The Wolf Of All Streets - ETF Expert Explains Why BlackRock Bitcoin ETF STILL Won't Be Approved

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

Despite all the positive news that Bitcoin ETF will be approved, ETFs expert Dave Nadig is skeptical it will happen anytime soon. He will explain why. At 9:40 am EST I will be joined by Dan The Chart Guy, who will present his views on the market and will share some trading ideas.  ►►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.

ETF mania has dominated the news cycle this week, but it's actually been a pretty crazy time to be in crypto. Coinbase finally getting a date against the SEC, and it's within two weeks that they're going to start that case. MicroStrategy bought a ton more. Bitcoin, FTX 2.0 potentially rebooting. There's a lot going on. And while consensus seems to be that BlackRock ETFs will get approved, I've got a guest

today who wants to pour a whole lot of cold water on that fire. Thinks that might not be the case. Of course, that's Dave Nautic, who we always have here when we want to talk about ETFs. And on the back half, I've got Dan from Chart Guys. He's going to share his favorite trades and charts right now. You guys don't want to miss this epic stream. us go what is up everybody i'm sky milk we're also known as the wolf ball streets before we get started please subscribe to the channel and smack that like button. Like button like Akon. Smack that all on the floor. Whatever

that works to that Akon song. We're back in the late 2000-aughts. What do they call them? The 20-aughts? The 2000-2010? What a forgettable decade that is really. What do you think about it? Just terrible. Anyways, guys, ton of news today. You know, on Friday, we like to review the news of the week,

talk about what else we got going on. But of course, now with our new structure, we also bring on guests on Friday. We're going to talk about ETFs with Dave. We're going to talk about charts with Dan. We only invite people whose names start with D-A on Fridays. That's our new policy here. Hope you are all doing well. I see someone says, Patrick, how did my 500 in Voyager turn into $37? Thanks, Gary. I'm not sure I can blame Gary for that, but I will say I withdrew a week ago,

and now as of this morning, two of my three withdrawals of my newly acquired Voyager pittance have arrived. So I will say that some of them are coming out. I love that they're claiming it's 36% of your assets right now and that we maybe get more, but it's actually 36% of the value of your assets in July of last year when Bitcoin was $20,000. So I was doing the calculations. You're getting about 22% of your money back.

Really awesome. Thank you. I don't thank Gary for that one. so I was doing the calculations you're getting about 22% of your money back really awesome thank you I don't thank Gary for that one I thank the United States of America bankruptcy process who have paid judges hundreds of millions of dollars to do nothing I also thank the incompetence of Voyager, Steve Ehrlich obviously

what a heaping douchebag my friend Steve yeah we used to be friends and I thank obviously the Voyager, UCC or whoever of heaping douchebag. My friend, Steve. Yeah, we used to be friends. And I thank, obviously, the Voyager, UCC, or whoever made the deal with FTX and Biden. They both failed before getting through to this point. Really fun.

It's been a good time. But you know what, man? Keep your smiles on your face. Life is good. It's just money, right? We're all going to get by. We're all going to survive this. But let's start talking about the news of the week, and then we'll go to Dave soon and discuss a lot of this in review. So I hope he's paying attention there in the background, but I know he is. First, the SEC approved the first leveraged Bitcoin futures ETF. Can't get a spot ETF,

but YOLO, you can 2x leverage Bitcoin now on the old stonk market using this POS product that we're getting approved long before we can get a spot ETF because protecting consumers is the mandate of the SEC. Now, to be fair, once they approved a futures product, this 2x product probably didn't look too dramatically different. So it makes sense that they would potentially approve it but i just i mean i have to laugh that uh we can now trade leverage bitcoin in our uh ira but we can't trade spot bitcoin there i'd say unless you want ira unless you of course want to use uh gbtc now actually decent volume on bitx that's the leverage uh etf about 5.5 traded on day one this week. Okay, it's 5.5 million. If you guys remember that BITO, when it launched, the actual futures ETF,

did about 200x that amount on the first day. There was a billion within just 48 or 72 hours on the first leveraged ETF, not leveraged futures ETF when it launched. So kind of a non-story here, to be honest, but interesting that there is actually some volume on that product. Also in ETF news, you may have heard that HSBC offered trading in crypto ETFs to customers in Hong Kong as the United States closes down China, opening its doors wide to its very beloved crypto industry, because we know that China just loves us. They've always loved us, guys. China's never banned crypto or spoken against us or done anything bad. Okay, but this

is Hong Kong and they are opening the doors. Now, there are a lot of bad takes on this. People say, holy shit, China's offering spot ETFs. No, this is actually exposure to futures ETFs, much like we have in the United States. But there still is obviously a story here about the United States closing and China opening. And then we saw the news that Fidelity was preparing to submit spot Bitcoin ETF filing. That going back to rumors we had already been hearing for over a week that Fidelity was going to come in with their fresh ETF. This also is a refiling, guys. Fidelity has been rejected in the past, but we'll get deeper into that. But now we do have BlackRock, the biggest asset manager on the planet, and Fidelity, who I've seen people say is the second

largest asset manager on the planet, but I'm not sure that's true. Top five for sure. Both filing for Bitcoin spot ETFs. Guys, this is all of the money on the planet and all of the control of the United States government effectively applying for spot ETFs. Whether they'll get approved or not, I do not know. But this is a massive step of approval for Bitcoin as an asset and certainly to legitimize the space. But here you go. Fidelity did actually refile for their spot bitcoin etf that is happening the wise origin bitcoin trust which you may remember because it's been rejected in the past but maybe the bigger story in the etf space now that we are all pending and then

trying to figure out what's gonna happen with black rock is that kathy wood stepped back in and said she gave the mutombo said no no no no, no, no, no, no, I'm first, right? And so Cathie Wood stepped in with ARK. They amended their spot ETF filing to include the surveillance sharing agreement. That surveillance sharing agreement viewed as novel by BlackRock, but a lot of these actually had similar features, but that was the big, this is different, why BlackRock can theoretically get approved. The surveillance sharing agreement for them was with NASDAQ, meaning basically that they would be able to share data and avoid market manipulation or detect it when it happens. I'm sure Dave will have thoughts on that.

