The Wolf Of All Streets - Crypto Bull Market Over? | Crypto Town Hall w/ @Aark_Digital

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

Crypto Town Hall is a daily X Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in crypto and bring the biggest names in the space to share their insight. ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. USE CODE ‘2MONTHSOFF’ WHEN VISITING MY LINK.  👉 https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/    ►► OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $10,000!  👉  https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL  - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets    Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor.  Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Peter, how are you? Good enough. Thanks for asking. It's a pleasure. Now, I didn't ask you just to be nice. I asked you so I can kick off the conversation and ask you another question, Peter, and that's your thoughts on the markets. Just a general overview. I haven't been on the show for a few days. So what would you make of the last few days? Just the same, same choppiness as always.

Any changes in your outlook after the macro numbers that we've seen over the last few days? Well, I mean, Bitcoin, I'm on the defensive a little bit, still committed, but I think support comes in 60 to 61. We break that, we go to 48. So, you know, Mark, Bitcoin's had every reason this year to go up between halving and ETFs. And, you know, the, Bitcoin's had every reason this year to go up between halving and ETFs. And, you know, the old saying that a market that doesn't go up probably can't go up, at least yet. And so more chop, but probably chop to the downside until the market can prove itself different. Yeah, we've seen a bit of outflows again today. I don't know what the numbers were. Sorry, yesterday.

I'm not sure what numbers were the day before and throughout the week. I'm sure Scott covered it when he was hosting. But we had it yesterday, a net outflow of 146 million. I don't think these matter as much based on the feedback we've had from some panelists. I think we just look at the numbers by the end of the week. It would be good to get Danish on stage as well. It's kind of a macro summary for the week as well, for last week. It's been a while we haven't had him on stage as well. It's kind of a macro summary for the week as well, for last week. It's been a while we haven't had him on stage.

But there's a bit of outflows when it comes to Bitcoin. I haven't looked at it. Let me see the day before. So, yes. So, yesterday, there's $190 million of outflows. The day before was also outflows of $226 million. Not sure if we discussed this on the show. And then, okay, the day before that was 101

million so i'm not sure if net net were in a positive or negative in the last seven days but scott if you look at the numbers when it comes to the bitcoin etfs have you discussed this on the show and what are your thoughts well i mean we had a record 19 days of inflows that stopped i believe last monday and now we've had some net outflows. But I would say it's the expected chop that reflects the sort of time based capitulation that we're seeing in the market. And this is classic summer Bitcoin price action, classic halving cycle, Bitcoin price action. You can say it 1000 times and people seem to be panicked i was actually just laughing because i tweeted that the crypto fear and greed index shows 74 greed and i'm just wondering what that algorithm is smoking people are freaking out panic seems like uh they think that the world is ending

at the end of the day and close who's freaking out hold on who's freaking out? Hang on. Who's freaking out? Have you read Twitter? No, I don't read. I don't read. Five second, but it's like, I mean, people are, I mean. Let me see. Look. You're fighting in Singapore, right? I could be fighting in Singapore, yes. Well, imagine if every single person was virtually fighting at the same time on social media instead.

That's what's happening right now. Yeah, well, I'm looking now. So what I do is to get a pulse of the of the center i just look at rand's because rand looks at the his team looks at twitter and then know what people are thinking and what they're writing about and then he does he puts it in the title so i look at rand's title see outcoin capitulation dump not over exit crypto now outcoin capit. Meme coins are in serious trouble. All wrong. I'm seriously concerned that the crypto market is over. So, yeah, it's pump canceled.

That's literally the last. And all of them are red. The last one, two, three, four, five, six, seven videos are red. Okay. So maybe there is a lot more feed than I expected. But I don't get where that's coming from. We're still operating like literally nothing's changed. It's like we're completely detached from the market. That's because you're zooming out and have high expectations for a likely bull run at the end of 2024 into 2025, which is not guaranteed.

But I think people still view that as the most likely scenario after the summer when they zoom out based on previous cycles. But I mean, listen, Bitcoin might be sideways, but all coins are objectively getting absolutely wrecked meme coins are dying on the vine uh if only there were some rational people uh who projected that was likely to happen i don't know on a show maybe on twitter my 30k end of year target still looks good guys well yeah what's your target again vin Vinny? Well, I think like two months ago, everything was at 74. It could end around $3,000 to $40,000. Yeah, but you were on last week and you said $90,000.

We all have upside and downside targets. I'm not trying to lie. No, that's fair. We all do it. You have to have an upside target and a downside target if you're actually actively in the market. I think the better way maybe to frame it that you and I have sort of talked personally offline is like if it sustains price action below X, I at 71, 72. If we can get above 74, it looks like it'll go to 90. Not, it looks like we're going to 90, right?

So I think the qualifier for 50 should maybe be like if we start trading convincingly under 60, right? Or something like that. Exactly. Conversely, below 57, it looks like it, we're going to go up to 40. Yeah, so we just, just to give you a heads up, just look at the panel. We've got a pretty good panel.

We've got Cypher Capital, Justin from Cy at the panel. We've got a pretty good panel. We've got Cypher Capital, Justin from Cypher Capital. We've got Elijah here as well to kind of discuss the whole VC market and altcoins in general and their thoughts on it. But also I have Danish, kind of would be good to get a macro overview from him as well. And then Vinny's here. Vinny, I'm kind of going, I haven't been able to sleep for the last two nights just because I'm starting to freak out from being excited about the opportunities that come from AI to now starting to plan about how the fuck me and my kids are going to have a future with AI advancing as fast as it is.

Are your kids made of AI? Because last I checked, you didn't have any. Yeah, no, okay. If I end up having kids, to be honest, I'm at a level I'm at a level You got AI girlfriends. Why not AI kids? Look, man, I know I'm at a level. I'm at a level. We got AI girlfriends. Why not AI kids?

Look, man, I know I'm a co-host and I can't remove you, but the person running the host account does work for me. So don't push it. But yeah, I think, Scott, maybe having a back and forth with Don is just on the economy in general and getting his thoughts. Kind of recap from the finance shows. I haven't heard his voice in a long time. I miss you, Don, by the way.

I miss Co. I do too too to be honest that's kind of scary that you all miss me since most people cannot stand in the crypto circle stand my point of view but i will say that about five days ago i called like just generally a top i did use the words the top we all know how tweets work. But I did call a top in terms of the overall markets. Now, it's been flat since then, if anybody's been watching, and I don't know if people know how gravity works. But usually the ball goes up in the air, then it stops. And then it comes back down. We have more than enough bullish news, quote unquote, bullish news out

there, but we haven't actually seen the markets move on it. Right. NVIDIA suddenly has funds there putting 20, by the way, NVIDIA is the S&P 500 now. So, you know, you know, NVIDIA has all of this great bullish news behind them, but yet we're not seeing crazy growth in that stock. Tesla, we saw Elon Musk get what he deserved, frankly, even though I'm a critic, I think he deserved that package. Nothing really has changed. We're seeing the markets essentially shrug everything off and do nothing with it. This morning, retail sales are back. They only rose 0.1%, which was lower than expected. We continue to get news that unemployment now is at the 4% level.

Nobody is really doing anything. And what it tells me is that we have a market right now that doesn't know what to do because the prospect of increasing rate of potential rate cuts. So good news is bad news and bad news is good news. But now we're starting to get bad news that the market is just like, oh, I don't want to focus on the bad news because good news is around the corner. I want to just kind of very simply, the reason why we're seeing crypto, crypto will front run the rest of the market.

