The Wolf Of All Streets - Will Bitcoin SURVIVE after HALVING? W/ @emoney_network | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

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Is your internet good on the boat? I'm on the front of the boat. I just posted a video. I literally got done with an interview five minutes ago. You left me. I understand. I waited. Do you know how long I waited for you? You know how long? Why should I be here? Just because you're there? I have a slightly better vibe than yesterday about Dubai, by the way, in case you're wondering. Yeah, well, I'm glad you stayed. Number two, like why what's something interesting on the boat now or what's happening well i mean it's sunset uh the uh as you know because you interviewed them the entire uh casting crew of miss world is present a lot of very interesting people a lot of content shot. It's just a pretty wild scene when you're just looking out at yachts.

Not too bad. The weather's improved dramatically, but excited to get spaces. You and I have spent the day once again just talking and talking and talking. Yeah, man. Well, you talked like fucking crazy. I kept mine short. The first one we did, it was meant to be three minutes. We did seven minutes.

Second one, probably 10, 15. I waited for you and waited for you and waited for you. And everyone's like, Mario, just tell him to stop. I'm like, I can't. I know. You didn't stop talking. You don't stop talking, man. How long are your shows?

Well, this one was meant to be 30 minutes to an hour. And I just did a couple of them. I appreciate you trying to wait. Brock Pierce was interesting, huh? Brock Pierce is Brock Pierce. But yeah, just for anyone listening, we're talking 2049. We went to a side event.

I was invited, Scott was invited to one of our projects as doing a big launch party there. I don't know why you were there, Scott, but it was a pleasure to have you. And yeah, we... On the boat? Yeah, on the boat yeah yeah on the boat and we finally okay bro and we finally spent the day together finally and scott is i agree like i'm on on the mic and on twitter just sounds direct as fuck in real life he's one of the kindest people you'd meet but when he's frustrated he's just anxious

just stay out of his way that's that's probably the best tip i can give you so when he's not anxious hug him chat with him joke with him he's anything triggers him he's annoyed his kids want to chat to him he doesn't have time he's sleepy just walk away that's what i learned about scott but it was a it was a good time. All good vibes today. And interestingly, I think we kind of have the market bouncing a bit, although I haven't had much opportunity to check it. And it looks like the halving will, in fact, be on 420. Brock, we were sitting there, Mario and I were sitting with Brock Pierce

doing an interview with five or six of us, and Brock was checking it in real time because he really passionately wants it to be on 420 and not 419. And it's going to be, what is it? Is it looking at 420? What was it looking like, Scott? All right. Your mic got cut out. Does anyone know when they're having, is it going to be 420 or 419?

He was saying 7 a.m. Sorry, 715 a.m. is what he said about it going to be 420 or 419? He was saying 7 a.m. Sorry, 7.15 a.m. is what he said about two hours ago on 420 UTC. So early in the morning, UTC, 420. But it's an interesting discussion. I think they're focused. One thing we really focused on, which we talked about I think yesterday,

the day before the show, is the Bitcoin ecosystem. You know, Simon Dixon would probably love that episode. And just talking about how, we kind of simplified it on that show because we're talking to TradFi but it's actually the bitcoin ecosystem um you know taking up a lot of liquidity taking up a lot of attention and rightly so um and then that kind of brock it made a really interesting point like when you're king you don't need to be first um and you could take your time

and now we're just seeing a lot of the use cases on different chains moving to bitcoin um and um you know doing it you know okay And now we're just seeing a lot of the use cases on different chains moving to Bitcoin. I had to post this photo, guys, above in the nest. I know why Mario's laughing because he was literally interviewing Miss World, Miss Europe, Miss Caribbean, Miss whatever. But Mario is about six feet tall, right? Ish? Yeah, man. Look how tall Miss World is about six feet tall, right? Ish? Yeah, man. Look how tall Miss World is. It's insane, yeah.

Look, you're sitting next to her on the same couch. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I didn't know we were supposed to talk about Bitcoin. No, no, when she stood up, I remember she stood up and I was looking for you guys and I couldn't find you guys and then I found out you were behind her and you're pretty tall as well. But now going back to the point, I think just looking at the markets, maybe give us a quick overview on the markets and your take so far and you've spent more time at events and stuff, you're the more social person, but what's your take of Token 2049 and please don't talk about

the floods again. What's the sentiment like? What narrative is it? So, yeah. As you know, I haven't been to Token 2049 just like you. I haven't gotten even within miles of it, to be quite honest. But I think you come to enough of these conferences, you kind of knowWA being a huge narrative, D-PIN being a huge narrative, really a resurgence of DeFi, a huge, huge amount of conversation surrounding building on Bitcoin, obviously, right? A conversation I continue to have is, you know, we're Ethereum and Solana and all these just a test net for the eventual building of Bitcoin. I obviously don't believe that, you know, I'm a multi-chain world guy. But to the point you sort of eloquently said about Brock before that he was saying that you're the biggest, you can take your time and pick and choose the things that are going to work. But there's a lot of excitement. I will say on the... I'm not going

to say on the negative side, but I think as naturally happens when price consolidates or things change with price, you hit this conference and there are conversations, quite a few of them with people sort of saying, I wonder if the top really could be in, which makes me think, by the way, that it's not. But you know, if you, I think had this conference one month ago, you would have gone and it would have been every person consensus 12 to 18 more months of insane bull market, which by the way, I still like, I lean way heavy in that direction. But now you do have people saying, Oh, did we miss it?

What if it's the top? Have you heard that in these conversations? Not really. I don't have the same conversations as you do. I'm just like, I go in and do my thing and leave as quickly as I can. But let's go to the panel. Just kind of give a quick market update. And I'm glad you kind of gave us a, we'll talk a bit more about talking 2049. I'm going there tomorrow.

