The Wolf Of All Streets - Trump Avoids Crypto, Markets Decline on Day1 | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

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Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday, 10.20 a.m. here on Crypto Town Hall. We do the show every weekday, 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. And man, there has been a lot to talk about of late. I think today, clearly, executive actions are the most heavily focused on topic. It's a little disappointing to many in the crypto community that Trump did not mention Bitcoin or crypto in his inauguration speech. I think if you thought Bitcoin or crypto were going to be in his inauguration speech, then you need to step a little bit outside

of our echo chamber and bubble. But also that there were no initial executive orders even mentioning crypto. I believe they did just under 50 yesterday. But the rumor is that there's 200 orders coming. And that could happen over a matter of days. But promises like free Ross on day one did not happen. Maybe Ross will be freed here on day two.

We have not seen, obviously, crypto made a national priority, as one of them said. We certainly have not seen a strategic Bitcoin reserve. An overturn of SAB 121. Those are the executive orders, I think, largely that people are looking for with regard to this industry. What we have seen is an absolute shitstorm of meme coin launches. So we got that uh but those were before the first day obviously of the uh inauguration and of the trump presidency i can just give my quick take nothing nothing to see here this is not the most important thing happening

in the world right now and they're going to get to it. That's my assumption. But I guess I could be proven right or wrong in a matter of hours, if not days or weeks. Inside news, I don't know if anybody has bothered to look at doge.gov, but if you have, it is the funniest, most amazing, telling thing you could ever have in this industry, which is it just says an official website of the United States government, Department of Government Efficiency, the people voted for major reform, and just the Doge logo, like the cryptocurrency Doge Shiba Inu. That's the entire website. I think it's fair to say that we're going to probably get what we want here with time. Rare day, I have Robbie and Hasib here, two of our favorites

who can speak to everything that's happening in the industry. Hasib, first, I mean, are you surprised? You just jumped on. I don't know if you kind of heard the preface. I was saying that people

were clearly disappointed at the lack of attention to the industry from Trump on day one. Not a surprise to me at all. Do you think we get something on day two, or does it even matter what happens in this very short term?

That's a good question. I do think that when you come into the presidency, you're pretty busy. There's a lot of stuff that's happening, and there's a lot of constituencies. I think on some level, the industry needs to slow its roll. There's not that many time-sensitive things that we need to worry about. It's not like immigration. It's not like tariffs. If this happens in a week or two weeks or four weeks, honestly, it doesn't really make a difference.

Obviously, the market cares a lot about it, but Trump has made pretty clear. And now we know where his allegiances stand with respect to the Trump family business. Crypto is the Trump family business now. So on that level, I'm not really worried that we're going to see a positive regulatory environment for crypto. And, you know, the main pieces of that, I think, are likely to get delivered in due time. But there's really no urgency around it the way that there is around many other things when you immediately come into office yeah you kind of alluded to the most cynical view which still is massively beneficial to the industry which is that even in his own self-interest right uh we now know what he thinks he can legally do uh which means that it's a mirror into what the industry can largely be looking forward to being able to do in the united states over the coming years right i mean if he can just be launching off meme coins willy-nilly my favorite by the way is not even Trump and Milani at this point it's Lorenzo the pastor who uh you know uh prayed at the inauguration and then immediately launched a meme coin as if it was like a huge surprise but then

talked about how he's locking up uh his tokens in the liquidity pool dying but uh very clear I did not see this you didn't see it oh my God no I'll get the tweet and I will pin it above it's in crazy like walked off stage from the inauguration the crypto community has blessed me with a meme coin something like that like as if you didn't know and then literally talked about the liquidity pool then like said God bless you know i mean astounded see anybody else see that i mean while we're talking about this because i'm gonna go find the tweet and unpack it to alex just did alex didn't you text it to me yeah yeah yeah i sent it to you yeah it was just ridiculous you'll find the tweet but yeah it's just like oh yeah the lord

blessed me with this or whatever and i don't know anything about crypto and then being like but here's how i'm locking it in a liquidity pool to protect the community and earn perpetual fees and thanks guys this is getting depressing i feel like i don't want to know i don't want to know that anymore of these okay it's in the nest up above now but uh the crypto community was kind enough to send me l Lorenzo so I have permanently locked my tokens into a pool so I'll never sell on the community but rather just earn fees that our token continues to flourish amazing day all the glory to God and then of course the contract address like I think it's probably just pumped up fun but it's just hilarious at the end of the contract address is pumped um yeah it's a pumped up fun i mean he does have a massive 500k market cap right now so