What you're seeing right now in Bitcoin, we're going crypto will front run the rest of the market. What you're seeing right now in Bitcoin, we're going to see in the S&P. I'm letting everybody know this is literally what's happening. Crypto is front running the market right now. What we are seeing in Bitcoin, we are going to see in the S&P 500. And the reason behind that is because right now, the way Bitcoin has been behaving, it has been a little bit of a liquidity marker. And we're seeing the QT that was being tapered is not enough compared to the interest rate restrictions that are occurring right now. And so overall, this whole like, if you feel like the market's being drunk with power, remember last time we felt like that was 2021. Remember 2022?

So we are literally at a very similar place where people were talking about meme coins, people were talking about all these stupid things. And suddenly, we have the market now slowing down on the crypto side, on all coins and meme coins and shit coins are gone. And we're seeing a lot of those get wiped out. And so we're going to continue to see that now in the rest of the regular market where I would call a bunch of shit coins like GME. I mean, think about it. What happened last time GameStop had all this shit going on? What happened right after? We are back there. That's the point that I was going to make is macro wise, we have crazy headwinds. Even if we see one or two little bull run ups,

it means nothing. On the longer arc, we are going to have news about slowing demand. So GDP is going to slow down. I'm letting everybody know now the next GDP print will be worse than expected. We're going to have inflation that remains sticky. Even if inflation comes down, it's still going to be, we're like, oh, inflation is coming down so quickly. Guys, it was still 3.5% on CPI, just as a reminder. Inflation will be stickier than expected. So recessionary GDP, inflation is still sticky. They will not be in a position to actually do rate cuts unless it's completely political. And if it's completely political, then we're in deep, deep shit. That's like way worse. And finally, liquidity is going to start really going away from the markets

because of global deflation. Last comment, and then I'll stop. Sorry. But China, I've been talking about China for a year. They've been able to fake their way out from their issues. But I will tell you that the data that came in this week is incredibly concerning, like incredibly concerning. They may be the source of global deflation. And so I'm a little bit worried that right now, what we should be worried about is what's happening in China and our exposure, all the companies exposure to China right now. It is a huge, huge issue uh happy to talk about the manufacturing index and how it came so poorly this time again it's like the worst they've had in in years donna should be ever considered writing a children's book really positive and how

but what could happen so danish what what is china's concerns that are they going to start printing money and fight it that way are they going to let it run its course? How do you think what would happen? How insulated, if at all? I don't think it would be insulated. They're letting banks fail right now. Exactly. They fucked up.

They're fucking up. Benny's 100% right. Talk about bank runs. Like right now, there are bank runs in Russia. We know this because of what's happening with the sanctions and with the ruble. So the bank runs in Russia have been confirmed. They're still ongoing? Whatever you want to call it.

It's like they are going to MOEX. And you can't borrow the yuan because it's gotten so expensive. Because yuan, everybody wants American dollar to die. But American dollar is not going to die because we have so much liquidity. We have so much money printing, right? And so what the problem with yuan is they're not doing the money printing, Mario, that they should be doing right now. In reality, they need to do money printing like yesterday. They're fucking up. They are in a position where most municipalities in China have exposure to real estate. Most municipalities have exposure to real estate. Most families have exposure to real estate, they were told their entire lives that investing in commercial real estate was a really good way to generate passive income. And they were convinced of that. So there's all of these families, all of these municipalities that have so much investment in

real estate and real estate is plummeting there. There's zero outside investment. In fact, last week, data came back that this was the worst in 10 years reduction in investment, foreign investment into Chinese real estate. I mean, this is like, they're jumping off a cliff. And honestly, they're 10, 20. This is they're doing the same thing with their economy that they did with their population. It's terminal, like they're fucking up, and they're making huge mistakes left and right. And the problem is, if it was just China, and nobody cared about China, if they had isolationist policies, that'd be great. But the problem is a lot of US treasuries are owned by China. They are dumping a lot of them because they need to. But it's a global

economy. If China falls, it will literally bring a ton of challenges across the world. I will remind everybody that it was the subprime mortgage lending crisis in certain markets in the United States that took down the entire global economy. If China falls, we all fall. And so we are now, now it all kind of makes sense why Yellen was going all the way to China and, you know, bowing to Chi and saying, oh, like, you know, all of this stuff is because I think there is some level of concern. And it also now makes sense why the Fed is acting sort of this weird way that they are, where it like makes it's completely nonsensical, like no other Fed in the history would suddenly start talking about cuts when we're at 3.5% with CPI. It's just all of this is happening, because there is some underlying concern around this Chinese issue and how it could affect the world.

So I agree with Scott. I probably shouldn't write children's books. No, I said you should. It's very inspiring. It's light-hearted, light-hearted, well-worded. But, you know, on the other side, I think the market makes no sense. I think you're a little bit, I mean, you know, you and I are very, we were very civil pages when it comes to this stuff. I think the, you know,

obviously China is very linked to this economy. I don't think the Fed is posturing over China, to be honest. I just don't, I don't see it. I think that there, I think there's other issues we can we can go into. I don't think China is an issue here. I really don't. Well, I hope they're taking that into account because if they're not, then this unemployment softening down now we're at 4%. I think this is a political season. So there'll be chaos around this.

Who knows? I'm really hoping that it's a landslide. I honestly don't care who wins. I really don't care who wins. Honestly, at this point, I just want it to be a landslide so that we don't have crazy chaos in the streets at this point in the U.S. I mean, the Fed can't do anything for the next two or three meetings because we're well, at least the next two meetings. They can't do anything in July. They can't do it because it's right between the debates. They can't. And this is Jim Bianco's what he's been saying. And I agree with him. They can't do it in July. They're not going to do it in September either.

The first time you see any movement is probably after the election. So because they don't want to be seen to be the ones influencing the outcome of this election. Exactly. And so I agree with Jim as well on this. So, you know, by the way, my prediction is there will actually be no rate cuts. They will keep talking about rate cuts, but they'll never happen. Absolutely. Kashkari came out this week and he literally was just like, why would we do rate cuts. They will keep talking about rate cuts, but they'll never happen. Absolutely.

Kashkari came out this week and he literally was just like, why would we do rate cuts? They're already financially easing in the markets. So the only way they do rate cuts is if the markets start dropping, which is why I actually think the market will see a major correction in the next three to six months, which is unusual cyclically, but everything is unusual. And I think that it may lead to change in regime here in the United States. I actually think that there's a high likelihood that we will see a major correction this year. It just, none of the indicators make sense. VIX is at 12. Like what is going on? Like we are literally acting like everything is fine. Like, you know,

that meme of that dog in the house with a burning, it's like, that's America. This is fine. This is fine. We have a million people trying to jump in here, trying to go around the horn. Eladio, what are your thoughts? I completely agree. By the way, it's nice to be on a space with you, Mario. I've been on with Wolf and Dinesh, and I think Dinesh is spot on.

Crypto is a liquidity play. It's risk. It's a risk indicator. It always leads the nasdaq 100 and i look at semiconductors and the massive flows and rotations that we've seen in just even the last week and with yesterday's announcement of a rebalancing of the xlk which is the tech sort of the tech because there are tech companies that have been moved into the communications part and into the discretionary part of the S&P in order to create the appearance of diversification.

But there is no diversification. If you invest in the S&P 500, you're basically investing in these very same names that we're talking about, the Mag7 and these, say, dozen or so semiconductors. And these shit coins and meme coins are already showing the same signs that we saw in early 2021 before the top hit in November. If you recall, the lower quality areas always get hit first. And we hit the meme craziness, the beginning of the meme craziness at the beginning of 2021. And that's when the SPACs and the lower quality stocks started to break down.

