 Hello friends, and thanks for hanging out with us today here on the Market Report on Cointelegraph. I'm your host, Benton, and we are joined again by our resident experts, Jordan Finneseth, Marcel Peckman, and Sam Borgie. Jordan uses his background in psychology and human behavior to spot those emerging trends in the crypto market. Sam Borgie is a business editor at Cointelegraph, where he brings a decade of experience in economic analysis and financial market writing. Marcel Peckman applies his 17 years of derivatives trading options in futures to the crypto derivatives markets. Fellows, we're going to be taking a high level macro look at what's going on in the markets this week. But how are we feeling Marcel, why don't you kick us off for today? Happy happy happy. Well, I think $32,000 is an important mark for Bitcoin because we've been under that level for the past 30 days. So yeah, it's a 5%, 10% increase from what we've seen in the past week or so. But it's still an improvement. So I think that the coupling from traditional markets won't happen in a single day, but it moved across multiple weeks. So the higher the better, so looking good. It's nice to see us holding around this $30,000 level, but again, bear markets kind of suck and they're going to be just long drawn out, boring sideways trading. So try and enjoy the market, get out and enjoy the sun if you can and just stay hanging there because we might be in front of a bumpy ride. Yeah, I mean, bear market bounces are really nothing new. And in fact, I was expecting one several weeks ago. I wasn't expecting nine red, red candles in a row. I don't think anyone was. So it's nice to see a little bit of a bounce, but overall market structure, I don't think anything has changed. And we're going to be diving into why Bitcoin is at the level it is right now. We're going to have Marcel take us through some of his expert takes on what the professional traders are going to be doing. And we're going to be diving into some headlines today, action pack show. And I want to thank everyone, all the fans from around the globe for tuning in. Tell us where you're tuning in from. We're going to be watching that chat. So if you have those burning questions, make sure you pop them in there because our experts here on the show today will be watching live and making sure that we get all of those questions that you have answered. If you haven't liked and subscribed, go ahead and do so now. We're going to be giving away $50 for the merch store, store.coin telegraph. If you haven't been there, make sure you go check it out. We got all the swag. You want the CT swag. We got it. We're going to be giving away $50, $50 USD today. So first things first though, we got the Twitterverse weekly roundup here. We got to catch what's going on. What is everyone talking about out there? We got to see it. So Danilo, let's go ahead and jump into our weekly roundup for this week. Just cannot get out of the headlines right now. A lot of stuff to get into here this week. First, I think we have some memes, but I want to welcome everyone that's just tuning in from around the globe. I see folks from India, Montreal, got a few from the states. Tell us where you're tuning in from. You have questions for us. You want to know what's going on with Bitcoin? You want to know what's going on with Luna? Ask in the chat. We will respond. And we will get your questions answered. Look at that. We got Vikram back. What's up? Thank you all for tuning in. Firstly, first up, we got memes to look at. So Danilo, let's go ahead and pull up memes. Let's get some hot live reactions here for the memes we got this week, where we got central banks, Bitcoin isn't money. Central banks, Bitcoin isn't money. This is a piece of paper. OK, that's a good one. All right, Darth Maul. Love to see it, Star Wars. All right, what else do we got today? Crypto is up a lot today, so you're up a lot of money, right? I think we're all feeling that one. That's a good meme. Everyone can relate to that. Everyone can relate to that. Any more memes here, Danilo? The rest of women are age. Man, sorry. I like that. Boom. Boom. All right, very relevant. That was a good find. Good find there, Danilo. I think we like that one. All right, what is career day? And your dad walk in what is NFT collection? NFT owners are feeling the pain. Board-ape owners are feeling the pain. And there's as well everyone is. Even the blue chip NFTs. Very good. Good finds. Yeah. One day, one day, one day, those low fees will come. Like we'll all be dead and gone. All right, good memes this week. Good finds from Danilo, one of our producers here. All right, we got some news to jump into though. So first things first. Besides losing money on cryptos, you guys are losing money on NFTs as well. Is that what's happening here? Just to be clear. Hey, not me. Open your hearts. Not me, Marcel. I don't need NFTs. We're losing enough money as it is, so. Well, if we want to compound those losses, NFTs are a great way to do that. Yeah. All right, let's get into those headlines this week. Like I said, Luna just keeps finding itself in the headlines. Luna 2.0 takes 70% in two days. Danilo, let's pull up this article written by ours, Brian Cormby here, writer at Cointelegraph. Let's dive into this real quick. I just want to touch on some of your thoughts. Like what is going on with Luna 2.0? Is this thing have a chance of any success? I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Jordan, why don't you jump in here first? Luna 2.0, you bearish or bullish? I'm kind of bull bearish long term. Like I mentioned before, trust is a really