The Wolf Of All Streets - Fear Rises as Smart Money Steps In #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

Join the daily roundtable we dive into Bitcoin holding steady around $92K amid weekend reversals and heavy liquidations, record ETF inflows clashing with crypto selling pressure, silver's explosive push toward $94+ with wild US Mint premiums, gold's industrial/monetary parallels, punishing leverage on breakouts, geopolitical headlines (Trump's Greenland interest, rare earths scramble, China/Canada tensions, NATO concerns), the NYSE exploring 24/7 blockchain trading, fierce altcoin debates and infighting, meme coin risks, and why momentum is flowing into metals over crypto right now.

Well, good morning, everyone. It is Monday, January 19th. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall. It's a holiday here in the U.S., but I guess people are still interested in talking. Markets are closed in the United States today. Futures are down. People are, everyone's talking about Trump deciding, you know, writing letters about Greenland. And, you know, there's fears over NATO. There's talks about, you know, on the macro side, there's talks about Canada and China, et cetera, et cetera. Meanwhile, Bitcoin sold off pretty much exactly what the futures did, still sitting around 92 and a half, which is below it well within the recent range. We saw record inflows last week as the crypto world was still mostly selling. And that's where we're at. You know, lots of interesting stuff going on, mostly, you know, mostly forth-turning things. I mean, I almost don't have, it's almost impossible to read the news these days. without more and more division in this country,

and it's just getting kind of insane. I mean, Gary, I see you up here. I saw you around a space this morning, talking about New York and real estate. I don't know how the real estate market in New York survives the next four years of the policies they're looking to do unless people really believe there isn't going to be one. But, you know, hey, you know, what the hell?

And we got a lot of uncertainty out there. Anybody care about any of this stuff? I mean, meanwhile, at the same time, the one thing that is a concern, is we saw a little rally over 94,000, got to 96. It reversed this weekend, and guess what? You know, $800 million of liquidations in the crypto space. So, you know, look, leverage and animal spirits are alive and well.

Every time people buy these breakouts, they get their face pounded. And we'll see, you know, at some point, when that doesn't happen, when there is no leverage on the breakout, that's when we'll actually break out. But, you know, that's where the world is. Anybody have any other feelings this morning? You know, or we're going to talk about news bits. I wish I had something intelligent to say about this crazy world, Dave.

But it's just a giant truck. I'm a Canadian and waking up to reading that we're thinking about sending troops to Greenland to defend it. And the headlines don't say from who. But it's just, it's surreal. Well, you guys are also, you know, cozing up to China. So it's like, okay, well, cool, you know, it's, it is what it is. I mean, but it is important as a Canadian, you, you understand that the reason the Greenland story is such a big deal is because effectively the U.S. looks at, at China, at controlling all of the world's rare earth minerals. And Greenland has an enormous, unproven, but, you know, enormous rare earth deposits.

And that's what it's all about. I mean, I, you know, I don't see any other way of looking at this is other than geopolitical. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I don't have that much to add to what you're saying. It's a crazy, crazy world. Mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world.

And it's hard to make sense of it right now. Well, I mean, look, the one thing that it is happening and is that now that this is smelter town hall is silver is pushing up right up against 94 bucks. And pretty much all the traders out there keep saying, hey, you know, it's, you know, when silver hit 80, the CME raised margin requirements, it dropped to 70 and they say, okay, we prick the bubble, it's over. I don't know, now what do you say when it's over 90

and now pushing toward 94, clearly heading towards, towards 100, you know, it's, there's some signals there. Now there's, the thing about silver is, It's not just a monetary metal. In fact, most of it is industrial demand, particularly batteries, defense systems, and solar panels, et cetera. But, you know, when you see the U.S. mint charging, I mean, I forgot what it went to. I don't know, Mark, I don't know if you might know as you have your hand up. But I think it was somewhere around, you know, 50, 60 percent premium overspot to buy Silver Eagle, something like that.

Yeah, it's like 183 or 176 or something crazy. Right. And so, you know, it's like what kind of person who is paying that? I mean, obviously, they're either doing it because they're hoping for no one to buy it because they don't have anything to sell, but you still have people willing to pay that premium. That's just, that's just nuts unless the market is just way underpriced here. It's just, it's a crazy signal. Anyway, Mark, you had your hand up before I went down the silver rabbit hole.

Yeah, no, silver is. Silver is so variable, you know, as you said, versus gold. And it has its own signal. It's a bit more mercurial because of the industrial elements that you mentioned, and it's a smaller market. So it, you know, the one thing I wanted to talk about or just mention, if I had the opportunity, since you brought silver up, is I think it is a PSA that I saw in relevant repeating to people not in the markets.

If you have silver and you've experienced a 200% move in the last year, you know, yeah. And you've mentioned this, Dave. If it goes to the 30 multiple of, you know, gold, if it compresses to a 30x price multiple to gold like it did in 2012 or 11, then it's at 150, I think. So it has upside. but man, I have much more confidence in the slow role of gold and Bitcoin than I do of silver, and that speaks to more my monetary background than the industrial use. So silver is a lot of vectors and the mint is another one. I don't believe the mint went to.

