The Wolf Of All Streets - Saylor Buys Another 5445 BTC, ETF Approval in October | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

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I'm talking to myself. How are you? Good. Were you muted and talking? It's a good trick. No, I just said hi. I didn't see they're talking for a minute. I think you said hi in that exact moment when I was going from speaker to host when you can't hear anything. Did I tell you how cool your wife is? No, but I'm always open to that conversation what's her handle again emmy melker e-m-i-m-e-l-k-e-r cool just sent her an invite for no reason i'll probably do that a lot now just i think she's playing tennis at the moment but maybe she'll join in she has a life

i'm glad how long have you been together for? We've been together since 2008. So 15 years. And we've been married just over, I guess, 11 years, 11 and a half years. Oh, wow. And you've got kids together, yeah? I have an eight-year-old and a four-year-old. But I'm kind of old. So, you know, all this sort of happened later for me, obviously.

You know, I'm 46 so i didn't have kids until i was 38 first respect second 46 is not old man no i just mean you know like most uh my friends from college and stuff a lot of them have kids who are graduating college well through high school that's because they're weird that's because they're weird and they follow p pressure instead of being logical and smart about it. So you've made the right decision and they've made the dumb decision, don't they? Yeah, I think it's different strokes for different folks. But for me, I had a lot of things to get out of my system

before I had any business getting married or having kids. Yeah, man. Well, it was nice to meet you in Dubai. I think I said that already. Yeah, it was great. It was a good time. It was a very good time. Yeah, it was great. It was a good time. Yeah, it was a very good time. We had a pretty wild time.

I enjoyed having you having my legs frozen while my face was in the sauna. It was great. It was sick. So we should do it again. But let's kick off the show, man. So we've got a pretty cool panel today. And, you know, it's not like one big topic that we're going to be covering. It's a lot of small topics. I think for me, the more interesting one is the, it's not that interesting, but the JP Morgan report on Ethereum

on the activity since the Shanghai upgrade. It's not the best report, but I think it's a dumb report. I was just going to say, it's so dumb to me, that report. It is. It's also a bear market, buddy. What did you expect to happen? Did you expect Ethereum to go to $10,000 after the upgrade just because?

Yeah, I was pretty disappointed because, like, the upgrade had nothing to do with increasing activity. The upgrade is all about reducing costs and making it more efficient. So their issue with Ethereum is unrelated. I think it just shows sort of a fundamental lack of understanding. But, hey, it's JP Morgan. I don't know, man. They're not dumb.

But then again, they could be and I could be the naive one. Whoever wrote it may be a little bit dumb. Or they just don't quite understand it. I don't think it's dumb. I think it's just a bad take. Yeah, since you've got Patrick here, we don't have the macro guys here. Let's just quickly dig into it. So they do a report where they talk about um the energy consumption

of ethereum um uh that despite the energy consumption collapsing by over 99 and the supply shrinking by 0.18 and staking going up by more than 50 and they're complaining about the the network activity being disappointing, which is weird considering that the upgrade had nothing to do with network activity. We're in the midst of a bear market. And if you compare the previous bear markets, we're doing significantly better. The previous bear market had no DeFi activity. They had no DeFi TVO, zero L2s, and no staking percentage. So I'm reading off a tweet from Yield Collector collector he's got a great tweet on this but it's just a report that i thought would be a big part of today's story that we dig into on why jp morgan

is is just not too happy with ethereum and it got a lot of headlines but from what i read it's it's just a not only nothing burger but just uh it's not a good look for JP Morgan. Anything to add there, Scott? Yeah, I agree. It's a perfect take. Patrick, have you actually, we've got Patrick here. Patrick, have you seen the report by JP Morgan? Yeah, I have. And first thing I'll say is I do think it's good that they're looking at on-chain data, but they make a couple pretty big mistakes.

