The Wolf Of All Streets - “Bitcoin’s REAL Bull Run Begins When THIS Happens & Nobody’s Ready!” | Austin Arnold

Episode Date: December 21, 2025

Will 2026 be the breakout year for Bitcoin and crypto, or will history repeat itself? In this deep-dive discussion, I sit down with Austin Arnold from Altcoin Daily to analyze why 2025, despite huge regulatory progress and institutional adoption, saw stagnant prices and altcoins getting crushed. We explore how Bitcoin has quietly transformed into a macro asset, driven more by global liquidity than headlines, and why 2026 could mark crypto’s pivotal “1996 moment” with the highly anticipated Clarity Act.

Will 2026 be the biggest year Bitcoin and crypto have ever seen? Because that's exactly what we said about 2025, and instead of breaking out, it broke people. Regulation flipped, institutions showed up, governments embraced blockchain, and somehow prices went nowhere while most allcoins got absolutely destroyed. So what actually went wrong? And more importantly, what happens next? In this episode, I sit down with Austin Arnold from Alcoin Daily to break down Why Bitcoin quietly became a macro asset.

Bitcoin's a macro asset. My audience, I see in the comment section, I try and read all of them. They say, why don't you change the name to Bitcoin daily? Why narratives died? The majority of my friends outside crypto, they're still not really even paying attention to crypto. If they have any extra spending money, it's going towards something else, they're not putting it into crypto. Bitcoin isn't that sexy to the average person. Why liquidity, not headlines, control everything.

When global liquidity picks up. Because right now, quiddity is being sucked dry. When it gets picked up, the next trend that really hits is going to be when global liquidity really hits and not the other way around. And why 2026 could be the real turning point for crypto. 2025 and now into 2026 because the Clarity Act has been pushed to early 2026 is our 1996 moment for crypto. If you've been questioning your conviction, ignoring price noise, or wondering whether this cycle is in fact broken, conversation might change how you see the entire market. Gemini comes in. The Gemini credit card gives you instant crypto rewards on every purchase and

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credit card, sleek, straightforward, and one of the easiest ways to turn everyday purchases into long-term value. To get started, look at the link in the description and get $200 in Bitcoin when you spend $3,000 in your first 90 days. Click the link in the description to apply and start earning instantly. See rates and fees in the description for more info. So 2025 has been a trying year for the crypto market. I think that we got a lot of the fundamental catalyst that we expected and price just didn't follow. I watch your videos obviously at a very regular basis, but I would love to hear you sort of frame how you're looking at the past 12 months now that we have the benefit of hindsight. Yeah, Scott, thank you for having me on.

Love your channel. I think 2025 for crypto, at least price action-wise, has been underwhelming. Fundamentally, it's been really great. Like fundamentally, the SEC full pro-crypto, the CFTC, full pro-crypto, regulatoryly, regulation-wise, we're at such a better place than just one year ago, yet price is up like 25% from all-time highs of 2021. So I think for me personally, Altcoin Daily speaks to an audience of 3.5 million across all social platforms. A lot of us are here for the long term, and to me, 2025 has just been a sideways year. Yeah, I mean, the name's Al-Coyne Daily, but you couldn't talk about all coins

daily if you had to at this point in 2025, right? All of our narratives now, we don't get to talk about crypto anymore. Now we have to be macroeconomists. We have to talk about the Bank of Japan and inflation and the Fed and what the government's doing. It's really a wild departure from the conversations we would have had in the past. Bitcoin's a macro asset. My audience, I see in the comment section, I try and read all of them, comment as many as I can. They say, why don't you change the name to Bitcoin daily? To me, this is, obviously, we wouldn't do that for branding-wise, But to me, this is what all comes down to. Bitcoin did underperform for a lot of people's expectations in 2025. For me personally, and what I try and educate my audience, is it's always been a multi-year time frame.

Like the investing thesis that I made in 2018 when I went full-time into cryptocurrency has not changed. And I try and check in every year has not changed now that we're in the year 2025. And to me, there's three big factors that I look for when I'm setting my investor's thesis, for crypto. Number one, big picture macro-wise, do we think that people in the United States and just globally are going to keep losing trust in their government, losing trust in big centralized entities like we saw the last 10, 20 years, or are we going to suddenly gain trust for these big corporations, these big governments? No, we're losing trust. The debasement trade. That word became very popular this year, but inflation, debasement of the currency,

See, that's something you and me were talking about. Bitcoins were talking about since 2018, since well before that. Do I believe that the U.S. government and central banks around the world globally are going to suddenly get fiscally responsible? Or are they going to continue the lawmakers prioritize short-term gains to get reelected and debase the currency in the short-term and kick the can down the road for the long-term? I think the last 10 years, inflation and debasement has only gotten worse. I think that's going to continue at least for the next 10 years.

I'm not seeing that changing yet. And the third thing, Scott, do I think the world is going to get more digital in the next 10 years, just like it's gotten more digital since the 90s, which is less 20 years, or less digital? No, the world is obviously going to keep getting more digital. And in this digital world, we're going to need an asset that's hard-capped, limited supply, insurance policy against those central banks globally anywhere. So to me, Bitcoin has not gotten less relevant. Bitcoin has gotten more relevant.

And in that long-term time frame, I'm more bullish on Bitcoin. It's just what's going to happen in the short term, anybody's guess. Yeah, I agree. So what does that mean for the rest of the market? I think you just made a great case for Bitcoin, and I think we know that there will be a massive adoption of blockchain technology. We've seen that across the board, right? I mean, the DTC talking about tokenize everything.

