Speaker 1: Welco A trillions. I'm Joel Webber and I'm Eric Belchiers. Eric,
Speaker 1: you went down Under to Australia, but while you went
Speaker 1: down under, crypto seemed to go down under. I'm curious,
Speaker 1: while you were on your trip, which was a work
Speaker 1: E t F inspired travel abroad, how much did people
Speaker 1: want to talk about crypto not E t F s
Speaker 1: A little bit. Obviously, I'm there for the e t
Speaker 1: F market and it's not as big of a deal there.
Speaker 1: I just felt like the mental thing was more about
Speaker 1: the e t F market and Australian equities and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But certainly came up. But where I
Speaker 1: noticed that the most was on my Twitter feed. I
Speaker 1: would go to bed, and when you wake up in Australia,
Speaker 1: say six thirty seven, it's three thirty four pm in
Speaker 1: the US, so I would get to see a whole
Speaker 1: day's news flow, And of course there was always one
Speaker 1: or two new nuggets of like horrendous details about f
Speaker 1: t X, the crypto exchange that halted redemptions, halted withdrawals
Speaker 1: and allegedly used customer funds, and Sam Bankman freed who
Speaker 1: you know, it was the face of crypto he was
Speaker 1: supposed to be like this disheveled tech nerd that like
Speaker 1: you could trust versus say, the Wall Street slick people.
Speaker 1: And this was a whole image covered on many, many magazines,
Speaker 1: many TV shows, And for this to be a complete implosion,
Speaker 1: I think is I can't overstate how brutal it is
Speaker 1: for Crypto because of how popular he was and how
Speaker 1: how much media exposure he had. Plus the other thing
Speaker 1: is having come from investor relations in crisis communications that
Speaker 1: were to affirmed there for a couple of years. What
Speaker 1: you want with bad news is just get it all
Speaker 1: out quick and let the news flow take something else
Speaker 1: to Two days later, this comes out drip drip, drip,
Speaker 1: drip drip every new day. We're on like week three
Speaker 1: now and there's still new details. This is bad, This
Speaker 1: could be. I'm not gonna say it's the death blow
Speaker 1: for Crypto, but it is a devastating punch which I'm
Speaker 1: I'm really wanting to talk about this. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: be joined by James Seifert from bloom We're gonna Telligent
Speaker 1: and Katie Gryfield from Broomberg News. We spent in the
Speaker 1: in the good times, we spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: talking about crypto and bitcoin et F s, and then
Speaker 1: now we've hit not only a crypto winner, but maybe
Speaker 1: a crypto nuclear winner is what a lot of people
Speaker 1: were calling it. So I think it's worth us talking
Speaker 1: about this again and what it might mean for e
Speaker 1: t maybe a crypto coma. And the question is will
Speaker 1: it wake up this time on Jilliance? What the SBF?
Speaker 1: Katie James, welcome back to Jillian's. Thanks for having me,
Speaker 1: Happy to be here. Okay, Katie, it felt like the
Speaker 1: E t F world was really excited about bitcoin. How
Speaker 1: does it feel now? I mean, if you think back
Speaker 1: a year ago, I feel like we were talking about
Speaker 1: all time highs. We had just gotten the futures Bitcoin
Speaker 1: et F out the door to your sec here's another application.
Speaker 1: Maybe you miss my last one. Yeah, for sure, people
Speaker 1: are like, okay, this was the last needed step. Now
Speaker 1: we're going to get a spot pitcoinn e t F.
Speaker 1: You also had all these crypto ish products launched, just
Speaker 1: dozens of them, and then worldwide you have all these
Speaker 1: actual crypto e t p s. You look at where
Speaker 1: we are now November two, and it's a totally different picture.
Speaker 1: And we've seen that big pipeline that I just talked
Speaker 1: about is dried up, and are there hopes for a
Speaker 1: spot bitcoin e t F at this point it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like it. Well, let me say this before we
Speaker 1: get to that. I agree, it's things don't look good
Speaker 1: right now, but James doesn't an e t F fix this.
