The Wolf Of All Streets - Crypto Crash! Is Bull Market Dead? | Crypto Town Hall With Benjamin Cowen

Episode Date: August 19, 2023

Crypto Town Hall is a daily Twitter Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in the crypto and bring the biggest names in the crypto space to share their opinions. ►►OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $60,000!  👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►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   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   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.

Scott. Hey, man, how are you? Good, man, good. Chill. You know, I'm still thinking about the space we did yesterday with Ryan Selkis. It was epic, man. I just learned a lot. Yeah, I mean, he's just unbelievable.

It's hard to keep up. Actually, though, he did message me. I don't know if you saw. I think he ruptured his ear. I did, yeah. Yeah, so he had a real medical emergency and was out of there. I'm also watching Ran right now with gareth on youtube you know on our show yeah he'll be joining uh he'll be joining shortly but man um what happened

with the markets uh just casual thursday evening and friday morning i think yeah i mean listen we were here um talking about these exact levels i think and they just got here a hell of a lot faster than anybody anticipated. But I think we have an absolutely epic panel here today to discuss the market, so I don't even want to dig into it yet until we get everyone on stage and start talking about it. I think there's a lot of ways you could take your opinion. Let's start with the basics. How are the markets performing? Just do a traditional market update before we start digging into exactly what happened and why.

Yeah. I mean, listen, everything across the board is down. The S&P down, Nasdaq down, Bitcoin massively down. I think the surprise narrative, and I'm looking forward to talking to Ben about this, and listen, it's only one day of evidence. It's the fact that altcoins actually somewhat outperformed Bitcoin on that drop, which I think is surprising. We have, obviously, the Evergrande news that they have filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in New York. And then, of course, the fact that 10-year yields are hitting all new highs here on this cycle. A lot of indications of, I think, you know, some weakness. Although actually, to be fair, 10 year yields being up high is actually probably an indication that the economy is stronger than we would expect. But I'm sure

that Mike McGlone will go ahead and tell us that means the Fed's going to keep tightening. But just I want to also just highlight the china news i had a meeting today with um with with a close friend and he was on bloomberg just before the meeting and um he he told me he goes mario i was actually pretty you know optimistic on bloomberg but uh you know between me and you things are a lot worse and people make it out to be when it comes to china and he's genuinely very very, very concerned. So that got me worried because he's usually a pretty level-headed guy, more of an optimist. So that was a pretty scary conversation I had earlier today. And obviously, we saw the bloodbath yesterday. But what are the narratives out there? I know there's one narrative that's

still a rumor about SpaceX. I think it was- SpaceX. Yeah, yeah, exactly. basically exactly selling let me get the numbers out selling how much bitcoin um where's around numbers just over 300 million 320 something million i don't have it exactly but uh there's now some confusion whether they just wrote it down as an accounting tactic or whether they actually sold pretty vague wall street journal uh language also i think it's important to know but we'll get into this deeper uh if they sold it certainly didn't happen yesterday i looked at the edgar database i couldn't find any filing about this yeah so there you go james is uh deeper in the weeds on this and can't see any evidence of the actual sale yeah which makes it all more more and

more confusing and i think kyle who's been on the show before, he's got a good summary of this. I'm going to find it quickly and read it out for the audience. But let's start with the panel. Guys, I'm waiting for Gareth. Gareth, is he Gareth? He always gives us a quick update. And then obviously, I'd love to have a back and forth with Benjamin.

We had you, Benjamin, on the show a couple of weeks ago. And it was one of my favorite shows in a bad way because it scared the shit out of me. But Gareth, we broke through the levels we were discussing in the last show. We annihilated those levels. Please give us some direction. Where are we now? What's the next support level? Hey, thank you, Mario. Yeah, Ran was keeping me there. Sorry about that for being a couple minutes late. So a couple of things to go over. We know we broke that 28,000 level. We saw that big flush. The volume in Bitcoin specifically and really all of crypto has been so light that when you trade below a key technical level, there's a lot of stops that get flushed, right? So there's

no buy volume to kind of absorb that. And that's why on some of these exchanges, you saw almost down to 25K very quickly. Now, the key is this, is that we're now below 28, which makes the chart vulnerable to 25. 25 is your next key support because that was where the spot ETF news for BlackRock hit, and we saw the big move from 25 to 31 and change. So that psychologically to me is a major, major level because of that.

If we broke below that, there's a lot of buyers that bought in on that, the thesis that BlackRock and this is the new bull market that are going to kind of be saying, whoa, what the heck just happened? If 25 breaks, it's then 2020 is the low that when Silicon Valley Bank failed, that was the low that kind of catapulted Bitcoin actually all the way to 31,000 when those banks were failing. So those are your technical levels on the way down. Is there a chance that we don't take out 25? Yeah, there's always a chance of it. But I don't like the fact that the upsloping trend line that was at 28 got taken out. That does mean it's vulnerable. My one thesis for Bitcoin really going down significantly would be that if we do see, I mean, we've seen the stock market

starting to take some hits now more and more. If the stock market starts going down significantly, it's going to be very hard with kind of deleveraging and moving money away from, you know, margin and all that to keep Bitcoin from selling off at the same time. So again, just be a little cautious here. It doesn't mean there's not some opportunities for swing trades. But again, you want to see anything that can recapture $28,000 or so would be very bullish. Otherwise think, of the year has been 25,000 on Coinbase, 25,214. I know it was 25,212 on Bitstamp. I mean, if you look at the Coinbase chart right now, that is literally to the dollar, the exact level where we had the bouts. Like to, I think, literally maybe even to the penny on Coinbase. And that was the level we'd been talking about. And for anyone who doesn't know, if you're a technical analyst,

this was the first higher high we had in the bear market cycle. So breaking that level was a really big sign that things had turned more bullish. So holding it really, really is important, but astounding to see it bounce

literally almost to the penny from there on a move as big as this. I want to know how many Gareth Soloways there actually are, because Gareth Soloway was just on my show. I don't understand how he was also on Spaces. You're doing the same thing. Guys, just a quick question.

Does anyone have an explanation on what really caused this? I want to ask this question to Ryan and Benjamin. Obviously, we're just speculating here. China seems to be the only plausible. But again, this is the biggest drop, the biggest liquidation we've seen since FTX. I think I've read that somewhere. But everyone is coming up with different rumors when it's even SpaceX, which is that rumor kind of made no sense.

So my question is, is there any explanation for this? Well, let Ben speak about the technicals because I'm sure the charts have actually been predicting this if you've been looking at the charts. The fundamentals, pretty much there's no liquidity in the market. We are at the lowest levels of Bitcoin trading that we've been in as far as the charts can actually record. And so when you take that and you drop Evergrande, and Evergrande is big news. It's serious news. And the reason why it's serious news is because 70% of China's wealth is in property. And if the property sector collapses, effectively the banks start to collapse. If the banks start to collapse, the country pretty much starts to collapse.

So people are worried about Chinese contagion. Gareth and I discussed it on my show, and Gareth doesn't believe that there's going to be contagion because he thinks the government's actually going to print money. And then you take that, and then you just throw a little bit of spice in it in terms of this SpaceX sold. That's just like the icing on the cake. Even though it was just a write-down in their balance sheet, and a write-down could mean they're just impairing the value of the assets, then that causes a bunch of liquidations. When you have no volume in the market, the liquidations just cascade because there's no buyers. As you go lower and lower, people with low liquidation levels get liquidated.