Yes, is he talking about tokenize everything? But will that value be captured by the tokens that we already, hold and love, or is it basically just going to be co-opted by Wall Street and these institutions? And once again, the little guy who is so passionate about this sort of gets left out. I go back to two things. Number one, I don't think last, I don't think last cycles, altcoins will be this cycle's alt coins. I don't think the winners have been chosen yet. I think we do see some separating themselves from the pack. For example, my biggest holding is Bitcoin. My second biggest holding is Ethereum. It has the most liquidity. It has the most on-chain activity. And in these

times of risk-off behavior uncertainty, we see the activity going back to these stronger chains like Ethereum. To me, I mean, I didn't sell any. To me, Ethereum's still in play. We're about, I just checked. I think we're about 40% around there from all-time highs from four months ago for Ethereum. For Solana, we're down 57%. To me, it is a no-brainer that Ethereum at least can return to its all-time highs, a 40% game just based on fundamentals. Are the fundamentals getting worse or getting better? No, the fundamentals I think are double. Triple is good as they were just two years ago, a year and a half ago, yet prices down 40% from all-time highs. Now, the big question is when, and can it go higher

after that? I think it can, but just in terms of how much better the asset is now compared to a year ago, price, I don't think, is matched up yet. Yeah, I agree with all of that. And those are my two largest holdings as well and my third is a lot of. Yeah, I've become the most boring, predictable crypto investor of all time, which I feel like is just consensus across the board. And a lot of that is just my portfolio has naturally rebalanced itself by the overperformance of those few assets and be just utter disgrace that's been the rest of the market, right? I mean, it didn't start that way. A lot of these things. is just kind of trended toward zero.

I'm not saying they're going to zero, but it's just been an absolute slaughterhouse. I mean, it's been really, really brutal in a quote-unquote bull market. 100%. And I still, the majority of my friends outside crypto, they're still not really even paying attention to crypto. If they have any extra spending money,

it's going towards something else, they're not putting it into crypto. And those that are, I still have friends, and I try and tell them otherwise, they're still putting it into SHIP or other coins. So still. So in that sense, we are early. Yeah, I guess.

I mean, I believe that, I mean, maybe there's a lot of reasons all coin season hasn't happened. I think obviously the institutionalization is one part of it because money from ETFs doesn't flow down to coin number 96 on coin market cap, right? It's just captured in a different vehicle. But I also think the meme coin trend and the Trump token really just destroyed retail interest in all coins. And I think there was this conflation of all all coins being one thing. So Trump, to many people, was the same as Ethereum or the same as Solano, which obviously isn't true.

But like, how are you going to get a higher ceiling for any token not named Bitcoin than the president launching one? Can I give you my biggest fear, Scott, on top of that, like what you just said? I think that some of the biggest catalysts we had in 2025 were institutions buying through the ETFs or just Wall Street buying through the ETFs. digital asset treasuries buying, now digital asset treasuries have vastly slowed down and stopped buying assets. Michael Saylor has slowed down, although he's not stopping. And then just this pro-regulation. All those three things, very bullish for crypto. I think the biggest, my biggest fear is if they, not that there's been any illegal behavior, like the meme coin, there's really no rules, stuff like that, but just the, um, the visibility or the, or what people think there's

nefarious behavior, then they're going to just put, oh, crypto is a Republican thing. Crypto's a Trump thing. He, uh, we, we have to take them down because he is using that illegally. So the whole thing must be illegal. That combined with obviously Trump wants a very positive economy going into the midterms in 2026. I, you know, a lot of people think the president usually gets it because he's so divisive, there's a lot of people thinking, hey, in order to win the midterms, we're going to have to slow this economy up. The fact that cryptocurrency is becoming so political, to me, that's the only short-term headwind that I think can really affect price. Yeah, I think it's a mixed bag, obviously, with the Trump administration, right? Because

it's undoubtedly a huge pendulum swing in the right direction from the contentious relationship up with Gary Gensler, the Biden administration, and Elizabeth Warren, and, like, the anti-crypto army was soundly beaten in the last election. But then you get the personal side. So you get all the policy and regulation legislation in the right direction, but then you get him, obviously, at his family, being spokespeople for the industry and taking advantage of the opportunity to make money. And so if the anti-crypto army had been dead, right, at election time, and it was really unpalatable to be anti-crypto, well, now I feel like they're just like keeping a list and checking it twice of all the bad things they're going to use if they ever get back in power. And we do know

that like it never stays one color forever in politics. A hundred percent. And if I had to pick anything, policy is the most important. Policy, the crypto, I think this is almost dreamlike, you know, a golden age of pro-regulation we're getting. I'm not the first guy to say this, but I think really 2025 and now into 2026 because the Clarity Act has been pushed to early 2026 is our 1996 moment for crypto versus the internet because back in 1996 a piece of legislation passed it was called the telecommunications act that really deregulated and offered just basic guidelines to allow the internet to thrive in 1996 and a lot of people back then thought okay 1996 we've had a good run the internet is

not going away but it's probably peaking out right now no is being constrained by the lack of regulation just holding it back and once the telecommunications act happened obviously that ushered in years more of innovation and upside for the internet i think that's where we are with crypto today and the clarity act passing in two 2026 hopefully is going to be that catalyst yeah we obviously we thought that was going to happen in august right that we had this president making statements in the spring and he expected that on his desk and to be signed by august obviously that's didn't happen. Then we got the government shut down. Another one coming. Yeah, and now it's December with another government shutdown potentially looming and then midterm. So our Goldilocks

