＂Trump Controls The Market＂ - China Tariff Threat Causes BILLION DOLLAR Bitcoin BLOODBATH
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Summary
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were rallying on Monday, pairing back some of their losses from Friday's crypto crash. Bitcoin was up 3.7% to $115,000 within 24 hours of the crypto crash, but it s still 9% off the record high hit earlier in the day. What s fueling the rebound? Is it a reaction to Trump's latest trade war with China, or is it a reflection of a broader market correction?
Transcript
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Crypto crash, okay? They keep using that phrase, crypto crash.
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But to the people that are in the space of crash, I'm going to read this to you and I'm going to turn it over to you.
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So Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, jump after crypto crash.
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Robin, I think you got a couple video clips on this as well, if you want to pull them up.
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Okay, so Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were rallying on Monday, pairing back some of their losses,
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following President Trump's renewed tariff threat against China.
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Bitcoin was up 3.7% to $115,000 within 24 hours, according to Coindesk.
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It's still trading about 9% off the record high, which was around 130, 131.
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I don't know the exact number. It hit earlier this month.
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Ethereum jumped 9%, Solana jumped 8.2%, XRP up 9.4% within 24 hours.
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The tokens plummeted on Friday with Bitcoin racking up, double-digit percentage losses,
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And the sell-off came after Trump threatened to hike tariffs on China,
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which likely sapped investors' appetite for risk assets.
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What's really going on here? Is it really the reaction to tariffs?
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Is that what the fear was? What do you think caused the crash?
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Well, I think there's a couple of things that are worth unpacking.
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First of all is Trump understands market hours of the stock market.
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So what did he do? He waited until the stock market closed on Friday,
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and then he came out and said, hey, we're going to put the 100% tariff on.
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I don't think that's a coincidence. As the market corrected in after-hour stock,
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there's just not that many people who have access to the after-market stock.
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So what do they do? They look in their portfolio, and they say, well, what market is open?
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What market has liquidity right now? If I want to sell, if I want to change my financial life
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or my portfolio, I'm going to sell cryptocurrency.
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And so Bitcoin specifically sold off. It sold off $13,000, which is a pretty big move.
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An asset went down $13,000 in a single day, but it's only about 10%.
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And so if you go back and you look at all these bull markets, historically there have been multiple 30% drawdowns
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And so this, I joke, is like a crypto crash for ants to the crypto crowd.
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Now, the stock market, if the stock market goes down 10%, 20%, they're freaking out.
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They're talking about the Great Depression, 1929, doing all that kind of stuff.
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And the crypto, again, it doesn't feel good to see your assets go down 10%,
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but it is still pretty small compared to what everyone has lived through.
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There was somebody who was chirping at me on Twitter yesterday, and they said,
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why are you saying that we shouldn't be worried about a market correction?
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I said, my brother, we've lived through two 80% drawdowns in four years.
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I said, your stock market crashes? They don't even register for the crypto people.
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So I think that plays into a lot of what's going on with the retail folks.
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By the way, it's interesting what you say, the fact that for the regular guys
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that are trading after hours, they're like, what do I mess with now?
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What they do with crypto, you can track what Bitcoin's doing.
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Gold's closed, stocks are closed, bonds are closed, everything is closed.
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Now, here's the thing, is Trump on Sunday night, you know, I posted this meme,
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it's like abracadabra, make the markets go back up, right?
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He tweets out an hour and a half before a future's open on Sunday night.
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Like, the guy knows what he's doing, and so that's fine, understand that.
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But I think the bigger thing about crypto, and Bitcoin in particular,
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is if you sold your Bitcoin because of geopolitical uncertainty,
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The whole point of Bitcoin is that it is a non-sovereign asset.
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It is supposed to be the safe haven that you can go and hold,
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regardless of what any government in the world does.
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And so I think that's part of what people are trying to figure out now,
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They're looking to buy on dips, but you still get tons of new people who come in,
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and obviously leverage plays a huge part of this.
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And so the big story over the weekend was there was $19 billion of leverage that got wiped out.
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Now, you can look at that as how prices went down.
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The way I look at it is we just reset the entire leverage in the system,
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and therefore that probably clears us so that we can go higher.
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Yeah, so it says historic $19 billion sell-off, but two accounts made $160 million.
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The two accounts that placed bets against the market minutes before the news broke,
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Less popular tokens saw declines as steep as 80% coin glass, a crypto data platform.
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Ahead of the sell-off, two accounts on Hyperliquid,
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a decentralized exchange that allows investors to make leveraged bets on future crypto prices,
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place massive bets that Bitcoin and Ether would fall.
