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The Fed Turns Hawkish: What's Next?
188 Plays25 days ago
In this week's episode, we discuss the recent shift in approach from the Fed and how this has impacted the crypto markets.
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Transcript
Introduction and 2024 Closing
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Decrypting Crypto Podcast. It's December 19th, 2024, and this is Off Chain, your weekly recap of the biggest stories in the crypto space. I'm Matthew Howes-Barbie, and as always, I'm here with Austin Knight. Austin, it's probably going to be our last recording of 2024. How's the year treated you overall?
Bitcoin's 100K Milestone
00:00:34
Speaker
I think it's been a good year. um Bitcoin is currently hanging out at 100K, which in our last episode, I know that we were sort of speculating as to how effective it would be at doing that. And I think that you throughout, you know what, I think it might even hit 120K. And I'll tell you what, Matt, that would be a great Christmas present this year. It certainly would.
Crypto Market Volatility and Central Banks
00:00:56
Speaker
I mean, based on today, 100K's never felt so bad. ah when we kind of pull back from about around 107 but I know I think it's a zoom out situation i looking back at the the year as a whole I was I was at the gym this morning and I was just thinking a little bit about you know what what state were we in at the start of January and man
00:01:25
Speaker
It's when when I really, I feel that sometimes the year has flown by and then when I really go back and think what was happening in January, what was even happening in last December,
00:01:37
Speaker
It is worlds apart, really, in everything that's happened in between. It's true. um You know, that's that's always how it is with crypto, right? you You have to zoom out, play the long game a little bit if you want to reduce some of that anxiety that you feel when, oh my God, it went down to 100K.
00:01:59
Speaker
But ah you know it's um as we were saying in those episodes at the beginning of the year, those dark days are what seem like dark days when you're down in the 60s or you know in the past. It may have been that we were down in the 20s. Those turn out to be amazing opportunities. And I think that now we can look on that in hindsight yet again. I mean, how many times have we been through this cycle?
00:02:26
Speaker
and say, ah yeah, that was that was a good time um to buy, to be active in the space. ah It was quiet, but good. And so to end the year um on on such a high note in the grand scheme of things, I think is fantastic.
00:02:43
Speaker
i I completely agree. And I mean, this this year, it's it's been all about macro, really. right And I think that the ah central banks have been front and center of 2024, not just in crypto, but across global markets. We've, I don't think in my lifetime, we've hung on to FOMC meetings at the level that we have this year. And, you know, yeah, we've been talking obviously a lot about inflation, and the flow of liquidity and how much that's played a huge role. We've seen that actually even just yesterday still.
00:03:31
Speaker
It's going to continue to be a big discussion topic moving into 2025. so With that, what I thought we'd we'd kick off, we've got a couple of things we're gonna dive into, but I wanted to share a little bit of a state of the market update, a few just thoughts on where we go next. And
Fed's Rate Cut Impact and Market Reactions
00:03:51
Speaker
even in this kind of 24 hour pullback, where I think there's some some opportunities, certainly on the crypto side um moving forward. So let's jump straight into that.
00:04:09
Speaker
As we alluded to, crypto and equities and bonds experienced a pretty significant sharp pullback yesterday. and Really, this is all a result of the Fed's hawkish outlook during their FOMC meeting yesterday, um as expected, the Fed cut interest rates. ah They did it by 25 bips. I know that earlier in the ah month, there was quite a bit of hopium around the 50 bips reduction. I felt less sure of of that, I'll be completely honest. But I will definitely say I've been caught off guard with the fact that
00:04:50
Speaker
they have signaled that they only plan now to cut rates twice next year versus four times um as was previously on the dot plot. So a much more hawkish Fed, and I think we've seen that the Fed actually, especially in the past couple of quarters,
00:05:10
Speaker
um or should I say the past quarter, it is zigzagging around a little bit. We had that real surprise in the 50 bits cut, and it seemed like, okay, it was rate cutting cycle continuous. Now they're saying, hey, we need to be more conservative, we need to cut less, and kind of positioning at this point around two rate cuts, you gotta ask the question.
