The Wolf Of All Streets - Crypto Crashing vs Gold, Is THIS Capitulation? #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

In this Crypto Town Hall episode, host Scott and panelists discuss sharp market volatility as Bitcoin dips to ~$84K, gold and silver experience wild swings (including massive intraday moves and liquidations), and broader assets sell off amid macro uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, and precious metals speculation. The group debates whether crypto is in capitulation or awaiting a catalyst (Clarity Act progress, stablecoin adoption, central bank moves), why metals are outperforming right now, the risks of leverage, long-term rotation potential back to Bitcoin, and the enduring value of dollar-cost averaging through choppy times.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall every weekday here at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Spaces. I assume you guys can hear me. Carlos giving me the heart. I'm trying this on my desktop computer instead of phone for the first time because the phone quite literally never works. Every time I try to get on stage, it rugs. And so I'm going to be honest. The real reason is because I've wanted to delete all social media from my phone and X is the last thing. And if I can do it from a computer, I no longer have to ever look at social media. I think it's a pretty good move, to be honest. So I guess you guys can hear me. We hear you. In fact, you sound better than ever before. Yeah, I'm sure I do because I'm not using AirPods from 1994. I don't think they made those in 1994. But yeah, I was using AirPods always really janky.

My producer said it was crap. Now I'm using my proper podcasting microphone. So at the end of an era. I will no longer have social media on my phone ever again. So I don't have to worry about the things that people are saying. I'll take the other side of that. you start traveling again, but, you know, we'll see. Yeah, can we set up a, can we set a bet on that, man?

I give you two months, bro, two months. You can ask anyone who knows me well or my wife that I am like the most stubborn, committed to human being when it comes to something like that, like one random day in July this year, I was like, I don't think I'm ever going to drink again. I haven't sipped alcohol in seven months. That's, yeah, if I quit, I quit. So we'll see. There was a time when I actually had no phone, had spaces on another phone, but that phone broke.

I can't have to happen. Anyways, nobody wants to talk about this. I'm just glad it sounds good. And then it's working that I haven't gotten rugged yet. But here we have, Dave, we have crypto crashing versus gold. Is this capitulation? But then I checked and everything's crashing. Yeah, well, absolutely.

I got up to make myself, to make myself tea. And then all the time, like, did we invade or something? I mean, I was just curious because, you know, it looks like everything is gone. It's to 50-280. Now it's climbing again back in the, So it looks like this, I mean, but stocks down, gold, gold, down silver, definitely down, Bitcoin down bad.

Poor little Bitcoin. Guy can't catch a break. I mean, it's funny. Everyone wants volatility when they're trading, but when it happens, people like it get freaked. But it is, I mean, versus gold, Bitcoin certainly looks like. The chart looks really ugly, but of course it always does, right? Meanwhile, we have gotten all the way down to the bottom,

pretty close to the bottom of the recent range. And if it breaks through here, then who the hell knows? But my guess is just like when, when I forgot who it was on this show when they were saying they were going to short at 94, 95, and it was like, yeah, that's probably going to, we work out to be a good trade. I think buying at 84, 85 is probably a good trade

until proven otherwise. Now, if there's a war, I mean, you know, whatever. I guess we'll see. So we got a bunch of people. What are all your thoughts? Do we start putting you on the spot? Anybody want to volunteer? Brian?

It's a fun. Oh, well, hey. Good morning, Scott. Hey, can you hear me? Sorry, this is Brian. I can share some thoughts. So, I mean, I just see so many different reasons for people, you know, wondering why all these other asset classes are at all-time highs and Bitcoin continues

to struggle, whether people talking about Bitcoin OG. selling, four-year cycle fears, quantum fears, Bitcoin viewed as a risky risk asset, pressur's metals stealing the show, central bank gold buying and not BTC buying, metals moving first, lasting impacts of 10-10, all these other things. My view is kind of there's less fundamentals for Bitcoin, at least, you know, not really those that you can throw in any sort of discounted cash flow model. And alt-coin applications are so nascent versus what they may ultimately become. that they really trade more based on sentiment, which is obviously low now.

The good news is this can change on a dime and can really start to pick up in a big way. I kind of think we might need some sort of catalysts. I don't know if that is clarity passing or central bank buying Bitcoin or maybe it's as simple as somehow getting Bitcoin to rally 20%, which will catalyze FOMO. But I do think we need some sort of catalysts, and then we could be off to the races. Yeah, Carlis. Good morning, by the way. Good morning. Yeah, it's fun watching all this constant groundhog day of chop. For a short time, Silver flipped Solana, which was not on my bingo card for 2026, but here we are at the smelting show.

Look, we have some things that are happening. The Senate is supposed to be voting on the Clarity Act, although I don't know how. that's going to get unstuck from the mud and has summoned major sector players in crypto Coinbase Circle to the White House to talk with banks. I think to probably, if I had to guess, tell the banks, you need to accept that digital dollars are the future and get this thing over the goal line. So if we can avoid a shutdown and maybe we can get a little bit of progress on the conversation on clarity. Maybe we can get things jump started again. Peter is taking his victory lap on every show talking about the dollar is done and gold is the new standard. We know that that's happened many times in history and never actually worked out. So I don't see Fiat being gold-backed

anytime soon. And of course, he loves to also call for the demise of Bitcoin, which I think is greatly exaggerated. But here we are. What are we smelting today, copper? Well, I mean, it's, it's just, yeah, we're just, just smelting, baby. I mean, as, as Ian pointed out yesterday, you know, the, the trading, the speculation in precious metals is now, you know, embedded within, you know, crypto derivatives as well as contract for differences, etc. So it's not even, it's no, I mean, there's a direct, you know, correlation to, you know, it being the old season style stuff. So there's a lot going on. Anyway, I saw Jason's hand up and then Adams.

