The Wolf Of All Streets - Crypto Skyrockets: Will The Ethereum ETF Be Approved?

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Ethereum, Bitcoin, and the broader crypto market are surging on rumors that an Ethereum ETF might be approved tomorrow. What are the chances of this happening, and what could it lead to? I'm joined by Matt Hougan, CIO at BitwiseInvest, to discuss this and more. Matt Hougan: https://x.com/Matt_Hougan? My friends from The Arch Public, Andrew Parish, and Tillman Holloway, are joining in the second part of the stream to provide an update on the $10K algorithmic portfolio.  Unleash algorithmic trading with The Arch Public: https://thearchpublic.com/  Andrew Parish: https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus  Tillman Holloway: https://twitter.com/texasol61 ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEKDAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   ►► The Arch Public Unleash algorithmic trading. Discover how algorithms used by hedge-funds are now accessible to traders looking for unparalleled insights and opportunities!  👉https://thearchpublic.com/  ►►OKX SIGN UP FOR AN OKX TRADING ACCOUNT THEN DEPOSIT & TRADE TO UNLOCK MYSTERY BOX REWARDS OF UP TO $60,000!  👉https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. Use code 'TENOFFSALE' for a 10% discount. 👉https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker  ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd  ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #ETF 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.

The crypto market has entered the Raoul Pal banana zone, going absolutely crazy yesterday on the surprising news that the Ethereum ETF is likely, apparently, to be approved as soon as this week. A major, major turnaround that has sparked and been the catalyst for a huge move to the upside. Ethereum up as much as 20% in a single day. If only there was somebody out there for the last year who's been saying that Ethereum's lag is not an indictment, it's an opportunity. Not saying that I was right. I'm saying that maybe I'm starting to be right. And I'll take that. But listen, when we want to talk about ETFs and the market and get the real news, what's

happening on the ground, I bring in the best. And that is Matt Hogan from Bitwise. We're going to talk about this, obviously. And the Arch Public guys will be here at 930 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Can't wait to dig in. Let's go. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of Wall Streets.

Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel. Hit that like button. All eyes, finally, for me, on Ethereum, we, I think, had peak fear, FUD about Ethereum last week, even though it's been a rough year in general. I hosted Twitter spaces where people said everything being built on Bitcoin is better than what's being built on Ethereum. And Solana has taken the spotlight. So it leaves ETH as the ugly middle redheaded stepchild that can never grow again. We had multiple people come on our shows last week and say they sold all of their Ethereum finally because it's dead. You may remember last cycle, the bottom of Ethereum was when a bunch of Bitcoin maxis literally got together and did

a Twitter spaces saying Ethereum was dead and they bottom ticked it to the minute. Guys, those are bottom signals. And here we are. I'm going to bring on Matt right now. Little surprise. Yes. Yeah. I didn't have this in my bingo card when I woke up on Monday morning. What a incredible couple of days. It's good to be back talking about ETH. Yeah, it is. I mean, just take a quick look at the market. I mean, Bitcoin, huge move for Bitcoin, up 6.3%. Ethereum's up 22% in 24 hours. It's bananas. As you said, it's the banana zone. I mean, 22% is a huge move, but it is nice to see other assets recognizing that there's something bigger than just the Ethereum progress on the Ethereum ETF. We've had a complete sea change in Washington.

We've had SAB 121. We've had the FDIC chair. We have this progress on Ethereum ETFs. I think there is a before Monday and after Monday in crypto. I think we're in a new era. I think it's going to push us to new all-time highs. Talk to me about the FDIC news. I think that that's been underreported and then we can talk about Saab and then we'll get into Ethereum. Yeah, well, you had the embattled FDIC chair, this terrible report about a toxic workplace culture, one of the worst reports I've ever seen.

And you had the Warren wing of the Democrats standing up and saying he can't be replaced literally in any other. She was protecting him behind the scenes is what the report was, that she was actually actively making sure through surreptitious strategies to protect him. But hey, she even said explicitly that it was her political intent in a recent hearing to keep him there despite the problems that were in the FDIC. I mean, literally, if he were in charge of any other organization or company, would have been calling for his head. But this is the bad. But just to be clear for people, I mean, these are the bank regulators when we've had failing banks outside of the outside of the toxic environment. I mean, these are also the people who helped kill the crypto-focused banks last year. That is exactly right for no good reason.

