# MicroStrategy Dynamics, Bitcoin Bottoms, and Institutional Crypto Strategies

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-06-17

## Transcript

I think Sailor puts a floor on it and he also puts a ceiling on it.
He owns, you know, I think he owns like three-ish percent.
It's under five right now.
And the main thing to realize is like, yeah, when Stretch is at a hundred and...
MSGR volatility is super high so he can sell a ton of it and buy Bitcoin.
He's definitely putting a floor on it.
What's up, everybody?
It's LG Ducet here and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that needs Bitcoin to score a World Cup hat trick, even if it's starting to feel like it should just retire instead.
Today is June 17, 2026.
This is a very odd bear market, okay?
We have some of the biggest and best assets like Bitcoin kind of trending downwards, especially on the backs of...
potential sailor implosions, while other upcoming assets absolutely outperform assets like hyperliquid, which fit the narrative of where this entire industry is going.
Our guest today is a head of trading strategy, so he spends his days quite literally exploring these narratives and their impacts on markets.
Hassan Basiri from FalconX is on with us today.
And before we get into it, listen, Milk Road Pro is on absolute fire.
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Oh my God, they're going to law off a little too much.
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Hassan, what's up, man?
What's up, LG?
How you doing?
I'm good, man.
What's OK?
Listen, my first question for you, what do you what is a head of trading strategy do?
Because you've got your you've got your fancy set up there with all your other analysts behind you.
You guys have like 100 monitors.
I feel like I'm watching a movie about Wall Street.
What do you what do you do all day?
I mean, I like I'm a kind of a jack of all trades.
I support the spot desk and execution.
I support I support our DeFi and market making team in terms of like partnerships.
structuring token market making deals as well as TVL deals.
And then I help explore options and derivatives for clients to try to put them into good structures or expressing views on certain coins or certain positions, whether that's Bitcoin, the majors or alts.
And we're getting into more esoteric derivatives as well, where you could bet on or speculate on Bitcoin dominance or micro strategy MNAV.
So really like...
trying to get clients to express views and figuring out how to best express that view with asymmetric returns and kind of like sitting between, you know, spot, DeFi and derivatives.
So what what do people want to express most these days?
Right now, it's yeah, right now it's short crypto, long AI.
That's the main expression.
Yeah, I know.
I know what more like.
But no, seriously, I think people are.
I think people are on the fence right now because we've been bouncing off 60 a couple times and the reactions off 60 have gotten more and more complacent.
It hasn't been as strong of a reaction as people would hope for.
And the main thing everyone's watching right now, sadly, and it's been widely reported is the price of Stretch and how that impacts Bitcoin.
Obviously, Stretch is not having a great day today.
It's at 92.
um and there are things that sailor's doing to try to you know smooth the volatility and get that back to peg it's not working right now recently he's been uh every week he'll sell or the past two weeks he sold like 200 million dollars of mstr taking 100 of that 50 bought bitcoin taking the other 50 added it to a cash reserve um and honestly i don't think i don't think the market loves that And I think Bitcoin, you're seeing the price of Bitcoin, right?
Like no one wants to step in front of that.
No one wants to step in front of what everyone thinks is inevitable, which is that Saylor has to sell Bitcoin, not even because of a liquidation or something like that, but because I think if he sells some Bitcoin and bolsters his cash reserves, I think Stretch naturally pegs and he smooths the market's fears.
If you look back to like, you know, two weeks ago, why did Bitcoin move from...
you know, 70,000 to 60,000, 72,000, 60,000.
It's not because Saylor sold.
It's because people are front running Saylor selling because he didn't sell.
He sold 32 Bitcoin.
He was trolling online.
And then he turned around, sold a couple hundred million of MSTR and bought Bitcoin.
And it's not helping.
It's not giving the market confidence that he will do, you know.
what it's necessary right now to re-peg stretch.
And maybe he doesn't even want to do it or doesn't think he should, but that's what's causing the problems right now.
