Unchained - Bits + Bips: Why It's Time for Crypto Traders to Be Patient - Ep. 782

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Crypto markets are at a crossroads. Is Ethereum primed for a short squeeze, or is its dominance fading? Are the SOL unlocks a real risk, or is the panic overblown? And did we already have an alt season without realizing it? In this episode, hosts James Seyffart, Alex Kruger and Ram Ahluwalia sit down with Sal Ternullo, managing partner at A100x Ventures, to break down the biggest questions facing traders today. They discuss whether Trump’s tariffs are impacting ETH, why the market might be misreading SOL’s unlocks, and how traders keep falling into the same traps—losing money despite crypto’s explosive gains. They also debate the real reason altcoins haven’t performed as expected, why memecoins might finally be dying off, and what the Growth Value Ratio reveals about the market’s future. Plus: the implications of Elon Musk’s bid for OpenAI, and whether Arweave’s AO can seriously challenge ICP. Show highlights:    3:33 - Why Ram likes what Trump is trying to accomplish with the tariffs    10:35 - Why ETH got hit so hard with the tariffs and whether there’s a squeeze coming    15:24 - Whether the market will see an alt season    21:47 - Why Sal believes that the SOL unlocks are not a big deal and why he’d like to see a shift away from memecoins    25:09 - Why Ram thinks that crypto markets don’t have a clear narrative in the near future    27:28 - Why Alex is concerned about the SOL unlocks    32:19 - What the growth value ratio is teaching us about the state of the markets    40:59 - How the potential Kanye West memecoins is another example of why Sal doesn’t like this space    46:39 - Whether Arweave’s new project AO can compete with ICP    48:04 - How Elon Musk is running so many projects, plus bidding for OpenAI    55:26 - James’ analysis on the likelihood of various crypto ETFs being approved    1:03:01 - Why Alex thinks this is the perfect time to “be patient” in the markets Sponsor: Somnia Network Bitwise Hosts: James Seyffart, Research Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence Alex Kruger, Founder of Asgard Ram Ahluwalia, CFA, CEO and Founder of Lumida Guest: Sal Ternullo, Managing Partner at A100x Ventures Links Unchained:  Grayscale Files for Cardano ETF  Central African Republic launches memecoin Reuters:  Trump raises tariffs on aluminum, steel imports in latest trade war salvo Elon Musk-led group makes $97 billion bid for control of OpenAI The Block:  SEC delays decision on BlackRock's Ethereum ETF options trading until April 9  Kanye West, after disclosing he was offered $2 million to launch a token, asks to speak with Coinbase CEO 'concerning crypto' Kanye West quashes memecoin launch rumors, says coins 'prey on the fans' James’ and Eric Balchunas’ tweet on the odds of crypto ETFs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I think it's a good time to be patient, to be honest. That's my main thought. On one hand, we have very, very good charts and assets in demand on Bitcoin and we have Alcoins that are completely absolutely demolished with very poor sentiment and negative positioning. And at the same time, it's like we're missing the trigger, right, for getting going. And Alts are so illiquid and like everybody's concerned about Alts. That's the truth is what defines sentiment here. So we have to talk about it, even though we're not very big on outs.

They're missing this trigger right now, and it's pretty difficult to hold outs in size, given how volatile they are. But at the same time, a strong view is the tariffs talks going to cease to be an issue. The market's going to be moving over. I think it will be moving over to increase efficiency, and then eventually the Fed does become, like the Fed is telling us very clearly that they will continue lowering rates.

It's just a matter when. And not just one cut, quite a few. They're telling us that. So that's coming. It's not really priced. Hi, everyone. Welcome to bits and bibs, exploring how crypto and macro collide,

one basis point at a time. I'm your host, James Safert, Tradfi Archmaister, Lord of Bloomberg's End. Here with Rahmalaala. Mesaer of wealth, leader of Lumida. How's it going? Today we're also joined by Sal Turnulo, first counsel of the Venture Court at A100X Ventures.

We're here to discuss the latest stories in worlds of crypto and macro. Just remember that nothing we say here is investment advice. Please check unchaincrypto.com slash bips and bips for more disclosures. Did you know Somnia processes over 400,000 transactions per second with sub-second finality and sub-sent fees? Somnia is built to bring reactive mass consumer apps like gaming and socialify fully on chain. Learn more at Somnia.network. Matt Hogan, CIO of Bitwise, writes a weekly five-minute memo on the biggest stories about the crypto market.

Check it out at bitwiseinvestments.com slash CIO memo. We might also be joined by Alex Kruger, but we'll find out in a minute. But before we dive in, Sal, why don't you give it? to spiel on who you are and what you do and why you're relevant to the industry and then we can dive into the topics. Cool. I will keep it brief and spare you guys the long-winded intro, but my name is Sal Trenello, a managing partner at A100X ventures alongside Nisa and Moyals who founded the firm. Ben and crypto, my entire adult life was a finance and accounting background, started off from the institutional side at State Street in an emerging technology's role, and then subsequently

built KPMG's advisory business in the U.S., focused on institutionalizing crypto as an asset class. And then 21 went to the buy side and helped to manage an early stage fund that invested across six layer one ecosystems. And now we're all on to fund two together. And so happy to share some perspectives today. But that's a bit on me in the background. All right. Real quick. What were those six layer one infrastructure plays that you invested in?

Can you share that? Yeah, of course. We were in Ethereum, Pocod, near ICP flow and Luxo. So we missed on Avalanche and Solano primarily. stayed away from Cosmos for fragmentation. But we've been quite close to those six-layer-one ecosystems and now are much closer to Abla-enches ball. All right. Well, that'll come up for later conversations for sure.

It'll be very relevant. But let's talk something that's a little more drad-fi in the markets. Trump is proposing a whole bunch of different tariffs yet again. I feel like every week we're going to hear about we're going to come on and we're going to record this podcast. And there's going to be some new tariff or some new country that Trump is trying to pick a trade war with. This one is aluminum and I think steel markets tanked initially and then they recovered. I mean, let's go to you first, Rom. What are your thoughts about the aluminum tariffs and just the tariff stuff in general? We talked a lot last week, but neither of you guys

were here. So I'll let you guys give your spiel. I gave my spiel already last week. Start with you, Ron. Yeah, like headline is, first off, and focus on this topic for quite a bit. I think the move from universal to bilateral is an improvement. Like, markets don't like tariffs, number one. can see the day after the inauguration, NASDAQ futures dropped when Trump mentioned a tariffs and they recovered. You had a Monday gap down sometime thereafter after Trump introduced another tariff concept on universal measures on a Friday afternoon. So Marcus don't like tariffs. They seem to be taking this kind of A.B. split-cell testing approach where they flow to policy on a Friday afternoon. Marcus Tank Sunday evening. And then on Monday, Trump walks it back, which by the way,

I think is a feature, not a bug. It's iterative. It's dynamic. It's humble. not ego-driven. I like that concept. And they've gone from this idea of universal tariffs. The idea behind that, of course, was to prevent China from evading tariffs by moving last value at the last mile of production to, say, Mexico or Vietnam, to bilateral tariffs. I like, I'm not a big fan of tariffs overall, but I like the overall objective they're trying to accomplish, which is prime open foreign markets. It's very difficult for GM or Tesla to sell cars in the French market where Renault dominates or Fiat dominates. Those are shitty cars.

