The Wolf Of All Streets - BTC Back to 2021 Levels! Is This the Ultimate Shakeout? #CryptoTownHall
Episode Date: February 5, 2026In this Crypto Town Hall episode (Feb 2025), hosts and guests discuss brutal market capitulation across Bitcoin, crypto, silver, and equities amid widespread despair. They debate whether Bitcoin is tr...uly decentralized, the impact of recent Epstein-file revelations tied to Adam Back/Blockstream, shifting OG sentiment, concentration risks (e.g. MicroStrategy), and whether the "digital gold" narrative still holds. Panelists weigh value vs. utility, macro pressures, potential bounces, and whether this is healthy purging or deeper structural damage—while urging listeners to re-evaluate priors and do their own research.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall every day here on X at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard time. And what a day to be alive.
Bitcoin and crypto markets looking extremely healthy. Everyone's happy. No depression or anger in the comments at all.
Now, obviously, crypto breaking down alongside seemingly everything else, hard to host even smelting town hall today with
silver down from, I don't know, 90 bucks to 74 bucks.
It is disgusting out there.
If you look at the headlines, it's nothing but doom, death and despair for all markets.
AI, metals, crypto, if you look at any headline, everything is apparently going to zero and fast.
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this inspiring, exciting, amazing market that we are in right now.
Dave, I'm going to go to you, and then I'm going to let you and Mike just talk.
Well, I mean, no, I don't want to get into that.
You know, it is what it is, right?
You know, everything is getting sold, quote, cash is king.
The fact that we're printing tons of it shouldn't matter, right?
You know, so there you go.
Everyone get up, tinfoil hats on, and dig your show.
shelters in the backyard, get plenty of canned goods, and that's it.
And we'll wait for it.
Now, all, all bullshit aside, the, there is, you know, this is what capitulation looks like.
It is someone, you know, it's hard for me to tell because I lost all my follows and followers on X.
My one public service announcement for myself is, if you think you're following me, you probably aren't,
because X has suspended my account because somebody hacked it and they, for some reason,
refuse to give it back to me.
So I'll ask everyone, if you do like my voice even remotely, please click on me and follow
me because I'm starting to give up.
I keep getting form letters every morning from them saying you can't get followed.
So, you know, whatever.
They can't verify it's me, which by the way tells you something about X.
And since everyone who's verified knows you have to give an ID and show them your ID.
they can compare the one from my original account to the one that I just set up to this one.
But for some reason, they're not technologically capable enough of doing so.
So, you know, I don't really understand.
But in any case, you know, I put it on a video this morning.
I think that we are seeing capitulation.
I have no idea where the bottom is, although I suspect your point that 57, which is the 200-day
moving average, is likely to be something that's going to get tagged.
What you're seeing...
It's also the 50 MA on the month.
by the way. Right. So I mean, look, when you look at that this, the one most interesting fact I saw this morning as I was going through, there are two things that I care about. One is that the Bitcoin hash rate weirdly, it's because of the adjustment, despite everything being horrible two days ago and everything through it, tip back up over a billion terra hashes. This is not what it looks like at bottoms. And if you go back through here,
history, you can see what bottoms look like. But here we are. You know, network effects are very
difficult to unravel. If Bitcoin is going to fail entirely, then the price today makes sense.
If that probability is higher, but that's really what you're betting on. Because absent Bitcoin
failing entirely, then the price right now looks like everyone's kind of dumping out at the same time.
And we've seen this every time. I mean, this morning it had rallied back up.
over 70 and then what happened, NASDAQ and all the other markets started falling and everything
started falling together. And so that's bound to happen. It's a question to figure out where the
price zones really are. And Mike and I can disagree on his 10,000 call and my, you know, in the 50s
call, it doesn't really matter. The truth is, is where will we zoom out? Now, a couple of things,
macro-wise. This will be the largest tax refund season in history, but it's only February.
and that generally takes a couple of months.
It's generally in May that we start seeing the effect of that.
And that, by the way, is a significant amount.
We're talking about $100 billion more in tax refunds this year than last year,
so $400 billion in total.
Some of it, some of it will end up in a lot of these distressed assets.
The truth is, right now, you just have to not be leveraged.
You know, if you're going to try to pick a bottom, you know, good luck to you.
I would say DCA and understand.
It's really a question of conviction.
But one other point I want to make, and this is a Gora point, and I think this matters.
I've been saying this on this space for two years now.
At some point, value is going to matter.
And what we're seeing in the world of crypto is Bitcoin makes us crazy, but it's a bloodletting.
And it's a bloodletting that makes sense, right?
You see tokens that you don't know where the value is going to come from, getting out.
absolutely destroyed. So this is something that Micah said for years and the one thing I agree with
them is that until all the memes that have no chance of monetization, all the bullshit gets led out
of the crypto market, that's when you're going to find a bottom. And to be blunt, I don't think
we're there yet. I think that until founders actually start coming out with definitive statements
of where value is going to be and how token holders benefit alongside them, as opposed to treating
tokens as non-dilutive capital, we're not at the bottom. And so I do think, however, we are a lot
closer to the bottom. And I think that newer projects are going to do this. And, you know,
Goro, I've been teeing you up because I do think that this is important. This is crypto town hall,
after all. And we can talk about markets and despair. What we really need to do is, is, I don't know
if Kyle Simani leaving multi-coin means a damn thing, but I do think that we're getting signals that the
market is changing. And I think that could be for the better.
I think he left multi-coin, but he said to focus on forward industries and he's taking all
of us payout for multi-coin and forward stock and is still the CEO forward. So I don't know.
Right. Well, but it's not like he's leaving the market. No, no, I understand that. But,
but he's making a bet. That's my point. My point is he's making a bet on a very specific set of
things as opposed to placing his bets and be and dumping on retail as exit liquidity.
Is that fair?
Yeah, we have Vinny as a speaker, let's not bring Salana and Kyle.
And all these people, we have, we have somebody who can cover all of that up.
I don't think you guys.
Hey, look, my job is to be provocative, guys.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
You just did your job well.
Vinny, we can't hear you.
Vinny, you're like, Mike.
It sounds like you're in a echo chamber.
Yeah, but I'll cover up for Vinny while he.
he's getting his mic fixed.
If your job, Dave, is to trigger,
then you've triggered Vinny as much as I know him since the civic days.
You've got his attention.
And now he'll speak for 10, 20, 15 minutes straight.
Vinny, go in.
Yeah, I think he dropped and he's going to come back.
Gotcha.
So I'll tell you an interesting thing that I've observed over the last two weeks.
And I was planning to say that on the last.
space three days ago when I appeared here, but the time was short. So a lot of my old friends,
I mean, one guy specifically who nailed it in asset management with building up the first
uranium plutonium physical reserve 20 years ago before it had a run and then he did a big, big
gain. He's a British guy, British asset manager with gold. And then of course he was in
crypto since 2016, along with me in the UAE market.
