The Wolf Of All Streets - $125,000 Bitcoin & $4,000 Gold! The Beginning Of The Great Debasement?

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Bitcoin’s record-breaking rally is shaking up global markets and Wall Street is finally taking notice. As BTC hits $125,000, major institutions like JPMorgan call it undervalued, while data shows exchange balances at a six-year low, signaling long-term accumulation and tightening supply. Meanwhile, gold’s surge and fears of currency debasement are driving investors toward hard assets, and even traditional finance leaders agree that tokenization will reshape global markets.

Bitcoin hit $125,000. Gold's about to hit $4,000, and silver is about to make a new all-time high around $50. Is this the beginning of the great debasement trade? And how are we supposed to know what markets are even reacting to when we're not getting any data with the government shutdown? There's a ton to unpack today for Mac or Monday with James, Dave, Mike, and myself. Let's go. Good morning, everybody, and happy Macro Monday. We all know it's my favorite hour of the week. I can't speak for these three gentlemen, but I think they enjoy it. I think so.

I have a hunch. Super fun. So much. So much to talk about. but none of it is data because the government is officially shut down, which we discussed was likely to happen last Monday. We should have had some data last week and didn't get it, but none of that is stopping Bitcoin, silver, and gold from absolutely flying.

Mike, you want to unpack that for us? Yeah, Anna, you nailed it right away. It's all about the shutdown. Anna Wong, which we saw, no less was getting somewhat economically bullish. The last few weeks has flipped. She said, I flip. Number one, because of this shutdown. Fed's going to cut rates in October and December,

and that's been a consensus with Ira Jersey and what's on the, you know, the expectations that they're going to cut 25 the next two meetings. Number one raises the shutdown. Both sides are digging in positions. Uncertainty rising, she mentioned in the negative print from ADP, and this justifies an insurance cut, which is what the Fed's supposed to do. Be there when things, you know, you need insurance. GDP losses due to some of the, due to the,

the shutdown might be permanent. She's pointed out some of the housing, the vendors to the government, less income for federal government workers and things like that. Even I have a son who's a military officer. He might not even get paid. So that's kind of dicey. So we're switching over to our chief interest rate straightened and just Ira Jersey. He said, yeah, markets all set up for another 50-based point-based coins cuts this year

at the next two meetings. Terminal rate has shifted to 3% a year from that. We pointed to that a little while ago. Tens and 30-year auctions this week. He's still looking for that bullish steep and everything. It's just a matter of time that two-year yields drop to that 3%. Right now, they're 359. Michael Casper, our equity strategists, pointed out, S&P5 earnings, remain strong.

But unemployment training in wrong direction is not a good thing. Small caps are remaining much better value than large caps, kind of their market pulse index, and the large caps have as approaching manic. Audrey Child Freeman, our FX strategy, pointed out the weaker yen, with Takashi getting elected, first female in Japan. I find that someone shocking. I've been working for the Japanese for many years, many years ago. I'm impressed with that. But she's certainly associated with expansionary monetary policy.

So seeing that little weak yen today. So not much different from her. And me, my point was I put on my risk management hat. I pointed out I got my FRM in 2006, which has been a long time ago. I've never really used it. But as a risk manager, I just pointed out, gold is just so expensive here. If you've been lucky enough to be long gold through this run-up, $4,000 an ounce is supposed to be time that is taking off some of that risk, particularly as we get towards the end of the year.

You've got a lot of profits. And I pointed out, the key thing I wanted to, I know Dave pushes back on a lot, and I've seen this a lot, is I want to point out, if you just take what have you done for me lately versus gold, You take Bitcoin versus gold. What have you done for me lately, Bitcoin? You have to go back to 2021. It's the flat line. I pointed out during that period,

Bitcoin has traded about three times of volatility, yet same performance. And then I also pointed versus the S&P 500, total return versus gold, since 1997. It's a flat line, yet S&P 500 particularly trades a higher volatility. You don't see that from all those people pushing stocks, and this one pointed out. Part of that's how expensive gold's getting. Part of that means there's the paradigm shift kicking in. And the things I see also from stock market volatility getting hammer, crude oil just staying below that last year's low, that I am remained very, very concerned as we had towards the end of the year. We might just get a pickup in volatility.

I mentioned the one key thing that can bring us our wonderful government to end the shutdown is the stock market going down and tying them to like they did with tarp. Right now we have the stock market looking to gap up on the open. Maybe we'll probably make another new all-time high today. as we said, look at that cold chart, all-time high, silver, sniffing an all-time high. Bitcoin this weekend, of course. It made an all-time high, right? We've got that right there. And it looks like it's climbing back at about 125,750, and interestingly, at the same time, yields are climbing. Last time I checked, the Fed cut, and yields are actually up from when that cut happened, which was down here. Interesting environment. I mean, James, what do you make of the fact that we're flying blind here with no economic data? So first of all, yeah, I mean, people are expecting the investors are expecting the Fed to cut again because, you know, there's no new information. The ADP is it's kind of a problematic number for the Fed. They don't really have control of, you know, they don't see through that as much they do the typical DLS data. So I think it's just status quo and status quo is concerned about jobs, which means that they're going to cut 25.

basis points. They may have held off until December if they had had different information, but we're not getting any data until the government. Something you said, Mike, I do have a brother-in-law who's Terry also, and they're not made, but they're going to get their back. I could get caught back up once the government reopens, at least on that side. Although Trump is taking advantage of the peers of the opportunity to just get rid of a bunch of fat. And so he will cut some of that. Honestly, I don't know how really additive that is GDP anyways. So I'm not really concerned about that.

The debasement trade is interesting. And what's really interesting about it is I just shared the screen, Scott, is that, you know, J.P. Morgan's piece about the debasement trade. And we've been talking about it years. So this is nothing new. This is nothing that is groundbreaking. what's groundbreaking about it is that the large the the the the probably the strongest bank in the world is now being forced to recognize it and they're they're they're actually having to uh

they're they're having to advise their clients on this and include bitcoin in the conversation so that is what's so important about the debasement trade that you're hearing about that j p morgan identified recently. And so what's what's incredible about that is now you have Bloomberg actually reporting on it. Unfortunately, you know, you still have, you know, Richard Henderson, maybe you can have a mic, maybe you can have a talk with them, but he's still just grouping Bitcoin in with crypto, so the crypto rally, you know, but throughout the, throughout the article and the only, obviously, the only crypto that is charted is Bitcoin because that's the only one that can't be debased. And that's the key for people who end up reading these articles.