And to see Democrats going from protecting him to completely swinging and calling for him to step down, him agreeing to step down once a successor is in place, at the same time that we have Chuck Schumer-led Democrats voting to overturn SAB 121 in the face of an explicit veto threat, and the same time we have this shock progress on Ethereum ETFs, three things aren't a coincidence. It's a complete change. It's really a new era in crypto. So it turns out that Bitcoin and crypto are not necessarily bipartisan. it's a complete change. It's really a new era in crypto. So it turns out that Bitcoin and crypto are not necessarily bipartisan, which we've said for a long time. There are very clear party lines to some degree,

but there are people willing to do the right thing and cross the aisle. We've known that there are very pro-crypto people on the Democratic side who are just afraid to stand up in the face of the pressure from the party. That's the sea change, right? I mean, you had multiple Democrats in the House, in the Senate, all come out, as you said, Schumer-led, and just completely refute everything that was coming from Elizabeth Warren and the White House. It's passed. So this would allow banks and other institutions to effectively custody crypto assets without having to put it as a liability on their balance sheets. Very huge, very rational, by the way, because you would think they would want

everyone to be using multiple custody options in their trusted institutions. Is Biden still going to veto this, do you think? I don't know. I actually think not. I think there is enough. I love that element of Democrats standing up. And there's some incredible Democratic leaders who have been pro-crypto. There is, of course, another slightly dirtier element to it, which is Wall Street's lobby has been pushing very hard to overturn SAB 121. I think they're pushing very hard for a stablecoin bill, right? They're looking at Tether making more money than Goldman Sachs and saying, this can't stand, Scott.

It's got to change. They just want some of it. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's no surprise the securities industry is the number one donor to the Schumer campaign. So I think there is this unusual alliance now between Wall Street, crypto, and Democrats in challenging districts that are losing the youth vote. And as a result, we've had a complete policy change. I don't know, you know, Biden said he's going to veto it, but I would be somewhat surprised if he follows through on that veto.

The easiest course is just to let this stand as the will of the people and move the industry forward and make it safer. And I think that's what's going to happen. I also think it'll just be politically popular with the constituency. There's no way they didn't see this groundswell for Trump in the crypto space and start to realize that there were enough voters out there that could turn this election. I do not anticipate Biden becoming pro crypto per se, but even stopping being aggressively anti-crypto and, you know, kind of corralling in Warren and Gensler. I don't think Gensler stops either, by the way, could be enough for people who were saying, I'm not going to vote Biden. He's so anti-crypto to say, OK, I still want to be a Democrat and maybe they won't kill

it. That's exactly right. I think that's what they're doing. And they were losing the youth vote, which is a traditional strong bastion of Democratic support. So they're trying to win back those voters who, as you said, would otherwise have voted Democratic but can't. But it really, you know, if you step back, what this means is there are huge chunks of the crypto industry that are now going to go from sort of pariahs to mainstream. It's going to be Ethereum. It's going to be spot ETFs. It's going to be custody. It's going to be trading. It's going to be stable coins. All those are going to be lifted up into the light over the next 12 months. And I think you're seeing that in prices today.

Okay. So I think we've seen a political sea change that is huge. Let's hope that we're right about that. It takes one Gensler Wells notice next week to put a dampening on that. But I want to talk about what happened here with the Ethereum spot ETF odds. You and I spoke not that long ago. You thought you guys filed later, thinking November, December was potentially the right time for this. Obviously, the entire industry has been dismissive of any chance that this would get approved because we didn't see the same sort of interaction with the SEC that we saw in the 90 days leading up to a Bitcoin spot ETF approval. I think because of the political sea change here, the SEC panicked.

And what happened? I mean, this is sort of the outlook right now here from Eric Balchunas and James Seifert. They also said they've gone from a 25% to 75% chance of approval overnight. And there was some sort of fire drill here from the SEC, right? So can you talk us through that being on the ground? Yeah, you know what we've seen? Obviously, I can't speak about our specific filing, but I can see what we're seeing in the news,

which is, yeah, on Monday morning, the ETF boys at Bloomberg had it at a 25% odds. Eric Balchunas thought the odds should be much lower. He thought it was more like 10%. Polymarket had it at 10% odds. ETH-E, the grayscale Ethereum trust was trading at a 25% discount to net asset value. Every signal that you could see in the market said this wasn't happening. And that includes the fact that no one had updated their filing. Usually there's a lot of back and forth. And now the reporting, as you mentioned, 75% odds, all the filers are updating their filings. We've already seen updated filings from Fidelity and others.

