The Wolf Of All Streets - Saylor Buys Another 155 BTC | Japan to Print $110Bn | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Crypto Town Hall is a daily X Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in crypto and bring the biggest names in the space to share their insight. ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. USE CODE ‘2MONTHSOFF’ WHEN VISITING MY LINK.  👉 https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/    ►► OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $10,000!  👉  https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL  - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets    Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor.  Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Simon? Good morning. Good afternoon. Hey Bill, how are you? Good Mario, how are you doing? Good man, good. Scott, is your mic working? Yeah man, you didn't even say hi to me. Yeah, I know, I saw you. I felt very triggered.

It was so adorable, you unmuted to say hi back. And I saw it, I noticed it. And then you went quiet and muted again. Like, yes. Hi Simon. Hey. I feel very triggered. It was so adorable. You unmuted to say hi back. And I saw it. I noticed it. Like, I bet you went quiet and muted again. Like, yes. Hi, Simon.

Hey. Hi, Bill. Good to see you guys. How are you, man? I'm doing well. I thought you were going to be, I guess it is five minutes late. Yeah, I thought you were going to be five minutes late. Yeah, I'm on the move.

Ran? Who's Ran? I see a guy requesting. Is it Ran Yuna? Is that him? I think. Oh, there he is. I think it's Nan Runer.

Nan Runer, yeah. Yeah, I think he's coming. He's been a guest, but he's always busy. He's going to Solana event, Polygon event, Cardano event. How's the Cardano? If Ran's not at an event, then there is no event. Exactly. It's a bear market.

The bull market is over i think he's still connecting how's um actually i'll ask ran that question i'm curious about cardano a few people have been mentioning it to me in the last 24 hours for some reason uh with different books i think it's up i mean everything is kind of not not not as a not as a price more as the ecosystem but um oh like they actually care no no we can't keep making enemies like this we have to we're not gonna get that okay i think charles is wonderful incredibly yeah it's a really cool guy um i'm a we'll let you kick off the show and i was a fed fed discussion today it's uh it's something you geek out over oh 99 99 percent of 99 percent of people thought it's

gonna stay the same oh shit it's the same it's so exciting yeah i'm very excited though that we did not that we learned our lesson in previous attempts to do fomc spaces even though they get big numbers like that we didn't reschedule and do it at two o'clock in the afternoon we still had our show here and uh i'm glad we chose that consistency because fomc is just a nothing burger right like i'm sorry i can't get uh passionately wound up about whether jerome powell's gonna sneeze in the wrong direction or if he blinks his eye to the left instead of to the right that markets are gonna get rocked i think the very fact that we have to like watch his facial expressions to determine what the global economy is going to do.

It should just be the biggest signal we have about how utterly broken and absurd the entire system is. You want to know something funny? First, I was going to say the complete opposite. I'm really pissed off. Me and Romy are really pissed off. We didn't do it yesterday, but I was exhausted. That's fine. That's literally why I'm happy about it.

On the second thing, I know I keep mentioning the war here and there because I'm covering it all the time. But there's like a big speech tomorrow. Everyone's waiting for it. People are canceling their flights by a group that could declare war on Israel tomorrow. So I know it's like completely unrelated. But everyone's going to be watching it. We're going to be streaming it live. And you think the FOMC is bad?

No joke. He's dropping teasers as to like him walking past a painting him writing a some something in arabic on like a book and driving all these teasers and then people are just analyzing them trying to figure out and you're not analyzing if you're gonna put interest rates up or down we're analyzing who's gonna declare war and people are gonna die and he's dropping all these little trailers like it's a hollywood movie coming up so when you compare the world is so broken man if you compare the fomc to this stuff the fomc seems like child's place he's like hey you know it's not that bad it's not good i mean

we used to we used to mock we used to we used to make jokes about justin sun making announcements of announcements when life was easier and you know we were living in the simple bull runs of crypto good now yeah everything is theater. It's really crazy. We should do a trailer. We should do like a little trailer for Crypto Town Hall. It's like you looking up on the sky. What does that mean?

Mario looking at some coin that looks like some weird dog breed. What coin is he talking about? Crypto Town Hall, season two coming soon. You wink into the distance and then it shows like a bitcoin chart like dumping really hard and then yeah and then a bull talking to a horse is it a bull market i think you should kick off the show we're ruining it the rare bull horse maybe i mean listen but yeah let's kick it off maybe we should actually we've got some great uh great guests today obviously peter good to see you man it's been a while peter chair we talk a lot on youtube i hope all is well maybe maybe we can let peter give us some broad strokes on what happened

with fomc at the back row yesterday since somebody has to do it please peter tell us about his body language i see you guys i see you guys have decided to add me thank you so much guys i'm really i really i really appreciate it i can't tell you how much i appreciate it i felt you spent the last 10 minutes saying amazing things about yeah yeah i'm glad to hear where we're talking to everything i was trying to get added to my own space thank you guys much appreciated i was just mean to me i was feeling so bad scott because we just Add it to my own space. Thank you, guys. Much appreciated. I was feeling so bad, Scott, because we just made fun of his name or something,

like who's Ran. And then we can't add him. It's glitching. I literally took a screenshot. Yesterday. I took a screenshot. Yesterday you kicked me off. No, I didn't.

I told you not to make jokes like this, Scott. Look, man, I even took a screenshot now. I swear to you, Scott, I took a screenshot of him glitching in case he gives me shit after like look ryan you were glitching i tried and there's a screenshot to prove it so it just said connect it just said connecting with the spinning pinwheel i've got a screen look i just want to thank you guys for adding me that's what i can say thank you guys don't get used to it thank you guys for allowing me to be here. Thank you guys for allowing me to be here. You're welcome. So should we talk FOMC and get it out of the way?

Yeah, I think we should. We're going to go with Ryan, Peter. Ryan, please, you're the guest of honor. There's seriously nothing to talk about. I mean, what do you want to talk about the FOMC? Nothing happened. Literally nothing happened. But markets are jumping.

I mean, at least as of this morning, I saw that stocks were largely up. Yields were kind of crashing. My TLT long is printing money. Do you think that the fact that he kind of said nothing, everyone expected him to say nothing, nothing changed, is once again

giving some sort of renewed confidence or is it just markets being markets? I don't think it's got anything to do with the fomc i think it's just cycles i don't think i think everyone got exactly what they expected this fomc there was zero news it was like it was just a waste of everyone's time to be honest i actually i actually i actually even think that it was a waste of Powell's time yeah I think that's fair what'd you say Ryan I think it may have been a waste of Powell's time

to do an FOMC yesterday he could have probably gone for dinner with his wife or something I mean we didn't need it he said nothing he said nothing yeah I wish all FOMC meetings are like this that would make our life a lot easier. Let's go to Peter, Scott.

Yeah, Peter. Can you hear us? I noticed that he hadn't unmuted when we asked last time. We'll drop him. We'll bring him up. I'll do it now. Peter, we can't hear you. Sam, what do you got for us?

