The Wolf Of All Streets - Crypto Market in RED! What Does it Mean? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

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Can you hear me? Yeah, can you hear me? I had so much trouble getting on Spaces this week. It's ridiculous. You didn't get on Spaces. I tried to put myself onto Spaces so that my very attractive, useful face would at least be seen on the stage to make you look good. Didn't work.

It's been a crazy week so obviously i had the dream about you which i said already on the space and i told you you're like three times my height um we had a we had a really good i actually enjoyed the spaces we did a lot of discussions about the markets we talked like yes last yesterday yesterday last year yesterday um lost track of time and i pulled in all night because you know we had a space with Elon and the son of the Brazilian president so it's been a crazy few days

but we did talk about the Uniswap the SEC versus the Uniswap which was interesting but no it's been a good, we haven't talked at all about meme coins, you would have loved this week I don't think we've barely mentioned meme coins but we did have a meme coin sponsor so

that's the downside of the week so you know i'm glad you missed that one but otherwise yeah it was a good week yeah i was trying to join a few times but inevitably it was a that was a paris blockchain week um and the timing obviously was midday so i was constantly doing something how was the how was the how was the event it was a i mean it was incredible event for anyone who hasn't uh heard of or gone to paris blockchain week they get about i think they had 9 000 people so quite quite large and the event is actually in the louvre so when you go down to the louvre entrance you know where the upside down pyramid

is where you walk into the louvre just about 100 feet on the other side is the entrance to the Louvre entrance, you know, where the upside down pyramid is, where you walk into the Louvre, just a hundred feet on the other side is the entrance to the conference. So, I mean, just an absolutely insane venue to have a conference of that size at. And, um, they actually had this incredible dinner, which is kind of the reason I went, it was the selling point. Uh, but they had dinner in the actual, under the main pyramid of the louvre and then anyone at the dinner was allowed to tour the louvre privately um which was relatively incredible um and obviously you didn't go there you didn't you didn't go there for business uh i mean i did so i hosted i hosted the main stage one of the days which uh when i agreed i thought it was you know like hey two or three hours of your life and then two days before i get this itinerary that's like arrive at 8 a.m and

finished at 7 p.m so i stood in one spot basically for like 11 hours but the good news is it was a ton of people i knew who like i was announcing and i didn't know i i've interacted with people back and forth got to meet a few people that obviously I've only met through screens or on spaces and such. And I actually did three fireside chats myself, which were all really incredible. You would have been dying because the day that I was hosting, they asked me last minute. It was unplanned if I would speak with Verena Ross in a fireside chat. For anyone who doesn't know who she is, effectively, she's the Gary Gensler of Europe. So anyone who knows my general position on regulators and regulation, I'm literally the guy who got fire Gary Gensler

trending on Twitter. They asked me to have a 30-minute fireside chat with effectively his counterpart in Europe. But it was really, really pleasant. It was a great conversation. And interesting because the day before, I had hosted a fireside chat with Jan Van Eck, obviously the CEO of Van Eck. And I was able to sort of... It was very bipolar, let's say. So I spoke to VanEck the day before we were talking, the title of the fireside chat between us was how, why are we here? Right. And so I said, sort of here, what does that mean? Why are we here? He was saying, you know, a lot of it is, why are we here? Why do we care about Bitcoin? Why do people care about crypto, lack of trust in governments, all of the obvious metrics that we have for why crypto is compelling.

But another point, he said, why are we here? He said, well, we're in Paris, where we have clear regulatory framework in Europe. They're much friendlier than in the United States. And he took that as an opportunity to sort of take his shots at the United States. So I sat down with her the next day and I said, listen, I was speaking with Jan VanEck yesterday. Obviously, you know, they're a hundred billion dollar asset manager, 10 billion in ETFs and ETPs in Europe alone. And he said, it's very difficult to do anything in the United States. Europe is a much friendlier regulator. And she looked me deadpan in the face and said, I wouldn't say we're friendly. Right. So we made for a very interesting conversation when I was talking to her, because in her mind, they're trying to create regulation, but exceptionally skeptical,

I would say still quite anti crypto in their mind and really just trying to protect consumers in any way she can. She made a comment that there's no such thing as a safe crypto asset. You got to remember, we're in front of a huge audience at a crypto conference, they invited her to speak, and I'm hosting her. So I think there's a perception that Mika and what's happening in Europe is quote unquote good, but only because it gives rules. I don't think that there's consensus that those rules are positive necessarily or that the framework is that much better.

But it just shows how far the United States is behind. Another question, and I asked you last time you were in Singapore, talking 2049 with Ryan. Any key takeaways from this event? Any narratives that we haven't talked about enough other than the obvious ones?

