E181 : Scott Melker: How To Get Rich In Crypto In 2026 (Without Getting Lucky)

0:00What's possible if you work hard enough and never give up in the crypto industry? I would love to say that everybody's going to make it. We're all going to make it. But no, most people are idiots and don't learn from their mistakes. So most people are not going to make it. If I was just a guy still trying to trade crypto assets in the trenches or something, I would not have made it. Do you think it's possible in 2026 and beyond to make it in crypto without building a business? Yeah. How? Bitcoin doesn't. Scott Melker, host of The Wolf of All Streets.

0:27Scott Melker:A leading crypto podcast reaching investors worldwide. He's a former professional DJ turned full-time market obsessive. Making digital asset markets more accessible. I think it's a superior way to store wealth. When you know what you know about the central banks and the United States government and the way money is created, all of a sudden that volatility doesn't feel like a problem. You don't feel like you're speculating. I don't need to go into the meme coin casino to try to figure out what the next thing is. It's like, you know, Netflix and chill, just Bitcoin and chill. Just buy some Bitcoin and hang out.

0:56It's not that hard. What's your goal with your media company? My goal has for a very long time been the same, and that is to bring Bitcoin to the mainstream. I really believe with deep conviction that people should own Bitcoin. I'm not going to tell them what price to buy it at, but I really think it's the most important financial asset ever created. What's the biggest myth that you want to help us debunk today about investing that you learned through your career and also through all the interviews you've made? I think the biggest myth is that you... Hi everyone. This is the little bit that I know none of you like that can help us make a huge difference for this show and we want to take it next.

1:3271 % of the people who regularly watch When Shift Happens have not subscribed and so all I'd ask you if you want to make a huge difference is the following. If you've seen this show before and you like it, help me, help my team, hit the subscribe button and we'll continue to build this show for you. Thank you. it's ran who put us in touch oh yeah a long time ago and he said oh man she's ghosting me also now all the time that's she's you know they come around when they need something which is fine like you know if he wants to talk about a certain topic a lot you'll see he like does everything for two weeks you know like you'll talk about strc yeah you were saying before about dressing up i when i started my first company at 22 i was saying i want to start a business because I don't want to dress up, right?

2:18Because I did two internships in my life before and I had this suit and I was like, I can't wear this shit. But I ended up having to go and sell was business intelligence services, data analytics services. To go and sell, I had to dress up. I was like, fuck, my goal of being an entrepreneur with a hoodie is not working, right? And so I did that for a few years. And since I'm in crypto, I'm like, I'm not going to dress up anymore. I'm just going to have my Zara t-shirt. Yeah, like a tuxedo t-shirt. A t-shirt that's a tuxedo. How are you doing? Good. Happy? I'm always happy and optimistic. I see you're always very optimistic.

2:55It's my permanent state. I don't really see the point in being a pessimist. Where does this come from to be hyper-optimistic all the time? I just feel like things always work out. Optimists always win with time. Just like bulls always win with time in markets. If you want to be a bear, you have to have exceptional timing and you're only going to be right for a little while. And even after you're right, you're going to look like an asshole when you're finally wrong because markets only go up and to the right. And I feel like life only generally improves. Would you rather be a king in the medieval times or like a normal guy with a job in 2026 with healthcare and antibiotics, air conditioning and plumbing?

3:38So I just feel like the evolution of things is always in a positive direction. Is there something in your life that actually didn't go as planned and never really became better? And did you have to abandon at some point? I mean, a million things. I think I've failed at most things that I've tried. And the things that you succeed at stand out for everybody. But sort of the old joke, it's like it takes 30 years to become an overnight success or whatever it is, right? And everybody says you're lucky and they don't see all the failures that you had the entire time. but I started countless little businesses and ideas that lasted for a month or two months, complete failure.

4:18I had businesses that were moderately successful but never really took off. I tried a lot of things in my music career that were horrid failures that I thought would be extremely successful. A song you make that you think is going to be a hit, you spend all this money and energy on, it doesn't even make the light of day. It's endless. But I view all of it is sort of you know falling forward advance the puck that's all that really matters you know who are you uh i'm just a guy honestly people always ask that it's like really funny they're like wolf of all streets such an egotistical name i'm like it was a joke you know i'm just i'm just a guy uh who you know i'm a guy with adhd like growing up was doing everything all the time and i've always been the one when i find something that's worth focusing on i can kind of actually get hyper-focused on it and it just becomes my thing for that period until the next thing.

