The Wolf Of All Streets - ETF To Pump Bitcoin To $200,000

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

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It is approaching D-Day for a Bitcoin spot ETF approval and Standard Charter says that this approval will send price to $200,000 by the end of 2025. To which I respond, why so bearish, guys? Come on, we go much higher than that, right? I have a feeling that maybe one or two of my guests will disagree with those large hyperbolic numbers, but we will discuss that today. Guys, it is ETF madness. So of course, I've got your experts, Matt Hogan from Bitwise and Dave Nautic from Betify here to discuss. And we've been talking about their study about RIAs ad nauseum. So interesting to have the two of them here together. Of course, on the back end of the show, we've got Wick taking your your chart request looking at what all of this might mean in the charts for the markets guys you do not want to miss this the ETF is coming I hope let's go let's go. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of All Streets. Before we

get started, please subscribe to the channel and hit the like button. I really enjoyed talking about the ETF, but I'm ready to not be talking about the ETF. But we can't stop now. And of course, as I said, we have two of my absolute favorite guests. You've seen these guys probably a thousand times between here and certainly Twitter spaces. I've got Matt and Dave. And Dave, I'm sorry to tell you, but Matt is now the second most interesting man. Oh, my God. What a brilliant interesting man. Oh my God. What a brilliant marketing campaign.

Congrats, Matt. I mean, I love, not only is it a great marketing campaign that had just enough poking fun at ourselves in it, you launched it like three days before everybody else right into the hype curve.

It was just chef's kiss. Well, my wife had sent a tweet, Matt that said, you know, every time we say ETF, you have to do a shot. So I'm wondering what you're drinking there and how many times filming that commercial you had to take a sip. Yes. Yeah, it was it was a fun event.

It was a fun event. There was there was definitely a good time had on set. Yeah, we were we were excited to do it. It went from idea to filming in about a month. It was pretty incredible. He's an incredible actor. And I'm going to have this photo on my Twitter page for the rest of my life, I think. I would probably have it on my ceiling. Two across your back.

The entire headboard of your bed. Okay. So we've seen, obviously, these amazing marketing campaigns. We've seen takes bad and good about what's happening with the ETF. Yesterday, we had a take that set the world on fire yet again. We know that everybody had filed their S1s. We talked about the fee battle, which Bitwise seemingly won. But then Perry M. Boring said, spot Bitcoin ETF update.

The SEC just issued additional comments on pending applicants s1s this is a delay signal everybody freaked out quickly eleanor terrett and about 100 other people said yeah i don't think that really means much right and then we also very quickly on the back of that saw that the sec was really just hustling here and blackrock vanek everybody quickly answering back and getting updated is there something here matt or is this literally just the process and actually the speed at which these things are happening, in my opinion, seems to maybe be an indication that they're trying to get this done? Yeah, it's a great time to be an ETF lawyer. I think they're all doing quite well in 2024. This is the process by which things get done. Dave can talk to this, but if you look at ETF history, there's always a flurry of filings and updates as issuers fine-tune their perspectives. Think about it as going down a funnel, and we're now at the very tip of that funnel. So this is just a normal process. You're going to see a lot of filings coming in today. Are those the last updates? I don't know. But this is an indication to me that we're

marching down the path to approval. I don't know, Dave, if you agree. Yeah, I mean, look, we've seen this rodeo before, but with a lot less headlines around it. I mean, every time there's a small change in how the ETF market is working, we go through a process like this. I've been the one saying I don't think that the 10th is a magic day, you know, Wednesday. I suspect it's soon. I suspect it's within the next five to 10 trading days. But I would not be surprised for this to sort of get dribbled out into Thursday, Friday. Oh, then we have a holiday. Maybe we start trading on Tuesday, Wednesday next week. But there's definitely going to be more froth. You're going to see some stuff coming back from the SEC. You'll see a couple of approvals pending. You'll see some approvals held. And then eventually there'll be a date that everybody agrees to. I still think it's

an open question whether or not we actually get sort of a 9.30 a.m. on a trading day starting gun. I think it's much more likely we end up with, and now things are approved and it's two o'clock on Thursday and somebody may be able to get a first trade in or people may open up the next day or they may have to wait till Tuesday because their AP isn't ready. Like there's so many little moving parts in here that Matt is legally not allowed to talk about because he's literally mid filing. You can do it. It's not approved. That's quietly sending you messages in the background.

I think after 30 years, we just brain locked, but, um, it's, we'll get there, but I think if anybody's trying to make an over under bed on nine 30 tomorrow morning,

take the under. Okay. So, but the, the idea certainly from the Bloomberg experts, I think as Dave, we were talking right before the stream they've pounded this january 10th date but arc is supposed to have to have a final answer according

to everybody by the 10th but you're just saying that the sec could be like i'll talk to you in two days who's gonna do anything about it we've seen quote unquote final answers in this cycle be uh we'll let you know in 30 days like i mean there's not it's not like there's a law and they grab Gary Gensler and drag him to jail for not meeting a deadline. You know, this is bureaucracy. I didn't say that.

You, United States government, Putin, Xi, you guys are my favorites. Anybody, but I mean, Matt, do you think that they have to answer by tomorrow or do you think this can just drag? Yeah, Scott, you and I have talked about this. There are two keys, remember, that you need to turn. There's a 19B4 and the S1.

So on the 19B4, I do think they have to answer. I think it's sort of a statutory rule. But you need that second key, which is the S1 going effective in order for the ETFs to actually launch. So I think what Dave is hinting at is- That's that gap between approval and launch, which Dave is saying, I don't think they're going to launch at 9.30 on a trading day. I agree. But we should have clarity on approval tomorrow, which I think is all anyone cares about.

