Transcription
A Bitcoin insider, aka CZ, has revealed what he thinks is the single thing that's holding back crypto adoption. We're going to talk about exactly what that is, and of course, everything that is happening in markets right now. We might even talk about everything that happened on Macro Monday yesterday. Although I could just move on with my life and probably never discuss that again and be perfectly comfortable. But what fun would that be? I got Andrew and Tilman. Let's go.
Let's do [music] [music] >> Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Scott's Therapy Hour. Uh, I have some bad news. Uh, you guys know that I've been angling for a LaCroix sponsorship, and I finally got in touch with them. They were willing after seeing my love for Black Raspberry. And yesterday, they said there were too many f-bombs per second, and that I'm no longer family-friendly enough for their brand. So, bad news there. Uh, but we're going to keep going. That one cost me a lot. I've got Andrew and Tilman. Good morning, gentlemen.
>> That was a strong, hard open.
>> You know, I just, you know what I do? I just wing it and I hope for the best. And that one was fine. It went well. I would just like to say that Andrew, you supported me. [laughter]
>> I, I enjoyed today's Macro Monday. So, probably, uh, do an entire show on bad takes >> about yesterday. But I love being a part of something that the internet grabs because I was there >> and then watching them like parse it and try to try to try to figure it out.
>> Um, [clears throat] >> it's the enjoying of of of that moment is kind of a good understanding of the difference between boomers and Gen X, right? Like boomers finally lose it, their top blows off, and they end, they end up dropping f-bombs and just clicking exit on the on the screen, right? And but boomers are like, and Gen Z is like, Gen X is like, this is cool. I, I'm enjoying this more, more conflict. Okay.
>> Yeah. But then Gen Z is like, "Oh, he entered his safe space." >> And he violated his pronouns. I don't know. Like, I, I, what I saw being an almost 50-year-old man, I saw two dudes who grew up like in the actual world >> kind of lose their [ __ ] and then move on with their lives.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> I think it signals, I think it is the bottom. I think that is the actual point where we know we've reached the bottom. You know, it's like the blow-off top. You need a signal. That's the signal. I think, you know, bottom line is, is it was the most entertaining show that you've had in a long time, and I don't know how we're going to top it anymore. That's the standard.
>> In fact, I have bad news. I hired a private investigator to do some very deep digging on the two of you, and I'm going to be bringing it all out so you can fight later. [laughter]
>> Believe what Andrew said about you, Tilman.
>> This is, this is, this is amazing. We're finally gonna get into content that I enjoy. Okay, let's, let's start throwing fish. Well, when I first told you about Karate Combat, you were like, "Get me in that." So, I know you've got a little bit of >> Listen, there's, there's a little D1 football player in me that wants to come out, even though I'm 45 and way beyond that at this point, but >> yeah, [clears throat] like to the world, people lose their cool sometimes.
>> Yeah, of course.
>> Mike, Mike apologized. I have no idea if Larry accepted or whatever. But what I found so interesting is like how unified, there's like, people are literally like hashtagging Team Larry and stuff. Fine, but like, how unified Bitcoin maxis will be, no matter what. Like, a guy said something bad about my thing, like, and somebody screamed in his face. Yes. Right. And so, listen, I, I like Larry. I like Mike. We're, we're all good. Like, I've, I've had it out. I've talked to where everybody's fine, but man, like, I was very surprised at how like emphatic the defense was. And by the way, like, anyone who wants me to get rid of Mike, like, bye. Sorry. Like, Mike, Mike McLoughlin is a fundamental party starter that show, and they're freaking out that I would have a TradFi guy on a macro on a Bitcoin podcast, and it's literally called Macro Monday. Listen, if you don't have people around you that challenge you to think, and if you don't think into emotion, then you're not challenging yourself, and your thesis is enough. I mean, investing is hard. You, you get, you get blinders on all the time without knowing it. That, you know, um, having somebody that speaks truth to you from their vantage point. And he made a lot of great points. They were both right on a lot of fronts. Who knows, really, is the point. Both theses are, are, are valid as, as far as I'm concerned. I, I do think that they both come from, you know, wildly different schools of thought, but it's no different than if you get into a debate with Peter Schiff, expect there to be wildly differences, you know, of opinion. There's just that's just the nature of the beast is first, you know, where they, where they lay their head at night. And I think at the very beginning of the show, and at the very beginning of the argument, uh, the, the most sound kind of rebuttal to Mike's points were, what time frame are you working on? And I think that was what it always boils down to is like, you can be a trader. I can be talking to you about what's going to happen in the markets, and if I'm talking to you about a different time frame, we could be talking over each other and really not be hearing each other. And that's a frustrating thing in any, you know, debate or conversation. Here's the point. Everybody's friends in the crypto space. There's not that many people, so we all have to eventually get along. And to your point, don't rob the, the rest of the audience just because there's a few uncomfortable moments. Uncomfortable moments are what, uh, actually are the most important things in your life, you know. And I, it's reminiscent of being at home during like Thanksgiving and trying to tell people about crypto early on. So, this is, this is a, a familiar, familiar setting for most people.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. And for me, you know, listen, Mike serves a, an important purpose, um, having to do, again, with the macro part of Macro Monday. You know, it, it, the show is
>> Yeah. Yeah. Thought it was Maxi Monday.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I was just about to say the show's not called the show's not called Bitcoin Monday, >> right? So, so it's Macro Monday and serves a purpose associated with metals and the movements in, you know, traditional markets and and and all of those things, right? You know, his concerns about being, you know, at the top associated with with StratFi markets are reasonable. The, the only issue that I really take with Mike is he's planted a flag with a with a particular um price prediction with Bitcoin at $10,000. By the way, those price predictions, I can tell you, uh, never, never work out. Uh, that, the markets are way too dynamic and love to to make us all, uh, greater fools. Um, it, those, those things never work out. Now, it may be um that we move a little bit lower or significantly lower. That, that's possible. It also may be that Bitcoin does what it's always done and it pulls back and then it goes higher. It pulls back and then it goes higher. It pulls back and then it goes higher. Um, that's probably what's going to happen. And so, you know, the, what I will tell you is what's interesting is people that are anti the crypto space or or or don't like the crypto space. You don't necessarily have to be anti. You just have to not like it as much as you like the next thing. They're much louder in downturns than crypto people are and Bitcoin people are towards TradFi.
