The Wolf Of All Streets - Lawmakers Tap Crypto Leaders To Advance BTC bill | CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

Industry leaders meet with with Lawmakers in D.C. to discuss The Bitcoin Strategic Reserve!

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall this Tuesday, September 16th. We are here every weekday at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard time. I'm hearing rumor, Dave, I'm in a lot of trouble for my skepticism on Bitcoin treasury companies behind the scenes. Well, you know, the funny thing is, is if you, you know, you and I both share that ADD and, you know, And you have things that come into our heads pretty quickly. But the basic story, which you and I agree about, is that if you have a sustainable business model, it makes sense. If you have cash flows, you should be saving it in Bitcoin in many, many cases. And if you have a competitive advantage, then you should leverage it.

I mean, the reason I bought some NACA yesterday is because as much as I think Bailey threw the pooch yesterday in his letter this morning was much better. and maybe he listened. I don't know. I'm sure a lot of other people said it. The fact is that he is at the epicenter of the Bitcoin Ecosystem. And so if there are ever going to be opportunities to be able to buy assets cheaply and people want to give him a credit line to be able to do so, I think he could actually do it. And so buying something at MNAV or at a discount, it just makes sense.

You know, that said, most companies that are just trying to use it. On the balance sheet, it's bullshit, and it's going to blow up. And people who are dumb enough to pay multiples more than two, and even two is kind of difficult, but paying multiples more than two are going to get burned. And you and I have said that. I don't understand why anyone will give you shit about that. Because, you know, friends in the industry. And listen, the problem, once again, is a very human but crypto problem. And that, David, I'm going to mute your mic, it's really crunchy.

But is that we just get caught up in these massive hype cycles. Like, everybody should cheer for treasury companies that trade at NAS or a slight premium if they're decent. Nobody should be buying something that launches without owning any Bitcoin that's at the 20x to NAF. It's just like all coins. It's just like the all point cycles. Look, I get a lot of shit, you know, I got, you know, Binance versus, you know, did a written news report off of one of our crypto town halls when I made the point that XRP is trading like leverage beta to Bitcoin. Well, if you look at the chart, that's exactly what it looks like. That's not staying that XRP is Bitcoin or anything else, but, you know, that, you know, a lot of people gave me crap.

Of course, finance also said that I was the CEO of coin routes, which is annoying since Ian Weisberger is running coin routes and I am merely a senior advisor and shareholder. But, you know, that's neither here nor there. I mean, you get news stories, get a life for their own. I mean, you had a, in your show this morning, I was in the gym, so I don't know if it was Andrew or Tillman. They made the point that a value cycle is starting, which, by the way, is the single healthiest thing that could happen for all of crypto, which is things with value are going to get recognized and people are going to pile in. That is the most important thing. Now, Bitcoin has its value proposition. We've talked about it.

It's dramatically undervalued. The problem that we have in crypto is people look at it, they suffer from problems. They suffer from unit bias, and they suffer from this kind of belief that, you know, a 10x gain is good, but it's not really life-changing. So why do I care about it? And anyone in traditional finance, you talk about 100% gain and people in traditional finance are like, wow, this is like amazing. And, you know, people in traditional fans, if you can get a 5% gain and lever it up to 50%, They're ecstatic. In crypto, people scoff at 10x gains, at 1,000% gains. That is more like lottery tickets. That is not investing. And eventually these things will come together. So in the treasury companies, if you ask me a question, which is, does David Bailey and NACA have a potentially sustainable business model? The answer is yes. If you ask me the question, could they grow via debt accumulation, et cetera, from where they are, now to a multi-billion dollar company? The answer is yes. If you ask me the question of should I be

investing at an net present value as if there were $20 billion right now, the answer is, are you out of your fucking mind? And that's kind of the problem in crypto. So people interpret what you say through that lens, right? I mean, am I saying anything wrong? You know that I've been dismissive of much of this for a very long time, but I think that there's value. And that's why I said yesterday, really hated the way he approached it yesterday morning, but I actually went and bought some. So, you know, and told people I was going to do so and then told people in a later space during the day that I did. So people thought that I was nuts. And I'm like, guys, you give me something that could, that I think is a double from here. I'm going to take it every time, right?

It's just that simple. It can be a double today. Well, I'm not saying it will. I'm not saying by any stretch or that anybody should expect that, these have that level of volatility. So if you think that everyone who were going to sell sold yesterday, it makes a lot of sense. Hey, Dave, if you want to get leverage on NACA, they now have options trading. I mean, one of the, how do they have options trading? Was it with the price so? Is that true?

I don't even think you can buy. I was hearing rumors yesterday. A big problem was that people were actually putting in bids on Fidelity, and Fidelity didn't allow NACA trading or something. Well, Schwab did. I know, because as I said, I did so. so I know Schwab did. But one of my recommendations to David, to be blunt, if I were recommending him, is he should do a 10-for-one reverse split.

And if you ask yourself why, it's very simple. It's because there's a lot of plumbing. And David, I think you know this, there's a lot of plumbing in a financial system that doesn't allow margining, for example, of anything less than $5. It makes it very hard to short, makes it very hard to do options, makes it very hard to do lots of things. So eventually, if he can't grow the company to be, You know, that's why nobody IPOs at a price, you know, close to this. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense if you're in traditional finance because it means you literally are outside of the plumbing.

