The Pomp Podcast - #1523 Jordi Visser | Bitcoin Holds Strong As Stocks CRASH

Episode Date: April 5, 2025

Jordi Visser is a macro investor with over 30 years of Wall Street experience. He also writes a Substack called “VisserLabs” and puts out investing YouTube videos. In this conversation we discuss all the chaos going on in the the market right now, tariffs, stock market, recession, what we expect other countries to do, interest rates, bitcoin, gold, and how to navigate uncertainty in this volatile market.=========================Today’s video is brought to you by Coinbase, the most trusted gateway to the crypto economy. Coinbase is an American publicly traded company that offers a secure online platform for buying, selling, transferring, and storing cryptocurrency.Get $20 in Free Bitcoin when you sign up and make your first trade here 👉 coinbase.com/partner/POMP *Terms conditions apply to the promo #CoinbasePartner #CryptoTrading #Coinbase =======================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/=======================BitcoinOS is bringing Bitcoin into a new era. For the first time, Bitcoiners can access real DeFi across the entire crypto ecosystem, powered by revolutionary zero-knowledge technology. No more trusting sketchy bridges or giving up security. BitcoinOS reunites all of crypto around the chain where it all began. Follow BitcoinOS on twitter @BTC_OS and Be early to Bitcoin again.=======================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/

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's going on, everyone? We've got an excellent episode with Jordy Visser. There's tons of chaos going on all throughout the market. People are worried about the stock market crashing.

They think the tariffs are dumb, and they're even predicting that recession odds are now up around 60%. It's a big problem for you and your portfolio, right? Don't worry. Calm down. Take a deep breath. Jordy is here to explain what's happening, why it's happening, what he expects to happen in the future, and how you can think through all of this uncertainty. I learned a lot in this conversation. I think you will as well. Here's my latest conversation with Jordy Visser. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment

or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Today's episode is brought to you by Coinbase, the most trusted gateway to the crypto economy. Crypto moves fast, and whether you're a seasoned investor or you're just getting started, having a secure, reliable,

and easy-to-use platform is essential. That's why millions of people around the world, they choose Coinbase to buy, sell, and manage their crypto with confidence. With Coinbase, accessing the crypto economy has never been simpler. Their intuitive and user-friendly platform makes it easy to trade

and securely store hundreds of digital assets in just a few clicks. No matter where you are in your crypto journey, Coinbase provides the tools to effectively navigate the market. They include real-time price tracking, advanced charting tools, and automated recurring buys for those of you who like the dollar cost average. Funding your account is seamless. They have support for bank transfers, debit cards, PayPal, and more. Plus, you can earn up to 4.1% APY on USDC, up to your first $30,000 of USDC, giving you another way to put your assets to work. What truly sets Coinbase apart is its commitment to security.

With industry-leading protection, multi-layer encryption, and 24-7 monitoring, you can trade and store your crypto with peace of mind, knowing your funds are safeguarded from potential threats. If you're looking for a secure, reliable, and easy way to invest in crypto, head to Coinbase.com slash partner slash POM. And as a special offer, our friends at Coinbase are giving you $20 in free Bitcoin after you make your first trade. Just click the link in the description or go to coinbase.com slash partner slash POM and you can claim your $20 in free Bitcoin today. Are you looking for a simple way to earn Bitcoin rewards every single day?

At Simple Mining, we help people mine Bitcoin, even if you're brand new. We're a vertically integrated Bitcoin mining company based in Cedar Falls, Iowa, offering a premium white glove hosting service that helps you maximize your mining profitability. With over 500 clients worldwide, we manage over 15,000 machines across our sites.

our facilities are staffed seven days a week and we fix most on-site issues in under 48 hours in fact we can repair more than 2,000 hash boards each month in our dedicated repair center ensuring your miners run smooth want to see it firsthand tour our mining sites either in person or online anytime plus for your first year of mining we cover all repairs no questions asked we bill you for the exact time your miners are running and you can pause whenever you want need to buy or sell our exclusive miner marketplace gives you the freedom to trade on your schedule You'll even have a custom dashboard to track your miner stats in real time. And if you're thinking about running your operation like a business,

our tax team can guide you through the depreciation advantages. Ready to grow your Bitcoin stack? Visit simplemining.io. Today's episode is brought to you by Bitcoin OS. Bitcoin OS is the ultimate upgrade to Bitcoin. Bitcoiners can now experience the magic of the entire crypto world, including DeFi, scalability, privacy, and more. But you don't have to give up control of your hard-earned stats.

