The Wolf Of All Streets - Crypto Market Dump And Pump: What’s Next? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

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Hey man, you're already in Dubai? Not yet, I'll be there tomorrow night. I'll be there tomorrow night. Yeah. Oh, Tuesday. I'm only coming to see you. You've been asking publicly over and over and over again, and here I am. You've said that to me so many times.

The last time I was supposed to be a long way over, but it didn't happen. Yeah, I'll never forget that um i was meant to do a show with um elon and um bolsonaro uh two days ago oh what happened i thought that was happening the strike israel four hours beforehand reminds me of when i did imran khan when i interviewed imran khan the same time the mutiny started. And now I'm interviewing Bolsonaro, which a lot of people compare to Imran Khan and Trump. And Iran strikes Israel. And the market's dumped. Were you surprised by that dump or was it expected? So is that what Bitcoin is still seen as a risk asset? I mean, the Bitcoin market, I guess, dumped a bit this weekend. I think you could argue that it was already that price action was somewhat baked in.

And then yesterday, stocks opened with futures up. Right. Gold's obviously been raging a bit. But listen, I don't think that it had much to do with the conflict. I think at this point, and I'm not speaking, obviously, from a humanitarian perspective, but markets have shrunk off the Ukraine-Russia war. I just think markets don't really care about conflicts that much. I don't really think that was the reason. It depends on the conflict. I think when Iran attacked Israel, initially, no one knew how significant it was. And then later, we started getting a bit more clarity that wasn't as significant as people feared, and it wasn't a full-blown war between the two countries.

But initially, obviously, equities were not open and the markets were closed, but crypto is 24-7. So crypto reacted, what, dropped by 8%, 7%, I can't remember, 12%. It was a big number. Again, if I get my numbers wrong… Yeah, I mean, Bitcoin dropped, obviously. What gave me a little more pause was how much all coins dropped this time. Bitcoin dominance was basically a three-year high. Obviously, what gave me a little more pause was how much altcoins dropped this time.

Bitcoin dominance was basically a three-year high. So there was definitely something to pay attention to in that regard. We've seen a lot of rangy, choppy Bitcoin price action without altcoins getting so utterly destroyed, at least for a day. This time, they definitely felt a lot more pain than I think we've seen in some of these past moves. But no, like I said, at the end of the day, Bitcoin just visited the low of a range. And when you're ranging, you go to the lows and people panic. You go to the highs, people get euphoric and they get wrecked both ways and you just keep on ranging. And so it's basically just between 60 and 74. Didn't break it. Yeah, but your thoughts on Bitcoin dropping significantly when the attack happened? Pretty much instantly. I remember I was covering it live when someone came to me and was like, Mario, crypto just crashed.

Obviously, they all exaggerated. And by the same time, gold was a good hedge. Yeah, but gold was pretty crazy. Yesterday, obviously, Sunday, I think Bitcoin kind of crashed on Saturday and gold made its bigger moves on Sunday, if I was watching correctly. And gold, you know, had this huge move to the upside, you know, $100 a day and gold is pretty big volatility. And, you know, almost $2,500, I think like $2,470.

And the lows of that day were $2,370 when people unpanicked, righticked decided, oh, maybe this isn't such a big deal. You get this crazy knee jerk reaction and then things generally revert to the mean. I see William has his hand up. Go ahead and comment. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, the way I look at it is the following. Bitcoin is three things, depending who you ask. For some people, it's a financial asset that you can hold forever. For others, it's a financial asset that you can hold forever. For others, it's a form of money to be used. And for the third group, it's just an instrument to trade

and to follow momentum or volatility. So what happened on the weekend showed us that the traders had the upper hand because they swayed the market lower. Now, to be fair, we don't know how crypto would have fared against the traditional markets because they were closed on the weekend. It would have been more insightful to have a more level playing field comparison if both markets were open at the same time. Obviously, the gold ticked up a little bit because some people would think that gold is a safe haven. And that's really what happened. Now back to the trading range, as you said, Scott, it is now, it's a trading range.

It's in. Going back to 62, it's not a correction. It's testing another support level. A correction would have been hitting low 50s if that is the case. And on the high side, it tested it three times, 70, 72, three times it couldn't pierce it. So we are in that range right now.

At that time, Chris, I assume you viewed similarly. Just quickly, Scott, you were talking talking before going to Chris and other panelists, you talked about how altcoins got hit hard this time around and Bitcoin dominance spiked. How would you interpret that? Why do you think this time around, alts took a bigger hit than usual? Well, I mean, I can't know the numbers, hundreds of millions, if not over a billion across the board flushed out of the market. When the casino goes that nuts, to me, it's a great signal that you're about to see that happen. I think that there's a lot of people who made a lot of money on altcoins in the past month and the minute they saw a sign to get out before they feared those return to losses they did and that i mean that's my view and also you know we have a more stable and also i think we have a more stable floor on bitcoin now with the etfs obviously there's this sort of increasing demand

uh that that keeps that floor there so a lot, I think, are just more inclined to sell their altcoins when things look a little dicey than they are their Bitcoin. And also we know that that demand for Bitcoin that's going through the ETFs is not trickling down into the rest of the market. So the rest of the market is sort of its own thing happening with the crypto degens and they just react differently. And in terms of so first on the altcoin side is you know, the grand scheme of things for the correction, it doesn't mean much.

