The Wolf Of All Streets - Ethereum Breaks $2K l Entire Market Bounces Hard! | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

Crypto Town Hall is a daily X Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in crypto and bring the biggest names in the space to share their insight. ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. USE CODE ‘2MONTHSOFF’ WHEN VISITING MY LINK.  👉 https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/    ►► OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $10,000!  👉  https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL  - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets    Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor.  Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

ran into battle for who gets to co-host oh i just got made co-host damn i lost it again man i lost it again i clicked i guess i clicked faster i'll try again i'll try again i'll try again next week i'll try again next week has it ever been you and i co-hosting without Mario's, uh, crypto punk face? I guess he's a real face now up on stage. I feel like we should put him to speak or anything. I don't know.

I don't know, but I think it should be. I think it should be just feels right on this Friday. It feels like we're going to talk. Is Mario even here? Or is it, are we talking to an avatar today? We might literally be talking to an avatar.

Never know. Look, we've got a thumbs up. He's probably biohacking or sitting in a sauna now or at the gym. He's got some sort of tubes in his nose and mouth right now. Yeah, but the consensus from the audience is that the shows are much better when he's not on. So this is actually a good scenario. Yeah, I think this is perfect. I think they were going to nail it.

There was a guy who ran a poll, actually, the one day, and he said, like, do you prefer the shows with Mario or without Mario? I think the consensus was overwhelming. They prefer just seeing his avatar and not actually listening to him speak. I voted 700 times, to be honest, but

whatever. It's like an American election right now. I'm just kidding. I don't believe American elections are fixed. Joke, guys. It's a joke, but a pretty fun time to be doing shows. No, it's not. No, it's not. Did you not hear what Vivek said, the message that Vivek sent the Democrats with? He said, just stop

pretending that Joe Biden's the president, and just tell us who the nominee is. Who's your candidate for the next election? And stop playing the game. Yeah, I didn't... I can't subject myself to the debates. I saw the clips

obviously on X because I couldn't avoid them, but just tell me next year. I wasn't a big Vivek fan. Well, I couldn't avoid them. But just tell me next year. I wasn't a big Vivek fan. Well, I wasn't an anti-Vivek guy, but I certainly wasn't, like, I didn't know too much about him. And let me tell you, he's the one guy in the race that always says the quiet part out loud. It was unbelievable.

Yeah, I mean, I saw that he obviously was being extremely critical of the Republican National Committee and sort of dunking. Anytime someone makes fun of Ron DeSantis's height, I'm here for it. So I enjoyed that joke. But otherwise, man, I think I just can't get past my own mental block that they're kind of all the same, both sides. And the whole reason that I like Bitcoin is because I can attempt to start to opt out of all of it. But it's finally a good time to be doing shows again, right, Ran? And the whole reason that I like Bitcoin is because I can attempt to start to opt out of all of it. But it's finally a good time to be doing shows again, right, Ran?

I mean, you've got to be having you kind of kicked around the insane metrics that you're seeing on YouTube, which I think anecdotally tell you exactly where the market is. And I mean, I saw your audience is growing massively again. People are tuning in. Prices are going up. Everything's great. I mean, should we your audience is growing massively again. People are tuning in. Prices are going up. Everything's great. I mean, should we be enjoying the ride here? I'll tell you that this month, Banter had its biggest month ever. So just to give you perspective, this is bigger than any month we ever had previously.

That's insane. Is that a function of both traffic on individual shows or as a whole because there's more shows? As a channel, we just had our biggest month. So yes, there are more shows, but there are also people watching the shows.

So it's like, you know, I think it's great. Traders are coming back. Trading volume is coming back to exchanges. I actually looked at the metrics earlier back. Trading volume is coming back to exchanges. I actually looked at the metrics earlier today. Trading volume

is really, really, really coming back to exchanges. Exchanges are going to start making money hand over fist again. Yeah, I mean,

it's, it's, it's, it's full bull. I mean, I don't know how, I don't know how else to say it other than it's full bull.

We're gaining about a thousand subscribers a day on the YouTube channel gaining about 1,000 subscribers a day on the YouTube channel, just under 1,000 subs a day on the YouTube channel, which is... Those numbers are unbelievable. Unbelievable numbers. That's like a month for me. It's really, really,

really full bull in the market. The appetite's back. It's almost like the casino was closed for a while and they opened the casino and everyone's back um it's almost like the casino was was closed for a while and they opened the casino and everyone's just come back to play well have you ever seen what's happened in vegas once they reopened after covid it's the most crowded vegas has ever been in history that's exactly what's going on in the markets right now at least that's the vibe that i'm getting it's the casino's open and everyone just wants to play.

Pretty wild. Patrick, are you kind of seeing the same thing? Obviously you're pretty deep into this every single day watching the markets. I mean, do you think that this is full bull euphoria? I actually thought that, interestingly, I thought yesterday we reached sort of peak fever pitch, just anecdotally

looking at Twitter and reading it. And then, of course, it hit that 38,000 and dropped right to 30, what was it, 36.5, 35.7, whatever it was. You can really feel it when the sentiment, I think, completely peaks that there's going to be a flush. And Ran, you were literally on here right before talking about how open interest was the highest it had been in alts in years and had to immediately get flushed.

Two hours later, there were like 30% down moves and bounces on alts. I have a metric. I have a metric and the metric hasn't let me down yet. And I posted this metric. When Pepe starts running after all the major alts, and you get a day where you had Solana going up and Solana and Ethereum and all of those stock going up and you get a pump in Pepe and Bonk, Bonk, Bonk, whatever you call it.

That for me is a sign that the market is going to start coming down. I posted it. Seven hours after I posted it, the market got flushed. But what I think is crazy is that I think a lot of people, and I've been talking about this, I've been saying really since we started to see altcoins run, but I feel like this is a buy the dip market, right?

I don't see how you would short this, especially short it with leverage. It just feels like an invitation to lose all your money, but everything's a buy the dip. But in a lot of markets, you think, hey, you hey, this thing's going to drop 25% at some point. When it gets there, I'll buy it. It happens in one hour. In one hour. Yeah, in one hour, though, the altcoins, I shared a bunch of charts.