But Cathie Wood basically said, dude, we can do exactly the same thing. We're just going to amend. And now we are still about a week ahead of BlackRock and their decision is expected on August 13th. When we say the first, the first decision, right? Because in the past we see these get kicked constantly, can kick constantly down the road, but that's when the SEC will have to give some clarity. We're going to get more into ETFs in a few minutes because I just want to review the rest of this news quickly before I jump to Dave. MicroStrategy, of course, bought another 12,333 Bitcoin. That's a lot of Bitcoin. There's what, like 300 of us here? My God, you could give each of us like a whole ton of them. You could give usually like 40 Bitcoin to everybody here, just in what he's bought in

the last couple of weeks from MicroStrategy. It's a lot. They now have $4.52 billion in Bitcoin. Now, whether it's reacting to that news or not, Bitcoin back up around $31,000, as you can see there. Nice little breakout on the line chart. Sexy. Nirvana files to place crypto custodian Prime Trust into receivership. Guys, last Friday, one week ago, I did a very deep dive into Prime Trust. I'm not going to rehash it again. But as you know, Prime Trust, the trusted regulated custodian of crypto assets in the United States of America, committed massive fraud. They lost private keys. Then they covered it up by buying more assets with their customers' funds, which, oh my God, it's insane. Luckily, this isn't an $8 or $9 billion mistake like FTX, tens of millions of

dollars. But the question remains, whose assets are lost? Very strange that we have not seen anyone coming out screaming, calling their lawyers saying, hey, Prime Trust has my $80 million. So there's some exchange or entity out there that's being very hush and has lost their money with these guys. I'm not going to make myself puke and talk about this story much deeper because I have to make myself puke by talking about this story. FTX reboot talks begin, send FTT tokens, sorry, 15%. There's literally people that are still out here trading FTT. Like as if, if there's a new exchange, FTT all of a sudden won't become like, uh, it won't be an unregistered security anymore. That's a complete shit coin

that's manipulated. Okay, whatever. Doesn't matter. I think FTX 2.0, yes, I understand it's a good idea for creditors to get their money back, but I don't think there's anything more disgusting than hearing the words FTX, again, associated with crypto, especially publicly. They need to let this thing die. Now, one of the bigger stories this week was that Robinhood and Celsius would be selling off all their Matic, ADA, and Solana because those had been deemed securities. Well, apparently that's being delayed for three months on Celsius, and it already happened on Robinhood and markets didn't react at all. Then, of course, the SEC versus Coinbase is set to open July 13th. That's in two weeks after the exchange's creative opening response.

Coinbase came back hard with an aggressive response. They could have waited a month and they said, not only like, are we ready for you guys in court, but you don't even have the grounds to be suing us in the first place. This should be Congress's deal. And so they filed a motion to dismiss the suit altogether, which would be absolutely amazing to see. Listen, I doubt it's going to happen, but, you know, it would be fun. CME Group set to introduce ETH to Bitcoin ratio futures.

So now you'll be able to trade Bitcoin futures on the CME of the Bitcoin to ETH pair. Which one's going to outperform? This has to be the bottom of ETH, Bitcoin. It has to be. We always see these things being tops and bottoms. These ETHs are getting wrecked by Bitcoin. I bet to be the bottom of ETH Bitcoin. It has to be. We always see these things being tops and bottoms. These ETHs are getting wrecked by Bitcoin. I bet that's the bottom. And finally, North Carolina House of Bass has built a commission study on holding Bitcoin. Now, guys, I got really excited about this news initially when I read it. In fact, we have,

I think, like 5, 7, 12, literally every person in North Carolina coming on Twitter spaces today to discuss this. But I did dig in a bit more and it passed the house and the headlines were the North Carolina house passes bill to add Bitcoin and gold to their treasury. What they actually did was they passed a bill that said they're allowed to spend $50,000 to study whether this would or would not be a good idea. So a little further off than I anticipated after reading it, but still always interested to see the states taking the lead. All right.

That was my Scott's 11-minute all-of-the-news-in-a-week review because I want to bring on Dave and talk ETF because he's, for once, maybe you're the contrarian here, right? Well, I don't know. You're so down today, Scott. I feel like I need to cheer you up. Oh, let's go. BlackRock ETF tomorrow.

Let's go. Yeah. It seems pretty unlikely to me. Where do you want to start here, Scott? Let's start with BlackRock because obviously that's not the news of this week, but that is the news that is driving everything right now. And in my opinion, whether BlackRock gets approved or not, the fact that BlackRock filed a Bitcoin spot ETF

is just an absolute game changer for the entire space. So that part I'll agree with, right? The fact that they've put their hat in the ring is a very positive sign for the whole space, of course, right? Anytime a major institution says, hey, this is a sandbox we want to play in. And BlackRock has been delaying for a long time. That part I'm willing to give people the positive vibes on.

