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Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to Crypto Talk radio, the podcast for everyday investors like you. Visit us on the [email protected]. And now here's your host, Leister.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Thank you for that, Bailey, and welcome, everybody out there in crypto Talk radio [email protected]. A very lovely evening out there. Cryptotalk Radio [email protected] welcome or welcome back. Thank you either way for joining the show. And if you didn't check it out, I don't know who on the show, possibly the man himself, but I don't know who on the show also checks out. Believes his channel on YouTube believes crypto. I don't know if there's anybody from there that's here or vice versa. Again, the man himself. But we did a giveaway of 50 memberships for folks on the bleach channel.
People might be curious. What I said, what I said was, bone has been very good to me. Bone has been very good to me. I am allegedly. This is according to Dex screener, by the way. Don't blame me, don't come at me. But according to Dex screener, allegedly, I'm a whale in know I don't feel like a whale. The amount of money invested does not feel like whale money. When I think whale money for something like Bone, you're talking six figures. I'm not six figures deep in bone, trust me. But apparently, when they ran the numbers, it's according to everybody else that's in bone. And what is your position numerically compared to everybody else? In other words, it's kind of like a logarithmic scale. If you look at who holds super bags and then you go down, where are you on that totem pole? Yes, I'm in somewhere in the top thousand.
And the reason that happened is because a lot of the whales actually sold out, but there's a lot more retail investors buying in, which ultimately elevated me because I'm so much greater than the average retail investor, by virtue, made me a whale. Okay, that's interesting, but it caused me to take a different look at this whole business. And so Bone was very good to me. Bone has been very good to me. When you look at it on the graph, it doesn't look that impressive. But the thing is that I've kind of mastered in my mind, I talk to everybody about patience, but I also talk about, it's a numbers game. The more that you hold, the volatility actually can work in your favor when you can anticipate where it's going to go. So it's harder when you hold a smaller bag. If you only hold like $100 of something and its market cap is like 100 million, it's harder for you to realize any sort of potential benefit from it because it's too small. Your bag is too small.
This I had to learn the hard way. But when you're up there, compared to everybody else on the block, all of a sudden, I said it before, like, a shift of a penny or two is hundreds of dollars for me. That's how much bag I hold. So bone was very good. So I said, you know what, let me go ahead and just do something nice for the community. Because in bleed's case, it's a community. It's not like a cult like some of these, and it's not people that go there just to hate on them, like with crypto journeys. It's truly a community. Now, I also wanted to do it because there's two motivations otherwise. One, it's hilarious. The humor, he'll get people that come in there and he'll have to just kind of sarcastically respond to certain people. I find that hilarious. But two, some of the questions that come in, I find hilarious as well. And so I also wanted to do that. And then secondarily, this is really now believe. So if he is listening, I'm giving this for free. Let's say there are people that take that membership and somehow, hint, hint, wink, wink, he's able to attach increased value to those who choose to renew.
So now it's a retention because they received it as a gift. And then somehow an increase of value is attributed to the renewal cycle, which causes retention. I'm not giving anything away other than what I just put out there. And again, this is under the assumption that Bleez is listening to the show, which he may not be. So that's why I did that, and I have no regrets. Again, bone was very good to me. For me, it was easy to do that. Now, if bleeze wants that other 250, all he's got to do is join the bone thugs in harmony. And once he does that, I'll drop another 250 in the bucket because that's still out there as an open deal.
Anyway, I wrapped up my endeavor. I worked a little bit late. We made really good progress, good conversation, had no complaints, no concerns. That was awesome business. I've been going on a buying spree of Steam gift cards because it turns out the local quickie mart down here sells the physical gift cards. And I'm like, deep, deep deep. So I've been dropping 30s on that. I got 30s on it because there are some good games coming out finally in early parts of 2024. I just bought one. That's crap. But it's fine. I'm going to play through it. But I've been having fun buying the steam gift cards and I'm waiting for the next check next week, so a lot's on deck. Looking forward to that.
Stuff was happening in cryptocurrency. I'm not really sure how to make of it. I don't know what to tell you, but I am going to talk about it. I'm also going to talk about an exchange this time for Geechee and our triad community. I want to make sure I keep that going less on the economic side, I'll talk about a couple of bits and bolts, but nothing extreme. It's really going to focus now on what we see here in the market and what we can anticipate or what we can predict. And a little bit of sketchy business happening that I see or can foresee that's coming up. That's a repeat of something that happened before. Let's drop trial and get right into it.