Others are expected to roll in by 10 a.m. The reason this is happening now is the SEC has a deadline of Thursday by which it has to respond to the first of these spot Ethereum ETFs. What it looks like is they're likely to respond to all of them. And you can't make a prediction, but it would be very odd to ask people to update documents in a hurry only to then disapprove them, right? It's like getting dressed up and then not going out. It would be an unusual series of steps. Now, importantly, Scott, this isn't the ultimate approval. This is just one half of the approval process. We can get into that. But this was unexpected. That's why the price of ETH is up. It's pretty it's pretty last minute I've never seen

anything like it in my you know 20 years classic Gensler SEC yeah I'm sure we'll get a fake tweet uh an announcement or something in advance of this happening that'll be wrong and we'll go up and we'll go down because they can't do anything right but a few a few uh questions here let's we will get into the nuance of the 19 before before what you just said about how the filing could actually work. But what is materially changing on the applicants applications that are coming in today that they've asked for? And is it possible now because we saw some changes over the last few months that staking could actually be a part of these spot ETFs? I think what we're seeing based on this morning, I saw Fidelity's filing came in and they removed staking. I figured, yeah. That was the primary change. The other chains were cosmetic. So I think you can proxy off of that to assume that

the SEC is saying thou shalt not stake, at least right now. And that's not surprising. I think it's fine. But that's what we're seeing in the filings. I always assumed that people were adding the staking because they thought they would get rejected now and were basically positioning themselves well for what they wanted with a new regime. I don't think that's wrong. You know, the SEC is forced to respond to what you write in your filing. And so ask for everything and see what their response is, I think was a reasonable way to interpret that. Our specific filing did not have staking in it. But I think what you're seeing is everyone pulling it out in the same way they pulled out in-kind creations and redemptions prior to the Bitcoin ETFs launching.

It was just a simplification of the filing. So I just want to touch quickly on what you said about polymarket. Now, the predictive betting markets where you can actually put your money where your mouth is and not just throw a number out on Twitter saying a 68% chance of approval, and that's up from like 10, right? And roughly overnight. So that's people who are actually making a bet on if this is going to get approved in two days, not in general, in two days. That's right. Yeah. If you extend that out to the end of 2024,

I think the numbers are up like 88% on Polymarket. So yeah, people are putting their money where their mouth is. It looks very positive. Okay. So let's talk about the actual logistical path to getting this done because it feels like maybe those two things won't align as quickly as they did with the Bitcoin spot ETF. In this case, we could get approval, but not actually a listing for quite a long time, which by the way, I would love. I think that would be amazing because it's just more time for the hype train to continue to roll. I actually agree with that. But yeah, for the audience, there are of course, two sets of approvals for these commodity ETFs. One is the 19B4, which is the approval to list.

That's the one that we're talking about today. That has to do with if there's market manipulation, does the SEC trust these markets, etc. That's usually the harder one to get approved. The other key that has to turn is what's called the S-1 or what many people describe as the prospectus. And that's the legal document that discloses all of the risks. These move through two different divisions in the SEC, trading and markets and investment management, right? Two separate groups.

So what we're talking about this week is the 19B4. I haven't seen any filing updates on the S1 side. And that's certainly a process that has to happen. No one gets an S1 right the first time, even for the most plain vanilla stock ETF. There's always a little back and forth. So after we get through this 19B4, there'll be another process on the S1. But usually that is more sort of an incremental process than a yes, no. So after we get through this 19B4, there'll be another process on the S1, but usually that is more sort of an incremental process than a yes, no.

The 19B4 is the hard hurdle to clear. The S1 is more, you know, do you get the wording precisely right? Okay. So let's say that the negative happens, that 25, 30% chance that this does not get approved. What would be the next date that we could keep our eyes on this? Let's say even it's a logistical thing. The filings aren't quite right. They don't get this done in the next 48 hours in a manner they're happy with.

