The Wolf Of All Streets - BTC Drops After FOMC! Healthy Correction or More Pain? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

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Well, good morning, everyone. It's Friday and Bitcoin going into the open was soft again. Lots to talk about. I'm glad to see Matt Hogan is here because it's nice to have someone who shares my long term view. And so given that, I'd rather let him talk. But the most important thing I think people need to think about is something. There was a tweet this morning that I actually responded to from a fairly popular and actually pretty balanced crypto influencer talking about Bitcoin becoming boring. And I think that's a large part of what's going on as bitcoins in a range with the people in the crypto world saying, well, it's not going anywhere. So let's look for something else.

And of course, and they look everywhere else in there. It looks like some post-apocalyptic hellscape on the charts. And but Bitcoin's in a range and doesn't look all that bad. So I think that dichotomy is worth delving into. Matt, I'm assuming you're back from BlockWorks and probably have a lot to tell us. So why don't you tell us a bit about what the mood was like and we know how you see things now. Yeah, absolutely. lot to tell us. So why don't you tell us a bit about what the mood was like and we know how you see things now.

Yeah, absolutely. Great to be here. And I think you described it really well. I do think Bitcoin is in a range. I think it's in a pretty healthy range. I think it's sort of waiting for the next catalyst, whatever that is, maybe the US government actually acquiring some Bitcoin. I'm not sure what it is that will shake us out of the range, but I feel strong that there's more bias eventually to the

upside than the downside. DAS was great. DAS was sold out. 2,500 people had a huge number of really high profile speakers, even down to the president. And the vibe was honestly pretty good. I think DAS, you know, so the overarching theme, and this is something we've talked about a lot, is there's this bipolar dichotomy in the crypto market where institutions are bullish and retail is in despair. And DAS was more institutional than not. So I walked away from DAS pretty bullish long term. I mean, it's interesting to compare DAS from what I'm hearing.

And I stayed down in Miami, you know, still sorting out the ends of my vacation and getting ready to jump back into the world. But compare that to Massari last fall before the election, which felt, I mean, look, I think Eric is an awesome dude, and I think they tried pretty hard, but it was half empty, if not more. And people were like, you know, I don't know what the hell's gonna happen.

Hopefully things will go well, but you know, it was very, very different. So. Totally right. I mean, we were so beaten down. I think people were talking about canceling conferences. Remember consensus moved out of the United States as a signal of where we were from a despair perspective.

I'll add a couple other points. Before DAS, I was at two TradFi conferences. I was at Future Proof, which was in Miami, which was a financial advisor and alt conference. Then I was at the Barron's top RIA summit, the top 100 plus RIAs in the world, people with billion dollar plus books. I would say those were extraordinarily bullish on Bitcoin specifically, but even starting to be bullish on Ethereum. At Future Proof, the most attended talk was Michael Saylor.

At Barron's, I gave the keynote address and the response was pretty overwhelming in terms of the number of people allocating. A lot of people told me they allocated during the speech. Our follow-up by our sales team has been off the charts compared to previous years. From my perspective, sitting purely in that institutional advisor lane through Barron's Future Proof and DAS, it's almost like the bear market doesn't exist. It's really a strange world. Yeah. I mean, next time you're in Miami, you should definitely give me a yell.

100%. But that said, it really is fascinating when you look at this because crypto, everyone starts like I'm going to two TradFi conferences the first week of April. One is Security Traders Association in New York. We've been in crypto. I've been on the board for a while and marching my way up the board actually. Pretty much everybody on the board level believes that the entirety of the financial industry is going to start moving into crypto as soon as the starter's flag or the starter's pistol

goes off, which I think has to obviously wait until after Paul Atkins and Brian Contend to start moving into crypto as soon as the starter's flag or the starter's pistol goes off, which I think has to obviously wait until after Paul Atkins and Brian Contends and maybe Gould at the OCC, but those two for sure are in their seats and rulemaking starts because these firms will not, they don't want to get faked out. But you're probably seeing similar things. And that is, to me, that's the catalyst. But unfortunately, people in crypto don't want to hear that because that puts the catalyst into the summer or fall. Yeah, that's exactly right.

I mean, yeah, the reality is, TradFi moves slowly. And that's true. And we forget good news. I'd forgotten about Contents, who's like the most passionate advocate for DeFi in the world. And yeah, but it's starting to happen. I mean, I think you can even start to see it in flows. Flows have stabilized into the Bitcoin ETF. We've had five straight days of positive flows, you know, a couple hundred million dollars in three of the last five days. So it's happening, but it is slower than many people want, right? We're in this sort of transition period from retail to institutional and institutional

just moves slowly. But I think the train is moving. Yeah, it's also interesting how people completely misunderstand flows, right? You know, I was pointing out for months that there was a substantial amount of buying in the ETFs by what I will call kind of less efficient arbitrageurs because the futures in the CME were trading at crazy premiums and so you could buy the ETFs and sell the futures and mint profit, especially if you could do that and leverage using portfolio margining if you're a hedge fund. Now, the

futures premiums, they haven't collapsed. They're just normal now, where you can't really make any additional money over the risk-free rate. And so therefore, we saw a massive dump out of all of that arbitrage last month. And so that was a huge amount of outflows. It's not terribly surprising that we have stability now. We're in a range. People are in panic selling. But more importantly, that entire supply is probably gone. I don't think there's any arbitrage left.

Do you? No, no, that's exactly right. I mean, that was the driver of those outflows. We can see it at bitwise because we know our core audience, which is financial advisors and family offices, there have been no outflows there, right? The consistent inflows that we see through our sales team, but from the outside perspective, that can get covered over by those arbitrage flows, which, you know, those maybe they'll come back in the future. I don't know, right? That can come and it can go. But I think the

long only bid is persistent. And that's really the point that I wanted to make. And so, you know, I constantly make this on Macro Monday when I'm arguing with Mike McGlone over this, which I don't want to argue with him when I'm not here. So we'll postpone that one to Monday. But the this dichotomy is interesting. So, you know, Gary, I'm glad you joined. You know, you sit as an institutional investor and are talking to other institutional investors who have had conferences with them.

I assume you're seeing the same thing. Is your speaker working, Gary? You're not muted, so. Paging Mr. Cardone. Okay, well, we'll go on. Anybody else want to chime in on this topic, Fred? Yeah, good morning, everyone. Can you guys hear me?

