The Wolf Of All Streets - War Pauses. Crypto Explodes. New Cycle Begins? #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

In today’s Crypto Town Hall, the crew discussed rising oil prices and the Middle East ceasefire, with speculation that Iran may accept stablecoins for Strait of Hormuz tolls — a potential blow to the petrodollar. Markets rallied on short covering across Bitcoin, Ethereum, silver, and stocks, while Bitcoin remains in a 60k–74k range. They highlighted the White House report dismissing bank concerns over stablecoin yields, XRP’s largest institutional surge (25% planning exposure in 2026), Adam Back saying “I’m not Satoshi,” Morgan Stanley’s new Bitcoin ETF, and Binance dominating Q1 2026. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Cryptotown Hall every other weekday here on X, 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard time. Quite a couple days here, Dave. I hope you can hear me. I don't see my mic working. But yeah, I hear you. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can. Yeah, I mean, look, you know, we'll see. I'm watching oil prices at 92. So I guess, I mean, there was a thing on Zerohead saying that, oh, well, just kidding. the straits are still closed. So, you know, who the hell knows? I mean, this is, I already posted a little while ago, people celebrating, you know, Bitcoin and Ethereum and whatever rallying. Understand this was a war short being, you know, unwound very quickly.

And so, you know, when you see gold and silver, you know, I said a while ago, the silver should be more correlated to Bitcoin. And that shouldn't surprise anybody. But when you see a knee-jerk, silver up 4.6%, you know, gold, you know, rallying strongly at the same time as oil is basically inverse to everything else. And all the stock indices are up 3%ish, you know, depending on which one, I guess he has a piece 2.5. I mean, this is not a Bitcoin rally. It's not a crypto rally. This is a let's see where, who is short what and afraid of getting run over, you know,

rally. And so it doesn't necessarily mean more than that. Now, that's said, I still believe that Bitcoin is in a bottoming process where 60 is the bottom of the range. The top of the recent range has been 74. So now we're higher. Okay. But it's not, it's not exciting. What is interesting and actually very interesting is the FT story on, you know, I ran wanting crypto payments. I didn't see it say Bitcoin. But that was assumed by a bunch of people. I don't know what the story is there and I'd be curious if people really know. But, you know, from a crypto perspective, it's just, this is just risk on until we get risk off and who knows, unless actually this does hold and something really good comes of it. I'm curious what people think. But to me,

it's interesting, but not much more than that. What do you think? I mean, for me, I've just given up on trying to figure it out and reacting to, and reacting to headlines, right? Because I, I don't think, I mean, you've said this the entire time. And I think on the larger headlines, it's clear what's going on. But I think in a situation like this where you have so many conflicting headlines, nobody really understands what's happening. Probably better to just sit back and give it a week or two. Yeah. Look, the best analysis that I've seen, the non-hyperbolic ones, understand that there's a few things that are going on here.

I mean, there's, you know, arguably that the arguably, arguably, that the, arguably, the justification for going into the war and starting it all was based on information that turned out to be false that we know with absolute certainty that Iran had a pre-war war gameed-out strategy that if this happens, we're not going to let us get decapitated like Hussein did. And so years ago, they set up this structure of 31 independent military units that have the ability to fire and operate. And making that work in a ceasefire is borderline impossible. I mean, we know this is true.

But what we don't know, and nobody knows, no one on this panel anyway, people maybe in the CIA do or, you know, in the Mossad, or, you know, at the highest levels of government know, is how much, what is the likely civilian government is going to look like when the rubble clears, when the internet gets turned back on in Iran? That's what we don't know. Expecting the fighting to end in a situation where they've actually set themselves up so that the fighting can't end unless all of these military, you know, groups, I don't know the

exact word for it, but they're 31 of them. Yeah. And get brought under control. It isn't going to happen. But what does matter is what happens in the Straits. What does matter is what happens in economic activity and reports of the UAE, you know, attacking and drone attacks on Kuwaiti infrastructure this morning. I mean, well, there's a new one right now, which is it's Saudi Arabia's key east-west oil

pipeline which enables oil exports to bypass the straight of Hormuz was hit by a drone just now. Right. But it's exactly what we're saying. So look, this is unstable. The question is if you're in markets, and this is what people always miss, and it's funny in a way, if you're in more, people say, well, okay, great, why is oil at 92, 93 and didn't run right back up over 100? Well, the answer is because all the shorts just got themselves obliterated. And they're not going to jump to pile back in. And, you know, it's just the fire. It's just that that's just not going to happen.

Right. And so, you know, people, you know, markets react. They know that people are starting to learn, you know, they get gun shy. Longs get gun shy, shorts get gun shy. And so you don't expect the next move to be as big. It doesn't mean that it won't happen. But it won't happen as quickly. Okay, great.

We got hands. I didn't see whether it was Jamie or Kenneth first. I think Jamie was first than Kenneth. It's Jamie. Yeah. Yeah, hey guys. Now, just, I mean, a question. I mean, I saw a post by British Hoddle, like, pretty close after the ceasefire was announced that, that Iran had shot off some missiles.