And Americans don't want to buy them here. That's not going to balance a trade deficit. It's very difficult for American banks to compete in Canada, which is dominated by five banks. That's a point that Trump raised. So the question here is, is Trump the stock market president or is he the external revenue service president? He's messaging around both, but ultimately, I think he's actually the stock market president. right importers pay for tariffs importers do importers like GM pay the price of tariffs and you know I've

gone through quite a few earnings calls every single one has said they will pay the cost to the consumer and Trump wants to keep inflation low he wants to keep energy prices low so I think his objective here is to open up foreign markets and in his own words he said he wants to see U.S. business win he wants them win globally. And I think his objective is to pry open foreign markets. So I think that's a very good objective. I don't think an end state where we're getting a trade war where tariffs remain elevated is good at all. You know, the trade deficit is not a bad thing. It's actually the scoreboard. I want to see a bigger trade deficit because it means that we're importing more capital. We're exporting more dollars and bonds to the rest of the world. China is sitting on

$3 trillion of U.S. bonds. They don't know what to do with. They can't buy GPUs with them. them. They can't buy F-35 jets with them. They can't buy American merchandise with them. We stuck them with a bunch of IOUs, low interest rates, and we got real merchandise today. So trade off is not a bad thing at all, but the objective of opening up foreign markets is a good idea. Yeah. I would say real quick, I mean, one, it's really hard, like, it's going to be really hard to catch up to China at this point. I mean, when you have the Chinese government, there was a really good episode with my colleagues, Joe and Tracy that do an odd lots podcast today. They talked about what's going on with tariffs and how the Chinese government operates. It's really hard when you have

a relatively authoritarian centralized country, government, forcing money into different industries. I mean, that's why, one of the reasons why they've become such a powerhouse and cars in a matter of less than a decade. They were nowhere, and now they are like the global leader, essentially, because the government was just funneling money to anyone that was building. cars. They had a few huge successes, namely B-YD. And here we are. They are a market leader. And it's just notable, they have 100% tariffs on like U.S. vehicles. So like you, it's not like you can, us doing any sort of tariffs on them or like anything out of reach. So it's just, it's very interesting. It's like almost kind of the point like, are we already so far behind

that we can't even make up in some areas of manufacturing like Trump wants to? I don't know. Two quick things that I'm going to get at sales perspective here. One is Trump's incremental tariffs on China are light because he knows, really Bessent knows, the knock-on consequence. And a lot of people have said, look, the tariff impact didn't flow through to CPI in 2018. This is much broader based than what we saw in 2018. So there's a big difference there. And second is, you know, if Milton Freeman were around, he'd say China subsidizing U.S. consumers, thank you.

Now, of course, is a distinction to be made for critical supply chain components that drive semiconductors and batteries and national security, of course. but for other items like furniture and solar panels, if China wants to subsidize the United States, it's actually a form of income that actually shows up in productivity gains for the United States, that benefits real income. Yeah, I mean, the only piece,

I think you hit on this in the opening interlude there, which was like, this has been an iterative process, which is basically testing markets reaction and demand, and seeing what foils out of that, and then walking things back. And so that was the case, both with Mexico and with Canada. Ultimately, they took action that changed course. I think you're starting to see a little bit more challenge as it relates to the reactions that we see from China, which candidly, I think everyone

expected, and he's probably taking counsel from Besson to prevent, you know, undue impacts in the short term. But, you know, we're going to see where this shakes out. Like there's a million different case studies that we can look at in other economies or on a historical basis, and this time is different for a number of different reasons. And so it's really a confluence effect. factors that are centered around, frankly, Trump's campaign promises, which, you know, whether we like them or not, many, many of them are being driven by a stick here, which is a term I think you guys use that. And I think this is one of the levers that he's pulling on on that objective. So I think it's going to be economy focused at the end of the day. And he's just going to

pull and push on levers until he figures out, you know, what is the right path forward. Yeah, I mean, real quick, I want to share this tweet, which was the fun. tweet I've seen in a while because the same thing happened the first weekend where Trump was talking about tariffs. I mean, here's a tweet from for those listening and not watching it home. It's from an account Ray J on Twitter and says, is Ethereum made of aluminum? Because it went, it went from like 2650 and the tariffs got announced and immediately dropped like 2,500. It was way worse the weekend before. But Ethereum was the one down the worst. So I guess I'll go to you, Alex, now that you've joined us here. Like, why is it?

it that when stuff like this happens and there's like risk off moves, crypto obviously is one of the only things trading on the weekend, so that's part of it. But why is it that Ethereum gets hit the most? Is it because it's used in a lot of defy and leverage situations? Like, why is it that Ethereum, ether is getting hit the most on these types of nights and moves versus most other cryptos? I think is, well, I mean, versus mostly Bitcoin, right? And really slow. I mean, everything else drops hit it harder. I'd say it's a matter of being over. which is something that people, when I say it's, especially people who hold a little E3 up there negatively. What do you mean?

Overbound? Well, it's like everybody already holds ease. That's the first thing. The second thing is it has very bad fundamentals, which are like, this is not a matter of discussion anymore. It's reflected on price, which means it has very bad price, which means everybody who is basically itching, they look and say, what do I dump? I dump ease. Then atopal that is used very heavily, extensive view all across DeFi as collateral.

That makes it more prone to liquidations during such moves. So I think that sums it up. I know of you guys how I'll be from you. One thing I'd point out here is that Ethereum has record short positions. I just shared this. You can put that in the James in the chat. But we haven't never seen this level of record short positions. and it does look like it's a bit much, you know, does that set up a squeeze or a countertrend rally at some point?

My personal, we're headed in that direction. Like there's a squeeze on the way. Sentiment is at pretty much all time lows in, you know, eight, ten years of just being present in the market. And I think we're going to see an event that we'll probably talk about later in the ETF section. that could be a trigger towards that squeeze. So I would expect that over the next couple of weeks we see that that on one happen and sentiment shift as a result of it. Ethereum is the funding leg for other crypto assets.

Ethereum is one leg of the carry trade. You know, that could get unwound. It's interesting. You got Don Jr. pumping Ethereum on Twitter. I still don't know. Is he like Nancy Pelosi, meaning like he's got insider information? Or is he just Don Jr.? I don't know.