I see crypto as a complete liquidity play. It's unlikely that we're going to see a meltdown of huge proportions but a correction is is eminent and i i call me skeptical but i i see yesterday's announcement that uh nvidia was going to be 20 of the xok uh just a very weird timely uh announcement uh you could call me conspiratorial if if like, but I'm in agreement completely with Dhanish on this one. The markets are showing all signs of not being a market anymore. We're broken. And the bet that the Fed that was made that the Fed would lower rates was made last year in March. It's still on the table. And the earliest we get a rate cut if at that is September,

we're not going to see 2% inflation, and we're not going to see 5% unemployment. And those are the things we need to see in order for a rate cut to be really merited. Peter, go ahead. No, I was just going to bounce off of Denise's comment there. If you look at the June, the expiring June contract of secured overnight financing rates, new contract low, new contract low close yesterday. So no rallying in the real market. Okay, that's a great data point. Thank you. Justin, go ahead then, Dan. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure to be here. And look, as a long-term investor, crypto investor, I think I come at it with a slightly different perspective. My minimum investment horizon is about five years for a lot of these liquid tokens. Obviously, we're constantly switching positions based on the changing fundamentals. But I think the way I see the recent market movement, and yes, it looks based on the changing fundamentals but i think you know the way i

see the recent market movement and yes it looks bloody on the charts but it feels very much just like a healthy correction to me i think in a lot of these cases there's a lot of undue panic around crypto markets which tend to um which tend to make the movements even worse right um but i think this feels like and this is not financial advice think this feels like, and this is not financial advice, but this feels like it's healthy. Like I'd rather it go down right now than it just keep going up and up and up because that's just not sustainable. And, you know, the analogy that was made earlier with gravity, I think is perfect. I mean, that's just the nature of these markets. And we have to remind ourselves, I think, from a fundamental, from like a

technological point of view, things have never been as bullish as they have today in terms of what blockchain is actually capable of doing in terms of the real usage of blockchains. It's never been this good before. From a regulatory perspective, it's never been this good before with ETFs, with sea change in the American political system. I mean, all of these things make me, you know, incredibly confident around cryptocurrency. Even if we have this type of dip in the market, I would just remind people to just get a bit of perspective, zoom out a bit and realize that we're not even down for the year right now. It's ridiculous.

Yeah, I 100% agree. I think that if you zoom out, people being bearish on Bitcoin at $65,000 is absolutely laughable. Hilarious. Imagine a year ago or two years ago being bearish at the halving, having Bitcoin make a new all-time high. And this is exactly where we're supposed to be in this cycle. And to your point, Donish laid out an incredible bearish case for the macro. I think that would be the only bearish case for crypto. Otherwise, when you look at Bitcoin and the crypto market, all the things you just laid out themselves, it's nothing but tailwinds. Things are bullish. And this is exactly where we're supposed to be at this point in the cycle. I mean, I tweeted this morning, Bitcoin was subbed. I bet we bounce here. It's just we've reached one of those fever pitches of bearishness today in the community, which is one of the easiest sort of signals that things are about to probably go up for a bit. Go ahead, Don. So one thing I was going to mention really quickly is actually, I don't know if you're

noticing this, and I'm sure you're keeping an eye on this. But actually, the fact that Bitcoin is going down while the market, the S&P and growth stocks are actually staying persistent is a great signal. Exactly, Donis. That's the point. That's what you and I used to talk about. We want to not be correlated. Exactly. And it's now like what happened for a little bit, it became correlated again, which was a problem. I was like literally

looking at i was like this doesn't make sense and so what we're seeing now is the divergence again between uh growth and tech stocks and uh bitcoin is amazing i will tell you um and again not financial advice but i'm actually showing up on more i have and i'm gonna continue to i know it sounds silly but dca as it continues to dip i do actually agree with binnie that is gonna dip it i think it actually likely will dip but it doesn't change my perspective on it because at any moment uh we could have a political rate cut which i that that's jim jim bianco is usually right but the thing that none of us can be right about is whether the, you know, like none of us would have predicted that our Fed would be so feckless that they would use words like transitory inflation, right? Like, like, there's no, none of us could have predicted

how bad they can be. And so just to be clear, we don't want them to be political, they shouldn't be political, but they might do a political rate cut because Yellen has Powell's ear, and they might do one. And if they do a political rate cut, there is nothing better to hold right now than gold or Bitcoin. So I do want to say that those would be the things. And honestly, I don't think it would be positive for the rest of the crypto assets. I actually think it would be very positive for Bitcoin in that scenario specifically but i mean we can you know so do we disagree uh i think we all disagree but um bitcoin's value really is highly correlated to global liquidity conditions um and that's been the case since inception really you track it back and look at the charts

there's just a really high correlation so when when global liquidity is bad, Bitcoin, I mean, look at 2019, how Bitcoin struggled. And then look at where we are right now. Bitcoin literally turned last year when everyone started pricing in seven or eight rate cuts this year. Now, I don't see how Bitcoin is going to benefit from anything other than Fed liquidity coming into the system or global liquidity markets changing. And based upon the inflation numbers and the Fed target of 2%, we are not going to get there this year. So liquidity is going to be at best where it is today, possibly worse. They obviously could have done a rate hike earlier this year and try to fight inflation more, but they didn't.

They went with the higher for longer stance, which isn't working. It's not restrictive enough. So, you know, we're going to be in this like stagflation zone by the looks of things. And I just don't see whether liquidity is an account to give Bitcoin another leg up. So as a pushback, the issue has always been, you're right that often it is sort of looks correlated with liquidity. But the issue is late 2023, early 2024, all of that fell apart. We were doing QT and yet Bitcoin was going up very, very quickly because of the halving. Right.

No, no, no, no. That's never happened before with the halving. It's always happened after the halving. The reason it happened was anticipating, obviously, the ETF approval. But the big turning point in the market was... But Q2 was going on. It didn't matter. The big turning

point was everyone was pricing in seven or eight Fed rate cuts in this year. And so the market was front run, and that's why Bitcoin went up. No, i just strongly disagree with us i i i have to say that you can't say both ways that hey it's always connected to liquidity but in that little moment it wasn't it it it was it was liquid liquidity poured into the market the qt was minor it was like 16 billion dollars $60 billion. The Fed's balance sheet was sitting at $9 trillion.

Who gave it? Who cared? No, it didn't make a difference. Anyone else want to chime in here and back me up on this or disagree with me? Well, I would like to just touch on the subject since it was kind of running off what I was saying earlier. I think the funny thing about crypto, and look, I am admittedly a Bitcoin critic. So when I say these things, it all applies to crypto in general. i'm not going to have this debate here now once you really want to um but i think generally speaking i think the funny thing about crypto is that a lot of people

think that when macro does bad crypto does bad but historically it really depends upon the prevailing narrative at the time because we have had instances where we've had major problems with the legacy financial system, which has actually led to a kind of a surge or a boom in the cryptocurrency world. I mean, this has happened multiple times over cryptocurrency's history. So it's not always correlated in that way, and it can very much depend upon the prevailing narrative at the time. This is where it becomes a bit of a wildcard, I think. And it's not always perfectly predictable in that sense. I do think you have a point in regards to liquidity. I think it's one of the better quantitative predictive drivers, let's say. Dan, you're patiently waiting.

Yeah, sorry. I'm trying not to jump in and jump the gun. Look, I don't know how long some of you guys have been in Bitcoin or been in crypto. Some of the talk today has been a little bit like, it sounds like it's your first cycle or something. Not to pause Cold War or anything, but there's been talk of, you know, the regime change in the US and the collapse of China, this kind of stuff. Look, if you really believe that my question is how big is your short uh otherwise you're just noise it's it some of that is a little bit um ridiculous to some extent look this is this is my third uh cycle in crypto we're up 56 bitcoin's up 56 year to, the sky is not falling. I don't really know what else to say about

that fact. Saying on one side that China is going to collapse and there's going to be a rate of cheap change in the US and everything is going to hell in a handbasket. How big is your short? Because if you don't have a short, then that's just noise, honestly. That's kind of basically all I wanted to say on that factor. We're up 56%.

