The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Is Stuck While Stocks Keep Ripping | Fidelity’s Jurrien Timmer

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Tether completes its first full Big Four audit, strengthening confidence in USDT’s reserves and transparency, while markets debate whether today’s AI-driven rally resembles the dot-com bubble. We also cover rising Treasury yields and renewed Iran-related inflation risks, alongside growing security concerns in crypto—from North Korean hackers infiltrating companies to the Trezor data breach exposing nearly 14,000 users. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ready to take your investing knowledge to pro-level. This is Fidelity Connects, your daily edge in the markets. Get deep insights on real-time market topics that may impact your investment portfolio. Listen to Fidelity Connects on Spotify today and power your next move tomorrow. Bitcoin is stuck while stocks keep ripping the S&P made yet another new all-time high yesterday, breaking 7,800 for the very first time as Bitcoin continued to languish. I'm going to discuss everything driving markets and the macro with one of my absolute favorite guest has been way too long since I've had him on.

Uri and Timmer, the director of global macro at Fidelity. We're going to dive into all of it right now. Let's go. Let's go. Good morning, everybody. Happy Friday and welcome to the show. Now, we're going to dive into a quick few stories that I just want to review before I bring Urien on because I think there's two of them that are absolutely.

huge this week and worth discussing that have happened and are not necessarily macro stories. So first of all, rest in peace to the Tether Truthers, who for years have been telling us that Tether does not actually have backing for their assets. I mean, this is a pretty savage tweet from my friend Pallo, the CEO of Tether over here about when Tether audit now. And he used the gladiator meme. Are you not entertained? Which I thought was bold. We've been hearing for years that their assets are not backed. They did finally get a big four audit from KPMG and have all the assets I said they did. They went as far as to actually go and count every single gold bar in the vault one by one checking the serial numbers, checking every transaction.

Tether is fully backed in case you did not believe that before, which I did. I will say I'm sure that in the early days they were backing Tether with much less reliable assets, like some said it was Chinese paper and all these other things, but I think as they became more reputable over the years, fully backed. No more question marks about that. The number two story that before I bring him on, I just want to cover, is the absolute disgrace that is self-custody for crypto right now. Treasurer warns 14,000 customers after fulfillment partner suffers data breach. I wrote about this at length in the newsletter this morning. We had the cold card exploit last week, and this week now their third-party shipper has unfortunately had their data hacked,

that 14,000 customers got an email from Treasurer today saying that your phone number, your address, and the fact that you are self-custody and crypto has now been released on the dark web. This is not just a theoretical threat for anybody who's been following what's been happening in France for the past three years. Effectively, somebody was accused rightfully of selling information from the French equivalent of the IRS to hackers who have been perpetrating wrench attacks against crypto holders in France. There's four times as many of them in 2026 and there even were in 2024, multiple

times. This is physical hacks. One of the founders of Ledger had his finger cut off literally in a $10 million ransom because people had his address to do that he was in crypto. Very, very hard right now. I think a bit of an existential crisis for crypto self-custody because it's one thing to be your own bank. It's another thing to be your own bank security. right because of a counterparty risk we were told in 2021, 2021, not your keys, not your coins, which I think is still a very good lesson. The problem is the lesson was that you couldn't trust the counterparties in the exchange. Well, now you can't trust the counterparty in the hardware provider that is sending you your wallet and doxing your address and phone number.

Very ugly stuff. I do not want to talk about it too much, but be careful out there. I'm going to go ahead and bring on Yuri and now. Good morning, sir. How are you? Good morning, Scott. Nice to see you. I was going to say, it's been way, way, way too long. But glad to have you here. So this show obviously crosses over from Bitcoin to macro. It's something that we discussed. And I think we're in that moment now where you really can't discuss Bitcoin without discussing macro.

It's not like it was 10 years ago. So maybe you can set the table how you're thinking about markets and macro in general right now. And then later we can get into where Bitcoin fits into that. Sure. So we are obviously in a roaring equity bull market driven by, of course, the AI story. And earnings are not only growing by leaps and bounds, but their rate of change is still actually accelerating higher. So if you think about momentum, fundamental momentum, it's one thing if earnings are growing, but if the second derivative is also reaching new highs,

That's a lot of momentum that, you know, if you're bearers, that's going to be a hard thing to derail, if you will. Now, at some point, we'll hit peak rate of change on earnings. I mean, earnings are growing, you know, at like 35% year over year. That's obviously not sustainable over the long term. The five-year earnings growth rate is about 15%. That tends to be as good as it gets over a five-year sort of Kager basis. But this earnings boom has allowed valuations to come way down. You know, the S&P 500 forward PE is about 20.

