The Wolf Of All Streets - Debating Solana | CPI Disappoints | BTC Breaks $50K | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

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Hey guys, Simon, how are you? I am very well, Mario. How are you? Good, good. Why very well today? Well, actually not very well. The world's gone crazy. But Bitcoin kind of keeps you sane at the same time as the whole world is blowing each other up. So what in the world is bothering you today, Simon? I'm very disturbed by the Palestine situation. The attack on Rafah. Rafa? Yeah, definitely.

The attack on Rafa, that's pretty heartbreaking. Absolutely. And the fact it started during the Super Bowl was just a bit of insult to injury. Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, that's really getting the better of me. It seems on the Houthi side, just from a financial perspective, it seems to have quieted there. A positive note, again, if you want to look at CPI numbers

and the global economy. Is that a fair statement? I don't think they're going to let off, but I guess there's a lot of aggression on that one from UK and US. It seems to have worked because I haven't seen any reports. I just look at my account. The team isn't tweeting anything about the Houthis before. It was like the talk of town every day.

So I'm guessing it's kind of quieted down after the airstrike. Yeah, the tit for tat seems to be looking for what the next move is. But yeah, it seems to have calmed down a little bit. But yeah, all eyes are on Rafa at the moment all right let's kick off the numbers i hope someone from the if we get the our etf experts to join us today to get an update there because the numbers are pretty impressive but let's kick it off with us there it's two important stories you've got btc breaking 50k and then you've got the cpi numbers coming in ryan will be joining us in a bit scott could jump in he's a bit sick today was very was very sick today. But I got the CPI numbers

and we got Peter here. Peter, do you want to give us an overview on the numbers? They are slower than the previous 3.4 that we had last month, 3.1 for January, but it was expected at 2.9. So the markets didn't like it too much.

Maybe Peter can give us an overview. Yeah, I mean, you know, we're overcooked on all these markets but a bitcoin nasdaq you know we've had big runs and so you get a little bit of news that uh not quite as dicey as the market looks for you get corrections and you know we shouldn't be surprised the fact that we're seeing well i'm surprised at the amount of weakness we've had in the stock market i wouldn't have expected it to really tank like this but uh bitcoin i'm not as surprised it's just some profit taking we were up a long way and you had a lot of formal buyers and so you've got a

natural correction in bitcoin nothing surprising there before getting into bitcoin could you give us how did the equities markets react and why is it surprising to you? Well, I just wouldn't have surprised, I wouldn't have expected something sharp down. You know, this is a pretty fair-sized sell-off

that I think we're seeing. I don't know where, I'm running a little bit behind here today, but I don't know what the NASDAQ is right now. It was down sharply when I saw it early,

250 or so. Maybe somebody can chime in and nasdaq is down one point okay yeah that's pretty good shake out so i'm um i got stopped out of a position today in nasdaq i got got stopped out of a position today in Russell. So, you know, I left some blood on the table today in stocks. I'm now flat. So, you know, generally speaking, when bombs start falling and they're throwing grenades around, I want to get into the trenches. So I crawl back into the trenches. Long term trends, I see no change there, either in stocks or in crypto. But sometimes when we get a big shakeout like today, seldom is it a one day and it's over. Normally speaking, you get one hard down day, you're going to get more.

You were talking about Bitcoin when I jumped in. Your thoughts on Bitcoin's price reaction? I think we broke 50K. I think we broke it today again. No, we almost broke it today. We broke it yesterday. And now we're back down. I think we peaked at 50,238. I forgot my numbers correctly and now we're down to 48 700 after as low as 48 500 after the cpi numbers came in now your thoughts on bitcoin's price reaction um we could see uh you know we just had 20 correction in bitcoin i wouldn't be surprised to see that it would do really nothing to the longer term trends but uh there's no reason for me all my bitcoin models remain remain up and so as long as they remain up i remain in an ownership position so i just think you had a lot of people come in here and at first they didn't believe uh the etf bullishness but yet the market remained firm and you had a lot of uh a lot of formal buying

that came in to push the market probably from the mid 40s up over 50 and now we're just seeing some natural profit taking come in and you know we'll blow the formal buyers out and mark will be healthy again but we could slip back down 43 to 45. I would think that there would be really good support there. Yeah, I'll see if I can get Danish up as well to give us an update on the finance space he did earlier covering the CPI numbers. And while waiting for Danish to come up, if he can, Alex, your thoughts on, I want to kind of go back to the Bitcoin breaking the 50K level, just for the audience to understand how important that is. That's the first time in more than two years that we hit about 50K. And so Bitcoin has been above 50K for only 144 days in

its entire history. Now, looking at the entire history is a bit misleading, which gives you an idea that we haven't spent too much time above 50K. And then the greed and fear index is at extreme greed at the moment, it's at 79. That's the highest again since, what are we now, 2024? Since November 2021. I'm just going to give you an idea of how frothy the markets are. Alex, go ahead. Alex Miller. Yeah.

And then we'll go to Alex Thorne. Go ahead, Miller. I would say I'm pretty optimistic about what's been driving it. I think we saw a very interesting pattern with the etfs launches where you know you obviously had a huge amount of run-up from like 30k into all the way up to like 46 48 that i think was driven by pretty pure speculation uh as to what uh as to you know where they were going to go and then of, of course, everyone expects a massive pop. It doesn't come. So everyone sells back off. We dropped down to like 39.

