The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Indicator Flips Bearish For First Time Ever! Should We Be Concerned?

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

Bitcoin is flashing a rare and potentially important signal: January and February both closed red for the first time! In this video, we break down what this unusual start to the year could mean for the broader trend, whether it signals deeper structural weakness, and how seasonal patterns have historically influenced Bitcoin’s performance. Is this the beginning of a more extended bearish phase—or simply a shakeout before the next major move? We’ll analyze sentiment, market structure, and macro conditions to determine whether this rare setup is a warning sign or a contrarian opportunity.

We have a potential indicator on Bitcoin flipping bearish for the first time in history. Should we all be concerned? We're going to talk about what that is and everything else happening in the macro today on a very special holiday edition of Macro Monday. I've got Dave, Mike, and sitting in for James Lavish, the very capable and impressive. Larry Lepard, let's go. Good morning, everybody, and happy President's Day to those who celebrate our presidents. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. It is time to get the show going.

We got Mike, Larry, and Dave. Mike, I know there's no morning meeting today, but maybe you can still give us the broad strokes. Yeah, the latest Vermonowong is still, she's turning quite bearish looking at the economy. I don't want to speak for her too much. Obviously, didn't have the morning meeting, but on the economic situation.

Most equity strategies are still blush, as you'd expect. Most fix it like Ira Jersey are fixed income strategy is still so much stagnant. And you know, for me, from a commodity standpoint, I look at stuff that's really getting scary. For instance, metals have just gone up too much. The metals look to me like cryptos did last year. Things like natural gas are collapsing. That's the number one measure of heat, electricity, and fertilize in this country. Looks like crude oil is peaked around 65.

Looks like copper's peaked around six. looks like silver's peaked around 100. It looks like Bitcoin's peaked around 96 on the year. And for any of these most, from my standpoint, like all the industrial metals and the economic sense of the commodities like crude oil to go up, the stock market has to go up. And Bitcoin's kind of signaling it's going to go down. Okay. I want to talk first about Anna Wong because she was in the news last week and we discussed

it. Anna and I still can't do it even after I asked her her name. I can't remember. Top economist, that was her, says up to one million U.S. jobs can be wiped in payroll revision ahead of jobs report. X is down. So I don't have the link, which was from unusual Wales. It shows that she was in fact 100% correct. We just saw a revision down of a million jobs from last year. Last I checked, this is the second year in a row that we've seen that. Funny because last year when it went down a million, everybody politicized it and said it was a result, obviously, of Biden

trying to make the economy look better than it did. Of course, markets react every month to these job numbers and you look back and see that it was all Fugazi and markets were completely reacting to fake news. Well, here we are year two of the same phenomenon, obviously under another administration. So it seems that maybe it's just wild incompetence and we need to stop considering the data. I don't really know how to even begin to unpack this, but why do we even look at job numbers on a monthly basis if they're completely wrong? Dave, Larry, either of you can jump in on that one. I mean, look, the problem with the BLS has always been, well, I shouldn't say always been, but the thing that drives economists nuts and the ones that actually care as opposed to the cheerleaders

that wave pom-poms on TV, which, by the way, are most of them, is the birth-death model and this notion of kind of made-up jobs based on corporate and other activity that they're sort of kind of monitoring. And the whole that was blown in the BLS by the growth of the gig economy is horrendous. They can't measure the fact that people have two or three jobs. And the second job might be working for DoorDash or Uber-Eats or whatever. I mean, if a human being has a Uber-Eats job, basically they have, they drive an Uber, they do DoorDash, they do whatever. They may go on TaskRabbit and do plumbing.

It doesn't really matter what they do. You know, the statistics get all get screwed up. And it's always been that way. That's why, you know, people looking at Fred and looking at part term versus full time, those trends have been problematic for quite some time. You know, I look at this and I find it funny, though, if you believe, and I think that it's true, that the Main Street economy is soft and that if you think that cutting interest rates or whatever policy you're going to do, perhaps a big print, you know, we'll let Larry go off

in a second, you know, is what is necessary to restore, you know, the mainstream economy and that there's no, and the people, the same economists will say, well, no, there's no slack in the economy because of employment. So therefore, if they cut rates, you're going to see consumer inflation. I don't know how you reconcile those two statements. You know, if the job economy is significantly, you know, weaker than people think. And with AI getting weaker still, particularly in the, in more expensive jobs. And we should dive into that because I think there's some misconstance on AI. The truth is, is there is a lot of slack in the economy. And what you really need, in fact, the only thing that will help is a massive wave of new investment, which, of course, monetary

policy alone isn't going to get there, but it's certainly part of what they want to do. And so it feels to be like, you know, I hate to say that a wall of liquidity is coming because, you know, that's like you feel like Chicken Little or Paul Revere or someone, you know, going crazy. But the truth is that they need to run this top, and the need is getting more and more urgent. So when I see data like this, it makes me think even more strongly that the back half of this year is going to have an enormous amount of stimulus. Yeah. I'm trying to remember what I read, but I think one of the stats was, you know, 350,000,

400,000 of those lost jobs or government jobs have never been replaced, and people were complaining about that. My response was good. Yeah. Has anybody noticed the 400,000 government employees that have disappeared and all of their efficiency? If it wasn't good, Scott, we should just hire two million people to go dig holes and fill them back in, which is more or less, most of our government employees. Or we should get three Mac minis, put Claudebot or whatever it's called and call it a day at this point.

So, yeah, someone's going to have to describe it to tell me, because there's a lot of things that I might want to do, but I'm terrified of security concerns. I'm going to hack myself. But Larry, I mean, when you look at all this and going into the big print, let's just kind of stick to the job numbers, I guess, first, or what the implications of that are. And we can talk about the cross-section of AI metals, all those things. But how you mean, I wasn't really surprised to see it.

I mean, I guess it was a little surprised. But, you know, the economy from other measures seems to be soft. I mean, as Mike indicated, you know, there's softness in a lot of different prices. I think you're going to show up in the softness and stock prices eventually here, too. but I, you know, I just don't put that much weight on government statistics anymore. You know, I think that actually the bigger thing that I think happened in the last week or two is that we all just realized that we're being ruled by a bunch of demonic evil fucks, so to speak. Larry, I wrote, I went off on that yesterday.

