The Wolf Of All Streets - Crypto Market Updates: Are We Headed for a Big Move? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

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Good morning, everyone. Happy Thursday. Mario, I know, is actually traveling today, and I'm sitting in the path of a hurricane, hoping I don't lose internet and get cut off. But hopefully, this will be a full-length show, and that won't happen as the storm has slowed down a bit. But yeah, I'm here in Florida, and things are looking pretty aggressive on the weather report. That's just life in Florida. What are you going to do? I love the memes about Floridians and hurricanes. Everybody's out prepping and stuff. We're just buying bottles of tequila and downloading movies on Netflix to make sure we have

something on the iPad if we don't have service. It's pretty much our prep at this point. It's not what you guys want to hear about you want to hear about crypto market updates are we headed for a big move uh i think so um and i think we could all dig into this in a minute but first i want to say that um i was at token 2049 in Singapore last week, obviously. We've talked about it a bit. I know that a few people on stage were there as well. Major takeaway is that nobody in Asia gives one flying single shit about anything that's happening in the United States. They don't know who Gary Gensler is. They think SBF is a government agency. They don't know what FTX is.

Nobody gives a damn about us selfish Americans living in our little echo chamber thinking that we're driving the future of crypto because we're just one small piece of a much larger pie and the bull market has never ended in Asia. With the other takeaway from Token 2049, which is one that I've unfortunately had in the past, I'm almost six foot one and I'm shorter than every single person I meet and it pisses me off. I don't understand how people in crypto are so damn tall. It's literally infuriating. But we should just start a basketball league. Foles, I met you there. You pissed me off. You're like six five. Yeah, it's funny you say that well i'm

actually more like six three but i met a bunch of guys that are even taller than me bunch of dutch guys bunch of south african guys that just have that genetic thing where they're like six foot six six foot seven towering over everyone yeah it's it's a weird industry everyone's like basketball player tall yeah don crypto uh d-a-n like he's huge yeah guys yeah it's huge like uh and you guys are all jacked too it's like you the crypto bear market has been so bad that all you guys do is get tall and go to the gym yeah we've been grinding you know when the when the market's quiet you gotta you gotta do something with your free time so i guess that's it right i did also bump into my very good old friend joa who's quiet, you got to do something with your free time. So I guess that's it, right? I did also bump into my very good old friend, Joe, who's here.

And you are not taller than me. No, definitely not. But I'm not short, but I'm not tall. But next in crypto world, I'm tall. I didn't say you're short. I said you're not taller than me. That's all I care about. I'm the measuring stick.

But Scott, for crypto OGs, I'm tall. Because crypto OGs are all short. The new crypto guys, they're all tall. It's kind of weird. It's like a digrat day of height at the early, the later you get into crypto. Are you saying that Bitcoin maximalists have stunted growth? Is that what you just said, not me?

Is that what you're saying? Yes, I think all the brainpower went to making sure crypto worked for all these other people who had time to go work out and do everything else and then enrich our bags, basically. Yes. I mean, speaking of said... What about the Winklevite? Yeah, they're 900 feet.

What about the Winklevite? They're 900 feet tall, but they own an exchange. They own an exchange where you can trade anything. I think they were Bitcoin maximalists and then they opened an exchange and they grew an extra 10 inches. I think that's scientific fact. I'm not sure. Come on.

This is some serious need for significance because you Americans are figuring out that there's a world outside America. Come on, Simon. You live in America, right? Just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding.

It's all, I mean, it's all going to be America one day though. Right. So it's fun. We're just projecting into the future. all, I mean, it's all going to be America one day though. Right. So it's fun. We're just projecting into the future. But, you know, speaking of things that are going to piss off Bitcoin maximalists, we're going to have a conversation here about the market. And so I can only say personally, and we're going to dig into it. Like I've been very, I would say bullish on Bitcoin because of ETFs and such, but have been pretty high conviction that we've

not had not started the cycle yet for altcoins. I've been literally saying it for years that, and I certainly was saying it with high conviction and many were in March that the meme coin madness that we saw and sort of the ETF hype was probably going to be a signal that we're going to cool off for 6 to 8 months or so. And that's usually what we see after the halving. Anyways, and now things objectively... I just posted a whole bunch of charts. I did charts for the first time. If it's a signal on YouTube, and God knows how long. But just objectively looking at charts, it seems like every layer one, all these altcoins are starting to bottom and move and show signs of breakouts and start to go up.

The scary part in my mind is that there's a consensus that we get the October and that everything is going to go amazing here. But it feels like it's happening. And it's important to remember that that consensus is only in the crypto echo chamber and not among new participants who we would need for things to go up, and I think institutions haven't really gotten involved. I mean, I'm looking right now, I just posted Bitcoin's actually just broke 65,000. So Bitcoin just made, as we're speaking here at 64,224, its first higher high since 74,000 in March. So this is what I've been looking for. Of course, it could close below, but 50,000 was the last lower low we had. It made a higher high at 52,000 and now breaking above 65,

higher low, excuse me, now breaking above 65 is the first higher high we've had in this cycle. Literally, what, five days before October when everybody expects it to happen. Yeah. I mean that that's it. The bearish market structure just broke literally as we're talking here. So Foles, I mean, what do you think, man? Am I like losing my mind here? I think I'm pretty reserved. I've literally been saying like avoid this market at the, at the detriment of my own YouTube channel for like six months.

