The Wolf Of All Streets - How Bloody Will September Get For Bitcoin? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

Crypto 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 share 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.

I've just realized something I'm not sure if you've realized as well our team can you hear me yeah our team are selective in what they want to do we tell them to do stuff but they don't do what we ask them to do they decide what they want to do so like remember I've asked them constantly to just start to do the music at the beginning of the show. I've asked it a few times. They don't like the idea. They don't tell me. They're like, Mario, we don't give a shit what you say. We don't like the idea,

so we're just going to ignore you. It's been like two months I'm asking for it. They just don't give a shit. I'm a great manager. We're not exactly, yeah, I was going to say, we're not exactly persistent. We usually throw ideas out into the metaverse

or wherever ideas go to die. And then remember about it a month ago, and we we're like what was that thing we were talking about that we were planning to do no i i disagree i think i'm uh um you know that the the gif of like something coming in from one e going out from the other and this is my life this is just ask just ask romi she's very selective at least what she wants to listen to and do and what she doesn't you are the you are the busiest person arguably that I've ever met which is interesting because I thought Ran was the like hardest working person I've ever met but a from what I've seen from you your avatar is literally always on stage I'm pretty convinced that you're biohacking to somehow avoid the fact that you sleep two hours a day and overcompensate for that.

But then every time I talk to anyone who knows you, obviously like Gaurav, you know, our mutual friends, he's like, even if I get Mario out of town, I finally got him to a yoga retreat for three days. He didn't leave his room for five minutes. I don't. He was like, he just flew to somewhere else so that he could sit there. I have no life.

I meet no people. Like, for example, I'm not going to Singapore to meet you and you're probably not going to stop by Dubai to meet me. I'm trying. I'm trying. And I literally do no meetings. The last meeting I had, like a meeting with someone, anyone really, like a professional meeting where you go there and you meet, excluding the one I had with one of my investors in the biohacking chamber. So I actually have meetings in the biohacking.

I'm meeting someone next weekend in the biohacking chamber. Other than those that happen once every month, the last meeting I had in a restaurant or something is probably I had maybe two this year, three max. And that's really like three too many. I'm extremely introverted, not introverted, but just don't like meetings. So the fact that I want to meet you in Dubai just shows that it's a very sincere request. And the fact that if you don't come for whatever reason, I would probably take it personally just so I put it out there. I'm just putting it out there that it might be literally the reason. Just to see how triggered I can get. Definitely intend to do it.

It's funny that we didn't intend to do it it's it's funny we didn't that we didn't manage to uh do it do it last night but but it's really every single person i know who actually knows you in person is like the guy i mean yeah i don't know how you do it man but uh we appreciate it here we are for you it's friday night and uh or friday evening at least and here we are digging into the crypto news of the day once again yeah i like how we start off every show talking about ourself like people give a shit to kind of warm up the crypto news of the day once again. Yeah, I like how we start off every show talking about ourself, like people give a shit to kind of warm up the space instead of talking about the space. It's because nobody's here. We know we can do it when there's 600 people

before there's like 6,000. Yeah, I think we should do a rule. I think so. We should do a rule. Until we hit 1,000, you just have to listen to us talking about ourself. So we need 300 more people if you want us to stop talking about ourself.

So Scott, how's this bear market compared to the last on a personal level? You got like maybe 30 seconds before we kick off the show. I think it's similar in a lot of ways. I mean, if we're talking about it personally, it's obviously worse because Voyager for me, you know, and I think the collapses obviously that happened in 2022, I think hurt a lot of people in a different way than the bear market did in 2019. I think 2019, yeah, people lost money that they had invested. They were down bad. Maybe they capitulated and they quit. I think in this cycle, obviously, a lot of people were damaged by platforms and things that happened, that money doesn't come back. It's not the same thing as like, I'm sitting on something that's down 90%, but maybe it'll go back

and I'll get an exit. When it's gone, it's gone if you were an FTX creditor or Celsius creditor, BlockFi, Voyager. So personally, obviously, that aspect of it was bad for me personally. But as far as what it's like versus, and I really do believe in the four-year cycle right now. So we're talking about 2015, I wasn't here. So 2019, 2023, I think that this is not nearly as bad. It's so funny. I see all these sort of hyperbolic and exaggerated. This is the worst bear market. This is the longest bear market. This is a bear market where we're seeing BlackRock apply for an ETF and the SEC losing in court to the judicial system and real adoption all around

the world. So I think, you know, in terms of actually mainstream adoption, in terms of recognition of the space, I think much like a chart, we're making higher lows in this cycle than we did in previous cycles. And that's why this bear market is Bitcoin at $26,000 right now, instead of Bitcoin at $4,000 to $6,000. How's the liquidity of this bear market compared to the last one? I mean, that is difficult. We might have people on stage who can answer to that better, but because that's sort of a nuanced question. I think it's very clear that global liquidity is a lot worse, right? And so I think liquidity in all markets is the reason that so many markets are suffering in Bitcoin more maybe than others. And then you add into that sort of the banking issues and operation choke point 2.0 in the United States and sort of this outright

assault by the anti-crypto army on the industry in the United States. And so I think that there's reasons that we have macro reasons for lack of liquidity. We have crypto reasons that are like just the part of the cycle where people are not interested and we lack liquidity. And then we have actually the regulatory and assault on the industry that has cut off banking relationships and literally a lot of people can't get money in and out of crypto. So I would say that aspect maybe is a bit worse this time. Yeah, I would agree. I think considering the circumstances, that's a key point here.

Considering the circumstances, this bear market is significantly better than the last one. The last one, we had nothing close to the attacks we're facing this time around, yet the market performed worse. Before we kick off, least i'm glad eric is here because he had a great video that's a bit more bullish um which kind of goes to rand's narratives i want to challenge rand's uh earlier narrative of a raging bull market whether that still applies and eric could probably make that same argument and then gareth probably make the opposing arguments it's gonna be good oh mike sorry it's gonna be a good discussion let me just kick it off with um before we do a market update i'm just gonna kick it try it out with a quick bits and pieces, pieces of news over the last 24 hours.

We've got majors are down about 5%. I think ETF outperformed Bitcoin. Open interest drops to levels before grayscale news. And I think one thing we'll probably discuss today is how we've retraced every single major development, positive development throughout the last few months. And it kind of shows what market we're in so we'll discuss that in a bit we know that the us judge asserted that bitcoin and eth are commodities that's in the uni swap ruling that happened earlier they got base and coinbase is base tvl jumped by 62 because of a platform um a comable is called

but there's a new platform a defi platform a a DEX on base that's gotten a lot of attention. They did really well. It's called, for anyone that's interested, it's called, it's a fork of Velodrome. It's called Aerodrome. So you can check it out. I don't know much about it. We've got a cool tweet here by Peter Schiff talking about Bitcoin. I'll read it out briefly.

Bitcoin hodlers who believe GBTC will convert into a spot Bitcoin ETF are better off selling Bitcoin and buying GBTC. The current 20% discount to NAV allows traders to increase the number of Bitcoin they own by 25%. It's an even better trade of selling BTC results in a tax loss. Nothing too major, but I thought I'd add it to the agenda. Another bits and pieces and news, and then I think, Scott, you could give a market update with Gareth and the rest of the panel. We've got something you can really touch on because that's your area of expertise but eth heads for a death cross indicator so maybe you and gareth could explain and i could elaborate a bit more on that and last bits of pure bits and pieces of news we got binance's

apac head quits um okay that's a cool one an opinion article in china court daily pointed out that cryptocurrency has economic attributes and can be classified as property um that's a cool one. An opinion article in China Court Daily pointed out that cryptocurrency has economic attributes and can be classified as property. That's a cool development there. We're talking about the positive narrative in East Asia. And lastly, three last points. Elon does say that they're not looking at launching an X coin, a Twitter coin. So there was a tweet that said X might be looking at launching xcoin for creators um and then elon just replies no and plus and last two bits and pieces one very these are

probably the two most important ones at least in my opinion or two of the most important four um crypto vc funding hits lowest level in 2.5 years and i know i've been kind of talking a lot about this and it's a topic i really i really um you know i'm interested in for selfish reasons and the last point here is open c sees the lowest monthly volume in over two years again just shows that the nft market is just taking a beating so it's a quick recap of the the main bits and pieces and use man i like that you have to do that every show uh that's good. That was great. Cool. I thought I was talking too much and I was going to get shit in the background. And CZ did a space earlier today, by the way. He didn't talk nothing too major.