Speaker 1: If the spotted Bitcoin e t F had been approved,
Speaker 1: like we were all saying the SEC should, and you
Speaker 1: were in this, you probably wouldn't have felt much you
Speaker 1: could have. There's no way your funds would have been
Speaker 1: like frozen, and and the ones that traded seemed to
Speaker 1: trade find so it seemed like we were actually right
Speaker 1: by by encouraging the SEC to approve a spot pitcoin
Speaker 1: e t F. Yeah. I mean, if you had money
Speaker 1: at ft X or block Fire wherever, jet Genesis that's
Speaker 1: frozen right now, you would have much preferred to have
Speaker 1: your money in a bitcoin et F, which you can
Speaker 1: do it through future ZTF. But that's the that's not
Speaker 1: exactly what people want. People want to spot and they
Speaker 1: went to these other areas and right now they're in trouble.
Speaker 1: And if you had an et F that was regulated
Speaker 1: by the SEC under the thirty three Act, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: be having as much of a conversation, but no matter what,
Speaker 1: people would have lost a lot of money because there
Speaker 1: was a lot of money on this even before we
Speaker 1: were looking at a spot bitcoin ETF approval worth mentioning
Speaker 1: that there are those future based products that you you
Speaker 1: just alluded to, how have they stood up in all
Speaker 1: of us? So actually they've done tremendously well. Their bidass
Speaker 1: spreads have stayed very tight um, the trading has gone
Speaker 1: through the roof. Biddoh is now the one a very
Speaker 1: highly traded et F. It's more more traded than GBTC,
Speaker 1: which didn't seem possible last year, so it's it's traded
Speaker 1: very well, traded tightly, and honestly, one of the big
Speaker 1: things we were worried about for potential with bitcoin future
Speaker 1: et F s is as has been talked about on
Speaker 1: the show many times, and when you trade futures there's
Speaker 1: the potential for backward backwardation and contango. So you you
Speaker 1: have to sell a contract every month essentially, So if
Speaker 1: you're selling the contract, and you're selling a contract at
Speaker 1: one price and you have to buy a contract at
Speaker 1: a higher price, that constantly eats away at your returns
Speaker 1: UM and the year and a half leading up to
Speaker 1: the Bitcoin Futures et F approval, the rolling that front
Speaker 1: on future contract would have underperformed spot bitcoin itself by
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty percent over a year and a half,
Speaker 1: which is a lot. So we were worried. We didn't
Speaker 1: think it would be quite that bad. Futures have become
Speaker 1: more institutionalized, more efficient, but we were worried that it
Speaker 1: could be ten twelve percent a year based on what
Speaker 1: we were seeing in the markets. But what happened in
Speaker 1: the futures market for bitcoin, everything flattened out. There's bury
Speaker 1: any curve. At some point there was a tiny bit
Speaker 1: of backwardation which actually aids in the performance. So we've
Speaker 1: only seen over the last year since this thing launched,
Speaker 1: Like Katie mentioned, it's only underperformed by about one point
Speaker 1: eight one point nine percent on spot market. And these
Speaker 1: things charge basis points, so you take out half of
Speaker 1: that and it's basically tracking within a percentage point of
Speaker 1: Spot Bitcoin. The problem is it's down so that one
Speaker 1: point eight I mean, that's like UM does probably little
Speaker 1: to uh, I guess sue the people who might have
Speaker 1: bought it, So working great unless you are invested in
Speaker 1: there basically, but talk a little bit. Bid Oh one
Speaker 1: year old. You guys wrote a story about it. You
Speaker 1: actually wish that a happy birthday on t F. I
Speaker 1: q it was I share a birthday with Yeah, that's cute.
Speaker 1: I'm a lot older. But what's your take on biddo
Speaker 1: and how it's held up since then? I will say
Speaker 1: it almost feels like there's this very delicious irony here
Speaker 1: that the spot Bitcoin e t F, or rather the
Speaker 1: future is back to eq t F s have performed
Speaker 1: so well, and I've spoken to a lot of E
Speaker 1: t F people, some in this room who have said that,
Speaker 1: you know, this is why we should have a Spot
Speaker 1: e t F for all the problems or the potential
Speaker 1: problems that would have been avoided that James went through.
