The Wolf Of All Streets - What Will Finally Get Crypto Moving Again? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

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Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Every weekday on X Spaces at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Hopefully, you can all hear me and we are not living deep in the glitch as happens to be the case on many occasions. Should be working well today in this day of incredibly choppy and once again, somewhat boring price action for Bitcoin. Luckily, we can talk about that price action with an absolute legend. We've got Peter Brandt here. Peter, wow. What a time to be alive.

We've seen it before, the sideways chop of Bitcoin from last Thursday to Sunday. We had four basically dojis in a row. Obviously, there were wicks all over the place, but we had the opens and closes, I think, within less than a $200 spread and still basically trading around that same, you know, 96,000 area. What do you make of the price action right now? I mean, other than being boring, hey hey i've missed being on with you you know your time just doesn't work for me but it's great to be back with you during this time

thanks for making it yeah i mean i kind of in my own mind have kind of four scenarios kind of built out on bitcoin and what i prefer is that we don't do anything for another two, three, four months. We may take out 110. We may take out 90. We may go to 85. But we're going to fool the market on both sides of the range and just continue to chop around. And maybe the chop goes lower. I mean, it just feels like an airplane that's lost lift, right? I mean, the wings have lost lift here. You know, some people are saying, you know, we break down to the downside and then we go straight back up. I personally don't happen to

buy that. I'm sure we could break support on the downside. It could be a washout, turn around and go back up and take out all time highs and get everybody excited again and fail. That's kind of what I think is going to happen. Yeah. What do you think would be the catalyst if we get a lot of sideways chop for the coming months, which I do think is a reasonable scenario? Yeah, I mean, I just think the catalyst is uncertainty. I mean, what's going on with the Trump administration? You've just got a lot of balls. You've got a lot of balls in the air.

You've got Ukraine, you've got the Mideast, you've got inflation, you've got Trump, you've got kind of a movement to the right by a number of some European countries, by Latin American and South American countries. So you've got the political landscape. You've got China. You've got an overvalued stock market that perhaps isn't going to get even more overvalued. So there's a lot of balls in the air right now. And so in my mind, there's just not a lot out there that tells me that there's going to be a sustained trend in either direction in just about any assets you look at.

I think 2025 is just going to be a chop year all over the place. It's going to chop traders up. So word to the wise, keep your capital intact. Don't make any bets and be willing to take big losses. Great perspective. So clearly you think that Bitcoin is trading alongside other markets because that's sort of your base case for all markets, I would imagine. Yeah, although I do think I'm still holding.

I think Bitcoin gets 125 to 150 in August and September. And that's the end of the bull market cycle. I mean, how we get there, I think we shop before we go there. I mean, at some point in time, I do think we get footing under the market. I have talked about 125 to 150 for a very long time uh i my i pegged the high end for august september of 2025 i think i think we'll go there but once we go there i think that's going to be the high for another two three years a repeated cycle basically the four-year cycle back intact yeah yeah it makes a lot of sense bolus you are deep in the charts probably sadly for you on days like this where it's doing nothing

uh what do you think uh hey scott hey everyone i mean look it's i think something we said on a few previous calls is it's a trader's market right and i was actually in a few longs yesterday i had like uh a variety of longs from from kind of the low to 94k and i cut all those before i went to bed because i've been burnt by this market too many times sleeping on positions when the market looks really good and waking up to absolute catastrophe and i woke up this morning and everything was red all my positions would have gone back to almost break even and i just thought yeah i'm clearly learning my lesson here even in a bull market i think uh you have to be sensible about you know uh taking profit paying yourself uh getting out of of positions when even

when the market looks good because the expectation is further chopped and look it's something that i've said on this on this call a number of times before, right? We know statistically that markets range far more than they trend, right? I think depending on who you ask or where you source your information, markets trend something like 20 to 30 percent of the time and the remaining, you know, whatever it is, 70 to 80 percent of the time and the remaining you know whatever it is 70 to 80 percent of the time they arrange uh and we saw that uh last year right where btc had this big move up from like 40k in january february and then in march it topped out around 70k and from march to october

there was just this this range that people seem to lose their minds trading it when in fact it was pretty clean range bound price action. Right. We were just we were just bouncing around between 70 K and kind of like kind of like 50 K. Actually, that was that was the range pretty much just bouncing around and giving range traders fantastic opportunities but uh you know guys who can't trade ranges were obviously struggling and then we saw a big move obviously around uh trump's election from that range into this new range which we've kind of been in since like november right this new range of kind of like 90k to call it 105k or 110k um and the same thing is happening the exact same thing that was happening last year is happening this year which is guys are losing their mind they're getting chopped up they're trying to force trades whether whether aren't trades they take and they're failing to realize that when price is range bound right a lot of a lot of the best range traders are incredibly