Me too. I've written, you know, did you see my article response to you, Scott? Yeah, I mean, it just, I don't know. I mean, you know, you want to talk about a bummer, you know, this stuff is just awful. And it's almost like you want to look the other way. It's so awful. And I don't know, it's just, it can't be good for consumer confidence, for just general confidence in the economy, et cetera, et cetera. I think I think we are slowly, and it is slow because the economy is like a battleship, but it's, or an aircraft carrier, it's the right metaphor.

I think we are slowly topping and turning down. you know, there's a lot of technical analysis, momentum indicators, et cetera, that would suggest that, you know, we're coming to a stock market top. Doesn't mean we don't have a little bit higher to go, but, you know, unless they really do get aggressive about, you know, a big print, you know, I don't see how they keep this thing going. It's, it strikes me as a very soft economy from what I can say. Yeah, I don't even know if we should discuss the Epstein files, which is what you obviously alluded to, I have certainly puked in my mouth about 15 times

in the past 48 hours, every time I see another thing. And any final trust, which was minimal, that I had in any institution, is long gone. Right. I think that's, you know, it's got to the point where it's not just us watching Wall Street. I think most of America is disgusted. And that's, you know, that's not a good thing.

It's funny that I've seen it attached to Bitcoin. I've literally had friends and people, comment to me that, hey, Bitcoin was mentioned in the Epstein files. I'm done with it. And it's a, real thing, whether true or not, it's the sentiment shift there is astounding. And I think that we're going to be able to apply that to everything. But meanwhile, back at the ranch and Mike, I want to ask you about this, we've got the strongest equity retail flows on record in history. So regardless of Epstein files or what the economy is doing, people are buying the hell out of equities. Yeah, there's only one thing to stop that.

Prices to go too high. I think they've reached near that plateau. One thing that's also notable is we have earnings as a percent running, what, 13, 14, 15 percent, almost the highest ever. Yet prices are rolling over. It's classic peak. We've just gone up too much. Priced in too much of the forward.

And the whole thing, everybody talks about liquidity. There's a 10 on the measure of liquidity in the planet. And that's the stock market going up. And there's a 10 for where it goes down. That's it. That's where liquidity is going to go and escape. from that's why I can point out right now when we have the next 10% correction in stock market it'll be the greatest amount of GDP almost 25% in almost 100 years that's your deflation kicking

in that's way overdue that's what's happening in china right now that's what's happened in japan for most of the last 30 years and what happened to us in 1930s it's all kicking in and i just point out to me this is not a doom and gloom trade this is an awesome environment for the tech leak oriented so let's look at people who didn't come in the year overweight risk assets at the highest levels in a hundred versus GDP with stock market volatility, 180 day volatility, running at eight years old. That's just silly to be long risk assets in the environment. You look for opportunities. So you look for a dip in risk assets.

So maybe you bought some Bitcoin around 64. It's probably going to get below that. But you look to sell the silly stuff like copper and certainly silver when it goes above 100. This is a great trading environment. It's just getting started. I want to end with one key fact is basically you look at a basket of U.S. Treasury's, a whole U.S. Treasury curve. It's the lowest versus gold in almost 50 years.

So full hand out here, I'm willing to take the risk. Yeah, you're supposed to be selling gold and buying treasuries, buying long bonds. That TLT right now is up about 3% in year. And you know I've been wrong on that for three years. I was wrong on gold for three years. But I think TLT is going to be up 20% and 30% on this year. With the minor 10% correction in the stock market. There is a great trade kicking in right now.

I feel like saying sell gold to buy treasuries is like throwing Larry big steak into the right. There's your meatball. There's your meatball. Let me, come out of the park. Yeah, well, Mike might be right short term. I mean, you have to ask, you know, are you trading or are you, you know, what's your time frame, right? I mean, you know, we're so indebted.

We're so over levered. I mean, that chart you just showed was actually rather stunning. I saw a similar chart, though, that goes with that, that shows the margin debt that, you know, that's driving all of that stock growth. And so, you know, we're just becoming ever more leveraged. And, you know, the whole society is just that we've become a society of gamblers. And the stock market is just a representation of that. You know, and at some point in time, the peak will be achieved.

And the deflation that Mike is alluding to will start. And, yeah, of course, for a brief period of time, bonds could look great, you know, and everything with risk associated with it could go down. I'm not really sure gold goes down, because I'm not sure really. I think gold is almost kind of a risk-off sort of trade, even though it's up a lot. It represents, you know, sound money. So, but anyway, you know, it's, there's, there's no doubt that the big question in my mind is, how are they going to get to the big print?

And are they just going to kind of creep their way there in gradual print like Lynn has called it? I mean, they're doing 40 billion a month right now. You know, they could easily increase that, you know. We've got, we've got a lot of moving pieces. is we've got Worse saying that he's going to team with Treasury Secretary. I mean, I think these guys are kind of dreaming that, you know, the notion of, you know, reducing the size of the Fed balance sheet, that's not what they're doing now.

My sense is they're going to come up with something new. They have to rebrand it. You know, they've already got reserve management as one rebranding of QE. And they'll probably create some other facility that's going to effectively be a big print, but it won't be called that. And so I'm sure they're working that through right now. and we've gotten until, you know, May, mid-May when Powell, you know, times out before the announcement of what that is. But, you know, that's what gold is sniffing. And I think if and when that occurs,

and it's likely to occur probably pretty quickly. I mean, you know, the midterms are this fall, and it looks like they're cooked no matter how you read it. But that doesn't mean they're not going to try. And so they've got to, they've got to, you know, inject a bunch of money into the economy me the summer to try and make things look good. And so I think we're all just kind of waiting to see what's that program, how they're going to do it. You know, that's, that's to me, in my mind, what's the unknown at this stage. But meanwhile, I mean, Mike could be right. You know, we could have a deflationary impulse.

And frankly, the more we have a deflationary impulse, the bigger the print has to be. I mean, it was the deflationary impulse of Bear Stearns failing or of, you know, the repo blowout that led to the last two big prints. So, you know. It's AI at the time. I don't think there's a question. And anybody I've talked to who's a lot smarter than me about this has said that what they've seen in the last two weeks to a month has even accelerated all timelines for AI and job cuts by many multiples.

