The Wolf Of All Streets - Will Markets Keep Pumping? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

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I think we're having technical difficulties. Can you guys hear me? I know nobody can hear Mario at the moment. We're trying to figure it out behind the scenes. Good morning, everyone. I'm literally passing through customs right now. Not sure that it's very popular. Been traveling for the last 30 hours from Singapore. Just arrived back in Florida. And most epic thing, you would think I was in token 2049 in Singapore most incredible week I'm sure Mario's about to pop in and we'll be able to discuss the

takeaways from that as you can see but I'm sitting on my flight for this last flight for 15 hours there's the milk over and like absolute legend one of my favorite people of all time sitting next to me, Rivaldo, the Brazilian footballer. So of course I had to chat him up. So man, what a, what a flight made,

made the 15 hours a lot more pleasant. Dave, we missed a macro Monday today, but we are going to do another macro Tuesday tomorrow. It's been brutal. Last two weeks. Well, do another macro tuesday tomorrow it's been brutal well not last two weeks well the good news is is that we're back at prices that we were at in august so it's like okay bitcoin hits prices not seen since

it's price is not seen since all the last six months. Yeah, I mean, yeah, whatever. We're exactly where we expected to be. I'm going to say we because you and I are more or less on the same page. Hi, guys. Can you hear me? Yes. Beautiful. I'm glad it's working.

Yes. Beautiful. And you're a co-host. Why are you your punk today? Because there's a potential breakout of war between Israel and Lebanon. I think it's a tiny bit more important than did Bitcoin go up or down 2% today. Then send your crypto punk over there and let's get your real face. Come on.

Yes, that's going to happen. But doing a recap, not sure what I missed, but I would love to kind of do a recap of talking 2049 like the main main highlights of the event main

you didn't do much you didn't miss much you just missed me bragging about sitting next to a famous footballer and chatting him up for 30 seconds

okay your thoughts I know you're in the airport so I'm not sure how long you speak my thoughts on the event we've done this on every uh by the way it's i think scott is coming out yeah just the mute

yeah yeah oh you're back now you're good yeah your thoughts on the event your key takeaways because that's something we've done at every single event um uh that happens because you go to most of them um so what we do in this space is going to get you to give a recap because I don't go to many events personally. Yeah. And my, my recap is that Mario, you threw an amazing penthouse party. That hosted, did not at all attract the Singaporean police when 3,000 people flooded the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental to get into a hotel room. It's my main takeaway.

But speaking of the app, that happened. Talking about, yes, Scott, I'll let you mute because your connection is pretty crappy. I know you're on the move. But yeah, Scott's talking. So we did our first, uh, you know, I heard bits and pieces of what you said, Scott, we did our first event, you know, put, put together a party and last minute, but didn't go as planned. Like too many people showed up. So,

so we had the police shut it down because the whole hotel had to close down the roads, close the hotel, shut down the reception, shut down. And the police had to come to get people out and took them three hours to get everyone out. Um, so I didn't, I don't have any takeaways from the event. I literally didn't even go to the event. I went to two panels, point telegraph being one and another one for a friend. That's it. I commentated the karate combat event and then just otherwise just went out at night

and had our party. So that was it. I had 12 people, their team members there. They did a lot. But I'd love more thoughts from the panel. I think they have a lot more useful information, productive information for the audience. Gareth, first, thanks for hosting me and Scott on your panel.

We also talked about the party. We talked about, among other things, kind of the media landscape in crypto. I'd love to get your thoughts on the event in general, key takeaways that you've had, how you share with the audience. Yeah, sure. Thanks, Mario.

And again, thanks to you and Scott for coming through on Thursday night to Cointelegraph side event Longitude. It was really great to have you guys. And I'll continue posting some snippets from that fireside chat throughout the week. So if your audience is interested in checking that out, just keep your eye out. Yeah, I was in Singapore from Monday morning. I traveled from Dubai. I was on that redacted flight, which sort of made headlines early in the week. All the

DJs on the plane having a big party. It was super divisive and a lot of people were saying this is the top signal and stuff like that. But just two cents on that it was really interesting to be a part of that i made a load of kols um and some other vcs and that sort of thing on the plane and really it was a lot less crazy than people said it was i mean it was crazy to to have a big party on the plane and you know i see i saw some interesting articles coming out today saying whether or not it was safe uh nothing was out of hand nothing was broken on that aircraft or anything like that it was it was people over exaggerating you've got you've got a lot of a lot of echo i've just muted you just and not sure why you had okay please get gareth when you're speaking got a lot of echo but it was just so it's actually a redacted coin which

is a project we've invested in um and we're working with very closely. And they've raised a lot of money. They're doing extremely well. So what they did for publicity is they hired an entire aircraft. They were going to go with Emirates first and then went with Qatar Airways instead. So I went on the plane. I'm a pretty private person, but I did go on the plane anyway because we are working with them and I wanted to support. And it wasn't that crazy.

I genuinely slept the entire way. I slept because I pulled in all night of the night before for a few interviews I had. But otherwise, I slept on the entire plane. So I wouldn't be able to sleep if it was that crazy.