00:05:37
Speaker
will they cut at all, right? And so I think there's been a pretty significant reaction. I mean, in equities, ah the S and&P 500 retraced 3% yesterday. That, for context, is the largest single-day loss since August. um And yeah, I mean, it was a bloodbath. BTC pulled back from 106, 107K down to briefly just below 99K, and then is settling back here between the,
00:06:06
Speaker
100 to 102 K mark. Altcoins have been wrecked, memes wrecked. So we're seeing things stabilize. um I actually haven't looked at whether the ah S and&P and co have like opened this morning. I know the future is early on this morning. We're well looking to be slightly in the green, but I think we're going to see a few more jitters over the next couple of weeks. My personal opinion here is that this is a mere hiccup certainly for crypto asset prices. um I still think we're going to end Q1 2025 in a very bullish place.
00:06:51
Speaker
equities may be a little bit more sensitive you know with bond yields set to go higher the dollar strengthening but i think what we've seen is even when we've had some of these periods of jitters and pullbacks which have actually happened several times over the past let's just say post-election period, um we've we've kind of regrouped and came back stronger. So um I'm unsure as to how things will play out in the more immediate term being the next three to four weeks. We we talked about this Austin in the, I think in the run-up to the inauguration, we should probably expect a lot of volatility.
00:07:33
Speaker
um i I think that is certainly going to be the case. Would it surprise me if BTC starts trading in the low 90s around that time? Definitely not. Not at all. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Potentially even upper 80s wouldn't surprise me. Do I feel like by the time we get to the end of Q1, we're going to have a ah some some moments of like real breakouts? I think so.
00:08:01
Speaker
We'll see how that holds true. We're not in our predictions podcast right now, but I think what's what's your thoughts here on the Fed's decision? I know you've certainly been vocal about the risks of ah inflation ticking back up. We're seeing here in the UK, the BOE starting to ah get a little bit more hawkish through the risk of stagflation, very different from what's going on in the US. but You think this is a good thing, bad thing, neutral? Where do you stand? um I lean good right now. yeah um The main reason for that being that, as I've said previously, I'm not convinced that inflation has been full, the the the risk of inflation um and sticky, potentially sticky inflation has been fully deflated from our economy.
00:08:56
Speaker
um you know the the median projection for core PCE inflation by the end of the year actually rose um following the last rate cut ah only by a couple of tenths. It rose to 2.8% from 2.6%. But then for the end of 2025, it rose to 2.5% from 2.2%. And overall PCE inflation is also rising um since that last cut. So you know as we discussed in the episode following that,
00:09:26
Speaker
um My concern is is just simple. It's the the feeling that you have on the ground as an everyday American um purchasing goods, looking at real estate, so on and so forth, like you know looking at rent rates. Rents in in some metro areas have corrected dramatically actually, but in other areas totally haven't. um it's It's not so much ah that I don't think we should have rate cuts on the horizon. It's um it's a worry about like pre-emptively or prematurely um eroding some of the progress that was made over the course of the past year, two years um with a you know a relatively painful
00:10:16
Speaker
Fed policy to introduce significant quantitative tightening. And so it looks like there was an attempt at the last meeting with the 50 basis points cut to say, okay, could we could we inch a little bit closer to easing? Can we continue to head in this direction?
