The Wolf Of All Streets - Weekly Recap | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

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Good morning, Mario. How are you? Hello. Check. Alex, you can hear me, right? Yeah, I hear you. How are you, brother? You never know. You never know on any given day if you're just

screaming into the void. This topic today, I love it. It's been fun watching the debate on X, and I love that we have Alex and Iago here. I's been fun watching the debate on X. And I love that we have Alex and I'll go here. I think Dennis Porter is going to be joining. I mean,

how many times have we had a big reveal on the secret identity of Satoshi Nakamoto? Do we believe that HBO has actually in this documentary, if you guys haven't been paying attention, this is a documentary that they're putting out called Money Electric, The Bitcoin Mystery. It's coming out next Wednesday, October 9th. Created by Cullen Hoback, who's the director of Q into the Storm, the docuseries that expose those behind the QAnon conspiracy theory. And the claim or assumption here is that they've identified who satoshi

nakamoto is and of course because we're degenerates we even have predictive markets on polymarket as to who that will be and the uh the leader there and according to galaxy digital's head of research said he heard that the claim says it is len sassaman, early Bitcoin guys like Iago, what's going on here, man? There's a bingo card that you need to complete in order to start the bull market. And the last item on our bingo card is someone says they've identified Satoshi Nakamoto.

So from here, number only goes up. What have we already eliminated on the b bingo card we we have um you know uh dead after the halving going to zero have we had any china fud or have we heard any fud about uh only for criminals and terrorists or have we gotten boiling the oceans yet aren't those all on the bingo card as well no china fud actually it is a common misconception. China FUD is mid bull market. Yes. Okay, so

the bingo card aside, do we believe that they could have possibly found enough evidence to make a legitimate claim? Who did they say it was? The conjecture is that it's Len Sassaman.

There's probably people here who know more about Len Sassaman than me, but it's a bit more left field than the obvious guess of Adam Back, who's heavily featured in the documentary, Al Finney, who obviously passed away. But I think the claim here obviously that len sassaman uh studied under you know bart pernil and david chom but we've had david chom i've had him on my show multiple times the early cryptographers who worked on you know cryptographic money um and sassaman died on july 3rd 2011 uh by suicide and that is very close

obviously to the time apparently that Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared. Yeah, I mean, I will say this is at least a less crazy theory than when Newsweek was just like, we found a Japanese guy named Satoshi Nakamoto. Remember that guy?

He's such a good meme that guy's picture though i know it's really true i mean assassin's not like a crazy theory like people have obviously put it out before i'm curious to see if they have any new actual evidence or if they are just kind of rehashing does it a genuine question like we've moved on from it does it matter if they found out who satoshi more importantly if they found the private keys what percentage supply does he have what do they have i i don't think about it i think if he were still alive and you found him that would potentially be four to five percent uh million coins right so yeah four to five percent more than that of actual supply if you consider lost coins

and you don't consider that million as part of the lost coins. Like Alex said, if in theory this person was alive and had access to those keys, then it's obviously probably more like 8%, 9% of supply. I think the keys are gone. I think they were probably destroyed and will never move or just lost at this point. But we're at a stage now where it doesn't really matter as much as it did. Remember years ago, it was like an existential crisis to Bitcoin. We're at a stage now where it matters very little.

It could have some sort of, obviously, impact on the price. Mario, some of the tweets. Yeah, especially if the person has passed. I think if you somehow conclusively identified satoshi and the person were still alive that would potentially i don't know i guess it would kind of depend but i think especially if they have passed uh i'm trying to find the tweets now though mario but when i first saw this sort of being talked about yesterday like the claims coming from hbo or others or that this

could be such a big and important reveal that it could even impact the election did you guys see this yeah i think it it'll impact everything from the ukraine war the gaza war to the china tensions and the elections yeah actually i have like uh yeah i hypere hyper extended my knee and I think it'll fix that. But maybe it's maybe it's Trump. I hear he invents the best chains, the best, only the best. Only the best. Wouldn't it be amazing if it was Craig Wright after all, though? I mean, come on, come on. That would be a plot twist. But seriously, for them to say that it could be impactful to the election, and then there's, if you watch the, obviously it's a trailer and it's clickbait, but if you watch the trailer and the clickbait there, it sort of says like Satoshi, whoever it was, it alludes to being in cahoots with the government.

And we've seen the claims in the past that, you know, Satoshi Nakamoto is actually the CIA. Guys, I'm not saying any of this is true. I'm just talking about past sort of claims about it. I mean, in what way could HBO or anyone surrounding this documentary say that this is such a big reveal that it could actually have an impact

on the United States election? I mean, somebody please jump across that massive void. If it was the CIA that did it or the NSA, that would likely be pretty impactful to things. That is the one revelation that if you conclusively showed it, that would be a big deal. But no, I mean, they're making a TV show like they want people to watch the TV show. And we're sitting here talking to how many thousands of people about the TV show. It's working. Yeah. Scott, did they

say that the, whoever that guy is, the Len Sassaman, did they say that he was involved with the CIA or the CIA had some sort of involvement along with Len? Did they make that claim? No, I did. The earlier people here can

remind me on the Bitcoin talk at the time, there was some tie to the government. Simon, you got to know that this history, obviously, like wasn't there a conjecture that all of the white paper and all this stuff had been sent to the government or somehow in cahoots there? I don't really remember the exact story satoshi satoshi uh handed over um the uh

the git repo um to his name suddenly escapes me but it'll come to me in a second in any event gavin that's right gavin to gavin and then gavin went and spoke to the cia and then satoshi posted right after that okay guys see ya left yeah see exactly and here mario is the quote a new this is from unusual wales a new hbo documentary claims have cracked the true identity of the pseudonymous pseudonymous creator of bitcoin stosh nakamoto it says that quote its findings will shock the world, even the U.S. election. That's a wild claim. That is clickbait of the century. I mean, it's got to be Trump, right?

