The Wolf Of All Streets - BTC ETFs See $3B Weekly Inflow, Historic Bull Signal? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

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Can anybody out there hear me speak? Yeah. What's up, Dave? How are you doing? Okay. Cool. Well, I don't know. I just gave a whole long soliloquy and I think it all was completely done. Yeah, this is the first time I'm hearing you speak, so I haven't heard anything before. Okay. Well, so I talked a lot to myself. I guess that's not all that surprising, isn't it?

So whatever. But anyway, there's two stories that I think are worth touching on this week. In any particular order could be the inflows into Bitcoin, Bitcoin looking like it's delinking, looking like it is poised for moving higher as long as the market doesn't crash. And even then, who knows what it will do. At the same time, we had a crypto roundtable last week on Friday that I thought was fascinating for a bunch of reasons. I mean, watching a panel where people from DTC are on the same panel as people from Anchorage and Bicco to me is really interesting because it feels like there's a disconnect in the old guard

versus the new. And when the chairman of the SEC basically is telling people we want to go and worry about innovation and we want to think about new business models, I think that there are people in the institutional space in crypto who don't really or not in crypto in financial services who don't really know what's coming for them. And so I'm curious. I mean, Carlo, I was actually asking you back when I thought you could hear me what your thoughts were on that, because to me it was a really interesting juxtaposition. I have never been more bullish about the prospects for the future of this sector. And I think it is finally going to be startup seasoning crypto in the

United States. And I foresee there's a lot of money on the sidelines, especially overseas, that was driven overseas due to lack of regulatory clarity that I think wants to come back and seize upon this new era. Paul Atkins comments on Friday at the round table. It made me incredibly bullish for the future of this. And I'm excited. I'm very excited, Dave. Yeah, at the same time, at the slightest hint of delinking, which we saw at the beginning of the week, to see $3 plus billion of inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs, I would imagine that that more than anything else is showing the kind of floor there is to the market. It doesn't talk about

the ceiling, but in terms of the kind of buying interest, I thought that it was a very big deal in a market where, yeah, the stock market at the end of the day, we had an up week, but that kind of up and that kind of demand, I think is illustrative. Well, and you add to that the new projections that we're seeing, I don't know if you saw what Kathy would and are came out with as far as their predictions, but through the roof and you know, the floor is very strong. I have to agree. I don't know where the ceiling will be, but I think the floor is starting to really find its bottom and stabilize on Bitcoin. Yeah, I mean, look, I'll be I'll be a little bit critical. I mean, I get pretty I don't want to say I'm ignoring Kathy Wood, but her track record has been pretty bad recently. I think that she's very much like the way I consider myself, which is right

on the general direction, but wrong on timing. I think that the general direction that she says that Sailor says other people, I mean, I don't want to look beyond, it's funny, I almost even feel weird saying it, but I don't want to look beyond, it's funny, I almost even feel weird saying it, but I don't want to look beyond the 10X in Bitcoin and worry about what's going to happen then. I just want to see that, I think the probability of that 10X of Bitcoin becoming digital gold and having them and being a place for a springboard

for more is a worthy enough goal that it's pointless to talk about more. Although I think there are people out there who really care a lot about the, the, the right tail, you know, the the extraordinary potential beyond that. But so I look at some of those things, and I wonder if it turns people off, you know, certainly in the institutional world, how these people are crazy, and devalues opinions. I mean, maybe no, I mean, I'm

curious, anybody else think the same way? I guess not. I guess I'm on an island with that one. But it wouldn't be the first time, that's for sure. Just like me talking without anybody being able to hear. So I can't see anyone else up here. So we maybe have an issue too with connections. I just see yourself and me know that everyone else is a listener. Yeah, that's it. There are I see you and Carlo as a speaker. And I've said there's some weird stuff going on massive power outages across Portugal, Spain. I understand UK has got some issues. I don't know if that's having any kind of issues. I don't know if that's having any kind of impact on connectivity, but Europe is definitely part of Europe is in the dark right now and that's really concerning. Really? Well, that's really

interesting. But that I hadn't seen. But then again, you know, I was just doing Macro Monday a few seconds ago. So what was it really paying attention? But yeah, I mean, you know, Douglas, I mean, what are your thoughts about that last week? And are we gonna look back in six months and say, you know what, the second to last week of April was really a turning point? Or are we just is this your basic? Yeah, whatever. I mean, you know, it doesn't really matter. But the price didn't move that much. And who really cares? So, Dave, on that last question you had, I think that what we have is

the benefit of hindsight in this generation. And I think that if we think of Bitcoin as being sort of real estate on Manhattan, at the time when we traded essentially beads for Manhattan, at the time when we traded essentially beads for Manhattan. If the traders then looked at it and looked forward the next couple of hundred years, they'd have probably thought, you know what, we're gonna get more than a 10 times, a hundred times, a thousand times on our investment. And I think that if you think of Bitcoin

as being essentially real estate, it's a store of wealth, but it's real estate without having to pay taxes on it on an annual basis and without having to take care of maintenance, then I think that you can sort of look ahead and say, you know, over time, this is going to have your significant movement to the top side, but you have to be patient.

