The Wolf Of All Streets - Crypto’s Recovering! Early Signs of a New Rally? | CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

This episode of "Crypto Town" brings together a panel of industry voices to discuss the crypto market's latest price action, the government's economic stimulus measures, and shifting dynamics between major cryptocurrencies and altcoins. The hosts and guests dissect recent policy moves such as Trump's proposal of 50-year mortgages and $2,000 stimulus checks, as well as institutional moves into Bitcoin ETFs. The core aim is to make sense of the current market bounce, examine cyclical versus structural change in crypto, and debate the future of altcoins in a rapidly maturing sector.

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Crypto Town all every weekday, 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard time right here on X, and we have a nice little bounce across crypto markets to talk about Bitcoin trading right at about $105,000 right now. Obviously, it was trading above $106 before markets opened. But as James Lavinich pointed out on Macro Monday this morning, had to fly. some leverage for idiots who can get liquidated over a $1,000 move before bouncing and heading right back up to where we were before. A lot happened this weekend. We have, you know, Trump floating 50-year mortgages and $2,000 stimulus checks. We got the government unshutting down on all of this potentially booing Bitcoin at a very key.

$100,000-ish support level. So a lot to unpack, a lot to discuss, some macro, some very crypto-related. Dave, where do we start? Realization that the Republicans are, if anything, going to overreact and certainly will not ignore the drubbing they took, even though it was in Democratic stronghold states, you know, on issues of affordability. And so you're going to see messaging and buttons being pushed and levers being pulled to make life better for the younger voters one way or another. I phrased this as simple.

This shutdown wasn't about austerity versus profligacy. It was about profligacy versus more profligacy. And the only difference really is if you get right down to it is Republicans insisting that that things that were temporary that have been used to help non-Americans need to stop. But they both agree that they need to help Americans. There's no, there's no difference there. This is a true uniparty situation when it comes to spending. Meaning to, you know, meaning that there's literally no end to. deficits right you know these two trillion dollar deficits which by the way could be

worse if in fact tax receipts are down the the unique the uniqueness of this large drop in government spending for a month that's gonna now catch up very quickly could very well actually exacerbate the full year deficit a bit but the truth is that there's a huge amount of liquidity that It's about to enter back into markets. And never forget how sensitive Bitcoin is to liquidity. So I think that's the context that you have to really look at. And we'll see.

I mean, anyone who believes, I don't know of anybody. Maybe someone on the panel thinks that all of a sudden we're going to get real reforms in a way that's going to be constraining to the money supply. And we're going to start spending less money. I just don't see it. And I don't see how anyone can look at it that way. Maybe we should start here with, do people think that the market has bottomed? I think that we are certainly bottoming.

A lot of the signals I like are there, but still, you know, ways to go, I think, to start to prove it. But I would love to open it to the panel and see what people think of this balance. This move kind of up around $105,000, if it's meaningful. they think the bottom is in. Anybody raise your hand and jump in? Tom, then Ryan. Hey guys, good morning. Good evening.

So I think the thing that I took away from this weekend is the equity markets and crypto markets, but man, is he really leaning into it, right? $2,000 stimulus checks, 50-year mortgages, you know, on the back of the big, beautiful bill, which. had a ton of different tax breaks. I mean, anything and everything to stimulate risk markets and risk assets is what he's going to do. And he just keeps proving it time and time again. So I think any dip into the midterms is just a viable dip because this man just wants to see markets go up. And he just keeps putting his actions in that light. So I think unless you have

some big black swan events you know these tips are just great buying opportunities Ryan I think we're just following same patterns that we've seen over and over and over again I think you know we went down last week we're going to go up this week we're going to probably go down right before Thanksgiving we're going to crescendo second week of December and then next year we might be capping down around 75 again. I think we're following the same pattern as much as everyone wants to think that we're following a different pattern or we've broken the pattern or maybe the pattern is just elongated if anything. But as far as time horizon, I don't, you know, I think on a longer

time horizon, maybe six, eight months out, we definitely understand. We definitely not bottomed, in my opinion. Richard. Yeah, I tend to agree. I don't think October was a great month for crypto in general, and I think that's going to weigh heavily on sentiment. You know, having highly liquid

markets, I don't think it's done us any favor of it. Even if we were aware of it, it was made very, very obvious. And I agree with Ryan, you know, as much as you want to be optimistic about the Trump administration's efforts, I don't think single-handedly that that's possible. I'm still a believer that, you know, the cycle isn't intact until proven otherwise.

