The Wolf Of All Streets - Grayscale Wins Lawsuit Against Sec | Crypto Pumps | Crypto Town Hall
Episode Date: August 30, 2023Crypto Town Hall is a daily Twitter Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in the crypto and bring the biggest names in the crypto space to shar...e their opinions. ►►OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $60,000! 👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/  ►►NORD VPN GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets  ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/  Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker  Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io  Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe  Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c  #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey man, I don't have my headset today. How's the audio?
Uh, it's fine.
Okay, so good, yeah?
Yeah, for a minute there, I thought you were ran.
Oh, shoot. That was just pretty shit.
I'm not even kidding.
Shit, that's like the worst thing that you could say, man.
The worst thing you could say. What the fuck, man? What a way to start the show.
I'm not kidding, though. I literally checked checked you just said sounded different you know a little uh yeah
i might skip today's show if that's gonna be the case when i sound like uh no you sound good and
look at joe joe just live he changed his profile photo live on stage just now joe what is it with
you changing your profile photo every month it It's the worst way to build that.
It's an NFT space.
I figured I'd put it as an NFT.
Yeah, but
I still see Joe's black and white picture.
Oh, that's good.
Now I see him. He's some sort of
superhero with an orange
mask. Yeah, exactly.
Come here to save
us from the SEC.
Let me see the panel.
I think I've invited you.
I've invited everybody.
So today's show, before we kick off today's show, let me ask Scott,
any updates on Ben?
Because Ben is generally relatively loud,
so he's always there to comment on anything that's happening.
But he's been pretty quiet on what
happened yesterday have you heard anything since i know that ran hasn't uh no so i mean
so i messaged him on the join ben coin account um just to check in you know obviously like when
you hear someone we're not friends by any stretch but he's definitely someone i've met and spent
some time with and talked to quite a few times and And I messaged him, I said, is this you on this account now? And he
said, for the interim, yes. And that's all I got. So I don't know where he is or what he's doing at
the moment. I would imagine that he's talking to his lawyers about his options and planning his
next move. But also his platform has been somewhat removed, right? He doesn't have access to his lawyers about his options and planning his next move. But also, his platform has been somewhat removed.
He doesn't have access to his main Twitter account.
He doesn't have access to his YouTube channel.
So I'm not sure where he would be able to make a grand statement at the moment.
But yeah, honestly, I don't know.
He does have one of his accounts, the Ben Tolkien one, as a platform.
Yeah, it's JoinBenCoin.
That's the one where i
had reached out to him when i saw that he had tweeted about the the mutiny um and you know
he did say there was a tweet from that from that account 13 hours ago that said ben is not owned
by hit network or bitboy crypto it's managed by a separate entity entirely controlled exclusively
by ben armstrong and duchess of defy the release and implementation of V2 is unaffected. And
we had said that on the show yesterday. But honestly, I was like, I don't know why this
kind of struck me, but I find the whole thing profoundly sad. I just, you know, addiction
relapse. It's a fake something that we've all largely seen in our lives. And then you go on
Twitter and you get the usual sort of cocktail and I get get it. He was a controversial personality, but the usual
cocktail of hate jokes. And the guy has a wife and three kids. And I think if you're a father
and you have kids, things like that are going to strike at least slightly close to home. And I wish
everyone would just lay off and move on to the next story. But the one thing you can guarantee
about crypto Twitter is they'll do exactly that. All right, cool.
Let's kick off today's story.
I think we'll start with the market update.
And this market looks just depressing.
The money just flowing out.
I think I was watching Rand's show today.
I watched his show, not yours, Scott.
And just for a change.
And then he's just talking about how money is leaving the market.
He's talking about USDC outflows averaging $25 to $30 million a day for the past month.
And then he read out a tweet on his show.
Now read out that tweet.
Not sure if Ryan's with us yet.
I think he is.
Time-based capitulation in full effect.
No new inflows.
Daily addresses stagnant.
Devs capitulating.
NFT is trending to zero.
Only the true believers, the patient, and the redacted remain.
This is the opportunity zone.
Not sure if Ryan's there.
And then Ryan and his show
goes on for about 45 minutes talking about him
doing a marathon in Portugal
when his wife was giving birth.
This is a rad show.
You get one piece of news,
six pieces of his life story and how it's relevant.
But it's a really interesting tweet
and I'd like to get your thoughts on it, Scott,
and anyone else on the panel
before we dig into the main story of the day day which is the major stc enforcement on nfts anyone in the nft community
time for you to freak out and but scott would love to get your thoughts on the market and
another i'll mention one other thing that ryan said is that um if you compare the period we're
going through now which is a time-based capitulation if you look at the last bear market
lasted 500 and something days.
That means before it broke above the previous highs.
That means if we are going,
if we are, you know, if it's going to repeat,
I know history rhymes, doesn't repeat,
but if it does repeat, and Gareth is here,
let me see if I get his thoughts on this.
But if it does repeat,
that means we've got like 300 and something
or 200 and something days left.
It's going to be a long bear market.
So we'd love to get your thoughts.
Yeah.
Okay.
First of all, yesterday, there was a tweet circulating that said that this was the longest
bear market in history.
And of course, one silly analyst posted it and then everybody reposted it.
And it was a chart from Glassnode showing year over year percent returns, which are
the dumbest metric I've ever heard for determining a bear
market. Completely arbitrary, cherry-picked data and completely meaningless. It showed the last
bear market being roughly 200 days and this one being over 500. And people were saying we're in
the longest bear market ever. Guys, that's nonsense. Are you guys watching what's happening
in the market, Scott? Well, I obviously saw that the jobs numbers came in, which is pretty bad for the dollar and good for markets.
I haven't seen Bitcoin.
Bitcoin jumped to $700.
Oh, wow.
Bitcoin just jumped $700.
Yeah.
What happened?
Hold on.
What happened?
Bitcoin just jumped to almost $27, but is now pairing those gains very quickly.
It's right now.
But the dollar is dumping.
Yeah.
Oh, shit.
That just happened now.
What triggered it, Dave and Scott?
Jobs, maybe, Dave, because I saw that.
Let me pull it up.
You know, obviously, this is all happening in real time.
But U.S. July job openings, 8.827 million, estimated 9.5 million.
The minute that those jolts numbers dropped was when the dollar started to dump,
stock started to pump, Bitcoin was doing nothing, and then clearly just followed.
I mean, Dave, what do you make of it?
I mean, yeah. I mean, it's obviously the knee jerk, which people are going to fade. But
when you get a candle like that, and you see all sorts of weird crap. I mean,
market makers quotes haven't adjusted yet. You're seeing backwardizations. It's the standard game.
People getting it liquidated or not, depends how many shorts are out there we'll see i mean almost all of these times this happens it fades to some degree but you know we'll see but it's
it's not fading that quickly it's 26.8 can you can you explain yes so can you explain to us the job report and what we saw what
was expected and why that uh led to the to the dollar uh dumping and crypto pumping so what i
think the fed is more likely to pivot sooner or what's the outcome pass i was listening i was
listening to you guys so i was just had the price now i was getting if someone can give clarity on
the job report i haven't looked at the job report.
Has anyone looked at it at all?
Gareth, you're here.
You're obviously the perfect guy for this.
You track this closer than anyone else.
I'm glad you're on stage.
Can you give us your thoughts on what's happening?
Yeah, so thanks.
Thanks, Scott.
So it looks to me like that Joltz number really kind of changes the narrative of the economy.
Guys, hold on.
Guys, guys, guys.
Please check this.
Walter Bloomberg just tweeted, Grayscale
wins lawsuit against SEC.
It actually happened.
Wow. Holy shit.
That's why you're pumped, guys. Not job report.
Okay, there you go.
There's your crypto answer. Wow.
There's that. Huge.
That's fucking... Alright, Scott, you've been
covering the whole ETF story and the Grayscale
story for a while.
What does it mean?
Yeah, Gareth, we're going to talk about the market in one second.
Just give the quick summary here.
So, obviously, guys, Grayscale was suing the SEC.
So, Grayscale applied to convert GBTC, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, into a spot ETF.
Obviously, that was rejected.
Grayscale decided to sue the SEC in an effort to rescind that. And apparently, they have won. Now, to be very clear, to be very crystal, crystal clear,
A, this does not mean that GBDC gets converted to an ETF. What it means is that the SEC can no
longer use the argument that they were using to reject the application. They can do a host of
things. They can go back and reject it on different grounds. They could approve it, of course.
They could rescind the futures ETFs from the past based on the same grounds of the rejection.
There's a lot of things the SEC can do here, but either way, the SEC is just getting absolutely
annihilated. The shorts are going to get obliterated, Scott, because here's the thing you have to understand.
This is within the context of BlackRock's and Fidelity's filings, too.
What it means is that they cannot reject BlackRock and Fidelity on the basis of a lack of market of sufficient size for regulation.
That manipulation argument that they've been making for years is now absolutely
gonzo which means that if gensler has even an ounce of political uh savvy so you got hot mic
hold on scott you're breathing heavily so dave can you just can you repeat that again they cannot
use which argument against so the argument that they have used with the most power over the last, you know, it feels like forever, is that the lack of a market of sufficient size to be regulated is because the spot markets are easier to manipulate than the futures markets.
The judge is basically saying that's ridiculous.
Of course, it's ridiculous.
We've always been saying that.
But they've been hanging their hat on that one. There is no way they can use that anymore,
which means that either they have to pull the futures ETFs entirely, which seems extremely
unlikely, and politically political suicide, or they almost have to approve the filers who
all have surveillance sharing agreements. They could make an argument to
grayscale, okay, we're going to approve these guys, you have to amend your filing to have
an information sharing agreement with whoever you are, and we have to evaluate that. That seems to
be the most likely. So my strong suspicion is, and you also see it because you haven't seen a
whole lot of the anti-crypto army rhetoric,
because that's turning into a political loser. I suspect, and I've said this, I put this in
Bitcoin Magazine, an op-ed that ran a week ago, that they're going to take the win and they're
going to approve the big boys ETFs and all who have sufficient information sharing agreement.
And this is sort of the kick in the ass that I think will force that. And I think that's what the market's looking at. But people have been burned before.
So who knows?