I also saw a pose from, with Thomas Young, who showed the transponder tracking map, where all the ships were, you know, that maybe they didn't get the memo that the Strait of Hormuzus is. open. They're on the outsides of it. So, I mean, do we even know if this is a real thing or is this just more of marketing? I think that's what I'm saying. I just don't think we could possibly have the information yet. And like, I think they take, this. I think Trump probably made this decision 15 minutes before. So it's not like 15 minutes later, the entire world got the exact memo on what they were supposed to do. I would imagine. That's why I say, like, give it a week or two weeks, right? Because these things kind of take a lot. I can't imagine just like, you don't just open it.

right? I mean, I can't even imagine how many, what did they say, 800 ships are floating around in there, just have been waiting for weeks. So it's going to take time. Yeah. Kenneth, thank you. Hey, guys, nice to meet you. I mean, the Chinese of a phrase called, may you live in interesting times. It's not actually good news. It's seen as bad news rather than good news. And I haven't seen more interesting times. in that definition in a long, long time. What's illuminating to me is not what's happening in the military war stuff, but the relevance of crypto and the fact now that we've yet another decoupling of the petro dollar and that the Straits of Hormuz will be paid for using, I think it's stablecoin, I think it's USDT, and the size and the emergence of the Iranian economy for crypto and crypto assets to remove itself off the regulation swift control layer. That's interesting to me.

Ryan? Yeah, interesting times for sure. I really like that comment. you know everything from you know the straight with oil they also have been highlighting the shortage of helium and they've been also highlighting the shortage of nitrogen-based fertilizers which is greatly or going to greatly affect our food supply and I don't know what the timeline on something like that is but there's a lot of bleak indicators for our economy moving into the future based on this one supply route, which seems very kind of crazy to me.

And I don't know much about this part of the world, and I don't know much about oil or these type of economics. I'm a software nerd. So when people say, like, they shut down the straight of Hermos, I don't necessarily know what that means is that just means they have a blockade where they blow up a ship if it tries to go through or they just physically can stop a ship. I just don't even understand the physics of, you know, how do they shut down a massive shipping lane like that? I don't know if anyone has just specifics for someone that doesn't even know that.

I'm not going to pretend I know the answer to that one personally. Yeah, it's more or less that what's actually happened is the threat of hitting a mine, not knowing where they're where they are or a fast attack ship or a missile, being able to do it has caused. the insurance companies to make it cost prohibitive to go through. So the insurance companies are going to say if you want to go through and you want to be insured, which every single company does, they can't afford it because it's, you know, some huge percentage of the economic value of what's on board. And so that's the effective manner. So the insurance companies won't allow it to go through unless the Iranian say, yeah, okay, fine, this is going to be safe. And so that's really the issue.

it's kind of a strange scenario, but it amounts to the same thing. So you could have like a hundred ships all just rush the straight all at the same time, and it's more of a psychological barrier that it's... No, well, first of all, that doesn't happen because, I mean, just the maritime situation. I mean, but the fact is, is ships going through the straight, the company that owns the ship is not going to let the ship go through the straight if they can't be insured. Gotcha. Okay. That's just the mechanics of what's happening.

But whatever. I mean, it amounts to the same thing. And so, you know, if they pay a toll to Iran and Iran was smart and or whoever designed it in Iran was smart and said they're sharing it with Oman because quite literally there'd be no way under international law for international waters in between two countries to be considered a single country. So, I mean, that, you know, that'll probably help. But whatever, you know, it's like if the answer is a, a does.

dollar a barrel of oil is, you know, it becomes very interesting. It's basically a tariff. And you've, and you heard we were on the spaces last night, Jamie. I forgot who was, was it Jeff Ward, Jamie? I think that was yeah. Yeah, he's great. Talking about, yeah, he had a lot of really good analysis about this. But basically what he said is it'll be, it's basically like a tariff. And the insurance companies, if you're paying the tariff, are probably like, okay, fine. And so that's, that's what's going on. Anyway, I hope that answers the question. I see four hands up. I don't know if their legacy or new or what we or what we have, Scott.

I think, yeah, I don't know if I can't tell if Kenneth was at a new here or Carlo. Yeah, that. Minor legacy. Go to Carlo. Go to Carlo. I have my hand up, but some people haven't yet. Good morning, Scott. Morning, Carla.

So I'm relieved that we have a pause in this thing. I think Trump did what, frankly, he had to do because he is mostly concerned with the markets, and he understood that a prolonged, protracted war would destroy the global markets and our domestic markets. So I'm glad there's a pause here. Again, we're all speculating as to how this is going to play out. But can we pivot to the White House Council on Economic Advisors calling out the banks on their stable coin yield bullshit?

Yeah, I was trying to post. I still don't know how to post stuff in the nest. If you look, I actually wrote a post art this morning with the actual link in it. I don't know if we want to pivot just yet, but the truth is that it was a, this is about as blinding a thing as you see. I mean, basically the White House Council of the Economic Advisors did a full economic write-up and concluded that let's get the, hold on, let's get the, very, very, very specific. I just put an article up in the nest that I just put out that has a link as well.