And, you know, think about what the sentiment was like last week. People were seriously asking questions and starting to really analyze zoom out and analyze technical charts. the prices were heavy and it was like it was a bit doom and gloom so it's easy to look back in retrospect and say, oh, we swept the 100K level and we're going

to turn around and go but I think there's a lot that if you're in crypto if you're in crypto primarily you're in it for more reasons and just holding Bitcoin so I want to be clear about that and a lot of people are invested in crypto startups and

And crypto projects outside of Bitcoin, so we can't just keep track in Bitcoin and Ethereum and possibly Solani ETFs and that being the mainstay of a hope. I think there's a real concern that Alcoins are in big trouble unless we see a new way with liquidity. I don't know if the Stami check does it, but it's definitely going to have to come in a different form. Right now, I have real concerns about the Alcoin markets. So the season, as we know, I think, is under a serious question.

Is it the season part of the cycle, though? I mean, Richard, can't, you know, if you believe that the cycle's intact and haven't been proven otherwise, wouldn't that have implied that Alcoigne should have had? Yeah. Let me rephrase that. Sorry, what I mean is the Bitcoin halving cycle. Makes sense. Not so much the Elkoin season aspect of the EFPDC ratio, starting to shoot the life.

Southern and Bitcoin dominance, you know, falling off a cliff. It's more that four years off because that's what people have been hammering dancing, that that's the thing that's losing, the narrative around that that's losing tech. And I just don't see it yet. So I just want to make the point that if you just look at the chart and zoom out, we had a repricing from November of last year, this time last year after the election, to January of basically a doubling in Bitcoin, give or take. And we've been in a range since then, full stop.

There's not been one quote for your cycle that's looked like. So to say it's intact is just funny. I mean, it's just funny. I mean, there was no 3x, 5x, 10x. This was a re-rating based upon a massive change from an administration that was openly hostile that tried to spread fud that wanted to literally put crypto out of business and make bitcoin go into the history books as a failed experiment to keep the dominance of the fiat and that changed from that to an administration that embraces bitcoin it called it literally

called it a strategic asset uh has created owns over 300,000 thousand in a strategic reserve that they say they will keep is a very major difference. And so that was a repricing. It was almost a one-time repricing. And we've been in a range since then. So I find it interesting, but what I, what's great, if you're bullish,

is the amount of due and glue. And basically on everything, I went and checked this morning, every cent of an index is at what is normally bottoming levels, not topping level they're all really pessimistic and even this action today you know we're yeah if you look at last week you last week we crashed if you could call it a crash 15% from you know 115 or whatever down to below 100 and but we've managed to hold the same range I mean it hasn't changed anything and so that's really the point but anyway this has gotten a bunch of speakers I Is he William Burst and then Eric?

Yeah, so just on the basis that there is a lot more adoption to come and talking about crypto in general, there is lots of room to grow. I mean, we haven't, we barely have adoption in crypto. So if you believe that adoption is going to, to increase then you can believe that there is room to grow as far as valuations and and that's kind of the simplest way to think about it that i that i can't think about it thank you said eric dave i don't see any hand so eric phaed your end up not again well i see tom's hand but i think it's a shadow from before but i saw eric go up after williams and i see williams hand still up so

I see none. I love this platform. I'd love to see Elon spend a few more bucks and make spaces a little more functional. Those three developers that Scott and insists are working on it. I'm not sure they're working on it. They've been diverted to building robots. Sorry.

They've been working on Optimus's hand lately. But anyways, no, I mean, if you look at what we'll William said, I actually feel like he's right. I feel like we really haven't scratched the surface of where things will go. So if it's, you know, a range that we're trading in, I think it's a viable range and a testament to that. I'm surprised it didn't get a little bit more play in the, you know, kind of social sphere. But JP Morgan Chase announcing both a larger position in in BitTense and then also increasing its position in Black Rock's BTC, ETF. This is unheard of a couple of years ago.