patient and they're very selective about the trades they take you just have to wait until price comes to one of the extremes right either the range high or the range low that's where you get involved you either play for the fake out the mean reversion or you play for the breakout the continuation and vast majority of time it's the first option it's the it's the mean reversion the fake out right and price is just going to bounce around in this range until some kind of bearish or bullish catalyst sends us higher or lower and then potentially price can start trending again but right now i'm looking at the high time frame bgc chart we are right around mid range we are right around the current uh point of control which for volume profile aficionados

you'll recognize that's just the area where there's the most volume in the range so it basically means that both buyers and sellers are willing to engage with price at this level, i.e. it's the area of most shop. So with that in mind, we are at the mid-range. We're at the area of most shop. Why are people forcing trades here? Why are people trying to say, okay, I'm going to long BTC here. I'm going to target 150K. Or I'm going to short BTC here.

I'm going to target 70K. Because I think that's where it's going to go. I just feel like those are not the types of trades you should be taking in this environment right i'm seeing like i i woke up this morning i scrolled my news feed and everyone everyone was giving out about the choppy condition saying btc is untradeable it's impossible to trade here this is not where you should be risking on i agree it's it's not where you should be risking on right there's a time to play offense time to play defense right but that doesn't mean that you just force trades and then give out about it,

right, and then bitch about it on Twitter, right? There's nothing wrong with sitting on your hands in this environment, especially, Peter touched on it, there's a lot of headline risk in the market right now, right? We have an uncertain inflation scenario, situation in the US. We have Trump announcing tariffs and then saying that well, maybe the tariffs are going to be delayed

and then there's an escalating situation and a de-escalating situation so there is a lot of headline risk in the market right now we're trading in the maximum chop zone i mean you know the point i'm making here is that there's no point forcing trades here there's no point trying to risk on with your portfolio and do a 2x in a month right there's a time for offense there's a time for defense, and now it's definitely the latter. Sefe, what do you think about the markets? Can you guys hear me? We can.

Oh, sorry, I was in and out. Sorry. Yes, it was very interesting what someone said before I dropped off, is that we've been used to trading in a bull market where you buy, you go to sleep because friend is your friend. You see the market structure. There was no announcement that would nuke the market. There was not this choppiness happening.

And this is exactly what I realized as well, which was really scary, is that we can't do that anymore. The realization that we're calling this a bull market, but in reality, I'm also causing a much more sculp trading, which I usually do in the bear market, where choppiness happens. And I'm advocating for take a position once or twice, maybe once or twice a month in the bull market and just ride it out and close it at certain points. But this is not the case anymore. And it's very scary. And the reason why it's scary is because if you have to do these sculp trades, because that's how much choppiness is happening in the market,

that means we're nowhere near having the bull that we've been all waiting for. And it's very, very scary. And this is exactly what's happening. I'm also re-evaluating everything. I do think that we are going to see a massive increase in the coming one or two weeks. But I do think also that there will be consolidation. And there is not really any narrative or catalyst that could take the market further. We basically used all of our cards at this stage. We have every card on the table, whether it's the strategic reserve,

whether it's Gary Gensler, whether it's Trump in office or not. We have all the cards on the table and then everybody's just looking what is really going to happen. Dave, I don't know if that was a hand up or an emoji. Well, it was an emoji because it makes my bullish heart sing when I hear people say there's no possible catalysts

and people give in to desperation. So, I mean, I'm going to walk into a different place so I don't hear echoes of my own voice. But, you know, everything that was just said, you know, a couple of times and what Peter's saying makes perfect sense to me. But I think that the listeners should understand why things happen the way they do. So when volatility compresses, what happens is traders stop pushing for the swing trades and turn their movements into more scalping, exactly as we just heard, which is the right thing to do. At the same time, option traders start selling straddles, start basically selling volatility, because that's where you make money

when volatility is realizing it's such a small rate. So when it moves very little, you can sell options and make a lot of money. The problem with that is over time, as it happens and continues, the longer it continues, the more people do that. And the more that when there is a quote catalyst, and I want to get back to that in a heartbeat, it tends to rip through that and dramatically exceed where you're thinking. And that could be through the upside or the downside. It doesn't really matter because people are leaning in the options world on both sides. So we're seeing that happen right now, right below the top. We were talking about this range blithely, but understand we were in an eight month trading range not all that long ago from 50 to 70 and now we're in a