They all bounced, went 20% down, hit support, and were gone in a minute. So if you didn't just have your bids already ready, but I think the most astounding, that's just such a strong indicator that it's a bull market that you got the retrace but it happened for one minute you want to hear an embarrassing story you want to hear an embarrassing story if it's about you or mario then 100 well so ftp pumped on the news that they may reboot the exchange, right?

So when I saw the pump, I thought the pump was an absolute idiotic pump, because even if they did relaunch the exchange, there's no way that they relaunch the token. And so I took a short on FTT, and I was liquidated overnight because the token just continued to pump. Okay. Patrick, I do want to go to you in one second. I'm sorry that I interrupted the token just continued to pump. Okay. Patrick, I do want to go to you in one second. I'm sorry that I interrupted, but I have to say something. FTT yesterday pumped because Gary Gensler said that it was a viable idea that FTX exchange could be rebooted.

Okay. Right. We've heard, obviously, John Ray, we've heard these people talking about FTX 2.0. But what is astounding and notable to me is that Gary Gensler can make a comment and pump an altcoin literally 100% in a matter of minutes. And he was personally responsible or the SEC as a whole for passively naming a number of altcoins in these enforcement actions like Coinbase and Binance, they would just say these nine coins are unregistered securities, you're in charge.

And those coins would go down 60 or 70%. Is there a single person who is more guilty of manipulating the crypto market than Gary Gensler, which is the thing he's literally supposed to be stopping? He made a dead Ponzi scheme token of a bankrupt company that was the biggest fraud in financial history double in price with a single comment yesterday. Think about that. And I got liquidated. And most importantly, Rand got liquidated. Patrick, what do you think of all of this?

I don't know how I can follow that. I mean, you know, things are looking good. Obviously, I'm much smaller than you and Ran, but yesterday was the biggest day on my YouTube channel since early 2022. So definitely, I think that's a signal that people are starting to come back. Another signal I saw is if you think of crypto Twitter as a circle, then finance and money Twitter are kind of concentric circles that are around that. And I've had multiple freelancers I work with who aren't normally into crypto, but are obviously tangentially aware of it reach out to me in the past day, asking if the crypto bull run. Damn it. Damn it. I was saying yesterday, I haven't gotten a single

call. I was saying yesterday, I haven't gotten a single call. My mom hasn't called to check in and see if it's time. Nobody. Maybe this is a top signal. Hopefully, well, if he is listening, it doesn't matter. But my video editor DMed me yesterday to ask which coins he should buy. I think that's the local. I think it's the first sign, and that's exactly why it bounced from, got rejected at 38, right? Six more to go.

Six more cycles to go before the top that's right that's right my my last year the dead top or last cycle the dead top was when i sat down to get a haircut and the guy asked me about urethrium literally like you pronounce it urethrium and asked me if it's a good time to buy it wait that's not the way it's pronounced? Thanks. Maybe that's the medical official terminology for it. Urethra is how it started.

By the way, Donish, Matt Hogan, I see you guys in the audience. I'm trying to invite you up if you can make it, but you might have to request for some reason. I don't think it's going through. Is this going to become another no they were invited you know well it could be do you mean dan you i was i was joking that you were yesterday you were wrong and he was dan yeah so for whatever reason or whether that was yesterday or two days ago i want to still put

this uh entire crypto move into some context and then dive more specifically, obviously, into the Ethereum part. Peter, cheer. What are you seeing, like, on the wider macro and where is this fitting in in context? Because to me,

it feels like we're completely untethered here and having our own party. Peter, I can't. Can you guys hear Peter? I don't hear anything but i see his mic i don't hear peter i think he's i think he's um i think he's not uh can you hear me now oh yeah i thought that i thought that gary gensler had uh had uh muted you perfect having some technical issues um let me just um yeah i think a couple things are going on on the macro side good for crypto you had icbc got hacked yesterday right so treasury trading was potentially impacted you've got the fed that's losing control deficits losing control you've got two wars kind of going

on so i think you're seeing a lot of reasons for people to kind of reach out to that and treasuries just do not feel like the flight to safety asset they once were. So I think people are pushing into other alternatives. I would say, though, I still haven't seen a huge interest in institutional people yet. Like you're picking up a lot of people in these chats. I have not gotten that big spike in people kind of wanting to talk about crypto yet. Isn't that good? I can't hear you. Can you hear me?

Yeah, I was going to say, it's one of those moments I can't tell where i'm having issues or somebody else but i think peter had an issue there i mean i think i think one thing to point out you may say that the institutions aren't in it i think i agree with you but important to note that we did have the flippant capital we haven't even scraped the surface, but encouraging to know that the institutional market is now more responsible for leverage than the retail market. We got to see 400 million of that flush yesterday, right? Which I think was kind of the story of that move. If I mean 400 million, it's not actually that huge of a day for, you know, we used to see, I think at the FTX days, there were days where it was a billion and open interest was flushed. But I still think it is notable that we have that flippening. It means that there are institutions that are looking to long time. I write about it constantly in the newsletter.

I get angry maxis with three followers and laser eyes screaming in my comments every single day about how I'm a shit pointer. That's a good signal that Ethereum was starting to bottom. We had Ethereum oversold on the weekly for only the fourth time in history on RSI versus Bitcoin. And I just think we reached a fever pitch of irrational hatred for Ethereum. I think JP Morgan wrote a whole thing about being disappointed in Ethereum after the move, that there had been no real movement. Those are all my favorite signals. But yesterday, obviously, we saw Ethereum. We saw first conjecture that Ethereum, that BlackRock was filing for an Ethereum spot ETF. It was basically

registered in Delaware. And so seven days before the Bitcoin spot ETF was announced, they had registered in Delaware. So people said this is an advance and it was confirmed by NASDAQ later. Obviously, we saw this large move in Ethereum to the upside. A few quick takes and then to the panel. I think that there's a lot of people. Go ahead, Ren. I don't know if it's just me, but you're cutting out. Is it just me that's cutting this out? You're cutting out for me.

