The Wolf Of All Streets - Strategy Retains Nasdaq 100 Status for 2026 #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

Crypto Town Hall's latest session focused on current trends in crypto markets, macroeconomic factors, and the evolving intersection between crypto and mainstream finance. The panel of regular contributors and guest experts discussed Bitcoin's recent price action, MicroStrategy's ongoing Bitcoin acquisitions, regulatory developments, and the impact of AI startups on liquidity and investment flows. Participants explored market sentiment, execution strategies, tokenization, stablecoin adoption, and the question of whether the crypto sector is entering or exiting a "winter". The goal was to provide market perspectives, debate narratives, and equip listeners with actionable insights.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Cryptotown Hall every weekday here at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard time. I hope that all of you had a wonderful weekend as we come into the holiday season. A lot going on with markets at the moment. Of course, a lot of delayed data coming in this week. So we should get some more information on jobs and inflation that we haven't been seeing since September. I'm sure that they have not all taken this nice break without data. to cook the books. I'm sure they're giving us exactly the data that's accurate. Yeah, that sarcasm. But we do have Bitcoin, obviously, trading a bit down on the day while many looking for a Santa Claus rally. We can call it our main story, but I think there's a lot to talk about strategy remains in the NASDAQ 100. A lot of people thinking that there was a chance that would be delisted. Also, of course, people talking about that with MSCI. Meanwhile, Michael Saylor went ahead and bought another billion dollars worth of Bitcoin for strategy that's two weeks in a row while the narrative continues to be from critics and he's

going to run out of money and have to sell his bitcoin he's buying a billion dollars worth 10,000 plus Bitcoin two weeks in a row. So I would love to first start here with strategy. Anyone, we're going to go straight to the panel. I mean, Michael Saylor not stopping here and obviously relatively important that they remain in the cues. So would love your thoughts. Raise your hands, jump in. Let's get it going. Toma. Yeah, not a profound comment, but whether the word is disappointing or frustrating or curious, the STRC product that they have, which was meant to be their iPhone moment,

isn't trading above $99, which is the point at which they're supposed to start selling it, issuing at the market, and then accumulating Bitcoin with that. They've been accumulating Bitcoin, still mainly by selling the, common equity, the MSTR, and a little bit of the STRD and STRF. And so it's like, we're waiting, there's a rocket chip standing on the launch pad, but its launch is delayed and until, until that kicks in. And it all, it always seems to get up to like 98, 85 or have a low volume day. And so this is, this is what they're counting on unless they launch another product.

And it's just, it's not that it's a failure, but it has. hasn't, it failed to launch so far. Carlo. Good morning, Scott. Good morning, Carlo. Well, I just looked at the chart for MSTR and it's getting absolutely murdered. It's down 12 bucks at open. I don't know.

This stock can't seem to catch a break, despite it being the first and the biggest Bitcoin accumulation strategy out there and the fact that it's got what seems like endless reserves to continue to absorb and continue to buy Bitcoin, it just continues to struggle. But also, we need to be mindful that Bitcoin continues to be choppy and sideways and struggle. And we've always been talking about the fact that this stock and what Tomer is saying about STRC, these are all correlates to Bitcoin. So if we truly are not at the end of the Bitcoin run, and we still have a lot of legs here in 2026 where we're going to see all this increased liquidity, all these rate cuts, which are going to benefit risk assets, that logic would tell you that that's going to

be a wave that's going to carry MSTR up as well. I'm still looking at my MSTR holdings continue to go down and wonder when that's going to happen. And I'm curious. Mark's got his hand up, but I mean, it's a correlate to Bitcoin. And we still are looking at a very choppy Bitcoin season right now and i don't expect any good news towards the end of december as people take profits and consolidate but i think in 2026 we should hopefully see a turnaround mark hey guys yeah i i agree uh amateo about your uh if that was emoteo speaking that was carlo yeah carlo excuse me about the um december and i strategy has been a derivative of a Bitcoin. He's done a credible job of creating a very

value supported preferred layer, but he doesn't have a marketing team. Wall Street is, I think, surrounding him with curiosity, but not support. So I just don't think he has that machine to sell it, Tomer, as far as, you know, why it's still below that 99 level. That's my, that's my first take. And then the second one is what Dave was beaten up. I forgot who. Oh, he was beaten up on Luke Roman, not jumping in on, you know, dumping Bitcoin and saying, you know, it's done for the next year and all that. The selling and the gamma trade, I've tried to look at it. If anyone has any certainty on this, it makes sense, but it just doesn't last that long. So I'll say that micro strategy is the third most important thing. The first most is discovering whether

or not the paper Bitcoin narrative is alive and well and suppressing or strangling vol and sucking premium out of the market for OGs, etc. That's the second one. And the first one is, you know, back to Wednesday's Fed, man, I spend a lot of time looking at it and no matter who goes in there, they're going to be running this economy hot into midterms. And they are absorbing T-bills. They may go beyond the three-year limit if mortgages don't come in. And I am way conservative as far as saying anything constructive on Bitcoin because we all know it's a matter of when. And so when I say within three months or six months, I don't take it lightly, the Fed is in service of the Treasury and they took a very active step that got very little cover besides from the