Where I think we all need to slow our roll is the idea that somehow BlackRock knows something. I mean, there are even pictures of a T-shirt going around says, you know, what does BlackRock know on it with a you know the bitcoin b in it uh i think the black rock with a bitcoin b i get it we got to make those mankind is that patent to that is that yeah get that fired up fast on the t-shirt machine that's good yeah but like the reality is that i i'm very very skeptical that there is some sort of fix that's in and that somebody, you know, the Gary Gensler made a phone call to Larry Fink and said, hey, now's the time. Just put this little wording in there about surveillance sharing and you guys will sail right through.

I am not a buyer on that narrative whatsoever. I think it is much, much more likely that BlackRock and Coinbase have been working together. That's been known, right? They've been partners. They've obviously been working on this filing. I think this was simply a matter of them getting their horse in the race before we get some sort of answer out of the GBTC lawsuit. That's the shoe to drop there. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that even if GBTC goes the way we'd all like it to and the SEC loses, that all of a sudden the floodgates open up. But it does put BlackRock in the hunt. But there are a couple, I think, really key important points. A about, and we will set up a surveillance sharing agreement with a regulated market of significant size. That's the magic words you have to use there, which all sounds great, except that the SEC not only has said multiple times that Coinbase is not a regulated market, they're suing them over this. You were just talking about this, right? So the idea that somehow while simultaneously involved in litigation with Coinbase, they're

going to approve a surveillance sharing agreement with them as a regulated market of significant size seems ludicrous to me. So I think this is a positioning filing, not an end state. And I think there are a lot more shoes to drop. I don't disagree. No, no, I don't disagree. The Coinbase thing is what really got me. And that's the part where I sort of agree with you there. It's very strange that within the same week, I mean, I think it was what, Tuesday, the Coinbase news dropped and it was Friday or something that the BlackRock ETF was filed on Coinbase, right? Using them as a custodian. But is there a differentiation between using Coinbase as the custodian for it and the case that Coinbase is facing with the SEC that's more about unregistered securities?

Yeah. So, yes, for sure. The thing being litigated with Coinbase and the SEC right now is not precisely the thing that they would be on the hook for in these filings. It's worth pointing out that while Coinbase is a named custodian here, they're not the named exchange. I think we're all leaping to the conclusion because Coinbase is roughly something like 40% of US dollar traded Bitcoin in the United States, that they're the logical answer. And I think, yes, it's more likely that it's them than say Kraken. Sure. That seems less likely. So all signs point towards Coinbase being that exchange. But it seems really a big stretch to say that that word regulated is going to get sl to if and when they finally approve how the SEC decides to pull that starting gun. We've obviously seen the news that I reported here about ARK, Cathie Wood effectively in pole position here by a week, right?

So that doesn't matter by your rationale because they'll just both get rejected. I'm just saying because that's what inevitably will happen. Why wouldn't BlackRock wait until ARK got rejected next time to put themselves? I guess there was really no way for BlackRock to position themselves as first in line with all of these other sort of moving parts. Yeah. I mean, again, I hate to say never say never with the SEC because, boy, they've done a lot of things that I did not expect and disagree with, obviously. But I think it's silly to think that they're going to bend a whole lot of rules

and then follow some sort of order based on who got in the door first. Historically, yes, you file a product first and it sales through approval. You're the first one approved. Yes, this is not a normal case. There has been so much back and forth here that I don't think this is that kind of a horse race. We saw something similar to this when the ETF industry tried to launch non-transparent or semi-transparent active products, and that required a similar set of rule changes and rethinking from the SEC. And that didn't really become like a starting gun situation.

They really sort of laid out what they needed to see. People refiled and then they got reapproved. I suspect if we get to the point where the SEC gives a pathway for approval, it's not going to be based on the calendar. It's going to be based on a new set of guidance and everybody will pull and refile. I think it's, I'm very skeptical any of these just get approved the way they've been filed. Or that any get approved with this administration or with this regulator, right? So does that mean BlackRock could also be anticipating, hey, we see regime change in 18 months, let's get in line, because the next regulator is likely to be more favorable than this one?

I mean, almost every last decision, any regulator has to be more favorable than this one. I mean, almost every last position, any every last year has been in this one, like literally hand this to my 23 year old daughter. She'd be more favorable. Anybody would be a better regulator than Gensler at this point. But yes, this is about positioning for that eventual approval someday. I don't think it's going to be just a matter of GBTC wins its case and everybody gets approved. Well, that's the problem, like you hinted at it before, but I mean, GBTC winning doesn't mean anyone gets approved. It just means that GBT can't be rejected on those grounds.

Yes. However, the important thing is what they're suing about is sort of an unfair application of the law, the Administrative Procedure Act, right? So even if the SEC loses, the SEC can say, oh, okay, court, you're right. We shouldn't have approved futures if we weren't going to approve spot. You have to get both futures. Yeah. I mean, this could actually remove all of the products in theory if the SEC decides to take that aggressive sort of tactic, right? I think that's actually more likely than

them approving a RAF to spot ETFs. I actually do. I think it's easier for them to say, hey, we need to suspend these things from trading. People can get their money back, which has happened before. The SEC has shut down whole corners of markets many times, and it sounds catastrophic. And essentially, these products are mining, people get their money back, and they complain a lot. I think that's more likely in the case of a loss by the SEC here than a sort of overnight blanket approval. Probably a middle ground here. These futures ETF, including the new leverage one, have to be sub 1.1 billion. I mean, Probably a middle ground. that back in five minutes. Yeah, out of a seven. It would be Noah's story for 12 hours and we'd be done with it. Yeah, it's absolutely trivial.

