The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Buying Frenzy - Is The Dollar Doomed? | Macro Monday

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

Join Crypto Is Macro now: https://www.cryptoismacro.com/ Tensions in the Middle East are rising, but markets are shrugging it off – and crypto is booming. Host Noelle Acheson is joined by Mike McGlone, Dave Weisberger, and special guest Peter Tchir to break down what this means for Bitcoin, the Fed, and global stability. Will the Fed go more dovish? Is crypto now seen as a safe haven? We’ve got expert insights and bold predictions on today’s Macro Monday. Noelle Acheson: https://x.com/noelleinmadrid Dave Weisberger: https://x.com/daveweisberger1 Mike McGlone: https://x.com/mikemcglone11 Peter Tchir: https://x.com/TFMkts ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEKDAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/ ►► Arch Public Unleash algorithmic trading. Discover how algorithms used by hedge-funds are now accessible to traders looking for unparalleled insights and opportunities! 👉https://archpublic.com/ ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. Use code '10OFF' for a 10% discount. 👉https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://x.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.

Hello everyone, I'm Noah Latcheson, author of the Crypto is Macro Now newsletter, filling in for Scott again. You'll be relieved to hear he should be back next week. It's good to be here with all of you so much to talk about as always before we dive in, do please hit the subscribe button. And if you've already done that right next to it, you'll find the like button. If you like the show, do please hit that as well. And with that, hi, good to see you without James today, but really glad to be here with Dave and Mike. How are you guys doing? I'm doing okay.

Excellent. And Mike is coming into us from Austin focusing on. So there right now, their core inflation target or expectation for 2025 is 3.5% and 2.8% for 2026. They expect unemployment. This is the Fed she's saying is probably drop up to around 4.7% for this year. She says they are somewhat potentially expecting a recession in 2026, though she doesn't think Chairman Powell is going to say that. Real GDP 2025, expecting around 1.3%. And based on their estimates, she thinks the Fed should be cutting 20 to 30 basis points this year and maybe 100 next year based on current estimates, and that's probably going to show up in the dot plot But one thing she did note

I think was significant is the majority of the FOMC is very hawkish and I do enjoy that My takeaway from that. It was just point focusing on what the Mr. Pres or mr. Trump is only focusing on one person But the whole FOMC is somewhat reluctant to cut rates So Iro Jersey pointed out he thinks that and he's been nailing this said long bond 5% is attracting a lot of duration Attention expects that's going to continue. So he doesn't see that US long bond saying saying much above 5% Where and he did see that the Fed is going to be easing. There will be a lower term structure and he's still expecting the bull steepening to kick in by the end of this year. So Gina

Martin-Adam is not in today, but our chief equity quant guy, Christopher Kane, focused on what he said. take a point out higher oil is not necessarily bad for stocks. And he pointed out, if we continue at this pace, we might have the fastest recovery from a 15% drawdown in the S&P 500 ever. The last two cases that were close was 1982. I remember that one vaguely was was a little bit younger. And then 1998, the Asian crisis. I focused on the low price cure trajectories that I wrote about at the start of 2025. I'm focusing on my mid turnout looks. And that's clearly in the grains. We're basically still heading towards that low price cure trajectory because prices went up too much. And now we still

have overhang of supply and demand picking up so so much and similar crude oil I just focused on what I wrote about at the start of the year still a key estimate fact in this in that space is demand estimate revisions remain downward, supply estimate revisions remain upward, it's clearly a bull market we've just had a spike is it going to reduce supply and increase demand? No. And so I point out, I fully expect price of crude oil to continue to gravitate towards those 2019 levels, which was the average price was $57 a barrel. And the US cost of production, which is, as Dave points out and knows very well, that that's usually what happens in commodities,

they go to their cost of production, but typically you have to get below those levels to change that. And then I shifted over and focused a little bit on that on gold, still quite the bullish market. I think a key thing to push gold lower was if the U.S. stock market continues to make record highs and stays there and rates stay high, why buy gold in that environment? The key thing to push gold above $3,500 an ounce is if US stock market rolls over. And one of the best indicators for, I think, the stock market remains Bitcoin. And that's it for me. Back to you.

A couple of questions though, before I throw over to Peter, who has just joined us, and I give Peter Cheere a chance to introduce himself. Mike, is the team worried about tariffs or more worried about the escalation of geopolitical tension? What's the simmering concern? All the above the tariffs, I would say it's much more the latter. The obviously the things you cannot predict. Tariffs are much more predictable. And as far as what the team is thinking about them, what Anna Wang said, she that the Fed typically when they sense short-term

inflation, it's their provocative to preempt that inflation, but it's not really in their forecast. So they're staying away, clearly staying away. The key theme I point out is from a tariff standpoint is there's only one force that really made Mr. Trump pull back on those tariffs and that's when the stock market dropped. And it still means so much. So he's emboldened now with the strong stock market.

So overall, it's like the focus from our team and the Fed means is we can't predict the geopolitics. Right now they remain isolated. I mean, if you get a nuclear war, sure, I can't predict that. But from an energy standpoint, from my standpoint, us energy traders know every time you get a nuclear war, sure, I can't predict that. But from an energy standpoint, from my standpoint, us energy traders know every time you get a spike and things like this, it's almost always been a chance to clean up, clean out shorts, reset the producers have been

selling forward like in the land I'm in right now in Texas, have chances to sell forward and bring out more production. And it usually accelerates those preexisting fair market trends. And meanwhile, we've got potential sparks coming from Canada and the G7 meeting this week. Peter, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Everyone, I'd like to introduce Peter Chear.