But then I think we've just seen very, very consistent inflows over the last few weeks. Obviously, initially, you had the clear out of people getting out of their GBDC position. But everyone's just having like nice, steady nine figure-day net inflow growth across this whole set. And I think it's creating a lot of upward buy pressure that's gradually pushing things back up. Alex, what do you think of the narrative that Bitcoin breaking 50K, it just means it will dominate. The narrative will be the Bitcoin narrative will dominate the media and now i've got all the um all of tradfi it's a lot easier for them to um to to get into bitcoin so you've got bitcoin breaking 50k dominating the media i've got the etf there as an entry point for tradfi um so it's just a perfect place to be yeah i mean i think i think the tradfi integration is a far bigger deal than like

the media buzz at any given time like media buzz does not work well for the fundamental aspects of crypto long term like media buzz is what drives a bunch of like shitty altcoin scams or people like getting ripped off um boring is good for bitcoin and i think just it gets slowly making its way into people's portfolios getting ignored as it does along the way like that is the kind of growth and increase that sticks around for a really long time alex son yeah i think the the flows have been pretty impressive over the last you know week and a half i think most people were surprised to see us you know lift from 38.5 to 50 in just 20 days i mean in myself included i think i mean that's a 30 move over less than a month. And kind of a quiet one, I think very few people, you know, big traders

involved in this very few, like, I think, yes, if you're on, you know, Bitcoin or crypto Twitter, you saw it, you watched it. But institutional traders I talked to were caught off guard by this. I think, you know, yeah. And I mean, when you move 30% in 20 days, and you rip i think you know yeah and i mean when you move 30 in 20 days and you rip from you know 48 to 50 uh almost 50 and a half like you know in one day like a correction is fine i mean uh you know and i wouldn't call this a correction yet but you know echoing peter's sentiment like it's totally reasonable to come back down into the mid 40s or something like that would be totally reasonable. That still represent a pretty strong longer term uptrend. So I don't think a lot of the institutions are here.

I mean, when you when you look, I think LPL had said that they're not they're beginning a 90 day review process for the Es before they let their advisors on their platform at it. So the flow story is really just getting started. That's why I've been frankly surprised, obviously happily surprised with the flows that we've already seen. When, as I've said on this show many times, the primary audience and addressable market for these products is the wealth management sector that has had no way to put end clients into Bitcoin exposure until these ETFs, and they are still not here. So look, I think it's intact. I think it's incredibly bullish. I mean, the amount of inflows without most advisor platforms even offering these products yet has been really astounding. So I think it's quite bullish. And, you know, CPI,

you know, it's not that bad a number. I agree with Peter also. I'm pretty surprised to see that, you know, equity markets off, you know, between one and 2% on really not too bad a number. But, you know, rates traders are repricing now just 100 bps by the end of the year in terms of Fed cuts. So, you know, there's a it's a I would say it's still a tricky macro environment overall, which will affect, you know, risk assets. And frankly, it's probably, you know, if Bitcoin remains a risk asset, then it will certainly affect risk Bitcoin, if Bitcoin becomes extremely widely adopted, and is on every Bloomberg terminal screen of every advisor and every portfolio manager,

well, it'll probably be affected also because it'll be traded more like a macro asset anyway. So, you know, I think steady as she goes primarily, but it's been, I think, quite positive, the ETF story so far. Danish? So, respectfully disagree. I think here's where the bears come. The big question is today, will Bitcoin act like gold or is it going to act like growth? And it seems like initial indications are it's doing me. So you're saying, I think you're cutting out Donna.

She's saying it's not acting. I don't know if anyone else, Dan. He's saying it's not acting. I don't know if anyone else can't hear him, but it's not acting. Yeah, go ahead, Dan. He said it's doing like neither. It's doing neither. You're cutting in and out. The last word is doing neither. Yeah, go ahead.

If you guys can hear me now, can everybody hear me? Just want to make sure. Perfect. Yeah, go ahead. It's ranging. Yeah. So it's doing neither. It's really kind of ranging right now.

We're watching to see what happens. I can tell you right now that the bull case is going to take a major breather. I disagree so strongly with the CPI comments. This CPI beat is a big beat, not because of just the fact that core, that headline was higher than expected, not just because of the, that headline was higher than expected, not just because of the fact that core was higher than expected, but really because of the fact that super core was high, which by the way, is one of the most important indicators that they use inside Fed meetings was up by 0.85%. This is not a drill. This is month over month. This is not a drill.

We have a super core problem. Really a big issue. It may be reaccelerating. This is not a drill. We have a super core problem. This is really a big issue. I agree with that. Inflation looks like it may be re-accelerating. This is not just long tail inflation. Sorry, bulls. This is going to give you a little bit of pause. And I think it's an opportunity to sit down and say, okay, are we just going to see some consolidation? Are we just going to see things slow down just a little bit before they go back up. Look, you can look at the RSI for stocks like Nvidia and others. They're crazy overbought right now. There's a lot of room to fall. I expect this to happen at a rate that is just incredibly dramatic. And we will see. I think the bears, the bulls have been out on parade and it's time for the hangover.