And I know a lot of traders reached out to me this morning and said, you know, we can't believe it. We got liquidated at 24,000, 24,200. But there are no buyers in this market. That's why it's happening. Benjamin, we'd love to ask you that same question um yeah so my general view on this is that you know there we always are going to seek out a narrative to try to explain like why the price did a certain thing um but again like the narrative follows the price not the other way around so if price goes down you know we'll like the narrative follows the price, not the other way around. So if price goes down, you know, we'll find the narrative to support it.

But that's not necessarily what caused it. I do think Rand is right. I think there's very little liquidity that's really out there right now that that liquidity has been sucked out for, you know, basically the last couple of years. And so when you go into a highly illiquid market, and especially during a seasonal time in Bitcoin's history, you can get these cascading liquidations, right? And we talked about this, I think the last time I was on here as well, that the S&P often gets a pretty large drawdown in August or September of the pre-election year. And that's usually sufficient

to knock Bitcoin down below some of these critical support levels that Gareth was talking about, right? So it knocks it below the 20-week SMA, which is right around that like $28,000 level. It knocks it below the 21-week YMA. We took out the 100-day, I think we took out the 200-day. And so what happens normally in this part of the cycle is Bitcoin gets a major secondary scare before the halving, right? So like we all talk about the halving. And then what normally happens with Bitcoin before the halving is the price halves or

something around that level, right? So like secondary scares from cycles past that took us down the average drawdown after an event like this or before the event like this is run 60 so it's not to say that we have to go all the way back down to those levels 2015 i think we only dropped like 40 or so from once we broke the 20-week estimate but this is this is what we've always seen you know it's sort of like the inconvenient part of the cycle uh that we kind of have to deal with. But, but I mean, this is, this is a cascading liquidation.

And to go with what Scott was saying earlier with regards to the Bitcoin dominance, like why are altcoins not dropping? I think what normally happens is when Bitcoin drops this quickly, you can see dominance go down. But once we start to get weekly closes in this range, that's normally when the dread starts to set in for the altcoin market and that's where you'll see all coins likely capitulate on their bitcoin pairs so i wouldn't i wouldn't i wouldn't jump to any conclusions just yet on on the bitcoin yeah i want to just maybe reiterate uh what what you just said so i think the problem is you've got to look

at altcoins into two in two categories the one category of altcoins is altcoins that are on centralized exchanges and have leveraged perpetuals, which is driving the price. The other set of altcoins is the altcoins that are sitting on chain. So they don't have much leverage perpetuals. They don't have much leverage against them. Now, if you look at how this this correction played itself out you'll realize that the the correction happened in the majority of cases where there was high leverage on on centralized exchanges so like if you look at a roll bit or unibot which are the i'm using those as examples

because they're small tokens that are growing very quickly but they don't have many derivatives what you realize is the price of those never came down because there was no open interest and there was no leverage. And so I think why Bitcoin, why the dominance may have gone down instead of go up is because Bitcoin is very sophisticated. And if you look at the altcoin market, not as sophisticated. So there was a lot of leverage liquidations. And those leverage liquidations never happened on altcoins because

there's no leverage and no derivatives. And Ran, to add to that, you also obviously have the fact that in the midst of the bloodbath, there was some quote unquote good news about Ethereum that we likely would get an Ethereum ETF futures approval in the coming days. And Ethereum, which is the most heavily weighted in obviously Bitcoin dominance and the strongest altcoin, if we're going to call it that, actually went up versus Bitcoin yesterday. So that could also be probably skewing it a bit. Benjamin, I saw you lift your mic. Do you agree?

No, I don't. So if you look closely, I mean, did Ether, I know, I mean, I guess, did it actually close the day green yesterday? Yeah, it closed the day green after a long week down and is up on the day today. So it basically opened yesterday at, I believe, it's marginal, right? 0.629 or something closed at 0.063 and is currently at about 0.0637. Okay, yeah, then you're correct about that. I mean, I think my view is that it's just noise, and it will correct itself in due time. Like I don't see that it's necessarily fundamentally changed anything. I also want to mention that for those that are following the dominance on TradingView, this is sort of like a petty observation, but do be aware that the definition of total market cap on TradingView is in the process of changing. And so they've basically added like $10 billion or $12 billion worth of new coins into the metric

over the last four to five days. Had they not done that, the dominance would be half a percent higher on TradingView. So just be aware that there's sort of some definition changes going on right now. That's not to say that alts haven't held up well. They have during this drop. But I don't know if anyone was watching the real-time capitulation, but there was a period where the dominance was like at like 49% or 49.8, and then it went all the way up to like 50.7 within like a second.

I think that we've sort of gotten a taste of what's likely going to happen here in the next few weeks once Ethereum really begins the uh the final drop and i think it's the i think it will be the collapse of the ether bitcoin pair that will mark the end of the of the altcoin reckoning you know i want to tell you a funny story you asked that you said you don't know who was awake or who was watching the capitulation so in south africa this all went down at about one o'clock in the morning so this all started happening at about one o'clock in the morning. So this all started happening at about one o'clock in the morning. And yesterday I got a Bybit pillow. So this is the true story. It's a real pillow.

It's called a moon pillow. And it's a pillow with a pillowcase and everything. And then it's linked to your alerts on Bybit. So as soon as you get alerts on Bybit, the pillow starts to vibrate. And yesterday was the first time that i actually tried to use this pillar and at like 12 o'clock at night one o'clock in the morning this this pillar just started vibrating my wife the look on my wife's face

was priceless you actually want to be woken up by price alerts oh my god this is this is one of the this is one of the worst yeah i'm it. Yeah, I'm going to. Do you put a quarter in the bedside table and it shakes the whole bed? Do you remember those from the 1980s? That's like the worst thing ever. I'm sending you a pic. I'm going to tweet a picture now of my Bible. It's a real thing.

I also thought it was a joke, but it's actually not a joke. It's a real thing. I'm just going to get someone to snap a photo of it. I'm going to actually tweet it so that you guys can see. My wife would literally kill me. I put my phone on do not disturb. So, Gareth, I'm going to actually tweet it so that you guys can see. My wife would literally kill me. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb. So Gareth, I'm just going through the summary from the team. So it says

Bitcoin is sitting on the 200-day moving average support level. Can you just expand on this before we go to James, Gareth? Is that true? It's well below. It's below. Yeah, I think it's below. Isn't it below, guys? Yeah, it's below. It's way below. It's below every meaningful MA on both so there's

really nothing there's really no solid support level now till we hit 25k correct uh as well gareth which we did right we did yeah yeah and on some exchanges we already hit it but but again that those happen to be like higher leverage exchanges the one thing to keep in mind is that those those moving averages now become resistance on the way back up. So it's like not only did you break them and with no support now below till 25, but even if we start to head back up, there's going to be resistance now at those levels. Makes sense. James? Yeah, I have a slightly different take. You know, for those of you that know me, I don't really follow technicals so much. It's not that I don't disagree with them. I just

look more at fundamentals. And I think there's like a combination of things that have precipitated this of course is what was mentioned before super low volatility super low volumes at the moment lead the market very vulnerable to any large trade um you know and then alongside that we've had obviously what's gone in china in china that's a negative thing um and then we've got regulatory actions and I think there was a an article posted by Coindesk yesterday and I think it was incorrect it was basically saying that um all SEC has postponed well the headline was incorrect the SEC has postponed all decisions till March 2024 or something like that which is actually misleading so and what's very interesting if you look at this price correction we're right back at the until March 2024 or something like that, which is actually misleading.

