The Wolf Of All Streets - Why Is Bitcoin CRASHING After ETF Approval? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

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Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 james you think of us yet nah not yet have you done a count on how many shows you've done about this in total i would love an estimate uh i actually am planning to do that today i'm off today so i actually only woke up like 45 minutes ago which is glorious but uh But I need to figure that number out. But it also means that the amount of shows and things I did, I didn't like basically do a chunk of my day job because I was doing like podcasts and spaces and interviews and press stuff. I was also doing radio and TV a bunch this week.
Starting point is 00:00:40 And I barely wrote any research. So this week is going to be a conversation. I was going to ask, what's your day job? I was under the impression that your day job was tweeting about Bitcoin spot ETF odds. Yeah, so I'm going to be doing the full swing in the other direction this week, hopefully, or I should be head down, headphones on,
Starting point is 00:00:58 ignoring people a little bit. We'll see. Hold on. What do you mean other direction? Is there a direction other than Bitcoin etf i don't understand well honestly i will be writing about the bitcoin etf yes but i mean like just writing rather than like talking to people like this like actually yeah i don't think i don't think i don't think we've had you on stage i know you were on scott's show but we've had eric obviously on stage but we haven't had you on stage since the approval you were on Scott's show, but we've had Eric, obviously, on stage. But we haven't had you on stage since the approval.
Starting point is 00:01:25 You tried to make it, I think, once or twice. Unless I'm wrong. Is that true? Yep, that's right. I can't even begin to tell you how packed my schedule was this week. Basically, didn't sleep for a few nights. Yeah, but Eric rage quit on us because of Red.
Starting point is 00:01:41 So there's that. Oh, man, should I listen to that? i do think he genuinely had to go but uh i've never seen eric show like that level of emotion he was he was super pissed for anyone who didn't listen to it last week i did not yeah hopefully we get ran so we can we can try to piss james off as well is ran still calling i didn't look at the show today i looked at your scott and i'll get him i think one thing we should do scott is you and rand give a quick recap of what you discussed in your show in this space a quick like two minute recap and it would be good i just thought of this before the space um so i'll ask you to do it and then we'll get rand to do when he comes on but is rand i'm not sure if you saw the show today is he
Starting point is 00:02:20 still uh in the same stance that the the etf launch was a failure or he's more in the middle now? I have no idea. I didn't see his show today. And even when he came on, you know, I think he admits all of us. We know with YouTube that like you get a big title and maybe you come to a different conclusion by the end. I mean, I think that in my opinion, I'm really curious, actually, what James has to say. So I do Macro Monday with james lavish uh dave weisberger mike mcglone obviously all three who are pretty regular here we talked about sort of the same thing james i pointed at the fact that eric you know as the dust sort of settled eric tweeted uh that you know even accounting for all of the outflows from gbtc i don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but it was 800 plus million in inflows net, right?
Starting point is 00:03:06 So by any metric, to me, seemingly a rousing success. Rand's point was when he was looking at the first day, talking about the volume, we didn't really know the answer on the inflows and saying, hey, it's net, net zero, because GBTC outflows basically, or volume matched the volume of the buying of all the other ones. And everybody kind of said, hey, we need to chill, T plus one, you know, settlement and all these
Starting point is 00:03:32 other things and understanding how long it takes to really see the numbers shake out, which I still don't think we really have, to be quite honest. But it seems like since then, very clearly, inflows crushed outflows. I mean, James, is that correct? That's my impression. Yeah, I think so. There's a lot of wonky things going on here. I'll just walk through them a little bit. These are things I plan to write about this week.
Starting point is 00:03:56 But essentially, there's two fundamental things that are causing lags in exactly what's going on in the market. The first is settlement, which everyone is talking about. There's T plus two settlement in many of these cases. So people might be selling GBDC. And even if they do plan to buy another Bitcoin ETF or Bitcoin itself, in many cases, they just don't have the money. They don't have the money yet. It's settling. So they can't rebuy whether it's in the same brokerage or if they're actually planning to buy its spot, they need to wait till it settles in brokerage and then they can wire it somewhere where they can buy it. So that's the first thing. So I think that there's probably some money that's come out of GDC that will come back in.
Starting point is 00:04:33 The other problem is the way that mutual fund accounting works, which depends how in the weeds you want to get here. But because a lot of these firms that do the accounting for these ETFs, they primarily did this with mutual funds, which had a different process than ETFs for creating shares, as we've discussed many times. But in many cases, that means there's like a T plus one situation where like, you don't really know exactly what happened to flows until the day after, which believe me, I know to anyone in crypto seems like absolutely insane to even be talking about. So we definitely have an idea of what happened through Thursday and even through Friday for the vast majority, but there's still some wonky things going on trying to figure out.
Starting point is 00:05:11 That said, I'm with you. The volume numbers were pretty much unheard of for the most part for multiple ETFs launching at the same time doing the same thing. I can't really say it's a record because it was multiple ETFs, but iShares alone came close to a record. GBTC, which is cheating, broke the record for first day of trading. But if you include all of them and even exclude GBTC, I mean, this blew any ETF record out the door in the US as far as we're concerned. James, the question that I have, and by the way, good to have Eric, Gareth, Alexei, and Dan is here as well, but Eric and Gareth to give us kind of an overview
Starting point is 00:05:51 on the market's reaction, which I know, Ryan, you covered in your show as well. But James, the question I have is not whether it performed well or not, but whether it matched or beat expectations or not. And Ryan is here as well, so I'd love to see if Ryan's opinion has changed after you, james go ahead yeah so i was kind of of the opinion that i thought we might see in the first few days and week net neutral like i thought we would see zero total inflows for the first few days right now it looks like we saw net inflows uh but again like i said there's some
Starting point is 00:06:21 accounting things where we might be missing some things are a little funky. But I don't think I don't think there's any way I don't think there's any way that it was net neutral. I think that if you look at the trade on GBTC, and you look at the wallet movement, I'm only talking wallet movement, I'm not talking anything else. Because we don't have the actual data, I think you'll realize that the art of GBTC is much more severe than we see. And I think that will probably come out in realize is that the art cloud of GBTT is much more severe than we see. And I think that will probably come out in the wash in the next couple of days.
Starting point is 00:06:51 I mean, Eric tweeted it with two days in the books. I found it. The nine new boards have taken in 1.4 billion in new cash, overwhelming GBTT's 579 million of outflows for a net total of 819 million in. So where's the disparity there's a possibility
Starting point is 00:07:06 that what ran saying is true that there there might be a little bit more outflows from gbtc than our show that is showing in that data due to settlement and um the settlement is t plus one or t plus two but doesn't that play both ways that's that's, that doesn't only apply to GBTC and the other number is larger. But that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. So unless you are of the opinion that there was more inflows into the new ETFs than there was, there was, you don't know. By the numbers we have, it was 819 million plus.