But it looks like now dips are becoming for buying yeah i mean so first of all i mean you just said that you know we we've broken market structure i wouldn't go that far yet i mean to to actually break this was about convincingly yeah yeah i would say like a close above but there are also other things you want to see you know a pickup in volume you want to you want to see signs that bulls are just getting interested rather than closing out their positions. You want to see an increase in open interest. You want to see new contracts opening.

You want to see buy volume increasing. It's one of those things where you need to see there's a few different elements that go into what I would consider convincing close or convincing break in structure. And we've kind of done the first of those now, which is we're trading above 65K. But, you know, it's one of those things you really want to see more. You want to see continuation.

You want to see increased interest from the buy side of the order book rather than decreased interest. You don't really want to see a situation here where bulls are saying, OK, that's the move. I'm out. And then, you know, bears on the other side of the order book getting increasingly interested that would be kind of at that point you're kind of talking about a pullback or you know maybe you have objection um but i mean looking looking at the chart i mean it is exciting you know as you said we are kind of looking at putting in a new high here but i mean at the end of the day like you guys remember how euphoric and i'm not trying to sound bearish here i'm merely off no i think i think we get another dip yeah i might

literally my point is we get you by the next dip that's kind of my point right the thing is i mean we we've had similar moves like going back to march i mean you know we traded above 70 70k like you know four times uh uh you know this year like back in we had back in march we had back in may we had back in june and even in july we kind of touched 70k before rejecting pretty harshly so i mean there's a lot of work to do still i think it's you know the signs are there things are going well the one key difference this time i will say compared to let's say the last three or four months is that you know the summer's over now and you know in theory at least the order book should be a bit thicker and it kind of lends a bit more conviction to these moves i suppose the other thing i will say is

that something that is very different now when you touched on it at the start of the discussion scott uh alt coins are starting to look uh a lot better than they have basically since since march since the total three uh yearly high in March. I think a lot of these coins, if you look at the pinned tweet on my account, actually, I speak about this in the video, where I got a lot of guys, I know a lot of guys were asking me,

oh, can we long this coin? Can we buy this coin? What should we do with altcoins over the last like three, four or five months? And all of them were in these very obvious, very clear downtrends. And at that point, you're just knife catching into, you know, sustained weakness. Now, the paradigm is shifting slightly, a lot of these altcoins are up, you know, 50, 60, even 100% off the lows, they're

breaking high timeframe market structure, they're showing real convincing signs of strength and signs of buyer interest, and total three is kind of breaking to the upside. So I would say that those are the two key differences now with what BTC is doing, with what the market is doing is not only is the summer over and hopefully the end of the summer chop is here and, you know, the order books are a bit thicker, but also the altcoins are the altcoin market is looking a little bit better in a way that it hasn't convincingly so much. Yeah, I just posted like four. I did it on YouTube.

I looked at them for the first time. I just have like a layer one list, you know, on trading view. I went down through them right before the show. I said, here's four. The first four I looked at, all of them have broken a downtrend, you know, like a downward resistance for classical chartists. And every single one I posted is either right now or already in the last few days has made that first higher high and closed above that we're looking for on Bitcoin. Exactly. Yeah. And I think that's what makes me cautiously optimistic here and

quite excited going into Q4. Yeah, exactly. Oh, Don is just here. I have to... And he has his hand up. Are you going to shit on us? Are you going to like rain all over my parade? I just want to know what to get expected for if I need an umbrella. There's no umbrella. We are in a completely new regime. And I'm going to use a word that I rarely use, but I am bullish on Bitcoin. I'll explain everything really quickly. Number one, we have now the worst decision, in my opinion, that the Fed has made in a long time, which is a 50 basis point cut. We are in a rate cutting cycle. We are in an easing cycle. This is all really awful for people that don't own assets but if you own a scarce asset like real

estate or like bitcoin this is incredibly bullish number two i just posted it up there china is now easing if people remember on our shows in the morning i mentioned that china would have to do something like this they were putting themselves in an incredibly poor situation. This morning, they actually announced even more easing, but they've already done monetary measures. So now you can, as a bank, hold less reserves. You can borrow for cheaper too. They also have corporate support. For the first time ever, China is going to, or in a long, actually, that's not correct. First time in a decade, China is going to, or in a lot, actually, that's not correct. First time in a decade, China is going to give hedge funds money to go and invest in the stock market. So we're seeing like an easing, a global easing cycle, like we have not seen before.

