The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Tumbles After Smashing All-Time Highs! What's Next?

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Scott Melker & Sidney Powell Dive in to discuss Bitcoin blasting past $124K on Fed cut bets, ETF inflows, and institutional buying, while Ethereum and alts hold strong. Bullish’s $13B NYSE debut and new Grayscale altcoin ETF filings fuel adoption. Holders stay firm, but will this momentum last?

Bitcoin just smashed through its all-time high yesterday, hitting almost around $124,000 to $125,000. Will this momentum continue? No, no, it won't actually. Clearly, the momentum is not continuing because Bitcoin is currently trading at 118,441 American inflating dollars. What the hell just happened? We break all-time highs. We're supposed to have blue skies and continue on up to 150, then 210, then $4 million. It didn't happen largely because of PPI and technical indicators showing maybe the top was in.

We're going to talk about that. All the news in the market today with my amazing guest, Sid, from Maple Finance. Let's go. Good. Good morning, everybody. Happy all-time high for 10 minutes day to those who celebrate. We did have an all-time high yesterday. And Bitcoin, Ethereum couldn't even get itself together enough to break its all-time high coming up just short. And now, of course, we have a market-wide correction and retrace. Going to bring on Sid right now. Good morning. I say, good morning for you, but you're on the other side of this planet, right? Right. Good. Well, yeah, good evening. Glad to be. Good night for you, I think. Okay. Okay. So Bitcoin goes up to $124,000 or celebration. Everything's great. I wake up. It's like 121 or something. Okay, no surprise. You know, if you trade markets, you know that there's resistance and all time highs, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And then PPI hits, right? PPI month over month hottest since March 2022 as services. PPI explode higher over half the. increases of trade attributable to margins for final demand trade services with jump 2.0%. So basically

they expected 0.2%. We got 0.9%. Last week we had the CPI numbers 100% rate cut priced in on predictive markets and Fed tracker. Now it's a week later and everyone's like no no Fed cuts in September. When have any has anybody been right in the last two and a half years about that cuts? No, no. This is a this is a this is. is, you know, a point going to the nothing ever happens crowd, you know, that guy who, who just bets on no change is ever happening on Polly Bunkett. He's, he's going to be very happy right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, but listen, these are, we know that these all are blips, right? Every day we get a new, some sort of government data headline. Nobody believes government data,

apparently anyways, because I'm actually wondering. Check the statistician. Who gets fired today? I was just going to say, literally like, who gets fired today because that can't be right. Right. But listen, in the midst of all this, I think let's talk about the actual narratives for Bitcoin and crypto. And the reason that it was even pushing to all-time highs in the first place, but clearly have crypto IPO madness, I think, is sort of the story and treasury companies, right?

We know exactly who the buyers are in this case. We know exactly where the interest and money are coming from. But here, the latest sign of crypto IPO boom might be. becoming 10T Holdings Dan Tabier predicts crypto listings on exchanges or a mini step or value movie on chain okay whatever point being the article the other article we have is that basically on the back of Trump being extremely bullish on crypto we're seeing launches of companies left right and center and the biggest one crypto exchange bullish price IPO at 37 per share it went up to like 118 bucks yeah I think I think I think so this pulled a full circle right I don't mean

full circle. I mean, fully went to circle. It actually launched. I think Circle was supposed to launch at like 29 and launched at 32 or 33 and went over 100 on the first day of trading. This did the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think, look, and

what I, you know, what we're saying is that IPOs in general are up. I think they're up 53% for the year so far versus versus same time last year. But we are seeing real interest and, you know, a clear demand for crypto IPOs. You know, we've seen the outperformance of Circle, now bullish.

We know that, you know, we know that there are other crypto IPOs coming. I think Crackens, you know, it's no secret that Cracken is going to be coming to market. We've seen Gemini. I think Gemini had also done a confidential filing to IPO as well. So I think as long as the market keeps receiving them like this and they trade this well in the first day, you're going to continue to see more of these IPOs coming. And it clearly shows demand among institutional investors as well as retail investors, because we know Circle was particularly well received in Korea as well.

Yeah. So here's the article showing the actual price action success of it. It opened it, ended up opening at 90. I mean, it's really like just wild demand for this. And listen, let's be honest, like I know and like the people from bullish. this is not an exchange that's on most people's radar, right? It is Peter Thiel back. They own coin desk.