I mean, he was literally leading every single large name,
including the partners of Binance today.
So like literally the legends of crypto of that time.
And he said a fantastic thing that I definitely want to quote.
And of course, his name, David Marshall, a lot of guys here would probably know him.
He said, bro, I don't hold Bitcoin because Bitcoin is great, but it's more like a cult
and I'm a value investor.
I'm a forward-looking value investor.
and so I don't hold Bitcoin like I don't hold gold.
While these are extremely valuable assets,
we are people depending on the value of the future and innovation.
And that's why I hold silver and I hold copper
because that is the industrialization of US that we are looking at
and all the budgeting and allocations that have been done in the last, you know,
one and a half years of Trump era
and his push towards bringing production back to US.
And then at the same time, the whole world moving to the world,
moving towards whatever production.
I'm sure everybody here knows AI, data centers, solar,
all of these are very silver and copper-intensive industries.
And then he says, similarly, if I do have to, let's say,
allocate 10% of my budgets into crypto,
I wouldn't do Bitcoin.
I'd do, you know, Solana, I do Ethereum.
He's a lifetime Ethereum fan, by the way.
So that's like something I've been hearing in a hundred different versions across the last two months particularly and then in the last two weeks more than ever.
And Scott knows that I still do like 14 hours a day calls and my calendar is like back to backpacked for 12, 14 hours.
And so I do a lot of calls around the world.
So that's a pretty profound.
So, Rob, are you saying that?
gold isn't a thing?
No, no, I'm quoting someone else.
But I don't understand.
Is that what he's saying?
Are you agreed with that?
I don't understand.
Is that Lou?
I mean, I certainly.
Sorry?
Who's speaking?
I'm sorry.
Gold has been around for 5,000 years.
Who's the speaker?
Some glitch with Lou.
With X.
Oh, yeah, Lou.
It sounded like Lou, but I can only see him as a listener.
Lou, no, no, no.
I'm not saying that at all.
And this guy is also not saying that.
He's typically behaving like a high-performance asset manager who is not driven by cults or history.
Oh, no.
Gabe is a smart guy.
Yeah.
But.
Yeah.
But, but, but, and I do agree with him.
I, I sold most of my bitcoins in, in the rally of 2021.
Of course, not the best decision.
I'm not saying it was.
But I'm just saying that a lot of innovation and utility believers, I mean, look at Solana.
I so wish Winnie's back soon.
But look at Solana, look at the kind of job.
We're not happy with our investment.
And I'm sure, you know, Scott, I'm not sure if you're invested as well.
But Berra Chen is actually building a good pipeline of investments.
Of course, the token is shit and my investment is down and I'm furious.
But, you know, look at what Monard is doing.
They have a pretty solid pipeline of institutional utility and so on and so forth.
So while Bitcoin and gold remain the golden standards, as we would want to call them, for investments,
and God save me from Gary's comments today.
But we've been betting our lives, and I'm definitely not saying I'm the best asset manager,
but we've been betting our lives on innovation, because innovation is the only forward-looking truth.
And from that particular, let's say, color of the world, it is okay, or let's say it's practically the most reasonable time now to start looking at innovation and production if you're looking at a three-year or a five-year cycle.
Very quickly, I know Scott calls my talks of monologues.
So very quickly wrapping another important point, Dave, the mining ping is over.
I think it was over the moment we stopped looking at the four-year cycles.
And I know there's a lot of arguments about the four-year cycle,
but I think the mining and the mining hash rate narrative was lost along with the same,
you know, four-year cycle narrative.
And if you believe in the four-year cycle narrative,
then definitely it's useful to quote the mining narrative.
But I don't think it's a, it has anything to do with short-term cycles.
and with giants like, you know, American Bitcoin
and the already existing giants jumping into mining
and even the stable coin, you know, guys like Tether,
investing into mining and holding gigantic size of mining
and a zillion other public companies,
and we don't want to call them Dax anymore.
Everybody's into mining.
And so it's diffused in all these, you know,
value life cycles or investments life cycle, I think if that makes sense.
I mean, well, sort of.
I mean, look, network effects are still network effects,
and there's lots of things going on.
I mean, I don't want to talk about silver today.
I'd like to take a day off.
But, you know, if we have to, we could.
There's a lot of geopolitical stuff going on here, too.
And there's a lot of game theory stuff going on here, too.
And we could kind of unpack all of it.
But I think that's a big deal.
Let's do a one minute each silver pro and cons.
It'll be fun.
Well, yeah, I was, Paul had, well, never mind.
He's gone now.
At least I don't see him anymore.
I saw him reacting.
I want to let him say what his reaction were.
But yeah, I mean, look, the, what's going on geopolitically is we are a massive,
debtor nation.
And there's all sorts of stuff, you know, kind of floating around the internet.
but as far as silver is concerned, the biggest thing is the difference between prices here and the prices in Shanghai.
Right?
You know, and we don't know how much the Chinese government are mining Bitcoin either.
Yeah, let me bring the India perspective.
34% premium to buy physical solar.
You know, what are they willing to do on other assets?
That's really interesting question.
Sorry.
Yeah, yeah.
Sorry about interrupting.
I thought we were doing one minute quickly.
So I'll use one minute for the India silver story.
From March till December, India and Indian institutions ended up just as a large country,
I mean, just as a country, end up buying $9 billion of silver.
And then, parallelly, they approved silver spot ETFs.
So every single ETF has to hold silver in spot.
And you know how crazy Indians are about gold and silver.
So that went off.
absolutely nuts. And so these ETFs started sourcing their silver from Britain, their usual
ties. However, India as a country sourced it from like 15 different sources. And so they were able
to keep their prices pretty low, somewhere around if I was to take US reference $48. And then three
large solar manufacturers of the country that already have contracts of somewhere in billions
not released, also ended up acquiring a crazy amount of silver.
All in all, just India as a political territory ended up acquiring 42% of the annual gold
production of the world through all these places.
Let's not forget that the world already consumes more than 80% silver produced in a year.
So if one party takes that, and that's just the India story.
I know I've exceeded my one minute.
I'll quickly take like 10 more seconds.
Bricks currency, the BRICS currency has been proposed so far,
and the most voted proposal is a basket of currency,
more like of a multi-asset ETF, if you may think so.
And of course, after gold, the most important basket currency,
I mean, currency in the basket is silver.
So all BRICS nations are getting to that.
And that's it.
So much to talk about.
I want to hear Mike's perspective on what's happening with markets right now.
Well, hello. I really appreciate Girov's comments, because he mentioned the two main commodities I would consider myself net short.
That's when copper got above $6. Right now it's $5.76. When silver got about 100, right now it's 78. I think they're both.
Gurr, the key thing you remember, you forgot about trading. Never buy a high elastic commodity after it goes up a lot. If you're not in it before it goes up, never do it.
