The Wolf Of All Streets - Ethereum breaking out vs Bitcoin. New Bull Run coming?

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

In this episode, the panel explores whether Ethereum's recent strength marks the start of a broader crypto rally. The panel also covers rising institutional demand, Strategy's latest Bitcoin moves, and why improving crypto fundamentals could outweigh a weak macro backdrop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, good morning, everyone. I hope everyone had a great weekend. Here we are on Monday morning. And we titled this because Ethereum breaking out versus Bitcoin certainly looks that way on the chart. However, whenever you look at, I look at the 0.03 ratio level as important. It had failed that. It is now there. You know, this is happening as Ethereum is close to retaking the 2000 level amidst, you know, more commentary of bitmine buying. more. You know, it's funny, you know, we talk about Sailor all the time on this show. We don't talk about Tom Lee enough. I actually am more scared by that than I am by the other. But I think the bigger story here really is, is this a signal for what's happening in the entirety of the crypto ecosystem? And, you know, I'm curious what people think. I mean, I think in the summer,

I take everything with a grain of salt because we don't really, you know, lots of summer movements are small. You know, I just remember the summer of 17. It was, it was interesting to say the least before Bitcoin took off. We certainly saw some pretty volatile moves. And, you know, we're not seeing a lot of volatility right now. I mean, to us, these moves look big because you're star for any news to talk about. But the truth is, is the moves are pretty small on a lot of these charts and what's going on in a lot of these markets. But, you know, it's this at the same time. as you know green shoots and certain believe it or not memes you know a scott showed a story this morning you know shiba enu up 22 percent hey we're back and it's like okay well you know maybe although

I feel like the end of which was which was the movie I kept trying to remember which was the movie where oh I think it was coming to America Eddie Murphy did where Randolph and murder more Duke were in the or we're in the dumpster and he threw some money at them and they're back you know it's one of those deals. I mean, I think it's kind of like that. But, you know, it is definitely more constructive feeling out there. And, you know, in terms of Bitcoin in particular and other assets, and that's despite the chatter over BIP 110, you know, Ethereum, the chatter is about institutionalization and people building more and more things in crypto. And I'm seeing more and more stories, you know, this morning more on things like, you know, BitTensor and other things.

So we're seeing more. So anyway, what's your take on it, William? I was trying to trigger you and I see your hand, so go for it. Yeah, it's a good setup, David. It's kind of ironic because I never thought I'd get excited seeing Eith at 2000 again, which is a level it had two months ago, but also it had five, more than five years ago, April 2021. So now, I wouldn't count my chickens yet because we teased that level before. I really want to blow it and go way past it.

In terms of the summer, it's interesting. The last high did happen at the end of August of last year. And the previous all-time high was around the July framework, time frame. talking about July 2021, more or less, close to that. No, sorry, it was November. But the summer proceeding was quite bullish. So, yeah, maybe the summer is not going to bring anything. Maybe it would.

But this all points to the fact that, obviously, I don't have to explain myself, but the Ethereum is vastly, vastly mispriced at the moment. So, yeah, I can pull on that string, but I see Brian wants to go. So, Brian, what are your thoughts? And then, and then Adam. Good morning. Good morning. Yeah, so VTC versus E, I was kind of chalking it up to within the realm of normal volatility.

I think MSTR did not buy BTC for the fifth week in a row. So maybe there is more treasury support for ETH. Obviously, lots of commentary on Robin Hood chain. A lot of people saying this is the biggest thing for Ethereum since BitMind immersion came along. My first thought was like the recent strength versus Bitcoin was maybe around the Clarity Act. And so, you know, I think like this week is a key week for us. We've got this week and next to get it out of the Senate. I do think like BTC has regulatory clarity.

So I do think it's probably more impactful for ETH. So maybe this is just bets around, you know, what could potentially happen with clarity. and it does feel like there's more upside if it does somehow pass versus downside if it doesn't. Yeah, I think that's, I guess we'll see. I mean, we'll get into clarity a bit more. You guys will get to hear me rant, but I saw Adam and then Andre. Yeah, I just wanted to, if some of you might not be tracking it, but one of the things that's kind of for, you know, ETH holders, NFT holders on ETH, this week,

we had Adam at TokenWorks release this kind of gotcha game and Adam has released a bunch of stuff on Ethereum. A lot of people are like wow Adam you know he would some people call him a serial Rugger some people think he's just an interesting dev. I like the guy. It's a good guy for me but but this is really it's really taken off. It gives something it gives people something to do with their NFTs. It's kind of it's a gotcha game in the same way it's like a claw game. game like these Poceman games that gotcha games you might have seen where you can put in your nfts put in a little bit of e and you basically get pulls at the at the at the lever right and the the functionality which he built and did which hadn't been necessarily done before on chain is this

kind of immediate buyback mechanism uh which really the gotcha games all need to be kind of like have this kind of virality to it and he did it in an on-chain way, which is pretty interesting. And I think, you know, for a lot of Heath holders and certainly the NFT community is very excited about this. And of course, it's got some mechanics that are purely Ponzi-esque. And really it runs out, I think, in like 10 days, this kind of tokenomics thing is going to kind of run out where it could go very badly in about 10 days. But we have about 10 days more of kind of excitement is the way I look at it. So just be aware of kind of what's happening on the timeline regards to that. It's kind of the hottest thing on

