The Wolf Of All Streets - Spot ETF Outflows Surge as Crypto Market Struggles | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

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Guys, welcome. It is Monday morning. And everyone's losing their minds because Bitcoin is the same price. We have $55,253 now. Bitcoin effectively chopping sideways, hitting a low around $52,500 over the last few days. And it seems like people are losing their minds. We have the crypto fear and greed index vacillating between about 20 and 25, which is extreme fear to fear. And nothing really happening to indicate that that should be the case besides the fact that, in my opinion, price has been trading sideways and people are losing their minds and losing their patience. Simon, we've been here before, man. Why do you think that the, well, Dave made an interesting point, I should say, about crypto fear and greed is not the

Bitcoin fear and greed index we talked about this morning. So maybe there's some separation there. But are you seeing, Simon, sort of fearful sentiment in the market from your perspective? And do you think that it's justified by what's actually happening? Yeah, I guess I'm in a little bit of a bubble. So the majority of like, you know, our customers, you know, buy Bitcoin every month, they've been trained for years, to dollar cost average, they've been through multiple cycles. Our average customer at Bank of the Future has been around since 2013, 14, 15. So absolutely no panic, loving the market, loving the opportunity to accumulate as much Bitcoin as they can every month with their fiat currency and just waiting for the market to adjust itself so they can feel good about their dollar wealth increasing. I think if they have crypto exposure, our typical customer would only ever go to about 10% crypto exposure. They may go to e-staking, but they tend to take their stakes

and buy Bitcoin with it. So it's a very different thing. But I think, yeah, if you're involved in the crypto market, then it's probably a pretty depressing time. And I'm curious on the ETF flows because I haven't been following that. So I'm very curious around how they see their side. Yeah, we have just had about 1.2 billion, I think, over 8 days in ETF outflows. And in a lesser time, obviously, we had the largest sort of over a 2 or 3-day period, I think, of $600 or $700 million.

So that's kind of why we have this title here. There's definitely been selling from ETFs. To be clear, people always go, BlackRock selling. No, they're not. People who hold a BlackRock ETF are selling their ETFs. So BlackRock is selling on their behalf. That's how it works. That's an interesting data point there as well. Is there a breakdown at this stage between custody holdings in the ETFs versus positions held within the fund? So we just don't get that real-time transparency, I guess, like we used to, because we'd have to wait for their quarterly reports. But I'm very curious around what the ETF investor,

what the mutual fund investor... And I think that data is going to be really interesting to understand in an extended downward or sideways market. Jonathan? Yeah, I can go over some specifics here with the ETFs. The seven-day, so for the light paper, I do a weekend version and it goes through the data dive. And there's 14 Bitcoin ETFs that we track using various on-chain analytics platforms. So over the last week, there are only two of the spot ETFs or spot funds, rather, that had Bitcoin added. That was Purpose Investments of 224 Bitcoin and Becerra Funds of 25.

Everybody else was selling. The net balance over the last week was negative 24,000 Bitcoin. 30 days, it's negative 20 769 blackrock is the clear adder over 30 days at 14 120 nobody even comes close there's only one other fund that has added uh over the last that is net positive over the last 30 days uh sorry, there's two. It's Purpose Investments with their 258 and Becerra Funds at 95. But BlackRock is still the huge, enormous adder over a 30-day period.

And they only got rid of 227 Bitcoin last week. Now that's on the... I don't know if you want to know the Ethereum stuff or not, but that's on the Bitcoin side. And do you have anything that... I guess it's impossible, but do you have any type of indicator around how much of the etf is institutional versus just everyday people there's no real way to know right uh there there might be this is just tracking the the known wallets of them and and what's coming in and out from

all over the place. You can go to, I think Arkham Intelligence probably has one of the best visuals of it. It's really interesting. You can see it's really cool to see these live trades and movements

going on because they're on a public blockchain. So you can see what... I mean, if you ever wanted to follow what the big guys are doing and do it in a live manner, that's the way to do it. If you want to trade like BlackRock does, you can follow what they're doing live. And do we know what specific exchange they're using to place the sell orders as the units are being sold? Yeah.

If we know who the... If the wallets are known, they'll put in parentheses next to it like Coinbase, Kraken, if there's any other entity that is known, it'll say. Very interesting.

For now, obviously, it seems to be largely selling by people in their own portfolios i'm assuming um but uh it does go into sort of the nuance of why there's so much fear and greed dave maybe you should dave weisberger share the point again sort of about um the bitcoin crypto differentiator maybe on what we're seeing and what we discussed this morning? Yeah, I mean, look, there are a few things that are going on. The point I was making this morning was that the people who generally are accumulating Bitcoin, as Simon articulated well, are people who look at this and say, OK, well, you know, we've been $10,000 either side of 60,

basically for seven months. We got the initial jump up on the ETF launch. And yeah, it's kind of sat there. And during this period of time, we've seen the euphoria get completely squeezed out of the market. And it's gone to quiet desperation to more desperation to people who are like well why won't it go anywhere what's going on and you see a bunch of metrics so bitcoin you know the two that i that i was looking at are moving averages you know so people who look for macd or moving average you know crossover divergence you know basically looking for the envelope of how it looks to the moving averages. Bitcoin's well below most of the moving averages

