The Wolf Of All Streets - Trump & Mt. Gox Market Impact | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

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the audacity on you the audacity waiting for you to speak i actually i got a message i can handle today alone if you have shit today yesterday i missed an accident because of all right cool because your stupid phone decision what a shitty excuse that's worse than it's someone saying the dog ate my homework couldn't attend the space because i didn't have twitter downloaded on my phone because it takes so long to download it it takes so long to download from the app store my ass no it's because i have uh 2fa on a separate phone so i have three phones i have my life phone then i have my uh phone for spaces because i don't have any social media on my phone that i carry around on a day-to-day basis i as much as i'm a uh quote

unquote influencer on this platform i refuse to actually look at it or read it and then i have a third phone for 2fa so which phone which phone which hold on you have a separate third separate phone for 2fas yeah for yeah for crypto security. Which phone am I on? The WhatsApp messages? You are on all my phones. Oh, okay. That's good. All right, cool. You're on two phones and three computers. This is the first space you do since the assassination attempt, yeah? I was here, yeah, actually, I guess. Yeah, this is Wednesday. Monday we we both couldn't make it yeah we we yeah all three of us would make it and then yesterday i did it and i focused purely on the uh on the assassination it was just before my flight was a short space we didn't even talk about the mount

cox uh distribution which i think we should talk about today let's see what the title says uh we'll crypto boom if trump gets a oh my god we need to start checking those titles and what i'll call it? Mt. Gox Distributions? Yeah, go ahead. Okay. There you go. I fixed the title. Mt. Gox Distributions and Market Impact.

Yeah, so we talked yesterday purely about Trump and obviously the markets. I didn't even know it was up to 63K yesterday. I think today is above 64K. And I found out during the space. I knew we broke 60 the day before. But yeah, the markets reacted really well to that news, obviously. But there's a poll that came out today. I know we're going to kick off the show shortly, but someone sent me that poll.

He's a liberal, but he sent me a poll i didn't verify but 30 you know the the platform the um 538 yeah the one that always has the polls yeah and their projections now show by for the first time i haven't seen in a while uh i'll send you the link so you know i'm not bullshitting biden is ahead which surprised me um let me send it to you i'm sure other polls will show differently because it just doesn't make sense but But if you look at that one- I hit my polls before the assassination attempt though. No, it's July 17th. That's the latest one, 9.30 AM. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'll send it. Let me, do you want to maybe comment it and pin it at the top, Scott, if you like? But yeah, it's, let me send it to you. Sorry, where is it exactly? Where can I find it? I've sent it to you on WhatsApp, man. And let me send it to Joe as well, Vezzy.

If everyone goes to, Vezany, sorry. If everyone goes to, yeah, 538.com, election forecast, that's the latest one. And it shows they do simulations. And I've seen – that's the one I use. It's the best source for polling. They use all the different polls. And based on the simulations, Biden wins 54 times out of 100 and Trump 46 times out of 100. What's really weird is that Trump was ahead in previous simulations prior to the assassination.

Now, again, I'm sure there's going to be other newer polls, but this is something that I saw this morning when I woke up. It kind of caught me by surprise. I still think it's highly unlikely that Biden wins. I'm looking at it now on the sky and it shows Trump ahead. Okay, does it show Trump ahead now? Yeah, I'm looking at it now on the sky, and it shows Trump ahead. Oh, okay. Does it show Trump ahead now? Yeah, I'm looking at it right now in front of me. 17th of July, Trump 42.3, Biden 40.3.

No, okay. So this is a simulation one. Let me send it to Dan. Let me send it. Hold on. Let me connect this to Bluetooth. I'll send it to you now via DMs, via Twitter DMs, and Scott will pin it for the audience. Let me send it to you now.

So this is the polling. The one you have is the polling average. The simulations, they have the whole who's going to flip which states, et cetera. So they kind of simulate the whole election and the different potential outcomes based on the polling. And that's what they conclude. But that shows that it's very neck-to-neck. 46 shows it's very close which i wouldn't expect it to be it's almost like 50 50 um but yeah you've seen it dan yeah so have a look at it that just that came out this morning which again came as a surprise to me there was a debate in my in the

space which was interesting i assumed from everything i've seen especially as we find out more information that the assassination attempt and the way trump is dealing with it we'll see a speech today has been very positive to his to the chances of him being elected um but there's been another argument made that people are seeing that and that's an argument that was made on my space that there could be another way of looking at it that biden could deal with this in a very presidential way people have moved on from biden's age they're no longer talking about that's an argument that was made on MySpace, that there could be another way of looking at it, that Biden could deal with this in a very presidential way. People have moved on from Biden's age. They're no longer talking about Biden's Achilles heel.

They've moved on from this. People's attention span is very, very short. And they've moved on from that discussion. They're focusing on Trump's assassination attempt. And there's a blame game as well going on on the left that, hey, Trump is the one that's kind of leading to that rhetoric, that rhetoric of hate and division um and then biden also capitalized on this yesterday in his speech talking about how guns should be banned assault rifles should be banned obviously trump

is is on the opposing side of that argument so there's it could be a lot more complex than what i initially thought but um i'm still leaning to this being a net net big positive for trump and from an election perspective but um yeah i just thought i'd send it on this rant to kind but I'm still leaning to this being a net net big positive for Trump from the election perspective. But yeah, just thought I'd send it on this rant to kind of give us shit, but I thought I'd share it with you. Yeah.

