The Pomp Podcast - #967 Dylan LeClair On Bitcoin’s Health After Last Weeks Crash

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

Dylan LeClair is the Senior Market Analyst at UTXO Management, a digital asset fund investing in the analog to digital transformation of money and the emergent financial system.    In this c...onversation, we discuss bitcoin, on-chain metrics, market structure, and what to expect going forward from this bear market. Dylan joins us every Tuesday on "The Best Business Show." To see the video with the corresponding charts that Dylan references throughout the interview, go to "The Best Business Show: LIVE" YouTube Channel ======================= Brave Wallet is the first secure crypto wallet built natively in a web3 crypto browser. No extension required. Store, manage, and grow your portfolio, get NFT & multi-chain support, and more.    Download the Brave privacy browser at brave.com/Pomp, and click the wallet icon to get started. ======================= The Pomp Podcast is powered by BetOnline.ag, the world's largest sports betting, casino, poker and horse racing website that accepts cryptocurrency for wagering.   BetOnline.ag gives you the ability to use Bitcoin and more than a dozen altcoins to make deposits and withdraw your winnings. There are no crypto transaction fees, and processing is instantaneous and secure.   Visit https://promotions.betonline.ag/pomp and use PROMO CODE: POMP100 to receive a 100% matching bonus on any crypto deposit.   BetOnline.ag is available in nearly every country around the world, making it the top global gaming destination for crypto users. =======================

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Starting point is 00:00:00 What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Dylan LeClaire is the Senior Market Analyst at UTXO Management. He also writes a newsletter with Bitcoin Magazine. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin, on-chain metrics, we talk about Bitcoin's price, the market structure, and what to expect in the coming weeks. I really enjoyed this conversation with Dylan, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by FTX US. FTX.US is the safe, regulated way to buy and sell Bitcoin and other digital assets. You can
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Starting point is 00:02:22 BetOnline accepts Bitcoin and more than a dozen altcoins to make deposits and withdraw your winnings. There are no crypto fees. Processing only takes minutes and transactions are 100% anonymous and secure. Head over to BetOnline.ag and sign up today to receive a 100% crypto bonus on your first deposit. Just use ARK promo code POMP100 to get started. discover why everyone is saying bet online is the fastest and easiest way to wager with crypto for sports casino games horse racing poker and more sign up today at betonline.ag and double your deposit with our exclusive podcast promo code pomp100 go check them out at betonline.ag anthony pompliano runs pomp investments all views of him and the guests on his podcast are surely
Starting point is 00:03:10 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. We've got Dylan. He's back from Europe. Dylan Leclerc, what's up, man? Pomp, it's been a while. Happy to be back. How are you? dude fantastic uh i almost made it the whole europe trip with just no volatility i was coasting
Starting point is 00:03:41 it was all good the last three four days i was there just the craziness happened i was i was in the middle of a prague airport with like pretty pretty beat wi-fi and uh while luna was collapsing and i'm i'm trying to kind of get my head around what's happening and make make trades and all that And it was craziness, but I'm happy to be back in the saddle. What was your general takeaway as you watched the Luna UST thing? Like, what was your general take in terms of watching it in real time? Yeah, so, I mean, I'm not going to lie. Like, I wasn't too familiar with the Luna mechanics before they added the Bitcoin reserves.
Starting point is 00:04:18 I thought it was an interesting experiment. You know, I called it, and people were attacking me for calling it somewhat of a Ponzinomic stablecoin. Like, I didn't know how it would end. And then I saw that peg drop, you know, from one to 98 cents. And it was just limit down on 98 cents on Binance with huge volume. And that was the point where I was saying, you know, I had a kind of a thread where I was just live tweeting my thoughts and what was happening at the time. And that's when I was like, oh, wow, there's there's some there's some problems. And then the peg broke and Luna was in collapse.
