The Wolf Of All Streets - Saylor To Buy $750M Worth Of Bitcoin, An ETF Will Be Approved And You Are Not Bullish Enough!

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart, Bloomberg ETF analysts, have increased their forecast of Bitcoin ETF approval to 65%! I am expecting both analysts to join me to discuss it. In the second part of the show Dan The Chart Guy will join me to discuss some charts: QQQ, SPY, DXY, BTC & etc! ►►MELD MELD will bring to bear the full power of decentralized financial instruments to the masses. Banks are at the heart of the economy, MELD will become a new set of banking tools that are by the people and for the people. 👉 https://bit.ly/meld-early-access  ►►OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $60,000!  👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   Follow guests: Eric Balchunas: https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas James Seyffart: https://twitter.com/JSeyff Dan The Chart Guy: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnqZ2hx679DqRi6khRUNw2g  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.

It's being widely reported that Bloomberg analysts have raised their expectation that a Bitcoin ETF gets approved this year from 50% to 65%. That was about 1% earlier this year. And since we have analysts raising those expectations, of course, we just brought the analysts here to talk to you about it. I've got James Safer from Bloomberg. And then, of course, on the back half, Dan from The Chart Guys to talk about what we're've got James Safer from Bloomberg, and then of course on the back half Dan from The Chart Guys to talk about what we're looking at in the market. It's going to be another amazing stream. I will not

be debating hexagons today. Maybe next week again. Let's go. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of All Streets. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and hit that like button. It's been a crazy week. We've all obviously reviewed the news over and over again. We've got DeFi under major stress with the founder of Curve having to sell off OTC, his coins to cover his loan that he took because he wanted to buy not one, but two mansions. Richard Hart getting attacked by the SEC. Me having multiple conversations with Hexicans.

We had two of them on yesterday. I thought it was a respectful, very interesting conversation. I thought they were great, but honestly, I don't think they really answered my questions. I listened to it again, and I feel like it was a lot of deflection and whataboutism. This is not a criticism. This is what we all do. But every time I asked a question about why Hex was different, they kind of told me why all the other things were the same. So it was fine. So I'd actually like to continue that conversation because I think there might be more there. But moving on to today, someone's literally this guy. Is it just me hearing the echo? I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Anyone else hearing an echo? Echo? Echo? Echo? No. All right. Anyways, seems kind of fine. But today, we've got a lot of news as well. Obviously, Michael Saylor looking at buying potentially

another $750 million worth of Bitcoin and selling shares in MicroStrategy to do this. Elizabeth Warren is tripping once again because that's what she does. She thinks we're all evading taxes and she wants more money from us because it's our money that the government needs because they can just print money. I don't understand it. But anyways, we're going to go ahead and talk ETFs right now. Let's go. I've got James Safer. What's up, man? How are you? are you hey guys how's it going what's going on scott uh not much i'm actually i'm just reading the comments right now and i'm laughing this guy yeah my room has some reverb can't help that but this dude just called it a hexagon standoff

the conversation i guess it's funny that's pretty good yeah yeah maybe i have too much reverb people are very upset about my sound do i I sound good to you, James? You sound fine to me. I mean, before we came on here, I was trying to get my mic to work and I couldn't get it to work. So I just gave up and I'm just using my headphones mic like a like a loser. But you're gaming right now. He's playing Halo or whatever. Call to do. I said Halo. It's like a golden eye. I'll show my age. But, you know, Halo was my game. That was that was my I haven't played video games in a you know. Hey, Halo was my game. That was my, I haven't played video games in a really long time, but Halo was my game. Me neither, but man, did I play the shit

out of Halo. Let's talk about things actually people might care about here. We've got Bitcoin ETF approval odds just got better. Bloomberg analyst, that's you. Yeah, that is me. I mean, I'll just dive in here, right? So we've been covering this. When we came out 50%, we got a lot of people like, oh, yeah, it's a coin toss. It can or won't happen. But really, like, if you look at anyone else, like, TradFi world was upping their odds as high as we were. The crypto world, there was plenty of people saying 100% chance that this was going to happen. That's what we do. Yeah, yeah. We take in new information and we increase our odds accordingly. I don't know if I said it when I was on with you last, but I was probably leading, I was like 51%. If we had to pick one, I was like 51% that this was going to happen this year because too many things were happening. A lot of things involved, BlackRock's involved, this Coinbase SSA, but there's been a few other things recently that have just both non-public that I can't really say, just stuff we're hearing

from different issuers, filers, people on what's going on. And a lot of it is just public. Like one of the key things, the Financial times article with the Brian Armstrong information, where he basically said that the sec went to him and said, you need to delist everything except for Bitcoin is like, in my mind, the first, like, obviously the first thing I think about right now is ETFs. In my mind, it's like the one thing everyone's been like, well, the sec suing Coinbase, why would they allow an exchange that trades Bitcoin to be the one that partners in the surveillance sharing agreement? And the answer really is they don't have a problem with Coinbase and Bitcoin. They don't have a problem with the Coinbase and Bitcoin trading. So that argument just goes out the

window as far as I'm concerned, or maybe not fully, but it's 80% in the rearview mirror, as far as I'm concerned, based on the reporting for the Financial Times there. I'm not sure if you saw this, but that came out. Well, we don't know. Financial Times reported it, but then both Coinbase and the SEC refuted it. So we don't know if that is actually factual or not, but either way, we do know for a fact that the SEC views all of their assets as unregistered securities because it said so in the case. And so it's irrelevant whether that was reported correctly or not. In a perfect world, the SEC wants all unregistered securities delisted. So we do know that that's the case.