Like, they've got a lot of things going. But nobody, this isn't a name brand retail exchange like a Coinbase or a Cracken or even circle. And it's still pulled the same crazy multiple. Yeah. Does that just mean there's literally demand for anything that says crypto that can get on exchange right now? Well, I think it indicates there, you know, there are plenty of companies within

crypto who should be looking to go live right now. I mean, as you said, Bullish doesn't do the most volume among exchanges in terms of the leaderboard, but, you know, it does have a few, you know, high profile assets. Like I think it's generally a pretty well-run exchange. It has a really strong management team. They've got the Coin desk brand under them. And, you know, and then of course, they have the Peter Thiel backing. And I think that counts for a lot with investors. But this signals that there's obviously rampant demand among investors. So Cracken should get their skates on. Gemini should get their skates on. These, you know, these are also high profile names that you would expect to do as well, if not, if not, if not better, just given that they do, given the volumes

they do. The volumes they do and their and name brands and who's behind them. You know, like Gemini's a Winklevoss twins. Those guys are going to generate an insane amount of interest. Cracken, obviously one largest exchange in the United States and been talking about them going public for years now. So clearly a very good environment. Hey, do you know how you can always tell? Go ahead. Yeah. I was going to say, it would be interesting to see if, you know, if we kind of progress through this trend and this cycle, the same way we have with the Treasury companies, you know, what the 10th or 15th company to IPO will be in the crypto sector. That's our next topic. Perfect segue. But I just wanted to ask you, do you know how you can always know when the top is in temporarily

for any asset? Do you know what the indicator is? Uber, Uber. That's one. The one that I find to be the most compelling they'll never do again is showing your portfolio or bragging to somebody, like pulling up your portfolio and showing them how well you've done, like showing your wife how much money you've made will always be the dead top. Always the top signal. Michael Saylor, today's strategy's Bitcoin holdings closed an all-time high of 77.2 billion. I know he doesn't have a wife. Oh, boy. But, you know, No. I mean, literally right at the top, he hit it with the brag. And the other one you've been seeing is Buckely from El Salvador, you know, every,

every now and then we'll post his portfolio. Yeah, his has been working out clearly on the way up better than this. But yeah, to be serious, though, let's talk about the Bitcoin treasury companies. It's my favorite topic. I love to get each person's take on how it will play out. I was a huge skeptic at the beginning. Like, I do not like leverage on Bitcoin. I don't see what the point is.

I don't really understand the massive premiums to NAV. But I came around to think it's less of a systemic risk to Bitcoin and more just a risk to the ones that fail and there's shareholders, right? I do think there would be some Bitcoin selling, but generally, you know, you'll probably just blow up your company and end up at a discount. You have an interesting premise, I think, that I share on how this might play out. Yeah. Yeah. So my short-term view is that there's going to be more of these because the market's saying that it's still willing to, you know, willing to absorb them and entertain a concept. So I think short-term we get more of these. Currently, they trade at premiums. I think over time that is going to trend towards a discount.

And you will see the stronger ones that trade at a premium, let's say a strategy, will acquire those that trade at discounts. Because if you look at it, let's say Sailor's strategies, trades at a two to one multiple, he can effectively sell $2 of stock, which represents $1 of Bitcoin to buy $1 of Bitcoin for 50 cents. So he's effectively getting a 4x benefit instead of a 2x benefit. So I think that's the natural progression of where this goes over time. And, you know, if those who say these will never trade at discounts, That's what people said about Grayscale in the past.

Let's talk about that because I hear that narrative constantly. How can you trade at a discount if you hold the Bitcoin? How can your stock be worth less than the net asset value? Stocks have this funny way of being irrational and trading on their own, regardless of the underlying fundamentals, just like crypto do. And it can easily happen. Now, Grayscale was a little different only because people literally couldn't redeem. So it was at a discount and people couldn't get their money out.

so it sent a much bigger discount, but that was down to 50, 60%. There's nothing to say these can't go down 5, 10%, which would be, as you said, a huge discount for anybody who has dry powder. Jack Muller's actually, I asked him, like, at Bitcoin Vegas, right when this trend was hitting hard, and he had just launched 21, I was like, isn't this like a systemic risk? Isn't this bad? He was like, I hope they all blow up so I can buy him.

