The Wolf Of All Streets - The Biggest Crypto Scandal, U.S. Gold Reserves & Bitcoin: What’s REALLY Happening

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

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A president rug pulled an entire nation. Coinbase is seemingly off the hook with the SEC, which should send the market and especially altcoins flying. And so many other things happened this week that I effectively missed because I was on vacation. So today we're going to unpack it all here on the Friday Five. Let's go. Let's go.

What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of All Streets. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and hit that like button. Yes, we know that the president of Argentina rug pulled his nation, but I'm going to be honest, I kind of rug pulled you guys. I did not announce that I was going to be gone this week. I don't tell people generally in advance now when I'm going on vacation because security concerns and things like that. Of course, you had Macro Monday still with Larry Lepard joining and the amazing Noel hosting. And then you had Jeff from Bitwise alongside Andrew and Tillman. Those people can all hold down the shows without me.

But we did not have shows on Wednesday, Thursday. I'm sorry. I'm deeply sorry. And we didn't have crypto town hall Monday through Thursday either because pretty much just me at this point. But yes, I was on vacation in Turks and Caicos with my wife to celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary. We've been together since 2008. We got married in 2012. Pretty, pretty crazy. Pretty crazy. It's funny because people are always like, yeah, Emmy likes Scott because he made money in crypto.

And we were together before crypto. Anyways, we've got the Friday Five today. NLW apparently is live emceeing an event. I don't know if it's at his kid's school or if he's rapping with a DJ, but that leaves you stuck with me to review the biggest news of the week, even though I was unplugged and not even paying attention to the news this week.

But we do have something massive, huge, holy shit, breaking, can't believe it. It's the biggest story of all time because you know, all time because you know all caps you know how we do it on x for engagement holy shit huge breaking massive breaking but honestly it is coinbase says sec dropping enforcement case as ceo calls for n to bogus actions against crypto there it is folks this could be one of the biggest stories we will get, although expected. Nice to have conversation that Gary Gensler.

Hmm. Some of those. Excellent. He has Mr. Burns, right? Excellent. The Gary Gensler's reign of terror is over. His legacy is in the bottom of the toilet bowl, still flushing because it's clogged, because it's so bad. Gary Gensler's regulation by enforcement over his biggest case against

Coinbase, likely over. What does this mean? It means that we can go shitcoin in peace because the assault on unregistered securities should be over. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. Brian Armstrong over here, this giga mega Uber Chad calling for an end to bogus actions against crypto. I think it is fair to say that we are finally seeing an end to those things because this was the biggest one. And if Coinbase is not getting trouble for listing a whole bunch of shit coins, then we're pretty much in the clear, at least as long as this administration and SEC are in power. Absolutely huge was not going to be one of my top stories of the week, but here we are. But we did have another SEC story that I intended to discuss, and that is SEC replaces crypto enforcement team with smaller cyber unit. Now, a lot of people are like, what? SEC is still going to have an enforcement unit against crypto?

I can't believe it. This is so bad. But the crypto enforcement team was like 100 people whose entire job was just to wreck our industry with no grounds for doing so. That same regulation by enforcement that I just discussed with Mr. Boone. So what they're replacing it with is a smaller cyber unit. And what does that mean? It's devoted to misconduct in the cryptocurrency markets. The latest sign of the regulators more friendly approach to digital assets. This is a good thing. They're saying they're just going to go after fraud and they have a unit that's going to actually look for this fraud. Now, would I want to be one of these large celebrities who's pumping and dumping meme coins and there's a trace

of it online because this is the blockchain and the transparent. Probably not because those people, if they're committing fraud, are still going to be effed in the bee. But good news for basically everybody else who's an honest actor just trying to innovate and be an entrepreneur and create things in the crypto industry in the beautiful year of his Lord 2025. So we have the SEC doing the right thing because after all people, fraud has always been illegal. And the SEC's job is to protect consumers and investors and retail from fraud and make sure there's proper disclosures. So if they want to do something to actually find the fraud, this is something that we should applaud. I don't like applauding regulators, but going after the bad actors and actually making sure that they can't act badly and commit fraud against retail with shit coins and meme coins, probably a really good thing. You don't have to worry about the Nigerian prince coming to get your meme coins. But clearly, guys,

