The Wolf Of All Streets - Missiles Fly. Bitcoin Holds. Safe Haven Arc? #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

In this Crypto Town Hall episode, host Scott and guests discuss the escalating Iran conflict's market impact, emphasizing human costs while analyzing Bitcoin's resilience amid war risks, rising oil prices, and geopolitical uncertainty. The panel explores how resolved conflict could reduce uncertainty, boost risk assets, and enable aggressive money printing, with Bitcoin potentially emerging as a digital gold hedge. They debate stablecoin regulations, the GENIUS Act's implications for yield, tokenized assets' growth, AI agents in crypto (including agenic wallets), and blockchain's role in combating AI-generated misinformation and fake content. The conversation highlights Bitcoin's strength through uncertainty and evolving narratives around stablecoins, tokenized Treasuries, and regulatory clarity.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall every other weekday here on X at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. We ended up missing Friday. Dave and I were both traveling, but we are back on schedule here today. Obviously, I think the main topic of discussion here and everywhere is the escalating conflict in Iran. I want to start this show the same way that I finished my last show and something that we say very often. We are very cognizant of the fact that the effect of war and conflict on markets should be the least of our concerns when there's actually a war and we're very conscientious of the human impact, how incredibly sad and unfortunate these conflicts are. But that said, it is our job to show up and discuss what that could potentially mean for market. So I don't want to minimize the rest of the topics of conversation surrounding it, but we are here to obviously talk markets and what it means. So I don't know where we want to start. It's hard not to be a macro show today, Dave, you know, because it's very difficult, I guess,

to discuss Bitcoin and crypto and context of this when there's so much uncertainty. You muted, Dave. Yeah, I'm not sure if his mic's working. Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, I can't see the button that ring. You guys can hear me now, right? Yeah, Bitcoin, we can hear you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, cool. It's a bit quiet. I think you're all right now. Go ahead. Okay, cool. Yeah, not because I change settings, but, you know, I've been away for a week, so who the hell knows. But I think that the level of uncertainty is a lot less than it was three days ago. What I thought was fascinating was at the peak uncertainty on Saturday that Bitcoin,

which generally really gets whipsawed. I mean, yeah, it moved six, seven, eight percent, something like that. But, you know, when I posted, I was, you know, basically on my way towards skiing at the time. It was like, you know, okay, the knee jerk is almost always wrong. And in fact, the knee jerk was wrong. But I don't think there's nearly as much uncertainty as people trying to figure out, you know, what's next. I mean, you know, I saw a post from our Earthwell co-host, Mario, yes, this morning, which is just silly, you know, about, well, I ran and striking out. Understand that what's going on in Iran right now is no longer top-down command and control.

And that's a very big difference. You've got a lot of a very disparate, very large company with a very large military that's geographically all over the country. And a lot of people doing what they think they need to do or what they're expecting to do without necessarily centralized guidance. And that's always a very dangerous situation. But that's what's happening. And from a strategic point of view, it's it looks like what they're, it looks like what they're, they're trying to do is piss off the entire world so as to bring pressure to make it stop. But I think the rest of the world is really just getting more angry.

And, you know, so we'll see what happens, but it doesn't feel nearly as uncertain to me. And I think that's what markets are reacting to. And I quit this morning. I thought that even the U.S. stock market would end the day green. And I still think Bitcoin ends the day green. And I'm just curious what other people think because, you know, maybe it's just me and maybe I'm just jaded. but once the missiles start flying, unless there's a major surprise,

generally markets react positively to that because the uncertainty is it's now very clear. The U.S. is not, there's no, you know, unless there's, unless this drags on for a lot longer, and I mean a lot longer, it's pretty clear that the desire to decapitate the leadership of Iran and give the people a chance to do something is happening, no whether or not that will succeed, Let's let other people debate that. But I don't really see a huge amount of uncertainty from the market's point of view. The biggest uncertainty is in the oil market. Right.

Right, which is where the straits get closed. To me, that's the biggest one. 100%. Richard and then, Carlo. Hey, guys. Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking back to what happened in Israel when they were retaliating to what happened on October 7th. And they unfortunately lost a lot of public support because it just went on and on and on.

and I think even seeing, I mean, we're addressing this macro thing first and then, you know, crypto flavor. But, you know, while people are dancing and cheering in the streets, the more the inner city of Tehran gets hit hard. And, you know, innocent people are put at risk. That's for me, you know, if you look at history, it's very difficult to maintain the public perception, you know, if this escalates and just keeps going on and on. and you start to see casualty rise. Eventually, people get fatigued of that. But it's nice to see the market trailing. I don't really know what to say.

Bitcoin's had pretty good pump. So, yeah, good to be here, guys. That's my thoughts for now. Carlo. Good morning, Scott. Good morning. Yeah, man, wild weekend. I have to agree with a lot of the analysis that Dave gave.

I think the uncertainty was probably more of a price depressor. Arthur Hayes came out and kind of is talking along the same lines that I'm thinking that we're probably going to see increased liquidity. And we know that ISM is starting to cross aggressively over 50. I am really impressed the way Bitcoin's price held throughout this entire weekend because my initial thought when I saw this invasion start was that we were really impressed. We're about to see a repeat of the Ukraine war crash, and it didn't do that.

