The Wolf Of All Streets - Kamala Harris Calls for New Crypto Laws, What It Means | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

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You're all having a wonderful Tuesday morning so far. I know that I am and that this place is a hell of a lot more fun when Bitcoin is on the way up and not on the way down. Currently trading about $67,000, continuing up from the 62s just two days ago. here begging the question of whether October is upon us, what's the catalyst for this and whether we're really starting to kick in to the next phase of this bull market after all these months of consolidation and the halving cycle, you know, that six month period where things tend to trade down sideways and exceptionally boring. Dennis, what are you thinking right now is the catalyst for this move? I mean, is this just kind of more of the same sideways and we're getting excited? Or do you think that there's something fundamentally behind what's starting to push price? Yeah, I mean, it's obvious. It's October. Number needs to go up. I cannot hear Dennis.

I don't know if others can. Can you hear me okay? I can hear you. Okay. Yeah. Awesome. You hear Dennis? Sorry.

Yeah, I'll even come back in after I make these comments. But yeah, it's great to see that we're here. It's great to see the numbers going up. Obviously, I don't think it's enough to really jump up and shout about. But as was mentioned, number going up is always a good feeling. I'm sort of of the opinion that regardless of the outcome of the election, I think this number on Bitcoin is going to continue to go up. And there's nothing really one side or the other can do about it. But, yeah, I think just early on, you know, people should be cautious.

You know, I would be continuing to buy Bitcoin here. If it does go up, it's probably going to continue to go up for a while. Hopefully this cycle, we're going to end up getting our six-figure Bitcoin. I think also, obviously, there's of course this lingering theory that MicroStrategy is finally maybe delivering on its ability to convince others to add Bitcoin to the balance sheet. You know, the interesting thing about past cycles, I've had this theory that like, in order for Bitcoin to really truly go up, you need some sort of catalyst that drives it up extremely high. In the past, it's been the ability to access crypto markets. So, you know, 2017, when I was in the space, joining the space, the big thing was you needed Bitcoin in ability to access crypto markets. So, you know, 2017, when I was in the space,

joining the space, the big thing was you needed Bitcoin in order to access crypto markets. And so everybody needed to access Bitcoin in order to play a casino game. Well, if you've transferred to, you know, to today, what is the casino game that might be playing out? It could be this idea that, you know, if you add Bitcoin to your balance sheet, you use debt to get more Bitcoin, you use dilution to get more Bitcoin, then your stock will go up. Well, in order to play that game, you have to add Bitcoin to your balance sheet. So if others end up following suits to MicroStrategy, then you could see, in my opinion, a really, really strong bull market, something that would rip a little bit harder than I think this last cycle. But someone let uh let them know that i'm done talking if they can't hear me i i went down and came back up and now

i can hear you so thank you and sorry for the awkwardness there uh spaces is always glitching so i'm gonna let uh somebody else simon maybe jump in so i can catch up because i missed most of denis comments go ahead simon yeah absolutely um i think it's a really important month for all of the people that are new to bitcoin because because I do believe we onboarded an incredible amount of new people through ETF, institutional, and also the work that I think the existing community has been doing in order to preserve Bitcoin as self-custody, as a bit of a counter movement against everyone that's going to be holding it through ETFs. And so I think an incredible number of people have been onboarded into Bitcoin. And I think they've all heard the pitch. So they've been on the spaces, they understand the four-year cycle. I think it was an essential part of all of the different investment advisors that were going out and pitching the ETF. And so a lot of people are going to be at that nervous stage,

just like the very first time you got involved in Bitcoin, where you thought, oh, am I the idiot that is the exit liquidity for all the people that have already made money? And your insecurities kick in. And it's a natural thing I've just seen so many times in every single cycle. And so if Bitcoin prevails in this cycle to actually hold the investment thesis, that I'm pretty sure it will. And I still remain very convicted that we are in the normal Bitcoin cycle. And all of the things and events that are happening around us is actually just building the reason to own Bitcoin, particularly

in self custody, but also those that want to do it through the ETF for tax benefits, and various other structures and retirement money. So I think psychologically, if the cycle prevails, which I'm pretty sure it will, then we hit this new wave of new people that all understand and will be adding their position because I think a lot of people have dipped their toe into Bitcoin, but they've got a lot more dry powder and they've got a lot more to allocate towards it. As long as they can see does this investment thesis roll out does it make sense and then it come becomes somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy because there's so many people that believe in the four-year cycle as it actually goes through you know the normal supply and demand economics that were built into its monetary policy. Dwayne and Tom.

