The Pomp Podcast - #1508 Jan Van Eck | How Bitcoin Is Taking Over Wall Street

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Jan Van Eck is the CEO at VanEck. This conversation was recorded at Bitcoin Investor Week in New York. In this conversation we talk about the relationship between bitcoin and gold, how bitcoin will disrupt Wall Street, the impact Trump will have on financial markets, and what crypto milestones Jan is looking forward to in 2025.=======================Simple Mining makes Bitcoin mining simple and accessible for everyone. We offer a premium white glove hosting service, helping you maximize the profitability of Bitcoin mining. For more information on Simple Mining or to get started mining Bitcoin, visit https://www.simplemining.io/=======================This episode is brought to you by Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR), a global leader in Bitcoin mining and high-performance computing for AI. Led by a seasoned management team, Bitdeer is driving innovation with its proprietary SEALMINER ASICs for Bitcoin mining and has a massive 2.5 GW power portfolio across three continents. Learn more about Bitdeer at www.bitdeer.com=======================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/=======================View 10k+ open startup jobs:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

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visit their website at bitdeer.com that's b-i-t-d-e-e-r.com go check out bitdeer today all right you guys have uh approximately 120 billion dollars under management yes sir Okay. And, uh, you, I think publicly have said that you have approximately 30% of your net worth in Bitcoin. Yes, sir. Okay. Um, you also, I think are one of the largest asset managers when it comes to gold. Yeah. Okay. A little bit on VanEck you want? Sure. So yeah, just, just, uh, just a couple of sentences. Uh, so VanEck, um, big ETF, uh, issuer right now, we launched the first, uh, gold fund in the United States in 1968. So I like to say that kind of hard asset investing is in our blood. And we were the first ETF issuer to file for a Bitcoin ETF in 2017. So that's a brief

background. How do you look at the relationship between gold and Bitcoin now? And one of the things that's interesting to me is last year, we saw gold was up 50% or so. Bitcoin was up about 100%. Central banks are buying hand over fist gold. We're knocking on the door of $3,000, you know, depending on the day. And I think there's a lot of Bitcoiners that used to say Bitcoin is better than gold. Gold is going to go down in value. It's going to be demonetized by Bitcoin. Bitcoin is going to be this great thing and it's going to surpass gold. Bitcoin has grown very quickly, but gold has continued to do very, very well in this economic environment, you know, since 2020, do they just win together forever? Or how do you look at that

relationship? I think the assets kind of rhyme. They do tend to hit sort of all-time highs, you know, sort of in the same year, calendar year. But I think that, you know, gold is really, I think they're different assets. They're definitely different assets, Anthony. So if you look about what's happened over the last year for both asset classes, I think it's been super, super interesting. So gold, even though M2 money supply was shrinking, or at least the growth rate, which came down dramatic last year, gold rallied. That's unusual. The dollar was strong. Gold rallied. That was unusual. So the typical narratives that you really have around gold, and maybe we can get to Bitcoin in a second, have not really been holding. And this year,

it's extended. And so the point I make is that we live in a different world. We live in a world of de-dollarization. I'm not the first person to make this point, but I really think it's profound. And the factoid I like to use is that India, I would say the best macro story in the world, in 10 years is going to be the size of continental European economy. So just think about that for a second. And what I also like to say is that's not just a slide from an economist. I think that the further you look out, the higher your conviction can be about some investment trends. I don't know what gold's going to do today, this hour, this week, this year. But if you take these long-term trends on Bitcoin or gold, I think you see this de-dollarization playing out. Because

the Indian policymakers, there's no correlation. They don't want to be a dollarized economy in any way, shape, or fashion. And so after you had the seizure of Russian reserves, after the invasion of Ukraine, that was the desire to de-dollarize step one. And I do think the Trump tariffs, I admire our president, but all this crazy tariff talk has just increased the native demand for non-American investors to buy gold. And so I think, look, we live, I always like to say people talk about the Fed and the U.S. and this. We live in a global investment world. And so I think that is the trend.

