Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Crypto Collapse, AI’s Ascent, Tariff Trouble, & Venezuela’s Turning Point
Episode Date: December 6, 2025I am excited to share this conversation with my good friend and investor, Michael Novogratz, to discuss the state of the markets. We are experimenting with a new format, so please send us your feedbac...k if you have any. This conversation cuts through the noise of crypto crashes, rate cuts, and AI hype with two veteran investors who’ve lived every boom, bust, and hallucination along the way. From macro politics to leverage-fueled panic and trillion-dollar tech bets, it’s an unsentimental, sharp-edged tour of how money, power, and technology are colliding right now. Michael Novogratz is the Founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital. He was formerly a Partner and President of Fortress Investment Group LLC. Mr. Novogratz served on the New York Federal Reserve’s Investment Advisory Committee on Financial Markets from 2012 to 2015. He serves as the Chairman of The Bail Project and has made criminal justice reform a focus of his family’s foundation. Follow Anthony on X: https://x.com/Scaramucci Follow Novo on X: https://x.com/novogratz Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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I am a crypto investor.
know I have a trap door on my portfolio. And so once in a while, I'll be walking across the living
room feeling beautiful about myself. And then boom, a trap door opens. And I have fallen into the
basement of the house. Thank God I'm out on the second floor. They'll probably fall right two floors down.
But what happened in the last 20 trading days, what I would call mini crash in crypto and the aftermath,
and where are we now? We have a flash crash. It did a lot of damage to the fabric of the market.
What people don't understand about crypto is that the crypto investor doesn't play for 10, 11, 12% returns.
The crypto investor calls themselves DGENs.
They want to turn 1 into 15th.
They trade a very volatile asset with a lot of leverage.
We had a cascading effect where markets just literally evaporated and collapsed and then came bouncing back.
Look at me. Get the gun over here to your head.
Are they going to win? Yes or no.
I think the gun.
Boom.
Welcome to Open Book.
I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci.
This episode was actually recorded a week ago.
It is about all things markets.
And I thought it would be interesting to drop it in our feed.
It's with my dear friend Mike Novocrats.
Mike and I have a 30-year relationship dating back to Goldman Sachs.
And I get so many questions related to market activity.
I thought it would be neat to have some bonus segments here
where we would be discussing markets with you guys.
And of course, I'm looking for your feedback, so please share it with us.
Enjoy the segment.
I'm Anthony Scaramucci.
And I'm Mike Novagrats.
All right.
So, Michael, we got a two-part show, aggressive market activity.
First part of the show, we're going to talk about the macro, what's going on in the polymarketers.
Raid cut.
Also, the crypto debacle that you and I lived through the last 10 days.
Right?
Okay.
Yeah, sinister.
Sinister.
I felt like I was in the microwave a little bit too long.
Oh.
And then the second a half, we're going to talk about AI.
What's happening there?
Are we in an AI bubble that looks like OpenAI just received a $500 billion market capitalization in their latest round?
So we'll talk about those two.
Let's go to crypto markets right now.
Polymarket has moved.
We were in the 40s on a rate cut in terms of market sentiment about 10 days ago.
Polymarketers have now shifted that to just over 75%.
You're a macro guru guru.
Where are we, Mike?
Yeah, listen, they're going to cut rates.
Williams came out on Friday.
That was the signal for all of us to stop being so bearish and get bullish.
You know, he's very influential to the Fed, but that was certainly a signal.
And I think the smartest guys I kind of talked to, read it as such, and it became a self-fulfilling move in the markets.
Listen, the unemployment rate, you know, 4.44, they said at 4.5, we're hiking. I mean, we're cutting. And you're right there. There's not a day I goes by. I don't read another article about AI job destruction. You know, college youth unemployment are right out of college unemployment. College grad is now 11%. That's an all-time high. And so I think it's going to be a real political issue.
you know, come the midterms, it's going to pick up steam.
But this transition from AI, you know, from a non-AI world to an AI world,
and what are we going to do with these people that are losing their jobs is going to be a real issue.
And you're going to see, I mean, you also have, this is the end of the PAL era.