Yeah, which actually, you know, like, I don't like to do the tin hat thing, but logically, GBTC converting to an ETF is horrible for Grayscale. Right? So, I mean, this is,

it seems like it's more of a tactic than it is of something they actually desire. I mean, I do believe that Grayscale, given the opportunity, would convert because they believe ETFs are coming

and they have to be in the ring. You're talking about a company that just had a record quarter on ETH and GBTC in earnings because there's no redemptions, those assets are locked, and they're collecting 2% on those assets indefinitely. At now. Now we're at like two basis points if the ETF gets approved or 20 basis points. Yeah, exactly.

And also remember, they're collecting that fee as a percentage of the Bitcoin they hold. It has nothing to do with what is trading at a discount or anything. So they just literally skim the 2% Bitcoin off or whatever the final fee is off. So yeah, they're doing great. I agree. I mean, you could argue it's economically not smart for them to be converting. I think you're right. I think they are passionate about this and they also understand that if they do get to convert, they'll be the first one out of the gate with huge ticker and name recognition. Of course it would be massive for them. I think they'd rather have all of an enormous

pie than the percentage of a smaller pie they have now. Yeah. I'm looking right now. I could actually bring it up. Great scale revenue from GBTC and ETH, about $44 million a month. Yeah. It's not bad, is it? And people can't redeem. No. No. And actually, it's funny. It's actually insane. Yeah, I got a Twitter question just as we were joining for the show, asking, well, what do you mean we can't redeem? And it's like, no, no, no, you can sell. You can get your money out by finding somebody to buy it from you,

but you can't take a million dollars of GPTC and end up with a million dollars of Bitcoin. It just doesn't work that way. And that's the whole point. That's the whole game. That's why we're talking about the ETF. I mean, I'm looking at these now, all these charts for the first time. Obviously, I've never pulled this up. But so Grayscale holds 633-ish thousand Bitcoin.

We're just talking about MicroStrategy owning 152,000. They have four times as much Bitcoin. I'm talking about $20 billion worth of Bitcoin,000. They have four times as much Bitcoin. You're talking about $20 billion worth of Bitcoin. Yep. That they just collect fees on. Yeah. Endlessly. Yeah. How is this legal? Well,

I called it the diamond hand Bitcoin roach motel at one point because it's sort of what it's like. It's like they're the ultimate diamond hand holders here. They literally can't sell. The Bitcoin is trapped until either they resolve the entire trust, which isn't going to happen in my lifetime, or it turns into some sort of structure that allows redemption like an ETF.

It's a bit of a hack on the system. It's not really designed the way securities are traditionally designed. It's technically on the pink sheets, right? Yeah, but let's say that they go get converted, is not going to happen let's be honest like let's say they win and the sec says cool you guys that just sued us are the winners not blackrock gbtc you guys get the etf that 44 million that they they made this month drops instantly to four million yeah yeah specifically because the praise the fee will come way way way way down million that they made this month drops instantly to 4 million. Yeah. Yeah. Specifically because the fee will come way, way, way, way down. Now, you would expect over time- And again, they're not getting 10 times more assets under management.

No. It's not what it's annexing volume. Not in the short term, no. But there are all sorts of other revenue streams that can be associated with it. It gives them a pathway towards converting your other products. Obviously, it would be a huge win for them as a company to be the first one out of the gate, even if the short-term impact might be next. Their discount on 6-14 two weeks ago was 44%. It's now 31. I'm trying to get this thing to pivot. But yeah, about 31. So you had a 13% boost on your Bitcoin trades in the last two weeks if you bought GBTC. But why would I believe that this is going to close down to zero? Yeah, the only reason you ever believe that discount collapses is conversion to an ETF.

That's it. Right. Yeah. It makes no sense to me. If GBTC closes, this turns it into an ETF. That's it. Right. Yeah. It makes no sense to me. If GBTC closes this, turns it into an ETF with all the problems DCG has, this is the only way they're making any money. As a trader,

GBTC is an interesting vehicle. I just don't know from here where the trade is. I had Big Cheds and Mike Alford on the show probably two weeks ago, and we were all saying you should buy GBTC right now. Right, because it's such a big discount. And that day that Bitcoin moved 7% or 6%, GBTC was up 17%.

Exactly. So it acts as that sort of leveraged exposure when it's at that big a discount. But I think at some point you have to be rational and ask whether or not you can really ever expect it to close so let's walk down the other path where uh black rock is black rock and they're part of our united states government and all the conspiracy theories that they control these little black puppets um if they knew something when they filed right what are the odds that we see this thing this year i mean bloomberg has it-50. You obviously think it's a way less chance. Well, so if they really know something, then the odds are 100%. But I don't think that they have that kind of insight. It is certainly possible that they got notification from staff or had conversations that made them think that they were ready to accept Coinbase exchange as a regulated exchange of significant size,

and therefore simply refiling with this sort of revamped language, which we should point out is now five years old. The Gemini filings originally had this. The Gemini filings are from the original ones, like 2013. We've literally been doing this for 10 years. But since 18, we've had this kind of language around surveillance sharing in there. So there's nothing particularly new on this, except that now everybody's put it in specifically the way that BlackRock did, which is nuanced. But if that's the thing that makes this thing go, I've never seen anything like it. That it would be that subtle. Yeah, but Densler's corrupt as shit.