That's what's happening right now. I agree with Danish, and I don't agree with Danish often, but in this case, I must say, I was very disappointed with the CPI numbers. Sorry, did we lose people? Yeah, Ryan is speaking, Danish. I'll bring you down and back up. Go ahead, Danish. Go ahead, Ryan. Yeah, so I agree with Danish.

I think the numbers were a big miss, like significant, significant miss. And I think, you know, if Jerome Powell's waiting for inflation to prove that it's coming down, I don't think it's looking very good. I mean, you've got the Suez Canal problem, which is causing freight to be a lot more expensive. And, yeah, you can say, you know, it's not going to affect the U.S. as much. But the reality is there are massive, massive, massive increases in the price of shipping, et cetera, et cetera. And I don't think that it's smooth sailing like we thought.

And you saw it. The probabilities of a rate cut went down. And now the market's saying, look, actually, we're not going to get a rate cut in May. And you know, maybe not even in June, 53% chance in June, but I mean, yeah, I think, I think that I think the market's getting a bit of a reality check. Also my prediction, I will repeat, repeat it. Sorry. I just want to make sure no rate cuts in 24. It's complete BS.

It's not going to happen. Sorry. It's not going to happen. There's no way. What? Zero rate cuts in 24. No, that's it's not going to happen sorry it's not going to happen there's no way what zero rate cuts in 24 no that's i mean i think that's a little bit we're going to see a re-acceleration i've said this before i said it in 23 by the way that was the only prediction in 22 that i was actually right so i want to be clear i expect the same in 24 i'll go a step further and say they might be a rank higher of like 0.25 at this point. What? I got to say, normally I'm a bull on stuff and I looked at the details on this report

and I'm really not happy with it. It's slightly freaked. I think the thing that's undervalued in a lot of commentary I've seen is that so much of the year-to-year improvements are because like the first half, the end of 2022 and the first half of 23 were really spicy. Like I think CPI was 6.4 in January of 23. And that falling out of the report is giving you like this false drop. But I think if you really look at core CPI in particular, it's an improvement from where it was year over year, but it's moving in the wrong direction for

the last three months. And so I think, yeah, Danish, I think is really kind of, I don't think I'm quite as bearish as he is and that we're going to see like a total reacceleration, but I'll definitely agree. We're not seeing rate cuts in the next six months. And if it doesn't improve, I absolutely think we might at some point at a later meeting going up. Joe. Yeah. I mean,

I'm, I'm on the opposite side here. I was on Donna's show, uh, last time the CPI numbers came up, and I'm like, I wouldn't be surprised if they go up. Again, because of what's happening in the Suez Canal, and I think a lot of people are discounting how much that increases inflation.

But haven't things improved there? We were just talking about it earlier. I mean, I'm not seeing many Houthi attacks anymore. But we won't see that for another month or two, though, Mario. That's the problem. What we're seeing now is what happened last month, But we won't see that for another month or two though, Mario. That's the problem. What we're seeing now is what happened last month, not what's happening today. So the fact that prices increased and things like that, that has a lot to do with that.

So as soon as that goes away, there's going to be a correction and you're going to see down. And all the people saying, you know, we think there might be acceleration would be like, oh, we were wrong. You know, if you look at what Bitcoin performed, it's up 30% in three weeks. If it goes down 20%, we're up 10% for a month. That's incredible performance. Like, I don't understand the quick shift to a bearish sentiment if you look at what's happening around the world, to be honest. Simon? around the world to be honest simon yeah um i agree on on um the the bitcoin one is an interesting

one right now because we're seeing three different sources of buy pressure that's combating some of the selling pressure from minor miners and all the bitcoin that sit in the market um you've obviously got the self-custody narrative which is all the people that sit in the market. You've obviously got the self-custody narrative, which is all the people that are concerned about the geopolitical situation, trying to de-risk themselves from banks, trying to understand self-custody. You've got the usual Bitcoin narrative that got us here in the first place. But we've added two different pressures. One is that now there is a Bitcoin ETF, as we've been talking about for

months and months and months. There's lots of people that are ringing their brokers and their wealth managers and saying, when are you going to support the Bitcoin ETF? And they're going and getting it signed off by their compliance. And then that's taking that process. And then eventually people are saying, I'm going to shut my retirement account if you can't support this and I'm going to be switching. So there's an incredible amount of pressure, which seems to be more of a steady flow. And the number is not only steady, the ETF inflows were 500 million for today and we're already at one point. What are we up to? Four point one billion in just over a month. Yeah. I'm just going to give give an audience an

idea now remember ran not sure where ran is but he's but he he said earlier and ran was the bear at the beginning and him and scott were battling it out just before giving you the mic back time and ran's like look if we get five to six billion in the first three months that's very bullish very very successful and we're already at 4.1 billion it's just over a month um so the number is speaking itself indeed so you know you'd expect some correlation but with an uncorrelated asset that's backing it and so that's an interesting trend but the other one is the debt market so we've now got an interesting model emerged which is that when people are fear off-boarding if they go they're buying stables

you know tether's about to hit 100 billion100 billion of market cap. The higher the rates are, or the more steady the rates are, the more their profit is. So they're making about 10% of the profit of Deutsche Bank at the moment. They posted a $3.5 billion profit. And they're committing to buying Bitcoin with their excess reserves. So the higher rates get or the more steady it gets, the more Bitcoin buying pressure is coming from those in the stable market. So you've got a debt market play, an equity market play and a self-custody play that are all intersecting to create this really steady flow of buying, moving into the halving as the miners need to sell off to try and beef up their balance sheets i do want to go to to dan before going to peter again dan and scott if you can become a co-host i can get up joe as well to discuss the altcoin market and what we could see next day dan just your thoughts on the numbers we just mentioned the etf numbers earlier your thoughts what we've seen so far? I think Ron, my colleague, just joined too, if you want to get him up here.

