The Wolf Of All Streets - Grayscale vs SEC Deadline | Bitcoin Top In For 2023? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

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Morning, Joe. How are you doing today, man? Good, buddy. How about you? A bit of a crazy week. Yeah, always, isn't it? But yeah, I can't complain. Doing well. People here wouldn't know. Joe, I have to ask you. I haven't even asked you this question. How did you meet Mario and start ending up on these spaces? What people don't know, Joe and i lived in philadelphia at the same time late 90s early 2000s we hung out all the time then probably didn't talk for 20 years and then all of a sudden we're just on twitter spaces together all the time

yeah i literally never asked you how did you beat mario yeah it was just like the whole uh spf thing um went crazy mario would pull me up more often and then you know just kind of really liked what it evolved into where it was like a a platform i kind of feel like was needed where you could hear both sides and not like this uh you know one-sided biased media and i'd like would offer help when possible to the point where i think we have a friendship now um but yeah that's pretty much how it started it just happened to be into crypto but kind of i liked where it was where his platform was evolving to joe and i used to we used to run the nightclubs in Philadelphia it's true didn't we?

we're the boomers now I would be in the circle dancing and Scott would be the one controlling the music everywhere now I sound like such a boomer man but those really were the days big in Japan

big in Japan Scott's claim to fame is were the days big in japan so that's big in japan scott scott's claim to fame is that he was big in japan that was like four or five years later but i was really old does that even exist anymore like things like shampoo where like uh you just have like huge clubs i just feel like it kind of died off yeah i feel like that trend sort of died i have to imagine that covid wasn't too friendly to the mega nightclubs i mean there's still some around but uh certainly it's still big in europe and ibiza and such but and new york and but yeah i think most of them probably uh died off unfortunately man we had a lot of fun but that's not what everyone's here to listen to. Guys, we have

to always chatter, of course, as we get started. But we're getting everybody up. Ren, how are you feeling on this Friday in this utterly dead and dry crypto news cycle that we have here, outside, of course, of SPF and

Caroline? I just got I just got, I had a debate with peter schiff well it wasn't supposed to be a debate it was supposed to be a uh discussion and it always lands up going back to um bitcoin versus gold he just can't avoid he just can't avoid that discussion so you can ask me anything that that's the frame of mind that i'm in yeah and what what was the uh core of the argument the funny thing is maybe i should say this usually seems like even though he's sort of become a punching bag for the bitcoin community that we probably fundamentally agree with him on

99 i was about to say that i agree with him on 99 he's actually got very very very smart like solutions to things like i said to him you know peter like because it's very easy to get roped into things and like and to criticize the current government and whatever else and i said to him peter like if we were to put you if we were if we waived the magic one and we were to put you in government, what would you change? And he gave me a whole lot of things of what he would change. And a lot of them actually really, really valid things.

We agree on everything. The only thing we don't agree on is whether it's going to be gold or Bitcoin. He says buy gold and we say buy Bitcoin and gold. And he doesn't see the end. Yeah, I agree with that but uh it really is he has such hyperbolic tape takes and he's so anti-bitcoin it's very easy to to focus it on that but uh every time we have him i find it to be extremely enlightening and obviously a really really smart guy he would He would probably point to something like

half of our headline here, which is $1 trillion in new debt every 45 days. This is crazy. For those who've been keeping track, the US debt has jumped $40 billion in a day, $33.55 trillion in federal debt just 25 days after it hit a record $33 trillion. You guys remember when they raised the debt ceiling, it was only at, what, 31? I mean, we're literally printing or adding a trillion dollars to U.S. debt every 45 days. How can this possibly be sustainable? I want to knock this topic out, then I'll give you guys a review of all kind of the dry news that we have. And then we'll dive obviously more into Grayscale for the SEC. Scott, did you see the other day our debt jumped up as more than the entire Russian debt in one single day? It's absolutely insane. That is insane.

I didn't see that. That's insane. And listen, I know that it's whataboutism, but I just found it funny that we were talking about Elizabeth Warren wanting to expedite the crypto tax rules because it might find $50 billion in taxes by 2026. She doesn't want to wait till 2026. And we're doing that every single day just in debt. It's just absolutely astounding. I mean, Peter, what do you make of this? Have you ever seen this sort of debt bonanza going on in the background that seemingly people aren't talking about? Peter Brand, can you hear us? Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. The conclusion is what everybody knows, and that's fiat currency goes to zero.

I've talked about that every time I have a chance. The dollar when I was born is now at four or five cents. I mean, same thing will happen for this generation. And so ultimately, the punching bag becomes the US dollar. And, you know, sure, the government can somehow change its debt by just ignoring it. But the end result is the US dollar gets clobbered. That's bullish gold, bullish Bitcoin. And gold's having quite a day, actually. But what's interesting is during this time of massively increased debt, of course, you have to zoom out. You can't just zoom in on these short times. But we've actually seen the dollar effectively raging, the DXY versus other currencies. That doesn't mean that the dollar is doing well. That actually means that the denominator is so poor. So if we're adding this

much debt on a daily basis, how bad must it be for other currencies that the DXY continues to rise in that situation? Yeah, it's crazy. Let me point out something, too, on gold that I've noticed. Gold had a big upgap on October 9th. It dealt with Israel. All of a sudden, we came in here on Monday. I had put out a poll Sunday with gold open 10 bucks or higher and or whatever the range

may be. But you know, we opened we created a gap and typically people say all gaps will get filled unless not actually true. And so with the follow through we have I'm thinking to myself and I'm thinking to myself, and I own GLD. I own some gold ETFs, not a major owner. But I'm thinking, what if that gap was a breakaway gap? What if we are in the process of doing what's called a V-extended bottom? I had really been looking for gold to back and fill back down to under $1,800, back to $1,750 sometime in February, March, then go to 3600. So I'm kind of back on the drawing board

and going, you know, what if I missed the boat here? Missed the boat, but assuming you're just saying that you missed the bottom, but your still base case is that it effectively doubles from here, right? Oh, totally.

