The Wolf Of All Streets - Crypto Terror-Finance | DCG & Gemini $1B Fraud Scheme | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

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Ryan, you there? Yeah, he's not. Scott's connecting. Yeah, I think he's glitching. When he comes up, ask him how he feels to be a speaker. I think we should ask him that every day. Wait for him to get up. I wonder if we can even get him up.

Yeah, I've just sent him an invite. He should be up shortly. I think the panel's all been invited as well. Let me see who's on the panel so I can bring him up as well i haven't even meant it i i don't like my new life i'm not even looking at the markets all right it's pretty steady that's better nothing's changed that's a better life you've become a correspondent what do you mean yeah but i'm not enjoying this scott i've got a question for you can you hear me yeah hear you. I was having some connection issues initially. That's okay. How does it feel down there being a speaker?

It feels great, honestly. No pressure. I feel like I can just leave whenever I want, not pay attention. You know what just happened? You know why we couldn't hear you anymore? Yeah, you muted me because now you have the power i'm aware of how this works honestly getting getting like passively muted alongside other the other speakers is a lot less uh offensive than when you used to just cut us off and end the spaces mid-conversation oh man i used to i used to do that i used to enjoy it so much until ryan called me off it was such a fun time and then r Ran had to ruin the fun. It was good days. Me and Scott loved it. It was our best time. We were young and immature, and since then, we've changed our ways.

Yeah, we're all grown up. We're running a big show now. We have to be professional. It was fine when it was on Mario's account. You're raffling feathers in the media. They love your coverage of the of the war right man i i don't i don't want to talk about it i i have now spending so many hours on this it's it's mental it's mental and the drama that's happening is crazy there's so much behind the

scenes are you dealing with the pro drill pro-palestinian uh tiger war given the fact that like you generally have a lot more pro-palestine um uh people in the world uh like you're dealing with the with the backlash i saw that you had some backlash you had some backlash around it yes it's just every day one of the sides is attacking me more than the other so so it's like they take their turns um but i think i i um i'm doing okay so far i think it's it's going well you know trying to balance it as much as i can um i'm just worried what happens like on a serious note and i don't know how that relates to crypto but i'm i'm seriously worried if um hezbollah gets involved.

This no longer becomes a regional conflict that we can all ignore. The question is, will Hezbollah get involved, knowing that the US has warned them, knowing that the US has sent carriers, knowing that the UK has sent carriers? I'd be surprised. I'd be surprised if they do, but it's just looking more and more likely based on what we're seeing. But I still think, personally, I think it's unlikely, but a few others disagree with me and a few people that I respect disagree with me.

But I personally still think it's unlikely. You know what surprised me the most is you've got Israel, which is this like powerful state when it comes to the army and their intelligence and protecting their borders and all those good things.

And then you've got, they say Hezbollah's got 100,000 plus rockets aimed at Israel. Now, if I was Israel and I was surrounded by terrorists or people that want me removed from that, how do you get into a position where you allow anyone to get 100,000 rockets and point them at you? That to me just sounds crazy. Yeah, man. You'd be surprised how many different countries point rockets at each other. There's a lot of rockets pointed at the U.S. This is not a country.

This is a terrorist organization within a country. Yeah. This is not a country. This is not a terrorist organization within a country. Yeah. Israel is in a tricky position. They're surrounded by countries that don't like it. But it's just sad. It's just sad. What's sad is things, they're all beautiful regions.

Like Israel is incredibly beautiful. Lebanon was beautiful, still is. People, you know, it's a party place. Palestine was incredibly beautiful a long time ago. So it's just such a beautiful region that became a pinnacle of hatred and destruction. It's just sad to see. Yeah, and Ran, you know, you mentioned that Hezbollah is obviously an organization. It's not the country of Lebanon, but people seem to quickly forget that the united states went to war against an entire nation uh because of a criminal you know because of a terrorist organization i mean went to war in

afghanistan because bin laden was there what happens guys what happens what happens to crypto if this does escalate what happened when the ukraine war i was watching crypto when ukraine war happened how did crypto react i think we were still in the early stages of the bear market am i right like just i don't think i don't think it particularly reacted at all my recollection i think there was like a seven percent move or something in the first days and then it's somewhat stabilized it was interesting in that case though down i think at first but then there it was not a nothing burger but i think it more interesting with that war was the narrative because um you had on one side which we'll talk about today kind down i think at first but then there it was not a nothing burger but i think more interesting with that war was the narrative because um you had on one side which we'll talk about today kind of the

elizabeth warren camp and the people saying that again it was being used to evade sanctions the classic sort of fun uh that is very similar to the being used to fund terrorist organizations but in the case of ukraine and r actually, there was also extremely favorable view of crypto and Bitcoin at that time. People forget, right? It was kind of around the time of the Russia was cut off from SWIFT were using it in lieu of their bank accounts. This time, we haven't really had any sort of favorable narratives like I think we did at that time. One interesting thing is, first, I think this could backfire because of what we're seeing in terms of the narrative being created as crypto being just a source of funding terrorists and Senator Warren trying to leverage that to advance her agenda. But I posted about yesterday, there was a bunch of,

just to show you how so many people still don't understand crypto, I posted about a bunch of Binance accounts that were frozen because of, I don't know, something to do with Hamas. And I'm looking at the comments. Remember, my audience is majority non-crypto, even though I still have a really, really large audience in crypto. And a lot of the comments, at least the non-crypto comments, like, hey, so much for decentralization. Hey, there goes the decentralized argument. And for me, it's like basics of crypto. I still didn't understand exchange is centralized, but crypto is not centralized. And they didn't understand that so it just shows that that

massive disconnect in my mind i thought that argument is dead like everyone understands exchanges are central aspect of crypto i thought everyone understood that um but they didn't and um it was just uh sad to see and then obviously all the attacks on crypto being a source of funds for terrorists you know what it is it's not the first time that we see we see politicians spinning up It was just sad to see. And then obviously all the attacks on crypto being a source of funds for terrorists. You know what it is? It's not the first time that we see politicians spinning up narratives and using select data and not actual data. So, like, you know, in this case specifically, Elizabeth Warren sparked this whole thing about how Hamas is relying on crypto. Crypto is the facilitator. But then Che Nalus writes the report and they say in the report,

Al-Qassam, the military wing of Hamas, announced the shutdown of their longstanding cryptocurrency donation program, citing concerns for the safety of their donors given the prosecution of those who donate through cryptocurrency. So they're kind of saying because of KYC and because they can trace it back,

it's actually probably the least viable mechanism. Yeah, I think no one makes the argument that, hey, they've just frozen the accounts because they were able to track it. No one made that argument. Everyone makes the argument, hey, see the funding. What about all the bank accounts that were frozen because they were used for terrorist activities?

