The Wolf Of All Streets - $150,000 Bitcoin Reconfirmed | Crypto Bulls Return

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Join Dave Weisberger, Mike McGlone, and James Lavish as we break down what's happening in macro and crypto! Dave Weisberger: https://twitter.com/daveweisberger1  James Lavish: https://twitter.com/jameslavish  Mike McGlone: https://twitter.com/mikemcglone11  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEKDAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   ►► The Arch Public Unleash algorithmic trading. Discover how algorithms used by hedge-funds are now accessible to traders looking for unparalleled insights and opportunities!  👉https://thearchpublic.com/  ►►OKX SIGN UP FOR AN OKX TRADING ACCOUNT THEN DEPOSIT & TRADE TO UNLOCK MYSTERY BOX REWARDS OF UP TO $60,000!  👉https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. USE CODE ‘25OFF’ FOR 25% OFF WHEN VISITING MY LINK.  👉https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd  ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #MacroMonday The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Standard Chartered is back at it again with hyperbolic Bitcoin predictions, although this time just reiterating their $150,000 predictions. I think we're all a bit tired of those predictions, but also probably all to some degree agree that it's still possible. But beyond the Bitcoin predictions, there is a lot happening in macro, a ton to unpack. I've got the all-star squad here, Mike McGlone, James lavish and Dave Weisberger to discuss and unpack it all. Let's go. What is up everybody? I'm Scott Malker, also known as the Wolf of All Streets. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel, hit that like button. You may have noticed

this is not my normal studio. I am in sunny yet humid Puerto Rico, land of non-tax evasion, but tax avoidance. Very different topic. Take you a bunch of meetings with the crypto community down here, but of course still had to show up on Monday to talk with all of you about the madness happening in the markets. I've got Mike McGlone, James Lavish. Dave, we've got you in the car. I'm going to just mute you. Maybe you'll listen in, but I had to bring Dave on because he's wearing the McLaren OKX jersey. The one race I missed the entire year from Miami, Lando Norris wins a rousing victory in Miami. So glad that he wore that in the spirit of that victory. Guys, we have a lot to unpack today.

I got to bring up this first story because it's just astounding to me. I know, James, you just tweeted it. At 2 million per minute, treasuries mint cash like never before. Guys, I thought we weren't even printing money right now. I thought we were tightening. I thought, yeah, what's going on here? It's referring to that we're paying $2 million of interest on our debt every minute. It's not funny. It's kind of funny. Especially in the context of last week, which we should talk about that too, where our economic advisors don't even understand how a bond works. I want to hear what Mike has to say for the morning meeting from Bloomberg.

I just got through the headlines because it's only 6 a.m. here. Okay. Let's start with our chief economist. I think the key quote I took about from her is- Anna Wong? Yeah. Anna Wong is that her view of the Fed was they were not as hawkish as they had thought. And her quote was she thinks there's two major paths for cuts, and that is if the economy weakens or inflation falls, despite a somewhat strong economy. Ira Jersey, our chief interest rate strategist, thinks 10-year note deal could get down to 4.3%. I think the key thing I really got from my colleague, Stephen Shoes, based in Hong Kong, is talking about the rate differential between the yen and the dollar and pointing out all the intervention. There's a problem on a global basis. You're not hearing about anybody intervening to strengthen the dollar. They're all trying to strengthen their own currencies, despite the discussion we had earlier. So I'm tilting in my views now about this rapid increasing deficit.

So I think the key thing from the macro that really matters now is last week, or maybe just a few in the month of May so far, we've had the two-year note yield, I think, peaked at 5%. I think crude oil has probably peaked at that high around 87. Copper might be peaking around 10,000. I see significant signs of peaking in commodities. The only commodity that's really closed at a record high at the end of the month of April is gold. And I still see gold heading higher.

I don't think it really stops it, particularly when you talk about the deficit. And the thing that's significant is we're seeing a bounce in Chinese equities, completely expected. I mean, they're probably buying their own. That was predicted from the ETF team. They should be. They're turning Japanese. And we still have rates in China, 10-year yields like 2.3%. In the U.S., it's now 4.48%.

Now it got to near 4.8% last week. And you see the tilt there. I think everything is starting to tilt lower. I'll end with this. Something I hardly ever watch. It's all about tilt there. I think everything is starting to tilt lower. I'll end with this. Something I hardly ever watch. It's all about the US stock market. So I'm watching that little 50-day moving average in the S&P 500 E-minis. I hardly ever watch the daily charts. Try to avoid it. I used to have hair washing those. And to me, the number one thing is it's got to stay above that 50-day moving average S&P 500 because my tilt is the big trade for me is everything starting to lower.

Bitcoin's potential leader. And it started. We've bounced. And now we have this narrative that all the economy's not growing as fast as possible as we expected. Inflation's still sticky and that's good for the stock market because the Fed's going to ease and we still have to go back to, well, maybe the Fed's not going to ease until the stock market tells it to, which is still my base case. Yeah. I mean, interesting. I know we keep saying that Bitcoin might be leaving. I just think still Bitcoin is ranging. I think it's hard. It did kind of sweep those range lows, but it's kind of just low volume, not much happening. Yeah. And ranging to me, it's a consolidation, right? So, and like Mike said, it's if bar, you know, buying an event and all things being equal, if it continues to trade in this range for a little while, it just makes

it stronger for an upside move. As long as we don't have a collapse in the economy, don't have a sudden spike in unemployment, for instance, which that's on the table. You know, that is absolutely on the table. We cannot say that we're out of the woods and we have the soft landing. Everything's good. We saw the unemployment number. Actually, let's back up. The unemployment numbers are confusing because I's confusing, because I think that

