The Wolf Of All Streets - Doge To $1? Bitcoin To 50k? | David Duong (Coinbase) & Chris Inks

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

David Duong, the Head of Institutional Research at Coinbase, along with Chris Inks from Texas West Capital, delve into the recent developments in the cryptocurrency sector, analyzing their influence on the valuation of Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and other digital assets. David Duong: https://twitter.com/Dav1dDuong Chris Inks: https://twitter.com/TXWestCapital ►►MELD MELD will bring to bear the full power of decentralized financial instruments to the masses. Banks are at the heart of the economy, MELD will become a new set of banking tools that are by the people and for the people. 👉 https://www.meld.fi/early-access-apply?source=crypto_banter ►►OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $60,000!  👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Elon Musk rebranded to X. It's no longer Twitter. And people are speculating now, of course, that that means that Dogecoin will be the global reserve currency of X and therefore the global reserve currency of the planet and therefore the most important asset ever to exist on planet Earth and will henceforth be worth $10 a coin. Have my doubts, but we're going to discuss it today and everything else happening in the crypto market. And of course, the prospects for Bitcoin now that it's broken down out of the range. I've got David Young from Coinbase to discuss at the beginning. And then of course, Texas West Capital, Christopher Akes in the back half of the show. Let's go. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of

Wall Street. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and scan your eyeball with an orb right on the like button because i know that all of you in the past two days have rushed to get in line at wherever the arbiter and distributor of eyeball orbs is so that you can get your free world coin even though you don't know what it might actually be worth or what it actually does because obviously obviously the fully diluted valuation of world coin should be more than that of chat gpt and open ai which it was when it opened believe it or not that is an actual fact. I said, I'm just going to go ahead and bring on David. We're going to talk about everything that's happening today. I didn't intend necessarily to go into WorldCoin again,

because we did it yesterday, but I was literally diving in even further yesterday on Twitter spaces. And it opened at a $28 billion valuation, which was probably what Musk should have paid for Twitter, if we're being honest. Maybe he paid $44 billion, but maybe he should have paid about $30 billion and was more than the valuation of OpenAI Chat GPT, also owned by Sam Altman. How broken is our crypto launch tokenomics model? I mean, no one knows what it should be worth and i i'm with you like you boy i can't also say that it shouldn't be worth up to 30 uh you know what i mean like

like it but to your point like i don't know what it does i don't know i can do with this like there's there's you know like there's no measurable way to actually estimate like what the actual value of it should be worth, except that a lot of people speculatively think it should be going up. I have these, uh, these foam earplugs from when I went to Grand Prix, $10 billion.

I say so. Yeah, I say so. It doesn't make any sense. And obviously, listen, so this is, I think it's a continuation of a VC model that's actually starting to somewhat die in crypto. Maybe I'm wrong, but I mean, this was the 2020, 2021. You get in on a presale, it somehow launches publicly at 100x the valuation of what you paid for it. I believe all of these

investors basically paid a billion dollars. It's, you know, I think it's sitting at 21, 22 billion right now. But it's paper and it doesn't matter because they don't have the coins to sell. So it's just going to naturally come down, I would imagine. That means that maybe you don't want to rush in and buy this yet. I mean, we have seen that at least in Q1 this year, investments on the VC side from like AI projects did actually decline, not so much in line with everything else, like everything declined, but they were a little bit more moderate. And I would say that OpenAI, for example, has done raises that have been more exceptional compared to everything else that's been happening in the VC tech space. You know, like it's hard to get anything besides a pre-seed

or series A kind of funding these days. Like it's like post series A, it's still been really tough across the board. So to be fair, open AI, like it's, you know, even if you extend that over to like WorldCoin and this kind of raise with the token launch, it has stood out among some of these VC projects. Yeah, listen, I mean, it could be absolutely massive. I have no doubt that Sam Altman is seriously behind this and that he's a genius, but it just makes me laugh still when things like this kind of happen, especially when it's like 1% of the existing supply is even on the market, 99% that's eventually going to just be released and obviously will be a selling pressure of some sort.

But listen, I really didn't mean to talk about WorldCoin today. It just happened to come out when I, I mean, you know, they're probably scanning our eyeballs right now. I'm saying you've been pointing to your eye a lot. I mean, did you get your eyeball scanned yet? I feel like it's getting scanned right now. If they didn't get me on the orb, they've definitely gotten me on my iPhone or gotten me on YouTube, I would imagine,

but I could be wrong. But obviously the lead story today, Elon Musk's Twitter overhaul could be huge for Doge and crypto generally. Elon clearly has an affinity for Doge, almost as part of a running joke. But I wouldn't be surprised if he actually went through enabling payments via Doge. Eh, I think he might enable payments via Doge, but I don't think anyone would care. That's my take. This one kind of falls in the purely speculative bucket but he's done these things before he's put it on his webpage

