Bitcoin is crashing. Crypto isn't.

Añadido: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Bitcoin broke below $70,000 for the first time since April and is setting records for all the wrong reasons.

[00:00:07]Meanwhile, the United States announced that it has seized $1 billion in crypto from the Iranian regime. And that's not all we have to talk about today. We're going to dive into it all right now on The Daily Wolf. Let's go.

[00:00:24]What is up, everybody? Welcome to The Daily Wolf on Yahoo Finance. I'm your host Scott Melker, also known as The Wolf of All Streets, and we've got 15 minutes to dive into all of the news that is moving markets today. Now, nobody particularly excited about Bitcoin price action. Obviously, we had a top recently around $82,000, and it's been nothing but downside since 70,000, obviously a major psychological level that's been broken down today. But, let's try to dive into it and see what's really going on because, as always with price action, there's quite a bit of nuance and potential catalysts that could be driving it. Here's the first one, obviously. Bitcoin's biggest ETF sell-off yet. Hits 3.4 billion as AI stocks keep climbing. So, there's two stories there. One, obviously, is this historic run that we have from the Bitcoin ETFs, $3.4 billion, 11 straight days of outflows. That is a new record. As I said, we're setting records for all the wrong reasons. I've alluded to this before, but Bitcoin looking like the Detroit Lions from 2008. They went 0 and 16.

[00:01:26]Actually, lost 19 games in a row if you go uh to the 2007 and 2009 seasons.

[00:01:31]We're the Detroit Lions from 2008 right now in Bitcoin. Things just continuing to look bad, but there's a few reasons for it. One of the that they alluded to right there is that AI stocks keep climbing. There seems to be a continued rotation into greener pastures, where AI and other tech continue to go up while Bitcoin goes down.

[00:01:49]We do have some evidence that some of that capital is continuing to rotate.

[00:01:54]That said, when you see $3.4 billion dollars outflows from the ETFs, it's pretty clear that people are selling and the price is going to continue down. And then there's a mechanical part to it as well, which there always is. We've seen 768 million in 24-hour liquidations. I'm assuming that that number is actually going to update cuz that's how it was reported this morning. Uh 84% of those obviously longs, which always makes me scratch my head and say what? 16% of those people somehow got liquidated being short.

[00:02:20]And how high was their leverage that they could lose all their money shorting a market that's going down? But uh clearly, you know, this is a this is a major event. And when you hit a psychological level like a 70,000, which we did here, that's where a lot of people have stop watch stop losses triggered, where they're looking to go short. Anytime you get around these major levels, you see a lot of liquidations and a lot of price action.

[00:02:41]Now, we have the market back in extreme fear right now 23. If you're taking a look at technicals, RSI is extremely low. This looks ripe for a bounce. But the other catalyst, obviously, are the story that I told you yesterday about strategy selling some Bitcoin even though it was a rounding error versus their entire position. It is a signal that they're willing to do it, and I think that scares people. Also, we had some old ancient Mount Gox coins, that was a bankrupt exchange that crashed the market in 2014, moving. None of those were sold, but it does tend to spook the market a bit when uh those tokens move.

[00:03:16]Those were the reasons it looks like. I think there's also macro headlines and fear that contribute to it, but right now very clear that Bitcoin is not the uh most popular asset on the planet is continuing to sell off. I will say very transparently, I happily bought Bitcoin this morning around 70,000 dollars and will continue to do so. But as I said, there's a rotation narrative here as well. Obviously, you know, you can take a look at something like Nvidia that's up 6% while Bitcoin is down. You can see what's happening. But even within the crypto market, which I think gives us some optimism, there are some AI related tokens that have been moving. I can show you just two charts that were on my radar that came up in the articles. This one is NEAR. They've positioned themselves as an AI layer one blockchain and you can see that the price action here has been extremely bullish even up over the past 2 days as Bitcoin's been crashing up many many multiples, you know, over the over the past few weeks and months.

[00:04:09]Another humanity protocol right here, which is an AI resistant digital identity layer and it's built on blockchain that verifies people as real and human. So, this is going to be huge in the future they're proving obviously that they're human. But, you look at this price action, which is riding the AI trade largely and you're up many many multiples. I mean, you know, down here 8 cents went all the way up to 80. So, 10X since April multiple, you know, three or four X in the last few days. So, this is the first time in quite a while that we've actually seen tokens in crypto moving either on their own narrative and we'll get to some more of them later, but specifically on the AI narrative, we still have things going up while Bitcoin is going down, which shows that maybe there's a little more interest and health in this market than just Bitcoin price action would indicate. Now, we have a really interesting story. I would even call it a series of stories right here. This is it.