Any thoughts? On the FOMC? Just in general, I guess, on the macro picture, FOMC being context. But I mean, I can give some more context where obviously we've seen FOMC kind of pass by. But we are seeing global M2 starting to rise even as it's falling in the United States. Japan announcing $113 billion, I believe, in stimulus today, which, by the way, was to reduce inflation, which is just laughable. Just kind of giving us the macro picture in general. Do you have any thoughts? Yeah.

Well, in a lot of ways, the macro stars are aligning for a BTC bull run. We saw just yesterday the head of macro at Fidelity. He actually sent out a really good tweet thread where he described bitcoin as exponential gold which we always hear to refer to as digital gold but i feel like exponential gold is a much better way of describing it because it has a lot of the properties of gold but with way more growth potential so we also liken it to the decade facing us he You liken it to the 1970s and the 2000s, where, of course, we saw a huge run up in gold because of macroeconomic conditions. I mean,

you have the Bitcoin ETF on the horizon. But in addition to that, you have this really precarious macroeconomic condition where we are. I think a lot of people, especially in Bitcoin world, would agree we're on the verge, really the precipice of what seems to be a fiat crisis. And I think Japan's money print is just the latest example of that. And with FOMC meeting yesterday, I mean, we know that the rates are high. The question is, will the Fed really be able to lower rates without shooting ourselves in the foot even more? So that's kind of my viewpoint on the whole on the next year or two is that really the stars are aligning.

And I think it was just shared there. Yeah, that's the. Yeah, I shared it above. Exactly. Uri and Tim are from Fidelity, head of global macro, I believe is his title. I've had him on the show a number of times. We actually had him on Spaces in the early days. He's one of the really great macro thinkers, I think, that understands Bitcoin. And I think that's a reflection of Fidelity's

understanding and Abby Johnson herself, that they really have been in this space mining since 2014 or 15. I mean, people don't realize, I think, how all in Fidelity has been from the very beginning. And these threads, I think, just give great confidence to the market, but also to other institutions that are considering jumping in. Bill, go ahead. Hey, good morning. Yeah, look, I mean, the way I look at it is the Fed is a semi-private public corporation. Right. And they're supposed to go make quarterly statements about what's going on with the company within the Fed. And, you know, they're hiding the reality. So to Ron's point, they didn't say much, but there's a lot to say, right? Where is the discussion about the bank balance sheets?

Where's the discussion about the amount of debt that's going to have to be printed? Where is, you know, where is the discussion about what's happening in Japan? Where is the discussion about the depletion of the repos position so anyway it's you know maybe they didn't say a lot but in my opinion they're obliged to and they're just basically sweeping it all under the rug it was more interesting listening to ron and his traitor sound like beavis and butthead talking over him in the background than it was listening to powell who basically just ignored completely ignored the reality which is what he's been doing basically for a year were you watching were you

watching my stream yesterday so I couldn't find the FOMC link and I was really busy working on something important and I saw your stream on Twitter so I clicked on that and I said I'll just watch it here through Ron's show and and I said who is this talking over over powell and it was literally like watching beavis and butthead because you guys were infinitely more entertaining than he was um but uh yeah so we aimed to we aimed to entertain and powell was really boring us last night but it was like he literally and you know i knew that i'd made a mistake going live when i saw the when the when the interest rate decision came out and they published the pack

and I could see that there was no variations to the previous pack or there was minor variations. And I just thought this was going to be the most boring FOMC in history. This whole bank thing is going to sneak up on us as if nothing is wrong. And then all of a sudden,

it's going to be 3x worse than what happened back in March. And everybody's going to be looking around each other going, how did we miss this? And, you know, he's not going to have an answer because he knew it the whole time.

So what's he going to say? Yeah, I knew it the whole time, but I couldn't talk about it because I didn't want to do what Warren did, which is facilitate a bank run. Right. So, you know, you know what worries me here?

You know what worries me? I think that you're 100% right. And you're not the only person in the world that's saying that something is broken or something is going to break or there is a lot broken, but maybe the Fed is trying to hide reducing rates is they're going to start reducing rates when something breaks. And when something breaks, I think that all risk assets are going to go down a lot. You don't even have to guess. There's a lot of ways to increase liquidity in the system besides reducing rates. And that's where the gamesmanship comes in. I mean, look at Japan's yield curve control, which I think is probably what's going to happen here

because nobody wants to buy our worthless debt anymore, which is something that they can't hide. So they're simply going to have to buy the debt when we have to start remonetizing the debt over the next 18 months. And they realize, hey, this is a new game because no one wants our dog shit, right? And so it's coming here as well. So I don't think the rates are the key point here. I think the key

points here are the public has no clue. Right. Liquidity is going to be massive. And I think crypto and certain tech stocks are going to be massive winners here. Probably real estate as well. Rand, you don't even need to guess. You can just look at past cycles. We talk about it here all the time, but it bears remembering for all the people who cheer the Fed pivot is that you get an un-inversion generally or normalization of the yield curve, which by the way, usually happens because they're cutting the short end, not because simply one, they're both going up, but one is going up less.

So this is even worse. But you usually get an un-inversion of the yield curve or normalization. Then you get a Fed pivot when something breaks, like you said, and then the stock market massively corrects and takes a long time to return to those levels.

I mean, it's happened effectively. But all roads point to a risk asset massive correction. In other words, what you're saying is for as long as the Fed is raising rates, you know the next point is going to be a massive risk asset correction because that's what history has told us every single time. And that's a bloody scary point. So isn't the question whether Bitcoin is one of them?

Well, Bitcoin will definitely be a risk asset. You think about covid in the beginning of covid when when people went risk off that also meant risk of gold and i think that the same thing happened in 20 in 2000 and in the housing collapse 2008 i think that the first reaction was it was risk off everything and it was just into cash well i think yeah i mean historically anytime there's a black swan or major downside event all correlations temporarily go to one but the story to me you know that that's the first half of the story we all know that bitcoin bottoms you know march 12

2020 it's a black thursday whatever we called it at the time went under 4 000 but really quickly mario i think that the real story there is not that it crashed and that the stock market bottomed 10 days later, but that Bitcoin went up 17x from there while the stock market doubled. So where do you want to be if that does happen? No, but before you go down the stock market versus crypto, gold, correct me if I'm wrong, but gold didn't do badly in 2020 during COVID. Am I the only one that got doubled? In the beginning, when the shit hits beginning when when when the shit hits the fans when the shit hits the fans everything goes down and i'll quickly i'll actually read you the numbers

i'm going to get it in front of me so when when we had the covid pandemic it was i thought it was march 2020 yeah it was the stock market bottom bottom like the 22nd or 23rd uh bitcoin was about the 12th. Okay, so let me just quickly get you the... Here we go. So gold went down to... Oh, sorry. Gold went down from where it was before,

which was 1,690. It went down to 1,451. So it went down about 10%. And then what happened afterwards then then of course everything then it was the everything bubble because then they just started printing money right but to my point before mario i mean listen gold's at 2000 now it topped almost 2100 he's saying it bottomed at 14 something that's not even a 50 move roughly when bitcoin's doing a 17x so you want to talk about exponential gold and what yuri and timmer from fidelity said there's your example

that's that's my point is even if everything dumps where do you want to be after that happens the thing that uh pulls a 17x the thing that pulls a 50 move or the thing that doubles but is there any chance and maybe you go to paul peter is there any chance that bitcoin does not follow the rest of the risk assets maybe the rest of the bitcoin it's not now could it be could it could that continue throughout the correction that we were we're talking about paul mario when things break mario when things break when when things break the first thing is people going to cash and that means they get caught out of everything so it's it's i mean that's everything too exactly exactly the whole the whole discussion is about cash breaking bitcoin acting as a hedge for that like what about when cash itself breaks

then what the one point i wanted to make thanks for bringing me up scott is the uh uh the yesterday the press conference and i don't know if you guys covered this, the BTFP, so that's the facility that banks are able to post collateral and get 100% on the dollar for bonds and other assets. A reporter asked him, like, are you guys going to extend this? And Powell's response was basically, he's saying, like, it's November 1st. You know, that may be a decision that we, you know, decide in the future. But he just, it was like a total punt. And I'm just like, that is pretty critical when you talk about something breaking. Like, I think that's where people are focused on banks.

