The Wolf Of All Streets - Crypto Markets Set To Explode As Bitcoin Approaches $95K!

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

Friday Five is THE show about the main news in crypto. Join me and Nathaniel Whittemore as we delve into the main topics that moved the markets. Nathaniel Whittemore: https://twitter.com/nlw ►�� JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEKDAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/ ►► Arch Public Unleash algorithmic trading. Discover how algorithms used by hedge-funds are now accessible to traders looking for unparalleled insights and opportunities! 👉https://archpublic.com/ ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. Use code '10OFF' for a 10% discount. 👉https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://x.com/scottmelker Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.com/ Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c #Bitcoin #Crypto #FridayFive The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment. 🎙️ New to streaming or looking to level up? Check out StreamYard and get $10 discount! 😍 https://streamyard.com/pal/d/6319316098351104

Bitcoin is pushing towards $95,000 and for once altcoins are seemingly following along. But when we talk about crypto markets set to explode, it's not really about local price action but more about predictions of what this industry can look like in the coming years. One of those being the global tokenized real estate market could explode to $4 trillion by 2035. That was coming from Deloitte. That's just one of the main stories

today. We have Trump vs. Powell, 21 capital, the ECB freaking out about dollar stablecoins, a number of United States companies looking to get bank charters, and of course, the Fed withdrawing crypto guidance. NLW and I are here to break it all down for you on the Friday Friday five. Let's go. This is up everybody. I'm Scott Melker also known as the wolf of all streets. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and gently tap that like button. Morning, happy Friday, sir. What's happening? Just crypto stuff and Trump stuff and more Trump stuff. You know, it seems to always be Trump stuff.

I don't think we've yet escaped the markets only care what he tweets environment quite yet. Don't think we're going to, although I think we are getting, actually I have this hat, the beatings will continue until morale improves on. And I feel like I didn't mean to, but I accidentally kind of picked the hat of the time.

That's amazing. Listen, before we get into the main stories, we have this sort of hyperbolic title, the crypto markets are set to explode as Bitcoin approaches 95. Well, Bitcoin, I mean, just went to 94.9, making another high in this kind of local cycle. But like I said, this is more about what's likely to come in the future.

This was one of the stories about real estate market exploding to 4 trillion. I've had a lot of conversations of late about how tokenization really is going to be the future of growth in crypto. We have a lot of crypto native applications that people are likely to adopt, but really the big numbers are going to come from the other side. It's going to be tokenization and stable coins, which I think Yeah, no, look, I think I think that there are there's a there's a whole slew of really

interesting things that could be could do but these are long term trends. So the tokenization piece, you know, I think that some extent, one of our mistakes that has always been to view it as sort of like a cycle hype narrative, as opposed to just critical infrastructure that's clearly coming, you know, and I think that this this report and these predictions are sort of validating that it seems inevitable, right? You know, again, there's questions of sort of exactly how it, how it, you know,

value accrues to the tokens that are used and all that sort of stuff. But it's absolutely the case that the, you know, the economy and assets are going to be increasingly crypto economy and crypto assets, whether they look like that today or not. So, you know, long-term trend lines are still pointing in a very specific direction. Yeah, at the end of the day, the story really will be if that's investable or if that's just captured by a bunch of legacy institutions on their own private platforms and blockchains

and they tokenize everything and we can't participate. Yeah, I mean, look, I think that the good news is that part of why it feels inevitable is that it creates tons and tons of interesting, unique, investable opportunities that people can play around with, right. And there's a lot of ways that that gets wonky and gross and weird, but there's also a lot of ways that it just opens up, you know, sort of proxy access to different types of assets that weren't available before. And I think optimistically, it's likely to me that the market is going to find lots of ways to have, you know, to expand access and to expand different types of participation. You know, look, I think the sort of the wealthiest, you know, most capitalized sections of markets

always benefit most from new types of sort of asset exposure. But that doesn't mean that there can't be opportunities for other types of investors as well. Absolutely. So the first major story we have, we pegged it as Trump versus Powell, but I think we could probably just put it as Trump versus, because obviously we also have Trump versus China. And I think these have been in my mind,

the two biggest stories since liberation day, and what we should be hyper focused on because he clearly played his hand with tariffs. We have varying results, mixed results we can discuss all around the world, but very clearly we had two narratives that the intention was to lower rates and to force Powell to do so. And of course, to bring China to the negotiating table at the moment that it happened, both of them seemed to call his bluff,

