Transcription
Bitcoin is facing yet another major test as global markets react and generally dump in reaction to everything happening in Iran and Trump's comments that the United States can basically go on fighting forever. Obviously, the price of oil is spiking, which is putting pressure on markets across the world. We're going to unpack that, what it means for Bitcoin, but more importantly, get some actual important updates on what's happening with the legislative process in the United States around the Clarity Act because we have the legend Ellie Terret here to discuss that all with myself, Tilman, and Andrew. Let's go.
Let's go. Let's go. Good morning everybody. Happy Tuesday. I hope you're all having a good one so far and that this show will make it ever so slightly better. I'm going to bring everybody on right now. We have a lot going on. You know, as I said to you, I saw the title and I was like, biggest macro test yet. I didn't really know what we were referring to because I hadn't checked the title, but clearly when I take a look at markets around the world at the moment, that is uh the war, right? Uh we we have some pretty uh compelling evidence that uh markets are reacting generally negatively. I don't have it on the screen, but South Korea down 8%, Japan 6%, South Africa 6%, Germany 5%. These are markets around the world. Uh not ideal, but we're going to talk about all that later.
I want to actually first start uh with Ellie because you have a lot of updates I think on what's happening with clarity. It seems to have been somewhat forgotten for a little while here, but uh there's actually a lot going on and some renewed tailwinds I think that it could get past.
Yeah, I wouldn't say forgotten. I think it's just one issue has been the focus for the last month. And I think when you're focusing on one issue and everything else gets kind of pushed by the wayside, everybody's kind of like, "All right, this is getting a little bit boring." So, I'll give you the update as far as I know to the minute, which is this debate over stable coin yield or rewards, right? I'm pretty sure that we all know now that yield is off the table. So, we cannot earn yield. People cannot earn yield on their idle balances anymore. It's just rewards, right? So, you could earn an incentive for signing up to use Coinbase. That's basically what the banks are semi okay with at the moment, but we're not even sure if they're okay with it because they're still in talks. There's still texts being shared back and forth between the banks and the crypto industry. Uh there was a meeting at the White House, I believe it was two weeks ago now. That was the last of the three meetings that took place. Now it's just texts being shared back and forth. There's some tension. There was a report on Friday that someone on the banking side said, you know, we see these talks breaking down behind the scenes. we really need Brian Armstrong to come in and really kind of like show some muscle here or we just don't think this is going to happen. And then there was a lot of push back on Friday from the crypto industry. You saw lots of players including Patrick Wit, the White House uh crypto council executive director. You saw David Saxs weighing in saying, you know, this is just not the case. You saw some of those players in the room like uh Ripple Steuart Alderati, um Paul Greywall from Coinbase, Miles Jennings from A6Z basically just saying, you know, these things take time. These negotiations are really, you know, finicky. There's a lot of sort of nuance here.
What I'm hearing from the banking side is that, you know, people want to get to a deal. I think both sides want to get to a deal. I think there's just lots of when you're writing legislative text, you know, I think the the goal is to kind of write it as broadly as you can. So when you you know when you're you know 10 years down the line you know when this technology evolves when there's there's new things that are coming in you know you're not completely you know strangled by the language that was written 10 years ago. I think you know writing as broad as possible is sort of maybe uh sort of the goal here right but I think the banks are freaked out by that. In fact I know the banks are freaked out by that because they've told me that themselves. They think that crypto will be able to slip some kind of like APY workaround into this maybe vague language. So that's what they're worried about. The White House is aware of their concerns. There is no compromise, no deal yet, but that's sort of the state of play when it comes to the stable coin yield talks. And that is the key hurdle that we need to clear in order for the Clarity Act talks to continue. DeFi ethics, they've kind of fallen by the wayside. So, when we get this this stable coin yield deal, maybe we won't get a deal, maybe we get something, you know, just that both sides can live with, then we'll be able to see perhaps a markup in the coming weeks, but we'll see.
Seems like that's all going to take a while. I mean, I guess if I'm being sympathetic to the banks, which is like gives me um you know, hives, but uh the Genius Act did sort of allow Coinbase to get around the yield conversation, right? I mean, and Coinbase is in a position, if we're being honest, where they can effectively offer rewards or yield in a way that they like when nobody else almost can. So, it seems like the ball really is in Coinbase's court and they probably have very little incentive to push for change. And and as a as a second to that, why does Brian Armstrong have so much power? Like the the fact that you said they're just waiting for Brian Armstrong to come in, like he doesn't have a vote.
It's interesting, right? And that CEOs have not been privy to these talks. They have not brought in sort of the big guns as it were. There's no bank executives, no Brian Armstrong. It's very much been the bank trades, the crypto trades. I think you know the the highest level of sort of like senior executives we've seen is like as I mentioned Paul Greywall who's the chief legal officer, Miles Jennings, who's the head of policy and the chief legal officer at A16Z. So you're not getting to like the seauite level in this in these conversations. But you know, Brian definitely knows what he's talking about when it comes to, you know, the crypto side of the conversation. He's also very sort of skewed to the crypto side. Obviously, you saw Jamie Diamond speak to CNBC yesterday. And, you know, he's got the bank angle, but he's also got the crypto angle, might I say, a little bit wrong, right? You know, he's talking about yield and rewards as the same thing. While they can be the same thing in this in this conversation, you know, like I mentioned before, yield and rewards are not the same thing anymore. He's also talking about, you know, the crypto industry not being regulated in the same way as banks, which I think, you know, in some cases that is true. The Genius Act, though, it's almost like the Genius Act never passed in in Jamie Diamond's eyes, right? He's like, you know, there's no BSA, there's no AML. You know, with the Genius Act, stable coin issuers are going through, you know, rigorous, you know, AML, BSA, KYC, um, you know, regulation. So there's some points there that he made yesterday that it's like okay well you know you are very talking the one side of the book. But I guess when you in these negotiations both sides are trying to get what they want here. So it's not entirely surprising.
Yeah. I just don't understand why Coinbase would ever come around if they're going to have something taken away.
There there's no reason for them to.