what's happening here is you've got a lot of people are just not filing for unemployment, it's paying the ass, you're not making enough money from it. I mean, heck, if you're an illegal immigrant, you can walk across the border and get more money than unemployment pays you in over a month just, you know, in a on a debit card. So it's just, it So it's kind of a confusing number for people. But the jobs number, which is payrolls, came in light again last week. And so you've got unemployment just ticking up. And we've shown the chart so many times on this show about when unemployment, when you enter a recession,

that's when unemployment really skyrockets. And that's kind of like the tip off. And so that's one thing. The other thing is, for me this week, I mean, I'm kind of laser focused on that Wednesday 10-year bond auction. It's a $42 billion bond auction. We've had some trouble in these auctions, and I really want to see how this plays out this week. I want to see if investors are demanding higher yields than the last number of auctions because of these inflation numbers. The inflation data just keeps coming in a little bit hotter than expected or wanted for the Fed. And we heard the Fed turn, at least Powell's comments, they could have been way more hawkish, but they turned away from dovish. Let's put it that way. So are investors going to demand more yield, more premium, a higher premium for the risk premium to the 10-year because they know that rates either are going to stay higher for longer or there's even the probability or possibility that we have a rate hike. We talked about this how many months ago that a rate hike is actually back on the

table and people were laughing. There's no way. It's on the table. Is it going to happen? Not in my opinion. I don't think it will unless inflation starts to roar higher. But those are kinds of things I'm looking at. And I would bet that, Mike, I would bet Anna's kind of has a strong eye on that auction this week, too. Fed has not backed off from tightening or easing during election years as much as the narrative says. They have in the past actually continued on their path regardless of elections. Like I said, I don't have it to quote here, but I was surprised when I read it. I'm afraid. I think you just fired up Dave and he's drinking energy drink. I got one word.

Anyone thinks that the fed will not be political bullshit i'm not saying they won't i'm saying historically i was surprised that they had uh done things that would have been politically unpopular in election years but i guess you also have to dig into when during that year they did it because it matters. The simple fact is the world is rapidly changing towards hyper-politicization. There's no question about it. And we got both sides here. We got Trump talking about taking away the Fed's independence because he doesn't want to be screwed by them. And he's not going to be running again, right? That's the funny part about it. And he has no political interest other than he thinks he knows better, which of course is a scary thought, but we'll

put that one to the side. And there's no question that the amount of pressure that's going to be on them, look, the polls already suck. I still am a conspiracy theorist. I still think that in August at the Democratic convention, or maybe the Democrats will have a new a new person to run. And I think then that that's going to get timed coincidentally with Fed easing. And, you know, you can say what you wish. I do believe that that's likely. I think the fact is, is the market is I mean, I just noticed the steepening of the yield curve over the weekend, which I hadn't noticed before, but it's actually fairly pronounced. And, you know, the jobs report on Friday is worse than people are saying, just like it was worse

than people were saying. And by the way, no one was particularly happy about it. And if you notice the narrative, most of the people who commented on it are like, well, you know, you know, it's all it's all trying to spin it. If you think it's an it is a coincidence that Stephanie Kelton and modern monetary theory have been making the rounds again, you're not paying attention to what's going on. If you think it's a coincidence that people talking about squishier inflation targeting, you don't realize what's happening. If you think it's a coincidence that there is this narrative that somehow owner's equivalent rent will go down if we cut rates, these are not coincidences. They need to do what they need to do. And if there's anybody who believes that there's a way out of our debt situation without inflating it away,

then I used to have in my apartment in New York when we used to live there, we had a view, a corner of, you could see the Brooklyn Bridge, I'd be happy to sell it to you. The fact is that's what they need to do. We've been talking about this and I've been talking about this for two and a half years.

But what strikes me over the weekend, and this is why I think it's interesting what James is saying, the auction, the market is telling you the auction is going to go well. That's what the market's saying. You know, the yield was at 4.7. We're now pushing 4.5. You know, it was 4.7, what, two weeks ago? You know, that's not an interesting move considering that. Who's going to buy these bonds at this point? I mean, yeah, we'll see.

But what else are you going to, that's the question. Are you going to put your money in risk assets or are you going to take the risk? Well, they're buying gold instead. They're buying gold. Yeah. Or are you going to, you know, it's, go ahead, Mike. I mean, it's a very. Once again, it's the prettiest pig in the pen.

What else are you going to buy? So you buy this. It's that trigger. That question triggered something that got me promoted from the trading pits in Chicago to New York trading desk in the 90s. And that is when I was extremely bullish bonds and over and over bullish bonds and all the guys in New York said, Muglone, you're an idiot. And it turned out to be right. One thing I always looked at was the rest of the world. I say, this is the safest, deepest market in the world. In that US 10-year, you're getting 4.5%. In Canada, you're getting 3%. In most of

Europe, you're getting three and two handles. In the second largest country in the world, which you really can't invest in, you're getting a 2.3 percent. It's going to collapse. Bond yields, I think, are just a matter of time it's going to collapse. And there's number one key thing that's going to make that happen is the U.S. stock market just mean reverting a little bit. 10 percent corrections in bull markets are normal. We just had a little bit, maybe 5 percent and we're back up again. And it's in many measures, I look at volatility in US stock market, it's extremely low and rates are extremely high. So when people say that question to me, Scott, I just really appreciate it. Who's going to buy those bonds? I remember them saying to me, like I said, it was 30 years ago. And I said, there's always someone who'll find it to buy bonds when

rates get that high. And that's the key thing I like to point out is, I like to say is who wants to buy gold with US stock market on a tear and you can get 5% of T-bill? Now, that's what we heard from Warren Buffett lately, but I want to tilt back to one thing. But the thing is, that's really wrong about when people say there's high cash levels, there's not high cash levels. I will be publishing on this in the next few days. If you look at money market total assets in this country as a percentage of our market cap, the stock market, it's about 11%. It was 14% before the great financial crisis. So we are extremely low in cash. People just forget to measure what really matters.

