The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin PUMPS Towards $124K ATHs! Breakout Beginning Or Bull Trap Incoming?

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

Bitcoin has bounced back hard above $112K, sparking fresh debate over whether the bull run is alive and well — or if this is just another trap before more downside. Analysts are split as traders weigh heavy liquidations, macro uncertainty, and the upcoming Fed decision. In this video, we break down Bitcoin’s latest price action, why some believe the bull market isn’t over, and the key levels to watch as BTC tests its momentum.

Bitcoin made a nice move, of course, on a Sunday, getting us back around $112,000, of course, if Bitcoin moves on the Sunday, we need to talk about new all-time highs happening immediately. I think consensus here will be that we need a catalyst or something to change. Maybe it's going to be just seasonality in October to start pushing back to new all-time highs. But we'll talk about it and all, of course, in context of everything that's happening in the macro. It is, after all, Macro Monday with James, Mike, Dave, and myself. Let's go. Good morning, everybody, and happy Macro Monday to those who celebrate.

I know I do, and I know that Dave, James, and Mike also celebrate. Macro Mondays. Good morning. Gentlemen, we have a lot to unpacked today. We're going to go back to basics though. Mike, morning meeting. What's going on? Good morning. Rana Wong is coming out somewhat bullish. First of all, for non-farm payroll, she's expecting 54,000. Unfortunately, she didn't mention a percentage rate, but the range is quite large between, large, between minus 20K and 100,000K. Her quote was she thinks large firms are not hiring. It's a productivity, productivity cleansing was the term she used, and a lot of that's because of A, but small firms are. And she says a lot of small firms are unable to fill job openings and they're starting to hire.

One bright spot she expects a non-farm is expect leisure and hospitality to show improvements in hiring. She's been mentioning this for a while. And she also thinks that headwinds may start to turn the tailwinds. We have that trade uncertainty and fiscal restraints might switch to the ones. The worst may be passed is her view for the economy in the U.S. senior financial effects, I'm sorry, rate strategies F IRA Jersey, says markets continue to be ranged bound, but headboards are lower in the range. She expects 4% to 4 and a quarter to 10 year to hold, expects a steepening to continue.

The 2-year-old to leak lower was his key quote. Not much new from our equity strategist, from our FX strategy, Audrey, chill treatment. these upward adjustments are coming to you with gross estimates might curtail her dollar bearish view and she's also kind of curtailed those and i just pointed out then i just focused on gold and waking up in the morning when gold's up almost 2 percent and crude oil's down almost 2 percent gold at a record high crude oil heading towards the the 40 level that i've been beating on for too long is very disconcerting now obviously the shutdown is part of that i look at gold is heading towards significant resistance around 4 000 i think it's going to print there

and probably can see some responsive sellers and the old resistance around 3,500 key support. I don't know what really gets to blow that, and I just pointed out all these ratios are starting to get disconcerting like gold versus crude, 59 barrels of crude.

It's never ended a year above 39. The last time was 2020. Gold versus Bitcoin back down to 29, getting towards a lower in the range around 25. I'd be much more comfortable doing that gold Bitcoin ratio on 25 versus 35, the old time high. And then I just point out the trends and crude oil and grains are all the same,

held in that low-price cure. And gosh, I forgot to mention copper is the key commodity to why. How to go up in Q4? And it's right on pace right now up about 19% in the year with the S&P 500, about 15%. It seems like it's just running right on the back

of the S&P 500 right now. Okay, a couple things there. First, a bit of a departure for Ana Wong to be turning bullish, right? I mean, that's a pretty big pivot after a very long time. On the economy, yep. Okay.

She hinted at it last week. Yeah, she did. I remember that you mentioned that. Okay, second, I think we need to talk about the government shutdown. Obviously, here we go. Brace ourselves, government shutdown threat deepens as Capitol Hill digs in. This obviously could happen late tomorrow night, I believe, late Tuesday night. Basically, it's up to Chuck Schumer at this point, I think, to decide whether we're going to have a government shutdown or not.

But I think the important part about this beyond the theater is that. that you just gave a great summary of all the economic data we're expecting, and we will get none of it if there's a government shut down. Yeah. So we have a, the Fed meeting is then what, the 29th, right? So October 29th. And between now and then, I'm just scanning through the Bloomberg, you know, list of economic indicators. You get, I mean, you have ISM this week. You've got jobless claims.

You've got non-farm payrolls and all that. You've got ISM. You've got more jobless claims, obviously. You've got the University of Michigan garbage. But you've got CPI, PPI, you know, all coming in before this next Fed meeting. And coming in early enough, you know, so like you've got the CPI and PPI coming in next week. So it gives them plenty of time to receive that, actually digest it, if they're going to get it, which are important numbers that they're going to be looking for.

They're really, you know, they're on edge about inflation, meaning they're concerned that if they continue, the Fed continues to lower rates just to make sure that we don't spike the jobless claims, then you're going to possibly fuel the fire of inflation. And so that's kind of a worry here. So what is happening? The dollars dropping. You know, and gold is spiking.

No surprise. Gold is sniffing out the absolute delusion of, uh, of fiat currencies and, and the endless, the, the ridiculous amount of, uh, spending that we're getting out of governments and, and we just expect more of it. They're going to come to an agreement. It's going to be more spending and, uh, whether or not, we, we, we win the war against, um, you know, paying for illegal immigrants, uh, health care. or not. That's that's going to be up to Congress and the president, but we're going to spend

money. There's no question about that and too much of it. My brain automatically shuts off the minute that I see stories like this because, A, I know they'll shut it down and B, I know they'll fix it. And I didn't even bother to dig into what the sticking points are at this point because it's just noise. Can I be contrarian for a bit? Yeah, do it. The Democrats right now are holding seven deuce and Trump's holding pocket aces and the Democrats are trying to talk about it. It's the literal dumbest posturing ever, trying to push for health care for illegal aliens and whatever, et cetera, et cetera, in a situation where they're also spending all of their efforts on the courts to block Trump firing people in the government. The instant the shutdown happens,

those people without jobs are gonzo, literal gone. It gives him carte blanche to fire all the people he wants to fire. The courts can't say boo because there's no money. And in fact, they can take extraordinary measures by firing people they want to fire in order to prolong and keep people they want to keep. And you give that power to the executive. They literally would be seating it. I don't know what the hell's going on in Schumer's brain because also remember, the House passed continuing resolution. So the only mechanism for the Democrats is they quite literally have to filibuster. And if Trump is smart and he's no fool on this sort of stuff, this is his world, you're going to have pictures of Cory Booker reading stuff on the Senate floor in support of

of letting Trump fire all the people he wants to fire. I mean, there's no way. They have such a weekend this time. It's actually crazy. In fact, I'm sure the Republicans are literally licking their chops, hoping that they're going to be this dumb. The only reason why they haven't come out and said that is frankly because they don't want to be smug and it's not politically smart to do that. So they'd rather let the Democrats have the rope to hang themselves. But the result will be, you know, some continuing resolution, which is business as usual, as James has said. And it's just stupid political theater.

