The Wolf Of All Streets - Major Bitcoin Setback Imminent? Gold & Silver Volatility Signals Market Stress!

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

Gold and silver are surging as investors rush into safe-haven assets, driving sharp volatility across global markets—and raising new questions about what it means for Bitcoin’s price action. In this livestream, we break down why precious metals are spiking, what the surge in volatility signals about macro stress and investor confidence, and whether Bitcoin is being treated as a risk asset or a competing store of value in this environment.

It is a major Bitcoin setback imminent with the Clarity Act being up in the air and major volatility now with gold and silver. It seems like nobody can figure out what's happening with any given market on any given day. There's a lot to talk about. And we're going to dig into it all right now with myself, Andrew, of course, Tillman, and special guests from the tie, Joshua Frank. Let's go. What is up, everybody? Happy Tuesday. Good morning.

I know that you're all dying to discuss what's happening in the crypto market. All 12 of you that are left. But four of the 12 people that are left are going to be right here on stage. I've got Andrew, Josh, and Tillman. Good morning, gentlemen. Good morning. Hey. Congratulations on being here.

It's an accomplishment right now. I mean, Josh, you know, I kind of joked at the beginning. It's hard to talk about this stuff every day and find new topics. like, I don't have to. So it's fine. But I asked you what you do. I actually used to do, I don't know if you remember this, Block TV, this TV show back like 2018, 2019. I used to do a weekly segment on Block TV back in like 2018 in the depths of like Bitcoin at three grand. And we can, we found stuff to try to talk about. And I think there were probably 11 people back then. So, you know, this is it. I think the problem is that you used to come on the show and we used to talk.

about, you know, venture capital investment, gaming, NFTs, all this stuff. Now we just talk about silver and Trump. You know, like, you know, but those are actually... I'm surprised he hasn't launched a silver company yet. That's got to be coming. He's more of a gold guy. I don't know if you know this, but he's... That's true. That is definitely sure. Last I checked, you didn't have silver toilets. Okay, well, so listen, yesterday we had a massively volatile day in silver and gold. It's hilarious because the headlines, were like silver and gold, erase Bitcoin's entire market cap in 12 minutes, right? I think I went to sign on and they were like right back to where they started.

I think silver went like 118, down to 100, but it's a fully, I mean, so many, you said this before, silver is the new Alcoid. I mean, I don't know like where the Alcoigne money is, but it's trading like one. Yeah, well, it went up to 117 and change yesterday and back down to 103, back up to 109, back down to 106, back up to 112 as of right now. Yeah, it's been shaking pretty hard, but it's in price discovery mode. This is what you expect after 40 years of pinned up demand. And we've seen this in the Bitcoin and in the crypto space.

It's just harder to suppress and manipulate Bitcoin because it does have its own financial set of rails. If you have a commodity that's tied to only one set of rails, which they control and own, I mean, look at the amount of lawsuits and the amount of fines that have been issued due to commodity, specifically metals manipulation in the markets. So you see now that unwinding after 40 years, and God only knows where the price is going to go, honestly. It's a very useful metal industrially to solar manufacturers, EV manufacturers, there's new battery technology that can use, you know, up to one kilo of silver in. a battery and it developed by Samsung and Samsung says that it'll charge an EV car in nine minutes and have a thousand mile range. So you're talking about like orders of magnitude, the same leap from you know, out of dollars in it like the old vibrating. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you charge it with

silver. Are you know? No, but it's it's it's it is like the same jump. If you think about all the industries and all the toys and tech that have been created due to the the, the, the, the, the, development of battery technology over our lifetime, right? From alkaline batteries, when I was a kid, you know, you had the monkey that clapped with the symbols for Christmas because that's all that the battery would power. And now you have one wheels that will take a 300 pound man up a slope with a gyroscope. Like the battery technology has jumped a huge gap just from going from alkaline to lithium ion. Well, the solid state battery is orders of magnetism. more than that. So you're talking about like legitimately being able to ship things via drone.

You're talking about autonomous vehicles that can carry humans that are electric. Silver is 120 bucks. Like silver's 120 bucks because I like aunt buying silver now. The one wheel analogy was very personal for Tillman. I want that noted. That is very personal. I love one meals. One of. But no, it's not Scott because here's the point. Like there's things that are happening that are unprecedented in the fact that like Samsung cut a deal with the mines itself, the silver mines, and said, we'll prepay for your, for your supply, basically, for your reserves. And, you know, that's, that's some, that's telling us something is telling us that the people who are dependent upon these, you know, rare earth metals, we've seen kind of the arms race in some of the categories. Now we're kind of seeing seeing it open up and broaden. And with China saying no export of silver, I mean, that's unprecedented.

We've never seen that. It's closed the arbitrage loop globally on the price of silver. Right now, it's Shanghai Silver is trading at like 130. That's a flywheel. They actually need it, but they don't need any more of it. They just could get it when it was cheap. And now they're like, shit, it's five times more expensive and we still need it. So it needs a lot of massive supply.

It keeps a flywheel going. But see, this is my point. we just talked about silver for the first like seven minutes of this show. It is the new all coin, even for the crypto space. I mean, Josh, are you guys, are your clients in the tie? You're like, you know, I can't really tell you about gaming or defy right now, but I have a silver product. I don't think the problem is, well, obviously silver and gold is part of the problem,

but I think the challenge in crypto, which not a lot of people talk about, is that a lot of crypto funds are now investing in publicly traded crypto companies. It's not silver and gold, but it's also just assets and attention that's shifting somewhere else, right? Absolutely. The reality is, so here's a chart that from us really quick. Let me take over screens there. And by the way, that's been my premise since Circle IPOed last year.

Alt season is publicly adjacent equities, right? I mean, that's it. So one of the biggest problems that we've talked about this before is capital raised by crypto funds. So this is specifically looking at U.S. crypto funds. They have to file what's called a Form D and a Form D with the SEC. So this is not every crypto fund around the world. This is just U.S. hedge funds and VC funds.

