then I can

bring it up. Then share the screen at the bottom. And then I'll bring it up. Slide. How about this? Present. Sorry about that. Share.

Go to window or Chrome tab. I would go to window up there and then, yeah. Okay. Go to window. Got it. Yeah. Let me know if you can see that. It's not up yet. So hit present, share screen,

and then you have to click share when you go on a window or tab. Oh, I see. Click share. I got it. Yep. It's going to happen, Dennis. Oh yeah, I found it. I found it. Yeah. In real time. There you go. Here, everybody. Are you ready? There you go. Perfect. I love a good chart. Let's go. Okay. Thanks. So from beginning of... Here's why I got bullish at the beginning of this year. As Bitcoin was trending down, but this is a weekly chart of Bitcoin going by the 2022. Now, listen, I'm not trying to say that I got everything right. I didn't.

So I probably, I mean, I became bearish on Bitcoin probably about here when it took out. We actually know about here, about 39K or 40K. Some people got in earlier. Some people correctly called a bear market sooner than me. I was just a bit cautious. It would take me until the break of like 52, that 51 level. Exactly. So I was 17,000 off the top too late. That's right. That's right. So I'm just

trying to be honest here because I didn't think that we're going to crash into a bear market until we took out 39K or 40K about here when it broke this flag pattern you're seeing here. I had a drop here. I thought at this point, yeah. So here's when I got eventually bullish on Bitcoin. When you see this blue line on my chart, that's a 21 weekly. 21 weekly is really important because it often sets the stage between potential reversal in Bitcoin or in price action, not just in price action. So notice how when the price of Bitcoin went over the 21 weekly, I don't know if you can see my mouse on my cursor. Yeah, that's right around that 19, 20 level. I remember. That's right. Yeah. That happened early January.

That's right when we fully retraced the FTX move, the FTX down in November sideways. And then all of a sudden that to me was like, we're back at pre-FTX prices. And that's right there. I mean, that's the week before. Yes. Well done. Absolutely right, Scott. So that's what got me bullish right here. And one thing I always wait for is I want to see two or three weekly closes above the 21 weekly before I can say, okay, this is probably a reversal in trend.

The reason is, if you look over here, back in April. That was so long. Yeah. Yeah. So notice that there's a green bar close above the 21 weekly, but then quickly reverse direction. It went back below it again on this red bar. Two bars later, it went below it. That was a warning as a potential false break. So over here, when I got two or three weekly closes in January, February of last year, January of this year, that's actually thought, oh, okay, this could be something. This could actually be a potential

likely reversal. So I've been bullish from January onwards. Look at those retests. I haven't really looked at the 21. A lot of people watch the 200, obviously, which I think is very popular. But I mean, where you have the hammer right there and then the next week, perfectly off, and then the last sort of test of it, both.

Absolutely. You're absolutely right, Scott. Yes. And you said it beautifully. When you get a hammer or doji, whatever kind of candlestick here, rising, and when it closes above the 21 weekly, that was a good sign, a positive sign. And then we got this nice green bar. And as you said, pull back to the 21 weekly. And I remained bullish all the way through here. As long as we stayed above support, I said, I'm bullish. Now, here's the big question. By the way, we also reached our first, my first target was reached at the 38.2% retracement. That's the orange line. That's a 38.2% Fibonacci retracement of the entire decline, as we can see from the highs. From 69 to 15-ish, 16-ish, right?

No, that was about 27,376. No, no, I'm saying that when you're talking about the full move, where you're pulling your fibs is from the all-time high. Oh, well done. You're absolutely right there. You're absolutely right. Oh, well done. You're absolutely right there. You're absolutely right. Yes, 69K, you're absolutely right, to the lows of the November last year. Correct.

Perfect. By the way, I'm using, some people get confused by this because the Fibonacci levels I'm looking at are logarithmic, and you actually have to go into settings of the Fibonacci tools. Not everyone knows about this. Even if you're using a logarithmic chart, you still have to go and enable the logarithm.

Yes, okay. It defaults to linear Fibonacci levels on the logarithmic chart, which, by the way, it wasn't until like two years ago they added that feature. So the only way to do it in the past was linear Fibonacci. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, it's very good. So basically, the first target was reached 27,376. The next one is the 50% retracement. And the next one up is the 61.8% golden ratio retracement, which comes in about 39K, 38,966. So let's just say 40K for the sake of simplicity. So I'm going to say, keep my analysis the same I have had it for the last few months, which is as long as Bitcoin stays above support, support is now the June lows. That's that low we made in June, which is about 24K or 24,500 approximately there. As long as they stay above that, I'm

looking for that red line at 39 or 40K to be tested sometime probably in the next few months. I could be by the end of summer, maybe even sooner depending on how fast it moves. And this is why I'm skeptical of these outlandish things you see in these articles like 120K, 100K. We need to get above that red line to first even speculate about a potential to all-time highs. I mean, it's ridiculous. They're calling for 120K. We haven't even reached all-time highs yet.

We haven't even reached the golden ratio level. And I don't see how, honestly, I can't see the argument right now to your point. Like there's so many levels between now and then, but I can't even imagine thinking of new all-time highs before there's a halving. I mean, even just looking at a four-year cycle, there's just no precedent for doing more than you're discussing in this timeframe. Yeah, you're absolutely right. But here's the bottom line. Could I see 40K or 50K? Absolutely, because these come within the Fibonacci levels.

