Scott Melker is the host of The Wolf Of All Streets Podcast and author of The Wolf Den newsletter.
“If I tweeted about a small cap [crypto] of some sort right now, the price would probably change by like 50%,” says Scott Melker, better known to his 904,800 Twitter followers as The Wolf Of All Streets.
Melker says he takes this responsibility seriously and won’t share tweets that might “impact the market” – but this makes Twitter “a lot more boring” from his end. In fact, Melker declares that Twitter “stopped being fun” when he reached 100,000 followers.
“That’s when I went through a phase of a real love-hate relationship with Twitter because that’s when I guess 10% of the people who respond to comments were trolling at any given time.”
All you can really post to 900,000 followers is “Bitcoin and inspirational quotes” because “everything else” will land you in hot water.
After graduating from Penn State University with an Anthropology degree in 1999, Melker tried his hand at a “million” other things — finding the most success in his 20-year stint as a DJ.
Shortly after finishing university, he also started his own magazine in Philadelphia called 101 Magazine, focusing on street culture and city vibes.
It caught the attention of a “huge” magazine called Frank 151, which acquired it, and Melker became the editor-in-chief of both.
During that time, he had the opportunity to attend “insane” parties and rub shoulders with legendary acts like the Wu-Tang Clan and Outcast.
“I just happened to look into crypto because there was a bunch of DJs trading it,” he says.
He first started trading on the Gemini crypto exchange in 2016 and recalls buying Bitcoin to send it to another exchange, Bittrex, so he “could buy Ethereum and Ripple.” ETH was “under 20 bucks” back then, he notes in a cheeky humble brag.
Rather than some lofty higher purpose, he says the main attraction was making cold hard cash.
“I was really just trading, trying to make money to support a new family; it had nothing to do with what Bitcoin was or what the asset class was.”
What led to Twitter fame?
Melker initially started stacking up followers when he was “trading the market well” and posting about it on Twitter. At that point in time, his content was “100% charts and trades.”
However, Melker didn’t want his account to be based on trades because it’s “fickle.”
So, he transitioned toward a more holistic approach to his content within the crypto industry.
“I would love to tell you there was some strategy that I took to grow my account, but it was always just me doing whatever I enjoyed doing the most at any given time.”
Melker has observed a direct correlation between his follower growth and the performance of the crypto market.
During previous bull markets, he has experienced an insane influx of daily followers.
“There was a time when I was getting a hundred thousand [followers] in two months,” he says.
Melker used to “literally respond to everybody” who commented on his tweets or messaged him, but that ship has now sailed.
“That’s like a full-time job, and then you just get to the point where you literally can’t open all your DMs anymore,” he says.
But it’s best not to refer to him as an “influencer.”
“I hate the term influencer because, to me, I’m just a student of crypto, and it’s something I’m passionate about and want to learn more about.”
Melker’s content revolves around crypto news and keeping people up-to-date with what’s happening in the market.
He likes to share his take on what’s important, and “what’s kind of noise and not signal.”
“[My content includes] all the lessons that I’ve learned in my streams and podcasts, but I would say it’s generally educational/informational content about this market.”
Melker emphasizes the overwhelming pressure he faces whenever he decides to “fire off a tweet,” considering how many followers he has amassed on Twitter.
“Twitter is like a movie where you throw a grenade in a room and walk away, and there’s a huge explosion behind you. That’s how I feel every time I send a tweet now,” Melker says.
Extreme beef: Gary Gensler
Melker is not a fan of United States Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler.
He admits that his Twitter is filled with many “angry tweets against Gensler.”
“I literally contributed to aggressively getting #firegarygensler trending on Twitter,” he declares.
He explains that his problem with Gensler is his recent regulatory actions, which he perceives as a “massive overcorrection” targeting crypto firms.
He believes that it stems from a sense of embarrassment over the fact Gensler was meeting with Sam Bankman-Fried before the collapse of FTX and didn’t realize “he was a fraud.”
ZachXBT, a pseudonymous on-chain researcher, accused Melker of pumping and dumping shit coins to his followers in 2021. It was a troubling time for Melker, who received threats and became the target of white-hot anger.
Melker vehemently refuted the claims and announced he would steer clear of tweeting about projects with small market caps altogether.
Melker says he doesn’t want his audience to get the wrong idea and prefers to focus on the educational stuff. He reiterates that he “was passionate” about trading altcoins, but says it can be difficult to navigate the boundaries of what you should and shouldn’t talk about as your following grows.
