The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Under Pressure as Layoffs Surge and AI Uncertainty Spreads! Live NOW

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Bitcoin’s rally has stalled just as global markets face a new wave of uncertainty. Mass layoffs across major corporations and growing anxiety around artificial intelligence disruption are shaking in...vestor confidence, draining liquidity from risk assets, and raising fears about broader economic instability. As trillions fluctuate across equities and tech stocks reprice around the AI narrative, Bitcoin is struggling to regain momentum.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:01 Bitcoin is under pressure after seeing a huge move earlier in the week. Obviously, we're seeing some retracement as the market absorbs all the uncertainty around AI and uncertainty around the geopolitical situation and potential wars around the world. There's so much going on. It's almost impossible to unpack. But amidst all that Bitcoin just kind of trades sideways. We're going to discuss all of it now on the Friday. Freestyle. I'm here alone. No guess. Sorry. Let's go.
Starting point is 00:00:31 Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the show, my cute little wolf pack. Little wolves. I imagine you as little wolf cublings, not grown full adult wolves. Today, we lost LaCroix. Got San Pellegrino. They don't even pretend to naturally essence this. It tastes like nothing. It actually just tastes like somebody threw bubbles into my face. I hate it. But I'm drinking it because it's the only thing here. And I've got a gimmick now. And I was not. willing to let it go. But San Pellegrino may not be our real sponsor, So Cicroy, but our real sponsor today, obviously, is my fine friends here at Abra. Abra Cadabra. Go ahead and reach out and grob you. Wolves grow crypto wealth with Auburn. I've seen Bill Barheight on the show many times and I will continue to repeatedly tell you that these are my friends. I use them. They have helped me in countless ways to buy a house, to get a mortgage, to open a loan, to manage that loan. This is the best way to put your Bitcoin and crypto assets to work without having to sell and take a tax hit on it. Now, it's not just going to the website and signing up and depositing
Starting point is 00:02:01 into the vault. You could actually get in touch with an advisor there, which I highly recommend. If you have an idea, something you want to try, something you want to work through, maybe even need some psychotherapy. These advisors are absolutely incredible. They will sit down with you and come up with a plan that works. They're regulated. They've been through hell and back to be the most successful lender in the space. SEC registered, all the things that you would want.
Starting point is 00:02:26 I highly suggest that you go check them out at opera.com slash wolf. All right. Now we have talked about them the most exciting part of the show. And we're done. Sorry, bye, guys. No, I'm just kidding. That was not the entire show. I want to start with some potential bottom signal
Starting point is 00:02:43 because I'm seeing them everywhere. Seems a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Bitcoin could definitely go way down. As J.P. Richardson, our guest said yesterday, maybe it wakes down in the 40s. Who knows, who cares? Everyone, though, I think confident in the long term that it will go up.
Starting point is 00:02:59 But what kind of bottom signals can we possibly have right now? I don't know. Did anybody open their favorite, you know, little news source at New York Times yesterday? Opinion. Crypto is pointless. Not even the White House can fix that. Oh, my God, talk dirty to me, New York Times. Tell me it's going to zero. Tell me how stupid I am. Call me Mick retard. Those are the kind of signs that I want to see to know the market's in. And then, you know, I was like, wow, this feels like a hit piece. Like, this has to be like from their editorial staff,
Starting point is 00:03:33 not from like somebody who would be biased. So I scrolled down to see who the byline was. Ryan Cummings on Jared Boren, no, Ryan Cummings and, not on, Jared Bornstein, Mr. Cummings. Mr. Cummings is easier to find than Mrs. Cummings in my experience. But Mr. Cummings was a member of President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisors on which Mr. Bernstein served as the chair. Let me get this right. We've got the chairman of Biden's Council of Economic Advisors and Cummings, who was also on the Council of Economic Advisers, with no bias at all, telling you that crypto is pointless and not even the White House, aka Donald Trump, can fix them. Guys, if you are still reading the mainstream media and believing the narratives, that I have nothing left for you because you cannot hate these people enough.