There was music, there was interviews, there were fun, there were drinks, but that was about it. And it wasn't even close of what you'd see, like, you know,

whole Wolf of Wall Street type debauchery that you saw on the private jet. That's not what happened. It was just really relaxed people having fun. But it was a good publicity stunt. Do you think it worked as a publicity stunt, Gareth? I think it definitely did, yeah.

I mean, they always say there's no such thing as bad press and, you know, there was a load of videos circulating about the party and everything. But it was basically just people, like, imagine being at a networking videos circulating about the party and everything. But it was basically just people like imagine being at a networking event, except you're on a plane. Yeah, people were drinking, but that was about it. There was some, there was some music and some singing and some karaoke, but you know, really no debauchery. And yes, I do think it worked. And I had lots of people ask me about it during the week, you know, when I told them that I'd been on the flight.

So yeah, that was an interesting way getting to Singapore. The week itself was super busy. I conducted a load of interviews for Cointelegraph. I sat down with Richard Ting, Arthur Hayes, a load of different people. Token 2049, the event itself, you know, people were telling me up to 20 000 uh guests were there the panel the you know the panels and speakers were fantastic they had everyone from vitalik on stage

to yeah arthur hayes balaji and you know really like an absolutely like star-studded lineup of of panels you know i actually got to sit around and watch a few hours which was really great guys like shane coplin from uh um polymarket were were there as speakers as well so there was really like a load of alpha and a load of really interesting takes on you know some of the most important things happening in the industry and i thought that was what are the important things uh and let me go to someone else. Someone else that was there. Just jump in. What are some important narratives that you kind of noticed at Token 2049 that caught your attention? And what was the sentiment there as well?

We'd love to get your thoughts relative to expectations. So any alpha from the event, anything interesting on that perspective from anyone on the panel that was there? Yeah, Mario, I'd love to join in. And I think just to accompany what Gareth was saying, what I find to be absolutely spectacular is that this was really like having Web Summit colliding with an Apple convention. Because we had obviously Token 2049, we had also the Solana Breakpoint, we also had a celebrity event with Iggy. And for those to remember, Iggy had over a billion views on YouTube. She was like a legitimate, real hip hop artists, no seven to 10 years

back. So all of these events colliding together, I think it made it probably the busiest week in the history of crypto. We had 791 side events, right? So and that's only the public ones. So if you take the private ones, it's over 1000. So numbers are absolutely bonkers. And I think the takeaways from what I've seen was that, of course, we had a lot of infrastructure plays within the past two to three years, a lot of people are really stressing the fact that we need consumer dabs some real world applications for us to be able to truly create a new bubble which will be the stemming or catalyst of a new altcoin cycle and these bubbles are very very important we have the ai world with ai agents infrastructure so that you can finally scale soft skills scale human beings

such as yourself, Mario, that is super busy, hopefully save some costs. And you know, the evolution of AI from going from machine learning to predictive models to generative models, and now AI agents, which helps scaling. So these are all really, really exciting topics. But one thing that I have in terms of alpha, Mario, is something that very few of us discuss with regards to how do we start or kick off a new altcoin cycle like the DeFi bubble in 2020. And I think that after talking with a few of the institutional borrowing and lending companies, you know, like Morpho, there are a lot of them out there. But what I can tell you is that since the US interest rates and Treasury

bills have been dropping, so now you're starting to lose all that easy money, quote unquote, easy money, where you again, you know, five to 6% for holding cash or for using for investing in bonds that is dropping and we're seeing you know, anywhere between 3.6% to four point is dropping. And we're seeing, you know, anywhere between 3.6% to 4 point something percent. And a lot of these institutional players like the hedge funds or the family offices are thinking, listen, if we go down to 3.5% or 3%, I want to find alpha, I want to get my money working. And these percentages are these APYs are no longer interesting to them. And already a lot

of these institutional borrowers are offering products. And by the way, SwissBorg does as well. We had days where USDC was offering double digit yield. So that is almost Mario three times what you can get in traditional finance. So I don't know what you guys think. I'd love to open up there. But I think the DeFi summer or the DeFi bubble with crazy, crazy APY is going to come back. It's going to come back because as this capital flows into DeFi and goes on chain, because interest rates are not so sexy anymore, and all of these companies, they want to make money, other projects are going to start copying and offering incentives with their own LP tokens. And I think there's a chance that we go to the DeFi bubble again, and that could be one of the next. Jonathan, your thoughts on this.

Could the Fed pivot, the aggressive Fed pivot, lead to a new DeFi bubble? Because a lot of people are talking about what will lead the next crypto narrative. Could it be DeFi, not AI, not gaming, nothing else? I mean, if they keep dropping, yeah, I mean, DeFi's yields. The problem with DeFi's yields are that they've, time again, shown to be very unsustainable for a great many of them. There are exceptions, but there's a difference between having a sustainable yield in DeFi

and a difference between outright predatory. But I think if you want the altcoin market to boom, whatever was going on in Singapore, like, I don't know, I saw the stuff on X. I mean, whatever party that was with Iggy. It was a horrible image for crypto, by the way. I mean, people like dry humping these strippers. I'm very bullish on GlaxoClone. What party was that? I think it was

one of the Solana parties. It was the night of the party, Mario. Yeah, maybe it was the alien party. Yeah, that looked like the very bullish on GlaxoKline Smith because I think 2024 is biggest herpes outbreak from there. But what happened over the weekend on Friday that is huge is the SEC approving the Bitcoin ETF options.

