The Wolf Of All Streets - SEC Backs Off. Is This the Big Unlock? #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

In this Crypto Town Hall episode, the panel dives into the major SEC/CFTC joint guidance classifying most crypto assets (including 16 major tokens like XRP, Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, Chainlink, and others) as non-securities, providing long-awaited clarity and a token taxonomy with five categories. They discuss the implications for builders, innovation, potential safe harbors, and how this shifts away from regulation-by-enforcement while highlighting that tokenized securities remain under SEC oversight. Despite the bullish regulatory step, markets sold off amid FOMC expectations, geopolitical tensions (Iran war/oil volatility), and broader macro concerns like PPI inflation data. The conversation also covers Bitcoin's resilience, altcoin fatigue, oil's outsized influence on risk assets, and why immediate liquidity and clear value accrual remain key challenges for many tokens.

Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Yesterday, we saw an announcement from the CFTC and SECC that effectively creates what they call token taxonomy, meaning that most of the major cryptos are not securities, and they laid out what would be a security, what would not be, when it's an investment contract, when it isn't. And the biggest issue that people in the industry are facing is, will this be? codified, could it be undone, and what will the rules be around all the various categories as we move forward? That said, it's a big deal. And of course, given the fact that we have an FOMC meeting today and we have a war going on, the market doesn't seem to care. And we sell off.

Is it a sell off on the news, et cetera, you know, whatever it is. But there's a lot to talk about today. And it is, it's one of those things that it's so logical what they effectively have said that it is very hard to both underestimate it. It's also very hard to say that this is what is absolutely necessary. So, you know, there's been there's many takes. Most people are basically happy. You know, it ranges from the ex-RP army saying, yeah, hey, you know, we told you, you know, Ethereum, et cetera, you know, there's no longer Ethereum special or Bitcoin special, et cetera, et cetera. But it is going to be one of those things that as things, you know, march forward, you will end up with a regime in the United States that will allow for

crypto innovation. What form it takes is a different story. And we have a lot of people up here today. I don't have a particular concern. You know, we could talk about what the market's doing. We can talk about that. I don't see any lawyers or any hands up here. We're trying to see if I can get met a lawman to join us because I know he's been commenting about this sort of thing. But the truth is, is it will matter. Because investment, like certainty and a lot of money that has been sideliner left the united states to go to various places uh is you know could potentially come back particularly given the you know what's going on in the middle east and what's going on in the uae right now so it's an interesting time william

what are your thoughts yeah a quick read on the document on that document and it is quite a complex document, it really requires careful reading. What I took out of it is that it is somehow biased towards infrastructure, meaning that what they are saying is the safest tokens look like infrastructure. So most of the, if not all of the examples they gave were infrastructure tokens. And they are saying the riskiest ones look like a business. And it's, it's, they did give a pass to those that have already been out, as you know, but it doesn't mean that the road is clear going forward. It was illegal interpretation, basically.

And you still have to do your homework. And what I'm a bit worried about is what's going to happen to experimentation. I was hoping that they would allow tokens to experiment. a little bit more, maybe for one, two, three years, like a safe harbor. There was no safe harbor included in this particular note. So I wonder if that's going to come later. I would like to see more leniency towards experimentation beyond just infrastructure. Well, yeah, I thought I saw another release or another.

headline that they were going to be putting in certain safe harbors. I mean, I think that there's a lot of work to be done, William, the safe harbor, you basically need the taxonomy first, and then depending on who has the authority, both the CFTC, which has effectively no regulatory infrastructure whatsoever for non-derivatives will need to create rules and a regime. and the SEC will need to, in all likelihood, either use safe harbors or no actions, but most likely rewrite a few of the rules that effectively make it very, very hard for securities. Because one of the things they do want is, and Paul Atkins has said this repeatedly, is he wants to allow for tokenized securities, not just tokenization of stocks,

but also tokens that provide value to investors to have a path to the market. market and right now we all understand that there's a variety of reasons why being called a security is quote a death sentence. So that that has to follow up. I mean, the one thing that I'll say is there's a lot of work to be done and they have three years to do it. And then that's not easy. I mean, you may think the three years is a lot of time, but in SEC parlance, not really. It takes just the public comment period alone once they've actually created a rule can make a rule take two, three, four years to get implemented. So it's going to be difficult. Brian, let's see your hand up. Hey, yes. I was just going to say Atkins was speaking yesterday. He said the SEC will

propose a formal rule to implement this interpretation in a week or two, and that proposal will include a safe harbor. So I do think it is coming. I guess more generally, to me, like this is pretty massive. So, I mean, this is super obvious, but, you know, we're finally providing, like, clear guidance for builders, innovatives, and entrepreneurs, and we're moving away from this regulation by enforcement regime that we had for so long. It also proclaimed that most crypto assets are not securities, so builders can be confident that they're not running afoul of securities laws. I also think that this enables non-security crypto assets that were sold as part of an investment contract to cease being part of an investment contract. And so I'm not a lawyer, but I think there's

some potential for them to stop being securities once the sale and delivery of the tokens actually occurs. And then it also obviously clarified mining, staking and wrapping activities and airdrops, which I think will be important. The devil will be in the details. It'll take a while to flush out. But I think like they're obviously moving on it. And then lastly, I actually think this can actually help clarity pass. I think they're providing this rule-based framework for key issues, and the SEC will implement this, you know, pretty soon with the formal rule proposal in a week or two, which I actually think could spur Congress to want to have more input via legislation. So I'm looking at this as pretty massive progress and a really big step forward for the industry.

Yeah, I think that it is a big step. Obviously, there's more steps to go. The interesting, point that you just made about will it help get clarity done? I mean, I think that the Democrats are smart enough at this point, you know, smart, clever, whatever, non-self-destructive enough to know that pushing innovation offshore is probably a bad idea. And one way or another, you know, it's a question of the banks, this whole stable coin yield thing is just, it annoys me because it's such a silly issue in, you know, fully. But, you know, we'll see, uh, we'll see, uh, we'll, see how it is. I mean, the fact is that the crypto side does have money, the popular, the real thing they don't want to have happen is be able to be tagged by being obstreperous in, for this,

while all the major firms have already gone to adopt it. I mean, the PR on this is, is complex. I mean, Austin, I was trying to put, thank you for the hand, Austin, because I literally want it was trying to poke you. I don't really want to talk about the Vanity Fair article, But what are your thoughts here rather than me putting words in your mouth? Yeah. So one thing I would say is money does not solve your problems as a lobby if you're misaligned with what the voters want, right? I think this has been one of the great misunderstandings, not just for crypto, but for people in general, which is to say money is an accelerant. If what you're doing is in line with what people want to align with what's popular, money to push the message will help.