Inflation is going to be out of control, which means that Bitcoin prices are going to skyrocket. So I agree that this might have just been the halving. I am not an expert in that in any way. But this is monetary policy from central banks across the country and around the world. It all lies. And it always does. Election cycle, global liquidity cycle we have, and then the halving cycle and being exactly on time. Matt Hogan from Bitwise was on my YouTube this morning.

I don't have the exact quote, but he said something hilarious. I literally couldn't stop laughing. But he said, governments have made recessions illegal. Like, you know, as a joke with the money printing that you're alluding to, it just effectively can't happen now. We will never have a recession again. If they keep doing this, we will never have a recession again. We will have a major depression

one day. Yeah. I lost Donish, but I don't know if that was me or him because my internet's a bit spotty. Go ahead, Dave. It was him. Donish, you got out. Goave yeah i got i got two points um one i want to go back to phallus what he said because i think you're you're you're right but

you're misleading the two leaders uh you're right that you're seeing the setup in all coins and but you're wrong about what that implies for bitcoin in my opinion at least this is my opinion i i think that bitcoin is set up for something that's very different. The marginal buyer or the price setter for Bitcoin for every one of the cycles up until this cycle was always speculators. It was always leveraged speculators who then tried to entice other more retail people in behind them with FOMO and pushed it up. And so every time you saw a cycle that starts to move higher, like in significantly in the chart side, it was being led by derivatives almost always or until the ETFs came. And then we had a spot rally, which is what took us from,

you know, 25 up to 70 at its, you know, at its coincidental with the halving rally peak. I think we have a world now where in this eight-month period since March, when we've been kind of going sideways, where you've seen rotation from people just disgusted with Bitcoin leverage and basically selling to stronger holders, either institutions or in certain cases, central banks that we'll start hearing about and sovereign wealth funds. If I'm right, what you're seeing is Bitcoin is more likely to grind higher for a while that the dips you're looking for that the speculators looking to buy in won't show up nearly as well as they have been. And you will see that kind of sustained rally. Meanwhile,

the speculators are in the altcoins. And you're right, because as they make money in Bitcoin, they're selling Bitcoin to buy alts to look for that dopamine hit, and you know, that 100xs and those sorts of things. And so we are set up for the for a rally, but I do think it's different. But the difference is significantly more strong-handed, slow accumulating buying. The point that corroborates this is exactly what Files was talking about with the order books. Now, obviously, CoinRoute, we trade billions for our clients, quite a bit of a derivative spot as well. But the clients, what we're seeing is the smarter money is using tools like ours and like Coinbase's and like Talos's to trade algorithmically. And you don't see orders that our clients are trading.

You just don't. The algorithms are smart enough to hide them, break them up into small pieces so that humans can't see them nearly as easily. And as a result, we're seeing significant volumes aren't bad, but the order books don't look as deep. Why? Because you don't have as much dumb money putting orders into order books yet in the altcoins where there isn't that kind of institutional liquidity you are seeing it because it's much less algorithmic based at least on in the spot markets and so it's important to understand what that means now it feels to bitcoin more like 2009 in the s p than it feels like any other point of the record. In 2009, for people who don't remember, the world was coming to an end and anyone who

invested in stocks was an idiot. And Tom Lee and people like that made their fortunes by basically saying, you guys are all wrong. We were in this huge monetary easing cycle. Look what's going to happen. And it became the largest bull run in history with basically almost no pullbacks of substance. It wouldn't surprise me to see Bitcoin enter into a cycle like that over the next five, 10 years to get where most people believe it's going to go, which would be interesting because there'd be less volatility.

Part of that thesis is that now with options on ETFs, you have many more people who can play volatility in both directions, potentially dampening that volatility. So it wouldn't surprise you to see Bitcoin volatility decrease as it rises. It decreases relative term. Obviously, if you're talking about a 15x in price, you're going to have volatility. But relative to altcoins where that is not happening, I think that you're going to see differential volatility increase and so it's going to make for an interesting market but i think it's important to understand these dynamics that are going on more importantly we're now below 65 000 so it's

a bear market and it's all over guys that's a joke everyone listening it's a joke it's a joke. Everyone listening, it's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. Okay. Joe, go ahead. Yeah. I mean, I love what Dave just said. You know, I looked at when the ETF came out, I said gold had a 10-year bull run after the gold ETF happens. I really expect a different type of cycle than we're used to this time. And I did think we were a month ahead of time so in august um i expected to i didn't expect a bad month um but it confirmed my suspicion that we're like a month ahead this august is probably one of the worst augusts we've ever had uh

september seems like it's not going to be bad like it normally is than everyone expects it to be uh we hit when i say new high i mean a new high within a cycle we hit a new high in march instead of during the the right at the uh having which is normally what happens we're just running a little ahead of schedule but only on bitcoin all coins i would argue are exactly on schedule and that's what's really messed with people's heads is they saw bitcoin make a new all-time high and they're very frustrated that all coins haven't gone but all coins are not supposed to move till six or eight months after they have it i mean historically it's like yeah and i've been writing for a month like people at 60 like hurry up and get in you know i think the buying zone was 52 to 48 for the past two

