The Wolf Of All Streets - Wall St Crypto Takeover | Gensler & Yellen In Trouble | Crypto Town Hall With Dave Nadig, Matt Hougan, Travis Kling, Bruce Fenton, J.W. Verret, & Others

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Crypto Town Hall is a new daily Twitter Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in the crypto and bring the biggest names in the crypto space to ...share their opinions. ►►OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $60,000!  👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Yo! Sup man? Nice new picture that bear market is over now officially, right? When you change your CryptoPunk? Almost. It's over I know it's become a meme now in the space but it's over once I sell it so it's gonna be a while.
Starting point is 00:00:15 Oh, come on. That's not what I read. Has Brad Mills celebrated yet? I haven't seen it. I don't know if you've seen it yet. I don't know. I've seen it yet. I don't know. I've read a lot about it, so we'll see. Yeah, it was me. Yeah, yep. Someone called you, yeah?
Starting point is 00:00:36 Yeah, even though I have the full airplane mode on and Wi-Fi calling, sometimes they slip through. I don't know. How was the space yesterday? It was pretty good. I thought, you know, sometimes there's slow news days, but I thought that it was still really, really interesting and we got some great perspective on the institutional side,
Starting point is 00:00:55 which I think we're going to discuss quite a bit more today. I mean, I just think that it's just absolutely insane, the velocity of news that's coming in and how quickly we're seeing this very obvious strategy of handing over the keys, so to speak, to Wall Street on this industry in the United States. Yeah, man, I was looking at the headlines today in our agenda and like generally speaking, those are the headlines you'd see you'd be celebrating. But it seems the sentiment is different this time around. I know we've spoken about this. Ryan, I've just sent you through a call to invite as well. You could accept
Starting point is 00:01:30 that. And I know that today we're going to finally, so I know that we're getting a lot of people that want to sponsor the show and we were meant to talk about one of the sponsors today, but because it came in last minute and I'm unprepared, we're going to do it. Is my mic bad or is it good?
Starting point is 00:01:46 You sound pretty good. There's a tiny bit of feedback, but otherwise pretty good. All right, cool, man. If the feedback gets bad, let me know. I've just put the mic closer. Just keep me posted. Ryan, you've got to accept that call. Okay, Ryan dropped.
Starting point is 00:01:58 There's no space. I know when Ryan drops that everything's fine. The day that Ryan does not drop, something's off. So we get another invite. Yeah, if he stops doing his dishes we know the space is yeah exactly exactly rand how are you i'm trying to get as a co-host and every time i accept the person by the bank i'm good mario yeah i didn't miss you guys too i'm joking it was how was the day man it was it was a would you call it a good day or a bad day yesterday? I mean, it's, I think, good for Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:02:29 I think in terms of the new cycle, pretty slow, but I think really good for Bitcoin. But yeah, I think, as I said, from the new cycle, pretty slow couple of days in the news. The only headlines are pretty much this Bitcoin BlackRock ETS and the possibilities of it getting approved in the news. The only headlines are pretty much this Bitcoin BlackRock ETS and the possibilities of it getting approved and what it actually means
Starting point is 00:02:49 if it is going to get approved. Now, I'm putting on my skeptical shades here. And the reason why I'm putting on my skeptical shades here, it's very simple for crypto to create a narrative because that's what they want the narrative to
Starting point is 00:03:06 mean. And I'm really trying to become very skeptical and to question the narrative as to whether we are making of this narrative what we want or whether this is indeed what is actually happening. And I think we should spend some time talking about that here today. Yeah, I think we can kick that off in a bit, Scott. Maybe we can start with the quick market update before we dig into the news. Sure, we can do that. I think it's actually interesting, Ran, to your point. Bitcoin looking decent, but Mike Alford was on my show this morning and here yesterday. GBTC looking much better as the discount closes. I think it's gone from mid 40% to 34%
Starting point is 00:03:47 on the GBTC discount since the BlackRock news. So that could actually be the trade here. What was the discount? Sorry, just so you can compare. What was the discount back during FTX days? It's varied. It's been literally all over the place, depending on the week that you look at it,
Starting point is 00:04:03 but it topped just about 50%, I believe. And obviously, in years past, was trading at a 20%, 30% premium. So you're talking about massive, massive swings in that. But the BlackRock ETF news, a lot of people interpreting is good for Grayscale. And the GBTC gap is closing. So if you're looking at a way to trade Bitcoin, a lot of people are viewing GBTC as the better trade. Even if you just look at the GBTC chart, obviously, the lows were about $7.50. It's trading over $16 today, meaning that it's more than 2x off the lows. Bitcoin obviously
Starting point is 00:04:40 hasn't done that. Bitcoin bottomed just sub 16,000 is trading right around 26 or below. So I mean, 27, 26, 733 as we speak, so up about 1% on the day, but still chopping sideways. So GBTC has been the much better trade really this year and certainly off those FTX lows. So actually, I've been quoting it on my show for a long time saying, if you're going to hold Bitcoin for 10 years or five years, probably one of the best things to do is to actually buy GBTC. And the reason for that is because at some point that discount has to close. And when it does close, not only do you get the upside of Bitcoin, but you get the discounts as well. So I think it's been a good trade.