I thought it just tried to play catch up. Is it one mint or all the mint, Scott? that did this? Is it only one U.S. Mint? Because I thought that there were a couple of iterations of that out there. Yeah, I mean, you can buy Silver Eagles from, you know, secondary sources. Yeah. For example, I guess random, you know, uncirculated ones are $106.59.

So it's only a 10% a little bit more, like 15% premium right now. but the U.S. Mint basically is the U.S. Mint is the problem. Yeah, I'm looking right now, U.S. Mint, silver, Eagles, Price. So where are we right now? At this instant, the official U.S. Mint, shop coins. Let's all you all find out together. Of course, we want me to sign up for a mailing list. Screw that.

Yeah, I'm trying. They want to do everything, right? You know, I just want American Eagle coins. Here we go. Here we go. American Eagle, silver one ounce, 2025 silver-proof coin, $173. American Eagle, 2024, one-ounce silver uncirculated coin, $169, right on the official print on the official page.

Wow. Yeah, so that is, and they probably sold it slight premiums before, maybe, but definitely not this. Yeah, so that's a string. We don't have enough silver to print this stuff. We want you to buy it from us until we can catch up. Yeah. Because anyone who's buying it, I mean, either that or the American government is just pocketing money from stupidity, right?

You know, because you can buy the silver reels on the secondary. They do that with lottery tickets, Dave. So why not go into the precious metal markets? Yeah, I know. I guess that's where you need Gensler, you know, to someone like him to regulate the U.S.'s own government. God, we need him. Where is he? Yeah, but I mean, but all kidding aside, you know, you, you,

You said you grew gold and Bitcoin together. I mean, you know, Bitcoin is still stuck in its trading range, and it's not trading like either of those things right now until it does. Right. And, you know, as long as as the market keeps going like this, it's one of those things that people in the crypto world are like, I don't know, giving up despondent again. You know, we got back to fear again.

You know, Tomer, I mean, you know, you're in the space. I mean, how do you feel the sentiment is? Well, if you don't, I have a question about silver. like I was shocked. A friend called me up on the weekend. He wanted to know about the space, what he needed to know about stable coins and gold. And I asked him,

how much of the world's gold do you think is concentrated? Because he was worried about concentration of holdings of Bitcoin and Ibit. I said, how much of the world's gold do you think is held by Fort Knox? He guessed 5%, 6%. Turned out it's 56%. So gold is very centralized

because I guess it was, It was seized or confiscated with the 6102, and then during World War II, all the gold from foreign nations got deposited for safekeeping with the United States, and they've kept it very safe by not returning it ever. I wonder, where is all the, like, are there huge stockpiles of silver kept somewhere, and are they in jeopardy of being needed for emergency purposes because there's such a shortage of silver? So there's that. I'm sorry for not answering your question. It's just, I still want to take it. It's fine.

I just, but I don't know where that 56% comes from. Fort Knox is like between 2 and 3% of U.S. holders. Now, how much are held in depository vaults that are controlled or accessible by the U.S. government?

That's a different question. I don't know the answer. You know, it's like, because some of that like GLD is, is the largest gold ETF. So hold on a minute. Let's just do that.

Well, while you're pulling that up. Dave, did we ever get the audit of Fort Knox under Doche? Yeah, we got the audit of Fort Knox in the same place as we got the Epstein files, the same place we got everything else. The answer is, no, we have no freaking idea what's actually there. And it's, that in and of itself is pretty interesting. GLD is about $150 billion, I think, Dave.

Yeah, I was just looking. So, right. So the U.S. $78 billion. Yeah, it's the largest. Central banks. So, well, basically, central banks hold about 20% of all the mine gold. That's the important thing.

And then GLD is another big piece of it, another big piece of it. I mean, arguably gold is slightly more centralized than Bitcoin is, but not hugely so. I mean, keep in mind that there's a lot of gold in jewelry. A lot of gold in collector's hands. I mean, yeah, I mean, the 6102 thing happened. But even there, it excluded jewelry and excluded collectible coins, which is why so much gold got rated. I know because, you know, I used to collect.

So, you know, before I got into Bitcoin, I had, you know, I had a lot of stuff in gold. Unfortunately, I sold Bitcoin for gold. And I did okay. I mean, it's still probably up from when I did it. Well, it is definitely up from when I did it. But, you know, people who trade Bitcoin, coin and gold back and forth have probably done better.

But anyway, so be it. But I don't know if that answers your question, Tomer. I think that for a centralization point of view, so be it. You know, it is the difference is the central banks own gold. They don't own Bitcoin. And the most important gold stat is that they own more gold than they own U.S. treasuries. Dan, you see a new hand.