Cool. Thanks. Good morning. So, yeah, I think it's, you know, just to echo some of Simon's comments here, I think the overall sentiment for Bitcoin is also building as well. So there's that overall pressure on, you know, on Bitcoin here in the markets, right? I'm sure, you know, you guys have obviously in the title there, the Harris campaign sure, you know, you guys have obviously in

the title there, the Harris campaign has come out more in support of Bitcoin. We have Chris Larson has like, you know, dropped about a million dollars into a pack. So overall, if you see the building out of a lobby here for crypto, that's very helpful in terms of getting into politicians ears. I mean, even if it's not unified, I would prefer more of a unified lobby. But, you know, you take what you can take, right? Even when you look at things like China as well, what's happening with the economic morass in China is actually positive for Bitcoin as well. We're seeing that the stimulus hasn't really played out as effectively as expected. And in my view, I think China, you know, needs another trillion dollars of stimulus. And, you know,

just some of the things that we're looking at here is in terms of uh initial jobless claims coming out for the us we have to see how that goes and that could also um help the bitcoin price as well as some of the economic data that's coming out for china as well and you know that which overall is looking a bit negative their industrials may go up this quarter because of some of the stimulus and in terms of the metrics that we get here. But, you know, no one believes that the unemployment rate in China, for example, is 5.3 percent. So I think overall, these sorts of pressures that we're seeing on like more of a global and macro scale are also trickling down into positives for Bitcoin. So we should see a movement, especially from China, as they're clamping down on taxes on the wealthy here.

We're going to see, as they try to repatriate some of this money here, we should see some more movements out of equities into Bitcoin and into crypto. And then you're also going to get, as Simon was saying as well, you're also going to get some new cohorts jumping into crypto as well as institutions take on crypto as well. So you might even see some more, for example, boomer involvement as they look at, you know, crypto as more of a legitimate investment there. So I think a lot of these different, a lot of these different themes are sort of coalescing here. If you look at everything from China and industrials,

as well as to the economic data coming up for the US, as well as China, as inflationary fears kind of overtake, you know, recessionary fears here. Tom. Morning, everybody. So I think the Bitcoin story is sort of written already, which sounds like presumptuous. But I think between the flows and the broader institutional acceptance, I mean, you had Larry Fink yesterday saying it's going to be as big as real estate, which is essentially calling for like two point, I think, three million dollar Bitcoin, which is crazy.

I don't think there's a lot of argument or battle there. It's more about the broader adoption in the space. And like, what are the things that have increased broader crypto prices the past week or so? And it's the political landscape changing, right? So you've had like a lot of things move against Harris. So maybe it's the VP debate, maybe it's the view interview she did, maybe it's just like, her plagiarism. I mean, kind of on and on. But you could track broader crypto prices to the election odds pretty closely the past few weeks. You've also had a few other things that have kind of generally made the market more favorable for investments. You've had Mt. Gox payments being delayed until October 2025. And we finally had a lot of the seasonality things we've talked about in detail across many of these spaces kind of start to kick in. I mean, we've talked about

October for a while, but October, quote unquote, doesn't usually begin until the back half of October. It doesn't start on day one. And part of the reason is that there's a buyback window for equities in the US. And there's a blackout period where you can't actually buy back stocks. And we know stocks and crypto for risk assets are fairly tightly correlated. And that buyback window starts up again in the back half of October. That's really when you've seen a lot of exposure and assets move up into year end. Coinciding with the fact that a few weeks out from elections is when historically in 2016 and 2020, we've seen markets move up as well. I think about three weeks out from 2016,

2020 is when you saw Bitcoin price start to inflect before it was up 2x, I think by January in 2016, and then 4x by January in 2020, which moved in 2021. So a lot of things right now that are really ticking the box kind of positively for the market more broadly. But all that stuff is kind of the background noise for me. What I get most excited about is when I look at my DMs and I have friends from high school pinging me, talking about like, oh my God, hey, I just saw this new game come out.