I can try to switch phones a minute. Am I cutting out for you guys? Thumbs up, thumbs down? Just Mario's cutting out for me. Okay, so you guys can hear me. That's good. What I was going to say is that we've had this narrative with Larry Fink, obviously, kind of on the roadshow for crypto at the moment. And he keeps saying crypto rather than Bitcoin.

And a lot of Bitcoiners, I think, have pointed out that he can't officially say Bitcoin. So he says crypto. But I think we can put that sort of narrative to bed. BlackRock, in his annual letter in March, he talked about tokenizing assets. We know that this isn't just about Bitcoin for him. But the fact that BlackRock now is following ARK and others for an Ethereum spot ETF means that this isn't just about Bitcoin, I think, and that Ethereum could be the next narrative. So I guess the question I'm posing, Matt, I'll ask you first, obviously, you're my go-to ETF guy. How big of news is this to have BlackRock joining the party with you guys? Yeah, absolutely. Great to be here. It's really big news. I think there was this speculation

on whether BlackRock was Bitcoin only or crypto. And this ends that speculation. They're clearly crypto. They're doing Bitcoin. They're doing Ethereum. If and when we get futures contracts on other assets or get more regulatory clarity, they're probably going to move down the chain. I think this is just a major signal

that crypto is moving into being a mainstream asset. And the other thing about Ethereum was before all the ETF craziness, it had a separate and really exciting bullish narrative around the rise of layer twos and the monthly active user counts there and the advent of scaling and the upcoming upgrades of the blockchain and all the excitement around tokenization. So you're sort of getting, you know, two major bullish catalysts pushing it forward. Makes me really excited for ETH. And I think, yeah, I think it was a really big day yesterday. Maybe not surprising in retrospect, but it wasn't clear

where BlackRock stood until yesterday. And now I think it is clear. And I think you know it's it's a major positive signal for crypto go ahead ran and having the usual sound problems see i can't now tell if i'm cutting out if other people are cutting out but uh here welcome to the usual party gareth i mean let's talk about the actual price action on what we saw there and am i breaking you, Gareth, or do you hear me completely? I hear you loud and clear. Yeah, no breaking up at all. I'm so good at this. Okay, go ahead.

So, I mean, at least on the price action for Ethereum, right, we saw that big pop yesterday. It actually went right up to the high from April of 2023, which was the highest price that it has seen in the last, basically in the last almost 18 months, right? So pretty impressive rally here, but it stopped on a dime right at that 2150, 2160 level, which was that pivot high. So basically as a technician, that's now the level I'm watching, right? Just like we were watching that 31, 32,000 level on Bitcoin before it broke out. This now becomes the key level to watch for bulls and bears on Ethereum. I think, Scott, if you can hear me now, just let me know. You sound great. You sound great.

So I think a few things, let's just go through a few things around Ethereum and BlackRock. First of all, BlackRock have been bullish Ethereum because, you know, they spoke about tokenization of assets. But I think also BlackRock are bullish on making money. And since they saw that an ETH futures ETF was approved, applying the same logic of the court case against Grayscale, they knew that an ETH ETF was probably the logical next step. The second thing is that ETH and the ETH ecosystem have done nothing in this pump and they've

lagged every other coin. So if you look at the Cosmos ecosystem or you look at Bitcoin or you look at the whole Bitcoin ecosystem, ETH and the whole ecosystem were actually lagging. Lido, Rocketpool, Frax, all the restaking protocols, Curve, all of those tokens had done nothing in the cycle where all the other tokens started to move. And actually yesterday, I actually did a show. It was completely coincidental saying, look, these tokens have to move at some point. And we think that when Ethereum is going to explode, all these tokens will explode. While I was live, the announcement came out.

And now 24 hours later, literally every single token that I said was going to explode is going to explode and i think that that's the logic here eth was the only one in this move that hadn't moved every other ecosystem had moved gaming had moved solana had moved cosmos had moved bitcoin had moved the only ecosystem that didn't make a move was the ecosystem so i think it was it was just a a catch-up rally by Ethereum. I tend to agree with that actually, basically, completely. David Tal, what do you think? They're trolling me. David, you there? I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.

Sorry. So, look, I... Can you hear him? Can anybody hear me? I can hear David. Yes, I can hear David. Okay, I'm going to drop off and come back on. So I had this this conversation with Danish this morning. Certainly, there is good reason to be confident that BlackRock and then everybody else in tow in the institutional world is going to go ahead and now take this asset class very seriously, and it's going to have permanence in that world, which will lead to incredible overtime, incredible, incredible inflows. It's a question of time in terms of when the ETF for ETH

gets approved. But we can be much more confident now on the basis of the fact that we will get a Bitcoin ETF that an ETH ETF will come. And so therefore, I don't think there's ever been a set of circumstances that is more, I don't know, certain, let's say, than we have right now. And so it makes a lot of sense to, you know, to use not necessarily a great investing term, but the front run, you know, all of that activity that will eventually, you know eventually follow. And yes, you can paint the narrative not as rosy. You can say, look, this is just the placeholder. Who the hell knows what's going to happen? But I really believe, I'd like to go ahead and bring people's attention to the fact that Larry Fink has pulled his pedal off of the gas when it comes to esg in a major way some may say he's done a 180 um on esg and people may not realize

dave just for context he created esg that's correct right no no and to your point scott if he created esg right he can create crypto also. And that's how powerful he and BlackRock are. And so I don't care who you are. You could try to stand in the way. You could be an investor, a stupid investor, or you could be a regulator, or you can be a lawmaker. You could try to stand in the way of BlackRock.

