The Wolf Of All Streets - Can ETH Drive The Next Bull Run? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Why don't you get on a plane a day early and come out here, man? What are you doing? I don't know. You have to ask my wife, man. That's a good question. I should have. But I'm going to be there first thing tomorrow, so I'm stoked. How's this team so far?
Starting point is 00:00:13 Actually, I mean, I haven't left the hotel yet today because I've been doing shows. And yesterday, Austin was as dead as I've ever seen it. So I think a lot of people are going to arrive today and tomorrow will probably start to ramp up. Good, though, to get a few things out of the way while things are dead. If anyone's wondering what we're talking about, Consensus is in Austin, Texas from Wednesday to Friday this week. I have to leave a little early on Friday, so I just wanted to get here early and get some things done,
Starting point is 00:00:37 shoot some content, have some fun. I'm looking forward to catching up. What do you got going on out here? Just generally lay off the land? Yeah. I mean, for us, it's just networking right now with other VCs and then trying to accelerate our fundraising for our next fund. So I meet projects as well that we're invested in. So it's just good to get FaceTime after being on a million Zoom calls and chatting on Twitter and stuff. It's always good to get some FaceTime with people. So I'll be at a bunch of the events this week.
Starting point is 00:01:06 It's everybody I talk to. I think crypto is going to be there, it seems. So it's going to be a fun few days, but a busy few days for sure. What about you? Are you shooting? It sounds like you're shooting content and then just popping around a bit. I'm a global brand ambassador for OKEx. So at conferences, a lot of the time, I'll shoot stuff with their executives and then do some
Starting point is 00:01:27 interviews. And then largely also, we're launching... Mario's actually involved as well with James Heckman, who was the founder of Hulu and Yahoo, owner of Sports Illustrated, all these things. We're launching something called the Roundtable, which we'll get into I guess another time. But it's a Web3-based app that consolidates content from Web2 and feeds into communities. I'm working on that with George from CryptosRS, Austin and Aaron from Altcoin Daily, among a whole bunch of others, Mario as well. So he's flying out here. And then as a part of that, we're doing a thing with RFK.
Starting point is 00:02:04 It's supposed to be wednesday night we'll now be on thursday uh spaces with him live and then thursday night obviously the deaton fundraiser so just really shooting a lot of content and then the rfk and and deaton stuff and then uh you'll you'll have to ping me privately because i think we're gonna have like a launch event uh wednesday night for that and we can break down the roundtable thing i think you'd be pretty interested in it uh anybody else on the panel here? Bruce, are you here? I've seen you everywhere else in the world. You're in Austin? Not this time. I got enough of my fill of conferences over in Dubai to last me until 2047. Based on what I saw, you got your enough fill of yachts in Dubai.
Starting point is 00:02:46 Yes, I did. You know, that picture that's going viral of all those, that big line of yachts in Monaco and people are saying things like, you think you've made it, but you really don't know what made it is and these kinds of things. No, let me tell you from somebody who's been there, it ain't all that. Yeah, well, I won't say this entire sentence because, A, I'm married. I've said it to my wife. But an old Wall Street adage that someone taught me when I was in college is if it flies, floats, or something else with an F, I disagree with the last one, then rent it. You never want to be the one who owns the boat or the plane.
Starting point is 00:03:22 You want to be the guy going between them. But I saw you jumping from about three or four of them in Dubai. So you've done that well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always a little noisy for me. Like signal to noise ratio in Dubai, I feel like it's a little high on the noise part. kind of fun-ish for like once or twice, but not as a whole way that everything works
Starting point is 00:03:50 where you go, like there's a yacht thing, four different yacht things a night. It does kind of get, at least for me, a little lulled. My wife appeared as a listener for the first time in God knows how long right when i made that comment she was summoned she was summoned that was absolutely perfect oh my gosh she's a speaker
Starting point is 00:04:13 now i see what they did you missed what i said dear but i said if it flies floats or something else we were talking about yachts then you're supposed to rent it but i said i disagreed with the last one but i think we know what I'm talking about. So we got Mario is actually on a plane at the moment. Yeah, she gave me a thumbs down. Classic. Mario is on a plane at the moment, but landing in Austin to meet up with us in the next couple hours. So we're going to go ahead and run with this.
