Bitcoin: The Institutional Takeover Has Begun

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Good thing now is Bitcoin is becoming more of an ecosystem. So it's not just investing directly in Bitcoin. There's now people can invest in MSTR strategy.

[00:00:09]They can invest in in Stretch.

[00:00:11]>> There's been a huge amount of institutional investment over the past few years. So what happens when we start to have like an institutional type of FOMO event? Because people aren't buying Bitcoin like they're buying a stock, right? They're not buying that's it's totally different animal. somewhere between now and the end of the year to retest the low we've done and create a massive double bottom, right? Even a bigger W. That would be my worst case scenario. Looking into the channel's data, I couldn't help notice that almost over 90% of you watching my videos are actually not subscribed to my channel yet. If there is one simple thing you can do to help me, subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. Your support means a lot to me.

[00:00:50]>> Hey guys, welcome back to another show, Bitcoin Uncharted. Smitty, how you doing today? We missed you last week, buddy.

[00:00:56]>> I'm good. Thanks for having me back.

[00:00:57]Always good. And uh excited to see you guys in in person in week and a half or something.

[00:01:02]>> See, how you doing today?

[00:01:03]>> Yeah, doing well. Got my flight finally booked and yeah, excited here. I mean, it's it's countdown is yeah, basically two weeks or a little bit more. But uh yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing everyone. Hopefully uh lots of you guys are going to come out and yeah, it would be great to see people, meet people, hang out, have a good time. So yeah, pumped for the conference, that's for sure.

[00:01:22]>> Yeah. Likewise, we have our panel which is on the first day opening in the main stage. Plus, you guys have individual presentations. So, looking forward to seeing you guys and hit the gym together like we were saying. So, overall really, really happy this is happening. Looking forward to that. And by the way, guys, as always, remember to go and follow Smitty. His YouTube channel is incredible. You have a video coming out tomorrow.

[00:01:43]>> Yeah, should be. Yep. If today is going to be Wednesday, so Yep, that's right.

[00:01:48]This to me is one of the most simple like if you're going to put any value in TA this to me is at least something worth it's a it's noteworthy at least because this is weekly right weekly closes so it's not like the the daily squiggles up and down the smaller moves.

[00:02:03]So it's at least weekly closes and this is going back to the support we put in or the bounce we put in at the beginning of 2025 right cuz that was if you know for people that remember it feels like a lifetime ago now. I mean, we shot up. We had such a big move after the um the election stuff and then we shot up to first time we went over 100,000 and then there was a pretty significant correction at the beginning of last year where we went down to that 74 and a half. We had a pretty big wick down there. But that level we got a significant bounce from and then we went up to, you know, 126. So for me, we got above this level, right? We had this move, this run up to 83 over the last couple weeks and then the pullback now, are we going to hold this level? are we is this is this something we're going to bounce at? And so 74 and a half to about 76. That's really the support range you could say from the beginning of last year that that major correction we had.

[00:02:53]So I'm not sure to what degree this is, you know, crazy support, strong support, but it's something at least uh if you look at the chart there, it's it's a higher time frame support. And um yeah, I mean it's it's a noteworthy level, I would say. I mean it's TA again, so it's it's a little bit of astrology, but >> I think it's support. It's too soon to say if it's strong support. I mean, we're talking about like these are like weekly candles basically, I think.

[00:03:16]Right. This is actually kind of a as boring as this week is, it's sort of like a really important week to see if that continues, if we bounce back off it. I do think this little this little tiny shoulder formation that we're sitting on right now. Yeah, this is the bull market support band, right? This is I was looking at exactly this over the past couple of other Bitcoin cycles to look at the the bare market downtrends.

[00:03:36]I you really don't see these little sorts of footholds that it's sitting on right now. So, it's either going to be uh pretty extemporaneous. We're going to fall through. I think we'll find out sooner than later is kind of my take.

[00:03:48]So, just another way to to to reiterate I think what you said, Lancing.