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By days and Friday, the positions were closed for $160 million in profits.
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You know, when you see stuff like this, this is the Wall Street Journal story right there.
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$19 billion, if you wipe out $19 billion of leverage,
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that doesn't mean that people holding cryptocurrencies lost $19 billion, right?
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If you put $10 in, but you get $100 of leverage, right?
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So there's some math that I think is a little bit misleading.
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The second thing is, you know, when prices go down, sometimes people make money.
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It's all about what are they positioned, how are they positioned, all that kind of stuff.
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There is a trend that is happening in America, but also globally,
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which is the intertwining of finance and entertainment.
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And what you now see is whether it's the prediction markets,
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whether you see it's the stock market, whether you see crypto,
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You know, I joke all the time, like financial markets have become like soap operas for young people.
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And so not only is there the gambling or speculation component to it,
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but what now in crypto is you have on-chain analytics.
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You can go and you can see what are the positions people are taking, what wallets are moving, right?
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All this information is almost like kind of new media to them.
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And so what people do is, oh my God, there's this big liquidation.
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They immediately begin scouring all this data, trying to find some storyline.
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And so when they find this, they kind of latch on to it.
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Now, does this person have information about the tariffs?
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And so I tend to think that good investors, they're not paying attention to this stuff.
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They're just saying to themselves, listen, I want to continue to acquire this asset,
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Is it just pure speculation who they think it is?
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So there are strong, maybe thesis as to who they are, because on the wallets, at times,
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people can start to identify whose wallet is who.
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And so in one particular case, there's a guy who's associated with a wallet that they believe
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It's not like they're coming out and tweeting and saying, hey, that was me that made 160 million bucks.
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Is this a well-known name or just somebody that's known in the crypto space?
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Are you, because I think the last time we spoke, you were a full-on Bitcoin, you were
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Is your, you know, if I was to look at your wallet, would I see some additional things
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So I've always thought about this barbell, right?
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Which is basically Bitcoin is a store of value asset called, you know, digital gold.
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And it is going to be a great way to protect your economic value that you've earned.
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You know, it kind of went from a contrarian trade to a consensus trade.
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And now the world has kind of woken up to the fact that this thing's going to work.
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The other part that, you know, if you go back to 2016, 2017, that I've always thought
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was going to happen, whether, again, the hardcore Bitcoiners, whether they like it or not,
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And ultimately, my understanding of the intersection of, call it crypto and Bitcoin, with Wall Street
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is once Wall Street figured out that they could make money, they'd go all in.
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Bitcoin ETFs, BlackRock now, the Bitcoin ETF is their single most profitable product in
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It's the most profitable product they have, right?
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So now all of a sudden, every other firm on Wall Street says, wait a second, if they're
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making a bunch of money on this, maybe we should start participating.
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And so you're going to see a bunch of people start going in there.
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Then you start to see the Bitcoin companies, right?
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Now you start to see these public companies putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet.
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What you're starting to see them talk about is they want to basically rip out cost and inefficiencies
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from the way that they trade stocks, the way that they trade various assets through this
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The technology seems to work, but I don't think this is going to be a retail-driven thing.
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I think this is going to very much be an institutional-driven thing where they say to themselves,
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all the plumbing in Wall Street is T2 settlement times.
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If I go to buy a stock, I don't actually get it till tomorrow.
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It's just kind of very antiquated type technology.
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And so it kind of sounds sexy, but the actual work that they're doing is very, very kind
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And so I think that that will become a huge part of this story.
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But I don't think we're going to be talking about, quote-unquote, crypto.
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I think that's going to be much more of a kind of an institutional story.
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So going back to my question, do you own other things?
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I own Bitcoin is probably 90-plus percent of the portfolio.
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And then I very publicly, in December of 2023, I started out mining Ethereum way back in
00:09:08.580
And I sold Ethereum and bought Solana, which ended up being a great trade.
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And I specifically said, look, this is a trade.
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I'm not going to be holding Solana five years from now, but it's just from this perspective.
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And so I think that Bitcoin is the king of the crypto market.
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It's going to remain the king of the crypto market.
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And I think it's probably the only truly institutional asset that you're going to see central banks
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What do you think about XRP, the conversations with XRP, with Ripple, whether it's a technology
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I think that the market is very, very good at figuring out where value ends up accruing.
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And what you see in, let's call it outside of Bitcoin, in the top 10 coins, what you will
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start to see is Bitcoin's dominance has not only remained constant, it's actually gone up
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And so I think that the market is assigning Bitcoin as kind of in a class of its own.