I mean this is you know what what's showing up when you go to the X logo it's got that like superimposed doge on it yeah I've got that right for people who are wondering I brought up his profile and tried to zoom in right here it kind of looks like his I guess that's his location is

x doge yeah yeah i mean pretty big for doge though okay so what we do know is that he intends for x to effectively be like the bank or payment system of the future right we're talking about the guy who invented paypal or was a part of that. And we know that that's probably actually what OpenAI also wants to do. I think we know that right now that's what Apple wants to do with Apple Pay. Everybody wants to be the financial system

of the future outside of the banks. Yeah, the Everything app. Yeah, but do you think the Everything app is really about finances? I mean, in part. Finances kind of connect you to everything because you got to pay for stuff so it makes sense and if doge is the unit of account that allows us to do that well sure then you could expect reasonably that that should go up but

whether he's actually going to implement that is another question entirely and i have no clue i don't think anyone does i don't even think elon does uh but you know we're in this kind of like low period now where we've had a lot of good news kind of back to back like bitcoin had the benefit of getting the like blackrock etf announcement uh and then all the follow-up after that with fidelity and your arc and 21 and all this kind of stuff and then then, right after that, Ripple came out with a huge kind of win for this space, which, you know, it was

more nuanced than that. I think certainly you have to say, the good news was you're not all the, you know, none of these can be wholeheartedly described as a security. It depends on the conditions. Certainly the SEC has suggested they're going to appeal. But I think because of that, we saw this kind of peak in Bitcoin.

And then now Bitcoin dominance is falling from like 41% to like 26%. At the same time, Bitcoin's moderating in price. I mean, this is a new regime. We haven't seen this all year. All year, it's been some combination of Bitcoin Bitcoin dominance going up when price is going up or like dominance going up a Bitcoin price falling. This is like a new regime suggesting that people are trying to look for some of the altcoin projects that they can kind of hang their hat on. And it's been moving that way since since Ripple kind of happened. But it's tough, especially when the dollar is this strong. When we got all these central banks kind of reporting this week,

it's just a really difficult environment to make any reasonable decisions. Yeah, and listen, I mean, I think that people are making a huge jump, even just in the fact that cryptocurrency would be involved. Right? I mean, X will most likely be a payment

app much more like an Apple Pay or something like that without any necessity for crypto in the first place. So you have to make the jump that it's going to be crypto, then the jump that it's going to be Doge, which is a wildly volatile cryptocurrency that will become even more wildly volatile if it became

adopted and therefore would be horrible for payments. Yeah. I think that's right i mean like the the trouble with this too is your transaction currency is also going to be the currency that you're trying to appreciate in value and it doesn't really work that way because if doge is going up in value and you believe that it's going to strengthen from like, you know, pennies to a dollar, for example, that makes it much harder to use inside the system. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So you kind of just described this interesting environment we're in right now. It's not really that this time is different, but it's kind of hard, I think, to parse where things are going because crypto for the first time in a long time, has seemingly

detached from other markets and is actually reacting to news. We had this very long period, I feel like, where maybe it was just because it was all bad news and things just didn't react, but obviously reacted massively to the Bitcoin ETF news from BlackRock to the upside for Bitcoin. But then altcoins kind of retraced their downside from the Coinbase suit back up very quickly after the Ripple news. But now it feels like we've gone back to Boringtown. Yeah, a little bit.

I mean, a lot of this stuff is also happening outside of the US as well, because you couldn't like, I mean, like the WorldCoin stuff, you can't buy it in the US. You know, you can do these things offshore. Same thing for a lot of the altcoins that are out there, like post-Ripple.

Even in the US, if you wanted to get access to some of these projects or some of these tokens that you're interested in, still really hard to do inside the US. It takes time to onboard in the US, especially if like, you know, someone's trying to buy it on Coinbase, for example, we have a system in place.

So a lot of these flows that we saw tended to happen outside of the U.S. and they were very rapid and they kind of happened and then they kind of reversed. Yeah, not only reversed, it just seems like we had like two hours of excitement after Ripple. Everything went up massively and then sort of this slow bleed, I think, as it sort of soaked in. But I mean, listen, you're at Coinbase. Obviously, there was a relisting there of Ripple. I think my sentiment, at least in the United States, and I've been saying that is regardless of the legal opinions of every lawyer who comes in on both sides,

for now, most people are not concerned, maybe for the next year, year and a half, that these things are generally securities. So I would imagine that at least in the United States, it gives people a bit more confidence to trade or hold, or at least not just dump and panic all of these assets, which is what they were doing on the SEC enforcement. Yeah, I think so. And I don't know, I tend to have more of a conspiratorial view that certainly the timing of the SEC announcements prior to timing got released, right before it sounded like already Ripple was positioning or at

least positioned for a kind of better judgment in this case. Yeah. And so I think, Ben, what's interesting, I agree with you. I think, I mean, listen, you don't roll out a massive enforcement action against Binance on Monday and Coinbase on Tuesday unless it's somewhat coordinated, right? Because even the bandwidth of the agency to manage those is tremendous. So they had to be planning it. The question is, did they know if BlackRock was going to then submit for the ETF or if that was the big wild card that the SEC did not know. I mean, in my mind, I feel like the SEC and BlackRock are probably like in cahoots to some degree, rotating door. But it really felt like the BlackRock ETF news just took all the wind out of the sails of the SEC. And that was probably a surprise even in advance of the Ripple judgment. Yeah, you know what I know. I mean, I feel like what happened with BlackRock tend to be more of an independent event.