And you can see the problem is they're just not raising more capital. We do see some capital flowing in. We have seen some, you know, a couple hundred, you know, million dollar raises recently and stuff like that. But a lot of those raises are going to VCs. And the challenge is, you know, the challenges, you know, assets get raised by VCs, VCs invests invest in these assets, these assets launch, and there's no end buyer at the end of the day. And the hedge funds themselves are really struggling to raise money. The only funds in crypto that are really raising money are some VC funds, but they're generally raising smaller amounts of capital

than they did before. It's very difficult to invest $2 billion into crypto things and get a return on your investment for your investors, especially if you're not buying Bitcoin or ETH, right, if you actually have to invest in startups and things like that. And then a lot of the liquid hedge funds are touching, you know, to Scott's Point Circle, maybe they're touching Bitco now and things like that. And the reality is, you know, when the music stops, businesses that make money look better than tokens that don't make money. And so I think it's a shakeup, but I also think sentiment is really negative right now. I think sentiment is in some places undeservedly so negative. There are protocols that do generate revenue that do make money that are trading at ridiculously low multiples.

And as those tokens start buying back more and more of the supply, eventually the sellers tie out and all of a sudden the price is going to start moving up. So I think, you know, right now I don't think the market is quote unquote fully reacting to like, you know, quote fundamentals. But I do think that, you know, again, once sellers wash out fundamentals are really going to start mattering. And I think a lot of the things that are generating revenue are going to start moving up. And I think one thing that's, yeah, I mean, I think, I think, you know, that's just kind of

the reality of where we're at. I think silver and gold matter because net new. people coming into crypto that could buy crypto are now buying silver and gold. But, you know, look, the market moves in cycles. And I think people are going to start asking the question, well, if we're talking about silver and gold so much, why aren't we talking about Bitcoin? And I think Bitcoin will catch a bit as well. It doesn't mean it's going to happen tomorrow, but I think it will catch a bit. Yeah, I mean, that's what he's saying here. Gold is risk off asset, silver's a risk off asset. Bitcoin's a risk off asset. If the market's still price,

that Bitcoin is risk gone, it's undervalued. To be quite honest, I'm not sure the market is pricing Bitcoin is risk on either. I think it's just not paying attention to Bitcoin at all. It's just not pricing it. Yeah. It's like it's a, it's not, if it was like a major risk on, it should be up, right? Because stocks are up and the Russell, you know, is making new all-time highs. That's small-cap stocks. It's just not trading much at all. Yeah. And I'd also, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I'd also add, where was I bet to go? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think the other thing is with crypto, it's the problem that we have, and Scott, we've talked about this a million times, is that people just try to make a quick buck

and it just screws over retail. And it just happens over and over and over and over again in the space. I mean, I think digital asset treasuries are the most recent example of this. They had good intentions. They all had good intentions. I don't know if all the sponsors had good intentions. Yeah, look, I mean, a lot of these deals,

I mean, I remember talking to them and they're like, you can get your money out in 30 days. So you put your money in, you get it out immediately. then, you know, an average investor is left holding the bag. I mean, that's exactly. That was literally the pitch. I got that pitch. Like, that was literally the pitch is like, it'll be in and out.

It doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. And look, and the people that were early to these things made money. And then no one else made money. Which is sad to hear because I wasn't invited to those parties. But if I was, I would have said to those folks, that's the opposite of Wall Street. Like, the whole point of going public or reliance.

launching is so that you can build stability and rebrand and draw money to a safe haven. I think that a lot of the early SPAC sponsors would disagree with you there. Well, then there wouldn't be lockup agreements. Lockup agreements are standard protocol. I mean, that's standard operating procedures for every IPO. I've had many of those. And so show me one big IPO that doesn't have somebody that has any meaningful amount of shares, sign one. That's why these were structurally different and so compelling, even though

actually a lot of these investors ended up losing their shirts because the stuff was still down after three days. I know, but that's kind of my point is like if they're structurally different and they've changed something that's worked for the last hundred years, you have to, you know, begs the question. Yeah, but it wouldn't have been working for crypto guys. It existed without the structural differences. The only reason people put money in these things is because of the fact that they could unlock safely. And it was like the new ICO. Like you used to just be able to, you know, invest in some all coin, and then there would be a token generation event. You'd get 15% of your coins a week after you invest it.

That's interesting because we're seeing the opposite on our fund side. We're seeing people that are wanting to come to the table with investments that are saying, hey, let's keep it for six years. Let's see what Bitcoin can do over the next, you know, decade of time. And, you know, it's longer term perspective. So I can appreciate that that is why they raised it, but that is probably one of the Achilles heels or the, you know, fatal flaws that. in the perspective. I mean, anything that you're trying to time in a short period of time in the

markets, you know, has a high probability of failure. Wouldn't, well, I think, I think, so I think there were a few things here. One is a lot of the people that raised or invested in these debts invested in kind, so they just, they deposited their assets. And a lot of them deposited locked assets. So they were locked in these assets. They deposited locked assets in these things. And then they got immediate liquidity on things that are locked. If you're an investor and you're up a hundred, if you're up 50x on something, I get that. Unlock, it can unlock over the course of four years, but instead you can move that vest up to six months and you can start dumping the position. That's super compelling. I mean, a lot of these things had limitations on the amount of

locked assets that there could be. But the problem was a lot of people investing in these things, weren't VC funds. They were hedge funds. And a hedge fund is not, you know, your goal as a hedge fund is not to hold a position for six years, right? I mean, your goal is a hedge fund is technically to hedge your risk. That's what's called a hedge fund. But, but yeah, I mean, I think, but it's not, To me, it's not Dats isn't the problem. It's everything that's existed. It's Kodak launching a Bitcoin miner back in 2018. It's Long Island Ice-T rebranding as Long Island blockchain company back in the day.

It's meme coins. I mean, it's just all of the shit that's just compounded and happened over the years of just bad actors coming into the space. And we just need to do a better job at calling them out and making sure that, you know, people aren't putting their money in before they lose liquor. Because the end of the day, in order for everyone to make money, we need a bid and if people get screwed they're not going to come back bidding again.

Well, it's what we've seen in the NFT space and the pump fund, the meme coin space is like they're deadered in a doornail because so many people got screwed. It's like it's going to take somebody really special to resurrect those businesses with any degree of confidence. Wasn't a gateway shutdown yesterday or?