It's a multi-decade trend of de-dollarization. It's a great bid under gold. When I think of you guys, obviously you're a very big asset manager in the United States, but you have done a fantastic job, I think, of going around the world and building out a business. And you have a lot of understanding not only of what assets are popular globally, but also how these investors think. bitcoin is a global asset that anyone can buy with an internet connection it doesn't care about

wealth status or language or religion or any of these things and it feels like it is maybe best understood in emerging markets it feels like to your point about gold uh being desired in these markets how do you see the demand shifting as the u.s political landscape is shifting right like one of the things that's always surprised me is Bitcoin allows for people to get access to a financial asset that they don't need an American bank account for. And now all of a sudden we have this surge of excitement in the United States. Do you see that ripple effect globally as well? We've heard Mike Novogratz talk about sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East saying, if Trump cares about Bitcoin, I care about Bitcoin, right? What are you seeing in these

other markets? I'd say it's a similar theme to what I was saying about gold, which is we live in a global world and we're you know i think i don't mean to diminish the the president's election but it's sort of like a blip in in the context of bitcoin it's a global asset as you said global demand uh what i like to point out as well is there's a lot of on-chain demand for bitcoin right it's an on-chain asset and we haven't even started to move finance really on-chain at all i mean we're just even starting to if we talk about it demand for bitcoin wrapped in tradfi you know, kind of wrappers. But I think there's, you know, we're still early innings for this whole game. So the Bitcoin ETFs obviously had this huge impact. You guys were right there

in the pack and have done a great job, I think, of going out and telling the story of Bitcoin and the ETF story. But it feels like Wall Street's not going to stop with just get, you know, spot exposure via the ETFs. We see all kinds of stuff in these, you know, 2X levered on top of Bitcoin treasury companies, we see, you know, principal protected notes and all these other parts of the industry. How do you see product development on Wall Street for Bitcoin? Like, where are we going to stuff this asset so that investors can get exposure? Well, I think leverage is incredibly important to the ecosystem. And Bitcoin investors have had that through the Asian exchanges for many years. And, you know, one of the big, well, the biggest buyer of the Bitcoin ETF so far

the hedge funds, and they're probably doing the futures trade, right? So for ETFs, ETFs are really wonderful instruments because of their liquidity. Our oldest ETF is gold miners ETF. And if you want to deploy $100 or $200 million into gold mining shares, you will get way more liquidity trading GDX than you will even Newmont or Barrick. And so that is the beauty of exchange traded vehicles they bring that liquidity derivatives add to that because every time people are trading these things or providing liquidity to etfs they need to hedge their balance sheets and they want to do that in an efficient way and that's why the derivatives market is super important we have options now on the etfs and futures so as we look for maybe other digital assets i don't know if

we're allowed to talk about them right having those uh by regulated u.s exchanges uh futures exchanges is really important as well. Let's dig into a little bit of nerd ETF talk for a second. There is cash and in-kind. I think that the ETF issuers, from what I understand, really wanted the in-kind component that was not approved initially. Are we going to get it? How does that work? Why is that advantageous in your opinion? Oh, I mean, it's a huge... So there are actually some pretty big Bitcoin holders that would like to move their Bitcoin from a wallet into an ETF for a variety of reasons. And they can't do that. That becomes a taxable transaction now. So that is really, that's why issuers want to enable the in-kind transactions. But I would

just take the opportunity to issue this warning note, right? Bitcoin is a bearer asset. Digital assets generally are bearer assets. Even in the ETFs, their custody is not guaranteed by anyone. Coinbase, Gemini, we use both. They're not guaranteeing the safekeeping, right? So there was this big hack last week, and I think there's a huge misunderstanding by a lot of people in the markets about that particular risk. And so just by the way of operations, actually cash creates are safer not not to say anything nice about the former sec but they are a lot safer than uh in kind because once you allow in kind you have to white label um whitelist a lot of other wallets and so you know i don't want to go down the rabbit hole either but um it's it's just something i

wanted to take a note of because it's a big event over the last week yeah um with bitcoin price is always something that people pay attention to the beauty of your business is you would like asset prices to go up, but naturally you are providing solutions and then individual investors can go ahead and choose what exposures they want. The Trump administration in the first term was obsessed with the stock market, as I think he's been most of his career. He wanted to see the U.S. economy succeed, and therefore he used the stock market as that proxy measurement. There is a flurry of articles over the last maybe two or three weeks that are now saying the stock market may not be as important. He's much more interested in this 10-year bond yield

and trying to get that down. Talk a little bit about, you know, how you evaluate that as kind of his North Star and maybe any implications that would have for Bitcoin's price. Yeah. I mean, I am no macro genius, right, or political analyst, but I do have an opinion and you did ask. So number one, I think this president is a man on a mission. I think he looks at the next two years because you never know what happens in midterms. And he's got two-year clock and the clock is running. So I think he's looking at the clock almost every day. So that's number one. Number two, I think the tech community, and I listen to all those podcasts, I think what's underappreciated by people that don't listen is how absolutely deadly serious they are about the

