The Wolf Of All Streets - RIPPLE VALUED AT $40B IN NEW FUNDING ROUND | CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

This episode of Crypto Town Hall, hosted on Exit at 10:15AM EST, features a lively panel discussion about the current state of the crypto market, with a focus on market bearishness, Bitcoin price action around key moving averages, liquidity trends, and recent industry developments such as Ripple's funding round. The goal of the event is to assess the market environment, decode contrasting narratives on crypto assets, and share strategies and perspectives on valuation and investment opportunities, particularly in Bitcoin, altcoins, and Ripple/XRP. The show also touches on macroeconomic factors, the evolution of the crypto ecosystem, and the importance of community and signaling in project valuations.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall every weekday here on X10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. And here we are once again talking about the market. Obviously, we're seeing wildly increased bearishness across the board as Bitcoin tests the bottom of this range. Although, in my opinion, holding 100,000 is a pretty decent indicator for the moment. But a story, a blog post from winter mute saying that muted inflows are actually reversal or plateauing of stable coin issuance of digital asset treasury demand and ETF inflows has left crypto once again as a player versus player market with the same washing machine of capital going token to token and market to market with no at the moment new inflow of capital crypto quant wrote an article stating that Bitcoin is testing I think they called it the 365 day moving average at 102 and to close below that as pretended previous bear markets. I think a lot of people also watching the 50 MA on the weekly chart, which is kind of in the same area price currently trading right about

that level. Not a surprise that we're seeing increased bearish takes as price drops. Obviously, a lot of this also has to do with a pause in liquidity from the government shutdown and a lot of things happening in the macro, we can job market, a lot of indicators that that has slowed massively, if not actually reversed to more firings and less jobs added. There's a lot going on at the moment, especially in the context of the S&P effectively sitting right near an all-time high. Dave, does that give us enough fodder? Yeah, there's lots of fodder. I mean, you know, the Wintermute article is, it's funny to me. You know, I find it amusing. when the company that most people have associated with the proximate cause for the drop,

you know, writes articles that are effectively self-serving clap trap. I mean, they're right in a sense. I mean, there's no doubt that the hotball of money that generally is on the edges of the crypto market left for gold and silver months ago. That is absolutely true. It is absolutely true that that Tether is trading at a little discount, which, you know, generally portends badness in the alt-coin market and not constructive for Bitcoin. But it's not significant.

So effectively, their statement that at this instant in time that the crypto community is marginal sellers is clearly true. I mean, it's been true for honestly true probably for, as Yago said on your show today, for most of the last eight months. And so, you know, yeah, okay, fine, that's true. But that doesn't mean a damn thing. That's backward looking, not forward looking. In fact, you know, when you get all of these things happening and the price is where it is, it's telling you something. And generally, you know, the last person to sell is the most unhappy. And you need to understand that that's why, you know, you and I always talk about this.

I am much more bullish when everyone else is bearish. and when the entire crypto community is so decidedly bearish with every single indicator, that is not the time to sell. That is the time to buy. You buy when it hurts you to buy and you sell when it hurts you to sell. So I saw some takes on Metaplanet. Now, we know, we personally both know the people involved. And so Metaplanet doubles down yesterday.

And people are out there calling them dumb and they've imploded and all sorts of other things because they're slightly underwater on their purchases. But the truth is that their capital base is solid, it doesn't matter. They're basically telling you, look, they think that this is a good buying opportunity and they're going to play it that way, as opposed to a sailor who doesn't trade, he just acquires and just blindly continues to do so and has been doing so through multiple bears and multiple drawdowns. So, you know, I look at all of this as somewhat noise.

And I'm curious we've got a lot of people up here. I mean, we could talk about Bitcoin, but, you know, You know, you can also look at Ethereum, and you can look at the alt market, and you see, you know, rather dramatic differences in terms of what's going on. Like, there's at least one coin that I own that Gore-Ov doesn't own, but talks about that's actually up over the last few weeks, right? Which is, you know, BitTensor. That's why I mentioned it, Goro, but I always love to try to ping you. Oh, you have no idea. You have no idea.

You have no idea about my relation with BitTenzer. So now, you have no idea. I always love, I always love pokey. But the truth is, is that investment narratives are starting to assert themselves. And value is something that matters. And people will, and I will continue to say that and, you know, get the ex-RP army to hate me. And I do think we need to talk about that story because there's, I mean, I've seen more bad takes over the last two days than usual on both sides. It's just, it's kind of crazy.

But, you know, let's talk about valuation in the markets and what's going on with the alt market. I mean, Gora, you obviously have an opinion. What do you think is going on? But first of all, let me do the obligations. As always, guys, this is Goroff reporting from Salt London. I'm the official host of the Crippertown Hall in the world's leading event. I represent Cipter Town Hall, and I only join when I am here. Your official guy on the street, our on-site reporter.