And so, but what's really interesting about this is that Bitcoin has a long way to go to catch up to this gold silver rally. And Mike, you've been right about this, that, you know, gold is taken off. And I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised that gold took off first. I wrote about this a few weeks ago that gold, is the leading indicator for risk around the world when you have a risk off trade. People are going to either gold or treasuries.

But they're going to gold because, Scott, you just pointed out the treasuries are going up. The treasury yields are going up as we get a drop in rates. Why is that? The Fed cuts rates, you have yields going up on the long end of the curve. Why? Because people are worried about inflation, which means that that makes sense that yields are going up, gold is going up stocks are going up bitcoin's going up and ultimately it's hard to tell what's going with the housing market but that that might just go up too because when you're cutting rates it loosens

up the supply and suddenly you've got the demand there and there's there's capital looking for pockets to hide in while the government continues to just relentlessly debase the currency that all the the treasuries are are based in. So that's a really big deal. I'm going to tee you up, Dave, for the rest of the conversation there. Yeah, I mean, just really quickly, Dave. So just to summarize, we keep asking the question, how can all these things go up? It makes no sense. And the answer is that the most powerful thing in the market is the debasement of the denominator, aka the dollar, and therefore everything can still continue to go up. And by the way, that's what that's what investors are most worried about. Yes. They're most worried about it. They'll buy anything. They'll buy anything

to be outside the dollar, two banks. First of all, on CNBC yesterday, there was an entire section on gold versus Bitcoin and Bitcoin catching up to gold, showing literally the charts of how gold goes up, but that Bitcoin goes up. So this has now reached escape velocity beyond our echo chamber. And then Dave, also, this is just really interesting and goes to what you were just talking about, guys. More cash is pouring into safety than risk, which I didn't realize. In the past 12 months, investors funneled $854 billion into money market. market funds over three X more than equities, which saw just $269 billion inflows. Bonds drew $548 billion sitting between the two.

This tells a clear story. Investors are parking record amounts in cash chasing yield and safety rather than market upside. And as I checked, Bitcoin is also up in this. Also afraid to come down, you've got to imagine that capital unlocks. But Dave, go ahead, run. Well, yeah, I think there's two meta points here. Meta point number one, and Mike kind of glossed over it quickly, a very, very, very

very important event happened this weekend. It's not that she's a woman. Yes, that's the Claren won the Constructors. I hate to say it, and you're going to get some hate mail for this, Mike, but that may be the ultimate, and I understand where you're coming from, because Japan is a much more misogynist society than us, but the fact that she's a woman is not relevant. What is relevant is she is a nationalist and a we need to spend, spend, spend, and debt is not a problem. That is a big fee change for the ruling party to actually be dragged

into the same direction as the opposition toward eliminating and to pay it with a debt of GDP of debt to GDP of over 200 percent. That's saying something. So the amount of liquidity that could come out of the Japanese, come from the Japanese market into the world could be extraordinary. And I also read this morning that at the same time that that's happening at the government level, Japanese private credit creation is hitting all-time highs or at least near-term highs. So all of that matters from a liquidity point of view. So when you use the word the debasement trade, the currency being debased, no, it's all currencies. And that matters, right? You know, Japan is one of the larger economies in the world, the stock market based on that election over

the weekend, which was a intra-party election, but will likely matter. was up almost 5% today. When's the last time we had an S&P rally of 5% in a day? When's the last time, we had a Bitcoin rally of 5% in a day? So when you start looking at a national stock market, that is almost, and by the way, the yen did not devalue 5%. So this was not a pure, you know, just currency revaluation trade. This is a big deal in terms of a wall of liquidity coming in.

And I will make the argument that this weekend, as confirmed by what we're now seeing in the market, Now, it depends. We'll look, by the end of this show, we'll know. But if we hold these levels right here, then the jump up in the weekend, I will maintain was a sloppy trade by some large institutional investors who didn't use software like coin routes to implement their trade. And they just pushed the market up too fast when they saw what happened in Japan.

But it's a harbinger because a lot of institutional investors are going to say, wait a minute, this is a very important change. And so that's what's going on. And I want to go back to gold for a second because I actually think that, yeah, on a trading basis, short term, maybe gold will have this difficulty getting through the 4,000 level. But 8% plus global debasement of fiat means gold is going nowhere, but up. And it's probably still undervalued relative to financial assets. And as gold goes up, the ceiling for Bitcoin goes up. So, yes, it's been flat.

And so it's really, it really becomes, you know, interesting. I mean, Robert, you know, Infra on spaces over the weekend and I were having this conversation. And what you look at in terms of the SMP versus gold, I basically say this is why a stock market sell-up is not all that likely. Because really, most of the S&P trade, most of the risk asset trade has been the denominator changing, not the numerator. And so and corporate consolidation into tech, but yeah. Well, yeah, well, because people buy what they understand. and they buy where earnings are being helped. And we're in the middle of, on the stock side, we're in the middle of, you know, the new

industrial revolution with AI, is that going to be, is that going to drive stupidity with people's narratives saying this is going to benefit? Sure, it will drive some stupidity. Is it going to massively improve corporate profits? Probably. It's already doing it. Corporate profits are at an all-time high relative to GDP. So corporations are doing it.

great. Individuals aren't. And a large part of what's driving these populist revolutions is to try to get a handle on that. And that's going to be an interesting trade. But I think it's really important from a macro point of view to look at this. Being short assets that could outperform the basing currencies is going to be the mantra that's going to take hold. And in that mantra, you ride that trade. You don't get off it. You don't know whatever. And that money market, wall of money, which at best, at best could potentially slow the law. Most of the yields don't come close to the amount of debasement. At best, it's a band-aid on something that needs a tourniquet.