I wouldn't say anything that we haven't talked about, but there are very few takeaways. So obviously the market, I think, but let's be honest, the price and sentiment in the market drives the sentiment and excitement at conferences regardless. So a lot of conferences were during the bear market. But you'll remember that my key takeaway last year, I went to ConsenSys in Austin, Texas. It was depths of the bear market, finance,

and Coinbase were recently being sued by the SEC. It was a very depressing environment in the United States. It was like going to a funeral. There was nobody there. Half the booths were literally accountants and bankruptcy lawyers. If you go to a crypto conference and presenters and booths that you go to attend are bankruptcy lawyers and accountants, you know you're in big trouble. Right. And so it was depressing, horrible. And then I went two months later to Token 2049 in

Singapore, and it was literally Crypto Palooza, no bear market. They weren't really concerned about price. They were excited about everything that was being built. And more importantly, I think SPF was not SPF and a lot of the contagion we saw in the United States was not relevant to people in Asia. He was a blip on the news cycle, not something that we obsessed about. And so I think it was just a wildly different sentiment in Singapore. And we were still in a bear market. And so now you have Paris. And listen, Token 2049 Dubai next week, I can assure you, will be the most peak euphoria of any conference in history. I can tell you that. Regardless, the market is generally good.

Every person in the world seems to be going. There's 100 parties an hour. It's going to be more even than Singapore. But then going to Paris at the same time, I would say was still somewhat muted, somewhere in between, even though the market is at all time highs. I would say that even now, Singapore was much more euphoric in the bear market than Europe is now, even in a bull market. So, but the key takeaways is that very few people, and that could be because it's not a Bitcoin-only conference, but very few people and panelists were about Bitcoin anymore. Right? And so I thought that was very telling.

I think there was mention of ETFs and what was happening, but largely the entire conference was about what's being built sort of in Web3 and other places. There were Bitcoin panelists, of course, but very conspicuously lacking. Also, I had one conversation the entire week or even heard one conversation that touched on or cared about meme coins, which showed you like as much as we talk about it here, and it seems to be the focus of this community, nobody cares about it at all from like a fundamental perspective or on stage, like no serious people are talking about that at all. They're really talking about all the narratives we're talking about here all the time, RWA, like I hosted a day of panels,

right? So the I saw a-section of everything that was happening. Sports, right? They had, you know, Alexander Dreyfus from Chile, the guys from Paris Saint-Germain, Liz Matuidi, you know, famous French footballer on stage talking about sports. We did it. There was a gaming panel. There was an NFT panel. There was a RWA panel.

All the narratives that we have, right? And so I think people are very excited there about what's actually being built in the future use cases. And there really wasn't that much talk of the trading in prices. And he's talking about Singapore. We do have one here and one we were talking yesterday. I'm going to kind of pivot from Scott and Paris Blockchain Week. We're talking about Hong Kong approving the Bitcoin ETF, which started off as rumors. And yesterday, I'm going to kind of pivot from Scott and Paris Blockchain Week. We're talking about Hong Kong approving the Bitcoin ETF, which started off as rumors.

And now it could be as soon as Monday next week. And ETH. And ETH, yeah, Bitcoin and ETH. You're right. Jeez, you're keeping up with the news as well, despite Paris. Juan, we'd love your thoughts on how significant is this for the markets? Yeah, I think it's a big deal. We'll see if uh if the rumors i can't hear him scott okay yeah okay yeah all yours okay we'll see if the rumors continue to be

uh turn out to be true uh if they are they said they could be approved uh as of as soon as monday uh but actually greenlit at the end of the month for start to start trading so we could see them start trading in in may possibly uh but i was uh i was talking to people um there i i think it's you know people are a little bit um skeptical right now uh coming into the having um and the reports i was estimate that be up to 20 in in uh in dollar flows Kong, but U.S. dollar flows into the Bitcoin and ETFs through the Stock Connect program in China to Hong Kong if this happens. So that could be a very interesting source of demand, additional demand coming in. I think, you know, you see the renminbi at 17 year lows versus the US dollar as a result of the economic slowdown in the shrinking trade plus. So people in China are looking to diversify into alternative assets. You've seen the surge in gold prices in Shanghai.

So I think this would be very well received given the current economic backdrop in China. Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. And your point about gold is well taken. I think that the reason we're seeing this major rally in gold is from what I've seen largely in the East and certainly central banks in Asia buying gold right now. So interesting if that trickles down to, I think, retail and Bitcoin, right? Yep, yep, totally. And, you know, China, as what you see in Chinese markets is anytime they get an avenue to diversify capital outside of the mainland through Hong Kong, generally you've seen investors take that option. So if these two ETFs for crypto come in, I think that is going to be very much what people are going to be looking for as a continued avenue to diversify away from the mainland exposure to China and look for something that gives them liquidity and outside of China and global liquidity as an asset.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I don't think it can be understated, the fact that this could be Bitcoin and Ethereum, right? Because we obviously have the battle around what will happen with Ethereum spot ETF in the United States. And I think massively diminishing sentiment that that's going to happen anytime soon. Yeah, that's another thing that'll be interesting. Of course, yeah, here the conversations are not progressing very, very swiftly. So the odds are not looking good for an approval here in May. But if you do see them approved in China or in Hong Kong, it'll be interesting to see the inflows into Ethereum ETFs

as a proxy for the, you know, demand and interest of Ethereum. Of course, like there's difference in attitudes globally, especially institutionally. But I think it would be kind of telling of maybe what the early initial demand for Ethereum ETFs could be here in the US if they were to be approved. So I'm looking forward to seeing how that develops. Absolutely agree. And it's a nice pivot to talk about the markets. Ethereum basically flat over the last 24 hours, but still up about 5% over seven days. But as we have in the title kind of crypto markets in red, Bitcoin back below 70,000. I can say I left for Paris on Sunday. I didn't check any charts. I came back on Thursday night and it seemed like everything was the exact same price.