[00:04:58]Scott descent says US sees roughly 1 billion in Iranian crypto as regime nears end of their tether. No no pun intended. Stable coin's tether, get it?

[00:05:07]Um, so listen, we can set the table here.

[00:05:11]You'll all probably remember that back in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. It's mind-blowing actually that that war has been going on for 4 years, but at the time the US and their allies froze 300 billion dollars in Russian bank central Russian central bank reserves. That was half of the 600 billion that they had total and it sent a signal to the world that said your central bank reserves, if they're not in your own bank or in your own asset, are not in fact your central bank reserves, right?

[00:05:40]And we've seen a lot of narratives about people trying to reduce their reliance on the US dollar certainly with oil trade, central bank reserves and gold have been massively increasing while treasuries have reduced. And a lot of that stems from this story.

[00:05:54]Well, back then to uh you know, to we'll call it freeze cuz they're not seized yet. We don't know what will happen with them still, but these assets were frozen and they were obviously Russia's. That took a coalition of G7 countries and votes and multiple banks. Now, you can just freeze their wallet as I said, right? So, there's rough 1 billion in Iranian crypto. You just call up uh Tether or USDC or one of the issuers and you freeze those wallets and it's a wrap. So, much much easier actually using crypto for better or for worse for the United States government to freeze and seize these assets. I mean, there's another story. It's a small one, but it speaks to the same thing. So, we had this one just the other day. This is Zama. I'm going to be clear. I've never heard of Zama. I'd never heard of CUSDC, but Circle, which is the issue of USDC, froze 12.6 million USDC on Zama on a court order from a federal judge. Now, it was later reversed as you can see here and the rightful thing was done, but very clear, if a judge tells Circle or probably Tether in that case to freeze assets, they're going to do it. This is not the decentralized promise of a Bitcoin, an asset that you can self-custody and hold your own keys. This is actually hyper dollarization as I've told you through stablecoins and through these assets, but also more control of governments using this technology to be able to manipulate the economic sanctions or abilities of foreign governments. So, very interesting that they've seized a billion dollars already in assets from this regime. Just an absolutely crazy number and they've used it done it using crypto rails. Now, the next story is a massive one of stablecoin adoption.

[00:07:38]MoneyGram enters the stablecoin race with MGUSD on Stellar. Now, remember that. That's the second huge announcement that we've had for Stellar, which is considered a dinosaur coin in crypto.

[00:07:49]Second huge announcement there, but they have 60 million customers and 500,000 retail locations and are launching their own stablecoin MG USD. We've seen similar stories with Western Union on Solana, banks having their own stablecoins. And this shows you that even if Bitcoin is down, stablecoin adoption is only up into the right, and that is an absolutely unstoppable chain.

[00:08:11]Now, they're doing this with Bridge, which is owned by Stripe, one of the biggest payment companies.

[00:08:16]It'll be custodied with Fireblocks and have self-custody, but the story here is that I keep telling you we have this Blockbuster to Netflix situation. All these payment companies are going to be Blockbuster if they don't adopt crypto rails themselves. So, I I think a huge story here that MoneyGram has admitted that they will be replaced and has adopted better, cheaper, and faster. But once again, these are stablecoins. These are digital dollars. They can be seized. They can be frozen. They're inflating just like your dollars are. So, once again, the killer use case for blockchain technology beyond Bitcoin happens to be the very thing that Bitcoin was created as a hedge against. That irony should never be lost on people, and that's why you should never, in my opinion, conflate crypto with Bitcoin and certainly not stablecoins with Bitcoin. Now, I told you the story yesterday about how Michael Saylor sold Bitcoin. Now, I think I just in passing I said for the first time ever, but he actually did sell some at the bottom in 2022, which is a news story in and of itself. The reason that nobody really pays attention to that cuz he sold it at 17,000, a little bit to harvest tax losses, and then immediately bought back more.

[00:09:28]But he has sold before, but once again, we had him selling yesterday or announcing, that's what's important, that they had sold yesterday. Well, here's the story now around it that shows you just how broken prediction markets on are as I continue to rail against these Strategy sold Bitcoin in late May and told the market in June. Here's how Polymarket betters are fighting over uh when it counts. So, I mean, this is absolutely crazy. It's $79 million basically bet on this contract that Strategy would sell Bitcoin before the end of May, basically. So, very clearly in their disclosures, they sold Bitcoin by the end of May, last week. But anyone who knows, we get an announcement from Saylor and Strategy every single Monday on whether they've bought Bitcoin now.