Could you tell everyone a bit about what you do and how you got here, Peter? Perfect. So my background is much more in the fixed income and credit space. I wound up trading, probably traded a trillion dollars of credit during the financial crisis. I've since been mostly working with asset managers and large corporations kind of advising them. And I'm at Academy Securities. And the neat part there is we have 30 some odd retired generals, admirals, two CIA people. So you get a pretty good sense, I think, of what we think is going

on geopolitically and then able to incorporate that into my macro outlook. One of the most powerful contact books in the industry for sure. Peter, can you bring us up to speed on your macro outlook? I know you probably missed part of what Mike was saying, but what's your take on the number one concerns in the macro market now and what assets could that spill over into? You know, I think right now and I'm seem like we're making it through the Middle East crisis or, you know, the fighting. And I think that's a relatively positive and I think it actually makes sense.

Right. Israel clearly has the upper hand in terms of where we're standing in the fighting. It's been very curious that the proxies have been very, very quiet. So I think we're actually starting to price and OK, Iran is going to be afraid to escalate this. Iran's not going to block the straits of hermose. China's probably been whispering in their ear not to do that anyways. We're kind of moving on to from there. And I think now we can kind of look where are we with the Fed and I actually think we're

going to see a fairly dovish Fed this week. It's I think people got higher oil prices wrong you know, I think the Fed screwed up transitory a lot but they will ignore this movement prices in oil and away from that you that, inflation is under control. If we remain at this 10% global tariff rate, which seems likely we're probably going to get more pauses, I think it takes time for that tariff inflation, even if it comes to work its way to the system. So we've got that coming down. And then it's ironic, when when I look at the jobs data I see nothing but weakness in the jobs data The only single part of the jobs data in the past month that's been positive was the establishment survey headline number So that's what we all see revisions were awful household was awful

ADP was you know weak and the Establishment survey one the response rates incredibly low so I don't trust that and they rely heavily on the birth-death model to create jobs and You can even Google it or you know go into chat GPT and look at it There's a lot of kind of known issues with that most noticeably to me are twofold one It really hasn't picked up the gig economy So I think now when jobs get weak people actually apply to start their own businesses not because they're gonna start their own actual business But they want to be an uber driver

They want to do something so I think the Fed has a lot of ammunition to switch to a more dubbish tone It would keep Trump off their back a little bit as well, which I'm sure that's not driving their decision But it would be nice not to have Trump yelling at you every day So I'm looking for a dubbish fed this week and plenty of other things to worry about for poor chair for chair Powell I actually was looking this morning at the chart of the number of prime age workers So that's actually coming down. I mean prime age and the number of full-time workers is also coming down So I totally agree with you. There are signs of weakness even if the headline news is good and before I throw over to Dave Peter What's your out? What's your personal outlook regardless of what you think the Fed will do?

What's your personal outlook for rate cuts this year? I think we're going to get three to four. I think we get one as soon as July. Again, I'm very, very nervous about the job situation. The other things I look at, it may sound insane, but you look at law school applications, they've gone way up. And that tells me if you're a graduating student, you're not sure what to do and you can't find a good job, I might as well apply to law school, MBA school.

So all these signals to me tell me that there's weakness, you indeed.com, you look through there, you see some weakness. And it's not just entry level workers, it's white collar workers. So I think we are seeing a slowing economy, that's gonna force the head feds hand. We get three to four cuts.

I'm not sure that's gonna turn out that great for the market, because I do think there is this overall slowing. The one thing about all these tariffs and the uncertainty, I think every company's encouraged not to be aggressive or maybe discouraged about being aggressive. I think that all feeds into a slowing economy though. Dave, what do you think this means for risk assets?

Well, I mean, the market's telling you what it means. The market is continues to price pretty much. All systems go on the liquidity side. As Mike is fond of pointing out and is correct, the market cap to GDP of the S&P continues to be in worrisome territory. There hasn't been anything major. continues to be in worrisome territory. There hasn't been anything major. Volatility, both the stock market volatility and Bitcoin volatility have been really low. Excuse me. Looking at Bitcoin volatility, all I can say is we've been in a range of like a 3% or 4%

range in Bitcoin now for going on six weeks. I mean, you know, last year we saw a range and we said, oh, okay, well, this is a range and this is boring. And people were worried, but put it in perspective, the range was somewhere in the neighborhood of a 20 percent range or a 25 percent range that went in for the summer. And we went in a three or four percent range, you know now for like five or six weeks that is crazy low and So you and the stock market too? I mean, you know a ten percent dip, you know

Cause people to freak out and thinking that was going to force it and Mike always talks about what it would take to get the Fed to be forced Personally, I don't think the Fed is forced to do anything You know, it's a question now. It's I don't think the Fed is forced to do anything. It's a question now, it's almost a personality thing. The underlying jobs numbers are clearly showing softening. Peter highlighted a few of those. It's going to be weird data because in the jobs numbers, of course, illegal and legal immigrants, there's no distinguishing between them. It's just what the companies report.

And so, companies that lose, like meat packers in California, losing 75 people who are here illegally, I mean, it's gonna make the numbers kind of messy, but the labor force participation rate is still low, has been for a while. As Peter mentioned, people going to school differently is part of that.

So we'll see. I mean, everyone, I don't think we've ever seen this amount of political pandering. I mean, it's one thing, we've had presidents, Biden saying it and Trump saying it. We've had other people saying, hey, lower rates help the economy. But this has been at every measure of the of the of the administration.

I mean, you have the Treasury secretary saying the Fed should lower should lower rates here, right? You know, that's kind of a unique political situation. And one wonders, you know, where they're coming from. Personally, I still think that liquidity is going to be more relevant than the actual price of the interest rates. I mean, I'm worried about, you know, when you get rid of the supplemental liquidity ratio, etc., you know, what goes on with reverse repo. I just don't see any version of the world where they could avoid injecting more liquidity into the market.

