 Welcome to the Market Report with Cointelegraph. We have an absolutely electric show lined up for you all today. Very special guest, Mike McLoan, that you don't wanna miss. So just make sure you're tuned in. I am your host Benton, joined again by our resident experts, Jordan Finneseth and Yashu Gola. Jordan uses his background in psychology and human behavior to spot emerging trends in crypto. And Yashu is a financial analyst who has been covering the cryptocurrency industry since 2014. Prior to his experience in journalism, Yashu was a security analyst at Premier Shield in a copywriter app and technology. Another great week for the markets with Ethereum leading the way, cracking $3,700. What is up fell as huge week in the markets? How are we doing today? Doing good, man. I'd like to see the market moving like this. Ethereum leading the way this time. Bitcoin's kinda lagging, but it's about to break 350. We'll see what happens. Well, I'm very happy right now because the Bitcoin did through big 250K level and which was my target for the week anyway. So yeah, I'm completely hippy right now. I'm kidding. It feels like it's that time. I don't know. September's always a funky month for the crypto markets, but is it time for us to smash through 50K? Are we gonna see that anytime soon? I don't know. I think there's a lot of stuff going on. There's a lot of interesting things happening. I think we're seeing some rotation out of NIT. So there's a lot gonna be happening in the next month. It could be good or bad. I don't know. Well, on the contrary, I'm pretty much excited about this 50K level because we are constantly trying to break above it and the kind of macro economic indicators coming in our way pretty shortly. I think we are good to go about 50K in the next sessions ahead. So why not? Well, good deal guys. Well, so let's get into some of our markets news today. We, our show is broken down into segments where we're getting into some of the news of the week. Then we'll hear from our experts. We'll have Yashu and Jordan jump into their segments. And then we'll give you the scoops with Markets Pro and talk to you about some of the biggest gainers in altcoins this week. And finally, we have our special guest, Mike McGowan from Bloomberg. And it's gonna be awesome to pick his brain to see what he thinks about what's going on in the market. And before we jump into things, if you haven't smashed the like button, go like it on YouTube. We're here every Thursday, 12 PM. So for our first news of the week for the market segment, let's get right into this. So as we mentioned, Bitcoin is touching that 50K level. Now it's hovering right around there. There was $450 million in daily liquidations in the past 48 hours. So I do wanna kind of unpackage this concept of daily liquidations. Yashu, is this something that you can kind of break down for us? What is liquidations and like, why was there so many of this happening currently in the market? Well, liquidations as much as I can see is because everybody was short in the market and they were not anticipating any kind of negative positive move because of whatever that is happening after the Jackson poll event. I think that played a very important role in causing this $450 million liquidation in short. Because yeah, they were not anticipating the move towards 50K. That's it. So they just caught themselves in the wrong side of the trade. Were they just simply anticipating like negative events out of the Jackson hole? Is that what was going on? Exactly, because Mr. Pawel himself very much cleared that they would want to go ahead with day frame. And I think most of the short-traded, the bearish ones, I mean, they anticipated that, yeah, it might leave Bitcoin in a dusty space. And I think one of the reasons they were very much bearish on Bitcoin was also because of the altcoin rally. The kind of run-ups we saw in Cardano and Solano and Ethereum itself, like in the last couple of days. So that might have been one of the reasons why people were anticipating that Bitcoin might fall. And of course, the kind of, you can say dominance, Bitcoin had in the market was also declining. So yeah, that might have played one of the more like important roles why people were bearish. Do you think people are going to flip bullish and kind of take out longs instead of shorting the market now? Well, you'll always find bearish people and you'll always find somebody getting wrecked because of a completely separate movement going out of the way. I mean, you cannot actually comment on that, but right now I don't think it's not wise to be short on Bitcoin based on what we are seeing right now with the kind of job data that is coming up. I personally don't think that people should short the market. Either they should simply stay away from the long and derivative market altogether if they don't want to risk their money. Yeah, are we gonna have to wait for an ETF or something to get passed for us to get like meaningfully above this level? What do you think? We have been past that ETF level and SEC is playing its own game altogether. I don't want to know what is in the mind of the commissioner, but yeah, I'm anticipating they would approve it, but not too soon, not too soon. I think it's too far away even now. But I do want to kind of ask more of a question about these liquidations. Is this to the retail traders that are doing this or do we feel like this is a lot of the institutions that we're shorting at these levels here? What are your thoughts on that, Jordan? Oh, all right. Yeah, I don't really get into that data too much. That's more for Yashu's friend, Butter, right there. All right, like, there's probably some institutions. For me, I'm like, retail traders should just be buying and holding Bitcoin. We shouldn't be trying to do usual longs and short. So like, I'm gonna always say that's probably more like retail traders or big traders, but I don't know, what do you think, Yashu? How to know that? I mean, see, institutional investors, they always lend in, you know, with a very long-term outlook and where they are standing right now, they're looking at the economy and they are deciding on how to trade, you know, based on all the macroeconomic factors. And what I see right now with the jobs report that just came on Wednesday, I don't think they are anticipating the full V-shaped recovery any time soon. So I might just say, it's safe to say that they are not behind, you know, any kind of bearish calls for now. So, yeah. I'm more likely to think it's more likely especially low-level retail traders, because low-level retail traders have been in the NFT game for the last couple months, like the last month. Like, you can either try and risk your money making longs and short on Bitcoin that ain't moving or the NFT sector where like you can get a pet rock for like a million dollars. I think a lot of that has been sucking the retail trade out. So to me, it's either been big traders, like old school whales that have a lot of money to spend and lose. Or it's been like institutions and the retail traders have been kind of co-opted into the NFT game. Well, we need to first separate big traders with the retail or institutional investors. I mean, they are completely different game altogether. A big trader cannot be an accredited investor. So when we're talking about traders, retail traders, yeah, they might be behind this, but I'm saying that institutions that are completely long-term into the game, they might not be behind the short on calls. Really. Well, enough of this bearishness. I want to talk a little bit of bullishness for Bitcoin for just a second here. So we had Anthony Scaramucci, the mooch himself, predicts 100K Bitcoin by the end of the year and we're still within reach of that. What are with our thoughts here? Are we that bullish to where this 100K level is not out of reach? I mean, it's a 2X from here. What are your thoughts on this, Jordan? Like I was saying before, from a psychological standpoint, when everybody starts saying the same thing, I'm usually like, that's when my, my spidey sense is like, danger will Robinson danger? Like, no, like the fact that it's been this mantra for like two years now, 100,000, 100,000, like they're trying to will it to happen? I mean, eventually Bitcoin will get there. Will it get there in this next cycle? I don't know. Like if I were like trying to be a little bit more conservative, I probably, if I was selling my Bitcoin, I'd probably put myself around 85, 90,000, not 100,000 just to make sure they got filled. But, you know, I think the FOMO, of it could just like push it up. Like if it starts running for public, starts jumping on PayPal to buy Bitcoin, you never know. What do you think, Yashu? Well, I think Bitcoin has a very long-term tendency to surprise all of us. And I wouldn't be surprised personally if it goes to 100K. Although, rather than just guessing it, I think there are enough evidence that supports the theory that, yeah, it can't reach 100K. Reason being is one of the service by Bank of America. It was done, I think, in May. And they found out that a majority of hedge funds, you know, they posed, they were interested in investing in cryptocurrencies if they get more institutionalized space to, you know, invest from. And we are seeing all the evidence. Why Morgan Stanley, why JP Morgan, why everybody, you know, any big firm out there is creating space, creating platform or venues through which institutional investors can put their money into Bitcoin. Of course, they expect the demand to go up and everybody knows why. So 