Transcription
Bitcoin is once again getting crushed, trading back below $66,000 this morning because Trump, in his speech about the war, apparently failed to calm markets or to give people the firm belief that the war would be ending soon, oil prices would be coming down, and we would see a stabilizing of the global economy. But in the background, it's not just about Trump and Iran and oil. There's actually quite a bit happening that's unique to the crypto market. It's just that price is failing to react because of the macro context. We have a very familiar face here joining. We got Dave Weissberger, who's going to help me break that down and also dispel a few other myths circulating in the market. Let's go.
>> Let's go. Let's go.
>> What is up everybody? I hope that you're all having a wonderful day. I completely lost sound there. So hopefully I can hear. I'm going to bring on Dave and we're going to find out. Good morning, sir. How are you?
>> I'm doing okay. It looks like the green light's on my microphone. Can you hear me?
>> I can hear you. I think what happened was, uh, Streamyard had a glitch on the intro music video, which often happens with Streamyard. But, uh, then we panic over here and we start running around and scrambling thinking that something's come unplugged or that, you know, somebody like, uh, blew a circuit. But none of that happened and we've got you and we've got you nice and centered. We were having fun trying to get you zoomed in. I don't even know where to start, man.
>> I'm going to be honest with you. There's so much.
>> People always need to remember something about markets. It always matters not what the news is, but what people expected and the delta in the news to what people expected. That's what it boils down to. It always is. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about corporate earnings. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about, well, you know, pretty much anything. In this particular case, for whatever reason, people in the market, the rumor was wildly circulating that Trump was going to announce tonight something or last night, something major that would indicate that the straits would get open, that we have a path to peace, yada yada.
>> I thought it was the opposite, by the way. I thought he was going to say ground mission to get this done.
>> Well, okay. But but that that's interesting. So but the market was was clearly pricing in something good. It, you know, oil was on its trajectory, you know, kind of, you know, pushing its way towards one, you know, 105, 106 or so, uh, and and it was went down to like 98 and, you know, at the same time, gold, uh, went up, silver went up. And silver is interesting because silver and Bitcoin have almost been perfectly correlated recently. I don't know if you noticed that, like silver's down 7% today. You know, it's not surprising. It's an industrial. It's become the nuvo industrial metal. And so the fact that silver and Bitcoin are doing, there's nothing Bitcoin about what's happening today. But anyway, Trump comes out and basically repeats his normal talking points. He more or less quoted Truth Social and the markets are like, "Holy [ __ ] he doesn't know what's going to happen." Remember, everyone in the market, in the media market, is very negative on Trump. And so the, it just, it's just that's true. I mean, look, the mass media is against him. Thinks that this is going to be a disaster. If you watch X, Mario's account parades out these supposed experts who don't have a freaking clue. But of course, what do they say? They say that the world is going to end. You're going to have nuclear weapons dropped, all sorts of other stuff. And so Trump comes out and repeats his normal talking points about, okay, we're obliterating this, we're obliterating that, we're winning. You've never seen anything like this before, yada yada yada. And the market's like, "Holy shit." Uh, and it doesn't matter which echo chamber you're in, the echo chamber is saying negative stuff about Trump. So, of course, what's going to happen? And in fact, it's exactly what did. Oil now is at 112, pushing higher. And weirdly, and I've never seen this before, Scott, so I don't know what to make of it. The US West Texas crude is higher than the Brent future. Now, I'm gonna guess because I'm
>> It's been trading like 15, 20 bucks lower.
>> That's right. So, the fact that Brent is lower now, it's probably because they're two different months. I don't know. I'm looking at at Trading Economics for Vegas. I like that view of all the commodities as it puts them all there and you get gold on the same page. But it's, it's weird. I mean, these markets, Gary Cardone said it yesterday on Spaces. He goes, "These markets are weird and it's really hard. The only things that we know for sure are that if oil goes up and we lose control of it, it goes towards 150 or 200, it will trigger a demand shock. It's already doing it. Airplanes, you know, flying is prices have just gone way up. And I'm going on a trip in a couple weeks. We were going to meet somebody and they said, "No, forget it. The the plane tickets are way too expensive, uh, to go." So, you're going to see a big demand shock about that. And put on my economics hat for a second. It's the the fact that people are looking at this as like, oh, well, inflation's going to go up because of oil, so the Fed's going to hike rates or isn't going to cut rates, just proves just how dumb most economists are, certainly the ones in the Fed.
>> It's because it's exactly the opposite. I mean, of what makes
>> Oil is way too elastic, right? That sends you into a recession which gives you cuts, right?
>> We could because we have time here do a history lesson of the. Everyone says, "Well, it happened in the 80s with Volcker." It's like, first of all, that's not true. Uh, it didn't. The oil shock started in '73 and was more or less over long before Volcker got anywhere near the Federal Reserve. What had happened was there was an oil shock. Debt to GDP was way lower. We had a huge recession. Nixon puts in wage and price controls. Before that, inflation was bubbling below the surface already. Inflationary expectations went crazy as inflation from a whole variety of reasons, mostly spending, mostly the fact that we were in Vietnam for a long time and we were doing these social programs, and then you had all the Watergate lack of confidence. And it was the 70s were a very interesting time. People forget, but inflationary expectations by the time Carter was halfway through his office were through the roof and oil was not one of them. That wasn't really the issue anymore and so it had already filtered through. So the notion of hiking rates because of oil, you don't use that as an example. Oil prices up.
>> Volcker had debt. You made the most important point in the like most obvious ones. Volcker had debt to GDP like floating between 25 and 32% or something. Some would argue we're at 130, right? It's not the same environment. He could hike to 20% without crushing the economy.
