Crypto prices continue to remain low to start the month of August, with Bitcoin still trading below the $24,000 threshold. But some crypto market watchers think this market pressure could be temporary, and remain bullish on the space, especially ahead of key changes like the switch to Ethereum's blockchain. 
David Siemer, Co-Founder and CEO of Wave Financial, joins Closing Bell to discuss current price movement, market outlook, and more.

Closing Bell

As Crypto Prices Remain Low, Is There Still Room to Fall?

joining me now is David Seymore, co founder and Ceo of Financial, a digital asset manager. David, thanks so much for coming on the show. So, your thoughts here on the price action that we're seeing today a little bit of a pause as we start the month of august what's behind that? Yeah, thanks for having me back Kristin first. Um, yeah, I think this is a pretty brief pause. Um, and you know, the market did make a big rise, ethereum is up almost 80% of its recent lows. So I think this is more of a pause. I don't think this is directly related to you mentioned kind of the ten-year bond rates, you know, declining, which we think will continue. Um, and, and in long term, I don't think necessarily out of the danger zone for crypto prices in general. Like I think there could very likely be more legs down more again related to some of the macro climate, but right now we're in this kind of weird place, news wise, where bad news is, good news. The worst. The jobs report comes out friday, You know, the higher the market and probably higher crypto rally. Right? So, so you are still seeing obviously David's correlation here with the broader stock market. I think we had seen the to decouple the crypto space in the stock market for a few days here earlier this summer, I would say roughly a week or so. But it does still seem like generally they're moving in the same direction. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I wish it would have decoupled the different direction as opposed to the crypto market is getting a little crushed earlier, but there were great reasons why the crypto market got crushed. So um yeah, we, we we do think the market is going to see a lot of turbulence, volatility is just incredibly high. Um, you know, theory, I'm with emerge coming up is a big event, um, you know, big event that may be priced in, most people don't think it's priced in, but there's a lot of, you know, so, and we're seeing a huge amount of just open interest around crypto assets as everyone's trying to see what's going to happen when it does go through this famous merge. So you're the ceo of this digital asset manager way, financial, what are you recommending to clients? David to industrials, do you think now is the time to buy in on some of these cryptocurrencies and if so, which ones? Yeah, we're we're advising our clients to be pretty cautious. So we manage a lot of crypto assets, most of our clients are already crypto heavy, meaning we manage assets for a lot of the crypto high net worth in the space, so they already have pretty major exposure, whereas a lot of our clients were kind of more just swaying them from using leverage, which has been kind of a challenge cause a lot of challenges to the recent period and then, you know, long term, we're incredibly bullish on the space, There's a really long way to go. You know, I do think we will see Bitcoin at 100,000 coin at some point in the not too distant future, but right now I think it is a time to be, you know, pretty meaningfully in cash still and just keeping enough dry powder on the sidelines that there are more dips down, you can find better entry coins sure. So speak to me more about the merge, right this upcoming merge for ether ethereum David, we had a guest on late last week talking about the same event that it could be a bullish indicator actually for the crypto space specifically for ether, what is this and what's the catalyst behind it. Yeah, the merge is simply a theory. I'm transitioning from proof of work to proof of stake. So it's a very long process, it's been a long time coming, thought it would happen. Black people thought would happen a year ago um now, okay, it's probably the most talked about event in recent crypto history, so it's a very known news event. So I'm probably on the side of that table that thinks that this event is fairly priced in that emerges fairly dearest. Yes, there are execution challenges. Yes, there could be more delays and more, but it should work, you know, ethereum will successfully transition to proof of stake. Um You know, so I don't necessarily believe that some of my peers do that, this is gonna be this massive catalyst that's gonna send ethereum to $5,000 a coin. I'd love it if it does, but I'm not that convinced. It will. How do you feel um what would you recommend again as the ceo of a digital asset manager when it comes to the old space? The defi space, I mean we talk so much big picture about Bitcoin, ether ethereum obviously the Blockchain and some of the biggest cryptocurrencies out there by market cap, which I think when it comes to big institutional investors, those are the ones at least generally that they seem to be talking about the most the ones on the radar regulators the most. Do you even play if you will or invest in di fire all coins? Is that something that's on your radar? Absolutely, yeah, we, I mean our our clients being relatively crypto native, most of the assets we manage for them are these longer tail coins. Um A lot of them are, you know, are literally the creators of like Bitcoin and ethereum. So that's you know, not they don't look for us to act necessarily do a lot with those coins and those are the kinds of lower yielding assets, you know, most of them are very heavy into lots of different ALTs and wave itself as an asset manager, mostly focused on yield strategy. So we actually are doing all sorts of decentralized finance liquidity provisioning stable coin yield farming. A lot of derivative strategies for our clients. And we focused mostly on kind of the more difficult, esoteric strategies around crypto, as opposed to people that are looking for simple kind of delta one exposure. Alright, David steamer, co founder and Ceo Way Financial. David thanks so much for taking the time on this monday.