And what's unfortunate in these sort of daily or weekly calls is everyone wants to know what's gonna happen over the next 24 hours, as opposed to what's unfortunate in these sort of daily or weekly calls is everyone wants to know what's going to happen over the next 24 hours, as opposed to what's going to happen over the next thousand years, because obviously, that's kind of the time horizon that we're looking at. But I think that certainly last week did show as a bottom. And it's also shown us a lot more corporations, I think, sort of coming out of the woodwork and getting involved in the sailor trade. Not only did Sailor obviously make some large purchases last week, but we're also seeing

now obviously the new Canter company that's coming in that's going to be essentially a Bitcoin bank. And we're seeing more and more of this happening across the spectrum. And this is just corporations getting involved. Obviously, I think we've got a vote this week for what? For Arizona, maybe a couple of other states where they're going to start getting involved in it. And then you obviously have the nation states that are quietly doing it out of the Middle East and the US that's sort of in a rush to get some in themselves. So we're all in this sort of front running stage right now, knowing what's inevitable and that there's going to be

purchases from lots of different places, specifically in Bitcoin, not in all the other things, but just in Bitcoin. And so I think that you can have comfort at these levels, but again, you've got to be, it's sort of, I think that you really need to have that 10,000 foot viewpoint or 30,000 foot macro viewpoint in that this is something that's gonna move higher.

There's gonna be volatility on a day to day basis, but who cares? Cause it's gonna go a lot higher. And it's sort of like, you know, obviously don't risk more than you can afford to. But I think that this is one of these opportunities where I look at it and I think, yeah, I may as well put two boots in the water here

as opposed to a tow. Yeah. I mean, look, I look at things I was mentioning last, you know, last hour that one of the my favorite indicators of what's going on in the greater crypto verse, not just Bitcoin, but including Bitcoin, is the fact that last week we flipped Tether to a slight premium versus a discount. And when that is true for a sustained period of time, that's generally an indicator that the market is getting more money in than is coming out. Keep in mind from the peak in the first of March till about two weeks ago,

Tether was trading at a persistent small discount. I mean, it's always very small, like two, three, four basis points, but it matters. And people on this in crypto Twitter often mistake this for the spot premium or the spot whatever, because what they're looking at is CoinBases or Kraken or Bitstamps, US dollar price of Bitcoin and comparing it to the Bitcoin Tether price or the Bitcoin tether perpetuals or whatever. And the reality is is tethers premium means when you trade it this way that the price of Bitcoin in dollars

is higher. I mean, it's just it's pure math, it's pure arbitrage. There's plenty of market makers and arbitrageurs to keep that in line. But what it does signify is people willing to pay a little bit more to be able to get money into the cryptos first, because that's essentially what Tether is used for. So to me, it feels like we're there to be a risk asset rally that crypto would have a significantly bigger push higher. I don't know what anybody else thinks. Douglas, what do you think about that? Tether's had a bit of a turnaround, I think, in terms of public opinion in the United States over the last couple of months, almost like XRP, actually. XRP was seen as a criminal and neither seen as being a savior.

Tether is being, I think, changed in a similar type of way, specifically because the US needs buyers of treasury bills. And obviously Tether is what the seventh largest holder of US treasuries. They've got more treasuries, they're holding more treasuries than Canada is. So that's a very important customer, given all of the changes that we're making with tariffs and that sort of thing. So I think that tariffs, that Tether sort of has moved from sort of the redheaded stepchild to maybe being a favorite cousin in the market.

And that's obviously, I think another reason why you're seeing maybe a little bit of a bit to the tether. Yeah, I'm not so sure I agree with that. I mean, I agree with the sentiment. I don't think it drives the price. I think the price is just supply and demand. But Carly, you raise your hand. Yeah, you know, an interesting thing I've been thinking about is a potential stealth QE maneuver

that could work here if the stable coin act passes is for the government to, let's say, encourage or prioritize that stable coin should be backed by treasuries, which I think would give some relief to what's happening with treasuries and would increase some dollar dominance and liquidity. So I'm just curious how that's going to play out because there are all kinds of things that the Fed can do that are not necessarily traditional QE. And one of those could be a kind of stablecoin arbitrage. Well, I mean, considering, I don't think they have to do anything to encourage it. I think that if you're a stable coin issuer

and you're dumb enough to put your money in bank deposits, then, you know, I think, may God have mercy on their souls. I mean, you're getting paid dramatically higher yield with treasuries and at much less risk. So, you know, we'll see what happens. But I mean, if you remember a city group came out with a thing, I'm looking for the actual story, I think it was 3.7 trillion, they think is the size of the stable coin market. You know, I personally think they're wrong. But I think that they're in the right direction. So I'm curious what people think, but I believe that what will happen for the first year, you'll see steady growth in stablecoins.

You will eventually see stablecoins become the plumbing underneath Zelle, Cash App, Venmo, et cetera, because it's way cheaper and more efficient. As that happens, you're going to also see competitors through traditional banking come into the sector, being able to be part of those networks, offering sweeping from stablecoins into yield bearing assets as a enhanced UI experience. So you don't have to actually do it yourself, that it will do that.

At which point the total amount of digital money markets will dramatically eclipse. Total checking account balances and stable coins will not stable ones will grow as much and checking account balances will dry up. I don't think there's any stopping that train. I mean, you and I talked about that before Carlo, but the very fact that city group is talking about 3.7 trillion dollars into the online digital blockchain economy is a very big deal that I don't think is priced in into the market.