Starting point is 00:04:41 We've obviously got the main story here, which we did not discuss actually on YouTube, Dave. So it's a good time for us to go into what I intended for us to talk about. Mt. Gox moved $9.6 billion in Bitcoin after five years. So anyone who hasn't been paying attention, I've been in crypto since late 2016. And outside of Bitcoin environmental FUD, Bitcoin, you know, boiling the oceans, Bitcoin's only for terrorists. I would say the other biggest story of impending fear and certainty and doubt is when Mt. Gox would finally unlock their Bitcoin to creditors and dump on and absolutely destroy the market. I, for one, have never seen one of these narratives outside of GBTC and the ETF for about two
Starting point is 00:05:22 weeks play out where an unlock actually massively affected the market. Dave, I'll ask you first, but then Bruce, you were around for Mt. Gox. I'm going to ask you, but Dave, do you think that this is meaningful to actually see this $9.6 billion in Bitcoin starting to move and go likely back to creditors? Well, I mean, the $26 billion in GBTC was meaningful, but didn't really matter a lot when the demand increased. So, I mean, the $26 billion in GBTC was meaningful, but it didn't really matter a lot when the demand increased. So, I mean, yeah, meaningful, sure. Small corrections, sure. Frankly, if there were a creditor committee, they could probably place it in block, you know, if they wanted to. The thing with crypto that I always find amazing is the wide dispersion between people who actually give a crap about the price when they sell stuff and people who do care.
Starting point is 00:06:13 Because when you sell carefully, this would be an insignificant deal. But we've seen people with things to sell crash the market intentionally. You know, and we've seen a lot of dumb trading. I mean, that's why my company exists. people with things to sell crash the market intentionally. And we've seen a lot of dumb trading. I mean, that's why my company exists, to help with this sort of thing. So the answer, therefore, it becomes it depends how things get sold. It also is if it gets sold. I mean, it could very well be that a lot of the people who get their coins back are like, OK, cool.
Starting point is 00:06:44 I was hoping I was going to get my coins back are like, okay, cool. I was hoping I was going to get my coins back and I kind of want to hold on. So we'll see. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I think the bulk of people who even in this cycle are or have gotten Bitcoin and tokens back from bankruptcies and similar situations have held it from what I've seen when they've been offered in kind. So you got to remember the people who were in in 2014 were very early and very open-minded and likely very bullish on Bitcoin and now have seen the price, you know, appreciate from the hundreds to the tens of thousands. Bruce, I could be wrong. Did you lose money on Mt. Gox? I did. I was a Mt. Gox creditor.
Starting point is 00:07:25 So I'll be getting some, I don't know, a fourth of whatever the coins I had there, supposedly, apparently. For us creditors, it's funny. I mean, it's been like a decade. You know, I mean, for every few months for 10 years, it's like, okay, here's this 16-page thing, half in Japanese, half in English. Just sign here and send this form, and then you'll have this thing. And then we're going to give you a creditor claim number. And then six months later, take your creditor claim number, and you're going to do this, this, this. It's just a never-ending nonsense. And it's really a shame. And it's an embarrassing
Starting point is 00:07:59 thing for Japan and the Japanese government and every single person involved because it's it's it's just ridiculous like it's not that complex it's like a bunch of coins got stolen the thing went under there was coins left take the coins send them to the people whatever's left it should have taken a month you know but yeah is there an argument to be made that for those who are creditors uh it was massively beneficial to be a forced holder. If it was the same amount of coins. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was spending coins on all kinds of stupid stuff back in those days. You know, we all have our stories about the, you know, the steak dinner that cost 10 Bitcoin or the pair of shoes that cost 50 Bitcoin or something.
Starting point is 00:08:40 So yeah, it's nice to be forced to hold, you know, and, uh, so I think that it probably won't have a huge impact as far as people selling, you know, it'll be very interesting. It's probably a very interesting demographic on that because there's, uh, you know, there's a lot of OGs that were early then and they stayed and there's a lot of famous names on that list of creditors. And there's a lot of people that, unfortunately there's people who left Bitcoin. I mean, how tragic is that? There was people who were really, really early and they loved Bitcoin and they were in it
Starting point is 00:09:07 and they were so discouraged by that. They're back now, Bruce. They're back. Yeah, I guess. Whether they like it or not. With one one hundredth of the coin that they had. Yeah. It's really wild, though, to see this actually moving.