[00:03:53]>> Well, I think I think that adds to how important this level is. During these extended bare markets, we don't really get above the short-term holder cost basis and stay above it. We don't we don't we've never seen during an extended bare market a retaking of the short-term older cost basis and then have it be sustained. And I said I just picked the number. I'm like sustained to me is like okay let's see 30 days above it right as a number. We got 13 days above the short-term cost base and we lost it. We went below it. But we didn't go that far below it. But the thing that we have been able to stay above is this bull market support band. So and in a similar fashion it sounds like you said this. Yeah, I was going to say maybe if you don't mind, Marica, while you're going there, could you slide back to the 2020 2021 cycle?

[00:04:32]>> Yeah. Have we really had sustained retaking of the short-term hold or sorry, the bull market support band? We never did during the last bare market.

[00:04:39]>> I guess we do have technically after that second peak if you zoom in on the way down. So, you're looking down closer uh towards the bottom there.

[00:04:46]>> Huge dump, but we we we got rejected though.

[00:04:48]>> Yeah, that's exactly what I was looking at. I think it is different >> because I mean the bull market support band and the short-term cost basis, they're pretty much the same levels.

[00:04:55]There's there's they're not that different. Just being able to stay above the bull market support band and and and hold that in a sustained way. I think it's actually significant.

[00:05:03]>> But it looks like we sort of need to hold it for a good 2 to 3 weeks.

[00:05:07]>> If we can stay above it for a couple weeks, to me that's noteworthy. And that's that'd be pretty pretty positive and that would give me a little bit.

[00:05:14]Yeah, it would be a it' be kind of some confidence as far as okay, we really are doing something different. What's the lowest level on the band right now?

[00:05:22]>> 744. If we do fail this, the unfortunate thing is that it looks like we might be then retesting 60 56 actually something like that.

[00:05:31]>> The W played out. So double bottom there. Speaking about this wonderful bull market support band. You can see we clearly lost it. Then we kind of failed to go over. We got rejected massively, but we could indeed bounce off from here. There's a lot of maybe and nobody knows. Honestly, I can't imagine a scenario where we do a massive downfall.

[00:05:52]If anything, the worst case scenario could be somewhere between now and the end of the year to retest the low we've done and create a massive double bottom, right? Even a bigger W. That would be my worst case scenario. Honestly, >> point to a Bitcoin summer then is what you're saying.

[00:06:09]>> Exactly. I mean, it could also be boring for a few months, right? And nothing happens and I think the market will fool both bulls and bears, which sound about correct. But one thing we can all agree, the impossible bare flag, it's clearly expired. This is more like a channel. If anything, I would imagine everyone would agree that this cannot be another bare flag. As soon as we form this bare flag that we have another one here, even bigger one, which I I discount entirely.

[00:06:37]>> How many weeks have we been above the bullmark support band? It looks like it's already been about four weeks. Is that correct? This is actually 6 weeks above it. This is interesting because I'm not sure we've ever had 6 weeks above the bullmark support band during an extended bare market. This is probably a first.

[00:06:52]>> Totally depends on if you're Sagittarius or Virgo. But if if you look inside the ribbon, it's it kind of forms this ribbon like the band. You could Do you count those as well? Is that what you're >> That's the crazy thing about TA is like there's so much interpretation. I guess the simplest way to look at it is the last time we got hard rejected. The last uh bare flag we got hard rejected.

[00:07:11]>> This is why people argue over an X. you find what you want in data, right? I mean, Benjamin Coin, which has been friend of the channel, friend of mine personally came on the show multiple times. He clearly has a different view and we've seen some ping pong with him.

[00:07:25]It's basically saying, well, the four-year cycle so far is playing out exactly as it was. Most likely we could bottom at the end of the year again in October. Whether checkmate says, well, I have a different view. They've gone back and forth very politely, I must say. So, really happy to see this. Many of my friends in my network actually are expecting Bitcoin to bottom in October.

[00:07:44]Important to highlight that nobody knows what will happen, but if I had to gamble something, I would say that is very unlikely, like I said, that we are going to see $30,000 Bitcoin.

[00:07:54]>> Two class acts there, right, that we Ben is able to both express an opinion that he has and his conviction as well as displaying open-mindedness and a peaceful exchange there. Two, uh, I think this is a class act. to I'm sorry.

[00:08:09]This is a master class of a respectful back and forth and just shows you the the widespread opinion the the cavern uh between where the opinions lie between some of the top experts, top analysts.

[00:08:22]So really interesting to see.