First one you mentioned is that the point of the upgrade wasn't to reduce Ethereum fees or increase throughput or anything like that. The upgrade largely had to do with staking and unstaking. And in that respect, it's been a success because more people are staking. And DeFi TVL, if you include liquid staking, is up in terms of ETH. So they talk about the amount of money in DeFi is flat, but in terms of ETH, it's actually up. And so any decrease or flatness is due to price fluctuations. And the other thing that they miss, as far as I can tell, is that tons of Ethereum traffic is now moving to Layer 2 rollups, where a year or two ago, the scaling factor of rollups was about 1x, and now it's 6x. So rollups

are processing 600% more transactions than mainnet so you can't talk about um you know activity that's being settled on ethereum without looking at the fact that most of it is on roll-ups now yeah and i agree with your initial point at least they are looking at on-chain activity if that's an achievement. Let's go into the Mike Novogratz story. Scott, by the way, I'm not sure if you saw this on the non-crypto news, but we have a politician from, just came into the wire,

politician from Russia, no joke, just puts out a statement. He's the head of parliament, I think. I know it's unrelated, but I like to mention on a non-crypto news when it's really big. I think it's pretty big. He says, Ukraine must surrender or cease to exist.

I haven't read the story yet. The team is doing a tweet on it. But it kind of took my attention away. But back to crypto, Scott. That's fucking mental. Ukraine should surrender or cease to exist. Statements like this are just fucking stupid. If you think the JP Morgan report is dumb, look at this political politician statement this russian guy um but you only go to the mike novogratz story and micro

micro strategy also buying up some some bitcoin i always love a good discussion on uh on micro strategy and michael saylor being a giga chad and dollar cost averaging on a level that people can only dream of i mean i don't know that it's such a huge story in the fact that we know what's happening, right? Anytime that he can raise or gain access to any capital profits from the company, he's always going to put it into Bitcoin. That's his mandate. That's what he does. I mean, they acquired 5,445 more Bitcoin for $147.3 million at an average price of $27,053. I love that people immediately scream, ah, ha, ha, he bought the top again. But last time I checked, the top was around $31,000, and we're still at $26,000, pretty close to that price. So I think that that's sort of a laughable

narrative. But I also think it's important to note that when someone like Michael Saylor does this, I don't think he really cares about the price. He's not like looking at a chart and trying to see if RSI is oversold. He doesn't give a shit. He's dollar cost averaging for the long term to hold Bitcoin, which is what probably most people should be doing. I mean, if we want to talk about Novogratz, obviously we have Novogratz saying, I'm trying to get the exact wording here. Sorry, I'm looking for the news, that we should see an ETF approval in October. That's worth discussing. I think it's very, very likely that we're going to get the blended Ethereum Bitcoin futures ETF from Valkyrie at the very beginning of October.

We all know that the SEC has very little grounds to deny an Ethereum futures ETF because we already have the Bitcoin futures product, which is effectively the same. But as to whether we're going to get a Bitcoin spot ETF, that's, I think, a little more challenging. Anyone on the panel have specific thoughts on what Novogratz is saying here? Travis, I saw you jumped up. Have you been tracking the ETF? Definitely paying attention to the ETF. I must have missed what Novogratz said.

Is there a link to that somewhere? I'll give you a link. He basically just said he thinks we're going to get an ETF approval in October. Mario, that's the gist of it, correct? Yeah, he was so casual about it, which caught me with what he said. He basically was just like, yeah, we're going to get good news in October and then just moved on and started talking about it.

So I don't know if that's a, hey, I know something, or I'm just a... Yeah, right. I was saying we're going to get good news in October. He wasn't specific. I really think that that's going to be the Ethereum futures ETF. Well, the blended one from Valkyrie and then probably a slew of Ethereum ETF approvals coming after that. That's my take or R2 anything. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense.

I have zero insight into the inner workings of these approval processes but i was taken back by his confidence in the statement of we're going to get good news in october from a cycle point of view i'm i'm very much caught in this fractal from previous cycles where like in the spring we have our you know finale capitulation event of some kind maybe confirmation of recession or whatever it is, the rate hikes pivot typically followed by downside of the market. So like, I think that all coming early, the good news coming early and catching everyone up guard would make a lot of

sense for, so, I mean, you know me, I'm more of a technicals guy, but, uh, it was, it was refreshing to see, cause I'm so, so staunchly in thely in the camp of like, just wait for the spring and the January investment window. But things starting up early in October would be very crypto indeed. you know big news might be a temporary bump because we're just at that point that year before the halving and that situation and we see obviously that we have every attempted sort of dump from this price of bitcoin is quickly bought up and any sort of pump and now by the way we're talking about 500 moves as pumps and dumps which is a sad state of the crap market here but um there's just not that much to look at and we have have Gareth as well. RT, I'll give you your thoughts, I guess, on that and the cycle. But then I would love the market sort of updating