Parabolically. And obviously we saw, you know, the Claudebot guys were bought by Open AI already as of a day ago. So now that's all going to be integrated into Open AI. But I'll say once again, anybody should just listen to my conversation with Bill Barheight that was live last week to see. just how incredibly powerful this can be if you're savvy enough, unlike Dave and I are saying we are to get this done. But I mean, we're going to see an absolute, I don't know if it's next

week or next month, but an absolute just destruction of jobs. But I think renaissance of productivity as a result too. So how those two forces go against one another, I have no idea, but Larry, the deflation's coming. And Mike, the deflation's coming, right? I mean, Dave. I don't know if you agree. Well, I don't, but I don't because there's a nuance here. And I think it's an important one, which is we always talk about consumer prices and we ignore asset prices. And we've had monetary inflation now for multiple decades. And we talked about this.

And what we saw in the pandemic was they committed the Cardinal Sin. The Cardinal Sin was we've had policies, literal policy, for both bipartisan to, encourage asset inflation and try to mollify or mitigate consumer inflation. And you do that by, you know, by very loose monetary policy, which promotes what I will call overinvestment. Now, overinvestment's a strange term because if you're a company, what is practical for you to do to invest in in terms of automation, outsourcing, and other big capital outlays will depend upon the cost of money. If the cost of money is cheap enough, then it is entirely possible that those investments will have a good return. And so what we saw for decades is every U.S. company outsourcing

the crap out of things, you know, firing people, but setting up, you know, infrastructure overseas, etc. We saw every company that could automate something would because the capital cost of automation was was cheap relative to jobs. And so, you know, that creates a hollowing out of our ability to produce what what percent refers to as U.S. productive capacity. And this is a multi-decade trend. Now, and, you know, by money being cheap. And so the consumer inflation from all of that, those are all deflationary for consumers. At the same time, we've had, as Mike points out, a massive increase in asset inflation, which is why the S&P is at all-time highs as a percent of GDP. It is, and it has been that way. Now, the problem,

What hurt them politically and what is a issue is the, quote, affordability crisis is based upon, in large measure, one asset, which is called housing. Because house prices, of course, are a levered way for non-rich people to participate in this monetary inflation. And so we've seen all this. Now, how will this all resolve? Well, AI is simply yet another way to channel away from consumer inflation. is going to make producing things cheaper, but only if you actually use it.

And, you know, we will see. I think that people do not understand how companies actually do things to understand the impact of AI. AI right now is going to have massive implications for personal productivity. But understanding that, you know, SaaS companies, for example, are more about having uniform things for people to use and network effects, and community, you know, things like Slack, you know, it's not because Slack is better software. It's because Slack is used by a lot of people. And the same thing is true through a lot of different SaaS companies.

So I think that people are overestimating the number of jobs, except for one cadre. There's one job that is going to go the way of cotton pickers. I mean, the cotton gin took away cotton pickers. He didn't need it anymore. Computers, I mean, you know, machines do a better job. You don't have a whole lot. And it's not just cotton, by the way, now pretty much every agricultural. there's very little human beings going and picking any fruit plant, this, that, or the other.

It's all machines. Well, coding is going to go the way the buffalo. You won't need coding anymore, but you still need system analysts. You still need to understand specifications. Still need to put this stuff together. So the higher margin jobs in the state for a while. Yeah. So there's A is job destruction, which we can argue until the death, right?

because obviously in the past, every new technology has reportedly been destroying all the future jobs, and then we just found new industries we didn't even know of, and job creation was created. But I'm talking more, and this will be close to Mike's heart, and I'm sure Larry's Reddit, the price of tomorrow by Jeff Booth theory of how this goes, because technology trends all prices to zero, right? Your TV gets cheaper. He uses the iPhone as an example. Your iPhone's not just a phone anymore. It's your free calculator. your free flashlight, you're free everything, right?

And so I'm talking about the power of this technology to iterate and effectively bring prices down to zero and then the big print that will be required to Larry's point to fight that trend and I think ultimately will fail. I mean, yeah, go ahead Larry. I'll piggyback on that and certainly that and what Dave said about CPI.

So I'll make a call. CPI is going to be negative or zero in about a year with crude oil going to 40. Now you know I've made that call crude oil going to 40 for over three years. But it's always what's happened. Three times in the last 20 years, that's where it bottoms. There's one key simple force for that happen. Now, that is just the stock market backing up 10, 20 percent and staying down. Now, that's a simple thing. It used to happen. But that's the key thing about Jeff Booth and the price of tomorrow. Also, the price of time by Edward Chancellor's. Jeff Booth points out the severe deflationary forces of technology, which is accelerating. I mean, you see that in commodities really big. I don't have to dig into details. and obviously that's some of the demand for the electrified metals like silver and copper, which are too expensive. But the normal cycle for the last 20 years for CPI to bottom around zero.

Now it's heading at 2.4%. It's going fast, which I mean usually when the Fed eases, when they have to ease, they don't go in 25. They go in 50 and 100 because they have to. That's Larry's big print. But that's the next trade that's just kicking in. Bonds are figuring out, above almost 3% on the year. But don't underestimate this technology is going so fast. And that's the key thing.

And we all know AI is going to make us so much more productive. Whoever's not exploiting and now is falling behind, but it's the transition. Transition to people right now. We're not hiring young people. People are replacing a lot of menial tasks with AI, with entry level positions being replaced with AI. It's the transition's going to take a while. And we're so overdue for just a little bit of normal reversion and transition.

The thing is AI pump prices up, just like crypto's pump prices up. No, they're starting to head lower. To me, this is an awesome trade. This is an awesome risk-traking environment. Seeds the moment. Don't be caught off sides. This is not being doom and gloom, which is, I just look at this. I've been in the phones with traders in the past,

when I was walking in the morning at a hedge fund, we looked at this environment is awesome. Let's take some risk. Let's get some volatility. But what's, and what's being nimble. And so far, that's been just getting started, I think. Yeah, I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure.

