Bitcoin is predictably struggling around

80,000 United States dollars per token

while the battle for stablecoin

supremacy rages on around the world.

We're going to tell you about all of

that right now on The Daily Wolf. Let's

go.

What is up, everybody? Welcome to The

Daily Wolf on Yahoo Finance. I am your

host Scott Melker, also known as The

Wolf of All Streets. We've got the next

15 minutes to talk about the exciting

price of Bitcoin, which of course is now

predictably hitting a wall around

80,000. But of course, all of the news

that is driving markets. We have a lot

of stablecoin and central bank digital

currency updates to give you today,

which we'll dive in on the back half.

Half first, of course, because we are

reentering a bull market in my opinion.

We have to talk about what is going on

with Bitcoin price. So here's the first

one. Bitcoin back at $79,000

after 81K rejection. Why did the rally

hit a wall? We actually have an amazing

live video of Bitcoin price action that

we'd like to show you right now.

If you haven't been watching the Chinese

robot Olympics, I really don't know what

to tell you.

I mean, there's thousands of these

videos on the internet giving me great

confidence that the tech

technological revolution is not in fact

here yet, and we're going to just be

fine as human beings. But yeah,

Bitcoin's running into a wall. That

Look, why can't they decelerate?

They can't decelerate. They just have to

run straight into a wall and literally

explode. Those are probably expensive

robots. I literally can't. But here you

go. So we obviously have Bitcoin jumping

up to around 80,000. Crypto greed gauge

hits highest since just before October

19 billion wipeout. I am seeing this

narrative everywhere and it drives me

absolutely nuts. Bitcoin spent a

historically long period in fear. Right?

If you were looking at the sentiment

index, it was fear, slight spikes out,

extreme fear for months at a time,

something that had never happened

before. We finally exit fear and get

into greed for the first time and you

already have the crypto media talking

about the October 19th billion-dollar

wipeout and how this is exactly the

same. So, take a look back at the crypto

fear and greed index then and you will

notice that we were in a raging bull

market with Bitcoin going all the way up

to 126,000 and much like how we have

been in fear here, we had a long

sustained period of greed and extreme

greed. We just got there. This is just

the beginning of a sentiment shift and

it is disingenuous to compare it to the

top of the entire bull market. Much like

RSI can stay overbought for a very long

time when things get going, it's

actually a bullish sign. So, can the

greed sentiment in the crypto market

remain elevated for a very long time. I

think that this is a bullish narrative

and not a bearish narrative. We've

talked endlessly about why price went

up, we don't need to do that anymore. I

would just reiterate that when price

goes up 24%

in a single week and you see things

getting overheated, you can expect a

healthy retracement and an opportunity

hopefully to buy some dips, right? You

leverage builds back up and that has to

get flushed and then you go hit the key

levels. At this point, the most

important level on the chart is the 50

MA on the weekly, which is exactly where

this move tapped. It's only August,

people. If we are in fact moving into a

new bull market, we have lots of time

still to participate because price would

be going much, much higher. Now, it's

Wednesday, so I know it's weird that I'm

going to talk about Sailor and Strategy.

We usually do it on Monday.

Strategy cuts net leverage near zero as

cash nearly matches convertible debt.

The Bitcoin treasury company has built

nearly four years of preferred dividend

coverage while continuing to repurchase

STRC below par. So, listen, this is

a follow-up on what happened Monday

because there's more data and the

narrative has slightly shifted because I

was not aware that they had effectively

gotten to a point now where there's zero

net net leverage. So, just to give you

some numbers, Strategy now holds 6.69

billion in dollar liquidity. Of course,

5.1 of that is in its designated USD

reserve, which can be used for paying

off dividends and expenses. And then the

new reserve of 1.59 billion in flexible

USD cash. So, that now puts it at almost

6.75

billion of convertible debt with 6.69

billion in dollar liquidity. So, those

almost match, meaning there's

effectively no net leverage here. So,

they calculate their net leverage by

subtracting their dollar assets

from their debt and dividing the

remainder by the value of their Bitcoin.