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Hassan, you've been in this space for almost 10 years, man.
Would Bitcoin be better off without Sailor?
It's a great question.
I've never asked anybody that.
I just thought of that now, though, because even though it's like you're explaining all the stuff that he's doing, the market's reacting to this.
We've talked about a strategy so many times.
And I just like I just really wonder, it's, you know, and a lot of people have pegged.
And I'll give you a bit more context, even from our audience perspective.
It's like people have said that 2025, the winter started earlier.
It just didn't feel like it because Taylor was buying and propping up the price.
And we've heard all these things that it just it seems to me, I'm like, is this a real is this a fair question to ask is like.
Would we be better if there wasn't this kind of artificial fund trying to jump through all these hoops?
I definitely think Saylor, I think from our clients, we get a couple of perspectives and I kind of agree with it.
I think Saylor puts a floor on it and he also puts a ceiling on it.
He owns, you know, I think he owns like three-ish percent.
It's under five right now.
And the main thing to realize is like, yeah, when Stretches at a hundred and.
MSGR volatility is super high so he can sell a ton of it and buy Bitcoin.
He's definitely putting a floor on it.
But I think his outsized ownership and the complexity of the cap stack and just the way he goes about doing some of the things he does, like now he's issuing AI.
There's AI infomercials telling you to buy Stretch.
And I think that definitely turns a lot of OGs off.
Like at 100,000.
We got a lot of OG whales selling Bitcoin in size.
And I think that's part of it.
So I think the fairest answer is I don't know that it would be this high without him.
But I also think it cannot go as high as, you know, I mean, he's, you know, he's a religious fanatic.
He really, really believes in his million dollar per Bitcoin headline, you know, and everyone else in the space, like, we're all traders.
We use our brains.
His is like a religion.
He does not care about the price today.
He really thinks it's going to hit a million dollars, and he's just going to buy until he owns as much of the supply he can get, as much of the cap stack he can take on to buy Bitcoin.
So that's my answer.
It's probably not as low or probably not as high, probably not as low without him.
How does this, we'll move on from strategy in a second, but how does this whole situation kind of shake out with the price of Bitcoin in short term?
And to give you a bit more context as well, like we're getting low now, we're hearing from some of our analysts that come on that it's like, listen, you're hitting levels of all these metrics that are only ever hit when you're like near the low of the bear.
So maybe it's a good buying opportunity soon, you know, and that if there's another low, it's going to come soon and that'll be it.
right but this this is clearly the situation that's hanging over all of that so maybe tell us this on before we move on like how you think this kind of resolves uh going forward here's my like take is i think in crypto uh you know we have this saying like pegs are always tested and liquidation levels are always tested and obviously in sailors in sailors case there is no reasonable like he's not getting liquidated there's he's not it's not he's not on hyper liquid but the point is is that i think the market will resolve a lot healthier if it tests him and like Bitcoin goes to back to 60, back to 55-ish, and he comes out and says, I sold some Bitcoin.
And that's what I mean by the pegs getting tested, the liquidation levels getting tested is that the market will test Saylor.
That's my take or my view.
I don't know if it's contrary or not.
The market will test Saylor.
And once he comes out and says, hey, I sold a billion or two of Bitcoin, I have reserves that will cover me for the next 18 months on stretch.
Everyone will kind of, in my opinion, everyone will think, okay, he's not a lunatic.
He's not just going to run stretch to the ground.
I mean, he is a lunatic, but he's not going to run stretch to the ground.
He's willing and able to sell Bitcoin to cover his dividend obligations.
And then stretch will re-peg and people will buy again.
People are not buying right now, in my opinion.
One, it's the summer.
Summers are exceptionally low volatility.
People are on vacation.
People are not worried about crypto plus AI is full boom right now.
But people are not buying because they're looking at what's going to happen with Saylor.
So once he just comes out and sells a little bit, bolsters reserves, I think we resolve higher.
And where is that price?