whether it was a bluff or not, they definitely called. The question now is how that's evolved and what's going on. So we obviously know that with Powell specifically that we'll talk about first, Trump called him a major loser, said he was going to fire him, said that he was incompetent, all these things. Now obviously walking back a lot of that rhetoric

after he saw what it did to markets, in my opinion, and saying he has no intention of firing him. Yes, we should cut rates, but I'm looking forward to working with him, you know, the usual, the usual backtracking on the aggressive rhetoric. Yeah, I mean, I think that the the couple things. So one of the challenging things to figure out, you know, for everyone when when analyzing Trump is like, so he calls Powell a loser, tweets about him a bunch of times,

but then in the next breath says that he has no intention of firing him, right? And so the natural kind of human instinct is to be like, all right, well, he walked it back. But what if those things actually just aren't mutually exclusive for Trump, where he could call someone a loser while also actually not intending to fire them. You know, I think that the thing that's hard for markets to wrap their head around is that Trump seems sincere when he says, no, of course, I'm never going to fire him because he just wants the punching bag. He wants to have someone to blame.

But in any case, it is certainly the case that markets did not like that being sort of like the new source of antagonism and acrimony. They were getting real jittery based on that for a variety of reasons, I think. And so, you know, again, whatever the proximate cause, however much intention there had or had not been around firing, there was clearly a softening of the rhetoric, you know, not just around firing, but also around the Fed in general. That market's responded very positively to when it happened. Yeah, it's sort of an interesting debate that I've had with other guests, but a lot of people saying obviously if he fires Powell or continues that rhetoric, markets are going to crash because there's a lack of faith in the dollar and a lack of faith in American institutions.

Dave Weisberger and others I've seen take the other side to like, well, if he actually found a way to fire pal, and people knew that he was going to bring in a really dovish Commissioner, then you match the markets are going to go up because the Fed would be controlled by Trump and do exactly what he says. But I take the former argument. Yeah, I think that the look, we are markets are quite good at finding ways to be cynical for the sake of short-term gains. But I think that that would really challenge even these markets' ability to sort of trade

the short term for the long term. So really quickly, now going to the China side is an update. Trump says he's split up with China's Z. Trump says trade deals are going well, Trump will end up with lots of good deals. Trump says Russia, Ukraine coming along, then literally 45 minutes ago, China, us not having any talks on tariffs in Chinese embassy, US should stop creating confusion. Chinese embassy. What the hell is going on here? No,

you never know from China. Yeah, I mean, look, it's, it, you I think that I think that it's basically what people are doing now is that they're mostly using what comes out of Trump's mouth not to understand where things stand, but to understand where Trump stands and then try to sort of, you know, from there, extrapolate that to what might be going on. So Trump talking about sort of, you know, deals coming along with China and intent

is not about him having had a bunch of conversations. It's about where his head is at relative to the conversations that, you know, will be held. You know, that is confusing, but it's also, I think, fairly clear to American observers that's sort of the way to interpret a lot of Trump's statements. Let's put it this way, more than most presidents,

his statements are leading indicators rather than lagging indicators when it comes to stuff that's going on. Yeah, I think it's also fair just to show this one article. Trump was warned of empty shelves and financial turmoil from tariffs and fire repel. Of course, this is from CNN business, so maybe it's hyperbolic title. His U-turn push stocks higher. I mean, we just discussed this, obviously, but there are reports from multiple sources that Wall Street called and they

were not happy. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, I think it's they've been trying to dramatize how unhappy they are for some time. Again, it's it's very hard to tell how much I don't know let's put it this way I am I'm fairly uncomfortable calling u-turns you know with any sort of real conviction I think we're still in an incredibly volatile scenario with a lot of moving pieces where you know all we know that right now is that it's uh everyone's a little happier than they were on Monday. And I'll take that W heading into the weekend. Yeah, for sure.