this is definitely the next great uh meme coin that's out there yeah he's yeah not not exactly crushing it but hasib like that was you know my first you just kind of and i've said it over and over again i'm not really fearful of like people's opinions of what i think but like i was a little disheartened by trump just the uh the timing and structurally how it was launched and and then melania just like hit different i think that was like the real cue that this was nonsense and now you just see like the kind of larps and copycats that are becoming down the line but we're going to be getting this from everyone right i mean if you see what trump did why you know like why not yeah i mean the reality is that there are very few people on earth that

have the kind of following and the kind of power that trump has there aren't a lot of trumps out there to do this so like you know lorenzo bless his heart god bless i guess you know good luck in launching your you get trying your meme coin grift. But it's funny because it's obviously not going to work. Otherwise, if it did work, it wouldn't be funny. So I think, you know, a world leader launching a meme coin, like you have to be, you know, a Putin or a Xi Jinping for it to have this kind of an impact and this kind of shot heard around the world thing.

I really don't think there's going to be a second. I think that the normalization of grift is the thing that makes me queasy. And I think should make anybody in crypto queasy that, you know, this is not a mean point, right? When you own 80% of the supply of an asset, that's not a mean point. That is, especially when it has your name on it, right? That's not a mean point. That's asking people to put money in a piggy bank with your hand underneath the bottom that's like it's just describing this thing as a mean point is itself kind of giving in to this distortion of reality that we just witnessed over the last 72 hours so um that being said it's it's not going anywhere and that's the thing is that you can't sue a president until he's out of office.

It is basically illegal to try to drag him into court. So I think what we what you will see is that he's going to get away with this. But it's not necessarily true that anybody can get away with this kind of a thing, because even if it's not criminal, you can you can just drag this person into a civil court. And any any judge is going to say like yeah that's the griftiest thing i've ever heard yeah yeah carlo said that yeah i mean fred you're a lawyer obviously carlo said that yesterday he's you know i kind of was like it's gonna i think people are gonna feel empowered the president did it well i can and carlo said that is even if it's the president that's not gonna hold up in court

right so this should not be viewed as carte blanche for anyone in the united states to do exactly what he just did although listen i think what it does imply yeah well i mean what it does imply is that very likely paul atkins who's coming in to be the new sec commissioner or sorry sc chair paul atkins is probably going to try to carve out as best he can something to make the Trump coin not illegal. Because if the Trump coin is illegal, it's not that you can't make the Trump coin illegal, because it doesn't matter. You're not going to enforce against your own president and the person who appointed you. But it's more than it just makes you look bad. It just makes you look illegitimate. And any public servant, it's in their interest to somehow square the

circle so that they don't look like a phony. So I think Atkins is going to find some way to draw a circle around this thing. I agree because, you know, listen, obviously everybody wants a 180 from Gensler in this industry. But it's almost like if Atkins didn't know about this, which I doubt he did, to be quite honest. But if there's no plan for legitimizing it, it's almost like Trump has kneecapped his own SEC commissioner before he's even approved or appointed. Because it just makes it look like it's so bad. And by the way, you made me feel better because I was saying grift yesterday and everybody was freaking out at me and I was forced to change my verbiage from grift to cash grab, even though I have about 50 tweets about it. They called it a grift,

but it's a grift. It's a grift. I completely agree. Look, I'm like you. I can say whatever the hell I want. I think it's a grift. I think that being said, clearly the people in crypto are not the ones who are going to lose money, right? The people who are in this Twitter spaces are probably the people who will look at the unlock schedule. We'll see, oh, they unlock in three months. That's probably the time to exit. This thing is going to be down only once 80% of the supply gets unlocked. Basically, like four times the current market cap is going to be in the hands of a single person, which is the president of the United States, who, of course, this is now the majority of his net worth. And he wants to get out while the getting is good. He has no long term conviction about a fucking meme coin.

So to me, I think the part about this is so sad is that the crypto people, like the people in this industry are not the people who can get hurt. But you might, yeah, you might lose money trading a meme coin, whatever. But everybody in here understands the momentum and are going to get hurt. But you might, yeah, you might lose money trading a meme coin, whatever. But everybody in here understands the momentum and understands the meme coin game. They understand things like FTV and market cap. Most people who this was their first experience with crypto. There are millions of people. This is their first experience ever with crypto.