Yeah. 125 million customers. And so there's a reason why people are like I want Coinbase to come to the table. Well, of course, they're the 8,000 lb gorilla in the room, and they're the reason why they're the only reason why Jaime Diamond has decided to talk about crypto and blockchain over the last 6 to 12 months, as if he knows what he's talking about. You know, one thing about Jaime Diamond, um, he hasn't done anything of of real constructive meaning even in the banking space over the last five years other than build a really big building in Manhattan. Right. So, Jamie Diamond should have retired probably five years ago and he'd be a name that's recognized as, you know, uh, a scion of JP Morgan and a CEO that was meaningful. He he's he's on the back at best he's on the back three of 18 holes of of his career, right? Um, there there's nothing that he's going to do that's going to be innovative in any way, shape, or form. Um, so, you know, we talk about Jamie Diamond because it's a name uh that people know and will get some clicks associated with social media, yada yada yada, but there it's just there's nothing coming out of that guy's mouth slashbrainction that's doing anything that's meaningful for the next five to seven years of the world of finance and crypto going forward. Brian Armstrong, that's another conversation. that guy's doing all sorts of meaningful stuff. Um, and so thus, uh, the idea that, well, Brian Armstrong has to come back to the table.
And, and let's not forget there's there's real animosity there. I mean, Jamie Diamond.
Yeah. Give him the finger or drop an Fbomb or something at him.
Yeah. Told him he was full of [ __ ]
Yeah. Right. And and the reason why he's saying that is because he sees the data of the leak of assets and clients that move to Coinbase, by the way, and never come back to JP Morgan, right? Because the the the ability to move money, the ability to avoid a behemoth of ask questions and and and not be able to do certain types of business, yada yada yada, that all exists in let legacy JP Morgan. That doesn't exist at Coinbase. Tilman's got all kinds of stories associated with how easy it is to do business at Coinbase. Right there, there in lies the problem. Right there in lies
Well, and I think it really stems from a redefining of the definition of the word bank. Um, in the past, banks were brick and mortar on the corner of every small town. Then it it got expanded to JP Morgan and the likes of them being called banks so that they could issue debt on the back of securities and use that as collateral. And now there's a a broadening of of the expansion of that um group of people called banks. There should be. And to think that we're going to not issue yield on stable coins because legislation here in the US says that the world can't do that is foolish. Deposits look for for yield. Period. The end. And so if you want to be a bank and you want to entice deposits, you have to address this issue. And you have to address it not from a domestic perspective, but from a global perspective. Because if we don't issue yield or make it illegal to um to re recognize yield with deposits of stable coins, it the stable coins in that those deposits are going overseas. Period. The end because there will be other countries that allow that. There's going to be a fight for this territory, this market share. And the banks obviously are protecting the legacy way in which they make money and the legacy industry makes money in holding a lot of deposits, playing with those deposits at leverage in the overnights and the likes and then also charging an AUM management fee um to to to to hold those assets. That that game has completely changed. If you look at that model of making money compared to Coinbases, it's it's polar opposites. Um, and so therein lies the the friction. And you know, a you know, for the banks to succeed secede on this issue is going to mean that they're going to have to adopt a new way of making money.
They're not going to, right?
Ellie said it's dead in the water.
And I would argue the same thing is true for Brian Armstrong. Like why would he? Again, same thing.
Yeah. So to me and Ellie, I want some, you know, no no pun intended clarity here, but uh so stable coin is a major sticking point and issues that could potentially be bigger are tabled. Ethics is a huge issue. I can't see that seems like they would be further apart than even stable coins. So you have the banks and the crypto industry and then you have the political side, right? Democrats versus Republicans. Is it fair to say that this is unlikely to get passed anytime soon and that maybe we can just move on in the conversation for a little while?
Well, it's interesting. I think depends who you talk to. I tend to talk to a lot of optimists. I think I'm whenever I talk to people, they tend to be people who are on the Senate Banking Committee who are very optimistic that this thing is going to pass. But I think we're at the point now, you know, I talked to Senate Democrats and I talked to Senate Republicans, but I think we're almost at the point where they are so done with crypto. I mean, you heard Mark Warner in the Senate Banking Committee hearing with Scott Bessent a couple weeks ago. He said, "I've been living in crypto hell." He's like, "We just want to get this done." And I've heard, you know, I've heard this from other Senate Democrats, too, that it's just like we It's almost like fatigue, right? It's crypto fatigue. They just want to get this done and out the way so they can move on to other things. You know, I think at this point the White House and the Senate Democrats, they've they've drawn the red lines in the sand, right? When it comes to the ethics agreement, the White House has said they don't want anything on the table that will restrict the president or his family members or the vice president or his family members from being able to, you know, dabble in the crypto market because they say that's, you know, against the that's against the Constitution, right? They don't want members of Congress to not be able to do that. I mean, that's a whole different conversation, right? That kind of goes into the whole like you know inside I mean you've got a whole insider trading bill right just introduced by I believe was it was it Elizabeth Warren she's just introduced a bill or she's like behind a bill that will which is you know
starting now. Yeah, I mean, that's a whole another thing, right? This is not just my point is that it's my whole, you know, it's not just crypto, right? This is a whole different thing like ethics and, you know, trading and owning stocks and owning crypto. This should not be put into the Clarity Act. This should just be something that is completely separate. So, you know, you're putting something that shouldn't be in a crypto bill in a crypto bill anyway. The Democrats and the White House, you know, probably can't get any further together than they are on this on this issue. So you've got that and then you've got the the DeFi side of things which is you know conversations over um 1960 which is specific section of the um of the uh BSA I believe and, you know, just little things over illicit finance that I believe the Democrats want to just gain some more ground on. So I in my latest newsletter um I reported that the Senate Banking Committee is eyeing mid to late March so a couple weeks from now for a new markup. Right. Right. So, we they postponed that markup because of Brian Armstrong's tweet on January 15th. So, we're a month and a half past that now. They're looking at later this month to potentially schedule another markup. So, I think they're trying to get this thing out of committee, guys. And then, you know, from there, it's kind of like it's out of Scot Tim Scott's hands, right? So, once it's out of Senate Banking, then it has to merge with the Senate ad committee's text. And then you've got one legislative bill that has to pass the Senate. Once it gets past Tim Scott, then it's in Leader Thoon's hands, and then it has to get out of the Senate. So, I think they're trying to get that next step passed because once you've kind of got that next, you know, you're out of committee and then at least you're you're past that hurdle. So, TBD when, but I'm hearing mid to late March uh for another Senate banking try at this markup. But I know that they want to clear all these hurdles before they reschedule that markup because they don't want the same thing to happen again that happened back in January where it's like all these these sides are unhappy and at the last minute they're like, "Oh, no, no, no, we can't do this."