And what's very interesting, if you look at this price correction, we're right back at the point where we were just before BlackRock announced the filing in June for an ETF. And I think the market's starting to realise now that things economically don't look great. From a macro perspective, sorry, from a regulatory perspective perspective people are coming back down to earth and just saying right but you know this is actually we're not imminent but can i can i but can the question i have though is that the argument that was made a while ago is that hey the economy the global economy mainly the u.s economy is actually doing better than expected so that that they expect interest rates to keep rising but now

what we're saying okay there's weakness in the economy. Isn't that good news? Can we expect the printing machines to start? I think Rand was saying last week he was talking about, and he just dropped, I'll bring him back up, but he was talking about how he expects the printing machine in China to kick off and that would trigger a bull market. Oh, Rand, is that back up? Yeah. I mean, the futures market.

So if you look at the futures market, you can see that they're pushing out their rate cut expectations. I mean, Goldman's has just pushed it out to June 2024. You know, we've got some big events coming up. We've got Jackson Hole on the 24th to 26th of August. And that'll be a really good indicator of what the Fed's thinking. But, yeah, I mean, I do think that economically things are getting worse, but there's still a very, very polarized market out there. We've got the bulls and the bears on that front.

And, Ren, on that particular point that I made, if we continue seeing weakness in China, could that turn out to become a bullish thing for risk assets if they start printing? Yeah, so, I mean, I've actually had many, many this week. I've spent a lot of time speaking to people. I recorded a few episodes. I did a couple of shows, et cetera, about this whole China situation. The consensus is that the only way out of this for China is stimulus and to print money out of thin air.

If you think about it, it's similar. It's not that dissimilar from the U.S. housing collapse in 2008. And there's actually a playbook. It took the Fed a while, but there is a playbook for how governments can get themselves out of this. And that is by printing money. Now, what Gareth pointed out

on my show today was, he said, look, you know, the difference between China printing money and the US printing money is that China doesn't need the left and right between the left and the right. You know, it doesn't need a tug of war between the left and the right. It doesn't need a tug of war between the left and the right.

If China wants to do stimulus, it happens. And he actually came on the show this morning and said, probably by Monday morning, we start getting stimulus. So the one, I'm going to say it's a blessing, but the one good thing that may actually come out of this is that we actually get stimulus as a result of this and uh and if we get chinese stimulus and that starts to increase liquidity in global markets that could be an amazing thing um but again there's other headwinds there's japan which is

which there's headwinds in japan um yeah i think it's so you think i'm not just to kind of on that point because we're for anyone listening well, we're talking about China. Do you agree with this thesis that Benjamin did point out that the narrative follows the price? But to kind of connect the dots for why the movement was so extreme, yes or against, the biggest drop since FTX. Not the biggest drop. What was the number, the comparison to FTX? The biggest liquidation to FTX. Yes to ftx one billion dollar yeah exactly so so um linking that to to evergrande's announcement of the chapter chapter 15 chapter yeah chapter 15 bankruptcy um that's a fair uh you know to

to kind of link it to anything that could be what triggered what happened yesterday there's nothing else to compare to space SpaceX's rumor is pretty silly in my opinion. Hey guys, we're going to talk to Macro. Ran, go ahead. We got to go to McGlone after Ran because he's going to have the best perspective here. Yeah. So what I've learned is that actually the news follows the charts. The chartist will tell you if it goes down,

it's going down to this level. And if it goes up, it's going up to this level. And then basically what happens is that you get the move either up or down and then you try and force fit the news to match the narrative of why the charts went down you know like so it's you know it depends it depends on what your belief system is if you're a technicals first but you don't actually care about the fundamentals and if you look at the fundamentals you're only using the fundamentals to justify the move that just happened on the charts. And let's go to Mike. Mike, maybe we can start discussing a bit further the news from China and how serious it is there. How are you?

Good morning, everyone. I appreciate you having me on. I do appreciate the comments and I really appreciate what Rand has said about China. What China stimulates is expected if it doesn't happen massively that's a problem it's going to happen it's just the way it always works in history the key thing i want to point about bitcoin is me digging in more and more into my history in markets as i see bitcoin right now is very similar to the u.s stock market in 1930 right before it bounced and rolled over hard. There's so many similarities. You'll see that in the tape on Monday. I'm writing about it. I wrote about it a little bit recently. And it just pointed out the facts that number one reason for this market to continue going down is the liquidity that pumped it is still going away. So I like to compare

the bottom line as you look at the U.S. know yesterday was around five percent you can lock in riskless returns for next two years ten percent every rational investor and money manager wealthy person on the planet who's not doing that is irrational i think that's what's happening we've seen a giant sucking sound of money going that way and it's just getting started now the key thing that always happens in history is you have to have what Rand said is that price leads the narrative and I really appreciate what Garrett said about oh, it's going to go down because it went down or it's going to go up because it went up and that's what a technician does. But those of us who've done this for a long time and

lost a lot of money doing it and made some money realizes you got to completely ignore the charts and focus on the macro and the macro for all risk assets is extraordinarily bearish risk assets and bitcoin is the most it's been one of the best leading indicators so if my narrative plays out which i do think is going to happen this is going to be the biggest global economic reset of our lifetimes that bitcoin should lead the way down why because it led the way up it's doing that now the question i ask myself is what changes this trajectory first thing you almost always need is a long and variable lag to federal reserve eating easy now let's talk about the stock market everybody's gotten bullish because they think

this recession thing has gone away but that's typically how it happens you have to get people excited and think it's not over and then what's human nature do you got to get slammed to the floor i'm just pointing out facts of history so i think that's what's human nature do? You got to get slammed to the floor. I'm just pointing out facts of history. So I think that's what's happening. The whole thing's rolling over. Bitcoin's leading indicator in the bottom line is the Fed is still tightening. So let's just look at two last examples of the stock market bottoms. The bottom in, let's see, March 2009. The Fed started cutting rates in September 2007.

The bottom before that was right around 2002. I think it was October, the Fed started cutting rates in December 2000. We haven't even started cutting rates. In fact, if you look on the terminal, I just look at this and expectations of Fed's going to keep hiking rates. So to me, this is a classic example of one of the biggest pendulum swings in history, we've had way too much liquidity pumping. The most recent example in history, the kind way too much liquidity pumping the most recent example in history the kind of liquidity we got in the last two years was the big pump in stock prices up to the peak in 1929 and now we're going the other way it's just the classic case and i see that happening the curve you see it happening producer pricing indexes you see it happening commodities declining

and copper declining it's just now we're getting towards that last vestige of the stock market catching up and Bitcoin's leading the way. So the question I'll ask myself and leave you guys there is who on this podcast, most people I understand probably have direct connection with cryptos going up, prices going up. And who has not made a lot of money and should not be locking that into US government to you know, so the whole history of cryptos, you haven't seen a 5% riskless return over one year. This to me is what the headwind is. And I just have to point out facts of history. It's just getting started. So I'll mention China. China is what I've been pointing out for a couple years now. I think China is a good combination of what happened with peak Soviet Union and peak Japan about 30 years ago. The Nikkei peaked around 40,000 in 1989. I remember it well. I was in the trading pits. And still hasn't gone above that level. What was it? It

was a property crisis. It was massive. The big difference now is we have China. It's not China anymore. It's one person. That autocratic leadership just always fails. And it's getting worse and worse. The comment I got from my colleague in Hong Kong this morning that said internal only was as bad as I thought it would be. And his question is, yeah, we're going to get stimulus. And just like we got stimulus in the 30s, in 1929, the Fed started cutting rates. I'll leave with this. The Fed started cutting rates in Q4 1929 as the stock market started rolling over.

