The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin To Test $110K? | Mortgages, Texas & SpaceX Go Crypto

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Will Bitcoin break out this weekend? On this Friday Five, I’m joined by Nathaniel Whittemore to dive into crypto’s biggest shake-ups – from Fannie and Freddie counting crypto for mortgages, to t...he BIS declaring stablecoins unfit as money. We also break down Bitcoin dominance hitting 65%, Texas launching a Bitcoin reserve, Republic’s tokenized SpaceX stunt, and a $15B options expiry that could send BTC to $110,000. Nathaniel Whittemore: https://x.com/nlw ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEKDAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/ ►► Arch Public Unleash algorithmic trading. Discover how algorithms used by hedge-funds are now accessible to traders looking for unparalleled insights and opportunities! 👉https://archpublic.com/ ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. Use code '10OFF' for a 10% discount. 👉https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://x.com/scottmelker Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io/ Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c #Bitcoin #Crypto #FridayFive 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.

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Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Bitcoin really looks like it is set to test the all-time highs and maybe beyond. And there's a lot of bullish news to support that obviously huge ETF inflows. But most notably this week, will Bitcoin and crypto assets on US based exchanges be counted towards your assets for a mortgage? These are just a few of the stories that we have here. NLW and I are going to unpack it all here on the Friday 5. Let's go. Big week for Bitcoin. Last Sunday, we were under 100,000.
Starting point is 00:00:46 We were obviously going to 5,000 or 10,000 or something much lower. And then the week ended on Sunday with a much higher price and price pumping throughout the week. We're going to unpack it all here. Bitcoin really doesn't seem to want to go down. No, no, it's a, I think that that's it really loves this, this this $100,000 level. I feel like recently it's decided that 105 is its is its number. And, you know, who knows, maybe we can go a little bit higher from here.
Starting point is 00:01:18 Yeah, usually when you get that kind of sweep of the lows on the chart, you go up and test the highs, I think so a lot of people looking for that 110, 112 is sort of the next test, assuming that we get there. Obviously, all this coming alongside Trump saying that we have a trade deal with China, the ceasefire in the war, it seems that we've cleaned up a lot of the macro, at least for now, temporarily. Yeah, I mean, look, you know, look, in the time since we were last doing this in the one week, we had the US enter the war, a ceasefire, a ceasefire that didn't really hold, and then a ceasefire for real.
Starting point is 00:01:53 So I think that part of this is also just the markets continue to fade macro events to some extent. They can't have no reaction, but they're very clearly coiled and ready to go back as soon as things look better again. And they were validated one more time, at least apparently, you know, in the short term. So well, the Nasdaq 100, the cues made an all time high, the S&P tapped the all time high yesterday and closed just inches below Coinbase made its first all time high since the IPO, so markets clearly not scared of what's going on. But let's dive into what I think is clearly
Starting point is 00:02:32 the biggest story of the week. Fannie Freddie ordered to find ways to count crypto as an asset. You can see the tweet here from Pulte. After significant studying and in keeping with President Trump's vision to make the United States crypto capital of the world today I ordered the great Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prepare their businesses to count
Starting point is 00:02:49 Cryptocurrency as an asset for a mortgage all caps so ordered. This is huge Yeah, apparently Trump is also giving a tweet school lessons to to imitate. I'm surprised at the end He didn't say thank you for your attention to this matter. Exactly. Exactly. Random capitalizations. We got we got it all. No, look, this is so obviously this is, this is one of those things that's like a great story news, like good story, not sure how much impact it's going to have, broadly speaking, in aggregate, is going to be hugely meaningful to some number of people,
Starting point is 00:03:25 right? This is going to be transformatively meaningful to, you know, I don't know if it's a handful, I don't know if it's more than a handful, but it doesn't really matter. I think that the point here is, this is a thing that should very clearly be policy. I mean, it's just very obviously these assets should count towards your net worth when it comes to a consideration for these types of loans. It is, I think, an example of what will be seen as the mega trend of this cycle, which is just the full integration of crypto and Bitcoin into the financial system as it is. So it's great news. I do think it's it's funny.