100K, I don't think it's sort of an unachievable target. I'm not actually sure about the time by when we can get that. Maybe not by 2021, maybe in the mid of 2022, but it is quite an achievable target. Do you think there will be influence by if, like there's, instead of, there's other ways for them to get involved in other cryptocurrencies besides just Bitcoin? Like if they really open it up to more than Bitcoin, that's gonna steal some of its thunder. Like people aren't, especially these companies that are really trying to make the bigger gains, they're not gonna jump into $75,000 Bitcoin when they can get into one of these hot DeFi projects. So what was it? Who just bought, what company bought a CryptoPunk? Dang. God. Somebody just bought a CryptoPunk, like a, like a big company. It was like a Chaser Visa or somebody. Yeah, it's like, they see what's happening and they see the people. It's where the people are going. And I'm not, Bitcoin is the top dog. It's probably gonna be the gold standard in the crypto market for years to come. But like the real money to be made by people. Yeah, but my thing is this is, so Yashu, back to your point though, it sounds like you're saying that there's gonna be a lot of institutional demand for Bitcoin in general. Like is that what it's gonna take? Or is it gonna be governments saying, hey, we now accept this as a legal tender? Like what is kind of those catalysts in your eyes? Well, goments, I don't know what they want to do. And nobody knows that. But as far as institution is concerned, my guess actually comes from the kind of development we are doing already in the space. If we are creating a big building, if you're bringing everything, if you break every kind of material that is developed, we are of course anticipating that people would come and live there. So once I see the people who were not even looking at Bitcoin in the previous years, now they are jumping into the game altogether. They are anticipating. They have research. They have these tons of Harvard graduates who have researched among these hedge fund managers and one of the Bank of America survey I mentioned, the same. They want something credible enough to invest from. They need somebody like Morgan Stanley or JP Morgan to come in the business, ensure the kind of insurance or the safety through which they can invest the money. They are just waiting for the right venues. And that is alone enough to signify that Bitcoin is going places. 100K, 200K, we will see, but it is going places. So it sounds like regulation is gonna be needed in order for some of those big institutions to get involved, to then have kind of that trickle down to other people getting involved with it through the institutions as like the vessel to Bitcoin. Definitely. I mean, you people would need lawmakers to really look at this market. And I think they are looking into it, the kind of strict laws from the US we are looking at. They're actually the first step towards a very bigger conversation, a debate how people can treat Bitcoin. Is it a completely different financial animal altogether? So yeah. Yeah, 70% of people too, like do what they're told by the powers, the powers that be the government, the thing that's above them. So they're waiting for the government to be like, this is legal and you can do it. They won't do it until that happens just because that's a psychological, people are, they do what they're told and they kind of stick with the herd in the flow in the middle. So until like we get an ETF and the regulations really get passed, I don't think we're really gonna get this blow off top like we are all expecting. On the top of that, I agree with Jordan at some point because the government right now needs money. They need lots of money too, because the kind of loans they have taken in the form of issuing bonds and they have a lot of debt to pay. And how would they make it? They would need to increase taxes. And who would they tax the most? The one who have gotten richer in the past 12 months, they really need to get in, they're skimming the game rather than let them go. If they just do not actually, they're like, no, they're gonna ban Bitcoin. They're just gonna push the entire market underground. And I don't think they are full enough to do that. Yeah, we already saw that here. They're just flipping those cryptocurrency regulations here in the US into that bill. Like they're trying to like take our money. You turned off my phone. Governments are gonna tax, governments are gonna tax at the end of the day. I think they'll wake up to this and the US is just very kind of slow moving at this point. But I wanna shift this over to the second biggest coin out there, Ethereum. This thing has been taking off like an absolute rocket shift this week. I wanna kind of grab a quick snippet from this headline we have. The Great Crypto Flipping. This is the age old question. Is Ethereum ever gonna overtake Bitcoin? And one of the quotes from this article is, is DeFi is on a tear, NFTs are mushrooming, Ethereum remains more scalable than Bitcoin. And it also offers more uses, including smart contracts. Moreover, Ethereum will soon move to a proof of state consensus algorithm, looking to be more eco-friendly than Bitcoin's energy intensive proof of work protocol. Is 2021 the year for Bitcoin or the year for Ethereum, excuse me. Sounds like they have a lot of arguments on their side. What do you guys think about this? Yashu, why don't you start us off? Well, I don't think there's a thing called Bitcoin or Ethereum, there's a thing called Bitcoin and Ethereum because both of these markets, they have plenty of room to grow. I mean, the adoption, they are still at the adoption stage. And in terms of Ethereum, it's still getting into the skin of the DeFi sector. It is still supporting so many immense full successful projects. And yeah, it is finally getting noticed. So I don't say that Ethereum cannot grow and we have to create any, you know, difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum. Yes, there has been challenges regarding the scalability issues and the network congestion, the higher fee. But the roadmap they have provided us, I mean, they are still on track of it. So I think most of us are invested in Ethereum, not because we want to compete with Bitcoin in any way. It's just a diversification tactic. Ethereum is a different animal altogether. So first of all, there is no comparison between the two. So even if a flipping happens, it doesn't matter really. They will always have different market to look at. Yeah, I don't know if it'll happen this time around. It might happen in the future. Who knows what's going to happen. But there's always going to be other competitors, as I say, like there's always going to be funds leaking out of both Bitcoin and Ethereum and all the other altcoins that are popping up. Will Ethereum pass Bitcoin? I think institutions might be more interested in Ethereum in this next bull run, because it has so much more utility versus just holding it or they'll have different allocations towards each. But I don't think it'll pass in this current bull run now. I am going hard Ethereum. I think it has so much upside. The Bitcoin maxis are going to yell at me. They're going to scream and yell from the rooftops that I'm wrong. But I think it has so much potential. One word, it's DeFi. DeFi is the tip. Are we talking about total market cap? I'm not. I'm talking market cap. Market flipping. I'm talking about taking over the Bitcoin market cap. And I think- It's like devil's advocate. It's like a 2X to get up to Bitcoin. Just 2X ain't that much like he talked about last time. So I got it. There's plenty of liquidity in the market. We can share the market. It doesn't matter, really. I agree. But I think Ethereum is going to rock it past Bitcoin here in the next three to five years. 2021 is the year for Ethereum. Exactly. All right, so let's get into our expert segment with Yashu today. I know he's going to be talking about more Bitcoin and the US job markets. How are those two related? So let's jump right in. Thank you, everybody, to allow me the space. So to begin with, I would like to congratulate everybody in the Bitcoin space that we reached 50,000 levels once again, confirming that there is adequate buying pressure near or above the 47K level. But frankly, I'm not surprised seeing the run up in prizes, really. I mean, the macroeconomic catalyst that had given us plenty of evidence about a microprice rally towards 50K at the beginning of this week. So I actually published an article just this Sunday, and I discussed a potential market reaction to a couple of US jobs data released this week. So as anticipated, payroll services tracker ADP, which is automated data processing, it showed that the US economy added about 374,000 jobs in August. Now, I mean, I'm not saying that is not an attractive number for an economy that was literally on the verge of collapse in March 2020. But still, I think the addition of 374,000 jobs in the private sector is very less than what the polls were expecting. I mean, if you look at the Dow Jones poll, just Google that. I mean, if you just look at the Dow Jones poll, you would say that they were anticipating about 600K jobs. And if I recall correctly, the Reuters poll of economists predicted the market payrolls to be about 6,000, 13,000. So they were optimistic, we can say, because they thought the economic reopening coupled with the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing would ensure more jobs. But why did the number come out to