Starting point is 00:05:21 But I think, again, it's very, very, very important that we ask questions and say, are we creating a narrative here or is this BlackRock thing seriously a done deal? On the one hand, you've got BlackRock, which have got a 575 to 1 win to loss ratio when it comes to ETFs. The only ETF that they haven't got approved is one that didn't have any reporting of its positions to the SEC. And 10 years ago. Yeah. And then on the other hand, you've got SEC, which has declined 60 Bitcoin ETF applications. So it's like two big gorillas, each one in the corner saying, well, who's going to win this now? Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say we do have Matt Hogan here from Bitwise and he's arguably one of the best
Starting point is 00:06:08 people to speak to this next when you conclude your point. Yes, I mean, I think the question here is there's a lot of confidence around Bitcoin. People are feeling the altcoin getting to Bitcoin because, and I think now that you think something Bitcoin, is this
Starting point is 00:06:24 this, you know particular of an etf getting approved matt maybe it's a good time to bring you up and say look you know are we being crypto bros and trying to justify and create a narrative or is there a real strategy that is finally going to get a bit be a bitcoin etf actually approved it's great thanks for having me on that that is the million dollar question. You know, I don't think it's right to assume that there's some internal wink and nod that BlackRock has 100 percent confidence that it's going to get its ETF approved. organized, well thought through, careful company, and that they see a path to potential approval. Otherwise, they wouldn't have filed. So I think it's right for the industry to be optimistic about this development. I actually think it's a major narrative turning for the crypto market. I think it sort of can be seen as the dawn of the mainstream era for crypto. But I wouldn't assign 100% probabilities by any means
Starting point is 00:07:30 that this is the one that gets through. But I do think you can take confidence that they've thought about it carefully. Do you think that BlackRock care about the reputational risk or the stats as we've made them out? Do you think that they really care if it's 575 to 1 or 575 to 2? No, but there's reputational overhead to stepping into the crypto market in general. I do think it's an important signal that that reputational challenge is low enough that
Starting point is 00:08:04 BlackRock is willing to step into it. That wasn't the case three or four years ago. It wasn't the case two years ago. It wasn't even the case one year ago. But now we have the world's largest asset manager saying that investors should have access to this space in a widely available vehicle. I do think that's an important statement. I don't think they care if they're 575 to 2, but I do think it's important. Yeah. And Ran, the other interesting point that I think it was Meta Lawman brought up last week and has been tweeting about is that BlackRock obviously has led the ESG charge worldwide. And so some people view this as either a headscratcher or sort of a death to the
Starting point is 00:08:41 Bitcoin is bad for the environment argument that BlackRock will be pushing in. I don't necessarily ascribe to that. I'm just telling you that's a narrative that is circulating because if they're the champions of ESG and are willing to go heavily into Bitcoin, it really does say something. Well, let's actually go one step further. One of the other narratives that the crypto bros have created is that if you look at GLD and when GLD launched and what the price of gold was when gld launched and the narrative that we've created is well if that's what gld did
Starting point is 00:09:12 for gold can you imagine bitcoin the bitcoin etf will be for bitcoin now i mean there is an argument for it in that you know a lot of investment advisors are not going to be able to sell Bitcoin and add Bitcoin to their portfolios. BlackRock do have a very big distribution network. But Matt, if we do get a Bitcoin ETF approved, and it is the BlackRock ETF, which I believe is then available in all the terminals in their distribution network, does this really mean what what we have created it to mean and that you know that it is going to drive distribution and it's going to be the best thing to be bitcoin that the pension funds can now allocate between one and two percent their portfolios that that the advisors will push this narrative because they want the commission on selling the new etf because that's what's going
Starting point is 00:10:03 around on twitter and i think we need to get need to get to really understand this from the sober head. Yeah, I think it's a great question. I'll see Dave Nadegon here, who's an expert, but I think a lot could be learned from the GLD example, actually. And I think what the GLD example tells us is that we probably overestimate the short-term impact and underestimate the long-term impact. A lot of people look back at GLD and say it's the most successful ETF launch of all time. And it did, it pulled in a billion dollars in a couple of days. But after a year or two, it was only a handful of billions of dollars. Where GLD really made an impact was over a five-year period when
Starting point is 00:10:41 it got up to, I think it was $80 billion. And I think that's what I would expect for a Bitcoin ETF as well. It's not the case that day one, the Bitcoin ETF launches and CalPERS puts $10 billion into it. That's not how it works. Day one, an ETF launches, there's a large amount of excitement. And then there's a huge amount of work on the other side, getting it approved on all the various platforms, getting people comfortable with it, seeing the track record build up. So I would say that we, as the crypto community, probably overestimate the short-term impact and underestimate the long-term impact. I think the long-term impact is absolutely massive. I do think it moves crypto to be a mainstream institutional asset, but I think it takes
Starting point is 00:11:29 a little bit longer than most people expect because there is a lot of work after approval before you see the wall of assets coming in. Yeah, I don't know. I hope Audra is better now the what is the impact of the narrative that instead of wanting to kill crypto, we're seeing the Wall Street, try to take a piece of the industry. And that should be a, you know, a really positive signal for the industry that we've been talking about the herd coming for so long. I've said it before. And now it's coming in. The narrative earlier was like, hey, they're trying to kill crypto.
Starting point is 00:12:04 Now they're regulating crypto and they're killing the incumbents and trying to take a piece of crypto. For the incumbents, for the people that were there in the early days, Coinbase, Binance and others, that's not a good thing. But for the industry as a whole, we should see more liquidity over the long run. Is that a fair statement? I think that's right, except for I'm not sure it's a bad thing for the incumbents as well. So I do think that's what you're seeing. You're seeing the industry now embrace this, move it into a regulatory market and get their piece of the pie. But I think the pie will grow. And actually, if you look at the history of asset management, even when the big players come in,
Starting point is 00:12:39 the specialized players tend to be the largest providers in the space. That's true in the MLP space. It's true in the real estate space. It's true in commodity space. It's true in most markets. So I think they're going to come in and get their piece of the pie. But the pie grows so much faster and so much bigger than I think the crypto native firms are going to do just fine. I think people underestimate the size of that pie and the value of specialist players. So I think, honestly, everyone wins in this case. I think it's strictly good for crypto. Matt, you say everybody wins, but as Rand pointed out before,
Starting point is 00:13:19 we've seen roughly 60 rejections of Bitcoin ETFs. Bitwise, obviously, you guys have been doing this for how many years? Since I was three, Scott. Yeah, so since 1943, you guys have been pushing Bitcoin ETFs. But it's good for you. And I've spoken to quite a few people in the industry who have applied for Bitcoin ETFs, obviously. And I've gotten sort of mixed feelings about it. Some people think it's a head scratcher, death to everybody else
Starting point is 00:13:51 who has applied for ETFs because there's this default idea that BlackRock will just get it. But some saying, hey, BlackRock gets approved, then we all get approved, bigger pie, sort of the idea that you just said. But from Bitwise perspective, let me even ask it a better question. What would it mean to you if you saw BlackRock get approved in the next six to eight months and Bitwise had not been yet when and I can't speak to any specific filing. But walking through that scenario in my mind, it would be very frustrating, the answer to that question. Now, I do think our broader business would do well. Bitwise is more than just a Bitcoin shop. But in that scenario, it would be exquisitely frustrating to be in that shoes because we have done a huge amount of work.
Starting point is 00:14:47 That's not my base case. That's not what I think will happen. And I would be happy to compete on a level playing field with BlackRock and see where the chips fall. But in that scenario, yeah, of course, we would be extremely frustrated. Yeah, Steve McClurg, who's in the audience, was on yesterday, obviously, Valkyrie in a similar situation and pointed to a past where he was at Guggenheim and had a similar situation where BlackRock effectively preempted them,
Starting point is 00:15:16 jumped in, but then Guggenheim ended up with the better product. So it's not unheard of that BlackRock could actually be first, but not be best. That's right. Yeah, absolutely. And the history of ETFs shows that all scenarios are possible. It's possible that the SEC would let one firm go and others follow. It's possible that second-to-market could possibly catch up to first-to-market. It's also possible that the SEC would line up multiple players and launch them all at once. We've seen all three scenarios in the past. And we'll see what happens here if indeed any get approved, which of course, as a reminder, is not a guarantee at this point. So Matt, if they don't get approved,
Starting point is 00:15:56 what does that mean for crypto? Well, I think at this point, the market is probably going to start pricing at least some probability that one of them gets approved. So a failure for them to be approved would be a setback. Again, I don't think it kills crypto. Obviously, crypto has done quite well. The first ETF application was filed when Bitcoin was trading for $100. So crypto would be just fine, but it would be a setback at this point. I think it would be a negative for the industry. Dave, now that you're here as well,
Starting point is 00:16:30 and obviously you're an ETF expert, what do you make of this entire process? By the way, anyone who's wondering, these are like, we're seeing my ETF guys. These are everybody I call. I see the letters ETF, but these are the people I have to go to. So go ahead, Dave. Yeah. I mean, I think Matt's got the general tone of it right. I think a couple of nuances I might put in there. The approval of a Bitcoin ETF, it's not so much that it would open up at just this floodgate of institutional money. I mean, some of that is true, but actually it's this middle ground. It's folks who would use Bitcoin as a portfolio asset, whether that's a non-enthusiast retail investor, a more conservative institution, or frankly, most of the financial advisor market, which actually drives an enormous amount of liquidity in this world.