And so from a risk asset perspective, the question is, what's going to be the beneficiary? I think it should be Bitcoin and gold. Bitcoin has been trading recently more risk asset even gold, although that depends on what timeframe and whether you put a lag in there. But that's sort of my base case is you're sitting in a range. And I think that geopolitics continues to be very relevant, right? And there's no question about it. I mean, I would think, I'd be very curious, because given the number of people in your company, Peter, who have significant military experience,

I mean, I don't know what they think about what's going on, but this is a big deal. I mean, in the 80s, the same thing happened. People forget that, that Israel took out Iran's nuclear program in the 80s because it was making strides. And that turned out to be a major stabilizing influence in the Middle East. And so whether that's going to be the same here, I do not know. I am not Karnak the Magnificent. I don't have that sort of crystal ball.

But your firm, you probably talk about this every day. It is kind of a big deal. And we'll see what happens. But if the straits of Hermos continue to flow, oil will fairly quickly retrace its recent gains. And the inflation cover will be there for the Fed to do something if they want to. That's my overall base macro case.

I think it's by far more important if it's impact on the price of oil than the other conflicts that are going on around the world, but who the hell knows? At the end of the day, war is really good for risk assets because war means lots of destruction and it means lots of money printing. Now, should it be? Is that a good thing? No, of course it's not a good thing.

But as Scott is fond of pointing out, we're supposed to talk about macro and markets and not the human cost, the human cost being undeniably bad from war. So I am not, this is not me saying Weisberger says war is good. No, no, this is not Weisberger saying war is good. This is Weisberger saying as unfortunate as it is and as bad as it is, it is actually good for assets that will, you're looking for, you know,

liquidity to be injected because it basically forces it. Peter, do you want to react to that? Yeah it basically forces it. Peter, do you wanna react to that? Yeah, I think when you make a greater point that we all have to separate the bad things that come out of war. And it's hard when we talk about this from a pure military strategic standpoint, but we'll try and do that.

And I think you're kind of spot on that this has the opportunity to kind of clean up what's been going on in the Middle East. It's for the last two years, there's been really a shift that it's more Iran that's isolated. The Saudis, most of the Middle East really wants to move forward. They are trying to develop a post-fossil fuel economy.

Saudi Arabia wants to become the data center capital of the world. So I think this pressure on Iran could very well work. I think that's good. And this fits into one theme that we've been talking to a lot You know at Academy is deterrence and I think we lost deterrence. It probably started a lot under the Obama era Right, you can't deter and say well if you cross this line, we're gonna do something. Oh you cross that line

Well, we're gonna move back. So deterrence is a very kind of you know tricky thing There's a really good piece out there on the Rand Institute you can find. The reality is, right, you have to be clear that you have this capability and you are not afraid to use it. And I think we kind of lost that, right? Every time our enemies saw this, they saw weakness on our part,

and you're starting to see, I think, now it's not necessarily us, but it's Israel leading the way here, and you have to use force. That force has to be there as a deterrent and the other thing that's kind of catching a little bit is We've been talking about China and everyone talks about will China invade Taiwan or not We don't think so we think there's a lot of question marks

But I think this weekend adds one more question mark right you had Russia You know everyone was very worried how you know strong they were gonna be they proved to be you know a little bit of a paper Tiger North Korean troops went to Russia. We're oh will that change it they were supposedly a disaster right they attacked en masse Very much like it was a world war one French warfare And they were completely gunned down and now you have Iran who had this vaunted missile capacity And we thought about a year ago when they launched that thousand missiles and drones That it was not a fake and that they wasn't well telegraphed on purpose, that they were actually expecting many to get through and they're just not that sophisticated. So if

you're China, are you really going to threaten and posture geopolitical might after seeing three other people have not been tested? And our generals point this out, and you know, it's unfortunate, but the US has been in war for the last 20 some odd years, right? There's been brief pieces, but we actually have a fighting force We understand, you know how to get this and I think I'm gonna butcher the term but it's you know Tactics is kind of for fun logistics is what really you know drives these we have that down pat It's very unclear anyone else does so I think this could actually If it works out and especially if we get some sort of regime change, really stabilize the geopolitical situation as deterrence comes back, and our enemies are maybe a little bit more cautious.

Yeah, and the difference between hardware and of course, software, and the legacy of each. Mike, what's your take on the potential impact of the shifts that we're seeing both in the South China seas and the Middle East? of the shifts that we're seeing both in the South China Seas and the Middle East? Well, I really like how Peter mentioned it. I'm going to bring up an event. I'm sure it's going to ring his bell and maybe you too, Dave. Operation Prane, Manthis, 1988, the US wiped out the Iranian Navy in about eight hours, and they came to terms after that. So I think that's what somewhat we're seeing from when you hear Trump say, let him fight it out. He knows, I think, that there's this complete upper hand. Let's not underestimate US intelligence, and this is going to be way over for Peter to adjust here. If they really want to go there, don't force us to test some of our new weapons that a lot of people would

love to try to test. They would just, please don't. And I knew that would get a little snicker, which is like, please don't, because we don't want to do that. But it is the world's most powerful military. And believe me, there's a lot of family members. It's in the family. Son of Marines, father of a US Marine, a son and a captain in the Army.

There's a lot of very motivated, dedicated, very smart people in this country that do never want to fight, but of course will do what they can to prevent it. So that's why I look at it from a market standpoint that and completely backing up, Dave, you know, we have I have a lot of family members in harm's way and we this is horrible, but we have to think from markets, which is focused on markets. What does it mean? And bottom line this is what Something has to escalate horribly and I just love how they people focus on the bulls who want to cover