And for the equal weighted index, it's about 18. That's right smack in sort of the middle of what you would expect when earnings are growing. You know, the longer term, like tape ratios, right, the cyclically adjusted, those are at or near all-time highs. but it should be noted that, of course, with earnings booming 35% per year, like the dollar estimate for the S&P earnings is up $100 just over the last year. Like, it's their mind-boggling numbers. So by definition, a five-year cape that's using the last five years of earnings are going to look very high because earnings five years ago were nothing like they are today.

So the valuation is always sort of in the eye of the behold. but right now the market is growing or is is rallying purely on the basis of earnings. And if we want to compare that to the internet boom turned bubble in the late 90s, which of course is a favorite pastime, admittedly by myself as well, given that we have sort of similar talk about technological revolutions. Back then, earnings peaked in like 98, 99. You can see that in the box there on the chart. and that whole final wave of price gains was entirely valuation.

And compare that to today and we don't have anything like that. Now, maybe in a year or two it will be like that, but right now it is not. Also, the market is built on much better breadth this year. So right now, 75% of the stocks in the S&P are above their 200-day moving average, which means that they're an uptrend. back in 99, 2000, that final fling to new all-time highs only saw 20% of the stocks above their moving average. So while there are similarities in terms of the price analog fundamentally and in terms of market participation, this is a different market. And the questions that we're all asking, at least I am, but my colleagues as well, is not about

is the boom real? I think we all know that it's real, but what is the, like, where can things go wrong in terms of sort of the financial plumbing, you know, these hyperscalers and the other companies and groups in the space of AI, they are issuing a lot of equity and they're borrowing a ton of money through the bond markets, whether it's private or public. And I think the number I saw is that this year, some $500 billion is going to be borrowed for hyperscalor data center expansion and the power and the chips and all of that stuff that goes with it, with another $500 billion coming next year. And you can start asking questions about the plumbing of those deals, like who's going to buy bonds? Like some people are buying 20-year bonds for these companies,

others are buying five-year bonds. How soon do the chips underlying those bonds deprecrease, and what is the residual and will the next series of leases be at a steep disc? It gets really into the weeds, but the questions ultimately around the sustainability, not of AI as a technology, but for the market, which is obviously very heavily linked to the AI space, I think will rest about on questions like that, as well as the models, the frontier models, right? So the LLMs and the agenic models, are they getting disrupted by the cheaper Chinese open weight models? And there certainly seems to be some anecdotal evidence that suggests the answer is yes. And if that's the case, if these expensive closed frontier models get disrupted, if you will,

just like human intelligence is getting disrupted, then you wonder if these big companies will be able to come to the market with an IPO or whether the IPOs will be successful and can they raise capital that way. So those are kind of the questions that we ask about, is this a bubble and how it is going to end? But certainly the technology is real. And at the same time, the economy is running pretty hot. I mean, we did have a soft payroll number last Friday, but it's worth remembering that the non-farm payroll report is a statistical model, right? And we can argue that, you know, a drop of 20,000 people or a gain of 50,000 people is bullish or bearish. But the data set, the labor force, is 171 million people, right? So you think about the tracking error of numbers like that, and especially when the labor force is barely

growing, like the break-even rate of the unemployment rate gets very small if there's not a lot of inherent growth in the labor force because people are joining the labor force or, you know, you have immigration or this or that. So it takes very little right now to produce a negative number. And so that doesn't mean that the economy is soft. So by our perspective, the economy is pretty strong. The bull market is intact, driven by earnings. There are risks, of course. One is concentration risk because the market's very top-heavy, the mag 7, which used to pay out its earnings, about 85% of its earnings, is now paying out only about 35% of its earnings because it's spending its cash flow on on cap-ex, which of course is good, but cap-ex has an uncertain outcome,

whether, as opposed to a share buyback, which has a certain outcome. So there's some changing there in the plumbing on that side. And then, of course, we have the interest rate side. I've been saying for the last four years that the Fed model is back, and the Fed model means that if the risk-free asset, the Treasury bond market, is priced competitively against the stock market, which is the risky asset, if the risk-free asset gets cheaper, then the stock market needs to get cheaper as well. And at about 4.7% on the 10-year treasury, we're in that kind of yellow zone where if yields were to go to 5%, the stock market would have to.

react with a lower PE, which doesn't mean a lower price necessarily because earnings are growing 35 percent and prices the residual of earnings and valuation. But those are the two risks, but there are nestled in within a very robust earnings-driven bull market. So many things to unpack there. So the CAPEX spending, I've, you know, I had a conversation with Jordi Visser the other day. He basically views that as the new stimulus, right? Is that obviously it's kind of its own private money printing to some degree. I mean, 500 billion a low. from Nvidia was an announcement this week, and you were talking about 500 ability a year. But it does seem interesting. We had earnings, I guess, a couple weeks ago on Microsoft and

meta in the same two days. And Microsoft went way up and meta went way down. And it seemed it was because they both were spending a ton on CAPEX, but Microsoft effectively, you could see the benefits of it in real time. And meta was more theoretical, which is sort of what you're talking about. What will happen if we spend all this money is there a real plan? And they were punished for it. So maybe the market is at least wisening up to some degree. as to the idea that all CAP-X spending is not necessarily the same. Yes, and I think that's actually a very positive development because investors are asking the critical questions.