My personal opinion is Bitcoin bottoms around $55-ish.
There's always that level where if Saylor sells, people panic sell after that.
And I think that's the one you want to buy.
And I'm looking for $55-ish.
And honestly, dude, like if you're buying, when you buy an asset like Bitcoin, you're going for two, three, four, five extra money.
So whether you buy it 10 to 15% or even 25% from the bottom, 25% of the bottom is an amazing, amazing buy.
You're never going to buy the bottom.
And unless you're like an anon on Twitter, you're likely never going to sell the top.
So it's really, really important to just pick time-based targets and like price-based like within a range and start to accumulate.
And we're not far from that, by the way.
I don't think we're far from that.
So long as you don't buy it at that point and then sell it when it does get to that bottom because you're freaking out.
Yeah, yeah.
Like just be, like have good risk management.
And like, you know, like personally, if I saw, I mean, there's really even no difference to be quite frank with you between on a long enough timeframe between 50, 55 and 65.
I really believe that.
So I think this level is fine to start accumulating.
Like it's not trading great right now, but like you generally want to be buying crypto when everyone says it's dead and you generally want to be selling crypto when it's on MSNBC.
Like that's like at the end and like, you know, you buy when it's dead, you sell when it's the greatest thing, sliced bread, and you will make a lot of money.
And right now, like it's, you know, it's in the limelight for all the wrong reasons because of Sailor, because of Stretch.
Like it's so like.
We're close, but we're not there yet.
And I kind of like Q3-ish in terms of a bottom.
Right.
Okay.
It definitely feels like we're trending that way.
I have another question for you on the Falcon X side.
When you're saying, you know, this whole section kind of kicked off of me asking you about like what trades do people want to express right now?
What are you helping clients, institutions kind of express in the market?
How often do these types of clients want to make moves, right?
Because you and I were chatting before.
You and I are both have DGN trader backgrounds.
So you and I have both been up at three in the morning aping different things, right?
So it's like you and I are not immune to...
uh making trades i'm saying and rather than being a what you would classify as more like an investor long term but from what you're describing is that like people are trying to maybe express things that are a little bit more short term maybe tell me a bit more about that of like is that something that's a symptom right now too is that people trying to kind of make moves in this kind of maybe short time frame while things are low or do people really just looking for long term long term stuff to express it depends on the client really you know we have some very very sharp uh you know bigger funds that will buy major dislocations.
So for instance, like you saw ZEC go from like 700 to 300 in two days, right?
And we had some very, very sharp funds come in and buy size, which makes sense, right?
Like it doesn't, it definitely makes sense.
Like even if it's a short-term trade for that, for you, which I don't think it is for them.
I think they believe in ZEC, given the size they bought, like you can't get in, you didn't get into it in a minute, so you're not going to get out of it in a minute, right?
So they buy these dislocations.
So like there's trades like that.
And then there's stuff like where, okay, Bitcoin has fallen from 75 to 60 in literally three days, four days, right?
I know that we're going to bounce.
60 is a big support level.
It's health support every time.
I'm going to put like a short-term options trade on where I sell a put, buy a call.
Or like they'll come in with size and then they'll take the 5% on the Bitcoin.
They'll take it.
So it really just depends on the type of client, whether it's like a… prop fund or like a larger liquid venture fund um and how they're looking to trade it but like for for stuff for like stuff like bitcoin and eth specifically a lot of these guys are more long term um you know trading weekly options monthly options it's very hard it's very very hard like you know it's obviously like given the given theta like you can make a lot of money really quickly um But the opposite is also true.
You could lose a lot of money really quickly.
So it depends on the client.
A lot of people right now are looking to express views on ZAC, ETH, hype.
ETH is the most interesting one, in my opinion.
I don't have a view on it personally, but a lot of people are thinking or our clients are telling us that they're the most bullish of the three majors in the short term on Ethereum, just because the BM&P, which is Tom Lee's version of Stretch for ETH.
that that's coming to market.
