BTC $50K! ETH $3,700! DeFi Summer 2.0, SUSHI, FTM | The Market Report w/ Mike McGlone

Welcome to the Market Report with Cointelegraph. We have an absolutely electric show lined up for you all today. Very special guest Mike McGloin that you don't want to miss, so make sure you're tuned in. I am your host Benton, joined again by our resident experts, Jordan Finiseth 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 and a copywriter at App and Technology. Another great week for the markets with Ethereum leading the way. Cracking $3,700. What is up, fellas? Huge week in the markets. How are we doing today?

Doing good, man. Like to see the market moving like this. Ethereum leading the way this time. Bitcoin's kind of lagging, but it's about to break through 50. We'll see what happens.

Well, I'm very happy right now because bitcoin did through, you know, break through 50k level and which was my target for the week anyway. So, yeah, I'm completely. Yippee. Right now.

I'm giddy. It feels like it's. It's that time. I don't know. September is always a funky month for the crypto markets, but is it time for us to. 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 nft. So there's a lot going to be happening in the next month. It could be good or bad. I don't know. Welcome to crypto.

Well, exactly. On the contrary, I'm pretty much excited about this 50k level because we are constantly trying to break above it. And with kind of macroeconomic 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'll be 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 McLaughlin from Bloomberg. And it's going to be awesome to pick his brain to see what he thinks about what's going on in the the market. And before we jump into things, if you haven't smash the like button, go like it on YouTube. We're here every Thursday, 12pm 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 want to 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 Pole event. I think that played a very important role in causing this 450 million dollar liquidation. In short, because, yeah, they were not anticipating a move towards 50k. That's it. So they just got 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 you know, Mr. Pavel himself very much clear that they would want to go ahead with tapering. And I think most of the, most of the short trader, 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 Solana 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, 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 shorten the market now?

Well, you'll always find bearish people and you'll always find, you know, some, somebody getting wrecked because of a completely separate movement going other way. I mean you cannot actually comment on that. But right now I don't think it's, it's not wise to be Short on bitcoin. I mean, based on what we are seeing right now with the kind of jobs 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 going to have to wait for an ETF or something to get past for us to get like meaningfully above this level? What do you think? I think.

Well, we have been, we have, we have been past that EDF level and SEC is playing its own game altogether. I don't want to know what is the mind of the, you know, 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 were shorting at these levels here? What are your thoughts on that, Jordan?

Oh, I, yeah, I don't really get into that data too much. That's more for Yashi's bread and 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 longs and shorts. 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 the 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 a full V shaped recovery anytime soon. So I might, I might just say it's safe to say that they are not behind, you know, any kind of bearish calls for now.

So I'm more likely to think it's more likely not just 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 longer shorts 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, 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 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 term 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 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 one of my, oh my spidey sense is like danger, Will Robinson danger. Like no, like, like the fact that it speaks for. It's been this mantra for like two years now. A hundred thousand. A hundred thousand. 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, I'd probably, if I was selling my bitcoin, I'd probably put my sales around 85, 90,000, not a hundred thousand just to make sure they got filled. But you know, I think the fomo, the FOMO of it could just like push it. Like if it starts running Republic 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 just guessing it. I think there are enough evidence that supports the theory that yeah, it can reach 100k. Reason being is one of the surveys by bank of America, it was done I think in May and they found out that a majority of hedge funds, you know, they polled, 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 J.P. morgan, why everybody? Any, 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. But I'm not, I'm not actually sure about the time by, 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 that will be influenced 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 going to steal some of its thunder. Like people aren't especially these companies that are really trying to make the bigger gains. They're not going to jump into $75,000 bitcoin when they can get into one of these hot D5 projects. What was it? Who just bought, what company bought a crypto punk. Dang. Oh God. Somebody just bought a crypto punk. Like a, like a big company.

Or somebody.