Yes. I was just going to echo what you and Matt were talking about with the delay on the institutional side, why these things take a while. I mean, it goes back. It's the same thing with the legal side of it. So after we've had Trump in and now we get more and more talk, I've had a lot of potential clients coming up saying,

hey, we want to get into crypto. We have this idea or that idea or we want to think about moving from an outside jurisdiction back to the US. And I say, that's great. Everything's on track. This is going to be a great idea. Let me get it going. But we still don't, we have a friendly climate,

but we still don't actually have the rules in place where you can be 100% certain and totally confident of making your move and that nothing's gonna radically change and Some clients and potential clients like great. Let's start it. Anyway, other ones are like well just do some of the groundwork We're not gonna do it yet. We're gonna wait till the rules are in place and You know, that's that's just the name of the game Yeah, I mean I

Unfortunately, you know, I use my cartoon here. One of these days I'll go back to a regular headshot and so everyone can see my gray beard. I mean, trust me, I can't tell you how many times I sat in meetings over the course of my career because I started in program trading, which was seen as cannibalistic. That was the word they always used to use to their existing businesses. And how many times I was told, we're not going to be on the bleeding edge, we're not even sure we want to be on the leading edge, you want to make sure that other people are doing it first.

You hear that all the time. The only exception to that was when the internet came in and they realized how bad things were, just as an anecdote for the audience. In around 1999, I was working at Solomon Smith Barney at the time, which was one of the largest NASDAQ market makers from the previous decade, except they looked down at their market share and realized that they had ignored the internet and ignored online trading. And this company called Knight Securities, which nobody had ever heard of in the management team, was sitting around 20% market share in NASDAQ and was dwarfing

what Salomon Smith Barney was doing. And they realized, wait a minute, this technology was eating our lunch. But they literally waited. I mean, it's not like this was how they were hiding. And you know, it's the sort of thing that does happen. Now, they've tended to be faster. What they'll do first is they'll start acquiring companies in the space. You can take that one to the bank.

So all the tech companies that are providing services, you're going to see a feeding frenzy among that. But you're going to see offering of services one way or another, it's just they're not gonna do a damn thing until their compliance department says it's all clear. Anyway, okay. As far as that goes, Gary, before I move on,

did you fix your speaker? Nope, okay, so let me get Simon up here. Okay, let's see, it says Simon, can you hear us? It says connecting, this being. God, I hate spaces sometimes. I know I'm starting to sound like Scott. We're in the glitch, it looks like. It looks like Fred got dropped too.

Who was that? I'm sorry, I couldn't tell. Simon. the a big reality of the major major benefits of tax neutrality. And so if you're Tether and you're Saturn El Salvador and you're able to receive all of your yield and purchase all of it in Bitcoin, and you don't have to consider the immense complexities around being in a tax jurisdiction, FIFO, LIFO, all that type of stuff. And you can hire globally anyway because everyone's working virtually. There is just a major reality of the world that we live in today There is just a major reality of the world that we live in today. The jurisdiction becomes not just about regulatory clarity because we've now got multiple regular,

but when you have a very clear regulatory environment in like Abu Dhabi, UAE, and then you're comparing that with El Salvador that obviously has a low level of trust but has a Bitcoin vision but then you're worried about what happens when when Bikeli leaves or you're comparing it to Singapore or something I think you've got a hot mic Dave, or someone has It was me, sorry Simon No worries or someone has. It was me, sorry Simon. Okay, no worries. And then you're comparing that with, okay, we've now got regulatory clarity in the EU with MECA, but the regulations could be a lot

better in the US. And so it's really important for US to get that regulations better than everywhere else in order to get this right because you're essentially saying exit a tax neutral environment because our regulations are so significantly better and I'm not sure what it would ever take to persuade a company like Tether to be able to make that decision because it's such a radical difference in your reserve requirements, your stability, all of those requirements. And I think that that is a consideration when most of these companies are used to being fully global, hiring globally, and just going to the jurisdiction at which they feel most at home. And they're able to really consider the immense complexities of the tax as well as the regulatory

side. If I was Tether, I'd be more worried about what the stablecoin legislation rules, requirements are going to be in the US asS. as opposed to where I've marked my flag because Tether's always had a little bit of an issue with their accounting. People always question it. And if you can bet your butt that there's going to be some pretty stringent requirements of reporting that stable coin issuers are going to have to have in here in the US. I mean, that's true. But as someone reported this morning, Tether holds more US treasuries than Canada. I think the seventh largest, seventh largest, which basically means they're going to

work it out. Now, imagine, if you will, from the crypto world, what happens when TetherFUD can't even be recycled, when it's done in a way that nobody could say that there's an issue anymore. Now, look, most of us who have been in the space for a long time understand there was a time when a lot of that, what'm calling tether flood was probably true and whether it's you call it luck or happenstance or you know prescience they grew themselves out of it but I don't think very many people believes that it's true now I do think however there are quite a few non investors in crypto who believe it and have stayed in the sidelines because of it curious if anyone has thoughts about that. Yeah, I think we are bored of listening to those farts now.

It was always a measure of creating a market dump that would cause a perfect crash for probably Tether itself or associated parties to swipe off the floor. And then within two weeks, something, Tether would publish their audit reports, and everything would would be fine and they'd be outperforming and the market would take up. So that used to be funny times. I think the market has built an immunity to that. It's not working anymore. Well, I do think that there's an important part there because obviously one of the attack vectors of Tether was that they have a network of Tether issuers. And one of those issuers was FTX and FTX was built on top of Silvergate and Signature and

their blockchain fiat currency system. And then it turned out that FTX had a paper contract with Alameda. And then when they're one of the issuers, you need to understand everything about the balance sheet of the issuing partner. And so there is like a major piece of work to, you know, tether could get everything right on their side. But if you're having other people issue tethers, then I think there is a whole regulatory piece to just get the consumer protections there, which is the difference between the attestation versus the audit, and then how long have

you been doing it properly for when you're deciding how long to do the historical audit? And I think all those things will be resolved and solved at this time, which is why you're probably seeing a movement towards being able to actually pass an audit at this stage, relative to when it was just at test stations before. But then again, it's very clear to all of us that FTX was like, of course, publicly very regulated, very clear and clean. And that's how we've got the the Tomasics and the Sequoias, you know, investing into it. And of course, I don't mean it literally. I'm just saying if houses like that can be defrauded,

it could be just an edge case that occurred once in a while that has happened in finance many times in the last century. It might happen in crypto, why not? But if you look at the paper contracts and the structure and the audits of these issuers and partners, they're not meant to cheat the system. In fact, I'm assuming, not that I'm an advocate of Tether, by the way, but I'm just saying in favor of them, probably they've taken their lessons from FTX and have built an even more robust system to maybe cut through the cheat sheet of FTX as well. Yeah, the FTX issue, which was the same with the Binance issue, is that you have a network of global licenses and then you meet all of your audit requirements and demonstrate solvency and auditability within that jurisdiction.