Starting point is 00:04:32 How does the New York Times run something like this? I have no idea. I'm going to be honest. Didn't read it. Should have read it. Didn't read it because I prefer being happy and not angry when I wake up in the morning. But this is the kind of garbage that you usually see more towards a bottom. And as you see here, crypto analyst says Bitcoin selling pressure is nearly exhausted. I think that we all agree that there's been massive bearish pressure to the downside until the last couple of weeks. We got down here in the 60s.
Starting point is 00:04:59 We've seen repeated attempts to push price down. And they have largely failed. Bitcoin has bounced nicely almost every time that we've pushed much lower. With that in mind, we have 8.7, that's billion, right? 8.7, that's not 87 trillion. I don't do math. 8.7 billion worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum options expiring today. That's a very, very, very large number.
Starting point is 00:05:21 Now, we know that, you know, markets tend to push towards, quote, unquote, max pain in situations like this. There's no real clear number as to where that is today. but once these options are expired, you tend to see more natural price discovery because people are closed, their positions are closed, that open interest goes away, and the market can actually have real price discovery without it being manipulated by people trying to make sure that their options expire in the money. So, you know, we tend to see the market move. I guess the question will be in which direction. But if this was one of those things holding price down, that could be up, up, up, and up. Now, we've had much of doing about nothing.
Starting point is 00:06:02 stories about spot ETS and their outflows over the past few weeks. As Ian Weisberger, the Hansmer and Younger Weisberger, said to us the other day, when you leave and look at the one or two or three billion dollars that there were an outflows, it's a rounding error, considering that this is an 87, 88 billion AUM product across the board, almost 100 billion in the ETFs. It's a couple percent over a few weeks. Well, now we have a huge bounce, right? days, 1.1 billion up. Once again, to me, that's a rounding error, but at least it's showing a
Starting point is 00:06:37 reversal in the trend. Obviously, when we're seeing inflows, it's more likely that the bottom is in and that things are likely to bounce. And of course, we have the crypto, fear, and greed index sitting here now at a cool, very lucky 13. That's a lucky number in some cultures, maybe, but generally considered an unlucky number. But here we go. Fear and Greed Index at 13. Take a look. we've been in extreme fear for quite a while. Been there. We were at seven last week. We know that we got as low as five, the lowest that we've been, I don't know, checks notes,
Starting point is 00:07:09 literally ever. And so I think it's clear that we have an irrational downside pressure at the moment, and that is usually alleviated. And you can just take a look at a chart and see what I was talking about before. First of all, we have weekly RSI. Now it's not, but when we were down at 62,000, it had actually broken this line. you need a close to confirm it. But that's the lows from July 2020, 2020,
Starting point is 00:07:34 and those are the lows quite literally ever in weekly RSI. The most oversold that Bitcoin has quite literally ever been. And you take a look, as I said, at these four candles, which have bounced nicely right above that 200MA. Yeah, even if we don't visit it, I would say that's close enough. But there's down wicks on every single one of these candles. There's real demand. There's been buying.
Starting point is 00:07:57 That doesn't mean that it'll last. but right now, once again, pretty clear that selling pressure is slowly abating and that the buying pressure is starting to kick in. I'm not here to make bold calls, but I would not be surprised if the bottom is in. That said, you know, if we like to do drawings, I like to do drawings. Like would it surprise anyone if we just did this for the next like a few months? And then I don't know, maybe some of these, maybe one of these, two of these. with two of these.
Starting point is 00:08:29 Okay, that's just weird. Don't be weird. Nothing would surprise me, right? I think we could go sideways for potentially six months here. Give us an opportunity to keep buying and buying and buying and buying and buying. And who does not want the opportunity to buy Bitcoin in the 60,000s, instead of the 160,000s?
Starting point is 00:08:45 And we literally all know it's going there. I don't know when it's going there, but it's going there. Right, right? Yeah. I think we all believe that Bitcoin is going way up in the not so distant future and that now if you can take your emotions and out of it and stop crying like a tiny little girl that this is probably a really good time to buy. Now speaking of things are not really quite as good. Florida man arrested over alleged $328 million dollar crypto Ponzi scheme.