So, you know, I think that people are going to start seeing that. I think they will see that as we get into the new fiscal year, depending on whether the new fiscal year is in the fourth quarter, depending on, you know, a lot of funds close their books at the end of October, right? You know, that's just true. more probably close at the end of December. But watch those trades and watch these things evolve. Now, as far as, you know, the crypto-Bitcoin stuff, you know, look, we could go down this road again.

It's not worth it. It's not worth it. The truth is Bitcoin is still a young asset. It is still something that is maturing at a rapid rate. But I will point out and close with Bitcoin volatility. The last time Bitcoin volatility got to as low as it did, as on the third, 30-day, as it did last month, was August of 23. It is since then doing the course that you would expect if you're on the bullish side. Remember, everything you say about volatility, Mike,

is true about stocks, but the one thing, and Jeff Park confirmed this for me, so that's important. He's one of the smarter people out there. Bitcoin is actually positively correlated to volatility, which the S&P is completely, is almost perfectly negatively correlated. to volatility. So understand that when Bitcoin volatility rises, it is more often because Bitcoin is having a sharp rally as opposed to a sharp fall. At a bare minimum, it certainly isn't a signal because we both know that if the VIX hit 50 and you ask me, where is the S&P? I would say 20% lower. I don't know. You tell me. If you tell me that Bitcoin's volatility goes from 1% to 2%, I would say, where's bitcoin probably 140 something like that if volatility doubled you would expect it and that

matters that's just that is just the math it could be both ways but it is more biased toward the upside so the market is a court has been coiling for a while and if you go back to and watch a macro monday from july i said at the time that if bitcoin stays in this range and holds the 122 to 112 range and we're a little above it now have we really you know we'll see today we'll see whether we're breaking out i said if it holds that range for another three or four months and the fourth quarter could be explosive well it did and it still could be it's not confirmed yet but understand that's what we could be looking at because the one thing we know is there is no fomo like even last night right we had all this action over the weekend there was if you look at at first

well, the funding rates on the perpetual swaps are below normal. So the speculators are not confirming this move. This is coming from potential spot, and we'll see where that's coming from. And if you look at the liquidations over the weekend, it's actually fascinating, right? So over the weekend, you saw, I mean, it was a slight uptick, but nothing. It almost is a blip on the chart in shorts being liquidated vis-a-vis longs. But if you look over the last 24 hours, And we know the last 24 hours has been relatively bullish. Over the last 24 hours, there's been more longs liquidated than shorts, even in Bickland. Which tells you- That's because people bought the all-time high breakout and then it dropped.

Right. But it's telling you that we're back up almost, you know, to almost where that was. You got to liquidate them before you go right back. But you're talking about the perps, the liquidating the perks. I'm telling you the speculators, if anything, there's almost no action. there's nothing going on there. So this is not a FOMO-E kind of rally. There's no euphoria.

This is the opposite of what we saw when Bitcoin blew up to both 60 and then down again and then 69 back, you know, a couple of years ago. The point in the line that Mike always uses to start his charts, remember those, you know, that one. It's totally different than it was back then. And that's important because, you know, if this was a FOMO move, if liquidations were skyrocketing and funding rates were skyrocketing, I wouldn't be saying the stuff that I'm saying, but I do think it does matter. This is a sort of thing that tells you that volatility could, there's, there's, there's Tinder for volatility to go up much higher. And that is something that

we need to understand and look at. And so Japan to me is a very big deal. And I think that the institutions who did buy or whoever bought on the weekend, while they did it stupidly, We'll probably make money. I think that that there, that was more of a starter's pistol going off than it is a, you know, it is a, you know, kind of a shadow or a stupidity. It was the opposite of the sorts of things when you saw some of these liquidations that we've seen. Dumb yes, but directionally accurate. And we're trading above the previous all time high, which was 1.24, 533. Well, we'll see.

We always get a difference. But I was going to say to what you always say, Dave. This is now the top of the range at resistance, give or take, $500 here and there. So, yeah, I hate, I hate really short-term trading predictions on shows like this. First of all, because a lot of people watch it on tape, you know, whatever, et cetera. It's just a bad idea. Yeah, we're wrong in four hours. But it is important to understand market structure and market dynamics.

And the supply demand is what's going to fuel Bitcoin, you know, and it's also important. to look at at all the others. Generally, generally, when we've seen crypto rallies to use the term, generally what you see is Bitcoin is leads and everything else has significantly more volatility to the upside. And Bitcoin and Ether both almost identical in terms of their 24-hour performance. Solana is almost identical to both of them within punchers. No multiples, no beta. Those things usually trade with beta, right?

and there's that. Of course, XRP is breaking its beta, but that's okay because the narrative and XRP blows basically compared to the narrative and others, and we could talk about why. But there's a lot going on here. And I think that this is a far more fundamental climbing a wall of worry sort of market than it is anything else. Fair. Let me make a point really quickly, Dave, because there are things that you will like, because you always talk about how do we value an all coin, and we have no earnings, it's very hard to determine what they are.

There is a sector that is wildly outperforming Bitcoin. This is B&B, exchange tokens, of course, but BNB has outperformed Bitcoin on a, I think, a weekly, monthly, yearly, five-yearly, basically on every single time frame. But I have to have to take a look. OK, X-coin pulled the same thing. the last like a couple weeks I hadn't even paid attention but these are the few tokens out there whether you like them or not that have an actual utility that you can look at exactly how much is being burned you can get a reduction on your trading fees those kind of things makes a lot

more sense in other tokens and maybe the market in some side of crypto is actually revaluing things that they can understand the metrics on for the first time in a very long I hope so really quickly and something you were talking about dave like look people when when um normal investors everyday investors look at charts and they're trying to figure out where is this thing going and now you're bumping against all-time highs right once you get through the all-time highs we talk about price discovery well we talk about price discovery because there's no there's no um there's there's no structural liquidity that's sitting there waiting to, you know, meet the other side of demand. So because you're in an all-time high, it's searching for the price, the next price that you

