The Wolf Of All Streets - ZEC Shock: Team Exodus Sparks Massive Selloff #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

The panel breaks down the Zcash drama: the Electric Coin Company team resigns en masse over a governance clash, sparking a sharp but short-lived ZEC price drop. Panelists call it a "nothing burger", since the core devs are starting a new company to keep building privacy tech, and the protocol is unaffected. Debate intensifies on privacy coins (Zcash vs. Monero tech/adoption), why on-chain privacy is essential for payments, DeFi, and institutions, and broader market confusion: Bitcoin range-bound at ~$90K, mixed signals across stocks/gold/bonds, middle-class affordability woes, and prospects for an altcoin/small-cap rotation.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto and Hald Hall every weekday here on X at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Yesterday, we did not have a show. We were here and ready, and spaces failed to launch. So I apologize for any of you that tried to sign on and listen to the show yesterday. Once again, not our fault. Another technical glitch, which you guys have no idea how many of them we have in the background trying to run these spaces. But that's neither here nor there. We are here today. Everything seems to be working, and we have quite a few stories that we're going to unpack with our incredible panel. Before we do that, we do have an awesome sponsor today, which is ZeroG. I'm just going to tell you about them a bit before we move on with the show. AI is reshaping the world, but right now it's stuck in the hands of just a few big players. But what if AI can run openly, verifiably, and on-chain. That's what Zero-G is building. The world's first decentralized AI operating system open to everyone.

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Quite a few stories here, but probably the biggest one that literally I have no idea and have zero qualifications to talk about is the one in the title, which is the Zcash shock. That I don't know how far it's down now. I can check the chart. I know it was down, you know, 20-ish percent or something on the day

on this news. I'm hoping someone on the panel can unpack this further, but this is what I've got. Zcash News. The team behind Zcash Protocol, Electric Coin Company resigned January 7th following a governance dispute with the board of its parent nonprofit bootstrap. The now former CEO of Electric Coin Company, Josh Swihart, says the team was constructively discharged due to changes making work untenable. The board says the dispute was over legal compliance and protecting nonprofit assets.

They're forming a new company to continue building privacy-focused. tech. The Zcash protocol itself remains unaffected. There have been multiple leadership changes within the Zcash ecosystem over past years. ZEC is down around 50% in the past 24 hours and recovering slightly. Joe, I'm hoping you can talk about this. Maybe Tom, I don't know. But this does not sound particularly like decentralized private tech when you read about this. Anyone have any insight here? Paul, go ahead. Save me. Yeah, so this is definitely is close to heart for me. given my fan of, me being a fan of a lot of the privacy projects, including Zcash.

I've worked closely with their team now since about 2018. And so, while I don't have like the absolute, like, nuance of this, I know that a lot of criticism is launched at the Zcash project for it not being as, quote, unquote, decentralized as, you know, something like Monaro, but realize there are multiple projects working on Zcash. And in a way, it's kind of like a healthy fight between them because it's not just a monoculture. They all have different opinions, everything from the Zcash, the, the Zcash Foundation to ECC,

and now Zucco has his own organization working on upgrading the protocol, which is entirely funded by not the protocol, but by actually donations that shielded labs. And so I think this is actually quite a buy opportunity because it's just that it sounds like negative news, but the project goes on. The team is still passionate about Zcash. I think that's the most important thing.

They're going to continue to operate, and the value of that team is pretty high from the viewpoint of the very nuanced knowledge of zero-knowledge proofs and the protocol. And so the fact that they intend to form a new organization means that they still would be building on Zcash, whether or not they can get some of the funding that normally gets channeled to ECC,

channeled over to the new company through the protocol kind of remains to be seen, but I'm confident they will be able to because they are the core devs that have kind of built and maintained this project over the past many years. So I think the argument was around Zashi, which, admittedly, I've disagreed with ECC on their focus on building Zashi in the first place, which is just simply a Zcash wallet, and it has its own modernization strategy,

which kind of bucks against why that group of developers exist, which is to advance the protocol. And my understanding was they wanted to keep it open source, also keep it as a reference for other developers to use, as opposed to the board, which wanted to privatize it. and make it its own little company that, in a way, would kind of compete with other companies such as our own, Edge, which builds also a wallet that supports Zcash and has for quite some time. And so while there's disagreement, I think this huge dump is, I hate to say it, but yeah, it's a wild way.

It's bounced 50%. I'm looking at it right now. It's really a nothing burger, especially in context of what's happening with the broader market. It's not like everything's up. Yeah, it's not like everything is up, although 15, 20 percent is nothing to sneeze at, you know. And sure, Zcash is up 10X since it's, you know, kind of low at like the $40 that it hovered at for the past two, three years. And so in the grand team. By the way, that was only in September. Yeah, exactly. It only went up around in September.

So a 20% dip is nothing compared to the 10x bump that it had. And it's from news that sounds really bad. But at the end of the day, you still have the same team. They're still building. They're still passionate about the project. And I'm confident. And this is the part that's unsure, but I'm confident they will still get the funding because they're the known names that have been building on it. Tom.

Hey, good morning. That was a great summary. I just add one thing. And the thing that's weird to me is the injection of, you know, U.S. legal laws here. So the team resigned under constructive discharge, which under U.S. labor law means the changes to their employment terms were made. and it was impossible to continue working effectively and with integrity. And they, you know, cited Zaki and a bunch of others having kind of malicious intent, which for a decentralized blockchain with normal governance oversight just seems very, very strange.

