The Wolf Of All Streets - Cointelegraph Bitcoin ETF Fake News!! | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

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Well, that was fun. Getting everybody up on stage right now. Gareth, never thought I would start a live stream at 9am price would be 28,000. I would stop a live stream at 10am price would be 28,000. But somewhere in between price would be 30,000. Yeah, hey, buddy. Sorry. I was just I was just you're good. Yeah, man. But yeah, that was wild. I mean, that was absolutely insane. You know, it just shows you, to be honest, and I think I saw some of your tweets on this, too, Scott, is that like, you know, crypto wants to be taken as a serious asset. And like things like this, you don't see an institution being like, wow, I really want to get involved in this market when stuff like that happens. I totally agree. That was just, just brutal. And we were on obviously live. So, you know, I, I foamed into the fake news like everyone else, which is something I'm generally pretty careful about. I smelled a rat very quickly and started tweeting about it, but man, that was,

that was wild. I guess we'll, we'll wait for everybody to get up on stage and then we'll be able to talk about it more, had a whole bunch of topics and ideas lined up, but I don't think we're going to talk about much else besides this volatility, clearly. And what just happened, what it may mean for if we do actually get a Bitcoin spot ETF approval, whether this is leaked early news or whether this was literally just fake news or an intern who fell on their head. Pretty insane, though, the way that this just happened, right? To my understanding, as I was sort of watching it in real time, and Ran, we got to get you up so we can we can discuss. But it seems that Cointelegraph obviously tweeted that the ProShares ETF had been approved, no link, that has now, I guess, since been deleted. And they had changed it to reportedly about 30 minutes later, but now it has been completely

deleted. That was picked up, as I'm seeing it, by Benzinga, which was then reported on Reuters via Benzinga and then reached all the way to Bloomberg Terminals, which to me is just like, I don't know if that just shows how quickly fake news can proliferate or how thirsty the market is for this. But the fact that it went across the board and all the way to Bloomberg terminals, which means it went to every human being on Wall Street, is just astounding to me. And embarrassing. Matt, you're here. You're just the guy I want to talk to. God, man. Listen, you're sitting there. You've been working on this. How many years have you been working on getting a spot ETF approved? I was seven years old when I started.

Yeah, so two years ago. Great. Five years. Five years. years of doing serious work with a straight face. I see James Seifert is in the audience. We got to bring you up, buddy. You know, five years you've been working on this seriously. And then you see this tweet. Maybe did you even for one second believe it was true? No, I did not believe it was true. We had we had an internal slack that put the likelihood zero. I mean, you know, I do think I do think we're on the pathway but but no i did

not i did not believe it's true okay so what do you think happens here then uh well well well start me off what do you think happened just call it what it is it was it was a brilliant case of market manipulation which wiped out i'll quickly i'm quickly going to give us an updated number of of how many shorts were actually wiped out but the binance short interest um open interest went from 100k to 86 k so yeah what's it at the 15 000 contracts there $300 million. $300 million wiped out in less than an hour. Rand, quickly, what were the numbers right before? Because obviously we already, which is not surprising now,

but we had already seen a 3% or 4% move on Bitcoin to the upside before this happened. So what happened was that closed the open interest from about 100k to about 92.93k then that started climbing it which was all the shorts that were liquidated in this morning's pump then they started climbing again and it got to about 97 and a half thousand or 98 000 open contracts and then it was flushed out to 86 000 open contracts and now we're sitting on about right now on we're sitting on 90 000 open contracts well how do you long liquidate it because price went all the way to 30 i have to imagine there were people who are getting long for moving in between 28 and 30 who are now i'll get us the i'll get us all the all the all the numbers now i mean that was astounding

embarrassing riveting i don't even know how to dig in. James, listen, you quickly kind of came out and said, this is probably fake, right? I mean, was there a second where you were like, wow, awesome. Can't believe they surprised us and did this. Well, I mean, so first I want to say, like, there's a lot of scammy accounts on Twitter, right? There's a lot of people that I look at

and I know that they're going to, this shit that they're tweeting is uh not necessarily to be trusted but to be honest coin telegraph doesn't they're not in that tier for me right like i like to confirm the stuff they tend to exaggerate things but like they're not ones to like completely lie about stuff or at least in my experience so i was like and then also the news that they they kind of broke the news that um the sec wasn't going benzinga did and they did that the SEC wasn't going to appeal the decision. And that seemed to ultimately be true. So I was like the odds of this being true – Right.

That was Benzinga. That was Reuters via Benzinga, which hit Bloomberg as well. Same path. Yeah, exactly. So I was like, OK. I was like – before I saw it, I was like this is like 1% chance. I wasn't quite at zero the way that Matt was, but I was pretty low. Fortunas texted me because I saw it too, and then he texted me.

He was like, what is this? I'm the one that usually checks the SEC sites, so I just scoured the sites for like 10 minutes, and I was like, I've got nothing. There is nothing to indicate this is happening. So I was like, I've got to i so i'm obviously on the bloomberg terminal i had i don't know i'm 13 or 14 clients message me tons of dms just like is this true and i was like all right i'm gonna go out there and say this is fake news because like no one else is saying it and there's a lot of people tweeting it like it's real uh so just never have i been so happy to be correct or or I guess sad to be correct, I guess is the correct way to say it.