And it more or less continues to erode trust in governments. And what you're seeing with gold is central banks buying gold. I mean, James, you wrote about it this weekend. Excellent, by the right. Yeah, I've got that. Thank you. And you're seeing central banks buying gold, but not the U.S. central bank you're seeing other central banks you're seeing the rest of the world looking at our

political dysfunction and saying okay this is silly we need to have real assets backing our stuff we can't just let the dollar run them up now i'm not talking about de-dollarization i'm not going into the whole brick stuff i'm not going down rabbit holes of conspiracy theories but good old fashion follow the money says that's why gold's going up from a central bank perspective meanwhile individuals and corporations and funds are buying bitcoin as their hedge. Now, the difference is central banks wield a bigger bat right now, and there's still a bunch, there's no gold sellers, so gold's going to go up. There's nobody's selling gold en masse, and there's original distribution of Bitcoin holders to sell Bitcoin, which is why

it's been stuck in a range. So anyone who zooms out and looks at what's happening and sees this as no macro trend ignores the fact that there are a lot of holders who have 10,000 percent gains and life-changing money when they see this stuff, you have to look at that. I mean, we know. It's not like we're guessing that's where the money is from. Now, on the margin, we can talk about what's setting prices, but you do need to do that zoom out.

And that's why. So, you know, James, you should go through and talk about the stuff. Yeah, no, I mean, that's a good summary of most of it. The other thing is that we're hearing a lot of people on Twitter kind of confused why Bitcoin's not matching the expansion of the money supply. remember it's on a 10 or 12 week delay you know a lag so money supply goes up then 10 or 12 weeks later bitcoin follows it it's been like this and you know gold uh follows m2 a little bit closer it's not quite as much of a lag but if you lag gold it's it's even a closer uh approximation because it doesn't

have the same volatility as bitcoin but um my argument in in the newsletter uh what i was trying to point out was that M2 is kind of a, it's kind of a flawed measure, especially when you have things like refilling the Treasury General account, you know, it's like you're taking hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars out of the market to siphon away to put into a checking account for the government to spend. So it kind of gets a little bit noisy. But if you've been listening to show for a while and Dave and Mike, you guys know this, Scott, you're in news, but And I prefer Michael Howell's definition of liquidity to follow what's really going on in the world because we're built on credit.

We're built on leverage. We're built on debt. The entire world is. And it's a better measure than just the M2 supply. So, and he's done a lot of work on this from crossport of capital. And so if you look at that, Bitcoin's like right on target to what's been happening in the expansion of liquidity. And gold is way ahead of it.

gold is ahead of it because of what we just talked about because of the relentless buying by central banks across the world and it's not that they're actively avoiding treasuries they're actively avoiding holding on to anything the u.s dollar base because they're they're recognizing that they need something in their in their own treasuries to protect against the relentless debasement of our currency and even though our currency is debasing at a slower rate than then, you know, Argentina or Venezuela or Egypt or whatever, it's still debasing. And if you're going to go and buy things like commodities, like Mike talks about, you're going to need actual currency that holds up against that fiat promise,

which is just a, it's, you know, it's empty. There's nothing there except the promise to print more. And that's the issue here. And so in the end of it, and I've, believe that like Dave is saying, it's not just individuals and enthusiasts who are buying Bitcoin. It's institutions now. They're coming in slowly, but it's not across the board. We just saw, and there's another thing we should talk about, Scott is Vanguard, you know, capitulating, but we're just starting to see that you're getting some institutions that are recognized that

Bitcoin is real. It's not going away. It is digital gold for now. And it is a strong store of value. and it will be because of its true decentralized nature. And so as that continues, Bitcoin will be the next chapter. And Bitcoin will catch up and surpass gold because it's in the middle of adoption. And so that's a really important point of all of this. And so it's going to take some time. But Bitcoin will be the ultimate store value. And central banks will be buying it.

And if they are buying it now, they're likely doing it through mining, which brings us to the hash rate, which just goes up relentlessly. So if you just pull back and look at the big picture, then you get the sense that there's something bigger going on here. It's not just about the economy. It's not about the government shutdown. It's about central banks recognizing that this fiat game is a shell game, or it's the big collective, you know, musical chairs.

And you're going to be, they're going to be, currencies pretty soon they're left standing with that. I have a question in that regard. I agree with everything you just said. I think everybody is aware of the debasement and the dollar's problems. That's nothing new. Well, they're admitting it. I feel like, yeah, I was just saying, are they finally admitting it by buying gold? Or is there also the Bricks narrative, political motivation? Some of that. But there's the one side is like, we don't want to hold the dollar because it's a poor savings vehicle and it's debasing. The other side is that we don't want to be relentlessly attached to whatever the United States government political whims are

and would like to find another way. I'm just wondering if that's true because you don't want to be holding U.S. treasuries and have them switch them off or seize them. Because a lot of this happened when we seized Russia's money in the bank account. I think that was a, you know, when $500 billion magically disappeared, I think that was a huge catalyst for a lot of gold buying around the world, including in Russia. Yeah, that's what started at all. And here's a crazy thing, though, is that, and Mike, you might have a closer approximation

this. What I read this weekend is the IMF is estimated that 22% of all gold purchases are being reported 78% or not. And so it's like backdoor buying into Swiss vaults that nobody knows about, you know, and that's one of the hard things to put your your finger on, but you're seeing it in the gold price. It makes it obvious, you know. And so if you're wondering what's going on and why you're not hearing central banks announcing that they're buying bitcoin look at gold's price if they announce they're buying bitcoin what do you think would happen to the price of bitcoin dave says that all the time yeah right right never front run yourself yeah you'd front run yourself so what would they do instead they'll mine it which goes to the hash rate

the hash rate is going up relentlessly why are why is it going up again the price is not going up but the hash rate keeps going up it's you know it's a it's a way to quietly accumulate Bitcoin at a cost and slower, but it's a way to accumulate Bitcoin that doesn't advertise it to the world. I also find it really interesting that both you and Mike decided to write about gold in the last two days. So obviously, even outside. And Michael Howell wrote about it.

