The Wolf Of All Streets - Massive Bitcoin Pump l Grayscale Defeats The SEC! l ETF Inevitable?

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

Join Dave Nadig, the ETF guru, and John E. Deaton, the crypto lawyer, as we discuss the implications of the Grayscale’s Victory. Chris Inks is joining me later on to discuss the markets.  Dave Nadig: https://twitter.com/DaveNadig John E. Deaton: https://twitter.com/JohnEDeaton1 Chris Inks: https://twitter.com/TXWestCapital ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   ►►MELD MELD will bring to bear the full power of decentralized financial instruments to the masses. Banks are at the heart of the economy, MELD will become a new set of banking tools that are by the people and for the people. 👉 https://bit.ly/meld-early-access  ►►OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $60,000!  👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy

And one of the biggest news events that we've had in a very long time in the crypto space, Grayscale defeated the SEC in court. And they didn't just beat them. They beat them down like it was a back alley brawl and it was 10 on 1 and Gary Gensler's just laid out. You've seen the videos, guys. You've seen them, right? They're all over your 4U Twitter feed. That's literally my entire 4U Twitter feed is somehow people in fights. I don't know why that is. But absolutely a huge day for Grayscale. Another major loss by the SEC. What does it mean for the industry?

What does it mean for the odds of an ETF? And of course, what does it mean for price? We've got an absolutely massive panel today. Got John Deaton. Everybody knows everybody's favorite crypto lawyer, not just a crypto lawyer, but everybody in crypto's favorite lawyer. And Dave Nodding, who is our ETF expert, who comes on every time I need somebody to talk about ETFs. And then, of course, the back of the show, Christopher Inks of Texas West Capital talk about price and charts. Let's go. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of Wall Street. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and hit that like button. Now, as many of you know,

I do live in Florida. Luckily, the worst of the storm is missing us at the moment. We have like 50 or 60 mile per hour winds, but the center of the storm, they're getting 160 mile per hour gusts. That means that hopefully my internet will stay stable. I have had two flickers today. So if I freeze like one of those YouTube thumbnails, you'll know what happened. Hopefully it won't be awkwardly with my mouth open because that's what usually happens. And if that happens, I have empowered today's guests to play host and talk amongst themselves and pray that I then return. But hopefully that won't happen. We will maintain the internet and life will continue on. Let's

bring them on right now while we got it. I've got John Deaton and Dave, what's up fellas? This is a big day. John, listen, I've been hyperbolic. I have a tendency to exaggerate, get really excited. But you right before, when we were talking, you said that this was a ass beating. Yes, absolutely. He got beat down.

He's laid out, knocked out. This was a three to zero vote by judges on an appellate level court, which is above even the Torres decision. This is a massive win for crypto, for Bitcoin and the industry. And it can't be understated. And Dave can get into more of that. Does it mean it's going to be an immediate ETF or it's going to be delayed? We'll talk about that. But it's a massive win. Yeah, it is an amazing. Go ahead, Dave, please.

Yeah, the scope of the win, I think, is actually important. And I think it will get easily glossed over because we'll immediately turn to what does it mean for price? What does it mean for the new products? The way they lost really matters because it's not that they lost on a technicality. This is three judges who really dug in. Like, I mean, if you go and you read the court transcripts, you read what was presented, they like really dug into the core arguments at stake here around, you know, the futures market versus the spot market around regulation, around manipulation.

They really dug in. And what they came back with was not just, well, SEC loses on a technicality. They lost on a, what are you even doing level? You are not doing your job. This isn't even close. And that's a level of loss that I don't think a regulator has seen in my lifetime before. I mean, it's quite a loss on a regulator. Yeah, there was an amazing... Go ahead, John, please. I was just going to say, to prove what Dave's saying, and a lot of people had picked that the SEC would win.

And you want to know why? The arbitrary and capricious standard is very high. The only thing the SEC needed to do to win was to provide, quote, a reasonable explanation, a reasonable, coherent explanation. And they win. Even if the judges disagree with the reasoning or disagree with the judgment, if they believe, well, I disagree with it, but they made an argument, it makes sense, and they couldn't even meet that standard. So when Dave says, understand the level of scope and the loss this is for Chervinsky here that I've brought up. He's obviously the lawyer for the Blockchain Association. They're in D.C. He makes the exact same statement you just made. And that's exactly what I wanted to point out. You basically front ran it, which is great. It's a very rare it's very rare for a federal circuit court to find that an agency has violated the APA. That's the big thing here by acting arbitrarily and capriciously. Everybody's

obviously jumping on those two words, as you just did. Jake's actually coming on Twitter spaces after, along with the entire Blockchain Association. They were all like, can we get on spaces today? Because everybody's dunking here, right? This is a massive win. But so the nuance, I guess, here really is, as you said, that it's not that they lost. We've seen them lose a couple times now before this is the kind of loss that would make the sec think twice about these kind of actions again right i mean that that to me is is the killer like my feeling has been that the sec and gensler obviously had a mandate to push as hard as they could to kill this industry but i think the pendulum swung too far and it's coming back and there's a lot of pushback and now it's going to become very politically unpopular for them to continue doing these things.