Yeah, it's like they're, they, 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 going to be the, 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, is so Yashu, back to your point though, it sounds like you're saying that there's going to be a lot of institutional demand for, for bitcoin in general. Is that what it's going to take? Or is it going to be government saying hey, we now accept this as a legal tender. What is kind of those catalysts in your eyes?

Well, governments, I don't know what they want to do. 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, every brick, every kind of material that is developed, we are of course anticipating that people would come and live there. So once, once I, once I see the people who were not even, you know, looking at bitcoin 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, something credible enough to invest from. You know, they need somebody like Morgan Stanley or JP Morgan to come in the business, ensure the kind of you know, 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 going to 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, through the institutions as like the vessel to bitcoin.

Definitely. I mean you, you would need lawmakers to really look at this market. And I, I, 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, yeah. 70, 70% of people too like fall do what they're told by the, the powers, the powers that be, the government, the, 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, that, that's a psychological like people are they, 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 going to get this blow off top like we were.

We were on the top of that. You know I agree with Jordan at some point because the government right now needs money. They need, they need lots of money too because the kind of loans they have taken in the form of like you know, 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. So they really need to get in their skin in the game rather than let them go if they just do not tax. So they just like, you know, we want to ban bitcoin, they're just going to push the entire market underground. And I don't think they are fool enough to do that.

Yeah, we already saw that here. They just flipping those cryptocurrency regulations here in the US into that bill. Like they're trying to take our money.

Governments are going to tax. Governments are going to 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 want to shift this over to the second biggest coin out there, Ethereum. This thing has been taking off like an absolute rocket ship this week. I want to kind of grab a quick snippet from this headline. We have the great crypto flippening. This is the, the age old question, is Ethereum ever going to overtake Bitcoin? And one of the quotes from this article 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 stake consensus algorithm which 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, a lot of arguments on their side. What do you guys think about this? Yoshi, why don't you start us off?

Well, I don't think there's a thing called Bitcoin or Ethereum. There is a thing called Bitcoin and Ethereum because both of these markets, they are, they have plenty of room to grow. I mean the adoptions, 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 immensely successful projects and yeah, it is finally getting noticed. So I don't say that Ethereum cannot grow and we have to create any 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 markets to look at.

Yeah, I don't know if it'll take, 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, all the other altcoins that are popping up. Will, will Ethereum pass Bitcoin? I think institutions might be more interested in Ethereum in this next born because it has so much more utility versus just holding it or like yeah, 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.

Are we talking about total market cap?

I'm talking market cap. I'm talking flipping. I'm talking about taking over the bitcoin market.

Devil's advocate. It's like a 2x to get up to Bitcoin. Just like 2x ain't that much that he talked about last time.

So there's a 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 rocket 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 you know, along with the space. So to begin with I would like to congratulate everybody in the bitcoin space that we reached 50,000 level once again confirming that there is adequate buying pressure nearer above the 47k level. But frankly I'm not surprised seeing the run up in prices really. I mean the macroeconomic catalyst that had given us plenty of evidence about a micro price 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, you know, 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 Dojones poll, just Google that. I mean, if you just look at the Dojones poll, you would say that they were anticipating about 600k jobs. And if I recall correctly, the Reuters poll of economists predicted the market, you know, payrolls to be about 6,13,000. 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 low? The anticipated, I think my guess is that it was delta variant of 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 above 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 now. We have like price above 50k correcting there.

Yoshu, I want to, I want to jump in here real quick. Can you kind of unpackage this for us? Why are, 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 is it? 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 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 Elon Musk, but I think it catalyzed that sell off 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. And that's what happened in June also like because of the China ban, we see that the estimates were low. But even, you know, with the China ban effect, the hash rate 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. 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, 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, with hash rate at all? Because I've, I've read reports that hash rate is starting to recover from people transitioning out of, out of China.

Yeah, I mean I think Cointelegraph also published a flurry of reports about it that how miners 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 a recovery in the same time they are holding. And I think, if I recall, I think there was a glass note data or maybe crypto quant but they showed that the miner 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. Almost the inverse with the jaws one. If it's like if it's good it goes down. If it's bad it goes up. It's just like.

