Announcer: Wall Street Unplugged looks beyond the regular headlines heard on mainstream financial media to bring you unscripted interviews and breaking commentary direct from Wall Street right to you on Main Street.

Frank Curzio: What’s going on out there? It’s December 22nd. I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where I break down the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. This is Thursday. I have some interviews for you. It’s during the holidays. Everybody’s all over the place, so you’re putting people’s feet to the fire. So instead, I’m sorry to announce this, but you’re getting stuck with Daniel Creech today. Daniel, what’s going on man? I usually do this big buildup with you, but today-

Daniel Creech: It’s the holidays, we can’t get anybody else. That’s okay.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, no, pretty much. I mean, you know what?

Daniel Creech: I can fill in. It’s one of my many traits. Moment’s notice.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, it’s like, “I can do it at this time, but can we do it an extra hour?” I’m like, “You know what? Don’t worry about it.” I just feel bad, but especially during these times. Everybody’s shopping, having fun, and stuff like that. But yeah, I always say it’s critical because there’s a lot going on into next year, where the Consumer Electronics Show is going to start up immediately once you come back. I’m going to be there in Vegas. You’ve got the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference coming out, where a lot of the best news within healthcare is announced, new studies and stuff like that. So, a lot of market moving stuff that you’re going to see, and we’re also getting economic data out and a few earnings.

Frank Curzio: So, this period’s important adjustments and stuff like that, and I know people want to just relax, and for me, that’s why they listen to us, basically, is to give them the scoop really quick because I know how busy they are. But there is kind of a lot going on, right? You saw David Tepper on TV today, which I thought was a pretty big deal.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, David Tepper’s always worth listening or reading anything he puts out for individual investors. I like his laid back style. He just says whatever he wants. He speaks his mind, not saying whatever he wants in a negative way. He just comes across as very genuine, straightforward, and honest, which I appreciate.

Daniel Creech: He didn’t say anything groundbreaking. It wasn’t an interview, in my opinion, where you grab a lot of good sound bites, but that doesn’t mean wasn’t a great interview. His talent, in my opinion, is he just keeps it very simple. His famous call several years ago was, everything’s going to go up, don’t fight the Fed. He’s essentially saying that now, leaning towards the bear side, because what we’ve been saying, and you’ve been saying much more, is, listen, how do you expect the economy and everything to go up and improve, stock prices, businesses, everything, improve when you have the Central Bank, the most powerful entity in finance, telling you they’re going to make matters harder?

Daniel Creech: As a society, and I’m guilty of this too, Frank, when you’re a b-b-b-billionaire, you can talk about anything, people listen. Why? Because you’re rich, and we value rich over here in the US. You can come in here and not have a clue about anything related… You could be Ralph Lauren himself and come in here and be like, “Hey, what do you think about Tesla?” People would go, “Oh yeah, what’s this guy think about Tesla? He’s rich, so he has an idea.”

Daniel Creech: But he did a great job. He just said, don’t fight the Fed, and I liked how he just, “I’m coming across a little bit bearish.” No big deal. Just a billionaire.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, he’s a billionaire that for me, he’s my favorite in terms of if I had to name one investor that I believe in, that I would follow, who I think is brilliant. You all have that one person-

Daniel Creech: Is he your favorite hedge fund guy?

Frank Curzio: I wouldn’t classify him even as hedge fund. I would say overall, he’s my Warren Buffett. A lot of people look up to Warren Buffett and say, “Warren Buffett’s…” To me, this guy, I follow him because of his calls. I follow him because I think he’s more common sense, and we all have to be analytical at times and know the numbers and things like that, but sometimes, you just have to take a step back and say, okay, common sense, what’s going on right now? These rates are higher, they’re going to hurt people going forward, they’re going to continue to hurt people. That big pile of money that you accumulated because money was free is getting smaller and smaller, it’s going to continue to get small throughout next year.

Frank Curzio: What he said in 2011 was something that changed me and really helped a lot of people listen to this podcast, because navigating the markets back then in 2011, I really got it when he said, maybe get incredibly bullish. Because when you look at the numbers in 2010, they were horrible. Even in 2011, stocks were cheap back then. But again, we’re just coming off the credit crisis, a lot going on, and we never saw anything like what the Fed did when it came to bailing out banks and keeping interest rates zero forever and stuff like that. Nobody was familiar with that because that’d never happened in the history of the markets.

