The Wolf Of All Streets - ETFs Dump, XRP & Solana Inflows Surge #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

Crypto Town Hall's live stream focused on the current state and outlook of crypto ETFs, particularly the contrasting inflows and outflows among Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Solana funds. Speakers discussed the implications of these ETF trends, the evolving regulatory landscape, the impact of quantum risk narratives, and the potential disruption from projects like Coinbase aspiring to become an 'everything exchange.' The session provided analysis on how increased institutional adoption, regulatory clarity, and new financial products are setting the path for broader crypto market maturation, even while short-term price action remains tightly constrained. The discussion was punctuated by questions about the longer-term relevance of ETFs, tokenization of real-world assets, and the ongoing evolution of tradfi and defi.

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All right, so moving on to the shows here, we got ECF's dump, XRP and Solana Inflows surge. I'm not sure that's the biggest story of the day, but I do think it's worth mentioning, obviously that we've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of outflows from Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, and that's been a pretty steady trend, all while we've had actually inflows into both XRP and Solana ETFs. So I wonder if this is just a function of them being the new kids in town and getting some interest, but definitely we've seen that disparity here for quite a while now. So interesting worth noting.

I don't think it's been tracked by the general market that that's been the case. It's not like XRP and Solana as tokens are pumping while Bitcoin and Ethereum are dumping. So just a sort of interesting divergence, I guess, there. And I don't know. Yeah, Dave, you're giving me the thumbs down. Jump on in. I think that it's, you know, people, look, you know, I've been very critical. And I own both, right?

So this isn't me, you know, pumping or shitting on anything. But, you know, the whole notion of ETFs is ETFs allow people who have no ability or didn't want to or don't trust Coinbase or don't trust Cracken or don't trust Robin Hood to own these things in a wrapper that allow, you know, market access. I said when all the ETF started, the Bitcoin ETF was a very big deal for lots and lots of reasons because it opened up institutional buying. We these others also open up institutional buying, but what I think you're seeing, and it's not surprising, is institutions that don't understand the difference between crypto, people who listen to, I don't wanna make fun of my friend,

but who believe that all cryptos are created equal, it's just that word diversification, right? So you're seeing a little bit of diversification moving on. And the best person, it would be great to have Matt Hogan on to talk about it, and I think that you're seeing, Exactly that. You know, you're seeing diversification. The entire crypto market, however, is bigger than that. And that's why XRP hasn't done anything. That's why Solana hasn't done anything of anything they've underperformed during this down draft since October 10th. So I don't think that it really means a whole lot. I think that Bitcoin is still the lead sled dog and Ethereum is probably, you know, right there with it in terms of, you know, Tom Lee and the 3,000 level matters to technical traders. And, you know, Bitcoin has been in the middle of this range. And You said it this morning, you know, between 85 and 90, that's a pretty tight range that we've been in for a while. And yet within that range, it's had, you know, it's moved from one to the other like a ping pong ball.

It's like, you know, one of those, you know, just back and forth and back and forth. And we can talk about this as much as we want. I think that the biggest story that people are talking about is in Bitcoin. In fact, with a lot of these coins is quantum. And I think that that is, when you have Ray Dalio talking about it as a risk, people are paying attention. I think that's putting a lid on the markets. At the same time, what's going on with gold and silver is very, very clear, right? The debasement trade is alive and well, and the hot money is using gold and silver to play it.

And so crypto is not really involved right now. Now, it doesn't mean it won't ever be involved again. In fact, I think it's the exact opposite, but it is not involved right now. So that's how I'm looking at this stuff. I mean, last week I was stuck in a hearing room all week. So, you know, I was able to be online a bit, but I really couldn't talk. And I don't know what people were talking about most of the week, but it feels to me like when you're when when markets get into a tightening range, you end up with a pretty big move at the back end of the range when it finally breaks. And, you know, obviously people in the crypto world think the break's going to be to the down. I personally think the break's going to be the upside. But, you know, we'll see what happens. But that is where we're at. Anybody else think there's signal in the fact that we have Bitcoin and Ethereum outflows and XRP and inflows.

just to keep it on topic for a bit. I see Mark, Ajit, Gator. Douglas, I see you as a listener, but I assume you're a speaker. Is that correct? Hey, Scott. I can jump in here. The Salana ETF in particular, I know, was a lot of people had funded that by the foundation. The foundation put in, depending on which ETF you're talking about,

anywhere from 25 to 50 million of their own foundation money, just exceeded. So when it comes to that, I'm a little skeptical about what organic flows are into that ETF and where they're coming from. So maybe it's a bit coiner in me or not, but it is a different animal with different motivations. So that's my five cents. I don't know what the flows were, were they an additional like 3 to 10 percent. So now they're like 10 million, so it's 110 million or is it much bigger? I can look while you guys are just guessing this.