important thing in cryptocurrencies, and Luna kind of blew up all the trust it had. And I don't know if it's ever going to come back. And I don't think people should necessarily trust it. Like we already know that DoQuon has had another failed stablecoin, and now they're talking about doing another one. It's like fool me once, man. Yeah, go ahead, Marcel. I think there are many competitors out there, like Avalanche, Phantom, even Solana, with their own stablecoin or their ecosystems of stablecoins. So I don't think investors will give them a second or third chance, because there are other options, viable and working right now, like make or die from Ethereum. So why take the risk? I don't think it will sustain itself. I mean, if you're a wild speculator and you want to take advantage of 70% pumps and then 90% crashes, maybe there's an opportunity. But I can't in good faith say to myself, I want to really participate in anything DoQuon is doing, especially with this whole talk about them wanting to launch a new stablecoin. Like what the hell is that all about? And what would that stablecoin look like? Is it another algorithmic stablecoin? Can't be, right? Can't be another algo-based stablecoin. So I wouldn't touch it, but I guess we'll see. It does have a vibrant community, a very large community. So maybe something can be salvaged out of that. We'll see. Yeah, so it has been connect. The only reason that they're doing the stablecoin is because Terra is nothing without a stablecoin. Why would anybody use it if they didn't have a stablecoin? Absolutely. Yeah, it's going to be uphill battle for Luna. I just don't see it. The airdrop that they sent out was pathetic. I think you saw, I saw one user on Twitter they had 50K of Luna and got airdropped like $150 worth of the new Luna. It's just like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. Not make it, I think it's salt in the wound. He said he had 1.9 million and then he got airdropped like $52 and he's like, I prefer a proper rug pull. Just do the rug, this is like adding salt to the wound, right? Yeah, they're just toying with you now. And you're going to have to pay taxes for this on IRS because it's an airdrop or something. So it's not really worth it. Exactly. It's like looking at the truth. Like I say, maybe a lot of people can at least like book some permanent, impermanent losses or something like for their taxes. I don't know. And I mean, I feel bad for the projects that we're building on in the Terra ecosystem. And you have rich design here with a question, are there any daps left on Luna to add real value or is it simply existing for trading profit purposes? We'll answer this question real quick and then we'll move into Bitcoin. Sam, are there any really daps left on the Luna right now or Terra ecosystem? What are your thoughts? I don't believe there are. I mean, I haven't really followed aside from the implosion and from the whole pegging situation because at one point I was also considering the Terra ecosystem very closely and beyond that, I'm not really quite sure about their DAP ecosystem and quite frankly, I don't think it's that relevant anymore. Jordan? The thing from what I saw is they're trying to get some platforms to migrate over to Polygon maybe or even saw some mention of B and B chain, but some of them could possibly go over to other chains inside the cosmos ecosystem as well, but I don't think that there's any, like again, if they don't have the stable coin, what's the point of Terra? I don't know. Exactly. And Marcel, or if you're a builder right now, are you building on Terra? I think most of those chains are EVM compatible so you can migrate, maybe the language code programming's a little bit different, but yes, you could theoretically move it to Phantom or to Avalanche or to Ethereum, but I don't think there was anything worse considering there's not the stable coin, the UST anymore. Well, enough said, I think about Luna, how what our thoughts are for the very grim future. If you're a lunatic, good luck, Godspeed to you, but let's get into the real stuff this week because Bitcoin I think is where all of our eyes are set right now, considering it is the stalwart of all crypto. So I wanna dive into what this uphill battle looks like for Bitcoin right now. We've been ranging around 30K, now we're finally above 30K and we've finally seen some green. So I wanna bring up this article, Danilo, written by William Seuber where he kinda talks about this Bitcoin price gaining 35% from the 23.8K bottom. I know Jordan and Sam, you guys have been writing a lot of articles about this particular topic. What are you all doing right now when it comes to this price range? Are you accumulating? Are you waiting for maybe a potential go lower or higher? What are your kind of thoughts here, Jordan? Man, I don't even know what to do now. I just kinda watched the market. I can't remember last time I put any fresh fiat in because I'm just like, this is bunk. I just, I'm having flashbacks of 2018 and like dollar cost averaging all the way down. It's like, that's not fun at all. So I'm just kind of surveying the field right now. If I get a few extra hundred dollars, I might put it in but I'm not really trying to buy a bunch of cryptos. I got a decent size portfolio as it is. So I'm just trying to hold on for dear life. Aren't we all? I'm fully allocated, baby. And I've been for a long time. Now I still have a DCA program in place for Bitcoin. That's on a monthly basis. So I'm still participating in that. But in terms of altcoin hunting, in terms of repositioning, in terms of all that stuff, I'm still waiting