I know there's a bit of fud around Binance. We'll talk about it in a bit, coming from one source. But CZ did do a space earlier, nothing too major. He did talk about Uniswap, the judgment case being very positive, which is, you know, as we all agree. But maybe Scott, you can kick it off for you and Gareth and Mike, the rest of the panel with a market update. I think the most notable thing in the market, obviously, and Gareth, I want you to just generally jump in here because I enjoy when you do it a lot more than when I do. We're lucky to have you here. But I do think the most notable thing is exactly what you mentioned before, if you're looking at Bitcoin, is that it did a full round trip. It returned to the prices where it was before the grayscale pump up and even actually dropped slightly below from where that moves

somewhat launched, still below the 200 MAs for those who care on both the weekly and the daily chart. And just a little, I think, discouraging for market participants, especially for bears, for bulls. And by the way, this is how you get rid of those last bulls and finally have a bottom at the end of the bear market. But to see it happen in two days was obviously a little bit brutal. It took a lot longer to retrace pumps of good news in the past. And we interestingly sort of saw this retrace happen before the news of the ETF rejections came out, leading a lot of people to speculate there was some front running here. That story you didn't actually mention, Mario, and I think that was kind of the biggest story of yesterday, was that all seven ETF, spot ETF applications were rejected. Excuse me, dismissed, delayed. Delayed, yeah.

My word is very careful. Yeah,ayed yesterday. Uh, it was kind of funny to watch cause they did them one by one and then there was a stall and then an hour or two later, they announced the BlackRock. Can I ask you a question on this? I didn't mention it just cause it's like the main focus of today's show. So I just kind of added the bits and pieces unrelated to the main one. But on that point, um, everyone's just making a big deal out of it, but in every one of our spaces, we all expected this. Of course.

Think about this. Grayscale, what was the grayscale decision? Three days ago? Did we think that the SEC was going to just start approving things three days after they themselves found out that they had the grayscale? That would look shady. Couldn't even happen. I mean, to the point, we're talking about the government. It takes a long time to turn an aircraft carrier, right?

And they're going to move extremely slowly on any of this. There was no way that they were just going to outright come in three days after with new rationale. I mean, this is going to take them if their plan is to really absorb this information, go back to the drawing board, relook at these ETF applications. Because remember, the GPDC decision, it doesn't say that we're getting a spot ETF. It says that the grounds in which the SEC rejected the spot ETF were capricious and arbitrary. So they can come back with new rationale for rejecting. I don't necessarily think they will, but those kinds of things are going to take time. They weren't going to just capitulate in three days and approve this. So the fact that I don't really assign the price action to that decision necessarily, like you said, it seemed like so forecasted and we just knew that is exactly what was going to happen.

There was there was no way. But still, you would expect maybe if this was a bull market, you would see good news, be good news and carrying through. And we're just still in that situation where, I mean, if you just think about it this way, Bitcoin, maybe the fair value of this bear market for Bitcoin is just somewhere in the mid 20,000s, right? Because that's where we were before BlackRock. It's where we were before Grayscale. It's kind of where we were around Ripple. It's just, this is maybe the price where there's a balance of interest and we're on this low volume environment where prices are going to sit for now. But Gareth, maybe you can give us an update on what's going on in other markets. Yeah. And Gareth, if you can also touch on the death cross that I mentioned earlier, because technical stuff, I don't understand.

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So just looking at the stock market, we have light volume today. We had this little surge in volume off of the non-farm payrolls today. I think the interesting thing for the non-farm payrolls was the amount of jobs added was higher than expected, but the markets rejoiced over an unemployment rate that popped to 3.8% from 3.5%. So again, it's showing us that maybe there's this potential for the soft landing or no landing at all narrative that we've been hearing so much about. The only negative to the unemployment rate that I would just bring up is that, to me, it's showing me that the participation rate jumped more than anything. It's not like a lot of people got laid off. It's just that people are now coming back into the workforce. And I think that's a result of people spending down their COVID

savings. And then I actually have someone, my head trader in the office, he was telling me about a friend of his who actually had to go back and get a job because of crypto. Like crypto, he was making lots of money in the bull market. He spent all, you know, down all his gains and his losses now are starting to swell and he's got to go back and get a job. So I think we're seeing some of that. I mean, markets are remaining up on the day, but S&P is about four tenths higher. Generally, you don't see big down days going into three day weekends when holidays are around. So I didn't really expect a down day today. Anyways, Bitcoin, again, going back to what what Scott was saying, it's just it's a bear market, right?

That this this is just more kind of reiteration that this wasn't a new bull market that was starting off the fifteen thousand seven hundred lows because you're seeing good news get sold into immediately. We saw it with Ripple, like literally Ripple popped that one day, Ripple's back below where it was before that news even came out. And same thing here with this Grayscale news, we've retraced essentially the whole entire BlackRock news. And again, you know, bear markets have a way of just ripping the heart out of bulls. Like it will make you from a bull into a skeptic again. And I think that's what's happening. People are buying these news news stories and then they're getting rejected and finding themselves in the loss column with their P&L. And so really what we want to look for is when does bad news become good news? When is bad

news come out? And instead, we don't see a new low being made or we don't see a flush and price holds steady. But right now, that certainly isn't the case. And can you talk about the death cross, or is it not really even worth mentioning? Yeah, Gareth, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, in terms of the death cross, I mean, these type of things are very much hyped up in markets. And I find that these golden crosses and death crosses, they're made out to be big things in the media. But in reality, they don't have a whole lot of impact. I mean, it's basically telling you a trend, right?

So the trend, again, is turning back to the downside. So it's a trend indicator, but I don't take it as like an immediate sell signal for the market or anything like that. That's right, Mario. They're lagging indicators. So for anyone who understands a moving average is based on past price action, usually you're talking about either a 50, a 100, or a 200 on whatever chart you're looking at. So if you're looking at a daily chart, the 50 MA is basically the average of the last 50 candles. And so you're looking at backwards data and how one is reacting to the other. A death cross is when a shorter term moving average crosses down below a longer-term one, meaning that the short-term trend has passed now below the long-term trend. A golden cross,

obviously, is to the upside where the shorter-term moving average, whichever time frame you're on, crosses up, and people view that as a bullish signal. But as Gareth said, more often than not, they're showing you something that already happened and not something that's about to. Cool. I want to go to Eric of comment on this particular point market updates and we'll go to mike and probably your take eric on where we are today and what you expect in september and maybe also give a recap for the audience on why september is such an important month and you know in brief it's historically been the worst month for bitcoin for i don't know how many years um also i'm glad jason's on stage because i want to dig into the nft market

or the what people are calling the death the death of nfts can be really interesting uh but eric i'll let you uh i'll let you give us your thoughts on where we are today and maybe in a bit more bullish take sure yeah so uh where do i start with this okay so first things first i'm driven fucking mad by people calling this a bear market uh stocks are basically around all-time highs some stocks make new ultimized bitcoin went on went on a more than 100 rally off the lows what fucking bear market is this is ridiculous uh we saw the lows last year in october or sorry november um and uh and since then it's been it's not a bull market certainly not a fucking bull market but it's a trans market it's a transitioning market and of course you know during this time we expect uh you know the ups we expect some sideways and down and you know it looks like we just hit some highs over the summer here and probably gonna

come a little bit sideways and down and i suspect the first couple weeks of september you know probably gonna set in the lows um at least for bitcoin so as far as bitcoin goes uh not related to traditional markets but as far as bitcoin goes September, everyone knows it's generally a bad month. Out of the 13 past Septembers, only 30% have closed with a net positive gain. And when I say net positive gain, I mean very, very small. The biggest one was 22%, but that was around year three of Bitcoin. Everything else has been minimal single digits. So more or less best case scenario for September, probably sideways price action.

And there is some more nuanced analysis actually on that. So a lot of people are aware that September, typically the most down month, but what people don't talk about is that it's typically the first couple of weeks of September, actually. Why is that? Because there's a quad witching in middle of September. And then after the midpoint of September, it's actually a little bit more balanced in favor of the upside for Bitcoin, specifically six out of 10 were having positive gains. Three were basically just unchanged. So that's where the last three come from. But ultimately, traditional markets um i'm it's it's hard to explain how manny it is for me to hear people call this a bear market um it is hubris it is hubristic to call it a bear market uh for one

on that question sorry i wanted to interrupt because on that particular point the the reason you know it is a good argument to call it a bear market is that we've retraced every single piece of good news no the xrp what do you mean crypto crypto so i'm talking about crypto what what what what has retraced if it's all retracing why isn't bitcoin back at 15 and a half thousand that's that's absurd yeah i'll let you up what what p3 pieces are using i'm by the way just i'm leaning on more on the bullish side but less so than a few weeks ago but you got the grayscale news. And by the way, I'm leaning more on the bullish side, but less so than a few weeks ago. But we've got the Grayscale news. Two days, we've retraced those gains.

And that's pretty major news. We've got the BlackRock filing. It was about, whatever, $25,000 a month. $25,000 to $31,000. Yeah, exactly. We're back almost at the $25,000 mark. And the XRP news, XRP was at 0.45, no, 0.47, I think, when it happened. Now we're at 0.5.