So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe Dave disagrees. But when I read it, I said there's no way they can appeal this. Like they're not going to take a file, assert to the Supreme Court or ask for a full in bank review because because of the way they wrote the opinion. It's three to zero. So I looked at it and said, wow, they took the appeal right out of the equation. I think the appeal was never really on the table because, you know, in order for this to really be appealed, the SEC, Gary Gentler, would have to go to the Solicitor General of the United States and say,

this is what the federal government should get really worked up about over the next 18 months. So aside from that being a political nightmare, the worst case scenario for the Biden administration is that this ends up in front of the Supreme Court, because the way the Supreme Court would treat this is as a Chevron case. And what that means is the entire administrative state, not just the SEC, but the EPA and pretty much every other administration that has regulations, works underneath this umbrella of Chevron deference, which is an old Supreme Court case, which basically says administrators can make rules and then enforce those rules.

This Supreme Court would love to overturn that. And this case is just rife for that. So in some cases, I think nobody would love this case to go to the Supreme Court more than the Republicans and more than the Supreme Court, which is the reason it will not happen. The SEC could effectively screw other regulatory agencies by pursuing this further. Yeah, absolutely. They could get rid of the FDA. I mean, the Chevron deference principle is the backstop of, frankly, everything since the 50s. Dave's point of going to the Solicitor General is huge because do you want to die on this hill? And any Solicitor General that reads that opinion and they look at the other decisions, every single time the SEC is in court, they get their ass kicked in crypto. They just lose.'s just lose they just lose right and so what solicitor general's gonna say yeah let's let's let's risk the entire administrative state for this because gary genzer can't keep his people working correctly

yeah right but isn't isn't this yet just another serious confirmation that regulators are not law, right? I think there was this opinion. We talked about this even as well before. You said people just don't sue the SEC because the SEC always wins, right? But you just said they're not beating crypto at anything. Library, maybe they didn't have the best lawyers. Maybe Jeremy Kaufman went and presented his security to the SEC himself, thinking that if he went in and registered, it would work out. But now when you get these big entities with big money and high powered lawyers, I mean, they're just destroying the SEC. The SEC does not lose like this. I mean, you read this. I'm just going to show it for people. This is the opinion from the circuit court judge. I mean, when you read this, this is like you said, I mean, it's just.

It's it's just I don't even know how to describe it. There's nothing there for the SEC. They basically told the SEC that you're incoherent, that your argument's incoherent. It makes no sense. There's no rationale. I mean, even the during the oral argument, the appellate judge was was concerned that this is so obvious. Are you going to potentially revoke the futures approvals? Because we're handing you your ass. I mean, that was basically said in open court. And, you know, at that point, the entire industry started handicapping this victory for the.

Yeah, for Grayscale. And so, you know, the real question is, what's victory for Grayscale. And so the real question is, what's the SEC going to do? Are they going to pivot? And Dave would be, his ear is more in line with the ETF industry than mine. I don't know, because I know there's a, Gensler's a megalomaniac as far as I'm concerned. Well, and that's really the issue here is what do they decide to do next? I mean, the baseline is pretty straightforward. There's a 45 day window in which the SEC basically has to say what they're going to do about having lost this.

And then the court works with the SEC. And then there's a mandate window, which I believe is seven days. So theoretically, it's like 52 days. That gets us to something like October 20th, where some mandate on how this gets cured has to be done. Now, how this gets cured is a really big open question. I think most of the sort of ETF pundits out there are guessing we're going to get a common clock of some sort. And whether that's March 31st or November 15th, I think most of us think it's probably first quarter next year. They'll put some guidelines about what spot has to look like. Everybody gets a chance to refile.

GBDC gets to get their ducks in a row. And then there's some magical horse race day. I think that's what the industry kind of wants. I'm a little bit more on the negative Nelly side of this. I actually think there's a reasonable chance they reach in and shut down the futures products. That's scorched earth to me. That's scorched earth, but nothing would surprise me with Gary Gensler. And I understand I'm the outlier there. I don't want anybody to think that is the middle of the bell curve opinion. Just having read what this SEC has done in the letters and the memos and the speeches over the last couple of years, watching Hester having this battle internally for common sense in these discussions, it would not surprise me for them to be like, we're just going to pause on everything for 16 months or two years.

And we're going to put a commission together to review crypto and pull the futures products and kick this can down the road past the election. I actually think that's a not crazy outcome. Well, I wish, I wish I could say that's never going to happen. I wish I could say that, but I actually think Gensler's instinct and immediate internal reaction is what Dave just said. And I put it at maybe 20, 25% chance. I still, you know, so I, which is high,

it's way higher than it should be. Like this is- Which is why GPT is still trading it at 14% discount, right? Yeah, for sure. And so, but when you have the Larry Finks out there pushing for a spot, you know, Bitcoin ETF, big donors, the political pressure is probably what leans it to not do that.

But- What I find really interesting here as well, John, is not only the way that this decision was handed down, but that the judges were consistent from the first hour of this case. People may not remember, but there was the Voyager bankruptcy judge, like, you know, at one point who basically pushed back against the SEC and said, your arguments here are ridiculous. Release these funds. This makes no sense. And then a couple of weeks later, this case started and outright from the very beginning, the judge basically said, this is ridiculous. Like, why are you wasting our time? This isn't even going to be a thing. So they were consistent.