window here to get this done is closing. I'm not saying it won't happen. I'm just, you know, we have to be realistic when it comes to the government at their speed at which they do things and how quickly their priorities change. And man, if that doesn't get done, then none of this stuff is codified. It can just be erased again by another administration that doesn't like the industry. A hundred percent. And I have heard SEC Chair Paul Atkins comment on this that they don't need the Clarity Act. It would sure help and make it bipartisan and make this the stickiest thing ever. But he is already saying his main goal with the SEC is to tokenize traditional finance. That will happen without the Clarity Act, although that does get the, there

is the fear that once the new SEC chair is elected years from now, could that be reversed? We need that clarity act to make it sticky. Yeah, he was talking about future proofing regulation, I think it was the term that he used. So a lot of credit to them for understanding that this is a moment in time and that it needs to really be solidified. And it's so obvious. Yeah. It's so obvious that we're using an archaic system.

Why should the traditional markets close at 4 p.m. in this digital world, all these rules. these roles were in existence before the internet or just when the internet was turning on, the technology has gotten so much better and thus finance. Finance and technology so intertwined now should get better to match. I was having a conversation with a Wall Street friend, a hedge fund guy the other day, and I was mocking him that the NASDAQ was announcing they were going to go, you know, 23 hours a day, seven days a week, take one hour off. And he was like, markets are going to crash. He's like, we can't do it. You know, I was like, yeah, you can. We do it.

But his point was, you know, like Wall Street is built for fixed hours. What happens on a Saturday when all these guys are like with their kids at a soccer game and markets crash? What happens when President Trump has to announce some big macro bad news like tariffs like he's been doing all year in 2025? He usually waited until after hours on a Friday or during a weekend when the stock market couldn't crash. Thank you for getting traditional finance practically, you know, to the same standards of crypto. Yeah, but they're not going to be able to handle it. It's going to be a complete disaster, but I'm here for it. I mean, Trump even launched his meme coin on Friday night at 9.30 p.m. or something, right?

Exactly. During the crypto ball. Talk about a fever dream. I didn't think that was real. I was literally watching Severance, the show, with my friends, a big severance party. And I'm like, guys, the president to be just launched a meme coin. And I just kind of sort of just like let it go as if, like, it didn't register yet. Like, is this real?

he must have been hacked, and little did I know. That was the start. I was at a dinner with a couple of friends as well, and one of my friends checked Twitter, not a crypto guy, but owns Bitcoin. Trump just launched a meeting coin. I said, no way. There's only no way. Three days before he's inaugurated or

whatever it was, that he's like, that there's legitimate, just like you said, it has to be a hack. He was saying, should we buy it? You know, it's going to go up. We probably should have at that moment, to be quite honest. But that was pretty unbelievable. I really do think that that was highly problematic. I mean, know we've already talked about that, but I think that the hangover from that just never goes away.

I think he should have done it after the Clarity Act passes, because he did it in, there's nothing wrong with doing it if there's clear rules. And obviously, meme coins are not going away, but the fact that it has been done without the Clarity Act passing, will this fit into the frame that Congress, lawmakers on both sides are trying to pass. That's the big issue. And it would have just been seen as just, you know, so much more compliant as the president. If he was a private citizen, do whatever you want. But as a public figure that's working in the government for the United States, it would have been nice to do it after the Clarity Act, but either way, it happened.

Right. So the Clarity Act, let's, in our minds, just say that it's happening. Okay. So we get the Clarity Act in January or February, David's Act just said this week. You think, you know, January markup, it's a very real reality. We're hearing that from the industry as well. go ahead and trust him on this one. Do you think that that is a significant short-term market catalyst? Can that like help all coins shake off the malaise that we've been in when you can

literally look at them and say, this is not a security, I can trade this thing, no questions asked into perpetuity? I think the Clarity Act coming in 2026 will be the biggest crypto catalyst we've seen in the last few years. Good. Now what that means for price, I think it'll be a catalyst akin to what we saw with the Bitcoin having in 2024, the ETF's getting launched, and even more closely to the Genius Act, Sablecoin bill that got passed earlier this year, catalysts that we saw every single time with those big ones, price run up into it, chop solidation on it and a little after it, and then price decline and people yelling, oh, it was just a fake out, there wasn't anything, a big deal here.

I think we'll see something similar to that again. But again, what this does for crypto in the next five years, 10 years, this is a revolution. This totally changes the game and brings crypto, which was a scourge on traditional finance. Bitcoin grew hundreds of X higher in the last 15 years. In spite being a scourge on traditional finance, now crypto is finally accepted in the limelight regulated, big money can finally feel comfortable getting in. And how the Clarity Act will do that is just so simple. Right now it's unclear whether something is a commodity or a security.

Is it sufficiently decentralized? Us in crypto, we could probably name it pretty accurately. But until it's written down in the law books, big money does not feel comfortable entering Ethereum, let alone other altcoins, even though Ethereum ETFs are out. They are allowed. I think the Clarity Act is going to open up so many pools of capital that finally feel it's compliant, it's regulated. We're not going to get in trouble for suggesting this at the company meeting. So it seems like we've lost the excitement in the industry around a lot of the narratives that we've had over the past few years, right?

We've seen sort of temporary bubbles, the DeFi Summer, Metaverse Fall, NFTs, like most of those things have effectively trended toward zero, right? but a few things in each sort of bucket have still continued to live and show some promise. But this whole year, which should have been the fourth year of the full cycle, the four-year cycle, and Alcoigne should have gone nuts, as we said, it really hasn't. So I understand why there's no excitement around these narratives and things, but is there anything on your radar that still, like, gets you really going that you believe will, you know, be a major use case, investable for retail into the future? I think a number one, the debasement trade.

