The Wolf Of All Streets - Crypto Market Dump! ETF To Be Rejected? Is $1M Bitcoin Still Possible? | Raoul Pal

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

3 years ago Raoul Pal made a bold prediction that within next 5 years the price of Bitcoin will hit $1 million. What does Raoul think about it today? Let's find out. And as always, Chris Inks will provide his analysis of the crypto market.  Raoul Pal: https://twitter.com/RaoulGMI Chris Inks: https://twitter.com/TXWestCapital ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   ►►OKX SIGN UP FOR AN OKX TRADING ACCOUNT THEN DEPOSIT & TRADE TO UNLOCK MYSTERY BOX REWARDS OF UP TO $60,000!  👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. USE CODE ‘2MONTHSOFF’ WHEN VISITING MY LINK.  👉 https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker  ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #RaoulPal The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Crypto markets just saw a major dump, a huge move to the downside. Yesterday, when we were streaming, it was 45,700 Bitcoin. Now it's about 42,500. All of this apparently coming on a rumor that the ETF might get rejected. We're going to talk about that, why that notion is actually nonsense for this move. And I've got the best possible guest today the stars align they gave me a major volatility and raul paul both right around 9 a.m eastern standard time can't wait to discuss this with him and of course to look at charts on the back end with chris inks texas west capital let's go. What is up, everybody?

I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of Wall Street. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and hit that like button. I'm not going to waste any time because I don't have that much of it. Raul, Matrixport. I read this. I go to Twitter. I see the market dumping. I'm like, so what excuse do we have today?

We all know that it's leverage. We can get into that. But what excuse? A guy with no inside information on anything said in a report that he thinks because it's a bunch of Democrats that we might not get a Bitcoin spot ETF approved. I mean, who the fuck is Matrixport? Who's ever heard of them until today? I think that's Jihan Wu's. It started as a mining, and then I think it was sort of actually like one of these yield platforms. I think it started as sort of a Celsius, one of those

competitors. I mean, here's what he said, right? The current five-person voting commissioners leadership critical for the ETF approval of the SEC is dominated by Democrats. I mean, here's what he said, right? The current five-person voting commissioner's leadership critical for the ETF approval of the SEC is dominated by Democrats. I mean, that's basically his premise here. We were bullish before. Now we're not bullish, but we still think the year will be good. And here we go with this massive event. But what I think really happened here, I mean, just for the record, is really clear. I talked about it yesterday.

$500 million in liquidations. This says one hour, but it's 10 minutes. 500 million, 95% longs. Yesterday talked about it at length that annualized funding rates were 66% to be long. I mean, humans love sex and leverage like nothing else. It's kind of what drives them. And I think the leverage is all about sex. Look how rich I am. Look how big my bags are. It's ridiculous.

It's ridiculous. And I keep saying to people, don't fuck this up. And leverage is the classic way to back it up. If you think about Solana, it's had a peak to trough 36% pullback. Now, even if you were mild three times leverage and the general D gens are much more than three times levered, you get wiped out. It's like, stop doing that, please. Just stick with the program.

Don't fuck this up. I don't think they'll ever learn. Is it because people just feel like they need to get rich quick? The lack of patience and I've got to do it now. In what world does Solana go up 10x in a year and you don't think there's enough juicy price action for you that you simply must leverage it? I mean, what world is that?

Yeah, it's absolutely insane. Just to be clear, you know, we obviously look to the experts when things like this happen. This is Eric Balchunas from Bloomberg who I had on last week. People tagging me like crazy on this rejection report. We've heard nothing to indicate anything but approval, but I want to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. So I'm asking if he has any sources or if he's just speculating. He seems to be a Bitcoin bull and recently tweeted, executive said approval likely. So unsure why we flipped. So listen, this isn't

the reason, right? This is a catalyst for somebody. Somebody's always sitting there when there's over leverage and it's all to one side waiting for any little thing that they can use to sell off a bit and spark this. Yeah, and don't forget, there are a lot of short-term traders in this space with a lot of capital, right? The main institutional capital in this space is actually trading firms. There's very few hedge funds, and there's very few big institutions. So these guys see that massive buildup in leverage. They wait for something, and then they press it, and everyone gets liquidated, and they make a ton of money from it. It's a classic kind of market maker price action.

It would have happened on the New York Stock Exchange floor, but it happens in the futures exchanges. It happens always. But the one thing just before I came on today, I went back and looked at the 2015 to 18 bull market. We had 11 20% pullbacks or more. Many of them were 35, 38%. In the last cycle, from the 2020 low, not even the 2019 low, from the 2020 low, we had eight corrections over 15%. Some happened in a day and some happened over three weeks. So it's normal. Yeah. And we say it all the time, but somehow it's mind-blowing when it happens

and we're rotating and the bear market is back and it's over, right? I mean, this is 10-ish percent move. It is nothing. Of course, all coins get rocked a lot harder, but actually we've had a pretty decent bounce here. This went all the way down to, I'm looking on Coinbase, about 40,600.

Pretty big. Like I said, 24 hours ago, I remember saying 45,700, we're on our way. The issue is it doesn't even give you enough time to go and search the sofa for any spare change, rifling through your jean pockets, looking for any cash. It's all over and done with. And before you know it, as somebody was saying, I think it was OSF was saying, now it would be hilarious if they approved the ETF today. Yeah. And I think that that's been speculation that that's very likely to happen, at least that

they'll find out that they're approved with the ability to launch. We may not hear about it, but a lot of people believing that the process is happening today, tomorrow. And frankly, does it matter if it happens today or in a week or even in three months at all? It's irrelevant. Yeah, but you know what the greatest top signal is? I have to play this video.

I'm sorry, because we saw it yesterday and then the market drops 10%. But I do think that the people who are in it for that are going to use that as a chance to sell. This thing is, you can't kill it. No, you can't. And the late Charlie Munger, who was so brilliant on so many things, was blind to this. Now you can say, wait a second, maybe it's all going to come around.