Ethereum right now. Are you arguing about FWA.fone? Correct. Exactly. Yeah. FWA.com. And I heard that in the first few days or hours, it consumed about 8% of the gas, of all of the Ethereum gas. So definitely the activity is... Yeah, I'm actually surprised it's that low, right? Yeah, when something goes crazy like this on Ethereum, where there's real activity on the chain. It actually just reminds me how much money is on Ethereum in relation to Salana. And everybody, I'm a big Salana bull as well. And I do think users are on Salana, but big money is on Ethereum. It's a completely different thing, right? Where the average user on Salada might

have 200 bucks, you know, there are, you know, deck of millionaires on Heath just looking for something to do with their eth and with their, you know, punk holdings and stuff and so are always very willing to support kind of creative new ponzi's on ethereum so yeah it's just one of those things that can create a lot of activity on the chain a lot of excitement on the chain for sure the question is can it spawn a you know it could it spawn the narrative you know i don't know defy summer nfti this whatever it could it spawn that kind of a full market in all this crap i mean you know i don't think nptives are ever going to go to anything like the kind of craziness of 21 but I do think people are looking for something to do with this you know what do you want to call it

an asset class or collectible class people are looking for new fun things to do with it and um you know I think lending and stuff when I talked to my big NFT friends 21 22 they're like oh man if we only had lending well we got lending right but but we you know but that only goes so far and it turns out to be a way that you know big whales kind of dump their uh NFT collections and stuff and So this is just kind of a, yeah, this is another kind of natural extension of what's happening in kind of the entire collectible space happening with Pokemon, happening with all the sports cards and stuff. So it was only a matter of time. I mean, honest, to be honest, that we were working in my company. We just never really got to that mechanism of how to get the buybacks

to work on chain. He did a really novel kind of, you know, simplistic and I call it elegant way of doing it and he's winning right now for sure 100%. It's really a fantastic product. Cool. Andre saw your hand next. Yes, thank you. Good morning. Happy Monday. Yeah, I think ETH has been outperforming since June, right?

And I just want to highlight in terms of flows, maybe two things or three things. So first, we actually saw two consecutive weeks of higher net inflows into global ETH ETHs relative to Bitcoin ETPs. That was quite remarkable. And I think the one-month flow figure is actually positive for ETH and negative for Bitcoin ETPs. So that was quite remarkable. You can see actually in terms of investor participation, investor interest, that there's more interest for ETH right now than Bitcoin. And that might explain this all performance as well, right?

Apart from on-chain activity. But I also thought that in terms of flows, I think it's really interesting to see strong outflows from semiconductor ETFs. like SMH and inflows into crypto ETPs, right? And I also think it's interesting to see that Bitcoin has been outperforming semis essentially since the peak, right? And I posted the chart this morning, like the intraday performance between Bitcoin and the Sox, right, the semiconductor index, since semis peaked on the 22nd of June last month. And it's more than 20 percentage points, right, in outperforming. So I think that was quite remarkable.

And I think the macro is still relatively bearish, talking about the AI trade unwind, like what's happening in the straight-hole moves, sovereign bond yields going higher, hyperscalas, continuing to underperform because of tightening credit conditions, etc., etc. But I think the crypto-specific fundamentals, they've actually started improving over the past months, like all the ETP flows, have re-accelerated Treasury company demand has like, bottomed, right? Strategy is stabilized, long-term holder supply at new old-term highs, conversions between trade-fying cryptos accelerating, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that's this kind of dichotomy, right? Barish macro, but bullish coin-specific factors. Well, I mean, it's almost

impossible to argue with that, right? You know, when you talk about the performance, I mean, Bitcoin bottomed early and, you know, some people will say, well, it led, it's leading the bottom. I I personally think that Bitcoin is bouncing around in this, this sort of like compressed range is, it's building that bottom, you know, and it's a process, right? You know, semis got a bit ahead. I mean, when you see things like Micron with doing a 20X,

it's like, okay, well, you know, people are going to take profits. I mean, that sort of thing is, is pretty classic. And I don't think that the semi trade is over. I think that the notion that the AI, that spending for AI is going to decelerate, I think is probably wrong. But, you know, we'll see. I mean, markets are markets. I mean, look, when SpaceX IPOed, and it kept running up, I said, well, it's going to be, I'll be looking at it when it gets below its IPO price after the unlocks are there to figure out where it's going to be. You know, these things are normal market fluctuations.

That wasn't a particularly brave nor fascinating forecast. That's typically what happens. And people, even though it typically happens, get basically fall for it. And there are certain things that occur. I think that when you see Bitcoin, it's up to what it, and Ethereum, the narratives do matter.

The Bitcoin narrative is about, will it get close back to its power law, you know, adoption on its track to digital gold, yes or no, or is it fundamentally broken? It really is that binary. If you think Bitcoin is fundamentally broken, sure, short it. Otherwise, if it's not fundamentally broken, it has a pretty big rally in the not-so-distant future. It really is that binary. Ethereum, if you believe it's going to be the basis for the crypto economy,

as William does, then it's underpriced, right? If you believe it is the first, but it's the beta max of crypto and will eventually fade, well, then short it. Personally, I believe neither. I think Ethereum is kind of in the middle of those two things, but, you know, I'm still moderately constructive on it by that. But that's really the narrative here, right? You know, it's, and we're in the summer and people, you know, look, we have far fewer people.

