The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Under ATTACK! Politicians Are Trying To Kill Crypto RIGHT NOW - How Do We Stop Them?

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

2024 is the year of the elections in the USA, and it means a lot for crypto. I will discuss it with Alex Miller, a long-time Bitcoin supporter and the CEO of Hiro, the framework for a decentralized, user-owned internet built on top of Bitcoin. In the second part of the show, Dan from The Chart Guys will share his market analysis and some trades.  Alex Miller: https://twitter.com/alexlmiller The Chart Guys: https://www.youtube.com/@ChartGuys  ►► Sponsored by Dega Dega provides scalable infrastructure and fast transactions for Web3 gaming and the Metaverse. Check it out: 👉 https://www.degaplatform.com/  👉 https://twitter.com/DEGA_org ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEKDAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   ►► The Arch Public Unleash algorithmic trading. Discover how algorithms used by hedge-funds are now accessible to traders looking for unparalleled insights and opportunities!  👉https://thearchpublic.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 ‘25OFF’ FOR 25% OFF WHEN VISITING MY LINK.  👉https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker ►►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   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 #Trading 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.

Bitcoin is under attack. Crypto is under attack. The current administration and government in the United States has made it exceptionally clear that they have no intention of allowing this industry to exist if they have anything to do with it in the future. How do we stop it? It's going to be hard. Alex Miller is here. He just actually got back from Washington, meeting with people. He's going to give us the alpha on what he's hearing. Man, what a time to be alive. It is absolutely nuts. Of course, we have chart guys on the back half to tell us what he thinks is going on with the market.

This is going to be a great but painful show, I have a feeling. Let's go. Let's go. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of All Streets. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and hit that like button. The market looking kind of shaky at the moment. Bitcoin down a percent in 24 hours, trading around $61,450. All coins kind of treading water. This all lines up with my base case that I presented to all of you and all of its splendor in March that things are about to get really, really, really boring for a few months after the halving. And that's kind of what has happened thus far. Hope I'm wrong and it gets more exciting this summer, but I have a very funny feeling we're going to kind of be doing this until September, October. I have no idea. We will see,

but I'm going to bring on Alex. We can talk about all of that. Are you, first of all, let's just talk about this. I mean, are you at all surprised by this price action? Is anything here concerning you? Do you think just another cycle? What's going on? Numbers go up, numbers go down. It is just is.

Yeah. I think knock on what I expect it not to jinx anything. I expected a little more of a dip post having, maybe we still get one, but I don't know. You were tweeting post having, maybe we still get one, but I don't know. You were tweeting about 50 day moving averages and stuff yesterday, I think, or someone was, I don't know. It'll go up, it'll go down. I'm bullish long-term. Don't really care what happens in the short term. Makes sense. Okay. So listen, you were apparently just in Washington.

I was. You were talking to some people, the rhetoric has increased, right? I would have thought actually election time, maybe they would chill out, stop talking about it as much, not alienate all of these voters. They've clearly drawn a line in the sand between Elizabeth Warren, of course, the SEC, but even the White House right now, right? So we have SAB 121. I don't know if people have been paying attention to this. Maybe you can break it down a bit for us because this is absolutely banana balls. Yeah. Humble opinion.

Yeah. So this whole thing that you're probably hearing about now, and in fairness, the White House doesn't want to be talking about this right now. Congress is forcing their hand on it. So basically, a couple of years ago, the SEC put out a staff accounting bulletin. They do these all the time, as implied by the fact that this was number 121. And basically, what it is, is it's just like memos that their staff sends to people who have to abide by SEC regulations saying like, hey, here's how you should handle this thing, right? All federal agencies do this all the time. And most of the time, this is like not a big story,

not a big deal thing. You may remember actually back in the Obama administration, there was a dear colleague letter, like from the DOE Department of Education, basically telling like colleges how they should handle sexual assault cases. Yeah, I remember. Like without trying to actually make a rule.

Right. It's so like I said, 99 percent of the time, these things are little technical things that are good to be put out. And then like a few percent of the time, it's like trying to backdoor a rule that they can't do otherwise. And what this political basically said is, hey, if you're going to custody crypto assets for a client, you have to carry them as a liability with a corresponding asset on your own books. And the reason this is a big deal is banks in particular have equity capital requirements. And there's all kinds of complex

structures around how much equity they have to carry and that kind of thing. But the point is, equity is expensive for banks. And so if you tell people that they have to be carrying equity to match against these assets, basically it makes it cost prohibitive for banks to get involved in crypto custody. Okay. Before we go further, and then you explain what's happening now, I want to make clear to people why this is such a big deal, and especially in context of where we are now. So when the SEC had these bulletins in the past, if you guys recall, during the last administration, we actually had hope that State Street, BNY Mellon, a couple of the hugest, we're talking about the custodians, the largest custodians of assets in the entire world, were actually making moves towards custodying