I didn't realize it was crypto. Can you believe off the grid? Can you get me involved in this? Whatever. And there's a few instances out the past few weeks of things that are like non-crypto. People are jumping out and reaching out to me. So all good stuff. And for me, the most exciting stuff is on the consumer side as we're kind of thinking about these things. So in the more immediate sense, do you think that all of that is starting to play into the move that we're seeing today? I mean, it's literally like, you know, now the back half of October, it's almost a joke that we're seeing things go exactly where they should in the cycle. But I mean, is this just the groundswell of fundamentals? Are we just literally in the cycle here? I mean, I agree with you on off the grid, by the way, and all those

things. But it's kind of hilarious that Bitcoin is doing exactly what it's doing on these exact days. Is it because of Harris? Is it because the Trump election odds are higher? Is it because Larry fakes on his road chores? It just kind of all of those things fitting into this point in the cycle? Douglas, go ahead. Oh, Tom and then Douglas. Yeah. Sorry, Tom. Go ahead. Yeah. Very briefly, it's a pretty direct correlation between election odds. So election odds, if you just proxy, you know, looking at predicted polymarket and a few others, Bloomberg has like an index of them. It's his odds are up like 17% since the beginning of October. A lot of that really recently and Bitcoin, I think it's up like 17% since the beginning of October. A lot of that really recently.

And Bitcoin, I think, is up like 12% or something. So like, and you can see the inflection points are like very clearly when there's a change in pulling odds for Republicans. So I think that's primarily the driver right now. I think it's certainly all of the above. But, you know, I think that the one thing that's affected, I guess, folks that I know that are more in the traditional financial markets was the HBO show that came out, what was it, last weekend or the weekend before, in that I think that that's really filtered through into guys that traditionally are into equities or into fixed income as their investments. They watched that and I'd say I probably got a flood of DMs.

I think that Adam and Samson did a really good job really of sort of pushing, I guess, what Bitcoin is all about. And I think that that's a huge grind swell. When I looked at the 550 million that came into Bitcoin yesterday, I was really thinking that's a lot of my buddies now getting involved. Because I think it was a huge swell of support after that HBO show came out. It's interesting because we were talking last week when it came out, whether it was a net positive or a net negative, the way that the space was portrayed. So you're saying that from, at least anecdotally, from your contacts, it was a huge net positive.

Well, yeah, I think so. I think that there's been a groundswell of thought in the traditional space that Bitcoin is dodgy, who's Nakamoto. But there's always been all these sort of questions about who are the guys behind it? Are they horrible individuals? And I think that that kind of gave a positive. But obviously, the comments yesterday by Larry that this could be the next real estate or the size of real estate really allows people to connect the dots. It's not just digital gold. It's also digital real estate in that, you know, the inflation hedge part of it. And I think that that's really connecting the dots for traditional folks is isn't something that

traditional folks are going to find on crypto Twitter. It's something they're going to find in the traditional markets that they look at information and they look at information. What does Larry Fink say? They look at information. What are the movies showing that talk about it? The things that actually reach their living room because not everyone's on crypto Twitter like we are. I thought literally everyone was on crypto Twitter like we are, but I guess I was wrong. So it's interesting. I'm glad that you're seeing it as a net positive because I tend to agree. And I think, though, having Larry Fink sound so fully orange pilled and evolving in front of our eyes, I think, has really been the biggest narrative. I mean, it's absolutely crazy how much he seems to