So we've just retraced every piece of good news and and one rule and again i'm not an analyst so you gareth mike know a lot more and scott know a lot more than i but like one one golden rule is like when you're in a bear market the market does not perform as it should when there's good news so performance badly or retraces when there's good news and when you're in a bull market it doesn't give a shit about bad news i'm not sure if that's a good rule of thumb no um okay so with all due respect mario and i have a lot of respect for you but with all due respect uh surely surely after following the news for so long you probably have noticed that it doesn't work all that well and just paying attention to the news stories the news headlines

those are typically you typically want to be doing the opposite of what that big headline is. Markets bottom on bad news and they top on good news. Explain that. The problem is with these news stories, they're not objective. They are subjective and everyone has different interpretations of these sort of things. And that is why it's very difficult to make anything out of these news headlines. And for what it's worth, I mean, at the the end of the day the only thing that actually moves price action are well orders it's not it's not the actual news itself two people can hear the same story and come up with completely different um analyses from it so uh i think looking at the news is it can be useful in the short term but ultimately uh these sort of events are you know liquidity events um you you know, to take positions off.

Price action is king, right? Price action is king. And price action, obviously, you can't be like, oh, that Ripple news, yeah, was so great. You know, price action told us what it was. And same thing here with the grayscale. And like, I think it's a little like just talking about crypto specifically, I think it's a little faulty to just say, oh, this is a new bull market. Because what people when people hear that they assume price will consistently be grinding higher. And you're not seeing that. Right. You've seen rejections at major levels. You're seeing every past every past bull bear market. Right. We've had 100 percent rallies, multiple 100 percent rallies in Bitcoin, and we've still gone back down.

So, I mean, I think, you know, stock market is different here, but you have to look at like history on Bitcoin bear markets. We've had rallies like this before. I'll add a question to it as well, Eric. By the way, I saw a couple of people in the audience, even MM Crypto was giving you a thumbs up. So you're not alone in the narrative of not being as bearish as somewhere earlier. But you look at the news like, hey, different people interpret news differently. But you can't interpret the XRP win

as in any way bad news or the BlackRock filing for an ETF or the Grayscale news. The market doesn't care now. The market doesn't care. That's what price tells you. So, okay.

Again, just to completely clarify things, I'm not calling this a bull market. This is not a bull market. This is the trans market. It's not a bull market. This is not a bull market. This is the trans market. It's not a cis market. It's not a buy market.

It's a trans market. Okay. It's a transition between bear to bull. It's probably going to take some, you know, another year, year and a half, something like that. Anyways, no, the whole thing is not retraced. Again, Bitcoin lows for $15,500. It is currently trading just below $26,000.

That's not a full retrace. We're not looking at the same damn charts, so it makes it very, very difficult to communicate. But I don't know where you're getting this from. You've got Gareth and Mike. I'd love your take. That's one of my favorite discussions so far on the show. I was so excited in the background. You guys have no idea how excited yeah this is great several times further as well with the stock market because we can definitely go there as well there will very likely very likely be new highs in the stock market within a year maybe less very likely that's

bro you need to change your profile picture it doesn't suit your personality at all eric but yeah mike gareth i'd love i'd love the other side of this because for me, these are the discussions I like Scott because you get both sides debating very openly and then we can finally some of the things Gareth said that bear markets will take money from everybody. And also a key point is today before long, so you guys how they waken, they typically don't go down a lot. But the facts to me of Bitcoin is, it is showing very significant bear market tendencies. It still is. So just this quarter, it's down 14% and NASDAQ's up 2%. Divergent weakness, that's bad. GBTC, the one thing I got right so far is GBTC is even down 2%. The key thing I got wrong, if I look back a year ago, is I did not think the Fed would hike this much. To me, that's the elephant in the room. So I look at right now, even after this payroll number today, when we by the time we get to that November meeting, it's still pricing,

the Fed's going to be adding more headwinds to broad markets. And the key thing to remember is Bitcoin has been just completely raised on zero interest rates. So here's another thing. On a one year basis, Bitcoin is up about the same amount as the Nasdaq. Yet it trades at two times the volatility. For someone who runs money and sits in front of a value-at-risk model, that's very, very bad performance for an asset that has two to three times the volatility of something like the Nasdaq. So I look at it right now as my base case is we're heading towards one of the biggest economic resets of our lifetimes just based on normal stuff and bitcoin has been the best leading indicator the way up and it should continue to be the best leading indicator in the way down and it's still doing that so here's what happened lately so we're having all this hopium about etfs that's a done deal we will get etfs it's just a

question of when it really reminds me of remember we had all this battle between the mayors of miami and new york about who's going to get paid in Bitcoin first and when the first ETF was launched, it really trades like very significant divergent weakness too much hope for new high and it's usually what happens when you tilt over and you crash to new lows. Now I'm not saying new lows. Let's look at the facts. Since Bitcoin first traded one in 2011, when Fed funds was zero, it's up 26,000%.

If you look at Amazon, the first time it traded one, the highest it ever got was maybe 200, I'm not 26,000%, 26,000 times. Amazon's only up 200 times. So we're talking about this asset's gone up so far and so fast. And it's one of the top leading indicators. I just look at it, simple mean reversion is what happens in bear markets. They take money from everybody. And I'm still afraid it's just going to continue to mean some of those big rallies. So give me signs of strength. Give me signs of divergent strength versus the stock market. The key problem I have is I think this year is like 1930. We've had a bounce in the stock market. It did in 1930, 50 percent, and then it rolled over. And then I look at all the indications are pointing that way. First, we know what's happening in China.

They're scrambling to try to pick up. Where is the biggest wealth creation in the last 10 years? And the world has been in China. That's starting to implode like Japan did. Then we look at Europe. All those PMIs are tilting negative. And the bottom line is they're still hiking rates.

And you look at the US, we're still hiking rates. So the bottom line I'll end with is don't fight the Fed. Don't fight liquidity. Liquidity is still negative. still negative bitcoin's leading indicator it's tilting down eric yeah uh i strongly disagree that bitcoin is a leading indicator that is uh it's it just sounds absolutely silly to me the reason why i'll explain is because bitcoin is like a shit coin to you know the major indices like nas like spy you know all the major ones so we expect bitcoin to not be as strong meaning that you need a strong you know broad market or sorry a strong uh you know major indices first before you get your you

know weak shit coins to move like bitcoin you know like the smaller caps i'm sure that you know this might because you come from traditional land as do do I. And it's just rotations, just rotations. Bitcoin is weaker. I don't understand where you're getting that. It's a leading indicator from. It's never made new highs before traditional markets coming out of, you know, a generalized correction. Never. Benson, I'd love for you to jump in on this one.

All right. I do believe there's something we're missing here which is the macros in general gareth made a very good point at the beginning which is the fact that banks in general are struggling we had a massive massive stale three years of covid where people accumulated liquidity and they are slowly spending it this leading to a massive retracement on on general markets yes the stock market is doing bits is not doing doing bad but at the end of the day what we're missing here as well is the fact that banks are using these stress tests to get back in the market uh indeed i have a i have a very good friend at Credit Suisse in Switzerland

and he was telling me that a lot of the engineers there, of the few crypto engineers and DeFi engineers that they have there, they are planning them to keep buying Bitcoin as markets are manipulated by the lobbies. So that's something you need to keep in mind.

You can't mislead people with bull bear, bull bear. Those are just concepts. You can't mislead people with bold bear bold bear those are just concepts you can't be just telling um normies and people to just join crypto that we're in a bull market of course if you bought a three cents yes you are in a bull market gg to you but eric at the end of the day we have been lateralizing for probably some of the longest times in the last five years so it's he's stressful for many and a lot of people that have btc in the banks are withdrawing the holdings right now because they are stressed yeah i have a question i'm sorry but that is just fully redacted that is fully redacted again i'm not calling this a bull market this is not a fucking bull market it

is a transitioning market from again again, there are people. So, Eric, when will it transition? When will it transition to a bull market? What does it need? And we've got James on stage as well, probably getting an update on the ETF side of things. But what do you need to see to say, okay, now we're in a bull market? Or what do you think will trigger that bull market? Is it just a matter of time or is it certain pieces of news?

It depends how you define it. Here's one of the major issues. It depends how you define a bull market. Many people define a bull market by new all-time highs i think that that's uh that's not necessarily my definition my definition is i want to see an uptrend on a very high term time frame that being either a weekly or monthly for bitcoin weekly is most appropriate because monthly has never been in a fucking downtrend so the weekly as of right now yes it isn't an uptrend but i still suspect that it is going to take time. It's not a full on bull markets and it's in the process of transitioning. We want to see a strong,

a very, very strong weekly higher low. You know, maybe that comes here in September. Maybe that comes in November. I don't know. Bitcoin again, much, much, much weaker than traditional markets, but traditional markets very likely have already set in the low. They very likely already set in the low either in August or maybe within these next couple weeks here in September. If it's not if it's not that, then that will break the trend that we've seen over the past 20 years. The past 20 years in pre-election years, the low, the low for the next year leading into new all time highs, by the way, within about a year was set in August on extreme lows on the McClellan oscillator indicator, which is just a market breadth indicator going over all the major indices. And we saw the exact same fucking thing again in August on almost the exact same day as the last time as well, by the way, 2015.