>> Well, it's not that he couldn't do without crushing the economy. He did crush the economy, but what he did was he starved. People were borrowing to spend. He starved it. people the investment, uh, was in was off the charts and unions were basically demanding, you know, crazy pay raises and unions mattered a lot more back then than they do. Uh, that was before Reagan broke the air traffic controllers and signaled the the decline of union purchasing power in many, many cases. That was when the big three were pitted against the UAW. The UAW was able to destroy them by by picking one off at a time. But the big three isn't is not a big three anymore. I mean, right now, you know, I don't know how many auto manufacturers there are in the US, but it's not three. Uh, so it's much harder. There there are lots of other reasons, but the most important part was that the aggregate demand cut off from that oil shock had dissipated and that's when the inflation rate started to take off. And so the notion that an oil shock, which will cut consumer demand, is going to be inflationary in so far as people asking for jobs. What jobs are people asking for? What raises are people asking for in a world where AI is replacing jobs as fast as it is? It just, it it's just I don't see that. And honestly, it's, it's the bigger problem is the fact that AI is replacing jobs and we have this K-shaped economy because we've had decades of prioritizing capital over labor. By the way, what does AI use? The oil shock could end within a week or two. I I think there will be problems. But I mean, it you can't price in indefinite oil prices rising because of a war that could theoretically end for a tweet that could change everything at any given time, right? So, I I just, yeah, it's not like where you can price in five years of $120 oil.
>> Yeah, I was just looking, my my screen just was
>> I brought up the screen that you had that what you mentioned before because it was really interesting. Right. So Brent here, you can see is kind of consolidating after already hitting the highs and here crude, which I assume is WTI, basically, uh, is ramping up to new highs, which it's actually the for the first time it's kind of a different chart over the past few days. I have no idea why that would be the case.
>> Yeah. None. And well, I guess we'll have to ask, you know, if I was on
>> I would ask Anos from the finance show. Uh, he tends to be the best oil guy that I I hear and listen to in terms of understanding the the nitty-gritty. But the point of all of this is if you can scroll down on that and you see silver down, you know, six and a half percent now. I mean, I guess things are a little bit bouncy here. Um, but you know, look, these the interesting thing about the market is markets like certainty. We always talk about that, right? Now, there are three possible outcomes that people are are trading on and they're literally ignoring, uh, one of them and some people are pricing the second one and the whole market is pricing the one that I think maybe is that they think is the most likely. So let's say, what do they, what what is the market pricing? The market is pricing this drags out for a little while. It ultimately gets resolved in a kind of negative-ish but not horrible way where, you know, oil starts flowing again, geopolitics is between the US and China and we don't care and everyone just kind of retreats into their their bubble of not much has changed, right? You know, the the the notion that not much will change is sort of baked in the cake here with some pain in the interim. That's what the market is pricing. That's, you know, where the malaise is coming from. That's why the S&P is still back where it was last week, you know, that's why it's not really moving because it's not going to affect corporate profits. The market is not pricing in, uh, the absolute disaster scenario where the straits or the oil capacity in the Middle East is bombed into smitherines and oil prices are going to be at 150 to 200 for the next year. The forward curve is not going to be contangled anymore or all that.
>> Or the other one being that, you know, Iran and Oman, I guess, or Iran has permanent control as a toll booth on the streets of Hormuz and can, you know, manufacture those prices.
>> Yeah, well, they wouldn't, I mean, that's not in their interest to do so because, uh, for lots of reasons. First of all, if they did that, then short of bombing the Saudi pipelines and everything else, I mean, the straits would become less important. Also, there's zero probability that that the international, even international law, I mean, they don't own those waters and Oman is on the other side of the UAE is on the other side of it. I mean, it's like all of a sudden every country that can has a gun that can fire into international waters, uh, can control and create a toll booth. Um, I feel like Gandalf, you know, this shall thou shalt not pass. There's no way in hell that I mean, Joe Biden's administration might have let that happen. This one won't and there's nothing Congress could do about it because not no American rational actor would allow that sort of thing to take place. Uh, if so, then that, if if the only way that takes place is if America does something completely, uh, different, which is essentially pull out of all its international obligations, leave NATO, leave all these bases, get get rid of all these bases and, you know, shrink the size of our military or take the dollars from the number of people that are in the forward bases and deploy it into rapid response, you know, kind of quick hitting sort of stuff that have been the military experts have talked about for years, but that would be at a lower budget. This administration doesn't seem even remotely, uh, in interested in lowering the military budget. So that's not going to happen. So you start gaming this stuff out and it gets kind of gnarly. That's why I say kind of status quo to bad is what most people are talking about. What no one is pricing in. No one is pricing in is that eventually they'll find people in Iran who, uh, that the people will accept and that won't be complete theocratic, uh, you know, diehards, you know, zealots and, you know, open up the country. And the question is, is what's what's fascinating about that is, is if you read or talk to experts on the subject of the makeup of the Iranian population, what you get is a vastly different picture than Afghanistan or any of these others. You get a a educated, relatively educated population who does not want to be governed by a theocracy. It's it's wildly unpopular. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of in voters or people, it's it's less than 20%. It's in the 20% range, 20 to 25ish, which more or less is the same as it is in a bunch of other countries, like Israel, for example. Their ultra-religious right is the same rough population that the ultra-religious in Iran, interestingly enough. Obviously different religion. Uh, the difference is in Israel, they are marginalized in the political sphere. There's still a few that talk every once in a while and we hate them. And you and I have had email threads about that. Not email threads, you know, X threads. Yeah.
>> But in Iran, that's the possibility. And and no one's talking about it. Uh, it's almost given a probability the markets of zero. Now, that probab that possibility, if that happens, uh, basically would justify the war. It's the only thing that would actually justify it because the resulting peace dividend by hamstringing the funding to Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis and the people, you know, some of the insurgents in Somali, in Somalia land, not in Somali land, in Somalia, and some of the other places would be massive. I mean, it would be a massive benefit to the world and to humanity, honestly. Is it likely? No, I don't believe it's that likely, but it's not zero. And the markets are pricing it at zero. And that's what's interesting.
>> Yeah. And I guess, you know, to to bring it back home as we always try to do on Smelling Crypto Town Hall to Bitcoin.
>> Uh, it just feels like it's very hard for any crypto-native news to push through the global headlines at this point. I'm literally not even sure what kind of news you could get on Bitcoin right now that would move price massively to the upside.