[00:08:23]>> I respect both their analysis, but Checkmate um I really like what Checkmate does. I think he's one of the best out there. I mean he especially with onchain, I think he is the best and he's looking at he's looking at a lot of onchain data, right? He has access to a lot of of of great charts, a lot of great um he's created a lot of metrics himself. So, as far as onchain data goes, I mean, he's really probably the deepest in the weeds of onchain, just his position just being who he is in the space. He also does h deal with a lot of um high net worth as well. So, he he does have his pulse. He does have a a good pulse on what's going on. He's definitely not married to any sort of um past pattern. Like that's the biggest difference here is I would say checkmate really looks at things in a dynamic way where he looks at every cycle very individually. I don't see him often pointing to these patterns, historic kind of patterns. More so he's looking at what's happening on chain. What are the indications? What what's what's different this time? So so yeah, from a from that standpoint I put more weight in what Checkmate has to say simply because he treats every cycle individual. He's more dynamic in his his analysis. Now Ben obviously he's looking more at these historic patterns but at the same time he is open to things being different. So it's just different different perspectives different lenses both have value.

[00:09:40]>> I've never spoken to checkmate and I will actually as soon as we finish recording the show I will invite them both for a debate on my show and maybe they'll accept. There is one important distinction between the two of them.

[00:09:50]Benjamin is not just into Bitcoin. He's into commodities. I mean he talks about the market S&P trades. He was trading metals and energy whether I think Checkmate is a different type of investor. So I think they have a different strategy.

[00:10:05]>> Checkmate is from I've followed him for years like Checkmate is he's a huge Bitcoin bull. My understanding is he's a pretty hardcore Bitcoiner you could say and he's but he's also just laser focused on Bitcoin. Like all his analysis is focused on Bitcoin. I mean he does he does some other things but it's like 90% Bitcoin, right? where as you said Ben is spreads himself out a little bit more over altcoins and stuff whereas Checkmate is just Bitcoin Bitcoin data like that is his focus.

[00:10:31]>> I'm sure that is going to impact how they see the asset. Definitely interesting. I actually respect them both and I actually love when like like you said smitty when this happens it's kind of amazing because lately people are not as polite.

[00:10:44]>> It doesn't have to be that way. I mean it can absolutely be this way. It's just people have generally speaking people have big egos and and well social media amplifies everything. So yeah, to to remain grounded and and take your ego out of it and have a good exchange. I mean, that's the ideal and it's great to see that. Uh, one thing Ben brings up, I think it's an interesting point is the S&P, right? And and just stocks in general. So the stocks stocks are are put, you know, doing very well. How do you think Bitcoin does in a scenario where the stock market does take a bit of a down dump, right? If if the stock market does go down a sign, like a decent percentage, any predictions on how Bitcoin would do because that's something that Ben brought up um in the interview. you you guys did Mauricio as far as one of his kind of concerns is that S&P is running, stocks are running, and Bitcoin's not not really doing that much right now. So, if it reverses, is that something I guess we'd have to look at the correlation as of recent? How correlated are they?

[00:11:38]>> If the S&P is running and Bitcoin is running, I would assume that if the S&P crashes, Bitcoin crashes. How can you say if the S&P is running and Bitcoin is not running, how would you assume that if the S&P crashes, Bitcoin crashes? The S&P has gone to the all-time high not long ago, multiple times, and Bitcoin is just chilling. So why all of a sudden we are assuming if the S&P crashes, Bitcoin is going to crash?

[00:12:00]>> It's just interesting. It seems like Bitcoin really does seem to be kind of doing its own thing. I mean, it didn't follow the gold and and silver run. It's it's kind of not following this run with the with the stock market. It just seems like it's going through its own process and doing its completely own thing at this point. I'd love to look into the correlation data over the last, you know, couple months, last year, and see on some of these. That's something we haven't really done enough.

[00:12:22]>> I I need to I haven't looked as much into the stock market recently. I was making looking into that somewhat last year. More with gold. I know that there's been a decoupling a dis sort of a disconnection from gold more so over the past couple months, which I think is again is positive sign. Yeah. As far as the S&P, I know there's been correlation with the S&P 500, but yeah, I I think the problem right now is that we're in a very different era with the S&P 500 today than we were 5 years ago. The big reason is that AI is carrying the majority of of those profits. Like it's super concentrated in AI stocks. So the Nvidas, the the Teslas, the things are changing. I guess that's all to say that things are changing within what's driving the S&P price right now as well.