range from 92 to 102 well that's half the width right half you know because and actually it's it's really one quarter of the width i mean it's a tight tight range in percentage terms really tight from bitcoin's perspective there's no way that continues for too long without it becoming just an explosive move, because it really is an incredibly tight range. And that's why, you know, people keep saying, oh, well, it could drop to 75 or 85 or whatever. It's like, sure, it could. And by the way, if you think that's possible, it's equally possible it could jam right up to 125. So when you look at this sort of technical trading, understand this is happening in a context of accumulation. I mean, it's very, very clear

that trading, which used to dominate Bitcoin, and you know, the Bitcoin flows, I mean, completely dominated, is being replaced by new investors who aren't trading, right? You know, the buy-in holds in the ETFs and et cetera, strategic reserves at the states, central banks, companies, et cetera. These are all buyers that are not trading. So what you're seeing is a supply crunch, not the bullshit, oh, it's coming off exchanges or there's nothing on OTC desk. That's a bunch of horseshit.

But what is true is that the actual marginal seller coming from the trading side is decreasing. And it's something that needs to be watched because there's only 21 million Bitcoins. Actually, it's actually less. We know ever because some's lost, Toshi's wallet, et cetera. But the supply is fixed and the buying is continuing. And this is an accumulation zone. And that has meaning. So if you ask me what a catalyst is, Scott, I'll come back and repeat something that you say, which I think is absolutely true. The catalyst is Bitcoin's price rising. I know it sounds completely tautological. Best marketing for Bitcoin is higher Bitcoin prices. print money anymore. If so, I used to have a great view of a bridge that I'd like to sell you. I mean, I think you're going to be successful in the sense of I think they're going to do a lot of good. But I don't think there's even the remotest chance that the money printer is going to slow

down anytime soon. And I think there's not even the remotest chance that policy and I loved what Bill was saying on your show this morning. It's still on here now. I can't see. He just went to listener, but hopefully i'll come back yeah yeah i mean bill you know i i had i been able to be you know post emojis on your show this morning it's like i think exactly what he was saying was right i'll let him go through his reasoning but there is a liquidity coming in and bitcoin is getting an increasing market share and and there's also the gold story which is worth worth talking about, but I've already talked too much. But the point is, I guess, if you summarize all of this, is you have a technical setup that's tightening and tightening, lower and lower volatility, which always brings these forces

into account with continued accumulation. This is very specific to Bitcoin, but we all know that as Bitcoin goes, the entire crypto market goes. So anyway, I'll shut up there, but I think it's important to juxtapose those things. Sina. Hey, guys. Morning, Scott, Dave, Simon, everyone else. Yeah, just to continue the discussion here. I published a post recently about the sideways action actually not being bad.

A lot of people get depressed by it or they think something's wrong. I all see it as progress and natural part of the market, and it's all good. But let's see what happened actually recently. We had three back-to-back weeks of gains in November 2024 that took us from 50 to 60 range to the range around 90, 90 to 100. So that huge jump in only three weeks, that needs to be absorbed. So it just needs time for everybody else that was in the market previously and now thinks okay they've made a lot of games it happened really fast so they need to save some profits they'll begin selling but for for everything they sell there are equivalent buyers that exist otherwise we would have been crashing. It would have become a blow-off top.

But every day that goes by, one of these profit-takers is eliminated from the market. So it's all progress. It's all improvement. We are building a base. We are building a foundation. And as Dave very well mentioned, let's not forget about the context. We have constant accumulation. because market participants begin trading at higher prices. And when enough volume is exchanged as hand in those prices, those prices are in effect approved by the market. So essentially a wide range of market participants agree that this is the right price. That's when a foundation is built. And at the same time, a lot of the speculators get depressed.

So leverage gets washed out and the underlying accumulation becomes strong enough to break us out of that range. A couple more things I'll mention is if you have a power curve model, which models the average Bitcoin price, it would be something at something around 90,000 here. So essentially, we've had a mini bubble this year because of all the positive speculation about Trump administration. Then that bubble is taking a break. The mean price is catching up right now, as I said, at around 90 and it's ever increasing because of adoption.