It's currently trading at 87.
It's a fixed yield.
So like basically it'll give you nine and a half percent, but where you buy it matters.
So at a hundred, it's a nine hour at 95, it's a 95, nine and a half percent yield at 190.
It's a four and a half percent yield.
So like the market kind of dictates like what your actual yield is there.
Cause it's fixed and where that trades is a good barometer of like ETH health.
In my opinion, it just launched this week.
So it's going to take some time.
But a lot of people are bullish ETH.
They also think it's like oversold and all this stuff.
I have no real opinion on ETH.
I got into space because of ETH, but have since moved on.
But we're still, we're really close to the BM on our team.
And I think Tom Lee is a good chairman and he wants to do what's best for the asset.
Truthfully, if you look at the DATS, it's like, which of the DATS are successful?
It's like Per, which is a great asset, Hyperliquid.
And then MicroStrategy, which has amassed a ton of Bitcoin.
Bitminer and obviously SBED as well to a lesser extent.
But I think all of these, the elements of why certain DATs trade well versus others is they pick an asset that people actually want to hold and then execution is really good.
The at the money sales to accumulate more, the underlying is good.
And then obviously timing.
Timing is one of the most important factors.
Bitminer was selling its shares at over a hundred bucks.
That's a lot of money to accumulate the underlying.
Now, did they turn around and purchase ETH at the best prices?
No.
But a lot of what they would tell you is like, we're an accumulation vehicle.
We're not a hedge fund trading it.
And that's fair.
That's fair.
You're buying it because you believe in the long-term accumulation of ETH.
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I have some questions for you about Ethereum, but first, since you discussed Tom Lee, if you were trapped in an elevator and you have to choose between Sailor and Tom Lee, who would you choose that you're stuck in the room?
Oh man, they're like, dude, I think like, okay, like honestly, I would probably pick, wow, that's such a good question, bro.
I think I could talk to more shit about, or.
about more topics with Tom Lee.
I mean, Tom Lee was like the number one equity analyst in Troutfy, I think at JPM for a long time.
Like he's been doing this a long, long time and looking at all assets, obviously like he's now known for crypto and he's been a champion of crypto for a long time.
But like he is a very smart guy and has been talking about it for a long time.
I think I could talk with, but the breadth of the conversation would be better with Tom.
but the depth of the conversation with sailor would be more interesting to me i mean i'm just like i'm a little scared of him i wonder if he'd kill me at one point like he's so autistic it's like like his intensity exciting yeah yeah no it's exciting you know when you're like uh when you're excited and scared and nervous at the same time that's never happened to me talking to a man but like it would probably happen to be talking to you know oh my god didn't expect you to say something like that yeah yeah he's just intense guy you know generally like when you're hitting on someone but like okay let's go let's go back to ethereum um on the client side right now is there is there more interest in expressing a a long on ethereum here like you're saying at these kind of oversold levels and i know personally you're not as interested in the asset but you're saying that that's kind of calls you're getting or top blasting hyperliquid yeah well like i'm a trader so if it makes sense you trade it like a lot of clients came in for like 1400 1800 risk reversals when it fell to around 1500.
Selling a put at 1400 buying a call at 1800 on like a two, three, four month timeframe that really does make sense to me.
Eth has held that 1400 price for a long time.
By the way, that's when Looking at a chart, 1,400 has been historical support.
A lot of people capitulated on 1,400 last year, and then it rallied up to 4,000, call it two, three months later.
I don't have a chart in front of me, but that price is held.
Generally, the way ETH trades, historically anyway, is it does this thing where it just does absolutely nothing for long periods of time and then rattles off 40% in a week.
And then everyone gets excited and buys that 40% move and it just kind of chops and bleeds back down.
That's just how ETH trades.
So I think allocating to these levels is fine.
And yeah, I'm looking at this like April 2025, ETH was around 1400.
And then in August, three, four months later, it was at 4,500.
It's very, very violent.
The moves are very, very violent.