And so now they've started not only accumulation positions, they're doubling down and enlarging those positions. And that's great for them, but where I think that actually takes us is that starts to give freedom and it becomes a catalyst for these other institutions to say, hey, why aren't we doing this as well? And so I feel like this is now going to be a story as we go into Q1 of next year where we see major institutions start to, you know, I don't think that this is going to become 10 or 20% of their balance sheet, but I think that this starts to become meaningfully low single digits for a lot of these institutions going forward. And that can only be, you know,

bullish for the long-term case, not only for the Bellwether's being Bitcoin and Ethereum as currently constructed, but I really do believe that there will be a bid that starts the cash in the and kind of to echo the conversations we had last week, like how can you possibly, you know, have appropriate price action versus like what the fundamentals of the tokens are? I've said this for a while, but I think that you'll start to see MNA in this space. I think that there will be interesting aspects of certain protocols that are of enough value to other protocols or other tech players.

that you start to see some real and meaningful acquisitions in the space. And that to me is when, you know, the speculation starts to really come in and you could actually see a quote-unquote alt-coin season because then folks are going to start betting on which one's next to be acquired. So you think Dogecoin could buy Fartcoin? Let's go. Let's go. I mean, I still like, you know, I still think of a couple of weeks, ago, I forget the name of the company, but the company that took a 25 million bonged

treasury position, I just wonder how that's performing on their balance sheet. Yeah, I think it's performing, well, never mind. I saw Steve at his hand up first. Yeah, now I see hands. I see Stephen and Richard than Ryan. Steve went up first, but then I think Ryan went up when I made the fart coin joke. Go ahead. I'm just going to make one question.

Quick point. You know, I think that retail's, like, been pretty absent this cycle, and that's, like, sort of noticeably different. I did see an announcement that the Commissioner Framman of the CFTC is going to push to have leverage added to spot market exchanges domestically in the U.S. Does anyone think that that would be enough to sort of reignite retail back into, like, this cycle? I think that you have to break retail into into two pieces. Retail has not been absent in this cycle in terms of U.S. retail in brokerage accounts by buying ETFs and micro strategy, et cetera, et cetera. Retail in the United States has been entirely absent. So yes, it will impact U.S. retail DGEN types, but it will depend on the rules.

Coinbase already has perpetual swaps on their exchange. and I think you'll see more and more of that. And so, and that will start to become a product. But right now, it's still relatively low volume. But I do think that there is something to that. And, you know, look, I've talked to times. I mean, she's behind prediction markets. She's behind safer, more well-disclosed leverage, you know, all these things.

The real issue is, is will it be, as she, been cheerful in terms of trading costs as the foreign exchanges are. And the answer is we'll see. I mean, people should remember that Krakken used to offer leverage and they just got their knuckles slammed by it. So this is another major change in terms of opening up markets. And all it will do is increase volatility. I'm not sure it brings it back, but it certainly makes it more volatile. Now, I lost track of who was next. I think it was Ryan. Brian, Richard, I think. Oh, thanks.

So one thing I want to underscore and remind everyone is that these are not companies. And we talk about mergers and acquisitions, and we talk about investing in these different coins and projects. But we forget that these are not centrally controlled companies that you can control by simply. owning the token, it's very, very different. And where some of them are companies like Ripple or a few others, most of them just because you own the coin or the token does not actually give you any voting rights in the ecosystem. And even if they say they give you voting rights,

it could come down to some of the core devs just forking the nodes or forking the chain and taking away those voting rights. So we just have to remember that we're not investing in regulated companies. A lot of these tokens and protocols and meme coins are very unregulated. And a lot of times, the true founders

and programmers behind them are completely unknown by design. That's a lot of these decentralized systems. So just, we have to keep that in mind when it comes to merger and acquisitions. I've looked into taking over old projects before and taking over old chains before, but there's always this legacy risk that it's really a community and it's not just buying a company or a project. Yeah, that is an incredibly important point. By the way, if you want to understand the single, one of the most important drivers behind Commissioner Atkins and the others at the SEC, what they want to do is to make that impossible, i.e. make

it impossible for an asset to be listed where there is no accountability from the founders and there's no disclosures. They want to end that. And frankly, I think that's a really good thing to end that. But, you know, you're right, right now, it's very, very unclear. and that that matters. Anyway, Richard, I think you were next. I mean, I'm seeing a wave of hands,

but I can't tell how many are... I only, I see that, but I did see Richard earlier. Yeah, that's weird. I just wanted to, I mean, I don't want to relate at the point we seem to be, you know, touched on a topic. So I want to just circle back to this and get an understanding because, you know,