I think the monetary metals are telling you that they, smell inflation coming. I don't think they'd be behaving the way they are if we were headed into. I mean, we may be headed into a brief deflationary collapse, but they can smell the policy response. That's my guess. And so, you know, it might work for a little while, Mike, but I feel like you're picking up nickels in front of a steamroller. Can I make a point? Because every time you see that, so here's the deal. Let me finish. Here, I'm selling metals at the highest versus the The Bloomberg Metals Index is the highest ever versus the Bloomberg Commodd Index. Checkmark. Okay, I'm willing to take a little risk, lean into silver above 100 and copper above 6 selling that.

I'm selling gold and buying treasury. It's the greatest spread in 50 years. I'm looking at silver just reached the highest ever versus crude oil and copper. Copper is its electrified brethren. Marcus sometimes say sell me, especially if you've been people like me who have been long, bullish, you know, gold forever, and you get a chance to say, take profit. And when you hear everybody else buying it like crypto's last year, you've mostly just say, thank you very much.

Test some shorts. And so far, they're working. So can I talk about metals for a second? Because I think that, look, I made the call on this show when gold was, you know, first went over 4,000. I said it will get to an equilibrium price of around 5,000, go above it, go below it and kind of stay there and then move as depending on what we do vis-a-vis expansion of the monetary. money supply that that's that i said that months ago i still think that's true gold is right now bouncing right around 5 000 you know we had a little run up uh i don't think it's sniffing anything i think that's its

equilibrium based upon the current amount of fiat money which of course next year the equilibrium will probably be 10 percent higher as the equilibrium will be 5500 in the year after that because we're printing 10 percent give or take across the developed world i mean that's the way i look at gold very very simply until such a time as it loses its luster as a monetary medal. But that's not going anywhere, as long as there are central banks and Indian women who are buying it for that reason. And they bring other people around it. I don't think the gold story is all that exciting.

I think it is what it is. And, you know, look, I called it. So I just think that that's exactly where we're going. Now, silver is very different. Silver is not the same story. The story with silver has everything to do with a secular change that is based upon technology. I mean, just the actual amount of silver required to create a next level up in battery technology, which is hugely important, both for EVs as well as solar power, et cetera, all the things that are going on.

The demand for electricity with AI is voracious. And if you don't understand that, you understand there's two huge drivers that that's going to create. Driver number one we're talking about is silver and the commodities and the infrastructure play and all that. Driver number two is going to be SpaceX might be the most valuable company on the planet in a decade. If, in fact, data centers in space can be made, they can actually achieve that. Because the amount of compute you're going to need is huge. And you can't ignore that. That's, you know, it's a crazy amount.

And I keep hearing people making the same stupid comparison to the Internet bubble where they looked at global crossing and all the various fiber plays. Because back in 2000, when these things were just jamming to ridiculous price levels, we were using 5%. Yes, five. That is literally 1 20th of the capacity we already had and they were planning these massive projects to increase fiber. We weren't using it. Whereas today, we are massively undersupplied in terms of compute and electricity. So every time people make these comparisons, it makes me crazy. So I think that when you look at metals, you have to look at what the metal is and

where it's going and all that. And look, uranium is another one that if in fact we do go, you know, free uranium, free nuclear power to provide that electricity, then uranium is another thing that's going to have more demand. But, you know, those are not the same thing. As far as treasuries are concerned, it's really a question of global confidence. I mean, look, I was cheered by Marco Rubio's speech and the Europeans seemed to sort of like it. But the truth is, is we are, you know, however you want to look at it. And there's a variety of opinions. I'm curious about what you think of this one. But we're moving. It is not a unipolar world now. The dollar might stay as the reserve currency of the world because it's the easiest transaction currency of the world,

and that's where stable coins are pushing us. But does anybody really think that the U.S. is running the financial world anymore with the way that it did for decades? I mean, I think that there's a lot of impact upon that. And we have to explore that, too. So anyway, that was a long monologue. But I just, the metals, I think, is not a uniform complex. That's really the point that I, that I, let me go back to the metals for a second, though, because I've got a lot of experience in this. I mean, Mike, I think, you know, you're making the assumption that because silver, gold have run hard, you know, they're due for a pullback and they're going to stop running hard.

And I actually take the other side of that. I think that silver is going to somewhere between 200 and 500 and gold is going to somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000. And the reason I take the other side of it is I don't think this is a normal cycle. I think that we're actually seeing fiat currency in the beginning process of failing. And in both of those metals, they've been suppressed for so many years as a result of all the paper contracts outstanding. And those are now coming unwound. And in particular, what you're seeing on silver, and it's really, it's fascinating to me is that there's enormous supply deficit.

and there has been for three or four years. And now all these people, all the users of silver are basically saying, give us the damn metal. You know, a paper contract that delivered silver was not good enough. And that's why, you know, you're seeing that the stores that the comics are getting drawn down, the stores at the London Metal Exchange are getting drawn down, the stores in Shanghai are getting drawn down. And, you know, a paper contract for silver is not the same as the metal being delivered.

and my suspicion is that the price at which the metal being delivered clears is going to be north of 150 to 200. And so I would not be shorting silver right here. You know, you're right, it's had a parabolic run. But just as, you know, probably there were guys short in gold back in 1978 or 79, when it was at 350 or 400 up from 100, well, it was about to go to 800. And so, you know, I think silver is a very, very dangerous short, given the way that. it's been behaving. And you're welcome to do it, but I wouldn't do it. And I don't know where the top is, but I know that until these supply issues are resolved, my bias is it's going up. Mike. So here's what you're going to hear in, I'm sorry, here's what you're going to hear in silver

next year. Fifting. Sorry, we've heard this before. It happens in every commodity after it goes up, you never want to buy it. Only gold sometimes you can do that. In history, historically be okay. But you're buying silver and gold right now. If you're buying now, the equivalent of prices around 1970, 1980, when CPI was running 15%. Here's the rule. Here's what's going to happen, Larry. Sarah was over almost down in the year. It's up 7%. It was up 60%. I think it's going to up down 25% in the year. It's completely dependent on the stock market and going up. It's 60% industrial. And the past was much less. So the world has changed. Even gold. I'm making the call. I think gold and silver this year will put in peaks that'll last for decades.