Yeah. Funny enough, I actually, you know, bought my first non, you know, physical coin medal last week on chain. And I was super surprised at like the lack of liquidity there. And I think that if we see a little bit, a little bit of a deeper order book across the board, whether it's, you know, on Solana Injective, you know, main net, whatever it might be, like that will, I think, open up a lot more reflowing dollars between our traditional, you know, crypto assets like Bitcoin, Eif, the other majors, and metals. And I actually think that, like, we're trying to move too fast to begin with.

And what I mean by that is, you know, I think that people, everyone, what's been said the last five minutes is all right, I think, is in that, you know, Fiat is on its way out. There's no trust in governments anymore. Even the best of our governments, like, are doing things that, you know, are, I don't want to say diabolical, but like, you know, like, real conundrums, given who their supporters have been to date, you know, especially with this ice stuff in America right now is, like, you know, really surprising. And I will say that, like, I think that eventually everything does lead back to Bitcoin and other digital assets. But, you know, this kind of volatility in the market could absolutely, you know, trigger like, I'd call it like a three-prong rotation. So in my view, it's like, you know, what are people comfortable with, you know, before Bitcoin? Well, let's go back to basics and, you know, metals, gold, you know, stones, things like that. When I say stones, I mean like diamonds, rubies, gems, emeralds, et cetera.

Let's bring back seashells. Definitely sea shells, right? Easter Island. Well, there's so many seashells. Everything's about scarcity, right? So rare earth metals, that's why, you know, on a per ounce per gram basis are so much more expensive because they're not found as much in nature. And there's like a much more deeply finite amount than, you know, gold, silver, copy, you know, anything else.

I'd have to do the full research. But my point is, I want to wrap this up, sorry for the prostration. is that, you know, I think that more people are going to get more fearful of, or excuse me, more people are going to lose faith in their governments and look for like happiness and happiness being security, right? So I think that there's going to be a rotation into metals first, and then once, you know, the world is able to do its research over, you know, many decades on the true finite amount of, you know, natural resources, metals, et cetera, you know, stones, use gems, shells, then we'll get back into the thing that's ultimately scarce, which is Bitcoin,

you know? And so I think that, like, having more digital asset markets, especially permissionless ones for metals would be great. Everyone here knows my history with leverage. So I'll say this. I really, really, really think that leverage is not a good thing, 99.7% of the time. However, I think that perps on chain for metals would be far more interesting and like a potentially good thing, given the other options out there, then leverage on traditional, you know, stocks, assets, you know, coins. So I'd love to see more of that.

I think that that might give people with smaller dollar values to actually invest an ability to. to, you know, or sorry, like further tools to like diversify themselves away from Fiat and it'll be enticing. Like, you know, I would have loved to have, you know, five X perps on, on silver. Like, I didn't put much into silver, but like it was the first time and it was a major move for me, you know, and I'm happy with it. You're not the first person even today to tell me that they had a clunky experience with digital. Oh, I mean, I missed the main movie. I just to be clear. Yeah, I'd keep Grossman on my show this morning, the president of Moon pay and he said that he just wanted to kind of test out liquidity and see it had a similar experience

to you he wouldn't tell me what platform but i think you bought you know copper futures on chain which by the way doubled in four days interesting that's great but but he also kind of uh had the impression that although it's a great conversation it's not ready for prime time and you definitely weren't going to be not really moving any size just the tokenized metal contracts right now like it's very clunky and it's not kind of ready. I'm not talking about for like, you know, like serious, serious moves. But if you have people that are like, you know, buying one to $10,000 up to, you know, 100K worth, like there's a lot more of those people than huge whales, right?

And they're the ones that have typically been the first to just think about, you know, 80 years ago in Europe and the U.S. Like people, you know, the kind of the middle range of people, you know, the kind of the middle class plus and minus three. are the ones that are like the first to move into the alternatives, you know, when they have the ability to do so. I mean, that's my view of it. Yeah.

And that's backed up by what, yeah, go ahead, Dave. I was just going to say it's just backed up by what's going on outside the U.S., right? You know, they're in. So scary. In Europe, Asia, and Amia, you got, you have enormous contracts for differences markets that have spreads that are wider, the market makers that are in those, those businesses, believe it or not, are the city. of the world. I mean, and so what are differences markets?

Contracts for differences. It's just it's it's it's effectively it's leverage trading. It started with with FX, but it's moved into metals and it's been a huge reason, a driver behind the volatility and the gold and silver moves. So the fact that it's moving to on chain to perps, which will be tighter spreads, uh, faster, quicker, you know, a bunch of different, you know, it's, it's probably a slightly better mousetrap and it's getting into it. But, you know, it's just it's broadening. That's all I'm saying. Anyway, there were a bunch of hands. I saw Adam and then I think Panos was that quickly. Before everyone jumps in, I just want to make a point. And then Adam and Panos, I just looked and today's gold candle, it has a 9% spread on gold.

I just think that's amazing. That's amazing. On the bottom is a 9% difference on gold. Silver is down 6% now. It was up before. I mean, it's like, yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, silver's moved at least, I think their candles, at least a 12% candles. These are not supposed to trade like pump fun meme coins. I just love how everything becomes this, this like hyper-final, like, we're rolling back into like, how do I do perps on fucking copper? It's like, it's so crazy, man. We've been talking about some frozen orange juice contracts.