I'm not saying that I actually I specifically mentioned, I don't put words in my mouth. I specifically mentioned that it might, it played it was it catalyzed the buying behavior because we are at the time where we don't have any more clues. I mean microstrategy is buying but people are not like 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 47, 50K channel right now. But again I'm saying that they have a lagging effect. All of these numbers, adp, everything else, they have a lagging effect on the market.

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 going to 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, the COVID pandemic and what the government's going to do and all these things. It's like a lot of it seems like it's noise to just entertain traders in between the actual big moves that happen in the market.

Well, I absolutely agree but we all need news to, you know, 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. That's definitely a good Right, Metric.

Yeah, indeed.

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, but, but just say that there's a new COVID variant 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 there is a there are, 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 going to carry us over into Jordan segment. If you haven't liked and subscribed, make sure you do so our YouTube channel Thursdays, 12pm 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 in the market. You know, 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 D5 is starting to rise up and like NFTs are getting a little bubblicious. So it's possible that we might be seeing a sector rotation out of the NFT sector and into D5, which could be the part of the reason why Ethereum has kind of popped up here in the last couple weeks. If you go ahead and share my screen, Daniel. Yeah, there we go.

Yeah.

So yeah, if you see this, the Defi index pulse shows that since July 20, right here, the D5 tokens as a basket, they think the Defi index Pulse has about 25 different tokens in it. Some of the top projects like Ave Synthetics, Sushi swap and it's climbed up significantly over the last month and a half. So it 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 the 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 defy users or these are unique wallets interacting with 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 defy 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. The earlier crypto or cypherpunk switch wallets all the time mentality is kind of is fading from the crypto ecosystem just because the more that the 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 defy and alt season starting to pick up. And I wanted to kind of get your guys's perspective on that because I know I hear a lot from bitcoin maxis but we kind of get the, the what's happening in the D5 space gets. It's overshadowed but there's big moves happening. You've had some of these protocols reach new all time highs and like and that's the other thing you're having the rising total value lock. I don't know if I have a chart here. No, I don't. On D5 llama, the total value locked in all D5 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 D5 tokens, the value of the D5 tokens is increasing. The people are using more stable coins on the network or so yeah, those are the two main things I thought I was going to say but I can't think of it. So what do you guys think? Yeah.

I'm an absolute fan of the D5 sector right now. I absolutely love what I'm seeing ethereum updating to EIP 1559. That was huge. I think that's going to 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 more burns, decreasing supply.

Yeah, that's. They, they keep saying that but I'm like that doesn't change the fact that it cost me 60 bucks to say end the transaction man.

I think it's, I'm sorry, yeah, you guys continue.

I, I mean, but it's not just Ethereum, right? Like that's kind of the tip of the iceberg. That's like the, the spearhead of everything else behind it. You sit, you're seeing chains like Avalanche, Polygon, Binance, Smart Chain, Phantom even is surging like. And so like there, there's obviously a need and a want for this unless inside the market. And that's what these numbers are telling me is that people are interested.

Whether it's retail 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 are 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, you know, 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 are actually absolutely right that people might be rotating out of Bitcoin and Ethereum because they think they, these rallies have primed, they are past the rage. But does that also mean that they are simply bored? They are not investing in defi tokens because they anticipate some greater 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. Big guy on Bitcoin is like maybe it's, 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, in just the whole. I know and I'm questionable about who's actually trading some of these, these NFTs, like the big price ones, like who's willing to pay a couple million dollars for an nft? I'm like maybe it's two people that know each other. Like let's just switch these back and forth. We can't know that because it's like the nature of our environment. But the, the some projects like Axie Infinity and I think that's just speaking to a whole nother realm of, of our whole sector that's developing with this play to earn and how actually Infinity to me isn't, 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 cryptocurrency and you actually earn real money for them or, or the, the utility of an NFT token being able to take an in game item out of the item of the game and sell it to somebody else is, is, is so, is, is attracting new people but yeah rotations out of bigger things.