And I'm actually really impressed with the resilience and that the price is staying stable. And Sailor bought more this morning. So I think it is possibly a buying opportunity for those who have a belief in a conviction in Bitcoin. The chart, to me, looks like it's coiling up in a very positive way, despite all this. And I think Bitcoin is going to become more of a digital gold hedge against global uncertainty. And what I expect to be, Scott, an epic money print season this year. Amateur? Yeah, obviously a heavy day and agree that it's kind of, it's just tough to talk about markets.

But essentially, I think it's a compelling environment. on a few things. And I'll just say, I hope everyone's safe and everyone's families and friends and anyone affected. But I think when you look back, it's kind of interesting to see the strategic decisions that were made. Specifically, you go back to Venezuela and the pulling out of Maduro and the timing of that before this event, which was clearly very calculated. So you kind of look at these larger macro situations of the end of the petro dollar,

the dollar debasement starting to skyrocket, the need for energy demand based on AI data centers and kind of where the future is headed. And so it almost, and look, I'm not a geopolitical analyst, and everyone became one over this weekend, as they always do during these events. So I'm not pretending to be. But I think that you look at this and see, oh, they made this strategic choice to corner the western oil market in Venezuela by pulling out Maduro and placing in this pipeline of oil that can go straight to the United States. And we're very transparent about it, uniquely so in a way that they wouldn't have been historically.

But now you understand why, right? Now the signal is clear. And then this invasion in Iran takes place. The Strait of Hormuz, which is always predicted to close, is now closed. And there is the potential for an oil and energy supply shock, which... I don't think it's officially closed. I think it's stressed, but not definitely closed. Sure, sure.

Yeah, I mean, it's not wise to go through it. And you're definitely not going to be insured with cargo if you do, right? So when you look at this and what do you see on the outset of it, you start to see energy prices first start to spike, but you actually see the dollar start to rebound. And you start to see like a bigger picture that's shaping up here. I do think that we are shrugging off this initial anticipation, which was a price suppressant. But I do think that it remains to be seen the level of instability that will continue to rise out of this from different domestic situations, everything else, and how that could affect markets.

And so we'll see. But I think Bitcoin's resilience in this has been impressive. I think that it doesn't take much for Bitcoin to find some footing and start to move in the right direction in these environments. It just takes a little narrative or a perception change and it catches on and it's enough to solidify itself in a move up. I don't think the uncertainty is over, but I think that the greater play here is quite obvious. And it sets up this administration to get a lot of what they want, a stronger dollar, control of oil and a macro environment that they can print into. Bitcoin also just to be, it's very. doing this live, it's up 4.5% in the last hour and just hit 68,800. So, you know, I'm sure that's

in concert with other markets, but interesting to see it completely shrug this off for now. Jamie, go ahead. Hey, Scott. I appreciate it. You know, I saw it today as well, like, the markets are kind of shrugging this off, which is a good sign of strength for Bitcoin and some of the broader markets. But, you know, this weekend, like, we were going through it live, you know, and, you know, when I was left with just like a great, as a U.S. citizen, like, you know, I largely focus on domestic issues, markets, things that's in front of me. I mean, you know, the only thing I can, you know, in my experience, is things blowing up in the sky is Fourth of July, you know, and, you know, we were speaking

with some people who were, like, you know, we were on the space with British Hoddle. He was in Dubai. He was describing how, you know, he was watching missiles from both. sides of you know over the water coming and colliding together dropping debris down in Dubai you know looking at he he left to get to safety we talked to some other people from Iran you know in the try to get sentiment remove ourselves from our own you know viewpoint here in America you know and you know it was just incredible I mean imagine not being able to enjoy free speech or social media or if you're caught having like a five-year minimum panel or

possibly hanging, you know. So, like, these are things that we just don't have to think about. You know, sentiment was really relief and happiness that they were able to be happy for a period of time. Like, they weren't, they weren't worried about their safety as much. You know, we talked about a little bit of last night, we had Michael Cantor on, and he was talking about, we were discussing about oil. And, you know, his view, he shared, as long as it wasn't persistent, that he didn't think that the, you know, the perceived market risk would be, you know, a large concern, you know, and also with the midterm focus, he really felt that like maybe, you know, Trump's going to do anything at all costs to try to keep the oil prices down so it doesn't impact the outcome. So those kind of the things that, you know, we discussed and kind of how we tied it into the market so over the weekend. Dave, did you have a comment? I see your mic's lifted.

Yeah, I think that, yeah, I was listening to the, I was trying to, I was stealthily as I wasn't a position to speak. So I listened to some of what British Hoddle was saying. And, and, you know, Ian, who's been on the show before he, you know, they got, they, they're, they got out of Dubai and went someplace else. But, you know, it is when you, when you see what's actually happening here, I think the markets are ignoring, literally ignoring a very popular. possible outcome. I think people are so jaded or are so used to the fact that when these things start that they drag on and they create voids and they create, you know, horrible instability. I think the market is essentially pricing in a kind of no, no good outcome. But I think there are some potential good out. There is a potential good outcome here. And I, and I think that from an asset point

of view that people are ignoring that. And so it's, and I said it this morning on Macromunday, people always will buy insurance for negative tail events, but rarely do anything for positive tale events. So when they happen that they're a surprise. And the positive tail event here would be a government that is a secular government in Iran, where the theocracy or the clerics are reduced to non-political, non-controlled military, no ability to fund terror around the world. There is no way that that is priced into risk markets. It's not even. Dave, quickly, though, can I ask you?