No one mentions those ones, but they mentioned the crypto ones but it's just it's same same story just selecting whatever data suits your narrative um but yeah right you want to kick it off i know you've you and scott did a show already so we're gonna kick it off with today's yeah i think i think yeah i mean i think the big there's a couple of big news stories obviously one is this Elizabeth Warren story and the fact that she's written this letter. I think she, let me just,

I don't want to misquote who exactly she addressed the letter to, but she addressed the letter to the Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. And it's a letter citing concerns that Khamenei is over $130 million in crypto. And I think she's using this as a mechanism to try again, once again, to ban crypto. Then I think the next big story is that Elon Musk and Mark Cuban, who are teaming up and they found an ass brief against the SEC, because they don't like some of the structures of

how the SEC, because I don't like some of the structures of how the SEC is running. Specifically, they mention the fact that the SEC can use internal judges, in-house judges, to preside over cases brought by the SEC itself, prohibiting defendants from the right to a jury trial. That's, I think, another one of the big stories. And then one story that broke just as I was going live was this New York Attorney General, which has filed a complaint against Gemini, Genesis, BCG, Michael Morrow, and Barry Silbert over the earned product and covering up a billion dollar hold. And I'm not sure how this exactly works. It seems like it's a complaint, not a criminal case. But the New York Attorney General for Genesis, Michael Moran,

very little bit conspired to fraudulently represent Genesis' financial condition to hide holes in its finances. So I'm sure the lawyers will be able to give us a better understanding. You know, one of the things that we should pay attention to is the fact that DCG owned Grayscale. I see Travis is here in the audience. He wrote a wrote a tweet which was quite i think it was quite extreme where he says you know this this could be a spanner in the works when it comes to the the grayscale gbtc conversion into an etf i think that those are the big stories today uh that we covered i

don't know if there's anything else scott yeah maybe get travis to jump in and comment on that particular point travis yeah i mean obviously it's just conjecture and i think i think probably everybody can have a different take on what gary ginsler may or may not do but it just it strikes me as like kind of a long putt to think that like the first spot Bitcoin ETF product that we get via a GBTC conversion would occur while the parent company, you know, is under criminal indictment from the Southern District of New York. Like it just strikes me as a sort of sufficient reason to put that on ice for now. me it doesn't i wouldn't think it would affect the other spot bitcoin etfs at all but um i don't know i just feel like that would be like

kind of weird you know like it's like i don't know could there be some point where it's like okay now gbtc is an etf and it's been trading for a few months and then here comes the parent company criminal trial or something like that. I don't know. It strikes me as odd. Yeah, on the ETF, and let me know if the background noise is okay. On the ETF, guys, and Scott, maybe you can comment on this, but we do have Mike Novogratz saying ETF approval will happen until the end of the year. We do have Grayscale CLO, who's a regular audience member, says it's a matter of when, not if. And Mike Novogratz, I don't know all his predictions tend to work, but you're going to have multiple sales forces when it does get passed. You're

going to have multiple sales forces, BlackRock, Fidelity, ARK, selling out Bitcoin. He talks about why he thinks it will be before the end of the year. All the indications seem to be heading in the right direction. The most significant piece was SEC's loss in court. Scott, what do you think about Mike and Grayscale, CLO, I forgot his name, sorry, their comments on this? Could it happen before the end of the year? Scott, you're muted. While waiting for Scott, I'd love to get other thoughts.

I think Scott's not coming through. Yeah, we can't hear you, Scott. You've got to drop down. I'd love to get other thoughts. Ottavio, I know you're here. John as well. We'd love to get your thoughts on what Mike and Grayscale's CLO have said. And Gensler did do an interview,

not sure if you can stream it right afterwards, talking about the ETF filings. I mean, we had AP Abacus talk about it in one of his tweets. But John Ottavio, I would love your thoughts on this particular comment. Are you saying John Deaton? Yeah, man.

Hey, thanks for having me, guys. Well, the thing I noticed about ginsler's comment is that it was one of the few times that he didn't take the opportunity to talk about fraud and talk about manipulation uh he talked in a very different tone which gave a lot of people speculation that with them not appealing the grayscale decision that we are going to see a spot ETF, you know, if not by the end of the year, possibly the first quarter of next year. And so, you know, whether or not it's going to be GPTC is another question. But just so the record's clear, there wasn't a criminal complaint filed.

It was a New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit basically saying that the Gemini Earn program was an investment contract under the Howey test, but also alleging fraud. And what's interesting is that the case alleges fraud between, as conspirators, Gemini and Genesis, and that Gemini did not share the risk that it knew related to the EARN program. But that's a civil lawsuit, not a criminal lawsuit. And, you know, we can talk about that if you want as well. Yeah, sure. And I want to go to Octavia drop down as well. Christopher, are you there? Yeah, I'm here.

Yeah, we'd love your comments on this as well. And if we do get an approval before the end of the year, what does that mean for the markets? I i think scott is back i'll give the mic to scott afterwards go ahead chris all right yeah um i i really think that at the end of the day uh the approval is is most likely um you know i think it's just you know these are like the last kind of things we go through and you know as with everything else in life and in markets, you know, things that seem the worst, you know, everything gets to the extreme before it changes, right? And so, yeah, I think that's coming. But, you know, at the end of the day, we're already on this upward trajectory. We've been, you know, for a year now. We've been sideways for a while here, but still, you know, we've been holding, we haven't gone down. And so, you know, I think everything just kind of says, yeah,

it's coming. I think markets go up and, you know, Bitcoin goes up on the approval. And it's just, but it's already going there anyway. Again, I don't see this as, I think if this wasn't a thing, if the ETF wasn't a thing, I think we'd still be going up is what I'm trying to say. But people are going to attribute it going up to the ETF approval. Do you have that clip that I know you played on your show of Gensler answering questions about the ETF? I'll look for it. I'll send it. I'll send it.

Yeah, Abacus has it posted. I'll send you through the link now. Send it in our group now. Give me two seconds. I've just sent it in our Crypto Town Hall group, not the moderating one. And there's a comment here. I think this is it. No, this is Abacus.

So he does say we have eight or ten. I'm not sure, Scott, if you've seen that video as well. Yeah, I played it today. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He says we have eight. So give us your thoughts. We have eight or 10 filings that the staff is considering an exchange-traded fund for Bitcoin to be a security, and that will trade on various stock exchanges. He's explaining what it is. Staff is doing work on multiple filings. When a company or an asset manager is seeking to take something public, this exchange-traded product needs to be

registered with the SEC. Somehow similar with going public, like an IPO. So he's explaining what it is and the fact that it needs to be regulated. And he mentions that we are dealing with 8 to 10. Yeah, how does it compare to other comments he's made? What does it indicate for you? Very strange interview.

