The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Will Explode In The Next 2 Weeks: Here Is Why! | Macro Monday

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Join Dave Weisberger, Mike McGlone, and James Lavish as we break down what's happening in macro and crypto! Dave Weisberger: https://twitter.com/daveweisberger1  James Lavish: https://twitter.com/jameslavish  Mike McGlone: https://twitter.com/mikemcglone11  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEKDAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   ►► Arch Public Unleash algorithmic trading. Discover how algorithms used by hedge-funds are now accessible to traders looking for unparalleled insights and opportunities!  👉https://archpublic.com/  ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. Use code '10OFF' for a 10% discount. 👉https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker  Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://x.com/scottmelker Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.com/ Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #MacroMonday The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Bitcoin has been consolidating, but there's a catalyst coming in the next few weeks that could cause it to explode. Of course, we are talking about the inauguration of Donald Trump. I've been off for a while. This is the first time that I think I took about a week or 10 days off and almost nothing happened. I thought I was going to come back to a huge pile of missed news and stories from checking out. And it was a very, very slow holiday. Good thing we can ramp it back up now for 2025 with the gentlemen, James, Mike, and Dave here to discuss everything that's likely to happen for Bitcoin in 2025 on Macro Monday. Let's go. what is up everybody i'm scott melker also known as the wolf of all streets before we get started please subscribe to the channel and hit that like button been off for quite a while, and there's no better way to get my feet back wet in the macro pond

than joining these three gentlemen, Jay, Mike, and Dave. Happy New Year, boys. How are you? Happy New Year. So, it's 2025. Now we don't have to talk about what's going to happen in 2025. We're here. We can talk about what's happening in 2025.

I can tell you, Mike is going to be shocked by this one. I can tell you one of the biggest first news stories of 2025. We're here. We can talk about what's happening in 2025. I can tell you, Mike is going, I know Mike's going to be shocked by this one. I can tell you one of the biggest first news stories in 2025. Mike, your boy, Michael Saylor has bought 1,070 more Bitcoin for $101 million. Now, listen, we knew he's going to keep buying. It does seem like he's slowing down here though. But I know when you, you, you love when, uh, when, uh, Michael Saylor starts to taunt the market gods. Yeah, it's the classic example. They learn in a trading page, don't mess with the market gods.

He is. That's good. I'm glad it's working. And I have to give him credit for it. It was 2020 when I was, you know, it's the curse of being a contrarian, particularly here at Bloomberg. I was just extraordinarily bullish. Bitcoin, I could see what was going on. It was just, you know, most people kind of hated it. And my management was like, what are you, silly internet money? And he came out. It really helped solidify my bullishness. But now it's the opposite. I look at three screens right now, CNBC, Bloomberg, and CNN. I see him

popping up all the time. Back then he was just on social media. Now it's like this one of those little lessons in life, like, yeah, okay. Thank thank you very much so i want to show one thing on that subject that i published this morning if i can share screen that's one chart that came out this morning that is the market cap of dogecoin at 56 billion dollars if you overlay that with the here's the market the bitcoin to gold ratio it's the same chart so it's the key thing i want to warn people about is the one thing I've always said is, yes, definable diminishing supply of Bitcoin, Michael Saylor's all over it, increasing demand and adoption. We all get that, things we've heard for a decade now. It's the problem of 2.4 million Bitcoin wannabes, which is just so much supply in this space. So on a macroeconomic standpoint is, yes, I'm worried about things like,

you know, has the same market cap as BNY Mellon. BNY Mellon has earnings. It's almost $20 billion estimated this year. And I think the rules of sensibility and markets that go up a lot might kick in. And you're seeing that in ETFs now. We saw the big pump in ETFs. And now we're starting to get to that point where, yeah, great, thanks, I'm getting off zero, but where's the earnings? And that's the thing, you know, from someone like me who's been tracking gold ETFs for

20 years is they just don't have earnings. And your typical money manager at some point says, yeah, I'm going to do much better off in the Qs or something else. But of course, queues now are going to get exposure to microstrategy. But to me, this is a key thing to remember in this space is big picture, bullish Bitcoin, but at a certain point, you're supposed to say, thank you very much. This is just froth like 1999, 1929 and 2007. Can I basically this chart and the conclusion you reach from it? What's funny about it is I actually think that there's a lot to be talked about in Doge versus Bank of New York.

I don't think any of it has any as much. It has as much to do with Bitcoin as the old original AFC or NFC. It was almost a perfect indicator for a long time. There was a period of time where yak milk production in Tibet correlated really well with the MSCI total return. This is the first day of statistics class for all you people. What's the first thing your statistics teacher teaches you? They say there's two words, correlation and causation, and they are very, very different. And just because something is correlated now or in the past does not mean it'll be correlated in the future. And so you need to

understand if there is some causation or some reason, hypothetical why they're together. Now, in your case, to be fair, there is a correlation. There is a reason Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency without earnings. Okay. That's where it ends. Bitcoin's investment case versus gold is the same investment case as gold versus silver when it went from 15 to 85 as a ratio. The difference is, is Bitcoin still not even in the game. And we're talking about price levels where Bitcoin is not in the game. It's still in the neighborhood of somewhere between, depending on how you define it, somewhere between six or seven times undervalued compared to gold's monetary assets. So Bitcoin gold needs to be analyzed differently than Doge versus Bank of New York or any other company that you came up with.