I think I heard that it was shut down this week. Yeah, there's very few left. I mean, if the gateway. But yeah, I mean, just to wrap a bow on that other conversation, Tillman, your investors are actual investors. The people we're talking about who invested in digital asset treasury companies are the same people who are launching ICOs to get instant liquidity and be able to make a ton of money. So they found a way to do that in public markets, which is why treasury companies were so compelling. And the reason you see treasury

companies for coins that are small and that you've basically never heard of or not important, to Josh's point, is because it's the actual founders who don't want to be locked up in their own project or early investors. So it was never. It was never. It was never. It was never. It was, going to work and you were there with me at Bitcoin Vegas the minute I walked into that room there was like nine of these things pitched to me I said to you guys I sent it to Jack Mullers who was launching one live on camera like how is this not a scam and he was like it's great because we'll just buy all the shitty ones like that's what he said but admitted that it was a pretty crap like uh structure so by the way I don't think that's broadly like I think there's some compelling

things like for example if you're a dat and you can buy another dat that's trading at a 30% the underlying assets. That's super compelling, right? Because you can, you know, you can then get a discount on it. I think the way that these things need to iterate and evolve is they need to become public companies like, you know, that are real companies like, Bicto is a real business, right? Circles are full business, right? So I think these things are going to need to add, you know, revenue driving, revenue generating.

And they already are. They're working on it, right? I mean, you have a couple of examples of that. The Rockaway X and Soulmates deal. I mean, the idea is to add, you know, different, differentiated, you know, asset management revenue and staking revenue and things like that. So you're starting to see, and there's more examples of that. Theramune, the Canton Dad is now running validators on the network.

So, like, there's some examples of this. That's what you're going to need to see, though. They're going to need to be more real businesses than just holding a token and buying more of it. I mean, BitBiners put 200 million in Mr. Beast, right? And you have Yvesila made an announcement yesterday, the other day, whatever the fuck the ethzilla is. but they announced that they were like investing in jet propulsion engines.

I mean, clearly the solely digital asset treasury model is not working. Andrew, I can see you're dying there to just say something. Well, the reality is on a macro level, the capital is flowing in a huge, huge, huge way. It's just not flowing into the garbage that we're mostly talking about over the last 10 minutes. ETF flows as of yesterday were $121 billion in January so far. They averaged $40 billion in January over the past decade. And last year was the biggest year on record. And they did $88 billion in January.

We're $121 already. So capital will find meaningful places to stash itself. The crypto industry at large needs to continue. to evolve and get more serious. And then, you know, let's move to another spot that is serious, but has put a stake in the ground for Bitcoin, and that's BlackRock, you know, announcing an additional ETF that's doubling down on their Bitcoin success, and they're just going to create another Bitcoin fund and see how quickly that one grows.

To Josh's point, you know, crypto businesses have to be serious businesses. that make money. However they figure that out, they'll figure that out. It kind of reminds me of the reset in, you know, internet stocks and the internet movement in 2002, 2003, 2004. Nobody was talking about internet stocks after they imploded in late 99, 2000, until 2004, 2005. I mean, that was a meaningful half decade of a winter.

And if anybody remembers, the NASDAQ didn't get back to all-time high. for something like nearly 20 years, right? Well, 9-11 was right in the middle of that too. Yeah. Yeah. So can crypto, you know, everything is much more consolidated now. Things happen a lot faster, right? So if the second or third or fourth layer of crypto can figure out and get its act together

and do meaningful things and make meaningful progress and have businesses that matter. I would argue that they are making that meaningful progress. I would agree. Look at all the, I mean, stable coins isn't the most exciting thing, but look at, I mean, the adoption of stable coins is unbelievable. I mean, everyone is thinking about how do I use stable coins in my business? How do we use stable coins for payment? How do we use blockchain networks for settlement? I mean, it's funny.

You're actually seeing this dichotomy where you're seeing this real enterprise institutional adoption. You're not seeing that being reflected in token prices. I think the reality is just figuring out how do you tell the story of this adoption. And I think it's also a matter of who become the winners and who are not the winners, right? I mean, you have this reality where everyone is trying to launch their own chain or their own network, right? All these new stable coin chains and things like that. And so the question is just how does value flow to token holders and what, you know, what things. I mean, the reality is I think we'd all be better off if tokens were just securities.

Like that's just the reality. If they were securities that paid dividends that, you know, that had revenue, that had earnings. I mean, we'd all be better off. There'd be better investor protections. and I think the tokens would perform better, but that's a personal event. And there'd be much fewer tokens. I miss Gary Jones for so much.

I don't think. Listen, Josh, I understand that comment because it would bring an order to the chaos that is much needed at this point. But I do also believe. Put a facade around buybacks and stuff. Yeah, well, listen, there's a lot of, there's a like you guys,

pointed out earlier with the digital, the treasury companies, there's a lot of behind-the-scenes dealings, and if you're in the know, you're in the know, and if you're not, you're not. And it should mimic the regulations that we have in the traditional space with some caveats, because you do not want to put a governor on innovation in this space, and you sure is don't want to, you know, set up boundaries and preclusions from innovators who are typically not the big companies from really fleshing out those innovations and trying and trial by trial and error. And you're going to have that. Coinbase has been a messy, messy integration over my experience with them.

They've been, you know, horrible at times from a customer service perspective, from an integration perspective, from a failed, you know, failure to even be operational perspective. Like, they'll just go back. I would take the opposite side of that argument, which is. go try to interact with governance. Go talk to one of these protocols that is sufficiently decentralized and try to get anything through or get anything done, right? A protocol that's got a foundation.

I'm sure Scott's interacted with these guys. A for-profit entity, a devco, whatever. That's also chaotic. I don't understand that comment being that I was born in the Bitcoin space as a minor. I interact with Bitcoin all the day, every day, and it does not have a foundation. It does not have the- Bitcoin is also different. Bitcoin is a digital goal.

