The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin To SKYROCKET As Institutions Prepare For Bitcoin ETF

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Will the Bitcoin ETF be finally approved? James Seyffart, ETF Research Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, and Haider Rafique are coming to my show to share latest news and their insights about the most important event for crypto.  James Seyffart: https://twitter.com/JSeyff Haider Rafique: https://twitter.com/Haider And as always, in the second part of the stream we have The Charting Man Dan who will share his market wisdom: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnqZ2hx679DqRi6khRUNw2g ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   ►►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  ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. USE CODE ‘2MONTHSOFF’ WHEN VISITING MY LINK.  👉 https://tradingalpha.io/?via=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/   ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd ►►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  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 #ETF 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.

The market reset yesterday with a major Bitcoin down move from roughly 45,000 to 40,000. Now it should be up only assuming we actually get the approval of a Bitcoin spot ETF. I'm looking for Bitcoin to skyrocket, although a lot of people are looking at this as a sell the news event. In my opinion, everybody seemingly sold the news yesterday. Now, whenever we have bad takes and fake news or poor analysis, especially surrounding the facts of a Bitcoin spot ETF, we just go straight to the expert. So of course, we've got our friend James Seifert here from Bloomberg, the ETF expert to give us some clarity. And I've got my friend Haider Rafiq, CMO of OKEx here, also joining to talk about what a Bitcoin spot ETF approval would mean for one of the largest exchanges in the world.

You guys do not want to miss it. It's going to be epic. Let's go. that happened yesterday once again. As you know, I happen to have the stars aligned yesterday where we got a major market dump, serious news, tons of volatility, and I happen to have Raoul Pal booked as a guest. And so incidentally, it was the biggest day probably that we've ever had live on this channel, not for recorded videos. But I know there's a lot more of you here now. I appreciate you guys all joining and hope that you enjoyed that stream and what we have to come. As I said, the content here is largely interview based. I love to talk to guests and glean alpha from them. And you're not going to get much more alpha than from today's two guests in the front half. And then of course, chart guys

in the back half of the stream. I've got my two guests coming on right now. We've got James Sabre from Bloomberg and Haider Rafiq from OKX. And Haider brought an extra special guest along as well, who I heard didn't sleep so great last night. Haider, are we going to get some perspective from the sun? I think he's more camera ready than I am. Potentially. I mean, you are on the West Coast, so I know that it's very early for you. We appreciate you coming. So, James, obviously, we want to dig into what happened yesterday. I'm just going to give the very, very broad strokes.

We did it yesterday, but we had this Matrix Report of why the SEC will reject Bitcoin spot ETFs again. This was literally just an analyst giving his opinion, totally valid, largely on the politics and Democrats being in control of the SEC will reject Bitcoin spot ETFs again. This was literally just an analyst giving his opinion totally valid, largely on the politics and Democrats being in control of the SEC, why he thinks it. Then it was reported by the block effectively as news, even though to be fair, they said that SEC will reject all Bitcoin spot ETFs in January, says Matrixport analyst. There was no news here, no source, just the guy's opinion. We have analysts all over the industry. And then all hell broke loose. What we all know was just a leverage flush. This is an excuse. I don't think this was really the reason. We had historically high open interest, historically high funding rates for longs, historically high amount of longs. Somebody simply made a ton of money by triggering a

liquidation cascade. But this was viewed as sort of the reason that it happened. Matrixport founder, Jihad, has come out today and said, Matrixport says dissemination of Bitcoin ETF report was beyond our control. Basically, we had no idea this was going to happen, dude. But James, what is really happening here? As in, is it going to be denied in January? I think it's clear that there's no evidence that it's going to be denied, but maybe let's focus on what's actually happening. I think we can, I don't need you to dive into dispelling the sort of opinions of this one analyst. What I do want to know though, is where are we in this process and what's the likelihood

that we are still seeing an approval? Has anything changed in your mind? So I'll say two things. One, nothing has changed in your mind? So I'll say two things. One, nothing has changed in our mind. So I woke up and I saw all this news and I had a bunch of people DMing me. And then, so I'm trying to figure out, oh, wow, maybe something happened that I missed. And I looked at it as though maybe I missed something. I need to figure out what's going on here. And then I got, I finally got my hands on the report and I was like, this is stuff I was talking about in August and July. Like this is the, most of this has been asked and answered. So that said there's, there

was nothing new in that report for us. It has, nothing has changed our view. Um, I'm still looking at January 8th to January 10th, or we could get potential approval orders. I know some of the more mainstream media outlets have started covering this a bit more, uh, Fox specifically, Eleanor has done great work over there at Fox business. And they're saying that you could get approvals this week. I don't think we'll get approvals this week, but it's possible we could get sources at these issuers where the SEC is basically telling them, be ready for approvals. So I'm still looking for official approvals to happen early next week. We could see

these things trading by the end of week next week. I think for a while we were worried there could be a massive gap between these approval orders and when these ETFs actually list. There are some prominent people out there calling for a weeks, like multi-week, six-week gap between that. I think that gap will be measured in days. So I think it's happening quite soon. And obviously, I hope that's what's happening because that's what I called for. But so I'm a little biased, I guess, on that front, but just doing my best here. Yeah. We also had the Fidelity news yesterday that broke. And I, of course, saw then a million bad takes. Fidelity has been approved their listing. This is happening tomorrow. And then I immediately got a message from Hunter at Bitwise,

