The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin To Reach 200k in 2025? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

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Good morning. Happy Tuesday. Yesterday, we were celebrating Bitcoin back above $100,000, peaked around $102,000, then between $102,000 and $103,000. And of course, now we launch, and here we are back below $100,000, chopping around hard to figure out exactly what's going on with the price action these days. Yeah, I mean, Dan, we were celebrating yesterday. What happened? Is it all over now? Last time we ever see Bitcoin above 100, it's over? It's all over, I'm afraid. Thankfully, I saw everything. It's all over, guys. Pack it up.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too, unfortunately. Guys, I don't know if sarcasm translates to everyone everywhere. Let's be clear. I was joking. I don't know. I don't know if sarcasm translates to everyone everywhere. Let's be clear. I was joking. I don't know. Yesterday was the first real business day back after the massive holiday, Christmas, New Year period. I think there's some buying there. I think one thing

that we have seen is that I don't know if you guys noticed this as well. The market tends to sell off in the first hour after New York opened and then tends to pick up again later in the day. like 10 30 it picks up so i don't know it might be about the time that it picks up again it's just something i've noticed recently yeah we'll see if we bounce here it is something that definitely uh seems to happen you have to wonder uh why that happens uh could have something to do with etf buying and selling and settling but uh hard to know. Mike, how are you viewing the market today?

We obviously chatted yesterday and you kind of take the wider view. But do you think that Bitcoin is reacting to something potentially in the macro that maybe I'm not paying attention to at the moment? I like to use the quote that I earned a little bit in Crude Oil the hard way. It's notable bear. And that was on the way up to the run up to the peak of 130. I just saw what it would do, make markets have more supply, more demand. And I'd like to earn that reputation now as a notable bear. I think 100,000 in Bitcoin was a tremendous threshold that should be most participants should be considered profit taking.

I look at the whole space. I deliberately produced, provocatively produced that headline yesterday. Bitcoin and 2.4 million wannabes point out that when people point at limited supply, increasing demand and adoption, which I do and agree with in Bitcoin. There is an unlimited supply of Bitcoin wannabes and competitors, which you don't have in things like precious metals and gold. And they're just silly, stupid, expensive. This is 1929-ish, 1999, 1927-ish. And, yeah, sometimes I'm the curse of being a contrarian, but I point out Dogecoin, $54 billion, Shiba Inu, $13 billion. That's just silly stuff.

I virtually guarantee we're going to look back from the future and say that was kind of dumb that we had valuations that high. And now we're having people talking about the bond vigilantes. What's really kicking in just the last half hour is we saw all the data come in with its strong respect in the ISM services, jolts, and inflation a little bit higher. So bond yields are picking up and people are selling equities. And the thing is also I look over my equity analyst, Gina Martin-Adams, and for the first time in a couple of years, she's very bearish. She says the market's just too high. The market's price of perfection. Earnings have to go.

You know, market's just price of earnings. So I think overall everything. And then we have this complete serious optimism about our new president, which I think we'll look back in the future and say, yeah, it might not make that much difference. Sure, if we get a strategic Bitcoin reserve that that's quite bullish. But you look over the ETFs, it's not a good reason to be on Bitcoin. It's a very small portion of the market. And it's my lesson in commodities I pointed out is typically for the retail people to buy these type of things, you need to have earnings, which we don't have in crypto with the exception of Ethereum. So overall, I'm looking at the big picture spaces.

We're way overdue for some back and field risk assets. Bitcoin is the best leading indicator on the planet. And it just should be sound when you're yelling. And I'll stick with that theme until proven wrong. Dave, do I dare let you respond as this tradition? I don't know if Dave can hear me. He just jumped down. I'm sure there are people who disagree with that view.

Go ahead, Andre. I don't necessarily disagree with that view but uh i think uh i mean yesterday we were so back right we just said we're so back today it's like oh it's all over again right and i think we're currently balancing on-chain tailwinds right which are very strong with macro headwinds at the moment so i think one day we see like BTC pumping because of potential SBR in Canada, right? Further corporate credit adoption of Bitcoin. And the other day it's being held back by bad macro news, right? Such as rising yields and strong dollar, right?

And I think this kind of price action that we're seeing right now is quite emblematic for a deterioration in the macro picture. Right. And I think I said it the last time I joined Crypto Town Hall. I'm still of the opinion that financial conditions have been tightening because of the rise in yields, treasury yields, bond yields in general, the appreciation of the dollar right which is now feeding through global growth expectations right so that's like uh repricing of global growth

expectations to the downsides which poses these kind of macro risks right for bitcoin as well and other crypto assets and at the same time we have these bullish on-chain factors, right? I mean, exchange balances continue to drift lower, right? Despite high profit-taking, right? And a new supply coming online because it's being absorbed, right? By corporates buying Bitcoin, by ETP flows and so on. And I think this kind of divergence between macro and on-chain is causing this volatility

that we're seeing right now. Explain to me this, Andre, or anyone. We have this strange sort of situation. Talk about the strength of the dollar here. And then we'll go to the other guests that have their hands up. But it's basically been up only since September, I believe, right?