Bitcoin, right? And in context of the ETFs now, they would likely have been the chosen custodians and not all of them going to Coinbase, right? And so when the ETFs were approved, these banks, which were already pissed off about this rule, they lobbied collectively to the SEC immediately saying, we want to be able to custody these assets. But guys, to understand if they were going to custody, say, I don't know, $20 billion of Bitcoin at BNY Mellon, which is nothing, let's even say 200, they would have to then have the equal amount of cash because the Bitcoin is not allowed to be called an asset. It's a liability. You cannot

do that. They can't go get $200 million in cash just to have it on the balance sheet to square the balance sheet. So the banks were super pissed about this. So just to put this in context, this is now anti the banks who want to safely custody your assets. Yep. And it just fits into the same pattern of like, oh, we're trying to make a stable finance, aka we just want to make it hard for people to transact, do anything involving crypto. So they put this out as guidance to people. But the GAO, General Accounting Office, actually came back and was like, no, this is a rule. And because it's a rule, it's subject to congressional review as part of something called the Congressional

Review Act. And basically what the CR calls them is the CRA. And basically what the CRA says is if Congress doesn't like a rule put forth by a federal agency, they can basically hold a vote on that and vote to get rid of it. So fast forward to right now, basically what happened a couple of weeks ago is people in Congress decided to invoke the CRA and get a resolution going. And as of like the reason that the statement came out yesterday for it is that the day before it basically passed on the House. Sorry, it hit the House floor. It passed yesterday. And at the same time, Senator Loomis in the Senate was able to get 30 signatures on her discharge position to force that to the floor as well. So basically, it's going to come up. From what I've heard, it's almost certainly going to pass. There's even a bunch of Democrats. So 20, 30 Democrats, I think, in the House voted for it. I have heard from talking to people that there are sufficient votes.

There's certainly more than 50. I think there's more than 60 votes in the Senate from what I've heard to pass it. And I think the White House is hoping that it never makes it to the desk. Because, like, the funny thing is I've also heard they don't really want this rule. But I think they feel between a rock and a hard place of like not wanting to uh not back one of their people yeah i'm trying to i mean we have it i'm just gonna bring it up because i i just uh found i was looking for it we have basically this letter from the white house saying we're gonna veto this if it comes yeah even if it passes

both parties house and senate they're going to veto it if the president were presented with hj resolution 109 he would veto it this is crazy why do they care so much because yeah because they're backing their guy i mean like that's but biden doesn't know what crypto is listen i don't know like i mean know, this is all coming from Elizabeth Warren. We know that. But I mean, if it passes both and it's very reasonable and it would actually arguably,

maybe Bitcoin maxis would disagree, but this arguably makes it a safer and more institutionalized asset class. Like, don't we want insured custodians who will then eventually be able to use this as collateral and such holding this for people who want that? Scott, we want that. No, I think a lot of people don't want that. A lot of people don't want any integration or acceptance of crypto or Bitcoin into the financial system. And this is integration and acceptance into the financial

system. So no, they don't want it. Okay. So what were your meetings in Washington? Was this what you were talking about and what were you hearing? I mean, this is like- I mean, this certainly came up. Look, so I was out there because, okay. So I'm going to make one plea, I think a little bit to folks in the crypto ecosystem and this world and you've slightly included, we've got to work progressively with Congress. There are a lot of people still in Congress. Look, this administration does not like crypto. There's no question about that, obviously. Elizabeth Warren basically has gotten to write their crypto policy, and she obviously doesn't like it. There are a lot of people who do like us. I mean, and, you know, who want to get good rules in place. They will make various degrees of effort.

I think if you look at like the Lummis-Gillibrand bill, it is by no means perfect, but it is a genuine, honest attempt to get something out there that can create a legal framework and structure for stablecoins. Both of their offices are very open to feedback and working with folks. I have plenty of friends who I was out there with who have been talking to them and working on it. Obviously, McHenry is trying to get a market structure built through folks in both the Senate and the House are interested in too.

One of the biggest challenges that I heard, though, is that a lot of folks in DC, kind of the biggest challenges I'd say for crypto in DC right now. Number one is they will put out initial draft language and just zealots will come after them for even try. And I'm talking about the pro crypto zealots. Crypto zealots. Go after them for even trying and say they're trying. Ben, it's like, guys, you have to be able to sit down. You have to be able. the pro crypto zealots go after them for even trying and say they're trying ben and like guys

you have to be able to sit down you have to be able to give them constructive feedback and to work with them like it's hard enough for us even as a group to agree on what we want to see at a principal level translating that into actual language is really really hard And if we're not working productively with them, if we're not coming forward with good proposals, they're just going to have to go listen to like whatever treasury and SEC are saying. So like, we've got to work with them on that. The number two thing I'd say is, you know, kind of on this is like, there's just a lot of priorities in DC now. And man, people are kind of depressed like walking

around the congressional office buildings i did not see a single person smile i feel like like everyone is just i think there is so much tension in congress like the you know what republicans have like a five seat majority now i think that's worse for everybody democrats included than if the republicans had like a bigger gap because basically everyone just feels like, cool, let's just like stalemate and lock each other down until the election. And, you know, I was out there talking to staff members and like, again, these are people who like want to do stuff. They didn't go to Washington to like sit and just like be stuck in a deadlock trench war. Like they want to pass stuff.

