The Wolf Of All Streets - “Bitcom” | Gensler Gets Bullied & SEC Says ETF-U To Bitcoin

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Let's breakdown Gensler's testimony and discuss the fate of Bitcoin ETFs, which now looks doomed. Join my special guests Matt Hougan, Bitwise, Steven McClurg, Valkyrie, and my Thursday markets guy Dan The Chart Guy!  Matt Hougan:https://x.com/Matt_Hougan Steven McClurg: https://x.com/stevenmcclurg Dan The Chart Guy: https://youtube.com/@ChartGuys ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.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  ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►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   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  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.

Four congressmen sent a very strongly worded letter to the SEC and to Gary Gensler saying to approve a Bitcoin spot ETF immediately. So of course, the SEC listened to Congress and went ahead and approved them, right? No, what they actually did was 45 minutes later, they kicked the can down the road further for ARK 21 shares and one of the other many in line. And they didn't even have to do that until November 11th. Was this just coincidence? Was it a strongly worded response to say we're not going to be bullied by Congress? Or is the SEC just trying to get ahead of a government shutdown because these things would start approving if the government shuts down and they don't have the staff to actually do it? We also had Gary Gensler in front of those very same four congressmen

and others just taking an absolute backyard beating yesterday in Congress, which is probably meaningless, but we're all here for it. I've got two amazing guests today. When we want to talk ETS, we go to the people who are actually trying to get them. We've got Matt Hogan from Bitwise and Steve McClurg from Valkyrie. Let's go, guys. Let's go, guys. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of Wall Street. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and hit that like button. I do not want to waste any time,

so I'm going to go ahead and bring on Matt and Steve right now, the guys who have aged at least 40 years in the last one year trying to get ETFs of any sort approved. I mean, this is insane. You heard what I talked about in the introduction, obviously, these very small group of congressmen, we would love to think that this is representative of the entire United States government, but there's a few that are clearly using this as a soundbite and believe very strongly in it. Do you think that the immediate sort of delay on ARC was coincidence? Was it the government shutdown? Was that the timing? Or do you think that Gensler was like, hit the button? Whoever wants to jump in,

you go first. I want to make it as uncomfortable as possible for the video. Go ahead, Steve. He hit the button. Absolutely. The minute Congress asked him to do something, he has zero respect for the courts. He has zero respect for Congress.

That's very apparent. The minute they asked him to do something, he hit the button. Oh, wow. Matt, what do you think? I love that. I love that conspiracy theory from Steve. I think it's government shutdown, running the government shutdown, I think is the actual story. But it was nice to see a bipartisan group of senators arguing for a spot Bitcoin ETF as being good for America. I liked seeing that. I appreciate the idea of the button, but I think it may be efforts to get ahead of a potential government shutdown. Yeah, I mean, Gensler made it pretty clear that if it's shut down, they're going to be really down to a skeleton staff. So we know that that would definitely affect these approvals or denials. But does that lead us just factually to mean that you get a de facto approval if it's not denied or delayed? Is that correct? So if a deadline passes and the government shut down,

the SEC isn't working, do you just automatically get approved? Is that basically the mechanics? Steve, you want to take that? Sure. I guess the real down the road. And those dates are starting to hit in October. But kind of going back to my statement, I do believe that they were planning already to go ahead and kick the can down the road. Matt, you agree with that because you're saying that they're doing it ahead of the government

shutdown, which means they were going to do it. I mean, that's their intention. Yes. Yeah. So they were planning on doing it Thursday or Friday. And the thing is, if that's what they were doing, they have just let ever they would have just um uh delayed everyone at the same time that that's actually what makes the most sense but the fact that they just started pushing the button you know the minute you got the letter that was kind of

uncalled for right um so uh but but i do believe that they were already in process in planning on hitting the delay button by by. They just kind of had a few go early. And by the way, there's still a lot done. There's still a few outstanding. But if they don't hit the delay, it's kind of like maybe it automatically gets approved. I don't know. Okay. So Matt, what's the status with Bitwise? Okay. Go ahead. Yeah, please. Yeah. I was just going to add, I mean, I can't speak to Bitwise's filing, of course, but on the key question, I know it may seem odd that Steve is saying maybe, but that is the reality. This is like uncharted waters that people are not, you know, the government's not supposed to shut down, even though we're now, unfortunately, very familiar with it. And in a normal circumstance, people wouldn't launch controversial products during a government shutdown.