They went, they saw the website. They said, oh, download Moonshot. They downloaded Moonshot and they dutifully bought the coin. And those people have no idea. They don't know how to read one of these charts. don't understand what fdvs are they don't understand unlock schedules they might even assume that it works like the way the stock market works you know if if trump wants to sell djt which is truth social the the spac that he took public um trump has said

that he's never going to sell you know i don't know never but he said look i'm not going to sell i'm going to diamond hand my own spac and that's why it's part of the reason why djt on the stock market is basically a mean stock you know trades and billions of dollars yeah yeah right right but the difference the difference is that if trump sells he has to declare publicly in a public filing that he is going to sell and that is going to be you know everybody kind of assumes there's an orderly way in which this is supposed to happen okay if you sell your own endpoint there's no rules there's no filing you have to make uh you just you just do it you just start selling into the liquidity and a lot of liquidity is passively sitting there because you know it's it's basically it's locked in where people themselves are providing liquidity so i

think what's very clear is that the least informed people are the ones who are going to lose the most money, which is why, to me, I think this can only be described as great. Yeah, and he can never sell his DJT stock but take massive loans against it until the end of time. Right. the end of time right and uh yeah with the trend token never take a taxable uh transaction never sell anything and still get all the benefits of holding that meme right but that's the other thing is that like you know djt i don't know how much of djt he owns i would assume it's nowhere near 80 percent um and i think for for for this like his holdings on a market market basis of trump vastly dwarf what he owns in djt right it's just it's not even the same order of magnitude and supposedly i don't know

like 10 times the the you know his on paper value of what he owns and this was probably five to ten which is obviously his life collectively right which is obviously a joke right like if he actually started dumping he wouldn't get anywhere near that. But he definitely get in the billions. And, you know, supposedly, I don't know if it's been confirmed, but supposedly, the wallets associated with CIC Digital had already liquidated $500 million worth of Trump in the cash. That alone is more than he's ever made from any of these SPACs or any of these real estate deals. Like nobody makes a billion dollars in a single deal. You know, but he made half a billion dollars from launching a meme coin on a friday night and he probably all he did was probably send it or his team sent a tweet for

him and probably never even asked it could be real you know it's it's a it's really a pretty uh astounding but i mean that's speaks to obviously him being the most powerful and probably a notable human being on the planet i mean to your point like maybe taylor swift can do this you know right but unlike djt unlike djt so your point was very good one which is that he can borrow against djt and the banks at least will play along and give him liquidity on that paper value of that company nobody's gonna lend him money against Trump token. It's a fucking meme coin. It goes up 50%, down 50% in the span of a day. So the only way you can monetize Trump coin is to sell it. That's why there is such a short lockup investing period,

because they understand the way you monetize this is by selling it to retail. So I think what you will see is that within the span of a year, this thing is going to nosedive. Of course it will. Anybody who's looking at any other token with 80% of the supply owned by a single actor would tell you exactly how it's going to play out. Yeah, but it'll probably be the slow rug instead of the fast ones that we see with meme coins. It'll be like any other token that was not deemed a meme coin from past cycles that just

slowly sells off over three years, right? As the tokens unlock. Supply doesn't generally hit the market in tranches like that, especially if we're already in a bear market when half of it is coming out, and you see the token go up. Fred, legal expert, what are you thinking about all this? I just wanted to respond to a couple of things there because I think they were a little bit off the base. But I did want to just briefly say that I would like to see a polymarket bet for how long after Lorenzo that we might see Lorenzo rolling in the Benzo. So that's a little hip hop toast to you right there. It is. It's is a really long hashtag but the uh i just want to i disagree

with a couple of things um that were just said just on the legal side because uh you know meme coins are what they are but it's definitely and you said carlos said this he was spot on not illegal to sue the president for any of his business dealings. I mean, whether that gets iced as a civil lawsuit until he's out is another question. But again, Trump, I don't think really owns these meme coins. I think he owns them through another layer of companies that he owns. For example, if you go onto the website, it's Fight, Fight, fight. LLC is the, at least that's one entity that has some type of IP over the Trump meme coin. But also if you look at the terms of service, I mean, what's going to happen and what I would expect to happen is that there's going to

be lawsuits very quickly by people that really don't like Trump because why not? It only takes one person who bought one Trump coin at 70 and then now sold it at 20 to file a lawsuit. But even there, the terms of service itself, they're going to try and force you into arbitration, wave class action. So the end point is that this was all very well thought out from a legal perspective in terms of making time. And timing before he was president. And yeah, yeah, perfect. Yeah. And so, yeah, 100 percent. I mean, this was very, very well researched, done, executed at all the right.

Now, I'm saying that from a legal perspective outside of whether you think the way the lockup and the smart contracts are executed or the liquidity pools or whatever, you know, there's just he's got the right people legally that we're or whatever i mean this just to me was a great way to introduce to the masses crypto i mean yeah it's not you know bitcoin or maybe the other utility coins that we like but it's still got the word out there that crypto is a thing and it's i mean if you don't think even though trump didn't say anything on day one he might not say anything today uh if you don't think even though Trump didn't say anything on day one, he might not say anything today. If you don't think he just doubled or tripled his net worth from crypto in the billions and he's not thinking about crypto every day. I mean, you're missing the point. Alex. Go ahead, Alex.