The Fed's still hiking rates. But if you see, so Mike, if you start seeing China pump liquidity into the market, could that change? Could that extend the bull market a bit further? As you said, the U.S. still has, the Fed's still going to be raising interest rates for longer, most likely. So still a long way before we start cutting interest rates in the U. And if China starts to print money, as we expect, as you mentioned, as Rand mentioned, others have mentioned, then doesn't it make it too early for the great reset that you mentioned? Oh, no, the pivot comes before the crash, as Mike said, but go ahead. Exactly. You got it. If China does not stimulate massively, that would be a problem. Expect it.

It's just like daytime comes after nighttime. It's going to happen. It's already happening. You just might not see it. But what's happening with the Chinese yuan? I fully expect it's around seven. It should pop to eight in a heartbeat. That's where it was the last time. We have the spread right now between the U.S.

T-note yield in the U.S. is almost double the yield in China. Now, if you're just running money, you can't really short the play with currency and yuan, but the US dollar is incredibly expensive to short. And what I see there is just what happened in Japan, what happened to Soviet Union. China's gonna do everything they can, but look at their number one export customer is Europe. Now, they've kind of pissed them off with this war.

Exports are declining. The number two export customer was the US, number one country to export to US. The US now imports more from Mexico than China. This is just getting started. That's my point is expect the stimulus from China, expect bounces in risk assets. And I think the prudent thing will be to do when you get those bounces in risk assets is to sell. Mike, we discussed this on Monday, you, myself, James Lavish, Dave Weisberger, and I did something rare at the end of the conversation. And I said, what's your target to the downside? And it's funny because we certainly didn't think that 25 was coming so fast. But basically, I think Dave said he would be bidding 24 to 25. I said

I was bidding 25 and 20. James Lavish said 19,400. You said, you know, he would be bidding 24 to 25. I said I was bidding 25 and 20. James Lavish said 19,400. You said double bottom at 15. Well, let's look. That's optimistic. I'm an optimistic person, but I'm realistic about markets. The bottom line is typically these kind of things. If it's as I think it's going to be, you typically get 90% corrections from the peaks.

And that means around below 10,000 in Bitcoin. I hate to say, but it's just where we were a few years ago, right before COVID, it was 10,000. People just seem to forget how fast and how far we've come. And that's the number one thing to remember in all markets is markets that move parabolic like this almost always correct. China is not a market, but it's a country that hasn't had a normal correction and a parabolic rise. It's getting it now and for good reason. Bitcoin, to me, looks just to me like the Dow Jones did in 1929, 30. It started rolling over.

And the thing is, though, what's the difference now is what's unique is it's kind of, it was basically the partner of the biggest pump in liquidity ever. Remember, what was the reason for Bitcoin? It came out of the end of you know, came out of the financial crisis when we're all just pumping the system with money and, you know, holding a risk a digital version of gold in a world where you get no interest, and you get zero interest at negative rates in

Europe that made a lot of sense. It still does. I completely believe in the technology, but having a significant correction in the price, when the Fed wants it to happen, is number one, just don't fight the Fed. And still, I'm sorry, here's the key thing I want to point out that I've been wrong. I fully thought a year ago that bond yields would be bottoming or peaking and bond markets would be the better place to go. The fact to me that the Federal Reserve is still tightening in this view that I had for almost a couple of years now, me is going to make it all worse and it's just the key thing is every central bank on the planet still trying to catch up with fed but now we're at the point where everything's starting to tilt over it's just early days you got to give this some time and it's just like i heard recently

with a friend of mine who owns condos prices in in florida they're just starting to turn over it's just the macro big picture here is just what you'd expect. If you study history, I'm trying to do more of it. After the biggest liquidity pump in history, Bitcoin was cryptos are part of it. And that's where the altcoins we all know altcoins most of them don't have value. Bitcoin has tremendous value, I believe in it. But it doesn't mean it can't get back down a lot. And then, you know, look what Amazon did, it went from

what cup 100 to seven, and and then you know look what amazon did it went from what a hundred to seven and then then we know the rest is history right up that's just a recent stock i'm looking at this in the macro and it's it's taking time but it's that narrative that this recession isn't happening and the feds still tightening is what i'm afraid of is it yeah scott can you can i wanna if you don't mind is there anyone that's bullish on the panel that could kind of balance it out? Yeah, Mario, I wanted to say, I know that Sean needs to leave in a bit. And obviously, the talk of the town earlier in the week was the $150,000 to $180,000 target from Fundstrat. Obviously, Sean is the head of crypto over there. So maybe he has a different opinion.

Yeah, yeah, you could say that. Yeah, thanks for having me on. I guess, you know you know first thing i don't know if i can maybe circle back to mike's view um because he sounds like the uber bear here i'm just wondering like what his time frame is on that and you know if your logic is that you know people will seek refuge and attend 10-year yield yielding 2%. But at the same time, we have this huge recessionary collapse. How do you foresee governments paying that real yield without real economic growth? And if we have real economic growth, that's not a recession. But obviously

the other alternative is printing more money, in which case, you know, central bank liquidity increases and Bitcoin does really well. Completely agreed, Sean, this is what's got to happen. At some point, there's gonna be printing of money. But let's look at current trajectories. And I wanted I've been pointing this out for you. It's the 100 week movement average in Bitcoin is, is kind of in its steepest downtrend ever, like, okay, got it. It's a downtrend. You want to fight that good luck. And is there a good reason for that continue based on the fundamentals of liquidity? Yes,

the Fed is still taking got it, what's happening. And then now we haven't even seen the expunging of wealth. Now, to me, that's going to come it happens in all recessions. If you have an expunging of wealth, yes, eventually, the Federal Reserve government starts printing money. But here's the facts about printing money. Typically, it takes about two years when the Federal Reserve first starts adding liquidity, first start easing for the stock market to decline. Now, Bitcoin's a little different. We haven't seen these cycles in Bitcoin yet. But I agree with you, it's going to come. Maybe it's going to trade like more like gold. But this is the initial part where all correlations go to one when markets go lower. This issue right now is the stock market still up. Bitcoin's still up on here, but it looks like it's rolling over. It's just Bitcoin's the highest beta.

It's the fastest horse in the race. And if we're going to remove money from the system, which is what the Fed wants, Bitcoin's got to suffer. The time frame, that's the hard part. But here's what typically happens. You have to stop out those leveraged longs and like james mentioned the you know markets basically black back to where what you know when blackrock first came out with applying for an etf remember that hasn't been approved yet but what we saw there was to me one of the classic cases of a decent blow off top when i heard so much bullishness based on the hopium for an ETF. I thought, well, good luck with that one. And now we're seeing those people get

stopped out the bottom line is even what Rand said low liquid liquidation levels usually get liquidated, you got to take those people out. So anybody I've heard these people say for so long, I'm irresponsibly long Bitcoin, like, good luck. Just heard these things before you typically have to flush, cause pain. I just think the pain is just getting started. And then I do agree. And at some point, it's going to do what Amazon go to seven, maybe go up to 2000. But we're nowhere near that bridge, we have to cross the first few bridges of getting past this period, which I think could be a couple of years. Go ahead, Sean. Okay. Yeah, no. And look, I think I'm very pro-risk management.