Their longs and get short corral focus on potentially closing the straight of hormones. It's never happened And it would be suicidal for iran It would hurt china in exporting countries the most the gcc would be suicidal for Iran. It would hurt China in exporting countries the most. The GCC would be upset. And in the meantime, when people say that, in career violence, it's like, okay, sell. And that's what's happening so far. But to me, that's the macro that Peter started out and Dave mentioned. The macro is we do have a world heading towards recession. Clearly, estimates from, I think, global GDP are down to the lowest in 50 years or so outside of contraction 2% and the downward estimates remain US tariffs are there we've

had this spike in energy it's heading lower we've had this a little bit having to handle bounce in grains and goals the best performing asset maybe Bitcoin to the side means so far this year the key thing I want to push back on is if we do head towards this recession, which I think is inevitable, it's a matter of time, how long we can avoid it, but the markets can remain irrational for a while, then the key thing that's going to happen is I think here's what I'm expecting to happen from this is we have the markets completely priced in for a 10% increase in S&P 500. So the risk is it goes down 10%. Gold gets that. The Bitcoin hasn't figured it out yet and I

think when that if that happens Bitcoin was the first to re-lower. Right now it's all about buying the sky. We got to buy high and sell higher. And that's where I look over from my standpoint is it's still showing up in the fact that I'm concerned. I'll end with this. The key thing that's I don't want to go back from this year and say May 22nd was the high for Bitcoin and the high for bond yields because I'm still worried that that was a sign that you have this risk asset going up, risk assets go up, Fed actually has to tighten in that environment because it's creating inflation. And I think most of the smart money in the

world is realizing that I can lock in 5% on the T bond after an extraordinary period of markets doing very well and US risk assets and you have to back off. So at some point, if we can, if Misha can show some of those charts, I can talk to those that because I think it will dress for those subjects. And if not, we can just tilt over to the rest of the discussion. Well, I know Dave's going to want to react to that but Mike before I let you go first, the dollar surprised everyone last week by not jumping when Israel attacked Iran because it

is supposed to be the world's safe haven and it was a tiny blip but really not very much. What's your take on that lack of a reaction and where does it go from here? Well, it's part of the breakdown of the trend since the bottom of 2009. The dollar has been same chart syndrome with US stock market divided by the rest of the world. Now that's already started to roll over. The dollar's rolling over with that. And so dollar's in a bit of a bear market

and to think that US is gonna try to reset global trade without a weak dollar is kind of silly. So the Trump administration might not say it, but when you say you want to cut rates 100 basis points, that basically means it. The same thing. So to me, that's part of the reason that's wonderful for gold. It's maybe it's just much less of a factor for high volatile cryptos. I love when people point it out. For Bitcoin and things like it's like a scale one to ten, it's a one versus expected to bind. For gold, it's like a scale 1 to 10, it's a 1 versus the speculative buying. For gold, it's almost a 9 or 10, and somewhat for copper.

So I think that's going to continue. And the number one thing to really make that legitimize that weaker dollar and make it accelerate is if the US stock market rolls over. Dave, any pushback there? Well, I agree with him on the dollar 100%. I think that where Mike and I disagree is on the nature of Bitcoin. This notion that people are opting for 5% yields vis-a-vis Bitcoin is just, I mean, it's delusional.

I mean, the data is very, very indicative of that the money coming into Bitcoin are boomers and people who would be the ones that actually would want 5% interest rates and that the selling is coming from original holders of Bitcoin who are saying, you know, at $100,000, I could buy a house, I could buy a car, I could do this, I could de-risk my life. And so a lot of the OG hodlers, and this has been going on now for a large part of this rally every time we get to this point, it's been a rotation and that rotation matters. But I'll just say this, the reason the price is still here and we didn't get what would be the normal 20%, 30% pullback in the Bitcoin price from the all-time high, we didn't get that. Why didn't we get that?

Well, that's easy. We see it. It's because of corporate treasuries accumulating Bitcoin And if that trend continues the supply will not be there at these prices. Now, what do I mean if that continues? Simple math, you know sailor talked to 2400 see, you know CFOs and we are at less than 200 Who have even talked about buying Bitcoin? And so we're early there and those are at less than 200 who have even talked about buying Bitcoin. And so we're early there and those are the ones who showed up to actually listen. It's one of those things in a copycat market, companies that see stock prices, I mean, they want their stock prices to go up.

Every company does. And so that's a big deal. At the same time, the clock is ticking. We know that by the end of the summer All the banks will have you know plans in place and announcements to offer Bitcoin trading services and being allowed to do it Including you know firms like you know Academy You'll probably one of the last ones but you know The fact is every single broker dealer and you don't have to admit or deny this Peter

But if they're not talking about offering it when they look at Robinhood making three times more in crypto than they do in equities, then I really wonder about the sanity of their leadership. And if I were on a board of any securities company, I would be. We just had very important news. People don't look at it as important, but it is important. You know, my friend, Jamie Selway, was just announced as head of trading and markets at the SEC. You know, I've talked with Jamie a lot over the last few years.

Jamie was on the board of several different crypto companies, understands digital assets, yet no one will confuse him with a crypto bro. He is extremely smart, measured measured and careful, but understands how digital finance is going to revolutionize markets in a very great way. And so when you have someone like Jamie running trading in markets with Paul Atkins, who has already said self custody should be a fundamental right. And that was earlier the week before you understand that there's going to be this whole sea change. Markets move on supply and demand.

And we always forget that we always talk about the macro rates. But why do rates matter? Rates matter because it influences the valuations that people look at. And so that changes supply and demand. Bitcoin becoming more and more gold like is a trend. It will be a meta trend that we will see over the next five years. Right now, what you're seeing is major supply demand things going on, but this lack of volatility is because you're seeing these things collapse into each other. In the stock market, you're seeing the same thing, but the difference there is that you have people who need, and I repeat the word, need the stock market to go up because the wealth effect is what's keeping the US economy afloat at the same time as valuations are stretched.

