The Wolf Of All Streets - What Catalyst Will Send Bitcoin To New Highs? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Crypto Town Hall is a daily X Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in crypto and bring the biggest names in the space to share their insight. ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. USE CODE ‘2MONTHSOFF’ WHEN VISITING MY LINK.  👉 https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/    ►► OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $10,000!  👉  https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL  - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets    Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor.  Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Is the mic working? Yep. Ryan, what happened with Gummy, man? Did you just wake up? See, the mic is doing well and Gummy doubles. Did you guys declare a partnership with Biden or something? No, no. I think it got oversold for a long time.

And then, I don't know. I mean, we're doing our spaces later. I mean, I don't know. Maybe that, like, people are expecting us to do somersaults or something. But, I mean, look, it was beaten for a long time. So, who knows? Well, congratulations. Scott, what happened to Scott's coin?

Yeah, what happened to that? I don't know, man. Yeah, Scott's coin is done. Have you seen NotCoin by the way have you invested in NotCoin my token is called

uh cash tag FK Mario we yeah we should um careful Scott

he'll he'll challenge you to a fight I know I'm trying he was so he was so bloodthirsty that day

that he challenged Emi to a fight yeah I he challenged Emi to a fight Yeah I almost Challenged Emi to a fight But then she just She was a bit scary So I went for Ryan instead Went for an easy option

But I wouldn't put anything Past Emi I would never fight her I wouldn't put anything Past her She would have accepted She would have definitely accepted

Yeah She would accept And then she'd go training And then you'd see her Like six months later And you're like Fuck I got myself into such trouble. Scott, before we kick off the show.

I like how our titles are so like, what's next for Bitcoin? Is crypto finally breaking up? Maybe if you guys, I just, hold on. I just said in the chat, I was like like i haven't contributed to that so i can't complain about yeah exactly but you guys you know you guys can you can change the title right now i can edit and change the title to whatever you like and you can't blame the team and all myself i woke up half an hour ago so you can't blame me i don't know what's happening to the markets and then scott is going through a lazy phase so he hasn't done anything with the titles

And then Rand is in an ongoing. I don't give a fuck phase. So then we can't attack the shit titles And I'm going I don't give a fuck for that. I mean, that's quite harsh, but Yeah, you know, I'm saying, you know, you don't care about the titles. I could just make fun of our titles I can't even edit them actually. Oh shit. Can you co-host me so I can edit the title, please? No titles i can't even edit them actually oh shit can you co-host me so i can edit the title please no by all power and we remain as crypto finally breaking but before you kick off before you kick off the show you actually genuinely had a you know what because i've been a bit mia for a bit so so i wanted to kind of get an update from from one just on the on the etf inflows for the last couple of weeks not just a few days um and and how they've been comparing to expectations and then maybe get an update on on ethan oh ethan falls too early hasn't launched yet and then maybe just

the market update from ryan as well especially when it comes to the memecoin ecosystem because memecoins apparently is still pumping and leading this market so that's the two things i'm curious about scott before i obviously give you the mic and then kick off the discussion on the news of the day and the markets in general but one i would love to maybe get a general update on the ETF inflows and more of a broad update, not just today. Sure, sure, sure. Good morning. Well, the ETFs are looking, the inflows are looking strong. We had a big bounce in May compared to April. April was the first month of net outflows in the complex with 345 million in net outflows. But May saw a strong rebound, 2.1 billion in net inflows for the month. And currently we're running on 16 consecutive days of straight inflows.

Yesterday was the second biggest day for inflows since launch, $887 million. So I think in the past, in this channel, I've commented that we think there's a couple, there's at least three different waves of inflows from different investors coming into the ETFs. The initial wave, which I think we're sort of maybe ran through, which was the early adopters of hedge funds, of retail investors, of some early smaller RIAs that are able to allocate faster. And I think we're starting to move into the second phase, which we got a hint of in the 13F filings, which are bigger, larger RIAs. We saw even a pension fund with a Wisconsin investment fund, and then starting to see endowments and other larger institutional investors.

So those typically, and the wire houses, the UBSs, the Morgan Stanley's, Merrill Lynch's of the world. Those larger types of institutional investors take, have a six to 12 month due diligence process. So I think we're now starting to see the beginning of those types of firms get on board, complete their due diligence and start the approval process allocation. Juan, did you say yesterday, I might have misheard you properly, but did you say yesterday i might have missed not heard you properly but did you say yesterday was the second biggest day of inflows yeah second biggest day of inflows uh with uh net inflows of 887 million for the the all of the etfs combined second biggest date yeah it's crazy and there's is there any any specific that triggered these inflows any specific users is it just that due diligence taking its time?