It's not one of these protocols. that's generating revenue that has that has a product that's doing buybacks right it's not it doesn't have a treasury that it needs to it doesn't have to my whole company and everything that i'm doing is predicated on the back of the protocol right let's but let's take bitcoin out of the equation and let's think about the rest of the market right why why wouldn't we take bitcoin into the equation and say that is the standard by which if it doesn't have a true use case like i think bitcoin didn't have a true use case or have a clear use case and agreed upon you use case. A lot of people were saying it was like to buy burgers and stuff. But now everybody's

agreed like it is a store of value. It should be treated as such. But that's very unique. There are protocols that generate hundreds of millions and billions in dollars in revenue. Investors should benefit from the billions in dollars in revenue that the protocols are generating, which is different than Bitcoin. The revenue can be generated from trading fees. It can be generated from asset management fees. It can be generated from vault fees. There's all sorts of other fees. If we want these tokens to ultimately succeed and do well, a lot of these tokens would be worth more if they were equity businesses than they are currently trading out as tokens. Josh, can I add to that? I would say a lot of them didn't need tokens and would benefit from

strictly being stocks or security. The problem is, Tillman, I think what he's saying, and I agree with Josh that says it's a long time. They just don't need tokens. So if you're going to create a token, that token can't, you're just not going to create another digital, So that token has to basically behave like a stock and therefore there has to be some value accrual to the token or you've just created a monopoly money or a lottery ticket that's purporting to be the value of the protocol. But you're putting the hands of where those lines are drawn in the in the hands of people that literally have the least amount of knowledge about the space. Like how are you going to let Wall Street, I mean the government basically determine whose project is valid? project isn't where to do they can't even come up with the clarity act bill like why aren't we going to let free markets work out those details because that's like no but you can go register

a business go online go to one of these websites and register an LLC or a c corp you can do it in five minutes it's not rocket science you can do it yourself the point is the investors in many cases would be better off oh i agree with that statement i agree with that statement yeah under the structure instead of buying tokens you'd be better off having equity in those companies my point my point being But that doesn't mean they shouldn't launch tokens. If a company thinks they should launch a token, whether they fail or whether they succeed and whether it's good reasons or bad reasons, they should be allowed to as my point. My point is there are a lot of tokens that exist today on the open market that if there were rules

allowing them to pay dividends to token holders, right? If they were able to exist under a traditional security framework, the investors would be way better off. And these things in many cases might be trading five times higher multiples and they're trading. it now. There are some protocols out there that are trading at four times revenue because the token holders can't benefit from it. And because of all of the regulatory hurdles that have existed in previous administration. What are those, Josh? What are those protocols that are four times? I mean, you can go, you can go look up a bunch of protocols, PE ratios and stuff like that.

I mean, you can start. I mean, I can't give you, I mean, I can go look it up and I can give you specific names now, but like hyper liquid generates a tremendous matter. Like, you know, there's a lot of new, like, you know, or not new ones that have existed. I'm not saying that any of these should traded higher multiples, but Maple Finance. It's all the DFI protocols. I mean, just take anything that's DFI, the DFI protocols, which are all financial instruments. I'm not talking about a decentralized game or AI company. I'm talking about all the DFI protocols, right, your lending borrowing protocols, your DECs is,

your PIRP DECs is, your DECS aggregators. But don't you think the DECS is like, The trend on the decks front that I see kind of monopolizing the headlines is, is Dexers are getting integrated with the central exchanges. Like you won't even know you're using a Dex in the future, but they'll be everywhere. Like every single thing that we- All my point is, holding the Dex token, you should get paid. If the Dex is making money, you should make money as the token holder.

That's my point with all of this, is that I think the structure that exists, right, because of regulatory, you know, because of regulatory constraints that existed before, all of these companies set up, they set up a Cayman Foundation with a C-Corp in Switzerland or wherever, wherever. I agree with you. They should have done it domestically and done it the straight, narrow path. The point is they couldn't have done it. They couldn't have done it because of a Tokyo.

All I'm suggesting is if these things were able to be securities and you can remove all of this nonsense, they would be run significantly. more efficiently more efficiently. You'd get rid of all of this overhead, all of this nonsense, and token holders would benefit. That's all my point is. And that's not Bitcoin, but that's a lot of these other assets that are revenue generating assets where the token holder, I mean, there's an example today. People are talking about pudgy penguins. Pudgy Penguins has a licensing deal with Walmart where they're selling a bunch of stuffed animals. Pudgy penguin holders get zero from that. All of the money goes to the C-Corp that's, you know, the Pudgy Pinguine C-Corp as an example.

And so my point being is, you know, like token holders are better off if they partake in the economics. And you need structures which enable them to partake in the economics. Yeah, there's a lot of stocks that don't pay dividends. I mean, lots of them. Yeah, but you own the economics. Just because they don't pay dividends doesn't mean you don't part. But the economic is that the stock goes up. Again, though, I agree.

A framework needs to allow. But if the stock needs. Josh, the framework needs to allow a company to. Go ahead. Josh only has two minutes. So, yeah, I want to let them. I was saying, yeah, you own a company that doesn't pay dividends, but they can pay dividends of the future.

And you as a shareholder would benefit equally from those dividends. Pudgy Penguins can do a deal with Walmart. They can then pay the founder of Pudgy Penguins a million and a half dollars. And you don't, you're not, you have no rights to anything whatsoever. And by the way, if that company sells to another company, you're going to get paid out for that company selling another company. The Axelar Dev team just got acquired and you as a token holder got shit. got nothing.

So stopping those companies from adjusting that reality. The guardrails are completely wide open in a crypto space for the current administration. They can do whatever they want. That's not true. Well, let's just argue for a second and say that a framework should allow them to do that. If it doesn't allow them to do it right now, I'm not clear about that. I know there's a lot of people doing a lot of stuff and that are seemingly way more, you know, razor's edge than that. But, you know, if I am a Pudgy Pinkwin holder, so I can speak from

experience here, I don't care that they're not sharing revenue with me. I'm not in it to as a business are you a holder of the token or you're a holder of the Tate? Both. Well, I mean, then I don't understand that you're just wasting your own money. Well, no, it's not wasting my own money. It wasn't, it wasn't an investment. I wasn't buying it for a yield purpose. I was buying it to join a community and to affiliate with people that are of like mine. It was a different purpose. By the way, that's totally fine that you join Club Penguin, right? But shouldn't it be if we're talking about something called pudgy penguins? I mean, that's what is insane to me. It's like the market should be wide open to offer the consumer whatever they want. And the business decision