thoughts on Bitcoin and everything from Gareth, because obviously we're seeing this sort of continued weakness from stocks as well. And the dollar absolutely ripping 10 green reits in a row on the DXY. Yeah, it's really been an amazing move on the U.S. dollar. And today we're seeing it again. I mean, the U.S., the Dixie is above 106 and is just crushing it right now. Vertical move since really around 7 a.m. Eastern time this morning. Interestingly enough, the stock market's down today, but not down a huge amount. I think the S&P is down about a quarter of a percent. The Nasdaq is down same kind of right in that same range. So so overall, the markets are digesting this for now, probably because they're slightly oversold. Now, we had that big dump on the Federal Reserve and then the follow through on Thursday and Friday of last week. And we kind of saw the same thing on Bitcoin. Bitcoin popped up, kind of came off. And I think for me, the biggest thing that I'm continuing to follow is we had the BlackRock ETF spot news that came out in June. And for me, that's the low that I'm watching. So far, we have not violated that low around 24,775. And even on the recent dip, we didn't get below that level. So we're still kind of in this higher lows atmosphere. And as long as that holds, I mean, there is hope here.

Maybe we do get that news in October that's bullish. My biggest thing would be if we do get an approval of a spot ETF, you have to see Bitcoin take out that 32,000 level. Like if it can't take out 32,000 on that news, then that would be very scary overall, to me at least. So it would be pretty wild to see Bitcoin make the exact same move that it made on the idea of a BlackRock ETF approval on the actual approval of the BlackRock ETF. That would be, I mean, it would be amazingly crazy to see. And I think it would also speak, I think there's so many people and I've heard this, this is, you know, you always see these narratives in crypto.

It's, you know, buy now because the halving is a guaranteed winner for you. You know, buy because when the approval comes, it's off to the races. And I think there's a lot of people that are saying, all right, I've accumulated here and they're waiting for that spot approval. And if that spot approval comes

and we don't take out the highs, you know, what kind of disappointment is that going to bring in? And is that going to bring in a wave of selling afterwards if it doesn't happen? So so just kind of things to keep an eye on. And again, just remember past cycles. Right. We saw basically the 2017 high coordinated with the approval of the futures for Bitcoin. The 2021 coordinated with the approval of the ETF, the futures for Bitcoin, the 2021 coordinated with the approval of the ETF, the futures ETF. And then here we're coming into this one, do we get a pop into it? Or if people discounted at this point? Overall, I still think it's like you said, with Michael Saylor buying, it's, it's, he couldn't care less where price is right now, his vision is 510 20 years down the

line. So it's a really shorter term investment kind of thing where you care about what this price action is. And listen, you and I talked about on Market Mavericks last Thursday, the fact that the S&P, specifically SPY, was kind of forming a technical head and shoulders and dropping. Since then, we saw it actually break down, retest that neckline sort of as resistance. This is technical jargon for a topping pattern in the market. So we can kind of go around to anyone else. I know we've got some other macro sort of minds here. But, you know, do you think that, let's here make it a really hard question that's going to put you on the spot. But do you think that the top is in for stocks for the year? I do personally. Yeah, I do. And again, it's interesting. If you go back to the

2000s, the dot com bubble, the Nasdaq is almost identical all the way through this recent bounce to what we've seen now in the Nasdaq. So so, you know, again, for me, it's always looking at the patterns and patterns tend to repeat because human nature doesn't change. And until proven otherwise, until we take out that all time high, I do believe that at this stage, we're kind of beginning our downward movement. And think about this, we haven't even gotten to a recession yet, but we all know it's coming, right? Whether it's next year or the year after, at some point, we're going to see a recession. We know the consumers tapped out, even though they're still spending their credit card debt is nuts. We know the deficit is above 30. I mean, there's so many kind of things. It almost reminds me of like, you know, someone carrying weights on their back. And it seems like every day there's a new weight that goes on that back. Eventually, you're going to break down, right? Eventually, you're going to have, you're not going to be able to support the weight. And so that's the question is, at what point does that hit? Yeah, it's like we have the Atlas shrugged meme with Atlas being NVIDIA and AI and the entire world on the shoulders being the rest of the market.