And then as soon as this, as soon as the long side, long speculators are exhausted, conditions will be ready for another move up. And this year, actually, we've also, if you've looked at our quantile model for Bitcoin, you would see that if anything resembling, anything resembling to the past cycles will happen, even with the diminishing volatility, a 90th quantile for the possible distribution of Bitcoin will be above 200 this year. So if you actually get to top range of the distribution, 99th quantile, that would be around 300K. So my base case is still a massive part of the market, bull market is left for this year. And there will be ample catalysts for it, including a dovish turn from the Fed once

the inflation data improves. And everybody else is printing. Ironically, as Jeff Park has mentioned, all this trade war and global conflict will end up leading to more money printing in the basement. And gold is a great sign for that. Gold has already broken above the all-time high and this will do its work we only see it lagged we only see a lagged effect in the price chart because we've had so much of upside move in a short amount of time yeah yeah yeah bill bill you were oh did bill just drop again are you here bill oh you're here good bill you had your hand up and dave uh dave summoned you oh okay well um i i didn't hear

that part but um uh sorry dave but he was praising our amazing show this morning on youtube it must have been it must have been a dog so so you know just I did hear some of what Peter was saying before. I mean, look, consider this me on my hands and knees begging you, all of you, please stop trading right now. Don't trade. I mean, I could basically tell you what to do as a trader and you can do exactly what I say and lose money, or you could do the opposite of what I say, and you're pretty much guaranteed to lose money. And so when you're dealing with this kind of market and the leverage that's available, I mean, your chances of losing money are so high right now. The only thing I can recommend is get some conviction for the state of the markets in general and size your positions accordingly, and then just go away. And if you need stops, because you just can't stomach the volatility, that's fine. But I think if your positioning is

in crypto, and you don't expect 40-50% drawdowns over the course of, you know, a few couple of years, then, you know, you're just not really meant to be here. and or you need to resize your positions in order to basically deal with the psychology of these drawdowns. But trading is a recipe for losing money in this market. And that's somebody who has both made and lost money in trading. I just can't do it in this market. And so Peter probably can, because he's been doing this his whole life and is a master. But, you know, our ball traders at Abra, for example, were like basically telling me like, you should expect that any money we make is upside right now because it's just so hard to, even as a ball trader, it's hard. And this is where it should

be relatively easy for ball traders. So anyway, sorry for the the preaching, but that's fine. Perfect. Go ahead. Yeah, Steve, go ahead. Then Simon. Hey, good to see everybody. Yeah, you know, I'm really I do a really bad job of looking at charts and drawing lines on them and predicting the future on the macro trader. And what I see happening in the macro lens is number one, rentals, rental supply has increased tremendously in a lot of the hot cities. Home sales in 2024 is below what they were in 2008. And, you know, we can start there. Inflation is, you know, you could say it's rising, but it was always rising. It's just, you know, the data probably wasn't correct. So inflation's high. Housing is in trouble. And interest rates probably aren't coming down on

the long end anytime soon. You know, looking at, you know, the bond market, which is the only thing I know how to do, in early December, the yield curve, uninverted, but in a very negative way, with the long end increasing, which is what mortgages are tied to. So everything from a macroeconomic landscape points to recession and a downturn. And that's affecting the markets right now. The biggest effect on the markets right now is actually uncertainty. You know, there was a lot of certainty around, you know, by the way, no matter who would have won the election, crypto would have gone up. Markets went up because now the markets understand what the rules are going to be. They went up more under Trump than if it would have been Harris with a win. But once Trump took office, the next 100 days is going to be pretty uncertain.

Because, you know, and if you look to see what has happened, you know, when the first announcements around tariffs came out, markets hated it. The second time they liked it because now there's certainty that there will be tariffs, right? So, you know, as the Trump administration announces new things throughout the first hundred days, all it's going to cause is chop. So I expect continued chop for the next 100 days, just simply from or the next 80 days, simply from a macro perspective. And then I expect a downturn at the end of the year and through 2026, which happens to coincide with the Bitcoin cycle. My price target for Bitcoin is also $125 to $135 for a new all-time high this year. So I'm still slightly bullish. But when it comes to trading, my son, what's interesting to see is that there's not a lot of traders, as other people have said, in Bitcoin

and some of the larger alts right now. Even Solana, you've got dumping. So even when Bitcoin's up, Solana's down because you've got this massive unlock schedule happening between February and April. So I expect Solana to underperform everything. So that's not something that I would hold right now. But where people are interested, where retail still has some money, are people that are trading meme coins, plain and simple. And they're trading it on the Solana network. So they bought their soul, and now they're trading meme coins, and they're winning and losing. Even my son does this on his phantom wallet. But he said the most interesting thing last night. He said, dad, give me all your money.