Yeah, it's, I mean, it's funny. Yeah. I don't know if 3,800 was a magic level, but it's getting to that point of where I think a lot of people are viewing it as ridiculous, can't be ignored, impossible. But both of you, like I said, did choose to write about it this weekend. Mike also obviously here, gold could be setting records for bad reasons. And you have the more mainstream narratives. It's weaker dollar at risk of U.S. shutdown.

I think that gold is not pumping on the risk of U.S. shutdown at this point. It's pretty, well, so here I like to point out the top five performing commodities this year is platinum. 80%, silver, 60%, gold, 45%, and then lean hogs. They don't really care about lean hogs, but it's only 25%. So gold's pulling up all this whole space, and that's the key thing. I know people might be nauseated by me, point out, there's only four precious metals. And they're all being led by beta and gold, those bait in the space.

They're all going up, obviously, all the elements are much more industrial, becoming more industrial every year. It's a real bad sign when gold beats everything. And then I tilt over, these are typically historically, gold is typically, the lowest volatility and a risk off asset store value maybe not risk off but store value then I look over at the other side you know the competitive competition in things like bitcoin and cryptocurrency there's unlimited supply and massive selling when they're yelling risks now that's the key thing i'm worried about this year and this is happening in an environment where risk is on and we significantly on sb 500 up 15 percent that's great it's and if we can keep volatility

really low the lowest in five years on 60 day basis and this is okay for cryptos and that to me is the thing, all my spidey senses that quote I love from you, Scott, and I've learned, are selling me that stick with gold. Obviously, gold, you don't want to be buying an overweight buyer as it gets towards $4,000. It's really overdone. Maybe you look for a dip around $3,500. But the end of this year, it's not going to make a lot of sense if we keep appreciating the S&B 500 and volatility stays low with gold at these levels. It would make a lot more sense. It would make a lot more sense. It's a little modest pickup and volatility. Maybe a big skits gets to near 20. Bitcoin has a little back up to near $100,000. That would make a lot, make a lot more sense. That's why, to me,

fourth quarter is one of the key indicators I'm using is copper, but copper's been going up for the wrong reasons for supply disruptions in Indonesia. But again, it's just the key thing is when gold beats everything, you've got to be worried, and I'm worried, very worried about potential for risk asset destruction. Yeah, I think that one of the things you said, Mike, and I agree with a lot of what you say about gold you and i've been on the same page with gold the whole you know since the beginning of the show um the thing that that that i want to hit on though is that a lot of the selling out of bitcoin in particular is coming from oh geez they've held this thing from a hundred dollars a thousand dollars you know and it's up they're up a hundred to a thousand x

and they're they're ringing the register and god bless them good job well done you you became a billionaire you know, well done. You should ring the register and go live the lifestyle you want to live and diversify into other things, maybe like gold. I mean, whatever. You've done it. So I don't blame them at all. But Dave, you probably have a better handle on this about, you know, that kind of selling. The other thing is we have had a bunch of noise in the Bitcoin world in particular because we have these new treasury companies that are basically you're you're you're you're you're reallocating from bitcoin into the treasury companies and there's a lag there too and so that's producing a bit of a lag because these bitcoin companies then take that cash and they're going

to turn around and buy bitcoin but it's taking a while so they're sitting on cash as they're doing this and so that's producing a lag that we haven't seen before in m2 and i think that that's that i couldn't get into it. My newsletter was already way past what you could distribute in a single letter. But that's also something that's going on that needs to be recognized. So maybe, you know, Dave, I'll let you talk a little bit more about both those things that you probably see in liquidity side of it. First and foremost, the narrative that Bitcoin has competitors in crypto is fascinating. No, but Mike just said it again. It has strictly limited supply. And it is, it is crypto other crypto assets are no more competitors to bitcoin that that that that a

obstacle stand equity has competes with invidia i mean you know you have to look at each asset in terms of each asset bitcoin has graduated from being in this morass of crypto you can buy it from etiops people can do it and it is different now that it is true that there are a lot of people in the world who still hold that view and that is a massively bullish thing because as people start looking into Bitcoin and learn that it is not the same as Ethereum. It is not the same as Dog Whiff Hat. It is not the same as Fartcoin. Then they go, oh, I understand this. I can actually commit real dollars to it. It is a ground war that's been taking place slowly but surely, and we need to look at it that way. Now, if you'd say the same thing about the Galaxy Crypto Index, X Bitcoin,

I start to agree with you in a sense, in the sense of, as I was saying before the show, when we were just chatting, there's a lot of bullshit in analysts who value crypto because they look at things and they say, oh, look at our TVO, look at our this, look at our that. None of it translates into value to holders. But that's a whole other different conversation. As far as the zoom out and what's going on, I mean, look, as I said to Scott at one point, if five years ago you were having a conversation, and I had these conversations. So this is not yet. So when you had conversations five years ago and you said, said, what would a relentless rise toward Bitcoin becoming digital gold look like? One of the things that would have to happen is at every major price level, you would see distribution. You would see old holders having to rotate because you say to yourself, okay, there's only 19 million Bitcoin or whatever is lost. Maybe there'll be 18 and a half, whatever the number is. So even if we find every Bitcoin and you're at to 21, how could Bitcoin become the underpinning of a financial system like gold is? in a world where so little of it is available.

Obviously, old holders need to sell to new holders. And those new holders are way, way less concentrated. Now, I want to repeat that, because that's not something that's obvious to people. People go, oh, but Larry Fink and Michael Sailor owns so much, of course it's concentrated. Get a grip people. Larry Fink doesn't own,

well, he probably does on some personally Bitcoin because he thinks is going to 500,000. But the Black Rock's owning holdings of Bick coin on behalf of both institutional and retail investors and those institutional investors have retail that roll up into that. So we're talking pension funds and pools of money on behalf of wide distributions. If you think of it this way, the base of a pyramid has to be wide. You can't get to the sky. You know, you can't draw things that look like, you know, the new building and the upper east side of Manhattan. That just goes like this. You have to have this big base.