I'm just kidding. No, look, if it actually happens that way i will be writing a scathing article about it i will throw my words into the i will wag my finger vigorously at the administration yeah so okay let me continue down this path of uh hopium and dreams and unicorn dust where blackrock gets approved okay let's say tathy wood gets approved august whatever 13th blackrock gets approved august 20th what does it mean for this market if we actually do see that so i'm theory of if you know if they do because i'm i'm telling you right now blackrock's not getting approved and it's going to be like two 20 million dollars of trading in the first day no no no it would be explosive and it

would be explosive for two reasons. At this point, I think it's more explosive because of the implied shift in the regulatory regime than from any kind of supply and demand thing. Anybody who's retail who wanted to get access to Bitcoin has probably figured it out by this point. So it's not... I agree with that.

There's an institutional thing, or maybe grandma puts it in her IRA now. But I don't think that's a huge... No, mostly why this is so important is because the approval of this would imply that we have a huge sea change in the US regulatory approach, at least to the commodities tagged cryptos like Bitcoin and like, I mean, all the ones that have been trading up because they're all part of these filings. Bitcoin Cash and GBS.

Bitcoin and somehow Ethereum, even though they won't say what it is. Right. So I think that that is incredibly powerful for the whole ecosystem. And yeah, of course, the individual ETFs that got approved would become lightning in a bottle, would get billions of dollars in volume and assets, and would become, if nothing else, enormous arbitrage vehicles for folks like you that are trading because now you have another live trading point on a different set of exchanges for the price of Bitcoin. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. I think it would be very bullish. I think

if there is a wall of institutional money that's waiting, which I'm very skeptical of, this would be the vehicle that would give those risk managers the green light to say they can do it. I still don't believe that the Harvard endowment is going to buy spot Bitcoin and custody it anywhere. I just don't think that gets past risk. So this solves that. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I agree with you, though. I think anyone who's been dying to get into it, who's retail, way at this point yeah it's just not that hard yeah it's not listen i i see dan in the

back i want him to actually join the conversation because i mean i don't know if you guys know each other we've got dave's we've got dan's hey i need to read to like don't darl or something i don't know something with a da i couldn't even come up with another one. That was really weird. But I mean, Dan, is any of this ETF stuff changing anything for you? I'm holding a great talk, by the way. I'm learning stuff because I've traded GBTC and I'm a technical guy. I am aware of fundamentals, but not as in-depth as you both just went. And yeah, I love the talk that you just had. I'm aware of it, obviously, and paying attention to the narratives, but price is always king for me and what I care most about. So I've tried to trade GBTC and I'll enter a market order and I'll watch my fills,

because as you mentioned, it's OTC. And it's just, I do that with MARA or a crypto stock, and I get filled instantly, little slippage. If I do it with GBTC, some of the orders are one, like it fills one share and then 90 shares and then 150 shares. And it's just like, I'm sitting there, fill, fill, fill, fill. And it's like, I can't trade this with my style. I'm in and out fast and this is just not that vehicle. And so when you get the kind of demand, it shoots way up, obviously, in terms of the... It's just hard to get in with any kind of significant capital on the OTC. So it's very fascinating to watch how it trades. And what I'm wondering, and this is a question for you both, because again, fundamentals

are not my strong suit. If ETFs were to get approved and we go through the hype and everything's going to get raised up with it, would coin then be a short towards the end of that? Because people are going to then be using, like me, I would not be trading on Coinbase anymore. I'm just going to trade these ETFs. So would that be a factor? Would that be a potential play once the hype starts to fizzle out a little bit? Maybe, Dave, that's a question for you because how much does, if BlackRock gets approved, obviously they're using Coinbase as a custodian. So how much does that weigh against exactly what Dan just said? I think that's a

fascinating question. It's a fascinating question. We have seen some examples of this in the past in the ETF space when an ETF drops into a market that's been historically more difficult for individual investors to get access to, high yield bonds, gold. Over time, ETFs opened up those markets to retail investors. We didn't see those markets decline in volume, but what we did see was a whole lot of new volume show up at a new place. So I think it's probably a bit of a reach to suggest that like Coinbase's volumes are going to go down 20% because the ETF gets approved. I think the rising tide effect, right, the fact that it would spike Bitcoin to 40K like overnight, I think would probably do just fine on Coinbase's natural volume. But yeah, but Dan, to your point, like thinking about that, people do trade coin, even more specifically Mara, Riot, which you mentioned, and MicroStrategy

as Bitcoin proxies. So how much volume would they simply lose just because, forget even like is Coinbase losing volume, how many people are trading these assets as their way to trade Bitcoin? I mean, trading Mara or Riot, as he mentioned, that's like basically leverage trading Bitcoin, right? It's like the moves are 2, 3x the size of what Bitcoin does, but largely track the Bitcoin market. So would people just stop buying those as traders? Because I think it is primarily traders.