This is normal this is so normal for this part of a cycle it's better than normal it's better than normal we had an all time high before the halving right and then we're having people you know saying today that the world is collapsing and it's going to help yeah if you look at old cycles here would be my prediction dan you can tell me if you think this is accurate. But there's a lot of confusion because people think we front ran the cycle because Bitcoin got higher. But the cycle is not just Bitcoin, it's everything. And I would say that altcoins right now are performing exactly how they normally would be at this point in the cycle, because the Bitcoin spot ETFs stayed in

Bitcoin. There's no trickle down from a Bitcoin spot ETF into the altcoin market. So that was sort of its own insular event. So think of this how I like to frame it when people ask me about it and are panicking. If we did not have the spot ETFs and you just looked at the cycles, Bitcoin would probably be comfortably in the low 40s right now. If I had to make a wild guess, it would never hit 74. We'd be comfortably in the low 40s. People have been like, this is pretty good. We were at 17 and all coins would be bleeding through this part of the boring cycle and nobody would be panicking. Yeah. Look, it's not going higher until everyone say it's over.

Right. And people are saying it's over. Look, people are saying it's over. Are you still holding Bitcoin? Because if you are, then I would question your commitment to that statement. I'm still bullish. I'm still long. I don't think it's over at all. All the factors are lining up there. Look, I'm not in the business of making price predictions.

As I've said before, price predictions are like nipples. Everybody's got one. I have no interest in seeing yours. Look, I'm just strong and long and happy. I don't think anything has really changed in the market um it's just impatient it's the point of being a lot that's it yeah it's the same that people it's that the community is not reflective of the world and when you're reading it on twitter you know that these are the people who are massively overexposed to meme coins and the rest of the casino and they're losing a shit ton of their money can i ask you scott can i ask justin a couple of questions justin are you there yeah i'm here

please yeah can i ask you a couple of questions what's your strategy at cypher capital uh at the moment and how would you compare this cycle to previous cycles and i'm talking about all asset classes you're talking about nfts coping about obviously vc back projects and and within that obviously there's different niches and looking at at the higher up the risk curve with their meme tokens as well. Well, cyber capital is quite unique in that regard. So we give our investors full exposure to cryptocurrency without hedging. So because that's our mandate, we're very indifferent, basically, to the market cycles. It affects our business.

It affects our bottom line, of course, but doesn't affect our strategy too much, you could say. I mean, it affects our business, it affects our bottom line, of course, but doesn't affect our strategy too much, you could say. In terms of what we're investing in, again, we take a very unique approach. I'm skeptical of a lot of different aspects of cryptocurrency. So just to answer your question, we are primarily investing in alternative layer ones with a particular eye into uh scale scaling technologies and governance and we're also investing in the d5 area as well which is one of the areas in cryptocurrency that i think makes a lot of sense actually um unlike a lot of other things in crypto i'm not a big fan of nfts not a big fan of game five not a big fan of most of, not a big fan of most of Deepin. Can tell.

Did he drop out or just for me? Yeah, I lost him. Yeah, he said he's not a fan of Deepin and what else? He's not a fan of DeFi. He said he's not a fan of DeFi. Gaming, Deepin, all your favorite things, Mario. Yeah, which I love. I love it. But just a part of your mandate, you still give exposure to your investors to all these.

I think gaming is one of the best narratives of this cycle that we can actually see come to fruition after being too early last time. Fascinating. Yeah, Justin, why not gaming? And then I want to ask him, why not gaming and your thoughts on AI as well? I don't know.

Did he say anything about AI? Scott, did he say anything about AI Scott did he say anything about a I did you hear yeah he's requesting that I did not say I yeah this is works you press on you it works well first of all thanks for inviting me English is not my native token so don't don't burn me when my English is not that good. But let's just, first of all, this is the first time that I'm with you guys. Most of you guys I don't even know. I know Scott.

I know Mario. I know Vinny. The rest I don't know. So, first of all, thanks all for inviting me over here. But, you know, the thing that I don't understand about these spaces that you're doing here, a lot of things are getting talked about, about economy, about the Fed. I even heard that the dollar printing money, the dollar is not

dying because they're printing. I don't know in what world they live, but that's, in my opinion, if you keep printing money, that's just going to destroy the dollar. And I think the dollar, the only way, the only reason why the dollar is still holding very strong is because they're sucking out, they're killing the euro. So all the liquidity

is coming from the euro into the dollar. That's the only reason why the dollar is at the levels that it's now. But that's something else. But, you know, I think that this space is created for like retailers. I represent the retailers. I'm from the retail fam. I think that most of you guys, nobody knows me. That's no problem. But I think that most of you guys nobody knows me that's no problem but i think that the ones that are listening to this as to the spaces they're really interested in crypto and they're really interested in why the dump happened and how it happened and and the wins i think that this is the most important and the you know i'm hearing a lot of people and it's like more than 90 percent are all bullish about crypto, but these same

people have been bullish for crypto for years. It doesn't matter if I listen to you guys today, tomorrow, next month, past month, two months ago. Are you saying Danish and Vinny were bullish about crypto for years? Vinny's always been, but Vinny was pretty bearish not long ago. Danish has been bearish since the day he was born. No, no, no no mario mario forgive me forgive me i'm not i'm not generalizing here it's not about everyone i'm talking about the average that i've been listening i'm listening today i'm with you guys now for like a half an

hour and most of you guys are all very bullish on crypto and i think that a lot of listeners that are over here they uh they are super wrecked it's guess what it is and i think that there is a lot more super wrecked how how they're super wrecked let me check i don't i don't check coin market cap as far as i know bitcoin is still about 20 30k yeah you know you know it's very good that you said this but let me tell you retailers i think that more than 90 percent are not invested in bitcoin so what's the use case to keep talking about Bitcoin? I don't think he's wrong. I don't think he's wrong.

Yeah. I said this, I was talking about this on my show this morning. There's been this perception that if you're in Bitcoin and you're in memes, you've done exceptionally well. Everything in the middle has gotten somewhat wrecked. So I think people holding their bags from previous cycles that are not Bitcoin, most of those are still actually down massively from the highs where they probably bought them in the last cycle. I mean, you look, the bigger name altcoins, the Maddox and all these things, they're down 90, 95% still from

last cycle. So people who've been holding those have not done well. And the idea that people are making money in memes and mass is absolutely and utterly nonsensical. They've only made memes. We have this narrative that the meme market is bullish or is performing well, but that's only if they've literally played the game of hot potato and musical chairs perfectly the entire time. And I would bet you that 95% of the people who have bought a meme coin are holding it right now down and did not flip out of it. So, Scott, I get around, but I want to just leave you with a thought and something to discuss. I mean, we, we talk about these things,

I just talk about specific amounts and I think it's important to, to bring this up. Like a lot of people can turn a thousand bucks into 10 grand and make it, you know, 10 extra turn there or even 10,000 into a million bucks, which is a hundred extra turn. It sounds good, but there's a big difference between making money subscale and making money in size at scale. And so when you're looking at the retail audience,

they're talking about sometimes 500 bucks becoming 5 grand or 10, 20 grand. And so those are the returns are much easier to find if you've got the time and patience to go look for these things, these like meme coins or whatever. But I can't put a million dollars to work to get 500x return or 100x return safely anyway and risk that much capital. So the moment you start dealing with sort of larger check sizes, you have to be a bit more know and you can't take the same level of risk and you could and even if you could even if you were you know like let's say i'm willing to lose a million on an investment i can't get the the liquidity in certain coins it just isn't there so now you have the liquidity problem and even if i get the liquidity going in i can't get the liquidity going out it goes up three or four or five x um there's insufficient liquidity and so this is the problem like we speak in broad strokes

about trading and investing and crypto etc but we don't take into account the the sizing of the bets and how to get liquidity in and out and it's it's a problem for for larger investors and that's why you do struggle and that's why people go into bitcoin because it's the only really really liquid uh crypto market out there and really firm as well and it's a lot of yeah sorry sorry to interrupt you uh vinnie i i know and mw i know you you didn't finish making your point but i know justin you dropped out earlier we're going back and forth thank you and you you you said you weren't bullish on gaming and and i was pretty offended to be honest justin like i i blocked you by the way just fyi why gaming man i don't i don't get it because i thought that was a i know i'd be as And I was pretty offended, to be honest, Justin. Like, I blocked you, by the way, just FYI. Why gaming, man?