So Jordan, I want to jump in here though and ask you this question. So like why, why are certain chains and their tokens pumping? For example, the Phantoms, 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 Yashi mentioned, like 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 had some, had a, has a Phantom reward going on I think for people developing on top of Phantom. So they're, they're they're, they're providing incentive to attract people and maybe people responding that because of that. Like 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. It's showing up on the headlines and stuff. I don't know. Even if those are the things that show up on the headlines in Coin Telegraph, 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 it's. From what 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 the, 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 that's 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 like if they're getting into Solana, it's because they see that the long term outlook of Solana might be better. They're not going to be.

Here's the power of Defi is in the staking mechanisms in earning interest for, for lending out your crypto. So regardless of a price drop in the actual asset, sometimes, not all the times that you, 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, the asset of that price actually drops 50%. So 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 the price when you're holding that asset.

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.

It's true. It's a scary space. It's a wild Risk right now, more.

Risk, more reward, high risk.

But it, 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, you can operate inside the Wild West.

And part of me, like, conspiratorially, 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, 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 a past run up. Like I had a token stake and like, yeah, I locked it up for three months. Then the token like went on a. And then it fell and I like, dang it, I couldn't sell it. So, yeah.

Anyway guys, I just, I just hope that, I just hope that we don't see any, any, any other 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 chains at this point, not in much more.

It's risky to stay on the bsc.

I mean, I'm an advocate of bsc, so like, you know, I'll bang that drum all day, I'll die on that hill. But yes, exploit hacks, there's, there's smart contract bugs, there's rug pulls, you name it. It's. It's happening on not just Binance, 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.

So easy.

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 12:00pm we're here. Let's get into our Markets Pro segment for this week. All right, we are going to 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 investors decision making with industry grade analytics. So this week one of, 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 is 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 CT Markets Pro 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 and 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 OKEx 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, you know 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 news quake notification hit Markets Pro subscribers phones several hours before the price of sushi began to rise. Sushi Sushi went up from 1125 at the time of the announcement to 1383 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? This newsquakes for the markets bro?

Well I wasn't able to get in on this trade but I do like the the news quick service. I know as we mentioned it before, if I'm a D5 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, the Markets Pro you can kind of have them all favorited on 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 news quake. Bye. Like you got to learn the, the different dynamics with the news clicks. Like with this one they gave You a little bit of time the newspaper happened and it took a few days for it to go on. There's other news clicks like the newsquake for a Binance listing. It'll be like news quick. And then you're like oh, careful. But like a newsquake for the, the Coinbase listing because Coinbase will announce it but then they say like we're gonna, it doesn't. It takes like four or 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, 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 XRP1 we were able to detect the Vortex score changing from yellow to green. And I, 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, it worked in my favor, more likely. So it's, it's pretty, it's pretty much a good feature, but I still have to 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 going to take us into actually the next token that we want to highlight. So Danilo, if you wouldn't mind bringing up fandom 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 Markets 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 a 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 Phantoms token, the coin rallied on August 30, going from $0.53 to $0.88 in less than a day. So sometimes these trades happen quick, sometimes it's over a couple 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. Marcus Pro subscribers could enjoy a further price hike from $0.70 to $0.94. You see that second leg up there? And so that's where Vortex Score does. 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, you know, passing that 80 mark because I know that's going to put it on my radar. And if you were lucky enough to jump in on sushi and Phantom, you made some, some nice gains this week and that's what Markets Pro can do for you. It's, it's a great platform. I love using it to spot these kind of trends. Jordan, were you able to kind of look at that Phantom trade at all this week?

I, I didn't get in on it. I kind of saw it come where I saw the several announcements related to Phantom. I think they, 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, they even released a paper and saying like we're not an Ethereum killer, we're an Ethereum helper. Like, so they, 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, on the amount of people inside the ecosystem. But it's a different approach. I think just like Polygon, it's, it seems like it's going to 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, that it's, it's doing all right. It's got a good future ahead of it.