They want to do things that are better. And they're just stuck up against a wall, which is, of course, then why you end up seeing so many executive agency actions. Yeah. And that's why, unfortunately, you know, a lot of people would have said, hey, gridlock is probably good. Right. In the past, we didn't have clarity.

They're not going to get anything done. We can just keep going. But what it's actually done is open the doors for sort of unmitigated attacks, which have been stifled by the court to some degree. But they're just basically nobody that can even regulate the regulators right now. Right. I mean, you have nonsense like this. We know it's all coming from Elizabeth Warren.

I mean, Elizabeth Warren calls for crackdown on crypto's role in child sex abuse. Where'd you get this? Did you know that every crackhead in the world actually first tried Bitcoin before they tried crack? That's a fact. It's true. We're the reason that people do crack. Yeah.

And we're going to keep seeing this stuff. It's going to keep coming over and over again. I think, you know, and again, this is why we need to get a market structure built across. We need to get something that actually creates the formalized past because otherwise, yeah, you're just left with sensationalist headlines and executive agency actions. And that's not something that actually forms the basis of a place that people can create an industry and create effective businesses in.

Okay. So listen, I try not to do politics at all. You have to talk about it in this context. I just hate both these guys. I've said it. Are we talking Trump NFTs? I just have to show, I'm going to have to show the videos

because listen, my job is to report what's happening. And objectively, as we look at it right now, we see what's coming out of the White House and we see what's coming out of Trump's mouth, whether we choose to believe any of them or where it's coming from of the White House and we see what's coming out of Trump's mouth, whether we choose to believe any of them or, you know, where it's coming from.

I have no idea. But this is what Donald Trump had to say live when asked about crypto. We know that in the past and he was critical, he did not like Bitcoin. Then he started selling NFTs, but was still critical of Bitcoin. Now we're getting a pretty significant. Biden doesn't even know what if you ask Biden, sir, are you for or against crypto? What's that? What? Get me off the stage.

You say, get me off the stage. Now, he has no idea. But look, the chancellor is very much against it. The Democrats are very much against it. And I say this. A lot of people are very much for it. Probably a lot of the people in this group. And I'm fine with it. And I say this, a lot of people are very much for it. Probably a lot of the people in this group. And I'm fine with it. I want to make sure it's good and solid and everything else,

but I'm good with it. And if you want, if you like crypto in any form, and it comes in a lot of different forms, if you're in favor of crypto, you better vote for Trump. I don't know. Listen, I don't know if he understands it or if he believes it or but clearly he's seen that there's a line in the sand to draw here and that's probably going to swing a shit ton of voters so okay see how much do i want to go into this number one donald trump doesn't believe anything donald trump says whatever comes into his brain based on like what the crowd in front of him will cheer the most. I think there's no question that a Trump administration is net net going to be more

friendly to crypto than a Biden administration. Like we we have almost four years of Biden administration. We have four years of a Trump administration. We know, like roughly speaking, you know, who would be in charge of the SEC under Trump. We know who is in charge of the SEC under Biden. So, yes, obviously, a Trump administration is going to be more net net, at least a little more friendly. I think it also obviously, you know, whether we get something comprehensive like market structure depends on what the House and the Senate look like. There's there's all kinds of things.

But like, don't anyone delude themselves for a second thinking donald trump actually knows or truly gives a about crypto like he's in front of a crowd the man says whatever causes a crowd to cheer it's his entire um but like i i don't you know look there's some new polling actually out the dc dcg ran a poll um you can check it out. It's all over Twitter. Blockchain Association put it out, tweeted it out too. Breaking down basically crypto voter sentiments in swing Senate states, including my home state of Montana, where folks are a little more pro-crypto than the average state. And absolutely, for people who care about crypto,

they say it can be a major factor for them. I'm personally a little skeptical of how many people at the end of the day are actually going to swing a vote based on crypto in this election. I think it's long term only going to become a bigger issue. But I think especially with what people are feeling right now, like the thing that's going to move the upcoming elections, I think has much more to do with the real economy, you know, where inflation is sitting, where kind of foreign policy is sitting and, you know, specifically just in like how safe people feel it. I'm like, those are going to be, I think the bigger issues for this election,

as much as like some of us might wish that a candidate would stay in crypto. I have no concept of how many like single issue crypto voters are really out there. I know that people scream about it in our echo chamber, but when it comes time in the election booth, I have no idea. Well, and I think especially single issue crypto voters