That's what I'm saying. Like when I read that description that I was sent, I was like, this sounds like a really shitty company, not like a decentralized protocol. I'm not saying that's what just the way it reads is I had no idea there was that much happening behind the scenes here. Go ahead. Yeah, that's basically, you know, we think these things are kind of on autopilot and decentralized and, you know, have multiple teams working on it. But this reads to me, like it's, as you mentioned,

kind of like a shitty company operating behind the scenes here. So, yeah, I think this is pretty much a nothing burger, but it just kind of shows that we're still not at that full decentralization phase. And there is still a lot of oversight from individuals or, you know, a handful of folks. I mean, is there any, when you read this, like, does it give you any sort of insight into why this went up 10x in the first place? Maybe that shouldn't have happened. Maybe that was just sort of a coordinated effort. Actually, I interviewed Charles Hoskinson yesterday, and I think it was him. And we were talking about this very briefly.

And he was like, A16Z and a bunch of dudes got together and they pumped it. What are we talking about here? You know, has nothing to do with Zcash in and of itself. Like, you know, how did this 10X, Joe, I see it lift to your mic, how did this 10X in the midst of what I think pretty much everyone would agree is certainly an all-coin bear market, if not a crypto bear market? Yeah, I mean, Scott, you've been around long enough to know that that's probably pretty true in a certain way, right? I mean, Zcash has like five to seven thousand transactions on it a day, which is still good. I mean, we're talking about, you know, Metaverse projects that had like. six transactions a day that were, you know, valued at a billion dollars, if not more, back

in, you know, different markets that we've had in different narratives. But the privacy narrative kind of popped up last year. It was kind of like Zcash was the bright spot in the market. You know, we had, if you guys remember, a lot of kind of OG Bitcoin whale selling. And the narrative was kind of like those people were going to start to move over towards more privacy-oriented coins and Zcash had, you know, some tweets from some pretty important people that may or may not have seemed like they were super mainstream crypto at the time and they were more just kind of like tech-oriented, you know, forward people and VCs and, you know, won't name names, but like that type of person that's more Silicon Valley. And yes, probably interested in crypto, but

people might have thought that things were coming back. And so low liquidity, not a lot of money going into a lot of different places, pretty easy for something to 10x when it's the only thing. Does it deserve to be the number 26 market cap with 6,000 transactions? And I don't know what else is built on it. And, you know, like, we're like, the fellow's just talking to us. Like, maybe they have like a wallet or something. Probably not. But again, like, you know, what's your favorite Cardana wallet?

You know, if you can't think about that in the top, then two seconds in your mind, then like they're in the same position. So still a lot of inflated, I would say, market caps. But, you know, as we know, social and speculation really drives a lot. of the value in the early stages of these things and Zcash had a ton of that and you know to see it kind of bouncing a little bit already and it's still up 734% on the year I mean it's probably fine and you know one person or two people usually you know everyone's job is like somewhat replaceable I would normally say that but if you have a like an extremely key engineer or one or two

engineers that are extremely key in an earlier stage company or startup or whatever it may be. And that person really has a different type of engine than the other people around them, it could be something that's not replaceable in the same way. So maybe something else comes up. But I would bet that that person also starts to build some sort of privacy competitor, which also just continues to validate the narrative. But let me ask you, like with all of that in mind and before we jump to Alex, But when you say that, like, does the 10x justified by the actual usage or is it effectively just yet in that, again, like a speculative pump?

And even if someone leaves, like, is there really so much adoption on it that it deserved this in the first place, right? I mean, so no, I mean, short answer is absolutely not. Something with 6,000 transactions or less, right, doesn't deserve the case. What is the substance? What is the utility? We now live in a little bit more of a substance utility world in crypto. But that doesn't mean that for short periods of time. We can't lose our minds and say, hey, like, Naval is posting about this, so-and-so's posting

about this, A-16-Z is behind this. I'm going to go for a ride. I'm going to put X amount of dollars into that and not say that. Tens of thousands of people on Twitter didn't see that and pushed money in, right? Like that definitely happened, but it is sustaining. But once something's sustaining, it gets on to all the different exchanges. It gets deeper liquidity. It has, it has, you know, can go cross-chain potentially.

then market makers get a hold of it. It becomes a profit center for them. They can now move the market around and it just becomes an attractive asset to trade. And that's why a lot of these projects try to get onto all those exchanges and then get the hype out there. Because once they get to that position, then they have the stack, the large stack of tokens that they can then actually make money off in perpetuity and potentially sell into that and buy Bitcoin. That was great. I think Alex was to ask, Dave, you can always jump in, so you don't really need to raise your hand if Dave, you have a comment. Yeah, now let Alex go first.

I just want to say, Happy New Year, 2026, everyone. Joe, great to see you on the show and wishing you all nothing but the best in 2026 with regards to health, wealth, and happiness. But, you know, Joe, I just want to stress one thing that you said that's extremely important because narratives used to pump tokens alone. But nowadays, you need narratives plus capital. The cycle has changed a lot and people are a lot more difficult to convince and persuade, I guess because they've seen so much vapor where in our space. But one thing that I really wanted to share with you guys related to narratives was the guy that I trust the most when I ask for which all coins to buy and why is one of the friends.

I'm not going to share his name because he's probably going to want to stay a bit confidential. but essentially what he does, Scott, is he's invested in 13 different funds. You know, the biggest ones, you know, as an LP in Pantera, Anderson Horowitz, as a GP and other funds, he's investing in open funds, open-ended funds. And he's a really smart guy. He always invest the minimum amount. So let's say $100,000 is the minimum amount. He's going to invest into 13 of these funds, Dragonfly Capital, you name it.