Yeah, that's going to do it for our Markets 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 into our special guest for today, Mr. Mike McGlong. All right, we Have Mike here. He is a senior commodity strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence. Mr. McGlaun specializes in the broad investable commodity markets and has over 25 years of futures and commodity trading investing experience beginning at the Chicago Board of Trade. How are you today, sir? Thank you for joining us.

Hello Ben. 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 going to get into some bitcoin, some Ethereum stuff today. But let's go right into things. I know El Salvador had recognized bitcoin as legal tender and we wanted to 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 the dollar is a global reserve currency and it's actually gaining dominance through digital token, through crypto ass and through digitalization of money. As a lot of you know, when you click on, click on coinmarketcap.com and 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 to remember is what's happening with El Salvador and bitcoin is. Bitcoin to me is replacing gold, you know, 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. You can transport in your head, put in a thumb drive and just think of what just happened recently in Afghanistan. All those people had problems. My son, who's an MD at Walter Reed has been meeting some of them and you know, they're leaving their countries with clothes, maybe a phone and maybe some value if they're 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 cessation of currencies like in El Salvador. 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 going to potentially end on in this space, an end game, is what seifudine Amos indicated in his book the bitcoin standard, is that central banks might essentially start allocating. I'm sorry, bitcoin.

There we go. So is crypto regulation in the US Good for the overall markets? What are your. What are your thoughts on. On that in particular?

Oh, yeah, all about the US not messing it up. Because what I see in crypto assets.

And.

In digitalization of money and finances, market capitalism potentially on a global scale, ever. And just to buy us being able to talk about knocking around and speculating, fine, speculating for speculators, it's fine to do that. Actually. Helps create liquidity. People forget that it's really a good thing. But to me, that's what's happening. The US Government's going to recognize that if there's any country in the world that's a bastion of free market capitalism, then, well, better be the US and look what's happening in China. You know, totalitarian communist state, increasingly becoming. They don't have free markets, free discourse, and the US does. So to me, as long as we don't 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. You know, initially I thought it was silly Internet money, but here I am and here we are. They're going down the rabbit hole. I think they're realizing. The key thing I'll leave you with is what I just put, sent to my editors, my outlook for tomorrow. And a key thing I always make them 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 and buy assets with it, but there's no better currency for it. And it's actually gaining that dominance. 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. We have in Western society as a banks and mortgages and financial markets. And so to me that's what the US leaders are going to figure out sooner or later. And you know, Democrats love that stuff that helps people who are not, you know, have not born into some of the western elites that a lot of like this recent hedge fund manager we heard came poo, pooing bitcoin.

So are you concerned at all that like this, this new defi system, this new finance system that 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 willing to be, always has been the case, always will be. But you got to, you know, fluff that out. I mean there's been tulip bulbs, South Sea bubble kind of started the stock market. That's just how things are in markets. And to me that, that's what's happening is we're in that price discovery, say sense, but there'll be a few winners. What happened to Amazon? I remember holding in a drop 90% that didn't, that wasn't so fun. Never had a lot of it, but it was going to go. And I love the story that Jeff Bootho in 2001 where Lehman, there was a Lehman analyst said Amazon is going to go under and look who went under. So to me that's part of, that's part of revolutionary technologies. And this, 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. What I see happening with DeFi and NFTs, which we were talking about earlier, is when you have companies like Budweiser and Visa, Disney and you name a few other ones, buying Ethereum so they can buy an nft. What does that mean? Demand is increasing. At the same time supply is declining. So now and, but you have to be. We're, we're wary of speculative excesses and be very careful with pump and dumps.