Bitcoin OS is powered by revolutionary zero-knowledge technology, and they let other blockchains plug into Bitcoin, offering their service to the world's largest digital asset. This lets Bitcoin holders securely move their coins across the crypto landscape, turning Bitcoin into a productive, programmable asset. Putting your Bitcoin to work once meant trusting centralized companies and bridges to protect your assets, a model that's lost crypto owners billions to hacks and fraud.

Bitcoin OS lets you be your own BOS, using a system based on cryptography rather than trust, the way Satoshi intended. Using Bitcoin OS, altcoins are returning home, eager to plug into Bitcoin security, network effects, and $2 trillion capital base. Bitcoin is the first and final BOS of all digital assets and will soon be reborn as the foundation of a united crypto world. Follow Bitcoin OS on Twitter at BTC underscore OS. Again, that's at BTC underscore OS and be early to Bitcoin again. All right, Jordy, I thought a great place to start the conversation is

Donald Trump went into the Rose Garden. He had his great press conference and he said, this is our declaration of economic independence, which sounds amazing. You would think that everyone's excited because we're going to have independence and stocks fell off a cliff. Chaos ensued. Countries are freaking out. And it seems like everyone thinks the world's ending. How do you think through the tariffs, the economic policies, and then kind of the fallout in the financial markets. All right. You said stocks fell. They're still falling as we speak right now. So, all right. So, I spent a lot of time using stocks and specifically the S&P 500 because it's a global index as the gauge for probability of recession. So, you know, for people who just

don't think of earnings and nominal GDP as related, when the S&P 500 year over year, As of this morning at the lows, we were back at zero, meaning the price a year ago today on April 4th or April, whatever day today is, April 4th, is the same price as it was a year ago. So that may not sound like a big deal. It's unchanged. So you had a great year last year and now you're unchanged. The problem is nominal GDP goes up every year except a recession.

There's a multiple on nominal GDP. Revenues are generally some multiple of nominal GDP. So when stocks are unchanged year over year, there's a probability of a recession being built in because it's a discounting mechanism. So I have always come to the, you know, the back test that when you're unchanged year over year, a recession based on the stocks is at 50%. We can get to 75%, you know, in terms of probability, that would be down 10%. And then once you get to down 20% year over year, there's very few times in history that you don't have a recession at that point. So that's why the stocks fell, because the earnings hit is going to be real for a lot of companies. You know, you can't unwind globalization really quickly.

90% of iPhones are still built in China. So the cost of an iPhone just went up dramatically. Technology stocks reacted the way they should. Retail stocks like Target reacted the way they should because we get a lot of stuff from China. So I think the market reacted like, number one, the tariffs are real. Number two, this is far bigger than we expected. We were not prepared for it. But now we've gotten to a level that as far as I'm concerned, at 50% recession, we've built in a pretty good place at this point.

This is normally when I get interested in buying things. So the recession odds have been spiking 18%, I think, in mid-January. Now we're up over 60%. How do you think about those, quote, unquote, odds versus maybe what the market is telling us, right? Stocks have fallen. Crypto has come down. But is there a magic number in your mind where stocks fall enough? And then you're like, okay, I actually believe the recession odds, or is it just kind of vibes,

right? It feels like everyone is worried and therefore they're going to stop spending and that'll contract that GDP. So this is a unique one, and this is what I want to separate. So when people say recession, we have no job losses. We're still creating jobs. We had the jobs report today. It was over 220,000 jobless claims. They're exact same level today as they were at the beginning of 2022. So one of the things in 2022, everyone, I mean, recession odds got up even higher than they are today. Everyone talked about one. We never got one. We created 4 million jobs that year. So the issue comes in that if people are receiving, if they're still hiring more people, that means income is still growing. If income is still growing,

it's really hard to have a recession in this country when transfer payments are 15% of GDP and rising healthcare expenditures or 20% of GDP, it's just really hard in a service-based economy to actually get a recession. So at 50% chance, unless he keeps these numbers at this place and there's no negotiating, which I don't believe is going to happen, a month from now, three months from now, you're going to be up buying at the lows today, in my opinion. I just don't see it. So I think the market could go down to 4,700 on the S&P, which would be almost almost eight percent lower than it was this morning and the reason is because I think they can take this to 75 chance based on the retaliatory side of China but we got a lot of things going on

