Shownotes
With the abrupt collapse of FTX it is certain to bring more cleansing to the ecosystem. While it can be hard to keep track of who is solvent and who is failing, let's dive in and take look. The next fail whale may be just around the corner. And how is the FTX hacker (possibly) suppressing the price of ETH?
News and Links
Biden calls for Crypto Regulations
Alameda was Frontrunning FTX Token Listing
FTX Failure Impacting Other Corporations
Fighting Monetary Colonialism with Open-Source Code
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I can be reached by email at mcintosh@genwealthcrypto.com and on twitter at @McIntoshFinTech. My mastodon handle is @mcintosh@podcastindex.social. Looking forward to hearing from you!
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Music Credits
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Transcripts
Hey, Sat Stackers. It's November the 21st. This is episode 83 of Generational Wealth
Speaker:with Cryptocurrency. I'm your host, McIntosh. Today's episode is about the great unwinding.
Speaker:Of course, you know what? On this podcast, as a financial advisor and all information presented
Speaker:on this podcast is for informational purposes only. Now that we have the legal stuff out of
Speaker:the way, let's jump on in. I hope everybody's having a good week here in the United States.
Speaker:We are preparing for a day of Thanksgiving. This Thursday is Thanksgiving for us. A time when
Speaker:we gather with our family, we have some probably too much food, and hopefully we're thankful.
Speaker:I know this year certainly I will be. In a lot of ways, it's been a very long year,
Speaker:but here we are at the end of it. I want to talk tonight about the fallout of the FTX debacle.
Speaker:We've already covered the FTX debacle, and other than a tad bit of news here and there,
Speaker:I won't really be focusing on it. But the reality is it is causing ripples, waves,
Speaker:maybe eventually tsunamis in the cryptocurrency space. So I think it's important that we
Speaker:understand what's going on. I think it's important that we at least explore how we
Speaker:think that may affect the market and so on. So as normal, we will begin with our market update.
Speaker:The day closed, the week closed a few hours ago. I'm recording this at 10 37. It closed at six
Speaker:o'clock central time. And so at that time, Bitcoin was at $16,291.83, Ethereum at 11 42.47,
Speaker:and ADA at just over 31 cents, 31.2 cents. All three of these are down from the week before.
Speaker:Interestingly, I was actually looking. Bitcoin's actually only down from the previous week about
Speaker:70 bucks. Now, Ethereum, on the other hand, is down about $80, roughly. And then ADA is down about
Speaker:close to 2 cents, about 1.8 cents. Now, of course, you have to look at this in terms of percentages.
Speaker:In terms of percentages, Bitcoin is basically not down. I mean, it's down $100. It's $16,300.
Speaker:So it's really not that significant a drop. Ethereum, on the other hand, was almost 10%.
Speaker:I think I'm doing that calculation correctly. And then ADA actually was basically right at 10%.
Speaker:So both of them were significant compared to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is slowly...there's a Bitcoin
Speaker:dominance chart, how Bitcoin is doing in comparison to the other alternative currencies and such.
Speaker:And historically, during a bull run, the alternative currencies gain in overall market value and
Speaker:whatever versus Bitcoin. During a bear market, it flips around the other way. And that's what
Speaker:we're seeing, of course. These others, in terms of percentages, are actually dropping lower than
Speaker:Bitcoin is. Now, obviously, Bitcoin's down. It's still going down. In fact, well,
Speaker:not a huge change since last week or the week before, but we're staying in this range.
Speaker:And given the market conditions and given the overall macro conditions, given the general
Speaker:market conditions of the last number of months where we've been heading downwards, until proven
Speaker:otherwise, I'm of the opinion it will continue going down. I may be incorrect. Of course,
Speaker:that's not financial advice, but I still stand by what I've been saying. We're at least going to
Speaker:go down and touch $14,000, $15,000, really, or a little above $14,500. We're getting very
Speaker:close to that at times. So, we will see. I think if we can get a solid break below this level,
Speaker:I think we will see those levels and then we'll see what's beyond that. We may make a bounce up,
Speaker:come back later and revisit these levels again. It is possible it goes lower than $13K. I would
Speaker:love to get some single-digit, so to speak, thousands of Bitcoins. So, $99K, $99K, whatever.
Speaker:That would be good. I've been very clear about this, I think. I hope so. But my goal, of course,
Speaker:is to accumulate as much as possible. It's not to necessarily gain the most profit or loss or,
Speaker:well, minimize the most loss or however you want to put it in a short timeframe. I'm looking at
Speaker:10 years down the road, where am I going to be? I believe Bitcoin is going to be much higher than
Speaker:it is currently, so, therefore, I would have bought as much of it as possible. If that means
Speaker:in the intervening time that it hits $10,000, then I'll take that. Now, I don't really seriously
Speaker:believe that it's going to go below $10,000. I think there's too many people who are interested
Speaker:in buying it at that level. But I do believe it's possible that we get down there and play with that
Speaker:level a little bit, and that may be the true bottom of the bear market. Now, I know that's
Speaker:completely off the wall, and statistically, it probably won't happen. That's probably true.