Frank Curzio: He came out early 2011 and said, “Listen, you know it’s going to go higher because the Fed has zero rates of flood and market cash.” He goes, “Everything’s going to go higher,” and he was exactly right. I’m like, holy shit, don’t fight the Fed. And I think for me, from my standpoint, when you’re looking at analytics and you’re breaking down stocks individually, it didn’t matter. What he was saying, numbers don’t matter right now. Money is for free. Growth’s going to go to the roof, just buy everything because money is for free right now. So, your balance sheets are going to get better. You don’t have to worry about debt as much. It’s easy to borrow money. You have a little bit of also pricing power with a lot of these companies. So, it was just perfect mark conditions.

Frank Curzio: Now, for 10 years, what happened? The Fed kept rates low, and we saw one of the biggest bull markets in a generation. Now he went on and said the opposite, and I thought it was funny because when you’re news organization, you always want a great sound bite, and he didn’t give one like, “Oh, the markets are going to crash. You better watch out and run.” Nothing like that. From someone that’s been on TV a lot over my career, I can get on TV right away, if I say that the market’s going to go down 40% in a week. Everybody wants to hear that. That’s a great headline. Everyone’s going to click on it. Everyone’s going to click on it. Or Tom Lee’s the biggest bull in the world, that’s why he’s always on right now, because a lot of people are bearish, but he’s bullish no matter what, and he’s going to make a call even on Bitcoin and say it’s going to go to $250,000 this year, which I think that was one of his calls. Regardless, they like to see that because it’s a great headline.

Frank Curzio: Despite that, I wouldn’t tell you to watch a 30 minute interview, but it was important because he’s like, “Look, we always say don’t fight the Fed, but the Fed is telling us exactly what they’re going to do. They’re telling us exactly what they’re going to do.” It hasn’t changed Powell, whether you hate them or not. It doesn’t matter if you hate somebody or not. Even say it’s a policy, doesn’t matter a Democratic or Republican, a policy is a policy, it’s how could you make money off of it? He’s raising rates. He’s raising rates into next year, and he’s going to keep them there, because that 2% inflation rate, we’re not getting… If we’re a 4%, he’s still going to continue to raise rates. When I’m looking at what he’s said, he’s saying, listen, it’s a very difficult market. It’s not just the Fed raising rates. Everybody’s raising rates right now. Seven of the major economies are all raising rates and they don’t care, and they’re going to contain to raise rates, which creates much tougher conditions.

Frank Curzio: This should sound familiar to you, because we’ve said this for a year now, of how it’s a different market, it’s different conditions. You’re going to see rates rise. We haven’t been in this. We’ve said this for a full year going through, and now, look where we are at the markets. But going in 2023, guys, I hate to say, it’s going to get worse. Because we had a flood of cash which is keeping a lot of these companies up, and they’re okay, and they’re still able to cut costs and things like that and buy back their stock. Going into 2023 is when you’re really going to see the capital shrink as the Fed’s shrinking its balance sheet, and that’s what’s going to hit so many of these companies.

Frank Curzio: I don’t know what the S&P 500’s going to be. It could be down 5%, down 7%, up 1%. I just know a lot of companies within there are going to see 30% declines when they’re reporting earnings. You saw CarMax today is getting wrecked, down 10%. Now you’re looking, what was it, close to $100 in September, and now it’s $54. So, you’re going to see these companies report horrible… Micron too, right? You thought Micron, okay, here’s the bottom. They keep wanting. That’s what you’re going to see going forward.

Frank Curzio: It’s the reason why we’ve been pushing Moneyflow Trader so much is this is a strategy that you can make an absolute fortune while this happens, and for our clients and subscribers to be emailing us with the gains that they have in their portfolio. This is a dream for someone like me because this is the reason why I do this. We lower the price of that product by 90%. It’s a $5,000 product. We lower it by 90%, and it’s not for the full year, but it’s for three months, because you need to understand how to buy long data puts. It’s one of the greatest strategies out there. I like to say I’m some kind of genius with the newsletter. The newsletter’s on fire from Moneyflow Trader because Genia Turanova, one of the greatest analysts, very lucky hiring, I thought she was great, and then she’s up over 30% of her portfolio. She’s killing it. She’s closing out winning trades like every 26 days on average, so it’s like every single month.

Frank Curzio: But when I hear what Tepper’s saying and I see what’s going forward into 2023, this is a strategy you need to have. You know why? Because if it doesn’t work, that means the rest of your portfolio is probably going to do well. I’m not saying to go all short, get out of all your positions. What I’m saying is you have your long positions in there, and even we have our long positions in our portfolios. But when you’re using that 7% to 10% to protect yourself, and it’s not just a hedge, because some of these things can go up tremendously. If you’re seeing a 20% decline after the company’s reportings, which you’re going to see a ton of over the next two to three quarters, this is something that can make you an absolute fortune, this strategy. It’s what I’m doing with my money right now and I keep pushing it. So, if you’re interested in that, mftoffer.com. You go on our website, again, and look for it. It’s a pitch because I’m pitching it because it’s something that’s going to help you.