So what does that mean for the past 20 years? You know, is that something to be aware of? I would say, I would say so, but ultimately going into Bitcoin, what do I need to see for a bull market? Personally speaking, I'd want to see probably back above $32,000. I think that's kind of the major reason that Bitcoin was hanging around for about a year in 2021, 2022. And getting back above there would kind of be significant, I think, just in terms of headlines. I want to get just a fresh take. Blocks and thoughts. I don't think we've had you on the show before. So we've had two different perspectives on the markets. I think the argument of whether we're in a bear market,

Ran was making an argument a while ago, he'll be on with us shortly, about being in a raging bull market. And then Eric's making a good argument on us just being in a transition market. It's not really a trans market. It's not really a bear market from what he's seeing. And he's made some good points.

What's your stance on the current market conditions what do you expect to see in september considering it is it is historically the worst month of the year for for bitcoin and crypto i think given the fact that the fed uh the fed is not uh elected to take a position yet on you know current inflation or raising rates and keeping them where they are that we're just going to see a sideways month and maybe uh you know sideways and down to a small degree i don't think it's going to be anything significant in my opinion i think we have a lot of sideways to go before you know globally macro markets kind of stabilize through a possible you know deeper recession before we can see any kind of you know significant uptrend in all markets

you know that's kind of my overall position can i ask you a question man like if we're seeing the markets not do that well when there's good news like it bounces up and it's really good news it bounces up and then retraces those gains so then when we start getting the you know bits and pieces of bad news which is inevitable will the markets just drop significantly? Then if good news is not helping the market improve, then bad news would logically just get us to hit low and lows again. I think there's an argument to be made there for that. But at the same time, we've had a lot of bad news over the last,

you know, over 2023, and we haven't seen that much downside. We've had, I can't quite recall all this stuff, but, you know, we've had significant bad news throughout the 2023 and the markets have remained fairly stable and you know and in up a little bit since december right so i don't think that's necessarily necessarily the case i think a cycle is playing out here on the macro scale and we just have to kind of wait for it to see it through and you know take our positions as we see entries, basically. Yeah, Dave, I want to go to you as well and maybe looking at other factors.

So we talked about the, and I'll go to Jason on that one as well right after. But Dave, get your thought on the debate so far. And also some of the metrics, like the metrics just don't look that good either. Like liquidity is low. We got VC funding is at a 2 or 2.5 year low as well. NFT market is just going to shit.

And seeing all these different gains, like the news where the entire crypto market was celebrating, and some of these pieces of news were unexpected to many, yet the market still retraces those gains. What's your stance on this? Well, I think Eric is right. I'm team Eric on this debate pretty strongly, actually. I think that people need to understand that we've seen literally the same thing happen twice. You saw a piece of news, and I want to talk about what that news means, that indicates a possible future piece of news, cause a $5,000 rally or a $6,000 rally, a 20% rally, which gets faded and it retraces because the people who bought the rally are the

speculators and the people who are waiting on the news in the future that was signaled are not going to allocate any dollars. I mean, we're talking about asset allocators in traditional financial markets being able to put money into Bitcoin. And the only people who are going to try to front run those are Bitcoin speculators. Those asset allocators can't do a damn thing until the actual assets exist for them to move into. And they've been faked out before. It's been going on for five years. They don't expect it. So BlackRock announces, everyone said, oh, it's going to happen quickly. Well, guess what? It isn't going to happen quickly. And so it fades back. Then Grayscale wins their case, which I think is massively important for the entire cryptoverse

and very important for the entire financial system trying to fight back on. I mean, I've lost track of how many different SEC new rules that will be lawsuits about. It's a very large number in many ways. So it's a very big piece of news. Being called capricious and arbitrary is non-trivial, but it's non-trivial in the sense of what it will allow in the future. So that retraces. I mean, I'm going to do my weekly recap this week. So we call the boy who cried wolf.

You know, the speculators jumped in. It didn't happen. The asset allocator didn't come in behind them. Oops, I was front running nothing. The truth is, is we have a balanced market. Eric is right. There are patient buyers out there. And the speculators are sold. So expect that to continue. It is not remotely crazy, that it looks like it will continue for at least another month or so maybe through the middle of the month. It is always a time like this. And I think that you just have to look at it. Now,

Mike and I, we debate this every Monday, and we'll continue to debate every Monday. I don't think Bitcoin is a leading indicator about is showing anything about what's going to happen, I think, in terms of the stock markets, because I think the fundamentals under Bitcoin are very, very different than the fundamentals in the stock market. And actually, the more we distrust institutions, that's actually good fundamentally for Bitcoin. And you could talk about this ad nauseum. But the reality here is we are we are in a balanced position, where Bitcoin, which trades like an option on its future adoption, and all those metrics are going positive. I mean, even the debates about new variations under the Bitcoin blockchain and new use cases are incredibly bullish for the long

term, you know, whether they come to fruition or not. And it's important to understand that as technicals, we're all looking for tomorrow. I mean, the fact is, is, you know, the trend is our friend, but it's a long trend. And I think that we bottomed as far as that goes. So we got Jason on stage. And I do want to get Mike's take on this because Mike, I know you debate Dave a lot on your weekly show. Let me go to James. James, good to have you again. We've had you on the show multiple times discussing the ETF news and your predictions has been getting better and better and for obvious reasons. I think a couple of months ago, you were predicting a 50% chance that the ETF will get approved. I think it was by this year. I think it's by this year,

50% chance by this year, then it went up to 60%. I think it was a couple of weeks ago. And now it's at 75% that will get approved this year. And I think it's much higher, like 90%, 95% by next year. Did I get my numbers right, James? Yeah, those numbers are correct. But we're still like in the next week or so, we could get huge changes. Because one of the things we're watching for, as a lot of people have hinted at here, we don't know exactly what's going to happen with the Grayscale case. We got that right, thankfully. And we also got correct that all of these decisions

that were due this week got delayed yesterday, which we also got correct. But the one thing we don't know is what happens next with the Grayscale case. It could be the fact that Grayscale has to completely re-enter this whole process that 240 day long process and then then our odds of the 75 percent in 2023 are probably going to have to go down if that's the case but also we don't really know right like and even grayscale doesn't

know we had michael sunshine on bloomberg tv this week and he we were trying to figure out me and my colleagues trying to figure out what happens next and we were like we really don't know and then he went on tv and the anchors asked him, like, what happens next? And they were kind of like, we don't know. We're waiting to hear back. So we're basically waiting to see what happens. The SEC is likely talking to the D.C. Circuit, the judges that came down with that decision to figure out next steps. But it really just went back to the SEC here.

So there's two options that I can see is going to happen, right? Either the SEC is going to say you have to reapply, go through this 240 day process again, in which case, like I said, the 2023 odds are going to have to go down because then there's no rush on the SEC to make any decisions. Or it's going to be a shorter time period rather than reapply. It's just going to be another 45 day, 60 day, 90 day time period. So we're going to be waiting to see that. And then there's actually a third option. The SEC could request what's known as an en banc hearing, which it's basically an appeal. Rather than three judges making decisions, the SEC is going to request that all the judges on the DC circuit, which is about 17 judges, would look at the decision and see if the three judges

did anything wrong, which we think is highly unlikely because the three judges that came down to this, it was a unanimous decision. They ripped apart the SEC's arguments in that decision. And it's very unlikely that even if the SEC, even if the courts do grant the en banc hearing request, we think it's very unlikely that the SEC would win such a hearing anyway. And James, it's interesting. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean and james it's interesting go ahead yeah i was gonna say i mean i think it's important to note something that james and i have discussed and everyone's sort of discussing here which is that it's easy to make predictions it's very hard to make time based predictions so the 75 you know listen if it gets approved in on january 15th and people

laugh and say you were wrong about 75% when it was two weeks later, right. And so I think the idea here, when you're talking about 95% chance in 2024, which we've dug into, and the only reason that wouldn't happen is maybe through the election cycle, things get frozen or something. I think the main point here is that this is inevitable. Right? So this approval will happen. And if you have a low time preference and you look at markets through a decade long view, even Jay Clayton just came out, I think it was literally today or something,

the ex-SEC chairman and said, listen, the Bitcoin spot ETF is inevitable. So does it really matter if it's December of 2023 or February of 2024, or if it ends up being punted to the next administration in 2025? I don't think so, because I think, you know, we still have the same Bitcoin four year cycle, an election year coming up, and things are probably going to be very boring, of a new bull run, a presidential election with a bunch of candidates who are all going to have to address Bitcoin and especially going to have to address it more positively if prices are better and an ETF approval coming. And so I just think it's important to exercise patience and not get obsessed as we do. James has to do this job. We talk about it ad nauseum. You have to handicap these things, but it's happening it's coming and does it Scott does it really matter James Scott how if it is next year when next year do you expect it

first quarter second quarter by March right James I mean March is the deadline earlier actually earlier so then why does it matter but then James why does it really matter if it's this year or next year it's not really that big of a difference no because January 1st man well also part of it is eric valchunas is my boss has a couple bets that it would happen in 2023 so part of it is a little selfish talking on that front but also it would be it would be almost too fitting the arc and 21 shares application is actually the final deadline is due on january 10th so it's entirely plausible that this thing gets approved in the first week of