Speaker:But if it does, I'll be buying Bitcoin. So, there we go. The tea tonight is hot.
Speaker:So, is the fire tonight. It's actually the first time that, when I've been recording,
Speaker:I've had a fire going. Where I live, it's not terribly cold much of the year, certainly.
Speaker:And this time of year, it kind of tends to fluctuate, cold, warm, and whatnot. And it's
Speaker:been cold enough that, actually, tonight, we built a fire. So, I've been enjoying that fire
Speaker:while I was preparing the notes. All right. So, there's our market update.
Speaker:We see some things going lower, and we'll talk about why that may be true. There may be some
Speaker:reasons why Ethereum, in particular, is going lower in just a few minutes
Speaker:as part of our weekly topic. So, let's jump on into that.
Speaker:As many times, unfortunately, our news is kind of interrelated to the weekly topic. So, we're going
Speaker:to need to cover that here. So, what came out this week? All right. So, this week, of course,
Speaker:we're going to be talking about the fallout of FTX kind of, well, going bankrupt, which is what
Speaker:they've done at this point. According to this article on Yahoo Finance, it's a $16 billion
Speaker:bankruptcy. I didn't realize it was actually that large. And I have not, in large part,
Speaker:reported on the clown world that was FTX. And as I've said, this is the court of public opinion.
Speaker:This is just my ideas and interpretations of what I'm hearing. Of course, these people have to be
Speaker:put through the judicial system, which I truly hope that they are, because it certainly looks
Speaker:like there's a lot of fraud, negligence, and outright possible extortion going on.
Speaker:But I do have to leave that, of course, for the courts to deal with.
Speaker:So, but given all that, their bankruptcy is causing huge waves across the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Speaker:So, according to this article, at this point, so far, their bankruptcy has caused the loss,
Speaker:freezing, or write down of at least $1.8 billion in funds from equity investors,
Speaker:from past funding rounds, and firms who held money with FTX. So, either these people had
Speaker:invested in FTX. I think you could lump Binance in with that group. Now, they have a currency
Speaker:that's effectively worthless in the FFT token, which right now is trading at, why do I not
Speaker:have it on this computer? $1.30, right? And if you remember, when FTX cratered, it was at $22.
Speaker:The CEO of Alameda famously said, we'll buy all the FFT token, FTT, FFTT, token that you have
Speaker:to Binance at $22. He should have taken them up on that. In fact, he might have tried to do so
Speaker:privately. And of course, they would have rejected that because it was just a sham.
Speaker:So, anyways, you've got investors, and then you'll also have firms who held money. So,
Speaker:this was people who FTX had their money. I don't know why. Maybe Alameda was supposed
Speaker:to generate revenue for them or whatever. And of course, that all proved to be not true.
Speaker:It says, this accounts for the hundreds of millions of dollars in credits, loans,
Speaker:and acquisition financing between FTX and its subsidiary, Alameda Research.
Speaker:So, there's a company called TMAT, T-M-A-S-E-K. I don't know how they say their name. T-E-M-A-S-E-K.
Speaker:They disclosed a $275 million investment in FTX and related businesses.
Speaker:And they'll be losing that.
Speaker:These companies invest that much money. I'm sure that will hurt, but the reality is,
Speaker:in most cases, certainly, they have a large amount of capital beyond that. So, it will hurt,
Speaker:but it will not kill them. The problem is, when you have smaller equity investors,
Speaker:and not only were they maintaining the equity, or did they put in equity, they were maintaining
Speaker:a portion of their funds with the platform. This may have actually been part of the deal.
Speaker:Hey, let us, you invest $100 million in us, and also, you're going to keep your trading
Speaker:money, essentially, on the platform. So, really, they lost both of those.
Speaker:One of these is Genesis Trading, which supposedly, they've announced over the last week that they
Speaker:have $175 million stock, quote, stock, on the FTX platform. So, they are what's called an unsecured
Speaker:creditor of FTX's Chapter 11, of their bankruptcy filing. Now, the reality is, Genesis Trading
Speaker:isn't going to get that money back, or at least very little of it. And if they don't, what does
Speaker:that do to them? Now, of course, it's all very opaque. It's not clear what this is going to do
Speaker:to these platforms. Now, a lot of people think that Genesis is probably going to be the next
Speaker:company to fall. Now, so, let's talk about Genesis for just a minute.
Speaker:Now, so, let's talk about Genesis for just a minute. Genesis is one of the companies
Speaker:that's part of a consortium, or whatever you want to call it, that's headed up by a guy called
Speaker:Barry Silbert. So, this guy is some kind of serial entrepreneur. I'd actually never heard of him
Speaker:before this, but I had heard of at least one of these, well, several of these companies.
