Geopolitics Spooks Crypto Traders | REKT Vision

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1:30to be here and happy to be together. So hopefully see you next time in Singapore. Real Vision will be there. I look forward to seeing you all.

1:44Hi, everyone. I'm Raoul Pal, the CEO and co-founder of Real Vision. Here at Real Vision, we're committed to give you the best knowledge, tools, and network to help you succeed in your financial future. If you're enjoying this podcast, please take a moment to give it a five-star racing. It truly helps us continue to bring top-tier content. Thank you so much.

2:10Hello, everyone. Welcome back for another episode of Wrecked Vision. I feel like it's been an age since we did the show because we actually pre-recorded it on the Thursday last week. And I was looking through the price action since then. We went all the way down to like 100k, then up to almost or about all-time highs and then in the last 24 hours we went all the way back to 102 and we've bounced back to 105 very very volatile week for majors since we last spoke uh how have you been doing us Seth? Yeah pretty good it's so you are right like a lot has happened since then because I was today I was like oh man markets really suck things are down but actually were up a lot from last week and obviously it was around this time last week the elon trump stuff started happening and stuff was you know going going a bit crazy so um yeah it's a bit of a it feels like a lot has happened in a week basically is the point i'm trying to make yeah yeah we um we obviously had that it was a bit of a weird sell-off with the elon trump stuff i think people maybe thought that the world was going to end and it seemed to just really affect crypto, really, and Tesla stock.

3:23We did rebound from that relatively quickly, and then we've had continued inflows into the ETFs and a bunch of Bitcoin treasury companies and broader altcoin treasury companies continuing to spin up. A lot of news about stablecoins and tradfly integrations as well this week. So it felt really good, actually, two or three days ago, and it really did feel like everyone was long, ready for us to break through all-time highs and push on again. In the last 24 hours, we've obviously seen the strike by Israel on Iran and some of the key nuclear facilities and personnel there. And we, as a market, generally react very poorly to flare-ups in even regional wars, it feels like.

4:10We had this with Russia and Ukraine when that was happening, and then we, or at least when it was first happening, and then we've seen it again now with any sort of flare-up in the Middle East seems to really affect crypto first. And the first kind of rumblings we heard about this was probably two days ago when we started to hear that Bitcoin started to sell off. And the main headline was that personnel were leaving some of the U.S. embassies in the countries around Iran. And everyone was like, well, that's really going to affect crypto. Normally, this dip does get bought, But because there's a nuclear element to this one, it does feel as though maybe there's a little bit more of a tail.

4:48What do you think, Eros, definitely? Is this just noise? I mean, stocks are down. The S &P right now is down about half a percent. And the NASDAQ similarly is down just over half a percent. Do you think this is just meant to buy these sort of moments? Hi, Raoul here. Listen, I think we've got until 2030 before the economic singularity arrives. Now, it might not be the exact date, but it's around then. So we have about six years to figure out how to unfuck our future. I've put together a report to help you called Prepare for 2030. It's going to help you take the first steps in that journey to make sure you're secure past 2030.

5:30So just click on the link below and start your journey now. Yeah, I think so. So I think if you take the last four years into consideration, every time we've had one of these headlines where it's like Russia, Ukraine, et cetera, Middle East, Israel, the market dips and you're always, always, always meant to buy. I actually think it's one of the easiest short-term dip buying opportunities that you generally get. and especially when you get this like parallel move lower and stuff i think it's a really good buying opportunity i also think it's all it's a good if you're looking at short-term technicals the market also often gives away its hand here like you'll see everything move down then you'll see like a handful of coins that haven't moved or possibly even higher and those are always the ones to buy because they're obviously you know have a big short base or their bid for some whatever reason someone has a large buy program in it whatever it is those are the ones that end up outperforming so it's actually like i think it's a really like i want to say easy markets to trade um because i do think it's the same it just seems to be to me at least to me the same story over and over again and i bet you look across your screen and look at what's outperforming on a day like today or yesterday when stuff's down i bet you that trade performs really well over the next one or two weeks yeah that's a good point i think bitcoin dominance has gone up on a day like today so most altcoins have broadly underperformed there had been a period before that where east have been outperforming but today the strongest ones again seem things like hyper liquid um east i guess he's just is not doing terribly some of the other l1s are doing a lot worse it's also i think the the other thing is to note like what's doing really badly and it feels it feels like a lot of the a lot of memes slash left curve stuff really got smashed down again.