He looks coy. He's gone back to first principles. He's starting to explain what an ETF is. That's not Gary Gensler. That's not the Gary Gensler. It looks to me like he's pushed into a point where he's got really no more defenses left. Yeah, I'll play it for you guys quickly. A court ruling from August in the Grayscale case. Grayscale, of course, trying to convert GBTC into a spot ETF. I know you can't comment on ongoing litigation, but should we still be considering that ongoing litigation given lack of appeal at this point? And if not, what happens next?

Wait, didn't you just say that you knew I wasn't going to comment on the litigation, but let me just say- But is it still ongoing since you didn't appeal? We didn't appeal last Friday. I think that's accurate. So you could still in the future in another form. But what we have in front of us, just so that the viewing public understands, we have not one, but multiple, I think it's eight or 10 filings that the staff and ultimately the commission is considering for what's called exchange traded products for Bitcoin to be in a security. So the Bitcoin would be held, and then there'd be something called an exchange-traded product, and that would trade on various stock exchanges. And those filings are in front of us.

I can't prejudge any one of them, but there's eight or 10 that we're looking at. So that's pretty much what it did. And that's not normal Gary Gensler, I've got to be honest. That's not how he sounded in the past. Scott, what do you think? I think that your take is generally right. I think we are obviously digging in a little deep on one quick clip,

but I think it's very clear that SEC in the past has been extremely dismissive. He wouldn't even answer a question like this in the past has been extremely dismissive, right? He wouldn't even answer a question like this in the past. And when you put this alongside the fact that everybody's refiling based on conversations that they're directly having with the SEC, that the SEC is asking the right questions now, and not just kicking the can down the road with no comment at all, which if you guys remember, we've been for years seeing the SEC just does the, you know, they kick it down the road, kick it down the road, and then reject without ever saying anything. So the very fact that these are real conversations,

they're spending resources on, you've got Larry Fink the day before talking about this being a flight to quality. And then a day after Gary Gensler is trying to start, you know, very in a very measured manner and giving a clear explanation, as you said. This is happening, right? We have Eric and James from Bloomberg saying 90% by January 10th. You have Novogratz saying...

Hold on, 90%? It's gone up to 90% before January 10th? Yeah, 90% before January 10th. But then, guys, so Scott, quick question. So if everyone's expecting it to be approved before January 10 Yeah, 90% for January 10th. But then guys, so Scott, quick question. So if everyone's expecting it to be approved for January 10th, 90%, why isn't it already priced in? Why did it spike up when we had that false news

from Cointelegraph a few days ago? Is that because it was early and that was different? Or is there another reason why the market reacted the way it did? I think perhaps Rand has already convinced me that my take was somewhat wrong, right? I had the assumption, if you guys remember, we've talked about it at length, but we saw when BlackRock applied, they went, the Bitcoin price in a week went from $25,000 to $31,000. Now, when I made this sort of,

when I presented this idea, we were still at $25,000, not at $28,000. But I said, maybe we get an approval and we just see it go right back from $25,000 to $31,000. But the very fact that in 30 minutes, price went from 28 to 30, and was stifled by the fake news, right, obviously dropped back down, clearly indicates that it likely would have pushed up much higher. The question now, though, is now that we've seen that move, and now that we have this 90% chance of approval, is the spot buying that we've seen increased even before that fake news? Is that people trying to get ahead of this as you just sort of as you just sort of postulated i think that's pretty likely i think the fact that we're

still sitting above 28 000 even after that fake news and we're up four percent before that happened is the indication that people are starting to buy in preparation for for that move heading up so i i think i'm less in the totally priced in camp in the but but I still believe that this has its big initial move, which I think is inevitable. But that much like the having it's sort of one of those narratives that yeah, I think you're glitching. Scott, I'm not sure if it's glitching for you around Ryan, as well. But do you think, Ryan, and, yeah, Ryan, the question to you is, how do you think the market will react long-term?

Do you think it will start a strong recovery for Bitcoin, or do you think the spike will be short-lived? Do you think the spike, yeah, Ryan, do you think, sorry, I just muted him, but do you think the spike, Scott, I muted you, you're glitching like crazy, but do you think the spike will be short-lived and will reverse all the gains, or do you think, sorry, I just muted him, but do you think the spike, Scott, I muted you, you're glitching like crazy, but do you think the spike will be short-lived and will reverse all the gains, or do you think that could start, let's say, a slow bull run?

There have been multiple pricing exercises done, and they all make similar assumptions. They make assumptions that institutions elevate 1% of their investable assets with Bitcoin and then increase to 2% and then potentially increase to 5%. And all of those summaries come out the same number, somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 in the first year, in the first phase, not the first year, the first phase, when they allocate 1% of their investable assets into Bitcoin.

So, I mean, obviously, you're going to get these people, you know, these are crypto people being crypto assumptions. Probably a non-crypto person would say to you, there's not a chance in hell that they're putting 1% of their assets into Bitcoin and crypto. So it just depends on which side of the fence you sit on. You know, do you think that you're going to make an assumption as to what percentage of their investable income these guys are going to put into Bitcoin and crypto? Dave, I see your hands up. What do you think? I think that it's really important to understand

the dynamics of the market. Markets are not monolithic beasts. You have short-term speculators, you have intermediate-term swing traders, and you have long-term holders. Long-term holders have been buying the whole freaking time, continue to buy slowly, patiently, not chasing the price. Swing traders, which are featured, many of the people that come on this program who are very good ones, looking at key levels, when to get in, get out, et cetera, and speculators. Speculators are very twitchy. To a speculator, January is eternal. It's an eternity. They don't care.

And so what you saw earlier this week was news comes out, speculators that are positioned short with the expectation that within a week, a day, a minute, they're going to be covering their shorts all collectively said, oh, F, you know, don't want to use bad words, but basically, holy crap, I need to cover my shorts. Bam, you get a short covering rally. So now they flush themselves out of their shorts, but they thought their short position was good. Then the news comes out. It's false. Oops. Let's reestablish our short. Those speculators are highly unlikely in the event of an actual approval to reestablish shorts until the market goes too far. And what we see in a normal retracement is a big move followed by, you know, it depends whether you're an Elliott Wave theorist, various swing traders, I mean, Gareth and others can

comment on this. The fact of the matter is you'll get a retracement, but it won't be 100%. The reason that we've now seen the boy who cried wolf happen now three times, and that with the exact same effect in ever shrinking amounts of time and magnitude. We saw 25 to 31 on the BlackRock announcement. And then people are like, well, wait a minute, this is actually not happening that soon. Bam, all the way back down. But slowly, we then saw the grayscale court ruling. And it went from what 2627 to almost 29. So about half the magnitude and a retrace pretty quick, you know, at least, you know, twice as fast. And then we saw yesterday, you know, not yesterday, Monday,

while Scott and I and James were on the thing. So my point is that people, you know, quick twitch kind of traders will push it up, there will be a short covering rally, swing traders will look at the key levels, and long term holders will just have a new level, a new base to continue buying. That's the first short term. The long term is as Rand was talking about, that takes time. It's not like BlackRock has a wave of $80 billion ready to move into the asset class. But once it's approved, you will start to see people who make slow decisions to asset allocate, and you'd see what I would call the beginning of unrelenting slow, steady pressure and supply at the same time as the halving. So yes, I'm rather bullish. There's no question about that. But I'm not bullish in the sense of it's not a straight line.