Could we see a bunch of them approved in a month? Yeah. In a sense, Scott, the SEC can do whatever it wants. Logistically, there are approval dates or windows stretching out until early December. I think ours has the last potential approval date, which is early December. So up to and including any of those, the SEC could ultimately allow these to go forward. If you saw that, what you would see is the SEC asking the filers who have deadlines at the end of this week, I think that's VanEck, to pull their filing and refile it. That's how they sort of reset the calendar. If that happens for what it's worth, it doesn't mean that VanEck is stepping out of the race. It just means that the SEC is sort of aligning everyone. So I don't expect that to happen, but anything can happen as we found out this Monday. Yeah, I think that this is shocking. I wonder where Gensler is at with all of this.

I wonder too. Because I mean, he was like crying all the way out the door on the Bitcoin spot ETF approvals. He was sour. He was, you know, I would never have done this if not for the courts. I don't really support Bitcoin from a guy who taught a class on Bitcoin. I mean. That's right. He wrote that signing statement like a third grader in detention having to say, I'm sorry that I beat up Johnny, even though he was really mean. It is remarkable. I mean, look, you know, as I mentioned, this seems like a coordinated refocusing of Washington policy towards crypto across multiple fronts, driven by voters, driven by Wall Street lobby, driven by common sense, driven by a few leaders on the Democratic side stepping up,

all of it together. I think he's probably just coming to terms that he has to let this go. It's going to be Bitcoin and ETH, ideally, and they'll be through. Knock on wood, we'll see what happens. I actually wonder at this point, maybe it's wishful thinking, if some of these Wells notices that are an announcement of an announcement of a potential lawsuit will just never get filed in the next few months as actual lawsuits and he can just kick the can down the road. He did his job by putting the warning out, but maybe they don't pursue them yet in election season with this being less palatable for voters and we just never see them happen. You can get a Wells notice and never get a case. That is very true. Yeah. Wells notice is just a shot across the bow. So that's an interesting angle. We'll see another interesting angle on Wednesday when the House

votes on FIT 21, which is the comprehensive crypto bill. That's maybe less likely. If that manages to go through, it's a clean sweep. It's a game over. But I like your idea on the Wells notice. That's interesting. Yeah, it'd be fun. Let's talk about the Bitcoin spot ETFs though, because we'd be remiss not to talk about how insanely popular and successful they have been. Of course, BlackRock, 400 holders is mind-boggling. I talked about this briefly yesterday, but they would have said that if there were 20 institutions holding all the Bitcoin spot ETFs at this point, that that would have been good. BlackRock alone has 400, but you told me the numbers when you look across are much more impressive, right? That's right. Yeah. Over 900 professional firms with more than

$100 million in management holding these spot Bitcoin ETFs as of March 31st. This isn't even as of today. This is as of two months ago, because that's when the filings are snapshotted. And here's the really important thing. They already hold a lot of these ETFs. They hold over $10 billion, which is just so far off the charts in terms of a record. Nothing has ever been close to that. But the thing I know from Bitwise, we've been in this market seven years serving these professional investors. We serve over 3,000 of these firms. What happens is they tiptoe into the water at first, and then they build their allocation over time. On our sales team,

we actually focused on wins, how many clients we could get in the door, more so than on how much we could get in the way of assets. Because once they get in the door, it's just like all your friends. Once they buy a little bit of Bitcoin, that's right, you're on the path. And that's what makes me so incredibly bullish for this. This is trillions of dollars of assets that now accept Bitcoin as part of the portfolio. It's going to be 1%, 2%, 3% of these I think, since then, where we've seen even more. But some of these are not just dipping their toes slightly. I mean, you know, you got Susquehanna and others that are over a billion, two billion dollars initially. That's right. Maybe Vanguard's coming. Maybe. Is that wishful thinking? You know, I think Vanguard is eventually going to get there. I actually think the Vanguard story, you're mentioning that the new CEO of Vanguard comes from BlackRock and played a key role in developing iBit and pushing Bitcoin ETFs forward. You know, I think they're eventually going to convert.

But it actually points to something that's more important if you're a long term investor, which is one thing that happens when you're in a disruptive area of the market. And I saw this in ETFs, is that you get generational change in the leadership levels and people who would come up with this technology become the senior leaders at these firms. And all of a sudden, crypto is not a crazy idea. Like, of course, we're going to have Bitcoin ETFs. So you saw this at Vanguard. You're going to see this across Wall Street over the next 10 years. It's actually a positive tailwind for crypto that will build and build and build, I think, for many years. This is just your first down payment of it. Right. But I think when we spoke right before the show, you said it was about 900 total, even though it's 400 with BlackRock. I mean, that's 900 institutions who outright in the first three months decided to gain exposure, meaning that those were doing their diligence long before these actually got approved.