Adam, anyone who believes, and you and I have both said this, who believes that that crypto is the only place where the D-Gens are hanging out. bro you are you are just sadly mistaken sadly mistaken actually my i wanted to chat with carlo for a second about um you know fidelity yesterday with their um you know stable coin uh launching on aetherium which or they're going to launch it on ethereum i thought that was really interesting news i don't know if you guys you guys probably already touched on it but i wanted to hear carlo's kind of take on that and you know we talk about you know hey is anybody going to fucking use ethereum and here it is. Yeah, Carla, I just wanted your take on that.

Yeah, I saw that announcement yesterday, and I'm not surprised because digital dollars are going to be the backbone of everything that happens in finance, I think, because it'll be the easiest off-ramp. And banks are slowly starting to understand that, and so are the big finance houses. Ethereum as the chain of choice, I think, is, I think it's the comfortable move because Ethereum has a, long battle tested history as a chain. I don't think it necessarily has an advantage in any way, shape, or form as being the foundation for stable coin movement. But it is the one I think traditional finance is most comfortable with. So I'm not surprised that they chose Ethereum as their chain. I just think I commented on this yesterday. I think we'll see a lot of stable coins built on Ethereum and a lot of other chains because essentially,

they are just the delivery mechanism for a stable digital dollar. So it is not necessarily a smart contract execution advantage that you get with Ethereum in this. I think it's just the IBM of crypto and the big finance folks are most comfortable with it. At least that's my quick take on it. I mean, it's funny you just betrayed how old you are and me that you said the IBM of crypto because if she had said, you know, the NVIDIA of crypto, that'd be, you know, different. It's just funny. But your point is well taken in terms of that's the way that people go at it.

But remember, once you set your stable coin, there is nothing that's going to stop you from moving to chains that are faster and cheaper to use if Ethereum gets too expensive or if other things happen. I mean, these things are going to be mobile. Anyway, sorry, I forgot. I think it was Panos was next. then Adam. Yeah, GM, GM guys. Just to go back to the whole metals conversation, it's quite funny because there are, there's so many jewelers right now that are like literally melting down jewelry and even watches because they're getting more money for the scrap than actually selling, like especially APs. There's a couple AP models that.

that jewelers are literally just melting down. They're removing the diamonds, selling the diamonds, and then melting down the gold because they're getting more money than the actual watch. And then at the same time, and I'm a huge proponent of metals. I think holding physical gold and silver and other metals is a very necessary long-term play for people.

I think everyone should have physical metals as part of their portfolio. But looking at these prices, and I actually think that it's going to go higher but then when I see Binance or now and other exchanges are listing and you can trade metals with crypto. Jewelers are melting down watches and jewelry to get more money for scrap. And then at the same time, I'm in the gym, in the sauna and there's conversations being had

with people having conversations talking about leverage trading gold and silver. Kind of feels a little bit toppy to me, even though I'm boosting. Kind of, bro. These are clear fucking top signals, bro. Flashing red lights, bro. Sell it all today, brother. Sell it all today. But the big question is, okay, let's say, like I said, I do think you might go a little bit higher.

Could go considerably higher depending on what happens in the world. Like, there's so much shit going on. But the question is, is the, because everyone's like, oh, they're going to rotate into crypto. Like, are they? Like, the big question is where is that money going to rotate when they're, there finally is a rotation. Do you guys actually think it's going to come into crypto at this moment? Like they're saying the next six months with the state of the US with the tariffs, potential war with Iran, like all these things looming. Do you think that risk on assets are going to take in that

rotation? I think you need to touch on that briefly, panels, if I could, Dave, because I think when people start to see the exit from these metals, where, you know, where that top comes in and they realize how difficult it is to get out in the spot market and that they're having to sell at a discount and that it's difficult to move this stuff, it's difficult to custody this stuff, it's difficult to borrow against it. I think inevitably people will wake up to what Bitcoin really presents as a true commodity that is easy and very hyper liquid to get in and out of. Right now it's the default setting to look at these precious metals,

as the antidote to the dollars continued collapse, but I don't think long term that's sustainable. I mean, you have to take the time component into account. And we always do this. It's like the first day you hear people talking about whatever, it doesn't matter, internet stocks or Bitcoin or Dogecoin is not the day that it is the top. The top is after some period of time of this happening

when the rally, gets exhausted and it ends. Now, metals have been gone on an enormous tear. And today, I mean, this kind of volatility often is what the top looks like. There's no question about that, or at least an intermediate top. I personally think that you're going to get a lot of volatility, a lot moving around here. You could even see a cooling off period. But I don't think the story is over because we're still printing ridiculous amounts of money. And unless political dysfunction ends and the world changes and they stop going deeper and deeper into debt, you're going to see all assets in fiat terms go higher. And that's a big problem. And people need to understand that. And Bitcoin

will be a huge beneficiary of this in time. But time matters, right? You know, it's still early in, you know, given what happened in 1010. Today, there could be, we have no idea. But when you see this kind of volatility, the number, if we had data on how many people, being liquidated in leverage gold and leverage silver positions, I bet you those numbers are astronomical because what we're seeing today is like 1010 style moves in markets that are just way the hell bigger. So anyway, Panos. I have a question. I'm in my 30, so I'm a little bit young to remember this. I mean, I wasn't even born, but someone else. Nobody cares, buddy. Nobody cares about how young you are. So in 1979, Silver,

rallied like over 400% in a year. Why was that? What happened in 1979 for silver to rally that much? Well, the biggest thing was the Hunt brothers, which they were cornering the market. And effectively, it was paper silver in reverse. So people have talked about paper silver. What they did was it was impossible to get at it. And so they literally cornered the market by effectively driving and creating a massive short squeeze. And that set the silver market back decades. There wasn't. any increase or change in demand. Remember, the 70s were when the fiat era started. So if you look at what gold did in the 70s, I mean, gold was literally, you know, literally the gold window to Fiat was closed. And so it started to freely float and it went from, it was pegged at 35 or whatever

it was and then all of a sudden, boom. And, you know, we know what happens. It's happened since then, obviously where it is today, et cetera. But the 70s also had Volker was appointed by Jimmy Carter, and he was just getting started. And so you had a lot of cross-currents. That's where I remember double-digit interest rates. Interest rates got up to be over 15%, right? Inflation was running double digits.