That we have some evidence for because historically people used to trade gold miners instead of gold for exactly the same reason. They act like leveraged plays on the underlying. And when gold trading in the ETFs really started picking up, we did see a lot of decline in the individual trades in some of those, particularly a lot of assets came out of those mutual funds. So people no longer played the buy the cow version of this because they could get access directly to the milk. Some of that I think would be true. I don't think it actually impacts Coinbase's trading volumes on the exchange, but certainly things like MicroStrategy and Mara could see significant drops in interest. Which means a significant drop in volatility. It's a really interesting

question. I wonder also if an approval of a BlackRock ETF would diminish some of the volatility and fun for traders. That implies you're going to get a lot of institutional landing, right? So the way you get volatility is by having large blocks of folks that aren't planning on trading very much outside of very wide bands. And that implies getting a lot of institutions to show up. I'm with you, Scott. I'm not sure I believe that there's a trillion dollars of institutional money sitting on the sideline waiting for the ETF. Those folks could have bought Bitwise or any other number of private funds a long time ago. Got it. Dave, before I let you go, any final thoughts, anything we missed? Yeah, always use a market order, man. Don't get out there and start trading. I mean, don't use a market order. Always use a limit order. Careful trading

something like... I'm like, really? Always market in? No, just like Dan was saying, it's like you got to be careful on some of this stuff. It moves so fast. And if you're just sitting here smashing the buy and sell button, you can end up with really surprising executions. Yeah. Awesome, man. Dave, thank you so much. I'm sure I'll see you on Twitter spaces very soon, right? Yep.

Or back here. Thank you. And I still want to see you play those guitars in the back. Next time. We're going to get there one day. All right, man. Thank you, Dave. What's up, Dan? Thank you for joining. I didn't mean to put you on the spot there and throw you in, but it's such an interesting conversation. And from a trading perspective, there's so many ways you can kind of skin it, which I agree with you

then. Just look at the chart, ignore all of it, right? I'm thinking about this market right now. Obviously, last week on Bitcoin, we saw that move from 25-ish up to 31, engulfing 10 weeks of price action. Pretty significant. Yeah, that's the second time it did it. It did that back in, let's see, the last time it did that was off of the consolidation early March. And it was the same thing, just consolidation for weeks and then just instant rip up. And it's a good sign, obviously, to be back up at this, testing the recent high and barely breaking it at this point. But it was almost

like the stock market has been so strong during that period. We're looking at Bitcoin like, what are you doing? Why are you not responding to this strength and what we're seeing in the stock market and the confidence that's returning to these markets? So it was a nice little pick me up and say, all right, well, there it is. And it can catch up really quickly. At this point, definitely still hovering around this 31,000 level. I thought it just dropped a thousand bucks while we were talking. Yeah, I was watching that while Dave was talking. What?

That's just stock market opening right there. So that's definitely a reaction to that, I assume, unless there's, you know, some... I didn't even see why that... Oh, and here we go. We got news. SEC, BTC, ETF filings are inadequate is a headline here uh sec yeah sec says spot bitcoin etf filings are inadequate oh wow do you have that pulled up i'm

like literally looking for it now i see it right here somebody's saying it but is it on twitter yeah zapier so i'm just seeing a link from Zapier on Twitter. I don't know who that is, but... Oh, it's an app. Yeah, we just have it in our chat room, you know. I got it right here. Yeah, well, at least I've got it from Zero Hedge, which is always a good time. But here, we'll see.

Well, I just moved. Sorry, guys. Moving things around. We're breaking news here in real time, you know, so... Right on cue for the combo. Yeah, that's why it's time, you know, so. Right on cue for the combo. Yeah. This is, that's, that's, yeah, that's why it's happening, because stocks are up.

Curious to see what the miners are doing. They're dropping hard with it big time. I imagine dropping even harder, right? Yeah. As we kind of know, so. It was brutal. They opened, they went up a quick couple percent, and then just an instant 6% drop in six minutes. Yeah. I mean, you actually look at the weekly here, and I would love for you to bring up your screen as well,

but, you know, this is, it's not great, actually. You know, as good as that last week is, if we close with sweeping those highs two weeks in a row with a doji there, maybe you get to move back to like 28.6. I don't know. I mean, it's not terrible, but not the weekly follow-through you're necessarily looking for after last week. Yeah, definitely stalling out in resistance.

And, you know, this was a bull flag attempting to confirm, and this now makes that bull flag a bit less likely. So we may be heading back down, like you mentioned, to, you know, 20,000,000 here. And now we have a range between the low right around just under $25,000 and now $31,000. And we may trade within that range for a few weeks if we fail here. So things may slow down for Bitcoin again. Yeah. So what else are you watching? Can you share your screen, show us some charts, so just kind of give us a general idea of what's happening? I saw you had it up there for a minute.

Sure thing. Yeah. So here's the bull flag attempt that just failed at resistance. And so now if we were to drop down and break this low consolidation, which is about to be tested, 29.8 thousand, again, that would pretty much negate the bull flag for me and would be setting up the possibility that we, this weekly inside, it's now a weekly inside bar very likely to close here in two days and it wouldn't be very hard to start the weekly consolidation from there. So at this point, the big question for me is, what's the dominance? And then now let's check in.

So I know the dominance chart, BTC.D here, a lot of people don't like it because it includes the stable coins, and that's a valid point, but I keep an eye on it. I have a good idea of what's happening. I just find that it's a little more reactionary than predictive. Yeah, we're not trading this instrument. It's just, you know, check in, give us a little bit of info. And this, it actually today was the first day in a long time that Bitcoin was green temporarily.