So I don't, I mean, I guess they're in red today, but it feels like there's just kind of nothing happening right now in the markets. I'm sure that I'm, since I haven't been paying attention, there are some things that are popping up and dropping. But Joe, what do you make right now of the market in general? Perhaps you can just kind of give us an overcap. To me, it feels very challenging. I think you might have got rugged a little bit at the end there. Yeah, you're right. Nothing's happening, Scott. We're all looking at Bitcoin. We've got the halving coming up really quickly here. And it just feels like we're not going into it with any you know telegram uh open network you know it's up you know 100 in the last month where you know you've got bitcoin down three percent um you've got you know things like ocean in the ai space down 20 percent um you know you've got litecoin down five percent you know so there's been a

couple of bright spots one of the other ones that was kind of been surprising me is bnb uh bnb has kind of been on like this little bit of a rally here um and i have no idea why i'm trying to it's almost like something's going to rotate in and people are trying to find where the next announcements are going to come from just with bitcoin being flat you know i think it's overall healthy for the market though i'm really glad that we've kind of been basing in this range for this long of a time, just because we did have such an uptick in the market. It was just such a fast race up to 70 and almost all-time highs. And now I think we're just kind of waiting for this shakeout. We still have inflow, outflow talk a little bit.

That's why people have just been playing these meme coins is because there's not a lot of other things going on. But even the meme coins are starting to leak a little bit. But you know, you still got you got Doge performing, you know, 8% over last month. So still kind of hanging in there. But I think the market still, still focused on this next big thing that we don't know what it is. But I'm still looking, you know, towards like the Bitcoin 2024 conference in July. That'll be like a fever pitch with Bitcoin. And I think we're going to be back into the rally by then. Isn't that when we usually drop like 25%? Every time I go to that conference,

everyone's excited and price goes down. Yes. It's the build up to that conference that was the excitement. It's like a vacation. A third of the rewarded happiness is the planning. A third is why you're there a vacation a third of the uh of the rewarded happiness is the planning a third is why you're there and a third is the memory i love the guys that plan that i've enjoyed that conference in the past but i think i'm literally uh cannot do another bitcoin only conference in ever i can't do it i cannot sit through nine hours of sanctimonious bitcoin maxi is telling me why i'm a scammer. And there's like, there's the guy with like the sign out front that's like, you know, almost like a religious zealot, just like, you know, chanting inside. I think you're going to see a lot more around the conference this time. I mean, even at ETH Denver, you know, there was like a Bitcoin Renaissance conference

that felt like more alive and there were more people there. So I think you're going to see a lot of that. You'll see a lot about runes. You'll see a lot about building on Bitcoin at that conference this year in and around the conference. But if you walk in, yeah, you're going to get hit with the religious side of it. Well, that'll be fun actually. Cause it's going to be like a Lord of the flies because you're going to have,

instead of them criticizing everyone else, they're going to be fighting amongst themselves over whether ordinals are scams on stage. So we'll have Udi probably flossing on stage, dressed like a wizard fighting with, you know, Max Geiser or something. And maybe that's worth the, worth the price of admission. I might buy a $1,500 ticket if that actually happens, but I mean,

I don't know what's going on in this industry. It's like, everyone's got to now physically fight each other in order to get attention. We've gone to that. It's pretty sad. Yeah. But hey, you know, God bless if anyone's enjoying it. Peter, since we have you, I mean, what do you make of Bitcoin here?

Do you agree with Joe? It's sort of, I mean, my take is that we're consolidating and the longer we do that, the better, as he said. Not sure if Peter can hear me. Yep, I'm on. Hey, go ahead. Bitcoin, you know, I still think that we could see some softness. I mean, I'm impressed with the fact that we're hanging out here at 70.

I mean mean that's you know price for me is king and so you know that's impressive i still think we can see just a chop here for the next month or two super bullish long term looking for market to perhaps double from here maybe triple from here into next year. I think equities, I'm short. I'm short the Dow. Got a sell signal in Dow futures. I'm short Dow futures. I'm looking at NASDAQ futures.

I've got a strategy to go short there. I haven't done it yet. For me, of course, my big position outside of Bitcoin is gold. Just amazed at the strength in gold. Market tries to sell off early in the day and then it's just charging ahead. But

my target in gold 26, 2700. It just doesn't seem that far away. I think we have a big correction in gold at some point but the strength we have in gold is an indication that, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire. This is a powerful market. There's some powerful people that still want to be long gold. I'm absolutely amazed when you look at the gold ETFs. Investors have been divesting of gold ETFs. The investor is

not with this move. They're on the sidelines and they're yet to come in. So just absolutely amazing. Day straight, months, investors have been net sellers of gold ETFs. That's just absolutely amazing to me. Yeah, just so bullish, bullish Bitcoin long term, kind of watching near term, bullish gold long term. I think there's a big correction to come, probably $100 an ounce range in gold within the next month. We'll probably see. And I just think equities can get soft here. Yeah, I tend to agree. We've seen sort of this unicorn Goldilocks environment of late

where stocks have gone up, gold's gone up, dollar's gone up, Bitcoin's gone up, right? I mean, that is a very, very strange environment where assets are supposed to inversely correlate or trade, you know, as hedges to one another are all rising or heading in the same direction at the same time. So you're obviously thinking that that's going to end if your short equity is in long hold. Yeah, two things. I mean, we always look at Bitcoin and the big question is, well, how does it correlate to something else? I think ultimately the question for every asset is how is it going to correlate to Bitcoin? That's, of course, if there's not a concerted global effort by central banks to try to rein in Bitcoin in some way. Some other things could put a damper on Bitcoin, but I won't talk about those here.