And I think we know that the bulk of institutions, probably 90% or more, wouldn't have even started that due diligence process until after they saw the approval because it would have been a waste of time. So there's no way that we don't see just this groundswell increasing in every single quarter, seeing another thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand going up. Yeah, that's exactly right. Look, we're going mainstream. We're in the mainstream era of crypto. It's going to be a regular part of people's portfolio. There's going to be billions flowing in each and every month. Yeah, it's hard to look at this data and be anything but exceptionally bullish. The setup is so great. I'm not sure if you saw this story. I just saw

someone mention it in the comments. So I searched it because I forgot to bring it up. Controversial blockchain firm Prometheum launches long-awaited Ethereum custody, and they're treating it as a security. For those who don't remember the Prometheum story, it's the Steven Seagal stunt double lookalike who went on the floor of Congress and answered a bunch of pre-prepared questions from Gary Gensler about how it was possible to just come in and register, and they got they got a broker dealer license, but actually had nothing to trade. And now Ethereum is a security. I feel like this was something they've been working on, Gensler and friends, to make it look like this was possible. And

this actually, after months of effort, probably hit at the exact wrong time for them as they had to pivot. It is incredible. I mean, I was speaking with someone the other day. It's like quantum theory, you know, where light can be a wave and a particle. It seems like they're defining ETH as a security and a not security at the same time. It is a remarkable coincidence. But, you know, Promethean has always been a sideshow. I think everyone who was watching it knew that that was true. What really matters here is whether we see progress on the ETF and, you know, Polymarket, the ETH discount, whatever you're looking at suggests that we're seeing that. So it is, it's, it's funny, but crypto is good at being funny and it's still positive.

So from a Bitwise perspective, is there anything you can see that's a negative sort of moving forward? I mean, you guys have been on the ground. You obviously have led the charge from a crypto native perspective versus sort of the black rocks of the world. Did when we started seeing outflows and price went down, was there ever any sentiment on the road that that could be the end? Or was it always the same?

No, not at all. From the meetings that we're doing, we have 20 plus people on the road every day of the week doing meetings with advisors. I see the winds come in on our Slack channel. We knew that this thing was building. We weren't worried about the short slowdown. That's just the nature of how ETFs work. Their flows in, their flows out. But there's been hundreds of millions of dollars of flows in the last five days. We're still in the early days. ETF flows build over years. This is still the early days. We don't even have full approval yet at Morgan Stanley, at Wells Fargo, at Bank of America. That's all coming in Q3 and Q4. You haven't seen anything

yet as regards to what these ETFs can do. So no, we weren't embarrassed there. Look, I think there are some hard yards to go on educating the market about Ethereum. I won't say that- I don't think these are going to be popular at all. I don't know about popular at all. It's great. Okay. Let me say they will do a minuscule fraction of what the Bitcoin ones did. I think that is right because you're introducing a complication. You're forcing people to choose. Now, some of the people who came into Bitcoin ETFs will want to diversify their exposure.

That's a natural base. And there are some people for whom Ethereum's real world use case truly appeals and its revenue appeals. But this is a more complicated sale than the first crypto ETF, which people have been waiting for. This is maybe a slower burn. I think ultimately still very important. And importantly, the e-supply situation is very, very tight.

So I think it can have a real impact on the market, but we're not going to see whatever, billions of dollars in the first day. That was a one-off on Bitcoin. They'll be successful ultimately. It's a huge win ultimately. It says good things from a regulatory perspective if we get this, but it is a different market than Bitcoin. What I find so interesting is that no matter what we talk about, no matter how many fundamental things we dig into, the market seems to do the same thing roughly every cycle. It at least rhymes, right? You get the big Bitcoin move, Ethereum's dead, Ethereum pops. Of course, people say, but this time we have ETF, but it's the same thing. I it's i look at this chart that i made earlier like this is