They're going to railroad right over you. It doesn't matter. They're too big. And I think the other side of that, which people talked about when the spot ETF was first filed, is not only is he the king of ESG and it's the sort of taking away the ESG narrative, him being the king of ESG and then filing for a Bitcoin spot ETF, in my mind, also eliminates a lot of the environmental FUD around Bitcoin specifically. Like if the guy who is the king of ESG is willing to come out and say Bitcoin is a viable enough asset for us to file for an ETF, he's saying that it's not environmentally damaging. Maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but you haven't heard any uh environmental fud

out of anyone other than elizabeth warren's face uh since then right lawyer i see you're giving a bunch of thumbs up what's your thoughts on all this yeah i mean i completely agree like look this is all just trying to analyze what to me is actually just a delayed reaction like people are slowly waking the fact that institutions aren't really in yet is like such a bold yet to me um you know they're like kind of waking up where like we live in a new world with black with you know larry fink saying flight to quality it's like you know you're rubbing your eyes and and slowly they'll trickle in i mean i think that's that's what i think it's just a it's just a foregone conclusion that you're going to see in Ethereum ETF. Yeah.

So I guess the question then, and Dan, maybe you guys want to answer this, Patrick. Like we obviously saw Bitcoin finally ran right. It broke that 31,000 level that was so key. And we had not really seen altcoins run. That's when all coins started to really heat up we saw these massive moves from all the ecosystems rand saw are we now seeing a market rotation into ethereum is it time to basically focus on ethereum and ethereum ecosystem

and maybe let the others cool off because even if you look at the charts they're all massively overbought i mean there's these are big runs. So that's actually funny enough. That's another thing that I tweeted yesterday. And I said, be careful of this ETH run. Because what the ETH run is going to do, it's going to start, it's going to start draining liquidity. I said, ETH literally broke the triangle during the stream while I was talking on, while I was talking about an imminent ETH pump, the ETH tokens have been lagging, they will now likely run. Because of the size of these tokens, because of the size of Ethereum and the ecosystem,

to move those prices up is going to take a lot of liquidity, which is going to drain a lot of liquidity out of the other alts, which are much smaller and much easier to move up. So you think about Solana. Solana is about one-tenth of the size of ETH, or whatever, one-sixth or one-eighth or whatever the exact number is. I haven't been checking. But you just think that when ETH starts pumping,

that needs a lot of air. And where does that air come from? In the absence of new USDT or USDC coming into the ecosystem, which we know is not currently happening, it is happening but not at a big enough pace, the liquidity is going to start coming from the other coins. You're going to start seeing a rotation from a lot of the smaller ecosystems

into the big ecosystem. It's almost the opposite of Bitcoin. You know, when Bitcoin goes up in the beginning of the rally and then dominance drops by 1% and the alts feel like they're having the best day of their lives, this is potentially, to an extent,

the opposite of that. Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense. patrick is that what you think as well uh that's that's what i think as well because the stable coin market cap is still holding flat so like ran was saying that liquidity has to come from somewhere however the one reason i have hesitation with that thesis is that Solana has, even with the ETH news, outperformed ETH by quite a bit over the past day. Yeah, Solana bounced hard. Yeah, Solana, I'll tell you what my thesis is there, Patrick, and I've actually thought about this quite a lot. So let's just imagine that, Let's reset the playing field here. And let's just say that there was an alien that came to earth and we had to explain what's going on in the blockchain world.

And we explained to this alien that actually, look, there's two ecosystems that do smart contracts. One of them is Ethereum. It's very slow and it's very expensive, but don't worry. It's got these things called side chains and the side chains all settle onto the main chain. And then the alien asks you one question and he says, I just want to know one thing. He says, can the daps on the different side chains talk to each other? Like a dap on optimism, can it talk to a dap on arbitrage?

And then you answer the alien, you say to the alien, no, that doesn't really work like that. What the alien will say is, well, actually, then this is a farce. Ethereum is a settlement chain for a whole lot of separate blockchain, which you can kind of call them layer twos, but they're completely separate, not non-linked blockchains. And then you compare that to what Solana is and what Solana is becoming in this cycle.

And that is one chain where everything works on the main chain and every dApp can talk to every other dApp on the main chain. I think that in this cycle, Solana wins because of that analogy. I think that that's why Solana becomes the best performing layer one or the best performing big token of the cycle. So I think it's going to back the trend. I think because of that, it's going to back the trend. And you can kind of see the narrative on Twitter and the narrative from the VCs and whatever saying, hold on,

maybe these Layer 2s actually really are just separate blockchains. And we're calling them ETH Layer 2s because they all settle onto ETH Layer 2. But the truth is that they actually are separate blockchains. Yeah, so I'll say I actually have more sold than ETH at this point after this run up. But I think you can make the case that the BlackRock filing for the ETH ETF, obviously, you have the long term inflows into ETH specifically. But what it also does is it legitimizes crypto and specifically legitimizes smart contract blockchains as something that's going to be here to stay. And that would that effect would trickle down to other chains like Solana as well. Yeah, that's fair. That's a fair point. I mean, that is a fair point. I do believe, and you said you have more Solana than ETH in your portfolio. I do believe, though, that Solana

is the Ethereum of the last cycle. So like the up and coming, the performer. In the last cycle, it was Bitcoin and then ETH became the better performer and the catch up and the second biggest. I predicted, just after I came back from the Solana conference, I actually predicted that Solana becomes the number three token after.

So in my mind, at the end of the cycle, it's Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and then everything else. I don't know how you feel about that. What happened to Polygon though? Like everyone, just a few months ago, no one was talking about Solana. Everyone's talking about Polygon.

Maddox, Maddox, Maddox. Hey. Hi Mario, welcome. Nice to have you. Thanks for inviting me. Like literally the first thing I hear when I join is just Solana. The last thing I heard in the last space was Solana.

