The Wolf Of All Streets - BTC Holds 100K! Is the Next Leg Up Imminent? | CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

The Crypto Town Hall live stream brought together leading voices in the crypto space for a wide-ranging discussion on Bitcoin markets, tax policy, strategic government holdings, and regulation. The event aimed to dissect the current volatility of Bitcoin, explore tax-efficient exit strategies for early adopters, and debate upcoming regulatory frameworks in the US. Speakers weighed in on ETF impacts, demographic shifts among holders, China's alleged strategic Bitcoin reserves, and the role of both centralized and decentralized exchanges. The conversation was both informative and candid, focusing on practical implications for investors amid ongoing industry and government changes.

Thank you. I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be able to be. So, you know, I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to Thank you. You know,

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall, 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard time every weekday here on X. Gary and I were just texting back and forth before. this about how the sun currently in the Tampa Bay area is the brightest we have ever collectively seen the sun in history. I'd never, Gary, that was the first time somebody texted me and said, go stare directly into the sun if you can. Dude, my, my housekeeper came home. I've known her for 14, 15 years. I said, Bobby, am I crazy? But, and she looked at it. She's like, yeah, it's okay. But she was putting her hand above her head. I'm like, hey, why are you having to put your hand above your head? I've looked at the sun many. many times and not had to shield my eyes, bro, I cannot, $500 ray bands that are mirrored,

I cannot look at the sun right now. I mean, I'm not a freak, but like this coronal ejection must be doing something because this motherfucker looks like it's closer to us. Does it not? I don't know what it is, but man, it is like, but, you know, it peaks in the sunspot cycle associated with market crushes. Well, funny enough, the Simpsons, like 10 years ago, predicted 11, 11, 15, and you'd have a solar blackout, and we're having a coronal ejection.

I just thought it was interesting. Anyway. And yesterday, Tampa Bay was, like, empty. I don't know why the low tide was the lowest I've ever personally seen, besides a hurricane, of course. anyways maybe we should talk about markets we've got bitcoin holds 100k is the next leg up imminent dave and i obviously did youtube to get today together so some of this might be redundant for those of you who watched it but i did comment it's kind of funny that you know yesterday we're at 105

106 maybe we pushed to 107 and bear market's over uh bull market has commence and then like you wake up and it's at 103 and we're going to 75 it's all over and i just still will never understand how three to four percentage of price movement has such emotional swings for seemingly the people on crypto Twitter. It almost defies logic, but it's, look, there's a range. We've been in a range. We've been bumping around the bottom of the range. You know, maybe this will be a triple bottom test.

I don't know. You know, Bart Simpson pattern, I have no idea. You mentioned The Simpsons. I mean, look, the truth is, there's demand at these levels. And they're not going to stand there and hold the level either if there's substantial weight and they can buy cheaper. But there is demand? The real question is, is there natural supply or is it just speculators who believe that the four-year cycle is this inviolate, godlike, you know, handed down on a stone tablets thing that is destined to continue to repeat itself? And my bet is on no.

Hey, Dave. Yeah. I threw a chart into the chat, which is just talking about, you know, old Bitcoin's wallet's becoming active again. It looks like, yeah, demand might be there, but it meets supply and then some. So I just see this market as being stuck with an overhang, which is going to take a while to burn through. And why do you think that, and do you think, David, that that is not exactly what we've

living through for the last six months? Well, clearly, as you look at the chart, it says that as well. But it also raises the question that's time honored on Wall Street, who's the greater fool, you know, the buyer or the seller? I mean, these are people who owned the asset for a long time. And they've decided, hey, good time to portfolio diversify. Do you want to be on the other side of the trade? A hundred percent, because the size of Victor, 100%.

And it's not like it's a question. I mean, Gary and I were talking about this the other day, and Gary had a great post about it. Look, there's two things. First of all, if you bought Bitcoin or mined Bitcoin from the early days and you went from being your basic, you know, reasonably well-off kind of nerd to a multi-billionaire, what's the marginal benefit to you from being worth a billion dollars to being worth $10 billion? Do you denominate this in Lambos? I denominate this in just people's lives. I mean, you have to, if you divorce, if you can't, if you don't understand the fact that for people who are not literally judging themselves on a scale of, of the same scale that the Jeff Bezos is the world judge themselves, or Gary for that matter, and you go from being, you know, worth, you know, a few thousand dollars to being worth a billion dollars, the marginal benefit. of going from a billion to 10 billion

if you think Bitcoin's going to 10x is just not nearly as large as cashing out some of that and taking a few hundred million so that your family is set up in perpetuity, like literally forever where they go in life. And so to me, there's a lot of that

that's been happening, and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's what needs to happen. But the thing that is interesting about this, and this is why I find it funny, is even through the tariff tantrum, Bitcoin didn't go below, you know, what, 74, 75, and that was correlated to risk assets. So the risk assets hanging in there

because of the liquidity that's coming into the market, to expect that Bitcoin's going to drop below this, it doesn't make sense. The people who wanted to sell can sell at $100,000, and they can be patient and they can wait. They have been patient historically. So why would we expect them to keep selling? The sellers, as it gets through,

if it goes below 100 are speculative sellers, not those sellers, because it's not like they're selling because they need to. People who compare today to 2022 are missing literally the story, the story. 22 people were forced to sell. You were in Voyager, you were in Celsius, you got sold out from under you. You were in FTCS. At the dead bottom. At the dead bottom. I think Voyager sold Bitcoin at 18. I think Voyager sold Bitcoin between. between 18 and 20,000. Because I think, I think what's happening here is you have, for the first time in crypto history, you have a way for people with $300 coins to have a very tax-efficient liquidity event.