I don't think anyone cares when they launch, honestly. We just want to know. We just want to know. I mean, look, I've been so negative on this whole thing. You've had me on a couple of times saying this. Even I don't think this is going to be a rug pull at this point. I mean, come on. At some point, it just becomes ridiculous.

So, of course, these are headed for approval. It's just a matter of time. If you're really betting on the yes-no bet on approval, I think you're missing the mark. I think that's right. And I would just add, if you look at the public filings, obviously, I think you're missing the mark. I think that's right. And I would just add, if you look at the public filings, obviously I can't talk about our filing, but you'll see that the changes are getting pretty small. Someone on X did a review of the BlackRock update today, and it's handful of words instead of paragraphs.

And that's another indication that you're really down that funnel. When it ends, still to be determined. But I do feel we're getting close. Right. And if there was a delay coming, the SEC didn't have to respond within the same business day as when these filings came. Right. I mean, that's pretty abnormal from what I understand. Yeah. Washington working really fast is a series of words that I haven't spoken before. But that's what we're seeing out here. Okay, so we all agree that whether it's tomorrow at 930, 630, whatever, we should be getting the answer on at least whether these things are going to exist or not very, very soon.

And then we can shift to the more entertaining conversation of what it actually means. Right. Because we have a lot of takes. Dave, I'm going to let you take a shot at this one first. This obviously from Standard Chartered, who've been known of late to give pretty hyperbolic price targets and get really, really excited. But they say spot Bitcoin ETFs may bring 50 to 100 billion of inflows in 2024. I think that's on the very high side of predictions of what I've seen, and that that would mean $200,000 Bitcoin by the end of 2025. Now, in my opinion, a four to five X of Bitcoin in the peak of what could be a halving cycle is not crazy. So I don't see the $200,000 number crazy, even without the ETF. But you think

it's kind of crazy, right? I think it's slightly crazy. The bigger question is that $100 billion, right? We're assuming that means net new money into Bitcoin, not people like taking stuff that's on chain and stick it in an ETF. If in fact, yes, there's $100 billion of new money that shows up in Bitcoin, Katie, bar the door, I have no idea what pricing would be. $200,000 is crazy number as anybody else's. I'm very skeptical that we're seeing that kind of numbers. The early conversations I've had with issuers, which will remain nameless that are not Matt Hogan and Bitwise, is that, yeah, there's some institutional money on the sidelines. A lot of that money is playing the GBTC discount game, right?

And so if you're a hedge fund manager and you've got a billion dollar position of that $25 billion in GBTC, yeah, if you really want to be long, you're probably going to move that into one of the cheaper, well-trading ETFs that will be on the market in a week or two and probably trade it out of the now 1.5%ing ETFs that will be on the market in a week or two and probably traded out of the now 1.5% GBTC, because why would you be paying that fee if you don't have to? But that's not net new money, right? That's money that's already in Bitcoin. It's already in a trust format.

You're just moving it from bucket A to bucket B. That theoretically should have no impact on price whatsoever, just create a tiny bit of volume as that moves. So I think we're going to see a bunch of so-and-so has a billion dollars lined up. So-and-so has $200 million coming in. So there'll be billions of dollars showing up in these funds, but that doesn't mean that's new money to Bitcoin. So basically you're saying like, Matt, you were telling me, I bet Bitwise has publicly said $200 million, right? BlackRock, we heard Matt Siegel from VanEck come onto Spaces and just blow the water out of everything, saying $1 to $2 billion, he's heard. But to Dave's point, a lot of that is people who are holding Bitcoin already that BlackRock is convincing to move that Bitcoin basically into the ETF rather than just hold it in cold storage. Is that correct?

So it's not new inflow. I think there is real new money set to come into the market. There are advisors on the sidelines who haven't been able to access this that control trillions of dollars that want 1% to 5% in Bitcoin. We talk to those people every day. We've been working with them for six years.

Our survey, as you mentioned, we've talked about ad nauseum. 88% of them are waiting for the ETF to launch before they consider buying. That's an incredible fact, considering they control something like $20, $30, $40 trillion in assets. So there is a lot of net new money on the side. That said, $80 billion in a year, there's just no precedent in ETF history for that happening. Dave would know the facts, but I think the most money that's flowed into an ETF natively in year one, that means an issuer didn't bring money to it, was the $5 billion that flowed into the Qs in 2000. So from $5 billion to $80 billion is a big gap. I mean, I am a Bitcoin bull. I think people want this ETF. I've been working on

it for five years. But to get a 20x of the historical record, that's a lot. A 20x on an asset class that probably has 1 20th of the volume or something, right? I don't know what the number is, but you're not talking about the NASDAQ. That's right. That's right. NASDAQ is a big deal. If you saw those inflows, I think we'd be well past that $200,000. Yeah. But I think they will be significant. I think they may be record setting.

And I think they will contribute to a new price. We're on the record of predicting that prices will hit a new all-time high this year. So that remains intact. But I'd love $100 billion to flow into these ETFs. There's just no- I think, look, I think there's positive flows, but again, remember we're starting at a $25 billion base, right? And I think there's a lot of the media coverage I've read sort of forgets that GBTC- They forget GBTC exists. Exists, right? And some portion of GBTC's assets are simply hedged out. We know that they're hedge players who've been out there buying GBTC and taking negative exposure native in the crypto ecosystem, which is not difficult to do.