So, we know that this new fund that

they've raised, the flexible cash, can

be used to buy Bitcoin, repay converts,

repurpose repurchase MSTR and preferred

shares. So, what's interesting here

is that they can now effectively start

to pay off those converts again. A lot

of people looked at this dry powder they

were raising as a likely war chest for

buying Bitcoin. That was the knee-jerk

reaction, that's what I initially

thought too, but as I think more about

it, they probably want to close out

those old obligations, get them entirely

off the books, and simplify this

financial structure that they have. Now,

you can look at Strive, right, which is

a smaller competitor to Strategy. They

have Saylor, which is their STRC

competitor, which is already trading

back at par of $100. Now, last I spoke

to their CEO, Matt Cole, he made it very

clear that they had cleared all their

debt obligations, all all convertible

notes, all their other products, and

were focused solely on Saylor as their

machine for buying Bitcoin.

You have to think that Saylor saw that,

realizes that his structure is extremely

complex, and would like to clear some of

that out and simplify this for

investors. So, maybe that is the reason

that they're continuing to raise so much

cash in this environment, why they had

to sell Bitcoin unfortunately lower,

will end up, I'm sure, buying at much

higher. It happens. But, what they're

probably doing now is really shoring up

the balance sheet, getting rid of the

old debt. They have all these other

preferreds, STARK, STRD, they're all

also trading below par. Why not clean

all of that up, get it to a point where

it's basically just MSTR, STRC, and of

course the Bitcoin buying and selling

machine. I don't know if that's

possible, if that's where they're

headed, but right now Michael Saylor,

instead of stockpiling Bitcoin, clearly

has changed strategies to stockpiling

cash. They saw Strive with no leverage,

with no debt, just using this one

product. It makes a hell of a lot of

sense for them to become closer to that

themselves. Now, moving into the other

narrative from the top of the show,

which was stablecoin supremacy, the

fight continues and it's continuing all

over the world. But, right now,

the fight is heating up in the United

States. Here is the big story that just

broke. US State Banking Associations

plan to launch their own nationwide

blockchain network.

The Bank Chain Alliance, they literally

just went ahead and called it Bank

Chain.

Bank Chain.

Is aiming for a 2027 launch and would

foster stablecoins, payments, and

tokenized deposits inside the banking

system's regulatory sphere. So, this is

not a small thing. This is 39 state

banking associations have joined the

Bank Chain Alliance, which uh

sounds like something evil out of Star

Wars.

But, the goal is a nationwide bank-owned

blockchain launching in 2027.

So, this represents thousands of

community and regional banks that do not

want tokenized finance controlled

entirely by crypto companies or mega

banks.

That is the interesting part right here.

So, they haven't even selected a

technology partner. We don't know what

chain it's going to be on. We don't know

if it'll be a closed system, whether

it'll be interoperable or not, although

they've said that they would like for it

to be interoperable with other chains.

This is really interesting because

they're effectively in their mind,

I think they're wrong, but they're

getting squeezed, right? You have the

USDC and Circle of the world who have

private stable coins. They're absolutely

crushing it, making tons of money. Then

you have the J.P. Morgans and the large

banks who obviously also are major

competitors at this point to the

regional banking system, and they have

their own plans. And the regional banks

and the local banks, the community banks

are stuck in the middle. Now, I had I

had an Austin Campbell this morning on

my 9:00 a.m. show. You should go back

and listen to what he said about this

story because he pointed out the fact

that there's absolutely no data that

supports the idea

that stable coins will cause deposit

flight from the big banks, which has

been the major fight that was very

highly publicized in December and on

about the yield debate for the Clarity

Act.

Right? So, there's no evidence of that.

But, what has been killing over time

regional and and community banks is

deposit flight to the bigger banks. And

of course, the fact that people don't

want to go into a bank branch anymore,

right? They're they're losing their

they're they're losing their customers

to SoFi and Robinhood and Coinbase and

all the digital apps that are

purpose-built for the younger generation

because that generation does not

understand the idea of going to the

corner and having a relationship with

your teller and getting cash out

directly from the guy at the little

glass window. Right? So,

stable coins are actually no threat in

any way, shape, or form to these

regional community banks. They're just

misinterpreting what's actually

happening and trying to build a

competitive system. But now we're going

to be completely

you know, bifurcated is two. Is there a

word is Are are we trifurcated?

We're trifurca- I feel like I'm

trifurcating right now. I just

trifurcated.