Starting point is 00:04:49 And at the point where, you know, the stablecoin UST had a larger market cap than Luna, in my mind, it was clear that a bank run was happening. And I joked about it going to zero. I didn't think it would legitimately go to zero right away. But, you know, a lot of smart people in the know, you know, capitalized and a lot of people, unfortunately, lost a lot. So it was a tough experience. But, you know, it was definitely definitely something that was quite memorable. All right. So when you start to think about that occurring, obviously, Bitcoin's price has dropped significantly. It was already down pretty seriously. But talk to me about the entire situation of they dumped 80,000 Bitcoin or so and Bitcoin still, you know, 26,000, 30,000. It's held pretty strong. Like, how do you feel about watching them do that and kind of the price action of Bitcoin from that? Yeah, I mean, really interesting. I think the second chart we have here today was showing just the spot volumes, right? So there's a couple kind of indicators or things that we look at, I mean, more than a couple. But in terms of Bitcoin bottoms, Bitcoin tops, we can see this sometimes in the on-chain data, but specifically when you're looking at like spot exchanges, and just how much volume is, or just how many coins are changing hands, right? Like if you look at my four arrows here, right, they're all pretty, pretty significant kind of moments are in the, in the, in the price action and the Bitcoin cycle, you know, doesn't mean it's necessarily a macro bottom or a macro top, but what we can tell here is lots of coins changed hands and it's pretty significant. So, you know, could Bitcoin go lower? Yeah, of course. And we're going to walk through some of the macro just developments that have happened. I've been talking about bonds and credit and legacy market volatility for, you know, for much of 2022. And that's obviously still kind of the driver here.
Starting point is 00:06:35 But just in terms of kind of a capitulation event, especially from a crypto native standpoint, you saw Bitcoin down big. But if you look at a lot of the kind of the altcoins, which, you know, I don't focus on too much, I don't own. But for much of the 2020, you know, 2021 bull run, the kind of the L1 smart contract chain trade was really big. Luna, Solana, Avalanche. And if you looked at what happened directly after the Luna crash, all of those kind of markets were down 35%, 40%. And, you know, as well as a lot of people who are seemingly risk-off and stable coins got completely wiped out. So there's somewhat of a crypto contagion event. And Bitcoin obviously took a hit.
Starting point is 00:07:16 But in terms of everything else, it was the crypto safe haven, which is, you know, somewhat crazy to think that despite it being down like 10%, 12%. All right. So let's start with Bitcoin's realized value. We've got a couple of charts that we're going to go through, but we've got realized price and kind of market value to realize price with a Z-score. What is this showing us? Yeah, so talked about this one a lot. You know, pull up the receipts if you'd like. Not saying I've called it because I've certainly been, you know, saying I've been in the market buying this entire time of dollar cost averaging. But just in terms of using on-chain as a framework and thinking about, you know, probabilistically where could this market go?
Starting point is 00:07:51 So I think back in November, back in December, when seemingly 25K was far too out of reach, far too low for Bitcoin to ever trade, this realized price was saying, hey, this, if you're thinking about a bottom, if you're thinking about a deep value buy, this is where it is. This realized price, it's the average cost basis of everybody on the network. This is historically during bear markets, the place where you see a lot of capitulation. you see you know these deep deep value buys and people are giving me a little bit of shit for uh for saying it's a generational bottom because how can a generational bottom happen you know three four five times in a decade but i guess if you want to think of it as a cycle bottom um dips below this realized price level are are you know where it's at and so we didn't dip below it technically i think coinbase hit 25.3 uh but that i think it's around 24k is a realized price and
Starting point is 00:08:41 we're just near that kind of cyclical uh bear market huge smash buy opportunity so i'm certainly a buyer here at 30k but just in terms of an on-chain framework 25k has kind of been my line in the sand for you know about six months now all right and then when you look at uh this next chart we have here we just have the btc usd price itself but you're pointing out a lot of volume uh changes there what what is this showing us yeah i mean uh just to kind of repeat myself a little bit earlier There's just a lot of coins changing hands, right? You saw a lot of weak hands finally capitulate, dump, certainly in stronger hands now. And that's kind of what you want to see at bottoms, right?