Here's the money line, Carlo. In short, a yield prohibition would do very little to protect bank lending while foregoing consumer benefits of competitive returns on stable coin holdings. So I basically posted, so riddle me this, why are lawmakers bending the need of the banking lobby? Exactly. Why is this even a debate anymore? I mean, the answer is because they're being paid to do so.

We know that. It's pure, unadulterated, corruption and it's impossible to hide. I mean, the White House putting this out is if it were propaganda, it would be one thing, but it's a fully research economic paper. So, I mean, I don't know. I mean, it's pretty close to impossible to me to believe that, that you could be a lawmaker and actually have a, with your straight face saying, yeah, you want to protect the banking, bank lending. You're protecting George Bailey. Meanwhile, when the reality is, is the economic analysis says it's the opposite. Meanwhile, I'll remind everyone that we're still dealing with backdoor,

channel conversations and the consumer is yet to see what the hell is in this revised draft. But yeah, I agree with you, Dave. It pretty much destroys their case. And if they let this go through, then they are basically ignoring the consumer and bending the need of the banks for an unjustified, grossly exaggerated, fear-mongering reason. I don't say any hands, Dave, him. Well, Kenneth had his hand up before. or more on the macro, but that's okay.

Yeah, I was going to continue talking about the economics and impact of what's happened in the Middle East. The Clarity Act stuff is obviously moving everything on. That is an abomination, of course, and I think it's only a matter of time until that rolls out fully. And we see, you know, logic return to capital markets. Yeah, I mean, it's not about logic. Kenneth, I think it's more that, you know, I've described this before. I mean, having sat on trading desks for, you know, both at two sigma, which is a hedge fund and at, you know, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, et cetera.

I mean, what happens in these situations when geopolitical risk get like this and it is obvious that there is news that could screw up your positions is you have much less liquidity on, you know, in terms of what, where market makers are likely to put positions out. And so you're keeping a very relatively light profile. That means that any move that happens from people who are caught off sides is sharper. And so, and you're getting less and less liquidity the longer this goes on. And that's why you're seeing moves large in things like silver. You know, silver has always been volatile, but obviously it's been, its volatility over the last six months is just, it's historic, right? So you're seeing that.

You know, crypto has had that volatility forever for a, lot of reasons. And it's gone down because of institutions, because the institutions that are in crypto are like long term and they're just kind of shrugging their shoulders on all of this. And when I say in crypto, I mean, most of it is Bitcoin. There's some Ethereum, there's some other bets, a few other other coins. And this being crypto town hall, I do actually want to talk about crypto at some point, but we'll get there. But I think that that's what we're seeing. Right. I mean, Carlo, I assume, you know, I don't know if it was your hand or Ryan's hand or Jamie's hand first. It's so hard to tell. No, I think maybe legacy hand for me. Happy to jump in if we evolve

the conversation. Yeah, legacy hand for me as well. Okay, Jamie. Just just a quick comment. Yeah, to the point of like with Carlo and and also like kind of coupled with the Trump tweets, we had a lot of talk about that obviously yesterday as it related to the potential deadline and whatnot. And, you know, it just seems like, and this is just observational, but it just seems like there's been a purposeful choice to give out more information, either media, tweets, posts or whatnot, to release information regardless if it turned out to be correct or not. It seems like people are okay with knowing what's going on, that it may change. Where before, I think there was a lot of, we didn't know people would kind of get agitated like they weren't in the loop. It's almost

kind of like in conjunction with the, you know, attention span of social media these days. And I just think that that it seems like, and again, this is just observational that it's been a purposeful choice to transition to that, to, you know, with all of these events and all these ongoing bills that aren't getting passed and what could happen. The accuracy of it is less important than just getting it out so people can talk about it. And it just becomes part of the everyday story. I mean, I use the word last night on Bitcoin tonight that people are numb. That, you know, it's, look, it's, to me, it is impossible, literally impossible to view Trump's

tweet in any other way other than outrageous, almost deranged. I mean, it really is. I mean, I don't care if you, and I support the administration for the most part. I just, I, you just, how do you use words like that? But, you know, it's, it's just, it's, it's. There's just no way around it. And so, you know, we, we've been given a choice. We had, you know, four years of no president with, you know, people running the country that,

you know, we have no idea we didn't elect. And now we have a president who is negotiating style and filter is zero. I mean, I've had conversations with individuals that are sane people, like normal, sane people who aren't evil, who aren't bad, who will make comments when they get angry geopolitically saying, We should bomb those people back to the Stone Age, right? That's what happens. Having a president that acts the same way or says the same way is disconcerting. I mean, there's no way around it.

I mean, you have to look at it that way. But I think people are numb to it, right? I mean, I really do. I mean, it's like at a certain point, you know, what do you listen to? You have to follow policy actions and look to see what's actually happening because we have no freaking clue. Does that mean you like it? Of course not. Right?