This all started when I had him on my literal YouTube, on my YouTube show, and you were literally standing in the streets in Davos with people walking past you live on my shows. It's a very standard method of people reporting of Davos, right? And so, yes, so I think, yes, I'm fulfilling my obligations to Crypto Town Hall. That's one. Two, I'm on the stage in the next 25 minutes, so let me give me more chances to do what Scott calls as a monologue and never a dialogue

but I will quickly take on Dave's take day one I know you're incredibly intelligent and smart when it comes to capital markets and the general investing I have you've just got you know 25 more cookie points for for telling us that you own Tao and so you know I am an insanely

big supporter of Tao and what they're doing and it as as you know the currency of AI. And we are getting into a deeper partnership, just so you know, send me your WhatsApp and I'll give you an idea and you'll love it. So that's that. And I don't think there's been a better opportunity to buy Tao, not a financial advice,

but just saying because they have pushed an update, which seems like has cost a colossal drop, but it's all worth it. End of the day, they can always upgrade it in the next week. I don't know what's happening, but I'm just saying that it might get a new. upgrade. So that's about tau and then alls. And then lastly, I definitely support Dave on the idea of these indicators in the market, which is the biggest indicator is when everybody in crypto is bearish. That's the time to buy. In fact, across capital markets and investing the best time to buy when it hurts and the best time to sell is when it hurts. So

this is definitely a good buy. But my other question from my lovely crypto community would be do I even have money left to buy because we have been buying all through there have been massive cash crashes last bit that I would like to add as a salt as a pinch of salt um to this conversation is there is definitely a decline in market confidence with the with the precedent being such a manipulative um i don't want to use uh words but let's say manipulative leader uh where where you know capital markets and liquidity is sort of losing trust uh to even exist out there and i think there is a seizure of that and the and because based on the confidence and if somebody would want to talk about that like that is something that i want opinion

from the the people who have seen like multiple waves like you know gary cardone's hair and maybe Carlos, you know, these guys should probably educate us on what has happened when the market lost trust because of the leadership, the political leadership, or something like that. I think we genuinely need to learn about these patterns that have probably occurred twice or thrice in the last 50 years. So, yeah, that's where I rest. Dave, you want to run with that? You were the bit-tensor spark.

Well, I mean, look, you know, BitTencer, non-withstanding, I think that what is interesting is conversations about value. I think that as far as, you know, market confidence, I mean, it is exceedingly clear that the four-year cycle types and the crypto quants and all the crypto people who look at markets like crypto is its own unique ecosystem and not related to the rest of financial markets are, I think they're wrong. And I think that, yes, there are, I don't, I mean, look, I live through the internet bubble, like rather discerally as running, running a program trading desk at the time. So I understand what we've seen, seen these sorts of things before. And the internet bubble is such a great analogy because so many firms that were worth

enormous amounts of money crashed to nothing. And yet the entire value of the sector is 10x today what it was back during that quote bubble. And so when you look at that, you need to understand that the same thing is gonna happen, Because history and technology does repeat, I believe that there is enormous value being created. I just don't know which are the value, which where the value will be. And so, you know, if you look at what's happened over the last eight months, I mean, is it constructive or destructive that the meme coins without real, you know, attempts to market the value of their brand have fallen significantly?

Yeah, it's incredibly constructive because, I mean, I, I, I, I, I laughingly look at the Fartcoin Bitcoin ratio. And, you know, it's and as is as a sign of health. Now, Fark coin still has a value, right? But it's down to 0.26, you know, compared to, you know, where it was it a dollar? So it's down 75% in the same time period that Bitcoin is essentially flat. So that's, that's very constructive. And when you look at money flows, you have to understand the marginal price center,

this whole rally, the whole rally was from long-term buyers that are new long-term buyers, and the marginal price setter ceased to be what it was in all the other cycles, which was the hotball of money trading perps. And we know this, because every time the people who have tried to go along on the perps side, they've gotten their nose smacked with a newspaper called liquidations, and not for small amounts of money. And what we saw on October 10th, to think that that wouldn't cause a pause in the market for a few weeks at a minimum, I mean, of course it had to, right?

And we said it at the time. The real question, and I'll go back, because I remember what I said the day after it happened, I said, listen, if a few weeks from now we're at roughly the same levels that we are today, that's incredibly bullish for what will be in the intermediate term. And that's, I think, what's happened. And, you know, so, yeah, it's taken a toll on all the hot money, all the KOLS, who, you know, say, wait until Bitcoin gets to 50,000 and alts are down 90%, and that will see you again in six months to a year or a year in 18 months.

I mean, if you listen to those people because of their wonderful track record of three data points, well, you get what you pay for. That's all I'll say. And I've been saying that for a while. I mean, you know, Gary, I don't know if you're behind the microphone, but this must feel very similar to you about some of the waves of commodity trading that you've seen over time. and looking at value. And you did a post about your brother the other day,

which I think is exactly right, right? I'm sure you agree. I don't know what post you're referring to, but... The one billion Bitcoin versus one billion real estate. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah, man. I mean, uh, these markets, uh, I think they're...