5:13But I think at the core, like I said, I'm just a pretty optimistic guy. I love people. I love having conversations. So this job that we have here is the ultimate, the best job in the world. It's like, people ask me, they're like, don't you get exhausted talking? I'm like, no, it's like getting to go to college, but A, you get paid for it instead of paying, which is amazing. but B you get to have a one-on-one with the most brilliant professor in his field for an hour and for some reason they'll answer any question you have and then you move on to the next class right who wouldn't want that opportunity so I think it's just incredible I was actually talking about that with Pomp saying it makes no sense like I was I was telling him like because he he understood podcasting fairly enough I think 2019 or 2018 yeah which is like before COVID and then during COVID like that's where like a bunch of podcaster actually took off a lot.

6:04But I was saying, if you actually think about it, you have three cameras, sometimes more. You have two mics. You have a chair, two tables. And for some reason, this thing enables you to talk. If it's well done, compounded over time, et cetera, you can talk to anyone. Literally anyone. Literally, within a couple of months, a couple of years, you can get to the top, which makes no sense. It does, though. It's like anything else. It compounds. hey like you said but all you need is the one person that you interview that says yes to give you the credibility to get all of the other people and at the end of the day people just love to hear themselves talk it's an ego game for sure and i don't listen i don't i don't i don't say that in a negative way at all but you know as much as you and i love to sit and ask the questions and get the education people love that opportunity to teach you that thing that they're so passionate about it or to have a conversation about it.

7:00You were a DJ before doing this crypto media stuff. There's actually something with DJs and crypto. I used to DJ for five years from 16 to 21 in Switzerland, in Spain, in Croatia. And I noticed a bunch of the DJs whose music I was playing 16 or 17 years ago were also pretty early in crypto, 2017, 18, 19, 20. You were one of them too. what's the deal with DJs that went down the crypto rabbit hole like fairly early? It's because DJs are DGNs by nature. For some reason, I think you have a job that's primarily at night and there's a lot of free time during the day and you're sitting on cash from the night before and for me it was because trading culture was big among DJs that I knew and crypto just happened to be the flavor of the month at that time.

7:54I got in late 2016, early 2017, and that was the first real iteration of alt seasons and ICOs. And so one guy would do it and he'd be like, I bought Bitcoin and I sent it to this place, Bittrex, and I bought this thing called the Ripples, right? Because you had to pluralize it because you didn't know how to say Ethereum's and Ripple's shares of Ethereum, you know, like nobody had any idea. and people were just making a lot of money. So it got around that you could kind of go speculate in this thing. That's how I found it. And I don't know, I think for me also trading, which is how I started, for some reason clicked in my brain the same way music production did.

8:32Like charting and drawing lines, I could do it endlessly and it kind of had this formulaic feel to it the same way that being in Logic or Ableton or Pro Tools did. I don't know how to explain it, but it's true. So I think there's just a familiarity there. It's still a creative pursuit. Did you make any money actually trading? Or you realized, oh, actually you fell down the rabbit hole. Okay, I come for the ups and downs and all this potential money I can make. But then I start to understand what's happening and what's the potential of this thing. And then I want to build something and become part of this industry.

9:08I made a lot of money trading, but it was mostly because I had lucky timing. So first of all, you would think you were making money trading and then you would look at your Bitcoin balance and realize that all you had to do was hold Bitcoin and it would have gone up more, but you were still making money. But trading's not for me, which is funny because I built my entire career in crypto on trading for those first few years. And not that I wasn't good at it, but I do not have the brain for 24-7, 365 crypto. I've got a family and kids and things to do other than stare at charts. And it becomes a real impediment, I think, on life.

9:44It's very stressful. You don't know if you're going to do well or poorly the next day. So I think you have to be really uniquely built for it. And I think for me that lasted for a very short period of time. What's the moment you said, I need to go all in and do something more than trading in crypto? You know, there was no moment. So people asked me that question. For me, everything that happens is always kind of organic and natural. And that's how it was for me. You know, I was trading. so I started talking on Twitter about my trades and all the people who followed me for music for all those years unfollowed me.

10:18So I lost half my followers. What the hell are you talking about? The script I think. But then I think I had enough of a base of people who were interested in it from music and I had the blue check back when blue checks mattered. It was like 2010 or 11 I got a blue check for music. And for whatever reason I think that used to give you this credibility that you were like a real important person or something. So for whatever reason, I think people assumed I had that blue check from crypto, which I didn't. And I started following and believed that I was an expert of some sort. But for me, it was like a tweet back then.