understand it, whether he's talking his book or not. I think it's important to note also that he's almost equivalently talking about tokenization on other chains and not just Bitcoin anymore, right? When talking about the AI marriage, I mean, BlackRock seems to really get this and want to be leading at the forefront. And it's really wild to watch. Go ahead, Simon. Yeah, I just wanted to comment on this concept of talking one's book. Obviously, it's a thing. And it kind of feels a little bit sinister sometimes, especially in the context of the crypto market, because it's often followed by a pump and dump. And so you're trying to tell everyone to buy a token, and your actual underlying goal is to sell that token. But my experience of Bitcoin is that you end up

talking your own book, because you actually aren't looking to sell it, you're looking to onboard as many people into Bitcoin as possible. Because once you get the orange pill, and I've seen this just so many times, and it's just happened to so many of us, that even someone like myself, I just end up working full time for Bitcoin for free. And there are so many people that do that just for the love of Bitcoin, and the desire to get as many people on board to Bitcoin. And so Larry Fink is clearly orange pilling, and he wants everyone to do it via an ETF. And then there's people like me and other people that are trying to get everyone to do it through self custody and get the true power of Bitcoin. But I think the point is this concept of talking one's own book is only sinister if your actual reason for doing it is to dump the token on somebody else because you didn't really believe in it in the first place. And there's no way to quantify this. But time and time again, we have seen that everybody, once you get Bitcoin, you never go back

and you just kind of end up working for Bitcoin for free. And it's like the largest, you know, in Ethereum and others, you have this concept of a DAO, but Bitcoin really is the DAO. It has this, you know, organization of people that are just so passionate about it, work for it for free. And, you know, that's the concept that we're just seeing. And countries do it. Companies do it. Now fund managers are doing it. Then investment banks will do it. Individuals are doing it. And that's the momentum that we seem to just be picking up right now. So just wanted to comment on that, because I don't think it's something sinister. Yeah, Simon, in this case, I would say that the bulk of people who are evangelizing for Bitcoin

are more like missionaries than they are like, you know, Wall Street characters talking their book, right? It's a bunch of people who have been orange-pilled and really want everybody else to join. And so I agree with you 100%. BlackRock, I think everybody always has a healthy level of skepticism being that they're like a fascistically largest financial institution on the planet. But that doesn't mean that, you know, he's not truly orange-pilled. I mean, Robbie Michnik is the one who orange-pilled him, came over from Ripple and apparently really made Larry Fink into a believer. I want to pivot slightly into the title here. Kamala Harris calls for new crypto laws.

Dennis, I'm sure you took a pretty deep look at her comments yesterday. Obviously, I can only say the way the media portrayed it, whether it was exactly what you said or not, was that she was basically proposing a crypto regulatory framework in an effort to woo the 20% of black voters who hold crypto. When I reread it, it seemed like she was speaking to a caucus of black voters and said she was going to put a regulatory crypto framework in in general that would benefit them. But of course, the media kind of ran with it as a racially driven statement. I'm not sure that's how I read it. Maybe you can give us some clarity. Yeah, I mean, certainly you saw it kind of being read a number of different ways. Ultimately, the campaign, when they put out their official statement, they said protect

cryptocurrency investments. So black men who make them know their money is safe. You could read during the tea leaves a million different ways on that. I think ultimately, it's very apparent to the Harris campaign that it's important to win over not only young male voters, but young black male voters. So they're trying to do what they can to really show that they care about the issues this young demographic is interested in. I think it's probably legalizing marijuana, sort of protecting crypto. These are things that probably a lot of folks on Twitter would appreciate as well. Ultimately, this is a very, very big area of I think what we're seeing in the polls, a down area for the Harris campaign. As someone myself who does my absolute best to try to stay in the middle on these things, I really try to stay out of also just particularly the presidential campaigns as far as like picking a winner. I think, you know, the moment you pick a side in these sorts of races, you know, two thirds of the country sort