And Bitcoin is basing. Gold is owned by, you know, there's just huge numbers of people, particularly in India and outside of the U.S. In the U.S., people have gold. But it is a huge base of supporters or holders. Bitcoin needs to get that big base. And that is what's happening right now. And people need to understand that. So that makes it very, very different.

The other thing that's really interesting here is we're talking about gold being driven by central banks. we know that no central banks have moved toward Bitcoin. We also know that the likely next chairman of the Federal Reserve is going to be someone who is possibly disposed to Bitcoin. We know that. I mean, this is not like you don't have to guess. And when you talk about game theory, what does it take to get turned some of that central bank buying of gold and the central bank buying of Bitcoin?

Now, is that going to happen in the next month? Absolutely. I shouldn't say not. But it's highly, highly, highly unlikely. But every time you look at these trends, anyone who's a Bitcoiner, here's the difference in Bitcoiners and morons like Peter Schiff. When gold goes up, Bitcoiners say, good, makes sense. We need, you know, people are debasing currencies.

We want to see assets move into assets that will protect purchasing power, protect asset values. And so that's good. Bitcoin will follow. It raises the ceiling. Whereas the, you know, Peter Schiff says, oh, well, look, you see, Apple, it's like, come on. You know, it's like, it's the same narrative. The issue is this whole deal that prices are still set on the margin by risk takers and by speculation. But it is important to know.

I'll give one, a couple, two stats that I want to give. That's really that I wanted to get to. And I don't want to start doing screen shares, but we could if you want to. First, Bitcoin volatility is forecast by BitGo. Bitbo hasn't been this low since August of 23. Now, unlike stocks, this is very. really important from a, from a relationship point of view. In the S&P, when you look at the VIX, there is a massive correlation between volatility and downward movement, i.e. an inverse

correlation of volatility. When you look at Bitcoin, it is a positive correlation to volatility for a very strong reason. And obviously, it's historical Bitcoin's the biggest, sharpest moves have been up with corrections. And that's fine. But we haven't had that. And so understanding that forecasting volatility to go up doesn't matter. In fact, the last, the August 23 price was $25,000 when last we saw volatility this low. So that's important. The second is last night, there was a rally almost of the same size in Bitcoin and Ethereum, and there were more than double the shorts liquidated in Ethereum than in Bitcoin. Now, small numbers, but relevant, because what you're seeing is less and less speculation on Bitcoin in either direction,

to the rest of crypto. Well, that's sort of Mike's point in a way, but honestly, it also speaks to the fact that the game in Bitcoin isn't speculation, which means that any move that happens will catch people by surprise. So there's no FOMA, there's no euphoria, there's no yelling in the Bitcoin market. There's a lot of crying because people are saying, oh, I'm underperforming, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, but there's no yelling. Anyway, I'll stop there.

But those are the points. Yeah, Janet Yellen. I can't hear the word every time of you guys say it, not think of Jen. I just want to show, we were talking about the fact that we need a catalyst to decide which direction of price is going to go. We finally have one. Jim Kramer said, buy crypto with a picture of the deck pot. Oh, boy. To be fair, actually, this speaks to the point, though, Dave, because he should have said buy Bitcoin if he was talking about a hedge against this and not buy crypto, right?

I thought he came out and said everyone in crypto is going to lose money. No, dude, it's this week, not last week. Keep up. he changed his mind from week to week I guess so the one thing that I want to point out I think it will be changing in bitcoin is we went through this pretty significant maturation process and my outlook was ETFs becoming broadly disseminated and I'll have Trump flipping over kicked in that potentially the peak of it being a baby now it's mature assets in the space you know significant accumulation in ETFs and what's going to trigger them to buy more or or to hit stops. And my thought is it just shows that now I think Bitcoin shifted from going, volatility going up when it's making record highs to shifting over to very much the same asset as the SUV 500 cryptos.

Now, all the correlations are pointing out that you can go check correlations historically from five years ago. They're all higher now. I looked at 48 months because I like to look at four-year cycles for the crypto space. And recently what happened with Bitcoin, just look at 90-day volatility versus, is the S&P 500, right now it's about, Bitcoin's about 2.6 times. It bottomed at one. The last time I got that low was 2020, and then we had that big rip.

But it's rolling down versus the S&P 500 in terms of prices. To me, that's that shift. I'm predicting a shift, and I see it in the data. Also, if you look at volatility 60-day or 90-day Bitcoin volatility versus gold, just recently it bought them at the lowest ever. Now, you can easily go back 15 years on that, and it's starting to recover. And to me, this is part of that transitions. We're confirming this year that Bitcoin is a risk on asset, along with all the cryptos,

they're all linked in there as risk on assets. And we're confirming that gold is becoming more of a risk off asset. What's the next big trade? I'm very fearful. Gold's telling us that it's going to be what's happening in China, a little bit of deflation kicking in, a little bit of stock market problem where, you know, government has to buy their own stocks, which Japan did for 30 years in China is doing now. And that's why everything in the next quarter,

is dependent on the U.S. stock market has to stay up, and gold's telling us your risks are it's going to go down, and that means the next trade might be treasuries. It's all tilting that way. Signals are there. When just the Bitcoin peaked in August, when the big's bottom, there's not a good sign as we end in the fourth quarter. Now, everything's on, everybody's on top of this trade. I know every hedge fund on planet knows ultimately is low. You've got to trade something reverse, and their time decays killing them. They're getting stopped out, the gam, but, you know, sometimes just gradually and suddenly. And to me, those are the indications. And I'm very, very fearful as much as I was in 2007 and six and much as I was in 1999.