for the dust to settle because the only cycle that we have to really tip our hat to to be confident about is the four year cycle. So unless something changes with those mechanics and with the upcoming having, it's not so upcoming, but you know what I mean? Right now I'm kind of standing pat on my broader crypto strategy. And I guess we'll find out in the next few months, whether we're in a bottom or whether we have more, I still think we have more downside action, but we'll see. Yeah, on chain, it looks resource material indicators are wrote in one of the several tweets of the past 34 hours, you can mitigate risk by waiting to confirm breakout or fake out, fire chart shows where liquidity rests in order book, monthly close. And so I guess when you're looking at this Binance order book is what it's showing as there's a solid 61 million sell wall appearing right around the 33K price. I'll pull this up. This looks to appear to be the sell wall that everyone's kind of waiting for. In my opinion, when I look at this chart, I'm gonna pull up the Bitcoin chart real quick. This to me is what I find fascinating is that from October 5th to the 20th or all the way to April 21 here, is you had 27 weeks of green candles with the one exception being here in January. And so when we look at this, this is kind of everything kind of regressing back to this mean. So where is that mean? Is it 25K? Is it 30K? Is it lower? Marcel, what are your thoughts here? I know you're gonna be telling us a little bit more in depth about some of this stuff, but what are your kind of general thoughts? Yeah, Benton, generally speaking, I'm not confident that the broader traditional finance market has bottom. So I do think that the S&P especially the tech stocks, which Bitcoin and crypto stand correlate more are still gonna have some issues over the next six months due to, I don't know, economic macro uncertainties. So having said that, I would rather not try to pick a single point yet, it's $30,000. But spread out across the next eight or nine months should be a better strategy. Cells with dips ask, is 250K possible this year? Yes or no? Well, anything is possible. It's gonna happen. I think he's referring to that new forecast. Was it from Tim Draper or someone? Yeah, Tim Draper, yeah. I mean, look, I guess anything can happen, but on what universe do you see the current mechanics of the market leading to $250,000? I don't understand where that would come from. I think eventually, but I don't see any evidence whatsoever that's gonna happen this year. We're a day away from June, and they had a whole year and a half of people calling for 100K Bitcoin, and we didn't even get close. So making that leap up to 250 is gonna be a big stretch, man, big stretch. Could be a beast. Jordan, I know you wrote an article about on-chain analytics and data showing how Bitcoin long-term holders continuing to soak up supply around this 30K mark. I actually wanna dive into that because I find that pretty interesting. Is this coming from the retail side where people are just desaying in right now and this 30K level is kind of most appealing for them? Take it away. I'm curious to hear since you wrote this article about this particular topic, I know Sam loves the on-chain data. Yeah, if you wanna share my screen to Neil. So basically, a lot of the accumulation that's been going on has been going on by entities. We can see here that the number of addresses with a non-zero balance has started to plateau. The last time it was seen as a plateau has happened earlier in March 21, but we're getting into entering this place. So a lot of people are either selling the Bitcoin or not accumulating, but what we are seeing is there is heavy signs of accumulation here. You can see on this chart, whenever it's purple, that means there's heavy accumulation. You see a lot of people, like the FOMO part where people accumulate when it's at the top and they have to ride all the way down. Smart money accumulated, it's at the bottom. And we're seeing right here, so after the price peak in November, weakness, weakness, but then we're starting to see heavy accumulation here. What it actually amounts to be is entities holding less than 100 Bitcoin are some of the most active ones out of, they've accumulated 80,724 Bitcoin recently. We're also seeing it happen with entities that hold over 10,000 Bitcoin. So we're seeing some of the lower, entities that hold less, start to try and accumulate more to catch up. And then the ones that are really big are just accumulating because that's what they know what to do. And yeah, long-term holders are still active, but they are starting to capitulate. We're seeing some long-term holders book realize losses of negative 27%. So even for the more savvy crypto investors, they're still taking book and losses here. So we are seeing some accumulation to pause this and how it's gonna continue going forward. I'm not too sure. What do you guys think about that, the accumulation statistics? Thank you, Danil. Yeah, more so. I'll let Sam express his opinion first because he hates on-chain as much as I do. Well, I mean, look, when it comes to on-chain, if you wanna take a look at what's happening on-chain, okay, go for it. If you wanna do a post-mortem of why a market crashed, where the coins moved, fine, but don't use on-chain data to give me price forecasts because on-chain data provides no price forecast whatsoever. So for me, in terms of the accumulation level, I think that the long-term holders are continuing to accumulate in general. I think that's probably gonna continue. It's just gonna depend on how many new