The Wolf Of All Streets - Breaking: Trump To Make Bitcoin A Reserve Asset! | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

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working hard to get all of our guests up on stage is as usual always a bit of a mind field trying to get the space is started up all you guys are having a great wednesday so far see up in the topic here i'm sure we'll talk about other things but i read this this morning it kind of boggled my mind so i'm hoping that we can get someone up there to give us some clarity that I'm looking at Bloomberg right now. Ether ETF battle for supremacy ignites as firms reveal fund fees. So you guys may remember that for weeks in advance of the launch of the Bitcoin spot ETFs, because we knew they were coming, we saw these incredible fee wars between all of the issuers, right? They continued to outbid each other to the downside. We saw VanEck and others contribute to Bitcoin Core,

donating some of the proceeds to Bitcoin development. We saw them waiving fees for certain periods of time. We already had VanEck actually come out on Ether and say that they were going to waive the fees. But what the real story was, I think, of the Bitcoin spot ETFs was obviously the 1.5% fee from GBTC, from Grayscale, that had a lot of people scratching their heads. The assumption was that they'd done the math. They sort of calculated how many people they would lose and that the higher fees would be worth it because many people wouldn't exit due to

capital gains or other reasons. Obviously, we saw Bitcoin on the Bitcoin spot ETF approval and listing go up from 47 to 49. And then for weeks, we saw this incredible selling pressure from GBTC, we saw it drop about $10,000 from there before heading up to a new high of $74,000. So it was a temporary overhang and selling pressure from people exiting GBTC. Well, today, I'm reading this article. We have finally the fees being proposed for Ethereum ETFs. Franklin Templeton, their Ethereum trust coming in the lowest right now, 0.19%. This is outside of waivers. We don't have to go through all of them.

But we've got basically Franklin up to Fidelity between 0.19% and 0.25% with various waivers. So all very competitive. BlackRock and Fidelity both holding at 0.25. BlackRock even are offering a partial waiver. So for the first year, we're up to 2.5 billion assets. And then we see Grayscale Ethereum Trust, which, by the way, still has roughly $9 billion in assets under management, which proportional to Ethereum is actually larger than GBTC was proportional probably to Bitcoin at 25 billion. Pisses me off. Yeah, coming in with a 2.5% proposed fee. But that said, and this is what I'm hoping someone can unpack for me, they have the Grayscale Ethereum mini trust. We saw them launch the Bitcoin mini trust later with comparable competitive fees at 0.25. So i'm not sure if anyone here has an answer on the mechanics can you go from eth into the grayscale ethereum mini trust without the capital gains implications uh or is grayscale literally throwing their hands in the air here saying let's crash the market for a couple of weeks because there is not,

I can't imagine a single person saying, yes, I'll pay 10x the fee of what's available from BlackRock. Andrew, I see what you're saying. The Ethereum mini trust, they're only allowed, at least Grayscale has decided that you're only allowed to move 10% of the ETH-E total AUM from ETH-E to the Ethereum mini trust. Exactly the same. I said weeks and weeks ago that the biggest problem in the first six months of the Ethereum ETF is going to be grayscale and true to form they've somehow made it worse than the bitcoin etf uh movement and their gbtc they're at one and a half percent on that product

they're at two and a half percent it's it it's hard to fathom other than um grayscale slash DCG, these two products, GBTC and Ethereum, are the only meaningful revenue that exists in those companies left. That's the only thing that they have left. So for them to continue to exist and potentially, DCG, rise from the ashes, this is what has to happen. They don't have any other choice. They look like fools for doing it. They're going to suppress the movement of potential cap, you know, total inflows and the narrative of total inflows into Ethereum ETFs by being a massive anchor on the overall class of Ethereum ETFs in the first, you know, at minimum, probably three months, maybe six months, we're still getting daily outflows from GBTC on the Bitcoin ETFs. So it doesn't, the only business sense that it makes is this is a survival tactic for- But it won't.

This is even more, everyone's going to leave, right? I mean, I agree with you that they did some calculation. It's funny because when Son and Shine stepped down, a lot of people said, listen, he managed them through the court case. They won. He did a great job there. But maybe, you know, this 1.5 percent fee was a bad idea well we clearly see that that's not the case maybe they thought he didn't make it high enough

and by the way ethe total aum right now is 9.986 billion so 10 billion versus the market of eath and it was 25 billion in gbz versus the market of Bitcoin is proportionally much higher. And we know that this volume of selling would probably have a disproportionately larger effect on price with Ethereum. Which, by the way, when it's done, we'll go to the upside. Yeah, you're going to see an outflow of probably 20% in the first 30 days from that product. Nobody with any meaningful financial understanding is going to keep that money in that product at two and a half percent. There's just no way. When you can reduce your fee by 10x in any of the other products, their calculation is that, all right, we're going to be happy with the fact that we believe the. Over the long term, 12 to 24 months, so we can lose half of our assets in this particular product. But if Ethereum doubles in price in the next 12 months, we still have 10 billion in in this product.

That's the that's that's the calculus that they're making. Anyone else have a different view on this? I mean, it's kind of hard to understand where they're coming from on this. I mean, Andrew, I think you're absolutely right. They just did a calculation and hoped for the best. Jonathan, you were jumping in there before. You said you were pissed. Oh, yeah. I mean, I was just going to repeat the 10%

minimum. Everybody knows that keeping your fees high to discourage leaving or staying is just a surefire way to win people over. Dave, I'd love your view on this. Well, my view is

I own ETH. I'm going to sell it before the launch and you know i own et in a brokerage account and you know honestly not being able to stake was a pretty good reason to buy east you know it obviously i own ethereum as well directly uh but you know to me that it's just usurious and there's absolutely no reason to hold it. That said, I think that you guys are all wrong in terms of the net effect on Ethereum as a whole. I think that ETH's premium, I mean, discount fell. You know, it was if you look at the Bitcoin ETF, the Bitcoin ETF was trading at a discount right up until the launch. ETH is not, I don't know what it is now.