That's what this is about. And until all that gets flushed out, I mean, the savings for these guys, look, if you're holding on to $10 billion or a billion dollars with a Bitcoin, you're sitting here going, Trump's not going to be in office one day, and my taxes are probably going to go up. When am I going to ever get the chance to clean my money, clean my coins, by the way. There are some coins that are a little dirty. So there's so many, I think that's what's happening here. All these ETSs and the SBRs are allowing people to do this in a very tax-efficient way.

If I can jump in for a second, I agree with everything Dave and Geyer saying. I think on the other, the one thing, maybe I'll mention this one first, the other thing that I think sometimes goes under the radar is the changing in demographics, the demographic profile of early Bitcoin adopters. And I think there's this idea, perhaps a misconception, that Bitcoin, early Bitcoin adopters were these, you know, teenagers wearing hoodies. And I've sat on countless calls with Bitcoiners in their 40s. And I'm sitting in the phone call with the wife. And they're both talking to me about buying that home that the wife really wants. And the person, you know, is reluctant to sell the Bitcoin. And they end up taking a loan.

Again, to Gary's point, because it's very tax-efficient for them to take some of that profit and upgrade their lifestyle. A lot of these people are having their second, third kid. and it's very important for them to actually put some of that wealth to work. And they can do that in various ways. They can do that in a tax-efficient manner through these ETSs. They can do that as well with Bitcoin-back loans that are now way more tested and way more reliable. There's companies like Ossedap, which stood all the volatility throughout the gears. And I think the demographic change is something that shouldn't go unnoticed

because a lot of these people are expected to or expect to at some point upgrade their day-to-day. And I think it's a very natural course of action. This is why I agree so much with what both Dave and Gary are saying. I'm struggling with the platform here. I keep getting cut off. So sorry about that. Anybody else, Dave, do you see hands? I can't see anything.

I only see Mauritia. Oh, Andre just raises his hand. I don't even see Andre existing. maybe Mario can see him. He can help you. Mario is definitely heavily monitoring the chat, for sure. It picked out again. Still glitching.

Welcome back. Sorry, guys. I'm trying to bring Perian. I'm trying to bring Perian on stage as well, but for some reason it's neglecting the request. I don't know. Go ahead. So maybe just a couple of observations on the market right now.

So we've seen this long-term holder distribution, right? it's no new piece of news right it's been going on for like 2025 most of the time right we've seen though distribution into weakness more recently right we've we've seen realized profits into the downturn close to 100k more recently was the highest amount of realized profits in 2025 the fourth highest i've just checked the numbers on glass and all was three yeah more than $3 billion realized profits on, what was it, three days ago, I think. But that being said, I mean, I think we've reached the point of Sellex Choshen, right? And there's a metric called, literally called Selig Chaucen was created by David Buell,

one of these Bitcoin orgies, who also created like the Puel multiple. And it essentially measures the percentage of supply and profit times ball, right? Yeah. I lost Andre. Did you guys lose Andre? Yeah. Yeah. He's a trailed off. Oh, my God.

Trailed off. What story you want to go after next, Scott? What are you thinking? All season upon us? You talking to me? Well, I saw you lifted your mic, so you're not. Yeah, yeah. I, you know, I'm a spoiler of flow, so except my own.

But I pretty much agree to this. And I think, you know, these guys are winners. Definitely, I have insane amount of respect for people who have held themselves through their mining journey and through their holding journey and eventually to only sell it at 100K. They're definitely so much better than me than losing all of them to my trading strategies on Bitmex where I didn't even realize that I wasn't actually trading on an exchange. I was trading against the exchange.

And of course, the exchange would win. So that is definitely happening. I'm sure we've gone through similar phases of markets in the life cycle of different assets, where they've been stable for a long time just because the hands were shifting from, let's say, the first set of carriers of value to the second set of carriers. I'm repeating basically to what everyone has said and just attesting to the same. So, no, I don't really have a new perspective on this. I think we all understand the same.

The movement of wallets have attested to that. The exchange flows have attested to that. If you're looking at on-chain data, through various public platforms as well as through internal access at TRM Labs and chain analysis, it all essentially it's it's an open book i don't think it needs a lot of analysis and uh over time there will be you know this increasing demand will surpass the supply and that's the beauty of bitcoin and its tokenomics um that uh you know there will be no coins uh left out uh to buy and that's when the the pricings uh the pricings will uh explode as they've always done right it's uh in in the

pricing market in the public market it's always slowly slowly then suddenly and so you don't have to basically conserve the proportion between between the supply and price change for today for the supply and price change for tomorrow because because that doesn't really correlate it's not a directly proportional metrics so I think we can move to the next topic this is this is pretty well validated Well, I had a question on Mauritio's comment earlier. I think you said that the ETFs provide a tax-advantaged way to buy and hold Bitcoin. I just wondering if you could elaborate on what you meant by that.