So that's point number one. Point number two, and I'm not going to talk about Doge or what they're trying to build or what it's going to be. But what I will say is, if you would invest based on the exact same methodology and the exact same comparison was made many times comparing Tesla to Ford or Tesla to a basket of Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, et cetera. How would you have done eight years ago if you had said, well, it's crazy that Tesla is more right when it first became more valuable than or than the rest of the auto industry, you know, the rest of the big three. When it first became, what would have happened if you had shorted Tesla and bought the big three? Ask yourself that question. And then ask yourself if you're a money manager,

if you'd still be employed if you had done that strategy. The answer is badly and no in all likelihood. So I'm not saying it's the same. Tesla also, you know, has lots, there's lots there underneath the covers. I don't know what it, you know, what its ownership of SpaceX is. I don't know. There's a lot of stuff there and let other analysts talk about it. But the, I was about to say something that I promised in my New Year's resolution, I'm not going to say. Do it. Break it now. The baseline of comparing things based off of that is bad.

Now, last point, and I agree with you on this. This is an agree with Mike. I think it's very, very interesting to understand that there are 2,000 some odd cryptos and understand where they're coming from. Whatever they are. You're talking about pump.fun. Yeah, you got a lot of stuff. There are a lot of stocks that people have never heard about in the OTC markets. Lots of them.

You know, tens of thousands of them. And I think most of the cryptos that are out there are that. They're not Bitcoin wannabes. Maybe they are. And maybe there are some fools who buy based off of that. But that's not the same thing. I mean, James, I think you agree with this. And I'd like you to go next.

But there's Bitcoin and there's everything else in the in the world of crypto. And as long as you understand that, that Bitcoin is a singular, unique thing and everything else in crypto are either going to be memes that people are playing with, like they're playing cards or tulip bulbs or whatever, and maybe they'll build some sort of sustainable community or someone or things that are trying to create utility for others to use in a new economy. That the main feature of crypto to date has been two things. U.S. non-accredited investors can invest early and you can get immediate liquidity if you're a venture capitalist or anybody else for that matter. Those are the two things. In this administration, those two things are going to disappear, not for the wrong reason, but for the right reason. The advantage will go away. At least, I believe they will. I think if you're a utility coin, you will be able to be investable. And I think that they're going to try to figure out a way to equalize in terms of liquidity. Now,

is that bad for crypto? No, it's great for it. It may mean that more companies will use crypto to raise funds, but it's going to have to be on the basis. It's going to create changes. It's going to take time. But I just, from a beginning of 2025, my overarching thesis is we are finally in a world where building utility and value is going to matter in the cryptoverse.

It's going to take time for it to happen. It hasn't happened yet, but that is a massive sea change. And so, yes, I think many coins that are valued at big companies that have tons of earnings and are doing things that have no earnings and no potential to the people who are owning it are going to end up looking really, really bubbly. And many things are going to look really, really good. I personally think Bitcoin's in the really, really good category, but that's just my opening salvo. So we got to go back to causation and correlation and up that that drink here that you have

dave yeah i want to know the correlation is it correlation or causation to the the um amount of caffeine that's in those drinks and your energy well this is a very low caffeine drink but my energy is it's just it's it's there i mean it's 2025 baby so this is a very low caffeine drink, but my energy is, it's just, it's there. I mean, it's 2025, baby. So this is just correlation, not causation. Certify the results. All the conspiracy theorists on the Democrat side are like, uh-oh, I guess we really are going to have Trump. And now we're going to start to see what's going to happen. I mean, look, you know, I'm looking forward to it. I can't, I can't argue it. It just is. It's natural energy. What you said, though,

about Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto universe is really important because Mike has been right, and we've talked about this for so long, about Bitcoin being the tip of the risk spear and it having a higher beta to the overall market and a higher beta to even technology stocks. So you've got technology stocks. Bitcoin does move with them. It's highly correlated and actually moves in front of them often, as we've seen. And we even saw it going into the end of the year. But at a higher beta to the underlying stocks and it's the same thing with the crypto uh universe the um any crypto that's not bitcoin moves at a high correlation to bitcoin on average if you take