Now, we could talk all day about whether that should be the case. The answer is, of course not. It's an anachronism. It makes no fucking sense. But it is the way it is. And so that's why companies do reverse splits. They do it because people need to be able to. A lot of accounts, a lot of what your friends on Fidelity probably has,

happened is there's probably a level of your account access, which doesn't allow you to buy what they call penny stocks and anything below $5 is a penny stock. So that's probably what it was, Scott. But it's something that people on this, on Cryptotown Hall, don't know. So that's why I'm imparting the information. I said it yesterday on a space in the afternoon, and people were like, no, that can't be true. And, of course, then they looked it up and they said, oh, okay, well, I guess he's right. Yeah.

That makes a lot of sense. So what do we think, before we get into other topics, what I've been getting in trouble for is saying that this is the quote-unquote end of the Bitcoin Treasury trend. And so I think I should clarify, I think it's the end of the hike around the Bitcoin treasury trend. And if every company launches a Bitcoin strategy and trades at a 1.1 or 1-Nab, I don't think it's the end of that trend. I think it's just the end of the initial hype cycle around these and nobody's going to buy it anymore. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I underestimate humans humaning, as I like to say.

Well, I mean, look, there's two points here. Point number one, it's never the end of a cycle. Bitcoin's volatility is still ridiculously low. It's price isn't moving. It's sitting in the same band. You know, all the technical doomsayers are being nonplussed by, well, why isn't it down at 100 now? And all the bull guys are saying, well, why are these old-fashioned OGs selling? are in a distribution phase, this two shall peter off and end, and volatility will reassert itself.

When volatility reasserts itself, companies like strategy, which have the ability to monetize that volatility, will outperform. The MNAVs will go up. Companies that have access to governments or other things that they can buy assets at a discount will go up. Companies that have no special sauce will continue to languish it around at a small discount to MNAV, and that'll be bad. but I do think that there is one trend, and I don't want to shill for Archpublic, but they're doing a very interesting thing, and you can talk about that if you want later. I'm a part of that for full disclosure, so yeah. Right.

No, I know you are, which is why you don't want to go there. So I won't talk about them in specific, but what I will say is that companies, which are cash flow generating companies, opting to save in Bitcoin, rather than in an asset that's being depreciated by 8% per year, by the U.S. federal government or if you're in other countries potentially more, opting to get rid of that 8% depreciation and get positive real expected returns for your cash flow hoard should create higher multiples for companies. And so I think that the notion of a Bitcoin Treasury company is just going to be defined as companies. Because companies don't want to be

stupid. And I'm not making up that 8% by the way. That's what the CBO is projecting our deficit to be and look at what the projected money supply is going to be, and that's what it is. So even if Bitcoin does not gain a kicker on its investment value based on adoption and, you know, whether you can read Bastian Sinclair's book on the adoption S curve, if you want to get an idea of what that looks like. But even if that doesn't happen, you would expect it to outperform dollars by 8%, which is a hell of a lot better than where most corporate treasuries are getting.

Hey, Dave. You made a point yesterday about basically the dollar depreciation. If we look at the long run, it's rate of return for the S&P 500, but 10%. If you look at forecasts over the next 10 years, it's more like 5 to 6. And that's before anybody comes in from a treasury standpoint and buys crypto to try to enhance their balance sheet. Your argument here, if those points are right, would be that companies should be doing to this just, to stabilize their value. Correct. It's exactly right, David. It's exactly the point. And by the way, that 10%, if you look at the track, the S&P performance divided by the depreciation of the dollar by the increases of money supply, particularly after the pandemic, looks a lot. You know, those charts are very similar. And if you actually look at it, the equal weighted S&P versus that, it's actually underperformed or slightly underperformed. But the MAG 7, which has generated additional value because of a massive surge in AI and technology. and hype around that has outperformed.

And the thing that drives me crazy about a lot of analysts is a lot of analysts only look at averages. Of course, in a world with hundreds, if not thousands of viable investment options, some are going to outperform and some are going to underperform. The aggregate is going to be almost by definition the sum of depreciation in the currency and increases in GDP in real GDP caused by productivity, et cetera. et cetera, et cetera. This is axiomatic. I'm not saying anything that people don't know, but most investors don't ignore that. That's really the point. Does that make sense, David?

Oh, yeah. Scott, you got that? Yeah, I do. I mean, listen, it's the same overarching theme. I just want to reiterate that I've, for me, that I've said from the beginning is that I'm very comfortable with institutions, governments, and individuals all approaching Bitcoin the same way, which is a hell of a lot better than holding cash. If you make money, take that money or some of that money and put it into Bitcoin and hold it very long term, the money that you don't need to sell, that to me is the Bitcoin. That should be what a Bitcoin treasury company is called, not financial engineering.

I mean, to your point about Arch Public, it's a private fund, not a publicly traded company, but it's existing businesses with massive cash flow with triple and leases and effectively franchises, taking the money that they're making, and putting it into Bitcoin using an algorithm to buy it at superior prices, and because of the big, beautiful bill, being able to entirely depreciate that the first year. That's the kind of thing that's going to be exceptionally sustainable. If you made a million dollars this year in capital gains and income, you can put $3 million into the fund entirely buy Bitcoin in a cash flowing business and not pay the government taxes. Doesn't that make sense? Something like that?