And that means if we do have that normal drawdown, S&P fireman, which is down for 20%, you know, 20%. It's really good for deflation, really good for interest rates going down, what Trump wants for the next election. But you should expect a 50% drawdown virtually all current cryptocurrencies, most notably Bitcoin. Let me address one thing here, Mike, because you say this a lot, and we have to talk about. this if you pull up the holders of ib okay the institutional buying of of bitcoin through the etfs it's not there yet i'm telling you there are there are hedge funds but you do not have broad-based institutional buying institutions mike you know this all too well haven't been a long-time bond trader who are the institutions they're not your citadels of the world those are the guys who are whipping around these

things and hedging them out like these are massive hedge funds we're talking about you're talking Texas teachers. You're talking about CalPERS. You're talking about massive, massive pension funds and endowments that are in the multi-billions to 10 to 20, 30, 50, you know, 10 to 20, 30, 40, 50 billion dollars that they're sitting on, okay? That they're the ones who need to be buying Bitcoin and recognizing it as a separate institutional asset. They haven't done that yet. The process and the reason for that is not because they're just dumb. And I actually, one of my recent keynotes, I was up in Prague, and I gave this keynote that was about institutional adoption. And the issue is they've got to go from research to asset class review, then do

due diligence. They've got committee vetting. They've got board approvals. Then they've got to have their policy documentation and then they've got ongoing risk management this stuff takes months and years for them to do this is not and it's structured to do that to protect the underlying investors the pension holders and the endowments from making massive mistakes so it that structures there for a reason but it takes so much time and up until just now every single person in the institutional world, save for a few, have been highly skeptical of Bitcoin as a separate asset. They're starting to recognize it because you can't ignore it now that it's been sitting here over $100,000, a $2 trillion asset in 15 years. And it is starting to solidify as something

on Wall Street that's different. And they're recognizing, but they still have to do the research. They still have to understand it. And then they have to go through all those processes to even get it in front of a committee to start thinking about it as a separate asset, aside from what you said at the first of this, which I still agree with, aside from it being a risk on asset. So once you start getting people to realize it's a risk off asset, that's when it starts to be allocated to separately in the institutional world. It takes so much time.

It hasn't happened yet. So what we're seeing is at the same time we're seeing, oh, dump their coins, you know, because they're just, I'm going to go get my yachts. I'm going to go get my citadels. Yeah. At the same time, you don't have those institutions buying. What do you have? You've got Bitcoin treasuries buying.

And those guys are still, those are long-time believers that have figured out an arbitrage between capital markets and Bitcoin. And so that's what's happening right now. You do not have broad-based institutional buying. I was going to, I know Mike's jumping in, but Mike, I want to just ask you, Is there a world where, like, where we're all right? Because, like, I think everybody actually agrees. Even Peter Schiff agrees when you take Bitcoin out of the equation,

what's happening behind the scenes, right? Gold could go up. But you believe gold and treasuries will rise. Couldn't it be gold treasuries and Bitcoin rise? So we just point out, James, you and Dave all said the same things I said five years ago. I agreed you to completely. What's changed now is we're proving that this space, first of all, I have to ask you the question. What one of those institutions owns and buys gold? Very few. It's a

single asset, a little bit holding on gold on the planet. It's one single asset. They buy indexes. They track it. Okay. And so, but they, let me finish my point. Hold on. When they allocate to gold, Mike, they allocate to it as a separate asset. Okay. That's it. That's a key point of what you just said. Go ahead. Okay. So my point is the value of the correlation between the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index and the S&B 500 or Bitcoin SB 500 is about the highest ever, yet this asset trades with two to three times of volatility. Now I've heard this from a money manager. I was when Chris Waller was speaking in Miami. I met a prominent wealth manager in Miami. He says he's not in cryptos. I'm like, why? He goes, well, I get less risk in my equities and I get the same

performance. Why would I stretch out? And this was a person who managed billions of dollars of people so well maybe millions i just that's my point is we're at that phrase stretch out he see the mentality is still it's out on the risk curve so it's out on risk curve but it's also pointing out the they they they all look at past performance as indicative of future you know just look at their their their their value of risk and their correlations and everything and everything i point to is much higher volatility than beta higher risk and right now we're getting kind of similar performance it just that's my point is right now and i part i and me 100 000 bitcoin mark that that mark that point where yeah it was a great run now find others find what's the next big trade and it was it was a

great trade and that's why i'm looking at it's long as again we have s mp 500 15 this year just imagine a year when it's down 15 that's what i think they're more thinking about a normal drawdown if any type of crypto allocation normal drawdown in beta they all know they're going to get much worse on the way down or they can expect more on the way up and lessen the way down? I mean, come on, it's not logical for allocating money. I think it's just the way that the lens that it's viewed through. If you view it as a long-term investment like most bitcoiners do, then it being a good trade isn't irrelevant. And if you viewed it as a trade and you're a hedge fund, then certainly worth considering. I'm not talking about all

the cryptos, Mike. I'm talking about Bitcoin. But that's again, so they're going to put Bitcoin in their gold bucket then. Is that what you're saying? It's going to be, it's going to be, well, or, or they're going to have Bitcoin and gold as separate asset. Yeah, in the same type of risk off bucket, exactly. So Bitcoin is not a risk off it. It's a risk on asset. You expect that to change, fine. But all the correlations, everything is very much a risk asset. We agree. It has been a risk on asset in every single instance except for one, which is the Silicon Valley Bank meltdown. Yeah. And it was a risk off asset. Now, I'm not like, we don't know. We don't know. know what's going to happen. We don't know if we're going to have a black swan, another, you know, catastrophic financial event in this nation, likely if you're, if you're, you know, paying attention what the hell they're doing in Washington. However, you know, if and when the broad base of investors do you understand that? That's when you start getting it to be allocated small. It's not going to happen overnight. You're going to have some managers go,

this is kind of i think this is risk off and then the more and more managers who start to understand that and that's exactly what scott just said it's a change of understanding and the lens that you're viewing it through and you know it doesn't matter bitcoin's not going to change according to what people view it as it's not going to change it's going to continue to be what it is and it's going to continue to you know to organically expand that reach not because you have one person comes out and says, oh, I'm going to buy Bitcoin. But what happens when you do have a CalPERS that comes out and says, we're allocated in Bitcoin because we believe it's a long-term strategic asset to protect against the debasement of the dollar? That's a big deal. And that will happen in the future

at some point. I don't know when. I completely respect your view of the future, but to predict the future as a fact is kind of things like that. I don't. I'm not saying it's a fact. I believe it will happen. I believe it will happen. Okay, that's good. So that's that again, That will go in their gold bucket, right? If they add Bitcoin, which I've been saying that forever, you can't hold goldy mouth with some Bitcoin in that space, but at some point it gets too extreme. That's my point at the beginning of the year.