I don't think it's even close. Like it's not literally not even close. And I'm on the ground. I can tell you, maybe I'm in an echo chamber and this is not from a political perspective of any personal feeling, but regardless of the assassination attempt like i have i think a wide breadth of friends in the united states of both parties a lot that are extremely moderate and i'm hard pressed to find a single person uh that wants

to vote for biden and i can give you could it be examples of people who are did vote for biden and so there's two ways the whole world the whole world is the whole world is uniting against the whole world is uh um uh is uniting against um is uniting behind trump and the republicans at the moment all the big names all the big names, all the big VCs, all the many people, all the people that were traditionally Democrat are all uniting behind these guys. Agree. Agree. So I've seen the same and I'm in the same camp as you guys. What we were discussing right before we jumped in, check your Twitter DMs. The polling doesn't show unless there's new polls that came out today, but the polling and it's too early. It takes time for these polls to

come out but um there hasn't been any noticeable change and then the the the polling platform the polling website that everyone uses the 538.com website just shows based on a simulation um prior to the assassination you know trump wins by a small margin now it shows that biden wins by a small margin based on the simulation which kind of either there's something in the simulation not polymarkets 538 polymarket is a lot less liquid but polymarket shows biden win no chance of biden winning like 25 mario you know what this could be is it's based on some economic data and some models that they're running and i could see a world where as they feed the model with the current economic data around

the market hitting all-time highs right s&p all-time highs uh some of these companies running like savings moving up money markets moving up i could see some of that going into this and and kind of skewing towards the current president because of that model i think that's probably why these guys are showing something like this is where is that the economy is actually in a, you know, from what the data is that they're giving us is showing is that, you know, like, you know, we're still at full employment, markets are all time highs. And that's probably why you're seeing this skew. But I don't think it's taking into account any sentiment, or a small amount of the sentiment around, you know, it's I think it would be very difficult for a model like this to understand the

last week and a half. I think the last week and a half is extremely relevant and swaying people, but I don't even think it was close before the last week and a half. Yeah. But I mean, the last week and a half completely cemented it unless the Democrats pull a rabbit out of a hat and we're getting closer and closer and closer to the point where they're not going to be able to because

I think they've got to have it by the 4th of August if I'm not mistaken. They've got to have their final candidate on the ballot and so unless by the 4th of August something happens I don't believe that I don't believe that they've got any chance. But again, it's politics.

We all thought that Trump wouldn't beat Hillary the first time around, and he landed up beating Hillary. So you never know. Yes, there's a new poll that came out now. I just found it on Newsweek. The methodology has been a question. The survey found that when asked, quote, if the election were held today,

for whom would you vote for? President. 47.2% said Trump, 44% said Biden, and 4.8% said another candidate. So it's 47. There's a three-point difference between them based on this poll. So yeah, look, but one thing I'd say, I'd ask you, Scott and Dren, I'm just going to unmute you, and you can unmute just because you got a bit of feedback. But one thing I'd ask you guys, could we see similar to what we had during the Hillary Trump days?

Everyone expected Hillary to win, and people were ashamed to say they'll vote for Trump. And they were hiding it. They were, you know, what was it called? Secret Trump voters. And that flipped the election could

we say the same thing now that people are ashamed people are scared to say they're going to vote for biden for obvious reasons no because biden's incumbent anyone who's voting for him says listen i'm just voting against trump and they move on with their life or don't don't talk about it in the same way i'm telling you man i'm on the grounds here uh you know like i said i talk to people daily from multiple generations multiple political parties and it's not even close. And it actually took the debate happening for my very, very passionate Democrat friends. And I'm talking about lifelong, you know, New York City, like Wall Street Democrat, donning donors to say, Oh, you've been right for the last year, Scott, that it's going to be a landslide Trump victory. And like I said, this is me. I view it, I think, from like a 30,000 foot view. Like it's not my opinion. I'm just saying like from what I see, you can see that it's swaying in that direction for all of them to say, oh yeah, this is over.

And maybe we literally can't even vote for Biden. I'm telling you, like, I know, many, many, many passionate lifelong Democrat voters who are 50 years old, who will not vote for Biden. Yeah, no, I've seen the same thing. I'm just trying to make sure that we're not in an echo chamber if the polls kind of show something different. But I've seen the same massive influx of polymarkets is probably your best bet and that's because people are actually putting money down and so like when you're putting money down when you're putting money down i think polymarket's a bunch of crypto like yeah exactly meaning people no no but it's different because you're putting money down so

if there's a strong but who's but everybody bets on the team in sports man that's like you know like your team goes to the champion i think i think polymarket is bad on your team yeah i think polymarket could become what you're referring to right as as the mass market starts to use it's an incredible platform but for now it's still mainly a crypto audience but let's let's go to the panel i do agree though that sharps are the ones who bet right so there's a lot of people on there i mean ran is right i think in sentiment i just think it's more skewed than we think because of who uses it. No, but I think what you're not understanding is