Yeah, I'll defer to the security sex experts as well, but I believe that both ETFs and these treasury companies allow you to invest BTC in kind and exchange it for shares in the ETF, and then you can use those shares to borrow or do other things with it. But basically it creates a railway or an avenue for you to convert your Bitcoins into other assets without necessarily triggering a taxable event. I think, Dave, it's more well-versed on this than I am, so I'll defer to them. Well, it's certainly true on the Treasury side, ETFs, if the in-kind, is already set up.

I think it's just for market makers. I think it's just for market makers that they can do that, but I don't think retail can do that yet. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, Marian, it's really, it's, it's, it's, it's got, he is the most succinct way. Buy, borrow, die. Right. Yeah, well, I thought that was interesting.

I've done that with treasury companies, made investments in crypto that I already had, but I haven't been able to do that with an ETF. So if there's one out there, I would love to know about it. Well, I know it's coming, right? We've had the SEC discussing it. it, but that was one of the original sticking points of ETF approvals in the first place when we first got them.

The industry wanted in-kind, and it was only cash redemption, I think. But, you know, we now know that staking is coming. I've said that Salon already has it in B-Sole, and I think In-Kine redemption is coming as well. I think all of this is just inevitable at this point with this SEC. So I guess we'll see. Treasury companies, it's very interesting because a lot of them initially were taking in-kind and then when NASDAQ started pushing back and the SEC started looking deeper, a lot of them pivoted. I know that Ford Industries originally when they were doing their multi-billion raise for Solana, multi-coin galaxy, etc., were intending to do Solana in-kind and then because they were told it would take months to delay, clear that they ended up doing it in cash. So, yeah, I mean, the one thing I will say is that if the Republicans were smart, they could make an enormously, like, absolutely brilliant, brilliant move before the midterms would be to propose and potentially enact a rule that effectively lowered long-term capital gains taxes in exchange for creating capital gain event when you borrow against, you know, basically when you borrow.

against appreciated securities or appreciated assets. If they did a revenue neutral way of doing that, that would be massive because it would benefit. It would literally, you know, cut the legs out of this oligarch argument that the Democrats keep making. I mean, this was Bill Ackman's original idea that he floated a while ago and everyone kind of knows it's the right thing to do. It's just funny politically will depend on how desperate they are

as they see what's happening with inflation in the economy. I mean, my guess is they don't do it, but then the next Democrat administration almost certainly will do something like that, although they won't lower the capital gains tax at the same time, in which case it'll just be revenue. But, you know, it is a really interesting question of what will that do. Not targeting Bitcoin at all. I mean, we're talking about all, all appreciative assets, but that's an interesting thought. Yeah, I think. Also, if I was to, you know, go on. Yeah, I was going to say, I think that that is a smart idea.

I was going to give you credit for that. if you didn't mention that somebody else had already said it, I would have thought, Dave, you came up with that. Well, to be fair, I actually have been thinking it for a long time, but Bill was the first one who put it out publicly. It was just a little bit more reach than I do. Got it. Okay, well, we'll give you the real credit for that.

We know you're the mastermind behind that idea. One of the arguments that we're using to make Bitcoin tax-free, so meaning just removing capital gains, taxes from Bitcoin altogether is because it provides an incentive for individuals to own Bitcoin directly, as opposed through an ETF. And that encourages further decentralization of Bitcoin. So just to walk through that one step further, the ETFs are obviously securities, right? these are registered products with the SEC. So you can't really, you know, you can't really take the capital gains tax away from,

you know, any kind of security product like an ETF. But for just holding Bitcoin directly, you know, we think that shouldn't be a taxable event. And in many countries, it's not. So just while we're talking about different proposals that can be put forward to create tax advantage opportunities. I think there's a lot to be said for if Trump wants the U.S. to be the crypto capital of the world and he wants to be, you know, the first pro-Bitcoin president, something that he could do to protect and further and foster the Bitcoin ecosystem is to encourage decentralization of Bitcoin. So while, of course, we support, you know, these products of

ATFs that have been extremely successful over the past couple of years, it does create very large centralization of Bitcoin holdings on Wall Street. So one way to encourage people to hold directly is to remove the capital games tax altogether. So that's my big pitch on making Bitcoin tax-free, still working on that. Yeah, at least for smaller transactions. Yeah, go ahead, Gary. Parian, how do you square that? If I hold gold...

Yeah, just got a convention treasury of it. That's the hurdle. And, you know, the other thing with putting forward any type of tax proposal, Republicans are very, very hesitant to put their name behind something that's not budget neutral. So if you're removing tax, even though this is kind of counterintuitive, right? because Republicans are usually very supportive of lowering taxes on American people. So you would think, okay, let's lower taxes for Bitcoin investors. But no, that's going to create a lot of revenue loss for the Treasury.