There were tons of things going on. The stock market was a disaster, right? So there was many things that were happening. None of those are, well, not none, but there's not a whole lot that's similar to today. That's what I was going to ask. Is there any relevance to that today? Like, could we see silver go to a 400% in a year? Chartists who only deranged chartists look at it as similar to today.

I mean, look, silver is, and in the 70s, in that decade, silver to gold, the ratio between the two, average, the average of the decade was around 35. Okay. In the Earth's crust, the average, the ratio is around 19 or 20. But with financialization, which is what took off in the 70s through the 80s into the 90s and has continued up until now. And as a large reason why Bitcoin exists, gold got to over 120 versus silver, because gold demonetized silver effectively. So a lot of the people who are buying silver today believe that it will outperform gold, not necessarily that they will both go up to the moon, but that's silver will outperform gold for this reason, that we will revert back towards where it was

before the financialization era ended. And so there's a lot of crop currents. Taking the account that there's gonna be a massive demand for it as a commodity, especially as we continue to see more in the way of solar. Elon's doubling down on solar, he's doubling down on robots, AI, this all demands massive amounts of silver. factor into where the price goes because it actually, as opposed to gold, has uses.

Well, yeah. And by the way, for those who play along at home, we are right around the bottom of the recent trading range at $84,000 now in Bitcoin. So, you know, lots of fear out there. I haven't looked. What's the fear and greed? It's got to be at extreme. Oh, it's only a regular fear. What is in? What did you say? What was that? It wasn't me. I think he's asked you if you thought the bottom was in, but I think you're just putting out. It was a joke. It was a joke. I think not, yes. I think we're going to the range and see it and see another retest. But, you know, whatever. As I said, I'm not, I'm not actively trading. So if I'm not actively trading, I'm not going to do it. You put a gun to my head. I'd say DCAing in here is probably going to pay off. But, you know, but I would DCA. I wouldn't be trying to pick a price. Right. And Gary, you said probably not.

Where do you think the bottom is? Well, I just bought below 87. Yeah. But I think we go lower. I agree with the gentleman Pennoss. I think it was. I don't see, look, you have to have money coming into Bitcoin, and Bitcoiners are broke. They're done, exhausted, completely smashed.

This is new money. This is going to be six months. I think we're in a bear. Like, we're just going to be in a weak cycle here. Why would people rotate into Bitcoin right now? They don't understand it. The new money needs to come into it. I'm just trying to be realistic.

I mean, opium is not a way to get rich. So this looks weak as shit to me. You know, problem is positions are so large at this point. I mean, selling it here, you know, I've just not been good at getting in and getting out and playing around. I think you just got a whole lot. For me, my strategy is to hold on. I think we go into the 70s, though. I don't see any reason why.

Like, I would love for someone to tell me why this is going to bounce at 84 and go to 92. I don't see it, man. Most certainly ain't going to punch through 100, which it has to do. It has to punch over 98, and I just don't see that happening. If it sits around 87, 88, it's going to go lower, right? So this is what markets do. If it's not strong, it's going to be weak. Anybody, anybody want to challenge that?

I just don't see in the next three or four months how we get out of these 80s and 70s. I don't see that. So the question is, Gary, then, why did you buy? Why don't you just wait? Well, because I executed this two days ago. I put a bid in two or three days ago. And I bought 0.3 Bitcoin. It's not like I'm going to die.

And I am accumulating. My goal is to accumulate another 500 Bitcoin. So I can't just sit here and go, well. This space was downloaded via spacesdown.com. Visit to download your spaces today. I'm going to wait for the bottom because when the bottom comes, I'm terrified. And you also won't have enough money to buy 500 Bitcoin at once when the bottom comes. Correct, correct.

Correct. Thank you, Scott. Like, I don't know. Like, I can't pick the bottoms and I can't pick the tops. I'm not good at that. I don't know anyone that is, but I'm not. And I'm not smarter enough to trade in and out of all these equities and short stocks. I mean, I've done really well just being focused and having a plan.

I think the plan has to be for four years. I can't, you know, get all micro every 12 hours. I mean, this market is impossible for anyone to understand at this point. Like, we have to appreciate, we're in uncharted territory here. Gary, I don't make my own decisions. As you know, at this point, I just run the arch public algorithms, but I can tell you that I'm going to be buying a hell of a lot of Bitcoin in about two hours and 13 minutes and have been buying on every single dip because it's, you know, algorithmically programmed.

I've been adding, adding, adding, and I don't really care where the bottom is because I'll be buying that too. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think that's, to me, that's the right strategy for Bitcoin is how much do you want to acquire over what period of time? And you stack it, pack it, protect it, and you wait four years. And because I can't, I just can't do all this micro stuff. I will go blind. And I'll lose money doing it. Does anybody, can anybody give me a bullish case for Bitcoin at 85 grand right now?