be so lower the anticipated? I think my guess is that it was Delta variant, the COVID-19. So it kind of like hurt the entire numbers they were anticipating to come out. I mean, the job growth more or less is tied to the COVID-19 updates. So what happens? I mean, that's a very interesting thing. So the ADP report comes on Wednesday. Bitcoin at that time was holding about 47K. And one day later, it jumps to 50K. So you can see a small reaction. So yes, ADP cannot be the only reason there. I mean, Bitcoin is holding about its 20-day exponential moving average as well. I mean, there's a psychological support level right there. And I think people saw it as a very good opportunity to enter the market again. But I think that ADP data just made them realize that, yeah, it's a good time to enter the market. So now we have like a price of a 50K correcting there. So yeah, I want to jump in here real quick. Can you kind of unpackage this for us? Why is the jobs report so important? And like, how is that tied into Bitcoin? Is it because people have more expendable income, the more people that are employed? What does that kind of mean? What are the correlations? I mean, 2020 has been a correlation itself. Like we have seen people losing jobs and then Federal Reserve jumping in and trying to save the market from crashing further. So the reason is the Federal Reserve previous statement on how they would start tapering their $120 billion a month asset purchase program unless they achieve maximum employment, I'm sorry, pardon my English. So maximum employment. So the ADP report mainly hints that the US central bank would stick to its money printing plans for a while, even though it plans to slow the easing down by the end of this year. So as all of us repeated this several times, aggressive bond buying means lower yields because they moved inversely. So it's great for accredited and non-accredited investor to stick to non-yielding assets. And it can be Bitcoin, it can be gold, it can be stocks. So which is why we are looking at it. And if somebody can just look through the data on the ADP in the previous months, I mean, in May, estimation was that the market will add 650,000 jobs. But in May also, the ADP data came out to be 950. So it was pretty higher than what was anticipated. In the same month, Bitcoin fell. I know they were like more reasons to it. There was a China ban, there was a Elon Musk. But I think it catalyzed that self in a way because people anticipated, yeah, that's the time for they don't need the safety of Bitcoin anymore because the jobs are adding up, the economic reopening is happening, they can put their money somewhere else. But that's what happened. In June also, because of the China ban, we see that the estimates were low, but even with the China ban effect, the hash rate fell a falling down. We saw some negative events in Bitcoin. But in July, I mean, you might see that the anticipation was 695K, the anticipation that how many jobs the market will add, it was 695K. And it turned out to be 320K in Bitcoin, pushed up. In August, I just mentioned that the anticipation was about 613K and it came out to be 374K. That's almost half than what was the economists were anticipating. So there's a market shock there. And because of that, they believe that the Federal Reserve will stay there for a while. And it will keep providing the support it was providing for the last 12 months or more than that. So yeah, Bitcoin is 50K because of that, I believe. Interesting. Does that have anything to do with hash rate at all? Because I've read reports that hash rate is starting to recover from people transitioning out of China. Yeah, I mean, I think Coin Telegraph also published a flurry of reports about it, that how mining is moving from one place to another or completely shutting down their business had a negative impact on Bitcoin prices. Because they wanted money. Of course, they wanted to sell whatever they held because they wanted to stay back in China, most of them. And that created a negative pressure on the market. But now, with the hash rate completely coming up, it simply reflects that the miners who wanted to remain in business, they moved to places, more friendly, regulated places. And because of that, we are looking at recovery in the same time. They are holding. And I think if I recall, I think there was a glass note data from maybe CryptoQuantz, but they showed that the minor holding behavior was completely going into the accumulation side, which is a good news altogether. As you're talking, all I hear is like, our market's completely comprised of buying the rumor and selling the news type situations. It's almost the inverse with the jobs one. If it's good, it goes down. If it's bad, it goes up. It's just like, let's pay the news. No, I'm not saying that. I actually, I specifically mentioned, I said, don't put words in my mouth. I specifically mentioned. I specifically mentioned that it played a, it catalyzed the buying behavior because we are at the time where we don't have any more clues. I mean, micro strategy is buying, but people are not excited anymore about it. We need more companies to come in and really show that we are into the Bitcoin game. So I think market does that. It's 50K is also a very good psychological level. And it's very normal that we are consolidating through this 4750K channel right now. But again, I'm saying that they have a lagging effect. All of these numbers, ADP and everything gets, they have a lagging effect on the market. Yeah. Yeah, it just seems like overall, that like a lot of our market behavior, the things that go on in the market is people responding to news. And it's like, so we can never like we, all these TA and stuff, they can give you a general like, oh, this is where we think it's gonna go. But so much of it seems to be dictated by what's going on in the world, especially with things that we can't control like the COVID pandemic and all. What the government's gonna do and all these things. It's like, a lot of it seems like it's a noise to just entertain traders in between the actual big news that happened in the market. Well, I absolutely agree, but we all need news to plan our trades and that's how the markets work anyway. So why not? Yeah, I think it's just good to keep that in mind when people are like, this is what's gonna happen. I'm like, you don't know what's gonna happen as far as the news goes. They should watch jobs data at any cost. It is very important. I agree. Definitely a good metric. Yeah. Indeed, man. Very, very interesting insights. And so are you bullish on Bitcoin here in the short term? In the short term, I'm expecting it to consolidate between 47 and 50K because let's just say because there are still uncertainty regarding the Fed's decision. They have said that they will start taping down by the end of this year. But now we have a new variant coming up in South Africa. I cannot pronounce the name because I'll bite my tongue if I do. So there's a new, but just say that there's a new COVID data in coming in South Africa and what it would do, we don't even know. So there's a lot of uncertainty. And as long as the market is uncertain, hedges like Bitcoin, stock and gold, I think they will continue to thrive. Yeah. Well, thank you for providing the data and insights for your segment today. This is gonna carry us over into Jordan's segment. If you haven't liked and subscribed, make sure you do so our YouTube channel Thursdays, 12 PM, we're here with the experts, giving you the hot market takes. Let's get into Jordan's expert segment for today. Okay, so yeah, there's a lot going on the market. Everybody's been focusing a lot on Bitcoin and Ethereum to a lesser degree. But there's other things I wanted to kind of look into and see if like maybe there might be kind of a sector rotation going on or how the NFT sector has been really hot and now DeFi is starting to rise up and like NFTs are getting a little bubble-ish. So it's possible that we might be seeing a sector rotation out of the NFT sector and into DeFi, which could be the part of the reason why Ethereum has kind of popped up here in the last couple of weeks. If you could go ahead and share my screen, Denil. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, so yeah, if you see this, the DeFi index pulse shows that since July 20th right here, the DeFi tokens as a basket, they think the DeFi index pulse has about 25 different tokens in it, some of the top projects like Ave Synthetic, SushiSwap. And it's climbed up significantly over the last month and a half. So just shows that the DeFi sector is starting to gain traction while Bitcoin has been stagnant really. I know we just popped up to 50,000 but we've been between 40 and 50,000 for a long time or under the 50K range for a long time. So I'm wondering, because in the past we've talked about how Bitcoin will go on a run and then it'll kind of stagnate and then funds will kind of start flowing into the altcoins and that's when we get an alt season. And I talked about it on a previous show that we might be in an alt season now and this is giving more credence to that fact. Some of the other factors that are in play when it comes to things like the rising user DeFi users or these are unique wallets interacting with DeFi protocols. And it's been continuously rising and I know some people like to switch wallets or some people have multiple wallets but the nature of DeFi with staking, liquidity providing and all these other things, it's really encouraging people more to actually use just one wallet because you can't, especially with the high gas fees we don't want to be switching all of our tokens from wallet to wallet because that just gets really expensive. So I think this metric is becoming more valid as time goes on because people are less likely and the earlier crypto or Cypher punk switch wallets all the time mentality is kind of is fading from the crypto ecosystem just because the more that mass public comes in, that's that message isn't really shared. We're also seeing an increase in weekly dex volume like it dropped down here to a low in July and it's been picking up lately. So yeah, I think that we might be seeing a rotation in the DeFi and alt season starting to pick up and I wanted to kind of get you guys its perspective on that because I know I hear a lot from Bitcoin maxis but we kind of get the what's happening in the DeFi space gets overshadowed but there's big moves happening. We've had some of these protocols reach new all-time highs and that's the other thing you're having the rising total value lock I don't know if I have a chart here and I don't on DeFi Lama, the total value locked in all DeFi protocols is actually at a new all-time high but the previous all-time high were really driven by the fact that Bitcoin and Ethereum were running to all-time highs but now they're not they're below their all-time highs but the total value locked in DeFi is at a new all-time high which to me signals that A either the DeFi tokens the value of the DeFi tokens is increasing that people are using more stable coins on the network or so yeah those are the two main things that I was gonna say at the moment I can't think of it. So what do you guys think? Yeah, I'm an absolute fan of the DeFi sector right now I absolutely love what I'm seeing Ethereum updating to EIP 1559 that was huge I think that's gonna decrease the circulating supply which inherently will kind of push price up we're seeing a lot of Was it huge? What did it really change though? Like I'm still paying a lot of my transactions More burns, decreasing supply. Yeah, they keep saying that but I'm like that doesn't change the fact that it costs me 60 bucks to send a transaction man. I'm sorry, yeah, you guys continue. I mean, but it's not just Ethereum right? Like that's kind of the tip of the iceberg that's like the spearhead of everything else behind it. You're seeing chains like Avalanche, Polygon, Binance, Smart Chain, Phantom even is surging. Like, and so like there's obviously a need and a want for this and that's inside the market and that's what these numbers are telling me is that people are interested whether it's retail or- You think this might have to do with the fact that Ethereum costs so much to transact on? Like why is Solana a D5 focused platform surge? It's at a new all-time high today I think or something. I think it's because the fact that people realizing it's a little bit untenable to try and transact or do all these operations on top of Ethereum. Solana actually also got this investment fund after it. So I think that's one of the reasons people just started bidding higher for that token. But that does not actually answer one question that you were actually absolutely right that people might be rotating out of Bitcoin and Ethereum because they think these rallies have prime. They are past their age, but does that also mean that they are simply bored? They are not investing in D5 tokens because they anticipate some bigger product out of it. They just want to rotate out of it, make some quick money and come back to Bitcoin and Ethereum market. So aren't we facing any downside, a very big downside risk based on the rallies we have seen in the past week? I mean, it can still fall very hard. I actually think there's going to be more of a rotation out of the NFTs just because they're getting so overheated. Some of it's actually rotating maybe into Ethereum. Bitcoin, I don't know, Bitcoin is like, maybe it's struggling to climb so high just because the money that used to exist that would always go into Bitcoin is now going into more different pockets. So the whole market, the bigger things are rising slower even though they're on an upward trajectory. Are you pointing at XC infinity by any chance? Because yeah, that token has done incredibly well. Well, you know, and just the whole, I know, and I'm in question about who's actually trading some of these NFTs, like the big price ones, like who's willing to pay a couple of million dollars for an NFT? I'm like, maybe it's two people that know each other. They're like, let's just switch these back and forth. You can't know that because it's like the nature of our environment. But some projects like XC infinity, and I think that's just speaking to a whole, another realm of our whole sector that's developing with this play to earn and how XC infinity to me isn't so much like the big players. It's the new people coming in realizing they can do behaviors that they've done in the real world like playing video games. In the crypto quarantine, you actually earn real money for them or the utility of an NFT token being able to take an in game item out of the game and sell it to somebody else is attracting new people. But yeah, rotations out of bigger things. So George, I wanna jump in here though and ask you this question. So like why are certain chains and their tokens pumping? For example, the fandoms, the avalanches, the Solanas, is it because they're starting to get some big names behind them investing in them or is it just all kind of hype that everyone's kind of getting that FOMO? Yeah, there's a lot of that going on and as Yashu mentioned, all three of the ones you mentioned have had big, like Avalanche Rush is a big promotion they're putting on to try and attract liquidity to Avalanche. Phantom has a phantom reward going on, I think for people developing on top of Phantom. So they're providing incentive to attract people and maybe people are responding that there because of that, it's amazing what news and advertising does to the psyche of the mind. Maybe the fact that people are just seeing that more, like, let's buy it, that's the next hot ticket is showing up on the headlines and stuff, I don't know. Even if those are the things that show up on the headlines in Cointelegraph, people that don't do as much deeper research and just kind of use those headlines and stuff might just jump on that because it's the thing that's popping up right now. It's hard to know, but I do think as far as I see a lot of people are pretty big on Solana. So I don't know, it's got a pretty decent ecosystem and their NFT ecosystem is growing too. Yeah, but Jordan, don't you think that they're also like excessively valued in such a short span and you're talking about rotation capital. So that really does answer that they can fall very hard if people want to move back to Bitcoin. I think they can, but let's say if we're talking institutional investors, they don't necessarily come in, buy and then sell six months later. A lot of them are looking for the next four or five year longer term plans. I don't know, I could just be making that up, but if they are getting into Solana, it's because they see that the long-term outlook for Solana might be better. They're not gonna be looking for the term. The power of DeFi is in the staking mechanisms and earning interest for lending out your crypto. So regardless of a price drop in the actual asset, sometimes, not all the times, that you actually, you're making out in the long-term, whether it's a 30, 60, 90 day window with the interest that you're earning, even if the asset of that price actually drops 50%. So like that's something that the power of DeFi that I don't think Bitcoin has. And it's kind of really kind of dictated on like the price when you're holding that asset. So that's good. You're missing out on security. I'm sorry to interject, but you're missing out on the security problem. I mean, I just read a report that 76% of all major hacks worldwide in 2021 so far was in decentralized finance. So- It's true. It's a scary space. It's a wild risk right now. More risk, more reward. High risk, higher reward. But the more you educate yourselves about the risk, the more you can kind of navigate those waters. Not saying that the risk isn't still there, but I'm a believer that if you know how to navigate the risk, you can operate inside the wild west. And part of me, like conspiratorily, I was like, oh man, they're getting everybody to stake their tokens and the market's gonna go blow off top and everybody's still gonna be staked and it's go down and like, damn, I mean, it's a trap. Like don't stake all your tokens all the time. That's not investment advice. That's just my experience from the past run up. Like I had a token stake and I'm like, y'all lock it up for three months. And the token went on a, and then it fell. And like, dang it, I couldn't sell it. I just hope that we don't see any of the pancake bunny event because yeah, that was really heartbreaking. I mean, that's what I was talking about anyway, so. Yeah, exploit hacks, big deal on all trains. Yeah, it's a huge thing. Not in Bitcoin. It's risky to stay on the BSC. It's risky. I mean, I'm an advocate of BSC. So like, I'll bang that drum all day. I don't die on that hill. But yes, exploit hacks, there's smart contract bugs. There's rug pulls. You name it, it's happening. And on not just buying it in a smart chain, every single chain, we've seen it on Polygon. We've seen it on Ethereum. They all go through this evolution and I think that's part of the maturity process. Will