And I'll probably either lose it all or double it. But that's exactly what, you know, that's exactly what's going to happen. If you trade right now, you could double your money or you could lose it all, you know, or somewhere in between, but it's, you know, the asymmetric risk profile right now, isn't great. And I agree with bill, you know, have, have, have a good amount of cash on hand, The asymmetric risk profile right now isn't great, and I agree with Bill. Have a good amount of cash on hand, have some positions you like, and just go away until Trump's first 100 days is over, and then maybe we'll rally again to 125, 135 Bitcoin.

I'll take 125 to 135. I think I like seeing this 300 better. Is that where it was? Simon, go ahead. Yeah, so, you know, I always look at this from a grander, like, what are we experiencing right now? My understanding is that the Trump administration is actively by policy, aiming to try and weaken the dollar when the world is trying to is keeps doing stuff to strengthen the dollar and so we're going through this tariff war and a range of geopolitical negotiations that are completely changing the world order as we see it today and so I believe that we're experiencing a retreat of America towards America first and being a regional superpower and handing over some of the global superpowers over to other regional powers. And during that whole time, there are currency wars, there are capital flows, there are change in policies. So and all of those, I believe, end up with either a negative side or a positive side with demand for Bitcoin. You know, take sanctions, for example. If you are a sanctioned country, you build an insular policy, just like most of the major sanctions, you know, if you look at Iran, if you look at Russia,

they tend to end up repurposing energy, getting into Bitcoin mining, and build an insular strategy. But open up. So if some of these geopolitical tensions get taken away, and we end up in an environment where, okay, Syria, you can now open up and you're rebuilding your financial system. You're building from the ground up. What does that look like? And so if you start following as well, like in the title that was in the beginning, look at where Coinbase is securing their licenses right now. So they just secured a license in Argentina.

They're trying to get back into India as well after a two-year hiatus. That was the title here, will be started. Yeah, correct. So, you know, in Argentina, they understand like, you know, currency wars, they understand inflation, they understand it more than anywhere else.

And so by opening up in Argentina, you know, there's a lot of volume there that was in a very restrictive policy before where you had to be in the black market in order to engage in this process. There was tremendous volume. You know, still the largest amount of volume here is still Nigeria, India. of gold owners that have tremendous savings that are going to be passing on their wealth to their next generation and their next generation is a bunch of people that want bitcoin and so now they're getting licenses in India you know India has been one of the well largest population in the world largest nation of gold savers and they've been the last flip flopper. You know, China and India were the most famous flip floppers in our industry. And now America says, well, we'll be in the center of crypto. So India says, right, we've got to relook at that policy. This will be the final relook.

There won't be a flip flop backwards again. You only go in one direction from here. In Europe, there's licenses, you know, at Bank to the Future, we secured our Polish license. That's full clarity on how to engage with virtual assets with a full regulatory regime. We just got our financial promotion approved in the UK, complete clarity in the UK and how to engage with this sector. And so, you know, globally, this is a global story. And there are, you know, the largest volume, again, is, you know, you look down the table, Nigeria, India, and these other jurisdictions.

And then if you end up getting an open business environment and these problems being solved, whether it be Venezuela, wherever it be, whatever these different things, these are all Bitcoin stories. And so there is a tremendous amount that's not factored into the price as the world starts to realize that there's

only one asset in the world that doesn't have counterparty risk, that is completely auditable, that is transferable at scale with liquidity, that is geopolitically neutral, that also solves the inflation problem for individuals, companies, countries, sovereign nations, and central banks. So I hope that that inspires into you that in these quiet periods, there is a lot of building happening. And it all gets built when things are quiet. It's only quiet for price. Exactly. That's all people look at, but it's only quiet for price. Andrew, I know you were trying to request because you had a comment. So feel free. Yeah, it's a you know, I liked Steve's comments earlier about the, you know, the first hundred days of Trump's administration and the quote unquote uncertainty associated with, you know, just a tornado of activity.