Jamie Dimon has not spared any negative words. No, but look, I mean, it's a reality and it's a technological marvel. And I think people have to start recognizing that it's here to stay. The SEC has been against it almost the whole time. Yeah. Now, that doesn't mean that every one of these is here to stay. But I do think that it's about this is a remarkable comeback that was unexpected. Totally. Except for all the bulls who turn out to be right. Gens this is a remarkable comeback that was unexpected. Totally.

Except for all the bulls who turned out to be right. Gensler does a lot of jawboning. Didn't work. Didn't work. I mean, Jim Cramer, hilarious, and he's a great meme for all of us. But the other thing is, I'm just watching CNBC and it just looks like of an older, different age.

It's like a world that doesn't exist anymore it's daily viewing figures are less than you and I will get on this show it's kind of it's and yet we kind of the space still looks at it for some sort of validation it's ridiculous um you know yeah and it's amazing how much he's flip-flopped. It's one of those things, actually, like he's saying the right thing. I'm glad to hear it. I 100% agree with it. It's just incredible what the market does the minute that he flip-flops. They had the inverse Kramer ETF. I would love to see the performance of it if it includes Bitcoin, but it's pretty comical to see this go down. Okay, so listen.

It's like Capo and his tweeting as well. Oh my God, did you see this one? No. Wait. I have just been informed of what really happened. At 4.48 a.m., Capo took his first long since 2022. I hate making fun of this guy. Honestly, I think everybody-

I don't even know who he is, but it's just a great meme, right? From the exact moment the entire market nuked, the timing is incredible, and it shows him taking an AVAX long for a scalp. And this is literally, I think, the first time he's posted about a long position since the dead bottom. And it was, I mean, to like within 20 minutes,

the market started to move. How is this possible? Come on. I don't know, but we've all top tick markets before. Yeah, I'm the master of that. No doubt. Okay. So listen, I think that we both agree that this is a liquidation event. It caused the cascade. This is the classic situation. So I guess then the question is what comes next? Does this in any way impact your view of what's happening here in the market? For me, we're literally trading at the same price as two days ago on Bitcoin. Two days ago.

Another mantra that I have when you're in the middle of a bull market that has the macro behind it is it's all fucking noise. It's just noise. And so, you know, has the main thesis changed? Is the world becoming less digital or more digital every day? More. Are investors who aren't exposed to it getting more interested in it? Yes. Is their capital flow coming in? Yes. Is the business cycle supportive? Are liquidity conditions supportive? Yes. In which everything else is noise. So it doesn't change anything. It actually gives it a higher probability of rising. And it gives it a higher probability of rising because you flushed out the leverage.

Yeah. I mean, it literally cannot continue up with those funding rates and that much open interest so i think that it's just a classic move so for me i still think we still get a massive move up if we get the actual approval now i obviously if we've gone in with such high funding we'd have had to sell off after the event now we can have a rally and maybe a sideways consolidation before it actually goes live, right? So we've got announcement and then live date, and then the masses need to be mobilized. And so there's going to be waves of that happening. So my general mental model could be dead wrong is we rally into it, rally after it, sideways consolidate for a month while everybody starts launching this thing, the tickers come out, you can start trading it and the RAAs go around talking to their clients. And then by March, it all starts going batshit crazy.

Yeah. So the premise of a lot of this, obviously, is this institutional wall of capital. I have a clip of you that my producer just shared from 2020. And I want to see what you said here and see if you still agree with it. Are you ready? Here we go. There's some bullish calls out there for Bitcoin, not just the $1 million mark, but $1 million within five years. Yeah, I think that's about right. And whether it's five years, six years, we're going to go through two of these halving cycles. And just from what I know from all of the institutions, all of the people I speak to, there is an enormous wall of money coming into this. It's an enormous wall of money. Just the pipes aren't there to allow people to do it yet. And that's coming, but it's on everybody's radar screen and there's a lot of smart people working on it. So I think it's going to be not because the world's collapsing,

it's because there's going to be adoption by the real large pools of capital. Right. I can obviously ask the question, is 1 million Bitcoin still possible? But that's the noise. That doesn't matter. I think we all think that's possible. And like you said, five, six, seven years. But that was a pretty prophetic prediction because you were talking about the institutional wall of capital which the etf is the single greatest unlock for that in my opinion and the idea that the pipes would finally be ready which is the same sort of concept we all know that in 2020 they just couldn't come in like i was black rock gonna just store it on their ledger in a safe and hope for the best like it didn't well don't forget rick reader did buy it i think he used the futures contract he bought it he's their big risk taker so we did see

institutional adoption but it was like early as you the the true pipes weren't there and now it's all there and they've all done the work on it and they all understand it. So, you know, we've seen the work that, you know, you've had Sandy on from Franklin Templeton. We've seen obviously the Fidelity team. These guys have been working throughout. People like Bitwise, Hunter Horsley, they've been out working all the way through the bear market, educating people, getting people in place, getting the right product, ramping up their teams. It's coming.

I mean, somebody said in the comments, but it's not like they're shooting commercials and spending money on these things if they don't think they're going to get approved. I played the hashtags commercial, the Bitwise commercial, the VanEck commercial yesterday. That would be a pretty big waste of money if these things aren't coming. So do you think that the institutional wall of money is sitting there waiting for this product? Do you think the demand will be there? We've seen these really mixed sort of predictions, even from the experts. It'll be a billion dollars in a week, like BITO was 48 hours. And then some saying maybe it's 30 or 40 million in the first month, right? I don't know how to gauge that. I've always said it's a function of price. So if price, you know, last year was the best advert you wanted for an ETF to launch. If you'd have launched the ETF in November 2022, you'd have raised 30 million bucks and everyone

would have been embarrassed. like you raise it off the bitcoins bitcoins at 150 last year that's pretty interesting to people um so now are the institutions going to use the etf mostly not it's most of the ras it's really for individual investors um so those pools of capital and the individuals, it makes it just super easy because they can just use their brokerage app or they can use their RAA because then they can get fees on top. So they're incentivized to do it. Will some pension funds do it? Yes, but they still really don't know how to deal with this asset class yet. And they want more regulatory clarity.