I think DXY, of course, is a dollar relative to other currencies for people who don't understand DXY. So it's not in a vacuum. But basically from 100 to, I think, last week it topped 109. We're now at 108. So up 8%. All of these risk assets that Mike talks about and stops being so high. How did that happen? How can Bitcoin have gone over 100,000 when the dollar has absolutely ripped and they're supposed to be generally inversely correlated? Yes. I mean, the doom chart, the macro doom chart that Raoul has been posting, I don't know, since probably a couple of months ago, right, is with a global money supply right leading by i think

12 weeks or so three months and bitcoin right and i think that's still a risk because dollar appreciation usually leads to a contraction in global money supply right um and therefore i think and even if you look and listen to guys like Michael Howell from Crosswater Capital, he's also been saying, okay, liquidity conditions have deteriorated in Q4, right? Despite Bitcoin rallying to new all-time highs and so on. So I think that's still a risk. But I think there's a disconnect between liquidity conditions, right, macro conditions in general, right, and on-chain, right? That's why Bitcoin has been rallying because it's influenced more by these on chain factors than these macro factors.

I agree, which lends to the next natural question, which is if we get the back and fill Mike's talking about the normal reversion, the recession, the market crash, any of those things can Bitcoin detach and continue up because of the strength of its own fundamentals. Were you guys able to hear me? I don't know if my mic is working. It's glitching. I'll repeat again in case you didn't hear me. I said that I think that it begs the question that if we get the sort of uh you know downturn that mike is talking about back and fill crash 1929 or even just a normal reversion can those on-chain factors outweigh that and can bitcoin trade sort of on its own and not uh follow the markets down I think the jury is still out there

because the correlation between the S&P 500 and Bitcoin has been relatively high. I think it's 0.5 on the past three months. So the risk is, of course, if we have a repricing of global growth expectations and decline and cross-risk appetite in traditional financial markets, it could weigh on Btc as well and which

i think we've been seeing this since yeah december essentially since the the the fed telegraph that they will uh cut rates less than expected right they will only cut uh will do two cuts in 2020 25 and was i think was five uh expected initially right and so i think that's weighing on bitcoin as well and so that's definitely a risk but in my view it's still some kind of a coiled spring thesis from an on-chain perspective because the supply deficit will most likely continue to increase until at least mid 2025. Because of these long leads right between the halving effect, right, the supply shock, and the price performance, the subsequent price performance historically, at least right is if history is any guide, the Bitcoin halving should this positive effect emanating from Bitcoin halving, which happened in April last year, should still last at least until mid 2025. And so I think there's definitely some kind of scenario where you have some kind of repricing of global growth expectations to downside. SP500 risk traditional financial assets selling off right because of this repricing. But at the same

time, Bitcoin can and other cryptocurrencies continue rallying, because on chain factors continue to be very supportive. Matthew. Yeah, hi there. I think what Andre says makes a lot of sense. I love not I've not heard it before actually, about talking about on-chain in contrast to the macro. So, sorry, I just got somebody, just the post come at the door, but I'll try and speak quickly. I think it's

absolutely true. On-chain, obviously we've got diminishing supply with the halving. I think that's a known effect well in advance anyway. So I'm not sure whether that's actually a factor in itself. But Bitcoin has evolved from being a purely speculative asset from the beginning. Now it's more of a store of value. And that's linked with the, you know, with on-chain. I'm sorry, I'm going to have to come back later because I've just got to take this. I'm sorry. No problem. Dave Weisberger, you had your hand up before as well.

Yeah, I mean, look, I don't want to rehash everything. But I do think that, you know, it's funny listening to your show this morning with with Matt Hogan and the guys from Arch and listening to some of the stuff here is actually I'm glad to hear the stuff here because I always hate it when everybody agrees with me. But I think that the market is doing what it did during the internet bubble or any other major bull period, which is Monday sets the trend Tuesday has mild reversion and that we see where the real trends can happen on Wednesday. And I think

that we'll let that play out in terms of the short term trend. The in the long term, I mean, there are three things that are just not priced into Bitcoin. So your question about can it de-link is the answer to that, as I've said repeatedly, is it depends on how. If the S&P crashes, you know, 15% in a day and, you know, hitting circuit breakers and the plunge protection team gets involved, they start talking about banning short sales and financial markets on the treasuries and the corporate debt side sees up like they did in the great financial crisis. Everything's going to fall because in a crash, people sell what they can sell, not what they want to sell. And if you've been saving money