Starting point is 00:09:18 I don't think we've, from what I've read, I was kind of just scanning the news. I don't think we have confirmation 100% that this is actually going to creditors, but it is the first time that these tokens have moved. And in context of what we've seen over the last 12 to 18 months in the news cycle, it seems like that is almost guaranteed to be the case here, right? Yeah, it seems really close this time. Of course, they've been saying that for years. Tom? Yeah, I was just looking at the prices when um the exchange went bankrupt and bitcoin was at 451 dollars so i mean it's just crazy the price appreciation yeah i mean it's nuts but the creditors are also getting um bch so there's about 70 million there
Starting point is 00:10:02 in bch which i imagine is just going to be immediately sold. That's going to dump to hell. Yeah. So that's going to be rotated back into hopefully more productive crypto assets. So at the margins, I think this actually could be either net neutral or net positive. I mean, I imagine most of these creditors are not going to be selling. Quickly, Bruce, you said that you're getting back one-fourth. Is that correct in kind? I believe it's about that. I think so. I would argue for the majority of people, they would have sold all of that long before this price and probably one-fourth with force holding for the majority of creditors would be better than what they would have done by either, as you said, spending it or selling it at some point in the last 10 years. Yeah, I agree. I mean, if somebody had 100 coins, and now they're getting 25 coins,
Starting point is 00:10:54 100 coins is a lot of money now. You know, 100 coins is like a big status symbol now. But back then it wasn't. It was 10 grand. You know, it's like, oh, it's wild. 10 grand. It was like funny money. You know, it's the kind You know, it's like, oh, it's wild. 10 grand. It was like funny money. You know, it's the kind of thing that somebody's like, oh, yeah, I heard about this crazy Bitcoin thing. Oh, yeah, sure. I'll throw 10 grand in it. Boom. There's your 100 coins.
Starting point is 00:11:13 So, yeah, 25 coins is a decent amount, you know. As long as you've been around, like how many people from those days, that era? I love digging into this because people love to say that early Bitcoin holders who are billionaires now and such were really lucky. But I think the conviction to have held through all of those events in hindsight is astounding. Like the $100 guys sold at $1,000, right? $1,000 guys sold at $5,000. So I mean, I would imagine, like I said, most of these people would have sold at some point. You saw $20,000 Bitcoin or $10,000 Bitcoin. Yes. So what percentage of those early OGs alongside you still have those coins from the 2010 to 2014 era? Not many. I mean, we know it's very,
Starting point is 00:11:57 very, very few. Hodling is the hard part. You know, somebody told Charlie Shrum, they said, hey, I wish I would have bought at 10 cents. He said, yeah, you would have sold it at 20 cents. And the pizza guy sold it at 10 cents. He got those 10,000 coins for the pizzas, which was the equivalent of like 0.002 cents. And then when it hit 10 cents, he was like, woohoo, 10 cents, suckers. I'm going to buy myself a computer, and it only cost me a pizza. What a trade. So a lot of people, it's very, very, very hard to hold when it goes up and when it goes down. You know, it takes that conviction. And there's been many times in this period between Gox and now, there's been like three major periods where it really was dark. You know, first couple,
Starting point is 00:12:41 it seemed like it might just die. And then the second one, it just felt like death. So there's a lot of, it's very, very hard to hold through the volatility. And I think the only way to do that is conviction. You have to actually believe. People who view it as a trade are like, oh, I'm going to throw some in here and get some more fiat. That doesn't usually work as well. Usually people build conviction. And sometimes people build conviction by hodling. So that works well too. Matthew, what do you think? Is this a meaningful event at this point? Or have we kind of grown beyond this being problematic? I think the if you put it in context, the price is or the value is $7 billion. It's a massive amount. But as you say, it's actually going to be a fraction of that that people actually cash it in.
Starting point is 00:13:25 But when you look at the amount that's already flowed into the ETFs, it's actually 10 times that amount. So we actually now have one million Bitcoin flowed into the ETFs now. So that's about $70 billion, isn't it? And we're talking $7 billion here. And we're not talking $7 billion, as we've said. It's just a fraction of that because, you know, you'd be unlikely to see more than 10% actually go into the market. So I think it's actually inconsequential. I don't think it makes any difference at all. And it's actually a major bonus, as you've already said, to the people who have been forced to hold. Yeah, what an amazing uh you know thing that's happened to them wish i'd been one of those unfortunately i wasn't for me but uh
Starting point is 00:14:11 yeah it's it won't affect anything it's just news cool i think we all agree that it's likely to be a nothing burger uh especially with the paced releases of it, the amount and the people that it's likely going to and their sort of level of likely conviction. So good we established that. Funny that we wasted a good seven or eight years of my life where people were worrying about this. And by the time it happened, probably nothing.