people come into the market realizing the long-term value proposition of Bitcoin. But beyond that, I don't really look much at the on-chain data. You heard it first. With that said, Benton, I'm going to say is if somebody has been selling Bitcoin at $32, $31, $30,000 for the past month, and it's rated huge volume, it was not a guy or a couple of person with 0.10 or 0.05 each. There were some large holders selling at a loss. But someday, eventually, they'll stop selling because they'll have no more coins in the market we recover. Would that take six months? Would that take another couple of months? We never know for sure. But when the market stabilizes at a certain level, it means there's a large seller going on and on, but eventually it will end. Very true. One of my takeaways from this is that, oh, I just lost my train of thought. Oh crap. Is that you're all losing money together? That's what you need to do to get here. Oh man, you have a question. It's about when you start looking around you. OK. All right, well, we're going to check the chat here to see what kind of questions we have. I see Sel Dips had the last question. Vikram's saying, what is the average BTC holding of retail investors save those on centralized exchanges? Does anyone know that stat off the top of their head? No. I don't know it off the top of my head, but the one takeaway was that we aren't seeing any new wall. New people come into the ecosystem. So it's kind of just people inside the ecosystem putting more money into it and stuff like that. But that's not really where the big gains come. We need a whole influx of new retail investors, especially, and maybe even new institutional investors to really help get this market rally going. So until that happens, we are going to stay pretty flat, in my opinion. Where can I get that sundial behind the cowboy, dude? Jordan, do we have one of those in the CD store? Amazon. Good deal. All right. I want to move into our quick crypto tips. Do your own research. DYOR, this is a term that you hear. Danila, let's go ahead and jump into this section real quick. It's going to be a quick hitter today. DYOR, you've probably heard it. Do your own research. What does this mean? Well, it's a common phrase used in cryptocurrency used by cryptocurrency enthusiasts. And this acronym is meant for you to actually do your own research. So what is the best way to do your own research? Well, read Project White Papers. Go to their Gitbook. Read through their documents. Go to their Telegram and Discord and interact with the community. Is it a toxic community? Is it a very vibrant and lively and passionate community? Check their social platforms for the engagement. If they have 500,000 followers, but their retweets are only getting 10 retweets, why is that? Dig into that. This is talking about do your own research. Understand the utility of the project and how it fits into the greater ecosystem. And lastly, read articles about the project. If it's a great article, they're going to be getting a lot of press coverage and they're going to have their market and machine going. Learn about what they're trying to emphasize and what their agenda is through the press. Those are my nuggets for how to do your own research and what D-Y-O-R means for you as a crypto investor. Let's crypto, crypto quick tips. All right, let's go ahead, Marcel. I want to get into your segment next. We're going to check the chat and see no burning questions. So if you have those, pop them in there. Don't forget, we're giving away $50 for the coin telegraph store at the end of the show. Drop your Twitter handle in the chat so that we can pick you to win that gift card. But Marcel's going to be talking to us about the professional traders and what they're doing with Bitcoin and Ethereum and where things it had next. So let's go ahead, Danilo, if you could let Marcel take this away. Okay, so I assume there's only one question from you guys. Is the bottom in, let me be fair and square before we go to the detailed analysis. We cannot set a bottom considering the 85% correlation from Bitcoin and cryptos to traditional markets, meaning if the S&P 500 plunges over the next couple of weeks, Bitcoin and cryptos will likely follow the trend. So assuming there won't be any major hiccups due to global tensions or worsening macroeconomic conditions, let's dig in Bitcoin and Ethereum futures and options metrics to understand how professional and retail traders are positioned. So I'll start by measuring the future market's premium. So the quarterly contracts, the one offered on CME, which there's also the monthly contracts, they usually trade at a higher price when compared to regular spot markets at Coinbase, Bitstamp and Kraken. And why is that? Because those traders need to wait 30 days or 60 days until the contract expire to get their money back. So they're overcharged to compensate for this lockup. Danilo, can you share my screen please? So the chart I'm showing you tells how much those traders are demanding additional for the price to hold on until the segment analyzed terms. So Bitcoin right now is at a 3% analyzed premium, which is typically deemed bearish. So premiums between a zero and 5% or sub zero negative are deemed bearish, where premiums between five and 10% are neutral. So right now those professional Bitcoin traders are kind of bearish. And the same thing is happening to Ethereum. So despite the price improvement to approximately $2,000, those futures markets of Ethereum, those traders are demanding only 3% additional per year. So there's not much demand for buying leverage going on right now. Thank