Starting point is 00:09:16 First of all, Florida man thing is so annoying. I'm a Florida man. I live in Tampa. there's something that people maybe they're not trying to like call him a Florida man in the sense of like the guys who go you know they're like Florida man wrestles alligator has sex with its kids and murders a raccoon right
Starting point is 00:09:36 and that like that's bad but see there's a thing that you might not know about Florida the reason that we have Florida man is actually because we have very very favorable freedom of information in Florida when someone gets arrested in Florida which is not true in almost any other state
Starting point is 00:09:52 that record immediately becomes public, including like their crazy mugshots of them, you know, doing bathsalt on the highway and all these things. And so the media picked up on this meme of Florida man, Florida man, Florida man, but it's actually just because we have freedom of information that allows the press to see these things in real time. But maybe they're not making a Florida man joke here. To be honest, maybe there's calling him a man from Florida. But arrested over alleged 328 million crypto Ponzi scheme, federal prosecutors say the Florida man faces up the 30 years in prison for wire fraud. and money laundering charges.
Starting point is 00:10:26 I mean, it's very clear. This stuff still happens, even with all the institutional adoption and ETFs and legitimacy. I mean, there's still guys like down here in Orlando kicking it offering 20, 30, 40 percent returns, and people are still sending these idiots money. Don't send people money to do crypto for you. Pretty easy. But I think this is going to lead to further regulatory scrutiny. Clearly, we're not out of the woods.
Starting point is 00:10:53 with the fraud claims. But this is just a good old-fashioned Ponzi scheme, literally taking money from new investors to pay old investors back. I wonder when you see these, like, what did you think was going to happen? Like, was there a world where this guy was like, I'm going to do this indefinitely and not get caught?
Starting point is 00:11:11 Like, there has to be an end to a scheme like this, doesn't there? It just blows my mind because it feels like there's absolutely no way that you get away with a Ponzi scheme over time. So you're basically just making the better. on like how long can I live well before I spend the rest of my years in jail. Seems like a really bad bet. Now, the biggest story of the week, obviously, and just kind of revisit a few of them, I think is probably Jane Street.
Starting point is 00:11:38 Nobody knows what's going on there, but it's provocative. Right? There's nothing there is there. Let's try to bring something up. Bitcoin fans. Bitcoin fans. Red Sox fans. Bitcoin fans.
Starting point is 00:11:51 Like fans of in. video stock. Bitcoin fans latch onto ridiculous Jane Street conspiracy to explain price level. You know what? It's true. Okay. So the facts. We know that Jane Street has long been manipulating markets both in Bitcoin and beyond. There's a hell of a lot behind the evidence that they contributed massively to the 2022 collapses, right? We know that they withdrew hundreds of millions of dollars from the liquidity pool of UST. And then after UST crashed, they tried to swoop in, and buy it up for pennies on the dollar, all the Bitcoin and Luna from Joe Kwan. We know the jump trading was also involved in this and all of this because of like an intern's
Starting point is 00:12:33 group chat. Like these guys are so dumb. Like for people who make a lot of money being smart, they're really, really dumb. But then extrapolating that forward to everything's their fault is a very Bitcoin echo chamber thing to do because we just can't accept that our price of our beloved asset is down without having a boogeyman or someone to blame. So the Bitcoin's been down because it sells off at 10 a.m. because of Jane Street thing, I've seen no credible evidence actually to prove that that happens. It just seems like we are making stuff up because it's fun. Like source, I made it up.
Starting point is 00:13:09 Right. So maybe that's true. Maybe not. But I think the price of Bitcoin has been down over the past few months because a lot of people have sold a shit ton of it and less people are buying it. Do we really need to figure out some grand narrative? There has to be like some Dr. Evil who's behind the, you know, behind the curtain and pulling all the strings. No, I don't believe that that's the case. I believe that Jane Street is doing this in multiple markets. There's many other funds doing this in other markets. And yeah, they're not just doing it in crypto because here you go, Trump media.
Starting point is 00:13:42 Fusing Jane Street, amongst others of naked short selling in a letter to Congress. Trump media called for a full investigation into Jane Street, Citadel, and others. now Jane Street is facing a second lawsuit over claims. It wiped out $40 billion in value. You got those planning to do. They're in trouble. James Street is, man, James Street, it's not going good over there.