I think people need to be, you know, very aware of what's going on here. personally a little nervous. I'm not so nervous about Bitcoin. It's the rest of the market. Hey, can I, and I may not be answering your question, but I would like to talk about the ripple thing. I just made an offer to Brad and Chris. Look, I'd like to do $25 to $50 million same deal. And I may understand it incorrectly, Dave. You may. I think you got it right. If I had $25 million sitting in my pocket, I might say the same thing. It's going to be very interesting, because I see that as them being able to buy XRP or Ripple being able to only being able to sell XRP at about $1.20 in a $2.30 market.

It's better than that. That makes every other. Oh, is it? That makes every other. So we just quickly here really quickly, Dave, before you respond, it is a show where we don't want to take for granted that 5,000 people have any idea what we're talking about. Yeah, so the deal is 500 million, Ripple announced at swell that they've taken. taken a $500 million investment led by Fortress, I believe, and Citadel Securities.

Also, I know Pantara and others who have been in most of their rounds have participated, and basically took a $500 million investment at a $40 billion valuation. I think the points where Gary is starting to dig in here is that Ripple holds $80 billion worth of XRP. This is a $40 billion valuation. Obviously, everybody knows they can't sell $80 billion. of XRP on the market and get $80 billion, but they also have, you know, acquired hidden road and a number of other companies that all have meaningful value. So if you include the current value of XRP plus all of their acquisitions, everything else they hold, you're talking about

$100 billion company valued at, you know, $40 billion. See, that's even worse, Scott. See, the deal, the story gets even worse when the XRP people think I'm attacking, which I'm not, man. I hope everybody gets rich. And I hope every one of these projects work because that'll be great for the whole industry. They're not all going to work, but they're beating me up going, hey, you're not even valuing the other parts of the company. I'm like, dude, that's why I just made your CEO an offer. Like I don't know shit the BNRs in the world are suffering right now, right? You're able to buy it at like 50, 50 cents on the dollar, assuming that's a piece product. Yeah, but more even compelling than that, Gary, is that those

digital asset treasury companies that you're referencing have to actually raise capital to buy the tokens. XRP has the tokens with no capital outlay to get them. And in fact, has used the token, and this is, I don't think this is a criticism. This is just an objective fact. I've used the token, obviously, to build out the rest of the business. I think that you guys are thinking too small. I watched Brad's speech at Swell yesterday, and I thought it was interesting.

I mean, look, I am a critic of XRP, the token, even though I do own it, I own a token amount of it. I think that, you know, that the XRP army is massively delusional and overly emotional, which are two very bad things for investments. I mean, arguably, if you ask me one thing to avoid, if someone put a gun to my head and said, you can get, you can utter one sentence of investment advice. It would be, don't get emotional about your investments. So, and so I've just described the XRP army, and it is beyond annoying to deal with them. But let's understand, and this will be a little bit of a monologue, but I'll give you the benefit of the fact that I literally had a job for 10 years, among my other things, was one of the primary deal evaluators from inside both what was Solomon Smith Barney, then Citigroup, and then to Sigma. I was to the designated skeptic on most deals. This is a deal I would be, would have been pounding the table to invest in were I there.

So understand what are the key aspects of this deal. First of all, it is non-trivial that it was Citadel Securities that led this, not Citadel investments, right? So this comes from the securities arm because they understand the potential value of a institutional prime broker built on crypto rails. They understand that the most important aspects of that prime broker are to be able to make money from distributed methods that have lots of collateral to deploy and may be very profitable with that collateral. Hey, Dave, not to interrupt the narrative, but I think that's clear. They still only paid 40 cents on the dollar for the company, though. I mean, they got a great. They pay probably close.

They probably will have paid less. Less, okay. And that's what I'm trying to help the audience with. They're buying the money machine. They're buying the house, right? You know, what's the value of the prime brokerage franchise at J.P. Morgan and the securitization franchise? It's very large.

Yeah, but that's my point. If it's so large and I'm thinking so small, why did Citadel pay such a cheap price for it? I'll tell you why. It's because if you look at and if you look at it, and if you look at it, look at in on on x i had a little conversation with scott and i brought in maritio who often comes up here if you look at where the ltvs are even at bitcoin which has no constraints that's you mean the lifetime value the loan to value no the loan to value ratio okay the haircut that you're going to take to get clean collat to get you know clean valuation on bitcoin today is if you're lucky you're getting 50

percent, right? If you looked at, in other words, for people who are listening, if you have a million dollars in Bitcoin, you can only take $500,000 against it. Correct. And so XRP is obviously not as pristine collateral as Bitcoin, plus Ripple's stake in XRP, their holdings of XRP are locked in escrow to be dribbled out every month, which means it's much more constrained. So it's significantly more constrained even than GBT was, which traded at a 55% discount, and only came back when the ability, because you can buy XRP in the open market if you want, it only came back when there was an ETF and you could freely move in and out of it. So taking a massive haircut against a collateral position is perfectly reasonable. And if you think about it