Right. So when you saw stand with crypto seeing major gains around how odious like Gensler was being, okay, this makes total sense to me. Most people found that really bad. But I would say many of the specific concerns around clarity are much more niche and much more fragmentary. And I would also tell you one of the big bug bears for the Democrats, which is the ethics thing around World Liberty and Trump, is not like a clean issue in the way that Gensler's thing was that's going to divide a super majority on one side. So I think, you know, as we're looking at the possibility of clarity passing, getting good rules in a taxonomy to answer some of of these questions definitely is helpful. What I don't know, Dave, is does it solve some of the core problems around the ethics thing, or does it really solve the problem with the bank lobby? That I have some doubts about, if that makes sense.

No, it does. I mean, look, well, the bank, let's let's talk about the ethics thing because there's an, whether or not the administration will go for it is, is the real issue. There is such an obvious grand bargain that basically would, you know, in terms of insider trading on stocks as well at the same time as issuance of crypto and, you know, banning, you know, politicians or elected politicians or candidates from issuing, you know, meme tokens. Now that there's a taxonomy, it's, becomes way easier to define that because you need the legal taxonomy to do that. But it would seem to me that an obvious grand bargain would make sense. Now, World Liberty is different because that's a operating business. And it's hard to understand, has there ever been? Because there's been many, many politicians, you know, presidents, you know, senators, whatever, have children, relatives who run operating businesses. And it's hard to understand how that is any different.

different than anything else. But in terms of issuing like a Trump token or Melania token or a this token or that token that is directly aligned to the what with the NIL, name, whatever I forgot, the I stands for in likeness, you know, of the politician. That would seem to be an easy do, right? I mean, I don't know if anyone would go for it, but I mean, you know, is that even being talked about or are they just that they have to get through the banking issues before they even get there? I think right now they have to get through the banking issues because if it dies on the banking issues, that's much less politically contentious than if it dies on the ethics issues. So you've got to clear that rock first.

I think the hard part on the ethics side is there's probably some compromise to be made in the Senate that would tie in, call it, federal non-ownership of crypto projects along with reforms around things like congressional stock trading. and we've seen comments around that standpoint moving out into the world. I think there is a bargain there. But Dave, you hit the nail on the head. Would the president then sign that if it forces him to divest from all the crypto ventures or his family? Because, yeah, I mean, the Torres Amendment has written is probably unconstitutional, but you can add language around acting in concert, then the Trumps have a problem. So that's the one where, as I watch clarity moving, I don't think the SEC efforts help with that.

And I haven't seen anything that's an unlock. Yeah, but the one point that is important is this taxonomy, as well stated as it is, it would be really hard for a future SEC to undo this, to go back to what Gensler did and basically say, okay, we were just kidding, businesses that are now planning based upon the fact that you can be an investment contract and there's a clear path to not being it. You know, once rules are proposed and are final, undoing a rule, it's been done before. But every time I know that it's been done has been because there's been a reason or a demonstrable change. Because if there isn't a demonstrable change, I mean, once again, too bad that there's no, none of the lawyers are up here. Without that, it's really hard. I mean, like, things like there used to be an uptick rule on short selling. But, you know, that doesn't really affect people's business, you know, and then they got rid of it and they put in reg show.

And I was involved in all of that. So I remember it happening. I can't think of any time the SEC has ever reversed something that businesses depended upon. I mean, can you? Can anybody? Only some of the post-2008 guidance purely because they actually wanted them to stop doing a lot of that stuff. Right. But it wasn't, so I think that, you know, look, clarity, we talk about why is clarity important?

Clarity is important because there are certain sets of businesses that banks, compliance departments, are telling their people, listen, we can't do this until it's in law. But it depends on which pieces, right? You know, that's really the thing that matters. I mean, if you're talking about you're trying to, if the SEC tells FINRA, you should approve broker dealers to be able to trade non-securities so that they can trade both crypto and and and securities on the same platform. I mean, for those who don't know, Robin Hood, for example, quite famously offers both, but they do so through an unrelated affiliate that's not FINRA regulated. And, you know, if their guidance changes, that's a very big unlock because I don't think you're going to be, that's one of those things that you can't undo it once it's done.

So, I guess we'll see. Anybody else care any more about what's going on with this act and where it goes? I mean, William, you know. Yeah, just a quick comment because you mentioned World Liberty. I'm not sure what you had in mind, but based on that framework, word liberty would be in the site of the SEC and would not pass any of these tests because the question becomes about, looking at the spectrum of economic dependence and profit expectation.

And that project is definitely run with that expectation and very centrally. So it would not, so I wonder like, what's going to happen to WLFI? Well, I think from my perspective, I think World Liberty is in the same boat as several other tokens. when they, this is the thing, the drum I'm always beating on, which is at which point is there a clear expectation of value and clear disclosure to investors and tokens what the value is coming from. And to the extent that it's correlated to, you know, to revenues that are being earned by a company or a foundation, or even if it's a distributed set of revenues, it is hard to understand in this taxonomy

and how it wouldn't be a digital security, which is why that safe harbor matters so much and why the actual rules are going to matter. That's my take. I don't know if that's true or not, but I'm curious. I mean, we need to see the rule proposal that's supposedly coming before we get there.

I mean, this was basically the announcement, but the devil's going to be in the details. At least I think so. Okay, so FOMC today and markets down. I mean, today we have a day that it's, the correlations are weird, right? You know, oil is up and is everything else down? Well, gold is certainly down and Bitcoin is down. You know, stock markets are, they're soft, but they're not down that much.

But it seems to be that everything is, it's oil versus everything else. But, you know, is there anything the FOMC can say today that matters? I mean, or is every, or all eyes on the war. I mean, Mike, you know, obviously, Mike McGlone, you're up here. obviously, you know, oil prices or what everyone is worrying about as well as infrastructure and what's going on. I'm curious, does anyone really care? I mean, the expectation is they're going to do nothing.