You know, I haven't, frankly, had a chance to look too closely at this morning's data, the CPI data. You know, we've been really slammed here this morning with this new article that came out regarding the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act, DAMLA, the bill that I think obviously a lot of folks here are familiar with from Senator Warren, led by Senator Warren. We put out our second letter today. We could chat about that if you'd like. Yeah, give us a quick recap. I think we're not talking about regulatory risks much,

but then again, every time I hear a bill being led by Senator Warren, as soon as you mentioned Senator Warren, I remember that it's almost certainly going to fail, no? Well, you know, unfortunately it's got a little bit, it has some traction, but we're working on the headwinds for it. But high level, this is going to impose some pretty serious BSA requirements on new digital asset entities. It's going to really provide

Treasury Secretary with some pretty broad discretion. And this was really the request of Deputy Secretary Adiyamu. And it's going to require digital asset kiosk operators to collect identifying information on their customers' counterparty. I mean, high level, it's very, very, very troubling. And if you get a chance, I can share with you our letter that we put out. It's the second letter that we did. The first one we did was before the holidays, and we got a lot of pushback from Senator Warren's office. Not too big of a surprise there,

but we're fighting for this serious issue, and we can get in more into it if you'd like. Yeah, we'll do it. I'm just going to fix my headset. David, we'd love your thoughts. I see you came up as well. I think you want to dine with us. Going back to the CPI numbers, one of the two main topics today. We'd love to get your thoughts on the numbers, David, and how important it is and what you think the Fed will do next later this year.

Yeah, thank you, Mario. I'm not going to say anything particularly exciting. I don't think the numbers, Danish will disagree with me. I don't think the numbers are that big of a deal, frankly. I think we're still going in the same direction of a soft landing. I think it's going to take longer. I think it's going to be a little bit rockier. I believe that when you land a plane, the first 10,000 feet of drop is pretty uneventful, unless you're in turbulence.

But landing all three wheels of the plane at the exact same time becomes difficult. And so therefore, that's where we're at at this point. I think we continue to go in that trajectory. I think any sell-off today, especially a serious sell-off, I mean, we're down across the board. All the averages are down effectively the same amount. Anything that's on an outsized basis down, especially tech, I'm a buyer of. It's interesting to see. I trade some, you know, pretty volatile stuff. You know, the ultra short real estate ETF, SRS, you know, is depending on how you look at it, up a lot today. And I expect that, and I've said this

before, I'll continue to play this tune, anything that's interest rate sensitive and anything that's highly levered and anything that's illiquid is in the shitter in this market. It's going to be bad for a while. We spoke about on the show this morning that 2023 was the worst year in 10 to 15 years, depending on the asset class, of distributions on venture capital funds and on private equity funds. And I think institutional investors are not going to go ahead and invest more unless they're bottom fishers. But there's already a bunch of distressed money that's already been put out there. There's already distressed real estate buying articles that are out there. I think they're way too early. Maybe if you're buying the most class A stuff, or if you're as crazy as the fellow

that's picking up office space in San Francisco that was written up yesterday in the journal, that may be an outlier. But for the most part, I don't think we've seen the bottom yet. There's going to be more capitulation, I believe, in the illiquid asset classes. Real estate is easy to see, but I do believe in private equity and VC, these companies that need capital, ongoing capital, try to continue to raise liquidity. We're going to see failures. We're going to see secondary sales of LP interests as well in funds like these. And I just believe that we're going to be in a higher interest rate environment for longer. Landing this plane is not going to be absolutely so easy in a short period of time by the Fed. The runway continues

to get longer and longer. And every day or every quarter or every month of reading that we get that elongates the runway is going to make it harder and harder for people to hold on to those highly levered, highly interest rate sensitive assets and enterprises. And so therefore, that's where I would be short. And then long, you know, when the market pukes on not so disturbing information like today, you know, I would be a buyer. Peter, Joe? Yeah, let me make a comment on Bitcoin. Then I'm going to make a comment on the interest rates. First on Bitcoin, for those guys that keep up charts, if you look at the chart of Bitcoin, we've been in an up channel since November of 2022.

And Bitcoin reached the upper limits of that rising channels. It's not surprising that we've turned back from where we are. If we go back into the midpoint of that channel, we're talking 42, 43 in that area. I think that's highly expected. Finally, on interest rates, I've commented here every time we've been on the fact that the market had grossly overpriced the December 2024 SOFR futures, secured overnight financing rates were priced at 150 basis points different than where the Fed was. And it was the best trade on the board is to be short those sulfurs because they were anticipating six rate cuts between now and December,

which was just ridiculous. Well, we're still four rate cuts different in the summer sulfur contract. It still can be shorted. So the expectations on interest rate declines were just over the, just ridiculous. So, you know, I think what we're seeing here in the sulfur, these 24 sulfur contract will continue. Still 100 basis points off from where the fed is right now still expecting four rate cuts this year and i think that's wrong joe i'm gonna go to you then i'll go to the rest of the panel just going back to to bitcoin's price whether we'll break 50k um you know do we still have joey perfect joe's here as well to give us a an update on what that

means for altcoins as well. And probably ask Alex that same question. Alex Thorne. Joe, go ahead. Yeah. Just to mention the whole CPI really, really quickly, Mark. I posted in the purple pill a chart from Truflation. And you can see a huge correction after the whole Suez Canal issue has been fixed. It's more real-time data.

