The Wolf Of All Streets - Trade War Escalates - But Bitcoin Holds STRONG! | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

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We trade wars to those who celebrate. It is Friday morning, Crypto Town Hall, 10, 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Every single weekday here, we are celebrating the strong markets that we've all come so accustomed to as the S&P and NASDAQ absolutely fall off a cliff. And Bitcoin stands steady. I've never been so excited in my life to see Bitcoin do absolutely nothing as I would say I am today trading right now at $82,800. If you take a look at the Bitcoin chart, every day has opened or closed between $82,300 and 82,900 for the past week. So in the midst of all this volatility, we've had big ups and

downs in Bitcoin, but at the end and beginning of the day, it effectively is flat right in the middle of the 82,000 as the world seemingly burns. Dave, what do you make of Bitcoin Weisberger? We'll do both, Dave, so I don't want to confuse it. What do you make of Bitcoin's relative strength, as our colleague Mike McGlone would say, in the face of market turmoil? Well, I mean, crypto in general has had a bigger sell-off than is likely to be seen on NASDAQ even after Monday.

And we do need to talk about this weekend and Monday. But I've been saying for a while, for three weeks now, that the sellers of Bitcoin have been the marginal crypto speculators. And frankly, it feels like they're getting exhausted. The people who have bought it are long-term buyers. Now, the real question is, how much this weekend will be flooding into, because the way things work, people should understand,

in the old world, when weekends are closed, it tend to be when a lot of people, dentists, et cetera, sit down and adjust their portfolios and they put in orders. If you look at stock market crashes, there's a reason that they've been on Mondays and the reason what they generally are are after bad weeks the week before

with gloomy news over the weekend, lots of orders flood in. You remember I said yesterday that if yesterday holds and tomorrow, i.e. today, is down another 3%, then there's gonna be a shit ton of panic going on on Wall Street over the weekend. And it will depend on what they actually do. But understanding that, apart from a massive panic selling,

the marginal seller of Bitcoin is exhausted. And frankly, the likelihood of things to try to offset this carnage is very positive for Bitcoin. Remember, Bitcoin was born in the global financial crisis, right? It is an opt out against this system. And the people who are along it are looking for a 10x and not worrying about 5% here or there. So you have this incredible dichotomy and it seems to be playing out.

We've been talking about this now for two and a half years, Scott, but it feels like this is a pretty important sign. And all I'll say is this, if you think Eric Trump didn't know that his father was going to rattle markets and cause, you know, all of this crap, then you're nuts. And you know, follow the smart money. That's really the most important thing I would say, or at least follow the most informed money. It's sort of like Bitcoiners. We are the Nancy Pelosi's of this cycle. That's all I could say. You did, we are the Nancy Pelosi's of this cycle. That's all I can say. You did not just call me Nancy Pelosi.

I just called you Nancy Pelosi. I called you a God level trader. Thank you. I'm just gonna say, okay, whatever. I'm no Pelosi. Hey, I don't even know if I'm Pelosi in that terminology. That's hilarious. What's also interesting, today we had job

numbers that were relatively strong. So I can say at least maybe the trade wars have given us enough cover to not have to talk about nonsensical job numbers on a Friday. So that's a silver lining. I mean, if everyone should watch, Basenty gave an interview yesterday with CNN, actually. And he's a very calm delivery. But what he basically said is, listen, the economy that we've been celebrating in financial as I, as celebrating for years,

is he calls it the steroid economy. What he's basically saying is it's drunk on debt. And effectively, he sounded like a Bitcoiner. Well, then again, we kind of know he is one, so that's not all that surprising. So when you have the most powerful person in the administration on the economy telling you that the economic system

has been financialized and drunk on debt, and that they are going to do everything they can to try to build a more sustainable path forward. It's pretty hard to be bearish on Bitcoin because that is exactly why. Because if you were bearish on Bitcoin now, then you shouldn't you should have never been bullish on it. And frankly, I think all the people who are in it just for trading and speculation are getting the hell out if they haven't gotten out already.

I called on one David, so I have to call on the other David. Your thoughts, David? Oh, you're too kind. I'm certainly, I'm a lesser David than Dave Weisberger. No, you guys are equal, David. I will say, I will say, no, no. First of all, it's a pleasure to join you today. You know, we had a space earlier this morning, Scott, that you were on. I think it was some of the most informative, knowledgeable, thoughtful commentary.