7:26So maybe we have another buy of the chariot like a broader altcoin season. But this seems to have gotten in the way of it. Gold obviously hit an all-time high or is very close to an all-time high on the back of this alongside oil rallying, which kind of makes sense. The case for Bitcoin does just seem very strong after these sort of moves again, because it feels like it's most, I don't know, pervasive. argument is this risk off digital gold movement in my opinion so i think it's a um i think it's a very very uh a strong move when when this sort of stuff happens and then maybe when when you start to see some stability after a few days then altcoins kind of catch up but big predominant does feel like it's going back up to like 65 percent here and the weekend is always a little bit difficult because you know it can be a bit more liquid and feels like this is not done i I mean, we're still hearing about strikes ongoing right now.

8:24So it does feel like maybe we still see a few more headlines over the weekend. So it's a bit where it's like dive straight into alts. In terms of the stuff before that had been a very, very busy week, I think, for crypto headlines. The first one seems to be, and maybe we'll touch upon this, is just the ETF seemed to be a bit closer for a range of different altcoins here. namely staking ETFs. So this has been a headline that towards the back end of last year, there was some comments from the SEC being like, well, we're not going to treat crypto staking like we would treat securities. We think it's slightly different.

9:03And then you saw this week that a number of this LANA S1 filings were told to be amended to talk about staking. And there are a number of ETH staking ETFs, which are currently potentially up for approval. And this has been driving, I think, the outperformance really of ETH this week, alongside some of the Treasury stuff that we'll get to later. But do you think we're now going to get a broad number of staking L1 ETFs? And do you think that's going to be a big deal? Yes, on both fronts. I think we will get it on ETH, which I think will be a big thing. I think that maybe even explains some of the recent ETF inflows to ETH as well.

9:46and I think we'll get it on Sol. And I do think it's a big deal. I think in our world, especially in the DJM world, you don't really think about like single digit yields because you're just trying to like 10X your bag or whatever it is you're trying to do, right? But there's a lot of capital out there that does care about single digit yields and especially in the traditional finance world. So I really do think that's going to be a big thing. I do think it will draw in a lot of capital, probably especially on ETH, to be honest with you. I really think it will. So there's a lot of hype about it from the Ethereum community and people keep talking about how it's going to be a game changer.

10:27And I think there's some skepticism as to whether it will be meaningful enough or not to move the needle for ETH flows. But I do think you're starting to see ETH flows pick up in anticipation of that, in my opinion. And I do think it will be a big deal. I think it's pretty big, actually. Yeah, ETH has been on a multi-week inflow cycle here for the ETF pretty much every day. Even yesterday with the sell-off, we saw an inflow into the ETF. It'll be interesting to see what happens today. But ETH continues to see inflows actually outpacing Bitcoin here in terms of some of the ETF inflows. And it's been many months now since they launched.

11:05It does feel like the staking component is the one I would agree with you. If I'm trying to pitch this as a wealth manager or an investment manager to my clients the idea that could pitch like oh well you can get it it's like a tech stock with a dividend yield you know and i do think that does it it's it sounds small to us but it does shift the mindset to to money that could come in and i think it makes them easier to have that narrative i think the pitch for ethereum it's taken longer for these wealth managers to be able to sell it's very clear than bitcoin bitcoin's digital owner it. ETH is like, well, it's kind of like digital oil.

11:46It's also a store of value. And it's also like a payments network. But if you can say, and it's going to get you a year of the yield, I think that's a big difference. Solana obviously doesn't have ETFs right now, but it was a very good sign. I saw today that Polymarket has about 60 % chance that we will see solana etfs by the by the end of july so that's also increased quite a lot which i think is quite a big shift and solana obviously should be able to offer even higher yields i do think it uh by staking i do think it probably takes a little bit of time to like make the pitch you know they're probably just getting signed to have traction with eith with these sort of things oh actually it's gone down to 41 i see just now so maybe maybe it's roughly 50 50 here that we're going to see stuff before the start of the summer.