I remember Mike Novogratz kind of made the same point not so long ago it was in the media he said listen if gold breaks and holds 2 000 it's immediately going to 3 000 right we've seen that in the past yeah i i mean you know i've felt that way for months and months and months and quarters that you know gold was building a huge accumulation phase. And, you know, of course, we can end the argument of Bitcoin versus gold. Well, you know, I feel like you both. I like both. But, yeah, so maybe this whole thing in the Mideast has just created

what I'd been expecting as a March low and higher and sooner. And, you know, we've got a breakaway gap. And, of course, that could be filled and change the narrative. But as long as that gap remains unfilled, I'm just thinking that gap is the start of a move. Gareth, we were talking about gold literally yesterday, kind of talking about how we thought it was looking pretty bullish. I was saying that I actually had been buying gold when you asked me that question on Market Mavericks. And here we are already a day later, basically seeing it up from, I'm looking at the weekly here, but on the day, gold up basically from 1869 over 1900,

currently at 1915. That's a pretty big move for gold over the last week, week and a half. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's been a monster move. And I think what's so interesting is just the week prior, you had this almost flush out. And one of the things for investors always to remember is that before a big run, there's usually going to be a flush out that makes everyone doubt it. Great example of this was with oil, where oil pushed up to 93. It then overnight popped to 95, reversed the next day, and then we know it's kind of collapsed back down from there. That kind of got all the shorts out, got the last people bullish. And then you look at gold, and kind of the same thing happened about a week ago, just before this move. And now what's amazing about gold today is it's now breaking out of a downward channel.

If it holds this, basically, if it holds above 1905 today, you're looking at, you know, consolidation and then a run at the all time highs. And I think, you know, you have a good shot of getting to the all time highs by year end now with a breakout in 2024. The other thing to mention too, and I can't show my charts, but if we do trendly trend higher and re-attack that, you know, 2080 level on gold, you do have an inverse head and shoulders here, which mapped out puts us at around $2,500 per ounce at some point next year. So guys, I'm interested to know, I'm interested to know how as a trader, how you trade this, like, were you buying it like at the lower ranges or were you waiting for the, like, is now the right time to buy? And I'm not asking for financial advice.

I'm just, I'm trying to get into the mind of a trader to say, when do you actually take the trade? When you're convinced that the trend has changed, like now where, you know, or like, let's put it this way. On the 6th of October, we bottomed at 1,810. Now we're at 1,915, and the last daily candle was one that went from 1,868 to 1,915. Now, what do you do?

Do you wait for a pullback, or do you say, this is now an uptrend, and now we're going to start buying? Because that's what people want to know here, buy or don't yeah so so the way i handle it just to give you guys you know some actual trades is that with my group we when we were down at that 1800 area i was picking up various gold miners right picking up barrett gold picking up a silver miner ag um first majestic and then we actually unloaded those today. So we're selling into strength here. Now, that doesn't mean that it's not going to eventually go higher. But the biggest mistake investors make is chasing after a big run you get because this is when the hype hits, right? This is

when everyone starts to say, Oh, my God, look at it go, I got to jump on board, I'm missing the boat. In reality, the good traders, they say, you know what, if I didn't catch this, I'm going to sit on the sidelines, be patient, at some point, it will form a bull flag or we'll have a small pullback. And then I'll jump in at that point. So I still have some gold positions on the long side like GLD and GDX, which is the gold miner ETF. But I did take some profits because again, after a run like this, I mean, this is a massive run. You just want to pare back your exposure, put some profits in your pocket. Is it a massive run? I mean, if I'm going to be critical, I'm going to say, look, we're at the same levels we were on September 26th, which is three weeks ago.

So we just reversed the last three weeks trend. Is that what you call a massive run? Because the way that you guys are talking about gold, and when I say you guys, I'm talking about you, Peter Schiff, Peter Grant, who's on here. You guys are talking about gold as if it's going up to $3,000. Yeah. And again, you know, if you're someone who's like, hey, listen, I'm going to hold my gold for five or 10 years, then to be honest, move from $1,800 to $1,900 here is not a huge deal. Like you can still buy. You know, for me, though, if you're asking me about entry price, like I'm not someone who

pays up $100 for something, you know, when I could have bought it $100 cheaper, it's the same method as going to the store, right? You're not going to pay $100 for a pair of jeans higher than you could have bought last week, you'll wait till it goes on sale again. So So in general, I would just say look for a pullback to maybe 1880 1885 and then start moving in at that point. But again, that's I'm a shorter term trader. So again, that's part of that that psychology of not chasing because think about the mentality of chasing, you know, think about people that were buying at 65 to 69,000 on Bitcoin. I mean, that was when the narrative got so bullish. So when things rush up, take a step back and say, listen, you know,

if I was going to the store, and I saw milk that was $10 a gallon, would I be getting really excited to buy milk at $10 a gallon? Or would I say, you know what, I'll wait till next week when it's back down to five bucks a gallon or whatever it is. Right. So I think I think putting that mentality on investments is really important. Don't chase. Don't be part of the chasing crowd. Instead, wait for things to kind of settle down, pull back and reevaluate. Hey, Gareth, the funny the funny opposite of that is if you went to the store and people saw expired discounted milk, they would buy it,

but they'll never buy their favorite stock or asset when it's on a discount. That's true. I want to hear Peter Brandt's point. I see his hand up and I'm keen to hear Peter Brandt, your view. Do you agree with Gareth that wait for a pullback or would you say, listen, at 1913,

the trend is up, jump in, and now's a good time to jump in? Well, I mean, you know, it's a matter of time frame, obviously, right? I mean, if you're a swing trader for a week or two, yeah, you wait for a pullback. Although I think 1890, 1900 is a good level from a futures point of view. But I'm with you, Mario. I look at where I think gold is going.

And again, we've had a hundred buck move. It's not earth shattering. Just as you have to have some Bitcoin in your stable that you hold under all circumstances i feel the same way about gold and so i i've also seen this a big inverted continuation head and shoulders on the weekly chart gold i've been watching it for months and so i think that thing that's that that's in play but if you look at the charts there's reasons to well, I may not want to wait to do some buying. You look at the weekly chart of SLV. It's put in a dramatic doji candle at the bottom last week.

This week, we closed the gap from last week. And so I look at the silver ETFs. I don't think a person should be shy to buy them right here. That being said, I wouldn't risk any more than 2-3% of my total assets on the trade. Can we just talk about

silver for a second? Silver has done nothing for as long as I can remember. Honestly, I'm going back to when I last bought silver in 20... I'm just back to when I last bought silver in 20... I'm just looking for my purchase price here. I last bought silver in

2021, April 6th. I paid $23. It's now $22.56. It just feels like such a neglected trade. What am I missing here? I don't think I'm missing anything anything i think silver is the most undervalued commodity out there on my on my chart board and it's currently putting in a serious

hammer on the 50ma and the monthly as well which looks like it could uh be the lagger that finally performs after this and i think by the way i just want to reiterate that peter i think made the most important point which is that it's about timeframe. So if you ask me the same question, I'd say, look, I'm accumulating gold. I'm not looking to sell it for years, if ever. I think this is an incredible price. And I like that it went up 100 to show me that there's a little bit of actual potential here on the move. And plenty of traders like to buy things a bit higher on confirmation. So it's really about strategy and timeframe. Gareth is buying this to make a quick profit.