But how do you come to like a number like 65 percent? Do you have a model? Is it based on some sort of black magic, Yoda? Yeah, I was joking with people on Twitter the other day. I was like, yeah, I just stick my finger, I lick my finger and I stick it up when I go outside and then we just throw a number out there. But really it's all qualitative.

So we have a team of people. We have litigation analysts. I have people that I talk to. It's really Eric and I that at the end of the day that have to agree on a number that we're willing to publish and put our names behind. And it really is like, if you had to bet and these were the odds, would you take the bet? Like try to figure out that middle ground, right? Like almost like a bookie, like trying to put the odds here on where

most people are and where we are really. Cause I think most people don't believe it's as likely as we do. So that's basically the process. We've tried to make it more automated. We tried to like, look at like, well, if this happens, then this is going to happen. And what are the odds of those different things happening? And like, you just, you could go, you go down like a rabbit hole. That's never ending if you try to do it that way. So, um, one wrong word from some regulator, a pundit changes everything. I mean, like I said, at the beginning, this was 1%. And so we had BlackRock come in and it went from 1% to 50%. Yeah. To be honest, I was honestly higher than 1% because I

thought there was always a chance that somebody would come in and do something or that Congress would come in and figure things out. But really, realistically, we were basically, it was a near 0% chance that anything was going to happen this year as far as we were concerned. I mean, 65% chance by this year is really meaningful at this point. It's August. I mean, we're talking about the next couple of months. What are the chances that, I mean, I'm not even putting a percentage, but can you give us an idea of the dates that these things are likely to happen? Because we've heard August, you know, in two weeks, basically,

was the first one that they were going to have to address. And we've heard dates November, December, and then even as far as March for getting any sort of clarity. Yeah. So I've tweeted out this chart of like, if you look at these filings, they have, there's four dates where the SEC has to basically respond by. So the ARK 21 shares only has three dates left. So that's the one you're talking about gets August 13th. But the SEC, as far as we're concerned, they're going to delay there. They're not going to make a decision on that date. The real date to watch, like the

next big important date, as far as I'm concerned on this front, is going to be when the grayscale opinion drops. So theoretically, it could come Friday at the most recent. Or if you look at one of the other things that we were got more confident in taking a sidetrack here is the SEC just lost a lawsuit in the same court with two of the same judges that Grayscale is suing them for. Great, Grayscale is suing them. And so the same two judges that were on that panel that said the SEC loses and gave victory to CBOE, basically under the similar circumstances, they acted arbitrarily and capriciously. They didn't do things properly. They basically vacated the SEC's decision,

which is likely what we think is going to happen at Grayscale. So that gave us more confidence there. But if you look at the timeline there, that was argued in late October of 2022, and we didn't get the decision until last week. So if that follows the same timeline, we're not going to get a decision on Grayscale until December, which I've talked to our litigation analyst, Elliot Stein. He says that's still pretty unlikely. We should get it in the next month or two. That's a very long timeframe. But just to give you an idea of like, it could come Friday, it could come December in the real grand scheme of things, right? So we don't know, but we think it's going to come before the end of September. But once that decision comes down, if, as we expect, Grayscale wins, the SEC is going to have

to do something, right? So theoretically, they have 45 days to appeal for what's called an en banque hearing, which basically means there's all these judges on the DC Circuit of Appeals. Every court case gets three judges. The SEC can appeal to say, we want all the judges, so that the panel gets way bigger and things like they basically all look at the facts and merits of the case and go ahead again. I don't think the SEC is going to do that. So we'll see. But basically the date to watch is like, we don't have an exact date, but it's like once that filing drops, wait 45-ish days, and then we should at least have something. I mean, there's nothing saying the filing could drop and then the SEC does something a week later. But really, based on the way they've been working, it's probably they're going to take the 45 days. They're going to take every minute

they have. You mentioned Grayscale. I wasn't even planning to talk about this, but this news just dropped four or five days ago. Grayscale claims Coinbase won't work as a Bitcoin ETF surveillance partner. So, dude, sour grapes, I don't know from Grayscale. I think we all understand that Grayscale is positioning that they want this to be an ETF, but probably want it to remain a trust for as long as possible. So that's that sweet, sweet fees they're collecting and their business basically collapses. So is this them basically trying to like punt it to make sure that they're nobody else gets an ETF approved and destroys the GBTC trust? Yes. So I think people got this wrong. So I mentioned a few things, why we got a little

more bullish to that 65%. And this letter was one of them. And I think the media got it wrong. If you read the letter, that's really not exactly what they're saying. They're saying- The media lied? Crazy. I don't think... Some of it's true, right? But the real – the crux of the letter was basically like, look, you don't need this surveillance sharing agreement. Like you approve Bitcoin futures. There's all these other things. We have the CME surveillance sharing.