who are actually swing i think almost anyone who is a single issue crypto voter is already only ever voting for donald trump they're not going to vote for you and right but i think i think that's changing but i think that a lot of them would have voted for joe biden two or three years ago i mean listen but i got ryan selkis right here i've got ryan selkis from masari right here here's a clip this one blew my mind it's collect this is at his nft gathering i if i recall correctly selkis was a biden voter he said it yeah he was he definitely voted for biden he you know at the time we were all on show saying gary gensler is going to be amazing he gets it yeah well i i can't say that Ryan is an example of everyone, but I mean, here comes Ryan with Trump right behind him. Can't really hear the sound, but I mean, I think that's pretty indicative of what people are thinking. I don't get to find anyone who's

been like going from the Trump side to the Biden side in this industry, except for Scaramucci. Right. I'd say I think 20 to 16 to 2020, there were people who made that move. 2020 to 24. Yeah, I think the only flow of single issue crypto voters is from Biden to Trump. But that's also just because I just have no idea how many of us there are. But this is a either way. This is savvy politicking from from Trump in this case. I have to give it to him. this is a, either way, this is savvy politicking from, from Trump. In this case, I have to give it to him. This is at a time when, you know, we're seeing the most aggressive. I thought it was bad. And it was last year when we had a Coinbase and Binance back to back. Right. But I mean, if you haven't been paying attention guys, so first of all, this just came out, Robinhood met with the SEC 16 times in good faith, right? If you guys missed it, I

think it was this Monday, Robinhood got a Wells notice from the SEC that they'll be sued for their crypto activities. They met with the SEC 16 times. They are registered for people to trade securities, right? So of all these platforms, even if crypto is securities, Robinhood is registered for people to trade them they delisted everything that was even passively named a security in an sec suit without proof and they're still getting a wells notice uniswap metamask consensus we're talking about all in the past two or three weeks right it's it's crazy and again so if you going in and talking to like the ideas that are floating around on the hill right now you know I think there's good recognition that one of

the things is we need some sort of regulatory framework that can be done, even if like one of the ideas is to put a lot of the onus on the actual exchanges, right? Say here's a framework of what constitutes a digital commodity versus a security. You guys basically have to choose which of those things meet it uh which actually allows something like coinbase to do the investigation right right now they have kind of a perverse incentive where obviously their listening teams look at things but they're in kind of this catch-22 where if they look too deeply if they're too strict about certain things then that can be used against them by the sec because like what yeah well you know i mean jeremy kaufman

is the best example like you know they they took the biggest beating yet pretty much from the sec and he was the first guy to try to do the come in and register thing he literally walked you know he told me the story jeremy kaufman from library he walked into the sec with a powerpoint presentation and then got sued for it yep that's just that the way it's going. But again, this is why like I said, look, we can look at the case rulings that are coming down one way or the other, the losses that the SEC has taken, but unfortunately they are also winning on some things. At the end of the day, the only thing that's going to work here,

we need an actual regulatory framework. Like we cannot have our framework being set by court cases, even if, you know, people think those court cases are coming down in the right way or getting to the right answer. We need an actual law and a set of frameworks that handles this. He said in particular, Patrick McHenry, I know wants to get something done. He's retiring at the end of this Congress. He's been a huge advocate for digital assets and trying to move something forward. So I'm just going to come back to the biggest thing that this industry can do right now

is work productively to come with ideas to give useful, collaborative feedback when bill text drops to the members of Congress who are actually trying to get this done. Because, and look, there's going to be trade-offs. I don't think you're going to get a market without eliciting that vetoed. I just, now I fear like with Biden's letter here of something that's so sensible and shouldn't even be on his radar. We could get vetoed. Yes. But again, I think that's more about the straight politics of like rebuking one of his people, which is effectively what it's doing. But this is what I was saying. Look, you're not going to get everything you want without some horse trade. So like, for instance, I think one of the horse trades will have to be like, based on just what I heard, illicit finance, right? This is, this is a major concern. And you know what, While it's ridiculous to say that crypto is the reason child abuse material exists. No, it doesn't. But there are people using it for that. And

again, it's a terrible tool on a lot of hands for terrorism, but there are still people who are trying to fund terrorists with it. And if we don't give the government, the trade-off is going to be the government's going to need some tools to counter that, just like it is with, you know, normal fiat currency right now too. Everyone supports that. I agree. There's going to be some trade we have to give in order to get an actual proper market structure bill and to really formalize these things. I think it'll be, you know, the details matter. But I think in principle, we have to understand that there is going to be a trade there and it's worthwhile because ultimately, again, creating the actual proper structures, giving people confidence to build their companies here instead of driving off abroad. That's what our goal needs to be.