I mean, you said, like, it's pricing in all the negative scenarios and not positive ones. I would say based on market action, it's indifferent to both. Well, no, not indifferent. I think that the negative, I mean, look, oil is, has a short-term spike in it. But we all understand, we all understand that the largest, the country that is impacted the most by the Straits of Hermuz being closed, there are two major groups that are impacted. From an oil perspective, China is the one most impacted.

From a quality of life point of view, it's the GCC, the Gulf community, because their food comes through there. And that's a big deal. And the question is, is will that, what will that cause? Will that create an impetus towards some form of ceasefire? Will it just piss people off and want to go for the final killstroke? I don't know these answers, but I think that it's fascinating. If it turns out that the command and control of Iran is actually truly decapitated

and that there is no ability for the current regime to reform itself, that could lead to outcomes that people haven't really put into their, you know, they're just not in the calculator right now. And that's why I'm much more, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I'm much more bullish than most people are on most risk assets. I agree with that. So I can't help but look at it that way because it feels like that. I mean, we've discussed it a lot.

I wrote about it this morning, but you can also just look at the facts. I mean, like we've said a million times, markets hate uncertainty, and the uncertainty is leading up to war once the war happens. Very rarely do you see a negative impact that's long-lasting on markets? It just doesn't really happen. It doesn't mean it can't. And if you're in Bitcoin, I mean, why did Bitcoin sell from 126 down to 60? Why did it drop?

Well, what were the reasons? Well, look, cycle theory, this theory, quantum fud, you know, people hate Trump, you know, tariffs, a threat of war. Okay, we got the war. We got the tariffs. The Supreme Court's done what they're doing. It's whatever. Most of those reasons are gone now. And so all you have to do is look at the supply and look who bought during that period of time and look who sold. And ask yourself, well, what's the most likely next scenario? And I throw that open to everybody. when, Jamie, I see your hand up. Is that a phantom hand or is that, is that a new one? It's a phantom hand, but I can actually, like, we actually went over this last night. I don't know if you're listening with Michael Cantrell, but he went at this in depth. Because, like, the ISM index is coming out today, and that's one of the, you know, the charts that I look at. But he actually kind of went in a little bit more nuanced, and he kind of discounted that. And he thought that Bitcoin price was more correlated with credit spreads.

And, you know, he actually said, if you look at that, the credit spreads were at their lows in October. And, you know, Bitcoin was at the, was at its all time high and has gone down since then. So, you know. Yeah, I'd love to debate. Yeah. I'm curious. I was, I was bringing up as like, this is your wheelhouse. We were trying to absorb it.

I have like five or six pages of notes trying to. Well, the thing that's interesting about that, and I want to go into depth here, but it's, when you look at average. on credit spreads, it completely conceals what's actually happening. Companies that have debt that are based on on financing business models that are being disrupted by AI are going to have their credit spreads absolutely go, you know, go widen out massively. But on the same time, companies that can use AI to cut their costs and do what what Jack Dorsey just did are going to see their credit get, you know, crazy good. Because, you know, and so unfortunately, there's a lot of both.

And Bitcoin has no relation to any of that. Like literally none. It's just one of those, those, it has, Bitcoin has been correlated to software companies. So therefore, when software companies drop, Bitcoin will drop. I mean, if you tried to say that in your first introductory, in your first introductory logic course in college,

you'd fail because it's literally a logical fallacy. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but these things happen sometimes without necessarily, they're correlated and they're not, there's nothing causal. And people always try to make causality. But when it comes to, But war, when it comes to global instability, I mean, there is a scenario here.

And I'll just, I'll paint it because, you know, you can call me the idiot bull. There is a scenario here where Putin looks at what's happened and says, okay, so there's literally a gun pointed at my head. Zelensky's already saying it. It's like, listen, you know, we see what's going on. And ultimately, this all resolves. And we could end up with a geopolitical win for this. administration that is that even his his most ardent TDS adult detractors would not be able to

argue is is undeniably good that is not priced it and and and so you could talk about credit spread the other big thing that the other story from last week that matters the most is the one I referred to the Dorsey story because that is fascinating right because what you basically see is the United States economy that's going to follow this model he was just first which is labor in the sense of, you know, middle management and people who can be replaced, it's going to happen. And companies, the capital is going to do really, really well. So the risk assets do really well.

So the question is, if you're the administration or any political leader, what the hell do you do to employ people? And there are various things that can happen. But these things are not bad for investments. They're just bad for humans, right? You know, as you get more and more K-shaped, more and more assets over everything else. And so I'm sure a lot of people will be talking about that in the next few days. Panos, I saw you put up a couple of hundreds before.