I mean, anyone else on stage, particularly thoughts here, we can find somebody else. Gator, I think your hand just went up, but I'm not really sure. We see a lot of questions here. I noticed that too. First of all, thank you for inviting me to this event. It's the first time I'm a speaker here. My name is Gator. I also go by the name, Dayon.

I've been in the crypto space since 2017 and also followed the Wolf of Wall Street since pretty much the early days. So it's a pleasure to be here. talking about the out inflows and outflows I do agree what was set earlier by Dave W I believe regarding the actual effect of the XAP and Solana inflows probably being very limited I do also think that part of as in terms of price effect I mean

and I do believe that this is also due to the attention that currently AI is getting in general so crypto as an investment is not as hot However, the inflows are significant, as being said already. And when looking at these inflows, I believe that they're a temporary effect of, you know, the fact that these ETFs are currently there, that the opportunity is there to invest in it in this manner, where likely it is a temporary thing. Initially, it's interesting, it's new, it's shiny, but I do believe that also because it's funded by Salana Foundation,

in Solana's case, for example, that the impact of it is going to be limited, especially looking at the long run here. People that want to invest in crypto, they will invest in crypto itself. This is maybe four people that are not familiar with crypto, but I don't see this having any effect in the long run, at least not significantly in the price of the tokens. Yeah, I mean, the Solana one's at least interesting in that it has staking, right? So I guess, and I think that's going to come to Ethereum, but Mark, I don't have the total numbers here. I just quickly got the flows last week, though. Bitcoin was minus 497 million,

ETH minus 643 million. And then, you know, modestly, Salonah was 66.55 in, an XRP was an inflow of 82 million. So they're not breaking the bank, but in the context of outflows, I think, you know, 66 million for Seoul and 82 million for XRP is worth the discussion. But maybe we've now beaten that discussion to death. I mean, Dave, what do you?

I mean, I know you, you kind of generally like discussing quantum. There's really not huge news right now. I mean, you look around and we have kind of the same trends, right? Institutional adoption continuing. I think J.P. Morgan today announced they're exploring crypto trading for institutional clients. But generally, we know where the puck's moving with regulation, legislation, and institutions, right? More adoption and more clarity.

So it's just become not interesting to discuss. Well, I mean, but I continue to point out that people who expect immediate movements have to understand that markets don't necessarily do what you expect. And that always tends to be the case. The reason I mentioned quantum is when you have people like Ray Dalio saying things that are wildly ignorant, it gets people's attention, right? you know, you know, it's like mischaracterization is, is key. So, you know, Nick Carter, who is pretty well known and very thoughtful in what he says, basically comes out and writes a large article and then some, and continues to push the narrative that the Bitcoin community needs to make certain decisions to adapt because things move quicker than you expect, and it would be dumb for them

not to do so. Now, this is not an indictment. I mean, I don't know if Nick sold all of his Bitcoin. and I would be beyond stunned if that was the case, but I haven't had a chance to talk to him about it. Maybe you have. But I take his articles as perfectly rational, we should have the conversation. I took Adam Back's response as, well, I mean, while he makes some good points, it's like, but a discussion is what he's talking about. And, you know, when you put your head in the sand, it's not good.

And so a lot of people reacted to this saying, well, wait a minute, maybe there is risk here. Maybe these Bitcoin guys are just being arrogant. And markets don't like that. And so I think that that has helped put a lid on the market. I really do, even from institutions who are looking at this and don't really understand it. And I talked about this, we had a really good conversation on Donish's coffee with Donish on, I forgot which day. I think it was yesterday, was it Saturday, I don't know, this weekend.