These are the kind of things that I think will be the future. But it's logical. It just as a Bitcoiner, just the entire notion that there's, that how we play with the tax code to incentivize certain investments and the corruption in our government to do so pisses me off. But that said, as an individual, of course, it would make sense to take advantage of it. That's only for accredited investors. I should be very clear. But like, it's not, you know, everybody has heard obviously about, you know, a billionaire. buys a private jet on December 28th because they can fully depreciate and get the tax write

off. So you basically get a jet instead of paying taxes, right? Well, that's pretty systemic. And there's a lot of ways to do that. And if you can gain Bitcoin and investment in the cash flowing business, those are the kinds of things. I don't really care specifically, but those are the kinds of things that are going to be very successful, in my opinion, utilizing Bitcoin as Treasury. But we can move on from there. Yeah. I mean, Gary Grant is doing that as doing, real estate and Bitcoin, right, with the full depreciation. It's a similar model, I would imagine.

Yep. He's going to end up arbitraging the depreciation, amortization. If Bitcoin goes down, it's going to allow him to sell the Bitcoin, take a loss, take that loss against the capital assets, write them down, and then re-buy Bitcoin and reset your basis. it's just it's an option tool like we've forgotten how much optionality bitcoin really afford somebody that's really looking at it as a business instead of a scam hey just to amplify that scott every time i use the words people always ask me what the hell do i mean when i say

monetize volatility what grant is doing is a perfectly classic example of monetizing volatility of course at the same time as being intelligent on tax strategies Right? You know, this is a very, very well-trod path for, I won't even say Wall Street. Let's say, you know, banking worldwide and smart people worldwide. I mean, you know, we were doing this in the city of London, a city group in the in the 90s, you know, on dividends. You know, there's so many variations of this. But when you take it into account Bitcoin's unique volatility characteristics, it makes so much sense. It's about some knock, though, while you were talking. So I'm a little higher than you. Sorry, Dave, come in for not financial advice. I mean, listen, you know, I'm pretty big. I'm not going to play games.

It doesn't really matter. It is what it is. There's one other story that, you know, that we put it as the title here, right? You know, and I just find it interesting. You know, do we, why do we care about cheerleaders so much anymore? I mean, is there real? Is there something real? I mean, you know, Saylor and Lee going to Bitcoin.

I mean, look, I have lots of respect for both, but, you know, they both have such, they're both wearing jerseys now. I mean, big jerseys, bright orange jersey, and I don't know what color Tom Lee's jersey is, but they have so much vested interest. Fuchsia, whatever. They have so much vested interest, do lawmakers care? I mean, unless they're donating money, in which case, of course, then they care a lot because that's what lawmakers care about most. well it's a double-edged sword we should go to the panel here uh it's a done and dan i would love your opinion so we don't have you here very often splur but um i think it's a double-edged sword obviously because we want the industry in the room right when they're talking about uh legislation

and this is for those who missed the story it's 18 crypto industry executives i believe are in a meeting to talk about the strategic bitcoin reserve and two of those people are sailor and and tom lee dan did i I get that right. I don't even want to. I don't want to butcher it. But, yeah, I mean, they're cheerleaders, but we also definitely don't just want a bunch of congressmen and senators in there without any representation from the industry. Yeah, no, that's that's about right. I mean, it's, listen, I mean, this is, today, I'm glad they're doing it. I mean, today is probably not the day to do it, though. I mean, listen, it's shutdown season in Washington right now. And, you know, we got 16 days until the government shuts down. Congress has been,

get to reach an agreement on continued spending, big parts of the government are likely going to shut down October 1st. And the Republicans, they want to, the Democrats want Republicans to extend those, but Biden era tax credits for Obamacare. There's no way that Republicans are going to want to do that. So this is like, I mean, honestly, small potatoes, I think, on the grand scheme of things. And so the timing of it, I mean, again, I applaud them. And I know they're going up to New York tomorrow for that Bitcoin Treasuries Conference.

I'm going to swing on up to that, too. I just want to do a deep dive on this whole Treasury's conversation, too, which we could probably talk about later. but it's an interesting time because really the focus has to be on the Clarity Act and market structure. That is a world's more important, frankly, for our ecosystem than the SBR. And I hope the SBR gets done on the legislative standpoint, but I just don't see it happening. I don't think they have anywhere near the votes. But by all means, Tom Lee, Saylor, I think they can spend as much time they went on the hill right now.

I'm glad they're up here with a lot of the other executives in town. But it's, you know, I don't think there's going to be much happening after today on that. There's bigger fish to fry. So it's a good, like, bait, press moment, or it's just a natural step on a very long process that we should not expect much progress on immediately? Well, yeah, no, I think there's going to be some aspect of the SBR that's going to come out, but it's likely going to be that for now. It's going to be that digital Essex stockpile that.