that get worked out over time? I don't know, we'll see. Sorry to see you. But that was a great segment for today, talking about our DeFi tokens. I know we have some exciting stuff to get into. We're gonna be talking more altcoins in our Markets Pro segment. Don't forget to like and subscribe our YouTube Thursdays, 12 p.m. We're here. Let's get into our Markets Pro segment for this week. All right, we are gonna get into a couple altcoins that have just absolutely skyrocketed this week and our Markets Pro platform was able to catch these with our Vortex scores. So for those of you who aren't familiar with Markets Pro is a data intelligence platform designed to enhance investor's decision-making with industry-grade analytics. So this week, one of the tokens that we're gonna be highlighting is Sushi, the token that a lot of you are familiar with if you're involved with DeFi. This was one of the first tokens inside the DeFi space right after YAM. And news is what moves the crypto market in the Newsquake Service by CTMarketsPro helps traders stay on top of important developments. That's what you're seeing here in this chart. That circle on the bottom, that's a Newsquake and that shows you exactly the point in time in the moment that the news hit the market and what happened afterwards. So Newsquakes are automated alerts that instantly notify users when market moving events happen. Thanks to them, Markets Pro subscribers often beat the rest of the pack to the most important news of the day. And this example here is showing you on August 30th, OKX announced the launch of the Sushi ETH liquidity mining. And this is a big deal when DeFi tokens get these kind of announcements. The white line is indicating price and we see that absolutely just, it took off like a rocket. It's just like parabolic. It's crazy to see those when this thing happens but Newsquakes are what often impacts an actual tokens price. And we can see that where it's like, holy smokes. So this announcement first came up on the exchange's website. The Newsquake notification hit Markets Pro subscribers phones several hours before the price of Sushi began to rise. Sushi went up from 11.25 at the time of the announcement to 13.83 two days later. I'm curious to hear your guys' insights here. Were you all able to get in on this trade? What are your thoughts about this Newsquakes for the Markets Pro? I wasn't able to get in on this trade but I do like the Newsquakes service. I know as we mentioned it before, I'm a DeFi or I'm an altcoin trader. So I got a bigger portfolio than one or two coins like the Maxis. So after a certain point, it gets really hard to track all those different developments. So with the news of the Markets Pro, you can kind of have them all favorite it on a list and it'll kind of put them out to you. But it's also like it doesn't just make it like there's a Newsquake buy. Like you got to learn the different dynamics of the Newsquakes. Like with this one, they gave you a little bit of time the Newsquake happened and it took a few days for it to go on. There's other Newsquakes like the Newsquake for a Binance listing. It'll be like Newsquake. And then you're like, Oh, okay. But like a Newsquake for the Coinbase listing. Cause Coinbase will announce it, but then they say like, it takes like four days for the trading to start. So you'll see this more of a lag and it'll appreciate after. So there's a like a behaviorist. I can see that there's different applications of the Newsquake technology. What do you think, Yashi? Well, it definitely works in my case because I was not able to get on the Sushi one as well. Unfortunately, I'm not trading this token. I wish I would have, but I did get some profits out of XRP. I mean, I'm not so like glad we're not talking about it because I think in the XRP one, we were able to detect the Vortex score changing from yellow to green. And I was lucky enough to spot it. And I made a good call. I think the price was up about 7% after that. And yeah, it worked in my favor, more likely. So it's pretty much a good feature, but I still have to like get into it more. I think from now on I should. Yeah, and that brings up a good point. Is that Vortex score, which you were talking about when it turned from yellow to green, and that's gonna take us into the next token that we wanna highlight. So Danilo, if you wouldn't mind bringing up Phantom token. I know we talked about this in Jordan's segment, Phantom chain, the actual native token of that blockchain did something pretty nice this week. So another great feature of Market's Pro platform is the algorithmic metric called Vortex score, which is that green and yellow line you see there on the chart. A coin score is a comparison between its current market and social conditions and those in the past. So high score means that judging from historical data, the asset's current outlook is bullish for the next 12 to 72 hours. So Vortex score of 80 and above is considered bullish, confidently bullish. And so on this chart here, you're seeing that Vortex score turn that bright green color and with FTM's price, Phantom's token, the coin rallied on August 30th going from 53 cents to 88 cents and less than a day. So sometimes these trades happen quick, sometimes it's up over a couple of days. So when the momentum is stalled, it could seem that the rally was over, but then a streak of dark green Vortex score showed up. This indicated that the conditions were still favorable for further upside. So sure enough that rally continued, Market's Pro subscribers could enjoy a further price hike from 70 cents to 94 cents. You see that second leg up there. And so that's where Vortex score does it. It kind of spots these things and it really makes things easy. Like I love navigating the platform. I'm always checking my scanner to see which coins passing the 80 mark because I know that's gonna put it on my radar. And if you were lucky enough to jump in on Sushi and Phantom, you made some nice gains this week. And that's what Market's Pro can do for you. It's a great platform. I love using it to spot these kinds of trends. Jordan, were you able to kind of look at that Phantom trade at all this week? I didn't get in on it. I kind of saw it come where I saw the several announcements related to Phantom. Like they released an incentive program to help developers come on. But yeah, Phantom is a early on and I think early in this year, they even released a paper saying like, we're not an Ethereum killer. We're an Ethereum helper. Like so they were doing the cross chain bridge thing early on. I think that that's kind of benefiting them now. It's a directed acyclic graph blockchain. So it's theoretically infinitely scalable depending on the amount of people inside the ecosystem. But it's a different approach. I think just like polygon, it seems like it's gonna be one of the top Ethereum helpers. Like a side chain that people go to. I know a lot of projects, they are EVM compatible, Ethereum virtual machine compatible. So a lot of projects can go from Ethereum over to Phantom. So I think that it's doing all right. It's got a good future ahead of it. Yeah, that's gonna do it for our Market's Pro segment. If you haven't signed up, you're missing out. Make sure you like and subscribe our YouTube channel. We have a very, very special guest for our next segment. So let's go ahead and roll right in to our special guest for today, Mr. Mike McGlon. All right, we have Mike here. He is a senior commodity strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence. Mr. McGlon specializes in the broad investable commodity markets and has over 25 years of futures in commodity trading, investing experience beginning at the Chicago Board of Trade. How are you today, sir? Thank you for joining us. No, hello, Benton. Thank you for having me. Very, very special is kind of way above my league, but I'll go by Mike and thanks for having me. Awesome, well, we're super excited to dive into a lot of the topics. We're gonna get into some Bitcoin, some Ethereum stuff today, but let's kind of go right into things. So I know El Salvador recognized Bitcoin as legal tender, and we wanted to kind of get your insights as to what it would take for Bitcoin to become a global reserve currency just around the globe. What are your thoughts on something like that? I think the better definition is global reserve asset because a dollar is a global reserve currency and it's actually gaining dominance through digital tokens, through crypto assets and through digitalization of money. As a lot of you know, when you click on coinmarketcap.com the short by volume, the most widely traded crypto asset in the world is Tether, digital dollar, double the volume of Bitcoin. And I think that's a key thing that remembers what's happening with El Salvador and Bitcoin is Bitcoin to me is replacing gold, old analog gold in a world that's going digital. It's digital and it has a key, some major attributes that are actually much better than gold. It's easy to transport in your head, put it on a thumb drive and just think of what just happened recently in Afghanistan, all those people who had problems. My son who's an MD at the Walter Reed has been meeting some of them and they leave their countries with clothes, maybe a phone and maybe some value if they are able to put it in something that they can store on a phone or a thumb drive. You can't do that with gold. I mean, so to me that's what's happening and it's a station of currencies like in El Salvador. Now, when you hear a few years ago about Mexican billionaires