But when a user signs up to Binance, they just think I'm on Binance.com. And then they'll say, but am I currently protected by Binance France regime, or is it Binance Nigeria regime? And have they segregated assets amongst each other. And so therefore each regulator is growing satisfied that you're meeting the local requirements, but who's actually auditing the global requirement as well. And that's the level of detail that needs to be achieved. And that was the issue with Binance Binance US. It turned out that the tether was being transferred between the two entities. US, it turned out that the tether was being transferred between the two entities. And therefore, when it went, you know, when FTX, for example, went into bankruptcy, it was like, is the US solvent and the non US not solvent? And so these are, you know, these are regulatory things that are the challenges of, you know, like the banks, they solve that at the by having local the I think there'll always be holes.

Yeah, we're kind of losing you. Definitely humans can definitely. The way HSBC solved it is they lobbied to change the laws that made it legal for them to not have client money. And then they managed to combine their investment banking with retail banking and say, hey, we'll get the government to bail out our investment bank because we can reclassify ourselves as a retail bank. And just so you know, the person that implemented those changes, the Glass-Steagall Act, is

in the Trump administration in this deregulation environment that is looking to do a stimulus by deregulating the banking sector. Well, we could go down that rabbit hole for sure. Yeah, I'm just saying, if you can hear me, even MD5, the Goldman Sachs story with Russia and Malaysia, I'm just saying humans are super good with finding holes. Oh, there's no doubt. You mean lawyers. Well, but it's not just that, Gaurav.

I mean, look, we know, I mean, look, at CoinRoutes, we had multiple clients, several of which went under because of it, tell us for months, I mean, a year. Yeah, we know there's something funny going on with Alameda and FTX. We know we're probably not making as much money as we could. We know it's sleazy, but there's enough liquidity and we're making money, so we'll just put up with it. And that went on for a very long time. This was not a secret that there were secret relationships there. People knew it. The biggest difference, and Simon's point is excellent, the biggest

difference is look at the difference between FTX US and FTX Japan. FTX Japan, no one lost the thing. Why? Because it was actually regulated. FTX US wasn't. And that was a very, very big difference. And Dave, the Japanese regulator enforces regulation. You, I mean, it's draconian how much the Japanese regulator actually looks at what's going on inside these exchanges. When I've had several. At a certain point the Japanese regulator was requiring exchanges to source compliant liquidity. You know what that means? That means that they

need to source liquidity from a counterparty that was registered and regulated under a jurisdiction for which the Japanese regulator has had comfort with. I'm not suggesting that we have to go that far but all I was saying is that there is a level of confidence. 21 million you had your hand up before Zillian. I mean I'm not trying to cut you off but you were up there. It's gone now but are you still there? Yes sir, so I've been. I'm actually at work. A couple things I'm going to comment on. Number one, so I run a bank. Not exactly the entire bank, right? But I'm a branch manager and to me one of the biggest things I sold from last year compared to this year were the amount of people coming in and making transfers, number one, to crypto exchanges.

And I feel like it's kind of died down now when it comes to the retail side of talking about Bitcoin, but we're still sitting at right between the 80,000 to 90,000 range. So for me, number one, it's a lot harder to go from 100 to 150 than it was back in the day of 20 to 40 or even 5 to 15, right? There's a lot more money that has to be involved number one. When it comes to the FTX situation, I think as much as it hurt everybody's like pockets, right, or their portfolios, it also brought on a lot of I think security because if you saw crypto.com for one, I made a point to kind of show, hey, this is what we have.

This is what we're holding. And that's where we kind of get to also the security, like I said, when it comes to people like either launching ETFs, working more on a centralized side, especially. I know here in the United States, a lot of people want to, if they're going to invest, whether it's a 401k or just buy something in general, they don't really like the DeFi side and they want to make sure hey It's just gonna be something where the blacks want event where if I put you know, my life savings in there Let's just say even a portion of 10 15,000. We'll have to work hard for it

I guess it's gonna just vanish, you know So I think a lot of the uncertainties with crypto or kind of being erased that people didn't know Prior also if I put money into this will it be gone? race that people didn't know prior. Also, if I put money into this, will it be gone? We see how much money is in Bitcoin. It has about a $2 trillion give or take market cap. So I think that we're headed towards the right way. And another thing is that there's usually three retraces during a bull run of 33% in Bitcoin. So we went from a hundred eight thousand to about seventy six You know, I think thirty three percent will leave you at around 73 so this is to me just normal right we're kind of Going a little up and down in this area

But a lot of people are stacking Satoshi's as you should or whichever crypto it is The fact that not only in this space where you're seeing on the news down Trump has been talking about the president of the United States regularly number one. As you can see the phone in the back line. But another thing is just how important, like I said, you talked about El Salvador. I think Russia and India and China have been also using crypto for payments. To me, this is something that's bigger than just the retail investor. When countries start using it for trade, that's what makes a bigger difference. And that's what's going to also be the huge increase. What I've been looking forward to is the next country that's going to accept it as a legal tender. Right? We

already see what El Salvador did. Now he also, I think Bukeleli, right, if I'm mispronouncing his name, he obviously, you know, arrested a lot of people, put a lot of people in jail, but they turned the country around completely. And there's going to arrested a lot of people, put a lot of people in jail, but they turned the country around completely. And there's going to be a lot of other smaller countries in the world where their diaspora is in the Western world sending money out. And I know myself, right? I'm Albanian. We send a lot of money, whether it be through RIA, Western Union, and it is so much easier.

And especially, you know, I got to live thankfully for this account 21 and console for a few months. I fixed me for a couple years for a couple years. And one of the biggest things I noticed there was the amount of crypto exchanges. So I can go on like any corner and you can literally go into a store sell crypto by crypto with cash exchange. Like I said right there. And this is I think something that's going to start coming to other places in the world

Because it is so easy. You don't have to you know Ask anybody can you send your money and as the more people get into centralization? We're gonna figure out sooner or later why decentralization is so important to us Jonathan Yeah, this is a slight pivot but Looking at the quarterly performance of the total market cap right now, if it closes where it's at today, this is the worst quarter since Q4 of 2022 for the altcoin market. It's the worst quarter since Q2 of 2022. And what's really interesting to me is, if you

use TradingView, they have three total market cap charts. There's total one, which is a total market cap, total two, which is the altcoin, and then total three is altcoin excluding Ethereum. Total three is outperforming everyone right now by 1%. So total three is down 14% this quarter, but the total market cap is down 15%. But the altcoin market with Ethereum is down 22.22%. And so when people are feeling like this doesn't feel good, it's well, because it doesn't. And when you look at the on-chain metrics too, there's tons of things, at least for Bitcoin, that are extremely bullish. I mean, the supply on the exchanges is... Just me or is everyone...