Starting point is 00:07:39 Because you don't know what you don't know what the final numbers are for the second day because there's a T plus one or T plus two settlement which you'll only know tomorrow or the next day correct but i'm saying you're making the assumption that means it was only more outflows in gbtc when you can make the equal assumption that was equal equal inflows into the others and by the numbers that we do have based on what has settled i'll jump in and i'll jump in real quick and add like one thing a lot of what i think people are trying to do is look at the volume numbers and say these volume numbers. And I know Rand was talking about OTC trading. I have talked to some people at Coindesk who said some of the writing that people are doing on the OTC wallets is a little inaccurate due to the way that they move things around.
Starting point is 00:08:20 But obviously, they wouldn't tell me anything more than that. Anyway, the volume, you can't really go by volume. You need to see the actual flow numbers is the problem, particularly for something like GBTC. I can virtually guarantee you that these market makers, when they were making markets in these other ETFs, theoretically possibly creating shares, were using GBTC as a hedge on the long or short side. So when you're creating a share and someone's buying a share from you when you have a bid ask out there, you are net short, so you have to buy something. In many cases, people were buying either futures or biddo was
Starting point is 00:08:55 what I was expecting. Based on the volume numbers I saw in GBTC and what was happening around the entire complex, people were likely also buying GBTC because that thing is so damn liquid. So some of the volume in GBTC, it was not going to be as high a percentage to the flows as the new funds is basically what I would say. So I also was of the opinion that it looks like it was net neutral on Thursday. But looking back now, it makes a little bit of sense that the flows out of GBTC were lower than I was expecting, even on the days that we already have. Okay, so look, let's agree the following. Let's agree that we don't know. And that we'll only know in about a week to 10 days.
Starting point is 00:09:35 And it's probably only fair to actually judge this thing a week to 10 days after the event to see whether or not the ETF is a net inflow or a net outflow. My concern is that a few things. One is I think that we've ended one trade and we're entering the new part of the cycle. And in between trades, it's not unusual to get a bit of a flash up. The second thing is if you look at the behemoth that is actually GBTC, and you say like, you know, they've got 20, $28 billion. I mean, I don't know the exact number, 620,000 Bitcoin, more or less. That's more than anybody in the world and three times what MicroStrategy are holding.
Starting point is 00:10:21 It makes, it's, the way I see this trade is that the probability that the institutions are going to bring in as much as the outflow on GBTC will be is, I don't back them to do that. And I'll tell you, the way I see it is, if there's just a 10% outflow out of GBTC, that's 2.8 billion hitting the market. And I don't know if the guys have got 2.8 billion lined up from here. Like I just doesn't make sense to me that I just, my, my, my spidey senses are telling me that there's going to be more outflows than inflows in the next 10 days or so. And I don't think that that's such a bad thing.
Starting point is 00:11:02 I'll tell you why I don't think that that's such a bad thing. And I think that any smart institutional guy is watching this and going, would I rather put my clients into the Bitcoin ETF at $42,500 or would I rather put them in $38,500 and look like a god for putting them into the trade a little bit cheaper? And I think that the institutions are smart enough to say, you know what? Hold on a second. This is not about the first week. Let the GBTC bubble deflate, right? Let the price come down, and then I'll put my clients in a week later, and I'll make my clients the happiest clients alive. Yeah, I mean –
Starting point is 00:11:41 Come on, James. Okay. We do know the numbers a little bit. So we've already seen at least 1.4 billion flow into all the new ETFs, at least 1.4. They could be also suffering from some of the same settlement and T plus one mutual fund accounting issues that GBTC is. So I actually, I've been saying, I mean, every time I was on here, I was like, guys, don't worry too much about the first few days. There's going to be a bunch of money that comes in, but a lot of it is going to be recycled. And I was trying to say, it's going to be about figuring out how much of this is recycled. We're probably going to see money, we're already seeing it. We're probably going to see money flow from other ETFs around the world, primarily Canada. We're going to see it from futures products. Futures themselves had a huge unwind during this whole thing. And also Bitcoin itself was, by any technical metric and even structural network based on the futures market, was overbought. So that's kind of how I'm looking at it. That said, just give it time. Give it time before these things are operating
Starting point is 00:12:43 exactly what you said, Ram. These guys are not going to buy. It's going to be even longer than what you were talking about. Some people might be waiting for what you're talking about, a little bit for the dust to settle, because GVC is still trading a little bit of a discount, large for multiple reasons, which we can get into. But it's going to happen over the coming weeks and months. The first week will be when I think I'm, I'm planning to check back and be like,
Starting point is 00:13:05 how did this actually go? So I will know this week. I know we're impatient because we're crypto people. I'm thinking more like the first month is much more of a fair assessment. And I think, you know what, if we get a little bit of a shakeout in the next month, it's not a bad thing.
Starting point is 00:13:18 You said one thing, which is right. The institutional, the CME futures, futures, open futures contracts, open interest on futures, declined by 20% at the end of this trade. And by the way, the ETH futures up 35% at the end of this trade.
Starting point is 00:13:37 So a lot of, I mean, you can't say a lot of the money because, you know, relative to Bitcoin, the ETH numbers are pretty small. But you can see that the institutions have started moving into the next trend, which is the ETH trend. Yeah, I want to go to David momentarily, obviously go to the guests. But just to make a point, I think we're conflating a lot of different things. The price of Bitcoin going down does not mean, obviously, that the ETF launch was not a success. So maybe people are positioning to get their clients in lower. I have no idea.
Starting point is 00:14:09 But literally Friday, we were arguing over whether the quote unquote Bitcoin ETF launch was a disaster. And now three days later, we're giving it a month to see. I just don't understand. Like, it seems like the North Star has moved dramatically. Even on Friday, I kept the disclaimer. And I kept saying, look, you can't judge a launch on the first day and on the second day. I think the net-net is, let's put it this way. I have no doubt that when we look back at this in a year from now or six months from now,
Starting point is 00:14:36 we'll say that the ETF was the most exciting thing to happen to Bitcoin. The problem is because we're crypto degens and because we only care about the price today and tomorrow, I think that a lot of people might be disappointed in the short term. I couldn't give a shit because my trades, I don't look at Bitcoin in the short term. And I also think that a flush out in a market that's run for 182 days without a real correction is kind of like healthy. You kind of want the flash out. I think the thing that I'm most upset about is the fact that today Bitcoin is hardly moving and it's like there's low volume and it's like crappy trading. It's a holiday in the United States and the ETF is not trading.
Starting point is 00:15:23 That's the thing. So what does that mean now that we're only going to get volatility between 9.30 and 4 p.m. on Monday to Friday, and then we're not going to get any volatility on Martin Luther King Day, which, by the way, the rest of the world don't really care about and don't even know what the hell it's about. But now, so I actually called up on my show, I called up on this. So now we're not going to expect any volatility on New Year's Day,
Starting point is 00:15:46 but that's fine. On New Year's Day, we're probably all partying or hungover, so we don't really want volatility. Then Martin Luther King Day, no volatility. Washington's birthday, like non-Americans actually give a shit about Washington's birthday. Monday, 20th of February, no volatility on Bitcoin. Good Friday, that's cool.