January. I think personally, the way I'm looking at it, I've been saying for a few weeks now, a few months even, the time periods we're watching is either some sort of time period after the Grayscale decision comes down, or that January 10th deadline. Those are the key things. I think it's going to be hard for the SEC to deny ARKIN 21 shares in January 10th and then approve a bunch in March. The one caveat I would also add, which is why we went above 90% for 2024, is the application from Hashtex, which is a crypto firm. They had the first crypto ETFs in the world, actually, technical ETFs based out of Brazil and Bermuda. But they basically went with this novel approach. And I talked about all the ways that the SEC might approve. If they want to deny again, they would have to revoke futures ETFs, which a lot of you have probably heard. But if they want to go towards other things like settlement of spot Bitcoin, basically, if they want to deny these things, they have to go something that doesn't affect the futures ETF, which is what

the court decision said. And so if they want to do that, they're going to have to go after settlement or custody of Bitcoin. They're going to have to make the arguments that that's why they're not going to prove spot and have allowed futures ETFs. And the DeFi application, which came down just a week or two ago, the way they went at it in this application to the SEC, basically null and void a lot of the arguments that would potentially happen. So the only thing left open to the SEC in my eyes, if they don't want to get really crazy and do something that would definitively hand them another loss in court, is focusing solely on something around custody. Because settlement, DeFi's application will be due in May. And if the SEC denies the hashtag application for DeFi, that's the tick ticker the current ticker of that fund i would

i the etf nerd to me is just loving to see what the sec comes up with to deny that uh it'll just be fascinating um so that's another reason why we're we're confident in 2024 because of the unique novel approach that hashtags has come at this application with the sec yeah i want to go to the so so jason i'd love your take as well if scott is done with the questions on the etf and then we'll go to david uh just a general market discussion and then what i want to do shift afterwards to the lack of funding in the space like what will attract investors back into the ecosystem we've debated earlier about ai sucking up the liquidity from crypto we've talked about macro you know just lack of liquidity everywhere um and obviously

we're talking about the the market potentially being in a bear market or trans market when it comes to crypto. Jason, we'd love your take. I'm not sure if you can touch on what will bring investors back to the market. All right. So yeah, just to take on those things quickly. I'm with Eric on that. Like we're seeing it as a trend market. We've been talking about it for several months as the markets have been going up, or at least that's for Bitcoin. And I guess where we were seeing the S&P and the NASDAQ back at the end of 2022 was a trans market. And once it broke out of 4,100, 4,200, that is basically the confirmation that we're ready to get into new all-time highs so there were a lot of people back at the three and a half to 3800 for the s&p you know looking at the macro because bitcoin doesn't lead this

space basically it's real estate and the big stock markets you know you've got to go down where the money sits trillions of dollars in the in the land markets real estate housing whatever you want to call it it's basically land and then into the stock markets and then into your speculative stuff like arts wine whatever you want bitcoin collectibles all that sort of stuff so there was a lot of people calling for a collapse at those lows but we're not seeing that and the main thing i'm looking at and the thing that we're seeing now across the market sentiment and the news is that they are starting to shift how they speak about the market. So we had this recession call. Everything was about recession last year. We didn't get a recession. And now they're still going on about a recession and the hugest collapse in the world and all this sort of stuff.

But every time this happens, you're watching a higher low form on the S&P and on the NASDAQ. And so when that happens, that catches a lot of people off guard because they're still waiting for this big collapse. They missed the bottom just like they missed August. We had that nice little low come in. And then the market starts to trade up higher. And so they just keep waiting for this collapse. And it's the majority of people.

I mean, that's what we see over and over again. We're young, we're old, we've got pretty big credentials or we're hedge fund managers. They all do the same thing. That's why 90% of people lose in the market. So in terms of a macro view, that's what we keep saying. And it's basically a wall of worry. And if you can read a chart and understand the market sentiment and news cycles, then you're going to be ahead of 90% of the crowds. And of course, most people keep missing out on these lows. As with the other guys, I think it was Eric and maybe someone else here as well. In terms of September, how bloody will September get? A lot of the data isn't showing that it's going to be that bloody.

And I know a lot of people are looking at a particular color of a candle, but it's more so if we're actual investors or traders, you're just looking at where is your best entry point. So September might trade within August and July's price range. Maybe it goes a touch lower than the August low. But I think we've had a pretty good opportunity at that August low to get into the S&P. So it's not necessarily that September is going to be all that bloody. Yes, it happens in years gone by. But when you look at some of the data that's come through from looking at the first, what, seven, eight months of the year, when this happens, when we get big moves out of the lows, big gains to the upside, September isn't always that bloody.

It could just be a bit of a sideways trend. And so a lot of people are going to keep waiting again. And then that just goes back to the first point that I made, that everyone's waiting on this huge collapse, which is not going to happen. I think we're going to see a new all-time high potentially at the end of this year, maybe into 2024. But we will get a mega collapse in the years to come.

It has to happen, but it's not 2023. It's not 2024. Okay, that's an interesting take. And then one more question there, Jason. I want to go to David about the whole China news, that being the most concerning piece of news just, what, two weeks ago? And no one's talking about it anymore. But Jason, one other thing.

What would attract investors into the market? What would convince VCs to come back? Well, if I'm looking at the macro space for the S&P and the NASDAQ, investors are already back. They're just not talking about it. That's what happens in the news cycle. I think Eric made a few good points as he was getting quite frustrated at the bear calls. This is not a bear market. And the investors are back. You just don't hear about it because it's not something that people want to talk about. Most people are addicted to fear porn. That's all we listen to is just the

market's going to collapse. The people who make the most money are those who are calling for a collapse all the time or that there's some sort of negative news or the markets are going to fall. So we're always sort of getting shifted around into this negative speak. And those guys tend to make the most money of whatever they do. It's just what people look for. So are they going to come back? I'm saying they're already here. And you see that in the price, like the S&P and the Nasdaq

Nasdaq was up 50% from the low from the cycle load I mean if you want to keep calling for a collapse You're sort of missing out on the bigger picture the S&P 30% from the low those investors are here. We're looking for What Bitcoin and crypto I mean Bitcoin still above its low. I think it can still come back and retest 23,600 that's a very significant. I think it can still come back and retest 23,600. That's a very significant level. But essentially, it's just in its accumulation stage before we start to get that move out. Once we break 32K, it lights out.

Those bears have got not much left. It's pretty much way up, all the way up. So I got to interject one thing here. One of the most wonderful things I love in markets when people tell me it's gonna go up because it went up and that's great i really respect your views but certain times you have to look over at the the substantial elephant room which is the fundamentals in the stock market and the feds still tightening um and one thing i that's what we just heard it's great and that's when you sometimes the biggest headbakes happen. So right now, I have to just interject one thing that you're looking if you look at the's just waiting for a little trigger to do it. It's waiting for people to hit those stops. That's just what I used to do for a living, not electronically, but in the real world and electronically. So I think that's the

setup now in the short term. And then there's other things in the big picture, like what Dave was saying. I completely agree with Dave in the big picture. And when it gets to a level, I think it's plateaued and shows divergencegent strength it looks like everybody's given up obviously jason has it then i'll probably start near tilting over to those long-term things but right now we have to admit this is a market that's trading very poorly it's showing divergent weakness i think it's a bounce in the bear market and to me the big picture is just imagine if the stock market rolls over for a normal recession which people say that's not happening it's just delayed all you have to do is look at things like the yield curve, what's

happening in housing, what's happening in the Fed still tightening on a global basis. This is the big picture that really matters. And you just look for the shorter term technicals to watch out what they'll do and be careful. People tell you it's going to go up because it went up. We've been used to trading markets when the Fed was there to save you the fed's doing the opposite it wants the market to go down i have to say that jason i'll let you look those things are completely off sorry sorry mike you know all due respect the housing market is up us is up for the fourth straight month it's at the same prices as it was april of 2022 us is obviously the biggest markets in the world and we have to respect what happens in the us, and we have to respect

what happens in the US. Of course, I'm from Australia, but I focus on the US. Australia is also up six months in a row. UK is up. Germany, new all-time highs in a technical recession. I think they're out of that technical recession now, but markets can keep going up. UK, looking at a potential recession, trading near all-time highs. France, looking at new all-time highs again, almost in those recessions.

So I'm not sure where the data is coming from about real estate down, but actually it's another point with the wall of worry. People keep missing out on buying the dip opportunities and the lows because they're fearful of some sort of collapse, which will come. But based on cycles, the data of history, and the data that's coming out now, the market is trending up. We've seen the lows, and we are trending out of those lows. Okay, if you want to fade the Fed, good luck with that one. We're checking in in a year. Let me, James.

No, good, exactly. James, I wanted to ask you one quick question before going to David. As I saw your reply to Craig Salim. So Craig tweeted something out about the delays with the ETFs. Everyone was talking and tweeting about it yesterday. We mentioned earlier very briefly. I want to kind of talk about it one more time. The delays with the spot ETFs, the Bitcoin ETFs, is nothing, you know, something everyone expected.