which I think are going to soften things over the weekend I just get an impression a belief that there's already some deals that have been made if he wants to roll out some positive deals that'll show that he's willing to negotiate we've got Tick Tock which is an interesting development which we can talk about but looks like we have a buyer for that the Chinese would have to approve there's a lot of negotiation that's still to happen. All right. So I want to kind of go like around the world of different things that I've seen happening. The first maybe is I was joking, but not joking. And I tweeted the treasury secretary went on national television for weeks and said, I don't care about the stock market.

I'm focused on the 10 year treasury yield. I want to get it down. And then he and the president went and they did exactly what they said they were going to do. And now we are below 4%. How do you look at that 10-year treasury yield? Is there a specific target that they're trying to get into? Are there more things? If it starts to fall, now do they say, hey, this is working, let's go bigger? Just talk through what is the thought process now that that treasury yield has actually fallen under 4%? Yeah.

Again, unless we're having job losses, I think they're going to keep being willing to see the stock market fall down to lower levels. Because I really do believe they know without job losses, you're not caught in this situation. This is a short-term repricing of assets. So if he turns around and says there's no more tariffs, the stock market would go right back up tomorrow because there hasn't been any damage done to the economy at a high level. Do I think there will be damage to the economy? Yes. To do tariffs, it's going to have an impact on things.

It'll take a while to rebuild and onshore, and that will mean slower GDP. But they said they wanted it. But I will remind you one thing that Scott Besson did say. He used this 3-3-3. One of the threes is real GDP of 3% is where they want to be. So I think we're closer. We have 100 basis points of Fed cuts as of last night built into the market. It's going to be slightly more.

That's by the end of this year. So they're getting what they want. They're going to get some rate cuts because we're going to see the unemployment rate almost assuredly tick up. I don't think it's going to go very far, but I think they're getting what they want. And I think we've reached a level technically, I think 3.5% on 10 years. is where I would imagine is kind of the no-moss line for them, where they will start to turn. But like I said, I think we're closer than people realize to some kind of

positive negotiations, just to show that some countries are willing to negotiate. So we've seen a couple of countries, Israel and Vietnam most notably, but also Canada has kind of hinted at it, basically say, no-moss, we're good, we're going to drop all the tariffs. Is that your expectation of what most of these countries are going to come to the table and they're going to drop all their tariffs and we'll actually have like true unfettered free trade with some of these countries or do you think that it's like i'll drop some tariffs maybe you drop some tariffs and we get kind of a a messy complicated type deal yeah i i think it's going to be

individually country by country but what the market will start to source out is the one that really matters the most is china and this is the one that like i you know the reason i brought up the TikTok thing, China and the U.S. are the biggest economies by far. If the U.S., if Trump really wants a deal between Russia and Ukraine, he kind of needs China to be involved in this. So I think we're looking at the news headlines, we're extrapolating this negative news, and that's why any kind of trade deals that happen show that the global economy, just like after Lehman Brothers, you can't just tear it apart. If you tear it apart, there's too much leverage in the system and assets will go down. So you and I talked about that tariffs are not

inflationary, they're deflationary. And I think we've been proven true, at least on the asset side. And if the assets fall and the economy falls, deflation setting in, I mean, oil has gone from 72, it was trading at 61 and a half when we sat down. That's deflation. Like that is the definition of deflation. And the problem is the global economy is a levered vehicle across the globe. And you can't, we're too connected to every place else in trade, in parts. So I think each country will find negotiations to do this. China and the US will be the hardest ones to negotiate everything. But at this point, we've built in no negotiations. And that's where we needed to get to to find value. And when we look at certain countries that are getting hit with

these tariffs. They have producers in those countries that sell goods to American companies. So we've seen two different companies now that are very large American companies come out and say, here's basically what their plan is. Walmart has gone to many of their suppliers and they've said, we know you got hit with the tariffs. We don't care. You are not going to raise our prices. And therefore, you as the supplier, you need to eat the tariff and cut into your own margin. We are not going to raise prices for the consumer. The second company is Ford, which has come out and that they're going to offer employee pricing for the foreseeable future to all American customers. How do you look at these companies and are they signaling that even though we're hitting tariffs