One of the greatest indicators of how little retail cares is just the listenership on all these crypto shows, the number of people on this space compared to, you know, six months ago. It's not quite a tenth, but can be that way. And that's because people are like, I don't care. Well, people don't care until number has already gone up a significant amount. Just remember that. Number go up is great advertising. We talk about that. But that's not Bitcoin to, you know, 70,000.

That's Bitcoin up over 100. That's not Ethereum at 2000. That's Ethereum at 2,500 toward 3,000. Those are big moves. And when that happens, people will start getting excited again. Ethereum starts making a run at an all-time high. You will have enormous attention, right? But right now, it's, you know, it's just different.

And that's something of people always ignore. It frustrates me to some degree how, you know, you listen to people talking about what has happened, as why it will continue to happen, as opposed to trying to predict what is the most likely scenario, right? I mean, William, I mean, I was trying to trigger you with that binary on Ethereum. I'm glad you raised your hand. So do you look at it?

No, yeah, I want to comment, but not on that necessarily. I'll just leave it alone. But the point that you made, which is that the viewership on the podcasts and so on is down, not only that, but this is all us, the industry, talking to each other. So I don't think it moves the needle so much to the retail and to the market at large. It's a bit of a catch-22 because, yeah, higher prices are going to get more headlines outside of the crypto media, which then starts the ball rolling in terms of attention. But if we don't have that right now, we are still talking to each other.

we're not talking to the market at large. And for those prices to move, you want to attract a broader segment of the world, not just the ones that are diehard like us. And that's what's missing right now. We have retreated to talking to each other instead of trying to expand the pie and to expand the reach and to reach other than just us. Well, yes, that is true. But I'll be at dinner tomorrow night with a bunch of my trad-five friends on the board of security traders. I can guarantee you that everyone's talking about tokenization. So Ian Weisberger did a post this morning on LinkedIn when he cited a statistic that's remarkable, which is more than half of the trading volume on hyperliquid was in. non-crypto assets. It was, you know, their obvious representation, whether that's oil, silver, gold, you know, whatever. It's telling you something. The market is telling you that there are crypto assets and there's crypto technologies. The crypto technology is winning.

Full stop. No question about it. Some crypto assets will win. Some will lose. That is normal. But if you debated in 2000, you know, when in the, after the dot-com bubble crashed, if you debated, and there were people who said this internet thing is a fad. I mean, famously, you know, Krugman said it, you know, the fax machine comment, but people debated what it did. But what it was doing was changing business models everywhere. And there were some of the greatest generational wealth of this generation was created by people intelligently understanding what the, you know, internet of information was going to do in industries, buying companies that both created that tech, as well as used it.

The internet of money, which is what crypto is, with all due with plagiarizing Mark Yusco, is gonna have just as big an effect. And we are seeing it play out. We have not seen it play out in the assets that will ultimately win yet, but that creates opportunity. So to me, that's what we're looking.

And, you know, I don't know, William, I assume when you say massively misprice in Ethereum, I assume that's what you're talking about, right? Yeah. Now, we need to reach a broader segment of the population. What you described is maybe the second layer, those adopters at the enterprise level and the institutional level. And that's been a renewed area of attention for Ethereum specifically with these three new organizations that Sharplink, Joel Lubin and Bitmine have funded.

That was specifically a response to the Ethiopian Foundation neglect of the institutions' market. So we're going to see an uptick as a result of that. But I think I want to see more of the regular people get excited again. I mean, you can call them retail. And we need more apps. We need more consumer apps. I mean, this one that was just mentioned, FWA.fani, it's attempting to bring a little bit more excitement back into the NFT space, which was a bit of a broader kind of application. I see a lot of new apps in the prediction markets that are like a second generation, like Pascal.

Maybe you've seen the announcement last week. was funded by USV it's another generation of a prediction market it's app dot pascal dot trade you can connect your

wallet to it and then trade and they are going after the polymarket and the culture of the world with a more crypto native but still not a geeky kind of interface.

So we're going to see more of these new generation of apps that will eventually bring more excitement from the masses, and that's going to be important. Well, I mean, I'm of two minds of this. On the one side, the best apps, people have no idea whether it's crypto or not. They don't really give a crap. I mean, you use your phone, you do what you're doing, and whatever. I mean, so I don't know that technology matters.

The U.X absolutely matters, you know, on that. On the other hand, the technology, you know, that's what, what I think is going on. I mean, and we're seeing it with the debate on the Clarity Act. I mean, we literally are seeing otherwise non, I mean, we're not talking about morons here. I mean, you know, we're seeing Congress people and senators saying some of the dumbest things I've actually ever seen them. And that's saying something. That is not a high bar, right? We've seen politicians say stupid things.

But when Chris Murphy says he's a guy. against a clarity and basically because, you know, his, his party's rule allowed Trump to make a lot of money in meme coins. And so now he doesn't want any regulation. You know, it's like you're seeing people, you know, there's piss on themselves and make themselves look dumb. Now their base won't care, you know, until they do. And at the same time, the entire financial industry is essentially, you know, even say, even Jamie Diamond came out, you know, today. It's like this whole debate is kind of showing cracks in the coalition. At some point, the technology just becomes too big to ignore, and it's very, very close to that level now.