00:10:33
Speaker
some of those key indicators like PCE indicated that there's still some risk involved there, which is just like what my gut was telling me as well. um i'm not I'm not claiming to be like some type of an expert on this stuff, but it's like, you know, look around you. ah does it feel like Does it feel like it's right? Does it feel like it was it's even anywhere near what it felt like to live in the United States in 2019? And by the way, in 2019, everybody was complaining about Inflated prices in certain assets than namely real estate, but in in other parts of the market as well um so you know even like getting back to 2019 levels to me feels like the a almost like a baseline goal for for
00:11:19
Speaker
you know what that for quality of life, for what it feels like to to purchase goods, to you know live as a normal person in the United States. And the reality is but there's probably no chance that we're even going to get to that. right So I do think that it makes sense for um the Fed to to to you know take their foot off the gas a little bit here, given some of those early indicators. I also think there was probably some political pressure involved At the last meeting, I mean, you know, we say that the feds should be divorced from politics, but obviously they're not. um And, ah you know, maybe there's a little bit more breathing room at this point for Powell and Co. to go back to to, you know, sort of sober mindedly saying, actually, like, this is what we need to do. So it was a still there's a lot on fiscal policy as well that, you know, until Trump and Co. get in to to power that
00:12:17
Speaker
there's a lot that they're still yet to understand, like on really what the plan will fully look like. And I think
Crypto Developments and Airdrops
00:12:27
Speaker
whilst fiscal and and and monetary are two sides of the same coin, they they must be thinking about this, right? And I think them,
00:12:39
Speaker
Remaining a little bit more hawkish for now probably like you say will give them a bit of breathing room when it comes to jen feb when maybe they start to form a little bit more of opinion on where things are starting to shake out.
00:12:56
Speaker
Yeah, no doubt about it. It'll be interesting to see how the administration change affects their approach. I mean, I think I've, I've indicated previously I do have this sort of looming fear that um Maybe toward the back half of of 25 or the front half of 26, we could start to see some type of like a a more overt recession or something to that effect. um We'll have to see. Feels like there's a lot up in the air with that right now. 100 percent. But I think the takeaway for me is um again, my my opinion here.
00:13:40
Speaker
I think both in the equity markets, crypto markets, there's nothing that's gonna slow this train down over the next six to nine months. agree And I think that there is going to just be a lot of volatility, especially in the run up to the end of Jan. um And then, you know, that's when we really will start to see the reality of the measures the policies that are coming into play I think the
00:14:18
Speaker
The rising hopes of a strategic Bitcoin reserve has what really pushed Bitcoin up to that 107, I think we might have touched 108k nearly, like um mark recently. And that seems to be a big part of the narrative. I think if that gets completely shot down,
00:14:40
Speaker
you know, a few months into the Trump administration coming in, I think that would be a very negative negative signal for Bitcoin and the crypto space. Even that, though, I don't think can completely crush the momentum. Yeah. So so I think that, ah you know, this to one side,
00:15:03
Speaker
There's also a lot of stuff happening across crypto that I think is much is part ah result of you know the the momentum, the rally, the euphoria that's been happening since um middle of November, but also hopes around the regulatory and policy shifts. And this is where I think we're starting to see quite a lot of pretty significant airdrops happening. um We've had, I mean, the the biggest probably, and maybe the top performing major crypto asset over the past month has been hyper liquid that has been
00:15:44
Speaker
phenomenal and it's been interesting to see a ah standalone layer one blockchain, I mean starting really as a perps decks and more now.
00:15:57
Speaker
um universally beloved across crypto Twitter, and I think has had an enormous amount of inflows into it. The airdrop was enormous. The fact they took no VC funding was a big part of their, their narrative, but the, the run since the airdrop has just been monumental. I have never Austin felt so sidelined in my life to watch this thing go on. 4 billion in fdv all the way up to 26 billion this is a 6x increase in i think about what two weeks since it's been launched so that's um that is that is an insane uh in my mind we've also just had uh pudgy pudgy penguins drop that penguin token i think uh yeah yeah it peaked at uh the the drop everyone has been waiting for um
00:16:53
Speaker
you know I mean, the I really think as far as NFTs and digital IP goes, Pudgy Penguins has been one of like the most amazing turnaround stories. It went from pretty much a dying project to Lucanets buying them, getting them in like Walmart and then just kind of actually getting a a huge amount of interest.
00:17:16
Speaker
I think that like the pudgy penguin gifs that are on like Giphy are some of like the most used like gifs on the internet. It's it's pretty it's interesting like how ingrained it is. um But they they did their airdrop, they rewarded a ton of people, and it's worth noting, if you have like an old Solana wallet, an old ETH wallet that you did a few transactions in, you probably got an allocation of this, which I found out myself, just going through some of my old ETH wallets from 2017 era that I've been using.