It's the whole tide has gone up so much. Yes, there's a lot more money in cash, but there's a lot more money in anything. There's less money in cash now than before the great financial crisis. And to me, that's the key thing that's going to trigger. We still, that's why the stock market has to keep going up. And that's why your biggest risk is there. And that's why I still think the problem for everything is beta. And that's what may be why, yes, it's great that Bitcoin's consolidating, but we also have that S&P 500 holding that 5,000 support and bouncing again. It's still, I think that correlation is now higher than ever because we're so elevated. We got to get through this test.

Just give me a 10% correction and a bull market correction in the stock market. And then we'll see what everything plays out. For now, it's kind of met. In commodities, I think everything peaking despite the fact that stock market is still going higher. I have to bring up that Buffett article really quick for people who haven't seen it, of course, or something right away. Berkshire Hathaway's cash pile hits record as Buffett cut stake in Apple.

Apple clearly still their largest, I believe, holding, but they cut either 13% or 18% and are sitting on $189 billion in cash. And roughly the numbers, I think they only bought $2 or $3 billion worth of stock and sold $20 billion more. Is this a dinosaur move or is this guy continue to know something? Because if you look at it, it seems like they could have played this run better. Obviously he zooms out, but when you have stock market at all time highs and he's adding cash, maybe that's smart, just slowly taking profit on the way up for whatever's coming next. But

that is astounding, $190 billion in cash. Well, I mean, the key point out of what Mike said, and by the way, it's hard to disappoint people, but I still agree with Mike on the notion of that there has to be a correction in the stock market at some point. I just don't know when. I certainly wouldn't be shorting it and I certainly wouldn't be using leverage. But is the fact that there's a lot more money. And as I've said before, it's the frickin denominator when there's it's like basic economics. First lecture in economics 101 was about supply and demand. You have more money. That means that the money is worth less. The money is worth less things. But I mean, that money that the money is worth less. The money is worth less, things denominate that money, price nominally looks higher. And that's a lot of what's going on. So the fact is,

yeah, we have a higher cash amount than we have ever, but the percentage is lower. Well, yeah, that means two things. It means that when we do get a correction, there's plenty of room for people to pull money out of the market before they go, row they go, I have nothing better to put it in, and they put it back in. And so you get a boom, you know, a bust boom cycle. But the simple fact is, is everything, denominated in dollars, should be worth more in order just to stay put because of the aforementioned $2 million a day of printing, yada, yada, yada. There's just more freaking money.

And the reason the dollar is, you know, rates are the way they are is because the dollar is the global reserve currency. And we need to attract people to buy it, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, Canada with what's going on up there at 3% or China or Greece or Italy at lower than us, it's nonsense. Anybody, it's like, I love the commentary. Every time there's a big market move, someone says, can you really believe that the discounted cash flow of XYZ has really changed by X billion dollars today in the last five minutes? And the answer is no, but the animal spirits have. And to be blunt, that's what markets are these days the animal spirits have and to be blunt that's what markets

are these days animal spirits they are the people on the margin trading so this morning to walk in and see bitcoin dropping because of the fcc taking a gun and shooting it at biden's foot uh because if you think that that hurting robin hood's investors is going to help re-election to this government you are out of your freaking mind and if you think that hurting Robinhood's investors is going to help re-election to this government, you are out of your freaking mind. And if you're sitting in the White House, and I don't know if anybody in the White House is listening to this, understand this morning might have been the capper. You know, going after, you probably don't know this, but going after Uniswap is a really bad way to help you with young people that are in college. You might have seen the polls not doing so well there. Going after the swaps, probably a bad idea. Going after Robinhood, literal Robinhood,

who had the broker dealer that you told them they couldn't use for crypto and then saying their non-broker dealer is breaking the law because it's a security, you literally have pissed off most of the average people in America that are their clients. Because you've created a literal no-win situation for those Star Trek fans. You're trying to create the Kobayashi Maru here. And the fact of the matter is nobody's going to be happy with this. And this is going to get used politically. And if it isn't, then the Republican strategists are asleep. But they're not asleep. They's going to be happy with this and this is going to get used politically and if it isn't then the republican strategists are asleep but they're not asleep they're going to figure this out because it's absolutely absurd it is totally absurd your that means fidelity is going to get a well's notice next because ethereum is in their platform right i mean the whole thing is absurd this government is insistent upon trying to kill crypto in a way that 40 percent of that 40 percent,

I think 40 million crypto users in America are going to find this actually matters to me. They did something and I lost money today. And that's what happens. There is a bit of nuance there. I don't disagree. Reason refidelity. But Robin Hood offered a lot more crypto for trading than fidelity does so what so if if they don't try to poke if they don't try to poke the ethereum

nest which they don't know if they will you do have robin hood trading solana and doge and you know basically further down the risk group but your your point is taken is that Robinhood is the register. I understand that Comrade Warren has convinced Comrade Biden that we're no longer in America. And effectively, what they've just said today is, you know, we don't want anybody to be able to trade any of these things because we think they're bad for you. That's literally it. Because Robinhood, for those who don't know, tried or wanted to do this under Robinhood, their broker dealer, and filed with FINRA, which is the self-regulatory organization that is their regulator, for what's called trading in non-securities through their broker dealer. Now, you can do this by, I tell broker-dealers,

can offer futures products, for example. So it's a well-honed path, and FINRA has rules for it. But starting under Jay Clayton, and God knows, continuing under Gary Gensler, FINRA hasn't approved any of these for broker-dealers facing customers. So despite the fact that Robinhood wanted to trade it through their broker-dealer as non-securities, but with all the broker dealer protections, they were not allowed to. So they created an affiliate and affiliate. You know, there's there's the difference between Robinhood's affiliate and someone using eBay to trade or, you know, a legal gambling site like we now have in Florida with hard rock bets or whatever. What's the difference? They're non-securities. You can put money up and make money or whatever.