You behind the mic. I mean, you have a foreign. You know, what is your take on all this stuff? Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I think that a lot of the selling and price suppression of the, you know, high-risk asset crypto markets was probably, in my opinion, there's probably a bunch of reasons. but I think a lot of it was just people trying to front run the news and be a bit cautious on the whole US attacking Iran.

Because we've kind of been expecting it now for months, right? Like it's been on prediction markets. Like we've been following aircraft carriers. We knew it was going to happen. And just to see how the markets reacted to what's going on just makes me more bullish on the crypto. market. And like, I don't want to be the guy that's like, oh, the bottom's in. But the way, unless things really change, which I, I personally think that all of this that's going on in the Middle East is probably going to be over by the end of this month. But even if it's not, I mean,

let's look at other wars, right? The Ukraine and Russia war has been going on for years and years and years and Bitcoin has gone and made all-time hires. I know this is different in the sense that, you know, there's the straight of hummus and there's oil and all of that stuff involved. But I still think that we are probably going to recover pretty well, whether this drags on or not. And I'm actually even more bullish now than I was pre-America attacking Iran. That's just my personal opinion. God, I was expecting pushback, not agreement. No, no, no, no.

I agree, Matt. I was very bearish pre this weekend. I was kind of thinking Bitcoin was probably going to go back down and revisit the lows, and it still might. But just seeing how Bitcoin and Ethereum are reacting kind of makes me a lot more bullish. Yeah, I don't know which way. Yeah, I mean, Bitcoin's over 69 now, by the way. Yeah.

Look, I think that, as I said, I thought today would end. I think Bitcoin will be testing that 74 level at some point in the not so distant future. We'll see how the technicals work. But I just think there's a lot of money that's off sides. I really do. A lot of people pulled their money out thinking they would be able to buy in cheaper. And we're going to get one of these grinding hated rallies. And if we do end up with, if there is any what I will classify as good news, that will feed the fire.

I mean, it is interesting, though. I mean, like today, the other interesting thing, you know, we always, we were joking that we were smelting town hall, right? You know, because everyone was, all we were talking about is silver. But, you know, today is one of those days where, you know, silver is underperforming gold significantly, you know, down, you know, three and a half percent gold's up one percent. And so silver is, is that risk asset thing. If that continues to turn around, I personally think that that if Bitcoin is going to stay a risk asset through this period, And I wrote an article last week about why I think that will change, but not in the near future. I think that you could see a lot of these things moving in lockstep.

And the ones that aren't being disrupted, but the ones that are not being disrupted are going to do extremely well. And from an equity point of view. So, I mean, I think that there's a lot of, there are so many people who are like taking it for granted that we're going to see a major stock market correction. And that's when Bitcoin is going to get cheap. But if it doesn't happen, then what? And that's really the interesting question. I mean, it's like we're also beaten up. I mean, greed and fear.

You know, we've been extreme fear now for how many days? I'm looking. I'm trying to go back. Let's see. Let's do three months. Last time we weren't in extreme fear was, well, not that long ago. I guess it was we got out of extreme fear on January 19th or 20th. It was the last time.

That's a long time. you know, you're talking five and a half weeks of extreme fear. I mean, at what point does that, is that the actual fuel you need for a rally that people hate? Richard. Yeah, I mean, and I think Bitcoin's had five consecutive months of red. You know, if we get March red, I mean, it matches the worst performance for Bitcoin in recent years. And like anything, I mean, it just can't keep going down and getting hammered. there's going to be a relief, really.

I wanted to say something slightly different. I mean, we can always come back to this, but I was listening to an interesting conversation with Brian Armstrong, you know, just to talk about the future of AI and crypto, which I think is a, you know, a really important prospect in our industry. And, you know, what excites me about this entire AI revolution,

you know, it's almost like on a daily basis you're seeing the various competitors drop, unbelievable products, you know. So at one moment it was Claude Code, and then, you know, in a couple of days, it was perplexity compute. And you're just watching this happen in real time. But, you know, if you've been in crypto long enough,

we're always looking for ways to advocate the underlying technology. I don't think there's been, well, there's probably some really good narratives at the moment, but a really strong one with a crossover into AI is this agentic wallet really being used effectively. And Brian, you know, the way that he explained it and how they're using it with AWOL, you know, their agentic wallet tool, I think it's a really significant moment with crypto trying to be relevant in something that we, I think we see we can easily see as going to be a part of how agents operates. And given how these applications, these platforms are exploding, I think it bodes really well for an aspect of crypto. That's a D. D.B's hand up.

Hey, I don't have a specific response to... This space was downloaded via spacesdown.com. Visit to download your spaces today. Richard, but since he kind of took it in a different direction, I figured it was okay to bring this up. And I didn't want to share my dozens of minutes of Iran expertise reading Twitter posts earlier. But one thing that I noticed yesterday,

which really is so relevant to the industry we're in, is all the fake posts. And obviously, Richard, you brought up AI and how it's just, It's crazy right now. And we're in probably the only industry that can really solve this problem. And it's something that I don't see is talked about enough. And I'd really love to hear what people think about how blockchain can help solve this issue.