So, yeah, I appreciate the people you've talked to who are optimistic. I love optimism, but what I'm hearing is see you in 2036. I mean, it's just like and luckily I've watched Schoolhouse Rocks and I've heard the song I'm just a bill, so I understood that process that you talked about, but I know that it's going to take a really, really long time. I know you got to go in a couple minutes, so I want to bring up one other thing that you uh highlighted yesterday, which is, and the irony you kind of said, hey, you know, we've got these crypto provisions and bills that seemingly have nothing to do with crypto. Well, here we are. Guess it's not a crypto provision, but uh CBDC ban has now made it into the 21st century Road to Housing Act.
Yes. Yes. If you remember the it was a standalone bill. So this is different than than so Tom Emmer introduced his anti-CBDC act that was you remember there were three bills last year that went to that passed the house. It was the anti-CBDC bill. It was the Genius Act and it was um clarity the House's version. They all passed. This was in June and then it was this whole kuffle was like it was like are we going to put Genius and Clarity together? Are we just going to pass Genius on its own? And it ended up being like Genius went to the president's desk. Clarity was sent to the Senate and then anti-CBDC was just kind of floating there. And if you remember the Freedom Caucus, they were all, you know, they made a whole stink on the floor because they were like, we've got to do something with this anti-CBDC act because we don't think the Genius Act is strong enough where, you know, it's going to prevent a CBDC in the future. And there was a whole like if you remember this was the Genius Act almost didn't like have enough votes because the Freedom Caucus wouldn't vote for it. The Freedom Caucus Republicans because of this CBDC little snafu there. Then they came to an agreement that's like okay we'll put the CBDC ban in the NDAA the mustpass defense spending bill at the end of the year. It was all scheduled to go in there in December and then all of a sudden it was taken out of that because I think a lot of people were kind of of the opinion like if you've been in Congress for a while, they kind of were like, "Okay, we say it's going to go in there, but it's probably has no chance of actually going in there and passing." Anyway, it was taken out of that and now you see it back in this new housing bill um from the Senate Banking Committee. So whether it stays in there, I don't know. I mean, it's uh you know, it was just introduced yesterday, so we'll see. It's not exactly the same uh bill that Emmer introduced. It's a little bit watered down, a little bit more limited. And you see a provision in there that it actually sunsets in 2030, which I think a lot of people were a bit um startled by.
Yeah. I mean, who needs a CBDC when we have the Genius Act anyways, right?
There are provisions in the Genius Act that prevent the Fed from implementing or um, you know, establishing a retail CBDC indirectly or directly, but I think a lot of people just didn't think the language in that was strong enough, so they needed an extra little boost. But I guess we'll see what happens with this one. But yeah, funny that things just get tacked on to pieces of legislation that have absolutely nothing to do with crypto, right?
The veterinary Save Dogs Act uh now has a central digital currency provision. Yeah, I I don't get it at all. Ellie, I know that you got to run. You have a train to catch. I appreciate you being here and unpacking all this for us. Thank you so much. Everybody give her a follow and hopefully we'll see you really soon.
Yeah, thank you. Good to see you. Talk soon.
Has it uh has it dawned on anybody, any politician for that matter, that Coinbase is sending their chief legal officer to these meetings so he can take as much notes as he can to make sure that they navigate whatever the hell comes out of those meetings? Has it dawned on anybody that that's what they're doing?
I I like hear talk about it and I love the coverage and I love the diligence, but like
I just want to punch myself in the face when I listen to the whole thing of it. so stupid.
Yeah, it is really stupid. I'm here for democracy, but like it is so broken and ineffective and dumb and counter to the interests of humanity. Like the very fact that nobody is sitting back and going, "Maybe people should be able to earn yield on their deposits." Seems pretty seems pretty obvious that a person who parks their money at the bank should be the one to benefit from parking their money at that bank.
Well, and you do get that when you have 20 million at JP Morgan, you get to have a three point.
Oh, right. I forgot about the whole socialism for me and capitalism for the rich poor thing. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. And and that's really what rich. That's all.
Well, it's it's what this struggle is about. That's why Brian's really, you know, most of his tweets this year have been centered around access and breaking down the barriers of access for for everybody to participate in IPOs, through tokenized securities, through ICOs, you know, through yield, through staking, all the all the DeFi protocols that he's integrated natively into the user interface. All that stuff is it, you know, like Andrew said earlier, it's groundbreaking efforts and it does uh deserve an applause. But I think the bigger issue that the legislation of these types of tax have need to start with one premise. Can we legislate them? I mean, if I make, you know, making fires illegal, you know, you're policing something that everyone can do anywhere and it's kind of a basic necessity of life. Well, moving money and moving value is a basic necessity of life. And so when people um, you know, like the Trump sons have said so eloquently a million times when you get debanked and and you rely on those things and you go aha there's another system here that I'm in control of. That type of um innovation can't be legislated. It can't be put in a bag. It it's it's globally out. So the question then has to be is what sets America up to be um the leader? What sets America up to be the innovator? What sets and then, you know, criminal behavior is easy to spot. How do you know it's criminal? Well, because it breaks the laws that are on the book. So whether you're doing it in crypto, whether you're doing it in any other business, it's all, you know, it all falls to the same standard, right? The law.
Okay. So, quickly, two things. I want to pivot to the actual market and all the things need to be discussed there. But one is bothering me. Scott, that better not be twisted tea. You're drinking the nerve. All right. The tangerine lacroy.