You know, we may have another year or two of more hand-wringing, but I don't believe we go into 2028 election cycle without regulatory clarity. I mean, I'm very convinced about that. I have no idea what will happen, whether it'll be after the midterms and the Democrats want to take it away as an issue for 28. I don't know how it's going to play out, but some of the things being said are just really dumb. Because the financial industry is already moving in hyperdrive to adopt a lot of these technologies. That is for sure. Nobody cares about any of that. So, Grain, I see you're up here.

You want to defend the notion of completely logical notion in my mind of Sailor buying back STRC at a massive discount. While preserving his dividend coverage. Well, before going to that, look, we could all hope that retail comes in. But let's be realistic. Saylor bought $7 billion worth of Bitcoin this year in the fixed income market. People are like, what the hell are you talking about a fixed income market? He bought $7 billion worth of STRC, right? He issued $7 billion worth of shares to go buy $7 billion worth of Bitcoin.

I say the same thing on spaces all the time. Does anybody think that 10,000 millionaires are gonna wake up this week or next week or pick whatever week you want, and they're all of a sudden gonna buy one Bitcoin each? Nah, it ain't happening. And do I think that those millionaires are gonna use prediction markets?

Nah, I don't think so. They're just not gonna do it. Somebody's like, well, strategy hasn't bought Bitcoin in six weeks. I'm like, oh yeah, you're right. They only bought 176,000 bitcoins this past year. They've only bought 650,000 Bitcoin since basically the start of the Bitcoin ETFs. In January 1st, 2024, right at the ending of January, sorry, the ending of December of 2023, strategy had less than 200,000 bitcoins.

We have somebody that bought 650,000 Bitcoins. Let's do the math. 200,000 to where we are today, we're approximately 843,000. They bought approximately 650,000 Bitcoins in two and a half years. I don't think that 650,000 people were going to wake up and decide, oh, I'm going to go buy one full Bitcoin. Nah, it's not going to happen. And where does this happen? It happens because it went into an equity that was easy to buy, low friction, and it went in also to creating the PEPF market to go after fixed income.

That's the adoption. And those people typically aren't the traders. So do I think it's good that strategy decide to buy back a stretch? Yeah, I do. I think he's going to be the biggest buyer of stretch. I think that's great. But I don't know. Maybe I just made up all those statistics.

Well, no. I mean, look, but does anyone, when we talk about Ethereum in breaking out versus Bitcoin, the fact that Tom Lee is still buying and strategy stopped buying that relative, I think that explains the relative performance. I mean, yeah, we can always look at narratives as to why, but I mean, you know, it is what it is. I mean, does that matter? Anyway, I see Andre and then Jamie. I think it makes sense.

I mean, I just made that observation with respect to ETP flows. You can also see it in relative tragedy company flows. But I'm also citing with grain of salt. I think what actually makes me most bullish or what makes me really bullish, is institutional demand. So if you combine both ETP flows and treasury company demand, right, for Bitcoin, I mean, it's been very depressed. It's been at a four-year low, right, in terms of one-month growth rate, right?

Because Saylor hasn't been buying Bitcoin, right? He has even been selling Bitcoin and so on, right? We have significant ETP outflows and so on. So very depressed, four-year-low, essentially the lowest since FTCX blew up, late 2020. And now we are re-accelerating because strategy is stabilizing, right? No false liquidation risks anymore. ETP flows are re-accelerating. And so I think it's super asymmetric from you.

Yeah, well, that's been my thesis for a while. I mean, you know, we'll see how things develop on the macro and what goes on over the, as the quote, four-year cycle comes to its end. And we see the next one. I mean, you know, whatever. But anyway, Jamie, you've been on, you know, doing the yeoman work on a lot of these spaces and dealing with a lot of this crap. What are your thoughts this morning?

Well, we've been talking about the MSTR. And I've kind of been doing a dive. I read the 8K today. You know, I wasn't surprised when they issued the shares. They increased the reserves by about $540 million. But if you look at it, to me, it's pretty simple. They have, the first debt tranche is due September, 2007. It's about a billion dollars.

So they have 147 million of obligations, but then they're pre-funding the rest of the debt. And so that's where, you know, you get to the 450 million is what I see for all of the debt based on their put dates. So right now they raised 500 and basically 50 million. That's another 100 million over what they need. And so they're, in my opinion, this isn't, this is something that for the next year until the first debt trons, they're going to have to do above and beyond that, they can look for opportunity to buy some Bitcoin or to retire some more preferred like they did today. But this should be expected. This is what they need to do to pre-fund and to maintain their obligations. It's pretty clear to me.

That's what they're doing. And I think it's a great idea, by the way. And if they can get to that point, by the way, you know, this is kind of like the first target. you know, potentially if they have the 24 months in reserves and they can get maybe a higher rating potentially to then refinance the rest of that debt, it could be a whole new directional for MSTR and put them in a better position as far as health and ratings with the market. Well, I mean, look, it is a chicken and egg thing here, but the truth is if Bitcoin starts to obey the power law or any other way of looking at Bitcoin, if it rallies significantly and

see new all-time highs strategy is going to outperform if bitcoin stays at these levels or drops strategy is going to languish and and underperform i mean you can't it is is simple the the thing that's happening now is there if anything slightly overreacting but doing what they feel they need to do because they made such a stupid mistake of effectively uh leaving themselves exposed so they owe in a very simple way, the market perceived, whether or not they did or not doesn't matter. The market perceived that when they bought back that preferred tranche a few weeks ago or a couple months ago, whatever it was, it feels like it was a long time ago, even though I know it wasn't.