>> Things go way higher. No, nobody's going to hit be hitting up my >> Andrew, that crypto's thesis since day one is we're replacing TradFi. Catch us if you can. Screw the man. You know, the both are equal. They're equal tensions that we need. Like tension is good. That's the yin and the yang of the universe. If you don't have the, uh, opposing opinion, you have blind spots. Period. The end.
>> Yeah. No, >> useless if you don't have TradFi to replace, and Macro Monday is useless if you don't have Mike McLoughlin to argue with.
>> That's exactly right. Clarify one thing because this is the problem, is and you see it. This is what I was talking about that when you see it in real time, when you're there, and then you see the clips, and then you see the reactions to the clips, it's, it's not, it's always out of context. Like, anyone who watches Macro Monday knows that Mike always says that there's infinite supply of crypto, but the way it sounded at that moment was he was saying that Bitcoin itself has infinite supply, which he's obviously aware is not the case. He believes that all crypto are in competition with Bitcoin. We argue about it all the time. I think that's a bad take, but the Bitcoin community has latched on thinking that Mike literally doesn't know there's 21 million Bitcoin.
>> Well, the point >> the, the point that you made, uh, in that moment, I think was was really prescient, and it was, I, if you think that, you know, infinite crypto and and somehow, and you made the point that, okay, you didn't say infinite Bitcoin, I don't believe that you believe that, infinite crypto is a problem for all these reasons. Well, if that's the case, that it's no different than TradFi markets. There's infinite versions of IPOs and shares that can be, uh, created out of thin air. That, that, that has been the reality for years and decades and decades and decades. You can take a company public. You can do a SPAC. You can do whatever you want in the traditional markets if you're compliant and create, again, uh, value, quote unquote, out of thin air. It never ends. So, the same principle applies. Um, I said something like that with, uh, Josh from from a couple weeks ago. You know, it was questions about, well, can crypto do, do this, or TradFi do that? I'm like, well,
>> there's an old saying, there's nothing new under the sun. It's just all has different masks on. Uh, it's all the same stuff just repackaged.
>> Repackaged. Diving into it a bit more. Here's what Binance founder CZ says. Just moving on. Lack of privacy is the missing link to crypto payment adoption. Can't even speak today. So he says, "Imagine a company pays employees in crypto on-chain. With the current state of crypto, you can pretty much see how much everyone in the company is paid by clicking the from address." Like, it turns out that, uh, there are some issues with being on a public blockchain, right? Now, I'm not saying that this is really, uh, the key to the bull run, but privacy has become this massive narrative of late. And I think that people conflate the kinds of privacy. So he's talking about obviously sort of like your individual privacy on the blockchain. The right to not having public knowledge of your transactions. I had Chris Giancarlo at the Arch Public booth last week, and he went pretty hard on actually all the bad parts about the Genesis Act because it doesn't protect any privacy. And then there's the Canton network privacy where the DTCC and Citadel are like, "We can't broadcast our million stock orders to the entire world." Like, obviously our orders and those things need to be private. So, we maybe have a privacy problem, but that said, it's becoming a narrative. Like, the, the world is healing.
>> Well, I don't know why there's a problem because there's a solution to all of those narratives. I mean, if you need privacy, there's plenty of chains that offer privacy. Um, there's data chains that offer privacy as well. So, I don't think that that is a, a technical problem that needs to be solved. There is a problem as it pertains to, you know, it's no different than cash. The same problem exists in cash. Again, nothing new under the sun. There is this money that is used for bad things by bad people. And what we've done as a society is put a lot of on-ramps and off-ramps that make it difficult for those people to live normal lives. No different than when you go buy a car. You can't walk in with cash and slam it on the table and walk out with a car. They make you prove where you got the money from. And so, there's, there's already systems in place on the off and on ramps. You, I don't think you need to get rid of cash because of those problems. You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? U, in this example, I would just say that there's always going to be criminals. There's always going to be people that are finding unique ways to hide their criminal activity, but they're, they're no different than the ways that exist today. Um, blockchain and crypto do provide a lot of control access for backdoor, you know, government agencies, for example, to have the only backdoor key to unlock the encryption. There's lots of ways to try to safeguard or try to improve upon the existing system, but they also are entangled with a lot of unintended consequences, right? You know, the, the big brother state and the fear that that induces as it pertains to misuse of that information. That's a, that's a real concern. I think everybody should be concerned with that. But that's why blockchain and and proof of work and all these things are so powerful because they're run by a, a global network of peop of participants that don't need permission, don't need anything other than, you know, the protocol and and the kind of the rules of how to engage. [snorts]
>> Is there any bad takes on privacy we can fight about?
>> No, it's actually kind of boring. I want to get back to the, to the fight from yesterday. Um, I actually thought that, uh, um, [laughter] actually thought, um, again, that Mike did a good job. I mean, Mike was, Mike was explaining his thesis, and he, he held his, uh, you know, composure also after the fact. You know, he was, he was quick to apologize. And the reality is, is, you know, there was a little bit of a lag, and maybe there was a little bit of snark involved in his comments, but, um, that's, that's the right way to handle things. And I thought you guys did a good job. I also very much enjoyed the squeamishness of Dave, the, the, for, for most of that portion of the show. Dave was like, "I don't know what to say," and I'd like to, you know, exit stage left. Lawrence, can I come with you?" Um, but that didn't, that didn't happen. [laughter] So, and I saw some of Dave's comments after the fact talking about it being, you know, kind of a bottom signal with with both camps being at their, let's call it, at their, at their very end. Yeah, I said that at the end of the show, and James W. called me a [ __ ] on Crypto Town Hall last week. We got to be close.
>> Yeah.
>> We gotta be close. Yep. Yep. That's, that's the nature of the beast.