The dot plot's going to basically be frozen in amber, and you're probably not going to hear a whole heap. Oh, yeah, Dave, you nailed it. No one cares about FOMC. It's all about Cruehl right now. And just what's happening today, and even this year is remind me that old mantra I learned when I've said a hedge fund like two decades ago. markets can take money from everyone. And the only thing that's really up this year is broad commodities.

Bloomberg Commodd Index is up 25%. In 2008, in July, it was up 30%. And ended up the year down 36%. And I think that's what's happening this year. Every trader in the planet knows what's happening. Crudale is significantly oversupplied before this attack. And after it's cleared up, once we've secured the strait, which I'm making that as a statement, will happen, then Crudel will collapse.

And I do believe with Mr. Trump on that. Now, if it doesn't, it's going to be worse later because this is right now a global and energy crisis recessionary trajectory. But the key thing I want to put in context is if you started talking about tokens, and people know what I've been quite bearish in most risk assets for a while. So let's talk about a very most significant positive trend I've enjoyed in cryptos forever, and that is the proliferation of crypto dollars. Tether has flipping everything. It's number three. I think it's going to flip an Ethereum this year and maybe Bitcoin next year. That's the statement of fact of a trend.

in my extrapolation to the future. What stops that? I don't know. But I look at this simplistically. Well, Tripoli, since this is Crypto Town Hall, we are in a bear market. You're supposed to sell rallies in bear markets. Respect the bear. We've had a Bitcoin bounce from 60 back to 74.

Thank you very much. I still think 74 is the first place to reset shorts, although it's still well below the 200-day move on average, which I need to point out if you look at some of the indicators. My key indicator last year was in Microstrategy Tilted over. Now we have Bitcoin tilted over. Now we have the stock market tilting over. Just look at the S&P 500, 100-day moving average. It's right around 68.

We're below that. We just bounced on the 200-day moving average. And volatility is still there, 180-day volatile is still near almost a decade low. So I look at this year, to me, it's becoming. And my mantra remains, it's a risk off year. You should be looked to respect that, be overweight U.S. treasuries and look to trade markets responsibly. Now, I haven't seen a decent. Yeah, Bitcoin had a good bounce from 60,

that's a bare market bound so far. In most risk assets, I don't see why with the reason to buy them yet until they have decent discounts, and I'll just review my key levels. I still think silver's key resistance around the 100 is going to build momentum, and it's starting to do that. Copper, key resistance around $6 is going to build momentum and it's continuing to do that. It just made a new low on the year. I think if you've been lucky enough to be short it, you cover around 5.

Now, I don't trade anymore. I just suggest levels. And even crude oil. Crude oil looks like it put up. peaking around 120. Just staying above that level is just so global recessionary and ultimately deflationary. I look at this is a great opportunity for traders. And that's what crypto people should be doing, trading and selling rallies. And I don't see any reason to break out of that mantra. And what's happened with Iran, I think it was going to accelerate. To me, it really reminds me

of some of the inclings of 9-11. This is going to shut off global consumer spending. And PITIC with people are really starting to get scared of AI, losing, you know, taking their jobs. We know all AI. It's severely deflationary. So I'll end with this. Right now, Bitcoin's down about 20% in the year. I think by the end of the year, it's going to be down 50% to 60%. Right now, the FCP 500 is down 2%.

I think by the end of the year, it's going to be down 10 to 20%. And crude oil is up 70%. By the end of the year, that front contract will probably down 20%. That's a simple 2008 type scenario. But so far, I don't see any reason to break out. of that mantra. And again, the end of the Q1 happened soon. And I look at this year, as you're supposed to be selling the opening and potentially looking to buy the clothes, and I don't see a reason to get out of that, to reverse that mantra yet until proven wrong. Yeah. What do you make of,

you know, since you're the commodity guy up here, what do you make of the fact that we were talking about two days ago crude, West Texas and Brent in oil, was, had narrowed like a $2 spread, which was below normal. And today it's up to $10, which is actually. above normal. Yeah, you nailed that, Dave, and macro monies. This is exactly what's happening to global. The Western Hemisphere, led by the U.S. is now the price maker in crude oil and natural gas. U.S. is the largest producer in that exporter. Trump gets it, market the world gets it. And one thing that really struck me on Sunday night when we first started, it was when they both crude and WTI, I'm sorry, WTI and Brent peaked at 120. That was a classic

case of just get me out of all my shorts, most notably W-WTI. And now it's at 99 and breads at 109. Now, those are front contracts. The key things you have to look up in markets. You know, always trade through where the puck's going. And crude, when you have backwardation, that's a pretty significant where the puck's going. Contangles normal. This is really less normal, but it's been the case since 2022.

That front, like these contract, which will be front month right before when Mr. Trump, right before the midterms, it's running around 78 or so. The mean, the high buying price since that first started trading almost 10 years ago is 53. And that's when the U.S. was a net importer of just a net imported crude of liquid fuels near 3 million barrels a day. Now we're net exporter near 3 million barrels a day. So this, everything here is very much advantage U.S. The problem is we walked into this war with stock market volatility very low and the stock market cap to GDP very high. I think we're just reverting some of those things.

And I'll end when I think is to me, this is what we're going to look back in the futures. Dave, gold front rent this. Gold's rally last year was so unusual. I mean, some of us were lucky to be on top of it, but to have a rally like that, the best in almost 50 years, with inflation just buried below 3% CPI. Now, obviously it's picked up a little bit. But the last time we did that type of rally was 1979. Inflation peaked at 15%. But you can look back right now and say, gold warned us. Gold warned us this was happening. And the Chinese way, you know, really adding to their strategic petroleum in Missouri was another indication. that something was going on. Now, we're seeing the event, and gold is selling, selling off. And I think it's going to continue potentially head towards $4,000 in else because it's still expensive. But the key thing I really find striking is what is the stuff that really concerns me. When I see people getting way enthusiastic about what they did buying cryptos last year

and all the people, you know, the retail people ask about how to buy gold this year and silver, that's when I always put up my red flag and say that. We put in pretty good significant peaks in the metals. just like crypto's last year. And I'll end with what I started is fair markets can take money from everybody. And 2% in S&P 500 is nothing. Yeah, I mean, I think that that is fair. I mean, obviously, I don't necessarily agree,

but I don't want to make this the Dave and Mike Argue show. So I'd rather, I'd rather try to broaden the conversation. You know, what is fascinating to me is if you told me that, I mean, that we'd have a down day after, you know, yesterday's news, and I wouldn't have been that surprised. But if you tell me that the all coins, which would actually be underperforming Bitcoin today, you know, showing normal beta,

that I do find a bit surprising. So I'm curious, you know, anyone else, you know, care or looking? Or is this just, you know, basic people sell markets, you know, taking profit, whatever from a nice little bounce that we've had? I mean, you know, it's like I've said it many times. I mean, Ether Bitcoin has been at 0.0.0 something. You know, that has tended to be that pivot level.