The market perceived that they were over levered, and all the speculation of doom loops came out. That's what happened. And that's what reflected the Bitcoin price. That's why Bitcoin went from the mid-70s as it was starting to break out down to, you know, piercing 60 and bounce off the 200 week moving average. That's the reason. And so, you know, people were terrified. And so now they're basically every week, you're hearing, well, they're not buying Bitcoin, but it's still going up. And oh, by the way, their cash position

is strong and there's no, no reason to be talking about doom loops anymore. And so to me, the longer we go without hearing micro strategy as the story for Bitcoin, the more bullish it is, but make no mistake. I mean, that was wrong what they did. They know that was a mistake. And it hurt Bitcoin and micro-stratage's capital stack. And so now they're doing the opposite now. And now I think what they're doing is responsible, but it's still dependent on Bitcoin. That's the bet. Brian. And then Andre. Yeah, this doesn't impact the long-term thesis, but I think that this week is key to see whether or not we can keep this market momentum going. I think it is both crypto-specific and more macro-related. I'm sure we'll talk about it, but on crypto-specific, obviously, any progress on

clarity will be vitally important, much less important, but micro-strategy reports Thursday after the Bell. And then as far as like the non-crypto-related risks and catalysts, we've got how things will play out in the Middle East. We have big tech earnings. Obviously, Google reported last week and wasn't good enough. They reported their first negative free cash flow number in company history. We've got the Fed meeting where the markets are currently placing a 33% chance of a hike. So I think we got a lot of things that could potentially trip this up, but some big, big things that could go our way as well. Yeah, I'm sorry, I have to laugh. I mean, if I were trading on prediction markets, that would be the one that I would be trading on.

The odds, I think, of the Fed hiking are, well, let's just say not high. I can't imagine that that will occur. It's just it's people who don't understand. I mean, Kevin Worse, the only way that the Fed hikes is with a veto from the Fed chair, which has literally never happened. So, I mean, it could, I suppose.

I mean, the Fed governors could all decide to override the chair. I'm not sure what the hell that would mean, but I think that's basically signaling the death of the Federal Reserve as an institution if that occurred. But that's the only way it could happen. I mean, Amateo, I saw, first of all, Andre, was that a new hand or an old hand? Phantom hand. Amateur, I saw you threw up the laughing emoji at the same time I laughed out loud.

I mean, you think there's any chance that they're going to hike? I mean, I don't see it mainly because it's just so early in Kevin Warsh's new placement at the Fed and doing this at the state of things would be really crazy. I also think they're just trying to implement an entire new process to analyze data to get something accurate. And with the way that government agencies move, I am quite skeptical to think that their outlook is that much more refined than it was by the last Fed meeting. Kevin Warsh has also been pretty quiet in this stage. So I think the shock to the system of them just to come out and raise. I just don't anticipate that. I do anticipate maybe we do get a little bit more outlook and some signaling to that if conditions really a worsen on the inflation side.

But I just don't see it right now. I was just more laughing at all of the extenuating circumstances that we have to analyze and how much this recent run of EF2K rests on everything going according to plan? Well, I mean, look, I personally, when people say this is an important week, I think that saying this is an important week in the middle of July, in the dead middle of the summer, like, you know, a week before most of Europe goes on vacation and et cetera, that's just nuts. I'm sorry, Brian, I mean, I'm not calling you nuts, but I think it's nuts to think.

I think the Clarity Act is, I mean, look, it is political football. who knows this is like the debt ceiling shit you know I don't know if it's posturing or what's going on I do know I think that it will be very unlikely that I think that this is something that doesn't need to happen before the recess to get done but this is a game of chicken and it's stupid that I don't think very many people think it's smart for the US to stay with no regulation on digital assets I think that that is a morally bankrupt position. It is a intellectually bankrupt position even worse.

And so it's going to get harder and harder to do, but the politics are the politics. And they're trying, they don't want to give Trump a win, and they certainly don't want to allow him to benefit personally from it. So that's what's going on here. But will it actually happen? Yeah, it will happen, but it may not happen for another year or two. you know, we'll see.

Anyway, David, you had your hand up, so sorry, you've been patient. Yeah, Dave, I was just going to say that, you know, following on the precedent that Kevin Warsh has set in the first meeting, back in June, he'll probably come out this time and to say he's forming a committee to consider whether to raise interest rates. I doubt it, actually. I think he may say he's forming a committee to understand what the next generation of rates should be, I mean, maybe explicitly.

but I look the reason to raise rates is if the economy if the if consumer demand is driving inflation right and or wage push inflation is happening if unions are are demanding higher wages but wages relative to GDP are pushing plumbing the lows they're not if you look at the most recent retail sales report retail sales were up 7% consumer incomes up only three any benefit people got from tax refunds in the first half is exhausted. So, you know, I don't think consumer driving inflation is something you need to worry about. I think you need to look more credit card delinquencies starting this spike. Well, that's right.

And so do you, that's cut rates. That's not raise rates. That's my point. Yep. And the other thing he's doing, and it's really explicit, they're going to talk about the measures of inflation that matter. I mean, you know, oil is obviously a huge driver of inflation, but the Fed, as much as powerful as they are, they don't really have a whole lot of impact on oil prices. Like, you know, to some degree, I guess, if you cut rates, maybe people can afford to speculate

more and spend more, you know, invest more in new oil exploration. But we don't have an oil supply problem. We have an oil delivery problem, right? That's what's going on here. So I don't see how the Fed has any impact on that. I mean, that's just, and so, and if I, and by the way, I don't think I'm saying it this way, because I think Warsh gets all this stuff. And that's why he's, he's trying to change the methodology of how they're looking at inflation, right, which of course will, you know, this has been done before. And it was done before under Reagan right in the beginning of his term. And it was very predictable results. And you can go back and look at the history. There's, you know, hedonics and substitution effects and the redefinition of CPI.