You know, you pull it back to 50,000 feet and that tornado maybe looks not like a tornado, but looks like, you know, open roads as it relates to crypto and Bitcoin on a go forward basis. So, you know, it's just a question of time versus timing. Yeah, tariffs, the whole tariff conversation is fascinating to me because tariffs have existed for a long, long time. They weren't materially changed from the first Trump administration to the Biden administration. There's enormous amounts of tariffs that are placed on American goods going into the likes of China and others. So it's all, you know, negotiation tactics, how the markets decide to evaluate those again over

its time versus timing, right? We're at 22,000 on the net. Sorry, I'm looking at futures, but we're at or near all-time highs associated with the broader markets. We're 11% away from all-time highs for Bitcoin. So it's all relative. While at the same time, we have working groups associated with crypto and strategic Bitcoin reserves. And another state nearly every day is filing something associated with a Bitcoin reserve. So again, it's time versus timing. And what does that look, three months from now? Who knows? What does it look like six months from now? I would argue higher. There are so many opportunities for there to be a gap higher that we don't see coming and happens in the blink of an eye with Bitcoin, that sometimes we can't get out of our own silo and see that there's so many of them that exist, right? At some point, there is going to be an

absolute supply shock that that will happen at some point. It's just a question of when. All the markers are there. And we're living in a different world. Maybe that's the reality with quote unquote crypto and Bitcoin, that this new world that we're living in of open spaces is so foreign to us that we can't get our minds around it because for so long the idea of bitcoin and crypto has been this this binary reality of of by a huge chunk of something at this price and then you're tied to that price forever whereas we now have you know the the the cftc guy that was that was just appointed. Yeah, I mean, the guy's a DeFi monster, right? So, you know, six months ago, basically, if you were a DeFi company, you were going to get sued, and you were going to face serious, serious issues. No way you could do business in the

United States. Now we have DeFi is a place that people should be building as fast as possible based on the change and adjustment. So getting our arms and our minds around all that is difficult to do right now. So, you know, price and where it goes, it's really, really difficult to see it not higher. Bitcoin in particular on a go forward basis. And we all know if Bitcoin goes to 130 or 150, you know, in the blink of an eye, which I think it can sometime between the next three to six months, all the other assets are going to have movements higher as well. Meme coins set aside, you know, you have a lot of names and a lot of projects that are going to follow Bitcoin price.

That's been the nature of crypto markets for years and years and years. Yeah. Any comments from anybody else on the panel on the current topic? I mean, the India thing was one of the bigger stories of the day that Coinbase is going to be working to reenter India. Simon made the great point that China and India have sort of been the source of much FUD over the past few years with the on-again, off-again bans. And they're favorable, they're against, they're for, they're against, back and forth. Seems like they're largely for. Peter, I mean, I want to just go back to you quickly because we asked about the charts.

Bitcoin, I think, is clearly still in a bull market. Would you view altcoins as being in a bull market? Like, would you define this as an overall crypto bull market? Bitcoin is crypto. Crypto is Bitcoin. I'll never change my tune on that. I mean, I want to be in Bitcoin. I have no interest in alt markets.

It's distracting. It takes attention away from what I think is the legendary, the iconic crypto. So I just want to keep my eye on the ball. And the ball to me is Bitcoin. I have no interest in the other macro caps. I have no interest in the altcoins. I have no interest in means. My interest is limited to Bitcoin.

We also should give some real time and space to the reality that crypto has led the way and is pushing traditional markets to act more like crypto. And what do I mean by that? Charles Schwab goes to 24-7 trading five days a week. They just announced it. The New York Stock Exchange is opening up a hub in Texas, probably to compete with Citadel and BlackRock and them opening up their Texas exchange. That's going to probably be a 24-7 type of exchange. That 24-7 trading, the tokenization potentially of that trading, which BlackRock and Larry Fink have talked about ad nauseum, that's all been pushed, by the way, by crypto and the fact that there are enormous amounts of people and enormous amounts of capital in the crypto space. And so, you know, innovation has been a thing and crypto has led the way.

And that's where we're headed with traditional markets. They've got to keep up. They absolutely have to. And they're going to. It's going that way. Charles Schwab has been around for forever. It's as old school as it gets. And the fact that they're going to do 24-7, five days a week is a huge headline. Did you cover the Robinhood earnings yesterday? No, I was about to. Literally, it was the next story i have it pulled up right here robin hood reports record 1 billion q4 revenue and 700 surge in crypto revenue amid post-election trading boom killing it yeah awesome um yeah uh but i was on a space with david weisenberger yesterday and you know the i think the the headline is that the the the revenue from crypto trading was six times the revenue from stockbroking trading, stock trading.