We talked about it last week. But whatever. Anyway, I finally see some hands. I didn't see Tomer, were you first or Gator first? I think I'd beat him by like one 10,000th of a second. Okay, good. Having run plenty of high-frequency trading businesses in my life, I front ran them.

There you go. I think this is kind of where you're going. we saw like at a much more microeconomic level we saw billions of dollars from strategy flow into Bitcoin in the last couple of weeks we saw maybe a hundred million from Tom Lee's company bit mine flow into Ethereum and yet we saw the alts grow more than Bitcoin and that is that's a for me that's a real head scratcher I can't I can't make sense of it on a fundamental microeconomic level when you see, like, there has to be big sellers of Bitcoin only and buyers of Ethereum in order for Bitcoin to not significantly outperform.

So there's something strange going on, which is hard to explain. And I would say unsustainable. So at least today with a bit of a sell-off, seeing more of a sell-off on the alts, the higher beta that you were referring to, is bringing me back to a world that I can make sense of. but there's something there's some other shoe waiting to drop and whether that's a correction downward in the price of alt or a big correction upwards in the price of Bitcoin or this market somehow absorbs this and we have to come to terms with the fact that billions of dollars publicly into Bitcoin is offset by something else is what I guess a lot of us are trying to

figure out or make sense of at least. Yeah, I mean, you know, look, it's failure at the 74, it actually went up as high as 76, but it doesn't matter. But, you know, it falling at that level, effectively tells you that we're still in a trading range. And, you know, you're seeing like the last couple hours have been very heavy, you know, dropping from 74 down to 71.5, you know, effectively since, you know, last three hours. You know, why? I mean, it could be as simple as strategy has stopped buying for the week because they're done. You know, when we see next Monday's print, my guess is you're going to see a number that they acquired, whatever the hell they acquired at an average price of 74.

And if that's true, then, you know, the rest of the week is likely to be soft and that we'll, you know, we'll lather rinse repeat on the weekend going into Monday and Tuesday when the STRC funds are available. Now, if that is true, then my public service announcement to Sailor and Fong Lee is they really should figure out of trade better. and I'm happy to help them, given the fact that that's what I know how to do. I strongly hope that I'm wrong, but if I'm right, then these guys really do need to figure out how to better deploy capital, because as asset managers, they may be fine, but as traders, they would be terrible. So not knowing what's actually happening, I just think that it's important to understand. And, you know, it does matter.

Anyway, Gator, you had your hand up. Sorry. That's all right. Thank you. I fully agree with what you guys are saying. I also think the market moves in relatively strange ways, but I do see, and this is maybe my own bubble, I'm not 100% sure. I'm mostly into the RWA and deep in space myself.

But I do see some sort of fatigue amongst the people in the alt crypto space, where nowadays altcoins don't all move along with the tide, so to say, when they're rising tide. There's too many altcoins for that. And that is already the case for quite some time now. Now, I see that because of that, because of this thin liquidity basically for altcoins, it's also becoming harder for really big moves in altcoins. And I believe despite the regulatory clarity from the SEC in this week, that altcoins really don't have as much attention at the moment as they have in a bull market.

And I'm noticing that this lack of attention for it and lack of activity in telegram channels, etc. Of altcoins has not increased yet. And therefore, I think despite the positive news, we're not seeing big moves on altcoins because they're also not as available as Bitcoin or Ethereum on broader markets. Looking at Solana, for example, you do see a move there after they got more clear. from the SEC, but you don't see it on the smaller altcoins. And I believe this would be the case due to some sort of fatigue in the market and the crap market that we're currently seeing, also with Bitcoin trading in a certain range still.

Well, I mean, there's no doubt that the alt markets have been in a bare market since October 10th at a bare minimum, right? I mean, it's brutal. You know, so, you know, it was funny. I'm going to reference the Vanity Fair article. You know, that where they kind of said, well, and I think the crypto pros call it crypto winter as a play on Game of Thrones, which I find you using. We all do use that, although I guess that's where it came from, winter is coming.

But the truth is, is it's been very cold in the all coins fit, right? You know, and you can look at it with a few exceptions, I mean, you know, where they haven't, it hasn't done too bad, but most of them are, most of the charts look the same. Now, some of them, in my opinion, are valueless. Like, there's no reason to own them. And I say some, I would actually put like 95 plus percent of them. I fully agree. But that's, you know, that's neither here nor there.

I mean, the difference is unlike an operating company, a crypto that basically the foundation abandons it and leaves it there, there's no cost to leave it on exchanges, and it's an asset. So people will trade it. Whereas an operating company who has to do filings, et cetera, they die because they get dissolved. So it is different. So I think I saw Brian first and then William and then Tomer.

Maybe a shadow hand on Tomers. Anyway, Brian, I'm pretty sure you were next. I was just going to say, I think Gator hit it on the head. I think that there's just a lack of interest in the space at the moment. Things are not necessarily moving on fundamentals and they're trading more programmatically according to beta. So smaller offcoins down more than the majors, down more than Bitcoin. I think the biggest issue for the altcoins just speaking about today is just the PPI.

So inflation came in much hotter than expected. I think what was a bit worrying about it is increase was really due to higher services. So most folks had kind of attributed to the run-up inflation to the tariffs and thinking that that could be transitory. But with it being more services related with today's print, I think it means it could be a bit more sticky. and then none of the recent inflation reports actually include the impact of the war in Iran. So I think like overall in general, the markets are reacting mostly to this inflation print today. Yeah. I mean, it certainly looks that way. Although when inflation is higher, generally gold does well and it's getting waxed today.