You'll get a quick twitch up, which is definitely not priced in, which is why we saw what we saw on Monday. And then you're going to see a new base and a new climb the wall of worry bull market because of asset allocators, which will evolve over time. That's my thesis. Matt, would love your thoughts as well. I see your hand up. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. I actually agree with that. One sec. Just before we get there, I will give you the mic in a second, Matt.

Dave, how long do you think before asset allocators, in terms of months, how long do you think before asset allocators allocate one percent of their investable assets into bitcoin it's not binary that's the problem the problem is is it months is it months is it is it years is it is i mean just you have no i i you're talking about a statistical thing we're talking about 15 000 plus individual decision makers some have already made the decision.

As soon as it's allocated, they want to get in soon. Others are going to go talk to their clients and clients are going to make decisions at different times. Others are going to adopt a wait and see attitude, et cetera. So it's much more of a slow groundswell building that, of course, we all know that the most important feature of Bitcoin, Scott loves to say this and he's right, is number go up increases, increases it. So what you're likely to see is the same thing we always see is a, you know, the reverse parabola, you know, the, the, I'm trying to draw it in the air here. But you know,

the the accelerating, you know, rally, which will get ahead of itself. And people will say, Oh, wait a minute, you know, we've gone too far. and people will say oh wait a minute you know we've gone too far and then lather rinse repeat it's not a binary switch that's the important point because you're talking about 15 000 different asset allocators they're all going to have different time scales matt go ahead yeah i was just going to to sort of add on to what dave was saying i agree completely with that and i think what that means is it's not priced in for the long term. Bitwise, we spend all our days talking to financial advisors. Most of them are not paying attention to the news. They don't know how close we are to a spot Bitcoin ETF. They don't know that it's a 90% likelihood. They don't know that the GBTC discount has narrowed so much. And they're going to come into the market over years. I think there's an extractive example from the history of ETFs, which was the approval of gold ETFs in 2004. And what you saw there was in the first five days, a billion dollars came into gold ETFs, the fastest growing ETFs of all

time. And then it quieted down. By the end of year one, it was only $3 billion. But it built year by year after that, to the point where at year 10, it was $40 billion. And what you saw was the price of gold went up 11 consecutive years after the launch of the first gold ETF in Australia, and then a year later in the US. And I think that's the important thing. You all are probably right in thinking about the scale of the potential move on the initial launch and the potential for retracement after that, a sell the news effect. But I think the market hasn't contemplated the sort of size of the step function long term from this going from an asset that's really hard to allocate to if you're a professional investor to an asset that's that's easy to allocate to and is normalized.

And I think that gold example of sort of 10 consecutive years of building inflows will probably be more accelerated in Bitcoin, but it's not it's not off by an order of magnitude. I think this is a multiple year. Matt, I've got a quick question for you. What was the short-term impact? And if you mentioned it already, I apologize. What was the short-term impact when the gold ETF launched? Yeah, I think you saw a run-up in price beforehand and immediately afterwards, and then some resetting. I think it's very analogous. But the bigger thing was gold was, I don't know, a $2 trillion asset class then, and it's, what, $14, $15 trillion now. I mean, that's the bigger thing.

So, again, Spike. How much of that do you attribute to the fact that there was an ETF? Do you think that the ETF, in gold's case, lifted a significant barrier? Before there was an ETF, how did people actually buy gold? What were the options for institutional investors to buy gold before the ETF? Yeah, basically it didn't happen. I know that's hard for people to imagine, but you had to buy gold bars or gold coins and put them in a vault, or you had to buy gold mining. It's worth noting, maybe people don't know, the gold ETF was developed by the World Gold Council, which is a group supported by gold miners who wanted to find a way to normalize

gold as an institutional investment. That was the whole idea. That's why they funded $14 million in legal costs and organized a huge group of people to get gold ETFs over the line, specifically to create a vehicle that will allow for institutional investors to access the space. And if you look at the data, what happened is really interesting and also maybe informative for crypto, which is that the buying of gold bars and gold jewelry, which were the way retail investors allocated to gold, didn't go down at all. All that happened was you added this huge increment of billions and then tens of billion dollars

in annual new net purchases for relatively supply inelastic good. And I think it was a primary driver of the price. I mean, you pull up a non-inflation adjusted gold chart and you will see a giant inflection around 2023, which was when the Australian gold ETF launched in 2024, when the U.S. gold ETF launched, when gold went from, you know, a nominal value of a couple hundred dollars, you know, into the into the thousands. I think it's a very good analogy to think about the transformative impact of an ETF on the crypto market. It's not going to mean that people won't buy it directly. People won't buy it through Coinbase. People won't buy it through apps. All that will happen. It's just you will have this new class of investors who control most of the money in the world able to buy it for the first time. So I'm pretty excited if we do see that. What about the comment that Novogratz made is that when you have an ETF approved, you're going to have BlackRock, Fidelity, ARK selling Bitcoin, promoting Bitcoin.

What impact will that have on regulation, if any? Yeah, it's massively positive. It normalizes the asset class. I mean, just think about the impact of Larry Fink going on and calling it a flight to quality asset. Think about what that does in Washington at the SEC, etc. Five years ago, he called Bitcoin an index of money laundering. Imagine if that was the tone from BlackRock today with Elizabeth Warren's letter, you get a very different outcome in DC than you do if the largest asset manager is calling it a flight to quality asset and helping, you know, millions of investors access it. It really provides an important counterpoint. So I think it puts us on the path to normalization on a regulatory front. I think it brings professional

investors in. It makes it, you know, much less volatile over time. It's just strictly good on multiple levels. David? So I just want to point out that, you know, and I don't want to say, I think long-term, I happen to agree with everything Dave and Matt just said, but for the short term, I'm not as positive and I don't think that the approval is coming as quickly as some people hope. Certainly, I'm definitely less than 90% in the next 10 weeks. But here's why. The SEC simply has to either oppose the GPTC conversion on alternative grounds or approve it. What possibly could the SEC oppose the GPTC conversion in the next 10 weeks? Oh, my God, a massive lawsuit was just filed against the parent company today

by the New York alleging fraud, alleging really bad things. Who is really running and has the ear of the administration in D.C.? The administration in D.C. right now, people think Elizabeth Warren just sent a letter. Who just got promoted and went from being Elizabeth Warren's chief of staff to going to the White House to be the deputy director of the National Economic Council, which is basically who is running the anti-crypto policy? John Donenberg, Novogratz, and Ryan Seacliff made a really big point of this. I don't think he left his job being chief of staff to Elizabeth Warren, which is about a secure job in D.C., to go be the anti-crypto person at the White House,

thinking everything's about to change in 10 weeks and crypto is going to go positive. So, I mean, I spent most of my 20s in D.C. at the largest lobbying law firm in the world. These guys, the decisions aren't made the day of. The decisions are made in the back room. I'm not saying I'm not positive, as Dave Weisberger said, for the future, but we're talking about people saying 90% in the next 10 weeks.