of automatically hates you. And that's a tushy action, we have to stay very, very neutral and nonpartisan as best we can to be able to be as effective as we want to be at the state level. But at the end of the day, you know, said, I have always said that when you see any sort of overtures, whether they be actual, I think, what people would consider to be authentic overtures, or whether they be lip service, to an extent, these are positive movements and these are good things to see. You want to see both sides competing for your vote. You want to see both sides pursuing this voter base and this industry, because even if they aren't doing it authentically, it just shows the power of this industry where now both presidential campaigns, obviously Trump way out in the lead on the issue, but both presidential campaigns are now

saying positive things about crypto broadly. I'm more of a Bitcoin guy, so I'd love to see some Bitcoin stuff coming from the Harris campaign and not just crypto stuff. But at the end of the day, like, you know, you have to appreciate just how insane it is that both presidential campaigns are sort of taking a look at this industry and going, wow, we really need to be courting this new voter base. You know, there's a lot of people in this industry that are single issue voters. They will vote up and down the ballot on this issue alone. That's probably because I would have to say that the Bitcoin voters, the crypto voters are probably some of the most entrenched voters I've ever come across.

You don't really find it very often that a voter is morally and also economically aligned with their sort of the way that they vote. Usually it's like, okay, I want to make money. I want to make the economy go up. Or it's like, you know what, we should focus on social issues. But Bitcoin is able to encapture both of these things. We just talked a moment ago about how when you're very – the people that are very pro-Bitcoin, they're not just speaking their book, they're orange-pilled, they get it. And what that really means to me is they understand the true social impacts of Bitcoin. They understand the societal impacts of Bitcoin. They understand the economic

impacts of Bitcoin. And they know that Bitcoin writ large is going to do very good things for society, not just grow their wealth, but also I think align incentives properly across the ecosystem, create a new base layer of economic finance for the world. Among another of other things, I think the most important to me when I first found Bitcoin was banking the unbanked. I just talked to a Democrat lawmaker yesterday who that was one of the main reasons why he's coming into the space. So needless to say, I'll finish off by saying that this is an extremely entrenched voter base. We will vote for people simply for the fact that they are very pro-Bitcoin. And I think the Harris campaign is finally starting to pick into that and realize that this is not a voter base that she can ignore going into the election.

Sorry, I'm having a glitch here still. Go ahead, Simon. Okay. Yeah. Um, I, I echo some of those sentiments and, uh, you know, we should take whatever, whatever, uh, politicians want to show us that they actually see this as something that's important to get the vote, which is awesome. But I also want to point out that it's so funny watching politicians not quite understand the nuance of the culture behind Bitcoin and crypto. And so obviously, you can see the thought pattern that would happen here. So it was a policy that was directed at hitting a demographic voter base, which was black men and American black men. And then it worked through what is the problem of the American black man. And then they said there's a financial inclusion issue. And then the financial inclusion issue led to a statistic around how many black men own cryptocurrency? And based upon that, it made the leap to,

we want to support cryptocurrency. And the average person reading that, you know, as a Bitcoin, a cypherpunk type of freedom, you know, global technology for all, no borders, no discrimination, no connection. You read that and you kind of think CBDCs because you think she's thinking about crypto in terms of KYC and targeting demographics and introducing some kind of protocol that might be able to target at the right relevant group and make some kind of financial apartheid

or something like that. So, you know, all of those different thoughts. So it's not that that was what she was trying to do. It's just the importance of your language when you are actually trying to understand the demographic and what is important to them. And the Bitcoin and crypto people, you know, see this as a borderless, permissionless opportunity for everybody. And it just didn't hit that tone. I mean, you may actually be able to give some clarity here. So kind of pivoting here, but the notion by Trump and Senator Lummis that Bitcoin could become a strategic reserve asset has been one of the bigger

narratives. And that was to be started effectively by taking Bitcoin that the United States owned, either from, I guess, Bitfinex, correct, or Silk Road. And instead of selling it, basically just putting it on the balance sheet. Lummis obviously goes much farther in adding millions of Bitcoin to the balance sheet. There was recent news that kind of went underreported about Bitfinex, that all of those assets would likely be Bitfinex's, correct? So isn't there an element here that the United States has a bunch of assets that were stolen from Bitfinex, and then the government was basically just going to, at one point, sell them off? But now they should go back to their rightful owner, Bitfinex and then the government was basically just going to at one point sell them off. But now they should go back to their rightful owner, Bitfinex. Yeah. Again, sorry, Scott, I have to do my full disclosure. I am a shareholder in Bitfinex, so I would benefit from these Bitcoins being returned to Bitfinex. But there is a little