We have all these other things. It's not necessary for an ETF to be approved. And they were kind of positioning like if this is what gets us over the line, just give us a few days and we'll get it sorted out on our end too. And then they basically, they literally asked for simultaneous approval in that letter to the SEC. So in my note that came out where we went to the 65%, I kind of said, the path of least resistance in this case is like the SEC just approving them all at once, right? So they lose the Grayscale case and just be like, fine, forget it. All nine of you launch an ETF and compete with each other. And if you're competing with BlackRock on that front, it's not something I would want to do if I was at Fern. But obviously,

Matt Hogan, who's one of the high ups at Bitwise, I love this quote from him is ETFs are a winner take most. And that's really the case. It's usually an ETF that takes most of the money for whatever reason, whether it's the cheapest or most liquid or what have you. But then it can get spread around a little bit more. And if we're talking billions, there's plenty of firms that can do just fine if they get a couple hundred million dollars in assets.

I mean, there's multiple ETFs for countless things. So that's obviously been proven. That is a great quote. But it's not just Bitcoin anymore, right? The race for future ETFs for countless things. So that's obviously been proven. That is a great quote. But it's not just Bitcoin anymore, right? The race for future ETFs kicks off with six firms filing SEC applications. Are these guys like in a WhatsApp or a Telegram chat and they're all like, you're going to launch, bro? Like, let's do this. Six at once, basically within a couple of days. So this is also why we've kind of, this is another reason why we've sort of upped our odds to 65 percent, which we haven't really fully discussed publicly. But volatility shares, they filed for an Ethereum futures ETF on Friday.

And I saw that and I was like, what? Because in May, we had four filers tried to launch these and the SEC swatted them away within a week or two weeks. Like they were just like, no shot. This is not happening. So something, so either, so the other part of this is volatility shares is the firm that got the two times Bitcoin futures ETF. So we don't know. So typically the way this works, so the way these spot Bitcoin ETF applications work, they go through this 19 before process, a formal process where they have specific deadlines. The firm submits something, in this case, the exchanges, the SEC comes back and gives them an answer and so forth, right? The 1940 Act ETF, so they have this new rule. It's called the ETF rule, also referred to as 6011 if you want to get real nerdy.

But essentially, it basically made it way smoother for these issuers at the 40 Act products to launch, which means they have a little more regulation behind them is what it comes down to. But the way it normally works is it's kind of just a back channeling conversation between the SEC and these firms. And the SEC is just like, guys, withdraw this. We're not happening. Just don't even bother. Which is funny because if a Bitcoin futures ETF is approved and that is based largely on the CME, well, we have Ethereum futures on the CME. And by the same rationale, futures ETF should be approved.

Yeah, exactly. That's 100% accurate as far as I'm concerned, right? But the SEC kind of has sway. Most people don't want to sue their regulator like Grayscale. I know a lot of people like to downplay Grayscale suing the SEC. But honestly, I'm not sure. Our odds of 65%, I don't think we'd be over 50 if Grayscale hadn't sued the SEC and they weren't going to win. Or we didn't think they

were going to win, I should say. No one knows what's going to happen, but we're pretty confident that that's going to happen. So the combination of that, the BlackRock pressure, some pressure from lawmakers in Congress, all of that is giving us this inkling that something's going to happen. But going back to the Ethereum futures stuff, so volatility shares files on Friday. Our view is that when they launched the Bitcoin, the 2X futures ETF, we're wondering if maybe they played chicken with the SEC, because technically, usually, it's just like the SEC says you have to withdraw this and you do it. But you could basically go down the same route that Grayscale sort of went, or maybe force the SEC to publicly issued, I don't know the technical

wording of what it would be, but it'd be like a cease and desist, like you can't do this in an official manner. Not just like, hey guys, can you withdraw this so we don't have to go through filing those official documents. So one of the things we're guessing is that might've happened with volatility shares and maybe because they filed the theory of futures ETF, they were threatened pushing the same thing. But what it really looks like is there's some sort of pivot at the SEC here because what happened, we don't know exactly when, but we know from multiple issuers and multiple sources, Wall Street Journal, BlockWorks, Ben Strack over at BlockWorks got this out first. We were hearing similar things. The SEC basically came out and said, yeah, we're willing to review these things again, which sounds like, OK, we'll review it, but we're still going to deny them potentially.

But really, when they August and September of 2021, we were saying these Bitcoin futures ETFs are going to launch and everyone and their mother was telling us these things are not going to launch. Yeah, they did. But the language that Gary Gensler used

was very soft. He was like, he said, we look forward to applications of Bitcoin futures ETFs under the 1940 Act. We look forward. That was it. That was all that was said. And that's what gave us the confidence to say, we think these are going to launch. And ultimately by September, we had upped our odds to 75%. And then going into October,

we were way higher than 75, but we never really published anything saying it. But so it's those types of words that you hear from the SEC. Now, the caveat here is we haven't heard those exact words from Gary Gunzer and the SEC, right? We're just we're hearing from other issuers saying they told us we could reapply. We're hearing from the Wall Street Journal and BlockWord saying that they were told to reapply. And that is a very good sign. And honestly, if you had asked me three weeks ago, I said this on multiple podcasts. People like, what about Ethereum? I'm like, the SEC, it may just say absolutely no shot. So obviously something has changed. Yeah. One thing we didn't talk about with the increasing the odds from 50 to 65% was that Gary Gensler for the first time was sort of dismissive and deflected the comments when asked. He was like, guys, there's a committee,