Yeah. And I mean, it is important to note, I think that this has been a general direction towards tech, wealth, entrepreneurship. And crypto happens to be at the front line of that because it's uniquely easy to attack and blame for things. But I would say that the country in general has been alienating entrepreneurs, wealth, tech. It's not just the SEC and crypto. Basically, every regulator has made it very, very hard for mergers and acquisitions, for tech to proceed. So I think it's just a very different approach. And we're just going to lose all of the innovation in this country if we keep down this path. And that's nonspecific to Biden, I think, in this case. Sure. I mean, we also can't

build infrastructure. We're just we're just making it harder to build stuff in general. It's OK. So listen, I like you made the best point like the answer is what do we do you're actually hopeful you went to washington you think we could get things done by simply getting in there and educating them because to your point if we don't take the worst view of all this there are people there who maybe don't fully understand it but want to get something done so their intentions are good i i don't think people appreciate just how few people out there actually understand the details here. And again, this stuff is complicated. Translating text is complicated. So the staffers who work for the reps who are out in front of this and who work for the committees that are

working on it, they are super knowledgeable. They understand it. They understand the trade-offs. The rest of the members, they have a lot of other things they have to do. If you look at the average house, do you know how big the average office staff of a house member in the US house is? I don't, but it's huge. No, it's seven people in Washington, DC. It's seven people. And that includes the receptionist, right? It is not a big team. The legislative aides who are covering this have five or six other things in their portfolio too. So now you move over into the Senate, if you're someone who's out in front of it, like Gillibrand, sure, you may have someone who is a full-time crypto person because this is one of their issues. But the vast, vast majority of members of Congress, their biggest exposure to crypto is FTX and how much everyone got burned on that.

They know what Bitcoin is, but no, they don't have a full-time staffer on this unless it's something that they're trying to make one of their issues. And even then that person still has another portfolio. Most of them have no one working on it. And so yes, it is incumbent on us to actually work with them. And there are great works out on the Hill, like Coin Center, like Blockchain Association, who are doing this work, who are doing education work. Literally, you have to go in and do seminars and teach people about this stuff. But the more that people can get in touch with their reps and say, hey, this is an important thing. We want to work productively on it. We want a comprehensive market structure. That's what's going to cause them to have to go out to the pro crypto people on Hill and say, hey, this is an important thing. We want to work productively on it. We want a comprehensive market structure. That's what's going to cause them to have to go out to the

pro-crypto people on the hill and say, okay, teach me about what's going on here. Yeah. You invoked it. So I have to share this story and make you stay for a couple extra minutes. I'm sorry. FTX has billions more than needed to pay- No, it doesn't. Victims. I just had to trigger you. I had to trigger you. I can't believe we're still pushing this narrative that these people are getting paid back in full. Now, let's be honest. They're in the best situation of any creditors of the failed platforms because they will get made whole in dollar value of their crypto at bankruptcy, but they get no upside from

the appreciation of the assets they were holding and have basically been pinned, pegged to the bottom of the market. Now, Voyager, you were pegged to the bottom of the market and you only got back 34% of that. So, hey, that's worse. And I would have thought that the fraud who went to just going to jail for a quarter of a century, those people would have done worse. But it turns out that the bankruptcy court, to some degree, actually worked to gather $16 or $17 billion. What's nuts is that they could actually probably have paid these people back even more. But now they're selling Solana at a tremendous discount because YOLO, it's nuts. Yeah. I mean, like the narrative thing on this, the narrative on it kills me.

It absolutely kills me. And obviously I think there's this very funny, you know, there's this old expression of the unity of Baptist and bootleggers, right? People who both hated alcohol and people who could make money from alcohol being illegal are the two groups that united to get prohibition passed, right? Strange bedfellows. I think part of the reason you keep seeing this narrative come out of getting back in full is you're basically having Sam's people who want to make it easy for him to get a pardon are pushing this narrative. But you know who else is, I think, is anyone involved in the bankruptcy estate. Because if everyone's getting paid back in full, then guess what?

No one really cares that the team reorganizing this is taking a billion dollars in fees off the table. Whereas if they're not managing it back in full, people are going to start scrutinizing those bills. I don't know if it's actually a billion. I know it's well north of half a billion. There was a point where it was like 250 million billed in two or three months or even less.

It's insane and like this is absolutely a complicated case where there was you know no good records or anything it's everything a total mess but yeah like i think there's a lot of people who want to make it look like the ftx recovery was good but like i said and this is the funny part people are still feeling really burned by this if you go talk to people in dC., both because of how close Sam was to D.C., but also just like how many people got burned by FTX. Like. That's still lingering there. People still feel very burned by it. Yeah, totally agree. So now we ran out of time. There's a lot more things I want to talk about, but next time I move on.