10:56You couldn't write an article or a long thread. You had a short tweet. That wasn't enough. So I was like, I'm going to write a newsletter, a free newsletter. I would do that twice a week. And then it was like, I could do a little more. So that became daily. and then someone said launch a podcast I said okay I'll do a podcast once a week and then I was like I'm bored doing it once a week so let me try to launch a YouTube channel I'll do that twice a week and then eventually just the nature of how I am I'm now working 18 hours a day in this one industry that I never had an intention to be working 18 hours a day in and I just I have a very hard time saying no to new things working 18 hours a day with your wife not now but I think that's how it was for a long time.

11:36I'm pretty good actually now at compressing that time. But yeah, I mean, it's a lot. It can be a lot. Crypto never slips, but neither do opportunities in traditional markets. Variational is bridging both worlds with 50 plus new market listings every month, giving you access to stocks, commodities, indices, and more, all through a modern trading platform. Because sometimes the biggest alpha isn't finding a new coin. It's remembering the rest of the world's markets exist. Big thanks to my friends at Bitwise Asset Management for backing today's conversation. Bitwise is a global crypto asset manager with more than$11 billion in client assets and more than 70 crypto solutions.

12:22That includes ETFs, index funds, SMAs, custom option strategies, staking, vaults, and more. However you want to invest in crypto, the experts at Bitwise have you covered. Is crypto still relevant in 2026? It's more relevant than ever. It's just that a lot. Well, because now it's so funny. People are so bearish on it when it's finally actually happening. It's absurd. Right. I think they're bearish because the thing they hold and believed in went down. But that means that you were only here for speculation, not for crypto in the first place. And I don't think that that's a criticism. It's just you have to understand yourself and know why you bought what you did or why you believed in it.

13:07It's kind of the joke. Like you start as a trader and then you lift your stop loss when it's going against you because emotionally you don't want to lose a trade. Then you become an investor because now you're down so bad. Then you become a passionate community member. And forever you're a part of like the Link Army or the XRP Army or whatever it is or Bitcoin. It doesn't matter. Non-exclusive to any asset. But right now is when it's all actually happening.

13:33But does that mean that crypto goes higher in the future? Because as we've seen, there can be a big disconnect between what people hold, tokens, and the fundamentals and how it's actually difficult to invest in most of these things that are actually happening. Well, it turns out most things didn't need tokens. and those that maybe did need tokens didn't properly structure their tokenomics so that the value actually accrued to the tokens. So basically you just had a bunch of lottery tickets with the name of a project on them and the project could be making money but you weren't. Or their shareholders in some of the cases could be making money and the value didn't accrue to the token.

14:12So I think it was structurally broken and that was hard to see at the time when things were actually going up because the price going up convinced you that there had to be something fundamentally there. But that means that the next iterations of these things will be built in a way that have more value accrual to the actual token and utility and to the holders. And maybe for better or worse, it'll look more like shares in a public company. But crypto is not dead, it's just changing. What do you do personally? I mean, you have a thriving business, so you're indirectly benefiting from crypto, doing, I mean, having good fundamentals and things happening in crypto, because there is things to talk about and there's money to be made as a business.

14:57But what most people who are listening to you or even to us want to know is how can I participate in this thing if I have a normal job and I don't want to build a business. I want to invest. But it turns out that most of these assets are uninvestable. I think you just buy Bitcoin and go about your life. And listen, I've never been a Bitcoin maxi. It's funny. I've managed to thread a very rare needle where Bitcoiners call me a shit coiner and shit coiners call me a Bitcoin maxi. It's a very, very rare place to be that I can be right in the middle. But I think that that's the most simple way. And then you'll find your way falling down the rabbit hole in different directions as you become more passionate about it.

15:42But But I feel like that should still be the gateway if you're going to go any deeper is you have a life, you have a job, take some of that cash flow because you know that inflation is real and that money printing is real and just buy some Bitcoin, see how it performs, give it some time and you'll probably end up further down other corners. But like most people come into crypto through Doge in that cycle or NFTs in that cycle or Or meme coins, the Trump token, and that cycle. None of those things are lasting, right? What do you do every month with the money you make? I buy Bitcoin. Just Bitcoin.

