 Welcome to Digital Asset News, the top stories and crypto currents in digital assets and break them down to bite-sized pieces today. Pretty good stuff. First up, chief economist at Alliance, Muhammad Al-Aryan says this bitcoin surge is different than the others. We're going to take a look at what he's talking about as well as some other prominent members also. Another prominent economist comes out, Dr. Larry Summers, who is the former US Treasury Secretary and says that bitcoin is here to stay. He doesn't give us guidelines as to what is going to happen or price predictions, but he does give us a roadmap of where we are potentially going. And finally, the juggernaut that is, Grayscale, raises $700 million in one day. And this is actually going to correspond to another piece of information that I received, which takes a look at small businesses getting into bitcoin. So we'll take a look at all that, but first take a look at what's going on the markets of the day. It is Monday, January 18th. It's about high noon, El Paso, Texas time, and what have we got? Well, bitcoin has taken yet another slump down to 35.9. But just remember about a month ago, we were at 20K, so I will still take 35.9. Not too bad. It's not 40,000. But I will take this. Ethereum is down a little bit, but still at 12.20. Tether's Tether. Nobody really cares unless you're an auditor. Polkadot sitting solid in that number four spot with a market cap of 15, almost 16 billion. And XRP, peg of the quarter almost, is at 12.7. I do not see XRP overtaking Polkadot. We've had a lot of mix and match and swaps in that fourth spot. But I don't see XRP regaining that anytime soon. Cardano down a little bit, but still pretty good prices, almost 37 cents up 20% for the week. Lightpoint up 33.5. Bitcoin Cash, watch out, 1.7. Chainlink down a little bit. But again, what a magnificent run we've had, 34% in seven days. And we have to retrace just a little bit. I've seen some crazy price predictions out there. Some people say 50. Some people say 100. I've even seen some people say $1,000 for Chainlink. I cannot say that in good conscience and say, yes, it's definitely going there. But we are definitely heading the right direction. Binance coin down. Rep. Bitcoin. Tron. Tron still in the top 20. Congratulations. I suppose. Cosmos interoperability up to the number 20 spot, 7.6. Synthetics, 3.7. Not too bad. Theta down. Neo up. Just going on. Not too much. So really today is kind of one of those blasé days. There's nothing like a 200% gain in a 24-hour timeframe, but I still believe that we are headed in the right direction. Remember, these are all normal. I will remind you in the last four-year cycle, in the 2016, the 2017, we had a massive run where we'd go up, up, up, up, and then a 38% drop, up, up, up 38%, and so on and so forth, beginning in 2017 and going all the way to the all-time highs. That's the same thing that we're seeing again. It's just that not as big of a dips as we've seen before. Now, only time will tell, especially as we go into February, March, and April. But again, I expect us to see fireworks, and I'm going to talk to you about some things in these news articles, which make me a true believer. So let's jump into today's top stories. So first up, Mohamed El-Erian. He is the chief economic advisor at Alliance, and he was on CNN and just pretty much just talks about essentially Bitcoin and where things are going. I like this guy. I've covered this guy many a time. He seems like a very level-headed person. He's not very flamboyant or really into sensationalism. He just kind of gives you the facts, and I can appreciate that on this channel. So let me give you some facts about this gentleman here. So he's the president of Queens College, University of Cambridge. Since 2014, he's served as chief economic advisor at Alliance, which we talked about, the corporate parent of PIMCO, where he formerly served as chief executive and co-chief investment officer. He joined PIMCO 99, senior member of PIMCO's portfolio management. He joined the company at the end of 2007, serving two years as president and CEO of Harvard Management Company. The end of the management is Harvard's endowment. And before becoming a PIMCO, Dr. El-Erian was a manager director at Solomon Smith Barney City Group in London. And before that, he spent 15 years at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., where he served as deputy director before moving to the private sector or IMF. So this guy, I think he knows what he's talking about. So when I saw this article or when I saw this video pop up, I was like, ooh, we can't wait to see what he's talking about here. So let's just take a listen, sit back and just see where we are potentially going. No surprise that we've seen people searching around for other alternative assets like digital assets and Bitcoin. And I know I'm sure you're being asked about this all the time. But I do want to get your wisdom on this because I saw you make some comments about just the structure of the market and at what levels different kinds of investors are involved. And perhaps what people that are new to something like Bitcoin need to watch for. Speaking as a sort of more traditional investor, but that understands both price action and the mentality of investors when they're making an investment, particularly like the price moves that we've seen. Mohammad, your wisdom on Bitcoin. So I don't know it's wisdom because I bought Bitcoins when they did below 5,000 and I and I sold them at 19,000. And I thought, wow, I'm really smart. That's a profit. All the way up to 40,000. So I'm not sure it's wisdom, but this is how people should think. This time around, because this is the third big surge in Bitcoin prices. This time around, we have a solid foundation of long term holders. They have been brought together by fear about inflation, fear about liquidity, mistrust in institutions, looking for more risk mitigation assets. I mean, a whole host of reasons bringing them together. That is a solid foundation. That's why I don't think you'll ever see Bitcoins back down to 4,000. However, above that is a really big layer of speculation. People realize that Bitcoins can move by four