on a number of these countries, actually the consumer may not feel it for some of their staple goods if American companies kind of hold the line and use the leverage that they have to make the suppliers eat those costs? So in the case of Walmart, Walmart is such a big customer and they're so important they have leverage there was another company kohl's they don't have any leverage um so what'll end up happening is if walmart says we're not pushing the prices through it's going to mean job losses for kohl's it'll mean bankruptcies for certain com you know companies that can't have the leverage and so it's very difficult to take the angle that prices won't go higher i think everyone's going to try to do that a because they don't want to feel the wrath

of the administration he's already said publicly i don't want to see prices being raised so i think there'll be some good feel-good stories out there but you have to remember for small businesses and people that are competing with walmart where i think it's really hard for them to sit there with the prices on that if their prices are going higher they just don't have the balance sheet and the ability to deal with that so you got to be careful with the big companies that still have leverage this economy is still driven by small businesses so they will feel the effect no matter what and when we look at those suppliers can they eat the cost you know if you're like in vietnam or in china or whatever and you're manufacturing some of these goods if you get hit with a 54

tariff you probably can't eat that right no and that that's the issue is that companies generally don't have like the ability to sustain these types of shocks for very long and that's why if it the the longer it goes on, that's the deleveraging that happens in the system. Companies are levered just like individuals are levered. They may not have three months worth of cash to deal with something. So, if something goes up this dramatically, you're going to see pressure. There's a reason why small cap stocks in the US have been underperforming since the election. It has nothing to do, I think, overall with the administration's decisions. But this has been going on for a while. They're under pressure for two reasons. One is higher rates. These

companies depend on where rates are more. So small cap companies, they need rates to come down. But the second thing is they're being disrupted by AI as well. And so I've said for the last three years in my writings that there's kind of a stranglehold on inefficient businesses. But the problem is small businesses, by definition, they don't have the money to invest in technology. They usually can't survive without borrowing money to keep cash flow going. And with both of those being kind of a grip on things. This is the excess. You have to remember that in 2022, we took the Fed funds rate up from zero to five and a half percent. So a lot of businesses were expected to go out of business, but they've been able to borrow through private debt and other things like that. So

the leverage is there. You're going to see companies come under pressure. So not everyone can survive the week. They're driven out during recessions. And I don't think this is going to be a recession, but I think it's going to be very scary for people as long as these tariffs are up there. What is the end goal? Do you think that they want to leave the tariffs in place and there is kind of this drive for reshoring of manufacturing, creation of American jobs, etc.? Or do you think that the tariffs are the ultimate gamble and kind of the ultimate bluff? And hey, we announce all this stuff, people get all upset, they come to the negotiating table, and it's just like the greatest negotiating leverage that we've ever had. I think anyone that fades the tariffs

being here for the foreseeable future is making a huge mistake. I think the administration has put together the math very clearly. They've said it on every podcast they can speak on. They're going to increase revenues. They want to have tax cuts for people on $150,000. They want to do whatever they have to do to redistribute some of the money. People have to realize that The sectors that are hurt the most by tariffs are technology and consumer discretionary. And so, you're watching those sectors get destroyed. And the reason, because they've benefited a lot from where they've done trade all over. Apple is just a perfect example of a company that was able to take advantage.

So, I think this situation, people need to adapt to a regime shift that has happened. And we've talked somewhat about it here in scattered pieces, but I wrote a piece this week for 22V and it was on the embodiment of AI as, hey guys, do your homework now. This is the real thing for the next five years. Let's focus on it. AI will disrupt the Mag7. It's going to happen. And this is just adding to it because the tariff policy clearly is having an impact

on these companies. They've benefited a lot. NVIDIA is fitting in the same situation. they're kind of at they need china apple needs china um google stock has gone down their search thing is becoming a big kind of story and people are like maybe they're not going to have the search dominance they had well guess what that's because of ai i use google 10 of what i used to i'm i very seldom go on it except to find out what time a restaurant opens or close that's about it at this point um and then you have rates higher for longer the one thing that i do not think is