And have been doing that basically until they run out of capital because it's one of the surest bets in the market right now is to sort of capture that. I don't even know what it is right now. 5% to 8% discount that's still hanging over GBTC. So yeah, there's going to be inflows. But if we go from a $25 billion ecosystem to a $35 billion ecosystem at the end of the year, we should consider that an enormous victory. And that's my over-under on the Twitter bets is about if we get 10 billion, I'm on the under of that, but that's right where the line is for me. Everybody in the game seems to be on the under, by the way. I haven't heard anyone who's filing one of these being like, yeah, $10 billion,

no problem. I will make one positive argument, which is the asset class is a lot more attractive at the expense ratios that these ETFs are coming in at than they are at 2%. We talk about the impact of interest rates on Bitcoin. The reason interest rates are bad for Bitcoin is it raises the discount factor. You can think of an expense ratio just like an interest rate. One way to think about what's going to happen is we're going to get a percent and a half, almost 2% interest rate cut for the Bitcoin ecosystem come ETF day. Imagine if the Fed came out tomorrow and slashed interest rates by 2%. There is that aspect to it where this is sort of a fundamental change in the market,

which I think is important to consider. So not ridiculously bullish, but this is a big deal. And we shouldn't overlook that as well. I do, Matt, because obviously we discussed this yesterday on Spaces, but most of this audience probably missed it. And Dave brought up that 1.5% fee that GBTC is having. They're going from 2% to 1.5%. You guys are at 0.24, right? So I mean, you're talking about effectively a 6x difference, right? And over time, we know that that is exponentially different. But they have that $25 billion-ish. So is this a game where they're playing, most people just won't move, it's inconvenient, and they're doing the math and say, hey, man, if we don't lose like five-sixths of this, we're still going to come out on top. Or you made the best point, which it might be a result of some calculations

they did based on the tax implications for the people who are holding GBTC. Yeah, I think if you look at ETF history, there are a variety of prices. I'll let Dave speak specifically to Grayscale. It's a company I admire. But sometimes you have ETFs with higher cost bases and people who have capital gains stay in those ETFs because it doesn't make sense to shift. So I do think that would be a rational step by an investor to stay in a higher cost ETF because they don't want to incur the tax gain. I think that's a reasonable point. Yeah. And I think that that's fair for the class of institutional investor that was doing the early creates and something like GBTC. Remember,

all that money that came into GBTC did not come from idiots like us. It came from people who were making very large one-way bets into GBTC, frankly, years like when this started. So that money is slightly trapped in there, as Matt said. But Scott, honestly, put yourself in the position of being on the board for GBTC and being in charge of that organization. Somebody comes to you and says, hey, you know what? We have this magic money box that throws off half a billion dollars in fees. We want to take that down by 80%. That's not a winning argument. Especially when we know that, and it's not a topic for today, but I mean, Grayscale is the cash cow piggy bank for the entire DCG empire, right? So there's implications all beyond what happens specifically with Grayscale for their entire business, I think,

at large. So I think it's a really big difference. And maybe they just did the calculation and said, listen, we got to keep whatever we can at this rate. There were only two options, as far as I can see. One option was you price it at 20 basis points out of the gate, and then you own that market, and you give up literally $400 million or $500 million a year in revenue. That's a tough sell to like, yes, you'll make it up in volume eventually, but you'd like to do it before you retire. So that's a real issue or doing exactly what they did, which was cut the fee enough that they don't get sued by their existing investors

and then sort of let that dribble out for a while. I wouldn't be surprised to see those fees come down, like almost ratcheting down every six months for the next couple of years. Yeah, I think that that makes a lot of sense. Bitwise, Matt, you guys sort of won this battle, I think, even if it's by a bit, right? There's someone in at 0.25, you guys are in at 0.24. But it's a really big deal because with fees this low, there can't be 11 to 14 filers that win, right? I mean, you have to do a tremendous amount of AUM for the math to work at 0.24% fees, even to be able to stay in business, forget be profitable, like literally to cover the expense of having this product, right? Yeah, obviously, I can't speak to our

specific product. But again, zooming out, you know, one thing you see in ETF history is that investors care about fees, the less they pay, the more they keep. And it is an industry. Eric Balchunas, Dave and I's good friend, calls it the terror dome of pricing. And that's what you're seeing. And for what it's worth, that's going to trickle into other parts of the crypto economy, is my guess. Over time, brokerage commissions come down. Custody fees come down.

You're going to see ETFs are a great source of price compression. So when you build an ETF strategy, fees isn't the only thing that people consider when they're evaluating ETFs. They look at liquidity. They look at brand. They look at research. They look at support. They look at other things.

But fees are a big deal. And so I think every issuer was thinking about that when they came up with their pricing. I'll say a part Matt probably can't talk about, which is one of the reasons by sitting at something like 24 basis points and being objectively the cheapest out of the gate matters is because if you're going after that advisor market, advisors over the last five years have really moved their entire operation towards model portfolios, whether those are internally managed models, or you're just taking a BlackRock model or going on InvestNet and buying a model for 25 bps. Those models are really important. And we know with certainty where the Bitcoin allocation in those models is going to come from. It's either going to be in-house, right? If you're running a BlackRock model, chances are it's going to have the BlackRock 1% or 2% slug of Bitcoin in it when they put money, Bitcoin in that model. But for all of the independents out there,

they have to justify to their investment committees, well, why are we picking this ETF as the way we're getting Bitcoin exposure? If it's not the cheapest one, you have a lot of explaining to do to Lucy it, right? I mean, it's the discriminator on model portfolio inclusion. Once you cross some de minimis hurdles around things like volume, which frankly, all these guys are going to have out of the gate. Yeah, there's a couple takes also that came in that standard charter study and yesterday that I want to discuss because this one really shocked me. They said the bank also expects the SEC to approve Ether ETFs in the second quarter of this year. I don't expect that at all. Am I missing something here? Second quarter with Gensler,

who won't even say if it's a security or not. Do you guys have any expectation that we would see an Ethereum spot ETF in the second quarter? I would love it. I would love it. I mean, I would just add Ethereum is more complex than Bitcoin, right? For the reason you suggested, Scott, that the SEC's regulatory position on it isn't clear. For reasons related to staking, you know, these ETFs are grants for trust. You could think of those as sort of dumb rocks that