All right, so come along and ride along in this fantastic voyage as we take a [email protected]. If you'd like to follow along, I'm going to start with Ethereum. Because of what I noticed that I'd alluded to very much earlier.
I zoom out to the month chart and I'm going to be looking at the month chart as well as the three month chart for a reason. Follow me. The month chart looks a little bad. We got to some red, more red than green, which surprised me because of some things I'll talk about here in a moment. But when I go to the three month chart, it looks amazing. And here's the thing.
Here's what happened, which is why the one month caused me to chuckle a bit.
We heard some rumors that the bitcoin ETF is scheduled to be approved, quote, anytime now.
There's a little bit of buy the rumor, sell the news that attributed. But also we saw some sales and the sales surprised people. There's a couple of avenues, some of them bitcoin miners, some of them people just selling out because they think that it's about to crash and burn because people aren't sure if it's going to actually happen. And part of the problem is they keep putting out dates. So they'll say, like, it's going to happen tomorrow and then yesterday it was like, okay, it'll be tomorrow. And then before that it was, it's coming later.
So my point is, there's a lot of fake news being put out with respect to the date of the bitcoin ETF decision. And there's a lot of what I'll describe as rather unnervingly accurate predictions. When I say accurate predictions, I'm saying people are saying it's going to, it will. There's a lot of absolution that I'm not sure is appropriate yet. It might be right, but we're getting very close to a casino in this regard. Like, it feels like a roulette table. You're rolling it, you either land or you don't. That's what it feels like with a lot of these predictions. It wasn't helped any by the frickin White house people because even they got involved.
I'm going to try my best to put this all together.
I'm going to miss some, I'm going to get some wrong because there's a lot of crap out there and I apologize, but I'll do the best I can.
If anybody remembers, during the Trump administration, he hired a guy called Anthony Scaramucci, aka Mooch. I don't know why he brought this MOOC in because he's as slimy as they come. But they brought him in and he shortly after got fired from his job. Afterwards, he became somewhat of an advisor. And he's been talking largely around cryptocurrency. He's on the financial side, but he's been talking about cryptocurrency. Now. He recently put out a tweet and he just basically said, this is over. And people jumped off this as if it was a direct prediction, saying that the bitcoin ETF is done, filed, ready to go, which caused a little bit of run up. Clarifications came out from Bloomberg that said, quote, the SEC is making final comments as we speak, after which applicants will file final 19 b four s and s ones shortly. So my point is, this is definitely the closest we get to done, but as far as I know, there is no official confirmation.
So this happened a couple of times. You had a bunch of news articles come out and talk about, it's done, we're ready. And then there's a clarification, we're close, it's not done. There was something from Gary Gensler that talked about some final reviews and final filings and gray whatever doing this and black whoever doing this. And there's a lot of messaging where I kind of wish people would just shut the hell up, in my opinion. I just wish that they would shut up because I understand why they're doing what they're doing. They're doing what they're doing because they're trying to trigger a pump. Bottom line, I'll say that if they want the smoke, I know none of them do. They want the smoke. They can come at it, but that's why they're doing it. They want to trigger pumps. All of these people are doing that. They want to trigger pumps. Others are trying to level set and they're trying to be realistic. They also know Gary Gensler tends to get triggered anytime he sees something that is a manipulation of sorts, which is ironic because he has been responsible for the vast majority of those. I digress. All I'm saying is that a lot of this business is to trigger a pump.
Here's the flip on what I just said.
A recent survey was performed, 88% of those surveyed that would like to buy bitcoin, they're holding off until there's a spot bitcoin ETF. On an older episode, I talked about the fact that there are a lot of wealthy folks sitting out there that do not want to trade the actual cryptocurrency, but they would absolutely jump right down the throat of a bitcoin ETF because in their mind, it's insulated from the risk inherent of trading the actual cryptocurrencies. And when you do the bitcoin ETF, it's somewhat of an implicit allowance to say, yes, we're okay with this type of a trade, just not the risk inherent with the unregulated side.
So that's a lot of money that's sitting on the sidelines that refuses to participate in the trading of cryptocurrencies. As result, more people believe that the spot bitcoin ETF is not going to happen. Yet. These are people that have great amounts of experience that believe we're going to see it. We're just not going to see it now. We're not going to see it soon.