And I think on days like today, to be kind of crowded around with good thinking people, whether they diverge an opinion is beside the point. It really helps kind of help inform you to gain a formed opinion of your own. And so I certainly believe with Dave Weisberger, as I have for a long time about following the money, and I, you know, whether this experiment works out or not, how much destruction occurs across the world with the experiment going on in terms of tariffs, on-shoring a bunch of activity that gets roboticized, digitized, done better in the United States, whatever it is. We don't have trade imbalances. We don't have reliance on other countries,

whatever it may be. One of the things that I just commented out loud about is I do believe that it may be Bitcoin and crypto more generally is a period of time to make its breakout. I don't mean to sound prophetic in any way. Sometimes some of the things that are most clear and most rational need to come under incredible pressure from everything else, while everything else is getting beaten up for people to realize the value of something else. I've said it before, and I think 2024 was a great year in markets generally. Frankly, most investors didn't really take much of a gander at crypto's outperformance, not 2024, not 2023.

But maybe, you know, these this this current situation, this car situate people to realize. The value of bit. The value of Bitcoin certainly in terms of being the pre eminent store value on and then maybe more broadly the revolution that crypto can go ahead and you know. Actualize you know overall and I don't again I don't mean. Like a crazy person but yeah I think I think we might have the recipe for that only time will tell if that happens. Alex yeah I think the really interesting to me especially over the last few days looking it's not I wouldn't frame it as the overperformance of Bitcoin and certainly the overall crypto market, but it's the stability of it as you were saying, right? Like it's not just, is it, you know,

nice to not have it moving around, but the fact that it's diverged so hard from the NASDAQ and just tech stocks in general, where it's been so strongly correlated for so long and is, and is holding steady there. I really agree with the sentiment. If you weren't bullish on it before, it's a really, really weird time to be getting bearish on it right now because it's finally, knock on wood, doing the thing that we say it should be doing. Interestingly, everybody has their own definitions.

I think we all agree that Bitcoin is not in a bear market just because it went down more than 20%. But the traditional definition of a bear market or a correction is usually 10%, 10% or more. Many of you had crashed depending on how fast is 20%. And if it gets into over 20% territory, certainly for stocks to bear market, the NASDAQ is currently down 19.93% from its peak. Yeah.

But so, and I think in terms of like that, you need to also just pull back a little bit. And it's not just like, look how much it's up in the last year. It's look at it where it was the day before Trump's election and think about how, frankly, overinflated or speculative the move up to 100,000 plus was based on, oh, he'll make a strategic reserve and blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. If you pull that out, like mid 80s, if you just price inconsistent performance and hedging against instability overall, like, it's probably about at the right point with given

Where the moves have been for the last two years on it? Versus you know when it shot up 25 or 30 percent like in a week because there was hopes that like Donald Trump would buy a bunch of it I Think one thing that's worth talking about Scott from a macro point of view is if you look at the 2017 playbook, I mean people forget that when Trump came in it was it was not quite as I mean he wasn't as much of a bull in the China shop as he is this time. I mean this is a clear intentional attempt at resetting 30 some odd years of US policy. So this is bigger. So let's just get that out of the way. I'm not trying to minimize that. But the indicator that when

I was asked early in 17, you know, when the market was kind of selling off in the beginning was well, is this the real sell off? And the answer and actually the same thing was true before you know, right at the election time. The answer in my mind was no not as long as the bond market isn't selling off in tandem with the stock market. The world is not repudiating U.S. assets. Just keep that in mind. What you have here are panic people who have been living off their wealth effect for a long time off their stocks selling stocks and buying bonds. But the bond yield at 3.9 is you in some respects, there are people in Washington who are doing back flips about that because it's what they want to see. So keep in mind,

we haven't seen repudiation of US assets yet, and that matters. So if you look, if people are buying bonds, and then you have others who are looking who listen to Michael Saylor and they're saying, wait a minute, why the hell am I buying bonds? I mean, why not buy Bitcoin? And it's a very interesting comparison when you look at it that way. But the economy in the US, like the job numbers and everything else, is there's so much crap going on with it.

The issue is how much would a trade war really matter and what would really occur? The more concerning news this morning had nothing to do with China's tariffs. It was China putting export controls over rare earth minerals. That's the real political flex. I mean, people may not be paying attention, but believe me, that's what matters. That's what matters. I talked about that this morning. We get 80% of our rare earths, by the way, from China, but more importantly, the little bit, which is I, sub 1% because we get 10% somewhere else, 5%. Maybe we have 2% comes out of California

and 100% of that is refined in China. So even the rare earth that we have in the United States, we export to China to be refined before being sent back. As I said many times over the last few weeks, I mean, there's a reason Trump is looking there, they're trying to figure out shit with Green mean, there's a reason Trump is looking, they're trying to figure out shit with Greenland. There's a reason that they're what they're doing in Ukraine and Russia. And yes, I'm sure they do want the war to end and yada, yada. And I hate to be incredibly cynical. I'm just saying that rare earths are a very big part of that story and will continue to be. And that's part of this policy. So, if we're not ready to find other sources,