Tomer and Mark, I think your hands are phantom, but you guys got to tell me. No, my hand isn't up, so let someone else answer. and then we can call you guys morning i just want to say i i heard a statistic it might not be true but i have a statistic that the majority of gold that is held is held in like um indian housewives have you heard that stuff before like an absurd amount is indian housewives it is a large it is non-trivial um indian population i mean every duwali that's what you give for investment i mean india is is definitely from a jewelry perspective number one i don't know if it's how what the percentage is. I mean, I guess we could all look it up. We could grok it or whatever

and try to figure it out. But it's non-trivial. That is for sure. And, you know, people in the gold trading markets do take advantage and understand what's going on with Diwali every year as they give gifts for savings. So it's, it is non-trivial. So anyway. Do you guys see that, um, NYSC is looking to move to 24-hour trading with, uh, yeah, that was that was going to be the one I was going to go to next. I think that's a very Yeah, the story is that they're going to run a parallel stock exchange that runs totally on blockchain rails, which of course the only way they can do that is if the SEC lets them. But what's fascinating, and this is what's interesting, and I'm curious, it's too bad we don't have the lawyers up here. But evidently, the biggest stumbling block in the Quote Clarity Act, this whole food fight that's going on, was that the Act wouldn't allow the SEC to create new,

rules for digital securities or crypto securities. But the New York Stock Exchange knows full well that, of course, you need new rules because you can't require transfer agents for something that's a bare asset. There's a lot of different rules. I mean, I did a post last week with five of them, but you probably could go through and find dozens. So obviously, the New York Stock Exchange is working with Paul Atkins and his SEC looking for exemptive relief to be able to do this and they're willing to make the bet that no rule like that will get passed by Congress and or they don't think that there's much chance that a president AOC's SEC will stop it once it goes live. To me, that's a very big deal. And I'm curious, I mean, you brought it up.

I mean, what do you think does that matter? I think it matters a lot from an entrepreneurial point of view if you're trying to be in that space because once a New York Stock Exchange is doing it, it's pretty clear that you're not going to get prosecuted. Now, of course, at the same time, New York Stockton is going to have a huge advantage. And because that's, of course, what happens, right? The biggest players get the biggest advantages from government. So I'm sure you love that, right, Adam? I'll jump in on you, Dave.

My question is, are they just going to kind of go forward with it and let the regulations catch up? Is that your general feeling right now? Is they're just going to kind of, I don't know what you'd call it, Uber it? and just kind of push in and then hope the or just press so fast that they hope to regulate. It doesn't seem like that would be the thing they would do. But is that the idea that's happening? Kind of like Robin Hood did, you know, tokenizing some stocks. Is that your the current feeling?

I don't know, but I'll tell you what. In a week I'll have a much better idea since I'm having dinner with some people, you know, that are right in the middle of this a week from tonight. And I'll probably have a pretty good sense of what's going on. But my best guess with knowing nothing, and I repeat, I know nothing, is that because I have more than a small amount of experience in how this stuff works, is that they probably put together a full proposal, and they're talking to the staff at the SEC about what sort of exempted relief they need

from which rules that effectively are unworkable for that vision, and they want to move ahead. I mean, remember, it wasn't all that long ago, because Scott talked about it, that Paul Atkins said, hey, we are going to see everything in the financial world go on chain within a year or two. Well, in order for that to happen, he needed to find a willing, large player to create an on-chain-based world. So this is soup to nuts. This is the registrars, everything. And so, you know, Caitlin Long made the point this morning, which I thought was really smart, she usually is, that states,

like Delaware doesn't have any way for doing it. So some states are going to need, some state is going to need to make a set of rules for on-chain securities that could work with this, and the companies that are going to want to participate in it are gonna have to register in that state or states that allow that. And so there's a lot of wood to chop,

but my assessment is that if you're a company looking to raise capital, you wanna tack into 24-7 trading, that this is a, this will be the place that you will do so. So I would imagine, for example, that they're trying to go after companies such as Galaxy, for example. And I haven't heard seen Novagrat say a damn thing about it. But I think that's the play, is to try to attract newer companies that want the 24-7 trading to be native,

that want on-demand settlement, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know if that answers your question, but this is a, I'm guessing now, right? And I hate to guess. But it seems like an educated guess. Yeah, it feels directionally right. I guess we'll see. I mean, I don't know, you know, we've already seen it with Robin Hood, you know, tokenizing individual stocks, you know, when kind of what I've read and maybe I've, you know, maybe I missed something. But it felt like they were just kind of doing it.

What was really backing it was very much a trust me, bro kind of situation. Which, you know, I don't know, you know, I don't know where it's going to go with that. But it feels like Coinbase Robin Hood will push into it, but there's an opportunity for a bigger player to kind of grab the entire space, if possible. Yeah, I don't know about grab the entire space, but certainly set the ground rules for the space that gives them an advantage. I mean, that's generally what happens with these things. But what matters from the perspective of people who are investing in crypto assets is what does this mean for the protocols that are going to be underneath it? What does this mean for the ability to trade between this stuff? I mean, remember right now, crypto is its own place, right?

But when you can start trading shares and Bitcoin and Ethereum and Solana and, you know, name that meme coin or whatever on the same platform back and forth from, you know, with with stocks on a Sunday, that's a very big deal, right? And so to me that that's what this is foreshadowing. Eventually, I think that's exactly the way the world goes. And so, you know, Coinbase is counting on the fact that it has first mover within crypto. And the traditional financial players are saying, well, wait a minute, you know, that technology is not that big of a deal. They can handle that.

Let's just get, let the regulators take the shackles off so we can compete. And I think that's what you're going to see. At the end of the day, from an investment point of view, value is going to determine what people invest in. But right now, there's a lot of difficulty and there's a lot of friction. And it's eliminating that friction is what matters. Rich, I see your hand up. Yeah, I look, an interesting topic. In the short term, I think it's probably a net negative for most altcoins.