The deadline is coming. The deadline is January 10 to put out a ruling about the spot bitcoin ETF. At least some of them by January 10, people keep coming out and saying, yeah, it's going to be approved. It's going to be straight up, it is what it is. Others keep saying, no, it's not going to happen. Gary Gensle is going to be a dick and it's not going to work or whatever.
Everybody's chiming in everybody's got a message. Even though you heard me say I've never put a stance, I don't know. All I can give you is the facts of dates as it is and what other people are saying. But when this other group came out and they said we think it'll happen, just not yet, I think that's playing into a little bit of that red you saw, because they know these are rich people that are very smart to the game. They've been down this road, they know what to expect. And so perhaps they know something others don't know, which is that things will absolutely freaking crash if it turns out that the decision is delayed, which apparently they are not supposed to, or it's denied.
They know that it'll cause a major crash again. So perhaps some of the red came from people who are in the know around the way. Gary Gensler plays the game on both sides of the field and perhaps he's manipulating the market. I'm not making a statement of definitive fact. I'm simply sharing sentiment as it's out there so you can make your own decision about what it means. I don't know what it means. I'm sharing what I see. I don't know what is the truth in this regard, but it would not surprise me if we did get an announcement of a disapproval in the short term and potentially a push down the road to a 2025. That wouldn't surprise me. There are still other catalysts that would push price up though, and I think that we'd still go on somewhat of a run. I don't know that we would crash. I'm not sure. I don't think we would. Time will tell on that business, but suffice. Today, rich people don't think it's going to happen this year. They think we're due for a little bit more time before we get there and there may be something to it. I don't know.
I talked about bitcoin and how slow as dog the bitcoin is. When I say slow, I'm talking about the default transaction.
You may not know what I mean. You may not know what I'm referring to. You may not know what I'm talking about when I say slow. I'm talking about when you do a transfer, when you transact it a to b, and you might expect that it should be reasonably fast.
It depends on the network that's chosen for doing the transaction.
At some point earlier, the lightning network was released to speed it up and it is much faster. However, its adoption has not kept a pace with the actual speed that it provides.
I'll share some stats and some data that may surprise you. Quote cryptocurrency exchanges are the most widely used applications in the crypto ecosystem, so we're referring to central. Let me say that finance alone has 150,000,000 users as of August 2023. OKX has 50 million. Also worth mentioning is bit stamp, with 5 million users. Still, only 6% of all centralized exchanges currently use the Lightning network to conduct transactions with bitcoin.
I'll give you some other names so we heard Binance, Bitmart's another one, Bitfinex, Bitmex, Bitthum, Bitstamp, Nicex. Never heard of coin corner Buddha, Okcoin, Zebpe, Kraken, OKx, and a couple of others. One or two others Kraken I was aware of. Unfortunately, as I said on one of the rants I did trust wallet does not support lightning. Even after all this time, they still do not. I checked a couple of other wallets I did not see it may be there, but I didn't see it. I didn't see lightning on Exodus. I didn't see lightning on Madeamass might, but I don't use that crap. I didn't see it on bitget wallet might be there. I didn't see it. Did not see it on alpha wallet. I don't hardly see it on wallets at all. So as blistering fast as it is, very few actually do. I dug a little bit deeper and I found a mention that Exodus wallet should and bitpay wallet should if it's there. I didn't obviously see it. So my point is this causes a depression, to use a different term, in the actual utilization of bitcoin as a transfer of wealth. So when you think about yard sales and Craigslist and all these opportunities to use bitcoin as a value transfer, if the damn thing takes 30 minutes to do the transaction, people are not going to buy into it. It would have to be blistering fast because that's how your Venmo garbages and cash app garbages work on the fiat side. So if bitcoin can't do that on a wider scale, it tends to hamper its adoption for the use on a day to day basis, which does what? It causes those people to revert back to fiat transactions because they see this is going to do what I need it to do. This is something that should be resolved. I don't know how fast it can or will.
Some more stats quote if even five to 10% of tether transactions move to the lightning network, USDT annual turnover could reach 257 to 554,000,000,514 rather billion, according to our forecasts. As users of stablecoins increasingly recognize the advantages of lightning, these figures are expected to grow substantially. The introduction of tether to the lightning network will be a pivotal moment reshaping the landscape of the stablecoin market.
How likely is this to happen? I think we got a long way to go, and the reason I think we have a long way to go is because at the end of the day, it took this long and lightning's been out forever and we still haven't got mass adoption and there doesn't seem to be any incentive to go any further or any faster. So I could get that wrong. But I do not see significant traction in that direction to adopt lightning on a wider scale. So take that for what you will.