there's other commissioners. I don't necessarily make these decisions. Like this is going to get approved, but I'm going to go. It wasn't on me, man. Yeah. So we, I, I, I was, I said that immediately when I was watching this interview on, um, it was Bloomberg TV, ironically. So the two, the two women interviewing him are, um, my colleagues and people I talk to somewhat frequently um so when they asked him questions the first question was about ripple and he just basically said well we haven't decided i am as you said i'm one of five commissioners and i was like whoa like usually when you hear gary he's like we don't believe this we're not doing this the sec the commission blah blah and

then i'm like okay he's like off he He's trying to offload the blame for that. It's amazing. I mean, to be honest, the SEC didn't completely lose that Ripple case. Crypto Twitter went real positive. Yeah, that's right. Crypto Twitter in, it's crypto in general. It's crypto Twitter that won, James.

And that's all that matters. Yeah, crypto in general won. Honestly, Coinbase ended up better off than anyone after that kind of decision. I totally agree. But then, so then Danny Berger, my colleague in London, asked him and Kaylee, they went to and they asked like, oh, like, what about, let's talk about spot Bitcoin ETFs. You have all these applications in front of you. And he literally said the same exact thing again. Well, I'm one of five commissioners. I was I was I was watching this. I'm like, what is going on? And I never admitted there's four other commissioners and that they have any input. I mean, Hester Peirce has been like yelling from the back of the room. I literally I literally went back and rewatched it like three times. And like I use that I use those quotes in my my my speech.

But he said here, let me see if I can actually find it. He's going to find it. I feel like I can find it. I'm in suspense. I'm ready. Oh, yeah. Here here here he goes. These are the two quotes he goes. So on the ripple when he said, great question. But the commission, I'm one of five commissioners. And the commission has not acted on that. And if the stacks make a recommendation, we'll have a discussion on it and we'll take it up then. I mean, the Ripple decision was a while ago. If the staff hasn't figured out and the commission hasn't figured out what to do. I think there's probably, my tinfoil hat theory is there's a little bit pushback from the other commissioners, maybe a democratic commissioners, like guys, we got to like figure this out a little bit better. Yeah. Yeah. Because you have to go in ETF and then we don't have to address these crypto lunatics for like another six months. Yeah. You have Hester person, you ate a, who are publicly dissenting very publicly

and very aggressively dissenting. So all it takes is one or one of the other Democratic commissioners, not necessarily to say like, Gary, you can't do this to be like, all right, we got to, let's figure a little something else out. We can't just, this path isn't working. So that's my tinfoil hat theory, but we'll see. And then the next quote was, so they asked about the filings, and he said, those filings do ultimately come up to a five-member commission, and so I can't prejudge any filing. So one, he goes back to that, and then he also started using that prejudge word and language after Jake and I forget whatever policy institute they worked for, but they submitted basically saying Gary has prejudged all these decisions. He should recuse himself. And he said prejudge multiple times too, which is unique, which I didn't write about because that's not my space to write about really. But that's also interesting to watch. Gary's on the ropes, guys. And finally,

before I let you go really quick, because it wasn't enough to talk about Bitcoin ETFs and ETH ETFs, we have TradFi giant Direxion, which by the way, I think was the bad guy's name in Halo, joins crypto ETF race by filing for combined Bitcoin and Ether Futures fund. Yeah. So there's nine total filings that have come out. So one came out on Friday, that was the volatility shares. And then there's a gap. Nothing came out really on Monday, and they all came out on Tuesday. So something, I'm guessing the SEC said something on that Monday after the filing, but there was a couple others, the two others that came out Wednesday. That's what you're talking about. So Direction and ProShares both filed for those. The interesting part here is like, usually it's a clock and the clock for

volatility shares ends on October 11th. And the clock for the other ones, the Ethereum futures ETFs that were all filed on Tuesday is October 15th, but October 15th. And the clock for the other ones, the Ethereum futures ETFs that were all filed on Tuesday is October 15th. But October 15th is a Sunday, so it gets bumped to the 16th theoretically when they would go live. And then also the pro shares and direction Bitcoin, Ethereum futures dual filings also have that October 16th date. So we could have, theoretically one, the SEC could delay and have all these go at lunch or once or they'll let volatility shares go first on October 11th if they approve these. But we could get literally nine of these. There's a world where we get nine Ethereum futures ETS. Two of those have Bitcoin in them as well. And like eight or nine spot Bitcoin ETS launching within a couple of weeks of each other, which, again, if you had

asked me two weeks ago, I would have put those odds at near zero percent. But something seems to have changed in the way the SEC is viewing this. And honestly, my view and one of my arguments that I've been making for this is like specifically for Bitcoin, it's the one thing that Gary and the SEC doesn't say is the security. Like they're going after all these other alt tokens, rightfully so in some cases, like the hex coins, but we don't need to go down that route. But like Bitcoin is the one thing they're not worried about. It's the one thing they say is a commodity. It's the one thing they say isn't a security.