>> Not that I necessarily disagree with James. I mean, you do have some certain qualities, you know what I mean? I mean, we did spend last week together, so there's other things.
>> Careful, Andrew. [laughter] People, Andrew's rating chasing today. He's just trying to get, he comes on, interrupts me, and calls what I'm talking about boring and hard pivots back in. I mean, are, are you trying to get an f-bomb on air today? I mean, we >> Listen, we don't, we, we don't need to talk about the difference in your face this week versus last week. Weird look. Okay. I mean, that's an entirely different discussion.
>> Really quickly, I need to just, because I just want you to be careful with your words, Andrew. Um, because I posted this photo on the internet, which I think is a great photo, and a lot of people had a big problem with the way you're holding my neck. [laughter] Right?
>> Listening that I'm, whatever you just said, [laughter] I'm a, I'm a grown man. You know, I can hold me in place. [laughter]
>> You just got Erica Kirk on the back of the neck is going viral after today. [laughter] All right. So, let's talk about the market. Uh, so we, we, we, I think that we have a, like, settling narrative that it's a bear market. Okay. Like, I, seems to be consensus at this point. Has Greg basically saying that he's a much better investor in a bear market than in a bull market. It's much easier to invest in a bear market. I've always said this, actually. I find bull markets very hard because the, you know, you're supposed to be selling, but emotionally it's very hard to do it because you think that things are going to happen forever, and there's actually actively decisions to make in a bull market if you're not running an algorithm. We can get to that, but like, if you're an active investor and you're trying to act like decide entries and exits, I find bull markets so much more difficult because I think buying something is way easier than selling something. Like, you buy it, but then like, do I sell it at a slight loss, or do I like, take profit now, or is it going to keep running? A bear market, there's almost no decisions to be made. You're not selling anything.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Well, it, it is a lot. Well, it depends on how you view the base asset. You, it's a mindset. You know, a lot of our customers will come to us and tell us, you know, the software has changed my mindset. It's removed the emotional chase, the reactionary trading, right? Most of us can point to trades where, you know, we're buying on big green candles. Um, [clears throat] we're chasing price. Uh, and and price induces emotion, and that's just the nature of the beast. And if you can master that within yourself, then it avoids a lot of mistakes. And chasing price is in a lot of, in most cases, the wrong move, unless you're adding to a winning position that you already have. But it's all about how spread out your cost basis is. So, if you are trying to accumulate a position and trying to do it wisely, it's about how much time you can appropriate to that, you know, accumulation. And so, the rounding bottom gives you the most time at the lowest price. So that's like the holy grail. And so, you're always trying to continue to allocate capital at lower and lower prices if you believe the thesis that Bitcoin could go to, you know, $250,000 or above. So, you know, in life, it's incre, in investing for the traditional side of things, most people have looked at a 10% to 15% return annually as kind of the holy grail. Um, we're Bitcoin kind of blew that out of the water, and now we're looking at, you know, markets that give you volatility opportunities that just without any, you know, directional move, there's opportunities to yield double digits plus, you know, 20 plus percent just harvesting that volatility. So, yeah, it's, uh, if you know what to do with the volatility in the markets and the way that the, the bottoms present themselves, there's a whole lot of chop typically at the bottom because they're, it's price consolidating and retesting support and all the things that you like to see. I mean, people have showed, I, we could show it on a chart, but like, every time weekly RSI, as an example, from a technical perspective, every time weekly RSI has been oversold on the weekly chart, which is like four or five times in the history of Bitcoin, you bottom. You might float lower, but you bottom. Ming, but it's like 150 to 250 days of >> time-based capitulation. But in reality, as Hib is sort of alluding to, there, if you just take that time to calm down and deploy, that's when the fortune is made.
>> Well, think about that bottom as being a visual representation of a constant buy floor. That's what a bottom is. It's literally a big buyer or a group of big buyers that have a price range that they're willing to continue to buy in. As long as the price continues to dip and and play in that price range, they're going to buy every dip within that range. And so, when you see that, that's a, that's why technical traders love charts so much. They, it gives them a, a peek behind the curtain, if you will, as it pertains to what the big money is doing, because that's the only way that happens. Um, and that's when you should be buying is when smart money or big money is buying. If, if big money has reached a point where they're going to buy within a range, kind of, you know, to infinity or to a, a lot larger market, uh, share than you can purchase. Um, then you should be kind of riding their way, right? Get, get in their wake and, um, follow that pattern. So,
>> bare markets are a real, you know, tide has gone out type of moment. Like, you, you find out who people are, what their position is, >> what their kind of core beliefs are. Tilman probably said the the best line, slash smartest line at Bitcoin Investor Week last week. He said, you know, people's, the people's moods associated with Bitcoin are in direct relation to their current dry powder, right? If they have cash available to, uh, you know, to allocate, they're in a great mood right now, right? If they're not in a great mood, that just simply means that they're out of cash and they can't take >> I, I've quoted you like seven times since then. That was live on this show on Thursday, and you said it on stage, I think, as well, but I mean, [clears throat] such a >> powerful.
>> Well, I mean, literally, you talk to so many people in the space, and one of the things that I think is unique, and this kind of is a great pivot into the, the conference and what, what we saw there versus kind of every other conference I've ever been to, is Bitcoin Investor Week, right? It carries a connotation in its name alone that these are investors. These are all family offices, big corporations, massive investment banks, the biggest of the big getting together, and all of them have so much dry powder. They've been sitting on dry powder and storing dry, trillions of it, on the sidelines. And the reason why I say that is because I see it in the market. When you talk to retail right now, they're all depressed. They only talk about price going up. Like, that's the only thing that you hear. Whereas when you talk about, well, versus our customers, our customers are a little different subset. But when you talk to, you know, corporate buyers, when you talk to big buyers of Bitcoin, they want it to go lower. They want 50s. They, they, they, they know it's going back. In their mind, they think 126 is not the top of Bitcoin's, you know, eternal price. And four years to wait for, you know, a 100% plus return, guys, is just asymmetric as asymmetric gets as it pertains to what they look at traditionally. And that's drawing a lot of capital, risk capital, into the this market that even at small numbers, you know, 1%, 2%, 3%, 5% allocation, it, it doubles, triples, quadruples. It's orders of magnitude larger than our current market cap, right? It brings a lot of capital.