I don't get it. Because I thought that was the – and I'll be as direct as possible because I'm genuinely curious. Because I thought gaming is probably one of the use cases that's onboarding more so retail at the moment. And the use case just makes sense to me. Do you think it's just not being done right? Do you think it's too early? Do you think there's a lot of fluff and it's hard to tell which one's the winners? The success rate is too low?

Or is it something completely different? I think most of GameFi right now seems like it's a casino to me. It's not really about gaming. I'm actually a gamer myself, and I'm even a VR enthusiast, so you'd think I'd be really into this metaverse stuff, right? But I think, if anything, it's given me a bit of extra insight. And if I think about it from the perspective of like um game design and and and and mechanism i don't think that you know adding these incentives

and adding this monetization actually makes for a better game and i'm also not convinced that you're really solving a problem there's a there's this narrative that's like, oh, you can own your in-game objects. Now you truly own it. I kind of think that is BS because game development is still completely centralized. So if the game developers can just take the object out, they can buff it, they can

do whatever to it, that's not owning the object. You're still at the mercy of a centralized gaming company. So as long as that's still the case, I don't really see the value add. But wouldn't it be a process to have the game completely decentralized? Obviously, it's a very early stages right now. But the end goal will be to have the game, the code kind of developed to a level where the players become the, you know, through a DAO structure, become the creators of the game as well. And then assets as an NFT become an actual owned asset that eventually becomes interoperable. So you can have another game like a vampire attack type game that allows the assets of one game to be interoperable within their game.

Now, I know this is a bit, you know, a bit too early to kind of to discuss that world of interoperable gaming ecosystems. But the use case theoretically makes sense, no? So there's two things here. So I think one thing you mentioned was the interoperability. And sorry, what was the other one? It was the, oh yeah, that the game is actually controlled by the gamers. So there's no central development team. I think in that case, I agree with you.

I think that's an interesting experiment. However, games are works of art, right? Games are, and I don't think you can really, I don't think the best art is created by committee. I don't think the best art is created through a decentralized governance process. I think it's, you generally have a few visionaries that really drive it.

And I think that's how the best games are made. So I'm a bit skeptical maybe from the kind of creative process perspective. Now, the other thing you mentioned, so I do think you have a point there. I think that would be interesting and there's potentially games to be made, but I think that would remain a niche, right? The other thing you mentioned, the interoperoperability thing that doesn't make sense to me for two reasons one is the competitive side so like for instance you know minecraft is not going to support ea items or vice vice versa right because they're actually in competition with each other so why would they support each other's items and the second problem with that is it's

just not compatible it's not like you can put a mine a minecraft sword into skyrim it doesn't work the game mechanisms are different the uh progression is different it just doesn't work that way from a gaming perspective and what about what about the the ai narrative that is obviously leading the current uh bull cycle yeah i Yeah, I've been looking very deeply into AI, actually, especially these last few months. AI in general or Web3 AI? No, no, AI is super exciting. 100% on board with AI. I'm not going to stick my head in the sand. And obviously, AI is probably one of the biggest technological developments of the century, you know, next to blockchain. That's huge. But I'm skeptical of the intersection between AI and blockchain. I think it's very limited in terms of what we can do because the amount of compute required,

the amount of like latency that's required between the different computing units, the sheer amount of data to create, you know, these AI models, it just doesn't seem at all suitable to a blockchain type design which is inefficient right so for that reason yeah i don't see a lot of the cross-section a lot of these ai projects i'm just going to call them out a bit here things like bit vm or um what's some of the other ones well a lot of these things they strike me as total nonsense if i look into it they just seem extremely inefficient much more expensive way of doing things. It just doesn't compute, if you mind the pun. I will say, though, there's one area that I think there is a important in a world of deep fakes. So in a world of deep fakes, where we can have a, say, blockchain identity that's, you know, based on public key cryptography, I think that is very powerful, very, very powerful.

But you don't need a blockchain AI project to do that. You can just, you know, use any layer one to achieve that use case. And two other questions other questions by the way scott if i go to if i just interrupt me uh but i kind of geek out a bit um so justin two other things i want to ask you about first meme coins obviously just sucking up a lot of the liquidity and attention in the cycle um and then the i'll ask the second one afterwards but what are your thoughts on the whole me coin ecosystem and just kind of give you an idea of where me scott and ran so scott has been in meme coins since 2015 he's deep into it he's launched a few himself. So Scott is very degen. Ran, okay, that's a joke, by the way. So Ran obviously was the first out of us three together. Doge was my first love in crypto when I was a trader. So I

guess technically it could be true, but I think the rest of it's nonsense. Yeah. So obviously Scott has been the most skeptical and rightly so. And Ran was the first one in and we got involved. It's been about eight months. We're pretty involved in the meme coin ecosystem from a media perspective and also investing in a few as well. But we understand the risk.

Now I've become more bullish, two reasons. Number one, I just don't want to make the same mistake I made in 2017 when I avoided ICOs completely, almost completely. And, you know, my first,

my only investment in 2017 was Filecoin. I thought they were the only ones doing it right. And then in, so I made a mistake there because obviously ICOs are a good way to raise capital right now. In the last cycle, I've avoided NFT PFPs. And obviously now I've got a CryptoPunk among other PFPs. And I just didn't want to make the mistake again with meme coins.

And I eventually saw the use case as like, if a meme coin is done right, it becomes true decentralization, like the ethos of decentralization. It's a decentralized community with no treasury, no founding team, et cetera. We'd love to get your thoughts on it and pros, cons and whether you guys are deploying there. Sure, sure. No, I mean, look, I'm a value investor and I'm very strictly speaking a value investor. And that's what I do for the fund. And that's what I believe in as well.

So I only invest in projects that have real value and have utility and I can identify money flows and some sort of dividend or burning mechanisms and a real use case. So obviously, meme coins are not going to be my thing. It's somewhat the anti-thesis of my thesis, right? That's meme coins. If you want to take the most opposite thing of what I invest in, that's meme coins like if you want to take the most opposite thing of what i invest in like that's mean coins because i'm a fundamentals guy i do fundamental analysis right so when it comes to meme coins obviously i wouldn't touch them but i'm not going to throw

shade on say people that are very competent at say momentum trading or you know take very sophisticated approaches in terms of trading and quantitative strategies, etc., that's fine. More power to you. It's a free market. The thing that concerns me, obviously, is the masses of retail that are trying to ape into these things, thinking they can make a quick buck. If you're not doing this in a highly sophisticated manner, it's gambling as far as I'm concerned.

And, you know, gambling isn't intrinsically bad, but when people, you know, are kind of led to believe that they're investing when it's really gambling, that's when it gets a bit icky in my view. And don't get me wrong, meme coins are going to stay around. I don't actually expect them to go away at all.