00:17:54
Speaker
I got a nice little allocation, which I thought was really cool. But then that that launched, it peaked at around 5 billion FDV. It's since settled down around 2.8 billion. um Looks pretty strong. ah And then the other one that's making a lot of waves as usual, this is the issuer of the fiat backed stablecoin USD zero. They've just launched their token, I think two days ago, um big air drop.
00:18:23
Speaker
again has performed really well. The chart looks like an early hyper liquid chart at this point but um you know we'll see where that actually ends up playing out. It's a lot of ah cell pressures running into in the market right now but you know lots more of these to come.
00:18:40
Speaker
I think 90% of the ah you know the private deals that were coming my way during the bear market were slated for a Q4 2024 slash Q1 2025 token launch. And I think there's there's a lot of this happening now. So lots to lots to keep an eye on there.
00:19:02
Speaker
One thing, actually, you know, talking about pudgies, um, eth NFTs, despite, you know, the streams of obituaries, uh, actually eth NFTs are probably being just quietly one of the, the top gaining assets over the past kind of 30 days. I mean, punks are up in what we say the past 30 days, they're up 32%, they're up to now floor place four plus four plus of 40 ETH over 90 days, they're up over 100%. So that's pretty nice. Then you've got Yeah, even like, you know, board apes in ETH terms up 40% on the month
00:19:53
Speaker
mutants, the whole board ape ecosystem up very strong in eath terms, doodles up 100% after they did that collab with ah McDonald's. I'm not sure if you saw that, uh, Austin. but is No, I hadn't seen that. Yeah. They had like all of these, um, I think all of the the kind of soda cups were just like doodles themed um for like quite an extended period of time. It's kind of interesting. um So it's, I have a feeling.
00:20:25
Speaker
I have a strong feeling that the classic eth NFT run that has happened, I think probably the past two years, even during the bear market ah through late December, early January, maybe on the cards, especially with BTC pulling back a little bit here. So we'll see. I could be wrong on that one, but anytime I ever go to write off ethnft's they just proved me wrong so i'm just going to avoid fudding them at any point at this point uh yeah we'll see and uh i don't know if you saw as well Kraken we just launched ink our ethereum l2 yesterday um it's built on optimism super chain if you haven't checked it out go play around with it that's been a really fun project we were due to ship that
00:21:16
Speaker
I think in like the middle to end of Q1 and hustle the main net together and. and launched officially yesterday. So that's been a lot of fun as well. Lots of good stuff. Wow, that's awesome. Man, isn't it so nice when you work hard on something and set a deadline for it and you actually beat the deadline? It feels like that never happens. It doesn't ever happen. It rarely happens. ah And if it does, lot of a lot of people getting stress text tested to the max to get things out. But the the ink team are are phenomenal.
00:21:51
Speaker
So it's been, it's been really enjoyable to kind of actually go and build and launch something on Jane as well as having kind of the ah centralized exchange ja alongside this. So
Year in Review and Future Optimism
00:22:04
Speaker
yeah, excited, excited ah for for that in particular. So overall, I will say, you know, this for me feels like a bump in the road, but we're still, we're still full steam ahead. Yeah.
00:22:20
Speaker
Why don't we jump into to our last story where we'll kind of like take a ah slight pivot away from the market and and general updates and and dive into a ah story that you picked out Austin um that focuses a little bit more around Ledger, the hardware wallet. Yeah, let's do it.
Ledger Security Breach and Concerns
00:22:43
Speaker
What's going on with Ledger, Matt? I've been hearing a lot about concerns with hacks and backdoors on X. ah Don't go and say that to me, Austin. but worth My relies on this.