>> Yeah. Yesterday I had this, and actually didn't bring it up, but it's a perfect, uh, visual for what you're talking about. So, there's almost no cash on the sidelines. Retail portfolio cash allocation is down to 14%, one of the lowest readings since the 2000 dot-com bubble. It's half of the '22 bear market. You can see it here. Cash, obviously, is this black right here. So, it's a have and have-nots. Institutions, who want to get it, institutions, first of all, never run out of dry powder, right? It's just because they're, they're well-managed, well, and waiting to allocate, and they always have cash on the sidelines. So, you take a look at that, and retail is obviously in utter despair because, first of all, they've barely participated, and those who have don't have any money to buy anything. Meanwhile, you have the topic of our show last Thursday there, where Hunter Horsley says, "Hey, we've been talking to these guys for two years. They just allocated their first $11 million bucks, and they're super excited to start buying." It's just, we have a, and for, for better or for worse, it's just wild bifurcation of what retail is seeing and what the money that's actually now going to move the market is seeing.
>> Bingo.
>> Yeah. So, so institutions, I, I just did a quick search. Uh, institutions have a little more than $5 trillion in money market accounts. In other words, cash on hand, right? Whereas, uh, over the past year and a half, retail, their, their number is under $3 trillion now, and it's, it's been going down, uh, uh, over the past year. So, to, to your point, to the chart that, that you just showed, that there is a bifurcation associated with re, retail and institutional cash on hand, dry powder, and, and that is, you know, that's fairly clear, um, [snorts] across all asset classes. Well, and what, there were great points on Macro Monday pertaining to the metals markets and how that plays into this. You know, metals used to be a place where when all chaos and all volatility, you couldn't escape volatility. It would, it would go to metals. Well, metals are as volatile as everything now, if not more volatile. And so, it's, where do you put $5 trillion of capital before a big print takes place? If you know interest rates are going down, and you know the big print's coming, you, you don't want to be holding cash when that happens, right? You want to be, this is a buying opportunity. This is the bottom, if you believe those things are about to play out, where, you know, you want to put that cash to work because the appreciation of asset values during those time periods are, are where you make a lot of money. And holding cash is where you have a guaranteed loss. And so, if you're holding $5 trillion and you're looking at Bitcoin, real estate, all these things, Bitcoin's actually looking less volatile than, I mean, what do you, what are you going to buy? Silver right now. I mean, good luck. Uh,
>> Mag 7's all now down red on the year. So, if you take a look at volatility, the Mag 7's been far more volatile than than Bitcoin this year. And, you know, gold and silver have wiped out $1.28 trillion today. They bounced. But like, to your point, there's, it's not debate. This is actually math. Bitcoin is not that volatile anymore. And it's been this way for years, by the way. I mean, I, I'm old enough to remember when Meta dropped like $28 in 12 minutes, or like 28% in 12 minutes after hours when you couldn't even trade it, right? I mean, these things are happening now with multi-trillion market cap assets. It's not Bitcoin's just doing nothing. It's doing nothing. [snorts]
>> And I think it's because it's in a huge accumulation phase. I think we are at that bottom, and I think big institutions are buying quietly, and I think there's a big transfer taking place from, you know, David Bailey is a smart guy, and I like to listen because he's been in the game for a long time, and he said something on one of your shows earlier this this year, maybe even last year, that, you know, there were a few handful of people out there that he had suspected, or if they were selling, that this dip was going to last a long, a longer time. You know, that's very telling that, you know, that means that some OGs may be talking about dumping their bags, and that's a wealth transfer, you know, to them. They, they deserve that. They were in from the beginning. They have a lot of Bitcoin. But it also is the very, you know, who's the buyer on the other side is what I would, uh, like to see. And I guarantee, I would likely suspect that it's not anybody on this show, but it has a comma and three letters after it with a period. Um, you know, I think it's a corporation. It's got to be some big entities that want to place that capital, uh, and are doing it in an OTC type manner with a, you know, broker deal.
>> The, uh, that move to 60, now it's two weeks ago, I think. Uh, but I've watched a lot of price action. And I know you guys have as well. That was different, >> right? That, that was somebody either blowing up or purposely selling a very large stack on every exchange across the board at the same time. There was no bounces. It was just steady selling all the way down. And it, I think it alludes like, kind of confirms that point that, I mean, if somebody blows up and is a force seller or wants to sell a lot, it's a small market, and there's going to be days like that, you know. I don't >> Yeah, exactly. 100%. And, and listen, it's on the buyer's advantage. You know, if I'm a corporation, what do I want volatility right now to point to? I want it to scare everyone. I want, I want as much when I have to buy big chunks of shares of a company, when are big chunks available on giant red candles? Why do I know that? Those giant red candles typically represent large volume of sellers. And that's when a large buyer can accumulate all of that. You know, large buyers, they can't, they, they're, they're on different constraints from a capital placement perspective than me and you. They move markets, uh, and they get in trouble if they move markets with wild execution. So, they're very systematic. They use lots of, uh, software to execute on their behalf. And, and Bitcoin is is right for the pickings. We went up to 126. Scott, you were a prime example. I was a prime example. We all thought, you know, price discovery. That's what typical markets do. You know, you break new all-time highs by $1,000. I think that that was just like a very, and, you know, a double top typically has a lower second peak, not a higher second peak. Is that >> last cycle too though? 65.
>> Last cycle too. So, large red candle. And I just wanted to show you what he was talking about. [laughter]
>> I'm happy today.
>> [laughter]
>> So, uh, it, so to, to kind of close the loop on institutional versus retail, anybody want to take a guess at who bought the most, the second most IBIT, uh, based on their 13F in in Q4?
>> Is it?