Starting point is 00:17:18 A lot of those folks have been scared off of Bitcoin, even if they've been interested, because there hasn't been an easy way to make it a portfolio asset. It's always required some level of jumping through hoops. So having Bitcoin ETFs would open up that market. And to Matt's point, I think you'd see a short-term pop, of course, but then I think a longer tail, three, four, five years, as you start seeing portfolio allocations come in, that does two things. Not only does it put more money into the Bitcoin pool and therefore you would expect number to go up, but what it also do is add stability, right? You actually want a large base of non-trading assets because
Starting point is 00:17:57 that's part of what helps price stability exist. So those I think would be the main impacts. In terms of handicapping where we're at now, I do agree with Matt. I think it's a little bit much to get all twisting the mustache and thinking that there's some backroom deal here and that like Tuesday next week, there's going to be a flash approval and EDX starts trading. I think that's a bit much. I think it's more likely that they are trying to get in line on the GBTC lawsuit, as Matt was saying. And this is just sort of their way of putting the marker in. I would be very surprised if the end state of this was BlackRock gets some runway of X weeks and or months where there's no competitor and they get the nod.
Starting point is 00:18:43 As Matt said, that's there, they have done things like the SEC has done things like that before. And generally, they've been pretty ham-handed about it. I think it's much more likely that we either get the classic, we're going to reset the rules and make everybody refile so everybody gets the same date. I think that's a pretty obvious one. They've actually made maneuvers like that and then around the futures-based products we have before. So that feels more normal. Or potentially putting a start date on the clock and saying, filings that meet this standard will be allowed to trade on X date. I'm actually quite skeptical we see any of this this year. I think this is the beginning of a new process, not the end. And I think it's probably well after a GBTC announcement that we
Starting point is 00:19:26 get some sort of formal approval, disproval, or request to refile, which I think is the most likely. Interesting. I think what a lot of people are pointing at right now is not only that we're seeing this BlackRock news obviously come through, and then we've seen the conjecture surrounding Fidelity, which I think we can agree so far is unsubstantiated. But on the outside of the ETF side, we're also seeing a bigger move by these larger institutions into the space, all seemingly at the same time, right? As far as breaking news for today, EBX Markets, which was not discussed as widely as you would have thought last year when it was announced, which is a cryptocurrency exchange run by Citadel,
Starting point is 00:20:05 Fidelity, and Charles Schwab collectively. I mean, you effectively can't find three bigger names that you can maybe add in a JP Morgan or a BlackRock. These are the largest institutions in the United States launching an exchange that will focus on Bitcoin, Ethereum, reportedly Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin, which always slide in because they're the ones that are effectively commodities. I just laugh when Bitcoin Cash is always seemingly included. But that's basically launching today. And then, of course, CZ had just tweeted, now it's on Bloomberg, Deutsche Bank applies for digital assets license amid growth push. Looks like that's primarily a custody license. There's no question, listen, you can make the jump to the conspiracy theories which we probably shouldn't do that you know there's a crackdown and i do it but that there's a crackdown on the industry the
Starting point is 00:20:50 people who built it the actual companies and that they're uh sort of trying to push for the adults in the room or push into wall street's arms but there's a lot of this happening right now at the same time right don't forget and don't forget to mention the crypto.com the time it cannot be uh any better crypto.com will see service for institutional clients starting june whenever in a few days or tomorrow and there was a story in the financial times yesterday mario that crypto.com has a proprietary trading desk and an internal market maker that's counter trading their clients okay that's a pretty big story that one i didn't i didn't see that one yeah very similar to you know what but then when you see but when you see but scott scott when you see news like this like i don't understand exchange after exchange player after we saw what happened
Starting point is 00:21:34 with abra a few days ago now we're seeing crypto.com again these are all allegations but but like i'm not surprised that regulators are cracking down i'm not surprised that the like it's it just starts to feel like we kind of need and again i'll get hate for saying this but it starts to feel like self-regulation backfired badly or ambiguous regulation or lack of regulation and we need wall street either we need clarity of clarity in terms of regulation but then again what crypto.com knows what they did is wrong so what clarity do they need i brought the allegations are true right sorry i don't know if the answer is that we need wall street as you said i think the it is more the other side which is that we need clarity and and but what can i call what clarity what clarity crypto.com needed clarity abraham ftx needed clarity no but the point is
Starting point is 00:22:20 like when a lot of these exchanges launched or when a lot of these platforms launch they basically if, if they wanted to be in business, they had to be the clearinghouse, the custodian, the exchange, literally everything. And that's been the biggest problem is there's no walls like in other markets. But the question is, if Coinbase is going to be your exchange, who was going to be their custodian if there's no trusted entity that is allowed in this regulatory environment to even custody these assets. So if these companies wanted to even launch, they effectively had to take on all of those roles and now retroactively are being punished for it. I think moving forward, they do need to look more like these other exchanges or companies where we have those walls between them and the custodian is not the exchange but to their you know to to
Starting point is 00:23:06 be fair they didn't have that option okay and that kind of this what we're seeing now fits the narrative that ryan was saying earlier that we the next bull market will not be like the last two and that's because regulation is here that's because the the the institutions are here the infrastructure is there we're maturing as an industry an industry. And that's not a bad thing. Like not seeing 100x pumps over a week is not necessarily a bad thing. So hopefully out of all this mess, we will see, you know,
Starting point is 00:23:35 there is light at the end of the tunnel. Ran, what's your thoughts on this? Let's get Ran, because I know Ran probably covered it earlier today. I mean, as I said, I think, look, I think the black etf net net is really bullish for for crypto i've got to be honest um i think that it's really
Starting point is 00:23:53 bullish for ethereum as well actually um and maybe he's not getting all the credit that he deserves why do i think that because i think that if you look at bitcoin they are very very very similar um the only difference is that he's now moved to proof of stake and because he's moved to proof of I think that if you look at Bitcoin and ETH, they are very, very, very similar. The only difference is that ETH now moved to proof-of-stake. And because ETH moved to proof-of-stake, the SEC is now coming for ETH and saying, you know, you actually could be a security. You weren't a security when you were proof-of-work, but now you've changed it into proof-of-stake and you actually may be a security. So I actually think this is bullish for Bitcoin. I think in the longer term, it's also bullish for Ethereum. I think in the short term, it's very bad for altcoins because all the liquidity is flowing from altcoins into Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:24:30 We've seen this before. I think it's the end of a cycle. And I think what happens at the end of a cycle is the altcoins bleed out completely and almost prepare themselves for a new cycle. And I think that that's exactly what's starting to happen here. I think that TradFi is moving in. I think TradFi is moving into Bitcoin. They've seen a very resilient asset and they've seen an opportunity to swoop in on this asset
Starting point is 00:24:54 and this industry really, really cheap. And I think taking it. Now, yeah, as I say, I'm trying to be very, very, very... What's the word I'm looking for? Skeptical. I'm trying to be very, very far away from drinking this crypto Kool-Aid. But I actually do think that there is substance here. Yeah, I agree.
