The Wolf Of All Streets - BTC Back Above $40,000 l Peter Schiff FUD | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

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testing testing how are you i'm good i just had an awesome uh awesome interview with scaramucci obviously your friends but man it's awesome yeah love anthony so can you can you maybe give us an overview on that i'd love like again what i want to do is every show is like you give an overview on your show uh and then ryan gives an overview on his show and before we kick off yeah how was nothing we just nothing we discussed was hypersensitive or particularly about the market today. I mean, the guy has just incredible stories. And so I consistently talk about it here all the time. A question I ask a lot of guests, like, do you think that Larry Fink is genuinely orange-filled?

Or do you think that Larry Fink is just talking his book? And he told a story about meeting Larry Fink in 2021 and the four seasons in Abu Dhabi. And Larry Fink said to him, Bitcoin is stupid. Like, do you really like this thing? It's crap. This is in 2021. So two years ago. But I do believe that we can tokenize everything and use the technology.

Right. And that he said that then a guy, Metzner, someone came in and started working on the Bitcoin spot ETF at BlackRock. I think the guy came from Ripple and legitimately orange-pilled Larry Fink. And now Larry Fink is genuinely like a huge Bitcoiner and believes in the tokenization of everything and flight to quality. He also told me a story about when he was a law student, I guess, at Harvard and Elizabeth Warren was a professor there,

how nice and genuine she was. And then in like 2019, Mooch was at a dinner, I think at a world economic forum or something. And a guy came up and took a picture with him, a Russian guy. And then all of a sudden Elizabeth Warren like demanded to know Anthony's involvement in like working with the Russian something or other on, you know, fixing the election, all this crazy shit. And that's when his like relationship with elizabeth warren went bad it's just crazy because you know we asked our guests hey what do you think

of jamie diamond's comments what do you think of elizabeth warren but you don't ask mooch that and get just like canned response you get literally his insight from meeting directly with them and talking to them about these topics it was just really really compelling and uh he was so this member he was the the first investor in um larry 10 million he seeded blackrock spotty tip actually the first time he ever mentioned that was the last time i interviewed him on my show he said i'm going to break this here but we we were the first people to send 10 million i think it was into their bit their private bitcoin trust which they were, which was effectively seeding for the ETF. He knew that at the time, but people didn't. But that's why they raised the

private trust, I think, which then became the seeding for the BlackRock Spot ETF. But he was the first 10 million. That was SkyBridge that put in the 10 million. And what I have thought on the markets in general, did you discuss that at all? Yeah. I mean, so you need a hyperbolic title. And he did an interview in Sam Moritz last week or a couple of days ago at WF where he said, you know, he thinks that after the halving, Bitcoin goes to $170,000. That's still what he thinks. You know, just basically take the Forex multiplier from current price if this is the price at the halving.

But he thinks we get around, you... Maybe he thinks we get around the previous all-time high, 69, by the end of this year. It's effectively what he said. He thinks the Ethereum spot ETF is coming. Quite a few things. This year? He didn't give us a specific date.

And that largely, obviously, this dip, as we've said, is TPTC, which will exhaust. Confirmation of a lot of things we thought. It's just interesting to ask someone the same questions and get their personal anecdotes on exactly what they know about that person and why. Yeah. And if anyone wants to check out the interviews on Scott's channel, Ryan, what did you talk about on your show today? It's kind of a high-level overview. We just spoke about kind of carrying on our discussion yesterday around GBTC

and the fact that yesterday seemed like the selling started to get a little bit tired. And as a result of the selling getting a little bit tired, you know,

the market went green again. And you saw that as soon as the market went green, the altcoins went crazy again. So, you know, Bitcoin went up like 2%, altcoins up 20%. So, yeah,

that's uh that's that's yeah that's pretty much what we covered yeah i was going through the outpoints now hey guys yeah i mean bitcoin also like really you know ran you you kind of been screaming about 39 600 which was the closing of the cme gap for me the level was always sort of around 38 600. i wasn't saying we were definitely going to go there but that, I talked about it a ton when we were on the way up, but that was sort of the area where price collapsed from Luna, right? So sort of the beginning of the 2022 contagion was, you know, between 38 and 40, to me, it was like 38.6. And that's exactly for the first time where Bitcoin just retested support. And if you look, that's also almost to the dollar at 2100 where ethereum tested its support almost to the dollar on solana from

like the luna correct collapse uh when it dropped down back to that level from support so like you know if you're a technical analyst you look for very key levels to be tested as support that's a bullish thing you don't want price to go up without coming back and testing key levels and all of the strongest coins uh came back and tested that same area from the beginning of the 2022 contagion brian you're glitching not sure if you're there that runs mike's not working but we can start going to the panel. Scott, we can kick it off with a market discussion. We've got Jason here, we've got Jesse, we've got Leon, Juan Leon, and we've got Mike. I've just sent you an invite as well, but maybe kick it off with a market overview, Scott. Sure.

I think Bitcoin is sort of struggling around that $40,000 area. Actually, it's literally $40,035 at the moment. Last I just checked, a lot of people pointing to that as a psychological key resistance now that it was lost as support. But I think Rand gave the quick appraisal that was correct, which is, you know, if Bitcoin finds even a temporary bottom, you see that all coins get a much, much bigger bounce. You know, and so across the board, let me check. Things are pretty flat, honestly. I mean, Bitcoin's up 3.3% in 24 hours. Ethereum's flat.