And so that's why you're seeing the stock market where it is. And so I have the same worries that Mike does that as we get into the fall season, where seasonality is against the stock market, that it could be a bit of a rocky road, but I guess we'll see. Right? I just wonder what would happen if we went into full blown crisis mode. It seems to me that if there was any crisis in the stock market, I don't think anybody believes that Powell will be able to resist the call for cutting rates. You know, I personally don't think they'll cut in July. I think they're going to leave it the way it is until something breaks. Peter, do your clients look at- Can I piggyback on that? cut in July. I think they're going to leave it the way it is until something breaks. Peter, do your clients look at- Can I piggyback on that? Yeah, sure. Just want to piggyback on that and then I'm sorry, I have to go. I have the honor of going to the Bill Perkins private conference and presenting in Austin and I have to go for a few

minutes, but I want to show a few charts. Maybe Misha, if you can bring this first one up to respond to Dave. The problem now was first look at what these, we have the pile on effect in crypto, in Bitcoin. And Michael Saylor nailed it in 2010 when he discovered Bitcoin, it was around 10,000. He was a good salesman and went to 100,000. And now these 100,000 is a prudent thing to do, maybe lighten up a little. But now we have the masses joining. History is probably not going to view this well. Now I get what Dave says, limited supply, increasing demand. It's certainly cleaning, increasing demand.

But this now is a, just checking, can you see that chart? I have to look at another screen because I'm on a laptop. Yes. Bitcoin goal has been, okay. So the key thing I want to point out that Dave mentioned there is we do have, I'm just... In the one chart I showed, it's S&P 500 divided by GDP. It's basically a way to look at the Warren Buffett model, but on the terminal easily.

You have to go back to 1929, the last time we had an end of the year basis, we were two times GDP. But also I want to overlay what's happening is now we have people what they've said is nailed it The market is so it's so needs to go up now, and it's so high It's classic human nature is only one thing to make it go down Going down because you will not stop buybacks you will not stop the corporate of people buying Stock market everything buying dips or anything until it stops and this is the way it works. So I want to show you this.

We are the highest ever, but I also overlay this with Bitcoin to gold cross is when Bitcoin was launched during the last great recession on the back of one of the biggest money pumps in history and then it peaked recently on the back of the biggest money pump in history and now everybody's on board. Typically what you get in this environment that I show on the screen is deflation. And corporate treasuries are buying it for, in the last big trade, the next big trade is by bonds, by long bonds. Another chart I want to show you is this one here. If you just look at an annual chart of Bitcoin, there's only been two down years for the S&P 500 total

return since Bitcoin's been around. And I just overlaid it with the gold, the Bitcoin to gold ratios every single time it's gone this year. Yet stock market's up. What's the sore thumb here? If the stock market stays up, sure, I expect Bitcoin will probably come back, roar back and maybe beat gold.

But for now, gold's winning. That's my indication that something bigger is happening here. And I think the risk is, do not jump on board. It's just the pile on trade. It's so risky now to buy when we're at 100,000 versus 10,000. And that's my thing is we're going to look back at this

from history and to point out the key thing that's the problem now is when Michael Saylor liked Bitcoin at 10,000 in 2020, there was maybe a couple competitors you can call them the penance of wannabes. Now there's 12 million, it's unlimited supply in this space. To me, that's very indicative of a commodity that has a lot of competition. And it's very indicative of a market,

I think history is gonna look back at it as we did the peak in 1929 in the US, the peak in 1909 in the US, the peak in 1909 in the US, the peak in 1989 in Japan, and look at it very infamously. So I'll end with Crude Oil. We did speak about Crude Oil a little, but this is a chart I put out Friday. One way to really look at markets is this is Crude Oil with its 200-day moving average. We bounced. It's a commodity. Commodities go down because they went up and go up because it went down. It's still going down because it went up. This is since 2022. But what it bounced to was to the highest volume price. Peter Stoudemeyer,

some of you who used to trade, I used to trade with... There's a commodity that faces massive supply and it's going down because it went up. And I think that's the risk in Bitcoin. People tell me it's not a commodity, but at these levels, when you have people look at it as something more than just a number on the screen, you have to be careful. Awesome charts, Mike. Thank you so much. And the relentless climb of the market capitalization relative to GDP, I was looking at this the other day also on global level.

It's the same on the global level. It reminds me very much of that Supertramp album. I'm dating myself here. I know. Supertramp album, Crisis, What Crisis. Did any of you remember that one? Excellent. And it very much sums up where we are now. And thanks, Mike. If you have to hop off, we will miss you, but really appreciate those charts you shared. Thanks very much. And good luck at the conference. Peter, I want to hear your take on the whole risk asset crypto outlook. Do your clients look at crypto at all? And if so, how do they look at it? So, you know, we're a relatively small firm. We're about 170 people. 50% are veterans. Our regulatory capital is up to about 80 million. We've grown quite rapidly since I've been there in the last eight years. And we are definitely looking at what's going on with the SEC, the tokenization, the ability to use this.

So, you know, given our capital base and our size, we haven't been aggressive on it. I think we're, you know, the CEO, CFO, we're all very familiar with it. And now we're trying to see, I think, for the first time, whether the SEC is going to make it easier for firms like us to participate. So we're definitely in that stage of,

okay, how do we participate in this? How do we do this? I think there's real opportunity. It does feel like more and more people are expanding into looking at this. I would say we're probably a little bit less, you know, Bitcoin slash crypto focused and the blockchain as a whole how all this technology how the tokenization is gonna fit. But again, it's evolving. It's something we're spending time on. I think it is going to be a growth area potentially for Wall Street. I would say, you know, to me, when we've been kind of, you know, somewhat bullish Bitcoin, not horribly pounding the table, but certainly back at 80,000, we liked it. And the one thing is Trump does do what he tends to do what he says. And this administration wants to buy cryptocurrency, they want to put it in a strategic reserve. I have no reason to doubt that they will not Do that they will come up with some form of announcement, right? I think he's already been very you know I'll use the term interesting and how he's used Trump coin and offered dinner so the biggest holders so all very weird things

But all point to an administration that's comfortable with this and I think when we talk to a lot of state But I think you can see the red states kind of following very quickly. There is this, you know, energy. My one thing that I keep pounding the table on, whether it's for good or for bad, is I think the cryptocurrency community has probably become the biggest lobbyist community, most effective lobbyist community out there, right? If you look at how other lobbyists behave, first they don't have the money right the cryptocurrency, you know You now have a very large market cap and it's completely united right big pharma