It dropped to like 0.4 or something today. It's tiny. I mean, it's like there's no discount. So anybody who wants to sell ETH now is getting out whole. And if you're talking about people in the, this is the important point. So if you break the world into oversimplifying into two pieces, Normies and us,

where Normie is the only way they can buy Ethereum is via an ETF or something, a product like ETH. And the rest of the world who can buy ETH, stake it, do whatever they want. The simple fact is that the people like us on this call in our bubble, we're already selling our ETH if we want to because there's no reason not to. Now, the real question is, of the people who hold ETH today, how many of them have it in an ARB trade or something like that?

My guess is not a whole lot. And I think that you might see an orderly transition from people in our universe or people in the E way they might have pitched Cisco 25 years ago, or Google 15, 20 years ago, or Amazon, you know, whatever, how many years ago, or NVIDIA two years ago. And that's the point. And so is there going to be net inflow into ETH? Probably. And so I think that it's a different case. It's a different market microstructure. It's a different holding pattern as Bitcoin. I think that's what Grayscale's banking on. But to be blunt, I think they're going to relatively lose more market share than they probably think. Yeah, Ran, I literally just clicked on YouTube to see what your show was on

today, not knowing. And here you go. Please don't buy ETH now. Is that why? I mean, I saw this and it blew my mind. Yes. The reason why I said it is because I do think that at 2.5% fees, you're going to get the outflow. And I think the outflow is going to scare me. It's the optics. And the optics are that you're going to get these outflows in the first couple of days because people are going to say well why must i pay two and a half percent when i can pay point one percent or even free right um and so and so um i think what's going to happen is people are going to look at the outflows in the first couple of days they can catch a bit of a fright the price is going to go down and then and then it's going to go up again don't get me wrong i'm very very very bullish long-term east don't get me wrong me wrong. I just think- You said now. It's clear.

You said don't do it now. Yeah. So I wouldn't do it now. I'd wait for the ETH ETF to launch. I don't think that the market is as astute as Dave says it are. And I don't think that the volume, if you look at the volume traded on ETH eDaily, it's tiny.

So I don't think that it's a, I don't think there's enough liquidity to get any meaningful sellout. Well, I think all of us on, you know, we're trying to communicate what a two and a half percent fee looks like, sounds like, feels like we're kind of at a loss. I don't think anybody on this call were thinking they're going to do a bigger fee than they did on GBTC. Nobody had that on their car. Like this is, it's hard to find, you know, adjectives to describe how absurd that this is. Like it really is.

Nothing surprises me. Nothing surprises me about the greed of, uh, of the DC. Well, I wasn't going to say it, but you said it. Okay. You said it. Yeah, it is. It is yeah it is it is it is it is remarkable it's it's uh again i'm i'm trying to find adjectives but a two and a half percent fee like hedge funds don't even that's not what you just say that's crazy i mean this is this isn't just high for crypto or high for ets. This is like high for the earth. Exactly. Like you can't go find alternative investments that charge this amount of fees. It's absurd. I mean, it's crazy. So I, you know, I don't know. I actually don't. You would think that there would be a lot of outflows very, very quickly.

But human behavior is is is hard to predict. But but I just can't see people that have held this in a meaningful way because they're you to be a certain amount of holders that aren't paying close attention until they sit down with their portfolios and their, you know, their their financial advisors. And somebody brings up, hey, are you aware that you're paying two and a half on this product when you could be paying, you know, point two on a on a, 0.2 on a BlackRock product or a Fidelity product, they'd be like, oh, I didn't know that. Instant outflow, instant sale, right? So, it's going to be, what may end up happening is it may not be as wildly aggressive in the first two, four, ten days, but it may be just an ongoing, continued outflow story for months. That would be my guess. Guys, I just want to let you know, I opened up my Schwab account, and I'm looking at

ETH, and it's down 9% today. I got smoked not surprised so my plan of selling it i mean at a two and a half percent discount i mean i feel like i feel like the i mean it's not a huge position but it annoys me right i you know what's the old expression you know you can check in but you can't check out uh that's what i said that's what i said that's what i said to you guys like it's it's misleading because you can't check out uh that's what i said that's what i said that's what i said to you guys like it's it's misleading because you can't sell any size in that thing that's the problem so but obviously did and people were selling it at what it's not it's not size it's illiquidity it's not size it's not so i ran well i mean there's there's there's somebody on this call, I see him down the listeners, Tyrone, who is very, very wired in to wealth management in the RIA space.

And I can't stress enough that one of the three or four most important pinnacles associated with that business is finding fees that people shouldn't be paying. And that's the value add that you bring as a financial advisor. And this kind of fee is so outrageous that wealth management professionals will be looking for this in people's portfolio to make a point that I'm working on your behalf and here's how. This fee is crazy. You need to be out of this product now. Maybe we can get all the outflows before the launch. There you go. Well, the launch has been like four business days. Let's talk about this.

But the point, Scott, is that, I mean, look, I'm not looking at it. I don't, I'm not, you know, I'm not actively trading the ARP. So I don't know what 9% down on a day when Ether is basically flat means, but is it now trading at an 8% discount? And if it's trading an 8% discount, then obviously, you know, it's a buy, right? You know, so who the hell knows? I just, I think that it's all relative. The fact is, is if you want to know, are people pissed? If you want to know if Andrew is right? The answer is yes, of course, he's right. People are already looking at this thing. Oh, my God, get me the hell out of here. And a lot of people are dumb. They don't look at the price difference. They just say, oh, fuck it, just sell it. And that's what that's what you're seeing. That's what caused a lot of market inefficiencies. And that's what we're seeing today. So, you know, the market is voting and it's telling the guys at Grayscale, listen, guys, you know, we're going to all get the hell out of here. You're going to it's going to be much I think it's gonna be faster than the Bitcoin ETF. Yeah, two and a half. It's a big difference. It really is. Dan? Yeah, it's kind of interesting. I think one of the reasons that stopped some people from selling the um bitcoin on a grayscale stuff was uh capital gains right um which is always weird to me uh not

living in america so i live in singapore and there's no capital gains tax i've never paid capital gains tax in my life um but i have some understanding of it um You don't have to rub it in. I know. I just need to get that out. Go ahead and brag a little more, buddy. I need to get that out there. But isn't like in the U.S., if you sell it in less than a year, it's a much higher tax rate. That's correct.