But certainly it stood out in juxtaposition to what the SEC was doing of like, this is the time that you want to roll out an ETF. Like it, it just feels like they, they know something, you know, like you don't, you don't just do that in a like pretty tough regulatory environment, unless you had a lot of faith in the ecosystem or in these tokens or in Bitcoin. You do it because there's some level of actual belief in what you're doing. Yeah. And I mean, it's obviously you're at Coinbase, but not even speaking in that capacity. I think it's been huge that everybody did the surveillance sharing agreement with Coinbase, right? Because I mean, it basically is this massive stamp of approval, in my opinion, from all of Wall Street that Coinbase is a market of significant size, that that qualifies to get an ETF approved, whether we do or not. And then obviously,

just safe custodian and viewed outside of the lens of maybe how the SEC is seeing it. So I have to imagine there had to be some celebration at Coinbase when all this happened after that suit. Well, I think that people misinterpret something, which is that they believe if you don't have a certain percentage of the market, for example, I think some people claimed, well, in terms of trading volumes, for example, Binance is significantly larger and we can debate whether there are wash trading or other things that kind of contribute to that. There's been arguments on that side. I'm not pushing that theory, but I'm suggesting that the issue isn't whether you own like 50% of this market in terms of

trading volume. It's really how much does a, and I'm just picking numbers here, like a 2%, 5%, a 7%, a 10% share give you in terms of preventing market manipulation from happening. And that is actually much more significant. I think that's what people are missing when they kind of say, well, you need to have like a dominant kind of share of the trading volume in order to be able to successfully participate in that servant-in-shelter agreement.

I'm like, actually, no, you don't. We can actually prove that even having a 7% share, for example, already gives you significant visibility to preventing a lot of the market manipulation that I think the SEC might be concerned about. Yeah, I agree. So listen, outside of these obvious topics that we feel like have beaten to death on every Twitter spaces, YouTube show, and whatever for the last few months, is there anything else that you're looking at that's

getting you excited right now? I mean, obviously, it seems like as the United States is dealing with what's happening, Asia is ramping up, right? I mean, Biden's coming back into Japan, Japanese Prime Minister talking about Web 3. I mean, so clearly, whatever's happening here is not stopping the rest of the world. No, and I was actually just in ECC in Paris last week as well. Nice. And, you know, like, so I'm not just saying like Paris itself, but we had people from around the world who were there. And it was just great positive vibes, I think, all around. And it was more of a builder conference. So you got to see like some technology that's happening behind the scenes,

like away from the regulation, away from the markets themselves. And it was just very exciting to actually be around that to see like, hey, you know what? In spite of like the tough year we had in 2022, like people are developing and you see a sentiment shift as well. I think a lot of people are trying to build out for real use cases in crypto. Yeah. I mean, when you went to conferences even a year ago, I mean, anecdotally, it was like, I always joke that even at Bitcoin Miami and consensus, it was like until 20, I guess maybe 22 even, but 21, it was like every booth was an NFT project or some kind of altcoin that literally doesn't exist anymore and then every conference i've gone to this year is like lawyers

yeah people building like hardware infrastructure like you said i mean it's people that are really building and then you take that a step further you have the united states where i think the vibe is understandably extremely dampened, less enthusiastic, wondering what's going to happen. And then you, I mean, you're even talking about Paris. I was in London, but I'm going to token 2049. And I know even last year, October 24, nine, it's like crypto Coachella. I mean, people, it's like nothing has stopped. Nothing has changed. No bear market. I even felt that in London, which is probably the second harshest regulator after the United States. That's interesting. Yeah, I feel like there's real debate now. And you're totally right. I

think you go back a year ago and you went to these conferences, maybe the positive sentiment that you had in 2021 was still kind of with you. And as a result, you know, there was this kind of complacency of, well, we're doing well. And if we build it, there will come. Whereas now we're saying, let's have this debate between infrastructure and user experience because we had to figure this out, guys. We don't like, we don't know if people are going to be here. And so like all these topics of account abstraction, fully homomorphic encryption, all these things

are just like, holy crap. These are not phrases that I heard like six months ago or maybe six months ago, maybe not like a year ago. Like they're all inside the zeitgeist at the moment. Yeah, I think everything I went to, which I'm talking about, it's exactly what you just said. In 2022 was sort of like right around Voyager Celsius, like maybe either slightly before or slightly after, but all before FTX.