Go ahead, Matt. It's a dream deferred, not denied, James. Don't worry. We will get there. But yeah, I mean, it's scandalous. It's bad. This is the kind of, yeah, attempts at market manipulation that you'll see through news media. It's happened before in traditional stocks.

It's not the first time we've seen people try to adjust prices by putting out fake news. But it's it's disappointing to see for sure. Right. But this is it's the particular fake news, of course, and under the very, very directed microscope of the SEC literally saying they don't want to approve this product because of market manipulation. Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. Jumped out at me like you're you're worried about market manipulation. This happens. I just want to know what happened at Cointelegraph. Was this like a disgruntleduntled employee did they get hacked did somebody just misread something and throw something out there they shouldn't have like if anyone from coin telegraph is listening we would love to have you on stage i tweeted it we're personally inviting you don't worry we'll be nice come on

you can do it i'm i mean it's it's it's worth noting that the preconditions were there right like this this is a unique day it's it's the day after appeal day and uh and so it's not you know it's someone who put it out is relatively sophisticated about what's going on so i think i think the preconditions were there earlier in the morning and uh and there's a rush to publish news it's it's still disappointing it's still uh a rank attempt at manipulating the market. You can see that in the price, but it's unfortunate. Yeah. I mean, Tom, I'll go to you right after this. If they did manipulate the market, it's more sinister than what you just described, right?

Because it means that whoever tweeted that on Cointelegraph had a financial interest in some way in seeing what the price did, unless they're literally just trolling which is of course possible but i mean somebody made a whole lot of money on bitcoin going from 28 to 30 in that amount of time and then coming right back tom you had your hand up yeah the thing that jumped out to me which really immediately sort of raised my antenna was they only approved one when i thought the indications were they would likely approve all of them at the same time to not be a key maker and just say like, hey, BlackRock, here is all of the flows for the Bitcoin ETF because you were first. I guess, James, is that still your base case at Bloomberg? By the way, really quickly, it was also quickly reported that BlackRock had been approved

as fake news, by the way. Not in the reputable sources, but it went very quickly around Twitter or X, whatever the hell we're calling it these days. Yeah. Yeah, what Tom said. We're very much in the camp. Like, Matt can talk to this as well as anyone because they just went through the whole thing with Ethereum futures ETFs. But we're expecting to do roughly the same thing with spot Bitcoin. They don't want to make any kingmakers in these things that people have been trying to launch for years and years.

We don't know what that does for precedent as far as other stuff goes. But these things where people have been filing for stuff for a long time the sec obviously kind of is just making everyone go in the same day and not letting anyone be a kingmaker um and we're mostly expecting them to do the same thing with with spot bitcoin so that was another reason why i was very hesitant like the the news that it's just the iShares ETFs it seemed very very very unlikely to me. Yeah, I must say congratulations to you guys for the speed at which you guys moved to say that you think this is going to be fake. The market was celebrating and you guys came out immediately and said that this doesn't seem like it's real to you guys. I'm interested to know, James, if the ETFs were actually approved, what is the formal notification channel? How would the SEC announce the approval of the ETF?

So how would the market hear us? We can avoid getting the fake news again. What do we look for to make sure it's the real news? Yeah, so there's two things here, right? There's both sources inside the SEC and at these fund companies. There are people that are likely going to know it's going to happen beforehand definitely at the sec and likely some people at these fund companies like they're in conversation with the sec before something like this happens so it could leak like if you see somebody saying indications are that the sec is going to approve stuff like that um as far as like the official

order there's going to be an order from the sec So we've seen a whole bunch of delay orders and disapproval orders. There will be an approval order from the SEC on the SEC website. Now, there is some lag many times from when like the actual approval order hits the place on the site at times, but there will be an approval order issued. And usually you'll be able to see it on the SEC website. So that's what I was looking for. And I saw nothing to indicate that. So like, whether it's indications or sources are saying that it's going to be approved, that's one thing. But like, if it's saying it's actually de facto approved, you got to show me a document or I'm not going to believe it. All right. But Jason, your point, and I will say like, I've always viewed CoinTelegraph as a reputable source of news in the crypto market. So something this outright false, I think, was very surprising to me, at least.

Yeah, I'm with you 100 percent. Like they're not they're not one of those accounts with whale in the name that I expect to be tweeting out complete like nonsense. I agree. David, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, clearly it's it's troubling in the sense that, you know, it's an asset class that's under a microscope. But it's not like we haven't seen these types of things with respect to equities from time to time. very active parties in terms of folks that are easily identified in terms of pulling off these spoofs and saying we're making a bid for company XYZ at ABC price and so on. It's few and far between when it happens in securities markets, but it happens from time to time. And it's a question of how quickly does the market correct as well? I mean, yes, this was not a huge up and down, right? You've seen securities, equities fly by 40 plus percent, 50 plus percent on these types of statements. And so I don't think it was egregious. I think

it was corrected pretty quickly. And then in terms of being able to run down the source, the source has been run down pretty quickly. So I think things are generally OK. Again, the asset class is under a microscope, so it doesn't bode particularly well for it. But I wouldn't be incredibly fearful about the backlash. I tend to agree with you. But the only point I think of nuance there is that this is the entire market, not just some stock that's a part of the backlash. I tend to agree with you. But the only point I think of nuance there is that this is the entire market, not just some stock that's a part of the market, like relative