It's got to be. I mean, I don't think there's any other way. What if it was Harris? Scott, just to piggyback on what Alex said, you know, I think he made a really, really good point does it really matter now ideally of course if the person is dead that's a good thing as as evil as that may sound and simply because you don't have the reputational risk right because I think people invest and create beliefs not just based on a vision but based on the person behind that vision

right there are multiple narratives and it's good to have someone that has a clean slate that nobody knows of and stays a mystery and just agree with the vision itself but i think that one thing scott for the benefit of the doubt i'd love to see their proof because i think there are a lot of things that can prove against the fact that it's this guy but um the fact that he lived in california in the bay area which happened to be pretty close to where Hal Finney used to live. That kind of makes me feel like there is some sort of possibility. And I remain to see the proof. But, you know, since, you know, Hal Finney was the first guy to actually tweet about Bitcoin, running Bitcoin back in 2009 and was the first person to produce the block, you know, like I always thought it was Hal Finney originally, because if you want to test the block you know like i always thought it was half any originally because if if you want to test the network why wouldn't you test it with yourself or with someone that you

really really trust maybe a family member um and so for those reasons i always thought that halfini was a part of a group of people who created such nakamoto and some of the bitcoin talk forums has british english in there so it feels like there were multiple people using the same account but I think that's the only plausibility is the fact that he died in 2011 Patricio Nakamoto's wallet has never moved which by the way is currently worth around 60 billion dollars which is crazy

but I think there is a very low possibility but I think it's mainly bullshit for viral marketing Yeah I'd agree I think the documentary is obviously clickbait and i think projecting the way that they've um framed it is it's going to be connect you know they're going to want to prove the connection to cia nsa and all that type of thing um which really if you think about it um it's pretty much impossible in today's day and age for someone like the NSA and CIA at this stage

to not know who Satoshi is. But what people are conflating here and putting together, I remember, it's been such a long time since we tackled this because it was years ago. And I think it had a reemergence when Tucker Carlson made an accusation recently. And over time, many people have tried to leverage this like inside information in order to try and get a lot of attention. But, you know, what they're referring to is that much of the open source code or SHA-256 as an algorithm, you know, are open source libraries that were created by, you know, the NSA, CAA, or whoever the division is that created these things. And so they make the leap that because the technology that pretty much everyone is using is using the same encryption means that it was created

by them, which is a kind of a play on words. But if anyone watches the first time I saw this, it was a monetary reformer called Richard Weaver that I before Bitcoin was created, I used to do presentations with. And he gave this YouTube video where he decrypted the name and showed that how the name relates back to intelligence. It's been so long since I've watched that video that I can't even remember it for now. But what Yago said is correct.

It was the original Satoshi handed over the GitHub repo to Gavin Andreessen. And then Gavin Andreessen posted and sent an email to Satoshi saying, look, I'm going to do this presentation for the CIA and discuss Bitcoin. And then that led to Satoshi saying, I'm out. And then also, it was when WikiLeaks started to want to use Bitcoin when it suffered its financial blockade. And Satoshi thought, you know, we're not ready for this type of attention and volume. So anyway, I think the documentary is not going to tell us anything new, but it's going to claim that they figured out it is the CIA. Yeah. It's, it's a bit heartbreaking to see that he's,

I think we've kind of skipped through it. He actually committed suicide as well. How Finney died from natural causes as far as I'm aware. Yeah. No, yeah. It's ALS or something, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. died from natural causes as far as i'm aware yeah no yeah it's als or something right yeah yeah exactly um you know and not natural causes but yes and then to know that he's uh committed suicide was a bit heartbreaking but like i think my question is a bit different because like why is october so boring that we're talking about who satoshi nakamoto is like has the market been that broad for the past? I will say like this week, you know, um, on the show,

you've obviously been, uh, kind of traveling and doing, you know, more political and other things at the moment. So you haven't been around, but we had the consistent conversations about October and seasonality and what price is going to do. Um, and so we beat it to death. Yeah, basically. And so we've like beat and I think everyone's expecting to kind of continue to be till after the election. Yeah.

So we need something to, yeah, I mean, we've kind of beat it to death over the past few days. And, um, so when I saw this, actually,

I thought it would be, and I saw this and then I saw that, uh, Yago was going to be here and I thought Dennis Porter was going to be up and I was like, this would be at least an interesting, like start, uh,

to the show to talk about it. I'm not criticizing. I was trying to be smart and use it as a pivot to kind of get a weekly recap. Obviously, it seems like a criticism, but I'm genuinely curious. Go, Iago. Maybe

if that's okay, I can just close off the conversation on this topic with, I think, one thing which might be relevant. If they do say it's the case I can just close off the conversation on this topic with I think one thing which might be relevant if they do say it's the CIA or NSA or something there's a really interesting parallel which is the Tor network which is the same

network the onion network that people use for private transactions and that was used by the Silk Road was invented and we know this with definitive truth was invented by the u.s navy and the u.s navy invented it in order to have secure communications over the internet for for their own purposes and escaped into the wild um because i mean escaped They released it as open source so that people could tear it apart. So even if it was the case that, you know, Bitcoin had been developed by some government agency like Tor,

it can very, very quickly sort of find its own purpose in life. My two cents, I think two cents. I know that Bitcoin is capable of that, but they're also great at keeping secrets, especially in this age. But also everything, the truth always comes out. Like I've been watching documents, you guys know politics, but the whole Cuban missile crisis, et cetera, all of it. Like the US was planning a false flag attack, et cetera, that could have been seen as a conspiracy, but it all came out in the files. They eventually got declassified, I think, or they got leaked, I think declassified. And then you could see the whole plan by the CIA and whatever other department to create some sort of false flag attack to attack and invade Cuba.