Speaker:And I checked this out. So, assuming that the guys,
Speaker:from the way people were talking about it on Twitter, you know, this guy's who I'm saying
Speaker:that he is. And then I went and looked at his profile, and his profile says he's the founder
Speaker:CEO of DCG, which is kind of more of a holding company, and the parent of Grayscale Genesis
Speaker:Trading, CoinDesk, TradeBlock, Foundry Services, Loon-O Global. So, all of those. And then also
Speaker:an investor, and I guess he's saying 200 companies. So, his company Genesis Trading is the one that's
Speaker:in trouble. And apparently, he's around shopping, asking for a billion dollars. Now, note a billion,
Speaker:not whatever the value was that I just gave a minute ago, which was what, $175 or something?
Speaker:Yes, $175 million. So, like four or five times that. Five times that, I guess. Anyways,
Speaker:they're looking for a billion dollar loan to keep this thing afloat.
Speaker:All right, that's interesting. But what about all these other companies? Apparently,
Speaker:between all these other companies, he can't come up with the money to save Genesis Trading.
Speaker:And then, interestingly enough, why is it a billion instead of 200 million or 175 or whatever?
Speaker:So, there's a lot of unanswered questions there. But we may see Genesis Trading unwind as the next
Speaker:part of this. And if that happens, that could directly impact his other businesses, which
Speaker:Grayscale. Grayscale is a very large business. I don't know exactly how large, but they're quite
Speaker:large. And they're an investment firm. Their little thing says, helping investors access
Speaker:the digital economy through secure, compliant, and future forward investment products since 2013.
Speaker:So, they have been around for a long time. And they own a lot of Bitcoin. All right.
Speaker:So, you see how this can start unwinding. I don't know if that will impact Grayscale.
Speaker:What he should do, which is actually what Sam should have done. Now, the whole thing was a big
Speaker:mess. And that was part of the problem. The interconnections between FTX and Alameda Research
Speaker:were many. They should not have been. They should have been two separate corporations who dealt with
Speaker:each other at what they would call, I believe in accounting terms, at arm's length. And instead,
Speaker:that was, well, it was very much not the case. So, one of the articles or tweets or whatever gives
Speaker:direct evidence that Alameda, for example, was front running tokens that FTX would put up on
Speaker:their site. So, in other words, FTX would post. Alameda was already on the books. And as that
Speaker:token went up, they're making profit. So, they're playing the system in the background.
Speaker:Just things every ordinary investor out there could do.
Speaker:Anyways, back to this. I don't know if this is going to unwind in the same way. Obviously,
Speaker:Alameda FTX basically went and solved it at the same time, which is what we would expect given
Speaker:what we've seen. Here, hopefully, these companies really are at arm's length. And if this one company,
Speaker:obviously, Genesis Trading goes under, it's not going to affect his others. If it affects
Speaker:Grayscale, that's going to have profound effects on the ecosystem. Now, that Bitcoin will not be
Speaker:lost. It's not going to go away. It's not going to disappear. It might drive the value of Bitcoin
Speaker:down. This might be why we get our $14K. But I don't know. We'll just have to see, okay?
Speaker:Okay. So, this is just the one thing that we're even aware of. And that's the problem.
Speaker:A lot of this is kept undercover. People don't want everyone to know that things are not going
Speaker:well. If they're a public company, quarterly, I believe, here in the United States, they have
Speaker:to release notifications, shareholder updates, or whatever you want to call it. But if it's a private
Speaker:company, which I believe Grayscale actually is, then they can hide whatever they want.
Speaker:So, my theory is that we will continue to see this as we move forward. We're not done yet. This
Speaker:cleansing of FTX, if you want to call it that, was the start of the process, but it's not the end.
Speaker:And we don't really know where the end will be. I also know that because of the cost of electricity,
Speaker:the low price of Bitcoin, and in some cases, bad investments,
Speaker:there's a number of publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies that are in the same position.
Speaker:They're on the brink. Now, it's for a different reason, but they're also on the brink. So,
Speaker:I believe I talked a few weeks ago about Core Scientific. I think that's what they're called.
Speaker:They are in bankruptcy. So, that has not been resolved yet. Now, it doesn't seem to have hurt
Speaker:the hash rate, which I find odd. The hash rate is continuing to remain up. And in fact, I saw earlier
Speaker:the difficulty level for Bitcoin mining had adjusted, and it was actually at a new all-time
Speaker:high. So, we've had multi-weeks in a row where the difficulty has gone up, which would certainly
Speaker:indicate that the network itself, the Bitcoin network, is very strong. But if we start seeing
Speaker:some of these large companies, Marathon is one, for example,
Speaker:Unwind. It could hurt the hosting space. It could hurt the mining space. A lot of these mining
Speaker:companies actually host as well. Compass, I believe, does that. Don't quote me on that.