I mean, been here for a number of viewers and watched, let's call it the playbook that happens in crypto. So, you know, historically, It was a lot of rotation in and out of alt into Bitcoin. I understandably now stable coins have become the de facto means by which people are moving in and out of passes. But, you know, for the most part, the Bitcoin dominance job is the thing that we watch. You know, and what I'm hearing, and I'd love to hear some further views on this, is that ultimately, look, know me wrong.

I mean, we're invested in a ton of companies, and we spend most part of our days working with founders and that. So it's not that we're necessarily believing what we're doing in the space, and it can be terribly difficult at times when interest falls off, you know, off a cliff, so to speak. But practically, what I was alluding to you was, you know, the whole year we've spoken about this big buildup to this moment where we started here. great cuts and there's these momentum shift towards getting a turnaround, certainly with the attitude around crypto, the acceptability in certain markets, all that, but I was more referring to the expectation around Q4 being this moment that we were all anticipating. You know, can you look at the historical charts in October, November, December, all generally are a really good green months.

But what I'm hearing is that ultimately that this is going to change and it's going to be more of a consistent thing because traditional finance is slowly but surely going to immerse themselves in the space and just keep acquiring whether it's ETFs or taking some treasury tokens into a debt strategy and that becomes the pay and if it could be negating. It's the traditional models that we've experienced. Am I understanding that, Ross?

I think that there's a word salad problem there. I mean, traditional finance is not monolithic, nor are these assets monolithic. So, I mean, ETFs are simply an access vehicle to buy crypto that will eventually single asset that ETFs within five years will be. very, they won't be that big of a deal. What will really matter with ETFs is what they're really designed for, which is creation of indexes for people to own sectors within the protocol spaces. I think Bitcoin is slightly different because Bitcoin kind of is its own sector.

So you'll see that. As far as far as M&A goes, look, there's a massive M&A wave coming. the key players in each of the major infrastructure areas in crypto, because, frankly, all the traditional financial companies are way behind the eight ball there. And we've seen this before. We saw it electronic trading. I've seen it multiple times. That's happening. Protocols are different. So, I mean, Ripple Labs is positioning themselves as too big to be acquired, but understand that it's the companies that are actually building in the space. But they have been buying companies left and right.

This will increase. So you will see a lot more of that. Now, what does that mean for the protocols themselves? Well, there's a race going on. Who's going to use them? I mean, we look at things like TVL. And honestly, there's not one crypto that if you used any of those metrics, you could come up with.

I shouldn't say that. there are probably a couple. But it's hard to justify valuations based upon what you see currently. It's always based upon what could happen. And so that's why there's that level of risk. The one point I will push back on, as you said, something about stable coins and being access to it. Make no mistake, the reason Tether is the most valuable company in the world per

employee is because Tether has been the, the access vehicle for buying and selling crypto. And people are willing to accept no yield for it. And so that's why to expect that that trend won't continue when the U.S. opens up to U.S. stable coins and when foreigners might not have even increased appetite for buying things on chain, when it broadens to more assets, I think it's foolish.

I think those trends are locked in. And that's what people are saying. Yeah, maybe I'm, maybe I'll phrase that incorrectly. I'm fully aware of that. What I'm saying is, I mean, if you've been doing this, you know, circuit 2017, 2019, there was still an element of people rotating straight in and out of. So me, let me say this. The BDC pairs were a very important way of looking at alt coins.

and that doesn't seem to be the trend any longer. Correct. So I think that will be. You're right. You're absolutely right. Look, the data said is that from, at least from the, you know, from coin routes was that, yeah, the VTC pairs were important, but they were already becoming way less important by 2019, 2020. Tether was, once Tether got to the point where people weren't looking at it as. as, as the, you know, the tether truthers of, you know, like, I don't know if anyone follows BitFinex, but, you know, a lot of people believed what he was saying for or she, believe what the account was saying about Tether for all those years.