Bitcoin folks. That's all I got. God bless. Yeah, I think that, you know, micro strategy, and I'm long it, when we look at it, really, it's just a call option on Bitcoin. And what we're paying away really is just time decay right now and that, you know, when there's no volatility and it's not moving higher, then the prices starts to drop off. But I think that, that when it comes to demand for the preferreds, I think that that's going to change somewhat when the rating agencies acknowledge the fact that strategy put together this dollar cash reserve. And I think that that's very important and that should micro strategy get like an investment grade rating, then that opens it up now to pension funds and other large companies that can

really start to unload it on their balance sheet. So I think that once again, it's really is just a patience game and we're paying away time decay, I guess, right now and it hurts. but, you know, we all believe that Bitcoin is going to go a heck of a lot higher over time. You just have to hold on to the position or add to the position and be patient. I'll tell you. Yeah, hey, Scott. Hey, everybody.

So, I mean, I kind of look at this, one, unbelievable that they're just coming up with another almost billion dollars in this current state of affairs to, keep acquiring Bitcoin. This point has been hammered quite a bit, but we're looking at a cost basis on this additional whopping 10,645 Bitcoin of 92,000. And I think, Scott, you've sort of mentioned this before. And it's just anyone who's sort of looking at this today is seeing that the average in price acquisition, it's just top-lasting again and again, no matter of market conditions. And I think that that alone probably just continues to raise questions around micro-strategy's

strategy of almost taking like a FOMO approach at every price level. Obviously, long-term outlook, he's banking to be right, and that the idea is that this really doesn't matter from a five to ten to twenty thousand dollar price difference. But I think it matters to other people when they look at this and just say, why is there a better average cost when these levels are pretty obvious to everyone? Interestingly, I'm not sure it's his execution that I would question. I mean, I just think that's always been his strategy. But I think where you're definitely right is that the treasury companies that followed him all came in and top-blasted because he was doing it. He set the

precedent that you get cash, you buy the Bitcoin. You don't trade. You just get as much Bitcoin as humanly possible. And we were left with a bunch of treasury companies buying in the 110s to 125 region with every penny they had and no ability to ever buy the dip, which no individual whatever do. Isn't it indicative of the fact that his purchases tend to be higher than what the average price across the week looks like, suggesting that the market's rather thin. And to get a billion dollars in, you've got to be buying at the top,

regardless of where it's at, of what we see the prices as. And that there just isn't that, that there's a lot less volume at the lower prices. Otherwise, he'd be picking it up at a lower price. That's red meat for Dave, the king of execution. Right on. Okay, tell us, Dave. I mean, I've never met Michael Saylor.

If I had one piece of advice to him, it would be fire whoever is responsible for his trading strategy because it's God awful. And, you know, it has been God awful. And it's not about top blasting or all the stuff. It just basically, if you execute your, if you're going to be buying over the course of a week, in what he's doing, and it's obvious what he's doing, he's doing it in a much more compressed time period. And so if you look at seven days of Bitcoin trading, I mean, there were, over the course of the week, there were one period, it got up to 94th out. You can see he did his buying almost certainly on the ninth and the tenth, when he would be an average price of the ninth and tenth.

If, in fact, since he's going to announce it on Sunday, he did it over five days and did what we call, you know, used like something like coin routes is time weighted average price, you know, over a five day period and did so using some of our better analytics in order to, you know, we call our automated mode, which uses, you know, fairly intelligent, you know, mechanisms for, you know, aggression, it would trade in line with the full week's average. And so if Monday was the low point on the week, yeah, okay, fine. You're going to be buying above it. If Monday is middle of the range, you'd be right there. And if Monday is above where it was the previous week, well, then you're doing okay. What he's doing is he's picking one or two days, trading in a compressed cycle, probably still using the same algorithms that he was using five years ago. And the truth is, is the algorithms that are five years old are what you would expect in terms of performance. So, you I mean, I don't know. You know, you talk to him. I'd be happy to provide some execution consulting to Mr. Saylor. But I do think the important point is he doesn't give a shit because what he cares about is in the long term. I mean, he should because it would increase his Bitcoin yield. And so he should care about this, but he doesn't. So as a shareholder, it annoys me because I am a shareholder because I do think that it is an implied option. And I do believe digital credit is going to be a very big deal. And I do believe that they will be. able to earn income from their Bitcoin when the rules change, et cetera. So that's my point on

micro strategy. I know it's red meat, Scott, but it is what it is. Yeah, I think maybe, I think that's one of the huge topics of conversation and the other, I guess, is how he continues to raise enough money to do this in the current situation. Well, I mean, look, let's be blunt. The only narrative that are being used, there were three narratives, you know, when the last time we started approaching 80,000, you know, on Bitcoin. The three narratives were quantum, micro strategy is going to get delisted and have to sell all their Bitcoin. And the four-year cycle is over and everyone should just retire, take their bats, their balls, their toys, go home, leave the playground and come back in, you know, 12, 18 months. Where are we today? Well, the first one, the first one,

one is borderline, has gotten to borderline silly status, and we could talk about quantum. I think we should have, you know, we should see if we can get some significant experts here. But at the end of the day, I think that that is dramatically overblown. The micro strategy narrative is gone. I mean, literally gone. I mean, you know, there's no way he's going to sell Bitcoin. He's buying it for Christ's sakes. And the only thing that that is interesting is MSCI, but the fact that NASDAQ isn't changing it,