bit of uncertainty. So my understanding, and again, we haven't got confirmation because we haven't been able to follow the money yet. But my understanding is that of the 95,000 Bitcoins that have now been ruled as belonging to Bitfinex as the sole victim, it means that everybody else that thinks they're entitled to them has an ability to apply for them right now and then there's a period at which they will be determined that they do rightfully belong to Bitfinex. Now because I was involved in the the hack recovery for victims where we converted people's Bitcoin claims into equity in the companies. And then there was a token, which was called a recovery right token, which gave you obviously, on top of shares on top of dividends,

you also got a right to the recovery, right. And then if you remember, a couple of years later, there was that issue where Tether had funds with crypto capital and crypto capital had a government seizure and shutdown, which led to an $815 million hole that they infamously patched up with a contract between Bitfinex and Tether. And then they raised a billion dollars through the Leo token, which also has a buy and burn element based upon the recovered token. So there's this very interesting structure. It is for the benefit of Leo token holders, recovery right token holders, and Bitfinex shareholders, but then there's this opportunity for anyone that didn't settle and maybe even the US government and other department to kind of say we want them for the strategic reserve asset.

But what I'm not sure of, just to close the loop, is whether the 95,000 Bitcoin are included in the 200,000 Bitcoin. Yeah, exactly. And I don't know if that separation is the same token, the same Bitcoin or not. And so we shall see, I guess, with the return of those. But it's absolutely fascinating. Tom, do you think that as the Harris campaign thaws, whether we believe it or not, that it makes crypto or Bitcoin less of an election issue?

Or do you think that Trump has sort of won that side of it and anything she does is largely lip service? Because this seems like pretty hardcore pandering the way kind of it was described there by Simon. Yeah. So there's one of the ways Trump wins this election is if young African-American voters come out for him. So I think this is a direct response to that. There was a broader study done by Galaxy Digital that Alex Thorne just released that basically goes issue by issue and scores Harris versus Biden and then Harris versus Trump. And Harris is an incremental improvement on essentially every Biden policy in Trump is a much bigger incremental improvement on both of the current legislation legislative folks. So, you know, I think either way,

it's going to be really good for Trump. But I think once the election uncertainty is behind us, regardless, it's going to be good for the broader crypto industry in general. These sort of like releases that she did this morning or whatever last night in terms of targeting Black men with crypto is like, I think, borderline racist and very targeted to, you know, the area she's underserving and not doing well in the polls right now. Dwayne, do you have any thoughts on how this could actually

impact the election as Harris starts to speak more favorably about crypto? Well, it's very hard to say, you know, exactly how this will play out in regards to crypto, in regards to the demographics that she's, you know, that she's really trying to hit, right? So, yeah, so, you know, in general, I think the economic policies are overtaking a lot of some of the social issues, especially with Black American men and some of the other demographics, you know, as well as, you know, white men as well. It's the same sort of, it's the same sort of thrust here. So, I think with that particular cohort, it's really hard to say how this will play out. But I mean, I, you know, it behooves any politician to target specific demographics.