Banks have all these assets that maybe, you know, that they have marked at 100 cents on the dollar. They maybe worked, you know, $0.85 on the dollar. That's not something that a bank can keep going for a long time. You talk about cash, like eventually they need to be matched, you know, like to have good coverage, and they don't. And I think that's something that the BTFP was something that was put in there for people who know for silicon valley bank and signature and all those in march it had a 12 month uh timeline or 12 12 month term on it

you know we're less than six months away now and you know it's not like there was a there was like a mini crisis there they put this facility to kind of protect banks in the short term. They gave it a year. And now they're not giving any indication of what they're going to do with it. And Paul, rates have only gotten – well, first of all, they'll continue it. But rates have only continued to go up from there. The situation has objectively gotten worse for banks. If he responds to the question per Paul's comments, then he has to address the fact that hey why might we need to continue this which is well there's probably more banks that are going to face a massive liquidity

crisis and we can't discuss that that that's there's zombies yeah that's the problem yeah well and and the one thing that you kind of got to go back to like the late 80s early 90s when they had the snl crisis this was maybe something similar like Like large banks, I don't think there's going to be any issues there. But small banks, this is similar to the S&L. There were all these small thrifts and savings and loans. They essentially went in and took all the assets and had this thing called the RTC, Resolution Trust Corporation, lasted from 89 to probably like 96, 97. And they slowly sold the assets off in bulk sales and securitizations.

So the government gave a facility to kind of hold the assets and kind of drip them out over time. So not like pseudo zombie, I guess, or kind of like short-term zombie, but there needs to be something you know potentially like that like you can't just have these banks underwater have assets underwater for for years um you look at the japanese stock market like from the 1980s to you know maybe just just recently like it went sideways for 30 years uh 40 years uh for i mean 35 years probably uh so that's kind of something that, you know, that's probably in their back pocket.

And some people think about, hey, we got to like clear out all these banks. The FDIC doesn't have enough to deal with the, like, you know, cover all the deposits and consolidate all these things. But, you know, I think ultimately that could be something that they resolve some of these issues. Gus, can somebody do it? Can somebody? So, like, Scott wants to go to Peter, but he was too nice to interrupt Ryan.

He's like, Peter, Peter, go. Peter, jump up. Peter, you go. And then I have a very – I've just seen an article which I want to ask a question about, but you go, Peter. Yeah, I think you're very overstating the risk of that bank facility. It was never very well taken up. Basically, it allowed banks to, yes, post that par, but they got current market funding. So basically, they were swapping if they had to bank deposit funding for much higher Fed

funding. Very little got taken up. It wasn't that necessary. Two, the average bank tends to own far less than five-year duration, right? Silicon Valley Bank was fairly unique in that they bought all these 10-year treasuries. So you roll down the curve, that offsets a lot of the pain from higher yields. So I think that's a relatively de minimis problem. Banks were actually able to hang on to their deposits much more. It's a little bit shocking, but you talk to a lot of small

corporations, they have $10, $15 million in little bit shocking, but you talk to a lot of small corporations, they have 10, $15 million in a bank account and they have to keep it there because it's too painful for them to move money in and out when they have to make payroll, when they have to do those things. So I was surprised by how much was able to stay in the banks. I think that's a kind of, you know,

a nothing burger, that facility, whether it stays or goes, it's not really that impactful. The banks that were in the most trouble have been slowly working their way out of it. Many weren't in trouble. Many did not follow the Silicon Valley Bank. I think that's one thing we learned is there were relatively few banks that took on a lot of duration risk. It's out there. It bleeds in over time. The roll down the curve is helpful. So I am definitely not particularly worried about that. I think it's slowing down. I think you're seeing a shift into private credit.

So that's slowly hurting the economy. But I don't think it's going to be this big gasp of bank failures. It's just going to be that they don't lend much anymore. It pushes people to private credit, which is raising the cost of funds, particularly for small and mid-sized companies. So I think that's a drag on the economy. But I don't see this being a big shock factor. Just before we go to Rand, just one quick question on the banks.

Why are the banks even aware with the Fed discount window? Peter? I don't think they are. I think that facility was very much, I think it was a poorly designed facility because it didn't do much. It sounded good. There were a lot of instructions going out to economists to really push how great this facility was, make sure it was a backstop. I think it was as much for show. It did nothing compared to what they did post-COVID, where they bought ETFs and things like this. This was a facility for the

desperate. People didn't really want to use it. And those that needed to will access the discount window, which is much more manageable, right? You can use the discount window. You can pay it back when you want. So I think they already have enough facilities in place. And again, this wasn't that exciting a facility. It didn't get great take-up. And there's so many other ways. But Peter, even if they didn't use it, just the fact that it's there is enough to stabilize the system and put everyone at ease.

It's just to avoid the fear that everyone had back in March. So it's not about using it. It's about just, it's there. If we ever need it, it's there. And I think if we do need it. Why didn't Powell say what you just said? I think he was a bit surprised by the question because it's kind of not been on anyone's radar screen

when we have discussions. So I'm sure they'll come back and address it a bit more. I think if they need it, they'll re-extend it. The one thing the Fed has learned, and the Treasury Department especially under Yellen, is you cannot let the banking system have a problem. As soon as the banking system has a major problem, it floods to the rest of the market. So they will act faster, stronger, more aggressively than they ever did during the great financial crisis. I think that was the message we were supposed to take away from what happened in March of this year. And so I would

not worry about their willingness to step up and do something again. Now, as we hear the election, if we have a change of administration, that might be different. Peter, since you're on mute, I'll ask you one more question. How about the geopolitical situation? We talked about Ukraine and inflation before, but now there's the risk, and I was reading a few articles earlier today, the risk of the conflict in the Middle East becoming a regional conflict. Does that worry you at all? Is that even on anyone's radar as a potential risk in terms of inflation? Because we're barely keeping up with Ukraine and all the printing that we've had. If you add another conflict, food prices, oil prices will take a hit again. Yeah, that's actually a major concern. And I don't know, my day job, I work with Academy