in Bitcoin and you need to raise cash, you're going to sell it. And it's 24 seven, it's liquid, it's easy, and that will happen. But if the S&P tops out and grinds lower, yeah, I could do link can absolutely do like, I mean, a 50% correlation in the past three months, which is higher than it's been, is basically nonsense. And if you look at that, if you're running a risk book, you know, and I just for those who don't know, I ran, you know, market making operations for a decade, if you're running a risk book, you're going to have multiple factors, and

you're gonna be cross hedged. And when you have 50% short term correlations, and well less than that, on the long term, you're pretty, you're going to be hedged, but it's not gonna be nearly as much as you think. And it can actually flip negative. And Bitcoin has been negatively correlated to equities many, many times over the last several years. So, you know, I don't care about that. But I do agree completely with what's going on in the bond market being a flashing red indicator. Right. You know, as long term yields start to continue to back up.

Yields are 4.683 today after rate cuts. Tell me how that makes, yeah. Well, what that means is that means mortgages are more expensive. The market that I would be most concerned about, frankly, is real estate. And everything that underlies real estate, which, by the way, while the companies are not as leveraged to real estate as they were in 2007, is still the market that led that crisis, and it's the one market that led the Great Depression. So let's understand that there are risks in the economy. Now, when I hear risks and other Bitcoiners hear risks, we think, well, that means they're going to back up the truck and start

printing money and do quantitative easing again, because that's their only tool on the long end. And they've shown no hesitancy to using it. And this administration, to be blunt, where Mike and I probably agree, is they will certainly be more willing to engage in quantitative easing type things, because to them, there's no issue with manipulation. They don't really care about what it's doing. So honestly, if you really think that the financial market seizing up is a possibility, you may get a better entry point to buy into Bitcoin. You may not because people see this, but it could be very, very bullish. The flip side to all of that is the demand side.

And anyone who wants to hear this, rewatch Scott's YouTube show this morning. Matt Hogan does a phenomenal job of going through the drivers from the corporate side and the sovereign side and the investor side, et cetera. But the demand drivers are there and there just isn't enough supply. This market isn't playing with any of that. This is just people taking profits, playing around, doing what Mike is saying. And that's fine. I mean, that's what happens. As you get to establish new ranges, that happens all the time. So this action, unless you're over leveraged, is no big deal.

Matthew, you had your hand back up. Are you back? Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me back. Yeah, I just thought it was interesting. Somebody mentioned about the inverse correlation between the U.S. dollar and Bitcoin. Well, it doesn't appear to carry through longer term. If you look at when Bitcoin was launched, the US dollar index was about 80 at the time. And it's now, of course, 108. So if you look at the chart, dollar has been

strengthening considerably against this basket of currencies. At the same time, Bitcoin has risen from nothing to 108,000. And we're there or thereabouts right now. So the big question is, where is the dollar going next? And I think we're actually at a pivot point, because we are beginning to see the US scaling back. Yes, we had some strong figures out today. But even so, there's a lot of warning signs out there with the bond market, as you said, and lots of other indicators as well. So I think that we may be looking at a relatively long term potential turn in the US dollar. And if that's the case, I actually think there's a correlation, a direct correlation between dollar index and Bitcoin. So if we see a turn in dollar and we see basically lower highs and lower lows long term, long,

long term when you look at the dollar index. So I think we're actually near a pivot point right now. We've got some bearish divergence in place as well. So I think we can expect there's fundamental reasons behind it. There's technical reasons behind it. So I think that we're going to see a turn in US dollar. So that means we're fairly near a peak. I don't mean absolutely imminently because we've had all this bullish news with Trump. But I think there's going to be some disappointment over that. I don't think he's going to be able to deliver on everything.

And again, it actually comes to the bigger picture. What is the macroeconomic situation? And can he do anything about that? So yeah, a lot of people have sort of alluded to that same theory for Bitcoin price action to some degree, at least early in the presidency. If we don't see all the things that everybody is so bullish about in the first hundred days that maybe you would see some disappointment and retracement, right? So not even just in markets in general and with the dollar, but also with big... Like, yeah, if we don't see a strategic reserve, if we don't see any legislation. Yeah, I mean, there's that factor.