And I'll read out Craig's tweet. The reason why these spot Bitcoin ETF delays aren't all coming out at once is because for every copy and paste, someone has to make sure they're properly changed their issuer name, exchange name, release and file numbers, data filing, days of next approved deny. It's meticulous work, but it's the process, nothing unusual. Just kind of want to touch on that is that yesterday's news of these delays and then all of them coming at once is nothing really to kind of look too deep into. Is that correct, James? Yeah. So we were i we came out with a note that basically said because i was a ton of people were like oh are they going to get approved this week after the

grayscale news and like like um like scott kind of hinted at like there's there was no shot of that happening to be complete like maybe five percent shot i could see the sec really doing it to stick it to grayscale and i see craig is listening here he was just making a joke but ironically i i actually talked about i tweeted earlier today we still don't have like the the actual blackrock delay letter so all these have these delay letters right and what's what craig was talking about is you have to change like the name the certain date like the language is exactly the same it's just a template and you change like a few things so somebody has to go in there i'm sure it's some word document or something and just change the numbers and the dates and the names. And that's why it took so long for them to come out. But at the same time, if you go to the

SEC website where these things are supposed to be, and I tweeted about this today, the BlackRock one still isn't there. It's elsewhere on the site. Like you can get to it and you can find it, but it's not where it's supposed to be, which is just kind of ironic. And a lot of people are joking about putting tinfoil hats on, including me. But yeah, this was completely expected. So I'm not shocked that the markets reacted to it just because this has happened before the last wave of Bitcoin ETF filings, despite me constantly tweeting out that nothing was going to get approved and that we were expecting delays, we get delays and then Bitcoin price would move on the delay headline. Same thing with denials. We were saying from the get go, these things were going

to be denied. They get denied. And I understand a little bit more about those moving and denials, but the markets do are definitely moving on these delay orders. And we were completely expecting them. The next dates to watch are mid-October, specifically October 16th. We'll have the Ethereum futures ETFs that have launched by that point, as far as I'm concerned. So I think it's a little more likely. I'm not saying it's really likely that we'll get an approval on those deadlines, but far more likely, in order of magnitude, more likely than anything was going to happen this week. Benson, I'll go to you right after Davidid and jason i want to go to you as well just to get an update on the on the nft market um but david macro updates your thoughts on the discussion

and maybe why no one's talking about the china the china worries as much as we did two weeks ago so i want to make a simple point for the audience there's never been a better time to buy Bitcoin. And yesterday was probably the second best time to buy Bitcoin. We have never been in such an assured environment of a fact that is it is widely universally acceptable and not a security. And it is going to be made for distribution to everybody, both retail and institutional investors. I think we need to keep in mind in terms of the price action over the past 24 hours, you got to keep in mind volumes low, end of August, retail investor heavily weighted in terms of Bitcoin owners. And so therefore, I know, I mean, the sell-off is

a little bit surprising, frankly, but frankly, I don't think that goes ahead and takes the entire thesis and throws it out the window. May we get better entry points in September, like people are calling for in terms of it being a bloody September and so on? Yeah, maybe. But at the end of the day, I can assure you, we're going to get it. I think everybody here agrees. We're going to get an ETF. There's going to be more inflows into the asset class.

What exactly the fair value of the asset class is, I don't know. But we know that it's traded up as high as $69,000 or let's say somewhere in the 60s. And frankly, we've put in a base probably somewhere in the 20s. And frankly, we've put in a base probably somewhere in the 20s. I don't think people believe that we're going to go below 20,000, no matter how ugly the market gets until the approval of the ETF. So frankly, I'll take that trade all day long.

I think it's very substantial. And then in terms of, you know, we have to remember, you know, in addition to the low liquidity, right? Nothing and nothing but smart things come out of his mouth. But he is too smart, I believe, for this market. When it comes to Bitcoin, I think your average Bitcoin investor probably saw the delays yesterday on the other applications for the ETFs and said, whoa, this was very unexpected. This is a huge surprise, especially in light of what just happened with grayscale. And I think a lot of people sold on that basis and wrongfully. So I think everybody, I don't think I don't. But do you really think that the average investors, I think that the market, we're not giving investors enough credit

as a little big investor, you know, smart investors now in the market, we're not talking about Bitcoin 10 years ago. And I think most people knew that the you know this kind of get delayed i think everyone was talking about i think those were just short long squeezes yeah to your point i think that people just saw leverage piling up they use a news event they pump up the price then obviously they know that they're going to get rejected just sell off and make some money i think these are just sideways choppy technical moves in a crab market i would i would agree with that if volumes were high, but because volumes are super low, I would actually take the other side of that. I mean, I don't want to dummy down the investor base, but at the end of the day, I don't believe

that the investor base is as sharp as this forum is giving it credit for. But that being said, let's leave that aside. My point is that I believe that there's never been a better buying opportunity. There may be better ones that come in the next couple of months, but frankly, don't let this one pass you by. At least that's my feeling. Frankly, not investment advice. With regard to China, look, the question is, Yeah. Go ahead, the housing market in China, I don't know if everyone saw this data,

housing market in China, you usually have to put down 70 to 80% in equity in order to buy a home. They went ahead and they changed mortgage rules and now they brought it down to 20 to 30%, right? That's obvious stimulus. But at the same time, frankly, it's not as psycho as we have it in the United States, where Zillow is now offering 1% down mortgages in Arizona. So at the end of the day, if that's what they need to do in

order to stimulate their real estate market, and granted, it's not just housing, it's industrial and commercial real estate in their country too, that's difficult right now. But if they can go ahead and pull levers and effectively go ahead and make sure that this crisis, quote unquote, that people are screaming about, inclusive of the unemployment with the young people and so on, you know, passes the same way China has done so many times in the past, then frankly, this is not going to be as big of a thing as Mike has said with respect to being equal to Japan. But it's just a question of whether this is history repeating itself or no. This time it is different, right?

And we deal with that all the time. The question is, is past performance indicative of future results? With respect to China, I believe I don't bet against that government, okay? I think it's very dangerous to bet against that government. You've been wrong until now if you bet against that government. So the question is, is whether you're going to be cavalier enough to say this is a problem that China can update on the NFT market. Sure, no problem. Yeah, I agree with the China stuff. Again, it's just news cycles. I mean, I don't know who we're debating here anymore,

but like Eric said, like many other guys have said, if we keep getting caught up in all the news cycles, it just basically puts a sheet over our eyes when it comes to investing. So, you know, China was all the talk last week because they needed something to talk about. Now it's the media. I know many others will take that as quite offensive, but at the end of the day, it's what the news headlines need. And they gave it to us. That's what we wanted to know. And the markets move on from that point. And I know Mike has left.

I know I spoke with him several months ago i think it was around april it's around the banking crisis just a month or so or two after that on gareth's show and i think at that time i asked him do you think the market's going to crash in 2023 take out the cycle load of course he was adamant that it was i know this might be a little bit childish but you know at the end of that last conversation we had with him, he's looking for the market to crash at the end of this year. And that as an example for the overall market, if you really want to get into your investing and trading and play this game really well, understanding what the media does in the case of that conversation, they just keep pushing out the timeline of the crash the recession the collapse it's just going to keep getting pushed out so now as we had that discussion just a few moments ago he's saying you

just wait till the end of the year when we yeah but jason yeah sorry go ahead i was just gonna say but but to be fair and i'm not like yeah to be fair and i'm not uh taking either side that works on the other side too, right? Because people have been overly optimistic and kicking out when they think the Fed is going to stop. And that's sort of his argument. And I think it is a fair point. Like, if we're going to talk about, oh, the recession that never comes, we also have to talk about the fact that predictive markets were saying 90% chance of three rate cuts by the end of 2023, only six months ago. Right. So I think where Mike probably is passionate is that the Fed and I agree with this. I don't

know what it will do to the market. But people want to hear what they want to hear from the Fed and from governments and China. All the Fed has ever said is inflation is too high, jobs are too low, we're going to keep going. And so I think the Fed should have stopped raising quite a while ago. But it just really is important to remember that the market believes that the Fed was going to be literally cutting rates right now. And now that prediction has been kicked way into 2024. And so it just, these delays happen. It goes back once again to saying that doing these time-based predictions

on when things are going to happen, humans are just literally horrid at it. Yeah, you're totally right when it comes to trying to do time-based predictions on fundamental announcements or changes like that. It doesn't work. And you can see how it just gets kicked down the road and i agree it goes for the same with the bulls as well once we start to get into this all-time high territory

things are going to get crazy and you're going to see those same predictions of uh you know this market's never going to fall like we had it in january of 2020 we had trump up there on stage saying i've made the best economy in the world. Nothing is going to go wrong. If we ever remembers that speech back then. And, you know, we know from history a month or two later, it was the collapse of all collapses. You know, the fastest one we had in history. So we're going to get those bullish times again. All I'm saying is when it comes to the bearishness, markets typically go up.