I mean, they're struggling at best. You know, as it is right now, people that are on chain are moving to, you know, Bibitz has just launched, you know, some trad-fire exposure on CFDs. You know, so irrespective of the underlying technology, you know, we always say this is this good for blockchain and some exposure and that people invariably probably not going to realize what's powering it. But, you know, for the sector, for crypto in general, I think, you know, for, you know, look at, look at what's going on right now.

You're wanting people to, people are moving across, you know, I know more people trading metals right now that know nothing about metals as a result of what's going on and looking at things like AI stocks, you know. So I think in the short term, net negative for altcoins, man, unfortunately. Wouldn't you say also in the long term? Because there's all this competition coming for trading instruments on various platforms and the regular data. And right now, the stock markets, for example, although they trade on a traditional database and they have many middlemen, it's not technology that's preventing them, it's regulations, it's preventing them. And the regulations are also preventing them to, I guess, to some degree from, are preventing, are preventing

alt coins from being able to wrap the things that are regulated and approved by the SEC and other regulators worldwide to trade. So it seems hard to see how this is particularly good for it. It's just turning everybody else into a commodity database, all the all the altcoins into a commodity database that's trying to act as a less friction implementation than a centralized database. And there may be some value there, but the barriers to entry seem actually pretty low for people wanting to trade things that have real world value in the sense of stocks that represent ownership stakes in real world businesses. And all the stuff that's been built in crypto is like interesting proof of concept to demonstrate whether or not people can do so in a decentralized 24-7 manner with reliability and uptime. but it's not where the value is going to be ultimately. Like there's just a tremendous amount of speculative value, speculative trading value,

and meme coins have like no fundamental value whatsoever. So, and they're what's driving the utilization of many of these platforms. So I just, I don't think that altcoins in general, like as a general space, are going to make a lot of sense. there will be some things that will be the platform, but I don't know that you'll need to buy a token on them to trade them, or if you do, it's the equivalent of fees. Well, I mean, look, there's, let's, let's, let's break the world into three pieces.

So memes are going to exist. They've always existed. It's just a question of crypto figured out a way to make it electronically tradable. So, you know, whether it's a little boo-boo or a Pokemon card or whatever, I mean, there is, there are people who are going to trade that stuff. When you talk about all coins, it really boils down to, if you're a founder, the thing that was the arbitrage that caused all coins to go nuts and why all the VCs want to invest in all coins was immediate liquidity.

And that was a regulatory arbitrage. So that's going to end. That will end. Eventually, liquidity is going to get equalized. you're going to have the ability to get it. They're going to speed up the process of getting liquidity in the securities world. And it's not, you're not going to have that big arbitrage. But that doesn't mean there's no value in an all coin platform that can derive economic benefit.

The point is, is that you have to be able to pass it on. And there's value potentially in selling a revenue stream. There's value in owning a piece of the underlying technology that's facilitating stuff that has, that's driving economic value. But it needs to equalize. And you need to get that right. And a large part of what happened in crypto was people being able to get immediate liquidity, whereas in equities, it takes years. I mean, literally years.

And so, you know, that was what was happening. So understand that reg arbitrage. Anyway, Gary, I see your hand up. You there? Gary. See, you lifted the mic, but I don't hear you. Now I see you twice. He was pumping out some hundreds earlier, so he's there.

Yep, he disappeared, and he'll come back. But yeah, I mean, the whole immediate liquidity deal is something that has always been a regulatory arbitrage. The other arbitrage in defy are people trading and trying to not pay taxes, at least in the United States, probably not going to be a winning strategy. It's not one that I would recommend to anybody ever. But, you know, there are people who do that. But those are going to go away. That said, having the ability to be part of a protocol or owning a piece of it where the economic value of that protocol to be passed on to the owners. Well, no, that's real.

The question is, which ones are real, which ones aren't? And I've been talking about this. I talked about it last year. It's starting to happen. It's this year. I mean, you know, we'll see. I mean, but yeah, I mean, if you look at the all coin markets today, they look kind of crappy, you know, and I think that this news is definitely negative for the call it the premium that people pay for being in a market that nobody else can access. and they can access immediately. Does that make sense? I mean, Rich, I see you giving the hundreds. Yeah, I mean, who knows where this lands?

I mean, we've said this count as times on the show, like, I mean, we could get rid of 95% of the tokens on, you know, coin market cap and force, you know, founders to compete with real businesses. You know, so much of what goes on in crypto is just a, a money grab, a grift, you know, maybe it was a soft, soft target for easy cash. This space was downloaded via spaces down.com. Visit to download your spaces today. I think the whole space is going to reflect over the last 18 months, in a difficult cycle.

VCs have even struggled. And, you know, crypto has a way of reinventing itself. I think it needs a good cleanse for many, many reasons. If you're talking about everything other than Bitcoin, I mean, as it is, Bitcoin is still struggling to prove itself as a reserve currency or store of value, but let alone what old coins represent. I mean, if you're looking at purely of the underlying tech like ETH being the smart computer of the world, you know, who knows?

But I think that a lot needs to happen. Quite frankly, I mean, I would be excited about being able to move on-chain into traditional assets and to be able to use liquidity easily for, you know, know, some kind of a project on crypto. But, yeah, I don't think it bodes well for a lot of alt coins, so to speak. So, Gary, I got you back up here. Yeah. Yeah, let's see if this works.