Bitcoin isn't that sexy to the average person, but we saw how retail flocked to gold. It went up, I think, 10 trillion or maybe 9 trillion in a couple days. Like it was crazy. People thought gold was dead. No, there was waiting for the narrative to hook. It had sort of bullish consolidation for months and months and months and months. And finally, FOMO into it.

If that can happen to gold, Bitcoin's price could double over nine. night that's just two trillion i think it's very realistic that bitcoin which i believe is a better gold um it's more scarce it's more transferable um it transcends time and space um i think that can at least can at least get to one third of gold yeah and with gold being 29 30 trillion dollars that would bring bitcoin to around nine 10 trillion dollars um that's bitcoin between 300 000 per coin to 500,000 for coin. Very realistic, given enough time. So I think that's not going away. I think that AI is not going away. Obviously, 2025 was the year of AI. Maybe it has a little lull, but this, but we're still in heavy competition against these other big governments, China, whatever.

So AI is not going away. I think projects like, I'm much more of an infrastructure. structure guy. So my little bets could go to zero high risk. You know, I know tau, BitSensor Tao doing big things, where it's just seed investing all these AI startups and just Tao is just investing in the infrastructure of that. And then I honestly think, you know, this year's alt, this cycle's altcoins are not going to be next cycle's altcoins. Maybe we get their robotics trend. Maybe we get D-Sai, decentralized science. I know Brian Armstrong has a coin around that. And I think, you know, one of the most valuable things that you and I do, you know, we're in the trenches, we're on the ground, and then we're watching these things come to

fruition. So when it happens, I'm ready, but I'm not sure yet. Yeah, the one that I guess surprised this year was eCash. Yeah. By the way, see, I'm so removed now from the all coin market, which is crazy because, listen, you're all coin daily. My first audience was me doing charting streams and just going through chart, chart, chart, chart, chart, and Alcoin, Alcoin, Alcoin, Alcoin, it's just, it's just not that exciting, right? But I mean, Zcash came out of nowhere, and even as the market corrected, Zcash was still flying. So maybe it's worth unpacking whether, in your mind, privacy is a real narrative, you know, does that have legs, or is it another one of these sort of Defi Summer, Metaverse Fall, NFT, summer type things. I think privacy is exceptionally important. I'm not sure that I've dug in deep enough to know

if Zcash is the answer to that or if that's the reason that it's actually pumped or sort of the narrative justifying sort of a coordinated FOMO. Yeah, privacy is not going away. Zcash was sort of the canary in the coal mine telling us that, you know, whether it's D5M or not, privacy will be a trend in 2026 and beyond, if nothing else. Because I, I think stable coins, you and I, the audience can all agree on that, stable coins are not going away. And do we want those stable coins to be totally public when we're actually paying for goods and services every day? Do we want the merchant to be able to see our wallets? No.

So Ethereum is a public blockchain. So whether or not it's Zcash or not, privacy is not going away. I think that will be a major trend for 2026. And while Zcash did a almost a 20X in just a few months, while the rest of the market was going, to crap, I don't think C-Cash is the answer. I personally think it's too much in between. It's neither, as they say, as the old in time, people say it's neither fish nor foul, meaning it's not one or the other. It's volatile like Bitcoin, and it appreciates, presumably, like Bitcoin, and I don't want to spend my Bitcoin. That's a store value.

I think the stable coins will be used for privacy, and I think we're going to see that with Ethereum layer 2s. I know protocols like Allio, they're focusing on stable coins. So I think that's coming out of other protocols. Yeah, the stable coin conversations really are just interesting. Maybe it's constructive to look at the Genius Act and kind of project forward what would happen after the Clarity Act, right? So although stable coins are boring, that's not really that investable.

I wish I could have gone long tether's market gap or something, right, as a trade. Because buying a stable coin isn't really an investment, but we've seen this explosion of different ways that institutions and individuals will approach stable coins, right? So you've got obviously the big two, Tether and Circle, and they're rushing to do partnerships and to basically become the infrastructure for all of these new stable coin issuers. But now you have down to Coinbase this week announcing that you can do your own white label stable coin on Coinbase, you know, all coin daily SD and it'll be backed by their custody and you have your own stable coin right so like now it's everybody gets a stable coin just like the meme coins stable coins the new meme coins to me that says you know 2025 was the year of institutions walls to regulation 2026 doubling down going harder and I think what we're seeing and what I've been seeing I studied the

altcoin market every single day try and look at the data and Ethereum which is already the dominant layer one for stable coins is increasing its market share. Tron, which is number two, their market share for stable coins is decreasing. And then we're seeing Solana and maybe Binance smart chain coming up a little bit as that third and fourth option. But stable coins are being built on Ethereum. Tom Lee was right. I don't know if Ethereum is the answer in 10 years, but right now, Ethereum today, this year, next year, has the liquidity as the market share. and we're seeing the actual activity on the Ethereum blockchain.