of Security. So we work with 16 retired generals and admirals. So we've been very focused on what's going on there. We are concerned, you know, how this is going to play out with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We believe a lot of this was meant to disrupt the progress made towards the Abraham Accords. The king and the leadership of the Saudis was pushing towards the Abraham Accord. It was not a particularly popular policy decision within Saudi Arabia. So I think as this ground war drags on, and we estimate it's going to be two to four months for Israel to accomplish what they need to do with Hamas, there will be civilian casualties. I think the risk is that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia pushes more,

leans away from the Abraham Accord, which I think would be bad for oil prices, energy prices. We do think there's a risk that Spoola does something. I would say no one can prove it, but the estimate is Iran's involved in pulling the strings, so watch for escalation. So I don't think escalation's priced in at all. And I am starting to hear from some corporations, they're actually experiencing some supply chain issues from things that are made in israel and it's starting to affect some biotech and tech companies a little bit whose employees are in israel so i think there is a much higher shock risk to what's going on there than it's priced into the market right now i think i think so sorry i just mentioned one quick thing there

and obviously because i'm covering it so heavily i think none of it's been pricing people i talk to a lot of it so heavily. I think none of it has been priced in. People I talk to, there's a lot of people asking questions, but I think none of it has been priced into the markets. Why? Because it's still really limited to Gaza. Obviously heartbreaking from a humanitarian perspective, but from an economic perspective, not really that big of a deal. Now, when it comes to the normalization between Israel and Saudi, it's not as shaky as we would have expected it to be. There's been some statements made from Saudi that they're willing to proceed with it as soon as things ease up and behind the scenes when you talk to people, it's going to proceed. The only thing I'll say and move on from this and go back to crypto and Randall give you

the mic is tomorrow's a very important day. Now, I'll forget that no one's as deep into this as I am, but tomorrow's a very important day. If Hezbollah, and you mentioned it, Peter, if Hezbollah joins, this is essentially a regional conflict now. You've got someone that's 10 times bigger than Hamas in the war. You've got Iran's biggest proxy in the war, and the U.S. will almost certainly be involved as well through their warships. Now, why is that important to our discussion? We're talking about crypto.

Well, that will impact inflation. If this becomes a regional conflict, inflation will take a hit, and obviously the Fed Fed decision will be impacted accordingly and crypto will be impacted. So there is an impact of crypto. I think we're not taking into consideration and I think we should. Mario, I haven't been listening to this basis because obviously I've been here at DevCon, but I'm very interested to understand Yemen. Is Yemen in the war now officially or is it a small radical group of yemenites it's the group that essentially controls ram in the houthis that are backed by iran that are in the war but they're pretty irrelevant they got a few ballistic missiles and stuff they've sent them towards israel

but they're pretty irrelevant not that big of a deal and they said they have a squad of migs yeah but they haven't there's a warship not far from them, and there's the air defense system that Israel has. It makes them pretty irrelevant, but probably much bigger than Hamas, that's for sure. But they won't change the calculation at all. The only group that will change things in the Middle East is Hezbollah, and then the next one will be Iran. That's how it is. Hezbollah is, in brief, tomorrow at p.m uh lebanon time they're based in lebanon 2 p.m lebanon time it's the weirdest thing me and scott were laughing about it earlier

but it's actually pretty serious at 2 p.m lebanon time the guy is giving a speech hezbollah is giving a speech in that speech everyone's expecting to get either hints or him directly saying whether he's entering the war um what makes it concerning is that he's put out it's the stupidest thing he's put out a bunch of teas it concerning is that he's put out it's the stupidest thing he's put out a bunch of teasers no fucking joke he put out teasers to try to hint at what he's going to say in this piece like him walking the past the painting with his logo this group's logo everyone's like that means marching on they're marching to the war or another one like a longer trailer with a whole bunch of clips and stuff and the trailers and the statements made so

far by him and his son point to likely escalation and then you've got iran saying that if this doesn't stop things are going to be escalating you got iraqi groups just said about an hour ago they're on high alert now the iraqi proxies of iran they're on high alert now because they're expecting unexpected they're preparing for unexpected events to occur and then lastly you've got uh i've got've had sources, I broke the story yesterday, that they've put out a warning to the US that if there's no ceasefire by tomorrow, Hezbollah will be joining the war. Now, that's unofficial, that's behind the scenes, but I've had enough sources that I've posted it out. So if Hezbollah joins the war, why does it matter for everyone's bags here in crypto, as I said earlier? this is a red line that gets me really concerned.

Again, purely from a financial and strategic perspective, it's a regional conflict. You've got Iran directly involved. Israel's made the threats that if Hezbollah joins, if Iran's proxies join, they'll consider Iran directly joining and they'll hit Iran directly. I don't think they will. But it becomes, and you've got've got you know to make matters even more concerning i think none of this is being considered i think this if this happens tomorrow we're going to be talking about this a lot more because just yesterday we've had a lot of uh military activity

or chinese military activity getting closer to taiwan again not on anyone's radar um and everyone forgot about ukraine as well which is ongoing so there's a lot happening, but I don't want to be fee-mongering, but that's just facts. Can I follow up? Mario, your 100%. Do you have things, Mario? Yeah, Peter or Simon, go ahead, guys. I think the one thing people aren't talking about enough is

Iran is probably selling 2.3 to 2.5 million barrels a day. I've heard the number as high as 3 million. That's despite sanctions. We have turned basically a blind eye to sanctions in our desperate effort to keep oil prices down. I think if this, you know, accelerates in terms of, you know, escalates in terms of the war, we will not be able to do that. So I think that would be a huge supply disruption, right? That everyone's kind of been wink, wink, letting Iran sell this oil to China predominantly while the sanctions are in place. And that is a, you know, issue. If this escalates, we will not be allowed to do that or will not want to do that.

So that's a big fear factor. And then you just mentioned China and Taiwan. You've also saw, I think it's Thomas Second Shoal, I had no idea what that was, but I believe it's the Philippines, they crashed a ship into a shoal that they keep troops on and they supply it. And it's been disputed with China. China used their Coast Guard ships to actually ram into some supply ships to that. So there's a lot going on around the world. And finally, a month ago, the big topic conversation we were having with our clients was about coups in North Africa, how that benefited Russia, to some extent China. No one even cares about those issues now because we've all focused on Israel, but they're real as well.