He literally said. Yeah, which, you know, which is totally, like totally logical and sensible for anyone who continues to have a premium to do and anyone who remains well capitalized. But for those who think that you can't trade a discount when you still got the Bitcoin, I point out that it wasn't so long ago Yahoo traded at a discount to the value of their Alibaba holdings, right, which suggested that the market viewed that Yahoo was actually going to destroy Alibaba value, even though they held liquid Alibaba shares on their balance sheet that were worth more than the entire value of Yahoo.

time. Yeah, it's crazy, but we have plenty of examples that will happen. I wonder if it would actually be micro strategy that buys them up or if it'll be like Nakamoto in 21 or if they'll all kind of the early ones with the big money pump. Yeah. A billion bucks, I think. There's waiting. My knowledge, a lot of them haven't even bought much Bitcoin yet. Yeah. They're waiting for regulatory clarity or approval to pivot the companies that they took over. So I mean, we've been speaking to a few of them. We, you know, I think we make no secret that, you know, we would be interested in lending to a number of these companies in, you know, in, in that we can provide them with capital that's a lower cost of capital. So no doubt it's cheaper to borrow it seven to nine percent than issuing a pipe or

a convertible debt or convertible bonds. You know, it's an opportunistic facility when they can draw a short notice and repeat at short notice. However, I think the companies that do well here are going to be those that differentiate themselves. Either they're really large, they have a fantastic brand name like a strategy, or they get the lowest cost of capital, or they're able to, you know, to somehow generate a yield on their treasury assets. That's going to be more relevant for the ETH and the sole ones than the BTC ones. But I do think you either have to get really big or you have to find a niche to survive in the in the treasury code game yeah that's why my sort of theory that I've been developing is that if you're going to have a treasury company even though

i believe bitcoin's the only valid treasury asset long term like yeah coins are just too i don't know i have nothing against all coins everybody knows i love them but like hyperliquid is not a like hedge against uh dollar inflation for the cash on your ballot sheet right so i do think though that it's impossible to beat Bitcoin with Bitcoin, so you have to do something. It's very easy to beat Solana with Solana because you just take it and make 9%. So actually, benchmarking an asset and you admit that it's a trade or kind of a loosely a hedge fund and not a treasury asset or company, I think those actually make a hell of a lot more sense to me. You literally don't need to take leverage on an alt-coin treasury company to justify a slight premium.

Yeah, yeah. No, 100%. You just need to be more efficient with your treasury assets. And, you know, in Salon, this case, you can stake it in Hyperliquid's case. Hyperliq is probably kind of a little bit more interesting from that perspective because you can participate in these auctions and, you know, get paid fees for holding the treasury assets. So I think that's, you know, that's one thing that could emerge. And then I think also another tweet we kind of discussed earlier in the week was the idea that if If notwithstanding what we've just seen on PPI, if you do get a rate cut before the end of the year, crypto spreads tend to widen relative to TradFi. And you might actually, I've been interesting the idea of could you see some kind of treasury company that's set up to do debt like crypto, you know, to effectively monetize the spread that you see in crypto over what you can earn in TradFi. Yeah.

There's so many creative ways to create these things. It's just, I think, as I doesn't say, it's just harder with Bitcoin. Your point about hyper. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm a hundred percent. As long as you don't, I just don't think you should then call those a treasury company. I think you just say like hyperliquid hedge funds. Yeah.

Yeah. So that people know because somebody is doing something to engineer a yield that justifies a premium to NAV. Yeah, I tend to agree with you. I think it's just a product of, you know, if you're structuring one of those companies or one of those deals, it's, you know, you speak in the language that the investors understand. And so if they've seen 10 pitches for Bitcoin treasury companies, if you go in there saying it's a treasury company, it's just easier for them, for the audience. Okay. So let's talk about, though, what you touched on because it's more interesting, which is that obviously you have your finger on the pulse at Maple of institutional asset management on chain, right? And how

these people are going to use their assets. Let's admit that they're going to have to do something, Bitcoin or otherwise. And as you said, you're very interested in being a part of that something. So the conversations you're having with them, what does that look like without giving away anything, you know, any inside information? Well, for us, you know, for us, the pitch is that they can, they can either go to capital markets and issue pipes or convertible bonds or preferred equity, but those are going to be expensive. Those investors aren't hanging out for a sub 10 return on investment. They're looking for 15 to 20 plus IRAs.