in orange is bitcoin since i don't know what year this back to 2017 and blue is eve and every time eve catches up right and it's the same exact chart with eve just lagging every single time and there it is but we could have like fallen on our heads for the last four years and not talked about the Fed and Jerome Powell and tightening. And it's the same thing just with more bullish catalysts this time. I don't disagree. You could go back another four years on that chart and see the same thing. It really does rhyme exceptionally well. Ah, man,

what a waste of time doing YouTube shows in spaces every day and writing newsletters. I could have just taken a nap. It's still fun to talk about, Scott. Come on. Yeah. The problem is if you talk about it too much, you start to make bad investment decisions like selling all your ETH last week because every YouTuber told you it was dead. That is explicitly true. Yeah. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is sit on your hands. But you just need to hibernate and you'll be fine. You need to hibernate. Yeah, you need to hodl.

Any final thoughts here before I let you go? Well, just that, you know, these, we're going to get all excited about this change in DC this week. And then there'll be a setback, you know, and then it'll change over future weeks. But I really think it's, I think it's a pretty fundamental change, right? Of and then it'll change over future weeks. But I really think it's, I think it's a pretty fundamental change, right? Of course, there'll be volatility going forward, but we've had headwinds from Washington for the last 10 years and very strong headwinds for the

last three. I think that's at least switched to neutral and probably is a tailwind. That's a big story. And that's a multi that's a multi-quarter, multi-year story. And I think that's, that's what we learned this week. So good. So good. All right, Matt, thank you always for the perspective, unpacking all that. Hopefully we'll catch up in person soon. I'm very disappointed. You're not going to be at consensus. We'll find time sometime, Scott. All right, man. Thank you so much, guys. Everybody follow Matt. You've become really, I think, the voice on TwitterX for the ETF world.

It's been really great to see. And you'll actually get real information as opposed to a bunch of conjecture from funders. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Thanks, Matt. Awesome, guys. Absolutely always love having Matt come on the show an honor and have to say i just love how bitwise has led this charge i think uh on behalf of all the bitcoin spot etf filers and now uh we'll see what happens with eath but now that we're done with that it's on

to arch public the boys andrew and tillman are here This is the first time we get to talk, I think, when shit actually looks good. Yeah. No doubt, man. What a crazy day yesterday. Crazy day yesterday, man. Started out with... You always kind of see what's coming, I think. Doesn't feel like anyone really saw this coming.

No, no, no. Nobody saw this coming. I think it doesn't feel like anyone really saw this coming. No, no, no, nobody, nobody saw this coming. And for me, the post I put up yesterday that was like this, this, this, this, this, all five of these things happened inside of about eight hours yesterday. I don't know, man. I don't know if it was all just a, a, a happenstance or if there was a good part of it that was, you know, kind of telegraphed and set up, right? So, you know, Grayscale fires its CEO. Barry announces it, even though he's not really part of Grayscale. They've got a new CEO immediately then there's a huge change in the possibility of ETH ETF um ah man there's there's there's a lot going on a lot going on I you know your previous guest

Matt and Bitwise and those guys you want to talk about you know evangelists and and troops on the front line um in my you know previous life as a trad fight guy and wealth management um i never ever ever hear anything but high high praise for those guys um the work that they've done and the work that they're doing um right now it's just it's just remarkable and you talk about the 900 quote unquote institutions of 100 million dollars or more that that you know have allocated uh capital to the bitcoin etfs and they're a huge part of that it's one thing to be blackrock and just be this monolith and so it's easy to stuff some money into a BlackRock, whatever. But Bitwise adding, you know, so many folks, it's a testament to their effort and their hard work. They should be praised kind of nonstop.

Interesting. I just I happen to bring this up and then we're going to talk about everything else. Oh, my God. Someone's not here, dude. What's happening? There he is. There he is. I thought he was on. I think he just dropped. But I mean, if you look at the ETH discount, it actually started rising a couple of days ago. Yeah. It was at about 24% now to the 11.83%. But if you take a look.

Well, think about the new CEO at Grayscale. He's an M&A guy, right? So he cut his teeth with mergers and acquisitions at both Goldman and BlackRock. I mean, I don't know if you can get a better CV from a traditional finance guy than that. So, you know, again, conjecture and some back end thoughts, you know, is Grayscale the kind of organization that over time it makes sense. Let's bring two things together. Right. So they settled with the New York AG for two billion dollars. Genesis did, which again was a part of DCG yesterday. That also happened yesterday. Right. About three hours after the change of leadership at Grayscale.