Long-term versus short-term capital gains if you pay out a year. So there'll be some part of like the 2.5% is a pain, but is it worth selling it and paying a higher capital gains now or waiting a little bit? So I think that might temper that. The only other thing I would say is the SEC have done a real

hatchet job on this, obviously, and you can't stake. If there's people locked in that can't sell, I imagine they're long-term holders for whatever reason. There should be a lot of shares available in the float to short sell. I mean, it's a very simple trade there. You just buy ETH yourself, stake it, and short the ETF, and you just capture that ARP. So you're getting 4% or so staking ETH, something like that. That's just a 4% kind of risk-free. So you can see some hedge funds doing that, you know, that are more kind of wired in.

Yeah. I just wanted to throw that in there. Yeah, so the question I was going to ask, we saw the price action on bitcoin as a result of gbtc right so you had that like very small immediate five or six percent pump right when they listed it was like 47 to 49 let's call it 50 and then over the next few weeks we basically saw bitcoin retrace we'll call it 20 for round round numbers. It was slightly more, maybe 21, 22. But it went from almost 50 to below 40 on that GBTC selling. So knowing that this is a less liquid product that people sell off ETH has to be sold, shouldn't we expect a more than 20% discount on Ethereum

whenever this bottoms before that EP selling is done? I mean, Rand, you just did your show. Do you have a thought on how far this dips? You just got to think that with less liquidity and less relative demand, you're going to see a bigger retrace. Well, that's why I said, that's why I wouldn't be buying eth now because I think that there's like, are we going to get, are we buying it 25% cheaper? Are we getting board apes for $12? No, no, no. I know.

I just, I just, I just think that, I just think there's going to be some kind of initial, initial concern. And I think it's just going to go down. I mean, it's going to be 25%, 25% down is back to 2,500, 2,800. I don't understand that. That's probably for the chart. That's probably for the chart just to tell you. I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, the chart doesn't look bad. So, yeah. Good job. Yeah. I mean, I heard everyone. It's true that astute investors will change but you know it always like i always find it crazy about how much trading happens on metamask which is you know three four times higher than doing it

anywhere else right and that's people who are crypto native right i do think there are a lot of people who don't look at the fees or don't or think everything is the same or out of convenience or aren't going to be switching um i do agree but we saw it with gbtc right so you we have that you had gbtc there were multiple reasons it sold off right a people were trapped so it's like fuck it get me out of here b there were people who were just playing the discount trade and the trade was closed they had no interest in gbtc Bitcoin. But then there's the people who left for the fees. And we have a similar dynamic here, except for the fact that they aptly pointed out the discounts already closed. But we do know that we've seen this happen before, just six months

ago. We know that there's people who are going to sell off because of the fees. Yeah. Well, there's 10 that, you know, somebody has to own the $10 million of the Ethereum trust that exists now, right? And a case could be made that there's some pretty sizable institutions that are running around in there. And are those institutions going to pay two and a half percent once it's converted? Absolutely not. Like no chance. And again, these products are created for retail investors. And here's the short-term, maybe mid-term problem. You're going to get a possibly a fairly negative narrative with maybe net outflows for the Ethereum ETF. Yeah, the Ethereum ETF category. If you get at net outflows for the first 30 to 90 days, you're going to have financial advisors where it's not going to be approved on a large scale to be able to use it yet. But they're going to be talking

about it and being educated on it. And when they're being educated on it, and half of them, by the way, don't even understand what Ethereum is, they're also going to see the headlines associated with net outflows in the first 90 days. And they'll be like, I don't know, no reason for me to touch this right now. It's just a grayscale is screwing this particular launch. That's the best way to say it. They're screwing it. Could I just push back on that? I mean, net outflows means that people selling ETH after the launch

for some reason, waiting for the launch for some reason, to be out of the investment entirely. Selling ETH to buy whatever they're going to call the other trusts is not a net outflow. That is a net sideways so yeah there'll be a lot of yes but the perception but there's a perception is the outflow first the

same as the gbtc one where where they first have to sell then they're waiting no but but no there was a difference gbtc when it launched was almost the first day that you could literally close an ARB. That ARB, you could have closed your ETH ARBs any time over the last month. And so it's different. It really is different. It's easy. The likelihood of the percentage of ARBs as opposed to the percentage of just people who just want to hold ETH, the percentage of people who want to hold ETH has to be higher in ETH than it was in GBTC.

It has to be. And that matters. Well, that sideways transition, though, it's only allowed to be 10%. They cut it off at 10%. So you have, if they would have made it 50%. No, no, but Andrew, I'm not talking about sideways inside Grayscale. I mean, they can't stop you from selling ETH and buying VanEck's product or whoever's. Correct. Right. Correct. You have to assume that the sale of ETH for the fee is not going to be picked up by difficult to nuance news organizations to simply talk about the negative flows associated with the largest Ethereum ETF. My assumption is, is that may be a bit of a story that I would assume.

That's a fair point. Ignorance will, of course, be magnified because that's the world we live in. But that said, I think the bottom line is ETH is going to be back at trading at a discount from now until the launch. And the liquidity there, as Rand pointed out, is going to suck. And people are going to have to be very patient and try to figure this stuff out. And it's a pain in the ass. It is not a positive.

Don't get me wrong. I am not spinning it that way. I just don't think that it's a negative for Ether. I think it's a negative for Grayscale. It's definitely a short-term negative for Ether on the launch. Well, I mean, it's going to make it – it's going to be painful for – because of the way news – Andrew's point is exactly right. I think that's where it's going to get painful. But, you know, honestly, we'll see how well the launch goes from the other products.