have sellers to step in. And often, you know, professionals will look at the charts and say, well, 125, well, the next levels are going to be mental levels where people just mentally set their targets, their stopouts, and where they're going to. sell some where they're going to take some profits off the table, 130, 150, 180, you know, like just the, so they're round numbers that people look at. The other thing that people look at is, or professional investors, they'll look at and they'll say, okay, where was the last real strong support level? Okay, say it's 108, right? Say it's a pretty strong support level if you look on the weekly. And they'll say, well, what's 25% up from there? And so it's about 135. And that's

another mental level. So instead of 130, 135, because you think, well, if it gets up, I bought a lot at 108. So if, there were a lot of buyers at 108 and there say, well, up 25 percent, I'm going to sell some. Up 50 percent, I'm going to sell some. So those become levels as well. And that's where you find these levels. So it's not just like random liquidity comes in. This is more of the personality of the stock and psychology of investors and where they've, where they've bought and where they're ready to get out. So it's difficult to tell, but that's why you have, that's why you have these jumps in price where there's just, there's pockets of illiquity because there's nobody standing there

ready to sell at, you know, say, 127 or 132. It's like you're, you've got these levels that people set. Yeah. Yeah. You're throwing darts at a number you like. Maybe that's my 4X, right? Yeah, exactly. exactly you have the same thing going on in gold right you know the difference is exactly the same

thing going on in gold except except with gold there have been people sitting on this thing for decades and waiting for that's true truly but go ahead when you get people like but the thing about it if you want to understand what makes rally sustainable and and i'm not making fun of you mike here because i totally understand what you said and actually and i borderline agree with it on risk management. I mean, it depends on whether it's your target, et cetera, et cetera. And risk management depends on facts and circumstances for individual investors. And you're basically saying people taking profits. But the truth is that if you look at gold and its rally and put it in perspective of everything else, it seems at a very natural price point. And if you look at the

direction of fiat globally, and I am not a big bricks de-dollarization kind of guy, I think that Most of the people who say that are out to lunch. Oh, Mike lost internet. I was trying to tee you up. I think that the gold trade is really a factor of two things. It's a factor of people who continue to save in it, not a huge amount of speculation, and a grinding, consistent buying from central banks around the world who need to hedge against dollars or whatever.

You know, they want to have more reserves. And it's pretty likely that Russia and China are adding to the. their gold reserves as well with their with their you know current account surpluses and so fading that rally seems wrong except on you know in the long run in the short run yeah you're probably right but i'm curious because you know from a valuation point of view i mean you guys have commodity strategists what are they saying um first of all it depends and gold our main commodity guy covering goals grant spore i saw him in london couple east goes his models have been underestimating this rally the whole way.

But again, that's what happens when you have paradigm shifts. Models always are supposed to do that. But I wanted to show a few charts. First of all, I want to encourage everyone to listen to this interview with Caitlin Long and I listened to this week. It nailed it. And I think the key thing I want to mention to you, if I can just share those charts, if Misha can do that, is what James, I think, is going to shift is Bitcoin volatility

going up on the way up. I think it's shifting more towards Bitcoin volatility. going down like S&P 500 on the way up. And then it's just trading more like the S&P 500. So here's the way I look at it. And I'm putting on my risk manager hat. Take the current price of Bitcoin to gold. Right now it's like 32 ounces of Bitcoin per one ounce of, I'm sorry,

three ounces of gold per one ounce of Bitcoin. You have to go back four years. Now I know there's pushback in, but you have to go back four years for the same level. The same time, the key thing, my risk manager, Spidey sense, it says you got stock market volatile lowest in five years, 60 day, the highest correlation ever to all cryptos in Bitcoin and to the S&B 500, and you got the S&P 500, the highest ever versus stock market camp to GDB. I'm your risk manager. I say, hey, we've made so good money in this space.

You have no absolutely zero risk going into fourth quarter to lose money there. By the way, you can replace a lot of those positions with options. I'll show you how we used to do that a lot. Now, I want to show you one other thing. This is just taking gold divided by its 40, 50, and 60 month moving average. If you go back on the 40, the 40, the 4. Uh-oh. Am I the only one who lost?

Three months, you got, and there's Perry to me. Am I back? I don't know why that's happened. I meant Uber. Keep going. Keep powering. Okay. So the point is, this is not, this is a place prudent managers say,

thank you very much. It's been great to write this. The thing we used to say in the market is give a little bit back to the market. Don't tempt the market gods. And this is a place. You're supposed to say, thank you, market gods. I'll take some off the table. And if you don't, as you're mis-manager, and we drop 20% in gold before the end of the year,

which are me, nothing in the big picture, sorry, you've been more, and that's coming out of your bonus. I mean, I just thought of a risk manager running. This is the way life is. And Dave's last because we, and Jim, we know this how markets work. So I just also want to show you a key thing I think's changed in Bitcoin. This is stuff we talked about 2008. The Bitcoin, this is Bitcoin volatility versus the versus gold. It's down, it's crushed at two.

It's the lowest ever. That's annualized 2.2 times. It's continuing lower. It's a different market than it was when they launched ETS in 2017. I'm sorry, futures. And then ETS's first one in 2021 and then the big ones in 2024. Again, it's this key thing I point out is what has the market done for you lately? The Bitcoin gold ratio, it shows me the mature market, volatility is declining.

Masses are in it. This is a big difference from the days we talked about years ago. And all those people that you, those articles you wrote about, to ask me about Bitcoin. Now they don't ask anymore. And that's why I point out, this is the key things that's really shifted in the market is macro, bigger picture. I just look at, you know, this is annualized, you know, the ounces gold rolling, the stock market rolling over versus ounces of gold. To me, as your risk manager, I say, don't be short volatility here. Good luck. Yes, it could last for a long time. Don't be long in the stock market here. And by the way,

Bitcoin has been, its performance just to keep it simple, has sucked versus gold for four years now. you want to james why don't you talk first because i know what i would say i talk too much so go for it well look you know one of the one of the things you have to uh taking consideration here is that bitcoin's only 15 years old you know a little bit over that and i mean and it's already a tenth the size of of the entire market cap of gold that's that's just mind-boggling so why is that well People are looking for pockets to hide in during these prolonged bouts of high inflation. The inflation's been over 2% for pretty much ever, you know, since the last, since a great financial crisis. And so when you when you have people who are just looking for somewhere to hide, of course they're going to hide in gold, but they're not hiding in treasuries.

that's the really interesting thing here so when you look back four years i mean we are in an adoption phase in bitcoin it's only 15 years old so it's going to continue to have plenty of people mike who think about it exactly the same way as you are describing it which is a risk on asset it's still it is still in the i would say the majority of investors think of it that way I'm very confident that the majority of investors think of it that way, probably the vast majority, probably 80% of investors thinking it that way still, maybe even more, you know, especially the institutional investors. They just don't understand it yet. Why? Because you see these articles, they just lump it in with everything else, just like you say, where there's thousands of other cryptos that they can be buying. It doesn't have to be Bitcoin, right? And that narrative continues. So the difference is when people start understanding, wait, why is Bitcoin staying here when all the other cryptos start to collapse? Or why is Bitcoin moving with gold behind it on a lag?