So the next story and one of the biggest ones certainly of the week is obviously what's happening here with Gander, Fitzgerald, Tether, SoftBank et al. Of course, we first got the report that we were going to get a micro strategy slash strategy slash sailor competitor in this company called 21 that was going to launch a sailor like fund with 42,000 Bitcoin. Then we got the news a day later, I believe that Jack Mueller was going to be the CEO, which I think obviously gets the Bitcoin community pretty pumped. He's the only guy who can go on TV and hoodies and a t-shirt and a hat, you know, kind of turn to the side and apparently have credibility. It's actually pretty amazing to watch him work. But this is big news. First of all, it's another institution saying that what strategy doing is a viable opportunity to gain more Bitcoin. It's confidence that there's going to be enough investible, you know, enough people interested in investing

in another vehicle like this in this kind of convertible debt, buying Bitcoin. But I think what's most notable to me is who's in the partnership. So obviously Cantor Fitzgerald, not a huge surprise, knowing where Lutnick stands. Tether and Bitfinex, clearly not a big surprise. But SoftBank coming in with 900 million Bitcoin is the real

story here in my opinion, because either they had it and we didn't know, or they've been buying it to participate in this. Also, we obviously just have this being slightly structurally different than the strategy, so to speak, because Mahler's gone on TV and has said, basically, we're worried about Bitcoin value per share, we're not going to trade in a premium to NAV, which by the way, I don't understand how they can earn a yield without doing that. But basically saying this is going to be a safer version of what micro sailor is doing. Yeah, I mean, hold aside the specific kind of financial engineering dynamics,

because I think that's maybe the for many people will be interesting, I think for our purposes, kind of, from a Zuma perspective, it's the least interesting thing. There's a lot of, I've loved this story this week, one because sort of on the face of it is clearly positive, more institutional interest, more excitement, but it's also shown, I think, around the discourse, just, you know, how robust the adversarial thinking of the Bitcoin community continues to be. Because this was not just a full kind of full on cheer sort of response. I think you saw a whole variety of things.

You saw some folks who are just pure cheering and basically say, Mollers is the type of person that we're really excited when he gets more rather than less power. And we like those folks having a big stack. People have been excited about the fact that there does appear to be more accumulation happening here. People have been excited about SoftBank. One of the really interesting points I think that people have made is that even though Masayoshi San has really taken a hit and had a hard time on his sort of, you know, previous soft bank investments, or sorry, Bitcoin investments, he's

sort of decided not to take, you know, to deal with the psychological hit of how much more he could have had and weighed back in, which is a positive. But then on the flip side, you have people who have been, you know, quite nervous about, you know, having another, you know, highly powerful kind of, you know, accumulator in the space, the potential trend lines that that indicates. There have been people who are questioning sort of, you know, how much this is tethered just trying to find a kind of, you know, a U.S. regulated institution that they can kind of do what they will with.

You know, none of which is to say that those are the right ways to look at it. But it's fascinating to me how much conversation a an otherwise sort of just very, you know, kind of on the surface of it, positive thing, you know, has has brought up. Yeah. And we have this kind of blockchain Long Island, iced tea, Long Island, iced tea, blockchain, whatever it was element to it, where your stock flies. If you mentioned Bitcoin right now,

cancer skyrockets 130% as traders FOMO into the stock on Bitcoin's back frenzy. And I think you're up another 25% pre-market right now. This thing is going absolutely nuts on this news. Yeah, no, it's, I think obviously the net-net people are pretty excited about this. Yeah. Okay. So the next story that we have here is about the European Central Bank, everybody's favorite

institution, but the commission versus the central bank arguing apparently about Trump dollar and stable coins. This is one I have not deeply unpacked, but I do love this headline, commission live it as easy to warns of crypto apocalypse under Trump. I mean, let's go. Yeah, I mean, so we had touched on this story before where Europe is getting increasingly freaked out about the, you know, stable coins as a destabilizing force for the euro. I think that's being exacerbated by the fact, just by the sort of the presence of the Trump administration. But it's also being complicated by the fact that within Europe, there is not a lot of consensus here. So two different groups, the ECB and the European Commission brought different reports on these issues together and they completely disagreed with each other.

So there's, you know, internal, you know, squabbling. There's sort of external nervousness. There's internal squabbling, there's external nervousness. It's just kind of a, I don't know, it's a get your popcorn moment for all of us over here sitting on the dollar. But I think that the other piece of this is that US politicians are now officially adopting the sort of recognition that stable coins are a tool of expanding US dollar hegemony.