Starting point is 00:14:41 But that means we have a good excuse to pivot to ETH, which I still think is obviously the main topic of the day with the very, very surprise approval of the Bitcoin spot ETFs last week. And of course, the backdrop of how that happened, the political side of it in the United States, the Biden administration, basically under pressure from Trump completely pivoting and be coming out, whether he believes it or not, vocally pro-crypto. And I think the Biden administration, Elizabeth Warren side, having to back off the gas a bit. Dave, we were talking about this this morning. You know, Mike McGlone on Macro Monday, he always refers to Bitcoin, you know, and the Paul Tudor Jones ism of the fastest horse in the race.
Starting point is 00:15:25 Do you think that Ethereum can be the faster horse in the race, at least in this part of the cycle or moving forward? Well, you know, you know, my answer is, is not really maybe. I mean, the fact is, is it's a totally different sale to normies who aren't in the crypto world, who don't understand what's going on. And it's a sale that it requires the salespeople to explain the technology and what's going to happen in the digitization of finance. Ultimately, I think it's a very powerful sale. And ultimately, I think it will attract a lot of investors. And if they do a job like they would for a tech IPO, it could very well be that the ETF launch could be amazing. But like most IPOs, I would expect it to fade that, you know, said pop.
Starting point is 00:16:24 But it's a long way from now because the 19B4s are approved, and now we have to go through the S1 process. And because everyone was caught flat-footed, it won't be nearly as quick as a Bitcoin ETF. Plus, they don't have their sales materials ready, et cetera, et cetera. You know, there's a ground game that goes on here. But that said, you know, as a trader, we are sitting, you know, the recent, you know, three-year range or, you know, whatever, two- range, has been topped by our Bitcoin-Ether ratio of 0.06 something, two or so. And we were trading as low as 0.045. It's now at 0.057, which are all numbers. It basically says, yeah, Ethereum probably has a little bit more to go vis-a-vis Bitcoin for the next month or so as this all sorts itself out,
Starting point is 00:17:06 and it could go well beyond the top of that range in the beginning, I actually expect that the ratio where we are right now is probably pretty magnetic and we'll ultimately get back here. And so trading it is useful. And frankly, we've had a lot of our clients trading that ratio using our software. So I don't want to say what they're doing, because frankly, I don't know, I don't look at what our clients are doing, I only know they are doing something. And it's a very interesting process, because it's a totally different sales force. But what's important about that, because Mario asked this question, he's not here to ask it again, is that it's highly likely that it has spillover effect into the rest of the
Starting point is 00:17:48 digital ecosystem, right? So once you start going down the rabbit hole to learn about Ethereum, some people are going to end up in Solana. Others might end up with newer blockchains that show enormous promise. And still others may say, well, look at these other really cheap ones out there for whatever reason and you know you there will be more spillover because the sale and the investment thesis is much more similar for ethereum to a lot of the rest of what we would call old coins or many of them than the bitcoin one is thesis so i would expect a larger spillover effect overall and i think that's quite bullish.
Starting point is 00:18:26 Lawyered. I see that you've gone from Lawyered.eth to Lawyered.btc. So you have to have an opinion here. I do have an opinion. But, you know, it's more nuanced or less. I think it's just I really don't like ETH more than Bitcoin. Like there's a lot that I do like about ETH. But when you take a step back, I mean, we're all here because of Bitcoin. Like there's, there's a lot that I do like about ETH, but when you take a step back, I mean, we're all here because of Bitcoin and it does have a lot of those
Starting point is 00:18:50 fundamental, you know, we've sort of bent over backwards, in my opinion, to try to justify why ETH is not a security and all that stuff, but it's just all there for Bitcoin. Um, and the way that the world is playing out, You know, I think Bitcoin becomes more relevant. And with all the all the L2s, ETH is less interesting to me because just I use less gas overall. So, you know, I love ETH. I think it's a great investment and I think it's a lot better than, say, holding,
Starting point is 00:19:19 you know, fiat, but you've got to have a Bitcoin bag. And I think that what I've realized is there's so many people in the space that are friends of mine and they go into every cycle like, okay, maybe I'd like to stack some sats, but let's focus on all the other shiny things. And at the end of every cycle, they have no Bitcoin and maybe even during it.
