The Wolf Of All Streets - SoftBank Buying Bitcoin? Institutions Are Stacking Hard | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

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Morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall. It's Thursday, April 24th. We have the show every single weekday here on X at 10, 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. I love looking down at the panel and seeing so many friendly faces. It really is amazing that we get to host and have these conversations on a daily basis with some such absolutely brilliant minds with such incredible insights. We have friendly debates and arguments and conversations about everything that's happening in markets and in crypto, of course, as a whole. And we have a lot happening in markets today. Taking a quick look, gold had a rough couple of days, but up slightly today. Bitcoin down at the moment slightly from yesterday, but obviously two days ago, we had that massive move from around 87,000, topping around 95,000 before seeing a bit of a breather here.

I don't think that's particularly a big deal. NASDAQ up slightly today. Stock market SPY up generally and yields down slightly. Dollar had bounced over the last couple of days but turning down as well. None of this very consistent for what you would necessarily expect for either correlated or inversely correlated assets.

I think that's worth digging into here. So before we get into the title story here which we discussed a bit yesterday, which was the new company 21 formed by Bitfinex, Canterfix, Gerald, Tether, and of course, SoftBank. That's the big eye opener. And Jack Mahler is taking over as CEO there to basically employ the Michael Saylor strategy of buying Bitcoin with convertible debt. Before we get into that, maybe we should just set the table for the macro. Since I have my Macro Monday buddies, Mike and Dave here, we'll start there.

Mike, how are you guys looking at this right now? Well, good morning, Scott. I think it's important to point out, like you said, start out with gold, one of the best performing assets this year. That's with the S&P 500 down about 7% gold, about 26%. Bitcoin's unchanged. That's a pretty good show for Bitcoin. But you look at the market vectors, 100 crypto index, it's down about 15%. My base cases, those markets are going to continue, stock market continue lower, gold continue higher, and crypto is following the stock market more likely than gold.

It's not a big shift from what I mentioned earlier in the year. The key thing that's changed as we know this year is we are finding out how volatile Mr. Trump is. And the bottom line is I just wrote in some of my colleagues, Bloomberg Intelligence and Bloomberg Economics are expecting a one-third drawdown in the stock market. Now, we got through a bit of that, it means another 20% in a normal recession, they're tilting towards recession. I think that's the key thing is you look at every demand

estimate revision for all earnings, GDP, everything on the planet, it's all tilting downward and you gotta ask yourself what stops it? I like to point out where did it start from. Now at the end of last year, we reached the highest market cap in the US versus GDP and versus the rest of the world in about a century and now we're reverting that with good reason so it's become prudent money management on a

global basis to sell US assets unfortunately because they just went up so much now when it's become prudent you're supposed to look to do that so but it's a great trading year and I think that's what we should look at for my background trading leverage futures which is typically 20 to 1 you know from the 90s is this to me is just a tremendous trading year we've had some great opportunities. So for instance on April 7th is when the VIX reached its high at 60 that's the same day that the S&P 500 bottom around 5,000 the Tenunaut yield bottom around 4% and Bitcoin bottom around 77,000. Now, those are closing prices.

I use those because it's basically VWAP prices. It's the price on the end of the day your average person can get in. Yesterday Bitcoin jumped up on the day. So I look at it as those are great buying opportunities. Yesterday was the first day to sell and test the market. So as a trader, you look at it, okay, it's jumped up to unchanged on the year. You look to sell it, make it proof strength. And that's the way I think a lot of traders are looking at it. And that's why I'm looking at Bitcoin is a great leading indicator and gave you a chance to trade it at a good low. It just gave you a chance to sell it at a good high.

And to me, the base case is I still, like I said, if we have a normal drawdown this year. The last, the biggest drawdown in the US stock market since 2009 was about 18% in 2022. And that year, Bitcoin dropped about 78%. This year, I think can easily drop 20, 25, 30%. So I fully expect the broad crypto market to drop 70%. And Bitcoin's somewhat up in the air. I think it easily should drop 50% in a normal drawdown and a normal recession. Some things that market haven't seen in a while. So to me, that's the tilt. The key thing about

gold is it got way too expensive at 3,500 an ounce. It's very stretched. I wrote a lot about that. Certainly on a historical basis, you have to go back to the 70s. And the most recent comparison was basically 1934 in terms of being up 32% on the year. And that was the year after we debased the currency. So I look at gold as very stretched. And I'm leaning over to, I'll end with this. I think the year will end with risk off assets like gold and long bonds being the best performers and risk on assets like cryptos and Bitcoin being some of the worst performing assets? So I have to ask you this, Mike. Bitcoin

from peak to trough already had a drawdown of roughly, let's call it 32%. I haven't looked exactly, but it was somewhere around there at 31.95%. Good guess. We've had SPY from peak to trough corrected 22%. That's a pretty big correction. And we obviously had the NASDAQ correcting even even more than that. So talking about, you know, this broader market correction of 50% for Bitcoin, we already did 30. Are you saying 50% from here 50% from the highs? Someone's saying this new environment that we've actually gotten that bear market, you know, it happens. So that's a good point. The key thing to remember in bear markets is they give you false hope

and massive trading opportunities, massive shortcoming rallies. I stick with my view and my colleague Gina Martins that we are in the early days of a bear market in the stock market. Earnings expectations are way too high. Earnings are going to have only one way to go, but downward, particularly as we face one of the number one forces for increasing earnings for less decades has been offshoring. Now we're ending that.

Of course, we have the fiscal that's getting shut off. We're ending that. But overall, I stick with my colleagues who know better than I do. And so the fair value from Bloomberg Economics in every session, Bloomberg Intelligence, is $4,000, the S&P 500. That's only a one third draw down. So I don't say, the thing is you can't remember, we've had gotten so accustomed to a market that goes down and goes straight back up for 15 years.