allocating to Bitcoin, it makes a lot of sense when you see that that piece of paper that most of the rest of the world has, it's not the dollar, is depreciating rapidly versus the dollar and the dollars are depreciating rapidly versus most assets. So Bitcoin to me is potentially a savior there. So to me, that's the way the difference but El Salvador is part of the trend and I think what we're gonna potentially end on in this space and end game is what Sapey Dinamas indicated in his book, The Bitcoin Standard is that central banks might essentially start allocating, I'm sorry, the Bitcoin. There you go. So is crypto regulation in the US good for the overall markets? What are your thoughts on that in particular? Oh yeah, all about the US not messing it up because what I see in crypto assets and digitalization of money and finances be marked from market capitalism, potentially on a global scale ever. And just to bias be able to talk about knocking around and speculating fine speculations for speculators, it's fine to do that actually helps create liquidity. People forget that it's really good thing. But to me, that's what's happening. The US government's gonna recognize it and if there's any country in the world that's a bastion of free market apples in them, well, better be the US. And look what's happening in China, totalitarian communist state increasingly becoming, they don't have free markets, free discourse in US does. So to me, as long as it'll mess it up, which I don't think we will. And that's the unique thing that really struck me a few weeks ago when we had those debates in the Congress was these guys are going down the rabbit hole. Stuff that you and I, a lot of us did five, 10 years ago. Initially I thought it was silly internet money but here I am and here we are. They're going down the rabbit hole. And I think the realizing the key thing I'll leave you with is what I just put, sent to my editors by outlook for tomorrow. And a key thing I always make a point out is what's happening in this space that I want our senior leaders to see is that organically on a global scale, the world's going to the dollar, not for reserve asset, but for reserve currency. I mean, there's no better currency on the planet for that. But if you want to hold value, you don't want to really sell your Bitcoin, you might want to sell dollars by assets with it, but there's no better currency for it. And it's actually gaining that damage. So to me, that's, and then there's ESG. It's an extreme example of ESG. Just look at DeFi, what does DeFi do? It's helping bank the unbanked. It's taking a whole planet of people in this planet who in the world have not been have access as we have in Western society as a banks and mortgages and financial markets. So to me, that's what the US leaders are going to figure out sooner or later. And Democrats love that stuff that helps people who are not born into some of the Western elites that a lot of like this recent hedge fund manager we heard came pulling Bitcoin. So are you concerned at all that like this new DeFi system, this new finance system that's being created in some ways may be replicating the old traditional fiat system where it's maybe kind of like the buddy system where you were kind of getting your buddies rich because they have access to information that maybe others don't. Is that a concern for you at all? That's always a concern at all markets. It's always will be, will always has been the case. But you gotta fluff that out. I mean, there's been tulip bulbs, South Sea bubble kind of started to stock market. That's just how things are in markets. And to me, that's what's happening is we're in that price discovery sense, but there'll be a few winners. Look what happened to Amazon. I remember holding in a drop 90%. That wasn't so fun. Never had a lot of it, but it was gonna go. And I love that story that Jeff Booth told in 2001 where there was a Lehman analyst that Amazon's gonna go under and look who went under. So to me, that's part of revolutionary technologies. And that's where this one comes in spaces. That's why I really enjoy being with guys like people like you is you understand the technology. I'm a markets guy and I just think supply, demand and price. When I see happening with DeFi and NFTs, which you were talking about earlier is when you have companies like Budweiser and Visa and Disney and you name a few other ones, buying Ethereum so they can buy NFTs, what does that mean? The demand is increased at the same time supplies declining. So now, but you have to be, we're wary of speculative accesses and be very careful with pump and dumps. You mentioned China and their purge on it. Do you think that's gonna kind of be looked back on as one of the biggest mistakes by a government to really purge? They controlled Bitcoin mining and now it's really become more decentralized around the world. What do you think on that? Right, you just nailed it Jordan, exactly. It's done everything good for the space. In the short term, it gave us a correction, which I view as very attractive. Correction in a bull market just flushes out the excesses which we needed. In the bigger picture, it's proving what's happening in this new Cold War. I mean, those of us who over and that all failed is proving how this system just cannot compete in this world of rapidly advancing technology and human innovation. Why do they steal intellectual property? Because they have to. There's no open discourse. I have to push back because they have to. They don't have free flow of capital. So to me, this is a defining moment in this space. It's really good for Bitcoin and cryptos and it's really good for free market capitalism on a global scale. And it's like I mentioned earlier, I have a son who's in the military and it hits home when people talk about removing people from Afghanistan. I don't want my son to die there. No one wants to die there. Why? It's not much we're gonna be able to do. But what's happening is with the Taliban in Afghanistan is they need a solid form of currency. They're going to Bitcoin. In China. They can't really push back like they did in the Ming dynasty in the past. Push back and go inward with the rest of the world. It's gonna fail. And to me, this ability to have all the software which you guys understand a lot better than me that you can't regulate away unless you shut down the internet is just making the world a level place for the rest of the world can kind of move up to living standards and the freedom that we have in most of Western countries. Well, if I may add there, I mean, I have a few questions about how much Bitcoin's price rise is related to the ongoing fiat bubble. And I mean, during its majority of the course we have lived through a quantity devising. And during that course, we have seen Bitcoin rising exponentially higher. So, you know, just a anecdotal, I mean scenario, but what happens to Bitcoin after say, Fed completely and wins it $120 billion monthly asset purchase program. And the bond yields spike again. And so would Bitcoin be able to survive that kind of growth? I mean, I'm sorry, by next year maybe. Yeah, I'm sorry. That's a dream. I'm sorry, I think I was cut off there a little bit because of my internet connection. I had to stay home today because the trains were all canceled this morning to New York. I live in Connecticut. But that's the first of all, ending quantitative easing, taking rates off of zero is a dream. I started trading Japanese government bonds, JGBs in 1995 and everybody said it was short and happy. They went negative. And then Europe went negative. It's just a matter of time for the U.S. And it's only one stock market bear market away. So that's a dream. But the key thing to remember about Bitcoin is, it's the digital version of gold, but it's very, people say it's not inflation heads yet. I'm like, yeah, not yet, but when it gets greater depth, and we don't even have ETFs in the U.S. yet, yet there is I think 30 applications that's overwhelming demand. So, but it's very nasty. But again, there are concerns related to the custodianship right now. I mean, you cannot like store a million dollar in your Bitcoin wallet and expect to be safe. I mean, I think Noriel Rubini discussed that like in one of the debates he was having with Arthur Hayes. And he said that if you hold Bitcoins, like all of your Bitcoins into that one wallet and you lose it, you lose it all at once. So there is no insurance actually trying to protect you. I mean, at least in the form of gold, you can have sort of insurance with the sort of custodianship companies that is providing you. So how does it really solve the problem of self-custodianship? Can you hear me now? Are we good? I didn't catch the last part of that. Oh, I'm sorry. So I was just saying that Mr. Noriel Rubini, he discussed that part. Okay, I'm sorry. So I was saying that... We all love Rubini actually. Yeah. I might have a closer look like behind mine. Just Mr. Rubini, he's an academic and he gets paid on hits and readership. He doesn't get paid on running money. Which is, the environment I came from was a trip, all that statement. That's from Market Wizards. And the statement is, are you making money or are you losing money? The Yashu, think about here, Yashu, is when you look backwards, are you interested in the future? Keena, Kathy Woodpoint, Woodpoint, but there has been, it started in, you can get it through an ETF in Canada. I'm with you. I was on that management history from Zugusen, where they're all going mainstream interrupted. Remember, that's the land of precious