I think it's, no, yeah, I think it's just the due diligence taking its time. I mean, who knows? Maybe there's also, you know, something big we've seen in the last two weeks, of course, was the new bipartisan momentum that allowed a couple of bills to go through Congress. And we've seen that start to become what I think is going to be shaping up the rest of this year and into 2025. Regulatory progress becoming a tailwind for the industry. And maybe with that shift, maybe some investors that we're holding out are now more comfortable investing as well. So it may be that, but I think mostly it's just the approval processes starting to come through. But that means if you see approval processes, that means those

big inflows, and we can have record inflows if we continue on this path, those big inflows should continue happening over the next few days, weeks, and months. Based on your explanation that it's just DD taking its time, that means it's going to be consistently high inflows. Yeah, we'll have to see. It's hard to know because the ETF issuers, we don't get to see exactly who puts money in unless an investor communicates directly because the platforms don't give that data to the issuers. So it's hard to know unless we know directly from an investor who's talking to us or someone else. But I do think in this second half of the year, we should start seeing those bigger inflows come in from those types of wire houses and other big institutional investors. So we do expect the second half of the year. Hard to know the timing if it's all coming, you know, going to start rolling immediately. But we do think the second wave is going to be bigger than the first wave of inflows.

I've been hearing I've been hearing a lot about the second wave, the second wave, just explain to me who buys in the second wave. So in the second wave, we start seeing really the big wire houses. So that's the Morgan Stanley's Bank of America, the UBS, the Wells Fargo's of the world, all those big, big wire houses and others, you know, like PNC private banks, the private banks start coming in as well. Those really big institutional investors, that's the large constituent of the second wave, along with starting to see some of the smaller pension funds, smaller endowments. That's who we expect to see in the second wave. I'll go to Dan as well. And then I want to go to kind of have a similar discussion with Ryan

about the meme coin ecosystem. Mario, your mic is very very loud like i don't know if it's like a lot of like it's very loud i don't know if it's just me yeah not really okay yeah so dan i saw your hand up earlier when one was talking and then i wanted to go to that around but i might change my mind now yeah just uh sorry just a couple points i want to join um so yesterday the 887 million that's about 30 days of new coin issuance taken off the market so i just want to put it in context in a single day 30 days new worth of new big ones taking market um i agree with one that i think it's uh the wire houses are now getting on board with it that's something that uh the bloomberg guys would you might say dan your mic is uh it's very muffled a bit far oh okay is

that any better any better now tiny bit better yeah okay well i'll try and be quick um that's what some of the bloomberg guys were saying that you know once it hits the wire houses it gets um able to be sold by you know wealth advisors etc uh the only point i wanted to make was um if we don't see a sustained high level of inflow in the next immediate few days i wouldn't necessarily be so worried i think that would be that there's been some pent-up demand that has not been able to enter because it wasn't you know this wasn't cleared with the wire houses yet and so the guys that came in yesterday if it is you know through the wire house is now available that would have been mine that was ready to go already and so you're gonna see from some fall on there so i wouldn't

be too concerned if the next few days are not as big or you know somewhat smaller i think that's pent up demand that's coming i appreciate it and yeah thanks for keeping it short because the mic was a bit muffled at ryan uh you know you've been leading the crypto the meme coin narrative and looking at the i haven't been looking at the markets as much obviously the flights the travels and and uh and you know more political stuff but um on the on a business side like the team that works with meme coins are now from the media side it's just been doing insanely well it's been very very consistent as well and you know i just keep hearing people talking

about meme coins leading this market obviously the game stop uh fever and led to a big pump um maybe give us an overview of what how do you see the meme coin market now you did give us you remember we had a discussion about ai a couple of months ago like guys i think ai is you know 70 through its cycle not sure if you stand by that but meme coin do you think it, you know, 70% through its cycle. Not sure if you stand by that, but meme coin, do you think it's, you know, the cycle's almost done? Because, you know, crypto goes through many cycles. Is the meme coin cycle done or is it going to continue leading this cycle? So I think ironically, so I think the meme coin cycle may be done, but then we've got another cycle, which is we have the celebrity coin cycle. So, like, I think people mistake meme coins and celebrity coins.

So, like like they just put them into one class now one is much more like a fan token so like if you look at iggy she launched mother mother's like it's a token it's not a meme there's no meme behind it it's just a fan token for a celebrity it's probably you can you you could maybe say it's like a a social currency for a celebrity and so like i think now we may we may like we saw we saw caitlyn jenner and we saw uh iggy and i think there's a couple of others i think soldier boy also dropped uh uh uh they call them meme coins they're not memes they are um they're what i call uh they celebrity tokens and what what yeah what it basically is it's like celebrities bringing

their fan base uh to try and buy tokens i think that's going to detract a little bit from the from the meme coin cycle okay but you wouldn't put it in the same bucket as as a meme coin as you've explained it's more of a social token rather than a meme token yeah yeah i think the market is putting it in the same bucket i don't agree that it should be in the same bucket at all and how long do you think this will last because we're talking to a celebrity manager yesterday me and you might know mk from my team so he manages all meme coins so we're talking about the big celebrity manager and going through what soldier boy jenner and others have done um do you think there's just a short-term pump and dump uh it's not sustainable or do you think those tokens or a short-term pump and dump? It's not sustainable.

Or do you think those tokens, those celebrity tokens, could end up developing into something more? I mean, I'm not a big fan of celebrity tokens. I'm not a big fan of celebrity tokens. Mario, can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Go ahead. You're not a big fan of them.