He has really a long, long list of different. type of you know VC funds. And long story short, he tells me, Alex, you know, I want to invest ideally between one to two million dollars. So $100,000 ideally the minimum amount in each of these funds. Why? Because he knows behind the scenes which group or conglomerate of VCs are actually creating the narratives. So if it's going to be a robofy, let's say that we're going to have robotics with the defy somehow for trustless reasons. then he knows that there are specific groups of people who are creating these narratives together. And the more people they have involved to push this narrative, the more it becomes

visual and more it gains traction and virality on the socials and the networks. And I think what is really important is having this capital to push that initial pump, right, because it's always the whales that push price action first and then obviously the fish that follow-up. But this is something that I've found to be extremely, extremely important, but it's a lot more difficult to do these days. So go for it, Dave. Yeah, a couple things. First, let's call it what it is. Zcash is a meme. It's a privacy meme, and it was promoted by a group, as has been discussed, of old bitcoiners who incinerated some of their Bitcoin in order to have enough capital to move the price higher.

and others who were implemented in pumping it. Now, if you understand that, that doesn't mean it can't work because memes can work, but that is what it is. You can't justify it on the basis of its volumes, et cetera. So put that out there, it's pretty straightforward. Now, privacy as a meme has a lot of power. And so there are a lot of people who are looking at it.

If you look technically at what it actually did is it rallied from, what was it, 50, 60 bucks to 700. It then- 40s. Yeah, right. It retraced almost a textbook 50% rallied again and it's starting to retrace again. Over the last month, it's only down 2%. Right? Yeah, so you know, understand,

and that's with this news. So, you know, from a meme perspective, from a, if there are still, if there's any dry powder among those people who wanted to pump it, it is really easy to see them pumping it again. And we see this all the time, right? you know, and so just important to understand

what you're talking about. Is privacy important? The answer is yes. Is Zcash going to likely be the answer for privacy? The answer is who the hell knows, but there's no evidence to indicate that it will be unless people can convince the world, you know, that because the Winklebos twins are involved

or whatever, that it's going to go someplace. And so whenever you look at these things, you need to understand it's within that. Remember, this is still a market where FTT token still is trading not at zero and it's trading higher in market cap than the average or at least the cutoff for the Russell 2000 companies. So, you know, we have a lot of crap in crypto. Whether Zcash is crap or not remains to be seen, but consider it what it is.

It's a mean. Paul. So while I agree with kind of the end of your statement, Dave, we frequently disagree. calling privacy a meme is just one of the most, like, insulting terms. I could possibly... I don't be called privacy a meme. Yeah, to call privacy a meme. Utterly insulting.

Unsulting to the rich amount of technology that it has to get built and has been built over decades from some of the smartest cryptographers in order to give us privacy. And, you know, sure, you can call Zcash a meme, but it's implementing something that at the time it launched, nothing else had. Compare that to a meme. where the biggest meme of our day, Dogecoin, basically had no additional tech on top of what Bitcoin and Likecoin launched.

Take any of the token memes that are on Ethereum. They built absolutely nothing interesting other than a marketing ploy and an image on top of any other token that was out there. Now you take Zcash, technology that had never existed getting launched. And privacy as a whole. I mean, come on, Dave, give privacy and the technology that was built for it some more credit than simply calling it a meme. Paul, you're not, okay, let me rephrase

because I actually agree with everything you just said. So, and I think privacy is enormously important. And I think our government, our government may be the best of a bad bunch. I mean, most of the world governments basically say privacy, they don't care, they don't care at all. We're probably the only government

that still does care a little bit. Right. I think it's important. But my point isn't to impugn the technology, and point of fact, privacy technology is massively important. But when I talk about coins, when I talk about assets, it's what is the asset worth and where is the value coming from? And there is literally no value right now in the transactional use of Zcash that would justify the token itself being worth, you know, lots and lots of

money. The reason you buy it is because you think it's going to get future, future use in some sort of sense. And so to me, that makes it, you're valuing it based off narrative or story. And anything- People are buying it because I think it's going to go up, not even because of future adoption. For being intellectually honest, that's- But why do they think it's going to go up, though, is the question? And is that in the terms of a meme, or is it in terms of the technology built in its capacity of what it's capable of doing? I think, I don't think, I don't think 99. And Paul, I agree with you in principle, I think 99% of people who have bought Z-Cash bought it because somebody told them it was going to go

up and don't even know what it does. Oh, that's probably true of most of the coins on top 100 of the market cap. Yeah, it's not unique to that. Probably a pair of Bitcoin as well. Yeah, exactly. But someone who was telling them was told by someone, was told by someone who then actually says, you know, something. There's something that's going to happen with privacy, and there's something about

the technology and the team around this. Now, that might be 10 degrees removed from, you know, the peon that finally buys it, right? But it started somewhere. And that start has to come. It did not come from the fact that it. It was a meme, and I think that the marketing is great, and it's going to get pumped. That's my differentiator. You're right.

A lot of these tokens, people don't know why they're buying them. It's just because they think it's going to go up. That doesn't make it a meme, right? There is a very, very specific kind of definition that I would like to adhere to from a meme. Just like you don't want to call everything a scam. Like, you know, Bitcoiners call everything but Bitcoin a scam. Well, then the four-letter word scam just kind of loses its impact. Same thing with a four-letter word meme.

You want to call everything that, you know, a person buys it because it's going to go up a meme. then you've lost the impact of the word meme. I mean, fine. You know, I always say words matter. I mean, meme is probably too much of a shortcut narrative base. But the point here is Zcash as a meme because people were pumping it is really, you know, let's just say Zcash is an idiosyncratic narrative being pushed. I mean, I just look at Zcash vis-a-vis Monero.

Monaro didn't have a bunch of people pushing it. and it's up on the month, right? You know, and it's also in the same privacy space. And the average person buying Zcash was not buying it because of privacy or they would have bought both. They're buying it. And then it's certainly not evaluating the technology differential. Almost nobody understands that that's buying it.

It's because the various people that were supporting it. It's the KOL problem. Call it whatever you wish. So, you know, if you're, if the word mean you think is offensive, I actually don't think it's offensive. I used to call micron technologies and, a lot of other, you know, stocks, mean stocks before there was memes, right? Because basically people were buying the story.

