The Wolf Of All Streets - War = Volatility. Bitcoin Going Wild. What’s Next? #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

In this Crypto Town Hall episode, the panel discusses Bitcoin's surprising resilience amid escalating geopolitical tensions and market volatility, with BTC holding steady around $70K while gold and silver saw sharper drops. They explore the decoupling of crypto from traditional risk assets, the monumental regulatory progress on tokenization (SEC/CFTC guidance and Clarity Act momentum), and why price action feels stagnant despite massive behind-the-scenes shifts toward tokenized markets, 24/7 trading, and blockchain efficiency. The conversation highlights MicroStrategy's buying strategy, stablecoin developments, and the broader macro uncertainty driving liquidity flows into crypto.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall every other day here on X10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. I missed last week entirely, Dave. Don't know how the show went. Didn't listen. Totally missed it. So I'm assuming that everything you guys discussed has been blown up 17 times by random tweets in that time anyways. Who knows? I know we didn't have any spider monkeys, so that was good. The spider monkeys were crazy. I'm literally attacked my computer while I was trying to do Macro Monday. The monkeys are very brazen. But, yeah, I mean, maybe I mean just jump in. Obviously, we have war equals volatility, Bitcoin going wild. What's next?

I mean, you know, wild these days is 68 to 71. But it's moving. Oh, sorry. I just found it fascinating that, you know, people say whatever they do. It's like people are trying to recalibrate their narratives. I mean, we saw a weekend where Bitcoin, basically, yawned. I mean, you know, down what, three and a half percent when Trump basically threatened, you know, worldwide energy Armageddon. And then gold dropped dramatically more, silver even more

so. And so Bitcoin being less volatile than them should tell you something. I mean, I think it's a sign of selling exhaustion on the part of Bitcoin, but it is meaningful. And it is meaningful to see what has been happening to, quote, safe havens. I mean, I made the point on Macro Monday, Scott, that, you know, people call something a risk asset because it's a risky asset. You know, and people really need to think about, you know, the definitions of what is a risk asset, what isn't a risk asset, because financial models are always backward looking, right? And, and honestly, the way the world is is very different. I mean, there are certain assets that are tied to productive capacity, no question about it. That's what we think of risk assets. There are

others that are trying to take advantage of or looking or be a hedge against monetary ridiculousness. And I don't even want to say profligacy or others. I literally mean ridiculousness. And gold and Bitcoin are both in the latter camp, but when things are ridiculous, the volatility is the same. And it is, what we saw this weekend was insane in terms of precious metals. And what we saw this weekend in terms of Bitcoin was a yawn. And I didn't have that on my 2026 bingo card. I don't know about you. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that Bitcoin is quote unquote holding up nicely. We discussed this on Macrom Monday this morning. But the amount of uncertainty, I think, is just absurd and the amount of wavering and back and forth and every tweet. And I don't know how anybody

plans for anything at this point in this environment. But yeah. Yeah, but you have to. It's like, You know, in the old days when, you know, the only people who reported on war were CNN and wars were happening live, you still traded markets, right? You know, it's like now everyone's reporting and who the hell knows what's real. And you have, you have a president who sends out posts without even spell checking them. I mean, I don't even know how to, you know, how to react to that. Anyway, I saw Jamie's hand go up and then Alex. Yeah. So, I mean, this is just like, we were live when this thing happened, like 7.44 p.m.

Trump with this 48-hour deadline, 745, the market dumps. You know, then, you know, you come in this morning and pre-market, you got Trump saying, oh, you know, Iran's been talking with us. We've given them a five-day extension. You get then, Iran foreign minister says, yeah, we've not been talking to him. So I don't know what, you know, like, that's total BS. And then Trump doing it again saying, I don't know why they're not, I don't know why they're saying that.

We are doing it. So like it's completely confusing. It seems like the only person that's benefiting is whoever is close enough to Trump to know what he's going to tweet before he tweets it so he can place his short or long. Like it's crazy. I mean, I've seen that that allege. My guess is that's actually not happening. I think he just basically tweets as he stream of consciousness.

But that's besides the point. I think that he gave a little talk to reporters on the sidelines that people, I don't know if everyone saw it. But he basically said that he's not going to tell people who they're talking to. because, you know, the people they're talking to don't want to be killed. And I think that there's a, and that's actually, that was a serious statement. It is entirely possible. Just understand. It is possible.

The, quote, foreign minister in the mouthpieces in Iran who have no real power, I have absolutely no idea who's calling the shots and aren't talking to them. So it is literally that crazy of a situation. Anyway, Alex, you were first and then Carla. Yeah, I just want to capitalize on what you were saying earlier, which was a really, really good point on the whole risk on and risk off markets. And I think the reason why people, everyone is confused is the markets are not behaving in tandem. So when you have a risk off market, for example, bond markets do really, really well.

Gold's supposed to do really, really well as a safe haven. And most of the risky assets like crypto, like stocks, like venture capital, actually crash. But now we're realizing that everything is moving in different directions. And therefore, all of the signals, we have some, you know, tailwinds and headwinds hitting us all at once. And so everyone is confused. Literally everyone, guys. And we talked about this, I think, in previous sessions. But for me, what I'm looking at right now, and I just want to really stress and emphasize what you were saying earlier about how well Bitcoin and crypto and all coins actually held.