Therefore, that's not something they want to get behind. So you've got to find creative ways to make up the revenue too, which is the challenge. Hey, Scott, I don't think Perry Ann can hear me. but ask her, how do you square up, how you treat gold or crude oil? I mean, we can't just start picking assets out and go, okay, I want that to be capital gains free. When I'm holding gold, I have to pay capital gains tax or crude oil. So how do we square that? Perriand, are you able to hear Gary?

I don't think she can hear me either. Yeah, Perian, can you hear me? Yeah. I can hear you now. I could not hear anything for a bit. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to drop you and bring you back up. Okay, go ahead, Dave, and then I'll do it. Gary was asking the question about how you square it was gold.

My answer, by the way, you know, which you do have to pay capital gains on, my answer is if the U.S. wants to see Bitcoin price appreciates because they own a bunch, then, you know, they gain revenue by allowing it. But the more important point is Bitcoin can be spent directly. Try going in and using gold shavings to go. buy a hamburger, not going to work too well. And if the idea is you want Bitcoin to be something to be a currency or a savings vehicle, then making a tax advantage is a reasonable thing. Going to no capital gains, I think is going to be a problem because of the revenue neutral side. But I think

from a de minimis point of view, if you want people able to use it, be paid in it and spend it, it's almost impossible if you have to pay capital gains tax every time you buy a cup of coffee. And that's exactly why we are where, I mean, you've hit the nail on the head with that point. In 2014, when the IRS just came out and declared that Bitcoin would be taxed as property, that, you know, pushed and tax policy is used to human behavior. So that that had a huge impact on Bitcoin emerging as a store of value as opposed to a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, which is what Satoshi coined it and called it. So tax has a huge, it has major implications for how it's been adopted over the years. And I've been in Bitcoin since 2011.

So early days, we didn't really know how this was going to be adopted, what this was going to grow into. I mean, many people thought this would be a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. It would be used for payments. The term of like digital gold and using it as a store of value, that wasn't really something that was widely accepted or discussed until many years later. So I do think here we are in 2025. We have the first pro-Bitcoin president. We can rethink how we did things in 2014. And now with the Chevron deference that's been shut down,

there's also an argument to be made that Congress did not give the IRS the authority to regulate Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies. And that can be reversed. So there's some legal cases to be to be made there. But Gary, I'm glad I didn't hear you, but I'm glad you asked about gold. I'm a, I initially went to D.C. to follow Congressman Ron Paul. I've always been very inspired by his work. And I personally lean libertarian in my political views.

Ron Paul served in Congress for 24 years. One of his notable pieces of legislation that never got passed into law, but he reintroduced them term after term after term. One was called the Competing Currencies Act and what was put in place to create the monopoly on the U.S. dollar. So my, in terms of how do we make Bitcoin tax free, I think we can dust off Ron Paul's Competing Currencies Act, which says, we should remove the capital gains tax on gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. Let's add Bitcoin in there

because this is how it was prior to the Fed coming in and demanding that we use US dollars for currencies, allow for competing currencies, allow the free market to dictate what the winners are going to be for payments. But in a free country, we should be, to use whatever we want to buy and sell our goods. So I think we can remove capital gains on all of those pieces, Bitcoin included, and then we can just take a straight principled approach to it. But then for Bitcoin, you know, obviously we want to foster not only free markets, but we want to further support the decentralization of the network.

And that's an added benefit. And another added benefit is the privacy piece of it. So if you have to disclose your Bitcoin wallet address to the IRS or the U.S. Treasury, now we have a Fourth Amendment issue because your transactions can be monitored and watched by Big Brother. So Americans have a right to privacy that includes digital privacy. We should not have to disclose our wallet addresses, our Bitcoin addresses to the government either. Gary, you were able to hear her? Yeah, no, I heard her.

I just, I'm trying to differentiate. I think what she's talking about is small retail transactions. That's what's being floated. I still can't hear. Yeah, no, we're aware of that. I'm going to drop you, Perry, and I'm going to drop your request again, please. Although, Gary, I think that it's very, very clear, very clear that Perry Ann is taking the approach. And by the way, which I completely agree with, that people should have the ability to opt out of inflation as a tax, that you should be able to do something with your money if the dollar is being debased.

It was never intended that, you know, income taxes. is one thing, but it was never intended that you should be paying taxes. But then we just need to reform all the taxes. Well, that's true. I argue. Well, that was her point. Now, if you're talking about micro transactions, okay, got it. But like, what happens when I want to use $40 million of Bitcoin to buy a house?