Can anyone else hear? It seems like Jonathan cut out. No, we can't hear. Okay. Well, I mean, Jonathan's main point, which is that same dichotomy, it feels like that this is a pretty severe correction in the crypto world. But the Bitcoin world is different because, in fact, Joe Carlos, or I'm not sure how we pronounce his last name, and I were having this go back and forth this morning about

is Bitcoin crypto, yes or no. Look Look it's undeniable when Bitcoin rallies people feel they have money in their pocket they take it and they buy alt with it looking to sorry I got a call that I did people hear the point that Bitcoin effectively makes all coins in a synthetic leverage for people who want to trade yeah okay No, we don't know you you cut out when you were saying that people buy crypto with their Bitcoin on a rally. Right. And so we have this thing that that people call the lead sled dog for a reason. But when Bitcoin stalls out at the same time as the NASDAQ is falling, and all speculative investments are going down, correlations increase. And that's exactly what we've seen. Right? I mean, let's call it what it is. I mean, you know, this is, you know, whether it's the proximate causes, April 2nd being some sort of going to be some sort of tariff disaster or whatever.

We've had a pretty reasonable correction in risk assets and Bitcoin is trades like a risk asset but ultimately won't be one whereas most of crypto are risk assets they really are you know base you know people betting on the what will be the potential with Bitcoin it's a little bit different because of the store of value idea so we do see that different I mean and Matt I'm assuming that you have those conversations when people are asking you about the difference in Bitcoin and Ethereum and other stuff, right? Absolutely. You have those conversations all the time. I think crypto is sort of waking up to the reality that it's not entitled to this sort of cascade of correlated returns

where we go from Bitcoin to ETH and then on down the chain. I think we're moving into an era where asset returns are driven more by fundamentals than speculation. The reason we've historically had these altcoin cycles is the market was driven more by speculation and industry-specific drivers than individual fundamental metrics. I actually think traditional investors get that. They get that Bitcoin and ETH are different. They're probably not surprised by the differential returns you have to vastly oversimplify gold

hitting all new time highs and tech stocks dumping. You have the same thing in crypto. You have Bitcoin doing pretty well and tech-driven assets dumping. I think we're going to see lower correlations between different assets in the future as we move into this fundamental era. But I think, actually, I think TradFi sort of gets that idea. Simon? I think one thing that people, because it's particularly in the Bitcoin circles, is they underestimate how impactful stablecoins will be.

At the moment, you get a stablecoin and the only thing you can do with it is send it to crypto native people, which is awesome. And you can do DeFi, whatever it is you want to do with your stablecoin. But there's two major leaps that are still to be factored into the market. One is, if traditional finance, and we do get disruption at the point to sell payment level, whereas the next people start using rather than having these point to sell payment level where the next people start using rather than having these point to sell terminals because you've now got a stable coin and you've taken away the volatility. People then start accepting in shops stable coins and you can actually just pay phone to phone and if they start adopting those in shops, then more people will start adopting it. And you really do

create this system of people being able to transact peer to peer, obviously a centralized environment, because it's a stable coin. But that is kind of solving the median of exchange challenge that we set out to solve. But volatility and Gresham's law and the fact that Bitcoin became the highest performing asset took away because no one wanted to use their Bitcoin unless they had to. Stablecoins really solves that. There is another major point with stablecoins. At the moment, a stablecoin is you get more and more dollars into the tether or circle system.

And then they get to invest it in treasuries, and then they use those treasuries in order to get a special subsidy by providing dollars on a blockchain. But I think that gets competed away, and we're already starting to see more and more issuers issuing stable coins where they actually pay real time daily yield. And rather than keeping all the yield themselves, they're paying it with the stable coin holder. That opens up a wave of structural changes that I think are very impactful, which is why the stablecoin part is really important next because if you're being paid on chain your stablecoin relative to treasuries, you're earning yields in dollars outside the banking system and that can auto convert to Bitcoin. If you auto convert your daily yield to Bitcoin

that you're receiving from treasuries on a stable coin, all of your fiat currency, if you're able to use it, you would then transfer into a stable coin and you use your fiat currency as a mechanism for getting riskless Bitcoin without the upside potential. And that's kind of why we're seeing like ETFs of like micro strategy converts and stuff like that, because you're trying to manage a upside downside risk for median of exchange, but also maximize your investment.

And I think this is something that stable coins will do that the traditional legacy financial system would never be able to do. I think that brings in a lot of fear currency to our sector once people have actually manifested in their heads what that implies. I mean, it also explains why the banks, why the American Banker Association is so terrified because anyone who has a checking account today knows the kind of yield you get is nothing

and it's pretty damn obvious and with more risk if you really think about it although the federal government without the federal government subsidy effective subsidy by having the FDIC banks couldn't compete but you know given the yield differential between what stable coins are going to be able to offer and what what checking accounts do, I think it'll be a big deal. Anyway, Zach, I know you're having trouble trying to get back up and down, but you have your hand up and then Zillian. Yeah, so a little bit of a different topic. I was curious if you guys had discussed the OFAC news from today. OK, I'll bite what OFAC news from today. Okay, I'll bite what OFAC news from today. Sorry. Oh, OFAC is a part of the US Treasury Department that deals with sanctions,

so sanctions of foreign rogue nations, sanctions of terrorist organizations, sanctions of criminal enterprises. And there was a lot of controversy, I think, in 2023, when OFAC has the authority to sanction the property of foreign nationals. And they took the position that the smart contracts, the code living on the blockchain on tornado cash that allowed the tornado cash privacy tool to work was the property of a foreign national. And they made it a crime for any US persons to interact with that code, regardless of whether or not you had criminal intent. This was definitely had somewhat of a chilling effect on the industry.