And this is a major.
You could buy 100, 200, $300 million of this, no problem at all.
And so it's sitting here at $1,700.
And is it going to get a rally?
I don't know.
But I know when it does rally, it will be very violent.
So expressing that through derivatives makes a lot of sense to me.
Yeah.
No, that move a year ago was pretty insane after the tariffs, right?
It was like post-tariffs, pre-bear market.
It went from, let's see, about a year ago, sitting around $2,200.
And then by mid-August, it was pushing $48.
So a two and a half X move, or almost two and a half X move in a two month span.
So that's a good point.
I think people forget that about Ethereum too, because it's so dumped on, it's ridiculed, you don't know what's going on, people leaving, especially lately, Bankless and the Ethereum Foundation, all the drama, and we've covered that extensively on the show.
But I think people forget that it's like, man, when this thing moves, it does move.
So that's very exciting.
What about Hyperliquid?
I mean, the chart tells you everything you need to know.
Look, I think obviously it's everyone wants to trade it.
Everyone wants to be in it.
Everyone wants to own it.
I don't know if these are top signals or not, but look, I think Hyperliquid, it is open finance.
Trade anything, anywhere, any leverage, and people are drawn to it.
And then we give you back over 90% of the fees by buying the coin.
And the main thing here is that I think there's a couple of things going on in addition to all the other shilling.
The first thing is that Hyperliquid has shown a very strong, the core team has shown a very strong initiative to defend the ecosystem.
Not openly defend the ecosystem, but there are no other ecosystem tokens that you can bid in size within the HYPE ecosystem other than HYPE.
HYPE gets the bid.
And you've seen a lot of teams try to go and put a Lend-Borrow into Hyperliquid or put an LST into Hyperliquid, the ecosystem.
it doesn't work.
The coin doesn't go because they will just, like Jeff and the team are just like, you're not going to put some fork that you could code and claw in five minutes, pitch a token, have that token attract value, and then take the bid away from Hype.
This has happened with Hyperland, Felix, a lot of these things where they tried to put a very simple and borrow on top of it.
And Hype just added one line into the code and allow you to do that, especially with portfolio margin, all these things.
That's the first thing is that they defend the token uh in terms of bid and attention the second thing is like this is less discussed is i think what the markets the market has a lot of trust in hyper liquid like they will do what's best for the token you know the staking yields like two percent no one cares about two percent right they're not giving you massive incentive like what are you getting the staking yield for like like you're not really like so my point here is that hyper liquid i think is like 40 issued and a lot of that's been bought back so My view is that Hyperliquid is not really a $75 billion FDV.
Hyperliquid's market cap is the FDV.
And those additional coins will never come to market or will not come to market for a long, long time.
So instead of looking at it as a $75 billion market cap or $75 billion FDV, the FDV is like a quarter of that.
And that's what excites me because I think it can keep running.
I think 100 is like kind of, I mean, I don't want to use, there's no guarantees in crypto.
There's no guarantees in finance, but like.
100 is the closest thing you can get to guaranteed.
And I think it keeps going, to be honest, especially with what we have all these IPOs coming and you saw how well it pegged the SpaceX open price.
Anthropics coming, OpenAI is coming.
These are going to be big, big, big attractions for people to speculate on.
What's interesting is right now, Binance is winning in SpaceX open interest, but people still are bidding Hyperliquid.
So it kind of tells you everything you need to know in terms of client interests.
We have a lot of call overwriting in Hyperliquid, a lot of hundreds to the end of the year that people were writing calls on Hyperliquid at 100 when it was at 65.
And I personally think that call is going to get ripped through.
That price is going to get ripped through eventually.
And these are more like institutional clients that want to generate yield because look, there's no staking yield, right?
So if you're just going to hold this thing.
you need to generate some yield.
A lot of clients like to write calls on Hyperliquid because it is high vol.
You do get paid pretty well on it.
And it is good yield.