if you're a bookmaker and there's a skew and you believe you can buy the bets on one platform and you can sell it on Polymarket, right? So basically, if you think there's such a big disconnect, the ARB gets closed by bookmakers actually arbitraising the trade so to speak they're not stupid they know that there's a lot of liquidity and there is a growing liquidity there every single day so i think to be honest i'm not sure polymarket is

accurate but i think it is the most accurate that we have jonathan db yeah so just scott is uh he's he's dead dead on I'm on the ground as well I live right outside of Chicago and I have a business in Chicago which if you know is one of the most blue and liberal cities in the entire country and I have never seen it like this people that have been hardcore lefts always voting that side flipping for for the first time ever, like Scott was saying. Just so many people that I'm talking to. It's not even going to be close. I've seen estimates, I think, of 70% Trump. I expect even higher than that, honestly, seeing what I'm seeing in the most blue city in the country. And I have feet on the ground here in my home. My wife and I are totally opposite

politically. She's a psychologist and she is not voting for Biden. She's not voting for Trump, but she's not voting for Biden. And also I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Trump is going to be here Saturday and she doesn't want me to go because she's like look what happened i said and we actually kind of got into a little argument because i was just jokingly saying i was going to go because we don't have time to go because we got kids but i'm like well fuck now i think i have pardon my french but now i think i have to go because just the principle of it i'm not going to get like scared away also it's in an arena so it's safer that i mean it's going to be safe it's rallies it's in the. I'm not going to get scared away. Also, it's in an arena. Also, it's safer.

I mean, it's going to be safe. It's rallies. It's in the Van Andel, and they're going to have the state police all over the place here. I guess we should pivot to what it actually means. Okay, Peter. Mario, just one more point here. One more point here.

The reason why I think Polymarket is more accurate than any other poll is because any other poll is just a cheap, hey who would you vote this guy that guy whereas polymarket is hey who would you vote this guy that guy put your money down put your money where your mouth is don't give us a bullshit vote ran i agree with that i just think that uh it's a matter of the fact that those other polls are literally useless at this point right those are the same polls that hillary was going to win in a landslide. So now I just think, like, think about it. These polls are like, we're going to go ask a thousand random Americans

what they think of an election. And to your point, they have no downside to giving their opinion. They're just terrible. Yeah, I'd push back on both of you. I think the polls are terrible, but they're the best indicator we have, Scott. And Ryan, I agree with you. I use Polymarket. I reference it all the time. But at at the same time who's the one putting

their money on polymarket they are those people in you know twitter twitter crypto people and we are every trade sir there's two sides to every trade true but the other side is not really represented on there so if you if you just have a platform that's all these crypto people are voting on i just don't think it's i think it's it's another really good indicator i just don't i just don't think it's better than than you know averaging out all the polls out there done by people on the right and on the left and then the various simulations that i run but it's it's a lot closer than i would have expected and so i'm gonna say we have six months till the elections a lot can happen in six months a lot a lot can happen um all i can say is i'm grateful

trump turned his head and looked at the chart when that shot was fired because i saw a video yesterday on the flight of not sure if anyone else has seen it of how close you know you look at it like oh shit just hit his ear that's it man it was it was it you know it was a millisecond away from killing the the the former president so um yeah i'm just really glad that he he you know whether you love him or hate him he turned his head and looked at that shot otherwise it'd be ugly for the u.s back in dubai oh okay are you not are you going to nashville no um maybe maybe i'm not sure yet just depends on if i have anything there are you going yeah is nashville are you going south africa nashville iran you're coming i was gonna yeah i'm coming so i'm coming yeah i'll be going? Scott is in Nashville. Are you going to South Africa, Nashville? I ran your gumming. I was going to, yeah.

I'm coming, sir. Yeah, I'll be there. I'll be there the 24th to the 28th. Amazing. All right, cool. Yeah, Scott, I think we'll kick it off. Let's let Peter jump in. He's had his hand up and then we'll move on. Yeah, yeah, thanks. No, I agree with Mario. I think, you know, elections

are going to be close. Just to comment on 538, that is a website of Nate Silver. Nate Silver, highly respected statistician and in polar, author of the book Signal the Noise, Why Most Predictions Fail, highly recommended book to read for anybody that's in the markets. But there are a lot of people who question his polling sampling. He was dead wrong in the 2016 election, the night of the election, 100 percent chance that Hillary is going to win. He was dead wrong on Brexit. He was moderately wrong in the 2020 election. And the criticism of him is not as a statistician, but that he has some bias. He's quite left of center politically, and that some of that bias is built into his sampling

errors. So that's the only thing I wanted to comment on. Oh, wow. I had no idea. Thank you. And how does he do his simulations? Do you know? He has sampling.

It's all built on sampling. And so the simulations are built on past data. The criticism is he really doesn't include in his sample the type of people who swung the Brexit vote at the last minute, you know, in the US, who is that? Teamsters members, it's, you know, 30 year old black men who feel like maybe they've got the short end of the stick and they can do better on their own so those are the under underrepresented people in his sample and so he tends to be kind of have sampling that reflects uniparty thinking so you know let's make that comment but i agree mario i think in the end that the elections are going to be closed. Yeah. Lauren?