So the reason I'm referring to that is that eventually, I think, if it is a governmental agency, it will come out. I don't think they'll be able to keep it a secret for too long um that's my two cents on it but is it a bad thing uh yeah if it is the government if the government has some sort of involvement or even has uh has custody of that five percent does that really still matter or that could be a pretty pretty significant bombshell like are we decentralized enough where it doesn't matter anymore i mean i think it would be amazing news to discover that the u.s government was secretly sitting on five percent of bitcoin that would be oh yeah don't worry about this whole you know debt thing that we've got going on

we've got it covered who is sitting on five percent of the bitcoin um that would be, I think that would be positive only. To the US government, but as a positive to Bitcoin. I think it would be amazing for Bitcoin. I think if, look, think about it, right? If you're another country and suddenly you discover that the US have very, very intelligently

been accumulating, figuring out a way to make sure that Bitcoin is valuable and to very intelligently been accumulating, figuring out a way to make sure that Bitcoin is valuable and to sit on 5% of it. I think you're forced at that point to start considering whether or not you should be accumulating it as well. So yeah, it would be effectively the US declaring that they've got a massive sovereign wealth fund of Bitcoin. Yeah, if it turns out that the US government does have 1 million Bitcoin, I'd say please return to Thomas Massey's and the Fed bill, restructure your economy and throw out the criminals that have got your government $35 trillion in debt and is trying to turn you into a communistic country. You've got a bloody nice tool there to do that. Dave, you'd agree? Dave.

Yeah, so give a thumbs up. Yeah, I mean, it makes the Luma spill a hell of a lot easier, doesn't it? And Scott, do you mind if I pivot to kind of a quick recap of the week since it's Friday anyway? Yeah, and I can easily do that, actually, because on Fridays, that's what I do on my show. Like, not that we often discuss like what we do on YouTube, but I kind of on Fridays, that's what I do on my show. Not that we often discuss what we do on YouTube, but I kind of on Fridays, I do a thing called the Friday Five, usually with NLW, Nathaniel Whittemore, who wasn't there today. We just sort of identify the most impactful stories of the week and run through them. And actually, I think it was a pretty interesting week. I'll just give the very quick, if you don't mind, and just tell you kind of what I thought the big topics were. There's actually a lot of debate. And as we're sort of talking about Bitcoin this week, and who's Satoshi Nakamoto, but there's actually a lot of sort of institutional takes on where Bitcoin

stands as an asset or in your portfolio. We obviously had the huge report from BlackRock saying that Bitcoin is a risk off asset that I think surprised a lot of people saying that it's good in global uncertainty, a hedge against inflation, government action, sort of the orange pilled Bitcoin narrative, and a lot pointing to how interesting that is. But then we had, you know, Standard Chartered coming out and basically saying it's still a risk on assets, but it's good as a hedge against financial problems like a Silicon Valley bank failure or something. And then surprisingly, JP Morgan jumped in and said geopolitical risk could drive investors

to gold and Bitcoin. So rehashing sort of the digital gold narrative. So that was kind of a story of this week is that all these large institutions were sort of jumping in and taking pretty high conviction positions on what they think Bitcoin is or will be moving forward. We can talk about that in a bit. We obviously have Mike here. I know his take. We have Dave here. I know his take. I'll tell you right now. Bitcoin is an option on its future adopt. Bitcoin is an option on its own future adoption is what Dave Weisberg will tell you. And Mike will tell you that it's a risk on asset that will follow, obviously, a decline in the stock market. Gold will outperform. The two of them actually have a bet as to which of those assets will perform the best gold or Bitcoin.

But let me just finish the review and we can get to that. Obviously, the next story was October, the increasing volatility and how it reacted to sort of we have job numbers today and all these other things. But seasonality and this endless debate over what should happen in October at this point in the cycle, we've talked that to death here. I think maybe one of the biggest stories that we haven't talked about on this show at all was that banks set to use SWIFT or token transactions starting in 2025. We all know that SWIFT is the financial equivalent of horses and chariots versus crypto or modern technology. And they've been actually testing using blockchain. I don't think there's clarity as to what blockchain.

I'm assuming it would be something private, but they will be using blockchain technology in conjunction with Swift starting in 2025 for cross-border transactions between banks. I think this is huge news for adoption of the technology itself. I don't know what it means for any specific asset, but from a technological perspective, seeing Swift say, yes, this is a better way for faster, cheaper, is a huge, I think, move forward for the industry as a whole. Then you had PayPal actually used a stablecoin for the first time, their own stablecoin, P-Y-U-S-D. I'm not going to tell you why I think that that's the

dumbest name for a stablecoin ever, because if you just look at it, it might remind you of another word. But they use it to settle a transaction with Ernst & Young, who has been, of all the big four accounting firms, Ernst & Young has been using blockchain with their clients, very bullish on it, a huge auditor for a lot of the companies, deep believers in this space. Well, PayPal paid an invoice using their own stable coin to Ernst & Young this week. And that was a first. And then I mean, there's so much to unpack when it comes to XRP. We have talked about it here. We went pretty deeply into it with our crack panel of lawyers yesterday. obviously the sec uh is appealing that xrp decision which i think gives a little less clarity as to the uh unregistered security

debate moving forward for all coins and i think also a little more gravitas to the election and the outcome because it's yet another invitation that here, you know, one month before the election, the SEC is still on their warpath. Mike, those are the big stories I had. Yeah, Mary, you want me to answer your question you actually asked, which was the market? Yes. It rallied at the end of September on the expectation that we somehow magically go up in october uh israel attacked uh hezbollah and people took that as the excuse over the weekend or whatever and everything sold off and pretty much everything is right back to the middle absolute middle of the long trading range if you look at xrp that's true that yes scott there's a ton to unpack there but bitcoin trading you know at, between 60 and 61 is more or less the middle.

You know, predictably, as it was falling, the doomsayers came out, started talking about 20,000, 30,000, 40,000, yada, yada, yada. That didn't happen. And we're sitting here waiting for the next catalyst. the jobs report is probably marginally bad, you know, for likelihood of another 50% of the basic plant rate cut until people unpack the actual numbers underneath it, which is why there's been a pretty muted response. Does that answer your question? It does. I hate to say it, but it is that boring.