So we can be a cheaper source of capital for them. We can be a facility they can draw down within a day's notice. So they can opportunistically buy the dips. And that's where they can start to compete with each other. So if you're the 50th Bitcoin company, you know, but you can buy the dips better than the others. Well, over time, you're going to end up. with more Bitcoin per share for your shareholders. Exactly, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Your hedge fund, your Bitcoin hedge fund will outperform. And then also you can, you know, then you can pay back our facility really quickly if you have, you know, one of these pipes or convertible deals, you know, in the works. So cheaper, more flexible, easier to draw down. And that's the pitch. And but the issue we have to,

become is a lot of these treasury companies, they do not want to represent to the market that they have a liquidation price on their assets. Sailor had this back in 2022. He used to have a facility with one of the big regional banks that's no longer with us. Which is funny. It was only 300 million of a multi-time. Yeah, like a drop in the ocean compared to... Enough of a narrative to drive people crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A drop in the ocean compared to what does on a, you know, and even, you know, even a weekly basis now. But, but I think it was sensible at the time. And I think there's a place for this type of facility for the purpose of buying the dips. I don't know that it's, you know, I don't know that's best long-term,

you know, long duration. They pay you back quickly. In theory, they're paying you back relatively quickly. They, they, they, as long as you structure it conservatively, they, you know, there could be very little chance of them hitting a margin call, or if they hit it and you've sized it appropriately, then they can easily make the margin call. It's not in our interest for any of these guys to get liquidated. We do not want to be responsible for that. And it would, you know, it would, it would certainly prevent us from doing other deals in the space just as we're getting started. So, but I think, you know, it can be a very healthy, mutually beneficial partnership. And so we're in conversation with these teams. But what I would say is for the Bitcoin

companies, we have pitched a deal where they could stake their Bitcoin and get a lower cost on the debt, because we had a Bitcoin yield product. Do you bap and put it in defy? I mean, how does that work? We actually, we stake the Bitcoin in custodians, and we use it in core network staking. So it's one of the Bitcoin L1s. So you're not really at a risk of slashing or a defy hack. But that's just one flavor. The others are that we would let them. stake, whether they could stake hype and then continue to earn fees from those auctions or they could stake sole and we can also lower their cost of debt because we can keep some

of the sole yield. But all of it adds up to we're open to creative structures where they can lower their cost of capital or start to earn more income on their treasury assets. That's kind of the core pitch. Yeah. You touched on it earlier and you just kind of made it even clear. The The concern continues to be to me, and I've said this a thousand times. It's company number of 73 or 35 or whatever it is. Like, what are the- 100%? There's a natural decline in quality. What do they have to do to compete?

Quality, but also just demand. Like, you're just too late. And where is the money going to come from? And what kind of pitch or risk are they going to have to take on to then compete? Like, why would you buy their stock instead of micro-strategy? To be honest, like I think micro-strategy, like 1.7 to MNAV right now, multiple? Well, it's really low. I mean, and justify.

Yeah, historically very low. Yeah. Like, why would you buy one at seven? Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I, yeah, I agree. They have to kind of, the business model of the newer ones relies on them having an MNAV premium. And the more there are already in the market, the harder it is to justify your MNAV premium.

And that's where you've got to eventually one of these companies is going to go quite far out. on the risk curve, and I'm sure one of them will blow off eventually. Yeah, I think it's almost guaranteed. So what else are you guys heavily focused on right now? I mean, I'm assuming it's just this humongous institutional wall of money we just talked about, but you obviously, I mean, Stablecoin yield, you guys have quite a few products still. Yeah, we've been trying to grow the stable coin. One of the things we did, we actually just announced today, or yesterday,