But eventually, Bitcoin becomes a store of value. And as a store of value, you measure everything then against Bitcoin. You start expressing the value of real estate relative to Bitcoin and so forth. One other thing, you mentioned Gensler. I'm going to do a drive-by shooting here and then quickly exit it. You take a look at Gary Gensler. If you're not familiar with his role in the bankruptcy of MF Global, you really have to look at it. This is a man who has absolutely negative integrity, can't be trusted. He's deceptive. He's a deceiver. He's a liar. He's a cheat. So that's my drive-by shooting for the day. Well, well-deserved and thoroughly enjoyed. So thank you for that,

because it's nice to have someone else say it, i don't have to always be the one um anyone else here have particular takes on what's happening in the the market specifically uh today or in general i tend to agree with peter i've been saying for weeks that i think we had a lot of signs of froth and topping i think at this point the having itself not fundamentally but the having as an event in a week is a non-event. And I think, Joe, you're right. I think we're seeing that. Douglas, I could see you lifted your mic. Go ahead. I'd love to say a couple of things. Macro-wise, I think we have to take a step back and say, why are we in Bitcoin? And we're in Bitcoin because, well, we think that there's going to be a lot of inflation because the U.S. government and other governments are printing money like crazy.

And so that would mean higher interest rates are actually positive for Bitcoin because it shows that that thesis is correct. You know, U.S. is printing. Inflation is rising. Money is being debased. That's positive for Bitcoin. But the market sees higher inflation as being negative for Bitcoin. And you saw that sell off in Bitcoin when the CPI data came out. I think another thing is that we look at the strong dollar, and there are some people in the market that say the strong dollar, but strong relative to other currencies, but it's still getting debased. Since 1960, the US dollar has debased by about 90%.

And that's a little bit concerning, I think, if you're actually holding money. And so if we continue to believe that, obviously, bad events around the world should be seen in a positive light for Bitcoin, as opposed to a negative light. Now, folks are saying that today, maybe Bitcoin sold off a little bit because of what's happening between Iran and Israel, and is the US going to get pulled into this conflict? Again, you'd think that that actually would be positive for Bitcoin, but then folks will say, well, it's correlated to NASDAQ and Bitcoin's really just a proxy for NASDAQ. And it really isn't. What Bitcoin is, I think, is that salvation or that float that you can hold onto that's going to keep your wealth floating above the rest of the

fray and the noise that's happening in the market. So when I see high inflation numbers, I think I want to buy more Bitcoin rather than sell it. When I see conflicts around the world, I think Bitcoin maybe is much more of a savior. And then when I look at what's happening in Asia, I obviously came in from the security token world a lot more than the crypto world. And when we were doing analysis in Asia, we found out that the majority of family offices in Asia actually have digital assets in their portfolios already. And this is very, very different from the United States, where in the United States, you find accredited investors. It's very hard to find accredited investors that have gotten invested in digital assets. And so the ETFs for Bitcoin and Ethereum coming out in Hong Kong,

I think are going to be momentous and a much more important innovation in that region. And I think that they'll be very well supported. So I remain very bullish on Bitcoin, very bullish on Ethereum. Thank you very much. I tend to agree. Peter, would you like to comment on Douglas's statement that he's very bullish on Ethereum? I think I'll take a pass on that. I mean, hey, there's a big money behind Ethereum. So that big money will continue to support its position. You know, big money always will defend its position. So, but ultimately, I think Bitcoin is king. Bitcoin is crypto.

Crypto is Bitcoin in my idea. Now, are there some other coins that will gain functionality? Yeah, I believe they will. I mean, is Ethereum one of them? People keep saying, well, your complaints against Ethereum are unbased because there's a new improved Ethereum. The fact that there has to be new improved Eutherians all the time tells me that Ethereum has problems. So every time I talk negative about Bitcoin, I get hate mailed. So I think I'll leave it at that.

I just saw something uh we were discussing this morning on my show but another layer one monad uh just raised i believe 226 million dollars so another um i guess ethereum killers anybody here familiar with monad joe have you looked at this at all i mean is that basically the pitch i mean this seems like you know the solana of last cycle people are talking about it as i'm exhausted scott i mean there's we've been talking about gas you know i talked to you know sandeep from polygon you know four years ago and he's still in his mom's garage like you know gas fee gas wars you know, Ethereum killer, how many more layer ones or layer twos can we have? I mean, it's, it's going to be, you know, the winner doesn't always come out at the beginning. But the weird part about crypto is

it seems like there's a bias towards early mover advantage in the space, you know, Bitcoin being the first, right, Ethereum being the first, there's probably a lot better technology that's come along the way, that's better than Ethereum, but it's still number two and you're gonna see a lot of these projects in the top ten you know go back and you know use the um time machine and go look at all the cashed websites of coin market cap or coin gecko going back 10 years the top 10 looks very different right we sometimes i think we feel like it looks the same just because we see Bitcoin and Ethereum up there. But even go back to 2014, I mean, you're not going to see Ethereum up there.