There were people who protested that by dusting celebrities' wallets with Ethereum or stablecoins that went through the tornado cash smart contracts to show this was an absurd thing. Then there were a pair of lawsuits where plaintiffs argued that immutable smart contracts, because they can't be controlled by the person who coded them up, aren't property and aren't subject to OFAC sanctions authority. And there was some sort of movement on that case. Today, the OFAC just withdrew the smart contracts from their sanctions list and basically conceded this point, which is a pretty incredible step, I think, in the right direction. Yeah, that is actually very good news. One would think that would help the altcoin market but then again people are slow to react

anything these days and there's still a lot of moroseness out there. People of the altcoin market are in the trenches, they're waiting for the next meme coin. Just to add into Simon's point which is extremely good, people are really underestimating the effect of stable coins that stable coins will have. And again, especially emerging currency denominated stable coins, I think these are going to have very good use case when it comes to remittance and also access to financial products in general, because in certain cases, certain jurisdictions, the literally holders of those locally denominated coins can leapfrog into DeFi collateral lending, all type of stuff.

And you will see markets organized around that and Forex markets completely migrating into that. I think there is a huge opportunity there, obviously for builders, but also for people to benefit from what had been built in the DeFi Rails and to finally have access to a little bit more sophisticated financialization. Yeah, I look at it as leverage, right?

Anyone who studies engineering understands you have one lever, you get a fair amount or one joint, you get a fair amount of power. But if you're a golfer, you know that when your wrists and the rest of your body move together and you get multiple points of leverage, it goes that much farther. It's asymptotic. Stablecoins are a major lever. Bitcoin being accepted as good collateral is a major lever. Now combine the two and understand what that could do for DeFi in terms of it breaking out just a pure crypto into the traditional financial world. Simon. Yeah, I also

wanted to add how this relates to and how right the Trump administration is on this particular issue. The understanding and recognizing that the key to world reserve currency status is actually leveraging the fact that these stablecoins are backed by treasuries, which is a more efficient process. But also the fact that if you create an authoritarian regime like European Union, where instead you're going for a digital euro issued by the European Central Bank, versus if you move to a regime of stablecoins where you have more of competing issuers and they become less authoritarianism because we end up with a regime just like Zach covered that, okay, the OFAC rules don't apply here. But then it's really important with the stablecoin regulations in terms of travel rules and various other things because then that could take you down a route of on-chain KYC and various

other things. But my hope is that the world reserve currency of the future is the one that puts the most amount of freedom into that technology. And so if you have a choice between a Euro issued by the ECB, which is a central bank digital currency with all sorts of rules codified into it, and a dollar that is freely transferable around the world and backed by treasuries, and then another jurisdiction comes like El Salvador maybe, says, well, we'll launch a stable coin

that is collateralized by Bitcoin on lightning nodes and has inbuilt privacy. We could end up having a race where the world reserve currency, well, they'll all be denominated in dollars most likely, but the one that gets the most likely, but the one that gets the most adoption will be the one that exerts the most amount of freedom. Obviously, governments will have a very tempting capital control regime that they would like

to implement, but this technology and this race can actually take us to a better place just by opening up the competition. And I think the ones that people will adopt will be the one that exerts the most amount of freedom. Well, I hope so. I mean, you mentioned the European Union. I mean, it feels like they're committing economic, Harry Carrey when it comes to competition.

They've kind of done that already. If you look at the number of European companies that have grown out of the last 25 years, it's a tiny number. But we could go there. One other question, and Fred, you can actually answer this, is we have this old law on the books of $10,000 being able to move it in your wallet and whatnot. With the stablecoins, as stablecoins get more and more traction, that's going to be completely

unenforceable. The question is, will they actually do something about that or just say, we don't really care anymore? Well, I think with any type of law like that, and yeah, it'll be completely unenforceable, it's going to be a pick and choose. Who do you want to go after and for what purpose? We've seen it play out I mean not in the crypto world of how you can pick and choose who needs to be responsible for which laws and go after them

I think something like that will probably address in the stable coin legislation and I was just gonna add to what Simon said Which you know is I think a really beautiful Analysis of how important stable coin legislation is is because it seems so analysis of how important stablecoin legislation is, is because it seems so almost not that important to crypto because a stablecoin is just a representation of a dollar. I mean, it could be any currency, but obviously it's usually the US dollar. And the point being is what he was talking about is the way it gets adopted and who are the players that win is immensely important for which layer ones are going to come out on top.

Yeah. So I know there's one person who joined the panel who I know has no use for any of this government regulation stuff. I'm curious what you think about all this, Bruce. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we don't need, we were missing the forest for the trees on both the stable coin thing and the regulations. I mean, first of all, we don't need any of these regulations. It's a bunch of nanny state busybody Karens trying to put authoritarianism and have their thumb on the, you know, putting power on the people, you know, power over people, totally illegitimate. It's not legitimate to use force and violence and all government regulations are backed by force and violence. So it's just not legitimate. The only legitimate

rules, you know, regulations for government are those that protect life, liberty and property. That's it, period. You know, all this nonsense about, oh, you got to fill out a form here and a form there. That's just totalitarian and anti-state nonsense. It's not the way the world works. It's not the way it has worked for centuries and centuries and centuries. People have been able to trade and move freely. It's a very, very new and stupid idea that, you know, basically in the last 30 years or so, some, you know some busybody, pinheaded tyrants in offices that they paid for with money they stole from people just decided that they're going to get up in everybody's business and start throwing people in cages if they don't fill out a bunch

of stupid forms. Completely and totally illegitimate, totally wrong, should be completely scrapped, thrown in the dustbin of history. It's a stupid idea that never works. It's not the way that the world should work. We have to be free people to have the right to speak and trade and do voluntary commerce with each other, period. Same thing on the stable coins, missing the boat. There's nothing cool about stable coins

if they're backed by broken phony fiat money that some, again, more pinheaded tyrants sitting in offices that they paid for with money they stole from people, print from thin air. It's the ultimate scam coin. We would be completely roasting somebody if they came in. Imagine if I came in here and I'm like, I have an idea for a coin. The supply is unlimited, and I can print it for whenever I want from thin air by pressing a button, and there's no proof of work or proof of stake. It's just me on a database, and I can print it and give it to my friends. I'd get roasted alive, rightfully, because

that would be a scam. And we all know it's a scam. And what's backing these stable coins is fiat, which is a scam. It's a big scam. So, you know, we gotta keep our mind on the ball. Like, you know, Simon said, we should be thinking about things like human freedom and privacy, and, you know, these are the things that matter. And we have to constantly reject this stuff

because there's always gonna be, the trickle down effect from the pinheaded tyrants is that it brainwashes otherwise good people to think like, we need things like AMLKYC, we need these regulations. And they get so used to being abused by the system and abused by these tyrants who threaten to throw you in jail if you don't do a bunch of stupid paperwork,