Yeah. I mean, it's not that much stress in treasury markets right now. I mean, it would definitely have to get meaningfully worse from current levels for the Fed to be particularly concerned about it, I think. I mean, I think we all know that there is some level there where they can just kind of step in and make all this go, you know, make all this go away and that will just keep working until, you know, maybe one day that doesn't work, but that time is almost certainly not now. Um, so, so maybe you get some more stress, you know, for, for a while. Um, but I, it doesn't seem like it's like that dire of a, of a situation to me. I mean, we're at the very tail end of a hiking cycle, and it's the biggest one we've had since at least 2001, if not further back. Yeah. Let's hear it.

Go ahead, Gareth. I want to go to Michael afterwards to just dig deeper into the macro picture. Go ahead, Gareth. Yeah, I was going to say, in general, I agree. I don't think that we're on the verge of a depression. You'll hear that narrative out there too. And I don't think that's going to happen because the Fed can still, they've already raised rates this high. They can still come back and flood the market with low rates and more money at a certain point. Like you said, eventually, at some point, it doesn't work, which again, I've speculated that could be the 100 year cycle, which kind of mirrors the depression, the Great Depression in the late,

you know, 2029 kind of thing at that stage. But I agree with you, I think, for me, the the base case now is that we kind of fall into a recession, that's not a horrendous recession. But it's just, it's one of those things that could last a really long time, because the Fed cannot be as aggressive as they used to be, right? So, you know, because inflation is still slightly elevated, they can't, you know, print the same amount of money they did during COVID, which probably means it's harder for us to get out of that. And it's just like this dragging on kind of crappy period. But they do.

But Gareth, they do have, and before going to Michael Green, they do have a lot of ammunition, like the benefit of raising rates to the level they are at now. And tell me if I'm oversimplifying it, but it just gives them room. And obviously there's inflation and they have to take into consideration, but if the economy takes a much bigger hit than anyone anticipated, things start getting ugly. The Fed has a lot of room to move down now. They do have room, but they do have also handcuffs, right?

So they're kind of handcuffed because they can't drop rates too quickly or too much because then the inflation goes from, you know from 3% or 4% to 12% or 15%. But wouldn't they need to start accepting structurally higher inflation? Then they have no choice if the economy gets a lot weaker, a lot faster. Yeah, and I do think that the goalposts will be moved, right? But I do think that they're going to try to be very, initially, especially, they're going to be really careful on that because they do understand that inflation attacks the middle and lower income people. And I think that's what right now seems to be their priority. But you're right. Eventually, I do think the goalposts, it gets moved from 2% to 3%. Yeah. I'm going to go to Michael. Michael, we've got a lot of indicators coming in,

a lot of data coming in this week. We've got the GDP numbers coming in on September 28th. The forecast, I think, is all these different forecasts. Actually, I won't read them. We've got the jobless claims also coming in on the 28th. And we have – so Powell also speaks on the 28th. So in three days, a big day. And also on to the 28th. Is it all on the 28th?

We've got the Eurozone CPI coming up as well. I'd love to get your thoughts on the importance of these numbers, what we expect to see and how that could impact the Fed strategy moving forward. Well, I mean, look, the interesting challenge, and I think the last speaker was addressing parts of this, is not so much what is the Fed, what is the data going to say, but how the Fed can actually respond to it. You know, they've given very firm guidance that they want to be extremely cautious with an emphasis being on the inflation side of it, not so much cautious on the employment or the economy side of it. I think that naturally gives us a bias that's not dissimilar to, you know, 180 degree version of what transpired in 2021,

where they were exceptionally slow to recognize the incipient inflation and acceleration in the economy. And so just as they were slow to move in 2021, they're likely to be slow to react in 2023 and possibly even 2024. That sets a higher bar for what the market now has to accomplish in order to get them to change their mind. And that can happen on some of the fundamental data, which I would argue we're going to start to see that in the same way comparisons have been getting more difficult for the, you know, for raw materials like crude oil, gasoline, etc. They're now getting quite a bit easier on the core components of inflation. And, you know, that may provide some relief.