You know, they're still working on, and there's other measures that the federal government, particularly the executive branch, can take, whether that's, again, continuing with the seizures, continuing with the asset forfeiture, if you will, and, you know, they're stopping the options, what they've been doing for the last, like, six months. But now that Bose out, and now they're, you know, listen, we have three and a half more years to get this done. And so, Witt, who we've met with his both successor and Harry Jung and a lot of these other folks on the team are now taking a lot more industry meetings to expand on the, there's two of them, right? the U.S. digital asset stockpiled, the U.S.D.A.S. and then the strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The legislative fix would be best, but again, that is such a long shot. I mean, it is such a long shot. So, yeah, we could talk more about it. I don't want to steal the show here, but I'm just giving you my opinion. I can steal the show. You're here. Steal. Steal. Let me see. Well, I'm curious to see. I mean, what your audience has to say about it. I mean, especially when it comes to the market structure, because this.

is what we're working on right now, just the sausage-making process. And this is, again, vastly more important because if we don't get this done, certainly over the next two or three months before the midterm year kicks up, we're going to have a real big problem next year after the midterms, especially if the Republicans lose the House. And then we're looking at a long, long way to go. And as long as Paul Atkins is in there, you know, we'll be fine. But hypothetically, President Gavin Newsom comes in in a few years, you know, who's to say he's not going to bring in Gary Gensler, Jr., or 2.0? That's why this market is, Or just Gary Gengler himself.

Yeah, maybe. I mean, maybe he'll be Treasury Secretary. I mean, that'd be a nightmare scenario. So what I mean is, like, that's why this Bitcoin SBR legislation, again, I love it in spirit. I'm a Bitcoiner. But I just, if we're going to use some horsepower, you know, we got to work together on the Clarity Act. All right. So it's good that they're in the room, but we got to get them in a different room.

The clarity room, not the, yeah, excuse me big-go-old. And a lot of these companies are doing a lot, too, behind the scenes. This is not as exciting. It certainly doesn't get the same press as a sailor and Latam Lee come to the hill to talk about the SBR. I mean, that's a lot more exciting, trust me. But the real truth is we need to work on this RFIA discussion, the rulemaking with the Genius Act, and then getting the clarity act done. And I think we will, but that's really where we're heads at for the next few years, for the next, that's the year.

But for the next couple of weeks, you know, I would encourage everybody here, to really keep an eye on that shutdown because if they can come to an agreement, that's going to make, I mean, market structure and certainly the SBR a whole lot of harder. Yeah, that all makes perfect sense. And luckily, we also had Ron here to kind of give us the breakdown yesterday. So we love having you guys to give us the actual information on what's happening on the hill. I just totally, total pivot. I just read a story that actually made me laugh out loud while my mic was all. which is one of the ones that was shared with me for this group. Citigroup forecasts eph to fall to 4,300 by year end. Last I checked, it's at 4,500. Big prediction.

Down $200. But listen to this. With a bull case of $6,400 and a bare case of $2,200, talk about bold takes from the Citigroup analysts. Ethereum could trade at any price by the end of the year. Where do they get these things? Like, that's news. It's great thing.

It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. And now I'm going to put Fulis on the spot since you're here and we're talking about price action. Is Ethereum going to 4,300 by the end of the year or maybe 6,400 or maybe 2,200 or maybe 15,000, as Tom Lee said? What's going on? So many hot takes. I don't know where to start. No, but Ethereum is an interesting one. Like, it's almost one of those charts where in times like these, I,

I lost him, did you guys? Yeah, I lost them too. I'll try him in here, Scott. He was going to be utterly dying to know what happens at times like these. I was just going to say, you know, somebody asked, I think maybe you asked a minute or two ago about why we need these figureheads. I think, you know, what Lee's been able to do over the last few months is just that price action that investors want. We want a number to go up. Like, you can't discount how important having these guys on CNBC every day chiming in is to the price of the coin and token.

And so I think, you know, Lee's been obviously very important for Ethereum. That's just hearing that that's going to be our price action makes me, you know, shake my head a little bit, a little bit as an Heath Bull. But we'll see how it goes. But I do think it's very important. And I think we're seeing it, you know, Doge, the ETF got approved. That's happening. They're still looking for their figurehead. I don't think Musk is going to do it anymore.

You know, but you need somebody big to be on the shows and talk about it. I think that's just the way forward. Paul, S, are you live? Yeah, sorry, my internet drop because apparently living in a first world country isn't good enough to have regular internet that doesn't bug out. Sorry about that. But yeah, just talking about Ethereum. I think the Ethereum Foundation was listening and cut you off. Yeah, they knew, you're going to say $2,200.

They knew I was going to give a hot, spicy bear take. No, I think that, yeah, I mean, something I've been telling my guys all this month is, effectively, there's a lot of, there are so many fundamental drivers in the market this month. We had PPI, CPI last week. We have FOMC tomorrow in like 24 hours. And the market has so far been, you know, it's been rallying. into this news event, but I still think there is a certain amount of indecision in the charts in the markets. And we kind of see that in the price action. I know at this point the 25 BIPs rate cut is like 96% or something like that. CME group are giving that kind of likelihood.

So the question isn't whether or not we get rate cuts. The question is, you know, to what extent they're priced in. And I think the fact that BTC and Eath have had these huge rallies kind of this month, more so looking at a BTC running off its lows, should kind of tell you what the market is looking towards in terms of risk appetite and how people are positioning. And I think this sell-off that we're seeing the last couple of days is also indicative of that. On high enough timeframes, I think that we're setting up for pretty bullish Q4. I think that there are a lot of risk on indicators that are flashing.