That's really the key. I mean, it does not go particularly well, at least in the short term, but I do think that once that EP selling is done, we see an absolute skyrocket once again, like we did with the Bitcoin. So, I mean, I think it's important to note that

most of us view this as an opportunity. We're annoyed at it, but it's a long-term opportunity. particular thoughts on the trade and the execution of GBTC as it relates to high fee, keep their fees rolling in. Tides are going to lift all boats and we're going to see higher highs with the Bitcoin price, which is going to fill the gap of outflows. He was right. I mean, it just, you know, it is what it is. He was right. I think it's the same, he's making the same play here. And I think over the course of 12 to 18 months, he's going to be right. But Rand's right on his show over the next three months, it's going to be painful. It just is. It would be interesting to see if this overhang still exists and we head up into sort of a parabolic cyclical, you know,

I do want to say one thing that I do want to say one thing that if we do get this dip and you've got a long-term thesis on, on ETH and you don't buy up this dip, then it's not like the Bitcoin scenario where you've then got like government overhangs and you've got Mt. Gox coins and you've got that. ETH doesn't have that baggage, right? So like, ETH doesn't have all these confiscated Mt. Gox coins and all this other crap, which makes up billions and billions and billions of dollars. ETH is like,

it's actually the other way around. It's got staked assets, which are locked up and actually earning yield. It's got assets locked up in are locked up and actually earning yield it's got assets locked up in bridges and smart contracts and stuff like that that actually are used to make the the network work east is a little bit deflationary um if the um uh if if you know east is deflationary um to to an extent uh if the network is used and so i think that if we do get the dip this would be one of the like the rare times in each like life cycle where you've got an overhang and then you should probably like if you've got a long-term thesis on each that's the best time to buy it because you're not going to get another chance you need there's just well there's a regional

in september what is September? Sorry. In September, historically, it's the worst month after the having Yeah, but I mean, I mean, I'm not talking about I'm not talking about market fluctuations. I'm talking about relative to them. I'm adding I'm, I'm adding to what you're saying. Right? September would already be a good time to buy you put this on top of I think it's gonna be an incredible time to buy you but I wouldn this on top of it, I think it's going to be an incredible time to buy ETH.

But I wouldn't buy it now, much like you said today. I'd wait till sometime in September, to be honest, because historically, that would be a good time to buy. Plus, you're going to have a downward, positive catalysts that go beyond the three to six month period and where staking could be added back to the Ethereum ETF product, as mentioned by Hester Pierce just yesterday. walk if there is uh um political change and regime change in the united states which you know from a standpoint looks like is going to happen um would not shock anybody um if she ends up being the chairman of the sec and then you have adjustments to um you know staking associated with these products um and then and also an adjustment to the Bitcoin ETFs moving away from cash create to in-kind distribution. So, you know, that's meaningful catalyst.

So, Ran, you're right. If you get a dip here over the next 30 to 90 days and you're a believer in Ethereum. It's your last chance. It's your last chance. Yeah, correct. You're correct. You're correct. It's your last chance. Yeah, Bitcoin, it's never your last chance. There's last chance yeah correct you're correct you're correct

it's your last yeah bitcoin it's never your last chance there's always some government that has billions of dollars there was up until now there was the german government there's the us government there's the mount cox there's the bulgarian government that has like all these governments have all these coins which are large overhangs it doesn't have that so right what about the what about the founders pre-mines? Would that be an equivalent? I mean, you could compare that to Satoshi's fund. The first, the Satoshi, what's it, one and a half million Bitcoin? What has he got in?

Genesis wallet. Yeah, a million Bitcoin. Yeah, but Vitalik's actually been selling them and Joe Lieben's been selling them. So Satoshi has it, yeah. I mean, I suppose you've got to factor that in, but I think that's already factored into the price, right? Where with Bitcoin, you had all these clouds, which were like completely anomalous. Legacy clouds, which, yeah, I think, I don't know.

To me, again, if ETH dips, I'm going to sell a lot of other things and actually get into ETH because I think long-term, fundamentally, you've got to be in ETH. It's probably the easiest trade in the market because they understand it as a technology. They understand how to price technology. They understand the number of users and all that. They understand all that shit. I think, to me, that's the play. Right now, do nothing and then buy as quickly as possible

but can we just take one more minute to say that you know we're running out of of downside narratives certainly with bitcoin but across the the crypto landscape right we're running out of downside narratives whereas six months ago downside narratives had both barrels pointed at us from every angle. Right. And so it right in the moment where we're running out of downside narratives, Barry Silbert slaps a two and a half percent fee on this freaking product. I mean, it's it's it truly is. It truly is remarkable. Truly is remarkable truly is remarkable uh bro why why do you say it's remarkable like you know the nature of the beast i think you're one of the i know so why does anything surprise you like why i mean you know the nature of the beast bro it doesn't surprise me but it's just i mean my goodness it it's uh it's just disgusting human behavior to be honest and and i don't know i mean i don't know listen he knows he's going to get

taken out in the long term so i mean he might as well try and make as much money as he can as quickly as possible right like he knows he knows i would about. Yeah, I would. You guys know that I have some folks in the SEC that I talk to. And, you know, what I've been told is there are some sacred cows that exist out there. And there are things that Barry has done that have, for all intents and purposes, taken him out of the absolute center of the bullseye from a legal standpoint. So, you know, I don't think that Barry's going to end up, you know, having real serious legal problems in the long term. That's just my opinion based on what I've been told. There are others that haven't been talked about yet that probably will. But, you know, again, you know, larger scale here, you know, we we've had so many downside narrative removed that it's just they could have done it. They could have done one and a half and everybody on this call would have been like, oh, OK, well, that's what they did for GBTC.