Starting point is 00:19:38 So I like to encourage people to look at Bitcoin more than ETH. It's less fun maybe for the degens. But I think we're getting a lot of this stuff on Bitcoin that you do enjoy than ETH. It's less fun maybe for the degens. But I think we're getting a lot of the stuff on Bitcoin that you do enjoy on ETH for the degeneracy. You know, we've got BR for 20s and meme coins and things like that.
Starting point is 00:19:54 So I think you'll see a lot of that activity that you saw on ETH, NFTs and ordinals come to Bitcoin. And overall, I'm more excited about it. So yeah, I shifted from the ENS to.BTC. I might go back one day. I like both.
Starting point is 00:20:10 Fairweather fan, man. You might go back one day. I'm just kidding. Yeah, I think that, listen, that's the sort of argument we've heard repeatedly here about Ethereum is that it's competing on, it's basically in a two front war, right, with faster layer ones on one side, and a lot of what was developed originally on ETH, effectively becoming a testnet for it to be built on Bitcoin. And so I think we've seen that argument, Dave, I see you raising your hand, and then Tom, I'd love your opinion on this as well. One other point that I think is very relevant is the underlying reason why and what happened with this.
Starting point is 00:20:49 It seems extremely clear and is some of our other lawyer friends on here. I don't see them. I guess everyone else. My flight's later today to Austin, so I could be on this. The fact is the SEC pretty much was forced to abandon the ether is a security concept. And, you know, in order to make this approval happen, because that was literally the reason we all kind of knew that was where they were going to have to go if they wanted to deny it. And that matters, because now we know that you don't, that you're, that the SEC, even, even SEC, won't go so far as to say that something is a security and therefore subject to 1940s era laws that don't apply to anything that has achieved decentralization.
Starting point is 00:21:35 And by the way, since Ether is now proof of stake, it means that staking isn't necessarily proof of being a security. That is exceedingly relevant. And I don't think that the market has priced that in. Because effectively, whether it's Solana, who, you know, pre-FTX, people might have said, oh, it's centralized because look who's controlling it. But right now, it's pretty hard to distinguish the ownership structure there from the ownership structure of ETH and many others, all of a sudden now become fair game for the CME to swoop in and create futures contracts, which would then lead potentially to ETFs on those. And I think that's relevant.
Starting point is 00:22:10 And so that's going to take a while to unpack. Obviously, if the FIT Act passed, all this would become moot because these coins would clearly not be securities. But the fact that we've already gotten that kind of a signal, I think is extremely relevant. I'd love to hear what other people think about that. Tom, then Matthew. Yeah, I think this, while we saw a big move, I think it's honestly still not priced in. You know, you have, and it really, to me, it's just a mean revision trade and then also a supply crunch. So we have almost $15 billion for the BTC ETFs. You just assume Ethereum is even one third of that. Let's call it $5 billion for the BTC ETFs.
Starting point is 00:22:47 You just assume Ethereum is even one third of that. Let's call it 5 billion in the first few months. They're going to have to actually purchase those tokens. That's 1 to 2 million Ethereum. We only have 13 million Ethereum right now actually available to be purchased. That's the lowest level ever. Tom, just quickly, I'm sorry to interrupt, but ETH is $11 billion, I believe, AUM currently. And we obviously saw what happened when GBTC unlocked and the discount trade was gone. So could that at least bring some initial selling pressure, do you think?