That's right. And they're my sponsor. And I would lose him if I had
It's Lroy 30.
He is just It's just That's just a joke, guys. It's just an uncar.
He didn't get that joke, Tilman. He didn't.
Yeah, he didn't get that. I'm just saying I was I was too I was in my zone.
Yeah. Well, Lacroy 30 is 30 proof Lacroy.
Oh, I would rate that. I mean, young for me would have drank that now that I'm not a drinker. But so listen, let's talk about what's happening in markets, right? We've got uh breaking, which I should just said markets, but markets post largest declines in month as Bren oil prices surge above 85 a barrel. Um, we're going to get there. Korean stocks suffer worst selloff since 2024. That's cool that Korea has a stock market. Didn't know that. Um, just kidding. And breaking, Iraq has shut down oil production at Romela, the world's second largest oil field. This, by the way, follows the shutdown in Qatar. Yesterday's traits of Hormuz effectively are closed. And this is just rocking oil markets around the world. I'm sure I have it here uh somewhere now. I can't find it because I'm bad at prep. Um, but uh, yeah, you know, we're we're having some we're having some issues here uh in the oil market. Nation states are trading
93 Europe 54%. It's a complete chit show out there. And what I want to get to with that long monologue flat.
Yeah. Doing awesome na nation nation states are trading like altcoins. So that's fun. Um also, you know, your last headline about the, you know, the cost of of of gas, you know, associated with oil. That's a that that has to do with Europeans. that doesn't have nothing to do with us here in the United States. Um, so, you know, we're we're we're good on the on the oil front um here domestically. Uh, we our our ability to to generate barrels of oil has uh has gone in the right direction over the past decade.
Can't we can't make small plastic toiles toys, but we've got oil nailed.
That's right. That's right. Um, yeah, it it's interesting. It'll play out. I mean, yesterday markets were down big to start the day and then they were essentially flat. The NASDAQ was actually up um, you know, for the for the day. Um, you know, Eric Belchunis put out a tweet today um that like the past five business days, you know, 1.5 billion has gone into Bitcoin ETFs, right? So, so I I you know, it would I understand that if all I ever do is come on this show and just say look at ETF inflows or outflows and that is the price of of Bitcoin and where it's headed. And that's just kind of the reality, man. It's it it's
They're the new minor for sure. They control the price. Uh, they control the supply. They control access.
Uh, close the closer you are to the printing press. Yeah, the the more you control in this world and I would argue Wall Street's as close as it gets. And Bitcoin I I will say I think that what you're seeing mature markets reward utility. They reward actual use uh of technology. And if you have been in the crypto space for any length of time, you've seen the reshuffleling of the deck of the top 10 cryptos, the top 50 cryptos, the top 100 cryptos. Like go back to 2015. None of those projects exist with the exception of Bitcoin and Ethereum basically uh or Litecoin, you know. But yeah, but the point I'm trying to make is this. That type of disruption causes a reshuffleling of what's valuable from a utility perspective and our market today global market uh is doing some serious reshuffleling and it's doing it because things have changed so drastically from a landscape from a technology perspective with AI that there's a big question mark is like what's going to have utility going forward what's going to be the safe haven haven asset. It sure as heck in silver. Silver was up 7 and a half% yesterday, down 6% today. I mean, it's become an altcoin basically from a volatility perspective.
Silver's risk on, gold's risk off, but silver's risk on. We've been saying that a long time.
So, you're seeing this reshuffleling of like people going, okay, how how important is this going to be to our future? And technology is driving that equation like big time. And so we I don't see it as a bad thing and I just see it as a rec consolidation of wealth. No different than what we were arguing about as it pertains to the traditional banks and their voice. What's crazy to me is that you know who's controlling the conversation, the banks and Brian Armstrong. It's like when did when did private industry become the legislator? And and I guess this is so complicated that we can't put people in positions that don't have a dog in the fight to to make those laws. But seems to me like that would be the logical solution is actually have unbiased uh, you know, bipartisan people in there going okay, what's good for America and how do we push this technology to the forefront so our people can innovate on on it. you know, it's just not our system is so broken from from politics to technology to the markets. You know, this whole thing with Jane Street, if you've gotten digging into that rabbit hole, good luck because that will again prove that there's going to be a big reshuffleling. And I I think markets going forward are going to have to be on the blockchain in order to provide the trust that people are going to need to place as much money as as the market makers want to be placed on those markets. Right.
Andrew, can I show you something? Can I show you something that will feed your think kink?
Yep. I challenge you not to have a spontaneous orgasm.
Okay. Here's our friend Matt Hogan.
I made it, didn't I? Uh, here's our friend
saying the show's live on the show.
Whatever. Here's our friend Matt Hogan talking about Black Rockck. This this one might might
It really caught me was an interview with Black Rockck's CFO Martin Small, right? Not a household name, but obviously a very important person at BlackRock. And he said they plan to tokenize all of their ETFs in the next 3 to 12 months. The thing I'm not sure crypto gets is that for a large institution when something is on a 3 to 12 month time frame, it's a fatac plea. Right at that point, you're dotting the eyes and crossing the tees. It's not a it's not a project that may or may not happen. It's something that's going to happen. And yeah, if you think of a world where all of Black Rockck's ETFs are tokenized and it's fully embracing DeFi and onchain finance, that's the world we're going to be in in a year. Um, and I think it's just absolutely remarkable.
that's awesome. When he said Martin Small, by the way, I couldn't help but thinking about Martin Short and then I was thinking about the three amigos. But anyways, go ahead. What do you think, Andrew? When I think of Martin Short, I think of Jiminy Glick. Okay, that that's the more committed uh uh correct he plays.
So, um what I think about it is I'm not surprised. And by the way, to Matt's point, 3 to 12 months, it's not a fat plea. Like, it's already done. They're just back testing it right now in some sandbox. Um so, it's ready to go when they when they launch it. Um, so it, by the way, this plays into the whole um, uh, what's going on in politics and the Genius Versus Clarity Act. Like that literally doesn't matter based on what Matt Hogan just said.