I think he's just a KRAO, to be honest. I think there's more than that. I think there's more than that. The Trump family is involved. They own these crypto assets or sending policy. If they knew what was going to happen, you don't buy that much heat in anticipation. We don't even know if it's hatched on another side.

To be honest, I'd rather not speculate on that, but I'm not putting my hopes up on Trump when it comes to East. If I had to choose, I would do, I would put my hopes on what you guys just said before, which is basically very low sentiment and very short positioning, which is rather extreme. Yeah, I mean, look at that. We've got the Trump screen here. We've never seen that. That's extreme.

It's good for traders or for holders. I mean, like you don't invest. It's the same thing as like losers average or losers buy average down, right? If something is performing so poorly, it's something you sell on Rips if you're a bigger picture rather than buy dips. If you're a trader, this is great. This is a good place, I think. Yeah. I mean, I kind of feel like it's due for some sort of run at some point, some sort of short squeeze.

I mean, the sentiment around Ethereum is so bad on crypto Twitter. Overall, like, I got criticized a bit for this on crypto Twitter. This is a little bit of a divergence. But, like, I feel like the sentiment from, like, the retail crowd on crypto Twitter is, like, this is the end of the world, I guess, because you have, like, a bunch of these AI coins and meme coins, like, down really bad. And I'm just, like, looking at this. And I'm like, this is nothing compared to, like, late 2017, early 2018, or what we saw

in 2020. We're not even in the same ballpark, and people are talking about it, like it's the end of the world. And then I look at other stuff and I see like, well, that this, some of these tokens are down 87%. So if I put a few thousand dollars into there, I'd be pretty upset too. But I feel like there's a lot of people just really praying for some sort of altcoin season and it hasn't happened yet, not to say it won't happen, but I'm not so sure that it definitely will. I mean, in my mind, the way I think about it is a lot of the money in this cycle of the last year or so, a lot of it's come in via ETFs, particularly for Bitcoin, even for Ethereum. We're at like almost four billion in inflows in the last couple months. And also micro strategy. And like that money isn't like a

hot ball of money that's going to go from Bitcoin to all coins in the way that a lot of it did in the past. So I don't, I don't, I'm not saying we won't see some sort of all coin season ripper, but it's definitely, we might be in a little bit of a different paradigm than the past few cycles. I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on that before we move on to Sona. Yeah, the thing is, We did have an out-season. This is something that it's kind of like, it's crazy to say there was no out-season. I mean, things went up a few, like between 50% to multiples in a matter of four weeks.

That's an out-season just because it didn't sustain or because people bought the top. You know, that doesn't mean that it was no out-season or you didn't get to sell because you got attached to things that we know have, most of them, very fundamental value. right it's just humans like it's just psychology something interesting i saw here exactly to your point james is there's a poll with a lot of boats here on on x uh 5,000 boats which is quite a bit for for this platform for our little world and uh the poll is about has this been the hardest cycle that you have experienced 5,000 boats very large like the largest you get on this polls is like 8,000, the average is about like a thousand votes.

51% answered hard yes. I think many people have showed up late and they have limited positive P&L to show for it. I had a conversation with my friend Quinn Thompson on Licker Capital over the weekend, just trading notes. We should get Quinn on the show at some point. We should, yeah. And he's in a bunch of different telegram groups. And he's like, look, yeah, people showed up late.

they're getting whipsawed. And yeah, that's part of the reason why the sentiment is broken here. So it's interesting. Sal, do you have any thoughts real quick before we move on? Yeah, I was just going to add, like, that we have, you made the point on like stickiness of capital from the institutional side and ETF products, micro strategy. But like we also had from all, it's a liquidity drain towards gambling type opportunity sets in the mean, quite space.

And a lot of those just got absolutely torched. in recent weeks. And, you know, last week as well, we had the largest liquidation in all. So a couple like long exposure and all it's getting liquidated plus a lot of drain into meme coins that haven't performed, plus stickiness of institutional capital. And it certainly for me is not the worst cycle I've experienced in any way, shape, or form. I think people forget, which was a lot of those raw downs are lighter.

Those raw downs are lighter than we've seen in prior cycles, actually. I mean, and they should be. Let's be clear. Like in 2017 and even in 2020, there was legit concern that some of this was going to go to zero as an industry in some areas. Like there was a not like in my mind, there was a non-zero chance that the U.S. was going to like do everything it could to kill the stuff. So like that's why you had real drawdowns. And now it's just different. It's a whole different system. So to say hard yes, just I feel like that has to mean people weren't involved in those other drawdowns. The average trader loses money in crypto. Cryptos create extraordinary wealth. Extraordinary wealth. I run a wealth management business where most of my clients are in crypto, so I see it. But the average and the median trader lose money. I think a lot of these traders, they bought at these peak sentiment moments in November, December,

when Gensler resigned, Bitcoin pumps, they buy, then it fades. Paul Atkins nominated pumps, then it fades. David Sachs nominated, pumps, then it fades. So they're on the wrong side of those trades and the whales are selling into those rallies. So I think that's what's made it difficult for that. I would keep fading, by the way, that news. That's my view. I think we continue to leak out for a few more months until we get clarity on this executive order.

Yeah, I mean, the other factor on that is not just the whale side of the market. It's the fun side. And if you look at the duration of venture capital vehicles that were structured 2018, 19, 2020, they generally are seven to 10 year horizon. Maybe they have extensions around them. But on every one of these rallies, there's exit opportunities and demand for DPI from investors and funds, which really hasn't come over the last couple years. So every time there's an opportunity here, the by side is capturing it and trying to get DPI out the door to race.

respond. Defined DPI for listeners. Distributions to patent capital, meaning that when you pay back your investors as a venture manager. So when we see the circle IPO come on the horizon, that's going to get animal spirits going against. There are news headlines in front of us, but not in the next one month that I see, unless there's some random announcements from Elon Musk putting payments on chain, which would be incredible. It's hard to anticipate that. I do think it's a possibility that's maybe mispriced. I spent some time with Michael Terpin at the Satoshi Roundtable. Michael, for those that don't know, is like a Bitcoin OG literally wrote a book on this. And his view based on the cycles of Bitcoin is that the Bitcoin cycle ends around November, December of this year.

So the clock is on, however which way you cut it. I'm not a pure cycle theory guy, by the way. But I think other people are. So it's important to consider that in your own assessment. Yeah, I mean, we're going to get into some of the meme coin stuff in a bit. But first, let's, I mean, this kind of goes back to kind of the distribution side of things. I mean, you, if you're a fund, your goal is to give money back to your investors and hopefully raise a new fund to, to invest in other assets potentially. I mean, Salana's headwinds. I mean, this is a common topic right now. A lot of people are talking about the unlocks that are coming for Salana. So again, somewhat related. there's a pump that fun lawsuit.