00:22:59
Speaker
I think that's why this picked up so much steam. So there was a ledger user who recently reported losing two and a half million dollars in Bitcoin and NFTs due to a quote security breach on a nano S and this included 10 Bitcoin valued at $1 million dollars and then NFTs valued in total at $1.5 million. dollars This user was pretty vocal on X, put out a couple tweets, they gained a ton of steam, and he made some claims. The assets were stolen from the Ledger Nano S device that had been purchased directly from Ledger. The seed phrase, according to him, was securely stored and never entered online. He believed that there were no malicious transactions signed, that everything was in his physical possession, and that the device hadn't been used for two months.
00:23:53
Speaker
So, I don't know, I think i think it took like 12, 24 hours or so that this tweet was um circulating and causing a huge stir. You know, it's like, oh my gosh, is there an actual security vulnerability in ledger devices? I think the implication of that would be gigantic. And then, K. Dean,
00:24:15
Speaker
another user on X identified what they believed to be a phishing transaction on February 22nd of 2022. We're going back years at this point. This is the scary part, I think. Yeah. And this is where I've seen, you know, my kind of biggest fear around like crypto is that there are so many situations where you may have compromised your wallet a long time ago and attackers are sitting waiting for the moment to kind of pull the pull funds from it. that That for me is like a scary piece. I think that's exactly what happened here. This particular phishing transaction from February of 2022, it involved the hacked Ethereum address and Kadeen speculated that the loss was tied exactly to that. In fact,
00:25:08
Speaker
Ledger came out and said that the user quote, seems to have been a victim of phishing and malicious transactions many years ago. Uh, another analyst said, quote, the hacker remained dormant for years before eventually draining the wallet. So imagine you get access to a wallet and then you're like, you know what, I'm just going to like sit on this for a couple of years before I do anything with it. That is like that looming nightmare that you ever, where you're like, Oh my gosh, do I need to like constantly be changing my wallets and auditing my security. This is like this is what I do and it's it drives my accountants crazy because I just have this I'm gonna call it productive paranoia but maybe people would just call it paranoia where yeah I literally cycle through I probably buy a new hardware wallet every six months and
00:26:00
Speaker
And I have multiple hardware wallets that I use as well because I'm also paranoid and I split out into like 10 to 15 different wallets, everything. ah So I replace all of those every six months and shift things over and it's a massive pain in the ass.
00:26:17
Speaker
But I just, I just get too nervous about this, this unfolding for myself. So having a fresh start just means I have like some peace of mind, if not a living hell of, um, wallet set ups. Yeah, it's, it's a, you know, pros and cons to self custody, right? Um, but you you may recall that was just that, that phishing transaction was only involving the hacked Ethereum address. So that explains the one and a half million dollars in NFTs. But what about the one million dollars in Bitcoin? Well, Ledger suggested that a malicious transaction on Ethereum could have expanded to more blockchains within the wallet. They said, quote, if the phishing attempt also captured the user's recovery phase, the attacker could gain access to the wallet across all supported chains, including Bitcoin.
00:27:13
Speaker
As we know, the user got phished when it comes to the ETH wallet. We can assume user error on the BTC side too. That's kind of funny. They're like, as you know, this person's dumb, sizzle. yeah like We've established a certain level of idiocy from this person.
00:27:32
Speaker
That's so passive aggressive. Yeah. but But also that that feels like a stretch, you know, I can does. Listen, I've seen industry like veterans fall for fishing stuff because just signing a con like a simple contract sign in your ETH wallet for something that you truly believe is like the right thing, completely innocuous, and then your entire wallet gets drained. That that can happen to the best of us. um I think you have to operate with a certain level of paranoia when you are fully committed to self custody. Now, I do think it's a stretch to be like, I think it's a whole different type of phishing attack when it's captured the user's recovery phrase. Now, that feels a lot more like a phishing attack
00:28:19
Speaker
on the ledger. I can only imagine that happening if it was like in like, I don't know, like ledger live or whatever, like that their actual software to do some of this. But I can't imagine how, how that could work. Yeah. and the The user mentioned that he never entered his seed phrase online. right Like it was securely stored, never entered it anywhere. So how would that even happen at that point? It feels like there's more to the story.