Yeah, I have to agree and I take it one step further. We had DeFi Summer. I think we're looking at Stablecoin Summer. I think that's going to be the meta of this cycle because everyone's going to want to uniquely build some kind of a stablecoin into their financial ecosystem. So I think there's a lot of room here for growth. Amitayu? Yeah, I agree with that sentiment. I think that what we're gonna have is just a barrage of news and headlines around stable coin integrations across multiple companies, multiple countries,

multiple providers. I think stable coins will ultimately represent the way that the US fortifies itself against bricks and some of these other kind of denomination tools that are being used geopolitically. And I just think it's going to continue. And I think that maybe the cycle top is when we see the real small businesses start embracing these as the big corporations, but I think essentially the stablecoin Experience is all about to be abstracted and simplified Meaning that anyone can transfer stablecoins process payments, etc The wallet complexity is about to go away and that's going to be a really big deal for the stablecoin economy.

And I think that the rising tide will lift boats because when you see those crypto based headlines at a narrative forming in a really big way, it's very significant. Dave, I'm kind of curious about your opinion on this like tether news. Just running the math on it, assuming that it's legit. I mean, that's like $82 billion worth of gold. It's an astronomical amount. One, I just have a hard time seeing that there's that much demand for a gold back token. And I just wanted to see what your thoughts were. I don't, I wasn't counting on a gold back. What token are you talking about? I was just talking about USDTT just plain old. Yeah, into the top of the spaces here. It's a breaking story. Oh,

that Heather purchase 7.7 tons of gold. The back is X a UT token. Oh, well, that's interesting. That is actually interesting. I hadn't seen that because I'm looking at my phone. I don't see. Oh, there it is. Yeah, that is a fascinating one. Effectively, having a backed token for gold is one of those things that will take advantage of the gold bull market.

Of course, there's a difference between velocity and acceleration in physics, we all understand the difference, velocity is how fast something is moving, acceleration is how fast it's it's changing Gold products do really really well when gold is rising because there's velocity and once it hits a stable point all of a sudden the storage costs and Verification costs and all of those things tend to go higher. So It will see how it does in the long run, but clearly there's demand

I mean the demand for gold is high. It's the same thing as driving Bitcoin, which is actually a really interesting topic. I mean, Gary, you did like two or three spaces this weekend. I'm curious, what was the general tone of the Bitcoiners you're talking to in terms of Bitcoin vis-a-vis gold and where things are going and what happened last week? Because I think this is relevant there. Are you there, Gary? Hey, I need to come back to you guys, Dave.

Let me get, give me a second, please. Okay, cool. Well, Simon, you were on as well this weekend. I know this is a topic near and dear to your heart. Yeah, so look, there's no doubt about it that stable coins are an integral part of the US strategy. The ability for anyone to be able to... It kind of gets rid of the pointer cell terminal.

It's global. It doesn't have massive infrastructure behind it. It turns banking into a tech play. Even having a gold back stablecoin, people find that a bit tricky because unit of account wise, it's kind of the same problem as Bitcoin, where your head can't get around how you measure the price of milk in Bitcoin, you know, when it's 0.00001278, you know, you just can't get your head around it. And it's kind of the same with gold. So that's always been the thing that's had less adoption. But in an environment where you're trying to store your value outside of the banking system,

if you've got significant wealth and you're trying to go into cash, what are your options? You're either going to hold it as a bank deposit, which is risky, you're going to purchase treasuries, or you're going to hold it in a stablecoin, and now you can hold it in a gold back stablecoin. Obviously you've got all the risks that come with that because there's still counterparty risk.

There's still a trust-based system. And then you have Bitcoin to seamlessly go in and out of a trustless system. And so all to say that, yeah, there's no doubt that this is the future strategy. And I think it just needs to be done in a controlled way. And the reason that they said we could kill Tether or we could just take over Tether.

So to me, I see Tether slowly becoming part of the US apparatus and the fact that it's now working with canter and canter is a, you know, a dealer for Fed. Well, let's pull down that, go down that before we go into the geopolitical side. I mean, a really simple thing, I mean, Carlo, I assume you're gonna agree I mean, a really simple thing. I mean, Carlo, I assume you're going to agree with this. A really simple thing. Imagine a world where we get the stablecoin bill and fairly quickly, some stablecoins, probably USDC will start, but it doesn't really

matter, are integrated into Zelle and Venmo and Cash App. Now think about what that means. All of a sudden, because right now, anyone, if you're outside the US and you don't know what these stupid things are, so in Zelle, Zelle is a banking network and it's only banks. Venmo, if you wanna move money from you to someone else, PayPal being similar, you use something called Plaid

to link your bank account to, which is, I mean, it doesn't feel clunky when you're using it, but it's very expensive in the back end. And there's all sorts of and it doesn't clear it takes three days, we all understand a lot of the issues with it. If that gets replaced with stable coins, then all of a sudden, non banks have the ability to offer the same sort of products to compete with banks and in particular Brokerage firms or even crypto firms. I mean, I think there's a reason people are afraid that you're gonna need banking licenses Which is why Kraken, you know, I am a trust bank and they've applied coinbase applied for banking licenses, etc

I mean the implications of this I think are, are very wide ranging in terms of the way the financial system is structured. I mean, I think that's what you were talking about. You're simultaneously 100% agree, Dave, because you're simultaneously eliminating all of the friction in the banking sector when it comes to off ramp and on ramp. I threw some thumbs down. I'm not a fan of plaid, very intrusive as far as what you've got to do to link up your account. And you're also eliminating a lot of friction in crypto, which is what we need for bigger

onboarding of the consumer. The moment that this becomes just as easy as an Apple wallet, I think sky's the limit. Hi, Matteo. Yeah, Plaid is very intrusive, actually still is Zelle. I knew one of the engineers who worked on Zelle. And essentially, you didn't even have to have Zelle enabled via the bank for them to actually register phone IDs. It's very intrusive technology in terms of how it's able to track devices and send funds accordingly. So, I mean, I think the other thing with stable coins is like, obviously X payments is coming, the ability to send and transfer.