There seems to be just a level of exhaustion with meme coin and AI agent narratives. I'll go to you, Sal, like, what do you make of the Solana headwinds that everyone seems to be talking about in the space? And do you think they're relevant? Do you think they're overplayed? What are your thoughts? Yeah, I'm in the overplayed camp on this, specifically around the unlocks. Like, I think there's enough long-term vested interest that the unlocks will get bought.

what concerns me more is just to fade on the meme coin side. It's like, and I've never been a big proponent of meme coins. I think there's interesting elements as it relates to, you know, encapsulating the value of humor in society, as Alex Thorne would say from Galaxy. There's interesting mechanics around Fair Launch, which looks back to 2017 ICA era. I like those things. But it's just been a massive attention grab that is more on the casino side of this industry. and I think we'll look at this in a minute, but like, yeah, a lot of these meme coins are, including Trump, are down 90% from all-time highs. And I don't see that reversal playing out

anytime soon. So, you know, I won't be the saddest of market whispers to see, focus move away from memes. I'd love to see it rotate towards fundamentals and things that have real-world value products people actually use. But it's been a tough slog for, the meme coin space. So I would say that side of, you know, the headwind's piece is is more concerning to me versus unlocks or, you know, the shifting wind on the agent side. I think agents are going to be here and stay here. There was just a lot of speculation hype around short-term applications of them. And really, the scope is quite limited today. Yeah, for those listening and not watching at home, I'm sharing a screen from one of the guys

at Delphi, I believe, Sateras Paribis. And there's just a bunch of charts of like some of the AI and meme points we're talking about. So here's Goat. Went all the way up to 120. And now it's down at like, I don't even know what that is. It's basically zero. 16 cents now. Zero bro, same thing.

AI 16Z. Same thing. Zero. Zero, bro. Sorry. Virtual. See, shows how much I'm with Sal. In the sense that I'm not even really even paying attention to some of this stuff.

virtual. I mean, all these things are just getting absolutely slaughtered by the market. And it just, yeah, I mean, it's just crazy. And it's kind of, the flush is coming out of Salana. But Salana is holding up way better than obviously some of these AI and meme coins that are on here. I mean, in the defense of those teams, it's not their fault. No. that people basically, like, there's like 10,000 individuals out there,

like say 50, whatever, but they just look at a number and say, oh, number is going up, so I need to buy a new meta and basically the liquidity is so low that the thing goes like a rocket. And then fast up, fast up, fast down.

It's simple mechanics is, you know, yeah. Well, it's incredible how Solana's created a new profession of people that just launched meme coins. They wake up, they launch meme coins. They work 18 hours a day. They go back to bed.

And this is what they do during meme coin season. It happened in April of last year. I think overall, look, if you think the beta is going to be rewarded in crypto, Solana's the best horse because it has the most momentum and crypto's momentum asset, that's the left curve answer, Tata position, if you think it's risk gone in crypto. It's kind of that simple. However, I'm going to bring some other data here on this. chart. This shows the on-chain activity for Solana. And what you can see here on the bottom right,

you see the pumped-out fund graduated tokens. You see the two different spikes. That first spike was shortly after the Trump election. That second spike was the Trump token. You also see that match to the G-DOTA validator tips and also the weekly Solana transaction fees, right? So, you know, those were two moments where you had a lot of focus and attention on. Solana, it takes usually months to work off those moments, right? April of last year, it wasn't until September of last year that we kind of worked off the excess and Solana set up for another run. Now, they were, you know, like three fits and starts rallies between then, but they

didn't recover to the highs. So the question is like, what is going to get that on-chain activity going again? I don't see what headline that is other than Elon. doing something on chain, which is kind of remote, speculative. And none of these chains could handle that. But the headline would make a difference anyway. The headline would still boost prices. So, you know, I'm more that the beta on crypto is negative right now for at least the next

couple of months. If you think it's positive, I think Solana is actually pretty decent entry right now. When you say beta, are you talking beta to the equity markets? Like, what do you mean? Beta at what regard? The word around the asset class. I think it's expected value is negative for the. next few months.

Interesting. Alex, you're a trader. What do you think about that, about asset class being relatively downhill or at least sideways for the near term? Do you agree? The asset class as a whole. No, I don't agree.

But I do think on the Solano side, I do think there is some that locks are an issue. So in good market conditions, they don't matter. market conditions they do matter because people just sell so basically

let's see based on my numbers here the ft x tx unlocks that were basically 650,000 sold unlocked from ftx in January up to 3.2 million in February, up to 9.7 million in March up to no 9.75 million in March down to 2.7 in April down to 400 in May and then it continues going down. So there is a short-term headwind that is, I think, very significant because Falan is actually one of the few assets

that is not, but it's actually a very good asset to hold and trade both. I think this matters. So I think it's hard to trend in these conditions. That's what I think. On top of those envelopes, by the way, you have unlocks from treasury sales from

Solana itself from early 2021 that are unlocking now as well. So there's a very significant number of tokens, sole tokens hitting the market liquid. One should ask oneself as like, the thing is we don't really have the answer is what of this has already been hedged?

Well, we don't know that. It's almost impossible even to estimate without having access to the books of the guys doing the hedging, right? To all of them. The future of mass consumer applications is on-chain, and Somnia is leading the way. Built as one of the fastest EVM layer one blockchains, Somnia can process over 400,000 transactions per second with sub-second finality and sub-sent fees. Whether you're building games, metaverses, or decentralized social platforms,

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Carefully consider the extreme risks associated with crypto before investing. So Central African Republic is debuting a meme coin experiment. There's a whole thread on here on Twitter. I mean, Reuters is covering this. I mean, it's the first country launching a meme coin or a crypto of any kind. I don't know. I kind of like roll my eyes at this, but I mean, maybe there could be something. Maybe they could actually create some usefulness out of this.

I don't know. Sal, what are your initial thoughts on CAR doing a meme coin experiment? I think I'm similar to you. Initial roll my eyes, but in the context of their economy, like there could be, you know, a positive outcome to them that's negative to a bunch of other market participants. So, you know, it's just a frustrating focus from top media outlets in financial news that this is the center of discussion still. But at the same time, it could be the basis for an interesting experiment. So try to stay positive.

Remember when El Salvador adopted Bitcoin in September 2021, that was two months from the top. So the big sovereign wealth funds are always late to the party. They're like the worst retail investors. They buy in an all-time highs. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Well, you're going to go buy it? It's pretty ominous from ROM there. No, I can equivocally say I will not be not be buying this. Let me share a few other data points for you all real quick. So I'm going to share this chart. This is from the equity market. All these markets are related, right? They're all related. This is the growth to value ratio. This shows the valuation of growth stocks versus value stocks.

You can see it's a mean reverting series. And, you know, we're at a level that isn't quite 2021. I don't think we'll get there. Marcus kind of learned from history. And the rubber band is starting to pull back. And you see that in Tesla, right? Tesla peaked a few weeks after Trump got elected. It's in a bare market now.