MSCI has a real problem. and we can talk about why they have a real problem because if they in fact at the bot at a local bottom take micro strategy out of the index let's say it pukes a little bit further and then bitcoin rallies they're going to dramatically underperform all the other global indices and that is a big problem for index providers they be taking generally they want to take less risk when they put this in when they did the october thing you know and they put it into their their status nobody really thought about it very much. They started thinking about as it got closer, but it's a very big deal. And we'll see what the indices do. I still suspect they're going to do it, but it's a big risk for them.

But we'll see. But if you think about from a narrative point of view, there's no reason to believe that Bitcoin's going to break through, you know, the support that that seems to be in the low 80s. But, you know, we'll see. I mean, I personally think that we're in a trading range. I've been saying that for a while. We're going to stay there. I guess, yeah. Could I pivot for a second? Did anybody, because I'm late. No, we've only talked strategy so far.

Okay, so, you know, I want to come back to Mark. Is Mark still up here? I don't see him anymore. I see him, yeah. I see him. Oh, you're in there. He was talking about running it hot. I mean, I think Exhibit A for that was Kevin Hacett on Face the Nation talking about how he believes

the U.S. budget deficit is going to drop $600 billion in, in 2026. And there's only one mathematically possible way that could happen. And that's if the economy dramatically grows more than people expect and therefore enhances tax receipts and tariff receipts. That's the only way. And this is the guy who is 75% likely on polymarket. Is that still true? Let's see. Let's let's go Fed. I'm in here. So let's do this in real time. Who will dominate his fake? Kevin has to. Oh, no. it's down. Okay, so now he's down to 47%. And Kevin Warsh is at 43%. I don't know that he's very different. But if you're talking about someone who's very senior in the administration, it seems very

clear that what their strategy is going to be. Because there's not, one thing is certain with the big beautiful bill, spending is not coming down, right? Am I getting this wrong, Mark? No, you're not getting it wrong. And it hasn't even really kicked in yet until next quarter. And that's a part, you know, we all love Bitcoin. We wanted to go higher. So I really check my drunk, you know, head state to see if I'm drinking too much from the cooler. And again, I did a really deep dive. I'm going to hit send on a substack after this call. And I did a lineup of Warsh versus hazard. And it just doesn't matter. They have seemingly different approaches, but they're both going to be supporting spending and absorbing debt at the front end. And that's just the way it's

going to be for through midterms and beyond. So yeah, Dave, I agree with you. I got to look at that. I heard about that $600 billion drop, and the CNN's jaw dropped just as far I heard when he said that. They're also recategorizing some of the student loan debt, I think, and some other things to get that number down. So there's all that stuff going on. It's hot. So that's the biggest thing is it's going to be hot. And I think we're all looking low at like these near-term dynamics. And Trump and Besson have a big plan that involves deviant.

regulation, unshackling, and letting it run, and hopefully it trickled down, you know, Disciples of Reagan. And I do think that's the broader 2026 play, and it's going to be volatile as fuck, I think, in the marketplace. Having looked at the FOMC last week and how much contention there was around a simple 25-bit cut, and when you even dig in beyond the voting members, there was obviously dissension, there was disagreement about how much the cut should be. And if you go to the non-voting members, you know, the bank heads, it was basically split. So is there an argument to be made that even if we get one of the Kevin's, which we will,

and we get a effectively Trump puppet in there who just wants to lower rates that there could actually be enough dissension in the rates that they're not able to do exactly what they want? And so, Scott, your question is we are going to get a Kevin, which has to be a headline somewhere. or someone please make that meme, we're going to get a Kevin. And the Kevin will either advance the mission or they'll do it in reaction to a failure somewhere. But it's going to happen. There's, you know, physical dominance. It's going to happen. And I don't know if that was answering your question.

It was more about a 25 hike. It's either going to happen with Hasser at the outset or with Warsh in arrears after a, in reaction to some sort of failure. that makes sense i think you know we've just defaulted and i default to this by the way so i'm just like devil's advocate we've defaulted to trump gets what he wants fed continues to cut extreme uh lightning you know and uh if there's enough pushback from the other voting members is there a way that can get blocked does anybody think that there's a world where trump doesn't get what he wants from the next Fed chair? No, I'm going to tell you, I see your hand up, so what do you say you talk?

Yeah, absolutely not. I mean, I think Trump's going to get his way one way or the other. But I think that there's a lot of people who expect what Trump getting his way is going to mean for markets and that it's just going to rain liquidity from the skies. And I don't know if we're going to completely see that. I mean, we already sort of see some of the QE initial onset bubble burst because what the Fed is doing now is buying back debt and backstopping banks, which are there to issue more debt. So it looks like what we're seeing right now is it continue to sort of cover the debt and the debt that's really propping up so much of AI and the entire sector. you know, I think that the timing is getting pretty auspicious for things starting to break pretty well going into this Fed chair replacement.