There's also, I mean, there's geopolitical situation as well. I mean, I keep harping on about that, but there's no doubt there's massive, probably greater than we've had for a long time, geopolitical risk with Trump coming in. There's a lot of things that people want to get out of the way before Trump comes to power. So we've only got a couple of weeks for that to happen. So there's a strong possibility we might see some things flare up. I went into it yesterday on a podcast that I did, talking about the massive risks there are at the moment. I don't know whether it's appropriate to

go into it, but Israel are about to bring out this laser defense system. At the moment, it takes them over $30,000 to bring down one missile using their Iron Dome. It's going to come down to as little as $13. So before they deploy that system, I think this will be seen as the opportunity to take their pop at Israel, as it were. So I think there's a lot of geopolitical risk and we're seeing oil. I mean, Russia, the supply of gas to Europe has been cut. So lots of risk there for oil prices. If oil spikes, we'll see inflation spiking again. So there's a lot of risk out there that people aren't factoring in. So I think we're going to see basically a bit of a turndown, a bit of a sell-off. It's expected. But we will still see new all-time highs before the big crash that

people are talking about, maybe later in the spring. But for now, we'll see a bit of a short-term pullback. We are going to see new all-time highs, Bitcoin above 108,000. But then I believe the big correction is coming later at the end of the first quarter. A lot to unpack there. Mike, do you want to take a shot? Yeah, I appreciate you asking because I just a little pushback in a dollar and lessons I've learned about the dollar trading it. And from my colleague, Gina Martin-Adams, our chief equity strategist, the dollar has gone up since 2011, almost tick for tick with the U.S. stock market. Now we're in a potential. But if the dollar starts ticking down, sustains ticking down, it has to coincide very similar with U.S. risk assets going down. And we all know the whole world is way overweight U.S. risk assets, as they have to be, because it's been the only place really to be in the big macro for over 10 years.

So for me, that's the lose-lose I pointed out for commodities, broad commodities for a couple of years. So you need a weaker dollar, which typically is an oxymoron with with a higher u.s stock market means they all go down so i tilt over to beta and then we i always we all know it's dave likes to push back me beta is the u.s stock market we need a 10 correction maybe we started it gets us get that over with which means we probably get a 30 back and fill in the um Bitcoin. Now I'm not looking at this as something minor and macro. I mean, I pulled out charts 100 years, going back 100 years with the US stock market cap to GDP. This is to me something when you make a prediction like I'm looking at now this is epic historical mean

reversion of very expensive risk assets. And at a point where we've had the US Fed has already said they can stop. They have to stop cutting because risk assets are too high. Inflation is elevated. We have a new president who's very volatile and we have volatility in most measures on a 10, 20 year basis at multi-decade lows. There's only one way for that to go up. And the risk, I just point out, the most volatile of risk assets is cryptos. Bitcoin is just the number one. And I'll just again point out there's massive oversupply and massive speculation in cryptos. Bitcoin is just one of them. Yes, I get it's different. We all know that. We pointed out. But it's not different when you see things like Doge or Shibuino drop 50%, which they should.

They should drop 80, should drop maybe 99%. Then they still have some money left in them. But do they have practical value? That's, to me, the point of where we are now. We're just at such an elevated level of optimism in risk assets, and starting with the stock market, and U.S. bond markets starting to tell you this is a problem. And I'll end with this.

We've basically taken out Fed easing until something tells them them the ease and we know what Dave mentioned what that could be Dave is that your name that means you have to speak I mean look we've had this conversation many times I I think that a S P not falling 10%, Bitcoin dropping 30%. I will take the other side of that bet in ridiculous size. Of course, I haven't gotten my steak dinner yet from the last bet. And the gold bet, I'm going to win that one too. So that's fine. But it is what it is.

A 10% drop in the S&P is unlikely to cause mass panic. A 10% drop in a day where people are afraid of what's going to happen, sure. I mean, you could see all the bids pulled in Bitcoin, I guess. Maybe you could see a drop down to 85. I mean, but that's not – you're talking about a drop below – at this point, a drop well below 70,000, you know, on the beam because of the S&P dropping. Nah, that is just not true. I mean, the correlation is only 0.5. So why you would expect the beta to be, to maximize at that?

I mean, the fact that it's more volatile is a reflection of the fact that the people who own it think it's going to go, it's going to 5 to 10x. You can't have a low volatility asset that you expect to go up by 5 or 10 times. I mean, look at NVIDIA's volatility, right? NVIDIA's beta. Do you think that after anyone has been paying attention to what's going on at CES, does anybody think that if the SOP drops 10%, NVIDIA is going to drop 30% in those days, it could, I suppose, there are a lot of people out there that are saying, Well, wait a minute, not likely, you know, and it's the it's the same thing. And Nvidia has a reason, because it's a major component of the S&P is a

far bigger reason to trade with the, you know, with that sort of volatility. So you know, I don't want to get into the statistical games. But Mike's point about value is really dependent upon which crypto assets are going to leverage new value, not just store of value like Bitcoin. So the real question in every one of the crypto assets that you're looking at is, is there a monetization present potential? Is there a reason for it to exist? Is there something that is going to make sense? Will, in fact, there be, you know, community members and

value and that is a piece of analysis should be that should be done coin by coin by coin. Someone called me of the two, how many of a million coins? I mean, I think... I think we lost Dave. I don't know if that's on my end. Can you guys hear him? No, I think he's gone.