you, Danilo. So what about retail investors? Could they be the ones driving up the price upwards? As Jordan showed us, the investors with less than 100 Bitcoins, the on-chain activity which showed us the buying. So for this metric, I usually rely on the Asian Tether Premium, which compares the USD Tether price in Asian markets versus the official CNY currency. So if there's excessive demand from retail traders, the Tether there in Asian markets will trade above the official FX currency rate. On the other hand, if those investors are dumping cryptos, they will try to sell their Tether causing the stablecoin to trade below its fair price in CNY terms. So Danilo, I wanna share another screen, please. So there you guys have it. When the Tether Premium is traded at 100%, it means that in Asian markets, it's trading at a fair price to the CNY, the local currency. So readings between 100 and 101% are teaming neutral because a 1% premium is acceptable to cover the cost of the market makers. However, anything below 100% means a discount, so a bearish market. So excessive demand from retail traders trying to dump their Tethers means that they're bearish. So whenever this happens, it's not a good situation. And since May 20, so like 11 days ago, the Tether indicator has been negative, so a discount on Asian markets. Right now, a 3% discount. So it tells me that retail traders are not buying the dip. Thank you, Danilo. So there you have it. While professional traders are unwilling to add leverage to buy using futures, retail markets is likely dumping their position according to the Tether Premium. That doesn't necessarily mean those investors are betting on a further price decrease, but definitely indicates a lack of conviction as the market overtakes the $1.3 billion market. That's it. So Marzai, I have a question for you. Why in your opinion do you think we held this 30K mark? Does this have any significance to professional traders? Yeah, Benton, if you remember that's both Tesla and MicroStrategy, average price from their holdings is approximately $30,000. And we've seen that it was not the retail investors and it was not the leverage the professional traders buying, so defending the $30,000. It means likely that there are enough institutional buyers or large accounts buying below $30,000. It doesn't mean that they'll continue buying at $34, $35, $40,000, but at least there's a level they're willing to defend. Well, below $30,000, it's cheap for me, I'm gonna keep buying. If it goes above, I'm gonna wait. So at least there's a positive sentiment because it's not the retail trader frenzy or it's not the leverage guys going crazy and buying at a discount that could be liquidated and causes further trouble. So it means that large institutional traders are buying below $30,000. And we had a question from the audience here I wanna get into is, do you think we need to rally or did the recent drops of Catherine Rhodes? I don't think there will be the necessary will be a pump and the price will break from $30,000 to $40,000 in a single day or a single week. That's not even healthy. I'll be happier if we decouple from traditional markets, meaning if S&P goes down, Bitcoin remains sideways or if S&P goes up 10% over the next month, Bitcoin and cryptos rally 20, 25%. But a rally happening on a single day that will be a sign of distress, that will be not well seen by the market. They will shout manipulation like they always do. Marcel, do you think that a lack of people really wanting to sell below $30,000 might be helping keep the price up here? Just cause I know that you can get into the futures but people that actually hold Bitcoin that are like, man, I'm gonna dump it now and buy it back at 20,000. Doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of people wanting to do that. Most people that are still holding are like dedicated hodlers. You think that's playing a part? Yeah, Ben, partially. Especially the day that it's dumping to, I don't know, $25,000 or $24,000 on Coinbase, but other exchanges held at $27,000. So it tells us that there are really no sellers below that level. It could have been a liquidation or a single player like the Terra Foundation, the LFG guard selling those 80,000 Bitcoins that caused the crash, but the remaining market participants did not sell below $28,000. So yes, hodlers are definitely setting the bottom price. Sam, do you have any questions? I don't, not on that, no. Well, one observation that I wanna make is like, I noticed like Jamie Dimon came out this past week and said like, oh, Bitcoin is undervalued by like 28%. Whenever I see these big headlines with JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, like I always tend to question, what are the motives behind that? Could this potentially be, you know, the dead cat bounce before we go lower? So they're looking to like get a little pump in before potential markets are gonna be going lower. So I do kind of question when I see those kind of headlines floating around. Go ahead, Marcel. So, so Ben, that's JP Morgan report came out in February with a $38,000 target price for Bitcoin. And at that time, Bitcoin was trading at $42,000 to $43,000. So what happens is that last week, they reiterated the target price. They just said, we're not changing. There was nothing that happened that's gonna make our mind reduce or increase the target price. So we're sticking with $38,000. That's what happened. Interesting. Very fascinating stuff. Well, thank you, Marcel, for providing your expert insights as to what's going on behind the scenes. We always appreciate to hear from the expert himself. All