Scott, do you want to invite our ETF guys just quickly? Do you want to invite our ETF guys? I'm
curious to see what they're... Yeah, the team.
Yeah, I want to see what they think. Yeah, I'll tell the team.
Dave nailed it though. Dave nailed it though. So this isn't about grayscale necessarily getting
an ETF approval, as we mentioned before. That would be interesting, but they're still in line
like anyone else. This doesn't push them to the front of the line. What it is, is yet another
notch against the SEC in their arguments for approving these, which makes a BlackRock or other
ETF more likely to get approved. And that's what it's about.
But like I said, to me, more importantly,
the SEC is just getting absolutely annihilated in court.
They're not winning literally anything
against the crypto industry right now.
They're not pushing.
They just keep losing.
Well, yes.
First, I think Dave, for some reason, I agree with you.
I just wanted to get their thoughts
because we've had them a couple of times give us their – if they had to guess how likely the ETF is to be approved.
I think they were sitting at – I think it was like 60% last time we had them on.
I want to see how that changes because I think it increased drastically.
We asked them the question.
We're like, hey, if Grayscale wins the lawsuit against the SEC, what would it be?
And they increased – they gave us a really high number from them.
Yeah, it was 75. So what they were saying was they had a 65% chance of approval this year of a Bitcoin spot ETF based on their assumption that Grayscale was going to win against the SEC, which they also had a high percentage chance of.
But to your point, they said that would go up to about 75% assuming we're right and Grayscale wins.
Correct?
That's what you're referring to.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're going to reach out and see if we can get some of these guys on.
I mean, Bitcoin now trading at 27,000, not a huge, you know, not the hugest move, but
it's nice to see some volatility and some movement.
But GBTC is at 24.
GBTC just went over 20 bucks.
Holy shit.
Yeah. That's going to be the trade right there,
which it has been now for a long time
because not only do you get the benefit
of the upside of Bitcoin,
you get the benefit of the discount closing.
That's the only thing I bought on the dips this year.
So yeah, okay.
Smart.
And then, Scott, another thing you mentioned,
and I would love to get more thoughts on this,
and let me get the team to send out more invites. But the question I had for you then Scott, another thing you mentioned, and I would love to get more thoughts on this, and let me get the team to send out more
invites, but
the question I had for you, Scott, is you said
the SEC is just getting annihilated. What does that mean
for crypto? We see the judicial system
courts play a key role
in preventing the SEC from achieving what they want
to achieve.
If you
think about it, this seems pretty bullish
after what we saw with the XRP and I was seeing
with the trust
with Grayscale.
I just see that
to be an extremely
bullish thing for crypto,
but the markets
are treating it
relatively mildly.
You know,
it did spike up.
There's a beautiful candle,
but it's still
less than I expected.
Yeah,
I mean,
maybe it's less
than you expected,
but go ahead.
And also,
like,
if you look at
previous cycles,
I mean, we're still in the halving cycle
and the depths of this sort of sideways winter period.
We already had the massive move up on bigger ETF news.
Listen, the Grayscale win is huge,
but in my mind, and I will continue to say,
there's nothing bigger than BlackRock
giving the stamp of approval and applying for their ETF.
That was the biggest news outside of an approval of a BlackRock ETF that we're going to see.
But you also have to remember, and Gareth, we could talk about this, but technically,
we had the most oversold that Bitcoin has literally ever been on smaller timeframes.
Daily has been oversold down to 20 RSI and has stayed there for well over a week,
which is longer than normal. There's bullish down to 20 RSI and has stayed there for well over a week, which is longer than normal.
There's bullish divergence there with RSI.
There are a lot of reasons to think we would at least get a bounce.
But for me, this is great news.
It's nice to see Bitcoin moving, but it's not like we're back above 31,000 here.
Right, Gareth?
I mean, this is a nice kind of upward move from the bottom of a range.
But Gareth, maybe I'll add a question to it.
Could that trigger a recovery back above 30,000?
Is that the news that we need?
So the key is, yeah, I mean, this is within a range.
And so as a technician,
remember we broke down below that 28,000 level.
And so if we go up,
that's going to be your first level that you have to attack.
Or so Bitcoin has to attack 28,000. If it can we go up, that's going to be your first level that you have to attack or so
Bitcoin has to attack 28,000. If it can recapture 28,000, then it has a shot at that 30 to 32,000
range. But right now, I mean, it's a great little pop, there's no doubt about it. But let's see
where things kind of settle out. You know, right now, it's still very vulnerable based on the fact
that it broke that 28,000 level. I think it's very important to remember where the...
Oh, sorry.
Gareth, the fact that the dollar is weakening and the fact that now we saw a big drop when
the SEC said they were going to delay the decision on the ETFs.
That was the start of the drop that we recently saw.
Wouldn't it recover with this and with the fact that the dollar is weakening?
I see a stronger bounce. I'm assuming a stronger bounce than people are expecting. Yeah, so you're right. Anything where the dollar weakens, just like gold goes up,
Bitcoin and cryptos in general should go up. So the question then starts to be asked is how big
of a drop in the dollar are we going to get? Like, is this a total
change with the JOLTS numbers coming out showing so many less job openings, and then consumer
confidence numbers are really starting to take a nosedive. I saw consumer confidence numbers
that are just above the what we see in recessions, right? So if we do start to see that, and then the
expectation is the Fed starts to, you know, not only do they not hike the rest of the year, but maybe there's the lowering or the cutting that starts coming into play by early next year,
then it could be something that starts to push the dollar lower, and we could get a more sustainable
rally. Now, that's going to have to so this is this is where it gets tricky, right? Because
you have that bullish narrative for Bitcoin. But then could it be that if the economy spirals into
a really bad recession, the stock market takes a major dump eventually. And then could it be that if the economy spirals into a really bad recession,
the stock market takes a major dump eventually. And then that's a negative factor for, you know,
crypto and Bitcoin because of kind of the leveraging and panic selling. So it's really
one of those things where like, as a technician, my job is just to look at the level and say,
okay, this is resistance. If it gets broken, it's broken. But as long as it's in play,
then I have to respect
it. But if you look at the TA on the DXY on the dollar, it does look like it should be heading
lower because it's bouncing. It bounced off resistance. So you would assume it's going to
test the lower end now, right? Yeah. So the dollar on a bigger macro picture, like if you go to the
monthly chart on the dollar, there's no doubt that it looks to me to be on a weaker transition. So you likely will head down.
It's just like, like, it's just there's so much more complications with the dollar. Because
remember, also, if if things globally get out of control, like anything happens geopolitically,
then everyone still rushes into the US dollar as the safety hedge. And then how does that play into
it as well? So I mean, in the bigger scheme, if you you know, yes, I think the dollar does head lower. And I think generally, that tells
us Bitcoin goes up. But it doesn't necessarily give us like the short term view of saying in the
next month, where's Bitcoin is Bitcoin reattacking that 30,000 level. For that, I have to go to the
levels and just say, okay, 28 is my line in the sand right now, If we can get over 28, then we start talking 30 to 32 again.
Yeah, I'm just trying to get some, so I haven't seen many articles on this yet. I'm trying to
read some articles and some different takes. But what Scott said, and Dave, I'd love you to cover
this, it does not mean that the Grayscale ETF will get approved. Is that correct?
It doesn't mean, it's not necessarily true that they will approve it outright, but they have to.
They can't use their same reasons.
Now, bureaucrats can do all sorts of things, but this is not in a vacuum.
You have other ETFs that have been approved or that have been put forward.
There's a huge crowd of them.
And effectively, this backs the sec into a corner i mean they can't
they're not going to appeal the supreme court this because they have zero chance of the supreme
court they had a much better chance of the circuit court level uh so you know let's just put that
aside so so this is done they now have to either come up with some other equally ridiculous excuse
and try to find some reason or they're going to have to see reason.
And I think people think that. As far as trading is concerned, Mario, just remember something.
The money that is likely to come into the market when ETFs are approved is slow money. It's not hot money. It's financial advisors. It's like a slow wave. It could be a very big one,
but it's a slow wave. So when the Bitcoin fast money comes in, if it jams it back up
to 30,000 in the next couple days, there might not be
anything behind that. And so you see technical levels becoming
important. But it's really critical to remember that we've
had this feature of a market where you've had the slow money
buying and the fast money, Paulie out as fast as they
possibly can.
So the question is, that I don't know the answer to,
is, well, the fast money, is there enough fast money
to come back in to sustain a push back to the 30 level?
Or are we going to sit here for weeks as all this stuff plays out?
But the trend now is undeniably the opposite of what it was yesterday.
Yeah.
The SEC is just getting destroyed.
The SEC is just getting
just beaten left and right.
It's unbelievable.
When has the SEC gotten good news
from the legal system
in any of this enforcement action?
They're just going to have to stop.
Like Coinbase is going to
absolutely slaughter them
after the Ripple decision.
And after seeing these things,
the SEC cannot push any further.
Let me read out-
This is going to be the end of the SEC's war against crypto. It's over.
Let me read out the Al-Qaiba fortune. They put out a piece pretty quickly.
The US court, and this is a recap for the audience that anyone joined and trying to figure out like,
guys, tell us why the fuck is the market pumping? Well, this is why.
The US court of appeals for whatever issued its opinion
in Grayscale versus SEC on Tuesday,
ruling that the agency was unreasonable
to deny the crypto giant permission to launch a Bitcoin ETF.
The ruling, which came after the SEC rejected Grayscale's
latest bid to launch an ETF last October,
opens the door to a potentially huge amount of new capital
flowing into crypto markets.
So it's from Fortune.
While retail consumers and hedge funds have invested in Bitcoin for more than a decade, pension funds and other
big players are talking about why ETFs are important. Other big players have largely stayed
on the sidelines in part because of corporate bylaws restrict what they may invest in on behalf
of their customers. And then they talk about why the ETF is very important. They talk about the lawsuit over, the lawsuit over began,
the lawsuit began last October when Grayscale sued the SEC
after rejected the application to launch the ETF.
Grayscale's claim focused on the disparate,
disparate, disparate treatment of ETFs
that package Bitcoin futures contracts,
which the agency has allowed since 2021.