If you could look back at the beginning of this case, there was no way the SEC was going to win here. They literally said, go home, Gary, you're drunk. And so we had to play this out. But the SEC is just running out of bullets. I agree with you, they could go back and do this. But to me, I think, and as you said, maybe it's 25%, the more likely case is that the SEC approves maybe all of them at once, but then does a PR campaign and goes on a road show to show how this is how they were right. And the industry, this is the one thing they could do. And then they just keep shitting on altcoins in the background or continue that assault because of their Coinbase case and stuff. But it makes sense. There is a political way to try to turn it into a victory and go on that campaign and still go after the altcoins.

I mean, there's a way to do it, but they decided for some reason, and I'm truly an independent. I vote both ways. I really do. I usually vote the incumbent out but um the the they just decided to go with this anti-crypto agenda for you know uh and you think about the the choke point 2.0 and all that stuff and so the question is are they gonna pivot are they gonna double down and i don't know the answer uh to be honest with you i i think the likelihood that they truly pivot is pretty low. I think there's a limping pivot here where they sort of allow this stuff to come through. I think they don't have a lot of options there. So I'm with you as much as I'm pretty negative on this and think they could hit the hammer. I do think that there's a very high likelihood that they sort of

let some of these products limp through. But to your point, Scott, they're going to keep up the war against decentralized finance in general. They don't want to- Well, listen, I mean, it literally was all of yesterday that Impact Theory got charged with an unregistered securities offering of their $30 million NFTs. And so to me, and I keep saying this, I think we've seen the big players they're going to go after.

I don't think there's the political will now to attack Tether or to go after another huge company. Maybe I'm wrong. I have no idea. Right. But I do think that the SEC is going to keep getting these wins where they get these kind of large fines and people say, we didn't do anything wrong, but we'll pay the fine and they get to pin it as a win and there's a settlement and they don't have to go to court or get embarrassed in the court system anymore. I mean, John, does that make sense to you? Because I think we see that with hedge funds, some influencers, NFT projects for sure now. A hundred percent. They're not limiting up. And I think we're going to, I still believe that we're probably looking at some kind of DOJ action with Binance being dropped along with other things. And so you're 100% right.

Listen, the problem is not many people can pay $100 million like Ripple did. I mean, that's just staggering. I mean, what project can say, okay, we're going to be investigated and Jeremy Kaufman brought this up, Dragon Chain CEO said the same thing, where they spend two, three million dollars during the investigative stage. Then they get sued on the eve of the statute of limitations. And then they got to really start paying fees of four or five million. How many projects can say, all right, here's 20 million that I'm setting aside to fight the SEC? Not many. They'll just say, I'll just pay the 20 or $30 million

fine or less. And so that's the problem. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I want to highlight something because you just brought it up. SEC secret Binance court filing has observers bracing for bad news. I don't know if you saw this because yesterday we had so much good news. This came out in the afternoon and nobody was talking about it, but this is kind of a big deal. I mean, listen, John Reed Stark, let's talk about someone who's prone to hyperbole, but he obviously was at the SEC for years, one of the lead lawyers. He knows this stuff better than anyone you can say. And I think that according to him, it's very strange that there was this secret court filing and that the motions were sealed. Right. And so usually the SEC wants to be very transparent about what's happening.

So the implication here, according to him, John, you can clarify for me, is that either they don't want to interfere with a DOJ investigation by putting things out publicly that could sway the opinion or change something in that, or that there's a protected individual that it could possibly hurt. Right. I mean, are those the correct, bottom line, it seems like they're gearing up definitely for DOJ action if you look at this. Yeah, I'm really, really going to be interested to see whether or not the Binance lawyers object to the ceiling, if they object or they don't object. That's going to be telling, but I wish I could disagree with John Reed Stark on this. I can't because I've been trying to figure out other than when you seal like this, it is to protect either identity

or the evidence, the underlying evidence. You could have an ongoing investigation. You could have someone in Binance today cooperating. You know what I mean. And I mean, we're talking about potential wiretaps. I'm not saying that's happening. I'm just saying that when you see a step like that, it is to protect evidence, identity, or ongoing investigation. So doesn't it seem like it would have to be an ongoing, when you see something this sealed,

this doesn't strike me as nefarious as much as in process, right? It's not like the judges aren't ever going to see much as in process, right? It's not that it's not like the judges aren't ever going to see it. They already saw it. It's just sealed. So I think the when when I see these things, I always try to back up a little bit and pretend that I don't know anything because it's so much more likely that this is because there's a whole unrelated case that they have a witness on or that they have a chain of evidence on that they're really trying to protect. So to me, it just means there are more shoes to drop.

Yeah. I mean, that's the only real logical explanation, to be honest with you. And, you know, we're going to see whether they they object. But I think there's something, you know, I'm I'm leaning toward not just, you know, I'm leaning toward sanctions violations and things like that. You know, we heard in Russia. It was just news in the Wall Street Journal this week. And we we heard I don't know if you you both saw that there was this rumor out that said that the DOJ was concerned or the SEC, the government was concerned what an indictment would mean and the industry would get crushed. I don't know if you saw any of that reporting, but to me, that's the government leaking that and setting the stage for future.

Yeah. You know, it doesn't mean it's true. It just means that they're planting those stories in my opinion. Yeah, that was curious because, you know, the SEC is the one who's supposed to be protecting customers and worrying about what's going to happen to, you know, retail if something happens. The DOJ usually doesn't care that much about the price of an asset or what happens to customers. They just want to get their guy. Right. So that was curious. That was probably a month ago.