I mean, I don't know. I mean, you know, Scott, I know you don't want to comment on this because people. That's fine. Oh, I don't hear about that. No one will accuse me of TDS because I generally am supportive of the administration. But I think it's impossible not to shake your head that some of the shit that comes out. That gets said. But, you know, what gets done is a different story, right?

And that's what matters, you know, and we'll see. I mean, I just think that Jamie, I think the world is numb to these various things. And people are trying to figure out what's actually happening. And I will point out that since, you know, Zeroheads came out. and said that, you know, that the ceasefire's already been broken. The oil is already up to 94 and it's still kind of grinding. So we'll see what happens. Okay.

Anybody else want to talk about the Middle East? Yeah, I mean, I, like, I don't care that people yell at me about it. I have my opinions in there what they are what they are. But I also know when my opinions are relatively informed and when I have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about, I don't think right now anybody has any idea what they're talking about. Right. Well, I've been saying that for weeks. I mean, you know, it's the only thing that I'm certain up, and I am absolutely certain of a couple of things.

I have absolutely certain that the printing presses are revving up. And the real question as to timing of it will be how long can the, you know, the rhinos and Democrats block Kevin Warsh from getting a hearing, right? And it's really Tom Tillis who's doing that. I mean, and I know that that sounds awfully obscure and not nearly as interesting as drones hitting. pipelines and war and people, you know, get very hyperbolic about. But honestly, that's the single most important thing for what happens to Bitcoin over the second half of the year is, will Jerome Powell be the Federal Reserve president, you know, Federal Reserve Chair as we move into the midterms? Or will Kevin Warsh actually be allowed to be confirmed? That's the most important

story. I know that that's a hot take. No one will agree with me on that. But frankly, I think that's what matters because once you have the administration in play, then monetary policy can actively be coherent with our treasury policy. Carlo, is that a new hand or is that a legacy hand? No, it's a new hand. Oh, good. You know, you and I briefly debated this yesterday on the Bitcoin afternoon show that I think what we're seeing here is the gradual extraction of the petro dollar system, as we know

it. And I put out a pretty lengthy piece about this, which I think I'm to a degree proven right on because I think we're looking at the Dollar's Third Act here. There is no doubt that whatever comes out on the other side of this ceasefire, the Trump administration has expressed a desire to get out of the region in the way that they've been present. I don't think that the Gulf countries necessarily feel secure anymore under the prior petro dollar system. And I think, and the thesis that I wrote about is that we started with Bretton Woods where the dollar was collateralized by gold, and it got us out of the World War II era, brought in tremendous economic prosperity for the United States. But then that started to crumble, and Nixon pivoted in 1971 to getting off the

gold standard and negotiated with Saudi Arabia, the petro dollar standard, which has been a massive engine for treasury demand and had bought the dollar 50 years of dominance based on it being the dominant currency for oil transactions. We're seeing the dollar becoming more and more marginalized and this war just basically accelerated the marginalization of the dollar as being the predominant oil instrument. And I think stable coins, going back to the stable coin conversation, I think this opens the door for the dollar to have another act. So act one was Bretton Woods. Act two was the Nixon era. Act three is get away from the petro dollar system. If China wants to be the global reserve currency for settling oil, great. And stable coins are probably going to be the new flywheel for

treasury demand. And the fact that the United States seems to be more interested in being a regional power at this point, South America being mostly dollarized already, seems to be a very prudent move. It's not a rapid destruction of the dollar petrol system. I think it's just a slow grind to a new era. And I think there's merit in that thesis because I don't think it's sustainable that we can continue to protect that region and be the global, deserve settlement currency for oil any longer because we're seeing more and more countries distance themselves from treasuries. Yeah, I have comments on that, but I saw Kenneth's hand go up.

And Jamie, Jamie, you were, well, let's go Kenneth because it's on the macro topic. Thanks, guys. I mean, this is passionate to me. The decoupling of the petrol dollar I spoke about earlier on this. But, you know, when you see Russia and China from 2022 conducting over 90% of its oil and resource transactions outside of the US dollar, namely in RMB or rupees, you know you're in trouble because you've got the biggest or one of the biggest oil stations in the world in Russia. selling to the most populous place in the world outside of the petrol dollar. I think your days are limited. And then on top of that, in June 24, Saudi started not renewing its petro dollar agreement that it had called the unbreakable agreement

50 years ago with the US. And now to come back to stable coin, you've got for the first time a sovereign country transacting for oil and gas transportation, at least, outside of US dollars in this toll we're talking about. That's way interesting. That's a new paradigm for currency. That's a new, okay, you know, Bretton Woods no longer Nixon, no longer. In fact, France went looking for their gold from Nixon, and that's when that all started. And now I think we see yet a further emergence of challenges to where the U.S. dollar is going to go.