>> Uh, no. It's Jane Street, which it doesn't get any more institutional than that. Um, so while everybody is panicking and price is is going down, down, down, down, and certainly in Q4, and my guess is is their position will probably mirror that for Q1 of this year in a few months when when Q1 13Fs come out. Um, institutions are scooping it up as quickly as they can, as quickly as they can. Um, so it, you know, um, we can talk about it all we want, but we also have to convince retail to to make the same kind of smart decisions. And wouldn't it be interesting if retail didn't have to on a daily basis make those smart decisions themselves, that something existed to help them with that?
>> Yeah, I, I know you're talking about Arch Public, but it would be turning off social media.
>> That's true. Hey guys, just don't look at Twitter, and you'll make good financial decisions.
>> It is something that, [clears throat] you know, crypto Twitter in and of itself, when we get, you know, fairly deep into a bear market, which we are right now, it's, it, it's painful. I, it is difficult to to scroll, uh, because, you know, everybody's got an arm that's chopped off and it's currently bleeding, and they can't seem to tourniquet it. Um, and emotionally, that, that's what it looks like too. Um, so, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a tough spot. Like, I, you know, I'm looking at probably the biggest, you know, Solana influencer that that Mert guy, and, you know, he's putting out a post two hours ago, which I would assume is, you know, 7 a.m. in the morning. So, he's waking up, and he's, and he's bemoning the state of our current industry. Um, and it's, it's sad how crypto has a [ __ ] reputation in tech circles. That's the start of his post, right? Um, so, you know, so that versus Jane Street loading the boat on Bitcoin, uh, BlackRock opening up its Bidd portfolio on Uniswap. Those are very different moments, right? Very different moments. And so, how do we, how do we square that, right? Or or
>> you square it with again.
>> square, you know.
>> it's not just a measure of your dry powder from an emotional perspective, but it's also a measure of of your current, you know, average price, or, you know, when, when you have, when you are overallocated, you get emotional. That's just [clears throat] the nature of the beast. We've all been there. I, it's not, I'm not, I'm not saying that's, you know, it's not something I regularly, I, I, you know, getting over emotional about investments, specifically Bitcoin. I don't blame anyone for that. You know, that's why I don't, I don't fault the guys on Macro Monday at all. I think it was number one, I think it was good for everyone to see. It does signal the bottom in my opinion. It's, uh, reinforcing the signal, I guess. Um, but, you know, Bitcoin is a very passionate subject because it's changed a lot of people's lives, and I wouldn't expect any other way. You know,
>> I have a really important question for you, Tilman, that this is, I can't take credit for it, from Emmy watching. Uh, what's in the box behind you?
>> Uh, it's a [laughter] it's a watch box. I think.
>> A watch box. Okay, just checking.
>> You have nice watches.
>> Should [clears throat] now, now you need security again. Sorry. [laughter] Don't tell it's gonna go badly for you. But, uh, yeah, watches, Emmy, it's watches. Um, okay, so I had, this is actually was was a pretty shocking to me. This is just another thing we had pulled up today. We were talking about Binance and and liquidity. Binance remains a king of stablecoin liquidity. I was not aware that they still have 65% of all stablecoins on all centralized exchanges are still on Binance. That is a wild statistic to me with all, all the companies that are involved. And
>> it, it tells you something. I love that, uh, CZ quote that you put up about the privacy. I, it, that's shocking to me because it just shows how far the two universes have have drifted from one another. We're so entrenched in now Bitcoin being a Wall Street product. That's basically what we see as the elephant. Like, that's, that's taking up our entire view. Uh, he sees it differently because he's sitting on, you know, that much cash in stablecoins, and a lot of his customer base are with them because of the privacy. They were, they are not the same as the Wall Street crowd at all. And, uh, those two worlds are going to reconcile with one another at some point. And, you know, I think we're, we're beginning to see that. And I think, you know, Kathy Wood, I'll take a little thing from, from, you know, an interview I saw on her, but she flat out said that she thinks that the initial crash that started, you know, at 126 started on Binance. I, I've seen an interview where she, um, said that. So, it's interesting that now she's aware of this, and that, you know, that chatter has started.
>> Novogratz flat out blamed him. I don't know if you guys saw that.
>> Oh, I didn't see that. Yeah, he kind of blamed him, and then Richard Tang, actually, uh, who is still, I think, technically CEO of Binance, even with CZ back, defended it and showed some data. But, uh, there, there's a lot of consensus that that at least was was a part of it, whether it was triggered by external events or not. I think everybody knows that certain systems broke there and allow and disallowed market makers from being able to do their job because they were forced, uh, closed automatic deleveraging. Uh, I don't know if we're far enough removed from Novogratz, Novogratz having both of his hands in a, in a previous implosion for for him to be, you know, casting, uh, aspersions, uh, one, one way or another. Um, but just, just as a, you know, 50,000-foot view, I mean, between Binance and Coinbase, you're talking about the better part of 500 million customers, um, that, that use those two exchanges. So, in terms of scale, I mean,
>> I, I thought it would be like 260, 270, wouldn't it?
>> No. Binance, 350 million that people that that
>> Dang.
>> Yeah. I, yeah, I asked CZ about that, uh, in a previous, and I think Richard Tang, and he said that yes, they have that many customers, but being honest, like, they're not obviously all traders because he, he said that for, for many years, people just use Binance as their, uh, as a, "Let me send you $10 in USDT, you send me $10." So, there are people all over the world who don't have bank accounts.
>> Well, but still, well, I mean, I didn't mean to interrupt you. 250 million would be no sneeze either. I mean, it's a, it's a gigantic number, anyway you cut it.
>> Well, as of 2025, December.