Even some of them are rallying. As we know, the whole AI5 sector is actually rallying in the past few weeks. and has performed extremely well during this war. And what I always look at for Bitcoin is the NASDAQ Composite Index. You know, NASDAQ is one of the most correlated to Bitcoin's behavior. And then I love looking at the Russell 2000 for altcoins because they're small and mid-cap stocks. And obviously, alt-coins usually when we speculate on some of these more risky assets, we tend to go with, you know, large, medium and small-cap tokens.

And therefore, I observed exactly which you observed, which is essentially, Dave, Bitcoin and altcoins holding extremely well. And the correlation between the Russell 2000, the NASDAQ and Bitcoin and all coins actually started decoupling. So what we saw was stocks were getting hit really hard. S&P 500, you know, lost over a percent. Russell 2000 lost over 2%. NASDAQ was hit hard at 1.5-ish percent. and Bitcoin barely moved. All coins were actually up.

And so that is to me a very important signal. And the reason why I'm stressing this, Dave, and I really want to extrapolate what you're saying is that my biggest fear in all of this is when I saw AI stocks pumping sectors. And I was thinking, what is going to happen if, you know, stocks, which are risk on assets and risky assets, what's going to happen to crypto if they get obliterated? If we really reach an all-time high, what's going to happen to our portfolio?

And that was my personal biggest fear because I didn't like seeing, especially since 1010, you guys can probably see that Bitcoin and Altcoins started having less and less correlation to, you know, the stock indices. And seeing that really reassured me and really makes me feel like we've hit the bottom. And I'm not saying that we're not going to retrace under 60K. Anything can happen in this space. But I think it's very unlikely that we do. And I'm very, very positive that if we move forward with.

with a full opening of the Strait of Hormuz, especially given today's volatility, that the crypto assets will resume their pump. And I'm seeing a very similar trend to what we saw last here in 2025. So sorry for such a long-winded answer, but I really want to provide context on all the whys that are connected to what you said, Dave. Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely in agreement with large swaths of what you just said. But rather than me pontificate, Carlo, good morning. Good morning, Scott. Welcome back. Thank you, sir. Good morning, Carlo. So everyone is looking for proof of taco. And, you know, I'm not buying it. I'm concerned by the potential manipulation that I'm seeing going on here because I am very pleased with how Bitcoin is responding. And when I look at the only trading market that's open over the weekend, which is crypto, and how it responded to the escalation. dialogue between Trump and Iran, Bitcoin dropped but did not nuke, and that was very promising,

but it was a leading indicator for me of what we could expect on Monday, and that leading indicator suggested that we were on the verge of a Black Monday type of a scenario, and then futures started to come out, and nothing was really moving, which was very surprising to me, which makes you think that maybe this was an insider taco. And then we have this complete turnaround with this five-day pause and Iran is denying the fact that there's negotiations going on. Look, I don't know how to gauge this, but it does make me personally more bullish on Bitcoin

as a hedge against all of this volatility. And the markets are really starving for good news right now. But I tend to agree with our friend Infra. Robert came on the morning finance show and made a pretty compelling case that regardless of what happens here, even if we do reach a complete settlement and a ceasefire, the damage is largely done to the oil market. And that damage has very big rippling effects when it comes to the chip market, when it comes to the fertilizer market.

And it's really concerning to see how. how much volatility is coming based on the president's tweets. And I would just suggest to proceed with extreme caution here because I don't think anyone has any idea what the hell is going on, honestly. And it seems to be they're just making it up. And there's a lot of reactive panic tweeting, which doesn't give me a lot of comfort in market. Carl, are you talking about the people...

Aside from Bitcoin. Carl, are you talking about the people responding or you talk about the president himself? I think the president himself. I mean, I think it's just all over the place. And it's very alarming when you're trying to trade on news like this because you don't have anything to more yourself to. There's no consistent messaging coming out and amping up and escalating and then deescalating instantly. It just is giving the market so many mixed signals. And I think this market is really, really looking for something positive to cling to.

and that generally sets people up for pain, in my opinion, and that's what concerns me. Yeah, I, I, I'm reminded of a movie that actually, I was flipping channels looking between NCAA games this weekend, war games was on. And so the last scene where the Whopper decides, you know, global thermonuclear war is a silly game. The only way to win is not to play. I mean, when you talk about you have to trade these markets. like, well, no, you don't. You don't have to trade anything. You can have investment thesis that are on the long term and opt not to play in markets. I mean, one of the things that I learned a long time ago running quant strategies, it used to be that was completely normal to ignore biotech stocks. Why? Because

biotech stocks wouldn't move normally. They would move based upon knowledge of clinical trials that you had no advantage of. And so if you tried, you would get killed. Now, there are all sorts of other data sources and other ways that quant can trade those things now. But the truth is that sometimes trading doesn't make sense. And so you should zoom out a bit. And, you know, sometimes you can make money at it. If you're faster, for example, at digesting tweets than everybody else, you could get in front of moves. But it's not so obvious. Anyway, Gorov, you've been patient. How are you this morning? I am doing incredibly well this evening. It's 8 p.m. in India. I'm enjoying a place that is not a war, zone, pretty fresh, right, a perspective beyond those in US, of course.

Thanks for asking. Good morning, everyone. So many titles to unlock so far, but I think, I think the, the, the, the pivot of this, of this conversation was established by Scott, which is no matter what you have discussed in the past month, past four weeks, I'm sure it has been blown 17 times over and over. And so anyone sensible enough should stop making claims or doing anything of that sort of predictions or claims. To that point, I'll go back to Alex very quickly. Bro, how are you doing in Dubai?