Solana's up 10, right? So you can see what's strong on the bounce. XRP, 2%. A few things. AVAX is up 13%. So a lot of the ones that were performing really strong kind of before this correction or in the past few months have bounced the hardest. And I think that's always really important to take a look at i literally haven't taken even a

superficial glance at the macro markets today so uh you know mcgloan can probably tell us what's going on there uh unless we want to stick for the moment onto crypto but yeah i think i think it would be would be foolish not to look at macro as well. So, Mike? Yeah, thanks for having us. Good to be back. No significant thing is what most people anticipated is economic stimulus out of China. We just got the latest round of that. What's the latest? They're going to be cutting the reserve rate.

There's just so many things they're doing. And CSI jumped. The Hang Seng jumped. But these are things that I think the responsive cell or certainly commodity people are just sitting and waiting for um so the macro is china is the key thing to look at is they have to stimulate because their economy is tilting over very similar to the way japan and soviet union did when they basically it mean reverted 30 years ago and that's just getting started in china you just noticed the dichotomy compared to a year ago as China was recovering.

Now it's completely tilted the other way. We're just seeing that happen in real time. So there's part of the wealth destruction issue, I think, in the macro that we have to be aware of. China, GDP is running minus almost 3 percent. U.S. PPI is still minus. And then to me in the in the macro from a bitcoin standpoint now we've had the normal correction this is just normal um most of us who trade without the bias of watching if i just fully expected that was this the silliest frenzy i've ever seen that etf launch

but the thing that's really mattering for me now is okay now we're back at 40 where's the next 10 000 come come come and i think mike not sure if you can just just sorry i'm trying to find the right moment jump in if you could just fix the mic a bit there's a bit of echo on your end okay if i pause and then just go to another mic and i can hop back on in a minute yeah you you do that you do that i'm not sure scott have you looked into the i know randy talked about it in your show as well. So anyone else check out Scott and Ryan's show there every day just prior to this space. But, Ryan, you were talking about the numbers when it comes to the ETF.

BlackRock's head of iShares said that by every measure, their spot Bitcoin ETF launch has, quote, gone incredibly well. And then James gave another update on that. So I'm not sure if Juan or Scott or Ryan, you want to give an update on the ETF side, because we keep going through the numbers every few days. Yeah, sure. I can jump in. Thank you guys for having me on. I'm Juan. I'm from Bitwise. On the ETF front, yeah, the price action is what it is, but the traction the ETFs have gotten is incredible. You see IBIT and BTC from BlackRock Infidelity above a billion dollars in assets now. Our ETF at Bitwise BITB is upwards of 500 million now. And in terms of the net buying and selling, we've seen the pressure that you guys have talked on this show about at length.

Again, sorry to jump in, just your mic could be better if that's possible, man. Sure, let me see what I can do on that. Let me switch out Mike. Mike, Mike,

so much better. Yeah, so much better. There's someone... Go ahead. Yeah, there's some... I was going to say it's banging next to you like a hammer, but I think it stopped now. So yeah, go ahead.

We'll go, Mike. We'll talk about macro, we'll talk about BTC price action, and then Juan on the ETF side. So we've got two different topics. Mike, you can be going first, and then Juan is fixing his mind. I'm really pointed out and concerned about for BTC.

I like to watch bitcoin versus gold and that um versus beta versus the s p 500 it started underperforming beta at the peak in 2021 when the s p 500 you know um and it's just in btc versus i'm not just gold but versus the s p 500 um started underperforming at the biggest liquidity pump ever in 2021. And now Bitcoin's what, more than the third from its peak and S&P 500 is making new highs. This to me, from a macro standpoint, if I'm sitting at a hedge fund, which I used to do in front of a value at risk model, is very bad for Bitcoin. Just pointing out facts, when the highest beta risk 24-7 traded risk asset will not go up and keep up with beta. That's showing you

divergent weakness. And I think that's what's happening macro and global. Now we have what to look forward to in Bitcoin. Everybody says, okay, we have to look forward to flows, inflows. Okay, well, great. But the problem is the ETF thing that those of us have been looking for, waiting for, for at least five years is done. Now, yes, it might happen in Ethereum, it's probably going to happen in a broad basket, which is the proper way for investors to get and now we're seeing the reality of what's kicking in. So my bias here is this leading indicator this world's most significant 24 seven trading game leading indicators probably going to continue to lead us

down into the recession like it led up on the way up 23 it led down in 22 and it's just showing that tilt so here's what i find quite unique about it is first of all that's the performance performances on a risk-adjusted basis has just been very poor now it depends when you look back you can go from pick out bottoms but certainly since this um biggest pump in liquidity in history ever has turned around. So now I see it is what do you got to look forward to? The biggest trade, the most significant arm trade last year was the by GBTC and orbit

versus either futures or Bitto, or this is what I've been looking for. And from first launches were first launched in 2017, all the big arm trades that I've seen from the hot hedge funds in the world are done in Bitcoin. They're just ARB'd out. There's just no major left there. Maybe there's some in Ether or ETH and ETH, there's still a discount there. But so now it's like, okay, now you got to prove you are better than beta. You have to prove, despite the fact you have higher volatility and greater

risk um that you will outperform the s&p 500 now the risk is that we just get this little recession that is never coming but it's happening in europe in china it's having problems and then bitcoin should be leading indicator so to me the macro is very poorly and i just want to see the beef of divergent strength and so, it's been showing divergent weakness. And the key thing I like to point out is I will stick, I'm not a fan of Peter Schiff, although I do know him personally. I sat next to him at the Western Republican Town Lamb Bank in 2013, I think it was. Got to know his fiance then. But it's just look at gold. Gold is, it's 52-week moving average is the highest ever and it's hovering there and even though etf flows are out that are outflows at some point that's going to flip and i

look at bitcoin it's just languishing and i see okay well there's a bull market that has a good reason to break out all it needs is is this competition from higher stocks and higher rates to go back a little bit and i think gold just takes off and that should be pressure for bitcoin so for now that's the outlook i'd like to see it change but the key point is bitcoin performance has been poor and i'm afraid the next 10 grand is going to be towards 30 rather than above than 50. so um i am willing to to bet you that we touch 50 before we touch 30, if you want. I gotta be careful betting.