00:28:51
Speaker
Um, and I think this is one to keep an eye on obviously because the, the implications for this are, are so widespread. Um, I mean, also it could be a giant hoax. Who knows, you know, it's, uh, this is the other thing like, you know, people of that have influence can do this kind of shit without any recourse. And it is hard to know.
00:29:16
Speaker
you know what's what's happened here um yeah and to verify what's happened. Yeah, but then I think there's this other question, which is like, aside from the outcome of the story, why did this particular story gain so much traction? Now, of course, there's the obvious concern to ledger users, as I mentioned, but there also remains a bunch of looming questions about a backdoor in ledger's services. And I think that this is part of what caused some of the paranoia. It's like, oh, did did did an exploit finally happen through that rumored backdoor?
00:29:52
Speaker
in Ledger services. You'll recall back in May, we covered this, Ledger launched a service called Ledger Recovery. It's an ID-based private key recovery service that allows users to back up their private seed phrase directly to their personal identity through three different custodians. So this is, you know, it's an opt-in service where basically Ledger users can say, okay, I wanna back up my seed phrase. At this point,
00:30:21
Speaker
you know, it's no longer on your piece of paper that you're so storing in your safe. It is being stored somewhere online that ah that's it's it's being held by a a ah custodian other than you, right? And so there are a bunch of concerns that like this could ah potentially be exploited. It could be a backdoor into Ledger users' wallets. At the time,
00:30:47
Speaker
ah Nicholas Baca, the co-founder of Ledger said, quote, this is not a backdoor at all because nothing will happen without your consent on your device. So kind of like catching us on a set of technicality, they're saying like, it's not a backdoor because you opt into it. oh how And then stopping a hacker from opting you in. Yeah.
00:31:05
Speaker
yeah Yeah, yeah. I do believe that in order to opt into it, you have to type your seed phrase into the UI. like It doesn't just like know your seed phrase. I'd have to check on that again to be 100% sure, but um um I'm pretty sure if I remember from when we covered this, like that is the process. um But it's certainly concerning. And even so, you know ah users on X were pointing out that, quote, the code path to send private key material over the internet will be on your device, whether you opt in or not. Hackers can take advantage of this and software bugs more likely to leak. So maybe there is some type of attack that can happen in the middle of this service. But I think that wasn't even like the biggest concern with this.
00:31:53
Speaker
the the The main concern that was going around at the time was this quote from the CEO, Pascal Gautier, where he said, quote, the only concern is if we get subpoenaed by a government, if you're uncomfortable with this, you can keep your 24 words. So what he's saying here is if you opt into ledger recovery,
00:32:15
Speaker
and you share your seed phrase with us and then we get subpoenaed by a government to gain access to your wallet maybe because it was connected to some type of illicit activities or or you know maybe at some point you you there's there's some crypto in your wallet that ah ah went through tornado cash, who the hell knows? yeah um That you know they could get a subpoena and then they would have to comply with that and then now like forget about the concept of self-cust eating your crypto, it's over.
00:32:46
Speaker
Yep, I think
Self-Custody vs. Custodial Services
00:32:47
Speaker
that was, you know, I remember when we first covered the ledger recovery piece and it started with like the concerns around the security side of things and then I think it very much went round to the um the subpoena situation and you know i mean it just it comes all the way back to your level of willingness to be a sole and complete custodian of your assets versus
00:33:20
Speaker
being and taking complete or minor trade-offs in the level of custody that you you pertain. You just, you have same amount of risk I think overall. It's just who is in control or exposed to that risk. Do you feel more comfortable exposing yourself to the risk? Or do you feel more comfortable in a company?