of whether it's providing a yield on pudgy penguin or not is up to the business owners. And if they choose not to, then guess what? They're less attractive than the vehicle maybe that somebody wants to own a penguin that gives them yield, then they would move the money over there. You know what I mean? All I'm suggesting the entire time is if you get to participate in the upside, you would be significantly better off. All I'm advocating for it. But I hear you saying that Pudgy Penguins should be a security. And I don't agree with that. That's my, that's what I hear you say. All I'm suggesting, all I'm suggesting is that there should be

security like protections and investors should be able to participate in the upside. That's But it's like that then where do we draw that line? It's like baseball cards are next. Art is after that. Like, you know, these are cartoon collectibles. These are companies that generate revenue. Serious investments. I got to run. You're the man, Josh. I love it. This is what we needed on a Tuesday morning. Spirit and Crypto talk. All right. Have it going, guys. God damn it. Don't leave us. Okay, anyway. Hi, John. Those show is going to go cold. Congratulations on the Ties acquisitions.

by the way. We never got into the murder. I was making the conversation. All right. Listen, I think that we were talking past each other to some degree. I don't think I've known Josh a very long time. He's not trying to like advocate for the Gary Gensler mentality

of regulating crypto. I think he's just saying the very quiet part out loud, which is that if you're going to buy a token, the value of what the project does should at least in some way accrue to that token. Well, it should,

if you own a token and you own a business behind a token and you decide that it should. That is my whole point. It's like, yes, I agree. We, you know, that is something that, you know, we could agree upon as business owners. But I don't agree on regulating that is what I was just saying. Like I own Axelar, the token he was talking about. And I saw the news that they had been like this massive. And then I was like, token went down.

Yes. And you know why? Because those guys made millions of dollars at the token holders. got nothing to his point. And that happens in crypto a lot, right? So. But, but we all had the choice of buying that token and we all had to decide whether that those, like it's bet the jockey. Most people who buy tokens think in their mind if they're not educated that like they're investing in a company and would benefit from that thing doing well. I don't think that's an insane notion. Like if Pudgy Penguins does a huge deal, you would hope that the token went up even if you're

buying it to be part of a community. Right. You would hope, but I wouldn't want it regulated Just because my hopes were dashed. I agree. I guess, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting, it's an interesting, um, uh, it's an interesting conversation. Do you guys want to watch Peter Schiff on Tucker Carlson?

Yes, I do. I haven't watched it yet. Do you watch your shift went on Tucker, Tucker Carlson? I'm going to have to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a gold company too.

So I see it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. There I got. I haven't watched it yet. So, because I, uh,

I like fun and hate misery. I also think you've described the decline of the U.S. dollar. It's diminishing purchasing power. So clearly there needs to be a new global reserve currency. You don't want it to be one owned by a geopolitical rival. So why wouldn't tether, why wouldn't Bitcoin be the new global reserve currency? Well, first of all, gold is money. It's not currency.

And so there's a difference between money and currency. So currency is backed by money. So when we were on a gold standard and we had paper that was redeemable in gold, the paper was currency. The gold was money. So currency is like a money substitute. But you can have two kinds of currency. You can have legitimate currency, which is backed by real money, or you can have fiat currency, which is backed by nothing. And so what we have now is fiat currency.

And the question is, well, could replace that with Bitcoin? And I don't think that that's possible. because I don't think that Bitcoin has any value beyond its appeal that, you know, you know, a greater fool is going to come and buy it. Central banks can't hold Bitcoin as a reserve against their own currency. If they had to sell it, I mean, the price would drop sharply. You know, you have to have real money. That's why all these central banks...

But under our current system, you don't have real money. You have the U.S. dollar, which is real because people have decided it's real. Yeah, it's an action. We watch the whole thing. I don't know. I mean, I feel like I would say that. I'd hate to shift myself watching. He locked me at, you know, currency and money.

And it's just, it's all semantics. It's all, you know, positioning to, you know, gold is just out somehow the best. And, and, you know, everybody talks their own book. But it, again, that, that, that, those three minutes were just. It's painful. It's very reminiscent. honestly of the Bitcoin Maxis, though, at some degree. It's like this delusion that carries a bias into

every word that flows out of your mouth. And, you know, he's saying things, and Tucker was right, he's saying things that are just not true today. So you can't say something has to be true if it's currently not true. Those are contradictory, you know, things. So I, you know, it's one of those things. I don't think gold and silver and Bitcoin are ever going to be the world reserve currency. Again, I don't, I don't think Bitcoin will ever be that. I think it's looked at as an instrument. I think it's going to grow and value just like other instruments that have huge ability to catch liquidity and to hold liquidity. But, you know, there are a lot of things that he was saying that are correct. Like, I don't think central banks will hold Bitcoin. Why?

But central banks are in the business of printing things to infinity. They don't want scarce. They don't know how to manage scarce assets. That's not what the – if they lose a palette of paper on the way into the ink machine, it's not catastrophic. Whereas if you fat fingers some keys, you know, the ramifications in the crypto space are catastrophic if you don't know what you're doing. And it takes – if you look at the litany of companies that have been hacked and failed and all the things. things that have happened in the crypto space over the last 15 years, most of it is user end error. Most of it is founders, you know, getting spoofed or people, you know, not knowing what they

don't know and making really big errors that cost, you know, their customers or themselves a lot of money. So there is a barrier to entry. But Peter is, you know, probably high on the horse right now. It doesn't surprise me that he's getting recognition, gold and silver. A broken watch is right twice a day. I grew up in a gold bug household, and my dad has been telling me that gold and silver were going to make this move literally 35 years ago. So the central system of inflation and all the stuff. And when interest rates went, I think, in like 82, they went to over 20 percent. They thought that was the day. And so here's the reality. When you can print dollars into infinity and every grocery store and Ferrari dealerships still take dollars, they have incredible,

sustainable power as it pertains to getting their way in directing markets. And unless the world stops believing we have big guns and those B-2 bombers that we saw for, flying over. I'm betting people at grocery stores and Ferrari dealerships are going to still take our dollars. That's just my bet. I don't know when that game or if that game will ever, you know, come to fruition in terms of us losing our reserve currency status. But it's not something I'm going to bet on for tomorrow. And I wouldn't bet on it for even the next decade. So like why talk about something that's so hypothetical and so doom and gloom? Like you've got much bigger fish to fry and much bigger problems if the dollar fails.