metals. And that's the key thing I get at Bloomberg sometimes. I don't have the, I used to be in South Side Bites. I don't have the inside scoop, but I get a lot of the questions from agents. The whole world's going there. As far as custody, it's being solved. This goes to the galaxy. Give yourself five, 10 years from this year of time. So, yes, that's not an investment. That's the flexible. I like to put yourself going forward. I love you, Avain, it's voluntary. It's oh, it's too volatile. Absolutely. You know, the volatility in Bitcoin model is the same as goals in 1980 and that Amazon was in 2001. Where do they go? Where are they going? Going forward, more definition. It's a matter of time, something has to go wrong. I can't predict going positively to a point adoption, El Salvador, ETFs in Canada, in Europe. And then just being added on seats. It's just a matter of time. And one of the key things I'll leave you with, the trend's your friend. And my own business in markets is try not to, don't try to pick top, but join trends when you get debts to me, what just happened. So what are some of the biggest trends that you're keeping track of in like a commodities market that you feel also impact the crypto market? Are there any correlations between the two? Oh, absolutely, Ben, tonight. I love the pushback I got when I put out recently that crude oil going down is very bullish for Bitcoin going up. I'm just a booth. I wrote that book on the price of tomorrow. I had the honor of sitting next to him at the Bretton Woods realignment thing a few weeks ago. But he points out a rapidly-vention technology is very deflationary. That's key case in crude oil. Crude oil is a deflating asset. It's the world's most significant commodity. It just peaked near 75, which is 50% below the peak in 2008. It looks like it's heading back down again. That's bullish for gold, bullish for the Fed to keep easing, bullish for quantitative easing, because they're just trying to offset deflationary forces. I used to own a farm from Illinois and from Chicago, but I used to have a farm in Illinois. And that price of corn is the same price as it was 10 years ago. Imagine if all your inputs are going our way because of rapidly-advancing technology. That's the key thing from commodities. And also the best indicator I'm looking from commodities is what's happening in long bond yields. The US Treasury 30 year, I used to trade that in the trading pits in Chicago, trade of the futures. It dropped below 2%. I remember trading it at 8% and 9%. The trend is clearly lower. In Germany, the long bond's zero. The trend's clearly down, which means more value and store of value assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, gold. I put them all in the same bucket. Trends your friend in inflation, like we've seen in Zimbabwe, or I have a colleague in my office, his name's Cliff, who's from Zimbabwe. And guess what? He likes Bitcoin, why? Because it's a stable store of value that can easily transmit and transport. So to me, that's the way to look at it from commodities. And just remember the key thing from commodities is elasticity to supply. All commodities react to higher prices with more supply. Why is corn down, why is lumber down in the year when it was up 100% earlier? Why is copper the same price as it was 10 years ago? But the key thing about Bitcoin and Ethereum is there's no elasticity to supply. We know the, the, the, the, yes. Coins, this year's a 1% comparison. And Ethereum is plunging because of what you mentioned you were bent in the EIP 155 protocol thing. Yeah, I do want to kind of touch on that as well. It's just kind of like your general overall outlook of the DeFi industry. How do you envision this evolution in meshing of a traditional finance and a DeFi sector? Is there any kind of coexisting and what does that meshing look like in the future? Well, that's more for guys like you to tell me. The bottom line is, because I need to learn from the people who are really in a space and particularly, you got to be younger than me and have more here. And I'm jealous, but that's okay. As I'm writing my outlook for this month, the key thing I see from DeFi is every time I look at it, you're all priced in Ethereum. As people are buying it, I see demand for Ethereum. I'm like, okay, it's all Ethereum. And then you look at some of the DeFi members of the Bloomberg Galaxy DeFi index, UNISWA, AVI. They're all Ethereum tokens. What does that mean? Demand for Ethereum. Then I look at supply going down, demand going up. Simple commodity guy analysis, price must go up in just a measure of how much. So my outlook is I think because of what's happening in DeFi, because when you see corporations, yes, they're not buying large amounts, but it's the signal. When they buy, when a corporation like a Disney or a Budweiser is buying, I forget all the other, so many of them are buying small amounts of DeFi, whatever. JPEG? I think it's NFTs, right? Yeah. NFTs, that's right. I'm sorry, NFTs. So DeFi is providing some of that. And it's just that to me is demand. And I see demand, but the key thing about DeFi is to me it's what it's doing to the unbanked. And it's what it's doing for things like being able to earn yield. I just got off the phone with these people in Switzerland and they have negative rates, but through some DeFi protocols and through a lot of exchanges, they're earning interest. That's just unheard of. So to me, it's just, I think the key thing that I'll leave you with is a quote from the MasterCard CEO who says, we just have to be in this space, or we're gonna end up like, he didn't say this part, we're gonna end up like a blockbuster or Sears or Kodak. Yeah. Well, one last question for you here before we end things today. Is Ethereum gonna flip Bitcoin? Million dollar question. It's a matter of time, it's a question of time, notably if the trend's your friend. If the current trend stays at place the last year or two, it'll probably be in 2022, we gotta get some bumps in that road. But in terms of market cap, probably the key thing to remember about when Ethereum outperforms Bitcoin and it's almost always in bull markets, broad market bull markets, which we are in right now, and it's clearly part of that bull market. When it underperforms, markets usually go back to that store value Bitcoin, and that's why there's a value in diversified portfolios. And while I end you with this, in the old days, people allocated to gold and bonds and now those portfolios to me look naked if they don't include Bitcoin and some Ethereum. Excellent. Well, we definitely appreciate you taking time out of your day, Mike McGlone. And I know Hurricane Ida is rolling through the Northeast, so having a little bit of internet issues and we appreciate you bearing with us. And as always, we look forward to hopefully have you on again in the future. Thank you for joining us today, Mike. Thank you. And I appreciate your education, I enjoyed listening. Excellent, very good. That was a lot of fun. I know it's good to get those insights from the macro markets and those commodity aspects. Like I'm always learning stuff, and I think Mike is an excellent resource to dive deep in with. But I know we're gonna open up the floor here to some audience Q and A's, get you all involved, all those burning questions that you've been waiting to ask us. Let's pop them in the chat. Let's see what you guys got and let's start diving into some community questions today. All right, guys, we got our community questions. So for those of you watching, what do you got for us? Ask us anything, whether it's Bitcoin, it's Ethereum, it's DeFi, it's NFTs, it's market related. What do you got? Hit us with them. Let's see what we got. Looks like we have, is that Marcel today? Is Marcel chiming in? Let's see. Do you guys see any questions in there? No, I don't see anything. Nope. Not yet. Will Karanah lead the way by launching smart contracts? Let's see, Yashu, do you wanna take this one? Man, Karanah community is like after me for a very long time. I don't want to, okay. But before I say anything, guys, I love you. Please don't hate me for this. Yeah, I don't think it's very, very closer. I have to begin by that because Ethereum has this advantage of being the front runner. It has been, it has set the benchmark for every asset out there. And all of the assets we have seen coming into the shadow of Ethereum, they're just trying to solve Ethereum's core problem, skill ability. And we are also looking at Ethereum solving its own problem with the con going hard folks one after another. And sooner or later we're gonna see it switch to entirely proof of stake. Cardano, I think to Cardano fans, I just want to say that there is enough demand in the space and you guys can coexist each other without raising the question that you're gonna flip or outrun or do any things. There is an Amazon, there's an eBay also and we can all coexist. And it's also about having a healthy competition because if Cardano does something amazing, it will also give other platforms an edge, maybe an inspiration to do even better, which is completely amazing for the entire sector on our whole. So there is no point of fighting with one another. And even if Cardano does well, it will gonna benefit the community. But my opinion, I don't think it will for now, really. I base my evidence, whatever collect data I have right now, I just base my opinion based on that and I don't think it's gonna do that, not soon. Yeah, I don't think it can do it anytime soon just because the smart contract functionality