Yeah, that was certainly not. I say, Carlo, I'm sure you had to follow up on that. Yeah, I 100% agree. I put up the successor piece in the nest, but the original thesis I put out a couple of days ago before when we had this escalation and Trump was going to wipe Iran off the face of the earth, was exactly that thesis. We've been seeing the gradual retreat from the petro dollar system, Saudi Arabia distancing themselves. This war just basically poured kerosene over that and accelerated that. And again, I think Besson may have strategically positioned the Genius Act, the stable coin infrastructure,

as a hedge against this ultimate pivot because we had the same overnight sort of pivot happened when Nixon sent Kissinger to negotiate this deal with Saudi Arabia to get us into the petro dollar system. And I think before any Treasury Secretary, and Dave, you've talked about this, his job is to promote the stability of the dollar, the dominance of the dollar,

and that's what he does all day long. He talks about the dollars, the reserve currency, the dollar's never going to default. The dollar is king. And I think in the back, in the back room, he's putting together that third act of the dollar where it does have an opportunity to maintain that because I have to agree. I don't think the dollar is in a position to maintain that, that position anymore and needs another vehicle for treasury demand. Stable coins make all sense in the world to me because if South America's dollarized and it gives South America quicker, easier access to digital dollars and every digital dollar minted creates a treasury, well, then that alleviates the

stress of having to rely on other nation states to accumulate treasuries, especially over oil, just has been articulated. They're getting away from that. We're kind of out of the process already. Yeah. Dave, can we move on from oil in the Middle East? I mean, well, come on. We went from smelping town hall to Middle Eastern Town Hall.

I would actually like to talk about crypto. I think there's two things that are interesting. I mean, Morgan Stanley is literally launching a Bitcoin ETF today that's, you know, markedly cheaper than any of the other offerings, which is not something Morgan Stanley does, and we're talking about geopolitics, which shows the world right. Look, the narratives, there are three narratives in the world of crypto that matter, right? And in no particular order, there's quantum, there's, you know,

which is not understood by most investors. And the ones who have the biggest amount of money are, their basic opinion is pretty clear that it's solvable. And we're going to make sure that it's solvable and it's non-trivial, you know, not being ignored, et cetera. And I think that your guest this morning when talking about what Nick Carter's saying is, look, it's a narrative. There is a risk.

The risk gets cut in two. I did an interview last night, which I guess will come out on, you know, with Coin Telegraph on this topic. It's not existential is the short answer unless people are, unless the Bitcoin community acts completely irrationally. And so Morgan Stanley is going ahead with doing what they're doing, all the other institutions, all of which have the economic ability to, you know, fix it if it has to get fixed, you know, with regard to it. It wouldn't be what people want to see, but it could happen. The second major narrative is the whole stable coin thing and getting a clarity act done. And there's a lot of misunderstandings out there about what clarity does and doesn't do.

What clarity does specifically is formalize what is who has jurisdiction over what and the path to regulation by enforcement, right? Meaning that regulation by enforcement dies. It becomes, you know, regulation by regulation. Right. And then the third topic is what's actually happening. inside of crypto to understand value. And so, you know, things like the announcement that you heard this morning was that Algorand is changing from a foundation to a for-profit company moving back to the U.S.

is extremely important because they've come to the conclusion that clarity or not, what the CFTC and SEC are doing makes it possible for entrepreneurs. And that's actually a very big piece of news. I mean, I didn't know it until I listened to it. Yeah, I wasn't aware of it until she told me. Yep. Right. Well, isn't that a big deal?

I think so. Yeah. I think it's a huge deal because they don't have to do that and they don't want to reverse that in a year. Right. So it's a huge signal in my mind. And yet, yet all we're talking about and the correlation among assets is such that, you know, as markets are citing are retracing now on more war news, I mean, Bitcoin is going down and whatever. I mean, it is, it is what it is. I mean, when you get into these sorts of days, you get higher correlations.

And so that's all anyone wants to do. But, I mean, there's a lot of topics that could be talked about here. I mean, Kenneth, is that a legacy hand or is that a new hand? No, that's a new hand for two things that you just said there, Dave, which are incredibly interesting to me. And that is, you know, the ultimate value of crypto and where it's going. You know, Beterrand said in January that during his office hours that, you know, crypto is at an inflection point. That inflection point is, you know, do we have real world adoption

sufficient enough to take us out of the sort of gambling crypto and the gaming world, right? That's well documented. And I would bring that in a curious way back to your first point on quantum. You know, 0.4% of world. finance is currently on crypto, stable coin, on chain, whatever way you want to call it. So that means, you know, 99.6% is in tradfi. Quantum is absolutely going to wreck that world. I mean, you know, if you think our crypto wallets are a threat, when you see what's going to happen banking with quantum,

is it not curious that nobody speaks about that? Is it not curious that everyone is looking just at crypto and saying, well, what a big, big, big threat quantum is? You know, QBit technology, you know, Google's willow is a much bigger threat, a huge, huge, huge concern to finance generally. So I think to me it's about adoption and it's about focus.