that they start to think that that's normal. And you have entire compliance departments, and then they go and spend millions on law firms and the law firms tell them to do the same stuff. And it just becomes a big mess where everybody is kind of forgetting the whole purpose of this. This stuff should be rejected and fought continuously. It's total tyranny. It has no place in a civilized society. It's barbaric and absurd and crazy and I look forward, I hope I live to see the day that it's all gone. I mean, the funny part is, you know, and obviously a lot of us are putting up smiley faces and

laughing. It's not that we disagree with you because I don't, right? You know, in an ideal world that would be it. But practically speaking, the guys that are the pinhead of tyrants have guns, drones, and other methods of financial mass destruction. In Europe, they're going so far as to lock it down with the CBDC, which is really scary. The real question is, you know, the fiat experiment, I mean, you and I have talked about this, we both agree, you know, the fiat experiment is 50 some odd years old, it's not, and yet almost every economist that you hear talking to people and people believe, people

believe that 2% inflation is a good thing. They think that inflation is necessary, which is completely insane. We know the largest standard of living increase in the history of humanity occurred during a period of no inflation. Now, yeah, there were more business cycles. You can argue about whether those cycles could be fixed, whether the internet would make them less likely anyway today. There's all sorts of arguments.

But the thing about the stablecoin idea, which is, yeah, it's propping up the fiat regime for even longer. The question is, what's the alternative? Because we have a situation where you say, well, dollars are terrible. The stablecoin regime, as Simon put it, and this is where Simon and I completely agree, I think, it provides a transitional bridge for people to be able to accumulate hard currency while spending the softer currency, and that softer currency being the dollar.

But that softer currency could become even more worldwide. A large percentage of the world is dollars already. Right, Simon? Yeah, and well, again, but the only reason that there was a contraction and a de-dollarization movement was because the dollar got weaponized for political means. And that is where you start to lose your status as a World Reserve currency, unless you can cater for that.

But I do want to point out, there's phases here. Bitcoin was the Apex predator in 2008. It gave us the ability to own our own money, spend our own money, and escape the debt slavery of the Federal Reserve by saving in Bitcoin. And those people that saved had a transitional wealth transfer from those that were saving in other assets. And that's the base layer of the system.

The next phase is how do you... And I think that as a opt out of central banking phase, the next phase is how do you, and I think that as a opt out of central banking phase, the next phase, and now we've got 800 extra hashes backing the network where no central bank or government can take it down. They lost that battle. And so now all they can do is persuade you to store your Bitcoin with BlackRock instead so that you don't get the freedom you should have. But the next phase is the stablecoin side, because that is essentially taking away for the asset class fractional reserve banking, but it's backed by war and violence, as we know, because fiat currency is fundamentally backed by war and violence. And so it's important to understand that when you are looking for how to regulate these things, the anti-money laundering laws, in the end,

when you look at the actual data, not what they want you to think, it actually just gives the government a monopoly on money laundering and the crony capitalists that are able to use their lobby power to bribe governments the monopoly on money laundering, which is why the banks, the shareholders of the central banks, are the ones that don't go to prison despite how much money laundering they're committing because they're able to

do the crime and pay the fine. So all it ends up doing, as Bruce correctly has figured out, is that everyone that's not money laundering ends up giving all of their data to this honeypot that puts you at risk and means that governments can do really bad things with that. And that's kind of where I think this whole transition to phase three is that we proven that we can put money

on 800 extra hashes of hash power and then the governments have to adjust. But what if you can put social media on 800 extra hashes and you can own your own data? What if you can do that with identity? And what if you can do that most importantly with artificial intelligence? Because there is a competition and this kind of goes to what we still need to build and why there is so much more to be built in our sector. We won the money battle Bitcoin they had to concede to but we have to win the social media, the identity and the artificial intelligence because they want a monopoly on the truth through controlling media. They want a monopoly on all of your movements through social data and they want a monopoly on

your identity. If those are taken away and Bitcoin was the mechanism for doing it just by putting it on 800 extra hashes of hash power, then I think we enter a world where regulations do get disrupted because they can't keep up with technological innovation and tax authorities do get disrupted because they just can't figure out what to do when they're trying to tax an artificial intelligence and they can't tell the difference between a human and an AI. So recognize we are on the path, it is a transitional phase. And that crazy world of freedom that Bruce has presented there might just happen if we do this right. I'd love to see it. I want to make two quick notes before we go to Gaurav. First, for those

who are watching the market, it's always amusing on an options exploration Friday, how the big figures are Magnetized and right now we are like we have been right around 84,000 And it feels like it's pinned there until everything expires Don't be terribly surprised to see some volatility later today don't know from which direction it will go Frankly don't really care because I don't think it'll be a big move because of what we're saying But it is worth noting for the audience. And the second is when you talk about the government being the monopolist on money laundering, you have to also understand that the media has been weaponized to help them. All you have to do is look at the amount of paid protest and others and useful idiots in the media going after what

Doge is trying to do, primarily, especially with USAID, where we've effectively proven that the government is money laundering federal funds back to politicians and their families and to pet causes of said politicians and their families that were never authorized. And yet there's enormous pushback just to preserve that, you know, from the media. So it's like, yes, you're right. We want that freedom. We do. But I feel like we are, I hate to say it,

but go back and watch Matrix One. Someone posted that this week. I feel like we've all taken the right pill here, but we're in the minority. And so that's where a large part of education and where a lot of this actually matters. Anyway, Gaurav. Yeah, thanks, Dave. I have a genuine question and genuine as in it's boiling in me for a long time. Because, you know, when we took the orange pill, sort of complementing your statement, Dave. We all came in for the sincerity of decentralization,

the value of assets, the store of value of Bitcoin and so on and so forth. My question to Bruce is, the stuff that's happening with meme is memes and NFTs and these stupid tokens that are launched every day that were launched every day on Ethereum when ERC came up and then there were Bitcoin forks and you know, Bitcoin and Poopcoin and whatnot. All that has happened in capital markets and I think still happens to some degree.