Speaker:Some of them only mine. They don't do hosting. And what I mean by hosting is,
Speaker:if I were to buy a Bitcoin miner, which I am strongly thinking about, actually,
Speaker:as the next step in my journey, it's something I've thought about for a long time. And the
Speaker:prices of the miners are coming down, in part because of all this stuff. I had to put it
Speaker:somewhere. I could either put it at my house and run it off my house and raise my power bill,
Speaker:which it's certainly going to, probably at a higher rate of electricity than what I would get if I
Speaker:actually hosted it somewhere. But that does bring risk. I could host it at Compass Mining,
Speaker:at one of their facilities, for example. And I've looked at it. It would actually be cheaper for me
Speaker:to do that. But the reality is now, depending on Compass Hosting, Compass Mining, to stay solvent.
Speaker:So if a couple of these mining companies dump and then dump all their inventory on the market,
Speaker:you're going to depress the Bitcoin price. The network hash rate will eventually be
Speaker:impacted. And it's not going to cause issues, so to speak, but it will cause the price to go down.
Speaker:And as someone who has invested in one of the publicly traded companies, it's BitFarm,
Speaker:just as full disclosure, this is something that's very interesting to me. I bought some of their
Speaker:stock. I certainly haven't done private equity investment or something like that. So I actually
Speaker:track their debt, their earnings, their Bitcoin that they're mining, all of this kind of stuff.
Speaker:And I think that from what I can tell, in my opinion, they're actually one of the safer ones.
Speaker:They're probably in the middle of the pack, so to speak, of around 10, 12 publicly traded Bitcoin
Speaker:mining companies. And I don't think they'll all go bankrupt. I think it's highly likely that a couple
Speaker:will at the bottom of all this, because they'll be going 12K, 14K Bitcoin, whatever it ends up being.
Speaker:They're going to be like, we can't do this, especially if it stays at that price.
Speaker:Does that make sense? Because if they're operating at that price for very long,
Speaker:they've bought electricity at a price that's higher. They've bought miners at a more expensive
Speaker:price, and so on and so forth. They can't operate profitably at that price. So they'll go bankrupt.
Speaker:So there's a number of these things. And in my view, I'm going to give you my opinion.
Speaker:I think all of this is necessary. There's obviously a lot of
Speaker:shenanigans going on. A shenanigan is people skirting the law, people doing things maybe they
Speaker:shouldn't be doing, people outright flaunting the laws. In some cases, I think that certainly
Speaker:seems to be the case with FTX. And the market needs cleansing.
Speaker:All right. So as difficult as this may be, keep in mind what I said. Here's how you should view it.
Speaker:We're going to continue to DCA, right? Every day, every week. If you're not doing it every day,
Speaker:we're going to buy our Bitcoin. We're going to buy whatever the other asset is. You guys all know
Speaker:my stance on that. That's fine. But from here on out, for me, it'll be Bitcoin.
Speaker:And we'll buy the Bitcoin because it doesn't matter to me if it's 16,000 like it is right now
Speaker:or 14,000 or 10,000. That's just an opportunity to buy more Bitcoin because I am betting in the long
Speaker:run that Bitcoin becomes a worldwide asset. And I have a lot of evidence at this point to back that
Speaker:thesis up. And we will see. Now, what I choose to do certainly doesn't mean that you have to do this.
Speaker:You have to do that. You can do what you want. But the safest way to do that is try not to catch
Speaker:the bottom. Try not to catch the top. Just DCA. Accumulate that asset. All right. So next we've
Speaker:got our supporters. So we had a good week. I appreciate that. We'll run through all these.
Speaker:Actually, they were all in relation to last week's episode on my long-term plans. So
Speaker:I didn't have any boost on the other promoted episode, and so be it. So we had some good stuff
Speaker:here, though. Our friend Borson Glaber from Germany sent in 99 cents. I think it's actually
Speaker:taking out the service that I've used. I've mentioned this before.
Speaker:Satoshi Stream. They handle basically my Lightning node. And there's a fee for that. I think it's
Speaker:1%. And so I think actually you could round all these up. I think he actually sent in 100
Speaker:sats, which not to get off track, but I realized this week I have an old computer sitting around.
Speaker:I've had for a number of years. I'd actually forgotten about. And it will run Umbral,
Speaker:which I can use to run a Lightning node and a Bitcoin node. I actually plan on running both.
Speaker:So ultimately, I think I want to move back to my own self-hosted Lightning node instead of doing it
Speaker:with Voltage, who I did it with before. And it was costing me $20 a month, which I don't make $20 a
Speaker:month off this podcast. So it was just money coming out of my pocket. So that didn't make a
Speaker:whole lot of sense. But I can plug this in on my home network and it works. So I think in the next
Speaker:month or two, I'm going to be doing that. And I'll keep you all up to date on that. And of course,
Speaker:that might make this accounting a little easier. So whether it was 99 sats, my friend, or 100 sats,
Speaker:I do appreciate it. And it's interesting. So he's from Germany. And I was actually talking
Speaker:to a really good friend of mine today. And they just recently went to Germany on their wedding
Speaker:anniversary. And we were talking about that a little bit. And he didn't really notice
Speaker:that things were like, how can I put it? Like things were much different over there. He said
Speaker:gas was high. Of course, it's like $8 a gallon US. But he said like food was fairly reasonable
Speaker:and the way that they traveled, I think like their accommodations were points or whatever.