I mean, it helps with an ETF. So we will see it. One of the headlines that will come across the tape in 2024 is some monster pension fund has taken a monster size position in Bitcoin. It's not just Bill Miller and Texas teachers. It'll be a bunch of others. We will see those headlines. They will be the pioneers to show the way to others that you could do it much like Paul Tudor Jones was a pioneer in getting the hedge funds to start trading it because he was pretty early into getting on board with it. Yeah, his fastest horse in the race comment arguably sparked the entire last bull run. Of course, alongside MicroStrategy designed to buy and put it on their balance sheet. I don't know if you saw, but Saylor now apparently is selling like 230, 240 million in MicroStrategy

stock. I bet we know where that money is going to go. At some point, is he going to sell any of his own stock? I mean, that's what he's doing. I think he's selling his own MicroStrategy stock, but the implication is he's going to himself buy more Bitcoin with it. I mean, the guy is, but you have to respect the absolute conviction in doing it and that he's been right even through these cycles. I mean, people like us who have been around a while, you're willing to wait 10, 20 years for something to happen, but then you get on in the court of public opinion. And if you're not profitable in six months you're the worst investor that ever exists existed on the planet right yeah always the case i look i mean he's been very single-minded and i would

argue brave because you know you're using leverage by issuing convertible notes to buy uh you know and it could have gone horribly wrong had the last cycle got worse the down cycle um but he did it and so there's generally the people who make obscene amounts of money generally take quite a lot of risk um yeah and those that don't make it aren't recorded and everyone forgets those who don't make it but they remember the winner the person who managed to get it right. And good for him. I think O'Dowd is one of the greatest investors of all time.

But this is a good opportunity, I think, for us to sort of give a reset on our previous conversations. Obviously, we had the podcast a few weeks back. We talked about Solana and you were extremely bullish on it. That was probably three X ago at this point. It was a couple of months ago, I think. You talked about getting this natural retrace that was obviously coming after you do a move that large, 10, 15, 20x. Is Solana still your main focus for the upcoming bull market and that ecosystem?

You were obviously very bullish on ETH in the last cycle. I'm actually starting to think that ETH is going to catch up massively soon. That's sort of my premise at this point after the Solana move. I'm wondering where you stand on all of it. So, yeah, my thesis remains unchanged. I'm mainly denominated in Solana. Second is ETH. And like you, I think ETH has a big catch up as soon as this ETF is done.

So that pause after the ETF is announced is I think the start of the ETH run. Because it's very simple. Let's say a billion dollars of speculative capital went in to speculating on the Bitcoin ETF. Okay, once that news is out, you'll sell. Then what do you do? Oh, the ETH ETF, well, that's going to come by maybe June. So in which case that billion dollars goes into ETH. Now, what's interesting about ETH is it's a third of the size of Bitcoin currently. So if you put the same billion dollars into an asset that's a third of the size, it probably goes 3x more than Bitcoin did. And ETH with the deflationary asset, the more activity, the less ETH is around. And all of the staking means there's not a lot of liquid ETH around

if this happens. So it could get very, very squeezy. So yeah, I think that. And maybe at some point, it'll play a bit of catch up to Solana. I think Solana beats it all cycle. But there'll be legs when ETH does really well, much like Bitcoin started off out of the gates faster than anything. Then Solana caught up and well exceeded it. I think ETH's chance is next. Yeah, we've seen sort of this classic cyclical action of capital, but it hasn't necessarily been just from, say, Solana to AVAX to hopefully ETH or something like that. But we've seen the entire ecosystem sort of move together. So is there anything that you're watching more deeply within these ecosystems that's particularly interesting to you? I've

always said to people, hey, man, just buy the layer one because you're not going to do the work to find the thing in that ecosystem that goes 100x. You'll get the value of the actual layer one token. But there's some pretty interesting things happening in these ecosystems, Solana in particular. Yes, there are. And I'm not smart enough to do it. I start up an asset management company called Exponential Age Asset Management, XPAM, that actually invests in... It's a fund of hedge funds. So invest in digital asset hedge funds so they go out and do the work and do it because that's their job i'm just not smart enough to find it one thing i do know is some tokens with new charts will do well who's that going to be is that going to be you know what

you know we've seen it with bonk you know could it be with any of the others a whole bunch of these and that's a bit of a crapshoot who gets adoption. The one thing that for everybody else to bear in mind is that these cycles tend to play out the same way. So it tends to start with crypto spring is Bitcoin dense. We then start transitioning later spring and it seems to be always DeFi season. I don't know why, but DeFi season starts taking off. Then you start hitting alt season. When global liquidity starts increasing year on year,

alt season hits and ETH starts outperforming Bitcoin. And then you get some of these ridiculous tail events. Also, NFTs lag. So we're kind of like we were beginning of last year in crypto where some of the NFTs have found a base and are rallying. Others are still bleeding. Obviously, some of those will go to zero, obviously. But that NFT space, it really takes off when ETH goes to all-time highs. That's what happened last time around. And then it utterly explodes because everyone's got money to recycle.

They buy trophy assets. Everyone wants to buy a punk. And then off it goes again. So we've got that madness still to come. We've still got another leg, meme coin madness, dog coin madness comes later still. So that's in Q2

is kind of dog coin madness to come. So all of the psychology of the degens, that will play out as normal, plus the sensible bets of the right layer ones. gains and more risk as they get bored with whatever they just made money on you know if eth doesn't well now i gotta beat eth i gotta get into nfts or layer twos or whatever it is and i for one believe that this will be an even bigger cycle and bigger version of that this is something i'm toying with so here's my probability set 60 chance it's a regular cycle somewhat like the last cycle but maybe a bit more like the previous cycle, that 2017. They got a little bit crazy. I think there's a 20% chance that maybe it all gets front-loaded because we get all of the retail demand via the ETF, and it actually is a shorter cycle than expected. If you think the previous cycle was actually a

bit stunted versus where people's expectations were, maybe this is stunted in terms of time. The other outcome I've got, the other 20% chance is that this is a gigantic bubble cycle, somewhere between the 2012-13 version and the 2015, because everybody can now participate and total fucking madness ensues. And I don't know which one of those three it's going to be, but they've all got a decent chance. Maybe it's my bags and future wealth talking, but I lean towards the latter, but I do have a premise for that. And I'll tell you why.