That's interesting because there was a moment. I haven't looked of late, but there was more tether on Tron than Ethereum for a while, right, last year. But I don't think U.S.D.C. is on Tron at all, right? So as, like, I think the grander stable coin market grows and tether becomes even a smaller percentage of it, just naturally, Ethereum really starts to heavily win more. and we're seeing two worlds form in crypto now because crypto five years ago was a wild wild west

crypto today has made it it's being institutionalized for better for worse that's what's happening and i don't think these noncompliant chains are offshore chains like tron that's not in america that's offshore um are not going away but the big money now is in the institutions it's from wall street and they're going to go what's most compliant, what's safest, what the largest financial market in the world, the United States deems acceptable. All that's coming through the Clarity Act, but we can already see Ethereum and Solana are clearly the one that has the most mind share they're being talked about. And it's not that Tron and other, not just about Tron, it's not like these other chains aren't going away, but the largest financial market in the world

is pushing you, pushing big pools of capital towards these more accepted, more regulated, more American or Western chains, and that's why I think we're seeing them grow. And it's sort of why you see Tether, obviously, making a major push to create a more compliant stable coin in the United States. They have Bohinds now running the U.S. side, whether it will be Tether itself that becomes basically, you know, approved in the United States, or they create some other version of it. They obviously see exactly what you're saying.

You want to make sure that they don't lose that piece of the United States. the pie. Well, what's that one saying? It's like, if I borrow a million dollars from the bank, I'm calling them every day, whatever, but if I borrow a 500 million, they're calling me, they're inviting me out for lunch. Whatever that's saying is, that's Tether. They have so much treasuries, they're so intertwined with the U.S. dollar that it's the United States best interest, and I think we're seeing that, that they're accepting Tether, because Tether is so entwined with the U.S. dollar and treasuries now. So what about gaming and NFTs and Metaverses and all the things that we were so excited about in the past? I'm not saying that the tokens that we

bought because of that should come back, but do you think that a better version or that narrative can return? Do you think those things are coming back around? I personally was really excited about Gunzilla. Yeah. Right. I mean, it was a literal AAA game. It was at the top of the streamers, it was the top of the store, really, really popular, built on, you know, AVAX, a real crypto blockchain within game assets. And it just, maybe it was the market, but just the token at least didn't perform. I'm sure the game is still doing well. But I thought that might be a breakthrough, right? There was a game Shrap Knoll that looked like that, too. Like, not really my core competency, but still seems like rationally, in-game assets that are

transferable and have monetary value is a really good idea. Yeah. To me, that's the most obvious one in 2021. The big talking point was it's the most, or gamers spend hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars in game assets they don't own, putting them on the blockchain. They have digital ownership for the first time ever. So it's a no-brainer. It didn't really catch on. To me, Scott, I'm almost, I'm thinking more and more that the trend that catches on isn't necessarily going to be because, that's because people see it, then put money in it. I think the money will be there first, and then whatever trend is popping off, that's where I'll go. If that's not clear, I mean, when global liquidity picks up, because right now in the United States and globally liquidity is being sucked dry, when it gets picked up, whether it's defy, whether it's robotics,

whether it's a D-SI, I think in 2021, NFTs, where, you know, got the most benefits because global liquidity was popping off from all the stuff they printed in 2020 and the liquidity got sucked into those. Gaming is not going away. The question is, how valuable should it be? Hopefully, GTA6 comes out and they have some component to jump start to that revolution,

but I think the next trend that really hits is going to be when global liquidity really hits and not the other way around. So crazy that we've just dumbed down our entire asset class price action to one huge macro factor, but it really is just pretty obvious. It's crazy. And it's also crazy to me that other people, I don't like to psych myself out too much,

but if it's so obvious, then what am I not seeing? If it's so obvious, doesn't everybody see this? Yeah, but we still expected 2025 that everything would go. That's true. Markets are inefficient. But maybe, you know, maybe like the liquidity that we were expecting just didn't come in the same regard. like we didn't necessarily expect a 60-day or more government shut down when nothing was happening.

And I think a lot of people thought that the Fed would start cutting earlier and that the Treasury would behave differently. So maybe we're just on a delay. To me, though, if we are on a delay, that means that 2026, 4-year cycle be damned, could be exceptionally good. 100%. And I think, speaking of delay, one of the biggest gifts Gary Gensler ever gave us was suppressing crypto markets for so long, that I got to accumulate more Bitcoin. I got to accumulate more Ethereum. And I know that sounds lame for somebody who just wants price to go up tomorrow,

which I do too. It's nice to see portfolio go up. Based on my investor's thesis that I talked about before, Bitcoin is not going away. It will be one third of gold one day, half of gold. I think it can compete with gold. And taking that long-term time frame, you know, presents the opportunity now when prices can do anything tomorrow.

I mean, the gold move, if you frame it that way, is so exceptionally bullish. Because when gold was at like $12 billion, and crypto $1,000, a trillion, excuse me, and crypto was one or two, whatever it was, and we used to say, listen, if we get to even half of gold, we're talking about $5, $6, $7 trillion market capital. Now, if we're talking about half of gold, and I don't think any of us think that thesis has changed if Bitcoin fulfills its promise. now we're talking about 14, 15, 16 trillion, right? So gold's rise, even though Bitcoin didn't really participate, actually just increases the upside potential if you still believe in that

narrative. Scott, here's my prediction for 2026. And gold investors are going to hate this. But I think what we'll find out in 2026 is because the gold price has gone parabolic. Some people are saying it's going to hit 5,000 and at least hit 4,000. We're going to find six months, eight months later that they invested heavily into mining more gold, aka inflating the supply. If you put double the gold miners in, they mine double the gold, inflate that supply higher, which devalues the actual purchasing power of gold for you or me, wherever it holds gold. You can't do that with Bitcoin. That could be the catalyst at the end of 2026 that lets people be reminded why Bitcoin is fundamentally better. But honestly, I think that is so much of a learning