And look, the best consensus on this is it really, first of all, it's way, it's farther in the future than the news stories will tell you. And second of all, it's not an existential risk unless people like CZ and Binance are beyond stupid. Because like half of the coins are, quote, vulnerable because they have public keys exposed or at finance. And finance can easily change that, right? So, you know, but these sorts of narratives gain, and they do change people's asset allocation decisions. Will they change it in the short run? Will they change the momentum?

No, I don't believe so. But I do think that when you see these narratives, it does cause a pause. I think the fact that Bitcoin is still in the training range where it is, considering this narrative, tells you that this market is different than other times, right? You know, when Tesla, we all remember when Elon, the first Tesla story that he was dumping or not going to sell his Bitcoin, what happened? It went from like, what, 50 to, you know, 30, almost in a blink. You know, that kind of, that's not what's happening here.

And I think it is extremely important to understand that the tailwinds from the regulatory side, from the institutional adoption side are very, very large. And so, yes, I agree with you. But I think that people who are trying to understand markets need to understand the impact of these sorts of stories. That's all. Yeah. I fully agree. And I was actually wondering, we were talking about the ETFs, XAP, Solana, BTC.

but what I was seeing last week was a Coinbase presentation of becoming the Everything Exchange and I was wondering how that will affect the impact and the use of these ETFs like it will I don't know if you if you heard or watched the Coinbase announcement but they were basically saying

that everything is going to be tokenized so they're going to offer again like Binan stride in the past tokenized stocks they're going to offer prediction market markets, etc. So it will become more accessible to invest in crypto directly. You see Robin Hood going in that direction as well. So how much of a function will these ETFs have in the future when everything is going to be accessible through this kind of everything exchange? It's something I'm wondering about. I don't have necessarily the answer to it, but I'm really curious how

you guys see this. Yeah, go ahead, Dave. I don't think it replaces them at all. I think it's a Yeah, I have a pretty strong opinion, actually. I think that Coinbase is sticking their flag in the ground, as has Robin Hood, that there doesn't, you don't need to use, you know, that they're going to be right up there with the Schwabs of the world, that, you know, it's like, okay, you want to invest, you can do this. And just wait until they have all their partnerships so that you can use it for your payment accounts, et cetera, et cetera. You know, that's why the trust bank charters are so relevant.

And that's why the banking lobby is, is kicking into high gear saying lots of stupid shit. And I mean really stupid shit in order to, you know, to their, to their pet Congress people that they've donated a ton of money to in order to try to preserve their monopoly. But I think that they're going to be as successful in that as the horse and buggy operators were in stopping cars, right? You know, it's just that the, people talk about stable coins a lot. It's not just stable. It's crypto rails. It's the fact that I want to pay my debts. I have my, I have credit cards that are earning me whatever rewards, but do I really want that when people are baking in an extra 3%? Right? You know, I don't know, I don't know about you, but when someone tells me that they're going to charge me 3% more for a credit card and I can pull it a debit card and pay for it and not pay 3%. Well, that 3% is worth more than any of the rewards that you're getting, except for maybe with Gemma, I with the Bitcoin Rewards card, which I use every place. Yeah, I've been using it now too. That's great.

So, you know, it's like, and I love the fact that I'm getting the Bitcoin rewards at this, this price, not, you know, significantly higher. So, yeah, I use that one a lot. But the point is they're trying to become in everything exchange. What I read Coinbase's announcement, maybe I'm wrong. I thought they were going to offer actual stocks, you know, in brokerage account, as opposed to just tokenized. So obviously when they're tokenized, they'll be ready to deal with that, too.

But answer to your question, which was the ETFs, is it's about counterparty risk, right? If you believe that Coinbase is safe, then just buy Solana and stake it on Coinbase. You'll get a better yield than you will if you're buying it. You know, if you're not going to stake it yourself, then you're going to get through an ETF, which has a management fee associated with it. But who knows? Maybe not. And it allows you to trade it.