Sorry, mute button's hard to get to. Yeah, I think the. So I think Fred's right about one thing. It's not like Trump's a signer on the multisig here, or having $50 billion of meme coin on his ledger. Other people are actually the ones who obviously did all the work here and are actually sitting and controlling site fight LLC or whatever it is that's holding it. I think you could almost argue, though, that's's a bad thing Trump at least has the ego where he would want to make sure the coin doesn't go down whereas if other people can actually are in

control of the selling on it they will have other concerns like pulling whatever money they can out of it so I think depending on how good the alignment is between Trump's desire to continue to look really good and strong and have the biggest meme coin in the world versus other people trying to pull it out is I think where you'll see some of that tension. But I think the, you know, the other thing is like Haseeb, you were talking about the issue it presents for the SEC. I don't think it presents any issue for Atkins or the SEC. Meme coins have been the only thing that has been legal for years. There's no, it's not like there's any utility or usefulness.

There's no argument that this is a security or anything like that. Yeah, but you're right. These are not meme coins. That's right. I was going to say, just hiding under the guise of meme coin and saying no utility, if you're actually holding the supply and you know that the price action is dependent on one person i think could lean towards security depending it's got his name on it it's not a meme what's the mean yeah it's a celebrity coin i mean if it's a promoter right yeah all right i see what you're saying there i

right can't the sec or somebody makes an argument i guess is what i default to but we've seen that he created an llc he created an llc to market it he tweeted it on the most famous twitter account in the world and it's got his name on it right the question for whether security is efforts of others i mean you can say well who's nobody's effort is it was a somebody just launched a ticker and then the whole community took off with it if it's one dude's name and he owns 80 of the supply what possible argument could there be that this is not you're betting on Donald Trump doing the right thing with this with this point it's got a point I'd say you have issues around you have potential issues around the common Enterprise leg I think

there's it's an interesting test there when you don't have um when you've got an established company that doing it but it's insular to that company on it um the efforts of others is the other interesting question one there in terms of why people are doing it I think their argument would be and it would based on the case law that I've read on it, would probably be not totally weak that they're basically offering it as a collectible in the same way. I mean, this is obviously the argument

that a lot of companies have tried to use that it's no different than Pokemon cards or anything like that, but they're making no promises or indication about what happens with this thing on the long term. This has been our number one frustration as an industry is that you can put out things with no value and no reason to exist. But as soon as you want to do something that is useful or has value to existing, then all of a sudden that's the thing that's illegal, which is where I come back to my main concern that like the thing the industry actually needs is a law that clears Congress and actually establishes a real regulatory framework here. And those are the people who are most likely to be

upset by this and basically become intransigent on wanting to move, especially with how thin the Republican majority in Congress is, right? They need Democrats to be on board with any kind of regulatory or market structure bill that they want to get across. And the more that you have these things happening that looks like Trump using the industry for his own gains, the less likely that that becomes each day. And so that's where my big concern comes down. Yeah, I think a lot of this, what Hasib said before, just comes up down to whether Atkins walks in and says how he's not appropriate for crypto assets, right? Like we've all endlessly debated whether a test from the 1930s and 40s is appropriate for determining what a crypto asset is.

But listen, the Howey test, if it remains applied, there's four prongs, right? Investment of money, common enterprise, expectation of profit, efforts of others. Hard to argue. People are investing money regardless of what the disclaimer says. There's a common enterprise, right? Everybody's buying it because they think it's going to go up, not because they just want to own a piece of Trump. And it's definitely the efforts of others. So I'm not saying it's a security dude. I hope they drop the Howey test entirely, but you can see how that argument can be made. The SEC can't drop the Howey test. The Howey test is what the courts

decided the application of federal law is. So the only way that gets changed is either the courts deciding to create a new category and test, which isn't going to happen, or Congress passing a law that creates a new definition of what we'll call a digital asset is or a digital commodity, whatever name you end up

wanting to put against it. Atkins can choose not to go after things. He can exercise enforcement and prosecutorial discretion on what they go after, and they can try and make rules that affect around the edges. But fundamentally, until Congress passes a law structure. Yeah. And a market structure, how we test is what determines what is a security or not. Andy. Hi, man, I just want to share my views on a few things.