But this, of course, is an unnormal circumstance. So I think maybe is the right answer. You know, this is not my view. It's not the way to get a spot Bitcoin ETF through. I agree. De facto, like by default so that they can fight it later. The other question I think or the other I think important nuance here is that the SEC has the right to continue delaying these for now. The ARC-1 that was just delayed, which they didn't have to do until November 11th, now does have a final date in January. I think it would be very interesting if these October dates were not delayable, but

were the actual final dates what we would see in this scenario, because the obvious decision, even being objective for the SEC right now, is to delay, not knowing what's coming with the government shutdown. Even if they haven't made a decision, well, we're not going to be forced into one, right? So I think it would be really interesting to see this happening in January when they really have to make a decision, because that now seems like when we're going to get the first true clarity is going to get the first true clarity is going to be in January when ARK comes up. And that's just the spot ETF, right? I'm going

to bring up something to make Steve a little bit uncomfortable here because I know you can't talk about it, but we still have the Ethereum futures ETF, which I think now I would see a 90% chance right here. This came across a Bloomberg terminal this morning, 90% chance of launching in October. This is the blended Bitcoin and Ethereum futures ETF from Valkyrie, if you guys see Steve down there. And that would be first to market. So I know you can't speak specifically about this, but talking about a spot ETF versus a futures, a spot ETF sort of has its own arguments, but an Ethereum futures ETF seems to align very well with the already approved Bitcoin futures ETFs. Is that a correct assessment? Yeah, it would align

very well. And by the way, look, what we believe is this. If you look at the actual market and you look at the Bitcoin futures ETFs that launched two years ago, the first couple have a lot of AUM. After that, they don't have much at all. So how much AUM are you actually going to get to a Cure ETH futures? Probably a lot less than collective for Bitcoin. But what we're noticing is that more people are interested in having a blended ETH and Bitcoin futures ETF because the spot is eminent for Bitcoin, you know, what, why would it matter spots eminent for ETH, which I don't think it

is, why would it matter, you know, in the future? But a lot of people are very interested in a blended Bitcoin ETH ETF, which is why we kind of went the route that we went. Yeah, I would just build on that. You know, we've been having a lot of conversations with financial advisors and family offices recently. And I'll say that the tenor of conversations around crypto has changed from, I want a crypto allocation to I want a crypto sleeve. Maybe I want Bitcoin, maybe I want Ethereum, maybe I want companies. I think more and more people are seeing it

as an actual asset class. Whereas in the past, they sort of lumped it all together into one thing labeled crypto. And whether that meant you were in Bitcoin or Ethereum or Cardano or stocks, they didn't even know. But now they know and they're thinking about this and crafting portfolios the way you craft them in stocks, right? They're thinking about putting together portfolios. And that's really been a change over the last six months that's come across loud and clear to me. Yeah. And on that, most financial advisors don't want to say, hey, I'm going to

put exactly 1% in Bitcoin and exactly 50 basis points in ETH. And this is how I'm going to allocate my portfolio. They want somebody else to allocate for them. This is the whole reason why they buy ETFs. It's not because they're out there stock picking themselves. There are a few advisors that do that, but most financial advisors want to lean on an expert to say, okay, this is the allocation that we see. So again, that's one of the reasons why we are going through this whole conversion of going to a blended Bitcoin ETH futures ETF so that we can make those decisions and they can lean on us to make those decisions for them. I'm sad to say as a Valkyrie investor that I have to ask this question, but is it 50-50?

I actually never bothered to look or ask, or is it heavier in Bitcoin and lighter on Ethereum? It's up to 50% in Ethereum, but no, it's actively managed. We make decisions. Which I think is the way that it should be if it's going to be blended. Obviously, as you said, they look to the experts to do it. When the first Bitcoin futures ETF launched, you guys were second at Valkyrie. So the first one famously had a billion in AUM in the first two or three days, right? And then as you said, sort of as they launch, they get less and less and less AUM. So how important is it to have the first mover advantage regardless of your name? Because I mean, even the first one that went, it was ProShares, right? I didn't even know who they were,

right? I obviously knew who Valkyrie was, but they got all the attention because they got all the press and they were the first one that people could buy. Yeah. And what's unique about ProShares, you probably wouldn't know who they were. They're not really retail facing and they're not even really financial advisor facing. They're a firm that historically has faced more like momentum and hedge fund type shops that are trading in and out in the same day. So those firms are used to trading ETFs that hold futures and a lot of times levered and things like that. So that's really where their space is. But yeah, day one, it was about a billion dollars. It was the biggest ETF launch of all time. And then we went three days later. So even three days later, we raised $ happened was, I think the next one was like 5 million and the next one was like a couple of hundred thousand. So it definitely tapers off

a lot after number two. It's also peak bull market, right? So it's a little different than the environment now, but go ahead, Matt. No, I was just going to say, this has been true in ETF history forever, right? This is a first to market market because the first to market ETF attracts the most liquidity, is the easiest to trade, is the most recognized. So particularly in areas where it's almost a commodity like exposure, like S&P 500 exposure or just exposure to one thing, you see this first mover advantage in a major way. Yeah, I think that that makes a ton of sense. Do you think that the fact that we're kind of in a bear market now versus that bull market launch at that time will have a meaningful difference? And also this is Ethereum kind of