That trade is over in my view. And there's a good reason for it to be over. I mean, it's a finally time we revert maybe 50% of the rally in the stock market from 2009 to the peak last year. That's my view. That's why I think things are sticking. I need to see proof of that being otherwise.

So that means if you get that normal 50% drawdown or even one-third drawdown in the S&P 500, I mean, you go down and you stay down for recession. Remember, the Fed hasn't even started easy. We haven't even started massive pumping of fiscal stimulus, which you'll need. This is just early days, and we still see a unemployment of 4.2%. Typically, it goes up to 6% These are it hasn't even started and maybe we'll get lucky But the key thing I'm watching is I look at that pattern of the 200 day moving average in the 10

You know yield it's rolling over just like it did in 2007 Some of us are on top of that trade and look at that pattern of the 200 day moving average of VIX It's bottoming just like it did in 2007. What stops that is the key thing is I look at trade it, take the opportunity, and the first opportunity I saw so far this year for a decent trade was we also, when the VIX is at six, you're supposed to buy every your choice of risk assets. I love the fastest horse in the race when you're bullish, but it pumped up to unchanged in the year and gave you a first chance to maybe short it, and we'll see how it, if it can prove those shorts wrong.

That's my point is we're at the stage now you're supposed to be looking to sell rallies and risk assets and make it prove you wrong. 74 to 95 is quite a move. That's a that's a very trainable move, regardless of what you think I do agree with you there not saying I don't think goes higher, but that'd been a nice nice move. And a lot of us here, I know Dave and I, we discussed this at length when we were buying those mid seventies levels.

Uh, for, for a lot of the reasons that, uh, Mike just laid out, regardless of your kind of macro view that it looked like there was a huge bounce coming. But I think, uh, Dave, we both probably agree that it's going much higher. And I'd like to get some other people's opinions too, but Dave, go ahead. Yeah. I mean, look, there's. I it's really strange because I agree, I think that unemployment

is highly likely to spike, which is part of my bull case for why I think Bitcoin is going to screen later in this year, because once unemployment starts going up, you're going to see liquidity come in. I agree that the liquidity, I believe in this case, will be more towards Bitcoin than towards risk assets in general, because those risk assets in general are going to have a hard time having profits going up when you literally, Mike said it, he nailed it.

I mean, the- Hey, junk, hear me again? I just got- Yeah, I think you got a call. Go ahead. Stupid junk call. In any case, you know that the globalization engine ending or at least being severely constrained is a huge problem for corporate profits. So I agree there. But I feel like Mike, when he talks about Bitcoin, is like sideshow Bob stepping on the rakes, you know, anyone who remembers that from the Simpson, it's like, we've seen massive trend toward delinkage and what you're seeing is because of adoption. I mean you know you can't ignore it being considered a

strategic asset. You can't ignore 70 companies now having it as a treasury. You can't ignore 20 states having it you know it one one way or another moving towards being able to put on their balance sheet. You can't ignore momentum towards a strategic reserve in the United States. You can't ignore SoftBank investing into the cavalcade of investing into it and the game theory with it. And claiming that past relationships are going to be into the future when those things are happening, it's a problem, right? And empirically, the market is starting to figure it out, and we've seen that. And I think that the fact that it's uncorrelated is really because it's an option on whether

it's going to become the global store of value. And Bitcoin is clearly gaining momentum, and that momentum is important, and you can't do technical analysis without understanding what momentum is. Mark, I would love your take here. Mark, if you're there, I would love your opinion. Otherwise, people go ahead, raise your hands, jump in with your opinions. Kano, go ahead. go ahead, raise your hands, jump in with your opinions. Kano, go ahead. Yeah, I kind of just caught the end of what Mike was saying, but it just sounded way too bearish.

And Dave brought up a lot of really good points with when it comes to Bitcoin, with strategic reserve, institutions buying, nations buying. Then you've got, you know, if you look at the macro, you've got quantitative easing in that's gonna that's gonna start probably rate cuts starting in June. Like this is a recipe for a bull market for risk assets. And it is very, this this market is is very similar, I think, to the 2017 bull market when it comes to Bitcoin. I'm seeing a lot of similarities. And I would like to place a bet with Mike that by the end of this year, Bitcoin will be much higher.

Much, much higher. All right. I think the bet, what's our conditions? Okay, I think we should figure out a price point. First of all, like, you know, you think it would be under a certain price, and I think it'll be over a certain price. This figure out what the price point is. How about how about unchanged in the air, but 94,000? I'll take it under 70.

Hold on. Say that again, unchanged for the year, but 94,000. I'll take it under 70. Holds to it. Say that again, unchanged for the year. No unchanged in the years is 90 for about nine words right now. 93. So I'm happy to take it under 70. Maybe we can use what 20 different 20 we can use 20,000 if you want is a even point. So you're saying so okay, what's the date with the state by December, November, December time you're going to use? what's the date with by this state by December, November, December time, you're going to end of the year, let's just end of the year. So you're going to say under 70,000. Yeah. Okay, yeah, I'll take the over on that for sure. We just do either. I mean, shouldn most sensible bet? I'm not trying to move in on your spread, but isn't it just natural that either it goes

up or it goes down by the end of the year? The thing is with that spot is Mike said that we're going to go into a bear market. And I mean, if Bitcoin ended the year at 94, would that really be a bear market? So how about how we do this? I just point out, if you look at virtually every crypto index, most 200-day mover index are pointing down. They're already in bear markets. Yes, I understand how Bitcoin is different and everybody tells me that.

