The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin To Test $110K? | Mortgages, Texas & SpaceX Go Crypto
Episode Date: June 27, 2025Will 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.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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,
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.
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
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,
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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?
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,
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,
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,
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?
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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,
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,
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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,
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,
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.
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.
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,
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
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.