They want to build a whole financial layer into X, which is the most engaged social platform on the planet. So, and I think stable coins are just gonna drive that. There's no way that Elon's gonna tokenize X. So when you see stable coins being embedded, not only on like the financial layer, but on the social layer, and people are just interacting with them and getting so familiar with using

them, I think that that really creates a pretty big critical mask. And to your point, Dave, it does create, you know, there's been challenges and challenger products to these banks for a very long time, There's been challenges and challenger products to these banks for a very long time. Products like Chime and all these neo banks that came into the market. The issue with neo banks that I got to experience firsthand is just the amount of fraud and

the difficulty that they have managing these products in a really safe and guaranteed way. They take millions of dollars in losses every quarter. And stablecoins are gonna help resolve that fraud. That alone is gonna be enough for them to adopt it because of how much they take in losses due to fraud. Simon. Yeah, just wanted to say as well, if at the end of this whole thing,

you end up with stablecoin legislation, clear regulations on how to regulate stablecoins, and the yield just stays within and goes to the issuer, and then you don't get a Bitcoin strategic reserve for the country and you don't issue a bit bond, then it's somewhat of a rug pull. All you've done is move the profits from banks over to technology companies and the main beneficiary were essentially all the people in the Trump administration and the banks that are going to be issuing the stablecoin. So if that's the end result, I mean, it's great, but it's somewhat of a rug pull in terms of actually, you know, what could actually be a monetary change. You kind of just shifted the profits and that's all you've done.

Well, but yeah, that's two dimensional. That's too two dimensional for me. I think that, look, here's what's going to happen. This is virtually certain. You're going to get a stablecoin bill. It's going to ban yield on stablecoins themselves. But what does that mean? That means that the actual plumbing that's underneath the new Zelle, the new PayPal, the new Venmo, and within all the money transfers that go on in the system, money transfer bidders will use these things. But it will be much, much less friction, will allow much better competition.

But there's nothing in that bill that stops other assets from providing yield that can now be exchanged seamlessly for those stable coins on the platforms of companies that want to offer it. So what you're going to see, if I'm right, and I'm pretty confident that I am, what you're going to see is the actual number of assets held in stable coins permanently will be much less than people expect, but it will become a conduit that will replace the five plus trillion dollars that are sitting in checking accounts, which make no sense. You'll be able to go fly much closer to the sun, as it were, and be able to hold lower balances because you don't worry about the thing of moving.

It's really hard for people outside the US to understand this, but you hold money in a checking account. You almost always hold more money in the checking account than you think you're going to need because of the punitive nature of what happens if you don't have enough and how long it takes to move money in, right? In certain circumstances, particularly from outside banks, if you're on a money center bank which pays nothing in their savings account either. Even inside the money center banks, try moving money from the quote investment accounts, unquote, into the savings or checking account. It takes time. And so I think that that's going to all become much, much less. Yes, Simon.

Yeah, so trying to square a few like macro questions. I'm interested in your perspective, Dave. If the goal is to, you know, the whole what Robert always talks about with the Triffin's dilemma, that you have to have a large deficit, a twin deficit, both trade and fiscal in order to have a world reserve currency. fiscal in order to have a world reserve currency. And so if the strategic goal is to lower the deficit and the trade imbalance as the macro policy and then at the same time, you use Bitcoin or stablecoins in order to actually penetrate global demand for dollars backed by treasuries. Is this like a conflict in goals? Where one goal, stablecoins helps penetrate world reserve currency, but at the same time, the macro goal is meant to be to reduce the trade deficit. I can't quite plug the two together. Well, think of it this way. Here's how I think about it. I think it's certainly true, but it's much more true when it takes a lot with the longer and the more friction is to move dollars from one place to another, the more trip in the dilemma is true. The faster and more efficient you can move it, the more flexibility you have with it.

And the reason is obvious, right? It's a question of how do you get the dollars to set clear and settle your trades? You know, I bought oil, I bought this, I bought that. The faster and more efficient that that is, the less actual dollars are necessary, doesn't decrease the, it's used as a reserve currency, but it means you don't need as many

dollars. You don't need to run as big of a deficit. That's how I looked at it. I've heard other people say similar things. Don't know if it's true. You have to weaken it to get the rebuild of the manufacturing base so the exports are cheaper. Well, you know, that's an interesting question. I actually disagree with that. I've heard you say that many times and now we're getting very theoretical. But I think that people always think about the goal of what Trump and Besant and team want to do in terms of employing American workers.