That's a big part of what we do is advising our clients on how to manage positions in between those cycles that you mentioned. I guess from my perspective, it's just governments with a debt-to-GDP ratio where it is right now, 140% or what have you. You know, we're kind of back in the corner here. Either we have the episode of, you know, crazy disinflation and real economic growth, in which case, you know, I think Bitcoin benefits from that. We've seen historically Bitcoin has, you know, correlated quite well with PMIs. Or, you know, we have the opposite. We have whether it's a large credit event or just a deflationary spiral, a large recession,

in which case central banks are going to continue to do as they've done over the past decade or so and print money hand over fist so i think either way you know in one case you know you're investing in bitcoin as this you know quote unquote tech tech stock right it's not a tech stock we all know that but that's that's the one investment use case or in the latter case in the deflationary spinal case it's really just a hedge against you know monetary debasement so by the way guys just really quick we have about seven minutes until there's a likely

grayscale it came down a case against the sec it came down it's not it's not uh it didn't come out today but they were posted oh man yeah this is a part for the course, right, James? Yeah. Surprise, surprise. I just want to respond a little bit to what Sean said because let's not forget, I still think we're turning Japanese. What Sean pointed out is things I've heard for decades. I mean, literally decades. I was in a cover of Albany Times in 1994 pointing out the deficit. And here's a key correlation I want to point out that's a fact is if you're worried about those kind of things you should be buying u.s government treasury bonds and gold because u.s government by the way because it is a base currency and typically it's a deflationary situation and what you've been

saying oh bond vigil anything that has not worked ever yet in this country i've just seen it i mean i've heard it for decades so at some point it's going to. I completely agree Bitcoin fits in that bucket, but so does gold. And at some point when we get this debasement of the currency, which happened in 1933, and that's what really bottomed everything when we went off the gold standard, it'll come. But in the meantime, the key question you need to ask yourself is, what is the trigger it takes for the Fed, most notably the Fed, to really start printing money and throwing liquidity at the system. The bottom line, typically, almost always, it takes a lower stock market. So I'll just give

you a lot, like I gave you the last two examples, you had to have a pretty significant down stock market before the Fed really, to really get that liquidity pump since 2000. That was the decline from 2000 to 2002. And then the decline from 2007 to 2009. Fed's not going to pump liquidity until it makes until it's told to by the markets. And that's the lose lose here. The fact that equities been going up, rates have been going up, the feds kept tightening. That's part of the reason I think we're in this situation. Now that's I think for all risk assets as far

as one other thing I mentioned, if you're a fiduciary, the number one thing you should be focused on right now is riskless us government securities us government two notes giving you ten percent in two years five percent now is any portfolio that's not going that way i think it's good luck explaining that to your clients as a fiduciary it just hasn't happened we haven't had those levels in about 20 years that's what most bitcoin people don't get yet the competition for assets that don't provide any returns is overwhelming yeah i would love to get people's opinions here then on what this means for crypto from what they're looking at wrecked man we haven't had you on we've talked about getting

out here quite a few times what's your opinion on this move and what's happening with the market right now yeah scott thanks so much for having me on it's been a it's been a while that we've been trying to arrange something but it's really interesting from a technical perspective what's going on in the market um for a while now since early august we've been seeing a weekly bearish divergence under the hood of the price action in the rsi a solid green down trend or at least green on my chart a downtrend on the rsi and higher highs on the price action but i feel like that bearish divergence really just fed into the emerging pattern that was the pattern that was forming on price action and that's the double top and what's really interesting about this double top that's really clearly forming,

it's forming an N-shaped formation here, is that the double top price action is at the base of this double top. And that base is at around 25,900. So, you know, a few weeks ago, back in mid-June, when we reversed quite strongly from that region, from the same region. This time we might see some downside wicking below that key level but if we see a weekly candle close below there and flip that into a resistance then we might not actually reverse from here and one of the things about that situation is that we're seeing seller volume, but it's not actually reaching the seller volume

from previous reversals that we saw in early March, late March, even mid June. We're actually seeing about half of the seller volume. So that just indicates to us that seller exhaustion isn't just yet in. We're still maybe waiting on that seller volume to come in. Will we see some seller volume come in over the weekend technically the weekly close hasn't closed yet but we still need to see at least double that

sell sell side volume just to have a bit more evidence that seller exhaustion is coming in and at the moment this double top has been forming for a while we're seeing it play out and it's quite striking to me how quickly we've seen the second part of this double top form because for every double top it has two parts it forms the letter m so half of the double top is half of the n and half of the half so the first half took 90 days to form and the second part of this double top formed in 60 days. And this crashes evidence to how quickly we've just blasted through those levels. Because in the past few months where we were forming the first half of that double top, we just saw zigzagging price action in a downtrending channel,

just going down, respecting the supports, respecting the resistances but but just one question in terms of those resistance levels wrecked how do we break through them so quickly like again i'm not i don't understand technical analysis that well and so usually when someone says you know gareth gave us and other analysts said like you know we've got these different resistance levels and obviously it's not uncommon for these resistance levels to just be destroyed for various reasons but what would you make out of this is that just because it's a double top that means the resistance levels don't have that same impact or is it the lack of liquidity in the markets that's a good question mario i'm sure it's the lack of liquidity as well because if we look at

the volume when we were forming the first part of that double top, we had an inclining volume, we had high levels of whether that's by volume or sell side volume. So we saw a lot of reaction at the supports and reaction rejection at the resistances. But what we're seeing right now, and the second part of this double top is that we're seeing actually declining volume, we're seeing very low volume levels. And previously, in the first part of the double top, those volume levels were much higher. So we'd get a lot of, for instance, sell side volume. If the seller volume came in, the bears were quite strong and would be able to move price to the downside.

But what we're seeing in this part of the double top is that the bears aren't necessarily strong in the recent weeks. They weren't really strong to push price down. Correct. Really quick. I tend to agree with you, but there's also the argument with the same thing that there's no buyers, hence why there's less volume because it's easier to push through when there's no bid. Exactly. There is no buyer volume. It's predominantly been declining volume, but seller volume. And what we're now seeing is the breakout on seller volume, but that seller volume can still cascade quite a bit. The bulls are nowhere to be found. And just breaking through those supports so easily just shows to us, this isn't necessarily high seller volume compared to a few weeks ago. Right, including both 200MA. Exactly. Including the 200MA on the daily and weekly.

Scott, let me ask you a question then, Scott. What would you want to see for this to change? For that volume to come back, I'd love to get your thoughts and Benjamin's thoughts on this. What do we need to see for buyers to start coming back into the markets and volume to pick up, volatility to pick up on the upside. Well, listen, I mean, lower prices beget lower prices and higher prices beget higher prices. As silly as that sounds, you're going to need FOMO now at this point. And after a drop like this, I think that that's gone for quite a while. And I think we need a catalyst, like a BlackRock ETF approval might do it. But to be quite honest, at this point, I think a BlackRock ETF approval in the short term sends price back to $31,000 because that's what sent price from $25,000 to $31,000. And the way that this market operates

is when you heard that BlackRock was applying for an ETF in the minds of the participants, they basically price in the approval. And then when it doesn't happen for a few months, you see price sort of trickle back down and move right back. So I think that even the upside now after move this significant to the downside is probably right back where we were. But I think it's also really important to note that, as Ben has said over and over again, we're just in that part of the halving cycle where this is a whole lot of large ranging chop sideways before the hal having. Go ahead, Dave, I see you have your hand up. Yeah, I mean, people keep talking about this as if it's like some sort of market signal that is, you know, by millions of investors, etc. You know, the much more likely scenario here is that the coiled spring that we've talked about, and Scott, we've talked about this on

your show many times, when you have weeks of Bitcoin dropping to low and low volatility, that has consequences. And people talk about that the next move will be large, and you understand why. Now why? The why is the kindling, the dry tinder is people who are in the market, in the options market, start leaning on prices. There's not that much liquidity out there. And there is people start getting leveraged, they get get, you know, complacent about being leveraged, because as a relative to volatility, the leverage looks safe and safe and safe. And when what all it takes, and all it took, I mean, this was five minutes, literally five minutes of market activity, where the price on OKEx, which was the worst, did most of the liquidation.