Yeah. So that was curious. That was probably a month ago. And they said the DOJ is considering another path against Binance because they don't know how it would affect. And that was a very curious story. And then you heard about three months before that, I think there was reporting that the DOJ was split on whether or not to bring criminal charges. And so there's another foot to drop. There's no doubt about it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So I guess and listen, I hate to ask for future opinions of what might happen. And I'm not even talking about with price, but can a BlackRock ETF approval or this kind of news for Grayscale counteract the downside of a full scale attack against Binance? Because if you want to talk about scorched earth, maybe they give you, like I said, maybe we get BlackRock ETF approval and literally like the next day we see a DOJ charges. I actually think that's the most likely. That's exactly what I

think would happen. And that's what I'm saying. They can get their win. And then, I mean, we saw Coinbase and Binance back to back day. I don't think there's any chance that the SEC and the DOJ back off the issue of unregulated securities, cross-border payments, all the stuff that we know that they're interested in. Not only is there no chance they're going to back off, there's no reason for them to back off. There's nothing about this court case that they lost has anything to do with them going after unregistered securities and unregistered exchanges. The honest truth is the SEC is on pretty firm ground on most of those arguments. Now there's bigger arguments

to be had about what should happen and whether we need a better regulatory regime. But by the letter of the law, like most of these unregistered securities, unregistered exchange issues, they're going to win on. I mean I mean, I mean, here, you know, this is what is so insane. Think about every take out fraud cases for a minute. Every one of these complaints filed by the SEC says in violation of the 1934 Security Act. We're playing 2034. You look back. Why was in 1934 Security Act. Almost 2034. You look back, why was in 1934, why did they have Section 5? It's all about disclosures and asymmetry.

And then now we're applying that to modern day blockchain public ledgers. No, I know. It's insane. It's insane in that you're trying to apply these pre-internet. So when you take blockchain open distributed ledger technology and you couple it with the internet, the whole purpose behind that Section 5 disclosures is almost obliterated. Yet we're dealing with it on a day to day basis with the SEC, because I mean, as Dave said, they're going to be able to say, hey, we can make this legal argument, you know. But Howie isn't even law itself, right? It's not like that was passed. People think the Howie test was something that was passed by Congress. That no, it's in and of itself is a court decision. Yeah, it's a Supreme Court interpreting. Yeah.

Interpreting what investment contract means in the statute. That's what Howie was. And so, you know, listen, the only thing that I'm hoping for, and a lot of people think I'm crazy, but, and I put it up there as like a 25% chance as well, is I'm hoping that the judge in the Coinbase motion to dismiss, take out the staking part, but there's a chance that the judge could say, as a matter of law, a secondary sell, blind bid, ask, you know, how he doesn't apply. You don't know who you're buying on it. So you can't rely on the efforts of someone who you're not buying for it. You can't promise someone that you don't know that's purchasing it. That could be the biggest victory we have.

It's probably not going to happen. And that's Dave's saying, ah, that's wishful thinking, John, probably. But I don't rule it out. I put it up there as like maybe one in five. It all seems like nibbling at the edges, right? Without either a new set of regulation that made sense, which I'm not holding my breath for, or legislation which sets some framework, which is actually probably more likely in my lifetime. I just don't see that the court cases are going to resolve this in a way that gives any real clarity. There's going to be a win here and a loss there. This is obviously good for folks that are interested in the commodity side of crypto in Bitcoin.

But as we get into the much more interesting stuff and the all kinds in the DeFi, I just don't see a path for that to get cleared up by a court case here and there. And none of those companies can fight to the point that John made earlier. I mean, they might have the money. I showed a tweet yesterday from Antonio at DYDX. They're based in New York, obviously, one of the largest decentralized exchanges. He literally threw his hands up and said, anyone who's doing anything in the United States should just leave for 10 years. Go find proof of concept and come back when it's reasonable. And you're talking about a guy who's fought the fight in the United States, in New York, I think, which is, if I'm correct, is probably

the most aggressive regulatory regime on a state level that you can find in the United States. And they're throwing their hands up and saying, let's just leave. Right. And lawyers, this is happening every day. Lawyers are actually saying you are fucking insane if you offer anything to U.S. investors. Yeah, 100 percent. That's what that's the legal advice that's happening in the United States right now. Just exclude the U.S. market, exclude U.S. investors. You're insane if you even try to do it. Yep. Yeah. Either that or set aside 50% of your budget for compliance. I mean, if it shows you the fact, I mean, impact theory, Tom, who's probably a billionaire, he settled and paid 6 million bucks just to not admit defeat and to move on with his life.

$6 million is a lot. You would think that rationally that would be enough to litigate and prove that you're correct, but it's not even close. It's probably a 20th of what you need to litigate. I mean, if they're going to go after the NFT space like this, who could even defend themselves? Maybe Yuga Labs would have the money to defend themselves if they so chose. But what they'd probably do is just pay the fine. But the thing with impact theory is they actually had to burn the NFTs, take them all back, everything.

So imagine if they went after Yuga Labs and they said everybody has to send their ape back and burn it. I mean, that would be the equivalent. Right. That's not going to happen. Yeah. Well, I mean, I wouldn't say never say never on this stuff, but like it doesn't strike me that there is a positive path forward outside of the narrow scope of this this GPTC ruling. Yeah, I mean, listen, Dave said it at the beginning that DeFi, they're never going to they're never going to just walk away and let DeFi blossom. It's never they're never going to do it without trying to kill it as much as they can.