And silver will rip your face off.
And I'm just saying, I'd rather be net short silver and be willing to take stops above
100.
What you just said is all past tense.
What's happening now is what happened with crypto's last year.
You're hearing the narrative.
Maybe it's the benefit being on the Bloomberg Terminal.
I'm hearing the narrative for the medals are just worse than they were for cryptos last year.
It's too late.
Trade's over.
Don't jump on board unless you're just a trader.
Good luck.
But so for now, I think what's happening in the markets, this is shaping up to me, to me,
maybe a better trading there than 2008.
And it's just getting started.
The stock market hasn't really started rolling over yet.
Cryptos are leading the way.
And I'll give you a key level.
$64,000 in Bitcoin.
If you've been lucky enough to be short, to me, think about trading.
This is a tremendous environment.
You know, if you're stuck overweight long, maybe stop yourself out.
And then look at the volatility.
$64,000 is basically the mean in mode from 2024.
If you're lucky enough to be short, that's a worthy level to be putting in little
buys and maybe in test longs for a trade.
Big picture, I think it's going way much lower, but it's a trade.
And markets going down a lot.
It's getting beat up.
I mean, look at Ethereum.
If it gets down to 1500, it's going to be flipping by Tether.
I think this is a matter of time.
Tether's flipping everything except Bitcoin since it's been around.
It's just the trend that's going there.
The bottom line is there's just one key market that's up today, and that's bonds,
treasuries.
And to me, that's going to be when we look at this year and we're talking about
this market a year from now, we're going to say that was the best trade this year.
The key thing is, and Scott, you're always nice about reminding me when I'm right, but that's the number one market I've been wrong on for three years.
To me, that's the trade.
Sees the opportunity.
This is a great market for trading and forget about bias long.
So I think I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to send the editors to my headline tomorrow, and I think it's probably going to be Trump.
Cryptos got trumped our stocks next.
And to me, that's the key thing.
The enthusiasm for cryptos was stopped out by Trump.
you put in the peak. Thank you very much. And now we're just purging. And it's clearly true what
Dave said is. We have to finish this purge. Things like Dogecoin are still worth almost
$15 billion. That's just silly, stupid. I mean, our future generations are going to laugh at this.
Hey, Mike, Mike, yeah. Was there a purge in stocks? Aren't there thousands and thousands of pieces of
shit stocks? That's my point. It hasn't started yet. Let me finish. It hasn't started yet. It hasn't
started yet. It's just you haven't seen, you ain't seen nothing yet based on like again. I think
this is going to be like 2008. Cryptos led the way up. They're leading the way done. Stock markets
just starting to roll over and I think the stock market's going to get trumped. Meaning,
let's just start with the 10% correction. Once you get that 10% correction, not only does that
accomplish almost everything Trump's looking for the midterms, it crushes. I mean, the federal
ease in a heartbeat. It gets inflation, takes it, inflation will maybe flip to deflation. It always
has in history, energy will drop, interest rates will drop, yields will drop. It's just a matter
of time. And I think Besson's smart enough to lean over to Donald and say, hey, Don, you want to get what
you want with lower inflation and maybe have your constituents who don't care about all the rich
people who own stocks. This is where we're tilting right now. The key thing is, bottom line is cryptos lead
the way. Getting to good support for trade. But be careful, be in long any form of risk gas.
I'll mention Agorov. If you're wrong silver or any type of industrial, most notably copper,
you have to look over that stock market. You have to have it go up because it drops 10%. Silver is dropping 20 or 30%.
So I still think the first key level to maybe look at potentially buying silver is around 50,
copper, maybe below five, if you're lucky, but you're basically long the stock market at the most elevated levels ever.
So I think we're working into a paradigm chef. We're going to look back at this from history and say,
Yeah, remember those tulips?
Well, those cryptos were just more silly than ever.
So we're starting the purge.
It's trickling over the stock market.
It's only February.
And I just love how it's playing out because, for instance, I was on a call the other night with Hong Kong.
And what they told me was exactly the same things I heard in cryptos last year.
We had people like me saying, yeah, you don't want to be long silver and gold, but the sell site selling who are on the call,
ETFs were all excited about their products.
So again, this is a tremendous environment to trade.
Right now we're getting to good supports.
Maybe, like I said, 64,000.
The reason I mentioned that is because what set me off was 2004.
We'll be looked back at the year as good as it gets for cryptos.
We had a halving, record setting stock market, ETFs launched, and the number one thing was Trump got elected.
So what did that do?
We all saw Dave loved all the Malani coins and all these mean coins.
That put in the peak.
And now we're just heading toward the beer market.
Sure, we're going to get bounces.
But remember, this is just getting started.
So, and stop picking bottoms.
We've got for a trade, wait for a rally to sell.
That's what's worked out so well.
So far, so I'll end with this.
The key levels markets I put for prudent shorts for Bitcoin.
Okay, we got that.
We got to near 100.
Didn't get there.
Copper when it popped above 6 and stopped a few people out, went back over,
silver above 100.
It went there.
Potentially through the oil around 65.
It's a bare market.
It's popped in their last year's mean.
And bottom line is the mean and mode from 2024 was about 64.
So that's just a little lesson I learned in the trading.
But when you're on a trade and you go back to the key mean,
that's where you look for it to whole support.
Mark, I actually agree with almost everything you're saying that.
Personally, yeah, personally, I think what people are missing out is like the meat of this move has happened for now.
It could be a balance.
It could be some reversion.
But like people try to.
One of the lessons I've learned in trading is don't enter a trade once the move has already happened, right?
You should profit-take, you should do those sorts of things, risk adjustment, but don't try catch a move while it's happening.
And look at the IVs right now on Bitcoin.
It's over 100% on the, you know, the daily one, two, three, four days out.
It's insane.
So just playing put options, for example, it's nuts right now with the IVs so high.
But I think that this is a trader's dream.
Like if you are well positioned before the sort of down,
down swing, even from 82 down here, you know, you're playing some sort of leverage options,
et cetera. This is great on the put side. Obviously, you know, the calls have gotten hammered.
But, yeah, I think, you know, there is some, you know, everyone's like talking about the,
you know, the charts and the support levels and the macro. There's also a sociological issue,
yeah. Like, I don't think we should underplay the fact that one of the trending topics on X right
now is Pito coin, hashtag Pito coin. And everyone's calling Bitcoin. Pito. And everyone's calling Bitcoin.
because of the Bitcoin core developers ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Like, let's not underplay what that means where everyone is not.
Like, the tweets are insane.
I can't even keep up right now with people basically being angry with Adam Back,
who was mentioned in the Bitcoin White Paper.
There's many people believed to be Satoshi and his ties and block streams ties to,
you know, to Jeffrey Epstein.
I mean, I'd love to get everyone's thoughts on that.