It's down like 25%. You see that in Microstrategy, had 3x premium to NAV. it peaked a few weeks after Trump got elected in that big swell of animal spirits. It's pulling back. And this chart is summarizing it for like all securities in the market. So it's happening kind of everywhere. And crypto is just a part of that, right? Look, we had discount to NAV two years ago with the ETH and the GBTC, James, which you and I and others covered very well.

And that was fantastic. It was a measure of undervaluation and under ownership. and now you're on the opposite side of that and you're coming back to equilibrium. So I think this journey to equilibrium will take a few more months to play out. Yeah, the one thing I'd say is I think a lot of that is, obviously it's AI hype.

So I feel like obviously the market can do whatever it can do, but I feel like a lot of this is just built. I mean, these companies are spending so much CAPX on anything related to energy and AI and it's like booing markets. I mean, the markets are basically completely betting on what's happening with AI. So, I mean, if we get like even half of the productivity gains that some of these companies

are promising, it'll be very good. But the other side of this is, like, some of those really big names that are in that growth section, aside from Tesla, like, if you look at the Mag 7, like, there are times where their like forward earnings ratios are just stupid. Tesla's the only one that's like, I would argue that's unequivocally bonkers. Yes. Yeah. Like, it's very, the valuation is crazy.

It's like, I mean, I'm restraining out 100x forward PE, I think, or something like that. But the broader point, people that own crypto own Tesla. Yeah. And they own micro strategy. And they own uranium. And they rise and fall together. And they own all of them on leverage. So when one is tanking, then they have to liquidate other securities they own.

And it doesn't mean all people are like that. The point is like the marginal buyer and the marginal seller are like that. Yeah. My point I was going to make is the invidias, Microsoft's, apples of the world are nowhere near trading those like crazy valuation numbers that, that, uh, some of those other names you were talking about. No, look, you have like non-U.S. stocks are beating U.S. stocks. China's being the U.S. Mexico, year to date. So the tide came in and now is starting to go out on this kind of idea

of growthy, futuristic animal spirits lottery ticket stuff. I don't mean that in a disparaging way. It's just the tide is shifting. I'm with you. I'm mostly like I am nowhere near like in the beginning of 24 I was pretty bullish on the market in general and just risk and because like you climb a wall of Worla. I agree. I agree.

But now I am nowhere near that. I'm like some there's one Trump could break some I mean something could break and I'm just I don't know. We'll see how long it goes for it. We'll move on. I want to be too dower here. Alex usually says I'm bullish. Yeah, Alex.

What are you thought? You're going to take any bullish here? Well, no, Trump's tariffs are an issue. They're bigger than expected. The question is, are there going to be second order effects and how the effect would react? I mean, at one hand, I think the tariffs will lose their impact. It's already happening.

And we'll lose their impact. It's a matter of, I think, let's say, four weeks, and the market moves on. But on the other hand, tariffs are the way we have them right now, expectation is Tariffs could drive an extra 0.5% to inflation, right? Could slash should. Like, that's the estimate. So the question is, is that a one-at-time thing?

If it's a one-time thing, it's a supply shock. Sorry to interrupt around, but just quickly on this, the Fed looks through. But if they don't look through, well, we have a problem. And also is, in the meantime, this means the Fed is going to delay their dobbishness because they need to actually see what happens there. Is it one time or not? So, yeah, short term, like, I'm not bearish, but it's not a good time to be bullish.

In fact, I'm surprised that stock indices are like almost an all-time highs if you think about it. I'm with you on that too. By the way, I think the tariffs are non-issue. It's bilateral now. The markets heard the tariff story three times. Like, boy who cried wolf, the third times it doesn't matter. The fourth time it matters less. So I agree with you on that point, too.

Any thoughts there, Sal, before we move on to Kanye West real quick? And then we'll get to ETS and then we can wrap up. No, I mean, I think you saw Ram's point this week, like you saw it today. And the market balance in the ETH chart that we showed earlier, what, down 20% and a rebound immediately. When last week we had a five-day recovery period and we stayed 10% under, you know, previous marks. So I think we need to see how this plays out. I think that point that out it's made on whether or not the Fed looks through any short-term impacts is pretty, pretty key here. And everything they look at is on a trailing basis.

And so if this start to see things that give them sense of pause, then the market will start to anticipate, you know, potential change in forward outlook. And it kind of becomes this self-reinforcing loop. So one, sorry, before we go on, one more comment on that. So the, from numbers I was looking at, the estimate is at the top. RFs, this trade war size-wise, would be 3x, the 2018 trade war 1.0, right? The initial estimate was like a little 2x, a little bit under. So on one hand, it's big, it's bigger than expected. However, this is already on the expectations.

That's a point of why they start losing their punch. and because the Lusers, it's in the price, the news stop, is what you were saying, stopped having such a big impact. What happened yesterday, I think, is in a way, it's Trump pre-announced some tariffs that on the market took a quick dump, and quickly reverted, I think,

had something to do with basically very positive headlines in the other Japan on basically. basically Japan saying that they've had good conversations with Trump and they're optimistic on the tariff side. There's still more to come, right? The tariffs on Europe, they still need to be implemented and there is tariffs that need to be implemented on basically old trade partners. They're talking about basically a 10% increase on 10 percentage point,

not 10% increase on about 600 billion. in so-called critical imports from all trading partners. The impact, as I was saying, is I think expecting the impact of this bad news to diminish dramatically makes sense, but then comes what the second order of effects. Does this trigger something else in the economy and the most importantly in the Fed? and the Fed. I think at the end, the deregulation and increased efficiency on the government side is going to be bigger than anything negative coming from Tarips. But, of course, I mean, the judges out TBD.

We will see if I'm wrong or right or wrong, right? Hopefully I'm right. Yeah. Sorry. Breaking news, I guess for you guys on here. We were going to talk about ETFs in a minute, but actually, I don't even know why I'm saying breaking news because this isn't going to be released for another 24 hours. But Grace Gail just filed to list their Cardano Trust as an ETF on the New York Stock Exchange. So that just happened five seconds ago.

But yeah, let's move on to, we'll get to ETS. But while we were talking about meme coins and stuff, let's talk quickly about Kanye West. He teased an interest in crypto. He claimed that he was offered up to $2 million to launch a token. And he was looking to talk to the Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong. So there was all this speculation about him launching a meme coin. I thought, one of my favorite things I saw this weekend was the Babylon B, which is like, it's like the onion as well. But they said, they put an article that says disaster after Kanye West's ex account hacked by Kanye

West because he was just tweeting what kinds of nonsense and racist and honestly some despicable things, as far as I'm concerned, I don't mind saying. But then he came out hours later and like, he was like, he denied any such plans calling meme coins. scams that prey on fans with hype. And then prediction markets that were saying Kanye was going to launch a meme coin drop from like 40% to 13%. I guess so like even meme coins are too nasty for Kanye, though. David Portnoy of Barstall's sports is making a whole bunch of noise like playing around in the alt-coin, shit coin casino out there.