And if you're buying an asset purely on a story without reference in any way to the value of the asset, then that's the way I would describe it. And so call it whatever. Dave, I think me means like, they were saying like, hey, this token literally has no utility, don't buy this and people would buy it, where at least there's like building happen. But I would be interested, Paul, to understand, yeah, I would, yeah, I would, yeah, I like, you know, I understood the sentiment of where you're going with it, though. Yeah, it had a little flash factor. My other question, like, it seems like you know a lot about, like, like, decash and privacy.

It's like what, like, genuinely curious as to, like, what the world looks like in five years if there's, like, a ton of privacy adoption, right? Like, does that mean that we're, you know, I can, you know, I can, you know, yeah, I know, I know. I'm just wondering, like, does it mean I'm sending capital? Like, if I need to send capital to someone, I can now just, I could do that anywhere. I don't need to worry about. Like, if I send it through a bank, they knew who I am. If I send it on Bitcoin and they get the addresses, they know who I am eventually. Like, what are, like, what are some of the use cases there that, like, make, like, a ton of sense that, like, make it a better world five years from now?

Yeah, so there was a great post put, a camera of what, which VC it was, but I know it was A16Z that showed some of the limiting. and inhibiting factors to adoption of crypto because of the lack of privacy and transparency in chains. But obviously the payments fact, which I know we've disagreed on whether or not payments will ever hit crypto-native, like actually on-chain payments, but payments on-chain with a transparent blockchain are basically a dead product without privacy. And then second, even in defy, having an institution go on to defy and know what all of the positions are that they take, all of the trades,

what they've done and potentially from that what they're going to do is a deal breaker for many people to use defy and having chains that can actually enable a private defy such as

like Alio which is a fairly very very small market cap chain right now although it has a 16 Z money behind it they weren't really pumped a whole lot just a tiny bit from the recent market chains like that

are one that if adoption hits actually drives a lot more utility from even instances institutions that would hold off from using defy today. Paul, I interviewed Yuval Ruse from Canton Network this morning on my show. And we talked exactly about this. And he sort of quipped that Ken Griffin, his former employee, you know, an employer when he was at Citadel. He's like, I don't think Citadel wants everybody knowing when they move money or what their orders are.

And he's like, that's what privacy means. Exactly. There's privacy like, I don't want the government knowing. so I use cash, and there's privacy like the largest institutions on the planet can't have their transactions being tracked by Whale Watch. No, absolutely. And so everything from the transactions being trades, holdings, to even just down to the consumer when I go and transact with a coffee shop down the street or I go buy a computer, seeing

the balance and future transactions in my wallet. That's just an unacceptable experience. And so Zcash on a technology level is leading the way. You're right. It is not leading the way in adoption. Actually, I'm a big fan of Minero because it actually is leading as far as adoption, people using it. But it has this negative narrative of, you know, dark net.

That was going to you my question, Paul, is when you compare Zcash to Monaro from a tech perspective and from a price perspective, I think that it becomes a really interesting conversation. Yeah, but, Dave, there's an answer for that. Minero's been delisted. Manero's been delisted everywhere, so it can't be speculated on that. That is the big argument for Minero. It survives the delisting.

It tells them, hey, de-list us, we don't care. They are the true honey badger of the crypto world, not Bitcoin. So, you know, I'm a big fan of Minero as well. So I'm not trying to, like, pump Zcash, you know, in contrast to it. I'm a fan of any privacy project to achieve success. And Zcash has one method of achieving success, which is, I'd say, kind of being more of the trying to be government-friendly compliant, we'll actually talk to regulators versus Menero being like, hey, de-list us all you want, right?

I don't care if the bad guys use it because we're also getting at the good guys using it. We just want actual adoption. And both have different paths. I'm open to whichever actually achieves adoption. But Monero, so I think for the main point of what Dave was trying to make by comparing it to memes, he was talking about the pump in Zcash, which was very much like a meme-like pump because the fundamentals didn't follow. I think that's what you were saying, Dave. And when we look at the fundamentals behind Monero,

Monero's fundamentals are way stronger than Zcash. Like Zcac, it has like triple the daily transactional volume. It has much more trading volume, even though it's been delisted from different exchanges. And as you said, right, unfortunately a lot of the activity is dark web activity. I faced that before my eyes when I was in London, literally people buy mushrooms, psychedelics, cocaine, all with Monero because the privacy technology is much, it's much more private. the privacy features are much more advanced than the ones of Zcash. But as you said, Paul, actually not quite true as far as the privacy features. It's a very debated thing.

You know, weak in one, strong in another. But it's more. It is. You can do a research right now. Like literally every single privacy expert will tell you that Monero has the highest levels of privacy. And that's why people are money laundering with Monero and not with Zcash. That's why they're using Monero as a default coin on the dark web. So that's not true what you're saying.

However, I don't know about that. I'd look into that more carefully. Minero's privacy is currently inferior to Zcash, but it has it by default. And that's its big strong point. You don't have to wonder what wallet someone's using, what wallet you're using. It's privacy by default, and you cannot send a transparent transaction. And that's where I'll give it credit. But, you know, and this is probably something for anyone listening and looking at getting into privacy coins.

There are back towards Zcash, though. There are back towards Zcash. That's why they're managing not to get delisted. I can tell you this, Paul, because we run an exchange, right? And we know exactly all the arguments that the mica and the European regulators were asking us to G-List Moneros because there's no backdoor. And therefore, this space was downloaded via spacesdown.com. Visit to download your spaces today. Door to Zcash. There is no backdoor to Zcash. That's an absolute lie. There is a transparent address, which exchanges are being required to use, or they're requiring wallets to use to deposit Zcash into exchanges. is finance did this.

They invented what's called a text address, which means you have to go and, you know, when an exchange gives you a transparent address, you have to then send from a transparent address. That's not a back door. Don't get me wrong. I don't like it. I don't like this mandatory transparent addresses from exchanges.

But I would not define that in any way, should perform as a backdoor because there's no way to take a shielded to shielded transaction and find out who the sender and recipients are, what their addresses are, what their balances are, and what their transactions are. That I would define as a backdoor. but there is no way to do that with Zcash.