Okay. Dave Towle, you have it. Okay, Dave, are you back? You can try again. Yeah, someone just called me and it wouldn't let me decline the call for some reason. Yeah, all I was saying is just to complete the thought. I mean, Mike and I agree on one point, which is a vast majority of crypto assets are going to be valueless.

But that is no different to a vast majority of internet companies were valueless in the 2000s. Yet most of the wealth that was created over the last 25 years came out of those companies. I think it's exactly the same analog maybe on a bigger scale and that's fine you know because this is global not just the us and you just need to understand that but you know that doesn't mean because there were 10 000 companies that clean the internet companies back in the bubble and there were that didn't mean that google and meta and Etc Etc didn't emerge from the swamp of all this crap and become the most valuable companies in the world so to

understand assets it's entirely possible that both could be true David towel I would love your thoughts um I I love how we ask existential questions on days that the market is down, but when days that it's up, there's we don't care about existential issues like, is there really value here? Or is there a reason for such and such coin to go ahead and exist? I will continue to be loud about the expectations from the upcoming presidential administration, not because necessarily even sentiments historically expressed by those in power, whether it be from the president to the treasury secretary to commerce secretary to sec head to ai cryptos are but um also because they all have a lot of money to make personally uh from a successful crypto ecosystem um you know i agree with dave weisberger in the sense that certainly there's only going to be a few projects that end up being the value drivers and end up sticking around and have the mantle. half of this year from inauguration on that the crypto world will get the greatest boost that it's ever gotten. And I don't think it's priced in. I don't think people understand, even the people that are in this ecosystem on a daily basis even understand yet how much of a boost, how much of a headline, how much of support, you know, in all forms, it's going to go ahead and get. I see these days as being the ability,

you know, giving people the opportunity to go ahead and prepare for that. I expect they're at points to be frenzied buying over the first half of the year. And I continue to say first half of the year because I don't know how difficult things are going to be for Trump in terms of numbers. I think, you know, the U.S. economy is doing great. Right. You know, our unemployment rate is kind of right where Fed wants to see it. Inflation has come down substantially. And but the U.S. dollar is really strong. Rates are stubbornly high, regardless of what the Fed does. Right. So the 10 year, the 30 year mortgage and everybody else around the world is cutting rates out of weakness. And we don't seem to be getting the same cooperation out of the long end of the curve in our country, rightfully so, because of the strength. And so there's going to be a time, I think, after all of the fanfare of Doge cutting, which I'm sure we'll hear about, and then, you know, whatever Trump plans to do early on. And I can't imagine how full his plate is. I mean, I tried to write a list of things the other day, and it just got too long at a certain point that I just gave up in terms of the things that he wants to do very early on. But the news cycle is going to be so fast, so furious. So I'm taking the opportunity to go ahead and breathe. all green all the way for crypto. And then, you know, I don't know if numbers start to catch up

with Trump, i.e., you know, there is no way to go ahead and get the long end of the curve down. And that presents real problems for people that want to go ahead and either finance long-lived assets, or they want to go ahead and buy long lived assets like, uh, you know, a, a home or a car, um, and how that goes ahead and affects the U S economy. Um, you know, longer term, how is Trump going to go ahead and get to, um, a better place for the U S balance sheet, you know, beyond what Doge can do, uh, from a window dressing perspective. So, um, you know, beyond what Doge can do from a window dressing perspective. So, you know, I'm days like this don't mean much to me. I certainly I'd love to see an update. And I really don't know why, you know, it would be that much down. I mean, maybe we're just going ahead and oscillating

between two, you know, ends of a spectrum. We've've all been around i could say everybody on stage probably has been around wall street long enough to say some years you get a great santa claus rally and things follow you know the old adages like sell in may and some years they don't and so you know what do i go ahead and chalk this up to people coming back late from vacation um you know not necessarily you know ready to go ahead and put money to work. People taking their time to go ahead and sharpen pencils and get ready. I'm not really sure, but it seems to me that we are in store for some really record stuff over the next couple of months. Yeah, totally agree with basically all of that.

But the interesting thing is that we have this title, right? Bitcoin to reach 200K in 2025. That's coming from Bernstein's predictions and something we talked about this morning on my YouTube with Matt Hogan. Oh, by the way, Scott, I went on Fox Business before the close of the year and I put 250 as my price target for 2025.

