The Wolf Of All Streets - China To Pump Crypto? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

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yes so i do want to talk about the china news not sure who's been who's been keeping up with that and how how important this is um because it does come as a as far as i know as a surprise announcement but maybe for those not following the chinese economy in recent weeks and months um so me it comes as a surprise announcement so i really want to dig into this and really and the impact it could have on the world economy, but also on crypto. So yeah, anyone on the panel that's kind of been following that will be digging into that. But Scott, before we go through that, you're back home now, yeah? I am, although my body seems to think it's in Singapore still.

You're still jet lagged. I haven't even been home. I've been home for like 18 hours so yeah no surprises yeah I'll be I'll be in back in the States twice in the next couple months end of October in New York and then in Washington Monday so in a few days in six days I'm gonna date yeah that's the eight hours is rough, but the 12 hours Singapore is a killer from there to here. Just totally upside down. Yeah, so I won't be going straight from Dubai to the US because it's a long flight. How long was the Singapore one?

It was a direct one, yeah? No, I had to fly Singapore to Dubai, Dubai to Florida. There was no direct flights from Singapore to the States? Not only from New York and California. So if you're in Florida... Was it quicker to go to New York and then Florida? No, because by the time you go and you have to be

there long enough before the flight, it adds basically an additional day of traveling. But it was about 25 hours of traveling plus the 12-hour time change on the way back. On the way there, it was like 36 hours plus the time change. Brutal.

Yeah. So let's dig into the news when it comes to the Chinese economy. One of their rates, I think it was called – let me see what it's called – reserve requirement ratio by 50 basis points. And they're also going to be lowering rates on existing home mortgages by about 50 basis points as well. So Scott, I'm not sure if you've been keeping up with us or anyone else on the panel, but we'd love kind of a general overview on this announcement. How big of a surprise is it? What does it mean for the global economy and crypto specifically? Anyone could jump in on that one. Gareth, you have thoughts on that specifically? Yeah, in China.

So basically what ended up happening is they did a bunch of stimulus measures. One of them was to knock down the interest rate on reverse repo. And reverse repo is something that we've heard about a lot in the States where banks were parking money at the Federal Reserve, basically taking it out of circulation, and then the Federal Reserve was paying them an interest rate on that money. So by lowering that reverse repo rate, the central bank in China was basically saying, hey, we're going to pay you less money to store your money with us. Therefore, it pushes them to loan that money out into the economy. And then the reserves that banks have to hold were also lowered as well. So it's just all these measures that encourages banks

to loan out money, which is stimulative. Yeah, but why that announcement? Does that just mean the economy is doing that badly that they need to take such drastic measures? Because whenever such measures are taken, it applies to any economy. Is it positive? When it happened in the US, everyone was like,

why such a big cut by the Fed? Is this something they know that we don't know? Obviously, most people concluded that's likely politically motivated. But when it's not politically motivated, like in China, or it could be, why take such a massive step? And should that be seen as a concern or as a positive indicator that China will do what it takes like the Western world to keep its economy humming along in the short term? Yeah, I think at least with the investing world, it's a positive, right? It's everyone's addicted to the cheap money. And it's China saying, hey, listen, we know that our economy has been stagnant and suffering in a recession now really since

COVID and never came out of that recession. And so it's the Chinese government saying, all right, listen, we're going to take steps. And I think part of it too, is that their youth unemployment is near 20%. I mean, there's potential unrest there. And we know that the government there has to take steps to kind of make sure that everyone stays relatively happy to maintain control. And really, we've seen over the last two weeks, a lot of clamoring, a lot of calls for the Chinese government and the central bank to really take these type of measures to kickstart their economy over there. So I think I think it's, you know, again, you know, you could take it in two ways, which is one is the Oh, boy, here we go again, cheap money flooding the system, you know, kind

of thing, or you take it from the you know, China's economy was struggling, and they had to take these measures to stimulate it. Another measure here is China will allow security firms, funds and insurance to tap the PBOC funds, to tap PBOC's People's Bank of China funds to buy stocks. Is that just another effort to stimulate? Because from what I understand, my limited understanding of the Chinese economy

is that a lot of the wealth is sitting, obviously obviously in real estate and stocks, especially even local governments that are responsible for most of the government spending. Most of their capital is sitting in real estate as well. So when real estate suffers in China, all the dominoes will begin to fall. And if stocks also take a hit, then there's nothing left. You know, people's wealth starts to degrade and that forces them to start hoarding cash, hitting spending, hitting the economy. So is that just another announcement? First, I'd love any thoughts on this analysis.

And does that announcement simply indicate another step by the Chinese economy, by the PBOC to stimulate the economy? So you've got real estate and i'm glad we're here i'll let you respond i'm glad i've you know kind of baited we're here up with that question to come up to comment on this because i know this is something he follows very closely as he's deep in private equities but yeah gareth love your thoughts on this particular statement and then we'll go to waheed yeah so so from my understanding i mean we we know that the real estate market in

china is just they're having their own 2008, 2009 right now, maybe even potentially worse. You know, they built these cities that no one was living in to stimulate their economy. And now they're paying the price for it. Right. So so I think that's kind of encouraging cheaper money. Maybe people can start to buy some real estate there. But you're right. I mean, the Chinese generally are a little bit more conservative than us in the US in terms of investing very much into real estate and other ways of protecting their money. And they've gotten hammered. And it's really, you know, caused some issues there with the spending side, which is that stimulative effect of the consumer as well. So, so, I mean, I'll kick it off to someone else here that might have a little bit more insight than me. Yeah. Well, he would love to hear your thoughts and

especially the comparison to 08, like 0 2008 wasn't just a real estate crash. It was a real estate crash with significant leverage that no one even could decipher. I don't think we have that in China. They're a lot more conservative. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Is it for me? It is, yeah. Right.