versus Bitcoin, right? Because anyone who was going to do a Bitcoin only futures has had that option for years already. So the people who are going to buy this are specifically interested in having the Ethereum exposure, presumably. Yeah. I mean, I'll go ahead and go. So that was two years ago in a bull market. Bitcoin is obviously bigger. And I think there was a total of about something like 1.3 billion in week one. If I had to predict based on the work that we've done, there's probably about 200 million to go around in this Ethereum launch. So it's a sixth of the size. I think that that's accurate considering the market and considering that it's ETH and not Bitcoin. So Gensler himself actually was asked directly if we would see a Bitcoin spot ETF. This is what he had to say. I'm going to play a video really quick so people can see. Approve the listing of spot Bitcoin ETPs after your recent loss in

court to Grayscale. Now that the SEC has the court's decision in hand, rejecting your rationale for denial, does the SEC plan to approve the current pending spot Bitcoin ETF applications? Thank you for your letter. I did read it last night. Again, we're still taking this under advisement. It's a recent court action, and staff and commissioners will take it up as appropriate. The court concluded that the SEC's denial of grayscale lacked, quote, a coherent explanation,

and then, quote unquote, falls short of the standard for reasoned decision making, and then was, quote unquote, arbitrary and capricious. How do you explain the SEC's actions there? We do that which we do under the law as best we can sometimes things go into court we're still considering that court decision I think was a district court I'm sorry with pellet court appellate court decision and I don't want to get ahead of the staff or my fellow so So he's just never going to answer these questions.

So here's my question. We just talked about first mover advantage. What if the first mover is one of the seven or eight applications and the second mover is BlackRock? Does first mover advantage apply to BlackRock? Let me take a shot here. Even before we do, let's pause for a moment and think about the fact that we have senators talking about spot Bitcoin ETFs.

There's often like a lot of doom and gloom in crypto daily coverage. But if you rewound four years and said we would have people stumping for a spot Bitcoin ETF in the halls of the Senate, I would have called you crazy. So it is it is nice to see that. On the BlackRock fund, the actual fact of the matter, if you look at the history of ETFs, is in specialty areas of the market, specialty providers tend to do really well. If you look at MLPs, which is an area of the energy market, that was won by a small firm in Texas called Elarian. If you look at commodities, the first commodity ETFs were launched at the same time by Deutsche Bank and seven guys in Oakland. And the seven guys in Oakland won that market. They're called U.S. Commodity Funds. So first mover advantage is

still a big deal. But we shouldn't assume that BlackRock, as great as they are, as much distribution as they have, will dominate the market. i think they will add to the market they will grow the market and they'll be a big player but uh the history of etf is actually pretty favorable to uh to firms uh like valkyrie uh firms like bitwise uh when it comes to winning this market share and if you didn't believe that you'd have thrown your hands up already right now that blackrock is in the market i mean that makes sense and. Everybody wouldn't be applying still if they thought that it was just a de facto winner, right? Steve, you were about to comment. Well, and I was going to say, it also has to do with who the buyers are, right? Because

Matt's right. There's a lot of folks that prefer the, and I'll go ahead and just say it, the experts like Bitwise and Valkyrie, that actually all we do is crypto. But there's also a large segment that will always purchase the tried and true. You know, when, for instance, when a pension fund doesn't, you know, when pension funds have people that don't want to lose their jobs, that's their job, not lose their job. You might lose your job by going and allocating to somebody that nobody's heard of, but you'll never lose your job by allocating to BlackRock. Yeah. Right. And if BlackRock messes up, it's like, oh yeah, but it's BlackRock. If somebody else messes up, it's like, oh man, you're fired. So that's really the reality of the way it works. Same thing with financial advisors. So on the one hand, the boutique specialized shops like us are going to get flows no matter what. And then BlackRock is going to get flows no matter what and then blackrock is going to get flows

no matter what right so um so i don't think it's one or the other i think it's i think it's depending on on on who the allocator is and their thought process is out there and by the way a lot of allocators think you know their thought process is okay we're gonna we're gonna choose one specialized shop and then we're gonna choose one behemoth and then and then and then make allocations to both and that's how a lot of people actually think as well so so yeah so so yeah we're not throwing our hands up i don't think you know bitwise is there i don't think any of us are throwing our hands up we're we're going after because we know we have that market segment but but but blackrock also has its market segment no matter what and you you you can see this already in the crypto market.