I think it's pretty clear no one really believes it anymore. And frankly, it might have even been true in the early days. We just don't know where it is now, right? But yeah, you're right. It's moved towards stable coin buying and selling. undeniably. Tom, is that hand a legacy hand or is that real? No, it's a real hand. I think what we're seeing is just the industry growing up, right? So you've had consolidation, M&A, start to increase traditional markets, access through IPOs and others. And now when you have, you know, things like this Coinbase announcements today on the back

of the Echo acquisition, you're having preferred. professional platforms where you're having these token launches now versus kind of the wild west atmosphere that we had previously the wild west is always going to exist in crypto because it's permissionless open source technology but if you have the choice you know after you know when coin base starts listing things directly or and or when the clarity act comes through and you have you know protocols that choose to follow it and protocols that choose not to you know who do you think investors are going to turn to, you know, a majority of capital is going to flow to the more, the safer protocols because they follow these regulations. Now, there are always the other

that kind of fall outside those downs, but, you know, we're starting to see the industry just have a new set of guardrails, which is going to increase the ability for further capital to flow and for further acquisition opportunities in the future. So we just have to make sure we're not going to lose what makes crypto crypto. But at the end of the day, if we want institutional and traditional capital from mom and pops 401Ks and retirement accounts, we have to put up some of these guardrails for some of these guys. So I think we're going to continue down this path. And it just means all systems go for more and more flows in the space. logical Carlo

Good morning Good morning Scott Good morning Dave So first off I'm amazed to learn today that Dave has

Past connections to La Cosa Nostra Used to play a poker game With several made men That long after my grandfather Was kicked out of the mob for refusing or not believing that he could fix games when he was a bookie.

So yeah, you got that going on. It definitely an interesting point. I'm definitely now going to think twice. At the age of three. I'm going to think twice when I take a contrary in view. So I think this ties into a broader conversation and you kind of touched on it with respect to tether and its accumulation.

I've always said, and I continue to maintain that stable coins under the Genius Act are going to be the driving engine for global demand of U.S. dollars and U.S. Treasury assets, and that that's going to ultimately be a Trojan horse for onboarding more crypto. So I don't think we're going to skip alt season this year. I think we have an elongated cycle, and I think as we start to see more... more and more wallet integration and adoption of stable coins in the U.S. marketplace, that's going to ultimately pivot to more wallet interest in L1 chains. And the thing that cannot be ignored, I know that ARC has built their own stand alone, but I think the thing that cannot be ignored here is that you need L1s to run stable coins efficiently. Unless they're all going to build their own stand-alone chains,

and yeah, that's possible. L-1s are still a part of the crypto economy and will continue to be until that changes. And while that's the case, there is interesting stuff being built, and I think that that stuff is going to be deployed, especially like we also talked about when we get market structure clarity, because then you're talking about the essential. essential need for smart contract execution. Stable coins can't do that. Stable coins are a payment remittance chain. You still need a good, strong, high-throughput L1 for real-world assets and for tokenized

securities, and I don't think that's going to change. Do you say any hands up, Dave? I don't. I see Ryan. Yeah, I agree. I could see a big push in the near future for more L-1s that are driven off stable coins, where stable coins are the main network token and transactional token, and then putting up KYC-A-M-L guardrails around that layer one, and then all the banks filing

in behind it. I have a hard time picturing a future where the banks and government, to at-large file in behind Ethereum or something that they can't intrinsically control and gatekeep. I kind of come out on both sides of that. I think that the L-1s that are going to get used are going to be the ones that have the highest cost benefit to the users. And implied in that is that they stay cheap enough for them to be.