Starting point is 00:16:03 Like Good Friday is cool. I think Easter, we should all have a bit of a break. But there's Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, no volatility on Bitcoin anymore because now it's an institutionalized asset. I think we can't judge it on the first Monday, but I hear you. Go ahead, David. Yeah, I actually think it's pretty good if we get to that. I mean, absent, you know, major happenings or goings on over holiday weekends or weekends generally, you know, if we get less volatility in the asset class, you know, I think that's part of the institutionalization of things for better or worse. That's when institutions actually move their money and show up to work. In terms of, you know, the North star moving. I agree with you, Scott. Um,
Starting point is 00:16:45 you know, if, if, if I had to, I certainly, you know, thought that there would be, um, you know, I wouldn't say explosive movement to the upside, but certainly, you know, strength. And here we are with, you know, somewhat anemic, um, you know, somewhat anemic, you know, activity. And, you know, I think for most folks on the call that are long-term holders, you know, the way we explain that away is it really doesn't matter. We just, you know, we're looking at the long-term. I think to be practical about things in terms of, you know, RIAs, institutions going ahead and putting money to work. I don't think that they were waiting at the starting gate, you know, for the gun to be shot and to go ahead and pounce out of the gate. They just, I don't think they work that way. I think they're willing to go
Starting point is 00:17:41 ahead and give up, you know, a little bit in the short term to make sure that they're doing this right in the long term, i.e. there's consensus, there's education, there's full buy-in from their customer base. I think that's all going to happen over time. And like Rand said, and I totally agree with this, we have no patience. That's just the way we rock. And that's fine, frankly, because for the most part, that gets us to places sooner than other people. But when we're waiting for the herd to go ahead and catch up and drive momentum to the next level, you know, I think we do have to have some patience in terms of, you know, there being massive teach-ins, you know, there being among sales forces, there being, you know, meetings, education going on,
Starting point is 00:18:26 publication of papers and so on and so forth that yes, are not going to say anything new, frankly, about this asset class that has not been said until now, certainly about the particular asset we're talking about here is Bitcoin. I don't think there's going to be anything new that's going to be said. But that being said, you all know, I know the way the institutional world works is that there is this regurgitation that needs to go ahead and happen for people to go ahead and find comfort in the fact that there is staying power, that it's worthwhile to invest in, that it is an asset class that is worthwhile having in a portfolio because it's uncorrelated, so on and so forth.
Starting point is 00:19:05 And so, you know, I think that that's going to happen. I wouldn't go ahead and give up hope on things, you know, based on the first five to 15 days of the year. You know, we've got a long road to hoe from here. James. Yeah, I was just going to chime in and echo something he said I was at PubKey on Thursday and I talked to multiple of these firms wholesalers so I talked to wholesalers from 21 shares from I talked to people from Hashtex I talked to people from Bitwise and VanEck and probably others and
Starting point is 00:19:38 the main thing that like that you need to understand is like these guys were paying attention watching all this obviously was exciting but it's kind of the opposite of me like that last week was like the main thing that i was covering um from a professional perspective these guys their work starts next week right they have meetings lined up out the wazoo all next week to go do what what david was just talking about and going to talk to these advisors and clients about these products right so all of these issuers are going to have people starting next week, going to talk to people about these. And to his point, even further, they're still not going to buy next week. They're getting, the conversation's going to happen. They're going to get more interest. They're going to pay attention. They're going to do their due diligence. Maybe some of them will be interested in it,
Starting point is 00:20:18 but it's, it's the conversation that's going to be happening. And that's how these people are getting in the doors of a lot of these advisors um yeah james hunter horsley uh on the day of the launch told us that they'd already had meetings they'd had 20 he counted them but they'd had 20 000 meetings uh bitwise alone had had 20 000 effectively pitch meetings and that was in advance of all this and you have to remember that them vanak valkyrie these are the most bitcoin native right who get it i think that the bulk of these haven't even gone on that road show yet and then as you said first they got to convince the rias and the institutions and then they have to go convince their clients so it's a probably a six month trickle just even get the ball rolling and you
Starting point is 00:21:01 also got to realize even based on that based on that same firm, Bitwise's survey, most advisors weren't expecting this. So the advisors that Hunter was talking about from Bitwise were the people that had an interest in this. The 30%. The 30% who literally thought this would even happen. Right. Yeah, exactly. So there's a whole other level of people that are now going to be like, okay, now these exist. I'll take a meeting and maybe just learn a little bit about this asset class. That's where we're at with a lot of these people. So it's going to take time. But then going, okay, so that's about the ETF. So if we want to look at the market and see Bitcoin go up all the way to 49 point whatever and down to 41, I think,
Starting point is 00:21:41 how do you, I know it's hard to make sense of the price, but that's massive volatility and a massive dump. But Gareth, could we see a repeat? I think it was, I can't remember who it was, Burundinski, I think, talked about a repeat of the Coinbase IPO we had in 2019. Is that a possibility? Gareth, what do you make of the charts and the market's reaction? I know, Rand, you talked about it in your show as well. So I'd love to get Eric's thoughts afterwards too. Yeah. So I think the key is, again, it was a very hyped approval. And I think you guys have all mentioned how everyone anticipated it. I commented a few times that I didn't know anyone that wasn't in Bitcoin going into that. So there's just naturally going to be some profit taking.
Starting point is 00:22:19 I think that's what people have to understand is that when you have that much hype, there's going to be some people that are going to say, okay, well, the hype is over now. Let me just take my profits and run. The big question is, how big of a dip are we going to get? On a technical basis, this 42,000 to 43,000 level is really a big level. This is where we chopped sideways, the lowest kind of points over the last couple months. And again, if that breaks, if this 42,000 area breaks, then you likely head to 38,000. 38,000 is another key former breakout level. And it's also the 100 day moving average. So there's a lot of confluence of levels around that 38,000 level, just in terms of the volatility or
Starting point is 00:22:57 lack thereof today on Martin Luther King Day. I think people just have to also remember that, you know, it's it's still Bitcoin is still partially if not fully a risk asset, as much as many people don't want to admit that, you know, it moves with the market on good economic news. And on a Monday, when the US stock markets closed, there's no economic news, there's no new news from any any players out there. So you're just getting a very quiet price action day. That should change, obviously, once the US markets reopen. And eventually, when the crypto market grows big enough, it can stand on its own. But still, I mean, you have Microsoft just taking over the biggest market cap company in the world around $3 trillion,
Starting point is 00:23:34 and Bitcoin and the whole crypto markets aren't even fully equal to one Microsoft, not even close. So it just has to grow into itself to be kind of equated and move on its own accord. But overall, yeah, I mean, I think you watch this of, you know, equated and move on its own accord. But overall, yeah, I mean, I think you watch this 42,000 level. And then if it breaks, you look at 38. If 38 goes, then potentially 30,000. I just want to point out, Mario, really quick to echo something Garrett said. You know, with this sort of downside that we've seen, there are a few other technical things.