Each pharma company might have their own agenda right military producers each have their own agenda. You have crypto pushing hard I think that's all forward momentum The one thing I would really like to see to get really really comfortable is I'd like to see the strategies of the world Have the premium to their holdings disappear right right now It's almost too easy as mark was saying you create a new company you invest in this and you trade it some premium to your Holdings I think hopefully that that disappears because I do see the orb right now where you'd want to be short those companies long crypto I think it's almost too easy for people to make money doing that I would like to see that this year and then I could really pound the table and that's kind of the two offsetting things for me I

just don't love that these companies are trading at a premium to their mercy and having said all that I do think the world is looking for alternatives as you see the US dollar is no longer everyone's favorite and when we started the year I kind of viewed the world that you had China orbited by the three evil you know Russia North Korea Iran and then kind of the autocratic resource rich nations aligned with China and then you had the US Canada Mexico NATO and that's been fracturing a little bit I think we're trying to put it back together but I think people are looking to alternatives and people are experimenting with

Bitcoin because of the alternative that the alternative financial wealth as well as the alternative asset that there's one point that just has to be made. And you know, I just don't understand sometimes how you could keep making the same point. So if you go back in history, and you look at any version, and you know, I could present but it doesn't matter it's the same chart you know any version of bitcoins price and you don't take into account the growth of the network then you're effectively what you're doing is you're saying that the commodity bitcoins like oil exists the same today as it did you know ten years, which is a completely ludicrous assumption. The hash rate, the power of the Bitcoin network is six and a half times what it was in 21.

It's one of the strongest charts in the history of charts, what the growth of the Bitcoin network. And I'm looking at the Bitbo one right now, and I guess I can present it. Share screen, where are we? Chrome tab, window. Now, let's see if I can see it. Do I have this right one? Yeah, for some reason I'm not seeing it.

Okay, it's on a different one. So yeah, forget it. I'm not gonna kill myself to try to worry about it, but it's the same screen So up into the right with a steep slope, right? Very steep slope and and yet, you know, even in the last week We've seen multiple sovereigns. I mean, you know the France Said that they're going to be using Bitcoin mining to help stabilize their network that came out last week I mean, it is a very big deal. So if you're trying to look at the price of an inelastic commodity and remember.

I keep pointing this out. It's a first year economic student should be able to understand that a commodity where the increase in price does not allow for an increase in supply. You, and you look at the growth of the network over time and you try to evaluate that commodity as if it's the same thing as gold, which by the way when the price of gold goes up more miners can pull more gold out of the earth. You can't do that with Bitcoin, yet the network is much stronger. So my problem with Mike's analysis of Bitcoin gold, I look at that

Bitcoin gold chart that look at that Bitcoin gold chart that he showed before, and it's very volatile, but it's an up into the right chart. And so that up into the right chart is, I think, the major deal. And, you know, 100,000 sounds a lot in an objective sense. But in terms of Bitcoin relative to the global asset base, it's tiny. It's still one-tenth of where gold is. What has not been said by Mike, but is the gold bugs understand, is that it is likely that at some point in the future, whether it's gold or Bitcoin or a combination of two, that the aggregate of the two will be a higher share

of global asset prices in a world where every single government wants, wants to propel asset prices higher and keep a lid on consumer inflation. That is the policy goal of governments. Now, are they gonna succeed? I mean, who knows? But the most likely failure isn't going to be asset prices collapse.

The largest policy failure is likely to be they lose control of consumer inflation. That's just what history shows in fiat money. And so if you're asking yourself, will the governments of the world fail in their bid to keep asset prices high, I would say that seems exceedingly unlikely. If you're asking me, will they fail because consumer inflation might get out of control,

that's probably more likely. What's more likely still is that Bitcoin and gold, and Bitcoin will continue to close its gap on gold and continue to eat into it together, will ultimately be the strategy that people use to combat that almost inevitable outcome of increased liquidity So that's the way that I look at the world and it's a bit different and and every time I try unfortunately Mike's not here To respond to that but you know Peter you talk to a lot of people in the you know in the traditional financial sector When you have these conversations anytime I hear the words blockchain not Bitcoin What that tells me is people aren't really,

you're not talking about anybody who cares about gold or sound money. You're not talking about Austrian monetarist types. You're talking about, okay, what do I do today with my portfolio types, right? Yeah, I think that's fair. And I think, again, especially on the corporate side, there is a lot of conservatism.

So I think people are kind of experimenting Okay, what's this and you know the fact that the SEC is you know much more? You know favorable or seems to be headed that direction is giving people that ability to like start Analyzing this a little bit more carefully see where they want to dip their toe in I think not Everyone's gonna be a Mike sailor and super aggressive, but we are at the stage now where people are like, okay What does this mean? How does it look like and again? I think you've seen when I do some writing for the street comm and stuff you know People have been experimenting in the Bitcoin ETS right and we can argue whether that's the best way or not way to own them

I also think it's gonna be interesting to see you know if some of these stable coins can actually figure out how to pay a Yield You know the one thing that is the big difference right money markets five percent stable coins can actually figure out how to pay a yield. You know, the one thing that is the big difference, right? Money market's 5%, stable coin's zero, depending on how it's used. If rates come down, that makes it more interesting to give up that interest, because you're giving up less,

or some of these stable coins can figure out ways. And it sounds like some are kind of coming up ways around it that you don't get yield per se, but you get more of the stable coin. So I think that's gonna be an interesting evolution too. I think that that requires that I just want to be I really want to jump on this because our audience cares about this. Look, the genius act hasn't passed yet. The the the banks and the donors and the advertisers in the Wall Street Journal are still pushing back against this. I wanna make two points. One, and I like Telus Deimos, but he wrote one of the dumbest articles,

I think he's written in his career yesterday. And I'm gonna flame it on X in a little while, because I'm appalled by the stupidity of people around the genius act and how little they understand it. My fellow co-conspirator, who by the way, is the opposite of me politically, I'm center right, he's center left, is Austin Campbell, who's an NYU professor, who's been spending a lot of his time debunking the morons who keep talking about the stable coin act.