And if you want a really good read that goes into a lot of detail of how insanely bullish this is, Bitwise's Jeff Park did a phenomenal, phenomenal write up. I can go through a summary. Please do Jonathan, I just spoke by the way, Garth, can I bring you back down and come back up please just fix your mic. Just to avoid the echo. But Jonathan, I just did an interview with Michael Seller just before this, 15 minutes before we started this. And he mentioned this as one of the three key things that are leading the current bull run um that the fed's decision and the exemption i think the yeah it was the exemption by the um um the sab whatever um you know big banks being exempt from that um so but can you can you dig into the um um uh that the into the Bitwise options, ETF options?

What that means? Why is that bullish for crypto? Why is that so important? I am so freaking... I have an adrenaline rush every time I read this and look. I mean, I... Okay, so first off, fractional banking with ETF options. Bitcoin's cap supply is really no longer the ball and chain here.

Now, there's synthetic leverage from ETF options. This is a whole new ballgame regulated, market power up, essentially. You have the OCC protection, synthetic notional exposure, leveraged. For the first time, Bitcoin's leverage can stretch over long-term horizons. So those long-dated OTM calls, more bang for your buck than holding a position that might tank 80%. And then the sweet, sweet nectar of volatility. Volatility smile. Bitcoin doesn't have to play by... Well, it doesn't really play by traditional market rules, but upside and downside are equally chaotic. There's the negative VANA action.

Gamma squeeze on steroids. No dilution, just action. Unlike GameStop or AMC in the stock market, Bitcoin can't just print more of itself. The supply is fixed. So when it's squeezed, it's squeezed for real. There's no management or boards to mess things up. Okay. And it's not your average commodity. The other thing with the options here is Bitcoin's

not oil or natural gas. There's no expiration dates. There's no OPEC pulling the strings. It's all about perpetual supply, constrained, grind higher. And I don't know what else to say about it, but it – Yeah, Dave, you put your thumbs down, so I'll just get your thoughts on what you disagree with. Well, I disagree that it's a grind. I think that the word Jonathan said is correct. It will introduce volatility. Effectively, it is – if you think about it in a very simple way, the U.S. is half the world's capital markets. The U.S. has just got

the ability to buy spot for non-accredited investors, which is most people. And effectively, what options are, are a slightly shittier, slightly more expensive market maker profit machine, but very, very analogous to the introduction of perpetual swaps. Think about that for a second. This is a world where the U.S. investors, unless you go through lots of hoops with third tier exchanges, can't really trade perpetual swaps and trading leverage for the average significant, but whatever retail investor is more or less impossible. And the professional investors aren't doing it, really, unless they're outside the US, can't really trade it. Effectively, by having options on the ETFs, it effectively opens up

the ability for all self-directed investors to effectively do what perpetual swap investors have done everywhere else. So is that bullish? Well, sure. In terms of it opens up capital flows, there's likely to be the gamma squeeze part is absolutely right, but you're going to have both sides of it. Unlike the ETFs, which I predicted rather strongly and kind of yelled at Jim Bianco because he said complete bullshit. I mean, nonsense about how the ETFs would exacerbate volatility. Options will 100% exacerbate volatility, and that means upside and downside. That's what the thumbs down was for. Net-net, it's introducing that leverage, which does create the significantly more likelihood of the god candles that people are talking about,

as well as liquidation flushes. It's just it plays out differently, right? And this deserves a deeper conversation. Scott, we probably should do a conversation specifically about this. But what you should know is all of retail who likes to bet on leverage and wants to gamble now will have the ability to do so just like they do everywhere else in the world using perpetual swap so to that degree i agree with jonathan but understand it is going to introduce volatility undeniable before i'm going to allow you it doesn't the volatility need to get a bit of a negative outcome as well it's one of the things that people criticize about bitcoin oh yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, if Bitcoin is an 80 vol asset, I don't know what it actually is.

It seems like it's less. But if Bitcoin is an 80 vol asset without options in the United States based on perpetual swap liquidations overseas, maybe it goes to 90. You know, maybe it goes to 100. It's going to increase its volatility. Its natural volatility is going to increase once this happens. Now, the reason it happens is because the people who buy, you know, people who buy options, you know, whether calls or puts, if as the price is just very, very, very stupidly basic options math, most people buy out of the money options, meaning, you know, if you're maybe they'll buy a 65,000 or 70,000 strike Bitcoin now just to save money, you know, to try to get as much leverage as possible.