What happened to Polygon? is a is a layer two and i just spoke about my thesis around layer twos we can call them layer twos on ethereum but actually what they are are they separate blockchains for all intents and purposes like you know a dap on matic cannot speak to a dap on optimism which cannot speak to a dap on Optimism, which cannot speak to a dap on Arbitrum. So it's pretty much like they're running on different blockchains. And yes, they are settling on ETH and they're getting the security on ETH. But that's not, like to me, the thesis doesn't make sense. A better thesis for me is that there is one layer one where all the daps in the layer one can just talk to that layer one and everything is just settled quickly and cheaply onto the layer one and that like again i say when i went to solana that's that's the thesis that i came home with i'm just testing

to see if i'm working is can you guys hear me i got kicked off rebooted listener two phones great okay good yeah we can but it just seems like for me what it seems like like, Ryan, is look, other than price, how are the other metrics? I don't know if you guys were talking about Solana and sorry to kind of pivot to that. But how are the other metrics other than just the price of Solana going up? Any other movements in adoption whatsoever? There's TVL going up, more projects building on Solana. So TVL is a terrible metric. And I'll tell you why TVL is a terrible metric.

And most of crypto actually gets fooled by TVL. TVL stands for total value locked. And most of the tokens locked up in an ecosystem are actually the token itself. So when you say the TVL of ETH, you said the TVL of ETH. Well, the TVL of ETH is mainly made up of ETH. And the TVL of Solana is actually mainly made up of ETH. You said the TBL of ETH. Well, the TBL of ETH is mainly made up of ETH. And the TBL of Solana is actually mainly made up of Solana. And the TBL of Kujira or Phantom is mainly made up of the primary token in most cases. I'm not going to say in every case. And the problem is

that as the price goes up, then the TBL goes up. And then everyone goes, well, look, the TBL is exploding. Well, yeah, the TBL is exploding because the price is exploding and the TBL is just these tokens locked up. I see think Patrick, you got your hand up. Yeah. A lot of thoughts on that. So I actually used to write tweets for DeFi Lama and totally agree. Totally agree. Because the problem with TVL is that it's highly, highly reflexive. So what happens is the price of the ecosystem token,

like Sol goes up, that causes the price of all other ecosystem tokens to go up, like we're seeing with some meme coins on Solana right now, which then pumps the TVL further, which causes more people to version stable coins and increases APRs on the network. And so it just can spiral up very quickly and spiral down very quickly. So although, you know, everyone likes to look at TVL and say okay is the tv tvl going up does that mean it's undervalued what are the what are the metrics you look for then patrick uh well one of the major metrics would be stable coin inflows because that's tougher to fake right because

that's real money uh but part part of the problem with tvl is um is that is that like like I said, since it's highly reflexive, TVL comes from market cap as much as market cap comes from TVL. So if a chain already has a high market cap, then all you need is a small percentage of that to actually enter the DeFi ecosystem for that TVL to go up. So it's a lot more complicated than the story you hear on twitter a lot of people saying well it's got a low tvl i couldn't agree with you more patrick i think the best metric today uh to to measure the blockchain is the the amount of usd back stable coin on that chain

because that shows the confidence of people to leave real money on that chain number one number two and it's a metric that probably not a lot of people are measuring, but daily active users of not the protocol, because the daily active addresses on the protocol is actually a cheat. And the reason why it's a cheat is because if the Solana price is going up and people start trading Solana between one another because the price is going up and people are speculating on the price, that drives up the daily active addresses. That just means there's more people in the casino.

The reason why they're coming into the casino is because the price is going up. What I'm looking for is the number of daily active users on the biggest used dApps on the blockchain. So, how many users are actually using the dApps on the blockchain, not actually many users are actually using the dApps on the blockchain, not actually just trading the token because they want to speculate on the token? Now, that for me is a metric which is much harder to read, but that's a metric which would give me confidence about a blockchain. Patrick, any other metrics that you look for? I would say those are the main ones. Truthfully, I do. And when it comes to

those metrics keeping up with the price action? One other metric actually that I think can be helpful, although this gets complicated comparing between blockchains, but is actually gas spent on the network. Because again, that's showing a willingness to pay to use the network. Stable coins are up slightly, not up enough to be commensurate with the price. However, again, if price keeps rallying, then APRs go up on the network, which could have an effect on that. The other thing I think that's sort of been underrated is that there's really a new generation of DeFi applications on Solana. So there's some from 2021 that we're able to survive and keep building, but there's a lot of new,

I would say, very, very high quality applications that have launched over the past year. Is there any other blockchain that you think is showing any signs of this kind of traction? So like Solana is showing amazing traction, and I think maybe we're just in a little Solana season right now. Is there any other blockchain other than Ethereum that you think is showing any – and when I say blockchain, I don't mean layer two on Ethereum. So let's talk about layer ones. Are there any other layer ones where you think we're seeing the same thing?

Yeah, what happened, Patrick? What was this shiny object syndrome? What happened to Aptos and Sui that everyone was talking about a few months ago? I've never been that into those two. I mean, they've got large war chests. I hear that they're highly performant, so maybe they can build out their own ecosystem, but I haven't really seen anything there yet what about cardano

you know funny funny story about cardano actually i was posting just the other day is um that's a good example of tvl flowing from market cap it's it's still uh quite low unless you count staked cardano as as some people who are ADA fans say you should, but assuming you just count smart contract TVL, then actually the amount of ADA that's been flowing into DeFi applications has been basically up only this year, about 4x since the start of the year. So you're saying that Cardano is showing signs of life? It is showing signs of life. Personally, I of life uh personally i haven't seen as much that's interesting there that's yeah hopefully i don't get flamed for that because because um

i'm open to changing my mind but um but it is showing something amazing it's amazing how scared content creators are of the it's crazy it's crazy community it's it's just uh yeah what about what about kujira do you watch kujira do you watch the do you watch any cosmos any cosmos uh chains oh yeah actually i had a video on kujira just just two days ago overview uh really interesting kujira and injective i would say are the two most interesting ones on cosmos i've seen both obviously performing very well, which has brought a lot of attention to them. Both have a lot of unique and interesting applications. Also, I think both still very young, where as far as I know, both are still permissioned, for example,

so you can't have anyone launch an application. But those are the two most interesting ones I've seen in Cosmos. Where are all the devs? I know that there was a point where the devs loved Polkadot so I don't know if that's the best indicator. So this is, I actually looked up on Santiment the other day to find out where the devs were

and to be honest, I just don't know if there's an accurate metric of where all the devs are, and I'll tell you why. It looks, when you read the data, the data tells you that the most active developer communities are Polkadot and Cardano. That's like the two chains where you're getting the most active developers. And that just doesn't make sense because in the VC game

and in the Dapp game, I don't know how many devs, I don't see any Polkadot related applications or Dapps coming out. I don't see much coming out of Cardano either. So I don't know where to get a reliable metric of all the devs, other than going to the actual dev cons and the hacker houses.