Why so bearish? Why so bearish? Um, you know, and, and, um, yeah, I think that we get these prediction lists constantly, uh, you know, and we, we all give them and doesn't seem like outside of the macro picture, there's anyone who has bearish predictions when they actually look at the fundamental tailwinds sort of behind the industry right now. Right. And so it's an interesting sort of disconnect, because if we go on here and believe that, you know, the dollar's yield, they're going to rip and there's going to be all these problems, then you have to very clearly believe that Bitcoin is going to become utterly and entirely detached. Go ahead, Dave. Yeah, the reason for that is actually very important. The within the people who have done the work and are in the Bitcoin community that understand that it's an option and looking for

a five to 10, you know, times, you know, rally to become to, you know, overtake or go parry, pursue with gold in terms of its monetary value, are a very small percentage of the investing community. I'm gonna repeat that because that's the important thing. A very, very small percentage are the ones who are in our little club as it were, the vast majority of the people outside the club range from it's, you know, magic internet money, we haven't really done any, I really thought about it, it's

such a small percentage of a portfolio, I don't really care, it doesn't matter. Or if you're working on Wall Street, I can't make money selling it. So it doesn't matter to and that that features really, really prominently to the idiot skeptics and people, you know, the Stephen Hanke's of the world or the Professor Allen's of the world, I mean, various academics who quite literally look, study monetary history, and they start their monetary history, you know, studies in

1972. And ignore, you know, 1000 years of monetary history and understanding why, you know, just saying, well, the world of fiat is all we have, if you woke up on that date, and you didn't look backwards, you wouldn't understand any of what Bitcoiners understand in terms of, you know, why money matters. And so when you have the vast majority of the population not caring, or outright deriding, you're going to get it balances off the fact that the people who have actually looked at it are bullish. And by the way, this isn't new. Anyone who thinks it's new, it's not new. If you talk to people in in the technology space, in 1996 1997, you know, the Netscape moment started and then when that faded,

you know, they were still ramp, they're still bullish and bearish, it moved, it chopped it, whatever. And then it took a couple of years until people started seeing, you know, real applications. And then all of a sudden, it just went absolutely completely nuts. And he we're still in the book, we're in the book for absolutely completely nuts, you know, thing. Now, the difference is, the reason I want to go back to that one point is with the announcement of E trade and with the change in e-trade and with the change in

administration the one thing in the change of administration i've said this almost every crypto town hall when people talk about macros is wall street is going to be allowed to make money selling bitcoin products they have not been allowed they've been actually excluded from it we've seen the operation chokepoint stuff for the last five years when that changes now all of a sudden that calculus that i started the conversation with is going to flip that's when you're going to see the massive rally everything until that starts to happen is i'm not going to say noise it might be generally upward but that's when you're going to see that major action those are the catalysts so i got i got to um just push back and dave a little bit when you just said about bitcoin i heard in gold for decades oh we got to get off one percent Dave a little bit. What you just said about Bitcoin, I heard in gold for decades.

Oh, we got to get off 1%. Everybody needs to allocate to go Bitcoin ETF. So Wall Street's been able to make money on it for decades. And yet total ETF holdings in gold stuck around 220 billion. In Bitcoin, it jumped up to 130 billion right away, which risk adjusted is above gold. So the difference is gold has plenty of other alternatives. I'm sorry, it only has four other terms and precious metals. Bitcoin, you're going to see more and more of them.

As you saw with Ethereum, it has 2.4 million. So I get it. I love Bitcoin. But I'm just pointing out, Dave, some of us have heard this. I heard this in this space. You can't compare it to NVIDIA. NVIDIA has earnings. And gold does Bitcoin and nothing,

and virtually no cryptos have earnings. And that's just the thing I've heard from RAs and RIAs my whole career. Maybe it's changed. I doubt it. Wall Street makes almost nothing from gold. ETFs are the lowest margin products out there. The products they care about are being able to look at coin but they look at coinbase's margins and you know they collectively look like homer simpson

when someone mentions pork chops etfs are a hundredth of that actually probably less in terms of margins that they would make right so you need to you know follow the money the most margin products they make are structured products and derivatives. And there are a lot of people out there. Talk to Larry Leppard to get him on one of these spaces and ask him about gold derivatives. And he will immediately start talking about it's a tool of manipulation and suppression of the price. But the truth is that there was an enormous demand for it. So Wall Street never made that much money.

Yet, that said said look at what happened in the fiat as the fiat era has moved on and why is gold more expensive than platinum so you talk about expense platinum is 30 times rarer than gold platinum for all of most of our life up until the last 10 years was considered more valuable than gold platinum trades at half the price of gold and you, you know, and the reason for that is because no one has ever used platinum as a monetary substitute. They just use it for jewelry. So if you want to understand just how vulnerable gold is, because of

its monetary, you know, value, that gives you a pretty good idea of where Bitcoin of where there's room for Bitcoin to run without anybody in, you know, caring, you know, in the monetary authorities of the world, in the central banks and whatever the world. So those are differences. And the reason I mentioned NVIDIA is, yeah, there's earnings, but it's a question of value. Like what's the value of those future earnings? And when you're talking about a store of value, that monetary component of gold is really what you're talking about. And I don't, you component of gold is really what you're talking about.