happening is i don't think we're getting inflation in the next two years with the tariffs down to some lower level. I think it's deflationary, but I think inflation is just higher for longer. We might get rates down, but remember, the administration also needs to sell long-term rates to restructure the debt because it's sitting in short-term rates. We still have a lot of pieces in here that say that this is a macro regime shift that is not good for technology, but it's good for some other sectors that are more domesticated and where auto companies will benefit from not having to compete with BMW and Toyota the way they did in the past unless they build their stuff here. I have been saying that the Federal Reserve is behind the

curve. You look at true inflation, over 3% inflation in December. Now we are down to 1.38%. So it's fallen more than 50%. The 10-year is coming down. It is very clear with GDP now and many of these metrics that there's contraction or slowing. That's kind of the point, I think, of what they're trying to do. It feels like they're trying to break the will of Jerome Powell and the Fed and make them cut rates. Do you think that we're at a point now where the Fed has to cut and kind of Besson and Trump have won that battle because they've been able to slow down the economy and crash these asset prices? And so Powell is kind of backed in a corner and here we go with the rate cuts. I think the rate cuts are coming. And I mean, we have 100 percent built in for June

now so nothing in the next meeting but in june for sure and i think it's going to happen because we're very likely to have negative gdp in q1 i would be shocked if we didn't have negative gdp in q2 as long as this tariff situation remains in place for the most part and when i say for the most part even if they're negotiating stocks will bottom before the fed starts cutting rates that's just what's going to happen as soon as there's appearances of hey the second half of the year is going to be better and that's what people watching this if the stock market gets ahead of where gdp is going to be where earnings are going to be it's a forward looking right markets are forward looking yeah they've already built in a recession the first half of the year

based on where we are what they're starting to build in is a recession not only for the year but where we lose hundreds of thousands of jobs. That's what happens when you get to down 10% year over year is you start getting into at least five, 600,000 job losses. We don't have that yet. And I don't think we're going to have that. So from my side, this is a great value point. 5,200 in the S&P 500 is a point where yes, it may go lower, but when it goes the other direction, they're going to be looking into an economy that will bounce back because the reason that we would have negative GDP in the first half of the year is these soft data surveys, which are just keeping people from conducting business right now. So remember what happened

in COVID, which was an induced situation. We came back sharply after that once people got comfortable, but they needed a lot of money for that. There's nothing going on that's like a pandemic. This is just a orchestrated rebalance of global trade. And if it's $250 billion of revenue, which is where I still think it's likely to come out. And that's what they can negotiate over the course of the next two months. Stocks will have bottomed way before. Bitcoin will have bottomed way before. And the Fed will cut rates because the economy will be slower. And that's why I think he'll get a little bit of what he wants as long as the stock market can bottom somewhere between 4,700 and 5,200. If we have two quarters of negative GDP growth, is that a recession?

because we had that previously and some made up organization that no one knows who works there, a nonprofit, they claimed the monopoly on being able to say whether it's a recession or not. We had a field day, obviously saying, didn't know that two quarters of negative GDP growth is not a recession. So they set a precedent now where if we get two quarters of negative GDP growth, should we just say, oh, it's not really a recession? so i this is i mean i i've talked about it as if you go back over history and let's assume let's say the last recession was 2009 there were two components which in my opinion need to happen there needs to be a lot of job losses where the unemployment rate goes up to at least seven percent

that's historically what would go on i think you had one recession where maybe it was a 102 where it didn't go up to seven but you need the job you need there to be millions of job losses it's really hard to have millions of job losses when we're hiring, as we did this morning, 52,000 people in the healthcare side. We have a shortage. We have a demographic. We have a labor shortage overall. So it's a completely different situation on that front. The second thing is the Fed can stop anything when it starts to really spiral. So we're talking about, will the Fed cut rates? There's other things they could do to kind of go through this. We're already starting to see pressure in the reverse repo market. That's suggesting to people

that there's stealth QE that's starting. There's a lot of things that can happen between now and we get to the point where there's a recession. But if you don't have job losses, nominal GDP needs to be below zero. I think there is a chance in these first half of the year that nominal GDP surprises at a very low level. But GDP now, the reason it's, forget the imports, let's say it's minus one percent a lot of that's happening because inflation has been higher in the first quarter and that's the thing that i don't think people realize a recession to mean nominal gdp has to go negative and that will drive earnings negative we are not at that point and we're not close to it right now bitcoin seems to be the shining light on the lighthouse in the sea