That's a retail transaction, man. No, I agree with you. I'm saying the drawing lines is very, very much. If I was to present, yeah, if I was to give a. devil's advocate for you here, well, the tax can still stay on the real state. And so it does serve the fact that crypto or Bitcoin in this particular case serves as the tax-free, you know, people's currency. Again, I'm not advocating that. I'm just being a devil's advocate, Gary. I hope it makes sense. Yeah, look, I'm not a big believer in, I love Bitcoin. And I think Bitcoin has

never gotten anything from any government other than hassle. And I prefer not to get anything from them, not to ask for them other than law. And see, I like Perian, because I think Perian's prop, Perianne needs to run because we need a young Ron Paul that says, hey, these taxes are bullshit. But I just don't think that it's going to serve Bitcoin well to try to single us out. The other thing is you take away all the capital gains on Bitcoin. Assume this price is going to go down. Hard. So, you know, be careful what you wish for.

I don't think this is going to happen. But now what I would support and I would actually spend Bitcoin to do it, let's just throw the entire system up. That's what we should have some lobbyists like Perian doing, like really help us get there. And I think we could get there. But you can't do it by picking out one asset class, I don't think. Again, on the contrary and purview, I think, of course, like you said, Gary, the global tax reform systems definitely have to go through and shape and form of value and money.

But in the current state of things, including the U.S., we're doing just about fine because that tax regime, sort of enables the bureaucracy of the country to sort of have incentives to keep working on that asset class and keep enabling the industry around that. And of course, I know crypto has not been enabled through the tax regime contribution, but more so the private contribution to elections. But I think, you know, not every government or every aspect of the government would always lean on to that factor. So tax of every single segment of assets sort of is the innate incentive for the system to keep working on that and the development of that segment.

So I'm totally in agreement with you. I think, Gary, what you're referring to is the wash trading. So if Bitcoin loses value, you can wash trade it. You can take the loss. and then you can use the losses for tax-advantaged purposes. But there's also talks. And today, wash trading with Bitcoin, you can do that. There's no regulations impeding us from doing that.

And some of the better platforms will even facilitate it for you. Like river.com, they'll set it up for you. They'll run the transaction for you. and give you like a statement for to give to your accountant for taxes. So there's tax of removing that benefit for Bitcoin. So I don't know, maybe I'm just going to one up you here, Gary. I'm going to say if I'm really not holding anything back, not planning on running for office, but if I were to run for office, I think I'd say let's just abolish the IRS altogether. The income tax is a form of indentured servitude, and let's get rid of the IRS altogether. That's my unabridged position.

Love it, and I'll vote for you, dude. Let's roll. That's exactly what I meant. Love that. I'm just talking about everybody to hear each other. Yeah, time for you. I think you get a lot of votes in the libertarian community, you know. But, you know, but the de minimis stuff and all this other stuff is true. I just, I kind of want to pivot a little bit, Scott. One of the stories that we didn't talk about this morning. Yeah. But I think is actually important and maybe maybe I'm being a little tinfoil hat here. But the fact that that China is accusing and supposedly seriously considering suing the U.S. government for its recent appropriation of, it was a pretty sizable amount of Bitcoin, you know, for our strategic reserve from

the, what is it, child trafficking, you know, ring, whatever, I think is actually underestimated of how important that is. And the reason I say that is if China didn't view Bitcoin as, Jesus, I hate this, if they didn't view Bitcoin as a strategically important asset, would they do that or would they do it in that way? And if they do start viewing Bitcoin as a strategically important asset, given, you know, that they've been driving gold purchases and they've been driving and they have not been buying as many treasuries, there is some significant meaning behind that. I'm curious what people think because, you know, that as a way of building a strategic reserve, I mean, the U.S. is already way ahead of where they would be even under the Limous Act if that, if it sticks. Are these the coins from the pig slaughtering thing or the U.K. women? Yes, yes, yes, yes.

The pig-butchering, whatever. Yeah, big but it was from track. It's really bad people. Yeah, but Dave, you know, there is no question about the sincerity of China in terms of what they think about Bitcoin. I don't know if you have seen this recently published chart that is from New Hedge that's doing round about Internet in the Internet. beyond the 326,000 something, you know, BTC held by United States, held by United States, not not holdings in Treasury, but I mean held under different circumstances. The only second to them is China with 190,000 bitcoins and United Kingdom with only 61,000. So you can see the difference after U.S. and China is like very small.

and, you know, after that is UAE and Ukraine, whatever. Very small numbers, less than 50,000. So, first of all, just to steer the conversation in the right direction, there is no doubt about China's sincerity on all forms and shape of value. And for those who are, I mean, Gary would probably attest to this, but for those who have been in the real state, global real estate, they understand that China's build their dominance in that also, including half of, you know, Kennedy Wharf,

and Central London be known by Chinese and Chinese-dominated territories, Italian and leather and fashion industries, you go into any single segment of business. So I want to push back a bit more of that because I think you're, I think you're actually right in fact, but wrong in opinion, meaning that the crypto industry, there is nobody who would have,

you would literally be having real serious mental deficiency. if you believed that China had that view, believe Bitcoin was pari-pousou with those things in building value, and doesn't have the ability to buy if it starts falling to the point to where people are talking crypto-winter. I mean, so many people over the last week called for massive falls in the price of Bitcoin. There is literally no way that happens. Bitcoin is so small relative to. China's gold holdings, treasury holdings, et cetera. If they truly Belimson does when he hears about