the SEC, even with this Coinbase news, not the biggest news that happened this week. And the biggest news is, of course, Libra, right? For those who missed it because you live under rocks or don't read the news or anything, we had the president of a nation, Javier Millet, whether he was fully involved or not, but tweeting, certainly, support for a meme coin, excuse me, a shit coin. I'll tell you why it's not a meme coin. Called Libra that was meant to fund private enterprise in Argentina. You could go visit the website that was created like two hours before the token and fill out a Google form. But what happened is this basically went up to like a $5 billion market cap and immediately dumped because insider wallets, specifically about nine of them, made about $87 million, selling a whole shit ton of tokens, rug pulling the entire nation of

Argentina, which has led to a scandal that could be the end of President Millet. I'm not saying it will be, but the opposition saying that he should be impeached, that he's a fraud. And this is certainly putting a little damper on his libertarian outlook. But if you don't know the whole story, look at this guy. His name is Hayden Davis, some company called Kelsier, who is admitted to being a part of the Melania meme coin, says that he is a close advisor to Millet, which is why he dresses like an evil character from Harry Potter who is about to jump on his broom. Look at this guy. That's a serious outfit. If you had one moment to go, for some reason, unprompted in front of the world with a video, would you do it like you were being interrogated at Hogwarts?

I mean, you could have used some good lighting, maybe a nice mic. Maybe you could have put on a suit and tie to look respectable. Instead, he looks like a Gryffindor dropout. What is that outfit? Are his shoulders huge? Is he wearing football pads? I literally don't understand. But he basically went on this rant and this video and then on a thread, a release that he put on X, this long thing, basically saying, bro, like, you know, the president and his team promised me they would support this.

They tweeted it. I had a promise they would continue. By the way, this is financial market manipulation that he's describing. This is literally a crime. Insider information of what the president is going to do. This guy is so fucking stupid then that he threw the president under the bus. He's like, dude, I didn't know they would delete the tweets. What the fuck? This should have gone up forever. He was supposed to keep tweeting. He deleted the tweets and it rug pulled. But we all know that it was Insider Wallace that rug pulled starting before he deleted his tweets because his advisors were probably

like, dude, you're in a lot of trouble, Mr. President. But yes, he then deleted all the tweets. Right. So this is kind of how the story started. You had this, you know, project that was going to support liberty. Viva la libertad in Argentina. There should be so many don't cry for me Argentina jokes that eventually led to the president of the nation having to spend an hour in a press conference coping. Millet made such great hit quotes like, I didn't promote it. I supported it. Is that what he said? I shared it. He said, I shared it. I didn't promote it. It's like saying, I was on Sirius XM yesterday for like five minutes. I was like, that's like saying, I handed him the gun, I put his finger on the trigger, and I aimed it, but I didn't do anything.

Bro. So I have a question here. How is this any different than the Trump rug pulls? Well, first of all, the insider wallets by Trump didn't immediately pump it to a $5 billion market cap or sell it. Second, there's a very important nuance here, guys. And listen, I was probably the most critical person of Trump token. I think it was a horrible idea, terrible timing, just absolutely stupid, gratuitous cash token. I think it was a horrible idea, terrible timing, just absolutely stupid, gratuitous cash grab. I've said that over and over again, but he didn't rug pull A and B. They had the proper disclaimers, whether you agree or not, that the Trump token was a collectible. It was meant for support of the president,

not a financial instrument, no expectation of profit. You can say that's all bullshit, but they put the disclosures. This thing is not a meme coin, guys. They launched a project that had a specific utility described that was supposed to be for the people of Argentina and private businesses there to improve their lives and fund them. So there's no hiding here behind the idea that this was just supposed to be a collectible or whatever. But what's really blowing my absolute brains out is that this guy, this guy, this nobody like Liberty University graduate who apparently is famous for like taking people out to dinner, then hiding in the bathroom until after the check comes, then coming back out and saying, oh dude, I didn't know the check came. Like literally you were in the bathroom for 30 minutes. We could see you hiding behind a pole so you didn't have to pay the check. This guy is somehow on a worldwide roadshow convincing world leaders that he's the

man to save them by launching a token, right? I mean, it was $251 million were lost. I think I read 74,000 people lost money. But you want to know how this bag of dicks right here is able to convince world leaders that he's the guy who should be launching a token for them? Oh my God, what is wrong with it? Libra tokens co-creator claimed he paid Argentinian president Millet's sister.