Starting point is 00:24:04 I have no idea. I have no crystal ball. I don't know what will happen. If you are a technical trader, you look at the fact that that 49 WIC was right up into the golden pocket, which is the 61.8% Fibonacci up to a 65% retrace. Bitcoin retraces back up to that level every single halving cycle, although this is much later. That was a hideous candle. If you're looking at the weekly, it was shooting star to the upside. And also now we've lost the 50 MA on the daily and testing it as resistance as we speak yesterday closed below for the first time since 26,000 in September. So what you're seeing on a chart, in my opinion, to his point, you have to
Starting point is 00:24:42 differentiate once again, as an investor, I did a show this morning, say, should we buy the dip? I think as an investor, you're buying the dip as a trader, willing to be wrong. Maybe you're looking to buy a dip lower, but I don't think anyone here is screaming to short this back to 15,000. Right? So it was always the idea by the rumor by the dip after the news, I think still holds, it's just a matter of where to buy that dip. But the charts right now do, in my opinion, say kind of what Gareth's saying, a little more downside is likely. Eric, I know you're looking for boring. I wanted to go to Eric and I've got a specific question then, Ryan, as well, just on a few comments made in the show. But just for the audience as well, I'm curious to see whether
Starting point is 00:25:19 the audience thinks we'll see a 2019-like dip and the ETF news ends up being similar to the Coinbase news. So in the bottom right corner, you've got that purple circle. We'd love to get the thoughts of the audience on this. But Eric, Rand talked about the institutional volume last week. BTC had the highest institutional volume, but then price still plummeted. And you've got miners moving all their BTC a lot more than usual.
Starting point is 00:25:44 Could we see a big dip before we we enter the bull market in your opinion eric so that sort of stuff i don't really pay much attention to i actually don't think it matters all that much just because it's not very objective um but as far as you know the short term i think bitcoin very likely to rally from here actually uh probably rallies back back up to like $44,500, $45,000, just a volatility mean reversion play. Bitcoin's kind of playing below what we expect for average returns in the more near term over the past 14-day period. And we do see volatilities entering into a bit of a contraction phase. So likely, we do see a little bit of a short-term rally. And if there is going to be a continuation move to the upside,
Starting point is 00:26:26 which I think would catch a lot of people who I surprised, myself included, it'd be happening off of that. But I do think $44,500, $45,000 is quite likely, and then probably rejection there. If Bitcoin reclaims like $46,500, then hey, this is all going to be wrong when I'm going to say next. You can probably put back on the bullhorns. But as far as everything else that I'm looking at, one of the major things actually Scott brought up, I think I actually spoke about this on your channel this past summer, sometime around there, where Bitcoin in the pre-halving rally, which has happened every time in the past, whether you believe in the halving or not, I actually don't believe in it much, but statistics are statistics, I guess. We have seen that rally up to at least the 50% retracement from the ultimate high to the ultimate low. And in many cases, or in a couple
Starting point is 00:27:14 of cases, we did see that rally get all the way to the 618. And in this case, Bitcoin did hit the 618 pretty much right at 48 and a half to 49,000 bucks. That was the high of the rally thus far. And what typically happens after that leading into the halving is we do start to see a pretty massive pullback or crash, if you want to put it in those terms. Not only did we see that, but we also have a major event, right? This major event with Bitcoin ETF coming out, you get event psychology, of course, and it's very similar, at least in nature, to when CNB futures launched, when Coinbase, when IPO, when the futures ETF launched as well. All of these did mark local tops, which actually did precipitate, you know, 40 to 50% retracements in the following a couple months what's also interesting about this is that after that pre having rally there has always been actually a 40 percent um dump on a monthly closing basis from that high to the next major low and then continue on to the upside it you know kind of around the habit a little bit after the having so a lot of things are kind of lining up in this
Starting point is 00:28:22 regard which to me is very very interesting which, which is typically, you know, good confluence. But one thing that I guess maybe I can scare some people with just because I do think that most people are kind of, you know, bearish right now. So, you know, one of two things probably happens. You probably either you probably do see just straight up from here or you see a bigger dump than most people are probably looking for. And the bigger dump that most people might be looking for is perhaps all the way down to $28,000. The way that I'm getting that is that from all of those pre-having rallies to the 618 Fibonacci, the move after that has always reached down to the 232 Fibonacci retracement, which is actually down around $28,000.
Starting point is 00:29:08 I think that would be pretty severe just from looking at it. It's kind of hard to see that right now. But my opinion is irrelevant to it. I like to stay with statistics. I like to stay with probabilities, kind of leave everything else out of it. None of my volatility models are suggesting anything right now, except just kind of boringness for you know a month or two um but uh but other than that i mean that's really all that i got you know of course you're gonna get the line drawers talking about 38 000 35 000 32 000 whatever you know fair enough but um that's
Starting point is 00:29:41 that's really all I got. Scott, you were jumping in before going to... No, ran. Yeah, I got around. Yeah, ran your thoughts on that particular point, and now I want to get other... David Bailey is up as well, and I'd like to say, ran your thoughts on the market's reaction. And I know... Maybe you can talk about what you covered
Starting point is 00:30:04 regarding altcoin season being back. And you talked about some of the numbers there, so it would be the focus of yours. So, just a line on a few things. There is a CME gap at 39,600. I'm putting a 90% probability on Bitcoin touching that CME gap because the CME gaps are usually closed. And that's the one CME gap that's not really closed, hasn't closed yet. So for me, 90% chance that CME gap is closed. Now, the next question is what's going to happen to alts? I think if you think that if you're listening to this and you think that Bitcoin
Starting point is 00:30:40 is going to crash by say another 10% and altcoins are going to go on the run of their lives while Bitcoin's crashing by 10%. You're dreaming. You haven't done your homework. Usually, when the money exits out of Bitcoin and goes into alties, what you get is you get a correction in the Bitcoin price and you get a correction in alts. But then when the alts recover,
Starting point is 00:30:58 the alts recover much, much, much, much, much faster than Bitcoin. That's how the cycle usually changes. So what I'm seeing on Twitter and stuff like that is I'm seeing people going, it's end of Bitcoin season, it's old season right now. There's no chance that you're going to get an old season. If you wake up tomorrow morning and Bitcoin's at 39,000 to 40,000, are you telling me that you're also going to be up 20, 30, 40%? Not a chance in hell. If your thesis is that the next run is an altcoin season, then yes, we get the flush out.
Starting point is 00:31:29 And then when we get the recovery of Bitcoin, Bitcoin recovers to, I don't know, 45,000 or stuff like that. But altcoins go much, much, much, much, much higher led by Ethereum. So for example, you could say that the next time Bitcoin touches 45,000, Ethereum is at 3000. And then that for me is like, if you want to talk about an alt season, that's the only path to an alt season. But I see some, honestly, some naive,
Starting point is 00:32:00 hopium, stupid opinions on Twitter that say, okay, now the trade's out of Bitcoin. Everyone's selling their Bitcoin. It's all going to go into alts. And the Bitcoin dominance is coming down. I've been here since 2015, beginning of 2015, and I've never seen an alt season while Bitcoin's crashing. David? Yo, what's up, everybody?