I mean, that was all done for a specific reason. And it presaged the beginnings of the biggest bull market in history. Now, we're in a different situation now. Markets are at all-time high. So I'm not saying that, I'm not saying that he's trying to spur that. I'm thinking he just wants to defend the wealth effect and leave it moving. Right? Yep.

I think Mike or Brian, I couldn't tell who was first. Yeah, I'll be quick. So the CME futures rollover, it's always the last week of every month. So you tend to see volatility. And so my view is that in any of the rollover weeks, which is the last full week of the month, is that as long as the price of Bitcoin stays stable, that's the best indicator that the things are looking good. You also want it to stay in contango instead of backwardation. So you always want the next month's future price of Bitcoin to be higher than the current month,

whereas backwardation is the reverse of that and typically not bullish. The other thing that people don't see is that six months after the spot Bitcoin ETFs were approved. So if you look at the CME future volumes on open interest, it completely shifted a completely different regime. And I think that's why, again, hoping that retail comes in to buy Bitcoin, I think it's more are the large aggregators, whether it's MSTR or BitMine for Ethereum. I think that now it's going to be the corporate wrappers are going to be what drives the price of these of coins. I mean, it's even true for, I think, for Ethereum.

So I think that's the way we see this play out. I think that the retail will come in through that. Well, look, retail gets interesting when prices start moving higher, right? You know, significantly. You know, retail is always lagging. They're not leading. in most financial assets. Now, in crypto, it was mostly retail,

but it depends on it in the beginning. And so it was exclusively retail. When people compare, and I'm gonna use the word, even though it hurts me, when people compare this cycle to past cycles, the biggest single difference is in past cycles, it was all retail. And so everything was exaggerated.

Now it's not. And so there's a lot of that going on. Yeah, and so I'll give you a couple things that don't come up on spaces that is different. Prior to tether getting large enough, most of the crypto traders were coin margined. So if they wanted to trade Bitcoin, they post Bitcoin as collateral.

And you have a feedback loop. As the price goes higher, they have more equity. They could then buy more Bitcoin. On the flip side, you would get long liquidations and short squeezes, and that happened. Once they went to stable coin margin positions, you saw that a lot of volatility just evaporated from the market.

market. So that's why we used to see that Bitcoin could change, have a 10% swing. It can go 5% up and 5% down in one day, and that'd be a 10% swing. And that's largely, you know, in the history books. So that's why things are fundamentally different now. And I think that's why we have these, these large buyers that are coming in and aggregating that, that sentiment and buying it through different rappers. So I think that as the, as the market matures, I'm bullish for it. And I think that's where we're going to be. I mean, it's funny you mentioned that. The coin margin, which of course was started by Bitmex, which is now shuddering this week.

And we're seeing things that generally play out at bottoms of cycles, you know, Bitmex closing, Bitmark closing. I forgot which Bitcoin Treasury company announced a liquidation last week. We're seeing those things happening, but we're seeing them happen without forced selling. And that's the big difference. Yeah, Dave, Dave, I got a conspiracy theory for you here in Bitmex. Ready for this one? Okay, let's hear it.

So BitMex, one of the things that they did awesome was they had a Bitcoin insurance fund that peaked at around 35,000 Bitcoin. So I was like, oh, Bitmex is closing down. What happens to those 35,000, or it must be 40,000 Bitcoins or 45,000 Bitcoins now? What happens to those Bitcoin? Who owns those? So I logged back, you know, hit AI. What happened to Bitmex is 35?

They're like, oh, that's a historical artifact. There's only 3,600. I'm like, 3,600. Where did the other 90% of these bitcoins go to? Oh, unknown. And I spent like, I don't know, seven minutes researching this. And everybody's like, yeah, who gives a shit? It's like, wow, 30,000 bitcoins evaporate and nobody cares.

I was like, and that was one of the coolest things. The reason why that insurance fund existed was that if, somebody was offside in their trade and their liquidation algorithm did not work correctly, you would be paid out of the fund. So you were long and the short guys got squeezed, but for some reason they weren't able to cover that. They would then, it was a great idea. They would then pay you off on this. So I thought that was a great thing that they had built into the system. But now that 90% of those bitcoins have just evaporated, were they not real in the first place? Or where did they go? Or were all the traders,

so terrible on it that it just, you know, disappeared. I don't know. Nobody's talking about except for me. Maybe it just doesn't know. Maybe nobody cares about 30,000 Bitcoin. I don't know. Well, I mean, I have no idea. I would imagine that they were sold.

It's what I would imagine, either sold or dispersed to the people who, you know, were investors in Bitmex. But I guess we'll find out. I don't know if anybody has any commentary about that. But yeah, it's, look, all I'll say is, is, you know, coin margin futures are an interesting idea. What will, it will live again, but it will live again differently. It's like everything repeats. So Bitcoin has collateral will get used.