>> I think that quantum is is the biggest thing that's going on right now. I mean, it didn't flinch yesterday with the Google news, nor should it have, by the way. I mean, it shouldn't have, but that's besides the point. Uh, what is fascinating is none of those three scenarios, none of them is bad for purely financial assets. Now, let's say what I mean. Even the the worst, the disaster scenario, Iran is a toll booth. We do nothing. We have our tail between our legs, etc. All this devastation. You know, the government has even more incentive to print like crazy, right? You know, the the the most likely scenario where we get some sort of status quo, we've destroyed enormous amounts of of property, uh, that will need to be rebuilt around in the region. We'll be part of it. Our military has to be restocked. You're not going to see in the world us to go back to balanced budgets or anything that would increase the confidence in the fiat currencies of all the major countries. That's not going to happen. So the question you have to ask yourself is why are Bitcoin and gold so inversely correlated to oil and why are they reacting this way? And the answer is because right now, what we always talk about is markets are uncertain. And when markets are uncertain, what happens? The big boys pull in their horns. They don't take leverage. Leverage is flushed out of the system. They don't make bets. And so it doesn't matter which bet. They don't make them. And so because you could, a a literal tweet, a Truth Social post, your entire portfolio is exposed to that. And that sort of thing makes any professional money manager nuts. You know, there are some people who who are making good bets. Now, long-term traders, I think, understand what's going on and they're placing their bets. That's why gold is still well above, even after, even after today's 4% drop, it's still, uh, over 4,500. And, you know, we t I talked about this. I mean, McLoone said, "Well, it's going to be on its way to 3,000," which it would if it wasn't for the fact that central banks still want it and people still want a hedge against all this fiat destruction that we see going on. Bitcoin has not benefited nearly as much, but it's still in the same trading range it's been in. So, you know, we'll we'll we'll see. I mean, I I just think that all roads eventually lead here. The question is, there are people who are spooked by quantum and that is holding back money. There's also people who are looking to allocate and are not going to do allocations till this war is over. So, I think you have all of that going on.
>> Yeah. Abby, yesterday's guest, we were talking privately and we didn't really get it onto the show, but he definitely believed that the quantum narrative is holding markets down. There are a lot of people out there who have sold because of quantum fear or more importantly who just aren't going to buy who maybe would have.
>> So the crux of the argument is, let's let's first of all, let's understand what is at risk. Nobody doubts that newer wallets or people who have control of their wallets will get upgraded wallets to be able to handle quantum risk by hiding public keys, etc., etc., or even, you know, newer signatures that are quantum resistant. Not a problem. So 70% of all Bitcoin is not really going to be an issue. Not unless you know, all it just would be completely irrational self-interest for that not to be. And and Nick Carter may say it, but I think that I actually don't think he really says that. But here's what people are afraid of. They're afraid of somewhere between Satoshi's 1 million and, you know, a full 30% of Bitcoin and older wallets won't get upgraded and they'll be stolen, uh, etc. So, ask yourself a question, and this is really a simple one. So, I I did this analysis yesterday. Let me see if I can pull it up. Um, yeah. Oh, damn it. Sorry. All right, here we go. So, I did this analysis yesterday. I asked Grok, I said, "Okay, so when people buy into these big IPOs and the stock trades and there's a huge amount of locked up coins, what happens when anywhere from 5 to 30% of those coins, uh, of that stock gets unlocked? What happens to the price of the stock?" Because, you know, they they didn't know. Now, it the the Bitcoin is different because there are people who think that they're gone forever and that we don't have 21 million, we have 16 million coins, but whatever. But and in the past, when people thought that there was a rumor of a Satoshi wallet, uh, get you know, moving coins, the market would drop 50 or 60%. Today's Bitcoin market is not the same as those markets. Today's Bitcoin market is dominated by people who would say, okay, 16 million, 21 million, what difference does that make really in my long-term price expectation? And the answer is not that much. So if you look at it from the perspective of what would professional people look and you take volatility into account and try to compare it to Bitcoin, what if the bottom line is the scenarios are are this? So I ran a graph, unfortunately, I can't, you can't see it very easily. Or I would present it, but well, I could try. Let's let's try.
>> We'll put it up there.
>> Um.
>> Live TV, man. We can do whatever we want. Okay. Can you see a screen?
>> Yep. One second.
>> Okay. So, this is 10% of the dormant pool, uh, you know, becomes available, right? And you can see the numbers start going higher and higher. So, effectively, the numbers range, and we'll just go all the way out to the bottom. This is the predicted, uh, recovery line. So, go to all the way down to the bottom of this, right? Let's get over here and then, yeah, 100%. So, three and a half million Bitcoin get non-dormant, major shock, 25 to 40% recovery in 6 to 12 months.
>> So that's our worst case.
>> That's your worst case. And that's taking into account Bitcoin's volatility and modeling the way that investors are now. Could that major shock be a wick of 60% down where smart people make a [ __ ] fortune? Yes, it's possible. But your shock, your your equilibrium price will be somewhere between 25 and 40%. And you have six to 12 months to recover. Now, ask yourself, we just had that. We literally just had it and it was coincident with the the quantum narrative starting to circulate. So, is it already priced in? I don't know. Possibly. I think the other addition, just playing devil's advocate, and I actually tend to agree with you, but is the loss of confidence that would obviously impact other people selling.
>> What loss of cost of confidence in what? That's
>> If you saw, if people started seeing, as you mentioned before, in previous markets, if there was even a rumor of a Satoshi wallet becoming unlocked, you would see price drop 50%. So imagine one actually does come unlocked and those tokens sell. How many other people would pile on?
>> Well, well, let's game theory that out, too. I'm saying game theory a lot today because I think that's what matters here. So, first of all,
>> Will could, is it possible that it depends who gets it? So, let's say a Chinese state actor, that's your worst narrative.
>> Let's go with North Korea.
>> Whatever. North Korea, China. What is their their their interest? North Korea is not the worst. China's the worst. North Korea's most important interest, if they hack those coins and get them, is for people not to think it's North Korea. For people not to know who did it and to sell them very gradually and make as much money as possible because if you, if they knew it was North Korea, they wouldn't get nearly as much for their money. They'd be selling it for pennies on the dollar and they wouldn't want it. If it's China, and let's say China decides that we think Bitcoin is a strategic reserve and they don't have one. Frankly, if you think with all the Chinese mining capacity, the Chinese
>> China actually wanted to break it, not profit from it. Worst case.
>> I first of all, if they, but it's not just want to break it. If they think they, they have to believe they can break it. Knocking the price down doesn't help them, right? Especially if it's over after a certain point. So, them dumping the coins on the market matters not. What matters more to them would be overhang and leaving that overhang going. The the the real reality is what is the most bullish thing that could happen to Bitcoin? No one talking about overhang, knowing what the supply is and having a a relatively, um, understood, uh, set of holders. That is the most bullish scenario. That's how you get better adoption. It's what needs to happen. The fact that Satoshi's wallet is is closed and people will always speculate about it is a drag on Bitcoin performance. Arguably a bigger drag than the likelihood of anything that would happen. So my argument is at the other end of all this, without any doubt, the best path to Bitcoin becoming, you talk, people talk about hyperbitcoinization, a Bitcoin standard. There's no way that can happen without these coins becoming part of the available supply and ending up in the hands of people who believe Bitcoin is money.