So even if rates do get cut, I don't know that the reaction can be as predictable as everyone's assuming. Yeah, I think there's a couple of stories that are worth talking about on this. I don't know if people saw, I mean, buried in the middle of, you know, of the Luke Roman switching to selling Bitcoin, which I called a perfect capitulation moment and pretty clear of what's going on. Today feels like capitulation selling, but we'll see, is his theory, which is, I think, sort of where you were getting at Amateo, so I'm going to pull on the string a bit, which is that AI companies, the big infrastructure one, the hyperscalers are borrowing shit tons of money to build and that is sucking all the liquidity into that away from other stuff now you know James lavish on our show this morning basically said well that might very well be true but the banks are creating that and the Fed is is enabling that and so it's in addition it's not taking money from individuals it's taking investment dollars

and so that that that's a major a major thing that's happening next year and the other major that's happening next year that I pointed out is there's some of the biggest IPOs, probably 2026 is setting up if the market doesn't crash and these things all go through as arguably maybe the largest, probably almost certainly the largest IPO in terms of dollars of market cap of companies going to going public ever with Anthropic XAI, SpaceX, and potentially open AI all going live. So all of that, that does compete for investment dollars. So there's that going on.

But that's obviously in the future. But, you know, but there's a lot going on. And the thing that's- I'm having mic issues, not trying to leave you with awkward dead space. No, no, that's okay. I just, I'm trying not, I don't want to talk over people if there's anybody else's stuff to say. But I think that-

Dave, I mean, based on your, you're, that information. And I really agree with that sentiment. I don't necessarily think it's like pulling money out of people, but it is ballooning the debt. How do you perceive the risks sort of mounting from this unbelievable debt vehicle being used to scale out CAPEX? And that, frankly, while AI is completely taking off, the actual profit has not. know that the ratio of actual money and income being generated compared to the debt being utilized to invest in the infra, the hardware, the warehouses, the scalability. I mean, do you feel like that's something that they can just prop onwards and we'll see how

it goes? Or do you feel like this risk is getting really top-heavy? I actually think that it is the most bullish thing that can possibly happen, which is companies that are going to IPO they're going to have we have that are going to end up with in all likely assuming the IPOs go well with lots of capital with a lot of stability yeah the you know anthropic i don't know about anthropic in particular you know open AI for sure is already told us they're not going to be profitable for three years but all the suppliers so the power the data centers potentially even SpaceX if you put you know if You listen to, who is it, George Visser was talking about data centers in space.

And not in a crazy way, because it does make sense. You're going to see all sorts of stuff. But all the supply chains for all of these companies is a large part of the growing economy. And people, everyone always focuses just on the consumer app and say, well, the consumer app's not going to make enough money in the beginning. That's true. You know, but if you look at the Internet bubble, And this is the last time we saw anything on this scale.

What you saw was, yes, the internet, every company that had a website, so many of them went crazy. But along the way, all the infrastructure companies, those also overbuilt too. They did, no question about it. But there was a massive explosion in creation of fiber optics. And by the way, Corning, one of those companies, it was, you know, Corning was one of them in the Internet bubble, is starting to react now because they, This space was downloaded via spacesdown.com. Visit to download your spaces today. Their infrastructure is absolutely necessary for the AI buildout.

And you can go through a lot of this stuff. Now, why am I talking about this? Well, because as the AI buildout goes on and as the compute and power start getting built, then all of a sudden, a lot of the promise that people look at in the crypto world for where crypto could be native payments for inside of use of AI, and you can get agentic AI and agent using crypto rails, all of a sudden start to become real. But it doesn't become real until after the infrastructure gets to that level. So I'm kind of looking at the second order effect.

Yes, I think that I'm not talking about, of all those IPOs, the one I'm most interested in is SpaceX. Because I think that they have the least amount of competition and the potential highest margin to be able to make money. but I think that the infrastructure suppliers and the entire supply chain and a lot of the crypto plays that are going to be alongside of this all start to get developed as this money starts to enter the system and I think that from a crypto town hall perspective is what we should care about that makes sense I'm atel because I don't know if I'm being clear yeah yeah no I mean I and I definitely agree on SpaceX the thing that I'm thinking here and that I'm tracking is, I mean, AI makes everything move faster.

The actual trend and velocity of this is just unbelievable. But with that, I think that there's a delay between all of the infrastructure, hardware costs, costs, the actual software catching up, everyone being able to build everything, this stuff gaining traction. And I think that we're in a little bit of a gap here. I think we're in a gap between all of the promised investments that are coming in, the actual time it takes to build out these things and get them established,

and the revenue that can be generated from them. And I think that we're sort of seeing that in that's coinciding with the macro outlook. And I think what I'm sort of expecting is to see some pain before some gain, essentially, and that this is going to take some time for these things to really develop. And that is going to also separate the wheat

from the shaft here. And it's actually needed. It's going to cleanse crypto. It's going to cleanse AI. And it's going to be a little bit of a reset. But on the outset of it, we got to move beyond a high velocity slop into real value, making progress with AI on screening cancers and preventing Alzheimer's and actually

having like pure real breakthroughs. And I think we're going to get there. And I think that the pain is going to be much faster than previous cycles that we've seen with the dot-com bubble, et cetera. But I think that when you combine the debt, the macro outlook and the time it takes for these things to get done and for the manufacturing to really kick in and get off on the ground, that's how I look towards this. Mark, I'm curious your response on that.