them all they move at a higher correlation to bitcoin that's just the reality of it so and we're going to continue to see that so if bitcoin you know rips higher here by 50 percent, you're going to see those you're going to see people make fortunes on on coins that have no utility. It's just reality becomes a casino around it. And that casino is going to continue through this year. drawdown, most likely caused by macroeconomic issues, because I can't see any reason for Bitcoin to have a drawdown outside of that. The fundamentals of Bitcoin, like Dave said, and all of crypto, there are just too many tailwinds right now. I don't see any headwinds right now. And I don't see any headwinds for them. But if that happens, then yeah, you're going to see things like Dogecoin go down in multiples of what Bitcoin does. That's just the pure reality of it. Right. But James, if we don't get that

drawdown in macro that would cause Bitcoin to go down and everything else to go down, we have quite a few tailwinds for the entire market, even beyond Bitcoin. Just want to share a tweet from Brad Garlinghouse, obviously, head of Ripple. 2025 is here and the Trump bull market is real for Ripple. This is even more personal after Gensler's SEC, blah, blah, blah, blah. But here's what he said. 75% of Ripple's open roles are now US-based. Well, over the last four years, the vast majority of hires were outside the US and we signed more US deals in the last six months of 24 since the election than the previous six months, excuse me, last six weeks. So listen, if you're a company in crypto that is not Bitcoin based per se, there's a lot of very clear evidence that things are thawing and that the situation is improving massively.

No, no. And look, we're gearing up to have another fundraiser of my hedge fund. And I'll tell you how it goes in the next few months with Operation Chokepoint 2.0, because it was brutal the first time around, with wires getting canceled, getting sent back, refused to be sent. People had to leave their banks just to you know invest it was pretty wild um so we'll see i have i have high confidence that that that's going to be it's getting resolved you know we already have people like um you know john deaton said he's he's putting together commissions to go look into this and so that that's that's an important step and that's that is a really big step in the world of Bitcoin in particular,

and then all of the cryptocurrencies around it. You cannot innovate if you can't, if they shut off every single traditional banking rail, you can't get the capital there to innovate. It just doesn't work. I mean, this story is enormous. I mean, I would phrase it this way. Watergate was a third rate break-in about campaign financing and a cover-up, and it took down a presidency. At best, misdemeanor breaking and entering.

This is unconstitutional government power, violation of the Fifth Amendment in due process without any question, depriving potentially hundreds of thousands of peoples of their jobs, all because there was a bias that probably came from the top and it needs to be stated. And these unredacted, and what we're talking about, people, is Coinbase finally managed to get through a freedom of information request that has now conclusively proven or shows pretty conclusively that there is intent and action from the federal regulators to pressure private industries, banks into not offering services for crypto and not servicing companies that provide a crypto,

Bitcoin only as well. And this is very big because what it essentially is saying is the federal government is literally depriving the livelihood of, as I said, hundreds of thousands of people, certainly tens of thousands of people and probably hundreds of thousands of people of their livelihood. And with no reason other than the bias of Elizabeth Warren's anti-crypto army. Now, whether or not we're going to get anyone from the FDIC to turn on her and say, yes, she told us we had to do this as a condition of our employment, whether she used the power of her office to do so, we do not know that. It may very well be she said it, but people could say, well, okay, so maybe she said it, but it wasn't her fault. But regardless of who at the highest level said it, there is very little question looking at

this, that the federal government was making an active decision to take away the livelihood of thousands and thousands of Americans from being able to play in the crypto world or trade in the crypto world or build funds in the crypto world or build payment rails in the crypto world. That is a very big deal. And I believe this story will have legs. Let's move up a little bit in 50,000 to 100,000 feet and go back to the macro picture. This morning, everything was rallying because there were reports that Trump's tariffs were going to be narrowed and that he's only going to focus on certain industries. Well, a red headline just came across my Bloomberg saying that Trump says that his tariffs will not be pared back. And you can see Bitcoin just go down from, you know, 99.5 down to 98.8 in just a

minute. And it's off of that headline that, you know, all of the all the techs are rallying off of this. And so this is where the market is very tuned in to what those tariffs could be i would like to actually hear mike uh kind of talk about that we got to piggyback on that let's tilt over to the macro looking for that was i saw that statement this morning is the reason copper was going up i was like do you think this person's going to take the risk of going down in history as a weenie come on that's That's what, this is the book, the no free trade tells you what's going to happen. Everything that these books that even General McMaster wrote,

he's doing. Loyalists and there's going to be tariffs. He made, we've seen this before, made that mistake of believing the Chinese. They're going to be hard and fast and come out. I mean, if you don't expect that, I'm like, good luck. I mean, it's just, this is the way it's tilting. And, but people use that in their position. So I want to tilt over a little bit to the macro.