So there's an inside scoop at Bloomberg. So I happen to do the internally with the lunch rating, but dinner, but Bloomberg has asked me not to, to cover Bitcoin less and focus more on commodities, but how it's related to its indication status for other markets. So if we make a public bet, I might get in trouble for that. But I have to be careful, but I just need to point out this,

the relative performance. And the key thing we need to think about is typically on this, I like listen to this program, but most people talk about trading Bitcoin. We hear about the long term, but that's the key point is, this is the world's most significant 24 seven trading vehicle. There's nothing even close on a global 24 seven basis. You don't hear people talking about gold like that. And that's why you have to

realize that if the we see more wealth destruction nights coming out of China, if that trickles down to the US, that's very unlikely this risk, I'd love to see it go up. But remember, it's still NASA involved. So it's just here's here's what I'll end with. It's just just very very rare for a high beta high volatility acid to go up when beta goes down mike why do you read i have a question for you rand can i do something really quick well i was gonna say actually i think it was last thursday or something or a week before i was with mike i think and gareth and mike i think gareth asked us maybe it was price was 45 and he said 30 or 60 first

i'm curious if at 45 which of those bets you would take with 60 as the top brand i said neither anytime soon. I think I said the same thing, but I would go 60 before I went 30, to be honest. That was my answer too. But that was close. From 40, I think 50 is an easier bet than 30. But from 45, I found that to be a really hard question. Mike, why is China not being able to stage any kind of recovery, all these stimulus? I mean, how badly broken is this economy?

I think it's worse than Japan was in the early 90s. I was working for a Japanese firm there, and I remember visiting Tokyo and running around the Imperial Palace. It was valued at a greater value than the state of Arizona. So to me, the inflection point came about two years ago with the unlimited friendship between President Xi and President Putin. That has flipped the switch on a global basis. You just look at U.S. imports from Mexico. They are taking off and they're dropping versus China. That's happening everywhere. The property crisis is a big deal. It's kicking in. And they basically just pissed off their two best export customers mr z just went too far now i read about this many books the one i write it read recently

that thing to get it right to get it right was price of time i think by chancellor and i've had to i've been delaying reading um ray dalio's principles because he was way too bullish china in my view he wrote that book before the unlimited friendship to me if you look for inflection points in history and time like the Molotov Rippentorff pact, right before you know, the beginning of World War Two, this is similar, it's happening. And it's because of two people, but it's the fit and the switch. When I'll end with this economy, the key thing I heard from an

economist was, in the last hundred years, if you're a country and you want to get wealthy, you cozy up to the U.S. Basically, they just pissed off the U.S. And you see it everywhere. Particularly now, it's not only on both sides of the aisle in the U.S., but it's all over the world. And Europe, that I hear, it's like, okay, well, get me out of China, re-shore, near-shore, anything but support this country that supported a war.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. Juan, you had gotten interrupted before. Maybe we should head back to what you were talking about as well. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Can you hear me better now? It's a little better. Go ahead. Okay.

Sorry, my connection may be kind of bad today. But, yeah. Yeah, it just went bad. Yeah, yeah. It's worse, Kwan. It's a bit echoey, and I'm sure if you're using Bluetooth, maybe disconnect from that. That could help. Okay. Andrew, is Kwan there?

Yeah, give it a shot. Sorry, Kwanwan you there yeah give it give it a shot let's start one one andrew uh yeah give it a shot one because i really want an etf overview that's just have you looked at the numbers while waiting for kwan you all ran i can look i have a one if you give me two seconds i have a dashboard on the ran did you run is uh anyone else has anyone else looked at it? Is my connection better now? Oh, Juan, you're much better. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, perfect. Perfect, perfect. Go ahead. Sorry about that, guys.

Yeah, I think everything that Mike said was on the macro front is really interesting. I think that sort of segues back to Bitcoin in the sense that we're sitting now in the price of Bitcoin where we are about 20% down from the highs after the ETF launch of $48,000. So we're now 20% lower, which is triggering down the prices now for technical people.

It's down below the 20-day, 10-day, 5-day moving average. So people are starting to look at it from a technical perspective. And I think it was Arthur Hayes who pointed out, if we go 30% below, we're going to be hitting below the 35K level at 33. So 35 is seeing is that the equity markets are still still going up. The yield on the S&P is matches right now the yield on the 10 year treasury, which means that the equity risk premium has disappeared from equities at the same time that rate expectations are resetting. And there's the geopolitical risk, some of which Mike commented on. So we're sitting at macro turbulence that the equity markets are not pricing in and that if equity markets go down, could influence Bitcoin even lower. Now, in terms of going to the ETF

question that you guys mentioned, I think it's been a stellar performance, not price-wise, but in terms of assets and flows. 11 days in, we're sitting at just about a billion of net buying. That is including the selling of GBTC plus all of the flows that we've seen in the ETFs. So that's really strong traction. But even then, you consider it a net positive billion over 11 days. If you average it out, that's less than 100 million in net buying a day. On a market where Bitcoin trades roughly, it's trading around $35, $40 billion a day. So it's less than, it's about half a percent of net new buying. So that's really not going to prop up the price.