have difficulty doing things. And an ETF has more things to do in in in the Ethereum ecosystem or would than in the Bitcoin ecosystem. So I do think it's more complex. I don't know, Dave, if you have a prediction. Yeah, I'm I'm skeptical. Scott, I'm with you. I'm not. I think that we probably get one eventually. I'm not actually sure we get it this year. Certainly there's a pathway for it to happen this year. I mean, there's no mechanical barrier for them just deciding to keep this gravy train moving and move on to ETH filings. And then we'll get those things out in May. So if in fact the SEC was going to keep up this pace, which as Matt pointed out has not really happened in our history in this industry,

then sure, they could approve and we could be trading these things in April. Unless we see some lawsuits and people say, hey, you approved the Bitcoin spot, the mechanics are the same. I don't see Gary rushing off to get this done, but maybe I'm wrong. This was one of the other big takes everybody's talking about from yesterday. Spot Bitcoin ETFs can trade at premium to fair value, GTS's Reggie Brown says. This was a quote. I think there's going to be a premium above NAV because US broker dealers can't trade Bitcoin against cash inside their broker dealer. Some can, most can't. So you're going to have trade hedges over futures and trade it on a premium and then take that off. And I think there's a lot of complexity there. He threw out kind of 0.088%-ish, I think, as a guess.

Is there really a chance that these things are going to track the underlying worst than the futures? He did. As Dave said, he backed it up. I was on Bloomberg right after him, and he said 8%, and I couldn't breathe for a few minutes. He subsequently corrected it to eight basis points which is i'm seeing that now now literally the article changed from eight percent to point today no but when i read this and i summarized it for the show it said eight percent and now it just says 0.08 percent yeah eight percent and 0.08 percent are pretty different uh i actually think 0.08 percent's too 8% and 0.08% are pretty different.

I actually think 0.08% is too low. So that gives me something to push back on. I think we will see a premium. Absolutely. At a day one with nothing but buy volume, you should see a premium. That's how ETFs work. I think something in the 10 to 25 basis points in a frothy day is something we see regularly in normal markets. Without something broken,

we rarely see premiums over 50 bps. That would be a big widespread for a new launch. And something like 8% would be like debt crisis where the underlying market locks or Egypt closing down in the Arab Spring, right? That's when we see those kinds of premiums. Yeah, that's exactly right. Okay, so not 8%. Glad we got that. A few more quick tweets for us to discuss before I let you guys go. If we're talking about what's happening actually with the trading of GBTC and kind of in

anticipation of these approvals, GBC traded close to a half a billion today, which is more than 99% of the 3000 current ETFs. And reminder, they're bringing a volume gun to a knife fight if they launch with everyone else. That said, the 1.5% fee will act as a repellent. We talked about that. But I mean, these are like historically high trading volumes, even for GBTC, even now that the discount is effectively closed. So is this just positioning? I mean, what are people doing here? Why are they aggressively trading GBTC if a better asset might exist with better fees tomorrow? Oh, because they can trade this one today. That's the obvious answer, right? Is that I think we're all snickering a little bit. This particularly frothy moment around the ETF launch

is just bringing everybody to the yard, right? I mean, it's bringing all the trad-fi traders who are mostly sitting there in their thinkorswim accounts or interactive brokers accounts who traded a bunch of crypto four or five years ago when it was fun or in the pandemic when it seemed like it was fun and then walked away after FTX. I think all those guys are back, right? So everybody's trading the positions around that. I mean, guys like Hedgeye have GBTC price tracker models specific to GBTC. So there's a lot of frothy TradFi traders that I think are back in this market. Yeah, I think that's right. And again, I'd point out to people, and I've said this before, that this TradFi market is bigger than most people think. If you're in crypto, you assume everyone's trading crypto.

Self-directed retail is maybe 20% of the market. The other 80%, that's a 4X, has been mostly unable to touch this market in the absence of an ETF. So there is a scale factor difference here. Yeah. I keep hearing this argument that if you want a Bitcoin, you would just buy it, right? That there's going to be no demand. And I think that that really is just not the case. This is not the way ETFs have worked. They made the same argument about gold. If you wanted gold, you could buy gold bars or gold miners. And that turned out to be wrong. The gold ETF eventually became $100 billion, right? It is just different when you can find it in your Schwab account next to Apple stock. In your IRA. Buying the same format, right? It is just different when you can find it in your Schwab account next to Apple stock in your IRA format, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, they look, there's real demand. I think the, the maturity button that we should all be looking at is when you start seeing

real volume on the options, that's when you know who won, right? So when we see, and you know, look, it'll probably be- How fast will we see those options? How fast will we see options on the back of these, do you think? Matt, do you have a guess? Because like it took a long time for GLD, right? That was like a long drawn out process before the market makers got everything buckled up. I think it could be fairly quickly, certainly within a week or two. But there may be reg hurdles.

I don't know. I'm not deep into the CME regulations on that stuff. Yeah, I don't know either, but I will say the competitive pressure when you have 12 companies launching is likely an accelerant to that. So GLD had the market to itself, so they could take their time. I assume lots of issuers will focus on that. So, you know, pretty soon. And that'll be good for the market. That's liquidity enhancing.

That makes everything works better. Yeah, it's liquidity and it will allow people who want to actually get some volume into this to hedge, right? Yeah, exactly. We say there's a lot of money on the sideline that can't get exposure to Bitcoin. Well, there's also money on the sideline that won't buy an ETF unless they can effectively hedge it. So just wait for zero data expiration, you know, IBTC options or whoever wins. Good times.