So there was still sort of, even at Mainnet in New York, which I thought was pretty damp, and there was still some excitement because FTX hadn't happened. And then I flew immediately to Singapore. And like I said, it was like the greatest, crypto is still the greatest thing in the world. Was there anything at ETHCC that you just said, you saw a lot of new things, terms you hadn't even heard. Was there anything that really, really impressed you? Because I heard it was actually an amazing conference. Yeah. No, I think

it was fantastic. I mean, the key themes, like I said, Vitalik was there. His whole talk was on account of abstraction, which I think kind of permeates through every project in some way, shape, or form. Like Chainlink introduced cross- chain interoperability, which, I mean, they mentioned this before, but they're they're open to developers. But like, there's a world out there where you could actually be on one L2. And, you know, trying to use an app on a different L2 to kind of get a certain result using Chainlink as the as the Oracle that kind of links the two, but not have to pay a link anymore because you know, that's

going to be dealt with by by the centralized application instead. I think things like that are very real now as a possibility. So I love that idea that as a user, like I remember the first time I had like a open a wallet and my friend sent me like some USDC. I was like, what am I going to do with this? Like I had no ETH. I had nothing. Like I couldn't move it. He was like, oh, yeah, you need ETH.

It's not if it was a MetaMask wallet, it didn't show up. Yeah. Right? Like you add it, go in and import the token. I still get that question from friends. It's still just weird. I mean, we're still so far from easily

usable on on any of these wallets oh yeah yeah i and i i think that's that's that for me was like really pushing like the web3 narrative because if you get that solved which i think everyone's now kind of focused on like uh within the builder community in some way shape or form then you can go a long way in terms of actually onboarding people. And I don't think it's going to happen like overnight still, but it's going to like be the door that opens and starts bringing people in over a pretty decent period of time. So before I let you go, I know we started a little late.

And before I move on to Chris, like broad strokes on what you're expecting from the market. I mean, are you still expecting from the market. I mean, are you still looking at the halving cycle and we just kind of are repeating history once again, and maybe it's boring for a little while here? Or do you think that we could get something that could really shock the market right now? I mean, my vibe is still that halving cycle, wait till next year, back of 2024, doable market. And we look back and laugh that we even analyzed these things. So I would say, let's take the near term and kind of six months out,

because I think right now, especially if you're looking at stocks and the equity market, there's a bit of a positive Goldilocks kind of talk, because a lot of people believe that we're in this, at least in the US, like decelerating inflation, excuse me, like this inflationary trend alongside pretty decent economic data, I have to say, especially compared to what's going on in Europe and other places. China has been really having a rough time. My issue with that is at the same time, positioning is not very clean. You've seen a lot of equity bears either get liquidated or they've closed out their positions or they've kind of hedged themselves. So for me, actually, it was easier when I was very positive

about the environment because no one had this trade on. Now I'm kind of just like, I might actually want to be very defensive in this very short term, particularly like the dollar has now bounced off. It's kind of level about like, you know, maybe a week and a half ago. I look at the DXY, the multilateral. Right, 100, right.

I mean, it basically went to like 99.5, put in weekly tweezer bottoms and bounced hard. Right. And part of that's seasonal for sure. But like, that's a big deal for crypto. I mean, like, we sit as the numerator to that, to that, you know, to the USD. So I think there's that. Plus, the interest rate differentials are going to factor in huge, probably this week,

because we're going to hear from the Fed, who may or may not say this is their last 25-piece bull hike. I don't know. The ECB is saying that they want a hike, but the PMI numbers that just came out, like weak economic data, I don't know if they can do that. So, yeah, there's that.

Japan is very unwilling to take a hawkish position and move away from yield curve control. So, if that's kind of the interest rate differentials we're working with, the dollar can actually remain stronger for longer in this kind of trend, which doesn't make me feel comfortable with crypto at the moment. But to your point, I think that we're probably going to get a better environment as we get further into the second half of the year. I think by that point, the mountain

gots redistributions, those payments are going to be done. People will start talking about the halving in earnest and you know I'm of two minds about the halving like I believe it's a positive event but not for all the reasons people suggest like if you look at it on a historical trend and you actually do factor analysis on this stuff it's like well 2012 you know it was like the first time it actually happened and then that was right before like we uh you know like when when Bitcoin really started traveling higher, that had a lot more to do with like the US debt ceiling crisis at that time. Or like Brexit in 2016. Or just the very fact that people were hearing about Bitcoin. I mean, it's very hard to compare the infancy into a current cycle.