But I think that's all short term. And as I think you guys have pointed out very well in the show here, these are short term currents. The selling on GBTC is getting exhausted. And then longer term, you're going to continue to see buying pressure on the ETFs because more institutional investors are going to be allocating to Bitcoin. Right now, you've seen these massive net inflows. But on a lot, we talk at Bitwise, we talk to a lot of advisors and institutional investors. Many of them have yet, we've been talking to them about these ETFs coming up, and many of them have yet, we've been talking to them about these ETFs

coming up, and many of them have yet to have the compliance departments approve these because they couldn't approve them prior to the ETFs launching. Now, the ETFs have launched, but these huge pension funds, foundations, institutional investors, and even big RIAs, they have investment committees and compliance departments that there's a lag effect. It takes a while. It takes a while to make these decisions. So it probably won't be till the second half of the year when many of these RIAs and

institutional investors really start being able to allocate across their models for portfolios. So I think there's a great wave of buying that's going to be ongoing throughout this year and beyond that, which will be very positive for price. So short term is what it is. But I think the picture, especially with a having coming up in April, and the net buying that I think will be will continue to see throughout the years is very constructive for the for price. Can I piggyback on that a little bit? Those are great comments. I really appreciate the key thing I've learned with advisors is they will focus on the number one lessons in the history of investing is what are my compounded earnings?

This is what I've heard in gold and commodities forever. Why is there only 180 billion in ETFs tracking gold? Because there's no earnings. And that's what I think people are forgetting who are specifically in the ETF. I'm sorry, in the crypto space is the rest of the world. I mean, the big bulk of the trillions of invested oftentimes focus on the long term earnings from maybe Ethereum or ether has been Bitcoin does it so I'll give you an example I think you should expect for inflows total maybe

ETFs just look at gold total ETFs are about 180 billion. Right now there's about 50 billion in Bitcoin ETFs. Yeah, that's, that's a that's a really great point, Mike. And that's we we when we talk to advisors, we try to explain to them that all crypto assets are not the same thing. Many advisors are just beginning to understand Bitcoin. And, you know, Ethereum is next in line. But it's a whole ecosystem that really is differentiating now with Bitcoin being the

store of value, the digital gold, if you will, of the ecosystem. But Ethereum being a very different animal, you can categorize it as a cash flow producing asset, unlike Bitcoin and more akin to a crypto tech stock, if you will. And I think people it's resonated with investors when we presented that way, because they can they can understand how to think about it as a cash flow producing asset, as a P&L modeling asset. And I think that they have very different markets. So I think you're right pointing out gold ETFs have 180 billion. But the market for assets such as Ethereum with Ethereum spot ETFs coming whenever they come, I think it'll be sooner than the 10 years it took Bitcoin ETFs. Now that there's president, we heard Hester Pierce say that they won't be going through more court or they'll try

to avoid going through more court battles in order to approve the next ones. They'll use president. So when those ETFs come, I think that's a huge other market that will unlock for advisors to be able to allocate to a different asset in the crypto space that they'll be learning more about and getting more comfortable with. And by the way, Mario, I don't know if you guys know, but Juan, we have referenced your Bitwise report a hundred times. We've had Ryan and Matt up here, but you were actually the author of that RIA survey, correct? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And thank you guys for having me over on today. Yeah, we published that, which was a really interesting survey coming on the heels. You know, we usually publish, in prior years, we've usually published that survey at the end of January. But this year,

with our expectations for the Bitcoin ETF approvals, we thought it was best to get it ahead of time and publish it because of the results, what they said coming about the ETF approval. And it was really interesting. If you guys remember that, that survey showed that less than 30, that about 39 percent of advisors were expecting an ETF approval this year, which was a big gap compared to the Bloomberg analysts who were expecting an ETF approval. Scott, is that the survey we kept mentioning that said that? Yeah, the Bitwise Betify survey. Yeah, it was that one. Juan's the one who actually did that. We've given Bitwise all the credit.

That was Juan's project. Yeah, so Juan, that was a survey that I think was one's project yeah so kwan kwan kwan that was a um a survey that that i think was one of the most important points in our discussion as we were trying to predict what's going to happen after the etf especially yeah and especially what it said for the audience to refresh your memories like uh trad fire was not expecting etf um it was like our own little bubble that thought was imminent and trad fire thought was less likely than not that an ETF could approve. Is that a good way to summarize it, Juan? Yeah.

But it also said that only 19% of RIAs even had a way to gain Bitcoin exposure for their clientele. The four contrasting stats were that 39% of advisors were expecting an ETF approval, while the Bloomberg analysts had a 90% plus probability. That on one side. So expectations were really tempered by advisors. And then the second one was the other one you just mentioned. Only 19% said they were able to allocate, they're currently able to allocate in crypto accounts.

But 88% said that they were waiting for an ETF approval in order to be able to buy. In large part because of what I mentioned earlier, not only is there interest, you have Larry Fink now publicizing it and endorsing it. But the ETF, given that it's in a regulated vehicle, a 1933 Granter Act trust, it unlocks a lot of the compliance requirements. How long, how long for those, for those, for those people to, to, to invest in ETF, how long would it take for them to allocate capital?

Is it a long process, a lot of due diligence and going through the, but et cetera, or is it relatively quickly when they decide to pull the trigger? Once, once they get, once they get clearance from their investment committees and, and compliance departments, it's relatively quickly.

It's the process of getting that approval and that clearance that is a long lead time. How long is that lead time? That pipeline, that lead time for us when we're working with the Morgan Stanley's of the world to get on their platform and get approval can be a due diligence process that can be as little as three months and as long as nine months or a year. So it's quite a long process. And one more question. I remember asking this a really long time ago. Does that process start before the ETF approval? Because if they expect it to likely be approved or possibly be approved, would they start

this process in advance or will they need to wait for the approval before the process even starts? It varies by institution and RIA, but most of them are usually handcuffed to, until the thing is not out and in the world, there's no point in trying to convince and work with their compliance departments. So most of them, we've been talking, we've been in the market since 2017, talking to advisors for years now. So most of them, we've been talking, you know, we've been in the market since 2017, talking to advisors for years now. And most of them have said, like, look, you've been educating us for years, we're ready. But our formal due digital process can't start till after the ETFs launch. So we're now working with all these advisors that we've been talking for years in getting that process started. So that's why we expect a lot of continued allocation throughout this year and the next

as a lot of these advisors finally go through that formal process and get the approvals from the compliance department. I've got another question for you, Juan. By the way, Scott, one thing I'm realizing is just it's annoying how the smartest people in any ecosystem, I'm talking about crypto now, barely get any exposure. And they probably don't spend the time doing shows and doing a lot of media, but they barely get any exposure.