They're asking the tough questions. One is about the models, the frontier models getting disrupted by the Chinese open-weight models. And the other one is, what is the ROI on this CAP-X? And you can see that hypers, you know, companies with very, good businesses that is not just about the buildout. If they spend less on CAPEX or they have a window into exactly where it's going and what it's going to deliver, those companies are being rewarded.

And if it's just like, well, we're spending because we have to because otherwise we lose the race, but we don't really know what the gains will be, then those companies might get punished. because, again, the CAPEX comes at the, it's eating away into free cash flow, which, again, it's not a bad thing. You want companies to invest. But when these companies were generating a lot of free cash flow and they didn't have enough purpose for it, they would return it to shareholders as buybacks. And maybe that's kind of a lame thing.

It's financial engineering. But it's like a bird in the hand. Like at least you know what you're getting. and if it's just a trillion dollars of CAPEX, and you don't know if it's going to be the last chair in the musical chair stance that it's like, oh, yeah, no, you're going to lose the battle, but you've spent a trillion on CAPEX anyway. You know, that's what nobody wants to end up as.

That makes perfect sense. I would say the bigger existential threat is the general fiscal situation. It's a breaking the U.S. government officially post its largest July budget in history at $432 billion due to an acceleration in federal spending. I mean, we can unpack that endlessly, but, you know, round 40 trillion, let's call it, you know, it's a rounding error, a trillion here and there at this point. But, you know, 40 trillion in national debt, seemingly running extremely hot, no plan to bring that down, even though that's sort of how this administration started with Doge and such.

I mean, how does that end? Yeah, and that 40 trillion debt is up, I think, 15 or 16. trillion just since COVID, like just in the last six years, right? So we had five trillion during COVID. That was the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, beautiful bill was, uh, another five trillion plus. And, you know, it's interesting, um, being critical on China with tariffs and spending money we don't have are the two things that are sort of not politically challenged in Washington. Like all parties agree that that's okay.

And so there really is no end in sight until the bond vigilantes really step up. But you've got Scott Besson at Treasury, who is a formidable person. And certainly I wouldn't want to bet against them and probably not many other people do either. And you see what they're doing, right, with the intervention in Japan.

issuing swap lines in the Gulf states during the Iran conflict. This is all about getting the U.S. bond investors to not sell treasuries, right? This is like, we'll lend you money. And whether that's backdoor fiscal QE type of thing, you know, is hard to prove, but that's another conversation maybe for another time. But it's interesting. So the bond market is in the hands of sort of the bond vigilantes. And if they push yields to five or even six, I mean, it's not a prediction on my part, you know, that's going to be a problem for the sustainability of the debt. And so I think the calculus in Washington at the Treasury is we're going to run this economy hot. We're going to be a leader in AI. We're going to resource everything. And we're going to

grow our way out of debt, or at least grow fast enough to keep the debt sustainable. And for now, that actually is the case, right? Like a very, very simple metric would be look at the five-year Kager of GDP, which is the nominal GDP, which is probably around 6, 7%. And what's the 10-year treasury yield? What is the funding is 4.65%. So if the growth rate is above the funding rate, you're good. If it's the other way around, your debt becomes unsustainable.

And like in Europe, for instance, they don't have the growth, but they do have the debt. In Japan, they are deflating or devaluing the debt. And they're actually doing a, I would hate to say, they're doing a good job at it because Japanese yields keep making new highs. But the Japanese debt to GDP is way down, but it's the ratio of debt to GDP. So I think the calculus in the U.S. is we're going to boost productivity through AI. We're going to grow this thing. And that keeps the growth rate above the funding rate.

And if that's the case, you don't, you avoid a debt spiral. But a lot of things have to go right there. And the bond market needs to behave, right? So we now have a new guy at the Fed, Kevin Warsh, who is trying, I think he's trying to channel his inner Allen Greenspan, like he's trying to be cagey with the markets. And I agree to some degree that the days of forward guidance and dot plots, all of that stuff were by, all of those things were byproducts from the financial crisis when Bernanke pushed rates to zero. And then they couldn't go any lower.