Yeah. I'm not a big fan of celebrity tokens. I think celebrities do stupid things. I think celebrities are going to bring their – I mean, let me maybe be a little bit more honest about it. I think what happens is that celebrities get used to very high lifestyles, and to keep those lifestyles, they need a lot of money. And in order to get the money, initially what happens is they start you know they start you don't get like a grade celebrities launching meme coins you don't see like fucking a a grade celebrities launching meme coins it's usually like

the washed out celebrities it's usually like celebrities that aren't like top of their game anymore and i think what what it is is like you know like like first you say i'm only going to do like a level celebrity shit and then you need money and then you're not getting the best jobs anymore so you go to b grade and then c grade and then d grade but you still need the same amount of money to maintain your lifestyle so well what do you do oh there's this new game in town where you can just go to crypto you can launch this thing called the meme coin you launch it using an anonymous dev and then and you land up making a fuck ton of cash and in inverted commas nobody actually knows that you've made the cash, right? That's the theoretical thing because you didn't launch the meme coin.

It was some dev. You bought it. You thought it was a good idea. It's bullshit. For me, what it is, it's a way for celebrities to come in and cash out from celebrities. Now, you could say that there's 90% bad, 10% good. The 90% bad is that and it ends badly. The 10% good is it

does actually bring more people into blockchain that ordinarily wouldn't be here. My argument to that is that these people come in and then they get wrecked and then they fucking hate blockchain and they never ever want to come back here ever again. Ran, are the people buying Mother, are they Iggy Azalea fans

or are they a bunch of crypto people using it as the next casino ship? I would say it's the latter. Well, look, I think the Iggy Azalea thing, in fact, look, I think I'm a big, I'm hugely negative about celebrity tokens. Hugely, hugely, hugely negative. And specifically celebrities

that know nothing about crypto. They come here, they know nothing about crypto and they think it it's a cash grab and i'm very very very against it now iggy has if you go look at iggy's timeline specifically her timeline is uh um all about tokens and she's playing a token game and she's getting you can see that someone who knows a lot about tokens is whispering in her ear. Like the other day she tweeted something, which said something like I don't even, the token was pumping and she said, I don't even have a market maker.

Does anyone have any recommendations? Okay. Now what is that? That is like, wow, look, my token's pumping. I don't even have a market paper yet, a market maker yet. You know what I mean? It's like, like look we're not dumb we're not dumb you know like we can see what's going on here um i don't i mean i i guess the test is to see how long it will last or when you know and and the problem is that i don't i think it will continue i think it will unfortunately i think it will continue for as long as the token price goes up and because she will remain interested as long as the token price goes up and because she will remain interested as long

as the token price goes up and more celebrities i mean you know if nobody else launches one then whatever how long are people in you know this uh in this adhd uh community how long are people gonna you know watch her make twerk videos to buy the token or whatever's happening what do you say brian do you guys think that this is gonna end just with a fizzle where people lose interest or do you think there could actually be some sort of uh regulatory body that steps in i mean we kind of saw what happened with with uh jenner and then you see other celebrities jump in a lot of people lost money in jenner that that was kind of a mess do you think that the sec is a risk here i i mean i don't see any major celebrities coming in because i think is it a security is there any way that you can that you can argue that a meme coin is a security like i guess who's launching

it who's launching it and how i think is what matters i mean you can definitely make the argument that you're only buying that token because of the promotional efforts of an individual. I'm not saying it should be a security. That's only one part of the criteria. But I mean, it's not like Gary Gensler's had any problem being liberal with his definition of what's a security. And I mean, Kim Kardashian transparently promoted given that this is not an endorsement of ethereum max i'm sure it's a scam i have no idea but regardless of what ethereum max was she put ad sponsored on her post and she actually paid a fine without admitting guilt over a million dollars because she didn't say how much she was paid so we do have some precedence here of the Gary Gensler and the SEC making a example of celebrities for participating in crypto.

Yeah. I mean, it's common that the IRS goes after celebrities because it makes that bang. You know, like it shows people that they're going after somebody and people are paying attention. So if I was a celebrity right now, I would be a little bit more cautious, I think. But we'll see. I'm not saying that they should be shut down by the SEC or anything. I'm just saying that it would be a risk in my mind if I was managing. Brian, I think it's a two-pronged answer.

It probably fizzles first, and then in two years, we get some action from the SEC on one of them or something like that, right? It's always so retroactive. I can't imagine the regulator catching up to this in time while it's still even a meaningful cycle but yeah go ahead matthew uh gm everybody i think too when you have things like friend tech pop up or you have the the ability for people to basically securitize themselves on a platform via token that is directly responsible for being you know where where investors are looking for an

increase in appreciation in the token. Like this is no different. And even if somebody posted something that was an Iggy Azalea token that wasn't actually backed by her, it's really troubling for celebrities that could have their name on a token that have nothing to do with something too. So that's quite a concern. I don't think you're going to be able to combat this. I think this is like a whack-a-mole situation where the SEC or the government's not really going to have a way to clamp down on this because it is so permissionless. But it is a mockery of the space. And I do not, you know, I agree with Rand, but I don't agree with it.