Coinmarketcap.com, the number three macro, let's focus on the macro here, is the market cap of all cryptos. There's Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether. Okay, it's fighting with Ripple right now. But let's just focus on the macro. This space, at least our current administrationations figure out the legitimacy of how important this space is for the u.s what does tether hold u.s treasuries it was silly stupid to push back on that now we're going the other way the key point i want to make though for this morning is i deliberately wrote that article this morning because i'm neutral i'm and i have to agitate

if i don't i'm a slacker like in this comp if i just agree with everything we all say i don't add any value to our listeners and that's why my headline was something i wrote about when i'm get bearish treasury or cryptos is 2.4 million bitcoin wannabes now that's the point i'm making is right now i'm more solidified in my view that the crypto space including bitcoin is more it is technically more correlated to the stock market than ever on a 100-day basis. And when we get that first 10% correction in beta, we'll get that. So I want to tilt over a little bit over to the macro this morning from our morning media. For the first time in months, and this has started last month, is Gina Martin-Adams, who's been spot on the

U.S. stock market. She says volatility is typical with the new president. Markets are way overdone. She's came out swinging that this market is just way too expensive, U.S. equities. And at the same time, my colleague Ana Wong pointed out, we're going to get a blowout payroll number at the end of Friday. She's expecting 268K non-farm payrolls. Unemployment rate's going to go up. Pointing out, we're just not creating jobs enough, except that's going to be a bit of a factor to take the Fed out of the market. And that's a key thing that Gina pointed out is Fed's out of the market for easing until the stock market potentially goes down. So another thing that my other colleague pointed out, Audrey Child Friedman, is we're going to get probably one thing we should expect in FX is volatility. And that's a key thing I like to point out from a commodity standpoint, the Bloomberg Commodity Index, the 100-week Bollinger Band is the narrowest since 1997.

That's over 25 years. It's going to move. We're going to see volatility. And typically, volatility is not good for risk assets. It's typically not good for what's sold over to Shibu Inu, $14 billion of market cap. I'm just pointing out this is 1929-ish kind of stuff. I think prudent investors get it. You're seeing this flow into Bitcoin ETFs, potentially like they flew into the ARK ETF back in 2021. Remember, that didn't work out so well.

But I'm just pointing out there's valuation metrics here that are silly stupid. All the indications are you should be careful. And it's not happening. It doesn't't happen overnight it's got to be difficult but the macro economic outlook i think is oh i'll end with this 1.6 percent that's the yield on the u.s the chinese tenure note yield that's 300 base points below the u.s the rest of the world is heading towards pretty severe deflationary recession. And I think cryptos are just on the cusp of solidifying that. I know you just throw like a Shiba Inu out as an example. I just happen to be looking at coin market caps.

I'm digging through it. I mean, does it matter to you that this did once have a 40 something billion market cap, you know, at the peak of the 2021 bull market? And now we're down, you know, here at, you know, 14 or 15 15 because yes, it still has a huge market cap. But if you look at it, it is dramatically decreased and only slowly made lower highs if you kind of look at this on the way down. So maybe this is a, nothing against SHIB, but maybe something like this is a slowly dying, it doesn't die overnight, but it's clearly gone way down since the froth of the last market. And by the way, for both of you, Michael, maybe you can do this.

If you take these charts and you divide by the amount of dollars in circulation, that changes things as well. Because remember, the denominator of all things. And that's the problem with a lot of the stock market analysis that we have in all these asset analysis. When you print an enormous amount of money, the denominator, it has to go somewhere. And remember, I've said this many times, the government, if you are smart, and I think Powell is smart, and I think our leadership leaders are smart, I may not agree with all of them all the time, and that's for sure. Their goal is to channel the monetary inflation that they are creating into assets rather than

into consumer prices. And so when you engineer asset inflation, it's going to break past correlation models and analysis of all markets, with the exception, I think, of the bond market, because that's more tethered to yield, which is why I believe the bond market is looking divergent from the stock market so strongly. And I think that if you normalize that, that divergence is nowhere near as large as you might think. And I'm curious what both of you think about that because that's a thesis I was developing over the weekend. Well, look, we got to go back up to 100,000 feet feet we're about to trip the debt ceiling again right so there it was suspended it is not in effect right now but because of the nature of the scheduling

of the treasury auctions prior to the debt ceiling um you know suspension you're going to have the i think it's going to be somewhere in the next week or so the today's a six i think it's going to be like the week of the like 14th to 20 something like somewhere in the next week or so. Today's the 6th. I think it's going to be like the week of the 14th to 20-something, like somewhere around the inauguration, we're going to get a problem where Janet Yellen is going to be doing extraordinary measures again. And so what do we have? We have this week, we've got, I mean, I've got Bloomberg up right now.