Yeah. As you guys, I might mention my partner on my podcast is an AI researcher, a former quant guy from Chis Figma. And so for the last year, you know, I've been adopting a lot of his practices and learning through him. And we deal with a lot of entrepreneurs. What they can accomplish and create on these platforms is pretty credible. And they're getting looks from established asset managers

looking to replace legacy systems on the, research more on the more on the research and strategy side sort of yeah i would say not not trade execution now what dave does for a living and i think that the enterprise systems that you're talking about will take a long time but you said it's moving fast it is the AI machine is moving fast and that does two things it'll either you know break certain employment log jams or it'll reinforce them as people wait as they've done to see who they need to employ to adopt. So I think it's bad to worse on the employment front and the bad is just a delay and the worst means people are cutting and then folding in five agents for every person they hire.

That's not there yet and I'd love anyone's insight into whether they see firms adopting that, but I don't think people have really done an AI strategy yet at the sort of Fortune 100 level yet. that resulted in job losses. Yeah, there's so much debate as to whether that's happened or not, but I think we don't will. Dave, you're jumping in. Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I can't speak to the fortune to the top firms because I'm not talking to them.

I know they're using AI to augment and do certain things, but, you know, if you're not, if you're a software business and you're not using AI, then you're falling behind. So, I mean, I don't know. I think it's much bigger than people think. The other point that I think matters, and I am far from an expert on this, but there's a lot of talk that the new generation of chips

that are just coming out from Nvidia are a quantum leap, like an order of magnitude, more powerful, and you will see significantly increased utility in models for everything from self-driving to, code generation to whatever. And that's the kind of thing. That's, you know, that's the reason that Iran was, because they, they secured that, you know, early. And yeah, they've been falling over the last few days, but, you know, that's, that's fine. It's really a question of what's

going to happen as this stuff ramps up in the, in the first quarter. And there's a lot, there's a lot going on there. I would, I would, I would recommend, I would recommend, And, you know, listening, you know, Jordi Visser did a really good podcast this weekend, and he talked about, in that he gives a bunch of other sources. I listen to two or three. That's one of the things I, I tend to list this on fast speed, but the other thing, you know, you can use AI4 is summarize podcasts and then ask it questions. And so you can actually interactively, you know, take what's an hour podcast and break it down

into 15, 20 minutes and actually get most of the detail out of it. So I think a lot of people are doing that in terms of getting information. because it just works so well. Yeah, and Dave, following up on what you said about the use of it, if we're just using it as people using it as a powerful browser, you know, prompt response, prompt response, that is, you know, so Q2, 2025, and I was guilty of that. Recently, again, by hanging out with people at higher pay grade than me on a tech stack basis,

they're they're not only using sort of you know the MCPs and these agentic processes but they also have on the on the research and content side a layering they have these you can train so you can have second and third level outputs that will edit for you based on certain criteria so that slop gets tightened up it has a certain voice it knows you so the so the tweaking on this is is really improving but it involves a series of different AI programs to get it done. So it is complex, and I think it does take a team to run eventually. I see how Mateo's hand up. I think Scott had that. Yeah. Oh, did he have to jump? Yeah, it looks that way.

Okay. Yeah, I just wanted to, like, if anyone's really curious to try this for themselves, I recommend that they go to Manus. I just spent all weekend with some friends who've been really trying to hack this thing. It's Manus.im, and essentially, it's a multi-agent LLM tool. Give it a try. Put in some pretty clever prompts in terms of actual task execution

you would like to see it do, and watch the agents put something together in real time. It'll blow your mind. It's pretty incredible. And we are seeing, like, the actual AI and agentic applications taking many step functions forward. And I know that we end up talking a lot about – can you still hear me, Dave? I think I have a call coming up. I hear you, yeah.

By the way, spell manis for those who want to type it in. I try it, and I spelled it wrong. I guess Antonio has a call. I got a call. Can you hear me now? Yeah, we can hear you. Yeah, by the way, spell honest, so people who want to try it can actually put it in. Say it again, Dave.

You spell the site that you were saying there. Oh, yeah, yes, absolutely. M-A-N-U-S dot-I-M. It can literally build websites, build developer apps on the fly, just give you all sorts of really, really cool tools. There's a lot of other tools that execute in very similar ways, but this is a really user-friendly one. where you can test what it's like to deploy a whole fleet of agents that can automate tasks for you and return an output that's really dynamic, visual, and compelling. And I think the thing that makes me most excited about the AI tooling

is not just how it affects the stock market and the MAG7, et cetera, but is like the actual rise of entrepreneurship that is accelerating. And that's probably the thing that I'm most bullish on, When it comes to the, of course, there's the picks and shovels order effects on that, but like the actual humans using these tools, not the giant corporations firing them and replacing them with these tools is the thing that I think is most exciting. And I'm betting on big. Yeah, I mean, I'm just, I just signed in.