16:21Okay, so I run an algorithm. Okay. But it's not a trading algorithm. It's called ArchPublic. I've been working, like I'm an equity holder in it, but I've been doing it very publicly for quite a long time. And it basically just algorithmically buys the dip better. So if you want to buy Bitcoin and buy Ethereum, buy Solana, you'll get the best price in that four hours, the best price in that day, or the best price in that week. So you end up beating normal dollar cost averaging. So it's dollar cost averaging smart, right? And so basically I'm at like 80 % Bitcoin, 10 % ETH, 10 % Solana is effectively how it shakes out.

16:55Right now I can't imagine what else I would possibly be interested in buying. But these are things, right, if I'm buying them as investments, I'm not trading. So those three things have institutional bids, they have institutional adoption. And I didn't sign up to be like on riding with, you know, JP Morgan. But it is what it is, right? And that's where the, I think we have an industry right now of have and have nots. We either have institutional adoption and interest and that wall of money has access or your coin number 75 on coin market cap and good luck. So your focus is on generating cash flow through businesses and then saying, I will only buy crypto assets that I think I can hold forever?

17:38For a very long time. Ethereum and Solana, I love them. Not in the same way. I think there's Bitcoin and there's everything else. I actually utilize a yield generating strategy with those where it buys dips and sells rips and creates cash flow and puts more money into Bitcoin. That's the kind of strategy that I have running. But I do want to hold those assets for a very long time but I can't call them forever assets. I think there's too much disruption in new layer ones and tech that you can't make the claim that they'll be successful forever. Bitcoin has bridged the gap. But yeah, that's how I think people should approach Bitcoin.

18:20You take money that you make. This is the problem I had with Bitcoin treasury companies, which I was very loud about in the beginning. You can't beat Bitcoin by buying Bitcoin. You need to do some kind of weird magic or financial engineering to figure that out, you should do exactly what people do, what we tell people to do. Take 10 % of your money and put it into Bitcoin. If every cash-flowing business did that, we would have incredible Bitcoin treasury companies that wouldn't be a drag on the market.

18:50How do you form your opinions? For example, now you're saying Bitcoin. Is it through experience? Is it because you're talking to all these people and you realize that's what all these people are doing? Or do you actually think that your own opinion is not that much influenced by the people you talk to? It's even more conservative. My opinion is definitely influenced by people I talk to. Going back to the beginning of the conversation, it's because I talk to really smart people and I take it as an education. I'm a strong believer in the idea of strong opinions loosely held. So I don't have 100 % conviction in anything.

19:29I'm a skeptic. And if I'm presented with new and superior information, I have no problem being very publicly wrong and changing my opinion and saying I was wrong and now this is the thing. So I can't say that I will fundamentally stay this way forever or that this is the exact view that I will have, but most of it is from my experience. If I had just bought the thing I actually believed in the most, I would be in a much better situation than I am now. It's very simple. what about what about yield um it's not a four-letter word anymore uh i was one of voyager's top creditors so that's why i'm asking for the yield trap as much as i mean i think we all got like massively fucked like a couple of years ago and we have crazy ptsd about all these yield stuff well i think maybe a bit too much sometimes yeah i think um it depends on where the yield's coming from and what the product is and what the disclosures are and the risk.

20:25I don't see how you can look at what happened in DeFi with all the hacks in North Korea. And it's like a hack every two days over the past year. I mean, these numbers are not for dispute. And listen, there was 10, 12,$14 billion of capital flight from platforms that were largely unaffected just because of a fear that DeFi was broken. I think that the attack surface right now with bad actors and AI is so broad that it's very hard to want to put capital at risk to earn yield. So it depends on where the yield's coming from, how transparent it is, and your risk tolerance. What's possible if you work hard enough and never give up in the crypto industry?

21:12Well, it depends on who you are. Well, let's take you as an example. A previous DJ. I would love to say that everybody's going to make it. we're all going to make it. But no, most people are idiots and don't learn from their mistakes. So most people are not going to make it. Unfortunately, I'm not saying that that makes me special or anything. I happen to be passionate about it in a way that I could carve out a business. But if I was just a guy still trying to trade crypto assets in the trenches or something, I would not have made it. Do you think it's possible in 2026 and beyond to make it in crypto without building a business.