12:38But it does feel like that could be a big pitch for Solana too. Solana's been a little bit soggy, I would say. Not necessarily done terribly, but it's definitely underperformed slightly versus Bitcoin and ETH. And I do think that ETS would be a very, very positive sign for Sol, maybe towards the back end of this year then. Yeah, I agree. So if it does happen, what's the timing? Because I read somewhere that it was potentially within five weeks, I think I read earlier this week. Yeah, the ETHF staking could be this month. It could be this month. The clocks really were kind of set with those statements from the SEC at the back end of last month.

13:24And now it suddenly seems as though there are certain filings which could launch early July or even this month. So that would be a big shift. And the Ethereum community is definitely getting behind this. You can kind of see it. The other big, so if that happens this month, I do think that's probably a 10 % move in ETH maybe. That's worth it. And like a good momentum sort of move because I think there's clearly going to be a narrative here that this could push inflows for the rest of the year, which we've really started to pick up. Yeah, I agree with that. I think a 10 % candle on that news sounds right.

14:07And it feels like to me, I know we've been talking, really done a big U-turn on Ethereum on this show from ridiculing it. Timed it well. We timed it well. We did time it well. We did time it well, actually. But I do see it being, I personally see it being in the low to mid-3000s I think at some point this or next month, Ceteris Paribus. Yeah, the only thing about it is whenever ETH becomes a consensus trade the market just nukes. I wouldn't say it's become consensus but whenever it outperforms, sorry it just nukes. There was a lot of commentary today that they had to start World War III the moment ETH started outperforming again.

14:52it's starting to break out of that that bad habit i think right because we've had some good performance and we did hit new all-time highs in bitcoin this week right i guess was it did we hit all-time highs we did didn't we we came close i don't know if we hit all-time highs now i think all-time highs are about nearly 112 now so i think we got up to like 110 area and then we then we reversed so it looks a little bit like a double top i'd see on the bitcoin chart which which maybe caused the reaction as well. But ETH would look like it was breaking out of a multi-week trend, right? It went all the way up to 2 ,875, I think, yesterday.

15:30And then this headline's really knocked it down over 10%, really. So maybe it rebuilds. Obviously, a bunch of liquidations. Open interest has built up quite a lot on Ethereum. So maybe this is a nice flash of that. But I think we've still got some good headlines. The other big headlines that we saw this week were, again, just an expansion of the treasury strategy coming to a number of different companies. We saw Sharplink, which was the ETH one, although today they've kind of shot themselves in the foot by seemingly another offering of equity or reselling. What happened there? Because I saw it was down 75 % yesterday, and then I saw some rumors of people...

16:14selling their stock. And then I saw a Joe Lubin tweet saying that those rumors were false because people misread it. So I didn't kind of patch together some things. Yeah, I don't think it's necessarily misread. I would say that they clearly raised capital to buy ETH from a number of different investors. And... Have you ever wanted to trade Bitcoin but haven't dared try? With Plus500 Futures, you can trade crypto without the hassle of opening a wallet. With just a few clicks, you can register and start practicing with their free and unlimited demo. See a trading opportunity? You'll be able to trade it in just two clicks.

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17:35who were allowed to sell it a month off sell their stock a month after that um that was raised there was a broad filing for a resale of equity and it looked and automatically every single person who is an equity holder gets put into that refiling of um that that uh as a potential reseller of equity here although that's not going to be the case joe lubin who is i understand The CEO or chairman, he said, no, we're not going to sell. And a number of other people who are, I think, close to him or in the East Foundation are going to sell. But it's very clear that some people might. And I think that wasn't the best taste in people's mouth.

18:17But what I would say is this is what a number of these other companies are pitching as well. I mean, we've heard and seen a few of these deals across our table. And a lot of them are like this. hey, give us some money for this company to buy an altcoin, ETH. Sometimes it's Bitcoin. And in a month's time, you're locked up for a month, and then you can sell your shares after a month. I think a few of these vehicles have a very similar sort of pitch. So it's not unique to SBET that they did this. And I think you'll start to hear about more of this in the coming weeks. because all we hear about is X company says they're going to buy an altcoin and the stock goes up 5X or 6X.

19:02But some of these guys have agreements very similar where they're kind of locked up for a month and they will sell. But it's probably not great that that's attached. Like one of the co-founders of ETH didn't really look like the right move, in my opinion, to be what MicroStrategy does, which has just continued to raise more new equity to buy more ETH. They did come out and buy some ETH today, but we've seen them. We've also seen DeFi Development Corp. They've done a slightly different route where they've apparently got a credit equity line for$5 billion to buy Solana. That line seems to have come from a mid-sized private equity or VC firm by the looks of it.