I've got a problem with that. I do think there's a lot of issues that the SEC, again, people don't understand. Gary Gensler, while he's the face of the problem, he's acting on marching orders from Warren and Biden's teams. He's not doing this without their support. He hasn't been hung out to dry. We're seeing a tone change, which I think is really important. And I think we're moving in

that direction. But I think these numbers of 90%, it's going to happen in 10 weeks. That's really a micro short amount of time. I just think that if you look, I don't bet on products. I bet on people and what people are doing. The smart money and the control right now is a bunch of old people who don't get this and the people who work for them are still banking on jobs in dc that there are going to be problems moving forward i mean just from a legal point of view there's a you know there's a process as far as i understand the process they have to approve or deny within a certain amount of time if they deny they've got to give you, I'm assuming, valid reasons.

They can't just deny for no reason, right? So, I mean... Well, that's the whole... That's the grayscale decision. It was arbitrary and capricious. They didn't appeal it. So they have to give a new reason, I think, in 10...

Whatever next Friday, like in 10 days. So they can either give a new reason or they can approve. That's what some people are banking on, that they're just going to approve and they're going to approve in mass and say all these ETFs are approved. In the last week, we saw BlackRock, ARK and some of the other big names do some amendments to their filings saying how they are not all their cryptos can be segregated. The custodians are going to hold it and it's a safe asset class which by the way i completely believe it should be segregated but here you have this lawsuit

that's with gbtc and dc and and the parent company where so what even if it's segregated if the company's being against it i'm just saying there's a lot of shit happening right now that the government who's very slow can take a slow roll can we take a quick look at the dcg uh thing that happened today and the reason why i say sing i'm not quite i'm not quite sure it's the new york attorney general they use the word fraud in in this thing but it's not from what i understand this is not a criminal case correct okay so what is so it's not criminal just like trump being sued it's the same person who's suing donald trump they're suing him they're suing it's a it's not like if he loses this he goes to jail he's got other things that can make him go to jail but ultimately right now

they're being sued for basically putting fraudulent statements on the market uh this obviously could lead to other other things but for the moment these are securities violations of basically lying to the market uh gemini's being accused of knowing it was junk and they were selling it as low risk dcg is being accused of you know selling of knowing the books were cooked and what the another problem how's that how's that not criminal david i'm gonna let the criminal lawyers explain the criminal difference in criminal charges everything can turn criminal it's just not criminal yet john carlo yeah well listen imagine it was just like the ripple case had they also alleged fraud it It's a civil case. So the New York attorney general is alleging fraud in a civil complaint, just like any other plaintiff would do. An individual sues someone

civilly in alleged fraud. And basically what's interesting about this case is, to me, is that the twins were not named, although Barry Silbert was named and the ex-Genesis CEO. And they allege that Jim and I conspired with Genesis basically on the Jim and I earned program. And the fraud on the Jim and I side is that they didn't share what David just said, that they knew, for example, that 60% of Genesis loans to third parties were to SBF and Alameda. They didn't disclose that. They knew inside that that in a crypto downturn, there was a 50 to 60 percent chance that Genesis would default. They didn't share that with their investors. And so that's the type of fraud, misrepresentation, omission, things of that nature that they're alleging. Now, is it possibly that

they could also file a criminal complaint? It's possible, but I think unlikely at this point. And I don't want to minimize when fraud is alleged i take always take a different perspective uh because um you know my big contention with the sec is that they've been not going after the fraudsters and they're going after you know uh good actors or people who are they're just technically violating you know section 5 of the 1934 act applying the howey tests to modern day blockchain technology. So I don't want to minimize the fraud. But we also need to know that Letitia James is a very political person. You know, she ran on going against Trump. She's very anti-crypto. And I

believe that she's working in conjunction with the administration because she has political ambitions, whether it's the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, whether it's eventually taking over Merrick Garland for Attorney General. And so there's a lot of politics at play here. Carlo? Good morning, everybody. Great thoughts, John. I agree. I was in New York City for a New York State Bar Association conference, and I spoke on blockchain crime, and I had some time to kill before my flight. So I went and popped in and watched some of the SPF trial. And they had the forensic accountant, the professor from Notre Dame up on the stand for the government, did a very, very effective job of communicating to the jury in charts and easy-to-follow pie graphs

the amount of customer funds that went into FTX that should have been listed as liabilities on their books and then went out to Alameda. And now, Mario, I think what we're going to see here is the contagion effect of this. Any loans that touch on Alameda, the companies involved in those loans are going to be closely scrutinized for purposes of what type of disclosures they were aware of, and what they failed to disclose. Now, it is a big jump from a scheme to defraud from a civil allegation of fraud, because you've got to have an orchestrated scheme to commit that fraud. And this could just be a lack of due diligence and failure to adequately interpret the data. So just to understand, so fraud, if it's orchestrated,

it's criminal. If it's accidental, it's not criminal. I'm trying to oversimplify. Well, you have to have a scheme to defraud. Under the wire fraud statute, there has to be proof of a scheme to defraud. So yes, they may have when things started to go sideways, looked and said, hey, we need to recall our loan. Can you send us books and show us what the stability is of your assets. And now you've got these books that Caroline testified to that were sent out that may have been misleading. If they can extrapolate that there was some kind of knowledge or that they were somehow complicit to that, that's a different story. But if they took what Caroline was sending at her word, and they simply

were reporting that back to people and not making any outward representations in a scheme to defraud investors, then I don't know that they can get to a criminal charge. But they certainly did, unfortunately, based on the allegations reported in this lawsuit. Look, everyone was excited about the gains that they could make in these vehicles, but nobody was talking about how these loans were collateralized, if they were collateralized. And I think that opens up to a lot of liability. Because we're talking about some of the most respected names in the industry. It's like every respected name, every leader, almost every leader in our industry is just facing some sort of charges, civil or criminal. I'm not sure what the latest is with Richard Hart, by the way.