You know, forget about the T-bills, 84 billion, 72 billion, 58 billion the T-bills, $84 billion, $72 billion, $58 billion in T-bills today. Obviously, they just got to keep rolling those over and hope that everybody whose T-bills mature and the money markets goes right back into them. But they're also going to do $39 billion of 10 years tomorrow. Everything's moved up a day because of Jimmy Carter's memorial service on Thursday. So $39 billion of 10 years tomorrow. And then the 30-year bonds, they've got a $22 billion issue coming on Wednesday. So this is where you're going to start getting your clues, I think, to see how these things are going and where these yields are. And that's going to give

you an idea of whether or not the bond vigilantes are really back or not and worried about that inflation we're talking about, the resurgence of jobs that Mike is talking about. We'll see what the bond market thinks, but that's going to give you your first clues, I think. And that divergence is going to matter. Is money going to start pouring back into the bond market, into the treasury market, because yields go up to a point where the longer-term yields attract that? Or is the curve going to continue to shape toward the short end? We'll see. Actually, again, I'd like to hear what Mike and his colleagues have been saying about this. I'll follow up on that. My colleague, Ira Jersey, our chief equity interest rate strategist, came on and says, his quote this morning is,

I got to stay off social media because everything on social media points out supply. He says, the key problem with the U.S. Treasury market right now is the Fed pivot. I mean, they're done. They're done easing markets price for it until market tells them to ease. Inflation is ticking up a little bit. Unemployment rate stable. But I like to point out bond vigilantes are clearly in force on a global basis. 131 is the difference between the average of the top five GDPs in the country, in the world, which includes India.

The yield on their 10-year yields lower than the U.S. 10-year note, right now 4.62%. That's pretty extreme. And you see that, and key thing I see that in things like gold versus copper taking off. And the key point I want to make though there is at some point I look at TLT as just a very positive earning put on the S&P 500, on the U.S. stock market. And getting more value every day. Yeah, I've been completely wrong on there. But we haven't had a 10% correction in over a year. So to me, that's the key thing that the market's got to worry about.

And this typically, the key point is the year after a president election usually has volatility. It's not like we don't have a volatile president here. And volatility usually means equity correction. So to me, I think it's going to be a great trading environment. Last year was great for long and hold risk assets. I think this year it's the more tactically oriented hedge funds and things will do very well. And that doesn't start with getting excessively long risk assets here and the riskiest and most expensive in history are cryptos. I mean, I think it's worth noting really quickly, Dave, before you jump in, Mike, we do have this chart that I've brought up a thousand times, which is obviously Fed funds rate in red. Blue is the inverted or uninverted yield curve.

And black is what happens to the stock market. I mean, we've always had the yield curve uninvert, then the Fed pivot, then the stock market go down. We once again, obviously had the yield curve inverting, the Fed pivoting, stock market is off this chart now. It's literally off the chart at this point, but it does always, always happen. That could just be that 10% correction that you're talking about, but it does always happen that after the Fed pivots, we tend to get a correction. Yeah, I think that it's the type of pivot. If you go back to macro Monday past, I used to make the point that this is the interest rate policy and this is what they're doing with the money supply. This is the one that matters. And so I think that one of the

interesting theories that I've been thinking about is gold. And gold, I think, has been trading over the last negligible so far. I think that it will change. But if you think about gold as a denominator for valuing all of these assets, I think you get very different answers. And if you reason gold as a denominator is because it's a proxy for non-manipulated money supply, because everything else is manipulated in dollars. And so we all know famously how Bitcoin is done versus gold this year and it's bumping up against that level. And we'll see what happens. I mean, I'm pretty confident in what's going to occur. But the S&P versus gold doesn't quite look like that. So yes, your black line is up into the bright. But what if you normalize that black line by the gold price on a certain date? And then at that point, I think you would see it looking a little bit more normal. And so Mike's point, which I've tended to agree with for a while

is we're probably going to get a correction, but if you get a big correction at the same time as a big pump in liquidity, it's very hard to get corrections in nominal terms. So nominal versus real terms matter. And I think that a lot of people get caught out not realizing that that's what's actually happening. And the reason that the perma bears have gotten absolutely annihilated over the last two or three years is because of that. Now, that said, a point Mike made earlier is extremely important, people. Stocks ultimately are tethered to earnings. And so you could be, you know, and it will tend to be that the biggest market downward moves happen when the last perma bear gets exhausted and capitulates.

And are we finally getting close to that at some point this year? It's quite possible. And it's something that people should understand. And that's been what Mike has been saying. And I think that it's really important to look at those cross currents. Too long. So just, Collin, we all know the quote, I think it's a consensus and everybody in the world knows the U.S. stock market's in the 95th to 97th percentile of expensive in history. The key quotes from Gina this morning, Gina Martin-Adams, was expectations for earnings, S&P 500 is actually over 20%. That's like never works. And for the tech stocks, it's around 40%.

So the last two years, she was completely right on. Expectations were low and earnings beat. Now they're so high. That's typically what happens when bull markets never end and they usually blow off and you could still go higher but it's so extreme now that's why i keep you know looking for alternatives and the key thing here i'll give another prediction for next year for this year just for people can push back so we've had four years of outflows in gold etfs yet gold's gone up pretty well investors don't give a damn why it doesn't

have earnings. You can get better in S&P 500 except last year. And of course, there's a better Bitcoin. There's digital gold. Completely agree with that in the big picture. I predict this year we're going to have the first year of inflows in gold ETFs since, what was that last year? Since 2019. And the key trigger for that will be just a little bit of underperformance in the stock market. Actually, versus gold last year was a bad year for S&P 500 versus this stupid rock. And that's not a good sign. So this is a key. And then you just look for triggers.