to the stock market, Bitcoin is, you know, would be comparable to the entire index fund or to the entire market. And to see it go up and down like that, simply on this news, and this, by the way, is the one piece of fake news that everybody's awaiting or watching that could manipulate this market in either direction. And it is the entire market. So I view it through a slightly different lens. Maybe that's obviously because we're a part of this echo chamber, obviously at a crypto town hall. But I just, you know, it's just a real head shaker to me. So perfect. So listen, the next question, I guess, is now that we've seen this price move, there's a few things to unpack, right? Is this a foreshadowing,

as Matt kind of alluded to, of what would happen if an ETF was actually approved? We saw, by the way, if anyone was paying attention, not only did Bitcoin absolutely skyrocket, but Bitcoin dominance skyrocketed, meaning that all coins got pretty much destroyed against Bitcoin on that move, at least temporarily. And then I guess the next part of that, which will go around to our analysts, which I'll ask after is, does this massive, if you're looking at a chart, and you're trading this technically, well, you can't get a much bigger wick to the upside than that. Does this look toppy and do you expect this to mean price will head down? Matt, I see you still got your mic up. I'm sure you got something to say about the first part.

Yeah, I think it is indicative. Look, you know, a Bitcoin ETF finally being approved is actually good news. You know, that will be good news. I do think it will be net positive for price. So I do think there's some, you know, foreshadowing. It's probably more dramatic given the surprise nature of this fake news. You get a quick reaction. But look, it's going to be a long term bullish force on the market that will impact the market over multiple years. So, you know, I do think, you know, we're on a path to eventually get there. So this is a little bit

of foreshadowing. It's just not foreshadowing that any of us wanted to see this morning. Let's talk about the actual price action. I'd like to get Rekt, Gareth and Chris in on this. Rekt, what do you think about it it it's really interesting because we've been seeing a multi-month diagonal resistance a lower high form on bitcoin's price action and we've been rejecting an upside wicking beyond that lower high quite consistently over the past few months and it's really interesting to see how this massive rally has rallied beyond that lower high. But quickly, of course, most of that move has already been canceled out. And we're just below this lower high resistance as we speak.

Gareth? Yeah, so I would just say this is that that pop took us right up to that 30,000 level, which we know was the big level that we tried to break above that 30 to 32,000 level. So again, it's hard to know because it was obviously fake news and you don't know if the buying would have really catapulted us through. But on a technical basis, that just proves that that 30 to 32,000 level is going to continue to be the level to beat. I really do believe that if we get through that level and can hold above it, then you can easily head back towards 50,000 on Bitcoin. But when that's approved, it's going to be a big deal if it can't get through. I think that's the kicker. I've heard so many people talking about how the approval is going to be the change where that's the new bull market. That's where this thing heads to 100,000. And so on chance that it doesn't break that level with approval, then you have a lot of disappointed people that may start to throw the towel in.

And quickly, before we continue with this, Cointelegraph has now tweeted about their since deleted tweet. Here's what they said. We apologize for a tweet that led to the dissemination of inaccurate information regarding the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF. Are you kidding me? They literally don't even know which ETF they fake tweeted about. They fake tweeted about iShares, not BlackRock, guys. Yeah, it's the same one. It's the same one. Isn't it the same part?

BlackRock owns iShares, yeah. Oh, my bad. But technically regarding the BlackRock, okay, whatever. An internal investigation is currently underway. We are committed to transparency. We'll share the findings of the investigation with the public once it is included within three hours. So at least we will get some clarity. Sorry if I was wrong there. I thought that the BlackRock had its own standalone ETF that was separate from that.

That's incorrect, James? Correct. Yeah, it's under iShares. Basically, all of BlackRock's passive ETFs are just under iShares, and this would be a passive ETF. Got it. Which makes sense now that people were reporting then secondarily after only saying iShares and a BlackRock ETF had been approved. Go ahead, Brandon. No, I mean, yeah, I was just reading the statement. I was just correcting you there. I mean, I think that what we saw is we saw Bitcoin go straight through 31,000 before the... It touched 30.

I don't think it got to 31. I think it touched 30, right? 30,900, actually. Oh, I think it... On Coinbase. On Coinbase. Really? Yeah.

The charts I have show like basically just at 30. So there's that, you know, multi-exchange volatility. That's pretty crazy that it got to 31 there. Yeah, it got to 30,000. I'm checking the multiple exchanges now. The Coinbase against USD, not USDT. Coinbase USD got to 30,000. I'm just checking all the ones that we saw the binance perpetual got to i

think 31 000 so binance usdt uh dot perpetual that one got to 30 000 30 9 30 718 yeah coinbase literally 30 000 to the tick like to the penny exactly 30 000 which is pretty crazy when you think about the odds of that happening this looks like just such outright manipulation i mean ram what do you think now what this means for the market let's say that this you know daily candle closes right back where it started with this monster wake up we were already having a pretty good day right the day started at 27 200 so it's still up a thousand bucks on the day still above the 50 the 200 ma right now on the daily i mean still a relatively bullish move even with that huge upside i mean it was it was a good move and i thought maybe someone knew something um because because the the move actually was driven by spot