Yeah. So we'll do it again next time, maybe on a crypto town hall. Sounds good. I'm there tomorrow. Yeah, I know you are. So I'll see you there tomorrow, man. Guys, you can follow Alex. Next time we'll actually talk about Bitcoin and what's being built on it. But I thought that today, I mean, we just, there's so much happening on the political side. I hate talking about it, but we had to at least try to break it down. Yep. Good to talk, man. See you later. Thank you so much, man. Talk to you soon. All right, guys, go follow Alex. Always has great insights. Very pragmatic, even, and man, it is, I feel like I'm living in the upside down. I can't figure any of this out. You know that I'm generally attempting to support RFK,

brainworms and all. I don't know, man. I don't know. I like the fact that there could be a third option. The world is getting tough. Anyways, before I move on to Dan, who we missed last week, I'm sure that he was celebrating the small victory in weed, which we will talk about in a little while. I got to tell you guys about, and speaking of Crypto Town Hall, which we were before, this is an amazing sponsor of Crypto Town Hall. I told you guys that I've merged companies with Mario's team over at IBC. So we're going to have a lot of shared sponsorship and stuff,

which is awesome. This is Dega, it's degaplatform.com. If you guys have not checked this out, this is actually really, really cool. And this is one of those that I hope does exceptionally well as a platform because what they're doing, first of all, it's gaming in the metaverse. So bringing back those narratives, but they allow you to build open software tools and solutions, removing the complexities of blockchain development entirely. So it's basically a developer toolkit that allows the average normal person to be able to build gaming metaverse on blockchain so that you don't have to be like a 10 rated programmer to figure all this out. So this is one of those things we talk about all the time, abstracting away the complexity that grandma can't use it. I'm not sure grandma can

build a game on Dega, but this makes anyone who wants to try and doesn't understand blockchain and programming be able to participate and do these things using zero knowledge proofs and the blockchain. So listen, if we're going to ever get mainstream adoption, we need to build tools that allow people who don't understand the complexity to participate and to use these tools. And so I'm really excited at the idea of this happening. So guys, I ask you to go ahead, check them out. Link is down in the description. Once again, it's not an affiliate link, nothing like that. They're just getting the word out. And I think it's a worthy platform to share. Really, really cool. Go check

them out. Build yourself a game. Build yourself a game. And now you've been saying it all along, man. Reschedule weed. We haven't talked since we kind of got there. Yeah. But tell us what you're thinking there. Yeah. With regards to cannabis. So it honestly reminds me of the Bitcoin ETF where it was a sell the headline reaction initially, you know, Bitcoin pulls back 20%. But then the actual mechanics of the capital coming into the space lead to a significant bull run. So what you have in cannabis is, all right, we got the headline, but essentially what the headline was, is, yeah, you know, the DEA is looking at rescheduling cannabis. And we knew that was probably going to happen. But it's now like a six month process for where it's going to actually happen. So it's a hurry up six month process for where it's going to actually happen. So it's a hurry up and wait kind of headline. And there was just a brutal sell the

news reaction. And I'm usually real good about sell the news and taking profit. And this one caught me a little bit by surprise in terms of how short lived that little pump was. I mean, it was essentially just three or four hours of pump on the headline and then give it all back real quick. ETF did the same thing. Well, so, but the good news is you've been ahead of it for weeks, right? So you've been saying, listen, I'm going to get in these positions in anticipation. So much like, as you said, the Bitcoin trade for a very long time was an ETF will get approved. And that took it literally from 20 to almost 50, right? And then it went from 48 or whatever it was down to 39, right after the news, but here

we are in the 60s. Yeah. So it might actually be the roadmap for exactly something like this. There was so much upside in an expectation of this happening. Yeah. And like you said, you know, since the lows from October, we went up a hundred percent and then we had a huge green day and then just gave it all back. And so, yeah, I think it could play out where, you know, if Bitcoin's timeline for what you just described was a matter of weeks or, you know, six weeks or whatever, this is maybe six months. And the next catalyst for the sector is looking towards the election. Florida is going to be voting on recreational.

Maybe by then we have, you know, schedule three actually getting wrapped up and officially stamped. And so, you know, I'm definitely still watching the sector, but I'm not, you know, I'm a trader, obviously. And so I'm in and out. And there was this big red candle to me was a big red flag. You know, the news day, that was one of my best trading days, like probably the fourth best trading day of my career. And I thought I would have one more day to start taking profits. But I had to sell into this weakness because of that massive pullback. So it's worth continuing to watch this

sector. But again, hurry up and wait. And for the people that have been waiting for this headline for so long, it was definitely a bit of a kick in the groin. Yeah. So I just want to bring up a headline before we talk about Bitcoin, because I do want to go to Bitcoin here. Bitcoin's longest losing streak of 2024 cast clouds over crypto, basically a $500 billion slide in market cap, five days in a row down. And crypto monthly trading volume drops for first time in seven months to 6.58 trillion. I've been saying, man, it's going to get boring after the halving. Yeah. I mean, that's completely normal to have volume drop off when you're not doing much of anything. So that's not surprising, but we got to just see the bull. You know, the month right now, the monthly timeframe is attempting a bull flag.