Mike, anything else on that front? specific question i have for you mike is that the the um the the comments by uh blackrock and by um um what was the other one that mentioned similar comment to jp morgan i think they said something similar about bitcoin does that at least shift your perspective slightly as you see the narrative shift but when you when you have a it's just silly to say bitcoin's um a risk off asset until it proves it and it hasn't done it yet and i just remember when bitcoin futures were first launched in 2017 jp morgan put out a report that they were failing i completely disputed that pointed out they analyzed it improperly you got to use contracts and open interest not dollar value but i want to just tilt over a little bit i wanted to fire up d, and I'm going to do that in a little bit. But first, let's start with Len

Sassman. That's been my bias all along, that it is Len Sassman. He is Satoshi Nakamoto, partly because, unfortunately, I have a close family member who had the same affliction. And I just know exactly how they think and how they did it. So I fully expect it's going to be him. But what happened today is solidifying some of what I'm afraid of, what Bitcoin's way overdue for. And that is the number one force of potential headwind for Bitcoin, I still think, is a bit of a backup in U.S. stock market. Now let's look at the next trade here. We have one month to the next election. All the data you saw print today is more likely that Kamala Harris will have the next female president,

which might be considered bad for risk assets, bad for the stock market, bad for Bitcoin. But it's all tilting that way. It's just the way markets usually work. Do you say all data points that Kamala will be the next president? The data today increased that likely probability. So let's talk about the next trade. The next trade is we do have an election and the next key action point here as of today it was unemployment that's over a next unemployment number is not going to be a big deal that's on november 1st but it's the main thing overhanging the market is how do we get to this election so my point is it her increases probably i think she will be elected but what's

what's happening in the market so you know i wanted polymarket put um kamala about as part of kamala for the first time in weeks and clee paul as well the margin closed to pretty much neck kamala was winning by a few percentage points that's going to another polling website so based on paul's it does like it's probably the best couple of days for trump in a long time yeah the reason isn't good it's because of the helene response but anyone who ever lived in chicago knows how how fired up people get when when politicians mishandle crises uh that's that you've got you've also the one extent the debate last you've got a strike and start having it there's also people because my prediction is Mario, you're cutting in and out, buddy. So I just – let me finish.

I've got to hop off in a minute to do radio. I just want to point out some facts here. That is, we've taken out the next hike. The next cut is going to be 100%. That's only 25 basis points. But that's right after the election. So the market's taking that away. The key thing that's happening is we're seeing a little drift lower in the stock market,

but as it should, we still have an election coming up in the last election did not have a peaceful transferable power. That risk is not priced in the market at all. So I think within the next month to me is an ex-trader, an ex-hedge fund guy who's a cover a lot of traders and trade a lot. To me, that's a trade that's might be putting on at least for a trade. But I just want to fire up Dave with one key point. I do have to hop off. And that is, let's use a point in time, which Dave loves to mess with me, but it's perfect. We have great banter on it. Since February 4th, 2022, Bitcoin

is up about 50% and gold's up about 50%. But at the same're both crushing the s the s&p 500 total return which is only 30 yet commodities are down about 10 so what i see from a commodity standpoint is severe deflationary recessionary trajectories you have to ask yourself what stops that the key thing that could accelerate it is a stock market just having some back and fill what it used to do the key reason i picked that point because that's the thing that changed everything from my view on gold and commodities. That was the day that President Xi and President Putin announced their unlimited friendship. To me, that changed the world in commodities. It changed the world for, I think, the world order. And that's why I picked that point in time. So just firing up, Dave, on points in time. Yeah. Can I make two responses quick,

Mario? Because I don't want to dominate. And I saw Simon had his hand up. I'd like to hear what time. So just firing up Dave on points in time. Yeah, can I make two responses quick, Mario, because I don't want to dominate. And I saw Simon had his hand up. I'd like to hear what he has to say on the other topics. But the simple fact is, you know, if there's no peaceful transfer of power, you think Biden's going to be holding on to power that seems exceedingly unlikely. Frankly, I think if you took a poll right now in the United States, how many people would like him to step aside? Given, you know, what's happened over the last week and his not being there. I think that that's just insane. You know, the only way there isn't a peaceful transfer of power, if there's revolts, is that people, you know, literally people think the election was stolen. And, you know,

we can talk about that. That's there's a very easy way to stop that. And just they just don't want to do it. But let's not go down that rabbit hole. The rabbit hole on the point in time stuff is like, look, you know, Bitcoin over the last year to, you know, one year has outperformed virtually everything. It then sat for eight months, which is exactly the thesis. My thesis has been unchanged, and nothing has changed it. I've said it on this show before, I'll say it again. I don't think we see a whole lot of movement until the back half of this month as we start getting clarity around the election and potentially clarity around what each candidate will do vis-a-vis crypto. I've said it before, Mario. I think that both candidates will be positive for Bitcoin for different reasons.

I think one candidate will be positive for the rest of crypto. And the other would be disastrous, at least in terms of the U.S. And it's that simple. And we have to wait on that news. And we're going to be talking about that for another two or three weeks, and then we'll start getting some clarity. And what I was saying earlier when I was cutting out as well, Dave, is that I talked about the polls, the polling market and the other polls, the Klee polls, whatever it's called, and being the best for Trump in many weeks. And the reasons for that is, I think there's the strike, because remember polls are,

sorry, betting platforms are early indicators, leading indicators. So you've got the, people are betting that these strikes may not be resolved in the next few weeks because in 1977, it took them five, six weeks. And they said-

Well, I thought they were already resolved. They're already resolved. I thought it was already resolved. Yeah, the strikes- Yeah, they suspended it until january so basically they've uh they said they didn't just suspend it they have a they have a tentative deal and they suspect they basically went back to work for at least three months to give themselves the time to finalize the conference but unless something goes wrong that's right but mario it's done the point is the the helene thing is a big deal the meme that is that is coming out i mean mainstream media

is doing everything it can to suppress it but if it is if it is true and it certainly looks like it's from mayorkas's own words the depart head of homeland security but he admitted that the budget that he would have had to help victims of helene and there are many of them it is a absolute disaster for the, I mean, you know, in the, in the true sense of the world is probably since Katrina, the biggest natural disaster the U S has faced. He actually admitted that they spent the money. This is no lie. They spent the money that they would have had to help disaster victims on migrants that they invited to this country. So that is going to be, he didn't hold on, hold on, Dave. He didn't, he didn't say

that. what he said is they've made clear repeatedly that they have the money for this what they are saying is that their budget on storms is tapped out and that there are separate allocations at dhs it's a play by this like by dhs to get more money allocated from Congress for everything they want to do going forward. But he did not say that they don't have money for Helene because of the money spent. Explain $750 a person when the migrants got $5,000 a person. Just explain that. Sure. Because that's one form of spending that they do. That's basically the immediate cash they hand out for emergency expenses right up front.