Long time. Look, the point is, you can keep calling the bottom and we all love doing that. And of all people, I am probably the loudest on this topic. but there are so many moving parts of this from the overall, as calculated, $17 trillion of economic loss of the war, and then the natural resource and gas resource losses and the ripple effect of that, you know, the case that you made, Dave or somebody else on the, on Carlos and his financial podcast made. And then let's not forget an important aspect of this, that. everybody is not trading in the world.

Like, yes, this space is full of people who are trading, who are into finance, and a large part of their wealth is largely put into capital, you know, investments. But the rest of the world is usual, average, the business moves on usual norms, which is, you know, they need logistical solutions, they need to buy stock, they need to travel, stuff like that,

like very, very ground-level realities. And they've all been taking a big blow. And that has a very long-lasting effect. And so what happens is, first of all, that that's creating an economic instability, which is already, you know, a succession of the liquidity withdrawal from the markets, larger markets because of the, you know, tweets of the president and everything else that has been done the last six months. And on the top of that, you know, there are countries, Gulf countries that are selling their resources,

they're gold, they're silver, they're whatever, in order to cope up with whatever is happening. So, and that has its own effect, right? So gold and silver is losing value. Maybe Bitcoin is losing its value. And those who are holding it, those are normal people running normal business, just holding Bitcoin as a means of investment are forced to sell. You know, old coins, holders of old coins are forced to sell. And so these aspects are usually not calculated, but are largely the makers of the market.

And because we bullish on the idea of Bitcoin holding onto 60,000, if this war continues, maybe even for 30,000, it'll be predicting. So holding 60,000, Alex and everybody else, I think you have probably should reconsider, unless you have like very strong cases of buying pressure. Last but not the least, I think about commodities. we live in a very smart world with a lot of back testing data. And so most of these markets have been, I forgot the word, but have been played out. So everybody knew that pre-war scenario commodities would move. And so commodity market was played out and sort of front run before the retail could map it out. And then the oil was obvious.

And so people jumped into oil. And that's the only one speculation or theory, which sort of makes me think that the next whatever of liquidity is left could actually move to crypto and if nothing then Bitcoin. And so that's my overall cover of the scenario, I mean, open for comments. And end of the day, this is just a chat. Yeah. Yeah, morning for us. You've been in here in Bali. Yeah, it's interesting. A couple of points. First of all, I'm annoyed. I got auto-de-leveraged on my oil short position on hyper-liquid. I very rarely trade on hyper-liquid. And all my friends talk about it and say it's great. First time I traded it, I got auto-de-leverage, which is wild. So I'm not a big fan of that. And secondly, I saw the UK still restricts trading of Bitcoin in a whole bunch of places. And then the gold market wipes out $2 trillion in three hours. That's bigger than Bitcoin.

entire market cap. So it's embarrassing that governments are still so late to the game on this stuff. And you can openly very easily trade gold, but not Bitcoin. And I think the most popular asset being traded there to your point is oil right now. I mean, a lot of people are pointing to hyperliquid as like this great example of, you know, people rushing to trade oil and gold and all these things they couldn't trade tokenized on the weekends. but I think, you know, it's the same people that were just trading meme coins and all coins who are found something new to trade in hyperliquid, right? It's like where the action is.

I don't think that, you know, Wall Street is like rushing to hyperliquid on Sunday to trade tokenized oil, but maybe I'm wrong. It's just people in crypto that have some cash left, probably. Yeah, it's exactly right. The same, same crypto speculators. But that's interesting, Dan, that you got auto-de-leveraging there. I hadn't really heard much of that, which, basically means they just closed your winning position, right? Yeah, so I was out of the beach having drinks with a friend, came back, and I was like,

ah, pretty crazy news from Trump, let's have a look at my little oil position. That much are you doing well. And I was like, ah, no positions, why is that? And I had to look around for it. And then it says, all that there gives like a little pop-up, and it literally says, the trade was closed because the other side couldn't meet liquidity. Like, oh, all right. That's something new for me.

I've never been, I mean, I guess we've all heard of the boogeyman of ADL before. So strange to see it. It wasn't a big position by any, any stretch imagination whatsoever. And it stopped me out at a pretty crappy price. So really interesting, to be honest with you. Because everyone was touting it as like, yeah, this is amazing, hyperliquid and Code's Law and all that kind of stuff. And it trades on weekends. And I think it was the most liquid market.

And then to get ADLed. so aggressively. Took me by surprise, for sure. Can I... Still the Wild West. Yeah, go ahead. 80... So you got liquidated when your position was...

You were long or you were short? I was short. I was a short... ...closed out at a price above where it went down to. Yeah. So I got stopped out at 94. It went as low as 80s.

This is Dave. It's the same phenomenon that... From 10. No, I am? happened to the market makers on October 10th, when all of a sudden the market makers who were supposed to be keeping the spread to shut their positions closed.

Yeah, I mean, I just hadn't seen it. I mean, you know, it, for that to happen. Me either. I know I believe you. First time I'm seeing it. I'm not disputing. I tweet about it. My latest tweet is a screenshot of that

with the pop-up notification. That's so weird. What they do with the algorithm is really weird because I do follow you and I didn't see it when I was scrolling through the 4U sec, not for you, the following section. That's just strength. I just tweeted it maybe half an hour ago. I should have seen it. Okay, well, whatever.