for them not to get a huge percentage of the revenues. So it's not going to be like Linux where nobody made money for building it, but you made money by maintaining it or handling it, et cetera. But the truth is that when you have commodity products and you can move from L1 to L1 with some but not incredibly expensive switching costs, it holds down the value of the actual underlying utility. It doesn't make it worthless, that let's be really clear. And it's not even clear that the market caps of the cumulative L1s

for all of these applications isn't lower than it will be because there are so many applications that can be used on these things. But those people who are expecting massive explosive growth in the L1 ecosystem writ large, I think are on drugs. I think that the math doesn't work. It's, you know, just simply put, people can switch. Those switching costs are the way economics works,

and we've seen it every single time. Now, that doesn't mean that there is in value. It just means that people are calling for 100 X's because the coin is low, when it's already a $200 million asset or $200 billion dollar asset, are literally delusional to the point of it's almost clinical how delusional they are because in the history of humanity no commodity that can be replaced with switching has ever gotten to be like that right ever literally ever and nor will it because it's just not the way economics works it's it's like ignoring supply and demand now i can't tell whether carlo or ryan wanted to

respond i think you got to pick your winners i mean I agree with you. Across the board, you're not going to see every L1 in the top 20 win. But I think within the top 20, you've got chains that are building and solving for real-world issues, and they'll win. They'll just be a smaller pool of winners. I don't think we're going to have a crazy alt season like we've seen before in market cycles. but I still think there is a utility for some of these L-1s to build lasting things that are not going to go away. Yeah, I do want to make one point about alt season. I think we did see an alt season, except the alts were gold and silver and, you know, by the contracts for differences markets.

I think you saw a absolute... And equities. Wave. What do you say, Scott? And crypto-adjacent equities. Yeah, and crypto-adjacent. adjacent equities, exactly. So I think you saw a ton of hot money moving into the momentum. And the difference is that cycle ended. I mean, anyone who owns any Nakamoto knows an awful

lot about crypto adjacent equities or, well, there are quite a few. I'm picking on Nakamoto because I own a small piece of it. And I will hold it for the next end number of years until whatever, but it's a tiny piece and, you know, it is what it is. All of these things have done, have relacted to momentum. Remember, what we see as alt season in crypto is not baked in the cake. What is baked in the cake is momentum trading as a religion for DGEN trading and gambling types, and they will go to whatever they can that has momentum. And when momentum fails, they'll move to the next thing.

That will happen constantly. There's no stopping that, whether or not alt coins in the sense of, of, you know, layer one's or, you know, different bridging protocols or layer twos or meme coins become the next hot thing. Well, anything's possible, but understand, it's not like we've repealed human nature. Human nature is to seek out that momentum. I think Ryan was next and then, Carlo. legacy hand okay sorry carlo go ahead yeah no nothing to add you said it perfectly yeah and people listening need to understand what this means you know if you're living in a bubble crypto used to be its own ecosystem divorce from everything else it isn't now and so it

that's going to change the dynamic but it's not going to change the fact that humans are going to And I've got to quote you there, Scott, that that was a good one. And so people will chase momentum. And a large part of why the sentiment in Bitcoin is so bad. And it really is really bad compared to the price. It's extraordinary, really, is because it's been in a range for a year. It gapped up to January. Yeah, it's been an elongated range.

But from Bitcoin's perspective, it's not that elongated. I mean, what was the bottom of 75? to 125. Okay. But that 10, but it didn't do what people hold in the same period of time, you know, moved, silver, removed even more. And so people tend to chase these things. And now everyone's kind of saying, okay, where's the money going to go? And we'll see.

I mean, I have my own thoughts. I'm curious what other people think. I don't see ends. Yeah, I don't see Anne, so it's possible. Surprise. I figured for sure we'd hear an Ethereum raw, rah, pom, William, you're on stage. So whatever. We don't have any anyone from the XRP army up there, although they keep chirping. You know, I just, I find. They love us. Well, no, well, look, I wish Michael would join us, honestly, because, you know, it would be interesting. I have nothing against the notion of XRP as having high utility. Honestly, I know there's very strong opinions on this one, both sides of it. But what I'm against is that this notion of XRP flipping Bitcoin, which I think is one of the most ridiculous things ever.