right, folks, we have a lot of macro stuff we're gonna be getting into next. But if you haven't liked and subscribed to Cointelegraph, go ahead and do so now. Don't forget to drop your Twitter handle in the chat. Giving away $50 to the CT store where you can get a swag shirt, a hat, some socks, whatever you want. We're gonna be giving away $50 worth of that at the end of the show. But I wanna get into our next segment, which is we're gonna be talking about what is the Fed's decisions and how it will impact crypto. And so I do wanna hand this over to Sam who wrote an actual article about what the Fed's doing. He's gonna break it down for us and give you some of the insights of what's happening behind the scenes. So Sam, feel free to take it away here. Great, so I spent a lot of years covering the traditional financial markets and covering the Fed was really important. Coming into crypto, I didn't think that I'd have to be tracking the Fed so closely, but here we are. So I'm sure many of you listening have been hearing a lot about the Federal Reserve and what the Fed does and interest rates. The Federal Reserve's primary role is to control the size and the growth rate of the money supply. And they have a few underlying objectives. They wanna maintain price stability in the economy while also fulfilling full employment and other economic indicators. What we saw after a massive money printing since COVID is a massive spike in inflation, right? The CPI, you've heard about the CPI, you've heard about other inflation metrics. Inflation surged after the COVID pandemic stimulus, ramped up spending, asset bubbles, et cetera. In response to that, the Federal Reserve has had to do a U-turn on its monetary policy by raising interest rates. And Danilo, if you can share my screen, this article here from a few weeks ago was a crypto biz article. We really explained to readers why they need to care about the Federal Reserve. And at that time, we were talking about the Fed hiking rates by 50 basis points, which was actually the highest single rate hike in over 20 years. Usually the Fed, what they do is they have a Federal Open Market Committee and they meet eight times a year to set monetary policy. So in that meeting, they raised interest rates by 50 basis points. Now, having said that, if you go back to their March meeting, and this chart here showcases that, every quarter of the Fed has a policy meeting, but they also release economic projections as well as the infamous dot plot chart. And this here shows you the dot plot chart, basically what this chart is, is it tracks FOMC members' expectations for interest rates over the next few years. They always get this wrong, so I've been monitoring the dot plot chart now for several years. They always overestimate how many rate hikes they're gonna be doing in the next year, two years, three years. The consensus forecast seems to be six rate hikes in 2022. Will that happen? I guess we'll find out. Now, if we go to this chart here, this is the Fed Fund Futures Prices, and you can see that investors are pricing in another 25 to 50 basis point increase, 50 basis point increase in the Fed Fund's rate in June, and they're also expecting another rate hike in July, September. September is where things can get interesting because it remains to be seen how badly the economy is gonna be doing after all these multiple rate hikes because what the Fed has in its arsenal is it could really, it could for demand, okay? By raising interest rates, you affect demand, you could lower inflation. However, the challenge with that is gonna be that you're raising interest rates in a declining economy. There's already signs that the economy's in decline, the GDP numbers, the employment numbers, also the PMI indicators. Will the Fed pivot away from that? Will they pivot back to accommodation? We'll find out in September, thank you, Dino. But that's an overall view of the Fed, why you should care about it, and obviously what the Fed does impacts additional financial markets, and that's also impacting crypto because crypto and stocks have been highly correlated since the crypto, since the COVID-19 crash. So all that said, the Fed is something that you're really gonna wanna monitor moving forward. I have so many questions for you, Tim. So wait, going back to the dot plot, what does each dot mean, and why are some of them stacked six wide, others of them are five rows high, like what is all that stuff? Yeah, so those represent the FOMC, so the FOMC members, those are the Federal Open Market Committee, these are the folks that decide monetary policy. You literally have like a cabal of people who sit around a table eight times a year, they decide interest rates. Each dot represents what their expectations are for interest rates that year. So it kinda allows you to visualize where interest rates can go based on the FOMC's projections. Very interesting, but like my thing is this, it's like how can we not do 75 basis point hikes? Why is 50 the number? Like is that gonna be enough to curb inflation? Well, even seeing 50 for me, like I've been monitoring these guys really since 2012, you know, I've been seeing a 50 basis point increases is pretty dramatic, it's the highest in over 20 years. I don't know what makes 50 so special more than 75, but I think Powell has ruled out 75 basis point increases. I guess the whole idea is you don't wanna hike too quickly, because they always consider to be like the delicate balance. You wanna try to facilitate a smooth landing for everything. Will that happen? I'm very skeptical, but I guess we'll find out by September how the Fed feels about