>> That's also the reality with an enormous amount of bank accounts, like, not every bank account at, like, a regional bank has, you know, $175,000 in it. It's somebody that's got a few hundred bucks that they, they move around from time to time, and they pay their bills, and then there's a couple hundred bucks left in it. Right. It's, it's same difference. U, point being though, is that that, that is a massive, massive scale audience, um, that has stuck around for a very long time. So, in the moment where, you know, we're at the, the, the bottom of the, you know, the boat, the hull of a bare market, you know, bottoming out, [snorts] um, you know, there, there's still the reality that that people haven't left. It may be quieter. They may be, uh, just a bit less interested, but they're still here. Uh, and they still own crypto, and, uh, it shall return. I mean, it, it, it always does. Uh, there will be a shift and a turn and a pivot. And what we haven't figured out is in two years, what's going to be the narrative or the thing that shows up that is sitting along Bitcoin that makes it very interesting for everybody? Because it always happens. The new bull market always has something connected to it. You know, 2017 and 2021, and then '23.
>> I'll tell you what I think one of the catalysts is going to be because it's a hot topic right now, and um, if you do any research on it, um, you're going to, you're going to find the same outcome as I did, which is, you know, these AI agents. Bill talked about him when we were up in New York, and how he's set up, I think ClaudeBot, very successfully, to pretty much do everything from a personal assistant perspective that you could ever hope to do. It's a massive, uh, you know, deflationary event. Uh, these technologies are going to have to start settling payments in crypto between each other. They, that's the only language of money that that computes. You, you can't do any other transaction. There's no way for them to, um, to settle things. So, as that industry starts to absolutely take off in parabolic fashion, which it already has. I think they were bought by OpenAI right out of the gates, weren't they? I mean, like in the first week of after their launch. But, you know, if you look at that tech space on payments that settle between agents, you know, there is no substitute then for other than crypto. And when you're talking about the flight to safety amongst the crypto. So, let's just, for example, talk about what I said earlier, you know, when everything else was volatile, money would flow to gold. Well, in that space, Bitcoin is the gold. So, there is no gold that it can flow to. There is no other asset that's not digital that can be, can provide the flight to safety more than Bitcoin ever could and ever will. And it's done that because the inflationary risk is gone. There is no more coins. Even if we abandoned the current proof-of-work network and went to a quantum-resistant network and abandoned the rest of the supply, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be problematic. It wouldn't cause any issues, um, doing that. And so, the base asset value of Bitcoin as a unit price has already been established for all time, and it's just a matter of now how we store them and how we get them around to one another when we want to transfer them. And AI agents are going to be the future of that, and they're going to want to hold Bitcoin more than anything else because they're intelligent beyond emotion. And if you look at all the chains, they all pose more risk than Bitcoin does from an asset, you know, allocation perspective.
>> Andrew, I didn't know if you're going to jump in on that one, or if we needed to pivot.
>> No, I think let's pivot. I >> Are you going to call me boring again, or we can we pivot without that?
>> No, I don't, I don't want, I don't want a private middle finger. That's what I >> Guys, it's 9:43. I told you [laughter] so mean. I told you guys by 9:41 somebody had to [laughter]
>> and rage quit and you guys obviously aren't watching the clock.
>> Listen, I, I, if I took this iPad and hurled it across the room with the camera on, that probably would be a topper, wouldn't it? I mean, wouldn't [laughter] signing off and we realized that you no longer own any watches. That's [laughter] cool box though. Used to have, used to have a lot of [clears throat] watches in it. Um, the, so one last topic I want to want to talk more kind of about Arch Public, but I don't know if you guys saw this, but 12-year trend broken. This Willy Woo, who's highly respected, obviously should be. It's not, uh, the value of that, it should be higher relative to gold, basically saying that quantum is the big problem. Like, I've seen a lot of this chatter from outside the community, but this is coming from someone who very deeply understands Bitcoin, obviously, and basically saying that even if it's patched, 4 million lost coins come back into circulation, then he does a pretty mathematical deep dive to what it would mean, you know, relative to the buying pressure we have to have. 4 million coins, that's a huge part of the supply back in circulation. Like, am I missing? I've been so dismissive of the quantum issue. Um, am I missing something?
>> Yeah, I think you are. U, but, and I think everyone is, because let's just, everyone wants to focus on how it's going to be broken. I like to focus on if it is broken. So, it doesn't matter how it's broken. The, the fact is is that if someone breaks it, let's just say, uh, you know, lost wallets, burned wallets start to send Bitcoin out of them, and we all go, "Well, that wallet's burned, a burned wallet. How is the Bitcoin getting sent?" And we find out that a quantum, uh, computer has hacked that wallet and has figured out how to get in and start sending that Bitcoin. Well, guess what? We can, uh, we can take the last valid snapshot of the Bitcoin chain, move it to another chain, and all the miners through consensus would move their proof-of-work power to that new chain, and we'd be up and running 10 [clears throat] minutes later. So, who cares how it happens? It's just not that big of a deal if it happens. Uh, again, the Bitcoin can be represented as a, as that, you know, Bitcoin price, if you will, across a number of chains. Look at Wrapped Bitcoin, WBTC. It's not Bitcoin, but people invest in it like it's Bitcoin exposure because it's correlated to Bitcoin on a par value that, you know, unless somebody doesn't represent the, you know, truth as it pertains to their their collateral, then it should be one for one. Bitcoin is if they're accumulating Bitcoin with with the net proceeds of those transactions.
So, uh, it it time will tell as it pertains to kind of how the the merger of universes happen, but the tech can't be stopped is the point. Bitcoin's done. Bitcoin, the value that has been accumulated in Bitcoin is a representation of the work that's been done. So, the only way that that disappears is if people stop valuing that work.
Yeah. There's there's, you know, it's just another new narrative. A narrative comes along every bare market that that we want to believe is the reason why the bare market exists. Uh, every cycle there's there's something uh, you know, I I hear Dave talk a lot about in the previous bare market cycle, you know, everything had to do with leverage. Um, quantum is so far off uh from from where and and my question then then immediately moves to it. Why is quantum only a Bitcoin problem five to seven years from now? Isn't it a problem for a bunch of other things that are maybe more important? Like why isn't Google stock down by 55% because quantum could take over Google and just ruin the entire universe? Like I mean what why
that's a great point or or Nvidia or any high you know difficult to reproduce tech company can be reverse engineered by quantum computers and AI. If if that is a threat then there's a lot bigger honeypotss to go after than you know Bitcoin. a lot. I mean, Bitcoin is what, a one and a half trillion dollar asset. What's Nvidia
exactly? Four trillion or or you know, Apple. So, so why isn't quantum a problem for for those quote unquote assets? And
why isn't a problem for the nuclear codes? That's where I get stuck.