Starting point is 00:25:16 And Steve, you came up, obviously, and we talked yesterday. But just your final thoughts here, sort of on the ETF. And then we're going to move to JW over here and discuss Gensler. Yeah, I actually still believe that the BlackRock ETF is going to get approved. I don't know when, but I'm pretty positive it will. And then it is also very, very bullish for Bitcoin. I don't know if it's as positive in the US anyway for other coins. I'm also of the opinion that a lot of tokens are securities, according to US law.
Starting point is 00:25:59 And there's a lot that we don't deal with because of that. There's a lot that are on the fence. There are a few that most definitely aren't. Like something like one of the biggest ones that was mentioned in the last couple of weeks, Cardano, for instance, I truly believe that that's a security. The way that it was created,
Starting point is 00:26:18 the way that the founders and the team made a lot of money off of the new issuance, so to speak, and the way uh made a lot of money off of the uh the new issuance so to speak and uh the way that uh it's it's treated uh there's there's a lot of other tokens that fall into that category you think it is a security or was a security cardano i think it is a security still is and and what happens so when when a token like cardano is considered a security in the u.s what happens to cardano what happens to projects built on Cardano? I know we touched on it already,
Starting point is 00:26:46 but I think it's a really important point, at least for VCs and projects building in the ecosystem. I think projects building on, you know, building on a technology is not a problem, right? I mean, think about it like this. If Microsoft violates securities law or any other type of law or Apple, you Apple, all the developers that are building apps on iOS aren't or shouldn't be affected. Now, it is possible that they would be affected when it comes to something like Cardano.
Starting point is 00:27:18 But yeah, just because you're building an application built on a technology doesn't mean that you're necessarily in trouble or the technology is in trouble. It more refers to the team and anybody distributing those types of securities. I think those are the ones, those are the people that are going to be looked at. All right. So, Scott, I know you want to move to Gensler, your best friend. There is movement against that's pointing out that gensler and the sec were overreaching i've read the full story i just saw the headline earlier but it looks like uh you know again some good news today i guess it depends on who you are if you determine it as good news or not but the the headline from the block former sec advisor legal
Starting point is 00:28:01 doctrine could end gensler's crypto crackdown we We have that former SEC advisor here, JW. How are you, man? Good to be here. Good to be here with all of you. I like a lot of press these days. Yeah. Well, I like to speak my piece here. And I did that when I was on the SEC's investor advisory committee. To be clear, I was there. I was put on there to replace Hester Peirce and take a role of the libertarian voice. Technically, I was an advisor to Gensler. I like to repeat that because I know that it annoys him. He said it annoys him, but it didn't work for him. I was always poking him to do the right thing.
Starting point is 00:28:41 So let's dig into the doctrine in question here, the major questions doctrine, which you say could end this sort of ongoing crackdown led by Gensler. Assuming that means that there's some overreach here and that it could be time for legislation or for Congress to step in, but you're the best to speak on this. So go ahead. Coinbase, Finance, Ripple, any one of them could take the cases against them to the Supreme Court and have a very good chance at using the major questions doctrine. This is a doctrine that the conservative majority in the court are using to roll back the extensive discretion to independent agencies that courts have given them over the last 30 or 40 years. So that gives me hope in the long term that Coinbase Ripple might win, that tokens might be protected. That's a long time though. That's probably a five-year fight. So that's not going
Starting point is 00:29:35 to help me as a Coinbase investor, as an owner of a lot of tokens, that's not going to help me in the next five years. And that's a long time in crypto. That's a millennium in crypto. But long term, that does help us. That's a backdrop against which the SEC operates. They know this risk. It's part of the reason why they settled the Waheed case, because the Waheed defendants raised the major questions doctrine in their case. It's a risk. The more the SEC alleges tokens are securities, the more risk they face.
Starting point is 00:30:03 There's a possibility that the district courts could do a Howey analysis on a token or two and say it's not a token. That hurts the SEC's precedent. But long term, I think the real risk is the major questions doctrine coming down. I don't think it's going to stop them altogether, but it probably gives them some incentive to settle at some point, maybe. I don't have a lot of hope for legislative reform in the near term. It's just because Congress is gridlocked. I think the real change will come if the Senate does flip in the next cycle. If it does flip in the next cycle, then if Biden wins re-election,
Starting point is 00:30:41 I think he probably still goes with a different SEC chairman, one a little bit more moderate, maybe one who's willing to go with ETF Bitcoin approvals, even though they're not willing to go with creating a reasonable path to crypto registration for individual tokens. We'll see. Or, of course, if it flips and we could have a Republican chairman, probably the odds are going to be better. Although Trump is not very much of a crypto guy.
Starting point is 00:31:04 He's hard to read. I don't know. He's got this NFT, but he was negative about Bitcoin for a long time. DeSantis has staked out a role as very much a pro-crypto guy early in this campaign in his Twitter announcement. So the politics are- Same with RFK, Vivek, and obviously Francis Suarez. So I think what we have here is a younger generation of candidates generally understanding that they either need to say they're pro-Bitcoin or actually be pro-Bitcoin and the boomers, the opposite. Hold on, Scott. I just want to throw something out there.
Starting point is 00:31:34 I don't think it's the younger generation. So if you look at all the people that have ran into the election race, so let's just quickly go through all the people. So you've got RFK, you've got Ram DeSantis, you've got Mayor Suarez. Those are the people... Vivek and who else? Vivek is too small
Starting point is 00:31:54 though. Vivek, Marianne, I think RFK and DeSantis are the main two. It doesn't matter. I'm just saying if you look at every single one of them, every single one of them have come in on the Bitcoin, with the crypto narrative, which means that they are fighting for the crypto community in the elections. Every single one of them has come out with some kind of stance on Bitcoin. And so you think that they genuinely believe in the technology or is it more of part of the narrative of supporting freedom?
Starting point is 00:32:26 Or is it just them trying to get votes? Well, regardless of what it is, regardless of what it is, they've all come out positive. They've all come out positive for Bitcoin. Whether it's just to swing votes, whether they actually believe it, they're all positive against Bitcoin in a time where the current administration
Starting point is 00:32:40 is negative against Bitcoin. Yeah, but I think the only two people that matter, Ryan, are Biden and Trump, based on the recent polls. And Trump, we don't know how pro-Bitcoin he is. Doesn't seem to... Wasn't RFK, wasn't RFK, it was Biden in the current...