That's my day. I speak. I'm not sure if you're going to be there as well. You have to, if I'm going there. So I'll come with you. I appreciate it. We'll become best bros, haven't we? But tomorrow, tonight, we're going to go to Rand's party.

I'm still contemplating that Scott. But just going to the panel. We're going by boat. We're going. You're going by boat. um but just going to the panel we're going by boat we're going you're going by boat i'm just gonna go normally i'm home now uh but let's just go back to the market it's like what happens um what happens next and i think just kind of talk maybe moving to joe and funny enough you talk about meme coins i know you gave us a whole speech on paris blockchain week no one talks about meme coins yeah well we want to take that back now because um you know we're on a boat with a lot of Bitcoin OGs.

I literally, yeah, I'm on a boat full of Bitcoiners, but I literally just watched an interview with the anonymous, not to me now, but founders of Shib, and the interviewer was sitting in a chair and a Shib pillow was sitting in the other chair and the guy was giving the interview from behind the camera so that he wouldn't be seen.

Yeah, not only that. So, yeah, we met him as well. And the thing is the whole boat, and we're talking about a boat full of, again, the early, early guys. You mentioned Brock Pierce. But all the early guys from the 2017, 2016, 2014 days. And 2010 even, yeah. And the boat had SHIB hats, SHIB t-shirts, just for the record. And we had, I won't name names or people, but we had those Bitcoin OGs that would never in a million years talk about meme coins.

Not only talk about the meme coin, one of them, again, I'd rather not mention names, acquired a meme coin. He's building a whole kind of narrative behind it and kind of reviving the meme which is really interesting concept so you brought up a whole bunch of the supply and is rebuilding it pumped really well um so yeah i think in this case um meme coins are still the the dominant uh narrative uh other than obviously the gaming bitcoin deep in etc yeah and i think maybe uh paris and dubai are two slightly different audiences in general but uh we get into that i mean we should talk about the market i see simon has his hand up let's uh simon if we can yeah maybe maybe simon i don't know if you don't i think someone's comments on what we talked about maybe we kick it off with like a market sure well let's do a

market update first assignment if you don't mind quickly like joe joe joe do that now christopher um so christopher's kind of market update you and Joe. And then we'll go to Hunter as well, kind of get an update on the ETF inflows and outflows. And of course, go to the rest of the panel since Simon. Chris or Joe, do you want to take it off of the market update? Sure, I can take it from my perspective. First, Mario, how does your neck feel after that picture? I don't know.

You have to look up and to the right it's unbelievable um just looking at the markets you know the way i kind of see this is when do things start to feel cheap and when do things start to feel expensive and you know a month ago a lot of the the meme coin in the all coin market it just started to feel a little expensive right and and now have, looking at the seven-day now across some of the top coins that are out there that are moving today, something like Stacks is still down 20%, even though it's moved up 8% in the last 24 hours. You've got some meme coins like Book of Meme still down 25% in the last week, even though we're up 10% in the last 24 hours.

And so things are starting to feel a little bit cheaper, I would say. Even like we were talking about Bitcoin ecosystem, something like Ordi, which is in the meme coin kind of category there, but it's a BRC20, it's down 38%, almost 40% in the last week, but things are starting to move a little bit. So I think the market's starting to feel like, hey, things just feel a little bit cheaper. The halving is actually happening now, hopefully in the next 24 to 36 hours.

And so I think we're just starting to see a little bit of a recovery. You also are starting to see some correlation between the broader markets and the cryptocurrency markets. And so that's also a piece here where where stocks and everything have kind of rebounded and they've kind of been on a five-day skid so things are kind of starting to feel correlated i think the underlying theme of

all that is that the uncertainty around inflation right everyone's kind of on this train of hey we're gonna have you know we're gonna have three cuts this year or five cuts this year and it just kind of keeps uh the goal posts keep moving and so i think just that little uncertainty is what's kind of making everyone a little bit uh you know squirming around trying to figure out where things are going and so that's it's kind of where we're at today but things are are way up in the last 24 hours and last hour here and let me go to you know scott you're trying to fix your mic um sorry nast or rome if you can please bring scott down and back up let me go to to chris ch Scott, you're trying to fix your mic. Sorry, Nast or Romy, if you could please bring Scott down and back up. Let me go to Chris.

Chris, we'd love your thoughts as well on the market. It's kind of an update, a bit of a technical analysis as well. Yeah, I mean, I agree a lot with what was just said there. We're seeing a lot of them all, you know, they took a big hit. They pulled back really significantly, but look like they're probably bottoming or pretty dang close to it. You know, I'm kind of really looking at like Matic and eGold and Mana right now. But I think more importantly probably is Bitcoin because we're starting to see a lot of this thing

where it hasn't actually done anything, right? So we just dipped below the range low and we're right back see a lot of this um this thing where it hasn't actually done anything right so we we just dipped below the range low and we're right back up into it and but now we're hearing about this oh my gosh if we lose 50 if we lose 50 000 uh there's like you know i don't even remember how many 15 uh billion in liquidations possible or something like that and so you start getting these really extreme views um and that's what i usually look for when I'm looking for, okay, is price potentially reversing or not? And so this morning, of course, we just now, as Scott was saying, we're getting a little bit of a rally this morning. We've got a wedge here coming down off about April 12th, that kind of swing high area up there. And we're breaking out impulsively

through that. We've broken out impulsively through that this morning. So I'm liking the way this looks. To me, it looks like we just got a spring printing on the range there with the dip down there on Wednesday. It found support at the hourly S1 pivot, and we're rallying up now. So for me, the first step, the breakout, this impulsive breakout of this descending wedge resistance has happened now. The next thing I'm looking for is an impulsive breakout above the hourly pivot area right around, depends on what chart you're looking at, but right around 66,400 or so.