You guys can hear me. Yep, you hear you. Well, I was trying to build up on what Tomer was saying, which is, like, I agree. I agree with him on the alt market. You know, one of the big problems, the alt market, you know, one of the big problems, the alt market, market has is the founders all compete with each other and piss on each other every day. This thing with Garlinghouse and, you know, Garlinghouse Pee and on Coinbase's attempt to get a proper crypto bill. And then you got Cardano coming out, smashing Brad. Now, I actually

think that some of this is justified. However, you don't see this. in other industries. You do not see big pharma lily beating up moderna. Never. They don't piss on their own market. And for some reason, Bitcoin has yet to figure that out or the crypto world has yet to figure that out. I think the token market is destroyed here.

Absolutely destroyed. There are so many options to, if you want to access crypto, which, like I went to a trade show this weekend Bitcoin Day in Naples. The space is not growing, guys. It is most certainly not growing. I've been there three or four years in a row. Same people, the same genre of people, same discussions. And quite frankly, some of the stuff I heard there, I'm like, wow, you guys really don't want people like me in this space.

because it's still very right and wrong in this space. And when financial advisors are helping investors make decisions, they don't have to fight an industry that's constantly pissing on each other, saying, well, that project doesn't work, that guy doesn't work. So I think the enemy is within the crypto space. and with all the optionality, all the options I have to invent, like the stuff that the New York Stock Exchange and the Dallas Exchange is going to do is going to go to 24-7. People are going to be able to trade in and out of whatever they want. And I don't see the competitive advantage for a bunch of billionaire token holders who are trying to pump their stock to get liquidity, which that's really what it seems like for almost every.

Every token I have seen, I've analyzed or looked at, like, I cannot control the supply. So nor the incentives or the motivations by which the big founders unlock those coins. So for me, and Bitcoin's suffering from this, okay, we still have, you know, two or three million Bitcoin that have to get out of these old hands at $30 and $300. $300. Until that happens, the incentives are a little perverted between the $90,000 holders and the $3,000, sub-3,000 holders. That has to get some parity, like spread between $3,000 and 90,000. One of these numbers have to change. Either the average cost of the low coins have to go up or, you know, transfer to 90 grand or the 90,000 has got to come down. Now, I know which one I would prefer. But quite frankly, either one of them suits me. I just I just think Bitcoin needs a more

level playing field between price. On silver, just finished my comments here because I was on a couple of spaces earlier this morning about Europe and and house home ownership in New York. And like it's really easy when you're it's really easy to start protecting. I mean, I heard stuff about Europe. today, I'm like, wow, would anyone invest a dollar in Europe right now? Because I wouldn't. Where I'm headed to is, I think America today is one of the safest places to make an investment. I mean, truly one of the safest places to make an investment. And I can't imagine taking dollars to Brazil or taking dollars to the UK or Germany thinking that I'm going to get a great return on that investment. In fact, I have no protection.

on that investment whatsoever, depending on what the anointed leaders decide or don't decide. So for me, what gold and silver are doing, they're just leading the way to, hey, we have, our system is really failing right now. And I've got to believe that Bitcoin at some point, if we can get out of our own way, and I do think there's been a tremendous amount of confusion for the last 10 years about what Bitcoin is and what crypto is, I don't know what the price of Bitcoin would be if we didn't have 40,000 tokens out there. I suspect it would be higher. So I'll just end with that.

But I think this is a time game now. People just need to be more patient. We're expecting returns too quickly, I think. So I'll end there. Thank you, you guys. Well, I think that's a really good point. I mean, I call this a time-based capitulation. That's the way I've been referring to it.

I still think we're there. you know, it's, you said a few things that are interesting. I mean, in terms of, you know, Europe, I can't really comment. I mean, this is, it's, to me, what's going on in the UK, and I live there for five and a half years in the 90s. It's, it's, I just find it sad. I mean, you know, what's actually happening there. It's the only way, only way to describe it.

But, you know, on a bunch of levels, I mean, there's a free speech person, you know, who believes how important that is. And you're seeing, you know, when they did Brexit, they had a possibility. And we in fact talked to at Coin Routes, we had talked to the British Chamber of Commerce and they were trying to attract crypto businesses. And then their leadership shit all over crypto businesses.

And so, you know, right hand, left hand, you know, they didn't know what they were doing. And that's why London is in serious danger of losing its status. London, people forget, but London became the world's largest financial center on the back of the fact that the US was dumb and allowed them to run the Euro dollar market.

But, you know, that's been fading ever since. since and they have serious problems there. But as far as the crypto world, I violently agree with you, Gary. I mean, I think that it's the Bitcoin use case, the Bitcoin investment thesis is easy to explain to people. And that's why you've seen inflows continue to increase people buying it. You know, like Fort Knox, like the US owns a lot of gold valued at $42. So that's 100, you know, one one hundredth.

It's not that dissimilar to the same problem that you have in Bitcoin. The difference is in Bitcoin, you have random people. You don't have, it's not governments. Governments are not going to sell. You know, the British government sold half their gold at $300. That was, I don't know if people know that, but that was in 19, was it 98? I think it was, no, I forgot what year it was. I think it was 98.