So if Alex is right. It's not the only form of assistance that FEMA gets. Okay, so that goes exactly with what I was saying. If Alex is right, and I kept saying the word if. If Alex is right, then the Trump bump from people who are pissed off will fade. But at the end of the day, this is going to be put under a microscope over the next month as things get resolved, and it's going to be a big issue. That's all I was saying. But you're right, Alex, you know, look, I absolutely agree with that. Once once we see the full details, and I think that,

like, especially the state government and the feds, to a lesser degree, were completely unprepared for the level of destruction to respond to it all. So I think there's potentially going to be a very big issue there. But I think potentially what people are talking about is the issue today, like around the money and things is not going to be where the biggest failures and issues will come out. And that's the current administration. I asked the question, why did Trump get a bump in polymarket? And I, and it wasn't a very big bump. I mean, it's 1 percent so who cares i think that's why yeah three three percentage points uh okay so whatever and even even bigger on uh yeah but still like in in september 30th so four days ago harris was at 51 trump at 47.6 so um 3.5 but mario i think that's now it's a

0.6 so from 3.5 to 0.6 and I know these changes are very small within the margin of error, but I think the election is so close, so razor thin, that every percentage point counts. Cut. I think, Mario, that's one of the factors, but I think we cannot forget the performance that J.D. Vance gave against Walsh the other day. That is, even CNN agreed that J.D. Vance did a really, really good job.

So that's probably one of the factors, but not making seem more presidential. And the reason we're talking about this before before Scott gets pissed off again is that I think it will have a big, as everyone said, it will have a pretty big impact. As as as Dave said, I'm blaming it on Dave. It will have a pretty big impact five weeks on the elections. But doesn't that mean on that point, Alex, Dave, doesn't't that mean changes in the polling will also have an impact on the market? If Trump is way ahead, I think crypto will respond accordingly. And if Trump makes a mistake or some new documentary comes out and he starts to lag in the polls, then that would show in the markets as well. Is that fair to say?

Is the market that sensitive to whoever is winning? I'm really interested in these elections. I think it depends and i mean i think the other thing is that poly market's moving on this and i think for the reason that dave said it's people trying to predict and get ahead but all of the current polling is still moving from that i've seen at least and if you look at like silver made silver and and some of the other meta analysis is there is still right now moving in Harris's direction, especially in the key swing states.

So if anything, it's looking better for her, which I think is also part of the reason that maybe you have gamblers betting on it on PolyMarket as being good for Trump, but you're not seeing the crypto markets move as though they actually are pricing that Trump is doing. I appreciate that update, because I haven't been looking at the polls as much.

I've been looking more on betting platforms. But you're saying the polling is still moving in Harris' direction because I thought there was a bump when the initial hype, the whole media coverage when she was swapped with Biden, she had a pretty big bump and then started lagging after that. Are you saying it's starting to pick up again in favor of Harris? Yes. The latest polling is moving back in Harris's direction. I think the current spread on the national polling that I saw is like three and a half percent

on the popular vote to her, which is right around where it starts to look better for her, even with the electoral college split. And then importantly like the pennsylvania polling and some of the other key swing states she's basically ahead in pennsylvania wisconsin and michigan in the latest polling and if she holds those three states the odds look very good for her overall like that is probably what it comes down to this year is those three states. I think polymarkets, most of the people who do that, Mario, they're actually getting the information from CBS, from CNN, and some of the pro-democratic parties. You can see it totally because everyone was saying that

Waltz would completely destroy, dismantle GD events in the actual debate when as soon as they actually started going live, the numbers were changing. So a lot of the people, the source of information itself is already biased. So I don't think polymarkets is a good reflection of people in general. I think the tendency is that most people will watch some of the democratic, pro-democratic channels as their key source of information. But I just want to quickly, Mario, go back to JP Morgan to close that loop, because you brought in something that's really, really interesting. And it kind of tags along with what Alex said earlier, as in how do people perceive Bitcoin? Right. Is it a risk on or risk off asset?

And obviously for everyone here, we're all orange built. Right. So we're probably seeing Bitcoin through a particular lens that we see it more as a risk off asset. We see it as a store of value. We see it as an apolitical, borderless, maybe store of value, right? But I think when it comes to the perception that we have, which, by the way, will end up deciding whether Bitcoin is a risk-on and risk-off asset, because we have to reach some sort of general consensus and not just be here in our eco chambers. You know, most of the predictions we've had this week, so JP Morgan was very, very optimistic, stating that oil prices are up. And usually when oil

prices are up within the three last markets, including its all time high, it's usually when there's geopolitical tensions within the Middle East and Russia, right? So that's what peaks oil prices, because when there are wars, there's more consumption of oil within the tanks, within the jets, etc. And especially if it's targeting around the Middle East and Russia, it makes it even worse. And that's why we saw crude oil peak, you know, in 2008. Now, I think one thing that's really interesting, guys, is that gold has barely moved. And Bitcoin, it obviously dropped to $59,000, but then had really good support to bring it back to $61,000. And to me, Mario, that's kind of telling us that a lot of the people are starting to be orange-peeled as well. Obviously, there's still a progression curve and there's still a curve for mass adoption.