Anyway, I think that it is, that's important. So was that ADL was system-wide? That had nothing to do with your amount of collateral then, right? It wasn't, there was nothing to do with my collateral whatsoever. My understanding of it is it blew through, I assume it blew through everybody's collateral that was long. and then probably blew through the insurance fund, and then they just automatically start cutting people's position that are in profit.

I have never seen it before ever. And so when I came back and I was like, why is my position not open? And I poked around a bit. And I was like, oh, wow, this is like genuinely. This is absolutely an auto de-leverage. It says auto-de-leverage.

And then you hover over and it tells you why. And it says, yeah, the other guy couldn't pay. So we stopped you out. So you didn't profit more than, you know, we could afford to lose, which is, you know, really insane for crypto. So I thought we were supposed to be like, you know, life in your own hands, all that kind of stuff. I get it. I obviously understand from a technical point of view, how it works, why it works, etc.

First time I've ever seen anybody, like, post about it actually happening in real life, and it was me, and it happened on a tiny position. Interesting. I think that is, that's going to be a competitive problem for hyperliquid if they can't, they're going to have to tighten that up, but I guess we'll see. Yeah, I had not heard of it either on hyperliquid at all. Obviously, we hear about liquidations or people, you know, potentially getting hit with slippage on cascades, but having a profitable position close while you're at the beach is problematic. Yeah, it's true. I mean, can we talk a little bit about micro strategy, Scott?

Yeah, of course. So, I mean, last week I made the joke on Wednesday and Thursday that I'll bet Micro Strategy is going to print buying Bitcoin at 74 because that's where it was on Tuesday, kind of at its apex. And at this point, I just really wonder how it is that, you know, that there's no easy way to say this. Their trading strategy is being front run and played by every good trader out there. And honestly, if any institution in any other business that was running money on the basis, and by the way, they are, even though they're not, quote, running money legally, but people buy them in order to gain exposure and gain, their critical mass. Their strategy is so sophomoric and so bad that, you know, I've been an

execution consultant on and off for funds and or for, you know, firms basically back through the into the 90s. And in the entire time of almost 30 years of watching trading strategies and helping people do a better job of accumulating and or selling, I've never seen a company so horribly bad at what they're doing. I mean, it really is that pathetic. And it's hard, it's really hard for me to understand it, you know, how a company that is, you know, with so many smart people could be that dumb. And I really, I can't use words that are different than that.

I mean, look, I could have designed on a paper napkin a better strategy than what they're doing. I mean, it's just nuts that every Monday and Tuesday, they, they smash by without any use of any algorithms, with any use of any discretion whatsoever. You know, I just don't understand it. You know, it's basically what that's telling you in this, that all of the things being equal, that high price for Bitcoin for the week will be tomorrow, assuming there's no massive whatever,

and then it'll retrace on Wednesday and Thursday. Now, I hope that doesn't happen again, but that's been the pattern that they've established. People talk about Jane Street, but I think MSTR and what they're doing with the money they're raising through STRC has been that way. someone has to have a comment. But isn't that like a compliance thing, Dave?

Why? Isn't that a compliance thing? Because any smaller strategy. Like they have to smash five a minute they get the money? No. Yeah. No effing way. No way.

No way. They don't. I mean, any smarter strategy would sort of leave a scope of inside a trading where the strategy is only better known to people who are either designing or changing or rather manipulating. the other way around the strategy of buying no it's not no there's no way uh-uh wrong i i i mean just asking no no seriously it's it's wrong because if it were the ATM perhaps if it were just the stuff when they sell their own stock but STRC is a yield right they raise money and they have to pay a yield and

they have total discretion of what to do with that money in order to pay that yield and earn that Bitcoin yield. So it's different, right? You know, I'm not talking about, you know, did they raise, if they're selling, if they, if they, they think that their stock is trading at a high MNAB and they sell it for Bitcoin. Yeah, then absolutely I understand doing it at the same time. I mean, you can still probably do it smarter, but I can understand not sitting in cash and waiting for volatility or using an algorithm or whatever. I can understand that, but not when it's STRC. That I don't understand. Anyway, I think I saw Jamie then, Mark. Is that right? Yeah, so just context more than comment. So just for the audience, it was a thousand thirty one Bitcoin, about 76 million that was

bought today and then, or announced today. And then also strategy announced the 42 billion ATM, 21 billion from MSTR and then 21 billion from STRC. No, they announced the ability, they announced that let's be clear. That's essentially SEC paperwork. I mean, people always overestimate this. That's basically saying they've authorized it, so they don't have to go through extra regulatory hoops when they want to do it. It doesn't mean that $42 billion is coming into the market this week. That's important context for people to understand.