Starting point is 00:09:18 That's what you want to see. This wasn't really a derivative market liquidation, more so in terms of just a spot market dump, right? 80,000 coins. I think certainly there was some OTC deals happening. But a lot of these kind of the macro guys, the people that understand this long-term debt cycle, Really, at 25K, Bitcoin's down, you know, 60% from the highs. They're certainly interested, right? And they're going to happily scoop up some coins from the weak hands that are becoming
Starting point is 00:09:47 for sellers. All right. And then you've got the inverse VIX. What is this showing? Yeah, so let's dig into a little bit of the macro here, right? We've been talking about credit all year. We've been talking about bonds and the VIX, right? This is the S&P market volatility.
Starting point is 00:10:03 and it's basically it's implied through just kind of options positioning the technicalities aren't too important this is just quantifying legacy market volatility and if you look at the inverse chart of the bix and bitcoin or if you want to do inverse bitcoin in the vix uh it looks kind of like the same chart right so uh there's certainly a really high correlation of legacy markets the decoupling hasn't happened yet but in terms of what you want to see for a meaningful decoupling to eventually happen it's these kind of capitulation moments these force selling moments and, you know, really just coincidentally in mass, this is what leads to the eventual decoupling.
Starting point is 00:10:37 So while certainly it hasn't emerged yet, you know, these two charts are top of mind for me going forward. And then when you look at kind of more macro stuff, the high yield corporate credit spread is exploding upwards. It's not quite as high as it was, obviously, in the beginning of 2020,
Starting point is 00:10:53 but still the highest it's been since 2020. What is this telling you? Yeah, so what's a corporate credit spread, right? You have corporate bonds, right? So those have a coupon, those have a yield. A corporate credit spread is just what are those bonds, what's the yield on those bonds above the treasury, the 10-year treasury or whatever maturity on the treasury curve, right? And that treasury is a risk-free rate for the entire world.
Starting point is 00:11:17 And even though in real terms, the treasury market and even the corporate bond market is negative nominally, right? It's lower than the current inflation. This is a pretty high signal, right? Because when there's cracks in the credit market, this is what kind of this is why equity markets are trading how they are. So never mind the fact that that Treasury yields have risen significantly. We can see that corporate credit is deteriorating. And so, you know, this is for the Fed. Right. You know, obviously, that Fed put is maybe removed from the market for the time being. But the cracks are kind of showing underneath the surface.
Starting point is 00:11:49 And for corporations that have binged on buybacks and just kind of a historic debt binge over the last 10 years, 12 years or so, this is where the stress kind of emerges. And so this is something that everybody should be watching going forward. I'll certainly be covering it. Corporate credit spreads, if this explodes higher, it is no bueno for equities. Got it. And then when you start to look at things like the high-yield corporate credit spread, obviously we're talking about the same exact thing happening. but people really are pushing further and further out on the risk curve. They're trying to drive returns. And so high yield corporate credit becomes really attractive. Is your expectation
Starting point is 00:12:26 that this will only continue to get worse and worse as we see this market downturn occur and interest rates go up? Yeah. So some of the framework that I'm operating on is that the Fed's going to end this height cycle until something breaks. And I think really what they're trying to go for is demand destruction. But what we see here with this corporate credit spreads and the VIX, which we were talking about earlier, is while there's a little bit more kind of day-to-day volatility in the VIX, which is tracking equity markets. It's really, you know, credit is kind of the tail that wags the equity market, or that, you know, it's the dog that wags the tail, right? And so as we kind of expect, I kind of expect corporate credit spread to
Starting point is 00:13:03 continue to trade upwards until something breaks, until there's, you know, the liquidity risks are quickly turning into solvency risks. And for a while in early 2022, people were only paying attention to this. And now I think more and more people are aware that under the surface, things are fracturing. And I think quicker than most people expect, a lot of the mainstream economists, a lot of the Wall Street guys, I think the crack, the eventual credit market malfunctioning or e-liquidity spreading rapidly, I think that comes sooner than most expect and the Fed will have to pivot pretty hard. We're not there yet, but this is how these things develop. this is how it all goes down. And then lastly, from a chart standpoint, we've got the dollar