at this point. At the same time, the leverage indication, the funding rates have been negative now going on three weeks. And just to put that in reverse, the last time bitcoin got into the 50 60 000 range and started kind of falling off of 60 into 50 it was after it had rocketed up there in 2021 and we could talk about fundamentals and why it's a very different scenario but the most important thing is is at that period of time the funding rates were ridiculously high and so it was obviously happening, where leverage players were the buyers and the whales or the holders were the sellers. And now it's the exact opposite. Now, the buyers are long term accumulators, and whatever sellers there are, are people who have been in it for the short term. So if you if you're trying to understand what a textbook bottom looks

like, this is what a textbook bottom looks like.'s for bitcoin in the rest of crypto on the other hand not so much and you know you're looking at at significantly bigger drawdowns there is you know support levels are hard to find you know scott put in his newsletter this morning i think it was you're talking about the eth bitcoin ratio and you you know, we've clearly, in that ratio, broken out of any ranges we've had since a long time ago. And there's a long way for that to potentially to fall, if you believe in that. Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen. I'm just saying that there's a lot more fear. My guess is if you did a fear and greed index on crypto outside of Bitcoin, it would be extreme fear. And if you look at Bitcoin, it would be neutral to fear, you know, like, okay, whatever. And I

think that's very, very different. Dave, it's been a while. What do you think? So, look, I see this as being within the context of the broader market. Granted, crypto has been, I'd say, somewhat uncorrelated from the broader market in terms of there having been a steady march down, you know, even, you know, starting as far back as, you know, end of July. And the sentiment right now in the broader market is kind of on pause and I think somewhat wonder in terms of the uncertainties around where we are in terms of economic cycles on a macro basis. Certainly in the United States, there is definitely calls for attention to recessionary indicators. We have everything going on around the election. I think the election and the platforms and specifically, you know, the either the stated or, frankly, muted platform regarding crypto is troubling. you know, people thought there was an early summer when it seemed like the legislature was going to go ahead and turn everything that the regulators had done until that point,

and then even the legislative sentiment of being divisive, you know, on its head. And I think that we've reverted back in a lot of senses when it comes to that narrative. And so, you know, based on everything, you know, in terms of tech, have we run too far too fast, especially based on where we are macro wise, you know, recession wise, uncertainty around the election wise, I think markets are just taking a huge breather here. And it's no, I wouldn't say, you know, I saw it coming. That's not the point. But, you know, to be incredibly surprised by what's going on right now, I don't think is appropriate because, you know, you really don't think is appropriate because you really don't have major institutional adoption yet in terms of what we think as traditional institutional investors in crypto, even Bitcoin for that matter. That's going to take a lot of time. It's going to come slow.

It'll be important in terms of being forceful, but it's going to be slow. And so therefore, this is a lot, I think, a lot of retail, you know, kind of moving about. And that's okay. You know, there are people that, you know, come and go in this asset class. And then there are people that come once, you know, take a beating and then leave and to never return. And so I think it certainly could be a lot worse of an environment, a lot worse of a pricing environment in terms of where we are in narratives. I think that it's generally, to go to Simon's point, a time-free accumulation for people that are in it for the long haul. Exactly when this goes ahead and thaws, though, I don't really know. But that being said, it could be very sudden and it could be quite spectacular to the upside if all of a sudden

the market starts to catch a very strong bid and we start to hear about, you know, general tech, you know, strong sentiment. Again, I don't think necessarily crypto is a proxy for tech. But that being said, I think immediately, you know, a risk on attitude goes ahead and permeates, you know, from technology, you know, over into, you know, crypto sentiment. So, you know, sorry for the long winded answer. But that's kind of where we are. I wish I had something much more exciting or poignant to say, you know, on this Monday, but that's kind of where I'm at. Yeah, I mean, you said you weren't willing to say

predicted it, but I'm willing to say I make a lot of bad guesses, but I predicted it. And anyone who's ever looked at the four-year cycle or the halving cycle or what happens in the summers for Bitcoin and what was happening in March, I mean, we were here talking about it and I over and over and over again said, look, I don't know what's going to happen, but nobody should be surprised. The base case should be six to eight months of boring, downward, sideways chopping action. Christ, that's exactly what we've seen. I'll say one more thing on that point, right? You, Scott, and I think a lot of the folks on the panel here have been through enough,

you know, I don't know, I'd say mini cycles, let's say, to at this point know, and this I think is important for the audience, you know, if you're a long-term believer in the sector, it really pays to have a fair amount of cash on the sidelines, especially during a strong run, because there's going to be a pullback. You're going to want to go ahead and be able to deploy during those period of pullback and be able to make, you know, really quality investments in terms of price point. And so you should always, you know, kind of keep your wits about you. Don't get caught up in the euphoria when everything's running really, really hard. There's nothing wrong with taking profits if this is the way that you go ahead and position your portfolio and you want to be able to go ahead and, you know, add, you know, at a lower price point, if that's not your, you know, strategy, if you're just a, you know, stick, you know, stick to it, buy and hold forever type of

investor, then that's a different story. But if you do want to go ahead and make more strategic, you know, price point investments, you should always, you know always have your wits about you when things are running really strong. Yeah. I mean, when taking a look at the market from this perspective, there's a number of articles on Bloomberg, CoinDesk, pointing out a lot of quote unquote bottoming signals, obviously crypto fear and greed index, one metric, but when people are exceptionally fearful, usually a decent time to think about buying. We have funding rates being sustained negative across perpetual swaps. Usually when you have sustained negative, that means people are overly bearish and paying to