What are your thoughts on ETH outperforming Bitcoin today? I think it's just noise. Yeah, I can't describe any particular significance because every time we have described significance to ETH outperforming Bitcoin, it reverts down and continues lower. I think this was a correction. It was a correction because it dipped down to $2,800 and it forced some liquidations automatically. I read $130 million at least so this was a correction of that forced liquidation all right let's go to the other speakers and one thing scott travis paul but one thing scott i want to ask you and matt afterwards is kind of the etf

that the do you think etf outflows could you think ETF outflows could speed up if there's more fear in the markets? How quickly would ETF outflows react to any FUD, to any fear? But let's go to the other points first. Travis, Paul? Yeah, just to echo on a couple of things that Scott said.

Yeah, I mean, I would say that Bitcoin actually traded really well through that. I mean, you're talking about like a 13% pullback, mostly on the weekend, mostly when US markets were closed. And that's just not that. I mean, I don't know. It's just, I mean, I would say that trades pretty well. People, or sometimes you've got Bitcoin naysayers that like to kind of poke it at Bitcoin where

it's like, oh, if it's a safe haven, like why didn't it trade better? And I think that's just kind of ridiculous in a situation like that. But the knee jerk reaction and, you know, a potential conflict event like that would be Bitcoin higher. It's just not I don't know whose expectation like who would have that expectation. That's just not how it's going to trade. And you shouldn't expect it to trade like that. With the alts, you did just hit, you know, quite an air pocket there. And I think that with the Bitcoin ETFs, Bitcoin has kind of been in a world on its own within crypto for a while.

It doesn't really have any competitors within the crypto ecosystem. It's kind of competing against like, you know, gold or treasuries in a way. But the TAM on those two assets is so much massively larger that it's just, you know, it's a much, much more, but it doesn't really have any, any competitors within crypto, I don't think. And now with the ETFs, like it's never been more of an asset on its own in crypto that makes it even more so different flows. A lot of those flows are structural. I see Matt's up here. I'm sure Matt can talk, talk to that more, but you just hit air pockets on alts. And I think that with the way alts have been acting lately people just don't really have conviction in very many of these names there's just a lot

of bag holders you know i don't know it's like the ratio of bag holding the conviction is is is probably quite high right now where people don't really believe in what they own. They're just owning it for momentum. They're owning it for the meme, like literally for a meme and, or they're just owning it maybe for some kind of points, airdrop, daisy chain thing. And I think that that does kind of change the downside behavior for a lot of this stuff as well too, because like, you know, you just pick a random alt that's run really hard over the last three to six months and a lot of these names could pull back 75 and people still wouldn't have conviction in them other than maybe for a bounce trade there's just not conviction

in the underlying fundamentals or the large majority of these names. Yeah, I agree completely. When people are flipping meme coins that die in 12 hours, knowing that they're playing a game of hot potato, that sort of mentality, I think, spreads across the entire market, traps this point. Go ahead, Mario. I'm sorry. No, I was going to go to you.

I just got an update on the most important thing still to this day in crypto yeah it's great to be on uh i do think it's matt you there can you hear him scott i think i can't hear him i think he's having the glitch i hear him yeah i could hear him yeah yeah okay all yours scott i'll let you take over i can't hear him great uh glad you can hear me uh most of you um yeah i think they continue to be the most important thing in the market. And I don't read much into the sort of weekend sell-off and bounce or the weakness in altcoins. I think it's exactly as you guys have described. up fairly well for the Bitcoin ETFs. We're continuing to make progress on national account platforms. Maybe some of that has pushed out into Q3, but it's looking pretty good. We have the developments in Hong Kong showing it's a global market for ETFs growing increasingly. And at least at Bitwise, we continue to see strong demand. I think we had something like 80 million in flows last week. So I think all is well on Bitcoin ETFs.

I think the market is going to be excited going into the halving. I think it'll be excited post-halving. I just think we're chopping sideways in the channel on Bitcoin, and that will continue for a little bit until we get these national account approvals and get enough demand to push us through to new highs. So, yeah, the word from Bitcoin land or Bitcoin ETF land is still positive. Matt, what do you think about the approval today, although they're not trading yet, of the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs in Hong Kong? Yeah, I'm sort of split between the Eric Balchunas take, which is it's no big deal, Eric being the Bloomberg ETF analyst,

and some of the crypto native takes that it's, you know, a giant deal. The Hong Kong market is relatively small, but it is a sort of outlet for onshore wealth into Bitcoin. And for that reason, I suspect, you know, this will be a positive. I don't think it's a game changer. I don't think it's akin to the US ETF market. But I take, you know, Eric's calling for 500 million flows, I'd take the over on that. So I think it's a positive.

Look, we're in ETF era globally for Bitcoin. It's going to be available everywhere. You're going to be able to trade it across markets. That's going to create a virtuous circle of liquidity, which is a net good. So it's not a game changer, but it is a net positive. I assume. On how level of a game changer it would be. Just want to give people some numbers.

I mean, I would agree it's pretty small of a market. You know, GDP over in Hong Kong is only about a little less than $400 billion. In comparison, people might have forgotten that we've actually had ETFs outside of the U.S. approved as far back as 2021, Canada, Brazil, Australia, amounting to about over $ and a half trillion in GDP. And that barely moved the market at that time. So I don't think this Hong Kong ETF is going to make too significant of a move outside of just newsworthiness. And that's about it.

Yeah, I think that's right. The only tweak to that is it's nice to get more ETF options available during Asian trading hours, which is sort of an air pocket that we've had. So that's a nice positive that sort of contributes to 24-7 ETF liquidity around the world. But I think that's right in terms of a matter, order of magnitude. I think Australia is close enough to Asia hours where we at least had that with about, what is that, 1.6 trillion of GDP available in ETFs as far back as 2021. But every little bit helps. Yep.