And so we probably get HACET as Fed governor appointed sometime in the next, you know, 30 days.
And so, you know, that's duffish and duffish.
And I think that's kick the equity market, you know, back higher.
And it's kind of saved crypto from its own, you know, troubles.
And we can get into that in a second.
Yeah.
But I want to stay on this for a second because we have a lot of young viewers and listeners.
There's a problem in the repo market.
Okay.
So just a minute on what the repo market is.
And just for people to know it's approximately $11.9 trillion.
At least that's what the number was in 2024.
It's slightly higher now.
So what is the repo market, Mike?
And what is the problem there?
And are you worried about it?
And should we be worried about it as market participants?
So listen, the repo market is where financial institutions can borrow and lend treasuries.
Treasuries are seen as risk-free instruments.
And so in lots of ways, it's the risk.
free market where people finance themselves.
If you want to be short, you go out and borrow the security and sell it.
If you want to be long, you can lend it out.
But it is one of the ways the Fed creates liquidity.
And, you know, the Fed did something really interesting recently where they're going to allow banks not to hold as much,
they're going to allow banks not to hold as much cash as they did.
You know, post-post-up great financial crisis,
we had huge requirements for banks to own this massive amount of cash.
And so they're going to be able to lend out that cash
and they're going to eject a ton more liquidity into the market real soon.
Because, you know, people were borrowing a lot
and all of a sudden the repo market got tight.
You got a tight repo market.
You get a constrained in liquidity.
You get a constrained in liquidity.
and people are trying to sell, guess what happens?
Prices go lower, right?
The market makers move, move the prices lower.
Let's switch over to crypto, which one.
But I think that's that that shift in the Fed, you know, I'm not a banking regulation expert,
but allowing banks not to hold as much cash is a monstrous liquidity boom.
And that's coming.
And so I just think you're going to see rates getting cut, more liquidity back into the space.
and, you know, markets feeling good about.
Listen, Trump doesn't want to get beaten up in the midterms.
And, you know, he did not do well in the, you know, these November elections.
A lot of it was affordability.
A lot of it's a state of the economy.
So he's going to pay.
He's going to do whatever he can to juice the economy.
Okay.
So Dovish Fed, Dovish Fed chairman coming.
signal from the Fed last week that we're going to get a 25 basis point cut in December.
You think there'll be more slack in the repo market, which fuels the liquidity.
And where are we on QE, QT, QE, or where are we?
We left QT.
I'm sorry?
We left QT.
All right.
All right.
So let's just explain that briefly.
Quantitative tightening is where the Fed has a very, very large back.
balance sheet and they start shrinking the ballot sheet by selling those bonds back into the marketplace.
So they're not doing that anymore. So would you say we're Q neutral or are we heading for
quantitative easing? With all likelihood, we will be in quantitative easy at one point, right?
We just have too big of a debt bubble to finance. And why the Fed is going to, you know,
allow banks not to hold that much cash
just so they can actually buy the treasury bills.
Hope the treasury bills not the cash.
You know, there's just, we're $38 trillion in debt
and growing and growing quickly.
And so that's not going away.
And so I think you're going to end up being, you know,
quantitative easing again.
Like, I'm not positive, like weird things could happen.
Inflation good collapse by itself,
but it doesn't feel that.
The Fed was nervous about this December cut.
Like half of them want to raise rates, not raise rates, but hold steady because, you know,
you're seeing inflation tick up a little bit and it's worrisome.
But, you know, then you got the other half saying, you know, jobs are coming under stress
and they're going to continue to come under stress.
And I think the broader view is going to be, hey, we got to cut.
You worried about inflation?
I mean, by the way, I mean, when you do.
don't get the numbers from the Bureau and Labor Statistics and they're blamed on the government
shutdown. It's not a crisis, but it is a little bit confidence limiting, right? I don't,
I don't see that it's confidence boosting that they're not sharing the data. Yeah, I think,
listen, I think affordability is under stress. Like, it feels more expensive in every, every single
strata of people I speak to. If you're wealthy and you're used to being able to, let's say
you were the modest wealthy in New York, right?