But it is interesting to see as a dynamic. I mean, just in case anyone misses, there were 500,000 tokens launched on Solana last month. Right. So talk about whack-a-mole, Matthew. You know, I don't think the SEC is going to have much of an appetite for trying to shut it down en masse. But they can certainly make an example of one or two people like they did with Kim Kardashian to try to slow it or discourage the. Go ahead, Matthew. I was just going to say that I love the fact that all these tokens get launched because it makes it impossible for people to find out what the real shit coins are. And so as somebody who's an investment advisor in the space, part of the way that you differentiate yourself is being able

to help people stay away from the bad tokens. So the more that come out is actually beneficial because it creates so much confusion in the space that it's actually beneficial for advisors to help people build wealth. That makes sense, David. Yeah, I don't put anything past Gensler and the SEC in terms of going after celebrities for their tokens, but I think it'll be a waste of resources. I think the Beanie Babies argument, you know, when it comes to celebrity tokens is very strong,

right? The analogy is correct. In other words, there's no, for purposes of the Howey test, there's no common enterprise that we're talking about when you buy, you know, a celebrity token, there isn't some stake in a company that you're buying. I guess the argument could be made, you're buying a stake in the person. But I really think it's a far stretch. And I would hope that the SEC wouldn't pursue something like that. You got to remember when they went after Tim Kardashian, they didn't even go after Ethereum Max, which was the quote unquote, unregistered security that she was guilty of promoting. Just for the record.

So they didn't bother to deem the actual asset an unregistered security, but still forced her basically into a situation where she had to pay a fine and move on with her life. So it's not, there's no, obviously. And that's the same with all the suits with binance and coinbase the sec loves to passively deem things unregistered securities without actually making that case or pursuing it so uh you know just what do you think will happen with those celebrity because you expect the same as nfts so every celebrity launched an nft and then they all went to zero and everyone moved they are n are NFT. I mean, it's the same thing, right? It's structurally different, but, you know, same concept, which is, you know, quote unquote community and which we know only lasts as long as price goes up. But yeah, I think they all fail. in how these are structured, how they really benefit a fan, what the upside is for them to own it beyond just, you know,

being in the casino. I would actually say that the way that they were originally sort of pitched in the NFT community probably had a lot more promise for actual long-term engagement with a fan. You know, an NFT being sort of a membership card to the fan club of that person that gave you benefits at shows. Listen, those are ideas I think that people largely are excited about stealing crypto, even if we haven't seen it structurally successful or play out yet. But this is not the way to do it. This is literally just

mimicking the way meme coins pump and dump and putting a celebrity name on it. This is not about community or actual value to the fan base. We saw the SEC did crack down on the whole NFT model as well. What was the guy's NFT project that got sued by the SEC? Impact Theory, I think it was. Impact Theory. And Stoner

Cats, right? So, you know, they kind of made their example and you haven't really heard about many people launching NFTs. You haven't heard, you haven't seen a hundred celebrities in commercials for crypto companies because everybody got sued. Right? So there is, the SEC is relatively effective in

discouraging behavior by going after one or two huge fish and making it very, very public. Yeah, I agree. DB David. Hey, good morning. Yes, I agree with most of these guys. I don't see any regulation or anything going down against these anytime soon, but probably for slightly differing reasons. And one again, there's so many of them. How are you going to attack the meme coins, the celebrity coins of the whole? And maybe this is me putting on my tinfoil hat a little bit, but not going after

these helps their cause of pushing back, delaying crypto, Web3, all of it. And to speak to Rand's point that he made earlier, far more people get wrecked on these and have a horrible experience and never want to come back after coming in and play in the meme coin game. And that just plays into exactly what the SEC and the Dems want to harm crypto and delay adoption. So I wouldn't be surprised if they don't go after it for those reasons. Yeah, I also just don't think that that thirst is there in this few months preceding the election. Yeah, I think the SEC has played its hand. There's some pushback politically. And right now, probably chill and do nothing would be their best move. Although I wouldn't put it past them, I think, as others

have said, I mean, Mario, how do you view this? Honestly, because Brian, I mean, you too, like you guys, obviously, you know, there was sort of BitCloud and decentralized social media. And we've seen these NFT projects with celebrities. There's been a lot of attempts at things like this. Honestly, this seems like the worst, right? We should have evolved for the celebrities coming in. It seems like we've devolved yeah i don't know if mario wants to go no you go man you guys have been a lot more active on big class i think your take will be a lot more interesting and you've been also looking at farcaster and and the other one that we invested in i can't remember the name i invited ed as well yeah yeah if you're listening yeah like i've been involved in all of them. So BitCloud, which changed to Deeso, which is going to launch a focus app later. Lens, Forecaster, you know, there's so many of them. Favor, which I think you invested in Mario. I think they were definitely better. All of those were better setups when it comes to, I think, a creator coin. I think it gave people more tools. This is just like the basic,

the meme coin is basically a basic way for celebrities to sell themselves. I'm not saying that any of those other ones like Frentech and all that are going to work out. I think that's still yet to be seen. I think there are a lot needs to happen in this space before we even start considering that. But I do think there is a future for creators and for celebrities, whether they're pseudo celebrities or major celebrities, to actually use the blockchain and use a decentralized identity in order to market themselves and share with those who follow them something special. Um, I think it takes time to evolve though. Yeah. And I think that there's more potential if it's well thought out, maybe done with NFTs or something else to actually be able to quantify why

the asset moves up or down based on the amount of fans or the engagement, things like that. I mean, like there's literally these coins are so like low liquidity you know um they're just gonna pump and dump regardless of what the celebrity does or what they give to their fans or what happens so there's just i don't see any fundamental reason for the price of these based on the attachment to the celebrity so i don't know just doesn't make sense to me i mean ed what do you think?