And so that is a headline, you know, that is the every broker dealer will see, here's the product, you know, here's the Trump administration, here's where the next product is. So they've got somewhat of a unique position right now both coinbase and robin hood for opposite reasons so coinbase started as a crypto company and tried to become a securities broker but had all the issues with the sec whereas robin hood was a securities broker that tried to become a crypto business and they had the problems with the SEC. But all those problems go away and now the whole market

gets to watch that there is greater return in supporting and making markets in crypto rather than just stocks. I was going to say, people need to understand that a lot of people who've been on Wall Street a long time understand this. You just got to follow the money. Wall Street always over-pursues the next shiny object in terms of revenue potential. But what does over-pursuing look like? What over-pursuing looks like is hiring salespeople, building out capabilities,

and giving the ability to introduce safe trading in crypto assets, not necessarily just ETFs, but actual crypto assets to the masses. There are many, many people who the only way they can buy crypto or all their assets are tied up in brokerage accounts. That's why Vanguard is a big deal. By the way, Vanguard will be the last to flip, but they'll flip when everybody else does it. Right. And so it's it's and Vanguard, most of their money isn't in the brokerage side. Brokerage side is a tiny piece of Vanguard. Most of it is in their mutual funds. So what you're looking at is all the wire houses, all the retail brokers, all over the next year, either planning or building an actual crypto trading capabilities and the ability to work with custodians and offer a solution. That is a massive number of salespeople.

That is a massive unlock of liquidity into the market, which will predominantly go to the majors. And it's not price net, just isn't. It's like, you know, we saw that everyone talks about institutions, but people don't understand. There's three types of institutions. There's three types of money flows out there. There's the high net worth individuals, family offices, and all the others that are serviced by this massive complex of financial advisors down through RIAs. And Bill can talk better than I can about the RIA business because that's a major focus of his. There's the institutions, the big asset managers, they won't come in, you know, the big pools of capital until

the consulting complex says it's okay to come in. They will come in when every broker offers it. So there's a lot of unlock here. And all I got to say is having spent so many years in between Morgan Stanley, Salomon Brothers, and Citigroup, when you start seeing headlines like what Robinhood does, we already know Goldman Sachs is telling everybody they want to do everything they can in crypto. And we've had E- know, E-Trade basically saying, you know, Morgan Stanley's E-Trade saying they're going to offer it as soon as there's the regulatory ability to offer it. This is a big deal. I'm going to keep talking about this for the next three months until it actually happens. But it's going to happen this year. We just don't know when. We still need Paul Atkins to get in. By the way, crypto companies are about to lead a renaissance of the IPO markets capture that Robinhood has.

So Wall Street is going to fall in love all over again with crypto because there's lots of money to be made on the IPO side. Well, you're also going to see a bunch of governance tokens start to pay dividends now that they won't call it dividends. It'll be protocol, platform, revenue share. But if you look at the revenue that some of these protocol tokens are generating, it's enormous. And sorry, not the tokens, but the protocols themselves are generating. And it's going to the foundations, which makes no sense, right? Because they're foundations. And so the only reason they did that in the first place was because they were afraid of looking like securities. And I think they're going to get a pass now, given the likely sandbox that's coming and the fact that they're generally going to be decentralized. And so I think you're going to see a wave of decentralized DeFi platforms that basically aggregate the the non consumer generatingumer generating revenue back to the governance tokens

themselves. And that is going to cause an explosion in what we used to call ICOs, but under just different names, probably more legit, easier to analyze. We're better at looking at smart contract code and shit like that. So I think it's going to be a very interesting year in that regard. Yeah, we just had the Exodus IPO, which I was involved in. That's up to 1.5 billion market cap now. That was a self-custody wallet. And, you know, I think, you know, it's done incredibly well. I think it hit a peak of $100 back to $50,

so massively volatile. But yeah, it's great. It's interesting to watch. Yeah, I mean, think about the revenue, like Kraken, OKEx, Bitfury. I mean, a lot of these companies probably don't want to go public where some of them don't. But the the revenue and profits of these companies, I mean, just look at their sponsorships. Right.

