The Wolf Of All Streets - How Bullish Is The Trump Administration?! | Crypto Town Hall [Bot Attack]

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

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I had to cut the music right when the beat drops, but we do need to start the show, everyone. It is Thursday. I hope you're all having a wonderful day. A lot in the news once again, but still the real story that everybody's talking about is Bitcoin price action and, of course, the political situation, the red wave. Now the Republicans officially have the presidency, Senate and Congress and a lot of conjecture as to what they'll be able to do with it and how that will obviously impact the crypto industry as a whole. We have a lot of rumors going around as to what some of those

policies might look like. We have Howard Lutnick being now floated for the head of the Treasury. So I think everybody can agree that janet yellen being replaced with howard lutnik would probably be massively bullish for the crypto industry um and we have some other news that's pretty astounding i mean just jumping in first on some of the signals that we have as far as price action and volume uh that give us some indication of what interest looks like right now in crypto. On November 13th, Bitcoin spot ETFs had a total net inflow of 510 million, recording net inflows for six consecutive days. BlackRock ETF iBit ranked first with a single day net inflow of 231 million.

I think we had a $5 billion volume day on iBit. And iBit is by leaps and bounds now the fastest ETF in history to accumulate $40 billion in assets. I don't have the chart in front of me. It's astounding. It's basically a straight lineup while everything else that ever got to $40 billion has taken a very, very long time. On November 13th, the Ethereum spot ETF had a total net inflow of $147 million, recording net inflows for six consecutive days. Fidelity ETF FETH ranked first with a single day net inflow of 102 million. Also, the BlackRock iBit ETF is now larger than their gold ETF for those keeping track. Some more bullish volumes and news here. According to DeFi Llama, Solana's

DEX daily trading volume has exceeded 5 billion for three consecutive days. Absolutely astounding. And then with the title here, according to Coinglass, the Bitcoin contract holdings of all exchanges in the network are close to $55 billion in US dollars, setting a record high for open interest. And obviously, that's also a record high on the CME. So fair to say that we have a ton of volume, a ton of buying, a ton of interest. And there's a lot of new people here. I mean, Tom, I'll start with you.

You just jumped up. Over the last six months, when we had sort of this predictable, slow drawdown, there were a lot of people asking, when will retail come? What will bring them? When will we get new money? Wherever that's coming for. Looking pretty good here right now. Yeah, looking really good here right now. Yeah, looking really good. I'm sure everyone's

getting the texts or emails from friends and family like, oh, that crypto thing is still alive, right? But what's more interesting is the financial advisor and allocator community that I'm pretty plugged in with is starting to really engage and actively come in, including the bigger allocators like family offices who may have been sitting on the sidelines. And the question is like, are they too late? The question that they're asking and the answer is no. We're just getting started hopefully here.

So there's really a lot of interest. Now, whether that interest is going to express itself in the ETFs, we've seen record inflows, consistent inflows into the Bitcoin ETF, but also the ETH ETF. I think we had four or five days of positive inflows. Or are they going to come on chain and actively participate? Those mid caps on chain really are not participating right now. It's been the barbell of ETFs and meme coins. So I still am not sure if the mid caps are going to participate. I think it's going to continue to be a barbell for a little bit. But folks are really, really interested

right now from everyone I talked to and not just crypto native people. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Thomas, what are you seeing right now as you're kind of looking at the market and interest? Obviously, I mean, obviously, you specialize in buying up the bankruptcy claims and such so i've got to imagine that that has still uh been booming and keeping up your time but uh you know in the context of that what else do you think yeah i mean just from the restructuring side of the crypto market i mean we're single you know as as the prices pick up volume picks up on our side of the market where people are like i I just got to get out of this claim or this situation. It's illiquid. So you find more people looking for liquidity.

And that's, and also the estates, of course, like the higher the numbers go, the more likely you'll see settlements because, you know, if there's zero dollars, you know, people tend to argue if there's, I don't know, make it up like a hundred million dollars more than you can sort of, you know, there's always a good settlement somewhere. So, you know, you've seen some pretty big, especially in FTX, because we crossed the two year mark where they could bring litigation. So now all every single litigation that we know will come out of the FDX estate is, is, is gone. So like, if it hasn't been filed by now, they missed the bar date. So, um, you see some interesting stuff going on, but, um, not too much, not too much. You're not having, you know, we're kind of like in the traditional finance area. So we haven't started getting the phone calls from the TradFi guys going, hey, what can we do?

Which is always a fun call. They normally call you and like you're really hitting all time highs, but haven't quite started getting those phone calls yet. I mean, there were, of course, guys in the FTX trade and all those firms are doing incredibly well. But once you leave, I mean, only a few, Three Arrow's claims traded and Celsius claims traded, but you go to any tertiary doc, it's like, it's still, those guys feel like they missed the trade and they're not really looking at it. It just doesn't move the needle. So kind of same old thing.

Thomas, I really like you and I hope that you have a very successful life, but I hope there's no more massive crypto bankruptcies for you to, I hope our contagion is done and that your business slowly dries up as you transition to something else more profitable. I mean, you know this, Scott, like my parents were bankruptcy lawyers, so that's how I kind of got into stock and trade. But you know it'll happen at some point. Someone will hit a footfall. Someone will get trapped, you know, either through litigation or hack or something. But, you know, you don't wish it upon the market.

And in fact, you know, some people think that distressed investing, you're just buying, you know, trash and trying to flip it or something like that. Or they think, oh, it's so easy or just, but actually that's the worst deal. The best deals are the ones where there's a really a lot of, you know, future prospects, um, within the assets, the company holds and things like that. And so, uh, I think you're seeing that. I think it's i think it's it's good for the ecosystem to develop i mean there's all you know airlines go bankrupt retail companies go bankrupt car manufacturers go bankrupt so it's a natural whatever is it maturation now but yeah i mean you you always are kind of hoping that you put yourself out of business because the prices

of whatever you bought, like when you looked at a lumber deal once, you're hoping that the prices for lumber mills are so ridiculously high that the deal that you're already in, you become a little bit of a backhoe. You want to retire on the work that you did and not have to depend on the future work is the kind way of saying it. Yeah. I mean, you don't wish bad things. Things will happen. Guys will get in trouble for AML, KYC stuff or regulatory change will push a company into restructuring. The best restructurings are liquidity problems, not insolvency problems. When I mean insolvency, like dying businesses are very tough to make money getting involved in the restructuring. Yeah, totally.