But JP Morgan was positive on price action. But JP Morgan was positive on price action. Standard Charter was positive on price action. Larry Fink and Goldman Sachs was positive on price action. And the only people that were against it saying that Bitcoin would fall to $40,000 was Goldman Sachs. So I think that conversation of risk on versus risk off asset is a really interesting one. And I think more and more people are getting orange pilled because we haven't seen as much volatility on what could possibly a world war be a World War Three. Tom, I'd love your comments on this and kind of going into this getting to the minutiae of the different asset classes as well. Yeah, I think that looking over the last few days. Yeah, I mean, it's it's very, very clear. And I think you can dress it up any way you want that Bitcoin is still very much a risk off asset. And we can debate that. But the data does not show that except that in very small sample sizes. Like to me, BlackRock is very obviously talking their book. It's like, you know, they have a Bitcoin ETF. And suddenly Larry thinks like a Bitcoin evangelist. And all of a sudden, it makes sense in portfolios. And all of a sudden, it's a hedge against, you know, World War likes to put it. It just all seems so fake to me. It's not even worth discussing in my view.

But the one thing that I just want to go back to the election piece, because Dave and I were actually debating this when I was chatting with him at MainNet. And I just don't know how anyone could still trust the polls after they were so wrong in 2016 and so wrong in 2020. And that was just a US presidential election. I mean, it's consistently wrong at the House and Senate levels. And there's a distinct democratic bias across these polls, particularly in these swing states, Pennsylvania, Arizona, New Hampshire, West Continent, Nevada, to a lesser extent. And the data bears this out. I mean, this is like reporting from The Economist and, you know, other sort of, quote, unquote, mainstream media outlets. So you're seeing even polling right now, I think it's

very, very likely that Trump is very much ahead. And then you'll say, Okay, well, Tom, then what does that mean? You know, for saying the betting markets that are really true outcome and true reflection of what people are actually doing with their money, you know, chatting with folks on the ground and people who invest in these markets and polymarket and others, a lot of people are actually using these markets as hedges of their crypto exposure and betting, you know, for Harris, because they're saying, okay, at least I can hedge some of my losses on the downside of Harris wins. So I feel like the markets, you know, are actually, you know, biased for Harris there as well, which I think is counterintuitive to most people. That's for Polymarket if it's crypto investors.

No, not just Polymarket. It's not just Polymarket, right? Now it's Drift. So you can look at Drift now expanded it, same exact bias. You could talk about Predictit, but that has $850 maximums for betting. So I wouldn't even consider that like a good signal. You know, you need the uncapped markets to actually truly reflect these things. And those are just, I don't think those are really true reflections because of the hedging that's going on. Alex.

Yeah, I think it's the degree to which 2016 and 2020 were off are overstated, especially because we know where they were off. And there's a lot of correction on it now. And if you look also at 18, especially 22, they actually, if anything, were off slightly in the other direction. Trump is definitely a little bit of a wild card that throws polling. But the way the models account for that have gotten much more sophisticated than they were and then the other thing with 16 in particular is that the again part of the issue is so hard is just how

tight the margins come down to on these elections come down to 15 000 p 10 15 20 000 people in three or four states as being like the entire deterministic of who wins the election. Um, and like I said, this year that's going to almost certainly be Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania and everything else kind of like doesn't matter. So it's very easy for even a, you know, quarter or half percentage point, uh uh error in polling to make it seem like this huge swing when they're actually pretty close but like for instance there there's almost no world in which like trump wins by a landslide he is very unlikely to even win the popular vote even if he wins the electoral college on it and again if you look at like even Polymark and stuff, it's pricing that at like, I think they put him at 25% or 30% odds to win the popular vote.

Yeah, no, I agree. And again, the last question for you, Alex, is how important is it for crypto who wins? I think you were the one that said it's both candidates are good ones. Here's you Dave, one's good for Bitcoin, one's good for – Trump is good for crypto in general. Would you agree with that statement, Alex? Yeah, I think so. I think the biggest issue right now is that all markets hate uncertainty, right? And so I think, you know, while Trump would obviously be better for crypto than Harris would, I don't think crypto dies if Harris is is in office i think it will continue to push through and you know it's a resilient group of people like we'll deal with whatever's thrown at us

um but the problem is right now that the uncertainty means nobody like wants to make a move until they know what the situation in front of them is donish yeah i just want to oh sorry i just want to push back on a nuance here. I don't think crypto dies, not even called slightly. I think crypto innovation in the US dies. If we have four more years of Operation Chokepoint, four more years of the SEC, which just appealed two days ago, and if Harris was going to pivot, she could have stopped that

or at least said something about it. But the reality is she didn't. So you have to assume that all exchanges, that the only way crypto will be allowed to trade in the United States is if crypto could trade on the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ or CME groups, where that Coinbase is forced to become a national securities exchange. I think you need to assume that. And that is a massive difference. It means no tokens could be launched until they've been seasoned for over a year with accredited investors, yada, yada, yada. So what does that mean? That means that all the innovation happens in Dubai,

Singapore, Hong Kong, London, you know, etc, etc, etc. That's my point, not that crypto dies, but it does mean that half the world's investable assets will not be available to things other than Bitcoin ether, that is fairly clear to me to be the issue here. And the fact that there are people who are deluding themselves saying the opposite, happy to do a deep dive space is just on that issue, because there's plenty of reason to believe that I'm right. Dennis, how are you? Good, man. Congratulations on the announcement, by the way.