If you look at Coinglass, I'll be talking about this in my weekly recap in detail. USDT spot on OKEx put in sell orders that either were dumb, i.e. too large for the market in a compressed period of time, unlikely, more likely were momentum ignition strategies, which is a classic manipulation strategy to take advantage of a market where you could have accumulated a balanced position of spot versus perpetuals, then sell the spot and then profit when your perpetual position makes you more money remember perpetuals are more liquid than spot so when you get spot led selling in a compressed period of time that drives the that you can break through the wall of whatever bids there are this is what happens and literally that's what happened it was an almost an immediate was a five minute reprice this is tail as old as time for crypto right dave so this is literally just

someone taking advantage of an opportunity to liquidate and start a cascade and make a whole ton of money and that's what we've seen over and over and over it's not that's right that's right but reading more into it yeah all i'm saying yes, it's a tale as old as time. Yes, it's something that, you know, as long as the market allows it to happen, it will continue to happen. And we have to understand that, you know, this is we're still in the same larger trading range. We're still in the sideways chop. And your charts this morning on your show where you showed in the halving cycles that this pretty much happens every time, because this sort of strategy can happen, is completely reasonable. I mean, look, for Mike, and I love Mike, right? But for Mike to be right, we need to see some action, some follow through

with the S&P, the NASDAQ, etc, etc, which I'm looking today and nothing. Now, is Bitcoin maybe the canary in the coal mine? Are we going to get a major crash in the fall? Maybe. But I don't think that you can link those two together. So I think sometimes I forgot who said it earlier. Sometimes the narrative gets formed after the price move. In this case, the narrative is some people made a shit ton of money by pushing the market down when it was vulnerable and don't be terribly surprised if they're also accumulating to do the same thing on the long side when there's a catalyst and aren't short just because we're low that's the game we that's the game we live in and ran

isn't funding really low right now funding now funding now is very negative the last time funding was very negative but yeah i i think you know i wasn't very bullish walking into the show but now that i'm hearing that everybody is so bearish i'm actually thinking i'm actually gonna go do some buying i may be like it just sounds like i bought yeah i mean i'm gonna start nibbling i'm not i'm not gonna go all in but i think it's probably worth starting to nibble because i know when people are this bearish this is what happens and i've also learned that in bearish times the media will exacerbate the bearish stories before benjamin i'm just gonna say like i don't know how you have the guts to do this right i could never go against

the market it's one of the hardest things to do i don't know it's a very risky thing could be a very smart thing i'm not going away even even nibbling like scott said is a scary benjamin what do you think yeah i mean so i was on this show two or three weeks ago and um you know everyone was very they're sort of the same stuff was said like everyone was super bearish and people were like all right well everyone's bearish that means it's going to go up and now bitcoin's down 12 and and altcoin some altcoins are putting in new lows, right? Sometimes people are bearish because there's a good reason to be bearish, right? The altcoin market, Bitcoin in general, right? They're not going to go into a sustained bull market until liquidity comes back in. And liquidity is not, like the Fed's not going to pivot when the S&P is at 4,300. If the S&P is at like 3,300, then yes, like the Fed, you know,

the Fed could pivot and they'll probably, they would probably pivot before that. But I don't really think, you know, the riskiest assets, which are cryptocurrencies more or less, they're not going to do well until liquidity comes back in. And I don't see it happening right now. It's not to say that there's not some swing trades, right, to be made, money to be made. I mean, if price goes down quickly, you can always bounce back in. And I don't see it happening right now. It's not it's not to say that there's not some swing trades, right to be made money to be made. I mean, if price goes down quickly, you can always bounce back up. But this is the phase of the cycle where where we see cryptocurrencies get wrecked. And by the way, I mean, in prior pre election years, we always get this correction in

the S&P. And and in 2019, the S&P put in new highs in Q4. And even in that case, Bitcoin still went down. So even in the case that the S&P goes up later on, that doesn't mean that Bitcoin is going to go up. And the reason is because Bitcoin, it's further up the risk curve. Cryptocurrencies are further up the risk curve. They're only going to do well once excess liquidity returns. So Benjamin, what would it take? So what happens if the ETF does does get approved do you think liquidity will come back into crypto no i mean the no i don't i mean i mean like you know scott right

if the etf gets approved like you could see some some renewed interest in bitcoin but that doesn't mean that all that money is necessarily coming from outside the system it could just be the same group of us us here just converting, people just converting their alts back to Bitcoin and the dominance going back up and just a rotation of capital. So I think you could see, if those narratives play out, right?

And if we do get a spot ETF approved, you could see more of a rotation of capital away from alts into Bitcoin. But I don't think it would necessarily reflect a lot of new money coming into the space at this phase of the cycle. I mean, the yield curve tells us the economy is sick. The Fed's not going to pivot until they have a sufficient reason to do so.

And I think they're going to I think they are going to go higher for longer for at least as long as they can to make sure that inflation doesn't just come back. And we get an inflationary decade like the 1970s. Ryan, my question to you is the same one I asked you yesterday or two days ago. Is the argument for the bull market, that we're in a raging bull market, would you say the bull market is dead or it's too early to make that statement? Come on. Two days of a chart breaking

information. It's breaking every resistance level that Gareth has given us over the last few weeks and a few months. It's two days, Mario. Come on, Mario. It's two days. So what do you need to see to say the bull market is dead? I need to see this pattern continuing for a sustained period of time.

If we stay at those levels, let's say we stay at those levels for a long period of time, would you… If we stay at these levels, I'm still claiming we're in a bull market. If we continue to go down and we start breaking more structures and stuff like that, then I may concede that maybe this was the bounce. But I'm still in the camp of a bull market. I'm also still in the camp that the economic data is out there. Everyone knows about it and everyone's trading accordingly. So I don't know.

I'm still bullish. But if we break a few more formations and if we stay down here for a long time, yeah, then maybe I'll change my thesis. Scott? I mean, as I said, Dave's here. You know, Dave, I don't know if you filled any bids because I think you said 24, 25 would be sort of the bottom of a move. But I did have bids sitting at 25,000, between 25 and 25,500 and a bunch of them filled. And when I set something, it doesn't really matter for me how it gets there. It just matters that it does. So I did fill, but it's not all in as Rand said. But my focus is very long-term. This isn't a trade. So if you ignore all of this and

just accept that it's probably noise and look at that four-year cycle, as I've said over and over again, I'm pretty confident in 18 months that 25,000 is a very good buying opportunity for Bitcoin. So for me, that's what matters. And 29, 25, 20, not that different if we're at 150. Maybe what we should do, as you did that on your show, Scott, 20, not that different if we're at 150. Maybe what we should do is you did that on your show, Scott, is ask every speaker if they had to guess what the bottom would be. And I bet it's very different now than it was on my show. Exactly. What was Mike's again? Like 11, 15K or something? No, Mike at that point, and then he joked today, which he did not make that joke, which I kind of giggled. He said, but I'm an optimist, right?

He said 15,000, so a double bottom, basically. And he believes, by the way, that stocks are going way, way lower, kind of Great Depression situation. So that is optimistic. That would be Bitcoin wildly actually outperforming the S&P in a scenario like that. I think he's talking about a 3,000 SPX, something like that uh and i said you know kind of 20 000 but i'd start nibbling at 25 james lavish said 19 500 dave you said 24 5 or something like that right yep so you see this is everyone saying like everyone's number seems to be very close to where we are uh where we are now so yeah and to me it doesn't matter how we got here so like i'm not going to pull bids because they're coming fast.