Well, it means that it means that Larry think is the new Brian Armstrong in 12 months, right? He's going to be pushing the boundaries of DeFi and this future finance, which should tell us that this cat's again, you can't good luck. I mean, I don't even think we'll get clarity from the Clarity Act before this project is complete.
Listen, I I freaked out when I when I saw this now, I think three or four months ago, whatever it was. So, the Dealbook Summit in New York City in the middle of Manhattan is as big a TRFI event as exists on the planet. All right? So everybody that's anybody that wears a suit and is worth $100 million or more and still has a C something next to their name in Tradfi goes to that and wants to speak at it. The fact that Brian Armstrong and Larry Frink were sitting next to each other talking about the future of finance done over. I don't need to see anything else. Nothing else. And
So Brian's holding the majority of their their
That's correct. That's custodian. So I mean like Larry's like, "Hey man, make sure is is everything good over there. We this is our most important product. Make sure we're good." And then Matt just says what?
Well, I guarantee he's been brought in there. Who do you think is providing the tokenized infrastructure?
So that's the outgrowth of of all of this. Like step one, step two, step three, step four, it's done, right? So, we're going to be we're going to be in a tokenized trading world. You know, I keep saying like two to three years. It's going to be sooner than that. It's it's going to be sooner than that, right? We have all of these announcements. So, the NYC and the NASDAQ and all that stuff. They don't talk about 247 trading and tokenized trading again without being like, "Oops, we didn't mean to say that six months ago. We were just kidding. We're just goofing off." CME's already announced it for a
for certain date in to in the future. I can't remember when it is. I think May. But um
So so again, you you just the picture of them sitting together talking through stuff. By the way, that's also why Jamie Diamond's pissed off because Larry's like, "Man, I'm not your friend anymore, Jamie. I like Brian better." I mean, that's the reason why I'm like, seriously, that's the reason he hates Brian Armstrong right there. That's the reason because five years ago, I bet if you did a Grock search or something, you could find a world where where Jamie and Larry are sitting together on a panel somewhere.
But listen, the you know what, fortune favors the bold, right? It's like you you got to be willing to take that that Jamie had all the chances in the world to embrace this. He's been talking about it for as long as anyone, hating on it, you know what I mean? So, I mean, he he could have jumped into the pool at any point in time. So,
You know what they say, you get the price you deserve in Bitcoin. That's that's the
Also
I I thought you get meme coins at the price you deserve.
So, so the fact that Black Rockck CFO is talking about 3 to 12 months, that's a bigger deal than visionary CEO guy, right? CFO is like
That's hedge that's hedge guy. He's probably added a few months to that thing.
That's right. He's like, I gotta be careful here.
Oh, and by the way, it's not just them. I mean, we've talked about the fact that the DTCC is doing this stuff before, but, yeah, I mean, let me take away Matt.
They add this. I'm bad at driving.
Tokenizations evolving from concept toward integration with market infrastructure. This foundational explainer breaks down the basics and outlines how the DTC tokenization service is designed to extend Yeah. blah blah blah blah blah. Uh, this is the guy. These are the people that do four quadrillion in transactions.
Yeah, that's right. So again, let's not let's not go too far with this, right? So tokenization is a cool word, right? It's a cool thing for our industry. It's it's a it's a buzzword, all of that stuff for the time being. And again, this is meaningful and in as it relates to the evolution of finance, 247 availability of trading and moving money is a significant leap forward. But at the same time, currently in the way that it's going to be rolled out, tokenization is effectively just always on functionality for right now. And they'll use certain types of rails and buzzwords, but it's it's not necessarily
It's not the full feature set.
No, it's not the full right. It's not the full feature set. But again, 247 availability is going to be a huge adjustment for
I'll tell you what it is though. I I think the biggest point that it gives them is a settlement layer across all of their asset classes because if you tokenize everything now you can collateralize everything. Now everything is a form of collateral against trading activity um not just your equity position and your cash position. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that Black Rockck Coinbase uh relationship evolves. By the way, um, you know, how hard I mean, my my goodness, how hard is it for Coinbase to be like, forget all this Clarity garbage. We're just going to get a conditional uh banking license. And then
I think they're just going through the motions with clarity, all of them. I think
I completely agree. I think it's a show at this point. And even when I've had we I have guests on, we'll have like a private conversation right before and it'll be like, "Oh yeah, this thing's dead in the water." And then we come on the show and it's like, "Yeah, well, here's all the progress that we're making." You know, it's just like every they all have to have their seat at the table. They all have to work through it. But, uh, if they're saying, "Hey, this is going to be done by May or March." Or I think Garling House 90% or 99% I think he said 90% chance this gets done. Like I think everybody, no disrespect to him, but I think everybody's just talking the most favorable potential outcome because
It's better for the market if everybody believes that there's a chance that this is going to happen. I mean, right? I mean, you even have like, you know, we talk about uh Jamie Jamie Diamond. Clarity Act passage could trigger crypto rally, says JP Morgan, right? So, this is why everybody's uh speaking favorably of it because everybody wants uh to not admit that this thing that I'm going to show you is happening. which is that altcoins are 38% of altcoins are now trading near their all-time lows worse than the post FTX period per crypto coin. It's pretty bad out there. So, everybody needs we need hope.
That that just goes to uh Tilman's point about, you know, at some point we just get to what level of utility does this token or this project have? And so altcoins going closer and closer to zero is just the natural evolution of a of an industry. Like if if if your stuff isn't meaningful enough to have users that are using it on a daily basis, it it's it's not it's junk is what
Yeah. This is this is what we've been waiting for. I mean, I've seen so much hype and so much sizzle in this space with no followth through, no real disruption, no real user base. Uh, Coinbase is one of the rare exceptions of just a a domestic company being riding the wave of crypto from origin to now. Um, and and picking up the market share that they deserve based upon that innovation. I you know, we're we're you cannot stop this train and so you know the clarity act I don't even understand why people are waiting on it based upon the fact that people are already doing this again the utility of Larry Frink tokenizing ETFs the utility of Brian Armstrong tokenizing stocks and putting them on you know futures uh copper you can now trade on Coinbase it's it's kind of like the what we have now from a framework perspective allows that. What what else do we need? Like what what are we trying to gain from this? It seems to me like this is a last stitch effort for the banks to force the industry to sign something that puts serious handcuffs on us going forward. That's what it feels like to me. And let me tell you, I've been around the block from a contract perspective and you don't sign stuff where there's non-negotiable hardline items that you disagree on. Period. at the end because
affect you in 30 years, right? Legislation like this is this is your precedent. We're still talking about the Howie test from the 1930s or whatever, right? So, I mean, you could literally be talking about what's going to be in there a hundred years down the road.