So you obviously mentioned foot faults and regulatory action and all of these things. Dan Spooler, you and I were texting and you said to me yesterday, well, maybe the biggest news story is Polymarket. You guys missed it. The FBI raided the home of CEO of Polymarket, took his phone, computers and such. It seems that the claim is that they could be in trouble for allowing U.S. users. Is that correct? To trade contracts on Polymarket? Not so dissimilar to when obviously Binance got in trouble for allowing Americans with VPNs to trade on Binance. But curious timing, man.

I mean, I get like the FBI raiding the CEO of the company that did the best job of predicting their opponent's presidential victory within a week of that election. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. It could be coincidence. But holy crap, man. Yeah. Yeah, the timing is really questionable. And the whole situation is really bizarre because Shane Coplin, there was no question that I'm sure there was a lot of American users using a VPN to play with PolyMarket. And there's other alternatives now, too.

I mean, Kelsey is now a U.S.-regulated predictions market, too. They also use fiat, where I think Polymarket, if I'm not mistaken, is still just crypto, crypto. But to rate it like this, like literally a week after the election, and it's even more surprising because Copland, I think he was actually leaned on the Paris Waltz side. I mean, I think he actually was back in – there's photos of him floating around here. So I don't know. It's not like he was pro-Trump either. That's what surprises me. You know, it remains to be seen how this is going to shake out.

Ryan Armstrong put a pretty aggressive tweet out last night. I think he's since deleted it. Elon Musk replied to that tweet, just raising questions about timing of it and an overall crackdown, the continued crackdown you'd think they would have let up after the election. But this underscores really the concerns that we have as an industry, you know, this Lane Buck session, you know, will there be more enforcement actions coming out from the SEC? Will there be more of these types of actions from DOJ prior to the new administration taking office? I don't know. This wasn't a good sign. So yeah, that was,

yesterday was an insane news day. I mean, every other hour there was something popping up. And so this was the latest one. I think that the Polymarket news dropped maybe 30 minutes or so after the Matt Gaetz news dropped. And we can get into that in a little while, though, because there is a lot of action happening on the transition side and these appointments but the polymarket situation yeah let's yeah we're gonna stick on polymarket then i want to come back to you about senate majority leader senate majority leader a leader obviously attorney general with gates and others the polymarket thing though i want to ask you really quickly or if anyone knows because we've obviously talked about like sec

civil enforcement actions against, you know, Coinbase and Binance all being dropped if we get a new regulator. If it's this was FBI, but if it's DOJ and FBI, are those things as likely to go away just because of a new administration? Somebody else may want to weigh in on this on the legal side. Yeah, maybe we need our lawyers. The one day we don't have five lawyers on stage, Dan. Literally. I would say, Scott, I've got a lot of thoughts on this because I've played with this space

a little bit. I think the first, like a couple of baseline things. Remember that first off, this is not the first time that Polymarket has gotten in trouble for this. They were fined a million and a half bucks back in 2022 by the CFTC for not adequately basically keeping US users off the platform. So not only am I going to go and say that this has nothing to do with the election, I'll go farther and even say this really doesn't even have anything to do with crypto,

almost certainly. We don't know exactly what it is. We won't know for a while exactly what it is. But my guess is it's either about KYC AML stuff or continuing to not appropriately keep Americans off the platform on it. And in terms of the tide of the election, again, I think what we will find out is the only tide of the election is going to be that they actually held off on doing the raid until after the election was done to prevent any appearance of them trying to affect or mess with it. This actually comes and becomes relevant to the Gates thing, too, and the House Ethics Committee panel that has been investigating him. But like, yeah, people are jumping straight to it. If you look at like even the other thing is, if you've watched a lot of the very political

minded prosecutions and things or the things where the FBI is chasing a headline, the FBI and the DOJ leak like a freaking sieve. They will constantly do it. If you think about back when they arrested Martin Shkreli, you think it's an accident that they had a news photographer sitting outside his apartment ready to get a nice nice, you know, perp walk photo of him coming out. No, these guys leak like a seed. And the fact that this leak didn't come from their side and was clearly either from Shane himself or maybe Shane's lawyer making a really bad decision, leaking and trying to set the context or set the narrative through that New York Post article, and that the FBI hasn't said anything, says to me that it's a real case that has been around for a long time. They had a warrant, which means they have a grand jury impaneled on it.

This has been going for a while. It's a real case. I'm not saying that it's totally valid or that we're not going to find problems with it. But the idea that this like got cooked up after the election because polymarket was polymarket wasn't even that much was not any more accurate than like any of the other betting markets. It did not call the election that far in advance. It was constantly flipping back and forth between whether Harris was ahead or Trump was at there. Yeah, the idea that this is about anything more than like standard financial crime stuff,

I think, is going to end up being shown to be absolute bunk. Yeah, I agree with that. Anybody else have particular feelings on the polymarket situation before we jump back to sort of this lame duck session in the transition team that Dan and I were talking about before? Because Dan, correct me if I'm wrong. Listen, I don't know if I'm wrong. Listen, I don't know if Gates gets approved. I don't know what happens with the Senate, but it seems like everybody being put in place is pro-crypto. It really feels that way. It really is. It really is. In the Gates situation, there's a few different theories on how this plays out, you know, because he literally resigned from Congress yesterday as well, because he was facing House ethics, you know, investigation. So he resigned his seat.