this morning specifically spot and coinbase and Spot in Asia. And that's why I thought maybe someone knew something and they were buying it. I thought, you know, it doesn't make sense that it's a deferred pump from the news that the SEC weren't going to, you know what I'm talking about, appeal the decision. So I thought it was strange to have such a delayed pump, if you know what i'm talking about um appeal the decision so i thought it was strange to have such a delayed pump if you know what i'm saying uh but but i mean yeah i guess i guess you know

maybe someone knows something maybe that maybe it's inevitable anyway that this thing's going to happen chris go ahead yeah so i mean you know i mean the reality is everybody's looking at what just happened today but i mean we've been in an uptrend, guys. We've been since that September 11th swing low. We've been, what, five plus weeks rallying already? I've got this as five waves up. I've got this as a leading diagonal. The rapid breakout, quick breakout above the wedge resistance and break back down right below it is usually

indicative of what we see in these diagonals. So for me, you know, again, we broke out above that bearish market structure. That was all around whatever that was, 28, 281 or so on this Coinbase Bitcoin USDT chart. So, I mean, you know, nothing surprising here. I mean, you know, a pump is a pump. But at the end of the day, you know, we've been rallying for five weeks already. And this is, you know, this last move is indicative of the end of a diagonal. So for me, I'm just looking at this pullback right now as a wave two. And if I'm correct, then it looks like we're heading up to 39,000, 40,000 to get us five waves up off that uh that you know september 11 swing low let's yeah go ahead let's talk about whether there's actually implications for this or an

argument for the sec to reject because of this manipulation or is that completely hyperbolic i mean matt you're you're uh i want to ask you again you're deepest in the weeds on this i mean do you think that this just gives them more ammo to say that this market is not a serious market? I think that's a long bridge to get to. I mean, on the edges, yes. The difference between this and the equity market is you don't have the clear surveillance into all the different venues to investigate anyone who might have tried to profit on one side or the other. So that's the bear case. But I think I think it's too small in the grand scheme of things to overcome all the arguments in favor of a spot Bitcoin ETF. So, you know, call me call me 9010 that this doesn't

matter. But it's still unfortunate. It's still unfortunate on the edges. Dave Weisberger this this morning we were talking about it kind of in real time and i asked the same question he said it was the opposite he said that this is actually embarrassing for the sec that gary genser doesn't want to see something like this because you know if this had just been approved we wouldn't be able to see things like this we would have a much less manipulated market and would already have the asset in place to be more serious. He kind of took the other side of it. In that he thought this will push them towards approval? Not that this will push them towards approval, but that this is actually embarrassing for

the SEC that these things can happen in this market just surrounding us awaiting an announcement from them on this asset. That basically the setup at this point has been so much anticipation and so much nonsense going back and forth that we that gary now knows listen if i approve or disapprove or any piece of news comes out it can actually be the thing that rocks this market yeah i can understand that well the the sec to some extent has put themselves in a box by allowing the the pressure around a spot bitcoin etf to build up so much. So I do think it's a meaningful moment for the market. So I understand that. But I would say that that cut both ways. At the end of the day, you know, by and large, I think the staff has to get behind

the technical merits of allowing a spot Bitcoin ETF. And I think those arguments at this point are very strong. but it's not a guarantee. And, you know, it would be better if this hadn't happened. So I'm receptive to that view. I do think the SEC is in a difficult box, but I just go back to the fact that there are really strong arguments in favor of allowing a spot Bitcoin ETF, really strong technical arguments at this point, some pretty strong legal arguments and the force of time. I think that wins out, but there's no guarantee. And we've been at this for five years. So we know that even times when you're optimistic can not always pan out. And we'll see uh bill and then christian we haven't heard your thoughts yet bill

i mean can i just yeah go ahead can we just respond to the previous speaker i think i think you're 100 right that you know we've been optimistic in the past and hasn't happened but on what grounds could the sec now decline a a spot etf and the reason i ask that is if they come up with anything barring what they've come up with before, then they can go to court and say, look, you know, you told us that the reasons why I didn't approve an ETF was the court specifically came back and said that that's not a valid argument. And now you're bringing other arguments. Why didn't you put them in the first documents? I really hope that that is accurate. I just, I worry, I worry on, I mean, you know, again, I'm optimistic. I worry a little bit about the Donald Rumsfeld-esque unknown unknown. I worry about other parts of the argument, not specific to market manipulation that could be tripping points. But again, to back up and make the more general point, I too am optimistic about this. I think the arguments are very strong. And I think we are progressing

toward a spot Bitcoin ETF. But I just emphasize that, you know, this is still no guarantee. Bill, did you have any thoughts yeah i mean uh look it's it's pretty funny that coin telegraph i know i know you sounded like a supporter but and i won't just pick on them i mean you know crypto press has a pretty good history of um irresponsible reporting in my humble opinion and the sec did announce on september 29th which is what, two weeks ago that they were delaying a whole bunch of these ETFs. And I think they kind of grouped them all in one big announcement. So it's not like they didn't already announce that they weren't op par for the course these days in crypto press. They publish rumors and either verify or not, or get their ass kicked because they got it wrong,

which is probably more often the case, and then retract. And I can point to numerous examples of this over time. And unfortunately, I agree with Matt, it's probably a non-issue in terms of whether or not this gets approved. And I think it gets approved in Q1, which we discussed, I think, on Thursday or Friday last week. But I do think that, unfortunately, it makes the SEC's point to a degree that look what an incorrect tweet. I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of these Reddit things where somebody posted something and then they picked it up