It's great. I get it. So how about we just do up or down 10% on the year? Up 10%, you win, down 10%, I win, and anything between will just consider noise because it does trade at 40%, 45% annual volatility. Sure. That's more fun. We'll start a group offline to discuss we're gonna I don't know if it's gonna be a big better if

it's gonna be more steak but I feel like between Dave Mike and I we already owe each other so many dinners I can't even keep up. Sounds good. At the end of the day I'm buying them all. Okay, Mark, you're up. Hey, hey, it's hard, yeah. It's hard not to talk about price here, but the movement in April still is shocking, Bitcoin. And we haven't heard many people sort of either say, never saw it before and give reasons why, was it SoftBank, et cetera. So any input from the crowd here on that, I'd love to know. Because- Are you meaning the bid that's brought it kind of up to 94 in the midst of all this? Yeah, just month date. Last night's close, up 13.6%, gold up 5.4% on the month, equities down 3 or 4%.

I mean, that deserves obviously a whole show and a review on market structure. Was it, who was buying? Was it just people punting? Was it real buyers? You know, I haven't seen, you know, Glassnode or Check and Change work. It's a little bit constructive. I know he thinks 94, glass node or, um, check and change work. It's a little bit constructive.

I know he thinks 94,000 is important, but sustaining that guys was not on my bingo card, even though a lot of us are constructive in April, since April 2nd to have that outperformance. So that's one thing I want to definitely continue on. And the other one on this, if we have time, Scott, is just the reaction function in the economy. Can this be pulled back? What Trump's done with tariffs? What's evidence of permanent damage to trade and growth that will lead to what Mike's calling the bear market and that his team is down 30%, which I agree with. I think we are headed that way. Those are two channels I think are worth or threads worth pulling on. I want to go to the panel, but I'll just say, Mark, in the last two weeks, we've seen

failure again in the last few weeks, buying billions worth in total that has to contribute. Maybe GameStop has bought 1.8 billion. We just saw, and Mike, we should talk about this, we just saw a massive reversal in outflows of the products. Bitcoin. I think they had $1 billion in one day. And we now know, as the title here says, that whether they owned it and didn't tell us or had to buy it to do it, that SoftBank had to basically buy $1 dollars worth of Bitcoin to participate in this company 21. I mean, I haven't really looked at volumes, but you know, that's,

it's a, it's kind of around the year on daily volumes, I guess, or for a month, but you're talking about sustained bids of five, six, seven billion dollars just right there in the past week or two. Yeah. And, and that retail didn't really puke the ETFs. There was bleeding but not the kind of outflows that you've seen in some of the tech ETFs. Yeah even Mike, I mean Mike would discuss this but you've over the last two weeks said wow Bitcoin is showing impressive divergent strength. Yes but that's exactly the point. It was a great trade. It got to that key pivot on change in the year. The key thing to remember here is some of us who, a lot of you in this

space are very smart, were in this space very much early days when it was inside our market. It had nothing but upside when people like Trump and Larry Fink hated it. Now the masses love it and you have to understand what's driving inflows. Price. Price is everything. Everybody who's buying it now understands they're buying a very, very volatile risk asset that has millions of dependents and it has to go up. That's my point. I've never seen an asset with this much risk of going down, meaning the stops will be exponential

if it starts trading lower. That's the point. It just is so much risk here. So what's happened is ETF flows are falling price. The biggest ETF flows this year have been, if you want to compare, bitcoins maybe somewhat flat up a couple billion, gold's up about 25 billion. Again, I'll point out, still stick with gold. It's expensive here, but that's the key thing is now that it's in the mainstream, the things I wrote about for years, once it got into mainstream through ETFs, that's when the trade's mostly over. And that's my point

is everybody pointing at all the binders. That's when the trade's mostly over, and that's my point. Is everybody pointing out all the buying? That's when the insiders said, oh, thank you very much, it's in mainstream. Is that when you're supposed to buy? Most people know in this space, though, that's when you're supposed to say, thank you, I made a lot of money. Where's the next trade anybody hates?

This is the difference now. So I wouldn't mind getting stopped out in my outlook for going back to 10,000, but I made the exact same call in February 2018 when it peaked around 10,000, the actual 11,000, the bottom was 3,000. It was just a normal bear mark, but remember, the stock market was down about 4% that year. So far, it's doing great, but if we end this year, which I think with the stock market down in 20% and Bitcoin's up, now that's a substantial statement, but it hasn't happened

yet. I need to see the beef. So Mike, are you saying that retail is the last stop on the rally train that everyone dumps on? Not retail. No, this is, this is the masses getting in. When you point out people taking inordinate risk on their balance sheet with a highly volatile risk asset and they're getting out of refocusing away from their business, which micro strategy did there, you know, you're supposed to be an income producing business and they're getting out of refocusing away from their business, which MicroStrategy did.

You're supposed to be an income producing business and you're supposed to use your cast to help run that business and you're focused on buying things like cryptos and Bitcoin where, remember, there's still a lot of volatility here. Your risk is it distorts from your business. If it goes down, it distorts from everything and then you have to pay for that. That's my point is I've never seen an asset more risky that it goes up than now, and particularly with the stock market, potentially a bear market. It might show that divergence, but again, I point out as everybody says Bitcoin is different

than the rest of the cryptos, and I just overlay. The Bitcoin to gold ratio, so I'll end with another thing. Bloomberg quant team has a fair value model on the gold, the Bitcoin to gold ratio. Currently, it's about 27. It peaked at 40. We all kind of knew that was a pretty good peak. It's dropped to 25. That's a pretty good support. But their fair amount value measure shows a closer to 17 right now. That's just showing the fair value and Bitcoin still expensive versus

gold. You know, again, show me the beef. It's got to at least stay up on the year with the stock market going down. Now, everything again is understand the correlation. They all bottom on the same day. So gold went up. So the thing is, treasuries. That's my point. I think people realize this is great as long as the stock market goes up and the stock market is recovering.