Their numbers aren't correct, but their trajectory normally is correct. As for the chart, I've been posting the same chart since October of buy and sell points. We broke the Fibonacci yesterday. It's now retesting the Fibonacci. Will it go below it or will it bounce up? We don't know. We'll know today. But Danish had made a comment earlier, like, I want to see if Bitcoin trades like gold today to see if it really fits the narrative. You can't judge an asset's performance in one day

on what it does. I mean, like I said, it ran up 30%. It's now testing to see if there's a support line there. If there is, then we're going to head higher. But there's normally a correction with this. I'm not saying we can't go down 20%. We can, but we'll see it if it breaks the line today or not and go from there. This is to talk about the charts. Bryant, maybe give us an update on the charts as well before I go to the next topic. Peter?

What, Bitcoin? Talking Bitcoin? Crypto Bitcoin. Yeah, I mean, it's not surprising that we have resistance above 50. Not surprised at all. So I think we could easily pull back into the mid, probably not

the low 40s, but definitely the mid 40s, and that still remains in a solid uptrend. So, hey, nobody should be surprised that we have a down day in Bitcoin from time to time. Yeah, but if you look at the, you know, we were at 50K a couple of years ago, and just looking at the markets now versus then, I probably want to go to Alex on that one, Alex Thorne.

Is that, you know, back then we had the Terra Luna Ponzi, we had FTX selling paper BTC, and I'm looking at Mitchell's tweet here. Precise or fastest rate hike in history, and then we've got all the ads, the crypto ads at the Super Bowl. Now you've got no crypto ads in the Super Bowl. I think we're at zero. We're just a couple of months away from the halving. The rate cut's coming in later this year potentially, hopefully hopefully. I got 70% of supply held by diamond hands. So there's not much noise and

there's not much fluff, but the fundamentals look stronger than ever. And obviously the ETF story, the ETF narrative as well. Alex, we'd love to get your thoughts on what we could see throughout this year and post halving as well sure yeah i mean it obviously looks meaningfully different than the last time we were in the 50s you know that was basically like 2021 um and it looks very different from a year ago i think we all know that right but here's some other ways it looks different, right? You have significant growing volume and share of volume for derivatives happening in regulated venues, right? Even Darabit is slowly starting to lose some share on options. You could imagine that if the ETFs, if the CFTC allows options to happen on the ETFs, which I think most people expect they will, that that would further, you know,

tradify eyes the options market, at least around Bitcoin. So you have a professionalizing market. You had players that were giving out uncollateralized loans that have gone bankrupt and now those bankruptcies are even resolving, right? So, but you do some things to pay attention to, attention to right you have you still have some overhang right somebody mentioned before the miners i i've been being people have been asking me about minor selling

like historically for years it's simply never been that much flow when you compare it to you know daily traded volume a major capit capitulation event like happened in early 2023 and in 2022, I should say, that could be meaningful. You have this overhang from Genesis trying to sell these trust shares, GBDC and ETH, that's maybe like one and a half yards. But they've been slowing. They've been slowing. I think they were at 95 million today.

Yeah, you're talking about GBDC outflows, but I'm talking about the Genesis bankruptcy has another 1.5 yards of GBDC and ETH that they want to sell. I mean, there's some overhang, right? The US government probably has a bit over 3 billion that could sell, obviously, of GOX, which we still don't think will happen

until this summer or in the fall. And of course, that's distributions billion that could sell obviously of gox um which you know we still don't think will happen until this summer or um or in the fall and of course that's distributions that may not be selling we think celsius already distributed completely and we didn't notice any if there was selling from that people that wanted to take gain since it was locked then i don't think the market noticed so um yeah to your point now i mean i think it is true if the I think one of the big narratives that I was have been watching is what happened in May 2020 with historic money printing and quantitative easing coinciding perfectly with the Bitcoin having the third Bitcoin having. That's what led investors like Paul Tudor Jones to bet on gold and then say, wait a sec, if I'm going to bet on gold, then isn't Bitcoin the fastest horse in that type of trade? I would love from a narrative standpoint for that May Fed rate cut date to hold. It's true. The market is pricing that almost certainly won't be a cut because of course we have the halving coming in April. Historically, Bitcoin bull markets haven't really started until even half a year after the halving.