I mean, it could happen. But if XRP flips Bitcoin is because Bitcoin has failed and XRP is being held loft by a ripple lapse. It's not a bullish scenario for anybody. So it's amazing. And if you ask me, why do I say that? It's because the only reason why Bitcoin can be a digital store of value is based on its network and its distribution. And the way that it is felt, there is no way that 50% of a coin being held between the number one founder and a company is ever going to be treated the same. It's just not.

and you can look at that any way you want. But it's one of those things that you could be a denial. You can deny what's factual or you could dream. And there are a lot of people buying dreams. Okay, William, I finally did something to prompt you. No, no, I'm not going to see anything pompous about Ethereum. That's not the point. but I think if you want to see something that will help

I'd love to see a lot of these zombie chains go away I mean it's going to be impossible but they can't because they have tokens there's a lot of what's the market cap of FTC exactly William can you or anybody explain to me how FTT still has a market cap bigger than most of the companies in the Russell 2000 index. Can anyone explain this? I don't get it. Exactly.

Explain to me what Cardano is at the cap that it is. It doesn't do much. We don't have to deal as far as what about Ethereum Classic? Oh, that yeah, exactly. There are lots of them. What do they do?

They have a token. They have lots of money in treasury. They can fake being alive for maybe 10 years, maybe 15 years. I still remember, I ever remember BitConnect? I still remember there were at least three months that on coin market cap or crypto compare, I can remember which one,

literally labeled Bick Connect a scam and it maintained a billion dollar valuation. So it's just something about this industry that I don't understand. Now, was it Ryan, or somebody was flipping negative or rich, You were flipping thumbs down, so you disagree. You think that FTT has real value and Ethereum Classic's real value value value. No, no. That was me acknowledging the certainty of what you were saying.

Yeah, no, but understand when people look at that, and, you know, meanwhile, James and I have to, Lavish and I have to deal with Michael Glone talking about millions of competitors in crypto, I guess there's one element of what he says is true. There are people in the world of crypto who effectively are keeping what is a shell game going. And it's not a Ponzi because it's not getting new money in, but it's definitely a shell game, right? And it doesn't do us all any good. I just don't understand how it's possible or who does this stuff. I mean, the differences in the equity markets, at a certain point, if a company fails listing standards, it moves to the pink sheets.

And even there it starts to go. I mean, I've seen bankrupt companies trading for real value with huge percentage moves up until the day that they finally went, you know, belly up. So, I mean, yeah, this stuff happens, but it is, it is crazy. And it's sort of like you can be betting on Pokemon cards just as much as you're betting on token at that point. I'll just say one more thing about the XRP because I was mentioned. I mean, XRB, I don't get it, but they're like a cult. They have so many people that believe in it that they got to the retail. I've heard several stories of friends of friends that are into XRP because they look at the price.

They say, oh, it's only two bucks and a two and a half dollars. So it can go to 10. They don't look at the market gaps instead of saying like, why should I buy a hundred thousand dollar whatever token? I can buy a $2 one, it will go much higher. That's all they look at. That's it. It doesn't make sense. It's science, William.

You're just confused. You don't understand, obviously. Does anyone here old enough to have the old game monopoly? In Monopoly, one of the cards is share split. You make blah-bitty-blah money. Well, share splits don't make anybody anything. It just allows for different trading dynamics. and effectively this unit bias problem it's just it's one of those things it's it's inherent in human

nature it's kind of crazy i mean it's one of the reasons that for years and i still think it's true that bitcoin would be way better off if it were priced in stats full stop uh you know and and it's one of the reasons why the ETFs have helped bitcoin because if you own i bit you don't care Right? You know, if you own, you know, Bitwise's ETF, BITB, BITB trades at $57. It doesn't trade in $114,000 or whatever, $105,000 or it's $57. So the ETFs helped Bitcoin by removing a lot of the unit bias problem of people buying it. Because people say, oh, I could afford 100 shares of Bitcoin. I've had people say to me, oh, yeah, no problem. I could buy $100.

shares of bitcoin i've this thing it's called i b it right and i shake my head and i don't know how to respond because i don't want to dim their enthusiast on the other hand it's absurd right i mean ryan i see your hand and that might be a legacy hand again because we love this platform this was a real hand uh so a couple thoughts uh for several different topics that we kind of over. One, Bitcoin is kind of in its class of its own because of the energy infrastructure and how it stabilizes the grids and it kind of plays opposite of AI's energy usage. So as we see the grids grow and more power plants coming online, you know, we will have need for Bitcoin mining to counterbalance.

especially in smaller grids. So like this point one is Bitcoin is in a class of its own because it's remained proof of work. The other thought was, you know, why are there so many legacy chains just floating out there? And there was actually a fun idea that was floated to me last year was this idea of it's called a vampire attack where you can actually create a new layer of one

and you issue out tokens based on burn receipts. from all the other coins. So you get, you basically incentivize people to burn their, their old wallets and then submit those receipts to mint coins on your chain. I thought that was really, really fun because there's, like you said, you know, tons and tons of legacy chains like thousands of alt coins out there. And it would be a kind of a fun project to see people burning all their old wallets to, to into the new ecosystem.