You can do it, whatever. What the SEC is saying with this Wells notice is they are admitting there is no path and nobody in America should be allowed to buy Solana. They should not be allowed to contribute to an ecosystem of any of the cryptos that Robinhood is saying. Which, by the way, that is a Rubicon that no one until this, they could have at least had plausible deniability that that was their goal. Now there's no deniability. They are now literally 100 percent with no wiggle room saying no American citizen should be allowed to buy or sell or invest in any of these assets, full stop. So that's a problem politically,

because they've not, and people haven't figured this out yet, but they're going to. And when you put together the combination of Uniswap and Robinhood and Coinbase, you literally have no avenue anymore for Americans to invest in them, to your point. Even before when it was just Coinbase or Binance, if you could go on a decentralized exchange, perhaps gain exposure to some of them. Now they're, I mean, but we know that this is what's been happening because they're also coming after. I want to ask you about James, about this, the Bitcoin self-custody, right? I mean, it's very clear that this isn't even now just about unregistered securities. This is about control.

We could say it's about taxes. We could say it's about a crackdown. But I mean, at this point, you know, we saw a lot of cheering from certain parts of the Bitcoin community about all the things happening to everything not named Bitcoin. Well, now they're coming after Bitcoin predictably as well as at least in self-custody. It feels like we're going on a path where it's like you will buy your Bitcoin from BlackRock or Fidelity and you will like it, sir. Yeah. And then we can see exactly what you own through your brokerage account

and they're not shutting off avenues to get money to those accounts. So if you want to move money to Fidelity, you wanna move money to your broker that has access to BlackRock, no problem. If you wanna move your money to Coinbase, sometimes your bank just misses the wire or they hold it up. Or if you want to move your money to Kraken, good luck. Sometimes that

happens. I mean, like I told you, I experienced the choke point 2.0 with my hedge fund. We had to wait weeks for wires. They just got canceled. They would get denied, they would get blocked. And they're sending it to a, you know, a limited partnership in the United States that is based in Delaware. And they were blocking it because we had Bitcoin in our name. I mean, you know, I mean, it's no secret. It's happening. And so the question is, I mean, I don't know. We could speculate on this ad nauseum, whether've seen the madness coming out of Washington the last number of weeks. And whether it's because they're just completely out of touch with being reelected or it's because the desire, the need, the absolute need for control is so high that they must take that path. And that's the question. Because this is not politically popular to any constituency, right? Listen, going after self-custody pisses off all the crypto clients. It doesn't get you a vote from any other sector,

right? There's nobody who's passionately voting on the, they need to get rid of self-custody platform. So I asked John Deaton about this in the interview that I posted yesterday for anyone who didn't watch it. He's obviously running against Elizabeth Warren. Now, I was surprised as a politician who has to, I guess, tow some of the line, he flat out said, listen, Jamie Dimon writes Elizabeth Warren's bill. This is about bank control. There's no way they're going to let this stuff exist if they win. And at the end of the day, it's really about central bank digital currencies, which Elizabeth Warren has said out loud. Now, that was further than I would have been even willing to go. And he's running against her for this, you know, partially for this very reason. So, James, to your point, I think it's about control because there's no way anybody's political

strategist looks at this and goes, you know, it's going to get us votes today going after Robin Hood or cracking down on self-custody because that's not popular with anyone. But that's not it. It's about control. You know, they will they will concede popularity for control every day. As long as they all get control. Right. So I put in our chat a tweet that I put out this morning because there was an absolutely brilliant satire uh you know satirical tweet about uh how evil wallets are and i mean by wallets i mean like the leather things or the canvas things i mean this kind of wallet right and so the the and it's it's absolutely worth reading you know that you if you do the show more. But basically, the argument is cash is dramatically better for money laundering than than crypto, certainly Bitcoin, et cetera.

Not even close. It's really well written. Awesome. But my point is, yes, absolutely. But understand that the same people who don't want you to be able to invest in crypto don't want you to be able to move money in any way that they can't literally see everything. Remember the $600 report, your Zelle and PayPal? These are people, they want cash to be illegal. They want control. So if you vote for Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, you are voting for a government that wants to control you. Now, you could, I don't care what

your politics are. I mean, I personally don't like to talk about politics in depth about this stuff. I'm not like Ryan Selkis, who's like gone on and whatever. But look, at the end of the day, he's a Biden voter. Well, he's a Trump voter now. I'm saying so you can see which way the tide is turning in this. Right. I mean, the reality is, is if you want to preserve your economic freedom, if you don't want an administration that is literally going to take a mandate, if you get if you got a blue wave in November, effectively assume that your economic freedom is gone. And if that matters to you, then understand which way to vote. Now, there may be issues that matter more to you. I don't know what they would be, but because to me, that is probably the most important one, but it is what it is. This move solidifies it. There's no, they're

now, you know, the old expression crossing the Rubicon, they have crossed the Rubicon. And that's why I'm so fired up this morning, because I was not expecting to come in and talk about politics. But when I see literally the one firm who represents, who effectively is the average American investor and the starter investor being told that, yeah, we know you tried to do this a compliant way and you therefore did it a different way, but we're going to go after you anyway. And I allowed people to do that, allow people to put a lot of money in it. And it's not like they've made a secret of it. Crypto has been a huge revenue driver for Robinhood for years now. So for them to come after them now, it's basically

like, what's the point here? There's only one point. They're basically saying, you know what, we have enough of this. We want to stop it. We think that America shouldn't be allowed to use this stuff. And they're drawing a line in the sand. I find it interesting that we're seeing this series of Wells notices yet, but that we haven't seen the actual court cases, which does obviously take a bit of time. So Wells notices effectively saying we're considering, you know, going after you guys. Maybe they're doing it for that political reason, but actually don't have the will to file the cases right before the election or with the stretched. You know, they probably are filing. It just takes time. The reality is, is political show, but do you believe that RFK will be given any sort of platform to run? No. I have a little bit of inside baseball there.