And the only way it was ever controlled and these bad players were just endlessly and controllessly launching fake assets with no intrinsic value or whatever, they were controlled by the regulators. What do you think is a solution for crypto in this case if you're not depending on regulations and compliance and stuff like that? What's the answer? When will this pain end? Well, I don't think it really was stopped by the regulators. You look at the ICO wave, the government didn't get around to prosecuting a lot of these cases until half a decade later. They've been slow on a lot of this stuff. What corrects it is the market. If you just let people do their thing, the market will correct it. There's no world where junk assets just keep

going up and up and up and up and up forever for a century. Those memes would have gone to the moon if the government didn't step in. No, they're going to go down to zero because they're worth zero. The market fixes that. The quicker the government gets out of the way and lets the market work, the quicker that will happen. They're counterproductive. People should be allowed to do stupid things. It's part of freedom. The world is a stupid place. Coughs are a scam. A lot of gym memberships are a scam. There's scams all over. Politicians are a scam. Fiat's a scam. That's the way the world works and people need to have the freedom to do things. The best regulator is the market itself. The best regulator is when you say, oh man, my cousin Tony, he put 40 grand in

an ICO and it went down to zero. Then five years later, oh man, my cousin Tony, he put 40 grand in an ICO and it went down to zero. And then five years later, oh man, my cousin Tony didn't learn. He put 40 grand more in a meme token and it went down to zero. I guess I'm not going to do that. And now that Tony's done it twice, he's not going to do it a third time. That's the way the world works. That's what's good. When you try and put trust into some sort of central authority like, oh yes, mother government will protect me. A, they won't, they're terrible at it. They're terrible at every single thing they do

other than killing. It's the only thing government is good at. Every single thing they do, every single thing they touch turns dirt. They're horrible, they're violent, they're authoritarian. Nobody in their right mind would trust the government to watch their kid or feed their dog. They can't be trusted

to do anything. They break everything. They take a bunch of innocent people and cause them to jump through hoops with ridiculous things like AM and KYC and paperwork and all of this other stuff. And then it doesn't solve anything. The biggest fraudster in history was the head of the biggest regulator, Bernie Madoff. Biggest fraudster in history was head of the biggest regulator. Biggest fraudster in our industry was Sam Bankman Fried, the closest person to the regulators. He was the number one most politically connected. He was the number one closest with the regulator.

He is the only one who got a meeting with Gary Gensler. Brian Armstrong didn't get one. Jesse Powell didn't get one. CZ Schurr is heck didn't get one. Sam got a meeting with Gary Gensler. Brian Armstrong didn't get one. Jesse Powell didn't get one. CZ Schurzheck didn't get one. Sam got the meeting. Why did Sam get the meeting? Because it is a corrupt and broken system that is rotten at its core and it can never work and never has worked and never will work. Every single society in the history of mankind has done better, all else being equal with more freedom. There's other factors, like if you're landlocked or you have low education and other things

that can make you richer or poorer. But if it's equal, if you have two countries that are equal in terms of resources and access, and one is more free, and you can see this from satellite photos looking at borders, the place that's more free is going to be more prosperous. It's even going to look better from outer space on a satellite photo. It's going to have greener trees and better houses. It's all about human freedom. People should have the power because either you believe people are good or you believe people are bad. And if you believe they're bad, then you sure as heck shouldn't give power to certain centralized ones like Gary Gensler, Bernie Madoff, or Sam, or Maxine Waters, or anybody else.

So, either way, whatever your belief is, it makes sense to have the people have more individual power. So, yeah, I think these things are corrected by markets. Believe in markets. Markets work fast. Nobody right now, when's the last time you heard somebody say, hey, I have a white paper for an ICO? You haven't heard that for five years.

They call it something different. They might call it a DeFi staking mechanism with Minkoins or whatever. And then that's a stupid. And then next year, they'll create some other name for it. Like, oh, it's an Internet of Things Web3 token, or whatever the next stupid buzzword is going to be but the point is the market fixes those things and if government gets out of the way and lets

the market work it actually works even better it's even more efficient people do things more so yeah you know power to the people i want you to have the freedom i want everybody to have the freedom central it's a total illusion pushed by centralized offices and the people in these power positions that they can help because they never have. They didn't help with Madoff or Sam. They made things worse. They always do and always will. They're not going to solve it.

So the trade-off, see the illusion is, well, yeah, government's really terrible and they murder 300 million of their own people and they burden a billion people with paperwork and they cost a lot of money and they steal our money and on and on and on. But at least they stop fraud. No, they don't. They don't even do the one thing they're supposed to do. They make it worse. They enable the Sams and they enable the Bernie Madoffs and they create a situation where only the fraudsters get away. So you get nothing from it. They steal all your money and they murder people and they put people in cages and they do all your money and they murder people and they

put people in cages and they do all of this horrible, horrible stuff. And they still don't do the one thing that they say that they're going to do. We got to scrap it entirely. It's all illegitimate. It's all evil. It's all horrible. Get rid of it. Let the markets work. It's never going to be perfect. Yeah, sure. There's still going to be fraud. There's still going to be bad ideas. But the market will work much more quickly and efficiently. When I say fraud, by the way, certain things, it is legitimate for government. It is legitimate for government to go after hackers or somebody who outright lies. If somebody launches a coin and say, I have a billion dollars worth of gold securing this

coin and they don't, well, that's fraud. That's a crime and should be a crime. But all this other nonsense where there's no victim when you're talking about paperwork and accredited investor rules and the nonsense that VARA does in Dubai and the nonsense that SEC does and all of these things, it's all junk, all illegitimate, all ineffective, and it's all for nothing.

It's not like, oh, well, at least we have all this stupidity, but at least it works, it doesn't work. Well, look, Bruce, you and I should probably have a one-on-one on this. I think we agree about 80%. You know, the 20% we disagree on are really about on the edges of what you started admitting there, which is that we do want people to be deterred from and prosecuted for fraud. I would add manipulation. I would add that I would add make lying exactly. Yeah. Where is the boundary? I would add make lying exactly yeah where is the boundary I would say there are there are there are I mean you there I I there are a lot of well-meaning

people at the SEC and yet the SEC's work product for the last decade has been crap right you know in fact yeah Dave if I can yeah go ahead yeah if I can just like continue to what you said and sort of complement my append my question. Bruce, you were about to complete your statement and then probably we digress. You said you can either believe the world has good people, I mean bad people and then that implies to the people sitting in the government are bad or and then you never said or the world has good people and that that means the government has good people sitting.

I mean, would you like to complete that? If people are good, then you don't need government to nanny-state us around. You know, overall, most people are good. 98% of people are good. So you don't need some nanny-state to sit there and be like, okay, David, you need to have this form before you can do a transaction with

Simon. You know, we don't need that. It's just a bunch of nanny states, you know, let them do their thing. People are, I believe people are generally good. I believe that some small percentage are bad. And I guard very carefully against that bad because they can kill you and they could be very, very bad. There are people, and I teach my kids this, I say, you know, because my kids are very, very blessed. We live in an almost zero crime area in New Hampshire, and we have this wonderful home and wonderful neighborhood, and you know, I have to remind them.