>> Or there being definitive certainty as to their status that they would never be unlocked. But but think about it. Some of those coins are the dude who lost his his keys in a garbage dump.
>> Yeah. A garbage dump in England. Right.
>> Right. So that dude, he doesn't have that much, but just that dude, how much is he willing to pay the MIT or whoever, Google quantum computer to reverse engineer and hack his coins? And who owns legal right to them? Because that's the thing people aren't talking about. It's like everyone's just assuming dark shadowy hackers are going to get them. Well, if Google is the one who hacks it, do they have actually the right? I mean, if you, this is really simple. Someone leaves their door open in their house and a pile of money inside their their vestibule. If you go in and take it, you're committing crime. You know, it's like if you take, if you literally steal somebody's Bitcoin using a quantum computer, you've committed a theft. Just because you can doesn't mean you will and doesn't mean you won't be prosecuted. Just remember that. It, it, no one is considering any of these things. Everyone's just saying, "Oh my god, oh my god, it's not safe."
>> But it's not the daily users that are that that are problematic. It's not the strategies hoard. It's not Coinbases. It's not IBITS. It's the stuff that was locked. But is it right to steal? And and and you just need to understand that all of this stuff is not being talked about. What I'm saying is right now, there's this dark cloud of uncertainty. Remember, we started this whole show by talking about uncertainty. Got this just creates uncertainty and I think it is suppressing the price, but I think it creates a, it's creating a longer-term buying opportunity for exactly that reason.
>> I I really like that argument. Makes me sleep better my night, so I'll I'll accept it. Um, yeah, I I think that, uh, I I just think that there's a huge, huge misunderstanding, uh, about what the quantum threat is. A lot of people saying it breaks Bitcoin. No, it allows you to unlock coins. Those are two very, very different things. And I think that the market will eventually realize that. But I will say that the quantum narrative has jumped the shark from just being an echo chamber thing to mainstream. And I have heard people who I know in the real world say, "But what about the quantum threat?"
>> Exactly. And that's my point.
>> That's all that matters is narrative.
>> Remember we said this when it talked about oil. It's true with Bitcoin. People hate uncertainty and it's all about expectation. The expectation today is almost as low as it can be. The there are so many people who are not buying and so many people who have sold because they fear the worst. I would say the expectation is pretty close to the worst. The expectation right now among the people who will matter, the marginal buyers or sellers is bad. That the diehards, the people like me or permabulls, you and others are like, you know what, it's not going to matter in the end. And they they believe that there, that this will all get solved in a reasonable way. But the truth is that a lot of quantum is already, a lot of the impact has already been seen. That's the fact. And if you don't understand that, then you're you're not paying attention to why it's the same reason. Why is oil not at 200? How many people did you hear two months ago said if the Straits of Hormuz gets closed for any length of time, oil is going to rocket to 150 and 200. Now, it may be that we'll get there. But the expectation was always from the day that the war started that that could happen. But it's not happening right. And why it's because people's expectations. Remember, it costs $55 a barrel to produce a barrel of oil. So, you know, obviously the farther you go above that, 112 is double or literally double. You know, how much do you go beyond double based on on temporary things and the and need to bid against others for what is scarce in the short run because you can't get it right? Remember, it's like you have to bid, you're you're outbidding for it. You have to be able to get it somehow. And the oil supply, the problem is is the Saudis can't get their oil. So the only people who can get their oil out to China, Venezuela, the United States, places that don't go through the straits.
>> Y.
>> So there's outbidding for that. That's what's going on.
>> So I want to talk about another topic that you got in a heated debate about yesterday that I think is really interesting and we haven't really unpacked at all on this show. So I I have your tweets here kind of with Josh Mandel, who you know, uh, I've communicated with quite a bit. Eric Weiss, who's a friend of mine, but it started with people and companies rehypothecating Bitcoin or the primary reason it isn't already 250,000 per Bitcoin. And to give the TLDR, we have basically this narrative that paper Bitcoin, all the products around it are what's suppressing price. And I think it's fair to say you took issue with that.
>> Well, it's completely wrong. I mean, you know, it I mean, it is it is insanity. You know, look, I've been reading GATA, GATA in the World Gold Council for over two decades. And they have made the argument, and I I believe it is somewhat true, that at times gold has been manipulated and suppressed, silver has been manipulated and suppressed. They make the argument that it's perpetual long-term suppression. Most of the the the public, the sort of if you go to the Gros of the world and the other things of the world to try to assess their statement, they put that at between a 20 and 40% probability. I'll even say, let's just stipulate to the fact that it's true. There's a huge difference between gold and Bitcoin and it's a massive difference, Scott, and it's the one that no one ignore that no one even talks about. Gold's dealers price their inventory off of futures. Meaning, you could knock the futures down and continue to sell futures and then it goes to the next contract to the next contract. You never have a tether to the spot market. There isn't one. Gold miners sell spot and yes, they do forwards and some of that is different and I've had gold miners yell at me and I'm sure some of them will get on here and say, you don't know the gold market works and I'm like, I understand enough. The gold miners probably do have spot markets that are divorced from the futures market, which is why the go the people say the GATA stuff, the price suppression is only 20 to 40%. But gold dealers like Apex.com because I've talked to them. I know the guys there. They use the futures market to do all the the bullion selling. So the the futures markets are really important in gold. In the case of crypto, perpetual swaps and futures both move with spot, full stop. If spot moves, futures and per get. In the case of per, it's immediate liquidation only track. I mean, they have a mark.
>> And every quarter futures expire. Every expiration, every month futures expiration is off of the volume weighted average of spot markets. So you cannot just roll a futures paper position. It's based on spot. That is a massive difference. So that takes out the whole futures and perpetuals being biased against or for Bitcoin. At times it's true and we've seen it. We saw it a couple years ago where futures were trading at a perpetual premium. When at that that happens, that keeps that allows the the spot price to continue to move higher. We see when futures go to a discount, spot does get under pressure. It does happen. Some rallies or bare markets are driven by futures. Well, we definitely do liquidation cascades and pers that affect temporarily spot markets.