But I think with the marketing and education kicking off for these ETFs, I mean, they really are. I can tell you I'm working on plenty of this for our ETF, like explaining the value proposition and story of Bitcoin. If you have that marketing and education hitting right around the having, I think, and it was coupled with monetary easing, you know, on an arbitrary human basis, comparing that to the automated, credibly neutral basis of Bitcoin, you know, tightening that that that has an enormous power to draw stark contrast and sort of capture investor mindshare. I think, you know, it's obvious that the market is pricing, you know, cuts later in the year now. And so whether or not that happens, it might not be the perfect setup. But, you know, if you think

of the advisor and wealth management platforms turning on ETF access after three, six months, and then also in that window is the having, and also in that window is Fed cutting, right? It starts to get kind of to be a quite unique setup for Bitcoin, let alone you throw in the possibility in May of ETH ETFs, ETH spot ETFs. So I would say like that's how I'm thinking about through the rest of the year. It's more of a flows and sort of fundamental like story narrative driven thesis through the year it's more of a flows and um sort of fundamental like story narrative driven um thesis through the year but you know i would say somewhat weakened obviously by today's cpi but we've seen we've seen jumps over the last six months that turned out to be blips and i i agree

with what some have said that i think it's it's certainly premature to like think this is the giant pivot but bears you know bears are like, but bears are like clocks, right? I mean, they're right once every 12 hours. I'll read out a comment by Kerry Hobo. He's referring to Danish, who hosts the Finance Space, is one of my favorite speakers, that, man, this dude is always so depressing, the Peter Schiff of Crypto Town Hall. So, Dan, I wish you were here, Danish. I'd love you to hear that. But Joe, I want you to add on to what

we had Alex just say, and maybe kind of slowly move it to Alts as well, and talk about the Solana narrative as well, dominating crypto, and how ETH is doing, and whether the ETH ETF is going to spice up an altcoin rally as well. Sure, yeah.

I think it's a pretty simple trade right now. And it's like inflation is still kind of that macro core narrative. And then there's a bunch of micro stuff around that. So starting kind of with macro, which leads down the rabbit hole a little bit, is we had the 10-year back in October have an interim top, right? And it's been, it came down pretty consistently. And that's when, you know, stocks started to move. That's when the crypto market started to move. Obviously, there's micro narratives around the ETFs that are going on. But, you know, Monday, you know,

it was December last year, like 10-year kind of has an interim bottom, right? And market continues to rip because I think a lot of people were thinking, okay, rates are going to start coming down. You know, they were kind of hoping and wishing. And the trade into this report today was, you know, we think that inflation is going to cool, right? Everyone's wrong. And I think we're going to start to see a little correction there. Again, Bitcoin has its own micro market narrative with the ETF, and it's got its own kind of like bullish. It's got some tailwinds there. But I think at the end of the day, all this means right now is a slight rotation into the into the alt market. Right. And I think you're that's exactly what you're seeing. And, you know, some of the names that people might recognize,

you've got a cash network up 11% today. You've got Stacks continuing its run. It's sitting at $2.12, past the $2 range, slightly above some comfort level there. You've got Ethereum up 3%, 26, 38. Does the Frankl Templeton joining the spot ETF, the Ethereum spot ETF race, does that have much of an impact? Yep, that was the next on my little bullet list. Like Templeton filing for the spot ETF, that's bullish.

And so you're going to see, I think, a very similar narrative play out as we saw with the Bitcoin ETF, right? A lot of bullishness, a lot of strength into potentially some sort of approval at some point, some cooling, let things kind of get figured out. And then you're going to see people just barrel into that thing, just like you're seeing with the Bitcoin ETF right now. And so, you know, but I think the longer term narrative here is, you know, if Bitcoin continues to do what we think it's going to do into the halving, you are going to see some of these kind of standout names. A lot of the names I think that people have recognized over the last couple of years. Solana, like you mentioned, we're above 100, we're at 110, so up 2% today. That ecosystem's been really on fire from the community standpoint. And you're seeing a lot of developers go and launch kind of meme-ish type tokens over there.

And, you know, which, you know, you're always bullish on just because the community drives, you know, like we say at Lunar Crush, without a community, there's no crypto. So you're going to see a lot of that. But then you're seeing a huge narrative building on Bitcoin, ordinals, a lot of, you know, there's like a lot of fundraising that's happening over there that you would have never even thought of

a year and a half ago. People raising seven to $10 million, like a taproot wizard to go and build out on ordinals. It's pretty crazy. So, you know, Arbitrum has also been doing well. I think a lot of developers are going over there. They like the L2.

They like the roll-up. They like the speed that's happening there. You know up a percent and a half today, up to $2. So I think you're just going to continue to kind of see this rotation happening. And every time there's this kind of blip downwards, unless there's some sort of other major macro event that kind of washes the whole market out, you're going to actually see a nice kind of growth and consistent growth. Yeah, I was going through the comments and I'd agree the comments kind of washes the whole market out, you're going to actually see a nice kind of growth and consistent growth. Yeah, I was going through the comments and I'd agree the comments kind of reflect the fear and greed index,

which is an extreme greed at 79. Tiger, Noah, Adrian, you guys have been quiet. Anything to add to the discussion? Probably pretty much anything. We've got good to get different perspectives. I think what's not appreciated, I've heard a few times, but i've been saying it for a bit it's like in the same way that um like the spy and the triple q's are like perpetual t-wops on you know the big six or big five