Starting point is 00:13:46 currency index, which is just exploding upwards, goes to kind of this idea of the milkshake theory or many others where the dollar is strengthening against weaker currencies. How are you viewing this in light of what's going on with Bitcoin, but also kind of the macro environment? Yeah. So, I mean, first off, got to give it a shout out to Brent Johnson. He's gotten a lot of flack for is his theory stuck by it and you know despite all the printing despite all this stimulus monetary fiscal in 2020 2021 the dollar is at a 20 you know two decade uh high so uh so against other fiats you know obviously not against real real goods and services but really this is important because the usd is the world reserve currency so we're setting monetary policy for
Starting point is 00:14:29 our own domestic political interests right the fed is obviously uh having to act because of political pressure, but it has a huge impact on all the other kind of governments and corporations around the world that are operating on a dollar standard that have dollar denominated liabilities. And so when the dollar screams higher, all these other currencies, all these other foreign economies, they get squeezed pretty hard. And I think that's what's happening. That's kind of the milkshake theory is that, you know, all these other currencies are collapsing against the dollar, which, you know, even if the dollar is collapsing against, you know, real goods and services, this is how risk assets basically are being forced to sell off. This is what a global
Starting point is 00:15:08 margin call looks like. We're not there yet, but there's a reason that equity markets are 20%, 30% off the high. So there's a reason why bonds are getting killed. And it's because we're kind of in this crazy environment of historic CPI inflation at the same time where the dollar is screaming higher. And so obviously this has a pretty big impact on the Bitcoin price. Any market that is denominated in USD is certainly is certainly kind of on the hook for that margin call, as the dollar appreciates, and everybody has dollar denominated liabilities, right? And the Fed is the only one that can print them. So this is kind of the dynamic going forward. And I think this is, you know, probably the story of 2022. When you start to think about kind of this
Starting point is 00:15:46 macro environment, and obviously, we're getting the interest rate increases, do you think we can get to the end of the year where they keep raising interest rates? Or do you think they'll have to stop or potentially even cut before the end of the year? How are you viewing the macro environment in which Bitcoin will exist? Yeah, so I think what they're really going for is a destruction of demand. Obviously, the treasury market, I mean, the treasury market really did the Fed's bidding for them, or not bidding, but rather selling off in the sense that you saw the Fed's fund rate still at zero or 50 bps, while the treasury market screamed higher at the 10 years around 300 basis points, 3%. So the treasury market, the bond market already really did most
Starting point is 00:16:25 of the Fed's work for them. And I think what the Fed's really doing is kind of getting back a little bit of that ammo that they use for the last decade and really post 2020 when they did unlimited QE and all of the rate hikes or the rate cuts down to zero. They're getting a little bit of that ammunition back for when the next time that they need to spur demand. Because I mean, let's be real, we're still in the same spot where over 100% federal debt to GDP, global debt to GDP, the estimate is around 400%. We're still in a debt trap. Nothing has fundamentally changed from that perspective. And to keep this credit system glued together, there will need to be more monetary stimulus. That is the end game. It's more credit expansion in the face of credit
Starting point is 00:17:09 contraction, what we're seeing today. The end game hasn't changed at all, which is why I'm still you know, ridiculously bullish on Bitcoin, despite the price action, despite all these macro variables. That's why I buy Bitcoin every single day, because, you know, we're in this end game and the end game is still binary. It's either deflationary collapse and total collapse, utter collapse, or more credit expansion, more monetary stimulus, more currency debasement. That's the end game. It's pretty clear. But we're going to have these kind of massive fits of volatility and contractions and expansions, you know, while it all plays out. Behind you, you have two books, The Big Debt Crisis and The Changing World Order, both from Ray Dalio.