>> Well, generally the liquidation cascades and per are triggered by the spot markets. What people are doing, and I've I've explained this in detail. I have a post that explains it in detail, an article I wrote.
>> Where, uh, what happens is people buy long spot position, short per position, and they amass it over a period of weeks. So it's big and they do it closely slowly and then they dump the spot position in an illiquid time, which causes per liquidation cascade and then the pers will flush wick below it, but at the end of the day, it's spot that's doing it. So spot, spot, spot, that's what drives the price in the end. Herbs can have wiggles around it, but in order to suppress it, you have to believe that somehow you can sell spot. Now, IBIT is spot.
>> So their argument, they have to buy Bitcoin. They have to buy Bitcoin.
>> So their argument is, is you can borrow and rehypothecate IBIT and therefore sell more of it. Okay. Well, let's look at talk about how that works. In order to sell IBIT shares, you have to borrow them. Borrowing IBIT shares has, it's it's not as trivial as it sounds, but you can do it. You can only borrow what's been created, right? You know, this whole notion of rehypothecation, yeah, there is some where you can get to the, the worst is like 140%. 40% more IBIT being sold is not, first of all, it's not structural. It can get to that and it's only in hard to borrow names, which it's not. So it's just by the data, not happening. And the notion that you could sell IBIT without having to borrow it is just nuts. It's just wrong. And in fact, what the mark and market makers, the only ones who have any wiggle room, and that's a three-day extra wiggle room because of the market maker exemption. Market makers don't make directional bets if they're selling IBIT.
>> No, they're selling and buying. They're creating the spread. That's the entire point.
>> That's right. It's just, it's just not the business. And look, I ran a market maker. And so when some jacked up fixed income trader who had a dream and called one day's price correctly, uh, you know, tells me that someone who believes gold was going to be at 16,000, you know, last December, you know, tells me that I don't know how the markets work. I mean, you could tell me my price predictions are wrong. Sure, fine. I'm I'm wrong as much as the next guy. I totally was too bullish on Bitcoin. I totally didn't didn't capture the quantum narrative and the effect of it was going to happen. I definitely believed that October 10th would be shorter lived or less sha or shallower than we thought. I got that wrong. But on market structure and market mechanics, okay, whatever. I mean, there there are few people in the world who I will talk to about it that are equals. Josh Mandel's not one of them. And I I don't care how many followers he has because like Martin Luther King, he had a dream. I'm sorry. It's just wrong. And
>> Was that 84,000 Bitcoin? Was that the thing? I like that.
>> Yeah. Yeah, it was the 84,000 and then the 444 prediction.
>> And frankly, you know, I I actually think that it's it it was good for Bitcoin to get that kind of people's, you know, interest in it. The truth is that even if you look at what he says, he's not taking into account the different volatility dynamics in Bitcoin as it matures. And so, we could talk about that, but that's arguable. What's not arguable is this notion that there is a market that is divorced from the spot market that's driving Bitcoin down. What's driving Bitcoin down is more sellers than buyers and a lot of people who say, "I thought Bitcoin was this indomitable perfect risk into the future. Now I'm worried about quantum. What's driving Bitcoin down is a lot of people saying I have lives to live and I need and I took money out."
>> I agree. I think, you know, listen, I think people don't have money. That's that's number one, right? So there's either you have dry powder and you're kind of excited as Tilman said, or you have no dry powder, so you're emotionally upset that you can't buy this low and maybe wanted to go lower, and it just is what it is. But all of these things just compound. I think for a normie investor who maybe had a superficial thought to buy Bitcoin to just say, not now, just not buying this thing now. There's quantum. Is it destroying the environment? Is Elizabeth Warren right? Does, you know, North Korea going to hack my coins? Is quantum a threat? The same old recycled FUD, right?
>> Yeah, I don't think so. I think that that there's a lot of the recycled stuff. I I think the normie investors are are listening to their financial advisors and they're, as as Matt Hogan will tell you and has told you, they are migrating towards more of a position than a portfolio. I think these weeks right now, there is none of that. Nobody's doing anything. I mean, and if they are doing it, they're raising cash because they're afraid. People in mo, we always say this, this is a slower motion version of this. We always talk about it. When markets all fall, correlations go up.
>> Yep.
>> Right. So crude oil at 112 causes silver to drop from 75 to 70. Right. Bitcoin to drop from 68 to 65. Actually performing better than silver, right? You know, you see the stock indexes are are, you know, down anywhere from almost 2% on the NASDAQ to, you know, a little over a percent.
>> I It used to be that the dollar was inversely correlated to all these things and now it's oil that's in the driver's seat, which, you know.
>> Well, yeah, I mean, that's true, but, you know, if you look at the the Dixie is usually the flight to safety and I guess the dollar is doing better. It's up half a percent today.
>> Um, but, you know, it's up half a percent. The pound is getting crushed, continues to, right? I'm just looking down the the thing. The Japanese yen is actually stronger against the dollar, but that's because it's up against its artificial ceiling the BOJ has at 160. But the point here is, is we're in a period of time of uncertainty. What is and the reason Bitcoin is probably holding in better than people would have expected with all of this is because why do people buy Bitcoin? Because we don't trust the system. And if the system is going to fall apart and this is this is stresses in the system showing that it could fall apart. What do you want to own? Obviously, in the beginning, uh, you know, you know, you want to own anything that doesn't lose you money and then people start looking for how to make money. So the real question is, what happens when there's an aftermath and is there an aftermath or is this a a forever war? That's the real question. And there are a lot of people this morning after listening to Trump think it's a forever war. And if we're still at war with Iran in four years, yeah, there's there will be a very bumpy ride over the next four years.
>> Yeah. I mean, the takes are kind of the same. I mean, circling back, I'd highlighted this before, but as you said, he effectively reread his recent social media posts out loud. And there was just sort of no new news. And I think a lot of people were like, if we're getting an address from the president at 9:00 that the world's going to tune into, there should be an announcement, right? And I think that that's why people are just kind of confused. I mean, you know, uh, we can go through, we get the idea, right? I mean, we know what happened here, but yeah, the summary, two to three weeks, but then no definitive answer on what happens after two to three weeks, right? Are we nation building? Are we not nation building? We may take out their plants, we may not. You know, we won't use this.