And then you also have things like Ethereum where they won't comment on it, but it's obviously not in the same group as the alt coins. So what I'm guessing might be happening is the sec is kind of going like what there's no reason like if we can't even win the ripple case outright like what are our odds of an ethereum type case so we might as well just like kind of like these put this other these other two things bitcoin ethereum in a separate area mainly i view Bitcoin as a tier all its own, then Ethereum. You could argue maybe some other stuff like Litecoin and some Bitcoin Cash, which obviously I'm not a true believer in or might be in that same sort of bucket. But a lot of these other newer altcoins, the SEC can just ignore.

So, yeah, I have Bitcoin on one tier, Ethereum in another tier, and then there's a huge gap to everything else that the SEC is worried about. But for a while, I viewed it not as essentially tier one, tier two. I viewed Ethereum as in this no man's land. But based on what we've seen the last week, I'm thinking Ethereum might have just separated a bit from typical altcoin conversations at the SEC. Love it. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. I know that you jumped off a meeting earlier that you could potentially get fired just for coming to talk to us. No, no, no. James, one day I'm going to send you like an old school Xbox and we're going to try to get them online and we're going to go head to head on some Halo.

I have an Xbox 360, but it's had the ring of death for like nine years now. Yeah, there's no such xbox 360 but hey we're gonna make it work man thank you so much for your time i appreciate the insight yep thanks for having me scott all right man etf mania it's a rain in etfs that doesn't that didn't work particularly well imagine if we get like 18 etf approvals on halloween or some random that would be absolutely insane i do have a bunch more news but i'm going to just go to dan we're going to talk first we're going to look at the charts and then at the end so i don't have to keep him waiting too long i will go back through the

rest of the news there's a michael saylor video i want to show you because he's an epic giga mega chad of hugely proportions uh the word is bigly not hugely right uh but we will circle back to that because i do want to dive in with dan as the market's open and we get to take a look at what's happening here. How are you, man? Good. How are you doing? I'm doing great. So I know that you don't care about ETFs or if they get approved. You're looking at the charts.

But, hey, I know you find it interesting. You always show up and watch in the wings, which I find awesome. What are you looking at, in the markets? Do you think that any of this fundamentally is going to matter or do you think that right now you can check the chart and kind of get an idea of what's happening? Yeah, that was great from James. I struggled to stay on top of it. There's so many headlines that keep coming out, but that was a nice succinct summary. So I feel like I'm up to speed. Spot ETFs would definitely matter, in my opinion. I do believe that that would lead to some buying pressure, not only from the people that would respond to the headline initially, but then, you know, the possibility that buying of those ETFs help support higher prices as well.

So definitely worth paying attention to. But again, as always, as you mentioned, the charts are where the most important information lies. And right now there's a couple of similar patterns in Bitcoin that are shaping up to the previous consolidation that we had seen back in May into June. And it's really a potential falling wedge pattern. So pulling up my screen here, I'm watching something very similar where, you know, this right here, we had a sideways boring week, and then we broke bare with zero follow through. And anytime I see a support or resistance break with zero follow through, I start keeping an eye out for a wedge. And patterns are often, you know, little fractals within each other. And so we look back to when we bounced the last time around after weeks of consolidation, and it was a pretty similar falling wedge where, again, the characteristic of the falling wedge is

that you break support straight into a bounce, you break support into a bounce, you break support into a bounce. And then we finally got that big move off of those lows. And so here we have, again, you break support, not really a bounce, more just sideways, but this was more of a bounce. So again, just opening them up to the possibility of this being a falling wedge, because for me, on the weekly timeframe, a higher low is the most likely scenario considering where we came from. And in an ideal world for the bulls, we hold this weekly EMA 12 to ensure that this consolidation retracement doesn't get too significant, because if it gets more significant, then that opens the door for a lower high,

whereas we want to see a higher low that leads to continuation. So over the next week or two, we're going to continue watching this and knowing that the bulls, you know, we need to show up pretty soon here. So let's get to it. But still the burden on bulls at this point. Yeah, I like the wedge because, I mean obviously, you can also kind of draw the more bearish scenario. There's a four hour just to look at it. But is that obviously kind of broke support on this range. But that's always what happens as you get into a wedge.

Yeah, it's definitely, you know, if you're a bull, you're cautious. And that was the same as the last time around. It was definitely this could be a bullish pattern. We're anticipating, you know, a higher low is the most likely scenario, but we have to be cautious. It's really tricky to trade these wedges because by definition, you take out support, you trigger the stop losses, and then you don't go anywhere. So for newer traders, they're extremely frustrating because again, by definition, it's, you know, it hunts those stops and then bounces right after, which is, you know, a newer trader's nightmare. Yeah. So listen, outside of Bitcoin, because we've beat it to death. I know you're watching SPY and QQQ and what's happening in the other markets because we did have that downgrade yesterday,

which was followed by then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or Freddie Mae and Fannie Mae Mac, Mac, Miggity Miggity Mac Daddy. I don't know. Them being downgraded as well. So there's a real fundamental crack here in the economy. And I'm actually surprised that markets didn't react more dramatically to this because they have in the past, like in 2011. But, you know, what are you watching there? Yeah, it was notable just in the sense that, you know, this is the first confirmed daily downtrend in QQQ in like three months.