isn't there for the hundreds or thousands of apps that operate on top of Ethereum to operate on Cardano. Once they it is, then it's about competition. Like that's always, like nobody knows how that's gonna turn out. Like you could say, yeah, they've been promising smart contracts, but Ethereum has been promising a whole lot for years and years and that just keeps getting kicked down the road. So it's almost like the theme and like from the more novice, we're normal people and we're criticizing developers, like developing new things is hard and it's challenging. And as you've seen, like as Yasui was pointing out, there's a lot of pitfalls and hacks that are there. So this all has to kind of be rolled out slowly, methodically, and I think like Cardano's definitely taking a unique approach, academic approach to that where Ethereum is like, let's just do it in the wild and try and change one of our wheels while we're driving. But like, whatever. I have said it once and I will say it again. I think Cardano is going to lead the way to answer Marcel's question. We've seen it with other chains and my argument is always the same. If you can deploy a smart contract blockchain and effectively deploy D5 protocols and dApps on top of that, you will have success. And if you have cheap transactions and super like low gas fees, people want that. There's a need and there's a want in the marketplace for that type of application. And I think Cardano is going to be able to do that. Are they going to overtake Ethereum? I don't know. But I do think they will have success. There's a lot of interest and like I said, I think they're targeting different areas of the world that maybe these other protocols aren't. And so there's more need for that in certain places. So great question Marcel. Thanks for chiming in today. But we got another question. Let's see from Mr. Sean Porter. Will the NFT market break away from the rest of the crypto market? I know, let's hand this over to Jordan. I know he is, that's right in your wheelhouse. No, I don't think so. I think we're at the top of the NFT market personally just because it got like parabolic, parabolic, parabolic. Who's paying a million dollars for it? It's a glorified JPEG. I'm on the NFT train. But at this point, I don't see paying that much money for him. So I think that it was just a mania in between different little bubbles and we're going to head into a different sector, possibly DeFi. And as I mentioned on a previous show and in a previous article, the Google interest in NFTs was significantly higher than it was for DeFi for especially during the summer. So like that's just we, and you had a lot of influencers and even fast food restaurants getting in on the NFT game. So it got a lot of press, but now like new people coming in ain't gonna pay $2,000 for a picture when they're trying to make some money whereas they can like put their money in DeFi and earn a yield. So no, I don't think that's gonna pull away at least not yet. Yashu, what say you? Well, I gotta say it as a dino collective fan because I have like about 86 breeds of dino toys back home. So yeah, I mean, NFT market, it's very, very interesting space. It has done something nobody even imagined. And now Jordan is right that I find it stupid that somebody is paying a million dollar for a glorified JPEG. So, but again, your question is that will the NFT market break away from the rest of the crypto market? I don't think from the chains they are dependent on because Mr. McGlone himself said that if somebody is buying an NFT, he or she is directly contributing to the chain that is supporting it, the smart contract that is backing the value of that NFT. So right now, Ethereum, the demand of Ethereum has gone up, why? Because NFT is going up, same for the DeFi. So you cannot actually separate the two. So as far as there is a blockchain which is supporting all of these projects, yeah, there will be a correlation between them. Yeah, I'm one that NFT, the actual technology is in a very nascent stage right now. And we're just seeing this pump with art with these kind of like tokenized art pieces or music or whatever it is. But I think the technology itself is much more scalable. So in the long-term, I'm extremely bullish on the technology of NFT. The certain niche segment that we're seeing this expand right now, there's gonna be a bubble. I always refer to the Pareto principle. There will be 20% of the inputs that create 80% of the outputs. You're gonna see these ICO bubbles kind of with this particular niche. So I don't think that the actual NFT market and its current state will pull away from the rest of the market. There will definitely be some sort of fallout. All right, let's see, we have another question here we'll field from GH Crypto Guy. And what do you think about Tezos? I know this one was talked about a lot. A few years ago, it's been under development. Jordan, what do you know about Tezos and then what are your thoughts about it? Tezos is the solid project. They get a lot of support actually from the French government. I know they've been launching their own. See, and that's the other thing about the NFTs is like you get an NFTs launching on Solana, on Tezos, on Avalanche. How can that market pull away when it's getting so dispersed? But Tezos, I like it's a good project again. It's been staking for a while. I bought some a long time ago and I've just been baking it ever since. So I like it as far as the smart contract platform and I think it's got some solid backing and it's starting to perform well and getting a little bit. I think they're starting to push their marketing sum too. Yashu, what are your thoughts on Tezos? Well, I'm not against it for sure because they have been consistently providing upgrades after upgrade and they've been trying to improve on previous protocols just like Ethereum. And as long as you have dedicated developers supporting the project constantly and they're answering to the community's issues, I think any project which is answerable to its users, I think it will grow in a long run. And I think since its launch in 2018, I think we have seen maybe six or seven major upgrades in Tezos so far. And maybe I'm not wrong if I'm recollecting it fine. The latest upgrade was Grenada and it kind of reduced the block times by I think 30 second, I think from 60 to 30 second which is a huge, huge middle. And so basically they're all trying to solve the problem Ethereum posed. The one is gas consumption, higher gas fee and network congestion. So as long as Tezos is able to provide that, it is in the game, it will be in the game. Yeah. And I know their mechanism is liquid proof of stake which was kind of that play on proof of stake. And so you have kind of a concentrated amount of Tezos with certain particular, I guess, governance models. So they're able to kind of pass these protocols and upgrades through that system. So it is kind of a fascinating blockchain to me. I know they've been rolling out a little bit of DeFi as well on that network and they're starting to get into the NFT space. So we'll see like what that evolution plays out with. In the short term, I'm not really looking at Tezos but I think it does have a lot of potential here in the years ahead. But yeah, so that's gonna be our community questions for today but I do wanna kind of in things say with any kind of closing thoughts for today's show. Yashu, do you have any closing thoughts for us today? Well, I would just revisit what I said during my Bitcoin section that all the viewers, I think you should really, really watch what is developing in the macroeconomic space in regarding to anything that impacts the decision of the reserve. And that includes job reports. So yes, you might be looking at some major corrections if something go haywire but that does not give you the reason to really let go of Bitcoin because like Mr. McGlon said that, yeah, the money is finally gonna flow back into this emerging, emerging sector, beating gold. And that's just gonna be my closing thought because I learned a lot from what Mr. McGlon said. So yeah, that's it. Keep holding guys. There we go. Jordan, what say you man? My closing thought probably be watch the FOMO. Watch the FOMO we saw recently with the NFTs. There was some FOMO going on folks. Like this whole for the next like six months there's gonna be sector after sector of FOMO because the market's getting heated. For me, I'm feeling bullish because it's getting green. This is feeling good. And just realize that like, look for the ones that haven't run yet because the ones that have run they're gonna break your heart if you jump into those. So mind the FOMO, fear of missing out. All right? And one of the greatest tools ever to be invented dollar cost averaging, I'll leave this as my final thought. If you're new to crypto and you're watching this you don't know where it gets started dollar cost averaging, Google it. It's your best friend. And it relieves a lot of the stress from looking at when you should buy, when I shouldn't buy. It's an easy system. Institutions use it. Michael Saylor does it. You name it. It's just a great tool for you to get started dollar cost average. That was it for today. We appreciate everyone joining us. Tune in Thursdays, 12 p.m. We are here on the market report until next week. Make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel so that you know and you get those notifications every Thursday when we go live. We're gonna have more special guests. And once again, big shout out to Mr. Mike McLung. Join us today. Until next time.