What are the triggers for that to happen? Just a little back and fill in risk assets. What's the riskiest? What's a good indicator? Cryptos. Yeah, as I said, Bitcoin, the rest of crypto, I think are different here. But keep in mind that ETF, the reason that you've seen that divergence is retail is basically saying, OK, fine, I don't need to put more money into gold. I'd rather allocate toward Bitcoin, et cetera, et cetera. Central banks, sovereign wealth funds don't need to use U.S. ETFs and pay an asset management fee to own gold.

And so the buyers of gold are that. Those are asset allocators who look at the monetary debasement that's going on globally in the entirety of the civilized world. You know what, we need to own more gold. Predominantly, your friends, your unlimited friendship or whatever you know coming from certain china russia and those sat and satellite states around them that have been buying so it is interesting i i think you're probably wrong on the on the etf i thought i think it's going to be very very close uh it's not going to be a mass wall of money going into gold and ETFs, but I think a mass wall of money from central banks looking to diversify could

happen. But there are many other things that could happen. And, you know, it will really depend. I mean, we're going to have a really good idea of what's going to actually happen when we see how fast the Senate can put the Trump team in place, where, you know, when Scott Besant is in Treasury, what does he do to the permanent staff there and what's actually happening in terms of policy? Same for Atkins and Brian Kintenz at the CFTC and SEC. Same for Lutnick and Commerce. Same for a variety of others, that whether or not there's going to be a change in approach toward unleashing entrepreneurship or not. And if the answer is yes, then you could get some ridiculous growth numbers. And that's what they're hoping for.

And that's what the hype is about. Now, I want to be very clear about one thing. If it goes the way I hope it goes, the hope and the hope for America, it is not good for the largest companies. It is good for the economy. If the goal is to unleash economic growth by unleashing entrepreneurship, that does not mean earnings to the moon from companies that have oligopolistic advantages, because those advantages are not going to be there. And that's a long-term trend that I think people are not understanding. I mean, my macro trend, if you believe that the Trump administration will be successful in doing what they want to do, is buy Russell short S&P. Maybe more buy more to be long, But at the end of the day, it's really about where the benefits are going to go. What's been amazing to me is how little of any of this is priced in. We haven't seen any of these macro trades other than our company is going to be brutalized because of tariffs versus our company is going to make extra money because their products are being protected. That's really where the focus has been been no one's really gone a level down yet or at least that i've seen

it'd be interesting to hear what what people like cliff astinis are doing and others are doing uh jeremy grantham are doing in terms of that because there are some real macro trends that are not being talked about yet james i see you brought a chart up. Yeah. Just a reminder that that BlackRock ETF is the fastest growing ETF in the history, right, of ETFs. So like this is where you can see the gold ETF, you know, underneath it. This is just it's insane how how much demand there is for this. And there's a reason for it. And Dave kind of hit on it is that, you know, Bitcoin has been very difficult for institutions to own because of the

nature of, you know, how you hold the keys, who holds the keys, the, the compliance around it. It's just, it's the settlement of it,

where you trade it. It's just been a nightmare for regular institutions who are not hedge funds, who are out there on the risk curve to own it. And now they can. It's so easy. And so that is a that's still a massive tailwind for Bitcoin that people aren't even talking about. You know, having the ability to just buy an ETF and settle it with your prime broker or your or your custodian the way that you would a normal stock or Apple or whatever. It's a major development that is still gathering momentum. Sorry. I was going to say really quickly and to that end, because Dave, we talk about this all the time, then Mikey can jump back in. We still have all of this happening, right? We had the launch of

the ETFs, but we are all well aware of the fact that that didn't mean that people could actually access them or purchase them. When you see things like only four days ago here, we missed this news, obviously, because it was away. But Morgan Stanley's E-Trade explores offering crypto trading when that hasn't existed. When you start to look at all these people coming online, the access becoming more, I guess, universal for retail and institutions to actually buy this, it's hard, as they would say, to price in what's coming. You got to remember, these are the most popular in history with most people, or at least 50% of the people, according to Matt Hogan, still not even having access. Let me provide a little bit of provocative pushback on that,

and to what you put out, James. You out i iau the biggest gold etf is gld it's 74 billion that's fair but it's just the growth of it yeah yeah so get it so here's the point the thing i've learned in my 40 years in commodities and 20 years in etfs is the next big trade for bitcoin to go up is some kind of strategic Bitcoin reserve. If you're spoken on retail, where Dave mentioned ETF holders, I'm like, good luck with that one. It's a lesson I learned. Gold ETFs. I mean, gold has been historically, right now, maybe on a global basis, 1% of global portfolios, actually less. And ETF total holdings are 220 billion. They've been stuck there for four years. Why is that?