Starting point is 00:32:58 True, true, I think RFK is... No, he is not. That is nonsense. That's a favorability poll that was run separately. It has nothing to do with who's likely to be the next uh candidate or popular yeah that's yeah rfk rfk sitting at below 20 last i checked um i can't remember yeah people yeah rfk's chances are are like you know and listen this is not a statement against him but you know he's running it like you know like
Starting point is 00:33:23 you said six 20 ish and and Biden was in the 40%. It was a favorability poll that people, as usual, are taking out of context and saying that he has a better chance of being the candidate. Neither here nor there, but that's just the facts. Just to go back to JW, I just want to go back to you with a question. Everything you're talking about is just going to lead to a lot of ambiguity for the ecosystem over the next few months and years. Like, I just don't see anything changing in the short term. I'm right in saying that.
Starting point is 00:33:52 And now what does that mean for the ecosystem? Does that mean we're going to be sitting in limbo waiting to see what's going to happen with the SEC's lawsuits? Well, the good thing is the worst case scenario is firms like Coinbase Finance get taken down and then they go after DeFi Next. And then it's going to be hard to find places to trade tokens. You'll be stuck with, I know how to trade peer to peer, but our average new person coming into crypto doesn't know how to do that. And so that means a huge hit to liquidity. But the good news is, even if they're successful in taking down these big crypto institutions, it's going to take a long time for them to win. It'll take years
Starting point is 00:34:27 for them to win that case. That buys us a lot of time hopefully for a change in politics. Look, if you imagine think about the politics of how Gensler got where he is. Liz Warren plays all of her chits with the Biden administration in her endorsing Biden and
Starting point is 00:34:43 jumping out of the race. She plays all of those chits for financial regulatory appointments. That's what she cashed those chits in for, those political chits. That dynamic's not likely to repeat. And so I think it's reasonable to assume the next chairman, the average tenure of an SEC chairman is about three years. The next chairman, even if it's a Democrat, probably going to be more moderate, do some kind of milquetoast thing, kind of like Europe's approach with MICA, probably do some Bitcoin ETF approvals.
Starting point is 00:35:18 We're definitely going to get, I think I'm fair saying that we're definitely going to get a better deal out of the next Democrat than the current Democrat chairman. So that's at least something. I agree, because clearly, as you're saying, Gensler is effectively an Elizabeth Warren plant. Right. I think everyone knows that she's the most powerful Democrat on the finance committee and certainly behind this entire narrative. So even another Democrat, people are losing the fact that there are plenty of pro crypto Democrats. Right. Everyone's made it a partisan thing because they're so loud on both sides. But there's a lot of Democrats that we speak to and know about that are very pro-crypto and are just afraid of Elizabeth Warren or afraid of coming out against the narrative of the party at this exact moment. But JW, what I want to know, and we can dig into that further, but I want to know, you said that maybe this doctrine, the major questions doctrine doesn't really come out until five or six years down the road, but the doctrine itself, doesn't it allow for legislators to step up and basically, outside of the court system, say that this is an overreach and to legislate? So we see the Warren Davidsons, obviously, and the McHenrys and all these people that are very clearly pro-crypto and anti-SEC.
Starting point is 00:36:22 Isn't there room for them right now to take advantage of the major changes doctrine and step in and already say that Gensler's overreaching without it having to go to the Supreme Court? It's a way courts have of interpreting law. So what they've used it so far is to strike down agency efforts to abuse discretion in law. CDC does a rank moratorium. CDC doesn't have any authority in the statute to do that, but they just try to fudge it, try to fit it into what's in the statute. Supreme Court says no. Major questions doctrine is. Congress wanted to give you authority to regulate that major question, national rent law. They would have given it to you in the statute.
Starting point is 00:36:58 They didn't. FDA tries to regulate cigarettes, nicotine as a drug, using their authority to regulate drug safety. And the Supreme Court says, no, that was not the point of the power given you to regulate drug safety. Nicotine is different and cigarettes are different from the pharmaceuticals that you regulate. So here, the argument is that SEC is trying to regulate digital assets that exist entirely on a decentralized ledger, nothing like any of the dynamics of sales of securities previously contemplated. So SEC is abusing its authority to go after this. So I think it's a good argument. I think it's more likely than not to win.
Starting point is 00:37:37 Between now and then, Congress could legislate, which could take that argument out of play. See it in this Congress, maybe next Congress. David, go ahead. I see you have your hand up. So I just want to jump in on what JW is saying to simplify it for people who don't want to talk about legal doctrines per se. I don't see the major doctrine being particularly useful in this situation because God only knows what the crypto landscape is going to look like in five years. Think of what we look like in 2018. Think of what we look like in 2013. Five years is a lifetime. I think what we're going to see is that practically, if crypto increases
Starting point is 00:38:18 as an asset class, and I think with what we're seeing going on with all the big players coming in this week, I mean, I think we have to talk about just the incredibly weird legal timing of Citadel, BlackRock, Fidelity coming in 10 days after, you know, the... I just said that. It's all, yeah. I mean, it's literally all within a week in Deutsche Bank today. So, yeah, we don't have to what's going to happen, I do think if crypto keeps growing in the manner in which it has and these large players, they're going to start. BlackRock is going to start throwing around. Fidelity is going to start throwing around their weight in D.C. to lobby for their benefit. And that will kind of push the major question doctrine aside. JD is 100% right in what he's saying. But because it takes so long, these rich people, these rich companies are going to want to establish barriers and moats that are good for them. And I think that's what we're going to see the evolution be in the next year to two years is how these players, unlike Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini,
Starting point is 00:39:48 the original exchanges with Coin Center and the Blockchain Association, how they were lobbying for perspectives they want. We're now going to see, and I think Scaramucci on one of these town halls said it very succinctly a week or two last week was, you're now going to see billions of dollars inflow with lobbying efforts from BlackRock, from Fidelity, and from the other players who want to do this to make Congress do what they want. And I think that's what we're going to see. Just as a point, whether it's Republicans or Democrats, I do think a Republican administration, even if it's Trump, we're going to go back to the days where they
Starting point is 00:40:30 just leave businesses alone. They're just going to say, kind of do what you want to do. And until there's a real problem, we're not going to get involved. It's going to be the same thing that we're going to see. But if the Republicans retake either more seats in the House, more seats in the Senate or a real problem, we had a real problem. I mean, if we're going to look at ourselves in the face, obviously the crypto industry had a major problem in 2022, right? And so I do think that regime change would certainly maybe put a bias towards better regulation or towards getting more clarity, but I don't think that that ends a crackdown after what we saw with the FTX BlockFi Voyager, etc. So I agree with that. But I remember meeting Rand for the first time in New York.