Uh, and if we can get that, I think there's little use to be thinking about it going down any further. I think a lot of people are going to get caught, um, waiting for it to come back down. If we do happen to get rejected though, and drop down,

I'm still looking, um, you know, at a sweep of, uh, 59,000 potentially heading down to, you know, 56, 57,000. But right now, I think that's kind of where we're sitting. Yeah, I think more importantly, hopefully you guys can hear me. I just couldn't hear Joe,

which is why I signed off. But I think more importantly, you know, we talked about for the last kind of month or certainly a month ago, I, you know, I was certainly saying in a lot of us that, you know, we had this sort of meme point madness, a lot of signals technically and just fundamentally that perhaps it was time to cool off. Certainly not to say a top is in. And we've seen Bitcoin effectively just range from $74,000 down to $60,000. And that same sort of euphoria we had at $74,000 when everything was overbought, like with RSI, I think we now have almost the opposite crazy, you know, when we're kind of coming down to 60, you have panic and conversations about is it over? And is the top in and things are oversold? Right? It's it's just the human human human emotion of it

that you're euphoric at the high. And that's why ranges even form, you know, technically, but, you know, listen, you if there was a time to buy, it's I'm not saying it is or isn't. By the way, I have no idea where price will go. But at support, you know, technically when people are panicking is usually the good time to buy. And when meme coins are launching a thousand a day and people are getting, you know, rich overnight and then losing it, that's usually the time to at least temporarily exit. At least that, you know, rich overnight and then losing it, that's usually the time to at least temporarily exit. At least that, you know, in my opinion. So I think what we have now is a very obvious bounce off the range low instead of that sort of stop at the range highs. But really interesting market here. Dave, I saw you throwing up some emojis there. What do you think? Well, I think a couple things. First, I'm completely in agreement with you on Bitcoin and I'm completely in agreement with you on

meme coins. You know that we've talked about this many, many times. But there are a couple of things going on here. We saw a huge washout, like one of the largest of the cycle of crypto hot money, right? You know, forced liquidations in crypto. And what you're seeing is a bifurcated market. I mean, actually, you know, if Bitcoin maxis are probably crawling, because if you look at the Bitcoin Ether ratio, it's decisively broke below 0.05. It's a 0.048 something or other now. And that that is that has traditionally been an area where you want to back up the truck on Ether relative to Bitcoin. But I think that what you actually are seeing is consistent

new money trickling in, coming in and, you know, into Bitcoin. And we, you know, we all know the ETF story. And I'm really curious what, let's see, is he on the panel here? Oh, yeah, Hunter. Okay. I'd be really curious of what he thinks about this. But my thesis and what we see in flows is significant Bitcoin dominance, not just in market cap, but also in trading. And so what I think you see is a weak hand to strong hand shuffling and a lot of people with serious regret. You know, people who trade altcoins to stack sats are unstacking sats by trading altcoins over the last month or two. And one wonders if they

will learn that lesson. My guess is no, because as you would say, Scott, humans are getting human. Absolutely right. Hunter, feel free to jump in there. Dave asked you the question, and I think it's always burning on our minds. Hey, how you doing? Sounds, sounds like these, these images I'm seeing. Hopefully Hunter, it shows you muted for me. I don't know.

We can hear you, Scott. Oh, great. Okay. Sorry. Scott, I'm only muted for you.

I hope that you guys are, are doing all right. I have a serious FOMO about Dubai until I saw photos of a torrential downpour. I don't know if that's actually what you're experiencing, but it looked crazy. On the ETF front, things are cooking. It's a good time. What can I say? So by the numbers, this week, we've had across the ETFs about 400 million in outflows. We've been close to flat. We had 7 million in outflows. Last week, 80 million in outflows. We had about 80 million in inflows last week. The week before that, about 500 million in inflows. We had about 50 million inflows. BITB has been pretty steady. In the first quarter, we saw over 150 new firms and wealth teams buy a Bitwise fund, which was great to see. Those are firms who had not invested with us previously.

So in addition to a few thousand firms that already use Bitwise funds. And then anecdotally, there's a lot in the works. My God, I've had 10 meetings in Chicago this week. We're doing internal trainings for platforms and RAs. Bitwise was recently approved on a very large platform, and we're beginning the work of going to meet with all of the regional offices. People are very open-minded. I think if you're not looking at the screen every day, Bitcoin is up 40% year-to-date,

and ETFs have gathered a historic amount of assets. I mean, people have probably heard everything there is to say about Bitcoin ETFs at this point. But prior to the Bitcoin ETFs, the fastest asset gathering ETF in history was QQQ, which gathered about $2 billion in a year. And the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF hit $2 billion in two months. And of course, BlackRock has outpaced that. So I think from our client base's perspective, the asset class is now accessible. Some people have moved quickly. A lot of people are in the process

and doing work in one form or another. So I think it's a very constructive outlook from ETF land and some of the capital markets participants that are now considering the space for the first time, based on what I see. Hey, Hunter, that's insanely bullish, just hearing about all the untapped resources that are still out there. But in your opinion, what do you think that, you know, we've all got kind of our hit lists, right, of huge clients that we potentially want, and you know, you're, you know, knocking off as much as you can, what do you think is the largest untapped resource that you're looking at right now that you're like, man, if we if we can convert on this or get to this market, this is going to take it to the next level? Well, I think that the, you know, so the US wealth market is, and I should mention that Andrew is a pretty good authority on the US wealth market as well, but somewhere around 30 trillion, or maybe a bit higher than that. And about a third of it is independent RAs and about two thirds are bank and broker dealer platforms. So I think any approval by a bank or broker dealer platform

is of course a huge opportunity set that opens. And so we're working on where we recently got an approval, we're working on now connecting with those advisors. So I think that that is a huge new area of opportunity. But of course, the RAs are themselves also a very massive part of the market. Maybe one thing I would say that perhaps could be novel relative to the conversation is that what we're witnessing is it's not if you build it, they will come. I mean, so definitely, it is appearing to be the case that the work has to be done. We, you know, do have to go have the meetings, talk people through their questions,

them having access. While for a lot of investors, certainly, they had conviction, they had a mental model, they were ready to go. I think the vast majority is still going to require a conversation, a training session, you know, and a bit of a process and support to feel confident with how they're going to utilize Bitcoin ETFs. So, you know, you've seen a few firms have been willing to speak about their platform approvals. Most of them have wanted it to be quiet. But it's not the case that, you know, the home office says, okay, this is now available to you. And then every advisor across America just, you know, puts it into a portfolio the next day. What we're witnessing is, again, that they then all need meetings.