And we have Dixie weakness. We have obviously rate cuts impending and presumably a dovish pivot from the Fed. We have, you know, and something you were talking about at the start of the discussion, you know, these DATs and treasury companies, I might have a slightly more bullish leaning than certain other panelists, and that's okay. Long-term rates down, equity strength. We had NASDAQ S&P all-time high in the last week. So I think that we're kind of setting up for.

a bullish Q4. And, you know, speaking on Ethereum specifically, potentially continuation and proper price discovery, I know we put in a new all-time high. Was it at the end of August or actually, yeah, end of August, but it was like a daily SFP type thing. And we didn't really, didn't really get to enjoy any sustained price discovery. But I think that might change. I think that FOMC itself is going to be a sell-the-news event. I think that the next week or two, we're probably going to see, choppy price action at least, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a kind of a pullback as a lot of old coins are kind of, you know, putting in very high open interest numbers and seeing a lot of leverage longs in the system, a lot of late longs trying to make money, trying to capitalize

on a move that is definitely slowing down, some momentum that is definitely waning. I think that sell the news event tomorrow, I think that we get a few days, maybe a couple weeks of sell off, but I think that that turns around in October. I think we're setting up for a bullish Q4. Speaking of Tom Lee, he made headlines today by saying that he thinks that rate cuts are going to be, you know, spark a massing, if I believe was the word bull run for Bitcoin and Ethereum. So I think consensus is that this week's rate cuts are going to be bullish for Q4. I mean, for sure. Yeah, that's certainly worrying, I think, because how often do we see these consensus takes and inevitably the market does the things?

that hurts the majority of people or that hunts the most amount of liquidity and knocks the most amount of people out of their position. I think the fact that it is consensus is why we're kind of seeing, because like, you know, if it was consensus bullish, then Heath would be trading at, you know, 5K right now and BTC would be putting in new all-time highs as well. The fact that we're seeing this kind of uncertainty, this sell-up, I think that should tell you that the positioning has already happened, the move has already played out to an extent, This is people taking profit on that bullishness, on that 25-bibs rate-cut outcome. I do think that long-term, it's very bullish for the markets looking forward,

but I don't think that the low and medium time frame, you know, 15-minute chart scalpers are going to necessarily see that in their intraday price action. Somebody else had their hand up, but they went down. I can't see. Can you hear me now? Yeah, I can. Uh-oh, you fizzed a little bit, but whatever, hopefully you. Yes, I hear you.

Okay, cool. Yeah, there was another story which I thought was interesting that people don't really understand, which is, you know, people complaining or worrying that institutional holders, you know, funds and companies are now somewhere in the 15, you know, ish percent of Bitcoin holdings. And was that the number? I mean, it was in our thing. I'm driving, so I can't look at the number. And I just find that interesting that people will be concerned about that.

Because if you look at, if you look at gold and you take and you include central banks in it, it's way, I mean, it's way higher. I mean, you know, individuals own less than 40% of gold. But even if you take the central banks out, it's, which is a big, big piece of it. it's still significantly more than that amount. And gold isn't generally something that individual companies do. And when you include the gold miners and the stocks, et cetera, it's more than double this amount. If you look at equities, that same kind of cadre owns close to 80% of equities globally. So it really is, it's fascinating how people get worried about these big distributed pools of capital of providing access to owning Bitcoin to individuals,

as if that's somehow a bad thing or makes it top-y. It's in fact, it's just silly. David, your mic is up. I don't know if you're trying to talk or if it's just your mic rumbling. Darity. It's my micrumbling. Sorry. All right.

Sasha, Carlo, you guys haven't jumped in today. Any thoughts here on the conversation? Sasha, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, two things on my end. I think, yes, I mean, looking at the FMC meeting and, you know, I think. Yes, consensus is, there's way too much consensus on how much the rate cut is going to be and what is going to do to the market. So I agree with, I think, Dave and a number of others who brought that up.

The thing I wanted to point out, too, is there are massive also option open interest for both Bitcoin and Ethereum expiring on September 26th. So I think that's going to be an interesting thing to follow. And it's mostly on, it's mostly call options, much less what options. Now my mic is best enough. Good morning, Scott. Good morning, Scott. So on the, obviously on the Bitcoin strategy approach, rumbling through Congress, I have to agree, it's ambitious, but probably not going to make it over the goal line because of where Congress is at right now. Now, as far as rate cuts, I'm fully prepared for a 25-bips cut and the ensuing disappointment and sell-off that will follow because I think people are still not zooming out and seeing the big picture here.

The Fed is inevitably going to capitulate because it's programmed that we're going to have a new Fed chair in May. So, again, I stick to my thesis. We're going to have an extended cycle here. we're going to have a lot of rate cuts coming down because the next Fed chair will be sympathetic to Trump's agenda. And I think that's going to be a massive benefit for risk assets, especially Bitcoin. And I also think we're going to see an alt season. So I enjoy the chop. It's an opportunity if you're dollar cost averaging to continue to do that.

It's boring. And it makes us talk about things like digital asset treasury strategies in the absence of, you know, market movement up. And that's fine. I'm happy to have these conversations. It's great. But I don't think it changes the fundamental nature of this. We've broken the four-year cycle. I don't think we're coming back.