They've been kind of thrown off the horse a little bit, and still sticking with this year being potential of more of a risk-as-a-risk off-year. Haven't been right there yet, but gold keeps outperforming even though we're going on. There's something going wrong here. Either gold backs up 10-20 percent or it gets legitimized by the end-year by the stock market dropping, which means then we start getting the cryptos to lead the way. But we have to talk about, we can't just end it at, you know, January 1st, that we had a major tectonic shift in policy when Trump was elected.

You had an administration that was nothing but antagonistic to the whole space. The Trump administration won is one of those. Choke Point 2.0 was real. Remember, Trump administration one did the same thing. Just like they're pushing back on some of the renewables. They're pushing, they push back huge on crypto's too. And Trump won. They flipped.

Give them credit for the flip. So it's not just, it's not just, it's okay. Well, stop. You can make an opinion. We can talk about what's opinion. We can talk about what's back. Jay Clayton didn't want his personal legacy. And Trump didn't give a crap about crypto.

It's a very, very different scenario. So Jay Clayton did a few things, such as the XRP case on his way out the door and a few other things, but there was no systematic policy to crucify crypto. Trust me, I'm the one of the three of us who have actually ran a crypto company and talked with the regulators both before and after to say that it wasn't a significant escalation in the in the anti-crypto army in the war, you know, after Trump won to what we had under Biden was literally. banks being told they couldn't bank you couldn't even bank you couldn't even do a crypto startup in America the SEC basically saying if you so much is think about a token or talk about it having one if you're a U.S. company we're going to lock you up or try to we're going to bankrupt you we're going to use our lawyers even if we can't win that that was silly bankrupt you yeah well I put it in just to ask that Dave just to ask that when when we were raising our fund in

in 2023 under under the Biden administration we were all Almost every single wire was held up, canceled, refused, you know, for because they were sending it to a company. Even though it was, it was, you know, we were, we were established in Delaware, we're in a Nevada company. Like, it doesn't matter. They just refused to send it because we had Bitcoin their name. Then as soon as Trump won, we've had one wire refused since then, one. And it came, it was coming out of Canada. So, you know, like, that's it.

So the crypto, the anti-crypto are going to go back to your point. It was very real. And anyone who doesn't understand that is literally missing the boat. And yes, James and I are angry about it because frankly, my entire life got upended by Elizabeth Warren and her goons doing something which could have set the U.S. back decades in financial innovation and did set us back. And now we're trying to catch up. So understand that tectonic shift is real. Anyway, James, you were saying a tectonic ship happened. Yeah, and James, in the spirit of that, I want you to like lead into this because obviously, I mean, you can view this as the last domino falling in the top signal if you're bearish, but you can view this as the floodgates finally opening in capitulation if you're bullish.

But talking about all the anti-crypto army and the negative things that we experienced over the past years, this might be the biggest signal we've had. So let me let's hold on to that for a second. I'm going to come to leave it up for a second, please, Scott. But my whole point of all this is talking about crypto versus gold since January 1st. It's just it, it's, you're missing a major piece of that because Bitcoin had a massive run up in November to catch up. And it kind of outran itself, you know, it got ahead of itself because of that, because of enthusiasm. And it had to come back and it came back at the beginning of the year. And so, but the problem is it had been held down.

If you think that there are no gold investors that have reallocated it to Bitcoin, then you're not paying attention. I don't know who you're speaking to because I've said the opposite for five years. Okay. Well, then, okay, then you agree with that. The quote I've used years ago is you can't hold gold anymore without Bitcoin in this space. That's probably helping out. Excellent. So it's point out one key thing.

I, you criticize everything I say both of you about Bitcoin to go. The Bitcoin to go ratio right now at 29.6 was first traded in 2021. Since that time, Bitcoin volatility and the performance of Bitcoin has been poor versus gold. Okay, so then can't use this year, can't use 2020. I'm pointing out that my spidey sense is seeing an asset that's matured and it's underperforming the basic asset on the planet. It's a bad sign. Can I make a simple point? So let's let's get this.

let's talk about two different scenarios scenario one bitcoin gold ratio bounces around these current levels and goes 25 35 35 25 to 35 and stays there for five years that is a scenario that is your scenario basically uh it stays in line with it it's fine uh my i will just a simple chart in 1980 gold's percentage of m2 was 40 percent 40.9 percent in 2025 at today's price it's 23%. Roughly speaking, gold, and there are a lot of gold investors who believe this, if you believe that what's going on with the Fiat world will get worse than it was in 1980, and most people do remember, that was the height of Volker, we saw inflation, but at the end of the day, our debt to GDP was 30%, not 130%. So, and the goal of the, if you go to the G7,

the number is even more extreme. So understanding that gold, in my opinion, will hit 5,000, maybe close to 6,000. In fact, that would be totally normal, completely reasonable, and if that happens, Bitcoin will move along with it, relatively speaking. That's scenario one. Scenario two, Bitcoin starts to gain adoption in excess of gold, i.e., it starts taking, eating into gold, and so the Bitcoin gold ratio moves higher. Well, then what happens to the price of Bitcoin. The only scenario, the only scenario, which is the Bitcoin 10,000 scenario, your scenario, is Bitcoin fails. Bitcoin is not seen as an asset like gold. It moves from 25 down to 10 or 5 or something and basically becomes irrelevant from an institutional perspective. That's literally

the bet that some of your statements would make. I actually don't think you really believe that. So I just wanted to be clear that if you were long-term bullish on gold like I am and think Gold is going to move to over 5,000, like 5,500 an ounce, this cycle, if you call it, this business cycle, this political cycle, then to think that Bitcoin is going to fall is crazy, unless you think that Bitcoin has, that Bitcoin goal ratio is either irrelevant, and Bitcoin is more like stocks, which is what you say, or the other. Now, I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I'd love to hear your reaction to that. Yay.

So let's not do that. Let's focus on different views and respect our views. I fully expect. I am trying to give you respect. I'm trying to say, I'd like to understand what you're saying within the context. So I don't think Bitcoin will fail unless there's some kind of technological thing. I think it's due for significant backup correction like the whole space. And it's point out facts of past performance.