You made a million dollars as a bond salesman.
You used to think, I can do a vacation in St. Barts.
I can go skiing.
I can take my...
All of that stuff is so much more expensive than it used to be.
So at the high end, everything's much more expensive.
My wife literally rented an Airbnb in Paris
because she just couldn't get herself to pay the $4,000 euros
for a normal hotel room because it was like art week.
You know, the, the, the, even at the high end, that stuff went way up.
Well, same things happening in the middle class.
What they used to think was their right is more expensive.
And, and certainly in the working class.
So in every strata of society, having the same life you did last year or two years ago feels
more expensive.
That's inflation.
I mean, what, I mean, there's a lot of things I love about this.
podcast, but one of the things I love the most is that we don't have any Brits on the podcast calling us for our bougie,
avarvis, Nouveau-Natures. Okay, so we're, we're whining about $4,000 euro rooms. Okay. And so you know I love that.
That's classic American. But let me ask you this question, though. You're Donald Trump. You want a rate cut,
for sure. You're going to fiscally stim going into the midterms?
you're going to do anything you can to win the midterms.
So yeah, I don't think he's got, you know,
I think the fiscal stimulus is going to come from the fact that they're going to lose the,
they're going to lose the tariff case.
And when they lose the tariff case, there's $300 billion that goes right back to American businesses.
That's a huge stimulus.
Let me test something on you, get your reaction.
So I've looked at the thing, obviously went to law school.
I feel like the court's going to split the baby and say,
listen, we're going to give him an emergency treatment for the first six months or nine months of
his administration. And so therefore, no rebates on what's been collected, but he's got to go to
the Congress for future tariffs. Do you think that that's possible or do you think these guys that
are buying these tariff claims right now at 10 cents on the dollar are going to go into the money?
You know, it's interesting. Neil Cachiel, who was the lawyer who argued. Yeah, you know,
he's bringing the case. He's before the Supreme Court now. Yeah. And he did a
You want to have fun watching a lawyer in his moment.
He's an advisory galaxy and a good friend.
Okay, so let me step back for reviewers.
Neil Cottier brought the case on behalf of the American people.
He has standing because he's an American taxpayer.
He brought it in the district court.
He won the case.
He brought it in the appellate court.
He won the case.
The Trump Justice Department said, no problem.
We're going to keep going.
and they argued the case two weeks ago before the Supreme Court, the nine justices.
And the court took the case early, Michael, and they promised a decision by the end of December.
Okay, with that as a backdrop, tell us what you want to, if any would be future lawyer.
If you want to see a lawyer in his prime, go on YouTube and say, let me watch Neil under questioning from these nine justices.
It was funny. I asked him, I was like, Neil, that was, how did you pull that off? And he was like, you know, I spent time meditating, getting prepared. I did a whole lot of homework. And he literally hired an athletic performance coach to be ready. But it was one of the greatest performances I've ever seen out of the lawyer. And again, I don't know if they're going to win or not. Supreme Court's, you know. I don't know. I got a guy. Look at me. Look at me. Get the gun over here to your head on this. Are they going to win? Yes or no. I think the gun.
Boom. I think Trump's going to lose this case. But you might be right. They might split the baby some. I don't think they're going to say it was all under emergency.
No, right? They can't do it. It would be such a gross violation. Remember, they're all originalists in terms of their theory and the application of the law. They would really be disavowing 80 years of conservative jurisprudential thinking. So they can't do that. But I'm saying Roberts is so afraid.
rate of Trump that he may give him a half win here on the on the on the on the on the on the money but
we'll see but so that's going to be stimulating right because that's going to use if that happens
it's a huge stimulus right so but markets trade up on that market's expecting a win michael or
what do you think the markets are i don't think the you know the markets are funny because
everything doesn't get baked in the way you think it's going to the day it happens or the
week it happens, people will be like, oh my God. And I think it would be down then up, right?
But I think it's a net positive. There's just, that's a lot of money. Now, it's bad for the bond
market, right? It makes our deficit worse. You know, Trump surprised everyone, and best
in surprise everyone by how big that tax collection was. And it really is tax collection, right?