of the storm um it's down but it is not down nearly as much as one you would think it would be down and two in the same time period many stocks are down more than bitcoin has been down and to talk through a little bit as to why is bitcoin holding up so well and what does that tell us about both bitcoin and maybe the market so this is i think this has been a week that everyone will look back on bitcoin if it continues to hold in the way it is this week around the 80 to 84 000 level as a major turning point in terms of what's going on and i i think there's a couple um roads that people should think about because the narratives will shape on bitcoin this year for people on wall street that have never thought of it more than a it's a levered nasdaq i'd rather

have the mag 7. um the mag 7 are now down 20 year to date before the opening today bitcoin as of yesterday's close was down 13. so it's outperformed by seven i mentioned last week the prior two years it outperformed the mag 7 both of those years by more than 25 so you had a scenario that was already outperforming during the bull market well now it's outperforming in the bear market but this week has been a difference in the last two days so since the since the tariff announcement liberation day was done i think the first road that people are starting to travel down to a new narrative is that you can't put tariffs on Bitcoin. And Michael Saylor posted this on X yesterday,

and I don't think a lot of people saw it, but it's true. If people want to start exchanging trade in Bitcoin, which has been rumored to be happening or it's been talked about, well, now you're starting to get kind of this belief that maybe that's what it is. Second thing is when the market bounces and it comes out, the system has changed. That is what people are going to remember today. So in 2020, we had Bitcoin just explode higher on the back of a new system of MMT. That was the belief.

They've printed so much money, it's got to go higher. I think I'm a believer in the fact that Bitcoin and gold are outside the system. The globalized system that's been in place since post-World War II, if you didn't think it was over before, it's over. I think trade is now affected forever, and it forces people to do things more digitally, and it's going to force them to move more and more money into digital cross-border transactions. Stable coins will grow. This is part of the network effect. So I think the reason Bitcoin is outperforming is because the market is starting to see the narrative for it,

not during this really bad period, but I like to find assets that are doing well during bad periods because those are the ones that typically have some major structural story. And I think Bitcoin is starting to get a little bit of its shine back that gold had taken away from it, I think it'll rally hard. Gold's been going up. It keeps hitting new all-time highs. Why do you think gold's going up and Bitcoin's not? Well, I think until we got the tariff announcement, I think gold was doing what it should do based on the Mar-a-Lago Accord. So if part of your game plan was that eventually the US is going to walk in and say, okay, we need to restructure the debt. We're going to not, you're going to get rid of the coupon on our debt. We're going to extend

it out a hundred years, you want gold for that negotiation. I think Bitcoin now with the tariff side, this is different because you're not doing trade in gold. So the thing is, hey, I'll buy this from you and I'll ship you all this gold. You can't do that. So I think the difference is now the tariffs are a very important step for Bitcoin. And remember the other thing we've talked about, which I just think is the major thing over the next 12 months, it's the AI agents and transactions and everything are going to pick up dramatically in the digital economy because the old economy with all this friction in it, a tariff is another friction. Frictions end up being how long it takes for your bank check to clear. All these frictions are going to start to come

down. And so the digital economy coming out of this is going to be explosive globally. And I think everyone around the globe is going to be, I don't want to have to deal with this stuff ever again. Let's do our transactions on the digital platform. And that means using stablecoin, AI agents, and everything along those lines. When you say that Bitcoin is being used potentially for a trade, is it the thought process that, let's say, if you had gold, you put it on a ship, you move it over somewhere, there's tariffs, right? You would get hit with those tariffs.

Is it technically, if some supplier in Vietnam is doing something with somebody in the United States, there should be a tariff, they just can't enforce it? Or do you think that it is actually not subject to the tariffs, and that's why it's outside the system? there's a nuance between like is it actually under the rules but they can't enforce it and so it's kind of like a gray area or is it just like no one's even thought yet about tariffing you know the digital world and that's that's where this comes into play is i think it's just we don't have it's very easy to go okay what are the imports we have that we ship in what are the

numbers okay 3.2 trillion okay the biggest problem we had and the reason the markets initially responded as bad as they did. If it had been an announcement that said, okay, we're going to have tariffs of $400 billion, I think the market would have been like, all right, that's going to get negotiated down to 250. The problem was he brings out these boards and everyone looks at it and is like, this is like a high school presentation that we're doing. How did you come up with those numbers? And then X starts figuring out and decoding how it went on. I think that is archaic in terms of the system of goods, of imported goods is not as important as the service side of the economy. I mean, it doesn't get published a lot, but we got a lot of revenues around the