Guys, you want to take that one? Because i just tuned out when someone sent me uh vivek ramaswamy is shitting on blackrock i'm like man just wait up let's get the etf first so i got distracted completely vivek has a list of 100 people that uh his committee has told him he needs to have hot takes against whether he cares or not and so it's always it's always it's but i just don't want him to shit on blackrock yet we could like if we do in like a few months it'll be perfect so i got distracted from from ryan's question um and i came in late as well can i can i ask you a question that everyone hates because i came in late scott can i ask you a question i I guess. I'm going to say no. Let me guess what the question is. What about the VC funding?

No. What about crypto funds, Ren? What about crypto funds? No, yesterday. Look, yesterday is 100. I can't remember which fund they put in $100 million in startups. I'll tell you my experience with funding VCs. There is a shift.

I think you guys mentioned it a week before me. I'm starting to see it a bit later, maybe because I'm so introverted, but I am starting to see a shift. Like projects, obviously, work with projects from an advertising perspective or incubation. They are raising money. I think there's more grants being approved. A lot of discussions have been delayed for months.

It's starting to close. So the shift is happening. But I just feel like it's very sad. I feel like, you know, Randy, you were talking yesterday about a 25% correction, which kind of fucked up my day. But I think as soon as the market… It happened like four hours later in an hour. You got the correction. It happens.

He's talking about 25% capitulation. Altcoins corrected 25% in an hour. There was an altcoin capitulation yesterday. Altcoins capitulated 20% to 25%. I don't know which altcoins you were in, Mario, but other than… I don't look at the markets. you were in mario but other than i don't i don't look at the markets are you being serious dead dead serious bitcoin went from 38 to like mid 35s and in the same moment altcoins literally went down 30 percent did they recover did they

did they recover they're up they're bouncing this is ridiculous let me give you some stats let me give you some stats solana went down solana is. Solana went down. Solana is one of the, let's say, one of the most reliable, the biggest old crank. Went down 14.5%. Let me give you some other ones. Give me some names.

I'll tell you how far they went down. I've got the charts open. I saw Algo went down, but bounced, went down right to Sport and Bounce. I just happen to be seeing some charts where it just bounced off key levels. But yeah, I mean, levels. Why is FTX up

57% in the last 24 hours? Because Gary Gensler is pumping it, Mario. You missed the show. Gary Gensler is a pumper. He pumps. You've got Immutables up 48% in the last seven days. Solana's up 25%. I think it's correct. It's down the back.

Most altcoins had a 20% correction yesterday. I mean, you wouldn't know that if you slept through the dip, you would have thought nothing happened. I survived the altcoin crash of yesterday. I need a t-shirt. What's your... Actually, guys, no messing around. What's your biggest holding, Ren? It's like i'm asking you if you um um bitcoin well well hold on let's put it it shouldn't be my biggest holding but it is my biggest it is my biggest holding because it's spiked up in price so quickly but right now kujira is my biggest holding it shouldn't be but it just happened so because it's spiked up in price should i give you the lunis speech again ran about that kujiraira being your... No, no, no. Point well taken. But my biggest holding, Solana, in order, Kujira, Solana, Injective, Arweave.

Okay. Scott? Bitcoin by far, Ethereum second. Oh, my God, man. You are so lame. Yes. I actually practiced when I pre-aged him. Sorry. Scott, what about the other friends of yours

in the same nursing home? Do they hold the same bags? I don't know. I'll have to ask him at dinner at 3.30pm today. Let's go to the... Just make sure you take your dentures with you. Patrick, what are your three biggest holdings?

Three biggest right now would be Solana, Link, and BitTensor Tau. I've literally never heard of whatever the hell you just said. Yeah, what's Solana? Yeah, never heard of it. Yes. Did you make that last one up? What's the third one? Do you know what, Ryan?

It's not the Microsoft Microcap. Don't worry. It's one of the largest AI projects. Yeah, it's such a boomer. You're right. Decentralized AI. It's a token called TAO. Again, for the rest of the people in Scott's nursing home, just so you know, the token was trading at around $54 for a long time. And recently it went from $54 to about $140. It is also one of my,

it's also one of my, not one of my biggest holdings, but it just became a big holding kind of overnight. Congratulations. All right. What was the second one, Patrick? What was the second one you mentioned? Trade money.

Link, which I think is obvious. I think to Rand's point, I think a lot of people have found themselves in much larger positions and out of balance based on the moves that we've seen, because it's been so long that things were sideways and people were trying to manage their portfolios. And all of a sudden you get something called 4 or 5x and it becomes a huge percentage of your portfolio. By the way, this is probably a good time to say this is not investment advice, but we continue. The irony is one of my community members actually sent me a tweet that I tweeted in September, 2022. And the tweet says all the money,

which I lost in Luna, I'm going to make back on Kujira. That's how long I've been holding it. I mean, I held it back down. I bought it close to zero. Well, no,

I held it because this is one of the tokens that collapsed in the lunar collapse. Then I held it right through the bear market. Obviously, I didn't sell one token. Just didn't really pay much attention to it because I know what they're doing. And I mean, these guys are shipping at the speed of light. And so I just held it and didn't really pay much attention to the price. And I think it went, again, I didn't pay much attention to the price. I think it went from like $0.07 to $4.

