What a 'Degen' Crypto Trader Really Does All Day

SPEAKER_1 (0:03)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Joe Weisenthal (0:20)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:24)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:26)

Tracy, there's been this big crypto run up. It's pulled back over the last couple weeks. Bitcoin got above 70,000. We haven't really done crypto this cycle.

Tracy Alloway (0:34)

I know, we did mean-

Joe Weisenthal (0:36)

I have a theory for why we haven't done one, but what were you gonna say?

Tracy Alloway (0:39)

You just wanna talk about your theory.

Joe Weisenthal (0:40)

No, there's a separate theory.

Tracy Alloway (0:41)

Okay, I was gonna say, it feels like a lot of stuff that's happening in this cycle has happened before. And I know part of it is the launch of the Bitcoin ETFs, but I mean, we have episodes on Bitcoin ETFs from like years and years ago. So if we do an episode, which we're doing now, I think it should be about what the difference is in this cycle, if anything.

Joe Weisenthal (1:03)

I think it's just been boring. And what I mean by that is like, it's always exciting when lines go up and down really fast, which is why I am a market journalist in the first place. But I actually think there's almost nothing particularly interesting about this crypto cycle. And in past ones, it was like, you know, there were at least some narratives, like Web3 and gaming to earn and some of that stuff we did in the past, or like how like Uniswap works, like kind of some interesting things about people like redesigning markets or whatever.

This one, there's no thing there other than price and basically meme coins, which VCs love to write thought pieces about, but are not really that interesting.

Tracy Alloway (1:41)

Joe, I think you are ignoring technological breakthrough that is dog-width hack. That was not around.

Joe Weisenthal (1:47)

No.

Tracy Alloway (1:48)

Last cycle.

Joe Weisenthal (1:48)

You're right. So we had Dogecoin and Shib last cycle, but neither of them had a hat in the last cycle. So there have been some breakthroughs in putting cute hats on the cute puppies for the coins. You're right. That is progress.

But yeah, exactly.

Tracy Alloway (2:04)

Okay. But we are doing a crypto episode right now for the avoidance of doubt. And I think the way we are coming at it is talking to someone who has seen multiple crypto cycles at this point.

Joe Weisenthal (2:17)

And also that if you accept the premise that basically the only interesting thing is price and why things move around, I don't want to hear from a VC. I don't want to hear from someone who's doing some layer three solution or some made up tokenization of a building in New York City. I just want to hear from someone who rides the ups and downs and what that's really like. Cause if that's actually the only thing going on, which I believe, then the only like true expert is not the VC or the investor or the founder, but the person who day to day is helping move that price one direction or another.

Tracy Alloway (2:53)

No, I think that's absolutely true. The other thing that I sometimes think about is what are crypto traders doing on a day to day basis? Like how do you actually spend your time if you are trading crypto? What does research look like?

Joe Weisenthal (3:07)

Yeah.

Tracy Alloway (3:07)

And then the other thing that kind of blows my mind is just the amount of man hours and labor power that is spent on thinking about whether or not line goes up on chart.

Joe Weisenthal (3:17)

Totally. You know, on some level, that's all finance is, but I guess like in traditional finance, I have some...

Tracy Alloway (3:23)

There's a veneer of respectability.

Joe Weisenthal (3:25)

There's a veneer, and I have some intuitions about how the professionals in the space make educated bets on whether the line is going up or gonna go down, and there's fundamentals and earnings and momentum factors and all that stuff, and people different try, and I sort of understand what they try to do, but I don't really know what the equivalent is in crypto. So I think we gotta learn, and I think we gotta talk to someone who is in the space of determining whether the price is going up or down.

Tracy Alloway (3:52)

Let's do it.

Joe Weisenthal (3:53)

So I'm really excited. We have the perfect guest because not only has he been a degenerate crypto trader for several years, it's the first guest that we've had on Odd Lots who has been sourced from our own Odd Lots Discord, an active participant in there. This guy is a smart guy. So why don't we talk to one of our own community members, a listener, someone who chats with us from time to time, someone who's not a VC writing big thought pieces about how the industry works and the importance of memes, someone who's just trading the coins.