The Wolf Of All Streets - Fear Peaks as Long Term Crypto Signals Turn Loud #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

Bitcoin holds near $90,000 amid $1B+ in liquidations and extreme fear sentiment. We discuss capitulation among crypto natives, price resilience in a tight range, new money inflows, Bitcoin dominance, and why precious metals are outperforming.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall every day here on X at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Topic today, fear peaks as long-term crypto signals turn loud. I guess we can dive into the fact that we've had a small retrace in the market. And somehow that means that we are once again fearful. I think the most astounding stat that I saw today, which I focused on pretty much on my show, was the fact that there was, I think, Dave, I'm getting an echo from your mic. like $1.08 billion liquidated yesterday and just a massive amount of traders, like 180,000 individual accounts liquidated and Bitcoin still trading right around $90,000. It just blows my mind the amount of leverage. But before, Dave, before we dig in, we do have an awesome sponsor today, which is zero-g. Just going to tell you a bit about them as we do each day.

AI is reshaping the world, but right now it's stuck in the hands of just a few big players. But what if AI could run openly, verifiably, and on-chain. That's what ZeroG is building. The world's first essentialized AI operating system open to everyone. Imagine a network where you don't just trade tokens. You train stores and run independent AI models at scale. No lock-ins, no black boxes, no single point of failure, just quick, cost-effective, auditable AI that anyone can build.

If you believe the future of AI should be a public good, not another corporate monopoly, join us at 0.org.a.i. That's the number 0g.aI. So I think as we move into the conversation, obviously all eyes right now on the World Economic Forum. I did not hear Trump's comments, but I have seen a few speeches over the past few days. But here we are, Bitcoin $90,000 and a billion liquidated, and we're back in fear, Dave. I mean, all I could say is that it's a question of who you're measuring. It's like selection bias or measurement bias is very important. So, you know, alternative me, which is the people who do the Bitcoin

when fear and greed are measuring people in the crypto, everything is crypto native. And crypto native people were morose and despondent yesterday and when things started dropping again, I mean, look, all I could tell you is anecdotally, I posted a sarcastic tweet, or post or whatever the hell we call it, you know, about giving up because of Greenland or whatever.

And it got like close to 40,000 views. And you know, it doesn't matter. I mean, you can post sarcasm and, get more engagement than you do when you post things that actually makes sense. And all you know there is you're tapping into emotions and the emotions of the crypto community are terrible. And frankly, the question is, at what point does the crypto native folks have nothing left to sell?

And I think we're rapidly approaching that. Meanwhile, there's a voracious appetite for it from people who believe, as Chris Perkins said this morning, you know, and or is better. Or as Scott Besant, you know, said yesterday on your show, you played that clip of him, you know, I would say humiliating, but I don't think that central bankers have shame. Oh, that was Brian Armstrong. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, I was Brian Armstrong. Okay. Well, there was another one with Besant on Bitcoin, too. I mean, look, at the end of the day, there is a, there are people who have very strong belief in a potential option of Bitcoin that are not selling. and there are people who have been in crypto for years, and they're the ones who are selling. And so what we're seeing is what I've been calling time-based capitulation,

but I think that when you see it going from neutral to extreme fear in a day, at the same time the price barely moves, and more or less we're back where we were yesterday afternoon right now, I mean, I think that has to mean something. Now, but that's an FTX-level liquidation event. 1.08, I think FTCS was 1.2 in the same amount of time. It's just astounding that there's still that much leverage to be liquidated in the system. Well, it just tells you how many people got, basically what happened was there were people who every time you get to the top of a range,

they expect it to break out, they go 20, 30x leverage or more, and it's wrong and it crushes them in their face. This time, what you had is people who put in less leverage than that got stopped out. And, you know, market makers, there's always people. always talk about hunting stops, you know, Gary's probably smiling behind the mic, because it doesn't matter what asset class you're talking about. It could be oil, it could be equities, it could be anything. You know, if there are, if people know that there's a lot of stop losses at 90,000, there will be, someone's going to hunt to try to trigger those stop losses and buy back at 88 or so or below. And I think that's what we saw. You don't, you know, Occam's Razor, the simplest solution is usually right.