I either could call it whatever you want. Well, that's a consumer tax.
Taxing without representation.
That's why they get a problem at the court.
And so I think that's a big stimulus.
It's a tax cut.
Okay, so I know, because I am a crypto investor,
and I appreciate you bringing me into the world of crypto,
I know I have a trap door on my portfolio.
And so once in a while, I'll be walking across the living room,
feeling beautiful about myself,
and then boom, a trap door opens,
and I have fallen into the basement of the house.
You know, thank God I'm out on the second floor.
they would probably fall right two floors down.
But what happened in the last, let's say, 20 trading days?
We'll take us back to the October 10th, what I would call mini crash in crypto,
and the aftermath, and where are we now?
Yeah, so we had a flash crash, and it did a lot of damage to the fabric of the market.
And it started really by, you know, at Binance, they had an Oracle,
which sets price, you know,
misfunction some.
And so they created a cascade
where people were getting stopped out
because there was the wrong price
on one of these synthetic stable coins.
That created dislocation in markets,
which then in all the levered perpetual markets
like hyperliquid, like Uniswap, you know, as prices went down, people started getting liquidated.
And what people don't understand about crypto is that the crypto investor doesn't play for 10, 11, 12% returns.
The crypto investor calls themselves DGens with pride.
They want to turn one into 15th.
And so they trade.
very volatile asset with a lot of leverage.
And it might be three times leverage, ten times.
And you can see it all on the screen.
And we had a just a cascading effect where markets just literally evaporated and collapsed.
And then came bouncing back.
You know, there was estimated even on hyperliquid that the market makers, you know,
30% of them went out of business.
I got zeroed.
And that was because, you know,
perpetual futures are not normal futures.
The genius that Arthur Hayes and his
group of people that put these things together
came up with is as longs get liquidated,
they're paired off against shorts.
And so when something's falling really quickly,
you could be short and you lose your short position.
Well, if you're long on another exchange
against that short position, you're shit out of luck.
And that happened to a lot of market makers.
And so we lost a lot of liquidity in the market.
We lost a lot of retail punters who lost their stack.
And what happens in crypto is after that group gets wiped out,
it takes a while for Humpty Dumpty to get put back together again.
Now, they get new savings, they get new money,
and that money starts flowing back into this kind of crypto casino.
But these are speculating.
and it's a buyer beware mentality,
these are not long-term investors.
You don't go 70 times leverage
or 10-time leverage even as a long-term investor.
You go it as a trader-speculator.
Right, but the market has delivered,
so you like the market better here,
given the leverage.
I actually, to be fair,
thought we were going to hold at higher levels
at 95, at 90, and we went all the way to 80.
80 was a maximum pain point yesterday, or Friday,
got to 180 on.
on 185 on XRP, we got to, you know, 125 on Salana, real pain points.
And now we've bounced some.
We bounced because of this bed.
But we're not out of the woods.
I do think crypto will cry, Bitcoin will climb back towards 100 by the end of the year.
But there'll be, there'll be sellers waiting there.
We've done some medium term damage to the psychology of the market.
And Anthony, when I step back,
there are three things that I think caused this.
One, when we hit 100, it felt like victory.
I put a freaking video out, congratulate in the crypto community and give yourself a hug, drink a bottle of champagne, sell a little bit and buy your wife a present.
Like, what a great accomplishment that this community got together and created this asset class.
And I think people felt I can sell something now, these hoddlers for a long time.
we had one nine billion dollar seller.
To put that in perspective,
that might be the single largest wire I've ever,
well, certainly single we've ever sent.
But like,
it's got to be a top 10 wire in American history
to wire $9 billion to one family.
And that's one third of all of iBits flows of the year.
So what you're seeing is as U.S. wealth, right,
the R.A. channel, which is $50 trillion,
is slowly moving to,
a zero waiting to a three to four percent waiting, right? That's a lot of money. It was met with
OG sellers. So that was part one, right? We had friends that sold and bought boats or sold
planes, boats, sports teams, pieces of them. Yep. Because there were so many concentrated
positions. In the long run, that's healthy. In the short run, that's painful. Right.