And finally, maybe the most encouraging sign I've seen yet that this thing is going to get approved is that Gary decided to do a really aggressive threat against the crypto industry. I love that. I do too, because actually we've seen, we generally do see these sort of disclosures and warnings ahead of big events. And to be honest, if taking this in a vacuum, right, without the PTSD of reading anything with his name on it, it's accurate, right?

I mean, except for number one. I mean, number one, those offering crypto assets may not be complying with applicable law. To me, if I read between the lines, that says we're coming with some guys who are going to be following applicable laws so you can get exposure that way. Number two, of course, risk and volatility. Okay, great. They say that about stocks too. And number three, it's Tuesday, so we have to talk about fraud and scams and Ponzi's. But you know what? That's accurate. There's a lot of fraud. I was not actually mad at anything he said here. I just love that he decided to say it yesterday. I feel like I like to imagine that he was sitting at the breakfast table,

like with his head in his hand being like, I've been forced into this terrible position. I know what I'll do. I'll tweet. Yeah. I think you got like 25 million impressions. So in like an hour. Yeah, it was crazy.

And I think I really think this is part of his victory lap. You know, like Bitcoin. You know, I've always loved Bitcoin. I taught about it at MIT. I wanted to wait till the right institutions were here to approve these. You're welcome. And then scorched earth and lawsuits against literally everyone else that's my prediction oh i do have one more uh for you this is especially for you dave because you think 200 000 by the end of 2025 is uh potentially crazy well you know we had bology

who gave us a 90 day a million dollar bitcoin well samson ma Mao now saying a million within days to weeks, if you guys didn't see this. And someone pushed him on it. He said, well, my cap is seven weeks because once we hit eight weeks, it's months, not month, right? Then we're talking about months and not days to weeks. A million dollars. Why? Why? What? I got nothing for that other than you know uh psychedelics are really easy to come by now i mean listen i'm here i'm here for it maybe he knows something i know i think we should ask this guy he seems to have the inside line to this guy seems to know everything that there is so did you get hey i want to know matt before i let you go did you guys like uh convert did you orange pill him we did our best i don Matt, before I let you go, did you guys like convert,

did you orange pill him? We did our best. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see if he shows up if these ETFs launch. I'll let you know. Awesome, guys. Always amazing having both of you.

I wish we actually had more time, but we went over. Guys, you can follow both Dave and Matt down in the comments. I'm sure you guys will be relentlessly X-ing, tweeting, whatever we call it now, when this does happen and we start to get more clarity. Matt, I can literally see it in your face. There's so much you want to say. Well, we could just say to Bitcoin, right? That's right. I have a shib-mit I can use to cheers to Bitcoin.

Guys, thank you. Really appreciate the banter and all of the context. We'll be on very soon to be talking about this in hindsight and not what might happen. Looking forward to that. Thank you guys. Awesome, man. I love having those guys

on. What an opportunity to have both of them at the same time. I know they've known each other for a very, very long time. A lot of fun to have two people who are actually friends on the show together. And of course, the show ain't over. It must go on. And now it is 935 or a few minutes over time. But I do have Wick, aka Zero Hedge underscore, here to talk, take your chart request, talk about what's going on in the market, man. How are you? It's been a couple of weeks because we had to do a macro Mondays on Tuesdays there for a while. It has been a couple of weeks. How are you doing, Scott? Yeah, it's been a couple

of weeks and just like yourself, I'm ready to get over this ETF hurdle and start actually charting, right? Because everything's been beholden to this ETF. It has given us a nice run. But yeah, I think even without the ETF, the having the election year liquidity cycles, I'm just really excited for this year, but I definitely want to get over this ETF. It's interesting that they think that it might not come on Wednesday. Who was that? Matt that said that? Dave said it and And Matt's not allowed to comment on something like that. But Dave did tell me before the show, he's like, he can name 100 times when they had to do something and just kind of didn't. Makes sense. Makes sense. Well,

let's pull up this Bitcoin chart here. Let me know when you can see it. Yeah, I got it. Okay. And let me enlarge it. And let's talk about this a little bit. Okay. So here we are, this is the weekly chart of Bitcoin. So whenever we have a big news event that might be systemic, I like to always default to the weekly chart, right? Because normally leading up to it, there's so much volatility. If you're watching it on the hourly chart or four hour chart, or sometimes even the daily chart, especially on a asset that has a 50 vol like Bitcoin, right? You're just going to get shaken out. Your emotions are going to go all over the place. So for more clarity, I always default to these weekly charts when there's

big news events and everything's looking really, really great here, Scott. I mean, as you see, as you've known, we've broken through this resistance over here. And I think that if the Bitcoin ETF is approved, this is what I'm watching. If we take this right here, we can go right up to the highs of this resistance zone. That's about a 25% move. And that's kind of what I was expecting if the Bitcoin ETF was approved. So if it does get approved, this is what I'm watching. I'm watching for it to go up to the top of this resistant zone. And then obviously, it'll take a minute to either break through it or consolidate or retest the lower end of that zone. But this

is what I'm watching, right? It's really hard to predict what happens in these events because it's so hard to calculate how much liquidity is coming into the market. Everyone's taking their shot. I don't like to set targets, right? Because I think targets is more for clout, right? There's no way to know how high or how low this thing goes. So yeah, that's what I'm kind of looking at for Bitcoin. I love the fact that we've broken through this resistance. It looks prime for this ETF approval. And again, I think even if we get an ETF denial, right? I think, you know, whatever, 30% pullback and then reset for the halving. Two, three months after the halving, we're back.

So that's kind of my opinion is it's kind of exciting. But at the same time, you know, it's not the end of the world if we don't get that ETF approval on the first round. What do you think? I agree. I've been watching, actually, obviously, on Trading Alpha. First of all, I somehow missed that price dropped to $45,500 on Coinbase today. I don't know if that happened everywhere, but apparently there was a big liquidity grab there. But all I've noticed, like you said, I mean, I always start on the weekly, of course, green dots, right?