And everyone listens to the people that are just trying to misinterpreting reports, et cetera. I know, Juan, your report was interpreted in so many different ways by so many different people. And it's a shame that we didn't get your voice on here earlier and others don't invite you to their show. So you can explain your own damn report. Did you discuss the ETF with them at all?

Did you bring it up as part of the survey or as a separate discussion? And what was their response? Yeah, well, we posed questions such as, what is your interest in buying an ETF? Are you interested and able to buy before or after the ETF launches? So those were the type of questions that we pose to them. Sorry, did you? One more question before. Did you just with your answer? Did you talk about the ECTF? Sorry if I missed it. Did we talk about what? Sorry. Did you ask them about the ECTF? Is that even on their radar? Oh, sorry. No, not formally in the in the in the survey.

But in conversations we were we were asking. And for most people, it wasn't it wasn't on the radar. People, many advisors were still even unaware of the Bitcoin ETFs coming, having coming to approval to a rejection or approval in early January. And Ethereum ETFs were even more lost on the radar. So yeah. And how is the... Sorry, go ahead. So I was just going to say that this is something that we who are in the crypto ecosystem talking

and thinking about this all day don't realize a lot of time, which is that most of these people are not allocated a Bitcoin. So they don't think about it at all. And they and the headlines they still had in their head all throughout all of last year was that was the 2022 headlines. Now that Larry Fink is singing a different tune. Now they're waking up, they're starting to ask questions, they're starting to think about it. But most most people out most professional investors out there think spend very little time thinking of Bitcoin and still get out and allocate their portfolios.

Even then, it'll be 1% to 5% of their allocation, meaning 1% to 5% of the time spent a day thinking about Bitcoin. You're the perfect person to answer these questions because we're always debating, stratifying their sentiment towards crypto, how quickly they'll get into it, how interested are they in the ETF. So my next question, you kind of hinted at the answer. And Andrew, I just muted your mic because you had a bit of echo. But the question I had for you is the sentiment.

You kind of hinted that their sentiment is still kind of a bit lagging. And if we get outside our crypto bubble, where we moved on from Sandbank Manfred and Alameda and all that mess. And, you know, all we talk about is the ETF. You're saying in TradFi, they're still in that old mindset, the FTX mindset, mostly. Is that correct? Yeah, I think things are changing now that we're through a year where Bitcoin was up 157 percent. They're starting to see that when they look at, you know, when they rebalance the models coming into this year and they look at all asset classes and they see the performance, they're starting to wake up to it. Obviously, Larry Fink has now been in the in the media quite a lot with with these launches, talking, endorsing Bitcoin in a way that he hadn't hadn't much done before. And that's grabbing the attention of advisors. But up until, you know, Q4 of last year, throughout all of most of last year, when we talked to advisors, they were still stuck in 2022.

So I think, to your point, advisor sentiment, I think, will continue to have a lag to what happens in crypto prices and crypto industry developments. I think now that the ETFs are out, making the asset class more mainstream and Larry Fink and big people like that in the media, I think advisors will start paying attention a little more and that lag might close a bit. But I still see sentiment and allocation as a lag to what happens in the industry, in the professional investor and advisor community. I wanted to get another person. I would probably give context to this.

This is Dennis. Dennis, I know you speak to a lot of the same people with Satoshi Act Fund. I would love to get your thoughts. And Andrew, you can jump in at any time um especially on this point but the question i have for you dennis and we'll go to andrew is the the sentiment when it comes to track fire like how long do you think it will take for them to completely change their mindset towards crypto will it take a a massive rally in the price of bitcoin beyond what we've had so far for them to pay attention does it take more time for them to listen to larry shilling Bitcoin time and time again? What do you expect?

Yeah, shilling always is helpful for sure. Sorry, Dennis. I'm not sure if you can improve your mic a tiny bit. Today's not a good day with mics. Let me turn my Bluetooth off and see if it gets better real quick. Perfect. Appreciate it.

And Andrew would love to go to you right after this go ahead dennis and in the meantime i'd love to go through the comments like for people in the audience because i know yeah it is it is for people in the audience like we're all in our crypto bubble and we'll talk the same language we're all watching the same news talking about the same things now you're getting an idea of of what people outside our bubble which is a much bigger piece of the pie what they think about crypto and where their sentiment is at. So we'd love to get your thoughts in the comments on the discussion so far. Yeah, thanks for having me up again, by the way. I was saying earlier just that there

can never be enough shilling. So more shilling of the BTC ETF is helpful. Yeah, I mean, personally, for me, I've been a little I was I'm to clarify, I am not a trad fi expert. I'm not even a TA expert. But I've always been more so bullish on Bitcoin's price going up post halving. So I kind of was somewhat expecting, I would say I would have been more seeing Bitcoin go flat here. I think it going down a little bit is a little bit of a surprise to me, but I really just didn't see ever at any point where all of a sudden the ETF is here and then we wake up and Bitcoin's at 60, 70, 80, 100K because of new inflows. As Juan was pointing out, which Juan, thank you again for reaching out, by the way. It was a great meeting with one of your colleagues. I appreciate you setting that up. And Scott, I know you've been trying to help me get some meetings going too. And I'll mention a little in just a moment why I'm trying to have meetings with ETF issuers here. But ultimately, what Juan was saying is so accurate. These people still need to do the due diligence. They need to do the research. They need to really become comfortable with the ETF.