Hey, Mario. I just want to make this point quick, and then I actually have to hop off for another space, but not only is the election a lot closer than most people think right now, everyone's just emotional with this assassination attempt, but you also have a wild card in Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is taking nearly

20% total points away from both parties. So and this is only growing, which is interesting because typically independent candidates actually lose polling numbers the closer you get to an election. The opposite is true for Kennedy. And so you have this massive wildcard where no one thought that we would be sitting here a week ago talking about an assassination attempt. But on top of that, you also have this wildcard candidate that's taking votes and also bringing out voters who have never voted before. The largest voting bloc is now

independents at 55% of the country. So you have a massive wildcard in this. And I think that that in and of itself, when you look at the numbers, Kennedy only needs to take 20 or 11% of Trump's base and 20% of Biden's base in order to win the entire election. So the numbers are actually quite achievable. And I think that we're not really considering that when we just look at the election numbers. But yeah, I just wanted to throw that out there. I like that you say it. I like that like you mentioned something important that we are all emotional right now those emotions will change not in a month or two or three or four or five give it another couple of weeks and people will move on the attention span of humans is fucking ridiculous that's something we'll start focusing on something else but i think would you guys agree and i think it is i know we're

discussing trump again but it is very important we saw how the markets reacted over the last few days do you think outside of politics, it's become the most important thing for crypto as well, the politics in the United States. So there's one thing you can say, listen, we don't talk politics, but we talk crypto. That's what this show is about. Yes.

So going back, thank you for that speech, Scott. But just going back to the point. No, I forgot the point. Thanks, Scott. We'll go back to you, Scott. Nobody wanted to hear you. Yeahott we'll go back to you scott nobody wanted to hear you yeah we'll go no no it's just uh yeah i forgot what i want to say but let's oh the likelihood of biden dropping out i think that one has shifted drastically i think everyone agrees there is a movement again i saw it today in the news i haven't had time to even look at the news

political news but there's a movement as a house democrats are kind of you know joining forces to try to still force biden to step down but it's become a lot less likely for him to step down and going back to polymarket polymarket was one of the first platforms to point out the likelihood of biden stepping down because the the narrative has shifted away from biden's age unless we go back to that um it's looking less and less likely biden will step down which i think is a big plus dan what do you think big plus for trump it's funny like all the likely Biden will step down, which I think is a big plus. Dan, what do you think? Big plus for Trump. It's funny, like, all of the Republicans don't want Trump to be president,

and half of the Democrats don't want Trump to be president, sorry, don't want Biden to be president. It's like, how can he be so far ahead in the polls when three-quarters of the country effectively don't want him to be president? Yeah. Yeah, that's the last thing I wanted to mention, Scott. But one thing we didn't discuss yesterday, Scott,

and I think this is the area for you is the potential liquidations for Mt. Gox. Once the distributions kick off, maybe give a quick overview and what that could mean for the markets. That's the other elephant in the room. the german government sell-off uh slowly abating here as the first sort of overhang of selling pressure into this low liquid summer doldrums market right and i think that that did contribute obviously to pushing price to its lows i think july 5th can i ask you a question about germany can i ask you a question about germany how long would it take germ to collect $300 million worth of taxes? Yeah, it's dumb. Well, they could just print it as well. They don't have to collect taxes. They could just print it.

Yeah, but I'm just saying, they would have worked so hard to collect an extra $300 million worth of taxes. All they needed to do would be a little bit strategic about how they sell their Bitcoin, and they would have made exactly the same amount of money. Surely you've got to hold the government accountable for this shit. Yeah. It's going to go down like a Bitcoin pizza

situation one day. All these countries are selling it to just throw it on their balance sheet, right? But we're Bitcoiners. We know that. They don't. And honestly, we criticize the way they sold it, selling it to just throw it on their balance sheet right but we're bitcoiners we know that they don't they and they honestly you know we criticize the way they sold it sending it to exchanges and just like liquidating without much uh thought but for them it's a drop in the bucket and they're just moving on with their lives but you know i think a lot of people pointing to mount cox as a potential overhang i can say anecdotally i've been hearing about mount cox destroying the bitcoin market since I got here in 2016. And I was two years late to hearing about Bitcoin Mt.