By the way, is that using Gemini under the covers? Because I see Nanobanana Pro is part of that. So it's a multi-model tool. So if you get a pro account, you can actually select GROC, Gemini, Clod, and it plugs in with a variety of plugins, as well as being able to select whatever primary LLN would like to utilize. You can test different ones for different use cases. Oh, okay. Well, that's interesting. So, well, that's a good plug because it, yeah, look, this stuff is moving pretty quickly.

you know it but whatever so yeah it's the other narrative just because we you know we we don't have that much more time but that I wanted to get to today is there was a narrative that started circling over the weekend on Ethereum and Bitcoin Ethereum in particular being the Wall Street token which is where it is and I think Ethereum flirting with it sits below now it's slightly above the 3,000 level this morning is kind of important you know Bitcoin the 87,000 level is important. I'm curious that anybody here have, you know, what are the, what are the current thoughts on, you know, where the value is going to be and, you know, where the money flows are because, you know, I know, I know what I think, but, you know, I've been pretty outspoken. I'm just,

I'm just curious. I mean, Carlo, you're, you know, you care a lot about defy. I mean, I don't know if you're up here, but, you know, are you behind the microphone? Yeah. Look, I think they're spot on in their prediction because the institutions are telling the public exactly. what chain they prefer when it comes to tokenizing real-world assets and tokenizing securities. It's the battle-tested chain. You know, it's interesting to see how chains ascend into prominence. We saw a recent report that Solana, Stablecoin activity is going through the roof, and a lot of people dismiss these alts as, you know, their time has passed.

I disagree. I just think the institutions are telling us exactly where these to- tokens are going to be utilized and how they're going to be deployed. And to ignore that, I think you do that at your own demise. Yeah, it's weird to think that most of the crypto community, most of the people who used to listen to this show and the ones who still do are all morose and feeling they're in crypto winter when there's so much actual light at the end of the tunnels being seen in so many different places.

I mean, I don't know, am I the only one who feels that way? but it feels it feels positively morose out there and yet awful just awful it feels horror it feels it's so funny dave it feels awful out there and I don't know if it's because we are looking at all pro cyclical market data that's negative and not accounting for things like you know having a judge around decision that August 29th, 2003 decision that was the unshackling of the Bitcoin ETF that no one believed until it happened. But we seem to be getting those at least once or twice a week now. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Did you talk this morning about the OCC granting bank charters

to Ripple and a whole bunch of others, you know, trust bank charters. Yeah, no, we didn't. Yeah. I mean, these are these are big deal. I mean, you know, and Carlo, we, your real world, you're a lawyer. I mean, it seems to me that the legal risk for entrepreneurs in this space has decreased by so much, so much that the New York Times, you know, probably at the prodding of Elizabeth Warren and her cohort in the Democratic Party, are publishing, you know, really bad articles about how crypto enforcement is down. You know, it's just, I don't know if anyone read that article, but it was really bad. It's almost inconceivable that someone would try to defend the Gensler SEC by claiming that the Atkins SEC is doing a bad job in policing

crypto. The OCC approving five charters all in one announcement is pretty massive. It indicates that OCC and Treasury are fully committed to seeing Stablecoin adoption. And I think one of them actually got, I think these are all tentative. I think there's still some more steps that need to be followed, but I think Bickgo got full adoption in an OCC letter. And this is just further solidifying that we're getting the thing that drove us crazy and made us pull our hair out under the last administration, which was lack of regulatory clarity. And, you know, the more I think about it, I think it was intentional. I think it was an intentional tactic to mire this entire sector in a lack of clarity to discourage institutions from jumping in and the more signs we're

seeing that that is changing the more we're seeing press releases from institutions i mean jp morgan is now allowing people to borrow against bitcoin who would have ever thought that would have been possible under biden's administration yeah i mean it is it is so clear um it is so clear but it The, I just can't reconcile the two things. I mean, the one thing I said this morning on Scott's show, which I'm curious we will think about, is that when you look at the way the price action has been, and we kind of know, I mean, Jeff Park did it, wrote a paper, which I think is spot on, that there has been, I mean, we know that over the summer when it was between 100 and 120 or

whatever it was, we know there was a lot of OG selling, you know, at least 400, maybe 500,000 coins sold, which is part of distribution, but he made the point that there's a lot of call sellers. And when you get call sellers, it creates two things, and it has the potential for a third. The two things it creates is it suppresses volatility and does. And it certainly, you know, it kind of reinforces trading ranges. So when you get, you know, towards the top end of the trading range, as long as it's, as long as there's incentive to defend that trading range on the part of market makers, and they will

tend to do that. And unless there's a lot of buying follow-through, it doesn't go anywhere. And as a result, you know, we've seen what we've seen. But the flip side to that is the longer this goes on, the more people have sold calls, the more market makers are short calls. What they do, just to be specific, is they sell, in this particular case, Bitcoin, at some delta, not 100%. But as the price approaches the call, they have to either, you know, you know, they have to hedge that. And if it goes through it, then they're forced to turn around and start buying back because now they're short and there's no there, there depending on what they've done