>> When the president of the United States talks about about geopolitics the way that people do in bars, you you have a situation where the world doesn't know what's going on. I mean, in the bar, I mean, if you go to a bar after 9/11, it would be very common to hear people say, "We should bomb those people back to the Stone Age, right?" You know, if you were, you know, if you're, you know, a few beers in and, uh, and and people start talking about people you don't like, oh, bomb them back to the Stone Age. Here we have the president of the United States on live TV saying it. I mean, do we live in a simulation? Yeah. I mean, maybe you know what I will say is it's, you know, he he's talking through, he's he's using those words carefully in order to rally his base and the common American who's like, you know what, enough is enough. But I don't think common Americans have been affected by these people that much, except for the ones who live in Minnesota, um, you know, except for the ones who live in Dearborn, Michigan, right? You know, to get mad enough and it's like, what, what is happening? I mean, you know, what has Iran done over the years? They funded terror. Has terror done bad [ __ ]? Yes. Has it affected Americans? Yes. Does it affect allies? Yes. Is it a drag on the global economy? And when I say allies, everyone thinks I mean only Israel. Let's be really clear here. The UAE and Saudi Arabia.
>> All of them as allies in the speech last night. I mean, he said Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates. He was very clear about that.
>> No, it's very true. I mean, it's very true. I mean, I mean, Dubai is it's a, the longer this goes on, if it if it stays that that that piece in the middle, that status quo piece where Iran continues to have power, etc. That is horrible for the UAE. It's horrible for Dubai. No one will trust that they'll be safe, right? The obvious, you know, worst answer is bad, too. They need a resolution where the people can go back and invest and be and turn Dubai back into what it was quick. Close. I mean, look, let's let's face it. Dubai was becoming, uh, arguably the one of the financial capitals of the world and has the potential to be that, but can't do that if the people there think that Iran could decide to send a drone swarm and take out all their water.
>> Yeah.
>> And it's just, it's it's very important to understand. Saudi Arabia, same thing. If all their oil is held hostage or a huge percentage of is held hostage by Iran and they could be and Riyadh could be threatened, same thing. So it's a very big deal. In fact, the issue they have far bigger issues than Israel does. Israel is a is an existential issue. Yeah. There's seven million people there.
>> Oh, the direct impact to the neighbors is much greater than right immediate.
>> The impact to Israel is if they ever lose a war to Iran, 7 million people are genocided. That that's the that.
>> Or like the nuclear Iran in theory, and you know, they they.
>> Well, well, nuclear Iran and nuclear Israel is, I mean, better read up on the impact of nuclear win.
>> But like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia not having clean water tomorrow.
>> Is a big deal.
>> Oh, seriously. But but that's the point here. I mean, and so people don't want to think about that. I mean, obviously I think about it, obviously everyone in crypto does because we all have friends that live.
in Dubai. We all have friends that live in the Middle East. We all have we know because they've been it's been one of the epicenters of our industry thanks to Gensler who pushed it all over there.
So, you know, which is the last story you haven't mentioned, which is the Clarity Act, you know, clown show, >> right? >> Yeah. I didn't I was going to go to something more positive, which was the Franklin Templeton basically acquiring I can't understand the mechanics of this no matter how many times I ask, but I'm friends with Chris Perkins who was on recently and Seth Gins who's been on the past, so I'll just ask him at some point.
But, uh, the TLDDR firm or did he leave his firm? >> I can't figure it out. Like, is >> I was hoping the same thing because I know Chris as well. I'm not a friend, but I know him. Franklin Templeton is buying 250 digital which I think is a part of Coin Fund. Although some of the articles kind of present it as if this is a joint venture between Frank Templeton and Coin Fund, but Chris and Seth both sort of in their language said we're leaving Coin Fund to go to Franklin Templeton, but they are Coin Fund. So, and the liquid assets of Coin Funds portfolio and that portfolio is coming with them. Maybe that's 250 digital.
Either way, Franklin Templeton, who's long been one of the most bullish institutions on crypto and has been building in this space forever. You've guys I've had Sandy call on the on on the show many times. She's absolutely brilliant. Clearly making a much bigger push in that direction and not worried about the price of oil while doing it.
>> Well, I mean, yeah. I mean, look, you don't make investment decisions on the basis of short-term things if you're a builder. If you have to, if you're if you're thinking about what's going to make me the most money as a company over the next three to five years and what's going to make me and and what can I talk to my investors about my plan, then you plan for three to five years. If you're planning for the next quarter, yeah, you have to worry about these things. So, if it's as an investment manager, you invest, you know, your your liquid assets have to care, but your illquid assets, no, you you don't care.
Now I I I'm cur the reason I was curious about Chris is because one of the assets that they have is some intellectual property around uh measuring you know onchain uh uh rate determination right that that's >> I read very specifically that the liquid fund itself is being consumed by Franklin Templeton but I obviously can't speak to the IP or the other businesses >> but that IP is is potentially very interesting in in an onchain world >> and you know it's just there's a lot of that that IP becomes very important and just for those who understand it's like you everyone knows you know what sofur is or if you don't then maybe you remember liebore from the old days but the notion of a reference rate that can be used by all participants is very important and Chris was developing that for >> that's one of the big problems for getting ETFs approved if people don't remember I mean not specifically but that you know a market of sufficient size but then the what was it called the agreement surveillance >> surveillance that's true has a different price than Coinbase has a different price than, you know, Bitstamp. How do you, you know, price the ETF and make sure that it's actually tracking what's your actual, you know, S&P has been working on this for crypto. Uh, Galaxy obviously created their fund for benchmarks. Bloomberg for these exact same reasons. You have to have a price to reference.
>> Yep. I mean, look at Coin Route. So when the very first thing I did was I created this thing called our cost calculator which at every single second can tell you aggregated across whichever exchanges you think should fit what it would cost to buy or sell specific amounts dollar values of uh of of any crypto. And so you know all our algos know roughly where the price is always but we don't publish it. We're not a we're not a benchmark provider. It's a different data. It's a data thing. Kiko has something similar to that and they do that and other people have done it.