And we kind of expected it to be a little bit high anyways. And we wouldn't even be having this you know conversation really um but they they darn near doubled it i mean it's it's i don't know maybe maybe i'm naive a little bit i shouldn't be but it's it's it's hard to fathom uh fullest you haven't spoken with do you have any opinion on what's likely to happen here with when these things launch? Thanks, Scott. Yeah, I'm just listening. It's a fantastically interesting conversation. But I guess I would just remind people of exactly what happened in the charts back around the time the BTC ETF launched. We got a quick pump from kind of like 46, 47K to 49K. And then what followed thereafter was almost two weeks of of dumping and price dropped

about 21 so yeah just to just to i mean applying that of course these things don't uh don't apply one-to-one they never do but applying something like that to the charts now we would see kind of new lows um at least in the short term so i think that's just something that i'm telling my guys to be ready for uh something to factor into your own analysis um i think that it's i mean it's interesting hearing everyone uh and rightly so but everyone abashed barry for what is seen as greed i mean i think he knows what he's doing i think um i um, I'm not sure how, I'm not, I'm not sure when and in what form, uh,

the, the, the, the machinations behind the setting, this, this extremely high, uh, uh,

fee will, will come to life. I think they will in some form or another, but it's just, it's, it's, it's, it seems ridiculous.

Like looking at the, the Ethereum ETF sorted by, uh, by fees. And and this is this thing is you know 10 times uh the rest of them blackrock fidelity investco and all the rest um so yeah i'm expecting i mean i don't have a contrarian opinion i'm expecting i'm expecting outflow you know the outflow inflow metric to to favor uh quite sizably in favor of outflows at least for the you know the first six eight maybe eight or ten weeks um but i think that what ran is said is actually um you know that rings completely true to me which is that this will present a fantastic buying opportunity for anyone who has you know bullish aspirations for what ethereum can do into the rest of the year into 2025 you know uh you got guys like gco

saying the 10k is programmed if you truly believe that to be the case and that guy has a phenomenal hit race then that's your chance you get you know 2.5 2.6 2.7k ethereum that's where you're looking to buy right you're not um you're not succumbing to the fear that typically comes with these sell-offs but rather you're trying to ask yourself the question where is the opportunity here where is the where where is the the the point of inflection in the market likely to come and where can i capitalize on that has anyone been following the the genesis restructuring plan i didn't i didn't actually follow it lost interest but he's obviously still working for creditors and there was a whole plan around giving equity and dcg to collateralize the

debt so surely this is all part of his calculations with some very aggressive crypto institutional creditors in Genesis that he's got to make happy. And if he doesn't make happy, I'm assuming that's going to lead to a chain reaction of lawsuits. And he's still trying to make sure he gets away with everything. I haven't. Andrew, have you been following that closely? Dan, you had your hand up too. I don't know if you been following him that closely Dan you had your hand up too I don't know if it was about that no I was just going to say one thing I mean Barry gets a lot of shit quite rightly

a lot of stuff to give him shit about but just in the sense of balance I want to just say I'm not his biggest fan I don't like him particularly but he is the guy that sued the SEC and got this over the line so I think we just have to give him that again grace y'all's done amazingly positive things for the industry i mean even the fact that gbcc existed for so long i think uh to your point is is really really important um ran i mean is there any other there's a couple other stories today i mean i think we've

kind of uh talked talked this one through. I just saw this one, actually, that there was a vote on the Reddit for Mt. Gox. And among the 467 members who participated in the vote, 260 chose not to sell Bitcoin after receiving the compensation, which is 55%. But the issue is with that a lot of people got claims. In other words, a lot of people have got… Right, you don't know, yeah. Yeah, you don't know. Like, yeah, maybe 90% of people sold their things as claims. Those are hitting the market straight away. Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. There's a couple others. Obviously, we kind of talked about it a bit yesterday, but the story that Jamie Dimon could potentially be the Secretary Magazine CEO David Bailey, who we've had on the show a bunch of times, because we conjectured what it took to get Trump to the Bitcoin conference, promised to hold Trump a $15 million fundraiser in Nashville later this month. And I saw yesterday, he offered to me, it's $60,000 a ticket if you want to go to the fundraiser. So, yeah. You do the math. I mean, 100 people, you're

already at $6 million. And $800,000 to have a private sit-down. And that fundraiser is already oversubscribed. Of course. They didn't commit to that without knowing. You don't throw the fundraiser unless you make the calls first. Yeah. Listen, like I mentioned, that there's there's really no meaningful downside narratives specific to Bitcoin, whether you like them or not.

You know, there's a difference between being popular and well-known. But Donald Trump is the most well-known individual on the planet. And he's going to be at the bitcoin conference speaking at the bitcoin conference i mean you know three years ago who's the most interesting person in the bitcoin conference michael saylor maybe kathy wood we are levels and levels and levels above that at this point um that that is serious big time right This is big time. Is it just me? Is it just me though or is this election

very, very, very much about crypto or is it just because we're looking out for the crypto stuff and that's why we're finding it. I think it's the latter. I think it's a bit of both. Yeah, we're probably looking out for it. You're right. We're probably looking out for it. But at the same time, we've got a

vice presidential candidate that just got chosen that... I mean, can you pick a more pro-crypto person? I can't imagine. It's not the reason he chose him. It's just a silver lining for us. I'm just... The only issue that I have

is we said the same thing about Gary Gensler. I remember it so clearly. I remember all of us thinking that Gary Gensler was the best and that everything else fucking happened. There's been a lot of people who put out the warning signals. Arthur Hayes, right? He's like, don't believe politicians. That's a fair

point for any of it. And we shouldn't be looking at any... It's tailwinds, but I hope nobody's looking at any politician, period, as the savior that we don't need because this stuff is inevitable regardless. Yeah, I mean, I hate the fact – Agreed. I hate the fact that there's a Jamie Dimon element to all of this.

But I love the fact that – yeah, okay. Yeah, Ran, to your point, I've been listening to the whole RNC. I've been helping Mario on that space. So I've been kind of forced to listen to every single word. And I've been waiting for them to mention crypto and they haven't. So the fact they haven't, I don't think this is a crypto thing. They've mentioned everything but crypto almost by now. So I think it's just us that's sensitive to it.