I've heard it mentioned many times before the truth machine. And I think this is absolutely crucial for our future because the fake content and stuff that is going around is it's destroying people's lives. It's destroying businesses. And it is so detrimental that we need a solution for it now. And we are really the only industry that I think can figure this out. So I'd love to hear some people's thoughts on that. I'm sorry, D.B., I miss what's detrimental? All the fake content going around.

That's the fake Twitter post pictures or the fake videos of the conflict or this or that that are just swaying people's opinions and destroying relationships, destroying families, destroying lives. Yeah, it is, well, I have two points that I want to make. One, that's funny in a sense, because it's just so obvious, which is that there is a absolute screaming need for proof of human. And while, you know, people are using GROC and other things to try to figure out whether things are AI, here I am.

And it's been now over a month since my ex-account, my original. X account was hacked and the X support people still can't verify the human behind both accounts despite having all the IDs. So, you know, it's just very, very, very clear that, and yes, a lot of people listening, maybe most of you are following my new account because it's been out there for a month and I've been posting on it a lot. But the truth is, is, you know, they still can't. And I went through it again with them this past week. I mean, I'm on my sixth different appeal. They don't know proof of human. And proof of human is, is, you know, I was passing by a kiosk for a world coin. And I will admit that this, that I was thinking to myself, you know what?

The idea of me scanning my eyeball, I thought it would be a never, never, never do. Because I wouldn't want to trust Sam Altman, and given what's happened over the last week, I'd say that if anything, that distrust is escalated. But proof of human in a way where you don't have to trust a central authority, you only trust the people that you want to trust is really important. So that's thing one. The thing two is we understand. It's like everything else.

You want to fight. Why is it that cybersecurity is a business? Well, it's because the people who are the best hackers said, you know what, I can make money and not go to jail by being white hat hackers and creating responses to cyber threats. So we're going to end up using AI to figure out and fight AI, which is dangerous because what has. happens if they collude or anything else. So yeah, you're you're right, D.V. It's a very big deal.

And there's so much crap going on out there. Anyway, you've managed to trigger two people. I didn't see who was first being Richard and Amateur. Scott, did you? I'll chime in quickly. I won't be long. I think X have a fantastic opportunity. I mean, if you assume Elon's going to be bringing in some form of crypto payment, which we read about recently, I mean, how is it that you, I mean, I had an incident this morning, quite a big account 1.6 million followers and they posted a picture of a hotel in Bahrain, I think, that had been hit. And immediately was suspicious of it and I put community notes and asked Rock, I said, is this real? And it immediately said no. And, and, you know, so to Deby's points, I think it's

quite consequential if people are actively being journalists and not taking that responsibility seriously. But I mean, surely X could monetize something like that. I mean, if they, you can see that tightening up in so many aspects of their algorithm. But if you're, if you have an opportunity to use GROC, which is an AI tool that can retrospectively tell you that it's not real, why can't they do that proactively before it gets posted? Real quick, if I could before Amateo, sorry, does I want to jump right on that is I saw also GROC responding to the, video that was going, one of the videos that went around yesterday. And the initial claim was, yes, this is real. And then people contradicted it. An hour later, Grock responded, no,

sorry, my original claim was false. This is not real. Then another hour later, it contradicted itself again. So that's, the problem is too many people are relying on these AI models as a source of truth. And it's just, it's a mess right now. Yep, I'm a tell you. That's wild. That's wild. Yeah, one of the things that I saw over the course of the past several days was essentially all of these accounts taking Intel and then packaging it up and reposting it. And it was very clearly AI generated, but it was a lot of like Intel summaries. And there's actually some amazing war monitor and situation Intel accounts on X that are actually. on average, four to 12 hours before any major news outlet is breaking anything. And they work extremely hard.

And if it's something that you're interested in, it's worth following those people because they work very hard to verify their sources. But then on top of that layer of very hardworking humans, that may or may not be using AI to generate this intel, is this army of bots. And if they're not bots, there are accounts that are using their human accounts. that are using AI in a bot style fashion to package up and distribute this information. And when it's bundled up and just fire hosed in this way,

it's really hard to differentiate what's true and what's not true. And I do think that this is going to be a persistent problem. In terms of how does blockchain solve that, there has to be an actual appetite for it. And the incentive mechanism of these models has to change. Like, keep in mind, there's a lot of these accounts that are running these bots or running these scripts because they're trying to get paid by X.

They want the engagement. And if it's a fake video that looks very real, they are going to get paid for that. And they get paid for that, not just on X. They definitely get paid on it on Facebook because everybody believes everything on Facebook. So the actual platforms have to be interested and invested in real human activity. because the bot activity and the AI activity still boosts numbers. It boosts metrics. We have Elon talking about all-time high usage on X this past weekend.

And I'm sure that is a big part because people are coming to X for news, real humans. But within that is this absolute mess. Can blockchain be used to solve it? Yes. Will involve, as Dave put, some kind of biometric verification most likely. Does that get into a gray area of where a lot of people in the space live philosophically on what they actually want this technology to do and how they want it to interface with themselves? Definitely. So I think you need a few correlating factors.