Speaker 1: But if you're Gary Gensler, who's one of his underlying
Speaker 1: problems is the exchanges, he's you know, made a point
Speaker 1: of that, and we're talking about this fantastic blow up
Speaker 1: of one of the biggest exchanges, I don't think this
Speaker 1: moves the needle in a in a good way for
Speaker 1: the Spot Bitcoin et F crowd um and one of
Speaker 1: the reasons we said that they should approved a spot
Speaker 1: Bitcoin e TF is that it would all these market
Speaker 1: makers who are not dumb. These are highly sophisticated people
Speaker 1: with a lot of money at play. They would have
Speaker 1: knows their way into these exchanges a bit, and it's
Speaker 1: possible they would have sniffed out some problems with f
Speaker 1: t X long before and not used it. But even
Speaker 1: if they even if f t X had a problem,
Speaker 1: there's multiple exchanges, so they would be able to source
Speaker 1: liquidity elsewhere. And I think that's the world. The story
Speaker 1: is an e t F kind of takes away that
Speaker 1: that risk of one of these exchanges having an implosion
Speaker 1: in halting redemptions. I will say f t X was
Speaker 1: the trading platform in the crypto world. Everyone wanted to
Speaker 1: use f t X because of the way they did liquidations,
Speaker 1: because of how efficient the trading was. So there were
Speaker 1: institutions that were caught up in that. But yeah, like
Speaker 1: you were mentioning in the in the e t F world,
Speaker 1: you have the Jaine Streets, the vertu uh Susquehanna, Ken Griff,
Speaker 1: the Citadel. These people are all in here. They are
Speaker 1: the biggest money in the world and they are trading.
Speaker 1: They make Mark it's more efficient when they trade. That said,
Speaker 1: they might have been using fd X because there's plenty
Speaker 1: of institutions that had money on f t X that
Speaker 1: we now know. They don't know how much money they're
Speaker 1: going to get back, if any at all, and not
Speaker 1: small amounts of money, big figures, millions of dollars. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Eric, what are the odds that the SEC wades
Speaker 1: into this and ever ever ever approves a spot bitcoin ETF. So,
Speaker 1: on one hand, this is devastating to crypto in general,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if you could say, well, this
Speaker 1: is probably just prolonged to spot bitcoin e f TF
Speaker 1: because this proves Gensler sort of worries. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: this could fast track regulation, and we all know that
Speaker 1: was the one thing Ginzler needed to satisfy him for
Speaker 1: approving to spot bitcoin ETF. Then he would feel more comfortable.
Speaker 1: So maybe this actually gets it going. Um, And I
Speaker 1: think the question is, let's just say hypothetically there's regulation.
Speaker 1: Maybe Biden says to Gensler gets something going, or even
Speaker 1: says the Congress get some regulations out and Agains is
Speaker 1: happy they prove us up at twenty t F. Let's
Speaker 1: just say that all happens in a year. Probably not,
Speaker 1: but let's just say it does. Will advisors ever come back.
Speaker 1: I know they trust the E t F and they
Speaker 1: would certainly be like, this is probably gonna be better
Speaker 1: for me than an exchange. But is crypto so um
Speaker 1: I guess mutilated and the reputation so bad in the
Speaker 1: toilet that doesn't even matter anymore. Yeah, I would say
Speaker 1: Eric and I were on the record we thought was
Speaker 1: a realistic opportunity. This was granted over a year ago
Speaker 1: when we first started saying that. I still think isn't
Speaker 1: off the table for the reasons Eric mentioned. My over
Speaker 1: under was basically September two, end of Q three um
Speaker 1: I part of that was that I thought there was
Speaker 1: tail risk or tail potential for like some sort of
Speaker 1: big regulation to come in and US get like an
Speaker 1: earlier approval than we expected, maybe like Q one or
Speaker 1: Q two of this year, based on like some regulatory guidelines.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of movement in Congress. Ironically, f
Speaker 1: t X was trying to change the way things were happening,
Speaker 1: which would have made their markets regulated by the CFTC,
Speaker 1: which could have satisfied it. Obviously that's not happening. So
Speaker 1: I think all those tail risk events of potentially having
Speaker 1: an early UM move move towards regulation, getting more regulatory
Speaker 1: clarity are gone. So I don't know that the September
Speaker 1: is going to happen anymore, but I don't think it's
Speaker 1: completely gone. As Eric mentioned, this could bring more regulation,
Speaker 1: more demand for Congress to step in and do something here.