Yeah, I mean, there's no utility whatsoever. You're just buying a meme coin or whatever you want to call it, a social token of these individuals, but you're getting absolutely nothing in return other than this speculative hope that it goes up. So, I mean, it's scammy in nature because these individuals are launching

the coins based on their name and then hoping that people just jump on the bandwagon. And most of them aren't giving anything in return. And if you're giving an airdrop, it's just, you know, more scammy coins. So, I don't know. I think until utility is involved somehow, it's just a quick money grab. Yeah, that's my feeling as well. Mario, did you want to contribute to that? No, I think this is it. I mean, in terms of talking about the topic,

I mean, there's going to be a lot of money to be made. Someone was telling me yesterday, someone from my team, he's like, Mario, do you know that Iggy coin or whatever, one of these three that we talked about, the Iggy or the Soulja Boy one or the Jenna one, it launched at a $48,000 market cap and it was worth tens of millions. How much? Yeah, I mean, do we know how much the celebrity themselves actually own

and structurally how that happens at launch? I haven't looked into it at all. It would be good to get him on the stage if he accepts, the guy that does this for us. I mean, that takes care of meme coins from our business side. But he said they make 10, 20, something like 30% of the supply.

Someone's giving a thumbs up. I'm bringing up Scarface if he knows that. Doesn't that mean they have to be selling the entire time into the hype of their own? If they sell, this is it. I think all of them would be planning to sell because it just doesn't seem to be a roadmap for anything you know when the guy that we're we're talking to is like hey what about the legal aspect they're like there's no it's not illegal because you're not promising anything in return

which is crazy to think of that that actually works and that right but there are other that's true but there's other like you can be doing something illegal or noncompliant without being a security. Like you definitely are not allowed to talk favorably about something to the public as a celebrity while you're selling it. Yeah, exactly. So that's another – exactly. That's another red flag, something else that authorities could look into. He said that – I mean that's a bigger – that's actually probably a bigger issue.

Yeah, he said Iggy would have made, I'm trying to remember if he was referring to Iggy, but would have made about $8 million. That was his guess. But I dig into it. I'll ask him more questions today. Yeah, I love this. I know nothing about this.

I would love to get into the- Scarface, I saw you. Scarface, do you have more information on this? Or were you reacting to something else? I brought you up when you were reacting as I was mentioning the numbers. Scarface? do you have more information on this? Or were you reacting to something else? I brought you up when you were reacting as I was mentioning the numbers. Scarface? Yeah, yeah.

So basically every time the celebrities come into space, it happens the same way every time. Soulja Boy rugged probably about 10 projects already, including meme coins. And this is a repeat of history I think honestly this is the most dangerous thing so don't invest do you know how much money he's made? do you know how much money he's made? well Iggy has 10%

of the whole of the whole supply but did she need to buy that or is it literally like when the token was created she just was was gifted 10%? How does that work? She probably sniped it when it launched, no? She gets the 10%.

She basically gets the 10% when they first launched. And I don't trust anything he releases. I think it would have been, I don't know. We'll have to check. I don't know if that was sniped when it launched. It was launched with a fail launch. She just kept the supply in the wallet and it was publicly, it was public knowledge that she holds 10%.

But I'll check and find out. Yeah, but like does she like coordinates with some dev who launches it? No, no. She doesn't. She does nothing. So it's all done by another crypto person, as Ryan was mentioning earlier. So another crypto person manages her account and manages the entire process. And that's where the drama with Jenner happened, that she was apparently –

Oh, there's a scammer. Yeah. There you go. So apparently Suhail, whatever his name is, so he launched – you probably know about this more because you read 10 times more than I do. But he launched Jenner's one, and then he launched – he was apparently involved in eegies one i think so he's being blamed for it so just having those people trusting that crypto similar to the logan paul story when he launched the nfc project he apparently trusted some other crypto guy that that ended up screwing him as well but he launched the ft project so uh yeah but look i think this this will continue and

um and uh yeah i want to understand the mechanics though better if scarface knows so who launches So, yeah, but I think this will continue. Yeah, I want to understand the mechanics better if Scarface knows. So who launches it? Who has access to the tokens early? Do people keep tokens or is it all fair launch? And then just because it's launched and nobody knows, they buy that supply. Initially, I don't understand.