That's your usual way it happens. And the number one risk for all these now, unfortunately, now it's the stock market. Because when we start having a little bit of liquidity destruction, which are way overdue for you, it stops and everything. But silver, copper, industrial metals, rules, you never want to buy them after go up. And I guess it means you're really bullish on China. Because if you're bullish on these metals, you've got to be bullish on China. And typically, that's not going so well. Remember, if we want to talk about what's going to happen to the U.S. right now, they're 10, you know,

yield is 1.79. Their debt to GD is 300%, and their money supply is running double the U.S. That's your big print, and that's what happens when you get big prints. It's just to save the deflation. We're heading there. Silver is part of it. Industrial metals are part of it. Natural gas is part of it. Crudel's part of it, and the number one thing is the U.S. stock market. So if you're bullet silver, you better hope that stock market goes up. Good luck. Can I make a point? I just want to clarify something I said before. I believe that the natural forces of AI and technology will be deflationary, but agree with Larry that the response will cause inflation. I don't think we're actually going into deflation. I think it just means more money

printing and insanity for the government to try to... We all mathematically know the system does not function as we understand it without inflation. I mean, you know, the alternative to inflation is the Great Depression 2-0, you know, because we're so indebted and you know there's just no way out without inflated things so um you know that's why i think the policy response is going to be way over the top um you know all i would say mike is i think that you know basically um silver and gold will be much higher a year from now and um the odds that your case unfolds i think are very very low um and the reason for that is just that you know we've kind of got a situation where monetary chaos is taking place

I mean, this is a sovereign debt crisis. We haven't had one of these since the 20s, you know, 15th. Really, World War I kicked off the last one. And it's kind of worse than that. It's a sovereign debt crisis combined with, you know, debt loads that are equivalent to what we had in World War II, you know, where debt to GDP is 125%. So the combination of those two things tells me that, you know,

the politicians will, when faced with the choice of, do we print enough money to keep the system working? Or do we let it all naturally collapse, you know, like Mellon said and liquidate everything? We know what they're going to choose. And so, you know, that's good news for sound money assets. It's bad news for everybody else and, you know, people who suffer from inflation. I just don't see deflation in the world that we now have. I don't see it, I don't see the natural process of deflation being allowed to run its course, basically based on the policy response.

I mean, it's really a question of what you call inflation. I mean, if you're talking about the price of things like this, the answer is, yeah, for those consumer prices can be driven down. There's no two ways about it. But the value of a dollar, you know, when we print more of them, is going to go down on something. And what that will show up in is asset prices. We keep, you know, look, I know I'm the token monetarist on the panel who thinks that agrees with Professor Friedman, that inflation is.

a monetary phenomena. But unfortunately, it depends on how you measure it. And there are forces that are clearly going to provide air cover to the policymakers when they look at consumer inflation. And that's what Scott was talking about. So I think you can kind of thread the needle both ways. You know, as far as the predictions go, I mean, I'm less optimistic as you are about gold. I do think silver will structurally be outperforming gold for quite some time. I think the gold silver ratio is going to go lower. I think it will continue to do so because of what Mike said. The industrial demand for silver literally could go up by a factor of five,

even without any new discoveries. All that has to happen is the new battery, the Samsung batteries and the various other people who are using that much silver come to market. And you can do that. Now, but the point is that Mike makes it, he's right, is there's a level beyond which those batteries are not economical, right? I mean, silver at $1,000, you're not going to have 32 ounces of silver in an electric card.

Sorry, it just isn't going to work. So, yes, it's self-limiting to a degree, but will, is the demand there for silver to outperform gold? Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, that, that's really a thing. Scott, you made the title, Bitcoin indicator flips bear. Yeah, I was about to go there. And I was going to laugh at it because we've never had a red January and February in the history

of Bitcoin. But the reason that I brought this up, because it's all the noise on Twitter, which is back, by the way, is that it last I checked it's February 16th. And when you start declaring things dead halfway through the month, usually you end up going the other way. So I bet that February turned green just so it just doesn't happen. Yeah, that was the indicator. Well, I just made my first post on X because ran, you know, our erstwhile semisphile. my co-host on Cryptotown Hall posts for the first time in 12 years I'm questioning Bitcoin's thesis. It's not to draw down that concern me. It's how Bitcoin respond to when markets generally

moved into risk and uncertainty, which is another example there of narrative follows price, which I find amusing. And it literally happens at the bottom of every channel. The last thing you need to see, you always talk about capitulation. When people, when nothing changes the narrative, but the price doesn't follow, people tend to start making shit up. And this is true in every single asset. And God knows, the three of us or four of us have all seen this so many times. When the market does something that people don't understand, they resolve the cognitive dissonance by coming up with a theory that's completely insane, but, you know, as opposed to looking at what's actually happened.

And so when we see that, that generally shows a turn in my mind. I mean, look, I don't know what the record for Bitcoin being at a negative sentiment as extreme fear is, but I got to believe we've hit it. I mean, we've got out of it for two days there. Literally since October, we've had two days at above fear into neutral. Two days. And we've been in extreme fear at least 75% of that time. And hit a historic low at five, right? That's right.

So that is not, that is not tops. That's bottoms. Now, could it be bottom of a trading rally and we have yet another big thing going and it's going to drop to zero? Yeah, maybe. I mean, I suppose if it fails. But I think that Occam's Razor tells me that we saw an enormous amount of distribution and that distribution creates a reflexive cycle, which happens all the time.

And it's within the crypto community because we've seen a massive, shift from native crypto sell, you know, native crypto holding to more institutional holding or more, you know, graybeard holding or people in their RAAs. And you talk a Matt Hogan, and we've gone through this a million times. Yeah, I actually want to ask

Larry then, you know, to that point, not specifically to Rand's tweet, but we've heard this quite a few times. Even my hedge fund guy, friends hit me up. They're like, Bitcoin trade's like shit. Like, this is the worst chart I've ever seen. Why is it doing nothing? Like, does it concern you at all that Bitcoin has not

you know, followed gold or silver or that it's, you know, basically, it seems correlated to stocks down, but not up. Yeah, not a bit. I mean, it's just, this is what Bitcoin does. You know, it's a, it trades like a wild animal and it rewards you if you're willing to hold it at very bad periods of time and the sentiment is awful. I mean, I remember the sentiment after 2017. I remember the sentiment 2019. I remember, you know, the sentiment after FTX. I mean, it's, it's very common for it to do this. And so here we are, you know, I don't know if this is the bottom. I think that spiked to 60 might have been the bottom, but I could see a bottom in the 50s maybe on a, you know, a correlation of one event. But, you know, there are people saying it's going to 40, 30, 20. There's just no way. That's not

happening. And, you know, whether, how long it stays here and when it starts to recover, I don't know, but I think it's going to, you know, recover within the next six months to a year. And, you know, one of the things I do know about it is if you're not in it in the best days, you miss it. You know, I mean, it's so you can't, you know, there's some good macro analysts who've tried to trade it, you know, and said, oh, I'm getting out. It's at 90. Okay, fine.