Frank Curzio: I’ve made this mistake before because I’ve always been a long investor, Daniel, that okay, what happens when the market comes down? I didn’t really have to worry about that for the last 12, 13 years, because the market, every time it dipped 10, 15, even sometimes 20%, a couple of times it hit a 20%, it immediately came back because of the Fed. We’re in different conditions now. The Fed’s not there to bail us out, and they’re going to continue to spend money like this next package that up for 1.7 whatever. They’re going to continue and continue.

Daniel Creech: Trillion.

Frank Curzio: Okay. I’m afraid to say the trillion word. But it’s going to continue to be like that where inflation’s going to stay steadily high, and this is a way that you can make money in this market and have fun doing it, because you’re going to learn this strategy.

Frank Curzio: So for me, Tepper just reinforcing our thesis on the markets and saying, “How could you really be long stocks here?” Not saying how could you, but it’s going to be very difficult for stocks to move higher when you have the Fed and you have that constant headwind, where you had the tailwind behind you, what happened? Don’t worry about it. Straight to low, oh, temporary tariffs, don’t worry about it. Fifteen, 20%, it’ll go away. Easy money. It’s not just rates, guys. They are going to come out and they are going to aggressively shrink their balance sheet, which is trillions. Trillions over the next couple years they’re going to be taken off the balance sheet, and that’s going to result in less liquidity, which is going to be very, very hard, especially for growth stocks, to go higher in this market.

Frank Curzio: So, I took a lot away from that, although there’s no particular soundbites and a nice headline CNBC, but I thought it was a fantastic interview.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, exactly. I agree. I think there’s value there. There’s just not a clickable light shining on it.

Frank Curzio: No, no.

Daniel Creech: What I like about him, again, he wears a number of different hats. He’s a hedge fund guy, he’s a trader, and also, he understands that his words carry a lot of weight for the individual investor. I liked his honesty, and he said, “Listen, if you’re me, I can do futures, I can buy puts, we have longs.” He says, “Of course you always have longs you never sell out completely.” He says, “But if you’re just the average Joe, and you can’t take advantage of the same stuff that I do, not because you’re not smart enough, simply because you don’t have the money and the tools,” he said, “So, just have a little bit more cash on the sideline.” That’s what we’ve been… Hey, head yourself, use Moneyflow Trader, have some quality longs. But as bad as it is for business here, the honest truth is there’s nothing wrong with having a little bit of extra cash to help you sleep at night. Whatever that number is for you as an individual, the long game is what you want to focus on. If you blow up your portfolio, you’re done.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, no, it is true. But I enjoyed that interview. I’m glad that they had it, and he was on for a good 30 minutes.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, he was. That was good.

Frank Curzio: It’s a good interview for you to watch. But again, the sound bites and stuff like that, they always want more. Like, “Is it going to…” He’s like, “I’m leaning short.” He’s like, “The Fed’s telling you exactly what they’re going to do. Why fight it?” So, I thought that was interesting.

Frank Curzio: But I want to talk about this, because it is in relation to what we’re going into crypto here, but Sam Bankman-Fried, all over where extradited back to the US. Now we’re realizing that the co-founder, Gary Wang, and Caroline Ellison, who looks like she’s six years old, I don’t know if you saw a picture of her. Have you seen a picture of her?

Daniel Creech: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: She looks like she’s 10.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, they all do. She looks very young, you’re right. She looks very young.

Frank Curzio: Not that that matters or anything, but I’ll get into that in a second. But they’re rolling over, and that’s normal. So now SBF, I don’t understand with a guy worth that much and hiding that much money because he knew this was coming, and you saw it just to sell out of some of these things. I don’t know who his advisors were, who his lawyers are, but you have to be careful when you’re speaking. It’s the number one thing they say. No matter what, just ask for a lawyer. If you get it written, no matter what, ask for… Don’t say anything. It’s 100% against you. If you go in and they start talking to you and you talk, don’t ever talk, even if you’re innocent. Just say, “I want a lawyer.” Because no matter what you say, that’s on record and they can use that against you.

Frank Curzio: For this guy to go everywhere and make it appear like, “Hey, I didn’t do it.” Now they have the smoking gun. So now, they had it, which is why they finally arrested him. But now you have Wang and Ellison, who are basically working with the Fed, and I think the agreement was $250,000 in bail, which they probably reached in their pocket in their hand and say, “Here you go, we’re out,” before they even finished that, the sentence, and they are able to basically go home for now.