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Now, if you then go into, let's say, coins 2 through 10, what you start to find is those
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are much more akin to me to like technology stocks.
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My understanding is that they have a couple of different things that they've done.
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Well, they've got a lot of competition from Tether, Circle.
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Now, all of a sudden, Stripe's getting in the game.
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There will probably be multiple winners, but it's heavy, heavy competition.
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On top of that, one of the things that is interesting, not so much about XRP the coin, but about
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Ripple the company is, you know, they have this kind of engine to generate profit and monetize
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So what they did is they bought, I think one of the companies was called Hidden Road.
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These are like billion plus dollar acquisitions that they're doing.
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Rob, can you pull up a company's Ripple acquired?
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And so what you're starting to see is, again, there's incredible controversy and debate,
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But what they've started to do is they started to take, I mean, look, $200 million acquisition,
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$1.25 billion acquisition, $250 million acquisition, right?
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And so what they're doing is they're essentially using the monetization of their balance sheet,
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and they're starting to acquire real companies.
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Now, what I will say is we have seen this happen in traditional finance over time.
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You have a company that has very controversial or maybe unsustainable kind of business model,
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but they have some access to capital, and they begin to convert that into something else.
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And, you know, look, the Bitcoin treasury companies, a lot of them had companies that weren't working,
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and they said, well, why don't I just start to buy Bitcoin?
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And all of a sudden, they kind of revived their business.
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Now, you know, there's kind of a delineation between XRP and Ripple,
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but I think that this acquisition stuff, people in the industry,
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even the people who don't like XRP, I think are saying to themselves,
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Okay, you may be able to end up with an entire set of infrastructure there
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that you can then go and actually build a business with.
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Hidden Road, if I remember correctly, they do a lot of, it's like market infrastructure, right?
00:12:01.780
So, like, again, it goes back to this idea of where value accrues in the crypto industry
00:12:08.320
is really kind of, and really in finance in general, there's two buckets.
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You have the retail-facing platforms, and then you have institutional-facing, like, infrastructure.
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And so the retail platforms, that's your Coinbase's, Binance's, Gemini's, you know, Tether's, all those guys.
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But then you've got this, like, institutional infrastructure, everything from market making to, here you go.
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So, like, a global credit network for institutions, prime brokerage clearing, financing, right?
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All this stuff that is very institutional in nature.
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Is that what a, would it be considered, is Hidden Road Company Ripple Acquire like a Pershing Company?
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Okay, I mean, that's a big deal to buy something like that, at $1.25 billion.
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And the guy that's running it, I think his name is Brad.
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He's involved on the, I've seen him with the Trump administration, a couple different things with them.
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But he doesn't just sound like one of these guys that came and created a coin,
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hey, let's sell a bunch of stuff, and then let's go.
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They're actually creating technology and buying technology.
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So, you're optimistic because you hear some people talk about Ripple could replace Swift possibility of that.
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Of course, the likelihood of that happening is less than 5%.
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I think that the strategy that they're pursuing at Ripple is, if you were in their situation,
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I think it's very smart to go and acquire these businesses.
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I've always just said that my focus is on Bitcoin because I think of, there's two problems in the world that I care about,
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The first is, I believe that the single biggest issue, if you can correct this one issue,
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it will have a profound impact on people's lives around the globe,
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is if you can basically stop the debasement of the currency.
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If you can stop that, then all of a sudden now what you do is you stop this silent theft,
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and now you allow people to actually keep the economic value that they've worked hard to earn.
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And so Bitcoin, to me, is the solution to that problem.
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There's kind of this heuristic of people have been complaining about this for decades, centuries.
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If you go back through all these societies, Bitcoin is the first technology solution to the problem.
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And so I think that that is a very profound solution that is going to have an impact that we quite don't understand yet, frankly.
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The second problem that I'm very interested in is this idea of the little guy,
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or the quote-unquote retail investor, being able to get a level playing field against these large institutions.
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And I think that those two issues are very interrelated because now what we know in this country is you can't be a saver,
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As these retail folks realize I have to become an investor, they need access to information,
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That's where I think I'm most passionate about.
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That's what I'm most intellectually stimulated by.
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What these guys are doing, I think, is something that is different and outside of it.
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And so it's just not something I spend any time on.
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And then last but not least on these topics, Doge.
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Because they just had an announcement, if I'm not mistaken, either on Monday.
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And I think Bitcoin is probably the signal among the noise.