And for many of the firms, we'll go to their national, they have internal events for their advisors. And, you know, we'll go there and speak and do that work. So anyways, I think that all amounts to a large new part of the market is opening up. And the work has to be done, but we'll do it. And it's, it's very constructive. And I'm very, very excited. Because I think this is a whole new cohort of of you know bitcoiners and and and um um crypto savvy people out there i mean i i just this week uh several of the people at the ra firms that we met with um they're very savvy and they have conviction um it's uh it's really exciting to see love that scott Scott, Hunter's all done. It's ground and pound, educating the RAs.

Sin's got his hand up too, but happy to let you step back in. Yeah, I'm happy I can hear. I'm very upset that I could not hear Hunter. But Andrew, I'm going to assume that based on whatever Hunter said, which I was getting context and background, that you have some opinions. Yeah, there's a, um, listen, bitwise is, uh, they're, they're doing an absolute fantastic job on the ground. Um, you know, I can speak to that, not only on a, you know, macro, but micro knowing people in the space, they're, they're really hitting it hard and they're very, very well received when their teams end up in front of these folks. There's two ways to look at the

medium-term value associated with Bitcoin finding larger adoption from an investment standpoint at these organizations. One, the work that's being done, and this is what Hunter spoke to, of getting approved on a platform and then educating on a platform. Something that, you know, people need to be reminded of. Your average financial advisor is anywhere from 52 to 56 years old. Now, you know, I don't want to make a huge amount of, you know, assumptions of somebody at that age, but they're not 33 years old and, you know, figuring out MetaMask. So, you know, there's been there has been some negativity around, quote unquote,

crypto. You know, a lot of the shows that those types of folks are going to watch in the space that they're going to be in. There's a lot of there's been a lot of negativity. So those are the kind of educational hurdles that Bitwise is working through when they're having these meetings. Right. We'd like to think that everybody is aware of Bitcoin, understands Bitcoin, and will look at the performance of Bitcoin over extended periods of time. And that makes sense. But that's not how human brains work, right? There's another side to the story. So there's an additional educational hurdle to overcome as it relates to, OK, can I put my clients in this and, you know, am I not going to get burned? There's only one potential death knell in that type of business.

And it's the compliance department. Right. If you get a phone call because a customer complains from the compliance department, you are fighting for your life in that business. And if it goes wrong, you no longer are working in that business and you're fighting for your life to reboot your career in your 50s, okay? Now, I'm just trying to give context as it relates to that industry and the hurdles that Bitwise is working to overcome, not just by platforming their ETF and other ETFs, but the education process and people getting comfortable allocating and suggesting to customers to put their funds into Bitcoin ETFs. Now that being said, over the next six to nine months, there's going to be continued increases in 30 plus trillion in wealth having access to these products.

That is absolutely going to keep a floor on the price of Bitcoin. There's no doubt about it. We're looking at 30 days of range bound between an all time high and now 63.7. That is a new paradigm of price movement. All of us, you know, because we've been here a long time, we're thinking, well, you know, we're going to see another 20, 25 percent leg down because that's how Bitcoin works. I'm not so sure. I don't know. There's a floor that exists because of these products. You know, we've seen in the last couple of days a massive dump from Binance, continued dump from Grayscale.

You know, these are things that, again, used to have enormous, you know, negative pressure on the price of Bitcoin. And the way that it holds up now is really, really something. But there will be continued. You know, I was given a note. Morgan Stanley is dragging their feet a little bit. There's some bureaucratic stuff going on inside of that organization. Wells Fargo is, quote unquote, surprisingly open and moving quickly towards a larger approval of the Bitcoin ETFs.

There's positive momentum. It's all going to happen at these larger organizations. And it's my estimation that the floor associated with the price of Bitcoin will continue to press higher. It doesn't mean that guys like Scott aren't going to be right when things get frothy. There's reason for there to be pullbacks. Um, but you know, as it relates to Bitcoin and the price and the work that a guy like Hunter and his team is doing, you know, in a lot of ways, it's the Lord's work. Hunter, I'm sure you're happy to hear that. And I won't hear your response, but, uh, go ahead. Uh, we, we, we, we love doing the work and, um, and I really,

I've been such a glitch. I can't tell if anyone else is talking. Hunter's going, he's, he's just laughing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I, Andrew's Andrew's a spot on and I appreciate it. It does feel, uh, sometimes like being, um, uh, you know, the, an unpaid teaching assistant or something like that. But we're very glad to do it. I will say if it's interesting to this group, that one of the topics that I expect will be a topic for the traditional investment professional audience,

really for the next year, is asset allocation. So, you know, most most of these wealth managers construct a portfolio where they have, you know, they think through sizing different different buckets might be us domestic, international, different categories of fixed income. And with, with advisors and investors who want to include Bitcoin in the portfolio, one of the things they have to include Bitcoin in the portfolio,

one of the things they have to chew on, not always, they don't always have to, but often they have to chew on, okay, where am I going to put it? Does it go into sort of my risk bucket? Does it go into my alts bucket? Maybe they have a hard assets or a real world assets, a real assets bucket. But they have to noodle a little bit on that. And think through, am I going to view it as a risk asset as a as a hedge, as an all, and that that comes up very frequently. And it has implications for, you know, what they sell, what they're going