It's just you can't expect me to ever invest in them either. But would you say it's a legitimate asset class beyond just a casino could it end up being like an nft asset class jesus what do you mean by legitimate can you define can you define legitimate so i would say i would compare it to something like nft pfps where um one way of looking at it in asset class now i would say they've got a use case beyond just a pump and dump. You know, people are still having it as a PFP. I have it on our other account. There's someone at Tyrogue in the audience. I think there's a PFP on this.

We have one of our lawyers. Yeah, they're still around despite NFT still being dead. So I think it's become, not everyone's called it legitimate asset class, but it's got a use case. You know, you've got interoperability among these PFPs, among different games. You've got Pudgy Penguins creating an ecosystem. And if we have utility to your point, what utility do memes have? So this is a question, obviously, I have my own opinion, but no need to repeat it for the millionth time.

Justin, do you think they could have utility over time that transcends the casino? Well, that's the thing. If a meme coin gains utility, according to my definition, it's no longer a meme coin. So that's the funny thing so that's the funny thing that's the funny thing right so and actually i think that like all cryptocurrencies are meme coins in one sense of the word i don't call them meme coins because they also have utility and purpose right uh it's just what we colloquially refer to as meme coins now is like

chains that don't have any uh clear utility or clear value and therefore we call it a meme coin and i think i think so i think you're kind of trapped there a little bit semantically because if you're investing in something with the expectation of future utility it's no longer a meme coin right that's right for pure meme coins which is what people have been speculating on here actually the point being they have no utilities, so they can't be deemed securities and they're just having fun. That's as much a legitimate asset class as a lottery ticket or casino chips. And it's literally no different. And that's totally fine as long as people know that they're in a casino. The problem is when people don't realize they're in a casino and think they're making an investment into a quote unquote

legitimate asset class. There's nothing legitimate about tokens being launched that are intended to be at zero a week later. And you're supposed to get into that. That's a hold on intent when you say intended, but Scott, Scott, that's not fair to say intended to be a zero. That's not what you know, that's just a pimping dump. It's through a meme. Expected.

And 10 expected applies to 90% of tokens that me and you invest in that are VC backed. There were 9,300, 333, an astounded number now half a million. I mean, some insane number of meme tokens launched on Solano last year, but there's also an, there's also an insane number of meme coins that are at a billion plus market cap. I just, I just think that like my position and that's shifted drastically. yeah i know i'm not look i could be i know i know but i think it's worth at least discussing i'd just say one last thing there is like my stance kind of evolved from exactly what you're saying and you know that me and you agreed on that we would argue with rand to one saying hold on it could become a community that's also financially incentivized that could

end up building something on that on the on the on the on you know similar to what doge is doing on the on the blockchain but more important even if they don't build anything it could be just rallying around a certain cause like a trump coin yeah but those don't last they don't we'll see i'm not disagreeing with you i'm not disagreeing with you in theory but like that's the same argument for literally dead pfps like i'm sorry like there were people last cycle who were saying, like, I am my lazy lion and my turntup turtle. Yeah, but it's also the same. But it's also the same. Or whatever the hell these people care about.

And those communities were only as good as the price. It's also the same. They're only as good as the price. Okay, well, it's also the same. By the way, I didn't know punks are down to 88K. Fuck, 120K last I looked. But anyway, they're also the same as punks that are sitting at 88K floor uh but the last thing i know i've hugged the mic for too long leave me alone justin one last question and i'm done you've been waiting for a while but your thoughts on the on

the on vc back talkers i know me scott and we invest very heavily a lot more aggressively than you guys but i think we have much smaller ticket sizes uh scott has become less aggressive in his investments and when it comes to VC-backed projects. And you guys, we've shared the cap table with a few projects. You guys have done a good job, but you're also very conservative in how many projects you invest in. Two questions I have for you.

The first one is, what's your strategy? What's your exit strategy? So when you get unlocks in a bull market in the last cycle or in this cycle, has your strategy shifted? Do you guys liquidate transparently? Or is it confidential? Liquidate tokens in a bull market as you get those small unlocks? Or do you always hold the tokens for a few years? Because you said your investment

horizon is about five years. And second, what are your thoughts on VC-backed projects? Because we're seeing a lot less liquidity there and kind of a lot of that liquidity and attention shifting to meme tokens. Yeah, I know. And I think it'd be good to explain my fund a little bit more. I'm very unique in that regard. I'm not a VC. So I don't participate in pre-sales at all. We only buy fully liquid tokens on the market without any lock-ins because our clients have a one week withdrawal period. They can get in and out of the fund if they wanted. It's completely open-ended so that's why we just maintain um full exposure to cryptocurrency and we don't actually have exit strategies so to speak you know we maintain basically the mandate is to give our investors the best possible exposure to the best possible cryptocurrencies based on our fundamental analysis and research at all times so that means means theoretically, when we invest in something, we could invest in it with the idea that we could still be holding this in a century from now. And that's the type of things we want to invest in.

Do you do any OTC deals? Something that's becoming very popular right now with current market conditions, where you just go to a liquid token and say, hey, we're invested a 40% discount with a six-month lockup, or you just don't do any lockups whatsoever no lockups whatsoever we might on occasion do an otc deal if public markets are lacking liquidity but that would only be on um like very small tokens that we just want to take a position without moving the market but that's the smallest what's the smallest uh token tokens you got what's the smallest fts or market caps you guys touch? Well, basically like 90% of the fund is in like high cap tokens. So like 90% of the fund is like, and then we have like a tail end, like the 10%. And for that 10%, we can go low.

I think we're invested in Railgun actually. I'll call that one out. Railgun is I think 30 million market cap or something like that. Interesting. I'm just looking at it now. Have you looked at launching, Scott, sorry, last question,

but have you looked at launching a VC fund? Have you considered it? Have you talked to your team? No, no. We actually haven't considered it. Well, I suppose we have over the years.

I think we would have made it, we would have a much higher AUM right now if we were a VC fund. The thing is, is that i think for a lot of institutional investors because we have a lot of institutional clients i think for a lot of institutional investors vc funds are a lot easier for them to understand because it's a traditional structure you know you're still investing in equity so that's easier for investors to understand because what i'm doing is i'm very much focused on investing in the tokens themselves because i think in the long run, that's really where the most potential lies. I mean, that is the revolution of all of this technology after all.

So that's, that's, that's really my focus. Therefore now, because. And last question I have, but that's the promise. And then we'll go to you. What are your thoughts on NFTs? Have you guys invested in NFTs at all in the last cycle? Yeah, no, I'm also, also very skeptical on NFTs? Have you guys invested in NFTs at all in the last cycle? Yeah, I'm also very skeptical of NFTs. I think there's some use cases for non-transferable NFTs like Solbound token, things like that, but those are non-financialized, obviously. So,

no, I mean, look, again, I'm a value investor. I'm not going to be, I'm going to predictably not be into some of these more speculative plays. And I will say something as well, you know, to you, Mario, and everyone else here, don't feel bad about missing out on investing in nonsense. Like really, just stick to your guns, invest in things that make sense, invest in things that, you know, you really think can be the future. You know, you can get really stuck in this weird place where you're just trying to jump onto one hype cycle after another you know i mean that's what you have to do if you're a trader but you know appreciate that you can also be an investor in this space and and take things more slowly and you know you know consider things and and don't don't feel bad that you didn't jump onto dogecoin i mean obviously like you know i invest. I actually had this recently. I had a type of retail investor came to me and he was like, how come your fund didn't outperform Shiba or something like that? And I'm like, well, I'd be a really shitty investor if I had invested in Shiba. You know, if I went all in on Shiba, that would just been completely unprofessional. Right. I mean, at least with my mandate. So it's a funny thing, I think, for a lot of meme coin investors, and this was said earlier, most of them don't win in the long run.