I mean, I'm pissed about it.
Like Adam Back told us a whole bunch of things we believed and now we,
Well, yeah, he's a, you know, he's an ex-teen co-conspirator.
Like, yeah, any thoughts on that?
I think it's the same shit as when people looked at the Silk Road and tied Bitcoin with that.
I mean, Vinny.
No, no, this is different.
This is different.
This is very, very different.
Okay.
Silk Road, they were not contributing code.
They were using Bitcoin, right?
They were not deciding on Bitcoin Protocol, Bitcoin Code, direction, any of that stuff.
That's very different.
The code, Vinny.
I mean, look, I don't know any...
No, no, no, no, hold on.
The philosophical views on Bitcoin have been shaped by the philosophical views of the core developers.
And because so...
How many people are horrible human beings on this planet?
Well, let's talk about...
Seriously.
I mean, you know, it's like if you start looking for guilt by association
and investing as such, you're going to end up very poor...
No, I do.
I do actually don't, I don't invest in anything I think is unsavory.
I don't invest in.
Sure.
Yeah.
So, so, all back by, as a startup invest, if I meet a founder that's got a really,
you know, sketchy background, or I just think they're a good or a nice person.
I don't put money behind them.
Sure.
But when the, well, so you have a company who has a CEO who does horrible things.
Yeah, I'd sell my shares.
And people do.
And if it's a good company, when they kick him out and he's no longer making decisions,
then the company goes, you know,
Well, if he's still a shareholder, I wouldn't know how this game works.
If he's a shareholder, I wouldn't buy it.
Like, literally, I do not give money to bad people.
And that's just a personal philosophy.
I think this conversation is beyond that philosophy, because we didn't come into Bitcoin
because it had an incredible past.
And we got to know about that history.
We all, most of us came into Bitcoin because the current code was fully decentralized,
auditable and distributed.
Right?
Nobody came to Bitcoin because they knew Satoshi was a great guy.
Nobody came to Bitcoin because they thought Silk Road was an absolutely amazing utility.
Right.
We all came to Bitcoin.
I would use a simple example, Microsoft, right?
Is there any doubt that the person who looks the worst at this point in the public eye is Bill Gates?
Anybody is going to take the other side of that?
I don't use Microsoft.
Fine.
Microsoft's market cap is still rather large.
And I don't think anyone's dumping Microsoft.
because it was founded by a by a absolute scumbet.
And we all kind of know that he is now.
I mean, you know, unless, I mean, look, you know, whether it's the Russian hookers
or the stuff on the vaccines or so many things have come out.
But no one's dumping Microsoft.
They're dumping Bitcoin for a much more obscure and tenuous relationship, which is another
way of saying if Scott were here and I think he had to jump out, that people look for
excuses and it just happens to be that it's timed as an excuse and look excuses are right right you know
when shit is hitting the fan everything hits the fan it's it's it's fundamentally a trust issue dave
like i posted a tweet yesterday which i think like a lot of people got angry about a lot of people
actually were supportive about it and i said well what can we trust about what adam back has said to
us i mean he said a bunch of things uh he said finney yeah it's all in the code no no no no
change? Hold on, Lou, one second.
That's the code change.
Lou, one second. Yes, the code has changed. Okay, so they revoked Gavin and
Riesin's access, who's Satoshi trusted, and they said, trust us. And Gavin said, okay,
I mean, Gavin said Craig Wright is Satoshi for whatever reason. That's fine. They revoked
his access. So now I look back and go, well, we kind of trust Adam back on a go-forward
basis. He's an ex-seen co-conspirator with this whole thing and MIT, et cetera. But we
We don't trust Gavin and reason?
Why is that?
Gavin told Epstein to fuck off
when he invited him to the island.
But Adam back went to the island.
So do we believe what
Adam says about Craig Wright versus what
Gavin says? I just don't know what to believe anymore.
Like, who do you trust? This is my
issue. The code. Do you trust the code?
But the code is changed
and it was changed by Adam and his team
at Blockstream. Well, we trust
the current code.
Yes, you can go look at the branches.
Gavin fought against the...
Gavin fought Adam against the changes they were making
and then they kicked him out and they took his keys away.
No, Vinnie, I'm not even referring to who did what.
I'm just saying, go today, start your journey today with Bitcoin.
Go read the code.
That code is distributed and well-mined with good people.
You're looking at it from the wrong perspective.
Anyway, the point I'm just trying to make is
these are the questions and this is why Pito coin is trending.
This is why people are up in arms in the community.
I don't have to pass judgment on this.
But let's just talk about the social aspects of Bitcoin and people are pissed.
And you look at the price, people vote with their money.
And just, you know, it's very clear for what we're seeing right now.
As the Epstein files will drop this weekend, there's a huge search.
And I've got a lot of OG guys ping me saying they're getting out because they're just pissed off with what happened with Blockstream and Adam.
And that's all I have to say on the topic.
Yeah, on that topic, I'll conclude by saying that it's a good way of, you know, creating a set.
I think there have been similar news of all sorts.
Not similar, of course, this is in magnitude bigger and can be weaponized better.
But the media that works for, let's say, these so-called market makers and people that benefit
from a market like this, I think this is a good chance for them to weaponize it and they are,
the whole propaganda machine.
But you're right, in a way, it's definitely people are voting from their money.
because they always fall for one of the other of these propagandas,
and that's what the other guys are good at.
This space was downloaded via spacesdown.com.
Visit to download your spaces today.
So I see Brian and then Paul.
Yeah, hey everybody, and thank you.
Yeah, I am not so sure that we need a purge, in my opinion,
and I just wanted to move it up a level and defend crypto for a second.
So my view is that crypto and smart contract blockchre
chains tautologically offers all these wonderful use cases and benefits not available with other
technologies. These are things like removal of intermediaries, democratization of value exchange,
and we're seeing this in real time tangibly come through with our upgrading of our
antiquated financial infrastructure. Number two, my view is that it's such a nascent asset
versus what it will become, that you don't actually have any sort of real cash flows that you can
throw into any sort of valuation model, and that means it's going to be volatile and it's going to change
trade much more on sentiment or the multiple. And when I'm a fundamentals guy, I look at the
underlying fundamentals. Those are actually in long-term secular expansion. So you look at things like
daily active users, number of developers, corporate adoption, all these things are up and to the right.
And so I kind of think that prices will ebb and flow obviously feels pretty bad right now.
They can certainly go a lot lower. But overtime, like the fundamentals are moving up and that
over time prices will follow fundamentals. So I'm still very long crypto and still very bullish on
what it will ultimately become and where prices will go over the medium and long term.
Paul. I mean, I think you nailed to Brian in the sense that you talked about crypto as a
whole. And I think the big challenge that we have is Bitcoin. And I resonate with what Vinnie said.