curve that could not be till 2030. That's coming. But I think 2026 will find the gold thing out. So it's not exactly the same, but we saw Bitcoin miners do the exact same thing at the top of the last bull market, right? They invested massively in A6 and miners because they thought that the bull market was going to never end. And they were buying machines at $15,000, that six months later were two or three thousand dollars and there's a massive delay to getting them online so by the time they got those machines online we were at the depths of a bear market where it wasn't even profitable for them to plug them in this is reflective of human behavior at the top of a bull market regardless even the smartest money and the smartest people so yeah i would imagine that

there's a hell of a lot more people out there prospecting for gold right now that weren't thinking about it at all when it actually you know 4,400 wherever it is it kind of looks like it could double top. And you could just see kind of consolidation on gold for a long time. And listen, even to add to that, gold and silver kind of Bitcoin, Bitcoin and Ethereum, right? Gold topped and then silver went absolutely nuts. A hundred percent. Pets. Ethereum goes nuts. And let's remind the new subscribers about the difference between gold and Bitcoin. When people did mine all that Bitcoin at the top of the cycle or invest more in miners, the same amount of Bitcoin was being produced every 10 minutes, every blocks. It readjusted. So you'll only get this amount of Bitcoin

every day. Today it's around 450. Gold, totally different. You could double the amount of output you're getting. Yeah, it's a, it is completely different. It's just really reflective of the behavior, you know, is that you see those kind of things. It's usually a top when they finally, everybody decides to go out and just like you're, you know, everybody has a friend who's like the ultimate top signal. Everybody had that Uber. driver in the last few months saying, hey, man, have you invested in gold? Yeah. Gold, yeah, gold fuel is a little cooked to me, but I have no idea.

And I think that would probably be pretty good for Bitcoin, just in a mean reversion trade, like a slight dip in gold and a slight rise in Bitcoin, and they start to close the gap pretty quickly. Yeah. And despite how I like to talk about the differences, I like gold. I like Bitcoin. I think most gold investors, I think most Bitcoiners like gold, and you can like them both. To me, I think gold used to be what they consider money for enemies, meaning maybe you don't want to use America's money.

Maybe you don't want to use China's money. You don't trust it. That was gold, money for enemies. Now it's Bitcoin because it's much more transferable globally. It's actually fixed. Yeah, I 100% agree with that. When looking at the market for 2026, I would say the only thing that I won't even say concerns me, but I think there's a lot of anticipation that the year will start and all of a sudden we'll see a bull run

because liquidity will start coming in and we'll start to see stimulus and all these things. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's going to be really boring for the first half of the year. It could be totally wrong, by the way. And then when we really start ramping up into midterms, that's when you see stimulus checks and Fed cuts and all those things. Not that I'm such a skeptic of the government, that's just how it works, right? You, I mean, you appease the people ahead of elections. have the stock market crash next September. They can have a crash in February, by the way, and recover by summer, and nobody remembers

that it even happened because we have lizard brains, but that be healthy. Yeah. I mean, I think everybody knows that a correction should theoretically be due. But yeah, I guess I'm saying, as I think it through, that maybe we're still in for a lot more of that chop consolidation you'll have to talk about for a while. I think just looking at the technicals on Altcoin Daily, we talk about fundamental analysis and, of course, technical analysis, as you do too. When we broke under that 50-week moving average, that, if history rhymes, signals the start

of the bear market. And every single bear market in Bitcoin's history, we have usually returned. If we broke under the 50, we may bounce back, get rejected, and then go back down to the 200. Which is at 56 right now. And rising, but it's at 56. It's at 56. So if history rhymes, that's what we should see. I think in the short term, people are just waiting for us to return to the 50 week and then see if we can break above it.

Probably 102, 101, 103, somewhere in that ballpark right now. I think I would love to see in the short term, Bitcoin, I would like to see this. Bitcoin take one more leg down. I don't think all the sellers have been necessarily exhausted from the market yet. I know we have big resistance around $70,000 because that was last week, $6,000. That was last cycles all-time high, $69,000. But I think what's going to make the pain trade, you know, what's going to get the market likes to take the most amount of money

from the most amount of people is if we grind up for the next couple weeks, maybe two months, up to that 101, 102, wherever that 50 week is, maybe even break above it. And then everybody says, oh, October 10th was just a, you know, that was a one-time thing. We're going much higher. and then we break back down, you know, get the most amount of money from the most amount of people, break back down to 70, and then we'll see if, you know, 55, 56 comes to fruition.

I hope it doesn't, but the beauty of being a dollar cost averager, Scott, the beauty of thinking long term is it doesn't really matter because, you know, it's what's going to be in five years, 10 years, but it is nice to see portfolio. I'm actually like, I love high prices, of course, because it makes our lives a lot easier. It makes our audience have a lot. more fun. It makes more people watch. There's more interest. But I, for one, still have more money coming in in the future that I would like to get in the market. And I would prefer to buy Bitcoin at 70 to 125. So like I actually have no mental problem with it going down from here beyond the fact

that we have to like psychologically deal with that, especially as public figures in the space. It's like we have to answer for it. A hundred percent. It's much nicer. The audience likes it much more when price is going up, which I do too. I like what Michael Saylor said. Michael Saylor, you know, the biggest Bitcoin bull out there, when Bitcoin crashed down the first time to back down to $100,000, he went on a Michael Saylor rant, which we all love him for, saying how lucky, how lucky we are that the price isn't at $10 million yet.