Mark, you're back, man. What happened? We heard I got all the messages, you got banned. I mean, or hacked, sorry, not banned. You got your account back? Sorry. I didn't, I did not get my, I don't. have i didn't have my band cherry popped no only hacked um apparently i bought a red SUV that's the

only thing the hacker put on my thing so very bizarre but yes um i am back back because i still i didn't yeah i haven't gotten it back either no he didn't dave so um he's new oh you know i think oh you have seven followers okay fine i've that's it and hey chrome's chrome's mike too thanks for following me you're number five i i mean i think i just i just hit it yeah i mean i actually just so you know mark i got after seven weeks i still haven't got anything the premium uh account chatted me yesterday and asked me for information uh about stuff um you know it's asking me for ticket numbers and stuff which of course i sent them about six different ticket numbers but you know it's it's it's crazy. The last message I got was, and this is obviously from AI, I'm truly sorry for the

distress this situation with your Dave Weisberger account has caused since the theft on February 1st. With the details you've shared about the immediate email change and subsequent misuse, I'll ensure this is escalated with all the relevant information, including the ticket numbers and a bunch of them. Can you confirm any other ones from their previous submissions to indicate in this review? Basically, it's all they do. And then it'll go silent for a couple weeks because Yeah. I just as an open letter to to to to Elon and Nikita and the people at X, if they want this to be a monetary platform, this absolutely has to be fixed. It can't happen. You can't have identity theft be irreversible. Yeah, you can't have someone to steal your account and then have access to your network.

I was an idiotic for clicking on a link that I'm getting fooled because I, which I almost never, I don't do it. It just looked so real. And it was it was on a Sunday morning. and they're telling me that they were going to ban my account because of copyright misuse if I knew it was bullshit. So I did something in anger and it was dumb and I'll never do it again. But the truth is that a system like this that can allow it to go wrong, it's bad. And considering how important X is, I think, and how I think that product could be very successful, it's really sad that they're ignoring it. It's bizarre, how long it takes.

And I think I'm even paying for the hacker's premium checkmark. on my account. It's just all bizarreo. Exactly. Thank you, Mark. Sorry. No, yeah, thanks for getting me back on. It's good to join.

Miss you. I was just bereft on dealing with it, so I was slow to get back on. But good to be here, guys. The question I had for you on Microstrategy to be very specific. And then I had a comment about why people in crypto, why we're all so awful. why the sentiment is so low. I think there's an undisclosed statistic that, for me, indicates why we're all off, you know, feel awful.

But back to micro strategy. Does, this is for Dave, I guess, or anybody, is it because they're using a lot of OTC? No. No? Okay. So that was my one question. First of all, both, you know, it is,

there's at least three firms that offer automated algorithm trading that can trade versus OTC in a slower, more intelligent way, at least three. Coin routes, Talos, and Coinbase's Tagomi, which is embedded in their platform. He could have access to any of those. This notion that trading OTC is different than trading on exchanges is nonsense. It really is, because when you trade OTC, yes, sometimes you find natural liquidity on the other side, but anybody who is trading on the other side of micro strategy and until they're done gets rolled over. And so that's not easy. You know, in fact, when you start doing that, the market

learns and the OTC market makers push the price up before they get anything bought. So no, it's not, it's just, it's, it's really sophomoric trading. And by the way, it doesn't matter that it's crypto. It doesn't matter that it's Bitcoin. It's any electronic asset or any asset that trades, the last thing you want to do is telegraph to the market what you're doing. And once the market knows what you're doing, it's going to cost you a lot more. It's really that simple. I mean, I'm sorry for getting on my high horse about this, but this is, yeah, it is, it's annoying because, you know, they are likely to be the largest Bitcoin holder, uh, within fairly short order and could own more, you know, including passing Satoshi's wallet, right? You know, that will probably happen, you know, at some point this year. And so having it being done so badly is just, it's not good for the, for the asset. It just isn't. It's not good for a lot of reasons. And if, if you're, it's certainly not good for shareholders. that's why you know and and is it is it a bad look that just makes people on the other side lazy or is it is it does it invite um snipers that you're definitely taking advantage of it that's 100 percent you know they don't have to guess that now look in the long run

will it matter i mean yeah but not that much i mean if he's right in his bet and i think he is in the long run it isn't going to matter it's just annoying in the short run that's all yeah okay anyway that that was my thought. I mean, look, we're seeing the quotes and the tweets on all these tweets is insane and what's going on in the market, right? You know, it's just, I don't even know what to make of it. That's, that's, that's the absolute reality here. You know, I don't understand what all these, what you're seeing, but, you know, greed and fear index, alternative to me is like weird. I've, have you ever seen this before? Right now, coin market cap says it's at 32. which is fear and alternative me, which is where is it?

Oh, damn, I had it up here. I think it was like eight or something. Yeah. It is eight, extreme fear. So something's wrong. I mean, even the greed and fear sentiment indices are wildly divergent, Scott. I mean, have you ever seen anything like that before? We're just all over the map with every piece of data we get from every market everywhere.

It's unbelievable. It really is. It really is crazy. I mean, all I could say is we haven't talked about what should, what we should be talking about. Which is clarity. Yeah, regulation and what's actually happening and whether founders will have a clear path. Of course, Carlos left. And he actually wrote an article I was going to tee him up this morning. But, you know, so be it.

I guess I think he was, his connection was dying. So, you know, probably he's got out of range. But, I mean, no one's talking about this. which is an incredibly important story for crypto founders and for VCs. He's up? Yeah, I just saw him pop up. Do you see him? I saw him pop up.

I'm back. You're there? I'm back. Yeah. Sorry, I switched over to Wi-Fi and it dropped me. I'm back. It's so weird. I don't see you on my screen.

Well, whatever. Anyway, oh, there you are. Okay, now I see you. This platform is fun. In any case, you know, you wrote something this morning. I was going to tee you up in terms of the path forward for clarity. You know, you want a riff? Yeah, so we've made progress.