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So you think Doge is noise is what you're saying?
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I generally think that, again, it goes back to Bitcoin is, think of it as a savings technology.
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It's kind of the safe thing that if you earn money, you spend less than you make, you store it in your account.
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So one of the frameworks that I have is in your traditional finance life, you have a savings account,
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you've got a checking account, you've got a brokerage account.
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In the digital world, you've got the same thing.
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It's going to protect your economic value over time.
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You have a checking account, which is your stable coins, and then you're going to have a brokerage account.
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People are going to have all kinds of crazy stuff in there.
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That brokerage account is actually really, really hard to navigate, just like the stock market is.
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If you're going to go pick individual stock names, maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong,
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maybe you've got some information or a unique view on the world, I think that that is basically what all the other coins are.
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I love how you broke it down to the average person that sees that.
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So you can play ball in your brokerage account and see what it does, but then you have where you put your money.
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And by the way, some people, when they think about savings, they think about half a percent, quarter of a percent,
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or a percent, or money market, sometimes two, three percent.
00:16:44.980
It is not half a percent rate of return type of thing.
00:16:47.440
On Monday, I introduced you to the FLBs, the FLB1 shoes, Future Looks Bright shoes.
00:16:53.740
And let me tell you what happened since that day.
00:16:55.840
For black shoes that we had, I'll give you the report here.
00:16:59.580
For black size, Rob, I think you have it as well, size 8 and 11 1⁄2 sold out.
00:17:18.520
Everything you order on those sizes will be pre-order.
00:17:21.520
I shared with you the fact that a lot of the sizes are going to sell out.
00:17:24.620
A lot of them, there's only four or five or six remaining for the shoe sizes.
00:17:28.980
So for some of you that didn't see what we talked about on Monday,
00:17:39.340
And some of the events, whether it's my insurance company or the Vol Conference or BPW,
00:17:43.060
at some events, I can speak 40 hours while I'm on my, just standing up talking
00:17:46.820
and I'm wearing dress shoes and they're uncomfortable.
00:17:48.740
I wanted to find a shoe that can combine both the comfort and the technology
00:17:52.640
and the authentic Italian leather, the trainers, because I love those shoes.
00:17:57.680
I don't want it to be too heavy where I'm feeling like I'm carrying weight.
00:18:03.920
And I want to show you this clip one more time.
00:18:07.880
And then we'll give you some intel and then we'll get right into the stories.
00:18:12.020
When we set out to create a shoe that blends comfort, function, and luxury,
00:18:32.020
We chose patience, spending two years perfecting every detail.
00:18:38.800
Introducing the Future Looks Bright collection.
00:18:51.860
So, just so you know, if you're wondering, Pomp came in here.
00:19:04.240
He's like, let me see if this guy's a product of the product.
00:19:11.880
No matter where I go last night, I was at Casa de Angelo.
00:19:15.300
The most comfortable trainer shoes with the Italian leather.
00:19:19.440
And again, if you haven't placed your order for yourself or your spouse, this was us at the VOL Conference.
00:19:25.660
The launch of it when we did it here was so exciting.
00:19:32.380
But guys coming back, how comfortable it is, how light it is, feeling the super foam at the bottom of it, taking pictures of it, sitting in boardrooms with your feet up where somebody says, wait a minute.
00:19:44.400
Does that say Future Looks Bright on the bottom of the shoe?
00:19:48.280
There's a certain sense of optimism when you're wearing these Future Looks Bright shoes.
00:19:54.000
So again, the black and brown, if you order them, we have them now.
00:20:00.440
If they're sold out pre-order because you'll get it second week of December.
00:20:05.220
The white, when it comes out, it will not last because, you know, there's a certain material that we mixed it with a lot.
00:20:14.660
This will come out second week of December with the navy blue.
00:20:17.620
The navy blue and the white will come second week of December.
00:20:19.920
The black and the brown are here for you to order depending on your size.
00:20:23.720
So go to vtmerch.com, place your order, and you can learn more about the comparison of how these shoes compared to a Tom Ford, Rob, if you can go a little bit lower, to a Gucci, to a Berluti, to a Ferragamo, to a Xenia.
00:20:38.760
Instead of spending $9.50, $11.98, $95, $8.40, it's built in the same exact factories as Gucci, Louis Vuitton.
00:20:49.320
It took me half a second to put them on, and the driver came, picked me up, got in the car, came over here.
00:20:53.600
So if you haven't placed the order yet for yourself or somebody else, place the order.
00:20:58.140
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00:21:00.880
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