We have euphoria to all time highs and now it's a bull flag attempt. And you're seeing the same thing in the NASDAQ with a monthly bull flag off all time highs. The S&P 500 is trying them. They're much closer. Yeah, they're closer. I was going to say that is one. If you go in on the weekly, that's probably a bull flag. Yeah. And you got gold trying a weekly bull flag right off the all-time high. So all these assets coming from a euphoria run, all-time highs, they're all seeing healthy longer-term consolidation. And so my mindset approaching all these markets is bears need to prove... Right right now they're monthly bull flags. So bears have to prove to me something is

significantly different if they're not going to be monthly bull flags. And Bitcoin, the response to breaking 59,000 was best case scenario. You break it and you go straight into a 16% bounce. And the next step that we need is just confirm a daily uptrend. This was a solid 13% bounce. Couldn't confirm the uptrend, gave it back. 16% bounce. Really want to see these bulls form this daily higher low today or tomorrow. Because if we want a chance to confirm this uptrend, we need that new support level. Otherwise, we're just going to do the exact same thing, fade back down to the recent low. So I'm bullish markets this summer until something drastically changes. Bitcoin just has a little bit more work to do than the other assets that I just mentioned.

But that makes, you know, listen, so even just talking in context of macro and not having cycles, A, summers are boring in crypto generally for Bitcoin and volatility is lower, volume is lower. But it actually makes a hell of a lot of sense that Bitcoin would have more work to do considering in the time it went from basically 20 grand to 74 grand. Yeah, that's always the case. The more volatile assets they're going to outperform on the way up, they're going to pull back harder on consolidation. So that definitely is part of the course. But I really would be much more comfortable if we just get a daily uptrend. We haven't had a daily uptrend in a month in terms of just a higher low and a higher high. And so that's the goal for the

Bulls here in the short term, pretty much May. Give me that into next week and Bulls will be a lot more. You'll see the sentiment shift massively on Twitter if we're back up in the upper 60,000s, just hovering under that, one candle away from an all-time high, Tez. The sentiment switches on a daily basis when nothing is happening have been just wild. I mean, you would think that Bitcoin was at like 20K right now based on the way that my feed is just cannibalizing itself. Yeah. People want it and they want it now. And yeah, I mean, it reminds me that I've been trading 13 years or whatever. And the majority of that is big bull markets after 2008, just up. And I have to remind myself, I might reach a period in my career where we have like a five-year

bear market. And that's just so foreign. I'm not even just talking crypto, just talking whatever, S&P 500. You just have to keep my perspective of that can happen. I've never experienced it, but I have to remember that that can happen. And so take advantage of the trading opportunity and the euphoria and the all-time highs while we have them, because don't take anything if these flashing numbers for granted. But again, everything's looking good for all-time highs, at least in the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ. I'd like to see Bitcoin pick it up a little bit, but certainly if the S&P 500 hits all-time highs, Bitcoin will benefit from sentiment. I mean, it's classic. I'm not immune to it. I'm a human being. I sold a bunch of altcoins when Bitcoin was right around the near all-time high when I said I had all those

concerns and everything about meme coins. And now I look at their prices down 50% or 60%. I'm like, I guess I should have sold more. Yeah. Regret for my profit taking. I couldn't have scripted it better. We had a market meetup where we're just in town, a few dozen people on an email list. Let's get together, have a beer, talk markets. And there was someone there showing their doge gains. And I was like, you know that's a take profit signal. That marked the top within two hours. And then we pulled back 45% over the next however many weeks. And it's just so many times we see that signal of euphoria being the signal in hindsight to take some off the table. The screenshot indicator is spot on.

If you're, if you're showing anybody anything to do with gains, it's an, it should be an automatic sell partial, even if it's 20%, just take some off. I've been saying it for years. I, if you show your wife, your portfolio, your portfolio, you're completely done. It's over. That's not even like a local top signal. That's like, wait, it's going down 50%. I don't care what it is. If you show your wife and you start talking about things you're going to buy her or how proud you are of your tremendous market skills when you were literally just riding a bull market, it's over.

But, hey, I did sell a bunch and learn from some of it this time. But it's hard not to. Somewhere mentally, we all compare ourselves to our portfolio all-time highs and what we could have done. Even though I dismiss it as irrational immediately when it comes into my brain. I would be remiss to be lying if I said it doesn't come into my brain. I could have bought this back 60% lower and sold the entire position. What was I doing? I really want to be holding like 9,000 shit coins right now. But then in six months, if it all goes up in triple quarter exits, you'll be like, I should not have sold anything. I should have-

Oh yeah. And that's honestly, that's an important point because we choose our mindset to a certain degree and you can choose that negative. There's always going to be a negative. You could have sold more. You could have sold it all. You can flip that perspective where if you sell, let's just say you sold half. Your mindset is great. I sold half and locked it in. And maybe if I want to rebuy, I'll have capital. My plan was objectively great. I have no actual regrets. I'm just saying the thoughts definitely creep in. And if you're on a much longer timeframe and you believe there's a massive bull market coming, which I think still remains consensus, I have no idea what will happen.