be short. That sets up for a potential short squeeze. If you take a look at the order book, there's an article about it. It's basically saying that that $49,000 was probably a bottom $52,500, a likely higher low here in that sideways chop. And that the order book effectively is saying by how much bid there is below current price, it's unlikely that we would make those newer lows. It's just nothing is certain. But when there's no reason to be overly bearish and you get all of these signals, it's usually a bottoming type signal. It doesn't mean the bottom is in, but a bottoming type signal. And September is supposed to be rough. I mean, Matt Hogan shared with me a chart that showed the monthly performance, obviously, of Bitcoin, which we all know,

depending on how people look at it, September being the quote unquote worst month. But you're usually talking about two and a half to 4% down, which is an hour of volatility for Bitcoin. So worst month is sort of hyperbolic. But if you look at October, November, historically, literally like 35, 45% up months. so we're exactly where we should be the problem is when you are there it causes panic because you don't know if the next part is going to happen dwayne go ahead hey good morning i mean yeah so there's something to be said about you know having having a large amount of of uh of outflows on the ETFs here. I mean, the only bright point that you can look at is perhaps Brazil,

where I think there was something like maybe like $4 million of inflows here. And they're an emerging market, they're a developing market. So that's to be expected. I mean, if you look at Bitcoin and, you know, contrast it with gold, it's quite the opposite in the sense that, okay, we're having a downturn in China. But despite that, there's still inflows coming into Western ETFs. Like, don't get me wrong, the net inflows on ETFs are still negative for the year, but we're seeing a lot of activity here. So if you are a holder of Bitcoin, a long term holder,

you know, maybe I'm just positive on a Monday morning here, but there's really no need to panic. We can look at this more over as a healthy consolidation. If, you know, if you're going on the premise that gold and Bitcoin are cousins here, they have a lot of shared value here, intrinsic value, a store of value, et cetera, you know, that we can look at it, you know, from that aspect and really say that, OK, if we're having a great amount of inflows here coming from gold, we also have the expectation of rate cuts overall. So despite, you know, we have some negative macroeconomic data here. So putting that all together, you could say, OK, this could be a healthy consolidation and there isn't really a need to panic just yet. And looking forward over the longer term basis,

you'll see Bitcoin rise again here. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And Duane, you kind of look at it, I think, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but as an outside perspective, right? I mean, you're not like a diehard Bitcoiner whose dollar cost averaging every day. Well, exactly right i look at more you know moreover obviously i'm not a bitcoin expert here but i do look at it as a correlative asset with gold in the respect that there's intrinsic value there and you're going to see activity in regards to um especially with consumers with consumer sentiment in their sense of confidence of where the market is going as well and where the economy is going.

And we're seeing that reflected in the Bitcoin price. And we're also, in some ways, we're seeing that reflected in the gold price. So I'm looking at both of these different assets here, and we could expect Bitcoin to rise in that respect over a longer term basis. Simon? Yeah, one thing I did want to cover is I think it's a real strategic mistake of the Trump administration to have his children launch this crypto project going into this time when we're all going to be judging and deciding. Maybe that's just my bubble. Maybe there's a lot more crypto people that are excited about this versus Bitcoin people that think this isn't the right way to go. But, you know, after all the

controversy of the previous NFT that was then meant to be associated with his son and then they denied it um yeah i mean yeah but to your point though trump's already on his fourth set of nfts right so he was there he was there long before he uh had the bitcoin pivot right and And I'm not disagreeing with you, by the way. I think the optics are likely to hurt more than help. And already, of course, as they launch that DeFi project or prepare to, people dig into who the developers are and that it's likely attached to a project that apparently, I think, got hacked last summer and it sort of looks similar to the platform. It's just... I think got hacked last summer and it sort of looks similar to the platform. It's just, I think their intentions, I have no idea what they are, but I would imagine they're good. But I think Simon Wright as a Bitcoiner,

you would just like him to keep pounding the pavement on the talking points from his speech in Nashville. Yeah. Protect self-custody, like the big, the big points and leave it at that. Yeah. What I'd love to see is just say, look, RFK demonstrated to us that he gets this. We're all, I don't know anyone that doesn't stand behind RFK's vision of what Bitcoin is and what it means to the American government.

And so if he could have tied that in with this is the role for RFK, then I think everyone would be very confident. But yeah, I still think everyone in crypto that's thinking about this as a one policy voter will still be looking at Trump because Harris has just been even worse. It looks like we just get more of the same. David? I just wanted to comment how interesting it is now that it seems that the legislature is the most serious and the most on script out of all the branches of government at this point. It certainly was not this way um certainly there there are folks there are congressmen and women um you know that are at

the fringes on this but i i think the majority you know are together hopefully they come back from their summer recess and are able to do something uh before the election to show you know that we're on the right path. Dave Weisberg are giving me the thumbs down. They're not gonna be able to do anything, either that, or he totally disagrees with me. But, um, you know, I, I, it's, it's really troubling generally. Um, you know, I won't go further than that, uh, to, to, to say that Donald Trump can't stick to the script on most anything. And then, you know, what the folks on the left or who are supporting Harris, who are crypto folks, Scaramucci and Cuban, you know, are trying to do, I think is just, listen, they can go ahead and make an effort, I guess. But at the end of the

day, you know, they're trying to go ahead and make, you know, Harris into something that she's not. I don't think there is a shred of her that in any way, you know, whether it be from outside influence or, you know, on an independent basis, she has no interest in this part of the world at all. She is way focused on too many other things. She has too many reasons, policy-wise, vote-getting-wise, to go ahead and paint this sector, you know, as an evil boogeyman. And I just don't think we're going to get anywhere with that. But if Congress can get their act together, maybe we can get some momentum there on a bipartisan basis. So at least if Harris does win, there still is a fair amount of congressional support for the crypto sector.