If you're buying it because it's an asset you want long term in your investment portfolio, there's no reason to be scared of a $100 move to the upside. And the risk of buying at $1910 is nothing compared to the risk of missing $1880 or whatever the numbers were. I'm sorry. Looking at it, yeah, 1910 versus 1880. What if 1880 never comes and you literally never add gold to your long-term portfolio when you want it to? So it's really just about your personal preference and risk management.

Yeah. And just to jump in on that too, and that's exactly correct. So it's more like, you know, like you said, timing, time-wise, you know, the only thing I would definitely say to people is that, you know, generally you want to buy assets when people are hating on them. And, you know, you go back a week ago and if you look at the gold chart, it was into major support. But people were panicking, like, why is gold dropping nine days in a row? So just keep that in mind for future investments is if it's a sound theory, right, or a sound thesis and your thesis hasn't been negated, which is that the government eventually is going to print and inflation probably remains elevated, then discounts should be bought, not freaked out about. And then I think that's the moral here. And I do want to say that even though these are

like, all right, so last week when we were down there, I actually purchased physical metal and physical is not something I trade, right? It's tucking it away in a vault somewhere and just kind of holding it. And it's one of those security things that I'll pass down to my kids if I never need to use it. But I do think there's that time frame. And the physical is more for me the long term while my investment accounts are more to trade. Ren, I think that we should – well, Joe, I'll let you speak and give your final thoughts here. And then obviously, since the name is Crypto Town Hall, we should move on to that. Go ahead, Joe.

Yeah, I just I actually wanted to ask Peter a question just just to change the point of view, because something he said plays into my narrative of what I think happens to Bitcoin, which is the dollar devaluing. Instead of thinking about it, when does gold go up, Peter? When does dollar go down? When does all this debt put so much pressure that we start to see it going down? Because Scott brought up a good point. It doesn't mean that it's strong. It means other countries are moving into the dollar at the moment because they don't have a better option.

I just can't predict when this pressure becomes too much from all this new debt. Well, I think the answer to that is you have to look at the purchasing power of the dollar, not the dollar versus other currencies or necessarily the price of gold or Bitcoin. You have to look at whether it's purchasing power, is it being destroyed? You know, 8% inflation, you go back into the 70s, the dollar got destroyed. But you measure that destruction against what the dollar can be exchanged for. And right now the dollar is losing its purchasing power. It's holding its purchasing power sideways for a short term against the Bitcoin, but it's losing it against a basket of groceries, a gallon of gas, a piece of real estate. It's already being destroyed. And so that's the key is the dollar gets destroyed relative to what it can buy

or relative to what it can be exchanged for. An interesting gold-related trade, too, in that regard is Swiss franc. I really like the Swiss franc. You look at the Swiss government, they have more gold backing there. The float that they have in the reserve currency bucket than anybody else by a quantum number, by, you know, 10x. And so I just think, you know, owning some Swiss franc related assets, having long Swiss franc exposure also kind of in my mind has to be thrown in the mix as to how I hedge myself against the ultimate destruction of the US dollar and other fiat currencies. Yeah, not just gold, but they also invest in equities, which I think is

an amazing model. Yeah. Can I just ask, what's the bear case for gold? Like, what? I remember that gold has had some bear case years. I wasn't following the gold price. What's the bear case? At what point do countries, people stop going into gold? I'll jump in here. And for me, it's honestly when elon musk starts mining asteroids and it's i know that sounds a little wacky but there will be a point where technology allows us to do that in fact i think we just bought a sample back from one i still think it's 50 years

down the line or 100 years down the line but there will be a point where you know in the in the universe or in the galaxy here there's a ton of gold out there somewhere. Okay, but barring humans on Mars and asteroids and sci-fi shit, what is the big case for gold? Sci-fi shit. Go ahead, Gareth. He's the one who went with the mining the asteroid, so maybe somebody else has a... Are you trying to bait us to say that Bitcoin will replace it?

No. Let's just live in a world, live in a realistic world where not everyone is just going to jump from gold to Bitcoin and you're going to get at least 50 years of the two of them working in, you know, before... You just got canceled by the bitcoin maxi council sorry yeah i got canceled by the bitcoin maxi council in 2017 when i started buying old coins so i mean you can you can never stop getting canceled by that it's a beautiful thing yeah but i mean let's just agree that that people aren't gonna the big institutions and they're not going to take out

all their money out of gld and put it into the bitcoin etf that is apparently going to be approved this afternoon um you know it's not going to happen like and put it into the Bitcoin ETF that is apparently going to be approved this afternoon. It's not going to happen like that. So in the absence of that, let's just agree that you're going to get both. There's going to be 50 years of both. Hey, Mario, it's good to point it out that central banks have been gobbling up gold in the last 12 months uh like seldom before um they're massive buyers and so somebody wants to really take a look at that and google that they'll see that uh it's just not a spec play it's a central bank play and when it is a central bank

play by the way central banks are exchanging their currencies to purchase that gold and so you know they're already in effect taking a short play on their own on their own fiat go ahead tom we finally got you up here go ahead yes awesome morning everyone uh so the biggest reason to not buy gold right is it has no intrinsic yield so you're competing right now with 5% plus treasury bills on the short end. So it's really challenging, even from an institutional perspective. And I remember going in boardrooms and trying to convince pensions that they should get gold when yields were at 2%. And they would basically be saying, gold really hasn't done anything in the past 20, 30 years. Like, yeah, it might be a devaluation sort of hedge play, but we're getting, we're getting yield here on this, on these other assets and we have upside on

them. So, so why do we need that in our portfolio? So, you know, that's really the bear case of the downside is the opportunity costs. But besides that, there really isn't a bear case. Okay. That's a perfect segue into Bitcoin then, Tom, right? Because we had the argument that it was at a low yield environment, that Bitcoin was a great investment. Can you make the same case right now for Bitcoin because it doesn't have an intrinsic yield itself? We have a whole lot of crypto and Bitcoin analysts on stage. So that's my segue.