So like, you know, prepare for that as the anomaly event, not as the like, yeah, it's happening tomorrow. By the way, just to go back to some of what Josh was saying, that entire conversation is mostly why most of the investing public just defaults to Bitcoin. Because if you're not a deep, deep insider in crypto, you didn't have any idea what we were talking about for 15 minutes, literally no idea. Confusing, difficult to understand, things like defy and C-Fi, we get it on this show,

but 95% of the actual normal investing public have no idea what that means, like no idea what it means. And therein lies the challenge, and that's why I think there's just a much, much longer tale, as I mentioned, sort of the rise of the internet at stocks after they just absolutely cratered. That took a very, very long time because there was education and adjustments to just societal adjustments. And I think we're in that same space. It's the reason why, you know, again, BlackRock is not, you know, starting a fund that's a conglomerate of the 10 best C-5 projects or D-5 projects and going out to the public with that. They're not doing that. They're putting Bitcoin at the top of another ETF and probably don't care what the rest of it says.

but here's another Bitcoin fund that has some yield associated with it. That's all you really need to know. Do you want to do a little bit more of this? And they'll get a ton of influence into that. Well, they're leaning in, not leaning out is the point. And them leaning in is like the Titanic moving. It's slow. It takes a long time, a lot longer than we all think.

And there's no doubt that they believe Bitcoin has staying power and that they still are holding to their premise that it's going to go to 700,000 or 500,000. It's just, you know, we are impatient. But I will say even the silver move, there are certain times where retail is driving the pump. I do not believe that to be the case. And I think that the rotation of retail money into these assets is really a sign of just how much of a gambling mindset we now take as a group of.

of investors into pretty much everything we do. And it's just a rotation. That's why I said silver was the new alt-coin. It very much reminds me today investing, as it did in 2017 in the ICO craze. It was like this mad rush rotation of like, can I get ahead of the rest of the crowd before all the money goes into the next hard asset

or the next thing that has a sellable story attached to it? And so one of the things that I've been really paying attention to is silver. And there's a hundred different narratives as to why it's happening the way that it's happening. And a hundred different thesis is where it's going. It's, you know, who knows? Yeah. And doesn't point that's not really quick, Andrew, that 60% of the top U.S. banks are now quietly into Bitcoin. Right.

Just to your point about like just Bitcoin, because why do you need to talk about C-Fi, you know, whatever? Yeah. Well, I mean, again, it's very difficult to, you've got to be able to put that into, you know, a 90-second pitch when you're sitting. in front of a client and what do you say about Ave Labs to a 67-year-old divorcee person? I have no idea, right? And by the way, to the idea of sharing value when you make this, doesn't staking exist? Doesn't Ethereum and Solana and other staking? In other words, you know, there's value accruing beyond the token associated with that.

That's not against the law, is it? Well, I think Josh was saying was, is that there is no clarity on that. That was the, you know, there is no rules that make that, you know, a reality for people who don't want to live on the edge or, you know, we own a defy exchange. So, and I do think that he's really talking about, like he said, the Pudgy Penguin, that the token world, the all these projects that have tokens, I don't disenfranch. Listen, what he's saying is right in the fact that a lot of retail has lost a lot of money on the back of those things. But that is the reason why that is called the bleeding edge, because you get bloody up there. You know, if you want to chase, that's why I've told people in the past the entire time I've been in Bitcoin, the entire time. Back to when I was mining on a CPU in my office, I told people, don't get into Bitcoin by buying Bitcoin.

Get into Bitcoin by mining Bitcoin. Why? Well, because you'll have sweat equity in it and you already own your computer. So you won't have a price risk entry. You'll be able to appreciate the network and what you own on the back of the technology and you'll give them education. You'll be paying. Whatever you pay for your equipment costs, you'll be buying an education. And if you look at crypto over the last 10 years, any time you were on the bleeding edge of anything, whether it be The meme coins, bleeding edge, wow, that was a while, that you either made a lot of money or you got bloodied. The ICO craze, same exact thing. Just name anything that's happened. The meme coins, same exact thing. So, you know, that is how innovation gets pushed forward because there's a lot of story at that moment of inception that then gets carried to the masses and it brings a lot of attention. and, you know, fame and money attract more, money and fame.

And, you know, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy at some level. So the question is, is how long can an industry go with being excited after being burned on all these projects? And I think we've gotten to that point. We've been, you know, burned so many times. There's an exhaustion level with all of us as it pertains to not chasing the new hottest project that's come out. And I do think Josh was right as it pertains to underlying utility. finally starting to boil. And we're seeing the simmer get hotter and hotter.

And I'm involved in some projects that have literally, no one's talked about for the last five years, but they're growing in total value locked the entire time. So, you know, you know when something is being used, that the use can be measured. And if you're an investor that is looking at usage is a primary indicator of value and, you know, you know, demand potential, then guess what?

Then you can, there's plenty to be looked at. Here's an example. Hyperliquid tokens are just 25% amid commodities trading frenzy. They added silver and gold pairs and the value accrues to the token holder. The token goes up as a result. I know it's crazy, but it can happen. It's the competition of ideas, right? It's the competition of ideas.

Capital is going to flow in a spots that that capital think, Capital thinks is meaningful and can grow from there. Like I said, with ETFs, $121 billion so far in January, it probably be 130, which is, you know, a factor of meaningful upside versus the highest January ever last year. So there's capital everywhere that can find itself into your space if you're doing something that's meaningful and grabs attention. So, you know, the crypto space has to do that, has to continue. much did you guys say the money markets held seven trillion dollars plus yeah it's it was three weeks ago it was seven point seven trillion dollars in money markets the highest of all time um so you know there's dry powder out there there's a lot of dry powder out there and get some attention and

well it's the reason why 7.7 trillion and then you just have a trickle of that 121 billion going into ETS. That $121 billion is still a huge number versus anything else that's gone into ETFs in January. But versus $7.7 trillion in money markets, it's nothing. It's a tiny, tiny, tiny little drip. Yeah. Tokonomics is barely interesting to a crypto podcast audience. Difficult sell for, you know, folks that are shoveling money into VLO on a weekly basis. And the, S&P 500. So, yeah, again, there are other pockets of performance, you know, like, so Kathy Wood and her performance has been talked about positively or negatively over periods of time over the past three years. But she's got an ARC venture fund that's up 55% in the past years.