But, you know, we could be back at 90 in a matter of days the way it trades. So, you know, if you weren't in it at the best 20 days from 20, you know, 18 to 2025, you missed 600% gains. So, you know, my view is you just, you buy it, you hold it, your dollar cost average. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead, Mike. Your dollar cost averaging in an asset has unlimited supply that's done.

It's over. Wait. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I'm going to supply. What the fuck are you talking about? They're going to go there.

Okay. Let's create some controversy here. The crypto bubble. Okay, so maybe you should let me speak before you interrupt because you're a classic, described a classic bear market. You're denying it. You're trying to buy every dip. You'll sell out.

You'll stop out when. And I'll say it now. It reaches a pretty low plateau around 10,000. That's usually how markets work. But please understand what happened in 2004. That was the good as it gets. Mr. Trump flipping. Now, if you're investing in the space, not are you trying to, you're supporting the Trump administration,

you're dependent on the Trump administration. You have stable coins that's taken over the peer-to-peer cash. If the trade is done and you still have millions of cryptos worth billions of dollars, which flush shows out. What gets Shibolino down to zero, doge coin down to zero, and then restart. In the meantime, if you're long, any of these highly volatile risk gases completely dependent on beta, you have to have the stock market go up. Flunk, it's flunk two tests.

It's failing versus beta. It's failed versus gold. The whole space is done. Just get out. Wait till you see a lot of those goes to zero and then get back in. But the biggest trade in history, the bubble is bursting. I will make the prediction from the future. we will look back at the Cryptomania, very comparable to tulips. It's just getting started. Like I said, no, if you're buying Bitcoin now,

you better hope that 180-day volatility in the stock market stays an eight-year low. You better hope that market-capped GDP stays at 100-year high. Just acknowledge the trade and trade. Sell rallies and risk assets. I hope somebody has got a video with this because we're going to shove this up your ass in a year or two. That was one of the dumbest fucking comments. Exactly. That's what you keep me embarrassed.

So I love it. Dave's been calling me dumb since Bitcoin is above 100. I love being dumb. No, I mean, you're dumb on, when you say Bitcoin has unlimited supply, that's just fucking dumb. If you say that most of crypto is going to go to zero, I actually agree with you. I think that. As a class was unlimited supply. If you take a look at the top 500 coins on coin market cap, my bet is 20 years from now, less than 10%.

And that will be a high number will have value. I agree with that. And I think that there's a ton of stupidity. And I've been very outspoken that the entire market cap of crypto will be much higher than it is today. But in fact, you might not even have the coins that matter. I mean, the only way that's true is that the value of the crypto rails is passed through to token holders.

And so you could talk about crypto that way. But when you talk about Bitcoin, Bitcoin is something very different. Bitcoin will either fail or it will. succeed. It's a going to be in the long run. It's a binary. If it succeeds, i.e. if it in fact is, as Kevin Warsh says, gold for people under 40, and if in fact that happens, Bitcoin is many, many, many multiples of today's price. And that, that is fact. And that could be with no other crypto succeeding, literally. I want Larry to jump in, obviously. But Mike, we do this argument all the time. I think we all know Bitcoin is a limited supply asset. It's just whether we can flate it with

all of crypto. But I mean, can't you just make the same argument for literally any stock? I mean, there's unlimited supply and theory of stocks that can come on to the market, but that doesn't diminish the value. And then they reach a too high, exactly. And then they reach it they reach a too high pinnacle. Airings are great. They fly up on this mass of wealth creation machine and then prices start underperforming as earnings stay strong. The key thing to remember about cryptos, let's talk about the most enduring thing in this trend in this space I think's going to continue. Tether has been flipping in everything. This is the key thing. It's tether right now. Another estimate, it's number three. I remember when I first started noticing it was an unstoppable force in 2018.

It was about 16. But it's number three crypto. It's going to flip in Ethereum around 1500 Ethereum. And another estimate, this enduring trend will flip in Bitcoin. Another thing to call me a dummy for from the future. Why? Because it's the most enduring trend in cryptos is tether flipping anything. See what's happening in the space? The space is awesome. It's gone to the dollars and its organic layer. And by the way, they all invest in U.S. Treasuries. Trump one didn't figure that out. Trump two did, but he helped put in the peak with Malonic corn and Trump coin. That's the top. I'm going to write about it 20 years ago when you call me a dummy. Just pointing out, Let's talk about the most enduring trend.

Now, if you expect that trend to stop, tether flipping and everything, I say good luck. I'd say it's going to flip in Ethereum this year and maybe even Bitcoin this year. I think it's more of a next year thing. I think that stable coins will ultimately be, whether it's tether or the sum of dollar stable coins, will flip in quite a bit of things. I think that the amount of money going into there is true. But I think that's orthogonal to the value of whether or not, you know, you talk about Ethereum, I'm not a Ethereum bowl. I'll be blunt about that. I don't know where the value proposition

is there relative to its price. I'm not going to lie. Bitcoin is very different, however, and I think the point is Bitcoin either continues to see its adoption increase as a store of value unit of account around the world and as an investable alternative to gold in the United States, or it doesn't. And it's quite straightforward, really. I mean, I think that the odds are higher now than it's been in a long time. I think that if in fact, and we are certainly moving toward that, there is a resolution, or at least the availability of a resolution towards quantum, which has, it is this year's China fud, then you end up with, you end up with a massive relief rally as the adoption curve goes up and as the selling exhaustion happens. Right now, we're in a period

of seller's exhaustion. And now that's seller's exhaustion, and I've called for this, so I'm not going to, I'm not going to change my opinion. I mean, I said I thought 60 was a bottom. I thought we would chop slightly higher, but not nothing crazy. And we're staying right where, you know, it is that way for a while. I think the next time there's a liquidity event that some of it will go into Bitcoin and you will end up with a hated rally. And that hated rally will then do what it's going to always do, which is either it's met by a wave of selling, and I want to know where the selling's coming from, but okay, or it grinds higher until people get FOMO again. And that's what Larry's talking about.