And you don't even go way any beyond that to talk about the denominator of finance. It's a good point, Dave. I know yesterday when you and I were speaking, we were talking about it being the most bullish day of 2025. But here we are with a little bit of dip. And I always appreciate your optimism. We do have Thomas today as a sponsor with EWX. I see that Thomas, you've got up here as well. So before we transition to a sponsor today, I just do have a disclaimer. Mario's company, IBC, does marketing, incubation and investing. Sponsors on the show are sponsors working directly with IBC, not necessarily CryptoTownHall or Scott specifically.

And IBC is also hiring for writers, journalists, and moderators. So if you're looking to join a great team or you're a project wanting to work with Mario or IBC, just DM Mario's account. He's up here in a speaker slot. So Thomas, I do see that you're up here. I just want to give you the opportunity to maybe give the elevator pitch to set the room about what exactly EcoWatt is. Yeah, hi. So EcoWatt was created to bridge the gap between retail investors getting the possibility to get into renewable energy investments. As you probably know, when everything started, solar energy in Europe,

especially about 20 years ago, renewable energy investment was just possible for investment funds, utility companies, or maybe in best case for so-called high net worth individuals, but not for retail investors. So when tokenization came up, we saw this as the missing link between the investment possibility into renewable energy and getting retail investors into this and pushing the uptake of renewable energy to much higher levels than when it is what we need actually so there's the ewx token associated with with ecowatt um which has a staking model so i'd love for you to explain how users can can benefit from that and how they're also supporting climate positive actions by using the product it's actually very simple so we are investing on the one hand in in solar power plants

on the other hand also into reforestation projects which are creating carbon credits so basically somebody who is buying the ewx he he has the possibility to stake his token in different projects. And from these different projects, he's getting the returns and the carbon credits. Wonderful. I mean, I've seen other carbon credit platforms trying to launch in this space, but it's never been as simple as an explanation as what you just gave for the end consumer. And given that we have a lot of people in here who are crypto native audience, I do appreciate that simplicity. Go ahead, Thomas. so go ahead thomas yeah the the problem and we of course also realized this that there are several companies who have tried to to get on this the problem always is that when you look at

the team none of these teams have ever been in renewable energy or even in carbon credits so everybody was just thinking that oh this is a new market where we can make some money out of it. But we didn't understand the system, what is behind it. Not understanding how you set up and what are the difficulties in setting up and getting the permits for a solar power plant. And not understanding the carbon market, which actually just over the last few years step by step is developing. What is your and your team's experience in the traditional carbon market? First of all, I myself and most of my team is in renewable energy specifically solar power plant developments already for about 20 years. So we know how to set up and what are the problems with setting up a solar power plant.

In addition, we have been, of course, looking at the development of the carbon credit market over the last few years and basically just in the last couple of years, really, it makes sense to get into the carbon credit market. But you have to be very careful, as you probably also realized. And so in the news with whatever multinational company was buying for years fake carbon credits where the project is even not existing behind these so-called carbon credits and basically that's also the reason why the price of carbon credits was almost nowhere, around one, two, three dollars, which also reflects how can a carbon credit have a value if nothing is behind it?

Of course, when it's just a few dollars. And when it's just greenwashing, nothing else. So we do have about 4, 4000 people in the space right now. Typically, when we have these spaces, it's just due to the nature and the title of the show before here, which was Will Bitcoin Reach 200k in 2025? It's a very crypto centric audience, people who are playing in meme coins, thinking whether or not they want to buy more Bitcoin. They likely hold more Bitcoin. So what's sort of the pitch to them on why they should put their money or their crypto into something like EWX versus something like Bitcoin? It's actually also very simple.

I mean, of course, everybody should invest wherever we want in Bitcoin or Meme coins or whatever coins. But on the other hand, you have also to look around and you will see how climate change is having more and more impact on our lives in the last couple of years. There is almost no month where we don't have somewhere in the world some catastrophes because of climate change. And what is important is that at least more funding is getting into climate action projects in order to avoid further catastrophes which would come up in the next few years. I don't know, probably not many followed the last COP29, which was in Baku, where the governments basically didn't manage to agree on the proper funding for climate action to avoid most of the problems which we will have in the future.

The UN is anticipating that we will need around $1 trillion a year just in order to implement enough to avoid more catastrophes in the next decades to come. At the end, $300 billion was agreed. On the other hand, you have what was for last year, 2024. The yearly volume in crypto trading was over 100 trillion. So the one trillion which is required for climate action is would be just 1% of what everybody is spending on crypto trading.