And also today, right now, you can margin borrow against anything that's in a stock account. account, but you can't do that against crypto readily without going through another company. Now, I keep telling people, that's going to be the big unlock. That's going to be, and I mean a very big unlock, because what changed in 1988 for equities to allow you to borrow against margin was a massive unlock for a variety of businesses. And that has already been signaled that is going to happen over the next, sometime in the next couple of years. Now, I don't know when, but based on what J.P. Morgan's saying, I would be surprised.

rise if those rules aren't proposed and start the adoption cycle next year. And so that's a big reason. So if you hold a Bitcoin ETF, if you hold a Solana ETF, you can borrow 50% against it. Obviously, if it drops, you know, a significant amount, you can get margin called, but you can borrow against it without having to do anything. And the rates are way lower because it's part of the financial system than it is for any other sort of loans. So that's why people would buy ETFs. That is the reason. Mark, I yield your hand up, but I'm pretty confident that you agree with that. Yeah. Anytime you make assets more fungible against each other, you're going to have it. You know, for example, I do have some ETFs locked up in a legacy account, but it's not diversified.

And so the margin is less than 50 because of the volatility of the asset. I don't know if that matters. and there is a new mortgage company that's going to be able that does lending now that came out but their rates are not as attractive as they are against stocks. So I think if you allow the commingling or the tokenization, you're going to have offset, you know, benefit in a pool. I don't know if that's exactly what you were talking about, Dave, apologies, if it's not. Yes and no. I mean, I'm just talking about the very, very basic thing, which is, you know, we, we were talking about this morning on Macro Monday that the economy has been funded in many respects by stock market. So you're seeing margin as a percent, just in at massive levels. And it's not what people think. I mean, it's there's some of that. But it's not that there's any data that shows that people are buying stock initially on margin more than they've ever bought before. In fact, I don't think that's the. case. But what is absolutely true is people living on their stock holdings by against it rather than taking the capital gains and paying for it. It used to be a

billionaire thing. Now it's a thousandaire thing. Now people with hundreds of thousands in stock market gains rather than selling or borrowing against it because their brokerage account will let them take the money out and pay for their life. That's the that's the untold story in the past few years. I agree. That has not hit mainstream yet. And you're right. It used to be the, what, buy, borrow, die that, you know, Scott and you guys have been talking about with Bitcoin based on real estate, but now people are doing it on a $3 million, $4 million equity portfolio. Sure they are.

And why wouldn't they? And so, but the net, but the chart that James Lavish put up, I think it was James put it up. It could have been Mike. Could have been Scott. That put it up that shows how large margin debt is as a percentage is huge. I mean, just the absolute numbers. Absolute numbers are massive.

But what is it? That's the money that's being taken out of the stock market by people borrowing against their positions. Now, this does create risk to the market, undenial, it also shows how important the wealth effect is. So when Gator asks, why would people rather have, you know, $500,000 in a Salana ETF than $500,000 in Solana? The answer is, if you have $500,000 in the salon ETF, you could borrow a few hundred thousand dollars against it. You can't do that if it's in if it's in the coin. Now, at a very cheap rate anyway. The same is true with Bitcoin, although Bitcoin, there are companies that will do a good job

with that, but the rates are the rates, and it depends. This space was downloaded via spacesdown.com. Visit to download your spaces today. Right. So does that answer to the investigator? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for me, I haven't invested in ETFs myself in the past. So this topic that we are discussing today is not really my field of expertise.

I'm more an energy sector kind of guy. I've got 10 years of experience in that. And energy and blockchain is my real expertise. But I really found it's an interesting thing to discuss. So that's why I asked the question. And a very clear answer to that was given. So thank you for that. Yeah, it makes sense.

Once again, kind of tough to find specific stories to talk about here, Dave. Did you see that Klarna integrates stable coins alongside Coinbase? Well, I mean, look, the integration is, there are very few things in life that you can see that are more obvious than the fact that the entire financial system is going to unlock because of the stable coin technology at the heart of it and the crypto technology at the heart of it. I mean, it is as certain as the fact that when the internet became, when we got graphical user interfaces and the ability for people to sell goods around the world by opening up an internet storefront and promoting it on social media, that it was going to change how retail worked forever. Forget just Amazon with just in time delivery.

I mean, just the entire notion of the internet. It was obvious in the 90s that all commerce was going to change. And people could see that, but it was hard to invest in. So because everyone said, oh, my God. Well, you know, do I have a website and people overpaid for it? It went crazy and then it dumped. But now, you know, years later, you know, where the wealth was created is pretty freaking obvious.