And however, just last week, he was reelected to his seat. So there's no reason to say that he can't retake office come January. But in the meantime, yeah, so his nomination was really a shock to most people that I know here in Washington. He's a very controversial congressman, but he's very, very pro crypto. He actually wants to get a pardon for Julian Assange. So he aligns with a lot of what our industry stands for. The problem is he's quite radioactive, really on both sides of the aisle. I don't know. He'll face a very, very tough confirmation process in the Senate. But Florida is just absolutely dominating right now. I mean, you take a look at just what's been happening over the last few days, how they put in Rubio, Secretary of State. They put in

Mike Walsh, Congressman from Florida, National Security Advisor. Up until yesterday, Rick Scott was running for the Senate Majority Leader. Obviously, he didn't make that, but the domination of Florida now moves my mind. And so let's just take it from the top, right? So this week, Rubio was nominated for Secretary of State. I think he's going to get it. He's definitely a China hawk. He's probably the most hawkish in Trump's nomination so far, but that opens up that Senate seat down there. So there'll be a slew of interested parties that'll be interested in getting that appointment from DeSantis to fill that unexpired term. That'll be one to watch. And we haveSantis to fill that unexpired term,

that'll be one to watch. And we have a lot of pro-crypto congressmen down there that would love to have that seat. And also, we talked about the mayor of Miami. There's a few other politicians down there that I think would be terrific for that. Then let's move over to Kelsey Gabbard. So she was the one who just got DNI yesterday, the director of national intelligence. Hugely popular, a powerful role, I should say, has been a friend of the industry. And then just going down the list here, we have, let's see, Radcliffe, CIA was interesting. The Department of Doge was just another one that came out there before yesterday with Musk and Ramaswamy leading that up. And they released that new official logo with the dog I cracked up. That's exciting. I mean, I think it's a perfect role for those two. You know, it's going to be set up to be temporary, but they're going to

be bringing in a lot of outside folks to help with that. So it would be fantastic. I mean, it sounds like they're literally going to crowdsource from X ideas to cut the government based on their tweets. It sure seems that way. And, you know, this is this is perfect. I mean, and it's what actually I got to give credit to Wayne. He's a regular on these things. I think it was him that actually tweeted that and coined that term a few months back. So anyway, they ran with it. So now it's an official government acronym. So we'll see how that shakes out. And then on the Senate side, this was pretty significant. Stoon ended up pulling it off. And he'll take the official role on January 3rd after Congress wraps up this five-week Landmark session.

But all three of them were A-rated by Stand With Crypto. He's rock solid. I think it also – he exerted the interest, the influence of the separation of powers. Trump all but endorsed Scott for the role without coming out for it. Scott didn't even make it past the first round of ballots. But again, I would have been happy with all three in terms of our industry. But soon I think we'll do fine. He's definitely not as hard, Trump, but that might not be a bad thing in terms of just separation. He also correct me if I'm wrong, but he's generally been pro crypto and also the CFTC should have more power and we should have more clarity. Correct? Exactly. He is. He is. Yeah, he's just not, you know, he's kind of low key, very great fundraiser, which that matters in a race like that.

But he's supportive of our industry. He's not like the alumnus or, you know, or a cruise, but that's fine. I think he'll work with us. And I think that it's not a bad thing. I mean, what a whirlwind of information. I never remember a political news cycle like this, but I guess that makes sense when you have a complete overhaul of what our industry can look for. Dwayne, go ahead. Hey, good morning. One of the things I'm skeptical of is the ability or the manifestation of actually reducing the amount of government in the U.S. in the sense that, you know, sure you can have a department of governmental efficiency and these sorts of things, but depending on that particular organization,

it might be more of a think tank that can suggest things to get passed, but it still has to go through Congress. So even if, you know, they have the House and the Republicans have the House and the Senate, you got to get all of these politicians to agree, right? You have to get the House at like, what, like 98% to pass these bills and to agree uh to do this and then some of these guys are in swing states as well so i just want to see how that's going to play out in real time here because you know people have kind of broke their neck and tried to reduce the government before and it hasn't been that successful so you know i just want to see how this uh you know how this plays out at least on that front the best the best shot we have right now for bipartisan agreement in this

lame duck session is going to be the stable coin situation. If we can get that- That's low hanging fruit. Big time. Yeah, big time. Because that's frankly, McHenry wants that finished. He wants that to be his parting legacy. And I really hope we can pull that off. And then of course, the market structure topics are going to be imperative. I think Trump's first 100 days are going to be very, very interesting. He's going to want a few quick victories for the industry. I think on day one, he should pardon Ross, get that out of the way. And I think the strategic Bitcoin reserve everybody's talking about, listen, I think it's a great idea. I wouldn't say it's on the top of the pecking order of priorities for the industry, at least

right now. I think market structure is big picture more important, but let's do it. Why not? So he'll have a honeymoon period, and he'll have a good working relationship with the Senate and the House. But two years is a long time, right? And there's naturally going to be some challenges. This is how it is. There's a lot of egos here. But I think we have a whole bunch of new friends coming in right now from the work that we all did, everybody on this call and the PACs, et cetera. We had a slew of new friends coming in right now from the work that we all did you know everybody on this call and the packs etc we had a slew of new incoming congressmen from both sides of the aisles a lot of young foot flight a lot of young folks that are going to really help us um so i think i'm really excited for for the next two years yeah and even at the most cynical level dan a lot of these people are going to be running campaigns again in the next two years right and they've

seen what this industry will do for anyone who even sniffs out a mention of crypto or comes out even remotely positive so i think that um you know that's only going to increase this industry you have this sort of these stars aligning right now if we really get a bull run all these companies all these donors they make tons more money you get the sort you know, flywheel effect of the politicians realizing that it's a winning issue where they can raise a lot more money. And I think it's just going to continue at least for the next two years where the industry gives a lot more money to politicians and politicians speak a lot more favorably. I mean, don't you think that that makes a lot of sense? I mean, this bull run's not guaranteed. But if it does, I mean, imagine the amount of money that's going to pour in from crypto into politics.