[00:10:16]Now, I guess it'll be whether they've bought or sold Bitcoin or done nothing.

[00:10:19]But generally, you expect that you'll see an announcement they bought Bitcoin.

[00:10:21]Well, in this case, they filed that they had sold Bitcoin. So, the announcement came in June while the actual sale clearly came in May. Well, Polymarket has endorsed the no side of the contract, meaning that as of right now, it can be overruled by the UMA token holders, which is just uh long story there. But it can be overruled. It has been in the past when it came to the uh Trump and Barron DJT case.

[00:10:51]But the biggest holders basically can overrule this. But right now, Polymarket is settling on the answer that's obviously wrong.

[00:10:59]Right? And so, imagine that you're in one of these contracts and you see it go wrong. I can tell you a story about another prediction market contract that I saw in real time settle wrong and very controversially. There was a movie, I did an interview on it uh called Finding Satoshi. I had an advanced screening of the movie. And then there was a prediction market on who would be named as Satoshi Nakamoto. I obviously didn't bet on that. First of all, I'm American and I can't, and that would be trading on insider information, which would be a big no-no. But I knew that the answer was both Hal Finney and Len Sassaman.

[00:11:31]But if you took a look at the contract, there was no way you could bet on both.

[00:11:35]You could bet on Hal Finney, or you could bet on Len Sassaman, but you cannot bet on both. Everyone in that contract lost their money, even if they bet on one of the correct answers, right? It settled on no. These things are in their early days. In my opinion, they are still broken and need a ton of work, but I think it should be very obvious that Michael Saylor and strategy sold before May was over. I I don't understand how it's a no. Imagine if you had money on it. $79 million here sitting in the balance. So, you'll remember, just going into a final story, which isn't really a story. I just kind of want to go back to where I told you about Near and Humanity and the fact that certain altcoins have untethered and are performing particularly well, even as Bitcoin goes down, which is something you haven't seen in a long time. Obviously, the main one that everybody's been talking about, Wall Street is loading up on Hyperliquid.

[00:12:24]Should you buy it? By the way, I do own some Near and I do own Humanity Protocol. They happen to just come up in the article, but I do them. I do not own any Hyperliquid, and I feel dumb for that, because Arthur Hayes, who's a huge Hyperliquid bull, came on my show not 3 weeks ago and told me to buy it at like $35.

[00:12:39]So, uh you know, uh we don't always uh listen to the good advice that's presented to us, but you have the CEO of ICE, which is the owner of New York Stock Exchange, saying that Hyperliquid will be bigger than the Nasdaq, right? We had Goldman Sachs rotating and buying Hyperliquid when they sold some Solana and XRP ETFs. We have a lot of people talking about Hyperliquid right now, and you take a look at the chart right here. I mean, this is what Hyperliquid has been doing while Bitcoin's been going down. I mean, up many multiples, as I told you, it was on my show back here in the 30s. Now, it's up to, you know, it traded up to almost 80 bucks, you know, $75, $76.

[00:13:15]This token is doing well because it has good tokenomics. People are using the platform, and that money actually accrues to the token. So, it's trading or being valued like people are are are are familiar with, which is, you know, like valuing a stock. That's something we haven't seen in the altcoin market.

[00:13:31]Once again, we haven't generally seen them going up while everything else is going down. But, I told you before that MoneyGram was doing their stablecoin on Stellar, which is XLM. We also had a DTCC announcement that they were going to be utilizing Stellar before, and you can take a look right here at the Stellar chart. Of course, it is actually down uh today and over the past 2 days, but up massively over the past few days on good news.

[00:13:55]This is not behavior that we have been seeing regularly in the crypto market, especially when we have Bitcoin dropping. So, Bitcoin going down seemingly every day, topped at $82,000 trading below $70,000 today. Who knows where it will end up, but meanwhile, coins with either strong narratives or actually strong tokenomics and good news are going up. I think that that is an important nuance. Meanwhile, once again, very important to remember that Bitcoin is an asset of its own, and crypto is an entirely different asset class in my opinion. That does not make crypto bad, it just makes it different.

[00:14:35]And stablecoins themselves effectively are a form of govern- government money.

[00:14:40]They can be frozen, they can be taken out of your wallet. They are basically just hyper dollars. That's all I got for you today. I will be back tomorrow with the next Daily Wolf. Peace.