Starting point is 00:32:21 Have you already talked to GBTC? Only briefly. But yeah, we did get into it. But I think it's definitely worthy if you're... Well, David might have more insight than the rest of us. Exactly. Exactly. I want David's thoughts on this.
Starting point is 00:32:37 And I know Preston was trying to unmute when we were discussing this as well. So Mike, is yours, David? Yeah. I mean, I would just... First off, I think the GBTC is what's dragging the price. I feel like that's pretty obvious in the consensus view now. But, you know, I think it's important to point out that that's a one-time drag. Like we're working through basically, what, seven, eight years of activity inside of GBTC that for the first time is able to get out.
Starting point is 00:33:06 But once it moves, it's moved. So there's a lot like when you look at GBTC, it's got 600 and let's call it 15,000 bitcoins in it. What that is made up of is a variety of different types of shareholders who have different goals, different ways that they hold GBTC that have implications for, you know, kind of predicting how much of a drag this is going to be. So first off, my experience is most GBTC shareholders are looking for Bitcoin exposure and they don't like the GBTC product, but they love Bitcoin. So they're going to rotate their holdings into other products. You know, maybe some rotate into the ETFs, maybe some, I mean, there's the, how you can hold Bitcoin has gotten a lot more evolved
Starting point is 00:33:59 over like the history of, you know, since GBTC got launched. So I think you're going to see like the majority of money that leaves the ETF rotate out into other products. And when you kind of like, you know, weigh the impact of that, you know, effectively, the outflow of GBTC is an inflow somewhere else. And so it's kind of, you know, neutral. Then there are, you know, another category of shareholderselines trying to figure out the best time to exit the product um and you know i think it that's probably that's a big slug of people um but they're going to to exit the product as they have maybe offsetting capital losses or you know if the price pulls back far enough it actually makes it cheaper for people to exit so um i think that that's going to be like a long-term tale of people exiting the product that's going to like materialize more slowly over
Starting point is 00:35:11 time people who are in an ira they have no downside to transferring another product so i think like that's a lot of the activity that you're seeing you know now is either people who are in a tax advantage to count um and can get out with no penalty or the third bucket of people, which I'm going to call like institutional investors, people that were doing the GBTC arbitrage trade, bankruptcy estates, basically people who have large holdings of GBTC, a big slug of those users, they're exiting GBTC and they're going into cash and they're not going into any of the other ETF products.
Starting point is 00:35:56 And they're just out. So I'm not speaking, I'm going to use a specific example here, but I'm not speaking details of what their plans are. But like the FTX bankruptcy estate, for example, they have a lot of GBTC shares. They have a lot of ETH shares. They have a couple of different trusts. You know, they owe their creditors cash.
Starting point is 00:36:27 And so, you know, at the end of the day, like they're not looking to rotate their exposure in a different product, like they just need cash. So that's a big slug. And, you know, all of those participants, they were just waiting for the discount to nav to disappear in order to start exiting this product. So I think that's what we're working through right now. You know, it's hard, like all these different groups, you know, they have kind of like, in order to start exiting this product so i think that's what we're working through right now you know it's hard like all these different groups you know they have kind of like like i said can i just can i just stop you there just before you go on to the next point in your mind what if we were to talk again in 30 days what percentage of the gbtc uh nav would have been unwounded and unwound whatever the the right English word is.
Starting point is 00:37:06 Like what percentage of the, right now, let's say GBTC is at 27 billion assets under management. If we were, let's actually bring it down to Bitcoin because if the price could fluctuate, then move the NAV. So they got 620,000 Bitcoin inside GBTC.
Starting point is 00:37:24 If we were to talk again 30 days from now, what do you think the number of BTC in GBTC is? It's a complicated question. And I've been kind of eagerly watching the data that's coming out of GBTC to try to make better approximations of that data. I do think, based on what I've seen, that we actually don't have the totality of day one trading data
Starting point is 00:37:47 Or like outflow data so I think the next like few days are gonna be hugely impactful for us to be able to make like a more accurate kind of Answer put your head up Yeah, okay, so I think that over the next 30 days, like, let's extend that to like three months, let's say. I think over the next three days and 20% of GBTC flows out in the next 30 days, which means that to keep up with that, the other ETFs have to sell about 130,000 Bitcoin, about 130,000 Bitcoin has to be sold, which is about 5 billion. Yeah. But let me put a caveat on that. I think of that 20%, half of it rotates into another product and half of it just exits.
Starting point is 00:38:54 So I actually think like, you know, let's call it half that amount is like net neutral on the price because, you know, they're selling that, but they're buying elsewhere. So, um, I think so just, just, you may be right. on the price because they're selling that, but they're buying elsewhere. I think, so just you may be right, my thoughts are that I don't think half goes into other products just to save the couple of pips, especially because there's TGT, capital gains tax implications, and there are costs in and out. So I'm not as convinced as you are that half actually is just replaced into other products yeah i mean yeah again that was just a gut call but like i know i know holders
Starting point is 00:39:33 that are like what you would call bitcoin maxis that are you know their total portfolio size is like a billion dollars plus and uh maybe their gray scale position was like 100 to 200 million dollars. And like they did this because there was the ARB trade. And then they're going to rotate out. They're going to buy Bitcoin, probably physical. And they're just going to take the tax hit. And that was all just part of factoring into the profitability of the trade. And like there are some big slugs of that. And they're definitely not interested in paying a one and a half percent fee.
Starting point is 00:40:06 And without... So my understanding, my understanding is that the big funds can actually negotiate with Grayscale. If someone could clarify whether that's legal, James, I don't know if you can help us here, if that's legal or not. But my understanding is that there may be some side deals going on where big holders are actually going to Grayscale and saying, look, if you don't give us 0.5, 0.6, 0.8 or whatever point something, then we're actually going to exit and they can't be doing these side deals. Would that be a legal scenario? No, they can't be adjusting the fee. And I also want to echo what David was saying. I agree pretty much with everything he said.
Starting point is 00:40:39 I think 50% of the outflow from GPC will find themselves in other ETFs or other Bitcoin exposure, whether that's literally just cold storage over time. The one thing I would add on to what he was saying, again, I agree with, I can't think of anything I disagree with what he said, is there's settlement, right? So people who sold out on Thursday and Friday, like in many cases, literally cannot buy. They're frozen out from buying right now with that capital. So there's money that's gone out of GPC right now that is in the plumbing of the old financial system that's waiting on settlement in many cases that cannot be deployed again. So, I mean, that's what I'm looking forward to see if that shows up over the coming week or two. So money comes out.