Starting point is 00:41:33 This has to be like five, six years ago. And he was interviewing me. And I had a class action against Coinbase. And this was like 2015, 2016-ish. And Rand was making fun of me. And he was asking all these questions, which when I was on stage at the conference, I was talking, I got booed off the stage.
Starting point is 00:41:54 I mean, the fact that the transition to where we are now, having survived the first round of crypto exchanges just disappearing overnight into... Your Honor, I can't confirm what the defendant is saying. I can't confirm that I ridiculed him. You know, that's the beauty of the video. The only difference is I was like 100 pounds fatter. But I mean, at the time, I couldn't even get picked up in the press when I was suing Coinbase.
Starting point is 00:42:24 And Coinbase pretty much capitulated to everything that first lawsuit said about what was going on at Coinbase in 2012, 2013. Now, the fact that we have FTX, Voyager, Celsius, which I think is the worst of the worst, you know, is we're cleaning up. But again, I think what you guys all say, this is the beginning, not the end. And this was much needed. But I do think that with the big players coming in, you're going to see a whole new round of lobbying efforts to get clearer regulation
Starting point is 00:42:56 for Main Street institutions on Wall Street to pump a lot of money into this. David, I've got to be specific about what we mean about regulation though. Yes. Yeah. Go ahead, JW. And I've got a question for David right after.
Starting point is 00:43:12 Sorry, JW. Go ahead. Yeah. Just my point is we've got to be specific about what we mean about regulation. Yes. I do think BlackRock coming in, uh, Fidelity coming in, they're going to be a very targeted power push on ETF approvals, on custody issues. But the bigger problem is what do new token listings do?
Starting point is 00:43:35 And I don't think Fidelity or BlackRock care about new token listings, new DeFi dApps, new Layer 1 chains. They don't give a fig about any of that. And that, to me, is the most important thing in crypto. They're just looking to custody the biggest, most established, things that have been around for 10 years. They're not interested in new listings, new offerings.
Starting point is 00:43:55 So that's still a dynamic, I think, going to be governed by that of the McHenry-Thompson bill that I'm still hopeful for. Biggest suits coming in might be good, especially on the Bitcoin side. I worry a little bit about one day the BlackRock ETF becomes BlackRock's validator and then they use the validator power to move towards some ESG nonsense. That's something to keep an eye on.
Starting point is 00:44:16 Yeah, David, let me ask you a question that kind of follows what JW was saying. Just for the audience as well, I've got a question for you. I want to see how many of you have a tinfoil hat on. Do you think this is all coordinated? Do you think that wall street is working with regulators to crush the incumbents crush crypto so they can come in and take a bigger piece and exactly what do you believe is happening do you think they suppress prices or just crack down on binance and coinbase um and time their entry into the ecosystem so i want to go through the comments
Starting point is 00:44:42 to see if we're alone in mentioning those narratives. In the meantime, we forgot to pin it. I'll pin the tweets above. You're going to see pinned tweets where you can email us if you want to come on the show. I think we have sponsors starting tomorrow.
Starting point is 00:44:54 Or if you want to work with our incubators. So my question to David is what happens to the startup ecosystem that JW is touching on? Because the news we're seeing now is all focused on Bitcoin. The news we saw a couple of weeks ago with Binance and Coinbase will harm altcoins, will harm those startups.
Starting point is 00:45:12 So again, before you speak, David, for any startups that want to work with us or on the show, just DM us and I'll pin the tweets above. We prefer emails. Otherwise, David, want to get your thoughts on the startup ecosystem and the statement you make. This is just the beginning. The beginning of what exactly? David?
Starting point is 00:45:31 So I think the answer to that is if you kind of look at Warren Buffett. You know, Warren Buffett never touched technology stocks. And now Apple, when he bought into Apple, is like 75% of his portfolio. I think what we're seeing with BlackRock Fidelity and the others coming in, I think JW is 100% right. They're only going to touch large institutional issues. They're not going to get into the altcoins, token issuance.
Starting point is 00:46:03 They don't care about any of that. I don't think that, I think that is still years away. We in the United States, we do things reactionary. We're not proactive, we're reactionary. So the reactionary here is Bitcoin's been around for going on more than a decade now. Ethereum's getting up there a the year, getting up there a little bit. Those are the things that the government's going to touch first. They're not going to touch the smaller issues. And if you compare it to Wall Street and we talk about frauds, you know, the OTC, the pink sheets, there's just as many frauds on Wall Street and the stock market. It's the larger funds that you're more comfortable talking about trading in. It's why hedge funds can't invest in certain things. But who reads anything that's an
Starting point is 00:46:51 SEC disclosure anymore? Disclaimer, nobody. So I think what you're going to see is the Congress is going to come in and register stuff that people on this call are going to be like, well, that's so 2015. They're not going to deal with the issues that are 2023 issues. We're not going to see that until 2030. Well, that's not good. And then for startups as well, David, what should they do with this uncertainty? I'm going to
Starting point is 00:47:25 defer that to the smarter lawyers who actually... Leave the United States, David, right? Go ahead and say it. I mean, I don't. No one's going to leave the United States every time someone says that. That's not true. They are. No, they're staying in the United States. They're just...
Starting point is 00:47:41 Not enough people. Not enough people. Not enough states where not enough not enough people not enough people in the united states you know it's like the it's like the frog in the boiling water the water just keeps boiling and boiling and getting hotter and hotter and hotter and to be honest like a very very very very small portion of people have left the united states not enough to count not enough to make a difference well ste, Steve McClurg, who was on here earlier, I mean, we had asked him the question point blank. I can't remember literally at this point if it was on Spaces or YouTube. And I said, listen, you're, you know, he's at Valkyrie.
Starting point is 00:48:13 You know, almost every fund in this, everyone running a crypto fund VC in this country. Like, what are people doing? He said either shutting down or leave the United States every single one. I'm not talking about retail. I'm not talking about retail. I'm not talking about a whole bunch of people doing the, oh, if this president is elected, I'm moving to Canada bullshit that we hear in the United States all the time. I'm talking about people who are actually building in this industry saying,
Starting point is 00:48:36 I cannot do it here. I either need to go get a new job or I need to go establish in the British Virgin Islands or wherever or Malta and go run my business elsewhere. Well, you want to talk about conspiracy theories. One that I think I'll put a tinfoil hat on and support is even more than the SEC's case against Coinbase is the SEC's proposed custody rule for crypto. Very expansive. And if you read the rule, there are subjective determinations the SEC can make to say, okay, you're allowed to custody crypto. Technically, they say you can take two paths. You can either custody at a bank or you can custody at a state trust. But they have a laundry list of things before they will designate a state trust as acceptable. They've already said they don't think Coinbase can even custody crypto.