Again, that is my higher probability expectation for a move to that red line of 39 or 40K, the 61.8%. And I think the article said something about, I think you said something about 50,000. That could be right. Yeah, that's the 78.6%. So yeah, my first target would be 39K, wants to get above this level here. That I think is achievable. These levels are achievable, 40K to 50K are entirely achievable sometime this year,

probably by, I don't know, autumn or at least by the end of this year, if not sooner. I think it could happen next several months. So that's what I have on Bitcoin and I'll stop sharing for now. And I have another chart I can show you on Ethereum. Sure, go ahead. I mean, we've only got a few minutes, obviously, five minutes left. So I would love for you to just cook through what you've got. Okay. Last thing I want to say about this chart is my bullish analysis is only as long as it stayed above the June lows. If Bitcoin were to fall below the June lows, which I think is less likely, I'm not expecting that.

Yeah. But if it did- Breaking 25 after it went from 25 to 31 in a week would be pretty bad news. Yeah. It would be pretty bad. So I would have to change my mind and say I'm wrong in my expectation if that happens. As far as Ethereum, this is what I have on Ethereum here. We have a nice, first of all, this nice trending line we have here, which is good.

So I think we're in an uptrend as far as Ethereum is concerned. And once again, if you look at these retracement levels, the 61.8% golden ratio retracement, again, logarithmic retracement on Ethereum, is 2,500 approximately. By the way, we've got two levels coming in about 2,500. One is the 61.8% Fibonacci golden ratio. Then you have this next red line underneath of it, which says 2,473. That is the 100% symmetrical projection. If you were to measure this rally from the lows of last year to the highs of, I think it was August of last year.

I'm not sure exactly. I think it was spring, probably. So if you measure this rally here, then project it this low, that gives you 2473 logarithmic symmetrical projection, which is merging. Interestingly, I like when two levels merge, that 2473 merges as 2,529. So it gives me 2,500 as a target. That's my target for the next several months on Ethereum. I like it.

Are you touching any of the market outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum? It's been a pretty different story for anything else. I mean, even Ethereum has struggled obviously a bit versus Bitcoin, but we've seen so much sort of regulatory uncertainty around the rest of the altcoins that they've obviously, you know, we could see Bitcoin had retraced, come back to the same price in the 30,000s after going to 25, but altcoins are still down 20 or 30% from that point. They did not recover. A lot of them. That's right.

That's true. That's a good point. I mean, by the way, am I back on? I've removed the stop share. Yeah, you're not sharing anymore. Yep. Yeah, you make a good point there. As far as I'm concerned, I'm only looking at Bitcoin and Ethereum, which I know altcoiners probably find that boring, I understand. Don't get me wrong,

I'm not dismissing altcoins. I mean, Ethereum obviously is the one I'm looking at other than Bitcoin. But you're right, I'm not particularly interested in the other ones. I'm focusing on those two charts for now. And as you know yourself, Scott, as your viewers know, if Bitcoin rallies to those levels, it's going to carry potentially those other old coins with it. Rising tide lifts all. Yeah. Of course. Yeah.

I think we know that. So listen, we only got a couple minutes left. Do you have any other macro broad strokes? If you're bullish on Bitcoin, does that mean that you're bullish on stocks? Because if not, it means that you think they can decorrelate. Yeah. I've been bullish on stock markets since January, and I still think there's a lot more money to come to the stock market. However, I should just mention I'm bullish long-term, meaning for the end of 2023, probably going to

2024, I'm bullish. However, in the short term, in the next few weeks, I think potentially sometime in the next few weeks, I think we're overdue for a pullback, and this could be a shakeout of some sort. It could be quite a, I'm not saying a crash of any sort. No, I'm just saying there could be some kind of a 3% pullback of some sort, something like that in the stock market sometime in the next few weeks. But I imagine, I think that once the stock market pulls back, we're going to go higher again to much higher levels. And we'll talk about it. Climbing the wall of worry. once the stock market pulls back, we're going to go higher again to much higher levels.

Climbing the wall of worry. We'll talk about it next time we have you on. I'm really glad you showed up. Thank you so much. Thanks very much, Scott. For joining, Alessio. You're welcome back anytime. Hopefully we can go in deeper next time. Thanks very much.

Cheers. Thank you, man. Guys, we were so awesome. Glad we made it, that we were able to chat. Loved both of those conversations and love just being back here, man. I am super jet lagged. I'm not going to lie. Flight was super delayed. I basically slept for like three or four hours.

Kid woke me up at 345 like, hey, dad, it's morning. You guys know how that is. A six hour time change going back to the West. But feeling very reinvigorated, even though I'm tired on getting back to making a content. I really miss it when I go away for a week. Obviously, also, you kind of lose people's attention, but I'm really, really excited to be back to get on Twitter spaces in about 15 minutes. I'm assuming I'll see all of you guys there, right? And of course, guys, just please, in the description, check out Meld.

Really awesome. I enjoyed interviewing Ken from Meld alongside Mario and Ran last week on Spaces. This sucks to be American. We all know that. But really doing impressive things. And just, man, I had a hell of a weekend. Awesome. It's awesome.

Just absolutely, absolutely epic hard not to be uh glowing after after a weekend like that where it's just sort of like insane experience after insane experience after insane experience so yeah man gonna go uh wipe the rest of the champagne off uh from from the run home after f1 and get ready for Twitter spaces. Guys, thank you so much for joining. Coming back. I know it's been a week. Looking forward to tomorrow. See you guys then.

Peace.