Alex and Dave. Yeah., hey Scott, thanks for having me. I'll double down on what Mike is saying. Look, just the headline of this space, SoftBank buying Bitcoin, like that feels like a top signal or at least like a reason to be bearish for exactly what Mike is saying. Like just look at the track record of that fund, how many tens of billions they lost on Uber, buying it at peak, peak valuation. So yeah, that's my two cents. Yeah. In this case, that is a funny take and obviously hundreds of billions or whatever in WeWork was nonsense, but this is just simply buying Bitcoin to participate in this larger fund with Tether, Bitfinex and Kenner Fitzgerald. So I think it's a little different than them taking it as like an investment position personally,

but yeah. Go ahead, Dave. So there's two massive issues that I have with what Mike said. The first is just factually nonsense. The notion that the masses are in Bitcoin. That's just factually not even close to true. Yeah, it does have a higher penetration among less rich people than stocks. That's true. It definitely has a higher representation in poor and minority people than stock markets do,

which is not a bad thing. It just happens to be true. But among millionaires and billionaire portfolios, it's very low. The fact that every time you say masses are going into Bitcoin, you look down and you see funding rates that are spiking, you see lots of speculation, you see derivative markets leading. We've seen none of that. It's literally none of that. The funding rates during the rally to over 94, which by the way, I agree with Mike, I actually called it two days ago that that is a good technical shorting position with

tight stops because we'll probably go fall back into a trading range for a bit to consolidate these gains. So it's not that I don't disagree with him on trading and it's public. It's a video that I published, so I don't have to. This is in Monday morning quarterbacking. But the notion that we are at mass adoption is so far off. Mass adoption looks like Bitcoin with an extra zero on the end of it. Let's just understand that.

That's mass adoption. At these price levels, we're not even scratching the end of it. Let's just understand that. That's mass adoption. At these price levels, we're not even scratching the surface of it. Mass adoption is what Bitcoin is, is pushing towards the monetary value of gold. That's what mass adoption looks like. We're not there. So the real question is, are we trending there or not?

And that is literally the question that we have to come to. So that's the first thing that I have, just a huge problem with what he was saying. And the second, the notion of the dependence. I mean, it's just not true. Bitcoin dominance, just look at it. And it's just not true. People in the Bitcoin space,

Bitcoiners hate shitcoins, Maxis do. I personally think there's a lot of value in the crypto verse. I think most coins will go to zero, but there will be quite a few and quite a bit of wealth created in the next decade. But that's really that's a risk asset. Right. I think most crypto outside of Bitcoin are risk assets because they're like tech stocks. Only they're not stocks, their participation in networks, et cetera, et cetera. And but that's not dependent. And when you talk about show me the beef, I mean, all you have to do is show them your chart of the Bitcoin and NASDAQ and

it is just not they're just not correlated. I mean, we saw it this week, NASDAQ dropped 3%. If I had made a bet with Mike before, you know, last week or any other time that we would have a day that the next time the NASDAQ drops over 3% Bitcoin will be up on the day, he would have thought I was delusional and probably given me 10 to 1 odds. Yet that's exactly what happened. And it's followed through by being staying relatively uncorrelated for the rest of the week.

That's all I'll say. Sorry guys, I'm having Mike's ears as usual, but I know Carlo, you had your hand up. Go ahead. Good morning, Carlo, I should say. Go ahead. Good morning, Scott. Is it safe to pivot to a new topic because I'm intrigued by the Trump token announcement yesterday? I think uh, let's finish this one up I know Mike was about to kind of jump jump in with the defense and then we'll pivot to trump token Just one the bitcoin to nasdaq 100 day. Um Correlation is 0.52 next

Done and done that's uh, yeah carlo. I love that you jumped there. I was going to talk about SoftBank and the 21 deal, Jack Ballers and all of these things, but we can talk about that later. So go ahead. Good morning, Carlo. Trump token, which is supposed to be a collectible and is obviously in no way, shape or form a security because it didn't go up at all because somebody promoted it. Now you get dinner with the president if you're one of the top, what, 220ers?

Crazy. Yeah, so I shared in your DM a post I just put up kind of asking that very question, is dinner with top Trump holders a utility? Interesting question. I remember vividly being live on spaces. Uh, it was Mario space. In fact, when this thing dropped and reading the terms and conditions and trying to figure out if this was an actual Trump token or if this was a scam after reading the terms, it

was clear to me that this was launched in a coordinated effort. Legal team looks like they had written robust terms and conditions and they were very clear that this was a collectible amine coin. There's been a lot of debate. There's obviously been a change in the regulatory climate with respect to how the SEC is looking at these things and the SEC came out and kind of gave new guidance on what constitutes amine coin. And then Trump, being Trump, always pushing the boundaries, announces this, what could be characterized as a utility, which is access to dinner with Trump. And now this begs the question,

does this raise the issue of whether this is now turned for more of a, to a utility-based investment contract? What comes of that? Who knows? Because obviously who's going to initiate? I have to guess that our friend on the other side of the aisle, Elizabeth Warren, once this leaves the Twitterverse, Scott, and actually gets into the mainstream news cycle, will probably be pulling her hair out on one of the morning shows talking about how this is

an abuse of power, pay to play, so on and so forth. One interesting distinction I'll note is that when Trump launched, Scott, he did it pre-inauguration when he was under a different set of standards. Now he's president and he's announcing utility on this token as the sitting president. So this is going to get interesting once it breaks out of the Twitterverse, I think. I'm not sure if you guys can hear me. I got booted for a second now, Mr. Speaker. But I will say very quickly that, Carlo, I was thinking about this and actually the NFT project, he did the same thing, right?