Speaker 1: But what about the ultimate question here, which is will
Speaker 1: would investors come back if there were a regulated entity
Speaker 1: like a spot bitcoin ETF. That's like the big rallying
Speaker 1: bull cry right that it'll unlock this previously untapped type
Speaker 1: of investor. But at this point I'm not sure that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But is the untapped market turned off? That's a great
Speaker 1: question if you think about who would be using a
Speaker 1: spot Bitcoin e t F trying to put it into
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps accounts that they can't go out and
Speaker 1: have a cold wallet ness sat right, that's somebody would
Speaker 1: want to get in low and watch it didn't should
Speaker 1: go higher. So I think I think if that product existed,
Speaker 1: somebody would be willing to dabble in it, and the
Speaker 1: whole point of it would be that it would be safe.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any political win here for anybody
Speaker 1: to touch this. So I don't see that I'm barish
Speaker 1: on your call for I don't. I don't. I think
Speaker 1: it's just a lose lose. It just looks nasty. So
Speaker 1: right now, at least I wouldn't see anybody willing to
Speaker 1: weigh in. It's too radioactive. Make any clarity here, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the That's why I are still low. But
Speaker 1: there is perceivably a path, but I would still stick
Speaker 1: to lower. It's definitely radioactive. Right now, I don't think
Speaker 1: it like if Gensler were to approve a spotic when
Speaker 1: E t F. Right now, I can't like he's obviously
Speaker 1: not going to go anywhere near it. But a few
Speaker 1: months from now, I do think there's going to be
Speaker 1: a call from people in Congress, from regulators and legislators
Speaker 1: to to do something about regulation the cryptocurrencies ACE. So,
Speaker 1: so we are about to talk about something and I
Speaker 1: want to come back to it, which is g BTC.
Speaker 1: If we we said it earlier, what is it and
Speaker 1: what makes it really interesting? Right now? Gbtcson over the
Speaker 1: counter trust that does it. It's almost like a closed
Speaker 1: end fund um where so it's it doesn't trade. There's
Speaker 1: no arbitrage, so it doesn't trade near the n A
Speaker 1: V of Bitcoin's once traded a huge premium and now
Speaker 1: it's at a huge discount. I think forty two closed
Speaker 1: at forty five on Friday and going down. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's crazy. That's a that's a steep discount. And g
Speaker 1: BTC was, which is, by the way, the gray scale
Speaker 1: Bitcoin Trust. Yeah, a lot of people had used this
Speaker 1: because there was no spoty TF. I think a lot
Speaker 1: maybe they didn't even understand that it could have these
Speaker 1: steep discounts. But it's kind of a bummer if you
Speaker 1: went in anywhere near that premium or if it was
Speaker 1: close to the n A V and now you're down.
Speaker 1: Even if bitcoin was flat, it just would be a
Speaker 1: bummer to lose. That's why. Which is great. So bitcoin
Speaker 1: is at one price. Yeah, Hi, if you're in this thing,
Speaker 1: off whatever that spot price right, So actually have some
Speaker 1: sizes here. I was just looking this up. Um in
Speaker 1: rough terms, since the end of g BTC is up
Speaker 1: something like a thousand percent, but bitcoin itself is up
Speaker 1: over three thousand percent, So this thing has lagged and
Speaker 1: lagged and lagged. Discount is staggering, but when you put
Speaker 1: it that way, it's even more dramatic. Yeah, and but
Speaker 1: a lot of the lagging happened on the downturn too,
Speaker 1: and so I think I look one point where bitcoin
Speaker 1: was flat and you were down like a bunch, and
Speaker 1: that would really hurt. Uh. It's if you're up a
Speaker 1: thousand percent you can still kind of sleep at night,
Speaker 1: I think, But it's when you're down and bitcoin is
Speaker 1: flat or something like that, which is can be frustrating
Speaker 1: and maybe you can't get your money out either. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you could sell it, but again you would be
Speaker 1: selling it. It would be like buying something and then
Speaker 1: you know you want to sell it discount or the
Speaker 1: ideas you weighed around potentially comes up, or if Gray
Speaker 1: scales trying to convert it to an each if that
Speaker 1: would completely close that gap. Some people are buying GBT
Speaker 1: so ce for that hope. They feel like it's almost
Speaker 1: like a call option on them converting to an et F,
Speaker 1: which would give you just like that, and that's a
Speaker 1: that's a could would be great trade, right, but that's
Speaker 1: the risk and doesn't look like that slightly. But James
Speaker 1: recently looked into this and Gray scales owners are having
Speaker 1: a bit of a problem. So now there's a whole
Speaker 1: debate on whether GBTC will will be forced to liquidate
Speaker 1: or could have problems UM and and solvency potential with
Speaker 1: the people who own them. So, James, why don't you
Speaker 1: go into that whole scene right now? So let me
Speaker 1: take a step back. Digital Currency Group is the owner
Speaker 1: of gray Scale. They own two hundred some odd other companies.