months um and that's where people should get it in i don't think and now with this breakout if it closes above 64 if i have extra capital anywhere because i've kind of put everything in uh i would be putting it in again because to me it'll be a confirmation. The thing is, I have always invested in altcoins. You know, famously, I went into Pepe when everyone was against it and did quite well. But this cycle, I'm not. I really believe what Dave just said. I think liquidity is going to flow to Bitcoin. I think there's going to be very few altcoins that actually perform uh well i think the big guys like like maybe suey

maybe uh maybe tan uh definitely ethan i think layer ones yeah layer ones with good narratives but i to your point i i don't think you can just throw a dart at literally a million altcoins and hope for the best but yeah i think those days are over like you need to find things that actually have value and actually build value in defi and most of that doesn't exist most of it is written on a white paper and it never goes anywhere and and i don't think we're going to be in that cycle because i don't think if you look at crypto and think okay okay, Bitcoin is safe. And you know, Pepe is a pink sheet. I don't think we're attracting the pinch pink sheet type investors to this new cycle, to be honest. Carlo, then Simon and Fred, trying to go in order.

Hey, good morning, Scott. First off, it's nice to be back on. I missed currency. We're printing at record numbers. We're easing rates, some say in a very aggressive fashion. So you have two options. You can wring your hands and yell at the clouds, or you can trade on the assets that are going to benefit from this type of liquidity movement. And I think that's what we're seeing right now. Simon? Yeah, so I feel that we're at a very critical moment in Bitcoin's history in terms of,

is it a stock in the mind of the vast majority of people or is it a commodity? Or you could change that narrative to risk on, risk off. and i believe it's both and so but we haven't this will be one of our most extreme tests um but unfortunately the central banks aren't allowing us to test so what we're seeing right now is competing central banks and understanding where they fit into the grand uponsy um that eventually leads to some kind of black swan events. And how does Bitcoin react to those black swan events? So we've, you know, the Fed has made the policy clear that the Fed is political, it's getting America into record levels of debt, it will continue until America is bankrupt. And that creates a financial apartheid where those in real estate and stocks benefit at

the expense of everybody else. China's now decided, the PBAC has now decided to copy elements of the Fed. But obviously, it has a stake banking model. So that means that the profits from Scenaridge make their way back to the state, which is a slightly different model. Bank of Japan has decided we've got to be a proxy for the Fed. And while we want to tackle our inflation, we can't do that because everyone needs our cheap credit and it breaks the whole system. And the Bank of England is essentially underwriting the IMF debt, which is paying for Ukraine. And therefore, you've made a connection between the central banks and the wartime economy that we seem to be entering.

At the same time, we've had three sets of escalations on the front of the war, whether it would be the Lebanon side, the recent Japan and China side that's happening this week, and then also the situation where the long range missiles are allowed to enter into Russia. So all of those create this environment of is Bitcoin risk on or risk off? I think it's both. I think there's a bunch of volatility. And with gold reaching new all time highs, and Bitcoin kind of lagging behind that slightly, but then catching up and also Ethereum's lag behind that. I think it's a new test. Yeah, I didn't mean to interrupt.

Yeah, no worries. Just to sum up, I'm confident that Bitcoin is good in either markets and its own market. And we're all going to create narratives, but Bitcoin solves some of the fundamental problems of all of the biggest problems in the world today. Black, what I was going to jump in and say is that there was actually a report last week, and now they're back on the roadshow. BlackRock put out a report basically stressing

that Bitcoin is a risk-off asset and going through a laundry list of reasons that they view it that way. Robbie Michnik, who's the guy who orange-pilled Larry Fink, has been on a roadshow making that case on mainstream media. So now you have... Listen, guys, Larry Fink is one of the most powerful people in the world. Now they're out on a roadshow not only talking about how important Bitcoin is as an investment,

but talking about it being a risk off asset for all the reasons that Simon just listed. I mean, it's really incredible to see. And why they're doing it, Scott. I mean, they came out and said they're doing because they fear the dollar, the $36 trillion problem. Well, you've got to read the narrative right now. The people that really know and control what happens in the world, they jump from one economy to the other.

Next month is the BRICS conference. I think that's a significant part of why gold's reaching the all-time highs. And there is a cryptocurrency and stablecoin pay there. And all of the people that control all the narratives that are moving all of the money seem to be saying we need to be concerned around de-dollarization. Fred? Well, I am bullish like everyone else.