So I think that's what we saw. But the fact that that terrified people so much should tell you something. I think that that's kind of important. Chris said something else on your show, which I think is important, which is that people underestimate the psychic damage inside the crypto community of October 10th. And I think that's really, really critical because, you know, that takes time. So, you know, if you put all this together, it tells you we're still in a bottoming process. I mean, the price is much more robust than you would expect.

given the fear and everything that's going on around it. But any new money is going to take new money, not the crypto market for a while. The crypto market will come back in when Bitcoin is well and truly marching towards all-time highs and beyond it. Until then, I don't think you're going to see it. It has to come from outside, which tells you you expect Bitcoin dominance to be pretty high over the next couple of months. Yeah, it's basically the same point that I made to him is that we kind of,

view retail as a monolith, but it's actually buckets. There's crypto-native retail and there's the rest of retail. And crypto-native retail lost all their money on October 10th and keeps getting liquidated. But the bigger wall of money that bought Doge and NFTs in the previous cycle, you know, the retail fomo that we talk about the Uber driver and your barber, they're not here at all. And all it takes, as we always joke, is higher prices for them to come out. Well, they are in Europe, but they're not here. They're in silver and they're in gold, but more silver than anything else. So whatever.

Anyway, I see Matt put his hand up. Yeah, Dave, I just had a quick question. You brought up a really great point. It's not the old money. It's the new money that's going to come in. So just curious,

what do you think is going to be that catalyst to bring that new money in? We see David Sachs already predicting that banks are going to fully embrace crypto if we get this legislation passed. Would that be the catalyst or what do you think? I think that people in crypto are obsessive about the word catalysts.

I mean, I'm not trying to be pedantic, although I guess I am. I mean, Scott and I both have the same New Year's resolution. and just to call out silliness every time we see it. I think that people obsess, you don't know that a catalyst has happened until after it's occurred and the price has already moved. We don't know. What we do know is that there is a lot of,

at Bitcoin and crypto in general is really a small spec in global asset allocation. It doesn't take much. Just do the math what happens as financial advisors, 86% of which don't touch crypto. You know, you go, yet they're some of the most opinion leaders. I mean, some of the most influential ones, you know, think that you should be there. What happens when crypto becomes or Bitcoin becomes a two to four percent allocation among financial advisors? Well, there just isn't enough supply.

This isn't. And so we don't need a catalyst. What you need is, is it to continue to move in that direction. And for people to look around and say, wait a minute, you know, the last 20 times we, saw this happen it dropped 10% it only dropped 2% maybe that means something and all of a sudden you know your bottoming process stops and you go from morose to you know over a period of a few months euphoric and then you look back and say well what caused the euphoria and then people will make up stories right amateo i think it was you then ryan i'm not sure i think so ryan was first

oh ryan was first okay sorry right yeah no worries good morning guys uh so i mean i keep running the charts through my AI model and it keeps confirming that we're still inside of a range. And just to confirm that, like anyone can go and look at it. So Coinbase added the week-long charts now. If you just go look at a week-long, the week segment of the chart and just zoom out and just look at the pattern. And then anyone that wants to tell you that we're in the fair market that are fearful, like the pattern is so just obvious. It's ridiculous at this point. So the stats haven't changed, the numbers haven't changed.

We're still inside the range. And it's still one week we're in a bull market and the next week we're in a bear market. I'm particularly bullish. I mean, heck, we're adding Venezuela and Greenland. And we're going to have lots of space for data centers and lots of energy reserves. Like, geez, a lot going on in the world. You know, no wonder we're sideways in the markets. I mean, people are distracted.

and looking at every little thing. I mean, it's funny that markets hate uncertainty, but apparently only Bitcoin and crypto markets hate uncertainty because everything else is seemingly having no problem, making new all-time highs repeatedly. I'm a tell you, I think you're up. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It just feels like every time we get headlines,

crypto gets an additional shock, and we also see the VIX spike up. I mean, obviously that's standard protocol. and standard practice, but it just makes me wonder if we are starting to see liquidity issues become more systemic or if it's just business as usual. Do we get the soft landing and do all this influx of energy continue to just spike markets and take everything crazy? Does the print that's coming, print our way out of this? Or, does the gold and silver and the precious metal signal of a possible recession actually take into effect?