Starting point is 00:04:05 Another example of a story that had it been, you know, a year ago, or two years ago would have been, you know, the biggest thing for weeks, but now it's just sort of derogatory and part and parcel of, of kind of the transformation. I mean, it's highly logical, as you said, this should have never really been under debate. There's also some caveats. I believe it's right now maybe only on Coinbase, but United States registered exchanges. So if you think that they're going to
Starting point is 00:04:32 start looking at your metamask wallet or your self custody to count up your assets, that's not going to happen. Also, I've seen a lot of terrible takes with people saying mortgages are going to be backed by Bitcoin. No, right. What this means is that if you require proof that you have the amount of money needed for a down payment and the reserves required for your mortgage. So if let's say your mortgage is $10,000 a month,
Starting point is 00:04:55 they might wanna see that not only can you afford that $10,000 a month, but you also have an additional $60,000 or $120,000 a year's worth of payments in reserves. They generally count your stocks for that. They will not look at your crypto right now and count that as an actual asset that would be liquid for your reserves. That is now going to happen. So it's really about the size of your net worth and the assets that count towards your
Starting point is 00:05:20 down payments and your future mortgage payments. It doesn't mean that they're going to give you a loan on your Bitcoin with a yield. I mean, with a interest payment. Correct. And I think that the you know, so then to the extent that you are still opposed to this, you know, the only plausible argument is you think that there's a higher risk that the volatility of those assets is such that they're more likely to go down from the value and measure than when you would need to call upon them, which is a more reasonable critique, I guess.
Starting point is 00:05:49 I think it doesn't really hold water with where things are now, but isn't there also gonna be like a, they're designing a system so that it's not like your fart coin counts the same way as your Bitcoin is going to. It should though, fart coin. Fart coin bags, I don't have far coin bags.
Starting point is 00:06:08 But yeah, also there's precedent for not counting them entirely. Like retirement accounts will count towards your reserve, but I think they'll only count like it's either 40 or 60% of a 401k or an IRA because there's penalties to cash out. You can't cash them out immediately. So maybe they'll just basically put a discount on your crypto assets as they explore this. I think it would be reasonable if you're holding Solana and a Coinbase account. It's reasonable to think that could be down or up 50 percent in six months to a year. Right. Right.
Starting point is 00:06:36 You know, it's the other interesting part of the conversation has been around basically, you know, the idea that they're only interacting with US based exchanges, right. And so some people have, you know, kind of taken that to task for it not being self custody. There's precedent here, right? You know, cash is legal, but they're not going to count, you know, the bag of cash that you have under your bed as part of this. I have screenshots. I've took pictures of it. Yeah, right. And and look, I think that the to the extent that it is a an indication of a formal disavowal of, of the value of self custody, that's one thing. But obviously, you
Starting point is 00:07:16 know, the the administration and crypto allies in Washington right now show no indications that that's the that's the attitude. This is just a mechanical need. The other interesting theory that I think is not an insane consideration is a way to basically like a sort of secondary benefit of repatriating crypto assets that are on non-US exchanges because they're not going to look at finance, for example. People are going to send the money to their Coinbase account. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:07:47 And so, I don't think this is a tin foil head thing. I don't think it's even sort of like the major intent, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it's like sort of, again, like a secondary benefit that just happens to be in line with US as crypto capital of the world. I mean, which he put straight there in the tweet. As you talked about that, there's some more interesting nuance as someone who's gone through
Starting point is 00:08:05 the mortgage process being a crypto guy multiple times, is that they usually have to season all of your money for your down payment and for your reserves as well. So you would have to do that many months in advance and you would have to show exactly where it came from for them to track the money for KYC AML to make sure that you're not money laundering and all of those things. So that is a major secondary effect. If you are repatriating it, they're going to know where it came from. You're going to have to account for it. It's going to be tracked. Yeah. Which I mean, by the way, if there is then another legal who cares? Right. But then I mean, and look, there's the if there there is then another
Starting point is 00:08:38 line of, you know, more reasonable critique, let's call it is from the extreme opposite side, which basically, you know, that doesn't want all those restrictions placed on on on how people interact with their crypto. But look, it's pretty hard to argue that net is not a good thing. And so you know, we'll plant the flag there. I think and probably move on. Yeah, let's move on to the second story, which is BIS says stable coins fail as money calls for strict limits on their role.