So, look, Mario, I have really fresh news here. Usually I talk about my usual talking points, et cetera. But this is actually quite fresh. And the source is the individual from China that I introduced you to in Singapore. I'm not going to mention the name. But he actually, the reason why I'm going to reference some of the things he said is because he told me this was going to happen. And I felt like this was weird. He didn't tell me exactly the moves or interest rates, et cetera, but just directionally the panic. So I hold his thoughts in very, very high regard. And essentially he said three things. Number one, there is a huge amount of

embarrassment in a sense that the only stock market, like you look at the US, you look at even Europe, right? Because Europe is practically in a recession, but the DAX is at an all-time high. And, you know, you look at the PMIs and all the different economic indicators, they're like screaming recession. You look at other countries like Argentina and others. So it's not just developed markets, emerging markets. They're all at all-time highs. China is literally at years and years of lows, okay, like almost a decade low. And so number one is a huge embarrassment on the stock

market. But number two and number three, very quickly, companies are saying, listen, we're over-levered, but our equities have tanked. So we have zero incremental demand. So if you want us to deleverage China and you want us to pay down debt so that the banks can actually release the reserve ratios, we need to be able to do rights offerings. We need an incremental bid on our stock. So that was point number two. And point number three is they've already bought a lot of stock in some of the national champions. And they've become leveraged. They have zero capacity.

So this is one of the first times they directly intervene in the stock market. And the reason being is those three points. One is like animal spirits. They're the worst performing stock market. Huge amount of embarrassment. Number two, they need the companies and free up reserves at the banks. And number three, the national champions that have been buying back stock are full to the brim. And so had they not done that, it would have been pretty, pretty severe.

Yeah, I'm just looking at the Chinese stock market returns in the past decade. So let's just look at the – I'm just going to look at some numbers here and compare. Because, again, I haven't been following the Chinese economy too closely except when the real estate – started seeing indicators of the real estate quote-unquote meltdown a few months ago. But the Chinese stock market returns over the last decade has been 35% in China, the US in return at 170% returns. And the EU...

No, but you're looking at Hang Seng. You're looking at Hang Seng. Look at CSI 300. I'm looking at the SSC and the CSI 300. So CSI 300 is the biggest cap stock. But that's true, but that's, sorry, yeah, okay, because that's just still pretty bad. It's less than Europe and you know when the European economy isn't doing too well either. So what about the Japan? What about Japan? Let me see, what about Japan?

No, Japan is all time high. All Japan is all time high. I mean, not all time highs, but like... 120%. Yeah, it's almost as all-time high, but like... 120%. Yeah, it's almost as good as the US, but they're just going to testament to the US economy. But just going through all the announcements that have been coming, like how... We've got the reserve requirements have been cut.

We've got further cuts of the reserve requirements by year-end. We've got the... They're going to cut the seven day policy rate by point two bips. I'm just going through the all the announcement here. It's all in financial jargon. So I'm just trying to decide. But you're missing a big point. Just sorry, I want to China to allow funds brokers, as I said

earlier, to tap into PBOC funding to buy stocks. Okay, that's never been happened. That's not the biggest one. Exactly. That's never been done before globally. Globally. The Fed never did that. I mean, they never freed up reserves and allowed collateral for people to lever up to buy stocks.

They did it for bonds. They did it for investment-grade bonds during 08. They did it during COVID for bonds, but never equities. And the reason being is they need to reliquify the system. And if companies don't have an incremental bid, they cannot issue equity. There's no IPOs. There's no new capital formation. Nada.

And by the way, we reached all time lows. I think it's 2% allocation to China in all developed market mutual funds. Never been seen. Never that low. So people are max underway China. Yeah, this is crazy. But you're right. It's never been.

The Fed has never in Europe, in Japan, in the U.S., has never allowed their window to be tapped to buy stocks. So, yeah, we see that in China. So, it's a pretty significant step by China. Before getting into crypto, how are the general financial markets responding to this news? Is it positive? Is it negative? Because in the short term, obviously, it just shows China's willingness, contrary to what we've seen prior.

And again, if I get anything wrong, do correct me, Waheed. I'm not the expert. But prior to what we've seen prior, China's kind of been hesitant to get too involved. Now we're seeing them jump right in and doing the same thing we've seen in the West. I think there's just a lot of – it's hard to tell specifically what the China news is doing when we just had a Fed rate cut of 50 bps less than a week ago. Yeah, well, all time high. I agree with Scott, meaning that we saw a little bit of a bump overnight. It's fine. I mean, people are sort of celebrating it. But there's also an element of, you know, is it too much panic? Like what the hell's going on? But to Scott's point,

we've already seen pent up demand and animal spirits in developed markets, given the Fed's moves, which are far more important. Yeah, but the Shanghai, I think you would look at the Shanghai Composite Index of the stock markets in China would be a good indicator of how the markets are responding to this. It's looking today, it's a 4% surge. We've seen that. So it just seems that at least investors are seeing this as positive news in the short to medium term.