I'm not sure because obviously I've been away for a while, but I'm not sure if there's been any developments because I think it was civil. Civil case. Civil case. Okay, nothing criminal yet. Yeah, okay. Considering we haven't seen anything criminal yet, does that mean it's unlikely? I know I've kind of pivoted to a different discussion because usually… No, Mario, because remember, look, I don't want to cast aspersions on anything unless it's been, these are allegations. But remember, a lot of these

cases start as civil enforcement actions by SCC, CFTC, state attorney generals. Whether they evolve to criminal cases, we've seen the pattern. They tend to start as enforcement actions, and then they tend to then evolve into criminal, because I think they're working together on a lot of these task forces. But two questions, Carlo. First, don't the criminal charges follow civil charges relatively quickly as we saw with, oh no, sorry, I was going to use Binance as an example, but there's still no DOJ investigation to Binance, nothing announced there, so still nothing criminal. So yeah, it makes your point. I thought they would be within the same timeframe. But then the next question is, I forgot the first question. The

second question, could that have an impact as it goes to any panelists? And when I remember my first question, I'll ask you, Carlo, but the second question, could that have an impact on the ETF applications considering that so many players are facing different charges and now we've got Genesis and DCG in the mix as well. I forget who just said it, but I think it was, I can't remember who said it, but someone was just talking about how, I think it was John who said,

don't put aside that this looks like coordination again, where we're talking about how this gets filed a week before a decision has to be made about Grayscale. I don't think that's accidental. The reason why, and I think to your point, Mario, about the difference between civil and criminal, civil tends to be, we said things that are wrong and we misled people, but we didn't steal anything. We didn't do it. We just misled people. Criminal tends to be we stole, we heard, and not only did we knowingly lie, we lied and we stole the money for ourselves. And the difference here I'll give you is one of the damning allegations in this complaint filed today is that Gemini downgraded internally the Genesis loans to say that they were compatible and similar to companies with a CCC rating, also known as a junk rating. And they went on just saying that these were safe investments for other people, for their clients. So that's misleading. We're going to hear a lot

of statements, I'm sure, from defense lawyers about how these are puffery statements in the disclosures. They said that these were all high risk loans and nothing was safe and guaranteed, but they were sold. When you saw the one page printout of an investment, it was sold as this is safe, liquid. You can put your life savings into this. That's when things are civil. When it becomes criminal is if, and I think the New York Post reported this recently and the Gemini and the twins very much denied this. So I'm not saying this is true or not, but the New York Post reported this recently. And the Gemini and the Twins very much denied this. So I'm not saying this is true or not. But the New York Post said they took out a quarter billion dollars of their own money

and then let their own customers go down. That's where you see something else. Obviously, Gemini and the Twins have denied that. But I've always said yesterday's crypto heroes, tomorrow's crypto felons. You know, this is going to be one of the saddest taking down of people if this turns out to be true. I've had nothing but respect for the twins. I really don't want to see this. I think it's terrible for crypto.

We really need leaders who are honest, fair, and upfront. But, I mean, I'd like to believe that their denials are true. And isn't it true that the success rate of the DOJ is extremely high? I can't remember what the percentage was 97 conviction rate when they come with a case they usually come very strong mario carlo will you agree with me on this carlo will you agree with me this though the conviction rates are really high most of the federal cases are drug related yeah and look the reason that the conviction rate is very high is because most people plea. Very few people have the risk tolerance to go to trial and to challenge the evidence that the government is bringing forward. So there's a lot of factors that go into that conviction rate. But look, when they bring a case, when they indict a case, they're usually ready to go. And they've covered their bases. They don't bring weak cases. There are exceptions. I've been involved in exceptions where I've gotten acquittals, but generally they bring strong cases.

Can I just ask you, what is their disincentive to not bring weak cases? I mean, it's a very impressive record. And I know that when they come for you, it's pretty much because they're pretty sure that they're going to get it right. But I'm kind of thinking, what is the incentive for them not to cast the net as wide as possible? Why do they pride themselves in such a good conviction rate? Well, I think because they genuinely want to serve justice and they want to do the right thing. And, you know, you could point fingers at bad apples and you can make accusations. But look, generally, they want to do the right thing and they want to bring cases that are solid.

Because you look at the SPF case as an example i mean there is a lot of money the expert testified yesterday that so far has billed the government a hundred thousand dollars for generating his forensic analysis of all the loans between ftx and alameda of investor funds so there's a lot on the line they don't want to bring a case and spend all this time and money and get egg on their face. Andrew, are you there? Let me bring up Andrew. I think the mic isn't working. Hold on, let me bring him up. Carlo, go ahead. I think you were speaking. Then I'll go to Andrew.

Oh, Scott. I was just going to say, I can't bring Andrew up either, so I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm trying to bring him up. I brought up David. Yeah, I'm here, guys. Sorry for the delay. Yeah, Andrew, you probably have a few comments,

but my question, I want to ask you about the video we played. You posted about Gensler's video talking about the ETF when he was asked. Ryan was just talking about how it's not the usual gensler and the the answer was was not what we'd usually hear from him um so i'd love to get your thoughts on it because you you made a similar uh similar post earlier today yeah so yesterday obviously his his commentary was very very different there's three ways that he could have taken that question one is i can't comment we're reviewing there's there's no reason for me to comment, right? That would have been one way to go with it. There would have been a different

direction, which was crypto is filled with, you know, bad actors, you know, his common trope from the last six months. He didn't do that either. What he did is he positioned spot Bitcoin ETFs as these particular ETFs and Bitcoin is going to be packaged in a sec that is effectively a security that's going to be traded on an exchange. That is as far as I can imagine Gensler going on this particular issue, saying, you know, this is compliance, right? Like, this is my version of being compliant. You've decided to use a compliant structure to be traded on compliant exchanges. I can't imagine him using language that goes any further than that without it being an absolute blowout. We're, you know, oh, yeah, those spot Bitcoin ETFs, about 48 hours from now, they'll all be approved. I mean, it basically stopped short of that. So pretty remarkable language, pretty, pretty remarkable adjustment in tone and positioning them as these submissions have come to us in a compliant way.

They're going to be packaged in a compliant package and they're going to trade on stock exchanges, a.k.a. compliant exchanges. Right. So pretty remarkable stuff. And again, I have several sources both in the SEC and those that have previously worked in the SEC and know people that currently work there. And there's lots of scuttlebutt that they're not going to string this out to the end of the rope, you know, February-ish of 2024. That is going to happen sooner than that. And that's not a surprise. One of the things that I didn't include in that tweet that I think is also a marker for, you know, there being a 90 plus percent that this is kind of a done deal and probably faster than we think is, you know, remember folks applied for, you know, ETH futures, you know, those ETFs, they were told, hey, we're not going to do those, right?

And then out of nowhere, SEC staff was like, hey, everybody, those ETH futures ETFs, you know what, why don't you go ahead and, you know, submit again. And like, less than a month later, all approved, bang, just done, right? That's also a marker as to the adjustment and change for some reason associated with, with what's going on here. That, that, that particular piece where we're like, Oh, we're looking at these futures again. And then two weeks later, it looks like they're going to be approved. And then like a few days later,

they're all actually approved and they're trading on Monday morning. I mean, that was speedy and quick. And that decision happened with very, very little pushback, it seems. And so add that to the language that Gary used. Did Andrew drop out? I don't know if you can still hear me, but yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think we can hear you now, Scott, but I think Andrew dropped out.