Yeah, so if anyone in the audience doesn't know the whole model, do hit us up, and I'll bring you up in the space for a future one. It would be good to get some more insight into the structure of these celebrity coins. We didn't plan to talk about it today, so we'll probably talk about it tomorrow. I'll bring a few guests and try to deep dive into it. Okay, Scott? Yeah, it's fine. I actually find that fascinating among all the uh

same topics we talk about every day i don't know how the mechanics are yeah exactly i do want to go back just to the markets in general um and go to the the panel like we are nearing all time i don't forget one thing you said scott like as long as we're not anything between what was it 64k and 72k doesn't matter it's basically i mean it's basically 60 and 74 all-time high and 60 um so obviously 16 hours out of reach so we're reaching all-time highs so maybe just getting some some minds on stage tell us how close are we to all-time highs in your opinion we're going to be led by the inflows right sorry ryan's on stage as well go ahead yeah i'd rather you not die with your mic on.

So just turn your mic off if you're going to do that. I think, yeah, I think, listen, we made a $74,000 high a few months ago. It was ahead of schedule for the halving schedule, as everybody knows, driven by the implos of Bitcoin ETFs and the fact that those were approved. But, you know, at that point, it was pretty predictable that we would then go into the normal halving cycle to some degree and range sideways for months. And now it's been almost 3 months, I think, most of the exact date. Ranging broke below 60 temporarily. But at this point, you see how bearish people get at the bottom of the range. When we were at 60, we were going to 20. And now we're going to probably go attack 73 or 74,

which is just the upper part of the range. And people are going to become insanely bullish. And we're going to start seeing articles about like 100k by August, because that's how humans work. But at the end of the day, this is all the normal sort of sideways chop that we see through summers, you know, selling and go away sort of attitude. Doesn't mean we can't go up this summer. I have no idea. But still, my base case is that, you know, we kind of reset in the fall. And that's when we really start to see that the massive bullishness in this market also heading into elections and quite a lot of, I think, catalysts at that point. But it's just funny, you know, 60 and 70 are kind of the same if you look at it on a chart.

It's just this range sideways. If we do meaningfully break above 74, I think, Ben, we have a lot to talk about. David? Yeah, I just wanted to go ahead and comment on the macro picture. So we had the first developed World Bank go ahead and cut interest rates this morning in Bank Canada. And then the ECB is expected to cut a quarter point as well. I know we're very U.S. centric, at least I am. But I think that the pressure is going to start to build on the Fed to go ahead and cut, kind of fall in line with the rest of the world. They don't want to be out of step. I think a lot of the rest of the world usually follows the Fed. But it seems like those central banks are now getting out ahead. And if the pressure continues to build, coupled with the election coming to go ahead and make people feel better about their pocket and

go ahead and increase access, I'd say, to credit, let's say generally, even though I don't think a quarter point does anything meaningful. But nevertheless, it starts to give people hope that that, you know, financing costs are going to go ahead and come down, housing, autos, so forth. You know, I think we just be aware that we might get into that phase or that mode, and then things could start to run really hot. Interesting take. Ryan, obviously, you're on top of the ETF flows. I think yesterday was 800 plus million, second biggest day ever. Can that drive us sort of ahead of this cycle if we see that continuing? I mean, is that

a potential catalyst here? Yeah, hopefully you guys can hear me okay. I'm on the road. Pretty bad. Is it pretty bad? Yeah, I can't really hear you. There's a lot of background noise. I don't know if you can fix it. It's it's all right. While you're trying to get that fixed, potentially,

anyone else have thoughts here on the market, the positioning, and when we're likely to potentially attack or break that all-time high? Dave, you can go ahead again. Sorry. I also wanted to say, yeah, I think that your point about the second largest day of inflows is really important into the Bitcoin ETFs.

Yesterday, I think the number was like 880 million, I think was the headline number that I saw. Obviously, that is a good thing. I don't know if anyone has any thoughts, by the way, on the short seller report that came out this morning on Riot. That short seller report essentially attacked the entire Bitcoin mining industry. I don't know if anyone has any thoughts on that. I know the short seller. I've been involved in a couple of tussles with that particular short seller in the past, Keresdale. If anyone's got any thoughts, I'm interested in hearing. I don't know anything about it. Anyone? Go ahead, Juan.

David, well, I'll ask you, I haven't had a chance to read the report. So if you can provide some color on it, I can probably, I have some thoughts on the Bitcoin mining as a complex. What was what did he detail in the in the report? I mean, the argument was bottom line. All they do is are the power and they don't really provide any sort of necessarily necessary utility. They're not making money mining Bitcoin. They're just arbing out um you know their power contracts i think that was kind of the bottom line of the report and based on the fact that they're just arbors and or they're just sorry they're all just arbitrageurs um that um frankly

they don't deserve you know the multiples that they're getting eventually there won't be an arb opportunity any longer and they'll essentially get squeezed out i see okay um yeah i mean the the first thing to know with keresdale is they've already had some bad run-ins uh trying to do some arbing in in the crypto space they were they were uh i think they were shorting earlier this year they were shorting micro strategy yeah that's trying to arbit. And they got massively burnt on that one. So they haven't started off with a good track record in crypto. But on the miners, yeah, it sounds like their thesis is kind of based on the same kind of thesis for commodity, you know, gold, precious metals, miners, which is long term value creation is net close to zero because they're just mining a commodity. But I would argue otherwise with Bitcoin miners,

especially because you've started to see, I think, two things that will lead to value creation over time. The first is that you've started to see some of the miners start diversifying their business lines into AI driven deals. There is I think that the AI boom will be a huge bonanza for Bitcoin miners. cloud infrastructure companies, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, project to spend more than, I think, over $200 billion annually by 2025 in AI data center CapEx. And the thing with that is that there is a big shortage of high-performance data centers. The data centers that are required for AI are not your run-of-the-mill Equinix type of data centers. You need specialized data centers. And for those types of data centers, the chips are in short supply.