Starting point is 00:49:27 They say, oh, you can just custody a bank. We all know banks are doing choke point 2.0. That's not referenced in the SEC's rule, but we all know it's happening. I think they're trying to shut down VC and hedge fund investment in crypto in the US, which would be a disaster. I've just been- And JW, we've seen, sorry, really quick, Mario. Yeah, JW, we've seen conjecture and this has been sort of my opinion aligning with what you're saying is that the SEC has probably bit off all it can chew against major opponents
Starting point is 00:49:57 here, right? Binance, Ripple, Coinbase, obviously. You don't get much bigger than that and they have limited resources so that the next wave of SEC enforcement actions, a lot believe, will be against those sort of mid-tier and smaller VCs and hedge funds where they can get easy wins because they can't afford to fight back. I mean, do you think that that's a reasonable assumption? I think that's true. And I think they're also coming after DeFi, too. I think if I can go on LinkedIn, I don't know why more people are not building anonymously.
Starting point is 00:50:30 We need to be like Satoshi, building anonymously. If you're a dev in DeFi, you should be anonymous. If I can go on LinkedIn and I can see your name associated with a DeFi project, call the lawyers now. Yeah. Call the lawyers and also hit us up. I've just pinned the tweets above. So I know Rand will kill me if you DM us.
Starting point is 00:50:50 So if you want to work with us, just go to the tweets above. Or tag a project. Don't hit me up. I'm in the United States. Not only this. You've got your DMs blocked. You've got your DMs blocked. But Bruce, put your tinfoil hat on.
Starting point is 00:51:03 What do you think is happening? I want to get your thoughts. You'll probably have the best story out of all of us. Bruce? The establishment is muting. The establishment is muting, Bruce. It's by the people that just
Starting point is 00:51:23 arrested the... They arrested they they charge tate bruce can hear us he's laughing he can hear us oh yeah i can hear you i could question i had a question to you um um yeah putting your tinfoil hat on what do you think is going on like do you really think there's back you know behind the doors um deals happening and you know what could we see next yeah i don't know about behind the behind the scenes i mean there is a lot of uh collaboration and you know there's powerful people with powerful networks you know one thing to keep in mind about i mean there's two things about black rock one is you know i joked when i was running for senate they they said what government agency would you shut down? And I said, BlackRock. And that got a laugh. You know, and they do a lot of, you know, terrible and evil things with ESG and stuff like that. There's a lot of problems. Wouldn't surprise me if they end up a big hodler and end up pushing for some contentious fork or something like that. the negative side of it the positive side of it is uh people shouldn't underestimate how how massive
Starting point is 00:52:25 black rock is and what a huge effect that has on uh you know everything in the world you know they if you took all the bitcoin on planet earth every single bit the entire market cap and piled it in in in in a bunch of addresses it's only five percent of BlackRock's assets under management. So one single company is 20 times larger than Bitcoin. So it's a very, very big deal. And clearly, all of these companies, it's not a conspiracy theory to say that they have ties with government. They're very, very tied in. They're very significant in their lobbying efforts and their legal efforts and everything they do is, you know, kind of another tier up from, you know, really anybody else in this industry. I mean, you know, you had kind of the early first professionals and then you had the first sort of real companies, then you had some public traded companies and so on up the chain. And you have people like
Starting point is 00:53:18 Saylor who've come in more recently who are, you know, a tier above what early Bitcoiners were, but, you know, in terms of wealth and influence. But BlackRock is a whole, whole, whole nother level. So I'm bullish on it overall. I mean, I think it's great. You know, I do predict chaos and problems. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there's big problems around BlackRock, if they come in and, you know, three years from now, they have, you know, 10, $20 billion in Bitcoin and they say, you know, hey, you know, we can make it faster or, you you know some nonsense like that that could that could happen um but you know it is what it is i think you know all all all's fair in love war and bitcoin i guess um by the way did you um sorry go ahead and i've just uh saw a story that i think we should uh bring up and but whoever was just
Starting point is 00:53:59 yeah yeah i was just gonna say had anybody seen there was some conspiracy theory that BlackRock would fork Bitcoin or something to do this? But I stopped. I dismissed it outright when I saw some mention of it. Does anybody know about that? If not, we'll just move on. Yeah, there's a thing mentioned in the prospectus that says BlackRock reserves the right to pick what fork if there is a fork of Bitcoin. And that language is clearly put in there because smart people know the history of Bitcoin and know that that happened. So that did happen. That was a, that was a real thing. And there was, uh, you know, times around the New York agreement and
Starting point is 00:54:33 stuff like that, where there was talk about exchanges, you know, kind of figuring it out. Cause, cause at the end of the day, what is the real Bitcoin? It's what each person decides to run on their own node. Uh, but it, but it, it, it it you know if if all of the big exchanges say this is the real bitcoin you know that's you know that that is can be significant um so in the case of something like this if you did have a contentious fork as we had with the the the block size war and the bitcoin bitcoin cash uh fork you know um one of them has to keep the BTC symbol and sort of be, you know, the real Bitcoin. In this last one, it was pretty overwhelming consensus, you know, in the direction of what is now called BTC. But early on, it wasn't, you know, 100%. You know, betting odds, you know,
Starting point is 00:55:22 wouldn't have said 100% and the market didn't think that. So, you know, anything can happen. But either way, you know, so that's where it came from. But, you know, it wouldn't surprise me at all if there's going to be these fights repeated again. History repeats itself again and again in this space. You're going to have an even bigger scam. The next one will probably be a government, you know, and you're going to have fractional reserves and you're going to have a fork battle. There's going to be a contentious Bitcoin war again. It's just the nature of it. And that's part of Bitcoin. And it's actually a good thing. It should be resistant to these kind of things. And at the end of the day, we all get to vote by, you know, the node that we choose to run or, you know, who we choose to align with. Scott, did you read the story? Yeah,
Starting point is 00:56:03 I just wanted to mention something else, Scott. David, I'll let you jump in because I just saw a story that FTX has paid $120 million in advisor fees between February 1st and April 30th. And I also saw there's updates in Sam Beckman-Fried's case, which I think you've touched on already. But I'm not sure if you saw that story. This number sounds insane. It's not insane if you've been a Voyager creditor like myself or anyone who's a Celsius or creditor or any of these. It's become very clear that Chapter 11 bankruptcy is to the benefit of lawyers and not to the benefit of creditors. When you see how much of that creditor money is being spent on these processes, especially when the assets could have theoretically just been liquidated from day one and not protected the executives. But yeah, I mean, it's a really, really massive number. Actually, Voyager, they're saying that potentially today
Starting point is 00:56:54 could be released. I mean, I can tell you in my personal account that they're saying it's a 35.6 ish percent initial distribution. A lot of that's being held back after because of future lawyers' fees. They've spent a ton on lawyers in this bankruptcy process, obviously. And then on the case that Alameda has against Voyager. So we have all these incestuous cases going back and forth among all of these companies. But what's crazy is that people are realizing it's 35.6% of your balance as of July of last year, which is significantly, that's Bitcoin was at 20,000 and Ethereum was like 13 or 1400. So if you actually do the math, you're getting like 24, 25% back based on what your current balance would be. So it's, I mean, it's, it's absolutely insanity, but these numbers are not surprising at all. And FTX, by the time they're done and get resolution,
Starting point is 00:57:49 this number is going to be like a billion bucks. What do you mean a billion dollars? How much is Voyager's number? I don't know, but I'm saying FTX has a much more complex, I think bankruptcy proceeding going on. It's 120 million from February to April. That doesn't even include November. I don't understand. How much assets do they currently have? How many billion dollars? FTX? We haven't really gotten clarity on that.