Starting point is 00:14:08 I think that they've probably done a lot of illicit things that are going to get them in a lot of trouble. But once again, I don't think that that necessarily means that they're the same. singular force that has been behind all of our problems. I think the other biggest story, if we're pivoting slightly from manipulation of markets and such, has obviously been, man, it is getting wild out there with AI. So there's a couple stories right now that are having everybody shaking their heads, including my AI agent, Athena, who I talk to all the time.
Starting point is 00:14:44 She's apparently hot. Bloomberg makes 15 billion a year. 12 billion from their terminal Bloomberg charges $30,000 a year per user for terminal access Perplexity computer which by the way apparently is could just also replace all the
Starting point is 00:15:04 open claw AI agents we all just spent a bunch of money making but perplexity computer literally one shot at the terminal the real time data within minutes using a single prompt now anybody who knows like Bloomberg has an absolute monopoly
Starting point is 00:15:20 monopoly, monopoly, an absolute monopoly on real-time financial data. You've seen James Lavish with his fancy Bloomberg terminal up here, Mike McLaugh with his fancy Bloomberg terminal. I'm not paying $30,000 a year
Starting point is 00:15:36 to be able to do like good old fashion like, what was it called? Like, thought I mess with the Apple chat. We are Google chat, but like we used to use it all the time, now I'm blanking out because I'm old. But yeah, you know, people love to chat with each other on Bloomberg. It's very secure and fast and then they get the real-time news breaking. Like it's the it's the era of the internet
Starting point is 00:15:56 and of AI. We don't need any of that anymore. So obviously I think the Bloomberg is in a lot of trouble. They're probably going to have their terminal replaced. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I know you all saw that. Jack, we're making blocks smaller today. Here's my note to the company. 40% of you are fucked. He literally just hired like fired 40% of the company in one day. Actually, like, I have questions. So, A, I think it's very clear. We're seeing massive disruption from AI. Nobody can debate any more that AI is not replacing jobs, right?
Starting point is 00:16:29 I think that that's very clear. But B, I'm wondering if these people found out about this from Twitter. Because the way this is written, first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks plus one week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of Mace six months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition. $5,000, get me another job that AI is not going to take. But doesn't this read like the corporate letter where these people found out they were fired?
Starting point is 00:16:58 Like, why are you telling everybody on X what their severance package is? Okay, so that was weird, clearly written by an AI agent. That's not even Jack. It's not him. But yeah, I mean, the disruption is real and it is coming everywhere, right? I mean, Zero Hedge had a take on it. 68 million on a party. 200 days later, fire 40% of workers.
Starting point is 00:17:19 blame AI. We're going to blame AI for everything, but it's not just, it's not just the block. Layoff announcements. I mean, it's a lot. It's a lot. It keeps going. It's not ending. It's not ending. Wolf of all streets. One guy. Replaced by much more expensive agent. Yeah, but the disruption is real. I think everybody knows at this point that AI is coming for, your jobs that you better find a hobby or get that AI on your side. But listen, I've been actually thinking through this pretty extensively. And yes, I think that we have big problems coming with AI for a lot of people. But in a world where we're all like rushing to program our AI agent so that we could have superior, faster information and more workflow and have it doing all these tasks that
Starting point is 00:18:15 let's be frank, we weren't doing in the first place. Like, we can all pretend that we were like, doing deep research 24-7-365 on crypto markets, but no, we're all just like watching my show and you get just as much information. But either way, isn't it true that if it's iterating this fast, you can see it like I showed you with perplexity, that very soon AI is going to create a version of itself or will continue to iterate to where grandma can do all the things we're trying to do on OpenClaught just as well as we can. And at that point, doesn't the rising tide just lift all ships. And then once the rising tide lifts all ships and we all have the same,
Starting point is 00:18:50 same tool, then everybody is using the same AI for the same reasons. And the playing field is equal again. And the real edge will once again be your authenticity and your accountability and your taste and your human creativity. So I think that actually, as much as we're going through this disruptive phase, like at the end of the day, it's all going to still come back to humans. And the great differentiator, ironically. will be how human you can be when everybody has equal information and access to these same
Starting point is 00:19:21 AI tools. And speaking of equal access, the Pentagon really wants all the access. The U.S. Pentagon has made a final offer to Anthropics seeking unrestricted military use of its AI capabilities ahead of a Friday deadline. This is wild. Hegsith, who went viral on social media for benching 350 pounds this week. You guys have no lives. Like, the take half of the internet was, like, really impressed, and half the internet was like, what a pussy. Only 350 pounds. Are those even real plates? AI. But anyways, he's threatening to label them as a supply chain risk. Anthropic is resisting use of its AI capabilities to surveil Americans. Anthropic is resisting use of its AI capabilities for lethal military missions. Anthropic was recently awarded a $200 million government contract, not a military contract.