So that should tell you all you need to know about how much profit they're generating and all right to go public once once rates go down, which I think, you know, to your point about Trump and the dollar, I think is going to happen. Well, we had we had the news late last week about Gemini exploring, you know, an IPO. So, yeah, if they're doing it, yeah, if they're doing it, you Gemini, Kraken, BitGo, who else is on the kind of docket right now? Yeah, I mean, no one has said it, but if you just kind of follow the wallets, Circle would be another one. Circle probably needs the capital more than the others, would be my guess, given that a lot of the revenue goes to Coinbase. But yeah, I mean, just follow the wallet usage and that'll tell you who can probably get out in this market. I mean, we're on track to do, you know, high eight figures and

shouldn't be saying that, but, you know, it's and there's going to be, you know, I think a boom in DeFi lending as well for those governance tokens. Right. So so and then I think you're going to see Middle Eastern companies start to announce securitized or tokenized securities exchanges that look a lot like Coinbase. And then there's going to be an outcry for us to start looking at that in the West, right? Which is what I think Larry Fink's been talking about. I've been talking about it for years. I think we talked about it on the, the interview you and I did in Dubai, Scott, right? Where, you know, it makes no sense to be doing T plus one settlement for securities in 2025. This should all be tokenized.

It should settle in real time, right? These stocks should look like governance tokens that have dividends attached and they should be fungible so that you can do self-custody, you can do broker-based custody. And I think you're going to see the Middle East lead the way based on what I'm hearing. And then I other other markets are going to start to follow suit this year well you you can yeah the secure the securitized funds the um i don't know if anyone's like you have to be ultra high net worth i think right some of them are like five million but they're paying dividends every single day so it's just awesome yeah it's awesome and there's no reason why you wouldn't want to do that with traditional equities.

There are incumbents that have an entrenched business model that takes advantage of the settlements right around water flows and whatnot, which is bullshit. That's at the consumer's expense. So get rid of all of it and just tokenize everything and just do, you know, order book style, crypto style settlement in real time for all of these assets. You can do, there's no reason why you can't have equities trading on DEXs that do atomic swaps just like crypto. Yeah, I think it's going to be a really interesting year.

I'm curious if there's going to be others that we're not expecting that are going to IPO. But I think, Andrew, what you're saying about crypto IPO is just also going to be a general boom in IPOs, which have been dead for so long. A micro example of the massive shift from a regulatory standpoint is you could have a company like Uniswap in the next 18 months go public when the previous 18 months they were fighting off the SEC and fighting to stay alive here in the United States. Like that's the that's the that's the size of the gap as as it relates to regulatory and then that goes back to my point about time versus timing like overall from from a time standpoint you know we we we are in the midst of or the beginning of or headed towards you know renaissance type of uh type of time here and so you know don't don't let it pass you by. Meme coins are not meme coins. You goof around with that stuff. But but overall, we're in a pretty, pretty unique period as it relates to the adjustments and changes to to markets and to finance and to all things associated with crypto. Pressing innovation, really pressing innovation. It's it's it's pretty i find it very impressive

you know kudos to all the builders out there yeah i agree one comment on that though you know while i do obviously uh you know we're trying to lead the charge in defy and and making these next gen technologies real in terms of traditional markets though i mean i see a lot of similarity right i mean to me the kind of trailing indicator on getting back to opening up the IPO market is VC distribution checks. And I haven't gotten a distribution check from any of the funds that I'm in for years now. And usually that's a trailing indicator on where public markets are going. And so if you look at the fact that it's very unlikely that Treasury rates could go a lot higher, they could go a little higher. I actually think Trump's going to do whatever he has to do to get them down.

And that's potentially a good leading indicator on the IPO markets opening up again, which I think has a good chance of happening in 2026. So we'll see. But I think it aligns very well with what you're saying. Simon, some final thoughts. We're going to wrap after you sort of give us your words. Yeah, so I was just going to say, like it triggered a thought when Andrew said,

you know, the Uniswap IPO. If something like that happens, then you've got an IPO that has a stock price with, you know, a DEX that has a governance token. And you can only imagine the types of things that are going to happen when you have a stock price and you can arbitrage to the governance token. And then as the price goes up, it increases the value with the new tax reporting. Not to dramatize because it's a bad analogy, but do remember that that was when you were marking these tokens to market was what happened with our 2022 collapse. So

interesting times ahead. Interesting times ahead is probably the best way to wrap because I think we all agree with that. But the news cycle a bit slow this actual week relative to how it's been, not relative to the past, obviously, because now Bitcoin and crypto are in the news every single day, which when you pinch yourself is pretty wild thought. All right, everybody, please give everybody on stage a follow. Our amazing guests follow crypto underscore town hall as well. The host so that you never miss these on weekdays at 10, 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Thank you, everybody, for listening to Crypto Town Hall. See you guys tomorrow. Later.