Like even the ones that win, they'll do it again and then they'll lose, right? This is the kind of gambling cycle because it's not based on fundamentals. So just really be careful out there, people. And don't beat yourself up over missing out on a meme coin. I'm sleeping perfectly fine watching it outperform my my fund. Yeah. Well, massive shout out to Cypher Capital. You guys have been in the space for a long time and we kind of,

you know, I've talked about it before when you're vetting projects, when deciding whether to invest in projects, there's a lot of indicators you look for, and one of them is who's on the cap table. And obviously Cypher Capital is that top tier investors that we look for so i appreciate you justin dan sorry for taking too long man i'd love to get your thoughts and arc i'll bring you guys on stage i have that back and forth uh lucy i'll see you on stage make sure you bring the arc account on stage as well lucy um dan go ahead man cool yeah um real quick um i want to say look this is my my third cycle i've been in the space best part of a decade um i just want to make, look, this is my third cycle. I've been in this space the best part of a decade.

I just want to make one point. I think the best advertisement for Bitcoin is probably some of these altcoins, right? Darlings I've been married to in previous cycles never come back. The only thing that I've found harder than getting rich, because getting rich is hard. The only thing that's harder than getting rich is fucking staying rich right you overextend yourself look ask mike tyson ask your average nfl player ask a lottery winner right um there's the only thing harder than making it is staying there so look most of these tokens aren't going to come back this is as uh you know the previous speaker said a a lot of gambling. I'm overexposed to Bitcoin.

I have been. I take parts in other stuff. But getting rich in crypto is fairly easy. Staying rich is definitely the hardest part. So I wanted to put that out there and have everyone keep that in mind. Yeah, I cannot disagree. And I remember the story of one of our team members made life-changing money in the last cycle. And I just found out a couple of weeks ago, he's a very smart guy and he lost it all. He's rebuilding it now in this cycle, he's kind of learned his

lesson. He's become not only greedy, but he's become overconfident in the current market. It's human nature, man. It's human nature to over-extend yourself. Look, I saw my portfolio jump to like middle eight figures one time in altcoins. It's human nature. It's human nature to overextend yourself and i can't look i i saw my portfolio jump to like middle eight figures one time in altcoins it's it's human nature it's the nature of the beast you know like if it's your first time just maybe take a bit of advice from some older hands like not necessarily take profits but put them into higher caps like ethereum or bitcoin if you look at the top hundred coins today they weren't the top hundred you know a year ago two years ago three years ago your coins probably aren't going to come back. The dinosaurs already do.

Yeah. And it goes back to the point that it's a whale killer. You were saying earlier that most of the people, you and Scott were saying, most of the people did lose money on meme coins, did lose money on these IDOs. So we obviously were in a position and we're pretty grateful for it. A lot of us on stage are in a position to come in early in projects to get referral you know we refer projects to each other and we have a team that's able to vet those projects for us and we still lose money most of the time it's kind of the nature of the beast so if you look at someone in retail um just imagine how much more difficult it is for them so kind of everyone listening that isn't that

you know that's not full-time crypto has a team um yeah, just keep in mind that most people do lose money. For every person that brags about their $1,000 becoming worth $10 million or being on Cointelegraph or Coindesk saying, hey, I put $1,000 in Pepe and now it's worth $10 million. There's 10,000 people that put in $100,000 and now it's worth $100. But I do want to go, Wael, go ahead. I'll let you kind of give your final thoughts on this. I know I interrupted you earlier and then we'll go to Lucy to kind of have a back and forth to go, Wael, go ahead. I'll let you kind of give your final thoughts on this. I know I interrupted you earlier, and then we'll go

to Lucy to kind of have a back and forth on ARK. Yes, no problem. Thank you very much. Your mic is really bad, man. Very muffled. Yeah, because I had to talk with my phone, and that's why I'm talking with my headset. So normally I have my mic. So I hope that you guys can hear me a bit. I will keep it

very short. You know, the thing that I do is I just analyze markets. You've just cut out as well. Yeah, yeah. No, I was. Someone is calling me. So that's the reason I just connect charts. I just follow markets.

I just try to save as much retailers from dumps. And that's also why I think i predicted most dumps past year i know that you guys don't know me but the ones that do know me follow me on twitter know this and it's just like this bloodbath i predicted it one day before and i also explained in a youtube vid why we dumped and we are where we are now and just to to to uh to get something even more about this is the fact that i think uh someone just said about he's very bullish on crypto because the markets are going up or holding, holding or going up, in my opinion, they're going up, the Nasdaq and the US 500. Well, Bitcoin is dumping.

But I don't think that's reality because every time when the markets make a little bit of a correction, you see Bitcoin dumping. So Bitcoin is not following up, but it's for sure as hell following down. And that's something to keep in mind because we're really topping out on the U.S. markets on the short term. So I hope that everyone stays safe. And, well, I keep doing my thing like I'm always doing it. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Thanks a lot, man. We have Lucy here. By the way, just for the panel now, we're're gonna have a back and forth with the sponsor of the day uh lucy from arc digital um so we're investors in arc and they're sponsored today's show so lucy good to have you and you guys listed a few days ago um so uh you know pretty excited to see how you guys what's the experience like now a week week after listing the market conditions? How are you? Hi, everyone. Great to meet you all again.

Last time was the counting down event where I met most of you guys. And after some days of the market correction, I guess the sentiment here is a little bit different. How is it? Tell me more. I'm actually curious. For a project, you guys are building a perpetual DEX. How is it? Tell me more. I'm actually curious. For a project you guys are building in Perpetual Decks, a very solid team, very solid investors. We're obviously on the cap table.

We did a countdown space for you guys as well. So we're pretty invested here. You've got Arrington Capital, Hashkey, OKEx Ventures, Delphi is on there, Big Brain Holdings. You've got a lot of VCs that we respect. Hold on a second. Let me just check something. I might be, am I daydreaming here hold on two

seconds it is hold on justin you're invested as well justin uh no no and if we were you wouldn't be able to tell like i said we're not on these scenes so we're not on the tables but that's what i thought but i see cypher capital backed by the best and i see cypher capital on their website it's a cyber capital with a b as in cyber technology oh my bad justin yeah my bad my bad cool sorry justin uh i apologize cool all right well justin is not invested because i'd be very confused if he was i'd be like cool there's another bullish sign but yeah so you've got a lot of great investors here um you've listed the token how's the experience like with current market conditions and i'll give you my thoughts as well on that same question of course of course so we listed in the most dangerous markets of all

we want to choose a time of fortune but unfortunately we just start in that day and so actually june the 10th is like the beginning of our product we started the project like eight months ago and after eight months we just got listed so not a bad bad timing for us but bad timing for all kinds of tokens because the market is crashing i feel like after we get listed we get more and more famous a lot of people who didn't know us before, who have not tried our product before, kind of noticed there's a new token incoming and began to become one of our users.

So that's the upside. The downside is... That's it. Before the downside, that's a really interesting upside. So when you have a project, especially when you're a retail-focused project, when you do list, you do get that attention. And I think people pay attention to you more, which, you know, you kind of become like a public company. A startup becomes a public company as soon as it lists, which one of the advantages is that exposure. But yeah, you are going to go through the disadvantages, which I'm very curious about.

What are those? Yes, the attention is definitely double-sword because all the people have a great expectation for our token, the price of token, to be safe. And especially to those who have been in our community since our early birth adoptions. I would say right now the price just doesn't really reflect all the fundamentals of this project,

but it's a fully liquid market right now and with very tight spreads on CEX and very good liquidity on DEX as well. So people can come in and go on their own free wills. So that is what we provide to this community. You can join at this time or you can leave at this time. Yeah, so my next question is, can you explain further what Arc Digital is?