Starting point is 00:41:26 It can't immediately go back into other stuff. It can't even immediately go into Bitcoin itself. So that's something that I think wasn't really discussed clearly. Yeah, that's a great point, James. And I've actually gotten a bunch of DMs from people who sold to get out, planning to rotate in. And then the price started puking. And they're like, whoa, well, maybe I'll just sit on the sidelines here for a couple days and see what happens so um i definitely think like you're right like money that's planning to rotate back in has
Starting point is 00:41:54 like it's kind of stuck in the in between in between state you know i had remember remember tradfiles never seen bitcoin volatility i mean they've seen it from the sidelines, but it's very different when you're about to buy an asset or you're in an asset and you start feeling it on your own flesh what the volatility is like. We've had, just to give you perspective, since last week we've had a 15% correction on Bitcoin. Now, like in traditional markets,
Starting point is 00:42:20 like 15% volatility in four days. It's like almost unheard of. Yeah, I mean, I think the GBTC makeup is pretty interesting. Ran, are you talking right now? He was. No, he was. He's done talking yet. Did you hear his comments? What was the last thing he said? Ran?
Starting point is 00:42:43 I said that TradFi haven't seen the volatility of Bitcoin. I mean, last week we had a 15% correction. I think they would be looking at this and going, whoa, hold on a second. Yeah. So, you know, what's interesting about the GBTC makeup is that a huge percentage of the shares are owned by what I'm going to call like ultra high net worth individuals, like going down the list of the biggest shareholders. And I've talked to, I feel like I've talked to a lot of shareholders, a lot of GBC shareholders. You'd be shocked by how many like successful business entrepreneurs, doctors who bought this product like five, six, seven years ago and have held it from the very get go are sitting on 20, 30, 40,
Starting point is 00:43:26 50 million dollar positions in the stock. It's wild. So, you know, like a doctor sitting on a 40 million dollar position in GBTC, you know, it's just like one of us. I mean, they're not super sophisticated. They're just kind of like, OK, out of this product into that they're smart, but they're not like, you know, they're not institutional money. So I think there's a lot of, a lot of people like that, that make it up, you know, there's over 800,000 GBTC shareholders. I, I don't think that there's really any money inflowing into, into GBTC. I've gotten a couple messages from people that like, maybe, maybe it makes sense for like arbitrage institutional firms firms to be doing it who are kind of just touching it for a small amount of time um so but like i think for the most part the activity like the the the trading volume is
Starting point is 00:44:16 people exiting which was why i was so surprised when we got the first day of data and it was like 95 million bucks is all that flowed out i was was like, there's no fucking way. There's no way that 3 billion in trading volume and 90 million flowing out. So I think as we get the data in over the next few days about what day one looked like, what day two looked like, we're going to be able to start getting like a better sense of like of the ratio of outflows to trading volume. And then we can start making some like uh more accurate projections um i when this like when the whole uh redeem et uh redeem gbtc campaign was going on i got a lot of different like people giving me their perspective on what percentage of the aum they think will
Starting point is 00:44:57 will move under any circumstances so like if grayscale made the fee 10 okay just like as an example um the consensus view was that like you know 40 to 50 percent of the aum in grayscale won't leave under any circumstances it's like just like dead dead money money is so sticky in these products like it's just it won't leave people don't read the perspective. They don't stay up to date about what's going on. Like the, just the money won't leave. So I think, you know, the, the entire world of Bitcoin that we're talking about that are going to, that could flow out of this product. It like the worst case is I think in that ballpark, 50% of the AUM. And I think that that's going to happen over a long period of time.
Starting point is 00:45:47 And so I really think we're talking about a much smaller subset. And again, a big percentage of that's going to rotate in. So I think my gut tells me here, what we're going to see over the next few days as we get an accurate picture of the true outflows on day one, day two of trading is like a big percentage of what's going to flow out has already flowed. And I think that like by the end of next week, you know, maybe a little bit longer, like the vast majority of like the quick outflows will be done. And so I think like once you start kind of running the numbers of like what the outflows are versus the inflows, you know, if the inflows don't, you know, too dramatically drop from here,
Starting point is 00:46:34 I think we're going to get to a net positive situation, you know, very quickly. And I know the answer is net positive, but I don't think it actually is net positive. Let me ask you, let me ask you a question. If we were going to speak again six months from now, exactly six months from the launch date, what would you, Rick, what would you say is the net, would you say it's a net inflow or a net outflow? And what do you think the numbers are? Six months from, six months from launch. Net, net inflow. I think my personal view is that like,
Starting point is 00:47:03 once we have, right now, we have this absolute uncertainty over the situation. I'm just speaking from the gut on these numbers. No one really knows until we see the data come in. I think that once certainty is brought back where people are able to make an accurate view of what's going on, smart money is going to front run the ultimate outcome. So I actually think the inflows, like as the price has dropped, I'm sure it's sucking out enthusiasm for fresh inflows to come into these ETF products. So I'm expecting the inflows to also start like being less and less per day. But once people can kind of make an accurate assessment of when these outflows will
Starting point is 00:47:46 be stemmed and inflows will be greater than it, I actually think they front run that activity and the inflows will actually start ramping up prematurely as people want to get ahead of that. So I mean, I think big picture, the ETF is such a positive, bullish thing for our industry in terms of liquidity it's bringing in. People that are saying like, this is a sell the news event, or this is a nothing burger, this is more digital. In my mind... Yeah, it's not even going to be close. It's not even going to be close. BlackRock just started running commercials. Larry Fink is on the roadshow. The entire world and investment advisors is going to do whatever Larry Fink says. If he says, hey guys, 1% of your portfolio should be in a Bitcoin spot ETF,
Starting point is 00:48:26 that's when every RIA is going to put all their clients 1% into a Bitcoin spot ETF, if he says that, of course. Can we just talk for one second about how bad that BlackRock advertisement was? Yeah, but that BlackRock commercial is so bad. It's so boring. It's so telepromptered. They didn't even edit the gaps between the guy talking. He looks like an AI robot, and it's literally perfect for every boomer it's perfect for every
Starting point is 00:48:49 boomer in the world you think that an agency actually charged the money or do you think like larry thinks that the guy listen just go put your webcam on you could have done that better in your garage like literally just like i know jay i know jay who was in that commercial. They're so wrapped up in compliance and what they can and cannot say. Like every word he spoke had some legal, some lawyer that basically came in and said, yeah, you can say this word here. So exactly what Scott said. This is very boomerish. It's there. They're targeting the type of people that don't really have Bitcoin. And I just wanted to add like a couple of things on what Rand and David were saying. The advisors, they know what the volatility is, right? Like they do this and it's going to be very emotionless. Like they're going to put 1% or 2% and they'll
Starting point is 00:49:36 rebalance around it. They're not even going to pay attention that much to like how much it's moving in many cases. And then also to what David was saying, we definitely have all of the day one data. That is definitely done. We even have a lot of the day two data for most of these ETFs. There are a couple that we do not, namely GBTC. I'm trying to get to the bottom of exactly which ones are going on there. There's likely some data from day two that is not in the data specifically for GBTC. And then the other side, I think you guys will be surprised by how much specifically GBTC's dollar volume does not correlate to underlying touching of Bitcoin, right? So ETS, for the most part, there's a lot
Starting point is 00:50:18 of matching on exchange where shares are just exchanging between Mary is buying and Joe is selling and the market makers are just matching them up. GBTC itself specifically was a super liquid product. So I think part of the reason why I overestimated the amount of money that was going to come out is because, David, I was saying this before, but basically the market makers were almost certainly using GBTC to hedge other positions while they're creating shares and other products. So I think it's being used essentially as a liquid trading vehicle which is why they can leave the fee at 1.5 because if it's 1.5 they take a little bit out every day so one 365th every day if the spread
Starting point is 00:50:56 is tighter in the cost to trade and you can trade it quick without impacting the underlying price at much higher sizes institutions are going to do that if they're trying to trade for hours, days, weeks versus go do it. But on Friday, the thing was at minus 3.5% discount. I mean, that's quite a serious slippage. So I don't know if it's got as much liquidity as we think. That's largely because of all the stuff we were just talking about. It's one-sided selling for the most part.