That's not true, Paul. Chain analysis is actually... Give me... Chain analysis was stated to be able to discover a vast majority of Zcash transactions. Why? Because many of them were transparent. Since so many were transparent, chain analysis gave up a blanket statement. This percentage of transactions we were able to de-anonomize.

Sure, because many of them are transparent. I would like you to find a reference to being able... Paul, you're going off topic. What I'm telling you here is that... that Monero has more advanced privacy enabled features than Zcash. And I can tell you that because we worked on a hack, specifically chain analysis, and it's very difficult. You cannot get the, you cannot trace the funds on Monero.

You cannot do it. While as you said, it's visibly so chain analysis can help with Zcash, and that's why people by default are using it. I mean, just look at the activity. I'm not saying, I'm not saying that Zcash has bad technology by no means, and it seems like you're very biased towards Zcash. I'm not at all biased towards Zcash, by the way. I give the Zecch team a lot of shit for having a transparent address.

I'm in no way to shape or form biased by Zcash. I'm actually a bigger fan of Minero, but I like to tell it like it is. I like to tell it like it is. Manero is more advanced when it comes to privacy enabled features. And that's what I'm trying to say. And then just going back to my original point is that Monero is actually being way more used than Zcash, hence why Dave is talking about the meme like pump. It is absolutely a meme-like pump.

You cannot say that Zcash is worth $10 billion in FDV. It's an absolute joke. So that's why I think Dave was pushing on that narrative, and it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, Hey, Paul, it looks like the entire team at Zcash was fired. So you might as well go send a message over there right now and see if they'll get rid of that. They weren't fired.

They quit and they're forming another company. And so there's no such thing as the entire team at Zcash. That's the entire team at ECC, which is one of the companies that builds Zcash. Yeah, it's a joke. But what I was saying is like, these are pieces of technology, right? One released in 2014, the other 2016. Other teams will move and leave and create new technology.

And whether the technology is fully transparent or not or fully encrypted or not, those things can be changed and they're going to get better and new chains will get released. And something will get released that no one can crack at any point in time. Some people will get released. That's quantum resisted. Then no one can crack. That's also fully private.

Like, those things will just happen because that's technology. I think that the interesting thing here is just privacy in general. And what it means when those things are in place and they're fully private and you can't see anything because there's like two use cases. There's the use case that Alex is kind of talking about where, yes, people will money launder on that. But then the other kind of major use case that you were talking about Paul, which is really interesting, is kind of this like on-chain dark pool.

which they probably should, like, rebrand that, but like some sort of, like, regulatory, you know, it's like, hey, once you pass kind of some sort of KYC, you can now go participate in this dark pool, and it's a somewhat closed system so that, you know, people can't see. And I'm sure this is how, I mean, dark pools are constantly used. I mean, I think like 40 to 50 percent of the transactions are dark pools,

but they're centralized dark pools, where everyone, you know, whoever's operating that knows what's happening. So this, it is a, when I think about, it that way in the way that you explained it. This is actually a huge idea to have some sort of regulated but also open dark pool system where you can go trade and transact and people know that you're being safe in there, but it's also people can't track everything that you're doing on chain. Well, I mean, you hit a nerve button with me that I'm not going to, I'm going to resist going down the rabbit hole, but just understand the dark pool and the equity market

you know, first of all, you know, I've invented three. I'm on one of the patents that on Darkpools have been dealing with this. Since the actual first one that failed, I was the inventor of as well, that was back in 1990. So, yeah, it's a very long story. But the short answer is that in all assets, I don't care what the asset is, if you tell the world what you're doing before you get to do it, it costs you an enormous amount of money. And so it does not matter. So technology that can actually provide for obfuscation in a way that after the fact could be transparent is where the world is going to settle in terms of assets.

That will always be the case. And for some things. Now, the way people achieve that is dark pools. It's also hidden orders inside lit books. It's lots and lots of things. I mean, it's a very complicated situation. I don't see how any of these tokens provide, you know, that. But if they did, and there was a way of the revenue and the transaction revenue going to accruing to the token holders or then, yeah, that would be very valuable.

To me, that's important. All I'm saying is I just don't see it in Zcash vis-a-vis Monero. And I think that was a well-stated point. I mean, look, you know, Monero is going to be a class. that's a case. After the Samurai Wallet case, I mean, there are a lot of people out there who think that our government and all the governments of the world are just don't want to allow privacy. And that is a huge battleground. That's why it was so important when Commissioner Perce specifically said, listen, this is important and we want to be able to support it.

You know, I don't know. I mean, at the end of the day, probably one of the most important things in crypto is the fact that the vast majority of governments in the world don't want privacy in any form. And so, yeah, it's an important story. I mean, I'm not going to use the word mean. We'll call it narrative. But the difference in Zcash and Monaro on the chart and in what's happened is dramatic, right? You know, in one case, they took an illiquid coin. They pumped a lot of money into it and got a lot of other people excited. And I don't know who cashed out or who made money or who's going to lose or incinerate money, but it's very different. Whereas Monero has been a slow, steady increase as more and more people are looking at the shit going on in the world and saying,

listen, we need a way to be able to transact in private. That's the way I would phrase it. Alex likes that. You know, Steve, I see your hand up. Steve, you there? Is that a phantom hand? I show him as a listener. Yeah, me too. Attack of the, attack of the phantom hand accidental kick on. Sorry, it's just, you know, I always want to stop when I see people's hands. Well, Dave, I invite you to look at some of the chains that actually enabled private defy, which could actually get to the end goal that you were referring to.

And I haven't looked enough at Canton, admittedly. So maybe I've got to listen to your episode from earlier today, Scott. And I know that someone had mentioned that it does have some level of privacy. I think that would be important if it actually is getting adopted by large institutions. It may be a dark hole kind of backdoor privacy where some organization can kind of see it like the government, but not your competitors. In contrast, chains like Alio are supposed to enable full privacy, and you can optionally expose transactions and, you know, with view keys.