federal budget deficit. I mean, I listen to the All In pod, David Freeberg, Sachs, they've been talking about this week after week after week. And it wasn't mentioned during the election, right? But it is on their minds. And so they are trying to deal with this debt issue. And I think so I take Doge very seriously. I maybe like to go into that a little bit. And I do think that they want to deal with the big federal debt. They want to restructure it. It's way too short term in their minds. So let me, if I could just take this a little bit further, my bet is that they are able to cut half a trillion dollars out of the federal budget on an annualized basis starting in the next fiscal year, which starts in October 1. And they've laid the groundwork for this. I'll

just give you one stat. There are 4 million federal government employees, but what people don't realize, how many million contractors are there, do you think, full-time contractors? Four to six times as many. 20 yeah you're too you're too good uh 20 million 20 million so they're going to cut the spending and i just i hear stories every day about people who have lost their jobs um you know with academic research or what have you um and so that's millions of people so what i'd like to say is our fiscal policy is like having it has been like having two feet on the gas pedal i mean the biden administration like they literally couldn't spend enough money as they were leaving office right

and so that is going to be a i'll call it recessionary step in 2025 i think that leaves the fed room to cut rates and so i think that's the bargain it's going to be this recessionary move i'm pulling back on government spending which is good for the 10-year and we fold down the front end of the curve if that becomes visible we don't know it yet and i'd like to highlight that like it's really amazing as a macro investor and vanek is kind of a macro shop what do we care about? Monetary policy, fiscal policy. What are the levers of government, because they're such a big actor in the economy, going to do to the financial markets? And, you know, we don't know on fiscal policy. I mean, we can look at the 10-year and guess, but the Senate passed a bill

last week. There was like no coverage of its fiscal impact, right? The House just passed a reconciliation bill. Again, like a couple of tweets and things like that. But this is fiscal policy this should be front and central right instead we're focusing on tariff talk and everything else so i think that's why the markets are a little bit nervous over the last couple of weeks because here it is the biggest one of the biggest levers of the biggest lever of two onto the financial markets and we don't really know we're guessing but we really have very little visibility into what's happening i've been polling the audience all week long do you think that we're going to balance the budget? Balance the budget? Okay, so my poll is, I'm going to give you my

question, jeepers creepers. So my question is, if we're at, let's say, 6% of our federal budget deficit, 6% of GDP, should we do a poll here? Are we allowed to do the live poll? So here's the question. Can we reduce that by 1%, 2%, or 3%? So lowering the federal budget deficit as a percent of GDP, let's call it 6% now, right? And debt's out of control, right? Interest on the debt's the most expensive part of government spending now. Raise your hands. Who thinks we can lower that by 1% in fiscal 2026? Okay. We've got some hands. Like 10. Okay. Are they more optimistic? Okay. It has to be one, two, or three. So let's say 1% or less. Let's try this again. Can we cut the fiscal federal budget deficit by 1% or hardly at all? Oh, whoa. I didn't ask the

question the right way. See, I'm not you. Okay. So that was about a third of the audience. Who thinks we can cut it by 2% of GDP? Not as many hands. Oh boy. 10, 12. Uh, and then 3%. No. Okay. I think we're going to listen. No, here, here, here's my whole logic. I think that we're going to balance the budget. I really do think so. And, and the reason is, uh, I agree with you that wait, wait, wait timeframe, not next year. No. During the Trump presidency, I think he will get at least one balanced budget. I don't think that it is sustainable longterm, all this stuff. But I think that there's really three components to this. The first is, I agree with you that Doge, we need to take incredibly seriously. I think that they will be very, very good at cutting.

And I think it's not just the waste, abuse, fraud stuff. I think that they will be able to cut things that previously were out of bounds. So the entitlement spending is one example. There's not a politician in the world that could show up and say, I'm going to change it. So you have to be able to cut back the spending without touching the promise. and what it appears like is they believe they have identified fraud. And so if you're able to 10, 15, 30%, whatever that number is, if you're able to get rid of that, but also not change the promise, then you've kind of found this like almost judo move. And there's a lot of examples of where they think they can do that. The second thing is the tariffs. I know you don't like them,

but I do think that we are going to go from a world where we're default no tariffs and it's as a punitive tool. I think we're going to switch to a default five or 10% tariff on every import to the United States. And then we will go to an incentive-based system where we will remove a lot of them to actually incentivize the product services, countries, and companies that we want to come to the US. And then the third thing- Hold on, hold on. What's the revenue associated with tariffs, 5%, 10% tariffs across the board? I would have to do, it really depends on what the incentive is, right? Because there's a lot of things that we're not going to be able to put that 10% on. But let's just say that Doge, I'm probably a little bit more optimistic than you. I think