So I think there's a lot of mounting pressure out there on the globe that if this lights that fire, it gets pretty ugly potentially quickly. Simon? Yeah, Mario, I do think all of these come together into a play. The Western media's desire to um not tell the full story of this and make this a a one-way terror attack on 7th of october i think has led to um the geopolitical um understanding of what escalation means and what this means to the rest of the world not being priced into the market because um i i everything you just said

is not really something's being covered in in in complete mainstream um and then you've got to think about well what's the crypto play what's the banking play there um you know we were talking about the the risk in the u.s banking system well could that be used as a financial weapon of mass destruction by these geopolitical plays of, you know, people understanding what the weaknesses in the financial system is, and putting together some of these plays in order to weaken the situation? I do think this escalates. And the one question we've never had an answer to is we don't know what Bitcoin looks like in a global world war. You know, historically, when people don't trust each other's currencies, they look to gold in order to settle and clear with each other and clear each other's debts in the post-reconstruction side as well. Does Bitcoin play a role in that? I do believe all of these subjects come together

if this is not de-escalated right now and everything is pointing towards escalation from what I see. Yeah, I would see deep in that world. I only mentioned a year and I think there's going to be an impact on crypto. Tomorrow, look, if nothing happens

tomorrow, then we shouldn't discuss this again at all. We should be fine moving forward. I i mean it feels to me like it feels to me like escalation might be inevitable because israel probably doesn't have any short-term way out of this like they keep talking about this lasting for months you know i don't think i think israel has made it clear and i think that if netanyahu i think Netanyahu is already not really the people's favorite. And I think if he stops this attack before the objective, which he stated of eliminating Hamas, then I think he completely loses popularity and he's potentially out. So I think that the Israelis have got a minimum of a number of months left there. And I think that, you know, if a number of months with what's going on right now,

I mean, it's almost inevitable you're going to get some kind of escalation. Yeah, look, if you ask me, people ask me this all the time. Do I expect escalation? Do I expect escalation? A week ago, I was like, you know, 30, 40% this escalates beyond Gaza.

That was about, you know, more than a week beyond gaza um uh that was about you know more than a week ago a few days ago that went up to 50 percent uh once i started seeing all these trailers by hezbollah and starting to see the narrative change you kind of see these look at things on the ground that's what really what you see what those politicians say obviously they just want to say what they you know they're trying to impress voters or impress other groups or just play those mind games and confuse their opponents. But it's not movement on the group. Obviously, the US keeps sending more equipment to the area.

You've got evacuation alerts across the board, embassies evacuating. All these things no one talks about because no one notices. And when things blow up, everyone's surprised. These things have been boiling up for a while. It kind of reminds me of when Russia was encircling Ukraine with troops. Everyone just ignored it and then suddenly it became one of the biggest events since World War II, while kind of reminds me of when russia was uh it was was encircling ukraine with troops uh everyone just ignored it and then suddenly became the the the one of the biggest events since world war ii

biggest conflicts in the in the region so you've just got embassies emptying out etc um so yeah it's it's pointing in that direction if now if you ask me that question obviously it could change tomorrow but now i'm leaning above 50 that it could escalate beyond uh this unless the ceasefire deal behind the scenes obviously this isn't public, and I haven't even posted about it, but behind the scenes there is discussions. No one's talking about it because it doesn't make Israel look good, but there are discussions for a potential ceasefire that the US

is leading, US and other nations, Qatar, etc. are leading. So we'll see. But it's crazy that we're talking about it. What do you think about the thought that because there's such a desire to make Israel look good, that that's creating a disparity in pricing that's not factored into the market? It could, it could. What's priced in, what's not is obviously what I ask Scott and others about.

I'm really good at pricing the markets. I'm trying to figure out the charts or what the price should be. So that's my weakness. All I know is I can tell you what's happening in the ground. I think the public is not pricing in this to be a regional conflict. And I think either tomorrow this continues and it's not going to be a regional conflict, which I'm praying for, or I'm not religious, but I'm hoping for, or we're in for a very, very tough time because the u.s is stretched thin you got ukraine you got now middle east um and then china's obviously eyeing taiwan and what we expected over the next few years because i've covered taiwan heavily uh where china makes a move on

taiwan uh could become sooner considering the u.s is stretched this thinly again i'm not mongering i think it's all very unlikely but it's just getting more likely i'm really i'm really level headed guy for anyone that doesn't know and in the latest request for funding was was there a taiwan budget in in that request or was it just ukraine israel no ukraine israel no ukraine israel taiwan and uh and the border the the border wall and that was initially i don't know if they changed it now because the focus now that everything's about ukraine and israel so i don't know if they removed the border wall and tai now, everything's about Ukraine and Israel. So I don't know if they removed the border wall and Taiwan or it's just not something they're opposing because they're opposing Ukraine and they're supporting Israel. They're the two main ones.

But I know that the border wall and Taiwan were included. But I'll link it to crypto, Ryan. I think you had an article you wanted to ask about. Well, yeah, I mean, it's probably a move to another topic I just read this article about the Bank of Japan providing $110 billion in stimulus to reduce inflation I only did three years of economics

I did three years of economics and I did a CFA so I did another three years of economics so you could say I only did six years of economics and I have no idea how that works and I'm wondering whether anybody on stage or anybody else has any idea how 110 billion dollar package helps people against inflation ran we are we are now to the point where they don't even hide how stupid they think we are

i mean do they think do they think that's like giving everybody 500 to have to put more petrol in their car that's going to fix inflation well they're also going to price fix the petrol which is the other part and and reduce taxes but this is like i mean we just did the what was it the inflation reduction act in the united states you can go on the treasury website when they describe the inflation reduction act i looked it up today i don't have the exact quote in front of me and it literally says, the Inflation Reduction Act, something to this effect, is the largest spending

package for environmental protection in the history of the United States. The Inflation Reduction Act is a spending package for the environment. Right? Please could you just send me that article. I actually have to stick with it.

Yeah, it's on the US Treasury website. I'm going to send it. I'm going to do it now. Come on, Ryan. Didn't you do your inflation module in your three years? What you do is when people can't afford things, you print some more money, you give it to them, and then they can afford stuff. It helps with inflation. Look, I understand that when the Democrats do it in California because you don't expect the Democrats who run California to be any smarter. But I just don't understand it from the rest of the world. If you say to me, California is doing it,

then I kind of say, look, I understand it because the people that run California must be the dumbest people in the world. But I don't understand how anybody else can think that that's the case. I don't know. Wasn't it Stalin or someone who said it's easier to sell the big lie? Man, I'm baffled by this. I see that Sam's got his hand up.

Maybe Sam, you want to just talk if you've got your hand up? I think Sam's got his hand up? Sam, are you there? Yeah, I think he's good. Oh, hey, Sam. Yeah, guys. Sam and Simon, go ahead, guys. Great. Yeah, so just the point that Scott had made earlier about the fact that Japan's trying to price-fix petrol as well,

I think that's an aspect of inflation people don't pay enough attention to. We always think of money printing and how that leads to inflation. But there's this whole other dynamic right now with the price of petroleum. And I think it's something we're actually not paying enough attention to here in the United States. So everyone's well familiar with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. So there's a lot of concern going back to what Mario was saying earlier about the potential of a regional conflict breaking out in Israel that would send oil prices surging. And the issue is

that we have already depleted so much of our strategic petroleum reserve here in the United States under the Biden administration that if oil prices were to surge again, we would have very little to tap in that situation to bring prices down. And so you would see energy prices surging at that point, which couple that with what we have in our macroeconomic situation with Japan printing money, the potential of the US printing more money. On top of that, you have soaring prices of oil, and it would just lead to even more inflation and even more anxiety across the global economy, which I think... To answer your question? Yeah. Listen, obviously, you're with Riot Platforms, right? So you know a bit about Bitcoin mining.