you can pretty much bet that we're going to have to play ball and probably fold a little bit because it's too important. For those who don't understand rare earths or effectively without them, you have no computers. You have no, forget renewable energy, you have no computers. So, you know, fighter jets, cars, yeah. More than just computers. I mean, China clearly here

did not capitulate or give in to what they see as a strong hand from or we can maybe from the United States. There was a report two days ago, I believe, that said that United States and China are likely to come to the negotiating table after the tariffs. And it also stated that China unlikely to negotiate because they view United States position as weak and likely headed into recession. So I think that they showed very clearly for for better or for worse, that they're not

afraid of this by raising tariffs 34% and then on rare earths. Go ahead, Lou. Lou, can you hear me? Yeah, sorry about that. Just need to unmute. Like usual, I disagree with quite a bit a lot of what's been said. First, somebody earlier on called the tariffs and experiment. I don't think it's an experiment.

We've done this multiple times. We know how this is going to work out. It's like saying that striking out in baseball is an experiment to see if it raises your batting average, we know that striking out will not raise your batting average and we know that tariffs are going to shrink the economy. That is what they do. I also disagree with what Dave said about that it's panicked people selling. This is a massive, massive market. It's not moved by some panicked individuals. These are the smartest people in the world out there making their bets and telling you that the economy is going to shrink. I think coming back to the negotiating table for Trump is going to be tough because he's

negotiated with people and signed agreements and then not honored the agreements. It's going to be tough to get people to come back to the table and trust anything that Trump does. And I think from a macro level, I think all of this, while it's unfortunate for the US and our economy, in the long run, it's great for Bitcoin. I think this is going to speed up. We all knew at some point that there was going to be a great decoupling. And my guess is this can be the thing that really starts to drive the decoupling of Bitcoin from the NASDAQ and the rest of the market.

Good. Good morning, everyone. I just wanted to add a different take I have on the tariffs. I think they're ultimately going to be good for two reasons. One is that the U.S. is obviously the dominant global buyer of everything, and the US has the global dominant reserve currency. So if you're threatening everybody that you're not going to be able to sell to the biggest market and you have the biggest currency,

you're in the driver's seat. The only thing there is, do you hold strong with the tariffs, or do you fold and get rid of them early on? And I think that's what's gonna be the big question here. Obviously everyone's thinking you gotta wrap this up by the midterms, which I kind of agree with. But if you go back, you're looking at the pain right now, your average orthodontist isn't gonna remember

what happened in early April when the stock market's back up six, eight, nine months from now. And yeah, the corollary is, okay, well, if the US is going to do this, we got to start to decouple away from the reserve currency. But I mean, they've been trying that now for at least BRICS has been trying that now for the last what three, four or five years. And you know, nobody else can agree on whose currency is going to be the reserve. Now, if everybody moved to Bitcoin, or some other, you know, currency, that would be an issue. But I mean, it'd be great for all the Bitcoiners. But, if everybody moved to Bitcoin or some other currency, that would be an issue. But I mean, it'd be great for all the Bitcoiners, but we're not there yet.

So I think the US is in the driver's seat as long as they maintain the pressure. Larry Fink, by the way, thinks that Bitcoin could end up the global reserve currency, which he said this week in their annual letter, which was just that. That was maybe the most eye opening thing that's happened in our space for the very long time. They kind of went under reported, but he's gone full Satoshi, which I find just absolutely incredible. David Tao. Yeah, I take issue with the point about the orthodontist, not that I am or am related to an orthodontist, but I think this

destruction in wealth and portfolios is certainly not going to get worked out in the next six to nine months. I think there's a real reordering that's going on right now. And I think, first of all, these types of drops, you know, for those that have been through it and do it professionally, yes, that's that's one thing like I will be able to very easily sleep tonight, no problem. But there are I'm sure if this persists and we get to Monday, and we should talk about Monday, Dave Weisberger, but you know, if we get to Monday, we get another round of

this, because it hasn't been capitulation. It hasn't been sloppy selling. It hasn't been force selling, right? Very orderly. So, you know, if history is a guide, you know, we've still got to get to that point. I can tell you people are going to be shell shocked at the end of this because in really an unprecedented amount of time coupled with the fact that this was self-imposed, how we work ourselves out of this I don't think is as easy as some people want to believe it could be. I think this is going to be a very very messy process. Remember on that list of tariff people you've got to

speak to each one individually and somehow work out a deal and oh by the way the president's already said we're not getting to deals anytime soon. Just for the record that's what he said but then yesterday he gave an interview on Air Force One and said if a deal is good enough, they'll take it and he's right. If it's exceptional. Right. I think it's problematic actually how back and forth they've been on things like that, right?