If you think about everybody was a little bit shocked that we didn't have a final leg last time around. So they now got that imprint, like they've all been waiting with the down 50% leg, the COVID leg, which is not going to happen again. So they're now all expecting that it to be a smaller cycle. And I always look for where can the crowd be wrong, but still be right, which is like it's going up, but it goes up more. My feeling is that it might continue to be a dampened or smaller cycle for Bitcoin, which we've seen sort of each having cycle goes up 1000%, 20%, 3%, whatever the numbers are from the previous all-time high. But I think people underestimate just how degenerate these TradFi guys are.

And once they come in through the Bitcoin ETF, and once they get a taste for this market, wait until they find out about meme coins and altcoins and NFTs, and that real liquidity comes in there. So I think that we get the inevitable trickle down of even institutional traders. I'm not saying that pension funds are buying punks, but I think that there's going to be just an unexpected boom in capital and that's going to flow through that same cycle that we talked about before. Everybody's been through that cycle.

You have, I have, everybody. As you come in on Bitcoin and then you walk into the candy store and it's like, holy shit, this is the best thing I've ever seen. And before you know it, you're doing ridiculous things you should never be doing and having a lot of fun doing it, even knowing that it's crazy. I mean, if you're doing it with profits and not your rent, then I think in a small percentage thereof, I think half at it. Is anything at this point in the macro cycle cycle we've talked about the four years everything cycle

obviously people can go back and listen to that but is there anything in the macro that's concerning you that you think could stifle this process no so my forward-looking indicates liquidity going up the business cycle following that path inflation Inflation falling. Look at true inflation. It was down at 2 point whatever again. I still think it goes to zero. And then following it will be the core inflation will keep deflating. Unemployment, who knows? I think it rises a little bit from here. But that's enough to bring the Fed into action.

Will they use the balance sheet and print? Well, somehow they've got to roll all of this debt. Maybe they don't. Maybe they figure a different way. Maybe they incentivize the banks to take it on board. Doesn't matter. It's the liquidity that matters. So I don't see anything on the horizon that changes any of this. And if you think about one of the big things that people were worried about was China, but cut to a month and a half ago, and Xi's got a smiling face in California, shaking hands with Gavin Newsom, talking about, well, we should all be working together. Well, that tells me for this cycle, that's taken that risk off the table too. So where is the risk here? Yesterday on Macro Monday on a Tuesday, we sort of reviewed, there was an article in Bloomberg reviewing basically the 2024 predictions of every meaningful Wall Street institution.

And they were all the same. And there was nobody willing to say anything dramatic in either direction. Almost every single one of them said, we see inflation being a bit sticky, maybe a very mild and shallow recession. Maybe we trade sideways. It was like everyone was hedging their bets because they were wrong in 23. Everybody was wrong. And it was clear as day to me then. It remains clear as day to me now

sure there will be upsets on the way we've got to get through an election and we don't know what madness is going to ensue in this election we don't know what content we're going to be consuming that's ai that gets us enraged and then we start hating each other um and it won't have been real content that who knows what stories, what fears the market has about, you know, is Trump going to impose a 10% tariff on everything? Is this going to happen?

Is that going to happen? So we will go through some volatility, but generally speaking, election years are all about the government giving out candy to appease the voters. And that's more cowbell in my mind. Yeah, I don't see a situation where that doesn't

happen. So I want to ask you before I let you go anecdotally, because obviously you have real vision. And I can tell with my traffic or Twitter followers or how many people show up to a stream exactly what price is doing. The biggest days are always, obviously the biggest days are when it goes up or down massively. But the general trend is everything's dead when the market's dead. And all of a sudden, people start coming back out of the woodwork. Are you seeing it in your business, this sort of bullish progression of prices and the everything going up? Are you seeing a ton of movement with new subscribers, interest, things like that? Yes.

People are starting to feel confident again. And it took them a long time through 2023 to start to believe start to believe that the economy could recover that it wasn't going to hell in a handbasket and it was it was okay to be bullish again and look it's just the business cycle and that's normal it took people a. It took people a while to recover from, but my crypto went down 75%. I'm like, no shit, Sherlock. It does this all the time. You know, you'll just hang on, stick with it.

Don't fuck this up. So yes, we're seeing confidence come back. You're seeing more engagement in videos. You're seeing a lot more interest in crypto again. People are starting to say, I get it now. All of that kind of stuff. So that's been great. We've also, we've got a, you know, as we built this new platform that I've mentioned before, there's a whole free component now and we've built education for people

that's free as well. So people just go to realvision.com forward slash Scott, go there, it's free. But there's, there's whole education about crypto to not fuck this up. We're just trying to help as many people as possible as you are. Just help them navigate this. Because once you've been around the block a few times, you know how it plays out. I know I'm supposed to let you go. But when you keep saying don't fuck this up, I know you had an epic video about it maybe a month ago. I saw it reshared, I think, today on Real Vision. What can people do really quickly to not fuck this up? Don't use leverage. Today proved it. Don't overtrade. Just hold. Have patience. If you're going to have a DGEN book, have 10% of your assets in your DGEN book and keep off DeFi. Don't go out trying to lend stuff for fancy returns because you get rug

pulled if you're not careful. You've added a layer of risk. And before you know it, you don't own your coins anymore and the game is over for you. So don't do that. Also, look, most exchanges nowadays are higher quality and relatively safe. But if you can, you should not keep your coins on an exchange. That exposes other risks. So you need to have wallet hygiene. Just store things on different ledger devices or whatever. Don't store it in one wallet. Don't use that wallet for everything because then everybody sees your wallet and you can be open to a scam. So just do that and just don't FOMO into the shiny thing because that is a sure way of losing money. And just step back.

Let the madness ensue. Have a smile on your face. Watch it, but try not to get caught up in it. If you do, use your 10% of your book to get caught in the madness so you can laugh at yourself because I guarantee that 90% of you will lose 90% of the money in that book. Some of your friends will make the 100x and you'll be always thinking, I can be them. You won't be. You never will be.