The fact that you could sit on a TV, watch a show, have an in-product mention. And Amazon, if you're watching on Prime, gives you a link that you can click and buy the thing that was there. I mean, just think about all of what exists today that didn't exist. Most of it was obvious. was obvious when the internet bubble was happening.

And the issue was people invested based upon, you know, well, whether the thing they were investing in is gonna get a big piece of it. What is completely obvious is that you're going to be able to buy any asset from the same set of accounts or interface that you can pay your bills. So you're gonna be able to pay your bills, you're gonna be able to save and invest all in the same place.

That is absolutely certain. And that's a massive unlock because right now, There's, there's, I mean, I think the number is like seven, six to seven trillion in deposits. And there's seven trillion in money market funds that it's hard to move from one thing to another. All of this is going to change. And we know that. And so when you look at these stories, to me, it's like, okay, well, yeah, you know, this is where it's going to go. And that's why it's kind of funny to watch the banking lobby, like fight for no yield on stable coins.

It's like, what difference does it make? You're going to be able to invest wherever the hell you want to. And the real question is going to be how is it treated from a tax point of view, how, you know, et cetera, et cetera. That's going to be the biggest difference. And yeah, I think it's a big story, but I think the real question is where's the value going to derive? And there's going to be a lot of value in luck, make no mistake.

It's just a question of where. Dave, I agree with you that if you increase velocity, that's the next stage. We have more collateral being used, as you said, ripping out, funding ourselves with used to be the domain of billionaires. But if you follow your thread on the velocity of, of, I'll say, collateral or value going faster, and what does that do to the banking system when you have now deposits that are not captive to the banking system?

Or do you limit that? That, I think, is the biggest scale. I think it's really simple. I think that there's a, just as we've seen many, many major changes, what you're going to see is different types of banks doing different things. I think regional banks are going to have to become, yeah, they'll have some deposits and, yes, they'll probably partner with companies that are large, whether it's Robin Hood or Coinbase or, you know, JP Morgan for that matter, you're going to be, they're going to be partnerships that if you use a regional bank that you're not excluded from the rest of this, this modernizing financial system, but I think that you're going to see regional banks move to a fee for service model. I think that you're going to see lenders, uh, pay, for access to potential loans that are sourced and verified by regional banking executives that have actually knowledge of local economies. And I think that borrowers are going to pay

a fee to source lending funds to regional banks as opposed to paying that fee based on having deposits that are captured and not given interest in basically, you know, having the interest rates being, you know, an arbitrage against the person who deposits. And I think that's a positive outcome. Right now, that is almost impossible to conceive because the banks themselves are fighting against it. You know, the ones that say, oh, my God, the regional banks are the ones who know the creditworthiness of these people. Well, I mean, I don't think there's a player in the market who's loaning money who believes the rating agencies are worth a damn on local businesses. I don't think that anyone believes there's any expertise there. No. So there'll be a change in in servicing, leadership,

and model. It sounds like you're saying it's almost not to say that you're aligned with what Trump and Besson are doing, but it's a run at hot, whereas there's going to be a velocity. There'll be an increase in business, and now there'll be an additional layer in some businesses that'll be fee-based that aren't, but there'll be so much more business in the financial system. That's the hope, right? That's what you want. That's what they want. I mean, look, I just think they're making a horribly dumb political decision on medical care that they could, fix it, but they only have a few weeks, I think. They could have a catastrophic midterms where the next two years, the only thing we hear about in the House is impeaching Trump. And, you know,

that is literally on the table if they screw over people, you know, from this, if they basically don't change the system that is, that effectively gives all the power to the insurance companies and just takes away money from people, I think that will be a disaster. So we'll see what they do, but that's the political problem they have. The interesting thing will be, you know, do the Democrats continue to double down against crypto or not? And I think, you know, what is it, David Sacks did? That was the other news last week. Scott wasn't it David Sacks last week saying, you know, that despite all the doom and gloom

about the meme coins and all the other crap, that he still expects to see clarity move ahead. Yeah, if he said markup in January. I mean, to me, that's the biggest difference because we all know that a lot of the pathologies that happen in the market happened because the U.S. pushed market, pushed, everything offshore. And so the real question is, does that gain anything? From a crypto point of view, that matters a great deal. And so I guess we'll see.