Is that the same playbook as we've seen in the West? It's pumping the economy, doing whatever it takes to give the economy a high. I think it's more aggressive, and I got a nice little gift for you and a beautiful segue, I think, to David and Shadan. Is the last time, oh wait, and during the mini-crisis in, I think it was 2012 or 13, correct me if I'm wrong, Scott, the last two times, you know what really almost went vertical? Bitcoin.

So your position, because of all the Chinese outlets, Bitcoin was one of the biggest moves the last two times China panicked. So essentially you're seeing all this, what we're seeing now in China, obviously the Fed cuts in the US, but the news coming out of China, net positive for crypto, Bitcoin and hopefully for the rest of the industry. A fair statement, Scott? I mean, it's net positive for crypto unless you're in the camp that it means something is fundamentally broken and that markets are going to crash around the world, right? So as Gareth said at the beginning,

it just depends on your general view on the market or not. You can view it as a bullish thing, you can view it as a bearish thing. Yeah, the positive aspect of it is that we see the chinese um central bank the chinese government just doing whatever it takes to keep the the the economy humming along to keep the economy doing well to keep a stock market up real estate stable um but yeah gareth with the kind of segwaying into crypto your thoughts on the markets in general it's been a while we haven't spoken yeah yeah absolutely and i think you know, what Scott was saying there about the general market is I think, for crypto, at least, you know, all of this is just feeding more into the reasons why crypto exists and why Bitcoin likely eventually goes higher. But But what Scott

was alluding to is that, you know, Bitcoin has been very tied, especially recently to risk assets and the stock market itself. And so, you know, if something did break in the system, and we saw, let's say, a 30%, 40% drop in the stock markets, you'd probably get what happened to gold in 2020, right, when the COVID crisis hit, where gold dumped initially, but then recovered and made new all time highs, right. And so I think that's just something that investors in Bitcoin should just be open to that happening. I think as long as you have that long term mindset, you're okay, but just be ready for the you know, nothing goes straight up, nothing goes straight down, as they say, in terms of Bitcoin on the shorter term timeframe, it's been going sideways just under the daily 200 moving average, it's kind of creating a bullish pattern. So I'm favorable that it probably moves up to around the 68,000 level over the next

week or so. So I do think there's some upside. The only thing that would concern me is if we broke back below 60. Break below 60, you could retest the low 50s at 49,000 level. But as long as we stay above 60, I think you look for 68,000, 69,000. And just there, Gareth, looking at the – so so you got two support level and a resistance. The support level everyone's saying is 60K. So as long as we don't break below 60K, we're good.

And then we're just going to break all time high to see that massive rally again. Do you expect next month, expect October to be, as we've seen historically, to be a good month for crypto? It's such a tricky question. So for me, it's just going to be following a level. So like you said, 60,000 is our support level, resistance level. If you connect the all-time high to the subsequent highs after that, there's a trend line that takes us to about 68,000 or so. If we can break 68,000 and really get above that, then yeah, then all-time highs come very, very quickly. But for me, again, the tricky thing is that, you know, I'm obviously very much into the stock market following the moves in the stock market. So I'm very aware that

the stock market and its relative strength or weakness will impact crypto. So I think that you just have to wait and see. Like if October, October has historically been a tricky month for stocks as well. We've seen a lot of crashes in stocks. So I think for me, it's more about, can we get above 68 first? And then let's look for all time highs. I appreciate that. Scott, I want to get your take on the market as well. It's been a while and we'll go to Joe. Great take, Scott. Joe. Sorry, I'm having a mic issue. I got it. Sometimes, you know, you click that mic is on and nothing happens. Cool. I generally agree. I think we're still floating sideways sort of in a range and need more

clarity. But we do have historically, we know that September is supposed to be the quote unquote worst month for Bitcoin. And right now, we're up on September, even though the month started badly. And historically, when we see a good September, especially in the halving cycle, which is the election cycle, which is the global liquidity cycle, we tend to see October, November be the most bullish two months of the year. And that's even regardless. So the setup right now, if you think the cuts are bullish, and you think that, you know, in the election cycle is generally bullish, we're lining up as well as we could for Bitcoin, I think, to break out to the upside. And we have our first potential high or low

in this entire cycle, technically. So if we get above 65, from a technical perspective, we have a higher high and a new bullish structure on Bitcoin. For me, I'm feeling pretty cautiously optimistic. All coins across the board starting to look like they're breaking downtrends. So I would say for now, things are looking pretty good. Altcoins are doing what, sorry? If you take a look at a bunch of altcoin charts, a lot of them are starting to show signals that they've bottomed and are starting to sort of reverse that downtrend so uh it's pretty pretty and that's exactly you know funny what should happen in a halving cycle yeah and i think a lot of projects

are expected to launch this month as well my team is was informing me they're expecting a lot of these vc back talkers have been delaying listing um for the last six months to be launching in october but looking at the performance of vc back talkers still not that great you know we just look at the performance we had one of them yeah now we have them all trying to launch at the same time which uh you know you're gonna have to have some serious serious retail uh interest to have enough demand to buy that supply that that that part of it concerns me yeah i'm just looking at it now um we have one we had one of our projects launched today favor which is a decentralized social platform but that's what we invested in it's a lot of the projects we invested in like a year or two years ago even three years ago

it's finally starting to launch so favorite just launched today so okay sitting above 1x of the ideal price let me see if i was like of the private rounds uh of the seed round yeah doesn't have the valuations there but but sitting off the public round in September. So at 1.2, 1.7x, the IEO round. So I'd say it's about 3, 4x. Yeah, a bull market is when things launch 1,000x, right? Yeah, 10, 20x. Yeah, exactly.