So number one, all my Asian friends who are very much like gamblers, they see that this big IP Trump coin is actually a really good, maybe a really good point for for everybody to get in you know awareness wise it has really gone up a lot you know all the normies are all coming in i think this this is one thing that i i personally recognize that it is quite cool you know but but at the same time i listened to a lot of these other spaces and and and some other comments from my lawyer friends and so forth. You know, their general comment is that, well, you know, if someone wants to sue Donald Trump, you know, they can find all sorts of excuses to do that. You know, but whether or not, you know, this thing is going to take years or whether or

not, you know, whether it passed the Howey test, whether it's a securities or whatnot. I think this is going to be a long battle because the regulations in detail is not very clear. launch from the president create a new or even a worse form of ICO that we are going to see? You know, even worse than what we see in 2017? Because literally anybody can just come out with their own coin.

And then if there is any, if there's no repercussion to all these launches, then the whole industry will become a laughing stock. You know, that, that's, that's something that I'm more concerned about. I'm not sure anyone else concerned about, about this factor. I think from a reputational, yeah, from a reputational standpoint and a like economic standpoint,

I think that is a very big concern. I mean, we already saw yesterday the pastor who gave the uh yeah he did a shit coin immediately afterwards and so that's that's real and i think trump and milani coins are damaging reputationally to the industry however like we're talking about the sort of nexus between what Trump is doing and the regulatory environment. It's interesting, I guess all three of Trump's crypto projects are actually pretty legally buttoned up as far as crypto projects go. Both the Trump meme coin and the Trump NFTs are very clearly described as digital collectibles. There's not a roadmap of other sort of financial gain that they have planned for people who are holding these things. And

I think you could make a quite good argument that under the Howey test, those are not securities. Whereas if you look at World Liberty Financial, that has been conducted explicitly as a securities offering, seemingly following the rules for private placements for the credit investors, and no trading on these things yet. So while it could be that there would be private lawsuits against Trump, this could all go badly. At least the way that Trump's legal team has been on these projects is to be very conservative and following what the current state of the laws is and not looking ahead to how the SEC might do. But would you think that if both the coins are going south, not doing very well,

I think reputational risk is there and he might even get more lawsuit. Would you think that he will kind of distance himself away from the token, arm's length, and then let

whoever that's running it do whatever they want? Or do you think that he's going to pump the token? Well, loss? I don't know. As it stands now, it's just a collectible. The Trump coin doesn't do anything. If you buy the Trump coin, you're buying it according to its terms as an expression of your support of Donald Trump, not as an expectation that you're going to make money if the price of the token goes down. I mean, look, there might be

class action lawyers, especially Democrats, who try and do these lawsuits, but I don't see a straightforward legal theory that you could use to go after him for this, even if you lose money. I don't know. That sounds pretty implausible to me. I think a judge is going to look at this on a facts and circumstances basis and say, boy, this really sure looks like you're enticing people to buy this thing. And you tweeted about it from obviously the most powerful account in the world. And what did you think was going to happen? Well, but that's not illegal to entice people to buy your collectible. trump sells all sorts of trump branded how is this a collectible hold on because nfts were collectibles the token is also described

as a collectible there's no other features to it they're not claiming the token will do anything it's just a digital fungible collectible i mean yeah so look i in principle you could make some kind of tortured argument that somehow but which, which trades on exchanges, is a collectible. The thing that would give plaintiffs, lawyers in the SEC jurisdiction is if this thing meets the definition of an investment contract on the Howey test. In order to be an investment contract on the Howey test, it has to be essential in order for the bull case for the thing to play out that some particular group of people exercise managerial meaning business efforts to make the profit that investors expect and expect to play out and here i don't think there is any promises that have been made that they're going

to do anything with the trump token that could lead someone to reasonably believe that trump is going to add features to this token to make it more valuable that's just you don't need to add features to a token to make it more valuable that That's just not what it says. You don't need to add features to a token to make it more valuable. That's not required in the Howey test in any way. It is. It says essential managerial efforts in particular others. That's what the Howey test is. Managerial efforts. Managerial efforts.

Nothing to do with the roadmap. Has nothing to do with adding tech features. Where are the managerial efforts? If you just say, I'm going to pump this thing. Where are the managerial efforts? If you just say, I'm going to pump this thing. I'm going to tweet about it. I'm going to help get it listed on exchanges. I'm going to help it get liquidity. I'm going to put this thing. I'm going to tweet about it. I'm going to help get it listed on exchanges.

I'm going to help it get liquidity. I'm gonna put initial liquidity in there. Where are the standards? They don't even say it, they just need to do it. If it is implied and it is correctly inferred by the market that Trump is going to, the Trump team, or fight, fight, fight LLC or whatever it is, is doing these things.