The technology can be established. There would have to be a real interest in these platforms to put these humanization efforts in. It would take place on the blockchain, but you would need a biometric component or some other real deal of verification because K1 I see is it. Yeah, there has to be a premium on truth over the content. I, because like, exactly. As soon as I see something, the first thing I do is Grock, is this true before I even do anything with it at all? Because I don't want to be responsible for reposting something that is clearly has not been researched. You know, it's like a first step you have to do nowadays with everything, but I totally agree. Yeah. I mean, it's, I find myself doing the same thing.

I mean, I trust my memory, but I don't post until I verify, particularly when it's things like, you know, we were talking about Iran. I mean, I was a college debater at the time that the first revolution happened. And as a result of being, anyone who knows anything about policy debate, knows you spend most of your time in the library and reading newspapers. And back then it was micro-fiche, so, you know, ridiculous stuff. But amazing amounts of research on all this stuff, you had to know what the hell was going on.

But it's a long, long time ago. memory's good but I didn't trust it so you know I would go to think about write a post and like screw that let's go to Grock and have it research like okay does this make sense and double check it and you know ask those questions but when it comes to the videos I just assume most of them are crap but so many of them look so real to the human eye when you first see it and you know it's like and it you just you just know that there's a lot of this stuff going on I mean hell it doesn't even take AI I mean how many people here have had

have seen dozens of posts about that hospital that the Iranian rocket, you know, killed all those girls. And yet people for days, days, you know, days later, even after it's thoroughly debunked, would basically say, hey, you know, this is, you know, this was accepted as truth. So understanding truth is, is hard. And it is, especially in a world of propaganda, it's really hard. Yeah, DB. Yeah, and this is why I think blockchain is just so crucial for all of it. And I think in the future, everything needs to be on the blockchain in a way. Because how are you going to verify, is this video real? Well, it was taken by this person at this time.

It's timestamped on the blockchain. It's legit. This video was created by AI, this source at this time by this person. Or this tweet and Twitter, I wish it was completely on blockchain or on. some type of ledger where it was all verifiable. Because one of the biggest issues I saw yesterday was a fake Trump tweet that went absolutely viral and the issues that it caused, I just can't even imagine, but it was completely AI generated.

And there's really no way to verify it unless you go search the, I don't know, the backup database to see if it was posted and deleted or whatever. But we need a way for that to happen. And that's why I think a blockchain is really the only answer. to figure out how to make it work. I'm too. Yeah. The slop will keep improving in quality

until it becomes a complete cultural, political, and security crisis. I mean, that's just going to be the reality. And then it's going to be required. But until then, it's just going to be a massive refinement in the quality of slop. And we're going to be sorting, through slop to try to find what's true and using these models to do it.

It's going to have to hit a fever pitch for their to step in and actually do something. Yeah, it's very chilling what you just said, you know, the, which is, you know, as, as it improves and it gets harder and harder for people to see because so many people, I mean, we have an entire society trained to look at, you know, quick, short TikTok style videos and or headlines and not actually dig into what's really happening. And so think about the propaganda and think about, you know, how divided society is. I mean, it's actually kind of chilling to think about. I mean, we're kind of way off the target of, of crypto town hall now, except to the extent

that Bitcoin and other blockchains can provide a source of truth, which will become more and more valuable. But, you know, it's, you're right. I'd love to have Jason Lowry on here. And I'd love to hear his response to, you know, how Bitcoin can help this. because honestly, I'm not sure I grok that. But, you know, it is actually a pretty chilling thing if you think about it. I can't see how any of these social media platforms are going to be usable within six months.

By the way, before the major proliferation of AI as a useful tool for actually creating content and such, I mean, obviously, Elon purchased X and one of the premises was I'm going to get rid of the bots and scans. and that was back when, if you remember, it was like, fake Vitalics and fake CZs commenting. But now, I mean, I find the platform already unusable before we even had open-clot-claw break foods and such, at least for anything beyond posting and signing off. Because 90-something plus percent of my comments are not from humans. And they're the same copy-paste bullshit. So, like, now with this growing, I mean, how will there ever be a way to differentiate

or even find the real human content. I know once again, yeah, you're right, not Cryptotown Hall, but I just don't see a trajectory where they figure this out. It's happening so fast. Well, I mean, the funny part about it is that X is actually incredibly well positioned to do something that will be short-term bad for them, but long-term essential. So the question is when will they change it? So everyone who does as a creator account, you have to be able to verify yourself, right?

You know, it was an ID, et cetera. So understanding that there's a human body. behind the account and not a bot becomes really interesting. You know, it is not hard to make it so it's clear. Now the issue that you'll say is, well, yeah, but then a human being could have a Mac Mini out there and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, yeah, you can get to that, but at least having a human and then you can police it.

And so there's ways of, it's sort of like a company that I do some work with, Solidus Labs has a, that they started in crypto with a compliance suite. But what they ended up having to do was build, use AI predictive models to find patterns of manipulation and whatnot, which actually, it turns out, makes it way easier to detect manipulation and or bad behaviors in traditional financial markets because you create learning behaviors. There will need to be that sort of platform in the social media algorithms.