If you look at all politicians, depending on how they're speaking, you know, depending on the demographic they're speaking to, they'll craft their policy or craft their language towards them. So I don't really see a problem with it. It really behooves a democratic candidate to do this sort of thing. So I think, you know, as we progress here, there's only a couple of weeks left. So I think that, you know, if you can craft policy that specifically hits, you know, hit certain demographics, that just makes sense, because the more clarity you can bring on these particular issues or even bring up something like crypto which has been a neglected issue for years then i mean it only helps politicians politicians are going to politic and this is a whole part of the story so i didn't even realize

while we've been talking since i haven't been staring at a screen that bitcoin went from 67 all the way back to 65 and then up to 65 88. It was interesting, there was a story this morning, Coindesk or somewhere that basically said that for the first time, you know, funding rates have turned positive, open interest is rising tremendously. Tom, I mean, I know you look at this stuff. Do you think that this was just, we got a nice pump and somebody just took advantage of that rising open interest to liquidate a whole lot of longs? I'm not looking at the data myself right now. Yeah, noise. I mean, I think in general, funding rates have been,

you know, in general, leverage in the system has been really strong. I guess what I'm more interested in is how people are expressing that. So what are people doing with altcoins and particularly meme coins as an expression of that value, rather than are they pumping it back into Bitcoin? I think Bitcoin price action, honestly, is now solely moved by fund flows. So there's a study by FalconX that every sort of dollar fund flows into the ETF within one to three days, that has a two to three percentage point increase in the price action of Bitcoin. The correlation there is pretty strong. So that's what I think is driving fundamental flows for Bitcoin. Now for these other things,

I'm not exactly sure. I think it's still tons of speculation. That's where you look for kind of the barometer of how the broader market's feeling. One thought I had the other day, which I'm still struggling with, and I'd love if other folks are thinking about it as well as like, if we do have a broader upcycle, we have all this money driven through speculation and meme coins and other things. You know, the 2021 cycle is driven by NFTs. And that's how people kind of flex their digital wealth. Like, how do people do it in this environment? And where's the trade in that? Is it like, hey, I just invested in Brett or whatever, Sundog or whatever, and I flex my bags that way. But it's kind of hard to post screenshots of your accounts or post on-chain stuff. I mean, the way people would do it before was, hey, I have a Bored Ape or hey, I have a

CryptoPunk. How do we do that in this new environment? And where is the investment on that? I think it's like the second order effect of like how we think about the speculation. And I still have no idea how that kind of plays out. So I don't know if anyone else wanted to answer that. But I was going to talk about the the other part of the political side is that and please do not take this as any kind of endorsement, because I will not be participating. But there is the launch of Trump's Families World Liberty Financial Project, which I believe they're rushing through before the election. And so strategically, they've decided that the token sale needs to happen before the actual election. And I think that would be deliberate for some reason, which I can't quite put together.

I can't either, because it seems like if he thinks he's going to win, he would want to do it after when he has more control over whether that's going to be an unregistered security. And he seems like he'd be at risk of the ire of the SEC if he loses, right? Yeah. But I guess the interesting part about it is, if this is a beacon for new adoption, when you sign up for it, you have to connect your wallet. So that's kind of a high layer of like metamask level of understanding, which is a big leap for many new adopters. And then if you're from the US, it goes through a verify investor process, which means that you need to demonstrate you're an accredited investor, which will involve uploading tax reports, proof of network, net worth, credit reports, and accountants reports. And so it's kind of combining that, you know, that securities accredited investor,

and then the, you know, native, you're connecting your wallet. So it would be interesting to see. And I really don't like the economics of the valuations. I'm not sure it's going to be a great thing. Yeah, it's like 70% insiders or something. But even I think his staunchest supporters in the crypto industry have been publicly scratching their head at this one and wondering why they're doing it this exact time. I mean, Dennis, have you heard anything about it? Any sentiment? Sorry, I broke up there at the last second. What was the question about? I'll just generally ask if you've heard anything about people's sort of takes on WLF, the World Liberty Financial, and why they would be launching at this exact time,

whether this is favorable for him or if it could hurt. I mean, in my opinion, it certainly hurts him with a certain audience. I mean, there's a lot of people that feel that this is just not an appropriate time to launch something like this, but I guess we should leave it to see what he actually does with it. But I'm a Bitcoin guy. So yes, the Bitcoin guy, I'm certainly not super keen towards him launching a crypto project.