Starting point is 00:17:46 And one of the things he talks about is there's these cycles and it feels like we definitely are moving or transitioning between cycles at the moment. Is your expectation that Bitcoin will continue to kind of be durable and succeed regardless of the macro environment and kind of which cycle we're transitioning between? Or do you think that Bitcoin now is much more susceptible to those macro forces and people should spend time not only learning about Bitcoin, Lightning Network and some of the more technical aspects, but also understanding kind of the macro environment in which we're playing in? Yeah. So, I mean, I would say I'm definitely a student of history. I love Ray Dalio's work. In particular, his work on the long-term debt cycle has really shaped my thinking and kind of helped me build a framework around this. So, I mean, I focus on the Bitcoin native kind of cycle, bull bear cycle. There's obviously the monetization phase, and that's why I love looking at the on-chain analytics. But in particular, with my focus on macro, it's really about kind of understanding the, you know, the interplay between these short cycles, which are, you know, a few years, maybe five years, you know, these credit cycles, but really this long-term debt cycle, right? That happens once every 80 years, 100 years, and most people never really live through one. Dalio said it himself. And so people don't really understand how to navigate these cycles. And it's really where, you know, in currency terms and nominal currency terms, you have debt holders and holders of cash that lose out, right? They're programmed, almost politically programmed to lose their purchasing power over time.
Starting point is 00:19:17 And so how do you insulate yourself from that? And some people will say, you know, in traditionally, in historic terms, it's to own gold, right? It's own something that you can hold. That's not, you know, that's not someone else's liability that has a production cost. That's scarce. And so kind of applying that framework to Bitcoin to current day, I believe that ultimately a monetary asset that is absolutely scarce with inelastic supply relative to demand with a production cost that's pretty much programmed to increase forever is something that you want to own, regardless of if it's down 50% from all time highs or is going parabolic. like, I'm a buyer and I want to buy more and I want to hold this thing, something that's liquid in every jurisdiction in the world. And so I think that that's still very misunderstood. And all the pundits and skeptics are out because it's off 50% from the highs. But in Bitcoin terms, this is nothing but a thing. We've seen it happen, you know, eight times throughout its history. It's really nothing new. I haven't been around for all eight of those times or whatever it is. But you want to be a buyer of this thing because ultimately the end game is pretty clear. And if you study
Starting point is 00:20:17 history, I think, you know, you'll come to the same conclusion. When you think about Bitcoin, obviously, all these asset prices are down in dollar terms right now. And I think that's what everyone's kind of paying attention to and freaking out. But over the last decade or so, most assets have been down significantly in Bitcoin denominated terms. How do you think about that difference? And are more and more people going to start to denominate assets in Bitcoin in terms of performance and kind of their evaluation? Or do you think we're still a ways away from that? Yeah. I mean, it's obviously a little bit challenging to conduct economic calculation in something that's so volatile. But if you have a longer time horizon than a couple
Starting point is 00:20:53 of weeks, a couple of months, right? Even if you just look back to the start of 2020, right? Bitcoin almost kind of front ran all of this inflation and the monetary stimulus that we saw, right? Bitcoin is trading at $8,000 at the beginning of 2020, right? So it's at 30,000 and everyone's calling it dead. It's somewhat ironic, but I think if you have a long time horizon and can afford to withstand some of this volatility. You don't have to become a for-seller of this thing if you simply hold it in spot or cold storage. Then conducting economic calculation in this and using it as a kind of a barometer for your savings or investing as a hurdle rate is something that's pretty optimal to do. And obviously, saying that down 50%,
Starting point is 00:21:35 you'll get a lot of hate. But ultimately, anyone that has operated on this framework for, say, four years has done historically extremely well. And I believe that to be true in the future. When you think about kind of the market moving forward, are you doing anything differently in your portfolio? Or are you kind of considering other things to do than just simply stack sats? Yeah. I mean, I've stacked a good amount this past couple weeks. I've had limit orders that were filled that I felt like kind of dumb holding for a long time, sitting in cash, waiting for them to be filled. Wasn't sure if they were. It was kind of my hedge around that, you know, 30k level, 25k level. Eventually, I think I will, you know, use Bitcoin as collateral,