from a prime brokerage perspective, if you can, if they could basically say, listen, we have $40 billion of collateral or value to back our financing, that gives them such, that gives hidden roads such a massive head up on anybody else who's operating in the digital prime broker space, that it's a very, very big deal. And so getting that print on the tape from a ripple perspective makes enormous sense. It gives validation to the fact that XRP isn't just a wasting pile of crap that a lot of people say it is. I don't believe that that is true, by the way, but that is said. It puts validation to what they're building. And what they're really trying to build is a multi, hundred billion dollar banking franchise and that's and yes it has value there and it basically says

there's value so that small haircut is just not that big of a deal and so all the takes of people say well it proves that it's not worth it yeah it proves that in all likelihood that the professional investors don't see xrp as a slam dunk that it's going to 10x obviously if it does they make an enormous amount of money but it shows that that building a franchise on the back of x is being validated by some of the world's smartest investors. And by the way, when I say smart, I'm not talking about Sequoia or other aping in VCs. We're talking about operational business. Citadel Securities is one of the largest users of prime services on the planet, right?

Because they're one of the big, three biggest market makers on the planet. And so they are constantly borrowing and trading and securitizing. And their funds are some of the biggest users of the, the borrow for their longer-term positions on the planet. So these are people who understand the value of financing this. So, Dave, as you dig into this, I happen to get in trouble, but it sounds like you would much rather own Ripple equity than XRP, the token. Oh, come on.

I've been saying that for weeks or months, maybe. Isn't Ripple also looking to buy back a billion dollars worth of shares in Ripple? I'm not going to, what I will say is this. I don't like investment where you don't know what you own. And when you own XRP, there is no clear to me. It is not clear what value the token holders will get out of this ecosystem. If you own Ripple company, it is exceedingly clear. How do you own the Ripple company?

You can't. They were trading at a $40 billion valuation before this privately on Karta. and there's plenty of people, you know, it's a pre-IP. You can do it if you're as rich as you are, Gary. But, you know, look, the reality is that if you ask me the point, it's about a valuation point. It's for why people. Well, I think what I'm learning here, though, Dave, like what I'm learning here,

what you just said, the audience should really pay attention to. You're saying a guy like me, and maybe I need to start making more trips and being nice to people when they have failed business models, that that's not really like me. I just, this business model is really problematic for me. Don't know why they didn't raise $5 billion if it's such a great deal. I'll tell you why. They don't want to be polluted.

Well, yeah. But the audience needs to understand that for XRP, there are large players buying XRP today for about a dollar or $1.20 in a $2.32 market. And they have a severe. And by the way, if I had that advantage, I would most certainly take it. If they want to sell me that, I will buy $25,000, I'd sell everything I got right now, just buy XRP and then dump it. I don't know what the constraints on it is, but, dude, I just. But those investors aren't getting liquid XRP.

No, they're not. Presumably. So you're saying they should do that. I mean, you could hedge it, I suppose. Oh, you can most suddenly hedge this, dude. Like, this would be so easy. Lock in 100% overnight. night anyway it's just the audience needs to understand there's multiple markets here it's not

you know buying big volumes i've seen discounts i've not seen a discount like this and then a bullish story well the bullish story is important so i'll tell another story it should just come with a similar premium if the story's so bullish we should probably do a longer form a longer form on this but look if you remember phillips polygram back in the day i'm probably this shows how old i am But I was trading in London in the 90s when Phillips owned Polygram, lock stock and barrel, and they were both liquid publicly traded stock. And when you looked at Phillips's holdings, you were buying Phillips for negative dollars because you could have sold the polygram, right?

And so lots of people did that. And what happened was after a lot of people put that trade on, at least at first, Polygram tanked because so many people were hedging that, you know, It's screwed up to whatever. It just, these sorts of merger arbitrages or things that you're talking about are more complicated because what could happen is ripple or XRP could moon causing your hedge to get crushed, but the ripple value doesn't go up. And so you're hemorrhaging cash on that side.

So that kind of a trade is a problematic trade. But if you believe the story, it's a great long. And so it's, I'm not saying it will go down the way I just said, but I'm just saying, that there's all sorts of things that can happen. I mean, and I think I saw Carlo, then Gorov, then Lou, but I don't know. You may have seen it in a different order, Scott. But I know we got a lot of people up here, and I've been talking a lot. Yeah, Carlo, I think, was first. Good, Carlo. Yeah, good morning, Scott. I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about stable coins, of course. And since we were talking about irrationality, can we talk about the deluge of negative

commentary coming out of the banking sector yesterday? Can we go back to it after? Yeah. I'm boarding a floor. light, so I just wanted to drop that hand grenade before I board. Oh, everybody should read. Corla, where are you headed, Corle? I'm coming back, man. I was in Newport, California selling the gospel of stable coins, and I'm heading back to Texas. Good.