Fidelity has been additive to the market, giant financial firm. But it's not like Fidelity has taken 100% of the AUM flow. Right. You can buy Bitcoin on Fidelity. I mean, you can buy Bitcoin on Fidelity. And yet Valkyrie is doing well. Bitwise is doing well. Nighting, others, specialists. And Coinbase is doing well. right? This is another mistake people make. People assume if we get an ETF, it'll eat Coinbase's lunch. And again, all history suggests is all it does is it makes the pie bigger, right? Like if you look at what happened to gold, demand for gold bars didn't decrease when there was a gold ETF. It's just we also got demand for ETFs. And trading on Coinbase isn't going to go down when we get an ETF. I think it will go up and we'll also have trading in an ETF if it launches. It's all this sort of stacked adding. By the way, this is why when you go to an ETF conference, you'll see competitors like

myself and Matt and Jan van Eyck and others all having beers together. You know why? Because yeah, we're competitors, but we all know the secret of if there's one ETF in market, it gets a little bit of flows. But once there's like two or three, then you've got more education out there and it all builds upon each other. So if you've got three ETFs in market, you're going to get 10x the flows. You're going to have 10x the AUM across the board than just one. Yeah. And so we're all friendly competitors in this space. Yeah. I mean, we've always been way too small for the infighting that we see in this industry in the first place.

I mean, Matt, you were talking about sort of how surreal it is that this is even being talked about in Congress, that we have bills in Senate. Let's add to that. Presidential candidates are making their position clear on Bitcoin. And then on the flip side, you still have this. Into crypto. Oh, let's see. Since we started out on Bitcom, let's go further into crypto. By the way, that would be a great beat. Since we started out on Bitcom, let's go further into. That would make a great beat. So she called it Bitcom. If you guys didn't hear the entire quote, she went on to say, talk about terror Luna, and she called it a Ponzi scream, a Ponzi scream. I'm not kidding. She said, Bitcom, terror Luna, and Ponzi scream in one thing. She also praised Gensler. She said,

he's doing exactly the job the American people want. And by American people, she means Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters. And that he's doing a great job and he's fantastic and he's wonderful. And these are the people that were taking selfies with SBF, right? Oh, and she also went on to say that the Republicans were in this committee were anti-tech and advancement. And it was insane. So I don't know if you guys saw that. But so the bottom line here is we still have a lot of work to do. Is that a fair to say that like we've converted a few of these people?

But my God, it come. I mean, look, I'm going to, I'm going to defend Maxine Waters for a moment. When you're just reading a paper and you don't know what you're talking about, Bitcoin could look like Bitcoin. We should say Bitcoin. That would have been worse, right? I mean, but Matt, like... We still have a long way to go. We still have a long way to go.

And there's still significant risks to crypto. We shouldn't look past them from a legislative front, right? Our view on legislation and regulation is you first want to do no harm. crypto we shouldn't look past them from a legislative front right that the the our view on legislation and regulation is uh you first want to do no harm and then hopefully we make progress toward regulatory clarity there is still risk that harm will be done right we're seeing that in the d5 space uh right now with some of the broker definitions so yeah at bitcom you know land we're not uh we're not out of the woods. But I'm still optimistic about what I see. We're in a better place than we were four years ago.

We're in a better place on ETFs as well. It is worth noting we didn't get ETFs in Clayton. We didn't get ETFs in White. We have at least gotten Bitcoin futures ETFs. So progress is slower than we'd like. We're only going in the right direction. I don't think that there's a question about that. And I think you're right, Steve. I think it's just hard to read that small font when you're getting older. I really think that's all

it is. I have a problem. I'm not making fun of old people. I need readers. I've literally aged 50 years in the last week. Well, this is one of the clips that got a lot of attention. This is from Richie Torres, obviously a Democrat who've been on Twitter spaces before. But to me, of all these things, we can laugh at the Tanya Hardings. We could play all those clips, right? They're hilarious. They're great soundbites. But this one really struck me as Gensler has no answers.

I don't know if you guys saw this one, but it's pretty compelling. Purchase a Pokemon card. Let me get back to that. You can purchase a Pokemon card. I don't know what the context is, but if you're just purchasing a Pokemon card. Let me get back to that. You can purchase a Pokemon card. I don't know what the context is, but if you're just purchasing a Pokemon card. If I purchase a Pokemon card, is that a security transaction? That's not a secure. Okay.

If I were to purchase a tokenized Pokemon card on a digital exchange via a blockchain, is that a security transaction? I'd have to know more. Okay. So for you, the process of tokenization is what transforms a non-security transaction into a security transaction? Look, if the investing public... I thought you were technology neutral. If the investing public is anticipating profits

based upon the efforts of others and they're exchanging funds, that's the core... I see my time has expired, so... I mean, it's the same thing. I'm sorry. It shouldn't matter if it's digital or if it's not. And we all know that they believe that NFTs and that any token is effectively a security. So I guess that the last kind of idea here is that can any of this real progress be made with Gensler or is it just a matter of time and we win when he's gone? I mean, not to say that he wouldn't be replaced by somebody worse,