I wanted to ask him one more question, just about considering that he's the one that broke the news when he was on our space about the DCG concerns, and obviously now we're seeing everything develop, so I want to get his thoughts on that. While waiting for Andrew to be back, I know we do have Nick and we've got David here as well. Oh, you're back, Andrew.

Yeah, yeah. So I had a different question to Andrew and then we'll go to Nick just to get his thoughts on the markets and then David to get a bit of a macro update unless Scott and Rana have further questions. But my question for you is about the latest developments with Gem Gemini DCG Genesis. Yeah. So, um, you know, obviously I, I, I put a post up and the, you know, the thought process behind the post, I, I, I often do some things, you know, after the post and, and, you know, put some things in there that, that have to do with it. Um, listen, I, I,

I think that, you know, it's hard to use language like it's cut and dry. When we're talking about legal issues here, this is going to stretch out for a fairly long time. But the bottom line is that you have one party that was doing their best to rely on information that they were given. You have another party that's accused of lying and fraud. And now by the New York AG, you know, is saying in their claim, they lied, right? They lied about their financials. I thought the best, you know, tweet that I saw about it and tried to give it a bunch of, you know, shine a light on it is, I don't even know who this person is.

It's a Novakula Okami. I probably completely butchered that name. But it says, so Genesis considered a sophisticated player in crypto, ran an uncollateralized loan book using Gemini money to lend mostly to 3AC, Alameda, and DCG, and then lied about it. Result, 232,000 retail investors lost a billion bucks. That's pretty cut and dry is what that is. Right? So, the bottom line is Gemini Earn was the biggest credit, still is the biggest creditor to genesis ergo dcg um they were using the service the most and that money was used to make bets and other loans to these companies that were now defunct and then after the fact dcg and genesis spent a lot of time covering it up, lying about it, and obfuscating in every possible way for a period of six to eight months. I've said it a dozen times, there's a good actor and a bad actor in this

particular play. And the good actor, every time something like this comes out, that company and those individuals immediately respond. They immediately give some level of forceful and full-throated response to what their position is. They've taken extra legal action against Genesis DCG and Barry individually. The other actor here basically has done everything in their power to hide, use lawyers and consultants to extend and dismiss and stay out of the limelight and use time to try and solve their problems. Oh, by the way, they put out some PR and lied about selling CoinDesk and that transaction still hasn't closed. So I try and keep it fairly simple. That seems to track. There might be a little bit of nuance in there as to who knew what and when and what actions maybe should have or could have been taken. But it's difficult to make decisions when you're working really hard to

and being lied to, right? I mean, that's that's that's tough to do it's one thing that one thing i'd add real fast that it was just from sam's trial over the last couple days i can't remember exactly what the language was but they they entered into evidence um some messages between genesis and alameda where genesis was basically like we need we need like 500 million dollars back in loans to like shore up our balance sheet to like make us look better or something like i can't remember what the exact language was but it was tough like it was like this is crazy genesis and yeah

i'm not a criminal lawyer but it was like very conspiratorial the way that it read to me, like very. Genesis and DCG knew that Alameda and FTX were insolvent months before everyone else did because of what Travis is talking about right there. And Genesis obviously knew, DCG obviously knew Genesis was insolvent for months before anybody else did. And the lawsuit today, the action taken today by the New York AG and the points that are made make that exceedingly clear. And I've seen documentation. I've even linked some documentation where you've got VPs at Genesis trying to work with customers and lenders talking about, hey, you know, you shouldn't don't blame me. I was just doing what I was told. I was taking what I was shown and I'm trying to help you out.

And it's not my fault. You know, I'm just doing what I was told. Right. It's crazy. It's just crazy. I remember those days where you'd be talking about those things in the space and they would call us fear mongerers. And then when things start coming to light, it just turns out to be a lot worse than we even. Yeah. And we even expected where we even made it out to be.

And that's across every single thing we talked about back then that, you know, people said were fear mongering. And then it just turns out to be significantly worse. You're sad to see. I want to go to christopher i'll remember that the next time that ran talks shit to me about binance let's see let's see because we'll see about binance so i think that's like the last one still pending see if travis is right or ran wins that battle you guys should make a bet financial bet like a hefty one what could happen i'll remind Rand to invite you to his show and have that debate. I think it would be epic. Christopher, we'd love to get your thoughts and then we'll go to Nick to get a quick

market update as well. And David, just a macro update before we wrap up. Yeah, I just, you know, I just wanted to take a quick second here is what usually happens when, you know,

when the government, you know, charges somebody with something, you know, we, we tend to always assume that the people are guilty. There's talk about the government's record is this great record, everything. But before I say what I'm about to say here, I do have a law degree.

I'm not a practicing attorney. I have a master's in psychology and I have a master's in homeland security. So I have a little bit, I'm just trying to say this so you know, I'm not just pulling this out of my rear end. But the fact is the way that not just at the federal level but at all levels, the fact that plea bargaining is 98% of the cases here that go through, it should be a worrisome number. you know, prosecutors are going for efficiency versus fairness, right? And so you have to think, especially when you have the resources of the federal government coming at you, you know, it's a scary thing, you know, getting threatened to go to the federal prison. Maybe you think, okay, maybe I might have accidentally done something,

you know, that may get me in trouble. And now I have to go and prove that I didn't, you know, and so that's a lot of this leading into people pleading out, pleading guilty, which boosts the government's record. Why would the government go after, you know, just the strongest cases rather than everything? Because, hey, it's easier to get a plea bargain, right? If you go and you say, hey, listen, we've got a 98% conviction rate, you know, you're going to be much more likely to continue pleading guilty. So I think a lot of that, I think we have to remember that a lot of that plays into just how, you know, these prosecution records that go on there. There's a

lot of psychology that goes into it, a lot of, you know, scaring people into actually agreeing to be, you know, to pleading guilty. And, you know, and what we find, especially at the lower levels, we know that a significant number of the plea deals, you know, the people actually aren't guilty, right? They're just fearful. They don't have the money to get a good attorney. They're scared because if they go in and they lose, they're going to get this much longer and much more harsh prison sentence. But the same thing applies as you get onto these larger levels as well. I'm not saying everybody's not guilty, but what I'm saying is I think we have to always be aware that just because, you know, the government comes and says, the DOJ says, hey, listen, this person did this,

this, this and that, you know, the reality of it is, until it's actually proven, you know, it may or may not have happened. And I think we got to be careful not to automatically assume that things are bad, or even that they're exactly as what is said. And just understand that a lot of, unfortunately, the fear that we see in there from people that are brought up against the government is this fear of, okay, well, if I fight it, you know, things are going to be a lot worse. And, you know, anytime you go to court, you know, I don't care how strong your evidence is, every time you go to court, there's a chance you're going to lose, right? And so, you know, if you're a prosecutor, it's a lot better for you to lose, right? And so, you know, if you're a prosecutor, it's a lot better for you to get a plea bargain of some sort, because you don't have to take that chance. And so I just think there's a lot of it out there, a lot of people, you know, generally,