And my guess is that by the time we get there, the Fed is not required to actually hike through November or through into December. And one of the interesting things that's happened post-Fed has been a general broadening out of the risks of rate hikes um from you know relatively going into the event they were obviously quite low around a september hike but they were reasonably high around a november hike now we're looking at some of that november has been degraded yeah i think he's dropped out um and i wanted to ask him about the um oh you're back michael your mic your mic isn't i'm not sure if you i know you're on the move

is there any chance to improve the mic or it's impossible it's pretty it's pretty impossible i'm in a car um so all good all good okay so so i'm not sure what you guys what i what i missed there because it was dead on no we heard we heard we heard everything just cut out yeah literally all right so so the biggest thing that I'm paying attention to is that actual dynamic of basically broadening out those hikes at the end of this year. To me, that's a pretty strong indication that they're not going to hike

through the end of this year, right? Effectively, that the markets are going to be able to pull that off, and then it becomes a question of can we convince them to cut in 2024, which I think is a probably a higher hurdle um although again i think the data will start moving our way on that front um but the biggest thing is you know the fed almost never hikes unless there's roughly a 70

probability priced into the event and now we're way below that on on the interest rate hiking expectation so it's all a very long-winded way of saying I think all the data that's coming out is basically going to lead to no action on the Fed. I think the idea of it getting far enough to cause them to even talk about cutting, that's a market event. That's not news. And you said the probability is well below 70%. What's the probability now of a rate hike?

How far off are we from the 70%? I can't see it directly in front of me, but if I remember correctly, we were about 16% for November and about the same for December. And so while cumulatively that goes to 30-plus percent or even 40%, if, remember it absolutely correctly. The fact that none of those actually expresses a particularly strong probability and we should anticipate the comparisons getting easier on the inflation at the same time that we're seeing a general slowdown beginning to emerge. I just think the takeaway has to be that the Fed is done,

and that's increasingly being priced into the SOFR curve. And, Michael, another question I have for you is the debate about a hard versus soft landing. Like the indicators are pointing, at least in my opinion, people, analysts, are split on that, but they are pointing to a soft landing. Are you worried about a hard landing? You know, some people talking, Gareth did hint, not hint, but did refer to some people talking about a depression. They'll be coming in.

Where do you stand on this? Well, I think the challenge is that, you know, if we could project forward what happens through a recession, you know, that would be wonderful, but it's very hard to do. Recessions, by definition, are inherently chaotic events in which, you know, we effectively execute various change of control features, right? Meaning people lose their homes, they lose their jobs, they're no longer in control in a way that they would have anticipated being just shortly before. I think that longer in control in a way that they would have anticipated being just shortly before. I think that's particularly true in the commercial real estate sector. I think it's particularly true in the housing sector. We don't have great visibility in terms of what this means

for the levered corporate sector, primarily private equity. And so, you know, we're watching a situation where I would just describe it as we know it's going to be really bad unless the Fed responds. And therefore, everybody is assuming that the Fed is going to respond and that will be the solution set. But in order to get the Fed to respond, something really bad has to happen. Right. And, something really bad has to happen, right? And if that really bad thing actually happens, if somebody goes into default, and I'll just give an extreme example of this that I highlighted on my sub-stack, you know, we're looking at a situation with entities like Verizon and AT&T, where they are already, you know, that largely exist to pay unionized worker pension plans.

They're seeing meaningfully slowing growth in their core businesses. Price shopping is getting more and more brutal in the cellular space, which has offset the decline of the plain old telephone service, the traditional landline business. And these things are very, very heavily indebted with an average coupon of like 2.6% in an environment in which they're highly likely to see a dramatic increase in their cost of debt over the next couple of years. So that feels like one of these crazy outside scenarios, but it's almost identical to the

gameplay that played out with General Motors, Ford, Chrysler going bankrupt in 2008. They were downgraded in 2005, choked the high yield market. And we're looking at the potential for a replay of that. Right. And by the way, the auto companies themselves are totally, you know, up for play as well. Their finances, while they look strong on a short term basis, is a very fundamental deterioration that's associated with the transition to electric vehicles and the change, you know, the underlying change in the behavior of the consumer around that. We just don't know. We don't know how this is going to play out yet.