Patrick, am I right that it started around $0.07 in the beginning of a cycle? Yeah. I mean, it crashed so low and it wasn't trading for a while. I think when it started trading, it was around $0.05 to $0.10. Yeah. So I think $0.07, it went from $0 seven cents to four dollars um and yeah even even yeah yeah i mean this i i guess my bags are boring it's bitcoin and ethereum and then uh also if we're just like top five ish matic uh which i think everybody knows that uh i now just got disproportionately large uh from alluvium

from buying that near the bottom and holding a lot of it from the other market and then injective as well which i think you said was one of yours no no no i will don't do that full disclosure i'm an investor that's you know that i said i did not even hate my life in madden simon no i'm just kidding nobody cut that out and you cut that out. And you're not allowed to say Bitcoin. No, Bitcoin. I want Simon to speak, but then one of the other bigger pieces of news that we have today, obviously, is the Celsius bankruptcy update. And we do have both Cam and Simon here. So I think that's definitely worth discussing.

Go ahead, Simon. Yeah, no, I don't invest in shit coins. There's only equity and bitcoin um but the sorry to change the subject slightly but justin sun tweeted that there was a hack in poloniacs um and uh yeah they're trying to record they're seeing about recovering funds at the moment so if anyone's got funds in polonx, I think it's too late. They are offering a bounty of, I think, 5% of the stolen funds

to a white... I'm going to quickly read your tweet. He says, Poloniex hack, don't know much details yet. Hope it'll be revealed soon anyway. So we're offering a 5% white hat bounty

to the Poloniex hacker. Please return the funds to the following address. We'll give you seven days to consider this offer before we talk to law enforcement. The size of the hack, I haven't been following it very closely because it keeps changing every couple of minutes. Last I've seen

it was 50, but I think it's up. saw 48 yeah i think probably around there probably around there yeah and then obviously there's the connection with hobby which uh has obviously had a lot of interrogation and it it mentions collaborating with other exchanges in order to resolve the issue. So I don't know, man. I don't want to spread things, but there seems to be the left hand passing to the right hand for a long time in these exchanges. I mean, you know, this was a 2014 exchange that got sold several times, recycled to Circle, then ended up in the hands of Justin Sun and yeah. Sam, you've been

in crypto for a long time. I've been in crypto for less than you but for a long time and I know that two things are going to happen every single bull market. One is there's going to be Justin Sun FUD and two is going to be Tether FUD and that's just been the cycle again and again and again.

Simon, do you think we can, and Cam, can we get an update on Celsius? I saw, obviously, that I know it still has to go to a judge, but Arrington was tweeting about it yesterday, and I think that there's some major updates there. Yes, sir. I'll start if you want, then Cam can cover some more. But essentially, we got a confirmation order. And the confirmation order is the end of a year and a half process to take all of the fraud out of Celsius,

leave all the criminality with Mijinsky and the co-conspirators that are facing up to 115 years in prison and then take the assets of the left, which were about 50% less than if we just didn't have any of them at Celsius and reorganise them into a public company and the public company will find out, is trying to get a pre-clearance letter from the SEC

using an exemption in the bankruptcy code that would allow you to issue shares and go direct to a public offering. If it succeeds, then there's about 120,000 slightly out-of-date ASICs. And we've got about, I think, about 85,000 plugged in right now. And then there's going to be about 450 million of e-staking wrapped into a public company. And then a bunch of illiquid investments as well. So that may be a public company offering that happens, hopefully, probably, I guess, around March next year if we get the pre-clearance letter.

That's everything on that side, yeah. So there's going to be a difference. Cam, anything to add there? Cam? Well, Cam, I summed it up with your mic. Mike, Cam, please, I can't wait to hear more about Celsius. You need to fix your mic. Sounds like he's in one of your machines with you, Mario. He's biohacking with you, I think.

Man, I would never biohack or shake hands with anyone that will talk about FTX or Celsius because I'm so sick of... Oh, Voyager, I'm so sick of these stories. I can't wait for us to go. Well, then you and I are not going to get along very well. There is an interesting... Is your mic working? Yeah, you're good. Great. Yep, you're good. Yeah, I guess one thing just to address now that the confirmation order is in is just how the press has been covering Celsius. Like, because it looks like it's going to be one of, perhaps the only company that's going to

reemerge from bankruptcy as a new entity. Some people have been portraying this as if Celsius somehow was a better actor than other players. That's actually quite the opposite. The only reason it's being reorganized is because they spent something like $700 million of customer deposits investing in illiquid mining equipment. And the creditors that are part of the creditor committee decided that it's better for creditors to try to create a new entity to get value out of that rather than liquidate the mining entity. And effectively, that's something that they should not have invested in. And that's different from a Voyager or a BlockFi, but they did things much worse and they pushed the frontier

of fake yield that encouraged other players that weren't quite as bad such as block fi and voyager to try to compete with celsius which i mean they intentionally pushed everybody down the risk curve collectively exactly and internal documents revealed that they were intentionally trying to get the most attractive yields because they realized when they raised the yield, customers came from BlockFi and Voyager and Nexo. So they were intentionally positioning their yield to be the best in market. And we found out that it was effectively Ponzi yield. So what's the, is there a consensus it seems like listen i was a voyager creditor i think everybody knows that it seems that we kind of had the worst timing because voyager liquidated assets to pay everybody back sort of at the dead bottom of the market

we've seen obviously ftx has the chance now with anthropic and solana rising that they could really almost be made whole like what's the consensus or at least ballpark of what Celsius creditors can expect? Yeah, it somewhat depends on your holdings. So if you held something like Bitcoin, you might get something like 25% in kind in terms of a liquid crypto distribution. But oddly, that would be a mix of Ethereum and Bitcoin. If you're a stable coin holder, you might do slightly better because you would get the run up that these other assets have

had. And then you'd be also getting a share in this new NUCO, which they're evaluating it to be about as much as the liquid crypto distribution. This is in-kind value. So the lawyers will only give you credit for your holdings when they filed for bankruptcy on July 13th of 2022. Yeah, that's what we got in Voyager. Everybody said, hey, you're getting 36% back. But no, if those assets were priced to when we got refunded, it was like 24%, some kind of the same idea. Exactly. So they're going to look at that number, which will be more attractive. But if you look at what you would have had, if not for the fraud itself, your numbers won't look nearly as good. If you had an account less

than $5,000, you're going to get 70% of that petition date pricing no matter what. Yeah. If you have more, it'll vary. It's better for account holders that the market has been rallying because there's basically some set allocations. So this new co-entity is taking $450 million of customer funds to start up. And there's a litigation trust, which is taking $50 million. So there's some fixed costs that need to get paid. And there's effectively more available to distribute back to creditors as the markets run up so it's good news for everybody expecting distributions exciting yeah there's there's a couple of interesting dynamics so so as cam said i'll if i you know the bankruptcy makes it look like you're getting amazing recovery, but essentially I'll have 25% of the Bitcoin I already had that I was aiming to borrow against.