There's only been two down years in the stock market since Bitcoin was launched. And there's only one Bitcoin in 2009. Now there's, sorry, don't piss you off. Now, there's millions of similar type products. There's only four cryptocurrencies, that's four precious metals at that time. There's still only four. My point is it's a highly volatile risk asset. And when we have a backup in the stock market, that whole space with alts is some people call them.

We'll go down a lot more. Bitcoin will probably go down less, but they're all going to go down a lot and much more than beta. And I think that's what's happening to institutions. They get that. They understand that. And if to tell them that all this path performance they see is not going to, happen anymore that when the stock market goes down, Bitcoin's going to go up. Good luck. That's my point is we're overdue for that. And it's just a wonderful situation right now so far this year.

The point is, if you look at the performance, it's poor. And my indications are, I don't expect it to fail. I still, the technology is awesome. Look what's happening with crypto dollars. A whole rest of the world's like, oh my gosh, how am I going to keep up with these stable coins and crypto dollars? We have to do CBDCs because it's organically going to space. The bottom line is these are risk on assets. There's millions of them. And when we do have a risk, scoff parry, which will last for a while, they're going to go down the most because they went up the most. Bitcoin's one of them. Got to talk about Vanguard.

Can I get my quick thing on Vanguard? So Vanguard is not nearly as big of a deal in the short term as the Cryptosphere believes, because Vanguard's brokerage arm is a really, really, really small percentage of its total AUM. Most of its AOM are in their market leading retail mutual index funds, total market, S&P, etc. So the brokerage product is not that big of a deal. But what this means is a very big deal in the long-term narrative war. And the narrative is everything when it comes to adoption. So why did this happen? This happened, a very simple reason. Because Vanguard's not stupid and their clients have been beating the crap out of them saying, why don't you have it?

And it becomes, companies don't like it when their clients tell them to do something over and over again and eventually they throw in the towel. And so what you're seeing is, is demand from humans that are clients in the United States that force the corporation's hand. It's a sea change in thought. That sea change in thought is narrative-based. It's not going to mean you're going to have a price explosion because Vanguard's going to put $1 billion or $10 billion or $70,000. Yeah, but it's a great, this is a great example of what I was saying before, of the institutional mindset and career risk, you know, the problem is if you, if you're, if you're a portfolio manager and you want to allocate to something like this, you've had career risk

all the way up until this point. And now it's turning. And so that's a big deal that it's turning. And this is the point that Dave is making. I agree that it no longer becomes career risk for you to be adding this to your portfolio is that's what vanguard is signaling why are they signaling it because of what exactly what dave said their their clients have been hammering them about it and guess what when they when they put out the statement they that they think it's not appropriate that it's not appropriate for vanguard's uh philosophy on investing and blah blah blah well that since that moment they put out that press release and that statement bitcoin i bet is up 150% that they missed out on and they know it and it's it's absolutely abysmal they did that

they refused to just allow their own in their own clients access to this and they know that why would they do that and people say yeah but you could just change there's friction and changing you know what that's like when you've got to transfer assets from one brokerage to another the brokerage and then you're out of the market or whatever it is you know a normal person doesn't want to deal with that they're like ah i just all right fine i can't buy i bit and they miss out 150 percent in gains so that 10 000 could be 25 000 but sorry sorry we messed up my bad that's what they're saying and they've capitulated that's a big deal this is you guys might remember we actually got boycott vanguard trending and it changed their logo to this when it happened and they

I think they really saw a meaningful difference in their bottom line, or at least a hell of a lot of bad PR and pushback. I think it's also worth noting that in that time, their ex-CEO who was there forever was replaced by the guy who built by Ibit at BlackRock. That's right. I'm not saying that one man can make a change, but you got the guy who literally like put together Ibit for Black Rock and went through that entire process is now the CEO of Vanguard and was obviously more likely to eventually make this change. At least not veto it. At least not veto it. I view this as plumbing. Once again, I view this as plumbing. It's access to a lot of people if they want it.

My guess is that they will. But we'll see. I mean, Mike, when you see something like this, is this tailwinds? Is this headwinds? I mean, how do you view it? Because in my mind, we're still opening the door to more people who couldn't even buy it yet who wanted to. So it doesn't trade like everything.

It reminds me of about five, six years ago. I was in London talking to one of my colleagues and the British some authority said, no one can buy cryptos. I'm like, that's a classic buy sign. And everybody hated him. Everybody's yelling. It was a classic bison. It was a great asset.

It was underappreciated. It was, you know, boom. Now it's the exact opposite. If there's selling, there's so much yelling, it's like, you have to be careful. And I just look for alternatives. Gold. Unfortunately, it's not, it's, I hate the fact that it's still beating everything. And it is.

It's telling you that we're near the end game of this massive pump in, these, you know, 21 million numbers on the screen. There is 300 billion that has a basis. That's basically crypto dollars. The rest of the margins numbers on the screen. I'm sorry, I'm a commodity person. I see unlimited supply and I see no basis. I get worried.

Now, it was really right on the way up. I get the demand, the final diminishing supply and increasing demand adoption of Bitcoin, but sometimes you get to a peak. Now you just see everything is so completely dependent on that US stock market going up, everything, particularly cryptos. That to me is what I'm really concerned

about maybe what you just said what you just said is exactly how i feel when there's unlimited supply and no limit on basis then that's what you need something that gives you protection against that and that's why that's why i believe in bitcoin that's i mean it's exactly what you just said and it's not because there's an bitcoin doesn't have a basis gold does gold is the basis gold is basis for bitcoin every number on the screen every number on the screen and commodities have always been able to trade a futures versus basis except for cryptos and crypto dollars have a basis. Bitcoin is you have to have the full faith in that one asset. Great, forget it. Was bullish quite a well. Just at these levels, it's just too expensive in my view. So I put out a post over the weekend about the math in why