And, you know, the banks have gotten largely what they wanted out of this deal. And I take the position that be careful what you asked for because I think that even though they've gotten a, it appears they've gotten because we haven't seen the revised markup of the bill, even though it appears they've gotten. even though it appears they've gotten what they wanted, which is no passive yield on stable coins, there is still a backdoor with respect to rewards. So, okay, everyone's going to have to rework their marketing materials to say rewards instead of yield or interest, and that's an easy fix.

But I still think the thing that they were afraid of for community banks is still going to happen because people are going to go where they can get the best return. And I'm putting out a piece today, actually, for my subscribers to the book. If you haven't subscribed, it's in my PIN tweet. But, you know, kind of talking about how I think this is going to probably backfire for banks. But we are back on track. It appears that May is the target now. It needs to get through markup, and we need to see what that marked up bill looks like.

we still have the headwinds with respect to the ethics provisions, of course. We don't know what additional attacks will be made on defy, but it appears for the most part that the debate around how to reconcile what was left as a gap in the Genius Act, the Genius Act simply limited issuers from paying yield and left wide open this conversation of exchanges, Coinbase objected, things stalled. We're back on track because it looks like now clarity has given, quote, clarity to that. I think odds are probably higher than ever that this thing is going to at least advance, but whether it's going to get the sufficient votes because we're bogged down in so many other aspects of the deal.

Also, there was some compromise that was thrown in where community banks want some deregulation as part of this deal. in order to bless it. I'm still stunned how much power banks have here in the conversation. I'm just honestly stunned to see that banks can actually completely hijack the progress of a bill by making these demands. But nevertheless, that's where we're at. I'm seeing a headline that Trump just said that Iran has agreed not to have a nuclear weapon. Can't even vet that in moments. It's going to be huge.

God, it's going to be huge. It's going to be the greatest ever. You never say anything like it before. I mean, oh, come on. You know, whatever. I mean, I think that the point, it's hard to underestimate how much this whole clarity thing is showing the importance of money in politics. I mean, you know, the old expression, they're not even hiding it anymore.

I mean, the fact that banks have a seat at the table when they effectively have been handed by government mandate hundreds of billions of dollars. I mean, it's not even a joke. I mean, it's $580 million or billion dollars in excess interest that they didn't earn from a change that was made in the global re-financial crisis, which the banks caused, by the way, to keep them afloat. And so then you take some of that money and you funnel it back to Congress as bribes, I mean donations, and you wonder why they have a seat at the table.

to me, the whole episode is as pathetic as pathetic can be. But that said, it also shows something else, which is it's impossible in the long run to stop progress. It will be very, very bad for banks that choose not to innovate. I think regional banks, some, will do extraordinarily well. I think the money center banks will see profit margin erosion for sure. I think regional banks can do very well using better technologies to compete with the money center banks,

because effectively what the technology does is it decreases the value of scale. And understanding that, and understanding that a large part of what crypto actually does and stable coins does do, is it eliminates some of that scale benefit. I mean, just think right now of how much power the banks have if they want to let people into the Zell network or not. Or if you have access to the Fed, like think of what Caitlin Long went through trying to get a Fed master account. In a world where you don't need it, the world changes. And so it does matter. And so, you know, I understand the crypto industry giving ground on a lot of stuff.

Of course they should because it won't matter in the end. And I think that's a large part of it. It really is about innovation and seeing how this goes. And I wish any of this surprised me. But, of course, it doesn't. You know, I think that money, people will always fight to keep their competitive advantage. So many banks have, you know, very large, regulatory outreach and legislative outreach departments.

Banks don't do something if they don't have a positive ROI return of investment for that. And that much money on this stuff shouldn't surprise anybody. But, you know, if you're investing in crypto, it should matter, right? You know, there are founders who are going to have certainty. I mean, we saw what Paul Atkins and Mike Selegg said last week, too, right, Carla? Yeah, look, I wanted to add to what you were saying because here's my prediction. and this is kind of a preview of what I'm releasing. I think the banks are going to do the predictable thing here, in my opinion,

which is they're going to double down on depository tokens instead of pure stable coins because that gives them an opportunity to benefit from blockchains, but only in their internal bank-to-bank framework, pass none of the savings onto consumers, and continue to extract fees in their toll booth economy, which has been working for them. And I think that's going to backfire. And with respect to Caitlin Long,

I had Caitlin on a huge roundtable at the very, very beginning of this whole Genius Act conversation. And, you know, it's funny to me that Cracken gets fed wire and Fed Now access, and Custodia Bank gets denied the same privilege by the Third Circuit. And instead of getting access to Fed Wire, Custodia Bank gets a trip to the Supreme Court. So it just doesn't make any sense. It's all over the place. Yeah, I still understand how they didn't get access and Cracken did after all. that maybe it's coming. Well, no, no, it's different, right? You know, Cracket,

applied for something different. They applied for that what it was skinny. I forgot what they called it. Yeah, they went for the Fed Master account. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And what, what Custodia went for was the full Fredmaster account. And the pushback was absurd, of course. I mean, you know, but it was pushback was based on the fact that they're not a a fractional reserve bank, right? And so they were there are two different things. And And it hasn't gone up the food chain. But, you know, my favorite comment from Caitlin from this whole episode was generally the Fed has, you know, and whatever their decision is generally a few pages, you know, it's either yes or no. And if it's no, it's a few pages for a very clear argument that their no was 87 pages because they didn't have any clear arguments.