But others in the space might like it. Generally, the response I've seen in the space has been negative. I mean, I haven't really seen a lot of positive attributes or people saying positive things about it. I think we've seen sort of these attempts to come in and use the people's names to be able to launch a token or some sort of crypto project in order to grow their wealth. You know, that being said, also, I will say when I was listening to Don Jr. talk in the spaces where they were discussing the launch, I did get the sense that he does

really appreciate the core values of what makes Bitcoin important, which I didn't think I would be waking up and saying, I agree with Don Jr. on Bitcoin or crypto, but he certainly had some things that he was saying, talking about being unbanked and the impacts of the banking system in general on the American people. So there's definitely an understanding going on within the ecosystem of the Trump family. But yeah, I don't think there's a lot of positive feelings towards the project itself at this point. Yeah, I think that people just generally scratching their heads as to the timing and obviously skeptical because of who's behind it and such. But I mean, the silver lining, or maybe the flip side of that taking the timing all that out is uh if it ends up being legitimate i mean this could be one of those things that that attracts millions of mainstream like uh people into the space they gotta hope that they get a

good impression when that happens but i mean yeah let's not forget let's not forget it'll certainly attract like you know people that are pro-Trump. I mean, so maybe that's like the play. Right, but pro-Trump, non-crypto, that could be tens of millions of people coming into crypto that were not here, right? I mean, the Trump supporters are like probably, you know, almost as entrenched as the Bitcoin supporters, right? Like they're just like, they're yellowed in to Trump from an ideological perspective. So maybe you get some effect where you get some folks that come over from the Trump world and become pro-crypto, maybe hopefully become pro-Bitcoin. But I don't see the direct like, oh, wow, this is great for Bitcoin on the surface. But who knows?

As the project develops, yeah, I'll hold my – I should I won't hold my breath on on a crypto project coming from them. But yeah, we'll see what happens so far. That's pretty negative in the space, the response. But yeah, hopefully that hopefully that that doesn't reflect on how they're going to govern when it comes to Bitcoin sort of writ large. I mean, let's not forget who this is, right? This is, we all can be very wide, eyes wide open with why we are supporting Trump in terms of what he's going to do for the industry. But this is also an individual who's at every turn his entire life has done something to try to get another dollar in his bank account. I mean, you start just look no further

than the NFTs he launched when he didn't even know what crypto was. You know, the number of obviously casino projects and everything. I mean, just literally everything he does is to try to get another incremental dollar. And then there's the sort of new generation of folks who, you know, supported by Baron and others who are trying to, I think, shepherd these things along. So I don't know who this is for. The folks in the crypto industry don't want it.

His old supporters don't know what this is, and I'm sure don't want it. So the only thing this is for a person that's benefiting is Trump and most likely his kids. So, you know, we could be eyes wide open to what we like about Trump, but this is not one of those things. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Simon. Yeah, I'd also say the way that they announced the project, it actually touches upon all of the controversial and regulatory challenges. So there's three parts to it. You've got the stable coin backed by treasuries. So that's recreating the entire infrastructure of Circle or Tether, which is a huge regulatory area that touches upon not just America, but Europe regulations,

MICA, all of these different things. Then there's a DeFi element to it. So that touches upon the whole self-custody part of connecting your own wallet, being able to execute in smart contracts. And then the third element to it is its governance token, which touches upon the whole, is it a security or isn't it security with the SEC? So you're literally hitting the OCC, the SEC, the CFTC, and every agency that may want to use this as an attack vector. But on the other side of that,

it may be a project that tries to clarify all these areas which haven't been clarified, which need to be clarified after the election. That was so many Cs in those regulatory agencies when you hear them rattled off like that. Guys, I think we've pretty much covered everything for the day. Going to be interesting, I think, to see where Bitcoin kind of goes from here. Trading now back down to $65,400 about where it started the day.

So definitely a strong rejection there when it got up into the $67,000. Once again, please follow all of our amazing panelists. They're doing great work, great insight. Very valuable to follow all of them. And X, otherwise, we will be back tomorrow, 10, 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Thanks, everybody. Thanks to the guests.

Thank you all for listening. Speak tomorrow. Bye.