And but when the so the market maker, they hedge, except for the fact is, as the price rises, the market maker has to buy more to hedge more. And so that's what's called a gamma squeeze. And the same thing on the downside. If you buy a put, say, well, I think Bitcoin is going to collapse to 40,000 or whatever McGlone thinks it's going to do. Maybe you buy a 60,000 put. And as it starts to fall, the market makers have to sell more. So it's not nearly as wicky as liquidations in the perpetual swap markets, but it does have that gamma component to it. And that's why it will add volatility. week with the custody of Bitcoin by a pretty large custodian of, and they're not just a bank,

they're a custodian of assets for the whole brokerage industry. That was timely, and it was, in my opinion, also timed with the SEC approval of the iBit options that will add more liquidity. In my opinion, the timing is a little suspect because, you know, in my opinion, BTC led all risk assets up. Once we cross over 60,000, that's the new floor now. And I believe that the significance of this is big. Unfortunately, the SEC is not pro-crypto under Gary Gensler. And as we well know, in my opinion, CBDCs or any discussion of CBDCs are contrary to the very purpose of what Bitcoin is supposed to do, which is to make you independent from sovereign fiat currencies. And I do think the election holds a lot of cards about how quickly we'll see 100,000 or 75,000 or 50,000. And it is obvious to me that only one side, in this case, not the Democratic Party, is going to be better for the price of Bitcoin going forwards.

Yeah, and let me just dig into the other story that we have. I don't know if we did spaces last week because I was obviously talking 2049, but Dave, your thoughts on the events of last week, especially the Fed pivot from tightening to loosening. What that means for crypto in the short and medium term.

And obviously we've seen a rally. How long could this rally sustain for based on that i think i think crypto holds the cards and i think the announcement you know i think great ceos the best ceos timed their announcements perfectly i.e how elon musk timed his announcement that he was going to go to china and and and give them the technology so that they could do self-driving uh cars first uh and and that was the bottom of the stock. In the same way, I see these announcements as an attempt to continue the stock rally,

because it is obvious to me that it is a leading indicator, and that it leads what the Fed is anticipated to do. And we now have a wall of liquidity that's coming back to this market. And I do believe it was due that the 50 basis point move was a function of preserving financial stability because of the cracks that we were seeing in the commercial real estate and the shadow banking system that's also been developed. Nobody's talking about the new shadow banking system. This space was downloaded via spacesdown.com. Visit to download your spaces today. Which is really private debt coming in and saving the traditional fixed income markets

that have lost their mechanisms of being very efficient. There is no efficiency when you have a yield curve that's been negative for the last, you know, 28 months. And now you're getting the tail, which historically tells us there's a recession. But the Fed, I think, is going to achieve a soft landing. You got to give Powell great, great marks. He held and he like a stoic tree and did not succumb to a market that priced in lower rates and more liquidity. And liquidity drives risk. It's that simple. And the companies that are most innovative benefit the most from that liquidity.

Dave, I saw you jump in as well. Yeah, I mean, I think that I tend to agree that Powell's doing what he set out to do. I don't think soft landing, I don't think any of that matters to him. I think two things matter. And, you know, I know I'm cynical. Number one, politics. And there are multiple commentators who said the same thing. Effectively worrying more about unemployment than inflation. But really what he cares about is managing to

reflate assets while and prioritize capital over labor. It's kind of a long way of expressing it, but effectively, before the pandemic, most inflation was expressed in asset prices and overcapacity and continued lots of trends in terms of automation kept consumer prices down. And the net result of all of that is that kind of Goldilocks thing where people get to the asset prices go up, and that's where the monetary debasement and the money printing is going to. And he wanted to get back to that, and he definitely wanted to get back to that for

a while. What is most interesting to me is he cuts 50 basis points and the 10-year actually yields slightly goes higher. Not a lot, but it basically was unched. So all the movement was on the short end, which is, I think, nirvana for the Fed. But from an asset perspective, understand in his press conference, and we did this on the spaces, Mario, he said specifically that even after 50 basis points, the policy was still restrictive, meaning that there's more to come just to get to normal. In the situation where they're doing, where markets

tend to go significantly down when the rate cut cycle starts, it's because they start the rate cut cycle when we're basically already in recession or their data is telling us we're in recession. And it's unclear that that's true. What is true is he thinks we are restrictive and he wants to get back to normal. And so that's what the market is pricing it. That is generally a good thing for risk assets. And if you look at, I was looking at some data this morning, which was fascinating. I mean, we know that we've seen charts and Scott and I have talked about them, that when you start to cut rates, markets generally sell off. But I looked at one that goes out a bit further.

And effectively, what it shows is one year post rate cut cycle starting. There were two losses, a couple of mediums, and three or four market ups, meaning that generally you get a flush out and then it recovers. And the question here is if we don't get a flush out, then what does that portend? I think it's generally bullish for risk assets as we go into this election, barring some massive surprise. And as you're doing in your other space, Mary, you know what that other surprise could be. And that's where I think that's why markets are more muted today than they might otherwise be. Fair point. And Tom, I want you to comment to what was just being discussed. Well,

considering that retail is far from being involved, from entering. Viewership across YouTube channels is relatively low compared to 2021, same time in that cycle. Interesting in the price. Yeah, so another point here is searches of Google are extremely low as well, despite us breaking 60K. So especially how are we hitting those numbers when the rest of the indicators are not that exciting, at least the more retail-based indicators? Hey, morning, everybody. So to hit on the macro points first, this is an extremely unusual period, as Dave alluded to a bit.