I mean, beyond just, I only think it's going much lower if everything else goes much lower. So I think we'll have to see what happens. But, you know, I'm with you on 80s forever. And I said that to you, I mean, when it was 126. Then we'd have a long choppy period and we would eventually get down here. So I'm not expecting any major catalyst. I don't even think, A, I think clarity's dead on arrival, but I don't even think it's a catalyst if it does pass because the expectation for

so long was that it was going to pass. So, and I also don't see why someone who's buying silver right now is naturally going to rotate into Bitcoin like people seem to think. I don't think it's the, yeah, see, I don't see that at all, dude. I don't see the gold and silver guys moving into Bitcoin. They don't understand Bitcoin. That, that to me makes no sense. This is old money.

My old money doesn't move like that. And it's not going to just move into Bitcoin in trillions of dollars, which is, is by the way, what we need. We need a trillion dollar. Well, not a trillion, but we need a shitload of money to move in this space. Especially, Gary, when yesterday the entire market cap of Bitcoin moved in gold. The entire market of capital of Bitcoin has been in today's volatility window in gold. Let's get it right.

Jason. I think people are discounting games. Long term, that is extremely powerful. This is showing you that these markets can move trillions of dollars in a day. NVIDIA has done it. in a week or two last year. So Bitcoin, most certainly one day is going to have its half a trillion dollar movement or a trillion dollar movement.

And, you know, the gold and silver guys waited an awful long time for that to happen. And maybe this is going to be Bitcoin. We also have to remember Bitcoin is a very, very, very small market. I mean, by very small, I mean, microscopically small. and we overestimate how significant Bitcoin is. I think it's a huge mistake, actually. Relative to how all the money is moving around these world markets, it is a very tiny market.

Yeah, so there are three points that I think to amplify and talk about what you're saying. So first, time you're right, you know, just even historically, trying to overcome 10-10 and the motives and what's going on in the market and all of all of the things that we've seen, the notion that it would reverse on a dime was always crazy. I said at the time I thought six months probably be required at least, but it could easily be more because we have other things going on. I mean, time is relevant. People don't make changes that quickly.

And so you're right about that. That said, when they reverse, they reverse fast. The notion that people in the gold and silver markets are, the understanding of what's actually happening in the precious metals markets misses the fact that a huge amount of the price drivers have been speculators and hordes of retail speculators all around the world, not here, Asia, Middle East, and Europe. And so those people, quite a few of them,

could rotate back into Bitcoin, or to Tesla, it doesn't really matter. They'll rotate wherever the hell they think they can make money. And so those things happen after those markets are exhausted. They don't happen when they're incredibly volatile. So, you know, let's just say for the sake of argument that, you know, we see, I mean, you see five, six percent volatility

or more, like today is actually closer to 10 in the gold and silver markets. That's not going to be the day when people are going to flip. When gold and silver get into a tight range and stay there and stop moving and reach equilibrium and stay there for weeks. Well, that's when people start to say, okay, I got to look for something else. So time is relevant and what causes it is relevant. It's not, okay, I made all my money here, let's go.

But the other thing to keep in mind is there have a lot of people, the speculators, a lot of speculators have made a lot of money in silver. And a lot of people took out a lot of money from Bitcoin, you know, in before October. I mean, this summer we saw a lot of it. So that's money that's on the sideline. And there's a lot of other money that's on the sidelines from that are being paid basically fuck all in terms of interest in banks and money accounts. And lastly, when bottoms happen, it's when everybody is saying what you do, which is there is

no bullish case anymore, that the only bulls are the true believers. And we're rapidly approaching that point if we haven't already. Yeah, I agree with that. That's why I said I don't know that we go lower unless things go bad, but I still do think that that can mean now we go from, you know, what, 84 to 94? Well, that's my base case, isn't it? And it has been. I think we stay there for a few months. I mean, but whatever. I mean, shit's going to happen. You know, that's really the point. Brian. So I'd go back to what I said earlier. I kind of think that we need this catalyst. Otherwise,

you know, I have full agreement that we kind of move sideways and kind of range bound. I would kind of push back a little bit respectfully on clarity. And here I'm like pretty hopeful. Fully agree, Congress is inept. I do think that banks are obviously pushing back against like there being this fair and level playing field. And Senate banking is now temporarily shifted its focus to affordable housing. All that said, I do think that this is a top priority for the administration. We do have widespread bipartisan support for having clear rules in theory, fair shake,

just announced that they have almost 200 million for the November elections and obviously had an enormous impact on the election in 2024. I do think the White House is gathering banks and digital asset folks together on Monday to hash out the stable coin yield issue, which is the biggest issue. Senate Ag, I actually think, has their markup for their version of the bill as we speak. They've publicly come out and said that they didn't get as many Dems on board as they were hoping. So maybe this surprises to the upside. I think they said none, Brian. Okay.

Gotcha. Yeah, so maybe there's some room to surprise for the upside. And then, yeah, my last point is there is a market on polymarket. It's very low liquidity. So maybe it's fairly meaningless. But at least that is giving it a 55% chance of passing this year. So I've not given up hope. And do you think like that could potentially be the capital?

or the spark we need for a bigger rally. It's brutal out there. It's just Bitcoin trading 84,600. I think silver, about 110, gold, 5,190 and the SMP, like, yes, SPX, 6,879. So Bitcoin is not unique in today's price action at all for once. Brian, I'm assuming is that a ghost hand or is it new? I see your hand up, but you were just speaking. I'm assuming it's older.