CEO of Bitwise, who said, dude, we like filed the same thing last Friday, man. This is just nothing. Yeah. So that's just, it's the 8A, 8A, 12B. All you really need to know is it's one thing that has to happen before these things can trade. You're registering the ETF shares as a security with the SEC. And yes, that needs to happen to list, but like, it's not something that's indicative of an approval. Like it's something that has to happen, like many, many, many other things like getting on the DTC website, like all of those things. There's a lot of things that need to happen before these things can trade on an exchange, but they don't mean they're approved. So there's two things we need for an approval. So if you're out there and you want to follow along and know exactly when these things are getting approved, you're going to see

a 19B4 approval order, which obviously I'll be tweeting out and covering on Bloomberg. And then you need to see an effective or what's called a complete prospectus or S1. So once those two things are done, once you have those two things, these things are likely going to list. Okay. So did you ever think that you would become a crypto celebrity and be a ex fact checker? No, no, I did not.. I've been involved in crypto roughly, at least on the sidelines since 2016, 2017, specifically on Twitter. And I've been covering all these trusts, these grayscale trusts for a long time. You can go back many, many years where

I talk about stuff going on with them. But obviously the hype and the ETF zeitgeist has hit crypto Twitter and crypto in general. So I guess just fortunate enough to be there. And I'll keep doing my best to fact check and get things right as often as possible. I'm due for a screw up at some point, but I hope I can push it off for as long as possible. You guys have been doing pretty well. If we get rejected with the 90%, then we're going to come after you, I think. You're going to get the

torches and pitchforks at that point. I'll have to eat a lot of crow and it'll be rightfully so. And then it'll get approved like three days after you get attacked because we know how this works. But Heider, I want to know from obviously an exchange perspective, I think that through the bear market, OKEx, other exchanges have been building in anticipation of sort of this institutional wave. Is this approval, assuming it's happening, as meaningful as the community is sort of hoping that it will be? And what does it mean for you guys preparing for it? Look, I think first off, what people have to realize is whether it's pre ETF or post ETF, Bitcoin are markets that are going to continue to be quite volatile in a short term period. Long term, I think there's, you know, the asset performs really well. But when people are coming in, whether it's through the ETF or through exchanges, I think that's just something I remind people to keep in mind is on a short term basis, you're going to see a lot of volatility as this whole ETF thing gets settled.

Whatever decision is made during that decision period, as James was outlining, I think we'll expect a lot of volatility. We saw that a couple of days ago. So as an exchange, as a platform, we're expecting volatility over the next six months. And that's actually good for an exchange business. Now, when it comes to the ETF itself, what people have to realize is that these are two different customer profiles. The folks who are traders like yourself, Scott,

I cannot imagine you're going to go trade an ETF. You're going to still be on an exchange, a centralized exchange or a DEX in some way, shape or form. So that business remains, you know, quite, quite intact. I don't think an ETF risks our business or dilutes our business in any way, shape or form. It's just a completely new customer profile that gets activated. To be honest, I have a Fidelity account. I have Bitcoin, you know Bitcoin through self-custody or through an exchange account, but I will likely probably purchase an ETF. I'm buying it. Yeah, why not? And I might do that using my 401k. So I think those instruments, we will see more

adoption of Bitcoin through those instruments. I'm excited about that. Now, when it comes to exchanges and being prepared for the ETF, I don't think at OKEx we're sitting here saying we got to prepare for the ETF launch. I think we're expecting volatility on our platform. We're expecting increased volumes. And we want to make sure that our platform is really stable to go through it and make sure that the matching orders and everything else works seamlessly. You will see, I personally think there will be brokerage platforms, crypto platforms in the United States who have brokerage licenses. They might actually introduce creative products to offer ETF exposure. I don't know what that looks like. Could Robinhood do it? I think so. Could Coinbase come into that market? Perhaps. I don't think OKEx will get into that game. We're quite focused on our strength, which is we have a

really robust centralized exchange. And then we have this Web3 platform that offers a DEX aggregator. I think our focus will remain to innovate and iterate on those products in the coming year. James, I want to ask you, and then really same question to but were you surprised by the amount of volatility yesterday just sort of on this? We all know, like I said, it was a leverage flush, but surrounding sort of any news that could be viewed as meaningful. And what does that mean for when we actually start to see an approval here? I think we now are actually literally completely bifurcated between sell the news and ten thousand dollar god candle camps and very few people in the middle yeah i so so first of all i was not surprised

because there have been times in the past where i have literally been telling everyone i've been putting out in tweets that like this is to be expected we're expecting delays in this or like we're like 99 chances that we're going to get a delay and like a delay happens and the market dumps like a thousand dollars or a couple thousand dollars on news that is like 100% in my mind baked in. And same like, so I've seen it a million times over. So I'm not surprised really. I guess it's a little surprising.