Starting point is 00:23:19 I mean, you talk about only have $12 or $13 billion worth a billion worth on the, on the market. That's doubles that. Yeah, for sure. I, I think it's certainly a risk. I don't think people have traded that as aggressively as they were trading the GBTC position could be wrong, but. GBTC was literally the widow maker of the entire last cycle. I don't think that ETH has that impact. I think people barely knew that ETH existed until the past month or two. So I find it hard to believe there's going to be a lot of unemployment there. But I was quite shocked that it had when
Starting point is 00:23:53 I just looked. Maybe I'm wrong. But when I looked this morning, it said $11 billion. I mean, I think GBTC was at $25, $26 at the peak. Obviously, I think it was seven or eight until this run, right? So the price going up has made that AUM balloon. But I was surprised, actually, at how much it was. But maybe that gives us sort of a roadmap if it's a third before this run, kind of the equivalent to where GBTC was at. Maybe that gives us a roadmap to the interest in ETFs versus Bitcoin. Matthew? Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong. I thought that the Ethereum ETF, that there was no staking involved there. I thought they weren't. There will be no staking. That was the big change that needed to be made in advance of the approvals. Yeah, so effectively, otherwise, they would have been classed as a security, wouldn't they,
Starting point is 00:24:44 I guess. The other thing is, I'm not sure how been classed as a security, wouldn't they, I guess. The other thing is, I'm not sure how positive it is. I mean, we're seeing this institutional adoption because the ETFs, you know, Bitcoin, now Ethereum, then who knows what next. And I'm not sure whether this is a good thing for the retail market. And it actually might bring about that alt season that we've all been waiting for and wondering what possibly could drive people to alts. And I think that the control, and this was all about in the, from the beginning, about decentralization. And that's why, you know, with the crash back in 2008, nine, why Bitcoin came into existence. And now we're seeing complete centralization again, all the institutions holding all of the Bitcoin Bitcoin and more and more of it.
Starting point is 00:25:26 So complete control. So I don't think the retailers will have a look in at all. And so the retailers will be forced to look at the other altcoins. And so it could be good for the altcoin market and could cause a complete turnaround, a turn of focus really for retail buyers, where they're going to look at. And the real opportunities probably are in the altcoins anyway.
Starting point is 00:25:49 So that's just my opinion. Yeah, that was sort of what I was going to segue into next. So you did it well. I think in this cycle, we've obviously seen Bitcoin run like crazy and outside of a few sort of narrative driven, I guess, pumps like RWA at points or AI at points, and then of course, memes going crazy. And that boosting Solana, we haven't really seen a altcoin run of any meaningful size and mass, right? I think there's a lot of things that still versus Bitcoin are down 90, even versus dollar down 90 plus percent from previous cycles. And in past quote unquote alt seasons, whether we have one again or not, you literally had
Starting point is 00:26:33 everything kind of cyclically running, right? There was almost no such thing as a dead coin when that happened. So perhaps Solana sort of happened in a vacuum with the meme coins on Solana. But this Ethereum spot ETF approval gives a lot more fire to everything else, to your point, and to the entire certainly ERC20 ecosystem. Wick, what do you think of that? Yeah, man, I mean, I'm just following the price action. I think it looks very bullish. I mean, you know me, I'm a TA guy.
Starting point is 00:27:04 I leave kind of the fundamentals to you guys so but you know i think it's going to lead the same road that the bitcoin etf kind of went down i think it's going to um you know take a while for those inflows to come in and i think it will affect ethereum pretty well i also think it has a mass effect uh of course on just the ecosystem i mean having ethereum etf approved you can't do that as anything as positive for the eco space i think you know later on years down the road i think it'll open up the doors to a lot more um uh i mean more etfs coming i mean i know it's gonna be years down the road but um i do think that this is how you kind of marry tradefi and and um in crypto so i think it's great yeah it's hard to think that the approval at least in itself whether for altcoins or not is a bad thing kind of on a macro level i mean bruce you had you've had some obvious uh strong thoughts
Starting point is 00:28:00 on why this ethereum spot atf got approved right uh with fit 21 and sab uh fit 21 and sab 121 excuse me um you're not a big fan of the government's intervention here obviously at all so what do you make make of the ethereum spot etf and what it means for the market yeah i think it's good i did i agree with dave i. I mean, it's a great point that this is sort of closing the issue of whether or not there's a security because they wouldn't have been able to do it, at least not in its current form. You can have ETFs made of securities, but this one wouldn't work that way because of the way that stuff like that. I wasn't a big fan of the FIT 21 bill. But just at the end of the day, there's right and wrong, and there's reality. And he kept losing, you know, Gensler and the SEC keeps losing these lawsuits. And, you know, some of this, it's just not a great argument that they have on this stuff. You know, they didn't have a great argument for it, and they've kind of tied themselves up in their own mess here with all kinds of complexity. They made it unworkable.