But they're just going to kill it for Americans. They're just going to kill it for Americans. Yeah. No. And we saw that. Right. Yeah. I mean, did you guys dig into the IRS, you know, the proposal?

Listen, it's from the infrastructure bill. People are acting like it's new, but it's just really back at the forefront again because it has to be discussed. But I mean, the notion that like a MetaMask is going to KYC every person and report every transaction to the IRS, and that's what they would have to do to be compliant. It's not only is it like patently absurd to expect it,

it's literally impossible even if they try. Yeah, no, it's regulating something out of existence. It's very clear. That's the entire intent behind it right there. So if you can't comply, you can't exist that's exactly exactly there is no path for compliance well i know that both you actually need to go like within one minute but so then we're all the general opinion that odds are we see some sort of etf approval at some point but that doesn't really change anything for the sec's aggressive stance towards

the rest of crypto. Probably not. Yeah. We're going to see an ETF. Is it this year or next year? I still am holding out the super negative opinion, which I desperately want to be wrong about, that they shut down the futures products and that's how they deal with it. I think that there's enough capriciousness in this SEC, to use the word of the day. Yeah. He just can't, he can't, he can't take the loss. I don't disagree that that's a very viable possibility, by the way,

if either of you are available at 10, 15 spaces, we would love to have you, but I know Dave, you're probably not, you got places to go, but John, I'll,

I'll hit you up. We would love to have you on there. Thank you guys so much. Really awesome insight. And it's nice to see both of your faces on one of these good days. Stay safe, Scott. Stay safe. Well, we made it through the first half without the Internet going out.

Chris lives in Texas, so he knows a little bit about hurricanes and some disasters here and there. But yeah, Chris, man, how are you today? Hey, what's going on, man? I think I'm doing probably better than what you're doing at the moment. Waiting for that to kind of push on through there. Yeah, we're kind of getting, I don't want to jinx it, but yeah, it's been, you know, we got like 50 mile an hour winds, a couple branches down and a whole lot of water in the pool. But beyond that, you know, pretty good. It's one of those things, you know, you do all this prep, like I prepped my parents' house, I prepped my house,

and then another like property that we have. I spent literally two days. And then you're like, I did that for nothing. But you don't really want to have done it. You don't want the one time you don't do it, right? It's like training, risk management, right? You don't want the one time you don't use risk management, proper risk management to happen and you lose everything. The one time you don't use your stop is when you get that $2,000 candle straight down and you get liquidated for your entire account. Right, right. Or if you're short and you get a $2,000 candle, oh, wait, that just happened yesterday, right? Yeah, exactly. On the other way, though. On the other way, luckily. Yeah, exactly. So listen, we talked, obviously, on the drop from 28 to 25. Obviously, we know that you've been looking for more upside. And for me, the drop to 25,

200 didn't change anything because it's just kind of the bottom of the same range, right? I mean, I can just bring up mine. But if you look at the weekly, this was that higher high break, and it was a perfect retest. I mean, literally like to the penny is where this dropped if you're looking at it on Coinbase. But now I think it's not on this chart, but I think we're kind of looking at a range now between 25 and mid 28s. So I think to start talking about the higher targets again, now we got to be back above like 28,600-ish. Yeah. Yeah. Let me go and pull up my chart there. Well, real quick, the first thing is, I don't remember if I shared this last time, but I've been on this search for, okay, all these

different things that happen after the bottom's in bottoms end to kind of say, you know, the bottoms end. And so the latest thing that I found is this, uh, Gaussian channel here. And every time, you know, it turns a red and then it turns green. Um, you know, when it does that green again, it's, it's noted that it doesn't go any lower than the lowest it, right. Um, and so, you know, it did this a few weeks back over here. So even if we got, you know, a push down lower, and even though, you know, you can't say, well, just because it's always happened in the past, it has to happen again in the future. You know, the fact is we're speculators, right? We're in the market, we're speculators and speculation means literally the definition means that there are no guarantees, right? And so, but you have to,

you have to find a point. You have to say, well, listen, at what point do I say, okay, this is what's likely going on. And so it gives me reason to enter. And so, you know, that's what we do. And so, you know, as of this point, we've got that as well now.

So, and as you noticed, as I noted on your chart there, you had the weekly hidden bullish divergence as well noted there. Yeah. But yeah. Exactly. And Ken, we did have that bearish divergence, you know, basically through all of April, May, which I can, I mean, if people are wondering what he's talking about here, we had this lower high on RSI and obviously a higher high on price in the same relative area. And that was, I mean, it didn't get to overbought, but man, it was, you know, a hair with away from getting there.

So now we're back at right at 50 RSI, which is where you want to kind of be above for the bull bear line. And we have now pretty clear, as long as it stays up, hidden bearish divergence. I mean, we also like, you know, we had, if you're looking, we had it bullish divergence on the daily, had it on the four hour and six hour, had it basically on the 12 hour. And now this move up. So, I mean, a lot of things looking good, but what I do want to know though, is are you surprised that that's all we got out of it so far? No, no. I mean, that's a pretty big move. And it was like, gosh, I was trying to follow it there yesterday on Twitter, posting it there. But I think the first hour was something like $1,500 or $1,600. And there was as much volume, by the way, on that first hour as almost the entire push down from $29,000 to $25,000.