Why is it follow gold like this so closely? And when you get that understanding, that's when you're starting to get and you start getting articles like this out of JP. Just remember, J.P. Morgan's CEO describes Bitcoin as a. scam as a Ponzi, as worthless, as, you know, he, I don't think he's used rat poison. He may have quoted Charlie Munger on it, but his bank put out a piece saying that it's part of the debasement trade. That is like this is so important for people understand that the rest of the street follows J.P. Morgan in a lot of ways.

Not all the, not all the analysts, not all the bank, but they have. to take their comments into consideration it's a powerful bank and you know now you're starting to have that conversation and so that's what it's not different this time that's how bitcoin is evolving like it's taking time i said this for a long time it's going to take time and uh and that's why that's why you're seeing this kind of price activity as far as you know bitcoin versus the stock market it's exactly what you said it's the it's the attitude towards bitcoin has not changed much yet and i disagree with you that people everybody knows about it everybody's heard about it but they have no idea what it really is they have no clue i still talk to people that i've told bitcoin about four years ago

and i used to think it's my problem that you know that i am not explaining it properly but then they come back at me with article after article about how bitcoin is used for you know illicit activity it's you know it's it's a it's a it's a ponsi scheme there's no value to it and i can i can point to these articles on cnbc and bloomberg and wherever else that that prove me right and you know they just still have not they they just can't get their head around it being a different technology and that takes time for people to understand that so i completely disagree that it's saturated with interest it's uh it's had a lot of hits and on media but the it's got the exact wrong narrative around it still and so that's that's what it is and it'll that'll continue to bump around and give people who

understand it opportunity to do the debasement trade before it takes off over the next number of years And just like, Dave, I'm not, I don't like making short-term price predictions in Bitcoin. I mean, that's psychotic. This thing could be up or down $10,000 during the show, you know. And so that's not, that's just not something you ought to be doing. But looking at long-term trends and understanding what's going on the world, the geopolitical uncertainties, you know, I mean, look at France. I mean, the political instability there is phenomenal.

and it's underrated how that's happening in Europe. Japan, that is a massive deal that Dave described. You have the female version of Trump in Japan now who's saying not only do we not want illegal immigration, she's going to take a step further and saying, we don't want any. Like, we don't want any immigration. So there, I mean, this, that is a major statement out of a world, you know, like, a world of liquidity out there. And like Dave said, the money printer is going to burr out there because they are over

200%, 250% plus debt to GDP. And that's been the carry trade for the world for a very long time. And basically, they just, you know, they just signaled that game on liquidity is coming out of Japan. Right. And by the way, the notion of no immigration for an agent. society as badly as Japan is, is probably incredibly self-destructive, but I think- Which means what? Which means, right, I didn't connect that point.

Thank you. I don't get it. It's, it means a lot of things. But most importantly, it means that they, you know, their retirement, they need to, they're basically, it's capital, right? It's a need for capital. Right. Which means I didn't connect that dot, which means that they must expand their GDP nominally.

Right. So it's the same thing. I keep saying it. I love it. What is the real Trump policy? What is the real economic far right? Not far right, but right wing populism. It's grow baby grow. It is the only way. And it's what every government is engineering. The old expression, don't fight the Fed is true. But I would actually expand it to say don't fight the government. When the governments are actively trying to manage. manipulate markets. And they are all of them. This isn't just a U.S. phenomenon. They are. They are looking to manipulate markets. So what do they want? They want asset inflation in order to spur investment, which will restrain consumer inflation, which is why, by the way, this notion of giving retail Stimmy checks would be utterly absurd. And it's a terrible idea unless we know that we can, we are. Look, if you do it. Good. We got midterms coming. But if you'd

do that, then, you know, I can't even shorting any asset other than dollars and expecting that that money isn't going to flow into risk assets. Can you imagine if they give a thousand dollar, you know, $2,000 checks out again for, for, yeah, as you say, you don't really need to imagine anything. We just did that. If they did that, Bitcoin would be a $200,000. That's just a fact. I can't even remotely believe that we won't be, that we won't get to.

the next round number. I just, because it's just, but I think it will be absurd. And I don't think Dave. And I say this seriously, meme coins would outperform Bitcoin. Yes, right. You're right. I said speculative stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I met what I met. NFTs will be back, baby. Yep. I was that was the next comment was like, buy a board ape now if you think we're getting seen. Well, but let's talk about the real story here because we didn't mention one story. We had two announcements this morning, which are showing what is actually going to happen. And another very big driver of prices in our crypto world. We have Galaxy announcing Galaxy 1, and we have Ondo announcing that they bought broker dealers. And basically, Paul Atkins is smiling because what you're seeing

now are two companies, and this is going to become a trend, that are going to offer vertically integrated with, in Galaxy's case, because I signed up, although I'm waiting for my ID to be verified. It's in a queue. It's using Cross River Bank. They're going to give you an integrated checking account, brokerage account, and crypto account. Now, with stable coins, and understand as those go into the payment rails, that is going to take over from the legacy banking system. And it won't just be Galaxy. Galaxies just were smart and got their piece of the pie first. But if you aren't paying attention to the fact that every brokerage platform who can, E-trade's doing it, Robin Hood's doing it, Galaxy's doing it, are going to be going after a vertically

integrated home solution for people to provide enhanced yields, payments, and investments all in the same platform. You're not understanding what this means. The notion of automated sweeps and where you're saving, it's going to make saving in Bitcoin dramatically easier. It's going to make saving in crypto dramatically easier, investing in stocks vis-a-vis. payments dramatically easier. It's going to speed up the whole process. Just wait for stable coins to be underneath it and it's 24-7 compared to name that other bank, you know, city bank. You know, you want to try to do an investment on Saturday, not going to happen. Try to seven in the evening, not going to happen. Galaxy will be able to offer that. I don't know what they're doing.