How would something like that affect the price of Bitcoin mining? So what's interesting about Bitcoin mining stocks is essentially it's a levered Bitcoin play. So I think what you were saying earlier, Scott, is very relevant. I think in a situation where we do have some sort of global economic shock, like we saw during COVID, there would be a dip. But then after that, when people, you know, they retreat to cash, but then they start to think about it more closely. I do think people would fly. They would flee to quality. I mean, it's really interesting that Larry Fink said the other day that Bitcoin, in his view, is now a flight to quality. And so I think on the whole, it could increase the price of Bitcoin as people start to see, OK, the dollar is not the refuge I once thought it was. Is there some kind of other asset where I could put my money to that would be a harder money?

And that's exactly what Bitcoin is, is it's a harder form of money. And so I think it would be on the whole bullish for both Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining across the world. There's also a geography play in the Bitcoin mining companies, though, because all of the NASDAQ ones are almost 100% exposed to US. So whatever happens with electricity, whatever additional shocks happen there, because all of the mining companies, from what I can see, they didn't geographically diversify on the NASDAQ ones anyway. Just quickly on Sam, since you've gone back to the war, if this does become a regional conflict, what do you expect with Fed decision moving forward? What do you expect with risk assets

moving forward? If it does become a regional conflict, it would seem that the Fed would have to cut in that situation. They would have to do something to stimulate the economy. But then it gets us back to the same situation. But then there's the issue of inflation. I thought, wouldn't it be forced if inflation picks up because of another conflict? I don't know.

It's a tricky situation. I genuinely don't know. Right. I think the Fed would almost find itself in an impossible situation where they would want to cut. another conflict i don't know it's a tricky situation i generally don't know right i think the fed would almost find itself in an impossible situation where they would want to cut but because of inflation they wouldn't be able to so i i would defer more to some of the macroeconomic experts in our group on that point um because i really think jay powell would find yeah i think they would ignore the inflation risk at that point and they would have to you know somehow make sure there's liquidity.

Maybe they announced that they do a pause in their quantitative tightening something, but they would ignore the inflation aspects of that and focus on the disruption potential. So I think that's how they would look at that. Even if oil went to 110, that would not be their thought. It would be much more about what does this mean for supply chains? What does this mean for disruptions and i think they would have to talk you know much more dovish and potentially do something to put some liquidity into the markets because it would probably be a pretty big risk off event interesting so it's like for risk assets for everyone in crypto you'd be looking at tomorrow's big day and and uh you know obviously obviously putting any emotions, any empathy aside,

if it becomes a regional conflict, that's a good thing when it comes to risk assets. Again, I'm just purely from a financial perspective. I'm just not sure if you can define Bitcoin as a risk asset right now. Would you imagine a decoupling between Bitcoin and crypto? It's decoupled. Yeah, Simon. No, Bitcoin and crypto.

Because it is decoupled. It's historically decoupled. From crypto. Yeah, Bitcoin and crypto, I mean. Oh, yeah. Bitcoin and crypto. Because it is decoupled. It's historically decoupled. From crypto. Yeah, Bitcoin and crypto, I mean. Oh, yeah. But yeah, of course. I mean, listen, even if you just believe in the cycles and believe that everything else outside of it is nonsense, during these parts of the cycle, Bitcoin dominates, dominance goes up, and then eventually, you know, it stabilizes at a much higher price.

It doesn't. It doesn't decouple. It doesn't decouple. It doesn't decouple. The correlation is not as it would be in a bull market, but it would decouple. It goes on between altcoins and Bitcoin. People FOMO into Bitcoin, the dominance goes higher, and then eventually, you know, they come back. But as far as decoupling from other markets,

I think that it already has. And, you know, maybe we do get that if there's a massive black swan, you get a temporary dip in Bitcoin. But for now, I think that it's starting to be viewed as a hedge. It has a different narrative. It's still extremely small and nascent. There's not much float. If there's still demand by institutions looking at the etf it's a simple issue of supply and demand bitcoin doesn't have to follow everything else because it has unique properties as its own market and and i believe it can rise even in the face of that and honestly maybe people will view it as a hedge you know who else you know who does sailor right we've got a nice pivot. Smart movement. That was well played.

That was smooth. I mean, you laugh, but the guy is $866 million in profit, which if I'm not mistaken is the more money than MicroStrategy has made in its entire existence. That's right. $29,586

per coin is his cost basis. We're currently trading about 20% above that. And he owns 158,400 Bitcoin. Not bad, buddy. Go ahead, Bill. So I'm curious, as a segue from Simon's question about the decoupling, what you guys thought of Arthur Hayes' comment about Solana. He said he was buying Solana even though it was l1 dog shit

uh because the price is going up so i think i think i think that's great that he's buying solana i think a lot of people are starting to get the solana uh um fomo um well i've been close to the ground here and i've been to enough conferences to not allow a conference to get me excited because, you know, I've done this many, many times. I've been to many, many conferences. So I know how to tell the hype bullshit from the real building and, and stuff like that. And I can tell you that leaving this conference, I don't see how any blockchain competes with Solana as a layer one.

I see how a blockchain can compete with Solana as a layer two, as a layer one settlement for a whole lot of layer twos. That's easy. Then I can see how Ethereum wins hands down. But I don't see how any blockchain that is currently available beats Solana when you add FireDance onto

it. I just simply can't see it. And so for me... I'll give you the counter to that if you want. Go ahead, finish your point if you want, but I'll give you the counter to that. Cool, I want to hear it. For me, the way I see it, if we are going into a cycle now

where let's say we make an assumption that ETH is 3Xs from here, or if we go into another bull cycle and ETH is 3Xs from here, and let's say that Solana gets to 75% of what ETH is now. There's still another 10X left in Solana. So, I don't know. I think that I just can't find the counter, which if you've got the counter, I want to go to that.

And I've really got an open mind. I'm stretching because I own Solana and I've asked myself the question, okay, what if it solves the holy trinity of of the bitcoin blockchain wars which is you know scalability security um you know and speed right if it solves the holy trinity which is what you're talking about then you know it'll it'll morph from being five percent of my bag to probably 50 right but if it doesn't happen it's going to zero right so so that's the bet because they've put a stake in the ground around that narrative and they're basically handing cash out to the ecosystem to support that narrative. So they're all in. Hold on, hold on, hold on. A few things.

Number one, I think that it's, look, I'm not going to say it can't go to zero, but I think it's at that point now where it's almost impossible. I'm not going to say impossible, but it's got the network effects where there's just too many people building too many things and too much money going into it that it's going to go to zero. Then I don't think that they're handing out money anymore. I don't think that they have a lot of money to hand out anymore. Remember that the token price took a big thing. Their runway and their foundation took a big knock.

So I don't think that they're handing out money. I think that the money that's coming in here is actual VC money and builders and stuff like that. So I don't think that this is – I think that this is beyond – there's no hype here anymore. I can tell you if anything, what FTX did was kill the hype. Even when I went to DevCon now, there were no retail investors here. There was no talk about anything retail-centric.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that probably 80% of retail probably wouldn't be able to understand anything that was going on at this conference because that's how technical it was. It stopped short of being a DevCon. It wasn't a DevCon. It was very much a conference and not a developer conference. But the nature of what they have here is completely different. Yeah. No, actually, with you, that's why I own it. But just to make it interesting, I do think that there are very few,

I mean, still most venture monies in the U.S. I don't know any U.S. VCs outside of maybe electric that are, and of course, multi-coin that are doing any meaningful amount of investing in Solana right now. Somebody is, to your point. I just don't know who it is. Or a lot of these projects are self-funded or Solana still is investing in these projects. But it's clear that they're winning developer mindshare at a very, very rapid rate.