My point is I find it incredibly curious that the world's press commentary speaks about the threat that quantum is to crypto when it's not looking at the huge big elephant in the room. That I think is relevant. Right. Yeah, so funny enough

I think everyone's got it completely backwards just to the point of I apologize I didn't see the name of the last speaker but crypto is a very small percentage of the financial world market here but you have to remember crypto is the easiest to pivot we could make Bitcoin and these different chains

quantum resistant very very quickly compared to the greater financial system. So the reality is, is crypto is the safe place when quantum rolls out, not the general financial system. The general financial system, you're going to have encryption hacks,

you're going to have people getting into these banking systems, governmental systems, classified systems, like all of the general encryption that can't be easily forked and rolled by an open source community, those are the real attack vectors.

Crypto is actually the easiest one to fork and to roll into a news consensus algorithm. So the reality is I would much rather have all of my assets sitting on a crypto chain that can easily be fixed rather than in a financial system. That's just a sitting duck. Can I just add in here? This is something I have never been concerned about. And the reason is the, look, it's Sutton's law, right? There was a guy named Willie Sutton who used to rob banks and they said, hey, why do you rob banks? And he said, that's where the money is.

Why would you spend any energy on a $1 trillion market when you could attack six multi-tens of trillions of dollars? It's such a nilogical thing here. We have really great security. Let me go hack the most secure. machinery on planet Earth for i lost dairy i did that bank america care you cut out and he was that and he's back and he's back you there

yeah yeah i don't know what happened there but i just don't know why anybody would attack bitcoin with its security knowing they could attack wealth well as far ago bank of america i mean the sieves of these banks their security systems or should be very very easy to hack so i just in the money He's there. I don't know why people get all stuck on this. Crying out loud, both things to run in two-factor authentication. SMS two-factor authentication. Your text to your phone is your bank's security protocol. It's crazy. It's crazy. Oh, my goodness. Don't even get me started on the SMS-2-factor.

It's absolutely insane that we've tied the majority of our security systems to a phone number from a centralized issuer. But to Gary's point, it's propaganda. You know, what's better for an ETF that needs to acquire a huge amount of crypto when the market is running really high? Well, let's create some fud. Let's create some propaganda. Let's push the market down. And then let's start our ETF. I mean, you had me at everything until that.

Well, I'm not a. I'm non-market guy, Dave. I'm a software guy, so I'll sit here and have my conspiracy theories without any evidence. The ETF issue is making more money. They make their money on net asset value. Bitcoin doubles, their revenue doubles. Let's just just call it what it is. I mean, it's just you got the incentives wrong there.

But the acquirers, the funds, yeah, sure. I mean, one could, you know, there's all sorts of things, right, in this. I mean, Bitcoin has a unique weakness in the sense of whether and you pick your number. You know, we know of Satoshi's coins. That's 5% of supply. There's as much as 30% of the supply that hasn't moved or isn't lost or blah, blah, whatever the number is. That is a unique weakness. If quantum is what causes Bitcoin to the Bitcoin community to resolve that weakness once and for all to actually understand what the story is with that, that's a incredibly positive thing.

If in the interim, it will cause panic because any time there's a tweet and people have muscle memory, right? anytime old people old wallets move markets dump because people try to front run the selling now the question is at a certain point the selling's already happened and so you know that that's what goes on with markets but the whole quantum situation is really interesting because the actual cost to build it this is not something that just your garden variety hackers can do I mean this is a really expensive difficult thing to build it's going to be you know has to be near absolute zero. It's not easy. I'm not saying it won't happen, but it's not easy. And then you have to ask yourself, who are they going to be capable of doing it? Well, the risk is not that Google builds quantum computers that can hack Bitcoin because if so, that's actually incredibly positive, in my opinion. The risk is the CCP does, right? You know, that's the risk. And what's their incentive? Well, you know, those are the questions that people have and people worry about it. I think the worries are massively overblown for a variety of reasons, but you kind of understand because

people tend to fight the last war, and the last war is, you know, while the old coins moving is going to cause the price to crash, right? So that makes sense right? Dave, I agree with this last gentleman, though. I think once this bill gets passed or not passed, well, past, I think you'll see this propaganda. This propaganda is coming from the banks, man. They're trying to divert the, uh, throw any amount of risk you can on crypto. People don't understand it. And it would make so much sense that they would try to, you know, shift the eyeballs because they have huge security risk. Oh, yeah. Like the banks have to know, it's just a matter. They wake up every morning going, oh, shit, what happened last night? I guarantee every CEO's like, okay, when's the hack going to happen? I know this for a fact. I don't have to

guess about it because I've been in those meetings. So not necessarily the CEO level. although at 2 Sigma I was, but not at City. I don't know what the current CEO's feeling is, but I can tell you that they know how exposed they are. And there's a reason. People always wonder, probably everyone in this panel has had experience with wire transfers that drive you crazy because of how long sometimes it takes.

Well, the reason, that slowness is for a reason. It's so that they can make sure they don't want things to happen where they feel they're economically exposed. This two-factor authentication stuff, Mike Alfred last night on Bitcoin tonight with Jamie and I went through a very specific, you know, in terms of fact pattern. When he talked about and he's right is that large accounts that people often go and bribe, you know, for thousands of dollars, you can get access to someone's cell phone and then use it to steal potentially millions of dollars.