Speaker:So he didn't probably translate that into dollars. But I did, as we were discussing this,
Speaker:I was thinking about that because it really wasn't what I expected to be honest.
Speaker:But then I got to thinking about it as a US citizen, as somebody who's using US dollars,
Speaker:he's using a Visa card or whatever. And so he's using essentially US dollars to buy German
Speaker:product, which means that we're getting the benefit of the US dollar being so much stronger
Speaker:versus I guess the euro. Okay. Both the euro and the pound, the British money are down
Speaker:significantly against the US dollar. It's a really good time for people from the US to travel to
Speaker:Europe. But that's, I think in large part why he wasn't seeing kind of the effects of this.
Speaker:Now we know I've talked about this, the things that are going on, inflation. We've got companies
Speaker:shutting down because they can't deal with the energy costs and all of this kind of stuff.
Speaker:So I do, Borset Gelber, I really do want to get you on the podcast and we got to figure that out
Speaker:soon, maybe before the end of the year. But he sent this message as well. Sorry,
Speaker:I just went off on a complete tangent. I apologize. But he sent this note as well. He said,
Speaker:agree with you that Bitcoin is the safest bet within crypto, but I feel better to diversify.
Speaker:My top holdings are Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Hive. So that's what he's chosen to invest in.
Speaker:We've talked about all three of those. Of course, I have no problem per se with people. You can
Speaker:invest in whatever you want, first of all. And one thing to account, I have a suspicion.
Speaker:I'm going completely out on a limb here, but I'm probably older than he is.
Speaker:And that's just a statement. I have chronological age. And as we get older,
Speaker:we tend to get more conservative, if that makes sense. The time for me making risk in crypto
Speaker:about crazy things, so to speak, would have been a long time ago. We're not here to discuss my age,
Speaker:but I'm closer to retirement than starting my career. And so that's part of it. I certainly
Speaker:get that. Do I think that ETH might outperform Bitcoin during the next bull run? It could.
Speaker:And like I told you all last week, my plan is to hold on to the ETH for now, unless things change,
Speaker:and these are always subject to change. But I will sell it at the top of the next bull run,
Speaker:directly into dollars or Bitcoin. I may do it in dollars and then wait until the bottom or close
Speaker:to the bottom of the next market. So there you go. It's all good. 99 Sats from Sells and Things.
Speaker:Appreciate that very much. And actually, the rest of these did not have messages. So
Speaker:990 Sats. So probably a thousand Sats from Ginny Jams. Thank you, Ginny. I appreciate that.
Speaker:99 Sats from Gerard 13. Thank you very much. And 99 Sats from Old Shark. Now I don't normally do
Speaker:streaming supporters, which we do get others who stream, but typically their support, you know,
Speaker:one, three, 10, a few that are even higher. I know Kyron at Marimorals these days, he's streaming at
Speaker:16, which of course I really appreciate. But anyways, they just tend to be lower amounts,
Speaker:but two of them caught my eye and I hope these were not a mistake. I'm going to assume they're
Speaker:not, but I guess if they really were, you could reach out to me and we can figure something out.
Speaker:Defunct Mode did streaming and it was 1,782. So I don't know what that works out to. It might be
Speaker:1,800 and then 99 Sats. So probably a hundred. And so I really appreciate that. That actually makes
Speaker:them the highest for this week. So really cool. And that's it. So we will move on. And so now we've
Speaker:got the news. I'm going to go through. I've got a lot of Twitter stuff. I've got a few direct news
Speaker:items, but I have a lot of stuff on my Twitter. If you guys aren't following me on Twitter,
Speaker:it's McIntoshFintech at Twitter. And then I'm also a Mastodon. That is in the show note. You
Speaker:can follow me on either of those. I actually tend to post the news stuff on Twitter. I would love
Speaker:to say I posted everything on both platforms. I don't. I post when the new podcast episodes
Speaker:come out and then sometimes about other things on Mastodon. The reality is, to be honest,
Speaker:I really like Mastodon better, but the people are on Twitter. So I kind of have to go where the
Speaker:people are to an extent. Amazon fires 10,000 employees according to the New York Times.
Speaker:And so the layoffs continue. I do believe this will go right into next year. I don't
Speaker:think it's going to continue. Large companies who have spent a significant amount of money,
Speaker:maybe buying other companies and bringing people onto the payroll as their profit margins drop
Speaker:and this kind of thing, they're looking for ways to cut costs. And if there's redundancy in terms
Speaker:of headcount and this kind of thing, this stuff can be very attractive to a company. Now,
Speaker:unfortunately, of course, we're affecting 10,000 employees. I actually know several people who
Speaker:work at Amazon. An old manager of mine, from the job that I'm still at, she left and went to
Speaker:one other job and then she went to Amazon. So she's actually there as far as I know she's fine, but
Speaker:this stuff is tough. And of course, I just taught recently about how my own company that I work for
Speaker:has been going through this in terms of layoffs. And of course, as I said, I didn't get laid off,
Speaker:but it has impacted our team directly. So the people who are left behind, they granted yes,
Speaker:we still have a paycheck, which is obviously important, but typically there's more work.
