Bitcoin Hits $80K: Cory Klippsten on Crypto's New Bull Run & Resistance Ahead

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Welcome back to Opening Bell. Time to focus on Bitcoin, which has broken out above 80,000 overnight. Cory Klippsten's with me, CEO of Swann Bitcoin. We've seen a nice run. In fact, we've seen Bitcoin over six months outpacing some stocks and gold, really breaking out. What's it due to?

**Cory Klippsten** (0:22)
Yeah, and obviously that's all due to this violent move upward here over the last week, where we went from about 64,000, and as you noted, we crossed through 80,000 overnight. It's pulled back just a little bit, hovering right around 79 right now. But it does seem to, as they say, have stuck the landing, which is pretty exciting. This wasn't a leverage-driven move and it seems to have plenty of spot demand here. So yeah, we're very hopeful that these are kind of the green shoots of the next big bull run for Bitcoin over the next couple of years. So watching it closely.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:55)
And part of this was attributed to the fact that the Clarity Act is back on the table on the agenda for the 15th of September. The CFTC has a plan. You had Besant now talking about more buybacks of treasuries. And there was some short covering. Would you say all of those are right? And is that enough to keep us here and get us to the 100,000?

**Cory Klippsten** (1:21)
Yeah. So look, I'm a big proponent of the view that narrative follows price as opposed to the other way around. And we're looking for reasons why this happened. I think of those four you mentioned, two of them are valid. I think the Besant move definitely unlocked some liquidity for risk assets and Bitcoin being early in its development as a store of value still trades largely as a risk on asset. And then they're provably on the tape. There were a lot of shorts that got liquidated and amplified the move up. So those two are true.
Clarity, I think, is just some marketing dust sprinkled on the industry that gave over 50% of the donations to the last political election cycle. So I don't think that's going to happen. I think it's pretty much DOA still. And I don't think that there's much going on that the White House is doing. And it's the new SEC rules that they passed for altcoins so that it makes it really easy to launch and promote and not get in trouble for launching things that are basically securities but aren't going to be classified as securities in the US going forward. But again, totally irrelevant for Bitcoin.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:31)
There was a meeting at the White House as well. I didn't bring that up last week, Wednesday, I believe, where you had folks from the crypto industry meeting with the president. And so we think about the debasement trade. And so is the demand real here, especially when you break out through that resistance here.
Will there be more interest? How do we get back to the 100,000? What's the catalyst for that or the 120,000?

**Cory Klippsten** (3:00)
Look, like so many other things, we'll look for the narratives after the fact. But the truth is, there is kind of a level where there was a lot of historical volume around 80 So to punch through that will take a little bit. There was another level around 88, that's going to take a while to punch through.
Then it's that big number with all the zeros at 100k, where so many OG holders, as they say, peeled off some coins last year and sold in the run up to 100k and then above 100k. So I think that'll be the last psychological barrier. There's a tiny bit more at 108, which was the first peak in 25 before the second one at 126 But that's really it, 88, 100, 108 Those are the only levels that have any kind of historical volume of big size above where we are right now. And to your point on meetings at the White House, again, totally irrelevant to Bitcoin. That's just crypto people kind of trying to line their pockets. And those are all centralized companies with their own currencies that they print and give to themselves and their buddies and try to market.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:04)
When you think about the purpose of Bitcoin and why there are people who bought it a long time ago and they're holding on to it, they think it's an important hold for a lifetime. Would you agree?
Why should people have Bitcoin in their portfolio and or hold this for a lifetime?

**Cory Klippsten** (4:22)
I don't think you need to think about it for a lifetime. I do think that the longer people spend learning about Bitcoin, the more they start to think about it as something that is a core part of their portfolio in a way that they want to store some or a lot of their value and obviously potentially pass it down to the next generation.