But if you wanted to, then all transactions are fully private. And so I think these are the kind of technologies that probably accomplish what you'd been inventing, you know, what you'd invented decades ago, but fully on chain. And actually, with some of them, no backdoor. That's very exciting. And it is, and it definitely requires research. I mean, all of these things are, these are narratives that will emerge. I mean, don't be, don't be fooled.

I mean, J.P. Morgan, you know, choosing Canton is, it's not random. I mean, it probably, what you described may very well be the reason. I mean, I don't know. I'm not there. I haven't talked to them. You know, the last time I talked with anyone in J.P. Morgan, it was, it was a decade ago because I'd been in crypto for the last eight years. But the truth is that that feature is really important for building market technology.

That's just a full stop. Yeah. Do you want to talk markets? Is it worth talking markets? Well, I mean, I think the most interesting thing about markets, and I'm really curious, you know, is that, you know, today is the first day. Actually, there was one other day. But it's been, there's been this pattern. that we haven't seen. Today, the sell-off was before New York got in. And ever since the market really started opening and we got real liquidity, it's kind of bounced back to hold the 90,000 level. The truth is, is that it looks like there have been a lot of waves of selling at less liquid times followed up by, you know, buying. And what does that look towards? Well, it looks

towards accumulation for sure, but it also, a lot of people are arguing this is manipulation. And look, I normally scoff at the notion of pure manipulation, i.e. people knocking the price down so they could buy it cheaper, but I'm not so sure anymore. And so I'm curious what people think. It's a pretty controversial comment, and it's so rare because usually when you try to do that, you lose. So it is, but it is fascinating, you know, to see what's going on. anyone feel free to jump in there go ahead i'm more of a question for everyone just around like does it feel do you feel like we've all been in the space a long time and everyone follows the markets just like obsessively do you feel any different today than you did

you know on December 8th or 10th or whatnot or whatever you know we we kind of fell down or like November 21st where it was 85 like do you actually feel like the world's changed and we're in a different place. No. You know my answer. My answer is until proven otherwise, Bitcoin is in a range. The range tightened. It was, you know, 85 to 95 now.

It's really like, you know, 87 to 92. And the volatility is compressing and compressing. And when realized VAL is so much lower than 60 day and future implied volatility, something's going to break. and break to one side or the other. I mean, obviously, we all know, you know, Mike's on here. He thinks it breaks to the downside. I think it breaks to the upside.

It doesn't matter, but something's going to break. And the longer it goes and stays in this tight range, especially as it tightens and tightens, the more extreme that break is going to be. And so that's about the one thing that we kind of know. And we saw this last year. We had eight months. And then we saw boom up, followed by crash down.

You know, it's like not terribly surprising, right? You know, it's his tail as old as time. And there's all sorts of real good reasons for this. This isn't just kind of an anomaly or a behavioral pattern. This is when the markets get really tight, people think it's safer to use larger amounts of leverage. Because after all, if it's going to trade in a 5% range, I can do, you know, 15x leverage and I'm not going to get liquidated. Well, okay, good luck with that. But, you know, you see that.

You also see option sellers. saying, well, you know, it's going to be there. So it's, it, there is reason why tight ranges for extended periods of time create large breakouts. Alex. This is more of a question for all of you guys, because, you know, how does it feel relative to December? I would love to zoom out a little bit if that's okay, guys. And just how does it feel, how do all financial markets feel at the moment?

And, you know, when I had a great chat with one of my aunts who managed to get an MD position at J.P. Morgan Chase in the 90s before they actually did the acquisition, which for a woman was very, very difficult back in those days. She is 76. She's been in finance since she graduated university. And she said she's never seen a market as confusing and with so many mixed signals as in having headwinds and tailwinds at the same time. And so my question for you guys is, you know, like the typical markets is we have gold pumping at the same time. as stocks, for instance. So we have, it's very hard to distinguish whether we're on a risk on or risk off environment. You know, usually when the bond market goes up, then then risk on assets

go down. And all these correlations that we've seen in the past are not working anymore. And I think that's, that's what's really weird, at least for me, what feels really, really weird in the current markets, because it's very hard to read. And that's why people are confused. A lot of people are sideline and they're also seeing like stocks like pumping forever. Obviously, we do have technological, we have a technological cycle. It's not just economic or business cycles, but I'd love to hear from you guys if it's also a very, very confusing market. And I think that also creates a lot of stress on people who are investing at the moment.

Well, my answer is follow the denominator. You know, it's like if you're printing money like crazy, then to value, gold is going to go higher, and particularly geopolitically, the buyers of gold are from the fundamental buyers of gold over the since 2000 have been, you know, 2000 as a price level, have been central banks that are, I don't want to, I don't like the word de-dollarization

because it implies something more than it is, but certainly backing, you know, the macro trend of backing one's currency by more gold vis-a-vis U.S. treasuries, is a clear trend. And that is gonna drive a lot. There's also momentum investors and gold and silver have had momentum.

And then silver has its own in dynamic, which is massive increase in demand from a variety of electronic things, whether it's new battery tech or new solar tech or new this tech or that tech, and it's already been in structural deficit. And so you're looking at those things. At the same time, when you look at the stock market,

you know, Mike, who's on the panel, points out accurately that, stock market to GDP is at an all-time high, which is a real red flashing signal until one looks at the fact that corporate profits to GDP are also at an all-time high. And this morning, we got a piece of data that's ho-hum because it was expected, but productivity up 4.9% in a quarter.