We've had numerous conversations Vinnie in the past about Bitcoin versus a lot of the other
crypto's forks of Bitcoin, BCH. And I think the utility narrative,
folks that camp
I think called it
right you know
Bitcoin not having utility
the entire store of value narrative
which was what was pushed at the time
Gavin it
the transition from Gavin and Dries
into the now current core developers
happened they said no no no Bitcoin is not
meant to be used right that's
why we slowed down the chain made sure we
couldn't transact on it created the
centralized L2 networks
and pushed for ETFs
and now we got what we asked for sure
You can see the code. Sure, it's open source. Sure, it's transparent. But what is the motive and
intent behind what the code is supposed to do? And we're feeling it because as a store of value,
Bitcoin does not have a competitive advantage over gold, over silver, over many other commodities
and assets until it has utility, until it can be used in such a way that it has a competitive
advantage, which is being able to transfer value across borders, anyone to anywhere in the world with no KYC,
that's when it has the advantage. Because, hell, an ETF,
of Bitcoin has no advantage over an ETF for gold.
Give me any reason why that is an advantage.
So that needs to be the push.
I really had big hopes for at least the L2s, right?
There's already talk of what you were just mentioning,
Brian, institutional adoption,
the technology will revolutionize the traditional financial system.
Yes, it can.
Guess what?
Nowhere in what you said does Bitcoin apply.
It's only hope would have been the different L2s,
although those create some challenges
and user experience burdens that other chains wouldn't have.
So can we get that?
back into Bitcoin somehow to give it any hope? I don't know, right? And so I'm a bit bearish from
that point of view because I think we might have already seen our ceiling from a store of value
narrative in Bitcoin. And the utility piece is what is missing. And so we keep talking about
this industry as a whole. Well, you know, Dave, you have self-suff. Bitcoin is not is not crypto.
And Bitcoin is not all these different alt coins. Well, guess what? The narrative is around all
of the other coins, but that's still a battleground, right? It's a little battleground to figure out
which of those coins and what programmability and scalability is necessary.
And privacy as well.
What privacy features are necessary to make one of those the winner.
And Bitcoin's completely not invited to that party.
100% not invited to that party at all.
So where does that leave us in this industry right now?
We're still kind of in this like, sure, now everything is a meme stock or everything
is a small tiny startup, us waiting to figure out which one kind of latches and holds
and gets adopted.
And so I'm kind of personally holding pattern to see and look for utility,
not for the next dat that then says,
I'm going to put this in my balance sheet because it doesn't seem to move the needle at this point.
Yeah, I have many things I could say, but Mark, excuse me,
so I'll lose hand up and then Marks.
I just wanted to dive in a little bit,
but why did you think that Bitcoin used to be a better store of value?
Did something change in its store of value?
Yeah, it had utility.
I was buying gift cards of any startup, right?
And so a store of value also means you have to be able to use the value.
And so I was buying gift cards on gift, left and right.
My wife was, whole foods, you know, and whatnot.
Are people buying stuff with gold?
No, no one's buying stuff with gold, but guess what they used to?
That was the transactional medium for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
And so it started with utility.
And at the time that it had utility, it also had store of value.
So it had that dual purpose.
have you ever tried carrying $10 million of gold?
It's a royal pain in the ass, but guess what?
Most people don't have to carry $10 million of gold.
So the point is, there weren't many options at the time.
Have you ever tried to carry $100 worth of gold and actually try and get $100 for it?
You don't get $100 for it.
There's so many advantages.
There's a huge advantage.
There are so many advantages to Bitcoin.
There are.
It's the digital representation of gold.
and everything eventually replaces.
You don't need to transact it.
So what's the volume of physical transactions in gold
versus all of the ETFs that people are actually using
to be able to speculate on gold?
People don't use gold to buy stuff.
Correct.
And in the same sense, that's also the transactional medium
by which people use Bitcoin,
is they don't use Bitcoin.
Sealer owns 3 plus percent of the entire supply.
And guess what?
He doesn't move Bitcoin.
He just holds it.
It doesn't move.
It just sits there.
The average gold, the average gold, personal owns gold, and investing gold makes less than one trade a year.
So this isn't about transaction.
And that's what a store of value.
We've moved on from gold.
And by way, gold is a, gold is a store of value.
And we've moved on from using it day to day because it's just the size of the population of earth and whatever else.
It's now currencies that should be backed by gold.
So you can have gold-backed dollars.
But they're not.
But no, no, no.
We had that until 1971.
We had that.
Okay?
We don't have that anymore.
But gold is, by the way,
and now reverting back to the store of value.
Central banks are now that hold more gold than U.S. treasuries by far.
Gold is just eclipsed in the past six months.
And no one wants to hold U.S. treasury.
So now you have a reserve currency, which is the dollar,
backed by a reserve asset, which is gold.
You cannot back the U.S. dollar with Bitcoin.
Okay, it's not big enough, it's not liquid enough.
You cannot get there, right?
And it's too volatile, clearly.
But it is being backed by gold.
And, you know, honestly, like, Luke.
It's not, it's not backed by gold.
Our debt isn't backed by gold.
No, our debt isn't backed by gold yet, right?
But it used to be, and it will be in the future.
How is it going to be by what?
Are we going to issue more debt to buy gold?
No, gold is going to reprise the $20,000,
so it meets M0 money supply pre-1970.
we want that's what's happening with gold right now that is what's happening in the macro sense gold is
going to go up four x from year in the next five to six to seven years okay and then we're going to
start backing the m0 money supply with gold effectively hey vini what what happens if the gold in fort
knox really isn't there since we haven't that that is a concern there's two concerns one is
china's claim china and india have most of the world's gold so that is that is a concern we're not going to
react because it's almost certainly true yeah we're going to have mass that is
true, we are going to have massive inflation coming in because we are going to have to print our way
out of the situation and the dollars can become worth us.
Well, okay.
And so what?
But then gold, but then gold picks it up.
Gold is going to play this out.
I just, I just toss that out there because it's really interesting.
I also will make one observation before I go to Mark, and that is every time we start getting
toward capitulation bottoms of Bitcoin, this is the exact conversation that starts to resonate.
And it's really simple.
And so I've said this one thing all the time, and I've been saying it for eight years.
Eight years, yeah, I guess weirdly, it's incredible, but it's eight full years.
That Bitcoin trades like an option on the potential for it to be adopted as digital gold and beyond.
Full stop.
Digital gold, it's a false narrative.
Paul and I have been telling you guys this for like eight years now.
It's a false narrative.
It's a false narrative.
Options trade with incredible volatility.
with exactly like this.
Look, when you see, you know,
the head of BlackRock talking about Bitcoin
as the potential to be, you know,
700,000 or whatever the hell is number was
before gold rallied.
These guys are idiots.
They don't get the tech.
They have no understanding what the tech is in.