That's, you know, kind of trading stupidity. Let's get one more take here before we get the Benjamin, REC Capital, and James predicting their bottom if they have one. Christian, I want to get your thoughts on the move we saw yesterday and what has been discussed so far. Good to have you in. Hi, Mario. Thank you so much. I hope you can hear me.

We can. The audio isn't great. Is there anything you can do to improve it, or that's the best it can be? Yeah, I'll try and actually help you as you speak. And I had some trouble hearing some of the other speakers before because I need to use a VPN to connect to the space. Are you in Dubai?

Yeah, exactly. Cool. So, yeah, great insight so far. I think I would agree with the down level of around 20 at the moment. But then again, to be very honest, I hadn't seen this coming, and probably nobody did two days ago. It moving this fast and taking out so much out of the market in a short term period. So I'm not too sure what will happen in the coming days. I think in general, it will take quite a big hit still because there's a lot of people are scared to move into the crypto market in general with so much regulatory changes happening and things pending.

But the question I have is like, how could this be the biggest liquidation we've had since FTX? I don't get it. How could this be worse than when the SEC lawsuit against Coinbase and everything was considered a security

and all the other shit that's been happening over the last few months? Yeah, I wouldn't say I have a fixed answer for you there it's it's it's indeed uh strange to see that this is the biggest moment right now um i do think it has a little bit to do with you know the the amount of liquidity in the space the amount of people that are in the space in general it has been so quiet for the last few months

i lost him i don't know about yeah man we should go around for the yeah let's get the prediction i think it dropped out as well but uh dave james i think david gave us your number i think it's like 20k is that correct dave well i mean look if if obviously things could overshoot i mean my thought when we were trading at 29 was that we'd probably see between 24 and 25. We're here now or we did. We got more or less close to it yesterday. I still think that's sort of where the clearing price is. Can we overshoot? Of course, we can overshoot.

The fact is, is I have two words for you to give you some hope. go back and watch what happened in the during the the decade of the 30s uh with the only asset because americans weren't allowed to own gold uh the only asset that people could own reasonably to represent some form of sound money and if in fact mike mcglone is right and we are going to go into a severe severe recession and the government won't be able to pump up markets um i'm not sure i agree i do think that there's's clearly a possibility of a correction. I think Bitcoin is this generation's home stake mining for a lot of reasons. So I am bullish just like Scott is in the long term. And I think these are squiggles.

And I certainly am not going to get my blood pressure to rise because I'm not leveraged and I refuse. I think using leverage on 80 or plus of all asset is insane. If you're a long-term investor. I think that the reality is I don't necessarily care if I think it's going to be much higher or longer for a lot of reasons, and that's a different conversation. Yeah. James? You're talking to me, James.

I am. Sounds to me going a bit funny. Yeah, I think it's dropping off i saw ryan it's quite even dropped out just a few seconds ago while they were speaking but it should be good now let's give it a shot yeah my thoughts are that you know 20 to 25 i actually i'm on the other end speaking to institutional clients and there's quite a lot of appetite at this point a lot of them recognize that the fed is backing off now so it's more from a macro perspective they're looking at things we've seen a massive unwind short positions and from the funds fund flows that's probably quite badly timed by those investors but i don't think there's a huge amount of pressure we've seen

probably most of the bad news priced now um so it just seems it just seems hard to be bearish i just don't see like the everyone's numbers and including uh panelists that we've had that are bearish the numbers are not much lower than where we are today and then the amount of news we've had from paypal to the etf to the regulatory clarity and all the big guys coming into the ecosystem, it just seems hard to fathom that we'll see a double bottom, what Mike McClure mentioned earlier, it was 15K, whatever it was. So it's just that the upside potential is so high and the downside risk is low based on every panelist.

So again, I'm a horrible trader for anyone listening, and we'll talk about Rand's trading course in a second but i'm genuinely a very very bad trader but just trying to connect the dots listening to everybody yeah i mean my view is from a macro perspective that it's going to get worse economically in the u.s and that's going to be seen as a Fed error basically and that will be supportive for Bitcoin. That will be what for Bitcoin do you say? Supportive because any

Fed error, you know, Bitcoin is a hedge against monetary policy. That will be a long term support of the short term Bitcoin will probably get hurt. Yeah, it's possible that. I'm a hodler yeah you noticed that the correlation between bitcoin and nasdaq was was nothing on the way up and on the way down all of a sudden bitcoin started to find its correlation with the nasdaq it just shows that risk assets you measure

their correlations on the way down you can ignore the correlations on the way up. So I think I have a slightly different view, Mario, than a lot of the other people that are bearish. I think worst case, you could actually see Bitcoin trade around the 2019 highs. So around $13K to $14K. I think that's the worst case scenario, in my view. So I think the reason why a lot of people say like $25K or or 24K is because Bitcoin has been so bullish for the entire year. A lot of people kind of forget that when a downtrend starts, it can last a lot longer than they think it can. When price is going up, people can never imagine it going back down. And then when it goes down, people can never imagine it going back up. So I think there is a real risk to either a double bottom or a slightly lower low.

2015 was a double bottom. 2020 was a higher low. We could have a cycle with a lower low if we go into a longer recession than when we got back in 2020. So I would say worst case is 13 to 14k, which happens to correspond to the 2019 all-time high or the 2019 yearly high and then so so in your in your opinion benjamin so last question i have for you is um so your prediction is 13 14k as i'm guessing is a worst case scenario but what are some factors you're looking at where you you think it will will will will um you think will make it more likely that will hit those levels and then what is the likelihood will hit higher levels like a low of i can say 20k instead of 13 14 yeah i mean i'd like to see i mean i'd like to see the un-inversion of the yield curve i'd like to see liquidity come

back to the system you know if all that happens and and you know bitcoin has has you know had this capitulation event and it's starting to move back higher the closer we get to the having and if perhaps we're on the other side of the unemployment rate, moving higher than Yeah, like, then I might be willing to pivot and say, Alright, well, the worst case scenario is not going to play out. But the truth is that a lot of us here, including and especially myself, have never actually experienced a full business cycle, because we've just been in QE for the last decade. And there really is a risk here of, you know, the unemployment rate starting to rise, maybe late this year, early next year.

And that's when the Fed will pivot. So at some point, or probably next year, they'll pivot, but at some point, we'll get a pivot. And whatever happens, I mean, the stock market usually drops after the pivot, right? And that's what history shows us. So on the other side of that, wherever Bitcoin is, if it's a higher low, then so be it, then the worst case scenario doesn't have to play out. But it all depends on how long is the Fed willing to remain this aggressive. And again, the reason they're remaining more aggressive this business cycle than any business cycle we've seen in the last 40 years is because we have high inflation. And so that's the risk that I think a lot of people don't consider as much is that,

yeah, they're not going to pivot as soon as you think with core CPI at 4% to 5%. So that's the worst case scenario. That's just if they tighten for too long. Cool. Well, guys, on this point, I think it's a good time to talk about the price action and trying to predict what's going to happen next, Ryan, tell us about the trading course that you have. I think it's a good time to talk about how... It's not my trading course. It's not my trading course. But I mean, if this has all been like technical jargon for you guys

and you want to learn to trade in a very simple way, Sheldon... Oh, Sheldon, yeah, yeah. The sniper guy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we call him a sniper. He's hosting a cohort specifically for Crypto Town Hall. There's a link

in the tweet above. It's a cohort that myself, Mario, and Scott are going to attend. We're going to try and teach Mario how to trade at the same time. You can learn how to trade.