You know, we could buy it a 100x or I forget the math, but, you know, that much of a discount. Because Michael Saylor, and it's in Wall Street in general, in governments around the world, decades. They're thinking in multi-year. BlackRock didn't open up all their Bitcoin products in the last two years to sell today. BlackRock opened up all these Bitcoin products. Black Rock is aggressively buying Bitcoin for what it's going to be five and ten years from now. Do you think that there's any negative intent from these institutions or you think they're

just finding their way in? I mean, a lot of people, like I kind of joke that I remember a time when J.P. Morgan was evil. Now we're reporting on J.P. Morgan's adoption. where it's kind of like cognitive dissonance. I don't like Jamie Diamond. I really don't need J.P. Morgan playing in our pool. But objectively, you know, them taking Bitcoin as collateral is probably a necessary move if Bitcoin's going to eat Wall Street, right? So it's kind of a touch to me, too.

I think J.P. Morgan finally realized crypto doesn't need them, but they need crypto to stay relevant with their clients. And I think of these big banks and BlackRock as more mercenaries. than missionaries, meaning they're not in it for the mission, for the lore, for the separating money and state, they're in it to make money. And they will sell in a double. They will flood the market, tell you we're going much lower as they encourage their clients to buy. They're not our friends, but we are aligned in the same team, understanding this technology is not going away. And just like the internet, good people use it, bad people use it, corporations use it,

individuals use it not going away and adoption is just bringing in new users it's funny it's i mean it's you talked about gold being money for enemies but crypto has a whole lot of that too when you think about it in that way right like they can't destroy bitcoin and if bitcoin is going to become the global reserve asset our enemies have to adopt it as well i'm not i'm not saying jp morgan is the enemy but the idea is there 100% and let's think about this scott i used to use this Russia, but I think China in the last year has been heavily getting into gold, let's just say to beat the debasement trade, any of these governments, let's let me put a name on it. You think of China, you think of Russia, whatever. Enemy government or other government, number one, they say

to get our people straight, to do good by our people, we're going back to sound monetary policy, we're going to go back to a gold standard, and that's going to solve everything. If that enemy government said announced we have this much gold in our safe would we believe them no it's a big unknown people don't even believe the united states has the golden fort knox right 100% where's that audit anyone else right yeah um but bitcoin verifiable uh you know money money for enemies transparent verifiable and changes the game monetarily so what do you think about the strategic bitcoin reserve that was the other sort of big narrative of 2025 coming out of uh 24 is that we were going to likely get that on the Trump presidency.

Now, they haven't started buying Bitcoin, but they've been, I'm trying to think of a nice way to say it, without saying stealing, but taking it from people all over the world, criminals and otherwise, right? So, I mean, we've actually got a pretty big stack, although we still haven't even gotten an audit on that. Getting an audit would be a very easy thing to keep Bitcoiners happy. I'm not sure why we haven't gotten that yet. I think it's a huge deal that they have officially announced.

We're keeping the Bitcoin we already have that we confiscated. that means it's valuable. That's still a signal to other governments. I think it's very hard to announce we're using some of this tariff money to accumulate Bitcoin. We're accumulating Bitcoin in non-taxable ways. It's very hard to do that when the economy for average people, even in this K-shaped economy for stock investors, for regular people, is not doing great. So it's very hard to say we're going to prioritize Bitcoin when everybody's, you know, hurting more potentially than they were six months ago. Yeah, I mean, is that the vibe that you're getting is that people just don't have money left to even think about this stuff? That's definitely the vibe that I'm getting.

I think so. I think, you know, liquidity is being stretched. I do see that. I don't think it's the end of the world. I don't think we're going to have, you know, a 2008-style crash. And while, you know, maybe certain companies, if we're just talking about the traditional market, you can always make the argument that certain AI companies are overvalued. I don't know. You can make that argument. The AI revolution is not going away. It is still, I think this is a mega trend. You know, it's going to be relevant for the next decade,

especially as we compete against these other governments. So point is, corrections will happen. You know, corrections are healthy, but people start screaming the end of the world. No, I think we're going up in the next multi-year. Yeah, which is all that matters. I think people are just so obsessed with the day-to-day, and it's just really hard to do

And listen, we don't, you know, we contribute to that, right? We're out here talking about crypto every single day of the world. And I'm making shows that are like price action and this and that. But every day's big news when you're tuning into Old Coin Daily. The thing is, but the thing is that the news has been so big. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's sad that we can't talk about price action because the news has been so big. Like every one of these stories a few years ago would have sent price 10, 15% in an hour.

100%. So I just wonder why no news can move a market. I was laughing. I keep laughing about it on my shows that like the DTCC announced a partnership with Canton Network, which I had never dug into. And they moved for quadrillion dollars in volume a year. Quadrillion, the DTCC, right? They cost the $100 trillion assets.

And you would have thought that even the mention of a cryptocurrency next to that would have like doubled its price in an hour and it went up like 3% and 7% or something and drop back to 3%. That was it. It's like there's nothing. If the largest financial institution in the world does, you know, for quadrillion in volume and they're mentioning your coin, and that can't move the market, I just don't know what can't right now.