You're going to see other stuff that was up there. And so these things are going to come and go. I'd love to see a better iteration that we all jump towards that has some sort of ability to create all these killer apps that I think we're looking for. But, you know, that's my only, like people talked about like a little bit of a black swan in this cycle. And that's one of the only things that I'm kind of looking at is like, if we can't gravitate towards something that's better this cycle, and we just have this kind of resurgence of some sort of DeFi summer slash, you know, it's like security tokens aren't going to get us there. I just don't don't

think that, you know, I don't think AI tokens are going to get us there. I think there's more innovation in pure AI that's out there. You know, Sam Altman's world coin and identity is not going to get us there. So I'm really looking for something else. And, you know, having just another layer one or layer two, isn't going to get us there. So I'm hoping we see something on Bitcoin and that renaissance continues because I feel like it's the one place that we could all... In our heart of hearts, we all have to be Bitcoiners a little bit. So I'm thinking that could be it in some way. But it's a tough call. Right now, it's just like the rudder is a little loose and we're, we're trying to figure out where we're going,

but we can't all agree that like we want more Bitcoin. Yeah, I totally agree. I think we're all Bitcoiners at heart still, you know, as much as I sort of said what I said about the Bitcoin community, still my will always be my largest holding. I think it's the most important asset ever created, but now we have 700,000 layer ones. It feels like, or layer twos or scaling solutions, and we don't have any more people. Right? That's kind of what

I don't understand. I was speaking to Nathaniel Whittemore, as I said about it this morning, I catching up, I knew nothing about Monad. He said, listen, it's less about all the points you just made, which are accurate, but more about the fact that this is just the resurgence of like vcs going for blood right i mean 226 million dollars raised for this thing it's from the largest vcs this is not a criticism of them but every vc knows that if they invest massively into a brand new layer one they're going to make a fuck ton of money, even if zero people use it. Exactly. And he was saying, so it says more about where we are in the cycle and the willingness to deploy capital than it does about layer ones versus layer twos and gas wars. It's exactly right. And it's because the promise of a new infrastructure layer is so big and you can't account for any of the revenue. It's literally the scene from Silicon Valley when they start to get revenue and

the Russ Hanneman's like revenue, we can't have revenue because once we have revenue, then, then we, they need more revenue. So I think it's literally the exact same thing where they're like, Oh, the promise of these things is so big. They know that game. And it's actually pretty sad that the venture community has kind of like all agreed to go after that in the same way, because, you know, at the end of the day, retail pays. Peter?

Yeah, hey, I've only traded these markets 50 years. So what do I know? You know, I've lived through Russian debt crisis, savings and loan crisis, the tech bubble of 2000, mortgage debt crisis of 2008. I mean, on and on and on again. Let me just say this. Yeah, there's going to be a disaster in some of this level two stuff. There's going to be a disaster in the mind thing. It's going to come. I'm not predicting who it is, when it is, or what it's going to be. All I'm saying is, folks, you better know who you've got for counterparty risk. Because in the end, when you have a crisis, you better know that you are solid on your counterparty risk partners. That's a point very well taken. Interestingly, though, Peter, you know, it's not like these things have come out unscathed, right? I'm not being critical

necessarily of any of them, but the amount of hacks, exploits, lost funds on accidents, mistakes. I mean, there's been no end to that. I wasn't following, but apparently Solana has effectively been down the whole time I was in Paris. Is that true? Or congested, right? And so, Peter, I mean, this is already is already happening right just the market doesn't care because they're so excited about price oh yeah i mean it's already happening but you know what we're seeing is just leaks around the edge you know the full tank has not broke yet and will but you know but we're already seeing signs that there's weakness around the edges yeah i i agree andrew you just joined what

you take on all this i'm really interested in in peter's you know chartist's type of of take as it relates to the diet you know there are macro dynamics obviously with bitcoin i i have you know fairly little interest in um you know most other projects in the space. But the macro stuff isn't and won't go away. The strength of GBTC dumping so much on the markets. And we've effectively hung out at or near highs for Bitcoin for about a month. I took a look back at the charts when we were at our previous high back in 2021, and the move down, significantly down to the 50s and then even further down was pretty fast. It was pretty quick. It was about a 30-day period and then about a 45-day

period, another leg down. I'm just really interested in Peter's take as it relates to the charts, as it relates to the strength of Bitcoin here. Taking a look at the macro, there's limited macro hedging. Andrew, I don't mean to interrupt you i'll let him do it but he did it before you joined like entirely well my apologies that i missed it i i guess then i'll add that um it's looking like morgan stanley is going to come online in a full way across this entire platform next week um so so that will be a positive headline uh for the space space. So that's about all I've got. You can still respond. I'm sure there's some more context you got there. Well, the additional context.

Oh, sorry, Peter. That's for you. Yeah, no. I mean, hey, we've seen hostile takeovers. There have been periods in the equity market, in the corporate market, where you get hostile takeovers of companies. What we have in Bitcoin is a hostile takeover of the financial system.