But, you know, we're sort of a pretty big train wreck if we don't get it. Because you have all these people still like one foot in the door back into the U.S. from a instant, like from the, you know, crypto builders perspective. And you'd hate to see it reverse. I mean, the fact is that they don't do anything. and the SEC and CFTC agree and the CFTC continues to push toward regulation, you know, in a reasonable light touch manner, people overestimate how easy it is to change things at these agencies easily. It's not. So if you get things past, yes, the SEC could propose to do things

that, you know, go back to regulatory regulation by enforcement, and they could. But it's not so easy in the court because of the Supreme Court, because of Loper Bright, which is a decision that took away Chevron deference, they'll have a real hard time. Even if Congress doesn't do anything, once it gets there, it is entirely possible that between Atkins and the CFTC, that you could have something approaching regulatory clarity, at least for main things, at least for very clear non-securities that basically takes out the worst outcomes, you know, of another Gensler coming in because we get a president of AOC who promotes Gensler back or someone like him. But I don't think that that's horribly likely in any scenario.

So what really is the problem is the notion of using crypto or hybrid, you know, tokens that are actually securities that could trade alongside ones that aren't, right? because that becomes really hard if you don't get clarity. And so there is, and also the US, you know, the individuals being able to trade on, you know, defy, you know, based without CFTC ruling. But the CFTC can basically make that possible now, right? They could.

I'm not saying they're gonna be able to in the next three years, but they could certainly try because I think it's pretty clear that the CFTC has derivative oversight. So I guess we'll see. I mean, I know of multiple companies that are working towards, providing the ability for U.S. citizens to be able to trade in a compliant manner on on defy exchanges, for example. So we'll see how it happens, but I don't know the clarity. I don't know that it's a total train wreck. I do think that it's bad, but I don't know it's a total train wreck that

you might think. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, I think, Dave, you're right about the legislation would be fantastic because of, as you said, the Chevron limits regulation or regulation by enforcement, if that's the right term. And your point about Atkins and FAM laying out some pretty strong initiatives before midterms can help reduce present AOC. But boy, it really would help to have legislation.

Then you would see banks and other institutions get much higher degree of confidence, of things not being rolled back really, you know, for a while. Well, I understand something. There is a, there are people in the banks that are sitting here saying, wait a minute, this stuff is inevitable. And if we wait another four years to compete, we're going to get crushed. Now, the management of the banks wants legislation too.

They just want the legislation to have little time bombs in it that gives them a competitive advantage. What people have to understand is when you get this legislation, you will get things in the law. that's negotiated by the banks to give them a competitive edge. You may not like it, but that's just the reality of the way these things work. It is also true that when it gets to the agency levels, that the agencies can get lobbied as well. And you see a lot of this stuff. I just don't think there's an entity anymore

that thinks the genie can be put back in the bottle. So when you see DTCC, you know, talking about their quadrillions of transactions all moving to blockchain, and we all kind of look at that and say, oh, well, but they picked this small chain that we've never heard of, it doesn't matter. The most important part about DGCC doing that is it tells you that the technology

and the asset class is past the point where it will be pushed out of the United States. It is. It is past that line. We have reached escape velocity. The sole, because I don't think that you may not like the way the legislation gets written, but there will be legislation. I think that is on a bipartisan basis,

certainly. Do you not disagree? I mean, it's too bad we don't have. Yeah, I think we get something. Yeah. Yeah. Gator. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think if you look at the Clarity Act and how far along it has gotten now, I believe we're very close to approving it, right? I understood something halfway January that it could pause into law and that the Senate markup is expected January 2026, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. So we're actually pretty close to that. And I do believe that if you look at how far U.S. regulation on crypto has gotten by now, that taking a step back, rewriting the law and retrying basically to get that clarity in the market,