And there is also not enough power to go around. So what the Bitcoin miners have is they have installed capacity in their mining data centers that can be repurposed for AI. And so you saw yesterday, for example, Core Scientific announced a big deal. It was a 200 megawatt AI deal with CoreWeave. And I think you'll start to see more of those deals. I think the Bitcoin miners are going to get a huge bid from AI going forward. And those deals are very lucrative for them. So I think that's an area of value creation. You could also potentially see some of those miners being taken out by bigger companies outside of the crypto mining space, just wanting to secure that data center space that doesn't have to be built out. The miners have been building these data

centers for years, and they've been doing the chip waves of recapitalizing them. So they're really well positioned to capture value from this. And I think they are. And then the second thing is that you've started to see, for example, with Mara, they started to iterate on the Bitcoin blockchain to develop tools for their mining uh for for their mining uh pool uh and other development tools uh they they launched a layer two on top of bitcoin that is going to allow them to capture value there so i think there's software development uh on the crypto side that they're starting to iterate with and then the ai uh deals that i think are going to start to flow in. And I think all of that is hugely positive for them. So, Matthew.

Yeah, I think, too, this is a great opportunity for organizations that are miners to break out and try new business models, just as Juan had mentioned. I know BitDigital is one of the smaller Ethereum proof stake networks that that is accumulating staking rewards and then what they do they're the they're the largest holder of ethereum from a proof of stake mechanism like ecosystem but they they redeploy assets that they stake into bitcoin miners and so they get then they get bitcoin mining rewards that they then exchange for more bitcoin and ethereum so it's kind of like an interesting flywheel managing both assets instead of just a single asset. And then to Juan's point,

they're also moving forward on an AI capability and infrastructure as well. So they're lending out some of that power, they're providing data center capacity, whatever those pieces are for additional flywheel efforts. I think that the miners are in great position to expand their portfolio of services and provide more value to both shareholders and their customers. I don't have the data in front of me, but didn't we just see a huge reduction in it was either difficulty or hash rate.

So we're really seeing, I think, finally, the sort of post-having culling of the inferior miners. Does anybody have the data on that? There's just something I read in passing, so I don't... Well, I'll find more on it. Go ahead, Dan. Yeah, look, every cycle, people say, you know, the miners are going to run into trouble, they're going to go offline. Every halving cycle, this happens. It never comes to fruition.

Bitcoin doesn't care. TikTok, next block, yawn. Yeah, I mean, some miners do. That's all, right? You see, it's kind of a survival of the fittest Darwinian situation where the ones who can afford to keep mining continue and everybody else gets called and the network proofs off. But to your point, right, does that matter to the market? Which continue and which don't?

I don't think so, really, at all. But the mining debate is interesting. I just saw some breaking news, actually, not necessarily crypto specific, but still something worth discussing for us. This is from Jake Chervinsky, who is from the X Blockchain Association now, but he's a crypto lawyer. He just tweeted, the Fifth Circuit just vacated the SEC's private funds rule holding that the SEC exceeded its statutory authority to regulate private fund advisors. The administrative state is out of control and the federal judiciary is

reining it in. Love to see it. So another L for the SEC in their attempts to make rules without lawmakers. I think we can all cheer for that. I still love to look back sort of a year and think about where we were at. Consensus was the best example because last year at Consensus in Austin, it was like being in a depressive, insane asylum.

There was like 3,000 people there. Everybody thought crypto was dead in the US. Nobody showed up. Half the booths were accountants and bankruptcy lawyers. And this year, there were 15,000 people, again, excited about what's happening in crypto because largely, nobody fears the SEC when the judicial system keeps smacking them down. So I think the environment is just wildly different. And it's good to see even outside of our industry, the SEC continuing to lose because we're not

the only ones that dislike them. David, go ahead. Yeah, I don't know if anyone saw the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing this morning on tokenization of real world assets. And to your point, the voices in the room, both on the witness side and on the representative side are just getting fewer and fewer. I mean, it's really, you know, on the witness side, you had one academic, I forget her name, Hillary, I think something, she was a professor, she was the only witness, you know, that had anything good to say or positive. Hillary Allen.