Well, guess what? Productivity is what drives corporate profits. And Bloomberg's own analysts say that corporate profits are gonna rise 14% this year. Well, okay, that kind of sustainable. in stock market valuations, right? So you have gold for a fundamental reason at the same time as stocks for a fundamental reason, all of which, if we talked to Bitcoiners, would say, well, wait a minute, a lot of this is emblematic of the Fiat world. I don't want to use the word

unraveling, but certainly showing signs of stress. And so the asset that probably should be going up the most is Bitcoin, but it isn't. And then you have to ask yourself why, and you start digging down that rabbit hole. But I think that it is confusing because old models start to break in relationships such as the dollar is reserve currency and everybody owning treasuries start to break. And that's what we've seen. Yeah, if I can jump in here and I'm back, Dave, you up, dude. So yeah. Dave, I appreciate that we tee each other up. I think this year is just completely optimistic, awesome year for traders. Sees the opportunities. Just sit back. Don't be caught off sides. Be fly.

flat and look for opportunities. And so far this year, I looked at two opportunities as an ex-trader. I don't do anymore. I don't trade. I look at it as we've had one pop in Bitcoin above $94,000. To me, that was a short. If we sustain about $100,000, that stops it out. Easy to say. First target for me is initially around 50. So I think it's a pretty good risk reward. That's what I look at it. Same in copper. Copper had one pump above six. I think it's a short. I think it goes to five. It stays above six. Yeah, it stops me out. Or if I was a trader. To me, that's the way I look at it. And even Dave mentioned, Bitcoin volatility is buried, stock market volatility is

buried. And what we're supposed to do is cause the most pain and get some good gains for traders. So that's my first thought in the year. And the macro is still the same. As I look at the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index was up 20 percent, ended up down 20 percent in this year. You're supposed to sell a rally around 10 percent. We've had already and make the market prove you wrong by proving strength.

And to me, that's why I think cryptos are a prudent short. I see the whole market looking in it that way because it's, If crypto's continue declining, everything goes down. Stock market will fall because they led the way up. Bond yields, everything. Now, so far, that hasn't happened yet, but I think that's the trade. And to prove that wrong, we've got to see Bitcoin's to stay about 100,000, maybe Ethereum, stay about 3500. Who knows, but at least a Bloomberg Galaxy index to stay up 10% in the year after dropping 20% last year.

I mean, that's why I keep using that analogy from 1929. So me, the macro big picture is now the difference is we have early stages of bare markets in cryptos, I think. really nowhere. I think we're getting to near peaks in all the metals. Silver's at the tip of the scale that. Silver is just so, I love how Dave points out of the fundamentals. They've been bullish. They've been the case forever. But the thing that happens when prices go par and bulk like that, it shifts the fundamentals. And you can bring on silver from your underwear drawer. So that's just the key thing. So silver could get to 100 this year, but I think it's going to end the year closer to 50. I think Bitcoin's more likely the end the year closer to 50 rather than 100. And even gold could

go down. And the bottom line is we just say, I'll end with this. If we just say the S&P 500 returns to its 200-day movement average, that's like almost 10%. That's 25% of GDP. Guess what? The S&P 500 will return to its 200-day mover average? The question is, will it roll over like it has done in micro strategy and Bitcoin and a lot of the other in the cryptos? And that's the key thing for this year. But to me, this is an awesome opportunity for traders. Be responsive. Take the opportunities. Use some stuff. So at some point, there's going to be. some great moves here. And to me, that's the start. Dave, if you want to run with that?

I mean, I could, or we could wait until Monday when Mike and I can really beat each other up on it. I mean, I would say that silver is going to revert to the silver gold ratio that we had in the 70s as the market is pricing in significantly more demand for silver at the same time as neither silver or gold are pure monetary policy, you know, pure monetary. assets anymore, which means silver is going to go. I'm much more bullish on silver than Mike is. I do think it's an excellent trade. I mean, look, the fact that it went, it went from 80 to 70 in a blink because of the traders who said, oh, my God, the CME is raising margin requirements, and then it recovered. And then they did it again, and it's still at 75, tells you all you need to

know about supply and demand for silver. Supply and demand still has a lot to do with price. I learned that in college and it's one of those things that actually was right that we were taught about economics. So I do think that about silver. We all know I disagree completely on the Bitcoin thesis. I don't want to go dive with that. But Mike's point about volatility being baked in the cake, I mean, of course it is baked in the cake. I mean, there's so much cross currents. I mean, our country can't agree on anything. We have, you know, 100 million people watching a video yesterday, and 50 think it's absolute proof of one thing, and 50 thinks it's absolute proof of another. I mean, this isn't the, what was it, the blue dress or gold dress thing from a couple

years ago? This is, you know, people can't agree on anything. So you're going to see all sorts of crap. We have the Supreme Court tomorrow ruling on Trump tariffs. No one's talking about that, but that could be a very big deal. Like, you know, 75% I think are the odds that they're going to say no and strike them down. Meanwhile, if you look at today's data, our trade deficit dropped was 50% almost below what was expected, right? So, I mean, there's so many cross-currents. So when Mike talks about it being a great trading environment, I totally agree. Volatility, I totally agree. Where things go, I think Bitcoin is more underpriced now than it's ever been, arguably, because just looking at its network strength, looking at all the drivers that should be driving it. So, you know,

we have differences around where it ultimately goes, but I think you do need to be careful. You do need to understand what those cross-currents are. So I got to fire you up for Monday, Dave. One line I love what you just said is supply and demand. I learned that stuff in school and in grad school. But what I learned only in the farm and working in the trading pits is there's nothing more important to bring on that supply or reduce demand or everything than the actual price when it breaks out. And to me, that's the point I'm making is what's not talk about the known knowns in market are supply and demand and trends and deficits. and so the unknown knowns are the impact, the elasticity when prices move a lot,

it almost always happens in silver. It's the devil's metal for a reason. And people get long here typically might take 40 or 50 years before you get back to the same levels unless you're just looking for 20 and 30 percent. So, yeah, I could get to 100. But like I said, I think it's more likely to drop 50 percent or at least a third from these levels by the end of the year. Okay.