globe that the U.S. has that are in services. I don't know what will happen to those companies. And that's where we go. If we want to have like a serious deleveraging, I just think Bitcoin is it's outside of that whole system. We know the government in terms of the administration supports Bitcoin. So to your point, gold is very easy to track and it's a slow moving thing. If you wanted to pay for something in gold, how long would it take to get the physical gold from point A to point B? In Bitcoin or in any kind of digital transaction, it should take seconds and it should be over. And I just think that's what's going to happen is that the new rails for the new economy, which were already happening anyway, think of it as this is just speeding up people looking

at that vision. And it's going to happen sooner than when people thought. When I look at the market in general, I think one of the parts that strikes me is actually the younger people are super chill right now. It's the traditional stock investors that are like banging their head against the wall. They're in shambles. They're so upset. They think this is like D-Day, right? It's like literally my stock market portfolio

is getting obliterated. This guy in the White House, he's a horrible person. I can't believe this, whatever. But I go talk to these young people and they're like, the S&P 500 is up over the last year. NASDAQ is up over the last 12 months. What are you guys complaining about, right? How do you settle that?

Is that just like the young people are used to the volatility, they're used to crypto, they're used to kind of a different relationship with financial assets? And it's kind of the older generations, like they've never seen, you know, the volatility that the younger people have. And so a 10% drop is catastrophic to them and kind of it breaks their mental, you know, model. But it just is like if the stock market's up over the last year, what are you complaining about? Why are you crying? Yeah. So, one thing that has happened, and I think there's Wall Street, which is clearly just, they're insane right now. Remember, I've had an overnight portfolio until this year, every year from 1994 until 2024. So, I'd be awake at night looking. It's amazing when you're not in there. And I grew up in the emerging markets. I can always look at the mark and be like, oh, this is a great opportunity. We've the best things I've ever purchased in life, houses, property, stocks, anything

is during these panics. So that's good. My 401k that if you type that into Google Trends, there are a lot of people in the country that are retired that are looking at their 401k and being like, oh, my God. So it's not just Wall Street. It is some main street that has pension funds. but I agree with you 100% when it comes to young people. And I've talked to my son about it. And because my son is 19 and he's traded crypto, he's used to the ups and downs. But the other thing is

he's also grown up in social media. He's grown up without the same kind of brand loyalty that people do. They just tend to move around more and more and they're willing to give up something. They have an entrepreneurial mindset where something going down and losing money, they do view it somewhat as a badge of honor but they also realize that they figured out the game which is it always ends up going higher in the end and that's because they've made the connection for whatever reason maybe they haven't seen a bear market that's lasted for a long time yet but my son's seen the crypto bear market and it was pretty painful to go down and some of the stuff he gave back eighty thousand dollars that he made all of it you know seven hundred eighty

thousand back to seven hundred and now he's a two three thousand i don't really know uh i think younger people have more of a tolerance. They definitely have a different perspective. And I think that's one of the reasons why the gambling side of the economy just continues to grow up versus the investing side. The job layoffs that you mentioned, do we ever see those be significant? Do you expect kind of full-blown unemployment to jump to five, six percent type stuff? Nope. Again, I think we have a labor shortage. I think the fact that the immigration numbers have collapsed in terms of people coming into the country at a time when we have demographics where 10 000 people are retiring every single day uh let's put it you know the the federal job

numbers we've seen now back-to-back months of of layoffs uh in the job numbers so they're showing up i just don't think we have enough people to fill in the gaps i think the hours worked temporary hiring all of these things will continue to just soften the blow but the reality is if anyone loses a job and they want to go be an uber driver they can the gig economy has taken up such a big portion of real time like if you want to get it now you're not making a lot of money you may not be making as much as you were but job losses is different than the outcome we're in which i've talked about i just think the corporate ladder and the upward mobility is gone right now I don't think the tariffs is going to change that. So I think the job market is kind of in

a modern day version of a recession where it's really hard for people to just go out there and demand more wages. And what the tariffs will do is make it more difficult for that negotiation along with AI. So I don't think we're going to have job losses, but I also don't think we're going to see a big job boom again either. One of the questions I think people really have is like the facts are changing the details are changing so rapidly what's the mental framework i should use what's the thought process and how do i kind of uh navigate uncertainty chaos uh a rapidly changing environment you've been doing this a long time what is your process to think through this um and if you were mentoring someone how would you teach them how to think