So we usually don't cut into periods of economic strength. So what is that economic strength? Next year, we're projected on the S&P for 18% earnings growth. That is a very, very high number in an absolute sense. And we're pricing in 250 basis points of rate cuts over the next 12 months. Easing into this sort of growth is absolutely unheard of. So then you have to look at periods when we've done something similar. So the past 40 years, the feds cut 12 times when the S&P is within 1% of an all-time high. If you look at that sample set, the market was higher every single time period if you look forward one year on all of those 12 cuts.

On average, that return is 15%. So we're seeing, if we just look at history here, this is sort of a perfect indicator to say like risk on, markets are doing well, and there's other things to go look at too. Seasonality, okay, great. October, Santa Claus rally, guess what? It's coming. And the sort of contrarians in the house, I don't know if Dr. Josh is here, but it would say, hey, we're going into a recession. None of that really matters. And I would say, hey, we're going into a recession. None of that really matters. And I'd say, well, okay, if you ignore earnings growth, as I just mentioned, you can look at other major economic indicators. So look at jobless claims, still very tame. Look at wage growth, very strong. Commodities, they're decreasing basically across the board. Profit margins, still expanding. Credit spreads look great. All of these things that you would look for for typical recession signs, certainly not there.

So I don't really understand the recessionary argument. I think we're in a fantastic macro position right now. So that's that. In terms of the more retail indicators, the problem is still there's just way too much noise out there and people are not ready to sort of believe or buy this rally and when we talk about youtube stats this is i think youtube has sort of hit its hit its peak a bit and you know we as a crypto community actually aren't on the biggest platform there is i mean now everyone's on tiktok i'm not on tiktok because it sounds exhausting uh and it is like a dopamine sort of ferris wheel. But I mean, that's where every sort of retail new investor is sort of there. So should we be looking at those numbers?

Should we be looking at other emerging platforms? I mean, are we looking at this like geographically? I think in the US, the interest is certainly down. But it sounds like from token 2049 conversations, maybe there's other places to look for that. Eladio? Yeah, look look the recession thing is gone okay we've had a 28 month uh inverted yield curve usually when we get the tail which we now have we have a a steeper yield curve between the two and the ten uh that marks usually the beginning of recession and then the sam rule which was invented by uh claudia sam she came out last week saying that even though we've had that half point increase

in unemployment uh in in a period of a quarter uh that's always marked the recession and she said this time it's different and it's different And absolutely, we're in uncharted territory. We have a market that's completely uncorrelated to all the geopolitical events. Look at oil. I mean, where would oil be if we didn't have a regional conflict in the Middle East that's actually expanding? And if we didn't have a war in Europe? And oil can't get past $75 a barrel. And, you know, there's a good chance that when we get a resolution to these things, that the price of oil will decline. So you got to listen to what the markets are telling you. And right now, risk on, and whether people like it or not, the MAG-7 are

probably still in charge of this market with a rotation into other areas that are going to benefit from lower interest rates like IWM and the champions in other sectors. We've seen utilities lead. But right now, risk on. And if you're a bear, it's not working out for you. Yes, I'm also reading, Carol, I want to pivot to another topic as well, as we get closer to the elections.

And Thomas, I'd love your comments on the markets in a bit as well. Feel free to comment on this one. But Harris's comments regarding crypto. Finally, she's done to give a bit more clarity. She said that she'll encourage crypto businesses while protecting consumers. I said that at a recent fundraiser, We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets while protecting our consumers and investors. To build that opportunity economy,

I'll bring together labor, small businesses, founders, and innovators and major companies. We'll partner together to invest in America's competitiveness, to invest in America's future. We'll encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets, so essentially you're not even saying the word crypto, while protecting consumers and investors, will create a safe business environment with consistent and transparent rules of the road.

So it's pretty generic, pretty vague, pretty broad, nothing specific, but it is something, at least a starting point. We'll have to get your initial comments. Anyone can jump in. Maybe David can kick it off. David here? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Look, I think it's a bunch of bullshit. I'll call it because Gary gets it. He took the words right out of my mouth. That's

exactly what I was gonna say. I mean, get Gensler has literally used those exact words in referring to his approach. I mean, when they use the word safety, and they don't even use the word crypto, it basically is more of the same. Look, I would make it very simple. It is not bad for the prices of crypto, but what it is bad for is you're looking at an administration whose goal is to turn Bitcoin into an asset that can be controlled, controlled is the wrong word, fit into the legacy financial system

so that the current players can make all of the intermediary money that they do. So you're talking about, I mean, the overall analogy is like saying, okay, we've got this great thing called email, but, you know, the post office is pretty cool. So basically we're going to let people do email, but we're going to create centers, and they're going to have to print them out, and the post office will deliver them.