Daily green dots and came right down to the track line on that dip down to 40, which I think was a great grab. Four-hour green dots came right down to the track. I just don't see anything bearish here on the chart. It's ready. It's ready. It's primed and ready. They've set the chart up. Technically, it looks amazing.

As you can see, you've got all this space here. So, yeah, technically, it's really just waiting for this green go sign. And that's why I think that we shoot all the way up to the top of this resistance zone. And then, of course, we're so close to all-time highs right here. Who knows how long it takes to get there? But once we get to the top of this resistance zone, that's where I try to reevaluate and look for a reaction. Look how the market reacts at this

resistance zone. But again, yeah, if we get the approval, I don't think it'll be too much longer in the year before we're testing those all-time highs. Let's go to the next chart. So yeah, Bitcoin looks very bullish. Technically, it's private and ready. Just a quick note before we move on, just to people, I keep seeing people say, and Arthur Hayes just wrote about it, 30%, 40% correction ahead of the halving. Be very careful with that notion. I'm not saying we won't get them. We always get them in these cycles. But if you're waiting for the correction, price might already be up so high that that 30% correction might be to above where

price is today. So you can get the 30% correction and not get the tip that you're trying to buy. So I would say be very, very careful there. Yeah, no, I, I think I also mentioned that on your, your show quite a, quite a while ago that we might get that 30% correction right before the halving. But to say that's, that's your setup, right? That is, that is very risky. You might be buying a lot higher if higher if your move right now has the whole time been waiting for that 30% correction. I mean, we've been talking about that since it was at like $30,000, right? And now it's at 46, 47. So yeah, no, 100%, I acknowledge that there's normally around a 30% correction before the halving. We went over it. But I think that's such a small negative catalyst amongst what we

have here for 2024. I'm really not worried about it. And if we get it, yeah, I'll be buying more, but I'm definitely not. That's definitely not my whole setup. Trying to wait for that 30%. What do you got next? Okay. So let's look what we got next. Okay. So we took some chart requests. Let's jump to INJ, injective. Okay. So you enlarge this. What a beast. Injective. I mean, I don't even know what to say about this, Scott. The relative strength that this thing has held, obviously it's very volatile. These weeks like on this week was really, really crazy. Scared a lot of people. But as you can see,

we've held green dots. And the one thing that I've told people is that once you break through, so you have this basing phase right here, right? If you go through a cycle analysis, you go through the bear market, you go through your stage one basing, which is a sideways consolidation. You start having breakout arrows trying to break above this resistance here, which will put you in stage two, part one. We broke into stage two. Okay. Consolidated, balanced off the track line. Okay. Hadolidated, balanced off the track line. Okay. Had a squeeze shading, letting you know a violent move is coming. All this time we're watching the stage two, part two. This is where it really goes parabolic on most of the charts. Okay. We were watching this. We got your breakout arrow. It broke above our line.

And that's exactly what it did. It went parabolic. And when it goes parabolic, this is what I'm trying to get to. My favorite thing is just simply riding the green dots, right? That's literally what they're meant for. They are micro trend dots. They watch the micro trend. So there's nothing better to let you know when the strength is really ending

these parabolic moves. And as you can see, it's kept green dots and we're actually trying to close the week here at an all-time high close. So injective again for for the setup my biggest yeah it looks looks amazing and it's it's defied everyone's logic of you know it can't keep going up it just does doesn't care what especially because we were still in that phase where alts

were down 75 80 from the last cycle even after they went up and this thing made a new all-time high i mean i've been watching it on the daily here you know you were showing the weekly there obviously you got the trade signal, the arrow at $7, right, above the track line. It gave you another one at $17. But what I love about this, guys, you know, I use Trading Alpha, which is John's indicator. Check out below. But like it never gave a red dot. Even when it went from, you know, $44 down to $29, it never told you to get out of this. And then it came back up for new all-time highs. Yeah, absolutely. And one thing I like to

watch in your chart too, right? There's a couple of, there's three things I'm watching. I'm watching the dots, but I'm also watching that track line. And that's another thing that I noticed in that chart there is that it tested the track line just below it looks like close below it once, right? And then it was right back above it. So I really like assets that respect that track line. It's really easy to keep you in a move. I think, let's see, it went below it twice, but yeah, it's looking really good. I mean, especially on this weekly chart here, Scott, when you're at near all-time highs and there's no resistance overhead, that's clear skies. That's the most bullish scenario you can have. So injective being like this right before the halving, it's really crazy. Now, I'm really interested to see what happens on this ETF approval. Let's say

we get approved. Let me ask you your thoughts. Do you think it pulls temporarily some liquidity from the alt market? I think we'll see alts getting destroyed on their Bitcoin pairs, but rising on their dollar pairs. Yeah. So I think it's like the old classic flat in USD down in Bitcoin. But I don't think really anyone is looking at the Bitcoin value of their portfolios anymore like we used to in the past cycles. People forget in 2016, 2017, you literally, there was no stable coins. You were trading alts in Bitcoin. So you had to denominate in Bitcoin. I think that's pretty much long gone, but I think that they will rise in dollars. I just think that Bitcoin will be outperforming dramatically. Okay. That's what

I think too. I think Bitcoin still is a show. If you're an asset manager, that's exactly what you're doing. You're getting out of a little bit of alts, pairing them off a little bit, right? And you're kind of going into Bitcoin. So I do think it will steal a little bit of liquidity. I think it'd be a short-term thing. And I think when we see Bitcoin hit that top of that resistance zone here. I think that's where we'll see some consolidation or even a little bit of a pullback. And I think that's when you'll really start to see alts try and catch up. So that's kind of my framework that I'm watching. Let's go to the next chart. So this was another requested chart. Whenever everyone was talking about these miners,

I made it very clear that CleanSpark was actually my favorite of the bunch technically. And, but if you look at it here, right? So let's look what happened and let's keep in mind what we went over with the cycle analysis before. You go into your bear market, you go into your stage one basing, which is a sideways consolidation. Once that happens, we draw a stage one basing below,

we draw stage two. So we know that if we break above this line, we're in stage two. And then here's stage two, part two, right? So there's always two parts. So here you go. You're consolidating. You break above finally. Green dots.