You mentioned, you'd mentioned China and their purge on it. Do you think that's Going to kind of be looked back on as one of the biggest mistakes. 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 the 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. Have to push back because they have to. You can't. They don't have free flow of capital. So to me, this is a defining moment in the space. It's really good for bitcoin and cryptos. 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, you know, it hits home when, you know, 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 going to 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 going to fail. And to me, this ability to have software which you guys understand a lot more better than me that you 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, 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 quantitative easing and during that course we have seen bitcoin rising exponentially higher. So you know, just a little, I mean scenario. But what happens to bitcoin after say Fed completely and wins at $120 billion monthly assets, asset purchase program and the bond yields spike again and so would bitcoin be able to survive that. I mean, I'm sorry, by next year.

Maybe 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 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 US 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 hedge yet. I'm like, yeah, not yet, but when it gets greater depth and we don't even have ETFs in the US yet, yet there's 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 Nouriel Roubini discussed that like in one of the debates he was having with Arthur Hayes. And he said that if you, if you hold bitcoins like all of your bitcoin 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 a, with a sort of custodianship companies, you know, 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. Nouriel Roubini, he discussed. Okay, I'm sorry. So I was saying that we all love Rubini. Actually. Yeah, I might have a poster of him like behind me.

Just Mr. Robin. He's an academic and he gets paid on hits and readership. He doesn't get paid on running money which is environment I came from was a.

All that.

That statement. That's from market wizards. And the statements are you making money or losing money? The yacht. Think about here. Yashu is when you invest you look backwards or you. The future Cathie Wood point there has been. It started in we can get it through an ETF in Canada. I'm with you. I was on that top management history from Zugson where they're all going mainstream Interrupt. 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. 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. Don't this go the galaxy Give yourself five, ten years from time. So yes, then it's not an investment. That's life. So I like to put yourself going forward. I love you. Vein is volatility. It's. Oh, it's too volatile. Absolutely. You know the volatility in bitcoin round is the same as Gold in 1980 and that Amazon was in 2001. Where they go are they going going forward? More definition. It's a matter of time. Something has to go wrong. I can't and predict going positively to a point adoption. Okay El Salvador, ETFs in Canada, in Europe and. And then just being added down sheets. It's just a matter of time. One of the key things I'll leave you with the trends your friend and my own business in in markets is try not to don't. Don't try to pick top but join trends when you get. That's 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, Benton. I love the pushback I got when I put out recently that crude oil going down is very bullish for bitcoin going up. Booth wrote that book the Price of Tomorrow. I had the honor of sitting next to him at the Bretton woods realignment thing few weeks ago. But he points out how rapidly venturing 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 whole 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. I'm from Illinois. I'm 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 higher. Why? 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 U.S. treasury 30 year, I used to trade that in the trading pits in Chicago. Traded the futures, it dropped below 2%. I remember trading it at 8, 9%. The trend is clearly lower. In Germany, the long bond 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. Trend, your friend inflation like we've seen in Zimbabwe. I have a colleague who in my office, his name's Cliff, who's from Zimbabwe. And guess what? He likes Bitcoin. Why? Because it's a stable store 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 supply. We know the co. The, the, The coins clay, this year's comparable and Ethereum's is plunging because of what you mentioned, Benton, in the EIP155 protocol chain.

Yeah, I do want to kind of touch on that as well. It's just kind of like your general overall outlook of the D5 industry. How do you envision this evolution and 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 for me, because I need to learn from the people who are really in the space and particularly you got to be younger than me and have more hair 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, they're all priced in Ethereum. People are buying. I see demand for Ethereum, like okay, it's all Ethereum. And then you look at some of the PDFOY DeFi members of the Bloomberg Galaxy DeFi index, Uniswap Ave. They're all theorem 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 and just a measure of how much. So my outlook is, I think because of what's happening in DeFi, because of 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 was.

NFTs, right?

Yeah, NFTs, that's right. I'm sorry, NFTs. So DeFi is really defi is providing some of that. 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 and 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 going to end up like. He didn't say this part. We're going to end up like a Blockbuster or Sears or Kodak.

Yeah. Well, I have one last question for you here before we end things today. Is Ethereum going to flip Bitcoin? Million dollar question.