[00:13:05]So like you said that Bitcoin its behavior is kind of doing its own thing right now. So I yeah, it would be worth I think retaking a look at that um again. But I see no reason kind of like what Mauricio was saying. I think I see no reason why if we were to have a market correction in the stock market, but Bitcoin I think fundamentally is a people look at it as a safe it's kind of a flight to safety, right? And I think it they they get into and then there's a narrative around that that starts to build when you have the re we've had retail FOMO in the past. Clearly the retail FOMO effect is going to be sort of diminishing over time. There's been a huge amount of institutional investment over the past few years. So what happens when we start to have like an institutional type of FOMO event because people aren't buying Bitcoin like they're buying a stock, right? They're not buying that's it's totally different animal. I it seems to me like a lot of businesses and institutions are using it as a hedge and allocating towards it kind of slowly and incrementally over the past few years. And it seems like that's more how it's working. And so what you could have is a huge creditbased hurting effect, right? When if you start to have a market correction out of S&P 500, I I almost think in a lot of ways we might see there's a strong argument to made be made we would see the opposite and see it actually pump Bitcoin. You've got capital fleeing from S&P 500 and at the same time you've you've got this narrative around Bitcoin that it's you know all the institutions have sort of adopted it over the past few years. They're treating that as essentially like the new gold. Yeah, I don't know. That's the way I don't think that they necessarily have to be correlated. I guess >> you make multiple good points, Rston.

[00:14:43]Like, okay, so one is Yeah, the assumption that that Bitcoin would have to move down, right, just because the stocks are go just because the stock market's going down. That's not the right assumption to make. I think I think there's definitely there's multiple scenarios where it plays out differently. And we've even seen that before like when um if you guys remember some of those banks were collapsing.

[00:15:01]There was a a few banks uh during the last cycle bare market uh during dur close to the low. We had a couple banks go under and Bitcoin actually rallied uh when that was happening which was kind of which was an interesting thing. To what degree do we think there's likely to be a major correction in in AI? I mean that's hard to predict. As Bitcoin went through its adoption curve, right?

[00:15:18]If we look at Bitcoin on the really high time frames and we say okay over the long term we've seen this adoption curve playing out. It's like it's like a phase multiple phases, right? And initially we went through multiple phases of retail FOMO. So we we kind of went through the retail FOMO phase. I really think we're on the precipice of going through the initial phases of institutional FOMO.

[00:15:41]So, we we we did the retail version and I think now we're going to do the institutional version and I think we're in this almost in this lull state between the two where we kind of have have we kind of had our our retail FOMO cycle and we haven't yet quite fully started the institutional. And so there's a bit of um you know between the two where it's like okay this is somewhat of a tough period for Bitcoin to get through in some ways because you know there's still high net worth that you could almost put them more of an institutional bucket but I'm talking like retail that doesn't have as much capital for them they're looking at and they're saying oh man I don't know Bitcoin am I too late you know the sort of idea of being too late okay you know Bitcoin can go to a million but I mean that's still only a whatever 10x or something these people that want these really high numbers right these really high returns turns. Bitcoin is becoming less and less for them if they don't have a decent amount of capital to put into Bitcoin, right? This is on a kind of another topic somewhat, but I do think that institutional FOMO to wrap it up, that institutional FOMO uh cycle or phase, that's really what's micro strategy is in some ways one of the ba major catalysts for because they're kind of showing like all these things that your business can use Bitcoin for.

[00:16:49]Different products, different different ways you can plug into the Bitcoin network. But we're going to see this across so many different companies, right? utilizing Bitcoin in various ways and then just like you said allocating capital and hedging bets. There's so many there's so many use cases. This is a this is the phase that's going to get us to a million get us to 10 million.

[00:17:08]It's the institutional foromo phase because retail is not going to get us to 10 million.