Let's make two points. Point number one, whether or not stable coins are allowed to provide yield within a year will be irrelevant. I'm going to say this again, irrelevant. Now, why is it irrelevant? It's irrelevant because tokenized money market funds already exist. And it will not be hard for financial institutions to offer automated sweeps into actual tokenized money market funds once you're stablecoin enabled. Anybody in the crypto sphere understands that the major reason stablecoins

are a massive improvement are because instead of three days to move money from one financial institution to another, where the sending institution gets the float on those three days. It's not even three seconds, meaning you can move money from one place to another, one asset to another instantly with no friction. So offering an account to clients that use stable coins as a checking account and have a savings account that is using a tokenized money market fund will not be hard. And oh, by the way, the regulator for that is not the securities regulators necessarily,

but the SEC is going to be totally cool with that. So all the brokers that want to offer that service will be able to do so. And banks will be able to do so because of where the direction the OCC is moving. So that within a year is certain. So yes, it is ridiculous to not allow yield in stablecoins. It is stupid. And it is basically just because of lobbying from banks saying, well, wait a minute, if you can offer yield in this product, effectively, it means that checking account yields will go from less than half of 1% on in the national average to 4%. Well, we're gonna, we're gonna lose lose all that money because right now the banks

are making that as a subsidy. But... Austin has done an amazing job. He's done an amazing job in refuting every single argument against the yield-bearing stablecoin. But it's a very big deal, Noel, because something you care about, which is once you have stablecoins underlying the entire financial system, and that doesn't happen overnight, but once you have it, the velocity of money goes way up. That is a very big deal from a macro point of view. What does it mean? It means that people no longer have to have six trillion dollars in trapped assets earning nothing.

That's even before going into the impact on the demand for not only the dollar, but also the treasuries underpinning those stablecoins. That's right. And the other big set big point about stablecoins are that as they become legal and US merchants and every merchant around the world starts to use it, it effectively cements the dollar as the currency of global finance. And so your amount of assets that will be held in treasuries, for lack of a better word, but because that's where it will ultimately be, will go up. And the dollar, not necessarily its price, but its use goes up. But that will definitely impact its price.

And so effectively what you end up with, and there's a lot of countries around the world that are already on a dollar standard, you don't think about it that way. But there are many, many countries that have that officially back their currency with dollars. There are others where they manage their exchange rate to the dollar. Effectively, what stable coins will do in the global economy is make that even stronger and easier by the way Dramatically easier and so those are those are big deals and people don't understand it I think the banking lobby understands it because you know effectively that's why they're still pushing against it I'm not gonna count my chickens until it's hatched, but I'm just tired of the silly rhetoric around it I'm just tired of the silly rhetoric around it. And one thing I find myself pointing people to is USDXX.

So it's the BlackRock Mutual Fund that holds circles assets. And to me, right, that's a level of transparency we certainly haven't seen from Tether. And it's again, it's something I think gives people that comfort. I'm not sure that ETFs are the ultimate way or mutual funds, but this is something that you can pull up if you on almost anything

USD XX it's the Black Rock Circle holdings the information's there right and that to me It's a huge step forward right it lets you know traditional people Tie this to things that we are comfortable with right and that I think the more you can tie this to things that you're comfortable With and does lead to that obvious question if they only if they hold all if they hold all these treasuries, why can't they pay interest? But that's a separate issue as you pointed out. Yeah. And speaking of getting comfortable with once everyone is comfortable stable coins, well, then tokenized securities are the next step because stable coins make all of them possible

and easy. The genius act, I believe, last I read goes to the vote in the Senate tomorrow, right? And if it passes, it then moves to a House vote. But it is looking pretty close and that would actually be astonishing the fact that we have a very first ever in the United States home to the world's largest financial market, the first crypto friendly or crypto supportive regulation. And another thing that, you don't know, Peter, you see this and the people you talk to the number of people and I Know Dave describes him as well number of people that are assuming that everyone in crypto is against regulation when that is precisely what we have Been fighting for all these years. We want the regulation. It will be a big vindication that all this fight has been worth it

Yeah one one point that just just to harp on something that said before, it is true that the crypto industry has been singular and unique and probably is why Trump is sitting in the White House. But the reason for it is not well understood. And that is because unlike any other industry, I have never seen, with a possible exception, you can make an argument that the cannabis industry suffered the same thing. The crypto industry was targeted by Elizabeth Warren, who ran the Biden administration's policy and economic policy for extinction. She tried to kill it. And it was as brutal a reason as you can imagine. And so all the people in crypto who look at all the idiotic protests this past weekend are like, yeah, well, you didn't have your family targeted by an administration

for extinction. You weren't censored. You weren't denied banking access. You weren't effectively tried to be eliminated by an administration. And now this one is offering, is offered freedom. And so yeah, there are people who can say whatever they can say. And the politics this weekend was just silly. I mean, some of the interviews with some of the people protesting, it's actually funny how dumb they are. I mean, they make themselves look so well, he's doing X is like, really, you know, and it's like, it's interesting. The cult of personality is all people can get to. But crypto as an industry, why was it so organized? It was so organized because the industry is promising financial innovation. It will create a better financial system, a more inclusive financial system. It is not left versus right. It's Elizabeth Warren versus everybody else.