Thank you. I appreciate you. Thanks again. I was going to say, I have to say something about the employment data today. I'm sure you all were watching the jobs report. I'm not sure if you guys discussed it, but why did we do a 50 basis point cut again? Jobs came in better than expected. 254,000 non-farm payroll jobs versus 150,000 expected. Unemployment dropped to 4.1%. Wages are up 4%. We are in, so to kind of go back to who wins and why it matters, guys, we're back, in my opinion, again, I've been saying unemployment is not the concern the recession should not really be as much of a concern the concern should be inflation and what happens when wages go up

inflation follows it's just there is no such thing as a bottoms-up economy that's not a thing and so long story short the best thing that can happen to crypto is a regime that wants to spend more money. And last I checked, it was the Democrats. So really, inflation is great for crypto. There's nothing that makes crypto go up faster than inflation. It's a good leverage for crypto. And I think that right now, yes, regulation has been challenging, but do they'll capitulate? They're gonna, they've been capitulating. She now she started by saying, well, you know, we want them here, then she's gonna say, Well, yes, we need them here. And then before you know it, it'll be done. I just think that crypto wins big in a democratic

establishment situation, because inflation will continue to skyrocket. That's interesting. Thomas, can I just ask two questions? I just want to ask two questions. I'm sorry I'm playing like host, but I don't know the answers. What percentage of those 250,000 jobs were government versus private and part time versus full time? Do we have that kind of breakdown yet? Yes, I have to pull it up because it's actually in the tweet that I put out,

but, and I don't remember, but let me, let me pull it up and I'll, I'll give you the answer to it. Here it is. So private payrolls were up 223,000 versus forecast at 125. Private payrolls were a hundred thousand above expectations. They also revised up the past months to the past months. They also revised up the past two months. That's correct. Yeah.

So you think that the 5050 basis point cut was a mistake, Danish? I know I do. But I know that Joe and others may disagree. I think they made a huge mistake. This is going to be like transitory inflation type mistake. This is I think they overblew unemployment opening. I think they overblew recession risk. I think they over GDP is still strong, guys. Like, what are we doing? What is this? And I'm telling you, this is all about the boomers and inflating their assets. It's all about giving away handouts.

It's all of the bad stuff. It's all about wars. It's all about printing money. This has nothing to do with economics anymore. This is a compromise Fed. And I don't talk... Joe, you disagree, Joe? People know me. This is a compromise.

Yeah, I do. But is, is Donald still speaking? Yeah, it's just cutting out for him. So I thought I'd jump in and give you the mic. Yeah. I mean, look, so, so this is, this comes from a, in my view, a fundamental misunderstanding of what interest rate policy is. Interest rate policy is supposed to be set at the natural rate of inflation, right?

And what fed the fed does is they they'll take it above the neutral rate when they think the economy is running too hot. They'll take it below when they think it's running soft. So the question is, where is the natural rate? Where is the neutral rate? And if you don't start with where is the neutral rate, where is the natural rate, then you don't have a good framework for understanding interest rate policy from the Fed. The Fed has said that they believe that the current rates in the past year have been restrictive, that they were sufficiently restrictive. And they saw that citing slowdowns in job creation and also citing slowdowns in the economy generally, particularly certain sectors, cyclical sectors that were struggling. Nothing that said recession,

right? And this is where the doomers have been wrong for two years now, and they will continue to be wrong. So the question is, have they, interest rate policy, has it come into better alignment with inflation data? And the inflation data has shown that it's cratered. If you take in some certain elements, subsuper core, right, they're closer to two than they are to 3%. You take it from a level where we were running close to 8%. Okay. So they were never saying that we're going to wait to get back to 2% to start cutting. Powell said that for a year. He said that we don't have to get back to 2%. We can be on a long-term trend towards 2%. But he also said that he thinks that the inflation data can run hotter this decade. And frankly, that's a good thing given the debt

levels that we currently have where the inflation rate is. So the question becomes, knowing that there's a lag effect, knowing that there were signs of slowdown, knowing that the labor market had signs of cooling off, it's not as hot as it was last year, that is undisputed by the data, but still knowing that it's not a recession, what do you do in that dynamic? Do you leave rates here? Do you jack them up further, knowing that they're probably not going to have the effect given the actual fiscal stimulus that is coming into the marketplace with higher interest rates in the form of money market accounts that subsidize people's standard of living? And the models they show, the econometric models, which they could be wrong, right? We think that's an interesting conversation. But

the econometric models show that they can actually lower interest rates here and actually help reduce inflation. And there's data out of the University of Pennsylvania that show that, I mean, you have to look at the high interest rates, which are blowing out the deficit, as having a factor on the inflation argument. With these types of debt loads,

when people pile into money markets and get 5% yield for nothing, for risk-free, that is subsidizing and actually making the inflation problem worse. So from my standpoint, I think that cutting 50 basis points and leaving it here is a solid move. I don't think that they should cut further. There's some betting market pricing now based on the jobs data that they might not. So that's interesting. What are they betting? What's the likelihood of that kind of cut versus not cut so it's not 25 i believe yeah yeah so you're right right no that's right so so the question is like

okay everybody keeps thinking this framework where a cut means doom is on the horizon when the reality is a cut is an adjustment to respond to some softness it does not mean recession and that's how you stick the soft landing guys and that's that's what they're trying to do so so let me kind of give a different perspective because they haven't stopped the spending so spending is inflationary by i don't think I have to explain this to anybody, but government fiscal spending is inflationary. So we have this crazy inflationary situation. The reason why it looks like things have been steady is because we've had a restrictive monetary environment.

You can't look at it in a vacuum. Yes, it is a restrictive rate, but Joe, forget about housing because I know housing is a very complex issue. OER sucks. We know all of this other stuff. Also, we're not sure if the lock-in is easy to break. So I get that housing is complicated. But unemployment, we're at 4.1%.

It's back down from 4.3%. Like, unemployment is getting better. It's not a strong economy. It's a heating. The Fed is supposed to be acting for the future, working. Wait, you just said it was a strong economy, Josh. I don't want to interrupt you, but you're all over the place. No, no, hear me out. Hear me out. I'm saying it's a heating economy. It's not a strong one. It's heating up. There's a difference. It's not a robust sort of steady strong economy what i'm saying is it's starting to heat up again and that is the scariest that's just that's an accelerating

economy i still don't we're not we're talking past each other heating up is an accelerating economy so are you saying it's slowing down and heating right now i'm saying it's heating up that's the point that i've been making which is my biggest concern this whole time has been inflation. Yeah, well, there are times where it's like, OK, could there be? Let me just say one thing. Dave has his hand up patiently. So I'll just say really quick one thing. Cutting 50 base points just cut $100 billion worth of fiscal spending. That's the math with the debt levels. When you cut 50 base points, you're getting $100 billion in fiscal outlays. That's just a fact. So, Dave, go ahead.