If you have like three, four, $500 million, this thing, and you're generating call overwriting strategies that annualizing to 30, 40%, that's quite powerful.
And they're writing them way out of the money, but I just think this thing can go.
So is that mainly what people want to do, what your clients want to do at FalconX is options?
Is that mainly the thing that they express?
They do a lot of options.
We have a lot of foundations and treasuries that will do options to generate yield on the treasury.
And then they'll also buy puts to protect the value of the treasury.
You have some token that is moving 30%, 40% a week.
What's the value of your treasury?
Is it $200 million or is it $100 million?
And it's your treasury.
You need it to manage your operations, pay people, run your business, survive.
A lot of crypto is just about survival.
And so you really can't survive if your token drops 95% value and it's unhedged.
You just can't survive.
So paying, buying puts or selling calls is just a way to extend your runway and pay people, keep the lights on until you can find the next thing that people want to invest in a trade.
So yeah, we do, we get a lot of like options.
The bread and butter of the firm is the derivatives desk and like how we help clients manage risk and express views through options and exotics.
Right.
Okay.
You're listening to the Milk Road Show, which means you've got takes.
Strong ones, I bet.
But where do those takes actually go?
Do you tweet them into the void, argue them in the group chat, or do you try to express them by buying a stock?
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What has been the, let's say, maybe take us back to like when the bear market started basically, like 10 months or however long it's been now, nine months.
What?
What do you, what did you think there'd be more demand for in terms of trade expression that there hasn't been?
I mean, the most obvious answer is alts.
I mean, and everyone talks about it, but I really thought that a lot of these alts would have some form of speculative bid.
And like, it's not like the alts didn't run.
The alts run, the alts are really similar to ETH.
Like they'll rattle off a hundred percent in two, three weeks, and then they give it back over three, four months.
And really alt trading now has become, and it's very hard to do, like especially in size, alt trading and alts, when I say alts, it's not hyperliquid because that's already a major.
But like I'm saying, alts are about like, what levels do you think are good to bid at that you think others will bid at?
And then where are you going to sell them in size?
Because like, if you sell some of these, if you buy something and you're in, you're sized in it and it's a 10% down day and now you're selling it, you're going to lose 30% of the value immediately.
Like it's just, you cannot, you can't sell on a down day.
So it's really about timing and sizing with alts, which is very, very challenging because timing is, is like, you're really front running others.
Where are other people interested in this, in this thing?
And then you generally want to sell right when you think, right when you think it's going to go to the moon and go higher, because like a lot of alts, they just don't hold on.
If it's not hype, it's not Zach.
It's not gonna hold on to its returns.
And there are good tokens that are down here.
You know what I mean?
Like, look at like, I don't, we could get into pump, but like pump went from an IPO or a ICO to like four.
It went down to two and a half and then it rattled up to eight.
And now it's at like one five.
And it's the same exact business.
They still make a ton of money, man.
They still make a shit ton of money.
Still do buybacks.
Like nothing's changed.
Yeah.
I mean, I think with pump, like this is a good, this is a good segue.
Like, like.
The market trusts Hyperliquid, the market trusts Jeff to do the right thing.
I think with Pump, it's a little bit of a different...
Everyone sees the numbers, right?
Everyone knows that it's cheap.
It's not rocket science.
They did a couple of things that were tricky that have, in my opinion, have given the market pause on bidding the token.
The first was they raised way more than was initially discussed.
It was going to be 250 million.
They raised a billion.
That's a lot.
That's insane.
It's a lot of money.
And it's like, okay, why do you need that money?
But by the way, I'm a big fan.
I'm a big fan of Pump.
I don't think meme coins are dead.
I think the casino's shifting.
You're working with animal spirits.
So this is not a negative take on Pump.
But I do think it has like a, the market doesn't trust them because the first thing is the raise.
The next thing is like, you have, initially, like Pump was going to do 100% buybacks.
for an indefinite period of time.
They didn't put a number on it.
Now they're doing 50% buybacks for a year.