with their hedges and how it's done. The words that are used in the community is gamma and gamma squeezes. And we are far from that, right? In a morose environment, you don't have that. What you need to understand, and people do need to understand, is whenever this morose crypto winter cyclical down draft ends 18 months from now two months from now i don't know which there's a lot of of potential firepower to that if buying takes us through certain key levels where a lot of people who have sold calls are going to need to buy back in now some won't some

are just like selling the call as a way of selling but others will and that that does matter so I'm curious, any of the option traders out there, what's happening? I mean, Tomar, you know what's going on in the community. Anybody worrying about this or thinking about this? Or it's just everybody is just so, oh, my God, we're going lower again and nothing else more. I mean, I don't really know in depth, but I would say maybe a little bit to add to it on the flip side. I think a lot of the OGs that sold, if the price comes back down enough, are going to buy, going to start buying back in. And we actually saw this in the, I guess, the 2017 to 2020 cycle

when Bitcoin topped at 20,000, then fell down to 5,000. There were a lot of OGs who were selling at 20,000 at that time, too, because I couldn't believe, oh my God, this thing I bought for under a buck is worth $20,000. And I remember a number of them getting a lot of FOMO when Bitcoin fell back down to 5,000. So that was a lot more volatility than going from 125 to 80 or so. But at some point, there's been a lot of money taken off the table and what's what's a bitcoin o g going to do with a billion dollars other than buy back some bitcoin yeah that i think that a lot i've seen a lot of people's thesis is that the net that will be the the the catalyst for the next bull cycle but i think all the four-year cycle people believe that that's you know doesn't start for another year to two years

I mean, I personally think that these notion of artificial time cycles are, is silly, especially for lots of reasons, but, you know, that's just my opinion. I mean, I guess we'll see. I think global liquidity matters. I think Mark and I are firmly of the opinion, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, Mark, that when the fiscal stimulus from the big beautiful bill starts kicking in at the same time, that growth starts accelerating, that some of that money is going to end up in Bitcoin and Ethereum and other places in the crypto world, but that until the cycle of depression is broken, you're not going to see anything. You sell rallies. And when the day comes when you're not selling rallies anymore, that's an important day. And you're not going to know it. it's going to be three weeks. You're going to know it in retrospect. You're going to look back three weeks or so and say, oh, wait a minute, I guess we should have been doing that. Is that how you look at it, Mark? Yeah, and I'll joke and say that you'll know it when I start selling tops because that's when it's going to break out. That's why I'm sitting on my freaking hands

because I know I'll do it the wrong time. And you're right. It is, it's not going to happen until it happens and we're in a moribund state right here. You know, for a number of of reasons. And one is, I think the Fed had to get their plumbing set to take on the increasing number of T-bills that are only 20% of issuance, not near the 35 that we saw, you know, a few decades ago. And I think we're going to hit that 35 to 40% of issuance being T-bills, which is why Carlo, you know, ramp up your stable coin machine because that's part of the game. Yeah, Carlo, get going. Oh, man. I'm so ready, gang.

I mean, it's just funny. I mean, you know, you just, I just keep thinking that, you know, we've had, we've been hearing this narrative now for, for weeks. And, you know, Bitcoin's been trading in the mid, you know, basically pivoting around the mid 80s to 90 now for, you know, quite some time. And, you know, you get a lot of leverage. The one point that I thought that was probably most interesting this weekend, and there were a lot of them was, I think it was. As a Bitcoin account, I think it may have been Marilyn Hoddle who talked about, watch what people are saying. When you see Larry Fink and others who are saying Bitcoin's going where it's going

and we all know what he thinks, that the thing it needs to clear is it needs to move away from the leverage traders driving the price towards the actual investors driving the price. And I think that we are in the late stages of seeing leverage not being the key. But we'll see. I mean, you know, we saw October 10th that didn't look like there was a lot of leverage, but obviously $5 billion in Bitcoin leverage got wiped out and another $14 billion in other leverage wiped out. So, you know, there's still a lot of leverage in the ecosystem. It's just different kinds.

And I guess we'll find out. I mean, one of the other things that people are looking at, I don't know if you've talked about gold and silver, but, you know, silver, everyone was two days ago or three days ago when silver went from $64 down to $64 plus to $61. Everyone was saying, okay, silver rally's over, time to come back out, Bitcoin's going to go up. Well, no, silver today is, you know, pushing towards 64 again. And I think that a lot of the speculative juices are flowing there. I see a new speaker, someone who's there. And I don't know. I'm curious.

You're raising your hand. You have something on that point? Why don't you do, like, the, like, the actual good thing and tell people, like, they should just buy the S&P 500? Well, I mean, that's what most people do. I mean, most people do buy the S&P 500. You know, that's what they, that's what people do. And, no, that's not what people do. That's what fucking 15% of people do.