And it's the investors who are attempting to do the takeover over central banks. So there's a war. This is a battle, folks. I mean, this is a major frontline battle in terms of how we express value of all assets. Central banks are saying fiat currencies and whatever debt they're carrying. Individual investors and speculators are saying, no, we are going to bet that Bitcoin does a hostile tank over the financial architecture.

And so, hey, this is going to be easy. There's going to be a battle all the way. This puts into context, by the way, and I also want Peter's thought on this, in the hard stance that the SEC and to some degree Wall Street took on the cash create process. Because if you're talking about redemption associated with the Bitcoin ETFs, talk about a game changer. Now we know why they really wanted cash creates because of what Peter just said, right? Correct. And Hong Kong, like you said, could come online this week, right? Correct. And Hong Kong, he said, could come online this week, right? Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. It is a, you know, the cash create process when you're

when you're, you know, redeeming in some way, shape or form, right? That that is that goes directly to Peter's point of, you know, it's a war of fiat versus, you know, a Bitcoin type of standard. If they had had, you know, kept the in-kind distribution as part of the process, you now have a way for folks to, you know, mass on board onto Bitcoin and then grab that Bitcoin on the way out, as opposed to dumping it back into fiat and having to stay inside the system. So, you know, that was a reason, you know, it's a pretty, pretty meaningful part of the conversation when they were finalizing the ETFs. But I think it's a bigger, bigger part of the conversation as it relates to the war that Peter just mentioned. I find that I find that really interesting, too.

I find it interesting, too. So it makes you wonder if it's actually good for Bitcoin fundamentally to have Wall Street putting their tentacles all over our beloved asset. Yeah, long term, there are, you know, long term, if BlackRock is the largest holder of spot Bitcoin on the planet, I think that's problematic. I think that's problematic in a lot of different ways. But that's long term. We're talking about probably a couple of years, but short term, midterm, you know, there's going to be there, there will continue to be continued Bitcoin strength in the price, continued upward momentum in the price.

But, but I, I think it's a fair and meaningful conversation to have as it relates to, you know, if BlackRock owns the most Bitcoin on the planet, okay, well, you know, what could happen? It's absolutely a concern. BlackRock becomes the world's central banker in that case. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great point. You know, it's a great point. Many, you know, listen, Larry Fink, you know, commented earlier today that some sort of wherever he was, but it but it hit the wires that that he thinks that there's, you know, possibly two rate cuts, you know, coming this year. Larry Fink saying that on the record, effectively, is much more interesting than what the word salad that Jerome Powell has at whatever his next appearance is. That is meaningful

information from the guy that possibly already is the head of monetary policy, but certainly could be in the future. You never fade Larry Fink is the point. I want to pivot here and talk about something that's been on my mind that's completely unrelated to the topic. And I would love the panel's thoughts on this. I was obviously, we're in a bit of an echo chamber. We all know that we're speaking to people who are all crypto native and have been through many cycles. I was just at a conference. I'm going to another one next week. It seems I can say almost nobody, maybe I've seen a few people show some skepticism, but almost everybody is expecting 12 to 18 months of up only because of previous cycles.

And it's giving me such pause about the bull market. I do fundamentally believe there are a lot of reasons it should go up ETF inflows, as you guys have said, but when have you guys ever experienced a market where everyone thinks the same thing is going to happen? And that's what happens. I mean, Peter, you talked about your 50 years, we have literal consensus in the crypto space that we're going into the biggest bull market of all time. Influencers are telling you how you're going to be billionaires you worried yeah i'm i'm in the process of halfway through a report that all issue that basically says there's a 25 chance that bitcoin has already seen its highs or close to its highs

and then we go down from here now it, it's not the probability I like, quite frankly, because it goes against my position and it goes against the 75% thinking that it's going up from here. But I can create a pretty good case that Bitcoin in the mid 70s is about as high as we're going to get in this bull cycle. I don't believe it, but I have some pretty good statistics and math to work through that problem. I'm just not ready to release the details yet. Maybe next time around. Oh, man, this is the suspense.

You can't just throw us a little carrot like that, man. People generally take a look at bull markets and their timing is off, right? Bull markets usually start much sooner than people realize, and they end much sooner than people realize, right? So a year ago, Bitcoin was at, what, 25, 26, 27. So we're nearly 3x from that. That's a pretty substantial bull market already. The other thing that I will add is, you know, there's a lot running around, you know, in the news, geopolitically. There's an election coming up. I don't love the, you know, the term black swan, but, you know, there are events that potentially could become part of the conversation that we're not aware of today that could derail some things. You know, we like to talk in the Bitcoin world about how, you know, effectively Bitcoin fixes this, that or the other. Basically, it fixes everything. If you've got a leak in your

house, somehow Bitcoin fixes it. That's probably not entirely true. Like if, you know, you know, if there's there's increased bombing in the Middle East, you know, Israel, we get involved. There's a there's a lot of things out there with, I would say, I think everybody on this, you know, this this particular space would say that our political leaders have limited mental capacities. So the ability for something to go sideways exists. That's a real thing. And, you know, so so so that's a possibility. If you're just looking at macro, if you're just looking at flows, if you're just looking at, you know, the financial parts of the process, yeah, we should go higher. There's going to be more assets that are available to be onboarded, you know, onto Bitcoin over the next three, six, nine months. But that doesn't

mean that in the next six to nine months, there's meaningful problems that we didn't see that jump onto the front page and cause disruption. Go ahead, Joe. And then HCSI given the hundreds. So I want your opinion too. Go ahead, Joe. Yeah. I mean, BlackRock filed for this spot ETF in June of 2023. And so we're coming up on a year of that kind of thought process. The market was almost completely flat until about October of 2023, where then everything started to move up. But we're still months into that. So you can assume by October of this year, we're a full 12 months into that bull market. And I just tell people that just started trading and they're figuring it out. I told them, go watch that episode of