i don't want to say the big seven but i really think it's the big six or big five i don't know if i'm gonna say the big seven but i really think it's the big six or big five uh you know the bitcoin etfs are perpetual t-wops on on bitcoin right um and i've said in the past to you guys that that suppresses volatility over time so like there is a passive bid now so like you know i don't i don't think that's appreciated enough and now it's included in all these asset allocation strategies for these asset managers so um there's always a bid you know there's always going to be a bid now so um like it always seems like when there's a dip people like to have these conversations you know last time i remember i was speaking on a space everyone was talking about solana being down and

how it's a piece of shit well it's up 20 or more since then so um you know we're we're i don't think you have to over complicate things uh you You know, we'll have dips, of course, you know, they're always going to be dips. I mean, even in bull markets, right? So just, I don't think we need to overcomplicate it. That's all. Can I push back on Joe real quick, just the whole Solana narrative to try to help people understand,

like I'm from the perspective solana if you look at the valuation of solana it's super high at the moment in comparison to other things i don't doubt you can speculate and make money i just see things like avax and things like that which have a lot of room to grow when you look at the market cap hey tiger sorry your your mic's hot. And then you look at active wallets on Solana and you see 700,000, where at the peak was reached in 2021 with 3.6 million. I just feel like there's a lot of hurt left to deal with. And the meme coins are fixing some of that. And I think they've been smart in doing that.

I just don't get the narrative yet on what they're going to do. It's just a very low fee transaction chain that isn't going to bring a lot of wealth to people from my perspective. I'm going to tell you what the narrative is. It's a bunch of people. So everything you said might be true, but the people who actually use the chain don't give a shit about any of that. Do you think the people who use the chain care about the valuation of Solana? Do you understand the type of people that are using this chain every day? They're a bunch of degenerates who are just looking for the next shitcoin to eight, man. Like, no one gives a flying fuck about that.

Like, I'm serious, though. though like you guys think i'm being funny like that's what's going on like you're not seeing what's happening on chain like there's a there's a hundred new shit coins every day that people are just throwing soul at like nobody cares you know like yeah the valuation might be high it's cheap chain but i don't think that you can argue that like from a consumer app standpoint solana is probably a better chain for those applications than ethereum i think ethereum is like an enterprise great solution that is better because there's better security this is more decentralization than than uh than solana in my opinion but i think that the people who use solana every day you know they care about uh speed and the cost of transactions so let me get let me go to noah and alex I think we've got your hands up, guys. bsc can't do that avalanche can't do and where i struggle with solana is that they say because of

the speed and because of the high throughput it's it's prime for defy well if you're if your chain goes dead for five hours and no one can get out of their positions and their market fluctuations and then what are you supposed to do about your um when the chain went down nobody cared i'm just gonna be honest with you no one no one cared because most of the defy activity is having an arbitrage right my point i'm trying to make is that right now people are shooting shit coins left and right on solano when that punch bowl dries out and we've seen these punch bowls dry out then eventually. Sure. I mean, I think, I think under, under credit on this one, like, yes, anything you can do on Solana,

you can do on AVAX or Cardona or a bunch of bunch of other places. But when you're talking about, you know, I'm just going to group this entire generation of like, you know, the 2019 new chains that started up as faster, cheaper L1s. You got to distinguish in some way. And like the reason Solana is sitting above all the other ones is they have done a better job marketing and positioning themselves, not with end users, but with the degenerates, to quote Tiger, which I think is an accurate description, but like the trading degenerates and the developers, right? And to ignore the effectiveness of the execution by that team and just be like, oh, well, like anyone could go do it anywhere else. No, like, you know, there's also a thousand fricking AI agents out there.

There's always a thousand competitors in any new technology space. And your ability to effectively pull in that initial user group, create momentum, and define a brand, they need to fix the fact that the chain can just go online for five hours and that it is as centralized as it is. But again, I think as long as they're there, if they're fast, they're cheap, and people don't worry about it, they are in a position to do very well as this alternative, faster, cheaper chain. Ultimately, I spend my time building in Bitcoin. I think that's where almost all the DeFi and everything is going to move back to, because there is a compelling reason to be in the Bitcoin ecosystem. It's better, it's more trusted. But there is going to be some number of developers

who want to be out in kind of the new chain world. And I'd say Solana is far and away the front runner now and like they could blow it. There's things that could go wrong, but I don't think it's by any means a given that they will. But Alex, wasn't the last cycle very, I would assume, very D-gen driven? Like the rise of the D-gen, almost the last full cycle. And this next cycle, I don't think that's what it's going to be. It's not going to be a bunch of young kids who treat it like get rich fast. I don't know. Your thoughts on that before I go to Noah.

I think it still will be by the way i don't i don't think that's ever going to go away in this industry or at least not for that yeah i i think that's a good assessment i think it's i don't think it will be quite as like insanely uh driven as like the nft drive of 21 was and what it did to it um i think every cycle you get a little bit less degen driven as things mature and go in. And again, I think it'll also depend on what ecosystems you're in. If you're playing in, I think this bull run is going to be very heavily Bitcoin driven. We're already starting to see that. And I think the stuff that's getting built on and worked around there

will be to a degree less so, but you're going to have a bunch of people. Yes, absolutely. Like if there's interest and attention and money coming into the crypto ecosystem, just like anywhere else, you're going to get a bunch of DGNs and grifters who are just looking to, you know, create something with upward momentum that people can buy into and they can then pump and dump out of. Yeah, Joe, I'd say you're,

you're always going to have that D-gen side of what's going on. And every chain has some D-gen type meme coins that are happening. I mean, even on Ethereum right now, look at what Polly's doing with like Pond Token and Pork and going up to $100 million valuations overnight on Ethereum, right?