I say, yeah, you know, there's places in the world where people will kill you for 10 grand. And so yeah, there is evil people in the world, but most people are good, and therefore markets will mostly work. So you can have a light touch state where it just goes after the real crimes with real victims against life, liberty and property. And property includes things like fraud. And that's really all you need government for. You know, you don't need to... The idea that a lot of people, you know, communists and leftists

have is that, well, everybody's stupid. I mean, you listen to Bernie Sanders. He has almost a disdain for everybody in the world. Like, he knows everything. He, you know, he's complained about Uber and Lyft and how many deodorants there are. There's too many deodorants. Hedge fund managers make too much. He complains about everything. He thinks from his narcissistic point of view that he can live in like some king on a throne who sits there and knows better than everybody else. Like Bernie Sanders, who's never had a job in his life, he knows better than everybody on this chat. He knows better than Gary. He knows better than me. No, he doesn't. He doesn't know anything. It's a place of arrogance. These guys think that

they think they're better than us. They think doesn't know anything. It's a place of arrogance. These guys think that they think they're better than us. They think that they know better and that we're all bad. You know, the implication that Bernie would have, oh, Bruce Fenton is a wealthy guy and wealthy guys are bad and therefore we must control it. And so he thinks I'm bad and he thinks Gary's bad and he thinks Simon's bad. He thinks you're bad. He thinks everybody's bad. And only he's good. He's good because he's the enlightened liberal man who had quadruple facts and wore a face diaper around and proclaims his greatness. And therefore, he gets to decide. And that's wrong. You know, he thinks we're all bad and he's good. I think most people are good. I think most people are good. And he can just leave us alone and things will go pretty well.

And occasionally, 1% or 2% will commit crimes. And that is the only rare cases where government interference is legitimate. All this other stuff, regulating deodorants or AML KYC or any other stupid nanny state stuff that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren want, all illegitimate. Well, I think you got, you know, look, there are public goods and there's where you draw the line. I mean, you talk about deodorants. Do you want people to be able to manufacture things that put poison in you that there's no way that the market will detect it for?

Sure, of course. People should be able to make things that have poison in them. What they shouldn't be able to do is lie. There's all kinds of things that are poison, my friend. Look at, I mean, every one of us probably has poison on our shelves. I mean, if you read the ingredients of Girl Scout cookies. I retract my statement because I am an RFK supporter on that topic. Anyway, Simon.

Yeah, I was just going to say it is a tight line because in stopping someone from lying comes the SEC disclosure regime and then you end up with lots of pieces of paper in order to try and stop someone lying. Well, hold on a second. Let's be very specific here. That disclosure regime was written in the 30s and it was updated last in the 70s. Right now, there's not even a mention of the internet. They bolted it on sort of, but they still have a 30-day period in IPOs to handle the fact that it takes that long or it did back in the 30s for a printer create the prospectuses. So I mean, come on. It's a bunch of crap. And not there's not a human being on the planet, not one who would say the laws as written would be what you would write today. And that that's an enormous indictment of those laws. And by the way, you want to know one of the people who said that to me, Paul Atkins, who's about to run the SEC. So you know, I think we need to give him some time because I know he agrees with that sentence. I know he was the biggest dissent on RegNMS, which has created the whole high frequency need for the data centers and we could dive into that one too. But look, the line is

there. Anyway, you were going to comment on something else, so I'm sorry. Yeah. But yeah, you know, I do and we know that these regulators, they just become co-opted by lobby groups and then they become a mafia racketeering organization that's to tap up all the broker dealers and allow the large financial institutions to do the crime and pay the fine as long as they get a cut and then they can expand their bureaucracy. We know that story to tell us all the time. It happens every single time. But in the whole philosophical conversation, I do think that fundamentally, having a monetary system, and this is where I come to one of the things to focus on, it doesn't

fix everything, but fix money, fix the world, is that we do have a duty to give the world a monetary system that is not based upon Ponzi economics. And the reality is that the credit-based financial system is a Ponzi scheme. There's not enough money to pay off, to service all the debt. And so you have to have more debt

to service the interest payment on the money that the bank has the monopoly on its creation. Fundamentally, that drives out the worst habits in human behavior, because everybody is driven into a system where you have to figure out how to get your positive balance on your online banking at the expense of a negative balance for somebody else's online banking

in a world where the money doesn't actually exist. And so I think that drives out the worst in human behavior. You can either regulate that away and create a monetary system that actually is not a Ponzi by definition, or you can compete it away, which is where I think Bitcoin actually was the regulator of the crypto market because those that have no Bitcoin right now because they spend too much on meme coins are going to look back and say, what went wrong? Oh, right. Well, by actually having a sound monetary base by which to compare your bad habits,

Bitcoin was the regulator and those that end up with the most Bitcoin without messing around with too much on the other side, you know, that was what regulated ICOs, what regulated meme coins. And then you've just got an element of obviously scammers and theft, which is something you have to figure out some way. Zilean and we're getting close to time here but let's get see if we can wrap up your final comments. Zilean, your hand's up. Sorry, yes I'm here, sorry. No, to join Simon's point, Simon always has very good points. Just to give like again, like a kind of a worldwide perspective, the credit system from some point of many traditions, including the large Muslim tradition is not allowed, right? I mean, most of these countries had to follow whatever modern finance does.

But at a certain point, they will have enough. And now in Saudi Arabia, this is a big debate, et cetera. They will have enough abilities and independence to kind of choose whatever monetary system they want to build for the future. So I totally agree with Simon's points. And I want to disagree with Simon one day, but I can't. It's very tough. Very tough. Yeah, I think this is one of those conversations

that personally I would love to go on forever, but I think we all have lives. So, you know, it's 11.30 on a Friday. I think we'll take it up again, but thanks, Bruce. One of these days we should have a one-on-one podcast where we can really dig in. The only problem is we're not gonna disagree enough for it to be fun, but we need to find someone who really does believe in the nanny state to to challenge you all don't count

I'm sorry. He'll fight for the fear currency. You can come up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well Joe's not up here now So I don't want to say anything about him. He and I have had those discussions We should definitely do that, but other than that, I think Scott will be back at the helm next week So hopefully I haven't disappointed too many of you guys but Crypto Town Hall will be Monday morning at 10 15 Eastern. Have a great weekend everybody