Seinfeld where Costanza does the opposite. He starts doing the opposite of everything and things start to work out for him. So if you think things are... You're hyper bullish, it's like, just do the opposite. It works out. Yeah. I've always said that people who are new to trading should do literally the opposite of whatever they think there's they should be doing and they'll make more money but uh and i think that's actually generally plays out hc what's up yeah we tend to think of the demand side that the etfs generate a whole lot more demand at least potentially do that and we also think of bitcoin as a very limited supply, you know, the diminishing emissions, etc. 21 million limit. But there are already a lot of

coins in hodlers hands, and they can sell them all of a sudden. So if there's a panic, for whatever reason, the price can crash in spite of the ETFs. So that might very well be. And in fact, since I'm cynical, I would expect that this should happen shortly after the halving because this just has never happened before. But we'll see. It's a weak statement. I'm not sure about this at all. Anyone else have a thought?

Jeff, what do you think? You haven't had an opportunity yet. No, I think I don't have a lot to add there. I mean, I think someone was mentioning earlier the conversation around gold flows. And I do think that is emblematic of the macro conditions we're in today. And one of the things that has been noticeable is that we've seen actually outflows in the gold ETF amidst the price increase, which shows you that the buyers are direct purchasers, whether it's private or sovereigns. I think that has a lot of implications for Bitcoin in that endeavor. And so it'll be worthwhile to continue watching those trends in gold as well alongside Bitcoin. Understood. Is there anyone else to my first question? Maybe Jeff, you have an answer.

Everyone thinks that this bull market has just begun. Everyone. I use the term everyone lightly, but outside of Peter just admitting he's writing something, but it is against his own current position. I'm telling you, I had this conversation over and over and over in Paris with builders and people in the space. We were literally standing at a party and there were like 10 of us. And the question was, how much longer will this bull market last? There was nobody who thought less than 12 months. It was just an argument over how long it would last and how high it would go. Nobody believed that it could possibly

not be a massive run. It was at least 12 months was the bottom. Yeah. I hear a lot about us generally being a third into a bull market cycle. I think there are different metrics people have been tracking. And one of those metrics I keep a close eye on is the ratio of the so-called short-term holders relative to long-term holders. And historically, you've seen that the percentage of the short-term holders increase to a pretty large amount that signals the top of the market, something closer to 70% to 80%. Today, we're seeing that 50 percent. But I also caution people that this time, it's a little different to do that analysis versus the prior cycles because the ETFs

have fundamentally changed the definition of short-term holders. All these short-term holders eventually graduate to becoming long-term holders. But what we've seen now is that these so-called short-term holders that are around 50 percent today are actually more than likely to be super long-term holders because these flows are coming from more stable institutions, making more stable allocations than prior. I think those metrics are a little misleading in that we're still quite early in the adoption of that buyer base. And so we should be conservative in estimating what past signals had meant to signal tops this time around than last time. Can I add one more point? But it's going to be a point that's the opposite to your opposite take here, Scott. A short-term catalyst that is probably going to show up that most crypto folks maybe haven't fully considered is that when the ETH ETFs are sort of taken off the chessboard, which is coming here in about a month. That's going to, from a retail standpoint, from a wealth management retail standpoint,

that will further embolden flows into the Bitcoin ETFs because it will be the only game in town from a traditional financial wealth management standpoint. So, you know, while we may think that there is, you know, potential for something other than bullishness and up only to, you know, to kind of press in and dampen, you know, where we're at, where most think that we're headed, that is another, you know, sort of side catalyst to where we're at now. And what we're seeing is almost a buy wall as it relates to Bitcoin price that will only strengthen that buy wall because, you know, when it comes to folks that are making potential allocations to their portfolios, they'll only have one choice for all intents and purposes. And, you know, that's a meaningful opposite to your opposite.

Yeah, I agree with that. I just like to, A, do my job here at Playing Devil's Advocate, and B, have learned lessons of the past. I hope anyone who's been through these cycles has before, which is like I've been the can you hear me sorry yeah i've i've been the idiot who's fomoed and believed at the top that we were going up two to three more times right i mean in the last cycle we were sitting at 69 000 everything in the chart said to me we're going straight to 100 i was bull tweeting every single new altcoin in the world because I

thought they were a new paradigm. And so fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. So I always try to keep in my mind the opposite argument. What would happen if this was the top? How would I be positioned if things don't go the way that I expect? And I think that everyone should at least have that in their mind from a perspective of risk management, you know, because you never know what's going to happen in markets. And it does give me major pause when there's such, such a consistent belief that a certain thing has to happen,