It also feels good to be back up on stage. I know I've been gone for a little bit, but I would just add from what everybody else has said is that, you know, these runs last a while. The explosive part is towards the end. But if you look at 2016, we got the 50% rise in the fall. But July and November of 17 is where things got crazy. And then if you look at 2020, you know, yeah, that was a little bit earlier. That was October, December when the run started, but you still had the January dip in that in 21. And then, you know, it exploded and then eventually went nuts in, uh, while there was a double top there, but you know, it reached that top next year. So, I mean, this should get started soon, but it's going to last a long time. And whenever you want to talk about the halving, the elections, the stock market or whatever, things always seem to go in the right direction at the right time.

And I think one of the greatest messages, and you guys may have talked about it yesterday, but was that all the politicians in the US have started getting the message, i.e. getting the money that people are giving them for to be pro-crypto. We saw Gensler get figuratively punched in the face in those hearings a couple of days ago. And you have high profile Harris supporters now against him, like Mark Cuban, Scaramucci. But I was just reading today that Mrs. Bitcom herself is now on board for crypto being inevitable. So when you have Maxine Waters saying, well, this is definitely going to be a thing, you've got a lot to look forward to. Yeah, I mean, the point is important.

Whatever happens in the next week or the next month or the next three months, 2025 is the year that if the cycle happens, it will be looking for the big movement. It ramps up now in theory, but the real parabolic action. We've talked about that actually with new projects releasing and pre-sales, Mario's favorite sort of topic of conversation. People look back on previous cycles and go, ICOs went nuts, pre-sales went nuts, but it was really for like a three or four month period in both of those cases, right? And the rest of it was horrible. And none of that happened until 2021. So go ahead, Dave. Yeah, I mean, there is... This is great for me. I've told this to a lot of people a lot of times. I don't want anything to get too crazy until 2025 because then I can sell and leave California and not pay taxes. Godspeed, my friend. Go ahead, Dave. What I was going to say is there is a narrative that is in the Harris administration where Bitcoin's price and Ethereum's price is driven

to, as people would say here, to Valhalla. But the reason it happens is because it's an institutional takeover. It becomes that Larry Fink asset. And they basically kind of ignore and cede altcoins to the rest of the world. And so the attitude that you see in Token49 is perfectly reasonable. And I don't see that as as well, I see it as problematic, because I worry about, you know, privacy and censorship resistance. But, you know, hey, you know, what we're talking about is price action, then, you know, it's not that I don't really think the election is that big of a deal for price action for Bitcoin. I get it matters a lot to founders and where innovation takes place. But that's a totally separate matter. Obviously, I care about it. But this show,

we're talking about what's going on in the actual price action. Anyway, I got to jump, but I just wanted to make that point. How dare you? Go ahead, John. I actually have a question for you, Scott. I don't know if you've seen Q been talking about wanting to head the SEC. You know he's more of an ETH guy than a Bitcoin guy. Is that good or bad? If that actually happened, which I doubt it will. It's not going to happen. Listen, I also want to chair the SEC. I'll go on the news and say that I don't think I have any more of a chance than Mark Cuban. But I think that the idea is what's important, right? Is that if we get someone who's industry friendly, period, or at least just not anti the industry, it would be wildly different.

I mean, listen, you know, politically, we're in an interesting situation. I think most people agree that Bitcoin is safe regardless. You know, Trump obviously talking about strategic reserve asset, protecting self-custody, you know, anti-CBDC, all very pro-Bitcoin statements. So we know that would be good. I think with Harris, and I'll continue to say this, that people who buy Bitcoin for the reason that Bitcoin was created should buy Bitcoin if Harris wins, because they'll believe there's going to be more inflation, more money printing, more government corruption, if that's what they believe. The same people who buy guns and ammo and flee to Puerto Rico should buy Bitcoin as a flight to safety. So the question then becomes what happens to the crypto side, I think, right?

And so, listen, regardless, these are not political opinions. I'm just telling you how I view it from a 30,000-foot view. Donald Trump is not going to list altcoins or say that altcoins are unregistered securities when he's literally launching altcoins in NFT projects. So you know exactly what's going to happen if Donald Trump wins. He's not going to make the things he's doing illegal. Period. So I think we know where the crypto side of things will land with him and the question mark then becomes Harris, right? But so like if Harris won and made a Mark Cuban like person, I do not believe this is happening and not a Gary Gensler type chair of the SEC, I think obviously that would be a massive improvement. But right now, all we have is to go on from the Harris side is

the last few years and we know it's been extremely contentious and a negative environment for crypto innovation in the United States. So listen, you can listen to the lip service and believe that will change. And I'd be hopeful that that would happen. But I don't think she's making Mark Cuban chair of the SEC, right? I think Gary Genzo would probably remain SEC chairman for a while. I would hope not, but possibly. Go ahead, Simon. Yeah, from my speculation, either Mark Cuban hates Trump or has a financial interest in making sure Harris wins. Because to me, this is kind of compensating. And I'm not talking about all policies. I'm just talking about economic and crypto um this is kind of compensating for the fact that we associate gary ginsler um with the harris campaign um because he's almost trying to come in and say we'd love you to change um the

the makeup of the sec and i'll put my hat forward forward knowing that it won't happen anyway where it's almost like trying to please how can we figure out like Harris is saying nothing there's no crypto stuff here there's no economic policy here because for whatever reason either being anti-Trump or that there's a massive financial interest in the Democrat Party for him. He's trying to say, I'll put my hat in and here's a reason. Let's try and find some reason. Please vote for Harris if you're a crypto person. Yeah, I mean, I'm curious other people's opinions on the panel on this side of things and what the crypto industry would look like.