Cox bankruptcy eventually destroying the Bitcoin market. So forgive me if this is a boy that cried wolf situation. We've heard it so many times that it's hard to expect it to be that bad. Personally, from what I've seen, yes, it's billions and billions of dollars, but it's going to be slowly, slowly distributed to a bunch of people who were very early Bitcoin believers and Bitcoin natives

who are unlikely to all sell or certainly there's no chance that they all sell at once. So I don't really see this as acute of a problem as Germany sending, you know, three 500 million a day. Maybe other people agree and think it's going to be a bigger problem. I just don't see how there's a scenario where it's sustained sizable selling pressure all at once travis were you here in 14 like i mean you've been hearing travis you've definitely been hearing about mount cox since

the first days you've been here i'm assuming yeah uh i didn't get into crypto till 17 but obviously it's yeah it's been around for a really long time and i do think it's just probably overblown. I think that for all of the there's there's huge hedge funds like Fortress that have bought, you know, piles of of claims. And these are sophisticated, patient Bitcoin bulls that are not going to slam the market. And for all the smaller creditors, it just doesn't make intuitive sense to me that you would hang around in the claim for a decade and then sell now as soon as you got the Bitcoin, especially with just kind of the outlook where it is right now. I mean, I don't know, maybe if we were like trading, you know, maybe if we were like a year after the halvening and trading like 120K or something like that, then you'd feel a little bit differently about it. But I think just with the whole setup, I just doubt that it's going to be that big of a selling pressure. I mean, there's going to be some amount of selling pressure, but I mean, the market took the Germans hammering 50,000 Bitcoin with about as shitty of an execution

as you could possibly imagine. And, you know, price did a very short down and then back up. And the ETFs have, you know, you've been seeing huge inflows into the etfs and i don't know i just i think it's it's more fun than actual real you know mass selling so yeah there's a lot to be excited there's a lot to be excited about right now. I mean, this is the most. I see nothing but tailwinds. Dude, this is the most I've been excited. I mean, we could talk about crypto, but I mean, more broadly, like in my life, like for this country, for the United States, for the world, like, you know,

I think being in crypto for a long time, you know, there's a line in a public enemy song, don't let a win get to your head or a loss to your heart, which is a line that I think is like very applicable to, to like crypto trading, where you're constantly trying to like balance out your emotions, try and bring the highs down, try and bring the lows up and be, you know, very steady, which is, you know, a very good approach to the markets. It's not a particularly good approach to your life because I think a full sort of a life well lived is a life where you are able to experience the full gamut of emotions. And so I think being in crypto markets for a long time, you have this tendency to want to try and like temper positive expectations because that's

a good approach to markets. But I'm trying kind of not to do that right now with like this optimism that I'm having about like America, you know, democracy, just in general. Because I think that when I look at, when I think about Trump and I'm not like a huge Trump supporter, he's, you know, far and away a better option than Joe Biden. But I'm not like a huge Trump supporter. He's far and away a better option than Joe Biden,

but I'm not like a huge, huge Trump guy. But when I think about Trump as a figurehead, and then Vance and Vivek as like the execution arms for this vision, that is a very formidable combination to me, and a combination that I think has a potential to get a lot of good done in this country. If there's a red wave that comes along with that, like, I mean, that's just the kind of thing that just makes me very excited. So. Dave. Well, two things. First, forget, although my politics and Travis's are probably fairly similar, I don't really want to go into that.

I did want to say that that quote and that outlook is literally what I make myself say to myself when I'm playing poker. Because you can't start believing your own bullshit, and it's very important to trading as well. So kudos, Travis. You picked probably one of the best ways of expressing what success in a market where you have an edge, but the edge isn't as big as you might want it to be. So, okay, so there's that. But as far as Mt. Gox goes, there's one thing that I haven't heard people talk about that I don't think people really understand. So a certain percentage, and I don't know the numbers, of claims were bought at pennies

on the dollar by people like Fortress and others. In those cases, those firms would have, in almost every scenario, would have hedged. So they would be long the claim, and they would be short some amount of Bitcoin against it. When the trade realizes and they lock in the profit, that profit then goes into their fund, which, depending if they are in fact Bitcoin bulls, is likely to result more in buying than in selling. Now, we don't know how much of it is there, but people need to understand when you're running pairs trades, this is not any different than a merger arb. And I used to work with people who did merger arbitrage for a living. And I can tell you that the profits generally get plucked back into some notion

of merger arb, and they generally keep a tail of their position as net long. So that's something that no one really understands. We also don't know how many people who have claims have already hedged it via derivative markets and keep a derivative hedge going, or who basically just want to be hodlers. And there's a large number of that. So I don't know what the net percentage of selling, but if the net percentage of selling of Mt. Gox's coins all dumped on the market is more than 25, 30%, I would literally be stunned. I can't imagine it being larger than that Jeff Jeff Hey there

Thanks for having me Just a couple things I agree with the comments on the setup I think it's even longer term Because it looks like With the nomination of J.D. Vance As VP You basically Changed It's like the old guard with the, you know, nomination of JD Vance's BP, you basically changed, you know,

it's like the old guard is out and that's, you know, he could be the future of the party. He's a Bitcoin holder. He believes in crypto. He has a lot of good ideas around crypto. And then you've got the conference coming up near term. But I just think there's a longer term thing here of just kind of you know that was the end of the by selecting him as vp that's kind

of the end of the kind of older traditional guard in washington and i think it's a it's a great you know longer term like multi-year setup i believe for for crypto assets i completely agree with that it's it's it's it's it's as good to get the neocons out of power as it is to get like the worst part of the left out of power like both of yeah both of those factions are you know equally as terrible for this country and for this world. The neoconservative, these warmongering fucks, dude, these guys, it's just, it's the worst. It's the, these guys that are in the pockets of the defense contractors that all they want is to keep pouring money into pointless wars and killing all kinds of people who cares and do it under the guise of you know protecting america national defense that it's it's bullshit it's so dangerous they're the worst kind of people and jd vance and vivek this this this new quote-unquote new right