Dave Weisberger, I'll go ahead and give the mic to you. Thank you for helping me there, David. Perfect. You got it. Perfect pivots. Well done. Yeah. I mean, look, Schumer just released the legislative letter and crypto was ignored. So that's not going to happen.

Right. You know, he had the chance to include something. He included nothing. And so, you know, that isn't. But I think it's important to understand, you know, the Scaramucci, look, Anthony has, he genuinely fears Trump, hates him, and has genuine concerns. And he just values those concerns higher. Everything you're hearing about crypto for Harris can be explained by two words. It's called cognitive dissonance. And cognitive dissonance is one of the most powerful human psychological forces. You know, we are hardwired to believe in ourselves. And so when

we say X, we will spend lots of time trying to justify X. It gets magnified when there's charismatic people that are telling you about X. And there's all sorts of great examples of this. The most obvious one is if you ask someone to give, if you're at a bar and you ask a person to your right, if they want something or you buy them a drink, versus you ask that person to hand you something or you buy them a drink, and then versus you ask that person to hand you something or do a favor for you, it turns out that if you then survey that person, the person is much more likely to think favorably of you if they somehow were persuaded to do a

favor for you than if you do a favor for them. And that's the kind of thing because humans become self-reflexive. So if you're supporting Harris because you hate Trump, then you're going to look to try to find any possible example as to why maybe she won't be so horrible for crypto. Now, that's not to say that you shouldn't try to work with both sides if you're a crypto company. If you're a crypto company, of course you should work with both sides. I mean, the election looks like a coin flip right now, and you'd be crazy to justify your entire business

on a coin flip. I spent the weekend playing poker, and believe me, I try to avoid coin flips or at least shove my chips in before the other guy, so at least I'm not the one calling off all my chips on a coin flip. Do you think Winklevoss has done that, Dave? Yeah, well, they sort of have. You're right, Simon. And, you know, some people will draw lines in the sand because it's what they genuinely believe. Now, look, I didn't say boo about supporting Donald Trump until RFK, because I actually thought that what he wanted is far closer to what I care about. But I won't go through my issues. But the point is Kamala Harris has, in her entire career, been pro-government. In fact, in every single policy she cares about, it's more and more government control.

That's more central control. The people who put her up for the election are very, very clearly in favor of centralized control. So you have to ask yourself, what does that mean for crypto? Well, it's really bad for crypto writ large. Now, for Bitcoin, on the other hand, I think Bitcoin has gotten escape velocity. I think Bitcoin has gotten to the point where the party leaders are like, okay, we're going to accept this thing here, and we're going to profit from it and try to co-opt it. And so it is not remotely surprising to see choke point continue where crypto companies are cut off. But people are allowed to invest in Bitcoin via BlackRock, Fidelity, etc.

So my thesis is a Harris administration, which is going to spend like crazy. M2 is going to explode, is going to probably be OK for Bitcoin, but bad for crypto in the United States, and potentially could set the US back enormously in terms of digital innovation. But those are two very different things. And it's, you know, so if you're crypto for Harris, and you're actually a crypto entrepreneur trying to build crypto companies or digital companies in the United States, you're a fool. You're an absolute fool. If you're a Bitcoiner, and you're for Harris, okay, I can understand that I can actually see it. And look, you're a fool. You're an absolute fool. If you're a Bitcoiner and you're for Harris, oh, okay, I can understand that.

I can actually see it. And look, you know, I'm kind of both. Why Dave? Why is Harris good for Bitcoin? I don't think she's good for Bitcoin because she's going to spend, spend, spend, spend, and you never get to tax as much as you can. Oh, got her.

And so she represents the acceleration of the demise of the fiat system, to put it in terms that you are extremely familiar with or anybody who's read any serious Bitcoin literature or monetary history knows. So I think she accelerates that. Obviously, Trump is more direct because he wants to have a Bitcoin strategic reserve, which would create a gold rush to use. And it's actually a pretty good aphorism around countries around the world stockpiling Bitcoin. And I think that that's probably better. But either way, I don't see it.

I think the Bernstein analysis that Bitcoin drops to 30,000 in the Harris administration, unless they genuinely believe that she's going to engineer some sort of smaller government, I don't see how that's possible. Okay, so I'm going to do a Putin on you now, Dave. If Dave says if you like, if you if you're a Bitcoin maxi, then you need to vote Harris. I didn't say that. If you're a Bitcoin maxi, and you have your in your bags are full, you want Trump because he's going to make it faster to become a global reserve asset. But you're probably sleeping well at night either way as long as you're not overly leveraged. I think, James Ackman here, just listening to this, I think it's a little naive and everybody's talking about, you know, they want to hope for something that's going to be positive. But, you know, there's a reason why, you know, BlackRock and Goldman and JP Morgan are accumulating while the federal government, who they're partnered with, is imprisoning people from Roger Ver, suing Coinbase. They're just slowly taking control of Bitcoin. So I think if you're just thinking, hey, can I profit? Can I get a 20x? Well, BlackRock always gets their 20x. And

every time there's a negative press release or a lawsuit or arrest, just look, they just keep accumulating at the low. But at the end of this, if Harris wins, this is going to be a 1933 swap because they're going to have control of the majority of Bitcoin. And for sure, you're going to be able to cash in. But this is just a road to CBDC. There's no way that an administration, which will be emboldened by a winning election, is going to allow a currency that competes with the US dollar. It's just never going to happen. But BlackRock will get its 20X, its customers will get its 20X, and we can be compliant and do the swap. But we're just fools to think that, hey, this is great. Bitcoin is going to take over as the or be a leading currency of the United States military.