and an eager Beaver journalist saw it, and before you know it, it's on Bloomberg. But it does make their point to a certain degree. James? Yeah, so I would say I agree with like 90% of what Bill said. But the SEC delayed all those things early, largely because they were getting ready for the shutdown. And we just had the SEC not appeal for an en banc hearing in grayscale so like matt said earlier in the spaces there there is like a window here where the sec could theoretically make a move like it's not likely

in our books but it's not like completely unlikely either so if somebody if this was actually manipulative and planned out like this isn't a bad time this week isn't a bad time to tweet something out like that uh because the possibility that the sec just goes ahead and approves these things under the 19 before process isn't like completely insane if it was like two weeks ago i would have been like or last week it would have been absolutely not but now that the en banc hearing is passed which is basically an appeal for grayscale um there's a lot of things that can happen right now that it wouldn't have been completely insane but it was kind of unlikely again as people. Brian it just occurred to me

that we actually I don't think ever discussed race scale on the show after it was actually after the SEC actually chose not to appeal you said you gave all the great reasons that would happen but that happened after actually in the evening on Friday standard time on Friday after our show. Yeah so You gave all the great reasons that would happen, but that happened actually in the evening. On Friday.

Standard time on Friday after our show. Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things I was actually about to ask James or one of the analysts who ever can give us the best answer is, what happens next when it comes to the grayscale thing? One, do they have to reapply? Two, do they go into the front of the queue? Do they go into the back of the line?

Like walk us through the different options of what could actually happen here with with with the with the grayscale trust so we don't know and grayscale doesn't know either um to be very clear so this week we should get a better idea of what's happening with grayscale specifically again i want to reiterate that we think like everyone's probably going to go at the same time i I think it's unlikely that Grayscale would go and now that the en banc appeal has not happened. Technically speaking, the SEC has until the end of November to apply for an appeal with the United States Supreme Court. That's highly unlikely, in my opinion, that they would even apply for it. It's highly unlikely that the courts would even accept the case. And if the courts do accept the case, again, both highly unlikely um the sec will lose in the current supreme court in our view so with that out of the way basically this week we should get this week or next week we should get a better idea the sec will do they

care uh do they care does the sec care if they lose like i mean what are the implications if the sec loses for the sec like okay we lost we spent the money we lost it's already happened i mean like at this point it doesn't matter but i don't think they want to go to the supreme court it would just look so much worse um there's just no upside in my opinion aside from just delaying things further and again we still have um the january 10th is a deadline for ARK and 21 shares application. So like there's already a deadline no matter what they do with this Grayscale case. Now, what does Grayscale have to do next?

It's possible that the SEC tries to make them completely refile and go through that 240 day process so they can have an active application. There's also a theory out there that I kind of subscribe to that now that their disapproval order has been vacated, that the grayscale application is technically active. But like we're in an area where there is no precedent, right? Like this isn't something that's happened. This isn't something that lawyers like, oh, in the past when this has happened, we know these are the next steps. So we're kind of in a gray zone. And I'm not a lawyer. So I'm just relaying from what I've talked to lawyers and different people. But

essentially, this week, we'll get a better idea of next steps. Maybe the SEC comes out and says, okay, we'll issue a new order, whether it's a disapproval for new reasons, which we kind of think is unlikely the SEC has, the courts have given the SEC very little wiggle room to deny again. Or they'll say you have to reapply completely start this 19 before process, the 240 day process. Or they'll say like something like, we're going to come out with a new order in 60 days, 90 days, 45 days, whatever. So the courts are not going to say, there is no world in which we think the courts say, all right, SEC, you now have to approve these ETFs. That's not going to happen. It's being handed back to the SEC to make a decision. Aran, I think it's important. And James, we had this narrative that one of the routes that the SEC could take would be scorched earth to basically, you know, take back the futures ETFs that they had already approved as a result of the Grayscale decision. Can we say that that was a completely false and nonsensical narrative since they've now approved so many Ethereum futures ETFs?

I think now it's a false. And I also thought, I mean, I've said it on here probably, I thought that was highly unlikely. But it was definitely, I wouldn't have put anything past Gary Gensler. But now that they've approved the futures ETF, they approved the two-act Bitcoin futures ETFs, I think it's like virtually 0% chance that that's going to happen. But again, I wouldn't put anything past Gary Gensler. So... No, but I mean, look, I also wouldn't put anything past Gary Gensler. No, but I mean, look, I also wouldn't put anything past Gary Gensler, but I think that I have to put past Gary Gensler. If you start going back and appealing, it just doesn't make sense.

Even for him, it doesn't make sense. And I don't have much faith in him yeah i think they would have just not approved those ethereum futures etfs hey dave i uh very uneloquently tried to uh make your point from this morning weisberger about this being a negative for gary gensler but perhaps you can do it more eloquently well mean, look, the SEC's job is to protect investors, ensure fair and equitable and orderly markets. When the SEC is the reason that markets are disorderly, that reflects very badly upon them. I mean, look, there's one federal agency that's rather, you know, that they can't do much about it, but they impact markets. So

that's the FDA, because when they approve a drug, that stock moves up, et cetera, et cetera. So they try very hard to do that when markets are closed. They try to, you know, adhere to schedules. They try to do things to try to minimize that because it's well known to be a bad thing for investors for government actions to be considered surprises. So the fact that we have this coiled spring in a market because of questions about the SEC, the fact that they've lost in court, they didn't appeal, it's just a black eye for them. And to be fair, I mean, you know, there are a lot of people in that building that are disconcerted. I know this from firsthand information. There are a lot of people in that building that are disconcerted. I know this from firsthand information.