Then you'll be like, damn, man, I shouldn't have sold anything back then. I was so impatient just taking that local high. Yeah. Yeah. It's important to not let those negative thoughts take over. Then you get in a downward spiral. So just laying out the dominance chart, you know, if in an ideal world, I'd like to see Bitcoin confirm an all-time high on a monthly bull flag, obviously get another wave of confidence, have that spike up the dominance. And then if we're going to see, you know, altcoin, altseason, you want to see this dominance chart break this potential rising wedge bearish. So just something I'm keeping an eye on. We can easily trade within this range for another month plus, but I like to lay out my ideal scenario for setups when I'm looking at whatever chart, because then I can say if things are

shaping up and that can help conviction. Maybe I'll go more aggressive if I've laid out the ideal scenario and I see that that is taking shape. And so that would be something to keep an eye on if Bitcoin gets the all-time high, another wave of confidence, top out. And then if we see that dominance roll over, that means it's time to focus on altcoins. And we haven't had an altcoin season in a while and that can change. Yeah. I kept feeling like there was altcoin seasons, but it's because it was very limited to certain sectors for very brief periods of time. So like if you were watching Solana, you felt like there was an alt season.

If you're watching AI tokens at certain points, you felt like there was an alt season. But if you look at your portfolio and the stuff that you likely held from the past cycle, they're still down like 95%. Yeah. Just little pockets that... All seasons when everything goes. Right. You just throw a dart at the wall and you win big. But yeah, it's been very different because it has required these little pockets of narratives that have led to significant outperformance in those little pockets, but everything else is significantly underperforming. You mean, you pull up any random altcoin and its chart versus Bitcoin is down in

the dumps, the vast majority of them. Yeah. I mean, with a few exceptions, I mean, I'm looking at, you had the dominance chart there, but take a look. I mean, when it peaked at the beginning of April, that was almost 57%. Hadn't been there since April of 21. So like, you know, you're going like where that was, look at that all, this is all season guys. Right. But dominance goes from, you know, 61% to 39% in just a matter of weeks. It's brief, but we've had them before.

I can't say it'll happen again, but you know, if we get one of these and it dumps back into this range and drops 10, 20%, that'll be fun. Yeah. Other things I'm keeping an eye on. So I've got my Bitcoin position. I got my gold, silver positions. The miners in both of those. So MARA reports earnings after hours today. And essentially, I'm just watching to see, are miners going to get... Same thing as altcoins. Are miners going to get their turn for a significant euphoria run. And I don't think it happens without a new Bitcoin all-time high, but I'm keeping an eye out to try and position. I like that MARA broke, I mean, same as Bitcoin,

broke a key support straight into a significant bounce. So that's enough to keep my attention. Okay, bulls are defending this level. So essentially I'm looking for a crypto miner position, whether it's MARA or CLSK. And I'm also looking for a metals miner position. This is GDX, the ETF. And we got this weekly double top that's taken place over the last year. And it's trying a bull flag. It's not a picture perfect cup and handle, but it's a double top into a bull flag attempt. And so again, just keeping an eye on... If I want to increase my exposure in the space right now or in these names, it's going to be through miners, not just

adding more of the asset itself. So I don't see anything actionable at this point for me personally in my style, but I just know that into the summer, if we do get these bull flags shaping up, confirming, I will be looking at miners in both metals and crypto. Yeah. Anything else? Aside from being real patient on cannabis. That's it. Yeah. No, no. Speaking of cup and handles, by the way, you were talking about the consolidation on the Bitcoin monthly, but I mean, you know, this is a pretty cup and handle-y, I would say. You know, we got steam coming out of the coffee. That could be an epic monthly cup and handily, I would say. We got steam coming out of the coffee. That could be an epic monthly cup and handle right here on Bitcoin. I mean, it went a little high,

but- Right. Yeah. I was about to say, generally, the right side's lower than the left, so you have that wall of resistance, but it certainly didn't break by much. Yeah. Conceptually, incredible. All right, thank you so much. I'm glad you're back this week. It was fun to catch up and we never got to talk about the, the rescheduling. So I'm glad that we did that guys. Obviously check out all of Dan's channels, chart guys on X YouTube, everywhere else. I love your quick videos that you do all the time. Really great alpha and quick.

So you don't have to watch like a 48 minute show. Like I just beat you guys to death with the, with the leg. You know, we all know that everyone loses their attention span after two minutes. Thanks, Dan. Uh, really appreciate you, man. Uh, I'll see you soon. Have a good one, Scott. All right, guys.

Obviously I will be back tomorrow with Nathaniel Whittemore and LW and Z Friday five. Guess we're going to have a lot to talk about this week. I got Market Mavericks this afternoon with Gareth and Michael McGlone, Esquire. That should be fun. We always get in good arguments because I'm not a mega bear. Otherwise, that's about all I got. Of course, check out

Dega, as I told you guys to, there. I'll see you all on Spaces in about 25 minutes. Peace, guys. Thanks for tuning in. Later. Bye.