Go ahead, Tom. what do you think? Yeah, I'll start here. And I'm sure people have thought about this a lot more than I have, certainly. But, you know, I think you need Bitcoin in your portfolio. But, you know, to convince the bigger allocators, you need to convince them that Bitcoin has value and it is a devaluation hedge against the dollar and against other, you know, sort of things that may go down. I still think we haven't proven that out yet just because of how Bitcoin has acted in a risk off environment. So, you know, I think right now it's nice that Bitcoin is outperforming as other things go down. But, you know, we need to continue to have those scenarios to give others confidence that they need to invest in their portfolio. So yesterday when I challenged Peter Schiff

earlier, I asked him, we were arguing about the Bitcoin return because I pulled out the chart and I said, look at Bitcoin. He said, Bitcoin's garbage. I said, it's not garbage relative to gold. And I said to him, let's look at any timeframe that you want to see how Bitcoin's outperform gold. And he said, cool, let's look from 2017 to 20 until today. And he picked, I don't know if he pre-planned it, but he picked the one timeframe where he said, look, if I look at the high of 2017 and he picked a date, we picked a random date. It was like 15th of June or 15th of August or whatever it was. And we measured the return of Bitcoin. And that was coincidentally the of june or 15th of august or whatever it was and and we measured the return of bitcoin and that was coincidentally the high of bitcoins the return of bitcoin

was about 20 or 25 and then he looked at the higher the gold performance since then gold was a 35 so like on that time period gold actually outperformed if you take yeah i don't think that's a surprise tom you can jump back in if that was directed at you yeah so there's a few periods that gold has outperformed bitcoin i'm going to tweet a chart here and then we can we can pin it it's basically bitcoin um versus gold and the s&p 500 and basically every rolling period you have for the last 14 years bitcoin has outperformedformed. So it's called the endpoint bias, right? You can pick any endpoint you want and you can look back and say like, oh, this asset has performed over this very specific period of time if you're trying to make your point. But if you look at every rolling period for the last 14 years, Bitcoin has essentially crushed

gold, crushed the S&P 500 outside of the two-year timeframe, that's basically it. So I'll tweet that out and we can pin it up. Yeah, we'll pin it up. Rand, let's talk about Bitcoin price action though, right? We've got a great panel up here for that. And obviously we've seen this sort of historical lack of correlation with Bitcoin to stocks, to gold, the inverse correlation that's usually there with the DXY. My argument has been that that's just where we are in the cycle and that we see this in sort of this pre-halving year every year. There's a lack of volatility, lack of volume and lack of interest. But I would love everybody else's take on why Bitcoin isn't really making dramatic moves while all of these sort of global macro events are happening that many would argue we should

be correlated to. Rek, do you want to jump in? Sure. I mean, we're currently in the pre-halving year, and we always tend to see this sort of macro accumulation with upside volatility throughout the year, downside volatility throughout the year. And these pre-halving years, 2015, 2019, and also 2023 now, we see lots of similar price action, loads of recurring tendencies. And is that because of the global climate? Is it because of just these tendencies typically happening within pre-harving years?

Very kind of difficult to say. But we've seen in 2015, for instance, that a downside wick happens on the yearly candle. And in 2019, we also saw a downside wick on the yearly candle relatively early in the year. So we won't see new highs this year in 2023, simply because we tend to see that sort of downside volatility early in the year and upside volatility later in the year. So technically, maybe the local top is in already. We're seeing a lot of weakness at these highs. But the pre-halving year is typically what we see in terms of upside volatility and downside volatility throughout the year, just wrecking bulls and bears alike.

Right. So quickly, that... Can I just say... Go ahead, Ray. Sorry. sorry ran you're breaking up buddy i can't hear you if it's just me can you guys hear ran anyone is it my connection no i think i think that ran you have a bad connection so i'll jump back in while you get into a better place. I was going to say direct. Does that mean that you think that 31K is the yearly top, much like that 14K move that we saw in 2019?

Because then if we're comparing those cycles, you would expect that we will see price drop quite a bit lower to make that sort of higher low that's been a shakeout in the pre-havening year every single time. We saw Bitcoin in 2019 went from around 4K all the way up to 14, and then obviously made the COVID low, which was a slightly higher low. We saw effectively the same thing in 2015. Does that mean maybe we get an 18, 19, 20K type wick this year before heading into the halving year? I think sub 20K at best and 20k pretty realistically speaking later this year or early next year in the halving because at this very same point in the cycle in 2019 and 2015 so around 190 days away from the halving we've seen in 2015 a 25 retracement in 2019 we've seen a 38 retracement at this very same point in the

cycle so we're currently 190 days away from the halving we've seen retracements at the same point in the cycle so technically we should be seeing a retrace at least begin right now but that retrace could see us go into late this year or early in the halving year. And just one last thing that I want to point out here is that I wasn't really bullish on an October. I think that wasn't a very popular opinion going into October, but 2019 saw an October yield of just 10%.

And this year, this October, we've only seen 5% to 6%. And in fact, October right now is minus 1% or maybe even flat right now. So I felt like this was going to be a very different October to what we've seen in the past. And so far, so good. I'm still very, very much leaning to a deeper retrace

later this year or early next year. I agree. Tell me what's worrying me, guys. Yeah, I'll tell you what's worrying me about. What's worrying me here is that the entire crypto universe has pinned their hopes

on exactly the same fractal of the pre-harvest going slightly down and then at some point doing an aggressive turnaround. And I'm just worried because that's the only hopium that everybody's got. And I just can't see why.

Well, we do have that ETF thing. Yeah, but the hopium that we have is that the ETF coincides exactly with the halving. And, you know, it's kind of like it just... I've seen this before. I've seen this movie before. Everybody's expecting exactly the same thing. Everybody's expecting them out.

Right now, the point of Max Plan is that Bitcoin shocks everybody because everybody's calling it down. Ben Cowan's calling it down. Rhett is calling it down. Every big account that I've seen tweeting is tweeting Bitcoin to retrace and then to turn sometime, is it on the halving or just before the halving or something along those times? And I just think now the point of Max Payne is to leave every single one of those people behind. So then that begs a better question.

Maybe we should go around. Peter, I saw you had your hand up. Is there anyone here who does not, well, Ren, you obviously qualify, does not think that 31K is the top for 2023? Anybody have a thought on that? Don, I would love to hear your opinion. Hey, what's up? Well, speaking about that, I do think it will be difficult to break that high this year, but I don't think we're going to drop that much lower.

So I think the consensus is that we may be like going to 23k or whatever which i think is fair i mean it's only 10 down or whatever but overall i feel like um if we compare this to like those three halving years for example 2019 obviously we had a huge run up we went like 4x or more from the 3k bottom to 14k. And obviously, the fall from there was quite large as well. Even if you don't account for COVID in 2020, I think we still went to like just below 7k. So that was over a 50% drop. But I mean, then again, it was after a 4x increase in maybe half a year.