that we don't kind of take into consideration, we just assume, oh, my gosh, they're getting sued by the government. So they're definitely guilty. Even subconsciously, we think that and I just think there's a lot broken with the way our justice system works right now but you know again all that being said I don't know you know whether they did or didn't and maybe they did maybe they didn't but honestly at the end of the day I don't think we're really going to know for sure because even if they were to plea to some lower charge or something you know again there's there's all that other bit that's in there um and so it's kind of the way our justice system is it's kind of screwed up but um yeah i just i just want to make sure people are kind of clear on that because

it's really easy so it's a good point the other way you know yeah i think i agree as soon as someone sees uh criminal charges immediately they jump in like they must be guilty especially looking at previous uh the record of the Justice Department. So I think it's a very valid point, Christopher. I appreciate you making it. I do want to go to Nick just for a quick update on the crypto market. Any comments that have been said so far? And then we'll go to David.

Thanks for having me today. Yeah, I didn't chime in as much as I wanted to on some of the previous topics. But I'm still on the camp and I've been saying now for months that I think the Bitcoin spot ETF isn't going to come to January or March of 2024. I just don't think with the current cases open that they're going to be rushing this. Yeah, Gary Gensler's tone has definitely changed. I think that means that, yeah, we're going to have a Bitcoin spot ETF. 99% sure, in my opinion, that we will have one.

It's a matter of when and when have they really ever rushed into doing these things and they really haven't. So I still looking at january or march i think is that mid-march is the final deadline for about seven or eight of these and i think they're going to do it in a band uh kind of a a batch way i think they're going to you know approve three to five of these i don't think it's going to be a one and done how do you think the markets will react nick so i don't think that is priced in i think just the the fake news and the fact that we're sitting here holding 28 640 dollars today in the face of a red stock market tells you it's not priced in even with the crypto people and once the bitcoin

spot etf is approved like others have discussed this opens up a floodgates for institutional size investors i forget who said it maybe it was david everybody will have their own thesis on how fast they move that one percent but i think ultimately they're going to start treating Bitcoin and the Bitcoin spot ETF, just like they did the gold ETF, where it's going to be a component of everybody's portfolio. As far as precious metals, it's going to be a selling point for these, you know, play by the book, financial advisors that BlackRock and everybody has. We're like, all right, this is what we do. We do 20% in bonds, we do 3% in precious metals, 1% in Bitcoin. And that's just kind of the standardized practice that they have. And, you know, we all know with the limited amount of Bitcoin in the finance supply and the set inflation rates, that's it.

That's going to cause a big disruption in the historical cycles that we see, in my opinion, and a large uptick. The thing is... Oh, you're back. Okay, sorry. Somebody's calling me. the thing is you know nasdaq has seen a seven-day downtrend here and i think there is still another three to five percent downtrend risk here um which you know historically at least in this whole bear market bitcoin has been pretty correlated with the nasdaq so we'll see if it can fight off the trend or if there will be some kind of revert to the mean. I think when the fake news came out, I said that I think that we're going to revert back to 27 to 27.5. I didn't think we'd give back all the gains, but I think that we do have some downside risk here as I don't see stocks kind of digging out of the hole with all the macro

events in the climate that we see across the globe. And I think a lot of people, this buying now is late longers because you have Novogratz and these big names thinking that, oh, I think it's coming soon. And look at Gary Gensler, it's going to happen by the end of the year. I just don't see that happening. I think there's too many core cases opens, too many loose ends that need to be filled. But I do think January or March. And I think that's really a better timing for us in here in crypto, because then it's an easier sell with the macro global environment as far as the war is going on we have the presidential election in 2024 we have the having occurring in April and everybody

understands that hey we've had terrible inflation globally and this is gonna cut the inflation half or Bitcoin and I think just it's a really easy sale sell for these asset managers to try to try to bring it into people I portfolios. I agree. I agree. I think it's a great take. David, I've been out of the loop for over a week now because of the war, so maybe a quick macro update, not just today, but for the past seven to ten days would be good, where we're at now. That's a tall task, Mario.

We should talk war. Not in this space, but you and I should. In other spaces. But in any event. No, I think just to bring it really quickly to the present, I mean, we're coming up on 5% on the 10-year. We just broke through 8% on the average 30-year mortgage. In light of that, I think there are a lot of people on a daily basis rethinking their portfolio construction. Certainly people that, you know, are much more in a buy and hold type strategy. And it's certainly in terms of long term illiquid investments. You know, people now have to realize that the risk freefree rate of return is way higher

than it was for the past 20 years. I think that that's the thing that's bearing the greatest amount of weight on the market right now. Certainly, the market is willing to reward companies that perform well. I mean, Netflix came out with numbers that were impressive by everyone's estimations. Certainly, there are questions around how much of it is long-term and not one time. But in any event, they did well. The market's rewarding them. And certainly, if the market sees something that it doesn't like, as in Tesla's earnings last night, it's going to get punished. Stock's down 9% today. So I think we will. And by the way, we oscillate on a daily basis. Right.

We have a one day up, one day down type of market. So I think there's two things. A, it's a stock pickers market in terms of being able to go ahead and put your money with those companies are going to perform well. And then the second thing is, is it's a trader's market also. And so you got to be a pretty active manager in terms of being able to, you know, have a long term, have confidence that you're going to make money in the short term. You've got to be in and out of markets. Otherwise, you really can't tell. And certainly, you know, the war is overshadowing everything. Certainly, if the war goes ahead and broadens, if people think it's going to lengthen, people think it's going to affect macro economy more generally, then obviously it's going to go ahead and hurt markets generally. And so therefore, I think people are hesitant to go ahead and place any

sort of overemphasis on a very long position, you know, in the stock market. So I think we're kind of in a holding pattern, certainly going into an election year, you know, in the United States as well. So there's a lot of uncertainty going on right now. So I wouldn't expect a major melt up in the market. Certainly Certainly there could be a major meltdown to the extent that there's any crisis. And then on a day-to-day basis, absent any of those two things, I think we just oscillate between gains and losses

with companies that perform well being rewarded and those that don't being punished. Appreciate that, David. I think this is it. I think it's a great recap. Scott, I'm not sure if you have anything else to add before we wrap. Cool. I think this is it, it's a great recap and Scott I'm not sure if you have anything else to add before we wrap cool I think this is it guys appreciate you all being here I will see you again tomorrow morning and nothing else sorry all good all good yeah appreciate the recap as

well with David and Nick all right guys we'll see you again tomorrow thanks everyone