Yeah, yeah. I saw your tweet on that. Exactly. So what does that tell us? Well, that tells us there's significant buying going on, right? And that's not retail buying. This is the thing that most people – I see a lot of people are trying to come out now and try to post all their thoughts on Wyckoff. And most of these guys who are doing this now, not giving any thought at all to volume and how it plays out. And, and there's even those that

do are having misgivings on the volume, not understanding, but when, when you have significant, the reason why we look at volume with price action in Wyckoff is because that is the only place that your big players can't hide. They can't, you cannot hide when you're buying millions of, well, not shares in this case, Bitcoin or something, right? So you're going to see these exceptional volume pushes, you know, at the highs or lows, which are telling you where these bigger players are coming in. And so, yeah, I mean, you know, that's significant,

you know, on that push down, they had what they had, but then yesterday, boom, this big comes up, right? Now, does that mean we're definitely guaranteed it's going to go up? No. Again, there's no guarantees, but I'm sticking with the same structure we've had that I've been talking about since June, where I've got that SC there. I've got that selling climax here. Again, the volume and price action throughout here, pretty much, you know, it's almost textbook for what we're looking for in accumulation. That spring, I mean, that spring is crazy. How much volume there is. It's a terminal shakeout here, right?

You have all this volume coming in, but this is all we got was this little bit. And when you have that kind of terminal shakeout thing going, you basically have sideways in a local range, and then you get your big move back up. And, you know, and I talked about it as this was developing. Anybody that was following me on Twitter at the time, you'll know, you know, we talked about it. It did exactly what we're looking for. Jump across the creek. We have our back up the edge of the creek here and which just basically becomes what appears to be volume and price action here. Just a reaccumulation before rallying higher. So, you know, based on the charts and the volume and price, I actually have little reason to believe that's going to go down any further. It could.

You know, anything can happen. But, you know, I'm sticking with what we've been sticking with so far. And, you know, I think we keep heading up higher here. There's a lot of opinions I've seen. And there was actually a very solid thread just comparing past cycles that I read through yesterday. I think I showed it here. It was from Immortal Crypto. They kind of said, if you look back at the last cycle, we had that huge move from 3,000 to 14,000, everybody remembers. And then kind of a slow bleed, then we got COVID, right? So we had the huge move down, but still a higher low, and then it entered the market. But the premise of that being that 31K

is basically the high of the year. And now we chop sideways for 200 and something days. And then next, you know, next summer after the halving, we start to make new highs and head up. I'm not saying that history has to repeat. It was just an interesting idea, you know, based on looking at the two previous cycles. Yeah. I mean, you know, obviously, you know, I can't guarantee it's not going to happen, but, you know, based on price action and, price action and volume, what's happening so far, that doesn't seem to be the top of the list that are what we're likely to see. So I think we had a good move yesterday, and we just need to see some follow through here over the next few days going in. I know that September historically isn't a very bullish month. Usually, you know, we're down on Bitcoin. But again, you know, that's just usually there are years there

in which we've been up. So, you know, yes, you can prepare for potentially to be, you know, to pull back a bit. But I think you don't just do it from the seasonality. I mean, you can expect it from the seasonality, but you still have to trade the charts. You still have to trade the charts because again, it could be the September, one of those Septembers, those ones that were actually had an increase for the month. Or like we end August in the next day or two, whatever, up another thousand bucks. And then September goes back down to 26 or 25. And they say, look, it was down 10% for the month of September and it's still just chop. And then we enter kind of a next phase. It's interesting. I had Noelle Atchison yesterday and she was talking about this low volume volatility. And she literally said,

all we're going to need is one news event or one catalyst to send this flying when things look like this. And then she messaged me like an hour later, said, see, and I had Mike Alfred on a week or two ago and he said, watch the end of August. Something crazy is going to happen. And then he DMs me and says, see. Right. And so I think that it's it really is proof that any news right now, when you have these lower periods of volatility and volume really can rock things to the upside. What I don't love is that we're still under the 200 MA on the weekly, which but we don't generally stay there too long right and that's kind of where we're getting rejected and then you go to the daily and it's kind of testing it as support now we'll see where the day closes but i would like to at least close above the daily

200 there um not that i'm such an ma guy but it would be nice because so many people are watching those two lines i think yeah yeah and and you know, yeah, I mean, you know, I don't really use moving averages a whole lot, but you know, a lot of people do, especially, you know, institutions and whatnot, because they are a lot of times those longer term, you know, holds. And so they kind of use that as their real kind of area that they're looking at. So, yeah, but you know, we'll see what happens here. We still, we still have to push up a bit. I want to see, um, I want to see 29,000. We can do 29,000, 28, six, eight, whatever, 29,000. Um, I think that's pretty much all she wrote for the low, uh, that we just pulled off of. And, and the reason Chris is saying that guys is because that's where this, I'm assuming

the major down candle we just had, we want to see that erased. You want to be back up in that same area that price was trading at before that. It is curious that we had a one hour technical trade down from 29 to 25 and we're yet to get back up to that area. So I think a lot of people are looking just basically erasing, kind of like the FTX you can see right in the middle of his chart. Yeah, the FTX moved down that we just talked about as a terminal shakeout. Then two months later, one candle erased the whole thing. Yeah. We want to see this erased back to the upside and be trading above 29.