So instead of going to mail a letter, you can type it in your computer, but it'll still end up as a letter on the other side. I mean, that's more or less what they're doing, because they want it to be settled just like the ETFs are, right? You know, on a daily basis, you know, one day later, you know, you can trade in your brokerage account and that's all you can do. We brokerage account that's open from 930 to four, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Meanwhile, most of the innovative parts of crypto, the ability to open source, the ability to reward users, stakeholders, et cetera,

none of that fits within that system. And they haven't talked about it. So effectively, I wrote a tweet this morning. There are three real asset tests, there's probably more, but my three would be CBDC, what does she think about that? And it's fairly likely that she supports it because Elizabeth Warren supports it. Peer to peer trading, and self custody. And if they don't, if there's no mention of any of that until there's mention of that and repudiation of policies going after it, such as Gensler's lawsuit against Uniswap. I think it's bullshit. Isn't it a better step, at least than the previous or the current the current administration? What we're seeing could have been improvement from what we currently have, but not as not

obviously not as positive as the Trump administration. From your perspective, Mario, it might even be nirvana. So let's be clear from a crypto price appreciation perspective, certainly from a Bitcoin price appreciation perspective in Ethereum, because they've hit escape velocity, it's fine. It still, however, is pushing more and more business to Dubai, which is where you live, and the economy there is going to boom as a result, because it is inevitable that digitalization is going to overtake financial markets. And if the US insists on being dumb about it, we're going to lose. But that doesn't mean theization is going to overtake financial markets. And if the U.S. insists on being dumb about it, we're going to lose. But that doesn't mean the world is going to lose.

It doesn't mean crypto is going to lose. It just means the innovation will leave the U.S. And I don't agree. I'll go to Thomas. I completely agree. It's complete smoke and mirrors. You know, I'm sorry. I don't believe in candidates that change their DNA in 60 days and become more conservative than Ronald Reagan when they were actually further left than Sanders.

It's obvious to me that any digital currency tied to a sovereign currency is the opposite of why Bitcoin was created. And it's just smoke and mirrors. I don't do smoke and mirrors. I don't listen to what candidates say in the last two months of an election because they're basically trying to fool voters into actually vote for them. And the fact remains,

one party never had one primary win for the candidate that they have now as president. The other party does. And we'll find out. And the winner of the election, in my opinion, will determine where risk assets go. And that includes BTC, because BTC has already priced in liquidity going back to when the rally, when the rally started from 25,000. So the next question, and Thomas, I'd love to ask you that question first

so anyone else could jump in as well. So I'll go with Thomas and Tom. And that's altcoins. Now we're seeing, I'm just going to read out two tweets and get your thoughts on it. Big inflection point here for alts, I think. That's by Skew. This coming week in October,

and October open will be vital for our coins i think it'll be very bullish to see a bitcoin and hit a new high and bitcoin leading this week prior to outs really popping off and we've got another tweet here from ali says the alcohol market cap looks prime to surpass one trillion it's just a matter of time before our coin season i want to get your thoughts we talked a lot on on bitcoin obviously i just had a my discussion with mich Saylor. I've asked him, I've asked him about our coins and meme coins as well in a subtle way.

Um, but 99% of discussion was on Bitcoin and half a percent on, on, um, but when I, you know, kind of moving away from Bitcoin in the markets in general, your thoughts on out coins.

And cause people were pretty pessimistic. We talked about talking 2049 year near people were pretty pessimistic. We talked about token 2049 earlier. People were pretty pessimistic when it came to VC-backed tokens and other alts were kind of split. Tom, do you want to go first on this one? Thomas, and then we'll go to Tom. All right, we'll go to Tom. Go ahead and go to Thomas after.

Thomas, you've got to unmute your mic. Bottom left corner. Go ahead, Tom. Thomas can start. Go for it. I think his after. Thomas, you've got to unmute your mic. Bottom left corner. Go ahead, Tom. Thomas can start. Go for it. I think his mic is not working now. I've asked him to unmute. So go ahead, Tom.

It'd be good to talk about also like your personal thoughts, maybe talk about master venture strategy as well, how it's shifted over the last few months. It's been a while we haven't spoken. Yeah, of course. So honestly, the biggest thing for me in the kind of Trump versus Harris debate is that both of them are going to have enormous fiscal deficits, Yeah, of course. So honestly, the biggest thing for me in the kind of Trump versus Harris debate is that both of them are going to have enormous fiscal deficits, which means more spending

directly in the economy. And I've tried to look for basically every study that's been out there. It's a bit hard because they all change their economic plans on what they're going to do. But it's between three to four trillion in deficit, depending on the candidate and depending on if the House or Senate is sort of for that particular candidate. But I mean, the direction of travel is very, very clear and put on top of all the things I said previously, enormously stimulative for risk assets, which will trickle into crypto unless it's extremely punitive regulation. So what I'm hearing now is not like, oh, Harris is super pro-crypto. What I want to be hearing is like, okay, at least she's not going to outlaw it or ban it or be