Frank Curzio: So, they’re rolling over, and you’re going to see this really influence the case. For me, it’s a story, it’s always on there, and it’s no surprise that they’re rolling over. The surprise to me is when you really see the age of these people, Daniel. Sam Bankman-Fried is 30, Wang, he’s the co-founder, Gary Wang is 29, and Ellison, when I said she looked like six and 10 and stuff like that, she’s 28 years old. These are children. These are children running multi-billion dollar operations. These are children.

Daniel Creech: Children, I don’t know about that.

Frank Curzio: These are children.

Daniel Creech: But they’re young people.

Frank Curzio: In the scheme of things at a billion dollar company, and when you’re saying that these three are at the top, and you can say, well, if you look at Zuckerberg, they always surrounded themselves by people who were smarter than them. I felt like these guys felt like they were the smartest people in the room, and to do what they did, the ego that’s involved, and I’ve seen it through Wall Street. When you see anyone under 30, 35, when they start making money, they change. They’re a god, they’re more important than the world. It’s the way you’re supposed to be because you’re young. You’re young, you don’t know, you haven’t got your ass kicked. A lot of these people haven’t gotten their ass kicked yet and just, holy cow. When I see the ages of them, and it’s just… I don’t know. I’m going to stop-

Daniel Creech: So what, should they go light on them because they’re young?

Frank Curzio: No, not at all.

Daniel Creech: Okay. I wanted to make sure.

Frank Curzio: Not at all. I’m not saying they’re not old enough to know what they’re doing. I’m just saying that in charge of that much money going in, and without the regulation behind it, I was just surprised so many people trusted them. For example, I just got a call where I get calls all the time from investments that I’m going to get into if I want. Our lawyer’s great, he gives me a lot of ideas, he’s in the hedge fund community, and I might pass some of those ideas onto Curzio One members and stuff. One of the deals that he wanted me to get into was a software company that’s like an add-on. I won’t say too much about it, but it’s really good, and they’re going to share a percentage of profits at the beginning, and already it’s starting to make money. It’s a great software, and that’s an add-on to a much bigger program. But when I got on the phone with them, they’re engaged, the couple, and as I’m talking to them, one’s talking-

Daniel Creech: Who is? The owners of these?

Frank Curzio: The owners of this company that I’m thinking of investing in.

Daniel Creech: Oh, okay. Gotcha, gotcha.

Frank Curzio: So, I’m doing a Zoom call with them, and they’re both talking, and they’re at separate places, and he’s talking, talking, talking. She just turned around, she said, “All right, let me finish.” Right away, I’m out of there. In two seconds, I’m out of there because-

Daniel Creech: Come on, Frank, it’s the season of love.

Frank Curzio: I’m just saying, there’s certain things that you see. If I see a bunch of young… I make sure, even when we’re dealing with some of our companies, I’m making sure I’m more involved. Where a company named me the president. So yeah, I want to see the numbers. I have to be more involved. I feel like everybody who jumped into this company weren’t involved. My point is when I looked at that company and I saw those two just bicker a little bit, I’m playing the odds. It might be terrible, but this is my money and my subscribers getting into it. I’ve never seen a company work out with a husband and wife at the helm.

Daniel Creech: Oh.

Frank Curzio: Not to mention that they’re engaged. Not that they were bickering, and 60% of marriages end up in divorce, but what’s going to happen if they’re both in charge of that company? That makes it really difficult. So, there’s little things that I see. The company was great, everything was great, and the people gave it to me were like, “I’m surprised you’re not investing.” I said, “This is why I said I’m not going to invest in it, because I just feel like I’ve got to play the odds here.” I didn’t like that, again, it wasn’t that they were bickering, but she was like, “Oh, well let me finish.” I just don’t want to deal with a company like this.

Frank Curzio: My point is these young people, I’m surprised that they went into the political circles, and I get it, but you have to be able to hire people who are much smarter than you and lean on people who are much smarter than you that understand this process, and I think instead of everyone being able to lean on these people, these people just invested with them without even looking at what’s going on underneath the hood, and now look what happened.

Daniel Creech: Kevin O’Leary tried to play that card. You’re not writing a check to them. You’re just saying, “Yeah, I’ll take money from you in an investment form,” and all that kind of stuff.

Frank Curzio: O’Leary, yeah.

Daniel Creech: Again, I’m not taking away from a lot of the people that did lose money. I’m just simply saying, to your point, a lot of those people that claim to do due diligence, they don’t have any reason-

Frank Curzio: Only reason that makes sense-

Daniel Creech: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: It doesn’t make sense.