And I feel like we're just in this very gray area on this. And since the end of last year, as metals started to really run, I just saw a lot of people expecting this to very quickly hit certain levels and start to fall down the risk curve. And obviously at some point, that will happen, right? But I guess my question to everybody else here is their thoughts on the precious metal trade if it's signaling larger liquidity debt and bond issues across the globe and concerns, or do we still expect this to just trickle down the risk curve and this to just be a soft landing that rises assets in general going into the rest of this year.

I would say that it is interesting that everybody is associating Bitcoin's wobbles right now with tariffs in Greenland when it's probably actually Japan's bonds than have a larger impact on the market. So I think that that's a point well taken. I did see Gary had his hand up. And then also I know Florian, this is what you're looking at all day with metals. and so you might have some great perspective here. But go ahead, Gary. Yeah, look, I guess I'll say the negative thing out loud, but silver gold, we're doing something we haven't seen in many decades.

Hard for me to believe that silver continues this climb. When it starts to retrace, I don't think that's going to be good for Bitcoin. I've got to tell you, I think Bitcoin looks weak here. I don't know how we're holding on to this premise that we're not going to test something below 89. You don't have any organic buyers. No crypto bros are buying Bitcoin right now. They're broke. So this is all new money coming in.

The old, old money coming in for the new money is what we're hoping for. And I just don't see it, guys. I'd love to hear the counter on that. Silver and gold don't look like they're going to stop anytime soon. And if they do, and this is my question to the group, once they start to retrace, what does that do to Bitcoin? Dave, you were jumping in before and then I think we can go to Florian, but you have an answer. Yeah, I mean, I hate to say it, but, you know, when when people like Gary, as bullish as they are, get more morose, that to me is so much closer. And I think you kind of know that.

When I start feeling morose, that's how I know we're closer to a bottom than the top. And it's funny. I mean, time is important here. You know, you have, it takes time to overcome a lot of stuff. But the notion that price action in the short term is, is determinative is just wrong. It's just not true. You know, look, there's a bunch of things going on. Dave, what does that mean?

Determinative. I mean, it's like prices, we always use this expression and we know it's true. Markets can remain irrational longer than we can remain solvent, you know, because it, things take a while to work out. But in the end, it tends to make a hell of a lot more sense. And, you know, what we're seeing in the world of Bitcoin, this isn't quantum, as some people are saying it. This is, there was a massive amount of distribution last year, a huge, literally epic. I mean, when you look at liquidate, the chart of liquidations, October 10th was so much larger than anything we've ever seen before. I mean, arguably, you can, you could say that Luna was

bigger, I guess, but not to traders, right? They're an asset crashed. It's just different. It's different, but, and you could say the GBTC trade was the widow maker. And yes, that's true because it was systemic risk in the system. And you could argue that micro strategy was the echo of that. And so the real question is, is there a wave of force liquidations from crypto? And I think the answer to that is pretty clearly no. We've seen it already. It's already come out. And so strip that out and look at all the, everything that's going on. And I think price is, is doing what you expect. I think Ryan is right. I've been saying this like, I've been yelling it basically. When you see a range this tight and it's historically tight, I mean, Bitcoin volatility is historically well, right?

Even given all this. And so you're seeing low volatility at the same time as extreme fear. Do you realize how fucked up that is? I mean, it's just not normal. And not normal generally means something. So, you know, I'm reading the tea leaves and trying to parse it together and saying, well, okay, you know, these are the trends that these are the trends that we're seeing. And I do think that there's there's a lot of vested interest. I mean, yeah, you know, there's a lot of cross currents on it, but I do think that looking at the price and saying, okay, we're sitting in this tight range with low volatility when everybody's puking their guts out, what's left? You know, a certain point, there's just nothing left in the stomach to puke out.

And I know that's a gross analogy, but it's, I mean, it's pretty accurate, you know, given what's been going on. So that's what I'm trying to say, Gary. Does that make sense to you? Well, it doesn't answer the question. You know, I think we will have a retracement of 30 plus percent on silver at some point. Oh, silver is a different story. What does Bitcoin do when silver and gold turn around and go the other one?