That's just from a report, but anybody, any type of reporting like that is going to point out the potential that these things are getting approved. If anything, it kind of gave us a little insight into how the markets will react if these things are denied. So obviously, there's some sort of money that's priced in this approval. And if it doesn't happen, we're going to collapse, I would say. So I mean, that's all it really told me. But yeah, no, not surprised at all here. I mean, Heider, what do you think of it? Obviously, you've traded plenty in the past and you're watching the metrics. I mean, was this surprising? And I guess if you even have any color on like how much volume it looked, I looked actually, I dug into each exchange on CoinGlass. It was pretty astounding how much volume and

volatility there was yesterday. Well, I'm not surprised because I think this volatility will continue to happen. There's a lot happening in the world today. So it's not just related to the ETF. There are other things happening around the world that are driving the prices, whether it's on the equity side or the crypto markets. So I do expect that in Q1, Q2, there will be volatility in markets, period. So not surprising at all. I personally, at a personal level, I kind of enjoyed a little price pullback because you got into the new year, suddenly the price starts running up. You know, at OKEx, we were all resting a little bit during the holidays. And when you see that

price run up, you're like, oh, here we go. We're back. Yeah, back to work. Back to work. So I enjoyed seeing the pullback. I think it's also a great reminder for people who have long-term positions. When the price scales back 5%, 7%, it's a great time to dollar cost average. That's how I was personally looking at it. We saw some of that behavior even on our exchange. Yeah. I mean, I literally tweeted about that this morning, something to the effect of buy the news, buy the rumor, buy the dip, buy the rip, just dollar cost average and don't worry about it because it's likely to be much higher in the future than it is now. How do you think this plays in with the halving cycle higher? I mean, do you think that because it seems like we kind of jumped ahead of where we would have been at this point because of all the ETF hype? Yeah, look, it's really tough to forecast.

But if you look at historicals, Bitcoin having effect doesn't take place right away. It takes about, you know, maybe eight months for it to start baking into the price. So if we just look at historicals, are we looking at December for a bull market to really kick in? Perhaps. But then you've got this ETF thing that's bringing in net new demand. I don't know what that does to a Bitcoin halving cycle. It's going to be a really interesting time. I don't think it's something we can look back and say it happened in the history before. So we have a baseline.

There is no baseline for what we're about to go through in 2024. I think at a personal level, again, I'm being very conservative in my own position and making sure that I don't go heavy up earlier in the year and have some reserves for later in the year should there be a more positive signal going into December of 2024. So personally, just looking at historicals, I don't think it's going to be April 29th, Bitcoin halving occurs, and suddenly you see a price shot up. It never happens. Right. Actually, kind of in James, I kind of view the ETF as the same, right, is that it's this big hyped event.

But the day that it happens, nothing meaningful should happen in the plumbing or behind the scenes unless we get billions in AUM, which I don't think anyone at this point is expecting immediately. But then four or five or six months as that AUM grows and as we see news that maybe a pension fund or somebody or RIAs in mass are recommending this, that's when it really starts to kick in, much like the halving. I mean, James, what's your perspective at this point? Has anything changed for how much AUM, how quickly these will become popular, where that will go? I mean, we do have 14 companies effectively that are going to be running Bitcoin marketing campaigns here. Yeah. So I largely agree with everything you just said. I think it's going to be, I think some people who think this is going to be a massive blow off top event are going to be slightly disappointed. That said, it also wouldn't shock me. So right now everyone's focused on what people

have as their seed capital, right? I've seen a bunch of stories and tweets about how much money people are seeding these ETFs with. Look, I've seen these ETF issuers seed these things with $5 million and then a day later throw in a billion from a pension fund in Europe, specifically on ESG ETFs. That's happened multiple times. So it's not completely out of the question that some of these issuers have more money and more clients on the sidelines that are going to pile money in, in the first day or two. That said, I think it'll be a lot of interest initially. Well, we should see significant... I'm expecting a big launch. I'm expecting significant inflows.

But like you said, I think it's going to be more of a slow burn. Like the idea that all of a sudden these trillions of assets and advisors and institutions that currently right now, maybe their mandates don't allow them to hold Bitcoin or what have you. They don't want to own a Bitcoin futures ETF. They'll go and basically do their due diligence on these things and possibly buy over the longer term? Yeah, I think there's this expectation that the due diligence is done, and I just don't think so. I think you need the product first,

and then it's going to then basically reset the clock on them truly considering this, and then we're going to see it down the road. Heider, I mean, it seems like it's similar actually to building on an exchange through a bear market, right? You learn all these lessons in the bull market of things that didn't go well, or that you weren't scaled for, that you need to hire for. Then you build it all during the bear market, but then you need to actually hope that the demand shows up, right? We don't know if the demand is going to show up. We just know that now the product will be there if the demand

shows up. If you even look at just a stock, a company going public, say, let's pick a company in tech, mostly the behavior you see in the market says the stock gets listed pre-hours, the price is going up, suddenly markets open up, and the stock goes up for a little bit, and then it starts to decline. And over the next 90 days, you actually are likely to see a decline in price from the point at which it was issued. And then as you said, AUM builds up and over time you see a healthy buildup of that stock price. My feeling, my instincts are that that's probably what we're going to be looking at here, which is the hype is going to come out. People are going to realize it didn't really meaningfully impact the price.