Yeah, I think that people are trying to extrapolate the fact that spot Bitcoin volumes are huge in Asia versus the United States and translate that to ETFs. But I think you have sort of those opposing forces. I think that people in Asia who are buying and trading Bitcoin want to buy and trade physical Bitcoin, right? And the ETF is kind of a more foreign and unfamiliar product to them. And they might actually want a product that's less surveilled or on the radar of China. So, you know, I think it'll be somewhere in the middle. But I think it's a net positive regardless. I don't think anybody can look at the Hong Kong approvals and say there's a bad thing.

And obviously, there's the nuance that Ethereum is being approved as well. Go ahead, Joe. Yeah, I feel like there's something that doesn't... We talk about the ETF a lot and about how much that could come in. But we don't talk about like Rune and DeFi on Bitcoin, which I think could actually be, if you look at what happened with Ordinals and what happened to other NFTs when Ordinals happens, which became the largest, the most expensive. If you look at the total of NFTs, it's the largest market.

And it just kind of sucked up liquidity from Ethereum and Solana. I expect when DeFi is launched, which is launching in a few days, same thing's going to happen. Like at the end of the day, no matter how much you believe in ETH, you're still a fan of Bitcoin. I feel like everyone would still rather be on the Bitcoin chain. And if it works out the way people think it's going to work out, I think almost just as much inflow is going to come from that as the ETF, to be honest. I'm curious what you think. I throw that one to the panel.

Joe, you probably highly agree. I've been a big fan of DeFi and easily a ton of the market cap of locked liquidity on Ethereum is from just simply wrapped Bitcoin. And the user experience of having to go from Bitcoin to any of the Ethereum chains, and especially having to experience of these L2s on Ethereum. And to be able to have a more seamless experience of Bitcoin and DeFi, I think it would be a game changer. I think a lot of people are looking forward to it. And it would ironically potentially impact the business model of wrapped Bitcoin. But we'll see how that turns out and what these products are able to execute. Guys, Joe, Paul, the ordinals have kind of slowed down recently, haven't they?

Yeah, I mean, nfts have but i'm talking about the liquidity drain that ordinals had where a lot of large nft collections you see the price came down never went back up a lot of that money went into ordinals um and when you just look at the total amount on ordinals it dwarfs what happened what was on other chains. It just sucked up all the liquidity. And I'm wondering if that's not going to happen on Bitcoin when DeFi launches, if it's not going to suck up a lot of the TVL that's on these other chains now, and if that can't be just as big as what's happened with the ETF. And I think it is. I think it's going to be tit for tat, to be honest.

There's two kind of NFTs that I think exist in the market. Ordinals kind of took over one style of NFT, one that, of course, at high value, Louis Vuitton, and just by virtue of putting it on Bitcoin, you've made a signal to the market that you believe this thing has value. And that attracted a certain type of NFT trader, creator and whatnot. And the other chains think salon is which you can mint NFTs hundreds if not 1000s of NFTs for dirt cheap, attracts a different use case entirely. Bitcoin has not been able to tap into that use case. It's still there, it's still

valuable. But without these layer twos and the EVMs or some type of scalability that allows for these larger scale amount of minting actions, it won't be able to tap into that. And this is what it's really opening up and its ability to take a lot of that liquidity away from the other markets. Depending, of course, if they're able to be successful with both marketing and achieving adoption where you don't have too much fragmentation across the L2s. Like let there be one or two chains that are quite successful in the L2 market. If that's so, then I think it can be quite successful in extracting this NFT liquidity. Well, I don't even think it's just the NFT liquidity. I just mean the DeFi that happens now, like the yield farming that happens,

how much TBL it's going to lock up um i'm just i'm using the nft as a benchmark like ordinals you're right in your use case but i'm looking at how much ordinal sucked in liquidity from from other chains and what's that mean what's that going to do if that happens now with defy no disagreement there there. No question about it. DeFi is heavily used on Ethereum and other L2s through RappBitcoin. That being just a huge part of the liquidity. I know I've personally used it. Many people I know. And so you can see it just by the numbers, which I can look up, but it'll suck up a ton. No question about it. I want to go back to the altcoin market. Joe, if you can give us an update there. We were talking earlier before you jumped on.

Scott was talking about how alt got hammered harder than usual along with Bitcoin a couple of days ago. And Bitcoin dominance kind of spiked. So maybe get your thoughts on that and whether that means anything in the long term. Yeah, no, it's a good discussion. Sorry, I said Joe or Joe. Joe is yours. Okay. Yeah, it it's good discussion i mean the bitcoin like as as far as what we saw socially on saturday it was a blip we didn't even see an increase a very small increase

in the number of posts receiving interactions across tiktok reddit x and youtube so really a blip and at the end of the day like i agree agree with Travis, there's, you know, Bitcoin is going to have these movements. And yes, you know, if there's a 15 minute period of, you know, potential imminent nuclear war, and there's not going to be power at the end of the day, that has to get priced in for like a second, where, you know, Bitcoin could go down. But at the end of the day, it's along with everything else with alts. Yeah, I mean, these things are, you know, they're kind of like the call option on the rest of the day, it's along with everything else with alts. Yeah, I mean, these things are, you know, they're kind of like the call option on the rest of the market. Right. And, you know, you're going to see, you know, the put option go down when you're seeing volatility in Bitcoin. You know, at the end of the day, these are still very speculative.