I would have said no, but I happen to be in Puerto Rico largely with the RFK political machine. And I can tell you that there's a lot of money and a lot of people, certainly down here and in the United States, who believe it's going to be very, very surprising, assuming, which they believe he will, that he's on the ballot. Of course, there's a biased angle there from the people who support him, but he has a pretty large machine behind him and they're pissed off. I think that he has a legitimate chance personally. I'll make my decisions when the election time comes, but until we're close and I know the guy's not going to be on the ballot, that's the horse I'm supporting.

The one thing that helps me... I don't agree with everything the guy says by any stretch, but at least he's not one of those two guys. One thing that helps him in this election cycle, which I think the other two candidates are overlooking, is that nobody wants to debate, you know. So if Biden refuses to debate, then there's there's if there's no stage for the current candidates to be on, then that helps RFK, because typically it's just he's out of sight, out of mind if you're an independent candidate.

But you can be front and center along with everybody else as long as you can somehow stir up controversy or get the mainstream media to talk about you. And that's probably the biggest challenge right there. I mean, look, what matters here is a very simple question. And that is, are they overplaying their hand? You always have to look at this stuff because the truth is that Americans always, you know, people like cash for certain things. It always has been i mean you could you travel to you know like we were joking at formula one this week that you know there's still cash tip jars around and stuff and if that event i get i i don't know what the grand prix i haven't gone to the

grand prix in london but going to everything else i've gone to in london in uk or in europe uh it's almost impossible to use cash. You can, it exists, you can go to an ATM machine and get euro notes or get pound notes, but try going to a restaurant or an event or whatnot and using cash. You almost can't, right? But in America, you can. And that's kind of an interesting point. And so, you know, we all are crypto focused, but it's really freedom focused. It really is. It's about that. And why do they not want it? Well, there's two things. And it's funny crypto is stupid. It really is dumb. You're going to, you know, if you have capital gains in crypto, report them and pay them full stop. Because at the end of the day, the blockchain does not lie.

And, you know, I don't care which fiat on-ramp exchange you're using. There's going to be, you know, it's going to be reporting of it. You think you can get away with a barter economy with Bitcoin? You want to buy something serious? Good luck with that. The government's going to get their pound, their pound of flesh. They're going to. And frankly, it's easier for them to get it with Bitcoin than it is with, you know, with with with actual cash dollars. And so to me, it's kind of mind boggling that they're going down this path. They must think that people don't understand and are already ready to be led like the lambs to the slaughter.

It's sort of like, you know, all the arguments we have about about macro here. It's like people think no one's paying attention. They can print to infinity. It won't matter. I mean, literally, that's what MMT is. They say, well, you know, it's everything's a denominator. So since we own the denominator, it doesn't matter. That's why. and I'm going to bring it right back to your first thing, Scott, I'm teeing you back up. That's why we all were like so horrified by the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors not being able to answer the question. The question he was asked was, if you could print money, why do you need to, you know, why do you need to pay it back? Yeah. But the scariest part about that, which which i think everyone watched we watched it here on friday actually on the show

that was jared bernstein a you have to wonder if he's actually that ignorant or if he's just terrified to give the correct answer because it would horrify people so badly but b is that the person asking the questions as you mentioned before she's further down the MMT curve than him and is criticizing him for basically not being MMT enough. That's the context, right? She's like, why legend if we can just print it and pay the bills? Right. It's it's absolute crazy town. It makes you feel that you literally have to own some Bitcoin, whether it's just to say this is insane or to protect yourself. And so, yes, I think Bitcoin can go to $150,000 this year or this cycle if all this madness

happens. But I bet Mike maybe disagrees. And I think the macro says maybe $150,000 is a really high target. But I think that rational thought says, screw this, it could go higher. So Bitcoin has been underperforming the S&P 500 and NASDAQ for a couple of years now, if you just look on the ratio basis. And that's a bit of a problem. That's why I have to relate to, I want to see it really do well versus beta. Now that we're past this perfect storm for higher prices, that's over. As far as regulation, we approve the ETFs in this country. Just let them beat each other up. That's the American way. It'll be fine. That's one thing. Let's not ad nauseum dig into that too much. And to me, it's just a matter of time that Ethereum ETFs

will be launched. And there'll be problems in the meantime. But to get to 150, I think that means that maybe the S&P 500 needs another 30%. We're at that stage right now where it's all about beta. And I want to point the key thing I love in cryptos, as we were speaking, I had to pull up my coinmarketcap.com, sort on volume when I noticed Tether is now $111 billion. That's been the most enduring trend in all cryptos. It's the most widely traded crypto. It's the US dollar.

You can trade it 24-7. And any European politician, I'm sorry, any American politician that messes that up is just an idiot. And the history will judge them accordingly. Just don't worry about it. I mean, just the one thing that's been enduring in all cryptos

is this base layer is the bucks. So, okay. And what do they invest in? Treasuries. Okay. And if you're a politician messing with that, you've got a problem. But that's the key thing

I always like to point out as an ex-accountant. Anytime you sell anything, particularly if there's an electronic ledger, the number one thing the IRS looks for is your cost basis. And if you think they are not, if you don't have a cost basis, they assume it's zero. Good luck. That's just life. And they pointed out. And that's from a guy who saw his brother's bank account when I was in a trading business get wiped out because he wasn't paying his taxes. It's just the way it is. You got to pay your taxes. You got to follow the laws.

And OK, so overall, big picture. But for Bitcoin to get to that level, I think it does have the long term definable diminishing supply, increasing demand and adoption. But right now, we have to admit one thing that's very rare is for that S&P 500 to sustain 20% above its 100-week moving average. Every lesson in history, except for aberrations around COVID, when it gets there, you don't want to be extra on. Particular volatility is extremely low. Interest rates are really high.