So that's the one strange thing to see the precious metals down 3% on a day like that. It is, I don't know what it's reacting to. I think that the one thing that's, that's been hitting gold, well, a couple things are hitting gold. First of all, all the people trying to get money out of Dubai. And that is a big deal, by the way. It's not incredibly well reported, but, you know, there's, you know, I've had multiple people DM me telling me that discounts, when you go to sell your gold in Dubai to try to get

dollars and order to buy stable coins to be able to be moving it, it's trading at a significant discount. I don't know if silver is being impacted by that, but whenever gold drops, silver tends to drop more. So I do think that is a non-trivial aspect of what's happening there. And I'm curious what people think. But in any case, you know, who is next? I think it was Homer and then William. Well, I didn't really have my hand up, but just as a quick comment, you know, everyone was talking about silver just a month or two ago about how crucial and industrial metal it is. But when you don't have oil, all the other industrial commodities become hard to apply. The supply chains go bad.

You can't produce. You're not demanding. It's really that simple. I mean, I know it sounds dumb. But yeah, I think that's right. I think actually given that, it's held in there very well. You know, it hasn't fallen nearly as far. But, look, this is.

Oil is the oil of the world. Like, oil is the grease that makes the world's economy move, and it will be for the foreseeable future. Even when we get electric cars and all this other stuff, it's all, we're not going to get electric ships. We're not going to get, we're just not going to be able to move away from oil for the foreseeable future, unless there's some striking innovation adaptation of like portable, you know, modular nuclear reactor is produced en masse. but even then. I think that even then, still you're using it in plastics and petrochemicals.

And when you talk with supply chains, it is far, far more embedded than people think, even if, I mean, like I drive an electric car and I monitor battery technologies and whatnot. And we're going to, they're going to be less,

less, you know, it will happen. But it's still, you know, for a very long time. It might lead to a 3% decline in the demand and use of, oil and oil-related products, right?

A mass, it's just like when you look at the sheer size of everywhere that oil gets used and how much of it there is, it's colossal and not threatened by disruption. Right. From batteries and wool and stuff. Right. William, was that hand, a shadow hand or a real one? No, no, a real one. I wanted to say, I think one of the factors is that people are realizing that the Iran situation

is going to take longer. It's not going to be solved over the next few days necessarily. So that is a factor. The second thing I was going to say, David, you made a comment about we were talking about alt coins. I did some analysis actually yesterday

about the top coins in market cap. Do you know how many coins it takes to reach 96% of the total market cap of crypto? Well, when Bitcoin is, is worth $68%. Yeah, but we know

that Bitcoin has a big dollar, 56%. But the rest. I guess 99% or like probably only 30%. But the point is it only takes 90, the next 89 coins to reach 96% of the market.

And this is what matters. The attention should be let's say on the top 100. The others, I mean, it's really irrelevant right now. If we can't make sense out of the top 100 coins, whatever you want to call them, then we shouldn't be even analyzing the market. Is anyone speaking?

I think Dave might be trying to, but he's still on mute. Yeah, Dave, you're muted if you're trying to. Yeah, I just got to jump by something. Yeah, I think that's true. Obviously, you know, 100 is a big number. I mean, you know, it's really hard for me to look past, you know, even past into the top 30 or 35, really for anything. Anyway, Gator, you on your hand up next, I think. Yeah, just the, I wanted to quickly go back to the earlier point about oil.

I think, you know, even if we would have the innovations to move past oil and oil usage and need for our world, that would only be initially at least, something for the more developed countries, the established economies, so to say. I mean, the U.S., countries in Europe, some of them, some countries in Asia, probably, but maybe in some sort of, in the Emirates, for example. But initially, even if we would have the technology to not have to use oil anymore, not rely on it as much as we do now. Even then it would take a long time before that gets adopted worldwide, these technologies, and especially in certain countries in the world.

So I do believe that the dependency on oil as fuel for the economies will be there for a long time. And I'm a big fan of renewable technologies, but I do acknowledge that there is many things to overcome, We're not really at any real adoption of a technology that is environmentally friendly yet, I believe. So just wanted to quickly catch back upon that. Can I just add to that? I think the only dense, environmentally friendly alternative to oil is nuclear. And it has limited applications.

but expecting wind or solar in the short term to be to be able to scale up to the demands, just the energy demands, let alone all the product uses that Dave alluded to, is mathematically just wild. I agree. I'm an energy consultant, and I fully agree. I see it in the field I'm active in, and it's definitely not easy to go into the energy. transition. I've seen people try with solar energy, wind energy, and each of them has their

own disadvantages. And let alone talking about the grid stability and energy safety and certainty, I think there is a long, long way to go there. And I believe nuclear is the one way that we can do it. One thing that we haven't heard that much talk about in the last, let's say, six months ever since the AI crazes taken over, is the role of Bitcoin in stabilizing energy grids or in being a pioneer species in the development of energy in new areas. I wonder if it's still going on

or if it was just a lot of rhetoric in the first place. It certainly had a big boost when Bitcoin was on the run-up. I'm just curious if anybody's hearing anything with respect to that because Bitcoin still, of all the coins, Bitcoin runs is the only one that runs on energy. that's in the top 35, right? And to the extent that any others run on energy,

collectively between the whole of them, they don't consume 1% as much energy as Bitcoin. So that's a very unique characteristic of Bitcoin amongst crypto. Well, yeah, but it's not just the consumption, the way it consumes is very relevant, right? You know, especially, you know, this is. Well, exactly, yeah. How many countries are having grid problems right now?

And having Bitcoin as a significant contributor to the energy use in a country, will allow for, because it can be shut off, allows for stabilizing grids when there's instability. And so that is a non-trivial thing that everyone who just says, oh, my God, we're just using too much energy. I know you're not like this, Tom, I know you agree with me 100%. So this isn't meant as a criticism, but it's made. for the audience to understand that I don't think that attack vector on Bitcoin is going to work very much anymore. No, my question is almost the opposite. Like, shouldn't we, given that the attack vector has gone away because Silicon Valley now supports big data centers,

which means it's not bad for the environment anymore through woke logic. But do we now then see the flip side, which is genuine support for Bitcoin as a load balancing grid stabilization, technology that supports power generation or grid stabilization in all sorts of economies. I mean, I think so. Matt, you raise your hands. I'm guessing you're going to have a full-throat. Yeah. I'm going to have to say, yeah, and that's just going to continue to grow.