but clearly he's never going to give the answers that we want. He's never going to define these things and he's never going to prove anything that he doesn't feel like he literally has to. Is that fair? My view is that the best ultimate answer lies in legislation. You know, I do think the rules aren't particularly clear on the frontiers of technology. And this is one of those frontiers. And I think the answer is going to lie there. We might make incremental progress under this commission or that commission at incrementally different rates. But the step function change, I think, is going to require some level of legislative clarity if we want to go from

zero to 100 and not one to two mile an hour. I don't know what Steve thinks. Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. It's going to be legislation because, look, I'm a firm believer that there are actually rules in place and those rules make sense and we stay within those rules. And a lot of people throw their hands up and say, oh, there's no regulatory clarity. Well, there is regulatory clarity. But one of the problems is, is the structure of the SEC kind of conflates the rules a little bit. So one piece of legislation that I'm a big fan of is what Warren Davidson proposed yesterday. And that's changing the structure of the SEC. Yeah, he's proposed that a few months ago, the SEC Stabilization Act, where basically he says there's, Gensler gets to stay, he would like to fire Gary Gensler,

but Gensler gets to stay, but it's basically becomes every vote is equal and it's a panel rather than the commissioner having extra having extra power, which seems so incredibly reasonable, especially when you have people like I believe his name's Urieta and Hester Peirce there who now just publicly dissent to everything with very reasonable arguments. I mean, listen, Hester Peirce, literally, we were talking about this yesterday with John Reed Stark. He said that basically de facto Hester Peirce would just become the commissioner if there's regime change, even if it's just interim, because she would be the senior member of the other party before they appoint someone else. I mean, can you imagine if the SEC is in its current iteration without a change and you just switch out Gensler for purse, I mean, it would be like, and she's not even pro crypto. She's just pro being a reasonable

person with a brain, right? So, I mean, I really think regime change or just a new breath of fresh air regime within the same party that has a different view would change everything. You guys agree. Clearly I'm getting the nod. I agree with you, Scott. Yeah. I,

I, I'm going to, I'm going to make this statement, right? I'm going to, so, uh, if,

if, if you've, you know, when I've been on your show or, or, or anybody else's, when people start talking or trashing Gensler, and I've always been very neutral,

kind of like Matt is right now. You are, you're smart. You guys have to be. I've changed and I'll tell you why later. Okay, awesome. I'll be calling you literally right after this is done. And Matt, you get the final thought before I let you guys go.

Yeah, I think that's right. My big thought is the one I mentioned earlier, which is, you know, across multiple different areas. I do think we're making progress. It's easy to get focus on the stumbling blocks. But I think we're seeing progress. And I think it's accelerating, which is exciting. Yeah, I totally agree. Like, yeah, we kind of joke about, you know, first they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win phases. If the then they fight you phase had to come, we have all the right fighters in place and

everything is progressing, I think correctly. So I'm extremely optimistic. It's hard not to report on these momentary temporary negative setbacks, but I don't think there's a single person here who doesn't think eventually we get a spot ETF approved or eventually we get some sort of loss, right? So it's, it's just a matter of time. And honestly, with this gridlock and deadlock and the sec kind of making no progress. Fine.

We'll just wait. Right. And then it'll get better. So that's my opinion, Matt, Steve guys, their descriptions down in the, in the,

their Twitter is down in the description. You should be following both of them, especially to keep up with going on this. And I just love having you guys on, man. Thank you both. Thanks for having us. Steve, you're going to get a call like three. Awesome, man. I love getting actual insight from people who know things as opposed to spewing my own bad takes on my half-baked research, which is what we generally do on YouTube as YouTubers, right? I do want to show you, before I bring on Dan, you know, we've got, obviously, Dan from

ChartGuys. I do want to show you a few more of my favorite clips from the Gensler hearing here because they are pretty amazing. Here's the Tanya Harding one I alluded to before. Pretty good, pretty good soundbite here. Chairman, I really liked your colorful testimony. And you're right. We are blessed with the largest, most sophisticated, most innovative capital markets in the world. But we cannot take this for granted. Even a gold medalist must keep training. With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, if the U.S. capital markets are a gold medalist,

you are the Tanya harding of securities regulation because you are kneecapping the u.s capital markets with the avalanche of red tape coming out of your commission oh my god i mean that's pretty good right for those of you who don't remember you might be too young but if you're my age the one of the greatest controversies of all time was when nancy kerrigan the leading figure skater the united states while Tonya Harding was her competitor, and she's had someone try to break Nancy Kerrigan's knees. She kneecapped her, literally, specifically. This is another one that I really enjoyed

because Gensler tried to get cute and funny, and it didn't go that great. I inherited, not only from them, but I inherited from my dad a real allergy to cats, and it's real. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Yeah. Well, we don't have time for that. I'm reclaiming my time.