But the point is the tech doesn't have a damn thing to do with it
in a sense.
It has a huge amount to do with it in another sense.
And unfortunately, value is what people believe something is.
And gold at the end of the end of the,
the day only has value at what it at these prices because people believe it's money and and the indian
people certainly believe it's money the chinese believe silver is money and gold is money you know
etc and there are people who believe gold is money and the world financial system has ignored it for
and they don't believe and they don't believe that bitcoin very long time so i totally understand the
argument right but the issue is will bitcoin because it has superior monetary policy you know qualities and
And we don't need safety or Simon on here to talk about it.
That's the question.
And it is a question.
Let's make it very clear.
I just find it's an observation that this is the exact question that happens every time at bottoms.
That's all I'll say.
Anyway, Mark.
Are you calling the question?
No, no, no.
What's the question?
I am calling this is a bottoming process.
I'll get to you the second, Mark.
I just want to answer the question.
Okay.
I don't want to try to bottom pick.
If you try to bottom pick, as Mike said before, you get your head handed to you, right?
I personally think we are far closer to a bottom than we are to a top.
And I think that the narratives will change over time as price moves.
I think we saw the prices move and the narrative follow price.
And we consistently see prices move and narrow follow price.
Now, what you said this morning is really interesting.
It said the reason that Bitcoin went from the, you know, broke the range of the 80s is because a bunch
more OGs said, fuck this shit and dumped.
And that's cool, but that's what capitulation looks like.
So it reinforces my thought process that the acceleration of the distribution of Bitcoin
from OG hands to, you know, boomer hands, for lack of a better word, has accelerated
because of the Epstein files.
And do I think it makes sense?
Well, yeah, in a sense it does.
But it's a process that has to happen.
And oh, by the way, Saylor doesn't own 3%.
micro strategy the company does with a incredibly broad base of shareholders and the same thing
is true with black rock black rock does own okay nuance sorry sailor micro strategy sorry about that
you know it's broadening the base you know people who are invested look that that is that is
patently untrue i'll tell you why okay if so you've got luke dash junior fighting with uh with the bitcoin
core guys and they're you know he's got his not software whatever else if there was a fork today
okay and savers said i'm dumping this this side or the other side of the fork he makes that
decision right not the shareholders not the whatever else he has that control and and he and and he and
and it's for control you're right especially what's happening right now with this whole bitcoin core
you know battle if they and and by the way luke's trying to put a fork out he's trying to do a soft fork or whatever it is
if Saylor choose one side of the other, he gets to choose because he has enough coins to basically dump the side of the market he doesn't want to win and he effectively controls Bitcoin.
Like, I'm saying this.
Honestly, openly, if anyone wants to contest it, I'm happy to discuss it.
But like, this is the truth of the matter right now with the concentration risk on Michael Saylor.
That is true.
I think we all understand that selling is definitely not in his favor.
So that has been off charge.
That's exactly what I was going to say.
it's that he may be a zealot or whatever but he's not an idiot and if no no no what do you mean
like if there's a 50-50 split in the consensus and you have to he has to choose one side or other
i'm not saying which side is he has to choose he could hold both in his case he doesn't have to choose
a damn thing he could hold both and i mean he could but you know if he if he decided to exercise
and say look i i i don't want to go this direction
he can choose which way he goes.
You're right, he could say I'm not going to choose.
He could say that.
But the point is, he has the power.
He has the power to choose.
He has the power to choose, which is not decent.
Which is not decentralization.
This is not decentralized.
Even if he chooses, people like me, people like you, people like Dave, and everybody else
calls him on his bluff because he really can't sell.
That's the point.
How do you, how do you guys appreciate it?
You absolutely can sell.
You absolutely can sell.
What are you talking about?
You can, you can, you can absolutely sell one side of the coin.
There's no, if he chooses one path, he can sell one side of the coin, absolutely.
No, he's from his yields.
Look at the products.
50% plus of his products offer yield on Bitcoin.
No, no, no, no, no.
You're missing the point yet.
Like, the hash power will go to the side that he's not selling on because that side will maintain its price.
Guys, this is like Bitcoin 101.
That is true.
But you're making the statement, which I think is completely false, that he would lead that charge.
the most...
No, I'm making the statement that he has the power to do it,
which means we're not decentralized enough
while he has a concentration of Bitcoin as much as he does.
And I'm saying that you're saying that he has shareholders
and therefore Bitcoin ownership is decentralized.
Maybe true, but the power of which folk it goes under is on his hands.
No one else is.
He has voting control.
It'll be actually very interesting.
Both BlackRock is a similar thing,
but in Saylor's case, it's very specific.
So selling an actual fork is probably,
and it's too bad, I don't see any of our securities lawyers up here,
but I'd be really interested to know what the securities are.
Is that something that would need a proxy vote?
Is that something that would need to be go to the board of directors
and the shareholders of micro strategy?
And my suspicion is they're gonna say yes,
because otherwise there'll be a shareholder lawsuit.
Not even fork happened quickly within 24 hours, $40.
We might have to dump something within 24 hours.
That would be malfeasance.
I mean, if you're a public company,
you own an asset as backing your public company, selling it without regard to market impact
and what it does is literally the kind of thing that causes shareholder lawsuits and causes you to
move.
I love a lawyer.
I'd be able to explain this.
No, no, there's no precedent for this, Dave.
There's no precedent for a split.
What stock suddenly splits with equal amounts into another type of stock with its own
network, right?
You can't do that.
And there's no precedent for this.
No, that's a stock split where it's the same asset.
But to have an exact, it's called a spinoff.
Right.
No, the question is, but the spinoff is clearly the other stock.
That's the difference.
In crypto, there is no clear actual definition of what is the original asset.
Like, what is actual BTC?
There's a legal definition of a spin-off,
but there is no legal definition of what is actually BTC in the case of a fork.
That is up to the entire community to decide.
So in Michael Saylor's case, he can say,
no, no, no, no, I didn't sell the asset that I was holding.
I was selling this other thing that just suddenly showed up out of nowhere.
You can't, don't attribute actions that are literally impossible.
Securities laws of the United States are very clear.
No, very clear.
You can't.
Define this.
What is this asset?
There are many cases, many cases where one company owns a piece of another company
or a large piece of another company.
And when that happens, if there's ever a corporate action on the company they own,
they literally end up having to have a board vote and having a proxy fight with shareholders to determine what their action is.
And so if they were going to be a situation, because there's an entire class of piranhas out there called, you know, class action attorneys.
And if you run a public company, you know this.
You know that you can't take actions that are definitive that are potentially catastrophic.
So believe me, when I say to you, there is no chance that he's going to act,
quickly and unilaterally on anything like that.
He will let the market determine it
and then make his decision and probably go to his shareholders
to do so.
That's just the way it works.
Now, is that a good thing?
No, does it change your argument?