So you have to go into your toolkit and say, well, what else can we do to influence, invest the market's behavior? year. And so what you do is you do QE, which are like surrogate rate cuts, and you create a dot plot and forward guidance that tells the market, look, rates are going to be zero for a long, long time, because we all think it is. And those things are not really needed in a normal interest rate environment, which is where we are. I think the Fed's biggest problem is that last year, 2024 into last year, it cut rates a bunch of times because the first rate cuts were fine. They didn't need to be so restrictive anymore because inflation had come down.

But the second few rate cuts last year were kind of gratuitous. The Fed was worried about AI eating jobs and it looked at the inflation numbers and they were coming down. But when you look at things like the Taylor Rule, those rate cuts were not justified. and now the Taylor Rule, which is an algorithm based on growth and inflation, has been moving in the other direction. So the Fed really should have been, should be taking back those rate cuts. But of course, nobody wants to do that. And, you know, I'm sure Mr. Warsh doesn't want to get a call from the White House.

So I think that's kind of the bind that the Fed is in, that they really should not have cut. They should not have. So how do they do they? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, they're not going to raise rates. I don't care what prediction markets or, you know, prediction that's not worse his job and

that's not why he's there. But interestingly, I was going to say, yeah, I guess they had some sort of justification for those cuts, but the bond market never believed them. No. But I mean, they cut and the interest rates went up and they're still up, you know. The Treasury yield still remain up, right? Exactly. And the last few times the Fed cut when the market didn't think it was just.

justified, the curve bear steepment. And that is the risk right now that if they don't cut in September after not cutting in July, when the forward curve is pricing in two rate hikes, that the back end will steepen. And then, you know, the bond market will just do the work for the Fed and it will tighten itself. And that's what they're hoping for. I mean, isn't Warsh effectively best in sky? I think it. It's probably a good thing that actually we have a Treasury and a Fed that are not contentious and are speaking to each other and have the same vision. But, you know, you can't be doing, I think it was Jordy that was on here. I mean, you can't be doing intervention in the yen and cutting, I mean, just that, you know, you, there has to be consistency between the behavior of the two and nothing says we would be raising rates.

Yeah, I think Treasury and Fed will coordinate more closely, not to the extent they did like in the 1940s when before the Fed Treasury accord. The Treasury has debt to sell. The Fed has debt to buy. I mean, they are expanding the balance sheet with T-bills. The Fed can set regulations for banks. And I think one of the ideas is to let the banks become proxies for the Fed, and in a way, they already are. So if you regulate or deregulate the banks enough,

and maybe with a steep curve that has some compensation via the term premium, maybe the banks will pick up the slack and allow the Fed to not have to own so many treasuries. So I think that's probably part of the calculus here. Okay, let's talk about where Bitcoin fits into all of this because we are in the dregs of summer. You know, we're languishing. There's apathy. Obviously, as I mentioned, there is actually some bad news. I'll take it as a positive that even amongst all this bad news, strategy-selling, self-cutting issues,

it is remaining strong, but it's certainly not. participating. Yeah. So my simple take on Bitcoin is that, you know, you have the believers. They're in because they're believers. So that probably includes you and me and many others. And then, you know, a few years ago, there was this hope, if you will, that the next wave of adoption was coming in with ETS. And I think to a good extent that was correct. But of course, if you make it very, very easy to buy. In addition to the people who really like it and who think it makes sense, you're going to get the fast money.

And the fast money is completely disloyal to any asset class. They're just going to buy whatever it goes up. And so you had some of that fast money. And the political calculus was part of that with Donald Trump being elected and doing some favorable things in the space. So you had kind of, you know, I wouldn't call it a blow off top. We went to $126,000. and it just kind of petered out.

And 126,000 was a 100% cager over 125 weeks from the low that preceded it. And when you look at the wave structure of Bitcoin's four-year cycle, on a linear skill, it makes no sense. But on a log-to-log skill, it has a beautiful harmony. And that top was well within the zone. Maybe a little short, maybe you should have gone to one. but it was within the zone of like where a four-year cycle bull market would end, not only in time and in price.

And then when it broke that uptrend line, I was thinking, okay, that's it. $65,000 is a good number because that is the kind of the trend line or the support line for the power law curve. And so since last October, that's been sort of my go-to number. And guess what? we're at 63,000, and we're languishing here because the time part of the four-year cycle, the winter cycle is still, you know, it's been too early for it to bottom. But in the meantime, the fast money, when Bitcoin stopped working last year, they jumped

on the gold train, right? Remember, Chinese central bank and Chinese investors were buying gold, the silver ETF went nutty, right? It went to 150. So that's where the fast money went. And I have a model based on the global money supply and its rate of change that really very closely explains where gold should be. And late last year, gold should have been at around 4,800, but it went to like 5,700. And that was all like fluff.