I don't know. Do you guys, Sal, what are your thoughts here? You're pretty negative on meme coins overall, it seems like, but what are your thoughts on this situation? Yeah, I mean, it's for someone that I think lacks principles that are generally agreed by most. It was like a pretty principled stance off, not ripping off. I think he mentioned what's left of his community. But I think that the communication threat, if you take a look at it and look at the chat back before,

like that type of deal construct, if you want to call it that, is more prevalent in the market than I would hope exists. And, you know, if there's ire from whatever the remains. enforcement side of the SEC looks like in the future, it's like those types of, you know, use a brand, manipulate markets, dump on retail for self-exploitation. Gain is like, that's where the focus should be. And so it's, you know, he came out on the principled side of this, surprisingly, that it's like, who are those intermediaries in that transaction that are trying to construct this opportunity?

And I think the payout to him was proposed to be $2 million. Whoever that intermediary was was playing that market and probably would have done 10x that. So, yeah, it's just a continuation of like another example why I'm kind of on that anti-meed coin side of the market. From a market's perspective, I don't like it. When retail investors show up to a market, expect to make money and they get burned, then they pull back and they tell their friends about that. You know, Kim Kardashian-Kanya's ex, she launched a coin in 2021. I want to say between June and September. So that was within four to five months of the top there.

So I think this is like the last hurrah with laycomers trying to monetize their brand. And I don't think they will be successful in that. I don't think investors in that will be successful either. Any quick thoughts, Alex? Yeah, I have an opposing view. I think these are just because they're poorly done, doesn't mean the mechanism is bad. They're very poorly done.

people like promoters are taking advantage, I think, of buyers. I mean, just quick, easy to pinpoint examples. The team behind the Central African Republic coin, not only they're getting a massive chunk of the supply, they were also dumping yesterday in size. It's like founders should not be selling their assets on day one. just wrong. When are we getting United Nations coin? World Heritage Coin? Well, that's the thing I think

is going to be, it's something I was, I think it's a trend. In fact, I was talking about this a friend of mine who works on the CBDC side of things. And I'm telling him, it's like you, like maybe you would want to consider actually, instead of pitching CVDCs, pitch them MIM coins. You know, it's you're going to be more you're going to get more of an audience

if you do that than simple CBDCs. You heard it here first, guys. Unchained bips and bips. Alex is suggesting that central bank should abandon CBDCs and should launch meme coins. I mean, for funding projects

in like ad hoc projects and doing very specific well put together things with good execution, it's a very good funding mechanism. Just because we're doing it wrong. I agree with that. I agree.

There's something there. It's just the current approaches are not going to help. Yeah. Yeah. And porno in pumping and damping shade. And like, you know, when you have so many followers,

you have some sort of responsibility. Right. It's just wrong. 100%. That guy's got the worst timing too. He's always off sides. But there's the same point that we make on meme coins and launch pads today that we made on ICOs in 2017.

Like really, really cool in global capital formation. cool experiment in global capital formation. And you can do really good things with that or you can do really bad things with that. And so the mechanics that I actually am very interested by. Like I think fair launch opportunities like what just happened with AO. If you're following AO at all, you know, no outside private market capital, fair launch token, doing something very interesting with that mechanic, but for a useful product that, well, TBD useful product,

but a real build. So it cuts both ways. A-O, you mean the token out of R-Weave? Yeah, R-Weave's new project that they're launching that is beyond that. I'm curious, what's your view there? What's the story? I mean, I'll give you a superficial high-level view first. And I can give you more depth than a subsequent conversation because I'm still doing the proper DD myself. But it was the first time that I've seen an ambitious.

technical project on a full-stack architecture actually use a fair launch mechanic beyond, frankly, Ethereum. And Ethereum, you know, we can argue on that Bitcoin even. But from a technology point of view, it's probably the most comparative and competitive to Internet Computer Protocol, ICP, which despite all sorts of issues they've had historically

is one of the most ambitious and exciting pure computer science plays that I've seen. Lots of really interesting and advanced and cryptography applied inside of a network architecture and design pattern. And I think AO is marching down a similar lane, which is like not in the vein of another alternative layer one network. It's like a totally different system design space using a fair launch mechanic. And so that's interesting to me.

Still hold work to be done. But I'll come back to some points to now once I've done the homework there. Interesting. Thank you. Do you want to talk about Elon Musk and Open AI? Oh, yeah. Why don't you go? Yeah, so this news dropped right before we started recording here.

So, Ron, why don't you give us the rundown on the news here that's going on with Elon Musk and Open AI and then we'll wrap up with some ETF stuff? So it just broke about an hour ago. But the background is that Elon Musk was one of the co-founders of Open AI is making a bid to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI. for $97.4 billion. Now, Open AI is raising money from SoftBank at a valuation of, I want to say, $300 billion. So this is one of the largest, probably the largest investment entities that would also have control over Open AI.

Now, the backers for his bid include Valor Equity Partners. That's Peter Thiel, by the way. It's Peter Thiel's growth fund. Barron Capital. I don't think that's Baron Trump. Sorry to disappoint anyone there. Atreides Management, V Capital, 8VC, 8VC's Joe Lonsdale. Joe Lonsdale was one of the co-founders of Palantir, also part of the kind of Peter

Teal Mafia. And Ari Emanuel, CEO of Hollywood Company Endeavor. He was the guy that was portrayed by Jeremy Piven in Antwer. garage. So it adds a little flavor there. But so Musk accuses Open AIA have betraying the original nonprofit mission and open AIS called illegal claims baseless and overreaching and said the nonprofit will receive full value in its ownership stake for the for profit. So yeah, it's it's a drama that's that's playing out in the markets right now. I'm running for Elon. I get bad vibes from Sam Altman to be candid. You know, Elon has the largest data.

center with GPUs in the world, by the way, in Memphis, Tennessee. He built it later than most, but he's all in on this AI story. And, you know, again, he was a co-founder of Open AI. He's, you know, seems to me got a legitimate basis to make a bid here. No, this is just the expression of all the sentiment that Elon's shared over the past, what, 12 months since the murmurs on the shift towards four-profits started to pan out in the media. I think it's just an interesting, just turning the tables and bringing a lot of close colleagues to throw capital markets at the opportunity and frankly put the decision outside of, you know, Sam could influence. But ultimately the board of directors at the Mount Prophet will consider the offer. And so I think it's an interesting twist.

I think part of this was like the promise to return to open source, which if two weeks back was any kind of reminder of the competition that's playing out there with what happened with Deepseek, like, It's a pretty interesting proposition. So I think the board's probably going to have to consider it and do their due diligence. I mean, Elon's playing the game at a different level here, right? He's transforming government. He's sleeping inside an office, instead of Washington, D.C. He's got the ear of the president. He pivoted and built an incredible data center.