I completely agree, Scott, we haven't had the industry right now is in terms of influence in this town is is peak right now, the industry really hasn't had this much muscle ever. And I think it'll continue. But we're coming off a really, really strong election. We literally the industry just took out, you know, the sitting Senate banking chair. I mean, that is a huge deal. And we have an enormous amount of positive attention on us right now. And I don't, you know, we can't screw this up. This is the time. And we have an incoming favorable president, Senate and House. And I mean, I think now's the time to really make some accomplishments. And the groups are really not going anywhere. I mean, so we're always going to be here, right? But the political groups like Fair Shake, Stand With Crypto, they're not just closing shop. They indicated that they're going to stick around and actually target these races going forward in the next midterms and raise money and build bipartisan consensus. And that will trickle down to the states, local even, and I think it'll be an

exciting time. Scott, can I just jump in with a point? Please. Yeah. So in terms of government spending on the Doge, I still can't believe we're calling that. What version of the simulation are we living in? This is amazing. They talked about cutting $2 trillion. Last year's discretionary spending was $1.7 trillion in total, and that included some military spending. So they're going to really have to cut deep to actually get anywhere near those numbers. That means cutting entitlement programs, which I don't think there's any real appetite to do. So I'm interested to see how they actually get through this red tape. The other thing is the Republicans have a mandate right now,

and the first 100 days is absolutely key. So I think they're going to tick off the easy things like the, you know, freeing Ross, etc. But I would be surprised if the first 100 days is actively like focused as much on crypto as we want it to be, it's probably going to take a backseat to some other priorities. The immigration, I mean, the bigger, obviously, the bigger national issues, I honestly, and Dan, I think we talked about this before, but Tom, I think there's a likelihood that, you know, the presidents like to have these grand, huge bills in those first 100, 200 days, like the laughable Inflation Reduction Act, obviously, Biden and such. I wouldn't be surprised if these big, for us, crypto topics get wrapped in as small issues in much bigger legislation. That's true. And as Tom was saying, there's a ton of priorities coming into the new administration. We like to think that we live, breathe, eat this stuff every day, and it's super important. And

it's important that the Trump administration coming in, but there is an enormous amount of other things he has got on his plate, including immigration, including foreign affairs, Ukraine, you name it. And you're right, there could be things wrapped up. Honestly, that is not a bad thing. We can work really on some of these other pieces of legislation collaboratively, like the NDAA Act that they're doing at the end of this year and in the new year. And I know Ron was talking about that, I think, last time he was on the show. I mean, there's pieces of legislation that we're going to push that can be part of something larger if necessary. That makes sense. James, I'm glad you jumped up here. We also have Andre here from Bitwise. So we have a few people we can talk ETFs here. These flows,

absolutely astounding. You weren't here at the beginning, but I mentioned it at the beginning of the show. I mean, obviously, it's following this incredible price action, but also aligning, I think, with a lot more wirehouses coming online and people being able to buy these. But I mean, iBit has been just the fastest by exponentially fastest to 40 billion. I mean, the flows, the volume, this is crazy. Have you ever seen anything like this? Yeah. I mean, this is unlike anything we've ever seen in the etf world obviously you in the crypto world you've seen stuff like this take off this way but uh in the etf world this is kind of uh rather unprecedented i would say i mean i don't know exactly what numbers you threw out there but we're at 2.4 2.5

billion so far this week that have come in. I mean, these things have taken in over 28 billion on a net basis since they launched on January 11th. That's a lot of money. A lot of this is still basis trade. I'm not sure that there is that many wire houses that have come online yet. I haven't seen much to indicate that there is definitively wire houses coming online, but we will know for sure who's been buying over the last few months. I mean, honestly, tomorrow is the deadline for the 13F data. So we'll know who had bought through September 30th on an aggregate basis. A lot of people tend to throw shit in in the last minute. Some have already filed, but yeah, I mean, we'll know exactly who's

buying, but I still think there's a lot of wirehouses, a lot of advisor networks that still haven't fully approved these things. And that's still obviously another area of demand that can come from it. And I said this on Bloomer TV recently, like they are like, can this keep going? And they asked me this like two weeks ago before the election. And I was like, look, if you look at our colleagues in the TradFi industry like the vast majority of people I speak to still consider this entire space a joke now and like they just equate like Bitcoin alongside nfts and meme coins like they don't there is no separation of like maybe we should start taking this Bitcoin thing seriously there are a lot of people that are

kind of like okay Bitcoin is its own thing I don't get. I don't get it. I don't approve of it. I don't like it. But so this whole other space is a joke. So there's just like, there's still this massive, overwhelming view from most people I talk to that are just like, I do not take this remotely seriously at all. And I think if I mean, I guess when or if that changes, or at least a greater number of people start to take it more seriously. I mean, this we're still early days i guess is what i would say i'd agree with james here i think if you have to put some kind of estimate on where we're going i mean we've already seen three billion in net inflows so far across all products right since trading launch but i think there's at least double this amount still in the pipeline I mean James has just mentioned that most of the wire houses they still haven't got access

right and if you look at simple estimates right if you just look at the whole passive ETF market in the US alone it's around 9.1 trillion, right? It's ridiculously high number. And if you just do some conservative estimates, let's say every fifth advisor, every fifth ETF investor is going to switch to Bitcoin ETFs, for instance, right with a 3% allocation, you end up with very high numbers, like around 60 billion US dollars still to go just by substitution alone. So money that is being substituted from existing passive ETFs like equity ETFs, bond ETFs and so on, commodity ETFs to Bitcoin ETFows since trading launch but you still have around the same amount left just by substitution alone and this pie is growing right i mean the the total etf market is growing because the s&p 500 is also at all-time highs right this this keeps keeps going