was the, we got Syrup, USDC, onboarded as collateral for drift, so for the purpose exchange. So I think this is interesting because it kind of marks a move towards yield-bearing collateral on these exchanges. And there's, you know, it's no secret that, you know, we would, we'd like to also be on hyper-liquid. And there are a couple of other players who have yield-bearing and collateral, but also would like to, you know, to get onboarded to these, to these perps decks. So I think that's, I think that's going to be a big trend for the rest of the year to keep an eye on. So yeah, I don't know how to handicap. Yeah, go ahead, please. I was going to say, for those who haven't seen the article effectively, traders, you know,

traders might have historically posted BTC or if they held stable coins, they post stables to, you know, as collateral for a perps position, uh, where the, you know, they could get leverage, but now you can actually earn a yield on the collateral, which is going to offset the cost of your, of your purpose. So much more capital efficient for traders. Yeah. This is so interesting because obviously this is the primary use case for USDT or USDC, right, is speculation and perpetuals trading all the way from institution probably down to retail. now you can effectively be earning yield on that stable coin that you're using to trade while the trade is open and beyond.

If this catches fire, if this catches fire, why would you ever use a dollar when you can have a yield-bearing dollar? Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's essentially the pitch from us is this is a no-brainer. You may as well earn on the collateral that you're putting in for these trading positions. And once we have yield-bearing BTC, which is coming, then you can do it on the BTC side as well. And how do people get access to the yield-bearing Syrup USDC? How will they get access to yield-bearing Bitcoin?

So Syrup USDC is available outside the U.S. at the moment, but anyone with USC can go and mint it. or you can buy it on a dex like we have pretty deep uniswap liquidity and and so yeah so really it's it's it's the third largest yield-bearing stable out there at the moment so I think there's about 900 million of it in circulation so it's it's relatively abundant and I'd encourage people to go out and go and check it out and give it a test around here is Athena I mean is this is kind of the same bucket as yeah it's in the same market so you know we we we really like the athena team we really like the uh the the sky team and those are you know those are the other two in the in the top three for yield bearing stables i mean i'm looking right now you uh is this correct

six point nine percent yeah yeah that's so that's underlying yield coming from over collateralized loans i mean earning 6.9% while you use it rather than just using a dollar with no yield seems as long as you understand yeah i mean there's got to be some risk like nothing's free right but as long as you understand what you're doing uh seems like especially for institutions moving size it seems yeah 100% obvious uh so how how big did you say this is almost a billion dollars yeah yeah so it's over over 900 billion all of the yield is coming from over collateralized loans to institutional borrowers. And, you know, the reason that we're able to generate relatively high yields versus some of the defy yields is that institutions will pay a little bit more to be able

to pledge Bitcoin. They'll pay more to be able to get fixed duration on their loans or to be able to keep the collateral in tri-party custody. So that's, you know, that's typically why CFI rates are a little bit higher than defy borrowed. And also, our yields have been, you know, relatively stable over time as well because we you know we always have a number of fixed loans on foot so while defy rates might kind of zigzag around uh the maple the syrup usd yields are typically pretty stable and slow to move so that that six point nine has been relatively consistent over time yeah just kind of a general question as we sort of come to the end that's been of debate throughout this entire run who's cashing out of bitcoin at record highs above a hundred

We had the same conversation at 100 and 110 and 120 multiple times. It seems that the indication still remains, and you're a block on-chain guy, is that it's actually these early whales and, you know, early holders who are cashing out. I think you're seeing it. Yeah, we're seeing it. I think we're kind of seeing the same thing. Now, I'm not necessarily a trading expert, but one of the observations. I'd make is, you know, for a lot of these early whales, it's now, you know, 16 years.

Maybe, you know, maybe if they're holding since 2011 or 2012, you know, that you're looking at more than a dozen years. It might be the case that they're at the stage now, depending on how old they were when they first purchased it, where they're kind of looking at estate planning. So now they have kind of generational wealth, you know, maybe they've passed away, maybe they've been through a divorce or something. And so there's kind of, you know, there's estate planning or selling going on for not necessarily because it's, it's their, they're a price target, but just because the amount of time that's elapsed has made that their life circumstances have, you know, have kind of drastically changed from where they were when they first purchased it. So, so I don't find it too strange that some of these early wallets are selling out. But, you know, I mean, my view is that it's going higher. So I, you know, I would find unusual if they're doing it from a price target. perspective looking to liquidate everything yeah i i just think there's a point where you're either

at a certain age or a certain level of wealth where it's so insane that you're just like i mean yeah maybe you should sell 20 the funny thing is is we have this assumption there's this guy who sold 80 000 bitcoin famously a few weeks ago you know just yeah 2012 wallets or whatever just sent 10 000 in the clip without even text test transactions probably from like a post it notepad uh yeah wallet i mean it's just a crazy how fast it was but people That guy could have 500,000 Bitcoin. Yeah. You know, like there's no proof that he sold his entire stack.