Well, whatever. I think that is worth digging into on Monday because it does matter. And right now that if silver actually does what you think it will do, which is basically gently grind down toward 50 and people losing hope and whatever, that is massively, massively bullish for crypto because so much of that hot ball of money that tends to move into crypto and old season, it was an alt season. It was when from Bitcoin into silver, it did. And you can see in the contract for differences market, you can see it.

So I think that those are really interesting. things that could be looked at. But, you know, there, there's a lot to unpack there. Dave, I think there's something that you said that was really cool with regards to the mixed in signals. You know, you mentioned something that's really, really important. It's not just the U.S. by the way. So Ireland, which is the best performing Eurozone country in terms of GDP, only had growth in the private sector. So people are still struggling, as you know, Dave, just like the U.S. with inflation, with the cost of living, energy of obviously. is going down. But it really feels like the middle class or the main street are still not in the

game. And this is still a game of the upper classes. And therefore, I have a question for you, Dave, and I would love to hear anyone who wants to add to this is it's based on the concept of the great rotation. As you guys know in the cryptosphere, everyone starts with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the mothership of all the assets. And it pulls up the mega caps first. The liquidity trickles down into Ethereum and to other major caps, you know, based on obviously fundamentals and different reasons. But and the same thing happened with with gold, it seems, you know, when gold pumps as a leader, we also have the great rotation. People are looking for other profits, so they trickles down into silver, plutonium or any other precious metals. But I'm just

curious, like, guys, do you think that the money, the liquidity will only stay in the mega and large caps? Or until mainstream? actually has better purchase power and that this issue between affordability and the middle class improves. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Well, I'll make two points quick, and I'd like to hear see if anybody else is like it's a really good question. One is that the affordability problem is because of all the money printing and the actual inflation. And when you talk about affordability, the decades-long policy of prioritizing capital over labor has meant asset prices go up while consumer prices stay muted. And so consumer, consumer

prices got unleashed for a variety of reasons. But one of the biggest problems with affordability, of fact, the biggest problem is housing. But housing is an asset. They wanted assets to go up. And so you get what you pay for, right? So that shouldn't surprise anyone. And that does pinch money. But there's plenty of money out there in the world. There just is. I mean, it's sloshing around. And you can see it, you know, whenever there's a story, the animal spirits take over. As far as what the rotation and what goes on in terms of all coins and small caps, I mean, until there is a notion of regulatory clarity, which creates a framework that people can trust that issuers are providing value in tokens, it's going to be hard. I mean, in crypto, it used to be that people just bought based on a story, confident in the fact that other people will buy the same story. it is getting less and less of that.

I mean, it's still true, and it's not going to go away entirely, but the idea and what they're trying to do, what the regulators want to do in the U.S., whether they'll succeed or not, I don't know. My guess is they'll fail in some sense. It'll get perverted. But the goal is to have a consistent notion of this token provides this, and then the teams that sell it are held to that standard.

That level of confidence will reinvigorate all, coins to the extent that people actually follow it. And I think that a lot of the all coin markets are being held up by that. I mean, think of it this way. If you are like Scott interviews a lot of the all coin guys and I see Scott disappeared, but let's let's get this right. I don't want to pick up names, but there have been at least three people that he's interviewed that are the basic name person behind a coin. And in all three cases, he was told he can't ask about how holders will benefit directly. And there's a reason for that

because they didn't want to get into legal trouble. So when you have tokens that cannot, through their governance model, pass through benefits that they want to pass through to token holders, that is a chilling effect on the entire all-kind market. And that is something that we've seen, and it's undeniable.

So I think that this whole political, you know, food fight, shit show over clarity, it's masking the fact that you have a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of token, you know, controllers and or even governance tokens where they won't even put up for a vote, the ability to pass through value. And unleashing that could unleash a wave of all coin buy, if in fact it is done right. That, to me, is the catalyst that may or may not happen.

Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely, because even like the small cap stock, sorry guys, I'll shut up after this. I'm talking too much, but it's just a topic. that I really, really enjoy discussing. But even like small cap stocks haven't really had that rotation yet, right? When you look at even at the AI specific, they're not really pumping like the majors or the magnificent seven.

And so kind of along your lines, Dave, a lot of people are looking for very complicated theories on why or why not there's an all season. But to me, it's just like the whole great rotation theory is the money will all, people greed, greed will always push us towards making more and more money. And so the money will trickle down, trickle down. Obviously, we need a catalyst, right?

I'm not saying that we're going to have an old season tomorrow. We're going to need new bubbles. We're going to need renewed bubbles, bubbles coming back, maybe with a better use case. But it's just very hard for me to believe that the money won't trickle down from mega caps to small caps and even potentially microcaps. Because across history, whether it's penny stocks or any of the lowest valuation assets, the money always comes back eventually. is just you need that spark. I know it sounds very basic, guys, but it's just greed and the way money flows.

It just doesn't make any sense for those who are coming up with different excuses on why money won't flow to the riskier assets. Well, I think that's true. I mean, I don't know. I don't want to dive down into it. I mean, it's too bad. If it were 15 minutes ago,

I probably would have teed Bruce up to rail about the SEC and the regulators and how they get nowhere. But one thing we do know is politics, when you get politicians, and we're getting these markups on these bills. I mean, that's just the beginning. You know, what happens is everybody with the vested interest

fights for what they want, and you end up with something that is Byzantine and squirrely. But we'll see, you know, what actually happens and we'll react to it when we see it. You know, I guess we're going to see it next week. We'll see a markup of the bill. We'll see, you know, how much crap is going to be thrown in and whether we'll get anywhere.

But to me, that's what's necessary for all season. Anybody else have anything? Scott seems to have glitched out, and it is 1115, so we are at time, and I think we will be back tomorrow morning, assuming that X technology allows it at 1015. If not, okay. Take care, everyone. Thanks, everyone.