has to happen. And, you know, and so I, I believe as you said that there's these massive inflows, unlocks. And I've been beating that drum alongside you, Andrew, since day one. And all the Bitwise guys here, I love the fact that these platforms, these RIAs slowly come online. Morgan Stanley hasn't joined yet and will join. And those people will be buyers. I think what we sometimes underestimate in the market and have always in the past is that there are always huge whales who are willing to sell. Like otherwise we wouldn't still just only be going up. I mean, there's somebody selling into this, right? And there has been every single time

when we've been at a FOMO top and say, who's selling Bitcoin? Who's left to sell Bitcoin? I mean, I have a theory. I'll tell you who could potentially be selling Bitcoin. And I've been saying, listen, for over a month, my base case has been that we were frothy FOMOing and had top signals. And that maybe now we jump into the old halving cycle, have six months of boring and go up in the fall. Maybe that's dramatic, but it's something that I'm looking at, right? Because generally we have a halving, then nothing happens all summer, low volatility,

things kind of bleed, and then we start going up in the fall. Well, this time we have a different situation with the halving in miners, right? In this case, the miners, we have certain miners that are exceptionally well positioned because of the high prices and have a ton of Bitcoin and money on their balance sheet and can sustain a long period of consolidation or bleed. And then you have some even publicly traded miners that are terribly positioned, right, who need Bitcoin to be at 70, 80, 90,000 just to be profitable after the halving. What would stop the most powerful liquid miners from just continuing to sell Bitcoin throughout the entirety of the summer and take their competition out? Right. We are literally in a position where the most well-capitalized miners who are in the best position can very easily keep price down and eliminate their competition. And I've seen others talking about this, but it makes a lot of sense to me.

I don't know if any of you guys look into mining as we kind of come towards wrapping here. But I think that if you're looking for people who could be sellers, there's a lot on their balance sheets. I guess, Joe, just a little on what you were saying there. It's like, I think you're the same as a lot of folks that have been in the industry for a while. It's like, you're just same as a lot of folks that have been in the industry for a while it's like you're just a little exhausted you know we had 20 the 2017 is kind of the last time we had in 2018 we had a lot of innovation when there's a you know we see this big run-up in bitcoin you know we had chain link you know which is the promise to to connect the data uh you know online offline of everything this industry and that's that was a paradigm shift you know we got something like Uniswap in 2018, which was the promise to say, hey, we can now finally all, you know, borrow against some of this money and utilize it potentially in the real world for what we're doing. And we can trade in a decentralized way. And this time around, we've got Bitcoin moving up

and you're just getting shit coin after shit coin after meme coin. And we're just not seeing the promise. And so it just almost feels like we're like a little let down with what we're seeing in the market. And so it's like those other innovations were holding up the rest of the market and they are what continued the bull run

for the next eight to 12 months after Bitcoin ran. This time around, we're just not seeing that. And then now we're forced to look at things like inflows and outflows for ETFs and whether or not our miners are going to dump on us. So I think that's the difference here right now is just the innovation. It doesn't feel like it's being pushed by the market in the same way. Yeah, I think there are a lot of things coming from last cycle that will have meaningful changes this cycle, but I still don't see the killer app except for stablecoins. Go ahead, HC, and then we're going to wrap up in a couple minutes. Stablecoins and Bitcoin have been the two killer apps.

That's it. Indeed, we need drive chains. Yeah, we need to go to layer seven before we can get there. Maybe. It's funny, Joe, you were talking about Sandeep earlier and how he's in his basement. I did a podcast with Sandeep a year ago and the entire topic of the podcast

turned into how many layers we would end up with. And he said we would get to layer six, seven, eight. For sure. Which is, which is wild. And I mean,

and I would give them credit for like, you know, that was a killer effort for the original lowering of the gas fees. for sure which is which is wild and i mean and i would give them credit for like you know that was a killer effort for the original lowering of the gas fees and that's why they did see their run-up and what they were doing and you know it's it's kind of solved right it's solved there right but now like we were saying with the vc money they just want to keep pushing it in and pushing it in and that's the only thing that's going to go up and vcs the reason they love tokens is because they get liquid faster, right?

With a standard equity investment, you know, you're waiting 7, 10, 15 years, you know, for your exit, you know, which is a good thing. Let these entrepreneurs focus on the business. They pivot 100 times before you're going to have that release of equity. Now, you know, it's back on the entrepreneur to say, hey, lock these people up for five years if they want a piece of what you're doing. Yeah, totally agree. I want to be clear to people.

It's my job as the host to be skeptical, to play devil's advocate, to ask the questions that might get a different opinion than the consensus. I remain very bullish for all the reasons that everyone has said. I just always keep in my mind the idea that I can be wrong. And I think that that's important for anyone. Strong opinions loosely held. Because I will ask you, on the way out the door, I will ask all of you this question, which I have tweeted many, many times before. If the top was in, and you are actively trading or investing in this market, and you are already mentally buying the car or house with the gains you're going to make in the next year, would you be okay if things stopped here and didn't continue to go up?

And if the answer is no, I would start to manage your risk a little better. That's the only point that I will make. Guys, that's all we got today. We will be back, obviously, on Monday. Great conversation. Really, really enjoyed it. As always, I encourage you to follow all of our guests. They're here because we like them and because we view them as authorities in the space. So thank you to everybody. We will see you all on Monday. Bye.