I don't think that Gensler is going to stick around. Fred, I'm not sure you can hear everyone, but Panos is speaking. Oh, sorry. Panos, we're getting really bad echo from your mic. Some needs to bring you down and up. So Fred, go ahead. Oh, sorry about that. No, I guess I can't hear everybody.

No, that happens here all the time. I would just say that I don't think if Harris wins, I do not think Gensler is going to be the chair anymore. I mean, that's not necessarily good. It could be replaced with somebody even worse. I know Dave, who dropped off, completely goes nuts if you bring up Carolyn Crenshaw. But Gensler is just the type of political animal that will move on. And he'll use all his political chips to say he paid his dues at the SEC and did everything he was supposed to, like a good soldier. And he'll be moving on.

So that's going to be different no matter what. But, you know, hopefully we would get someone pro crypto in there. And, you know, it's possible, again, enough money is flowing to both parties that that's not a ridiculous thought. Yeah, let's hope he doesn't move on to Treasury Secretary. Penos, try again. How's my mic now? Way better. Okay.

Does anyone on the panel think that Harris is going to help fast track CBDCs? I think a lot of people. You've already got one. It's called FedNow. Very true. Very true. Yeah, that's my thoughts on the whole Harris situation. I think that her and the SEC are really gonna try and push push through uh the

whole cbdc uh industry so she she talks about digital assets but i think that's what she really means she has been careful so far listen i and i think it's a lack of uh understanding of the industry and it's obviously talking points, but as you're saying, she has only said, to my knowledge, digital assets and blockchain. I haven't really heard her say Bitcoin and crypto in those official statements, right? Yeah,

I'm assuming that's what you're alluding to. Dan, go ahead. Yeah, that's a good one. I'm not sure if she's going to accelerate CBC, probably. I think the Democrats are quite pro-CBDC. Republicans have typically been quite anti-CBDC, which is pro-Bitcoin. You saw Ted Cruz come out along those lines.

But if she is pro-CBDC, I think that's a bad sign for us because they're not going to want to allow things that compete with the CBDC. So I think that would probably be bad for stable coins as well. Simon? Yeah, subtle difference, but I think people need to start having the proper debate. Harris would be more likely to launch a GBTC, a government digital currency.

A CBDC is a construct of the deep state because the central bank is a different entity to the government and so um it's if if you believe if you if the ideology is a she's veering you more towards communism um then the central bank is just a takeover of the money supply and so it would be more likely to be issued by government rather than the central bank because central bank gives less power. Yeah, but wouldn't that imply that central banks lose their power? And I think most people believe that that too actually controls everything.

I mean, why would they take the power away from the central bank who controls everything? But that's what JFK did. JFK printed a dollar back by silver and then got assassinated yeah and his uh nephew rfk jr speaks about that quite a bit and uh it's pretty compelling to be to be quite honest and uh interestingly i mean i can just say anecdotally, I interviewed RFK in Austin the day before consensus started. And we had sort of a long chat, he and I and about what the narrative and Caitlin Long about what the narrative of the conversation would be and what we would be discussing. And the main point that we were

actually going for was abolish the Fed. And the conversation, exact conversation you're having. And we did have a long conversation about what the Fed actually is, the fundamental lack of understanding by people of who controls it, effectively a private entity that's obviously capitalizing on money printing in the name of the government. But he literally made a joke. He was like, well, if I say abolish the Fed, they're going to kill me in the next week. You see, like literally, you know, it's a mess to my face.

Yeah, that's the truth. Look through monetary history. Everybody that tried to launch another currency that's independent of the central bank, their country got detopled or they ended up getting assassinated that's a that's a fact of history simon which i think is just uh makes the k and i've said this before makes the case of al salvador actually quite interesting that they were able to make bitcoin legal tender and to adopt bitcoin

because it's the only country effectively that could do that. Because why question mark people, if you don't know, they use the U S dollar as their currency. So if they had had, if they'd had their own currency, the IMF, world bank, CIA, you name it would have attacked their currency and crush them and, you know, taken out the leader in a coup. Like we saw, these are not conspiracy theories, by the way, guys. This is what happens all over South America, all over Asia.

This is what the United States government does with the IMF and the World Bank, predatory loans and the CIA. And that's what would have happened. But El Salvador uses the dollar. So no harm, no foul. Scott, I'll take it a step further. It's not the government. The central bank controls the government and the intelligence agency at all.