Because we all know what the dollar is backed by. It's the U.S. military. I'll comment on that. I'll argue the Navy. The Navy is the one that backs it. If I could comment on that i think there's like 80 80 percent of truth there but then a deeper understanding has to go in that we need to dig deeper so firstly any country that makes bitcoin um tax-free for purchases

is has the opportunity to attract a lot of people and make it where it can be a currency within that country. Any country that decides not to do that is looking for a tax place. So they're treating it as an asset or property, and they can benefit from the tax collection. So every country gets to decide which side they want to be on. So if you're the world reserve currency, and you've got a proof of weapons network, then obviously you're going to go for the property and tax side. But let's not pretend that Bitcoin is Ethereum. Because if you want to create a network for central bank digital currencies, then what you do is you launch an ETF, and then you convert it into staking. So then you can control the governance of the network. And then you get a

significant control on the protocol where you can launch a CBDC if they decide to do it external to their own chain. But fortunately, proof of work was designed in a way where if you own Bitcoin, if you have a node, and if you mine Bitcoin, and if you create a startup on Bitcoin, these are all very different players. And that's the reason why Bitcoin has survived. And if you create a startup on Bitcoin, these are all very different players. And that's the reason why Bitcoin has survived. And Bitcoin doesn't really matter who owns it, because then all they can do is manipulate the price. And then manipulating the price is just a trade. And the fact that we've got this fixed money supply, I would bet on the fixed money supply over the trade. I think it's a point well taken, Simon. As you talk about the election, what the likely outcome

is, the only reason that I've pointed out that price, and James, I agree with all that you're saying, could theoretically do well under Harris. I mean, there was a huge article in CoinDesk or Bloomberg today that said Bitcoin goes to 90,000 if Trump wins, 30,000 if Harris wins. And I've said this before, I think there's a fighting chance that the Harris win, like David said, could actually, like Dave Weisberg said, could be good for Bitcoin in that the same people who would move to Puerto Rico or flee the country if Harris won to avoid taxes and things like that would view Bitcoin as a flight to safety and would buy more of it in a situation where they were fearful, much like Silicon Valley

banks collapse and things like that. I can be completely wrong. The crypto industry is probably as a whole likely set back massively if that happens. But Bitcoin itself, speaking specifically about could perform well. Dave, go ahead. Yeah, I think it's trusting and then having. And we know that Elizabeth Warren wants a CBDC. This should really be scaring the bejesus out of people to understand what this is,

what this is doing. And I think that that is true. None of that means that the price of Bitcoin won't go up if you spend crazily and BlackRock gets their 20x. So yeah, I think that what James was saying, I agree with completely, in the sense of, you know, you get if you're if all you're doing is trying to invest to try to profit, then I don't really think that who wins the election from a Bitcoin perspective matters. and getting a better system, a monetary system that is fairer, more inclusive, more efficient, et cetera, then there's a huge difference in the election. And I think that that is something that people don't really want to talk about, but it seems to be reality. Look, a CBDC is incredibly dystopian, but why is it dystopian? If you have a government who is going to push back and try to censor speech who is going to have the power to cancel people from the financial system at will that is an exceedingly uh that that basically is goes beyond orwellian at that point and so you

know that that is actually on the table and it sounds tinfoil hat crazy to talk about that sort of stuff but that really is it. But if we're talking crypto town hall, but what's going to happen to the price of Bitcoin or what's going to happen to the price of Ethereum, those are totally different issues. And I just want to be really clear that I'm very worried about one, but not worried about the price. Yeah, that's right. It's a very important differentiation that I was talking about price and that you're talking about price, because I can't tell you what it would mean for self-custody, which is very important to Bitcoiners. Right. If one administration wins versus the other one, since we know that there could likely be attacks on that or other very, very important facets. As soon we're going to pivot the conversation, just waiting to get James Heckman back on stage. And I think just, you know, continuing the political conversation for a moment, I'm just checking a check at Polymarket now has Trump at