Yeah. The public service announcement is J.W. Verrett posted. Yes, I was going to ask if I could post it in the nest because it's that good, Dave. That would be great. All right, that'll be my mic drop, Ben. It's a really good take down of the absolute stupidity. of the banking sector and what they're saying about stable coins. And understand that when the banking sector loses,

that's a large part what Brad was basically talking about in his speech at Swell yesterday, because they believe they'll be one of the winners. And whether they will be or not is interesting, but that's really the key here. Anyway, Lou, I still see your hand up. Gorov, I think I see your speaker unmuted. I think you were first, so.

Are you there, Gorev? Or you live in the market. Yeah, I'm here. I just got caught by the mooch. So I'm sorry. I totally missed the conversation. Tell Mooch to call in. Get him on here.

I actually told him. See, Moch. Oh, man. Scott is inviting you to the space. You should join it. Yeah. He's literally. He could just yell through your phone.

Come on. Speaker call, it'll be fun. Exactly. Like, he's with the ex-prime minister right now. get that guy on too what are we doing here yes it'll be fun but um Dave I heard your whole ripple thing and the one thing that I always wanted to say you know at some point of time in 2017 18 we were the largest retail largest as in on the market whales and so as much as I love the token the reality is you're right no matter how

many businesses ripple will own no matter what the dynamics and the financials of those business are there is absolutely no clarity on how those businesses represent their value on the net value of the token and so definitely owning ripple company at least for the audience on this call is a much better trade for everybody and by the way this is also an incredible idea for somebody to tokenize a ripple equity for the first time and I am here with the CEO of Cracken and the entire institutional team I might as well suggest them to do that it's it's a massive demand commodity as of now and I'm calling it

commodity as, you know, tokenized equity, not being straight security. Well, I mean, there's a lot in that regard. I will say that if you know where the current U.S. SEC is going, they are doing everything they can and very much want to eliminate the notion that being a security is a death sentence for crypto. But in order to do that, they need to get rid of the accredited investor rule. That's really the key. So it's really a non-U.S. thing until that rule goes away.

and that's a totally different conversation. It is, it should be the key. Dave, Dave, we have, we have the mooch. We have him. Oh, awesome. Anthony, you there? Hey, guys, can you hear me? I just, I just want everybody to know that I take all my financial advice

from the two Cardone brothers, okay? So whatever they say, I'm doing, right? And Mario, are you taking notes? You're doing the right thing, Anthony. All right, I just want to make sure We have one brother here right now I'm sorry, or we could have that. I see, I see him, I see him, they look

they look pretty similar without my bifocals, you know what I mean? But God bless, I got to pass you back to cover because we're doing an event here, but maybe next year we get you guys to come here to the salt event in London. It's been great fun. Dave, did you get your invitation?

Mario, I miss you. Anthony throws the absolute best events in the world. I will say that, sir. All right. Well, please, please, please come next time. And Mario, I think your invitation was lost in the mail, but I did send it to you, okay? He's only as available as he is on, the email was only as available as he is on this call. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So anyway, you know, Garav, I think you and I agree on this. I mean, the key thing is, is people need to understand that there is a lot. a long way to get from A to B, where A is crypto-native firm to B is becoming dominant in financial

securitization. And that is a massive business opportunity. Yeah. And also, it's almost like impossible for me to fathom. How can this be the longest standing most known misery of crypto, where the business value is uncorrelative to the token value. Like, everybody talks about it and every forum has this topic. And it's almost a laughable topic about crypto amongst the crypto people.

And we still don't do nothing about it. And then leaders like Ripple, like, come on, Ripple. I mean, at some point it was like number two, leaders like Ripple are not talking about it, are not doing anything about it. Right? At a $40 billion valuation, how can you not actually release a paper, at least a paper, if not like an elaborated securities filing, that the equity is backed by token, what's the correlation of value? Unless, unless you actually want to capitalize on your ripple army and more emotional, low-hanging retail-oriented tools. Wouldn't you? If you were Brad? I mean, I think he's done a... phenomenal job. I mean, seriously.

Like bringing me in with my would you do that? No, bringing me in with my whole meditation and ultra-ethical background and commitment, which is like which makes money secondary. Of course, I would never do that. But you're right. Probably everybody else should do that if they're

not bounded to ethics from their soul. Well, I mean, that's a great philosophical conversation. I mean, I don't know. I guess 40 years on Wall Street dude, I'm much, so much more jaded. I know that being CEO and being, doing what, the way that has approached this has been, I think.

At this point, at this point, you can't stop me from telling a very quick 30 second story. I spent, again, the last three days at Wall Street with my bankers and the bankers I rejected and the bankers that want to work with me, like about 13 of them. And guess what? about half of the conversation was about philosophy, spirituality, ethics, and how this business that we are doing the debt is about building an ethical equity layer through the power of ethics on blockchain for finance.