Bitcoin's role in that. So I would just continue to, to me, the power is the issue. Power really is to bottleneck, whether that compute is used for AI and data centers or whether that's for Bitcoin mining, power is the bottleneck. There are already Bitcoin mining companies going off grid, tapping the stranded energy and renewable. So that's pretty cool. But I wanted to circle back really quick on why some folks,

and top me off the ledge here, why some folks think this Iran might take longer. He's got a 60-day clock, doesn't he, on this war powers resolution? Congress has to give him the declaration of war. He's got 60 days and he's got to wrap this thing up. And I don't think Congress is going to give him the support he needs. So I think I'm leaning more of the sides. I think he's got to wrap this up within the 60 days here on the war powers.

That's just my two sense. I'm not a geopolitics expert, but I don't think laws matter when it comes to international affairs, these kinds of things. There's a lot of debate on televised news networks and such, but once you're in, you can't just pull out. Once you started a fire, if someone says you have to stop, you're going to stop trying to fight it after, 60 days and it's still raging you still fight the fire

yeah yeah but I just can't see how he's going to get congressional support for this military action so somehow this has got to come to an end and if it drags out longer man it's it's going to be tough on a lot of us it does it does sound like aspects of it are slowing down like the rocket

launches from Iran this I'm saying because I have relatives in various places in the Middle East they say that the quantity of rocket there's a basic constant air raid sirens, but the quantity of rockets that are even launched is very much diminished. So if it continues to diminish or run out, maybe there's some settlement, but I'm not a geopolitics expert. The sad reality is almost everyone on this platform could make that same

statement. They are not a geopolitics expert, except most people keep insisting that they, that they comment as if they are. So, you know, it's funny. I get a lot of heat from people because I keep saying, we don't know what's actually happening. And, and obviously, we know some of the things that are happening, right? You know, but there's a lot of stuff that we don't know. And, you know, you look at the news flow and it is, it's, it's crazy. I mean, what, what is news? I mean, today, the big deal is attacking natural gas and creating blackouts in Iraq and various and sundry other things being leaked. And look, we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. It's just that simple. The only things that are obvious are constant air raid sirens, which, you know, throughout the region, not just in Israel. Israel's used to it, right? I hate to say it, but it happens all the time. But, you know, the UAE is having serious issues. And I'm sure some of the other countries are having serious issues with all the expats fleeing. And that's an expat-led economy. And so there are issues there. Yeah, Matt. Oh, no, I, so was that a phantom hand there, sorry.

Oh, really? Because it just flashed up. It was blank. Oh, no. Phantom hand. I mean, you know, you, you host a bunch of spaces. I mean, I, whatever. But anyway, you know, it's like, we keep talking about the same stuff day after day.

You know, I kind of think that the most important stories tend not to move markets when they happen. They tend to move markets when people believe. My view on the SEC story, by the way, is that people are like, yeah, okay, this is cool, but I'm not putting any more money in on the margin until I actually see where things are going. But that it's a huge deal for the companies that are actually working on things, right? You know, I think that's the bigger deal. So I think there's a lot of, you know, a lot of founders out there who are like, okay, I can cut my legal expenses. I can do this. I can do that. And you can make business decisions now. But those business decisions don't show up in investable

opportunities for months, if not years. So I think that, so anyone who expected to see a major crypto rally today on the basis of that, I think you're being swamped by the geopolitics, to be honest. But if you're in the private side, I think it's very different. If you're an angel investor now, or if you're looking at M&A now, I think M&A just got a lot easier and people don't realize how important that is, but that's not something that's investable immediately. That's the way I would look at it. I'm just curious. Anybody else care? Yeah, I agree. I think the main messaging is that developers, innovators, entrepreneurs, it's safe to deploy your time and capital back into the space. I mean, that's the, you know, like we keep seeing, you know, all these, you know,

announcements of the Clarity Act's coming soon. Like, they're continuing to talk about. It's coming. It's coming. And it's just they're trying to work it out. So I think. think these are just continual messaging saying like listen don't go anywhere be patient like here's a you know the commodities collectibles tools stable coins and then tradfi as securities that's again more verbal clarity and they're just trying to make sure people know it's coming just give us time but like we're we're going to get this but just don't go anywhere we this is the most important space moving forward and we need you so that's what I took from it yeah but I mean this is the tragedy we're in We get overtaken by geopolitical and whatnot interest rates and so on, news instead of taking

care of our own destiny by just looking at what is positive. And that's why I was saying that if we focused only on pick a number, 50, 40 significant coins or companies, that's really what matters. I mean, today, tempo goes live on the main net. yesterday Ethereum talked about a very fast finality for example

I'm sure they pick any coin there are positive developments for each one of them and that's what should be what not just us talk about but that's what the market should be talking about and not kind of be at the

whims of the next crisis or the current crisis unfortunately It is still a liquidity driven market, which means that the money will come in and come out as they decide, not as we decide. Because a lot of people are very busy doing some good stuff in the industry. But those headlines, once in a while they pop their head. But otherwise, it's back to talking about oil and gas and war and interest rates and anything but crypto stuff, unfortunately. Those are pretty important things, though, William, right?

Like, that's the reality. It's very easy to get distracted from the number 63 crypto token, and it's a very complex and convoluted story of how it's going to differently tokenize securities on a blockchain with second layer of smart contract. It's just people are tired of that talk, and there's way too much fragmentation and alleged innovation. and alleged innovation, right? The biggest part of the problem has been

that the alleged innovation has been so swamped with innovation that turned out to be a scam or ineffective. Yeah, I don't know that I agree 100% with what you said. These are not promises. Another one yesterday, five banks got together and they announced

using ZK Sync to tokenize assets. And I mean, these are real. But like announcements from banks are worth even less than the printed paper. This is adoption. I'm talking about adoption. This is not promises. An announcement from a bank is not adoption. There have been millions of announcements from banks going back to 2013 that they're going to form a consortium and do this and that and the other.

So until there's actually something that launches and sticks, There's a lot of noise. There's a lot of noise. And it may be the case that this one announcement is real, but you have to appreciate that. In a world where we've seen tens of thousands of announcements of banks are doing this, but it's really just lip service because they're not really committed to the space or the technology that they've supported is not actually effective technology.