And then you're going to over time slowly see a buildup. I mean, James, do you think that this could be as successful at least as BITO or was that just a unicorn at top FOMO at the heat of the peak of a bull market? Because, I mean, a year ago, price was $16,000, right? I mean, we really have come a very long way. There is a lot of hype again around Bitcoin. Yeah. So Biddo was unique in the sense, like you said, there was a lot of hype around it. It's also like if you could see the trades that were going on, like I was looking at the terminal and it was a lot of like, we talk about it internally, like minnows. It was a lot of small trades. It wasn't like institutions piling tons of money. It was like a feeding frenzy of minnows buying this thing left and right. And I think

part of that also had to do with the fact that it was one ticker. So everyone's talking about this one ticker and everyone's talking about the flows that it's getting in and then more people are buying it, more trading. So more trading begets more trading. So we were seeing a whole bunch of just building on top of each other. We think we could possibly see 11 ETFs launch. So that's going to hinder things a bit. I do think we'll see hundreds of millions go in on day one. It could get close. But like I said, there's this tail event that where BlackRock and some of these other issues in the past, they don't necessarily like to seed with significant amounts of capital. They'll seed with what they need to get it off the ground because you can't just launch something with

nothing in it. And then they might have a bunch of capital waiting in the wings, which they would much prefer to do day one because that ad gets more coverage. It creates more volume. It shows assets and flows. So it's way more marketing if you can just take money from your clients and put them in on day one or day two, rather than necessarily seeding it. So it could be massive. If some of the if multiple of these issuers, or even somebody like BlackRock is planning to do something like that. I just again, that's, that's not guaranteed flat. I just can't imagine BlackRock having a flat launch. But maybe I'm just that's my sort of echo chamber perspective. But the thing that is different this time, obviously, for many launches we've seen in the past is the names that we're seeing associated, right?

You may have Jamie Dimon on the floor of the Senate talking about how the government should kill this, but you also have them being listed as the AP for a number of these spotty chefs. Now you have Goldman Sachs trying to get their piece via BlackRock and Grayscale. Here you go, same sort of idea. I mean, never in the past have we had literally the world's largest institutions all involved in anything crypto related. I'm a big fan of watch what they do, not what they say. I don't really care what Jamie Dimon has to say about it if JP Morgan is coming in and playing these roles. But I mean, Hyder, I'll ask you, I mean, was it on your bingo card that we would see

literally the most powerful institutions and people on the planet really fighting for their sort of piece of this launch? No, it is. I mean, look, we all hoped we would be here today or at some point in our lives, but I didn't think it was going to happen this soon, which is great. And I think the level of validation we're seeing in the market is amazing. What I'm more curious about is how do they build demand? They can, of course, reach out to their customers. They're large customer bases. I'm seeing emails come from Fidelity for now almost a year about Bitcoin in general and custody. And BNY Mellon, which we bank with, there was a time when my wife and I were taking a mortgage out and they wouldn't consider any of

our crypto assets as value. Now they're actually like chasing after us to custody Bitcoin. And this is BNY Mellon. So I think it is quite surprising how quickly the tide has shifted, so to speak. What I'm more keen about as a marketer is how do they build a demand? Is it just will Fidelity and the likes just go and tap into their existing customer base? Or are they actually going to do powerful storytelling similar to what you're seeing from crypto companies come out recently. Is there going to be a big storytelling war in 2024 as a marketer? I'd love to see that. I mean, what do you think, James?

You think it's Super Bowl commercial time again for crypto, but this time BlackRock instead of FTX? I don't know about Super Bowl commercial. It's possible, but I wouldn't be surprised to see these things at sporting events. And we've been saying, I'm with Hater completely. We, we, we were saying that this is lining up to be just a marketing bloodbath. Like people are going to be spending tons of money. You're, you're going to have to, you need to get your name out there. There's different ways to do it.

You can literally make commercials. I think like Invesco Galaxy in a way they're doing 0% fee for the first six months. My view is that's just another, it's a market. That's their marketing spend for that product, at least some of it. So yeah, that's the way I'm looking at it, but it's undoubtedly if you own Bitcoin or you like Bitcoin, this is a net positive for you because these are some of the largest institutions in the world that are getting behind this. And we've already seen they're dipping their toes in the water on marketing. And I think it's only going to heat up if and when these things ultimately launch, because it's not just that marketing. It's also

the fact, which I'm not the first person to say this, these big companies, they have huge distribution centers, right? They have huge people out there trying to sell their products to different advisors. So you're going to have thousands, if not tens of thousands of people out there talking about these Bitcoin ETFs, trying to get advisors and other people to buy them. So just that conversation happening is a net positive for anyone who likes and is bullish Bitcoin. Or James, is it possible, James and Scott, that we see marketing war, so to speak, but there's also a supply war because you can have a ton of marketing, but there's not a lot of supply in the market. What happens then? How do they fulfill the demand if there is a huge amount