Older, yeah. I think we've kind of talked through the price action and some of the theoreticals. Anything else specifically on the docket? I do have a question. Someone said that my mic sucks. So is it too loud or too loud? You sound fine to me. No, you sound good, dude.

Okay. Because I'm using the podcast, Mike, so whatever. I mean, I think that this possibly is going to be a day people are going to remember, at least in the metals markets, of what's going on. I mean, on the other hand, it's entirely possible that it's just, there's a lot of froth and there's a lot of sideways action. And, you know, we won't even care about it in a couple of months. I just think it's important to understand. I mean, I think the more interesting thing, the one market no one did mention, but is a huge move,

is Gary's favorite, certainly your history, is crude oil going, you know, basically rocketing up. You know, it's almost up 10% in a week. We all know why, you know, at the same time, natural gas in the same week is dropped 25%. Those are the sorts of markets. And those, there's just, the point is there's volatility in the entire commodity space. And so there's a lot of people trading around a lot of stuff. And until, you know, the Iran situation is understood until whether or not everything that's going on domestically here, I mean, it's just, we live in crazy times. and there's just no other way around it.

I just don't see anybody getting more confident in our institutions and more confident in the structure, though. That's what the one common thing that I think everyone could agree on. Yeah, I think I should be really clear. If I'm giving the impression that I'm bearish on crypto, I'm not. It's more of a time frame-based conversation than obviously general trajectory, which is why I've, I mean, I've bought more Bitcoin from 126 down to, to 80 than I've almost ever bought in my life.

You know, I bought it a lot cheaper and more, but like I've deployed, I should say, not more Bitcoin, but I've deployed more capital into Bitcoin at these prices than I was able to do ever before. And I do that pretty confident. So, I mean, I agree with you. I think we go way up. But it's hard to right now just mentally frame the immediate spark for that. well dude the the the entire discussion i mean it just is on a call earlier today and this the discussion

of like you know i is taking over the discussion and the timeline so much you know we're talking about the end of all jobs you know are there any good are there going to be any jobs left ever right i mean that's the that's the crazy end of world discussions happening now and so what what's there to what do you what do you do with that right and so it's just very difficult you know what gary just said to, you know, kind of raise the hairs on the back of my neck that, you know, Bitcoin's going to trade like silver or something, you know, knowing

a bunch of silver bugs when I used to work on Wall Street who've been there for 20 years and it didn't freaking move. Kind of gives me the shivers, you know? I am one of those guys. It's actually funny. Yeah, so it gives me the shivers like, fuck, or am I, am I in the completely wrong space? Should I just go dig a hole and go, you know,

dive into it? I mean, it's just, I don't think that's where we are. I think AI to a large extent is overhyped in the end of all jobs. It's kind of silly. But at the same time, that's where people are right now. And so for me, and I think for most of us here, we're just in this like time space right now where we just realize this may take, I don't know, multiple years to kind of get out of. I don't know.

I see your mic, Dave. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I was actually trying to do a little bit bit of research. I mean, the silver thing is interesting because the real story there is, yes, there's a lot of industrial applications. It's a great conductor. We get it. The real big one, though, is the Samsung solid state battery, right? You know, the notion that, which has an enormous amount of silver in it, I mean, like 12, 13 ounces per battery. And if it truly is nine minutes to charge at a thousand mile range, then you have to expect that that solid state batteries will become to, in pretty much every car on the road in the next decade.

But how many, what do you need? Like 10 pounds in each battery or something? How much do you need in each one? I can't remember. I don't know. I'll have to research it. I've heard it. I've heard people say like 12 ounces, give or takes,

almost a pound of silver in each battery. And if that is literally going to be in every single car. And by the way, if you have anyone who's ever driven an electric car, if you had a thousand mile range that you could charge in six to nine minutes, there won't be internal combustion engines very many of them left. I mean, maybe as, you know, in cold weather climates, you know, to have in case the power goes out and you get stuck on a road in a snowstorm,

you know, but other than that, you know, that will be massive. And so that is an enormous potential driver. But again, this is all hypothetical, right, Dave? Of course it is. That's exactly the point. The other point that I made, which is hysterical, if you think about it in terms of gold. And I love this because people who go about quantum and Bitcoin, I think that it's the same thing. I mean, SpaceX is going to IPO this year, right?

They're going to IPO supposedly at a trillion and a half valuation with lots of money and lots of momentum. If you look at their business plan and you look at a lot of what they're doing, there are multiple companies that they're looking to service, that their business plan is to do asteroid mining. Are you serious right now? Dead serious, which means within a decade, there is a very real risk that the entire global supply of gold could double or, or a fact, go by a factor of 10. Easy if it pays off. Now, is it likely?

Of course not. But, you know, in terms of tail risks, it's, I mean, they are going to IPO. So the thing that the point that I'll make here is, and I don't know if I'm going to trade it. I may try to figure out a way to do it. The closer we get to the SpaceX IPO, somebody is going to make that connection. Just you can take it to the bank, write it down, put it in a time capsule now. At some point this year, that asteroid panic over gold is going to happen. It may happen from when gold is 10,000 and maybe when gold is 4,000.

I don't know when. But I'm not saying it's real. I'm saying that the hype cycle will take off, just like a lot of other risks. So it is people, markets are crazy and you have to understand that, right? I'm just a pit, a stock that's had a big run. Markets are people. A stock that's had a big run there is Rocket Lab.

I missed it, but it had a big run, and that's essentially one of their models, I think. Yeah, look, I'm not saying this to say that gold is going to go crush because it's going to be the new seashells, right? But I am saying that people are going to start talking about it. When they start talking about it, then people start investing about it. I mean, you know, if you want to get there before the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the lemmings decide to, like, move into stuff. And this is one of those predictable sorts of things. Brian, is that a new hand or is that still the same shadow hand?