He paid too much money for Twitter at $40 billion a few years ago. Then he changed the course of an election because of Twitter. increasing the value of Twitter. And now he's making a run at OpenAI. He's negotiating peace deals with Ukraine and Zelensky on the phone with Trump. I mean, this guy is incredible. He's a level 99 mage in the game of life. I mean, the other point, he's a level 99 game.

That's pretty good, Rob. I mean, the other thing is, you said he increased the value of Twitter. I mean, it remains to be seen, I guess, what the value actually is. But the revenues are way down. But the problem is his cash flow, like as a percentage of revenue is way up. So everyone was like, all the mainstream media was saying he's going to completely kill Twitter. It's going to die. And meanwhile, like, the profits are like through the roof, like, because he cut all the fat,

which theoretically is what he's trying to do with the government. I mean, there's obviously seems to be a lot of issues with federal courts. And we'll see how that plays out. But, I mean, unequivocally, he's making way. more money on the revenue that they're pulling in than Twitter ever had before. So he kind of, he's, he knows somewhat what he's doing, no matter how you slice it. We'll see how this all plays out. I mean, it's absolutely fascinating. If he actually managed to buy opening eye, like, it's, I don't even know. That's just insane to me. This is like a fake story that you make up about a dude

in like a sci-fi movie. Incredible. And his ability to raise that much money that quickly, $97 billion. That's no joke. That's bigger than the vast majority of initial public offerings. and that's like phone call money for Elon. And some of the most influential growth stage investors in the world coming around in that time frame, it's just remarkable. Yeah, you were talking about Tesla and Forward P versus Market. And I was sitting back and not speaking because I'm just like, this is just the markets, you know, not overvaluing, but valuing one of the most transcendent entrepreneurs we've

ever met, ever known. So I wouldn't be surprised if people. this off. There were a lot of people in the Twitter thing started like, oh, he pulls it off. Like, he's pulled it off and to James's point, like more profitable now. And candidly, I think they're just getting started because all the ad buyers are coming back to the platform post election. So I think the numbers are going to ramp through this year. And they have broader distribution now as one of the top media platforms. And it's just going to come. X payments came out last week. So the future of the super app on the outsides here. I just want to be

really is incredible. I'm not a fan of Tesla stock, but Elon Musk has changed the timeline of the planet. Isn't that a fair statement? He really did. Yeah. I mean, like, if you're talking about like Starlink, how Starlink is being used in Ukraine now, like rockets. He changed this one individual from South Africa changed the timeline. I think he was a he got, he's not a citizen. Is he a citizen yet? That's the other interesting irony in this whole thing, right? He's an immigrant that you overstayed his visa or something. I mean, I mean, I could watch that video of his rockets coming down and landing on those chopsticks essentially over. It looks fake. It looks like CGI. It's absolutely insane that that's real life. And though I will go back real quick when I saw Tesla, like, nothing to say about like, I don't know what Tesla is actually valued at, but strictly speaking, if you're looking at a valuation metric, like they are the only ones that are like outside any semblance of a relative normalcy. And that's just the, that says the market's bad on Elon. Like, all of these other endeavors are still in private markets and they can't get exposure.

So it's like, here's your public opportunity to do that and we'll bet on him. When you say markets, though, it's really retail investors in South Korea and Hong Kong. I mean, these are not like the institutional investors. Yeah, I agree. They're going to invest on traditional valuation metrics. This is like meme coin. This is like meme coin for the rest of the world. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Let's get to ETF. So I'll give a bit of a rundown. of where we're at. I came out today with my boss and colleague, Eric Boutchunis, on basically what's next in the ETS landscape. And you guys can ask me questions, I guess, and we can dive in.

But here's a chart that I put out. Right now, we can actually add, as I talked before, I said before Grace Gill was uplisting. They don't even have a private fund. So it's just a filing, a 19B4 filing, which is that request to list digital assets on an exchange. in an ETF wrapper. So we have right now, we have

Lightcoin, Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, HBolkod, and now Cardano. I wouldn't be surprised if we have a bunch more. Our odds right now, we have Lightcoin at 90% odds by the end of 2025. Solana, we're putting the odds at 70. XRP, we're at 65, and Dogecoin, we're at 75. Those odds are slightly lower,

aside from maybe Lightcoin on where Polymarket is. So the main two things that were watching here are one, did the SEC acknowledge the 19B4s? I think last week we saw the SEC acknowledge those filings for Solana, which is something the prior SEC administration had not done. I've said on this podcast before, they weren't going to do that unless they were ready, willing, and able to potentially unwind the lawsuits they have with the different exchanges, whether it be Crackin, Finance, Coinbase, you name it. They need to figure out what they were doing because they call.

Paul Solana security in those lawsuits, those lawsuits are still active. They've appealed a bunch of the decisions with XRP. So the fact that those two things don't really have clarity and whether or not they're a commodity or security, even though I think Hester Purse's crypto task force would unequivocally try to argue that they're not. They'll try to have, they have to figure out a way to get out of those lawsuits. So you can't have the division of enforcing calling these things securities and then putting them in a commodity ZTF wrapper, right? So our view here is ultimately purse and the SEC are going to unwind, untangle those threads there that would stop these things from getting into an ETF wrapper. So we're expecting this week XRP, even potentially by the time

this airs, maybe not. And Dogecoin, those filings are due to be acknowledged by the SEC. So we'll see where they stand. But yeah, so these odds could jump up for all of these within the end of the week. So I don't know if you guys have any questions, thoughts, concerns, but I think Lykecoin So all of these, the final deadlines are in April. So the first one's Lightcoin on October 2nd. I think Lightcoin is a prime candidate to potentially be launched like way before it's not way before, but before it's deadline. There's a lot of things that it just doesn't have to worry about that these other assets do.

And Dogecoin potentially as well, I don't think the SEC, I don't think ever called Dogecoin a security. But it needs to be acknowledged by the SEC. So we'll see where they play. Do you guys have any questions, thoughts? I mean, question for you, James. Like if we were going to stack rank the odds of Ethereum introducing staking into existing UTF products, like what would you put that in terms of profitability against these other

products here? So we don't have any active filings that I'm aware of that are trying to get staking involved in Ethereum ETFs, which surprised me because that means that for some reason, I'm guessing there's something behind the lines that are telling us it's, you know, they haven't done it yet. We have applications for in-kind creation and redemption for Bitcoin and Ethereum, which I'm pretty confident is going to happen in the near future. They got rid of SAB 121. They're trying to get rid of other rules and things that are preventing different players

from playing the crypto space. And once that's done, in-kind will happen. Maybe once in-kind is done, they'll do, you know, staking. But my assumption is staking is going to happen in the relatively near future. I just don't know how quickly and no one has filed yet. So I think it's going to happen. I just don't know when. And the other thing I would say is these are only, the ETFs I was just talking about,

they're only spot ETS. There's a whole host, like literally 30 futures-based ETFs that would be based on futures that haven't even launched yet. So I have theories on why the futures haven't launched yet. We saw a whole bunch of news with CME and other things try to launch futures, but that hasn't happened for Solana or ExtraP or some of these other assets. What we want to see is the Circle IPO. These are mostly distractions.