00:33:48
Speaker
it's kind of like being um exposed to that risk. I mean, I've seen, think about from when we first started doing this podcast, Austin, back in 2017, there was kind of,
00:34:03
Speaker
two real options for us back then. There was like paper wallets and hardware wallets really. I mean, that's what I had. I had paper wallets for years. All of my Bitcoin used to just be on a piece of paper ah that I had like in a safe and that was it. I mean,
00:34:22
Speaker
And then there was like the issue is like, okay, when you were like generating those wallets, and you're doing that whole weird thing where you like wiggle a mouse around mouse cursor around a screen to generate like a code, like, they were like, Oh, yeah, you know, they those websites could have been hacked and exposed your private key from the get go, it's like, oh shit, okay, well, now we'll move to hardware wallets, and we introduce like, there's, there is always a risk. There was always a risk. um And I think that you just got to get to a point where
00:34:53
Speaker
you have a certain level of acceptance. Now we see more and more people just, you know, having hot wallets. I created a ah wallet when I was playing around on the SWE blockchain earlier this week. And I created a wallet with them my Google OAuth, right? And it's just, you know, I was like, I'm just playing around with this wallet on this blockchain. It's kind of less important to me. I'm not gonna hold meaningful sums on this.
00:35:22
Speaker
I'm just gonna spin it up. I'm not gonna be in control of my keys. I'm just gonna, oh, well then.
Future Predictions and Plans
00:35:26
Speaker
And I think as we start to see crypto enter more and more of the mainstream and the underlying infrastructure, this like account abstraction um is going to be more and more preferred by people. Most of the time now it's like, you know you can secure with a passkey on Apple or otherwise. So I think that it really just has to come down to What is your priority and having maybe a mixture of risk? And then again, I think you can, if you feel very worried about this kind of thing,
00:36:02
Speaker
um cycle through wallets, just really pay a lot of attention to your own like OpSec and what you're what you're sharing online and trying to transact as little as possible, especially with smart contracts and interacting with smart contracts that you don't fully know and trust. and But there is always going to be a moment where you your your guard can only stay strong for so long. And yes the it's always the dumb stuff that gets people. It's like the phishing attacks that get people or the social engineering. Nine times that time it's social engineering. So yeah, I think you just...
00:36:46
Speaker
be productively paranoid, don't let it dominate your mind. Um, and I think just figuring out what, what your priorities are from a security perspective. Yeah. I would say to wrap all this up, my gut lean is that, uh, this wasn't actually an issue with ledger or device. Yeah.
00:37:09
Speaker
I agree. I don't think so either. I think this is a user error. I mean, we've already established from ledger that this is a dumb person, apparently. say
00:37:23
Speaker
yes Oh god, no, that's it does suck. They've lost a lot of cash, but I i think it's um highly unlikely. Not impossible by any means, but highly unlikely that this is like through a ledger backdoor. If we've already seen, to to be fair, to Ledger's point, that the individual was um caught up in a phishing attack that they were completely unaware of. There's nothing to say that either they were caught up in more than this or um the phishing attack extended to beyond just like, you know, ah the Ethereum wallet itself. But either way, it sucks. Well, I'll tell you what, Matt, it's been a hell of a year. um ah Another one in the books.
00:38:13
Speaker
Lots of one roller coaster rides, but it's amazing to see where we ended this off. And I look forward to coming back next year. More crazy stuff will happen, I'm sure. I can't wait to hear what our December 2025 recap will look like. Hopefully it will be from a private island that we have purchased, Austin. That would be yeah that would be a highlight, I think. we Well, you know what we got to do? um ah Early next year, we need to do a proper recap of all of our predictions from the start of this year and then share some new predictions for 2025.
00:38:50
Speaker
That sounds great. I'm only going to share prediction, uh, recap predictions that I was correct on. Uh, so, uh, yeah, we'll definitely do our 2025 predictions. Maybe we do that the first part of, of Jan and we'll, uh, we'll recap.
00:39:07
Speaker
how right and how wrong we were in different areas. We'll see where we stacked up. All right, until then. It's been a pleasure. Happy holidays. Happy holidays to all of you listening. And we'll see we'll see you in the new year. See you, Matt.
00:39:44
Speaker
The contents of the Decrypting Crypto podcast should not be used and are not intended as investment advice. Please do your own due diligence before making any investment, cryptocurrency or otherwise.