they can get to a trillion in savings, but you say 500 billion. So let's use 500. Let's say that the tariffs are good for approximately another 500 billion. Ready? I think that the number one thing people are underestimating is in this water. If you put Howard Lutnick and Scott Besson in a room with Trump and you say, we got to make money and they look at the balance sheet of the United States, I think these guys are going to start doing all kinds of stuff. And the Ukraine mineral rights deal is one example. But I think that there's going to be a fire sale of U.S. government buildings that are just unused. I think that they are going to start doing all kinds of these deals, which previously people thought was not the role of the government. And now what you've essentially

done is you put business people there. So if they can get another trillion, we're still around hundreds of billions and trillions here, you would essentially be able to close the gap and get pretty close. And then there's wishful thinking for an extra 10%, so we'll be in a surplus. Okay. And are there any risks to this scenario? There's an incredible amount. If we hit a recession, recessions typically cost one, two, or 3% of GDP. So here's a good question for you. One of the things that also is true is what's good for the country may not be good for Bitcoin. So if we balance the budget, is that actually a headwind for Bitcoin and could hurt the price? I don't think so. No? I think we're talking about just

an adoption of digital gold. And we're in the middle of a trend. And I think it's kind of unstoppable. It's sort of a secular trend. And people did celebrate a lot with the election of Donald Trump. But there's a lot of further adoption to go. A lot of governments haven't gotten involved. Corporations are actually excitingly involved. But there's a lot to go there. There are a lot of investors who are just barely starting to talk about it. I was at a conference in Dallas earlier this week, a big RIA. They just are now allowing their advisors to solicit Bitcoin investment. So it's a long ways to go. BlackRock just made the announcement they're going to put this in every portfolio. We know that there's many RIAs in large institutions,

wire houses you just go through kind of all of the different types of organizations 12 months ago zero of them were even allowed to talk about it let alone they were doing anything what is the timeline that you think it takes for them to pretty much say okay this is like a default part of a portfolio across all of wall street this is a really really important part of the equation in terms of the adoption by um the wealth industry right so if hedge funds own like 27 billion of Bitcoin ETFs. I think RIAs own something like $7 billion, you know, ballpark. But that $7 billion, a lot of that comes through, maybe not that $7 billion, but RIA assets come through model portfolios. And the one thing I don't think we've talked about yet today is the core,

it sounds stupid, right? But, and I hate correlation as a statistic, but the correlation of Bitcoin against the NASDAQ, because that was something I've really felt it hurt the Bitcoin ETFs last year because people are like, it's just a risk on asset. It had a 60% correlation to the NASDAQ. What do you need it for? And the people that sit in the dark rooms and make the model portfolios up, they're like, it's not additive, right? I already own a lot of Qs. I already own a lot of semis. I don't need Bitcoin. So that's actually fallen. The 30-day daily volatility has fallen to about 0.25. And I don't know if that's what got BlackRock to put them in their model, but I think that's something that I'm really keeping an eye on. And I hope that continues

to go lower because over the last 10 years, it's like zero. But an allocator that's looking at 0.6 in the short term is, I think has, was not embracing Bitcoin. So this is, this is an exciting thing. You mentioned earlier, this idea of like Bitcoin in a wrapper, right? And the ETF is kind of the wrapper around Bitcoin. I would argue that many of the Bitcoin treasury companies are another form of Bitcoin with a new wrapper where now the equity investors or the debt investors can go and buy these financial instruments and get exposure to Bitcoin. We have seen some asset managers start to talk about, oh, I have a fixed income fund. Maybe we'll put 5% Bitcoin in there as a way to almost juice the return. And if you have these kind of

peer comparisons, if you're outperforming, then does that reflexively force your peers to start to do this? How do you just look at Bitcoin, not necessarily as a single asset that people want exposure to but actually bitcoin being added to some of these other strategies that are very popular like could you know i'm assuming someone somewhere is going to launch a mag 7 plus bitcoin etf at some point right like like those types of things if for no other reason then it sounds good in headlines if headlines could drive capital flows somebody will try it yeah right it depends on the narrative i think like maybe mag 7 with bitcoin makes sense uh maybe you know but i think for a fixed income, I think most gatekeepers would say, no, I want my peanut butter here,

my jelly there, and I'll mix them. Asset managers love to do that. They love to sneak in different asset classes. So we launched a CLO ETF almost three years ago. And it's basically this institutional fixed income instrument that has great risk return characteristics, but no wealth manager or average person knew what they were and they sounded weird. So, but like probably over 10 years and they trade it, you get a premium yield to the, uh, right now. But, you know, so they were mixed in to like every fixed income, you know, multi-strat, but you know, my feeling is that'll go away as, as retail gets involved, the, you know, the premium will get involved. So they do love to play that game, but I think that's a limited game.