Daniel Creech: Frank, if you’re going to bring me on to Curzio Research, pay me.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, you’re right.

Daniel Creech: Hey, why do I care what you do?

Frank Curzio: Absolutely, separate-

Daniel Creech: You just wired me a couple million bucks to pay my taxes, and then now, I have this account that shows me these tokens. Okay, we’re good. Yeah, Frank does what he does.

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

Daniel Creech: Anyway, let’s have some fun here. So, they roll. Ellison?

Frank Curzio: Yes.

Daniel Creech: Is that right? Ellison and Wang?

Frank Curzio: Yep.

Daniel Creech: So, do they go to jail an over-under of seven years, Frank? What do they get? Because they got to do a limit, in my opinion. Well, you give me your-

Frank Curzio: They let Sammy the Bull out after he killed like, what, 30 people?

Daniel Creech: That’s different, Frank. We have respect for mafia people. These guys are fraudsters.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. I’m just saying the deals that they signed, it depends how much the FBI has and the SEC has on them. If they really need a couple of dots that could be connected that they can’t connect, then they’re going to give them even more. They’re going to know that these kids, believe or it not. They’re going to know-

Daniel Creech: Okay, I’ll take under seven years for the two that turned, and Sam better get 50 plus. What do you think about those odds?

Frank Curzio: I think it’s going to be more than seven. They might get out before seven, but I think the headline has to be bigger than that.

Daniel Creech: Okay, gotcha, yeah.

Frank Curzio: I think it’s going to be, well, 20 years, and on good behavior you get out in four. That’s how it is. Who doesn’t behave good when you’re in a jail cell and you only get out? What are you going to do? Especially these kids. What are they going to do? They’re going to fight with someone in jail? Again, they’re not going to maximum security and craziness. They’re going to go there where they’re going to have TVs and stuff like that, and it’s nice, and they barely have a fence around where they are. Trust me, I’ve had a lot of friends growing up in Queens, and there’s a big difference between federal prison and regular prison.

Daniel Creech: I thought you were going to say, “Trust me, I did 10 years.” No, I’m kidding.

Frank Curzio: No, no. But there’s a huge difference with the maximum security, visiting friends there compared to going to federal, and there’s seriously not even barbed wire on the fence because no one’s really going to run, because it’s like a country club there.

Daniel Creech: She’s by far the smartest of them out of the trio that I can see, because it’s reported when she was in New York City a couple of weeks ago, that she lawyered up with a Clinton super lawyer, as they call him, Jamie Gorelick of WilmerHale, and, check this out, Frank, let’s see, was the former number two ranker member in the Clinton Justice Department, and in a recent interview, shared she referred to lawyer, to current AG Merrick Garland, as her wingman. So, there’s no coincidences and a lot of ties in Washington.

Daniel Creech: This will be fun to watch out. Fun meaning hopefully justice is served to these fraudsters. The wild thing, Frank, and the frustrating thing, like I often talk about in investing, is that you have to wait. Okay, so Sam got back to the US yesterday, I believe, sometime. The trial’s not going to be until 2024, the end of 2023?

Frank Curzio: Maybe, yeah.

Daniel Creech: It’s going to take forever, which is very disappointment. But at least you got to take small wins.

Frank Curzio: They’re going to have to get a lot of stuff together, too. There’s still a lot a lot of stuff they got to go through that’s hidden that they don’t know about. That’s the thing. When you’re coming in, you’re just look at papers and things like that, and obviously, since a lot of the houses and everything and the assets, they weren’t accounted for. You need people inside to connect the dots. So, the more you can connect those dots, and they’re going to know, and the lawyers for Wang and Ellison are going to know that, and if they’re like, “Listen, this is the smoking gun that you wanted. I’m going to hand it to you on a platter if you give us this, this, and this.” Again, that’s how they’re leveraging it, and that that’s fine.

Frank Curzio: But to my own point, and the reason why we bring this up, because it’s just the news story that people like talking about, I really think that this is a great thing for crypto, because you need this wipe out. You need people to understand how dangerous this market is. You need to get rid of all the shit, which we’ve been adamant about for four years covering this industry, having our newsletters, saying everything. I can’t find anything on so many of these things. They don’t provide updates. So, many shit tokens. I say again, 99.2% of the industry, that’s just not a number that I’m pulling. I’m just saying that everything that I’ve researched, and I’ll see these technologies and I’ll look at a token structure, I’m like, you don’t benefit at all. Uniswap is a great, great service. The token’s not linked to anything. It should be worthless. The token should be absolutely worthless. It’s not linked to anything.