21:46Yeah. How? Buy Bitcoin. Do you believe that Bitcoin will trade at much higher prices than it is now? I do. That's why I buy Bitcoin every month. Right. So why, you know, it doesn't have to be that. I think that what shocks people is the simplest answer is the correct one. And it's never changed. People are always trying to find a better play to everything, right? But it's the same. It was the same if you look at tech stocks, right? Apple, a long time ago, it's like, okay, this one is too big already. Actually, I think it's Chamath Palipati, he was talking about Bitcoin since a long time and saying Bitcoin.

22:27And he was giving other examples. He was saying, you buy Apple, you buy the category leader, you don't buy the number two. It's counterintuitive, but that's how it works, right? Yeah, and at one point, I think he owned like 5 % of the Bitcoin supply or something absurd. I don't remember what the number was. But astounding. But yeah, I think Bitcoin doesn't get you rich quick and most people come to get rich quick, but it definitely lets you get poor or avoid getting poor slow, right, from inflation. So listen, I mean, anybody, almost anyone, I challenge you to go back and do the math on anything you've put into crypto.

23:06If you had just bought Bitcoin with every one of those purchases and sat on it, where you'd be? This is a tough one. Because if you've been here since 2017, you were buying it to$3 ,000,$4 ,000,$5 ,000. And even if you went all the way up and back to$3 ,000 and back to$126 ,000, you're still probably very happy with those purchases. I made this calculation many times, actually. Yeah, really. It's like the meme of the guy in the mirror pointing at himself. You're fine. You're good. You didn't do that.

23:41how do you take a crypto media business to the next level uh for me i think that i made a very conscious decision a few years ago part of it from the ptsd of what happened in the past um that i wanted to focus pretty heavily on the bridge between crypto and tradfi or the mainstream adoption of it but primarily on the institutional level or at least that's where i i believe that things were headed. And I think it was pretty early to having high conviction that that was going to happen. And so I really converted most of my content with that in mind. It started becoming very interview based. A lot of people from institutions that were crossing over bigger names in the crypto space, but they were focusing on institutions and really trying to focus there.

24:34So my audience kind of turned over from 20 something DGN traders. Now my audience are guys like me with kids who want to invest some of their money in Bitcoin, but have jobs and large portfolios and are buying ETFs. I meet them every day. And so for me, I think directionally I was in a good place and now I can kind of capitalize on having that conviction. So like I have the Yahoo show now, you know, On Yahoo Finance, to my knowledge, is the first and only daily crypto show on a mainstream network. I mean, they're three times bigger than CNBC. I don't think people realize it because it's Yahoo.

25:15How does a show like that happen? They came to me, actually. And I'd been on Yahoo as a guest many, many times. I'll actually tell you. So one of the producers, I was pitched by basically the head of content who's new at Yahoo. and they're kind of looking to build a more personality-based roster. I think that's a little less guys in suits reporting the news, a little more personality and hot takes. That's why you dress like that. Yes. I don't dress like this on my own show. On my own show, I'm in a T-shirt, right? Thank you for dressing up for this podcast. I did this for you. and uh and um you know we kind of got it to a point where it made sense for for both of us to do it uh but to me that's the answer so now like i have a show there i own the show right so it's my own property um and i can leverage that to create new shows that exist hopefully on mainstream media and build a brand around that and so that that's the we're only you know i'm not too deep into doing this, but that's the plan.

26:24I really understand on the business side how much it makes sense. And you said a few years ago you understood that and now it makes even more sense and probably very lucrative. How do you not get bored? Because it's a more kind of boring side of crypto. It's less exciting than all the kind of crazy shit that's left and right that ends up losing people. But all that other stuff is fun in the same way that playing Russian roulette is fun. it was really exciting until the bullet goes off right and so like first of all i have no conviction in any of that stuff anymore and i did so the my my like what i was guilty of was being an idiot in those early cycles i believed that this hundred projects were all going to go up forever and people followed me and of course you know they lose money and i lost more than anyone but you know that does not an excuse for it i was wrong you know so i i think that uh it's not that i'm taking the safe play.

27:17I just think that, first of all, we can all scream at the same echo chamber, but the echo chamber is not growing. It's the same people that have been here for 10 years. Absolutely. So what's the point of me talking to them? Not saying I don't want those people to listen. They do to some degree, but I want the new guy who's thinking about it. This guy who's got a portfolio, where does Bitcoin fit into this? Why should I care? Go orange pill that guy. At least get him, even if you don't orange pill him on Bitcoin itself, tell him why it's good for his portfolio construction and get a couple percent in there.