He paid off the dude's very powerful sister to gain influence over a president, and it apparently worked. I can't imagine the arguments between this dude and his sister right now at this moment. But he's spragged in text messages that are now been seen that he bought influence over the president through the sister. And the president does what I want. OK, I don't know if you guys saw that part.

You can watch the CoffeeZilla video. I didn't, but I'm sure it's great because I always are digging into what happened here. Now, obviously, Millay is on the World Roadshow giving Elon Musk a chainsaw and trying to improve his appearance. But this literally could be the end of his presidency. I mean, this has to be one of the wildest stories that we've ever seen in the crypto space. I don't know if you guys agree, but I think this is absolute insanity. People were saying it's an FTX level event. Clearly not the case. This didn't crash the market to zero. FTX hurt investors all over the planet. SBF was literally the biggest fraud. He was the guy who was in Washington making policy. SBF destroyed our industry for years. I would actually, listen, if we want a silver

lining this, if you look at the metrics on pump.pond and how much activity there is in these wallets that were like native crypto wallets speculating on Libra, those wallets are doing nothing. This may, I'm not going to say ended, but may have finally wiped out the excitement and capital that was speculating and pumping and dumping meme coins. There could be a good side to the industry if people see how absolutely insane this is and just stop. I think humans are going to keep humaning. But I think that this probably, after Trump clearly put in the ceiling, the Trump token put in the absolute ceiling for meme coins in this cycle.

That dude can get the market cap up to 70 billion. Nothing else is going to surpass the Trump token. Wherever that goes, nothing is going higher, right? Basically, like put a cap on what could happen here. But I think that this could be largely the end, the end of this level of meme coin craze, at least seeing presidents do this shit, right? It'd be pretty dumb at this point

for a president to try to launch token. It will be interesting to see how he recovers from this. My instinct is that he'll be fine. It's politics, right? It'll be forgotten. But man, this guy, like I just, I just don't like, I don't understand how this person walks into a room and people are like, he's, that's the guy. Look at him. Look at him. Just look at him. I would love to hear what you guys think he looks like. Since I'm alone, I can do whatever I want.

People who are listening to this on Spotify today are going to be really confused. But give me your best hot takes on Hayden Davis's appearance and outfit right now and I will share them on the screen because it will be amazing to see what you guys have to say. Wonder saying that he's willing to bet that less than 1% of actual Argentinian. Yeah. If it's even five, it's a scam, dude. Maybe storm trooper like that. Pedophile, maybe nerd, Super dweeb. Super dweeb. Star Trooper hoodie.

Yeah. I like that. I like that. What else we got? Reno Sheriff's Department vibes. Super Trooper. The real bully of Hogwarts. That's what I'm saying.

He's definitely with Slytherin. Colin from Love Actually. Quidditch World Cup champ. I think he's a Quidditch benchwarmer. Yeah. Just got back from the dojo. FWIT. Audition tape for Superbad 2. Gingers don't have souls. Not surprising. I shouldn't have brought that up. That's

mean. He's a virgin. Certainly. Hayden should borrow one of Vitalik's rainbow unicorn pajamas. Heaven's Gate member. Wow. These are fun. Timu Jean-Claude Van Damme. Baywatch Analysts. Batman. I don't get that one, but I like it. Hiddenator. Carrot Top. Hogwarts. Juggalo. And I'm going to end on Cobra Kai Quidditch motherfucker. The Gryffindor grifter. That's