And I didn't think they were ever going to do that until the ETF was launched. So it is a super important moment. We all know that critical moment, but it was a foundational moment. It was not where we're going to see this huge bull run the moment the ETF launches, but it needed to happen so that we can have this big bull run that is sort of imminent now because of the launch. So as Juan pointed out, three to six months for these RIAs just to take a look at the Bitcoin ETF and to do their due diligence. And then once they have collectively, then you're certainly going to see some new inflows. But in another area, another arena, there's going to be a lot of money, in my opinion, coming from pensions, state pension funds in particular.

State pension funds currently sit on $5.5 trillion of assets under management. And currently today, state pension funds hold ETFs, they hold gold ETFs. In fact, there's an entire portfolio theory around holding just a tiny bit of gold in your portfolio that will help to de-risk it. And we sort of believe the same thing is true with the Bitcoin ETF or with Bitcoin broadly for the state pension funds. In fact, we plan to back that up with research. We're working really closely with our internal research team to produce a paper that would back up the claim that essentially by adding a very small amount of Bitcoin to your balance sheet, to your portfolio, that you will be able to significantly de-risk your portfolio due to it being like a non-correlated asset. So we're working really closely with these state pension fund managers.

We're going to be working really closely with the treasurers soon because we are at Satoshi Action crafting a resolution that will push state pension fund managers and treasurers to start studying the Bitcoin ETF. But that's going to take time, right? Because we're working with lawmakers to get that pushed through. And we already have a few states that have raised their hand, they're ready to do it, to start studying the Bitcoin ETF. But that's going to be a long process, right? Because once they get the resolution passed, then they got to set up the committee, then they got to set up a study, then we got to start having those conversations between the different ETF issuers and also those state pension fund managers. And then eventually they're going to say, okay, yeah, this is a good idea. And let's

put out the report that says it's something we should buy. And then from there, you have the opportunity to start the process of maybe having them allocate. And so that's a bare minimum. I mean, that's like eight to 12 months away. So but once it starts happening, I mean, that's an incredible impact that it could have on the price of Bitcoin. And for those of you that are wondering why

I might be having those conversations at Satoshi Action, we passed, craft and pass public policy to protect Bitcoin and digital assets. And we also, our new recent effort is to get a bill or an ETF

passed at the state level that would encourage these pension fund managers to engage with these ETF issuers who, I mean, most of these, and maybe Juan can tell you, I don't know about Bitwise, but certainly at a lot of other ETF issuers, they already talked to state pension fund managers. They already talked to the treasurer. So they have these, a lot of these people have these relationships. The reason why we matter as an organization, as Satoshi Action, is because we're a third-party validator. We don't own any stocks, any equities. We don't have ETF. I don't own the ETF. I just own Bitcoin. I'm just an advocate. I'm a nonprofit. I don't even own Bitcoin mining stocks,

right? Because I try to make sure that I maintain a level of credibility when I go into these conversations. But it's really valuable to have us come in and say, yes, you should do XYZ. Yes, you should do this study and to hand walk it through because it's not a special interest, corporate interest that's doing that. It is a nonprofit that's doing it. That's backed up by an additional nonprofits research. So that can be really helpful. That's sort of an update for you guys to have where we're at right now. And we're, you know, we've talked to quite a few different ETF issuers and their partners, and, you know, we're hoping to talk to more of them and continue to push this conversation forward. Yeah, Dennis, that's become that's become my favorite pitch. We often have Donnish, Dr. Donnish on here, who hosts Mario's 9am finance spaces. And I used to co host him with him. And I

just kind of kept whittling and whittling away. And the final point that got him to buy Bitcoin was when I told him, you can hate this thing, but look at what it does for your portfolio as far as your sharp ratio. Right? Like we have proof it has idiosyncratic risk. It improves the sharp ratio.

You need to have a percentage of your portfolio in this. And he finally agreed and started to buy it. And that's the, to me now, that's the pitch to the people who don't believe is that you can hate this thing and still make money, right? And then eventually I hope that they get orange-pilled, but that it's good for your portfolio and the math supports it and we don't even need to debate the ethos of it

or your deep-seated belief in it. Yeah, that's right. And then, sorry, one quick point, one I wanted to make, it's kind of ties into what you had said earlier about at the launch this is like this the etf being issued it was like the moment we breached the great wall of china right like we the war didn't end the the the huns didn't win when they reached the great wall of china but it was the beginning of the end of that that chinese empire right at that time that was trying to fight back against the mongols so we have now put the key into the gate and we have turned it and the gates are now open um and now

you're going to see over time could be six months it could be a year it could be two years it could be five years to be honest um But at the end of the day, the gate is now open and you're going to see some really serious things beginning to change, especially because you have the largest asset managers in the entire planet running around, promoting, advocating for, probably investing in also government relations of their own. And this is where you start to really see not only at the state level, but in Washington, DC, things start to really shift dramatically. If RAs don't get it yet, Dennis, like if they don't get it yet, imagine the day that Larry Fink is doing one of these interviews on CNBC or something and says, we recommend a 2%

portfolio allocation. Yeah, not only that, but right, that's literally all it would take for every RA in the country to pay attention to this and consider it. And not only that, but right. That's literally all it would take for every RIA in the country to pay attention to this and consider it. And not only that, the interesting thing is that like, I love what you're saying about how people aren't going to be all like, no, these people are not going to be Bitcoin maxis, right? Like, in my opinion, I've talked to a lot of my friends who are Bitcoin only. I'm Bitcoin only. I'm, you know, people would say I'm like a soft version of a Bitcoin maxi, so to speak. I can, I can, I can be Bitcoin only and get along with my crypto friends to make sure that America is a leader on this technology. I think it's super important to be

able to do that. But these people that are coming in, they're not going to be hardcore like me. They're not going to be hardcore even like 50% of what I probably put out. But they're going to buy Bitcoin because like you said, it has a measurable impact on their portfolio. And that's going to be a lot of people. Like, there's going to be a lot of people. They don't really care about, you know, unfortunately, you know, sort of like the freedom aspect and like how Bitcoin unlocks. But that's a funnel. Yeah.