So, well, I'm not going to stop preaching about that ever enough. Well, I'm actually writing a book talking about some of the unethical things that I saw over those 30-some-odd years on Wall Street. You got a face for the current page now. page. I'm just very practical. And most investors don't care. I opted out for a reason, among other reasons, but it is a different conversation. I'm your favorite. I'm your favorite cover page picture. If not, then back page. Yeah, well, we'll talk. I'm going to DM you my WhatsApp anyway before, you know, when we're done with this. I have it up on my screen. Anyway,

Lou, you've been very patient. You had your hand up and I see your speaker. No, no. It's been great listen to you guys, you know, play with each other. But I would say that the, you know, I think one of the things that you're missing about Ripple and I think it's been alluded to is actually the value of the Ripple Army. You can laugh at it if you want, right? You know, you can laugh at the Doge Army. You can laugh at the Tesla Army. But the fact is, it's real, it's been there for a long time. I've experienced it viscerally. These aren't stupid people. These are a lot of people who have made a lot of money. They have a belief about the way that the world is going and you know uh i think that's going to continue to be a ton of value

and you can laugh at them if you want but a lot of them have gotten really fucking rich i i am not laughing i mean i i don't like some of the delusions there but i totally understand why and how brand building and where it's important no it's that that's why i praise brad for for doing what he's doing i mean he's one of the only people who i know who's actively monetized communities you know in a very specific very concrete way. I mean, the closest analog, and I'm not sure, there are two close analogs to this,

but the biggest analog is probably tether, right? In terms of, you know, arguably at one point, they had to fake it until they made it because they got screwed by unscrupulous banks. And we know that they had to fill in balance sheet, and they did it became one of the world's most successful, if not the most successful company. Because a lot of this, I think, is believing.

It's not just Brad. It's not just Brad. A lot of people are getting, I mean, what is Justin Tron bringing? You know, and look at what he's built and the value that he's created for, you know, for people who bought the Tron token. That's true. You're right. I mean, communities matter. Yeah.

I mean, there's no question they do. Yeah, exactly. People do think that salespeople do nothing other than take calls. It's like, no. Relationships and communities matter. And you have to be balanced about it. That's kind of important. But I think it's a good point, look.

And I will say that's where I've always been an Ethereum bowl, because I think by a wide margin, Ethereum's got the best community. And it's getting better. Their lead is growing. It's not shrinking. You mean the institutional community, as you might want to call it, right? I mean, the dev community. I mean, they're obviously crushing it on the institutional community.

Things could change tomorrow, obviously, but their lead there seems to be growing. as well, but I mean, in terms of the world's, you know, smartest devs, you know, ethically aligned devs, I mean, you know, and that's really the, the attraction to the Ethereum community, I think more than anything else, is ethical. That's an interesting perspective. Thomas, what do you think? I see you join and have your hand.

Yeah. So I would just have a question, Dave and give Gary. It seems like, you know, back in a prior life back in the 1990s when I was at AT&C, we would be able to do deals with people because of the name brand and get equity on any kind of deal with people would throw it in just to have our name on their ledger you have to think that at some level and this is a hypothesis i'd ask your comment on it does citadel's participation in ripple accrete value that's intangible beyond the 40 billion dollar yes yes and in fact let me tell you a story. This is your life story. So back in the early days of the, the last time there was a major

M&A cycle in FinTech was in the early 2000s, started in the late 90s. And basically what you saw as a feeding frenzy where firms, such as, you know, it started with with firms, all of them, didn't matter. Goldman was probably the first to do it well, but all of them started. realized something very simple. They said, if we use this technology, the technology would be worth more by the very fact of our use. So we want to have the chance to invest in it. Very simple. It's the point. It's called strategic investing. It became, it didn't exist. Really. They didn't do it. I know that my management stopped. I tried to do it at City. And I can tell that story too, but I'm not going to bore you guys. But that is a very big deal. So that's why when you literally have one of the three largest market makers in the world, investing in a company that is going to be providing services to it. It's a strategic investment. That's why I said Citadel Securities being the investor, not Citadel the venture side or Citadel the investment side.

It's actually very relevant. And I think it's a very, very good signal, which is why I said, Gary, that's part of the thesis that I was trying to get across to you. So thank you, Dave. Thomas, I don't think that thesis has ever changed. It just happens every hour, not just on Wall Street,

but also in the valley from early stage to later stage. And I don't think that's ever going to change. We just saw this stupid, like not stupid. We just saw a random coin go from nothing to $500 million just because they had these incredible, you know, all these investors on the cap table. So it just keeps happening for us. Yeah, I just, I'm just trying to rationalize what's happening here.

The other issue from the ripple side is if they're using their XRP token to use as capital to expand their operations, whether it be an A activity or just core operations. This allows them not to touch that token stack, maintain the price at 225, and take that money in. So they're looking at this is on an accounting basis, this may look like dilution, but it's going to be net accretive with the Citadel stamp of approval. And they don't have to write your tier point. They don't have to sell tokens if they have $500. Right, right.

It is undeniable that signaling matters, which is Gorov's point. It has always mattered and always will matter. But it's equally true that real utility matters too. So when Wall Street firms value strategic acquisitions, they do, they were the first question that you'll ask. And I've done there. Lou, what's the utility of dope? Yeah, okay. It's very loud.