So it's like one bill, bill one bill one uh piece of legislation that sends some money to ukraine no legislation is getting passed right now right it's a gridlock it's election year but but but the the point is infrastructure act hasn't even really hit yet we have a ton of spending ahead of us and i don't know if you've noticed but both hold on hold on hold on Both candidates are populist now. Both want to give away handouts to buy votes. This is where we are. We're in a new regime.

So the point is, if they are forward looking at all, they actually need to stay restrictive. They're making a huge blunder. I think there's nobody here that believes that a real slowdown is coming. I think you look out there. People are still hiring, jobs are still open, wages are still going up. We are actively seeing unions getting more money.

This is only going to lead to a triple. I know you think that. I know you think it, but come on. There are people all over Twitter for the last two years. I mean, we can go and name names of some of these people that have been saying recession in two quarters. I mean, some of them are on the macro show you guys host. Yeah, but they're wrong.

They've been wrong because they didn't think. Look, inflation is the problem. I'll let Dave talk. Sorry, but inflation is the thing. We will be talking about this in 2025. The return is coming. They've made a huge blunder. Sorry, Dave.

So I want to make two points, Danish, because it's funny. I'm kind of in between you and Joe. Point number one is on inflation. Look, I'm a monetarist. I understand you guys are more Keynesian. I get it. The simple fact is they're trying to engineer asset inflation, and they need to engineer inflation so they pay it to be able to pay back the debt. There is what

people don't understand. I don't understand why I say this. And some people don't understand it, there is a trade off sometimes between asset inflation and consumer inflation. When you make it cheap to outsource when you make it cheap to automate, you can trade off against consumer inflation. And so threats like threats, the supply chain that if you think that the politics politicians didn't get in and basically, you know, threatened the ILA, you know, the long term association, you're crazy, because the supply chain disruption is the one thing they can't abide. And by the way, the

bond market sort of agrees, Joe, the bond market, unless I'm missing it, I wasn't yesterday was Russia, Sean, I wasn't looking at the screens, but I noticed that the 10 year yields 3.95 and it was 3.75 earlier this week. Well, Danish, is right as far as Bitcoin is concerned. Both candidates will spend. The biggest difference in the two, and it's a massive one, is regulatory. Whether you believe that Trump would establish a Department of Government Efficiency, that's one way to get down spending. Whether you believe that he will do some of the things that Rebecca has talked about in terms of getting regulation off our back. But the government percentage and the government spending and percentage of our economy, that's the lever that's the biggest difference between the two.

But you're right, both are going to spend. And if Trump can't do that, and it's entirely possible he won't or won't be able to, then, yeah, all assets will go. But that regulation is what will keep tokens and other cryptos down. Solana, if they want to claim it's a security, will keep that down for years until eventually a bipartisan consensus in Congress forces the president's hand, which I do think will happen, but I think it will take a couple of years. And so it is a big difference. The biggest driver of the debt, government efficiency is not going to kill the

biggest driver of the debt. The biggest driver of the debt is interest payments. Sorry, I'll let Alex talk, but it's interest payments. No, no, no. I agree, which is why I said that 20 basis points backing up, you know, rising in the 10-year today is not... 10-year is not how the government's being funded. It's not being funded with primarily 10 years. It's all short-term paper, which is very interest rate sensitive to the Fed. The Fed controls the shorter end of the curve. And by the way, the two-year is actually higher than it was when the Fed cut. The Fed cut

and the two-year has risen as well. What does that tell you? I don't know. What does it tell you? It tells me that the economy is stronger than people think. It's pricing out future cuts. Or the bond markets have decided that we are now in a compromised regime where they're just going to keep... Again, this is the issue, is that I don't know... Thank you,

Dave. That was essentially a masterclass. You're absolutely right that there is going to start being this huge dichotomy between inflation that affects poor people and inflation that affects rich people who own the assets. Asset inflation is good. The inflation that affects poor people and inflation that affects rich people who own the assets. Asset inflation is good. The inflation that affects poor people is bad. And that's how they're going to try to make it seem. Where in reality, if you can't move from poor to rich and own an asset. So by the way, if you own an asset right now, congratulations, you happen to be on the right side of this.

But this entire situation is, I'm telling you, it's a powder keg. Do you believe that, Don? Do you believe that if the Fed keeps rates in the fours for the next year and a half, you still believe that? I just don't think they're going to do that. What if they do? You can see their dot plot.

What if they do? No, but their dot plot says, their dot plot is saying, I don't care what the market is saying. I care what the dot plot says. They're saying 200 basis points worth of cuts in the next yeah but they change their mind all the time right we know that they're they're meaning to me that's just a that's just a guess but but then they're not speaking this is the challenge it's like we're saying well they're just gonna change their mind

and it's like but then what is that earlier this year no cuts this year he said no cuts this year earlier this year he cut so so don't he can he can't put too much weight on the dot block. Well, he cut because he's compromised and the government told him to cut. Let's let Alex get in because he's got his hand up. Sorry. Go ahead. Alex? Alex Miller, you want to speak?

Get on mute. Great take, Alex. I appreciate the value added to the debate um but yeah i think this is uh we've gone back and forth pretty well i think it's a good discussion uh danis you should jump in a bit more often and you can probably run the whole show and give us a bit of a break uh but i appreciate you coming on appreciate you joe i think dan is coming on triggered joe and joe jumped on because danis jumped on this is this is what i expect because i've been trying to get joe up the whole time uh but I think it's a good discussion, everyone.

We'll see you again on Monday morning. I appreciate you all coming in and enjoy your weekend, everyone. Thank you so much. Bye, everyone.