The course is free. There's no money. You don't have to pay anything. Everyone's free. But there are limited spaces. So we're going to take in 2,500 people from Crypto Town Hall on a first-come, first-served basis. It's going to be fun. I mean, it's fun.

It teaches you how to trade. There's no cost involved. You're not risking any money. You're not paying anything, nothing like that. It's a three-week course. You probably need about an hour to an hour and a half a week. I came out a much, much,

much better trader having done that. I've read a lot of testimonials of people that say it's changed their lives. It's really, really, really worth doing, I must say. And again, it's free, so just join in. But there are only 2,500 spots available for Crypto Town Hall because we are running a parallel cohort

and our system can only handle 8,000 people at a time. And the other cohorts already got 5,500. So there's 2,500 spaces for Crypto Town Hall people. And I mean, join us. It's going to be fun. And I guess you've got nothing to lose except maybe an hour a week. Cool. Yeah.

So that one triggered Ryan to do it is I was just making fun of myself a few days ago about being a horrible trader. And Ryan, so he's talked about this course before, Sheldon's course before. And then he came up with the idea of doing one where he tries to turn me into a good trader. What we should do, Ran, we should get people to start betting if I'd be a good trader or not. I'm betting on not, by the way. You know, I mean, let's put this whole thing aside. So when I met Sheldon, Sheldon had, he had just, you know, he had $400 in his pocket.

He had just lost his dad. Today he's a multimillionaire and he's done this through his trading. And he's one guy that I've met a lot of traders in my life and I've worked with a lot of traders in my life. Sheldon has a gift of keeping it very, very simple. Like he's the simplest trader that I know. And it's simple and effective. He's results he's got testimonials so it's a case of like you got nothing to lose try you don't want to do it drop out but I mean just try it I think it's a great do you know that uh while while I'm there do you know that I'm a very anti-trading

like the concept of trading is something I'm I think learning how to trade is good it's a good skill set to have especially in illiquid markets within crypto you know nfts and and meme coins and stuff it could work until it becomes liquid and it's too competitive um so first i'm a bad trader second i think it's just you know i know a lot of people that made a lot of money trading but also i know a lot of people that lost money the more illiquid the market the more trading um would make sense i don't goes against what a lot of people say, but for the one reason I say that is because I think when it gets too liquid, you're just competing with much bigger guys

with much bigger teams. When it's illiquid, you're comparing. Forget about the trading. Forget about the trading because I also don't have time to trade. There are people that trade in and out of stuff all the time. Forget about that.

What the course taught me, which was unique, was how to understand the emotion of the market. And based on that to decide whether I'm part of the emotion or I'm being smart. And that's the thing that I learned very, very, very simply. And since I've done that, I've got a lot less FOMO. And I don't rush into buy things. I don't rush into buy things and I sell things much sooner because what the whole thing about what the course taught me is how to chart the emotion and understand. And now often when I'm about to buy something, I always say to myself, no, you're actually being part of the emotion in the market. And then I step

back and usually I don't take the trade. Now if it's called the trading course, but I actually trade a lot less since I started trading it because I realized now that the thing that's forcing me to trade is my emotion of FOMO or fear. And what this course taught me was very simply to understand which part of the cycle.

Did the course... And as I said, I take less trades. Did the course tell you not to buy a damn pillow that vibrates every time there's a fucking drop in the market? But Bybit sent it to me, and I'm actually going to send you one as well so that you can experience it. Yeah, I won't be using that pillow to sleep. But we'll go to the other sponsor.

Bybit is the other sponsor of the show. So there's two pinned tweets above. If you want to join the trading course by Sheldon, I'm going to give it a shot as the trading skeptic um and see what happens to me and we might be do a betting pool if i'll be a good trader after or not again my genuine bed bet will be that no i will not be a good trader after that um because i'm just really shit but i think i learned a few things so check it out it's a course above it's a free course and you know i'm not making anything off it i think around is the same i don't know but i'm not making anything off it but if you want to check it out um you could do so and i know sheldon sheldon's a great guy um the other sponsor think Rand is the same. I don't know. But I'm not making anything off it. But if you want to check it out, you could do so. And I know Sheldon. Sheldon's a great guy. The other sponsor, or this is the only sponsor, the course is not sponsoring,

but Bybit is a sponsor of the show, and there's an $8 million prize pool. Actually, it's really interesting. There's a trading competition by Bybit for to win $8 million. So what you could do is go to Sheldon's trading course, learn how to trade, then go to the other pinned tweet, go to Bybit, click on the link, join the trading team, and then win the reward that our team hopefully wins. We're playing with banter, Rand's team. Not so fast.

No? Not so fast. The Bybit trading competition, if you don't register in the next two days, because the trading competition ends on the 27th of August. And if you don't, you've got until the 20th of August to register. And then you've got to complete your trading by the 27th. And then the team with the highest P&L across their top 10 traders is the winning team.

And I think earlier on today when I looked at the banter team, we were coming 11th. You can join any team you want. I mean, we obviously should join the banter team. But, I mean, it's fun. It's fun. And you don't need to put a lot of money into your account. Do you put real money into the account? Yeah, you have to.

I think the balance is $300 or $500 in the account in order to enter. And obviously, you're trading real money to trade. Cool. And if you can't reach the $300 amount to be able to put it in, Ran is giving away free grants

for anyone who wants to join. So just DM Ran and he'll give you a free grant to join at $300 a year, Ran. Sure thing. Alright, bro. We're going to jump off.

Really appreciate it. There's an ugly red icon on the panel. This is the logo of the Crypto Town Hall. Click on it. Follow it because we're going to start hosting. This is the logo of the Crypto Town Hall. Click on it. Follow it because we're going to start hosting shows from there. And also massive shout-outs.

Actually, look at my account. I'm going to retweet something. Let me retweet it now. Romeo, retweet the killer whales thing. Ryan, I'm not sure if you're retweeting them as well. They're posting images. That's the reality show where me and Ryan were on. I'm going to retweet another one now.

Just check it out. They're going to come out in a few weeks now. Oh, wow. Is it a few? I thought it was like late October. Isn't that a few weeks away? What are we now? A few weeks is not like two, three.

I mean like five, six, seven, no? Okay. Isn't it? Okay, fantastic. I'm very excited to see it. I'm very excited to see it because, you know, we only saw it on the one side of the camera. I really want to see how it translated on the other side of the camera yeah you were a

complete asshole i already talked to the to the camera people and they said man that ran guys just not not what we expected so uh yeah they said they're not inviting mario my invite must have got lost in the mail he's been cropped out of mario's been cropped out of season one as well. I've just retweeted an image from there. If you want to check it out, everyone. But otherwise, check the pinned tweets and Scott's here. Your invite was lost in the mail.

They sent it to my address by accident, so I'm there. Weird how that happened. Benjamin, it's a pleasure to have you, man. And hopefully next time we have you, we'll be a bit more bullish. But it seems the discussion we had a few weeks ago seems to be materializing and we're down significantly since then um and what's your um actually you already told us what your prediction is so i'm not gonna ask for it again guys thank you so much for a bleak space today um and hopefully we'll have a more positive space on monday we will do it if there's any

breaking news of the market dumps or pumps on the weekend and we'll be covering it apologies for being late on this one we just needed to sleep all right cool thanks everyone see you next time