Because you know it's going to get bid up too high, right? It's going to overshoot. Well, the real question is what's too high given how much? Gold is funny because I've been listening, you know, a decade ago, gold bugs would tell you that keeping up with all the money that have been printed to that point a decade ago. And I'm using those terms specifically that it should. Gold should be at 5,000, which is about to be where we are. Since then, we've doubled the global amount of money.

So those same gold bugs are talking about 10,000. Now, are they right? Well, I mean, objectively, if all the central banks in the world continue to buy gold instead of U.S. Treasuries, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Do I think that's likely? Absolutely not. Do I think 5,000 is probably a medium... This space was downloaded via spacesdown.com.

Visit to download your spaces today. Fair value? Yeah, probably. So how much does it retrace? Does it become less volatile again? Whatever, but that's interesting. Silver is a bit different because silver was when gold was basically the monetary play and silver was totally demonetized. We saw gold silver ratio trading between 80 and 120, right? But if you go back to the 70s when all this started with Fiat, it traded in the 30s and its ratio in the Earth's crust is 20. So I still still think silver ultimately ends up in the 30s, just like it did in the 70s, which means it could outperform significantly. And the reason for that is because even with all, if every single project that has gotten funded turns out and delivers as much silver as the people think that it will, as of today, we still be in structural deficit because of all the new things that are there.

Now, Florian has his hand up. So let's let him talk about this because he looks at these markets much more than I do, but I do think that you have to look at silver slightly differently. Yeah, thanks for having me. Well, first of all, regarding Bitcoin and crypto, I mean, I think we simply have to accept that the music is playing somewhere else right now. And the behavior over the last three, four months clearly points to a bear market. I'm sorry to say that, but that's what I see. I've been around now 13 years.

That's then the fourth crypto winter. I have learned painfully that the retransments during a crypto winter are pretty painful. So Bitcoin can retrace 50, 70. It has already retraced 90, 95% in the first and the second crypto winter. So it's looking weak. It is not really correlating with any of the other markets. I mean, NASDAQ tech has held up rather well up until recently. Bitcoin did its own thing.

So I think that's a warning signal. I think there's many reasons to be skeptic going forward for the next few months. We had this bounce a week ago or something. It failed slightly below 98,000, which is just the minimum retracement of this whole move down since early October. So that is clearly showing weakness. When we talk about the alcoins, many, like Solana, I mean Solana is completely disappointed in that cycle. Ethereum made a slightly new high, but overall, I think it's been rather weak. And, I mean, we should not forget this has been going on now for 15 years,

and it's totally normal that a sector needs a breather. And it takes a while to digest all this. And when we speak about sentiment, I mean, I'm running still, and the same is true here in this conversation. I'm still running into way too many people who strongly believe that this must come back immediately, and this is a bull market still and you have to buy any dip. But the reality right now looks different. I mean, I'm willing to change my mind immediately, but I assume the best thing that we can see for Bitcoin going forward

over the next few weeks and months, maybe is a bounce back to 100,000, maybe the falling 200-day moving average coming in around 105,000 right now is probably the best case. And as long as Bitcoin stays below that simple moving average, Yeah, it's an old school technique, but it has worked out in the last three crypto winters. And as long as Bitcoin stays below that moving average, I'm not willing to load up in that sector at the moment. I could imagine that this might end, like always, in a complete panic at some point later that year, maybe in summer or autumn. And then probably it's very interesting again.