You know, I interviewed, I interviewed devs, but I interviewed the devs and I said, then guys, why are building on Slano? And I parted them. I said,

but you can do the same thing on each layer too. And they said, you cannot do, you cannot build the type of stuff that we want to build on a layer too. It's too clunky. You have to bridge stuff from the one side to the other side. You have to get it off. It doesn't work.

If you want to build a proper consumer application, you have to build it on a layer one. And if you're going to build it on a layer one, today Solana is your best bet. I think that that's, I almost want to say that's undisputed if you're talking about layer one. And that's before they actually launched FireDancer, which is going to make Solana much, much, much, much, much quicker.

So, yeah, I mean, I came here not expecting a lot, and I'm leaving here so super bullish that it's like, this is it. I have another question. I totally agree with you. I try to look at it from all perspectives, but I kind of come to the same conclusion. I just like to think about why it could fail. And, you know, I would not discount Ethereum at this point for sure.

But, you know, I think Solana clearly has the momentum. Yeah. Can I say something? You can just look at that. Let's just look at the options here. So you can go, if you were looking for an L1, you could go to Aptos or Sui, but they don't have a developer community. You don't have any of that.

They don't have any of that, and there's very little money that's gone into building any kind of tooling and stuff like that into those chains. I'm not saying you can't. I'm saying you can do that. That's clearly an option. You can go on to Cardano. I mean, yeah, I think that I've got a little bit

of an issue with the speed at which Cardano has been delivering. I know they keep saying, you know, we're doing it properly and we're getting

peer reviews and stuff like that. But as an investor, personally, I believe that teams that can't ship quickly are probably not teams that I want to be backing.

And it's nothing personal against Charles or Cardano. For me, I just prefer teams that can ship faster. The thing I like about Solana is that they never refer to mission-critical applications as the go-to-market strategy for the ecosystem. And obviously, Solana is not a company in and of itself.

It's a protocol. But the narrative there was around gaming first, which I really liked, because you can move fast and break things, which they did, obviously, because Solana had significant downtime during its initial phases. And it was games that suffered for the most part, or just L1 movement of Solana that suffered. And I think relative to the alternative, which is massive DeFi ecosystem, which we don't want in Solana during its early days, was brilliant.

And I hope we see more of that during the initial kind of rollout of Cardin. Brent, go ahead. I was going to say, I think there's a pretty gaping hole, a pretty large gap between it solves the trilemma and it's going to zero. I mean, maybe I'm but i mean it feels to me like you can have quite a bit of success without fully charging the trilemma solving the trilemma and that people who truly care about decentralization uh or security or whichever part of that trilemma can find another chain where they're passionate about and that maybe

a lot of these other chains that don't solve it are fast enough and good enough but what problem does it solve versus ethereum in that question i agree with you by the way speed speed i mean there's a lot of people listen you know ethereum require and listen i'm not making a case for anything for all those who are gonna you know start sending the tweets but the ethereum layer twos have their own problems. Even in conversations I've had with Sandeep about Polygon, now it's become our inside running joke that we'll be at layer fives and layer sixes when Ethereum finally reaches scale.

Even without solving the full trilemma, if Solana can just be that fast, I think that that makes it superior for certain applications and certain developers to. Well, hold on. Hold on.

Hold on. It's solving speed. There's no doubt that it's today the fastest layer one blockchain at the cheapest cost. So it's solving speed in terms of decentralization and security. So remember that Solana is still in beta. And there's one step where Anatoly says we'll get Solana off beta and that is when they have a second validator client which is not the one that was built by the Solana foundation or the devs then Solana will be officially

off beta and into the what he called mainnet right so that is happening right now with FireDancer, and he reckons within six months to 12 months, they'll be running a full node. And once they are running a node, then that is the official Solana mainnet and Solana being officially decentralized in all aspects,

not only in terms of where their validators are. And, you know, when that happens, you've got a very fast, very cheap, decentralized chain. And I just don't see how anybody else competes, to be honest. I'm not saying it'll never happen. I'm just saying that I don't see how anybody else

competes. And I also think that by the time we do get a viable competitor, it may be too late, exactly like it was for Bitcoin. By the time we started getting competitors for Bitcoin, Bitcoin had such a network effect that it was almost like too late to try and compete with it. You wouldn't try and compete with Bitcoin to be the store of value. There's just no point. Yeah, you could almost make the case that it would be better for Ethereum if it didn't have hundreds of billions of dollars

of mission-critical applications like stablecoins running on it right now because it would probably enable them to move faster. But they're in a bit of a quandary right now because we're so dependent upon the stability of Ethereum for all these stablecoins that they can't take any risks at all. And nor would we want them to at this point.

And that is Solana's opportunity in my opinion. Go ahead, Scott. I was going to say, but I think there's people who will continue to value that. Of course, I do. And that's why I think that multiple ones can win depending on the priority of the developer or the project that's happening. Yep. Yep, totally. But I mean, but to your point also, I mean, if we take that a step further,

we do know that even though it's mission critical and Tether and all of these are largely built on Ethereum, where do most people in the world send their USDT? What chain? Yeah, Ethereum. I mean... Tron. No, the answer is Tronon no yeah that's true and i was going to say so so it's clear that when it comes to your average person they just want the fastest and lowest fee if you're in venezuela right now and you want to send tether from one person to another you're not going to use ethereum and pay three dollars if you can pay three cents and you don't

care what tron is or how it happened you just just care that it got there. If Solana can replace that with a chain that people actually like better and works better, they're going to take a lot of the market share. But there is also a feeling and a perception when people use Tron that it does work. You can say whatever you want about the platform, the technology, the people who created it, whatever, but there is an overall market perception that it just works, at least for that. It does.

It does. Can I ask you a quick question? I'm completely unrelated. I've just been waiting and I'm not going to wait forever. I've asked this question yesterday as well. And Ryan, I wanted to ask you that question and then Bill because you guys had a back and forth. How is the sentiment like? I think, Scott, you mentioned it yesterday that projects that weren't raising before

have started closing their rounds. I think, Scott, you were paraphrasing what Ryan told you the day before. Ryan, how is the sentiment like at the event and Bill as well and everyone on stage, everyone that's dealing with projects, talking to investors and VCs? Are we seeing that the sentiment trickled down

to VCs and projects raising money? Can I make a really quick comment to add to that just before they answer the question? I'd like to ask permission. I've been once again looking at some projects that have been launching of late, and we saw this sort of barren desert of nobody being willing to even launch a token. There have been a couple of late, I know TokenSight was one, I think one Amino launched yesterday,

that actually have kind of gone up initially and stayed relatively steady as opposed to just being the classic pump and dump pattern you would expect. But forget even the price action. I think the narrative that people are saying, hey, this market is now good enough to launch this thing we've been waiting for, says a lot.