But as far as XRP or ETH or, you know, any of these others, ETH is going to get swallowed up by layer two's. All the transaction volumes are going to eventually just be on layer twos. No one really wants to use layer one because too expensive and too slow. And then that just gets more centralized as you go off the layer stack. Bitcoin will just stay in a class of its own as long as, It's proof of work, and it will scale alongside AI. So I'm long-term bullish on Bitcoin.

Even though there might be pullbacks in the next six months, eight months, the market is going to do what, you know, speculators or people coming in and out or, you know, different Black Swan events might happen. But 10, 15 years from now, I'm keeping my cold storage and staying in Bitcoin. Yep. I think the only difference between you and I on that regard is, is I think that the markets are always perverse and always surprise people, and the surprise would be to the upside at this point. That's really the only thing I think, but in the long term, I think we end up in the same place, and so be it. You know, we'll see. William, I know you're not going to let that insult go unanswered. Sorry, I got distracted for a second. Yeah, can I remind you that Ryan basically said it's going to be eaten by layer twos. Whatever. I'm the best response I've heard yet. I'm not going to say anything because it's not, it's whatever.

We did have a couple. I think relatively big news stories. I mean, the CFTC looking to bring leverage to American crypto exchanges, obviously. But then also, I don't know if you saw this, but Coinbase launches platform for individual investors to buy tokens before they're listed on its exchanges. Yeah, I saw that. I hadn't dug into the details. Does anybody you know what that really means? It's not security tokens.

We're talking still, you know, utility tokens, commodity tokens, whatever. but before they actually list it. So this is like a pre-sale platform. A pre-sale platform. Wow. That's fascinating. And how are they going to, how are they going to possibly deal

with the conflict of interest question? Or are they basically just going to say the things with the most volume that by definition deserves to be on our exchange? I mean, that's a fascinating question. I'm just curious. Yeah, I don't know. I guess we'll have to.

to dig into the mechanics as anybody know, if not totally cool because I don't know how much has been announced. Yeah, I have no clue. I mean, I literally looked. I had clicked on the journal story during Macro Monday, but realized that I really can't be reading and responding to Mike and you at the same time. So I haven't had a chance to read it and dig in. Just curious anybody else.

Yeah, yeah, I just thought of something, if you want to be cute. It's like saying that the Walmart is going to be eaten by Sam's Club. That's all I'm going to say. That's funny. Ryan, you're up. They're owned by the same. Sam's Club owns. It's part of the same network.

Yeah, exactly. Ryan, legacy or real hand? No, real hand. Real hand. So, I mean, we've seen the business. model with pre-listing and fundraising throughout the years. Coinlist was one of the bigger ones I've seen, and they have a great platform. It really seems like Coinbase might be targeting platforms like that.

So I'd imagine it's going to come across something very similar to what Coinlist has done. That makes sense. That is logical. I want to go back to one thing. Someone said something about Ripple and the cult or XRP in the cult. And that was, by the way, an intentional miss. For years, years, Ripple because of the SEC suit and everything kept saying and everyone kept trying to distinguish between Ripple the company and XRP, the token.

Today, the incentives have changed completely to where the company wants to promote the token by words because they own so much of it and it's so helpful to their balance sheet and the community cheers everything that the company does so the company is building a real business like a very real business in terms of bringing custody prime brokerage not just for crypto but FX prime brokerage together with hidden road while it's et cetera trying to build a vertically integrated business that is on the scale of for lack of a better word in many respects the institutional business that coinbase has that's a very real business none of that has a damn thing to do with xrp except for two things

one there will be some products that might use the ledger but not really clear how much demand that will cause. And two, XRP is enormously important to their balance sheet as collateral.