The rest of them put their money in, like, retarded-ass fucking, like, salana coins. or fucking do dual.com gambling or fucking steak.com gambling on fucking slot machines. They're retarded. That's what 85% of people do and 15% do the S&P? No, 95% I reckon. Yeah, I think you better do some more research. No, 95% of retards will put all of their fucking liquid into slot machines. chains on a, I can't listen to that, particularly on the S&P, when the single largest financial

product over the last several years are zero day options on the S&P. People should know that. I mean, people don't know that or if you're not in the market, but you're not just buying the S&P, people are gambling on it. People gamble. It's why prediction markets are as big as they are. Totally, Dave. And, you know, that guy, I don't know where his point was, but, you know, we talked.

about markets here and about investment side and industry but that that part about gambling is a huge issue with you know youth especially you know young men whatever 18 to 35 it's a disaster so you know yes but that's not what we're talking about here it is a huge issue yeah yeah i mean look it i personally think that there's way too much gambling we've all heard you know in in the crypto space I, you know, talking about Solana coins in the same breath. Well, Salana coins is different than Solana. I mean, you know, Pump. Dot Fund, what is it, 98.5% of the people who played in Pump. Pump. Dot fund lost most of their money or all their money.

We're pretty close to it. I mean, you know, it's, it's, they're lottery tickets. And so crypto is lottery tickets. Stocks have lottery tickets. Lottery tickets are lottery tickets. You know, people play them. But from an investment point of view, we're talking about an asset class that is, it's not trivial asset class anymore but you know with a total market cap of somewhere in the three trillion range for all of crypto it's meaningful and there's still a lot of crap there and there's still a lot of

potential there and that's what we're trying to talk about is what's the potential right yeah yeah i mean and then you know if you went about gambling it's not just uh on salana you got the manning brothers supporting Fanduil as what, you know, as what they do during Thanksgiving dinner. So it's a broader issue than just here. It's true. Mark, you have podcasts that talk about addiction recovery that are sponsored by draft kings. I mean, it's like an unbelievable environment that we're in with gambling. But I think to your point, Dave, you know, crypto and blockchain and Bitcoin, these are emerging

asset classes. And with it, there's a lot of gambling. there's a lot of fraud. There's a lot of scams. But we're also working very hard to try to build and find the actual value of the future within this emerging asset class because there is something very sizable here. And it's very different to be in a space where we explore discovering that value, the utility behind it and where it will accrue versus other spaces that are just like de-jetting and hopping into these things, right? The space isn't for, the gambling narrative. It's to actually explore finding value in an emerging asset class,

which is sometimes really hard to do. Yep, it is. And we've talked about this a million times, we've talked about this hundreds of times, that value is based upon the perception of what the token holders will have a part of and what the token economics are vis-a-vis what the potential value is. And, you know, we keep seeing this. all over the place. That's why we worry about, the reason I care about regulatory clarity more than any other reason is to eliminate the bullshit so that if you are in control of a token project and you want to give your token holders a stake in revenues of the protocol or, you know, whatever, that you're not worrying about being sued for it and down the line. I mean, you know,

to me, that's the biggest deal. So, you know, stable coins, we can use that. But the real, real unlock with stable coins is when you can get platforms that will allow you to trade in and out of any of these assets or equities or anything else for that matter on the same platform as you do your payments. Right, Carlo? Sorry if I'm putting you on the spot. No, not at all. Not at all. I was in the middle of writing down something. Yeah, look, I've said it, and I'm very firm on this, and I know that Mark knows I'm kind of on the sidelines waiting for this to really, really catch massive adoption, but all of this that's happening in stablecoins is the precursor to tokenization

of assets, because you have to have the plumbing in place to be able to go back to Fiat. And if you're going to tokenize everything on blockchains, then you have to have an off-ramp that is blockchain driven to make this a seamless process. And that's why this is a big threat to banks, and that's why banks are feverishly trying to figure out. And look, they have a very good thing in the product line, J.P. Morgan and their JPM token, this notion of tokenized deposits is here to stay because it solves for the one thing stable coins can't do, which is they cannot directly pay yield, and the issuers are not allowed to act as banks. So all these SEC charters, they're great. They give them access to skinny Fed and all these things, but they'll never be full-fledged

banks. And that's why banks are not going to go away, but they're certainly going to have to dramatically reduce their fees to stay relevant, and they're going to need to integrate digital dollars, or they're going to fall behind. Yep. Well, I think that's probably a good place to end it, unless somebody else has last thoughts. You know, it will be, we'll come back. Well, I won't be here tomorrow morning because I have a conflict, but, you know, I guess we'll see whether this is, as James Wynn calls at the beginning of a Black Monday, or Mike McClone even said that he thinks we could see a stock market and full asset crash within this week.

So, you know, we'll see. There seems to be a lot of fear and concern out there. And I think that it's important just to keep your head level, stay away from overdoing leverage, and make sure that you understand under discipline in your thesis. And at that point, you'll be okay. I mean, I guess, yeah, well, yeah, I think, is there any, given that we're at 1118,

I think we'll end it there unless somebody else is something else. to say great show dave anybody else okay cool well thanks guys once again scott will be back here tomorrow morning i am going to be in a stupid well never mind it's just a just a hearing that i am i have to be at for the day starting at 9 a.m i'll be locked in a room so i won't be able to do very much if i'm lucky i'll get some time free maybe i can listen but that's probably the best i can do anyway take care everyone stay safe out there This space was downloaded via Spacesdown.com. Visit to download your spaces today.