It's inflation. I do think the BP is very positive for Bitcoin. People care about inflation. They're broke. They can't break the cycle. They're struggling. And they don't want all of America's money to go to war. That's what I think people care about. I know we know that Bitcoin is part of that narrative, but we still have a job to help people understand that this is part of the inflation trade and this is part of the war trade and this is how you protect yourself rather than relying on politicians but the politicians are going to help us just get more people to want to listen yeah there's a reasonable medium silence i mean

like uh you know we don't have to be on the docket every second uh to mean that crypto is a meaningful part of the conversation and we can be super excited that it's even being mentioned right so i mean we're i look at it through the half glass whole perspective which is the fact that it's in the there's even a part of the conversation that you have presidential candidates willingly or unwillingly being forced to talk about it, that it's in the platform, regardless of what they're talking about it every day, that's leaps and bounds ahead of where I ever believed we would be in this

cycle, certainly. And especially in context of how absolutely awful it was a year ago. I think people fail to realize just where we were like 18, 24 months ago. I mean, it's not that long ago that Luna was rugging. FTX was bankrupt. You know, we had Three Arrows Capital, Celsius, Voyager. It seemed like there was new FUD every week regarding Tether, USDC. Binance was, you know, there were rumors that was illiquid the bear market just seemed like it was going on forever I mean from that to now where crypto has become this major flashpoint in the US elections and right many many you know alter down a little bit at the moment but many of them are still you know seven eight hundred percent up from where they were a couple of years back

it's it's pretty wild actually actually. I think it's indicative of how quickly crypto can move as a nascent market and a nascent industry. And follow us quickly, even to add to that, you're 100% right. But that was all the contagion. At that point, the perception was that actually we were in a friendly regulatory environment. That's when back when we still liked Gary Gensler and people were happy. Yes. The app was meeting with all these people. Yeah, exactly.

Right. So that was horrible for the industry. But the real sea change from the previous period to now is that a year ago, the SEC had not lost anything just over a year ago. And we're attacking without any view that they could lose you know coinbase one day binance the next day completely coming after the industry so the politicians and the government is even the bigger story than i think the contagion within the industry a year ago we thought crypto was dead dead forever in the united states dead forever

eladio you can go ahead yeah um well i don't know if you remember scott i was i guess i was here about a couple of weeks ago and i basically did say that that that 60 for whatever reason round numbers technically people just go crazy over round numbers and once we got over 60 and held it that that was a bottom there was a bottom there was somebody who i believe sounded indian uh uh that day who marked uh said that we had hit a bottom when we saw 55 000 i don't know who that person was but he was spot on i mean and uh when you look at crypto yes i i know what there have been a lot of victories uh All these lawsuits were going to go against them. It started with the XRP ripple lawsuit. And everything's gone the opposite way of how Gary Gensler wanted it to go.

And I say Gary Gensler because I hate to break it to you, but we just have a yes-man president that listens to Janet Yellen. You can say Elizabeth Warren. Yeah, exactly. And all they do is listen. And we have a president that was a yes-man for all his advisors. And there was a culture of anti-crypto. I mean, come on, they went after everybody. And it's failed.

But when you look at, again, see the correlation the correlation doesn't have to be a perfect correlation the leading indicator implies that something's going to happen before and then and that weeks later uh the market will follow suit i just think the crypto is on a quicker cycle uh you look at the perfect teacup pattern right now going back to that 2021 almost uh you know uh with with a handle that's sort of trying to develop here the way i see this i i do i do see we've seen a bottom and that crypto is about two months ahead of the market the top on crypto was on march and and the market's just really uh kicking out some of this ai absurd excess because the only but it's flowing into higher risk in russell it's not flowing into higher risk it's flowing into lower risk because

the russell and the rest of the market and the industrials have all already priced in the fact that things work did it be great because the economy was slowing. In other words, you got to look at the price points. And in my opinion, you have 90% of the market has priced in something that's worse than we have. And that few stocks, those nifty 25, have priced in AI times 10, everything perfectly. And I think we're seeing a rotation. And it was obvious when you see the Dow try to capture a bid like we saw yesterday and the NASDAQ completely implode, because all the money's hiding in the same space. And the rotation is going to be messy. We're going to have days like yesterday. But at the end of the year, the market's probably going

to be higher than it was because we know what's coming in september and it's more liquidity september that rate cut is at a hundred percent i believe and so the story is intact i i do think we are going to see a hundred thousand at the this year or next year at some point i don't think we're going to retest we're going to go below that 55 000 number at this juncture unless something you know it doesn't look like it jonathan and dave sure uh three little points quick first it's amazing that we've let dokwan get away with being crypto enemy number one because his the collapse of tara did cause billions of losses for people some people people committed suicide. FTX collapsed. Yeah, that was bad. People got their money back.

You know, a lot of the stuff, people got something back. But the Terra collapse, that fucked everybody. And the second point, just remind everybody, when crypto's in an expansion phase, these 20%, 30%, 40% pullbacks in Bitcoin and even greater for altcoins, totally normal. The third one is on the SEC. They don't lose against crypto.

Since 2019, their win rate is around 96% or 97%. But they have lost the ones that are most important to everybody but they they have an insane win rate yeah but all those losses come in the last year jonathan so they never lost and now they're losing that's that's the point of the narrative so it's not really about the entire percentage although you are absolutely correct that they went and shit in the last year what i'm saying is like we a lot of us, oh, they have to be demoralized. No, they're not. They have a lot of the office, the people there are really motivated because they're like king shit making three pointers every time they throw.

Not anymore. Yeah, I agree. Dave. Well, I got to react to that a bit. I mean, first of all, talking to people down in Washington in the SEC, yeah, that building is demoralized, but it's demoralized not. Crypto is a pimple on the problem. I mean, it's just one aspect of it. It's the entire agenda being against the industry. Almost every one of their proposals is going to get litigated. It's it is bad, but it's bad for a lot of reasons. And the agenda of economic freedom matters. I mean, I think that people

need to calm down when they talk about why we don't see the Republican convention, why it isn't in press releases. I mean, look, Trump's going to go to Bitcoin Nashville and do a keynote speech. I mean, who would have had that on their bingo card that the lead one of the leading candidates would be doing that? I mean, he doesn't need to appeal to crypto at the Republican convention there. He's trying to rally his base and they're trying to get people to talk about issues that matter. Now, one of the issues that does matter is deregulation and spurring innovation and the economy and, you know, stopping the nonsense that's been going on in this administration that people don't talk about. And that is firmly there, and it's one of the themes.