Right. And, you know, but people are going to trade these like, you know, we talked about before something like EOS, for example, you know, they have 140,000 Bitcoin on their at their foundation, which is equivalent to like the 13 largest, like university endowment fund, like in the world. And it really, it's kind of like, you know, a phantom and ghost chain that's out there, but they will live, like, they will exist longer than, you know, most of the people running businesses here. So that's where it gets kind of crazy, where it's like, they will exist longer than, you know, most of the people running businesses here. So that's where it gets kind of crazy, where it's like people are just betting on that speculation side of everything. And, you know, at the end of the day, like, these things will still be around, even with the limited amount of building that's happening. By the way, just talking about Bitcoin, it's part of the news for the day.

Volume by DWF put out a report or a tweet. Volume on ordinals have increased exponentially with bitcoin halving and runes protocol launch coming in april the most prominent nfts are node monks bitcoin but by the way just joe i know i seem clueless but my team is all in on ordinals we're invested in a whole bunch of projects in that ecosystem and they're even investing in ordinals nfts as well even but they're the ones that told me it's kind of been slowing down recently but let me just continue reading what dwf put out the most prominent nfts as well even but they're the ones that told me it's kind of been slowing down recently but let me just continue reading what dwf put out the most prominent nfts are node monks bitcoin puppets and quantum cats xyz disclaimer i have no idea if we're invested in any of these

some of these airdrops have been a pretty high value we expect many protocols to launch or migrate to ruins kind of making your point there joa um any other thoughts from the panel um on the bitcoin ecosystem especially with the with the runes launching very soon anyone at all actually matt i'm gonna go to you on this one yeah i've got a lot on this too and i'm gonna match to prepare you i want to go to you as well does tradify even give a shit about this or is it just for us dj but matt joe i'll let you comment on it first and then we'll go to matt where the tradify cares well they should care a little bit you know as far as the miners go because we will see when Runes launches here, you know, probably the most clogged Bitcoin chain that we've ever seen,

higher than when Ordinals had launched. So I think a lot of people are preparing for that and what that is going to look like. We've already seen a lot of action here with like, quote, pre-Runes, where people are launching ordinals that are attached to a rune token standard. And for people that don't know, runes is just a new token standard on Bitcoin, similar to what BRC20 was, but a much more evolved and better standard. Casey Rotemar, follow him at Rotemar on X, wrote the ordinal Standard, and now he wrote this new Rune Standard. And so the kind of building on Bitcoin ecosystem is about as hyped as I've ever seen it. Matt? Yeah, I would say that TradFi doesn't know or doesn't care.

Oh, shit, I can't hear Matt. Okay, so hold on, Matt, before you speak. He can, he's gone. Yeah, I know, I know, you can all hear him. Scott, you're back. Matt, I can't hear him, so he's speaking. So the mic is yours, Scott, to go back and forth on that. We're just still talking about the. We'll be hosting our own spaces on it. But we speak to a specific angle of the TradFi community. And I think we're the only people doing anything

on this topic. So the narrative is just too complex, I think, for TradFi to get its head around. It has a simpler view. I agree they should care, and maybe you'll start to see people writing about it. But until you see us, Alliance, Bernstein, and other folks writing on it, then TradFi hasn't woken up to it, even on the edges. It's also positive for TradFi. And so I think they don't really need to care right now. It's a positive for miners. It's a positive for the ecosystem. I think had this been a negative thing, you know, maybe there's something they would look at a little bit more closely, but it's positive all in all. Perfect. Yeah. Scott, you're back. Joe,

I had one more question for you and Matt, hopefully Scott could hear you. Um, Matt, I'll let you respond. I have a question for Joe after Matt responds, cause I cannot hear Matt, Scott. Um, but the question I have for you, Joe, is that any specific narratives, is it still the same three narratives, RWA's, AI, and gaming, or is it changing a bit in the markets? But Matt, go ahead. No, I

agree with that. TradFi doesn't need to care. They also, you know, they have a very long time horizon. They'll catch up, but there's nothing about this that's going to sort of alter the drip into ETFs, which remains the story for tradfi right now yeah i could transition a little bit to rwa's ai and uh gamefi you know if you look at just over the weekend in the market and that little blip um everything recovered in unison and coordinated to those asset classes. And so, yes, a lot of people are sticking to those

narratives. I think they really want to see some sort of killer app come out of either AI or RWA. I think you probably have a little bit of a better chance at real world assets hosting that and being part of the killer app that more people are utilizing, whether that's, you know, owning gold and having an access to, you know, an NFT that gives you access to that gold or securitizing that because at the end of the day, RWA was just like a fancy word that crypto gave to security tokens. But I think that that's actually like the best case, like partial ownership of a Camaro, right, or something that's out there where, you know, you know, people are living, you know, more and more into homes where they're splitting, you know,

if you live in Newport Beach here, you know, six, eight people are owning a beach house. And how do you do that a little bit better? And how do you sell that off and, you know, not have to do a bunch of paperwork. And I think that there's something probably there uh but you know we'll we'll see i see gary in the audience here he's selling his 600 million dollar home maybe he wants to securitize that into eight pieces uh joe joe just want one more question i have for you is um the base ecosystem seems to be doing really well and it seems um uh someone told me nfts on base are doing well i know that meme coins have been have been dominating and brett i think based brett which is the leading meme coin on there has been doing well but what else on brett is doing is is doing uh is uh is gaining traction also talking about

meme coins also it's just funny linear we haven't talked enough about linear we should probably do a show on that and that's that's the the new um linears and yeah oh you know about foxy oh shit yeah yeah for foxy launched on linear they're the the biggest meme con on linear they launched at a so me and scott i don't know if you're involved in it scott but we're we're invested but it's the foxy launched at what fdv of 130 million that was more that was a lot more anyway fdv 130 million and and uh mark cap 40 million that's on, which is a pretty interesting ecosystem. I think we're invested in a few projects on there.