Where are they going to find that money? Right. So I don't know. Interesting. Interesting. Scott changes in in everything in twenty four hours. Pretty, pretty wild. Tell me you probably weren't listening to Matt before, but he said that he thinks this is a complete political sea change, right? That we see the FDIC commissioner that elizabeth warren's been protecting stepping

down we see sab 121 have democrats push back against biden's pre-veto we see in the same day effectively all of a sudden the theory of etf is going to be approved i mean is this are the times really changing here well i don't. Tides change every day. As my, my economics professor said, there's a new train leaving the station every single day. So you don't have to chase the one that's already left. And I think politically speaking, you know, somebody's going to win. There's a bias that everyone has towards one direction or the other, most people have. And so I pretend not to listen to all of the stuff that's going on politically. That is way above my pay grade.

Don't have any dog in the fight. I'm a capitalist, right? I want markets to be efficient. And so to the degree that we can get people that agree with efficient markets in power, I'm all for that. But to say that one side is dominating in that field, I don't see it that clearly. I think that there's a lot of mixed waters there. I do think there are specific standouts, like you said, that are really anti-crypto, for example. And I think there are a you said, that are really anti-crypto, for example. And I think there are a few standouts that are really pro-crypto.

And then everybody else is too afraid to really raise their hand. But we do see the tides turning in that regard. I do see more and more people being comfortable now that Bitcoin has become appointed by the financial sector, which typically is how politicians will start to strengthen their stance on something. Industry experts, specifically bankers, are saying it's a viable product. So they now don't have the asset has been de-risked for them politically in some regard. So I think we're going to see a lot more people get on the, you know, one side or the other pertaining to Bitcoin. And the more ETFs that come out, you know, you were talking about the ETH ETF earlier, the more politicians will feel like that's a leverage that they can use for gaining, you know, followers and or voters.

So I do think that we're entering into this really interesting space where this is now become the newest hot topic to brand your campaign with. And that's going to lead to a lot of, you know, I think a lot of noise and congestion, to be honest with you, and not a lot of action. There's a big difference between an approval of an ETH ETF and sizable amounts of capital finding their way to an ETH ETF. I agree. I think, Scott, you and I agree on this. I don't see a world where you're going to get a massive capital. Yeah, I don't think that's going to get a massive, you know, casual. Yeah, I don't I don't think that's going to happen. And I think it's probably simpler than we think. Bitcoin is a brand. People, everybody

knows the word Bitcoin. Right. And outside in crypto Twitter, man, and some other financial spots, they're not a whole lot of boomers that have any idea what Ethereum is. Any idea what Ethereum is. You know, to them, it sounds like the back of a pharmaceutical grade something that they're having to inject themselves with to stay healthy. Oh, there's some Ethereum in here. I wonder if I should ask my doctor about that. They don't know what Ethereum is. Well, and let's talk about the downsides of Ethereum real quick, because unless you're using a layer two, unless you're using

something other than Ethereum's mainnet, you're subject to ridiculous wait times or ridiculous fees or both. That's true now on Bitcoin too, Tillman, unfortunately. It is, but Ethereum's trying to solve a different problem than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not trying to act as a medium of exchange, in my opinion. Yeah, exactly. It's a store of value. That's the way I look at it. That's what I think Larry Fink looks at it as. I don't think Larry Fink's getting into Bitcoin ETS because he thinks it's going to be the best way to buy coffee 10 years from now. That's what he is tokenizing on Ethereum. He is tokenizing on Ethereum. And listen, Ethereum does dominate the space. But I just want to step back for a second and think about it from the simplicity of a user's perspective. I was one of those users 10 years ago. And when you

start using blockchain, whatever you... oh man, it's so horrible. It's so funky, it's sick. Yeah. And if you use Ethereum, what are you left with the taste in your mouth? This is expensive and slow, and I don't understand it. And there's a lot of risk to it. I just don't think mainstream is there. I don't think it's become user friendly. I agree. All right, let's move on for that. Tillman, I know we just have to give the update. There were no new trades on Archpublic last week, so we stand up about 14%. Well, you're the lucky, actually, we always seem to take a trade on the show. So we took a trade