Yeah, I would say if you're already exposed to this market and you're feeling any sort of emotion, just do nothing and wait. Because you're probably, whatever you're holding right now of emotion, just do nothing and wait because you're probably, whatever you're holding right now is very likely to be many multiples up by 2025. Half of me wishes that we didn't have businesses to run. I could just turn off all my computers, go around the world, spend six months in Africa, go and do something and come back and it would be so much easier. Yeah. To prevent yourself from making bad decisions. It's funny. I think one of the times when we were talking in person, it must've been in March. So it was still a while ago and

the market was doing well. And you were like, I'm already checking my portfolio twice a day. So something here is happening. I was like twice a day, even twice every 10 minutes, twice a day for you as FOMO then you're doing really really well I try I really try not to but it flashes at you and if not what I've now done to feed the inner dgen is I've got like on coin market cap the uh the kind of um smaller tokens and speculative stuff that I've got and I check that all the time don't even check the p and l I'm just like are they up up or down 20% today? Because they invariably are up and down 20%. Preston Pyshko So fun. Yeah. The casino is always open there.

By the way, as I let you go, if you need any final counter indicators, Schiff is tweeting about how bad the Bitcoin spot ETF is going to be for everyone. Jeff Booth See, the gold people really hate the ETF. They think it broke their world like they thought the futures. And yes, look, there is a reality of the fact that this is keeping money inside the TradFi system. But we also know it's like tourists, they go on holiday, look at this great country, like you come to the Cayman Islands, you start thinking, maybe I could move there. And before you know it, you buy an apartment there or whatever it is, right? People, as you said before, they come in through the Bitcoin ETF,

they look around and like, I want some of that meme coin ridiculousness or NFTs, or I want to sport a punk. And then before you know it, they're in crypto land full time. So. Well, they're all welcome here, thank you so much for uh your time and then hopefully after this cycle we can all move to the gamut it's lovely man that's definitely better than whatever i'm doing with my life made me feel bad all right man everybody follow raul obviously i know you already are you have your own youtube now so those videos are incredible on youtube uh r me on YouTube, Ralph, the journeyman, tons of great stuff.

My big macro thesis, crypto thesis is there. It came out over Christmas, new year. Go and watch that. And if you want the free real vision experience with the AI and the, all of the videos and the transcripts and the education stuff and everything else,

just go to real vision.com forward slash Scott. It's all free. So knock your socks off i made amazing dude thank you so much we're gonna do this again soon enjoy the rest of your day thank you all right my friend take care everyone see you soon wow that was uh awesome i'm used to having at least an hour with raul so it's hard for me to even have a 30 minute conversation with a big brain like that i do want to move to the game. And so I'm going to be honest.

It's a really, really appealing. So, uh, guys, it's not done. We're not done. We've got our normal Wednesday here. And what a better day to look at charts with Chris Friggs of Texas West Capitol. Dude, you brought, there's 4,400 people who showed up to YouTube. Another 500 right now watching on Twitter,

all because you're here. Yeah. I wish, I wish. They're all here for you. It's incredible. Great job. Great job. I was listening with you and Raul there and man, I am 100% behind what he said there at the end about overtrading and about just kind of hold on a bit and, you know, not getting shaken out by the short moves. And, you know, and the fact that really I'm big on what he said about, you know, 90 plus percent of y'all are going to, you know, you're going to, you're going to see somebody get a hundred times on something. You'd be like, Oh man, I can do that too. But you can't, and you won't. And most of those people that got it are lucky.

Um, you know, uh, very few of them are actually skilled. They get it right. All of it just like hoping and whatever. And so the thing is, if you're using proper risk management, um, you know, and, and you're taking profits along the way, you're going to be a lot further ahead than what most people end up being. Um, you know, when they go through a bull cycle, I said the other day on, on Twitter, they're on X I posted, uh, and I said that, uh, you know, they go through a bull cycle i said the other day on on twitter there on x i posted uh and i said that uh you know just because it's a bull market doesn't guarantee that you're going to make money um a lot of people lose money in the bull market and so you got to know what you're doing you know you can't just hope either that or buy and hold and then you still got to hope a bit if you're getting something really kind of crazy out there but you're buying

and holding bitcoin or ethereum whatever most likely you're going to make money. Yeah. That's what I said. If you're exposed now, man, go touch some grass and get out of here. Like Raul said, I think that's true. But I mean, you've got to take a look at Bitcoin here, obviously on the daily. The first thing that I noticed here, just on my end, is the last time we were at the 50 MA was 26,700 ish all the way back in October, right? And you generally get these mean reversion touches. It didn't break, but if you want to look where this move basically died, I mean, within a couple of hundred bucks, I think the 50 MA is about 40,900. This went to 40,600. That's where we bounced. I'm not saying we're going to permanently bounce, but no big coincidence that I think that's where we saw a balance on a daily 50 and then of course we had this bull pennant

uh i mean it's a bull pennant it was a classic bull pennant looked beautiful volume on the breakout oh bad so that didn't work out as planned. Remind me as a technical analysis doesn't work every single time, right? Yeah, yeah, no, you know, it's all in how you look at it. And, you know, here's the thing. Technical analysis is a big, broad, you know, grouping, right? So you have everybody from classical chartists to Elliott Wave to Wyckoff to price action, you know, specifically maybe ICT or something like that. So, I mean, there's a lot of different things under technical analysis, right? And not everything reads the same way. So for me, this is kind of how I'm looking at this. So we've got this range here.

We have a great drop off in volume throughout the range here. We got this rejection that's moved out. It has not printed a lower low right now so right now i'm really interested there's a lot of volumes a volume spike on that coming down but it's getting caught down here in these wicks where all this demand is right this is low volume node um i've shown this chart this is something i posted on the weekly it was talking about you know before we broke out how we had this bullish consolidation on top of this uh at the time there's the blue pivot there and whatnot. But yeah, I mean, for me right now, it looks like a diagonal.