And so people like to do that. And that is a very serious thing. Scott, you've talked about this before. you use a particular service to stop sim swapping for exactly that reason, right? Yeah, funny. Yeah. I do, and I would love to get deeper into that, but we have a special guest today that planning to have a chat with for 11 o'clock, so we have actually perfect timing.

Cool. Sorry, I didn't know the thing open. No, no, perfect. I'm going to pivot right now. So today we have, His Highness, Sheikh Soud bin Faisal, Kassimi, was a member of the Distinguished Al-Casmi royal family and Sharjah and Russ Al-Kamai. I'm sorry for butchering these United Arab Emirates. He has a strong background in banking and financial technology

is recognized as an experienced entrepreneur and business leader. Served as chairman of several multinational companies and sits on the boards of multiple holding groups. Some of his roles include president of the Commonwealth Union Blockchain Network and leadership positions in companies such as Rice or Capital, Cash Pay, Share's Care App, App, and Best Home's Real Estate. Sheikh Saud was among the earliest adopters of Bitcoin and Blocking, He strongly believes in the digital transformation of the global economy and is committed to building platforms that create value and opportunity worldwide.

Through the Commonwealth Union platform and established network representing 56 countries and connecting more than 2.6 billion people, the aims to foster global collaboration, innovation, and economic growth. So welcome. Thank you for joining us. I think hopefully is still on stage. I think we literally just lost them. Let me invite again.

I see him. Okay, I see listener, but he was there for a moment. Are you able to speak? Oops. It's a wonderful platform, isn't it? I saw the mute go on and off. Can you hear up? Same as we're having some classic technical difficulties.

Perhaps I see him as a listener, so perhaps we can invite him back up. Okay, now I can be able to listener and, yeah, this platform sometimes is crazy. No, still listen there. Maybe advise him to step off the app and come back in. Sometimes I'll try to do that, which I hope is that and all that introducing, you know. Yeah. There's a lot of introducing. Don't, not often that I get to introduce his highness, you know.

So I would love to get him back up on stage. You can introduce me as your highness anytime. I don't know what, Derry? the how you said it every time. I mean, come on. It's going to be a, it's going to be a clap. But do not call me Lord Gary. I was, while we're waiting for our gentleman, I'll tell a funny story.

I was looking at buying a house in England. And the only thing, like the house came with a Lord title. And I walked away from the deal because I'm like, I cannot possibly ever have the name Lord Gary. So you can buy a one square foot plot of land in Scotland and issue those titles to people now. I guess we can keep chatting. Scott, we were talking about sim swapping.

Maybe the ex-engineers should use Anthropic to try to fix their spaces. Well, they could use GROC. It doesn't seem GROC is doing it. They don't even use that. I mean, it's, yeah, it's definitely something going on here, but. I mean, we have

like a 25% hit rate at full technological. access at a given moment. Yeah. Well, you know. And yet their sister company is launching rockets in the space. We want to address what Bitcoin's doing what it's doing right now. Well, it's doing what is.

It's following everything else. It's just correlated, right? Bitcoin and silver are almost doing exactly the same things, right? Isn't it? Yeah, it's exactly. And silver was up like, almost 5%. Now it's up three. It's almost identical, Gary.

It's kind of crazy. But I'm telling you, it's just because, you know, the macro is where is where all the trading is. And the liquidity is just not there because people don't want to put out big bets when the next tweet, the next Trump, the next, next news story is going to screw them. I mean, do you think it's anything different? I mean, you've traded for a long time. I mean, you know, I've sat on more trading desk to know that that's the, I was just, I was a little surprised that, that, look, it held really pretty firmly during the 20 days of insanity. Then it responded positively yesterday. I don't know.

I'm just a little confused as to, and it just may be liquidity flows. But I'm, I'm pleased with the way it's responded. I was hoping it would flush out. I don't know if it's going to do that. I don't think this event is over, so I suspect there's going to be more volatility. Oh, yeah. Right. So I'm going to keep my bids low.

Hopefully, I don't miss a move. I just don't see how Bitcoin goes gets to $80,000 right now in this environment. Well, I could tell. I'll be slightly contrary. Look, I think we're still in a range. I won't be convinced of any difference until it materially grind, starts grinding higher. And I don't think that happens. until there's some resolution here, right?

If it works out that this continues on for the next two, three, four, five weeks, you know, where this continued uncertainty and there's a resolution, then the path to 80 and way beyond is very, very clear, because what you need to get through is the period, is May is generally when, because remember, last year was not an up year. There was not going to be a lot of tax selling to pay taxes from capital gains. But there is a lot of, this is going to be a,

very large tax refund year. But people are going to be spending that on gasoline if this continues to happen, as opposed to spending it on investing. Right? So, you know, a lot of, well, this is, this is, they're going to pay more for gasoline no matter what happens here. Well, sure. For the next four or five months.