And the altcoins were outperforming. So, you know, you have Litecoin had a big morning. It was, Litecoin just up 9% on this reaction, but it was up 20%. When's the last time we've seen Litecoin 20% in a day? So actually I like, I read a newsletter every day and I've, I've very, it's been like, it used to be all altcoins and stuff. And this morning I actually bothered to include Litecoin. Yeah. I was like, I'm going to actually, this actually looks kind of good. Yeah. Well, it's got i

think it's at massive resistance right now but right yeah they got this wall up here 103 105 so i'm only seeing a bitcoin chart right now so i don't know if you're talking about seeing it but uh let me try this if you chair the uh whole window instead i usually show my litecoin chart while we're at it i mean litecoin literally like this is this line, if you do descending resistance from the dead top all time high, I mean, it's at it right now. And at this sort of resistance, it's been consolidating against I think that has to get above 107 before I'm interested, but it's worth watching now, at least in my opinion. Yeah, it's also got the narrative, the dangling carrot of the happening for Litecoins coming up, I think estimated, you know, the start of August.

So it's always nice to have a narrative to keep retail interested when that is the case. So that alone is worth keeping Litecoin on the radar. And, you know, I think the 20% move today before this drop was an indication of that. But yeah, definitely right into that resistance zone and rejecting. So bears that are playing off that resistance are getting rewarded at this point. But there's a couple other altcoins that have been, you know, the past couple of days performing. Sol had a nice couple of days here. Again, at this point, you know, we're in real time trying to catch up and see how much of the altcoins being hurt by this news that we just got. Yeah, we'll watch that in real time. It's funny,

like, I'm getting WhatsApp messages as this happens. You know, I'm sure you just said in your group, like, everything's blowing up and we're planning. They're like, what should the title for the Twitter spaces today be? Crypto Town Hall. And as you're talking, they're like, SEC hints no spot at Bitcoin ETF. And I wrote,

Bitcoin ETFs are fucked. Have fun staying poor, as their title. and there you go yeah i mean look at that reaction you just showed on solana i mean that was like we probably literally like in the time since you came and what you wanted to share and what you would share now probably change fundamentally which shows how much this market can just get absolutely rocked by a headline yeah i, I was going to talk about how this is the first day where Bitcoin is green and the altcoins are stronger. And this list on my right here was plus five, six, seven, eight, nine, 20%. And now it's all down one to 3% in the green. So very notable shift in the last 10 minutes and really a sucker punch to these altcoin bulls who have been waiting for a chance, watching for rotation, essentially, because oftentimes we see Bitcoin lead and then Bitcoin will trade range bound.

And then we see some rotation into the altcoins. And we haven't really seen much of the rotation aspect because of the suing of Coinbase and that whole narrative that has been keeping the altcoins at bay and right before this is the first little ah here are the altcoins showing some life but that is now being erased fairly quickly so it was one of those times I was going to say but it wasn't necessarily in the chart because I was thinking wow a lot of these altcoin charts look bottom

and now look at that candle is that a 4 hour or 1 hour? that's a 1 hour right so fully bearishly engulfing below the F we'll see how it closes And it didn't look to me like alt parade to at least make a move. I mean, I think it's like generally that means you get a good week or something. I wouldn't say it was trade other things anyway. So what are you thinking in general on stocks at this moment? Because every time I have a guest on, we're either going to new lows, it's dead, we're going to have a depression, or the bottom was in long ago. up here. I mean, the S&P 500. I think we get more. Big gap up. So yeah, I mean, we're testing the recent high right now on the S&P 500. I've been really impressed by the recovery.

And the rotation is just, it's masterful where you see big tech lead the way. And then they take a breather and the financial sector gets a turn and the healthcare sector gets a turn. And so one thing that I want to, Maybe your audience isn't watching stocks, but this is something that I hammer home. The only time that you're going to see any fear in the stock market is when QQQ, XLF, and XLV are all dropping at the same time. That is when we see our major sectors that have the most influence, AMIs, ETFs, QQQ, SPY. When we see that happen, we know money is likely leaving the market. Anything less than that, there is rotation going on. And the last month plus, we have seen some significant just

inverse correlations where QQQ and XLF will be tick for tick inverse on the five-minute time frame to start the day for the first hour. And then the last week it shifted where QQQ and XLV healthcare are inverse tick for tick on the five minute time frame. And it's just, again, masterful rotation to keep things healthy. And that's why the VIX is just- The washing machine. I literally just pulled up the VIX to check as you were talking. And I mean, let me look at that. There's just 13.36, there's no volatility. It's incredible. This is a nice, fundamentally beautiful move happening. The only time, this is just through observation, I've just watched the VIX and the only time the VIX is going to have these big green spikes is when those three sectors that I just mentioned

are all dropping together. It literally doesn't go up in any meaningful way unless that happens. And so you see on Twitter, people are like, QQQ is down 1% today. Why is the VIX red? Because the other sectors are picking up the slack and they're solidly green. And right now, it's the financial sector the last couple of days that have taken over. They had a little weak bounce here, and then they had a bank stress test after hours on Wednesday. And then since then, they've now hit a new high. And the financial sector is now hitting three-month highs again. So it's just masterful rotation. And it's just a very frustrating environment for the bears, specifically the fundamental bears that are watching this happen and saying, this doesn't make any sense. But that's why-

Well, it wasn't. But what I say, market irrational solvency, something's unsolvent, something's not the trade. Market around the lash of rational longer than you can remain solvent. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's why the numbers are king.