That was just, that was the blow off because the fast money was running amok. And then we got the Iran conflict and all of a sudden gold was like one of these reserve assets that could be for sale because these Gulf states need liquidity because they can't move their oil. And then gold sort of became a more correlated asset. They became correlated to bonds ironically because bonds were the other reserve asset. And then, you know, gold stopped working. And guess what? At that point, the AI boom really took off. And now the fast money is in AI and semiconductors.

you look at the ETF flows in Korea, like levered single name ETFs in the U.S. 70 billion dollars of fast money has gone into that, just into the ETF space, right? And so the fast money is somewhere else. And at some point, that will stop working, right? Remember, if a hyperscaler reduces CAPEX, who's going to feel it the most? It's the semiconductors, right? And so at some point, the stars will line up. They're starting to line up for gold, like the global money.

the global liquidity growth rate is starting to perk up again, and some of the fast money, like I said, is gone. So I think it will require gold first to start moving and say to the market, like, okay, you know, the store value thing that we totally forgot about, maybe that's still a thing. And if global liquidity grows fast enough, it will be a thing because that's what makes gold move.

And then Bitcoin, which I know this is like heresy on a show like this. But to me, Bitcoin is like, it's sort of the junior player on the store of value team, and not junior. Like the precocious younger sibling, let's put it. Everyone agrees with that. Yeah, we've got gold lovers here. You know, we're all here. But so, so it's just, it's an asset waiting for a story, right? It's all about stories and narratives and catalysts, but near 60,000, even if it goes to 50,000, to me, and this is not investment advice, but like, that's an area where I'm like, okay, you know, that I'm getting, I'm getting, the risk reward is, is, is in balance. But again, you know, I've, I've never been like religious about Bitcoin. To me,

I look at a menu of asset classes. It's about two dozen of them. It could be equities. It could be Chinese stocks. It could be gold. It could be high yield debt. Bitcoin is one of those 24. And like every other asset on that menu, there are levels where the asset, makes a lot of sense and there are levels where it makes less sense. And that's how I look at Bitcoin. It's like, okay, you know, it's all relative value. That's why I look at the Bitcoin to gold ratio. That, that has captured the low so far. Very nice. Because if you take a Z score, if you detrend the gold to Bitcoin ratio, whenever that Z score goes to minus 100%, Bitcoin puts in a low. And that's where we were over the last few months. So that's kind of how I put this

whole thing in perspective. I had a chart of Bitcoin to gold ratio here, but yeah, you can't find it at the moment. Here it is. But yeah, I tend to agree with all of that. There are an interesting stat that my team pulled up while we were talking. Maybe worth noting a lot of open interest, futures positioning, piling in here on Bitcoin with implied volatility at multi-year lows. Feels like a big move is coming soon in some fashion.

So you basically have, you know, open interest exceeds a full day of trading volume. You have implied volatility basically at its lowest, which is the summer doldrums, this part of the cycle that we discussed. And then, of course, you have implied volatility rocketing or open interest while price is dropping. I mean, some will tell you that means a short squeeze is coming, right? But you don't know which way that's going to go. But this is just classic Bitcoin, right? It lulls you to sleep. And then when people finally capitulate, it makes a massive move, right?

What's the old stat? All Bitcoin gains are made. in 10 days a year. The rest of the time you're basically nine days and down. I know, and Bitcoin is maturing as an asset. I think it certainly has earned its stripes as an asset. It has endured long enough. But, you know, other assets are the same way, right? The equity market is either trending or you have long periods where it does nothing and it becomes forgotten. And that becomes, it becomes like a value market. And, you know, all these assets sort of wax and wane and they cycle in and out. And that's why I like having a broadly

diversified portfolio so that you don't have everything in one thing that is either really working or it's not working at all. That doesn't create many peaceful nights of sleep in my house. No, yeah, I agree with that. And I think that most people listening agree with that as well. But, you know, I fully agree that we are in a very interesting place for Bitcoin. You can look at it historically, whether you believe in the cycle or not, you can look at it through the lens of this implied volatility and such, but also to your point, you know, the power law line is here, the 200 MA is here on the weekly. These are the areas we've bottomed. Always. You know, it has to be the same, but yeah, you know. And again, the gold Bitcoin ratio, the spread of Bitcoin against its power

law trend line, and you want the early bullish price action. And you want the early bullish price action. to be really inconspicuous, right? You don't want these big, big green bars up. I don't trust those. Like, you want it to be so slow that no one even notices, and all of a sudden it's like, hey, we're at $75,000. Wow. How does that happen?