They just threw everything in there. And that should tell you something about the real fear on the part of the banks is to actually. have real banks that are not fractional reserve that make money on fees, that's the real threat because that requires much less regulation, is much less risky, and that's sort of a rubicon they don't want the world to cross. So that's really where the fight is. It wasn't crypto versus non. It was fractional reserve versus non. I don't know if that answers the question, Scott. Yeah, it does. Yeah. Okay. Alex. On that point, on that point about the Caitlin's non-fractional reserve, does that then strike fear because it's a de-leveraging where people

all of a sudden move their capital into an unlevered animal and then just it's a, it's taking leverage out of the system because credit can't be created? I understand something. I mean, Caitlin and I have this, she calls me a rough party because I think that there would, there will be plenty of leverage in the system from credit along the sides. It doesn't, credit does not have to be in the same place. as banking. It doesn't, right? You know, bankings can go to a fee model. It can do whatever. But yes, there is a fear that that's exactly what would happen. That is the fear.

And, you know, that there will be less lending because there would be less capital available to be lent. I think that there are plenty of companies that are willing to borrow in order to lend and could do so in a, you know, in terms of global capital pools. But that's, that's the argument. It really is about that. Yep. Thanks. Alex. Is it cool if I zoom out a little bit, Dave? It's not entirely connected to stable coin yields and the current banking. Yeah, 100%. We keep being that one with Beth anyway. Yeah, I wanted to look a little bit at the volatility, what's next, and some interesting information that I came across over the weekend that I think is very actionable. And a lot of you listening out there can probably use this. And regardless if we hit the bottom or not,

you know, I'm a huge advocate for dollar cost averaging. I know Scott, you've been preaching that for years and years. But one book that I'm currently reading is called Mastering the Market Cycle. And the reason why I ordered this book is because I was mainly looking at Ray Dalio when it comes to cycles. Obviously, we know that he's contributed a lot as a macro investor. But a lot of my friends, you know, said that Howard Marks, who is the CIO of Oak Tree, a co-founder of Oak Tree also had very interesting contrarian views on how about the cyclicality of financial markets.

And long story short, there's a quote that he said that what was really interesting is when the time comes to buy, you won't want to. And it's a very good quote because I've been telling a lot of friends just activate your dollar cost averaging right now. And they're like, no, no, I'm going to wait until 50. I'm going to wait until 55K per Bitcoin. I say, but what if it doesn't go there? You won't be as smart as you think you are.

And essentially there's one section of mastering the cycle, which hard Marx preaches, which is how to be a contrarian and start buying at a low, at a local low in whatever asset class you're focusing on. And essentially, it's a recipe that he breaks down into five different categories. The first category is bad news, obviously, you know, entering the war. That's definitely not the best news in the world. And when it comes to geopolitically driven volatility, this is the highest volatility we've ever had in crypto based on geopolitical news. So the bad news, we know it's already there. The second category was widespread losses. As you guys can see, every single exchange is cutting people.

And I know, Scott, you covered this in your retreat saying like when people start laying off, especially the big exchanges, that's a really good sign that we're entering or getting close to a low in terms of where we are and price action. And obviously micro strategy, bitmine, they're all struggling, they're all dollar cost averaging, but they're actually at a loss as well. So there are many, many examples that can tell us that widespread losses are already one of the factors. The third factor was faltering corporate revenues, which, you know, Coinbase, Robin Hood, all the reports going out are showing a decrease year on year, month, a month. So that is definitely ticked in terms of the third category. The fourth category to identify a bottom is, declining asset prices. And obviously we're between minus 50 to minus 90% from all-time highs across the spectrum. And the last one was an interesting one that Hardmark said, which was doomsday articles. And those are articles that are really exaggerated. And we can see even, I'm not talking about, you know, the nays here is like Rubini or Peter Schiff or all these guys are always saying that, you know, the financial market is going to go through a reset. Everything's going to zero besides gold or whatever they believe in. Those guys are.

not even worth reading because they're so biased and they're just if you're constantly bearish obviously at one point you will be right uh just just how the way market goes right it's either right or wrong and then you know eventually over time you'll be right but the doomsday articles are very very common i mean even ray dahlia wrote a book called when countries go broke if you go on wall street journal if you go on bloomberg if you go on reuters there's so many articles about world war three how the world's going to, you know, completely end and how financial markets are going once again through a massive reset and everything's going to zero. So anyways, just to share with you guys that, you know, if you want more information, I think Howard Marks is very, very eloquent in his way of explaining how financial markets work. He's been a great contrarian.

He's very good at risk management as well. And I just tried to really look at it and obviously I'm biased. So don't trust me and look at it yourself. But if you look at the five categories, which he calls are the signals to indicating a bottom, I think we pretty much check them all. Sorry, it's a little bit of a tangent, but still connected to what's next and the current volatility we're seeing in the markets and how people are a lot of the market signals. What's interesting, Alex, is that, you know, we talked about this when Bitcoin was hitting 60, like that week, we, I think the title of one of the shows were Bitcoin is dead, you know, hits all time high, you know, mentions. I mean, the fact that it almost perfectly called it is not surprising, really, right?

I mean, am I remembering that right, Scott? Or was it off? We wasn't off by more than a day or two. I know that much. It was very close, for sure. And so, yeah, but that's part of it. I mean, selling exhaustion is what it really boils down to, capitulation. You could pick whatever word you want.