the crumbling economy. Sam, I've got a question for you. So imagining that some reason the Federal Reserve come out after next meeting and said, okay, we're rising 25 or 50 basis points, but we're done for the year. We think that inflation is coming down, so we're not doing any more rate hikes. What will happen to traditional markets and crypto markets if that's the case? I think the market would look at that as a positive sign because that's a significant reduction in what they expect in the number of rate hikes. So if they do raise rates, but they signal, it's all about the language, that future hikes are gonna be tapered off or we're not gonna hike anymore for the foreseeable future. I think you'll see more of the money on the sidelines go back into risk assets. Stocks are considered risk assets and crypto is tied to stocks in the risk asset bucket. So unfortunately, if you're a Bitcoin bull and you think that Bitcoin is an inflation hedge, it has been over the past decade, but in this particular period, it's considered still to be a risk asset. So if stocks rise because of the Fed pivot, I expect the same to happen for crypto. And Sam, is there a level of interest rates you think that, like, what level do you think where it would just cause the economy to break? Like you can't pay debt on $30 trillion worth of debt, you know? Yeah, yeah, I think anything above 3% and you're gonna start to see a lot of really negative backlash happening because we're an economy that relies heavily on debt and the interest rates are the cost of money. It's basically the cost of borrowing money. When that increases, you're gonna start to see conventional wisdom says you raise interest rates when the economy is growing and improving. The whole idea is that you cut interest rates to simulate growth. Then when the economy is growing and recovering, you then take away the punch bowl and it should be okay. But we have an economy since 2008 that relies heavily on interest rates. So you manipulate their interest rates, it has an impact on mortgages. Look what's happening in the housing market. We saw demand, essentially crater last month in housing. So, and we're only just, we just raised twice already. The Fed has, they introduced rates, I think raised that rate hike in March and then again, in May. So there hasn't really been that much in terms of rate hike so far. But look at the impact that it's had. But like, my thing is this, if they don't raise the interest rates enough, it's never gonna be, like it won't get it down to the two or 3% target of inflation that they're looking for. Like, is it still gonna go higher before it goes lower? The inflation rate? Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, in terms of the official inflation rate, I think there's a good chance that it peaked. If you take a look at what the Fed measures, we all talk about CPI, but the Fed uses a measure called the Core PCE Index, which is a more restrictive measure of inflation. That one has also showed signs of peaking and it's kind of coming down now. So, however, as Marcel and I were talking, before the show, if inflation goes down in the next year, it doesn't mean that prices are going down. It just means that future growth is gonna be smaller. So that eight or 9% increase that you saw year over year, that's already been the, it's been a new baseline now for prices. So future prices might increase two, three, four percent according to the CPI or the PCE, but that's on top of the inflation that we saw for the past year. So in that respect, there's a possibility that inflation has peaked already. I guess we'll find out. I think you're probably gonna start to see in the next few months. When they compare the year over year metrics, you might see a decline or a slower rate of growth for the PCE, CPI and the core PCE index. So that'd be considered like compounding inflation. Basically. Yeah, basically. So we're fucked is what you're saying. So what you're saying is that the federal reserve might not be targeting a specific inflation number. Is that it? They're not targeting really for two or three percent because they know they can make up those numbers. Is that it? I mean, I think it's an interesting question because they still target two percent. That's their official target. I've heard some rumblings about them maybe increasing the target range, which would actually be a huge move by them. But no, overall, they are targeting two percent. I think they think they could achieve that and they probably could if they continue to raise rates, but right now the focus seems to be solely on making sure inflation comes down and they're prepared to sacrifice the stock market in the short term for that. Now, if we go back to September and October of this, if we come to September, October, November and the PCE is down to maybe three and the economy is in recession or signs of recession, you might see a pivot in language and that's where it begins to begin a recovery in asset prices. I want to take a second to get to the chat here. We got Zimborska with a question, isn't the point of Bitcoin that the traditional metrics for inflation were destroyed, like gold with rehypothecation, all the inflation hedges are broken, which is why the printing spree continues? Do you have any thoughts here, Sam? I think in the short term, I think the inflation, I mean, Bitcoin hasn't behaved like an inflation hedge the last year, that's just the reality of the matter. Bitcoin had its opportunity to really shine and it didn't in that respect. That probably demonstrates the fact that adoption is still quite low and the hodlers, those