Then you have shares in a company. And if the shares in that company outperform the portfolio that you had with Celsius prior, then you get a higher recovery. So essentially, you're looking for the leveraged mining NASDAQ listing to outperform Bitcoin or whatever portfolio you had. At least you have some upside, right? I mean, that's the whole point. So there is the possibility of a recovery if it outperforms. But then you've got all the litigation stuff. So there was so much things that we can pursue, you know, we're able to pursue Mishinsky,, the VC investments, and the e-staking, they've become like a bit of a, there's this closed loop of people that are all the final stages is a proof group which is running the staking for us but they're also looking to bid on ftx and we put a clause in there where any deals that um

that they do they have to come to our new company in order to put those deals through so we may end up depending on where this goes actually rolling in a chunk of the FTX stuff as well into the new public company. I don't know if it's all going to go that way, but there's all these interesting dynamics once you can get all the fraud out of the way and just figure out what these assets are. So the scenario is improving, right? So I think Celsius at least is benefiting. You could lose it all still. Yeah. Well, you know, we all know it's a topic that I'm following closely.

I've talked about it a million times, but Celsius in 2020 was one of my first sponsors for three months on my podcast. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. It's over. It's done. It's not.

You're good. You're good. You're safe. No, actually, it's funny it's done it's it's not you're good you're good you're safe have you gone no i actually it's funny because i there you know there's been talk obviously of clawbacks and all these things but i've proactively been talking to simon and uh and cam even though there's no legal obligation to do so but about uh trying to you know return anything that i did make which was not much and and make sure that that does happen as part of that. Yeah, Scott volunteered to give the funds back,

even though he doesn't have to. And if anyone else wants to follow the leads, then I think Scott is showing the way because those funds will go back to creditors. So thank you, Scott. It's not like I have them anyways. They went right to Voyager. But thank you, Scott. It's not like I have them anyways. They went right to Voyager. The tragic truth is they'll go to the lawyers, but hopefully they'll be...

So that was the problem. Earlier in the process, when you guys weren't necessarily in place, we reached out to some people and it was basically like anything that you return is just going to go to a legal fee and never make it to anyone. And we literally tried to some people and it was basically like anything that you return is just going to go to a legal fee and never make it to anyone. And we literally tried to find people that had directly signed up. I didn't have an affiliate fee. I literally didn't make affiliate income there, nothing like that. We couldn't find a single person that even signed up and was still there in 2022. And it actually collapsed because it was so early. But yeah,

my fear was always that whatever money anyone gives back to try to help is just going to end up going to the lawyers. I just went through that, right? So hopefully this could actually get to people when people start getting clawbacked or volunteering some of their funds. One of the crazy things, too, is that Voyager wound up using Celsius to provide them part of their yield. And yeah, they withdrew $100 million on, I think, March 9th. So they wound up clearing out their Celsius earnings account. Not everybody was as lucky as them.

And even funnier, Voyager and Celsius both used Kirkland & Ellis as the law firm. And Celsius had a claim in Voyager and missed the bar date in order to file that claim, even though it was Kirkland and Ellis' left hand passing to Kirkland and Ellis' right hand. They still managed to actually miss the date. So Voyager creditors benefited from Celsius creditors. Right. And we're all, even as Voyager creditors, are still waiting. If everyone wants to know how incestuous this is, we're still waiting for claims that have to do with Alameda, FTX, and Friero's Capital.

And was any of your stuff paid off with client money? We found that out in the SBF case. Yeah. I mean, Voyager was just such an epic shit show. But, you know, listen, I cheer hard. I hope that Anthropic goes to a gajillion dollars and FTX creditors are made completely whole. And somehow that helps everyone else. I think it feels like actually, even though with all the bankruptcy and the lawyer's fees and stuff, there are scenarios here where just by the fact that it took so long, people get a hell of a lot more money back.

So I think we'll all cheer for that yes that is actually true we have been in well incredibly lucky or maybe it was planned out to take all those legal fees but we've certainly made more than it um up in the money we will save as a role as a result of exiting during this market if things change the same so So that is a real silver lining. Yeah. I mean, I remember Voyager, like people were screaming to the committee, I think Bitcoin was 25 or 26, just liquidate now. And then they ended up selling it all at 18 or 19 when it dropped from there. It's just everything at the dead bottom. But what can you do? Hopefully, like I said, in the other claims that Voyager has, maybe that'll be made whole whole mario anything else in the news you're dying here to talk about we need a theory about

for sure yeah i'm just really disappointed no one's talking about gaming as much as i'd like but obviously i'm the only one geeking out on what i did so earlier luvium is now one of my biggest holdings when you guys called me a boomer that was boring at the nursing home that's obviously benefiting from the gaming move no man like it what simon considers it a shit coin you should probably sell it hey listen i had the shit coins get you more bitcoin listen no cool now i think this is it we'll see everyone on monday i guess if the market but it's got if the market you dump or or pump during the weekend let's say let's make a rule. If they pump or dump by more than 10%, Bitcoin goes up or down more than 10% in one day on the weekend, we do a show.

One of us has to do a show. It's going to be me. All right, cool. Thanks, everyone. The reason I agreed is because you know I'm not showing up and now you have to do a show. Perfect. Yeah, I know. Exactly.

Because you got kids. That's the excuse you use. I'm just going to get it. Kids are a good excuse. That's not called an excuse. I'm going to get a kid just so I can start skipping shows more often. I'll lend you one any weekend. Cool.

Alright, everyone. Thanks a lot.