Right. But the environment's going to be good around that time when the Bitcoin halving is going to happen. Ideally, we should get some positive news regarding a Bitcoin spot ETF, for example, which should happen right around the end of March. We'll probably see the

central bank actually needing to pivot to rate cuts because by that point they'll realize there's a structural trend to inflation because we've got AI now. What do you think AI is going to do to inflation? That's going to start really increasing productivity, lowering input costs. Inflation is not going to stay high here. There's a structural reason for it now to really start trending lower and it's happening sooner than people think. So all those things are coupled together with like

what's happening on Ethereum, which doesn't impact Bitcoin, but it impacts the ecosystem because Cancun fork is going to be happening around the same time. Counter-abstraction probably become a much more real possibility at that point. Like I think that by the time we get to Q4 into Q1 2024,

we're going to be in a much more constructive environment. That was a hell of a case. You really thought this out. So I appreciate that. I tend to agree with you, right? And I think, but I think this is still one of those like forgettable summers where you could probably just come back in a couple months and worry about it. You know, every summer with Bitcoin seems to be so boring, which I think

is probably a good thing in this case, considering all the joy out. David, thank you so much for joining. You have a new Twitter account finally, right? Yeah, yeah. I think I got to his flack over my old name. Are we going to get you tweeting ever? You know, I don't think I really

need to invite that level of scrutiny in my life. I will try to tweet more. It's such a positive place, man. I don't know how you could possibly think that way. It's wonderful. Never get negative responses at all. People are so kind. I mean, like, all it's hearts, man.

All right, man. I look forward to having you back soon. And I will also have to do it on Spaces, guys. Check him out if you want to see his not tweets on Twitter but otherwise you'll catch him here thanks David alright well so I'm not convinced that Doge is going to

$1,000 or $1,000,000 or whatever yet but Doge does look kind of good and now is obviously the time it's Wednesday and so that means we're bringing on Chris and we're going to actually look at some of these charts and figure it out because the title does say Doge to $1, Bitcoin to $50K.

And that was based on what I was intending to talk to Chris about, not necessarily what I was intending to talk to Dave. Do you think Elon Musk is going to make Doge the global reserve currency and we're going to a trillion billion? No. does the global reserve currency and we're going to a trillion billion um no but but cycle wise um you know i do think doge is headed up so uh we do have that uh yeah i kind of came across on my timeline there a few years back we had that one guy on a tiktok uh when doge was getting up there toward the 70 80 cents and he was like oh man here's why Doge is going to go to a thousand dollars.

Yep. Top. Man. Yeah. That was the top. Yeah. And so, you know, I just kind of. I lost on Saturday Night Live, which it's in and of itself was the greatest top signal I think in the history of markets.

When my aunt, who knows nothing about crypto, called me and said, I heard about this dog thing and Elon Musk is going to pump it tomorrow on SNL. Sell, sell, sell, right? Jim C tomorrow. Sell, sell, sell, right? Jim Cramer, sell, sell. Unfortunately, I've sold, sold, sold like 900% lower already. I clearly missed the top of that one.

On that cycle, I think I literally sold like in a penny. It was a great cycle. It did great. Different than what it ever did before. I did great, but maybe we should start there, okay? Because, I mean, we do have kind of, do you have a dose chart up? I don't want to put you on the spot, but here you go.

Yeah, yeah, man. So, I mean, for me, you know, my big thing is we had this pullback to this congestion here. We've been going sideways, what is this swing low down here around june of last year yeah for a year over i mean that that's a great bit of accumulation there volume and price action looks real good um so i mean for me you know we we didn't even have enough pressure to send it down to a spring which is just this dip below the range low instead we just have what we call less um last point of support here and we're rallying up now so i mean for me i i you know when i look at this i think we may got a one two going on here three's up there around 22 almost 23 cents um but you know and again i think these third waves when i'm looking at these charts i'll probably overextend uh you know the first real big third wave off the alpha

lows uh they'll probably extend they're usually the 1.618 extension of the first wave. But I think they'll all likely overextend to get further. I mean, for me, structurally, I want to see an impulsive breakout above the weekly pivot. I mean, to me, that's the big kind of price action thing I'm looking for.

Is that about 10 cents? Let me see. Yeah, it's just about a little bit more than that. About 11, just over 11 cents or so. 11. What one was that? To me, that's the big air. If we get impulsive breakout above that, you know, big shot of volume, nice candle spread,

breaking out and closing above it. To me, that signals you should have bought down here. And, you know, we're going to run through the run through at least testing the high, if not getting higher. So you think the does go back to 70 something cents yeah i have i have nothing you know there's nothing in the chart here that says it shouldn't there's nothing in it that says oh my god you know there's no reason we shouldn't get up there um i know a lot of people wouldn't you know right there's still some very pair very bearish people out there i you know it's it's tough man it's a tough life right with emotions and trading but um there's absolutely nothing going on in the charts that says that, you know, further

down should be your first thought. Now, that doesn't mean it can't go down, but it's got, you know, all these charts, they got work to do to get down there. So, you know, my default is up and I trade it up until, you know, information comes in and says something different and then we'll trade it down. Yeah. Speaking of when my hand called a neck gratuitous top for Saturday Night Live, this is what it looked like, right? There was the monster. I mean, literally, RSI was at 97. 97. And that's when it got to 45 cents. Right. Massive bearish divergence. The clearest head and shoulders.

I mean, you could draw the head and shoulders neckline in multiple different ways, but like this is as toppy when you also align it with sentiment and news as you can possibly get. I mean, zooming in on now, like also you kind of have this breakout right here, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so maybe you're going to get this.