So whenever that happens, we want to say, OK, things are shifting because if we trade in a market environment that is characteristic of a strong uptrend, we have to recognize the shift in that. And so we don't keep trading the same way because we have to adjust our trading styles. And so with the loss of this uptrend and the confirmed downtrend, that for me means more open to bearish swing trades, more cautious as a bull and open to the possibility that we see some weeks of consolidation here. And one thing that is something that I'm watching because I've been very interested in metals recently, but the dollar and this pertains to Bitcoin as well. I don't think enough crypto traders are watching the dollar because there is a significant inverse correlation between Bitcoin and the dollar where just very simply the dollar has been bouncing for three weeks and Bitcoin has

been consolidating for three weeks. And you'll find that pattern very often. And the one thing to remember with correlations is the strength of them. It's almost like a current in the ocean. It's there. It shifts. But sometimes it's stronger. Sometimes it's weaker. But it's always worth keeping an eye on. So, you know, if you're a Bitcoin bull or a gold bull, you really want to see the dollar top out here shortly.

And this bounce is definitely a bit concerning because if we were to confirm a weekly uptrend as a result of this bounce, that would be a notable shift in the dollar weakness into some eventual dollar strength, which is not what the bulls want to see. So for you, that peak right there, I mean, it's like 104. Would it be this making a higher high there, whichever whichever way you draw it? You know what I mean? Is that how you would kind of confirm? You talked about, obviously, a confirmed downtrend for QQQ. I think you were looking at that, I assume, means because it made that lower low for the first time, right? Correct. So here, DXY could still be bearish as long as it doesn't make a higher high. Yeah. And I look back to, you know, back here in February, it was a big

bounce there as well. And the bulls had a chance to, you know, confirm a trend change off of that, and they were unable to do so so you know we're still in a downtrend as far as anything for me under 103.54 would be a lower high if we break that level we're very likely to form a weekly higher low next consolidation if we don't break that level it's possible we drop to lower lows but it would be the kind of you know wait and see and observe over the next few weeks and i I think the dollar chart in August is going to be the weekly chart is going to be one of the more important charts to be watching regarding all markets. Again, metals, crypto and even the stock market. Sounds to me like this is a scary time to take either side with any sort of conviction.

I mean, that's kind of how I've been viewing it, because like you have this sort of massive run. So you may be trying to catch the end of that if you're a bull, but if it's going to continue, you're going to end up shorting what's probably the consolidation for another leg up. So it's sort of the worst time to be in the market with any conviction if you're actually trying to aggressively trade it. Yeah. I mean, this is, you know,

this is the bears getting there the most conviction as far as the NASDAQ and the S and P 500, the bears getting their most conviction that they've the NASDAQ and the S&P 500. The bears getting their most conviction that they've seen in the last couple of months. So there are definitely some traders that are now more aggressively going bearish. But as you mentioned, we know a shorter term timeframe confirming a downtrend very often just leads to a longer term timeframe, higher low. So I'm open to the potential that we eventually get some monthly consolidation. I mean, so many of these charts, whether it's NVIDIA or whatever, that's just been so strong all year.

We're going to have to see monthly consolidation eventually. But there's tons of space for a monthly higher low to be the result of that consolidation. Yeah, I totally agree. So are you actively trading this right now? Or is this one of those like hands below, but sit on them for a while thing? I shorted yesterday. Definitely. You know, having the narrative helps just psychologically. You think about the market and you know, the market has over the past two months gotten trained to buy the dip and to be, you know, more and more people go into the bull side of the boat. And I

never liked when everybody's on one side of the boat because that's when the boat tips. But it's, you know, I was, I was more open to going bears because when you have that narrative, it justifies the move. Whereas, you know, for most people, they see the market down 2%. And if it's a technical move with no fundamental reason, they're more, a lot more likely to buy that dip and be comfortable. And if there's a, oh, there's a headline, there's a reason I'm not going to buy this dip so the bears can run with it a little bit more. So again, I am more open to bears. Just an example, you know, like this Netflix chart, just charts that have been running all year. And I look at the Netflix weekly timeframe and say, well, if Netflix confirms this weekly

downtrend, I mean, look at the long-term four month chart for me, the most likely scenario here. Well, that's a new arrow yeah have you seen this new arrow thing the arrows used to be it's so annoying the arrows used to be like with the brushes and the rectangles and stuff and now the arrows have their own thing over there yeah that's new for me anyways I love it so we can do that big arrow I don't know why I want that but hey whatever for me the most likely scenario is a longer term lower high just because of the size of the dump and granted it's a big old bounce on netflix and this is just one example you know meta there's a lot of these charts and nice sell on meta by the way but uh a four month lower high is a possibility for a tightening range whenever we see massive

volatility in both directions i look for equilibriums and tightening ranges because you go from volatility to tightening ranges so often in markets. And so I'm watching for it on the longer term timeframes. Yeah. I mean, as you're talking, I'm just clicking through the few sort of stock charts that I have up here. SPX, bearish divergence, massively overbought. QQQ, bearish divergence, massively overbought. Meta was the one I can see now it's getting bearish divergence while it's massively overbought. This looks across the board like it's very due for a correction to me. Yeah, it's just a question of how much.