“You don’t just show up with 900,000 followers one day and understand what you can and cannot tweet about.”
Price predictions?
“There’s nothing that makes you look dumber than a price prediction,” Melker states. He should know, given he took an optimistic swing at predicting Ethereum would hit five figures in 2021.
However, he is bullish on Bitcoin hitting six figures in the next bull run.
“I think the next cycle would be somewhere between 100 (thousand) and 250 (thousand),” he declares.
But Melker believes that after that, the market will see another huge decline before it hits half a million.
“Then we drop down to 60 (thousand), and it’s boring forever. Then, we pop up to half a million, like we continue these four-year cycles.”
However, Melker doesn’t want “to live in a world where Bitcoin is a million dollars.”
“The faster it happens, the worse the world is,” Melker says.
“Because if Bitcoin goes to a million dollars. It means that everything else has exploded, including the United States dollar, and we’re living in some Mad Max dystopian future.”
“Where you and I are those guys without faces painted going to gas town, fighting off the enemies,” he describes, referring to the 2015 movie Mad Max: Fury Road.
Nigel Farage has told Sky News he would allow some essential migration in areas with skill shortages but that numbers would be capped.
The Reform UK leader said he would announce the cap “in four years’ time” after he was pressed repeatedly by Sky’s deputy political editor Sam Coates about his manifesto pledge to freeze “non-essential” immigration.
It was put to Mr Farage that despite his criticism of the government’s migration crackdown, allowing essential migration in his own plans is quite a big caveat given the UK’s skills shortages.
However the Clacton MP said he would allow people to plug the gaps on “time dependent work permits” rather than on longer-term visas.
He said: “Let’s take engineering, for argument’s sake. We don’t train enough engineers, we just don’t. It’s crazy.
“We’ve been pushing young people to doing social sciences degrees or whatever it is.
“So you’re an engineering company, you need somebody to come in on skills. If they come in, on a time dependent work permit, if all the right health assurances and levies have been paid and if at the end of that period of time, you leave or you’re forced to leave, then it works.”
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28:27
‘We need to reduce immigration’
Reform’s manifesto, which they call a “contract”, says that “essential skills, mainly around healthcare, must be the only exception” to migration.
Pressed on how wide his exemption would be, Mr Farage said he hopes enough nurses and doctors will be trained “not to need anybody from overseas within the space of a few years”.
He said that work permits should be separate to immigration, adding: “If you get a job for an American TV station and you stay 48 hours longer than your work permit, they will smash your front door down, put you in handcuffs and deport you.
“We allow all of these routes, whether it’s coming into work, whether it’s coming as a student, we have allowed all of these to become routes for long-term migration.”
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1:51
Sky’s Sam Coates questions PM on migration
Asked if he would put a cap on his essential skills exemption, he said: “We will. I can’t tell you the numbers right now, I don’t have all the figures. What I can tell you is anyone that comes in will not be allowed to stay long-term. That’s the difference.”
Pressed if that was a commitment to a cap under a Reform UK government, he suggested he would set out further detail ahead of the next election, telling Coates: “Ask me in four years’ time, all right?”
Mr Farage was speaking after the government published an immigration white paper which pledged to ban overseas care workers as part of a package of measures to bring down net migration.
The former Brexit Party leader claimed the proposals were a “knee jerk reaction” to his party’s success at the local elections and accused the prime minister of not having the vigour to “follow them through”.
However he said he supports the “principle” of banning foreign care workers and conceded he might back some of the measures if they are put to a vote in parliament.
He said: “If it was stuff that did actually bind the government, there might be amendments on this that you would support. But I’m not convinced.”
Is there a catch for Bitcoin hodlers, with the asset’s price up over 600,000% since the beginning of 2013?
Perhaps — if governments keep waking up to Bitcoin’s value, the whole “you only pay tax when you sell” mantra could soon be a thing of the past.
What if a wealth tax is the answer for revenue-hungry tax agencies with no time to lose? It’s a yearly tax on a person’s total net worth — cash, investments, property and other assets — minus any debts, applied whether or not those assets are sold or generating income. The idea is to boost public revenue and curb inequality, mainly by taxing the ultra-rich. A wealth tax takes a clip off what you own, not what you earn.
Countries such as Belgium, Norway and Switzerland have had wealth taxes baked into their tax systems for ages, yet some of the world’s biggest economies — like the US, Australia and France — have largely steered clear.