We can have a cat visit. We can do the kitty part later. I mean, and then finally, the one place where we did actually get some clarity that we already had. On Bitcoin. You've made comments on this. You believe Bitcoin is not a security. Is that true? Well, I think the staff, the SEC have the just right I'm just asking you this question and this is not a gotcha I

thought there's going to be an easy softball into harder questions do you think Bitcoin is a security I think I've said this in the past that I think that it's I'm asking you to answer my question now this is not supposed to be hard I know i said it does not meet the howey test which is the law of the land about so it doesn't be the howey test so therefore it's a commodity is that fair won't say that i i i would say it's not a security and then the test is otherwise for other laws it's a schematity guys it's It's a security, a commodity. The guy won't ever answer any single question. But to be quite frank, he clearly doesn't care. It's part of his job to just show up and take his beating for an hour every couple months and then go back about his business. I

think that that's what's happening here. It's fun to dunk and to watch it and to see it happen, but I don't think that these hearings are really moving the needle. All right, now we can actually move on to what you guys care about, which is charts and markets and take you a look at what's happening right now. It's been a pretty exciting week. I've got Dan, anything brand new in your mind after last week? We've seen some definite serious volatility. Yields are pumping like crazy. The dollar continues to rage out of control and stocks are looking a bit iffy to me. got Bitcoin. We could say it's holding on well. And we could say that about the metals three days ago. I talked about the metals at the end of the last show. But the dollar took out the metals yesterday with a big dump. And so it's just a question of, can Bitcoin continue withstanding? For me, a lot of people don't like correlations because they come and go and you really got to

stay on top of them. And we could say right now, Bitcoin is ignoring a lot of the broader market weakness and the dollar strength. But for me, it's an overhanging like, yeah, we're holding support and holding well, but to have confidence, we need to see some things align in other areas of the market. And so Bitcoin can trade sideways while the market finds a new support level. And while the dollar hits a temporary top, it could be positioned well to continue some of this bounce. And I'm zoomed out a little bit right now because things are getting a little choppy on the shorter term timeframes. And when things slow down and volume slows down, it's important to zoom out a little bit so we don't

react to the five minute candles, which really don't mean anything bigger picture. And so right now I'm on the two day timeframe for Bitcoin, and we're going to be looking for a break of a tightening two-day range sometime early October. And really that's going to be the next bit of information that we're looking for. Yeah. I think on Tuesday was one of the stranger days for the quote-unquote correlations. I don't want to say that that was the day, but there was a day it was stocks were up, but the dollar was also up, but gold was also up, but Bitcoin was down. We're really seeing some very strange movements, but I think it's very important to note what you said. I think Bitcoin is chopping sideways is very good news that it's not correlated and dumping

with other things. But if we're being intellectually honest, it's because people are apathetic and there's just not that much interest in it at all. So you can kind of, I think, skin it through either of those lenses. But to me, I will take definitely it as good news. Now, you did just mention that metals finally dumped. So listen, we had this sort of narrative of late that, wow, gold is really holding its own, even with the dollar going and with yields going crazy. And for anyone who doesn't understand, and I talked about this the other day, historically, gold should go up when yields are going down because people think that, hey, it'll hold its

value. It's great. But when yields start going up, people sell things like gold because they can go get yield. And so it was kind of curious that yields... I mean, this is 10-year yields, guys, if you haven't seen the chart. I mean, this thing is just skyrocketing, approaching 5% here. You would think that everybody would be selling their gold into this because there's no yield in holding that gold. Well, now we're finally seeing that crack. So do you think that now the gold's holding its own, China's buying it, the Chinese are buying it, central banks are buying it? Do you think that maybe that was just wishful thinking? Yeah, to a certain degree. It's the lowest level we've seen in five or six months right now. And it was essentially a tightening range that eventually

just rolled over. And again, the fact that if there was ever a time for Bitcoin bears to go on the offensive and to take out that $25,000 support. I mean, to have the dollar screaming higher, to have the broader market dumping 5% in six days or whatever it's been since the FOMC, that would be the time for the bears to go on offensive and they're not doing so. So again, that is a win to just go sideways. For me, it's always imagining a battle or a sport or a war or whatever, and it's bulls versus bears. And we could say the bulls are playing defense well, but we're not seeing any offense from the bulls. And so the question will be,

once the dollar does hit a temporary top, and once the markets do find a new support level, does that mean that the Bitcoin bulls can make their move to try and get up to the recent highs of 27,500, 28,000, and try and go on a little bit of offense. And that's really the next piece of the puzzle that we're looking for. I would love to see what you're looking at with the metal charts, if you don't mind me sharing. This is gold on the monthly, obviously. And so you can see that this month, it's basically traded down from a high of around 1950 down to 1875. I think it's also important to note, guys, that September is just almost always bad.