Yeah, the big green candles, you know, everybody knows the most face-ripping rallies come in bare markets. I've always always skeptical of that. And equities too, yes, for sure. And it doesn't break a new level or, you know, it just rockets right up into an area of resistance. and everybody gets excited, piles in, and that's the gratuitous short. Doreen, I know we kind of kept you for time here.

Anything else that I might have missed? No, just, you know, enjoy the summer and keep, you know, it's a good pond to fish from. There's a lot of fish in the pond right now, both within the stock market, right? International stocks are working. Even like boring things like European banks have really fascinating fundamentals and performance. They have performed almost as well. as the AI stock. So they're, you know, as opposed to a few years ago when if you were not in the Mag 7, you were just like completely left behind, that is no longer the case. It is a broad, broad

market and it's a good market to be in. And the doomers keep dooming. That's what they do. It sells newsletters. It does. It does sell newsletters. Listen, I mean, there are things that are different this time that are concerning, like the way the bond market has behaved. But, you know, to me, just ride the train. until there's a reason not to. That's what stopwashes are for, right? Yes. All right, Erian, thank you so much, everybody. Please give him a follow.

It's been wonderful having you. Hope to do it again soon. Great. Thanks, Scott. All right. Thank you. That's always incredible to get the macro insight that really, obviously, as you guys know, has become more of the focus of what we're doing here

as far as content. We've had Macro Monday for years as the most, as the most, I think, popular show on the network. but you really can't talk about Bitcoin anymore, I don't think, without digging more deeply into the macro. Now, there's a couple, before we move on, a couple other things that I wanted to show for today, and then we're going to do something different, which is go back to reviewing the week, which I used to do here with NLW on the Friday 5, of course.

But I'm not sure if you guys saw this story, but I'm going to play the video. A North Korean hacker's response when asked to say something negative about Kim Jong-un. This has to be one of the crazier things that I've seen. And I'm just going to play you the video. So Laura Shin, who's amazing from Unchained, she posed as a recruiter hiring devs to effectively entrap a North Korean hacker. I'm just going to show you exactly what happened here because it's amazing. It was time for the question I had been waiting to ask. You know, as I mentioned earlier, the crypto industry has seen an influx of North Koreans.

working on behalf of the dictatorship to infiltrate the crypto industry. So we have to do a big check for that. Can you say something negative about Kim Jong-un? I see. It's not... Where to go? I'm sorry. Can you repeat that? I didn't hear you. We can keep going, but I will give you the, I'll give you the gist, is that he disappeared. She messaged him again. He sent back a vague message that was clearly from AI. and then effectively just disappeared. But now this is the killer question that they're using.

So you know that these North Korean hackers have been effectively posing as devs. I think he said he was from Long Beach. The United States was not from North Korea. They traced him back to Vladivostok. I don't pronounce that wrong. Russia, where apparently North Korean hackers are still allowed to operate. But these guys have stolen billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars over the last year. and she completely trapped this guy.

I mean, it's so good. The video's amazing. You guys should follow the story because it's just amazing. So before we move on to discussing the news of the week, which we will cook through in a second, you guys know that I've been working closely with People's Reserve. I've had CJ on the show many, many times. And for full transparency, I am a holder of PRN

and actually using the product, which full transparency should be that it's amazing and I'm using the product. But I've showed you guys the calculator, which I can show you again. But these guys are doing absolutely incredible work with Bitcoin as pristine collateral for mortgages. I'll just read this for you. Paying $50,000 to lower your mortgage rate in Tradfai, that money's gone forever. People's reserve, it's not.

Here's the math. 500K loan, 6.65%. You're paying a monthly payment of $32.10. Total interest, $65,000, $5.37. So if you pay, obviously, 50K in points, your interest rate drops, right? Your new monthly mortgage 2431, 280K in savings, your break-eaving 5.35-year window. Right. Now, if you use people's reserve, BMR starts at 6%.

Now, the same concept that they have with points you can use with PRN tokens. Once again, I own PRN tokens. That's awesome. Same 50K and PRM points. Rate dropped to 3%. You're now paying $2,100. your total savings are 320K and you break even in 4.6 years. And now you can stake those same tokens for 10 to 15%. You can sell them back anytime and you can keep earning rewards. This is the same idea as buying points for a mortgage.

Like we're not shilling some all coin here, whatever, it can go up and down in value. What you're getting is the actual, you're using it like points to get the discount on your actual mortgage. If it goes up, great. But you can then say, sell those points back, which you can't do with a normal mortgage. You can stake them and earn and keep earning the rebate. It's really just amazing what they're doing. If you guys haven't played with the calculator, you should go to it. I'm hoping it's down in the description. This is for the Bitcoin Bond. One is my favorite, full transparency. Let's say you have a $500,000 purchase price. You put down 20% in Bitcoin, which is 1.59 Bitcoin. You have a good credit score. Okay, let's assume that Bitcoin goes up, up 20% a year. You've completely paid off your mortgage in year 11 instead of 30 years.