Just creating more uncertainty. Yeah, I think it's incredibly messy. And again, I go back to the one point, not that Israel matters, but Israel said before this all came down, we're going to zero. And by the way, they're still on the chart. They still got- 17%.

We hit them with 17%. Exactly. So like, this White House, I think is clear. We have to be honest, they don't have a clear chain of command, order of process, how we're going to go ahead and get this done. They want it to get done. It will get done. But I don't think that it's going to be six to nine months from now that the orthodontist

is going to feel okay again about his portfolio. Just for the record, I was going to say dentist, but Dave W took that one from me, so I had to go ortho. No problem. Happy to spread the wealth or the losses, I should say in this case. There's also some nuance, which is that Trump campaigns largely, at least to Wall Street and people with wide exposure to stocks on higher prices in the stock market and Bitcoin as well, assets in general being sort of the benchmark for how he judged the success of

his presidency. And to some degree, I think this has been a pivot from that. So that's also I think caused quite a bit of confusion and head scratching. You have to give him all the credit in the world for doing exactly what he said he would. But I can just tell you anecdotally, because I have a lot of Wall Street friends, they all think this is going a lot lower and they're all pissed off and they all voted for Trump. Yeah, I always say well, love them again, by the way, I'm just saying to your point, like if you're going to do austerity, if you're going to do tariffs, if you're going to break things, you have to do it now. So that by 2026, when there's midterms, it's not a conversation

anymore. But this isn't what a lot of people felt like they voted for. Not a value judge. Absolutely agree. Dave Weisberger. I think there's, they have two options to stop the panic. There's only two. And you really have to game it out. What you just said is extremely important, Scott. The thinking is going lower. When I talked about, you know, selling, you know, selling, I'm talking about, you know, retail holdings, but I'm not, I'm not talking about retail holders of stocks. What very few people understand and why three o'clock is very important, and why the opens are

really important is, oh, this is still the vast majority of wealth, the vast majority of trading, 70% of trading is institutional, but those institutions face redemptions from retail people who pull their money out of mutual funds or pension administrators who say, wait a minute, should we really be this aggressive? And all of those boards are holding emergency meetings. You know that. And if you've sat in the corridors of power in any sense, you know that the managing directors that are running every one of the Wall Street firms and the people who are at the senior levels of every big investment institution are fielding

phone calls from panicked investors and panicked people saying, what do we do? And that is where all this stuff resolves. So understand that this weekend will be, you will have what has been colloquially called the president, the plunge protection team, the president's working group on financial markets, which the best-send chairs, he is gonna have to come up with something. So they're gonna have two possible choices.

I mean, I guess there's a third choice, do nothing and let the market crash because Monday could be exceedingly ugly if this continues given what is likely to happen over the weekend. So there's two choices. Choice one, they say, you know, that chart was stupid. You know, we want to, we will put 10% tariff and okay, you can argue that that would be bad, but Wall Street had more or less digested that and we will have reciprocal tariffs in excess of that when people charge us more But we're not going to try to equalize our trade deficit by a brute force blunt force trauma hammer Which is basically that's the whole Israel thing they cut to zero and yet they're at 17% because they have we have a 34% trade Deficit with them. Well, why do we have a trade deficit with Israel?

Because they produce biotech and other shit that we import that we don't produce. I mean, it's pretty straightforward, and effectively, they have to walk that back. Now, whether they'll walk it back or not, well, that'll be a different question. That's a question internal to the White House, is do they see this as enough of a panic to do that?

If they do that, markets will explode. And I don't mean by a little bit. I mean, you know, they will explode. And that's the obvious smart move. Now, whether they'll do it or not, I don't know. The second thing they could do is rush or push to rush in liquidity measures. And you know, that's been the playbook, but that is so antithetical to what this Treasury Secretary wants to do.

I just don't see them doing it. So I guess, you know, that's really the question is, will they walk back the nonsensical chart or not? It really becomes, it's almost that binary. Well, Dave, I will, and before Alex, you jump in, just to qualify because of the start of that statement. When I was speaking to my friends, we were together last weekend and they said they thought another easy 5 to 10%

and that's already happened this week. So I can't say that they're all convinced that it's going much lower from here. Hilariously, the guy I always reference as my friend and I say can't say where he works, but rhymes with Citadel, he literally quit Citadel last week and is texting me right now about his impeccable timing for getting his ass out of the market. Alex, I want you to go, but I also want you to touch on this question, which is we see that Bitcoin is showing strength right now in the midst of all this, even if that just means sideways.