Frank Curzio: Again, you don’t get equity stakes in this, and it’s very, very difficult to understand this market, but you need regulation, because the innovation is coming from here. Even the NFTs and the Trump NFTs, Trump’s down to NFTs. Again, if you have a big name, that’s a good way. Sell NFTs, and again, he sold them… What was it? How many? I don’t know. Something-

Daniel Creech: Do you have his website up?

Frank Curzio: 44,000.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, they were talking about how they sold out. They were selling for $95 a pop.

Frank Curzio: Yes.

Daniel Creech: They sold out. I don’t know how many there were. They did say it was limited.

Frank Curzio: 44,000.

Daniel Creech: Okay.

Frank Curzio: 44,000. So now, the prices went up a little bit. Now they’re coming down a couple days. When you see NFTs, this isn’t what I think of NFTs. NFTs are access to service, it’s access to show ownership in your property and everything that you do through the blockchain. It’s amazing. Once it’s on a blockchain, it’s fact. That’s it. You can’t change it. It’s yours. That’s going to be the future of the digital community. Whether you like it or not, or whether you believe it or not, start learning about it. I’m learning about it where the first NFTs that I bought-

Daniel Creech: Are you buying Trump NFTs, Frank?

Frank Curzio: No, I’m note buying Trump’s NFTs. But there are NFTs out there that are fantastic. Again, this is an industry, same thing, where you want to have someone to guide you through it. Not saying that we’re not going to fuck up every now and then. That’s why I want to start a newsletter around this. But the one true NFT that I’ve gotten into is called Killa Bears, and I remember posting about it because the community’s so big and they’re like, “Frank Curzio is on board,” and this and that. I think I bought… I forgot how much, maybe 10, $15,000.

Daniel Creech: It Killer or Killa?

Frank Curzio: Killa Bears. Killa. These things went up tremendously in value, because these guys have a whole story to tell. So, it’s like a Marvel franchise where you have all these things, now they’re going to create a new show, Seth Green’s behind it, who’s on a lot of the stuff with comedy show and things like that and animation. Then even going further, building this show and building it and having certain chapters and telling a story and just you see this community growing and growing and growing. It’s like being able to buy the Marvel characters before all the movies came out, which is pretty exciting. The guy understands this, because I talked to the owner. This is what he’s thinking. He’s not like, “Oh, I want to sell this and that’s it.”

Frank Curzio: But something like that makes a lot of sense. Having access to NFTs through tickets, ticket selling, where, again, you’re a billionaire owner and I don’t want to make billionaires more money. I explained this, I’ll explain it one more time. But once they sell those tickets, they go to Ticketmaster, who has basically the monopoly who sells it to everybody, and we saw that with Taylor Swift and how much the prices went up. But now, those tickets get sold, resold, resold, resold, resold for thousands and thousands of dollars depending on the venue, what’s going on, and the event. But now, you can put an NFT on that so every time that ticket is sold, say you don’t make the $100 off of all the tickets, you make the $100 immediately, but then every time that ticket is sold and you click that barcode, it’s an NFT, so it automatically goes to blockchain, and you’re going to get 10% of every price that it’s sold after that. That makes a lot of sense to me. That’s a brilliant example.

Frank Curzio: I hate saying that because I know that there’s owners that are doing this right now in the NBA and the NFL, and I don’t want to make them more money. But you could see the power of NFTs using that example of what it means. Any access to service, and again, and ownership of everything on the internet.

Frank Curzio: But yeah, seeing Trump get into NFTs, I guess, listen, it’s going to bring more attention to it. I don’t know. It’s a bunch of pictures with Trump and whatever, so they’re probably funny and entertaining. But this is the future of the market. This is going to get much, much, much, much bigger going forward. Billionaires are all investing in this technology. They have been investing in this technology and these platforms. Being part of this and staking and making money through that and seeing the whole process, there’s a lot of money to be made in this if you’re in the right projects, in the right areas. We have some very, very, very, very good contacts in this industry because we’ve been attending a lot of crypto conferences over the past three years, and it’s opened up the door to a lot of real people, real projects coming to us and saying, “Hey, this is what we’re looking to do and this is cool and no bullshit.” So, this is a big deal, but the Trump thing is also kind of funny.

Daniel Creech: Speaking of communities and things, just Bitcoin in general and how we’ve talked about the bigger picture and all that. The Sam Bankman-Fried news is great. I agree with you on the wipe out and things. From a community standpoint, Frank, I thought this was an interesting stat: 17% of Bitcoin’s total circulating supply is now held by retail investors. Now this is according to Glassnode, which is a data blockchain analytics firm.