It's absolutely insane. And your payment is only $2,100 a month. It's cheaper. If Bitcoin goes up more than that, obviously, you're paying, you know, let's call it 40. You're paying off in seven years. Seven years. So guys, I highly recommend it's down, I'm assuming in the description that you check out people's reserve. I'm going to have CJJ on a lot. I absolutely love, love, love what these guys are doing. All right. So listen, we're trying to change up the format of the show a little bit so that we actually cover the news. And when we have a guest who doesn't really want to talk about North Korean hackers, we allow them to talk about things they want. And you may remember that we used to do the Friday 5.

So about 12 minutes before we started today, I decided to redesign everything for my entire life and show. So at like 848, I was like, new show concept. Right? And so, of course, that meant that we had to go into Higgs field and make some amazing videos or concepts. So you guys, if you watch The Daily Wolf, you know I have a section called How Not to Invest. This is what we had whipped up for that one. I just want to show you just so. How not to invest.

How not to invest. So that's so good, right? And then we tell you how not to invest. So we were trying to come up with concepts in nine minutes for what we could call a Friday you know, week in review. We used to have the Friday 5. This is what AI fed us for the first, for the first one. Weekly reckoning in the bull, he goes across

the thing. Like this is watching again. He spilled the coffee. First of all, we should call it the rectining. Okay? And then then our other idea was what the hell happened? What the hell happened this week? This one is good, too. So I want you guys to

vote on these, obviously. It's filled everything wrong. There's a chicken. What's all happened in a week in Rueue? AI is so good, guys. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. Should we watch that one again?

I think the North Korean devs made that one. Okay. Okay. Let's talk about what happened this week. Guys, we talked about all of it kind of individually, but we here's our, what was it, the rectining? What was the first one called? read what the hell happened and this thing

with the bull the weekly reckoning the names this thing came up with were so good do we have the oh my god you guys are okay here's some other when we put it in chat what the hell happened

the week and regret Friday's exit liquidity this week in bad decisions the closing bell of shame markets gone mild the Friday rug report well that age poorly the week that wasn't priced in

thanks for playing this week and Friday financial crimes. The final liquidation, the Friday bag check, last call for liquidity. AI's good, man. Can't even get to it. All right, the first story

that we need to talk about from earlier this week. Strategy sold some Bitcoin. Strategy increased its U.S.D. reserve by $650 million and repurchase $109 million of STRC. This increased U.S. duration by 140, 30 days to two and a half years and tighten STRC's Bitcoin credit by

10 bibs. Interestingly, in his announcement, he did not mention the fact that they sold $109 million worth of Bitcoin to repurchase $109 million of STRC. Conveniently, that part was left out here. They then obviously did their financial wizardry with MSTR to raise another $165 million in cash. So the big story here is that he's now sold three times, well, four, if we count the time he sold like three Bitcoin and a Skiddle. But three major Bitcoin purchases, you know, $1,600,000, $3,000, over 6,000 coins now. And all of the doomers who said that that would be the end of the market were wrong because

Bitcoin has gone up since it happened. Right now, people know that he's willing to sell Bitcoin. They don't have to fear that anymore. And they can tell that he's not going to buy Bitcoin right now. So they can't now say that he was the only buyer in the market. The days of strategy being the main character in Bitcoin and crypto are over. And Monday is further evidence that happened. What also happened earlier this week is that the nerds won and the nerds lost.

There were nerds on both sides. Good nerds on both sides, as Donald Trump would say. Bitcoin hits block 961,632 as the controversial BIP 110 soft fork attempt begins. All the people who are supporting this have soft forks. I've heard. The proposal had scanned support from Bitcoin miners and influential commentators have also voiced their opposition. This was a battle for the very soul of Bitcoin. The Bip-1-10ers think that Bitcoin should only be used as hard money.

There should be no spam, ordinals, BRC 20, ruins, any of that on the network. Of course, they lost because changing Bitcoin would have been very, very hard. I actually sympathize with some of their arguments, but Bitcoin is going to Bitcoin, and you shouldn't change it, and you can't change it. They lost. It was another embarrassing, I would say, episode in the long history of embarrassing. episodes among the Bitcoin nerds who fight about things that probably won't end up mattering at the end of the day. I respect the fact that they care so deeply. I really do, but this was never

going to happen. This was not even as big as, you know, the block size wars in the past, but yet another bear market argument that was had in the Bitcoin community. Invita partners with Wall Street giants to raise 500 billion for AI build out a company worth trillions and trillions and trillions of still needs to raise $500 billion just to be able to increase KAPX to keep growing. There is an endless thirst for infrastructure in AI, and they're going to keep funding it endlessly. And one of the big problems is part of that is that our Bitcoin miners will no longer be Bitcoin miners riot platforms. Surges 20% in pre-market trading on $9.1 billion anthropic deal. Anthropic, call me.