higher and so the potential of um the substitution flows alone is also increasing. I mean, you mentioned also the 40 billion AUM in iBit, I mean, no questions that they have completely, I think the word we are looking for is either destroyed or obliterated, right? They've completely destroyed previous ETF launches. And it seems like this is going to continue with the bull market because um i'm just i'm still at the airport here in geneva right now we've just come back from four client meetings today alone um so retail interest has picked up you've probably seen that google trends chart but

re-institutional demands also picking up it used to be this way when we went to client meetings, we had to push them all the time. Like, are you interested in investing into ETFs, ETPs, right? But now it's more like a pull effect, right? We're seeing increasing demand from clients, right? And of course, I mean, the reason is we've

crossed new all-time highs and it's just a natural phenomenon, right? But I think there's still there's still so much in the pipeline james what do you think of ethereum catching up to some degree i mean it's finally even just getting net positive right and we're starting to see some flows but uh are you hearing any chatter that there's actually direct interest in those and i mean right now this is literally we've seen an xrp uh etated, Solana, HBAR, right? I mean, the floodgates are opening here.

Yeah, I mean, no. I mean, we're seeing, obviously, you've seen price pick up a little bit on the Ethereum side, but not to the extent we have like Bitcoin and some others. But I mean, the demand, the interest just isn't there yet for Ethereum. I think I've talked about this on these spaces before. I think it's just a much simpler story to say what Bitcoin is and what it's delivering. It's very simple. You can hold Bitcoin, you can store it and you can move it or trade it. Right. Like with Ethereum, it's the whole DeFi ecosystem. It can do a lot more. It's a lot more complicated. I think we as as Andre just said and as I just said, there's a lot

of advisors, a lot of trad by people that just like, don't even really understand Bitcoin, let alone trying to wrap their heads around what Ethereum can offer. I think the idea of cash flows and staking might be something that eventually, like, I don't know how quickly it will happen, I think, could drive some demand there. But yeah, there just isn't the same level of interest and demand. There hasn't been this fervor to get their hands on Ethereum, at least not yet. I'm not saying it's never going to happen, but yeah, it's just not there yet. The other thing I would say that we didn't really talk about is Bitcoin ETFs are probably about, at least the US bought Bitcoin ETFs. I believe if they haven't

yet, they're about to pass Satoshi as their estimated 1.1 million Bitcoins that Satoshi has. So I mean, no matter how you look at this space for the Bitcoin ETF specifically, they're just, I mean, firing on all cylinders and crushing records left and right. But yeah, Ethereum, there's just less interest, I guess you could say. I think that's an opportunity, personally. Zach, since we now have a lawyer, I don't know if you were listening at the beginning, but we were talking about polymarket and the raid by the FBI. We obviously have this sort of sentiment that the SEC enforcement actions, all the civil suits will sort of disappear. If something comes from the DOJ or FBI at this point, do you think that because of the change of the administration, those could be dropped as well?

Or is that sort of a different situation? We just didn't really get it from a legal standpoint. Normally, it would be a different situation. I think with if Matt Gaetz ends up being the head of the DOJ, I think you will see political shifts in the cases they bring. And the question for cases like this is how far along are they? If they're already sort of filed, if they're in the court system, then it's harder for the DOJ to walk them back. If it's early stages, it's still an investigation. He hasn't been formally charged with anything. It's easier for the DOJ to get rid of this. Does anyone have any insight into how likely these

folks are to get approved? Or is anyone not likely to get approved? People with more knowledge than myself? Matt Gaetz is not going to get approved unless it's a recess appointment. And so the question is, do they want to spend political capital on that? John Thune has said he is open to a recess appointment if that's necessary to get Trump's picks across, but not necessarily that they're down to just do everything through a recess appointment. So we'll see the politics of it. I think the less controversial picks will all make it. I would say Thune also said that before Gabbard and Gates got announced, too. And you've seen a lot of them backpedal a bit on it. I don't think we can be certain, but I feel like someone like Gates is insane enough that it jeopardizes whether Senate leadership is going to want to do recess appointments or whether they have the votes to do it.

I mean, Dan, is that accurate to you? Do you think, I mean, Gates is viewed in that lens? Yeah, no, no question about it. Alex Miller, I think you're on the line. You were in that group with me yesterday discussing. Everybody was pretty shocked at that. And I think out of all the recent nominations that Trump's put forward, Gates is the one least likely to get confirmed. You know, one theory I think I mentioned is, you know, he may have just nominated him really as a favor, kind of as like an honor. Yeah, he loves the attention, dude. Gates loves the attention.

Loves. Yeah, loves the attention. Yeah. And so he doesn't get it. Okay, then he's out. And then you'll get something else non-confirmable. Or he'll go back to being in Congress for the seat he just got reelected to last week. Did he resign, though?

He resigned from Congress. Well, he did resign, but he was just – he resigned, I guess, his current term. But last week, he was just reelected to the seat that he would take office theoretically on January 3rd. I don't know how that works, actually. I saw that on CNN yesterday. Scott Jennings was speculating how that would work out. So he was just reelected to the seat, but he was elected to the seat that starts on January 3rd, not the current one. So it's quite a unique situation. Dwayne, I don't know if you want to weigh in. Well, yeah, sure.

I'm obviously not an American political expert, but it appears that he resigned two days early so that he wouldn't necessarily be subjected to the investigation that's going on with him with the trafficking with the trafficking issues so because he's not I'm officially in office then they could question whether they're going to release it or not because not an actual member right now so I think that was the main issue and I'm wondering if I'm you know he can really get can you know confirmed I you know for that particular job, because it doesn't really have the requisite qualifications. And in some ways, I'm wondering if it was just, you know, also, there's the idea of attention, you know, to sort of distract from

this investigation that's going on with him, put him in the news cycle for a different light. So those are a couple of the issues that, the issues that I think that could be considered. I think there's a near zero chance he gets confirmed. I think the only way it happens is a resupply. Yeah, I'll also point out if we trust Polly Market and Kalshi, they're pricing it at like 35% that he ends up as Attorney general. In case anyone noticed, by the way, I'm getting messages, but we just had a 5x spike in followers. That is the bots attacking spaces.