And that has been the case once again here. So no real surprise to me that stocks have underperformed in September and that gold's dumping a little bit. But this time, I do think it's because of what's happening with the dollar and with yields. Yeah. This is the monthly time frame for gold. And we have a triple top that everybody can see from space. It's a level everybody's looking at, the all-time high. And so we've now rejected from that everybody can see from space. It's a level everybody's looking at, the all-time high. And so we've now rejected from that. And I look at my Fib retracements here. And if we pull back 50, we're approaching the 50% retracement. If we get to that level, that's when I start looking for tightening ranges to become most likely. And so if you hold the 382

retracement, you look for a potential bull flag. But once you lose that and you go towards 50%, it's possible gold pulls back and then sets a higher low and then bounces for a while. I mean, I'm looking at so many monthly charts and three-month charts in the stock market, the metals, and Bitcoin and crypto. And it's just shaping up that it might be a boring first half of 2024. It's entirely possible that markets just tighten up because the most common thing that you see in technical analysis after periods of significant volatility in both directions, and we certainly had that, the 2021 euphoria, 2022 bear market, you look for long-term tightening ranges as the scales of supply and demand try and balance out

a little bit. And so that's entirely, I'm preparing for the possibility that it is a boring, longer term tightening range for a while from here. And, you know, that's the case for the dollar. Now, the more it drops, the more I'm going to be looking for to trade between, you know, the low here of 1615 and the high of 2067. I mean, it's entirely possible we spend the majority of 2024 within this range. Yeah, I think that everybody's so passionately either bearish or bullish for what's coming and crabbish is probably the most likely scenario. It's exactly what you're saying. What Bitcoin is doing now, imagine if all markets did that for the next year. Exactly. I mean, you look at the dollar, this is the three-month timeframe. There's our big

breakout. There's our big pullback. If we set a lower high and a higher low, next thing you know, that's six months going by. So I'm just seeing it on so many things where that is something that everybody should be preparing for is the potential that long-term tightening ranges are on tap for the next potentially six months. And for me, that means I always talk as a trader about knowing when to pump the gas and pump the brakes. And our bull markets, we're pumping the gas, we're trading actively, we're moving significant capital. And then when we recognize tightening ranges and declining volume, it's important to pump those breaks and ensure that we're not trading the same way because that's when we give back gains. The people that trade a bull market and keep trading that same way once we start topping out, that's when you get back those gains. So it's important to ease up a little bit and remain patient. And that's why I suggest

zooming out to the longer term timeframes because I see people when there's tightening ranges and they're talking about one minute candles and it's just like, that's too zoomed in. You got to zoom out and wait for the bigger picture to develop more. Right. So as a day trader, then how will you approach this? I mean, I know obviously you look into uranium and you find a sector that you think is going to move or you look into marijuana and you perfectly called that sector was going to move right before it did. I mean, do you find a sector that you think is going to move, or you look into marijuana and you perfectly called that sector was going to move right before it did. I mean, do you find that there's always something to trade

if you look hard enough, even in those kinds of markets? Or is it literally just like, I'm sitting on my hands and I'll see you and I'm going to a music festival, I'll see you in a week. Sit in the mud in Burning Man for two weeks. There's generally always something, but it's the difference between having a couple names versus having 50 names. So it takes a little bit harder to find those things, but there is always volatility somewhere. And then you got your three times leveraged ETFs, so you can use those to try and get a little bit bigger pieces of the pie.

So yeah, as you mentioned, uranium has definitely been the star of the show recently. And here we are testing even today, which is just now. You called that last week too, and they're all up. Yeah, I'm a little bit cautious now just because the weekly timeframe is getting a bit extended. But we just had first hourly oversold conditions yesterday leading to higher highs, which is exactly what bulls want to see. So at this point, the only cautionary thing for this is CCJ, which is one of the major names.

If we were to pull back hard from this open this morning, we would be a little bit cautious of a rising wedge type of pattern, just where we bull break. And whenever you bull break into straight into consolidation, it means start to be a little bit cautious. So today's a pretty important day to me to see if we close strong or not. But essentially, you know, anybody that's not in uranium right now, you're waiting for weekly consolidation to have better risk and reward and, you know, look for a higher low because there's tons of space for a higher load of form. Once we do top out, it's just patiently waiting at this point. Yeah, that was the kind way of saying you should have listened last week.

Honestly, we've been talking about uranium for over a year. We've got a ChartGuys member who's like uranium is his thing. And he's been putting out so much information. And he's getting a little frustrated because it's like, this is everything that he was talking about and still nobody cares. Meanwhile, he's, you know, having a fantastic year because he's been positioning for this for so long, but he should be excited. He should be excited. You want to be the only guy who gets it. You don't want everybody to agree when they all agree is when he's going to start shorting into you guys. So let's, let's tie this in here. CCJ, this Uranium play, had a year-long monthly equilibrium, just tighter and tighter, nothing going on, everything is boring. And then once the long-term tightening range breaks,

there's your opportunity. And so if we get these long-term tightening ranges in markets and in other places, again, it means that I you know, I welcome it. Yes, it means it's going to be boring for a while, but you know that when those tightening ranges break, you usually get significant follow through. And so that's essentially, you know, giving you clarity. And so it's something to embrace. It's just, it takes, it takes patience. And a lot of people don't have patience, but this is a good time to develop that skill set. Awesome. That makes perfect sense. So that means that if this premise is correct, based on these monthly charts, that maybe at the end of 2024, we start looking for the last four or five months going into the election season. We start looking at these things, making those breaks out of consolidation if that happens.