What is a perpetual DEX? What are perpetuals in the first place? And then what differentiates you from other players in the ecosystem? Of course. So perpetual markets, there are so many,

like the five of the top 10s are on Arbitrum and Arc Digital is one of them. But the difference between us and other markets is we actually accept a lot more assets, including LSTs and LRTs, which are the main narrative of this round. So we open potential liquidity to over $62 billion. So holders of LSTs can actually stake in our AARP pools and earn additional

yield powered by the fees. So that is the restaking narratives we are having here. And I think another difference I want to mention is the insane cash flow because we have a relative small team, like 15 people. But our cash flow until today, after eight months, is $2.97 million, around $3 million. I think that's pretty good because traders pay a relative low fee at five bips for trading

and we can collect that amount of fee. So our cash flow is relatively in sync in comparison to other non-profit projects. Yeah. Let me, just Lucy, just want to... Because I've been to some... I want to take a step back. Just kind of, I want to try to educate the audience a bit further.

When you say LST, so liquid staking token, can you explain that a bit further for the audience? What is liquid staking and a liquid staking token can explain that a bit further for the audience. What is liquid staking in a liquid staking token? Of course, so liquid staking token is the Abbreviation for is LST as a provision and the record restaking token LRT is the abbreviation since we are operating on an EVM chain, right now most of our restaking tokens and staking tokens are around the biggest protocols, including LIDL, RocketPool, and Pandora. So these guys are like the big operators that keep the EVM chain safe and sound. So these people have made the staking much, much easier.

Because if you are operating a small staking yourself on MetaMask, you have like 32 E's as the benchmark, a minimum benchmark. And also you will get some punishment by uh by like something like slashing happens so actually uh most of the retail facing um products they will actually route it back to an lst or lrt protocol like lidl or eigen layer so and so as a matter of fact people are earning that's a layer of yield through this lst and rrt's um yeah so that that's pretty much so right now the yield is around five yeah sorry finish off and i've got another question right now the yield is around five of course of course so right now yield is around five uh to 15ST, LRT after it's fully unlocked.

So if you put that money on ARK, you can earn another layer. If it opens your 1x leverage, it's another layer of 15% APR. So that adds up to like 20% to 30% yields in one year. Let me take a step back. So obviously, I want to talk about the behemoth in the industry, and that's GMX. So you guys are competing against a monster here. What gives you the edge?

Why should ARK Digital, which you're sitting at, what, $30 million market cap, I think last I checked, why are you a better alternative to GMX, which is at, what, a quarter of a billion market cap i think last i checked why are you a a a better alternative to gmx which is at what quarter of a billion and market cap uh yeah so gmx uh is the uh is the ancestor like the first generation perp decks uh as we can see in this market it's the P2 pool prep decks always follow or just innovate on top of GMX. So right now, GMX, I think it has not achieved its full potential because its all-time user is only 600K. There are a lot of problems around this protocol as well, so as us. But still, in huge contrast to other apps,

such as Telegram DApps or GameFi DApps, these apps have more than 10 million, even 30 million for NorthCoin. So I believe the market is still not that abundant. And so we have plenty of space to explore in this perp deck sector. Okay. And then what's your strategy moving forward? So you've launched your token right now.

You're in the early startup stages. What's your strategy? What's your marketing strategy to get more users onto ARK? Yeah, so right now the major things happening in the next 12 weeks is the thing called the ARK L-Tip. So Lucy, just two seconds. Whoever is next to you making a cup of coffee or making sound, just either shush them up or throw a cup at them just to make sure we can hear you properly

because there's a lot of background noise. Oh, sorry. Probably it's because the power. Yeah, go ahead. Let me remove the power. No, there's someone who's moving things around. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, so yeah, the next biggest thing here,

which is actually happening right now, it's ongoing, is the user acquisition with huge incentive because Arbitron Foundation just granted us with 900K ARPs, which will be spent in the next 12 weeks. And ARC, as a sponsored protocol, actually we have a matching of grants of 8 million ARK. So that will add up to around 1 million US dollars with today's valuation. So we will spend out these things to have a client, so for user acquisition, including LPs, traders, and users from other prop taxes.

For example, we will make a tokenized voucher to other frequent traders on other taxes, such as GMX, KiloX, ZFutures, for these top performers on other chains and give them free vouchers and these people can get free money and deposits and to try to play around with our game. So I believe this will be one of our very special events. It will never

be seen even after 12 weeks, I promise. And another thing is we will continue to incentivize people with very organic tokenomics because right now if you stake ARK, you get ESARK

and you can earn more by staking. And if you want to have a multiplier become a VIP of this game, you can receive the MP, the multiplier points at a fixed rate of 100 apr over a year so i believe with this mechanism the people who really want to make use of this utility will have a better experience with that yeah i appreciate the update another

quick question more of a personal question like what's the experience like having a live token so obviously you're in the back end you seem like a i'm not sure if you're a developer yourself but you guys are builders uh rather than than marketers or front-facing team members so and i've had that same experience with you guys in the last space so now that you have a public token you have a community that's watching the token price and not only what you guys are building at arc does that change much in terms of just the whole sentiment of building a project with a live token out there considering market conditions? Actually, this is the very first project which I have like zero to one experience with the team. So my feeling is very, very different. I actually joined the project with

a mature total already, which the community is very sticky already. And people, I feel like family because all the cyclical things like ups and downs, we happen together. But for a new life project and the new small

family we're having here, I think the bondage is even stronger, especially in the beginning of the token launch. So every day, even with 1% fluctuation and volatility, people will be chatting in the chat room. And even with a new small feature, people will be very excited. So the attention we're getting here is really making everyone very hyped. Yeah, congrats on that. Last question I have for you before we wrap up the show. What's the last message for your community, for the audience, for anyone listening? What are you guys building that's exciting at ArcDigital?

The next biggest thing? Do you mean that's... The next milestone you guys are working on. What should your community expect? Okay. So, I know it sounds quite silly, but in our company and our community, every day we have like sitdown and stand-up meetings.

We are talking about making Arc to a million user DF. I know not many people can achieve that, even with three to five years of building. But yeah, that's what we are aiming for right now. And so the first principle is making the DApp as simple and smooth, easy to understand, straightforward for every new beginner and make it as complete as possible for sophisticated traders. So our product team is working day and night to making this product more and more, more and more catering to the market needs.

And our marketing team is always simplify the rules of gaming actually. And another thing I can mention here is about tokens. So I don't know if anyone is still excited about this after today's market crash. But yeah, we have a lot of plans around the token. So we have incoming listing for CEX and DEXs still because right now we are listed on 5 CEXs and 2 DEXs and we also will have

buyback program because our supply will increase like 2X by mid-August so we will have at least 12 months in a row buyback for tokens for at least 100k dollar worth and also we will have more

incoming functions i don't want to waste everybody's time but make sure you subscribe and follow our twitter and medium for the detailed rules i appreciate that yeah i didn't know i had no idea actually the markets were crashing. It shows how detached I am. I literally just checked it when he said, now today, markets crashing. I'm like, hold on, Bitcoin's steady. Then I look at altcoins, they're bleeding. Stacks down 8%. Filecoin, my little baby, my first investment, is down 14%. And memecoins, dog with hat, is down 13%.

Oh, me too. You invested in Filecoin? Yes. I invested not only the token, but also the whole mining system oh shit i really feel you when it's yeah i didn't know the markets took that i don't hold any falcon anymore i invested long time ago back in 2017 but um yeah i didn't know the markets crashed as much as they did but it is what it is cool anyway look it's a great discussion and we'll see everyone tomorrow another day we don't care markets is up or down i'll probably put another another clickbaity title is bitcoin

is crypto dead our altcoins dead i'll put some nice catchy title anyone else to check out arc digital uh the the name is in the in the title and lucy's on stage as well i appreciate all thank you so much for joining and we'll see you all tomorrow bye everyone