or five percent a day. And that, of course, attracts people. We saw last week, fascinating that when the stimulus checks hit people's account, quite a few of those dollars ended up buying Bitcoins. So people are speculating on Bitcoin. So I tell people, just be careful, because I can I understand the solid foundation. But on top of that, you've got a big speculator layer. So just make sure you can manage through that. Because as we saw on Sunday, Monday, that price can fall by 20% in 48 hours. Yeah, you've got to be prepared to volatility. I mean, there will be people watching this game. All the reasons that you suggested are a reason for buying into Bitcoin still exist and will continue to exist in 2021. So I do think Bitcoins are going to continue to establish themselves. But it's important to know what they establish themselves as. They're establishing themselves as part of the payment system. They're establishing themselves as a holding in a portfolio, one percent, two percent. What they're not establishing themselves as is a global currency. Central banks will not allow that to happen. And I think it's important because that gives you a bounder valuation, clearly not zero because they exist in the ecosystem. But it's not. I hear some people saying it's going to 400,000. I don't think so. So, you know, just understand it's a huge range, but understand it's bounded by some realities. And yeah, that totally makes sense. Very level headed. It's not it could potentially not go to 400,000. And I think just like I've always said, I think, you know, around 150 K is a pretty good sweet spot. I don't think it's going to a million. I don't think it's going to zero. I think Muhammad here has it pretty much spot on. And the reason why he talks about is like, look, there's a big range of what you can use it for, but it's not going to be a global currency. Look, I don't know where you think this this could potentially go. But I don't see us using Bitcoin as coffee. I I understand the whole narrative of store of value. I don't just see it. I just don't see it as that. And I think it's it's going to grow, especially as time moves on and especially with all the different businesses, corporations and institutions getting in. But I do agree here that it'll go up. There will be volatility. I think, remember, 2021 is again going to be an all time high. But just be prepared because 2022 is right around the corner. And statistically, we have always seen a major dip following the all time high. So just be aware. All right. So let me understand the comments section. Let's move on to our next piece. Next up, this is short. But again, I'd like to get various people out there who talk about that, hey, this whole market that we're investing in, it is legitimate. I like to hear these things. So this is former Secretary Larry Summers. And he is one of America's top economists. And I was after Summers, the 71st Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration. He served as director of the White House National Economic Council and the Obama administration as president of Harvard University and chief economist of the World Bank, which is interesting again. International Monetary Fund World Bank Chief Economist. When we're talking about as far as Mohammed and here we are with Summers. Currently, he is the president, emeritus and the Charles W. L. A. University professor at Harvard. So a reasonably smart guy. Summers comments about Bitcoin were delivered last Friday while being interviewed by David Weston on Bloomberg. And he said when he was asked if Bitcoin's a bubble, he said this, I'm not going to predict its fluctuation over the next six months, but I think some institutions like it and it's here to stay. I don't think the whole thing is going to collapse. I think that having run up and then run way down and then back up. It looks much more resilient. And therefore, I think people are going to move towards it. And as people move towards it, it gives the finiteness of its supply that's going to be a factor to raise its prices. When he says finite, he means there's a difference between scarcity where you have a little bit, but you can still find some and then finite, which means it's got a hard cap. Bitcoin is a hard cap of $20 million. Gold is scarce. You can still we can still keep finding gold. And some people say, well, it's fine. I'm like, well, really, because we keep finding more of it. I don't know what you're talking about. So this is all good news. You know, as far as like, you know, getting to have a economist that has been in the upper echelon of his career to really come out and say, hey, this isn't going to go anywhere. We don't know where it's going to go, particularly, but it's not going to zero. So I'd like to hear these things, but you have to take everything with a grain of salt and look at the person behind who's talking. On 20 April, twenty eight, twenty sixteen, the digital currency group or DCG and investor in some of the best known businesses in the crypto space such as Abra, Coinbase, CoinDesk, Bitcoin, Ripple, as well as the parent company of Grayscale Investments announced that Summers was joining the firm as a senior advisor. So you can look at it in two ways. This could be a guy who is, you know, I'll play devil's advocate who is just looking out for his, you know, financial investments, or this is a guy who has been around a lot of probably smart people in the blockchain industry and has learned quite a bit and has said, hey, since twenty sixteen, I've been around a lot of smart people. I've figured out what they're talking about. And I can see that Bitcoin is not going anywhere. And I can see a lot of different blockchain companies are going to be here for quite some time. The reason why I bring this up is because as you invest in a Bitcoin, you're always going to get somebody, you know, as you talk to people, they're always going to bring up these like naysayers and say, well, you know, this person, you know, this gold bug said it's going to zero. And you're always inevitably going to hear about this guy who is Noriel Rubini and he is Dr. Doom. He's an economist and he's forever been saying the exact opposite of what