Go ahead. What was the question? It came in and sounded like a... What I was saying is utility, not of the token. I'm saying the utility of prime brokerage stack. That is, if you believe that prime brokerage, i.e. financing, which is the core of Wall Street, literally the beating heart is securitization and financing of all positions. If you believe that that's going to all move to a digital technology stack, then placing

your bets on one of the leaders in that makes sense if you're if you're a firm like Citadel securities especially if you think that your stamp of adoption is going to increase the likelihood of that that's what this is about all the other stuff is noise David they made a five million dollar investment here it would just be like buying a lottery ticket they're just you know placing bets on the roulette table but 500 million is a serious deployment so uh you know that look you don't ignore smart money and there's something to this. That's what I've been saying, this whole space.

So, I mean, look, Ripple is still missing some pieces, you know, from building this whole thing out. I've said that before. I mean, they don't have, you know, in, you know, it's, it's just, there are pieces missing, but, you know, for them to compete with Coinbase on the institutional side and surpass them with a bigger balance sheet, but that's clearly where they're going. And if it isn't, then maybe I'm maybe I misread or, you know, maybe I'm misreading what Brad and the team you're doing, but it feels like that's what they're trying to do. And their goal isn't to be bigger than Coinbase, although that's obviously a first step. Their goal is to go after

J.P. Morgan. You know, that's, that's, that's the different business thing, Coinbase, right? That's right. Their goal is to be, is to be a digital, you know, a digital solution for financing writ large, full stop. Also, let's not forget the fact that like every the startup, no matter what the size is, and then the size is, of course, empowered by the early days of crypto. They do, like every other startup, have to find their product market fit. They aimed something. They pivoted from that. They aimed swift.

It didn't work. Of course, the technology wasn't ready. Banks didn't take it. Then they probably now are aiming for the JP Morgan model. And, you know, let's give them the benefit of doubt. Like every other startup deserves a 10 year, 20 years chance. And again, depending on the treasury, which they have the biggest, they can do much better. they have more chances so you know as long as there is clarity i think i think there's a chance for that

and with that i i say bye um i do have to go to the stage now thanks goroff lu my favorite part of the whole uh scaramucci uh cameo was that he clearly hasn't been here long enough to have been yelling hi to mario that is true anyway lou you have your hand up oh yeah no i was just going to say i I actually think Ripple is going to lean heavily into the stable coin world. I think they're already over a billion. Yeah, I think they just passed a billion. But interestingly, as many points out, I think 80% of it's on Ethereum, something like that. I'm not even quipment.

It's a fact. You were talking about Ethereum before, which is why I said it to you. But Ripple, the company doesn't give a crap, does it, Scott? No. What they care about is getting in and make, if you think about what they're trying to do, it's build a staff it's build a business and xrp is a tool for that business

that they absolutely will constantly talk up because they need it to because it helps their collateral that doesn't mean that it would that they won't fake it till they make it either I mean it's not necessarily as negative as people think I mean ripple becoming a big player

is good for xrp the token at least for the foreseeable future until people unless someone says or proves that there's no relation so I think you have to be sanguine about that. Anyway, I see Joe just jumped up. Do you have something specific? No, no, I just jumped up to join. It's good to see everyone. Hope everyone's doing well. I mean, we started off talking about the market. I know you have pretty strong opinions there.

Does anybody else have anything before we go back to that? Not me. We can go back. Yeah, so Joe, you've been going back and forth with a lot of the, you know, kind of poking bears. you know, for like two or three days. I mean, you know, what do you make of the fact that we're stuck kind of at this very low end of a range for days? I mean, I know what I think, but I'm curious what you think. Yeah. I mean, I think everything is to be viewed in context.

And you came off very strong years where you had pretty much peak optimism coming into the election, coming into post-election inauguration. I mean, a lot of folks forget that Bitcoin put in an all-time high, literally on an inauguration day, when it was clear that the regulatory climate would be much more favorable, when that had been priced into the market, when you had a very bullish atmosphere from just a general macro sense with the Trump administration coming in. And you spent basically the entire year consolidating. And I think that if I would have told you a year ago, just right now, we're going to be at 100. roughly $100,000 on Bitcoin, we're going to be stabilizing there consistently for months, building support and consolidating.

You would say that's fantastic. But the reason why I think most people are disappointed and you have to always check your sentiment and check your bias is because people bought into this myth of the four-year cycle. People bought into this idea that you would have this explosive Q4. And because Bitcoin is explosive and we know that many of the all-year cycle, complex rides the back of Bitcoin and is sort of high beta to Bitcoin, they loaded up on those names. And not only do they load up on those names, they loaded up on call options and derivatives, and they loaded up on Bitcoin proxies, all these levered plays trying to outpace Bitcoin's

performance in what was supposed to be a very bullish year. And for me, like, expectation, happiness is all about expectations. When they had these expectations at fever pitch for this bullish move to, you know, you had people to be in a year saying 400,000. or 300,000, you had that price to perfection. And we've spent a year consolidating alongside a very strong economy, which it has continued to remain robust at the aggregate level. And now people are confused. They're confused because they have to actually think and not buy into these myths