52%. And we've seen sort of Bitcoin price move along with the expectation of who might or might not win the election. We have the debate this week, CPI, PPI. So actually, as sort of a boring and choppy sideways, we do have some significant catalysts potentially this week. CPI, PPI. So actually, as sort of a boring and choppy sideways, we do have some significant catalysts potentially this week. Go ahead, Simon. Yeah, I just wanted to say as well, the international fight versus the American fight. So believing that if America makes, you know, restricts your ability to self custody, and a bunch of Bitcoin ends up in ETFs and they tax incentivize everybody to hold it through a share rather than holding it as Bitcoin. And then we end up with a massive bag of Bitcoin in Coinbase. That's an American story and it should be a fight for

property rights, for constitutional rights, those types of First Amendment rights around freedom of speech as a protocol. But that doesn't destroy Bitcoin, because there is a non-American story. And the non-American story is moving towards, you know, the ability to maintain people's right to self custody. So we've already seen this battle before when America confiscated all of America's gold and said, you know, and the market still continued outside of America and it didn't destroy the gold market. Granted, it was used to manipulate who has a vast control of the gold supply, just like the Great Depression was. But I just want to kind of reiterate that the American fight for ability to self custody is an important American fight,

but it doesn't change the nature of Bitcoin, which is for the world. I mean, I think something to think about everyone is that Bitcoin is trivial and interesting, kind of, to the left. But think about what the status of gold was in 1932. It was everything. I mean, it was everybody's stored retirement. It was traded. It was carried around in horses. It was the currency. And Roosevelt just killed it and possessed it and grabbed it. And the same people that controlled the Federal Reserve then, literally JP Morgan and all the affiliates, control the Fed now under the same circumstances. And what they did, if you go track this, and I invite everybody to look at the true history, that in between the crash of 29,

they accumulated gold, Kennedy family, by the way, being a leading accumulator, Joe Kennedy, and they doubled the price of gold. And I go look at the price of gold for 100 years was exactly static and horizontal. Then they doubled the price of gold. And then they swapped it for the dollar. It's exactly what they're doing right now. So I think, you know, look, there's there's for sure, if Harris wins, I think the price goes higher, but not for the reasons you're thinking about. It goes higher because BlackRock and JP Morgan, all the affiliates controlled by Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street are accumulating like mad right now as they suppress the price. Once they get power, they'll do exactly what they did in 19, you know, when Roosevelt took over, bring the price up and then they they'll force a swap, because they've got majority custody, and they can do it. And they've got the military, and they'll make it illegal. Yeah, there's another side to that. And I do believe

someone might have such a thing. But there is another side to that story. America is reaching a phase where sanctions don't work like they used to. They're drawing alliances and competitors. It's creating a de-dollarization movement. So if America wants to destroy the dollar, then they just need to make moves like that. And so there is a very different competition and access to information and ability to engage with other countries where I think America has the most powerful country currency and the world reserve currency, but it is in a fight

to remain competitive. And that would make it, that would be a very bad move, I feel, for its competitive advantage. Mario, is that you on the round table accounts? It is, it is, yeah. Just listening to the discussion here.

I know we're digging into the political world as well. Did you know you said the debate is this week? You know the debate is tomorrow, by the way. Yeah, that's part of this week. Yeah, okay. No shit. But also, you talk about the election. Now we're going to get to the Roundtable

and have more of a free speech discussion, something I've been pretty vocal on. We did a space with the Brazilian congressman. Yes, yes last night so that's why my sleeping pattern is all over the place but last night we did one with with congressman from brazil um and how x was just completely banned in that country not sure if you saw by the way there's uh the recent new york times paul showing trump at an almost 100 chance of winning the election. I know it's too early. These don't matter as much. But yeah, this keeps changing. You know, it's like almost 100%, 99.7% chance Trump will win according to New York Times, Sierra, National Poll, and the Silver Bulletin as well. That came out today, earlier today.

I would love to see how they got to 99 points i don't know yeah exactly i have no idea because i think polymarket is the best because you know anyone can say anything but then when you have to put your money where your mouth is and i think that's why polymarket matters the most in my opinion so i watch it very closely and you mentioned polymarket's at about 52 percent uh trump and 47 48 percent kamala and it was yesterday was a lot closer like two percentage points differences. But yeah, Scott, I think we should introduce the roundtable and we've got a bit of a discussion with him.

Yeah, absolutely. And you guys will see that up in the nest, there's a couple of pinned tweets. The first one, mine, saying the most compelling use case for crypto is decentralizing journalism and protecting free speech. That has a link to an article on the street that's effectively announcing RTB. Many of you probably saw the interview that Mario, myself,

James and they all were both on stage, did on my YouTube channel, which will also be coming out on X this week in full form. But the street gives a really good summary of the highlights and points. And I think it's just very, very interesting that we ended up having this conversation today after the Bitcoin conversation that we just had, because it's an exceptionally easy pivot to talk about how important blockchain is for censorship resistance, for protecting privacy, for protecting free speech. And that until now, in my opinion, we haven't really seen anything outside of Bitcoin compelling as a platform that allows for all of those things. And now I think we have it. So, um, uh, you know, we have a, all obviously a James who, who are the founders, uh, of, of round table, uh, Mario,

you and I also very deeply involved, of course, uh, something we're very passionate about is not a sponsorship. This is something that we feel very important to discuss. And so I think maybe, uh, James, you can add some more color and context. I appreciate it. And, and great to have. And great to have you and Mario as partners. And this is, you know, as I said, this is not a sponsorship situation. I think we can, you know, again, look back in history during the COVID, you know, most crazy, you know, period.