And that is why the industry was so organized. Organization was because of necessity. I mean, there are lots of people in this industry who want to fight each other, you know, fight each other in a big way, but you give a common enemy and people fight. Now we have the opposite. Now we have an administration who is arguably trying to profiteer from, you know, from the industry. And so, okay, well, whatever. I mean, I don't want to take a position. I'm not a big fan of Trump coin. I'm not a big fan of any of this stuff. What I am a big fan of is having a modernized financial system with intelligent principled regulation, which by the way, is the default position for most of the

crypto industry. Most of the crypto industry doesn't want deregulation. What they want is what are the rules will play within the rules. Exactly. And this in the world's largest financial market. One overlooked feature of operation choke point 2.0 with the oppression of the crypto industry is the international impact it had. I was reading a paper this morning by the latest financial stability report by the European Central Bank in which they cite and one of the risks of the crypto industry is hey look what happened the United States where crypto brought down a bank which we all know is actually not what happened. It's the opposite it's the absolute opposite. Exactly.

Silvergate was liquidated because the regulators were putting it out of business it was orderly No investor lost of money. The only bank that lost that, that went out of business, uh, that was assassinated was, was, was signature. It was assassinated by the regulators was only one that would have lost money with Silicon Valley bank and crypto had nothing to do with that. That was literally they lost money because they took too much risk and circle. This is the other thing I love about stable coins the European Union how they got it wrong circle

Depegged was the only D peg we've seen In crypto since you know some of the tether FUD that's gone back and forth and and we can talk about tether I tend to agree with what Peter said. I think transparency is good In fact, you know solidus labs, you know the company that I'm working with fact, you know, Solidus Labs, you know, the company that I'm working with now, you know, uses sunlight as the best disinfectant on their t-shirts. So it's a good thing. But the only DPEG we've ever seen in a major, what would be regulated, regulatorily approved crypto was Circle because they had 30% of their assets in Silicon Valley Bank and had the federal government not backed it out, they would have not been asset backed. That is a hugely important point, because people keep ignoring, and God knows the European Central Bank is going to ignore it, that fractional reserve banking is inherently risky, and probably doesn't need to be as risky as it used to be. The reason we used to need fractional reserve banking was because capital wasn't global, mobile, and we had no information flow.

And so the only way you could get loans to a small business in Peoria, Illinois was from local banks in Peoria, Illinois. These are the ones who would do it. Well, that's not the truth anymore. It turns out that a huge percentage of bank assets are actually used, they buy treasuries with it. So what do we do? Depositors, it's

exactly the same as the stablecoin model, only there's no way out, right? Depositors put in money, they get half a percent interest and the bank buys four or 5% treasuries. Although the reason the banks are in such bad shape is because they actually bought 2% treasuries and now face huge losses on their balance sheet, unless they, if they actually had the liquidity. So, you know. The impact on the actual plumbing is gonna be huge, but you know, we only got a few minutes left.

I wanna come back to Peter with something that I've been thinking about while we've been talking. And that is if Powell cuts rates, July, say, why would we not see what we saw in September when Powell cut rates? Why would bond yields not react negatively? Or in other words, head up even more, we're really to see that.

You know, I think at that point, it was viewed a little bit as they'd given up on the inflation fight that they weren't afraid. And that was kind of the negative reaction. You know, I think people, I feel this time people aren't as bullish. So one, I think people I feel this time people aren't as bullish. So one, I think people are kind of positioned fairly bearish. I hear much more talk about the 10-year hitting 5% than 4%. So I think the market from a

positioning standpoint would be susceptible to a pullback. I do think we've kind of been ignoring some of the job risk. Yield curves are fairly steep. There is some risk, but I'm fairly comfortable that this time it doesn't happen that we might get a slight steepening, but the cuts will more than offset that and you know I kind of view 4% on tens as my target maybe 450 on 30 so down a little bit, you know again I think people are mistaken one of the messages that Powell was very reluctant to cut when tariffs were potentially liberation day tariffs, right? You had no idea what these things were gonna do. They were unprecedented

You never seen any of that and I think some of that's off the table and that actually gives Powell more room, right? If we stick at these pause type levels, I think Powell has that ability to say, okay I think we can understand what 10 12 percent tariffs does to the economy It slows us down probably faster than the inflation comes so I can cut the Level of uncertainty was so high and I think that's where people I think power was actually spot-on Even though we are scared about the economy with liberation day tariffs He had no clue what this was gonna do to prices what this was gonna do supply chains, so he had to be cautious I think it actually this calmness lets him you know proceed a little bit

And I think that's where rates canness lets him, you know, proceed a little bit. And I think that's where rates can take a degree of comfort. The other part, I keep coming back to this is, you know, when we look at the deficit, for example, right? Everyone's now talking seven trillion or whatever the number is, and everyone gets all worked up, that help push yields higher.

What they will forget is that it bleeds in slowly over time. It's a billion here, a billion there. So you don't get this massive, all of a sudden, oh, we have to issue all these treasuries today. Two, you know, I'm not a big fan of tariff policy, but it is generating revenue. So there is revenue coming in from that terror that will offset some of this. And that's not calculated into any of the official calculations. So we could get some positive headlines from that front as well. So I think the market just got itself too worked up about these things things and it'll

calm down a little bit and Powell will give that right ammunition this time. Yeah, and after all, September was a very long time ago. A lot has happened since then. We are in for a hectic week this week. Peter, thank you so much for being here to share your insights with us. It gives us ammunition with which to deal what's coming I mean this week not only do we have potential fireworks coming from the g7 We also have a lot of unfortunate potential fireworks coming from the Middle East and that's even not taking into account We're still waiting on China's reaction to all of this. It's gonna be interesting Yes, of course. Sorry next time I'd love to bring my chart

I call it Maslow's Hierarchy of a Credit Bubble, and it takes Maslow's hierarchy of needs and looks at where credit or financial asset bubbles start, and it always starts in safe assets. It never ever starts in risky assets. So when we're worried about systemic risk to the system, it's always safe assets. You can go S&L Crisis, Russia, Ukraine, Enron, Worldcom, AAAs. So I think people allocate risk very appropriately to risky assets.

That is actually fascinating, especially since these days what we understand to mean by safe assets is changing. So I was figuring that out. And thank you very everyone for joining us today. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Dave. Talk to you all soon.

Tune in next week.