ROLLUP: Bitcoin’s Confidence Game | Bitmine’s ETH Bet | Token Rotation | U.S. Perps

**David** (0:04)
Welcome to the Bankless Weekly Roll Up. It's the first week of June, and we've got Haseeb on the show subbing in for Ryan this week. Haseeb, how are you doing?

**Haseeb** (0:12)
Doing okay. It's kind of a rough day, but you know, hanging in there.

**David** (0:15)
Rough day because of the markets?

**Haseeb** (0:18)
Rough day because of the markets. I'm just seeing all the bleeding. I mean, obviously, you know, I think it's okay. I think it's going to be okay, but it sucks to see so many people kind of down and hurting.

**David** (0:30)
Yes.
Is this different than any of the times in the past? I think what you're saying is like, eh, this happens. This is what we go through in crypto. This is par for the course.

**Haseeb** (0:41)
Look, if you're in crypto, you've been in this industry for a long time, you know, being down 4% in a day is not catastrophic.

**David** (0:47)
Yeah.

**Haseeb** (0:49)
I think we were feeling a bit of a sentiment reversal. It's like, oh, okay, we're pulling out of this. It's either we're going to shake it off, and it's like, oh, no, you're not out of it yet. So I think people are feeling that pain.

**David** (0:59)
That's right. We're going to talk about a handful of things on the podcast today. Is Michael Saylor going to kill Bitcoin? Bitcoin is trading at its 200-week moving average while stretch is trading off of its peg. Saylor is in the middle of a confidence game with a market. We'll see whose wins. Tom Lee and Bitmine have announced that they're going to issue an equity yield instrument right in the middle of stretch being distressed. We're going to talk about whether that's a good idea or not. Despite the weakness in the majors of crypto, some tokens are still very green on the week. That, to me, is new. So what to make of that? And also the CFTC greenlights, the first compliant perps markets inside the United States. Let's start with Michael Saylor. Saylor and Strategy sold 32 Bitcoin for $2.5 million, a very small sale, probably just probing the market, seeing how the market digests it. Coincidentally or not, this is a question that I have for Haseeb, is whether this was a coincidence. Coincidentally or not, Bitcoin fell by like 17% after the announcement of that sale from $72,000 down to $62,000.
It's back up about $63,600.
Haseeb, coincidence, this Bitcoin is kind of just doing the cycle thing, but the timing is special. What do you think?

**Haseeb** (2:19)
Yeah, I mean, clearly not a coincidence since this was announced. I think this was announced on, what was it, Tuesday, that the sale was announced, but the sale happened last week.
And obviously this amount of sale is so small that it's obviously it wasn't the sale itself that was absorbed by markets causing this downturn.

**David** (2:36)
It was this symbolism.

**Haseeb** (2:38)
It's a signaling. And the signal clearly has accelerated this, but only since Tuesday, right? And market was coming down before Tuesday. So I think it's quickened the pace of the sentiment turning sour, but it doesn't explain the full drawdown that we've seen since Bitcoin kind of recovering to near 80k.

**David** (2:59)
Right. Yeah. I'm of two minds. There are some such thing as coincidences, but also I think if you just ignored the Saylor thing and just looked at the price chart over cycles, this would look normal. This would look relatively normal.
But at the end, you disagree?

**Haseeb** (3:15)
Well, look, I'm not a TA kind of guy, so I don't know what's a normal or not normal price chart.
I think it was true that there was a sentiment reversal. People felt like the weekends had been shaken out. A lot of retail had already exited the market. And so it's like, okay, now we've taken our lumps, and now it's time to re-consolidate and re-establish, okay, how do we feel about the fair value of Bitcoin? I think it's pretty clear this market is very flows driven right now and very sentiment driven. And sentiment, I think, you know, Saylor was probably testing the market, as you mentioned, and I think he got the answer he was not looking for, which is that absolutely not, you are not allowed to sell, like you are a big part of the story of why Bitcoin gets to keep going up. And so I think Saylor likely has internalized this lesson of never press that button ever again for as long as he can.

**David** (4:02)
Really, you think that he is not, his hands are tied and he can't sell.