Starting point is 00:09:04 What a shocker. Yes, stable coins fall short on key monetary principles, warning of financial crime risk and threats to monetary sovereignty. These were the three things they said it fundamentally fails on, singleness, elasticity and integrity. Okay, first of all, what's singleness?
Starting point is 00:09:21 Isn't singleness just a different word for fungibility basically? I think so, singleness. Isn't Singleness just a different word for fungibility, basically? Yeah, I mean, look, so the jokes write themselves with this one, right? Central Bank says you should, you know, central banks should continue to be in charge kind of a thing. I think what's interesting and new about this is, you know, I've been watching the BIS statements around stablecoins for and crypto in general for quite some time. This is a statement that is anchored in the reality that we are living in now,
Starting point is 00:09:48 which is that stable coins are a force, right? This is no longer a discussion of future hypotheticals. This is a sort of a forced consideration based on the engagement with stable coins and the excitement around stable coins. So I think one, it is a reflector of a change in the position of stable coins in the global system. Two, the big, huge grain of salt,
Starting point is 00:10:17 bag of salt that you gotta take with this is that the BIS is all in on central bank digital currencies, right? It views CBDCs as sort of the chosen version of the future monetary system. So there's basically no disagreement anymore around whether blockchain-esque type rails are going to be a better system to move, you know,
Starting point is 00:10:37 money in the global financial system on. It's a question of who controls them. And the BIS obviously is interested in central banks who are their main customers and clients being the ones who controls them. And the BIS obviously is interested in central banks who are their main customers and clients being the ones who control them. Pay for international settlements. Isn't this the organization with the huge guy as the head of it?
Starting point is 00:10:54 Yes, yes. The absolute unit as people like to call him. Guy is an absolute unit. I can't believe I'm blanking on his name. It's important, but definitely. Augustin Karsens. Augustin Karsens. Augustin Carstens Augustin Augustin Carstens Christian Tristan it's all right perfect now we move on to the third story because I can't even think about how dumb that last story was we've got bitcoin dominance hits new high as hopes for altcoin season fade you take a look at the
Starting point is 00:11:21 chart we can get rid of that line right there. But I mean, this is going back, you know, months and months and months and months, if you look here on the daily chart, and Bitcoin dominance has done nothing but go up making a new cycle high. I mean, we're talking about high back to I don't even know, back to 2021 January. So it's been all Bitcoin all the time. And I think the story here is not only the legitimacy of Bitcoin and it becoming a asset that's in most portfolios, but the fact that crypto adjacent stocks are just crushing all coins as well.
Starting point is 00:11:56 Yeah. There's two parts of the story. One is big themes are Bitcoin and stablecoins, and that's very, very clear. The second is to your point that, you know, the casino has moved to the to the big show and, and you know, Bitcoin, treasury stocks, and all of these things are where a lot of that, you know, historic alt season energy is going right now.
Starting point is 00:12:18 The big show. I like that. It's I mean, this is just absolutely brutal for anybody who's been holding any altcoin basically, I mean, you get these random out performances, we get those moments when there's kind of a pop. But even as we see significant inflows into Ethereum ETFs and such, it just can't keep up. It's just yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's gonna change. It's interesting. I think that the some of the patterns of you know, historic alt seasons were basically predetermined
Starting point is 00:12:48 Before we ever got to those alt seasons, you know, the big one for me being that VCs crypto VCs have always had an incentive to back some newer flashier thing because of you know If you get if you can if you can turn something into Solana, right, you can make an absolute boatload of money if people actually start to move behavior to that base chain. And that sort of pattern has been broken, I think, pretty aggressively. Now, not to say that, you know, Sui and a couple of others aren't sort of picking up, you know, some amount of traction, but it's not the same, right? Solana was the Solana for this cycle. It has, you know, and I don't think that that's a bad thing.