of us who have been in the market for a long time and believe in the value proposition of Bitcoin are still a very small minority. However, Bitcoin has vastly outpaced the S&P 500, the CPI, the PCE, whatever metric you want, since inception. So in that respect, it has served as an inflation hedge but in an acute inflationary environment like we've seen, it hasn't performed and there are many reasons for that. All right, you heard it first, folks. Sam Borgia giving you the latest insights and from the macro perspective, I wanna go ahead and get into our next segment for this week. These are the two coins you should have been watching through our Markets Pro platform. Don't forget, we're gonna be giving away 50 bucks at the end of the show, drop your Twitter handle, end the chat for your chance to get that $50 for our CT swag store, drop it in the chat right now. All right, folks, we had Tezos on the radar. So let's go ahead and get into our Markets Pro. That's right, Tezos, you heard it, May 23rd. Well, what happened? You got a newsquake alert from the Markets Pro platform. If you're not familiar with the newsquake alert, it's an automated alert that instantly notifies you when market moving events happen. So on the 23rd, the popular online marketplace eBay announced it was launching a sports NFT collection through its partnership with Tezos. And this newsquake alert alerted the Markets Pro users and trading started at $1.88 before the newsquake and after, shout out to $2.24, that's a 19% gain, huge gainers in these kind of environments, 20%. You take those home and you write everyone about it because that's how big they are. All right, the next token that we were watching this week was Phantom. Did you guys think Phantom was dead? Well, not according to our Vortex score. That Vortex score is a comparison between its current market and social conditions of those in the past. 80 or higher indicates confidently bullish, 30 or lower is historically bearish. Well, Phantom this week saw that Vortex score of 90 and a flash green and the Markets Pro subscribers got that alert when that happened and it briefly touched the 90 in the Vortex score on the 20th at 35 cents and climbed over the course of the week all the way up to 49 cents, 33% gains in only a couple of days. When you get alerted with that Vortex score, you should immediately start putting some of these tokens on your radar and that's what you could have done here with Phantom at 33% gain, we will take those. That's where you live to fight another day, those 30% gains, the 20% gains in these kind of market conditions. That's why you have Markets Pro in your back pocket. All right, folks. I wanna get to some of our closing thoughts but we gotta pick our winner. So literally, I think if you drop your Twitter handle in the chat, you're gonna win. I don't see any Twitter handles in there yet. So if you wanna win $50 to the swag store, go ahead and do it now. I wanna give everyone the chance for their closing thoughts today. Jordan, why don't we start with you first? Bear markets are not fun. Don't expect them to be fun. And they usually last longer than you want them to because the market can remain irrational a lot longer than you can remain solvent. So don't overextend yourself. Don't ever put more money into the crypto than you are willing to. Convince yourself before that you're gonna lose it so you kind of accept that fate and then whatever happens in the afterwards is positive, right? Yeah, if anybody has been around since 2017, we could ruin for a rough ride potentially. Even if we get another little up and down, we're still a couple of years away from the Bitcoin having. So it's gonna be a bumpy ride. Just brace yourselves. Sam, closing thoughts for today. Yeah, you should know why you're in the market. You know, have an investment thesis and stick to it. And if you have a good outlook on crypto and you have a longer term horizon, you should be fine. It's people who wanna dabble in and out that get into trouble. Just be mindful of risk. Very great advice. And Marcel, any closing thoughts for today? Well, I'll tell the viewers to interpret Bitcoin and cryptos as those tech stocks were like 20 years ago. Yes, there were some failures. There were some 200% hikes followed by 70, 80% crashes. But those companies that survived are the Amazons, are the Google's and Facebook's of our time, so the leading companies of the world with trillion dollar value. So what we're witnessing right now, we are 20 years in advance, so just wait for that. So you gotta keep up the momentum. You cannot just say, well, I lost 70%, so I'm out forever. Whoever did that back in 2018 missed the gains from $20,000 to $6,000. So just stick to the game. That's right, everything begins and ends with conviction. You gotta know why you're here, folks. You're not here for the get rich quick. We're in it for the long haul. Just realize you are early, you're very early. I wanna go ahead and give away the $50 to the winner today. We have Rich, new design, congratulations. Big win today for Rich. Thank you for participating and dropping in your Twitter handle. We will be sending you a DM on Twitter to redeem that $50 to the swag store. Hopefully you can treat yourself to a nice shirt, maybe a hat, maybe some socks. Who knows, we got lots of stuff in there. Folks, that's gonna do it for today. We appreciate everyone for tuning in around the globe. We'll be here next Tuesday. Go ahead and like and subscribe. Turn on the notification bell so you know when we go live until next Tuesday, 12 p.m. Eastern. Over and out. Thanks for joining us today.