of demand? Price rises to meet demand. They keep rising the price until they can actually get a bid. Are some of them going to go extinct? I mean, there's 14 of these can't survive, right? So right now, it looks like one of them's already out. GlobalX didn't meet the 1229 deadline. They're a big ETF issuer. We call them an indie issuer, but they're decent. They're pretty big size actually. And I don't blame them. But now we are looking at 11 people that are likely, or at least right now, potentially

could launch on day one. And then you also have 7RCC, which is run by Rally, who I don't know if you guys know who that is, but she's running Bitcoin and carbon credits ETF. And that's probably going to launch potentially this month. And then you have Panda, which is a European asset manager who's still trying to launch. So right now it's looking like 13, um, 11 to start, but yeah, I'm with you. I don't think that there we, I I've said this many times before the ETF industry tends to be a winner take most. There's one or two ETFs that are at the top, get the most assets, the most volume. But there's plenty of scraps for other people to have successful businesses and products around them. I don't know if there's enough scraps

for 11 different or 13 different issuers to survive over the long term and have profitable businesses. Heider, I'm going to put you on the spot. Oh, you're muted, Heider. Go ahead. You're muted. Yeah. So I have a question for you guys in in terms of popularity who do you think is the most popular brokerage platform for the etf demand i mean i think blackrock will win as an etf but i think fidelity would probably be the most popular platform that's involved maybe i'm wrong yeah you can't discount fidelity because

they're like vertically integrated here, right? Like they have not only do they have a platform where retail can trade it, they are the back end for thousands and thousands of advisors just running normal portfolio businesses. They are the asset manager on this thing. And they have a crypto subsidiary. They have a crypto custodian subsidiary. So like they're very vertically integrated. That said, I mean, Robinhood, it seems like an easy answer here just because of the type of people that own it. But I mean, Schwab and Fidelity are the two biggest platforms really, particularly after

Schwab bought TD Ameritrade. So I mean, these things are going to be anywhere you can normally buy a stock, right? So it's not, I don't know if we'll actually see. You can't really see which brokerages on my end, like the way that I look at data. I can't see which brokerages are the ones actually doing all the buying here, but we can see who's actually holding these things. It'll be interesting to see at the end of Q1, who are the big holders of these things because it has to be reported because these are going to fall under 13F reporting standards. Heider, I'm going to put you on the spot. Okay, so at OKEx, you obviously changed their entire branding, the colors, the logos, did the Manchester City deal, Tribeca Film Festival, of course, McLaren F1.

I've been there with you. How would you market these if you were one of these issuers? That's a great question. To be honest with you, I haven't put in a lot of thought because I don't have to deal with it but I do think the what we've learned being at McLaren or at Formula One rather is that you get a lot of b2b relationships you get a lot of high touch relationships and for ETF you know and the institutional dependency these issuers will have, I think those brand partnerships can have a really meaningful

role. Now, they're no short of any contacts or what have you, but I think there's a lot of demand that sits in these paddocks or in these experiences that I think a lot of their sales teams can benefit from. But I'm not sure they're going to go in that direction. I haven't seen a lot of the brokerage platforms or issuers, you know, have heavy brand partner investments. They do have some, like you have Goldman Sachs. They're a co-partner with us, you know, on the F1 McLaren side. So I think what I'm expecting to see more of is to compete with the crypto issuers. The traditional issuers are going to certainly have to up their game on storytelling.

And I think brands like Fidelity, brands like Thinkorswim, I think these are the two brands I really think will have the potential to do amazing storytelling. They have great ad agency partners, and I could expect them to do great work. Robinhood, I just don't know if their customer profile will really care about an ETF. I could be completely wrong about that. I think it's going to be bonk and doge for the Robinhood customers while we are talking about spot ETFs

over here with the adults. Yeah, Robinhood customers, I believe, from what I think I know about their profile, is they want options. They're traders. So I don't think they're going to be as interested in an ETF. I could be proven wrong there. Yeah, well, one benefit here is that when Biddo launched,

it was only a day before we saw options. So assuming the SEC allows it, these spot Bitcoin ETFs will have options too. But the other thing, I would almost discount my Robinhood call because you could just buy Bitcoin directly. And I think most people are just going to prefer to do that if they're on Robinhood specifically, which they won't be able to do on some of the other platforms you just talked about. Yeah, I know we're over time here, but yeah, I think the millennials and the younger generation is going to continue actually trading the underlying assets and go further down the risk curve. And the real unlock here will be with Gen X and above and up to boomers who are going to hear about it from their RIAs, as you said before.