I never got a chance to really respond. So one of the mistakes Mike is making is he's conflating crypto with Bitcoin. I mean, look, I don't disagree that, and you've made this point, Dave, I don't disagree that most crypto is bullshit worthless and needs to go to zero. You know, Shinobi coin, Dodge, Dogecoin, all that crap. it's junk. You know, I mean, all the NFTs and JPEGs, etc. They're all worthless.

But Bitcoin is different. Bitcoin's digital scarcity, the first example of it, and it's been proven and accepted in 17 years of history, shows increasing adoption. And so I, you know, if you say it's going to 10,000, I say, show me the evidence that the adoption is slowing down or decreasing. And you say, well, it's from 126 down to 60. Well, yeah, and it's done this seven times before.

where it had a decline. What's that? ETFs, yeah, ETF growth may be slower right now. ETS. Mass and then get me out. Yeah, but it was the fastest. It's March the peak. This is things we predicted five years ago.

ETS going mainstream, best backtists in history. Retail, Joe Schmoe jumps aboard. There, yeah. I'm fucking done with you, man. I really am. You won't even let me finish my comment. Fuck you. I mean, fuck you.

you, man. Seriously. Now I got to moderate. We have another topic that I want to discuss. And I think we can all agree on. And, well, I'll be saying FUs, too, which is the number of- Okay, Larry, you're out of here. All right. No question.

Appreciate you. All right, guys, I want to talk about this. Dutch lawmakers advanced 36% capital gains on crypto. By the way, this is not on crypto. It's on stock, crypto, all assets. this, I mean, speaking of things that we can all say an FU to, how do you possibly live in a country that's going to tax unrealized gains? But this is the wrong. This isn't the right headline, by the way. I'm now reading it. It's a 36% tax on unrealized capital gains. And there's a reason

that they kind of had to do it because of the way their laws are set and even the lawmakers who passed it are saying they shouldn't have, but this is going to happen. So just to give people an example of the insanity of this. If you invest a thousand dollars in a stock or Bitcoin for that matter and it goes up a thousand dollars next year, so you've had the $1,000 of profit, you will pay $360 in taxes, whether you sold that or not. And you'll have to find that money somewhere unless you do want to sell it. And you really have no choice about you cannot compound. You cannot invest. You basically might as well not try. I mean, this is absolutely insanity.

Even in France, we tried 0.5%, 1%. I think they did a wealth tax and literally everybody that had any money left the country, there's a 36% unrealized capital gains tax. I can only think of this as the dumbest thing I've seen. I mean, I know the thing that's interesting about Netherlands, I mean, you know, I wrote this history of equity markets chapter, so I'm well aware. That's literally where the stock market started.

The first day exchange was the Amsterdam Exchange. Some of the best market makers on the planet are there. Now, market makers won't care because they're selling anyway. They're buying and selling. I mean, one of the reasons why I think that people have to understand my point of view on Bitcoin, for example, is if you think that Bitcoin is going to see a bottom at 50,000, let's just pick that number and this is relevant. And you own it at 68. And you think that that's a high likelihood.

but you own it from 10,000 or below, then you're going to pay an enormous amount of taxes. Even in Florida, you're paying 24% at the federal level. And if you're in California, New York, you're paying closer to 40 or 50%. So the hurdle rate for you to be right on selling to buy back later is crazy. Now put that in a situation where you don't have to sell. Where if January 1st, what that means is people in December are, going to have to, you know, December into January are going to be having to sell because if you don't sell, think about what happens to people who are, you know, are living off of their,

their investments. It's much worse than you think because it means if you're living off your investments, then you have to sell or you won't be able to afford the taxes because as you say, if let's say on January 1st, when they calculate the tax, you owe, you know, $50,000 and you haven't sold it. And you're in your investments. And you're planning on only selling, you know, 30,000 that year or whatever the hell the number is. And by February, it's now, your investment has fallen. Your, your effective tax rate goes from 36%. It could go to 70. It could go to a negative. It could go to the point where it's confiscatory, where it's taking your wealth. It is, it's sort of like when you're on Wall Street and you get options every year or stock every

year in your company. What is the most popular plan for people? They give an option to you. The option is sell enough to pay your taxes. That is the literal most chosen option by all people who get stock-based compensation is sell enough to pay your taxes. Now, you work for a private company, not a public one, Mike, so you don't know this. But trust me, and I know I've seen the data from inside, it was not just Citigroup. You know, it was, it's always, it's always, always sell enough to pay taxes. Well, that you've just taken an entire nation and done that. So the ability to accumulate wealth there is just going to be.

Dave, I've worked for plenty of public company and have gotten stock. So I know that I've done the trade. The key thing from what you have, it means you don't buy that asset when you have a rule like that. You just don't buy that asset. Of course, you don't buy it and you sell it when you can. But now you've taken that to all assets out of one country. Yeah. What's going to happen?

Well, I mean. How do you live there? I literally don't understand. Like they're saying you cannot. Invest. Yeah, more or less. And by the way, I don't even know what the laws are for unrealized capital gains losses. But it feels like if you lose, I guess you can roll them forward, but you, I mean, this makes no absolutely no sense.

I mean, Mike, what do you do if you live in the Netherlands right now? It's the EU, right? You can just cross a border and go get a better law. But I love the historical aspects. First of all, why are we all here in America? Our ancestors came over for reason. are we all in Florida? There ain't no taxes. I've just finished my taxes for the year, and I lived in Connecticut the last three decades, working for public companies. And I remember

paying a lot of taxes in a bunch of different states. It's why migration, it's just going to accelerate that migration to low tax places where people can keep their own money. Yeah. That's true. Bullish on the UAE for sure. It's like I would imagine that, you know, I suspect that there's some places in Europe that will do better than others, but, you know, Amsterdam's a beautiful city. I just, it's just to me is crazy that what, what they're doing to, to that country. And that's just, it's just crazy. But the, the side to it is, it will be such an humble, unmitigated disaster that those who want to do wealth taxes in the United States are going to have lots of splaining to do, because you're not

going to be able to cover it up. Yeah, I mean, Macron had to end this in 2018. It had been in France for years and the amount of capital that fled the country was so... And it was more than order of magnitude lower of a rate. And we can literally see it was 0.5%. I think sliding rate 0.5 to 1.5. It's a different kind of tax, obviously. It was on your entire net worth. But that's what's being proposed effectively in California.