Well, I call that bullish divergence. If the fundamentals clearly getting better, but price is staying the same or going down, to me that's a much better buying opportunity versus prices going up, but the news is getting worse. No, that's when you sell. The bullish divergence is when you buy, thinking, I like that. So do you think that at some point next year, we look back and we go, holy crap,

all this stuff that happened in 2025 was so important as Price catches up, like all these bullish narratives all of a sudden become these massive catalysts? I think this is Crypto's 1996 moments. I think it's going to be even more clear two years from now, three years from now, especially as Bitcoin and Crypto are good. You can use it for mortgages as collateral, as issued by the federal housing person, Pulte, of Trump. It's like all these pools of capital are opening up, even the ETFs. You know, the huge pools of capital will finally open up. J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo weren't able to suggest it to their clients until six months ago.

So it went a full year. Clients were able to ask to get in, but the professionals weren't allowed to advise their clients to get in until six months ago. We're seeing all these pools of capital open up, and it really, we might not even, and see results for that until two to three years. All these things just take a long time, but there's not a single one of these major institutional unlocks that should stop price from going up. It's just like, like Morgan Stanley's in, Vanguard's in.

I mean, like Vanguard said never. And now they're talking about letting these, I mean, you're talking about trillions and trillions of dollars of investable money. And I literally at this point feel like we just need price to go up because that's the best marketing for future price. We have all these narratives in the world, but if Bitcoin's all of a sudden, 110,000 in a month, everybody's going to be talking about all-time highs in Foamoint.

And it does, in a sense that, you know, I always try and think of not just the bullish case, because you and me can always, you know, we want the bullish case to happen, we're invested. Is it a problem that crypto is no longer the anti-consensus trade? It's now consensus. We've arrived. Is that a problem for investing? But then I look back on like Michael Saylor talking about the most. global wave in 2010, 2011, saying Amazon and Apple have been the best companies.

They will continue to be the best for the next 10 years. And to me, that makes sense for quality crypto assets with product market fit as well. I keep mentioning Saylor, I think, I would imagine you and I are both still bullish on micro strategy long term. I actually think it kind of looks like a glaring by where it is right now. But what about the, well, first of all, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but what about the rest of the digital asset treasury space? They're suffering.

I think, yes, Sailor's going to be okay. I don't own any strategy just because I'm pure Bitcoin. You know, I'll take that volatility. But I think strategy is good to invest in as a bull market. It'll go up higher than Bitcoin, and a bear market will go down lower. If you believe in Bitcoin long term, then strategy MSDR is going to be too great. I think, you know, we don't need five different digital. digital asset treasuries in America or in one region for one protocol like it's I

think it makes sense of one to two Ethereum Dats one to two Solana Dats obviously I think it marked the top the digital asset treasuries and buying sui buying BitTensor buying you know these lower cap coins and Ethereum and Bitcoin that mark the top I think it would be a clear bottom signal if this happens for Bitcoin clear bottom signal the digital asset treasuries are force to sell where they're get acquired at a discount that would help mark start at the bottom or as well and i think this would be the absolute bottom and i don't think this is going this is i don't think this going to happen in the next six months but if bitcoin has a horrible year in 2026 and maybe we go back

to 55 000 bitcoin and we even go lower dips under the 200 week moving average and then michael sailors shareholders start some of them start to form a lawsuit and you know they're suing him fiduciary duty sell the bitcoin it's not good anymore clear bottom signal to me if that would happen yeah i agree listen i know we've got we've talked for a long time is there anything else that's on your radar exciting that i might have missed in this conversation before i let you go i think that 2026 for those people staying in tune will be an awesome year i think you know nobody really this is the cliche but nobody really tells you you know you're in the good old days until after they happen. I think cryptocurrency today is the good old days. I think you will never regret learning as

much as you can, staying in tune. You know, being the crypto guy or crypto girl in your friend group, it's just like, was it a bad move to be the mobile wave guy or the technology guy in 2010? No, it's not going away. And I think if I could give any piece of advice, which is, you know, my audience has heard this before, is take a motion out of investing. The lower Bitcoin goes, the more fear there is, that's a great time to buy if you believe in the long term. Just like when euphoria happens, take some profits, DCA out. So that's the tried and true thing I stick to. Yeah, you're a DCA guy like me.

So you're, I'm assuming, I don't need to ask you if you're just buying and buying and buying and buying and buying, but I am. I have weekly buys every Monday. I have weekly buys, and I had a huge one at 88 and down to 80 that I set like last April and I didn't know if it would ever hit. But I figured that was a really key level if we ever did come back on a major. retrace we went deeper but uh yeah i've had those and i've some in the 70s too if we get that flash crash or the extended crash the buy orders are set yeah that was my last kind of big buy it was in the mid 70s when we went down in april the tariff yeah yeah it's been interesting that we've kind of have hit all these key levels you know like 74 was that previous all-time

high from last year we went up at 100 but it just was this glaring hole in the chart you know it has traded pretty technically but if bitcoin was 6970 thousand in 20 2021. We hit 6970,000 in 2024, 2025. If we get back down to $69,000 Bitcoin, to me, Bitcoin and especially crypto, completely de-risked. It was risky back in 2021. It was risky. Even as Trump was becoming president, will he actually put in a pro-cry-S-E-C chair, CFTC chair, whatever, completely de-risked if we are at those prices again, yet fundamentally we're 10x, 100x better than where we were just a few years ago at the that same price. I love that. Can't think of a better way to end. Awesome. Thank you so much for

your time. I really, really appreciate. I'm glad that we got to do this in longer form because every time we would do an interview on the street, it would be like five minutes. For sure, for sure. Scott, I appreciate you. I encourage all my audience, much of them to do, but subscribe to your channel. You're going to be on mine, you know, in the coming days. So get ready for that interview. But thank you, man. Awesome, man. Thanks so much. Let's go.