We're trifurcating

private banks, big banks, and these in

the middle. So, right, you'll remember

that we reported on a story not that

long ago about OpenUSD, which was a

consortium of all the big banks trying

to compete. Everybody knows that stable

coins are the future of financial

infrastructure. There's just a major

battle over who's going to own those

rails and how that will proliferate.

Now, we have another story along with

this, Japan to work on blockchain-based

stock settlement system, details

expected early 2027.

Japan's regulator is all over this. They

also know that they're going to have to

use blockchain because it's faster and

cheaper and is the future and have their

own plans for blockchain adoption, which

obviously itself will also include

stable coins. And if you think there's

no more stable coin stories to tell you,

I'm sorry, we got a few. Nothing's more

exciting than stable coins.

I wake up in the morning, you know, and

I'm laying there and I'm like,

"Stable coins, man. Today's going to be

great."

Next one.

Revolut joins global stable coin race

with euro-backed token because what the

world wants is more euros.

Nobody cares. No, they do care. They do

care. And what matters here is that

actually because of MiCA regulation or

MiCA regulation, depending who you ask.

My European friends say MiCA, so I'm

going with MiCA. But MiCA regulation

uh around the European Union

is that

for Revolut, they were basically forced

to delist tethers. They have USDC taking

a huge percentage of their gains, and

they have this massive debt from Tether.

And so what they can do is launch their

own euro-backed stable coin and try to

use that internally for their customers.

Once again, to give credit to Austin,

who I discussed this with this morning.

Nobody wants euros anywhere

outside of Europe. And they don't really

want them. They're just forced to use

them. Right? So, it's not like they're

going to compete with dollar-backed

stablecoins, but it is a private company

and neobank launching a stablecoin for

their customers, which reminds us of

Standard Chartered launching the Hong

Kong stablecoin that I told you about on

Monday. And if you think that that's

where the stablecoin wars end between

community banks and regional banks and

private banks and Euro banks and

American banks, we have the biggest Euro

bank of all, the ECB, claims

That's the European Central Bank. Claims

digital euro will offer maximum level of

privacy amid surveillance fears. I look

at that guy and I think

you know what? I trust him with my

privacy.

Look at him.

The glasses. It's the glasses.

They just reek of trust. Okay, so

listen.

Anyone who's been in Bitcoin or crypto

for a long time, the biggest boogeyman

and rightfully so is the idea of a CBDC

or central bank digital currency. Now,

think about it.

If you digitize all transactions

directly from

the central bank, what do you get? You

get a Chinese surveillance state. You

get the central bank being able to have

full visibility into every transaction

that you make because it's on a

blockchain and we know that blockchains

are transparent. If I want to send my

friend $10, which I would have given him

in cash, and I have to do it with a

CBDC, the government's going to know I

did that. They want to take some taxes,

they can just take those out of my

wallet. They want to drop you a little

stimulus,

they airdrop that right into your

wallet, but they tell you, "Hey, this

money is yours, but only if you are a

good, nice, behaved citizen and if you

spend it on Nikes and groceries."

The central bank digital currency is the

most dystopian version of money control

that a central bank or government can

have and I don't believe them for one

freaking second when they attempt to

tell us that these will have a maximum

level of privacy.

I do not believe you and I'm not going

for it and I hope that this fails

horribly. And now our favorite segment

to end the show, how not to invest. Hit

it.

>> How not [music] to invest.

>> How not to invest.

>> Jury convicts Las Vegas business owner

of cryptocurrency

Ponzi scheme. A federal jury convicted

Brent Kovar over the 24 million Profit

Connect scheme, Profit Connect. At least

400 investors were promised fixed annual

returns of 15 to 30%. Here's the good

part. The alleged business used an AI

supercomputer to mine crypto and

validate transactions. So, investors

were falsely promised hundreds of

millions in reserves, FDIC protection,

100% money-back guarantee. This was just

a Ponzi scheme taking money from new

people to give it to old investors. If

someone promises you 30% because of

their AI supercomputer, don't send them

millions of dollars, you jackasses.

How not to invest. Da da da da how not

to invest. How not Yeah, honestly, man,

that's all that I've got for you today.

Like I We have a how not to invest every

day because people are dumb and they do

stupid things. Don't be one of those

people. Just go ahead and uh buy that

sweet Bitcoin. That's all I got for you

today. I'll see you tomorrow.