represents leaving these octogenarian warmongering fucksticks behind forever let them die and uh turn the page yeah i mean i don't think people will realize regardless of your your thoughts on them and i want to get on as to what you said but the pentagon has never passed an audit right we talk about defense spending and where the money's going and that we always have to increase the defense spending i think that uh the pent Pentagon in the last audit was able to account for less than 30% of the entire budget and where it was spent. I mean, it's an absurdly broken, corrupt system and all that money is going to the hands of private contractors to wage war. It's factually, this is not like tinfoil hat, the money disappears and nobody asked them to account for it. Yeah. At the magnitude of trillions with a T.

Correct. Yeah. It's pretty eye-opening when you start digging into it deeper. But I think, you know, more importantly, since we're here on Crypto Town Hall to talk about what it means, you know, we always kind of joke that inflation numbers and metrics in the economy, it doesn't matter what the actual metric is. It only matters what it is relative to the expectation. So 0.1 down is great. If you thought there was going to be 3.1, it goes to 3.0, even though in a vacuum, maybe it's not great. I like to look at crypto kind of through the same lens. Think of the expectation for what this industry would look like in the United States one year ago and And where we are right now. And literally,

literally nothing but tailwinds. It's 180 degrees of what if you had asked me a year ago, we would look like. When Gensler came after financing Coinbase on back to back days, there were no court victories. Clearly, Biden, you know, was the favorite, I guess, for president and they're seeing the anti crypto army. And there seemed to be an open mandate to attack this industry. Well, that has changed 180 degrees in that amount of time. So I just can't see anything but tailwinds versus what we expected. And another thing to think about with with Vance, I don't know if you guys have talked about this yet, but he is he is going to be and Trump has, you know, danced around this stance for a while as well, too.

But this is Vance is going to be leading that's likely going to be leading the charge with an on shoring push, bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. He's a Rust Belt guy. He's talked about this a bunch of different times in order to have manufacturing, just the numbers work, uh, with, with re-onshoring jobs in the United States, you have to bring the dollar down. And so having a concerted dollar devaluation strategy so that an, you know, an an American export actually works. And there's a real chance that this administration could pretty quickly come out with a concerted dollar devaluation strategy to that end, to an onshoring end goal. And that should be a tremendous tailwind for crypto. I mean, just like where's Bitcoin going to be if the Dixie's at 85? Like you tell me, like it's, you know, it's not five digits. I can tell you that it is not five digits. So, you know, I don't know how many people are

connecting those dots in crypto, but this is, you know, a tremendous tailwind, along with numerous others. I mean, Vance is like, you know, I mean, the guy owns Bitcoin. Maybe you guys have seen the video of him shitting on Gary Gensler, like really shitting on Gary Gensler, talking about the importance of decentralization, talking about the importance of getting sensible regulation around crypto. I mean, this is, to Scott's point, like truly a 180 relative to where we were a year ago. And it does not strike me that it is priced in here, like that it's like anywhere close here. Bitcoin 64, you know, Ethereum, whatever, 33. That just doesn't strike me as anywhere close

to the right numbers for this stuff. So we'll see, I guess. That's not financial advice, but that's sort of fundamentally and qualitatively that there seems to be at odds with it. And I understand how that could be because these things have changed very quickly. The assassination attempt was a few days ago. The Vance pick was two days ago. But I just don't think it's being reflected in prices right now. But it probably will be pretty soon. I was literally going to make the exact point, Travis. I had a conversation yesterday where someone said to me, oh, Vance is crazy about the dollar. And I just said, listen, you need to understand there's trade-offs in politics. And Vance gets this because he's incredibly smart that there's a trade-off

vis-a-vis importing a higher standard of living via consumption and being able to create an environment where people can work for a living and live off that. The hollowing out of the middle class, as it were. And he totally understands that the dollar is reserve currency and what's gone on has enabled that hollowing out of the middle class. And I then connected the dots to Bitcoin and I got a, oh, wow, that makes sense, sort of light bulb moment. So I think you explained it extremely well. That was what I was going to talk about because i think it's extremely uh clear that that's where this that's where a neocon very much yeah i'm in trouble yeah yeah one yeah one thing One thing that it's going to be interesting to see with this administration is the kind of D dollar devaluation of the dollar on one hand.

But then Vivek has been so strongly and Trump has adopted these views. he was still running for president, was talking about a zero dollar based budget at the federal level instead of starting with like, oh, last year the budget was 20 trillion. So this year we start with 20 trillion and then move it up or down from there. He said, oh, no, you start at zero and then you build it up from zero and zero dollar based budgeting and see, you know, exactly how much is actually necessary. You know, that idea is strikes me as, you know, probably too radical to actually get implemented at least anytime soon. But what you did see once Vivek came in and became a close advisor to Trump, and he is a very close advisor to Trump. You started to see Trump taking some of his views.