But a lot of people pointing to what will happen Monday. Do we think that what Bitcoin does this weekend is going to give us hints to what happens on Monday? Because to be fair, Bitcoin often sees some of its worst price action on weekends when other markets are closed. Yeah, I think absolutely. Weekends, as we know, are huge for Bitcoin and crypto in general, and it tends to often not be well.

The flip side to that point though is that since everyone knows it, and I think again, because it is historically moved so much in line with tech stocks and the NASDAQ and things, just basically higher bait on it, every day that it diverges and holds better and outperforms on it, it sells the case a little bit more for it that this might actually be the interesting differentiated point for it. I don't know how long it has to stay like that and hold it, but I think at some point it actually then really starts moving back against to the market and continuing to increase because it's now doing the thing that it's

supposed to be doing. Okay. So that leads to another question. Number one, again, to anyone on the panel, the question about the weekend. But number two, I think it's worth discussing why Bitcoin is doing what it's doing right now when it hasn't necessarily done that in the past. If anybody has any ideas of why it is holding so strong in the face of all this selling, I mean, like I said, NASDAQ down 20% pretty aggressive. Usually that would have meant a much bigger drop for Bitcoin in the midst of that. Panos, then Fred.

Yeah, I mean, think about it, Bitcoin has already dropped so much from what was the higher 109k. Yeah. So I mean, it's I think Bitcoin has already done a lot of a lot of selling already. I do think it could go lower. And I think we're in this like stalemate right now where it's like flip a coin 5050. Either it's gonna go up or it's going to drop down into the 70s. But you know, I think it's not as as affected as much as other markets because it has already literally been battered for the past I don't know how long like we

saw it go into the 70s, it's bounced back up again. But I mean, it's probably a 50-50 coin flip whether we're gonna go back down into the seven years again or move up from here in my opinion. Scott. I think on, I have no idea what's gonna happen this weekend but I think on the second question, why is Bitcoin holding? I think what's going to be different, and I'm kind of coming around to this begrudgingly when I look at my crypto portfolio,

but I think not everything is going to skyrocket this time, unlike all the other cycles we've had before. And so why isn't Bitcoin getting hammered? It's because everybody that matters outside of the crypto world is starting to see what the utility is, why it serves a purpose, and that it's because everybody that matters outside of the crypto world is starting to see what the utility is, why it serves a purpose, and that it's actually meaningful. And I say that and stress that because, as it turns out, there's a crypto that everybody loves to hate, unless you're in the army, that's been doing actually very well, because whether you want to say a company has paid to get into Trump circle or not or because he's talking about XRP guys.

These, uh, I mean that you can't deny that that's done very well over the course of the last couple of months. And it's also hanging tough for what's been going on. And you know, even not as well, but even Cardano is hanging in there. You know, you had a really good interview with Charles a couple of days ago and there's actually a lot of utility there even though everybody loves to hate it. So, you know, it's I think we're gonna see a separation of the pack this this cycle and you know, I just pulled up my portfolio and now I'm like, okay, well, I guess it's timely maybe time to sell my Kava, Eos, Sand, Secret and Mana.

I don't think those ones are going to hit this cycle. You're just not a true believer and now you're going to get attacked by the passionate communities of whatever the hell those things are you just said. I know. I'm sorry. I don't think you're wrong. There have been some obviously that have continued to outperform throughout and I think everybody agrees that we're still going to get some

nice bullish movement from a lot of all coins throughout the rest of the cycle. My question then is did Trump like put a 99% tariff on the Ethereum Foundation because holy shit that is not performing well go ahead David I am NOT gonna comment about aetherium or I didn't even need to see that in there right before you the guy adding aetherium to the balance sheet of a company I still believe by the way but yeah I go no but while we've been talking I mean the NASDAQ's down now like five and a quarter percent on the day and Dow's down four percent on the day, S&P down four and three quarters. We've taken two legs lower while we've been on chatting here.

I think who knows what the close brings, but certainly unless there's some real policy statements out over the weekend, my expectation is that this continues certainly into Monday. You know, whether Bitcoin can hold its ground, if history is guide, right, in terms of what it's done over the past as you started this space with, you know, the range-bound nature of it, I expect it to be there over the weekend. I don't think anything is going to go ahead and all of a sudden, especially silence is going to go ahead and panic the Bitcoin community that's held in this range until now. I expect that we

get there. But Monday certainly could be, again, if there's no particular statements or negative statements, let's say, from other countries saying we're going to double down just like China, then I think this is going to continue on Monday. And on top of that, folks, I got to go back to the no panic selling yet and margin calls certainly starting to come out for folks. And yeah, we could very well see a flush. I'm not trying to go ahead and put fear into anybody. I'm just trying to think rationally about this.