It was like Gordon Brown. Yeah. So it would have been early 2000. Yeah. So, you know, they sold at under, I think it was like two, 70 to 290, they sold half their gold reserves, arguably the dumbest trade in history. And by the way, I was one of the people saying it was on the dumbest trade in history when it was being done. So, you know, it's yet took a bunch of years before it became obvious. It was that

stupid. But generally, it's not the way governance operate. Now, Bitcoin holders are different. You need that distribution. You're right. And last year was a large part of it. It is not done. A huge start was made, but it's not done. And so, yeah, you know, that. that's going to drive a lot of the future price appreciation. Will Bitcoin become global sound money? Yes or no? Well, if the answer is yes, its price is going to appreciate dramatically.

Will Bitcoin start to rival gold at some point when gold peaks? Well, that's the Larry Fink case. And that's that's digital gold. And that's, you know, a 10x from here. We'll see. You know, we've got a bunch of I've seen. So Adam, you reacted a few times. I still see Tomlin Mark's hands up.

I can't tell him. Well, Gary hit a lot. on so many points. It's, it's, I would have you look at Poland. I hear, I hear great things about Poland. But the rest of Europe, I'm not so sure. Hey, I agree. I agree. Poland, by the way. Awesome market. Oh, and Hungary too. Okay. Hungary to visit there as well. Yeah. And Gary touched on a lot of points. I think the infighting in with Bitcoin and all of crypto is, you know, yes. I don't know. I don't know if we ever get past that. I look at that as just like human nature. I just think there's and maybe, you know, Mark was going to touch on this a little

bit. There's still, and we've touched out on the show a number of times, there's still this huge question of, you know, is the New York Stock Exchange, are they going to use a private blockchain? I mean, I just think they're going to. I just, I don't think it's going to be on, you know, Ethereum or Salon. I just don't think it's going to happen, at least not in the beginning. And, you know, so what's the bull case for, you know, my all coin bags right now? It's just, it's not great when it's coming to this is the kind of traditional finance cycle and it turns out they're not interested in using public blockchain rails at this point in time you know I just think that's the thing that's putting the damper on price and the damper on excitement and until

we get through that you know to the other side where people want to use public blockchains I just don't think we're going to have this kind of run in alt I just it's not going to happen. Hey Adam let me let me ask your question Adam because it sounds like you're holding some other as am I, Solano being one of them, when do you cut your position and say, okay, look, this thing's done. Never, Gary. Never. You don't cut the alts?

Never. I'm a believer in crypto and freedom technology of public blockchain. So I never, I'm cutting my position. So unless I have to to feed my family, I will never. I'm not going to capitulate because I believe it's the future. I was suggesting, like, do you look at, okay, I know Bitcoin's going to survive? Let me get it out of my salon and just move it to Bitcoin. That's a tougher question.

That's what I meant. Yeah, no, I'm just, I'm still like a product guy at core. So, you know, we build on Solana and on Ethereum. And so, you know, I won't really, I don't move my bags around that much at all, really, just because I am, I am a believer in kind of network effects. And so for me, Ethereum, I think Salana has is the next kind of traction piece. You know, I look at like what's being built. And Salana for me, you know, whether the price, I have no idea what the price is going to do, right?

But I do know that it has real traction of real people because I talk to people every day who use it and build real things on top of it. So I'm still very bullish, like long term, but I'm talking 10 years, 15 years, right? So, but I don't think in the next, I don't believe that we're going to have a significant run in any of these Eith Salana over the next few years. I just don't see it. I don't see a reason for it to happen unless some super app happens. And I just, I know how rare those things are and I just don't think it's going to happen. I don't think we get the world on chain anytime soon. So I'll make one comment and then go to Tony, which is it will happen when nobody thinks it could possibly happen. That's what that's when. That's when. That's when. move start. Perfect. That sounds like now. Exactly right.

Tony. Yeah, it could be now. Like the sentiment here is pretty negative on alt coins. And there's various different rationales. I think part of what's holding back, they're both a shakeout. And, you know, like with the internet, when there was a lot of stuff that didn't make sense on it, because everyone was just figuring out that, you know,

putting dot com at the end of a company didn't make for a valuable bit. business because these things were businesses and needed the cash flow to operate to pay their expenses you had this huge shakeout in 2001 you get corrections in crypto but you still get more and more cryptos appearing and they just don't die they they sit on there and so and then you get people advocating for them because they think they can pump and dump them or they think they may think that there's some genuine value in this really long tale of of offerings but But when people say crypto, they could mean a lot more than, but generally speaking, three different things. Some just mean Bitcoin and they equivocate between the two terms.

Some mean like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana and Tether, I suppose. And then some mean this whole universe of many millions of all these other things that really that long tail isn't providing value, but hasn't shaken out and been closed down. And so the confusion in the market continues. And you also have this misalignment that the primary retailers of these instruments are very interested in people buying the long tail of them. Coinbase and Binance, they make more money when people are trading left, right and center into all sorts of different things. And there are pumps.