Speaker 1: One of the two big companies that most people know
Speaker 1: in the crypto world are gray Scale, which operates GBTC,
Speaker 1: and Genesis, which is basically a prime broker. They were
Speaker 1: the first institutionalized prime broker in the cryptocurrency space. Right now,
Speaker 1: Genesis had some unknown exact exposure to the ft X
Speaker 1: blow up. Right now, Genesis and d c G are
Speaker 1: trying to raise money. It's been reported by multiple sources
Speaker 1: that they're trying to raise a billion dollars or so
Speaker 1: in emergency financing UM. Genesis could potentially be heading towards something.
Speaker 1: They're definitely in a liquidity or solvency crisis, So we
Speaker 1: don't know what's gonna happen. There could be news by
Speaker 1: the time this drops that something big has happened in
Speaker 1: the space, so a lot of people are concerned about
Speaker 1: some sort of contagion risk with Genesis going into getting
Speaker 1: into trouble, which brings DCG into trouble, which leaves people
Speaker 1: unknown to what's going to happen to g BTC. Now
Speaker 1: in the in the documents of GBDC, they specifically state
Speaker 1: that if the sponsor goes has goes into insolvent, or
Speaker 1: goes into insolvency or files for bankruptcy, then the trust
Speaker 1: will be liquidated unless fifty of the shares vote to
Speaker 1: like transfer to a new sponsor like go to I
Speaker 1: don't know Goldman or coin Base or some other person
Speaker 1: that would sponsor this trust, um. But that means if
Speaker 1: they if this if Gray Scale does go bankrupt, which
Speaker 1: I don't see any way that that happens right now
Speaker 1: because of the amount of money they're bringing in on
Speaker 1: all these trusts. But again, a b DCG sells off
Speaker 1: Gray Scale as an investment to raise capital, I don't
Speaker 1: know if they would want to do that. This is
Speaker 1: one of the crown crown jewels of their portfolio. Um.
Speaker 1: But essentially it comes bound to the fact that if
Speaker 1: GBTC has to sell uh has to liquidate, they're going
Speaker 1: to sell the bitcoin in the open market. It's not
Speaker 1: a lot of people seem to think like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna get the bitcoin back that I have a
Speaker 1: pro rad to share. No, the documents are very clear
Speaker 1: that you would get they would sell the bitcoin in
Speaker 1: the open market and give you a prograd to share
Speaker 1: of those sales. So there's a theory out there that
Speaker 1: d c G is actually shorting bitcoin and buying GBTC
Speaker 1: knowing they're gonna liquidate and they're gonna pocket. Well, So
Speaker 1: that's a theory out there. But I mean, we know
Speaker 1: for a fact that they were buyers of GBTC big
Speaker 1: buyers in Q two of two. They were buyers in
Speaker 1: Q one, There are buyers in Q two, and they
Speaker 1: were actually sellers in Q three, and I'm assuming they're
Speaker 1: also sellers now in Q four. There's no way to
Speaker 1: know for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that
Speaker 1: they're probably selling some shares. But there's also they can't
Speaker 1: just sell. There's the GBDC. It's what's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a rule one a offering, which like we're going to
Speaker 1: get way into the weeds. We don't have to get
Speaker 1: into that. But it's not regulated on the closed in
Speaker 1: funds you talked about. But under one A, if you're
Speaker 1: a related party, which d c G is, you can
Speaker 1: only sell one percent of the shares outstanding that every
Speaker 1: three months. So they it's not like they can just
Speaker 1: dump this on the street immediately. They have to sell slowly.