>> All this intellectual property is going to become very important because in in distributed markets it's it takes market data collection and makes it into a different problem. But you know that's going down you know that's that that is uh that's when you really go down that rabbit hole. So and that's not a rabbit hole that anyone really cares about. But what matters at the Franklin Templeton news is it's more proof. Like I'm I am uh moderating a panel at Security Traders Association. Yes, the word securities is in the title in New York uh in a couple weeks on the the the Monday the 13th. And we have a panel I'm moderating a panel on the perspective of traditional financial firms and what does it mean uh as they start moving into more and more digitalization, tokenization, etc., etc. We have another full panel on crypto firms and how they are embracing traditional assets and how their technology is working, how their market structure is because they are as difference. It's a convergence, right? These things are coming together. Uh we also have a two other fire sides, one with zeroash and another uh with uh the New York Stock Exchange talking about tokenization and all of it. So it is a huge deal in traditional finance. It is what a lot of people are looking at. This is not a small thing. This is moving aircraft carriers. This isn't this isn't speedboats, right? These these things are this is what's going on in Iran is not going to change that. That is happening.
And even Elizabeth Warren's anti-crypto army, she's really, if you've listened to her recently, not that I it makes turns my stomach to have to listen to the [ __ ] like the wealth tax stuff. And I I I'm sorry. I just the lack of the amount of innumeracy and lack of economic knowledge is crazy. If you want to talk about that, I can I can explain. But her tone is much more about things that I really don't disagree with. I mean, we shouldn't be able to issue memecoins if you're in politics and could affect it. You should have we should have insider trading rules for crypto. Sure, I agree with that. You know, we want to make sure that things can't be stolen. Now, of course, in her case, it it all it always devolves into shrewish behavior that has nothing to do with the technology and protecting the banks, but you know, there really hasn't been the the well, this technology is terrible. We don't want to use it anymore. >> Yeah. >> When Jamie Diamond tells you says crypto rails are better, >> it's game over.
>> Yeah. I mean, we've also, you know, the a lot of the recycled FUD of past even from Elizabeth Warren has actually died. Bitcoin miners boiling the ocean and >> oh >> things like that right so so we are advancing >> um and I think to your point she's right about a lot of things but they need to apply to everything and not just crypto so an ethics law for uh crypto that doesn't apply to insider trading of stocks by Congress is uh is non-starter >> I I have made this point till I'm blue in the face not that anyone will ever listen to me but should there be a blanket ethics rule for all elected officials yes of course there should anyone who works in the DoD or on the a staffer on the financial on the the armed services committee be allowed to buy and sell Rathon? Of course not. You know, bankers have harder big every bank out there has rules.
>> Oh my god, they're so strict. And but >> I was there for years. Believe me, I know how strict. I can tell you right now that uh that argument against crypto, it's very specific to Trump, so it will last, but it's coming to prediction markets near you and it's going to be a much bigger debate there because they're so much less regulated, so much easier to use and people are going to be able to buy positions there on insider information with basically nobody watching for a while until they try to get their heads wrapped around it. So, that's where that behavior is going to shift in my opinion. Oh, you're you're you're so spot on. That's exactly right. But the whole thing is look, the whole the whole all of Washington is is corrupt. I mean, the corruption is off the charts. Like, you know, Elon found it and and and his his band of merry men started figuring out how much fraud there is. How much NGO money gets recycled back into political campaigns which get used as slush funds for kids, you know, their kids' weddings and, you know, where they eat and all the other stuff. It's it's insane. So much money. not just political campaigns but also consulting fees and other sorted, you know, arrangements from NOS's that are partially funded by the federal and state governments. I mean, it's crazy.
And then we we get what we're seeing with the Clarity Act where the banks somehow where where the the administration and the Congress say words like, "Well, we need a a compromise between the banks and the crypto industry." No, you don't. You're public servants. You you build you should build laws that work for the people. Did you see anyone saying the public savers committee is is is negotiating with the the whatever for protecting their rights? It's like no. Let's call it what it is. the lack of paying yield on stable coins is there's this this big Hoover, you know, big vacuum cleaner pulling into the pockets of America and just sucking out tens of billions of dollars at a time because the they the people have to use payment systems that don't pay them interest and they have to keep it in the in near there so they can get it there in a moment's notice lest they not be able to pay their bills. I mean, it's insane, Scott. It's just it it's taken money in politics to such a bare level that that anybody can understand it when the banks have such a strong seat at the table. It's crazy.
>> But that's where we're at. >> I mean, I guess we we you you mentioned it before. We have eight minutes, so usually we're wrapping by now, but this is fun. We can talk about clarity. So, obviously, we had this yesterday. I can tell you privately that this uh set the world on fire because it was kind of is it fake news or is it not? if you listen to the interview. So the headline Coinbase Paul Greywell says Clarity Act issues will resolved in 48 hours. I corrected it below uh saying that he said I'm very confident we're going to see progress when asked if it was this would be done in 48 hours but uh clearly Coinbase and Paul Greywall never came out right and said hey 48 hours this thing will be done. But uh the confusion I can just say came from the Chiron. Coinbase expects Clarity Act deal on rewards within 48 hours. So Fox News threw that up. It caused a big stir. Um either way, Coinbase not thinking, by the way, that this is going to get done in 48 hours, but a lot of people saying that there is major progress here towards it getting done. I still view this as a quagmire, but would be really unsurprised to be proven wrong and happily eat my words if
>> Yeah. I mean, I feel the same way. Look, my point of view on on the Clarity Act and where we're currently at is the bigger deal is going to be the ethics provision. Yeah, >> I think that that if you're in crypto and you understand that that Kraken's gotten the skinny Fed license and all of these crypto firms will be banks and you understand that they have the ability to create technology that won't in a product but could effectively mirror what needs to be done so that you don't have to hold stable coins for any length of time. Right? I mean, the problem is US Treasury Bent's going to wake up and say, "Wait a minute. What's going to happen here isn't good for us because the US Treasury wants is people to hold trillions of dollars in stable coins." That's what they want. Why? Because they're going to buy US treasuries, right? So, they want that. What's going to happen is people are going to hold maybe a trillion, maybe hundreds of billions in stable coins and they're going to have investments that can be very rapidly moved back and forth from state, you know, to be used for payments and those investments don't are no longer limited to US treasuries. That is the that the trajectory we're on right now is that trajectory to where you will have deposit accounts that might hold treasuries, sure, but they're going to have to compete with Bitcoin. They're going to have to compete with STRC. They're going to have to compete with high yield funds. They're going to have to compete with crypto funds. They're going to have to compete with stock funds because all of these things being tokenized means the velocity of money is increasing. When the velocity of money increases, Scott, that means that the amount of money, the $7 trillion that are sitting in payment accounts, I mean, are gone. A CD will be a thing will literally be RIP CD. There's no need for a CD. Why lock it up for six months to get the yield? Other people will give you that yield without six months lock up and that'll all be it'll all be tokenized and you can move it like that. That's the problem for the banks right here because the speeding up of the technology if they lose control of being the gatekeepers of all payments. If you can Venmo, PayPal, etc. and or write checks effectively from an account at Coinbase, Kraken, or Robin Hood that there's no reason to hold money in bank deposits anymore. And so that's the thing that's a far bigger deal. It's actually perverse, but allowing stable coin yield, which might be anti-compet which might make the banks lose, you know, make less money is far better for their long-term health than forcing the industry to the next level of of where it's going.