through kind of a very uncertain environment well the first thing is at the very beginning i i said something that has helped me throughout life during these these points so i learned this in brazil i really spent a lot of time on connecting the the economy and the money supply back to assets and i've got bids underneath i don't care about the market could have fallen five percent while we're sitting here i mean there could be more retaliations trump could have said i'm gonna go double what i did on china anything could have happened while we sat here for 50 minutes. I've got bids underneath and the things that I want to buy. And they're more geared towards Bitcoin, micro strategy. They're the places that I think, A, they're doing well right

now. But I don't care about the news once we get to a level where I think recession is there. So I've, since 2009, if you only bought when people start talking about a recession and recession probabilities get up to 50%, you're always making money. You might lose it for a month. But you're making money as it goes on because we've made new all-time highs in Bitcoin. We've made new all-time highs in the S&P. And the only time when we haven't made them quickly is with significant job losses where nominal GDP stays lower. I'm telling people that's not going to happen. Here's what could happen. The tariffs could stay on. We could be fighting. There could be a recession that is brutal for the first half of the year. Guess what? That's what happened

during COVID, China and the U.S. would both stimulate their own economies by giving as much liquidity as necessary to prevent a recession. It's just what would happen if they can't come to an agreement on things. They can't let the stock market fall because that's not what is the best for all people. If the stock market falls, there's no jobs. So I think everyone just needs to remember that when you get this kind of a correction, it's historical. Second thing is if we actually do keep the tariffs up at these levels and things go on, eventually rates will go down. If the rates aren't making the stock market fall, then the Fed will come in and provide liquidity to people that need the liquidity. That's just what's happened since the great

financial crisis. And with debt to GDP at these levels, there's really no option other than that. So printing is going to come. That's why Bitcoin stands out always as we're, since the white paper came out, debt in the US was $9 trillion. It's now $36 trillion, and it's going to grow over the course of the next 10 years. It cannot go down because we have entitlements that are coming behind it. One of the predictions maybe that I have is that we'll see all-time highs in stocks and Bitcoin before the end of the year. Agree or disagree? I think with the speed that we've seen, I think we'll see all-time highs in Bitcoin before the end of the summertime because it's i'm it's just it's hanging in there so well uh

when we came in here this morning microstrategy pre-market was trading up six dollars that would make it unchanged for the year it's up sixty percent from six months ago while the mag seven are now down seven like there's something happening michael saylor has been called a lot of bad things by wall street and they all said oh i'd rather own earnings i'd rather own the mag seven the mag seven are showing that the system is global it needs to work we are never going back to the same system the stock argument of new all-time highs i said it on here that i think that i thought it will happen i still believe it will and one of the interesting stats i saw from charlie ballello was a great post did you see it yeah i know he just put that um this is now

one of the 30 worst whatever days 62 trading days into the year and he showed what happened the rest of the year the majority of them went up dramatically it's like reflexive right yeah if we go down fast we should go back fast and that's that's the way that i see this happening because i do believe that under the surface gdp statistic is wrong the feds are going to respond as they do to a wrong statistic and people are underestimating how much positive stuff is coming out of ai for the second half of the year and markets will be discounting not where the economy is at the time they will be discounting where it's going to be a year from now so if they can come to an agreement on the tariffs and the fed gets to lower rates then all of a sudden if you put

everything back into the position where we are it's like all right we knew there were tariffs we actually got rates to be lower and that's where i think we're going to be by the time we get to the end of the summer time is the narrative will be shifting i think a low in stocks will happen very very soon because of the panic i um i tend to agree with you where where can we send people to find your information your great content uh if they want to learn more some version of viscer labs for sure whether it's on x whether it's on substack whether it's on youtube uh the youtube stuff is really where i try to make sure i can give people a little bit of nuances on things it's excellent the analysis is excellent you got all the charts it's very easy to understand so i

highly suggest people go it's a storytelling thing with facts and news articles which i like to do and then i i did my first deep dive ai piece uh for 22v research which people can reach out to them on their website and they can find me everywhere including here with you all right thank you so much for doing this do it again next week thanks sam