Like this is the reason why, to be clear, there's no case law around this in either direction. We have not seen a celeb coin, which is very different from a meme coin, actually get adjudicated in the court of law of whether or not that is going to constitute an investment contract on the highway test. It's very different, though, than just saying,

okay, this is a collectible that could just be, you know, have absolutely anything. This is a meme coin that somebody owns 80% of that has their face on it. I think there's a very strong argument that that is going to be an unregistered security. And to be clear, it's not like Atkins is going to have some enforcement action against it. Obviously not. The question is, can a class action lawyer get a juicy settlement out of this company? And I think the answer is probably yes.

Yeah, I think they can. And look, I'm not necessarily a fan of Trump. I am not a fan of this token. I actually think that that is the more strained argument. I just don't see any statement they've made that would give someone the reasonable impression, at least at this point, that could change. They could say stuff that they are going to undertake all of the efforts that you're saying, as opposed to they launched this token, and the terms clearly state this is an expression of support for Trump. And whether or not you like the word collectible, as opposed to, you know, celebrity token, whatever, the thing is not being pitched as a financial instrument. And I'm also pretty sure that this is requiring no effort to get listed on exchanges this is a smart contract that any exchange can list and because and they all jump to it robin hood day one coinbase day ones exactly said they were going to list these things this is i don't think

you need the specific managerial efforts of fight fight fight llc or whatever it is i think that there is a shelling point around the celebrity of trump that creates this memetic effect yeah i was gonna say i don't think it's very interesting for us to go back and forth on the mechanics like you know they listed on meteora they had a um you know they had this thing ready to go on moonshot on day one moonshot is a company it's a centralized company that has their own product like obviously nobody else had trump coin listed but moonshot in the very beginning the idea that they just pop this thing on chain they're like oh whoopsie daisy let's see what happens like that's clearly not correct now yes i don't know if they ever coordinated with any of

the centralized exchanges we don't know that we wouldn't know unless somebody goes into discovery and figures out was there coordination around this? My guess is that probably those teams reached out and they were like, hey, we want to list this, but there's no fucking supply. We need inventory. Can you help us scrounge up some market makers, figure out who actually has inventory of this thing? Because no exchange is going to list this without some market makers actually being able to get some initial liquidity on there. So the reality is we don't know, but very, very rarely do coins show up on centralized exchanges within a day, regardless of whether they're Trump token or not,

without some attempt of coordination. Let's say they did coordinate, right? The question is, if I am someone who's buying this token on Robinhood or Coinbase, am I buying it based on an expectation that some particular group of people is going to undertake business efforts to make number go up? And I don't think you can point to any of the current marketing materials for this token that would reasonably give that expectation at this point in time. It's not enough. I agree with that. There's not much there. I agree. There's not much there, but their torture, the managerial efforts of trying to disingenuous, trying to get this thing listed on every major exchange, if in fact they did, we don't know.

But to the extent to which they took actions to make this a tradable asset on financial platforms, it's like, like, a judge is not just going to silently look at the things that well, they didn't tweet anything. So I guess we have to let them go. Like, no, they're not stupid. Judges are not stupid. People are not stupid. For sure. But you do have to look, the facts and the circumstance are whether there was a reasonable explanation of profit based on essential managerial efforts. And you're failing to give any indication what those essential managerial efforts would be.

Yeah, I think we get it. Like you said, judges are not stupid. Well, one day we'll find out if this even comes in front of a judge or not. I think in the meantime, we're going to see a lot of meme coin, non-meme coin launched. Robbie, you haven't had a chance to speak. What do you make of all of this? So I think, you know, the legal arguments aside, I think that this was an opportunity taken, obviously, to make an enormous amount of money, which, you know, is kind of on brand, as I replied to your tweet. I think you had the best take on it initially on Saturday.

And I think, honestly, you know, as was said earlier, I think Hasib might have said it, I do think, and others have echoed it, I don't think this is good for the space generally, because I feel like it's a good reminder that actually what we've needed all along is some sensible guidelines and, you know, dare I say regulations, as opposed to just an environment of absence of all rules and regulations, because that actually doesn't necessarily move the space forward either. Yeah. Do you think that this gives any indication of what the environment is going to look like in the United States for other projects that are looking to launch? I mean, listen, you guys have a massive portfolio company, portfolio at Animoca. Obviously, every one of those companies has to be thinking,

hey, what's my US strategy now? Sure. Well, so obviously, I think this is a better environment than the environment that we just had and experienced. I think that's without a doubt. I do think that we have to approach it carefully. but definitely we're pushing all guns blazing, so to speak, in terms of looking at the opportunities in the US market in addition to other places, whereas we used to kind of carve out the US explicitly for many years. We're launching right now a token for something called OneFootball, which we do in Europe. And the intention was to build that under the new Mika framework and really focus on it being European first, not just because it's exciting that the US is becoming a part of the story again. I think we just need to proceed cautiously. And I also think that we have to keep in mind the history of the president, which is generally to put himself first so that whatever, you know, actions he may take in

the crypto space may not necessarily be an indication of plans for the rest of the industry, only for what he's interested in doing for himself. So I think as long as the industry's goals are aligned with his own personal goals, then we might see some progress. Interesting take. Yeah, that's my kind of base case cynical view as well. I wonder, though, then if you know, how absurd would it be or interesting, and I guess beneficial to all of us if all of a sudden, you know, they did cash out a billion dollars and he did what was rumored, which is have in some way no capital gains on profits for U.S. made crypto. And all of a sudden there's no taxes to be paid on that. Right.