And ones for spot market Bitcoin, which has, which says repeatedly 2021. And once for spot market Bitcoin, which
has which says repeatedly denied. So I'm going to get more I'm trying to see if you tell us
anything what it means for the markets, what it means for future ETF applications. But it's just
like, it kind of goes to the point that I wanted to make earlier before the news broke, is that
we're seeing money flow out of Bitcoin, we're seeing NFTs trend to zero, we're seeing just
liquidity at all-time lows.
Yet the SEC is getting just short on one side,
and institutions are getting into the market.
The smart money is getting into the market.
So if you told us like two years ago,
when is a good place when people were more bullish,
when is a good time to enter?
They'd probably say when there's good news,
when the smart money is joining,
and liquidity and volume is at all-time lows, which seems like it's right now. Yeah, I agree 100%. But we do need to obviously dig into
what's happening with the NFT market in the SEC because the SEC obviously getting pushback here.
But in the case of impact theory, there's a settlement, no blame associated
for anyone who missed it. That was the original topic here is that Tom Bilio's impact theory
did a NFT offering and they basically raised $30 million. They just paid just over a $6 million
fine. They did not admit any guilt, but this was the first time that we've seen the SEC really push
against an NFT release as the release of an unregistered security i have to feel like their appetite for going after things like
this that may be it may not wane because it's low-hanging fruit and they can get these easy
wins and settlements but i just don't think they're going after anyone heavily again after
this none of those huge names they just keep just quickly we're at 27 400 scott so it's like five percent now
so um that's a pretty good pump so gareth would you say that's before sorry i keep pivoting back
to the story that just broke um but would you would you say guys like this is what would you
expect from the market considering the news that we have today was that pretty limited price action, Garrett. Garrett, are you there?
Scott, Garrett.
I'm here.
Technical guys.
Yeah, Scott, do you think the market is going to be 27,400?
The next level that matters in my mind and that of probably most technicians is going to be the 28,600-ish area.
Do you remember when we had 31,000 and we were ranging kind of between the
mid-28s and 31? The big breakdown happened from the mid-28s down to 25. So now you're sort of
in a range between 25 and let's call it 28.5. And so I would expect this move to push at least to
there. And then we'll see what happens. Yep. Yeah, I agree with that, Scott, 100%,
right in that 28 to 28.5 area.
Cool. So we'll keep covering this live, and we'll get some speakers up to keep covering the ETF, the Grayscale Wind, which is probably the main news of the day.
There was other major news that I think, Scott, you've covered well.
And I want to offer some clarity on this, and this is pretty important for anyone in the NFT community. The SEC has the next target um and and that's nfts and
that's unsurprising the only surprising thing is that they targeted you know somebody who's trying
in my opinion trying to do the right thing trying to do it right as well probably the the language
they use now we have some things from the agreement that they had when they sold their
nfts but impact theory sold on a fees and they said they're trying to build the next disney and the nfts gave access to buyers i probably should have
looked into this a bit further they gave access to buyers i think to speak to holes or access to
certain shows all these little uh you know perks uh impact theory so tom billiard runs a show pretty
big show he's got a successful company as well um and yeah he's tried to use the nfts as an
access card to the show it's being part of a community which to me is someone trying to play
by the rules i'm not talking sec's rules but you know trying to do the right thing with nfts a use
case that makes sense but they got screwed hard it's not they only they didn't only have to pay
six million dollar fine just for anyone that's listening, they raised over $30 million from the NFT sale. They're not only paying a $6.1 million fine, they have to refund all original
NFT purchases. So every person that purchased an NFT will get their money back in ETH.
And then all the NFTs will be destroyed. Essentially, they will be losing a minimum
of $6.1 million. And that's their loss, plus any other expenses,
out-of-pocket expenses for launching the project.
That, to me, sounds pretty aggressive,
even though it does seem like it's a security.
And it's just another reason for anyone building to be outside the US.
It doesn't indemnify you,
which makes it less likely the US will go after you.
Lesky, what do you think, Scott?
Do you think that was a bit too far?
Do you think they're doing the right thing?
A bit too far could be the middle name of the SEC at this point. So, yes, of course, you think that was a bit too far? Do you think they're doing the right thing? A bit too far could be the middle name of the SEC at this point.
So yes, of course, I agree it's a bit too far.
I think that your summary was very good. But once again, this is the Kim Kardashian moment of the SEC with altcoins for NFTs, right? They basically went and said at that point that any major celebrity or influencer
who shills any crypto is going to get an enforcement action from the SEC. They made a
cute video and Kim Kardashian paid a fine, also did not admit guilt. To me, this is, you know,
impact theory was probably the biggest name that released a major NFT project outside of maybe
Vaynerchuk. I mean, I think Gary Vee would probably be bigger. But Tom, you're talking about an extremely successful guy, a big name,
successful podcast, big in the media. So I think they went after him to make a point and to say
that these NFT projects are not going to be allowed and to basically stifle anyone who's
considering doing this again in the future. I would love the panel's takes on this since we've been talking a lot, but that's how I view it.
I think they went after, once again, a huge settlement. They get the
quote-unquote win, even though Tom and Impact Theory didn't have to admit any guilt.
Yeah, so before going into the panel, let me just read out.
I'm looking at Founders Keys website. It's still up. It says
what they call a story-based NFT. So they build out a story, and I'm guessing they Founders Keys website. It's still up. And it says what they call a story-based NFT.
So they build out a story, and I'm guessing they build out a game from it.
They've got two projects here, one called Mary Muggs
and the other one called Project Kaizen.
So again, anyone in the NFT community, if you launch an NFT project
and are doing the right thing in building out the project,
you should be worried.
That's the message I get from this.
So I would have liked to see the SEC take action
against all the scammers out there,
not sure what their jurisdiction is,
but, or at least target the bad players
in the ecosystem first,
and then go after people like Tom Billiard,
who's just experimenting.
I think Tom Billiard needs new lawyers,
and I'll explain why in a second.
But let me read out what the website says,
just a couple of sentences.
Our mission is to introduce people to empowering ideas
that scale through story.
And he talks about both of his projects.
So that's the use case of his NFTs.
It wasn't related directly to his show,
at least from having a quick check on his website.
But yeah, we'd love to get your thoughts just for the panel
and what that means for the NFT ecosystem
and what other enforcement action you could see from the SEC.
Just yesterday, we were talking about the SEC versus crypto influencers,
and now we're talking about NFTs.
I just have one question.
How long before they go after Trump's NFTs?
Dave, we've got a few years.
Yeah, he said how long.
How long until they go after Trump's NFTs?
Dave, your mic is bad, but I did get to the end of that.
Yes, and there's other players.
If you go through the list of big players in the NFT ecosystem,
you've got Nike, you've got Dolce & Gabbana,
you've got Tiffany, Gucci, Adidas, Time, Budweiser, Bud Light,
Lacoste, Nickelodeon, McLaren, Pepsi,
all these guys launched their own NFT project.
Now, I'm not comparing what they did to what Tom did,
because if you read out Tom's agreement when he launched his NFT,
6C says, now we're building out this IP.
Imagine that it could have gotten in on Disney when they were doing Steamboat Willie.
And that's how we think of the legendary tier.
They're talking about one of their tiers in the NFT.
That's how we think of this whole first job, quite frankly.
So comparing yourself to a public company, to Disney,
telling people, imagine getting into Disney, you know, in my opinion,
sounds like, you know, buying shares at Disney,
just before they launched a certain character.
And then they say, seven says impact theory also underscored that this
value would be derived from the company's efforts.
And it's like they went to the exact language that would piss off the SEC.
And then the lawyer is like, hey, let's use this because the SEC won't like it.
The value would be derived from the company's efforts.
No joke.
That's what Seven says.
And in fact, we would use the proceeds from the offering for development, bringing on more team and creating more projects.
For example, then one example is but yeah i will
make sure we do something that by any reasonable standard people got a crushing hilarious amount
of value what do you think uh i think that we shouldn't be surprised that this was i mean this
is a security like i you know i'm all for crypto fighting you know back against the sec where the
sec is wrong but this is clearly a case of, you know, this is framed as a security.
And I don't know if this guy got decent legal advice before he actually did it
because, you know, to say things like this, this is a fucking security, bro.
I mean, as simple as that.
And since you just jumped on, now what about the news that we saw today?
Grayscale winning against the SEC.
Unbelievable.
I'm actually – sorry, I was actually on a call.
It's tax day in South Africa, so we have to file and pay all our taxes.
But I'm just reading all these things that are coming out here.
It's a massive, massive win for the SEC.
And it just shows when they have been fought,
so you've got the fight against Ripple, they lost, or they lost half.
The fight against the SEC, they lost.
It just shows that if you can take it to the end,
there is actually a chance of beating the SEC.
And every time we beat them, it makes us a little bit stronger.
So I think it's a massive, massive, massive win.
Yeah, I'm trying to get some different takes from Crypto Twitter as well.
So we've got two big pieces of news today, one good, one bad.
And let's go to – we've got David here as well but so we've got two big pieces of news today one good one bad and let's go to we've got david here as well we've got uh vivek um and i brought up a crypto rover as well
guys we'd love to get your thoughts on two big pieces of news that we're seeing right now
let me bring up call as well someone from the lively panel
yeah today we've got the SEC.
You guys love to shit about the SEC,
but when the SEC loses,
all of you are quiet
and are celebrating.
And then when NFTs
get crushed by the SEC,
all you guys
are NFT profile pics.
Let's see,
Cole.
Cole,
you've got a profile pic
of an NFT.
Maybe time to change it.
I just joined.
Times are changing for what?
Time for you to change your profile.
It is going great.
We're at a very, very high.
Everyone is traumatized today.
The NFT community is traumatized.
Impact Dewey getting screwed by the SEC.
And everyone is sitting there buying crypto right now with BTC pumping.
Why do you think BTC is pumping, man?
It's because our panel is buying crypto.
Can I jump in, Mario?
I think, this is David Towle.
So just to detail, I just got on, I'm sorry.
So just to detail, effectively, you know,
this is a win towards GBTC being converted into an ETF.
So I would expect on the basis of this news, at least for Bitcoin, it now justifies if you look at Bitcoin in a vacuum, which it's not, but let's look at it that way. You know, clearly it should retrace
the bump that it got from BlackRock's ETF filing, if not higher than that, right? Now that we are...