And even just the tax arbitrage that Mike mentioned has led massive capital flight from California to places like Texas and Florida. And that's without unrealized taxes. That's just higher taxes. Well, in a world where you... have 10% asset growth than a 36% tax you can do the math right you know it's a 3.6% wealth tax if it's 5% so it's still much bigger than a pure wealth tax of a small number and it's a big number right you know it's it's it's and the problem is is that it's it's it's not it's not symmetrical and the way that it

happens is actually worse because with a wealth tax you at least okay I have an entire year to slice off a piece of my portfolio. Here, your risk is specific to a given date, which is crazy. I mean, it really is crazy. Speaking of someone who built algorithms to trade to a point in time, I know how they work. And so with the end of the year, which is a terrible liquidity period of time, is going to be a just disastrous period of time for all the assets that the Dutch hold. And by the way, you know, ASML, by the way, is the largest holding in Holland, right? you know, one of the largest chip, you know, chip companies out there. It's just, this is going to have some very big impacts.

There's no two ways around it. And, you know, we'll see. But it's just, yeah, I mean, it's just, I find it. Who's going out of their way? But it's, I agree with you, Dave, but it's a benefit of those of us who seek low taxate. So key question is, who is going out of their way to move to California, start a business in California. So here's a quote from a book. Why was Jesus?

of Nazareth born in Bethlehem because of the tax. Old Man Joe had to go back for the census for the tax. That's from the book Daylight Robbery by Dominic Frisbee, a big Bitcoin. It points out some of the major shifts on the entire world were because of tax. And you're seeing it major in the states right now. What person is going out of the way to go to a high tax repressive state? They're all going to low tax red states. It's just the fact of, yeah, I want to keep my money in a better way. So to me, that's a major shift and the system. But also, it's a It's what's happening in this country. I had a son go to school, you main,

and the main topic up was in Maine was, we got to do something to protect our flight from Florida. So the tax is a big, powerful force in markets. And I just look at this like, yeah, good luck, real estate in California, but what's that going to do for real state in Florida? Well, I mean, it's not going to hurt mine. I know that much. Yeah, I mean, I just think that it's just one of those things.

There's been a few things of late. that I just feel like we're living in a simulation. They're so shocking that I can't believe they're real headlines. When I read that Netherlands headline, I thought I was reading the Babylon B or the onion or something. Yeah, I mean, look, there are lots of reasons. When we talk about the K-shaped economy, we talk about the Epstein stuff,

it all kind of comes together. I mean, I wrote a little piece, you know, earlier, you know, over the weekend on why people are so up in arms and no one trusts governments anymore. It's because we've literally instituted policies to create and to create, literally to create a gap between the elites and the rest of the world. And effectively, our policies are if you have assets, you've done well, and if you don't, you haven't. So, you know, the rich get richer. This is not dissimilar to what is happening in France.

Remember, there were two revolutions that happened, almost in the same time, the United States Revolution and the French Revolution. In the U.S., we went because we had massive, resources and ability to expand and lots of reasons, it went in one direction. France went in the other. And regardless of the catchphrases behind it, you know, it was an expression of venting of popular anger. And venting of popular anger is what we're seeing in politics all around the world. It doesn't matter, you know, where you are.

We're seeing that. And the Epstein situation ties all this together. So, you know, you're seeing this stuff. Politicians who believe, you know, like the left has this belief. And I'm not talking about Democrats now. I'm talking about the extreme left, the ones who are kind of running the Democratic Party right now, but this do shall pass. But they have this belief and the belief is totally wrong.

It's that the economy is a fixed thing that's theirs, the people in power to divide it up. And we all know that when you take that belief, what you end up with is mass human misery. Because the economy isn't a fixed thing. If the policies don't encourage growth, the economy shrinks, if the policies encourage growth, it grows and you have more to give to other people. people. And so, you know, you see this lesson, you would think this is obvious, but it's not. And so, you know, we have the mayor of the largest, most important capitalist, you know, city in the, in the world who believes exactly that, that the economy is to be divvied up. The Dutch politicians believe the economy is there to be divvied up. It's all the same thing, Scott. And so, you know, the world will,

will find, water will seek its own level. People, capital will go where it's treated best. Innovation is relentless and eventually, you know, these, these waves of popular anger will either dissipate or get focused so much that we end up over-correcting and then go back and forth. And it's a, it's a massive pendulum. But the Dutch one is crazy. I mean, there's just no other way or no other word I can come up with. Yeah, we're at 10 o'clock. Obviously, it's a holiday.

I want you guys to be able to go enjoy it. I just want to say, obviously, we've never seen the conversation to generate to that level previously, I think it's very clear, Mike, we love you. And I would never want to hear anybody that I respect called names like that. And listen, I disagree with the opinion that Bitcoin and Crypto are the same thing, but welcome to the last four years of our lives debating this, right? So I don't think there was anything brand new there. Obviously, you know, very upsetting to Larry and we'll discuss that offline. But we're at a point clearly. That's like the third time that on this show or Crypto Town Hall or elsewhere. I've seen sentiments so low that people have resorted to name calling.

I was called a bitch on Crypto Town Hall last week. Dave, Dave, there for that. It didn't make any sense. No, it made no sense. But just to say, I don't know if it's a signal of where we're at in the market right now, but there is clearly a lot of anger and people are having, you know, there's a lot of emotion tied to people's positions. And we can discuss what that means. But usually we obviously are relatively respectful of each other's opinions and love the debate here. So that's all we got for you guys.

I'll be back tomorrow. Obviously, thank you, Dave and Mike for showing up on a holiday. And once again, Mike, well done, maintaining. That's love. That's love from brothers. Love. All right, guys. See, no, time.

Bye.