>> Correct. You would you would rather make a little less but keep the customer than lose all the customers.
>> Right. And and that is what's happening. We have seen this story before. We have we've seen it in the financial markets, right? We saw the way, you know, people used to pay commissions to trade stocks for retail customers. I remember financial consultants used to make there were these ads. I remember the Smith Barney ads with the guy on the yacht, the first Charles Schwab ad when they came in with you $10 commissions, which is you whatever they they had the the old broker sitting on his yacht and they and the argument was the caption was, "Would you rather the broker may have the yacht or do you want to be able to make your way toward toward toward that kind of wealth?" That was the world and it got lost. It it eventually it it went to zero literal zero. I'm not saying the same thing happens to the banks because but you don't need there's much less need for the current way a fractional reserve banking than people think in with mobile capital flows etc. But you just got to once again game it out what will happen. And as things get faster and faster, investments will compete on the merit of investments and payments will become a much smaller piece of the overall pie. That doesn't mean that a cash account that's paying yield that's backed by US treasuries is going to go away. They won't. Those money market funds are going to do well. It'll just be tokenized money market funds like like Frank and Templeton has the Benji, right?
>> That will do very very well. I did see that a lot of coin funds deal is paid in Benji.
>> Why not? >> Yeah, >> why not? It's a highpaying >> very safe in tokenized asset that pays a a solid yield and is immediately movable back and forth into whatever else you need it.
>> Yeah, that's what it is. >> And it can be used as a stable coin. Very simple.
>> Well, not No, no, they don't use that word >> because of the legal side of it. But >> but what the bottom line is is this the >> not a war continue to make the statement that the banks are shooting themselves in the foot and they don't even know it because they're not smart enough.
>> Yeah, that's I mean Chris John Carlo made that argument to me. He was like the real story of the Clarity Act is that the banks need it more than the crypto industry because they you know they they really are under the uh law and the regulator and they need to know exactly what they can and cannot do getting into this industry that they want to be a part of. So maybe it actually, you know, listen, right now if Cody Act never passes, there's a lot of things you just mentioned that maybe become vague, but one thing we know is that you can still get a yield on Coinbase and that the banks will have less participation in the industry.
>> Yeah. No, it's dead true. Look, I I I you know, I I personally care because the M&A activity that is likely to happen uh is still being held up by clarity and that matters to me because, you know, I'm you know an owner in coin routes and the the technology matters and there and the banks don't have it. So, I I would love for this to get resolved and then we'll see where things go. Uh you know, some people are are already figuring out that that this is going to happen. and it's inevitable. But, you know, look, we're in a we're in an uncertain world. There is the real question. What we didn't talk about, but you and I talked about last on Crypto Town Hall is what the hell does this mean for non-Bitcoin crypto assets? And my answer is going to be the same. Tokens that can demonstrate revenue and participation by token holders in revenue will eventually become very, very good investments. Tokens that can't will eventually die. I think it's as simple as that. And that scares the hell out of people because, you know, when you go from, in the case of the internet, eyeballs to money, it's always a a rocky chasm. In the case of of crypto, when you go from this attention economy or TVL or whatever, and just say, well, but the total addressable market is so huge, we're going to get a big piece of it, it's like, great, show me the way. And some will. That's the thing. That's the thing that's interesting. Some will and the ones that do will be worth quite a bit and some won't and they will be historical curiosities like I don't know what the what the how the owners of LOS did or ask Jeeves did but I don't know which cryptos are ask Jeves but I think quite a few of them are
>> yeah but if they are they probably uh founders are going to be on yachts without the product ever being delivered >> well that's the other >> use and losos for a while >> I mean the other topic that that people could talk about in terms of regulation and and we'll probably bring it up is the biggest difference in crypto and and securities is crypto you can get immediate liquidity and in securities it's a ridiculous process. The truth is the world is better off if it's somewhere in the middle.
>> Yep. Totally agree. All right, we hit 10 o'clock. I think we unpacked it all. Dave, see we now that we're crypto on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we have to find things to do on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
>> Well, I'm still finishing off my book. We're going to have uh I I'm going to be getting you a copy uh of the first draft. Yeah. Well, it's the the rough draft of the all chapters is written now, so it's done. Uh right now I'm at, you know, we're just south of 80,000 words. It's there, you know, it's it what' you say?
>> That's a real book.
>> Oh, yeah. No, it's it's it's a it covers uh basically a 20-year period from 85 1985 through 2005. Actually goes I I hit I kind of scratch into 2008. So it's 23 years uh of how markets have changed, what were the learnings and all the high jinks, all sorts of stuff that that you know funny stories about things that went on to illustrate Wall Street. It's it's meant to be, you know, beach reading but with some actual alpha buried in the pages. So you know, we'll see. But that's what I'm wearing. It's called Million-Dollar Fat Boys for those who are watching. And uh there's there's a website we'll start I'll start promoting it for a mailing list, whatever. But John Wy and Sons is publishing it, so I'm not handling the PR, the distribution. So,
>> we'll see.
>> Man, I can't wait to read it and we'll push the hell out of it here.
>> All right, man. Well, thank you as usual, and I'll see you on CryptoTown all tomorrow, 10:15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. The rest of you, I'll see you tomorrow here at 9:00 a.m. Thanks, Dave, as always, guys. Give him a follow on his actually new Twitter account, which is linked down below. We'll get into that another day, but till then, we will see you tomorrow. Thanks, Dave. Bye, guys.
>> That's dope. Hey, let's do