pretty good. All right, guys, we're going to move on now to the next story, which is at the ECB. The European Central Bank wants to establish blockchain-based payment system. Everyone's like, holy crap, this is amazing. Look at this news. The European Central Bank finally admitting that our technology is superior for international payments and internal payments. And holy shit, you dig in. And this is about a central bank digital currency, guys. This is evil. They want to take the basis of the blockchain,

make it as centralized as humanly possible, and basically create a central bank digital currency, a CBDC, to use around the European Union. Now, we've seen President Trump, many states, many in the United States, including Jerome Powell, say we'll never see a central bank digital currency in the United States. It will be banned. It will be illegal. But we know that Europe is the place where the United States' worst ideas go to thrive. And so the worst of everything. Sorry to my European friends over there, but you guys are the worst right now. And it looks like Europe going to go ahead and develop a blockchain platform that looks a hell of a lot like a central bank digital currency. I think we need to keep our eyes out on that because it's absolute trash. Eurosystem expands initiative to settle DLT-based transactions in

central bank money. This is European Central Bank talking about central bank money. Should I accept these cookies? No, I'm not taking your cookies, bro. So you can tell how much prep I did. I didn't even eliminate the cookies at the bottom of the screen before we got started. So listen, I'm all for adoption of blockchain technology, I guess, by governments and institutions, although I'm old enough to remember when we didn't give a shit about presidents and institutions and governments and sovereign wealth because we were raging against the machine and we were a bunch of rebel libertarians, cypherpunks who were buying Bitcoin to opt out. Now it's like, when will the president pump my

bags, bro? But listen, now we're going to obviously with the adoption by governments, we're going to see the worst sides of the technology being adopted as well. We've got some news on Binance. Binance US restores use of American dollars on the platform. You might remember that Binance US, one of the major casualties of the Gary Gensler era of regulation by enforcement. Basically, they said Binance US, not an entity of its own. had operation choke point 2.0 all the banking partners were removed we saw okay coin die we saw ftx for obvious reasons us die even though it was supposed to be a separate platform binance us basically was killed it continued to exist but there's no volume no way to get dollars in and out you

had to send money via stable coins well if you if you want to know that Operation Chokepoint 2.0 against the crypto industry is thawing, well, we finally have banking partners again for platforms in the United States like Binance.us. Binance CEO Tang, who I'm interviewing, honestly, I canceled. I shouldn't. It's embarrassing. i've been trying to get an interview i should say misha my amazing producer has been trying to get an interview with richard tang for ages and then like a week ago or two i went skiing

with my daughter and my flights were delayed and i got home at like 2 30 in the morning i was supposed to interview him at eight i was like i don't know, man. And let's just say I made the bad decision of prioritizing feeling like a human being and sleeping before Macro Monday. But we will be interviewing him again in a couple of weeks. Still haven't done it, though. Obviously, I've interviewed CZ before. But him saying that we have a fresh reset for crypto in the U.S. regime. Very, very clear now that we are so back, baby, and that we will have multiple options of exchanges in the United States where we can send our actual dollars in and out moving into the future. On a more negative note for Binance, although this seems stupid,

Nigeria sees Binance for $81.5 billion in economic losses back taxes. The Federal Inland Revenue Service, that's not a real thing. You guys made that name up, is looking for $79.5 billion for economic losses and $2 billion plus interest in back taxes. Economic losses, how did finance cause Nigeria economic losses? They said that they had a significant economic presence in Nigeria, so should be liable to pay corporate income tax. Okay, cool. Let's see how that goes for you.

Binance has more money than Nigeria, probably. So we have a whole lot of stories now about the United States and what's happening under Trump. First, we have Trump coming back and underscoring his commitment to make U.S. the crypto capital. He said it again two days ago. A lot of people were wondering. But along those lines, we obviously have the states moving forward with a hell of a lot of Bitcoin strategic reserve bills. Utah's Bitcoin reserve bill advances to Senate standing committee. That