Daniel Creech: The way they define retail investor, Frank, is a holder that has less than 10 Bitcoin, which would be valued currently, give or take, at 169, $170,000. So, they’re saying if you own less than 10, you’re quote unquote retail. What they use in terms of, for any new listeners or not entertained by crypto people, when you hear the term whale, that means that you hold a ton. You’re a whale, you’re a big player, you’re a large hoarder, you’re wealthy.

Daniel Creech: Now, the 17% has gone up in the last couple years. The figure stood at less than 12%, again, this is for retail investors holding Bitcoin under 10, in early 2020. So, in just two years, you’ve gone from 12 to 17%. We’re not politicians. That’s not a matter of five, okay? That’s a good, significant rise for retail investors.

Daniel Creech: Why do I think this is important? Because you’ve talked about the need for institution to get in and really help the bull market. I totally agree with that. What I’d like to see is the retail get more of a portion of this before that money flows in, because then everybody benefits, not just the top. That’s important about that.

Daniel Creech: One last thing here in my opinion on why I think the individual will continue to go to Bitcoin, is when you have markets evaporate or bear markets or market crashes, you do lose some wealth. Some wealth does evaporate. If this was worth $10 billion and now it’s worth $1 billion, that’s a lot of money gone. However, the remaining money transfers. It doesn’t just go into thin air, Frank.

Daniel Creech: My point to all this is that you have this huge wipe out, and a lot of alt coins and different coins that, to your point, aren’t worth anything. What if the vast majority of that, those people, yeah, you’re going to have some people sell everything and write off crypto and they think they got screwed and it’s somebody else’s fault. That’s their problem, they need to deal with it. What if a lot of the money just throws in the towel and goes into Bitcoin and Ethereum. Hey, why play in this crazy lottery when you can’t find information, you don’t know what’s exactly behind it, you don’t have a lot of documents to go through and try to trust other than just what they’re telling you. Why not just have a lot of that money flowing into Bitcoin and Ethereum? Not to mention all your institution money coming. I think this is fantastic to see the individual retailers grow their holdings in Bitcoin.

Frank Curzio: I could tell you, one is that institutions are going to come into Bitcoin in droves in 2023, 2024. You’re going to see it’s going to be open the 401ks through Fidelity, BlackRock, it’s going to be huge. I can also tell you speaking to the biggest bulls in Bitcoin, they hate old coins. They’re Bitcoin only. A lot of them crap on Ethereum. I think Ethereum is the platform for NFTs. It’s going to stay that way. It doesn’t matter about the gas fees. That’s the way it is. It makes it easier. It’s Ethereum, it’s not Polygon, it’s Ethereum. They have all these exceptions, whatever.

Frank Curzio: But when I look at Bitcoin and the amount of people and the holders too, right? You’re seeing more and more people hold it and they say, “Well, Bitcoin, more and more Bitcoin’s coming offline.” It is because after FTX, you’re like, holy shit, I thought everything was okay, and now you might not be able to get your money back. So, let me just put that in cold storage, which is, I won’t say a USB drive away, but you’re taking it offline and you own those.

Frank Curzio: So, if you own those and you’re taking them offline and you have them on a drive that’s outside of your computer where no one can touch, you’re not going to sell it anytime soon. That’s why you’re not seeing, I think, Bitcoin collapse from here. I’m not saying it can’t go lower depending on the markets. It was $18,000, now it’s like 16 six. The markets come down past couple weeks.

Frank Curzio: But Bitcoin, Ethereum, those are going to be the leaders going forward. The tailwinds behind those two are incredible. Then you have a nice group of old coins, maybe 100, 150 of them, and some new ones coming in, that offer tremendous opportunities. Unfortunately, there’s thousands and thousands of these things that are worthless in garbage. Even going through it and seeing people and learning about new companies in this industry and some of the token structures, they’re like, “This is what we’re going to do. Yeah, we’re going to give away a percentage of profits.” I’m like, “You’re not generating profits for probably 15 years, so no one gives a shit.”

Frank Curzio: So, how about 2% of all sales goes into automatically buying the token. When you buy it, you burn it, meaning that you get rid of it. Again, it’s kind of like a buyback, and you’re taking the shares, which are the tokens, off the market. But now you’re creating constant buying. That’s why Binance has stayed up so well. Because Binance has so many uses. They constantly burn their token from the revenues that are generated. That’s a great utility, you could use it for so many different things, lower your trading fees. The coin is valuable. It’s like a Dave and Buster’s card that you just put $100 on. It’s valuable in Dave & Buster’s. But if Dave & Buster’s closed, that card, even though you got $1,000 on it to play video games, is worthless.