[00:17:11]>> Retail is going to lose money. Retail is the one who buys the top right and they sell the bottom. That's how market operates. like the market is going to punish the majority of the partic I'm sorry to say it but that's why it's called dumb money so I cannot see a scenario where retail gets it right they are going to get punished massively meaning in my mind they're going to join when the price is going to be way overrun the average Joe is going to join in when they'll see Bitcoin pumping in the news they're not going to buy the bottom or they're not going to buy now they're not they're not even interested in Bitcoin so institution now are playing I don't want to say a trap because that that's used in a wrong way, but I think they are preparing the stage.

[00:17:53]>> But of course, retail does FOMO in at some point, but it's like you said, Mauricio, it's more likely near the top.

[00:17:58]So, they're not necessarily the main catalyst. They're shifting more to endstage cycle amplification, you could say. So, even if we have retail or sorry, institutional mainly driven FOMO cycles for the next few cycles, retail will still play a role. It'll just be a diminishing role. And um yeah and again retail it's it's like you use that phrase there's retail is a huge range a huge spectrum you know you have smart investors that are here for the long term that have more capital like I said they're almost in some ways many institutions there there will be anytime Bitcoin does a big move you're going to get some retail jumping in >> whether in the beginning when this thing was costing a couple of thousand bucks many more people were interested hence why you know the memecoin extravaganza and now maybe stretch is kind of appealing to those guys saying you You know what? I can get 11.5% a year. I have to do absolutely nothing. Okay, sign me up. Here's my money. So, I think the game is changing. And we covered it a couple of times on the show. And this is where I disagree fundamentally with Ben because even though he looks into the data, I look into the adoption and I'm like, how can this be the same when to throw an analogy, let's let's imagine we play basketball and it's just a couple of friends playing basketball and then all of a sudden the NBA shows up and I'm like, it cannot be the same game. I mean, I'm playing games.

[00:19:15]>> The game that's a good Yeah, for sure.

[00:19:17]>> You know, they're going to crash me. You can't say like, "Oh, Mauricio or um yeah, Mauricios, he's hit five threes in every single game the last three games, but the NBA players are here now, so you know, he's going to hit five threes again." What you were saying about Bitcoin being 77,000 and and that's that's a number that turns off a lot of investors. I used to be really concerned about this up until this, you know, recently. Now, the way I look at it is, okay, so the people that have higher amounts of capital to put in that want to be here for 10, 20 years or whatever, those people are the 77 is not going to phase them. The$100,000 Bitcoin dollar bitcoin is not going to phase them. But the the good thing now is Bitcoin is becoming more of an ecosystem. So there it's it's not just investing directly in Bitcoin. There's now people can invest in, you know, MSTR, you know, they can invest in like strategy, they can invest in in Stretch, uh they can invest in through ETFs. So with an ETF, they don't see the they're with an ETF and these other vehicles, they're going to see a different number on the screen. They're going to see with the ETFs, my understanding is it's not the the Bitcoin number they might see. I mean, some of them are still going to understand like, okay, I'm allocating the ETF like I'm buying $77,000 Bitcoin.

[00:20:25]But in a lot of ways, it's different because the ticker they'll see is is a smaller number. So the ETFs are somewhat solving the I guess what I'm trying to say here is the ETFs somewhat solve the unit biased effect. And then also you have other vehicles like I said MSTR that number is a three-digit number versus Bitcoin. Then you have stretch which I mean stretch is basically you're getting the yield but you're still involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem. So I think retail will continue to play a role but it might not be directly investing in Bitcoin. Maybe they help MSTR, they invest in MSTR because the narrative on MSTR could still appeal to retail where it's like, oh, Micro Strategy can still become this multi- trillion dollar company and even if it's the same idea as investing in Bitcoin to some extent. I'm not saying they're the same because obviously I believe Bitcoin is is superior, but that there's different narratives here that could have captured retail is what I'm trying to say.

[00:21:17]>> To me, the most important thing what you just said is is exactly that. The last thing you said there was the institutions are coming in and they're using this ecosystem to capture retail.

[00:21:26]I think that that that just ties such a good >> that's a you just summarized like 10 minutes of me talking like one sentence.