Speaker:So, all right. There is direct evidence that Alameda accumulate tokens prior to FTX listings.
Speaker:I've got an article right here about it. So I will be including that in the show notes.
Speaker:All right. I did just recently post about this Barry Silbert guy, who's the CEO of all these
Speaker:companies. We will see how his empire is affected. If he set his little empire up correctly, then
Speaker:it will be compartmentalized. If not, and Genesis goes under, it could cause a chain
Speaker:reaction that really could cause a widespread issue. I had a little joke tweet, so to speak.
Speaker:Twitter is hard to tell if people are joking. I probably shouldn't have done this, but the
Speaker:Binance CEO, CZ, we've talked about in relation to FTX specifically, he came out and said,
Speaker:Bitcoin is not dead. That was his tweet. I retweeted that and say, wow, I feel vindicated.
Speaker:I would point out that in all of this stuff, not a single Bitcoin company has been affected.
Speaker:Is that chance? Maybe. Is it that Bitcoin doesn't lend itself to being leveraged and
Speaker:rehypothecated and that kind of thing? Maybe. I would argue it's probably more of the second
Speaker:than the first. If Grayscale does get affected by this, if Genesis goes under and then Grayscale
Speaker:takes a fall, that is a lot of Bitcoin right there that they have invested in. That Bitcoin
Speaker:will get sold at market price at that point, essentially. It'll be released and it'll go back
Speaker:into the market and nothing will happen from it. Now, I did want to mention this. I mentioned
Speaker:earlier, Ethereum had gone down lower this week, certainly percentage-wise, than Bitcoin has. Now,
Speaker:I believe there's a reason for that. If y'all remember, as part of this FTX thing,
Speaker:it's like a soap opera and I do apologize. I don't want to turn this into the FTX show.
Speaker:There was a hacker. Well, I told y'all, I feel like it was an inside job because it was so quick
Speaker:and I'm quite sure that is the case. I guess, technically, they still don't know. By the way,
Speaker:SBF is still running around, not in custody, which I find a travesty, but okay. This hacker
Speaker:earlier today started moving money out of the wallet where he or she had accumulated it and
Speaker:selling wrapped Bitcoin, wait, now I'm going to have to find the tweets. It was wrapped ETH,
Speaker:I think. That would have been backed by Ethereum. That was dropping. Yeah, he's selling off. He's
Speaker:got like 600,000. I apologize. I keep saying he. I don't really know. But regardless, they keep
Speaker:selling off the asset and there's something like 600,000 ETH. They're actually like the third
Speaker:largest ETH holder because of this. So, that is depressing the price and I think there's a
Speaker:direct correlation between that. All right, moving on anyways, because I really don't want to turn
Speaker:this into a show about FTX. All right. So, I retweeted. You guys remember I talked about the
Speaker:colonialism, Africa, French colonialism and how they're still manipulating the currency down
Speaker:there. Great article in Bitcoin Magazine about that. Turns out in Brazil, the Supreme Court has
Speaker:ordered the freezing of 43 bank accounts owned by people and companies accused of anti-democratic
Speaker:behavior. Now, that's what I know. That's the tweet. There's an article, but it's very clear
Speaker:the Supreme Court did block 43 bank accounts belonging to individuals who apparently were not
Speaker:friendly to the government. Now, I don't know anything about Brazil other than where it is and
Speaker:a few general facts, but that seems very unfair to me. And yet another reason to keep Bitcoin.
Speaker:All right. 12 words. Don't have to put your money in a bank account. All right. So, by the way,
Speaker:I kind of retweeted this. This was about value for value. I did want to bring this up though,
Speaker:and we're going to wrap things up here in just a minute. So, somebody called Kobe who I have
Speaker:never heard of, but apparently they're famous, whatever. I'm sure I could date them. I'm not
Speaker:sure. Apparently they're famous, whatever. I'm sure I can dig into them and find out they're
Speaker:crypto famous or whatever. They said, we got paid around 70K from FTX this year. So, this is in
Speaker:sponsorship. Okay. This is advertising. Our costs are slightly below the average cost for an
Speaker:advertisement on a crypto podcast. I believe Bankless charges ballpark of 250K per month for
Speaker:anything, for example, but they make a lot more content than us. So, this is coming up because
Speaker:Bankless was sponsored by FTX. And so, these people are shedding some light on that. Apparently they
Speaker:were getting paid 70K in the course of a year because they did a lot less content, but they
Speaker:were apparently big enough. They were being sponsored by FTX. Now, I promise you FTX hasn't
Speaker:been knocking on my door saying, well, I'll sponsor you. Now they can't, but if they had been,
Speaker:do y'all know what I would have said? I hope you know what I would have said. No. Right? This is
Speaker:why we do value for value because when these things come along, in my mind, at this point,
Speaker:Bankless, and I do listen to them occasionally, but they have no credibility. They don't. They
Speaker:just don't. This is why I use value for value. And we will get to that at the end of the show,
Speaker:but of course, value for value is about if you find the content valuable, what do you do? You
Speaker:support the show because if you don't, eventually the show won't be here. That's just the way that
Speaker:it works because I spend a lot of time preparing this stuff, getting it ready, putting it out there.