But that is a funnel. This makes my situation better. And that's going to be probably at least 50% of the planet that does that, at bare minimum. Yeah. And they're all welcome. They're all welcome. They're all welcome because like, you know, listen, there's a lot of people who came in through Doge or came in through NFTs or came in through like metaverse hype and found their way to Bitcoin. So, you know, all roads lead sort of in that direction. I think, uh, Juan, you were about to say something

then Andrew. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just, uh, just quickly. Uh, first of all, Dennis, yeah. What do you, what are you guys are doing at Satoshi action is, is so vital. And, and as you said,. And as you said, we're talking to pension funds and big institutional investors all the time. And it definitely helps to have a partner like you guys on the lobbying side, on having that impartial third. Advocacy side. Advocacy. On the advocacy side. Yeah, so it's great to be connected with you guys, and we hope to build that relationship. And the analogy about the Great Wall is totally apt. And Scott, your point of what you were saying, I think it's totally right. And what's funny is that the performance metrics, the sharp ratios of Bitcoin has been there for years. And RIAs and investors have been apprehensive because, you know, it's emerging, it's risk, it's an unknown asset class.

Now, the funny thing is now that Larry Fink and big investors are in and starting to promote it, now it goes from, oh, I, you know, if I don't put it in my portfolio, it now becomes the opposite of what was before, which is now the career, before the career risk was putting it in your portfolio. Now the career risk is going to become not putting it in your portfolio, even though the metrics have always been the same. So it's a wonderful asset in terms of the diversification and asymmetric risk benefits that it can add to a diversified portfolio. People should have been putting it in their portfolios all along, but they certainly will start now. And I think that's going to be great for adoption and great for portfolio performance for the average investor. Andrew? Just real quickly, the Bitcoin ETF, you know, from a macro standpoint, it's short term,

medium term and long term bullish for Bitcoin. And here are some reasons why. Short term, the inflows right now after nine or 10 days are breaking records versus anything else that's ever been launched. That's remarkable, given the outflows we're seeing on the GBTC side. All of the other brands associated that have launched Bitcoin ETFs are seeing inflows that are breaking records that short term, medium term and pulling back the curtain a little bit more on TradFi. So we talk about RIAs. One thing to go to the third or fourth curtain as it relates to RIAs. RIAs are all set on like three or four platforms that they use as their back end for custody and doing trades and all that stuff. Those three or four platforms, again,

are going to take time to approve these products, allow these products, recommend these products for these products to become a very simple asset allocation portion of client portfolios. The way to look at that is when gold ETFs were approved, you can go look at that parabola, right? And that parabola is kind of mind bending. It's explosive growth. But, you know, there was some time where that, you know, parabolic move didn't hit quite yet. Well, that was because they were waiting for approvals, three months, six months, nine months, for everything to be approved inside of these captive sort of systems that are trad five for people to be able to allocate capital to it. Long term, you know, once you have, you know, one, two, three, five percent, you know, allocation model to a, you know, alpha asset like Bitcoin, that's when you see the parabolic move that you saw with gold, you know, ETFs. So short term, midterm, long term.

And that again, that midterm, I can't stress enough that mid-term number. So places like Ameriprise, which has 20-some thousand advisors. Places like Edward Jones, which has 20-some thousand advisors. Those places haven't approved clients to be able to move into that stuff yet. Back-end RIA custody organizations like Pershing, for example, that that will take time to move through. But when it does move through, it will then be available. So we're seeing just the first fruits with these billions of implos that have gone into the, you know, the quote unquote new nine. It's pretty remarkable stuff. You know i i sign off on everything that that juan said

about where we're headed uh in terms of adoption of this stuff um but we're you know we've breached you know uh retail we absolutely have i i've been fairly you know fairly stunned at the pace at which inflowers are going specifically into BlackRock, Bitwise, and the like. Andrew, meanwhile, you just tweeted, you know, 45 minutes ago or something, almost $800 million again from Grayscale today. Yeah, you got to love Barry. Listen, that's a unique story as it relates to the folks that have been in that product for a long time and the entanglement with DCG and the money that DCG owes everybody. There's a large portion of folks that are in that product that don't care about tax

ramifications and just want out. They made a bet that they're gonna you know charge 1.5 percent you know 5x bigger than really anybody else um and the truth of the matter is is there's going to be a portion of people that sell that product that end up in in another uh bitcoin etf product um but but there's a different dynamic that's going on there where people just want out of the quote unquote Barry ecosystem. That will continue for a while. My guess is, is that there's going to be, you know, in the next six months, if you were to couple, let's call it BlackRock and Fidelity and one other, their AUM together is going to be bigger than GBTC and Grayscale's Bitcoin ETF. And then probably by the end of the first year, my guess is BlackRock will have more

assets under management in their ETF than Grayscale will. So, yeah, interesting, interesting dynamic. It's not, you know, people are like, oh, in the second week, it'll slow down. Or this person, particular day, it'll slow down. Well, yesterday, it didn't slow down. And then today, it's as big as it's ever been in terms of outflows. Yeah, it's tough. I thought that was somebody else jumping in, but it was behind your mic.