pork chops to Bitcoin below 90, below 80, whatever, et cetera, it just doesn't happen. And so I don't believe the crypto community believes that's true. I think that they still have this idiotic mindset that China is, you know, hates Bitcoin for a variety of reasons and doesn't see it as a geopolitical tool. I think that that game theory, that narrative is very real. And I think you think it's very real, but I think there are a lot of people who don't believe it. Yeah, yeah. I'm in a hundred percent agreement with you. I am simply trying to express the fact that countries and institutional investors, I mean, some of them, they don't take one thing seriously. Like, that's what makes them incredible investors. They don't put all their eggs in one basket. They don't play by a single

rule of thumb. Let's put it that way. And so they don't like it. I don't like, go all guns blazing in one single direction and that's what I was trying to a reasonable role in the capitalization of value and when I say value I mean all the avenues of value known to mankind and that could be distribution of fashion equipment distribution of electronics owning real estate in the most valuable land pieces or land sites of the world you know crypto gold and if you were to again just to attest to a test to what you said about Bitcoin, if that mindset is sort of complemented on gold, you know, gold just fell by a few, you know, a few good numbers in the past month.

And of course, China did not go to buy it. And of course, we understand that the amount of capital they can push in if it was their first line of defense against the global financial, let's say, crisis, or US-induced, let's say a financial crisis, then they would have actually gone out and bought out gold at that price. But that's what I think we all would agree that large and sensible investors, they keep building their position slowly. They don't go out, all guns blazing in one site. And they are actively hedging everything. So that's their position. They're not betting 100% on Bitcoin, but they're also not betting against Bitcoins is probably what would make a better sense

from my standpoint. That's fair. Yeah. Anyone else on that? I love that the story, though, is that governments are vying to create strategic Bitcoin reserves by figuring out who can steal the Bitcoin's better. I mean, didn't Pakistan announce that they were going to do a billion-dollar Bitcoin reserve in Bitcoin that they take from criminals that they haven't taken yet?

Like, we're just going to go find a billion dollars in prime related Bitcoin in Kazakhstan and take that and make it our reserve? Very on brand for government, for sure. I think, well, I have a lot of questions about this particular development. Dave, I'm glad you brought it up because it is really fascinating. It's super interesting. Without a security clearance, we're not going to really know a lot of these details. But it does absolutely show that government.

actors clearly see Bitcoin as an important asset. Otherwise, they wouldn't be fighting over it and spending resources on, you know, suing each other to, you know, to try to get it. But I think the part of the story that's actually missing is these are Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. They were actually stolen from other people. So I think the only right response is giving those Bitcoin and trying to distribute those Bitcoin back to the actual victims. Like Bitfinex, for example, who were holding 100,000 of their coins. Exchanges have been hacked. There's many, many very high-powered operations underway to steal from Bitcoin whales, investors,

retail, all sorts of people, too. I mean, I was just recently hacked by the Lazarus group. Thank God they didn't actually steal any of my crypto, but that's what they were after. So I would like to see in these law enforcement operations that there's at least an effort to try to give. Yeah, that was crazy. They hacked your telegram. Yeah, they hacked your telegram. And then I was with Jenny, the PR agent.

I think she clicked on a link for an invite with you. Hers got hacked and they went to every single one of her clients. to try to hack crazy. Yeah, but it's not your fault. I'm saying it's just like this endless, they get one, and then every person you ever talk to, they hack them, and then they hack every other person they've talked to.

And, yeah, be very careful on telegrams what I would tell people. Dave, sorry, go ahead. Now, I was going to say, maybe the government should hire Sullivan and Cromwell because they've done such a great job of returning value to the FTX people who lost their money there. Sorry, it was a bad joke,

but, you know, They've done better than most. Well, Sullivan and Cromwell have done phenomenal. FTCS holders. I mean, yeah, you got back your Bitcoin at $16,000. Cool. Well, Voyager holders got back 30% of their Bitcoin at $18,000. So, well, I guess it amounted to 60 after the second.

So even worse. You'll never. Yeah, somebody should talk about token gate, please. Why are we all talking about recent hacks? I don't even know what that is. Lifetime. You don't know? TokenGate was the first exchange that allowed ICOs and ERC20 token sales.

So it was a Hong Kong-based exchange. The Dow and Dijic's ICOs were actually sold through only one centralized platform. And, yeah, I have a few tens of thousands Ethereum there amongst a few million Ethereums of the whole world of people. Nobody has got a penny. So we've come along with. What a crazy space. That's good.

Well, you know, getting paid something apparently is a win. Sorry, Scott. See, that's what I was trying to explain that I was, I was fighting for like three, four years to get all the etherems back. And then they, one of those days, they said, well, you'll only get $48 per Ethereum. And that was the price when we got hacked. And that's what Liquidator said. And I said, you know, even at $48, it's a lot of money. Can I please have that?

and it's been three years since I've been chasing that. So, yeah, getting something for hacked capital, I think, is already a lot. Getting hacked or, like, bankruptcy or getting your assets stolen is like the price of admission for having any meaningful involvement in crypto agents industry. It's unbelievable. Just also add once because people also get that twice or thrice. Yeah. David, we're jumping out and I interrupted you.