Same shadow hand, but I did have a thought, and this is maybe a little bit less for BTC, more for like smart contract blockchains and the apps built on top. But I do think, like, our financial infrastructure is incredibly antiquated. It's slow and expensive. And we are upgrading this infrastructure with blockchain. base rails. I think like every company is now, you know, developing a stable coin strategy. We're seeing loss of movement on tokenization. SCC just put out a statement yesterday. You're seeing, you know, active development from DTCC, NYSC, NASDA. And so I actually think that

we are on the verge of reimagining these antiquated financial infrastructure. And I do think that value will accrue to these chains, you know, where this activity occurs. So I do think this underlying fundamental improvement, we'll steadily see that over time. And so that's kind of the bet that we're making right now. And that is, in my mind, it's not all at once, but is a big catalyst for a lot of these leading smart contract blockchains. Yeah, I think that that's absolutely true. I said yesterday I spent Tuesday at a blockchain symposium in Miami. And, you know, I had the opportunity to talk with Commissioner Perce and a bunch of others during the day. I mean, believe it or not, there are people in Washington who are as frustrated by what's going on in Congress as we are, because they just want to get working, right?

And they are working, right? They're working on stuff. There are people who really believe that the system needs to be modernized. And there's very little doubt that's going to happen. The one piece of caution, well, two pieces of caution I'll get. One, it always takes way longer than you expect because people, there are a lot of firms out there who make absolute crap tons of money because the system is so screwed up and inefficient. And I don't know. You guys don't want to listen to me. Go through the litany of them, but we're talking many billions of dollars per year in profit made by companies because of the inefficiency. Those companies will do everything they can to slow down the improvement.

So it does mean these things take longer than you expect. And the second thing is there is no. interest on Wall Street to make the have the protocols be where the money is made. I'm not saying it won't happen. I mean, because the protocols can end up being worth a lot just like infrastructure companies on Wall Street can make it be worth a lot. I mean, look at what Stripes evaluation is, etc. So but they've that's not their interest. Their interest is if they're going to build something, they want to build it so that they make the money. Companies make the money, not the protocol. So there's going to be a really interesting give and take there.

Yeah, fully agree. And I think that is the key question. Like, does this all happen on private permission blockchains or do they move toward a public blockchain? In some sense, like, it's actually these institutions that have the distribution, the billions of customers, billions of dollars to throw at it. And they can obviously leverage that to try to do it themselves. I think, like, what I'm banking on and why I think it has to happen on a public blockchain is you need that credible neutrality. So like JPMorgan has onyx or Conexus and it's kind of hard for them to move over to Bank of America and say, please develop on our private blockchain. So I'm hoping and I think it will occur on public blockchains, but yeah, completely agree. Like that is that is a key question.

Yep. I think you're right. And it brings us back to when you look at the rest of crypto, where is value? That's the next big thing. And we don't want to go down that rabbit hole now. because we're getting close to the end. What do you think, Scott? I mean, Chip, eight minutes for rabbit holes. I don't think they go. Yeah, well, it's funny on days like today when the markets are so volatile, by the way, you know,

it's just fun to watch. I mean, you know, Silver is the magnitude of the moves during this show relative to the market cap of most of the assets that we talk about, it's just it's almost crazy. It's not surprising because we've all seen it before, but it is. I find gold moving 10% in a day surprising. I mean, not surprising, but I don't think that that's a positive signal.

Yeah, I don't think it's positive for the world. I just think that understanding the gambling culture that exists everywhere and ignoring it, you know, it's just funny. I mean, probably the best prediction, I made on this show was a few weeks ago when the CME raised margin requirements. And I made the point that, hey, what does that mean? Well, it means the market makers are going to have much less liquidity to hedge against all the speculation because they're the biggest users of the CME.

That's exactly what's happened. So it's funny. I mean, I made exactly $0 and zero cents or zero sets, you know, from making that call. But it's exactly the way markets work. And if you don't understand how markets work, then you're going to make mistakes. So things like Gary was saying, yeah, I mean, you know, be patient. If you have a long time preference, that's cool. Just don't over leverage.

I mean, Jason, you know, before he was here and he was talking about his, forget his history. I don't want to go through that because if you know, you know, you know, if you don't, you don't. But the truth is leverage, if you don't use it correctly will crush you. And there are so many examples, hell, it's happened to me. where I've been right, I mean, like on massive moves and gotten myself stopped out and didn't take advantage of the move. And so people really need to understand that. And if there's one piece of advice that you, and I've heard you say the same thing, Scott, to give to people is don't get yourself stopped out of a move you have high conviction in because you want to take advantage or try

to get too greedy in the short term. Yeah. More people lose money being right, honestly, with leverage. Yeah, no, that's exactly. Exactly. It always feels like the market knows exactly where your stops are, liquidates you or takes you out and then goes the way you intended. The other thing that kills people is when they get so confident. I mean, it drives people nuts. But, you know, if you're like everyone's like, oh, no, this is going to happen. Bitcoin will go to this price. And inevitably, you know, anyone who's that sure, if you're, it's very, very unlikely.

The only people who get it right are the one or the momentum. traders who actually are looking at whatever. But if you're talking about picking a bottom when a market, in other words, if you're picking on when things are going to change, the number of people who get that right is vanishingly small. The number of people who try to get it right is enormous. That disconnect. Think about that. That disconnect is where all, that's where the liquidations are coming from. Yeah. But the, you know, interesting point is we wrap here about gambling culture, Obviously, that's what's giving us this incredible volatility that you have never seen in assets like this. But I also think that it's, and I've said this over and over again, is what's sucked a lot of the liquidity out of the crypto market.