Do but my Bitcoin like
Yeah. It's just
take my eyes but not my shirt. [laughter] I mean, all us, you know, again, us Gen Xers, we're we're reasonably cynical. So, it's very easier for us to go, what's the Bitcoin problem? Isn't it a Department of Defense problem? Like,
well, and that also assumes that if a quantum computer did break something, let's just say something did get broken. We know who it was. It's not like there's they're selling quantum computers down at the corner store. these [laughter] things. I mean, you're taking a some you're taking the natural physics of an environment down to ne, you know, what do they have to take it to? Zero or or hund hundreds of degrees below zero to get these computers to work? It's a it's a it's a facility. It's a lab that's the size of Walmart that has these things in them. So, you know, to think that we're even close to Andrew's point, like, you know, yeah, maybe in 300 years you can buy a quantum computer like a laptop, but it's not an US problem. [laughter]
Yeah. But the quantum the quantum conundrum is a meaningful cycle opportunity just like the opportunity existed when FTX blew up and we were down at 135 16. Everybody listening to this show wishes that all of the Bitcoin they owned was at 13, 15, 16. Everybody, right? So, just like every other cycle, the previous top effectively becomes a trading range 3 to five years out, which is where we're sitting right now. Right? So if that's the case and has been over four cycles, I don't know, 68, 67, 64, 71, any anything under 70K is a gift based on that that cycle.
Yeah. I mean, this is the sentiment right here, right? Feel like Scott's going to crash out today. He's been buying since 126K. Stress has to be rising. I've been buying since 1800. Yeah, [laughter] I happen to have started buying a bunch more with Arch Public at 126K, but I love these prices. I'm going to crash out if we don't stay here longer so I can accumulate more. I'll crash out if we go straight up to 125 again in a week and I missed my opportunity. Just a totally different view. And to be frank, a lot of that comes from like utilizing arch public algos. But I want to put you guys on the spot. So once again, sailor bought
Mhm. kind of a thing, right? Uh, he bought at 67,710. Decent price. I don't know if it was one of you guys because I've basically blacked out on all the events of the last week and a half, but I maybe it was Todd actually, but didn't you guys do a full audit on what strategies cost basis would look like using automated tools rather than the purchases that they've actually made? Am I making that up?
Yeah, that is true. As of last week, if over the past four years Sailor had been using our strategies, his cost basis would be right around 28K. I mean, that's that's that's a meaningful difference uh as opposed to to where it is now.
Now, he granted
editors flip that [ __ ] [laughter] Yeah, he the the truth of the matter is is like he has a different mechanism to draw from, but that shouldn't be the way in which we model as as retail how to buy Bitcoin. You don't buy the tops, right? He's borrowing money to buy the tops and he gets the most leverage at those tops. But, uh, you know, it's a bad example for the rest of us as to how to enter because you're literally getting the worst price every time you enter. Uh, and to correct myself, it the you have to for a quantum computer to work, you have to be at negative -459.65 degrees Fahrenheit, absolute zero. So, good luck trying to get there. I I don't know many people that can.
The other thing that that case study showed uh and and we updated it like three times over a three-week period is there were more purchases that that Sailor did. um he would have something like 41% more Bitcoin over that four-year period if he'd have used our strategies. So significantly more accumulation and significantly reduce price by using algorithmic tools. You you simply can't um you can't argue with it. I mean it it it you just can't you just can't argue with it. the the executions um and again the adjustments associated uh with emotions are that means they're undefeated. It's just it's just undefeated, right? [snorts]
Well, if you appro approach a mathematician and they didn't have any experience in Bitcoin and you ask them how do I reduce volatility risk, they would tell you to spread out your purchases over time. that to Andrew's point, mathematical certainty lies in in that equation. You do remove risk. And so if you have found yourself in any, you know, period of of trading and and trying to invest in Bitcoin or anything else for that matter where you feel like you're chasing price, uh, and you're emotional about it, these are the tools that will cure that for you.
I keep seeing this like, how did he buy at 76K? I mean because he raised a h his as Tilman said his strategy was working a lot better with much higher prices and as the flywheel continued and as people found out about it he was able to raise more that just happened to be when there was higher prices so if you're deploying 100 million when it's 30,000 but you're deploying 5 billion when it's 125,000 you end up with a relatively high cost base but he was buying he had money
well and he's he also can't dilute um highly dilute the current shareholders by buying a ton down here. You can't even when you have that type of a debt mechanism and and you're you're kind of a slave to it. Um, you know, dilution is what will start causing people to not have confidence in owning the underlying collateral, which is the shares that you're offering them as the convertible note. So if you start to underpin the fact that you could be highly diluted at new lower prices with new shares being issued at large quantities then it it does it could you know co cause some sort of a spiral to take place and uh he's trying to avoid that. So you you're you're going to see smaller purchases at lower prices by definition and you're going to see higher purchases at higher prices. Scott click click support there on on the site and then go to the lefth hand side you'll see case studies um if you go down if you go to the case studies there so so you'll see the pioneer if you click the pioneer which is which is you know has to do with uh with
yeah and so the point there is that over time um [clears throat] the math is the math and and what that case study does the reason why I want you to pull it up I want people to go look at it because it's pretty exhaust exhaustive. Our data and research team spent a lot of time putting these case studies together. I think we've got 20 plus on on our website at this point. And you know, again, it it's just math. It's just like, okay, Sailor is the quote unquote gold standard in the space. So let's take a look at what he does and you know how if if if our tools were employed uh with the type of capital that he's working with what would be the outcomes and then we just publish the outcomes and it's uh we we found that people find this very very compelling um it's not a narrative again it's just it's just math it's just data and uh that data speaks real volumes at at the Bitcoin investor week it you know was part of we had a big LED screen that showed a bunch of stuff and data and and and and whatnot having to do with with arch public. And [snorts] that particular video caught a lot of people's attention, right? The the Sailor video associated with the difference the the variances associated with the total accumulation of Bitcoin and then the difference in in his uh cost basis. So yeah, I'd encourage people to go take a look at it.