And the World Bank and the IMF, right? Certainly. So yeah, I think that that's a better way to skid it. But who steps in at the end of the day after those coups and such happen? It's basically private American companies, right? Who probably work for the same people. It's the shareholders of the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England and all the shareholders private American companies, right? Who probably work for the same people. It's the shareholders of the federal reserve and the bank of England and all the shareholders that created the system in the first place and the bank for

international settlements, they're the net beneficiary. So it goes out with America. Yeah. So I guess circling back to the CBDC conversation to your point, then she might try a government currency, but I don't think that would work particularly well. Isn't that just a path to being JFK? Yeah, that is a path to being JFK. So the, you know, the central bank is more likely to do it, but I just want to make the distinction. And then obviously, Trump is coming up with the alternative narrative, which if you're a crypto, I'm sure the MAGA people

will think, okay, we're taking on the establishment. This is draining the swamp. But when you're a bit more crypto experience, you know that this is highly likely to be a pump and dump. But I take your narrative as well, Scott, that if he wants to launch his coin for his family, then aligning interest with a regulatory environment, it just opens up an incredible amount of attack vectors. And because I think the project was a stablecoin, a DeFi project, and the governance token, that's a whole lot of stuff to bite off with all sorts of three to four letter agencies that will do all sorts of things to attack that project. Yeah, that's why I like to be clear when I'm saying like, this is not a political

opinion. I'm trying to take a look at the things that are actually happening and what that would mean for regulation. I'm not saying it's good or bad that he's launching these things, right? We'll get a lot of varying opinions. I'm just saying that there's no way he tries to create a regulatory environment that's, you know, against his own self-interest. Nobody would, right? It's not a criticism. It's just when you're on your fourth NFT project, you probably don't think NFTs are illegal unregistered securities. So I guess, listen, as we're sort of coming towards a wrapping here, let's maybe try to discuss what the bearish case would be. I mean, Fulis kind of, listen, we're here once again at resistance, 64,500.

You know, it broke 65 per second, got rejected. I mean, what's kind of the bear case right now as we're increasing bullishness and thinking that cycle's about to enter a new phase? What could sort of rug pull or derail this what would you be looking for i mean from a technical pov and it's it's going to sound like such a meme but like everyone has been talking about this descending channel that btc has been in since like march and it's one of those things where like everyone here is aware of of you know what it means to have a self-fulfilling prophecy like market psychology is a funny thing whereby sometimes you just have something you know a kind of a paradigm that means itself into existence so like if everybody's looking for something then sometimes that's exactly what's going to play out

so i don't know i mean we've basically had this this dynamic resistance level that's been running from, you know, back in kind of March, it was around 72, 71K. It's coming down a bit in May, it was more like 71, 70K. By July, it was more like 69, 70K. And I mean, if you continue that kind of descending, let's say the upside of the channel, it's kind of hitting like 65 or 66 now, which is pretty much where we're, where we're trading into now. So it's like, it's one of those things where, I mean, if it plays out, it'll be the most obvious, it'll have been the most obvious play in the world. That said, I'm, you know,

it's not something I'm trading off or something that I'm really planning for. However, it is something I'm, I'm looking at and I'm somewhat aware of. But even just from a, from a kind of a more principled approach, I mean, we are trading, if you take the price action we've had basically since March to now as a kind of a range, you know, we spoke about this a number of times before with kind of lower like 55 56k being the range low i mean we're trading right around the mid-range now right so this is kind of where you would expect chop right this is where you would expect both buyers and sellers to be interested in price which results in a balanced order book which results in typically a lot of a lot of choppy up down price action this is kind of you know, people might get frustrated because the strong upside move that we've had from like 5th, 6th, 7th of September all the way up until now, this is where it kind of might stall, chop for a few weeks before resuming, you know, the upside

journey or even rejecting. And I think that's where a lot of people will say that maybe, you know, that's it, the move is over or we're done here. Whereas in fact, you know, price is just chopping around the mid range. I don't know if you guys are familiar with this volume concept of a point of control. It's basically the point of a range where the most volume is traded, which basically means that both sides of the order book are interested in engaging with price, both buyers and sellers. We're right around that level now now so it's kind of where you would expect a lot of chop so it's one of those things i said before though the difference is that all coins are going this time yeah exactly there's a huge difference and as i said the summer is over so you're expecting maybe a more lopsided

order book with more market participants willing to push price around so look we'll see i mean we've had a pretty sharpish rejection here since 65k on the low time frame we're down about 900 so far but i mean that's to be expected i think these mechanical rejections are pretty normal when you sweep an external liquidity level like this yeah shorts shorts jump on board longs tp but look let's see interesting few days pa ahead Yeah, look, I follow ISM PMI really closely, right? And for people who don't know, that's like what purchasing managers are doing. And typically, I look at that almost as an indicator where is there going to be added liquidity or not. And as long as the M2 is high, then I feel comfortable getting in. And if you look at PMI, it's almost always a few months ahead of what Bitcoin is doing.