last show and it was a loser. Yeah, it was a loser. And that trade lost about 3% of the gains that we were up. So we're up still about 8% since we started tracking the 10,000 portfolio thing. And we're actually in a trade right now. And I don't want to talk about it because, you know, bad luck, but we'll let you know next week. You can tell this guy played football. You probably never changed your underwear for 17 years we do um we do tell them and why don't you go ahead and give them the the news about the bitcoin algo that we're close to yeah sure important thing today yeah we um are very close 30 days um from launching a bitcoin trading algo. We've done this before. We've used it ourselves in the past. We've revamped it. There was some liquidity issues when we were using it way back when, and now those have changed. And so we're very, very excited about that. It will be a limited launch because of the size of the markets and what we can stand from a threshold perspective. But if you're interested in that, please contact us.

We'd love to have kind of a queue of people that are first come, first serve so that we can show you what we've built. Will it trade spot or ETFs? Both. We're going to have both, but Spot will be first. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the idea for our first launch in the next 30 days is a Spot trading algo that will then DCA your winnings on any given day into Spot Bitcoin. Right? Don't talk about too much of the sauce, but here's what I can tell you about it. If you are somebody who looks for opportunities to average in, dollar cost averaging to your hodl position, if you're looking at like building a portfolio over time of small increments of Bitcoin, this will accomplish that. And if

you're also looking at making cash flow on a certain portion of your portfolio, so that, you know, you are getting you're generating revenue on a monthly basis or generating yield. This also has the ability to do that. So it's kind of a hybrid piece of automation, excuse me, that will allow you to, to, you know, take your losers and store them away and for in your huddle position,

and then take your winners and cash them out on a daily basis. And this has been, this has been a movement. We've really pushed back into this over time because when we talk to customers and we talk about a bitcoin focused algo their eyes get as big as saucers like when is that coming out i want to get my hands on that right so um yeah give the people what they want right eth is over 3800 right now yeah yeah it's crazy i mean it was it was at 20 exact math but it's probably nearly as close by a percentage

basis to its all-time high from last cycle as yeah it's a lot of it went a lot further down what was it 2900 like on saturday or something or friday of last week it was it was sub 3000 on friday and if you go back to like May 1st, it was 28. Yeah. 28, 18. Crazy. Yeah. It's something to watch the political winds change.

And for it to legitimately affect the market for a good reason. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, it's also something to see, again, the things that happened yesterday in order the Bloomberg guys be the ones that kind of announced the sea change. I don't know, man.

You know me. We could see a run poll in two days. No question. No question. It would be so bad. My coach in football, Matt Brown used to say something that I live by now is if you believe all the negative, you got to believe all the positive they're saying about you.

It's better not to believe either. So just stay in the middle, do the hard work, wake up every day, grind it out. Ethereum is one of those things, but crypto in general is one of those things. It's like every day there's a new bell of the ball. There's a new thing. It feels to me very similar to every other cycle, just with new characters in the room. In the previous cycles that were NFTs, now it's runes, now it's ETFs. It's these driving narratives that people are using at the top through media to push their narrative out. And, you know, whoever wins, time will tell. The free markets hopefully will win the day and we will see more buyers and sellers on one side of it.

And the market will respond unless if we're going to get an xrp etf haha well then you know when's the when's the when's the follow-up with the bitboy etf you know what i mean i mean once there's there's there's it we're only a few months away from it right if we're going to go with ethereum i just open the whole thing up to absurdity right any uh final thoughts news anything we might have missed there and Andrew, before I let you guys go? No, I just think it's never a dull moment in the crypto world. It really is something to see such a dramatic shift. We've got to get a lot of credit.

I think we'd be remiss not to say this to um you know to ryan selkis um sorry i mean that guy's been you know talk about doing some serious work putting his neck on the line and being you know very very committed to to policy um i i think you know everybody should you know shout out that guy right now doing real, real work. Beyond that, anything else is thearchpublic.com. How could I not say that on the stream here today? I got it right here. We didn't talk about it as much today, but guys, it's crushing it.

We're all loving it. There's a lot of you in here who are following it, using it. A lot of people have signed up. I haven't heard a negative thing. So yeah, good. Check it out. Great.

All right, guys. Well, amazing show. Thank you so much. Let's hope that this, uh, bullishness continues and I'm sure I'll see you guys on spaces.

All right. Later. Bye guys. Let's go.