The other thing to keep in mind is regulation by enforcement, regardless of those three-point shots that you were just talking about, has now become an incredibly polarizing issue. And do not underestimate the impact of West Virginia versus EPA combined with Loper Bright versus Raimondo. Now, I don't want to go all legalese. I'm not a lawyer, but our lawyers on stage will tell you that the ability of the SEC and also the other, I forgot the name of the, I can't remember the name of the case where they can't use their own administrative courts, which is part of the reason that their shooting percentage is so high. Those are all gone now. And so there's a lot that's happened that's been positive. The most positive thing isn't, I don't care who's treasury secretary per

se. I also know that, you know, I've heard firsthand accounts of Jamie Dimon's actual views on crypto. And his actual personal views on crypto are not what he talks about wearing the jersey from JP Morgan. Just keep that in mind. But we'll leave that aside for a second. What matters is who runs the SEC, who runs the CFTC, and what's the regulatory agenda. And if you ended up with someone like Dan Gallagher has been rumored at the SEC, then you're going to end up with a act that is going to be a regulatory framework for crypto that we can live with, which is principles-based. Because if you go back and read any of his speeches, and I was there for many of them, it's all about principles-based regulation. And what is that? That's things that we all kind of want to have happen so that people

who do rug pulls actually get prosecuted. Real path toward disclosure, more like what Vasari does than what Edgar does. You know, things that make sense, best execution so that, you know, if you're using a platform that costs you a lot, people know that it costs them a lot. Sorry to interrupt, but Dennisis porter who was on stage before and dropped but hopefully he'll come back and he said this is not a joke i just reached out just in between trump to announce a usa bitcoin strategic reserve in nashville so how is bitcoin traded down six hundred dollars over the last hour if that's hitting the tape? It does.

I missed it out. Look above the pinned tweet. Huge breaking. This is Dennis Porter. Dennis, he's here. Okay, Dennis, you take the stage. I'm glad you came back. Hi, everyone.

I am back. Sorry, I'm not a big ETF guy or ETH guy, so I didn't have a lot to add. I didn't have a lot to add. Don't worry. So I'm not a big ETF guy or ETH guy, so I didn't have a lot to add to that story. Yeah, so obviously the idea of a strategic reserve is nothing new. The idea of adding Bitcoin to the balance sheet is nothing new. Some people have fought on the corporate side for this for years, like Michael Saylor, to have companies add Bitcoin to their balance sheet. You know, we at Satoshi Action Fund have worked with states, state treasuries and also state pensions to add Bitcoin to the balance sheet. You've also even seen nation states like El Salvador add Bitcoin to the balance sheet.

But of course, it's something entirely different to have the United States even thinking about adding Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset. Obviously, this would be huge, huge, huge, not only for just the United States, but the world, because the very idea that, you know, even like theoretically, right, let's say you're one of those people who thinks that he just makes campaign promises and doesn't come through on his campaign promises. This even if that's true, a campaign promise of this magnitude for the crypto Bitcoin space would have a ripple effect throughout the world, because even if he doesn't do it, it's bringing a lot of credibility to the very idea itself. And it would also be in alignment with some of the other news that we're hearing that, you know, Trump would be interested in backing the dollar with Bitcoin. I think that's a little bit more far-fetched. You know, I have a hard time believing, you know, he's going to convince everybody in the federal government to

back, you know, the U.S. dollar with Bitcoin. But the idea of buying Bitcoin and just adding it as a strategic reserve, completely rational, and I think also something that would be much more plausible as well. And Dennis, I have to assume that Trump had to say something fresh and new for the Bitcoin conference, right? We've already got Albrecht, you know, like he'll commute the sentence and all of the favorable comments. So like this probably, well, we may have just taken the wind out of the sails, but maybe this was the big, you know, breaking statement that he was going to make to, you know, tens of thousands of people applauding. Listen, listen, at the end of the day, Bitcoin conference is the biggest stage in the world with regards to Bitcoin. It is also just in general a very large stage. And it's an excited crowd. And if you're coming in, and you're

just going to say the same stuff you've always said, you know, I think it would go well. But I think what Bitcoin, you know, the Bitcoin conference is trying to replicate here is somewhat of what happened when Naeem Bukele announced that he was going to be adding Bitcoins as a strategic reserve and also making Bitcoin legal tender. And I was there at the conference when that happened. I mean, it was sort of like this surreal moment. I think the same thing could be happening here. And, you know, you got to look for what you can possibly do to be able to get the audience to the next level and to really bring that excitement in. And I think this is one of those situations where this is a big promise, right? In the sense that it will get people excited, but it's actually completely plausible that it could. Can you imagine if

he makes Jamie Dimon Secretary of the Treasury and also does this? Make Jamie Dimon add Bitcoin to the balance sheet for the United States. I think that would be the, uh, the, the perfect sort of story, um, to put all this together. So yeah, I, I'm obviously very excited about this, this news again, you know, Satoshi action at the state level, we're constantly fighting for policy innovation like this, where we push the States to buy Bitcoin. We push the state pensions to buy Bitcoin. Um,

and so I'm not really surprised by this news. But I'm also, again, very excited about it because I think it will lend a lot of credibility to the idea of adding Bitcoin as a strategic reserve across the world, especially given the betting markets, everybody having Trump as the clear winner here. Obviously, everybody had Clinton as a clear winner in 2016. So things could change. But I'm not sure Biden is up to the task. And in fact, we're, of course, now this morning hearing, hearing news that it's likely he'll step down within the next week or two. I mean, I had heard, you know, a week prior that that was that was accurate. Of course, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna speculate on when the President may or may not step down. That's not that's not something I have a ton of access and that type of information. Or you're going to make Biden a reserve asset.