to sell to buy it, and what their expectations are for it. And because it has both high return potential but low correlations, there's a case to be made for a lot of different locations in the portfolio. So that might sound esoteric to some, but definitely is a focal point that is getting brought up in a lot of conversations and I expect we'll, we'll be talking about for, for the year to come. Hunter, I know that you've got, um, you know, you've got to be careful from a compliance standpoint and, and a bunch of different ways, you know, disclosures and whatnot. But as I described the demographics of financial advisors, you know, that, that, that 50 year age point and some of the thoughts that they have,

if you can speak more generally to whether it's the kind of questions that you guys get, what are the nature of some of those questions? You know, am I completely off base as to kind of what I said there about, you know, kind of your typical advisors as you're meeting with these folks, or are you not necessarily meet, well, you're meeting with advisors on the R ria side so i don't know to what extent you can talk about it but i i'd love to hear your thoughts yeah um i i think i think you were you were right on the one one thing i might add so so definitely you know wealth managers tend to be um you know i don't know if the average is 50 or 60 but in that in that range and um they've been doing what they've been doing for a long time

um and as you said andrew you, they they lived through the dot com. They lived through the great financial crisis. You know, they they're trying to protect clients wealth and and so, you know, again, a lot of conversations sometimes like I'll have to hop off in a minute, I'm doing a doing a teaching for a large RIA. Sometimes they'll have questions about understanding the crypto landscape, but a lot of questions are what's happening in the market

and what's the deal with the Bitcoin halving is recently topical. People are very interested in knowing what peers are doing. A fascinating phenomenon at the moment is that lots of firms are investing and doing work and none of them are talking about it publicly. So if you just looked around on your LinkedIn, you would think that nobody has done a goddamn thing. Because I think right now, people just think there's no no upside to being public about it. So there's sort of like this large cohort that has moved silently in the night. And, and so people are very interested in knowing what others and what peers are doing. And then asset allocation people are very interested in knowing what others and what peers are doing. And then asset allocation, you know, if they are interested, then asset allocation comes

up, because they have to figure that out. They have to say, if it's one or 2%, where is that coming from? You know, how are we thinking about where that's going? And then finally, one other piece not to get too, too idiosyncratic or in the weeds of this of this um uh topic but um you know many firms have sort of uh they have advisors and then they have an investment team um and you know the investment team it could be strategists uh analysts uh research um and sometimes you know they're they're i just have to like, I love there's so many great people on investment teams in wealth management firms across America who get it and who are interested. And sometimes there's almost a challenge that they face, which is we see it. We think it could be valuable.

It's not yet widely accepted enough for us to shove it into the model or to put it in the model. Some of them are doing that, but for many of them, they say we can't yet put it in the model because it's still not well enough understood by all the advisors. But if they put it in the model, it goes into every advisor's portfolio. And so how can we take a step forward here if we're not putting in the model? And so, you know, sometimes they'll set up teachings for us so we can start to educate their advisors. Sometimes they'll connect us with some of their advisors who are particularly interested. But there's sort of two different cohorts inside of most firms. There's the investment team and then there's the advisors. And if the investment team is not yet ready to put it in a model, then there's a question about

how do you make the hop over from the conviction or understanding the investment team has to the advisors who can use discretion to put specific things in portfolios, but are sometimes not as up to speed as the investment team. So we usually juggle both. And to give people some context to what Hunter is saying there because he generally has to stay away from like firm names for compliance reasons. But I'll give you some examples. So there are investment arms at the likes of Goldman Sachs. There are investment arms at the likes of Dynasty.

There are investment arms at the likes of Stiefel. Those are three very different organizations. You know, obviously Goldman Sachs is ultra high net worth. Everybody knows them. They're a super large organization. Stiefel is considered a quote unquote regional. They have about 2,200 advisors across the country. Again, they have a big investment arm, research arm. Dynasty has the same. I don't know if anybody remembers Ron Insana from CNBC. He's now the head of investments in their investment arm at Dynasty. All of those organizations have investment and research arms that, you know, have different levels of understanding and comfortability

with Bitcoin as an asset. And that in some way does or does not trickle down into the organizations. But those are three different types of scale of organizations that I can name that speak to exactly what, what Hunter was talking about. Yeah, we do. Yeah. Love steeple. Yeah. Yeah.

I didn't mean to put you in an uncomfortable spot. But yeah. Well, there was a there was a, you know, Goldman, one of the executives at Goldman came out like two weeks ago and said, you know, Bitcoin, Bitcoin sucks, Bitcoin is garbage. Right. Well, at the same time, you know, Goldman Sachs is begging, you know, BlackRock to be an authorized participant on their iBit product. Right. So there's a difference there. Like Goldman Sachs at some point will, Goldman Sachs has a very robust wealth management

arm that lots of people don't know about. They've even bought a couple of RIAs and brought them in-house, United. So people don't know that about Goldman. They just think they're this big behemoth. Goldman will follow after the likes of Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo and approve it for their wealth management advisors. So, yeah, there's layers to this. Yeah. And Goldman is also an AP on the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF.

And I think that they're getting more familiar with it through that dimension. On the Goldman topic, it's worth noting that Goldman also doesn't believe that gold belongs in an asset allocation. They view it as a tactical asset. So these firms are not all the same. So they all need to sort of be handled individually, as you have experienced with Andrew. But zooming uh out i would just say it's uh out i would just say it's uh very very exciting because you know if each each person on this call thinks about uh your network and and how many investors you speak with and talk to about bitcoin um uh you know maybe it's five maybe it's five, maybe it's 10. I mean, there's some people

on here who are just incredibly influential individuals for whom it's many more, but most advisors have 50 to 100 clients. And so it just it makes me so happy with many of these firms as they're digging in, and they're, they're, they're getting smart. And, you know, in a few meetings this week, I had questions like, do you think hash rate will drop after the halving? It's just really amazing. Bitcoin is entering the mainstream and this group has incredible reach and influence. And I think that we will get to a place where one day, you know, a lot of people are informed on the space. And so I'm grateful to a lot of the wealth managers and investment teams for spending the time because this is such a small part today of the 99 other things going on that they have to deal with.