I think this is the way it's going to be going forward. Anyone else thoughts on that specifically? Yeah, I saw Adams to let him jump in first. Actually, I wanted to just touch on. I don't know if you all guys saw the news about Google with their stable coin. like AI Payments Rail that they just talked about today with partnering with Coinbase and Salesforce. I just wanted Carlos' opinion on that if he'd seen that. And what do you think it means for stables in general? Yeah, I just saw that. Thank you for the DM. Can I touch on that,

Scott? Yeah, please do. I mean, there's stable coin news every day, right? We got metamasked stable coin launch. Yeah, I think it's picks and shovel season for stable coins. And anybody, and everybody in FinTech is looking to launch and looking for clarity. I am not at all surprised by tech companies integrating payment rails and partnering and consolidating in response to this. It basically is going to disrupt the way we transact on the Internet. There's not going to be the need to go through all the trouble of connecting a credit card and putting in your account number, your billing address, your expiration date, your three number, digit on the back of your card. All these web providers and all these online e-commerce retailers

are, I predict, all going to have seamless stable coin integration. And I mean, you're kind of talking to the person who's the most bullish, I think, in the entire space on stable coins. I think this is all a net win. The thing we need to be mindful of and continue to push back against is this notion that there is some kind of a loophole. here that is a threat to banks. I think that's a protectionist agenda from the banks. I think they're totally misreading the narrative here because they're threatened about what stable coins are going to do to their traditional fee extraction model. And they would love to see that, quote, loophole closed so that only they can make yield in their own creative ways, but deprive the consumer of having

options to the traditional banking rails. Things are changing and those that fail to adapt are going to get left behind. That's really my bottom line with all of it. I got to agree with that. There's a massive push from the American Bankers Association happening. It's mostly been behind the scenes that it's becoming a lot more blatantly obvious now. And part of the concern we're also facing right now is with the Genius Act, there's a there's a state option, right? And so all the bankers have associations throughout all the different 50 states. And so they're going to be leaning on state treasurers and state banking commissioners' offices to cut their own favoritism down there as well. So I think this is going to be a major battle on the horizon.

It's already gotten up and running, but beware. And I think this is an area where we need to stick together as an industry to stand firm. If I can, Scott, I wrote something this morning, I think is timely to put in the nest that talks about that exact thing. Texas Bank Association came out before the stable coin bill was passed, voicing these concerns. about how this would impact community banks. And it's the same protectionist agenda that we're seeing now from the bank lobby. So I'd love to share that just to kind of build some traction behind this narrative if I could. I think we lost Scott.

I think we lost it. You can put it up there, Carlo. I'm going to put it in next. Okay. Look at me. I'm the captain. Go ahead, Carlo. I was actually wondering.

I am the captain. Carlo, what's your feeling on this actually feels a lot like. feels a lot like um i don't know this feels like libra honestly this feels like facebook you know partnering with all these i mean i get that kind of creepy vibe in the same way that this is just like big text big grab um yeah man look it's it's inevitable uh we're we're gonna have centralized entities when it comes to stable coins because by nature they are they are centralized they're they have to be fully regulated there's just no way around that um Libra was ahead of its time.

Libra was an attempt to do something very ambitious. The team that tried to build Libra is now building SUI, and I guess that's a net positive for their ambitions, but that's not going to stop the tech companies from wanting to get into this. And I don't think you can put that genie in the bottle. I just think this is the way it's going to be going forward. Is it going to make it more centralized,

and it's probably more Web 2 than Web 3 ethos? Yes, but I don't. I think that kind of comes baked into the Genius Act because the Genius Act is a highly centralized piece of legislation. You're not going to break the traditional peg requirements because that introduces too much volatility into the dollar system. And that plays into the bank narrative. So we have to be careful here that we maintain that and we don't get too over our skis with how we build on stable coins because that's only going to cause a contagion effect that we want to avoid. We want this to be smooth.

yeah i mean carlo you and i have talked about this a million times i mean this the the technology is ahead of both adoption and people's understanding of models so you know we already know anyone in crypto understand how easy it is to move money the issues that people will have to come to groups with in business models are things like okay i'm willing to to pay something for being able to call my credit card company and someone screws me in a reverse a transaction. I'm willing to pay something for, you know, credit, right? But am I willing to pay 3% in a world where these guys are making, you know, 95%

profit margins on that? And then there are a lot of people who say, well, I don't want to pay for that. I just want to have my money, you know, move quickly and I want to pay anything. And people forget that the rewards systems are based upon the fact that there's such huge margins. right and all of this will we'll get sorted out and that's where this this stuff is all fighting and that's where it gets complicated Do you see me Dave because I got I got caged? Yes, we see you you are back man and I know you have three minutes to spare Hey Scott just wanted to apologize for earlier. I was putting on my knock a options trade Anyway, that all worked out well in any event I'm gonna hazard the forecast here if you got a

Google putting up payment rails, we're going to have one of the MAG 7 companies come out by the end of this year and announce a crypto treasury strategy. And arguably, that might take the air out of a lot of these DATCOs that are out there. I think by the end of the year, one of the MAG 7 companies is going to come out and announce a crypto treasury strategy. I mean, all that cash they got sitting there earning what, you know, less than Dave's 8%. right so David who would be your prediction well you know Google's kind of gone out there with the rails and the stable coin so they're at least putting more of their toe in the water I'll go with I'll go with alphabets

going with Zach Zuck meta wow interesting guys see I go with Navidia I think Navidia is in a perfect position for Bitcoin well either that or Apple Tim Cook tries to win back Wall Street love. Apple's cash. I think that in five years they're all there.

That makes more sense. That's really the point. Think about what that means for price, though. That's why you get people like Fink and others saying, you know, 500,000 plus because what does it look like with, you know, the largest companies in the world all saving in Bitcoin? I mean, you know, there's an S-curve to adoption that is. that's the parabola. And if you look at Bitcoin hash rates, by the way,

it's sort of anticipating that. You know, people don't talk about it, but the network just keeps getting stronger and stronger and stronger. I mean, look, you got all those data farms out there as they've got. You know, the older ones they can depreciate and have them go, you know, mining. Why not? Man, I love the wrapping towards the conversation with the huge hot take. I think it'll be Zuck, but what do I know?