A quick interim update for our UK listeners. Coinbase has introduced new compliance measures specifically for you.
Apparently, I don't know details on this because I'm not in the UK, unfortunately, but apparently they're going to be introducing a type of investor field that they're going to ask you for. This may just be for statistical reasons, just to understand the investor pool, but they also are going to be collecting what's referred to as a risk assessment form. This comes from regulations from the Financial Conduct Authority. I assume you know who that is. If you don't do some research, check that out. But allegedly what they're trying to do is increase compliance across the board overall to identify more information around risk. Risk of different know what is your tolerance of risk? We do this in the United States on the stock side. Now I actually have a portfolio, and the first thing they ask, you know, what's your risk tolerance? Are you one of those who's a yolo type of investor or are you very more cautious? And I'm kind of more balanced, leaning slightly towards high risk investments, but I don't go all in. It's part of a diverse portfolio. So for me, it's kind of part of the course. Turns out a number of people have already been introduced to this change and they're already squawking about it on social media. Of course, it's Coinbase, so it does not surprise me that there's more garbage than benefit. Here's one. User s three. Anist, as in Shaunist. Quote, where on the web platform. So he's talking about the computer. Can I update my info on the new UK regulations. I can't seem to find it and the link in the email don't work.
So part of the problem Coinbase has, as many of them do, is they seem to favor mobile and they don't test for computer, and I suspect that's what's happening there. Robinhood has the same problem. I can't provide any direct assistance. I will say if you're having issues on the computer side, see if it works on the mobile side. And I know that's distasteful, trust me, but see if it magically works on the mobile, because I wouldn't want you to be put out of compliance and possibly blocked from your funds or something worse. So again, I wish I could provide more assistance, but I'm not familiar with what it is they're asking, so I don't want to speak out of turn.
Everybody knows. I hope not. But everybody probably knows who Logan Paul is. Logan Paul is a social media influencer, quote unquote. He also is a WWE talent, which is a damn shame to the business, but he is, he was a boxer. I don't know if he still boxes, but I think he still has his license. He's been doing a lot of different things. You may not also be aware that he dabbled in nfts, very most recently crypto zoo, NFT, to be specific, and Coffeezilla went after him for allegedly scamming people.
And what's happened now, and I'll try to summarize best I can, but I don't do nfts. But there may be people affected by this garbage. Apparently a year ago, he had said he was going to refund. That never happened. Recently, he set up a website or someone on his behalf set up a website for refunds, said he was going to countersue the creators of it, alleging, quote, nefarious trading activity. So what he's saying is that there were people that he had partnered up with to create the game, that they were somehow responsible for what happened. Quote from Logan this buyback is a way for me to make hold those who intended to play crypto zoo. The buyback is not intended to compensate those who gambled on the crypto market and lost. It's important to remember that the zoo token was created to support the crypto zoo game and its players. So in other words, if you bought the token behind this business, you're not going to get jacked, bro. But if you participated in the crypto zoo and somehow got ripped off, then allegedly, you'll be able to get some money back some people chimed in through the discord server that was set up in response to this alleged rip off, chimed in and said, quote, didn't like it back then when it was announced, don't like this now.
And there are some concerns. The site does not support encryption protocols which have been around for quite a long time, so it means it was slapped together in haste and possibly not well thought out. Requires significant personal data from you that could be breached because it's not encrypted. As a result, I am going to not recommend you do this. If you really want your money back, I can't tell you what to do, but if the site is not encrypted and not protected and it's requiring significant personal data from you, I'm going to warn you away from it for your own protection. It's up to you, but you should never put significant personal data if the site's not encrypted, how do you know? If you go to the site and depending on the browser, it's going to look a little different, but it'll be roughly the same instruction and I am giving instructions on your computer, so if you're going on a phone I can't help you because the browser could be anything, literally. But on your computer, let's say in your browser, in the address bar up top, usually there's a little lock icon on the upper left next to the web address. Htps something, something, little lock usually, or something similar. If it's got any kind of indicator that there's a problem, like it's red or there's a line through it or something else, get off of it right away. Once again, I can't tell you what to do with your money, but I would not recommend you enter your personal data on a site that's not properly secured. I can't tell you any more details about that because I wasn't following it because I don't do nfts. But I'm sharing it because it sounds like he's trying to do something, but perhaps he's being ill guided by the people that told him to do this and I don't know what's going to happen as a result.