And they've, Andreas used to say it's the same as companies that got onto the intranet when the internet boom came. And there's just a lot of, there hasn't been that much effective sophistication. Like with the exception of BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF, we don't really see anything that is mainstream Wall Street banking, embracing of Bitcoin. There are reasons for that, though.

But before I go off on a diatribe, Brian, I thought I saw your hand up first. Is that real? Yeah, I was just going to say, I think that a lot of times in crypto, So we look at things and expect it to happen quickly. I think just looking at the history of technology, it literally takes decades for any new technology to reach final form like internet invented in the 80s.

And it wasn't until mid-2000s when we got user-generated content, social networks. Also takes decades for people to change their behavior. I'm super optimistic and bullish that we're finally seeing institutions coming into the space. And I actually think this is what we need. if we rely on this to be consumer driven, it's going to just take, you know, 20, 30, 40 years. Whereas if big institutions come and they switch this on for us, they abstract it all behind that, and utilize the blockchain back end, but consumers actually don't know that. I actually think we could see mass adoption.

And then, lastly, to your point, Dave, on, like, good news not being incorporated into prices. I'd say, like, MasterCard acquiring BVNK is a really great example. So not only are they bringing stable coin and tokenized deposits to their customers. And by the way, there's billions of card users around the world and hundreds that are accepted at hundreds of millions of merchants. But also the key thing to me is that this is a chain agnostic solution. So MasterCard didn't come in here, try to leverage their position to build their own chain and capture all the value. They're acquiring BVNK, which is connected to all major blockchains. and then it's the MasterCard customers that are going to get to choose which chain they use.

So I just think that this is a huge positive for public blockchains. I think a lot of the institutions really only dip their toe because the rules weren't clear. And as this clarity continues to progress, I think they'll going to be forced to come in in a big way. Yeah, I want to riff off of that a little bit. But Matt, was that a shadow hand or is that a real one? No, no, this is a legit hand this time, Dave. Okay, good. Yeah, you know, one thing, and I think that was just a great thing.

point there. I think Brian was making. I want to go back in time just earlier to strategies big event there they had in Vegas, where Nisha Sundarand, who's city's head of digital asset custody and development, the big presentation she made, making Bitcoin bankable. The city is already planning on rolling this out in Q3 and Q4. So regardless to me, that that indicates to me that the mindset is there, that the Clarity Act is going to get done, that something is going to happen. They wouldn't be putting all of this out and putting this presentation together and going on stage at micro strategy's big event going this is what we're planning on doing if they didn't think it was going to get done so i'm still really bullish that this

thing does get done i don't see the folks of city bank you know spinning their wheels and doing doing this all for not yeah i think that the the most important thing that people need to understand about crypto this is not a bitcoin situation this is about crypto is whenever you look at a level one or an infrastructure token, and you think this thing is going to become worth trillions, you need to ask yourself the question, why would the companies that are going to use this thing want the infrastructure to be worth more than the company? And the answer is it doesn't.

So the history of technology on Wall Street and everywhere else is that the companies that pick, like take something like fix. So, you know, I had the fortune, the good fortune to become friends. and colleague with a guy named Jim Lehman, who is known as the godfather of Fix. Now, for those who don't know what Fix is, Fix is just a protocol. It's the messaging protocol that drives all of Wall Street. It's the standardization of messages. There's a fixed committee, and in a world of where it was crypto and it was tokenizer,

probably would have been a token to be able to help and fund some developments and stuff, but it would never have been worth a huge amount of money relative to the market caps of the banks that used it. Just never. So you have to ask yourself the question, why does a token have value? The token has to have value either because it's contributing from the network or because there's some artificial scarcity that's imposed because the owners of the token have a motive to do it.

You have to ask yourself that question. Those are the questions that a lot of cryptos, a lot of altcoins never get asked. So if you don't see a wallet or a total addressable market, that's big enough to justify your grand visions of the future, that's probably because it doesn't exist. And so there is a lot of mis-evaluation. Now, that said, were there to be a way to incentivize development and build something, there could be some real value there.

But I think there's a lot of people who have very incorrect expectations about what that total addressable market could be. So it really depends upon, you know, the actual token itself, how important the token itself is within the ecosystem, or was it just a land grab or a money grab by the founders where the money is going to be made by the company or the distributed foundation, et cetera. So all of that is important here.

These rules that are coming out from the SEC and CFDC will allow for trading and fundraising of new things, and it will allow for development. The question of what will it ultimately be worth is yet to be determined. but M&A in the space of companies that are at companies that are building, I think, is going to increase significantly because that has really been rained in. Matt, is that a new hand or is that the old one? No, that's another phantom hand, Dave.

I don't know what's going on on the app. Sorry. Well, we know what goes on on this app. That's why I always ask the question. The one thing I don't want to do, William, I see that looks like a new hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was going to say, David, I agree with you about the relative value of marketing. gap between infrastructure and apps.

I won't get upset if Tether at one point in times value market cap is higher than Ethereum because we're comparing two different things. Ethereum is infrastructure and if you look at the internet

yeah, there is value at the infrastructure level but the monetization really happens much higher in the stack at the application level. Look at the companies like Google. Amazon and so on that were all built on top of the internet and they are valued more than the internet if you were to value the internet.

So in the long term, I would like to see more apps that are valuable, that are big on any blockchain infrastructure. That doesn't mean that the infrastructure value is not going to grow. It's going to grow commensurably with it. but if you go very, very much kind of long term, the apps, the app layer, whether the user touches something, whether the user is a institution or a consumer, that's where the monetization is going to happen eventually. Yeah, I think that's probably right.

But, you know, look, it's, the point here is that if you're building and you have product market fit, you can make money. If you have a token that is relevant as opposed to just kind of there to raise money, it's probably going to fail. We've seen a lot of that. And, you know, it's these things go through cycles. Anyone who expects that the current, you know, winter, current morose nature of the market will stay? No, a new version will come in. I don't, I'm not smart enough to know where or when.

probably, you know, based on a bull run in Bitcoin when things happen. But Bitcoin has its own very unique, you know, place in the market. And I just, I know people get mad at me for saying that, but it's true. You know, there, with no corporate sponsored token is ever going to become the global store of value. I'm not saying Bitcoin will, but it certainly has a chance. But I don't, but I know what won't. What won't is anything that is sponsored, that is built by individual, by people, who you can identify and are profiting from it.