Starting point is 00:13:29 I think that a lot of the excesses of alt season were these sort of like predetermined patterns that were mostly about financial engineering and who gets, you know, who got in early. And it doesn't bother me all that much if some amount of that is starved out. I don't think that it means that there's not going to be altcoins. I think that they're going to have different, like actual different purposes that are meaningful
Starting point is 00:13:50 or be on the other end of the spectrum, completely memes and no one cares. And honestly, like that divide, you know, where it's you're, you're really just a meme and a narrative and a story, or you're actually something significant is pretty okay with me. I agree with all of that. It's just interesting to note that the financial engineering has now come to the stock market because Bitcoin and treasury companies have just found a much bigger and better way
Starting point is 00:14:15 to financial engineer massive gains. So we'll see who holds the bag at the end of that because we know it only ends with somebody holding the bag. Yep. All right. Now we've got a story that would have been like the biggest story in history, but here we are in 2025. Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed strategic Bitcoin reserve bill into law.
Starting point is 00:14:35 I'm old enough to remember when people cared about strategic Bitcoin reserves. We've got a couple of funny, funny tweets here. Texas is already the home of crypto mining. This session, Texas should become the crypto capital. Texas wears the crown as the Bitcoin mining capital of the world. That was from Greg Abbott already last year and obviously making a bigger move now,
Starting point is 00:14:52 but I just love this one. Breaking Texas, Governor Greg Abbott spotted driving home after signing historic Bitcoin strategic reserve bill into law. By the way, you could just have a car doing that in Texas on any random day, but I think we'll take it. But listen, I mean,
Starting point is 00:15:06 not only is Texas one of the largest economies in the world, seventh or eighth, including all the countries, right. But as he said, they've been far forward of everybody else with crypto in general. And this is the third state to approve something like this. But the first that's actively has a plan to buy Bitcoin. Correct. That's the that's the big difference here. You've got sort of a symbolic New Hampshire live free or die bill, which is great. Obviously, they're you know, they're got it got to get there. And then the Arizona bill, which is very, very, you know, kind of proximate treatment for or similar treatment for crypto assets as for other seized assets kind of a bill, right? Definitely not a full throated endorsement of the sector.
Starting point is 00:15:47 This one is a full throated endorsement of the sector. It's Texas wanting to go appropriate and use funds from other sources to buy Bitcoin and find ways to buy Bitcoin. It's a Bitcoin buying bill in a way that the others haven't been. So hugely differentiated in that way. So I think it was, what I saw 10 million or something upfront. So obviously not a huge amount, but at least it's opening the door. You know, assuming it goes well, we know
Starting point is 00:16:12 how once you get into Bitcoin, you don't stop by generally. Yeah, yeah, the starting point is definitely symbolic. But the openness to an intent to move forward is I think the big thing. Yeah. And so kind of the final story here, which I think leads into tokenized stocks in general, is that we have tokenized shares and Elon Musk's SpaceX coming from Republic. So this is obviously interesting that we're getting tokenized
Starting point is 00:16:40 shares of stocks being traded. But this is private. Right. SpaceX isn't like something you can go out and buy at Charles Schwab at the moment. So that's big. And I think just to sort of wrap that up, we have Bybit launching global stock trading with USDT. We've seen Coinbase has applied to offer tokenized stocks. We know that that's the future of Robinhood. I have actually an interview with Vlad coming out on Sunday where we deeply discussed that tokenized stocks are coming. So maybe we talk about that first, progress there and then the fact that now you can buy private companies. Yeah, you can sort of buy a very tiny amount of, of private companies a little bit up until they reach their limit is actually perhaps a more accurate way to say it.
Starting point is 00:17:26 So, you know, look, I think what's interesting to me about this set of stories is it feels very much like tokenization of existing assets is the third leg of the Bitcoin stablecoin stool of this cycle, right, of the financialization of crypto. And it's, you know, if you go back when we were in sort of depths of the bear market and people were keeping themselves warm by imagining what the cycle themes might be in the future, real world assets, where it was all real world assets, right? Tokenization of real world assets, a big sort of blinking hopeful theme.