Starting point is 00:22:19 not the whole, not my whole stack, but optimally, you know, to go short dollar and invest in other investable assets, maybe Bitcoin itself. Certainly, you've seen, you know, big players like Michael Saylor do that. On a retail level, you can do the same, but, you know, risk management is key. You never, ever want to become a for-seller. So, you know, it's obviously there's so many variables with using leverage, but ultimately I'm kind of waiting for, I think, more volatility in the legacy system to play out and an eventual Fed pivot, which, you know, could happen 18 months from now. It could happen six months from now. No one really knows. But my kind of thinking leads me to believe that it will come. And so I think at that point,
Starting point is 00:22:56 I will, you know, use a little bit of leverage and I guess go out on the risk curve, if you will. Got it. And then when you start to think about Bitcoin as part of this narrative, one of the things that's fascinating to me is there's lots and lots of people saying Bitcoin, it didn't serve as an inflation hedge. Inflation is 8.3, 8.5 percent. And, you know, it's a 40 year high and Bitcoin's down. My thought process has always been like, no, Bitcoin went up, you know, 400 percent, 500 percent before the inflation got here because people were moving their capital in anticipation of the inflation. But how do you view it? Is my view directionally kind of in line with yours? Or do you have some other way to kind of think about Bitcoin as an inflation hedge at the same time that the price is down? Yeah, I mean, you nailed it, right? Everyone said that, you know, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, when it went to, you know, 3800 in March of 2020, people said it failed. And then it went up and went up to 60,000. And, you know, when an order of magnitude higher, and people called it a bubble, and now it's down to 30k, you know, 400% above where it was, and people said it's failed, right?
Starting point is 00:23:55 So the narrative continues to change. Bitcoin continues. Next block is mine. It continues to operate exactly as designed. And anybody that's just allocated to this asset over a few years and over an investable period, if you're holding this for less than a year or two years, you're more of a trader or speculator. Right. And so everybody wants to buy blood until it comes. And, you know, we're buying blood here and I'm perfectly happy to do it. So, yeah, nothing has changed from that perspective. And I agree with you and your framework of thinking about it that way. The last question I have for you is around this idea of the number of Bitcoin wallet addresses with 0.01 Bitcoin just crossed over 10 million for the first time. And that's about $300 worth of Bitcoin. How do you think about that metric? Is that an important metric? Is that something that we just should expect to continuously go up as more people come into the market? And so like, maybe it doesn't have as much signal as, uh, as we should think, or just walk me through kind of your thought process with a metric like that, that just seems to only be on a one-way trip up into the right. Yeah, I think it's, it's certainly very interesting. Um, there's obviously a ton of, sorry, sorry about that.
Starting point is 00:25:04 Um, yeah, I mean, certainly there's, there's some signal there, right? The network continues to be adopted. Uh, you know, more people are using this, more people are being onboarded, but at the same time, uh, there's a little bit of kind of, uh, you know, like I can have multiple UTXOs, right? I don't need to put it into one address. So there's certainly maybe some, not error in that thinking, but I think also, if you're thinking about kind of entrance over the last few years, most people, or not most people, but certainly a lot of adopters are just kind of, you know, using a centralized exchange, right? Maybe they're being onboarded directly to
Starting point is 00:25:38 Lightning, where that's not showing up. And that's, you know, multiple people are holding and kind of a centralized claim on Bitcoin. And certainly, you know, maybe that's not optimal for that kind of self-sovereignty, but people are free to kind of adopt this asset as they choose. And so I think it's a pretty cool stat, but it's not certainly reflective of, you know, say, hey, there's 10 million people that have $300 of Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:26:01 You know, that stat is kind of up for interpretation, but it's certainly pretty cool to see. Yeah. The other thing that I always look at is like how many people actually hold Bitcoin and estimations I've seen range from, you know, a hundred million to 300 million, I think it's probably the largest estimation that I've seen. Uh, and my take is always like, it's probably somewhere in between, right? Like, I don't know, 150, you know, maybe on the lower end of those estimations, but even if it was only a hundred
Starting point is 00:26:26 million or even 50 million, like to do that in, you know, 14 years or so is, uh, is absolutely incredible. Uh, and to then see the fact that, uh, you know, these individuals, uh, um, at least in a generalized way who have gone ahead and accumulated 0.01 Bitcoin, say that's worth $300. If all of a sudden, uh, you continue to have this kind of play out as I think you and I believe it will, uh, that starts to become like pretty material over time. Um, and then your expectation would be that those wallet addresses will continue to stack sats as well. Uh, and so that 0.01 will become obviously more than that, uh, over time.