They're going to have to fight back. And so what I suspect is what you're saying, Scott, is it's like a cycle. it will get so bad that they'll be forced to do that and the platforms that actually fix it yeah yeah exactly i'm gonna tell you is that a new hand no it's existing i mean but i don't think it's like completely irrelevant for the space like it it affects everything it affects all of our engagement it affects how information spreads we know that our markets are very narrative driven this can work to our benefit and it can work to our detriment and it really works to both consistent So I mean, I do think it's an ongoing thing that is ever persistent.

And the minute that they probably start getting good flags on these things, the slop evolves. And it becomes even more sophisticated, even harder to detect, and even more capable of passing humanity checks. So, I mean, this is something that I think we do have to stay plugged into because it does hark, back to the underlying thesis of don't trust verify. But how these things connect to one another, I think so remains to be seen. Yeah, so if we're done with this conversation, I think this is Crypto Town Hall.

I just think it's fascinating today. Like, you know, I'm getting a bunch of DMs and people saying, well, why are these things rallying? And you look at things like Solana up 11% over a seven day period, you know, three and a half percent today. And it's funny for me because I know what my cost of entry is. And there was a period of time over the last week where the WIC actually took it below my actual acquisition price fully weighted. It's above it now, not that it matters.

It's not that big of a position. But you see these things. And the real question is, will it matter? And when I say, will it matter? It's like, is it going to be, are the rallies going to be across the board? or are they going to be fit in what people actually think matter? And so, you know, hyperliquid, Solana, you know, and a few others are up a lot. And then there's others that have been, you know, that really aren't.

You know, Canton Network, for example, is, you know, basically flat over the last seven days up like a percent. But that's associated with more institutional. Zcash is down, you know, 9 percent, you know, over the last seven days. So was that mania? Is that done? of the people who put their money in, is that just all gone? You know, there's, it really is interesting because generally in these geopolitically led markets, you don't see mass divergences, but in fact, in crypto, we are starting to see some divergences. I'm curious. Anybody care

about that? Because to me, it is going, that will be a trend, I think, and I think that trend is going to continue, that the market will not be nearly as uniform as it's been. But, you know, who knows? I mean, I'm a tello. I can't tell if that's an old hand or a new one, but it's got to be a top. It's an oldie. Carlo got his up, I think. Yeah, I tend to agree, especially with what we're seeing with massive stablecoin volume, it seems that chains are becoming less and less relevant, especially with the fact that bridging across chains is becoming so seamless now that chains seem to be taking more of a delivery mechanism for tokenized assets and stable coins, depending upon your specific use case,

as opposed to being a standalone value ad. And this is something that I think is going to rise or I should say lift up the boats of established high throughput chains like Solana, Sui, certain other chains like Polygon that are doing amazing stuff in stable coins. And for other chains that are not necessarily building towards that direction, which still seem to be playing on the old narrative book, I think that presents a challenge. And I know, Dave, you've talked about this from the perspective of you just can't have a chain that is just building under the old infrastructure, make a base case, make a use case going forward. And I think the smart chains are adapting. Yeah, at the same time, I've seen people investing in Solana recently saying, well,

but the stable coins are going to really help them. And what the narrative there isn't so much that you just need to use the chain for the stable coin, it's that the ability to make payments and bridge and across multiple ecosystems and creating financial primitives, et cetera, enables it. So it's, that matters. The way I see it, I think what it offers is it offers the end user, the opportunity to be able to link seamlessly into whatever chain they happen to hold. So I can see this being a use case for what's already in your wallet

that's currently not really finding its use case, but being now the processing throughput for bridging out of stable coins into whatever native token you happen to prefer. It used to be a lot harder to do that. And I think as we continue to get down this, stable coin rabbit hole, we're going to see that happen on the back end without much work. And there's going to be less risk in this whole bridging over to other chains, which if you're a big believer in a chain and you think it's the fastest horse in the race and you think it's going to be the one that's going to process the most transactions, then I think you might see some value there. Polygon, for example, they announced a massive burn today of tokens that's that's only going to probably.

lift up the token price as it continues to be a more ubiquitous asset. They're connected directly down to Visa, where you can now direct pay from your Polygon token into your visa seamlessly. All of this is what's happening. I think the wallet is becoming more of a ubiquitous utility than which wallet are you carrying and which tokens are you putting in it, if that makes sense. I mean, Dave, you're making the point, obviously, that stable coins are going to be, I mean, effectively commoditized, spread across chains, and you can't really make the argument for a single chain to benefit so massively. And that, which is funny because that was how Tom Lee set Eath on fire to the upside on Wall Street was because he grabbed the stable coin narrative before it was huge. And that was something that Wall Street understood. And he just kept saying Ethereum, Ethereum, Ethereum, Stablecoin, Stablecoin, stablecoin.