Speaker 1: If they are selling, I'm assuming based on what's happening
Speaker 1: with Genesis and d CG that they're likely selling a
Speaker 1: little bit to try to raise money. But we we
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what's going on behind the scenes. This
Speaker 1: is very opaque. This is not like the E d
Speaker 1: F world where we know exactly what's going on. I
Speaker 1: have a word, speculation. This is just it feels so
Speaker 1: all of this feels so speculative. It's hard to throw
Speaker 1: thing about throwing money into this and this whatever this is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to earn money here you go. It feels
Speaker 1: a little black gone, gone, gone gone. I've spent more
Speaker 1: time on Signal and in Twitter d M s over
Speaker 1: the past two weeks then I have in any other
Speaker 1: period as a journalist. But have a question for James,
Speaker 1: so wait, I understand why DCG was buying shares of GBTC.
Speaker 1: A lot of letters here. Why were they? Why were
Speaker 1: they selling? Do you think that was just to raise cash?
Speaker 1: Why would DCG be selling shares of GBTC. I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's no way to know exactly why they're selling, but
Speaker 1: they owned a ton of it, so there's no reason,
Speaker 1: like if they need to get unloaded a little bit
Speaker 1: off of their balance sheet, or they just don't want
Speaker 1: to have that much exposure. They're going to sell slowly
Speaker 1: over time. They're probably trying to limit the market impact
Speaker 1: of that selling. Who who knows? We don't know why
Speaker 1: they're selling, but we know they they're the largest holder
Speaker 1: by far. They own more shares of GPDC than any
Speaker 1: individual entity has owned of GBDC in its history. UM,
Speaker 1: so it's not like they're just unloading tons and tons
Speaker 1: of shares. It's a very small amount that they sold
Speaker 1: in Q three. Can I ask another speculation question, Cathy
Speaker 1: would bought GBDC shares last week? And I never got
Speaker 1: a satisfying answer. Why Maybe you could speculate about that?
Speaker 1: So when she bought bitcoin was around sixteen thousand, seventeen
Speaker 1: thousand dollars per bitcoin. GBTC at the time was trading
Speaker 1: at a forty two ish percent discount, maybe more during
Speaker 1: the day. So I recently saw a GBTC was trading
Speaker 1: over a fifty discount. So there are times in a
Speaker 1: day where it goes crazy. So she could have seen
Speaker 1: one of those times and it was like, basically, if
Speaker 1: you're buying at that discount, you're buying exposure to bitcoin.
Speaker 1: At like I said, it's seventeen thousand dollars, you're getting
Speaker 1: it nine thou five hundred dollars. That's what your exposure
Speaker 1: is at this type of discount. So she might have
Speaker 1: just said this, She's definitely believe in bitcoin. We know
Speaker 1: that for sure, so she probably just thought this was
Speaker 1: too good of an opportunity to get exposure. Well, but
Speaker 1: doesn't She also like to have maintain waitings that are consistent,
Speaker 1: and if GBTC went down, she had none. She she
Speaker 1: had none, There was no new by interest in this ets.
Speaker 1: She had a very very small mark. W W it
Speaker 1: was She hadn't thought since July. But sometimes she buys
Speaker 1: just to keep the weight at where it was, because
Speaker 1: if it goes down, she has to buy it to
Speaker 1: keep the weight up. Was a big buy? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that idea of buying in a discount I find really
Speaker 1: interesting and I am curious, like how much new money,
Speaker 1: non crypto money could possibly come, could wash into this space. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, if we get a spot bitcoin ETF we
Speaker 1: know for a fact there's trillions of dollars in US
Speaker 1: advisors that would probably take a nibble at this potentially.