I think he just wants to get so close to Trump, you know? He like dressed like Elon now and he tries to hang out and he wants to be, you know, one of the cool bros and buy Bitcoin, bro, you know? I think it's going to work out perfectly. But to transitioning, we do have X, Y, O up on stage. Marcus, is that you behind the account? Yeah, that's me. Hi, everyone. How are you done? How many times do you think we've like had five-minute conversations at conferences. I don't know. Over and 10.

Yeah, a lot. I'm a bit off the conference circuit for the moment. I'm not going to Singapore for the first time in four years. It's just too big of a trip. That's probably a good car. There's so many people there. It's a whole city's a traffic jam. It's Formula One at the same time.

It's exciting, but also makes it slow. What is it? Like, it wasn't a thousand site events. It's going to be crazy. That's an awesome. Awesome. Sight to have you here for this part of the show, the sponsor section. I'm going to give basically a, you know, 15-minute-ish interview and dive into what you guys are building. Every time, obviously, I bump into you, we get into this conversation about X,YO. Maybe you should just give us the TLDR because you've been around since 2018. D-PIN has been a huge narrative, but I think you were arguably first. That's right, yeah.

we were the first people we didn't realize it in 2018 of course we're sorry coins the current coin the term in 22 but yes it looks like it yeah so dive more into it maybe you could tell everybody what it is specifically why it's important why you built it yeah so today we are a data company on blockchain basically but how we started out is we are are we realize that location gets easily smoothed to hack, that you can download it. Jeepers spooking up, for example,

and pretend that you're in Dubai right now where they're actually in Los Angeles. It's a problem for most absolutely phone, also for self-driving cars and smart cities, and so on. So we've got a network of connected IOT devices where those devices confirm each other's proximity and location.

And that way, you know, you can have relationships and maps and you can have supply chains, automated tracking, and automated RWA's and data from the real world and things like that. And we had difficulty scaling, you know, like very large in 2018, only 2%. So yes, population was using crypto, but we were like, you have a wallet and you need to pay us in XIO if you want anything from us and it was difficult to install the software, you know, it's the beginning of deep in basically and it was just hard and so we launched subsequently an app or coin. So you can download it on coin app.com, which also lets

you collect, say not only is this geo-mine for location, but also collect other data from the real world, like sensory data or offline data, like bio data and so on. And we validate and verify it and then, you know, set it to web two and three companies. And we have like a very broad data set. Yeah. Go ahead, sorry. Yeah. We managed to go there to more than 10 million nodes.

And it makes us, I think, one of the largest deepets as well. And we are, because we saw data, data, data, data, data, you know, we tried not to build the layer one or layer two of the last seven years, but we built so much technology for it. And so last year we decided to now it's time, we built a data-focused layer one because nobody else is doing it. And so we launched today our X-Y-O layer-one data chain, which makes not only data storage and data certainty more accessible and more crypto-native, but also analytics and usage of databases. So talk more specifically about what you launched today. Yeah. So the chain today is, for example, if you look at... other chains and they are about transaction penalty and about transacting token value and in our

case it's about transacting data value and storing data value and getting certainty for it let's say you have a deep in and you collect that data but you want to first make sure that that deep in and that device at the location where it's supposed to be so we have to have to our proof location technology to do that but then for example we can and prove that the data came from that device was stored, let's say the database and then put into our layer one. And you can prove that part. And so that the data hasn't been humbled with.

The problem in Debin, of course, anywhere where you create value, people are able to earn, they try to cheat. So someone might have 10 weather stations in the basement, and pretend it to be all over the world where they kept the most money and our data chain of course goes beyond deep in you know we are in the AI age so it's about data for AI and and other applications as well you know that for example AI hallucinates and with our chain you are able to you know prove for example where that data comes from or can have AI go and tell the deep network collect some data where there's a lack of knowledge that's what you call proof of location and proof of origin as i did my research i saw those okay yeah yeah yeah that's right yeah thank you yeah and and so with it we we have for example block blockchain have flowed by they're growing

infinitely right as you create more box the the blockchain is growing and the the nodes and become I'm difficult to run and we build a lot of technology to reduce blockchain load and makes the chain. So XYO has obviously been around for years, but now there's also XL1, correct? So what's the dual token system? How is that structured? How do they work together for the ecosystem? Yeah.

Yeah, you're right. We have two tokens now. One of them, we call them the yin and the yank, basically. XYO token is external to the XYO layer one. It's for the deep end rewards and contributor rewards, the ecosystem, staking, governance, security, and so on. And you can stake X, XYO token in the XYO layer one to earn XL1.

So if you stay, produce the validator nodes or something cause a step reward pool, which is basically something like Nodeless staking, you earn that XL1. And XL1 is for the Garth and transactions, and DAP center on inside the layer one and X-O-1, some of it gets burned, so every transaction on X-O layer one. So it basically creates this codependency and the network gets secured with the X-YO-O-2. So X-Y-O, obviously, will be largely staked or is largely staked, correct?