The third thing is they promised everyone an airdrop.
There's no airdrop.
And it's been roughly a year since.
So I'm not saying any of these in isolation has had an impact on the price.
I'm just saying in totality, this paints a picture of like, okay, well, the market doesn't trust you or they'd bid your coin because it is fundamentally cheap.
Even down here, there are programmatic buybacks, yada, yada, yada.
Everyone knows all this, but it's a trust issue.
And so like if I were advising them, which I'm not like, I would say, I mean, and the unlock is coming up too in like mid-July, I think.
So like that's definitely put a cap on it because that's a lot of money that people are up a lot on.
So that's, I think like what they should do is let the unlock happen, do the airdrop, let all the people that want to sell, sell, and then just start afresh.
Rip the bandaid off.
Like you're not going to get, you're not going to like reverse financial engineer your way through.
these unlocks.
You're just not going to do it.
And you told people you're going to do an airdrop.
So when are you going to do the airdrop?
When the price is higher, it's going to put a ceiling on it.
So I would say rip the bandaid off, get it over with, and just do it.
People who will sell, want to sell, will sell.
Obviously, it's a lot of money and people in crypto are poor right now because nothing's performing other than hype.
And then you get this out of the way and you slowly start to rebuild the trust.
Another interesting...
Sorry, you want to keep talking about this?
I could go about pump all day.
I think it's one of the most misunderstood.
I think it's one of the most misunderstood tokens in crypto.
I really do.
I mean, are you getting a tattoo put on your face or whatever for PumpGo?
I mean, tell Noah and Elon, like, yeah, pump it 0.01.
I'll get a tattoo pump on my neck.
So for people that don't know, Pump's latest product is PumpFunGo, which is like a bounty marketplace, which mirrors Black Mirror, which last year had an episode basically referencing Pump, where this couple kept doing all these silly...
tasks that the online world would tell them to do in exchange for money because they needed money.
And now basically, and it was supposed to be a reference to pump fun.
But now now pump fun is kind of emulating that.
And that's that's a guy recently got a tattoo on his face as a result of a pump fund bounty, basically.
And the community bonded and sent him more money than the No, because he misspelled it because he misspelled the tattoo apparently.
Although I feel like all that to me is like a psyop publicity stunt, honestly.
Like that to me, I'm like that's set up, you know, that's especially seeing the stuff that's happening.
Wait, what did he misspell?
I didn't even see.
What did he spell?
Like what did he misspell?
I think it was like bounty or something like that.
He misspelled it.
How did he misspell bounty?
I don't think it was bounty.
Hold on.
Was it missing a Y?
Or like E instead of Y?
Okay, here we go.
Disaster strikes.
Bounty work.
It was hashtag bounty work and he wrote it booty work.
There was no N.
That may be a good misspelling.
And it's right on his forehead.
And so he didn't get the money, but then the community rallied and made him a coin and sent him a bunch of the fees, basically.
God bless.
God bless.
God bless this man.
God bless.
God bless.
God bless this in general.
The DGEN community will still do the right thing even in the doldrums of the bear market.
We'll still step up and make things right.
But one of the things I think is like to getting back on this issue of trust and like market perception of the project and why people bid your coin is like one of the narratives for right or for wrong.
I don't agree with it.
Is that like pump is extractive.
because so many people have lost soul.
It takes soul to bond the coin.
You get paid in soul.
You sell the coin for soul.
Pump makes money in soul.
Is that instead of doing a buyback, let them stake the coin and give them Solana.
Obviously, there's some regulatory issues that we have to work through.
But when that happens and you give people back soul, you're doing two things.
You're giving them the preference to use the soul to bid pump.
You're also giving them more money to go back to the casino, which is pump.
And you're taking, you're giving them the optionality to do what they want to do with their earnings that they've earned from staking your coin and supporting your coin.
So I think like that would change, that would start to change the perception of pump is extractive.
And it would one increase, like actually increase wealth.
People want the money in their hand.