That's 31.
Right, exactly.
You're saying 31, effectively.
Yes, exactly. So certainly, we...
Well, I want to understand something. Just one second. I want to understand something,
because I'm reading something here.
I'm reading something here,
which I think is incorrect.
The stuff that I'm reading here says,
Grace Valley Investments got a green light
from a federal court
to launch the first Bitcoin exchange
traded fund in the United States.
That should not be accurate.
No, that's not true.
Yeah, that's not accurate.
Who wrote this?
Who wrote this, Ryan?
Who wrote this? Call them out, Ryan? Who wrote this?
Call them out.
But it's Sabrina Wilmer and Alison Versprill.
I'm not sure where it comes from.
Yeah, that's wrong.
That's completely wrong.
I'm just – yeah.
I just wanted to make sure that we're right.
Yeah, I think we're right.
I think that's wrong.
That's an awful shorthand for what happened. That's all. That's what it boils down to. To be accurate, right,
there is no guarantee at this point that the ETF will go through. But clearly, the SEC has been
knocked down in terms of its opposition. And so therefore, like I was saying before,
I'm just trying to make a very simple, you know, argument that we should at least, you know,
retrace above 31,000, I should say, you know, north of 31,000, because not only do we now have
BlackRock as part of the, you know, group that wants to offer ETFs. But now we have, in fact, procedurally,
you know, more momentum to get past any pushback that that the administration or the regulatory
agencies would go ahead and have. And so at the very least, with respect to Bitcoin,
that's where we should go. The question is, is whether the market reach through this
even greater than that. But I would be a buyer,
not investment advice to anybody else, but I would be a buyer anywhere below 31,000 at this point.
Really quickly, Mario, this is really interesting. I just happen to be looking at the charts, obviously. I drew a big, anyone who looks at my Twitter, a big middle finger to the SEC over the
chart pattern. But this volume right now, with six minutes left
in the hour, is about two and a half times as much buy volume on this hourly candle as there was
on the candle that dropped price from basically 28 to about like 26. So this is more sell volume,
probably more buy volume in one hour than the entirety of the cell volume from 29 down to 25.
Yeah, I'm going to play you this thing.
It actually came from Bloomberg, funny enough.
I mean, no surprise that the reporting isn't 100%.
But I mean, let's just quickly try and connect or get a laptop to play.
One second.
So what is that? So Scott, I'll ask you.
Hold on.
Here we go.
Okay, I've got it.
Go ahead.
It's been a years-long pursuit for Grayscale.
Remember, it has been fighting the SEC's decision,
and now it has the courts in their favor.
If you look at the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust,
this is the main entity that would face conversion.
This is one of the longest-standing,
largest trusts holding Bitcoin, in which retail and institutional investors have been able to gain exposure for many, many years now. We're looking at a discount to net asset
value really narrowing here. At this very moment, it stands at about 24% under its net asset value,
but that is expected to narrow as they get closer to the ETF conversion,
which has really become a main thesis
for investing in this fund.
And beyond that, as you're saying,
there is a whole host of other ETF filings
in the pipeline.
Okay, I know, it doesn't talk specifically.
It's not voting well for those firms.
I will also say that in addition
to the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust finding some love on...
Yeah, it doesn't say anything.
Yeah, it doesn't specifically talk about what they said.
But that first bit of news that I gave you actually did come from Bloomberg.
Yeah, and just guys, can I ask you a question,
just a broad question before going over?
Scott, are we closer to being able to say that the SEC fight against crypto is over?
I don't think it's over. I think they'll continue to go. No, not at all. So listen,
they're going to have to pursue the Binance and Coinbase action. I would just say that
their case against Coinbase holds very little water at this point, more specifically after
the Ripple judgment. Because if the SEC's entire case, and it's not the entire case,
but the bulk of it is that Coinbase is offering the sale of unregistered securities.
If in the Ripple case, we have clarity that the secondary sale of those is not securities, well, bye-bye SEC.
But what I would say, and I've been saying this for probably months now at this point, is that it feels like the SEC and the anti-crypto army and the Elizabeth Warren wing, they just pushed way too far and the pendulum is swinging back, right? I mean, it's not popular politically, it's not popular with the constituency.
And at this point, I think that there's just not going to be a political taste for much more
action. I think they'll follow through with what they're doing. And I think we'll see a ton of
action against people who cannot afford to fight the SEC and who will settle. Cases like this that we're
seeing with impact theory, right? They get $6 million, they get to make a little video,
they get to call it a win, and they get to set a precedent to some degree that other people
shouldn't do the same thing and could be in trouble. So I do think we're still going to
see a lot of actions. I just don't see anything. I don't think that they have the manpower or the
political will at this point to go after anyone sizable now that's my take i could of course be completely no but scott
scott they're going to carry on going because they've got unlimited no no no wait i'll take
i'll take issue with that ran let me jump on the back of scott on this one look the ftc right um FTC, right, has made similar cavalier moves, right, and has been smacked down by courts.
And the question really is, and I don't know the answer to this. Yes, they have unlimited resources.
If they are given access to those resources, the question is, is whether the president, frankly, and his staff wants to go ahead and continue to support losing
correct using regulatory agencies especially going into an election cycle
that's easy losing there's no reason for them politically to keep trying more enforcement
actions and to continue losing it's a very big risk now look at coinbase coinbase up 11 today 15.35 of course on the day
unbelievable what's going on i mean look i think that the sec the sec i think the biggest thing
here is that we're telling the sec that if you if you are big enough to fight back the courts are
maintaining some kind of sanity and sanity has meant that in every single big case
that the SEC has gone up against crypto,
the SEC has lost.
I mean, that's where it is.
Not lost, but is losing.
I am thankful for Trump-appointed judges.
Me too.
Me too.
And I think that if americans vote for the biden administration
again in 2024 then i think americans deserve whatever they get whatever that means that's
what i believe ouch i think i think people that vote biden trump last thing they're thinking about
is crypto i think there's a lot bigger issues that people worry yeah if you're voting for
biden or trump then crypto is the last thing on're thinking about is crypto. I think there's a lot bigger issues that people are worried about. Yeah, if you're voting for Biden or Trump, then
crypto is the last thing on your mind because
they both hate it, let's be honest.
Scott, right
now, if there's a Biden-Trump
rundown, and I know you're a Democrat.
How are things in South Africa these days,
Ran, because I'm thinking about...
I'm just asking, if there's
a Biden-Trump showdown
in 2024, as it stands right now, as a Democrat, where's your vote going?
I'm not a Democrat.
You told me you were a registered Democrat once.
No, I used to be. I'm registered unaffiliated for the past eight years or something like that.
I don't know.
To be honest, I would write in Pee Wee Herman or something. I can't I can't in good conscience vote for either of them. I hate to get into uh you know i hate getting threats and trolls but i also have a personal relationship with my family that's
not positive mario mario scott scott can't give me a straight answer if you were american and right
now there was a biden trump showdown and you had to and you had to uh uh take a vote where do you
go i'm about to tweet something with banter
bubbles being used. I'll screenshot a banter
bubble. So if you have two choices,
force me to answer this question
or not tweet banter bubbles.
If I tweet banter bubbles, can I not answer the question?
Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave,
I want to hear your thing.
American
Trump versus Biden today
on the ballot paper.
Who are you voting?
And then Dave, I want to add a question to it, if you don't mind.
I'll answer Ryan's question.
One of the questions.
I'll tweet it.
I'll tweet it.
I'll tweet it.
It's out.
It's out just now.
Can I add one more question, Ryan?
One more question.
How this news compares to the XRP news we saw to crypto?
So two questions.
The XRP news was bigger.
This is great.
I agree with that.
It brings us one step closer to getting an ETF,
but that doesn't change the future of the industry
and what is a security and what's not a security.
But that makes the ETF a lot more likely to be approved.
And for us, the ETF is the biggest news.
Yeah, but I think, Mario,
I think that the application by BlackRock was bigger.
That's all.
From a speculator standpoint, this is bigger.
Would you rather have, when you're kids, you play the game, would you rather?
Would you rather have a Bitcoin ETF or a ruling that the altcoins aren't securities?
Which one is more beneficial for you in the long term?
The ruling is not as powerful as an ETF getting approved.
The ruling…
No, the one changes the trajectory of the entire industry.
The other one is just some more buying pressure.
Very different.
But, Ran, as a speculator, this is bigger news.
If you're purely a speculator, this is bigger news.
No, it's not.
Come on, this is on one asset.
This is on Bitcoin.
What about the other assets?
I'll agree with Ran on that. This is David Towle. This is very Bitcoin narrow. And frankly,
if again, going back to the SEC, I don't know what their what its mandate is in terms of how far it can go. But it could continue to pursue everything else that's gone on its plate,
you know, except for Bitcoin related actions, which at the end of the day, we all knew eventually the SEC would have to throw up its arms and say, we agree that we've always said that Bitcoin is not a security.
And therefore, you know, we should be comfortable allowing for a spot Bitcoin ETF.
I firmly believe that everybody here figured we'd eventually get there and frankly, sooner rather than later. The question now is, and I agree, I would much rather the XRP ruling Do you think people, the mass market will adopt Bitcoin or they'll adopt altcoins? And in my perspective, it's Bitcoin. And that's why I think it's bigger. I do believe that there is room in the world for other currencies.
There's other use cases.
I think that this needs to go bigger than that.
Yeah, my portfolio is heavily weighted to Bitcoin right now.
That's just the trading posture as opposed to a long-term belief in the sector.
I don't even understand.
I don't understand how intelligent people are having a discussion like this.
This is a ruling which is getting us one step closer.
It doesn't even approve an ETF. It's just one step closer to a Bitcoin-only ETF.
The XRP case basically says
all the innovation that we're doing
that is not Bitcoin may
actually not actually be a security
and therefore we can actually continue to
innovate. Clearly, the
XRP case is way bigger. Come on.
Yeah, I would argue. Ran, how many people do you know
adopted altcoins
before they adopted Bitcoin?
This, to me, is the entryway for the
mass market. It was.