But that's not the only thing that happened. Crypto is going through a really positive transition,
but it's a painful one.
It's a transition from just being a story.
We're the most important industry.
We're really important.
We're going to decentralize the world.
We're going to, okay, we now have legislation, right?
Genius Act getting the next piece of legislation.
It's time to show me to money.
Like, show me what crypto actually does.
Right.
And so when you start saying, well, how do I make money on this stuff?
It's a harder story.
Some businesses are making money.
Some businesses aren't making money.
There are some token ecosystems.
that make common sense to an investor.
And there's some that all feel like they're just association.
And so as the story gets harder,
people kind of lose interest a little bit.
And I think that we're in that period.
I am positive.
More traditional finance players are moving into the market.
Everybody was just talking to a guy who was one of the biggest
infrastructure providers.
He said in the last two months,
he signed nine new contracts.
with, you know, the Citibank type, type accounts to provide services.
And he was excited, but he's like, but my existing business, oh, I, you know, he needed a safe loan,
you know, safe note to stay to stay afloat.
And so he was like, it's so crazy.
I've been building this for six years.
I'm still negative, yet I see the future.
And I think we're in a transition period.
I want to go to our economic dashboard, do a little bit of rapid fire with you.
And so going higher, going lower, this is just really a short-term thing for this week.
I'm going to say tariffs, we both believe that Trump will lose the tariff case.
The Supreme Court may split the baby or you may see a $300 billion rebate out there, right?
I think that's fair to say, right?
What about interest rates going lower?
Yeah, I long two-year notes.
stay long to your notes.
They're going to bring rates down to 2% in the next 16 months.
Okay.
And what about inflation?
Here to stay?
Or you think we can tame that with productivity gains?
Or what's your thought there?
I think inflation is going to creep higher.
They're going to creep higher.
So you're going to have a little bit of a, you're going to real rates are going to be negative then, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
It's my thing gold and silver is the, I don't think the gold market, the silver market, or the AI market's over.
Okay.
too hot for the equity markets
are going to cool off or equities are going higher
because rates are going lower.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting.
I was talking to one of the world's best investors
who had been pretty negative two months ago
and I called them and I said,
well, why were people negative?
They were negative for three reasons.
They were negative because of this fear of the AI data center,
circular, you know, Sam Altman invest in Oracle,
Oracle invest in Sam Altman, everyone
invested in Navidia. This spent, right?
That was one.
They were negative because
Howard Marks, who one of the great writers,
said, hey, whenever the stock market trades at 25
times, 10 years later, you
make no money. That money invested.
It's not a good time to be
invested. Everyone bought that story.
You know, it felt Navidia
hit $5 trillion. There was a bunch
of stuff that felt like, oh, this could be the bubble.
And we sold off some.
The reality is,
I fundamentally believe
AI is the most important technology of our lifetime
and this will be the largest bubble we ever see
we're not even close.
Now I give you some data points
that if you're already starting to look at 27 earnings
because we're finished 25,
you know, these companies like Amazon
and Microsoft, Google, meta,
they're not trading it 25 times.
They're trading 17, 18 times.
And they're growing like crazy.
and so I think the market all of a sudden not as expensive because earnings are growing so fast
and so you're going to and I've talked to like I was just had one of our largest investors he's like
dude I'm buying and so the psychology hasn't shifted and you know you've got some market
they'll be shift you might be selling the video and buying Google or selling you'll have different
leading horses but I don't think we have this wild overvalue everything
Okay, we're going to take a break.
When we come back, we're going to discuss AI, the valuations there, the potential bubble, open AI, GROC, etc.
It'll be right back after the break.
Welcome back from the break.
I'm Anthony Scaramucci.
I'm lighten overgrats.
All right.
So, Michael, we're back from the break.
But AI is not breaking.
There's no bubble popping in AI right now.
You talked a little bit about this before we went to the break.
but the bubble is expanding, but the fundamentals are also expanding, Michael.