Now, to talk about an exchange, this one's actually very easy. And I'm going to be talking about the exchange known as HTX, or it used to be known as Wobi H-U-O-B-I-I did a review about it a while ago. Now it's referred to as HTX.
This is going to be the easiest exchange review I ever do, ladies and gentlemen, because it bottom lines is this, do not, please do not transact with HTX. If you are transacting with HTX, I would strongly recommend that you get your money out of it as a recommendation. I can't tell you what to do with your money. However, HTX, formerly known as Wobie, is having major issues.
The major issues have to do with where they primarily are based out of, which is in Korea, specifically South Korea. They're going to be closing on January 29 in South Korea. They claim that they're having some business challenges. They claim that the regulations are getting too strict to comply with. There was a new law that was passed, the, quote, virtual Asset Investor Protection act, which is adding more safeguards, and they are concerned about the ability to comply with this act. Now, of course, this is all Korea based. The problem is that that's one of the largest places that they play. So if they can't sustain in one of the largest places they play, that may indicate a significant impact on their reserves.
Quote, Wobi Korea, along with 20 other exchanges, struggled to forge these essential banking partnerships, as in partnerships with a local bank, as required under the law, so that they can provide fiat to crypto services, safely issuing real name deposit and withdrawal accounts, so that we can control money laundering and price manipulation, basically is the reason why they're doing it. And what they're saying is that they failed to do it or were not able to do it. Quote, they were limited to offering only crypto to crypto trade services.
The report highlights that out of these 21 exchanges, ten generated no revenue from crypto transaction fees in the first half of 2023. So you got two parts to think about here.
The fees that they're referring to, your makers and taker fees. At some point, they would have to convert that into fiat because they have to be able to sustain business operations. They have to both pay people, they have to pay property. They have to pay for all their online services, their Internet access. They have to pay for things. Normally that's done by collecting fees. None of this is free. What they're saying is that if this or other exchanges were not able to partner up with a bank, how are you able to get fiat? How are you able to collect fees? And if you're just doing it kind of with crypto to stablecoin and you really have no fiat off ramp per se, how are you able to sustain your business, which may make you insolvent, even though your business may be thriving? Crypto to crypto but at some point there's got to be a fiat connect. I actually like what the law is requiring. I actually celebrate what the law is requiring. It's actually the greatest way, in my opinion, to be able to manage assurance oversight. Assurance oversight by, what do I mean?
Again, to repeat what this says, this law, the amendment to the law, it's requiring that they partner with a local bank. Like think about this. This is something that we all should want. I said it in an early way, older episode. We should want partnerships with local banking instead of the rush to try to replace banking services. It's a different thing. And when it's in the law, you must partner with the local bank.
There's a couple of things that go along with that. One, the bank is required to collect and maintain information about the organization, including Ha, information about the people.
You literally can't duck the smoke when you're partnering with a bank. I just went through this, setting up my business account. They had to understand everything about me to set up the account. Now the account is in the business's name, but they still have to understand the owners, they have to understand the tax, they have to understand address information.
I wouldn't say it's crazy invasive. It's pretty benign when you're talking something cryptocurrency. Now there's all sorts of risk assessment that has to happen in terms of your reserves. You have to understand what are you coming in with, where is your source of money? And a whole slew of other questions, audits that would have to happen. And if they're correct, and they're saying that this exchange specifically is struggling to produce even the basics of what's necessary to do that, that means that that exchange is at high risk of shutting down or ripping you off, not making a statement of definitive fact. I'm saying that that's what this fundamentally means. So if you're in HTX, I would recommend you get out. If you're considering HTX, I recommend that you don't, because my guess is that HTX is going to be having major issues, and even if they manage to succeed somehow, we can't be assured of their solvency in the long term.
That's my message. It's not shared by many people, but I'm going to say it. And you may see more coming out over the next couple of weeks about this one, but HTX is off the list. Easiest exchange review I've ever done, arguably.
In closing, we don't know what's going to happen with the whole bitcoin ETF, and you're going to see a lot of flip flopping information about it's coming. It's not coming. It's coming. It's not coming. And all I can say is what I always say, be safe. Don't Yolo and Fomo. Don't get tempted off the green candle. Be careful because it's frightening out there, and we don't know what's going to happen if this thing does get denied. We are going to see some crash. I guarantee we're going to see some crash. It's not going to be pretty. It'll pass. And I do think we're going to continue the run up, and I think we're going to trend generally up, and I think we're going to be good. Just waiting close.