It's trading on, I know it's trading on at least Bybit, I think, OKEx. So it's, you call it a meme coin, but it launched on a bunch of centralized exchanges as well. Yeah, exactly. KuCoin, Bybit, BitGet, I think it's BitCasual, but Bybit, KuCoin. OKEx, I'm just looking at the chart, yeah. Yeah. Also, yeah, so George, my question was not about Linear. get i think it's because of a buy bit q coin and uh okay i'm just looking at and yeah um also yes so so george my question though is not about linear i'm not sure if you can comment on linear but more about uh base yeah i mean you know the base chain coinbase i think they reported like

20 million dollars in revenue uh for base in march um you know up you know from five million so it's i think it's right now seems kind of inconsequential to their overall earnings with what's going on, you know, but you are seeing, you know, with I think their actual earnings, like more in like the four to 500 million in that in that same quarter. But I think the interesting part is, you know, the overall, the overall market that's out there and the coins that are being launched here, you are seeing tons of activity. Now, you know know what this actually ends up meaning for the market you know i don't know if coinbase ends up saying hey we are gonna you know i would love if one day they said hey we're gonna launch

a token and it's gonna be you know we're gonna d-list from the stock exchange and it's just gonna be a token on our exchange and basically be part of that that would be epic i don't think that's going to happen uh but they're you know they they are playing in this d5 space but the the tough part with this play devil's advocate a little bit is, is we saw this with FTX when everyone was like, oh, everything's going decentralized. It's going to happen no matter what. That's where a lot of people went after. You saw all the major centralized exchanges launching these DEXs. DEX volume still is one-tenth of centralized exchange volume here.

And so some people might call this actually somewhat of a distraction for coinbase and we have enough l1s already yeah it really is go ahead yeah two thoughts just quickly on the bitcoin i think scott you mentioned it this morning the uh announcement or pre-announcement from william it's a bit hard to hear you buddy i don't know your mic changed you change something? I'm trying a new one, but how about now? Is this better? It's the same. Just go ahead. It's the same. Go ahead. Okay, I'll switch it after. You mentioned that Tether has a new pre-announcement about tokenization. I think that's going to be significant whenever that

happens. It's kind of a bit similar to what BlackRock did, but imagine it, I would say, at least 10 times in scope, potentially. Back to the base, because I'm very close to the base ecosystem. I spend a lot of time on Forecaster. Right now, base has more than $5 billion in value locked on BASE. And it's really being driven by a lot of the Web3 activity. And I know I cannot stop talking about meme coins. You talk about DeGene.

DeGene is no longer a meme coin. It's one of those that has transitioned from a meme coin to being a real spend and earn Web3 coin, almost like Steemit, but much better. So keep an eye on those coins that evolve from having started as a meme coin, but being really in the hands of many users that are using them in the apps. I'm bringing Vinny up. I'm not sure if he can hear, but he's requesting. So I'm assuming he has a comment on this when he does appear. Vinny, I'm showing you he's connecting. So we can, I guess, continue on from there.

I do want to circle back. Vinny, I see you're up now. Did you have a comment? Because you requested. So I'm assuming you got something to say here oh no i just i just joined now so i don't know what you guys are chatting about but uh okay sorry i just wasted everyone's time for like 60 seconds man it's your fault i'm just kidding no no no i'm sorry i got i got chewed out on friday by everyone i think friday thursday space space is where i was like doom and glooming. Then I posted on Friday that Bitcoin had to hold 60k

over the weekend and everyone was laughing until Saturday afternoon. Yeah, I've been getting it all month since daring to say negative things about the meme coin casino being a signal that we might chill for a while and that we might might chill for a while

and that could get could be the highs for a while i mean it kind of brings us back to the market chris what are you looking at i know you know i said kind of earlier now it looks like we've established a range pretty much 60 ish to 74 ish and people tend to panic and think it's all over when you hit the bottom of the range right yeah i, I mean, you know, again, it's the same thing I've been talking about for, geez, I guess for a month now. You know, we're range bound. Our last, the market structure coming off, if you're looking at the weekly, if you're looking at macro market structure coming off the 2022 bear market swing low,

the last higher low is right there around that 59,000 area, depending what chart you're looking at, 59,200, right around around there so we're sitting between there and the all-time high and we've done nothing but range and every you know everybody getting you know uh wired and and freaked out about it and you know i've talked about a few different potential scenarios as we looked in here um i've mentioned triangles but said you know really i all that, uh, I didn't think we'd have really have triangles here. The way I'm looking at it now in terms of Elliott Wave, uh, is a flat correction. And so that basically is three waves down off the all time high, three waves back up, uh, recovering at least 90% of that drop, uh, which we've got, and then five waves down, which may or may not be complete here. I think if we lose this 62,500 area, I think we sweep that 59 low, but I think it may be short-lived, just like a wick down there, maybe into like, I don't know, maybe about 57,000 or so.

And then I'd look for the move up. If we don't lose that, though, and instead we break out above this morning swing high, which is right there around 66, 860 or so, 870. If we can break out above that instead, then that suggests the bottom is probably it. And then we need to see a breakout above the 72,800 area. And if we do that, then it's all time highs incoming. And, you know, at least that's what I'm looking at right now. So, you know, I think people misunderstand when you said earlier about, you know, the drop this weekend and what was going on with that whole Iran Israel thing. What I think what Scott was trying to say here,

guys, basically is that the chart was suggesting that it was already headed down anyway. That's what he's trying to say. Yes. The range loads were in play, whether it was going to be Saturday or Monday. Right, right.

Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, the way we look at the markets, isn't that okay. Well, you know,

we know that there's going to be some, you know, the way we look at the markets, isn't that OK? Well, you know, we know that there's going to be some, you know, Iran sending all these drones over to Israel or something like that. But we look at this, we go, well, here's what's going on with the structure. It's likely to pull back further. And that was already in progress. And that was, I think, maybe what Scott didn't make so clear what he was trying to say this morning. You know, I completely agree with that. Anybody that's been following me for anything like the time, you know, that's what we talk about. You know, we say the news is in the charts. It doesn't mean we know what's going to happen,

you know, what exact news event's going to happen, but just that the chart's already set up, the direction is set for the trend. And, you know, you'll get a knee-jerk reaction to news events, but generally speaking, the trend's already in progress. So for me, again, even as of this weekend, we still haven't even broke 59. So it's not even a pullback. It's just sideways. Chop, chop. Go ahead, Joe. Yeah, I mean, I'd like to ask Christopher, but doesn't it feel like people are waiting to see what Israel's reaction is to this? Because as soon as Blinken started talking, we saw a retraction.

Yeah, I know the chart was pointing we were going to go down. Of course, people overreacted because of the news. I think the news did play a factor. And now I think people are kind of – people are like, oh, I'm going to buy it cheap. And they jumped up. But now like smart money is kind of waiting to see like what is Israel's reaction actually going to be? Or am I just being too cautious here? I want to hear who's, okay, I can't hear Christopher, but since we're talking about the. Let Chris jump in though, because he asked him a specific question.

Yeah, I know. I interrupted him on purpose so I can actually bring him down and back up. Well selfish for me for the audience but i really want to hear that back i got it christopher's back up now so i was only a few seconds wait go ahead christopher sorry now hopefully i can hear you okay no um yeah all i was uh was gonna say was the way that i look uh at charts um is this just this understanding that uh basically what we talk about the smart money whatnot, it's not that they tell the market what to do. They're testing the market. Okay. And so it's not that some whale out there or whatever pushes price, you know, these wherever they want it, they can nudge price around. But at the end of the day, it's what is the market feeling? And so

what you're getting often when you get the rallies up in the pullbacks are tests of the market's resolve at that point. And so in response to your question there, I don't know so much that it's smart money waiting for the response, but they're more so it's the smart money is testing the market participants to see what the market is feeling. If the market is really bearish and whatnot, then it'll just take a little push by those smart money to kind of, and then the market will jump in and follow through lower. But if the market is bullish, for instance, and smart money tries to push it a little bit down, what's going to happen is the market itself is

going to eat up that push and then they're just going to keep on going up. So yeah, I don't think it's necessary that the smart money really is waiting for whatever's going on with there as much as it's testing the market itself to see is the market bullish from here or is the market still got some fear in it and it wants to fall a bit lower? To me, to me, it just seems like most assets are telling you that this just wasn't that big of a deal. I don't mean to make light of conflict at all, but just as it relates to two markets. I mean, and it was Mario, I listened to your space for a couple of hours when you had. It's always funny to me. I mean, you space for a couple of hours when you had, it's always funny to me. I mean, you know, funny kind of in a weird way, but like, uh, to be in this space and it's

like me and you and Scott and Matt from bit wise. And then I go into one of your political ones and it's like Alex Jones and Andrew Tate. There's just something funny about that. But it was telegraphed by Iran's response was telegraphed. People knew it was coming. If you're paying attention, they responded in a way that was very contained and not particularly destructive. And then the United States has a tight enough leash on Israel that they're not going to let Israel basically escalate it from there and more or less let this die on the vine. And it seems like the market is saying that that is the base case. There's obviously tail risks to that.

And the market's going to figure out, you know, kind of how it wants to price those tail risks of something other than that happening. But it's like that's the base case. And so you have stocks flat, gold up small, VIX essentially flat, dollar essentially flat, yields a little higher, crude down a little bit. Like it's, you know, the market is telling you how serious of a deal it was. I think I appreciate what you said. I think the markets is one of the smartest indicators there is for anything, really, because you've got some of the smartest people betting their own money on what they think will happen next,

including some people with insider information, more information than most of us here. So I'm glad you're kind of focusing on that. And I probably should, I'm going to mention it now because we're going to cover, obviously, Israel's response, which is expected today. You know, Blinken, I think, I'm going to mention it now because we're going to cover obviously Israel's response which is expected today you know blinking I think just say we're streaming it live he said they expect Israel's response in the next 24 to 48 hours and that was about half an hour ago now why is this important I think this is one of the few black swan events that could um you know change the the entire sentiment in crypto I think if the Israel's response was like you know as extreme as wiping out iran's nuclear capabilities which is a possibility even though i'm on i'm on travis's uh

you know travis's boat here i think it's highly unlikely it is a possibility there's a lot of people kind of calling for that israel has been been been been you know warning about iran's nuclear capabilities for a while um and then it goes back to a question why did israel um you know a lot of people said israel knew iran would respond very aggressively if they hit the consulate and killed the general. Yet they did it anyway. So was Israel trying to bait Iran? Or is Iran ready to escalate just for political purposes? There's too many factors in place.