Starting point is 00:51:23 So if you want to hedge it, for the most part, you're not going to have a ton of basis risk as a market maker using GBDC as your hedge. It's not going to deviate super far. The way we look at ETFs, so one, I think that discount, it was around 2% for the most part, 1.5 is what I was seeing. The way to think about an ETF premium and discount, we call it the arbitrage band. So if it's at a big discount or a big premium or whatever that number is, in between the typical peaks and valleys of the discounts and premiums, that's what we refer to as the arbitrage band.
Starting point is 00:51:56 So for an underlying asset that's a little more difficult to transact in or takes longer time or what have you, that will widen out. Or maybe it's not trading when the ETF is trading. That means there's a little more friction in doing that creation redemption process and actually arbing out the risks. So I think it's a combination of one, both there's a ton of selling in GBTC, as we've discussed. And two, these APs are just going through the motions and figuring out the process for actually doing this. So every time they do it, they're like eking out, they're getting a little more
Starting point is 00:52:29 efficient. There's like getting to a point where they're scaling and like, oh, we can do this a little quicker. We could do this a little faster. We can do this a little more efficiently. So as time goes on, they will get more and more efficient at doing these types of things. And we'll see those discounts go away. And as the selling pressure eases off a little bit on GVBC. But again, I don't think that selling pressure is going to stop this week. I think it's going to be a little bit after that. Yeah, I 100% agree with that take, James. Preston, you haven't had an opportunity. I've seen you lift your mic a few times. Any thoughts here? Yeah, no, it's all this technical stuff. as a lawyer. I'm not one of them math people. So so I avoid trading. But what I will say is that from our in our business, we have the luxury of living in the future.
Starting point is 00:53:19 But unfortunately, we're constrained and we can't talk about it, at least with any degree of specificity in public because of those pesky duties of confidentiality. What I will say is I had a friend of mine talk to me about six months ago. Yeah, business got absolutely ruined by the bear market. And he told me, you know, the narratives are tired, right? That's what he said over the summer. He's like, the crypto narratives are tired. Everything seems tired. Nothing has changed. And in too long and things are getting stagnant. With the ETF, the one thing that has changed, right? People day trade, right? Without consulting their lawyers. But generally speaking, if they're calling up their lawyers and they're looking to form a new business, it means that there's been some kind of, it's psychologically a very
Starting point is 00:54:03 complicated exercise when someone decides they're going to go strike out on their own and start a new company, particularly in a field like crypto, which is just so crazy. My phone has been ringing basically nonstop for the last two weeks. So whatever else the ETF might do to the crypto markets, it has changed up and shaken up the malaise that people were in from a multi-year bear market, you know, out in the wake of the FTX bankruptcies and all those bankruptcies, everybody's saying, oh my God, what's next? We don't know. This is terrible. What a disaster. So there's been a major psychological shift among the clients. People are much more optimistic.
Starting point is 00:54:39 And I think in the longterm, right? So again, lawyers don't think about, I barely ever look at Bitcoin's price. Someone will tell me, oh, it's 48,000. I'll learn from long term, right, so again, lawyers don't think about, I barely ever look at Bitcoin's price. Someone will tell me, oh, it's 48,000. I'll learn from it from a tweet, but not because I actually check. Because if I checked all the time, I'd drive myself crazy. But I think what I'm looking at tells me that there are going to be some very interesting products and services coming online in the next six to nine months. There's a lot of innovation.
Starting point is 00:55:04 People are starting to grind now. So six, six to nine months. There's a lot of innovation. People are starting to grind now. So six, nine, 12 months. And when that happens, there's going to be a lot of interest. I think more people are going to be drawn into the space. You're getting new projects, new user interfaces, new ways of doing business, new types of applications that make it easier to talk to different blockchains. So ultimately, I think the ETF is a kind of turning point. Psychologically, for a lot of people point psychologically for a lot of people. It represents a lot of liquidity coming in, which gives people a ton of optimism to do other interesting things, which in turn will also bring new users, new liquidity and new projects. So that's from the legal point of view. It's a it's things have become very optimistic in a very short space of time. And it's really great to see. Can I throw out one other item too that I think is very bullish for the price,
Starting point is 00:56:01 maybe next year, but comes from the ETF, which is as RAs put this into a structured portfolio for their clients, like a risk adjusted portfolio, which a lot of those are calculated via ratios, sharp ratios, like kind of objective metrics when they assemble those portfolios. And so like this ETF product will be kind of automatically distributed via that process to some degree. But as the price of Bitcoin appreciates over the course of this year, RIAs that have included this ETF into their model portfolios are going to outperform other RIAs. And so when people start looking at the, you know, their end of year,
Starting point is 00:56:42 you know, assessments of how they've performed, they're going to start measuring, you know, their end of year, you know, assessments of how they've performed, they're going to start measuring, you know, their different firms against each other. And you know, those that weren't in this product are going to be at a disadvantage. I talked to some family offices recently that said that they've already seen this happening in private equity, like private equity funds. If a private equity fund in general has kind of been like languishing this year, but if they invested in something that was exposed to Bitcoin, and that was part of their portfolio, maybe their fund skews 6%, 7%, 8% better return on investment than other private equity funds. So I think there's definitely a bandwagon effect here that as this product performs,
Starting point is 00:57:33 RIAs that don't play ball with it are going to underperform those that do. And it's like that game is all about what quartile of the returns are you in? And if you're in the bottom quartile quartile you're going to lose customers to those that are you know in the top two so anyway i think that that's like a longer term trend that will play out this year but as a direct result of the etf and um you know i think i'm incredibly bullish on the rest of this year um and you know i'm hoping this all you know kind of settles down um you know two weeks from now three weeks from now so anywho i'm gonna i'm gonna bounce from here uh i hope that was useful um ciao people thanks david uh alexi do you have
Starting point is 00:58:20 any thoughts i'm hoping you guys can hear me i transitioned yeah we can you perfectly fine alex I love you. I know you haven't spoken yet. I love your quick thoughts on this. I think it was a pretty incredible discussion. And just going through the comments as well, it seems most in the audience agree with pretty much everyone on the panel. I think everyone made some good points. The most obvious point everyone agrees on is, you know, we've got to wait a few months, even a few weeks to start getting the numbers. Alexi, your thoughts? To bring in a bit of a different perspective, looking at private markets, venture capital, and just the net inflow of projects looking at Bitcoin, I think it's not just about the ETF itself and how that affects the price immediately. And I probably count myself toward the people that think, well, let's wait and see what happens.