Yeah. And for anybody that doesn't know, it's usually what you see. If you look back historically through charts, what you'll notice is when you have the big capitulation type candles, you usually have a big pop the other way. You know, right here, we go ahead and back down here. So often enough, that's what you're going to look for there because the market's just not interested right here. It pushes way through.

Nobody's really buying up. So it makes it easy to pop back up through it the other way. Again, just market's not really into it. Yeah, we had a comment here. And since you're the educator, I'll give it to you. Darn, I didn't understand or catch the Wyckoff mention Chris dropped there. is this point. We're at a final wave. No, that that's not the point. So, I mean, maybe you could just give the very he's not talking about LA waves, but maybe you could just give him the quick explanation of why there's a positive thing, not a negative thing is maybe he understood it. What the volume there that we were talking about? Well, I think he's just thought that you were saying the Wyckoff means we're in a final wave, but it actually, what you're saying is that we're effectively leaving accumulation.

Yeah. Yeah. Effectively, this is your accumulation here. And then you'll usually have, you jump across the creek. You don't have to have your back up the edge of the creek. And all this is guys, jump across the creek is just this big, large candle on big volume that breaks through resistance. Your back up the edge of the creek is just a retest of resistance as support. It's just the names given to it, but that's all it is. It's a breakout through that resistance, pull back, retest the support and go up. Now, again, it doesn't always happen, but it happens more, you know, enough times that, you know, that the name was given, right?

That this analogy was given of the creek here. Yeah. I just brought, I put the schematic up. Yeah. I just put the schematic up quickly. I just Googled it for, you know, for some people to see, but you see at the end that goes up. That's what he's talking about. Yeah, exactly. And that's all we're really looking for here is we're looking for that, uh, move up, you know, and, and the thing is we've actually had the, you know, this is how long is this here? This is so far we're 140 days sideways here.

So, you know, the big thing about the ranges is the longer they play out, the bigger and stronger the break's going to be when it happens. And so, you know, usually you'll just have like a backup here and then you'll kind of rally right back out. This time we kind of pull back again. So we're getting more strength here to potentially push up and really kind of get moving, you know, at least up here toward this, you know, 38,000 up toward the R1 pivot, if you need a visual on the weekly here. Um, but you know, likely to be, be further than that. I mean, even if you just did, even if you're just doing, um, uh, uh, pattern trading, right. And you look at this range here from swing low to swing high,

and you get that breakout. I mean, you're still looking up there around that almost 41,000, just off the height of the range here itself. We traded around 42,000 on the way down forever and on the way up before. So I remember that's going to be a very key level. I see you've also got, if I can see it clearly, an ETH chart, an NVIDIA chart, and an EGLD chart. So let's move on to Ethereum. Because I think it might have been when we were charting that I pulled up the monthly, which I hadn't looked at in so long

and had no idea we had this support, which is kind of crazy. Yeah, yeah. And a monthly chart to have three perfect touches and for this candle to end there, that was pretty compelling for me. Well, that's right. And you know what we always say, you know, you know, one touch is a point, two touches

of the line, three point, you know, three touches or more as a trend. And that's what you want to see. You know, that that's the true support of resistance. I've actually got this more as a barrier triangle rather than a leading diagonal. Could be a leading diagonal, you know, could be one, two, three, four, get a five pull, but, but we would just pull right back toward this same pivot area on the weekly here before rallying up right now until we actually get that. I've got this as a one, two, one, two here, but you know, again, you've got this consolidation, these lower, as you mentioned,

these low, uh, higher lows, but toward this consolidation area, you've got volume dropping off as you do here. I don't even see if we pull it up there a little bit. There we go. Volume decline as price consolidates. And that's what you usually get in a triangle because you get that volatility shift as it gets, you know, tighter and tighter. And, you know, most often it gets you a push out and we had this descending channel here. We had a wick down through it. It looks like a throw under. We're rallying back up. We hit the EQ of that descending, um, channel here. If we can break out impulsively above that, you know, initially your

pattern target is going to be the top of the channel. If you can break out impulsively above that, then we look for a breakout likely through the swing high here and just kind of work its way up again, minimally R1 pivot. Um, you know, as we're kind of going up there, if this triangle is working out, you know, as a barrier triangle here, then like we did with Bitcoin there, we were looking at the channel there. You look for a breakout here. Right to those highs. Yeah. Yeah. Right back up there, 5,200 or so based on the height of that. So won't be a straight shot, but you know, the idea is that it would kind of higher lows, higher highs up toward that point there.

So, yeah, yeah. And here on the weekly, you notice we've broken down, reset down into oversold on Stoke RSI here. So, you know, we get this rally up here. It looks like it's doing all right. Just want to see some follow through locally. Yeah, I mean, it's looking good. I can't argue with it. Now, Bitcoin, you know, on the Bitcoin pair, maybe Bitcoin outperforms, but I think it's still looking good. I see you got NVIDIA and EGOLD up there. What are you looking at NVIDIA? Because I think that's the chart everybody's watching.