Dave. So you know it, you know it replaced coin margin positions? You're ready for this one? It's Bitmine and MSTR and ASS. It's the Bitcoin. And it's the coin. Treasury reset changed it. Because as the value of those go up, people are like, what did Green just say?

I'm like, no, no, no, that's what replaced it. Because if you were buying Bitcoin and posting U.S. dollars, right, or tether, then you would have no reflexivity in posting that as your collateral position. But now what's happened is we shifted it from being coin margin to being share margin trading. Right. And that's where you have the volatility side, you know, on the side of. MSTR and Bitmine.

So if anybody's on this call, Dave, do you think anyone in the call just gets what we just said? I'm sure quite a few people do, but I do think that, look, equities and commodity futures have always had an element of reflexive margining, which is, it's just that the Bitcoin-managed ones were different. I mean, all collateral in all financial markets should be based upon what you call the haircut. the haircut is essentially based off of volatility and liquidity of the asset. And so that amount. The thing about coin margin futures were there was no haircut.

And the entire crypto world basically just took it as it was. So if you had, you know, whatever, if you're getting 10x leverage and you had a million dollars in Bitcoin, you could buy another 10 million in Bitcoin. So if Bitcoin dropped, you lost money on both. Whereas with a haircut, if they were giving you a 50% haircut on it, well, then you wouldn't have nearly as much leverage as a result. result because of big based on Bitcoin's volatility. And that is where the future is going, right?

You know, you will see that. And that means that assets like Bitcoin that are digitally, digital and liquid will become usable as collateral within the financial system. There are certain innovative ways that that's starting already. And that does matter. But you're right. Most of it is inside companies like micro strategy, which has scale, but they're not lending it out.

There's not, it's not, there's no extra lending going on. And a lot of this stuff that to make this work, that's one of the, the things that clarity, the act itself is needed for. You know, so, you know, hey, so I see John Deaton up here. John, you know, you and I have both been saying the same thing about how dumb some of these critiques of clarity are. But one of the most important things is to try to get sanity and to have regulation that makes sense. And these are all the sorts of things that are part of it. I mean, are you hearing anything different? Or did you, we just lose you?

John up here, and now I see him back down as a listener. I hate this. I hate this. So, Dave, while you bring him back up, and I really want to, you know, talk with him also. So, you know, Fred Kruger wrote this article that is Michael Saylor and the new John D. Rockefeller, and that's not good for Bitcoin. And he had two premises in there. And I'll be real brief.

one premise was the conspiracy theory that the government will seize control of MSTR to get control of the Bitcoin. That's always this conspiracy theory that that's always going to happen. The second party said was that just like John D. Rockefeller and what we saw specifically today, strategy continues to amass a large cash position. Now prior to December of 2025, if you heard of a company that acquires lots of cash to a Bitcoin, and they say two things. it's a melting ice cube or cash is trash. Now what's happened is, as Fred framed it as being in the negative, having that huge cash pile is actually quite strategic in a bare market. And so what it gives

him is this massive optionality to buy back stock. He could buy Bitcoin at a future date. There's a lot of things that he can do with it. And if he doesn't even use it, we're like, well, it's a melting ice cube. No, because that the cash now is equal to half the day. debt, it takes his net leverage down to 6%. And most people reverse that metric. When strategies net leverage is at 6%, that's the equivalent of him buying a house and putting down a 94% down payment. Most people think it's the opposite. And that's what they go, oh, strategy. And the reason why I know this is, because they're strategies over leverage. They're leverage to the hill to the no, their net leverage is 6%. They're like, yeah, exactly what I just said. Maybe it was before you join. I made the point that

while they were not over leveraged, the entire Doom Loop market was saying that nonsense. And a large part of why they've done what they've done is just to make that go away. Totally agree. And so even if the cash is not used, air quotes, not used for anything, the fact that it basically cut their net leverage from 12% to 6% is massively beneficial to having creditworthiness. And most people that are Bitcoiners will say, That's completely presprosterous to own cash. They should just have, it should be all Bitcoin and they should just get rid of the cash.

And they did that for the far bigger. The far bigger issue isn't really that. I mean, the bigger issue that I've seen in a lot of the Bitcoin spaces is just this entire notion of big Bitcoin is a problem. I mean, I'm genuinely interested to have somebody explain to me how Bitcoin could become digital gold and beyond without. penetration through every aspect of the financial system. If someone could explain how that could happen,

do they think that the entire world is going to wake up one morning and say, you know what? Every one of these companies that everybody uses for their entire financial lives has to disappear and they're going to go to self-custody on their own. I mean, to me, it's just nuts. But yet you get people talking about this. I mean, one of the things I always liked about what Sailor said, and he's never changed on this, is that for Bitcoin to get to be the preeminent digital asset,

the asset that everyone cares about, first it has to penetrate the financial system. And yet you get all these bitcoins talking about it, like, it can happen without that. It's like, okay, I mean, I don't see how that's remotely possible. I mean, Amateo, I mean, your background, you understand this, right? I see your hand up. I mean, enough to know that it's absurd to think otherwise. And I think you're absolutely right, Dave. And I think that the reality here is that for, I mean, from the time that I've been involved in crypto and Bitcoin,

it was the institutional global adoption was being pushed pretty unanimously towards the effect. This was the way to take over. But it would be these decentralized, layer that no one could control that would come in and be a disruption force for the traditional financial market, to enable freedom for people all over the world by giving them a financial alternative that could, you know, whatever insert narrative at the time, offset inflation, hedge against the dollar, be digital gold. And then ultimately, once it actually came to fruition, so many of these diehards completely tucked tail and turned around on this.