But I think there's still way too many people in this sector hoping for, for a, turn around immediately and hoping for their ship coin bags to go up again. So I think I would be very careful going forward. And yeah, Bitcoin is completely disconnected at the moment from all the other markets. Maybe in the future at some point, that will be a good thing. But right now it's clearly a bad thing. So I would be careful here. And speaking about the precious metals, I mean, if you look at the Bitcoin gold ratio,

the ratio has topped out in the 40 zone multiple times. over the last few years and is now moving down slowly in favor of gold. I have basically a head and shoulders pattern there pointing towards 12 to 1, 10 to 1. And I think speaking about gold itself, I mean, it's a secular bull market since early 2000, 26 years in the making. Yes, it's going totally bananas. It doesn't look very healthy if you're long term in the markets. of course it looks scary if something goes up like this. But I think what's really going on is, I mean, we're seeing the end of the US petro dollar system

and something else is coming along. The emerging market central banks, Chinese, Indian central bank, the Russians, they don't buy Bitcoin, they buy gold. They need an alternative to the dollar and more and more people waking up that this is a fear Ponzi scheme system in which we're living. And they trust. the physical metal here. And I think going forward, I think that gold will not top out at $5,000.

In the short term, yes, probably a few more days and weeks, and we might see a sharper pullback here, but I think gold can easily go to $10,000, $15,000 down the road. And I think silver can easily hit $200,000, maybe $500. No problem. The vast majority of people on this planet is still completely underinvested in the metals. And if a Fiat money system is basically imploding where you want to run to. So I think in the big scheme of things, that's what's going on.

And yeah, it looks crazy. Many people are surprised. But, I mean, in the gold box scene, so to speak, we've been always talking about it. Yes, it took much longer than many people have expected and hoped for. But in the end of the day, I mean, it's playing out pretty clearly in front of our eyes. So, Florina, I have two questions. totally they're totally separate one who are these people that are buying every dip and are very bullish because i i mean maybe mike alfred but not a whole lot i mean certainly more i hear

a lot more people saying where ryan is that we're in a range and a lot more people being morose saying well you know wake me up when when it happens or i'll buy lower i'm just curious i mean you mean regarding crypto well yeah i can tell you i mean it's been one of those clear sentiments signals for me over the last few months. I mean, I've been still bullish in October, remember? I thought that we would still go higher. But the more Bitcoin showed weakness, the more I ran into people who basically told me, no, this is the only thing that goes up forever.

And I have to buy every dip. And I still meet strong believer in the Bitcoin. And, I mean, we just heard it here in our conversation before as well. So I don't see, I mean, that's the typical sentiment that you see in a bear market, right? People don't want to. We did in a bear market since October. That is absolutely, you can make an argument, 2025, post-inaguration was a bare market. Yes, we saw a bottom on the tariff tantrum early in the year and it got back to the

Alzheimer's high again. But more or less, there was never euphoria. There was never a bull. But arguing that doesn't matter. I have a more important question for you. There's rumors, of course there always are when there's big moves, that some, banks or players in the system in the precious metal system are in kind of deep trouble from the silver move being caught off sides kind of like you know what's it melvin capital got caught off in in

game stop have you heard anything about that because that that would be a very interesting phenomenon because they can't really control the silver market like they did nickel so i'm not really sure what the power yeah yeah exactly look i mean this is not a secret that uh for years and decades they have been 150, 250 paper ounces of gold, and the same is true for silver, being traded to basically hold the price down. And you can easily do this in the futures markets where people sell silver and gold that they don't have to. And I've been for that reason, very skeptical when the whole thing with ETFs and Bitcoin futures started because that's exactly the way you can manipulate the market. And then you have a huge bunch of derivatives and the market gets more and more

transparent in the end of the day. And that's been going on for decades in the gold markets. In fact, the top in 1980 came into play when they introduced the futures gold contract in New York. And we have for many years now heard the problems in the LBMA in London that there is so much unallocated gold, meaning they have sold gold on a paper contract to a third party. They never touched the gold. They've never seen the gold. And at some point, of course, with the rising gold prices, those family offices, institutional investors got skeptic and they wanted to see the gold or sold that position with them and made sure that they got the real physical gold on their hands. And that's been going on for years and decades.

And I mean, there is a few people who really, basically every week came up with new reports digging deep into the commitment of trades report and who are those four huge big short players in the silver markets. And yeah, I mean, there's rumors that, I mean, to be. weeks ago there was a big report about the UBS being massively short. I don't think it's true, but overall, yes, and you need to remember one very important thing. Silver is an industrial metal.

It's been used. Most of the gold that has ever been mined is sitting somewhere at the gold and might come to the market at higher prices or not, but silver has been used. And most of the industrial use, those companies, they don't really care whether silver is trading at 30, 50 or 150 because it's just a small part of their production cost, but they need to make sure that they have it.