But if you look at the launches over the last few weeks, it's just still not looking good. But let me, Jon, I'll go to your hand and we'll go to Joe. Yeah, if you look at a daily line chart, you know, about as basic a chart as you can get on Bitcoin, it's a textbook. It's right out of your baby's first book on technical analysis, Bull Flag. It is. It is. It's right at the top of the channel right now but it is it looks really really good and also i mean if if you are a believer in cycles and you you think we're going to get a repeat of what has happened in six months post, even if you take the lowest performance, which was, I think that was in 2016, the six-month post-halving gain was 38% or so,

that puts Bitcoin at 88K. If you're looking for where that range would be on the low end from prior years. That's what it is. Hey, Joe, I would love your general analysis on the markets. To be honest, the more I read about what's happening in China, the more I think the markets are underpricing it, undervaluing how important that is for risk assets.

I'm not sure if you'd agree with me, Joe, but I just think that that should have, to be honest, I'd expect it to have a bigger impact. And probably some people would strongly disagree with my statement here, but just a bigger impact on crypto than the Fed cutting the Fed cut a few days ago. Yeah, I mean, they're they're cutting rates from not as much of a position of strength as the US has. I mean, I would akin it more to you know having to are there lowering rates you know similar to you know covet times right like you know going down to that kind of zero zir period but also real quick scott can't find the mic button because he's checking his meme coin portfolio he's wondering when that elizabeth obviously look how fast i just found it when you

tried to trigger me with me and he's wondering wondering when is Elizabeth Horne is going to come back. Is Elizabeth Horne down? See, I just like the name. I never actually looked at the price or bought any. I think it's at zero. But as rates come down, that money does have to go somewhere. All of those millennials have been saving up. They still can't buy a house.

So that money will flow into QQQ stocks and crypto. But, you know, we still aren't really seeing the retail engagement, you know, looking out on social media, you know, Bitcoin engagements that we see are, you know, as low as we were, you know, over a year ago. You know, we do see, you know, the number of people and the creators that are out there, actually, that number is increasing. So we do see more people that are engaging, creating content, but we're seeing a heck of a lot less people that are actually engaging with that content. And so we can kind of say that kind of mainstream, I would say retail isn't back yet, that kind of white collar Robin Hood class. Obviously, we're all still here. That's why we kind of had the meme coin madness, you know, at the beginning of the year. But I think we are starting to see, like Scott was saying, we are starting to see some of these altcoins starting to kind of break

levels that they haven't. You know, you've got BNB up over 600, you know, Solana sitting at 145. You know, I think that some of these things are really poised to move. And if you're looking to kind of add a little bit of beta to your portfolio, you know, it probably would make sense to take some bets in those categories. And then if you're, you know, kind of like a, you know, a wild, wild person, you know, you might want to add, you know, the kind of those meme coin mascot positions back as well on all these different, you know, layer ones and layer twos. But, you know, layer ones and layer twos. But, you know, there's still kind of like black swan events that can occur. But I think

also another thing is Kamala, you know, she's gotten a little bit more dovish. I think people are kind of, you know, and as she's kind of raised, you know, in the ranks on Polly Market, people are thinking, okay, you know, maybe it's not going to be as bad as we all think. And, you know, I don't think Trump was as true as he could have been on some of the things, especially at the Bitcoin conference. And I think people might be seeing through that. So, tough to say. And Joe, one more question before we go to DB. Can you give us your thoughts on the more D-gen plays in crypto?

So, we've talked, you mentioned briefly about meme coins. But your thoughts about meme coins, VC-backed narratives and nfts as well it's kind of a quick analysis of all of them and more importantly what you think you know when the market when we start breaking all-time highs again and retail starts to enter what um asset class do you think will lead the next bull run you know i would love to think that some of these utility tokens will actually be the things that lead it. I mean, like, again, poly markets really like the only kind of mainstream adoption play that we've seen outside of stable coins, you know, and people buying layer ones because it's infrastructure. So, you know, I think a lot of these meme coins

are still going to get purchased. They just do every cycle. But, you know, I think some of the VC backed tokens people are I think they would just do every cycle. But you know, I think some of the VC backed tokens people are, I think they would rather wait. Right. But I think that, you know, you're sitting on something for six, seven months, these teams are actually just ready to go. They just want to launch and they want to be in public. I mean, anyone that's ever done a big marketing launch or campaign knows you don't want to just sit on that thing forever. So you're probably seeing a little conflict internally from, you know, the investors and then the people that are actually launching these projects that want to wait. But, you know, we are, you know, 10% a little bit more away from all time highs in Bitcoin,