completely against it. That's really all we need. So Trump victory, yeah, super great for crypto. But I think a Harris victory at this point is now neutral more than anything else. And in the way we're thinking about it as a venture fund, unfortunately, it's less of a consideration and concern because most investments we're making are now domiciled completely offshore out of the US. Our team is mostly based outside of the US. I'm one of the only folks here. And projects that are choosing to stay in the US, even if we do get favorable regulations, it's going to take an enormous amount of time to actually filter through to these seed stage, pre-seed stage startups, particularly when they're trying to launch a token. I mean, the standard right now in the US based on current

statutes is that you have to have a one-year cliff and then three-year lockup on top of that. And that's just not competitive in the current market where you can go outside the US and have more attractive terms to investors. So things are in the US still a bit tricky on the kind of venture side, but you know, more broadly, it can be more bullish on the asset class in general. Alex? Yeah, buddy. So when it comes to the altcoin markets, and to comment a little bit on what you were saying, and I just want to close my thought on the DeFi bubble, you know, it's very important to understand, guys, that in every single altcoin market, there are only two particular players that are going to win.

Those with very strong fundamentals. So, for example, Sui in the last few months literally didn't give a fuck about the altcoin cycle retracement. It's been outperforming all the others, but also on-chain, it's been outperforming the others. So those chains that are going to have very clear metrics will attract essentially this smart money. And then those creating the bubbles are going to attract the speculators. So I think it's very important, Mario, that we define the altcoin cycle from two particular type of investor personas. And once again, there's a very easy concept, Mario, that really reflects all the way back from 2005 to 2010 in Silicon Valley,

which was the question, what is the next big thing? And the way people would define that, and I know because I was working with tech stars, I was working with 500 startups, I was working with Google startups. And what is the next big thing was defined by the 10x factor. So we need to create something which essentially is 10 times cheaper, or 10 times better in terms of its value, in order to really disrupt what is built on web to, to really get people to break their habits that are very difficult to break and replace them with new habits, which is to bring money on chain. And that money inflow is absolutely critical for us to get more interest into risk assets and expand that risk asset profile all the way down to the lower

caps and micro caps. So I think it's really important, Mario, once again, that we have these fundamentals on chain. That's very clear. I'm a fundamentalist. I usually really make my decisions based on all the on-chain data that I can get through Dune, through DeFi Llama, through Nansen, and all these different explorers through the blockchains. That's how I invest. But then once again, people like things that are hot, the hot narratives, which you talked about earlier, AI. AI needs to challenge what's being offered on Web2. But it has to have that 10x factor,

that old, what's the next big thing, Silicon Valley mindset. Just two last questions for Tom, Dave, and Gareth. Tom, question for you regarding master ventures and VC backtalk. I think the only two panels I did was with Gareth's one, the point telegraph one, because I got massive respect for them. The other one was for one of my friends. We did talk about the current state of VC-backed tokens. Your thoughts, do you think the model will shift? Do you think we'll continue to get that amount of interest

that we've seen in previous cycles again? Or do you think the age of VC-backed tokens is over? Now, when I say the age of VC-backed tokens is over? Now, at least when I say the age of VC-backed tokens is over, I'm talking about that massive interest during the bull markets. Yeah, I mean, if you say no, I think you're betting against the human nature to speculate and try to get outsized returns.

I don't think that's going anywhere. It's just more of like what form it takes it takes. So I have a hard time thinking that the casinos of meme coins are going to continue. I think it's going to shift back into people being like, what the hell are we doing here? Let's look for some fundamental investments that have some sort of catalyst or cash flows or whatever. Something I could actually tie my hopes onto. Certainly there's going to be some punts in the meme coin space, but I think it's got to come full circle again, like all things do, right? You have this crazy bubble of all this VC money that tried to capitalize on what was 2020, 2020 when it returns. It got a bit ahead of its skis.

Folks were super bearish on it. And then we'll find a leveling. Even if we don't get more VC capital in the space, if the space grows 10x, you're still going to need to be able to fund a lot of these new age startups. So do I think more VC capital is coming in? I think we're probably going to be at a steady state for now. Do I think these tokens that are funding are going away? No way. I think we're going to eventually get that return. It's just going to take a bit more time. Venture capital serves a very clear purpose in traditional markets. And I think people in crypto are just starting to realize it a bit more. And most of it is signaling, it's help in building fundamental business models, which we haven't had in crypto to date. Connections, all of those

things that help your business actually grow. So if you're trying to build a business, VC is immensely important. It's not going away. But so far, many of the things we've built are not really businesses. They're speculative assets. So once we have more maturation, come full circle, I think the value will be there. So yeah, that's where I'm at. And last question, Gareth, Dave, that question is for you guys.

And I love your push. You can jump in on that one. By the way, Thomas, your mic is still having unmuted. So I'm assuming it's not working. But Gareth, what would we, first key stories over the last week, because we didn't do any spaces last week, any key highlights, kind of a quick summary for the audience, and what to look out for over the next few days for this week?