And I've had a lot of diplomats that speak to me behind the scenes that don't want to come on the show. I think no one's sure. Is the U.S.''s leash around Israel's neck, is that enough to stop Israel from escalating? Is it even needed? I don't know, but I do know that it is extremely, it's one of the few geopolitical things I'm happy to talk about on these spaces

because it will play a role. It will impact inflation. I think we had an analyst come on stage, might've heard him, Travis, talking about how this will impact the shipping lanes as well. And trade around the world, it will impact inflation. I think we had an analyst come on stage, might have heard him, Travis, talking about how this will impact the shipping lanes as well and trade around the world. It will impact inflation. It will impact the Fed's decision and that obviously impacts everything else. So, it's just too many factors that will be impacted by an Iran-Israel conflict. And just remember, the markets were reacting to any escalation with Hezbollah, which the next step

was for a regional conflict. The next step was Israel versus Hezbollah. But if we skip that and go directly, which we did, now there's Iran attacking Israel directly. We kind of skipped the whole Hezbollah narrative. It just shows that it is still a very serious matter. But I tend to be an optimist. So I don't think it will escalate too much. Israel will respond. They will strike Iran, but it will be a limited strike. But then again, how will Iran respond as well? So we'll see. Part of, to me, what makes it confusing and also may make it difficult for people that maybe have more insider information, you know, you had a couple like retired colonels that were in that space. And, you know, I think there was a former CIA guy in there. And obviously, when you have folks like that, with with clearances or used to have clearances

like that, and they get into a space that has 60,000 people in it, then you got to kind of wonder like, what are they saying? Why are they saying it? What can they say? To what end are they doing this right now? And you combine that with the fact that all of these conflicts are proxies, or they're like proxies on proxies. And you're seeing that in most of the major conflicts around the world right now. And the nations that are actually at the front lines are just representatives or puppets of larger, more powerful nations. That's a sad thing.

It's pretty dark, right? But that is the state of things. And it makes it even kind of more difficult to try and ascertain how some of this stuff is going to go because it's like Israel isn't going to retaliate because the U.S. doesn't want them to escalate this situation unless for some sort of like

backroom geopolitical reason, the United States actually does want to ratchet this up right now, for example, maybe an election in November. And for strategic reasons, it's deemed a good idea that they want to ratchet up the intensity of this conflict right now. And then the United States says, okay, Israel, actually you are going to go go now and so you have to try and like step into all these like weird kind of proxy stuff and yeah but how do you how do you interrupt but you guys are you guys yeah scott how do you no no i'm gonna no no i'm gonna help you scott scott i was gonna do the pivot for you don't worry i was just about to ask you a question scott if this escalates how do you think that impacts crypto like when does it when does when does it matter in your opinion i don't why why would it matter i don't i just i literally gave you

i'm sure we'll have knee-jerk reactions like saturday but like what happened with ukraine right i mean i i don't see why i i just don't first of all to travis's point the whole thing seems like scripted and telegraphed it's like hey guys, are you free on Tuesday at 4pm for us to bomb? Like, will you be ready? I mean, I'm not trying to make light of the situation, but come on, right? It's very clear that neither of them, they're both, you know,

need to show that they're strong without doing anything that actually gets a lot of people killed, in my opinion. So that's my outside zero knowledge, zero expert, and I have no business talking about it. But as for what it will do to the market, first of all,

geopolitical conflict, in theory, not in the moment it happens, but in the long term, should be a reason that people would buy Bitcoin. Certainly not a reason for them to buy cat with dog face, nutsack hat or whatever the fuck these idiots are trading every single day.

No offense to all of you. I love you. I'm an idiot too, but you know, so what it means for the like meme coin casino and coins are 200 down the market cap. I have no idea, but in theory, I don't see why this would wildly affect markets in crypto at all. Because people who are passively buying Bitcoin will continue to do so. People who are holding it will continue to do so.

And people who are trading altcoins are like an entire different breed and market who are going to be doing that regardless so joe you're starting to sound you're starting to sound a bit bitter that you're not into you know that someone actually approached me to to launch a a scott malker meme coin how to do the ultimate fud you can say joe you can say that's me you know you know it's crazy though i literally got absolutely like attempted evisceration of me last week by a bunch of Bitcoin maxis who thought I was promoting meme coins. But absolutely the most hilarious thing.

I got canceled once again by the Bitcoin high priests of maximalism because for some reason they took an out of context clip of me saying that yeah the meme coin community considers you the anti-meme coin guy and i've got the bitcoin and the bitcoiners consider me the meme guy because i'm not bitcoin enough so i just get i get kicked in one nut by one community and the other nut by the others so welcome to my welcome to my life in politics exactly the same thing. Go ahead, Travis. on alts over the last couple months. And this was really sort of driven home over the weekend when we hit that kind of bad air pocket when the Israel stuff ramped up. But to me, it seems very clear that there's not even close to enough collective bid in alts right now. And people have been trying to take profit on positions to make room for new stuff that's coming down the pipe like Egan and Monad.

These are probably the two largest token launches this year. And you have some meaningful portion of the crypto degen part of this market that just skip alts all together and they go straight to memes and you saw it back in february when memes really started heating up and you saw all the air come out of the alt l1 trades like injective and suey and say and aptos and everybody was doing these um this this points to airdrop daisy chain trade on some of these alt l1s and there wasn't enough money to keep a bid in those names that's right and also to go fire into meme coins because there's just not that much capital like you're not attracting it's a washing machine it's a it's a it's a there's very little new capital in the altcoin market i'm sure that there is some you know people point at

market cap but obviously the prices go up that you know. We see a lot of it rise. But we got to this fever pitch of meme coins. And just to be clear, if you guys want to trade meme coins and people want to do that, I think it's amazing. I love casinos. I've said it 100 times. There's nothing more fun to me than going to the craps table and playing and winning or losing with my friends. But I know I'm at a craps table. So my beef with meme coins is that a lot of people come in, have no idea that they're in a casino. It's like you're in a casino and don't know you're there. And you don't know you're playing a game. So if you want to trade meme coins or buy lottery tickets or play in the casino, more power too. Great. But if you make a thousand new meme coins in two or three weeks, there's just not enough money there.