I think it's pretty done. The Biden thing is pretty done. I just sent out a... On StockTwits, I just put out a platform-wide alert, and Dennis, you're responsible for locking this shit up right now because it's getting too much

attention. Well, thank you guys for having me back up. I appreciate the opportunity to be up here. Again, I think this is a really, really, really again, bold promise. I think it would be a bold political campaign

promise. But again, it's one that is completely rational. Will Trump be able to follow through on it? That's another question. But ultimately, for me, I am very, very big on having states, nation states, cities, corporations, people add Bitcoin to their balance sheet and i think that this is going to be um something that whether it happens or not will ultimately drive people to to take a second look at this asset and say wow i mean gosh if the united states is adding this thing to its strategic reserve then then maybe we need to front run then maybe we need to start looking at it ourselves as well yeah the other point is that this is just not good you know this isn't that it's good for Bitcoin, which obviously is what we care about. But this is actually really good for the countries that do this. This is really good news for America. For America to put Bitcoin

as a strategic reserve asset, I believe makes the credit rating of continuing to lend to the US government, it takes out one of those risks. And it actually is a very smart strategic move. And if we are moving to a world of central bank digital currencies, let's face it, the central bank digital currencies that we're going to end up using are the ones that exert the most freedom and have the strongest backing behind them. And so a CBDC that can prove their Bitcoin reserves is the type of country, you know, this is very good for the country, not just for Bitcoin. And that's why it's a no brainer. And that's why everyone gets there in the end because it's just a it's just a win-win all around yeah i mean i agree it's a it's a win-win for everybody honestly it's also

a win for the trump campaign you know for those that don't know me or don't follow me uh you know i do a lot of work to be able to make bitcoin non-partisan bipartisan we spend a lot of time with republicans and democrats educating them on the potential of the technology. We have had, you know, Republicans and Democrats sponsor our legislation, legislation that we've had passed into law in four different states. But at the end of the day, like Republicans are clearly far out on leading on this issue, something that I wish, you know, hopefully the Democrats take a lesson here and learn that, you know, this is not a voter block that should be ignored. This is not an issue that should be ignored. I think that message is coming through loud and clear, especially with the reaction of, you know, Ro Khanna, Mark Cuban, putting together a roundtable with the Biden folks. And, you know, the conversations, you know,

of course, I think there's others in the room that probably have a little bit more details on the specifics of that conversation but ultimately in the conversation from what i heard it was like they were sort of surprised that like how bad it was for crypto and bitcoin in the usa like they just didn't they just haven't had the capacity to to pay attention to this issue the way they should have and it took them off guard i mean at the end of the day like this is a brand new issue and it's and it's really certainly picked up quite a bit of steam in the last three or four years, especially with the attacks that have come from the federal government. The one funny thing about attacking an industry or threatening an industry with regulatory capture is that industry tends to become very, very, very, very interested

in interacting with the government. Any highly regulated industry is also very much in bed in government agencies. We see this not only in healthcare, we see it with the military, but even things like the energy industry. If you look at public utilities, public utilities are like quasi-government. They're regulated monopolies, and they spend crazy amounts of time. In fact, they're the massive rotating door between public utilities and public utility commissions where they often sit their own people there. of these attacks, there's going to be so many people that are finding themselves either like myself, where I've built Satoshi Action Fund from scratch two years ago, to pass multiple bills into law, interacting with government on a daily basis, you know, starting to get asked by international partners, you know, to come help us pass Bitcoin rights, you know, Bitcoin rights, self custody,

the right to self custody, the right to mine. These are terms that were coined and created at Satoshi Action, we consider ourselves to be the policy innovation house for the United States and also for the world. But now we're starting to see not only the United States continue to adopt this at the party level and hopefully at the federal level, we are now also seeing countries reaching out to us and saying, hey, how do we pass Bitcoin rights here in our own country? It's an exciting thing to see. And there's a number of different things we're fighting for. The big, big thing coming up in the future is going to be, are we going to be able to actually get rid of capital gains on Bitcoin? It's wild because I never would have thought Bitcoin rights would have moved so quickly and been adopted into the RNC

platform so rapidly. But now that that's happened, it's like, okay, well, what's the next wave of policy that we can start to innovate on? And I believe that the next wave of policy we can innovate on is to start to get rid of capital gains on Bitcoin, start with a de minimis exemption. I mean, you just can't use Bitcoin as money when every single time you go to buy coffee, every time you go to buy groceries, you're getting hit with a tax event. So we firmly believe at bare minimum, there should be a de minimis exemption. We have it in our model policy already, and we are getting ready to pass that model policy into law as we move forward. The big, big thing around the corner that I think people really need to pay attention to as well is Ohio. Ohio is going to become the Bitcoin battleground state. It's going to become the crypto battleground state. You have JD Vance from Ohio. You have Vivek about to take Senator Vance's spot. You have our Bitcoin rights bill that's been introduced there. And also you have Sarah Brown that they're trying to take out as well. So there's so many things that are happening simultaneously in Ohio. On top of the fact that it is a key battleground

state for the November election, you're going to see quite a bit of news come out about Ohio and how it is really truly the Bitcoin battleground state. And we look forward to being able to pass Bitcoin rights into law there as we move into November and send a strong message to everyone in the state that Bitcoin is here to stay, digital assets are here to stay. And this is an issue that not only will people like myself go and fight and advocate for to pass bills into law to protect, but even as far up as the president of the United States being willing to add Bitcoin as a strategic reserve

for the United States' assets. I'm excited. Guys, having some technical issues, obviously got kicked off. I'm the only host here. What an amazing show. We're going to wrap here, probably unpack this further tomorrow.

But wow, what a conversation, guys. It's really one of my favorite shows we've had in a long time. So thank you to everybody on the panel. Dennis, thanks for coming back up and for sharing that news. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out. Absolutely epic. And the reason we love doing this show every day, especially when something like that breaks in real time to hear all of you go, holy shit, because I heard it like seven times. You guys lifted your mics just to say, holy shit, in disbelief all at once. Remarkable moments. I'll likely never forget. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you back tomorrow at 10, 15 a.m. Eastern Standard

Time for Crypto Town Hall. Thanks, guys. Bye. Thanks, guys.