When Trump was on the All In podcast, he talked about drastically shrinking the federal budget for the Department of Education and then taking the large majority of those dollars and distributing that to the states and letting the states do education at a state by state level. And I think he also mentioned doing something similar, I think, with the Department of, I think, Agriculture, I think. And so these were like, these are the vague ideas that Trump adopted. And it's going to be interesting to see whether or not they actually follow through with some of the shrinking of the bloat at the federal budget level, because that stuff is, you know, now, if they just take more or less the same amount of dollars and pull them out of the federal government's pocket and put them into the state's pocket, you know, then it doesn't have that big of an impact on, uh, you know, the dollar or maybe the economy or maybe, you know, it's, it's, but if they, I don't know, it's, it's going to be interesting because if you're trying to weaken the dollar, cutting the federal budget is, you know,

diametrically opposed to trying to weaken the dollar, basically. And it's, I think it's going to be interesting, because I got really jazzed up about, you know, getting bloat out of the federal government. I mean, this is this would be a tremendously positive thing for the United States, if we could do some of that. And so I think that's just going to be something interesting to watch watch because I think it is politically something kind of hard to pull off because, you know, if you actually, you know, I don't know what percent of U.S. GDP is government spending. I don't know it off the top of my head, but it's like a very real number. So if you like take a big bite out of that number, then that's the type of thing that could potentially, you know, push the economy into a recession, which is, you know, the absolute last thing I think Trump would want to do. So I don't know, it's gonna be interesting to see how that shakes out.

David? It seems clear that this is going to be and, you know, the popular pressure is saying this, that this is going to be a very transactionally minded administration, you know, if and when it wins. And, you know, certainly happy to have educated folks as part of the most inner circle. And certainly folks that, you know, are not only policy folks or legal or regulatory career people, but also, you know, experience on the business side. I don't know if it was discussed yet, sorry for joining late. But if Jamie Dimon becomes the head of the treasury. Does anyone feel like there's going to be, he will be able to influence, will want to influence the trajectory of cryptocurrency?

Because he hasn't been, I mean, obviously, as the head of JPMorgan Chase, he's embraced it to the extent that, you know, JPMorgan can go ahead and profit off of trading crypto related instruments, crypto related, you know, businesses, their been, I think, the loudest force there, the singular force there in terms of stopping crypto. Will he similarly be a pretty opinionated person? And he's a respectable human being. I mean, he is the titan of banking in the world. And does anyone think that he will be able or will want to go ahead and influence the direction that the administration takes on crypto? I think it goes full Larry Fink if Elizabeth Warren is not in power. You mean that for real or you're just joking? I mean it for real.

I think that and I'm not much for tinfoil hats, but I think Jamie Diamond and that side do what's best for them as a bank with the current situation and administration. And I think that if he ends up Secretary of Treasury in a Republican administration, I think he goes the direction that the wind is blowing there. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think the same thing. I think there would be some risk there. I don't know if I hadn't really thought deeply about whether or not Jamie Diamond would be my top choice for treasury secretary or who you'd want more than Jamie diamond.

But I think that crypto has had such a significant impact on this Trump campaign. I have no reason to fight it directly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Vance is a supporter of a vague is a supporter. Trump is a supporter.

Trump is keynoting a Bitcoin conference. The fair shake pack, I believe, is it now the single largest, I think it may be the largest single issue PAC in existence right now. I think that may be true. So I think we've actually, and kudos to crypto for getting this done or now swinging a big enough stick. And then you're going to get somebody else running the SEC that's goingTC through a series of no action letters and settlements and likely executive orders out of the White House. And very quickly, you're going to have a framework around the crypto ecosystem that just actually gives real guidance on how to structure things, how to do token offerings and token structures in a way that there's not all of this unknown and unanswered questions and this kind of deal.

And I don't know, I just don't think Jamie Dimon would stick his, yeah, it doesn't seem like he would like dig his heels in and be like the anti-crypto guy. He's just going to, you know, the banks will just figure out how to make money off of it. Like they'll just, they're going to, they'll repeal SAB 121 and they'll just get in there and make money off of it like Larry's making money off of it. Dan and David. he's making money off of it. Dan? And David? I wanted to change the tune a little bit. Do you guys see the tweet from Craig Wright today? Have you been

up to speed with that? I saw his website. Yeah, he's been legally compelled to put on the front page of his website and pin on his Twitter that he is absolutely not Satoshiin okamoto so i thought that was quite interesting turn of events today seems like you would just take your website down he's not allowed he's legally he has to hold out there for six months that's like that's like honestly like that's now to the point of embarrassment and stupidity where you like lose a sports bet with your friend and have to wear their favorite team's

jersey for six months or something. It's ridiculous. He never knew when to quit and walk away, right? And now he still says his opinion on it. I thought it was a bit of a change of pace from US politics. Wait, he's not Satoshi Nakamoto? Yeah, no, right? I mean, not officially.