Starting point is 00:26:58 Uh, and so anytime that Bitcoin's price is down, people are able to accumulate more sats, uh, you know, on sale, right. Or, or kind of at a cheaper price than they were able to a couple months ago. And you gotta be careful because, uh, if it's an asset that's going to go to zero, then obviously you don't want to be buying it, right? If you look at some of the other assets that have gone down 99% or whatever. But if it's an asset that's a great asset, it kind of follows all the timeless investing principles. You get Warren Buffett saying, listen, we love to buy great assets and hold them forever. And then what does he do? He sits on cash, sits on cash,
Starting point is 00:27:27 wastes a little blood in the streets, and he starts deploying, which he's doing right now in the stock market. And so I think that Bitcoiners in some way, even though maybe Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and that whole crowd isn't the biggest fan of Bitcoin, Bitcoin embodies a lot of the kind of timeless investing principles that, uh, you know, those folks follow. Right. Yeah. And it's also should be said, you know, there, there can't be a hundred million people or, you know, globally that they can't own Apple stock, right. Someone in Africa can't buy Amazon. They, you know, they, you can't, you know, if you're living in a developing nation, you don't want to be carrying around a bar of gold, but you can have a $50 smartphone and hold
Starting point is 00:28:01 some Bitcoin and memorize it in your head and walk across the border. Right. So, so from the Western point of view, everyone's like, well, you know, why would I own Bitcoin when I can just hold index funds or, you know, it's, and it's kind of a very, you know, check your financial privilege, shout out to Alex Gladstein. You know, there's, there's kind of this Western privilege point of view of, you know, why would I, why would I want self custody? Right. But there's, you know, billions of people don't have property rights. They're living in, they're living in hyperinflation. So to say, you know, why would you need Bitcoin or, you know, what's the point of self custody is a pretty ignorant kind of point of view to come from. And so in that, in that
Starting point is 00:28:35 perspective, Bitcoin is pretty empowering. Yeah. It's, uh, it's awesome to kind of think through some of this stuff. Um, I appreciate you, uh, you joining us. I'm glad that you enjoyed your trip to, uh, to Europe. Uh, I saw many of the photos. Uh, it seemed like it was a, a great time, but, uh, uh, you came back and joined us right at the perfect moment where, uh, we, we need your help. So I, uh, I'm glad to have you back. Where can we send people to find you on the internet or, or sign up for any of the work that you're publishing? Yeah. Uh, you know, as always, you can just find me on Twitter. I spend a lot of time there interacting with people, publish more of the kind of advanced research with Bitcoin Magazine Pro. It's our free and
Starting point is 00:29:10 paid newsletter sponsored by BitMEX, new sponsor. We just kind of publish stuff four or five times a week. We put out really in-depth stuff that covers more of the kind of the granular data that you wouldn't really see surface level content. So you can find me there. Awesome, man. Well, listen, I appreciate you taking the time to join us. I know people We're very excited when we told them that you were coming back and we'll talk next Tuesday. Appreciate it, Bob.
Starting point is 00:29:36 All right, later, buddy. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered.
Starting point is 00:29:51 Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.

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