With the NFT project, he hosted dinner for top NFT holders. So we do have some precedent of him doing this and NFTs by the same definition as they're calling meme coins they believe are collectibles. And he pulled that off during the last presidency when we had Gensler at all. So I'm not surprised he would do this because he has a lot of precedent and he's already done it. I mean, Scott, I think it's important to make two points here. First, we could certainly debate whether there's conflict of interest

with Elizabeth Warren will pull her hair out. I mean, honestly, couldn't care less what happens to her. I mean, there's a certain point where someone who lies so much, she's gone well past where anyone really should be listening. But in any case, the conflict of interest being the president is the only real issue. The actual good thing is turning a meme coin into something with value. Not going to necessarily call it utility, we'll call it value. Passing on economic value or having a value to a collection or collectible or a meme is a good thing. It's something that is probably the only thing that should matter for meme coins.

Otherwise, they are pure Ponzi schemes. If you can't have a monetizable community or some value of owning it, what's the point of owning it? Because it doesn't do anything and it never can. And so it's a good trend. But does that matter? So that's the big point. Right. But baseball cards don't get you access to the president. Because I'm not disagreeing with you. I think that in general, you should add something valuable. Stop, let me...

Look, one of the guys at CoinRoutes, his previous business, was doing baseball card collections. Baseball cards are valuable because of scarcity and the ability to hold them, collect them and keep them in good condition. That's not the same thing with meme tokens, it's the same thing with NFTs. That argument works well for NFTs,

but it's not meme tokens. But the point I really wanna make, Carlo, and what I really am curious your feedback on, is I think Paul Atkins, his first speech, said something that is music to my ears because those who you guys have been listening to me rant about this topic for years now. I mean, I've been ranting about it for five years, which is that the job of the SEC should be to make it such that the asset being designated as security is not only not a death sentence,

but is like, yeah, sure, who cares? That's great, you know, and it shouldn't matter. And the reason being a security matters is because the rules that we have for securities are archaic, don't understand technology, exclude people who aren't rich, and throw up competitive moats for cartels. And Paul gets that joke. And so when he talks about creating a sustainable principles-based regulatory framework for digital assets the goal is to make being called a security not something that you want to avoid and that We is is I think the real that's the real Nirvana. That's when real projects will go I'm not gonna say till Valhalla because who the hell knows it's basically it's question of their value

But real projects and real real entrepreneurs will rise to the top. I think that that a meme that provides value is is a teeny step in that direction and so for that I think it's kind of interesting. Hey Karlo what do you think? Yeah look man I am actually more bullish than ever on the prospects for the future of this sector. And I'm excited to be back in the mix and available to advise people to actually build again. Because now we've pivoted to the point where we're rewriting the rulebook, we're giving clarity on what those rules are going to be. And that is essential if this entire sector is going to thrive and if we're

going to see business come back to the United States. So I'm excited to see that Paul Atkins is taking this stigma away. And I absolutely agree with Dave because the regulatory hurdles and the cost of registering something as a security, especially something as obviously benign as a meme coin that might have some indicia of utility, created such an impossible burden for anyone trying to launch in this space, cost prohibitive, and the fear of getting regulatory pushback, if you carved out an exception but then got dinged with a warning or a, or more importantly, enforcement action, which basically bankrupted you, there's such a line of carnage in this sector of people that were destroyed and their

dreams completely obliterated because of this continued lack of clarity. So I can't disagree. I'm excited to get back to work and advising people to build again because we're finally going to get clarity. And that's all I think anyone on this panel has ever wanted. Mark. Yeah, Carla, that's a great point.

And Dave, when you talked about having security clarified, I agree with that. And back to maybe what Mike was talking about, about where Bitcoin is and on the ratio to Nasdaq and the price, I think we are in just, whether it's the eye of the storm or as far as crypto is concerned in Bitcoin, we had tremendous promise with all the executive orders, just one after the other, almost to what he promised, day one. But I think we're going to have to wait till July. Even with the revision by the FDIC taking back the prohibition on launching crypto-based

products, they said said go ahead, do it yourself, you don't need our permission. You know, that's not really going to be done, I think, until all of the agencies agree on the plan in July. And then they have cover, then they can do it. So, you know, Carlo, you know, tee up your emails and your business prospects, but I don't think we're gonna get a lot of movement, let alone adoption, until they get cover from that president's working group, which I am very constructive on in general.

But again, I think it's gonna be Bitcoin first. It's the easiest one to get on your rails. And stable coins. I think stable coins are going to open up a tremendous opportunity. It will probably be the meta of this cycle because anyone and anyone and everyone who wants to launch a payment rail and do it in a regulatory compliant way and not have any sort of yield tied to it, but just strictly be a payment rail is going to be very attracted to stable coins this cycle. Yeah, I 100% agree with that. I mean, there's so many use cases that are going to be unlocked by legislative and regulatory

clarity, Carlo. I mean, it's just, or at least we're going to like hopefully unleash the innovation that's been sort of sidelined or waiting in other countries. Yeah, Mark, go ahead. Thanks, staying on that stable point, what do you guys think the prospects are for income to be accumulated and distributed? Because that's the killer wrap,

which in this higher interest rate environment, which is gonna obviously I, I think, stay here unless there's true yield curve control. So I think Dave has strong views on that. Obviously, it's been a nonstarter for both sides of the of the legislative bodies when it comes to utility and stable coins. Not thrilled about it. But I know, Dave, you have really strong position on this.