And you and I both called bullshit on it at the time. Completely. And, you know, the market's clearly agreed with our assessment, but whatever. Especially, Dave, when you factor in that Ethereum is the one that is most subject to spikes in its gas fee when there's high volume and high activity on the network, there are so many lower cost faster solutions, especially the base L2 stuff. It's hard to make that case that EF is necessarily the fastest runner. but I still think for purposes of tokenized assets, it's battle-tested smart contract and its battle-tested history as being a smart contract

deployment mechanism probably still has a value add. Well, I'm not very bullish on ETH. I haven't been, I mean, but that's besides the point. I think that there's lots of financial primitives out there. I personally think Canton Network is probably the most underappreciated coin out there, but that's neither here nor there for a bunch of reasons. But the truth is that we haven't mentioned, the one thing, that one corollary of this is,

I'm curious if anyone knows and we'll be hearing about it in a few days, it's too soon, but if this war resolves reasonably quickly in any coherently good manner that they can claim to be good and what is actually good versus what they claim to be good are not the same things. I'm wondering if one of the reasons we're hearing more chatter about getting a clarity act passed is because the Democrats don't want to give the, they think the midterms are, if they think the midterms are a slam dunk, they won't care.

I think the midterms are going to be tougher because, you know, Trump gets some foreign policy wins, et cetera. I think that they'll cave much quicker. And that's really what it's about, because when you talk about what's going on and if you're investing in crypto, the certainty is necessary. And I don't think that people really understand what it means and why it's that big of a deal. We're all so damn tired of it. I mean, Scott, you and I both thought that clarity had basically was dead, you know, a month ago, right?

Yeah, and I still think that. Yeah, I don't anymore. But that's besides the point. I think that watching that matters. Now, what matters there? Well, there's two things. First, all the bullshit. I mean, everything we've been hearing on Bitcoin recently that's not been Iran talk has been

the Jane Street manipulation stuff. And I'm sure I'm going to talk about that on Bitcoin today with the guys who I will be the lone person, the lone voice of reason on this, just to put it out there. But I think that having the ability of the CFTC understanding their role and being able to really dig in and try to provide people a sense. that markets are fairer and aren't subject to ridiculous manipulation would be a major, that's a major catalyst. And I don't think anyone really understands how big of a catalyst that is after 10-10.

But when people have been burned as badly as they were, knowing that there's a chance that these things are going to get less and less, I think it's going to matter. And so I'm curious if anyone cares. Jamie, is that a new hand? Yeah, new hand. So, you know, didn't the OCC's guidelines, recommendations basically shut the door on the users getting yield, but then on the other side of it, it more likely will accelerate the Stable Coins Act getting pushed through.

I know you guys, Carlos, guys, hand up, you can answer. Yeah, I did a quick breakdown of what's baked into those proposed regulations, and it's definitely more favorable to the bank lobby and less favorable to Coinbase. And I think that that is becoming the more dominant narrative. I think in order to get clarity done, yield is going to have to be the sacrificial lamb, so to speak. And I think token providers are going to have to get more creative on how they achieve the reward component of the Genius Act. But I think if I had to predict, I think the banks

are ultimately going to win on this. And Coin Basin Circle and their symbiotic relationship on how they're paying out is going to probably migrate more to defy through their base wallet than to be a standalone feature on the Coinbase primary application because despite whatever the banks are trying to do, I don't think they're going to kill Defi

and I don't think they're going to in any way, shape, or form be able to deny the consumer the ability to put their stable coins in Defi and come up with creative, yield mechanisms there? I think we need, the fact is, is Brian probably knows that we need, they need to have rules. You'll see all of the major crypto companies will end up with bank or trust charters, and

they'll all end up being able to offer payment platforms. And what they will do is they will have all, they will all start offering automated sweeping from stable coins into yielding coins. And so, you know, it's exactly what happened in, but with much. better technology with money market funds in brokerage accounts. 100%, Dave, you nailed it because Coinbase wants to be a neo-bank. They understand, and anyone who doesn't see that isn't really getting the big picture, they're not necessarily fighting the banks.

They just want to be a bank, but not necessarily have all the constraints of being a fully chartered bank. And I think they're probably going to thread that needle. So the most important battle that is going to happen post-clarity when they finally get this is what is what can neo banks use as collateral and and what can brokers use as collateral, you know, for margin loans, et cetera. And if all of a sudden B-UIDL and the Benji and all the various and sundry yielding, I can't call them stable coins, but yielding money market funds that are tokenized could be used as collateral based upon any rational measure of its risk, it becomes so

easy for this to become a non-issue. And you will have, it will happen. It's going to take longer. And look, it'll make tether and circle more, more profitable in the short run. And the banks will keep some of their deposits, but they're going to still bleed out if they don't offer, if they don't offer investment products that are reasonable. The notion that it takes days to move from an investment product in a world with crypto rails underlying it, those are numbered. And I think the crypto industry understands this, I don't think the banks do, to be honest. I think that I think they're playing checkers when the people in the crypto markets are playing chess if they can get their shit together. So, you know, we'll see. You know, I just think that it's really more about politics than anything else.

I can't tell whose hand is up. I think we're at time anyways. I don't think there are any in. Just go ahead and wrap it and we'll be back on Wednesday unless there's anything we're dying to finalize. We have a lot of evolving situations. We have a lot of time. Mario is hosting, you know, a space with 120,000 people listening about Iran attacking 15 countries. I mean, that's what people are obviously care about today. And, you know, we'll see where it goes. Are we back tomorrow morning or Wednesday, Scott?

Wednesday. Okay. See you guys. All right, guys. See you in two days. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, guys.