And if you were just sitting on, you know, $50 billion, you'd sell nine and go get a yacht and make sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think it's like a huge judgment, but it is. Yeah, because there's kind of like a generation of wealth level that some of these, you know, some of these wells are going to hit where it's like if they've got two or three billion or $10 billion, you know, what's, what's an extra billion or two? like, you know, they can kind of block it in and they're, you know, they're five generations from now their family is still be living comfortably. Yeah. Well, no, they'll blow it on Coke and hookers, but you know, you don't make it two generations when the wealth gets handed down. That's a fact. It's like lottery winners who, you know, they're 50% of them are bankrupt in two years or something

else. Oh, they'll go and put it in the, in the 200 stat. That's right. To that 200, Yolo, send all your Bitcoin into it, hope for the best, end up at a 50% discount on your shares. You said your opinion is that it's going higher. So, I mean, before I let you go, maybe just like your general market thoughts and premise for, you know, the next two quarters, year, two years, cycles, et cetera. Yeah, I think, well, I think this cycle, so let's say what, you know, whether that's two, two quarters or, you know, anywhere from like two to three quarters. But let's say my kind of prediction or range for the cycle has been like 150 to 180. I think, you know, with the institutionalization of Bitcoin, there's a couple of tradeoffs. So you're going to see more consistent inflows through the ETFs.

You're seeing now more steady rates of new adoption coming through. Folks like Ray Dalio are saying Bitcoin and gold should be 15% of folks' portfolios. So I think that leads to kind of, you know, steady upwards pressure. But I think at the same time, the size it's reached now, the level of adoption is rich, means that you don't see, you know, you're not going to see 8 to 10 Xs, you know, within a cycle. And so I think that's why, you know, I'm kind of sizing it and saying, well, it's probably a 2 to 3x in the cycle. And from the last low, you know, I think that takes you to sort of 1, 180, sorry, 150 to 180. 80. Yeah. That's kind of my prediction.

It's not bad. Yeah. In a year, two years, five years, six months? Oh, no, no, I think, I think six, you know, six to nine months. Yeah. And then do you think we get a 75% brutal bear market for no half years? No. No. I think the cycles get shallower now. That's the, that's the, that's the flip side of institutionalization. Yeah. I totally agree. Well, Sid, man, thank you. As always. Can your average person go use Maple or is it just for the company number 73? No, no, no, we're open to individuals, institutions, and treasury companies alike. So if you can go and find us, we are at Maple Finance on X. I am at Syrup Sid on X, or you can head to our website, maple.finance.

So we have a product for accredited investors in the U.S. that will pay you between 6.5 and 10% yield on stables. And then, of course, we have the Syrup USD product for those outside of the U.S. or those who are very defi-native. And that's currently paying, as you showed before, Scott, 6.9. And can be used as perps collateral now. Incredible, man. Well, listen, I can't wait to see how all these treasury companies continue on.

And I guarantee that they're all coming to you. anyone like you to find ways to put this stuff to work. So be careful for them, Sid. Yeah, like I said, it's not in our interest to be responsible for liquidating one of these. So we want them to succeed. Hopefully we'll have you as a wall to risk manage their potential bad decisions when they're trying to take out more risk.

That's what we need. I am confident that we've learned a lot from last cycle. I know there will be people who blow up and haven't. No, YOLO 10X. 10x margins, 10x margining their Bitcoin treasury assets is collateral. You got it, man. All right. Thank you so much, Sid.

I'm about to go stake all my FTT and try to get a loan. Love it. Thanks for having me, Scott. It's a pleasure for having you guys. Give Sid a follow and we'll see you guys tomorrow. Thanks. Let's go.