And I see a ton of progress. I'm very optimistic. And I actually have to, I do have to run to a meeting with an RA now. Thanks, Hunter. I just want to say, Hunter, if there's anyone that is capable of dealing with these intricacies, it sounds like you were the man for the job for all this stuff. So well done. Thank you. Leading the industry.

We love what we do and love being part of this community. So thanks for having me on. Tom, you had your hand up. I know Scott's kind of glitching a little bit. I know Scott's kind of glitching a little bit. You and Sins. Yeah. All good.

Good morning, everybody. So just wanted to hop in on a few points there. So actually chatted directly with the Goldman digital assets team the day their CIO made those comments. And they're directly investing in crypto. They are building things within crypto. And they're an authorized participant. We're trying to be on a lot of these ETFs. So, you know, I think we think of these organizations as more of a monolith, you know, rather than

individual people who have opinions on these assets. So just a point there. You know, I think a lot of this comes down to career risk, right? You have people who need to... Yeah. Still hear me? Yep, go ahead. We can hear you. Yep, go ahead. We can hear you.

Okay, cool. Yeah, a lot of this comes down to career risk, especially for advisors, right? If you put in 1%, 2%, 3% of your portfolio into Bitcoin, I think that's acceptable even for the most conservative person. But if you start upping that to 10, 12, 13 percent, you know, you're going to have potential issues. So they need to have track record. They need to have, you know, institutional accountability. And the sort of the ETFs are building that over time. So, you know, we're

going to continue to see more institutional flows as that sort of happens. You know, I had a conversation the other day when I was in Florida at my in-laws country club, and they had, you know, a high net worth individual advisor. And he advises, you know, in aggregate, hundreds of millions of dollars, this person. And he said, you know, Jamie Dimon told me that Bitcoin doesn't make sense. So I'm still waiting to see if it makes sense. So there's a ton of folks like that who are still out there, a ton of folks who are in that older age cohort who still need to be convinced. And the longer these ETFs keep trading and the longer sample size we build, the more we'll be able to put the stuff in portfolios.

So it's a time game and it only goes one direction. Yeah, there more we'll be able to put the stuff in portfolios. So it's a time game and it only goes one direction. Yeah, there's going to be, Tom, that's a really prescient comment. So assume you're like an advisor at Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch or whatever it happens to be, and you're 62 years old. And those organizations inside of those organizations have very specific retirement outcomes for those types of advisors. They'll sell their business internally and over a four-year period, they'll end up banking $20, $25 million if they don't do anything other than have a couple meetings a day and don't screw up, right? So the reality is, is that that type of advisor,

now that says nothing about the 50-year-old guy who's asking about hash rate, but that 62-year-old advisor who's got a four-year earn out to the tune of $25 million because of the business he's built over 30 years, that guy isn't pounding the table on a Bitcoin ETF. He's just not. So there are layers to this. And that was my point about the work that Bitwise is doing. I mean, it's involved stuff and they're having conversations, you know, with RIAs. They're having conversations, you know, at regional levels of different types of firms. They're having conversations with the investment arms of some of these firms. It's not easy work, but they're doing it. But the point I'm making here,

I'll give you a real, real, real example. Like Morgan Stanley, I've got inside stuff on that place. They were set to approve not just in the ultra high net worth space at their PWM level, but across the entire platform on April 4th, everything was supposed to be approved. That got stopped and pushed back. Why? Because of bureaucracy inside of the organization. And I can't give you any more than that, but it got pushed back. And part of that is, again, there were layers here. And I come back to that 60-year-old guy doing a $25 million earn out. That guy is really comfortable with saying, well, Jamie Dimon says so, right?

Or Gorman says so, or such and such says so, and I don't want anybody messing with my money, right? Even though it's a 1% of a 1% type of thing that you could have a problem with one of these products, they don't want to take that. They're not interested in that risk. They've taken enough risk in their career for the last 30 years, gone through the dot-com bubble, got a couple of complaints that they were able to deal with at that point, could have derailed their career. Right. Same thing in the financial crisis. Maybe another complaint that didn't go anywhere and they dealt with because

they did the right things. Right. They don't want that to happen again when they're staring down the barrel of retiring and moving on. Moving on. Yeah, so totally agree with all that. But I would also note that price follows, you know, narrative. So when Bitcoin has, you know, jumped up to three, four X, you're immediately going to get calls from your clients, if you're an RIA saying, you know, why are we not considering this? So the longer price stays up, the better it is for that narrative as well. So it's sort of a perverse incentive in that regard. Yeah, I agree with that. RIAs are a little bit different animal than a guy, you know, 32 years in at Morgan Stanley. The RIA guys are comfortable enough with risk that they decided to move away from an organization like Morgan Stanley, put their name

on the front of the spot that they're at. And that's now how they're doing business, you know, with the back end of a Pershing or a Fidelity or a Schwab. And they're willing to go that route. So their RIAs are inherently going to be more comfortable with risk. I think they'll lead, frankly, as it relates to adoption of Bitcoin ETFs. I will also note, because he's now gone, that the little quip that Hunter made saying, we love Stifel, my guess is they're probably doing a bit of a roadshow with Stifel right now. And I also would bet that there'll, you know, they'll, they'll be an announcement, you know, here in the next two, two to four weeks on, you know, they're, they're, they're being on platform at Stiefel. Great conversation, you guys. And just kind of

looking at that, all of what you're saying is just the backbone of what has been this larger narrative of what's going on and touch him little bit with what scott mario in between their yacht parties are are talking about other things that are being being built because of those tailwinds um we do have uh raj up here from from e-money to talk a little bit about uh real world assets raj if you're there maybe just give us a little breakdown of you know like what what are the tailwinds from this kind of larger uh run up at bitcoin and how are you guys looking at uh real world assets and bringing that into what's going on thank you uh thank you maria and scott for having having me first of all in crypto town hall thank you very much um we we look at real world assets as the next generation of um uh way of bringing liquidity into the web3. First of all, there is over 10