And interest rates in the rest of the world are plunging in their bonds. It's just the signals here to me are towards deflation. And the top leading indicator is Bitcoin. Now, if we do get the backup in beta, if Bitcoin cannot go down as much on a risk adjusted basis, that's a win. And so far it is. And I just look at the only major commodity still at record highs is gold. And it's up another 1% this morning. It's interesting, Mike.

We have this sort of push and pull about how this collapse will happen, right? I'm down here, obviously, everybody's like hardcore libertarian, they moved to Puerto Rico for a reason, right? You don't just make that move unless you deeply. So we talked about these things pretty deeply at dinner with quite a few people that would surprise you guys who are down here. It seems the consensus here is that runaway inflation is coming, not deflation. And none of them can wrap their head around how deflation would come outside of potentially a real estate crisis. So I'll tell you the number one way it's going to come. First of all, every lesson of history

is pointed towards deflation after significant inflation in the back of the biggest money pump in history. The book, The Boom and Bust by Quinn, the other book, The Price of Time, I forget the author of that one. Chancellor points that out. There's many of them that point that out. And we're tilting that way. It's already happening in China. You can't believe their data. Look at their bond yields, 2.3%.

And then you have to look at the number one thing that really, what sparked that deflation that kicked off in 2006, 7, 8, was the US housing market went up too much. And it started leading way down. What's been leading everything and everywhere in the world right now is the U.S. stock market. So to me, deflation starts with the U.S. stock market having a normal reversion correction. It brings on everything. And if it doesn't happen, Fed's not going to ease until it does. That's the lose-lose right now. And then I just point out how expensive it is versus most other assets. So let's unpack that for a second, though, because, Mike,

I agree that there is a significant risk to deflation, but it will be very short lived. There is no way we can continue with the deficits that we have if we have a deflationary event that causes a collapse in the economy. There's just absolutely mathematically no way. And I think you would agree with me in long-term that, look, when you have an economic downturn, what happens? Your mandatory expenses, your entitlements go up by 8% to 12%. And at the very same time that your tax receipts go down by 8% to 12%, we're already running $2 trillion plus deficits. That's going to put us up over the $3 trillion range. What do they have to do? They're going to come in and print. Any kind of sharp downturn in the economy will be a sharp upturn and a V recovery because so much printing is going to happen. Why are they going to do that? Because we must keep high inflation to continue the madness of the debt problem that we have.

There's just no mathematical way around it. You have to keep high structural inflation. So therein lies the question on the bond yields. And so what happens to the rest of the world? We are, the dollar stays strong perpetually, and it crushes so many economies around the world that are dependent on it and need dollars. And that's just reality. And banks. And our own banks. That's happening.

I'd just like to use one good example, a little bit of pushback on that, James, is we are turning Japanese. Yeah, I understand that. But we're a different economy than Japan. And Japan could be doing what they're doing for a very, very long time before they collapse. And I agree that this can go on for a long time. Absolutely. It can go on for a very long time. But it would be easy for us to spiral upwards in our debt to GDP if we don't continue to systematically allow for perpetual inflation. And that's just reality.

So, I mean... Can we really turn Japanese as the reserve? I mean, can't Japan do what Japan did because they're not... The answer is no. The answer is no. You can't if you're the reserve. But more importantly, Japan did what they did

with a culture of... a huge culture of savings and an unbelievable amount of money saved in the postal system, et cetera. A population that was trained toward duty and to the government. It's a completely different- Yeah. So hold on. So Japan's housing market collapsed, and that's what caused them to have no inflation for all these years. What happened when our housing market collapsed? The entire world collapsed. The whole world.

We took basically the whole world down with us. That's right. Look, I think that people need to remember something. I don't like to be Pollyanna-ish. I don't want to be Chicken Little-ish. But the reality is, if you go back and look at Germany in the 20s, they were saying exactly the same shit I just heard before we went into hyperinflation. The mark was the strongest currency in the world, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And basically, it's always the same. If you read The Road to Surf, it doesn't matter which one you read. I will go back and repeat Milton Friedman. Inflation is always a monetary phenomenon. If you are printing more money, the denominator goes down. The issue with all of this is how long can you kick the can down the road? And the one thing you cannot do and get away with is publicly say the quiet part out loud and get people to believe you. Because once every human being on the planet believes that the government says, you know what, we don't need to do this, then all of a sudden, that's when inflation starts to spiral. That's when-

You're getting the question every day now. I get this question every day now. If we're buying our own bonds, what's the point? Why don't they just print money and give it to the banks? Just print money and give it to them. Why do we need to go around with this charade? Then we just turn to a banana republic and the confidence in the U.S. dollar collapsed. Banana world. You said it before, world, because Mike is right. We are as bad and as annoying as we look at our fiscal situation. We are still the best of a bad bunch.

I will go back to the way I phrase this constantly. And I'm not the only one who phrases it this way by any means. 1971, the world embarked on an experiment of 100% fiat currency. In the 5,000 years of recorded history before that, before 1971, there was always somebody out there with hard money. That is a fact. And it is also a fact that every major empire that started to devalue their hard money collapsed. And so, yeah, you know, this is an interesting experiment. Can we continue to promote it? But most of the people who are, quote, economists, certainly in the most of the people who are out there who are in policy positions around the world have never lived in a world before when there was any form of sound money. And so we have this dynamic. And yeah, look, personally, we're all better off. I don't want to see anything close to the kind of upheaval that those Bitcoin advocates are

talking about Bitcoin being worth 5 million in a year or two. I mean, whatever. If Belay was going to win his idiotic bet, which obviously he lost, it would have meant that really, really bad crap would have happened and immense human suffering. First of all, I don't believe that will happen. I certainly hope it doesn't happen. But I do think that Bitcoin delinking and doing what it's done three times in its past, coincidentally, on the same cycle, a four-year cycle, which may have something to do with the way its monetary policy is, where it delinks. I mean, Mike, when you talk about Bitcoin being outperforming the S&P and you're going back to the price from 2021, what you're doing is saying, okay, since its last cycle high, Bitcoin is underperformed.