We'll watch the retracement size. We'll watch the amount of volume behind it. One thing for me, as I mentioned in a previous stream, is do we see all major sectors with QQQ, XLF Financials, XLV Healthcare, do they all drop to the lows at the same time, which show mean money leaving the market as opposed to rotation? Because even yesterday, the big red day, healthcare was still a little bit green and flat most of the day, wasn't selling off. So I'm watching to see, bears will gain confidence if we see all major sectors dropping together. Awesome, man. Thank you so much for joining and for your time and insight every week.

I'm going to be gone next week. So I'll see you in two weeks. Me too. It works out perfect. So yeah, two weeks. Perfect. We'll see you guys in two weeks. Thank you, Dan. Everybody follow the chart, guys, of course. Thanks a lot, Scott. All right. Yeah, guys, like I said, we do have a bit more news that I wanted to get through and I didn't want to make Dan sit through it for too long there. Always appreciate his insight. And it was great to have James there at the beginning. So what we're looking at here, obviously, Bitcoin whale Michael Saylor might buy a lot more BTC. Well, first of all, he did just buy a lot more BTC.

I don't have the numbers here right in front of me, but he did. He actually raised his cost basis once again. I think they bought around $30,800 this time. Once again, a local top, but who cares? But they're planning to sell up to $750 million of stock to buy more Bitcoin. He didn't say exactly to buy more Bitcoin. We're kind of jumping to conclusions, said, you know, buy things they need for the business, blah, blah, blah. But he means buy more Bitcoin.

Incredible that he's willing to sell more stock to do that. But MicroStrategy has been wildly outperforming even Bitcoin, I think, this year. Right. I mean, let's look at the 2023 low 132. It's currently at 397, topped at 475. I mean, we're talking about three and a half times up from the bottom. Bitcoin didn't even 2x. So if you've been looking for a way to effectively trade Bitcoin with leverage, MicroStrategy has been a huge way to do it. Sell off $750 million more here. Flip it into Bitcoin suite. Let's see what Michael Saylor had to say himself on video about buying more Bitcoin. I have you with us. If I look at MicroStrategy's total Bitcoin holdings right now, currently stands at nearly 153,000 Bitcoin. Nearly 500 of that came just since June 30th. When you think about the Bitcoin acquiring strategy, what might that number total in the quarters to come? Well, our goal is to accumulate as much Bitcoin as we can on behalf of our shareholders. And, you know, we acquired from cash flows. We bought that last tranche with

$14.4 million worth of company cash. We also use equity and debt issuances from time to time. So we try to make sure that everything we do is always a creative. So we will acquire as much Bitcoin as we can as long as market conditions allow us to do it in a creative way for our common stock shareholders. Well, it was interesting that we also saw an 8K come out after the earnings report yesterday, which seems like a way to really tap into the rally that we've seen in the shares so far this year. I believe MicroStrategy up over 200 percent. What's the plan there? What will you use that theoretically for if you do sell shares? our use of proceeds generally is just to acquire Bitcoin. So Bitcoin is up one hundred and forty five percent since August 10th of twenty twenty three years ago when we started on the strategy. And we've pursued a strategy of of levered Bitcoin investment. So we use cheap capital. Our average cost of capital is like one point six percent or something in that range. And the combination of leverage and then offering our shareholders a yield, we don't charge them a fee to manage this Bitcoin. We actually aim to generate a yield. That's allowed us to actually generate 254% performance in the same time that Bitcoin was up 145%.

So our strategy is sort of levered long, offer a yield, don't charge a fee, and then actively manage our position and actively manage acquisitions and financings between equity, debt, and cash flows in order to get the best result for our shareholders. I love this guy. Actively managed usually in the TradFi world means buy, sell, short hedge. For him, actively managed means sell other shit so I can buy as much Bitcoin as possible that I'm never going to sell. That's what I call active management.

That's what I call being an absolute gigachad. I love this guy. You should love this guy. He's doing it for the culture. And by culture, I mean clout shareholders and Bitcoiners worldwide. I mean, how can you not love it? People can say whatever they want about it. It's working. Their stock is massively up. It's just amazing. And you want to see someone who you also love just as much as MicroStrategy appear on your screen right now? Here it is. Oh, no. It's Elizabeth Warren.

She wants a demanding a crackdown on the crypto tax evaders because everybody made so much fucking money in crypto last year. You hag. Nobody made any money in crypto last year. This is a joke. We all know that we're all having fun staying poor. Nobody took any profits. Everything's going to zero. We're not making any money. But she said the IRS and the Treasury are coming up against a deadline and Democrats have little patience left.

Now, to be fair, she is just asking for a rule, a law basically, a ruling that was enacted two years ago to be put into practice, to be put into practice. So nearly two years have passed since the law was enacted. And that's the one that's going to close tax loop holes for rich crypto investors

we probably lost other money on celsius or voyager block by anyways but nearly two years have passed since law was enacted and the implementation deadline is less than six months away but treasury has yet to publish proposed rules funny that she's putting pressure on janet yellen aka lloyd christmas with the sweet haircut to go all in against crypto here. And Janet has bigger problems like the United States being downgraded by Fitches. I don't think that they care much about crypto at the moment, but research suggests that crypto tax evaders

are cheating the IRS out of at least 50 billion a year. The figure may be much higher. It could be like 50 trillion for all we know. It could be $70 trillion, gajillion, bazillion if we don't do our research. No, the research says it was $50 billion and that's based on research in years where people actually made money.