[00:21:31]>> You've seen you see this with all the other captured industries right with the commodities with housing. So this is a good it's you know depending how you look on at it. It's a good thing. I'm recording on Friday with Rajad Sony and Adam Livingstone about MSTR and Stretch because there is a massive difference between an ETF and strategy or stretch because whenever you purchase an ETF technically if you sell they have an obligation to sell but if you buy strategy or stretch Michael Sailor doesn't have to do anything because you don't actually own Bitcoin.

[00:22:02]>> You said stretch is uh I don't know the statistics on stretch but you were saying it's actually 80% retail. That just shows you that that retail is getting involved in Bitcoin through stretch in a in a decent way. And then also MSTR I think MSTR is something that retail so yeah maybe re and even mining companies. I mean you could say in in a lot of ways like I don't know what retail involvement is in mining companies but Bitcoin mining companies is another way that people can still get the opium of oh this small mining company can still do 100x right and again it's still within the Bitcoin ecosystem. If you hold Bitcoin mining companies, even though I wouldn't do it personally, you're still involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem. You're still driving capital in a roundabout way somewhat.

[00:22:41]You're at least helping secure the network, you could say, or something.

[00:22:44]You're somewhat involved even if it's extension of Bitcoin.

[00:22:47]>> Bitcoin is not going to get to a million dollar because we have custody into a harder wallet and we are sovereign and we go f you banks. No guys, Bitcoin is going to get to a million dollar because Sailor or Strategy I should say is going to make products for people to invest.

[00:23:01]They don't even care what is the base of it. For what we know, and this is I know it sounds controversial, but for what we know today, Sedor could be the one selling or strategy could be the one selling. What kind of deal they've done?

[00:23:13]How do they buy? We don't know squat. We just see the price in dollars because it's transparent. But we don't even have the strategy address and they will never disclose that. Why? Because they can manipulate the market. Sailor's idea using strategy as a vehicle. All the shenanigans is doing. But that's how we get adoption. Whenever you have products in the market, they're going to offer you a return or a yield that has nothing to do with you owning Bitcoin. In fact, for what is worth, maybe some of the people they're selling the Bitcoin, sorry, maybe some some people there are selling the ETFs are actually buying stretch. I don't even know if there's a cross data there. But imagine you are someone who wants more dollars and you don't care because you're investing in stock, gold, metals, energy. You have this 11.5% a year. Do you care if it's Bitcoin or not? probably no.

[00:23:59]>> Why do people buy S&P or NASDAQ, right?

[00:24:02]It's a it's it's not they're not investing in a single stock that they they want to go up multiple X's. In a lot of ways, it's just um it's that passive income and it's just that hedge against inflation and it's it's saying I need to park some money somewhere where I can feel confident I'm going to get that on average 10% return a year. I mean, it's it's a different product. I mean, there's a lot more confidence in the S&P uh not going to zero than there is that's the biggest thing. It's like, okay, I can get 11 and a half with stretch, but a lot of people are still not going to have that level of confidence that they'll have in the S&P.

[00:24:32]Now, it's guaranteed. The 11 11 and a half% is guaranteed. Although, there is a a risk uh that every person would quantify differently saying, "Okay, I think this thing could go to zero. This is my percentage probability." With the S&P, it's it you can have a bad year. I mean, it can go down obviously, right?

[00:24:48]On average, it might go up 10% or 7% or whatever. Once there's more confidence in Bitcoin that continues to add more confidence to Bitcoin, then stretch will will become a product and and things like it will become a product where it's accepted that this is an alternative.

[00:25:01]And so, yeah, it's going to take time.