And so I think a call for either hard or soft landing seems extremely premature. Yeah, and interesting. I'm just going to mention before going to the last story of the day, just a bit of an update on FTX. Talking about a soft landing, there's someone, his name is Joe. He's been on our stage a few times. He did a really interesting chart. There it is, Joe Consorti.

He comes on our stage a lot. He's talking about, he did a nice chart, and you can go on his profile to see it. He talks about soft landing headlines. And his, I would, the point he's trying to make is that when the Fed has done hiking, headlines about a soft landing for the U.S. economy surge. So, he starts seeing a lot of headlines talking about a soft landing. So, that's when the Fed has done hiking rates. But now the headlines are disappearing.

So, he's talking like they've completely plummeted. He did a nice chart where the headlines pick up. Let me see if it picks up before the Fed stops hiking rates. And there seems to be a correlation there. You could check the chart. So, yeah, it is an interesting chart. And he still talks about how historically within a few months of this, the economy worsened severely and the Fed cuts rates. So, it's like an early indicator of the fed cutting rates in the economy not doing too

well and we're not seeing that indicator now so just thought i'd give him a shout out it's a nice chart that i came across or the team came across on twitter um but the last story scott i'll keep today's show um short um and it's uh it's sam have you did you read this story about sam bankman freed yes i did he wrote a 250 pagepage essay basically blaming Carolyn Ellison for everything. And Sam Tribuco. Yeah, yeah. There's two. There's three.

He criticized Tribuco but did say that Tribuco was planning to leave the company in late 2021. But he's saying that he's denying the commingling of customer funds, saying that that was fabricated by the law firm Sullivan and Cromwell. And basically just his girlfriend who's already guilty basically and flipped on him to fraud. He's blaming her for everything, which is just so absolutely absurd because she was obviously the head of Alameda and Alameda should have never had access to anything FTX related. So it should have been completely an unrelated thing it's like he's digging his own grave when i read through this stuff yeah and also he's been digging his own grave since he came up on spaces uh last year a couple jets though he did get a couple jets apparently yeah and even shares in an airline company apparently like he becoming a co-owner

of an airline company and owning a bunch of jets you know it's not really an airline company they've only got a few jets. But yeah, so he blames her. He said that the reason they broke up is Ellison, his ex-girlfriend, she avoided risk management discussions. And that's why they broke up. So he was really frustrated with that. So it's a long essay.

He didn't post it on X this time. He didn't post it on Twitter. He sent it to New York Times. And that's kind of little snippets that are worth mentioning so just nothing nothing too major in there i'm guessing his lee is his lawyers kind of looked into it before they allowed him to publish it my guess is they did um and yeah he does he does a whole dispute about him who's he's uh ftx loaned money to a company in order to buy a couple of jets, something along those lines. And now these guys are the biggest creditors in Bahamas. Is it in Bahamas, no? Yeah.

I see you had your mic lifted. Did you have something to say? Well, we can put that co-mingling denial to bed right now because I withdrew in 2022 January from FTX, and I received a wire from FTX. And two weeks later, I withdrew in 2022 january from ftx and i received a wire from ftx and two weeks later i withdrew another amount and i received a wire from alameda so at the time i didn't see that as the red flag it was but uh i think we could put that one to rest right now yeah i think obviously travis is here and you you you probably have very strong thoughts on FTX. What kind of strong thoughts?

You're a big – you don't – you think it's very – You're one of their biggest creditors. Yeah, you're unhappy with the way we're representing them and innocent until proven guilty. Correct, Travis? Well, I don't have any hate in my heart for Sam Bankman-Fried. I don't think that's a good way to go through life. You got to let that shit go. That kind of stuff will really eat you up.

But one thing I was thinking about today, Travis, and I know we're meant to wrap up, but I was just looking at what he's built. I'm like, why did you have to fuck up? You were building something good. You're a smart guy. Why did you have to become a criminal and fuck it all up? FTX had – it was a clean exchange.