Yeah, I mean, look, sometimes in negotiation, you give people what they think they want, they go back, they end up happy, and then they get obliterated because they didn't understand the next move. It's like, this is very basic chess. So effectively, stable coins, because the banks have lobbied really hard to say,

oh, we need checking accounts because we need fractures or banking, and we need to attract, you know, the what, five trillion or whatever of assets that don't pay interest to dumb ass customers and take advantage of them that we need that, that they're going to get the legislation to be payment rails and then they're going to be happy. Unfortunately, there's a problem for them, which is as long as if you've been noticing pretty much every crypto firm worth anything that has any retail associated with it are applying for banking licenses.

Pretty much every broker is going to establish crypto trading. What does that mean? Well, what does that mean is that the notion of using ACHs and using underneath Zelle and underneath PayPal, PayPal is gonna pivot to stablecoins faster than you can blink. Zelle is the banking, they're gonna be left in the dust. And the difference for that is, right now when you use PayPal or Zelle

to transfer money from one thing to another, what happens is it takes at least three days for the money to really move. They may give you instantaneous credit, but you'll know that in the plumbing that there's a delay. With stablecoin, that delay goes to seconds. Now, what does that enable? That enables an entire new range of products

from crypto companies, which will be yield bearing assets that are equivalent to money market funds. And with the SEC being this particular SEC, expect tokenized money market funds to be approved by the bushel in a variety of different ways. And now what you'll have is a mass exodus from the banking system anyway to these new competitors, which can offer instantaneous checking, instantaneous payments and sweeping the money market yields as opposed to the kind of ridiculous way you have to go into savings accounts and even then most money centered banks savings accounts don't pay anything. So within a few years the fact that stable coins don't provide yield is going to become irrelevant.

It's just a few years of additional profits for the banks that they can make on the back of dumb uninformed customers. But the products are coming and the plumbing is too easy for it not to be there. That's my strong opinion, Carlo. Did I disappoint you? No, I think right on point. And I think it is going to be wildly disruptive to the way money moves around. And banks are excited about it because I think it's another way for them to arbitrage fees, but we still have, hopefully, the decentralized alternative for people who don't wanna play in that ecosystem. Oh, I think it goes beyond that.

I mean, I think, you know, people look at, the banks are looking at Tether, like Homer Simpson looks at pork chops, and they say, oh my God, look how much money they're making. Except what they don't understand is Tether's primary use case, almost its entire use case, is for people to get dollars into the crypto system to be able to buy and sell crypto. So when you look at Tether USD, at Tether dollar, right now, for the first time in a very long time, it's gone to a slight premium, a three basis points, you know, premium. That is a very strong indicator of bullishness in the

crypto markets, of money entering the crypto market. And by the way, that tells you that I think that we are going to have a fairly constructive end of the week, but that's besides the point. In any case, the banks don't have that use case, right? And Tether, of course, is going to lose some of that use case because people are going to have other alternatives. They miss that fact. What they don't understand is that instantaneous payments gets rid of float from their system

and people won't be forced to hold money in checking accounts. Right now, I have a stupid amount of money in a checking account. I just do. I mean, just because just to fund myself because I don't want to play close and fast to the wall. People are going to invent automated solutions that handle payments where you don't have to think about it, where you have your money in a new yield bearing account and will automatically

bring it from that into your stable coin, do the swap for you, make your payment. Well, Dave, there's gonna be, I mean, assuming on how the legislation shakes out, the industry wants a yield bearing stable coin that you'll be able to just use. It won't even have to go in and out

if we actually get that in the legislation. That's not right now. You're not gonna get it. I mean, you had Perry Anne on yesterday and she pretty much said the same thing. I mean, I'd love gonna get it. You know, you had Perry Anne on yesterday and she pretty much said the same thing. I mean, I'd love to hear it. It's like, they are sticking on that. That's the hill that they want to die on.

And honestly, that's sort of like the French putting up the Maginot Line before World War II, right? You know, it's like, so the crypto industry is like, okay, well, we really want this, we really want this. But, you know, honestly, it isn't going to matter in the long run. And so get the clarity, get the ability to get these things out there and move on to market structure is probably the smart move for all the various lobbying associations within crypto.

And so I think that's what's going to happen. I mean, it's just, it's, it's really funny. I mean, you can see this developing. Someone's going to write a book about how silly the bank lobbyists, they don't know how much money they spent, forcing that thing in only to give them a couple of years maybe of additional profits.

Yeah, that makes sense. Let's talk about what we can build when we have legislative and regulatory clarity. Robbie, I know I like to force you to say quietly while we plow our way through macro and Bitcoin, but I always love having you here to give you a perspective on what's coming next and what's exciting you. I think right now we're finally, at least from a price perspective, we're finally seeing a little action from altcoins, which makes people start to pay attention again and they start thinking about

what's being built. Do you think that this could possibly continue and we can really start talking about these projects again? Yeah, I think so for sure. I think that, you know, we kind of at the beginning of the year, our house view was that, you know, the first half of the year was going to be quite choppy, euphemistically. And then the second half of the year would be something to look forward to. And so it's about putting your head down and building for that.

And I think, frankly, what we're getting from our research team is reassurance that that's still very much the case. And so we're looking forward to a very interesting second half of the year. I think frankly in the world of content, one of the interesting stories of the day actually is what happened to Artifact, if anybody caught that. You know, it's a project that was sold to Nike and then subsequently closed down. But today the artwork for their NFT collections disappeared because somebody forgot to pay the CloudFlare bill. Oh, yes. So that was a wake-up call for whoever spent, in aggregate, about $100 million

on that collection over time. And it's a reminder that even when you put things on IPFS, that's you need to do it properly, you need to run your own nodes, you need to, you know, there are certain things about the tech that still need to be thought through carefully. That is crazy. Yeah.