But guess what, guys? Most people are just paying their taxes and she can shut the front door. U.S. prosecutors worry Binance charges could cause run-on exchanges. Interesting. This is coming from Semaphore, a very reliable news source that is literally partially owned by Sam Bankman Freed. Just saying. Just saying. But anyways, this is a very strange story. I've asked kind of a few lawyers about it. DOJ apparently would like to charge Binance,

according to this, with fraud and other things, but they're worried that it could cause a bank run on Binance. The SEC never worried about hurting retail with their cases. I'll tell you that. All they did was just passively name a bunch of altcoin securities so that those would crash and kill retail because the SEC and Gary Gensler have done more to hurt retail crypto investors than literally any of these actual scammers, criminals, or negligent dicktards. But there's some things to parse here. So first of all, I don't think the DOJ does not bring charges on someone because they're worried about this, right? So I think that this is probably pushing towards fake news-ish. But interesting, if true, that they

would be concerned about that. B, you don't worry about a bank run unless you're actually worried that a platform is insolvent because if there was a bank run on something that's fully backed you don't even worry about it this story just reeks of fake news i don't know none of it's making much sense so it is what it is and then finally guys litecoin plunges six percent freshly monthly lows on halving day. Yes, the Litecoin halving, the third Litecoin halving happened yesterday. Too much fanfare. 17 people partied. Charlie Lee sold the top years ago. Probably doesn't care that much. No, Charlie's awesome. I played poker with Charlie. He won. But yeah, it went down,

right? Had a run and then it dropped, but that's what happens. Here's the weekly candle right here. Like when still looking pretty good, putting in a series of higher lows here and higher highs. But yeah, guys, we all know that the halving is a sell the news type of event the day it happens because it takes time for the supply reduction to actually matter. I wrote about this in my newsletter this morning. I never even talked to you guys about my newsletter, literally like, guys, no, I write a free newsletter. I get up at four o'clock in the morning to write this five days a week,

like literally every single weekday. And now I'll say that and I'll probably take a week off for like the first time on the newsletter next week. But yeah, I mean, I wrote a whole, like I did a whole thing, the other having, and I wrote about it. We've got mailed in there. They're up there in the corner. Also you can check that out. But yeah, I wrote all about what this means and how there's actually been real adoption of Litecoin over the years and how it continues to just sort of chug along and be relevant.

Yeah. So you guys, I talk about other things and I think it's cool. I think it's cool, but we all know that, you know, if you look at having cycle charge it takes a couple months for it to really matter for that supply to go down that is what it is yeah checkout nailed by the way but but but more separately got 25 minutes till twitter spaces apparently today's twitter space is i'm going to share this chat i shouldn't't. I shouldn't because I'm being mean. But it's about NFTs and the future of NFTs. And I love to mock. I actually think NFTs are cool, but I do love to mock them just sort of sarcastically. And they're like, what should the title of today's spaces be? I can't tell you the actual words, but I wrote in all caps. And it was while I was talking to Dan, to be honest. I said, NFTs are fucking was while i was talking to dan to be honest i said nfts are fucking stupid we are talking to the dumb asses but it's uh that's not really how i feel it's just a joke in a chat

but we are doing a bunch of apparently huge nfters they sent me this list show you how out of touch i am they're like these are the people that are joining they're huge nfters i've literally never seen any of them so i'm actually going in with an open mind as usual i'm going to listen and see why nfts could possibly come back um maybe i will watch from my house in the sandbox metaverse next to snoops that i bought for four million dollars i'm just kidding i never bought land in the metaverse i told you that shit was stupid you know if you buy land in the metaverse, they can just open a different metaverse and make more, more land, not the same as land here.

But anyways, guys, you should show up because you guys listen, I make my jokes, but I think I have proven, especially this week that I'm very open-minded and we'll listen to anyone make their points. I enjoyed Gary Brandon yesterday.

I just didn't get the answers. I want it. It doesn't mean I won't continue to seek them. A lot of what they said was true, but they were sort of making the case against proof of stake and for proof of work if I was actually listening to it genuinely, and that we probably have problems with a lot of different platforms and not just theirs. Michael says, if you want crypto to flourish, you need to elect RFK or Vivek and not another dinosaur. If we want anything to flourish, we need to vote for someone young, by the way. I love that now RFK, who I like a lot. You guys know that I interviewed him two weeks ago.

A week ago. Anyways, he's the gold standard for youth at 70. I think he's 69 years old. Not a young man. But Suarez also is pro-Bitcoin. I think Vivek hasn't figured it out yet. His comments at the Miami Bitcoin conference seemed like he was doing the DeSantis thing

where he was just sort of using it as a talking point and didn't really understand it. But I don't hold people accountable for that. It means they're willing to learn. That's a good thing. It's the biggest problem that Bitcoin maxis have, right? They'll be like, this guy doesn't understand it. Fuck this guy. You're like, dude, dude welcome him he's trying to help you know anyways

that's all i've got i'm gonna go talk about jpegs you guys are more than uh welcome to join more than welcome to join that's all i got for you guys I will see you on the morrow in a fortnight on hithereth theneth see you guys tomorrow peace