Well, I mean, it's certainly true, and it's also certainly true that until that changes in public perception, that's arguably the single most important thing to change in public perception, right? You know, in a way, the fact that the industry recovered as quickly as it did post-FTX is sort of remarkable, and I think it's a testament. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, that initial rally has basically created a range. the average human being who's not on these spaces that, oh, well, you know, isn't it much more risky, not because of the prices of the investment, but just because it can be stolen. So that is a big deal. It is non-trivial. That's one of the reasons the ETFs have been so successful because people wanted to be in the investment and didn't want to take any of the risk. And there still is quite a bit of that. I mean, I don't even think you can deny that that's true. But, you know,

there's a lot of other stuff that's gone on. What I was going to say is as a natural pivot to Garav's comment, Gorav, I'm curious, what do you make of Coinbase's attempt to open up a new ICO market with more transparency? Because I think that's kind of a big deal. So I don't know if I've mentioned that, but one of the CXOs of Coinbase is our investor. And so, I mean, I'm just disclosing something that's almost public, nothing special. but they keep talking about the fact that their North Star is to make Coinbase the Amazon of tokens. Of course, in a very compliant way, we all know Coinbase has been sticking to compliance and ethics for a long time. And I think this is just an addition to that not star.

They will keep finding ways to make more and more tokens and digital assets. available to the world and then people can choose between means and uh you know basically non-revenue projects and the the rare amount of real projects i mean that's people's choice but coinbase is committed to being the marketplace uh it it's supposed to be yeah we impact that a bit yesterday but i think it's a net positive clearly to have a regulated entity with more transparency token launches. So, okay. Yeah, even if I was to defend their business side, you know, there's also another problem.

For those who have lived, I mean, a lot of people here have actually lived through that time. And sorry, there was a time when we were only trading on Poloniacs and everything else was shared. And it took like one and a half to two years. I mean, it's insane to even quote it today. But it took about one and a half to two years to get your KYC done and your account approved for, you know, a $1 million to $5 million daily transfers. And so then Bitrex came and just swept the whole market because there you can actually get your K-YC done and do better trading.

And then eventually Bitrex started to fail on the K-YC and the speed and the reporting. And Binance took over that was much better than that. So what I'm trying to say is there is a market that beats their predecessors on speed, on listings, on availability, and Binance basically stood out because they made everything available to people. So from a business point of view, I don't think there's a caveat to not listing everything and not committing to being the marketplace that you're supposed to be as an exchange. And especially in crypto, the biggest wins are made, I mean, I advise literally tens of exchanges.

I sit on the board of so many exchanges, and I've taken exchanges from like 100 users to million users. And I can tell you, again, it's a public advisory. Everybody can use it. The one thing that works for every single exchange is just go out and list tokens. Just go out and list the most popular meme. Go out, list the most ridiculous, you know, unethical scam, and you will get the most number of people registering to your exchange.

And so this is not like a super smart idea that only I would know. This is like almost publicly open. So I don't think in the, in the spirit of competition, Coinbase should lose. But that by all means does not mean, I mean that, but that does not means that you can buy everything on Coinbase. If you, if you go on the compliance check metrics of listing a token, it's like, it's like stupid. They really don't go into the revenue side. They really don't go and check the business. model.

They did list the market makers this time and their percentage and duration. Oh, okay. I'm not aware of that. But basically, I'm trying to caution the users of the space that, you know, a token listed on Coinbase does not mean that it's the best token in the world for you to buy and that it's a penny stock where you have a chance to make your Bitcoin killings again. Like, just do your own research.

Don't buy a token because it's listed on one exchange. change versus another. I mean, I have a quick question on that, Gerav, since I have you, and I think this is a question I've always asked myself. How if the game is to list as many and as fast and the most ridiculous things out there without any sort of concern of what they are as an investment thesis or, you know, who's behind them, et cetera, how is a, how is a regulated entity like Coinbase with listing standards, et cetera, even as lax as they might be, how are they supposed to compete with decentralized

like dexas who are basically spinning up these things, left-right, center with no compliance and no, you know, their speed to market has to be faster, their ability to do things or iterate has to be faster because they're not subject to any of this compliance overhead. So how do you see that playing out? You're absolutely correct. There is no competition between them and Dex's and everything else, but the competition is on the other qualities, let's say, qualitative values, the experience, the KYC on ramp, off ramp, the number of traders and volumes, the way the business is run. Of course, these are certain other metrics that would create user to stick around a certain

platform versus a Dex. Regardless to mention Dex's have, the biggest problem Dexes have is front rolling and MEV and sniping attacks. And so I think it all plays out well and balances well in the overall space. And both are growing. I mean, I don't think anyone could debate the growth factor of Dexas against sexes. I think they're all growing in their respective space. We have seven billion people in the world with seven billion possibilities and perceptions.