I have a quick update on that, Scott, if I could, because I actually made that very same comment today, and then someone clarified to me that apparently there was an announcement by the team and the announcement is Quonex and Animus Collections are currently on their way to be decentralized to Arweave. So apparently they are pivoting and their infrastructure is shifting and I'm happy to put that in the nest just to clarify that for anyone. Yeah, go ahead. Cool. Still. Well, and I think frankly that's great because the point for anyone. Yeah, go ahead. Cool. Still, still. Well, and I think frankly, that's great because the point is that these things all have to

be not just decentralized but done in a proper way so that they are actually, you know, that they are actually fully decentralized and available for all eternity because that's part of the promise of it. And it gives the tech a bad image when people see cases where it might be otherwise because that's the whole point of it to begin with. But yeah, I think other than that, really looking forward to next week, to be honest. I think in-person events and particularly ones like Token 2049 or Consensus, some of the big ones tend to be good opportunities to get a pulse of what's going on with people's projects on the ground. And I think, you know, talking about

Softbank earlier, far from being a top signal, I think things like that, and you know, them working with Cantor and stuff is just signs that, you know, the market is good, because we're starting to reach ears and eyeballs outside of our own small Twitter verse, which, which is great news for the space. Yeah. I think token to when they 49 next week is going to be a huge barometer for where we're at. Yeah.

Especially for like those of us who live in the United States, at least we have this like PTSD of past years where our conferences were like accountants and lawyers who were there to like, uh the booths to defend us for participating in unregulated securities. Every time you get outside the United States, especially Dubai or Singapore or one of those, it just reinvigorates you to believe once again how important the things that are being built are. For sure.

Don't be scared, Scott I'm gonna be there. 20-25,000 people next week. Is it that many? Oh yeah. So it's gonna be actually much bigger than last year. Actually it was small in Dubai with the floods. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, just for my house event, my little house event in person. I got almost 2500 applications. I hope you have a big house. It's like a loft downtown, but you guys are all invited, of course. I mean, a lot of people and I'm very surprised on the diversity. And this is what I like about conferences in Dubai, also Hong Kong, places where it's easy to get into. You just bring people from all over the world and you see what people are

actually building and working on. And that's where the opportunity is because a lot of these great projects might not have access to capital, things like that. So I would really encourage the well established capital asset allocators to look beyond guys that speak in perfect fluent English and went to Ivy League. Because there are some great things. Hey, hey, hey, that was me. I went to the Ivy League and I speak impeccable English. Exactly.

My English is terrible. Actually, my English is average. I was going to say one of those is true. And it's the only language I speak. So welcome to America, buddy. Yes, but it's going to be great. And I was going to say one of those is the only language I speak. So welcome to America, buddy. Yes, but it's going to be great and hope to see you on there. Yeah, I did not realize it was going to be that big.

Honestly, I was like very hesitant to pull the trigger. I've been pretty much avoiding conferences, but I'm now I have decided as this week that I'm going and I'm really looking forward to it. I think it's gonna be really, really fun. Zillion that said, like, what are you looking forward to accomplishing there? Right, obviously everybody has their events. The reason I've been so like anti-conferences for a while

is I feel like it's just a traveling party of the same people, like an excuse to go see each other in a new city every day, every week. That's how it feels to me. So what are you looking to sort of accomplish there? And what are you looking forward to seeing? Well, for me, I'm looking forward really to see a new perspective on things. Right now, I'm focusing on exploring the highest probability event in crypto, which is token failing and what we can build around that, right? To kind of leverage that value, etc.

So I'm basically trying to see who's actually building things at the end of the life cycle of a token. We see a lot of pump that fun kind of wannabes and I'm thinking, okay, well, that's the beginning of the life cycle. How about the end of the life cycle since that is the highest probability event so I'm just looking at you know who's who's allocating capital to that who's uh yeah who's building stuff around that and uh and yeah so sounds like you and Robbie should be hanging out definitely yeah Robbie same question to you like is this an excuse to get a feel for what's

real and what's kind of fluff? Is this, you know, visiting a hundred portfolio companies? I think for us, it's a couple of things. So we have our portfolio day, which we do at Token 2049 in, you know, in both locations, just because every time there's a big event like this, the chances are that we can get the most possible members of our investment portfolio in the same place at the same time. So it's a great time to spend a day just helping to network and troubleshoot and praise everybody. So that's, but also I think it's about just connecting with the wider community. It's a chance to meet people from funds who we co-invest with projects that we've been incubating.

I mean, it's literally just, you know, it's like the United Nations for, for crypto projects. Yeah. Everybody in one place is hard to get, especially for someone like you. I mean, how many investments do you, does Animoca have right now? About 550, but you know, we have our portfolio day. We have about 250 people coming on Tuesday. Yeah. I mean, so when do you get the opportunity to sit all those people in one room?

And then inevitably, since they're all your portfolio companies, you get them in a room and they find all these creative ways to work together. Exactly. And that only happens in person. I thought that we didn't have to ever go back to offices, Robbie. No, live our lives on the internet. Agreed. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's exciting.

You guys just made me actually a lot more excited. I, last year was a pretty muted event. And I don't know if that was the floods or because they were just trying to scale to Dubai, obviously Singapore had been a huge event and I think that was the first open 2049 in Dubai last year, but it felt like 5,000 people, maybe. It wasn't that huge. Yeah, I think ultimately they claimed like nine or something, but yeah, it'll be twice as big this year.