I believe Bitcoin is 90% undervalued. I can lead through it, but it's very simple. If you think about gold's market cap, gold's market cap somewhere between 80 to 90% of gold, world's market cap, this pure monetary value that has nothing to do with jewelry, there's nothing to do with industrial use. And you can get at that based on the gold silver ratio, the gold platinum ratio, comparing it to the other precious metals. And so you understand that gold has a massive monetary premium in its price. In fact, if you heard me saying it, you go to $5,000, it's literally because of the monetary premium because of the explosion in global liquidity over the last 40 years, you know, which really accelerated post, you know,

post decoupling the gold window so basically 45 years since 1980 so if you understand that then your quote basis for gold is for an asset that should be half the price of platinum give or take platinum is what 1400 i don't have a look recently but it's a hell of a lot less than 3800 and so i need to understand that that everyone who looks at it every time i hear the argument but gold is something you can wear as jewelry sure you can but it it is for the most part most of its value is based on its monetary use, which has no basis in anything other than trust, belief, thought in something that you can understand that has worked for 5,000 years as governments have come and gone. And you look at the collapse of governments and the collapse

of every empire, pretty much every empire that's ever collapsed, one of the first signals has been debasing their coinage, whether it was the Roman Empire, whether it's the Spanish, whether hell the english although they were smarter they devaced it so slowly they just kind of faded they didn't go kaboo so they they were a little bit smarter right yeah so congratulations the pound lost you know 80 of its value and they lost most of their colonies they have a commonwealth yada yada yada and now they have some moron running the country with the lowest approval rate in the history of the british prime minister ship so okay cool but the truth is that every empire falls this way so if you and if you You don't think, because we know, you know, our current Treasury Secretary is a student of history.

He knows this. It understands that the only way out of the United States, the only way out, let me repeat that, only way out is grow, baby grow. That's it. They need to do everything they can to encourage U.S. capital formation, production, and consumption, you know, yeah, okay, we're going to consume. They're not going to stop it, but they are going to prioritize production, production, production, production, grow baby grow, which means they want to cut regulations, they want a tariff in their way to doing it. And we all know, I've been very critical about the way they've done the tariffs. I'm not defending it, but that's what they want. Part of Grow Baby Grow is let's get the cost of money back

to where it was for 20 of the last 25 years and make it zero. Let's have the cost of money be at a flat of inflation rate, which means you're going to see liquidity pumped into this process because that's what they need. It's going to start when Powell is gone. It's going to start, they're going to see a shadow Fed chair appointed before he's out. Powell will probably serve out his term. But you saw it in this last speech, you know, his last press conference. Basically, he's been defanged. He doesn't have the power to do what he wants to do because it won't be sustained. And the most important thing about the Fed, the most important thing with Volker was he basically said to the market, this is the red line. Do you?

doubt me. They couldn't wait him out. They couldn't wait him out. He had three years before anything was going to happen to him. And so you're not going to see that kind of hard line. But I actually, you know, we could talk about the macro set. I don't think it makes sense anyway. Because there's so much, much reason to believe that higher interest rates actually doesn't really help with inflation because it props up costs the owner's equivalent rent. It decreases investment in automation, you know, at a time when AI requires a shit ton of automation. I mean, look, Open AI isn't going to make a dime for four years, according to their own data that they're telling people, they're telling investors.

It's very expensive. And when the cost of money is high, it's hard to make those investments. Those are the investments that will literally cause production, right? Investments in there was a, I listened to a really good podcast this weekend. Actually, I was listening to two or three. And they all basically said the same thing, which is investments in AI is going to need, is going to be a big deal and is going to have massive changes in the way most businesses, jobs, professions are done. But in the short run, it's going to cause more employment and more investment. Now, if you understand that, then understanding that's why they're so hyperbolic about cutting rates.

And a lot of the macro arguments, just as soon business as usual. They don't assume the economy is at an inflection point because of a new technology. And honestly, there are people who believe that this is as big as a supply chain of the internet or bigger, more like the introduction of the steam engine and or the assembly line. I mean, these are all points in our history that made big changes and changed policies. I would argue that I would argue that the, you know, Besson and Trump keeping it to first principles, they want to lower interest rates. They want to lower interest rates because they know that they can. grow the economy in nominal terms, number one, and number two, that will bring down the deficit because we're spending a trillion dollars a year on interest alone, 1.2, if you don't net out

intergovernment payments. They know that they, so what does Trump want to do? He wants to say that he balanced the budget. And if he, and if you, if you raise productivity by 20% and you, and you decrease the the amount that we're spending on on interest by half then you're getting pretty close to a balanced budget and a surplus and first principles that's what they want they want to come out and say we did it you know and unfortunately for regular people out there that means that they're going to deal with inflation and that's what I think that gold is sniffing out I think Bitcoin seems to be sniffing it out at the moment, too. It's up to 13,400.

Just kidding, guys, it's just one hour. It's not that exciting. Well, if you look at it from Friday, Bitcoin's up 4%, and the S&P is only up 30 basis points. So, you know. Yeah, I will mess in this when we talked about it was down and the S&P was up. So, you know. Whatever, Dave, whatever.

It's not a perfect correlation anymore, that's all. I do want to say, as potential catalyst, it is worth noting. And just because of the title here, that October tends to be an exceptional month for Bitcoin. If you take a look, with one, two, three, four, five, the six last October's have been green. The lowest was five percent, two of them at ten, and the other is pretty like astronomical. And we tend to get a pretty good Q4, especially at this part in the cycle. I don't know if seasonality will matter, but a lot of people definitely looking for a very bullish Q4. And just as a final potential catalyst for the crypto market, obviously, because we're going to get a hell of a lot of UTFs this month.

Kyle Samanion, he thought that we would have a Salana staking ETF, potentially by October 1st, or then he kind of revised to the first week of October. We don't even have Ethereum staking ETFs. Just making the point that things like this and Vanguard, there's still a lot of unlocks to people who may be looking to buy and haven't or haven't found a way. So I do think that it trades differently than other assets as a result of that growing pressure. But that's basically all we have for you guys today. Another incredible Macro Monday, the best hour of my week. It really is. They're mocking me in the comments the whole time about how I say nothing, by the way. And that's the best part about it. Why would I say anything when I have you

guys? We've got nothing to add here, man. We've got nothing to add. We'll talk ad nauseum. That's that's what we're looking for. All right, everybody. Thank you so much. We will be back next Monday, of course, the next macro Monday. And I'll be back with Andrew and Tillman tomorrow. Gentlemen, have a wonderful day. AI is reshaping the world. But right now it's stuck in hands of just a few big players. But what if AI could run openly, verifiably, and on-chain? That's what ZeroG is building. The world's first decentralized AI operating system open to everyone. Imagine a network where you don't just trade tokens, you train, store, and run independent AI models at scale. No lock-ins, no black boxes, no single point of failure. Just quick,

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