So we will find our avenues to play our game. I think that does it make sense? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. I mean, look, the interesting thing will be when there's actually a sworn-in CFTC commissioner and full board of commissioners, what their policy directions will be assuming either clarity or the more recent bill that gives them the ability to regulate spot. Because the United States has this regulatory agenda, which is kind of fucked up today. It's called the SRO set up self-regulatory organizations, where exchange. changes in the equity markets are actually regulators. And there are many people like me who think that that made sense when they were mutualized, non-profit organizations. It makes no sense

when they were for profit. But the fact that there is no regulator in crypto that looks at listing standards at all or even has a set of disclosures that are clear, that's not going to stay forever. There will be a regime that says these are things that can trade on regulated entities. And at that point, you get, you end up with a very interesting situation. Today, we have these things called, you know, there's, there's trading in what we call the national market system for securities, and those are all regulated. And then there's others, which are the OTC market. And yes, you know, I'm very, I'm friends with the guy, you know, Cromwell Colson who built OTC markets, which is where the pink sheet stuff trade. That's kind of the stuff that you may have read about

or seen in the movie boiler room and stuff like that or Wolf of Wall Street. But that stuff is much, much less regulated. It's really easy to get up and running. I think that the precedent for the dexes to be more like that and for the sexes to be more like the national market system under some sort of modern regulatory regime is where it's going to go here in this country. Now, I'm not guessing about this in the sense of I actually have talked to people who are currently in various places in government who believe that that makes sense. Perri-Anne, you talk to them more than I do. I'm curious, you know, I don't talk to anyone on the hill. I'm talking about regulator types.

What do you think? Do you think that that's a reasonable prediction based on where the negotiations under clarity are going? You know, what do you think? I'm just curious because you obviously are much closer to the legislative side. Yeah. Well, what's in the legislation is actually going to have very big implications for all commodities markets, which I don't know if most people fully understand that. It is a big deal, but essentially it gives the CFTC spot market oversight over digital assets. So today, the CFTC does not have spot market oversight of commodities, which, means they're just, they only have enforcement authority and they're only surveying derivatives, futures, markets, not the spot market. So that's going to change. So we're going to see massive, massive changes to how the CFTC operates once the Clarity Act passes into law.

SROs are not a part of that discussion today, but they could be. So it is, still possible that Congress would give the CFTC spot market authority, and then the CFTC could designate and put in place an SRO, which would work, you know, more similar to traditional markets, you know, as you've outlined. But today, there's not really a discussion around SROs. So there's still a lot to work out. We're still in really early days, even after the Clarity Act passes, hopefully this year, it's still going to take a couple of years to implement that potentially longer. And that's also part of why there's now a rush to get a CFTC chairman confirmed. Congress is very hesitant to really move forward with legislation that really

changes the structure of the agency without anyone in place. So there's a lot of moving parts here. I actually am a fan of SROs because, you know, government is not efficient at all. But there's, you know, there's pros and cons to that too, but I think it should be a part of the discussion. Oh, by the way, to be clear, I am not against the concept of SROs. I am against the concept of for-profit competing SROs that can use regulation as a weapon in their competition. And I say that from a very specific viewpoint, one that will be in my book where I actually was told by upper management to leave the floor at Solomon Smith Barney because Dick Grasso was visiting. And he knew, my management knew that I'm a little bit stubborn and would stand up to him and tell him that New York Stock Exchange has no right to stop us from market making. because I built our electronic market maker

that was upstairs. I literally was told to leave and the reason was they don't want Dick who has all that regulatory power to be able to take, use it against Solomon because he got pissed off that some and I quote, snot-nose little kid is telling him how he should run his business, unquote. By the way, that literally was a direct quote

which he used to the person who ran equities there. So I have a very specific way of looking at it. But no, I don't have any issue with SROs. I think that in general, having industry representation in creating rules makes a hell of a lot more sense than just always being dictated by the government. It's a little bit nuanced, but I just, yeah, thank you for the clarification. Yeah, so I just, I just want to be clear. I don't want to be stated as is the other way. But anyway, and here we are, Bitcoin is below 102. So guess, Scott, it's time to panic. We've got to put our...

Yeah, it died. Literally, we killed it on this show. Yeah, clearly. It's our fault. So sorry, everyone. Sorry, everybody. We have now pumped and crashed to levels not seen since yesterday. I mean, yeah.

There you go. Look, Wednesday is Hump Day. We had to hump something, right? Yeah, David, it's your fault. You're the one who... You're right for the show. During the show... I just rained on your parade.

I'm sorry, man. I owe you. Big time. Okay. I'll even... Give Scott his Bitcoin back. Ouch. Okay, well, I don't want to go there.

Did that cease in the pig butchering scam? Whatever, guys. I really thought that he, she loved me, you know? I went to my Bitcoin ATM and I deposited money for my long-lost lover in Cambodia. Anyways, that's all we've got for you today. Hopefully our title tomorrow won't be Bitcoin holds below 100K because God knows what's coming next. It's been a great show as usual, and we will see you guys tomorrow. Thank you, everybody.

Have a great day. Thank you.