People want the soul in their hand so that they can go and like pull the slot machine again.
So I think like that would definitely help.
the perception and start to change the narrative around it there's some issues there obviously like can you do that and things like that but i think uh if they wanted to do it i think they'd get that right right okay hasan we don't we don't have that much time left um and as much i'd love to keep talking yeah no problem i knew that we would end up going there as soon as you came on before we were recording i was like we're immediately going to talk about detention but yeah i wore a shirt for you yeah You're a big boy now though.
We're having big boy conversations in the bear market here.
We have to zoom out and think about the bigger crypto market.
It's a professional show.
What should we be thinking about for the rest of the year?
I think that that's really what I want to focus on for the last couple of minutes here is from your perspective, you told us kind of what clients are interested in, what kind of trades they want to express.
right off the bat you said that people wish they were way more exposed to ai the last like couple months then to crypto naturally i think we all do even in those who do have exposure to ai um but what from here the next six to 12 months what do you think um what should people be thinking about let's put it that way not investment advice or anything like that but what should people be looking for or watching um in the crypto market and broader market uh within crypto specifically i think Capital finds its best form of return.
It's best risk suggested return.
That's where capital goes.
So what I would say is I would look for rotations and from like all the wealth that's been created in stocks for some of that to come back into crypto, like SK Hynix being 50X up in a year.
You know, like some of that rotation, like some of that Korean bid and some of like just the wealth generation that's happened.
I really want to see some of that money come back into the space.
Now, is it going to go to pump.fund?
Probably not.
But is it going to bid the majors?
Yeah, I think it will eventually.
So that's the first thing I want to see.
And then the major thing is like for longer term people looking for an entry, obviously we talked about stretch.
And the third thing is like midterms, like what's going to happen in midterms?
Sorry, what's going to happen in midterms?
I'm not as bearish as some of the other people on the desk on Dems winning.
But like, I think a lot of people, I mean, we're split here, but a lot of people think if Dems win the midterms, like.
uh it's going to unwind a lot of the positive regulation that we've had and and obviously like you know the clarity act when if and when that gets across the line um like so for instance for example some people are saying if dems win and clarity is not passed by then clarity gets killed that's an extreme example that's something to watch for um so like so basically watch midterms hope a republican wins and then see how trump reacts to like this ai tax that people are not talking about or like cracking down on AI, whatever that means.
And then watch for capital rotations from the wealth created outside crypto to come back into crypto because they think the risk adjusted returns good.
And at 50K, at 50ish, 55K, I think it's a good RR, especially if Saylor sells a little bit of Bitcoin to put everyone's mind at ease.
Absolutely.
That's good, man.
Where do you, are you the kind of person who has price projections or anything like that for cryptos?
Are you allowed to do that?
I mean, I'm allowed to make up a number, but I'll make up a number if you want, bro.
I mean, look, I like, I'll tell you this.
I like Bitcoin bottoming around 55 plus minus plus minus 10%.
Like I just like, and then in terms of like tops, I really think.
You have to get this sailor cloud done with, and then the animal spirits can take over again.
Right now, there's a cap on it because of all the other stuff going on and the AI sucking the air out of the room.
But life is like a pendulum.
Markets are like a pendulum.
And right now, I don't want to say that we're at the extreme, but we're getting there.
And it'll swing back.
It's just time.
And hopefully, you're a good investor, trader.
portfolio manager, whatever, like your job is timing.
Sadly, your job is timing and it'll get there.
Just don't get liquidated and stay locked in.
It's hard, but stay locked in.
I like it.
You guys heard it from the head of trading strategy at Falcon X.
Stay locked in.
Don't lose your shit.
The bottom is near, so relax.
Hassan, great to chat with you, man.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thank you for the insight.
And I'm sure we'll see you again probably at...
maybe hopefully at higher numbers.
We don't know, but I'd love to see you again on the show.
Thanks, bro.
Thank you, LG.
Thank you for your time.
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