I mean, that's why this weekend was so interesting, because you saw Gold had a capitulation. moment down to 4,100, but it was so quick and bounced the bottom so fast. That's not, capitulation doesn't look like that. Capitulation, except for, you know, when the Fed announced their liquidity bazooka in March of, what was that, 2021. I can't remember anymore. I mean, 2020, March of 2020, the world was ending, right? You know, other than that, capitulation looks like, bam, and then it sits there for a while,

and then gradually starts to recover, and then eventually gain strength. and moves higher. So, you know, gold hasn't had, didn't have a capitulation moment, nearly as much as it had a liquidity flush. And we've seen liquidity flushes in Bitcoin plenty. But Bitcoin did have what looks like a capitulation moment, you know, flush to 60, and then it sat there and started to gradually do better. And it is significantly more constructive from, even from a technical point of view,

much less from a fundamental point of view, where it's very constructive. You know, Carlo, is that an old hand or a new hand? It's a no hand. It's a no hand. He's like out of range again. That was a legacy hand. Yeah, yeah. You can never tell.

I don't know how you can make them go away, not go away. Oh, there it goes. It disappeared finally. But yes, Scott. I mean, that's a large, if you're looking at that, we haven't even talked about the rest of crypto vis-a-vis Bitcoin and Ethereum. I mean, this morning, you know, Tom Lee announced a big buy and Sailor announced a big buy. And so, you know, that's what's keeping those, those two.

up. There are a bunch of other stories here on Crypto Town Hall that we could talk about, but at 1110, I'm reticent to start them. Yeah, I think we can wrap. I think we covered it, and it'll give us some fodder for the next show. Yeah, I think that's fair. Anybody else have final thoughts? Yeah, I think the dollar cost averaging theory on the top of the theory Alex laid out is a super smart method of wealth accumulation. I mean, I mean, of the future, wealth of the future. But the argument that I would have is how long do you want to dollar cost average it or DCA it? And then because, you know, it's not like Bitcoin is at 60,000 today. It has been here for a while. So and the doomsday articles and all the five signs have been

there since Bitcoin 90,000 and maybe even Bitcoin 10,000. And so the world seems to come to an end every time it falls. And then there's always a black spawn at the end of all these cycles. So when do you really want to do that is probably my next question for the next space. Yep. Unless Alex, you would answer that to me on WhatsApp. Yeah, there's that. And then there's a lot to be talked about with regard to individual other assets in the

crypto sphere and what clarity may actually matter. Forget clarity act. what the SEC and CFTC said means. I have a topic you guys might want to pick up also to entice and attract more listeners to the space. Let's do a Tao, Tao, Twitter space. Let's talk about Tao one of these days. Because if you're not observing,

there are subnets that have gone from a $5 million launch to 50 to 100 to 150 and somewhere back to 90, and then there's like many legacies are ranging back in 200s of millions. And there are options markets launched, like native options market launched within Tao subnet ecosystem. So there's a lot like Tao. And I don't know if you guys have actually seen Jason Calcani as recent tweet, which is Tao is better than BTC, whatever.

So that can be a food for thought. If you guys want to decide that as a topic of one of the Twitter spaces, I mean, what else are we doing these days? I mean, yeah. Yeah, I had lost you in there for a minute, yeah. I actually have that as one of my holdings, and it is, am I, I'm pretty close to even. I think, you know, I, I bought some at a stupid price, and I did DCA down when it was doing badly. So actually, I think I'm slightly up on it now, but, you know.

That's why I suggest you to be on my WhatsApp. No, I, I, I, so that I can send you some in. I were trading. I mean, I would be. I mean, right now, I've had, I've had my head down. I'm, I literally have done 16 of 18 chapters and two are in rough form to finish, finish my book that I'm writing. So, I've been focusing my effort on that in addition to being on these spaces. So, you mean, you funneled some ideas into chat, GBT and watched it write the book for you. No. Just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Well, you know, you know what's funny about,

First of all, I don't use chat GPT. I use GROC, so, but it's not about that. And this is a first person account of, of, yeah, they can't write it for you. It can't write it for me. I have to write it all. So what I do is I'll write like 8,000 words and it'll chop it to 2,000 words. And I'll say, well, you left this out and that out and that out. And then now we'll end up with three or four thousand words.

And then I go through and I re-edit the crap out of it. So, but it's helpful because it is a helpful tool for writing. but it can't write for you. It's not writing this for me, no. It can't. It's a good editor if you can find a voice and it's getting better. I've heard 5.4 is a huge leap for that. It is, it's, yeah, it does work well, but I still need to do a lot of work on it afterwards.

But it does, I would say it's at this point helping, probably cutting the time to get things done between that and using, was it, whisper, you know, to be able to dictate as opposed to, to type. You know, I can stream of consciousness and get something out the other end that I can then edit. So it's basically chopping about 75% off the time of writing. So it's cool. But, you know, we'll see. I have a bunch of people here. You know, Scott, you'll be one of them who I'm going to send a draft to and want comments and what back for because it's, you know, it is, it's about, it'll be, right now it's at 80,000 words. It'll probably be a little bit more than that, but not by much. So it's not too long. It's a good weekend reading.

Yeah, I can't wait to read it. All right. Oh, I can't wait to read that. We will be back, I guess, Wednesday, 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Run it back again. We'll see you guys then. Thank you. Bye, everyone.