Dan, that's such a hard question to answer, Mario, because I was so inundated with interviews and everything from Token 2049 that I didn't have my finger exactly on the pulse of all the biggest announcements. For me, man, I'm trying to, honestly, I really am at a loss to give you the biggest um kind of takeaway i did find the kamala harris like very brief comment on her plans for cryptos as a as a big talking point but also it was it was fairly vague so what does that mean for the rest of us um

something i am looking out for this week was the launch of the Hamster Combat token airdrop. So they've finally done the snapshots and those tokens are supposed to hit the market towards the end of the month. I'm just very interested to see what happens with the token price here because all these tokens are going out to all these players. People have got different amounts of tokens. What are they going to be worth? I looked around online. I couldn't see that. CZ's getting out of jail at the end of the month as well. I believe it's the 29th.

That's definitely going to be something we're going to be doubling down our coverage on. So that's going to be interesting to see. I did speak to Richard Ting last week in Singapore about that, and we'll be publishing that later this week, a video and podcast. And he did reaffirm that CZ can't take any sort of management role at Binance now, but he is still a majority shareholder in the company. And to be honest, I think it's great news that he's finally out of incarceration. He was someone that did a lot to build the industry. He's definitely got his critics. Lots of people in this industry do. But the amount of work in terms of driving adoption of cryptocurrencies in general,

you can take your hat off to CZ because he brought hundreds of millions of users to the crypto ecosystem, whether that was through the first opportunity to buy Bitcoin or whatever the crypto of choice you enjoy buying. So he'll be out of prison at the end of the month, and that's something we're going to cover hard. It'll be interesting to see what happens there. And then, of course, just the election race in general, Donald Trump getting a lot more vocal about crypto. That's something we're going to keep our finger on the pulse with. And I'd be interesting to watch those narratives. So yeah, token 2049 was absolutely crazy last week and it did reaffirm a lot of my faith in a lot of the good stuff that's happening

in the industry. There is a lot of noise. The whole Iggy Azalea party thing was a bit crazy, but I also find it really interesting that she has doubled down hard on Mother and she's also looking to build something. And she's pretty much the only celebrity that's still going that released a celebrity meme coin and is actually trying to do something with it and build a bit of an ecosystem. That's a big plus for the Solana ecosystem because it's there.

And yeah, she has a big gravitas. So it'll be interesting to see what happens. But yeah, all of that are things that are kind of interesting me this week and yeah, I'm still trying to just catch up with everything because last week was crazy. The time zone changes, the travel, all the late nights. Yeah, it was great.

And like I said, I will be posting a few more snippets of my conversation with you, Mario, and you, Scott. Thanks again for joining us last week. And, yeah, we'll be posting a bit more content from that as well. So keep your eyes peeled there. But that's about it. Thanks, Gareth. Dave, anything to look out for for the next few days?

And Elio will ask you that same question in any other comments that you have. I've got a bit of data. I'll just kind of give you some kind of boring answer to this. We've got a bit of data. I just kind of give you just give you some boring answer to this. We've got a bit of data coming out over the next few days, but the the SMP global services, PMI data coming out to a few macro indicators, the consumer and confidence data is coming out the oldest new home sales. And they had the quarter two GDP readings as well. So it's just some key factors to look out for.

But other than that, is anything important in your opinion, Dave, that's coming out? I don't think anything changes until we get the October jobs report, to be honest. I think that the data underlying underneath the headline numbers are the ones that are going to matter because that's the one that will influence elections if the continued trend of native-born American employment numbers lagging continues to go more part-time versus full-time and the report is soft and unemployment ticks up, that's a big deal. I think all the others are basically people are going to use everything else to point toward what they think is going to happen on effectively that first Friday in October. To me, that's the next big, really big piece of economic data. Obviously, global instability is what's going to be on more people's mind than any of the other pieces of data. That's

what I think for what it's worth. Eladio? Yeah, I think that is correct. I also think that the Fed is going to act and not just because of the cracks that were in the commercial real estate market. I think that the lower 50% have not benefited from the Fed's 0% policies because they don't have assets that have appreciated from their liquidity over the last 16 years. So that tells me that the Fed had to move that 50 basis points as an insurance policy and to make sure that the low-end consumer doesn't have to choose between fuel shelter and food appreciate that i think we've covered everything for today i was just looking at david mentioned kind of geopolitical situation i know we're covering the situation in lebanon and

israel live on my other account. I've been doing it for a few hours. I was just looking at the latest updates. It doesn't look too encouraging. Maybe, David, one final question. How important is that? If we see a full-blown war between Hezbollah and Israel, you probably can call it that already. I prefer not to make comments about what I think in the region except to say this.

I mean, more important, except to say this. I mean, more important, how big of an impact would you think we'll have on crypto? But sorry, go ahead. It completely depends on the tail risk of whether or not it's a broader involvement with Iran in a hot war. Iran, yeah. That's when markets will care. Markets don't. Honestly, as much as personally, many of us care a great deal.

I don't think markets care unless they think the oil supply is going to be hit. That's the cynical reality as far as I see it. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. I think we've covered everything pretty well. We'll see you again tomorrow, everyone, as always. And for the panel, we really appreciate you coming on.

Thanks a lot, everyone. We'll see you soon. Bye-bye. Cheers, everyone.