So if we're popping up, if we can even zoom in more here, you can see it's just three waves down. So ABC here. The retracement, I think, is right around 70 and a half, which is institutional pullback level. You see there. Oh, no, it actually went down a bit further here. Well, let me see. Yeah, it went down a little bit further. It's fine.

But anyway. But yeah, so it hits that low volume node, grabs a bid, runs on up. Four hour is almost oversold in Stoke RSI, RSI as well. I'm watching right now. If we rally up, this is just three wave down. So if we rally up above this swing high here, it's right around 45,519 on the Bitcoin-USD pair on Coinbase.

But whatever chart you're looking at, it should be a 1, a 2, and a 3 like this, right? An ABC. If we're popping out above that without creating any more waves down, this is just a wave 1 on the way up. And all of a sudden, we're looking at $54,000. So, I mean, you know, if, if we get this and we kind of measure this out here, uh, let's see here. One and two. Yeah. Up here around 53, 54,000, depending what charts you're looking at. Um, and so, yeah, so it's just really important

now what happens here. If we break down below here, okay, then we can look down lower, but as long as we're holding here, we're not making a new low on this big spike of volume coming off there. That daily pivot is holding right there. Man, that's just the first wave on that next series up because it's a diagonal. And if it breaks out higher, it's not an ending diagonal. It's a leading diagonal, which makes it a wave one. Yeah, I just want to show this. Right now, on the last 24 hours, we're at $651 million in liquidation.

It's been a 89% long. Right. Then you go to I mean, so obviously it's 12 hours, 581. So most of it obviously happening recently. Four hours, 560. So there and then one hour is only 25. So it all happened in that 10 or 15 minute period. Basically, when you dig into those numbers, over 500 million in a candle. I mean...

What are you going to do, right? We talk about it all the time and people still do it. And it's liquidations. It's not even losses, right? So that doesn't even really include the people who properly use risk management, right? The stop loss and just loss, right? I mean, it's literally just the people who didn't even use a stop loss and just lost, right? I mean, it's literally just the people who didn't even use a stop loss to get liquidated. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, I mean, like I said, we, you know, warn about it all the time

about becoming over leveraged and getting too frothy and, you know, and stuff like that. And, you know, when it does that, the market pays the price and, you know, you kind of wash everybody out and you get back together. If you need a narrative, you know, I'm not big on narratives. I'm not big on, you know, fundamentals and all that other stuff everybody out and you get back together. If you need a narrative,

I'm not big on narratives. I'm not big on fundamentals and all that other stuff. I'll just look at charts. But a lot of people talking about ETFs and whatnot, and I find it quite compelling that we're getting this huge reset on a lot of timeframes right before a potential ETF approval right now. Is it going to improve or not? I don't know, but it did. We didn't want to be at historically high funding rates and open interest massively overbought on everything going into it. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, I don't know, you know, if it gets approved, we're reset. I mean, technically we're, we're reset or resetting, um, across, you know, many, many timeframes. So, uh, you know, it gives it room to run. So yeah, I think it's exciting to come up last few days here.

So nothing has changed for you in the sort of larger timeframe views that you've had every week that we've showed up and talked. Forever, right? It's a 10% daily flush, whatever. It doesn't, uh, you don't think we're going to 12,000 right now. No, no, not at all. Unless it's E, unless it's E, unless it's E, maybe. It's Ethereum, right? Yeah, exactly. Um, you know, I've had forever and a day here since we got this one and two, I've had this wave three up here at almost 52,000. And if this is a one, two, you know, taking us up to 53 or 54,000, that gets us right there with the target. So, um, i feel pretty good about it to me nothing has happened again we haven't lost support on there we've got the range um even if we do i i would caution people though even if we get a drop below that range low

that i had on there just watch don't immediately sell because it could always just be a spring just a or terminal shakeout just below it maybe hit hit this S1 pivot around 38,300 and then take off and rocket back up. So just be careful. Don't assume it has to go down to everybody gets all bearish and has to go to 5,000. Capo's probably out there texting right now that he was right. And look, it's the end of the end again. And I don't know, man.

I don't know if you saw on Raul's stream, Capo took his first long this morning at 4 30 a.m right before this i'm not kidding on avax i shared it before we had jim cramer yesterday which is just funny whatever it's not it's just funny um but yeah capo literally took a long i'll have to now find the tweet again but yeah he took a long this this morning that's it that's his first long right i mean like i said i think i think it was the first public long that i've seen that he actually took uh since sort of capitulating on the i don't know brutal it is what it is but i'll tell you what guys listen here's the thing about trading um nothing on capital just individual but just specifically on doing generally on doing

that thing. If you're a trader and you think you know something that other people don't know, I mean, jump on it. Trading's all about asymmetric information. It's all about knowing something that somebody else doesn't know and taking advantage of that. If you say you know something and then you're not taking advantage of it, do you really believe that you know it? You know, and that's what it comes down to. Proper risk management at the end of the day, guys. It really is proper risk management. So, yeah.

And, you know, all of this triggered by the matrix port analyst that nobody knows or cares about saying that. And then, yeah, you get but you get the good takes. Right. Met a lawman who I have on the show all the time, James Murphy. If the SEC were to deny all spot Bitcoin ETFs, the applicants would immediately sue. And the D.C. Court of Appeals would again rule that the SEC was arbitrary and capricious. The SEC gave every reason they had for denying Grayskill and loss. I expect multiple approvals on January 10th. I mean, that seems like a pragmatic, reasonable, and rational, based on on evidence take on what's likely to happen here.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, again, for me, you know, it's all about the charts. I know everybody likes to talk about all the other stuff because the other stuff feeds emotion, right? If you're in a trade and you say, okay, well, the trade has to go long. Well, what information can I find that supports what I'm saying? How can I twist that so that it really supports my emotional bias in this trade? And so, you know, I mean, people still try to do with charts as well, but it's not the same type of emotional connection that you often get with narratives.

Narrative stories are very big for human beings. We use them in marketing and advertising and everything all the time because they work. But people use them when they're trading because it makes them feel warm. It makes them feel better, right? If you can find, oh, well, this guy is saying this, then basically, oh, I'm as smart as they are. And so we're going to do this. You know, you got to be careful with that. But yeah, yeah.