It is going parabolic. You stay with the green dots. Goes into your stage two, part two. Stays parabolic. And when it does this, when it goes into this parabolic move, a lot of times I will consider taking profits when the dots end. That's why I keep saying on these parabolic moves, these are, that's what I really like to watch. And as you can see, it lost the dots right here on this big move down. And ever since that it's really had no strength, right? So this is again,

why I love these parabolic moves, just watching the dots more times than not. It's the perfect time to exit when you lose them. Right. So looking at clean spark right now, we are kind of hovering above and below the track line. I don't really like that, to be honest with you, Scott. And I'm not really sure what to expect when we get that, if we get that approval. What are you thinking about, about minors on that approval?

What's your, what's your third process? I think miners, I asked Mike Alfred because he's like my miner expert. He got me to these pretty early. I think that they had sort of a blow off top here. I think that they'll go up again massively over time. I'm not exiting them, but yeah, I think that like, we just saw sort of the big move on minors for a while. Yeah. Okay. So I, I want to, I see, I ask you sometimes ahead of time, cause I don't want to upset anyone, but that that's kind of my thought process, right? Again, this is the, the daily chart here and losing those dots here. Um, I'm pretty much going to wait for it to break above this level right here. Right. I think this right here is a little bit of

a pivot. So I think if we break above that, we have green dots. I'll think about getting back in clean spark. But for now, for me, it's all about Bitcoin right now. So that's the clean spark chart. Yeah. Really quick. Somebody asked what indicator is that? It's trading alpha. It's his. And you see, I use it as well. You can check it out in the description down below. That's the soft sell. But of all the things, I've told you guys this, I've been pitched like a thousand indicators over the years, a million strategies, and I've literally have just started using this myself because it just works. It's so simple. Yeah, no. So yeah, Trading Alpha, and specifically if you go to our websites or if you go down below is what you should do.

We actually have a 25% discount that's going to be running, I think, until the 15th. So if you want to enter, I think I had the wrong. You do. I'm sorry, Scott. I didn't update you. It's twenty five. It's twenty five off bundle. So if you put twenty five off bundle, if you go to our website, you check out on the yearly the link is below and Scott's comments clicking twenty five. Twenty five off bundle during checkout. The link is below in Scott's comments. Clicking 25 off

bundle during checkout, that'll drop it by 25%. It's the largest discount we have all year. And I did it for Black Friday and again for the holidays. But yeah, Trading Alpha, and this is the alpha bundle. And then also make sure the yearly is the only one that has the dots in the track line. So if you get the monthly, you're going to be disappointed. Let's move on to the next chart here, Scott. Yeah, what do you got? See what we got. By the way So if you get the monthly, you're going to be disappointed. Let's move on to the next chart here, Scott. Yeah, we got. See what we got. So by the way, if you guys are wondering,

I did ask for these requests on X. If you're wondering where we came up with these, I tweeted this morning. So guys look for that tweet each week so we can get to get to his his request. That's where these are coming from. Yeah, yeah, guys. Whenever Scott makes those requests, it's always most likely the night before.

So again, if you want to watch my takes here, make sure to put your input and give me some charts to chart. Somebody said NVIDIA, and I'm so glad they did because it's my favorite stock and it has been for a minute. In fact, when I saw this going through this little bear phase here and it put in bottoms, broke above the track line. I think it got in here, got in here, and I saw this going through this, uh, little bear phase here and it put in bottoms broke above the track line. I think it got in here, got in here and I got in again over here. I think this was a bit of a FOMO for me, uh, but it's been acting really, really well. You can see it did reach our target. And when I was in this, I did set this target here, uh, around $500 and

it's been consolidating around there ever since. Right. And we did get that one red dot, but more importantly, what I was paying attention to was we've got this shaded squeeze. And as you guys have known, when we get these squeezes, it precedes large moves, right? So waiting for the breakout, I view this as bullish consolidation. And here is your breakout arrow breaking above this resistance and finally at all time highs. And you know how I feel about all time high guys. I've mentioned it a few times now. It's the most bullish technical aspect you can have is not having resistance overhead. We have no sell orders overhead. It's clear skies. So yeah, Nvidia is looking great, whoever asked for it. I'm a big fan. I'm still in this move.

Me personally, I'm in a hedge position. That's another thing I wanted to just mention. Scott, if they bring options out on Bitcoin on that ETF, gosh, that's going to be so exciting. You guys are going to see some different tweets from me for sure if that happens. But over here, I do have a long position. I do own the stock. I own a put option, a long-term put option. That's protection. It's like a hedge. And then whenever it consolidates, I'm selling calls to offset that price of that protection. That's a bit complicated there, but NVIDIA is looking great, guys. So I expect it to go much higher in the cycle in 2024. It's been a leader versus competitors. So no, this is looking great. Technically, you couldn't get a better chart than this. Let's move on to the next one. Ethereum. Okay. No one actually asked for Ethereum, but a couple of weeks before that, you guys were all over it. So let's talk about

Ethereum here. Again, we're doing this bullish consolidation right above the support resistance now turned support zone. So I still like Ethereum. I think that if we get that ETF approval on Bitcoin, I do see Ethereum. Let's see if it jumps up. The same thing with Bitcoin. I think it jumps up to the higher range of my support zone. It will be a 26% jump. And I think we consolidate over here specifically in Ethereum for a while because it's a little bit of a lagger. But as soon as we start getting that news, as soon as the Bitcoin ETF is out the way, I think we'll start getting a little bit of FOMO talking about the Ethereum ETF. And I think that's what you, me and quite a few people have been waiting for, Scott.