Ran,
you're also missing the political...
Ran, you're missing the political
interdependence here.
If Bitcoin ETF is approved and it becomes part of the mainstream dialogue, it's a gateway.
And politicians aren't that subtle.
And so the question then becomes, what's the likelihood if it becomes a popular asset with lots of adherence, with lots of people, that fit act is going to be you know something considered
anathema to the democrats we've already seen breaks in that this actually does have big influence
there is cross it does matter because politicians don't know bitcoin maxis versus you know they don't
think that way the fact is either crypto becomes something that they want to stall and fight, or they don't. And if it
becomes don't, then it's not whether it's a security or not, because right now there are no
rules with security. The only reason Bitcoin or altcoins being a security is an issue is because
the rules don't work for them. Given an act that forces the SEC and CFTC to write rules that will
work, then it changes the narrative.
And so that's what's going on here.
That's why this matters, not just for Bitcoin.
That's why Ether is rallying today too, not just Bitcoin.
I would argue that the BlackRock ETF application
was way bigger than the Grayscale win, personally.
I just think that that's bigger news.
Yeah. But this is a step in the right direction. I also think that the Ripple decision was bigger
than this. I agree with Ran on that more because I think, once again, it's going to be a major
crack in the case against Coinbase. And I think the case against Coinbase is the pivotal moment
whenever that finally gets settled for this industry.
Yeah. And I don't disagree with you there. I just think that look what happened to the price of crypto, the price of Bitcoin when the BlackRock ETF application came in.
25 to 31, right? We went 25 to 31.
Yeah, exactly. Are we going to at least break 28.6? If we don't break 28.6 for this news,
this is a depressing, depressing bear market. Did you expect the SEC to lose this case?
Honestly.
Yes.
Did anyone?
Yes.
I only expected the SEC to lose this case, not because I have any insight, but because
we have experts on here who have insight and are the ones who are looking at this every
day and who have priced that out.
Like you said, I mean, we had Eric Balchunas and James Safer both on here who said that
they thought, you know, Grayscale was going to beat the
SEC. Listen, from the very first day, I don't know if you guys remember, but the first day in court,
the judge of this particular case, the judge was extremely dismissive of the SEC's case,
questioned it outright from the very beginning and almost implied that it shouldn't even be in
court because it was kind of absurd. So I think that most people from day one believe that Grayscale had a very good chance of winning.
The thing is, and once again, just to reiterate, that doesn't mean that we get the conclusion that
we want from it, which is why I don't see this as big of news, because the SEC can play this
in a number of ways that would not necessarily be beneficial for the industry.
Just, can I say something, Mario? Hello, everyone. How are you?
Hey, man. How are you?
All right. Long time. Just from, I would like to give like a more global view of things. I think
sitting out here and going around, I can see that basically the US cannot stay as an outlier
when it comes to this
adoption. I mean, we see a bunch of regulations, a bunch of clarity happening all over the world.
I don't see the U.S. staying out of this. Obviously, now the U.S. have chosen to go
through the enforcement and going to court, et cetera. But at the end of the day,
regulations tend to converge because we live in a global environment.
Second, I think that the new narrative that BlackRock is throwing around when they talk to capital allocators, which is basically Bitcoin is the only truly global asset as an asset class.
And this is, I think, a fundamental distinction that is very attractive for capital allocators, but also for sovereigns.
So, I think, yes, it's going to be a piecemeal type of process for the U.S.,
but things will converge towards just adopting this asset class, etc. The U.S. obviously has
taken the path of going to courts and challenging this environment, etc.
Yeah, that's a path, but it's a path that will converge towards something.
So I think from a practitioner perspective,
obviously it will happen.
When it will happen, we don't know, but there is a path to it
and there is a precedent globally,
and there is an environment in which it can converge.
Let me just give a quick update as well.
And I'd love to go to Ryan.
It's a rare occurrence that we have Ryan on stage.
So we will make the most out of it.
Ryan, your honor.
It's a pleasure to have you after all these months now.
Ryan, this must be the happiest day of your life.
This must be the happiest day of your life.
Your arch rival just got hit in the face.
Let me read out some numbers just quickly updating the markets
and then we'd love to get Ryan's thoughts on this.
Coinbase up 13.6%,
Riot 12%,
Marathon Digital 14%.
This goes up.
We got Bitcoins up 5.1%,
ETH over 4%,
BNB over 5%,
and XRP over 4%.
Ryan, we'd love to get your thoughts.
Well, it's, you know, I'll spare everybody the
schadenfreude. I think anyone that's followed me for a while knows my feelings on the SEC chair.
But, you know, truly, I think the SEC is, or at least it used to be an important institution to
protect investors, you know, make the US capital markets fair and efficient, and really the top capital
formation engine in the world. And it's a regulator that's just lost its way. And fish
rots from the head. And that's what you've seen with Gary Gensler. From a personal standpoint,
that's obviously pretty satisfying. I do own some GBTC shares, full disclosure. You know, I do own some GBTC shares as via full disclosure. I think,
as many folks know, I've been highly, highly critical to put it mildly of Gary Gensler.
But it's always been rooted in facts. And what I think is just asking for consistency and
legitimate treatment. And, you know, the SEC is an agency to just abide by its stated mission and its core
principles, which is around investor protection, where they were failing abysmally with a
multi-billion dollar discount to the GBTC shares that were floated because there was no redemption
mechanism, thanks to its novel structure and its inability to convert to an ETF.
I think the markets are going to be fairer with this ruling. You won't have a delta between derivatives-based ETFs that basically just enrich
the financial firms that are market-making around it and kind of clipping even more
exorbitant fees than you'd have in a spot ETF. I think it's good for the industry's
general institutional adoption and trajectory. And then I think most's good for the industry's general institutional adoption and trajectory.
And then I think most importantly, this should really embolden many other entrepreneurs,
you know, predominantly in crypto, but I think even more broadly, to take a little bit of
a different tact with their financial regulators.
I mean, the issue is, you know, we live in a country where as government, you know, of the people, you know, for the people, not, you know, the people work for the government.
And we've just ceded so much control in general, particularly to our financial regulators.
And there's this kind of unwritten rule that you don't criticize your financial regulator.
You certainly don't sue them. But when they've lost their way and they're just running roughshod over, you know, legal norms and ultimately running, in some cases,
diametrically opposed to their state admission, you got to hit them in the mouth. And you know
what? You know, get this guy out of there, right? He's corrupt, he's inept, and ultimately he's embarrassing
the administration now with some of these
really crippling losses. So it's
a good day for everybody. Ryan, I have
a question for you. If I put
you in front of Gary Gensler right now,
what would you say to him?
If you were to really
speak your mind, no holds
barred, no consequences, what would you say to Gary Gensler if you were in really speak your mind no no holds barred no consequences what would you say
to gary ginsley if you were in front of him right now well i mean you guys have known i've been
around long enough and and you know i i'd like to think that i've survived because uh i'm i'm a
little bit more professional and maybe you know some people might think just from my spicy tweets
but i would probably just smile i mean there's nothing else to say. This guy is losing.
He knows he's wrong.
He knows that he's tried to turn the SEC into a merit regulator.
Look at his ESG standards.
Look at, you know, all these kind of new rules that he's writing, his immediate pivot to
AI to get in the headlines.
I just smile and I wouldn't even need to say anything.
I think, you know, the smile should
basically say your career is over. You know it. You've been on the wrong side of too many issues.
You've embarrassed this administration. You're losing in court. You've lost all legitimacy.
People in your agency don't respect you. And the only ally that you have is a fringe senator who,
frankly, based on our polling, would lose even in deep blue Massachusetts if the former
Republican governor would just run against her. So we got to, you know, enlist him. And then all
of a sudden, you know, Elizabeth Warren's influence in terms of all the staffers at the SEC and the
other major financial regulators, that starts to dissipate and we can start having serious
conversations. So, I mean, I just I would just smile. But, you know smile, but let me just say, I think at the end of the day, what we need is not a laissez-faire, no rules SEC chair, but we need someone that's actually going to follow the agency's mission.
And, you know, you can smile at someone and wink at them and have it be a big middle finger at the same time because the facts and kind of the outcomes are on your side.
That's what we got today.
What was a bigger ruling if you were to compare the two?
If you took this ruling and you took the SEC ruling,
which ruling do you think is a bigger win?
I assume you're talking about the XRP ruling.
The XRP ruling. when i assume you're talking about the xrp ruling the xrp ruling which yeah if you've got if you've
got the xrp ruling and you've got the which one do you think is bigger for crypto it's no contest
as this one um so first of all the the xrp ruling was a mixed bag um uh the uh i think it was
important that they uh that they ruled um that these were not financial instruments in and of themselves,
the XRP tokens. But then you had another regulator that kind of conflicted with that ruling more
recently with a subsequent ruling. I'm blanking on the name of the second case, but that's something
that's probably going to get brought up to the Supreme Court because there's a direct conflict between two district courts. With XRP, you also had the SEC rule that the institutional sales,
so the direct sales that Ripple made of XRP to other counterparties was a security. So
that one was very much a mixed bag. This one, if you read through it, it's basically,
you know, the court saying to the SEC, you just made shit up.
You know, you made shit up because you don't like this asset and you didn't want to approve it and you were dug in on it.
Well, everything that you did was didn't make sense.
And clearly this was arbitrary and capricious. I mean, that's a high standard for a court to not defer to a financial regulator.
So it's egregious in terms of like their decision making process here.
And right, they said that from day one in this case, right? I mean, the SEC was losing from the
first hour of this case. Exactly. But you never know what happens behind closed doors. They can
ask tough questions, but if they're satisfied with the answers, or they think it over and kind of
weigh all the evidence in one fell swoop, then they can come to a
different conclusion, even if their questions are somewhat pointed.
Again, the other reason that this is so big is, as Bitcoin goes, so goes the rest of the
industry when it comes to integration into the broader financial system.
And what this is, is basically a court ruling that essentially says you need to treat Bitcoin fairly relative to other commodities
and you need to treat this commodity ETF fairly compared to other commodity ETFs. And that means
40 act funds should be able to buy shares of the Bitcoin trust. That means all of this
institutional capital that's been sitting
on the sidelines, either because they just can't hold the underlying asset for whatever reason,
or they've been given these like implicit suggestions, quote unquote, that they shouldn't
own these shares because the SEC would frown upon that. And, you know, awful nice job that you have
there. Be ashamed if something happened to it has been the subtext of this agency and the goons that are currently working under Gensler.