I mean, the charts are not looking bearish. Okay. So are you looking at any other charts specifically? As you do that, here it is. I have just been informed of what really happened at 4 48 AM. Capo took his first long since 2022. When the exact one with the entire market, dude, I mean, it's, it's, it's awful um but yeah i mean you know so everybody's kind of talking about file and everything and we've got this great accumulation range going on here we're just now getting ready to break out uh we should have a jump across the creek here which is just basically this breakout through this um this supply here that's keeping everything down which should be a decent size candle large candle candle spread, large spike of volume. Right now, again, all we've got is this pullback

based on this being a one and a two, we've got a three up here at 2648. So, I mean, that's, you know, that's where I'm going with this. You can see we've got a lot of volume as we kind of broke out through the range here up into this, up into this area. So all this, where you would expect it, you know, anybody that went short over here is going to try and protect those shorts. Um, and those who missed are going to think, Oh, I've got a second chance now, but man, look at how quick that was bought back up. I mean, the, you know, this daily candle here, uh, let's drop it down to four hour here. Look, I mean, look, look at this three,

less than three hours, man. It's down and right back up over 50 back up um you know right there at the s1 pivot especially if this thing closes above the uh the four hour well the hourly pivot here um i don't see a whole lot of reason to believe it won't continue up higher um but big picture is you know looking at least at 26 48 right now um with file on here oh by the way if we look at this as a one and a two here you can see we hit wave three right here basically perfect and then we pull back wave four the 100 so wave five should be a 10 61 kind of sent target area right there take that so yeah file still looking good i think it's got a long way to go there flushed it's so crazy when even you know as many times as you see it to see what uh like seven or eight percent instant moving bitcoin

does to all coins right exactly exactly uh let me see here i know i've got where is my actual chart oh it's right here it's with all these okay um so yeah i've got some ones here uh let's jump here to ftt real quick because people are crazy. They're still buying that. We do not encourage you to trade the token of the debt exchange, but hey, it's got a chart. But if you're charting it, if you're trading, if you're in it, here's what I'm seeing at the moment. We've got basically a 50% pullback on a flat here. Ending diagonal, it looks like, with a throw under of the wedge so looking for an impulsive breakout above the wedge especially above the uh daily pivot here at about three dollars and about four dollars we can get an impulsive breakout that's a large candle spread large spike of volume

i think that says wave four is done wave five got a minimum expected target up here of ten dollars and forty cents but damn we've got this fair value gap all the way up here to $25 and 47 cents. So I wouldn't be surprised to see this potentially overextend on up there into that kind of area. But normally if we're getting a rally from where we're at here, probably looking about a $10 and 40 cent target initially anyway. If we do continue to come down further, I mean, my first thought is the S1 pivot here. It's right there around $19 and I'm sorry, $1.93. And then we'd want to see a breakout back above the pivot. If we got that, we'd be long, a bit higher there. We can note that we got this dip down here, right into that low volume node. So if you guys are out there trading, you've got

your VPVRM over here, your volume by price level, always be looking at these low volume node. So if you guys are out there trading, you've got your VPVR on over here, your volume by price level, always be looking at these low volume nodes. They give you a lot of area of resistance and support depending if you're below or above them. So again, you can see it hit that. It's bouncing. We'll see if we can get it rallied. So we're largely looking for opportunities here on these dips. Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, right now the rally's backed up up you'll see them on a few of these charts they look really good so um it's very encouraging right ldo usdt this is the three day chart we show you this nice resistance area here that we've kind of again not saying this is an ascending triangle but we do have consolidating um toward resistance here we have the higher lows up toward this resistance area.

It looks like a 1-2-1-2. Again, think of things like Ethereum that I've charted out there. And there's a few others. Look at this one right here. This interior wave three minimum expected target of $11.97. The larger three has a minimum expected target of $24.15. So once we break out through this, worst case scenario is a little retest of it and then kind of continuing up toward those two targets pretty easily, I think, going up there. That's a nice chart.

Yeah, I like that. I like the consolidation for the resistance again. OP. Look at that retest. Yeah, look at that retest. And that's a blue sky, right? I mean, that's the all-time high yeah exactly exactly you know again arb did that today too i'm not sure where it is now but arb had a all-time high breakout just like uh a lot of these yeah yeah i've been running here lately too yeah yeah yeah but look at that i mean yeah you know pull back to

it uh we touched it uh right here on the way. This is the three day as well, just to give you a kind of a cleaner picture here. And then, you know, a pullback here again, just testing the pivot as supportive. That thing holds, there's no reason why we shouldn't be rallying. And so I've got an initial target of $5 and 16 cents or so. But usually if we're testing the pivot here, we route the R1, usually we'll just kind of come back toward the pivot again. So right above it here, probably around where we are at the moment. And then we'll break out higher. So initial target of $5, 16 cents or so, and then 27, 25, and then $60 and 97 cents up there. So yeah, I think these starts are great with where I'll talk about talking about hey just kind

of hold on to it for a bit don't don't get shaken on the small movements don't try and trade your way to you know the poor house uh every little move you know that's bad try to avoid that let's see here i've got xlm um we've got this nice range sitting right here again same idea you know get this great dip down into this uh support down here in this wick which hasn't been touched this whole bunch of demand that hasn't been touched in this wick so we got a hit here rallied it back up basically s1 pivot here on the daily is holding a support if we close above it and so again it's a three-wave movement down you can see that on this rally up, excuse me, it's just a seven.