I love how everyone's giving feedback as well. Yeah, and I'm out of here. I get an emoji from Bill, silence from Ryan. Love it, guys. Appreciate the feedback. I said it to you the other day. I think people are starting to get their confidence back. I don't think that VC is in full ball yet. I think that crypto listed markets are

certainly in full bull. I think VCs are a little bit more cautious. I think Andreessen is about to raise another fund or is raising another fund, which is... 3.5 billion. Yeah. I mean, I don't think that all the sentiment is going to come back on the first day. That's not what I expected. But certainly things are heating up and people are starting to open their wallets up a little bit more. You know, Mario, a lot of the VCs, what you've got to think about is that a lot of them have money in Bitcoin. And, you know, we went over the realized price of Bitcoin, which means that most people were actually in profit when we went over like 27,000 or 20, the exact number. But as soon as we went over 27,000, we were in, most people were in profit. And because most people landed up in profit, it gives you more confidence to start spending.

And that's effectively where we're at. So like there is a much bigger appetite now to be spending. Simon? Yeah. Of all the companies, I mean, I've got about 89, I think, equity in my portfolio that survived. I think the last six funding rounds were all down rounds. So that was as an extreme as a 75 percent reduction

in valuation to about a 25 percent reduction in valuation to companies going bust um i do think a a chunk of money went into actually um well distress um so most uh most of the VCs were looking to capture those types of distress. And the FTX bankruptcy is actually a really interesting one because how much of the Solana supply does John Ray control now? Does anyone know? I don't know what the percent, 10%? 98.9%. I think I'd heard, please people don't call me,

but it's somewhere I think 5% to 10%. I mean, quote me, but it's somewhere, I think, 5% to 10%. I mean, this move up, as we were talking about yesterday, it's massive for creditors if it sustains. Yeah. I've seen the receivables go from like 20 cents on the dollar to at least 50 cents on the dollar in the past few weeks. And within more than 50, they can get completely whole. Yeah, so for the patient of investors looking at it. Yeah, for the patient investor, you can get an FTX claim for about 50 cents. A bunch of it is private equity.

There's a bit of real estate in there. But, you know, before the Solana pump, I think it was a 90% recovery, including the private equity because of AI investments and stuff. But now with the Solana pump, it's going to actually be interesting because with the Mt. Gox bankruptcy, Mark Capellas had to fight for creditors because they were going to just dump all the Bitcoin and pay everyone off. So in Bitcoin value, they got about a 10% recovery.

But in dollar value, it's going to be like a 10x recovery. And so you could see a similar thing here where if Solana goes up too much, and if sufficient liquidity is there, then FTX could dump bag, pay off all creditors, have 100 and then interestingly the next in line after creditors would be the government so the government could end up um one of the largest bag holders of the because there's about two to three year time lock coins as well cool um scott i think that's uh i don't have any other questions yeah same i i'm just i'm so happy for i was researching i was trying to research i was trying to research how much of this amount of supply fds had yeah i'm just happy for any ex-creditors i say it every time but being a creditor of the other ones at bad timing i think voyager sold off their salon at like 12 bucks or something blockfi was the worst blockfi

sold all their bitcoin at the bottom of the market for dollars put it all in silicon valley bank and it had to deal with um ftx and then ftx sued them for 450 million or something so by the way do you know when the decision will be made regarding sam because there's a closing arguments are being made i'm not sure i think it's today what i mean today the decision will be today decision will come out on how many years in jail no oh i don't know if uh the sentence i think someone said and probably scott so i'll dismiss it but if it's not scott then then some point someone said that is the this the decision will be the sentencing will be like before the end of the year it's one of the i think it was a lawyer oh um scott do you know when it

will be do you remember we discussed it once in a space do you remember well since i am a lawyer um and you complimented me so highly then and even if i knew i wouldn't tell you well we have 5 000 people but yeah let him suffer as well uh let me see when spf sentencing is anyone does let us know the answer i don't know the answer but i know that you know we'll find out if he's guilty is anybody else watching this market crash are you being serious bitcoin's's gone from $35.5 to $34.7. It's a terrible crash.

Dang, Bitcoin crashes to prices not seen since yesterday. Okay. Oh, that was a nice jam. Breaking. Mario Nafo, breaking. Just in. Yeah, I put my alarm bells. Breaking.

Breaking. I have like a code. If I put one alarm bell, it's like normal. Breaking, but normal. If I put just in, it means not that important. Breaking means important. Breaking with two alarm bells means like that happens like maybe once every day or two or three. That means like shit is going down.

That means it's very serious. Breaking means it's already broken. It's super broken. Just quickly on them a final thing i want to ask the audience because i know we ask all the time your thoughts on how many years sam will spend in jail let us know in the comments we've we're doing a bet behind the scenes um if you put it in the years if actually you know what we'll do give away a prize we'll give away rand tokens um a bunch of rand 500 rand tokens to the person that gets the exact sentence the exact

sentence right the correct sentence um by the way rand has there been i've been in my war world has there been anything new with the show the killer whales show i haven't even spoken i've seen i've seen some trailers and that published but i haven't actually seen any any real real news they should launch it now you were the star of wendy's trailer i saw it yesterday you are i didn't actually see it i got a lot of comments about it i actually haven't seen it i was oh that was one part yeah you guys went off at each other once oh you went off at each other 80 we went off at each other 80 times that was just the ones that they maybe showed but i mean no that was, there was one that done.

Yeah, one was like, it was genuine shit. Yeah, Mario, you're the one who told me that he said, literally turned to the people who were pitching, right? He said, guys, he's never going to understand this. Yeah, something's out of hand. I'm not criticizing Wendy. I'm just saying, that seems cold. It was the best.

It was my favorite part of the show. Because I was stressed because of what I was going through. And then that part just made me relax. I was just watching Ran and Wendy go out for each other. Scott, you know, I don't have,

if there's one quality, I have a lot of qualities, but one quality that I really don't have is patience. I don't do patience very well. You're so annoying with that. So annoying. and it's true for everyone listening so fucking annoying yeah i mean i i just um i just didn't have the patience for yeah for what happened there yeah it was it was very exciting i can't wait to see that show i can't wait no but there's a lot

of things that behind the scenes that i hope they put the behind the scenes because there's a lot of heated things behind the scenes that there is by the way rand one other thing i don't know if you know we have and probably end the show there the mics that we're wearing i don't know what you're saying no private calls at the time but those mics are on 24 7 just fyi so i don't know how much i get me the recordings yeah so i don't know if i called your wife or something i've done enough tv in my life to know that you've got to switch your microphone i've done that oh i've done i've done i've done enough tv in my life to know that i've been caught out i've been caught out many times including including um the worst situation you can think of and i'm not going to tell you what it is but the worst situation you can think of

I'm calling you after this show I'm calling you after this show shit man don't put him in this situation it's recorded and there's 5,000 people what do you mean tell us fuck up again do it again say it again yeah we'll call him privately

call me after the show alright guys we'll let everyone go we'll see you all tomorrow thanks everyone bye