Wow. Okay. Yeah. Mine, by the way, is an after party. So it starts at 11.30 and it ends at three in the morning. So for me that's a great way to kind of get everyone that I want to see because most of events end in Dubai at around 1 a.m. even like the party-like event. I have to stay up till I'm only going for three nights and my goal is to be awake till four or five o'clock every night so I never get jetlagged when I come back for Formula One the next week.

So come see me. It's fun. Send me a DM and I'll come see you. I'm going to be a night out. Honestly, last year I went to the conference for I think less than an hour and a half in the entire five days I was there. I mean, given the conference is only two hours, but everything always happens around the sides, you know, and the conferences themselves are just kind of a good of a good of a, you know, Super Bowl. Yeah, that's what you show to your partner, right? That's what you show to your wife and then you go to the side events. She usually comes with me, Zillian. So, oh, cool. So bring her over. Oh, quick. So listen, we've only got a couple of minutes left. I just saw Dennis, you joined, maybe give us the quick TLDR on where we're at with the strategic reserves and everything you're working on. Yeah. Yeah.

Glad to be here. Sorry. I was popping in and out like six times. I couldn't get the app to work, but finally, welcome to spaces, buddy, where I got kicked off. I got kicked off twice today in mid conversations. Good. We're still dealing with it. Technology, it works when it's great when it works and it's annoying when it doesn't. Yeah, so a lot of great things happening. I actually just finished up with a conference here. We had a panel with Grayscale Coinbase where we were able

to get in front of a bunch of state treasurers and state financial officers. And honestly, the reception, because I've gone to three of these now, these state treasurers, the reception is much, much, much higher and much, much, there's just so much more interest from these folks who make these decisions. And like, at the end of the day, like if you can't get a straight treasurer on board, like it's going to be very hard to pass a bill for strategic Bitcoin reserve policy. But we're seeing a lot of progress. Obviously, we're down to the finish line on the states that really have a shot of getting it done. There's a couple of states where we really thought we had a great chance of getting it done this year that didn't pass, but we will be back for a second year and a third year to get it across the finish line. Just keep in mind, strategic

Bitcoin reserve policy is very radical policy. And the fact that we were able to pass it in chambers in multiple states is a huge, huge sign that there is a thirst and an appetite for this type of policy. So we're down to Texas, Arizona, we're going to see stuff in Ohio, we're going to see stuff in Pennsylvania, Hampshire just passed it out of the out of committee there. And it's going to be on the consent calendar. So that means it's going to move a lot faster. We've also got some really great progress happening in North Carolina as well. But we're going to see going forward that at least one or two of these States get this across the finish line.

And that's kind of what I projected this whole time, right? Like, you know, when we first started to work on this model policy, which is the basis for probably 95 to 99% of the strategic Bitcoin reserve policies across the country. For those that aren't familiar, Satoshi Action, the nonprofit that I run, we not only educate lawmakers and regulators on Bitcoin, we also craft the language and create models that those lawmakers can introduce. We did not think we were going to have 25, 30 states doing this when we got started.

We thought maybe there'd be a few lawmakers that would be interested. Obviously, all that changed when President Trump came out and not only endorsed the policy, but ultimately ended up, through executive order, creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve. It's just been an absolute fire hose of trying to make sure we get these things across the finish line as fast as possible. People should just keep in mind, like when we first started, each year we only passed two bills into the law.

We passed two bills into law in 2023 to protect Bitcoin rights. In 2024, we did the same. And so we expect we'll match that same pattern. But moving forward, once one or two states does it, the following legislative cycle, which is only, what, six months away, seven months away, that is going to be a period where we're going to see an absolute expansion as we fine tune, you know, what works for each of these states, because each state is

very different. And it's also very different from the federal government, like a federal like a Senator Lummis type bill is not the type of bill that you can do at the state level for the vast majority of these states, like some of these states, unconstitutional, they could not do something like that. So very excited about where we are on getting to the finish line on some of these states and looking forward to getting one, if not at least two across the finish line so we can break down that door. And in twenty twenty six, when we come back harder and faster and better with a more souped up policy, we're going to be in a much better position

to continue to get this stuff across the finish line. Hey, that's absolutely incredible. Dave, go ahead. I just have a quick question, Dennis. So I saw something, I can't remember where it was. I was, unfortunately, I was scrolling on my phone. But I thought I saw some, one state, maybe two, talking about a law to enable their investment funds

to be able to buy Bitcoin in their investment funds as opposed to, forget strategic or anything. Just, you know, there are a lot of states, you know, Texas, California, New Jersey that have self-run pension funds where they could invest. Can you talk a little bit about whether or not that's happening? Because that's not a trivial thing either. Yeah, that is happening. I mean, that was one of our first angles last legislative cycle in 2024, where, you know, we hadn't really gotten to this point where people would be interested in actually doing the purchase of Bitcoin for the state treasurer. So we're very interested in continuing to push on that and making sure those pensions have a shot to be able to buy Bitcoin.

I mean, we've already saw multiple pensions. I mean, Wisconsin, I think they hold like 250 or 300 million dollars of Bitcoin. So we'll see more and more of that take place as well as we move forward. And yeah, definitely very interested in seeing state pensions along with state treasurers and those and their treasuries allocated to Bitcoin as well. Hopefully you can hear me. It's showing me as a connection lost once again. Spaces, man, no idea what's going on with this thing. Dennis, thank you for joining here late.

I'm glad we got that quick update at the end. Obviously we're at time here. Everybody in the audience, give our incredible panel a follow. All these guys are amazing and gals. We do get girls up here like once a year. It's great. We did have Perry in yesterday. But give them all a follow

and listen to their insights on and off spaces, of course, because they're the experts that we turn to. Otherwise, everyone, we will see you back here tomorrow, 10, 15 AM Eastern Standard Time. Bye.