we have over here with Larry Summers. So both of them are smart guys. So where did one go wrong or where did one pick up like it's not going away? And this one's like, it's a bubble. Well, you have to take a look at where these people are coming from. So Rubini, he's an economist as well. He teaches at New York University Stern School of Business, chairman of Rubini Macro Associates. He received his BA in political economics at Bochoni University, Milan and a doctorate in international commerce at economics at Harvard. He became an academic at Yale and a visiting researcher, advisor at the International Monetary Fund or IMF, the Federal Reserve, World Bank and Bank of Israel. So again, you get these ideas of where you are, you know, learning from where you are working at. So when you could take a look at the Federal Reserve and the World Bank, maybe a lot of these ideas kind of seeped into Rubini. He kind of just took hold as opposed to Summers and Mohamed over here, who have different, but it's just good to see that there is a wide range of opinions. And before these guys weren't really around, really not weren't saying too much, but Rubini's been everywhere. So I'd like to see a difference of opinion. Anyhow, let me understand the comment section. Let's move on to our last piece. So last up, Grayscale raises 700 million in one day. That's the whole story. I could read the whole thing, but I'll just preface like this. They raised 3.3 billion in Q4 2020. Great. The CEO said, well, Bitcoin remains most of our investors first step. We've seen an uptick in interest from allocators looking for broad exposure. So like I've always said, Bitcoin is a gateway crypto, and it leads you to down the rabbit hole of everything that you are already probably already investing into. So this is just interesting, but I picked this story in particular interest because it's not just big institutions that are stepping in. This was actually sent to me, somebody who is in the institutional game and he said, Rob, you're not going to believe this. I've been getting a lot of requests from small businesses who are looking to get into Bitcoin. He said, it's this has never happened. This is the first year. So kind of flabbergasted. And this was just some of the emails I wiped out the information because I don't want to give anybody's information. And this is what was said. So I said, hello, I want to set up a corporate account below or some answers to my company and situation. They probably, you know, initially said, hey, we want to use Bitcoin. They probably got a questionnaire and they're writing back. And they gave her company name, who we are. We're a blank that has built up significant cash reserves. I want to use some of that cash and invest in Bitcoin as well as invest in ongoing profits. We're not a financial institution. We'll not be trading regularly. We will not be using margin. We have about 700,000 in cash. We would like to move about 400,000 of that into Bitcoin, likely purchase quickly over a one to three week time frame. Sounds like a micro strategy move. We'd like to also invest our future monthly cash profits on an ongoing basis, which is about 20 to 40,000 per month. And then they go on from there. So you can see like this is just one example. Here's another example. Hello, our company is looking set up in a corporate account to diversify the assets to deal with unforeseeable risks in financial markets in these unusual times. We are involved with educational health programs geographically and online. Please send a corporate application for onboarding with your exchange. Thanks. And whoever the information was. So again, I think people and businesses are looking to the examples of Michael Saylor or micro strategy. They're looking at the mass mutuals, the big insurance companies and go, look, mass mutual is a pretty old school place. And they've done a ton of research before they got to Bitcoin. I think I do the same thing. They took a look at Michael Saylor and micro strategy and said, look, these guys got a game around August. They put in, well, over time, they put in more money, but they put in one billion total. And now they've all, they've more than doubled their value in a very short amount of time. So we like that. Same thing with Galaxy Square, Voyager Digital, Riot, Citadel, all these public traded companies on top of all the ones that are ETF like in private. So when small businesses get into it, and I just talked about this in my last video, it's the same thing. Small businesses get in, they have their treasury, their savings, whatever you want to call it, and they're putting their money in so they don't want to have it lose as far as the purchasing powers of a dollar. Now, just wait till not only those types of investments, but you're talking about retirement accounts and bonds and things like that. I mean, we're talking about trillions upon trillions. And if that's just, that's just that 1%, let's say people start to go, you know what, you really should look at between 3% and 6%, 7%, 10%. Now we're off to the races. And that's why I think this year, 2021 is the year. Right now, a little bit of boring, but just wait, buckle up, because it's gonna be a pretty great ride. All right, so that's it for today. So thanks for watching the whole way. I really appreciate it. And before we take off, I just want to remind everybody that the DNews Cardano Stake Pool is chugging along, doing pretty well. Looks like we've been minting blocks and we've got a pretty good return on ADA. 7.5% for the last epoch and 5.65% for the lifetime. If you're taking a look at, if you want to take a look at the actual stake pool, there's going to be a link in the description. It looks just like this. And it'll take you to our DNews Stake Pool information page and you can find all about it. And to make it super simple, just click on wallets and it'll scroll all the way down to the 13 minute video, which pretty much lays out exactly what we are, what we can do and everything that you need to know about the Cardano Staking. So check that out. And that is it for today. So thanks for watching all the way in. I really appreciate it. And we'll see you on the next one.