And that's where we're maybe going to get the bigger unlock of capital here. One thing I think we can be sure of, already seeing it from Hashtag, VanEck, Bitwise, great commercials, which by the way, because they don't have tickers yet, and I'm sure there's laws, they're just Bitcoin commercials. So the one thing I'm going to be literally just Bitcoin commercials, Bitcoin, it is time, I think is the Hashtag one, right? And so I think at the very end of the day, the entire asset class is going to be the big winner just by virtue of these massive marketing campaigns. I mean, Haider, do you agree? I agree. I think it will be a very interesting year for marketing in general. Historically, I've taken the personal point of

view when everyone's throwing dollars and doing a lot, you kind of stay on the sidelines and be quiet, which is what we did in 2021. When everyone was done and fatigued in 2022, we came in and leaned in quite heavily in the market. And people were quite surprised. They're like, hey, it's a bear market. What are you guys doing? Our philosophy was back then, we want to do it when everyone's kind of tired and fatigued. I think this is going to be a different year, different strategy. I do think we're going to lean in. I certainly don't want to have FOMO, five Bitcoin ads out there, and we're sitting on the sidelines. I don't think that's going to happen. So expect some fireworks from our side. All right. Well, then my bold call is we

see a Super Bowl commercial from someone. Go ahead, James. I think that's possible. The one thing you mentioned, the tickers, it's actually, once these things are ETFs, you cannot actually put the ticker in there. You're not allowed to do it. That's what I was saying. I didn't know if there was a law. So I think we just get this sort of like de facto Bitcoin marketing campaign, and they hope that you see the name of who's running the ad and go check it out and whatever.

So the way they can market these financial products really just opens the door for it to be a general marketing campaign for Bitcoin. You got to love that. And Scott, I think we will see evolution of marketing regulations as well. You're seeing that in UK with FCA. You're going to see that with other regulators. As this stuff gets more consumerized, I imagine the marketing side will continue to get more regulated. Yeah, I'm sure that's already the uh bingo card for them after uh ftx's uh shenanigans i will say james any final thoughts before i let you guys go

uh no nothing for me i mean like i said just look in january 8th to january 10th look for those 19b4s and the effective prospectuses and that's when we'll know things are ready to go. And so do we just follow you? Like, do I need to like put alerts on the SEC account or is there some secret unlock where I can know 12 minutes before everyone else? Or should we just all follow you and set our alerts? As I am deaf, I've seen most for the most part, people beat me to tweeting about it.

So I usually, when I tweet about it, I try to add context as quickly as possible because I know I'm not going to beat some of these automated platforms out there, getting it out there. But, uh, yeah, I guess you could follow me and I'll tell you, I'll, I'll be sure to cover it. I mean, if I'm not covering, it's a failure on my part as soon as it happens, but, um, hopefully I'm not like driving or something when it happens, which has happened in the past. Yeah, sure. Hyder, any final words? No, very exciting. Buckle up. Those are my final words. Yeah, I think that's the best.

If yesterday was any indication of what can happen or when the Cointelegraph intern tweeted a few weeks ago, I think we know that any... I think maybe Matrixport hired the Cointelegraph intern. Now that I'm thinking about it. But if it's any indication, I think we're in for a wild ride. It's going to be a lot of fun. Guys, you can follow both James and Hyder down in the description.

Their links are there. I highly recommend that you do both. Guys, thank you so much for your time. And James, I'm sure this is your first of like 17 shows today. So sorry I kept you over. No, no problem. Thanks, Scott. For at least another week or two.

I hope it lasts. Thanks, buddy. Thanks, guys. All right, man man that was awesome uh yeah uh seemingly nothing to see here after all that news yesterday which is kind of crazy to me because we had obviously the fake matrix report then we had the fidelity thing and it's just all bad takes it's all bad takes unless i at this point it's just like i asked james or eric and i won't report anything else unless one of them tells me that it's true uh and i'm very uh honored that i can get them both on here and always happy to have hyder hyder and i have been talking about doing this much more

regularly and bringing him on uh potentially uh to go you know weekly show or or spaces so look for that as well i'm putting him on the spot i know so maybe i'm gonna get in trouble for saying that but i hope that's going to happen. And now, guys, if you're wondering what the hell is happening in the markets, and obviously with trades on Bitcoin, and maybe we'll talk a little bit about marijuana because once again, our profit of all things stocks is here.

Chart guys, Dan, dude, we clipped a video last week for social media. You saying watch for the DEA to make any mention of rescheduling, marijuana. We got news either yesterday, the day before that said DEA looking at this and MSOS, which you literally showed

us, went absolutely bananas. Yeah, and this isn't the headline we're looking for, too. This is the precursor to a potential maybe us went absolutely bananas. Yeah. And this isn't the headline we're looking for too. This is the precursor to a potential maybe headline down the road. Yeah. And one of our team members drew the analogy. This kind of reminds me of the fake Bitcoin ETF headline. We popped and we gave it back. And then it was like, oh, we're holding these gains really well for a fake headline. Not to say that this cannabis headline was fake, but it was something we already knew. And again, it's the same thing. Like, huh, we're seeing follow through on this bull move on news that was, really, we knew the