So it's not like the Europeans are coming from nowhere with this. There is some intention here. Depending on what Asia does and how tariffs go, there's a world where stable coins are stable coin issuers or the number one buyer or certainly top three of United States treasuries. Yeah. So, hard to argue that they're wrong in that perspective, considering that somebody's gonna have to buy these things. And that's definitely going to be stable coin issuers. Speaking of stable coin issuers

and crypto companies based in the United States, it seems that in advance of likely legislation on stable coins, we are getting a whole lot of institutions trying to get banking license. So we got the Wall Street Journal here, crypto knocks on the door of a banking world that had shut out. Circle, BitGo, and other crypto firms

plan to apply for bank charters or licenses. Coinbase apparently going for it. Here you go once again, Circle, BitGo. I don't know why I can't say that. And others, and then you have Stablecoin, Turf War, Bank of America, Tether and Circle, Battle to Shape US Rules, so this is, we all know that they're all lobbying

and trying to get what they need into the bills, and then of course, Citigroup predicts, Stablecoin supply can hit 3.7 trillion by 23. By the way, there's more, you even have the Bank of America CEO bullish on stable coins. We'll get into that business. It's never ending talk on stable coins here,

but perhaps the story worth double clicking on is the banking charters. Because that to me tips the hat as to what they think this legislation will look like and what will be required to compete. Yeah, I think there's a combination of things going on. I think one, crypto institutions have had a long-term interest in sort of the opportunity, like basically moving on over

into the traditional financial and banking world via Visa v bank licenses. It got obviously sort of stumbled and held back over the last couple of years with Operation Chokepoint. But this is not like sort of a new ambition, right? People have recognized that a lot of opportunities open up and crypto institutions are ambitious. They don't want to just be the biggest thing in crypto. They want to, you know, use crypto to take over the rest of the economy.

So I think that's one part of what's going on. But certainly, I think that the flurry of activity that we're seeing is reflective of the potential that the way that this legislation that we're seeing is reflective of the potential that the way that this legislation goes with stable coins is that you have to have some version of a bank charter, whether it's a limited version or a complete version to actually participate in this game. I think that's certainly the proximate cause for this amount of activity and is validated by all the sort of all the banks waiting in as well. So, you know, people are gearing up for what they perceive is one of the big sort of important competitive areas, which is stable coins.

And it looks as though, I don't even think that it necessarily means that they think that for sure, banking licenses will be required. I just think that based on where things are, they think there's enough of a chance that they're taking it real seriously. Yeah, I mean, if this could be there, even if they only view it as a five to 10% chance, get that banking charter can't hurt. Right. And we know Kraken has a banking charter actually in the

state of Wyoming, they're not one of the ones listed. Although I think it's very narrow rules as to what they can do. But it would make sense for basically every exchange in the United States to get their own bank even outside the stable coin legislation to get their charter just so they can't be debanked by a future administration. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's one of those things that makes a lot of sense to try to take advantage of a friendly

regulatory period to try to lock in some advantages and value that come from that. And then the next story, speaking of Operation Choke point 2.0 and issues with banks, we have the Fed joins OCC FDIC and withdrawing crypto warnings for US banks. Here it is directly from the Federal Reserve. Federal Reserve Board announces a withdrawal of guidance for banks related to their crypto asset and dollar token activities, related changes to its expectations for these activities. Interestingly, I saw a whole lot of tweets from the industry saying we won, it's over, we did it.

And then a whole lot from the other side, the Caitlin Longs and others saying the Fed is still part of the anti crypto army. Don't believe this. They're still coming after us. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know. Look, I think that the signals are positive when it comes to what's happening publicly, but at the same time, there's some challenges that are happening as relates to what's going on behind the scenes. So, be cautiously optimistic, but also listen to the

people who are dealing directly with the folks there. Yeah. I mean, that's really the final story that we have for the day. I think in general, everybody's just kind of holding their breath as usual and waiting to see what price does because Bitcoin's at one of those levels where a meaningful push at this point could kind of give people confidence that the nonsense is over, at least for crypto. But man, it's hard to get super excited when you see those kind of tweet storms and news storms back and forth between Trump and China and others.

I just think there's gonna remain a lot of uncertainty and volatility for a while. Certainly how it feels to me. I think, look, I think we celebrate the short-term wins, kind of continue to position yourself defensively, be optimistic where there's room for optimism. But I think it's going to be volatile for as far as the eye can see from where I'm sitting.

Yeah, I agree. All right, guys, give NLW a follow. Check out the breakdown. Of course, I'm not sure I'll be back next Friday with the Friday fives. I think I'll be traveling, but maybe you'll do it. You don't need me. We'll see. All right, not required here. Let's be honest. All right, everyone, we'll maybe you'll do it. You don't need me. Yeah, we'll be we'll see. All right. I'm not required here.

Let's be honest. All right, everyone. We'll see you on Monday. Thanks. Bye.