It's a matter of time. It's a question of time. Notably if the trends, your friend, if the current trend stays in place the last year or two, it'll probably be in 2022. We got to get some bumps in that road. But in terms of market cap, probably the key thing, remember about when Ethereum outperforms Bitcoin, 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'll 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 will look forward to hopefully have you on again in the future. Thank you for joining us today, Mike.

Thank you. And I appreciate the education. I enjoy 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. I'm always learning stuff and I think Mike is an excellent resource to dive deep in with. But I know we're going to open up the floor here to some audience Q&As, 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, 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 DEFY, it's NFTs, it's market related. What do you got? Hit us, 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 Carano lead the way by launching smart contracts? Let's see. Yashu, do you want to take this one?

Man, Cardano community is like after me for a very long time. I don't want. Okay, but before I say anything, guys, I love you. Please don't hate me. 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 other assets we have seen, you know, coming under the shadow of Ethereum. They're just trying to solve the Ethereum, Ethereum's core problem, scalability. And we are also looking at Ethereum solving its own problem with the ongoing hard forks one after another. And sooner or later we're going to see it switch to entirely proof of stake. Cardano. I think to Cardano fans, I just want to say that there is enough, enough demand in the space and you guys can coexist each other without raising the question that you're going to flip or outrun or do anything. If there is an Amazon, there is 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, you know, maybe an inspiration to do even better, which is completely amazing for the entire sector on a 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, I base my evidence. Know what, 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, not to.

Yeah, I don't think it can do it anytime soon just because like 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 it is, you know, then it's about competition. Like that's always, like, nobody knows how that's going to 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, the more novice, we're normal people, we're, we're criticizing developers. Like developing new things is hard and it's challenging and as you've seen, like as Yasi 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 Atheum is like, let's just do it in the wild and try and change one of our wheels while we're driving.

But 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 DEFI 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, that maybe these other protocols aren't and so those, 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 a. 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 a. Like it is, it's a glorified jpeg. I, I'm on the NFT train but at this point I don't see paying that much more that much money for him. So I think that it was just a mania in between different little bubbles and we're gonna head into a different sector, possibly D5. And as I've mentioned on a previous show and in a previous article, the Google interest in NFTs was significantly higher than it was for D5 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, defy and earn a yield. So no, I don't think that's gonna pull away. At least not yet.

Yashi, what say you?

Well, I gotta, 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, 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 same for the defi. So you cannot actually separate the two. So as far as there is A blockchain who's. 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, this pump with art, with, you know, these, 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 going to 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 going to see these, these ICO bubbles kind of with, with this particular niche. So I don't think that the actual NFT market in 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 what are your thoughts about it?

Tesla's the solid project. They get a lot of support actually from the French government. I know they've been launching their own and see, and that's the other thing about the NFTs. Like you get an NFT is launching on Solana, on, on Tezos, on Avalanche. Like how can that market pull away when it's getting so, like this dispersed? But Tezos, I don't know, it's. 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 some 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 the long run. And I think since its launch in 2018, I think we have seen maybe six or seven major upgrades in Tezo so far. And maybe if I'm not wrong, if I'm recollecting it, fine, the latest upgrade was Granada and it kind of like reduced the block times By I think 30 seconds, I think from 60 to 30 second, which is a huge, huge metal. And so basically they're all trying to solve the problem Ethereum posed. The one is gas consumption, you know, 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, 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, I'm not really looking at Tezos, but I think it does have a lot of potential here in, in the years ahead. But yeah, so that's, that's going to be our community questions for today. But I do want to kind of end 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 Federal 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 going to flow back into this emerging, emerging sector, beating gold. And that's just going to 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 would probably be watch the FOMO. Watch the FOMO we saw, we've been seeing it with the NFTs. That was some FOMO going on, folks. Like this whole from now for the next like six months, there's going to be sector after sector of FOMO because the market's getting heat. I don't know. For me, I'm like, 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 going to 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 to get 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, 12pm 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 McGlone joining us today. Until next time.

It.