Frank Curzio: It’s all about the system behind that token, and if you can’t use that token as a utility feature, then it’s worthless, and that’s why I’m saying, 90% of the industry is worthless because that token has no structure, no anything, you can’t use it for anything, meaning that people are just going to sell, sell, sell, sell it, and there’s no demand in no buying for it.

Frank Curzio: But with the FTX, just want to be clear here. This isn’t a crypto problem. People are like, “Crypto, this is what I told you.” This is a fraud problem. This is fraud. Even if we have regulation in the US, nobody would’ve caught this because this is an overseas place. This is where everything took place. Binance has a US division, not FTX and their US division. This happened outside of the US. So even with our regulation, it wouldn’t have worked.

Frank Curzio: But it has brought down the price in so many different cryptos. I think this is a fantastic opportunity for people who have a long-term view, and I’m not talking about having a 10-year view, I’m talking about having a 12, 24 month view, I think you’re really going to see a lot of money going into Bitcoin. It makes sense as an alternative. People want that alternative asset class, and that’s why you’re seeing all these funds. If their clients don’t want it, they won’t do it. If their clients want it, that’s why JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon did an about face. “This is bullshit. The industry’s terrible.” You have to see how much they’re integrated into the blockchain and crypto now. Because their clients want it, so either give it to them or you’re going to lose that business to somebody else, and that’s why one more and more of the biggest funds in the world and management institutions who are managing so much trillions of dollars are going to get into this, and that’s a lot of tailwinds going into 2023, 2024 for this.

Frank Curzio: I just think with FTX, you’re going to see much more due diligence on these things, which you need, because you’re going to find out which projects are real. Because again, this is the industry that you see in the most innovation come out of. They have a massive metaverse, massive crypto that’s going to take place at CES, arranging all kinds of meetings and things like that, and that’s going to be pretty much the first week. I think they’re going down there the 3rd to the 7th, 8th. So, lots of meetings set up, but this wasn’t a big part of the CES, Daniel, in the past, and now it is, and it’s going to get bigger and bigger and bigger, so it is interesting. But I do think this is great news, the FTX story.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love the fact that he’s here in jail and awaiting trial.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, it is pretty cool. All right guys, so look, questions, comments, feel free to email me at frank@curzioresearch.com if you want to take advantage of that Moneyflow Trader. We’re not going to keep that open forever, I promise you, because that’s a huge discount. I don’t think any of our subscribers who subscribe for two years at a much higher price, we haven’t gotten any blowback because they’ve made a lot a lot of money over the past year and a half on this product. But mftoffer.com if you want it. If not, don’t worry about it. But please, learn how to protect yourself. It’s not just protecting yourself and hedging yourself, it’s a way to make an absolute killing, all for these companies that even you see today, the CarMax’s. “Well, I want to invest long term because used car prices are through the roof.” That strategy was nine months. That worked for nine months, and now, everyone’s out of these things tremendously.

Frank Curzio: So, that’s what you’re going to see. Things are going to work for nine months. They’re not going to work forever. You’re going to be like, “Wow, this pocket is great. Fertilizer is great. This is great. Travel is great.” But you’re going to see it reverse course so quickly because of what’s happening, what the Fed’s doing next year, which is going to open the door to a lot of these companies reporting, expectations are going to get high going into the quarter, they’re going to miss, and you’re going to see 10, 15, 20% declines. It’s a layup. It’s a way to make a lot of money. Again, if you’re wrong, what’s the risk? Chances are the rest of your portfolio is probably going to do pretty well in a bull market, if it does happen to be a bull market next year, which I really don’t see based on the numbers. So, that’s it for me. Daniel, email address? I know you like getting emails these days.

Daniel Creech: I do. I’ve been getting a handful, too. I appreciate that, daniel@curzioresearch.com. Everybody’s being too nice, though. Get out of the Christmas spirit. Where’s all the Grinches at?

Frank Curzio: Yeah, you’ll see. When the Grinches come, they come. It’s kind of funny.

Daniel Creech: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: It’s like, what? Careful what you wish for. All right, guys, listen, happy holidays. Enjoy, you and your family. Thank you so much for all the support. If you are subscribed to any of our products, you’ll hear me from Frankly Speaking tomorrow. Otherwise, make sure you watch the Eagles-Dallas game. Enjoy the holidays. Let’s go Eagles. I don’t know if Hurts is going to play or not, but Minshew Mania is there, and I’m looking forward to spending time with my family for the holidays. So again, have a wonderful holiday, and I’ll see you guys next year. Take care.

Announcer: Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry. The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its host and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money and your responsibility.