I don't think that's it at all. I mean, yeah, I think that's what they say politically. But what I think they really care about is rebuilding our productive capacity so that we don't find ourselves beholden to countries that are potentially antagonistic to us. And that requires use of AI and roboticized factors. And so, you know, we know that it's going to be, there's no, it's not politically palatable to take the US labor force and pay them what people are paid overseas. Although people would argue that China, while they pay a lot less, have a lower cost of living. So it wouldn't be as big of a deal. But that's theoretical. What is certain is in today's factories, on

average, labor cost is 20%. So if you roboticize and bring in AI, you might be able to bring that down to five or 10%, at which point paying people, the ones who do have jobs will not be a problem, but you could rebuild our productive capacity. That's the way I look at it. This is a leapfrog moment. It's sort of like what I founded a company years ago called CoinRoutes. And there are two in the world of algo trading for people who want to buy and sell Bitcoin and buy and sell whatever, there's Talos and there's CoinRoutes who are both built from understanding crypto from the ground up and they perform dramatically better than those who try to use old legacy technologies. Well, manufacturing is no different. You try to build a plant, it's going to use AI or robotics

to be able to be better and more efficient than the old plants. Yeah, so then, then projecting all this forward, and it's a very useful exercise, because I think people need to prepare for what, if that world happens, then it means that the goal is to have human-less manufacturing. And that means what can a stable coin do? Well, it can do a universal basic income. And so if we're moving to that world where robots are doing all the manufacturing, and that's the goal of this whole exercise, all the manufacturing and that's the goal of this whole exercise.

Then it makes sense while Elon and Visa and everyone want AI stablecoins, social data, and that to me implies social credit score and a universal basic income. That's the end result. It could be. I mean, I'm not going not gonna I'm less dystopian than you and my general outlook. I think that a 90% reduction in number of humans doesn't mean nobody has jobs, particularly if you're bringing back industries that we don't have at all. And we're mostly a service economy now. I mean, I have direct personal, you know, experience with this. I mean, I was once nicknamed literally

nicknamed the angel of death at Solomon Smith Barney because I was the one driving automation and trading and we went from 95 traders, you know, to basically between five and 10 on the trading floor. So I saw this but didn't mean zero. And it didn't get rid of all the other jobs around around it the sales jobs the support Jobs the investigation, you know quality control yada. Yada. Yeah, I takes all of those as well Well, eventually eventually, you know, what are we? Well, that's

Whole sales team on agent cell. Yeah. No, I well, okay I'd love to I love to hear about how that could work, because, you know, a lot of decisions are still made by people. And so but whatever. But in any case, there's there's many steps to this. And each right now, we could barely think through one or two steps. And you're talking about like 10 steps in the future. Right now, it's a question of just how to restore our productive capacity. That's what that is. But if we want to bring it back to Bitcoin and the cryptoverse, Bitcoin dominance is certainly a trend that we see that's pretty strong. And there's been a lot of conversations about last week. And I'm just curious, does anybody here have an opinion

of whether or not what we're seeing with 3 billion and ETF inflows at a time when the market was just basically recovering and we saw effectively dramatic outperformance of Bitcoin to the stock market? Does anyone think that this is relevant? Yeah, David, I'll just close off that conversation and someone can answer that. But closing off that conversation, it's still a Bitcoin story. If that's the world that we're headed to, then money you can own, money that has a fixed supply, money you can control, money that has no social credit score, and money that has a fixed supply is where everyone's going to want to go. Yeah. So all roads lead to Bitcoin.

Yeah, well, you and I agree on that one and have for some time. I mean, Gary, you're back up and I back up here. I was just curious there. Because I know you did like two or three spaces as we go. I'm curious what you guys were hearing or is it still still too soon? Well, and hearing what, you know, regarding people being wanting to eat in or feeling late or well, just in general, you know, like the vibe a few weeks ago was downtrodden, right? You know, I was I was bullish and you were bullish, but you know, look, I was more

obvious, I was more bullish at 78,000 AM at 94. But you know, but I'm I'm curious because sometimes it seems to take a while for people to, you know, kind of figure out what the hell's going on. But I think that the story here is most of the people with money, right, that you talk to, they're not buying Bitcoin for a $3,000 chop, they're buying it because they're not going to 10x or more. Right? Correct. Right. So when you when you understand that, and understand that that's a significant amount of the demand

and that the supply is coming from people who are chopping around, that sets up for a pretty explosive potential move at some point, depending on what the conditions are. I mean, am I crazy and looking at it that way? No, no, I think that it sets up for an explode. I mean, look, this is the beauty of Bitcoin 22 days ago you could have bought Bitcoin for $20,000 cheaper Like think about that. That's a lot of movement for somebody that wanted to get in

They missed 75 now. They're looking at 95 and you're like, wow, is this a bargain now? Or Now, they're looking at 95 and you're like, wow, is this a bargain now? Or do I get in? I mean, like you're going to be your reflection. Your response is going to be, okay, I need to wait. I need to wait now. This market is going to absolutely rip people's face off if they're not really committed to acquiring Bitcoin and not worrying about the number, the dollar value which they're doing that at. So I really hope we see some... Look, I've got bids

placed for close to a million dollars of Bitcoin in the high 70s. I don't think I'm gonna get hit. I think there's a lot of people that are like, okay, if I could get back to 82, we'll set bids there. You guys think this is another opportunity coming up to buying Bitcoin low as well? Sir, maybe you're not hearing me but, low as well like sir maybe you're not hearing me but sailor bought what 1450 units of bitcoin and and it did nothing man so hey guys over you guys i can't predict what tomorrow or next week's going to do but to me there is much more upside here than there is downside. If I have $10,000 of downside, you know, that might be true. That would be what, 85, maybe 20 grand of downside,

but I can't think of any more. What would have to happen, Dave, for that to occur? Well, market has to crash. Now, by the way, by the way, you know, this thing that's going on in Spain and Portugal, this is a big thing. Okay, you have countries, entire countries who went on this fucking don't do fossil fuel and they are in blackness right now.