Starting point is 00:18:00 And so you sort of had then this shift over into a focus on Bitcoin driven by, you know, the Bitcoin spot ETFs and Larry Fink coming in. But you remember that when BlackRock made those announcements about the Bitcoin spot ETF, Fink was frequently put on the spot trying to kind of get him to, you know, do the old standard divide between Bitcoin versus blockchain. And he really blew it up. One of the things that was notable is that he was sort of seeing Bitcoin's praises in Bitcoin terms, but then also basically saying that, of course, the tokenization of stocks and real world assets is coming. It would be insane for it not to
Starting point is 00:18:38 it opens up so many opportunities and that they were, you know, thrilled about that too. And now we're kind of starting to come to the part of the cycle that is where there's going to be more experiments in that. Right? Bitcoin is a theme. Stablecoins are obviously sort of off to the races as a theme. And this is the third of those. And so it doesn't surprise me that we're starting to see more and more activity around that
Starting point is 00:19:00 area. Yeah. I think it's hard to sort of assign a timeline to this. Maybe it's going to come after we get more clarity with market structure. I don't know. And we're saying that that will be hopefully composed by September. But if the United States government saying a market structure bill will be composed by September, I expect it to be a few months later than that. But you know, this is definitely going to be the next thing, assuming they can push it through. But you know, this is definitely going to be the next thing assuming they can push it through
Starting point is 00:19:31 Yeah, I mean I so bringing this then to the Republic story the Republic story shows how much this set of Opportunities is really going to require New and different regulations for it to work So basically that the the short of what Republic is trying to do here is they're trying to use crowdfunding exemptions to offer up to $5 million worth of a proxy for these private shares in companies starting with SpaceX, where you can only buy up to $5,000 and they're sort of vague on exactly what it'll be backed by,, you know, that maybe, you know, secondary holdings of that company, the way that you can redeem it, or, you know, or sell it is going to be weird. Like,
Starting point is 00:20:12 it's just it's very convoluted structure. I don't think people think that it's a particularly good product acceptance so far as at least it's trying to, you know, pave the way for more interesting things. But when you dig into the details, it's just it is very clear that this is, this is not a thing that's easy to do. And you're kind of contorting yourself to work around regular, you know, or existing regulations. And that I think is reflective of just how much is going to need to be opened up by by by a shift in in regulations for this to actually take hold. this to actually take hold. Yeah, I think that that's the main point is that as bullish as things are as positive as the government is as favorable as the regulatory and legislative situation is they still actually have to make the rules. from legitimate actors with these things, the more it shines a light on this needing to happen. So there's still a pretty long list of regulatory issues we need to work our way through,
Starting point is 00:21:11 but at some point the set surrounding these tokenization issues will come. And I think that they will eventually be dealt with because I've always felt that Wall Street, when it is allowed to mess around with tokenization, it's just going to be a complete bonanza, right? That the variety of products that they'll get to approximate, invent, it's a dream for a lot of these shops.
Starting point is 00:21:38 And there's going to be pressure for the government to adopt. We have altcoin money and institutional Bitcoin money now flowing into Bitcoin treasury companies and crypto adjacent stocks. The next thing will be when all of that money, that bubble pops and it will flow into some sort of tokenized Wall Street scheme. That's my next prediction.
Starting point is 00:22:02 100%. One time to be alive. Dude, were you a permissionless? I was not aware. You can see that the reason I'm in your house is because I was traveling and on the road. So I figured I was there for one day. And then as I was leaving, I was like, I bet he was here as I was getting the breakdown emails. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, no, unfortunately, that the timing, the timing didn't align is a little bit of a miscommunication. But the event looked awesome. You know, the block works has always done a killer job with events. I gotta say, though,
Starting point is 00:22:33 you know, permissionless is great. But I love the I love this sort of the more institutional focus conferences they've been doing. So yeah, yeah, yeah, permissionless was shockingly more casual than I anticipated. I had not been to one of them before. But it was definitely like, you know, cool hang out with speeches going on on stage. It was a really great vibe. And I saw that they got Dennis Rodman on stage somehow after I left. So that was pretty, pretty funny. Love it. Why not? Why not? Do it in North Korea
Starting point is 00:23:00 next time. All right, guys, that's all we got for you. Check out nlw and the breakdown of course and the formerly known as block works newsletter which is now the breakdown newsletter which I absolutely love and we will see you next Friday. Thank you, man. Right on later. Let's go.

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