Yeah. Ellie Ellie brought up, well, they're talking about the 1960 whatever. And I'm like, I wanted, you know, didn't want to jump in and say something that would, you know, be stupid or mess up what she was talking about, but I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. Like what what what a complete and utter waste of time.
You never have to worry about saying something stupid, Andrew.
It's expected. Yeah. So again,
very low and then people will be impressed when you say something stupid.
Right. Right. That that you just kind of summed up most of my life. But anyways, it's a different subject. Um, so it but again, you know, we're talking about the 1960 blah blah blah act about something finance. Like you this isn't serious. Like checking accounts hardly existed back then. You just wandered around with a big watt of cash and hope for the best. I mean, unbelievable.
That's where we're all going. By the way,
if you force all stable coins,
if you force all stable coins that are issued to be issued by banks and to be backed with tea bills, you you solve this problem with the exception of one thing that the big banks have to readjust their entire profit model. That's the only thing that and and we could get this bill passed in a nancond if true motives were were on the table and it wasn't really this is just about protecting their legacy revenue streams. In my opinion, it's no different than like the real estate market, you know, was in such flux that that law got passed that had to get it all kind of solidified on how they were going to play the rules going forward. And man, it it was a rainy day for a lot of folks and then for other folks it was a little bit of a a leveling of the playing field. This I don't to y'all's point, I don't think that we're even close. It reminds me of the Dumb and Dumber uh scene where he says, "So, you're telling me we have a chance?"
What was all that one in a million talk?
There is no chance.
Maybe the most quotable movie of all time.
There really is. Now you got my mind going. There's a million quotes that I
Night.
I was way off.
Next, next time I come over to Toman, I'm gonna give him my extra pair of gloves. It's
We're in the
He's literally an aspen. I mean, like tell me that the jokes right themselves for what's funny to me is that, you know, Jamie Diamond being pissed off at at Brian probably has less to do with the, you know, the back and forth politically and yield or whatever. Jaime's just pissed off that Brian's still making him work hard. He's like, I didn't I didn't want I don't want to do this much work in the last three or four years of my time as a CEO. I just want to kick back and, you know, relax. Which again, based on the scale of JP Morgan and what they get in yield by not paying a meaningful yield to 90 plus percent of their customers, right? What's the interest number that they make each quarter? It's like crazy. It's like 20ome billion dollars that they make between what the Fed gives them and then what they give out. You know, if he wasn't facing meaningful competition buzzing around him, he'd be like, "Well, I don't have to, you know,"
When Yeah, but when when did we start relying on people that have, you know, 20 billion dollar a year interests to be at the table,
right, writing the bills? I mean, that seems insane to me. It seems like a very clear conflict of interest. Uh, and and same goes for Brian Armstrong. I mean, the whole point I thought of getting the pro- crypto cabinet and all the Zars or whatever their titles are in there
was so that we had real people that had unbiased positions of power in the government that could make clear rulings on what was best for the American people. That that's what I would think would be the process for getting something like this passed. But this is just highlighting how backwards everything is, quite honestly.
I thought they were just gonna pump our bags.
>> Yeah. No, not been a whole lot of pumping.
>> They suck.
>> Well, not if you think if if you understand the fact that these things can't die. Uh, they really are are here for good. Like crypto is is here to stay. It's like these are buying opportunities. I mean, I I can't
>> this morning.
>> Yeah. Well, listen, the dips are like hardale opportunities if you look at the risk-reward ratio. Um,
>> so got an it's got an 80% chance, I think, plus of doubling from here, Bitcoin does, and a 20% chance of having from here. That that sounds like a pretty good risk-reward balance to me. Um, but yeah, not
>> was the alarm just going off in.
>> Did what?
>> I heard an alarm.
>> It's my cuckoo clock.
>> Oh, it's your clock. I figured that was the [ __ ] in Andrew's basement needing feeding.
>> It's breakfast.
>> Rocky wrote.
>> So, I did buy the dip this morning automatically with Arts Public, my favorite algorithmic trading tool that you all should try.
Right. Well, listen, I think this the thing that is a great segue into, you know, what we what we do at Arch Public is the the New York conference that we were at a couple of weeks ago. Anthony Pompiano put on that the room was all institutional enterprise buyers. Uh, folks that have been sitting on the sidelines for a very long time. They have been waiting for the opportunity to present itself to buy rash based upon rational decision-making, not emotion or FOMO. They haven't experienced FOMO yet. They they they put great barriers in their life to prevent them from experiencing FOMO because FOMO makes you make dumb choices. Uh, and so you know what we saw there is is that there's a ton of dry capital that just is a steady buying floor. And so if you you ever hear any adage in trading, it's always about, you know, following the smart money or, you know, playing the the counter trend, if you will. This is the this these are the opportunities that everybody talks about. It's hard to enter it. It's emotionally distracting. It's emotionally taxing because everybody thinks doom and gloom, the sky is falling. But that is the very nature of the markets as it relates to you know opportunity and buying buying opportunities and when when you make money. You want to make money when everyone's selling. And I try to give analogies that get make sense to people, but imagine everyone in the crypto space, there's 21 million seats in a stadium. Those those stadium seats are season ticket holder seats. If you own the ticket, you get in the stadium. If you don't own the ticket, you don't get in the stadium. When the team's winning, tickets are going at huge premiums. People are paying stupid money to get into that stadium to watch the winning team, right? Because they want to feel a part of the winning team. When the team's losing, they are they can't fill the stadium. They can't give away the tickets, right? If you want to buy a block of tickets in that stadium because you think that team has a lot of potential and you don't think they're going to blow up that stadium and it's going to be a permanent staple in that city, you buy the tickets when the team stinks.