By the way, guys, these are just theoretical ideas, but you just want to wait until if we see all of these sort of consolidate and higher lows, lower highs coming into a tightening range, there's going to be that moment where it's very clear which direction they're headed. Yeah. And this is the NASDAQ on the three month timeframe. So again, very long term, essentially the bears need a good bit more follow through from here. So the bears want to control into the end of the year because, again, we look at retracement size. You know, if I'm a NASDAQ bear and I want to see a long term tightening range, most of 2024, I want to see a pullback here. Let's see another just going to measure percentage from where we stand today. I would want to see another drop of, you know, another 10% to get right back snug in the middle of that

range after that big bull move over the summer. So the bears do still have a little bit of proving to do here over the next couple of months. But if they do, then again, that tightening range becomes the most likely scenario. I love it. Perfect. Anything else you're looking at? Let's see. We will be looking for cannabis weekly higher lows, but it's funny. I was listening to your previous guests and the slow dragging on of the government on these ETFs. And it just reminds me of cannabis, cannabis reform and how slow and how long it takes. And so we have positive headlines in cannabis, but now we're looking out maybe the next three to six months where we have to wait for the next headline to try and continue that momentum. So, you know, we look at the name

like MSOS, we have the euphoria run, we have the weekly consolidation. And again, it's, you know, a potential weekly tightening range, we'll look for the higher low, maybe then we'll look for the lower high. So another another spot to look a weekly high or low eventually, but longer term tightening range. Perfect. Love it, man. Thank you so much for everything that you do, for joining. As always, guys, follow Dan. We never even talk about it, but how can people follow you even closer with ChartGuides? You mentioned you have a member, so talk about what you guys are offering. Yeah, we got a chat room community. We've had it for the last eight and a half years. Really, trading is a lonely game. It's just a place where we all come together

and just every walk of life, but we share the common goal of we want to profit and we want to help each other and we want to learn. And so it's just a really conducive space for progress. And as you learn technical analysis and try to become a trader, you realize that, you know, it requires becoming a better person as well, emotional control and all of these psychological aspects. You know, it's one thing to learn technical analysis. A lot of people can do that easily. It's another thing to master, you know, the psychological aspect of the game. So just, you know, support and interacting with full-time traders and a whole bunch of other stuff that I don't put on YouTube and Twitter and all that. So chartguys.com is where we have that.

Awesome. Everybody check it out. Thank you, Dan. We'll see you soon. Thanks, Scott. All right, guys. That's all we got. Oh, I think we had one more. Oh, well, let's watch Gensler get dunked on just a little more. We got one more clip. It's a good way to go out, right? I identify with both the conference chair's remarks and Michael Cloud's remarks. But for me, it's a big day in Congress for more reasons than what we've talked about so far. Today, SEC Chair Gary Gensler is going to testify before the House Financial Services Committee.

And boy, does he have a lot to answer for. Under Gary Gensler's leadership, I would say failed leadership, the SEC has been an incompetent cop on the beat. Throughout his career, Gensler has been relentlessly loyal to the biggest institutions at the expense of everyday Americans. Today, he's going to face some important questions about that. Gary Gensler has worked to consolidate his own power, even though it means crushing opportunities and, frankly, the financial future of this country. This strategy hasn't been successful for him.

As you note, the SEC continues to lose again and again in the courts on its crusade against digital asset innovation. So it should be increasingly obvious that the crypto industry is not an industry rife with non-compliance. Rogue bureaucrats like Gary Gensler are supposed to be working for the people, not reigning over them. I, for one, would like to see the SEC return to its mission and make sure that they protect opportunities for every American who wants to participate in the greatest capital markets in the world. Digital asset innovation is an important part of that. Despite what Gary Gensler thinks, he is not a government of one. He is a bureaucrat who answers

to Congress, and I look forward to having him before our committee today. And now I turn it over to our beloved leader, the toughest man in Congress, Steve Solis. Yeah, I really wish, by the way, I,

if I had the time and I still produce music and I actually cared, I would make a beat out of this for sure. Like this loop of Maxine Waters. Since we started, since we started out on bitconf let's go for the intercrypt since we started out on bitconf let's go further let's go further into crypto be so good since we started out in bitconf let's go further into crypto. Since we started out on Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin,

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