Maybe you get a dip. It's only a few more cents. I wouldn't necessarily wait for it if you're bullish on this, but I mean, this whatever looks good good it is overbought yeah i mean overall i mean like you said you might get a bit of a pullback there but i think uh i think there's a good you know a good reason or a good narrative going on here why we should have this you know further you know heading further up here so i mean it's it's definitely not a terrible chart you know to look at like i said been going sideways here for a year um volume continues to drop off throughout the range um you know again you've got a lot of selling going on up

here you have a bit of volume you had some more showing up here you don't have any selling really going on you get very very little selling going on down here at the bottoms and that's what you want to see you know you don't want to see the selling going on the bottoms if you're looking for accumulation. I see that on Bitcoin too. I don't know if we can bring up a Bitcoin chart, but actually I was looking at this range on the four hour that we've been in, obviously massive, like look at the massive volume at the range highs and lows every time. Just massive, right? So like massive selling from the top, massive selling at the range highs and lows every time. Yeah. Like just massive, right? So like massive selling from the top, massive selling at the bottom to sweep the range,

massive selling when it hit the top here, massive buying into the top, and then massive selling down. This time, just almost no volume on this breakdown. Slight spike, but there was none when he reached the range lows here and none here. So yeah, I see a bear flag, but this also feels like it could just do what this did.

Yeah. Like fake out below the range and then just surprise everybody and head up here. And this part breaks down anyways, but. Yeah, we've got the FOMC here in a few hours. You know, I mean, if we look, if we zoom out real quick on the daily, I mean, what do we do? We hit the daily pivot. So this was my breakdown. That's also the daily 50 MA there. Exactly. I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's there right here in case guys are wondering. Three candles now sitting on the 50 MA. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, if we're actually looking at this range here on the daily, you know, we've got this move from the swing high coming down here and you see the volumes dropping off and then all you get like you were selling is just that spike of volume down there at the bottom that's usually not indicative of uh of distribution distribution we usually say when you get to that final move down you're going to see candle spreads getting bigger vinegar on the way down volume expansion you know you got the follow-through right you got the the market jumps in on it and it starts selling finally but we're just not seeing that there and we found the you know support here at the pivot and i don't know you know if i'm looking at that you know i think there's a good case to be made for this thing that's rallying up here now if it doesn't you know if it doesn't you always

say you know should have other targets you know again if we get an impulsive breakdown through the daily pivot here which is basically a swing low, four hour or later candle, you're getting a big volume, big candle spread in the close below. Well, then we'll look down here around 27,000. But until that happens, you know, again, everything is up. Everything is up. You know, your default should be up. Too many people out there, especially, you know, amateur traders out there trying to short every top, trying to long every bottom, you know, zoom out to a larger trend or a larger timeframe. What's your trend? And then you trade in the direction of that trend. Stop trying to get cute and, you know, guessing where the tops are and, you know, and the reversals are and everything just by the pullbacks. Oh, I can't hear you, man.

For some reason, I was muted. You also have to have a very specific reason for those trades, like to just jump in because you think it feels bad is not the move. So somebody said, Jules said, is it not a bear flag? To be clear, it currently looks like a bear flag, but nothing's confirmed until you break out of it.

So if it breaks down, you would call it a bear flag. And then if you want, you know, you would look at it. I mean, you could either draw the flagpole up here. I mean, maybe this is really the more kind of honest approach. And that would give us probably 28 to 51. I mean, it's not even so far low. We've all been sort of expecting 28.5. Everyone's looking at it.

So through that would be nothing listen i wouldn't be surprised today but also so like if you were looking to short though you'd be looking to short up here not just in the middle of this potential thing right yeah you can take a short here with a really tight invalidation so if you're right and you retest the range lows and it goes down you make money but there's just nothing to do right here that's i mean yeah yeah and that's one of the biggest skills in trading is you know just understanding first of all stop trading stop trading ranges uh most people can't do it successfully it's really difficult and when they try they're usually entering and exiting you know

range eqs right they're usually you know if you get this go up there you know middle of the range is where people won't seem to want to enter and leave. And it just doesn't make any sense, right? You want to make sure that if you are going to trade a range, first of all, you got to understand how ranges work. And most people don't. But other than that, you want to be taking your trades at the tops and at the bottoms of the ranges, not anywhere around the middle here, which is where people tend to get impatient and jump in there. So it is what it is. We'll see what happens. Everybody's expecting almost 100% for the FOMC to get the 25 basis point rate hike. So the market should have

it. It's going to be his tone after that's going to matter, right? If everybody's expecting 0.25, listen, I bet we do this. This is going to be wrong,.25 i listen i i bet we do this that this is going to be wrong by the way but i bet we do this i bet we get a big wig down and then just absolute like uh moon for no apparent reason because that would uh just freak everyone out or we pop right back into the range and then go down yeah yeah it's you know one thing f1c it's that a the first reaction is usually wrong, and B, that you usually get liquidations in both directions, and then