DEA was looking to reschedule. I guess the fact that they actually said it makes people more confident. But yeah, we're seeing the buildup on social media, big accounts talking about MSOS now. So the buzz is building a bit and we'll see if it materializes. Do you happen to have the chart offhand? I would love to take a look at it. Just show people. It's just, you've done this like four times now. I know we do this every week,

but every once in a while, you just mentioned something and then I go back and look. I'm like, oh, we're up 100% since you said that. You know, something wild. Yeah, this is just MSOS. And yesterday, you know, the headline drops and it triggers

the algos. We halted on the way up with a quick move and we're seeing some continuation today. So this is the non-leveraged version. The leveraged version is MSOX. You got to be careful just because it's not nearly as liquid. It's very illiquid. But again, this is the kind of thing where if you get that news headline, you love illiquidity because it's everybody trying to get through the door at the same time. And it leads to things, you know, really following through. But, you know, here's MSOS testing 736 resistance and breaking it. So highest level in a couple of weeks. And now it's all about 769. And really, it's just a tightening weekly pattern trying to build a longer term base. And again, we're getting a little momentum. And if we get that spark hitting the fuse, that's when the fun starts. So we're going to continue

watching for that official headline. We got to hear the DEA saying, we are rescheduling cannabis. And if that happens, 100% easy. We've still got time then. So what do you make of Bitcoin yesterday? Obviously, it was pushing towards 46,000 over the January 1st and January 2nd. And then complete flush, right? Down to almost $40,000, $40,600. I mean, the funding rates here, you can see we're back to basically almost flat, which is good. But these funding rates were historically high. It was expensive to be long.

66% annualized. In fact, you were paying to get long. Open interest was high, easiest predictable flush ever, which we talked about on Tuesday, the day before it happened, but pretty big. Yeah, and I mean, the bulls are pleased that support held again. You can see two times now. And again, it's that sucker punch flush that we talked about back on December 11th. It was very similar.

That's an 8% drop. This was a 10, 10 and a half percent drop. And same thing. We found support at 40,000. And then we just tightened up for a while. And after this volatility, that's what you get. You tighten up on the 15 minute, and then you zoom, I call it the zoom out game. Then you zoom out and then you tighten up on the hourly. And then you zoom out and you tighten up on the four hour. At this point, I'm on the 12 hour. I'm looking for a 12 hour lower high to be the result of this bounce. And we're looking for a higher low. Again, in the absence of a headline, you just look for the massive volatility in both directions to lead to tightening ranges.

So that's what we're going to look for. And again, you can just look back to the last time, flush, bounce, just tightening up. And so watching for something similar in that regard. But the simple statement is if 40,000 is holding, bulls are staying comfortable. Yeah, I view it the same way. I think that this was the big flush and now short of the big headline, there's no reason to believe we'll do anything but just go sideways. And with regards to the headline, just something I want to mention, I was listening to your prior guests. Just my perspective as a trader, I will go and trade the ETF over trading on an exchange because in the US, the fees are so different. You know, if and we're going to get leveraged ETFs eventually. And if I can trade actively with zero fees versus I mean, since 2017, I've paid Coinbase over six hundred thousand dollars in fees. It adds up. Back in 2017, most of it was 2017, 2018. And I can justify that expense because

the volatility and the gains were very worthwhile. But again, that's insane. If I can save five figures in fees a year, I'm absolutely going to go wherever that is. So I do believe that at least full-time traders will go to the ETF and especially leveraged ETFs when we get those. Yeah, I wonder how many of them are already trading the CME futures, for example, or BITO as sort of proxy. I mean, we know that they're obviously even trading MicroStrategy and Coinbase and any other proxy, but I do agree with you. I think all of that is going to funnel into the most popular spot ETF. Yeah, I didn't trade crypto much in 2023. It was all MARA, Riot, and all those names, all due to fees.

It just doesn't make sense otherwise. Have you been watching the miners over the past few days? There was quite a blow off top, I think we could almost call it. Oh, yeah. Wednesday, I was messaging my buddy Wednesday, who's this all in degenerate and does well. I don't know how he does it, but I'm saying he'll scale out. There's an inevitable 10% drop coming. You can reload them and didn't, but a big drop. Now we look for the bounce. We're going to look for a daily lower high and the top 10 for now. I mean, unless, you know, unless the Bitcoin run on an ETF headline takes us 40,000 plus, I think the

top is in for now. We, you know, we are outperforming Bitcoin massively. We hit a climax top on a 15% up day after going a hundred percent on the month. And, you know, this is just, again, you see massive volatility in both directions. You look for a tightening range. And I do believe top's in for a while. And now we just have to balance out the scales between supply and demand while we find a more stable price in between supply and demand. Yeah. I mean, you talk about the idea that the top is in for now. I tend to agree with you, certainly, on miners. I want to just go back to Bitcoin, at least conceptually. I think, personally, I don't care how fast it happens. I think yesterday's flush was necessary.

And generally, maybe it's my bias, but I didn't really view it as such a bearish thing. Like you said, bulls sort of held the main support. It got a lot of the leverage out of the market. I was discussing this with guests yesterday. Feels like we got the nice reset we actually needed if we want to get a push on the back of the market. I was discussing this with guests yesterday. It feels like we got the nice reset we actually needed if we want to get a push on the back of this ETF because pushing from that point where it was already complete lunacy seems like that would have put a cap on what was possible there or that someone would have really shorted the hell out of it at that point with that much leverage. I agree. People ask me, do you think it's a sell the news event?