I think we all got positions in Ethereum, right? Oh, yeah. Listen, I might be wrong, but yeah, I make the case all the time. Also on the Bitcoin pair, it's sort of sitting at a key support and it's oversold on the weekly for only the fourth time ever. So yeah, of people, again, are worried because it's been a laggard. But to me, as I've mentioned before, I think the structure, right, you're seeing higher lows, higher highs, and a little bit of consolidation here at this phase, right before this big news event. I think this looks absolutely healthy. And again, yeah, I'm actually still in Ethereum. And my bet is that it goes higher. So let's move on to the next chart and we will end it with Solana and how fitting right after Ethereum. So Solana is looking great, right? This is probably my,

not probably, it is my biggest position that I have. I'm all in Solana. You go through your bear phase here, your stage four downtrend, you're below the track line. You do not buy when you're below the track line in a stage four, you start basing here in your stage one base. Remember your consolidation when you're in your consolidation. I don't care what the dots are telling me. I'm expecting it to go above and below the track line with red and green dots. This is what you want to see in a stage one basing, but you want to have your levels. And that's what we did. We have our stage two starting, uh, over here. Okay. So broke out into your stage two, got your long above. Here's your stage two, part two, boom. And that's why this says in progress, because this is still in progress, pulls back. We still have green dots. It's on the weekly chart, the macro chart.

Um, I was really, uh, you know, when we had this candle here, this pull, this candle that pulled back, I was really mentioning that I wanted it to close above a hundred because I wanted to lease two candle closes above a hundred, very important. And now you can see, we're actually retesting that level right there at a hundred. I think this is where it wants to say, stay until we get that, that Bitcoin, um, kind of announcements, uh, on, on the approval, right. Approval denial. But if it gets approved, I think that, Bitcoin still is a show. But again, I think Ethereum's next target will be probably the lower range here at the one, let's say 140 to 150 range, I think is what we'll target next after Bitcoin does its thing and then gives alts a little bit of time to catch up. That's my

take on this. Love it. I totally, totally agree with that. I see that line right below in the 70s. That's kind of where I'm watching if we do get some sort of shakeout. I wrote about that, I think, yesterday or the day last week in my newsletter that that's an area I'm really interested in. Not that we're going to get that retest, but if we do, I'm going to be bidding the shit off. You and me both, Scott. I've bought every dip here. here so no i can see what you're looking at right here so scott's looking at a a pivotal support right so we also call this uh in technical analysis we call this a logical place to pull back this is a logical place right here 100 so scott that's not a bad place at all personally i hope that we never revisit that we just keep going of course just

because i'm i'm in this. I'm FOMOing into this. So no, I love this chart. Everything looks good. So yeah, all the charts across the board, especially the ones we went over, with the exception of CleanSpark, in my opinion, look really prime technically. We just need that catalyst to be a bullish one. And I think we're off to the races, Scott. Agree. I totally agree.

Really quick. Someone said there were no stable coins in 2017. What are you talking about, Scott Belkert? I see you guys talking about it. I'm saying there were no really stable coin pairs. You had to either trade against actual USD on Coinbase or you moved your Bitcoin to Bittrex. This was pre-Binance, which launched in 2017 and trade on a Bitcoin pair. So they were irrelevant.

It had no market cap. So yeah, I'm not saying they didn't exist. I'm saying it didn't matter when it came to trading. Otherwise, guys, yeah. So we gave you the soft pitch there. Trading Alpha, it's right down in the description. As he said, you can get a massive discount using that below. He's on here on Tuesdays for a reason. He and I have been sort of in the background talking about trades for literally ages now. And I use it all the time. That's all I got, right? I can't give you a better endorsement personally than I use it.

Yeah. I mean, look, we're in that phase right now. We're in the bull market, the four-year cycle. This is the time to have all the edge that you can get. So if you're looking for a technical edge, I've been in the markets trading. I haven't had a job for the past, gosh, it must be about 18, 19 years now. It's been 84 years like the Titanic. Yeah. Well, this is the best TA stuff I've found. So if you're looking for a technical edge on TA, I can guarantee you my approval that this stuff is close to the best, if not the best. It's the best I've ever seen. That's why I use it. So thank you for partnering with us, Scott.

We really appreciate that. And we're really proud of our product. Yeah. And on top of that, you get access to the Discord where you actually get to talk to him and his team. And you get really handheld through this entire thing. It's not like you just turn these on your screen and hope for the best.

He's had to hold my hand. How many videos have you made me on how to use different parts of No, no, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I'm happy to help anyone. And again, as Scott said, if you sign up for the yearly, not only do you get the indicators, right, but as a bonus, not part of the price, but as a bonus, you get into our VIP section of our discord. We have 60,000 members there on the VIP section. I'm there every day. You can simply just tag me and I'll answer your questions. So I try to make it as easy as possible, Scott. So thank you again for partnering with us. And I'm happy to help anyone

that wants to join us on our journey. All right, man. Appreciate it, guys. That is all. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be talking about a Bitcoin spot ETF approval, right? And then we won't have to do this anymore, do this dance. But I do know we have Yusko on Thursday. I'm not sure yet who the guest is tomorrow, but we keep it coming, man. Thank you so much. I'm glad to have you back, Wick, to be doing this. It's been way too long. And I'm hoping a lot of people are going to check out Trading Alpha, man.

Thank you so much, everybody. I will see you tomorrow, 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Bye, guys. Thanks, Scott. Take care. Bye.