As much as I would love to, the idea that us talking about Matt Gaetz somehow brought us 20,000 extra people. Yeah, so that, and sometimes these bot attacks crash the spaces. So just putting a heads up there, if we get rugged, that that is likely what happened,

but we have it right up there in the title bot attack. So I know we have a sponsor that's going to come up in a little while, but Dan, is there anything else politically here that should be on our radar

or anything maybe you're expecting over the next few days? Other people being floated for appointments that we haven't had announcements on? The big one right now for everybody's awareness is Treasury. That's really the last big, big tamale that we're waiting on. I think it's imminent. It could be today. It could be tomorrow. And it's really boiling down to two people, Bale Bessant out of South Carolina and then Howard Ludnick, who's now emerging, in our opinion, is more of the favorite, because the other guy, Besant, turns out that he had potentially some ties to George Soros. You know, I don't know the story there, but that's quite radioactive in the

Trump world. But nevertheless, they're both pro-crypto, and that's great for us. I actually like Howard Ludnick. I watched that video that he did with Pomp a few days back. Real impressive guy. What a great story he has. He's highly connected to Tether, which is interesting. So if he gets it, that would be very, very fascinating for our industry. So keep your eye on Treasury. That should be any day now. Yeah, although he has a lot of enemies in D.C. in the industry as well.

There are people who definitely have knives out for Letnick. I think you're right. I mean, there's a lot of other opponents. You're right. I'm not going to get into it, but it's not going to be a cakewalk, no question. But he seems to be attached to the hip at Mar-a-Lago with Trump right now. And he's actively involved in the transition process. So that's not going to hurt his chances. Yeah. And I understand that you like given your position, you need to be diplomatic here for people in the audience like that. I think there's a lot of wrangling over what stablecoins will look like. And there are large competitors who do not see the same way.

And Letnick seems like is in the crosshairs of that fight right now. And that's a lot of the sort of intrigue that's going on in the crypto industry in DC at the moment. Yeah. the moment yeah uh we're sorry we're working behind the scenes to get the uh sponsor up so that we could uh let them speak to these uh 27 000 bots actually 22 000 bots um but uh in the meantime anything else here as we uh kind of wrap up on anyone else's radar. I mean, to Dan's point, the news cycle is so fast right now, so much happening and so much in this transition that it's hard to even keep up. I haven't even, while we've been on the show, bothered to look at the price of Bitcoin. It had once again made a move to the upside. And then I saw that it was kind of dropping. Here we are, $88,000 flat,

pretty big drop. I think it was up at 91, 92,000 two hours ago. So a lot of volatility here. I would say that since our original title was how much open interest there was on Bitcoin, you can expect that every time you have that level of open interest, that you're going to see these flushes in both directions. Go ahead, Alex. Yeah, I kind of have a question for, I guess, like Dan or whoever else feels like they have a really good read on Senate Republican politics.

I'm curious what you guys think about what the selection of Dune as majority leader versus Cornyn or especially Scott says about like the Senate Republicans attitude towards Trump and how they're what they're saying publicly versus what they're thinking privately. I think it says a lot. I mean, Trump came out strongly for Scott. Elon came out strongly for Scott. They did this through a secret ballot, and the Senate picked Foon, which I think says that there are Republican senators who feel like, all things being equal, they would be a check on Trump, but they're unwilling to do so publicly.

Yeah, I pretty much agree exactly what Zach said. I think it was a chance for the Senate also just to flex their check on balance of power. The Senate has confirmation power. A lot of them did obviously support Trump publicly, but the Senate's a club, right? And they're going to want to go with who they think is the best leader. And Thune's a very pragmatic guy. Again, he's a great fundraiser, as I mentioned. I don't think he's going to be necessarily bad for our industry. All three of them would have been fine. This is Rick Scott's second attempt. He tried to do it against McConnell two years ago and failed really bad. So I don't know how much power he'll have

in this Senate, but Thune seems to be now the new McConnell. Yeah, Rick Scott has no business being Senate Majority Leader. I say that as a Floridian who's tracked his career for a very long time through perpetuating the largest healthcare fraud in history to being the least popular government in the history of Florida and just failing his way forward somehow. Literally had a 26% approval rating in Florida as governor and somehow became our senator. It's pretty incredible what money can do in politics. I think since we are concerned and want to make sure that we get this out of the way, Buzz, do you want to go ahead and have a chat with DiviBet? Yeah, for sure. Just to make sure that DiviBet is good to go and can speak despite this bot attack.

DiviBet, why don't you do just a little bit of an intro to kind of warm people up about what DiviBet is and what you guys are working on. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, first of all, thank you guys for having me on this space. Really, really love the conversation that's been going on right now, especially, you know, with everything happening in the US, right? So thank you for that, Alpha, and thank you for the conversation here. Can you guys hear me okay? Yeah, you're great. All right. Perfect.

Perfect. So with that opportunity, I would love to kind of, you know, let you guys know what we're building here and how, you know, we plan on kind of growing in the future. So to start off, DiviBet, what we are is a Solana power sports betting protocol that we've used blockchain technologies to really eliminate all the traditional barriers of access, right? So those of us here who are DeFi users and have been in the crypto space for a while know that, you know, a lot of times the user experience is actually better than the Web2 counterparts, right? So for us, what we've been able to do is actually build sports betting on chain. Now we've allowed people to wager directly with their wallets without having to sign up or actually deposit for every single bet they place. And, you know, with the way we're built and structured by utilizing smart contracts to really govern

and manage the entire bookmaking process, every bet is actually made with guaranteed payouts and instant direct settlements. And, you know, the biggest differentiator between us and every other casino sportsbook out there is that we actually have a DeFi-based model at the core of our product. And we use that to really disrupt the casino model by adding the DeFi element and allowing anyone to be the house.