And it's not just gold and silver. To me, the ability to bet on tomorrow's weather on almost every platform in the world is really shown us where the meme coin money has gone and where the speculators are. You can just gamble on anything anywhere, anytime legally now. and if we're being intellectually honest, that was the best use case for 99% of crypto over the past 10 years. It was a way that people who love to gamble could gamble anywhere in the world 24-7, 365 on something. And now it's just not the only horse in the stable for that.

Oh, and also, by the way, when everybody starts gambling everything all the time is usually, that's like, Wymart Republic stuff. It's not a good signal. It's not a good signal of where people mentally are or financially are, people start to gamble when they feel like they can't get ahead any other way. All I'll say is this. Yes, the signals of the end of the Fiat era, one of the most obvious signals is when this sort of stuff starts to happen and it becomes normalized.

When people, when it finally gets to the point where you can't know the price of money because as expressed through other assets, That is when the era ends. Now, is it likely to end soon? No. What will actually happen is they'll try a new Band-Aid or a new fix, a new kick the can down the road, a new plaza accord, a new this accord, a new that accord. But when you have the American administration basically saying 40 years of hollowing out our middle class by having the dollar be artificially strong needs to come to an end,

and that's exactly what they're saying, by the way, to think that it's not going to be volatile as the world has to come to grips with this. I mean, we're all kidding ourselves. Right? I mean, Gary, you should surely, you must have an opinion on that. Well, I mean, I'm just reading something Zero Hedge put out. Two and a half trillion dollars just got wiped out in 30 minutes in gold. That's the entire Bitcoin market and Ethereum, guys.

Wow. We're such an unprecedented times. It's amazing. By the way, oil, why would oil be going up? Like, that makes no sense. Oil cannot continue this drive to $65, $70. Okay, there's so much oil on the planet at $40, $45, it's ridiculous. These margins are enormous and they will not last.

Well, is it oil going up or is it a dollar going down? Or is it just people speculating because of Iran? I actually asked you that before, but I think you had stepped away. because that actually does matter. Oil does matter to the global economy in a big way. I'm not sure it's going to have the same correlation with the dollar that he used to have, though, Dave, because there's just so much oil in so many different hands. I mean, truly decentralized.

Kind of funny, right? So it's vastly decentralized, yet it has an OPEC wrapper around it. So I just don't see oil. Look, it costs 40 bucks to make a barrel of oil. Okay, it's a $25 margin. And this is no longer an art. It is absolute science. So it just does long term.

This 70 bucks cannot survive this. It makes no sense at all. But again, I'm in the uncharted territory. I don't think anybody has a clue what's going on here. I do believe that. I think everything is a gamble now. I mean, I have to admit to myself, hey, look, my crypto trade is a gambling. because the world stage is completely changed in a really short period of time.

It doesn't mean I'm wrong, okay? It doesn't mean I'm going to change my position, but, you know, there have been, it's a little bit like, you know, the casino's changing the rules in the middle of the game. Well, anyway, it's uncharted territory. I think people should be, I think people are going to get conservative here. here, right? Which means they're not going to just plow in. That's why I can't get really bullish here on Bitcoin. Think it's just going to go to $92,000. Well, I think the point that I would praise to people is bottoming is a process. And the process looks a lot like what we've been in. You're staying arranged for a period of time until something happens.

And something could just be, you wouldn't might know it. It could just be some big pools of money say, okay, enough is enough. I'm going to take. advantage and the supply dries up. Now, as far as as gold and silver goes, we're in what's called price discovery. When you get into price discovery, volatility goes through the fricking route. I mean, some of us were talking about this over a week ago, but you know, when we were at between 70 and 80, everyone thought that was unbelievable, unprecedented, it can happen. It went to 80, it's going to back to 70 and you know, like Fred Kruger put out this thing, which, you know, it would be back at 42. I mean, whatever. You know, now here we are above 110, and we're going to 120 to 110 and back and forth.

I mean, silver is in price discovery, gold is in price discovery. When you get that, it's volatility. So I guess we'll see. Now, is that price discovery because, you know, we haven't decided to print more than the eight to 10% more dollars, but is it catching up for decades of price suppression as the World Gold Council would tell you?

You know, I don't know, there's a lot going on here, but I guess we'll see. All I'll say is when the markets are this volatile, all bets are off. Yeah. traders can make money i think that's exactly right mike mcglone always says right great trading environment uh and i think that's true i guess until it's not gary did you have a last comment there so i left your mic no buddy i'm good all right all right guys we're going to get ready to wrap i did

forget something at the beginning when i was raving uh about removing x from my phone and being able to do this on computer which is that we do have a sponsor reason that i was supposed to do at the beginning that we do it here at the end uh which is from uh zero g we've told you about them a million times Here we go again. AI is reshaping the world, but right now it's stuck in the hands of just a few big players. What if AI can run openly, verifiably, and on chain? That's what ZeroG is building. The world's first decentralized AI operating system open to everyone.

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Thank you to our amazing panel. We always manage to have an incredible conversation, regardless of what the market's doing. And damn, the market gods did give us something to talk about today. So I guess we can make our bets on what prices and volatility we'll be talking about tomorrow, but I have a feeling this is just getting started. All right, everybody, have a great day. Dave, as always, thanks for co-hosting.

Guys, we'll see you tomorrow 10, 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time for the last Crypto Town Hall of the week. Peace. Thank you.