>> Yeah.
>> Bitcoin's team from from that analogies perspective stinks. We were at 5% confidence level or fear greed index. Five. I mean, that is 17
>> 5% is the lowest we've ever had in like my recent I can't remember it
>> ever. It's the lowest reading ever.
>> It was the lowest and we stayed in fear the longest period ever. Yeah. It was the lowest it ever hit. The previous was six in July of '22 and it only stayed there briefly. So we're the lowest and the longest in extreme fear and we did spike out of it to break that streak right before coming back. It's disgusting out there.
>> Yeah.
>> Well, but but it's disgusting if if you look at that number. But if you think about a floor price of 65,000 or 60K with that low of a number, what what other correlated drops when the number's been that low? What percentage drop has it been from all-time high? 80 plus percent. We're at like a 50% pullback. Great. That's that's healthy. That's what you want. You can't you you can't go straight up forever, right?
>> Um, so
>> yeah, we we you know, we have individualized stories too about clients that have been using our tools um and using them the way that they want to. These are, you know, user-driven tools that have had just extraordinary experiences and and to me, our tools are more effective and and more useful in down markets, in bare markets than
>> absolutely in up markets. So in up markets, you can throw a, you know, you can have a monkey throw a dart at something and and it's going to go up, right? Like that's just the nature of markets. But when you're in down markets and we start bombing Iran Friday, Saturday morning at 1:15 a.m. and Bitcoin is going lower, who in the world is taking a trade at 63K? One, you're not awake. Two, if you are, you're probably drunk. Three, on top of that, it's Iran and the US going to war. You got to think that it's going lower, but it didn't, right? So everybody that was in that particular moment using our tools, they grabbed more Bitcoin at 63, 64 and no nobody else did. Another thing is, you know, we we had somebody, we had a bunch of clients that came to Bitcoin Investor Week. One of the clients said, "Hey, I wasn't going to get in, wasn't going to be part of the concierge program. I thought, you know, Bitcoin's price was going to go lower, but I decided to get in anyways because I I needed the tools." And this guy was
>> no reason to get in.
>> Yeah. This guy was going around telling people at the conference, "Arch Public helped me build my house in Puerto Rico and put in a pool. That's how effective these tools are. That's what it's done for me. I've been able to use them in a way that has allowed me to do real-world stuff." Right? So, listen, uh, we we let the tools speak for themselves and then we let our customers uh speak for us as well. We get on this show and we talk about how effective it is, but the proof is in the pudding. The proof is in 18,000 plus users. The proof is in Scott's putting 100,000, then 200,000, then more than that because I don't want to manually trade ever again. I just want to do this. Right.
>> Well, and we want the proof to speak for itself. Like you said, that's why the product is free. You can use the product absolutely at no cost. Um, we also had a lot of people came to the conference that were free users and they would come up and say, "Your team has supported me through my journey of getting the software up and running and accomplishing what I want it to accomplish for me." Um, you know, as if I was a paid customer. That's that's what we want to do. We want to make the experience of getting Bitcoin ownership more more accessible and easier for people. It's just been so hard and so complicated. And really, if you boil it down to simple um, you know, financial premises or simple financial rules, which is like, if you want Bitcoin exposure, you should be separating your purchases. Don't ever buy at one pricing level all of your purchasing power. You need to spread it out and dollar cost average into your cost so that you have a healthy cost curve. But the next question is is like, is Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. the best time to buy or Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. or are you just going to buy based upon when you're available to buy after work? Those aren't the ways in which you should apply capital. You should apply capital when there's a structural weakness in the markets. when you see a dip that provides a buying opportunity that then starts to bottom and you see buying pressure start to, you know, come back and you have to have tools to monitor those things in real time. And those are the very tools that that we provide. And so use them for free, see if you like them, see if it provides value to you, dig into the customer service side of what we do and and get set up to to, you know, whatever you want it to do, it will do. It's a very very robust tool. Um, and then call us and let us know what what you think the highest value is. We love to hear feedback. Like Andrew said, we've got a lot of customers and we
>> Andrew, you actually came to me yesterday with an idea and I think we should absolutely do that. Like I'm not
>> Yeah. officially announcing it today because I don't know when we'll do it because of schedules, but to put together a webinar where basically like
>> instead of doing it here every Tuesday, we sit down with anybody who's actually interested and walk very like diligently through uh what I my the process for me at what points like we thought it was calibrated wrong, how we recalibrated that, how we got it to a point where it's basically perfectly calibrated, when and why I continued to add capital, you know, what the experience was like starting at the top of the market. How I wish uh, you know, we were starting right now, which I will be with another portfolio because I'm addicted. Um, you know, I think that it would be really valuable for people and we could kind of take it offline from here and just, you know, really get into the details of what that looked like for people cuz like,
>> yeah, I it's been just an exceptional tool for me obviously, right? It just makes my life so much easier and I get those little dopamine hits where that alert goes off and we all need that.
>> Yeah. or when you wake up and you're like, "Cool, my
>> my robot version of Scott Milker just did this for me while I was sleeping, right?" And and and that is the nature of By the way, I I get semi annoyed um when I just hear singular tool or singular algorithm. Our we have tools all plural like there there is an almost an unending version of our tools available to you. Scott, how many are you running right now?
>> Uh 11 or 12 or 13. I I scaled back. See, like this is an exact perfect example. So, we have about 13 set up. But, uh, as the market started to drop, I actually wanted to focus more on Bitcoin dips. And so, I kind of recalibrated to
>> by a higher percentage of Bitcoin and a less lesser percentage of altcoins because obviously they're going to need bigger bounces to kick in the selling side. So, at any given time, you know, six to 13 and
>> and let's even break that down here, right? I mean,
>> Yeah,
>> let's break that down even more. So, those six to 13 that you can turn on and off are also they have 15 variables that you can change within each one of those that you're also tweaking like, if it drops by this percentage and you can change that percentage from 2% to 3% to four. But I raised those right because like
>> exactly right seeing how much more volatile when you see it in real time obviously certain assets are and that I was pretty convinced we were going lower and not higher. I wanted to buy bigger dips, right? And uh spread out to how much we were doing them at. Listen, at the beginning, it would be like the weekly candle. I said this before. It'd be like the weekly candle would close down and my weekly, daily, 12 hour, six hour would fire on three complete separate assets and I would buy like 30 things, right? I was like, you know, but like there came a time I was like, "Okay, well, I don't have infinite capital, so I'm going to slow it down." And and it's continued to just bring the cost basis down slowly. Mhm.