Yeah, NVIDIA. Basically gauge the entire stock market now. And then the 533 targets, you know, on the actual during the normal hours, you know, we got a high here of 502.66. But I think you saw that as well. When they had earnings, we popped up to something like 522 or something. So we got pretty close to that 533 target. The question is, was this, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is an ending diagonal here. Is it done?

Or is this going to be a leading diagonal one, two, and then we head up. So what we're looking for is a breakout above this swing high here at, uh, five Oh two 66. If we break out above there, I'm going to look at this as a one, two, and then that gives us five waves up to finish out this wave five, five, one here at around 647. If we get rejected here and we continue coming down, then, you know, the top's in here, wave one is done and we're pulling back for a wave two. And so, you know, you don't want to be buying for a little bit for a while it pulls back on that. But, you know, I've been following this thing since the bottom here. And, you know the bottom here. And we have the inverted head and shoulders going on here with the target there. We hit it. I mean, everything just working out

really great. I know we don't need to fill that gap because it's kind of a breakaway, right? Yeah. Gaps are not created equal. But man, if it does come down, bidding like 315 there, I got it right here. I mean, this big gap right here you know like yeah this area like if we really get a major stock market correction and that fills man what a fill that would be oh yeah we'd look at uh yeah actually yeah because you got a 50 around 305 there yeah yeah and there's i mean yeah that would you know around that or even down here toward uh this this two you know potentially even down toward 265 even. But that, that would be where I'd be looking for.

I would look if it was going to come down and break down below that way for that, I would look forward to retrace through that, fill that gap there. You know, maybe even come on down to that 258 or something like that. But, but you know, at those areas there, that 50 to 61, eight, that's where I'd be looking for a reason to go long for the next wave up. Right. For the next, I just can't see myself buying it right now no no right now you're at the highs you're really kind of playing games at this point you know it was like feels like that you're that guy you know like finally finally do it you're the signal right if you're the guy who's like oh and i've heard of it and video is going it's like uh my aunt texting me the day before where Elon Musk went on Saturday Night Live and saying, I heard about this Doge thing.

It's supposed to go up really big tomorrow because Elon Musk is going to be on Saturday Night Live. He said, the top is 100% in. It's over. Good job, right? What do you got on eGold there? You know that's one of my favorites. So you and I traded that when it was ERD, right? The ERD, when it was 15 sat low cap on Binance and didn't even have a USDT pair and went to like 500 sats before we even

started talking about USDT pairs. I mean, this is one of, and I like the team I've interviewed Ben a million times, but man, I like this thing thing it's got bullish divergence too i'm looking right now yeah yeah you know i'm looking at this is the weekly here just to kind of give us a big idea we've got this um this uh demand right here uh this odd colored candle we basically hit the eq of that looking for it to rally up i want to see this nice impulsive rally off here but man oh man if we can do that i mean wave three is up here at 883 um we would need a breakout really above wave x here at uh 270 to really kind of confirm this large structure but again this is the weekly uh so yeah you know if we can get a impulsive breakout above this descending you know wedge resistance here um i think that's a good signal

that the you know there's a good chance that the bottom may be done there and, uh, we're heading up from there on that. I mean, I just, I like, I like overall, I like the structure. I like where it's finding as long as it keeps support right here. I like it a lot. And look at this daily. I mean, oversold down to 19 with bullish divergence. Now it's kind of putting in maybe a hidden bear div, but this is, this is forming a bottom. Yeah, yeah, it does. It looks good. I mean, it looks like a lot of the, you know, gosh, it just looks like a lot of the alts coming off here more recently, right, before that rally there.

So, yeah, I mean, I like the structure. We definitely want to see some follow through on it. But, you know, again, that's what it's all about, right? It's traders. You go in there and you look at the charts. You say, OK, well, this is looking interesting here. At what point should I be interested? And, you know, for me, it's that impulsive breakout above that, that wedge kind of resistance there. If we can get that, then things,

you know, to me that says, okay, let's start looking at really kind of trading this and seeing what's going on for the longer term, you know, potentially rallying that on up there, you know, hundreds of dollars up. Yeah, I like it. Yeah. I mean, we're going to see what happens. I'm still in the camp right now that everything looks good, but Bitcoin probably outperforms just because of the narratives. And then once we get back in that 29, 30, 31 and start going sideways again, we maybe see all to pop this time. They didn't really do it last time, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the key is you kind of want to be in before, you know, before the things go off, Right. Too many people, especially the newer traders trying to get in after the big moves.

Right. Bitcoin takes off yesterday. It's up, you know, eight hundred thousand dollars. And then people are like, you know, and then fifteen hundred dollars. And they're like, OK, now I need to get in. Well, maybe not so much right now. Yeah, I can pop up a little bit higher. But, you know, let's increase the odds that you're going to be successful with this and kind of wait for it to pull back a little bit there. So we kind of got that overnight. Absolutely. Well, I just got a flicker of power here, so I'm not going to push my luck anymore. That was awesome. I'm glad we got through it, man. Thank you so much. We'll see you next week. Sounds good, man. Take care. Be careful out there.

Yeah, man. All right, everybody. Thank you. I'll see you on Twitter spaces about 25 minutes, assuming I can keep some internet going because my phone doesn't work in my house if the internet's not on. So let's keep our fingers crossed. Amazing day to celebrate with you guys. This Grayscale win. I think it's absolutely huge and can't wait to see prices follow. Thank you guys. I'll see you later. Let's go.