that people have been tied to in the Bitcoin space that, you know, we have three, four years after having, and then we have a red year, you know, green dot, green dot, green dot, red dot, or whatever, you know, a myth you want to believe in. And now you actually have to think. You have to think, what does it mean to have institutional adoption? What does it mean to have ETF access? What does it mean to have a rotating distribution from the OG hodlers to more of a mainstream financial advisors allocating a small percentage of Bitcoin in their portfolio? And what it means to me is you have capped upside and you have capped downside. And this is

why I think you're seeing in the Bitcoin market reduce volatility. You're seeing Bitcoin 10, to creep within ranges, top up certain levels, and then sort of, you know, consolidate at that new range. And I think that's the part for the course on the future of Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin's going to bore you to a million dollars. I do call. I do not close to Bitcoin's going to a million dollars in, you know, two years type narrative. I think Bitcoin's going to trade a lot closer to the NASDAQ and how the NASDAQ trades over the coming years. And I think it's going to do fantastically well, perhaps not as good as it had in previous years. But there's a reason for that, because Bitcoin has been de-risk.

And the people that bought in early, they were rewarded massively for having to deal with that risk. When it's been de-risk, right, you should expect to be rewarded, but perhaps not as a high of a level. So I view that as very positive. I think once you shake off this myth and PTSD that people suffer from, really, that are suffering from now, I think people are exiting Bitcoin market because they think that they're going to be able to buy it back substantially lower. They're going to be severely disappointed. I'm not to say we can't go a little bit lower here, but I think you're basing, and I think next year is going to be great. And I think the economy is going to get stronger going in the next year.

Just one final thing, just from a market space standpoint, you know, you've got through this sort of liquidity bottleneck over the last several days here for a variety of reasons we can get into mechanically. And where where you're at, you're at the point where, you know, once they reopen the government, You're going to see billions of dollars start to be flown from the TGA that will be spent out. You're going right into a period early part of next year where the big beautiful bill spending is going to continue to bolster the economy. You're going to have a situation where the CAPEX bill starts really in earnest. I was looking at some massive numbers of build of spend that's going to start in Q1 and Q2 of next year. And just the cherry on top, you have a new Fed chair that's going to come in. And we know that that Fed share at the very minimum is going to be more hospitable.

to rate cuts than the current fed chair. So all of that is to say, I don't understand the bearish argument. I would love for people to explain to me. It seems to be largely driven by PTSD and myths. Could always count on you for a great monologue, Joe. I mean, I'm sorry, I try to give us a sink. No, no, I failed. I failed miserably. I actually thought it was, that was a really good synopsis. The only place where I disagree with you is on its correlation to the NASDAQ, I think that, yes, that's sort of true, but at some point adoption will matter. And what's happened, I think the rotation away from gold back to Bitcoin will also happen if you get any FOMO moving on. So, you know, momentum feeds momentum. I mean, Scott,

one of my favorite things you say all the time is you always say that the best advertisement for Bitcoin is number go up. And so it doesn't take a whole lot for, you know, the, If the rock starts moving downhill, and right now people are trying to push the rock up the hill, when the rock starts moving downhill again, all bets are off. I think you'll find correlations, we'll go to hell, et cetera. But you're right. Right now, it clearly is trading that way. Well, just to be clear, I don't view that as a negative. Like, I never understood this argument.

People are saying, well, it's correlated to the NASDAQ. I mean, Mike, your colleague on the show, he says this all the time. I think it's great. NASDAX's the correlation you want for the last 10 years. For some reason, people hate stocks, which whatever, that's fine. You can hate stocks, but you've made a boatload of money if you've been in the NASDAQ 100 over the last 10 years. Why is that a bad thing?

No, I hear you. I mean... And I'll just remind people, look at the sell-off the other day, right? When we had that real nasty sell-off where Bitcoin went down under 100K, what did gold do? Gold, which is much older than Bitcoin, it's sold off as well. And that's because when there is liquidity stress and an environment where you have to sell everything, Dave, you know.

You don't get to be selective. Everything, the correlation goes to one on everything but cash. It all goes down. And I don't know if you that is a bad thing at all. I think that's just the nature of investing. Yep. I think that's absolutely right. So, yeah.

I mean, I think that's a pretty good spot, Scott, unless there's something else you want to say. No, I think it's perfect. Perfect inclusion. Wrap it up. S&P is down a bit today. Yeah. And Gary, if you want to talk about some of the mechanics,

just DM me. Happy to have a chat. Okay, doke. I think that's it. Thank you, everybody, for joining. Great show as usual. And we will be back tomorrow. Well, I'm not available tomorrow, Dave.

I don't know if you're available. But hopefully we'll be back tomorrow, 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time for another Cryptotanel. Yeah, Dave will be here. It'll be a much better show. You should all show up. You won't have me dumb up the conversation over here. guys that's all we got see tomorrow bye bye