So even if somebody who is trading Bitcoin or meme coins or whatever coin coin if we would just spend even just half a percent of it amount on climate action tokens when this would have an immense effect on the climate which we will have in the years to come so is it like like for the the end consumer who may be listening in and not necessarily conscious of the environment as some of those typical investors machine to get involved in, or is there a profit-oriented mechanism for them through staking as well? No, you have actually both sides of the profit. On the one side, you have the profit, which you can get from the staking, but also by

time, also by the increase of the value of the EWX token. And in addition, you are doing something good for the environment. And just as an example, in 2020, we had around 1.6 million deaths related with climate change. This is anticipated to increase to up to 10 million in the next 30, 40 years, if we are not doing anything to avoid more climate change. And the only way to avoid more climate change is to get more renewable energy and to put more trees in the ground to get the CO2 out of the air.

What are the biggest challenges for you and the EcoWatt team right now in trying to facilitate this mission to help climate change? Yeah, it's mostly just to get everybody to understand that we already missed the 1.2 degrees temperature in Greece which was supposed to be only in two, three years. Now last year was already 1.6 and in two, three years, we will probably already have two degrees, which means that we will have much more climate catastrophes coming up if not more and more climate action is being done. And this influences everybody. I know the focus of this panel today was really about trying to see or have a discussion rather on will Bitcoin hit 200K in 2025.

So typically in crypto, people are kind of thinking on a one year timeline as being like a long term timeline, which is relatively funny at some times. But what is the longer term vision for for ewx like where do you see yourselves in three to five years which i think is a more reasonable long-term time frame yeah three to five years to to have echo what is the the major global platform for for climate action and to to have millions of users who are realizing that really something has to be done and actually nobody expects somebody to invest thousands or tens of thousands of dollars if everybody just invests a couple of hundred dollars that's already enough. But of course, it's always the masses. It's meant to be the most important, probably also the most difficult

part to make everybody understand that climate change will will affect everybody. And specifically, probably you in the US already see it in areas like like Florida or North Carolina, that most of the people have started moving their houses because we are getting flooded every year. And you can't afford to spend every year tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars just to fix your house because you got flooded again.

I know for listeners who are tuning in, the EWX EcoWatt account is up here in a speaker slot. And the first thing that I noticed on the account when I clicked on it, and I encourage listeners to do the same, is that there is an ongoing pre-sale. I believe it's on Coin... There's going to be a CoinStore listing after the pre-sale. But did you want to kind of describe what the presale dynamics, the token economics, and maybe how users may be able to get involved? Yeah, at the moment we have this presale going, which is at 20p.

And we are planning now with CoinStore to have the listing with end of January, beginning February, and listing price will be 50p. The prices also in relation with the price of the carbon credits. So the token will be always related with the value of recorded always like the social carbon credit price will be always connected to it, which is every year it's going up and up and up. So therefore, the tendency for the price increase is clear that definitely the next few decades, carbon credit prices will go up and we read also the price for the EWX. How has the early days of the pre-sale been going thus far?

Yeah, it's very good. Of course, now the last two weeks because of holidays and probably for sure because of this Bitcoin craze, it was slowing down a bit. But since yesterday, it's picking up again. Well, congratulations. I do encourage people who are in the audience to click the EWX profile. They are in a speaker slot here alongside thomas um and thomas as we we close down here is is there any other call to action to the listeners in terms of how they could get involved or is the best place to to send them to that that pre-sale site to get information on it

yeah the best is really just to go on the on our site where is all the information and through the site you can log in register and log in and very simply very easily with by connecting your wallet you can purchase some ewx tokens and maybe just as you know uh for the for the future every time when you buy something, Bitcoin or some other coin, always think to do something also for the environment and maybe at least just 1%, 2% of this, also purchase some EWX so we can continue and increase climate action.

Well, if somebody's in the audience, I know this time of year, it's a time of year where a lot of people have reflected at the end of last year. Maybe some folks who have just been in crypto maybe have some New Year's resolutions to do some good or do some good for the environment. So I definitely encourage people to check in there. And Thomas, I really appreciate you joining and commend you guys for what you guys have been able to accomplish thus far and the mission that

that EWX has so I really want to thank you for coming today yeah thank you for having me and yeah just as a last if somebody has some questions or so you can without a problem through our site through support you can

ask whatever you want to know in addition. Excellent. Well, I do encourage the listeners, click on Thomas' profile, click on the EWX profile, give them a follow, check out their website. It's ecowatt.io, and the presale is ecowatt.io slash EWX. So, Thomas, I want to thank you again for coming today and the listeners for tuning in. Yesterday was the most bullish day of 2025 in the crypto markets. We're seeing a little bit of a dip today, but I still remain bullish long term. I resonate with the title, hoping that Bitcoin reaches 200K in 2025.

It might be a little bit too bullish in terms of where I'm thinking the market's going to go. But I think this is going to be a great year. And Thomas, I thank you again for joining. So with that, everybody have a wonderful Tuesday. Have a great day. Thanks, bye.