nothing. Yeah, because you've got a lot of bots and whatever out there, and algos that are based on sentiment, and algos that are based on when the report's released, and then when he's speaking,

they're kind of based on the words that are using it, so it automatically trades. So you're going to get a lot of that whipsaw action. I tell people, man, I don't trade that stuff. I stay out of the market when that happens. It's just almost 30 years ago, there's just no reason to be in the market during news events. Even if you're in the right direction,

you'll probably get stopped out before it goes in that way. It's very frustrating. Isn't that the time for 50Xx leverage uh tight stops yeah yeah now the big thing coming into this fomc though is that uh you know we missed jobs uh you know jobs were soft uh and then then you know that we we missed the big i mean cpi was was it 4.1 the previous month and we were looking at 3.1 so we're already looking for a big move down we're talking about headline cpi right was it 4.1 the previous month and we were looking at 3.1 so we're already looking for a big move down we're talking about headline cpi right and we actually got three so i mean it was even less than the big move or even more than the big move that we were looking for and then on top of

that core cpi man broke five got down 4.8 that was that was a huge move down so i mean you know they're going to look at that stuff and they're going to well you know i know we've talked about the fact that we're going to keep raising you know through the end of the year, you know, they're going to look at that stuff and they're going to, well, you know, I know we've talked about the fact that we're going to keep raising, you know, through the end of the year. But, you know, maybe not. Yeah. Especially if we see this coming month, if we see some continuation lower, I think it really puts a lot of pressure on the Fed to, you know, not be raising anymore. So we'll see what happens after this one.

Yeah. By the way, I just happened to be scanning charts while you're talking. I hadn't looked at this, but this looks really good on Solana. Solana? Oh, yeah. Looks like a Solana. I know what it's printing now. Yeah, you've got the Doji down there at the bottom. You've got the two. You've got the big candle

before you print the big candle after. That's a daily. Yeah, I mean, most often that's a type of reversal right there. And so, yeah. I mean, I like Solana still. Still looking forward to the next annual. Most often, that's a type of reversal right there. I like Solana still. Still looking forward to seeing you all. That just happened to be scanning through and that jumped right out at me. What else are you looking at right now?

We've got some... Let me see here. Where is my charts? I think it's this one here. We've got a lot of these ranging on the weeklies here. Some of the ones I like more, I like Maker here. Yeah, you mentioned that last week, and it said nothing but go up, so there you are. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised to see something like, oh, I don't know, maybe something like this here.

Let me make that a color that can see let's do the black on black just like on the blue there right yeah but yeah i mean i wouldn't be surprised he's a bit higher up here kind of pull back you know just a little bit below where it's at here and then kind of fire up toward that uh that weekly r1 pivot you'll be you know 1655 here to maybe um 1900 that kind of area and then from there i mean if we can get a rejection i mean this would this would work out perfectly right back to the uh the weekly pivot here at about 1200 and then kind of you know continue its way on up through this but i mean this is a this is clean this is nice nice range here great drop off in volume uh good almost a hammer candle here at the bottom really low

volume and then you see this uh you know this rally up and this volume expansion as we go. So that looks really good. I like that chart. Yeah, and you mentioned that last week, and clearly it's done well. Yeah, yeah. I've been watching near. Near is not looking terrible. I want to see some follow-through in the breakout of this descending resistance here. So, you know, basically this horizontal $1.62 area. But if we can get some

impulsive breakout through there, I mean, I think, you know, we're probably rallying up here at least toward the pivot. Again, this is the weekly here. And that'll get us up there at around $7.70. Doesn't happen all in one shoot, obviously. But yeah yeah i like the pullback here in the range i like the movement up pull back i want to see a breakout here now to kind of give us that move up higher yeah that looks i mean nothing looks bad to me it's scary i keep scanning through and everything looks kind of okay i mean we all we had these big retracements the past like week or whatever, but they're all sitting right into support. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you know, again, it just, it's, it's up with, you know, so many things here. SNX here. Same kind of idea. So much accumulation on these charts. Yeah. Yeah. This one, it looks good here.

We had quite a bit of volume still coming in met this at this recent swing high here uh we've got this pullback i want to see a breakout here i want to see this hold as last point of support here and i just want to see this continue to rally up breakthrough if we can do that um you know again just kind of continuing to push out higher there. Let me see here. If we've got this, I mean, seven and a half dollars, $7 and 45 cents gets you right up kind of this area right up there. Yeah. I don't know. My colors are off on these colored charts. Yeah. I mean, which is more than a two X. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, that's what I'd be looking for there. I to see some further breakout above this this is uh three dollars and 39 cents I want to see a breakout above that but all of a sudden that starts looking kind of good if we can get that so so you guys never buy now it's a if

something happens that you're watching that's when you become interested so you set an alarm and you don't depend over these charts just set set the alarm at that point. And when it goes off, go visit the chart and see if it's wicking through like crazy or if you've got volume and you're breaking out. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, if you're trading guys, I mean, that's what you're doing. You're looking for opportunities for potential opportunities to come, right? And that's what your time should be spent doing. You're not looking to trade right this second. You know, you're going to get some sometimes, but of the time you're you're it should be this it should be looking at the chart saying okay what's the larger structure what are we looking at and let's zoom in and figure out okay at what point you know did we say okay this looks like an entry here um you know