[00:25:03]Right now, it's just strategy. I mean, I what I would like to see is 10 companies that are involved in in not necessarily doing exactly what strategy is doing, but doing something that is growing the ecosystem of Bitcoin in a similar fashion in different sectors. Right? So we see kind of this um this adoption curve starting with uh with yield products related to Bitcoin and and strategy kind of being the pioneers of that you could say in some ways >> I think once the monetary conditions be start to become looser again like you know once once some of these impediments you know the credit spread interest rates fet you know all this stuff geopolitics ter whatever once things start to really loosen up for institutions specifically to start being able to get cheaper debt again which is the really the key to unlocking massive investment outside of just right now the the thing is it's so concentrated because the big shiny object right now is AI but I think we're going to see a lot more institutional because we all agree right now a lot of this is being dri like this is increasingly becoming dominated by institutions and less by retail and so we need that so the big question is like why haven't we seen them kind of what happened to this 1% 5% allocation to you know treasury funds for for the different institutions I think it is coming but they're dumb and I think that they need the good they need the cheap credit to be able to do that and I think that that's what we're my prediction is what I'm expecting is that's sort of what's around the corner this time I think >> yeah also regulation right like the clarity act is going to >> and regulation yes >> yeah I mean institutions I mean if you are degenerate gambler into a basement you don't care if you want to gamble money or I should say fiat currencies to purchase assets but if you are a big corporation or a treasury company or someone like a big entity with lots of money you want regulations to be in favor and we haven't even seen in half of what we're going to see. Let's see on July 4th if the Clarity Act passes. I think regulations and like you said and cheaper credits are going to supercharge the whole next move. And by the way, you can be casserin. You can just buy your own Bitcoin, stack it in your own wallet and just be all embracing self-custody.

[00:27:03]That's your best defense.

[00:27:05]>> Yeah, that's always what I would recommend. But the the the real harsh reality I think is that it's not that process is not set up for the average the average person will not there's technical barriers. It's it's really there's a lot of you still have to you know set up some kind of network that of trust whether it's through an institution or like it's it's not yeah I think if we're really realistic about that it's not for the average Joe so >> maybe I'll do some dive deep into the topic but I would love to know how many people actually own physical gold in percentage gold is even easier to obtain you go into a shop you buy it as long as you know or you trust where you're buying it from but I wonder how many are holding physical gold versus >> I think it's a small percentage it's With Bitcoin, it's going to be very similar. I think we'll see. It's going to be worse. Yeah, it's probably worse.

[00:27:49]Like you said, it's probably worse. It It's more difficult than going to buy gold and and storing gold. Yeah, you're pro probably correct on that. It'll be interesting to see over the over the longer time frames how it plays out. The Clarity Act, it'll be interesting because if it does pass mid year here, I think this will shift a lot of people.

[00:28:04]Like I don't know what to what degree, but I think it's a significant event where the sooner the this passes, I think the more people will say, "Okay, I think the bottom is in." because I think this is significant enough even if there's initial sell the news and and we crash a little bit. I do think it's a major milestone when this when this passes. And the other thing is also the US uh with the reserves, right? That's something that's also in play. I don't know if it's going to happen this year or what. I haven't followed that as closely once the Clary act is passed because it's going to happen at some point. And then you have um the US actually have its reserves. I mean that takes a lot of the risk off for institutions. they can say okay regulation-wise we have this clarity act and then now we're investing something we're investing in something that the US itself has a treasury like the US itself has a reserve for this asset like that really removes a lot of the risk for these major players because they can point to the US and say look you know they're allocating to it or they they've have a reserve of this you know that that's a huge legitimate legitimizing effect >> I think is you said it best I think they're understated I think that they're going to make a difference >> that could be indeed the change to the four year cycles we are all waiting for.

[00:29:09]Even though some people are saying, well, Bitcoin topped when it always topped, but what if it's not bottoming where it's always bottoming? So, doesn't mean the four-ear cycle is over because you can play so many different cards.

[00:29:21]So, that's why I would like to see an alltime high in 2026 because that will kill everything. If we would go to a new alltime high in 2026, there is no soul who could say the four-year cycle exists and maybe through summer we could see a different cycle play out. Again, none of these matter because my strategy is always the same or my plan I should say.

[00:29:42]I don't buy because of something or sell because of something. But I'm not going to lie, it will make me super happy to see this fouryear cycle being broken.

[00:29:50]Either way, we're going to be here monitoring.

[00:29:52]>> We're all on the same page there.

[00:29:54]>> Exactly.

[00:29:55]>> Yeah. Either way, we'll be here every week covering what's going on. So, see, thank you so much, Smitty. Thanks a lot.

[00:30:00]I cannot wait to see you guys in Prague.

[00:30:02]So, looking forward to that.

[00:30:04]>> Thank you guys both. It's really really pleasure today. And uh also really excited to see you across the pond just a couple weeks.

[00:30:10]>> Yeah, a couple more shows. We'll we'll be there.

[00:30:11]>> Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next week. Cheers.