So I just think everything is like we've always been seeing. We see diminishing returns and also just a bit less of a correction following those. So in my opinion, I think we just range around this around 25 to 28k area, maybe for the rest of the year and yeah from a speaker point of view just i see there's this with myself mario scott peter dan gareth patrick tom joe bill rect can the speakers just put your hands up if you think we're going to break the 21 the 31 000 by the end of this year. Can I change the question, Ren? Yes. Break the 31,000 before the halving,

because I think that changes the narrative, and I think that's the important thing here is everyone's waiting for the halving before it to go up. Do we believe it'll go above 31 before the halving, I think would make more sense. Okay, fair enough okay fair enough fair enough if so we've got 10 speakers here um three of the 10 speakers are saying that we will break the 31 000 before the halving that's it bull is that a hand up so it's four uh i think i think bull but bull okay so bull i can't put my hand up, by the way, I don't think, because I'm a co-host.

You can put your hand up. I did. Oh, no, I'm a speaker. Okay. I think before the halving that it'll at least test it and mess around and go above. But I don't think that it may last very long. Okay, no, wait. Let's be a little bit more-

But we have the ETFs, though. The ETFs are supposed to be approved in January. To be honest, my feelings at the ETF price action, the ETF approval is the exact price action that we already saw from BlackRock filing for an ETF. I think long-term, it will be very, very bullish, but the move from 25 to 31 in one week, if we're sitting at 25 when the ETF's approved, I bet we get to 31. But that's for the people paying attention today, right? Which is very small in comparison to when it actually starts going up and these ETFs are available to other people. Yeah, I think it's more like a halving event where you get the news and

then it takes a very long time for the fundamental underpinning of it to actually play out. I think it's very, very bullish. Don't get me wrong. Peter, I don't know if you're raising your hand for your price prediction or to speak, but I think to speak. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to be the minority on here. I think they have it and I think the ETF had none of that. So I'm a futures guy. I've been trading futures since 1975. I'm used to the fact that things get discounted in advance. You don't wait around for events to happen and say, okay, you start from zero on price action. Price action discounts events in advance and anticipates events in advance. To me, especially the halving is a complete non-event ETF. I'm a little bit unsure of that one. Yeah, I mean, that aligns, I think, with what I was saying. I think that you get the pop, and then it takes a very, very long time to actually see if there's a fundamental change in the ETF, how much interest there is in it, how much buying there has to be underlying it.

And I think those are kind of unknown unknowns for the moment. I don't know if anyone disagrees, but I'm very bullish on the ETF. I think it's a huge step, but I don't really see it taking price from 25 to 50 in a week like I think a lot of people do. Patrick, we haven't heard from you yet. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I would agree with most of what Scott was saying that if the filing for the ETF took us from, what, 25 to 31, like you were saying? Yeah, exactly, a week. Then I think the confirmation or approval of it

is going to at least tap that, probably take us above that, and then it's going to change the structural inflows where you now have a lot of structural buying for BTC that you didn't have before, which will just help us steadily grind up over time. Ren, what do you think? We haven't really talked about this. I mean, I know you think that the path of max pain now is up, but do you think that the ETF itself is a part of that? Or do you think that that's sort of a separate narrative at this point? I think if the ETF gets approved, Bitcoin jumps to $40,000, $40,000, $45,000.

It may retrace. It may retrace. But I think that if we get an ETF approval, I think Bitcoin has a god candle to $40,000 or $45,000 or something like that. Does it matter what ETF? Let's say that we haven't even talked about the RISC over a CSCC deadline. We do have a deadline today. In theory, people could say that we would see one today. I don't think so.

No, it wouldn't. Today, there's not, I mean, there's not, there's not no chance. There's a very, very, very, very, very low chance that there's an ETF today. Today is just the day

for them to appeal the case. And as we discussed yesterday, there's no real upside for the SEC in appealing the case. There's zero upside for them to appeal the case because if they do, what do they gain?

They gain nothing. The only thing that they... Unless they can prove that a Bitcoin... Time. No. Time for what? Time for... I'm just saying, there's a feeling that the SEC will do literally anything in their...

I agree with you, by the way, but that they'll do anything in their power to just kick cans down the road whenever possible. Option number... So let's look at the SEC's options. Option number one, concede this loss, but actually concede nothing. option number one concede this loss but actually concede nothing okay we concede the last gray scale go back and refile or go back and there's another 90 days or go back and listen we're not approving any spot etfs because we're we're in a review period great option number two they appeal and they risk taking a second loss and wasting money and you know despite what I may say about the SEC,

I do know that they are worried about spending too much money if they can avoid it. So I don't see the upside for the SEC in actually appealing this case. Because it's not like they have to approve a Bitcoin-spot ETF. They just can't decline a Bitcoin-spot ETF on the same terms. That's it. Yeah, I tend to agree with you. Bill, we haven't heard from you. Any thoughts here?

Great to see you. Yeah, great to see you as well. Sorry, I apologize. I've got to air the airport. So if it's too loud, let me know and I'll mute. I think that Peter's right. I think the halving is a non-event. I think the things that are interesting to me are surprises. Right. So I think we're in for a surprise via the Fed. I think you cannot have this level of debt and not have interest rates become significantly lower because if they don't, we're fucked. And so it's a foregone conclusion that, one, they've been wrong every time in their forward guidance, at least in my lifetime.

And unfortunately, I'm probably the old guy up here. They have literally been wrong every single time on their guidance. So assuming that that holds, you know, there is going to be surprise liquidity coming into the market. And it's only a surprise because most people are actually believing the Fed right now. I don't. I think they're absolutely wrong with their guidance simply because the economy cannot absorb this level of interest payments easily, which basically just creates a circular spiral. Sorry, spiral on the debt.

So two things there, Bill. First of all, you can't say you're the old guy because we do have Peter up on stage. All right, Peter, thank you. Please stay as long as possible. On this stage, stage you can't say that second of all i want to ask you a question do you know what the total tax collection of the united states government is uh is or was it or it is in 2023 no but it's easy to calculate because you could just look at the debt versus the spend so it's four4 trillion. Right. $4 trillion. And right now, as it stands, they're going to spend $1 trillion of the $4

trillion servicing debt. Right. That's 25%. 25% of the total tax collection of the United States is going to servicing debt. And they're going to be refinancing 33% of that debt in the coming months. At a higher rate. from lower than 2% to over 5%. And so I think that $1 trillion number is going to go up significantly. And the spiral is going to basically cause them to have to do some backtracking, not to mention the fact that I do think unemployment numbers are completely understated. And I think the real ineffective unemployment number is higher because of the way they, they change the denominator.