What happens when people start, if this last three or four or five hours, Portugal, Spain and part of France. This is chaos now. Okay. Like this is chaos at the wrong time, by the way. We don't need two countries blacked out right now. This is extremely coincidental. I'm not trying to be a manufacturer of drama and chaos, but I would be paying attention to everything that's going on.

Like why did, why did India and Pall and Pakistan, 10 years, dude, they've been quiet. Like nobody's been fucking with anybody over there. All of a sudden this morning, hey, we're going to go, you know, we're at war now. Like this feels exactly like Ukraine. It feels exactly like COVID-19 it's just you know, let's move over and focus on another part of the planet It's it's it's a little concerning so I'm pretty comfortable with my Bitcoin position I'm very comfortable with it actually and I think everybody else is gonna get behind it quite quickly But these moves are giving people more front-running opportunities. This is gonna scare very wealthy people, right, Dave? They're just gonna look at and go, wow, man.

Is it a grid problem? Because I haven't seen the news about what's going on in Europe. I mean, is the grid an issue or is there a supply? Well, they don't know. They don't know. There was a 12 gigabyte, 12 gigawatt decline in demand. So something happened. You literally had 12 gigs just disappear in demand. Well, that fractures the entire power system. Now, that's what they're saying right now. But how would you take off that much demand at one? I mean, we're talking about that much demand going off the system in seconds. Yeah.

Okay. So you have all this power running through a grid, through a wire, and then over half the volume of demand just goes off, goes black. That really fucks the whole grid system up. See, this is really important because all this de-globalization we're doing now, like where's all this energy flowing? You have volumes of energy flowing across countries

that are now in conflict with each other. And if you don't think this is real, I have literally seen the state of Nevada, steel, electricity, and natural gas that was going to California, that was contracted to California. So energy, and we've seen this before in the Ukraine, having pipelines stopped. So I would pay attention to all this, dude. These are really big moves here. Yeah, I'm looking at, you know, X. I mean, there's some funny, there's some funny memes about the power stuff, but,

you know, I guess, well, I don't want to jump on, you know, on, on grid outages because we know our grid, basically the electrical grids in the United States as well is definitely needs to be upgraded. There was a story this weekend. I can't remember who was it. Was it, was it Sergey Brin? It was someone very, I think, I think it was from Google basically talking about how our complete I think it was Eric Schmidt.

Oh, Eric Schmidt. Okay, so I was 50-50. Okay, I got it wrong. That's always. But the point that our power grid is just dramatically not capable of supporting what's going to happen with AI, that the amount of electricity demand is going up and our grid can't even handle it, much less our production capabilities. All of these things kind of lead you to the same place. Significant need for building productive capacity, significant need, frankly, in the way things are here in terms of prioritizing capital, All of these are very long-term bullish for our favorite asset here. So Ben, what do you have to say? Yeah, I just wanted to add how more and more people are learning from the retail investor all the way up to the biggest institutions on earth that Bitcoin is the hedge against all uncertainty,

whether it be financial uncertainty or even things like energy grid stability, like we're seeing right now, it seems like every single place you look, there's just chaos going on and nobody knows how to plan for the future because there's these just black swan events going off everywhere.

And there is an educational gap where people still see Bitcoin and their first thought is, oh, it's super volatile. It's like it's crazy goes up and down all the time. But they don't know that it's that's because it's measured in fiat. It's in a fiat price. And the fiat is the thing that's crazy because there's no measuring stick that stays stable. It's constantly fluctuating all over the place. And once they learn about Bitcoin, they read the Bitcoin standard, listen to enough of these spaces, and finally fill in those gaps, they realize this is the most certain thing there

is, it has the unmanipulable 20 million hard cap, it has a new block every single 10 minutes that chugs away no matter what, no matter how crazy the world is, it just continues plugging away every 10 minutes. And it's really like this this clock that chugs away no matter what, no matter how crazy the world is, it just continues plugging away every 10 minutes. And it's really like this clock that just keeps ticking, keeps ticking through all of this. And that's why education is so important. It's just helping people realize in a massively uncertain chaotic world, Bitcoin is this beacon of stability. And that's just going to bring so much more money into it and more understanding and more awareness.

And that's just gonna continue raising the floor of the foundation of it and how its understanding is portrayed and that will show the price as well. And by the way, just before we go to DB, if you look at the market, it is 100% not retail. It's the buying interest has been from people who do understand what you were just saying, and it's from the larger side.

The search, actually I saw this morning, the search, Google search for Bitcoin is way down, more indicative of bear markets. So understanding, if you overlay those two things, it starts getting very very interesting anyway DB Yeah, we had an interesting space about this last week kind of taking it in a further direction of what Gary was kind of Just talking about but what happens if the the grid that allows for BTC usage even goes out and This came up because just a few weeks ago

My internet and cellular service both went down at the same time and I couldn't do anything usage even goes out. And this came up because just a few weeks ago, my internet and cellular service both went down at the same time and I couldn't do anything. Couldn't send a text, couldn't call, couldn't check email, nothing. So what if Bitcoin still relies on data and it relies on a grid? What happens if something more catastrophic were to happen?

Well, actually, so I was gonna make two points. First, I love X because someone in our audience went to the BBC and posted it right back at us and said that it was temperature variations in Spain contributed to the outage is something to do with anomalous oscillation, very high voltage lines, phenomenon, notice, whatever, I mean, anyone can read it and say it's there. But it's fascinating. We know that the grids are vulnerable.