And it was, and continues to be not like this. It shouldn't happen this way. And I think that ultimately, a lot of these, and this might ruffle some feathers, but I think a lot of these OG bitcoins got exactly what they were pushing for. And they just now don't like that it's mainstream and that it actually took off and did exactly what it was promised to do, but it doesn't have the same kind of rogue cyberpunk qualities that it did at its origins. But I just don't think you can expect it to maintain that when you start to get to these levels of global financial adoption. And so I just think that that's where it stands right now.

Yeah. I mean, I think, look, I sit there. We'll decide whether I'll jump on some of the other spaces to talk about this stuff. I just, I find it ridiculous. But it's sort of like, you know, when William was talking about Ethereum, you know, the difference is, is in the case of Ethereum, the need for institutions is not questioned, right? You know, but now Ethereum went to proof of stake, so that's more centralized, so I guess it's a different ethos. But it's, it amazes me.

It truthfully amazes me. I mean, all this notion. I mean, I love some of the memes that come across the internet. But the truth is, unless Bitcoin loses the ability through law or some ridiculous, you know, pernive events for people to hold it in their own wallets and transact peer to peer, which frankly, I think is impossible or damn close to impossible, then why does anybody who owns it care if the majority of people use it via intermediaries and centralized, centralized people because they want to do things the way they currently do them.

Because eventually as it grows in value, the use case and the UX, et cetera, or native Bitcoin will improve. But it's not going to ever get that until that, right? Dave, I just want to add one thing to that. As you pointed out something that I think is a dividing line on where things stand right now, which is the Ethereum ecosystem net whole, the business. builders, the L1s, the L2s, anything EVM that's touching it is all working towards capturing this institutional and enterprise demand. And there's this giant chasm right now between

where Web3 stands today, the liquidity, the products, the retail users, which tends to be a more Web3-based product and the actual blockchain rails that we've talked about. And that that chasm has the unified support, for the most part, of the Ethereum and EVM at large ecosystem to onboard this. And it's getting the institutional development, investment, to achieve this goal. And I think that that is a big part of what will continue to see helping support and drive Ethereum's gain and performance going into this next start of the cycle. I think that's right. William. Yeah, I wanted to echo what, first of all, I agree with the last speaker.

And David, you said what you said about Bitcoin, you don't see it being as important as it should if it doesn't penetrate all of the financial kind of ecosystem. But what you said described Ethereum, because that's what Ethereum is doing. And unfortunately, the Bitcoin holders have been holding Bitcoin because for them, the punchline is price goes up. So they hold it until the price goes up. Whereas with Ethereum, the punchline is usage goes up. So Ethereum's main activity right now is to be everywhere, to make it a useful asset, not just an asset that you hold, but an asset that is productive, that does things that is used to securitize real-world assets. you use it to

punch in collateral on the blockchain not just to move money but to make it a useful asset and to even earn staking yield on it and put it in all kinds of defy types of instruments and new products

so that's kind of the forte that Ethereum has I just want to make one point there because look when Bitcoin becomes usable collateral, it will have a native yield. Full stop. I just want people to understand that because it is easy to use Bitcoin as collateral and those people who have it will be able to loan it out and get a yield from those who want to demand it for use as usable collateral. So there is a path for Bitcoin to have native yield. I could explain this. It's probably worth

discussing. I might even do a video about it. But it's a little early, but it is going to happen. because the technology is allowing it. So that part of the comparison isn't necessarily right, but you're right. It's usage versus value. That's clear. Anyway, Ryan, I saw your hand up. Thanks, Dave.

It's a great discussion. I didn't have a whole lot to add for the last hour. Just enjoyed listening to you guys. I will say, though, that, and just as a reminder, I know we're kind of at the top here, that we are incredibly early. And it's so easy for even us, panelists like we live in this world that we get so myopic on a very short time horizon on

these ups and downs and these little bumps but if we really zoom out there's billions of people that haven't touched any of this stuff yet there's billions of people to still on board and that can hold value and and what i like about bitcoin is anyone with electricity can plug in a bid axe anyone with electricity can set up a minor anyone with electricity can onboard themselves with no banking no KYC AML, they can participate completely sovereign. And you can't really say that for most ecosystems. So we still have billions of people to go. And I'm excited for the future for Bitcoin in general.

And the more myopic we get, it can get depressing through the summer. And we have the ups and downs. And on every little bit we're hanging on. But I think that if we stretch out the time horizon, we'll realize that we're so ridiculously early still. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that, you know, we'll have these conversations. But it is worth, you know, discussing some of, you know, some of the things we touched on today, I think are useful topics. You know, as you said, we are sort of running out of time. I can't tell Amatoa William, I still see your hands up or either of them new? No, that's an old one. Straight ghost.

You're good. Okay. So in that case, unless anyone has some other new topic to talk, we're going to cut it here. and we will be back on Wednesday morning, and maybe we'll have some news. I mean, who knows? Although maybe it'll be the summer and the weather's been beautiful and, you know, whatever. But we'll see where we're at.

At least, you know, maybe we'll have some notion of what our friends, you know, Kevin Warsh and his band of Merry Men will be doing, et cetera, et cetera. But for now, everyone have a great day and stay safe out there. Enjoy your summer. Thanks, Dave.