Bitcoin TANKS To $64K After Warsh Goes Full Hawk

**Scott Melker** (0:00)
Bitcoin and seemingly all other markets take after Fed Warsh's first FOMC when he refused to give any guidance, dot plot, and had a quite hawkish Fed board. We're going to talk about that, but much more that's happening specifically in Bitcoin with Alex Miller. Let's go.
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the wonderful world of Minecraft. When my son is here in the studio running cameras and screens, this has become a tradition. So if you're wondering why we have strange bunnies, chickens and fires behind us, that is the reason. Alex, you live out in the country, you got bunnies, chickens and fires.

**Alex Miller** (1:00)
I do, I've also got raccoons who keep killing my damn chickens. Do not like raccoons much these days.

**Scott Melker** (1:08)
Every person I know who's owned chickens loses the chickens. It's usually five, but yeah.

**Alex Miller** (1:13)
We've lost eight at this point, so we've got five new ones. One of them is a rooster, so I'm learning the joy of our sunrises is about four or five years this time of year. So get a real nice 4:45 AM cock-a-doodle-doo.

**Scott Melker** (1:28)
You did that to yourself, sir.

**Alex Miller** (1:31)
I didn't know it was a rooster when I bought it. You don't know.

**Scott Melker** (1:34)
They're little. That's hilarious. All right. Listen. So there's a lot of stories to unpack here. I actually want to start with the one that you pointed out because I realized I covered it pretty thoroughly yesterday on The Daily Wolf, but not here on this show.
And it's kind of a big one. Crypto industry pushes back as Pritzker signs 0.2% digital asset tax. I showed you the amazing meme that we had for this.

**Alex Miller** (1:56)
Yep.

**Scott Melker** (1:57)
I showed that's the governor who I'm not saying he looks like that, but he kind of actually looks like that.

**Alex Miller** (2:02)
I mean, he doesn't not look like that.

**Scott Melker** (2:05)
That's right. He's taking your money. So the proposal here basically are actually, it's a law. Like he signed it. So 0.2% even if you send yourself some crypto from your own wallet to your own wallet. Now, to be fair, this is kind of all digital everything. So it also applies to prediction markets. It applies to digital advertising. But at the end of the day, if I'm sending my money from one wallet to another, seems like that shouldn't be...

**Alex Miller** (2:29)
Yeah. So one slight clarification. It doesn't apply to self-custody.

**Scott Melker** (2:33)
Right.

**Alex Miller** (2:34)
Exchange wallets.
Yeah. Exchange wallets. Anything that's basically by a hosted service provider. But to the point, the law is so broadly written that I don't see how it doesn't apply to Venmo transfers and Zelle as well too, because it basically references back to a digital asset definition in law that basically says, any representation of money that's not like a gift card basically is a digital asset. And so it's really broadly written, probably a lot more than they intended it to be. But yeah, it's ridiculous.

**Scott Melker** (3:06)
Yeah, I mean, I think the industry obviously, they say it's the most punitive law passed for crypto. We obviously take everything as a personal front and a personal attack, and I think partially it is.
But it's more of a story of a broke state trying to tax anything they can get their hands on.

**Alex Miller** (3:22)
I mean, the same budget bill also introduced like a 10% tax on programmatic digital advertising. So if you run Facebook ads as a local business, you're now going to be taxed an extra 10% on top of that too, as part of it. They've only got a $60 billion budget, Scott. They need more money.

**Scott Melker** (3:42)
Yeah, I mean, they need to find better ways to waste more money.

**Alex Miller** (3:47)
Yeah, yeah.

**Scott Melker** (3:48)
I think it's more specific.

**Alex Miller** (3:50)
It was crazy. It seemed like, I think I was looking, I was reading another thing, speaking of other states with large budgets. California, my God, just like the tech receipts they've had from the post-pandemic boom and stuff, they would have had a $60 billion shortfall without any of those, and just without some of the AI boom numbers on it, and they're just spending like it's always going to be there. I don't really understand what the plan is long-term going forward on it, but maybe I guess it's always going to be there.
Yeah. I mean, look, the one upside potentially to something like this is, it makes them want more digital asset activity so that they can tax things more from it, so maybe it causes them to pass more good crypto legislation.