I don't expect that to happen. I'm personally not from the U.S., but if I look at how far it has gotten so far and how much it has helped the industry, especially when it comes to real-world asset tokenization, also the Deepin sector where I know some people are really fanatically lobbying to get that clarity and I think it was already provided now also via the Clarity Act that Deepin is not for example seen as a security I'm not sure it wasn't that regulation or that act but basically I see that these these things have now become so much clearer I don't think that they will go fully back on that no matter if you're Democrat or a Republican. However, I do see that, you know, Democrats are more skeptical maybe to

some regard on crypto than that Republicans may be. And maybe there will be some amendments, but in general, I think the outlines have been laid, and I don't feel that these are changing anymore at this stage. And I can't wait for that to be actually implemented into law. Yeah, I think that that is true. The Democrat-Republican thing is unfortunate, because what's happened is, is Trump becomes, so much of the Democrats' ideology these days is fighting Trump that when he says A, they say not A. And I think a large, that is actually one of the reasons that the price has underperformed, I think. I mean, I don't think it's even all that arguable at this point. But this two shall pass. And the smarter money basically says, yeah,

okay, whatever, but it will pass. I mean, I will continue to tell people that I think that the Trump mean coins were the signal the ultimate reason why the market has played out the way that it's played out for that for all of this but you know it's it's it's unfortunate but it is it's just a fact you can't do a whole definitely right that put in the ceiling there's no way you're going higher than the incoming president of the united states launching a meme at uh 9 p.m. on a Friday that was the end of uh all coin ceilings yeah that's that that's the way I look at it So, but, you know, as I said, narratives always look at price action in the reverse in the rearview mirror. Sometimes they reinforce it. It has been true at every single crypto winter, every time Bitcoin swoons that you get these.

And some of it is true, but it definitely creates fear uncertainty and doubt. So when I say FUD, it doesn't mean FUD is not always untrue. Some of them are, like the environmental nonsense was literally not just FUD, but untrue FUD. there are stories and narratives that always surface at the time after Bitcoin has already fallen and people think it will continue. And generally, when those stories reach a crescendo, that's the bottom. The only time that wasn't true was when FTX imploded because now that created massive amounts of force selling. And I think that that's very instructive.

So if you're listening from a market, from a timing point of view, I mean, I don't know what the, what the catalyst is to cause what all the four-year cycle people are saying, because I think they've already sold. And I think, you know, we've literally been either extreme fear or fear on the sentiment gauges, on, which is much more pure sentiment on crypto than is on stocks since October 10th. So we're now going into our third month.

I mean, has this ever happened before, Scott, with it with the market kind of in range, not dropping? No, I just think we're very highly constrained. Maybe you should talk, I kind of touched on it, but about the options expiry, specifically and kind of what we dug into there with 85 to 90 range. I mean, I think it's meaningful because it pretty much sets that salient floor. I think that anyone who expects for without a major catalyst for the option for Bitcoin's

price to escape the trading range that's in right now until after Friday with it with I think the largest ever options expiration, I mean, it's going to take that. And why is that? That's because of the nature of the way that market makers are positioned on the other side. of the options. We always talk about Max Payne, you know, you always talk about being pinned to a price. Obviously, news can come out. If, let's say, economic data comes out that takes down the market, we have a major crash or, you know, Trump makes an announcement of who he's going to put in the Fed and that person says, yeah, we're going to cut interest rates to 1%. I mean, you know,

there are things that could happen that could cause markets to move in one direction or another, but absent anything, and if we consider we're in the holiday week of all holiday weeks this week, after tomorrow, you know, before expiration, I mean, there's, there's no reason to believe it's going to escape that range because it's sort of like gravity. Escaping, you know, though that range, escaping that range would require significant oomph. And I'm not sure that it will happen. The only reason that it could happen this time, Scott, is because, you know, it's Christmas time. And there's just a lot fewer, there's a lot less liquidity in the market.

So maybe, you know, a large event. I mean, who knows? For all we know, there's a large amount of spot held against derivative positions and someone's going to try to do another October 10th hammer. Yeah, it could happen. For all we know, it could be, it's harder to do that in reverse. You know, there's someone who has a pile of money that they're trying to cause it because they have all these long derivative positions and they want to implement it

and make money it that way. I mean, all these things are possible. but the most likely scenario is we stay here through Friday. I think Jeff Park has written pretty well against this on volatility and a few other people have written some pretty good articles. Was it Jeff's? Was that one? I can't remember who wrote the one that James cited this morning.