I haven't signed up. Can I ask you a question? It's a very big deal. I want to, I was like you finished, but ask a question. They're offering 8% premium yield on cash for U.S. accredited, excuse me, for U.S. accredited investors for percent annual yield on high yield cash accounts, obviously all those other things you mentioned. Where is 8% premium yield coming from for Galaxy? And where is over 10% yield coming from Coinbase now? Because these are Celsius and Voyager level yields. I'm not saying the same.

I am not saying the same. I'm just saying 10% yields. I don't know the answer. But what's the yield on the sailors was STRF? I think it's around 8% right 8 to 10 STRC it could be that there's lots of places that you could do it

the question is is what credit are you taking and you have to dig under the covers to understand the question is do you think this is your bank account or do you realize that you're making it? Well you could have galaxy I don't know what galaxy is doing but you could have Galaxy getting part of the interest back

if they're investing in some of those deposits if they're investing them in USDT or USCC, they could have individual agreements with tether or... I'm not saying there's anything on board. I'm just saying we're definitely back to the 8, 10% part of the cycle. Well, but there is that, but there are instruments who are paying that. And look, the devil's in the details. I am hopeful, don't know once again, because I haven't gotten the sign up.

I will find out. I am hopeful there will be disclosures that will describe it because you can, there are problems, right? You know, if the problem with Voyager and all those other ones were, when they first started, it was being generated because people were willing to pay that to borrow Bitcoin and they were using it for that. And then that changed because of the arbitrage is going away because of Fireblocks, I've explained this a million times. We could rerun it. Anyone who cares, I'm happy to explain it. but they then all went off in different directions. Voyager did it by selling, you know, debt to a, I don't know, what's, what, what credit

rating we would have subscribed. We did 600 million dollars with no collateral to three arrows capitals. Right. Oh, you know, triple C sub, you know, whatever, idiotic loan. In the case of Celsius, they decided to fund an entire prop trading operation and pass it on. I am, I would be remarkably stunned of Galaxy, what, if you, if they weren't. willing to disclose, roughly speaking, where this is coming up. I'll disclose it.

And I would also say that if it changes, they will adjust it down, right, as opposed to what those guys did. So they'll do it the right way. And I think all these other ones will do the same thing. So it's really a question of that, you know, where you're coming from. Just to be clear, if you're getting more interest than you are from U.S. Treasuries at the same duration, there is counterparty risk, full stop. And you need to understand it.

It might be worthwhile counterparty risk. But there is counterparty risk. And you do need to understand that. And that's why disclosures are so important. So, you know, it's like, you know, Mike and I and James all tell you, there is no such thing as a free lunch. You're not getting it for free. But there are ways of doing it. I mean, you're leverage risk or leverage.

And by the way, they're also probably making it. Like Coinbase, they offer, you know, if you stake Solano with Coinbase, they take half, right? You know, they pay out an APY. They're taking a very healthy spread on their staking program. I know because I have some stake there. Dave, we do have one more story, by the way. They could be driving things today. I don't know if that's how this is going unmissed,

but Grayscale has added staking to both their ETH and Seoul. We officially have staking, Ethereum, and Solana, ETFs, ETPs trading as up to know. This is just teeing up, Mike, this stuff. So, okay, Mike, I hope your internet's better. Go. So I enjoy, this is a great. So I picture us all sitting in a trading desk, which some of us have done. You sit around or on a hedge fund.

We all have different positions, and we've all had a great year. And one of us had a great year and just being invested in the silliest, stupid, almost an ancient rock in history. It's up 50%. And that one person had half the volatility, the rest of you. And the risk manager comes over and says, knock, knock. It's a great year. You lock in, you're supposed to lock in. This is the sentiment we're getting now.

And we should be because it's underestimate the key lessons of what you're pointing out, what we generally anticipate don't, doesn't occur. Everybody's saying the same thing. Everybody's bullish. You have to be very careful in those environments. And that's from the risk manager, which have always been kind of astute. It comes out and says, hey, what's managing some of that risk? We switch to drives, lock in some of those profits.

Don't be stupid when we get normalization. It's not a when. It's an if. Maybe it doesn't happen this year. But that's where we're getting to these stages now. since the kind of bullishness, I remember, 2017, and some of the peaks in 2021, 22, and certainly in 1999 in the stock market, and there's always a reason. So let's forget about the reason, to point out where we are, what it means.

We have this government shutdown going down, and I have to tit over to I think it's going to really matter. I don't think it's going to stop. Certainly, if you listen to that interview with Caitlin Long, now this is my take after 61 days, that we have a very emboldened president, and he says it's a good thing. And I don't think what's, not anything is to stop unless beta goes down and goes and makes and forces them to the negotiation table. And this is where out now. And that's what gold's predicting. And, you know, record highs in a very high volatile asset like Bitcoin's great.

But just imagine the year if the S&P 500 wasn't up 15%. And we're going to get that when it's down 15% or even maybe this year. And that's why I just say this has been a great year for those invested overweight long gold. And you had half the volatility. So all the other stuff to me is noise, and you've got to be careful with the noise. Mike, you have a chart there. Do you want me to bring something up? No, I don't want to know you with more charts.

I'll show you one, because this is something I've had inkling for a decade, partly because I used to work. I used to be in a cell side of this product, glitter, is just a basket of precious metals. You take the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index, which I was instrumental in launching at Bloomberg at Bloomberg, you have to go back to 2017 for a flat line of this basket of all these great crypto assets that everybody's trading on their phones for nothing, which is great and a lot of fun, and divide that by just a simple basket of precious metals, gold, silver, platinum, platinum. People are starting to realize the value of just four precious metals versus 21 million cryptos that you can trade.