And so there's a lot of drivers, and of course, Silver has been sleeping for many, many years. I've been many times writing about the mother of all cup and handle patterns, 45 years in the making. Finally, it's breaking out. And it's a violent breakout now, and it's a massive

catch-up, and I don't think that this trade is over. Silver is hard to get. I can tell you, there is just very few pure silver mines operating on the planet. There is not many coming into production anytime soon. Most of the silver that is being produced is a byproduct of the copper production, and those copper mines cannot ramp up silver production just because the price went up. So I think this will take time.

Remember, as well, it takes 10 to 15 years to build a mine. It's a long, long process and a very capix-intensive process. So I don't think that this is over any time soon. We might see a healthy pullback in a breather, yes, especially if, I mean, it looks like the stock market is probably correcting here a little bit further with all this geopolitical stress. But we've seen this last year, and you mentioned it before as well. I mean, I think generally it started the pullback and then also Bitcoin got in trouble. And then at the end of that pullback also Silver got a hit. Of course, at the end, it's all about liquidity in the markets.

And if it disappears, then all markets get into trouble. And as we all know and remember, two months later, suddenly the liquidity appeared again miraculously. And Bitcoin made a new high. Silver started to run. And the stock markets also made a new high. So I don't think that we are in front of a huge crash here because I believe in the larger scheme of things that we are in a cracker boom. I think that they're going to print more money and that overall all markets will move higher. But right now the music is clearly playing in the metals and I don't think this is over.

And by the way, another very interesting ratio, the gold-silver ratio. The last bull market in 1980 topped out at 15 to 1. We're currently trading around 50 to 1. So I think there is still the best still to come. but it would be healthy to see a breather here at some point. Usually the first quarter into spring is always very strong for the metals. And then let's say, yeah, late spring into early summer, usually you get a nice pullback. And that's usually also a good buying opportunity from a seasonal perspective.

So, yeah, just to parenthetically, just to note, the ratio in the Earth's crust is somewhere between 19 and 20. And that does matter. And that's one of the reasons why pure silver mines are, you know, difficult because silver is, is underpriced relative to its rarity, you know, certainly relative to gold at 50 to 1. So it's not a small thing. Anyway, Amateur, is that a ghost? Yeah, no, I mean, in the earth, you basically find 10 ounces of silver for one ounce of gold, right? And if you go back 500 or 1,000 years, that's been always kind of the ratio around 10 to 1, 15 to 1. And don't forget, I mean, silver has been always the money of the people.

And then in the late 1900s, actually the Americans and the British started to basically push silver out of the system. And, yeah, I mean, if we're really seeing history here in the making and we're moving away from the U.S. Petro Dollar standard, this confetti party, which is going on now for 55 years, basically, since the end of the gold window in 1971, yeah, I think silver will come back and it's coming back already. And again, I mean, it's in a critical element now, a critical mineral. You need it a lot in the data centers. You need it for any of the future technologies. China has cornered the silver market. They don't export any silver anymore. And finally, the West is slowly but surely waking up that, yeah, we've been basically

sleep walking here into that situation. Everything woke was more important than making sure that people have jobs and business are running and that we have the materials to produce what we need to produce. So here we are. Half of Africa is basically under control of the Chinese. And the permitting process in the Western world is very lengthy, very complicated. And the Trump administration now is doing everything to turn this around. The Europeans slowly understanding that.

And yeah, there is not enough silver for all these future applications. So it's going to be very interesting how this was playing out. Okay, smelting town hall. I was just going to say, we went deep dive on smelting town hall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amatoa, was that a ghost hand or was that? Maybe let me say one more thing. Sure, sure.

Of course. The classical typical, the classical argument, I can see it already. So you can see that more and more old minds that were out of business for 10, 20 years are trying to get into production. Okay. So, of course, at some point, let's say two, three, five years from now, there will be an oversupply because now money is coming into that sector. Many of those old mines that have not been profitable for years and decades

are being ramped up again. It takes time. This is not happening in one or two days. This is a process of probably a few years. But that will, of course, down the road, lead to an oversupply again. And you can also imagine that all these Joey sick, six packs who are now storing and bolting silver at home at some point, they will bring it back to the market, right?