So trying to call a bear market every year is just statistically wrong and mike's been on the bearish side i don't want to say you know mike he's not here to defend himself so that's fair enough but the bears in general have been on the um the bearish side over and over and over again all they do if we can see through it to learn for our own investing is that they kick the can down the road recession in first half of 2023 that came and went recession in the second half that came in second half 2023 that's gone now they're kicking it to 2024 so eventually it will happen they'll be right i'm sure we've all heard it before the broken clock is right twice a day and that's pretty much what we're seeing here with the the bear case because the market's bullish and they've

got nothing to talk about but yeah i agree with you when it comes to those things definitely be skeptical of the bears be skeptical of the bulls just like we have with bitcoin and these guys talking about 160 grand btc and in 2023 with blow-off tops it's the same sort of thing those calls are just so stupid and it just it screws everyone who listens to those full-on bears or full-on bulls. I'll shut up now. Thanks, Scott. I'd love to get – I appreciate it, Jason. I wanted to ask Jason Dean, get his thoughts on all this, but also on the NFT market.

I just read out one piece of news that OpenSea's, I think it was trading volume is the lowest. It's been like two and a half years. And we've mentioned this. We mentioned bits and pieces earlier about the NFT market just dropping significantly. Yesterday was a bit of a good day for the top projects. I mean, they went up like 10, 15 percent, but generally just heading to zero, at least for most smaller projects.

And the bigger projects are not doing too well either. So I'd love to get your thoughts, maybe a quick update on the NFT market. And if anything has happened in that market since the impact theory settlement with the SEC. Well, I'd love to help you with that. But I'm a macro economist and a bitcoin specialist and a bitcoin miner i've never owned an nft i don't know anything about nft so i'm really not the right person to actually uh to to comment on that unfortunately oh you gotta let me see hold on i'm blind or you've got nft in your bio oh you don't that's my you're right

you're not yeah that's yeah cool i'm the idiot go ahead jason my bad no problem man conversation has been really interesting because it's exactly my area so uh listening to the debate between the bear and the bull you know that really the definition of it has been uh has been fascinating but and i agree actually with a lot of points on both sides of the argument uh and my what i do most of the time is i spend my time helping people get started with bitcoin whether that's through the bitcoin racing team on driver and owner there or one of the other communities that i'm running so i get to see the kind of man on

the street view if you like uh in terms of what they think of all the things that we discuss because we're all so close um to the markets and and you know it's fascinating to see because there is a real correlation between the conversations you have in a bull and a bear I'm sure it doesn't come as any surprise to you but for most people right now it's pretty much a nothing market it doesn't fit into either category it's just a thing that's in the background which sometimes people talk about and my view is again some of the other guys said we're kicking the can down the road i can tell you macro economically we are in a mess a real mess and this will unfold ultimately you're absolutely right we're kicking the can down the road the road and our job now

really is we can't do anything about that because that's the backdrop we have and my i see it as our role is to make sure we can you know inform as many people about Bitcoin as we can. And that's kind of become my main focus. So I've just kind of thrown that out there. And I'm sorry I can't help you with the NFT side. Oh, good. We had a panelist today that was coming in to talk about the NFT side. I confused him with you, Jason.

So my bad. But if anyone's in the audience, give us an update there. Otherwise, we'll do it on Monday. Just because the NFT market hasn't been doing too well. I don't think we've covered it enough. But let's go to Benson and Jola to get different takes on the market. And I think we could start

wrapping it up, Scott. I was about to say, on the takeoff of Jason before talking about the growth of the real estate market in the USA, et cetera, that clear inflation, if the GDP is not growing at the same or a similar rate

as this inflation is growing, and people not even able to purchase assets anymore, which leads into, of course, the same grand recession that we had in 2008. So to me, it's not something positive, it's something negative indeed. When it comes to the market mario um i do believe that there are chances for everyone right now if you dca all the way to 20k is decent to get an entry obviously um that if you dca if you're obviously a daily

trader right now you're literally seeing the same thing I see. Constant manipulation, and that's what you need to be looking at. The macros are painting the picture right now for the crypto ecosystem overall, and that's how I see it as a trader, as a daily trader. I trade on news nowadays, not on technicals. Cool. Let's get Joe on Crypto Fundamentals. Final quick thoughts. Yeah, I mean, look, I wish Mike was still here because I agree with his thesis of what's coming. But the result is what I don't agree with.

I think a lot of people forget that the entire world is not a speculator market where it is, where as it is in the US. People in the US look at Bitcoin for speculation. Most of the rest of the world look at it as a safe haven away from their current financial system. And that's what's happened. That's been the greatest mass adoption has been when countries' economies begin to fail, people flee to Bitcoin. It's happened in Turkey, happened in Argentina, it's happening currently in Lebanon. And that is the greatest adopter. So if there is a crash in the US, I assume a lot more people will go to it. Hold on, man.

They flee to Bitcoin or stables? No, they're fleeing to Bitcoin. They're not fleeing to stables. In countries like Argentina, they're absolutely fleeing to stables. Like Tether is incredibly popular. Yeah, exactly. I don't know where you got Bitcoin from. When I sent money to someone in ukraine and different people i know somebody

to ukraine they were sending stables and in lebanon as well i know people in lebanon would send them stables and they're holding stables in argentina i saw the statistics there that are stables i think bitcoin just the volatility of it just doesn't i don't think it makes it and also people just want dollars i mean you have to remember these are the same people who would run to the black market to buy cash and now now stablecoins is an easier way to do that. And Scott, wasn't it Argentina? What country was it that had a new politician that was anti, that was a libertarian? That was, yeah, it was the US.

Yeah, current leading candidate in Argentina, Miele, has proposed abolishing their central bank in favor of dollarization, right? So instead of using the peso, going to the dollar. But here's what happens. LA has proposed abolishing their central bank in favor of dollarization, right? So instead of using the peso, going to the dollar. But here's what happens. Stable's the first step. Then people get into Bitcoin. The reason why NFT market isn't doing well is because people aren't sure about Bitcoin, because people take the profits and go into alts, which is the way I look at NFTs as well.

It's just an alt in all reality. So typically, they do go to stables, then they begin to adopt Bitcoin. For example, Bitcoin ownership in Turkey is 40% of the population, right? Yes, they use stables, but they also use Bitcoin because it is the gateway to getting into Bitcoin. And let me, let me go to, to crypto fundamentals. Just a final quick thoughts, just for the audience. I want to remind you all, if you are a project, if you're a VC with a portfolio of companies or projects, hit us up. Scott, if you can mute the hot mic. I don't have my phone with me. I'm in the sauna. But make sure you hit us up. Scott, you've got to mute hot mics, bro. You've got to mute hot mics. My mic is not on. It's Fran. No, not yours.

You've got to mute everyone's mic. Someone else's hot mic. Yeah, so we've partnered with AscendX. So if you want to list on AscendX, we've got a really good partnership with them to be able to list you quickly at much better fees. And it's a very close partnership. If you list on them, you also work with us and we help you with the awareness, et cetera.

So we've got a close relationship with AscendX now. It's been months in the making. If you want to work with AscendX if you're on a list on the sendex make sure dm any three of us and we'll open a tweet at the top in a second that will have the emails um and uh i think i think i say if you're on a sponsor as well on the show we'll come on the shark tank show next month that's probably the most exciting thing for me at least uh is um also hit us up it's gonna be a video format. And if you want to watch the real Shark Tank, that's launching in January.

Killer Whales TV, where me and Ryan are judges. Scott, maybe the next season. Me, Ryan, Scaramucci, and others. So that's launching January next year. You can check him out on Killer Whales TV. Incredible budget, incredible production, and a hell of a budget.

So it's almost identical to Shark Tank. And the team will pin the tweets at the top, where you can email us. Also, there's a red logo on stage. If you go on your phone, it doesn't take you, it takes you a few seconds. Get out of the toilet, get out of the shower, go on your phone, check the panel and click on the red logo and follow it because that's where we're going to be hosting shows. Cryptofundamentals, blocks and thoughts. And we'd love your final take on the markets and what we could look forward to over the next few months.

And then we'll have Scott andyan kind of wrap it up i actually want ryan to give us his final thoughts on the raging bull market that was that he's discussed in previous shows but the crypto fundamentals i'll let you go first i just kind of wanted to touch on you know a certain aspect of liquidity you guys didn't you know the macro scale you guys certainly did and you guys all did an amazing job i think a lot of the liquidity we need to focus on too is in regards to the hundreds of millions of dollars that's leaving here on chain with scammers, right? And through poor operational security. So those are two things that need to be talked about more, I think. And that not a lot of people can provide education on and or talking about. And those certainly drive sentiment and drive people away from the space and drive liquidity

away from the space and keep friends, i know people who've been fished for four million i know people who get scammed out of their life savings right and those are certainly aspects of liquidity i think need to be mentioned as well and that was my final thoughts on on what you know the segment thank you i appreciate it and scott before you wrap it ryan are you there i'm here bro i'm here raging bull market are we yeah are we there still there uh we, bro. I'm here. Raging bull market. Are we there? Still there? I think we're in a bull market. I don't know if it's raging anymore. But I still think, I mean, if you look around, I still think you're in a bull market. As I say, it may not be going up only, but Bitcoin is up like 60% this year.