Because they don't have earnings. Bitcoin's much more volatile. It doesn't have earnings. Yes, we get the present behind it. But what you just saw, I think this year, we're going to look back from history like we just saw the big pump in the art funds four years ago. I was like, yeah, okay. You got the initial people jump in. Matt Hogan, I get it.

I'm a big fan of Matt Hogan, but I can point out that what happens with ETFs and your competition income producing assets is they only go up so much. Unless you get, you have to have that performance. So to me, forget about ETFs. The next key thing for make Bitcoin hours, if the US does some kind of strategic Bitcoin reserve

and other countries follow. Otherwise, ETFs are a bad way. I think a good way to expect it to put in a peak and potentially have peaked and do what all ETFs have done in history and commodities and gold as they get to a certain level. And then you look at like, yeah, sorry, but NVIDIA is doing this and they have earnings and the QQ is doing this and they have earnings. And by the way, this is what I know. So every time I hear the earnings thing with Bitcoin, that conversation about Ethereum, I think is exactly correct.

So let's start with that, right? That there has to be value creation in the Ethereum ecosystem and not value bleeding for Ethereum to do what Scott believes it's going to do. And I'm less I'm less sanguine about that. I think that that same thing is is when you talk about XRP, where I am much more sanguine about it. I think that the deals that Brad is signing are relevant there. But when you talk about Bitcoin, it is, I think, one-tenth underpriced right now for what it is. There is still enormous skepticism, enormous skepticism.

And what we are not pricing in is 30,000, 40,000 financial advisors. Sorry, my cat's trying to unplug my computer. The cat also saves drinks, by the way. We are not pricing in tens of thousands of financial advisors being unlocked. Remember, every broker-dealer in the United States has been stonewalled by FINRA and the SEC for dating back to the last two years of the first Trump administration. We have six years of applications sitting with FINRA for broker dealers to be able to offer crypto trading services, Bitcoin services,

no matter how limited it was. None of them got approved other than Prometheum, which is, of course, insane to begin with, because they have zero financial advisors and zero flows. So I think that saying that that's not a big deal, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. Now, Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, that is a massive catalyst if it happens. Polymarket has it at about 40 some odd percent of some sort. Once again, lots of deep skepticism about whether it will happen, whether other countries will do it. I mean, you know, whatever

one thinks of Dennis Porter, he's saying this is absolutely happening. You know, we talked about Miele years ago when he first got in or was first being done. And Miele has not pushed in that direction yet. Look at the economic success he's been having in Argentina and tell me how long it's going to be. 2025 is the year that you're going to finally hear something going on with Bitcoin. You saw what happened in El Salvador. People were like, oh, my God, I am after telling you can't do this. You saw what happened in El Salvador. People were like, oh my God, I am after telling you can't do this, you can't do that.

Yeah, he had to give up his volcano bond. But what he is doing is buying more and he had to give up the wallet thing. But what he is doing is making it easier to buy and buying more and strengthening its ecosystem. So net, net, all these things are positive. We haven't talked about corporations. Corporations are copycats, just like everybody else, every CFO out there. I mean, come on.

I mean, you're a CFO and you want to goose your stock price because you have employees who it's easier to retain if your stock price is going up. What are the best performing stocks worldwide? Pretty much the few, the handful, the tiny, infinitesimal percentage of stocks that have added Bitcoin to their balance sheet. I mean, these are catalysts. And I'm pushing back against your point about catalysts, Mike, not about the other points. I think that there are massive catalysts that are out there. We will see them. And I fully expect to see at least in Bitcoin to manifest. And the only thing that stops a massive Bitcoin rally is a major stock market risk asset correction, because at that point, people sell what they have to sell, not what they want to sell. And that always happens.

How much does that change with ETFs? ETFs are still trading with the stock market. And if the volume and liquidity is largely going into ETFs and not necessarily into spot Bitcoin, do we at least see a dampening of that narrative? In the past, that was always the case, obviously. You'll never see a dampening of the narrative if there's a crash. But in a slow grind, yeah, that matters. So gold can outperform the stock market for long periods of time. A stock market grinding lower, you can see gold grinding higher. A stock market that crashes, that people get real fear, gold will crash with it. I mean, in the GFC,

gold took three months. It did ultimately outperform dramatically, but it took three months of going down before it went back higher. Let's go back to Dave's point about the demand from companies adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets. Look's go back to Dave's point about the demand from companies adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets. Look, you got to remember, MicroStrategy stomached having an impaired asset on their balance sheet for years until the gap accounting was changed. And a bear market. Just now, and a bear market. So for people who don't know this, for the listeners who don't understand this, the gap accounting used to require Bitcoin to be held at the lower of cost or the lowest it's ever traded as if it's an impaired asset.