I love that. I mean, it's definitely a better and unique spin based on competitors in the market. For those listening, like if you're using Rollbit or anything like that, they kind of tout themselves as a crypto betting platform, but you're depositing. contract factory where each new market is a new set of smart contracts and you can bet directly in your wallet and get a payout immediately without signing up. Would that be correct from more of a technical standpoint? Yes, 100%. Every single time you place a bet, it's locked into an escrow against our house pools to guarantee that you'll get paid out in the event that you win. And by utilizing smart contracts there, we actually get rid of, once again,

the process to have to deposit before you wager and even the withdrawal process as well, where as soon as you win, you'll get the money directly back into your wallet without you ever having to visit the platform. And how does that kind of compare to something like PolyMarket? I know that the panelists here were kind of talking about PolyMarket a little bit earlier.

And just seemingly the market is, well, the U.S. market is hoping that they would ban U.S. users from being able to participate in certain markets there. In this way that you guys have kind of architected this, how does it differ from PolyMarket? And maybe talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so, you know, structurally and architecturally is actually pretty similar in terms of utilizing smart contracts instead of wagers, and actually be able to take wagers and actually show all the bets on chain and, you know, completely transparent. So we're very, very similar in that aspect technically uh but you know the business model would be different right uh they are a predictions market uh which you know we've seen throughout the years uh you know really really get popular during the election cycle as

you can see in the past cycle uh but at the end of you know polymarket's been around for quite a bit of time now right and and they had a similar, you know, hit of popularity during the last cycle as well. So for us, you know, the main difference there is we're more focused on the sports betting side of things, right, where you would come in, you know, bet on your favorite teams and whatnot, and be able to do this in a completely on-chain manner. And my understanding is you guys launched relatively recently. When did you guys exactly launch and how did that all go? Yeah, so we actually launched on Mainnet over a year and a half ago, back in March of 2023. So during the deep bear cycle, if those of you that remember.

So yeah, building in the bears definitely come with a lot of hurdles and obstacles that we got through. But yes, we've been around for over a year and a half now, generated over $12 million in wagers since then. And we've been seeing a pretty nice uptick in growth in 2024 as the markets are starting to change. I expect that to grow a lot more as we enter the true bull cycle as i like to uh say it and and it's all driven by the dvy token how does that fit into the model what do people do with your tokens so you know with the divi tokens it's it's our native token of the platform right uh you know and a lot of web 2 sports books you'll see a lot of used marketing tactics like uh you know matching your deposits up to a certain marketing tactics like uh you know matching your

deposits up to a certain amount and giving you you know boosted odds and free bets like that right uh so we are borrowing that model and it's it's a way for us to really attract additional users to our platform right where you know if they wager on any of the tokens that we support it'll be uh eligible for them to earn these divi tokens. So those of you that have been in DeFi space for a while, it's similar to yield farming, right? That was kind of the big thing back during the last bull run. So we're kind of bringing that back with yield farming. And we actually have a current promotion on

to get additional users on our platform where their first wager made in Divi tokens will be no sweat. Right. Meaning that if you lose, we'll refund you the wager up to 5000 Divi tokens. So it'll be a nice way for people to kind of come on, try our system, see how really different from the competitors with no risk to them. Cool. Now, I definitely encourage people who are listening in to, I was just on your website,

if you click on the Divi profile and go to their website, which the link is in their bio there, you can see the offer there right at the top of their website. But you talked about that current campaign that's going on right now. What else do you guys have coming up? Maybe talk a little bit about not only just campaigns, but your upcoming roadmap to improve the product for users absolutely so right now you know the the product that we have now what i would call you know still kind of in its beta stage right where it's more of a proof of concept that we can actually bring betting on chain and we've been able to achieve that with pre-match bets and also parlays as well so So in 2025, we're looking to really add additional markets, right? So, you know, the player props, daily fantasy sports, things of that nature to really

be able to compete with the full-fledged solution of sportsbooks out there. On top of that, you know, we're continuing to build utility behind the Divi token so that you'll have more reasons to spend and use it within our platform. And one of the things that will be coming out soon is our staking, where, you know, you'll be able to stake your tokens and actually be able to earn, you know, over 200% in Divi tokens if you do all of the daily activities and quests that we have set out. And lastly, we're also going to put a rep share element to it where we'll be diverting and contributing 100% of our foundation shares to people that stake. So that could give them not only the yield farming aspect, but also the passive income aspect as well as you utilize our tokens.

Awesome. I think a lot of people in Web3 are relatively bullish just on the nature that, hey, Web3 sportsbooks can really be an on-ramp for users. I mean, I even had a friend who had a personal experience during the last election where, of course, the winner was not actually chosen for a few months after. And it took them months and months to actually get paid out from betting on Biden using a centralized sportsbook. So I think a lot of people are fairly bullish on Web3 sports betting platforms being a really great onboarding tool to bring more people into the industry and to kind of expand the pie. And we talk a lot about that on shows like this. But what are your personal outlooks on that expanding the pie element and the outlook of more users coming to Web3 for sports betting? Is that something you guys believe in deeply? Yes, absolutely.