trillion market to tap into. But the main thing is the biggest problem we are facing right now is how we will bring them into the Web3. If you look at, I mean, real world assets are different classes. We look at, for example, real estate, REITs or shares or commodities. Well, shares and commodities are quite easy to bring them into Web3, but something like real estate or REITs are very, very hard to bring them because to prove the ownership, to prove the custody is very hard. And at the same time, the local compliance and regulations are something being also very, very challenging. For example, buying an apartment in Dubai is very easy because the local rules

allows a foreigner to buy it but at the same time buying an apartment in in Hong Kong or in a different country is slightly harder because there are some certain rules which needs only certain kind of citizens to buy it and and there are certain rules and which needs only certain kind of citizens to buy it and and there are certain rules and regulations to be followed so so we need to maintain a golden policy with respect raj i think we lost you unless i'm also rugged now sorry sorry can you hear me apologies hello yep i can hear you now oh thank you thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. So yeah, I mean, I'll mention once again. So I mean,

there are different ways of it. What I'm trying to say here is that tokenizing a real world asset is not as easy as minting an ERC3643 token because there are several things behind it. For example, a tokenized Tesla share. The question is, where is the custody of the Tesla share? For example, a tokenized apartment, i.e. fractionalized and a tokenized Tesla share, the question is, where is the custody of the Tesla share? For example, a tokenized apartment, I fractionalized and a tokenized apartment, let's say in Burj Khalifa. Now, the question is, do I really own the share of it? Do I really own the apartment? How are you going to prove the ownership? How are you going to prove the custody? That's the biggest, biggest drawback we are facing in real world asset bringing into the Web3 world. And that's why what we have done is we have created to be separated into four sections which you call them as four

pillars in web3 which are proof of identity proof of compliance proof of ownership and proof of custody without any i mean without these four pillars it's it's impossible it's very hard to bring our to build rwa in in web. And this is where we think... Oh, no, I'm sorry. I thought you were finished. I was going to say miraculously, Raj. I just started to be able to hear you. Both Mario and I are having spaces glitches,

so I'm glad I was catching up. But I'll let you finish. I was going to jump in with a question. Go ahead. Can you hear me now? Yes, I hear you fine. Great, thank you. Thank you, Scott.

So bringing real-world assets into Web3, it's a different stage process. So we really believe following the compliance with the local regulations and building them exactly how we are building them in Web2 is the right way to build them or bring real world assets into the Web3 world. That's what we believe in. And to make it possible, we need to follow the right compliance procedure, as Andrew mentioned before, like following the local government policies. And on top of that, building a proper procedure where to showcase the, for example, I buy a certain fraction of an apartment, tokenized apartment. It really proves that I'm the owner. For example, we can take an apartment in Burj Khalifa, fractionalize it into 100 parts, and then we can hand it over to a REIT in Dubai, let's say, MR3, MR, we got it. And then we can

sell it as a token out into the market. I own one token of the 100 tokens. Now I can go back to MR and I can verify and I can confirm that, yes, I really own a fraction of the department that proves the ownership and also the custody of the apartment. So this is what is very much lacking in the industry right now. A lot of people are tokenizing

a real world isolated share or a commodity and then they are bringing into as an ERC3643 or any other format, but where is the custody of it? Where is the ownership of it? That's the big problem we are facing in the real world asset right now. Joe, I'm in and out.

I'm listening. All good. Yeah, I had a question. You know, I think people, you know, back with real world assets, you know, we used to just call it like security tokens, right? And I remember even it was like BTG Pactual started to do like security token offerings back in 2020, I think is a decently sized bank in Brazil.

What's the difference today between what's happening on that with versus what was happening in 2020? Where, you know, is it literally just the renaming from security token to real world asset? Or is it the identity piece of what's happening here? Like these pillars you're talking about, like, why is it going to work this time? The answer is a very good question, actually. The answer is, I mean, it's definitely possible this time is because we are exactly following the rules. For example, I have to mention about Mika over here as well, which is marketing crypto assets, which is coming in Europe very, very soon.

The regulatory oversight makes things very easier. Four years ago, there is no proper regulatory oversight and everything is being done by just tokenizing and then calling it as a tokenized real world asset. But it's not really working as I mentioned before because of the lack of the four pillars as I just mentioned before. But now that now things are evolved now regulation regulatory oversight is in place right now and and there is for example we can do kyc of

the users we have centralized institutions who are who can do the kyc and the custody of it so things are more easier and it's not just about the way we are doing it in a security or or in or another way as well i mean for that there are very very difference between a secret security token and and the tokenizer's company world asset as a mention um because of the changes in the regulatory oversight and also not just about it and also people are getting used to it for example four years ago we don't really we don't really know exchanges doing kyc but right now most of the exchanges are doing kyc uh and and and of course the giving out the data now for example the ftf travel rule travel rule was not there

four years ago but right now travel rule is there for example kyt kyt is not there four years ago but right now travel rule is there for example kyt kyt is not there four years ago right now chain analysis is is the biggest one doing kyt and it became very very common and if you really want to run an exchange or a swap or or an on-ramp off-ramp kyt is compulsory right now in the park nowadays so people are getting used to the changes in the regulations and they're accepting that okay no this is common right now yes kyt is common yes kyc is common more people accept the changes it becomes more easy to bring rwa uh into into into real world because we can't bring rwa into web3 without passing through the compliance and with you know securitize and BlackRock, they just launched a tokenized fund, and they launched on Ethereum,

right, which I think that was always a big question mark for everyone, you know, is, is the sovereign nation gonna launch, like, you know, some sort of CBDC, which chain do they launch it on? And I think it's pretty interesting to see BlackRock actually just choosing Ethereum, you know, even pre ETF, I think they're probably banking on ETF getting approved. But, you know, what would be some of the other options? Like why would someone choose to maybe build their own

or white label something? You know, like if we're talking about banks, if we're talking about different projects, are people just going to say, hey, we're just going to default to Ethereum? So, again, the difference is that Ethereum, well, there's several things, for example, here. We have Ripple doing it. It's a private network.