There's my 70 and a half retrace. That's what I was talking about. Um, that's an institutional level almost to the tick. Uh, so based on the height of the swing, how to swing low, you know, you got a pattern target of 17.3 cents. Um, and then I've actually got targets of about 18 and a half cents and almost 21 cents up here 20.87 cents actually moving up there so just looking for what was it the dinosaurs i love the dinosaurs yeah yeah the things we made so much money on back there in uh yeah what was it man what was it like 2007 that was like 17 18 yeah yeah man we're popping in and out of that all the time but yeah if you're breaking out here above what is this a 13.34 cents so about 13.3 cents right here again it's three waves down so if you're breaking out above that minimally should be the

pattern target but probably uh these two targets as well coming on there let Let's see here. I got two more here. It looks like I've got a KCS USDT. Again, if you zoom in, it's, it's, it looks like a three wave movement down here. So we're just looking for a breakout back above getting out of this range. It's a 38 to pullback. If we can get this breakout here through the range, we're looking at 1894, $18, 94 cents, and then $21 and 45 cents. If we do happen to break down, not just a wick down, but like really break down again,

we'll look at the S one pivot. And then we want to see a rally and break back out above the pivot. If we can do that here on the daily, then that'll set us up for a new high coming out through there. And loving that. Was it? I said, loving that what's that i said loving that and again uh three-way movement down here this is rose people been asking about this it's a three-way move we've rallied you know 50 or more back up already back above this previous um this previous uh block here, demand block.

So we're back above that, trying to close up back above that pivot. Again, this is the daily. So again, if we're down three and we're breaking out above that second wave, they're at 1467, 0.1467. Initial target of 0.18866. Secondary target of 0.31638. And third target of 0.41239. So none of those are straight up targets. Well, maybe the first one, but, um, you know, with these larger targets, just understand guys, you're going to rally up, pull back, rally up, pull back. Um, but that's where we kind of should be heading at least, um, on these. So some good opportunities, good opportunities.

Love it. Love it. I see some amazing, by the way, comments. Well, here's a question. I'm curious as to how all the leverage got flushed out across all the cryptos. It seemed planned and the big whales would have to have positions and everything. I don't think that the big whales have positions and everything. I think that once they trigger Bitcoin, everything else just goes. And when you're at historically high open interest and funding rates, it does not take much in the spot market to push it.

So I think that's more what happened. I don't think it's like a single person who's selling to make profit on every single token. I think it just incidentally causes that sort of cascade. Well, in a lot of it, these bigger crypto know, these bigger crypto funds and whatnot, you know, they've got these algorithms out there and, you know, they're in multiple alts and whatnot. And so when you get a certain movement, according to the algorithm on Bitcoin or on the alt itself or whatever, it triggers them to sell, which then maybe triggers other of their algos, you know, triggers. And so, you know, it's just what it is. Yeah. So it's not like some big conspiracy yeah and the final take that i have to just correct because i keep saying it katherine woods knew she sold all her bitcoins everyone is arguing about this in the comments she didn't

it's a false narrative she sold her gbtc position because it went from a 50 discount to a five percent discount and she moved the money that she made into BITO, which is the Bitcoin futures ETF in holding for her own Bitcoin spot ETF that is coming. Kathy Woods would not liquidate all of her Bitcoin in advance of the approval of her own spot ETF that she needs to have massive assets under management. It's a false narrative that you guys are reading. It's not true. And at the end of the day, she has a 15% max allocation to Bitcoin adjacent stocks. So she sells Coinbase and GPTC as they do well to rebalance her portfolio and keep it at 15%. And she didn't sell a single Bitcoin, only GBTC and some Coinbase stock.

Guys, don't buy the FUD. Dude, we have a huge audience. We have a huge audience here. Remember what I said at the beginning? Yeah. About emotions and narratives. Yeah, we have a huge audience here today. Chris, the opportunity to shill to them

everything else you got going on since they're all here. Hey, listen, man. All I could say, guys, is I spent the last year and a half really being a lot more public than I usually am. I don't know anybody really that's called more bottoms than I have in stocks and crypto over the last year and a half. And I've explained how they worked and why they were happening and whatnot. You guys can learn to do this. You really can. If you want to, we'd love to have you.

Members.Texaswestcapital.com we've got a group coaching uh yearly program that we get um and you learn exactly what i do uh day in and day out i'm telling you it's it's worth every penny so and for those who haven't been here before chris taught me many years ago i i knew the basics of trading but he sharpened my knife made me a much better trader, removed all the emotions. He's the guy who I credit for being my mentor for largely all of my success in trading.

There's a reason he's here every Wednesday, and it's not because I just think he's handsome, although I'm sure he's very handsome. Yeah, it's the beard. He's here for the beard. But yeah, guys, you should be following him, checking out everything that he has going on. And on that note, you should also be subscribing to this channel, liking it down below. You've obviously seen that the numbers have exploded.

That is a coincidence. No, it's because the market is exceptionally good. We're here every single day. We were here every single day through the bear market. I am committed. As I've said, if you guys wonder the ethos of my channel, very different than that of other YouTubers that have been successful. I do not want to necessarily be the alpha like other YouTubers. I don't want to tell you what to do. I don't want to tell you what to

trade. I want to bring on experts and talk to them, ask them questions so that I can learn. And by proxy, you can learn with me, right? So the alpha for my channel is always in the guests, very rarely in me. I consider myself more of a student than a teacher. I always have. And that's what you can expect if you continue to show up here day in, day out like we do. And Chris is here every single Wednesday, one of the three traders that we've chosen to have regularly on these streams. We've got Macro Monday with James Lavish, Mike McGlone, Dave Weisberger. Absolutely incredible content. Thinking about breaking that out into its own complete channel

because it's doing so well. We got John Wick on Tuesdays, Chris on Wednesdays, Dan, Charting Guy, Chart Guys, amazing alpha on Thursdays. And then I've got NLW on Fridays for the Friday five. And we're going to be adding more. I can promise you, especially as these number goes up, it inspires us to do more. So please subscribe to the channel, see everything we have coming. Chris, sorry you had to sit there through my pitch. That's all good, man. You looked great. You looked interested. Guys, I got to go. Twitter spaces, we are back. Crypto Town Hall. I expect to be absolutely massive and Chris will be there.

So come join us in 15 minutes. Crypto underscore Town Hall is the Twitter account that's on. Thank you guys. I appreciate it. Subscribe, like, see you tomorrow. We're going to have another big one tomorrow. I've got James Seifert from Bloomberg tomorrow and Haider Rafiq from OKX. So we're going to keep this train rolling. Thanks, guys. See you tomorrow. Bye, Chris. Thank you.