And for me, it's hard to answer that question because I need to know when I need to know what the chart looks like into it. And so, yes, you're right. If we're up at forty six thousand and that headline drops, we spike up real quick and then we dump, you know, 10 percent real quick, in my opinion. And now, as you mentioned, this this kind of resets things. And, you know, I said for a while, if we haven't seen weekly consolidation and the headline hits, I'm looking for it to be a sell the news event. Now we've got very brief weekly consolidation. We broke the stair-step pattern of a higher low every single week. But again, it makes me more open to the possibility that we can see a bit of upside on the reaction. I'm still ready for both. I will not be surprised with either. I won't be surprised

if we head to 47,000. I won't be surprised if we head back down to test 40,000. So just anybody that's getting ready for this volatility, just have two game plans. There's only two things that can happen. We can only go up or only go down. And so just be prepared for either. What are you watching in general now? I mean, it's been sort of, I guess, predictably volatile and rocky start to the year for stocks, I think watching in general now? I mean, it's been sort of, I guess, predictably volatile and rocky start to the year for stocks, I think, in general, if you're looking at indexes. I love it. I think my favorite headline, by the way, yesterday was Bloomberg Crypto that said that yesterday Bitcoin had erased all of its gains for the entire year.

Oh, yeah. That's great. I was like, dude, that was two days. Yeah. I'm sorry you mentioned that. It's back to the prices from 48 hours ago. So yes, it has erased the entire year's gains. Yeah, I'm watching the S&P 500. This weekly consolidation, again, was inevitable. I'm watching the retracement size. There are no red flags whatsoever on it at this point.

I'm watching to see if it's going to be a bull flag or not. There's definitely rotation going on in the broader market. Money is leaving the NASDAQ to start the year. No, I should say the healthcare care sector is benefiting health care sector. Two month time frame. So real long term, just sideways for years and now at all time high. So my question is, you know, is health care about to lead the market here to start 2024? We had some sideways back in 2015, 2016 that was similar.

And so, again, just building up pressure and now up at the high. So just watching where's money going, you know, where's the rotation going? That's one of my favorite things to do when watching the market is, you know, I just view it as, you know, flowing water almost, and where's the water headed? So you just you, I mean, we've talked about this before, for just people here, XLV is sort of how you trade healthcare in general, if you want to not try to pick the winners or the select companies, that's the way to sort of get exposure to all of healthcare via like an index. Yeah.

And then you can Google, you know, top holdings of XLV and, you know, UNH is going to be up there and JNJ is going to be up there. So there's individual ways to play it as well. But yeah, if you want to just broader base, then it's XLV. And it's definitely one of the most, for me, the most important ETFs that I watched to give me a gauge of the overall market is Kikiku, XLF for financial sector and XLV for healthcare because of the weight that they have in the S&P 500. And so again, it's just rotation still going on right now, which is what bulls want to see. The red flag for the market is when all those major sectors are dropping together.

If one's dropping and one's going up, it's just rotation. And rotation is bullish when you're in an uptrend. Anything else you're specifically watching right now or just kind of... Just cannabis and crypto stocks has really been it for a while. And that's been my bread. I mean, really, for six years, that's been my bread and butter. But yeah, just keep an eye on those and just gauging whether the bulls are going to keep control after this weekly consolidation to keep it a bullish uptrend in the market overall

in Q1 2024. Man, I can't wait now to see that DEA when they change it. It's going to happen because it's rational and we're going to absolutely be laughing here all the way at the bank. And now I go buy more MSOS and I'm convinced. I hope so, man. I've been watching the irrationality of the federal government surrounding cannabis for 15 years. And so it's kind of hard not to be cynical, but not letting that, you know, sway my readiness. History tends to with a lot of rocky roads, but tends to move in the right direction with time. Just hope that we're still here when they

finally make the right decision. Yeah. Guys, follow chart guys, obviously on on X, check out his YouTube channel, everything else that he has. I love that this is, you know, each Thursday, it's progressively more people watching and, you know, better engagement. And I think that's a testament to the market, but also the fact that we just show up here every week to do this, man. So thank you for doing it with me. I really do appreciate it. Happy to be here. I'm out of town next Thursday, but I'll see you soon. Well, we'll note that. Have a great one, man. We will see you soon. All right, guys. That's all we got today. Tomorrow, obviously, is the Friday Five with NLW. We're going to have a lot to talk about.

I would imagine that was another one that we had to take a week off last week. If you did not watch the interview with Raoul Pal yesterday, I highly recommend that you do so. It was really, really good. Also, if you guys are watching this channel, we've been taking a lot of time and effort to take the best parts and cut it up and throw it into the shorts so you guys should go check out the shorts we got an amazing editor uh who's putting those together uh i like watching them because i have adhd and it's

like one minute of my time to remember what the highlights were uh and uh so and you know also soft pitch, subscribe to the channel. If you're new here, please subscribe to the channel. We love having you guys. And I think it's going to be a hell of a, hell of a road rollercoaster over the next few months.

And certainly over the next couple of years, guys, thank you so much. Appreciate you all for being here. I will see you tomorrow morning and on twitter spaces in about 25 minutes