The good news about Bitcoin is, however, it's completely global. And as Simon is fond of saying, it doesn't matter if one country or one region goes down. It is the most fault tolerant, overly redundant network in human history. I think is that is that anyone think I'm hyperbolic by saying that? I think that's true. Anybody would disagree with that? No, that's the point. The point the point of it is, it's a fundamental real importance of geographical diversification. And we got that when the China mining ban, it was one of the most diversification and we got that when the China mining ban. It was one of the most important tests of the Bitcoin network. It corrected the price significantly.

And then within a period of three to four months, mining equipment went from 60% in China to 20% in China and 40% in US and a whole industry emerged in US with the public companies. And so if anything were to happen with the grid in US, you'd expect a correction in price, whatever new test, a new lesson Bitcoin has to learn, and it will just carry on because other countries will be mining, there'll be a correction in the difficulty rate. For two weeks, you'd get blocks that don't clear at the same pace as what you're used to, just for confirmations. And some people in America would just hang tight and not be able to spend their Bitcoin. And they'd start asking, hey, maybe I need to set up my own node. And maybe I need to figure out how that node connects to a satellite.

And so every single time, it just gets, every disaster has made Bitcoin significantly stronger. Well, think about it this way, but isn't the other big point that Bitcoin is, and we saw this in Texas, and you have political leaders in Texas and business leaders in Texas all know this and talk about it, to the point where even Elizabeth Warren doesn't mention it anymore, even though she'll lie about it in the next couple years anyway,

just because that's what she is. But that Bitcoin has been stabilizing grids. And if you're worried about grid stability, then Bitcoin is one of those perfect demand users, because it's one of the only ones that can scale up and down as grid demand is necessary. So to me, grid issues is going to highlight another reason to, you know, for the importance of Bitcoin and its utility. Right? You agree, I assume, Ben. Yeah, absolutely. And another point I just want to put out for

the original question, which is, you know, what if the internet goes down? I want to make sure that we have the proper lens that we look at that question, because the the fiat system, the dollar in your all these fiat currencies also are running on the same internet in the banking system. So like, both of them would theoretically if this, you know, doomsday scenario were to be happened, where the system. So like both of them would theoretically, if this, you know, doomsday scenario were to be happened, where the internet goes down, all of those would be wiped out too. The difference is with Bitcoin is, you don't actually

need that to do it. Like theoretically, you can mine Bitcoin with a pen and paper. And it's obviously, you know, far more primitive and slower and not very... I mean, we have these computers doing bazillions of blocks a second or bazillions of calculations a second that are much more effective. But Bitcoin has a way where you can always downgrade to more hands-on physical methods of mining if you need to. And I also put in the Nest, this really cool project that's happening in Africa,

where they're finding ways to use Bitcoin just through their flip phones and just these cell phones that don't even use smartphone data. So there's always ways that you can adjust how the Bitcoin network is used and operated if there were to be some big event like that. It's much more shiftable than the fiat system.

I'd add to that as well. If your bank was out for that long, at the other side of that, you could end up with a bank run and a systemic risk event. And then you would need FDIC style event. We've seen what types of things happen in the Silicon Valley scenario. But at the other side of this, you may not because you just didn't get the right setup and you need to learn something new, but your Bitcoin will still be there. On on the other side of it, wherever you go in the world, you'll be able to access those Bitcoin and there'll be no counterparty

risk. There's no country risk. Those Bitcoin will be there. You would just need to get connected or get another setup, but you can just chill and access those Bitcoin knowing that there's no key person or company or counterparty or Fed risk or anything in the middle. Yeah, that's an amazing point. I mean, if you're holding bank digits on a bank account and that bank goes down, that's gone. In Bitcoin, all you have to do is basically just remember those 12 words, write them down on a piece of paper, remember them in your head and just kick back and go relax for a few months in the Bahamas. And then when you get back and hopefully the internet's back, you're good to go. You beat your Bitcoin. Which to your original point, is when you are

really into Bitcoin, and it's a journey, because initially you'll just be focused on price and you'll be thinking, oh, have I bought the top? Was I the last idiot to buy it? And, you know, it takes a few years to psychologically realize how relaxed you can be. But once you get there in Bitcoin, and there is a massive community of people that don't see price volatility as a thing. They see it as mental and psychological stability. And I can tell you for a fact, with all that's going on in the world, I actually genuinely believe if it wasn't for Bitcoin, I think I'd be a bit more mentally unstable and I'd be a bit more, a lot more uncertain about my future. And so that is a real source of stability for people once they really get into the Bitcoin community, once they get beyond the price

volatility. And a whole extra component of this that you sort of lead nicely into there is the community of people that Bitcoin is made up of. Because the people in Bitcoin, the more than you meet at meetups and conferences, you realize these are the ultimate problem solvers or the ultimate sovereign individuals. They're constantly saying, everyone needs to read the sovereign individual and these books that are about increasing your sovereignty. And these are the people you want to surround yourself with as we go into a more chaotic world because they just solve shit, they figure shit out. And I know you and I are both on Nostra, Simon, I really recommend everyone out here, go check out Nostra because that's a perfect example of another problem that Bitcoiners just found.

They said we need a decentralized social media protocol that can't, you know, doesn't have a CEO. And they just made it and it works super well. People are sending Bitcoin on there already. And it's just a couple of years old. So very powerful network to be a part of and to understand that these are the people that will figure things out if things do really get here in the future, which unfortunately it's pretty high likelihood of happening.