It's great, trade them. But at some point, that's going to be a problem. And this is my point. There's a problem. When you get, you just have to have this, this has to keep going up. Stock market has to keep going up. That's not a trade you want to be in anymore, I don't think. When it was cheap, sure.

But now here, you want to look for alternatives. Even gold is getting expense here. And that's why I think the only thing I have left, if this goes down, is key bonds. And that's the never one thing I've been wrong on for two years. But why are yield still going up even as the Fed cuts, given I understand the mechanics. I'm just saying it's hard to get excited about bonds. That's the key thing. That's why they can't manipulate them up.

That's why on a one to 10 scale on the global basis for macro, the 10, the 10 is one thing. the U.S. stock market has to keep going up. So if we get just a little 5% correction, that 4% yield and 10 year, it's going to drop, that support is going to drop to resistance. Bitcoin will drop 20% easy. Copper will probably drop 20% easy. That's an if statement. But again, it's the whole, that we're that elevated.

That's my point is cutting rates, the consensus is, yes, its stock market goes up. And I just remember, that feels to me exactly like 2007. And it took me a while to make that money back. but that peak after the Fed cut was tough, and then it just went down 55% to that low in 2009. I feel the same way now. The thing is, things are so much more expensive.

We didn't have cryptos back then. It was, you know, so as your risk manager, you've had a great year, lock in. Even on gold. So you're saying light. Even on gold. That's my point is when gold's that expensive, everything's got a problem.

And so that's why I just say, I just had to put my risk manager spidey senses on, and I'm writing the right of waiting to hopefully publish on it tomorrow is um just get out so you can't go to cash so that leaves the last place being bonds yeah but he's the funny thing is though the gold gold's different though because gold's being bought by central banks it has been this point okay i got it but it's the key thing those are we those are things that we pointed out you're not going to go take profit they're just they're they're not going to go exactly but i'm sorry i just wanted i i just got approved for galaxy

The 8% yield comes from a note written from Galaxy Digital Holdings Limited. It is not, they explicitly say it's not FDIC insured, it is a security, it's a reg D security. It is effectively a bond. I'm sure if I read farther, I will find out how senior it is on their cap table. But effectively what they're doing is they're saying, listen, we can deploy capital effectively within our digital within our digital play you know we're our cost of carry our cost of funding is probably higher than 8% for the balances they're using for people who don't understand they can they can lend it at 12% and give you eight right well it would no it's not about lending

it's about if you are a a broker a brokerage firm if you run I used to run a prop desk so I understand this you have capital so I ran a a long short strategy. It was long, whatever, and a short whatever. At a certain amount, you have to pay for the capital of the bank uses. Now, I was at a triple A, you know, city bank. It was the last place. And even at two sigma, it was extremely high, you know, in terms of credit rating. And so you're paying something over prime for anything. If you're galaxy, you're probably paying more over prime. I don't know, what's the prime rate now for, you know, for this sort of stuff. What's the, what is that for funds. But I had to guess, I'd say somewhere in the six, seven. So if you're paying two or three

over, earning aid is probably a good, paying aid is probably good. And so this is probably a way to decrease Galaxy's funding costs. As rates come down, that API will almost certainly come down unless it's, unless it's a contractual, which I mean, it could be. And by the way, and I'm not saying it's a comparison, the Voyager and Celsius, Voyager actually would have been fine if they had just gone down on their rates. Right. So the competition and the refusal because they were signing up customers to go down on their rates and lose customers in the race against these other Ponzi.

So, I mean, understanding and knowing about how this company is working, this is a very logical product. It's not crazy. And you have to understand it. But you do need to understand what you're investing in. People can understand it. I personally think that it could make a lot of sense. It does have a 60-day lockup.

etc. So, you know, it's, this is not a crazy product. This isn't, you know, people are going to say that it is today. I could guarantee it because people, it's going to be the very when you read 8% premium yield on cash, given it's accredited. You should understand your average person's like 8% yielding bank account. Sweet. I want to, so before we, because we only have a few minutes left, let's give some alpha to the, to the people who are listening. Mike, I want to ask you something because this is really important. We get asked us a lot. you know we talk about cold and we talk about buying gold and you can buy gold coins you can go to you know different places to buy coins but a lot of people are buying it in their their IRA or their

401k or whatever it is and or just their investment account that they have over at fidelity or swab and they buy something like gld so what how do you see the relationship of glde versus spot because this is a really important thing for people understand So it's one of those things that gold bugs will be all over, particularly people who have to buy it and put in their underwear drawer or a safe deposit box. It's a very unlikely, unusual event for that to ever break down. GLD holds the actual physical gold or to have an issue, and it's insignificant. If we ever get that bad, I'd like to point out a quote from having a conversation about the same thing, getting bullish gold 10 years ago with my son, who was. I was in the U.S. military at the time.

He says, if it gets that bad dead, I think I'd rather have guns and ammo. And by the way, stock haul of food, right? I just looked in one of my accounts, and I noticed iron trading up 12% today at 50, over, almost 57. Yeah. Well, that's an energy trade. No, though, that's a, that's a vertically integrated AI provider training. Exactly, which is energy.

Because they have, you have, you know. I'm going to expand. one thing, what GLD is and what gold futures are, is they have a basis to the actual physical. And that's my problem with cryptos. I love crypto-current. Crypto dollars and stable coins. There's a basis to treasuries. But everything else is just a number on the screen that you hope is going to work. And that's the problem. I'm worried. We're at the point now. When stock markers goes down, we get the purge. And then it'll be time to buy crypto assets. I would disagree on FTC. I bit in the spot Bitcoin ETFs. Because there's

When you talk about crypto is virtual and doesn't have anything physical, understand that most of gold's price, at least 80%, probably much more, has to do with the same monetary premium that we are talking about vis-a-vis Bitcoin. And in Bitcoin's case, it's negligible at this point because it's so cheap relative to what it would be if, in fact, it had a monetary premium. That's the issue. You can't look at gold vis-a-vis platinum and not understand that gold is. outperform platinum so much over the last five to ten years because of monetary premium. And monetary premium is kind of animal spirits. It is animal spirits. There's no question about that. But gold has had those animal spirits for 5,000 years. Before that, seashells had it for over a thousand years. And then there's also the Isle of Yap with the big rocks. And mankind, ever since they went

from a barter economy to wanting to have something that you could use to store value in between transactions to allow us to transact and compare and have a functioning economy have always needed something they believed in to transact in. And that belief creates a value above and beyond any physical instantiation. Unless you understand that, then we have no basis for it. Now, does that justify fart coin? No, it does not. Does that justify even Ethereum? No, it does not. Ethereum should be valued based on what you believe the Ethereum network will be worth. Same with XRP or anything else.