Or, you know, I think there's some interesting potential things here that could happen, even if we're so cynical and just think it's in selfish. Yeah, no, 100%. And actually, I've had similar discussions with legislators in the UK where I live, because I think for the UK, it's a big opportunity. Now, one of those sort of post Brexit things is the ability

to kind of make our own guidelines and rules in these areas. And I think that one of the things I've observed throughout Europe and also in the Middle East is a lot of migration of talent in this industry based upon tax treatment, as we all know. And I do think it's a huge opportunity for places that want to attract our industry and talent from our industry to address those issues because we saw a huge flood of talent going to places like Lisbon or even Milan for the financial services industry and especially the UAE as everybody knows. So these things really do matter when it comes to attracting talent. Yeah, I agree with all of that. I'm just wondering what a company's plans are in this sort of transitional environment, you know, to come back to the United States or start to confidently build here. So I think you have to even wonder if we.

Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I was gonna just say the TLDR for us is definitely, you know, we're putting lots of resources into, you know, charting our US strategy, and very much, you know, as I mentioned, with the with the one football, we're working with base, and we're trying to establish more relationships with centralized exchanges in the US and things that we had, you know, kind of made an effort to avoid in the past. So I think, whatever, however, however, your dial is, you know, from zero to 10, in terms of cynical

on what happened over the weekend, I do think that the US is very much front and center of our sort of BD outlook for the next for the next year. Does anybody have a strong view, just kind of circling back to the original topic, on the odds that we'll see executive order that even mentions crypto having seen nothing yet? And I guess a second question there. Zach, I saw you jumping in, so you can address this one too. I mean, obviously ross was a day one thing uh do you think we get that elon musk tweeted that it would happen so that's pretty compelling yeah i mean the rumors are both will happen sometime this week i don't i certainly

don't know for sure uh but you know it would be weird for elon to step out on the ross thing if that wasn't true, it clearly wasn't a day one priority, but I would expect that to happen. And then the rumors, there will be at least one crypto executive order, whether that is the creation of a crypto council or a repeal of, of Saab one 21. I don't know that it's going to be like one of the big headline ones. I don't think you could remove capital gains by executive order. I don't know that it's going to be like one of the big headline ones. I don't think you could remove capital gains by executive order. I don't know that we're going to get the SBR executive order, but I think it is likely we'll get something.

Yeah, I was going to say, I think everyone I've talked to is very confident we're getting something this week on it. I think someone always just said getting your hopes up that it's going to be an SBR, uh, yeah, capital gains can't happen.

That's again, something that has to go through Congress. I think most likely is something like a crypto advisory council that comes in plus agreed. Like I think the Ross pardon will definitely come through given how clearly that was signaled from Elon on it. Um, the,

again, the big game comes back to what can get done in the first 100 days through congress and what bills we can actually get seen there um but i think what we're going to see on the eo side is much more just a little bit of like signaling and then the folks who got are getting put into agencies um and in those leadership positions are obviously going to be much more friendly to the industry than what we've been dealing with for the last four years. Yeah. I mean, just quickly, just as news updates, obviously, on the Bitcoin side, we had Saylor buying, I think, another $1.1 billion worth of Bitcoin. I guess he waited a day to do the announcement on Tuesday instead of a Monday not to conflict with MLK in the

inauguration. And Rumble made their first purchase of Bitcoin at $20 million, I think we're starting to sort of see this bubbling that the corporate Bitcoin reserve strategy is going to have legs into the coming years. I guess the question there then becomes, when do we see a Microsoft or an Apple, or it's on the docket, at Meta, one of these huge companies that would truly move the needle when do we see one of them at it also i think we're up past 11 states even more that are uh considering a uh bitcoin reserve