>> You can dial it to sport plus, sport, normal
>> heads out there. Yeah, you get what I'm saying. It it's very customizable as it pertains to how aggressive or, you know, if you want to divest of your portfolio to some degree to create cash balance because you think that we are going lower and you want to uh apply that capital at lower prices. All of these tools are meant to to to steer you in the direction that you want to head, but do it in a prudent way over time versus doing it instantly or when you're available or when the emotion, you know, you know, gets you to the computer to to actually do it. Those are all bad bad ways to react. You should never react to the market, right? You should be proactive in what you want to accomplish. Set those rules up and then allow the market to present the opportunities and and capitalize on them. And that's what these tools do exceptionally well.
>> I need to use my AI agent because I have an AI agent now. I'm very sophisticated. Um, she's named Athena.
>> You only have one.
>> So, listen.
>> Oh, she does a lot of things. She has sub-agents. Okay. But either way, like I need to actually I was going to say something serious because somebody in the comments said, "Make a Milker tracker."
>> I need to literally program her to just tweet every time I get an alert and share it.
>> I'm not going to do that, right? But uh because that's like work.
>> It's it's uh um by the way, to tie this to 24/7 trading, BlackRock, Coinbase, all that stuff is coming, right?
>> Yep. So our tools will be more and more and more and more valuable as innovation continues to find its way to financial markets. Like if
>> we cut our teeth in the futures market, for example, like we we will be applying these strategies across every tokenized market, every traditional market, every traditional and tokenized assets.
>> Our hedge funds are so screwed. I'm telling you, man. My my I've said it before, but these guys are shaking in fear of 24/7, 365.
>> Yes, they are.
>> They should be. And I'm not. And I'm And I'm sympathetic because like, if you're used to market hours and actually getting a break, sorry, welcome to crypto because everything is becoming these firms are going to have to automate everything. There's just no way you can have enough competent people working at every shop who are available at 3:00 a.m. on Sunday to actively trade the market. And there's actual liquidity at those times. So you got to participate because 24/7, 365.
>> Yeah. Market hours have almost been like being a teacher. And you know, because think about this, you know, the market doesn't open till 9:30 for most traditional markets and it closes at 4, right? So I mean, that's that's not even a full day for your average, you know, guy working on the line at Ford.
>> Well, even then, they give up on large sections of the year like the summer, sell in May and go what, you know.
>> Yeah. and and you get a bunch of bunch of days off associated with you know, different types of holidays um and you know, weekends off, right?
>> I bet you could boil down the real trading days to under 150 a year.
>> Yeah, there for sure. That that's absolutely.
>> Oh, and if you actually do forget trading days, hours of the
>> I mean, entire hours versus like hours in the year.
>> Yep. That's right. So to your point, Scott, people kind of freaking out about this in the world of finance for sure. that that's the reason why um, you know, talking about it at Pomp's conference, like, you know, Jeff Park works at works with Pomp and his organization now at Pro Cap and, you know, you either have to to clone Jeff or several clones of Jeff or you got to figure out a way to automate, you know, the way that Jeff thinks.
>> d bought some Bitcoin, I saw that was announced yesterday. I think 450 Bitcoin or something. Prob. Good job, Jeff.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, big purchase. Kudos to them for having dry capital to place. Um, I I will also say that I think that you know, this 24/7 markets um and trading automation specifically and what we can provide. If you go dig into that Jane Street article and you see um what they've been using as tools, it's automation. Every one of these big shops uses automation. Every single one of them. So the question you have to ask yourself is like, where can I buy automation? Where can I license this type of technology? Not a black box version of it where I don't get to control it and I don't get to work it, but something that I can download on my computer and actually work it myself. Where, you know, if you ask yourself, if every one of these pro shops is using automation and yet retail's not been given access to it, there might be an advantage there that you is worth checking out. Um,
>> yeah. Yeah. And again, we have teams. We're not just telling you to, you know, go on Twitter and say, "Hey, I need to be using Claude with seven different, you know, iMac little machines, right?" Like, I'm not going out and doing that. I don't have any idea how to do that. But what I do know is
>> with
>> Yeah. If I get involved with Arch Public, then there's a team of people that can help me say, "Hey, I want I want to do this, or you know what? I want to do what Melker's doing. Can you guys set up my thing the way that Melker's doing it?" Yep, we can do that.
>> Click in your way.
>> Then you're trading like an 8080 ADHD riddled, you know, podcast. Perfect. Well done.
>> Honestly, I'm gonna be honest with you, my ADHD is pretty much gone.
>> Yeah. Thinking about actually writing a book about it all those years.
>> We're not laughing at you. We're laughing with you, Scott. That's what we're doing. That's an excellent exit joke.
>> That that hard.
>> That's when you drop the mic and you walk out of the room like George Costanza.
>> I can't drop this mic. It's attached to something. I'm going to break the mic. Oh, damn it.
>> Now it's like flaccid.
>> Yeah, it's weird. Never experienced. I swear this never happened to me before.
>> Oh my god, we got to go, guys. We'll be back next Tuesday. Here. Right here with I'm glad we let Ellie go early.
>> Yeah, really good idea.
>> You know, because I'm not sure she would have liked this part.
>> That's all we got. We will be back. Uh, we're going to set that webinar up. It's going to be great. Uh, I'm going to be there. You're going to be there. Everybody, you know, is probably going to be there. Um, so don't miss it. I'm setting an outro video. I'll see you guys later. Peace out, everyone. Bye.
>> That's dope. Hey, let's