You there, Scott? Yeah, sorry, I got blocked there for a second and lost sound, so I missed the last 20 seconds. What I was asking is I think it was Jeff Park who wrote a pretty good article on this, but I can't remember exactly who, but James and you shared it this morning. Yeah, I don't know. Actually, James had shared it with me. I don't know exactly who it was. It wasn't Jeff, but it was very, very in-depth, like showing exactly what's happening,

the mechanics of effectively the 85 floor and the 90-ish cap. And it's funny, even today we kind of touch 90, get a little bit above and drop back below. And I mentioned last week, basically every candle touched both, right? there maybe there was one day that only got up to 88, but most days kind of went into the 85s, you know, 86, and most days went up to 89, 90, and settled right back in. I think the more impressive part, or depressing, I should say, is how many people got liquidated on those moves. Yeah, I see 200 billion in liquidations and price has been, like, within a $5,000 range for a week. I just, I don't get it. It just goes to prove P.T. Barnum was right. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, I don't know what else to say at this point. It's like, you know, people who trade on momentum breakouts for looking at, you know, okay, it's breaking out now. I'm going to go 100x levered. And if I'm right, I'm going to make a lot of money. And they've been wrong every single time on both directions. I mean, it's like you got to wonder. I mean, you know, at a certain point, it feels like sideshow Bob and the Simpsons, you know,

stepping on the rake. again and again and again and again but you know it just goes to show that uh that using excessive leverage is one of those things that if you're using it's basically like buying a zero day option which by the way is the most popular financial product in the united states right now because to say it'll expire worthless it's no different it really is yeah crazy well we're down to like a very small panel today so dave i think we'll wrap it a couple minutes early and come back tomorrow um yeah i think that i think that makes sense i mean you know we got it you know it's the holidays it's the holidays i mean it as i said it would be i think the audience

would find it interesting if we could get you know quantum show yeah i think that that it's worth it because i don't know if you can get nick carter or adam back or anybody any of the possible it would be it would be incredibly useful because like a lot of people want to hear about this and have it in a long form discussion totally agree i think we'll uh maybe uh maybe uh start to put that together for a day in the future. Mark Gator, I guess the ghosts of Doug and somebody else was here. Ajit, thanks for joining. Gator, yeah, your hand up. Do you have a comment real quick? Yeah, yeah, real quick. So again, thank you for inviting me. And I was actually looking at a video that I saw last week from Ribbett Capital, $12 billion AUM Capital Fund.

and they are now also working on something with a quantum computer where the quantum computer is actually generating the tokens that are going to be generated for all kinds of different services. Very interesting thing to look at because that actually is using quantum to generate tokens for everything and to make sure that we can issue them and run them safely rather than breaking tokens as we now fear

or at least a lot of people do fear. So I think that is very interesting to look at how quantum can actually enhance crypto instead of destroy it. So you can look at it from two ways. And I'm really looking forward to discuss that or to see that in a discussion with you guys. And I would definitely join that. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think people underestimate or overestimate a lot of things when it comes to markets. Like I have made the point I made this weekend, Scott, just in conclusion, is that I have said the single most bullish thing that could possibly happen would be.

if the Satoshi wallet was activated and auctioned to big financial institutions or whoever wanted to auctioned and they treated it like a secondary like they would in the stock market. There have been many, many, many times in my career that companies that had a lot of non-floating, you know, privately held stock get done in secondary stock transactions where, you know, five, 10, 20 percent, depending on the notion, probably more like five or ten most of the time to the price, it gets auctioned off. And then, of course, once that happens, what's called an overhang or the thought that, and it usually happens, by the way, when family members get, you know, when it goes to, when people die and its inheritances, et cetera, et cetera. But it's a very

well-known, understood effect. And the impact on the market is always an order of magnitude to less than you or more than you would think it would be based on looking at order books and other sort of things that people look at in crypto. And so I just don't look at the possibility of the Satoshi wallet being owned by a company that spends billions of dollars in quantum computing to acquire it as the death and disaster that people look at. And I think a large part of crypto has to do with people not really understanding how markets truly work.

So I do think it's worth talking about. But for now, you know, I think there's so many other topics that are important there. Yeah, totally agree. Well, thank you guys for digging in. We will be back tomorrow for another Cryptotown Hall, 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. We will see you guys then. Thank you so much for joining and for listening in and to our guests for participating. And we'll see you tomorrow.

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