But again, Ripple is available on Ethereum as well. Now because Ripple has kind of tokens, certain amount of tokens out, which is whitelisted from their part, and then they are minted on Ethereum. It's in a similar way. Someone have the ownership of that. For example, BlackRock is tokenizing bond and they're putting on Ethereum, which is fantastic. But the question is, who owns those bonds? Who are actually the seller?

Technically, it's the BlackRock owns it. They whitelisted on their names and they're putting on Ethereum. So similarly, this is where it is. Things will change. For example, someone have to show the ownership of the security asset and then you can put it on the on the ethereum or solana let's say solana started token extensions two months ago permission tokens and permissionless chain but there have to be an ownership of the token who owns it which can run on the on the

solana network that something is important that's where that's what we believe is that um a compliance oversight of the tokens are are are accepted by somebody like black rock over there and then it's been given out in an ethereum which is like as a as a subsidized or a sublet of the share or the bond to the outside community. Amazing. As we wrap here, I know, did you guys, Raj, did you guys have an announcement today

that you wanted to put out there? I think I've seen something in the background here about that. Yeah, we launched the Tesla today, actually, which is the first public permission network,

as I mentioned before, which is, it's a network where it consists of all the four groups, people, projects building on Ethereum, Avalanche, Solana. As I mentioned before, permission tokens and permissionless chains

are coming very soon. But it's great that blockchains are giving an option to add condition on the smart contracts, but to fulfill the condition, there have to be some checks to be done, right? So eMoney Network is the one which fulfills those checks and lets users to pass through the four proofs and get them an account on other chains. But when they pass through the eMoney Network, they get a wallet on eMoney Network where the wallet address is an IBAN number. We are the first one to tokenize bank deposits as well, which is already live in the market. So we welcome

people to go and test it and try it very much like JP Morgan on X. But we made it public like Binance Smart Chain. So we're literally bringing the entire banking infrastructure into the blockchain world where we're trying to make our regulations upcoming of regulations as well, which have nothing but the money tokens where the first ever stable coin always picked to one is to one with the liquid currency in a bank account. Yeah, we launched it today. So welcome people to give and have a look at it which is very very unique and very different it takes a while to understand but it's as per

maker regulations yeah yeah i did i did pin that did i hear that right where and how does exactly does that work with the iban number like if i wire money there it goes to a wallet it's a it's a good question so it's uh so what happened is that we are a bank we are an offshore bank and we are a blockchain as well permission blockchain as i mentioned just like jp morgan onyx so when you when you get a wallet you have an iban over there you send thousand euros to the iban it creates equivalent amount of thousand e euros on the chain which is as perca regulations of 2024 june 30 which is coming

very soon so you can send those e-money tokens from ox to ox the real money moves in the background from iban to iban as well it's always oh i think raj got rugged again by the way i think it needs to be mentioned um that today's crypto town hall space is just epic level of quality i don't know if that's associated with uh mario and and uh scott being less available i mean you know it's it's not i mean the crypto town hall is the hosting i mean i've done 30 of these you know with the round table with mario and scott over the last i would say like 45 days it is an absolute nightmare in the background and what's that when people are i can't hear this person i can't hear that what is going on it's like yeah twitter x i don't know elon has to get his shit figured out here soon because it is,

it completely breaks. I just thoroughly enjoy giving Scott Mario a hard time. I mean, that's, that's the, you know, if I can do that once a day, I've had a good day.

Um, but yeah, it's, uh, it was a good one today. Uh, information, uh,

from Hunter and, and a little bit of a drill down there. He went a little further than he usually does. It's really good stuff. Yeah, it's funny. He seemed kind of... Oh, since. Go ahead, bud.

Yeah, I just... I had prepared some ETF statistics because I followed that data very closely and I had my hand up earlier to jump in when Hunter was there to see what he thinks. So hopefully we'll talk about that sometime later. And also we didn't get to even talk about the halving. So probably a lot of cool stuff moving forward to talk about.

Yeah, unfortunately, the halving in California here is going to be on the 19th. So we don't get to celebrate, I guess, in the same way as the folks that have it on 420. So if you're in UTC or further east, depending on where you're at, you get it on 420, which is pretty exciting. But since you have anything on that you want to discuss real quick, are you good? No, I just don't want to belabor the point.

I was hearing a lot of discussion online about whether HAVING has an effect or not. Some people are looking at the chart and say, okay, immediately there's not a lot of effect. There's always this camp that pops up every cycle that says it's all priced in for now, expecting a drop. And there's some other people saying that in the longer and several several months later that's when you see the effects of it so i have done a an analysis of the average returns given how many months we move away after the having and the synopsis of the that in one sentence is generally for the first five months you don't see anything it's it's depressing and that sort of fuels all that cognitive bias that oh nothing happens it was all

uh priced in uh then in month six you see a little move seven eight a little bit of a further move and then the actual explosion starts after that. So that's how I would summarize this for now. Yeah, good stuff. And I think we're going from 900 Bitcoins a day to 450 on the market every day. So that's from 30 million a day, or down to 30 million a day. So 900 million a month month now down from 1.8 billion and in the grand scheme of things it's not a huge amount but the that that small amount is you know as they say it's it's uh you know it's priced in it's written into the code that we're going up because of it so it will happen but all right you guys we do have to wrap here appreciate everyone joining this

morning thanks raj and e-money uh everyone go give them a follow and uh until next time