And I think that changes that, you know, going to my point about people being emboldened,
I think people, you know, now they look at it at this as a split decision, which is,
okay, we disagree with our financial regulator, but it's still the SEC. And now it's, well, at least we have the course on
our side. So maybe we can be a little bit more assertive here. Even for the most conservative,
old school financial institution or asset manager, you're going to start to see the floodgates open.
And that's going to start with Bitcoin. And then ultimately, I think you're going to see other
victories for Ethereum. You're going to see other momentum building to pass some legislation that gives some guideposts for how this asset class should be treated.
And I think this goes a long way for Bitcoin itself, for institutional adoption, and then also for pushing the pace of what we should expect in D.C. out of the legislators as well.
Okay.
I'm trying.
Do you think that this changes who would be the first ETF?
Do you think that, that grayscale could be BlackRock to get the first approved ETF?
Do you think it's still BlackRock in the,
in the lead?
Do you think somebody else doing that will be approved at once?
How do you see this playing out?
You know,
I, I don't know. I, you know, I think it's anybody's guess. They can mess with the ordering as best they can. It doesn't really change the dynamics for Grayscale, though, whether they're
first or later, because all of their assets under management are captive until they convert,
right? So because of the structure, there are, as many people might know, there are
not currently redemptions available for grayscale trust assets. And so all these Bitcoin are captive
assets that can't necessarily move to another issuer just because they get beaten out of the
gates. But what I think is interesting, you know, with respect to all the ETF competition,
is really what this does for GBTC shareholders long term.
It's going to be great for them twice because, one, the discount is already closing.
It's down to 17%, which is the lowest it's been since, I think, February 2021 or sometime
early 2021.
And the fees are going to have to go down, too, because right now they're priced at 2%
annual fees.
Grayscale has already indicated they bring that number down.
But basically, any other spot issuer that wants to be competitive is going to have to
compete on fees.
And you're going to start to see this get whittled down closer and closer into the 50
to 75 basis point range, maybe.
So not only are you closing the discount to the underlying asset value here by allowing for redemptions with an ETF, but you're also creating some pretty significant pressure on the fees.
And that's going to ultimately be good for shareholders.
What I think people will wake up to tomorrow is if Grayscale can just magically convert tomorrow to an ETF, this is a disaster for DCG.
Because Grayscale is their cash cow and if all of a sudden you have
both immediate fee pressure in the sense that grayscale is going to have to reduce fees to be
competitive from two percent to one percent or 75 basis points whatever it is you're talking about
an immediate 50 percent haircut not to mention the redemptions and the potential outflows that you could see
once this trades at par and people can actually create and redeem shares. In other words, take
assets away from their AUM. So all of a sudden, the crown jewel of DCG that frankly is propping
that entity up because you need the cash flows from Grayscale to pay all this debt and potentially get out from under some of the Genesis related contagion.
Now that earnings engine for that entire business is going to take a hit.
And the only way to make up for that is to see Bitcoin at $100,000 or $200,000 and make it up on volume.
This is bad for Grayscale.
I mean, as much as it's a win for them, as you said, I mean, you pointed it out and we've talked about it a lot. It's horrible for them financially. And we also just had the news that
today DCG was effectively going to repay Genesis. And the false news that that meant 90% back for
creditors. But if you really dig into it, it's more of a beneficial move to help DCG than it
is to help creditors.
I think they're in big trouble, frankly.
Well, I don't necessarily think that it's horrible.
So this is the nuance here.
I don't think it's horrible for Grayscale because Grayscale is a business.
Their margins are phenomenal and they have so many other products.
And this could open the door for them to really be a tremendous player in creating many different types of ETFs and trusts and
a whole family of products long term.
But in the near term, it creates immediate pressure on their flagship products, which
the near term is what matters when you're talking about debt service, right?
So I think for the long term, this is kind of inevitable for Grayscale.
And they're playing a volume game and a number of products game and a rising kind of
tide lifts all boats type of game. In that respect, Grayscale itself is still well positioned. Now,
the issue is, okay, you can't just dividend out those cash flows from Grayscale and use it to
service all the other kind of holding company needs that happen to level up and that are a
result of some of these really tricky issues with Genesis and some of the other affiliates at DCG.
So it's, it's a, it's a really interesting case because, you know, the, the, actually
the incentives at Grayscale and DCG, well, the incentives at Grayscale, you know, or
one thing, but I think both the incentives at Grayscale and DCG are actually to slow
play the actual conversion to an ETF as much as possible,
even though they just won.
Right.
Right.
It's a really, really weird dynamic.
But ultimately, I think you're starting to see the public market reaction.
It's great for the GBTC shareholders.
Yes.
So the question I have is first looking at the SEC's win rate.
You know, they win 90% of the contested cases they brought to the administrative law judges.
And that's between 2010 and 2015.
And they won 70% of federal court trials
over that same period.
So seeing how they're losing in crypto,
we've got two losses so far.
And then we see how the Coinbase one goes
and the others as well.
Seeing all the losses they're facing,
what does that mean for crypto?
How bullish, you know,
looking at the prices right now and the sentiment in the markets right now how bullish should we be
and could we make a statement are we closer to making the statement that the sec's fight against
crypto is close to you know close to dying and their sentiment would be forced to change in the
near future i don't think that gary gensler cares if he has a single friend in Washington.
He's going to go down with the ship.
And so I think unless he gets a phone call from the White House saying,
we need you to step aside and we'll make room for you in our next administration,
but it won't be in the SEC, he's not going anywhere.
Why? anywhere um well because he's he's stubborn and i i think he's um uh you you have to kind of look
at his history and um you know i i don't throw around the word corruption loosely but i think
that he's just a corrupt um you know a political actor and um and him losing in court is just going
to make him dig in and say okay OK, you know, screw you.
Like, well, you know, we'll be acting on their directive anyways. Right. I mean, this is their directive. Right.
You made the point. It's until it becomes politically unpopular for the administration that put him here.
He's not going to change. But, you know, all coming down saying this is becoming unpopular.
I mean, remember, this SEC could turn around and if they accept this ruling.
First of all, I don't know what the appeals process looks like, but they could turn around and they, then, well, let me, I would
have put that as a higher probability event until you saw the parade of BlackRock and
all the other kind of traditional finance firms starting to throw their hat into the
ring.
I think now that there's just too much political momentum from kind of the Wall Street crowd
to push the spot ETF over the line.
But, you know But I think it's
going to be kicking and screaming versus something that's done voluntarily or with any expediency.
So I don't know what this means in terms of timelines, but I don't think that's going to
change a single thing that the SEC does, because in their eyes, they're at least, and think about Gensler's political calculation as he's getting to the
end of his career. He can't take a loss at this point. So his best case scenario is,
let me finish out my term, grind these guys down, piss everybody off. And then you know what?
The next time there's some crypto crisis or some bankruptcy or some big black eye for the industry
when I'm out of office,
I can take a victory lap and say, I told you so. And no one believed me. Right. That's kind of his
only play at this point, because otherwise he's just kind of toast because he's mismanaged this
industry. And I think the agency just tremendously over the course of the last couple of years.
But that doesn't take away from the fact that this, you know,
I always like to say crypto is inevitable, right?
It's just a matter of timescale.
And this is a move in that direction.
So it's great.
There's another important piece of news.
I know I don't know how the panelists are up as well,
but there's another important piece of news that we were meant to cover
before this news broke.
And that's the SEC's win against Impact Theory and the NFT they launched. Now, Impact
Theory is obviously a legit
project. We're not talking about one of these NFT
scans, a legit company by a legit founder.
Yet, their lawyers were pretty
lazy. In
their agreement when people purchased the NFT,
it talks about
it says
Impact Theory underscored that this perverted
value would be derived from the company's efforts.
Okay, that's not in the agreement.
So that's in the SEC's lawsuit.
So my apologies there.
I should have seen the agreement.
But they mentioned some quotes from the agreement or from the website of Impact Theory's NFT project.
And lawyers just didn't do their homework.
So we'd love to get your thoughts on this.
And obviously, the SEC lost when it comes to Grayscale, but you can call this a win with impact
hearing and what we could see in the next few months with
other NFT projects by just entrepreneurs
and also by big companies like Nike, Tiffany, Gucci, Adidas, and all that.
I don't have strong thoughts on this one
other than it just it continues to point to the fact that we need clear rulemaking and guidance from Congress. continue to argue until, you know, the end of his term, what the howey test means and how it
applies to various crypto assets, whether it's an NFT, an ERC-20, you know, Ethereum, anything,
you know, anything in between. So I think, you know, it's, to me, I personally don't read too,
too much into that single ruling. But I thought Paul from Coinbase actually had a
good take on this, which is, you know, bad facts can make bad law, but that still means that it's
bad law. And I think, you know, with this particular case, without going into the nitty
gritty, I think it was, you know, a pretty, pretty bad set of facts, but it's just the SEC trying to build momentum against, you know, a weak project with, with a bunch of bad facts and, and then extrapolate
that to extend to a bunch of different assets.
So, you know, I think minor in the grand scheme of things, but, you know, we'll keep an eye
on the precedent itself and, and make sure that the SEC continues to look at these on a facts and circumstances basis versus trying to apply blanket statements to the entire asset class.
And any updates?
We covered your thesis in a space over a month ago.
And then right after this, two days after that, we saw the XRP ruling.
Today, we're talking about Grayscale.
There's other developments in the past month.
Any updates you'd like to make to that thesis that I highly recommend?
Probably everyone's read it here, but if anyone hasn't read it, I highly recommend you check it out.
Any updates to your thesis, Ryan, and kind of a general take on the markets today over the next six months?
Well, as you guys know, I wanted to have this conversation the last couple of months, and we keep missing each other for different reasons.
I just had another kid being one of the primary reasons.