That might be changing. More governments are eyeing wealth taxes for crypto. In December 2024, French Senator Sylvie Vermeillet took it a step further, suggesting Bitcoin (BTC) be labeled “unproductive,” which would mean taxing its gains every year — whether or not it’s ever sold.
Yep, every asset holder’s favorite word is unrealized capital gains tax. It would be naive to assume other countries are not thinking about the same idea.
With Bitcoin’s significant gains and industry executives such as ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood eyeing a $1.5-million price tag by 2030, I’d bet a magic 8-ball would say, “Signs point to yes.”
The growing global interest in wealth tax
It might seem far-fetched, but it is hard to ignore the gains. The average long-term Bitcoin holder is already sitting on significant profits.
The incentive is obvious. Switzerland’s wealth tax goes up to 1% of a portfolio’s value, and governments know there is plenty to collect.
Countries catch on — sooner or later. Consider how capital gains tax became the norm.
The US introduced capital gains tax in 1913, the UK jumped on board 52 years later in 1965, and Australia followed in 1985.
Governments likely considering the wealth tax
Governments are likely entertaining the idea — whether they admit it or not. If any country seriously considers it, Germany could be a prime candidate, even though it scrapped its wealth tax back in 1997.
In July 2024, offloading 50,000 seized BTC at $58,000 might have seemed like a smart move for the German government, but when Bitcoin hit $100,000 just months later in December, it became clear they left a fortune on the table.
In retrospect, a costly mistake…
Will this be remembered as a blunder on par with Gordon Brown selling half of the UK’s gold reserves at $275 an ounce?
Imposing such a rule on the wealthy comes with obvious risks.
To understand the real effect of taxation on a country, just follow the money — specifically, where millionaires are moving. Recent data shows that high-net-worth individuals are leaving countries like the United Kingdom in droves, heading for tax-friendly havens like Dubai.
The potential repercussions of a wealth tax
Will nations risk losing these individuals to tap into unrealized gains on Bitcoin and other assets?
Bitcoin is volatile and full of unknowns. While some events could lead to massive losses, governments may still push forward with policies that ultimately drive away millionaires, only to realize the trade-off wasn’t worth it.
Conversely, US President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order establishing a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve — a clear nod to the hodl mentality. No doubt, this has other nations considering a similar move.
If nations are embracing the hodl mindset, could that mean wealth taxes are off the table in those countries? Only time will tell.
One thing is sure: Bitcoin hodlers have amassed enough wealth to put themselves on the radar of tax authorities. Whether this sparks fundamental policy changes or just political grandstanding, the crypto community won’t sit back quietly.
Opinion by: Robin Singh, CEO of Koinly.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
The combination of full prisons and tight public finances has forced the government to urgently rethink its approach.
Top of the agenda for an overhaul are short sentences, which look set to give way to more community rehabilitation.
The cost argument is clear – prison is expensive. It’s around £60,000 per person per year compared to community sentences at roughly £4,500 a year.
But it’s not just saving money that is driving the change.
Research shows short custodial terms, especially for first-time offenders, can do more harm than good, compounding criminal behaviour rather than acting as a deterrent.
Image: Charlie describes herself as a former ‘junkie shoplifter’
This is certainly the case for Charlie, who describes herself as a former “junkie, shoplifter from Leeds” and spoke to Sky News at Preston probation centre.
She was first sent down as a teenager and has been in and out of prison ever since. She says her experience behind bars exacerbated her drug use.
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Image: Charlie in February 2023
“In prison, I would never get clean. It’s easy, to be honest, I used to take them in myself,” she says. “I was just in a cycle of getting released, homeless, and going straight back into trap houses, drug houses, and that cycle needs to be broken.”
Eventually, she turned her life around after a court offered her drug treatment at a rehab facility.
She says that after decades of addiction and criminality, one judge’s decision was the turning point.
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“That was the moment that changed my life and I just want more judges to give more people that chance.”
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0:22
How to watch Sophy Ridge’s special programme live from Preston Prison
Also at Preston probation centre, but on the other side of the process, is probation officer Bex, who is also sceptical about short sentences.
“They disrupt people’s lives,” she says. “So, people might lose housing because they’ve gone to prison… they come out homeless and may return to drug use and reoffending.”
Image: Bex works with offenders to turn their lives around
Bex has seen first-hand the value of alternative routes out of crime.
“A lot of the people we work with have had really disjointed lives. It takes a long time for them to trust someone, and there’s some really brilliant work that goes on every single day here that changes lives.”
It’s people like Bex and Charlie, and places like Preston probation centre, that are at the heart of the government’s change in direction.