it can happen, it can happen, you know, in the blink of an eye. And so these teams just have to kind of have their finger on the trigger ready to go. And, you know, you'll see the standard, you know, couple one, two big utility projects do well, you know, you'll see the standard, you know, couple one, two big utility projects do well, you know, maybe we get kind of like another kind of chain link type thing out of this cycle. And really, you only need to add a couple in that top 50 to kind of like point to adoption. And so I think we will probably see that in this cycle, I really don't think it's going to come, you know, off the heels of AI, You know, I know a lot of people are all big on AI and crypto, and I just think it's too nascent. And I think that the applications for AI are just so great within, you know, all the like the S&P 500 and what's

happening kind of behind closed doors there that it's just not going to leak into crypto in the same way. And so I just don't think we're going to see anything there. So I would just kind of still bet on these layer ones and layer twos that kind of have the infrastructure being built and i think we still have another cycle of that um db would love to get in there liquidity yeah sorry scott i was gonna go to db good hey good morning yeah joe kind of touched on it but the the interest is just not there if you look at google trends or YouTube searches, Scott can probably tell you about his YouTube volume, but Google Trends, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, they're all at lows that we've been seeing that we saw two years ago, two and a half years ago at actually lower than at the bull

market lows. And so they haven't really picked up much. In fact, they were quite a bit higher earlier this year around April. So the interest is definitely not there. And I'm going into quarter four cautiously optimistic, just like Scott was saying. And I've always said that I don't think we have enough data points really in order to show a true trend. I know people like to go off of the having and the election cycles and everything, but there are people that also say and show good reasoning that 2020 wasn't a normal cycle because of all the money that was printed, all the stimulus that went into the economy, that we really haven't seen a legit cycle or anything worth quantifiable evidence since 2016.

So we've really only had maybe two cycles that we could use as data points. So it's hard to say what's really going to happen. But like I said, cautiously optimistic for quarter four, since the data that we do have shows that it should be a good good good going from here yeah i mean otherwise it's trying to get in front of a moving train as far as global markets right i mean if the stock market continues to make all-time highs you don't want to be the one who's trying to call every top and getting absolutely destroyed doing it. Right. It just seems like you don't get in front of that. So,

you know, if that continues, which it has far longer than many, I think expected, and maybe the election will impact that. You have to imagine that as of now, if you were looking at the cycle and March, which we all were here and,

you know, I obviously was saying, listen, we're going to have about four to six months at least of downward boring. And, you know, meme coins are going to get crushed and such. That's happened. We're just kind of losing the conviction in the next part, which I think is natural when time has passed. Right. But everything, theoretically, nothing has changed in my mind. I think it's all aligning, aligning well.

And I think that it's all aligning especially well for Bitcoin, regardless of the election outcome, because I think Bitcoin has solidified its position. I don't think there's much controversy or thought around where its place is as an asset class. And I think there's an argument to be made bullishly for either candidate winning, which people don't want to hear apparently. But, you know, if you're the type of person who buys guns and ammo or moves off to Puerto Rico, when you're afraid of the presidential candidate that's elected, those same people should buy Bitcoin. And if you believe that a Harris administration means more stimulus, more money printing, all those things, well, you should buy Bitcoin, right? And if you're a Trump supporter, obviously, and you believe it's going to become a reserve asset, well, you should buy Bitcoin, right? So I think that we have a lot of bullish catalysts there. And the question marks then become what's going to mean for the crypto market per se. David, I see you're giving me the laugh there. I'm not sure if you agree or disagree,

but it seems like there's a silver lining either way for Bitcoin itself. You always humor me. I got to tell you, listening to this conversation and coming back from Singapore, all I saw was people spending a shit ton of money. So it seems like we're in a full bull run because I saw all you guys partying and we were partying too.

I don't know what you're talking about. I was asleep early every single night and you know. I must have met your twinsie. Wasn't me. Couldn't have been me. It was Mario. We looked so much similar.

Maybe the bodyguard following you around. Yeah, at least two of those at all times. Singapore is like the safest place on Earth, though. Mario, why do you need security in Singapore? Look, I told you my mic is not working for another two minutes that I can speak.

That was like seven minutes ago. Yeah, we're going to get into a discussion with Sheldon. By the way, in my discussion with Saylor, I've asked him on – I tried to sneak in a question on meme coins yesterday. I think it was a couple of days ago. How'd that go? It was yesterday. He answered it. And that goes a long way, so I appreciate that.

But his is obviously – we all know his stance on crypto. And I've asked him a question on whether he'd buy – sorry buy sorry about background noise i'll have background noise for another maybe 45 seconds but i've asked him on whether that uh his thoughts on the ether whether it will ever be um on micro strategies balance sheets obviously won't be you know about micro strategies just focused on bitcoin and nothing else um but um he didn't he never said he'll never invest in ETH. His stance on ETH was really positive. Now, I've also been looking. I've done a lot of research recently on ETH versus Solana, Aptos, and Sui.