So talk about the addressable market, talk about the flows that you're seeing in terms of
profitability there.
You know, listen, I do what most investors do.
I call my smart friends who have better relationships with the guys at those companies
than I do and do my own reading and homework.
when you listen, I listen to a podcast that Microsoft CEO did.
They are seeing such productivity increase.
There was one story that, you know, $100,000 worth of the Blackwell chips in one of his
engineers' hands can produce as much code as what it took to write windows in one
year. See, yeah, one guy plus chips is now windows in a year. That was the entire company over
multiple years. And so you're seeing a productivity increase that we haven't seen before ever
in these places. And they're, they're waiting for power. They're waiting for places to
plug their chips in. And so it feels like there's still a backlog. Listen, there's going to be
competition, right? You look at Gemini three, all of a sudden. You're like, wow. And that
I don't know who's going to win.
I do know the one thing that would worry me
is if Open AI starts coming under stress
because that's the big borrower, right?
And Sam's been the big leader in this stuff.
And who knows in five years who's going to win this thing?
Right?
But he has a $500 million market cap.
It's a private company.
But are you a buy, sell, or hold on Open AI
with a $500 billion market cap.
I'm probably a,
I think the market cap goes higher,
but I don't want to play that one.
I'd rather buy Google.
Listen,
Warren Buffett just bought Google.
You rarely,
you rarely lose following Warren Buffett.
And again,
I'm not smart enough to know
if it's going to be Gemini or OpenAI.
I really am not.
But Google evaluation feels,
feels easier to swallow.
And again, it's so hard to tell.
And we're still early in this stuff.
You know, I have a crazy story.
You know, GROC, which also has its, you know,
fan base, came out with GROCopedia.
And my buddy calls me,
he said, my God, this is going to put out Wikipedia,
you know, Wikipedia in six months,
well, no employees.
You know, how are you going to go?
Wikipedia is better. And so he said, put your name in there and see. So I put my name in there.
And that four pages in, there was a paragraph that was totally fictional. And I was like, it's crazy.
And unfortunately, it had some bad accusation. Was it good stuff? No, bad stuff. I thought they were
to tell me you had hair and you had like 10. And I so I start talking to Grock and saying, hey, you know, I didn't, I wasn't on the board of the New York Stock Exchange.
I didn't work at Bank of America.
Like some just factual things wrong.
You know, I didn't postpone my hedge fund
because of a terrible article in Bloomberg
about all these women complaining about me.
I was like, and it turned out
when Mike Bloomberg was running for president,
he had the company, not Mike Bloomberg,
the company had signed some NDAs
with,
with employees that had
had probably misbehaved
and that came out on the campaign trail
and Bloomberg said,
hey, this is a company, you know,
and it was an awkward moment.
But there was an article about
Mike Bloomberg that somehow became me
and there was a hallucination
and it was almost impossible to convince
and it was interesting.
The entire Crockapedia
had references to everything except
this one paragraph.
And there was,
like then I said, well, where the ref is well, it was behind the paywall, it must have disappeared, your tweet, it doesn't exist anymore, you must have. And it literally took calling the company and calling the lawyer. And it's all gone. And they were, they were great about it. But it was 18, you know, if I hadn't read it, it could have been up there for for months. And so we're early still. These things do hallucinate.
Well, Michael, talk about the machinery for a second, because I feel, and I hope I'm wrong about this, because I like Jensen.
long and I like
NVIDIA and I do own NVIDIA so I want
to be fully disclosed there but I feel
like it's a little bit like
Cisco in 1999
where the valuation is
reflecting what it has done
so far but is
it now completely saturated because
if you remember Cisco
who was making these switches to help us build
internet one
once all the switches were in place
the growth rate
declined substantially for Cisco.
amazing company, but it wasn't able to sustain that historic valuation that it received
before the NASDAQ bubble crash in 2000. Is NVIDIA like that or make the case for or against
what I'm saying? You know, the law of the law of large numbers makes it harder and harder,
right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you go. If they get this, if they get this ability to sell to China
that Trump talked about on Friday, that's a big deal for him. And so we've got to follow that.
but in everyone who's met him, and I have it, says he's just a beast, you know, one of the greatest
hardworking cultures and the whole culture and CEO. And so I think this is going to be the
largest bubble of our lifetime. And I don't think that means, you know, five trillion might not be
the top in the video. It might be a trillion. You know, like in 10 years time, will the company be worth
five trillion, probably not. But it doesn't mean we're not finished going up.