So when you talk about margin calls, let's be very specific. So here's the mechanics. I mean, in Bitcoin, everyone wants to talk about seasonality and cycles. Here are the mechanics. On the, in Bitcoin, everyone wants to talk about seasonality and cycles. Here are the mechanics. On the open, which we've already seen, orders are in. They're now getting executed.

And we're seeing, I mean, the carnage is real. I mean, Nasdaq down 5.79%, gold down almost 2%. Just keep in mind, that's why Bitcoin has fall below 82,000 because gold is down, you know, you know, 1.86%. And that's indicative of the famous aphorism in a panic. People sell what they can sell, not what they want to sell. And so correlations go up. That it makes what's actually happening even more remarkable. But understand that this is panic. So mechanically, what you generally get is a price move from now, you know, from the open to somewhere around lunchtime-ish,

some quiescence, the market will kind of hang out, maybe it'll do something, if there's no news, by the way, and then at three o'clock, you'll or thereabouts, it's not exact science, you'll see, that's when margin calls have to be met. So if there were a lot of margin calls today, you will see a force selling wave at three. That, by the way, is why circuit breakers are put in. Because if you look at where the crash operated,

there were some gaps, but the big selling, the thing that absolutely took the market completely and kneecapped it in October of 87, and keep in mind, I was on the trading desk, I ran our program trading system, so I know exactly what happened. There were no bidders after three when the margin calls came in, and that's why things accelerated so badly.

Now, that won't happen because it can't. They'll pause the market first, but so you watch the post three o'clock. Then mechanically, you get all the major decision makers over the weekend. And that's why the open and that's why the Bitcoin, you know, it will be a leading indicator because people are going to know, you know, what the hell's going on. But when you talk about margin calls, the time to watch is the last hour ish. It's actually before that.

So really from 245 to 315, you'll know whether there's margin calls. And so just be watching that if you're trading today, it's exceedingly important. Quickly, I've been this above in the nest, but retail investors bought 4.78 billion in stocks yesterday, the highest amount in 10 years. So I can say that retail was confidently, well, not necessarily confident, but was definitely interested in buying the dip yesterday. And then another one, which it's not an emergency conference or anything, but Fed Chair Powell scheduled to speak today. 1130 AM, he's speaking at the Society for Advancing Business Editing and

Writings annual meeting, but we all know that he's going to be asked questions about what's going on and what the Fed Is likely to do it coming meeting so I would expect eyes will be on that 1130 Yeah, well, we're gonna we're gonna host spaces that's gonna broadcast that for anybody that wants to go ahead and and listen in And to your point on the retail, the orthodontist obviously did not do very well between yesterday and today. Let's just hope they don't have any Bitcoin to sell on the weekend when everything's closed.

For sure. I hear orthodontists are huge, huge Bitcoiners, very orange filled. Anyone else thoughts on when this slows down? If we see a level of capitulation, if we think that the market will absorb this and head back up or whether this is just the start like Dave, if we had Mike McGlone here, he'd be telling us over and over again, this is just the beginning. This is just starting to roll over. This is, you know, where Mike and I agree is when you have the Treasury Secretary of the United States, who's part of these policies

telling you that our markets are on steroids, and we need to take the debt out of the market. You know, if you look at the debt, the market cap GDP, you understand that's very problematic. I mean, financialization has been going on. We're talking three, four decades of bipartisan policies that they're trying to unravel here. There's going to be a lot of broken eggs. There will be massive winners, too.

And so the question of where does it go, it's fine. I mean, Mike, every bit of the analysis that he does and where he and I disagree is everything he's looking at is backward looking, which, you know, look, I ran a quant for quant desks for two decades. And yes, backward looking makes a whole lot of sense unless the world is telling they're telling you what they're going to change. And we don't know whether they'll cave or not. We don't. We have absolutely no idea. But I think there are definitely pockets of things that are completely overvalued. I mean, still in crypto, I would agree.

I mean, I think Farcoin rallied again last night or something. It's like, OK, whatever. I mean, I want stuff like that to be zero for me to feel better about crypto. I'm not going to lie about it. But I think Mike's point is fair that unwind financialization and writing the quote steroids from the economy is going to be painful for some stocks. But, you know, I keep coming back to the Russell and, you

know, in the Russell still down for a second day down more than the NASDAQ. I got to believe there's some opportunities in smaller cap stocks that are going to benefit. And I think there's other ones that are going to be absolutely destroyed because of the supply chain issues that you've talked about. So you know, it's going to take a fair amount of analysis. But in days like today, when the markets are doing this, and where they did yesterday, nobody's doing analysis. They're just fucking selling. And if we're going to invoke Mike McGlone, who's not here oil