It was a good exchange. alameda is a smart trader but then you start to fuck up and do a lot of dirty things and illegal things and here we are so that was my we have seen that enough in the crypto ecosystem you know over the last 18 months and and you can go back a decade and see the same thing that it's it's no longer a valid defense when you're looking at an organization. You say, that organization will not commit fraud because they're making too much money. You can't say that anymore because we've seen it too many times where a platform or a company or a group of individuals will be very profitable, will have a very good business to, in some instances, what you would call a golden goose, right? You know, FTX, like, you know, it's

not an over-exaggeration to call that a golden goose. And people in crypto have just shown us time and time again that they are willing to commit massive fraud despite that. And, you know, that's worth watching. Mario, I would push back on the claim that he was a good trader, that they were good traders, because keep this in mind. Like you said, the Golden Goose FTX was basically making billions themselves. They had the screens open for Alameda to show customers trades. They knew where everyone's stops were. They were offering high leverage and still managed to poorly trade the market. So even stealing customers' funds to trade with,

knowing what the customers' orders were and likely being able to manipulate the market, they still lost billions and billions of dollars. So I would say he's a brash trader. I was talking about the traders pride fdx his trades prior to fdx but again i don't know the history well enough but fdx is alone alone was a good exchange like he he played his cards right the way he kind of uh um got close to the politicians with strategically smart move and he's trying to strong arm and look how how cocky he became

by stealing money oh yeah i know stealing money but I'm saying if you take out all – my point is like why get greedy when you've got something going? Like he was doing well. He didn't need to be the biggest exchange. He didn't need – Psychopathy. That's the answer. It's just – it's made-off level criminality. That's what it is.

One more thing on the FTX bankruptcy. It was also just news today is that, uh, I don't know if you saw this, but AWS is putting $4 billion into anthropic AI, which the FTX estate owns a big chunk of, uh, they're doing a 1.25 billion to start, uh, but working up to a $4 billion total investment. Uh, and they're going to take uh anthropic and basically uh intertwine it with aws it's going to be the basically the llm inside aws what's the value what's the value what's the how much unfortunately we yeah and um there was

another round earlier this year that Anthropic did that the valuation wasn't disclosed either. But Sam put $500 million into Anthropic in the B round, and people are thinking that's got to be worth at least $2 billion in this round because he has been getting diluted. Like that position has been getting diluted in every subsequent round. But I think it's got to be worth it. The amount of money he's made is mental.

The amount of money that FTX, Alameda, et cetera, criminality or not, that investment being another example, those jets, like every week something pops up. We found a few hundred million dollars here. We found a few hundred million dollars there. It's crazy. But on that note, I think, Scott, we could wrap up the show and see everyone again tomorrow yeah some days uh there's just not that much to dig into yeah but check well there's a lot today it's just what we just did it pretty quickly um nothing too major nothing too exciting um did you

talk about because i know i had to jump off for a few minutes you talked about mike novogratz is a prediction that we'll be seeing an etf before the end of the year we did i think it's just one of those things there's not that much to parse there right we'll see if he's right or we'll see if he's wrong yeah true true by the way check the the let's just be as we end check the tweet i just posted the one i had to jump off for if you supposed it's crazy to think people say these things and like we live in a world where you have uh russia say one of the biggest uh so so the biggest country with the most nuclear warheads saying that the biggest country in europe uh should surrender or cease to exist imagine i told you that two

years ago you'd be thinking i'm off he's a leading politician he's a leading politician though he's not putin right i know everything that comes from them is putin but my first take is imagine if we took like as u.s policy every wild fucking thing but even the wild yeah true true but even the one so he's not just some random politician he is the uh the uh whatever leader the lower house parliament so he's got a pretty senior position but then if if a u.s politician as much as you hate them if they say something even close to what this guy just said, imagine someone says Russia should cease to exist or something along those lines. These guys would lose the vote, would no longer be in parliament. Yeah, exactly. That's pretty extreme.

Now, for me, I think this is more political maneuvering like you'd make a statement like this because the sentiment around the world i don't know if you saw zielinski was in canada and that people were just yelling out get out of our country or something along those lines just criticizing him but just the beginning of the war everyone was praising him so like the sentiment in the west is shifting uh considering the amount of money that's pouring into the war whether you're against it or for it and i think the the russian politicians are playing that game he's trying to ignite more hate more fear among western voters to pressure politicians in the west mainly the us to get out of the support but i know this is a crypto show so kind of we're getting ahead of ourself all right scott i'm gonna i'm gonna wrap up we're good we'll see you tomorrow bro see you everyone