19:50So we could have a big buyer of Solana there, at least up to$5 billion. And they hadn't bought that much before. They'd only bought like$100 million odd. So big, big rise in those. We saw our first hyperliquid treasury this week, although it was very small. I think it was only$400 ,000. But the stock did like a 5x. and we've seen a ton of different ones around Bitcoin. I think GameStop actually is upsizing their offering to buy Bitcoin today and I think I even saw companies within crypto, I think Dot said they're going to use a Bitcoin treasury for their own treasury, which I thought was relatively funny.

20:30So this is still the trade. We've obviously highlighted a lot that these treasury companies are spinning up and it felt as though that shift towards ETH or altcoins was starting to happen. but there's i think this this aspect thing was a bit of a misstep and i think you're going to hear about some missteps similarly in the future with how some of these other companies have raised capital basically do you think there's a feeling of like people trying to replicate the sailor thing and then it not going as well because obviously whoever keeps giving them money it's a bit almost like cult-like right it's like okay we're just going to go all in on this thing just keep going all in until something happens whereas not everyone may have that same mentality and probably he probably has the same or very similar people just continuously backing it um uh i don't think it's difficult to get people of that same mentality on this other stuff right like i think that's another reason why i think this um this whole stuff with um with sbet was kind of a bit dicey because I don't know.

21:38It all went up. And obviously people bought it for a trade. But now it's down a lot because maybe everyone's aced in their red trade because they realize what's going to happen on the actual stock. Microsoft actually seems to have this ability to keep going and keep... sort of keep... Ponzi is the wrong word, but keep the extend and pretend thing going and just keep going high because people are very... Whoever holds it is very tightly held, obviously. they kind of have firm hands but yeah the sharp link stuff sharply price action is a bit like these people just kind of like poneyed out of the whole idea of it i don't know that's exactly what i think it is i think that's that speaks about bitcoin more than anything like when someone buys bitcoin they want to hold it forever when someone when these other i mean they're like reverse SPACs or like when these companies without any sort of previous movement into crypto are now announcing these crypto strategies with altcoins, it feels as though it's often just like a trade, but they're doing it just to pump the stock for a short period of time.

22:43And everyone who's financing those sort of trades in the initial equity offerings or in the private deals before it gets announced are really just in it for like a month or two. And I felt like maybe SharpLink was going to be different in that it was going to try and replicate like a really long-term approach here to Bitcoin. And it just seems to have shot itself in the foot. So I think this was, I don't think it's the death of companies trying to do this. And I do think that the commentary from Joe Lubin since then makes me think that it's salvageable, that he is going to try and really make this a company that is going to do that sort of long-term, consistent buying of ETH.

23:26But, I mean, you see it. It's been very frothy. It's been very frothy. it's attracted people who are there just to like oh i can make money in the next month it's a 10x okay yeah done and i'll sell it as soon as the month's over and i think how those deals are being done is suddenly going to get slightly exposed here so it's not that i'm not bullish on the idea that companies could do this for eth just how they've been structuring the financing is very very short term it's very clear yeah i agree i think i'm still really bullish don't get me wrong i'm still really bullish on like corporate treasuries going into bitcoin eth potentially and that other kind of stuff but i'm not that bullish i'm actually somewhat bearish on the creation of other corporate crypto ponzi you know systems like strategy works because of strategy um but i'm not sure it can be replicated that easily unless you really have like diamond bulls holders which clearly like sharp link didn't have so yeah you've got to believe in the asset for a long long time if it feels as though not just like a month and everyone is up a lot in that trade there's there's talks that people like the people who did the financing were up like 100x you know they were up a lot so like it does make sense that they'd want to maybe sell but this doesn't leave or at least they would consider selling i know it's unclear if they actually are going to sell, but it just doesn't leave the best taste in people's mouths.

24:56So I don't know if that's going to backfire yet. We have said that it does sow the seeds of slightly backfiring. And I agree with you. A company with cash buying crypto is way better than these other companies, which is like, I didn't have a business before. And now I've decided to go into crypto and do this sort of short-term strategy, often financed by a private deal with short-term capital. I think those things can really turn around. But let's see. Let's see how the next few develops. I do think following Sharpling, it's important, I think, even for Ethereum, how that turns around. Let me put it that way.