Starting point is 00:59:03 And it'll probably take some time for influence to arrive. But it's also about, you know, Bitcoin clearly being positioned as, you know, a leader in global adoption. There's a lot of speculation about, well, will an ETH ETF be approved or not after, you know, against those comments in the actual documents. So a lot of projects, both within Web3 and outside, are now seeing Bitcoin as more or less now, you know, like I guess some may consider it like ratified, you know, so it has been now finally approved after 15 years of going back and forth.
Starting point is 00:59:32 So what we can clearly see is lots of teams from other ecosystems, from alts basically starting to move and pay attention to Bitcoin. And this already happened, you know, when Bitcoin had its CryptoKitty moment with Ordinals and like a whole new community and a whole new use case kind of was discovered, which might seem, you know, not as significant as the ETF. But what you do see is a massive inflow
Starting point is 00:59:58 of new products and teams building on and around Bitcoin. And as a result of that, we will see many more projects kind of trying to, you know, discover Bitcoin Layer 2s and things of like ways of how they can build around Bitcoin without changing the core code base. And we've already seen half a dozen, if not more projects announced that they're building L2s, including us, but also many alts basically that have previously not managed to gain traction
Starting point is 01:00:25 announcing or testing the waters of becoming Bitcoin Layer 2s, even though they're not sure how. And I think that's just a starting point. And with Bitcoin having coming up and definitely increasing miners, just because you can clearly see miners also kind of paying attention to the space, we're definitely about to see, from my perspective, and, you know, from the conversations we have and from the discussions we have with teams that we're advising in the fundraising and so on, we'll see a lot more Bitcoin startups raise capital to build
Starting point is 01:00:55 products, probably also fueled by the ETF not being approved and not just speaking about, you know, journals more three focused use cases but probably also um use cases that focus on institutional clients and you're like so so we can definitely expect more products around hashtag organization and things that are sit right on the intersection between traditional and and and crypto markets that's another thing probably just a bit sorry um i was just going to say that no No, go ahead. That's absolutely right. On the subject of venture raising, one thing that happened last year is that deal volumes fell off a cliff. So I was working on a couple of Series A's that just vanished as soon as SVB collapsed.
Starting point is 01:01:36 I think a lot of people underestimated how much liquidity was being provided to the startup space. So you had both this weird convergence of a long crypto bear market, the bankruptcies of a number of the big… They call them DeFi lenders. They weren't really DeFi lenders. Celsius, that was a CeFi company masquerading as a DeFi company. You then had the generative AI mania in April, May, June of last year, and SVB collapsing, all of those things combined to a massive reduction in capital available for crypto startups. You had VCs like Jason Calacanis saying, oh, you know, crypto's dead. Better go pivot into AI.
Starting point is 01:02:16 That's the future. And now a lot of those decisions, people are starting to regret those decisions because it turns out if you had invested last year in any of these startups, you could have done so at very favorable valuations um so i think we're i'm rely i'm expecting a lot more venture to be available and that is going to just be part of the positive yeah i remember we had that i'm not sure if you remember scott right we had down our space a few big names in the industry saying hey we've pivoted to ai and they kind of lost hope in crypto um i remember those days and It feels like it was...
Starting point is 01:02:45 It was Vinny. You have no shame, man. You just call out people. Vinny and others. He said that he always kept his investments. Yeah, Jason did it. He tweeted about it. He took the crypto pivot to AI.
Starting point is 01:03:00 And that was at the bottom. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, that's what Justin said, exactly yeah i mean i guess what you see now is smaller funds basically jumping on the bandwagon basically now you know because they have to you know take more risk um we're we're aware that some of the bigger funds and people here yeah yeah yeah we can alexa alexa speaking oh god well okay finish up like start that no no yeah the thing you sat on is uh that we're aware that some of the larger funds, basically like multi-billion or billion dollar venture funds, are currently still kind of observing and trying to learn
Starting point is 01:03:33 about the Bitcoin L2 space, trying to figure out if it can become a big thing without forking Bitcoin. But what you can see is more and more of them starting to do more research, spending more time. Some European VCs I'm aware of have actually, you know, started building out Bitcoin-focused teams, like hiring in people and analysts that just focus on the Bitcoin market. And that was just because of Orinals.
Starting point is 01:03:57 And now, obviously, with the ETF, it just creates another reason for them to double down on this. So I'm definitely, from my perspective, the moment we see one of the larger, more like generalist vcs deploy capital in into a bitcoin startup that's raising now we'll probably see many more follow because yeah right now it's like they're just they're waiting basically they're kind of yeah almost first and what what i want to do is that tomorrow if there's no major news, I do want to start talking about the flow of capital into ETH and
Starting point is 01:04:28 the whole narrative around altcoins and the ETH ecosystem with the ETH ETF approval. I think that's an important focus. I think that's it. I love these, especially the last couple of days, how Ryan and Scott, you're both having massive audiences, but you don't always agree on things. I like it. When we do this,
Starting point is 01:04:44 we recap of each of your positions and what you discussed't always agree on things. I like it when we do this space to get a recap of each of your positions and what you discuss on the show on the day, and then where you disagreed and then those debates and then the panel gets split. So, you know, in the audience, I want to hear if you're on Team Ryan and Team Scott when it comes to the ETF and just in general. I think it was a great space. I really enjoyed the last few days and our coverage of the ETF.
Starting point is 01:05:04 But I think that's it. I think we've covered it space. I really enjoyed the last few days and our coverage of the ETF, but I think that's it. I think we've covered it well. Scott, Ryan, any final points? All good. I think we covered it well. All good. And just to be clear, Ryan, I think you and I actually agree on almost everything. It was just what happened in one day, and I think all of us agree to zoom out.
Starting point is 01:05:19 Don't make peace. Don't make peace. You guys disagree on everything. You guys hate each other. It's good for the audience. I think what he says is wrong, and I'm on the other side of it no matter what. Is that better or worse? Exactly. Much better.
Starting point is 01:05:33 Ryan, call him an asshole. Call him an asshole. No, no, no. I can't. I can't. I can't. Oh, shit. I tried.
Starting point is 01:05:39 Too much of a good friend. All right, cool. I think this is it. Thanks a lot, guys. Really appreciate it. Bye, everyone.

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