I know we're a little bit delayed here, but yeah, I think the big overarching thesis that I'm kind of updating right now is like, what is going to be the catalyst and where
are the signs of life? Because we're kind of approaching the deepest part of apathy right now
in this cycle. You know, it seems like the bad news is priced in. Nothing is really kind of
moving the needle in terms of volumes or, you know, adoption or interest. But we're starting
to see some green shoots, right? Decentralized social, you know, whether or interest, but we're starting to see some green shoots, right?
Decentralized social, you know, whether you like friend tech or not, you know, the combination of friend tech lens, forecaster, you know, Twitter, um, having, you know, some, some
issues and, and, and kind of struggling a little bit, um, with public perception or
whatnot.
It, it opens the door, I think, for decentralized social plays in a way that has never really
been possible before. You combine what's happening in L2s and I think a total
zero to one breakthrough with the Coinbase wallet to base blockchain experience. And then the
progressive web app hack that Frentech came up with. came up with, and I think kind of really woke people up to, it's one of the most elegant UXs that I think we've seen to date.
The fees are low. It was fast. You could do it through the Coinbase Wallet app that people trust and find secure.
So there's pockets that I think should be exciting for folks.
Ethereum has gotten through some of its major upgrades.
There's this huge catalyst for Bitcoin in the ETF ruling today.
The stablecoin market caps and proliferation of USDC and USDT.
Circle just had another major partnership that they announced with
Ricardo Pago in Chile today, a big fintech player in LATAM. So you kind of see all this
like grinding out of progress. It's not necessarily reflective in the asset prices,
but it's like the kindling for the next part of the cycle.
And I bit my tongue because I don't want to give financial advice.
I almost said the next blank run.
But the next part of the cycle,
we'll say after apathy,
is capitalizing on all this kindling
that's been built up in the market.
And I think across the board,
whether it's politically in the courts,
through kind of new applications,
new infrastructure,
there's a lot to be excited about going into 2024.
Ron, off this topic,
but just interested to know what you thought of Frentic.
Have you used the app?
Are you...
He's very bullish on it, yeah.
Yeah, he's very bullish.
I've seen back to him.
Well, let me hedge this a little bit.
I mean, I probably have... I think I made like two and a half ETH or something like that so far.
But I think I put in like another 10 or so just to play around.
And I've been kind of buying and selling, you know, kind of keys, mostly just to see how people are using the rooms right now.
So, you know, when I kind of experiment with things like this, it's, it's generally not to I don't like speculating on things where it's a 20% big to like get in,
get in and out of a position. Right. So I've kind of treated some of this as just like specular speculation as a user, just to kind of get my imagination going. And I think,
I do think it's, it's something like friendTech is going to be very powerful.
And the things that I've been pretty interested in are the different rooms where there's various experiments going on.
So on the one hand, I got keys to a number of folks that I don't necessarily hear from that much on Twitter, but they're doing AMAs in their room.
Dan Robinson from Paradigm comes to mind.
He's not super vocal on Twitter, but he's answering questions
and covering a lot of territory in his room.
And I just think he's brilliant, and I don't always hear from him
in the Twitter echo chamber.
So I bought a key there, and I've held it.
Just while you're talking about this, I should just mention to you
that you shouldn't buy Mario's keys.
I mean, even if they're for free,
just don't take them.
Just give them back.
It's just not worth it.
Look, I'm not going to send...
I'm not going to send...
My nude is pending.
Give it seven more days.
Seven more days before my nude will come out
instead of your message of one nude
and then it disappears.
I don't know if you saw that, Ryan.
Ryan has one message there.
It says to the moon and it disappears.
Mario, to interrupt,
we have actually some other
pretty significant breaking news
that X Twitter has obtained the license required
for crypto payments and trading.
Yeah, that happened a couple of hours ago.
Yeah, that was true.
Yeah, I know.
It's being tweeted again and we haven't mentioned it.
So we know which coin is going to be prioritized there, right?
Yeah, it could be.
So we were expecting this because we knew about the application a while ago.
But it is pretty important news.
I think today is full of big news.
We have the Impact Theory settlement.
We've got this Twitter news.
I know, Ryan, you're covering it in your show. And then now we
have the Grayscale
win that kind of dwarfs
everything else. So it's been a pretty
busy day for crypto. You know, we
have all these quiet days where we try to find
news or we cover small bits and pieces.
But today is a pretty
good day for crypto.
And hopefully the sentiment continues
to change. For anyone that looks at the price chart, which I don't, Scott and Gareth were talking about the $28,600 mark.
So if that sentiment change could get us over the $28,600 mark, I think that's a really, really big milestone.
Eleanor was just on stage.
I want to get her thoughts on this as well.
But yeah, that's a pretty good day overall.
Do you think this is enough though, Ryan?
Do you think this is enough to,
and I asked some speakers that question earlier,
to shift the sentiment in the industry?
Because Ryan was talking earlier in his show,
and today I watched Ryan's show, not Scott's,
and he talked about how money's just flowing out of the market.
And he read one tweet, and I'll read it again.
Time-based capitulation in full effect.
No new inflows.
Daily addresses stagnant.
Devs capitulating.
NFT is trending to zero.
And he talks about only the true believers and stuff,
and then spends the time talking about his marathon.
I want to ask a question to you, Ryan, and to Ryan,
because I know he's covered this.
News like this, this is a pretty big piece of uh a big a pretty big piece
of development in the industry is that enough to shift the sentiment to get us out of that rut that
we're in you know the way i see it is you know we're in a sea of negative sentiment um and this
is like one little move to the upside and eventually all these little moves to the upside actually sway
the the direction of the flow but you know right now the unfortunately the flow is very much
against us and i think this move is enough you know like i don't think that this gets us above
the 31 000 and you can see it in the price price is like 27 500 i mean theoretically the price
should be way higher i think ultimately you know bitcoin is very much a function of we've got to understand that bitcoin is very much a function of, we've got to understand that
Bitcoin is very much a function of global liquidity and global liquidity right now is in
trouble. So the big stream is a much bigger stream than crypto. It's a liquidity stream.
Crypto has its own problems, but we still have this global liquidity problem, I think.
Ryan, do you agree?
2015, 2019, 2023, right?
Yep. You know, it wasn't necessarily the bottom of the market, but it's definitely the bottom in terms of enthusiasm, apathy.
And what would concern me is if the pace of developments and and kind of infrastructure
and kind of new things was slowing down i just i don't think that's the case i think um defy
uh still has you know some some pretty significant headwinds even with some of the positive
developments that we mentioned um because it it clearly seems like it's going to be in kind of the regulators, both SEC and Treasury, and some of the more AML-focused regulators,
which is not where you want to be. So I think DeFi still has some headwinds, but I think
kind of throughout the rest of the industry, there's a lot of tailwinds that are building. And if you have
positive court rulings and positive, you know, precedents from the regulators that, you know,
make it possible for folks to invest and to integrate these protocols, you know, that takes
a little bit of time, but that genie doesn't get put back in the bottle. So it's almost like,
you know, the tsunami, you know, right before the tsunami,
you'll see the tide go way out or appear to be way out and, you know, the beach is like super
elongated. And then all of a sudden, the massive kind of rush of water comes in slowly, but,
you know, surely. So I think that tends to be what happens during these consolidation periods.
What that means for near-term price action, that's your guys' shtick and expertise.
But I think for the long term, today's a pretty good day.
How would you define long term?
Well, I mean, I have been pretty consistent, I think,
over the course of the next, you know, 10, 20 years,
crypto is going to be ubiquitous.
And, you know, the back end of the financial markets and most value transfers
are going to be blockchains. So
like that,
that kind of universal
kind of triple entry accounting
for all types of data transfers
and all types of financial, you know, asset transfers, it's not going away and it's kind of triple entry accounting for all types of data transfers and all types of financial
asset transfers. It's not going away and it's going to be a permanent feature of society in
the next couple of decades, but it's going to take a long time. I think different parts of
the market will see different paces of adoption. I think Bitcoin and Ethereum, sooner rather than later,
because Wall Street is likely now getting the green light or close to the green light.
For stable coins, probably sooner rather than later, because they're already so large and
they're a pretty significant source of demand for US treasuries, or they could be.
And then other pockets of the industry
are basically just in their seed stage.
So I think you're talking about
overlapping hype cycles here a little bit,
but the net results is going to be
for some of these major assets
and big pockets of the industry
that are already on the radar of the institutions. I think that's going to be sooner rather than later uh we'd love to get
your thoughts yeah go ahead joe i just want to ask ryan a question while i have him up here and ran
ran show kind of touched on it a bit and i think it doesn't get the attention it deserves
i've been in a space for a long time and i kind of see a threat that doesn't get enough attention, which is the brain drain. We finally have something that is seems more cutting edge than crypto, which is AI.
And I do see a lot of people moving, I just don't have any numbers knowing like how many people are
moving, how many devs are going there. And, you know, these are typical innovators, first adopters
that, you know, they like what's new and shiny.
And I feel like they're going to AI, which is a threat that we haven't faced before.
And just your thoughts on that.
I actually don't see them in tension, really.
I think actually developing models and some of like the hardcore AI work that's getting
done, a lot of that's going to be dominated by big tech.
But pretty much any startup, any tech startup in any vertical
is going to apply AI in some way to their business.
We have a couple of AI tools at Masari that are coming out.
Our engineering team is super excited about it,
but they're working on applications
that are specifically going to help our users for this end
market. And I think that that's going to be true for all sorts of startups, especially kind of data
startups. So maybe I have a little bit of a selection bias here, but that's kind of one
thing I'd say. The other is, I truly believe that crypto and AI are kind of yin and yang
technologies. You know, crypto is going to be important for proving provenance in a,
you know, AI dominated internet. And when you're talking about like digital identity or
provenance of an asset or IP or whatever it is, I think securing those scarce digital assets in
an age of infinite creation of AI is going to be important. So certainly, to the extent that
there's a brain drain to AI, I think it's to AI and away from all other tech, or maybe I think
about it more like a rebalancing. I'm not convinced that it's an exodus from crypto.
And to the extent that talent is flowing out, it's probably mutual because a lot of crypto
companies are financially underperforming right now.
And there's just been a lot of layoffs this year.
So I think it's not layoffs or a flight to something shiny so much as we're in a weak
part of the market cycle.