That's actually one of the main reasons why we decided to build this. When you kind of go back a little bit and kind of look at the history of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin in particular, right? One of the first mass adoptions and the first use cases were for gambling, right? I've talked to a lot of people that they remember the days when they were using Bitcoin to play poker, right? Betting one or two BTC a hand and stuff like that. Obviously, at that point in time, it wasn't worth much, right? But what that's done for the industry is actually opening up for a lot of other, you know, users to be able to get on the sports books, make the wages that they like, without going, you know, across the traditional

bank banking system, which a lot of times would be extremely expensive, or, you know, delayed, like you said, right with their experiences that your friend had. So I believe like, honestly, without the first wave of mass adoption by these gamblers, you know, I don't think we'd be all here talking about, you know, the policies that are coming, right? So do you think that that was the first injection? So for us, it's really an evolution, you know, of the technology in this space, right? By utilizing crypto, we're taking betting to the next level, putting it on chain and truly giving everyone a

better experience. That's also a primary reason why we decided to build on Solana. I know there are a lot of talks about ETH and the dominance that they've had, right? And being, you know, number two within CoinMarketCap and whatnot, obviously gives it its, you know, novelty. But at the end of the day, right, we want to position ourselves as the consumer application to support that continued mass adoption. And in order to do that, we believe that you need to have a good user experience, one that rivals whatever you see in Web2. So with building on Solana, people can actually see that. Transactions are processed within a couple of seconds, and you can kind of track all that stuff on chain as well. So with the upcoming, you know, bull run and the adoption, every single cycle, right, we see the number of wallets grow by, you know, two to tenfold, depending on what cycle you're on,

right? So we expect, you know, that number to hit over 5 million, hopefully a billion users by the time that, you know, when we're in the middle of this bull, and, you know, we want to position ourselves to be there to be able to capture, you capture a percentage of that pie as they come in. Yeah, I had a similar experience with my own network of just poker friends. And that's why a lot of them got into Bitcoin. And it was from what you said, but also just people in different countries around the world, like people with using different currencies

and kind of having that aha moment of, oh, we can settle everything in Bitcoin and everyone's on a similar playing field. But I was also using an online sports betting platform a few years ago. It was built on Polygon. And one thing that caused me to stop using it was just the liquidity um of the betting and the this particular platform was very much so a pvp betting system so if you wanted to take one side of a wager you had to have someone market make the other side of the wager so are you guys setting lines or is everything p2p within the platform so you know the p2p model would actually be more similar to how Polymarket does it, right? With a predictions market, right? Where like a lot of the odds are decided by the betting volume. And, you know, when you look at the decentralization of betting,

that is the most pure way to do it. For us, we actually source our lines from, you know, some of the biggest bookmakers out there. You know, there's the DraftKings, Pinnacle, Bravadas of the world that we get our odds from. And then in our backend, we then look at the, you know, source the best ones that we want to give to our clients. And then we put them on chain via smart contracts from there. So, you know, we do realize that's one of the major issues of PVP, right? There isn't enough liquidity on one side, you're not going to be able to make that big bet that you want. So that's why with our house pool model, it's more of like an AMM model, right? Where as long as there's enough liquidity in there within the limits that we've set on per bet, you can actually

go in and make that wager without having to worry about whether there's liquidity on the other side or not. That's awesome. I mean, I think that that's, that was the big issue for me during the last cycle of using some of these online sports books is that like, if you wanted to do a wager anywhere above a hundred dollars, there, there may not be liquidity at a line that would be fair compared to traditional books. So I think that's smart. So with traditional sportsbook users, like say somebody is, you mentioned DraftKings using DraftKings. What's the plan to kind of attract those users to start using a decentralized Web3 model? Like what's the pitch to them as to why they should move away from a product like that to something like Divi? Yeah, you know, the number one thing is showing them the ease of use, right? Be able to like really display, you know, how easy it is for you guys to connect on our sports book

and actually be able to, you know, get your bets in record time, right? Kind of showing them, you know, the hurdles that we remove by being on crypto. Also, you know, with the advancement of a lot of wallets that we've seen, right? A lot of wallets now you can support, you know, buying crypto directly from those wallets. If you connect your Venmo, your credit card, things of that nature. And one of our plans is we are talking to some of these on ramps as well, where, you know, we're looking to perhaps provide a promotion where, you know, it will be the first X number of dollars will be, you know,

with zero fees as long as they come and use it on our sports betting protocol. Right. So, yeah, you know, with zero fees, as long as they come and use it on our on our sports betting protocol, right? So yeah, you know, promotions like that to number one, get more users and also water adoption as well as more and more people become interested. Are the majority of the markets are they Saul based markets or like Solana based markets USDT? Are they in the native Divi token? So we actually support seven different markets, right? There's a sold, the stables, USDT, USDC, our own tokens, Jupiter and Wormhole as well.

And, you know, with our thing, you know, the feature we plan to open it where anyone can actually open up their own pool, right? Similar to how a lot of the DEXs work. And then, you know, at that point, any token or any project, whether meme coins or any other, you know, L1s or L2s,

they could come and actually create their own pool. So now people can start betting in with their tokens, you know, immediately given their token additional utility with it as well. Wonderful. As we wrap up here, just at the top of the hour, is there anything that would be your call to action for any listeners, perhaps like your ongoing promotion and how they can sign up and get involved? sense information, right? All you have to do is go connect your wallet and you're good to go. So yeah, just to reiterate the current promotion we do have, you know, your first bet made in Divi tokens will be, you know, offered to you guys risk free, right? So if you come and lose, you'll get up to 5000 Divi tokens sent directly back to you within 24 hours. So like I said,

it's a way for people to come and explore and see, you know, what true Web3 betting looks like and, you know, get people ready for our Divi staking awards, which will be coming out in a week or two. So yeah, make sure to come check us out and let me know what you think. Wonderful. Well, there's a couple of big NFL games this weekend. So if anyone's listening in, I'm sure that's a pretty good way to have a no sweat bet. So I know personally, I'll be watching the Chiefs versus Bills. So maybe I'll check this out.

That's a classic. It's going to be a good game. But Divya, I appreciate you joining us and for the AMA. And thank you to everyone who came. So thanks, Scott, for hosting this. I thought it was a great conversation. Thanks, Buzz. Happy Thursday, everybody. Yeah, guys. Thanks, Buzz, for jumping in, I thought it was a great conversation. Yeah, thanks, Buzz.

Happy Thursday, everybody. Yeah, guys, thanks, Buzz, for jumping in. Thanks for guys having me. Yeah, we'll be back tomorrow, obviously, 10, 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Looking forward to it. Thanks to all our guests. See you guys tomorrow.

Thanks, bye.