The price action is king. Because if we latch onto these fundamental biases and we don't recognize what the price is screaming at us, that's when we lose money. So that is why we're all about trends and price levels as the most important thing. Narratives are a factor and worth paying attention to, but it's always in the price. I've got to say that ChatGPT is incredible. As we're having this conversation, I tried to pull up the Wall Street Journal article. And of course, I don't pay for a subscription to the Wall Street Journal.

But I asked ChatGPT to just give me a summary and I was still able to get it. So guys, don't ever buy a subscription to anything ever again. But here's what it says. The article from the Wall Street Journal reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission has found a recent batch of applications to launch spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds inadequate. The applications were filed by asset managers, but specifics about which aspects of the applications were deemed inadequate were not given in the excerpt available. Article also mentions that the sec is separately suing two major cryptocurrency platforms financing coinbase but does not provide details about these man all right yo sec i i yeah now now's the time to just keep tweeting fire gary gensler i guess

but so you know obviously yeah you obviously believe that uh so the bullish momentum will continue i mean do you talk about do you think big dips coming out of the bear market? I mean, I think the bottom's in. We're roughly out of the bear market, but we will see some big major retraces again in the future. Yeah, I agree. And there's a possibility. I've been watching a timeframe that I don't generally watch, the four-month timeframe. And that helped me shift from being

bearish to being bullish at the start of this year, just because it was a long-term high or low. If we go back to my screen here, there is a possible setup where we set a lower high and continue range bound into next year. But again, the bears have to show up and prove something to us. And they just have not done so. I'm open to it. You know, I'm open to both directions. This is the four month time frame.

And it helped me. And look at this. I mean, those last two candles are just monsters. And so I was looking at this and, you know, I don't ever use a four month time frame being more of a day trader, but I'm saying, you know, if this is an hourly chart, I'm not going bearish after this consolidation to EMA

12 looking for a higher low. And so that, that was a big eye opener for me saying, oh, well, maybe, you know, we do put in a little bit of a bottom. And so it's either going to bull flag, you know, we know NVDA, Semiconductor, they have the ideal four month higher low and higher high. And there's some other names, you know, Health confirm these four-month bull flags. But I'm open to both possibilities. What I like to do is put the burden on a direction. I say, the burden is on bears to prove to me that we're not going to hit a new all-time high because the momentum is clearly heading towards the all-time high at this point. And so show me something. Show me all our sectors dropping together. Show me high bear volume. Show me a confirmed daily downtrend. I mean, when's the last time

SPY has seen a daily lower high and lower low? And it's been months and months since that's happened. So if that's compelling, man, yeah, I hadn't looked at that. But I mean, that was a perfect reversal candle right into, I guess you're showing support there. I mean, literally right into support, right? Then you have effectively a four-month that engulfs two months worth, and you're only what? You're now 26 off the high and over 100 off the low. Yeah. And I posted this back in October, this chart, and I didn't label it. I put it on because everybody was bearish on Twitter. I put this on Twitter and I said, are you bullish or bearish this chart? And the majority of the response was I'm looking bullish.

And that's the right answer for me, in my opinion. And if I had said, this is the S&P 500, I think it would have been a lot of different answers. But if you take the narrative out of it and you just look at the price, it really opens your eyes a bit in terms of, again, the only truth in markets is the current price.

That's the way that I approach markets. And anything else is hope. And some of it plays out. But we've got to go with what we're given on every day. And there's bears capitulating right now. You know, I see it on Twitter. Finally closed out. The ones that are transparent finally closed out.

That means the top 10. Yeah, right. Yeah. Now it's not even there looking. Is that a TradingView neon sign in the back? It is, yeah. And when it's on neon, it's much too bright, so it's off. But yeah, it's cool.

Awesome. I got a shirt. They gave me a shirt. I'm sure they'll give it to you. Give them one. They gave me at some point, I think I have a TradingView mug and a t-shirt somewhere, but the neon is next level. That thing thing is awesome and it looks like it's good

that they gave it to you because even i'm commenting on it and seeing in your background which means it's a really really good marketing and well worth the price of a neon sign and shipping oh dan thank you so much i gotta go get ready for twitter spaces since now uh that show just entire entirely changed absolutely um so So there's a lot of prep to do now in reviewing all this. I absolutely love your perspective, though. They're really measured. And I think, guys, if anyone listening,

this is why you can mock technical analysis or you can say it doesn't work, it doesn't predict the future. I can agree with those things. But it's the simplest way to take all the bias out and filter all the news that you cannot keep up with 24-7,

no matter who you are, and just get some actionable intelligence. I mean, that's really how I view it. Absolutely. I agree fully. And that's the final takeaway is price is king and do everything that you can to be comfortable identifying trends based off of prices and removing your bias from, from your decision-making. Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much.

Always a pleasure. Love to have you back soon. Thanks Scott. And everybody else, I will see you on Monday and then I'm going to be out for most of next week, but I'll be back. Mike macro Monday,

uh, with, uh, Dave, of course, and Mike McGlone. And I think James lavish maybe. So,

uh, really looking forward to that. Thank you, Dan. Bye guys. See you on monday