And I remember watching the doctors who had treated more patients than any doctors in the country. And they called Israel and Sweden and New York and Miami and Chicago. And, you know, this was super early. And, you know, they had the data that less than 1% of the population would be affected, you know, certainly, you know, die, They had seen 5,000 patients and they had about 50,000 in their data set. And, you know, they published it on YouTube and Twitter and Instagram. And in unison, it was taken down by every major media company and eradicated. And I remember looking at it. And I and I told my son to quickly record it, I just had this gut feeling that it was going to be removed. And these were PhD MDs. And, but, you know, ultimately, you got to do more than tell your, you know, children to try to save something before mainstream media, you know, takes down scientific content. And then, you know, we all saw Zuckerberg admit that they took down 70,000

profiles. I saw 17,000 profiles taken down. And so I met Eyal two and a half years ago during this, and I'd done 30 years of building major platforms for companies like Yahoo. And he was working on his expertise coming from the architect of DeFi and said, look, I'm going to make sure that we have a platform where everything is not only saved on the blockchain, but the second piece, which I frankly think is equally as important, is censorship through demonetization. So people are trying to give the Canadian truckers money, PayPal, GoFundMe, Stripe, they all eradicated dissent, dissenting opinions, mostly doctors were cut off from getting, you know, subscriptions, credit card companies were basically taking all the

scientists out. So the celebrities could give their medical advice, you know, to our country. And so they cut off the money supply. And then they just erased all the content. And, you know, what we've done is is solve both, you know, we're able to pay journalists, decentralize through this token RTB. But before going there, I just wanted to give this one other example, which was amazing. Robert Malone called me and said, hey, there's a whistleblower at the Department of Defense. My son happened to be in Navy SEAL camp at the time and had his heart damaged. They made him take the vaccine days before going in. And a whistleblower came out and gave the actual DO data of all the damage and deaths of our soldiers, airmen, and naval personnel. And Malone said,

can you get this saved on the blockchain somehow? Because he didn't know anything about it. And we quickly saved it on the Bitcoin blockchain. And 24 hours later, the DoD took down the information, changed the information, and then put up false data. But forever, we have it timestamped

when the whistleblower, who was the chief nurse of the army, ended up posting this. And so everything on Roundtable that you're going to be seeing, whether it's financial data, political data, medical data, protests in London, it will never be eradicated. And the people who produce it will be paid in a decentralized way. And we can all support that free speech, you know, through that token. So I don't want this to sound pitchy in any way. We all went through what we went through. And the goal is that no matter what happens, whether we're talking about history, whether we're talking about actual inflation, not the fake inflation, money printing, the budget, election integrity, whatever we want to talk about, journalism can survive. And even if they commit suicide mysteriously in a jail cell, their content will live forever. And at least their children can be funded, unlike the Canadian truckers. So I'm sorry to use the COVID metaphor. It's a real

toxic subject, but it was the most extreme form of censorship. And it really, taking the money away was the key. And then all those executives that I kind of feel sorry for it, New York Times and Newsweek, who need to feed their children. If advertising is going to be taken away, they're just going to do, you know, whatever the government tells them. I actually don't blame them. So that's a lot. You know, happy to take some questions on this. And NIL is the great inventor. You all know him. Hey, I see Wendy Owen here also a partner. Thanks. And George Tong and a lot of the group that are backing this effort, but happy to take any questions, you know, or comments. Yeah, I think you touched on a really important aspect at the end there, which was

misaligned incentives, right? So journalism, I think, as we know it, the reason that we're here, the reason we even have this space is the reason that we do it on EPS is because we obviously believe in free speech. And we believe that as whether you want to say independent journalists or citizen journalists, whatever the title is, that there should be a forum for open conversation about any topic.

And this is a place that you can do it. I think everyone shares those values. And no one disputes, especially not in crypto. It's not only that I said this to, I can't remember who it was yesterday. I think I said it to Elon. Well, yeah, we did a message to Elon yesterday. And one of them, I said, it's no longer left or right. Oh, no, I posted about an issue yesterday, and Elon engaged. And essentially, what I said is that, you know, it's no longer

a left or right issue that, you know, a lot of people like to label Elon mainly on the right. But when it comes to free speech, it's not a left or right issue anymore. It's free speech versus censorship. We've seen that in Brazil. We have people from the left and the right together on stage, politicians on stage. And we've seen that in brazil we had people from the left and wow together on stage um politicians on stage you know we're seeing that in the u.s as well but more importantly i think what people care about now is the platform how does it work like al if i i asked you to explain how roundtable compares to platforms like x and others how does it work how are people onboarded how can they use it and what's their incentive to use it beyond standing up for free speech? Yeah, I think, you know, the main difference is like, you know, it's, it's,

I can't hear just a heads up. So I cannot hear y'all. So you'll have to take over. Scott, it's glitching. Okay, I got it. Yep. Go ahead. Yeah. So I think the main difference is that this is more structured more like the difference between the AOL and the internet. So while, you know, AOL was like a privatized network service and it was centralized and they controlled the entire network, and the internet is basically a bunch of ISPs that they all provide service to different users, but they all get to the same internet. And I think that's the main difference when we're talking about kind of a next generation media network where you can actually run it from anywhere. And since all the instances share the same data standards, it means that it's completely censorship resistant.

There's no way that anyone can just turn off the servers because there's no single, just like you cannot turn off the internet. I think that's one big difference is the censorship resistance, and how it's structured. And it's also very scalable in that way. Because you can have a lot of instances that record a lot of data, even on different blockchains, if it gets to that, but it's all visible to all the rest. Everyone can see everything. So an indexing service, for example, can index the entire network because it's all used the same data standards, so it's very easy to do so. I think that's one big difference that kind of changed the paradigm of censorship resistance with media network. And the other one, yes.