That's right, yeah. We just opened the staking contracts. There is a big incentive to stake now in the first month. We put up as a first product 100 million extra one as a special bonus to stake us who come in early, which can grow depending on how much XYO gets staked. And so, yes, we anticipated a lot of the X, X, Y, O to be state that there's going to be some scarcity for XYO in the market. and because that's basically the only way to get XR1. The X1 token, we have our investors and partners and team and advisors and so on.

The tokens are locked up on very stringent terms. And we did that because community comes first for us. We proved that in like 2018 and 2019 when we raised 40 million there from the community. And today it's the same story where we said, you know, we don't want anyone to down on the community, you know, no investor and nobody else, right? And we want the community to succeed here. And for the community, also, they don't just get air drops, you know, because we thought about the long and hard. Maybe if we should reward our first X, XYO users with some drops. But then I think the long term that's not a good model because, you know, the people who don't, you know, ruin it for the people who want to stay in.

So this way, you know, the early holders of X, Y, O and everybody else who has X, Y, O and a Bice X, Y, O can stake it and earn the XL1 in our network. And that's basically the only way you can get. So let's zoom out a little bit because obviously you built this in 2018. we've seen deep in narrative somewhat grow. So, like, which industries do you think benefit the most from a blockchain that's purpose built for data? Where do you see the earliest adoption? Where do you see sort of the puck going for a blockchain

that's specifically built for data? Like, why do we need this and who's going to use it? Yeah, first, deep in itself, you know, it's going to grow massively. The World Economic Forum just forecast that it's going to grow from its current just under $100 billion. by three and a half trillion by 2028. 2028 is in a little more than two years.

And all these deep ends generate data. And so what we are going to create deep in marketplace, basically, where you can tokenize your data and sell it and where you can prove that the data is true and correct. And that's number one. And then number two, so all data market for AI and others, obviously is much larger and we are able to you know to validate and verify that and

the market is huge and then certainly we do real world interactions where for example we are working with someone on connected clothing might way you can put chips into the clothing right and then you can prove you know 10 friends for example go jogging together afterwards they earn some NFTs or some points for leaderboard or something right or real world petal hunts real world games so you can prove the location someone was in the soccer stadium for example right and then they have the right to me messy for example and and so it's it's it's a lot of ways our data blockchain is going to work and we've got to start with our own deep in network we're going to put that on chain and then start with some first deep in

brands and then we have some but two partnerships which are working with proof location at day really really really interesting so you kind of mentioned AI before and it's hard to have any conversation without talking about this intersection between AI and crypto obviously so is that like a real use case for you or is it a buzzword at this point I mean where do you intersect with AI beyond what you've described before Yeah, you know, we have $9 million revenue last year. I think it's one of the best running deep ends as well. And we are intersecting already at the same point.

So our data, you know, gets acquired or gets used by AI companies and geo-location companies and real estate and advertising and many, many different ones. And, you know, AI is part of that. But we wanted to be much more than that. you know in AI can connect to the x-y-o layer one for example and says you know I like a piece of data and find me the opening house of restaurant for example and then you know you can dispatch the people in our deep network to collect that data and as you have more than 10 million notes that's pretty pretty easy for us so it can say you know like verify some data if it got you know feedback that it hallucinated or or other

things yeah so yeah there's definitely more than a bus word and it's going to be growing in usage massively i think or the next so i guess kind of in the last few minutes you're looking forward what's your vision for x-by-o layer one over the next let's call it year or two and you know what should the community and your potential partners be watching for yeah we looked on board a lot of partners on the chain you know for to give them the round capabilities of you know our deep network as well as layer one and we are building up more more features that's going to take a few months to do that and as I said you know that's we're going to onboard our system first we're going to create a lot of transactions on the

chain because of our massive number of nodes but also you know it proves the network and then we're going to onboard those partners over the next few years, which need a data-focused blockchain versus transaction-focused blockchain. Thanks. Perfect sense. Any like final thoughts? Anything else that might have missed? No, I go stick now because it's the early bird catches the work because of the special incentives and we just launched our X-N-1 token a few hours ago. So you might want to be able to catch that as well and then follow us on our X account.

You see me speaking for it right now. So you don't miss. Official XYO. Yeah, if there anywhere else, people should check you out, where can they go for the staking, all that, or can they find all that information by following your act? Yeah, go to XWROT network. It's going to give you easy to understand download of what we're doing.

If you're interested in partnering with us and then we're just in an email to partnerships at XYO, network. We have an ecosystem fund, for example. And yeah, we'd love it. All right. Thank you so much, ma'am. Sorry, I won't see you at this one in Singapore. I'm going to break the streak. I'm sure I'm going to see you. Any other. At the next one. The next one in the U.S. probably. The international travel is killing me. I'm getting old. All right, guys, everybody, please give X, Y, O'O a follow. It's on stage, as he said, official X, Y, O. Marcus, what's your X account? I don't have it off the top of my head.

Yeah, it's funny. I have mine. It's official X-Y-O. I don't have one. This is you. Perfect. See what you did there? That shows true, you know, faith and commitment.

You are, you are X, Y, though. I love that. That's how I think of you guys, so it's perfect. And otherwise, guys, so give them a follow. I'm sure, and you're welcome to join, you know, as a guest anytime, man. It's great to catch up. Otherwise, we will be back, of course, tomorrow. 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Thank you, everybody. you tomorrow. Thanks, Marcus. Thank you to the rest of the guests. Bye.