So what is it worth in 10 years, then? I don't know. I don't know. I just, I just know,
when a company makes that much money making chips, the incentive for other companies to come
up with a better chip is so high. It, you know, it's just, it's hard to keep a monopoly.
So we have both experienced this in our multiple decade careers on Wall Street. You get
price compression in a name because the earnings slow down and to your point in the law
big numbers you know you got to grow up you got to grow a five trillion dollar company by a
trillion to have 20% market capitalization growth so it's not that sustainable and then the
multiple comes down and all of a sudden the company's worth less even though it's still a great
company how many times you've seen that movie over and over so you know it's interesting I'm
remember I was listening to Dan Sunheim, who's, you know, had one of the great runs, you know, of a generation for a while, right?
And he said in growth stocks, if the second derivative of growth is positive, stay long.
And when that second derivative of growth flattens, get out, right?
It's pretty intuitive way to think of things.
Right.
It's hard for growth to keep going when you're that big.
Right.
And so at one point, you know, the multiple comes down.
But again, I keep wanting to come back.
Why this is going to be so challenging is this is going to be the greatest bubble of our generation, of our lifetime.
Not just generation, right?
And the only ones we've really seen, crypto has seen a couple bubbles, but that's specific to our industry.
Smaller.
The overall crypto market is under $4 trillion.
I mean, this is, you know.
But $99 was a real bubble.
remember 99 prices didn't come back until 2016
and we didn't really get the benefits of the internet until 2006
six years right and so even before all the benefits
that AI happened we could hit a crazy valuation I just don't know if we're there
I don't think we're there yet and just again I I'm in a privileged position
that between my investors and the people I know in this community I
in this last week spoke to four of the smartest and best investors
the world and they have really articulated why they think these stocks are are not nearly bubble
valuation. Okay. So I, I, I, we've got about two minutes to go. I'm going to add another
category because this came up today. And I'm going to share some of the insight that I had because
I'm still close to members of the Trump administration. Venezuela, it's not impossible that we
have a regime change in Venezuela and we move to some sort of transitional government there, Michael,
until they can establish free and fair elections. And that would mean that the U.S.
and its companies would be reentering that very robust, very rich market. It's been 30 years of
decimated activity in that country from communism. Would that change anything on the macro in
terms of your view of oil, Latin America in general, South America. What's your thoughts?
I think, listen, I think, you know, for the people of Venezuela's sake, I would pray it happens.
That place needs capital in a really big, big way it needs. Like, all countries need good governance,
infrastructure and capital, right? So the capital helps build the infrastructure. And Venezuela's
really falling apart. It's one of the saddest.
stories. I think in the short run, oil prices come under stress. It probably takes a while
for that really to have a broader lasting impact, but it's definitely negative oil. But mostly
it's positive Venezuela. And it would be a win for Trump. You know, period. I invested five years
ago in a Venezuela P.E fund. One of the wealthy Venezuelans said, hey, I'm going to be careful.
This thing is going to turn it on point.
And I hope he hasn't invested that much.
I hope he's been patient for five years.
If not, that money is tapioca.
You know, when these things do turn, it is time to get money in them.
Because one of the things I learned being in Indonesia when it blew up.
And everyone said, oh, my God, it's gone forever.
The human capacity to want a better life for themselves and their children,
If you're in Indonesia, Venezuela, if you're in Georgia or Baltimore or Russia is real.
People don't want a shit life.
And so the moment there's oxygen, man, the building starts again and the commerce starts again.
And so give the Venezuelans a shot, take the yoke of this authoritarian, you know, crap regime off of them.
And I think that place would boom.
All right.
Well, that's all the time we have for the day.
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