Really not that much,
although your argument is much more sensational
than it needs to be.
But if in fact there is a big debate in Bitcoin
and Saylor has to weigh in personally,
he could weigh in personally,
but I guarantee you he's not gonna do anything
that is absolutely catastrophic for the price of Bitcoin,
or for either side because it doesn't make any sense from the do-side that's just common sense
this is to me right let's see me right for one second now it goes to a vote and there's a 51
one side 51% the other side but the the minor majority gets to choose how you know
those are a lot of 50 50s 50s no that's exactly so now you have a situation where
three percent is actually controlled by 1.5 percent right so like this is the
not decentralization, guys, any way you put it.
It is true that although a 3% is hardly a control stake, but it's black, well,
you're, look, there's two people.
No, no, no, but if he goes to blackrock and basically the same happens.
What I'm suggesting, let me, let me encapsulate your argument, tell me if I'm right.
You're basically saying that while 3% is not a control stake, the blackmail that he could do
on the community in order to force his idea is, makes it not truly decentralized.
Is that essentially what you're saying?
It's not blackmail. He's a zealot. He's philosophically aligned one way or another.
And if there was a fork and he really believed that this version is the best version of Bitcoin or the original version and the other one is not, he gets to choose.
He would tell his shoulders like this and he can exercise his voting rights as well.
He's part of the vote. He has voting power.
Okay. I hear your point. And yes, I guess to some degree that is true.
But it is also true. And we've seen it before. I mean, you know, how many people own Bitcoin?
as a B.
Right?
You know, and Bitcoin cash are alive and well, although I don't really understand it.
Well, again, a lot of that stuff is people don't own it because they believe Adam
Back and now they found Adam Back's a Pito and now what?
That's the basis from our argument.
What we've been told to believe the past freaking 10 years is a lot of bullshit in my opinion
because we just can't trust the people told us to us.
Can I ask a really stupid question?
Just, you know, you're passing off Adam Back as a Pito like with definitively.
I mean, you know, it is, I don't know, Adam.
So this is not whatever, but I do believe in innocent to proven guilty.
I also believe that there should be, that it is beyond insane, that there have been no prosecutions, like none.
And by the way, there are multiple states where there's no statute of limitations on child.
I'm just quoting what's trending on Twitter right now.
What's trading on Twitter is basically they're calling Bitcoin, Pito coin.
So what do you like to?
I hear you.
But that is, but that's not the same thing as saying, you know, there's a, there's a,
difference between saying that a bunch of people on Twitter, much of which is anonymous trolls,
are saying something and that something is true in a court of law and something is true that
the guy actually did it. I mean, honestly, they were taking money. They were taking money,
okay, it doesn't matter. They were taking money from, from Jeffrey Epstein, for MIT,
Jory Toe and Blockstream. They were taking money from Jeffrey MC. And knowing what he was up to
because they went to the island. Like, I mean, look, you can argue. You can, you can, you
You can innocent or proven guilty, but in the court of public opinion, in the court of public opinion.
In the court of public opinion, this is not going down.
I mean, dude, it's way worse than that.
I've heard before the scheme came out, I had tons of stories about what happens at Boxing's offices in Palo Alto.
I used to live there.
Like, this is not, this is not a private.
I'm sure.
I've seen it in so many different places.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So this is the, but it's one thing to have, it's one thing to have these crazy drugged up parties in Palo Alto offices.
It's another thing to be associated with Peter.
Peter's on an island, okay?
And like the same reason, by the way,
do you know why we have small blocks?
Because Luke Dash Jr. believes that Catholics are going to overpopulate the earth
to 50 billion people by the year 2050.
He posted the religious text.
I've got all the screenshots on X.
And he said, we can't scale Bitcoin because we can't handle 50 billion people on Earth
because Catholics are going to procreate faster than us evens
who use condoms and contraceptions.
Like, if you want the entire thread, I'll show it to you.
I'll screenshot it.
I've got it.
It may still be up on X.
This is the ideological battle we're having right now with the core developers.
It's bullshit, man.
I believe you and believe me, I've seen multiple crap.
I mean, all I'm trying to say is if you start using that sort of acid test,
I'm not sure there's an investment that you could possibly own.
Now, it might very well be that with the fourth turning, everything should go to zero.
We should burn it all down and start again.
But that's essentially what you're saying.
Yeah, I'm just saying we should question all our previous beliefs that we were told by
people we should not be trusting that's all okay mark you want to take us home totally i think you should
absolutely go to test all your priors ben i absolutely agree with you and as far as adam back i think you have to
start with uh everything's true just take that up everything's true he the assertions that he's a pedophile
are there that he went to the island he took money and as a bitcoin investor if that's something
thing you relied on, I would say that you had a weak thesis. And, you know, we're not even talking about,
you know, Jack Dorsey, who I, when in my life, when I walk in the room and the first guy comes up to me,
tells me a story and it's the loudest. To me, it's like the babbling brook. I listen to the end of
the least. The person over the last couple of years who's been the quietest and doing payments,
Like what I think was it Paul talking about that?
Is Jack Dorsey.
So do I rely on Jack Dorsey?
No.
But I certainly don't rely on one of the loudest guys in the room
who was clearly Blockstream and Adam back quietly loud in his manner.
I don't think this is an existential.
I do think that back to testing your priors,
when we had something like this come, unexpected,
not in anyone's fucking bingo card.
It is awful.
It is not without a blemish.
We're taking it.
It may last a while.
But I don't believe it's an existential
because we don't have the ability
to process this information properly.
Back to Connman Tversky
and System 1, System 2.
We are living in System 1 right now.
We've got to back up
and this call is doing a good job
of trying to pull us back in.
And then you did lay out some good system 2
thinking on that as you did, Dave.
So what do I think?
I think you have to assume Adam is guilty for your thesis, not for him, not publicly stating it,
but just for your thesis, and proceed accordingly.
I loved Cat Stevens growing up, the fact that he wanted to put a fatwa on, I forget the guy,
the author, I still listen to Cat Stevens.
I like his work.
The fact that Adam Back, you know, was instrumental in the development.
of the process that led to it, whether it was Satosha or not.
I don't care.
I look at the code.
I look at the foibles they've all mentioned.
And I say, what's my best bet as the world is burning, as we are approaching.
I agree with you 100%.
I think just remember the code and the philosophy around the code are two different things.
Anyone could look at the code.
But like we may have been misled by the philosophy around it, digital goal narrative,
whatever you want to call it.
And I'm actually willing to just say, you know what?
I went from Craig Wright's in Satoshi being 0% to maybe 1%, 2% or whatever in the past weekend,
because I just don't trust anything they've said and I want to reevaluate everything.
And this also applies to Gavin and Bissom.
Like we were told Gavin, you know, Gavin was the guy who, you know, he lied about everything.
And now I'd rather trust Gavin than Adam.
And they took his keys away.