61 bucks a barrel actually $60 and 90 cents down 9% on the day. He's been long calling I think he's been calling for 45, but he said 60 many many times Yep. No, he's been absolutely right on that one. And and that's because well and if you look at silver It's the same. He said that at one Yeah, no, he did. He said it at 120. Yep. And he and I have never disagreed. I kind of think that at these levels, you start to get a bit of panic and what will

happen because we know this. And it's funny that I'm referencing a TV show, but watch Billy Bob Thornton's speech in Landman because Taylor shared the great research. At this price, most of the productive capacity, most of the oil producing capacity is losing money. And so they're gonna start shutting wells and stuff. So if it actually, if this isn't a blip down, if this is a return to a price,

especially given the incurrent dollars and how much it costs, there's gonna be a shit ton of oil capacity taken offline. So drill baby drill becomes, huh? Why? Will be the question. You know, it's not about, you know, about legal. It's about about what prices. So price does matter.

But don't forget how important oil input prices are to inflation. Never forget that because tariffs even 100, you know, and also never forget how the BLS calculates inflation. Never forget that because tariffs, even 100, you know, and also never forget how the BLS calculates inflation. The BLS will do substitution. So except for things that we absolutely cannot have that we have no US alternative, they're going to smooth out the cost of tariffs, but the cost of oil of oil is down this much. This is going to give the Fed much more room than people realize if it stays here. I doubt that it will, but it very well could.

Just reading through the other stories in the news, this one caught me by surprise. Fred, you invoked the army, so I'll state this one. Coinbase derivatives announced that it has submitted a self-certification application to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and plans to launch XRP futures contracts on April 21, 2025. What do we make of that? What you should make of it is that the powers that be have decided that when we go to the altcoin market, XRP is going to be one of the chosen ones. Now, you can have your opinions on whether that's the right way or the wrong way, but I think that's just the way it is, is that everyone's making their moves trying to get

the favored status in the Trump administration that's pro crypto. You're going to see that. I mean, I think you're going to see XRP is the next sole ETF that gets approved, doing the derivatives on the futures market, one of the easiest ways to do it. And we're going to be off to the races once we get through this initial pain, I think once we get the stablecoin legislation. And now I'm starting to think we'll get actual structural legislation at some point at the end of this year. So it's all good news for the ones that are getting the additional help from the insiders and you know again you can take it up with whether you think that's the right way or the wrong way to go but that's just kind of the way it is. But it's good for Fred. Yeah, you can try to get. I would be careful about one thing.

Futures Introductions has not been kind because it allows people to short. But I do tend to agree with you. I mean, I noticed a few, I don't even know, it was weeks ago, months ago, how if you go with your iPhone and look at your Yahoo Finance app and the only two cryptos that shows right off the bar off the bat are Bitcoin and XRP doesn't even show Ethereum.

So I just cracked me up when I saw that. I've also loved how in the past anytime you saw anything offered in the United States, it was always Bitcoin, Ethereum, and then Bitcoin, cash and Litecoin. For whatever reason, no matter what was being launched, those were included no matter how little interest there was in them at that time. Brett, you obviously mentioned the stablecoin regulation there. Just sort of anecdotally, I bailed on Crypto Town Hall yesterday.

Dave jumped in and hosted the rest of the spaces because I was interviewing Kirsten Gillibrand, a Senator from New York, obviously, who first proposed the Financial Responsibility Act, I think, whatever it's exactly called in 2022 with Cynthia Lummis, with a plan to legislate on crypto market structure, stable coins specifically. She's also the lead author with Hagerty on the Genius Act coming out of the Senate for stablecoins. And as we reported this week, the stable act came out of Congress and past committee and is going to the floor. And her and I had a long discussion about that. And she deeply, deeply believes that we will get stablecoin and to your point market structure legislation this year. So thanks. And she's a Democrat from New York, Senator,

but believes that this is the time that they can thread that needle, that it's politically popular, that there are tailwinds to do so. She said, it's funny because I said, hey, what are the meaningful differences between the genius act you're proposing out the Senate and the stable act coming out of Congress

and why do we need to? And she basically said, we don't, we're on the phone with them, we're trying to bring these together. They're not meaningfully different. So bottom line is this is a bipartisan effort to get this legislation passed and very, very, very high chance it says here.

I guess my only question would be what unintended consequences or pitfalls will be in there that we don't see yet. Because as excited as I am for legislation, I do have my doubts that anyone can't, not criticism of them specifically, but that any politician can get that right with this industry that moves so fast.