That's just one of those things. And it's just such an easy argument to make, and yet it just gets so much emotion. I mean, Jamie, you hear tons of emotion on this one, I'm sure. You know where I'm coming from if you're behind the microphone there. But, you know, yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously we, you know,

spend hours in these spaces and people come up on both sides. I mean, it's trying to keep the sides from just being personal and respectful, to each other on these topics is a full-time job. So yeah, 100% Dave. So Brian, I saw your hand go up. Yeah, I was just going to say that I fully agree and you need to look at tokens individually. I think historically token value accrual was mostly absent for most coins. And I'd even go so far as to say like tokens are, and especially in the past, are kind of this nebulous concept that derive value from this hodgepodge of different concepts like speculation, the potential deterrent,

on the fee switch, some weak governance participation rights and things like that, which kind of of our tantamount then turn into the token being worth what someone else will pay for. There are memes. There means. I mean, look, let's face it, anybody who doesn't realize that the biggest single difference between tokens and equity in startups, the biggest difference was immediate liquidity. If you don't realize that, then frankly, I will never respect you because that's the bottom line. The bottom line is you can't sell equity immediately. It takes a long time and a lot of money

to access the U.S. market, the European market, etc. It is a big process to IPO. You know, Grand Cardone was on one of these spaces and he said it was double digit millions to go through just just to start. So if you think about from a startup perspective, that's impossible. But a token, you can launch for really cheap, relatively speaking, even if you're paying finance to, you know, IEO it or whatever. I mean, you're not, it wasn't a big deal. So tokens created immediate liquidity. Is that good or bad? Well, I mean, there are lots of good arguments to say that it's bad that you shouldn't be able to get immediate liquidity just on an idea. But there's lots of good arguments to say, well, wait a minute, that allows you to democratize and not have to use VCs.

Yet VC back tokens were the majority. So that kind of makes that argument go away. It's an interesting question. The SEC understands this. And they're kind of in the middle. They're like, well, maybe we should to have a method for immediate liquidity for some of these things if there's easy public disclosures that are clear. And so it's a tough, this is the tough not to crack. People in crypto don't like to admit what I just said is true,

but all the big coins have already, you know, are long past this. So then the question becomes, okay, so do we care about immediate liquidity? Or do we care about standardization? Do we care about being, you know, being able to invest on platforms? a lot of these things a lot of these questions get you know get together right you know they're all conflated and we're not going to unwrap it today and we're basically up against time

anyway so you know from a last thought perspective william is that a real hand no no that was an old one homer i think i saw some you know i thought i thought something flash on your side any final no i got i got booted off the stage and re-invited so i didn't really have much more to add but i will echo your sentiment around you know when you think through the game theory of what happens to tokens is if they become too valuable, they become too expensive to use. They're all open source, so an innovator does a copy paste,

and companies move there to where it's the cheapest thing. So it's hard for a platform to capture value if it's commoditized and copyable. And there is a network effect for some of these things. But as we've seen, it's not as strong as you might think. the applications that, you know, Tether moves to every blockchain. And so it's on all of them.

And Tether's really the killer app of non-Bitcoin blockchains right now. Yeah. And it may be moving on there too, in which case all of this debate about what will and what won't be might get, you know, there's additional risk on to all these other altcoins that they won't move on to Bitcoin. There's a lot of Bitcoiners resisting that move, so they're maybe the best friends of these other tokens. But it's just hard to think through a situation where a token actually ends up long-term being able to really be valuable by providing a platform for running code. Well, I mean, I'm not so sure that I'm that negative, but I do think that the vast majority of them are constructs used to enrich founders and VCs. So, you know, it is what it is. Any final thoughts out there?

I see two hands. Don't know if they're real. I see Brian and I see William. Yeah, I was just going to add. I didn't mean to talk badly about all all coins. And my point was just you have to be discerning. And so to address like layer one tokens for top chains specifically, I actually think you're kind of playing this platform thesis where if any DAP gains mass adoption,

the platform should do well and you have a lot of at-bats. I also think that these network effects are really hard to replicate. replicate for where you can generate this strong ecosystem of users, developers, and DAPS. We've seen so many alt L1s try and fail to really supplant Solana or theory over a couple of the other big L1s. Also do you think you need that L1 token for gas so as if there is more activity usage and development the demand for that token will move up and that should push up its price. And then lastly I'd say like we're so early on what this can become but the TAM is just

absolutely massive, where at least for Solano, like, it's working to put all of finance on chain, then I do think like that could just be hundreds of trillions of value that could actually move on chain, and there has to be some value associated with that, and you can figure out other ways to capture that value in the future like a lot of other tech companies have done in the past. So we'll leave it there, but wanted to clarify my last thought. Yeah, and I look at it the same way, right? you know, it's, if you think that there could be, that a token could capture half a percent of the total value of every, of all the assets, yeah, maybe.

But that's a lot bigger than most of the market caps and most of these tokens. So there is, there is some, but it's a limited, it's a zero-sum game in a sense. I mean, the total address will market is for all of them, not just for one. But yeah, you know, I do look at it that way. William, one last time, because I still see the hand in front of me because. No, no, this was an old one, but I just want to say a quick thing. again, we should be making a difference between these tokens. And we, like you said, tether, but tether is a currency.

So it is what it is. Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a currency more than it is a blockchain, because you can't do much on that Bitcoin blockchain except trade Bitcoin itself. So Bitcoin tether should be looked at and discussed as a currency. Then if you want to look at infrastructure, discuss Solana and Ethereum and Tempo. as a infrastructure.

It's two different ballgames. And we have to be a little bit more sophisticated and discuss things in the context that they are in, basically. Yeah, I think that that's right. Isn't crypto short for cryptocurrency? It should be. I always use the word crypto asset because I hate the, because I do think the currency is Bitcoin and stablecoins.

But that's besides the point. That's just my personal mental model. Any case, we are up against time. So unless there's someone with something pressing to say, we will see you all again on Friday. I'm out of the office anyway tomorrow, so it doesn't really matter. So have a great day. Stay safe out there. And let's see if this kind of draggy, fally market is going to have any interesting fireworks this afternoon.

Just remember everyone, the knee-jerk reaction to the first thing you see from the Fed is almost always wrong. Just remember that. So I have one piece of advice for the day. Take care, everyone. Thanks, Dave.