Anybody talking about that? Up 137% since launch. Is anybody talking about that? So you have to, you know, keep innovating, keep making adjustments, keep grabbing additional users and, you know, at some point you'll break through. Well, well, money was moving very loudly and obnoxiously in the space early on, and I see it moving very quietly now. It's being placed strategically, it's being placed without the headlines attached to it. And, you know, that should tell you something smart money buys quietly. They don't shout it from the rooftops, whereas loud money is typically looking for exit liquidity.

That's what you see in a lot of projects. And you are getting, you know, you're getting some folks in the space that they never are gonna be forced sellers ever, because it truly represents 2% of their total value or in total net worth or total, you know, market cap. So, you know, we're getting some really, really hard money coming into the space.

And like you said, the ETS are a perfect indicator of that. That is the preferred vehicle for hard money because of all the advantages that comes from a custodial perspective, from a lendability perspective, from an accounting perspective, like all of the above, single point of access with all the other equities that they currently hold, like all of all, no new tricks to learn from the old dogs and owning ETS. So that's, I think, why we're seeing that be the primary VETFs. of choice for those, you know, big institutions, and it probably will continue to be so. And you are seeing more and more products not only be added, you know, what I would call the cream

of the crop, you know, Black Rock, but you also are seeing a lot of, you know, kind of 8X leverage futures, you know, and some pretty crazy hedging tools that are coming out in the traditional space. I think the CME announced that they're going to be doing Solana Futures. Is that correct? Did I see that correctly? Yeah. So, you know, the folks are getting, you know, they're getting the message. The message is that the demand is real.

That retail wants access to markets 24-7. They want access to more volatility and more upside in shorter periods of time. They want to make bets. They want the thrill of the ride. That is what money is saying. from a retail perspective, and you can, you know, there's too many examples to list. But everybody's chasing the be rich before you're, you know, 40. No one's on the slow ride to retirement with the steady compounding.

Another interesting point that, you know, we should have made while Josh was here is, traditional markets are moving towards crypto as opposed to crypto moving towards traditional the markets, meaning tokenization is like the word of the day and has been for a long time in the traditional world, like 24-7, tokenized assets, all of that stuff, tokenized securities, as opposed to tokens that should go and be securities, right? So how do we, you know, what's going on there? Well, I think, again, listen, there's all types of unintended consequences to actions. And I think the problem is not identifying that there's a problem.

We can all agree that retail's been burned on the back of meme coins and that there could hypothetically in a perfect world be a better system in place that would have protected some of those retail. But that's fairyland. That's no different than a communist, truly, that's thinking, you know what, we can make society bring no homelessness to everyone. Well, you know what?

Good luck. It's never happened. You know what I mean? Like that doesn't exist in nature anywhere. In nature, animals eat each other when they're hungry. And that's kind of the model that we see in the natural order of things. And so the capital markets mimic that. When somebody sees blood in the water, you know, from a capital perspective, they go after it.

I remember the 2009. maybe 2020 Bitcoin Conference. Everyone said if Bitcoin hits $17,000, Michael Saylor is going bust. And it was like all the big boys. Did you see this? I'm sorry. I know.

Oh my God. This is an article on Yahoo Finance. Why Micro Strategy's latest is deeply concerning. And they go into the mechanics of him selling stock and STRC to buy Bitcoin. And literally as if this week was the turning point where, his strategy totally changed, and we should be very concerned about Microsoft. We're on Yahoo Finance. I mean, this literally, like, they were like, he's not using cash reserves or cash flow

to buy Bitcoin. He's engineering his balance sheet. I'm like, for this is your moment. Yeah. The lack of understanding, again, is that that gap is so, so, so wide. It's so much wider than we think because we're in this silo, right? And so Yago Finance, who should have editors slash writers who have meaningful amounts of interest slash education about what they're supposed to be writing about, even that fails a fairly low bar.

They have grok for heaven's sakes. But if then you go to the people that are actually reading it, that bar gets even lower. So it's, it puts our industry at a disadvantage. when all the things that we come up with. Even the term staking, you know, that's just a different term for paying basically a dividend of some sort based on, I mean, so we got to call it staking instead of, you know, because we just hate. Traditional. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's, it is what it is.

And our industry will continue to evolve and grow and there's enormous amounts of upside and money to be made. but there are moments where it's difficult. Money to be made. I bought a whole lot of stuff using this thing. Yeah. Well, I should say this thing bought a whole lot of stuff for me with my money. The volatility tree... We finally got some nice dips again.

I was really bored. Yeah, the boredom factor is the enemy of any trader. And I have found personally, and I've found through many conversations with customers, that you are your own worst enemy with your finger on the mouse. And when you get bored, you start making bad trades. And one of the disciplines that trading with automation brings you is that you can truly set it and forget it. And that does allow you to go occupy yourself with other things and not subject yourself to sitting with your finger on the mouse being really bored until there's the right setup. The setups don't come every day.

That's the truth. The market, you shouldn't be trading unless the market gives you. the circumstances you've determined to be a good setup to take the trade, right? So, like, we all have different things that we believe make a good setup for a trade. And programmatically, we can have that represented in our brokerage account with automation. So I can say, you know what, if this happens, then I want to buy a little bit. If this happens, I want to sell a little bit. And I can construct exactly what my will is so that I don't have to sit there with my finger

on it and have to act on my will in the moment with all the emotion and the money at stake. That is a recipe for you doing things that you wouldn't otherwise do when you are clear-headed. Scott is a perfect example of that when he came in at the very top of 126. He was like, I want to buy everything now. We'll be at 135 tomorrow. Just blink, Tillman, and it's going to be gone. and I said, listen, we very well may be, but we also could go back down to 79 again and retest that.

And so it'd be better if you don't try to guess the market. You just put a system in place that over time works. And so back to the Treasury Company example, like they have created a product that obviously the market wants. Or Michael Sainer wouldn't have bought $2 billion more of Bitcoin. Why? Because he bought it with other people's money. So those people are happy.