25:35I do think it's important because if one of the founders of Ethereum is going to be involved in that, it does feel as though they need to do it a bit better than what they just did. Yeah, it needs to. Otherwise, it looks like a joke, right? kind of it's like everyone's looking at this thing it's like oh oh yeah sharp link and then you know retraces its entire gains down 66 i mean down 66 percent in one day is a massive move obviously it was up a crazy amount over you know a day or two so um i do think that that strategy needs to be um maybe rethought but also done in a way where it sends a positive signal to markets otherwise you know the the potential buyers of the ectf are probably all looking at this and they're probably like, I actually don't want to touch this now.

26:18What's going on here? Right, exactly. I think it will put off other companies from doing a similar strategy given what they just saw with the price section. So definitely needs to turn that one around. Other than that, I think the other major news seem to kind of come from just announcements from Coinbase this week. They announced a ton of different things. And I know Coinbase is obviously one of the major exchanges for most people in Europe and the US. But they came out and said, we're going to allow park trading in the US. We're going to launch a native DEX in the US. And actually more broadly, it seems.

26:58And they're going to do a 4 % Bitcoin cashback card with Amex, which I believe is one of their first movers into crypto. We saw stable coins potentially coming from Amazon and Walmart, at least there were commentary that they're going to look into stablecoins. We had commentary that Bank of America is looking at stablecoin. We had commentary that Shopify is going to start integrating crypto payments. And that Stripe, who is obviously part of their payment gateway, had just bought a native crypto wallet service called Privy. Huge, huge news it feels here for corporate adoption, particularly around stable coins and payments.

27:49Which of those really stood out to you as the biggest news of the week? i think stripe for privy was pretty huge to be honest with you like that's one of the biggest and most bullish things that i've seen because you know one of the main use cases i think of crypto is like payment processing all that kind of stuff etc so um stripe is huge and privy also is like i think one of the best retail friendly products that there are out there i don't know if you've ever used it you probably have by now but of course i use it for yeah use it for several things we're using it for heat and exactly right and it's on um abstract global wallet is basically built off of privy as well um it's super easy to use and that's what you need in order to get people onto crypto where they don't even really like do the cphrase stuff obviously you would never you know put your life savings on a privy wallet but um i think it's a very powerful product i think stripe buying that shows a pretty deliberate move into the crypto space or they're just like okay we need to have some fingers in this pie just in case it takes off either way it's uh it's big i think yeah i've worked with them they're a great team i'm glad they got they got acquired um and obviously stripes huge huge in the payment space so them getting them getting involved and that will mean that they get integrated in everything kind that Stripe does, which is going to be very big for them.

29:15Shopify was kind of one of the more obvious ones initially to happen up there. I thought the Amex news was pretty big as well, though. Like, we haven't seen much from Amex in crypto. It's like the third major, let's say, credit card provider. We've seen quite a lot from Visa and MasterCard. But to see Coinbase and Amex team together at 4 % cashback on a Bitcoin card, that seemed to be like the number one piece of news that came out of the, other than Perp trading that came out of the Coinbase thing yesterday. Do you think you're going to get a... Do you use a crypto card? You ever looked at these sort of products?

29:50I've dabbled with a Coinbase card. Sorry? Look at it. It looks like a really cool black card. Yeah. I'm more keen to actually... Yeah, this does look cool. I am keen to actually experiment with this stuff a bit more because I've actually had issues with putting crypto on-ramping, off-ramping, having bank accounts closed down, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So actually just being able to hold stables somewhere safe and be able to spend that I think is pretty powerful. And with the Coinbase, the one that I have, I haven't used it much to be honest with you, but you can spend on it. You can even withdraw cash on it.

30:34It has like a£1 ,000 daily withdrawal limit as well, which is actually pretty decent. So I'm keen to actually start using stuff like that a bit more as long as I'm comfortable with where the money is secure, if you like. I think even Safe have a card as well coming out. No, it's just Safe. Safe, we've got one. It's Massive, we've got one. I think a lot of people are coming out to do this sort of stuff now because it's very, very cool. I've been using one for a long, long time. Ledger has one. And it is good. But feeling that you can just spend crypto is nice. And I agree with you. The moment you move even like$100 from a centralized exchange on or off, it's just like maybe 10 years worth of your employment history.