for the state and some structurally interesting ways that they're doing that i know texas kind of proposing a novel idea that people could pay their taxes or make donations in Bitcoin so that they effectively don't have to go through the conflict of buying Bitcoin for the balance sheet. You could basically just take whatever comes in and hold it. If we don't get an SBR, how big in your minds would a state-level strategic reserve be? Simon, you can address that one first actually um so obviously people want the the big announcement um but historically any opportunity to free yourself from the federal reserve and reform money has actually been done at the state level. So obviously JFK did the whole launching a dollar backed by silver in 63, which had to be reversed after his assassination. But historically, the fight for freeing the states from the Fed

and state banking and versions of colonial script and various other things, which led to the Declaration of Independence in the first place, when the Brits tried to hyperinflate the state level currency. And Dakota still has state level banking. So the opportunity for a strategic reserve at the state level, I actually think is more significant, but I don't think people kind of see it as a monetary geek like me. So state level strategic reserves is what is best for America. And then the opportunity for Treasury to actually hold Bitcoin as a strategic reserve gives it that opportunity one day that if the

fight between the Fed and the government becomes a prohibitive thing, this is when you can have radical monetary reform in a moment of need. And that is what a strategic Bitcoin reserve is. It is strategically reserving Bitcoin for the moment you need it. And one is what a strategic Bitcoin reserve is. It is strategically reserving Bitcoin for the moment you need it. And one day the Fed and the government are not going to be in line is my prediction. And that is what the day is coming for. So the state's having it is a good thing. But I don't think the market will see it as that interesting 52 announcements. Well, it doesn't pressure like foreign central banks necessarily to add it which is the game theory i think that

people are talking about with excuse me a united states strategic reserve nick go ahead i can't hear nick is nick speaking can you guys hear him i couldn't hear no hey sorry about that guys Can you hear me now? You sound very pro-podcaster, Mike. Good. Appreciate it, guys. Simon, I really valued your points there. I think that that was fantastic. I really agree with this idea that the strategic part of the strategic Bitcoin reserve is for the potential monetary reorientation of the planet. And I say potential because it's not like we're looking at tomorrow going off of a dollar standard and going onto a Bitcoin standard. But in the event that there is a hyperinflationary event

or a monetary realignment or some sort of currency block that the United States didn't see coming, owning Bitcoin in a strategic way gives the United States the potential to move into a new system that is more Bitcoin-oriented or or Bitcoin centric. And the point about states accumulating Bitcoin to have a second option or a backup option if the country ends the Fed, or to even move toward a monetary system that doesn't involve the Fed, the states having a strategic role in that is not something that I really factored in before you just said it there. So those are really great points. And I agree with them. And I just wanted to also mention here that when it comes to the strategic reserve at the federal level, even if we don't get the accumulation, the legitimacy that comes along with Bitcoin being owned by the federal government in any

way, shape or form just completely changes the asset class, I think, overnight. And the price, because in the end, that's what I do. I'm a price analyst and I kind of back into narratives from the price. The price is telling you today, if it closed here, it would be one of the top three or four closes of all time in Bitcoin. I think the price is telling us that something will be happening. So that's my,

that's my analysis. And I appreciate you guys having me on. Sure. Anyone else, any further thoughts on this topic? We're going to move to wrap pretty soon. But I think, you know, tomorrow and the next day are going to be interesting shows because we'll have more clarity on the executive orders

in this first day or two. And I think we'll have a lot more clarity when we see 200 executive orders that have been proposed, all signed, to see kind of where it shakes out for crypto. But I think everybody here generally seems to agree that whether we get executive orders or it's mentioned or top of the docket, that we have a much friendlier environment in the United States for crypto and that we're likely to see a lot of positive things. Fred, go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say to end, everything is amazingly positive going forward. But just keep in mind what happened in the first Trump presidency. I mean, not related to crypto at all, but there's just so much opposition and fighting. So just be prepared for any significant executive

orders to face immediate lawsuits. I don't know if you guys talked about it previously, but Doge has already been sued in federal court that it's not a valid government function or the way that Trump set it up goes against various administrative laws. So there's going to be a lot of roadblocks. It's going to be a long road. It's still positive and everything's behind our backs. But don't freak out when you see these things and this opposition thrown up. Yeah, it's going to be messy. I think we all understand that there's going to be a political pushback and there's going to be a lot of fighting for clarity on every front. Guys, I think we've covered it for today uh awesome panel guys everybody in

the audience please follow everybody on the panel they're they're here for a reason uh because they actually uh keep keep us uh in line and give us a pulse of what's happening with the market and and the news cycle of course it was really great debate today uh it's gonna be very interesting uh four years four days and then an even more interesting four years coming and we'll be here every day at 10-15am Eastern Standard Time to unpack it for you guys so once again Andy, Simon, Asim

Robbie, Fred, Nick, Alex everybody give them a follow thank you guys and hope to have all of you back very very soon everybody have a great day we'll see you tomorrow bye