Yeah, about CBDCs and frankly, government, you know, keeping control of everything and really, you know, blockchains are just technology and, you know, public ledgers are awful and so forth. And then, you know, the voices on the representative side also are just getting fewer and fewer of the folks, you know, the real old white dudes, you know, are very unhappy. But, you know, even obviously everybody on the Republican side is pretty encouraging. And and there was the gentleman from Securitize was was on the witness panel. I mean, Carlos Domingo. Yeah. A really solid hearing, because you could just even if you listened objectively, which

it's hard to. But even if you listen objectively, you know, the points being made against advancing the technology, even if you take the worst of all possible outcomes in terms of security and things like's testimony or whatever would be absolutely absurd because who was so anti this and pro CBDC. And, you know, I think Carlos is well prepared for those who don't know. And we'll have him on. Maybe I'll invite him tomorrow. Carlos Domingo is the CEO of Securitize. That's who did Biddle, B-U-I-D-L, build with BlackRock to securitize, to tokenize assets on the Ethereum blockchain. And they're getting a lot of that other institutional side. So he's been appearing in front of Congress sort of defending this and making clear points. And most importantly, David, I think the tide is just very clearly turning.

The appetite to be on the aggressive other side of this argument is just not there right i mean you watch elizabeth warren literally on the on the floor of the senate arguing that the sab 121 should be completely thrown out not voted on and then you have chuck schumer and nine other senators flip uh and vote in in favor of passing that to the house and getting rid of sab 121 even though it was vetoed by the president if you're in politics, you see that and you just don't want to step in front of a moving train. And right now, politically, this is a hot, hot potato. You know, I think one of the issues is that so many of these people in Congress just don't understand crypto. Last week at a consensus, I know you were there,

I had a chance to sit down with a Democrat congressman and discuss crypto. He was actually somebody who was looking to kind of become pro-crypto, I guess. And it just kind of was astonishing to me how little he actually knew about crypto. And this was a man who was on the younger side. So I think there's a discrepancy between how much these people know and what they pretend to know when they go and try and pass these laws or vote against these laws. I agree. It's just some staffer, right? They don't even make their own decisions or show up. But most important side of that, or at least the silver lining, I think, is A, it means we're early.

And B, they're going to have to have an opinion because voters are going to start asking about that. And when your constituents start to pressure you on something, you have to have an answer. I mean, Matthew, you and I have talked about this sort of offline even. It's the same. What's happening with politicians, I think, will echo what's happening with institutions and registered investment advisors. When your customers start calling and asking you about a Bitcoin spot ETF or an Ethereum spot ETF, whether you hate it or not, you need to at least have an answer.

You need to be educated enough to give an answer. And that's going to be the case now with politicians. I think, you know, we had a massive pendulum swing, sadly, with Sam Bateman Freed and FTX in politics, where I mean, we do have this sort of partisan, at least, view that Republicans are for crypto and Democrats are against, but people seem to forget. And I'm not saying this in defense, but it was the Democrats who were working closely with Sam Bateman Freed. That's a bad thing, by the way. But at the time, they were the ones viewed at least as being pro-crypto, right? Maxine Waters taking pictures with him and then meeting with

Gensler. So there was so much egg on the face, I think, of the Democrats or anyone who was actively participating in that and pro-crypto that they went the other way. And now I think the pendulum is swinging backwards, like a safe space, so to speak, to become pro-crypto again and start speaking favorably about it. I mean, that's my take on how it's gone down. I think Republicans did a very good job of sort of co-opting the pro-crypto stance in the last few months, certainly, and even years during that time. But I do think that it's going to become a little more bipartisan. Go ahead, Dan. I'd say, I don't think they were a perfect though. They were pro money. They were pro donation. Correct. I'm talking about, yes, they wanted Sam's money.

I'm just talking about perception wise, perception wise. If you go back two years, you say, Oh, it was the Democrats that were working so hard for crypto. I was just right. I don't want to give the only counterpoint that, um, Ted Cruz and some of the Republicans were more pro-crypto even before FTX and that kind of stuff. As a, you know, self-liberty, you know, that kind of stuff. But yeah. Yeah.

I hear your point. They weren't pro-crypto. They were pro-money. I agree with that. But I can tell you that it was that whatever they were pro, the fact that Sam went down is what made them so aggressively negative or anti. Right. And so hopefully that's at least thawing where they can, you know, come out in public, peek their head out and see what it would be like to make some positive statements about crypto. So I hope, like I said, it's just more of a thawing,

or I would even take from the bulk of the Democrats, just say, indifference, and not an outright attack against, right, which I think is what we've seen. And I think that, you know, Elizabeth Warren's popularity and influence are slowly waning. And I think that's probably a net positive. Guys, I think we've pretty much covered everything we had for today i think tomorrow we should dig more into the uh celebrity tokens maybe get some of them on stage some of those celebrities and uh grill them and see how much they know what the intentions are here that would be awesome if we can get iggy mario team i don't know if uh we can do that or get caitlin jenner one of them i mean that we used to we used to do things like that here you guys might remember i also would love to get carlos from securitize and since david you brought

up that hearing i think that would be really interesting to dig in to how he prepped for that what he thought the vibe was around it because he is becoming sort of a leading voice at least on the tokenization side because of the alignment with blackrock all right guys uh that's all we got for today thank you so much to our panel once Once again, guys, if they're up here, we like them. So you guys should check them out, follow them, call them at home. Maybe it offers to take them out for drinks and drive the kids to school. No, I'm just kidding. But you should follow all of them. Guys, that's all we got. See you tomorrow. Thank you. Bye.