VanEck, uh, you guys are big Bitcoin proponents. You've done a fantastic job there. Um, you support the Bitcoin ecosystem. There's a bunch of stuff that you guys are doing. But you also, I think, have an understanding that there is a broader industry of assets. And sometimes it makes sense to have exposure to Bitcoin. Sometimes it makes sense to have exposure elsewhere. You've got a liquid fund where you guys are trading in and out of these assets. Just talk about like Bitcoin's role with these other things, right? So it doesn't mean that these other funds necessarily have no Bitcoin. It's just in January, maybe it's a good time to have Bitcoin. In February, maybe it's not, right and trying to kind of think through these market cycles and the macro backdrop i look at

bitcoin's very different from other digital assets i just look at it totally different i say look at bitcoin it's sort of a store of value gold type of asset whatever you feel comfortable with there uh the others are really i would say aggressive growth equity types of allocation right in allocation to solana or what have you i mean that's to me like semiconductors or nuclear you know nuclear energy uh smrs and that kind of stuff i think the blackrock number was 1.5 percent into the portfolios yeah um i have seen estimates as low as like half a percent in these model portfolios i've seen people estimate as high as five percent uh you're at 30 personally in bitcoin right um there are plenty of portfolios out there where gold is a much larger percentage than one

right where do you feel like bitcoin probably ends up do you have a gut feel for you know the wealth industry in general that model portfolio that kind of averages them all together is it like a half a percent one percent thing or do you think it's higher i mean we we're at two percent in our uh we have sort of 60 40 models and we're two percent and now we will trade that right um you know if it goes to three or four percent we'll sell if it goes down we'll buy So that's our I think what happens personally if you're lucky enough to be early and the way to as everyone here knows the way That you know the first question you ask a bitcoiner is what year did you start buying right then? You know how big their wallet is

But basically, you know what once they start making so much money. They don't ever want to sell so then they say well That's really my bitcoins not my normal portfolio, right? That's not normal portfolio allocation and I think that's what advisors are doing is like here's my regular portfolio And wow you were lucky to get into Bitcoin let it run I was on the panel on Wednesday with a gold bug who bought gold in 74. You know, he was talking to my dad back then. And, like, he's never sold his gold. He's never going to, right?

So he owns, like, 20% or 30% in gold. But that's not what he would advise anyone else to do. That makes sense. What is the number one milestone or development in 2025 that you guys are paying attention to? Is it the strategic reserve or something else? For me, it's actually not Bitcoin. It does have to be Bitcoin-related. stable coins is the most interesting to me i'm i really applaud what senator lummis and chris land

on their staff are doing um they're i guess gonna you know propose that bill in march and then hopefully it gets done um before labor day uh i think it was labor day um i'm just telling you that he's gonna have to pull all-nighters because i am really worried i don't know if there's anyone from jp morgan here but i'm really worried that the bank regulators are going to try to kill the stablecoin bill or say that you have to be a bank to issue a stablecoin or something like that and that will just kill it um in the u.s and and the development will happen overseas so i would say that is the biggest thing i mean i think we're just burned right people in crypto with choke points and all this kind of stuff it's just do we really think that good stuff will come out

of dc i i'd rather have no regulation than any regulation but well maybe i'm just too bearish I don't know. I'm a New Yorker. I have to make sure that you're a good dad. Your son has a stable coin that is becoming quite popular. Can you talk a little bit as to, you know, you already have two stable coins out there that I think people say, hey, these are the two big winners. But obviously there's a belief that there can be room for more than just two. What is kind of the angle for the stable coin? Yeah, you're in an industry of stable coins where you have two giants, right? Tether and Circle. And I think he just saw a market entry opportunity for having sort of a little bit of a go-to-market strategy that's different from Circle. Because Tether is non-US, basically.

They don't want to come onshore. So I think there is a lot of opportunity with stable. I think there's a big opportunity with tokenization, actually. If Hester Perls and the SEC does what they say they're going to do. Actually, our industry, I don't think we can imagine how much change there's going to be in terms of tokenization of assets. Because if, anyway, I won't go down the rabbit hole too much. Tell us. Well, a lot of what's been allowed in Europe regarding tokenization, they still say, well, you have to be tethered to the traditional financial system because of the clearance mechanisms and things like that. But if you actually trust the blockchain to take care of the ownership of an asset,

of a tokenized fund or whatever, that's revolutionary. That will allow a lot of innovation to happen. Ladies and gentlemen, Jan van Eyck.