Yeah. It's people with two jobs. Effectively, but it's more, it's even more than that. I actually think they just skew the denominator to make them, to make their case. And we'll say what they have to right now to,

to not, to not turn into Volcker. So anyway, I, my take is, is we're going to get surprise liquidity in the system next year. I don't think it's going to be having driven. I think it may coincide timing-wise with the having, and people will once again correlate the having with an up move, but I don't think that's what's going to happen.

I think peace is going to break out, which people aren't expecting right now, and I think we're going to get a big pump in liquidity when the debt burden becomes unsustainable in the next few months. Well, we going to get a big pump in liquidity when the debt burden becomes unsustainable in the next few months. Well, we know we'll get the pump in liquidity. The timing is always the hard part, right? I mean, that's literally inevitable. Yep, I agree. Yeah. Patrick, then Joa. Yeah. So Hindenburg Research did a study on 55 countries that reached 120% debt to GDP ratio, which is around where the US is now, and 54 of them ended up monetizing the debt. So as far as I'm concerned, it's basically a matter of

if not when they have to turn the money printer back on. You mean when not if? Yeah, I assume. When not if. Yeah, when not if. Yeah, I agree with that. The only, I think, argument people would make pushing back is that none of those countries were the United States with the global reserve currency. I tend to agree with you, but there is an argument that it is a bit different when talking about the U.S. versus smaller economies. Do you think that that's valid? I think it's valid. I think the difference, if you look into the dollar milkshake theory, is that probably the U.S. dollar will be one of the last fiat currencies to fall simply because so much debt and exports are measured in dollars.

But that being said, that doesn't change the ultimate outcome, which is that you can't have debt increasing at infinitum. Joe, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, to bring it back just to the ETF thing, I think this ETF is different just because we have a situation like example in New York where you had billionaires row, where I think it's like 68% of the properties are empty. Billionaires are simply using it as a safety deposit box almost where their parking capital, because they have nowhere else to put it. once we had and if you do the calculation

it's actually a better return to just buy the etf than to do the real estate part especially when you know real estate prices seem like they're probably going like they're going down uh refinancing is becoming impossible um i just see it as an alternative for people that don't know where to put their money to have too much money. So that's why I think this ETF is a bit different. Yeah, the challenge with that is, is that with real estate, real estate is less liquid than the actual ETF. Whereas Bitcoin trades 24-7 and you're basically launching a product that trades 30 hours a week. So I think you're going to see massive outflows from Grayscale as the discount converges to zero, not to mention the fact that God knows what's going on with DCG behind the scenes. And I think it's going to be a big nothing burger from a liquidity perspective in the

Bitcoin markets, except to send a positive message that, you know, this has been blessed and BlackRock is real and, you know, hopefully the others like ARK are real. But I think the public is going to be disappointed when it comes to the actual volume purchased in these ETFs. I'd be shocked if it was over a couple of billion dollars. We have some precedent, obviously, but I think it's largely the timing in the market. We had the Bitcoin futures ETF. Of course, it was the top of the market, as we've seen many, many times. But that did, on BITO, did a billion in a matter of days, a couple billion between them, Valkyrie, and others that were approved over the first two weeks. But then we have an Ethereum futures ETF and blended ETFs,

and they did literally a couple hundred thousand dollars, right? Sure, but that's micro strategy for a couple of quarters, right? So, again, I actually think it's liquidity and retail that is ultimately going to get Bitcoin to the promised land, if that's all you care about. It's not what I care about, But if the focus is just on price, you cannot get there on a couple more billion dollars being put under lock and key. You just can't. What would be the number? You know, we've heard numbers, people say it would be 20, 30 billion flowing into those. I think that's a bit

exaggerated, to be quite honest, I think with time. And I do think that if BlackRock gets approved, they likely have some investors lined up. I don't think BlackRock launches and comes out flat. But there's got to be some number where it becomes meaningful enough to really push price. Yeah, I think it's billions with an S. And like I said, I think I think that's a another government driven pump of liquidity that we are likely going to get next year anyway. So the narratives will probably be, yeah, thank God we got the ETF. Thank God we had the halving. And I just I'm saying I'm telling you, like, that just doesn't correlate. The math just doesn't work. Right. The only math that only math that's worked for Bitcoin and Ethereum run up so far. I'm not talking about usage. I'm talking about price run ups. Are these, you know, government driven changes to liquidity, stimulus checks?

And think about all the savings that was generated in the United States is basically gone. It's dwindled to zero in the last few months. And now we're running massive amounts of debt at the consumer level, which we have a hangover on and God knows how we're going to deal with that at these interest rates. And that's actually exacerbating the problem. So we're in a very different environment now than we were during the last run ups. And so the good news is, is if all you care about is the price of Bitcoin, I think that the government's going to have no choice

but to support your base case in the next year. Does anybody disagree with that? Can I just reply to what Bill was saying about the ETF? The thing that I noticed, Bill, and I've been in crypto for a long time, 2012, there's a narrative that's starting to play out, which I've never heard, except in the very beginning of Bitcoin, which is, I'm hearing a lot less talk about speculation. And I'm hearing a lot more people. I mean, I'm shocked. I'm hearing

Peter Brand talked about you should own gold and Bitcoin. I'm hearing much more flight safety talks than I've heard since the very beginning, like in 2011, 2012 of Bitcoin. And I think that's the narrative that's changing because that changes things for people. And I don't know, Scott, I know you've been around a long time. I don't know if you have that sentiment as well, or if it's just me. But it just feels like it's a different conversation than it was. Yeah, I tend to agree with you, actually. Guys, as we're talking about this, I actually realized we didn't kind of do the very brief news review. So I just want to kind of highlight really quickly the few main stories that we do have, at least in crypto today. We have Grayscale SEC deadline

at midnight that, of course, we've kind of talked a bit about, maybe becomes a nothing burger, but that seems to be the biggest story of the moment. There was a story on Cointelegraph that Coinbase spot trading volume falls by 52% compared to 2022. I don't think that surprises anyone. I think that whether you believe in the pre-having year or not, that that's exactly what we would see aligning at this time. Uniswap launches Android wallet beta for Google Play. Platypus Finance suffers more than $2 million exploit on Avalanche. If you haven't seen a $2 million hack, is it even a day in crypto? I don't think so. And Coinless launching, where did that one go? It disappeared. Coinless launching staking fund that will offer US accredited investors the opportunity to earn yield on their assets.