The Solana ETF makes a lot of sense. but where is a circle IPO? I mean, we're also going to probably see a Cracken IPO. Gemini, there was rumors last week that Gemini was going to IPO. I mean, that's also pretty big. Those are bullish news items. These are not bullish news items to me. Yeah.

Like, H-Barr is not bullish for the market. I mean, what you've got to realize here is like if you're an issuer and you can get, I don't know, 100 million, even 75 million into these, it's a profitable product. I mean, H-Barr specifically, I was looking at. into it. It's like traded really heavily by the South Koreans you were talking about before, Rob. So there is like pockets of areas that love these things. So theoretically, if you're somebody who's like, I don't know, an XRP maxi or like coin maxi or whatever, you might want to put it in your IRA. And even if it's a much, it's going to be a way smaller, you know, investor base most

likely than something like Bitcoin or an Ethereum. But there's still like a marketplace to have these things in a wrapper. The more interesting thing is the fact that I don't think, did we even talk with. The CME put on their beta website that they were going to launch Solana and XRP futures on February 10th potentially, like they were getting ready to put it out there. And then they took it down and said it was an error. It was just testing. We also had Coinbase put on their website that they were filing to list Solana and HBarr-HBahedera Futures. And they backed down and took that down. And the spokesperson says they're working with the SEC to launch these. My pet theory is in order to launch a futures contract, you need to file all this stuff and you need to sign off

and say this is a traditional futures contract. There's also an option to check off that it's securities futures, which is regulated by the SEC and CFTC. And I have a feeling that because of these things that I'm talking about right now with those lawsuits that Hester wrote in her piece, A Journey Begins, basically talk about they need to unwind all this BS that has happened over the last four years. I wonder if the SEC's official stance being that these things might be securities is holding up even those futures contracts listing. And the fact that we saw all these issuers file for futures contracts on Solana, on XRP, on all these different tokens, and they haven't happened yet, kind of tells me that the issue might be something that everyone wasn't expecting.

I think CME thought they were actually going to be able to launch in the next month or two. I think Coinbase thought they were going to be able to launch futures in the next month or two. And they haven't. And my pet theory is it's the fact that those lawsuits are still actually out there calling these things securities. But, I mean, we might know within the next couple of weeks if that theory is correct or not. But it's interesting to think about. Something is holding these things up.

I've been hearing, I mean, Joe, Joe on this podcast has been saying since August that we were going to see CME Salon of Futures, Joe McCann. And, I mean, they haven't happened yet. So something, there's something in the back end that's just not allowing these things to launch. I don't know. If you guys have any pet theories on what's going on there or anything different. I would just guess it's procedural. just getting the right paperwork in place and education.

It's a new staff at the CFTC. It takes time to process. It's still a bureaucracy. All right. I think that's it. Does anyone have any final thoughts on what's going on to markets right now or we can just wrap up? I think it's a good time to be patient, to be honest. That's my main thought.

It's on one hand, we have very, very good charts and assets in demand on Bitcoin and Seoul. We have alcoins that are completely absolutely absolutely. demolish with very poor sentiment and negative positioning. And at the same time, it's like we're missing the trigger, right, for getting going. And alts are so illiquid. And like everybody's concerned about alts. That's the truth. It's what defines sentiment here.

So we have to talk about it, even though we're not very big on alts. They're missing this trigger right now and it's pretty difficult to hold outs in size, given how volatile they are. But at the same time, a strong view is the tariffs talks going to cease to be an issue. The market is going to be moving over. I think it will be moving over to increase efficiency.

And then eventually the Fed does become, like the Fed is telling us very clearly that they will continue lowering rates, just a matter when. And not just one cut, quite a few. They're telling us that. So that's coming. It's not really priced.

I think we have one cut right now in the market this year only. So the time will come. It seems like it's not now to me, but it's so good time to be patient, I think. Let me ask you this to wrap up. I'll ask both of you. So this is Quinn Thompson, who we were talking about from Lekker Capital and Alex Thorne from Galaxy, both friends of the pod. they have a bet now basically that if Bitcoin prints a trade price below 89, 999, so basically below 90K,

Alex will owe Quinn a steak dinner. Alex, you're talking about we're chopping sideways, you just gave that whole spiel about what's going on all coins and things like that. Do you, if you were out, which side of this bet would you take? Do you think we were going to print below 90 before the end of the month? I mean, I'm bullish, but I think that's about that, to be honest. Which one? Alex Swarns, I mean, Bitcoin is a highly volatile asset.

What is the I-B right now? So, realize volatility is about 50 right now. Anyhow, it's very low on a historical, maybe 56, I don't have it in front of me. It's very low on a historical basis, but it's still very high. So talking about with a little calculator, I could calculate the probability of that trading in two months. based on 56 vol the probability is actually pretty good so yeah it's also as my view there is it's is this range forming the same way it happened in 24 where 60 is 90 and 73 and a half is 1.9 and a half it's actually the same is it's 17.4 and 17.8% difference it's funny

funny coincidence it's a coincidence there's no nothing there's just a coincidence But when you have those ranges, it's common for the range to break and quickly be bought up. So you don't put your bid at ever at 89, 999 or 90. You put it above or you put it below or you scatter them around. You scale. That's a bad bet. So wait, wait, what number before we go to Sal, because I want to hear Sal's thought, I'm like which side of the bet he would be on?

So at what number would you be like if it was, what if it was 87? Would you be like, okay, I would take that bet? Absolutely. Okay. Yeah, 87 I'd take it. Okay. Sal, what is your thought on Bitcoin pricing? Yeah, I see the point that Alex is making on like a technical analysis basis.

But I'm on the Alex store and that of this bet. Like I think realistically we're going to see continued institutional buying pressure in the low 90s, the bounce that we just saw over the past. week and a half is something I anticipate will continue. And we're 18 days from the end of February today. We're filming on the 10th. So are we going to see another market shock event from future tariff announcements? Like, I'm not sure what is on the horizon over the next two weeks that would cause more uncertainty and another retracement.

All Scott liquidated last week, you know, it's, I just think it's unlikely by the end of February. If we play it out through March and we get some more, you know, next year, events, maybe, but by the end of the month, I think it's unlikely. So I'll buy you guys a steak dinner in New York if I lose this one. Great. All right. That was a fun way to end it. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Bits and Bips. We'll be back in one week to discuss more about how the worlds of crypto and macro are colliding. Until then, everyone.