There are a lot of people in that building that don't like the fact that they are the story. They would like the market to be based upon, you know, money flows. I mean, we should today be talking about Stephanie Kelton and the reemergence of modern monetary theory and Paul Krugman saying we've beaten inflation and all sorts of sound money sorts of things, not the SEC. So the point is, it looks bad. Now, do they care? I mean, I don't know. I'm not in their heads. But I do know that history will judge it very poorly that the SEC has become the market driver because there's this pent up demand out there, obviously, that is waiting for something to happen. But that said, I do want to come waiting for something to happen but that said i do want to come back to something rand said before that i disagree with he said it's unlikely that the the

grayscale decision come midnight on a friday uh is why we were opening up today and i disagree with that uh the fact is as you said yourself the original rally was spot-led. And a lot of people who would be buying spot tend not to want to trade on the weekend, especially USD basis because of the way the banking crisis has caused liquidity in the weekend in the United States to be so poor. So I do think that the buying that preceded all of this foolishness was legitimate spot buying from people who are patient and slow and see this as yet another reason to up their allocations. But obviously, this blow-off move was based on rumor and speculation. Well, price is now sitting in the exact same spot that it was uh before all of this so there is some you know that lends some credence to what you're saying sorry ran go ahead

scott uh well on friday when we had the discussion you said that you think that the 30 000 prices in the um the 30 000 prices in the spot etf approval now you had a pump and you saw like when the first five minutes we got to 30 000 do you change your do you change your um your prediction on what the price will be if we actually do get an approval or multiple approvals i said like the 30 i said i thought that it would end up closing below the 31 area like being the yearly high i wouldn't be surprised to go above but i mean that was a yeah it doesn't change my view because i think that whatever we just saw was literally somebody manipulating the market and making money i'm not convinced that what we just saw was in any way natural or gives us a lesson as to what

might happen in the future i know i'm seeing that around a lot but like if that was just a couple actors buying heavily on news that they were leaking and knowing was going to go up then i don't i don't know if that's giving me much information or that i care but i'm not sure that that changes i have to think about that more deeply to be quite honest what do you think i mean you obviously you're the implication i think we go way higher on that i think 40 000 i think 40 000 the first couple of days with the excitement when when everything gets approved for sure i can i definitely can see why that would be the argument at this point certainly i i just like i'm thinking a little dismissive of this entire move today and and don't think it gives us much information. But I

think you're right that there's going to be insane hype. When it does happen. You can definitely tell sentiment wise and what we saw on x and how excited we people were that that is a massive catalyst. So I don't think you're wrong. David. Yeah, yeah, I just I just wanted to comment on what David Westberger said. I think it's very sharp reasoning, and I agree with his thoughts. If we were in, I'd say, a less charged environment, I think we, Gary Gensler, but also generally regulatory agencies in this government, have been living in crazy town for a while. And I think they are impenetrable to any logic that they have very stark policy marching orders. And, you know, as crazy as things might seem, I don't think it was Dave, I think it was someone before that said, you know, about appealing to Supreme Court of the United States, maybe not wanting to see that type of public slap. I don't know about that. You know, but with respect to not bowing to the pressure that seems to be building out there

in terms of all logic pointing in the direction of get this done now, I just I really believe at this point between not only the SEC, but also the FTC plus the FCC doing some stuff with respect to net neutrality. I think there are just agencies in this government that are are are under crazy marching orders. They've got blinders on. And for whatever reasons, they just continue to march to that drum, regardless of how many losses they take in the public eye. Yeah, I think that that makes sense. Christian, you haven't had a chance to weigh in. What do you think? Yeah, I wanted to get back to what you and Rem were discussing. And what I do think on what just happened is that it was way too quickly identified by a lot of people in the market that it was not real. And I think, you know, if it really got to prove that it actually might push through most of the resistance.

And I think that might be taken towards a tweet like this from from an account that is credible i would say that's bad news yeah just very interesting to to see what will happen there you know it's like it's it's a hundred million got got deleted in in in a matter of minutes almost. And yeah, barely anything can be done against it from one simple tweet. I mean, I'm laughing the whole day already from all the tweets that are being posted on the account now. And just very interesting to find what the, especially in the US, the legal results are from that. Go ahead, Bill. Yeah, I'm guessing the Cointelegraph reporter didn't just make it up,

which means that there's probably some, you know, go to Reddit or something like that, and you can probably trace where the person got the information from. They probably won't disclose it since they legally don't have to. But I'm guessing the CFTC would probably like to know who is trying to manipulate the price since they have very broad fraud and market manipulation oversight of the spot markets. I think I agree with you, by the way, now that I'm thinking about it more as we're listening. I think it goes higher than 31 for sure yeah for sure um i i am i wonder who would sue i mean let's say somebody manipulated the markets yet who would sue who would be sued and who would sue so who's the the regulatory agency that would would uh generally it's the cftc for spot markets um they they don't they don't regulate

the from a licensure perspective um the trading of spots but uh post.frank they do have very broad uh fraud authority which you guys all covered with the uh um i guess the the voyager stuff last week yeah i guess that would be similar. Ran, I guess your question is who do they go after and maybe they'll be able to detect who actually profited from this move and if there was some relationship between them and the tweets.