And then, of course, maybe personally the biggest story of the day, CFTC charges former chief executive officer of digital asset platform Voyager with fraud in massive commodity pool scheme. I actually brought up Amateo, my good friend over there, who obviously was head of marketing at Voyager for a long time. Everybody knows that I was a big fan, friend of Steve and creditor there as well. I would love to just hear your thoughts, Amateo, on seeing this news, because it seemed like this was going to be pretty clean. Yeah, caught me by surprise. You know, I think we had seen the investigation being underway. I think a lot of us had a lot of questions if anything it came to everything from fdic insurance to stable coins to yields especially when it came to uh kind of the final days when everything started to go down um you know we were given these communications. And I think similar, I think we all drink the Kool-Aid, Scott, and I think many other people did in terms of, hey, you know, Voyager is built different, right? I mean, those are kind of the this time is different, built different, or almost the famous last words. But we all had this underlying perception um i think what may surprise people is that the employees did too

that um the way that we were going about generating yield was in the lowest risk fashion with the highest liquidity providers with uh kind of a proprietary set of partners and that the executive team was going to be doing everything absolutely necessary at the highest level in order to protect user assets. And there was always just this reassurance behind the scenes. So I think one of the big questions that was in the filing is the communication that happened right before the bankruptcy was filed that saying, hey, the assets are safe and Voyager is well positioned and there's really nothing to worry about. You know, kind of try to stop this mass.

Your assets are FDIC insured. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, obviously, I do think that that that the communication, I mean, it's always really tricky, right? Like we were guided to put FDIC insurance with the clause that this is only in reference to uh usd not usdc kind of sandwich uh right next to uh stable coin yields so i'm not surprised that it was seemed as misleading i always had concerns about it it was always something that we had voiced that was like uh okay like we'll do this

but you know i don't think any of us ever thought that it would come to this so when when we received this communication that all these you know assets were secure i think myself amongst everyone else man we just breathed a big sigh of relief because the you know rome was burning every single different player was falling and we thought we were safe and um only for days later to to get another piece of communication that needed to be put out around uh filing for bankruptcy uh it took the vast majority of employees by shock um i think something that would also surprise people is that literally everyone except for Steve, in my opinion. But yes, I think there was a couple others, you know, right. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. At the very top. You know what I mean?

But we but we sure as hell didn't know. I know the CMO didn't know. We were we were all really really distraught i think i think unlike i think voyager really gets bundled up in this ftx debacle and a lot of people think that operationally it was just an absolute disaster like ftx and you know i think one of the saddest things about it is that it wasn't um It was just full of really hardworking, esteemed professionals who fucking killed themselves for this thing. I mean, we worked so hard for years to build it to what it was. So, yeah, I mean, it's not surprising to me that those communications, they were misleading. I think that the position that they were in is not what was represented.

And I think we were all really like, hey, we just put this out there. I know some particular people who worked on some of those communications that were just beside themselves. I mean, absolutely beside themselves, myself included. And, and, and just so distraught. You know, I think when everything came down, I was a bit of a public figure for Voyager. So obviously took a lot of heat and rightly so it's just, we were just so out of the know. So, yeah, I mean, I was a public figure for Voyager too.

Totally. Totally. He worked so closely. Quite a bit at that time. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think there was also this perception that, you know, people who are closer to the matter, maybe have the opportunity to help friends and family get assets off. That was just not the case. You know, the hammer came down on everyone and um everybody

everything got subpoenaed so you know i'm glad i didn't do anything stupid because every message everything if there was anything related um it got subpoenaed so um yeah i mean it it's it's pretty wild i'm really curious to see you know what kind of the net result of this is um like like this investigation this filing uh you know there's some some obviously this isn't like a criminal proceeding this is coming from the cftc so we'll see how they'll pursue things further sorry go ahead go ahead i was just gonna say the last thing that I'll add to this is that, you know, this wasn't just like text in the FTX. They were like, just put this out there and say, we'll buy all FTT at $22 and everybody will love it.

And they'll buy it all and everything will be fine. You know, none of that was the perception as all the communication went through legal review, compliance review, executive review. So it came top down. It went through a top down process only to lead to this, which I find to be completely remarkable. In the position of working there, you would never expect for those reviews to be in place and for something like that to still occur. Yeah, a serious lesson. I think it's kind of a bitter, and Peter, I'll let you chime in a second. I think it's just a sort of a bittersweet

situation because I think at this point, we all know that if Voyager had liquidated assets day one, right, we would have gotten 70, 75 cents on the dollar. We end up getting what they called 35. But if you look at the value of your assets on the day of the bankruptcy, it's 24%, right? Roughly. So, you know, it's a 3x. And I think there's a perception that the bankruptcy was declared to protect the executives, right? Because there were existing suits that nobody talks about that got cleaned out in bankruptcy, and there were a hell of a lot more that were coming. Yeah. And if there wasn't a bankruptcy, who knows what kind of tsunami would have rolled in, right? But I will say that I have no idea if this is true. You know, I think that the pressure for bankruptcy was a hell of a lot higher due to the fact that Voyager was public.

I don't know if that's true. Sam said the same thing, and they weren't public, but aboutdx that there was this pressure to declare bankruptcy and anyone who's seen how much money bankruptcy lawyers get uh would not be surprised by that yeah it was like i can't believe it i mean that the the last the last like one of the last formal documents that i submitted before i resigned was uh and it was right. It was, it was basically this weird window about 24 hours where, um, I was told that this was going to happen. Um, I couldn't do anything about it. And I was waiting for the ball to drop. And I actually didn't know when the news would hit. So I ended up up being 24 hours i thought it was only going to

be about four i put together a very thorough idea doc of everything we could do to restructure to avoid this scenario because i just knew that the customers everyone would just get absolutely hammered and it was just gonna it was just gonna be such a fuck situation. So that was like one of the last things I put together. I had lots of ideas and had lots of different possibilities. No one was going to go for it. You know, it wasn't going to happen. I'll say, I don't know if I ever told you this. Well, first of all, like before the bankruptcy, Voyager had done me a favor and turned off my crypto withdrawals because I had a sizable amount of money.

And I said to Steve, actually, once upon a time long ago, I said, listen, I can't walk around with this accessible on my phone. But then for two months before the Voyager bankruptcy, I tried to contact everybody over and over again to turn on my crypto withdrawal. So I was literally the only Voyager customer in the world who couldn't withdraw during that period of fear. And then obviously, you know, my withdrawal went from like 500 grand a day to 10 grand a day overnight. And so I couldn't get crypto out and I couldn't withdraw. But then to even add to it, last November, Thomas Brazile, who's been on here a lot of times, who buys bankruptcy claims and flips them, right? I got a call from a friend who said, I just sold my bankruptcy claim in Voyager for 65 cents on the dollar.