Starting point is 00:58:13 Guys, someone else might have the answer. Six or seven billion. Let's go with seven. So you're saying one-seventh of their assets will be spent on this legal case? Maybe not. I mean, maybe it'll be five, six, seven $600,000, $700,000, who knows, right? But it's an astounding percentage of it that ends up going. Is the narrative...
Starting point is 00:58:31 And this is advisor fees. This isn't lawyers, right? This is just advisor fees. This isn't even the lawyers, if I'm reading this correctly as I'm looking at it. Well, it says legal consulting and financial services. So maybe this includes lawyers. Yeah, David, I'm in the wrong business. Me too.
Starting point is 00:58:49 The bankruptcy cases are insane, as Scott's saying. But the value is when FTX collapsed in November, the recovered number was about half of what was expected. Different than Voyager. Yeah. If you consider that Voyager. Yeah. If you consider Voyager could have liquidated and we would have gotten 75, 80 cents on the dollar. And now we're talking about 25.
Starting point is 00:59:13 And the bankruptcy laws are the next set of laws that are going to have to change, but that's a conversation for another day. You know, the story, you know, the story about the lawyer that ends up in heaven. Dave,
Starting point is 00:59:23 I think she told me the story, didn't you? He was only 26, but he billed enough hours to be 90? Exactly. At the gate, they said, oh, you're much younger than we thought. He said, because they cut up his billable hours, they thought he was 90. That's my father's favorite joke. That's why he's retired, and I'm still working for him. So, Scott, did you say that if they liquidated as soon as Voyager went bust,
Starting point is 00:59:51 you would have had 70 cents on the dollar and now you're going to have 20-something? 68 cents on the dollar. Yeah, it would have been 68, 70 on that day. And actually, kind of people forget, but Sam Bankman freed before the actual official buyout they attempted. Actually, that last August or September tried to make a play at Voyager to just liquidate the assets to everyone. But yeah, I mean, basically it would have been 68 or 70 cents. Now it's on the initial distribution, it's 35%. But remember, like I said, that's 35% of your balance at the dead bottom of the market, not at today's prices.
Starting point is 01:00:29 So if you were still holding that Bitcoin and Ethereum that you had on Voyager right now, it's worth 50% more than it was last July. That's fucking insane. The Chapter 11 laws in the US are crazy if these numbers are accurate. Yeah, I've firstly paid the Voyager lawyers and advisors $750. Look, as we wrap up, I've got a question for Ran and Scott, and anyone could jump in on that same question. First, we're going to wrap up, so make sure if you are a project,
Starting point is 01:00:56 hit us up in the pinned tweets above. Let me go with Ran first. Ran. Myra, just as a matter of interest, who's racking up today? Oh, shit. I will never crash the space on you or Scott again. I would never do it again.
Starting point is 01:01:11 I feel like we should let the lawyer conclude. I guess the two of you guys get too... You guys are too... No, no, no, man. The guests are too high-profile to play these games. I would not dare. And especially if the lawyer ends up representing me or another company one day in the next decade or so. profile to play these games. I would not dare. And especially if the lawyer ends up representing
Starting point is 01:01:25 me or another company one day in the next decade or so. I've just got a question. Ran, the news that we're seeing over the last few days, would you say it's more good news or more bad news since Coinbase and Binance? Of course, it's good news. I mean, all this TransFi talk about crypto is, of course, it's good news. And I love the fact that the crypto bros also, we hate to say that BlackRock is coming in and TradFi is coming in. Ultimately, we need someone to buy our bags. And if I were to sell my bags to anyone, I'd love to sell my bags to TradFi.
Starting point is 01:01:58 I think that would just be the happiest day of my life. We want TradFi. You are seeing a lot of these crypto bros saying, oh, well, you know, Bitcoin was supposed to be decentralized. And if BlackRock come in with all their money and start buying up all the Bitcoin and putting it in their trust, and Bitcoin becomes very centralized.
Starting point is 01:02:17 Bullshit. We got into this before the institutions and the TradFi so that they could buy our bags. That's why we got into it earlyfire so that they could buy our bags. That's why we got into it early, so that somebody could buy our bags. And if it's not Tradfire buying our bags, then who are we going to sell our bags to? Okay, so then if this is good news, and I agree with you, what do you think of the market's response to the news? I think Bitcoin has responded really well.
Starting point is 01:02:44 I think Bitcoin is now at the same price that it was before the SEC attacked Binance. The day that the SEC attacked Binance, Bitcoin was trading at $27,000. And Bitcoin is back at $27,000, which means that we are where we started. The problem is the altcoins. The altcoins are really bleeding. Altcoins are 20% and 30% down since then. That's the problem. And that's because you just don't know
Starting point is 01:03:07 which is going to be the next altcoin that's attacked by the SEC and deemed to be a security. Scott, same question two years and then we'll wrap up. And I promise I won't end it. No, I'm being it this time. But same question.
Starting point is 01:03:18 Not doing, no. No, no, I promise you, man. No, this is traumatizing you. I'll give the final word. I wanted to end it on myself today to kind of make it uh more fair because i feel so bad um but yeah i'll i'll say what scott says um the news over the last few days is horrible um you know it just shows wall street and the sec doing what i expected destroying crypto and i think the market is relatively flat
Starting point is 01:03:43 as i see being flat for many years to come and crypto is not dead but crypto is in an ice age so this is what this is these are scott's words you're gonna cut me off so go ahead no no I promise I won't those those would not be my words actually I think that this is all quite bullish and I think that we're seeing like to we've got JW up here right we've got others I think that uh we're finally seeing that these regulators have overreached and there's going to be a lot of pushback so i i think that's a very very positive thing and i think that we're moving in the right direction narrative i don't believe in this push back narrative i think this whole bullshit about pushing back and all these bullshit hearings in
Starting point is 01:04:21 the united states and nothing comes out of just are just a facade. No one is pushing back. He's been appointed by Joe Biden. He's the puppet of Elizabeth Warren. And all these old shenanigans and all these facades that somebody's actually going to push back against the regulators are a bunch of hogwash.
Starting point is 01:04:37 Well, we'll see. That's the beauty of the market. All right, guys. We'll appreciate all being here. We'll see you again tomorrow. I think it's like 10.15 EST. Is that correct, ET? Is that correct it's like 10.15 EST. Is that correct? Is that correct?
Starting point is 01:04:47 Is it 10.15, Scott? I'm not speaking. We'll see you again tomorrow. Otherwise, any project, make sure you check the pinned tweets above. And for the guests, really appreciate you joining. Thanks a lot, everyone.

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