I could use $9.1 billion, and I know a guy who mines Bitcoin. Look me up. 20-year agreement highlights an industry-wide shift toward AI infrastructure revenue. So it depends on your view on all of this. We know that publicly traded Bitcoin miners in the very near future will not be publicly traded Bitcoin miners. They're becoming AI data centers. They're in the perfect place at the perfect time because there's regulatory red tape in certain states and all of the world. It takes time to build AI infrastructure.

They're uniquely well-suited to become AI data centers. that's what they're doing. It's more profitable. It costs, on average, $74,000 to mine a Bitcoin. That means that they're all losing money right now. They're selling their Bitcoin to build this infrastructure. The question is, what happens to the Bitcoin network? We've seen hash rate drop when all these guys exit the market and become AI data centers who also maybe sometimes mine Bitcoin when it makes sense. Maybe it becomes more decentralized. That's the more bullish side. Obviously, the negative side is these guys won't be mining Bitcoin anymore. It's going to be very interesting to see how that plays out.

Another story this week. Crazy stat of the day. Robin Hood Chain is the number one Ethereum L2 by blockchain revenue in just its first full month of being lied. Robin Hood Chain absolutely crushing it. Goldman Sachs to gain Bitcoin and ETH income ETFs in up to 2.25 billion Eos acquisition. So the crypto media loves to act like this was a big Bitcoin story, but it's a very small Bitcoin story and a much larger story about Goldman. Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs.

They're not our friends. It's like you guys to know that. One of my best friends, actually, is one of the head guys at Goldman Sachs. He's my friend. But it's like having a friend who works on the Death Star. Goldman Sachs to gain Bitcoin. Goldman Sachs to gain Bitcoin Ethan income of ETFs, right? So about $1 billion of this AMN, AUM is in a BTCI, which is a Bitcoin income fund.

I don't know the strategy. covered calls, something like that, to earn a yield. You're capped upside in the upside of Bitcoin, but you earn a yield throughout just another novel product in the ETF space, but Goldman basically buying their way into this. They had filed for one. They didn't launch it. Now we know exactly why.

Now, maybe the last story of the week that's worth reviewing is that it was Slaughterhouse 5 for Bitcoin companies reporting earnings. Gemini's shares slide after $100 million loss. As Winklevoss says, we still have work to do. Bitco sees revenue jump 80% to $4.3 billion in Q. too, but post net loss. They lost money. Securitize. Falls 20% after earnings miss is tokenization revenue falls short. And none of those in and of themselves are surprising stories. To me, this is bare market things, right? Obviously, it's very hard to make revenue as a crypto company

right now. The good news is that these trends will reverse when the bull market comes back. And I assume that all of these companies will do exceptionally well. I'm just not sure you guys saw this. What happened? You know, I don't drink anymore, but what I used to, that's how I would have read that. Who the hell happens? This is the week of review. So that's all the news.

You know, listen, I'm going to ruin the show now by asking you guys what you thought of it. Did you like that? Sounds like garbage. It sounds like garbage. It sounds bad to you. Mine had no base, but I don't know. I don't know if they're talking about that. I mean, do you guys like where I, like, kind of cover a story?

And then we do a guest and they talk about things. and I cover more stories and I do stupid songs that we make five minutes before the show and pretend they're fit for TV. Got a thumbs up. Team sliding bull. Yes, team sliding bowl, I think is good. The other one isn't even in English.

So I'll push pretty hard with like the low quality because I think it's funny, but completely misspelled. Yeah. Good show, Scott. I saw you smiling for a second about, 6-7 6-7's back It went away

My kids told me that 6-7 was dead On January 1st And then this summer All of a sudden they were 6-7ing again I'm gonna get out of here It's embarrassing But I want to, you know Before I leave

What is the chicken doing? We didn't tell it to put it chicken No part of the prompt was like Very serious intro music for a weekly review with flying chicken. Someone said, bro, where Bitcoin going? Probably up eventually. That's why I buy it.

That's all I got for you guys. I hope you enjoyed it. I know that I did. Now I have to go get ready for another show. How many shows can you do about the same stuff? I think I should add another one. Another show. 5 p.m. show, what the who happened?

With Scott Belker, a week and read. See you guys later. Love ya. Daily Wolf, Yahoo Finance. See ya. Let's go. Hey y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old.

You should have ordered from Wayfar. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home.