Bearish Trends Pinning Bitcoin & Ethereum as CFTC, SEC Seek Federal Clarity

Nicole (0:00)

It's time to take a closer look at Bitcoin, Ethereum and more here in The Crypto Report. Let's welcome Adam Lynch, Director of Equity Research, Charles Schwab. Thank you for being with us. So it was just a blink of an eye, 85,000, 86,000, and some exciting conversations about Bitcoin and it moving higher. And what happened? It pulled back here. Your thoughts on this week's action.

Adam Lynch (0:22)

Yeah, hi Nicole. Definitely a different visit today. I think the last time I was on was two weeks ago. Yeah, I think we were up around 86,000, 87,000 at that point.

Obviously, the crypto majors have been hit pretty hard this week. Bitcoin is down around 80,000 today. Ethereum around 2,400. Bitcoin was hit about 3% so far. ETH down six. Other cryptos like Solana, I think that was down 8.5% or 9%.

So a pretty tough week, a tough day yesterday. It's the fourth straight day today. The fourth straight day declines for Bitcoin, which more or less just kind of coincides with a general risk off environment. We've seen renewed selling in stocks and bonds, increased oil prices. I heard you mentioned that to the previous guest, up another $3 today, higher interest rates. Just a lot of things that have turned sentiment bearish.

Nicole (1:15)

I wanted to hear what you thought about the recent conference there abroad in Asia and Singapore. Some of your thoughts from the Token2049 story.

What mattered there?

Adam Lynch (1:27)

Yeah, it's been a pretty fascinating conference. It's absolutely massive. About 25,000 attendees gathered in Singapore this week. There were reps from over 7,000 companies spread across 150 countries. So it was really a who's who of the industry.

Some of the keynote speakers from the more traditional finance side, we had the CEO of Franklin Templeton, the chair and CEO of NASDAQ. And then from the more crypto native side, you had finance, hyperliquid, polymarket founders and CEOs. So a couple of comments that have come out of it so far. Whenever there's a big gathering like this, I always do try to pay attention to what is being said by some of the major players. And Tom Lee made a pretty big comment that moved the market where he essentially just confirmed that his firm Bitmine will cease accumulating Ethereum once they hold 5 percent of the outstanding supply.

Now, that has always sort of been his goal. I think they're at 4.9 percent now. But just hearing him confirm that, there goes some support potentially for that cryptocurrency. So keep an eye out for anything else that may come. It finishes up tomorrow. So we'll see what happens.

Nicole (2:40)

He's certainly been positive on Bitcoin all along, Tom Lee. Mike Novogratz was also part of the story there.

How do you feel the sentiment is, particularly with some of the regulation that has come in, right? We didn't get the Clarity Act. We didn't get the law, but we've gotten some rules and some of the guests I've had on this week, Adam really told me and felt that that was helpful to propel crypto higher because at least you had the SEC and the CFTC taking charge.

Adam Lynch (3:12)

Certainly. I would definitely echo those sentiments.

They had always said that they were going to, but it's one thing to say it, it's another to actually deliver. They really have over the past couple of weeks with both the SEC and the CFTC putting forth different rules. I think we may get to something that's close enough to clarity that it'll look pretty similar. The issue obviously is that it's not legislation. If somebody else comes in, there's a turnover, there's a new head of the CFTC or the SEC, those things can be wiped away.

Nicole (3:44)

Yeah. We've had a selling this week, four days in a row of selling. Are you hearing that folks are saying to buy the dip at all? Quickly.

Adam Lynch (3:51)

Yeah, a little bit. There are some positive signals. Seasonality is great, right? October, this is a great month for Bitcoin, a great quarter for Bitcoin. We've seen some strong technical signals. So I think it's a pretty positive environment with those kind of negative, more macro variables kind of holding us back.

Nicole (4:11)

Adam Lynch, thank you so much always for joining us here for the crypto report and keeping us abreast of all of that, thank you.