And those pumps come and go and you have to be very active. That's how they make their fees. And there's no real penalty for having. steered people into a bad direction which again nasdaq was very embarrassed when the nasdaq went from 5 000 to 1,000 they wanted to stop it but finance and coinbase don't seem to care when you have these big crashes or you had me up until that boy that's okay i like this i'm trying to be controversial here you know i i just know i mean look at the time that the dot com bubbles happened you know nazac had just moved to a newer technology and they went on a buying spree uh they

bought, you know, they bought a bunch of different electronic communication networks, companies called Brute. And most importantly, you know, INET, which was, which was the old island, you know, it was just a whole bunch of corporate Pac-Man. Believe me, I knew NASDAX management back then, well. And they didn't give a crap about, you know, they were just trying to build, build, build, build, build, and build a better trading environment. They were certainly not embarrassed by it. In fact, you know, they understood it. What was interesting is there were two pieces to the dot com crash. There was the piece that was the larger stocks that NASDAQ did where, yeah, there were some that famously flamed out Pets.com being the most obvious one because it did the Super Bowl ad and

then was gone pretty close after that. But there was also tens of thousands or 14,000 actually OTC stocks that traded on what at the time was called the pink sheets that people would pump up to hundreds of million. That looked a lot like all coins and crypto. Only crypto was global and got bigger. But still, it was that long tail. And that got crushed. Those are the stocks, by the way, that are immortalized in the Wolf of Wall Street or boiler room. So just so you know. But anyway, that's a parenthetical.

Anyway, Tony, I saw your hand go up before. Are you there? Yeah. Hey, Dave. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. Perfect. I just want to add some thoughts to what Gary was talking about with the infighting and competing for users and liquidity.

You know, I think that's more of a feature rather than a bug, because it's human behavior online, on the internet, and of course, on blockchain networks. You take it offline. We're competing with sports and politics and religion and all these things. Well, if I have a certain token, I'm incentivized to get more people in that network and to compete and get more liquidity because I want the valuation to go up. So I don't think that's going to go away. Over time, could the education around blockchain networks and tokens and so forth through bigger brands and even governments, could that help alleviate some of the infighting? Yeah, sure, but I don't think it goes away because it's network effects playing out Metcalf's law. Yeah, I think that's true, but there's still a sense of, look, there's a lot of the tribalism in the crypto world is sort of unique.

I mean, on Reddit, I guess with GameStop, we saw some of that, but there's nothing quite like the XRP army or, you know, whatever. I mean, I'm picking on them because they're the most obvious, but, you know, people who say things that are just literally clinically insane and get claps and cheers for it. It's just, and it gets to the point where people look at this and say, well, this is just stupid. That doesn't mean that the value isn't there. it means that people who are, if the proponents of an asset literally look like morons to anyone who understands has even a modicum of financial education, then it does create a smear on the asset. There's just no way around it. And listen, I'm not just jump in.

I mean, I love Bitcoin, but what Gary was saying, there's quite a number of people in Bitcoin who are also clinically insane and give it a bad name because of the way that they try to represent it. So, well, there's, you know, and I think this is where the truth gets separated from the chaff eventually, right? Like, Bitcoin survives because of what's true about it, not because some guy is saying that it solves the world's problems in food or something like, you know, like, but with these other things, sooner or later, the test of reality has to kick in and people will lose faith. And it takes, it takes crashes to shake people out of their stupid positions because if the price holds up, then they think they're right. They're just reinforced by that. So it's really wacky. One thing, I don't know that we have time today,

but you were asking way earlier, Dave, like the enthusiasm that I've seen in Bitcoin in the last couple of weeks is all around Michael Saylor's STRC product that's selling like hotcakes when the markets are open. And so if we wanted to talk a little bit about that, that's fine, but we may be out of time and you can save it for another day.

Yeah, Dave, also, you know, I know you mentioned XRP and the XRP army as an example, but what about meme coins? What about the Trump meme coin, right? Look at what has come from. Yeah, there's meme coin communities. There's so much of this stuff. I mean, look, I'm on record and people got mad at me, but I don't give a fuck. I generally support this administration and a lot of what they want to do, but I thought the Trump meme coin and the Melania meme coin when he launched it was an absolute critical disaster. master for crypto evaluations.

And the reason I say that is because it's cemented half the country, literally half the country, and a lot of them with money, saying, okay, I got to stay away from crypto because this is, you know, people reflectively, I mean, the joke is if Trump cured cancer, that people would say, God damn it, how dare you attack, you know, cancer cells have a right to exist, right? You know, we literally are in that, that kind of oppositional thing. You know, I went and rewatched Monty Python's argument clinic recently. one of my favorite skits of all time. I swear to God.

No, it isn't. Exactly. Exactly. It feels like that's the world to win. So I do think that that was a big deal. But meme coins, look, if you could build a community and monetize that community and create content based off of that community, yeah, you might be able to create value. The question is, will the token have value?

That, to me, has always been the quays. So, like, pudgy penguins or Pepe the Frog might very well become. an incredibly trademarkable marketing thing that royalties could accrue. Will that accrue to a token holder? I don't think so. But if the answer is yes, then sure, it makes sense. I mean, my point is, has always been, show me the path to value. And that's all that matters.

But the meta point is still, if you got stupidity, say, well, it doesn't matter. Once people say it doesn't matter, they're not serious and it's really hard to listen to them. Well, I think we got to delineate between the flash and the pan type projects and meme coins, which is like a short wave and then it goes away to your point, Dave, but actual blockchain networks with tokens, like you said, that accrue value over time and it's a great investment. So long-term investment,

I think the two dynamics, they're going to run side by side because it's human nature, memes, trends, blah politics, I mean, right? I mean, look at the, like you mentioned, the Malani meme, going to your pump, now it's gone, right? Flash in a pan.