They keep giving him more money to buy Bitcoin. That doesn't mean it's the only way and only why to buy Bitcoin. The why for them is to create new products and to become the largest bank of Bitcoin and product developer of Bitcoin that exists. That's their niche. That's what they did. That's the bleeding edge that they own. Whereas, you know, if you're just Joe Blow, you may not know that you're buying into

the bleeding edge, you may think that you're following the captain of the army, you know, that you're following the commander in Michael Saylor. The reality of it is, is that Bitcoin, it's intrinsic value as I see it, and as a lot of people that have been in the space for a long time see it. It's the best store of value that has ever been discovered or ever been created. And what that means is that when you take your energy and your life, whether it be capital energy, sweat from your brow, you own a business, whatever energy you're putting into making money, hopefully you're making more than you have to live on. And whatever is left, you have to decide what you're going to use as a saving vessel or a savings vehicle. Bitcoin has proven to be as

good or better in most categories than any other asset that you could put in that category. So the question now is not if I should include Bitcoin in my investment strategy. You can look at, you know, from all the way from enterprise down to retail. The question now is, is how much? And what's the prudent amount? What can I do based upon my individual circumstances? And I would just, you know, that's what Archpublic software is about. It's about over time affecting large amounts of change with small, small. Well, yeah, imagine if one of these Bitcoin treasury companies are just digital asset treasury companies a year ago would have said, you know what, we're going to use some rules-based

algorithmic decision-making processes to accrue what it is that we've been given as capital to buy this or that asset. Do you think their stock price would be meaningfully, probably adjusted to the upside from where it is today? Absolutely it would be. Why? Because at minimum, there would be an understanding in the market that they're using some level of committed algorithmic decision making as opposed to whenever we got the money, we bought the asset, and that's now we don't know what else to do now. What else do we do with this company that is sitting on this amount of stuff that we bought nine months ago? Well, it shows that they either are ignoring risk or they don't understand how to hedge against it because risk is always tied to price levels. So if you put 100% of your capital at one pricing level above 100K, for example, you're underwater right now. If you spread your capital over a long period of time, then you're getting exposure to a cost curve that then averages your cost entry, which, you know, Scott,

can attest gives you a much lower threshold to get back into profit on those dips because your average price Bitcoin now we're close I mean it's one day right I mean I've actually had the Ethereum one in the past two weeks a couple times it popped over a profit and was selling and taking money and then buying the dip on Bitcoin and that's with a like historic drawdown well the longer the price stays

right around here the heavier the concentration will be in the this price zone. But that's a good thing because the longer the price stays here, the more of a foundation this pricing level is. So you're just looking at like market dynamics is you don't always, you never want to load your basket with all your eggs, right? So if you think Bitcoin's going to 135 when it was at 126 and you bought all at 126, you know, you don't have any more capital of the place. That's what the treasury companies have done to themselves. They have no more meaningful capital to place. So any capital they raise now on the back of their share price that's down 95%, they have to dilute everyone that got in early massively to raise the same dollar. And so

that's a, you know, it's a death spiral as it relates to how you're buying Bitcoin because you're predicated on debt mechanisms and you can't raise debt capital anymore. And that's not a fun place to be. But it doesn't mean they're dead. There will be a day, all these companies, if they keep the reserves that they currently have, and Bitcoin goes to 250, yeah, you'll hear all, they'll be back as the bell of the ball, and that's the cycle of like picking your poison and how you enter Bitcoin. It's like, when do you want to be a hero? Do you want to, you know, bet the ranch that you can pick the bottom and try to be the hero right now? Well, good luck. I've been there, done that. And it's, it proves that everyone's a fool. The market will

prove you a fool if you stay in it long enough i promise uh it's it's it's a really um there's been times in my life where i've literally thought the market was monitoring my trading activity and taking the opposite position i'm keeping my stops on my 400 uh that's right we have come to the market to make money on tillman today uh but that's why you've got to remove the emotion that's think about how narcissistic and think about how myopic of uh you're emotional view that is like in no one cares no that's that's the point no the markets don't care about you wanting to make a 500 dollars a day or whatever your goal is in trading it doesn't care so you shouldn't put care into that you should build models inside of programs that allow you

to remove yourself from the equation so you don't create your own worse than me and yourself yeah hey how to become 10.03 It's time to get your daily David Weisberger. That's what time it is. You know what I mean? Over to Crypto Town Hall. Yeah. One air pod in.

I'll do my taxes. How it's over. Kill it. Yeah. Amazing. Meanwhile, you guys should definitely check out Archipel. We didn't even get into the fund again. But any conversation about treasury companies should naturally tell people to invest in something that actually, you know, has cash flow and tax benefits.

But we can get into that again. next week yeah or schedule a call with us we'd love to tell you what we're doing it's all predicated on positive cash flow buying bitcoin from real businesses like like i'll tell you who's doing a great job of it on as a close uh steak steak steak and shake steak and shakes buying it with hamburger sales i love it point of sale and they buy bitcoin it's really cool crazy i know and they're giving it away to their employees they're given you know like 21 cents for i don't know every something uh Bitcoin back to their employees, all employees. That's really cool, man.

Yeah, I mean, you kill them with the unhealthy food, but then you save them with the Bitcoin. That's right. One day they can pay those medical bills. Did you not hear the name of the restaurant? Steak. It's elevated, buddy. We're eating hamps top soarloin beef at steak. And they use, you know, they don't use.

Yeah, they're beef tallow fries too. Come on. Fries. Yeah. So you're going to recant that statement? In my ear from the producer, the sales are up 18%. Yeah, you're a friend of Bitcoin. Bitcoin's a friend of you.

In fact, University of Texas has a saying, give your best to Texas. Give your best to Texas and the best will come back to you. If you give your best to Bitcoin, the best will come back to you. The market does not care about your $400 position, but Bitcoin cares about you. That does. Listen. Go buy a hamburger. Go buy Bitcoin because Bitcoin deeply cares about you, your children, your needs,

your wants. I can't think of a better way to end today. All right, guys. That's all we got. See on Crypto's melting town hall.