indeed so i mean yeah it's just kind of uh you know everybody everybody wants to do that you know that trading the minute they they open the chart they want to find something right that second and you know most of the time it isn't what trading is yeah oh one more one more here's comp man hop at that monster run there right yeah comp like i was really watching it kind of lost the range highs there for me but yeah you have a different range see i had it like this i was like what happened yeah no this is uh this is absolutely fantastic um i mean again you know you got great volume drop off the range develops you know look at that low down there uh at the spring boom rallies back up this is what you want to see we get the pullback the retest of the uh range resistance as support. Man, I'm looking higher up here at around $217.

You know, and it just, this is just pretty clean. I mean, this is one of the cleanest kind of accumulations that I've seen. Great rally off that spring there. Just absolutely awesome. And, man, I mean, you know, it may pull back a little bit further here or whatever, but, you know for me i think we should be at least looking at 217 right now yeah i think i had 175 on mine for the breakout because of that low here and that high yeah yeah i mean that makes sense it's it it's this swing

this resistance support right here i mean yeah it makes r1 pivot on the weekly perfect sense yeah yeah yeah it looks great uh I was brought up comment here. He said, Scott is telling some alpha there. Don't make the trade, let it come to you. I learned that from Chris as you guys are wondering, but yeah, I mean, that's the thing is like, yeah, I used to do that same thing where I would like stand through the same 50 charts every day, every hour. Yeah. You should be able to look at a chart at a certain point and just decide what areas you're interested, set an alarm and never look at it until it hits that area. Because everything else between is just you looking at an opportunity to make a bad decision. It's hard trying to make something happen, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I've seen the video of a guy like blowing on the chart. Well, but I mean, you know, and that's the thing, you know, when you first get into trading, before you become consistently profitable with it, you're like, stare at it. It's fun, right? You stare at the charts 24 seven. Well, it's fun until your eyes can't keep open anymore, right? But once you've been doing this for years and you get into this rhythm and you, you know, you, you've got your system all figured out and you got things figured out. I mean, at that point, you don't want to stare at the charts anymore. You know, you're like, listen, just, okay,

let me see, where can I be looking at later okay i'm gonna set it right there and i'll come back to that you know if it gets there um it just it's just one of those things right you know if you've been doing this 20 30 years you it's okay to still look at the charts but man it's not like it was when you first started and you thought that every time you opened uh the chart you'd be able to make money right i have kids now too now, too, so I can't do that. That was a lot easier before I had children, when I started doing it. So yeah, now it's definitely a lot more difficult.

So any more you're looking at, or I mean, it's time for us to go anyway. No, I think it's probably it, but I do, I like that comp, that breakout was nice and clean, and like I said, you know, I think we may get a little bit higher first before we get it you know pull back down to the range resistance or range uh eyes again but i mean overall i that thing looks like i think just wants to keep going um and then that accumulation again was you know from uh what was that june again it was from june

so you know we it's just the same thing we saw with Bitcoin. Basically, a bottoming structure, and then we're breaking out, or most of them are breaking out. Your default thinking should be higher. If new information comes in, we'll change. Jules has two different ranges between you both, but it gives you a respective trade.

Amazing Scott sees rejection, and Chris says it's great. Show a chart to 100 people and you might get 100 different uh responses but i to be quite honest i like this better so so there you go but yeah it happens you're not going to agree on where you draw your lines but it's always fun to discuss it so chris man thank you so much everybody follow tx west capital on twitter and i'll see you back next wednesday Yes, sir. All right, man. Thank you, sir. All right, guys. Quick housekeeping.

Crypto Town Hall today is at 1 o'clock for the first time instead of at 10.15am because of FOMC. But I will only be there for the first hour because as you guys probably know, I'm have a conversation I'm hosting with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today at 2pm Eastern Standard Time. specifically to talk about,

hopefully, hopefully, specifically, specifically to talk about Bitcoin, money, monetary policy, freedom, and hopefully not to talk about all the other things that people seem to obsess about with his campaign, because, you know, when it gets down to it, I don't do politics. The goal right now for me is try to get all these guys on and really hear how much they know about Bitcoin, what their position is on it. Next Monday at 10.15 a.m. on Crypto Town Hall, I've got Mayor Francis Suarez, who's also running for president, joining.

I doubt I'm getting Trump and Biden, but maybe Vivek will be able to get next in the line. But I will see you guys then today today I'm assuming that most of you are going to show up on Twitter Spaces at 2pm if you don't it will be recorded we'll be able to share it and I'm only a very small part of that I'm hosting but it's myself, Robert Breedlove Marty Bent, Mark Moss

and Natalie Brunel I will see you guys on Twitter Spaces this afternoon. Peace.