So, but the, the interesting thing is I I find because I'm the token, you know, I spent, you know, close to 40 years on Wall Street before I moved into crypto eight years ago. And what I've seen over the last few months is more people who look and feel like like I used to getting into Bitcoin and buying it and holding it and sticking it someplace without leverage, without fear. More people in the crypto world on the edges, letting leverage wipe themselves out, liquidated every day. A great washing machine of moving from original crypto folks back. Now, I'm not talking these aren't Bitcoiners, because in fact, they're probably what the

Bitcoin Maxis will call shit coiners that are doing this. But we've seen this move. And the real question is, when this move is over, or at least there's not enough supply from people like that, that's when the next move comes in. And you know, metaphysics and, and, and the philosophy to the downside. And by the way, I agree with the philosophical points you guys are both making. But practically speaking, this market will move, like seriously move, when we get some certainty in capital markets and that supply stops because the demand is just not stopping. We are now rolling a snowball down a hill. And I know it's felt that it's been up the hill for the

last five years, but the ball's rolling downhill now. And I don't think there's much argument there. I mean, DB, I mean, I assume you agree with that. Oh, for sure. Yeah, it's just everything's primed to keep moving. Like Gary was mentioning earlier, it's the people that are buying now aren't looking for a quick flip. They're looking for to hold a 10x plus. And it's when it does happen, it's going to be, I think to use his words again, face melting. Well, I mean, it feels like that like that that will happen. I mean, look, I don't like history doesn't repeat. Okay, everyone who thinks it does, it's wrong and markets they but it does rhyme. So there are our shadows so there are shadows i mean twenty seventeen was really interesting you go back and look at it. What the rally was what is it eight x off the bottom. And in three and a half x off the top of where it was before the major rally happened at the end of the year. And i'm not saying that can happen again, although it could.

We all make our predictions, we all talk about these things. But the most important point is, if the supply is moving towards holders who are holding for a 10x, then that's going to smooth out volatility, at least the downside volatility. And that seems to be the case. I mean, that's going to smooth out volatility, at least the downside volatility. And that seems to be the case. I mean that's why, you know, I thought that the high 70s were a tradable bottom because it just felt like the demand was there. It doesn't mean that it would, it's gonna, people, the smart money doesn't put a wall underneath it. I mean everyone who looks at the order books and God knows I build a company that's based upon looking at real at the order books and God knows, I build a company

that's based upon looking at real-time order books, doesn't understand that most liquidity and most financial assets has been trained to be out of the market instantaneously, but being able to quickly rush into the market when they see an opportunity. That is the dynamic that we live in in capital markets today. And Bitcoin is no different. And so, you know, I always laugh when people talk about, oh, the supply shock is going to happen because of all the money moved off exchanges. It's a bunch of nonsense. And the wall is going to prevent the market from moving in a certain place.

Well, that's a bunch of nonsense because most of the real liquidity is sitting both sides sitting on the sideline. I'm curious if anybody cares about any of this stuff, but otherwise it's just me musing. So yeah, actually, I believe that the cycles are kind of dead at this point. And don't you think we're possibly almost at that curve where we're going to hit that tipping point with the adoption and the recognition and everything? It just seems like we're so close to that tipping point with the adoption and the recognition and everything just seems like we're so close to that tipping point. Well, I mean look the four-year cycles were designed

to become less important over time, right? Because the amount of the actual raw amount of supply difference at each halving from now on is progressively less and less than what one new corporate treasury would be demanding. So it's one of those things that you just, it was designed to become less relevant. So putting recency bias and saying, well, look, what happened the last three times, it's not so much that the price movement or the volatility movement is going to decrease, although that has to happen as well, but just the raw amount of supply differential in each having is getting less and less. And so therefore, to expect that a four-year cycle is going to go into the future when

it was based off of a supply shock, just let the math doesn't work. Yeah, for sure, especially with the number of eyeballs that are hitting it growing exponentially. That's where I think is really going to set it off. Not the lowering supply, but the parabolic growth that we're soon to have, I believe, in the entire space. And the innovation right now across the entire Web3 is pretty impressive. And with regulations with the US everything going on it seems like we're just so close to something that's gonna set a fire under it all it could be well we'll see we'll talk to you know we could talk again tomorrow morning was anybody has anything else I think we're kind of that time so we're gonna wrap here any final

comments no, thanks everyone for so Ben, you wanted a final comment? That's cool. Oh, I was just gonna throw in there. I mean, basically a way to wrap all the things you guys were saying was, Michael Saylor came out and said several years ago, like it only takes a handful of billionaires all decided to buy Bitcoin and every single model gets broken. And that's the nature of the first truly scarce asset with rising demand and truly cap supplies that it's eventually everything just blows up and it just turns into a dog candle. And we're gonna see that soon. I think we

all agree. Yeah, it takes two is the answer. Anyone who's ever gone to an auction. It takes two people who want both want the same thing. Because now you're at that, of course, a singular scarcity, but it's the same idea. But yeah, I mean, we'll see. I mean, we're all markets are markets, and they're going to continue to bounce around. And we're still at this 94 level. And we'll see where we are tomorrow. So in any case, as Scott was is fond of saying, you know, please follow all the speakers who give up their time. We will

be back tomorrow at 1015 for Crypto Town Hall. Thank you all very much everybody.