Yeah, I mean, the question is... This is a global industry, so if the CFTC does find out about it, I mean, what would they sue some... I think't coin telegraph based in russia i'm not actually sure i think the head office is in russia or certainly one of their big offices is in russia yeah because generally it's very difficult to go after journalists very difficult regardless of where they're based even from even from market manipulation yes it would be i mean if you

can prove that that's what that what that that was to me that was their intent i suppose but even with the irresponsible nature of crypto journalism, I would venture a guess that it wasn't their intent to manipulate the market. It was their intent to front run the news based upon a rumor rather than responsible journalism. I mean, isn't there like a minimum amount of due diligence that a journalist needs to do. You're confusing ethics and the law, which is something that gets confused a lot in cryptojournalism. But unfortunately, I don't think that they're breaking the law in just retweeting or tweeting based upon some rumor. Well, okay.

Sad, but... Just as a follow-up to that, I'm very curious, what's the difference here between a journalist and an influencer? Because, for example, in the Netherlands, influencers have to mention, like, not financial advice, or whether it's an ad or not.

And when are you a journalist officially? When are you just an influencer if you're tweeting without anything saying breaking news? I mean, you you know the meme is the meme is that if you say not financial advice if you say that tweets on financial advice i've got legal advice from david silver that says that if you say that your tweets are not financial advice you're safe and the sec can never come after you and the cftc can never come after you no one can come after you that's what dav No one can come after you. That's what David Silver wants to know. There's nothing better than when we have David Silver listening in the audience

and we can talk about all of his legal advice that he's giving us. I'm trying to get him up. For some reason, I don't know. On my side, it doesn't look like he's connected. I see him in the audience, but I guess we'll keep going. Simon, I saw you're about to jump in. Welcome. Thanks for having me.

I'll put the disclaimer out there. Not legal advice, not financial advice, but... No, Simon, yours is also full disclosure. I'm invested in it. You've got to say that. I am a shareholder in Bitcoin. I'm a shareholder.

And I've got a close relationship with the CEO. But yeah, there is carve-outs in every regulations for media. So when you – and it's an interesting thing because that's jurisdiction-specific. So, you know, if you're Bloomberg and you're doing a Kramer and you're, like, making recommendations and stock picks, it depends if it's a public company, private company, commodity. So each regulations has the definition of whether you're a media outlet or not.

And in my understanding as well is market manipulation. Probably, again, maybe David Silver or some of the other lawyers could take this one. But you probably have to try and profit from it, right? So if you bought Bitcoin, i guess they could have had bitcoin i'm assuming every journalist at coin telegraph probably has bitcoin but if you bought bitcoin released some news and then sold bitcoin uh that would probably be something worth investigating but yeah my my memory of coin telegraph is i do think you're right i know originally it was certainly founded by russian um uh a couple of

russian people it was much it was a decentralized company because i remember i did actually try to invest in them when they did a funding round and i couldn't get to the bottom of the structure and um uh it's quite tragic actually but um the ce CEO passed away not too long ago, wasn't it? If I remember correctly. Do you remember that? I remember something like that, to be honest. I didn't actually put one and one together there, but I remember something like that. But I mean, so I guess the implications of doing it for them,

other than a loss of credibility, is not really very much. Yeah, I think a loss of credibility, I think it's a big thing. I think this is embarrassing for Cointelegraph. Who was the other media outlet that kept – it was a real media outlet that kept making – kept posting fake news for a period. Who was it? It was pretty recently. And then it came to a point where everything that they posted,

people just said that they were... New York Times, Fox News. No, it doesn't come to that one. We can go on and on about that. I do think this is one of the things where, you know, the market manipulation, actions and lawsuits, someone would have to be directly tied. I mean, this is a coin telegraph, their reach, the impact of how long the market shot up, where the market stabilized after the news was fake. Someone, there would have to be, this would have to be such a perfect insider trading scenario

where someone bought sold that person was you know within the u.s reach my guess is this is going to go nowhere it's going to go nowhere fast and there's just lost credibility yeah the price literally was back where it started within an hour right so uh hopefully very few people were actually affected especially if they were buying and selling the spot so i think i don't want to get technical here i don't want to get technical but you say it was wasn't weren't we under 28 000 28 100 yeah it's still up slightly i think it was like 27 7 to 27 9 sort of before and was already up about three and a half or four percent Right? I mean, it's up still 5% on the day, which is

impressive, even if this hadn't happened. Yeah. Yeah. I guess what it did... I guess what it did... Sorry, Sam. I guess what it did was I think it showed the market what would happen if.

That's what happened. And now the market's going, hold on a second. I mean, the thing is, it's literally, it's a when and it's not if. When this happens, the price is going to pump. And it's coming soon. I mean, it might be 30 days, it might be 60 days. The Bloomberg analysts have a 90% chance within the next 70 or 90 days or whatever it is. He's here. That Bloomberg analyst is on stage with us, James.