Starting point is 00:29:11 They repeated this line like, oh, come on in and register, but there isn't really a way to do that for most of these projects. They had this thing, this special purpose broker-dealer thing, which turned out to be kind of fake. They said, okay, here's this one designation you can do, but it doesn't really do anything. And nobody got it. And then only and then somebody pointed that out, then they gave it to one company, which was kind of fishy. So there's just a lot of problems with this. I think it's kind of ironing it out. It's a bit too slow. I think that in a time like this, and I'm glad that a lot of people in our industry are rallied, like last week, there's a lot of people like, yeah, yeah, go. There's two points to that.
Starting point is 00:29:47 One, we don't historically give a lot of money. So if you're really, really, really serious, unfortunately, elections are won by money. So I'd say give more money. But we can meme people and troll people. We can dominate Twitter or whatever. We can shake things up. And I'm glad about that. But I think we really need more revolutionary stuff. I think we should just scrap all of this stuff. We can dominate Twitter or whatever. We can shake things up, and I'm glad about that.
Starting point is 00:30:07 But I think we really need more revolutionary stuff. I think we should just scrap all of this stuff. I don't think we need any AML-KYC rules. I don't think we need any accredited investor rules. I think the entire idea of registration is broken. I think all of the exemptions are broken. I think the whole thing is broken. It should be completely demolished and spun upside down, in my opinion.
Starting point is 00:30:27 I think things will be working a lot better. And the closer we get to that, even if it's tiny little incremental steps like the Lords in the High Castle over here telling us that we're allowed to trade this ETH ETF, okay, great, I'll take it. So small wins. Yeah, Dave, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, look, I agree with Bruce on both of those points. But I think that the key thing in the FIT 21 bill, I mean, there's a lot of crap in there, right? And I don't want to go into it, but the ban on regulation by enforcement,
Starting point is 00:30:58 where explicitly creating a, you know, basically taking Hester's original safe harbor idea and saying, once you give it and show the intent to register that, uh, that you can't be prosecuted during that period of time is massive. And it eventually essentially defangs the stupidity of the approach and forces the SEC, uh, and the CFTC to do more or less what they're supposed to do, which would be a disclosure, the SEC, at least to be a disclosures-based regime. Where I disagree with Bruce is I think that if the industry helped and the SEC codified all issuers to do disclosures on the scale that Masari has already done in the private sector, that would be a good thing, i.e you know and hold people to tokenomics and hold people to
Starting point is 00:31:46 supply schedules and understand that if you create something and do a rug pull you know that that is considered criminal you know those sorts of things i think people could get behind disclosures on the trading side too and the market structure side too but the the reality is, I tried asking John Reed Stark this question when he was on one of these spaces, and he even admitted that probably 90 plus percent of the enforcement actions the SEC takes, the Wells notices and everything they do, are for technical violations without even an allegation of investor harm. And when you have a situation like that, it's much more like a bureaucracy protecting its power than protecting investors. And honestly, without a regime change, I don't see that that changing. But it is it actually wouldn't be crazy for it to move in
Starting point is 00:32:38 that direction. If you listen to Vivek speak, I mean, if you let him near the SEC with a hatchet, you'd end up with a much, you could have an agency that could do a lot more than it's currently doing today with a lot less money and a lot less impediment to investors. Because one of the other things that people keep forgetting is none of these agencies use modern technology. I mean, they still require prospectuses to be written for Christ's sakes. You know, we have this thing called the internet, you know, it's like, it just, it is amazing to me that you still have bound prospectuses to be written for Christ's sakes. You know, we have this thing called the internet, you know, it's like, it just, it is amazing to me that you still have bound prospectuses that are created. It's just, it's just, it is absolutely mind boggling.
Starting point is 00:33:15 Can you tell me more about this internet? Yeah, really? I mean, it's funny, but, but, but true, you know, they just, there is the amount of information available when they created accredited investor laws. Those are the most insanely regressive laws out there to prevent social mobility. It's insane. average person sitting on the internet probably has done more research or has more at their available to them than institutional investors did 40 years ago. And yet we have these laws that say only rich people can invest in things that actually make money. So what does it do? It creates a huge, huge bag holder, bag liquidity. Retail becomes exit liquidity to VCs, right? And that's what the stock market is. In crypto, that's not true. Because in crypto, everyone could dump on everybody. And yeah, okay, is that good? Is it a free for all perfect? Well, no, but I'd argue it's a lot less regressive than what you have in equities. Even Caitlyn Jenner can dump on you an accident in crypto,
Starting point is 00:34:27 right? Which has to be, by the way, I haven't dug into it too deeply, but has to be the most absurd story I've seen kind of superficially of this cycle, which is saying a lot. Lawyered, have you been paying attention to that at all? I don't mean to put you on the spot. I just haven't dug in too deeply. But even sitting in Austin last night, I was with Austin and Aaron from Alcorn Daily last night, a bunch of guys from some other project, a whole crew, and nobody, they were all talking about it, and nobody still could figure out if it was real or a deep fake or if Caitlyn Jenner was actually involved or not. Have you been following it? Sadly, yes. And I think it is real
Starting point is 00:35:03 unfortunately. Yeah, it's too bad tom have you been watching this at all i mean i need somebody to give the quick summary or maybe i just did but to my understanding uh basically caitlin jenner's team got socially engineered by some guy named sahil who's a rug pull master and convinced them that they should launch a token. It ended up being real and he ended up rug pulling the supply. Was that correct? And he is tweeting about it now. That's basically the summary in this guy.