Well, sure, it's true. We're still right back at the price in a trading range now with its last cycle high. The only difference is, is the hash rate, the number of ownership, every fundamental about Bitcoin and adoption is now four or more times more valuable. So all you have to ask yourself the question, if we're going to get a cycle high this time, where will it be? My answer is somewhere over 200,000, because that would literally be average based upon what it's done in the past. So I'm not talking about, you know, you can't draw a chart where you look there, you have to go back at least to 2015, if you want to start drawing charts, because you have to take into account these cycles. That's the only point that I'll make there. But other than that, I mean, everything

you're saying is true except for the fact there's a lot more dollars, a lot more euro, a lot more yen, a lot more pounds, a lot more every piece of paper out there. And that does mean something. So I have to follow that a little bit because that's the main reason I'm still very bullish gold. And I have to point out that I just like to look at, if you look at the Bitcoin divided by S&P 500 ratio,

the peak was in 2021 and we had a lower peak later in 2021. We've had a lower peak this year. So I look at it from a giant value at risk model. It's not showing the big, I would like it to show in a bull market and And it's showing the opposite. It's showing divergent weakness. I look at the same thing at Bitcoin versus gold. Bitcoin is doing the same thing. It's showing divergent weakness. I'm not picking a point in time. I'm just showing those highs in a ratio.

So I look at it as a giant value at risk model. That's a problem. I like to see it do something better. So if I'm putting on structuring positions and expecting to say, hey, maybe if I was along 100 units, it has to be 500. And typically in the past, I could put on a third or less of that and Bitcoin get the same performance. I'll do that. But now you're getting less and less. It's diminishing. And that to me is the fact of what's happening. I'm very concerned that all we need is just the normal rebalance of the markets. That's just the S&P to do what it always does in bull markets. Is that correct, Ludo? And then we'll see who's wearing clothes.

Right now, I'm pointing out that what we had for a good high in Bitcoin was significant. And we're at the risk of, I think it might make another new high, but the risk is greater reversion at the moment. The problem, bottom line is, it still trades about three times the volatility of beta. And so we got to get over this. And if you just look at these ratios, it's showing divergent weakness on the last few highs versus beta. I need to make a sentence. If you take what you just said, that is why I am almost eye-wateringly, unbelievably more bullish about Bitcoin now than I've ever been before. You basically just encapsulated Bitcoin is cheap, cheap, cheap compared to its fundamentals.

That's because essentially what you're saying is it hasn't gone up. It hasn't gone up nearly as much as you would have expected of all those things. It's true. I think it's on sale. I think it's a discount. And that's how I look at it long term. Now, do I use leverage? No. And I keep saying it. I mean, look, our clients at CoinRoutes are experts in understanding and utilizing leverage in order to smooth out arbitrages. And I always am staring at leverage on a constant basis. It's really important to understand it because what we see today is all the leverage players for weeks now have been leaning short. And the longer that goes, the better it is for a long-term bull run. Because what you're saying is why. People are saying it's that old meme that I love. And it doesn't matter what two prices are. You know, it's the one where the right side of the cartoon, there's a desk that says Bitcoin on sale for, it used to say $60,000. Now, you know, whatever, Bitcoin on sale is $60,000.

And there's a multitude of people lining up to buy it. And on the left side, there's Bitcoin on sale at $30,000. And there's one guy looking around saying, well, maybe I shouldn't be buying it here because it's cheap. When things are cheap is when, you is when people are less excited about it. But you're right. Those value at risk models will all of a sudden start tilting toward buying Bitcoin if Bitcoin starts sustainably trading at double where it is today. And that to me is the problem with those models because, as I've said,

repeat after me, Bitcoin trades like an option on its future adoption. That's right. So, you know, but yes, but that's why I'm so I'm so bullish. But it's also why I think that absent a catalyst, we could stay like this for months and we do the show every week. And so I'm going to be a broken record. I've been saying it for two months. That was my base case. But meanwhile, Bitcoin surpasses one billion transactions process 800 weeks after launch. That's red meat for you, Dave. But I mean, this is astounding, right? I mean, the level of adoption in the amount of time still shows, as Dave loves to point out, look at hash rate, look at transactions.

Everything's pointing up, even if the price isn't necessarily on a day to day basis. I mean, I don't know any other way to phrase it. It really is that simple. Because we're getting to this point. The reason I disagree with Mike on the Bitcoin price and agree on many of the other things is because of the narrative of what Bitcoin is or isn't. You know, it's like, if you want to understand,

like, for example, if you remember, I think it was almost a year ago when everyone was talking about software, that Jason Lowry book. And we had a show and we talked about it. And I said, well, listen, you know, unless I'm crazy, doesn't this mean that Bitcoin's blockchain could have other use cases other than simply value? Right. And now we have Michael Saylor talking about using Bitcoin as an ID solution. Well, guess what? I mean, you know, now all of a sudden you go from the argument that your friend Peter Schiff likes to make that, well, you know, gold is used for jewelry and Bitcoin. What's it used for? Well, OK, maybe there are some uses, whether it's inscribing JPEGs, which I think is kind of silly, but it's whatever. But ID solutions, you know, the blockchain itself has value and it is important to understand that.