Right. But as we go in their company driving season, that becomes very, that's a 50%. Like, they're not going to get away from this dollar 50 that we got hit with in Florida. I was paying $3. and now I'm paying $4.50. That's a big delta, man. Yep. I paid $5.80 the other day for $93.

Yeah. I just paid $8 a dollar yesterday. Where do you live, man? California. Yeah. You're going to be at $10, dude. Well, I am like. I paid $7 to, you know, get a third, a third of charge on my Tesla.

So, you know, I'll tell you, it's it, that, all kidding aside, I mean, the, the, the, the, the cost difference has just skyrocketed, you know, in favor of EVs for now until electricity costs, which inevitably will go much higher from this, you know, catch up if they haven't yet. But it is interesting. We did the same thing here up in New England. It went from about $3 like you, Gary, but we got to about $4, you know, in the course of like three weeks, you know, has been noticeable. I did notice also on the Bitcoin chart.

It looks like it's moved out of the, the, it's sideways range up until, like, at least the next, you know, 74, five day, like you mentioned. I think that's in Target. And then if it continues, 80s in play, and if it certainly continues along this direction, it's certainly been not shy with the war or the conflict. It has not reacted poorly. I think it's been very strong. I agree with Gary on that as well. Hey, by the way, you haven't mentioned the fact that we've tried to get this back up. So I apologize for not to be on top of this for struggling here.

Yeah, no, I know. It's understanding. I don't want to go down and a whole alley. Anyway, Kenneth, I think I saw your hand up. Yeah, no, just very quickly, guys, I really like what we're talking about here in so far as when gas goes up a buck, a buck 50 from where it was, let's say at the beginning of March, in the U.S., that further breaks things because we're talking about a country that's a net exporter. The United States get all the gas it needs and beyond, you know, from its fracking technology, etc. But, you know, where incremental income from tax receipts or whatever goes to spending on a commodity that the United States,

has a glut of because of the petro dollar price of that commodity, that brings not just uncertainty in what's happening next, but fundamental fissures within how the economics works and the questioning of people. Why am I paying all this extra money for something that we have lots of? Yeah, we actually managed to get back on stage with the CWU blockchain account. So welcome. Sorry, we had those technical difficulties. Can you give us a mic check? Is it working there?

Yes. Do you hear me now? Wonderful. And this platform is always such a challenge, but thank you for joining us. How are you doing? I'm doing wonderful. So now we can dive back in where we tried to start about 10 minutes ago. So maybe we can start with this.

What is Commonwealth Union and Commonwealth Union blockchain network and who does it represent? Okay, the Commonwealth Union is a group of 56 countries. It's a union of the group of 56 countries. It is more like trade and economic development, education, cultural exchange, democracy and governance. It's a union of these 56 Commonwealth countries. So that's one part. The blockchain is a vertical of one of the 500 verticals, which is under the Commonwealth Union. So I'm the president of the Commonwealth blockchain vertical, which is the one which is making this token under the blockchain vertical.

I understand. So can you provide us some context as how this search. that Commonwealth and how that came together. I mean, 56 nations, a very impressive number. And obviously, as we said there in the intro, yeah. So it's Commonwealth Uni blockchain is the official vertical of Commonwealth Union, okay, was created to strengthen the digital innovation and financial inclusion across the Commonwealth 56 countries. That's a small explanation, what I can tell you.

Perfect. So how did this come together? Who's backing it? Okay. We have, of course, we have the backing of the Commonwealth Union as the official vertical of the organization, operating under the name of the Commonwealth Union blockchain network. Understood. So maybe we can talk about what the benefits of what benefit the Commonwealth blockchain offers users. And obviously, I guess the next question is why you chose to build it on Solana.

Well, see, we're launching on Solana because it offers a fast execution and low fees and easy access. for a wider range of users. And it's a fair launch because there was no private sale and no presale and no special insider allocation. So everyone enters under the same public condition. And, you know, it's, I think it will be a fair launch from the beginning. This is what I'm focusing on. Perfect.

And so I know we've kind of gone through it very quickly. I mean, what exactly are the products that are being built? You know, what is going to be the specific offering here? But before we get to the kind of conclusion. So just for the audience, the next step is for us to build a real utility through the Commonwealth Union blockchain network, including, of course, the blockchain infrastructure and the exploration of stable coin to support the cross-border payments

and the trade across the 56 countries. So the focus is on practical application and long-term implementation. That's nothing. Is there anything else that you specifically want to add that you want us to know? Well, this is our first token that we launch, and we hope it goes for the best for everyone. Is that being launched literally today, this week? Well, what are the specifics to be launched today? Yes, it will be totally launched today.

Very, very exciting. Well, thank you so much for taking me. the time to speak with us. Is there anything else you want to add before I let you go? Nice talking to you guys. Thank you. Okay. Wonderful. See, easy. Easy. Very, very good and an honor to have you here. So everybody else, I think we wrapped it up. We'll be back, obviously, on Friday at 10, 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time for the next installment of Cryptotown Hall. Thank you, everybody. We will see you then. Bye.