Nasdaq is fucking flying high. It's not stopping. I had Raoul Pal on my show uh today he's got a great thesis i mean he's he he breaks it down so he speaks so well and he breaks it down so well in terms of how he thinks liquidity is about to come back into the market and uh you know i think we're seeing the jobs market cool down we're seeing uh we're seeing the job markets cool down, we're seeing inflation cool down I'm losing Rand Mario yeah he's getting in the car yeah and Scott I'll let you

give us your final thoughts man that's one of my favourite spaces, I love debates like we had today yeah I think it was great I really enjoyed it, it's a pretty good that's one of my favorite spaces i love debates like we had today yeah i think it was i think it was great i really enjoyed it it's nice to hear both perspectives and i think where are you where do you stand by the way scott like are you in stables uh out bitcoin where are you now i'm in everything right you know and frankly my exposure to crypto is is pretty large i don't sit on the sidelines because i don't attempt to outthink myself. I mean, anyone who I've ever discussed this with, they know that at all times, I mean, 70% of my portfolio is just sitting basically in investments and assets that

I don't touch. So I'm not really trading around it. I will say that, you know, I very publicly a couple of weeks ago started selling a large portion of my stock portfolio, but that was the portion of the stock portfolio that I bought at the lowest, right? I sold a large portion of my stock portfolio, but that was the portion of the stock portfolio that I bought at the lowest, right? I sold a whole bunch of meta at 314 that I had bought at 230 and 100, right? So that's not saying it's a lack of fundamental belief in which way the market's going. There's just certain times when you take profit because you've made a whole lot of money on the trade and you move on with your life. But I mean, I always view myself as an investor first. I have a long timeframe. And I think that a year from now, like I said,

after the halving community election cycle will be once again in the real rating bull market will be just beginning. So I just think right now it's forgettable. There's not that much to do. It's fun to talk about it. But unless you're looking at hourly charts and scalping back and forth, I think this is an avoidable market and we'll see what happens. You don't need to be right if you are waiting five years or 10 years to see what's going to happen with your portfolio. Cool. I think I'm the bigger risk stake out of, I don't know about Ran. I'm not sure if he's got the connection back, but I'm the bigger risk staker. I'm getting a lot more bullish, especially after our last

discussion where Yasu from Anamoka was there, the second space both of them actually the two that he was on i'm becoming a lot more bullish on on deploying capital again in startups and the xrp ruling helped and with a focus on gaming not ai but gaming really really bullish on gaming probably my biggest focus um and uh yeah like i i hope i'm not making the wrong decision i hope that uh you know the bear market doesn't have to to or we're not in a bear market or if we are it's you know nearing an end, but I'm really bad at technical analysis. I'm really bad at timing. All I care about is,

history tends to repeat itself or rhyme, and I'm betting on that, but I'm not sure about Ran's risk appetite, whether he's deploying capital and startups still, or he's kind of eased up. I'm deploying very, very, very slowly. Very, very, very slowly. It's like the project's got to reallyed up? I'm deploying very, very, very slowly. Very, very, very slowly. It's like the project's got to really be great

if I'm deploying because I'm not counting on any help from the market. I'm not counting on any momentum from the market. The project's really got to be able to survive in the long term. I think the biggest problem that I'm having now is I'm getting bored. Like, you know, like the biggest problem,

like, you know, I know like for some people, Bitcoin and crypto is not a full time thing. And so for them, it's like, OK, well, you know, we put we put an investment and, you know, we've got 100 other investments and we've got we've got our full time jobs. We look after and stuff like that. For me, the problem is that I'm crypto 100 percent of the time. And we're at the point now where not much is happening. Like, you know, I don't see 10 deals a day. I see maybe one deal a day

if we're lucky. You know, I used to wake up in the morning and there was always something to watch. There was always like... But I hate that. But Ryan, I hate that. Like, we would never have ran this show.

We would never have started the Shark Tank. We would have done it like, you know, way down the track. Like, we would not have rushed it as we did now. We wouldn't have had time for it. If it was it was you know if we had 10 deals a day i love boredom i genuinely do it just gives me a life is it allows me to build and not having to chase project after project i hated the bull market because the formal sucks no i mean i think the

bull market was a bit overkill but i think now like you kind of wake up every morning you don't even want to check the bitcoin price or even need to check the bitcoin price because there's not much to check and nothing's going to happen now and look maybe i'm also frustrated because you know we have to make cool content every single day we have to make interesting content every single day and sometimes that for weeks and weeks and weeks and then there's not much going on you know there's just nothing to report about and you know you still have to make an hour show every single day. And it just becomes harder and harder and harder.

And I'd love it if there was a little bit more. You're dropping out. But yeah, do what everyone else is doing. Pivot to start adding AI to your content. Every content creator is just mixing in some AI and some macro on his shows. And we're doing that ourselves. Barely any AI, but we're doing that ourself you know barely any ai but

we're doing a lot of macro um yeah i don't know like i don't find it to be boring like look at this week look at last week you know we get two boring days and a crazy day so i actually disagree on the news side there's a lot happening um it's just on the market side there's not a lot happening um but then again i wasn't creating content in the last bear market i wasn't even creating content in the bull market so obviously i can't compare to what it was back then. Cool. I think you're dropping out, Ryan.

I don't know if you guys can hear me, but yeah, I think, I think I agree with you. I mean, as I said, like we have had some news this week, but just in general,

I would prefer some more movement and some more volatility just to get, keep my dopamine levels consistent. You know, like right now my dopamine levels are like down. I need, I need, I need a need the dopamine pump bro i hate dopamine pumps um and i hope that this you know calm like i hate bear markets height of the market is collapsing i get annoyed when the market is blowing up because you just can't keep up with everything i love when the market is steady because it allows you to build like the value of what we're building i know sounds cheesy and we're

you know tooting our own horn but the value of what we're building here this show the the shark tank show and tooting our own horn, but the value of what we're building here, this show, the Shark Tank show, and other stuff we're doing that we haven't announced is really cool shit. Like the partnership with Ascendex that I've been talking about or the launchpad that we'll probably talk about. Like this stuff we could never do in the bull market. In the bull market, you're just trying to catch up with everything and keep your head above water. And then in the bear market, you're just sitting there depressed every day. So I think where we are now is like the sweet spot um but it's just surprising to see people

like we've had some people we both respect right and it's got respect come on and say like you know we kind of move to ai that's pretty surprising to me but um you know especially after what happened the last uh the thing with ai the thing with ai is cool in that ai is very difficult to monetize and you know one thing i really enjoy about crypto is the instant gratification. And when I say instant gratification, I don't mean like that, you know, I just, I like to see the results of my action quite quickly, be it through transparent adoption, be it through increase of price, you know, whatever that is. And I think with AI, AI is very hard to monetize in the short term.

I think there will be a lot of billionaires and billionaires made in AI, but it's not going to be as easy to monetize as crypto because we have tokens and liquidity. Do what we're doing. Do what we're doing, man. Work with projects, take equity, which I thought would be easy. It's actually really hard. They're so, so, so, so careful with their equity.

They just don't want to give it away. Very greedy. But just take equity for services or, so careful with their equity. They just don't want to give it away. Very greedy. But just take equity for services. With the AI show, we try to take equity. But actually, projects and that shows we're in a crazy bull market reaching a peak. They prefer to pay you dollars than give you equity. Just like in crypto, when they want to give you dollars instead of giving you tokens back in the last bull market. Now, it's really easy to get tokens.

It's hard to get those. What you're saying is super interesting because you know like people aren't precious about their tokens because people don't respect the value of a token but then they expect the market to respect the value of their token and people are very possessive about the equity which is kind of strange because you know the whole movement should be around um uh substituting the old world of equity with the new world of token and tokens and governance and so if you said to a project listen you can pay me for marketing services in equity let's say like screw you and they give me equity but they're very very very to pay you in tokens which just shows like they have no respect people don't don't respect tokens

as much as they respect equity. I think if we want, if you really want tokens to have real value, then people need to respect their tokens as much as they respect the equity and not use tokens as a slash fund that they don't really care about. Yeah, and I'll kind of end it with agreeing with Ran. Like what happens with us?

Because we get paid. I know Ran, I think you're a lot more careful with tokens. Scott doesn't like tokens much. And you guys are more fiat based. We used to be very flexible with tokens. I'm talking about the recent months. And at one stage, we're getting paid in full with tokens. Now it's a bit of a split between tokens and fiat. But when a project is keen on giving us tokens, we're like, yeah, actually, we prefer fiat. And when a project, when it was so easy, when a project comes on, says, look, guys, we prefer to give you fiat and when a project whenever it's so easy when a project comes on says look guys we prefer to give you fiat not tokens so we start arguing with them no we want your tokens so start valuing your tokens vcs will value it more the market will

value it more but on that point i think is a is a really cool space we'll see you on monday we'll kind of touch on alts and nfts a bit more on monday just give you an update there because i know i was planning to do it today but uh didn't't work out. But yeah, it was a great space. Scott, we wrap? We're done. Done, man. I'll see you in Dubai soon. Thanks, everyone.

Happy weekend.