But to your point, you invest in EVE, invest in Solano, long-term, real things being built. So I think, unfortunately, we can't get rid of it. It's just human nature. Yeah. Tomer. Is that you?

Is that a real hand or is that a fan? No, it's a, it's a ghost. It's a phantom hand. If there's someone who has something. What about you? He just saw a hand flash. Yeah. I'm flashing it, Dave.

I'm old enough that, you know, a port in any storm. So I think you kicked off the call talking about, or no, Tomer did about the, you know, not chaos. I'll throw that word in there. But, you know, Greenland, Minnesota, you know, pick your poison troops coming in. I thought this was only economic, but it's obviously, you know, the 2020 social unrest has grown.

And I think that really is a thread going through our whole call, even what Mr. Cardone was talking about, you know, Bitcoin having an echo chamber. everybody, you know, the economic opportunity from wages, et cetera, aren't there. People are feeling isolated, so they're grabbing onto a community. Could be a Doge coin, could be an XRP army. So I think those things will hold value. Like someone said, there'll be some short waves. You know, no one's really grabbing Melania. But I think the meme coins will have more value maybe than the 24-hour exchanges

that the New York stock exchange. will do. I think, you know, staying on the idea about economic disparity and our market, I think value will accrue to identity. I think identity has a place in our community. Bitcoin has some of it as a brand. And that's why I agree that holding on to some coins, all coins, you know, I'm only Bitcoin, but that may have purpose because the project could stay alive, the technology could be there, adopted elsewhere. But yeah, that's one thing I still like about, you know, this call, et cetera, is that there's a fervor. And day before I drop, I'll say, I was in New York last week, and I went to the Yale Club.

As an alum of UVA, we kind of split it. And it was an awful environment. Everybody's holding on to their private debt. It's not vibrant. So as far as trading 24-7, you know, I think there are. two worlds. There are people who want to innovate and there are people who are holding on to their value with income and have no interest in doing anything innovative. So I like this call. I'm selling the L club. Now, dropping the mic there. I played poker there once. There are a couple times,

actually, back when I lived in New York in a private room. But, you know, look, innovation is what matters here. Eventually, value will, will matter. in the long run value matters, in the short run momentum matters. And right now we're seeing people that all the momentum traders. And we've been saying the same damn thing since November, but it's really true. The momentum traders are in silver and gold, right? They're in, you know, various and sundry sub sectors or sub industries inside the stock markets. They're not in Bitcoin.

Bitcoin's been in a range now for a while. and all coins have been sliding. And it's basically time-based capitulation. But there is innovation happening. And while I've never been a fan of, quote, immediate liquidity, making tokens being more valuable, thinking that that's a sustainable model because it isn't, there are value propositions that will make sense.

And so we'll see. I mean, this is something that's not going to play out today, tomorrow, or the next day. It's going to play out over months and years, but it is going to play out. I will point out that there are, you know, there are, there are chains that will have value. And the trick is is winners and losers. And I'm not smart enough to know which are going to be the winners and losers in terms of value space.

I mean, on the forget smart enough, I'm not prescient enough. Bitcoin, on the other hand, I think is underpriced and hasn't had that momentum trade. And I think the momentum trade got derailed, hasn't had that since 21. And it's kind of overdue. Like we people keep talking to the four-year cycle and I keep saying, yeah, but there was no up. There was never euphoria. We never got to that. So you can't have a cycle that didn't have the up and expect to see the magnitude on the down.

That's why we're in, we're in this thing. Now, does that mean it's dead? I don't think so. Does that mean, as Gary is saying, that it feels hard to feel that like there could be an impetus? All I will tell you is I'll never forget when Paul Tudor Jones first came, out post the, you know, in the pandemic in May and talked about Bitcoin being the fastest horse. Everyone was like kind of, oh, this is great. And it didn't do a damn thing for four months. It just sat at the same price. Then it started to take off. You know, four months could be four

years for all the hell I know. I'm just saying that we don't know what will be the catalyst. What we, what I can tell you is that a world where half the world thinks that it's, well, that's a Trump-associated thing and half the world says, you know, and I'm not going to touch it, is destructive. And, you know, we'll see. I mean, my guess is, is like everything else, this shall pass. This food fight that's going on in Washington. I mean, I would love to have, hopefully, Eleanor can join us one of these days because, you know, her arguing with Brian Armstrong is not something I had on my 2026 bingo card. But yet here we are. Because Eleanor has been pretty much spot on in terms of reporting. And so, you know, to me, that was a big deal. I don't know if anyone

cares about that, but we're kind of up against time. So, nope. Okay. So in that case, we're going to end it here. Enjoy the rest of, for those are Americans, know the rest of your day off to the extent that you celebrate Martin Luther King Day. And we'll be back here again tomorrow. And I think Scott is back with us. So I don't have to carry the conversation, which would be good because you guys are getting tired. I would be tired of listening to me, so I don't know about you. Hey, Dave. We love you, Dave. Yeah, we love you, Dave. I sent you an email.

Let's set the pot up. Okay, cool. Let's do it. Okay, guys, we're going to take off now. Have a great day.