Starting point is 00:20:15 Anthropic now has just over 24 hours to respond. This is absolutely insane. I am squarely on Team Anthropic. I don't think that the United States government should have access to every technology from a private company built inside that country. I mean, we've seen this, obviously, with pushback from Apple, from law enforcement when people want to get into their devices and crack them. Like, we deserve some sort of privacy,
Starting point is 00:20:43 and some of these tools should not be used for their most nefarious. various purposes. Like, this is insane. Anthropic, the United States government is openly saying that they want to use their AI capabilities to surveil Americans. That's me. No, you should not be able to use AI to surveil Americans. That's a violation of my constitutional rights. And we should be using this private tech company's AI for lethal military missions. I mean, listen, I don't know if we're going full sky net here or what's about to happen. But this is all, like, we are going fast into the realm of absolute insanity, in my very humble opinion. I hope that Anthropic continues to push back. I do not really want to see this happen, to be honest. And meanwhile, the odds of the U.S. Pentagon banning
Starting point is 00:21:32 Claude surged 49% as Anthropic denies Defense Secretary Higgsett's final offer. So, yeah, maybe none of us are going to have that. And meanwhile, back at the ranch, while we're all looking at the circus and watching all the nonsense that's distracting us from the important things like the Epstein files, we have a potential war breaking in Iran. Imminent U.S. Embassy and Israel is currently evacuated. China called on citizens to leave Iran. Major Israeli cities have opened bomb shelters. IDF soldiers called up for air defense services. Yeah, I mean, and then meanwhile, back at the ranch, the U.S. military's most expensive drone, the 230 million Triton, has reported. vanished near Iran. We're spending 230 million on drones. Couldn't we have vibe-coded that thing for
Starting point is 00:22:18 like 23 bucks and a bag of Skittles? 230 million triton drone. It's like they've never heard of Anthropics AI. They could have just completely done this. Either way, like clearly things are escalating because this means apparently that Iran has electronic warfare. Why am I talking about Iran? You guys don't want to hear me talk about this, right? Crude oil's high. McGlone's going to be pissed off. It's going to be a short. And meanwhile, back at the ranch, we know that markets generally waiver before there is an announcement of war. But once you get the war, markets tend to go up. Iran is probably going to be a war.
Starting point is 00:22:53 We didn't put 50% of the military capability on their borders just to give them a high five. Right. And so I think that sadly, that is probably what is coming. And we will see what it means for markets. Clearly it means crude oil has been going up. I think that crude oil will probably dump massively after the war starts. And just kind of to put a little bow on this show right now, we have Chinese holdings of U.S. treasuries plund the lowest level since the global financial crisis.
Starting point is 00:23:21 No surprise there. We know that nobody wants to hold our debt anymore that they're buying gold. But in the meantime, U.S. M2 money supply jumps to new all-time high of $22.45 trillion. It is hard to do a show like this, man. So we're going to go to a war. Nobody's paying attention to the Epstein files. the government wants to use AI as a military weapon and to surveil us. And here we are talking about whether Bitcoin is going to be like $66,000 or $67,000 by Monday.
Starting point is 00:23:52 The world is a very scary place right now. I am going to take my own advice and sign off and go touch grass this weekend and try not to pay attention to any of this. Because, man, it's pretty scary as you try to dig in. Absolutely, absolutely horrifying. Hopefully we will not have a war. And hopefully if we do, it will be very quick and surgical and will not expand into a massive conflict. And more importantly, hopefully all of the pedophiles running our government will be held to accountability when it's all over. And people start paying attention once again to the Epstein files because that's the real story that exists right now.
Starting point is 00:24:33 It's the only story that exists. And nobody should be literally talking about anything else. I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend. I will see you on Monday with Mike, James, and Dave. Peace.

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