Listen, we're just asking questions here, man. Nobody really knows. Nobody really knows. David, go ahead. We went ahead and filed a change of business under the Toronto Stock Exchange for purposes for people that don't know. This is totally self-promotion. I'm the CEO of Centaurus Energy, ticker CTA in Canada, ticker CTARF in the United States. It used to be an energy upstream oil and gas producer. It's no longer in that business. It now has a passive royalty interest in a field in Argentina using the proceeds. This has previously been disclosed to go ahead and invest in Ether as its treasury asset. We've now filed with the Toronto Stock Exchange to go ahead and invest in all Layer 1 tokens, inclusive of staking.

And we're changing the name of the company to Layer 1 Inc. Ticker will be L-A-Y-R. And the shareholder meeting will be at the end of September. The stock is currently halted. I expect the halt to probably last a couple days, maybe two weeks, while they exchange reviews our plans, but we've been in discussions with them. And then everything should be effectuated, you know, as of the end of September, when we have our annual shareholder meeting. And we're currently in discussions with folks to go ahead and raise capital, primarily on a debt basis, to go ahead and invest

and stake and restake and be the micro strategy of everything else in the layer one world. Amazing. Wow. Congratulations, man. I didn't know any of that. Yeah. Press release came out last night. And I'm happy to talk further offline with you or with anyone else. But certainly, thank you. I appreciate a couple of people that are on this space have been encouraging and I appreciate their input. And, you know, to the extent right now, it's a one man show. So I'm happy to have partners, people involved. That's not a call for resumes or anything like that. I'm not getting paid anything. It's all on the come. But if people want to go ahead and throw their weight behind this, I believe that there's a place for this in the market. I think Canada has been a little bit more aggressive than the United States has been. So we're regulated under Canadian law, even though our stock trades in the United States has been. So we're regulated under Canadian law, even though our stock trades in the United States, we don't have to go ahead and kowtow to the SEC.

Although, you know, frankly, after this presidential election, it may not make a difference. But in any event, the staking part of it obviously is important. The fact that it's in the security forum is important for tax purposes. And I think we'll be able to do some interesting things. Like I said, right now, we're just focused on ETH. But as time goes on, I expect that we will do some other things. And I think that with the structure that we have, you know, we've hit the ground running and hopefully, you know, we can do more unique things than just be an ETF. We could do, you know, some more value add stuff for our shareholders. Yeah, very cool.

Very cool. It would be interesting to see if you could do it in the United States. Before we go, actually, just since Peter, since you're here, just technically, you know, we just had this move from sub 54 basically to 66 or so in 12 days and 24 percent something ish appreciation. To me, this means, hey, we're back in the range and maybe it's boring for a couple of months. But do you think that anything's fundamentally changed here? Oh, well, you know, I can't say fundamentally. I mean, I can say in terms of the charts.

I mean, I saw the break that we had on, you know, July 5th is really interesting because the market tried to crash back down through the loads that were put in in early May and create a double top, but it was a reversal day and we've been up ever since. So, you know, in my mind, I have to kind of say failed double top. So, you know, what does that mean? Is that it's not bearish, but the reality is we're still in the sequence

of lower highs, lower lows. You look back at March highs and we had the April highs and we had the June highs as and we had the June highs, a sequence of three lower highs. We're in lower lows. So yeah, I mean, I just think we'd go back into a big old sloppy range for right now, to be determined. I mean, I am impressed the market held. I'm impressed by the bounce. You you know i can't say anything other than that but uh you know does that turn me into a raging bull that we go straight up from here no it doesn't i mean i think the market still has to uh absorb itself and settle down and create something that

that looks like a continuation pattern on the charts, and I don't see that yet. Peter, what do you think about a wick-off reaccumulation here where we just had the spring and we're doing the jump the creek right now? Very possible. Very possible. I mean, I really would have liked to see big rally, though. I mean, big volume. Yeah, the volume. I agree. The volume was not there. That's the main thing that I thought was kind of missing was the volume wasn't really there. Yeah. If we had had big volume come in, slugs of volume, you know, we had a slug of volume on on july 5th so you know that was

why coffee in right but then we rallied and we put in a nice bar on july 14th we go you know we go up big on the 15th and we don't do it on big volume and i think according to why cop we really needed to see demand come in off the lows, and we have not had that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, maybe another way to define it is like maybe the range low should have held. And the fact that Germany was just hammering Bitcoin over July 4th into a very thin market, just made for sort of like a kind of like a failed breakdown shouldn't have gone that low in the first place but did because it just happened to have occurred you

know at this sort of time in the market when it did and you know and so it's just sort of like a failed breakdown inefficiency you know swing failure pattern type of deal yeah it's a weird it's like a kind of a weird ta pattern like if this thing goes all the way back up to the top of the range it's like yeah yeah it's like a deviation which is which is sort of like what you call something when it doesn't make when it like doesn't fit anything else you're just like ah it's a deviation you know like and you just call it a bear trap and move on with your life yeah yeah yeah yeah awesome anyone else listen before we go anybody else have a strong view on this move that we just saw and where it might indicate that we're headed i personally think we just continue to range sideways till September.

All right. Nobody else has a strong view, so we're going to go ahead and wrap. Thank you guys for listening. We'll obviously be back tomorrow morning, 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Thank you to all our guests. Follow them. Hang on their every word. Harass

them in their DMs for not financial advice. You guys know what to do. All right. See you guys tomorrow. Bye.