And I know Aptos and Sui have been taking a lot of – have you been watching those at all, Scott, or anyone else on stage? Because I think Sui and Aptos are starting to get a lot of traction and the metrics have been really impressive. I know it's kind of completely different than the discussion we were having earlier, but Solana has been getting a lot of love recently. But over the last couple of months, Aptos and Sui have just been outperforming and beating at least my expectations. So I'm not sure if anyone on stage, Joe, you'd probably be good to comment on this unless Scott wants to jump in on that one as well yeah i mean they they kind of get bundled into the the layer one category and

you know i know you probably saw a little bit more of that you know at token 2049 just because they are a little bit more focused um on that market than they are you know focused on the i would say the u.s and european markets um so it might just kind of be, you know, what you're seeing there. But, you know, like I said, all of these different layer ones, you know, and layer twos that are out there now, really, it's just a play and what is the beta on the market. And if some of these things just trade, right, like there's a lot of kind of even ghosty type chains out there that still have like large treasuries that can just trade along with the market. Yes. I mean,

yeah. And look at the foundation, you know, they've, they, now they own bullish, right. They own,

um, is it by coin desk? Is it coin desk? Um, and so, you know, they've, they have,

yeah, they have more money than, you know, most universe. What about coin desk? Sorry. So what about, what about coin desk?

What'd you say Scott? That's, Oh, that, that, you know most universe what about coin sorry so what about what about coin desk what'd you say scott that's oh that that they you know basically they effectively own it the guys was it block one but they're also they i think they also hold like way more hold on block one sorry i'm sorry take two seconds i'm out of the loop a bit mark one acquired the crypto to like 2020 so we gotta catch them yeah hold on they've acquired when did they acquire coin desk it's like last year last year when when grayscale uh when they were going through all their oh wow obviously the gcg was going through all their problems i i i'm aware that coin desk was looking at selling um because we got our deck we got their deck it was passed on our table i never i thought they never sold because i haven't heard anything since i didn't know it was obviously block one acquired them so that's that's news to me sorry they have

15 billion dollars of bitcoin on their balance we know the former ceo well that's insane and do you know what their plans are in spending that bitcoin the plans are to go public when Trump's in office. You never spend Bitcoin. We're talking about Bitcoin. We do have the kings of Bitcoin here with us on stage. I think it's a good segue to talk to Shadan and you, David, just about DeFi Gold. First, a pleasure to have you both. Maybe a first general question before digging into DeFi Gold is your thoughts on Bitcoin in general, the state of Bitcoin at the moment. Edam, why don't you go ahead? Well, they really reflect yours and everybody else's. I think Bitcoin is the one safe bet right now. And I think, as I'm not sure who said it, was Scott or somebody else.

It's really, you know, no matter what direction you really go, Bitcoin is going to do well right now, it really seems. And that's why I'm betting on that. And then furthermore, I mean, just stuff like what we're doing, David and I, bringing DeFi tokens and all this fun to Bitcoin, I think is going to be a real boost as well. I think, you know, the whole meme coin space and everything you've seen to date, there's always going to be meme coins. But when you have millions of them launching, I mean, obviously, you you're you're going to have millions that are going to do really nothing and only a few that do so it's it's better to launch a you know instead of launching a meme coin to buy a lottery ticket really as far as odds go yeah and one thing I, again, I did talk to Saylor, again, a day or two ago, and one thing we talked about was kind of the change of Bitcoin's perception from a store of value

to an all encompassing chain, the safest chain out there, the king of all chains, and DeFi being a key to that utility. Can you expand a bit further first on the perception of Bitcoin today? How is Tritify perceived in Bitcoin? Is it still seen as a store of value or is the concept of DeFi on top of Bitcoin starting to gain traction outside of us nerdy echo chambers i think i think it's definitely gaining traction i mean i mean look the the trump family uh is is getting into defy a lot of people everybody that david and i know on on wall street knows what defy is and is interested in it uh are they playing with it no but they they certainly understand you know the features that are out there and what people can do.

And, you know, Wall Street is all about making money and they see this as an opportunity to make money. Right. No, nobody wants the frictions that exist today. And most people don't view Bitcoin as being a platform for DeFi, for tokens and whatnot. But, you know, we're we're proving that that's the case. I mean, today, the DeFi Gold launchpad launched with our own crowd sale. There, you know, a bulk of what we're doing is on Bitcoin, right? We're not just Bitcoin, by the way, we're a multi-chain solution. So the launchpad works across three blockchains right now, which is Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the Ton blockchain.

And the DEX works across chain DEX. It works across Ton, Ethereum, and Bitcoin. So you can grab a Bitcoin asset and trade it with another one. Most people in the crypto space have no idea that Tether is going to be launching a stablecoin on Bitcoin on the RGB protocol, right? Like I'd say probably 98, 99% of people that are in crypto that join these spaces on a regular basis don't have an idea that, you know, what's really coming with Bitcoin and the fact that you can do scalable, shardable, smart contracts on it today, right? And you're looking at the volume that's, you know, for these cross-chain DEXs today,

like, you know, ThorChain, ChainFlip, and some of of the ones that some other ones that are out there, like Maya protocol, it's very, very small, small compared to, you know, what's on centralized exchanges. And this is the one thing that's been missing in DeFi. So there's a lot of potential for growth in that market, right? It's that market that can be the chain flip of tomorrow, right? As somebody was meant, sorry, the chain link of tomorrow, because it has a lot to grow, right? And it can capture a lot of the market. And that's why, you know, this is an exciting place, because both Bitcoin, DeFi on Bitcoin has a ton of potential growth and cross-chain transactions that are, you know, completely decentralized have a ton