So eventually there's just too many assets, not enough capital and they're going to crash. Maybe some will survive. I'm sure. I'm sure there will be some that perform well, but yeah, with very little new money and exponentially increasing assets, there's only one way that can end. Well, yeah. And then the last thing I'd say, too, is that like in a way, that whole meme coin movement is it's kind of a fuck you to VCs. They're basically saying, like, I'm not buying your marked up bag because you can't even pretend to put together a decent enough fake narrative for it to be pseudo believable. So if that narrative isn't even pseudo believable,

I might as well buy dog with hat. And honestly, like in a way it's, it's pretty, it's actually pretty smart move. I mean, it's like, it's very nihilistic, but it's kind of smart. And if you rewind back to like summer 2021 with where NFTs really ramped up, that this was sort of one of the more intelligent pitches that I heard for NFTs was the viewpoint of let's just stop pretending like alts, like the technology on all to actually do anything. They'd like that. There's actually a product underneath and just remove that, that pretending. And that's what NFTs are. And now they're JPEGs with pictures and you can, you can just trade them. They're just trading instruments. That's right.

And they are just like another extension of that. Yeah. Like I said, the only, I agree 100% with what you just said, but it's the DJs who are creating the meme coins who are saying, fuck you to the VCs, not your average person who's buying it because they think it's going to make them rich, right? Yeah, and I think that most people know that a lot of meme coins have a ton of manipulation in them. I mean, most meme coins have a ton of manipulation in them. I mean, most

meme coins have a lot of manipulation in them. There's the thing, the, what is it? A fair fun, what is it? Fun launch dot or launch. What is that thing called? Yeah. Yeah. That thing. And it kind of helps with more fair launch type of stuff. There's still a lot of manipulation in it. I think most market participants in meme coins realize that, but they're probably just looking at the lesser of two evils and they're going, eh, I kind of like it over here a little bit better than like buying the marked up VC bags. I just kind of like this set up a little bit better. So I'm just going to kind of spend more time here and a lower market cap. So like maybe it's, it's more parlay-ish, right? It's more of a...

You can play it with 500 bucks. Yeah, you can play with 500 bucks. Right. But I don't think that anyone, whether it happens now or happens later or whatever, those things in all markets, eventually, you see flushes. Doesn't mean that it won't continue. It won't whatever, but you just have to,

once again, if you're in a casino, just know that you're there. Joe, I would love to hear your take on these meme coins before, before we get going. You haven't had a chance to speak. Carlos,

sorry. Sorry. Yeah. Thanks for having me up. So I'll just comment quickly on the meme coins. I want to just talk about overall to sort of where we're at in the markets. We can, but I mean,

listen, I want to just talk about overall to sort of where we're at in the markets if we can. But I mean, listen, I love the fact that the meme coins abandon the pretense that, you know, these altcoins are going to do anything at all significant. And to me, I think that's what people crave. They crave honesty. They crave, you know, people just being truthful. And let's just go gamble some of these tokens and let's just see which ones pop and which ones catch on from a cultural standpoint. So to me, like, you know, although I, you know, I'm not really, I'm not really personally investing in them. I understand why people are drawn to them. People want just, you know, to be able to abandon the nonsense and just say, hey, we're just going to pump some of these things and see if we can get a movement around them and create the next doge or whatever.

So to me, like, you know, I think that that's what the consumer is telling you. You're telling you these things are interesting from the standpoint of just, you know, what can rise really quickly and have significant growth and the ability to tap into the zeitgeist of the moment. That's a skill in itself. Right. So, you know, people that want to go trust, invest in these and trade them, you know, more power to you. I don't even as a Bitcoiner, right. I don't, I don't prevent people from wanting to gamble with their money, they should, it should be open and honest that they're gambling, right? Like, and, and I think nobody's confused about the activity, right? So like, I don't... Okay, if you think nobody's confused, then power to the people.

Yeah, power to the people, right? Like, I don't, I don't have any problem with that. I mean, I love the fact that every single one of these things states on, you know, their white paper and website, this has no value, this has no utility whatsoever. And despite the disclaimers, everything the SEC talks about all the time, people still go buy it anyway, right? They want to gamble with their money. And who are the regulators or folks to say that they can't? And also, it is great from a security standpoint. I know it's not really a big thing that doesn't deter any investors that these things might be investment contracts or may not be. But I think it's great from the securities analysis, they just completely take it out. When you are issuing a token and you're saying this has no

value, this has no roadmap, this has no plan to become anything of utility, and you put that out there in the open space, how can anyone come forward and then say that you're launching some type of investment? Joe, quickly though, I still, as a lawyer, I would imagine you wouldn't recommend that an American launch fund. No, of course not. But I'm just telling you, you know how difficult that case will be to prove when you go out? I mean, just think about it. Like, you know, the SEC faced a tall order and was unable to prove their arguments in Ripple and they failed in other suits. Think about how much more difficult it becomes when no pretense is advanced that these things have any value. It just it just

makes it that much more challenging on a going forward basis. I agree. All right. Well, I think we guys I think we actually covered effectively everything today. And I'm sure we're gonna have a lot more to talk about tomorrow. I mean, Bitcoin still sort of showing some weakness here. I think it was today it topped around 66.8. So almost 67,000. And now right back down to 64.4. So we'll have a lot to talk about, I think, with the markets as we make it through the week. We will be back tomorrow, 1015 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Thank you all for joining and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.