Starting point is 00:35:37 It sounds like he's done this with like five or six different celebrities as well. So he's just a complete scumbag. It sounds like, and Caitlyn Jenner unfortunately got caught in the middle of this. Um, so yeah, I saw someone tweet that, you know, we wanted to get more women in the space and we got, uh, you know, Caitlyn Jenner and Ansem's angels. So, you know, we're not, we're not onboarding women as we should be, but, um, yeah, this, this is the kind of stuff that's going to happen in a bull market. Right.
Starting point is 00:36:03 I mean, people are just going to go for cash grabs. There's going to be scams. It's going to be rug pulls. I mean, we can hate on regulation all you want, but we need to put regulation at the margin and kind of stamp some of this stuff out because it's just not a good look for anybody. What are Ansem's angels, dare I ask? Oh, boy.
Starting point is 00:36:21 So Ansem is sponsoring like Playboy models that are getting paid to go out on dates with people or do video calls. You can draw a pretty clear correlation to other industries where that sort of stuff happens. Tell me more, Tom. Tell me more about this internet. Yeah, yeah. This is, it seems like some sort of dating service, borderline prostitution, maybe, but yeah, I'll leave you guys to look it up on Ansem's Twitter. It's
Starting point is 00:36:55 not another thing that's not a great look. Are people outraged, I should say feigning outrage by the morals in this community, or I haven't seen the reaction to that. I think we're past that. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:14 I think we're past, we're past surprise, I think about Ansem. I mean, I think if anything, people are a little surprised that he's going this way because it's, it seems like the last thing you can kind of do, but you know, if you can make money, then that's sort of a nod in his direction i don't think
Starting point is 00:37:29 anyone really cares too much chain based or is it literally yeah you pay to tinder no i think you can pay in crypto and it's anonymous in that way i think because you're paying in crypto so i think i don't want to make allegations that i can't say for certain. But what I have heard is that it's basically just prostitution with crypto. But you can also do sort of those like just a phone chat and stuff and whatever that leads to. But yeah, I mean, I think it's unimportant to the crypto space. Anson, I think is Anson is unimportant to the crypto space. He's kind of just being clownish. It's almost like how what's his name?
Starting point is 00:38:03 Bib almost forgot his name. Bib boy was important. And then he just really wasn't. And we had, we all had a laugh for a little bit. I'm proud to say all of this is totally off my radar. So clearly I don't read enough, I guess, on here, but I think probably a good time for us to wrap if we've gone to Antum Angels and Caitlyn Jenner unless anybody else has a meaningful opinion on those I think we kind of covered it all today and obviously we're all going to be sort of in and out of consensus for the next few days but definitely we'll be having all the shows thank you so much to all the guests guys are amazing and go ahead Tom go ahead you raised your hand yeah
Starting point is 00:38:46 yeah sorry I just want to put a little more color in this so you could go out on a date with this Playboy model this handsome angel for fifty thousand dollars and you get uh they'll fly you out to wherever you want to go or she'll fly to you they'll book a five-star hotel take you on a date um so as the other panelists alluded to, borderline prostitution stuff. They're just hanging out in the hotel room. You guys are just jumping to conclusions. You need a five-star hotel just
Starting point is 00:39:14 to get ready. Yes. Very important. Very important. All right. Well, I think we squeezed all the juice out of this one today. So thank you, guys. We'll see you all tomorrow. Enjoy. And the rest of you, see you in Austin.
Starting point is 00:39:30 Thank you, guys. Bye.

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