And he said that Craig Wright was Satoshi and they took his keys away because of that.
I'm willing to reevaluate everything at this point.
I don't want to believe anything has come out of the core camp since basically I've been in Bitcoin.
Yep.
It is tough.
Ben, what I'm going to go on, you're going from zero to four percent.
I'm going back to what I think going to markets for a second and about probabilities.
There's so much money in the system that Polly Market had, Jesus is coming by the end of the week, at $600,000.
So there's 600 grand that people said, you know what?
what, this is the best use of my capital right now.
So I don't think markers are pricing anything right now.
I think that we are in such a state of disarray.
We are in a new global order.
I don't use that word lightly.
We're away from Breton.
Trade started it last year with the tariffs.
We're going in.
Everything's up in the air.
There's information coming fast and hard.
So, you know, what McClone said early about, you know, trading things and Dave,
even talking about, totally.
Assess things, guys.
do your fucking homework because
there are going to be more curve balls. And this add and back
thing is
awful, unknown, but
again, I don't think existential, but
does invite a new
assessment
for everybody on what they're doing.
So Gary, I saw you put your hand up. You got
final thoughts here? I did. I'd like to
just end with a positive thought because I
want to vomit over this discussion.
Thank you. I was
yes, I think it will be a positive
comment. I was contacted by
Coinbase again today had to move some collateral over quite a bit actually, but that's not
what bothered me.
I asked the question, I said, hey, of the people you're servicing, you're making these
phone calls to a lot of people.
How many of those people are moving collateral versus cashing out?
And the answer, the response was 10% less than 10% of the ultra high net worth players
are cashing out.
So 90% of their ultra-high networked players
are posting collateral,
they're not cashing out Bitcoin on this drawdown.
I think that's positive.
Now you know why they're rich
because they don't listen to the news
and they're not on Twitter.
So they remain themselves rich, keep themselves rich.
By the way, just on that,
this particular conversation,
like we're comparing a problem here that we think might be a problem with look this is infested every industry on the planet so like bitcoin's not going to take a big hit because of this because of adam back adam back's not important in this thing if he is then you guys really miss sold the story to me um yeah i think i think i think you should check that check your notes on that one i mean gary the one thing that i will say what vini said is extremely important
because forget the...
Now, your mic is off for, Dave.
I think you're in the same spot where Vinnie was.
Okay, while Dave's...
Better, can you hear now?
Sorry, I put...
Yeah, you're here.
My hand when I adjusted the mic,
hit the little mute button that I didn't see it.
Vinny said something extremely important, Gary.
Now, I take it far differently than he takes it.
But if it is true, and I believe him,
that a bunch...
A lot of OGs said,
fuck this shit, and they're dumping again.
And they did so.
that explains very quickly why Bitcoin is the worst performing asset today.
It also tells you that, you know, you can't.
Silver, silver's had to draw down twice as bad as Bitcoin.
Okay, well, silver, yeah.
But the whole market is getting fucked up, man.
Yeah, I mean, like to me, we want to talk about Epstein.
Epstein's going to be in every board.
Everything else is, and you know what happened in silver, right?
I said I didn't want to talk about it, but we can't make the comparison.
Literally, the United States called a meeting yesterday.
effectively could have been tight.
It was cut about strategic minerals.
It was how the fuck do we get the price of silver down?
That was the meeting.
And so they're shooting their cannon and they're still in the mid-70s.
To me, the trader in me says, yeah, this is going to be fun.
Who's going to win Asia or the United States on silver?
And I think that the answer is going to be Asia.
But that's besides the point.
In the short run, they're going to be able to keep pushing it down to this level and maybe a little below, but not much.
But that's a different story.
No, but what Vinnie said is really important, Gary.
If there's been a lot of capitulation among OGs,
accelerating last year's pace, that tells you that the transition is accelerating.
The sole question, and it always has been, is will it gain critical mass?
And to get critical mass, you need more holders.
It's as simple as that.
Does that not make sense, Gary?
Because that's how I took it.
Now, Adam may very well be very important.
and honestly, the entire future direction of Bitcoin is probably going to move.
But we've also heard that Sailor is really important, even though he's not mining it.
He's not a core developer.
So, you know, yeah, the entire story has to be relooked at and people will look at it.
Right?
You there, Gary?
Do I lose everyone?
Yeah, no, I'm here.
I mean, you still have people that you have new money coming into this market.
That's what we need.
The crypto bros are selling Bitcoin.
Let's be clear.
But the whole market's getting.
And it's because I believe they're believing false narratives that need to be valued.
That's all.
That's what I'm going to say.
I don't think this industry is any different ethics-wise than any other industry I've ever been in.
Like, having this purity thing is not a cool thing.
You only lose.
Exactly.
I think that is kind of the point.
I mean, the point is to become a mainstream financial asset requires a different
set of people involved, any much broader set of people.
Anyway, I agree.
And furthermore, this really shows the deficiencies that come along with decentralization.
Well, decentralization makes one of the great.
Broadly decentralized.
And Vinnie's points, fairly, is it's not as decentralized as we would like it to be, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
And it's not about being curious.
It's not about that.
I'm going to try to be like,
the squeaky teen.
I mean,
I was in Bitcoin off the Silk Road.
I knew the risk.
People told me not to invest.
It was crazy, bad, dirty money.
This is worse than that.
That's my point.
Because now instead of changing, like,
it's a narrative issue.
We basically,
the OGs are getting out,
and you're trying to get new people
who don't understand
the nuances to get in
and put their money in.
It's a concern.
Look.
Look, I think that's fair,
and I think there's been a great conversation.
We are getting the hook, however.
So,
we're gonna we're gonna wrap up
see you guys
thanks
well OG has to be defined
because at Satoshi roundtable
this was definitely not the
sentiment so OGs have to be defined
as per Gary
Coinbase is not selling
roundtable was before the FECN files came out
just be clear
I mean we are still here in Dubai like most of us are around
but anyways let's let David wrap
and let's take it on Twitter
I think I think there's
There's a lot here. And speaking of Twitter, could those of you, I would say follow all the speakers up here.
And in fact, all the speakers, if you could follow this account of mine because it looks like X isn't going to get me my old account back.
I would appreciate it. As Scott would say, none of us and people in the audience know none of us are compensated for this.
This is stuff we do and these sorts of conversations. I think, I think today is very valuable.
Everybody who wants to do the research and the work on Bitcoin should listen to what Vinny is saying and evaluate it.
I think it's absolutely valuable.
And you should understand what the hell you're voting,
what you are investing in.
It's not only about number go up people.
That's all I'll say.
So with that,
we'll see what kind of carnage we're looking at tomorrow.
Personally,
I suspect we're going to get a little bit of a bounce here.
But, you know, we'll see.
And that's the way it works.
Thank you all.
Thanks, guys.
Good night.