Bitcoin is different. And while they are all crypto in the sense that they're all using cryptographic technology, that's where it ends. Now, we have major correlations in the markets. And Mike, you are correct to point this out, which is when people make money in Bitcoin and they take profits on their speculation, they plow it back into, as Scott mentioned before, you know, if we are a Stimmy checked, where is it going to go? It's going to go into Doge.

It's going to go into crap because people like lottery tickets. Is there any one of us who don't get, you know, stupid tweets that you're saying, well, you can't make generational wealth if something's only going to go up on 10 times, right? And so you have that. And that's the same thing that propels the stock market. I mean, you know, it's crazy. Exactly. And it's human nature to be trying to be a lamb.

Look at me. I want to make generation wealth like everybody else did in the last few years or 10 years in Bitcoin in stock market. That's when it's usually the end. And I just pointed out how expensive things are, how expensive the gold is, expensive the stock market is, and how relatively cheap U.S. Treasuries are. So when you're running that prop desk, which we both sat on, when you have, you know, clients, your traders taking some profits where they put the money. I suggest put it in the treasuries and sit back and just the hardest thing for risk, ask it, risk manager or for a trader to do is to not trade. And sometimes you're supposed to just get in cash and sit back and wash it. This is one of those times, I think.

Okay. And then on the flip side of that, and that's a good place to end here, Scott, is that, you know, I don't ever advise anybody that they're going to get rich quick on Bitcoin. Just like you wouldn't advise them that you're going to get rich quick on gold. This is a way to not get poor slowly. That's it. That's all you're doing. And you're going to have to hold on to it for a very long time.

time. But you can get poor pretty slowly if you're holding onto treasuries that have negative yields and you're sitting in cash that is just melting away in your in your bank account. As far as a trade, yeah, long-term bonds, they could come down quite a bit, especially if we, the yields could come down quite a bit and you make a bunch of money on the 10, 20, 30-year bonds if you, if we have some sort of event that that does push the market to sell off strong. So that's, that's, that's, that is something, I want to take the other side of that because I'm tired of people saying, I mean, I understand what you're saying from the perspective. Only, only if it's not, only if it's not a, only if it's not a credit event that is threatening the. No, I want to say something different. So if you're, if you look at at at these success stories of all the people who really made it big in the last industrial revolution, you know, Andrew Carnegie and others.

you know, people who did it well. What they will all say is they saved their money, they saved for a long period of time, they took it, and then they invested it and took a risk. If you, but that idea that you could put money into savings and it could compound and you could make money

disappeared when we decided to go to negative real interest rates with the past 25 years. The very notion, yeah, go ahead. But if you save in Bitcoin, not only will you do better than Andrew Carnegie did in his pastbook savings account, you will do significantly better if it in fact is right as a savings vehicle to build wealth to be able to then use it to take the risk that you want to take if you have a business idea is possible.

To say if you actually create wealth slowly is also possible. It is not a lottery ticket. That is the important point. That's the point. That's right. And so that's the way to look at it, I think. people have been we have had as a society no way for savers to get ahead for a long time without having professionally managed money and most of it has moved into the mag seven and risk and what

we're saying is there there is an alternative here and and people still choose lottery tickets Mike is right he's 100% right people will always human nature is they look for lottery tickets right I would still say professionally managed if you have the right professionals make sense but Bitcoin is that savings vehicle. And that's the one thing I recommend to people. And they go, oh, well, when would I sell it? And I'm like, if you're thinking that way, don't, right? You know, I'm not going to tell you how to market time.

What I will tell you is savings over a long period of time. It is the most logical course. And I put my money where my mouth is. I mean, John Deaton and I talk about this all the time. This is how I save, right? It's the same thing. The very notion that you need to hire a professional person to not lose money. means that your money is not really money.

That's the advertisement. And that's the one thing I'll say. Now, that transcends everything we talk about on the show, which is really more shorter term macroeconomics. And there, the most important thing is liquidity. And I don't see any sign of global liquidity dropping. I mean, you know, there could be a black swan. Don't get me wrong.

I mean, it could happen. I mean, more likely we have white swans. There are more likely, it seems like there's more likely white swan events. But we have black swans. We have two wars going on. If both stopped, that would be massive white swans. If both accelerated out of control in the other way, those would be black swans. If nothing changes, well, who knows?

I don't think it's going to be black swans. I don't think wars matter anymore. Oh, no, that's not true. That's not true. Where's the stock market and where are those two wars that were started? Oh, well, no. But none of those wars haven't done anything yet. I mean, they become a world war.

We haven't seen anything major impacting global. supply chains or global food supplies or global energy supplies which goes back to mike's comment of guns guns and ammo that's right that's exactly right and mike's there yeah guys 1006 we stayed over we did it again james sitting in the light you know it's right yeah james's light out you know we've had a good day guys now is amazing as always because yeah james we can we know what time it is on the west coast based on yeah there you go james and sun rising. Sun is up.

Let's go. Guys, another incredible show. Thank you so much. I know that we will all be back for another macro Monday next week. And I think the ending of that show is exceptionally profound. So I hope people watch it again. It's not always a conversation about what's happening in the news today or what might be driving prizes.

It's important to remember why you might want to own some of this very, very long term or something. If you don't believe in this, own something because your money is not really money. That's all we got for you guys. Today, we will see you next week. Thanks, Dave. Mike, James. If your mobile number was stolen and your passwords were reset,

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