So naturally the head counts are going to be reduced in crypto.
Figaro, let's get your thoughts and then maybe get lawyer thoughts on today's
ruling as well. It's a good time to wrap it up.
Just final quick thoughts on how, you know,
anything else in the ruling that we saw today that we haven't,
that is worth mentioning that we haven't, that we missed.
Hey, guys, I got to run.
Thank you very much for including me again.
Hopefully, we'll be able to do it again soon.
Thanks, Ron.
Really appreciate it.
We got to go through that thread.
Maybe when you do an update to it in a few weeks or months, we could finally cover it.
Sounds good.
Thanks.
Thanks, man.
I think you have to get your thoughts and lawyer thoughts, man, and then we'll wrap up the good. Thanks. Thanks, man. I think you'll have to get your thoughts in,
lawyer thoughts, man,
and then we'll wrap up the show, guys.
Sure, sure.
The interesting thing that I'm seeing
is we're seeing a clear distinction
between the quality of lawyers on these cases,
specifically the library case,
but from the last rulings,
which are great for crypto in general,
just to have guidances,
they're focusing on the SEC's
failures as attorneys. They're focusing on a lack of evidence
or a lack of declarations as to fact patterns
that are necessary to win their cases. And we saw that in XRP
with the secondary problematic sales. They said that the
SEC didn't prove enough evidence
that the people buying on exchanges
were relying on the representations by...
Or folks in the company.
Exactly.
And here you're saying that they're saying
that the SEC just didn't file enough information
to explain or provide enough information
to explain why their claims
that somehow the Bitcoin versus the futures ETF is any different than the existing two that were approved.
So they're not making law.
They're simply saying that the SEC isn't Java, which is an interesting thread.
Scott was so happy.
Scott did mention that earlier.
He was so happy.
Anyone that doesn't like the SEC, including Kyle and Scott,
this is a great day for them.
Lawyer, anything else to add to today's ruling before we wrap up the show?
And then tomorrow's show, by the way, two things, guys,
before we get lawyer thoughts.
Two things.
Tomorrow's show will be labeled, most likely.
Can we trust the current pump?
That's one.
Number two, Scott, tell us quickly about
DOP, who's
we just pinned their tweet above
data ownership protocol. We've had a whole
space on this topic. Really, really
cool project. And they're sponsoring today's
show. They're partnering with us. So if you want
to check out their pinned tweet, anyone listening
to us, check it out. If you do want to join
the show as a sponsor, make sure
you DM any of us us co-hosts
or the emails that that we will pin above if anyone could pin the emails above hit us up you
want to come on the show we do have the shark tank show that's going live in a few weeks that's next
month so it's in september and so in a few weeks we'll be going live that's our own shark tank
show that's done online on youtube i, I think, and on Spaces,
and Twitter video.
So if you want to join there
and pitch,
make sure you do
in the big Shark Tank show,
the Killer Whales show
that me and Rand were on.
We'll be launching soon.
We were just judges on there.
We'll be going live in January,
not November, December.
They've delayed it till January,
but we saw the first episode snippets
and it's a fucking awesome show
I'm very impressed
by what they've done
it's probably the best production
that's ever been done in crypto
it cost them a lot of money
but the show was incredible
similar to Shark Tank
the production is almost
identical to Shark Tank
I didn't realize
I didn't realize
that they
that they postponed it Mario
till January yeah
well I don't blame them
the market is
is not really
you know
there's too much apathy
right now for a new show so I don't mind them delaying it but really there's too much apathy right now for a new show
so I don't mind
them delaying it
but I want it to come out
ASAP because it's such
a well produced show
and hopefully
they'll show us
other episodes
before they come out
because the one
they showed us
was pretty cool
they showed me
but I don't like
how they edit
you have to see
how they edit
in this case
they edited me
attacking you
hopefully they'll
keep it that way
because in the next show
hopefully in the next show,
they won't put rants crushing me as well.
So, it's hitting back.
I want to hit them up and say, guys, please make sure the rant attacking me
is not edited into the show.
Please, please, please.
Lastly, we have a partnership with a big exchange.
So, if you do have a project or you're a VC with a portfolio of companies,
make sure you hit us up to work with us to list on that exchange,
pretty big exchange.
We've got a really, really good deal with them.
So if you do have a project and want to list on that top-tier exchange,
we'll be announcing their name soon.
Hit us up.
This goes for any project that wants to list.
So that's the last thing on my end.
Scott, do you want to tell us quickly about Doc,
maybe in 30, 10, 20 seconds,
and then we'll get Lawyer's final take on today's news?
Sure. I just want to make sure you can actually hear me. I had to get my car.
Yeah, we can hear you.
We're getting closed down for a hurricane here, actually. So they just closed my kid's school. So I don't know if I'll be here tomorrow. But yeah, speaking of DOP, it's actually extremely interesting. I mean, I think everybody understands the lack of privacy with crypto transactions. If I send something to you, Mario, it shows my wallet.
You can click on my wallet. You can look into everything I've ever done, who I've ever paid,
how much money I have, which is obviously wildly problematic. It's one of the up and downsides,
obviously, of having a transparent public ledger. But at the most simplest terms,
this allows you to push a button
and to take that and to add privacy to that.
So they get their transaction,
but they can't see the specific wallet
and into it and where it came from.
So it gives you an element of privacy.
This works with NFTs, transactions, everything.
So really the implications for private data,
very, very powerful.
I think it's just really, really important.
There's a few technologies working on doing this.
Obviously, privacy coins.
This is one more great way to be able to maintain your privacy on the blockchain.
Cool, man.
Check out DOP.
It's pinned above at the top.
Lawyer, anything else on today's ruling in both rulings, the NFT one against Impact TV and the Grayscale win.
I would love to get your thoughts.
And I want to get Fiji's thoughts on the ruling against,
or not the ruling, the settlement between Impact TV and the SEC as well.
That's really important.
That was going to be the main topic of today.
Again, anyone in the NFT community,
this is a very important settlement to look into.
So I'd love to get Lawyered's thoughts and Fiji's thoughts,
because both of you have a silly cartoon or an NFT as a profile pic.
Fiji, do you want to go first?
I'm not sure if Lawyered can unmute.
Fiji, do you want to go first on the SEC ruling and settlement?
Yeah, the ruling, the impact of the NFT case is really interesting because unlike the statements that's made about the information, the rulings in the NFT case are pretty like patent, meaning they you promise that that money's going to go up and
you launched an empty project uh which was the standard for quite a while in the chopping block
um the question and they settled right so are they will it win if action goes to the merits i don't
know i'm not sure we'll ever see that because i don't know how many projects are capitalized like
ripple or other token projects that have the money to fight so we'll probably see a bunch of these and they'll
probably be strategic because they're guaranteed settlements by the sec so prepared to see a bunch
of really really big bull market projects get slapped for big numbers to make a point
yeah and what about nft projects launched by people outside of the u.s
are they also susceptible i think the answer is yes but i would love to get your what's going to
be super interesting is the overlap with the um the logic in the richard hart case which is
basically the alter ego case so if they can pierce the corporate veil of foreign created entities or
otherwise say that they have a personal jurisdiction over people because they're in or have been in the u.s or used a chain or otherwise it has a basis in the
united states again they're settling these right so they're not going to the merits and most nft
projects don't have the money to back to them so they can make any wacky argument they want
and they can get default judgment settlements probably from a bunch of people.
So it's going to be an interesting jurisprudence
summer or winter.
Yeah, in fact, the impact theory is not admitting
any guilt here, by the way.
To Vigil's point,
the SEC is getting $6 million.
They get to say they won. If you look at Tom's
tweet, he basically says,
we're happy we settled with the SEC and can move
forward. So everybody gets to skin it as a win so this is scott scott scott scott scott i don't care how they spin it
the sec identical yes they're going to go after the low-hanging fruit the projects that are easiest
to get money out of and i mean it's the's the same thing. When we launched our ICO in 2017,
our lawyers told us exactly what not to say.
And Impact Theory said all of those things.
So of course they're going to get hit.
But there's still like the Bordet Biot Club case
that still needs to be settled.
There's a couple of others that are out there
saying that hopefully we'll actually set precedent
and not just be more-
I don't think they'll set precedent.
I don't think they'll set precedent. And I don't think they'll set precedent. I don't think they'll set precedent.
And I don't think they'll go heavy.
They won't crumble the industry. They have a little
bit of care for the average consumer.
I think they're just going to make their points to stop
it from happening moving forward, which I think
is a good thing for the space, to be honest with you.
And one thing
to mention is,
to Scott,
the SEC could say they want, Impact TV can in no way
say they want. They have to pay a $6 million fine and refund every single NFT purchaser.
I agree. I'm just saying that because the Impact Theory didn't officially have to say that they
were wrong. It was like Kim Kardashian. I told you, it's just the same thing. She paid a fine.
She didn't make a statement. She moved on with her life.
It would be very different if this was a court ruling against impact theory that said that NFTs are the...
True, true. Exactly.
Exactly. So it's not like we get legal precedence here that every NFT in history was.
And that's why all these guests are correct, which is that the SEC is going to take the easy wins on people who can't afford to fight and are willing to just pay and then call
them wins and move on because in the court of public opinion that's what they'll be viewed as
and they're gonna look on that point i think it's sorry could you not let you go ahead so good
yeah um also make themselves look good they're setting up the structure of the fund to repay
injured victims kind of like a meto meto celioma fund but that's probably going to do in terms of
disgorgement and by the way we care about you we're setting up a fund to pay back the people
we didn't protect cool all right well guys on that point i think we've been pretty pretty uh
um you know last 48 hours
been full of news. We saw the BitBoy story
yesterday and now we have the Impact Theory
story and lastly the Grayscale
story. So tomorrow, unless there's more news,
we'll probably focus on the Grayscale story
a bit further and focus on the price action
will be a relatively short show. Get a few
analysts in place, macro and technical
to discuss where we are in crypto
today and whether this pump could get us above the all-important $28,600 mark
and whether we could even touch the $30,000, $30,000, $1,000 mark
or we'll be short-lived due to sentiment.
So we'll cover that tomorrow.
Appreciate you all and we'll see you.
Bye.