Speaker:So, the money that's getting paid by these sponsors and advertising is going to influence
Speaker:what I say. And it's going to be either explicitly because for example, in some of these contracts,
Speaker:they will say, in fact, it's quite typical. You can't say anything bad about us or implicitly.
Speaker:In other words, they're my sponsor. Maybe I shouldn't even bring that up because I don't want
Speaker:to get in trouble. 134 firms affiliated with FTX are filing for bankruptcy. Yikes! I'll skip that one.
Speaker:Daniel Prince, who does a podcast once bitten, I think, it's a pretty decent podcast, said this,
Speaker:if you had a Bitcoin DCA plan in place over the last year, your stack has been steadily increasing
Speaker:with zero anxiety. And this is exactly what I preach. This is why I retweeted this. Oh,
Speaker:right before that, he said Bitcoin is down 71% over a one-year period. One year ago, Bitcoin was
Speaker:71% higher. That's a fact. It was roughly $69,000. And now it's $16,144. Today, that weekly buy gets
Speaker:you 71% more Bitcoin for the same amount of fiat US dollars or whatever your euro or whatever.
Speaker:Keep your foot in, hodl on tight. I don't know exactly what he means by the first part.
Speaker:Hodl, of course, is a reference to don't sell, hold. If you're having trouble with Bitcoin in
Speaker:particular, and I'm only going to speak about Bitcoin in this case, falling so dramatically,
Speaker:flip the script, think about it this way. If you know long-term Bitcoin is going to go up,
Speaker:this is simply a buying opportunity. Done. You see how that works? Turn it upside down.
Speaker:You can buy more, 71% more. I think that's actually the way that works. I'm not sure.
Speaker:I do know if I buy Bitcoin right now for say $100, I get more than I would have one year ago.
Speaker:And that's what's important, the sats that are flowing into your Bitcoin wallet.
Speaker:Sam Bankman Fried's lawyer, Paul Weiss, has dropped him as a client. And I said,
Speaker:so lawyers finally found someone they won't represent. I'm stunned. So I apologize to
Speaker:the lawyer friends there, but I just thought that was funny. I also tweeted,
Speaker:I don't want to get into international politics. I'm going to just a tiny bit here, but the new,
Speaker:I think prime minister, I don't know, the head of Italy,
Speaker:Maloney, I think, Melanie? Melanie, I guess. Melanie is her name, M-E-L-O-N-I. She's not
Speaker:afraid to call things out. You may agree or disagree with her or whatever, and I don't
Speaker:live in Italy. I do not have a dog in that hunt. But she was talking about the French. Now maybe
Speaker:she just doesn't like France, but she was talking about the CFA Frank. And it was fascinating
Speaker:because it's the exact kind of stuff I was talking about earlier. And I'll end with this. I had some
Speaker:tweets. I'm old enough, to be honest, to remember when there was actual journalism,
Speaker:at least in a vague sense. I'm old enough. I was a baby when Nixon resigned. I certainly do not
Speaker:remember it. But what brought Nixon down, for example, was journalism. And what I see today
Speaker:from the left and the right, frankly, is seriously very sad. The Washington Post.
Speaker:So, FTX falls apart, declares bankruptcy, blah, blah, blah. There's clearly, if you take 10
Speaker:minutes to do research, all kinds of evidence that this was a huge mess and it was all self-caused,
Speaker:self-caused, and very likely there was a lot of downright illegal things going on.
Speaker:And here's the Washington Post article, which is still up, by the way. It was written on 1116,
Speaker:so four days ago. Before FTX collapsed, Founder poured millions into pandemic prevention. Now,
Speaker:I want to separate these two things. First of all, this is not about the pandemic,
Speaker:coronavirus. This is about Sam Bankman Freeds. Why is the Washington Post caring what he did
Speaker:before all of this came apart? Because the dude is going to cause misery in a lot of lives,
Speaker:directly, financially, creating insolvency in companies, creating people losing their money.
Speaker:Why is that not being talked about? And I saw this kind of stuff several times. And the one
Speaker:that was the most disgusting, quite frankly, was about the CEO, Caroline, I always want to say
Speaker:Caroline. Caroline, I think, sorry, I do not remember her last name. I apologize. But the
Speaker:CEO of Alameda. And this company, one of these journalistic endeavors, if that's what you want
Speaker:to call it. Oh, by the way, the Washington Post byline, democracy dies in darkness. Hello. Why
Speaker:don't you talk about the actual problem here? But anyways, that was kind of funny.