And I said, oh, get me on that shit, right? Put me in touch with Thomas. We started talking. He was like, we'll figure this out tomorrow. We'll be able to transfer your claim. You can sell it to me. And FTX collapsed that day and the claims went down.

Oh my God, unbelievable god unbelievable i mean it's laughable i mean at this point but wow i mean it was absolute disaster peter did you have something to add sorry yeah no i i was just gonna say i just finished you know michael lewis's book on sammy um reinforced what a non-transparent can of worms the whole crypto back behind the wall space is. I'm just wondering relative to what we just talked about, how many more shoes are yet to fall? How many more dominoes are yet to fall in the space? It's a good question. I think there will always be more, right? It's just a lot to cleanse.

I think the question becomes how significant will they be if they do, right? Or how much of that is expected or priced in? Listen, I have no specific thoughts on Binance, but I think a lot of people point to Binance as potentially a player there. One of the narratives nobody's talking about, seemingly, is that FTX bought out

Binance from FTX, which we all know, but using customer funds. So there could be a massive potential clawback against Binance of funds back to FTX, which could be a pretty epic issue. And then I think people point to DCG as a potential house of cards. Like I said, I'm just kind of telling the narratives rather than sharing my own personal thoughts on them. But the grayscale Genesis DCG situation seems to be tenuous at best, right? And so even the question then becomes like, do people just expect these things to fail at this point after seeing Genesis go bankrupt and all the kind of around Binance? And how large of a player in

the market will these will these entities be by the time that happens if it does yeah i'll just add to that that the the other shoe to drop there that that you know keeping in mind that block five voyager ftx uh three arrows this was all from a yield seeking environment. This was the hype of yield seeking. In retrospect, it all probably seems crazy to everybody that people would take on all this risk for 8% when now the Fed is paying four and a half, right? And so what we've seen as a whole is the flush of yield seekers. But what we haven't seen is who has been able to buffer the initial blow and may still have issues. And as you said, Scott, you know, there's these clawback concerns. There's, you know, in regards to Voyager, there's a $400 million hold that Alameda has on assets they're claiming to be theirs, which, you know, in my opinion, it actually belongs to Voyager customers.

There's opportunities for more. There's a lot of cases to be settled. So we'll see. Scott, do you mind if I just share one last piece in the Voyager story? Love having you here. It's cathartic. Go for it. Totally. our one last kind of piece in the voyeur story love having you here it's cathartic yeah go for it totally um i'll say that one of the one of the pieces that just really uh man it really aches in

my heart is uh is i for almost two and a half years maybe maybe the whole time i was there which about three and a half um i had just preached that we should just focus on staking. That staking was the future. Algorithmic staking was about providing yields. And, you know, we had market, you know, and it's even in the filing, marketed as high as 12% yield. Well, that 12% was on polka dot staking. You know, that wasn't on risky risky borrowing uncollateralized assets to

to idiots you know in three euros capital um uh you know there's people who support those guys whatever i just think they're idiots but but i i i you know we we had a an acquired an investment in block damon which is a on-chain staking company. And Steve wrote me, God, I want to say it was a couple weeks to a month before everything collapsed that said, hey, I really get staking. I'm all in. Let's build this. Let's do this. This is the way and it doesn't require any risk. And I just was so like, Oh my God, like finally, finally like we were there and we didn't even have a chance to, to too little too late. And,

and you can imagine that if that was the only focus that there could have been a built different narrative. Now whether Voyager would have survived the perception of the sec on stakeable assets being potential alleged securities and some of these other things that these brokers and their inability to register ended up getting hammered for lack of registration even though it was unclear you know whether it could have fared all those headwinds on top of a brutal bear market with record low volumes for in ratio to the amount of assets that are actually in the market you know i really don't have the answer to that the the fate could have remained the same but yeah uh pretty

ironic here but i just don't think that what we see right now is an exorbitant yield-seeking environment because there's plenty of yield on the dollar. Asset prices are down 99%. Go get into Treasury. Go buy some bonds. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining and sharing your thoughts on that. I know that you had to remain silent for a very long time. I did. It's just interesting that we're now seeing this, you know, well over a year later,

at least some, some blowback towards the actual executives. And, you know, interesting to see, I think, how this plays out. I think, you know, I've shared the thoughts a lot of times before, but each of these situations, Voyager, FTX, BlockFi, Celsius, I think they were all different. But to your point, I think they all came for this hunt for yield. I mean, I remember even talking to Steve about the fact that when Doge went crazy, you guys had millions of people trying to sign up.

People remember that centralized exchanges could not get onboard people fast enough. I talked to CZ during that time and he was like, I'm a customer service agent. There's not enough people. We can't get enough people to work for us to onboard customers. It was too fast and largely because of Doge. But then you're in a situation where you have millions of new customers who are expecting a 9% yield.

And that's inevitably going to push you just further down the risk curve until something explodes. So I think there's cases of people who maybe got out over their skis and rather it was either lose the customers or go get riskier to get that yield. And that might be more of the case here. And then there were people who, when you listen to their case, like SBF were just outright frauds from the very beginning running Ponzi schemes. And know, and that, and in my opinion, you know, when you see that SBF was putting the back doors and lending to Alameda in 2019, before there was even the bull market, you know, that that was contrived and planned from the very beginning. But guys, I think we're going to wrap it up here. Thank you, everybody, for your perspectives. Thank you, especially

Amateo for sharing your thoughts on that, of course. Once again, guys, that big red logo, CryptoTown Hall, as you notice, we put in a full week here sharing your thoughts on that, of course. Once again, guys, that big red logo, Crypto Town Hall. As you notice, we put in a full week here running the show on that account. It's been great. And hopefully we'll have Mario's voice back very soon as things hopefully calm down in the war. If you guys haven't been paying attention, he's been running 18 to 20 hours of spaces a day himself over there.

Absolutely just astounding work and coverage. attention. He's been running 18 to 20 hours of spaces a day himself over there. Absolutely. Just astounding work and coverage. So I can't wait until things calm down a bit and we get him back participating, but really has been great. Everybody down there, follow all of our guests. They're up here because we love them and because we give them our stamp of approval. Otherwise, guys, we will see you back on Monday, 10, 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Thank you, guys. It's a wrap. See you on Monday. Bye.