Speaker 1: I mean, the other thing you've got to realize is
Speaker 1: Bitcoin itself has had like four or five plus draw downs,
Speaker 1: and every time people are saying this is the end
Speaker 1: of crypto, this is the end of bitcoin, and so
Speaker 1: far it's come back. Now, obviously this could be actually
Speaker 1: the end of bitcoin. Maybe it's not going to get
Speaker 1: back to that sixty dollar high we saw, but this
Speaker 1: is part of crypto. If you're investing in crypto, you
Speaker 1: probably if you did any bit of research, you knew
Speaker 1: that a plus draw down was a realistic possibility and
Speaker 1: a realistic rix and f t X. Granted they're a
Speaker 1: huge exchange, but back in the day when moult Cox
Speaker 1: went under, which was an exchange that went bankrupt and
Speaker 1: they got hacked, they were the exchange. It's not like
Speaker 1: it was like a bunch of other exchanges. It was
Speaker 1: moult Cox and nobody else and they lost money and
Speaker 1: everyone said this was it. Silk Road got hacked. They said,
Speaker 1: oh that's it for bitcoin, and we keep it keeps
Speaker 1: coming back. There's a lot of people still in this
Speaker 1: industry obviously hurting right now. But I don't know that
Speaker 1: I would count crypto and bitcoin completely out forever. Well,
Speaker 1: I agree, I would never kind of doubt it's come
Speaker 1: back too many times. The difference between Cox and Silk Road, though,
Speaker 1: are that this guy was on the cover of every magazine,
Speaker 1: um except Business Week except when he fell and had
Speaker 1: the great cover with in ruins, really good. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he was just like Elizabeth Holmes the next buffet, which
Speaker 1: by the way, should be a bear signal every time now.
Speaker 1: Also hiring Larry David, giving all these political people money. Basically,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I felt red flags come up when
Speaker 1: I saw f t X on every umpire in anything
Speaker 1: I did. I tweeted out, I said, this is there's
Speaker 1: something wrong here because MLB is not the crypto audience.
Speaker 1: These are like six the seven year old people who
Speaker 1: are knock at that's how much money they were just
Speaker 1: spraying everywhere they could advertise in places that weren't even
Speaker 1: their target market. They sponsored a sports stadium. I mean,
Speaker 1: all this stuff. I've just been spending a year doing
Speaker 1: a book on Bogel. Who would He hated advertising. He
Speaker 1: thought that was a sign that the company's misusing your money.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what Bogel said when we asked him
Speaker 1: about crypto. Oh, he said, I wouldn't touch it over
Speaker 1: my dead body. Yeah. And and well the reason he
Speaker 1: would think there was the reason Bogel didn't like crypto
Speaker 1: that wasn't It wasn't because of the SPF potential. It
Speaker 1: was just because it's a commodity. And this is the
Speaker 1: thing that crypto people miss. Sometimes crypto people trash the
Speaker 1: SMP five hundred in stocks and all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's different. Stocks have cash flow, there's something
Speaker 1: of value there. Crypto is like a commodity. It's only
Speaker 1: worth what someone else will pay for it. And that's
Speaker 1: why Buffett and Bogel weren't hot on commodities or crypto.
Speaker 1: And that basic thing of crypto not having anything beneath
Speaker 1: it besides what someone else will pay for it is
Speaker 1: the scary part where it you know it who go
Speaker 1: down more and stocks have money and cash flow to
Speaker 1: support them, especially in the next fun with five stocks,
Speaker 1: Which is why if I told Crypto all along, don't
Speaker 1: beat up on the SMP. You don't know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. You went to Australia, people listen to trillions there,
Speaker 1: would you learn? I know it's weird. You know how
Speaker 1: bands are like big in Japan, you know that whole thing,
Speaker 1: Or we're big in Europe, like the Pixies were a
Speaker 1: banned in the US that nobody really but in Europe
Speaker 1: they were huge. Um, we're big in Australia, guys. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The per capitive people who said, oh I listened to
Speaker 1: trillions was way off the charts. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, a lot of people are into it. I
Speaker 1: think what it speaks to is the whole of media there.
Speaker 1: There is nobody there doing et F media, so they
Speaker 1: come to their star for it. Love you Australia, James Katie,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us on Trillians, Thanks for having me,
Speaker 1: Thank you, thanks for listening to Trillions until next time.
Speaker 1: You can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, Bloomberg dot com,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you like to listen.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. We're on Twitter. I'm
Speaker 1: at Joel Wepper Show. He's at Eric Faltunas. This episode
Speaker 1: of Trillions was produced by Magnets Hendrix by m