Just while you're talking, I owe your amazing invention here. I would encourage people listening to go to ourtb.io and actually feel free to ask IL or any of us questions or go to the app store and just type in roundtable rtb and you can participate in this web3 experience and we're going to jump right on and engage with people at this time but just so you have better context this is not a press release or something that's going to be built like past Web3 technologies. It's up, it's running, and Ayal, you did a tremendous job. So sorry to interrupt. Yes, and I think that the second biggest difference is really how monetization works within the platform. Because we use the RTB tokens that is running on multiple blockchains and bridge between them.

We use that in order to incentivize content creators, both automatically based on the engagement that they are able to generate, and as well as using it for tipping. So, you know, things that use cases that became very, very popular with networks today and becoming more popular, it's tipping and subscription, those kind of a direct payment between the consumer of the data and the you know, creator of the data in a way that is also censorship resistant. We've seen people getting their, you know, credit card canceled bank account castles and I think you know, it's only going to get worse. So we felt that we need to create a system where no one can stop the possibility for people to

essentially reward those who create great data and great information for them. And I think those those are like the main two differences that that that are very, very important in networking. The data aspect and the financial aspect, if both of them are censorship resistant, then you have a really solid system. I think a third component that is very important is how to connect it to existing media networks. But I think James is much better to speak about it. I was going to James, before you do that,

go ahead. I was going to have Wendy has her hand up. So yeah, I was going to call on Wendy. Go ahead, Wendy. No, I just wanted to say one of the things that I like about round table is that there's a bunch of different content creators that are already there.

We're already publishing and it kind of like on Twitter or on, excuse me, on X, it feels like you have to create a list of people that you do want to get your information from. But on Roundtable, everybody's already there. And I think that's wonderful. And it kind of helps to sift through all of the different information that's being pushed out. Because let's face it, there's a lot of different narratives that are being brought from all different angles. And it's kind of hard to be able to form an opinion

based off so many different things. But I feel like there's a lot of really great content creators that are already aggregated on the platform. Yeah, it's exceptionally well curated. Yeah, I think that's a huge aspect. And you can have a conversation there with people who comment without worrying about them being bots. Yeah, that's exactly. Everybody that's on the platform and interacting it's amazing none of us you know

you can't use youtube or x to talk to your community because 90 of its bots are spam that's exactly what i was going to send you next is we actually get to interact we i don't know if you can hear me i'm going through a spotty place but you actually get to interact with, I don't know if you can hear me, I'm going through a spotty place, but you actually get to interact with your, with creators and be able to talk to them. And like on X and like X, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, because I post on all those different social media apps. And it's just, there's so many bots. It's so hard to sift through all that. And you actually get, it's, it's just a really nice, clean experience in my opinion. Hey, I think in terms of what Wendy was just saying, first, I do want to do my commercial support for X because I think without Elon and without X,

we would all be sitting in caves trying to reach each other and have real content. So we're all, you know, owing him and I'm, you know, so happy that he's saved the world. And so, you know, owing him and I'm, you know, so happy that he saved the world. And so, you know, we have our, I think, additional help. The way to think about Roundtable is a roundtable. Think about roundtable of experts on stage and a community being able to ask questions and engage with those experts without being interrupted by other content. So a little bit like Reddit on steroids, you can actually ask your questions in video. And so kind of spaces on demand. So the features that this team in Israel spent 4.5 years working on, backed by Binance and ICO two and a half years ago. I think everybody would enjoy it. We don't feel like we compete with X. That's a great place

to reach hundreds of millions of people. But if you are an expert or interested in a specific topic like crypto, like Roundtable that you can see right now if you're there, it's a great way to be saturated uninterrupted, not only by bots, but, you know, Trump content or football or whatever. If you're there to talk crypto, it's all about crypto. And we have the experts there standing there. So, you know, again, not trying to be pitchy, we want to be there for you. We want to be there for you. We want to be there for the world to be able to support independent journalism that you can't find in other major media sources. And, you know, we look forward to, you know, building a great community and then continuing to support X and support spaces and support Crypto Town Hall.

I appreciate it. Well, it's a pleasure to be on board with you and Scott. Well, it's not a pleasure to be with Scott, but with everyone else and to be part of Roundtable. I think everyone should check it out. Anything that supports free speech, we're all back. So it's good to have you, James. Hope to see you in Singapore or when I'm back in the States.

And I'm sure I'll see you again soon. Thank you, everyone, a lot for being here. If you want to check out Roundtable, their handle is on the, but yeah, just to be clear, that's Roundtable different to the one we do on Spaces, our regular show.

It's a completely different platform. But if you want to check out the black icon, just check out, no one, yeah, exactly. But we just tell people to click on an icon. It's a lot easier. Just check out the black icon on screen. You can check out the Roundtable. Otherwise, we'll see everyone tomorrow morning any final words scott yeah i think

wrapped it up well really excited i'm gonna head over there actually myself i'm i'm there at least once a day posting and then um you know obviously interacting with the questions so if anybody has questions or comments right good place and also anyone going to singapore make sure you hit us up uh we'll be me and scott will be there we have a whole side event there as well so just go to my profile click on me dm me now we can meet up they can come meet us at us can you imagine they put you and i on a panel together god are we doing a panel together uh like you and i are going to be doing a panel together at the coin telegraph like exclusive after yeah shit they've got the privilege of having not one but

two of us fucking hell they must have earned we didn't buy brand they must have paid us a fortune they must have paid us a fortune for this anyway appreciate everyone thanks a lot we'll see you again tomorrow bye everyone