But it's not right now. It takes time. Maybe in two, three years, we're going to see a totally different situation. And Mateo, you're allowed to desmelt us. Oh, well, I was going to just double click on one smelt. And that was, Dave, you were kind of alluding to this, and so were you, Florio. I mean, I think we've all been asking a lot of questions about the actual. actual amount of metal that's not paper that's out there.

I don't know whatever happened to our Fort Knox audit that we were promised, but we didn't get a live stream of that. But I was just sort of curious about this idea of an emperor wears no close moment on metals. And if we do expect to see that, and if, Florian, you kind of anticipate that and what you think, you know, does that induce even more hyper scarcity that? that makes us even more of a blow off? Or does the uncertainty and fear kick off the shock and the drawdown? Well, I do want to make one point.

The answer to that is I have no freaking clue, right? You know, you only see the stuff that happens when someone dies, you know, or goes into the death throws and people have to start throwing money at it or changing the rules. You know, we're, we're now weeks past the CME doing it, right? CME, not once but twice in the space of a week, change the margin rules when CLIP and silver traded over 80, got it down. to in the 70s and now we're trading at 93 or 94, right? So that didn't work. So in other words, their playbook from the Hunt Brothers and the Hunt Brothers was clearly an attempt to corner a market.

Understand there is a massive difference between Bitcoin and gold and silver. And it is a massive difference. And it is, and there's also a difference inside of gold and silver that speak to this. The difference is, is there is no electronic spot market for gold and silver. There are, are controlled fixings in London, and there's dealers that look at a price that's derived from futures, it's backwards. In crypto or in Bitcoin in particular, while there is huge perpetual swap markets

and futures markets, they absolutely are tracking and are linked to the fully transparent electronic spot market that goes on all around the world. As a result, the paper Bitcoin to sell to depress the spot doesn't work. And in fact, most of the big liquidation events have been because people have done things like, well, you know, frankly, you can do this. And people have. They've done it in Bitcoin on October 10th.

Somebody did it in a broad spectrum of coins. Build up over time, large spot long positions hedged with short perpetual swap positions. And then strategically at a moment in weakness, dump the spot to drive down and create liquidations in the perpetual swaps. that doesn't work in gold and silver, you know, as a manipulation because there is no electronic spot. Spot is controlled by a cartel. And so it makes it, that's one of the reasons why, you know, banks have been fined billions of dollars over the years for manipulating the price of gold, but the manipulation is generally to control the price. Bitcoin is uncontrollable or very hard, but you can manipulate it in the short term. So there's two different types of manipulation

going on and that matters because everyone who thinks that the same narrative works in each market not so much now the change to the is that there's another market the contract for differences market it's also paper it's also derivatives but that market has gotten extremely liquid and large it's actually according to the best research i can get i can find as large or larger than the futures market and so it's still a paper market but there's people who are trading on both sides of this and it's not cartelized. And so the dynamics of the markets are different and they are changing. And so you have to do it that way.

I don't know if that answers the sort of question you were asking, Amateo, but those differences do matter. Yeah, I think it makes sense to understand how the markets work even better. And I think those differences matter tremendously when it comes to the value prop of Bitcoin and the verifiable on-chain attestation that we can do around these things. Right. And by the way, the S.A for the Bitcoin community, the reason I disagree with Florian on the short term is I think that we, I think that there's a lot of people who have put a lot of money because they understand that difference in transparency and they understand that difference in absolute scarcity. And yet, yeah. Yeah, the crypto community is like, I don't care. I'm looking at the chart squiggles. And this is an interesting, this is not going to happen. Anyone who thinks this changes tomorrow, you know, we'll be talking about the same. for months is sadly the way I look at it. But there are certain trends that are inexorable. I mean, Florian used the word crack up boom. Crack up boom has a lot of pathologies to it.

I see Robert on the panel. I know you care a lot about crack up booms and what that means. I mean, what happens as the Japanese bond market continues to melt down? What happens as, as populism takes root on both the...