Yeah. So we're at 90 by Jan 10. That might be a little high. The SEC could delay. There's a few other things, right? But Jan 10, as I mentioned earlier, the ARK21 shares and their final application, the SEC can no longer delay. So they either have to approve or deny.

And I can't imagine them denying and then approving stuff later. So if we get denied on Gen 10, odds for 2024 go down. But there's also things where they could be approved under the 19B4 process. And then there's other divisions at the SEC that this thing has to go through. Their prospectus has to go through CorpFin. There's a few other things. So theoretically, they could approve under the 19B4 process

and then find other ways to not let this thing actually launch at those times. But I think they're going to be hard-pressed to completely deny ARK and 21 shares by January 10th. But I've said this before, that 10% is basically Gary can kind of like pull rabbits out of a hat and do what he wants. You guys are 75% on 2023, and this is literally 10 days later, somewhat arbitrary, right?

Yeah, yeah. So we were, yeah, full disclosure, Balchunas has a steak dinner bet. So if he's correct and the thing gets approved by, before the end of the year, he gets a free steak dinner from another ETF analyst colleague. And if it's after that, the ETF analyst colleague gets a steak dinner.

So that's part of all of this that went into this. But I'm still very confident it happens by January 10th. And I think if we don't get an approval order by the January 10th deadline, that doesn't bode well for anything else later in the year. Brandon, have we talked this to death? I think there's no more juice in this lemon. Hey, could I bring up another juicy but related? Yes, please.

While James is up here. Was it, correct my memory, was it Bloomberg or Coindesk that broke the FTX balance sheet story? Coindesk. Coindesk. Okay. Which was a fake balance sheet, by the way.

Yeah, well, the seven iterations came out in the court hearing oh it wasn't the actual one that caroline produced or well there's one version yeah it was it was one version and whatever version it was was actually that coin desk broke clearly was a fake balance sheet because the real balance sheet would have had you know tens of billions of dollars in a hole or whatever but it's just when you think about the context that coindesk broke a balance sheet that sent the whole thing into a spiral and that balance sheet was cooked to look good it just shows you how astoundingly bad this situation really was but go ahead simon yeah so have we have we discussed the fact that the first person, according to Caroline, to receive the fake balance sheet was Genesis with regards to the repayment of the $500 million loan?

And the same company from an unknown source leaked the balance sheet was Coindesk, who both happen to be subsidiaries of Digital Currency Group. We haven't discussed this, but this is a fair point. Yeah, they are the same company. And we know that the walls between these companies are paper thin based on what we've seen, obviously. The only defense of that is it's completely against their interests. So it obviously works against their interest. But it seems somewhat coincidental that the same group received the balance sheet

and leaked the balance sheet from an unknown source. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot's going to come up. I mean, for me, the highlight of the last 48 hours when it comes to the SPF case is this letter to Judge Kaplan, which says, On behalf of our client, Samuel Bankman-Fried, we respectfully submit this letter in connection with the issues that we discussed with the court and government on Friday relating to Mr. Bankman-Fried's inability to take his prescribed medication during the trial day. As we noted, Mr. Bankman-Fried has been doing his best to remain focused during the trial for the past two weeks, despite not having his prescribed dose of Adderall during the trial hours. However, as we approach a defense case and the critical decision of whether Mr. Bankman-Fried will testify, the defense has a growing concern that because of Mr. Bankman-Fried's

lack of access to his adderall, he has not been able to concentrate at the level he ordinarily would and that he will not be able to meaningfully participate in the presentation of the defense case. We appreciate the efforts of the courts and the government to find a way to address these issues. The defense also attempted to resolve this matter with the BOP, but we have received no response to numerous mails and voice messages. As discussed, the court on Friday and the current proposal is to give Mr. Bankman Fried a 12-hour extended

release 20 milligram dose of Adderall in the morning before he is transported to the court house for trial on Monday, October 16. We are hopeful this modification will resolve the situation, but it's not clear that the BOP will in fact be able to provide the extended release dose to Mr. Bankman-Fried.

Listen, I've taken Adderall before and 20 milligrams is a monster fucking dose. Yeah, I mean, I have ADHD, so I guess I can theoretically sympathize, although I don't take medication anymore. But how bad would SPF have been at fraud if someone had pulled his Adderall years ago? You know, maybe if we had just taken away his Adderall, he wouldn't have been able to do any of this. It sounds like he's got a serious, serious addiction to Adderall. I mean, it's... I personally blame him for everything that's happening

with this fake ETF news. I don't know how, but I think it's his fault. Yeah. I think on that note, Scott, we've squeezed the juice out of the lemon here. Yeah, and we have weeks to talk more about SPF and his Adderall. So I think we can wrap this one up. Mario's going to be back talking to us tomorrow, right? That's what I heard.

I heard a rumor that he might grace us. Right now, it's all rumors. Right now, it's all rumors. I think we've taken a backseat to the middle east war justifiably so i think all right well guys thank you so much everybody follow our guests once again before we leave follow crypto underscore town hall i think this is day six of hosting on this account uh and going exceptionally well really happy with with with the results and we will be i think staying here uh

indefinitely right ran so uh everybody please follow that account follow all our guests and we will see you all tomorrow hopefully uh with the actual etf approval just kidding i don't think that's gonna happen all right thanks everyone have a good one