Jesse, you haven't even had an opportunity yet. I mean, what are you thinking about the market at this point i actually just tweeted uh one of my classic sort of uh check sentiment tweets is the bottom of the bitcoin correction and yes no right now it's uh 59 no 41 yes i usually go with the opposite of what the crowd says what's what's what's what's the question what would before you go just said i said is the bottom of the Bitcoin correction in? Yes or no? Just binary. Like, do you think that we've hit the bottom of this or no? Before going to Jesse, ask that question for the audience as well.

Whatever Scott put out. You can go to his poll, but put it in the comments as well. I'm going to go through them. What were the poll results? Now, let him put it in the comments because I want to listen to the context. I want them to see the question yeah i just did it and it didn't right now uh no is leaving so people are still generally uh more bearish than bullish people human human emotion is so freaking dumb and no one's immune to it and it's crazy to see that happen time and time again you asked that question two weeks weeks ago, everyone would say the exact opposite. And now here we are. But Jesse, go ahead.

Good morning, Crypto Town Hall. First time being on here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I don't know how much time I have, you know, wolf of all streets, because we'll try to keep it as short as possible, just so I don't go on a long rant or ramble. But yeah, I posted a chart on, you guys post the crypto tone hall and then I put in the messages as well. So I don't know if you want to follow along on that. But, you know, basically we're talking about, you know, the quick recap of Bitcoin was,

we're talking about a higher probability reversal at 16,800. And we had laid out four longer term targets and all four longer term targets were hit, including the forty eight thousand six hundred ish. And since October, you know, leading up into the ETFs, we were looking at price was starting to get overbought. It was pumping and we were calling out there was starting to be bearish divergence, meaning if you're not, you know, in the technical world, you know, price is going up and making higher highs,

while the relative strength index, RSI, is making lower highs. So we're calling out, hey, watch out for bearish divergence, watch out for bearish divergence. And then we are even saying, hey, it could go up and hit longer term target four as a possible scenario, and then start to go through this correction after that. You know, similar to what Dennis believes, I was thinking that we would go up and hit, you know, longer term target three or target four, we did, we hit target four. And then we'd have a correction before the halving, which is estimated to be, the last time I checked was April 17. And, you know, I didn't predict any of this. This is just probabilities that I was looking at and scenarios I was looking at. And so now it's going to be sorry. Sorry to interrupt. But yeah, can you focus on like where we're at now and correction. We had a sell signal on the 12th and we still have time. We still have lower prices to go, in my opinion, because I wouldn't

take that $30,000 bet that Rand was talking about. But Target 3 has two major reasons why, and that's about $37,000 Bitcoin. And in my personal opinion, I don't think the bearish divergence gets cleared out until we're below $35,000. I think there's strong support at about $34,300. So will it automatically hit target four that I posted on that chart? It's not guaranteed, obviously, right? Nothing is. But I would be surprised if Target 3

doesn't get hit. We're at Target 2 right now. We're exactly in the middle of Target 2. And Target 3 is about $37,000. And then Target 4 is down below $35,000 and $34,300. And timing-wise, right? So timing-wise, the next possible buy-the buy the dip scenario, in my personal opinion, is before the next halving. So if I'm looking at the chart right now, I'm looking at, you know, at the earliest, maybe we start to see like a big move, you know, middle of February, early March. But it could be as long as, you know, middle of March before we start to see that this correction be over. And so not only prices going lower, but actually more time. And that's usually the most painful for the permabulls and perma bears. You know, as far as from technical analysis, you're looking at, okay, yeah, people can handle the prices going lower, but the timing of it probably takes longer than what people mostly think.

So I would say lower prices, target three at least, most likely target four to clear out the bearish divergence. And then start to look for like maybe bullish divergence on the daily chart. I saw Scott posted on the four-hour chart. And so that's more shorter term. You can see a bounce on the shorter term for a four hour chart. But see bullish divergence on the daily chart, you know, moving forward. Thanks, man. Thank you.

And Scott, can I tell you something? Yeah. You can't, someone can't come in be respectful and nice to you and then you're mean to him. We have to create that reputation of being yes, you will. We have to make you. We have to make you a nice guy.

You know, I was trying to hone in on the extreme value of what he was saying to the audience. The way you do it. I do agree. I do agree, by the way, that I'm looking for oversold daily, which hasn't happened yet. So we'll see. Don't change the topic. But on that point, I think we've done a great cover. I'm going through the comments, by the way.

Most people are bullish in the comments. Unlike your audience was mostly bearish, yeah? Yeah, well, it's still kind of shaking out. Perfect, perfect. 60%. Perfect representation of your personality. I'm joking. I'm going a bit too far with this,

but I think this is a good time to wrap. Scott, any final words? Yeah, I'm going to go cry because you were so mean to me, and then we can come back tomorrow and be friends again. I thought this was actually really amazing. I'm glad we got Juan here. You know, I feel like, Juan, we've had like the entirety of the Bitwise team here. And somehow we missed you and you were the one actually behind all the incredible reporting that we had commented on.

So I appreciate having you here, Jesse, for the first time. And Dennis, always great to do what you're doing. And you can just keep bothering me because I'm bad at the email intros, as you can see, although I try. Thank you guys for the support to our entire Bitwise team and happy to be here. I hope to join you guys in the future again. This was great. You will, for sure. Thanks, Scott and Mario. Good to be here. I hope to join you guys in the future again. This was great. You will, for sure. Thanks, Scott.

Mario, good to be here. I'm very excited to be working on this stuff. We need to get as many of these pension funds to buy Bitcoin as possible. And maybe one day Bitcoin will fix the pension funds too. Can't wait. Cool. Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye.

Thanks, guys. Bye.