of potential for growth. And that's what DeFi Gold is really banking on. Yes, I think there's two things that are going for DeFi and Bitcoin. By the way, David, Shazam, you can both jump in anytime. There's two narratives that are gaining traction, the Bitcoin narrative with ETFs and regulation, et cetera. And obviously the printing of money we're seeing around the world and the devaluations of various currencies. And number two is just DeFi in general, especially with the decision of the Fed and the surprise cut a few days ago and now what we're seeing in China is that a lot of investors will be seeking better yields out there. And the best yield out there right now or one of the best potential yields is DeFi. So you've just got Bitcoin and DeFi both being strong narratives. Does that mean that DeFi and Bitcoin would become,

kind of logically speaking, going with that thought, would become the best choice for investors? Bitcoin is seen as the safest. DeFi seems very appealing now with the cuts by the Fed. We'd love to get your thoughts on that concept. Yeah, it's the best for a number of reasons. It's the least traceable, which I think is great. So you have DeFi that's really private and yours, with RGB at least, not with Roon so much. You have something that's very fast and efficient,

and it's on Bitcoin, which is much more secure than any other blockchain, right? So I think it just makes sense for DeFi to move over to Bitcoin as the layer one, as the main layer. But there are always going to be cases for other blockchains. I mean, there's already so much infrastructure on Ethereum, right? We, for example, one of the reasons right now the Launchpad supports Ethereum as well is because most people couldn't even figure out how to download a Bitcoin wallet, right? So we were like, we absolutely need to support MetaMask and, you know, everything else there that people use today. The ton blockchain, for example, is a lot more scalable in certain respects and much better for, you know, something like a metaverse environment. Right. There is always going to be blockchains that fit certain things better than others.

But for the majority of what's done today, and nothing special is done today, really, Bitcoin is much ahead of the curve than any other blockchain, in my opinion. And it comes with the fact that unlike Solana, it's, you know, truly a decentralized platform. And again, it's not just about being frictionless, you know, with respect to technology, but also being frictionless with respect to regulations and whatnot. What makes crypto very easy to use versus the U.S. dollar in an e-commerce workflow or anything really is the fact that it's not over encumbered by regulation, right? It's very hard to move money around. It's a lot harder than it should be even still today. That's why you have so many middlemen who don't really do much of value. They just fill out forms in the back end, really, when you're doing a transaction. So if you come up with a way to do,

to have the efficiency of Bitcoin, which is a digital bearer instrument, right? Nobody's controlling where it's going and where it's not going. And you still have all the features that regulators want, you would have a perfect world. But we don't have that. And Bitcoin gives you a lot of freedom because it's not encumbered by that regulatory layer. And something to keep in mind is all these Ethereum blockchain solutions are going to be encumbered by that, right? DDEX and all these solutions are very easy to regulate, but a smart contract on Bitcoin will always be between two parties at the end of the day. So there's nobody to really go to other than the people that are using it, right?

It's as powerful as Bitcoin is as money, as a finance, you know, smart contracting layer, if that makes sense. As we see DeFi grow more on Bitcoin, what do you think that would do for DeFi and other chains, Solana, ETH, et cetera? That's question number one. I've got question number two on why Ton?

Why didn't you guys pick Solana as a third chain after Bitcoin and ETH? But let's go with the first question. How do you think the growth of DeFi and Bitcoin as we're seeing right now, what impact do you think that will have on the rest of the DeFi ecosystem and other chains? Well, that's a great question, Mario, and that's why we're a cross-chain solution, right? Our exchange and our launchpad supports

all these blockchains and currencies seamlessly. And I think it's just going to strengthen everything else, right? Because the important thing is just to bring more people to it and have more people use it. And as long as you have bridges and connections between the two, you can actually do transactions without bridges. But why do you need that? If one chain is better than others, let's say you made the argument on why Bitcoin is the best,

then why should they even exist? Why should DeFi even exist on other chains? Because of what I said before. So in the case of Ethereum, people have already built a lot on Ethereum, right? So today, MetaMask is a lot easier to use, in my opinion, than X-verse or leather, especially leather. And there's just a lot out there, right? I mean, people have been working on these solutions. The development curve is, you know,

ahead since 2015 as far as the Ethereum world goes, right? So there's just more refined tools, easier tools for building smart contracts. So that's the one advantage that Ethereum has today. But that's going to erode over time because it's not that complicated to bring all this stuff over, right? I mean, for Bitcoin to catch up to Ethereum as far as infrastructure goes in the DeFi and smart contract space, you're looking at a few years.

So I think eventually a lot of these blockchains will become less important but they they also have goodwill right i mean ethereum has has a brand people are always going to be using it because there's people that have affinity for it right so that's something to keep in mind as well right why why if if coke tastes better than pepsi why why is pepsi still selling right it's because it has a brand it has an audience but that's it's a But that's a bit different because what we've seen when it comes to technology is that people like to call less around one or a handful of protocols just when it comes to convenience. And as you said, the steep curve for adoption from a development perspective for Bitcoin relative to ETH will erode over time. Yeah.