means it is actually advancing, moving forward. Cinema calls Arizona a trailblazer as state pushes to keep unclaimed crypto in native form. We can summarize all the things that are happening, but let's just say that a lot of states have moved bills past committee. They're starting to look like they actually have a legitimate chance at being approved for the first time. And we have basically half the states in the United States promoting or proposing some sort of crypto or Bitcoin strategic reserve legislation. This is good news, but also important to note that just because one politician in a state proposes legislation doesn't mean it's going to happen. So that's what's happened in 22 states so far. But maybe the biggest story in the United States is, well, apparently we think there might

not be any gold in Fort Knox. You guys heard about this? Proposed U.S. gold reserve audit could spur blockchain adoption for sovereign reserve tracking. Sure. That's a very crypto focused take. But more importantly, Trump and Musk say they want to make sure that Fort Knox gold is still there. Maybe it's there. Maybe it's not. Can you imagine if Fort Knox had just been sitting empty? I mean, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessette's like, it's there, man. I don't know why we now have the idea that it's not, but the Treasury Department audits that stockpile every single year. This seems like clickbait. It would be pretty insane.

Can you imagine? It's like the Al Capone's vault. Who's old enough to remember when they opened Al Capone's vault? Yeah. Anyone? Well, they made this big thing. I think it was Geraldo Rivera on TV. I remember being a kid, and back then you had to watch shit live because you didn't have DVR and it was like actually exciting.

And they opened it and there was like literally nothing in there. It was dust. We were supposed to find Al Capone's money. Well, imagine if that happened at Fort Knox. And these dudes are just like the military is out there protecting nothing. And then I've seen takes it like we don't just need to make sure the gold is there. We need to drill into it and make sure it's not tungsten. But I think the bottom line here is that Trump and

Musk, for better or for worse, I would say for better, are willing to audit everybody. It's like Oprah right now. You get an audit, you get an audit, you get an audit, right? I mean, Fort Knox talking about auditing the IRS. They're firing a whole bunch of IRS agents talking about auditing the Fed. I have an interview coming out this Sunday with Caitlin Long, where she talks very extensively about that. Really, really interesting. Listen, they're going to figure this all out. Oh my God. You're my heir if you say Oliver North would be blamed. You guys remember Oliver North? Yeah. My bet is that the gold's there. My bet is that the gold is there. What else do you guys want to talk about?

Listen, I missed the week. So we are going to talk about very quickly, LBank, unlock up to 100% cash back on every trade. You guys know that LBank, right now LBank and Aptos. Look, I can change. You want to see something cool? I'm my own producer. So watch this.

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but Aptos, amazing sponsor. Looking forward to doing a lot more things with them. What I'm really excited about actually that's coming up on a side note is I've got a lot of conferences. We've got Paris Blockchain Week in April. So I'll be doing, as you guys have seen, the full content review of that, man on the street interviews, figuring out who we're going to be working with to make that happen. But Paris Blockchain Week at the end of April. And then Token 2049 in Dubai, not only going there to cover the event

and do interviews as I always do, but I've partnered with my old friend who owns the Middle Eastern Blockchain Awards. So the night before Token 2049 starts, we're going to do the Middle Eastern Blockchain Awards in Dubai at the Burj Al Arab. It's going to be absolutely insane. I'm really trying to focus on a few events in person each year and just do some sick things there. And I think that it's going to be a lot of fun to do that. But check out LBank and Aptos. Guys, we basically covered all the big stories of the week. As crazy as that is, we did it. We cooked through it fast, 30 minutes. I started earlier because NLW wasn't here and he usually shows up at like 9.08. But yeah, we try to keep this show to about 30 minutes and we did it.

Did you guys enjoy it? Solo show. When I do a solo show, which is very rare, I say a lot more bad words, make a lot more bad jokes. It's way more informal. It's probably kind of embarrassing for the maturity of crypto, but here I am being myself. This is how it used to be back in the day. Guys, that's all I have for you today. Telling you, LBank, click on the link down in the description. Aptos, click down in the description. Not an affiliate link or anything, but just check them out. Flip them, flip them. Otherwise, that is all I have for you today.

I am back today on Crypto Town Hall, 10, 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. So check that out as well. Four-day absence. Miserable, miserable. I'm the worst. But next week, we're back in full. See you then. Let's go.