And so you're going to see that. But I think it's like if we kind of go back to what some of the vision was of what these communities could do, and you even think from a Web2 standpoint, creators and people trying to create a community first, it's almost the same thing as doing a campaign where like, hey, we're going to build this new beach chair and it's coming out in six months, you know, help us fundraise for this thing that's going to happen into the future, right? That was a model that has happened for a long time. It's just happening at such a scale now. And people kind of forget they're like, oh, there's no product, there's no utility yet. It's like, well, that's always been done, right? There's always been kind of pulling revenue forward. I mean, look at what even Elon did with like like the you know the cyber truck he's like hey order it now you know they pulled hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue forward on a product that didn't exist i think you're just

seeing that extrapolated across an open decentralized network that like the internet should have always been um and so i you know sometimes it you know it grinds my gears a little bit to hear some of the outsiders talk about that that model um but, you're going to have the D-Gen market. But back to Solana, it's like Solana just has tons of traders. They have a pretty solid trading and trader network that's out there. And those people just love to trade these things. And even when the network goes down, they can still trade on a centralized exchange. So that's kind of where it lands.

Yeah, I mean, i agree with you joe you can build community before you build a product and sometimes that's even better just a lot of them don't build the product um so i think like i just think that like from what i because i've you know i've been very uh meshed in the salon community community the last five, six months. The community's locked in. If they've been using Solana the past five, six months, no one is going to all of a sudden

go to Ethereum. And if there is a competitor to Solana, I know somebody mentioned AVAX. It's definitely not AVAX. I'm going to pump out back for a second but i think say network is is probably one you should keep keep an eye out for um you know it's one i've liked for a while and it's and it's doing okay another one is maybe injective but there's no like there's no real narrative around Injective. I like Injective just because it's sort of in the same bucket as the hot new chain like today is.

But I don't think that AVAX is the competitor to Scythe. Let's go Simon, Noah, and then I think we can wrap it up. Thanks, Joe. Simon? Yeah, I was just going to say, the bit that quite a lot of people miss is that because we're so focused on whether the SEC takes jurisdiction over these token issuers, we forget that

the market over the last two years is now fully regulated. So when you're issuing all these tokens, they're all done by there's virtual asset service providers globally the entire world has a regulatory regime for issuing tokens there's prospectus there's market manipulation rules in europe and the whole industry has completely created a regulatory environment for people issuing tokens and so because they haven't been classified as

security other than in the us and then we got the coinbase case um if the thruffiness of these token issuers was going to die down it hasn't died down because now it is all regulated it all it all has to follow guide i mean right now you, one of the companies I invested in, they got their KYC provider approved by the Dubai regulator, which means that as long as the KYC provider is approved, they don't mind that a bunch of developers are getting together and being completely decentralized. And so all of that regulatory infrastructure

has now said that this is a new asset class and it's allowed to exist everywhere that the SEC doesn't have jurisdiction. Noah? Yeah, I think it was Joe that was speaking about the Ethereum ETF, but this is a question for the panel and maybe a good way to wrap it up. I would love to know what people think about the ETH ETF narrative, or more specifically, how do you think the mainstream is going to receive the ETH ETF narrative versus the Bitcoin ETF narrative. I'm in the camp that Bitcoin is a lot easier to understand. And Bitcoin, to the eyes of an average investor that's

never dabbled in crypto, has achieved product market fit. Whereas Ethereum, you could market it as a world computer and decentralized applications and all this stuff. But I think I have a much easier time explaining Bitcoin around the dinner table to my family and my girlfriend's family than I would ETH. It's actually pretty simple, Noah. You just have to say, you know, Bitcoin is like a digital gold. And then all you have to say is to your friends and family, imagine if you could have invested in the internet when it started. Would you do that? That's what Ethereum is, right? And you could use that for all the other ones that are out there and say, oh, you know, when the internet started, there's actually competitors, right? But the US government decided to, you know, give us the one that we've got. You could say, well, imagine if the internet was reborn and there were a lot of competitors. These are other things that potentially you can allocate to. So I think you're going to see not as big of an allocation, but I think you're still going to see people chasing it hard.

And you're going to see people chasing that yield. Simon, last words. Sorry, last words, Simon. Yeah, I was just going to say, the thing that makes the ETH ETF slightly more challenging, I think it will get through in the end, but it's just the pre-mine, the governance. The governance is just such a major thing.

If all these ETF providers are going to become the holders of all the stakes of the network and then they have influence over over the future of the protocol and then you have hard forks determined by blackrock and various other things i think it's going to be interesting but the narrative is you know you've it's just a simple you know bitcoin is gold and then because you've got the staking side to it, they'll see it as get your cut of the transaction fees because you're able to have the staking yield. So it almost becomes like a debt and equity market with crypto beta, I think is what the narrative will be.

Now, any final quick words? No, that was great. I love the analogy of investing in the internet early. I'll try to share that one around the dinner table and let you know how it goes. Cool. All right, on that point, I think it was a good space, a good discussion,

and hopefully Scott will be feeling better tomorrow and we'll see everyone tomorrow, same time as always. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Joe.