You're kind of implying that you believe deep down that a lot of those DeFi, that DeFi in general will slowly migrate to Bitcoin and there will be one chain to rule them all, as many people believe, long term, as we've seen with TCP IP, for example? Yeah, yeah. I think over time that will happen. But again, you can't do everything with a hammer, right? So Bitcoin will not be suitable for the same a huge bonus for the TUN ecosystem and why we

chose it over Solana that you mentioned before. But the other thing is, is just scalability. And sometimes you need that global state. And TUN actually is one of the few blockchains that has that, right? You know, something like Mina, you know, that's something that Bitcoin, Ethereum and all these other blockchains can't do, right? Which is have a blockchain that doesn't grow in size or grows in size in much less than a linear fashion for some of the other ZK blockchains, for example, right? So there will always be blockchains that are better at doing certain things, right? And they will all be interconnected in any case, because it will be easy to take value from one to another. So what my answer is, is that blockchains aren't the important thing. They're going to be commodities. What's important is what runs on top of them. And what runs on top of them is going to be across blockchains. The value of Ethereum and Bitcoin as meme coins,

because that's what they are also, is always going to be there because people are going to have affinity and tribalism for one over the other, right? So it's very complex. It's social, right? Money is the most social thing you can get. And that's why I think other blockchains are going to be out there, just for those reasons that I've mentioned. Let's talk about your launchpad as well, to be specific. How does it help projects wanting to build on top of Bitcoin?

What does your launchpad offer? Yeah, so I mean, there's two aspects to our launchpad. First of all, if you're a great project, we can help you with marketing and introducing you and working out great deals with great people like yourself, Mario, right? And it's also just even without that aspect of it, there's also the fact that this launchpad is really the only one that lets you launch on any blockchain and accept payment in any form you want. Right. So right now, anything on Ethereum, anything on TUN, the Lightning Network, Bitcoin, you can use as payment. Right. And you're not using us as an intermediary. It's going straight to you. All we are, we're leveraging the core of what DeFi Gold is. Right. Which is an oracle that works across all these blockchains.

And it's also a storage layer and a way of sharing state across all these blockchains without introducing a new blockchain. We go the master node route or the service node route. On each of these blockchains, we have the concept of service nodes that speak to each other, right? You don't need to introduce another layer two. That is the layer two in a sense, right? So what we have is this Oracle network that at the end of the day powers our platforms as well. One of them is the large pad. The other one is the DEX, right?

And that's why we can do it cross-chain again and multi-chain. And if you want to be able to accept all these payments without using a BitPay or some kind of centralized gate, it's almost impossible. You can do it through our platforms and the protocols that we've built. And by the way, thank you for having us on your cap table. I forgot to say that earlier as well. And final question is, Shadan, more about your token, your launch.

What do you have planned? What people will expect over the next few months from DeFi Gold? And by the way, we've been in talks. We had a panel. It's been months since we've been speaking. It's been a pleasure seeing you guys develop over that period of time. But I'm curious to see what your plan is next. Well, it's just, you know, we're eating our own dog food.

This first crowd sale is our own. It's going to help us, you know, optimize the platform for others as well because we're learning from doing our own crowd sale using this trustless multi-chain environment. And it does have its challenges as well, which is what we're solving, right? And eventually we're going to be listing it. By the time we list this token, the DEX is also going to be live

and it will be the first of its kind because again of all these other cross-chain platforms out there like you know maya you know again thor chain and and chain flip when we come out with ours it will mean that any rgb uh if if rgb is released by then, which it will be. Any RGB token can be traded with any ERC-20 token or any Solana token completely in a decentralized fashion. And again, on a DEX, because you can chain these exchanges together, essentially, right? The brokers can do that very, very easily. And that brings a lot of power to it because it means anything can be traded now for anything else without using an exchange, without you going through an account setup process with your favorite centralized exchange. And we're bringing

two major blockchains to the equation, right? bringing all the d5 stuff including runes uh you know rgb top route assets that are on bitcoin to this world we're also bringing the ton blockchain to this world where you can trade everything you know in a completely decentralized fashion and that's that's very exciting in my opinion i appreciate that that, Shadan and David. Good to have you as well. If anyone wants to check out DeFi Gold, the handle's in the title, but even better, the username should be on stage. I think

it just dropped out, but you can see David and Shadan there, and it's pinned at the top as well. Check it out. Can I just say, you can go to launchpad.defi.gold and actually start participating and join us in building this. Launchpad.defi.gold. That's a pretty cool username.

Launchpad.defi.gold. And you can also go to DeFi.gold. I think one of the things that always comes full circle is crypto is not an overnight success what we developed has been many years of background in y combinator crowdfunding being in crypto since 2010 and you know we're looking for the best projects in the industry and that's one of the reasons we're partnered with you and waheed yeah and you guys have a lot of Bitcoin OGs on your cap table as well. We have a ton. We talk to the creators of Tether all the time. We talk to the guys at EOS all the time.

We have a lot of great partners. And I would just say my excitement is about remittance and the idea of on-ramps and off-ramps. And I think a lot of people forget that Swift does about a hundred billion in volume a day. And when you, when you look at Bitcoin and when that market cap of Bitcoin hits $10 trillion, you're going to want to be able to move money around very quickly. And that's where DeFi gold comes in. I appreciate that, David. Again, pleasure to have you both on stage.

Pleasure to be part of your journey over the last few months since we last invested. And for the audience, check him out. The, the, the handles now on stage, DeFi gold team,

DeFi gold on, on Twitter. Appreciate you all for coming on. We'll see you again tomorrow. Same time as always. Otherwise enjoy your day and thank China for pumping the markets. Hopefully in the next few days. Bye everyone.

See you tomorrow. Bye. Bye. Bye.