We bottomed out almost two years ago, a year and a half ago on BMI. If we go lower, it'll be the first time in history that we trend lower and sideways for this amount of period and don't go up. It'll be the first time in history that we trend lower and sideways for this amount of period and don't go up. Right. It'll be the first time. The rare case scenario is if it drops for the first time I've seen in recent history and inflation goes up, then we have way bigger problems than Bitcoin. And that's why I feel comfortable saying it's a good it would be affected by the macro exactly it would be affected by the macro US would have serious problems paying its debt

liquidity probably would have to spiral just to pay it but then then we start getting very close to creating this cycle that will lead to hyperinflation. So I find that almost impossible to happen. I don't think the government will let that happen. The dollar, as we saw with COVID, is still strong.

People do go to the dollar in cases of emergency. The BRICS is not established yet. So my bear case scenario is unless the world goes to absolute shit, we're at a pretty safe level, to be honest. Of course, don't go and leverage yourself because these market makers have gotten really good at shaking and increasing the volatility and getting people out and going to where the liquidity lies to go capture it. But we're at a pretty good level of range. If you look 5,000 down, 5,000 up, I think that's pretty much where we're at. Pen good level of range if you if you look 5 000 down 5 000 up i think that's pretty much where we're at pen i said your hand up yeah this isn't really a technical view this is more like geopolitical but while everyone's kind of bullish because of the rate cuts in the

u.s and china let's not forget that there's a war brewing in the middle east that could quite easily get out of hand and will affect all the markets, not just the crypto market, the stock market, commodities, all of that. So just wanted to throw that out there as well. Yeah, I mean, the last two times we've had 50 BIP rate cuts when people were expecting 25 was basically, what, 2007 before the Great Recession and before the market collapse in 2000. Generally, when the Fed cuts more than expected, it usually precedes a pretty large correction in markets. So, you know, that had been something to talk about for quite a long time. Alex, you haven't had an opportunity yet to speak. I mean, how are you viewing the market at this point? What's your thoughts yeah look i am i'm not a trader so i get a little bit lost in a lot of the macro uh conversation i'm really like a product and tech guy and i spent um you know

last week in singapore i was really focused on the tech that's being built especially in the salani ecosystem and if i'm bullish it's because because a lot of the promises from the last like five six seven years of you know the failed ICOs and all the garbage that we saw is that a lot of the things that we were promised are actually coming true now so seamless spending you know really compelling gaming use cases very interesting interesting DeFi products. So I'm bullish, but it's probably on different timelines. But that's interesting because we talk about it here quite frequently, right? You always get these sort of cyclical narratives or these little bubbles in crypto, right? All right. You know, real world assets that flies for a month or AI or Metaverse or DeFi,

some of those things. And it never happens in that first hype cycle. So now we're coming into another cycle. So you would assume that some of the things that were so overly hyped four years ago, or even eight years ago, we finally see come to fruition, right? Humans are terrible at humans are terrible. We always think everything's about to go parabolic. So they get impatient. That's why they capitulate and sell because nothing's gone up as fast as they want but when it does go parabolic they're equally bad at understanding just how crazy it can go 100 and uh yeah so like

on a very long time horizon like i try not to get caught up in these like the huge um like uh cyclical movement but like just from on the ground what is being like usable and uh making my life just simpler and easier uh better uh the the we are in the right industry for sure totally agree that we're finally catching up on uxui and the old meme that grandma will be able to use it which is what we've all been sort of waiting for i think uh steven any final thoughts before we wrap here yeah just wanted to play out like the war scenario i mean i'd imagine that everyone would take their alts and dump them for stables and bitcoin um i think on the stock market side people would maybe stay around the tech thinking that, you know, it's very different because we haven't seen such a war during, you know, time when companies can stay open and

they're fully online. So maybe the tech companies would be the net beneficiary. You definitely have war stocks that would be a beneficiary of that. But would there be a movement out of the non commodity bearing stocks? You'd have a movement towards oil the non-commodity bearing stocks? You'd have a movement towards oil and gold ETFs and with the Bitcoin ETF. I mean, certainly if I had a chunk of my wealth in a pension and I wanted to keep it within that environment, I'd probably be moving it from stocks to either bonds, commodities. And I think Bitcoin would be a big part of that. So I think you could end up with a very interesting, highly speculative, but a very interesting drain of stocks into the Bitcoin ETF in that scenario.

I think that makes perfect sense. Guys, I think we're going to move to wrap. We're going to take a look at the market here throughout the day, of course, and be back tomorrow at 10.15am Eastern Standard Time. Huge thanks, guys, to all of the guests. You should be following them all. If they're up here, that means we like them. So go ahead and go around the horn up here on the panel and just click that follow button to everybody you see. And otherwise, we will be back tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll be here pending hurricane,

but I know Mario definitely will. See you then. Bye, guys. Have a great day.