But in the macro sense, I think that we cannot underestimate the importance of MMT narratives, the importance of inflation narratives being used to justify. I think that what you're seeing now is, and James said something before that was incredibly important, and we have to come back to it. Japan has managed to intervene and keep the yen from escalating away. If you think that the Japanese prime minister and head of the Ministry of Finance didn't have a conference call with Yellen and Powell last week, then you are delusional. If you think that the tone, because remember, the Fed doesn't, their main tool is jawboning, is talking. If you think that that tone wasn't dovish to help Japan not go through or have it go really badly, then you're crazy. Because they basically said, listen, if you have four stuff, the only option we have is to sell dollars and sell our treasury.

Do you want us to do that? No. Well, we don't want to do it either. Well, there's one other option they may not disclose right away, and that's swap lines. Well, right. They're going to probably be doing it. They probably, but they're open, which is a question of whether or not they've used them. Right. And by the way,

for those who don't understand what that means, the TLDR is it means more liquidity sloshing into the market. Look, I think, I know that Mike is, or I think Mike is a long term Bitcoin optimist. What we're all arguing over is whether Bitcoin as a risk on asset, whether it gets impaired in the crosshairs of a stumbling economy short term. Long term, though, even if it does, that volatility, in my mind, just produces opportunity for long term capture, capture of long term value. Because you look at if Bitcoin collapses down to $30,000, $40,000, that's a tremendous opportunity, in my opinion, to grab some deep value on a long term asset that will hold its value and will continue to appreciate in long periods of time.

So just give it a few years. And that's and that's it. It produces opportunity, the volatility. And that's a good thing. I think one thing that has to be commented, we didn't mention, you know, in in in terms of this. I'm sorry. I was just like to keep my thoughts together. There was a lot of conversation, you know, well, I'm trying to encapsulate my thoughts on this. I mean, you're talking about opportunity. There is a lot of talk about Bianco Research was talking about what will happen when the ETF holders are losing money. They're going to sell en masse and they're going

to exacerbate volatility to the downside. And certain people like yours truly said, you're out of your freaking mind, Jim. These are people who are buying it. Even the retail, when it gets to RIAs, it's going to be even longer term. But retail, yeah, sure, some will sell. And there were headlines this morning, record outflows in Bitcoin ETFs last week. Yeah, sure. What did the price do last week? Nothing. Yeah, it was a dip. It got bought and we're back where we were. And the fact is, at one point last week, half of all the Bitcoin ETF buyers were underwater and yet no cascade happened. And yet we still have, we're only beginning this march of on-ramps for the ETFs. We've just begun. So the catalyst that we've talked about, this positive catalyst that's

already played out, it hasn't already played out. It's playing out. And the amount of capital that can come into the space, once you get large institutions that are onboarding their clients and their customers i mean we're talking about the jp morgan's the goldman's of the world that's going to it it just creates additional liquidity into bitcoin that is not there right now and so and we're just now seeing some of that because we're passing that magic 90, a hundred day mark where they've had their quiet period to see if the thing collapses, if there's a problem operationally, if something happens with custody, we're past that. So now they're getting what that means. I mean, we literally saw weeks of stories and people in

the mainstream financial media, the FP basically made it their base case that when there was a dip in Bitcoin, the ETF buyers new to the market will panic sell and it will exacerbate volatility. People made that claim. I mean, I think they did very briefly, like you said, and it went right back up just like anything else. So I think your retail, I mean, there was over 500 million in a day of outflows. That's retail saying, I don't want to play this game. And those people were always the short-term speculators anyways. And we're never going to stick around for the right reasons, which is why I sort of laugh when Bitcoiners get mad at people who trade meme coins because

they're completely different markets. And I laugh at the idea that someone who's trading meme coins in a casino would have been a bit bit pointer today if meme coins didn't exist right well that kid you got to pull up that casino guy the guy dumping 20 000 into his account and the casino just an instant yet we we're worried about on ramps to to uh to robin hood but and then just two days later you have 500 and i mean 520 um, 520 million outflows. And just two days later, you have 378 million inflows just two days later. So it's just, it flipped, you know, that's the shift. The Bianco narrative is the same as shift, by the way, he laid it out on my, and it's very popular Puerto Rico narrative, by the way, that the ETFs will cause more volatility to the downside when

there's a major dip, but, uh, there's not even enough money in them right now to test that. We'll see if BlackRock and Fidelity are right when pensions, endowments, and sovereign wealth come, if they panic at a 7% drop and sell billions of dollars to Bitcoin. I have my doubts about it. The simple fact is that the people who are buying- Those guys are aircraft carriers. They do not turn quickly. Aircraft carriers, it will almost certainly dampen volatility, meaning that as they get this, they go. When those people are fully invested, the idea that it will be balancing. So if someone says, I want to have 3% in Bitcoin and Bitcoin doubles, they have to sell half of it.

That will happen. And that will actually cushion volatility upside on similarly if they say i have three percent in bitcoin and bitcoin drops in half they're gonna buy and so it's the opposite it literally is the opposite the reason asset allocations that matter and what's going on with gold is new buyers or people who uh you know it's it's not part of that 60-40 portfolio. But once something is part of a mechanistic portfolio, it dampens volatility, full stop. And so if that happens, it happens and we'll understand it. And I think you should welcome it.

Agree. And now I'm going to go to the pool for some meetings before it rains, inevitably by noon, and I spend the rest of the day underwater, hopefully only in the physical sense and not the portfolio sense. Gentlemen, thank you. As always, a pleasure. Mike, James, David, I don't think that was necessarily the direction that the show was intended to go in, but we don't really have an intended direction. We don't take direction well, Scott. You watch the all-in podcast. They've got you know six topics we just talk and see what happens then we run out of time and hope for the best uh for next week people people love it i do certainly it uh matches my add

personality exceptionally well but uh guys thank you uh interested to see uh how the coming weeks develop you know i think we're going to probably unfortunately be talking about a lot more politics whether we like it or not so uh it's coming on every show, every social media channel, every everything. That's what's going to be driving the narrative. From Mike, James, Dave, guys, thank you. See you tomorrow morning. Bye, everyone. Let's go.