Speaker:They were talking about how she has become the bell of the alt-right. Now,
Speaker:most of the listeners probably know what I mean when I say alt-right, but it's like the very
Speaker:fringe, far-right people here in the United States. Now, I don't have any evidence, I've not seen
Speaker:anything to think that that was true. And given her history and what she did at this travesty
Speaker:of a trading company, I have no idea why they would say that other than to smear the alt-right
Speaker:or by association, the right leaning people. So you see how that's done.
Speaker:And it's just, I just wish these people would actually do their job
Speaker:and investigate. Just crazy thoughts. I don't know. I don't know. Okay.
Speaker:Oh, and last, I do need to cover this. I apologize. It's getting a little long,
Speaker:but this is the last one. The president of the United States, because of FTX,
Speaker:has now come out saying he's going to push for stricter international crypto regulation.
Speaker:I hope it's just international. Now, I don't think they have any control over international crypto,
Speaker:but whatever. This FTX, by the way, FTX.com, which was the first one to fall and should have
Speaker:been the only one to fall in that case, actually was headquartered in the Bahamas. So it was
Speaker:overseas, so to speak. And it was there for a reason. It was to keep the regulators out.
Speaker:While Sam was in Washington schmoozing those very regulators, by the way.
Speaker:There will be a book, there will probably be a movie about this at some point. It's crazy.
Speaker:All right. So that wraps it up. So as I mentioned earlier, the Generational Wealth
Speaker:with Cryptocurrency podcast is a value for value podcast. We support podcasting 2.0.
Speaker:We don't have sponsors for the very reasons that I just gave you earlier. And we don't have
Speaker:advertising. You can, however, support this podcast in three different ways, with time,
Speaker:with talent, and with treasure. If you don't have the treasure that you can directly support me,
Speaker:then there's lots of things I need done. I'm struggling to deal with, and I would love to
Speaker:get done and move on to other things so that I can continue to grow the podcast in the sense of
Speaker:what we're providing. And so you can just reach out to me if you've got computer skills or just
Speaker:something you think you could offer. If you do have some treasure, on the other hand,
Speaker:and you find this podcast valuable, I would love it if you would support it. How do you do that?
Speaker:Well, I don't do PayPal anymore. The only direct way at this point to support the show is by using
Speaker:a podcasting 2.0 app. So this is a new generation of podcasting apps. We're adding a lot of features
Speaker:to them like chapters, transcripts, and also streaming Sats. So you can basically have a
Speaker:little wallet of Satoshi's, and it can be a very minimal amount. We're pretty much talking about
Speaker:a few dollars, not hundreds certainly of dollars. And you can support a podcast simply by when
Speaker:you're listening to it, you stream Sats to it. So if you choose to support this even, say,
Speaker:one Sat a minute, that means every minute as you listen to it, it's going to send out one Satoshi,
Speaker:which is one 100 millionth of a Bitcoin. It's far less than a cent. I don't know offhand what the
Speaker:number percent is, but I want to say offhand, I should look it up. So 6,000 Sats is a dollar, 97
Speaker:cents right now. So obviously, if you're streaming one Sat a minute and a show is 60 minutes, which
Speaker:will be roughly what this one ends up to be, that's 60 Sats, nothing. But you're showing your
Speaker:support. And if enough listeners do that, it does help. And some people stream more than a Sat per
Speaker:minute. They just do, or they boost, which is simply a way to send kind of a one-time thing.
Speaker:And you can send a message with it as well. I read some of those out, or I read all of them out
Speaker:earlier, actually. So you heard that and you can get your name on the show. You can send me a
Speaker:message that way. It's a great way to interact with the audience and create great connection.
Speaker:So if you don't have a podcasting 2.0 app, you can go to newpodcastapps.com
Speaker:and see a whole list of them. I use the Fountain app a lot. I also use,
Speaker:oh man, I use like three or four different ones. Let me actually just bring up new podcast apps
Speaker:rather than open up my phone. Podverse, I do use that one. And CurioCaster and Cast-O-Matic,
Speaker:those are the ones that I'm currently experimenting with. I do use a Fountain the most. I actually
Speaker:promote this podcast through Fountain. And what that means is I actually pay Fountain to,
Speaker:when somebody listens to my podcast, they actually get paid to do that. So that's pretty cool. So you
Speaker:could actually go there and if it's one of the promoted episodes, which is the latest and then
Speaker:one that I had picked a while ago, now it's been, the one on the three legs of cryptocurrency,
Speaker:and if you listen to those, then you get paid Sats. Go straight into your Fountain wallet.
Speaker:So that's really cool. A lot of innovation going on there. So anyways, you should go check that
Speaker:out if you're not now. If you like the content, I would love it if you would tell your friends
Speaker:about the GWC podcast. And as always, thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful.
Speaker:And of course, I want to hear from you. I'm on the Twitter at McIntosh Fintech. I'm on
Speaker:mastodon at macintosh at podcastindex.social. You can reach me by email at macintosh at
Speaker:genwealthcrypto.com. And of course, that's also the Generational Wealth website.
Speaker:Stay humble, friends. Go out and make it a great week. And for those of us here in the United