Yeah. And it it's like you said, it's just math.
Yeah. But uh when it was being broken down for me, I can just say anecdotally, so like since we obviously can unpack it and we have a couple minutes left, but we were all in New York together, everybody knows we did a live show and a bunch of content. I've been to sort of your happy customer events over time. And that one, man, first of all, that was a conference. Okay, they said 3,000 people. I don't whatever. There was there were some people there and a large percent of them were arch public customers. You guys had over a hundred people come of their own valition just to be at that conference and hang out with you guys. We went to a dinner. There was over a hundred people. Every one of them with a big smile on their face.
Super excited to be there. And every single person I spoke to at some point in that conference was like, "Hey, uh, I I either am here because of you and Arch Public or I just signed up. I'm super excited."
Yeah. every person. Yeah.
told me that like uh Mcloan upsets them their feelings or something, right? But uh otherwise,
yeah, it was uh it was incredible to be honest with you. it. We've the team has put a lot of hard work into getting those customers up and running with the software and and kind of giving them the education as to how to use automation and why uh it will be an effective tool for them to remove emotion and be on the ready for when market conditions present themselves and they take advantage of those to meet their long-term objectives but instead of chasing based upon kind of short-term movement. All of those things was was so rich and so uh endearing to me. I just can't thank all of them enough for making the trip. Uh the community is growing at a pace that we could have never envisioned. Honestly, it's just it's it's fabulous to see. And the group of people that are we call our customers are likeminded uh even killed, highly intelligent, wildly successful captains of industry across all of of their it's it's really it's jaw-dropping to see. So the fact that they um have found value in what we do um and have joined us in such a real tangible way and flying out and being with us, we're we're going to be doing more of them. It was it was highly uh highly valuable for for all parties involved. So, we're gonna
That's what I want to do. I want to do Bitcoin Vegas.
I want to do F1.
Yeah, I want to do F1. So, you know, get with OKX since they're with McLaren and do a thing and get there was something mentioned about that to to
By the way, like Yeah. to your point like I was sitting in that room. You know the old saying like if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.
Yeah.
Exactly. With your customers, I'm very much in the right room. Listen, [laughter] they're exceptionally valuable.
One guy who was so Toman, uh, Andrew, his lovely fiance, and I and a couple other people were kind of at a side table just because we were the last ones to sit down. That doctor from Brooklyn, that story, that was the funniest thing I heard the whole time. I'll just give people the summary. Basically, he was at worked at Mymonities and you know it's like people speak every single language where he was training and he had a Russian friend who told him like to say this Russian thing every time he walked into the room with a Russian payment he would say with patient he would say
yeah like you know good morning and he would walk in he'd say it and they would all kind of like look at him and move about their lives for like a year and then finally one of his patients he walked in he's like do you know what you just said he's like no he just said I have a huge [laughter] He had been saying this to old women and like whatever for like years.
Well, I think he was the chief of surgery in the hospital. Like he was as high up as a get
and so like maybe actually to put bookuns on this conversation like with Macro Monday and that's our generation.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like we're not buttth hurt little weenies.
Like somebody can literally say f you to me to my face and I'm like I'm going to go home. It's fine.
Yeah. I got other things.
Yeah. And so his friend did that to him like in a professional setting that he's he's that would not fly if he was 20.
Yeah. It was a really great week. It was a great week with with clients. We, you know, Tilman and I had a bunch of different conversations and Tilman tells a story. He was, you know, talking with one person that was a, you know, somebody that's thinking about coming on board and somebody came up into the conversation and was like, "Yeah, you need to come on board." and started telling the arch story for Tilman and for
he literally was selling it for me and I said, "Are you are you a concierge customer? I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you." He goes, "No, I'm a free user. I just love your company and what I it just was it was it was an incredible time and and even to have free users come out and make the effort in the trip and Pomp did a fabulous job. His entire staff is, you know, top-notch. It was a first class event to say the way we used to
such a good conference. Like to me it was like I I've talked about a lot and we got to go but it you know like Bitcoin Vegas is an amazing for what it is but it's like kind of like Coachella you know it's like the big retail and then that gives you one impression and I bet when we go to Bitcoin Vegas this year if in two months prices are still where they are like it's going to be
ough like I said I went to consensus in the bare market and every booth was like a tax accountant or a bankruptcy lawyer like that was lit I'm not even kidding. It was like ah fix your crypto taxes might have a right off and then you go like in a bull market and it's like a bunch of NFT projects and like things that are going to be gone. So, but like these kind of conferences like what Pomp did there, there's never depressed sentiment there.
Yeah.
Because [clears throat] it's people there for the right reasons and who are not like overallocated and emotional about their position.
Yeah. They actually they're three to five year asset allocators, right? That that's how they go. Yeah. I put out my conversation with Dan Tapiro from S like and it really struck a chord with people. He's amazing. But it's like I'm looking at 10 years. Like who cares?
If you invest in my the fund, you're with me for 10 years. So if you're going to bother me about what happened in the first six months to the prices of things like
Yeah.
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, you guys can check out obviously uh arch. There it is. archpub.com if you would like to come theoretically to the non-existent trip to F1 with us one day. you you got to be a customer and uh if you want to come to Bitcoin Vegas Coachella, you can probably do that either way. Uh, but yeah, we got a lot of big plans. It's been just very exciting to be along for uh for the journey from the beginning. It's just really fun for me because uh not only like am I a customer, but it's all the people like most of the customers are people who have watched these shows.
Sure. So whenever we go to something, it's you know it's like talking to family. It's really really amazing. So thank you guys. Um, I'm very disappointed that neither of you cursed at each other. Uh,
I'll leave that for after the show. I'm going to
hide your watches. All right, guys. We will talk to you later. [music]
That's dope. [music] stuff.