I would just say it's A, why do you think that this is so bipartisan? And to kind of answer that, I would say that, you know, I heard you talk about on your show earlier, I think your fear is the correct biggest fear, which is, are they going to mess up the legislation like Europe did? And are we not going to get yield on stable coins, that kind of thing. And it's valid because the banking lobby will be fighting to get their interest preserved. But going back to why it's so bipartisan is because the crypto lobby now has all the money to go toe to toe with the banking lobby. And so when

you've got politicians who are going to get a ton of money from both sides, you know, they're going to ultimately come to a conclusion, I think that's going to be, you know, a compromise, a little upset here and there on both sides, but it's going to be totally compromise. A little upset here and there on both sides, but it's going to be totally workable and doable. So I'm really excited on that. Wondering if that can be a catalyst for a bit more excitement and bullish movement in the market. I have to say that I've been surprised that things like a executive order on the strategic Bitcoin reserve didn't end up moving the needle when we I think consensus was that that would be the catalyst for a huge price run. I think it just shows how sort of beholden to macro Bitcoin remains at the moment.

Can I be contrary for a second Scott? What if it did? Please. What if it did? Yeah. What if we'd be at what if we'd be at 65 right now? If Bitcoin, if let's say Mike is right about one thing, and I think he is right about this, that Bitcoin and crypto do lead a little bit. What if the Bitcoin community is seeing the tariffs and everything else? And there was no strategic reserve and there wasn't all this

this constant buying interest in the bid. Where would Bitcoin have gone to? I think Tom Lee would have been right. It would have hit 60. So, you know, in my mind, a 30% price preservation plus is a pretty important thing, especially for something that we know its most important impact is in the long term in how it will influence investment consultants

and advisors to consider Bitcoin more of a strategic asset than just an alternative asset. Because that difference is trillions of dollars of investment. Not billions, trillions, that difference. And that is what that executive order starts. It started that avalanche. It's just the beginning. It's just a few pebbles right now. So I actually think it did make a big difference. Good point. That's a very good point. Mario, I know they have to host another space on his account in about five minutes.

We're going to move towards wrapping, but Matthew, you jumped up on stage. Actually haven't been able to hear your opinion as of yet. I would love to know your thoughts on this kind of relative Bitcoin strength quickly and what that means moving into the weekend. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I look at the markets from very much from a technical point of view. I do believe we've definitely got somewhat lower to go, but this is a corrective move down. You can look at all sorts of different currencies, but even the, you know, look at the S&P. Definitely corrective. So I do believe we're going to go to new all-time highs, but

we've still got some more pain to come. With these tariffs, Trump will find a way he's you know, he's a master of changing his mind over things, he will find a way to to row back on what he's done. It's very damaging. It's a tax on Americans, obviously, that's Americans are going to pay more for everything, even the things that aren't and can't be manufactured in the US at the moment.

So it's definitely going to cause some more pain and probably Monday is going to be more of a bloodbath. But as I say, we have somewhat lower to go, quite a bit lower to go, but the line in the sand for Bitcoin, I believe, is 69,000. The top of the previous bull market, 69K. And also, if you look at it from Elliott Wave perspective, not everybody believes Elliott Wave, but it's a good way to look at the market structure. And I believe it's going to be defining whether we actually do head sharply down or whether

we bounce from somewhere above 69. We're going to then go to new all-time highs. I hope and believe we're not going to reach that 69k level. And if that's the case, it's going to rebound very, very quickly once we, I mean, it's not far to go for Bitcoin now. Someone mentioned before that XRB hasn't fallen much. It's actually fallen a lot more than Bitcoin since the Trump inauguration. That's when things really started to go south. I think it's fallen somewhere around 40%. Bitcoin, what, 20%, 25%. So even XRP has stumbled hard.

But yeah, I'm still very hopeful. I don't like to sell the market because it's extremely risky. But I'm waiting to buy dips, and the dips are not yet in. And you look at fear and greed right now. Fear and greed, I just looked, is at 28. Nowhere near extreme fear. So there's still a long way to go down. So there's no form of capitulation. Bitcoin will play catch up to the downside. When I say play catch up, catch up with S&P, Nasdaq, the stocks, the indices. So it will play catch up to the downside probably next week. But as I say, we've not got that much lower to go. I don't think as long as we stay above that 69, I'm

positive and think there's a really bright future ahead. If Bitcoin rallies, then no doubt the alts will as well. So I think even Solana is going to see new all-time high again. Within a matter of months, we're not talking a long time ahead of us. So that's my take on the market. Well, I'll take that positive take as a perfect place to wrap because they're kicking me in the butt and telling me to get out of here. We do have to run. Guys in the audience, everyone, please give everybody on stage a follow.

They're amazing. They're here for a reason. And you can get their endless amazing perspective, even when we're not recording here on spaces by simply giving them a follow. Otherwise, Crypto Town Hall will be back on Monday at 10 15am Eastern Standard Time right here. Have a wonderful weekend, everybody. Let's hope it's meant yet another bloodbath. Okay.