So if you bought it at $50,000, it traded down to $16,000. You had to hold it on your balance sheet at $16,000 of loss forever until you sold it in order to recoup that gain when it went back up. So even if it went from 50 to 16, back to 70, you had to hold it at 16,000. You would have to physically sell it at 70 in order to get it marked back properly on your books. Now, just now, that's changed where you hold it at fair market value. So instead of an impaired asset. So that is going to allow companies who are even on the fence thinking, oh, this volatile asset, I don't want to hold it on my balance sheet. You know, it's volatile, as volatile as it is, and then have to hold an impaired asset

for years until I sell it. So that is a big deal that people are just completely ignoring. And that will allow some companies to get over that hurdle of putting on their balance sheet. Meanwhile, Bitcoin's pushing 100,000. Mike, you're muted. Yeah. Yeah. Let me just follow up one thing what Dave said is, and you make this point all the time, and I think it's a little bit misunderstanding and certainly from a management standpoint, gold before it corrected like it did in 2008 had been beating the S&P 500 for two years in a row a lot. So it had a lot of profits to be taken out. So when the stock market crashed,

sure, gold went down just as much and then it continued to take off. But it was a great hedge two years before. Those of us like me who started using it as a hedge because I bought this massive house in Connecticut and I thought I knew prices were going to go down. I just hedged myself. That's the difference now. Gold has been way underperforming. Almost every asset except for highly volatile risk assets like crypto is in the stock market for many years now. So that's my point is I'm not going for a crash at all.

At some point, we'll get it. I'm just like, just give me that first 10% correction. It'll be a great opportunity for trading. We're going to get it. when from where it's going to happen this year again mcglone's wrong fine that'd be wonderful volatility stays low but that's correction from the high right so maybe it might it might have started already and that means that maybe it has started and that might be we'll see but again it's the it's like you saw the headlines this morning i just love that human nature of markets when they come out and say, oh, yeah, we might not have Trump tariffs as much as he said.

I'm like, yeah, the guy's not young. He tried this last time. It's like silly to even think that. But if it helps support your position, it helps you maybe make a move and make a quick trade, sure, let those things fly in the tape bitcoin just pushed back through 100 000 for the first time since christmas eve when it crashed through 100 000 uh on the on on the way down to a low around 91. global whatever that tariff news services pmi just came out it was lighter than expected so yeah so i mean who knows with with bitcoin but that yeah yeah i mean none of the of the things that are going to create the rally are happening this morning. What's happening now is it's trading like a risk asset on the basis of all the things that we've talked about.

And in a supply-demand construct where there just really isn't supply. A couple of other facts, which I always like to look at. Funding rate on Bitcoin right now, still well below trend, well below normal. Forget speculation. So here we are at 100,000. The funding rate is below 0.01. It's actually 0.008, which is significant. The other thing I've been staring at nonstop through the end of the year is Tether US dollar. Tether US dollar traded as much as a 30 basis point discount. The discount is now down to less than three basis points. It will be at a premium at some point in the next couple of weeks, at which point you will look back

and say, oh my God, that is coincident with the beginnings of alt season slash crypto rally. When you start seeing Tether go back to a premium, that is a very strong indication of people buying it giving up their yield in order to be able to buy crypto assets and we've seen this many times and if you're tracking that the movement of that versus the velocity of the movement of the crypto world uh you're well suited to understanding uh what's actually happening so those two things are very very important because what you're seeing is spot led buying. You're not, this is not derivative led buying. So every time you see crypto bull markets, when you look in 2021, that move, two thirds of it was led by derivatives. So every time Mike rebases and does his cherry picking at the top of the 2021 market to where we are now, I'm like, wait a minute.

You know, a lot of that, at least at least 40 percent of that move, no matter just to be charitable, is was derivative led froth at the at the melt, the crack up boom kind of thing. And then when all the crises happened, you know, starting with terra luna i don't want to revisit history but we all know what that is uh it took that froth out and it went in reverse and it over corrected down to levels that are crazy and it's funny because i'm going to get my my schnibble that i didn't get off of ftx us i'm going to get back into my kraken account at some point in the next month i think i'll buy something you'll buy something. You'll buy something. Yeah, I'll buy something, but it's not a lot. The $12,000

or whatever the hell it was, something like that based off of it was... A lot of cat food, Dave. That's a lot of cat food. It was.3... That's like eating a Monster Energy drink. Think about it. It was over.3 Bitcoin. What's.3 Bitcoin worth? It's worth a lot more than $12,000 right now.

Now, obviously, I hedge myself because, you know, I'm not a fool. But, you know, there's a lot of things that have happened here. And you've got to keep it all in perspective. You know, we have global macro things. We've never – we're in totally uncharted territory here. We really are in terms of monetary deficits throughout the entire world. We haven't talked about that. The sheer amount of debt to GDP in the world is insane.

I'm about to tee up, Mike, now. We've never seen anything like this on the scale that it is, except for maybe Japan, China going Japanese. I mean, I can't believe you didn't mention any of that. I mean, the Chinese bond yield just absolutely cratered since the last time we talked. We mentioned it. I mentioned it earlier. 1.6%. That is a very big deal, right? Yeah.

So you mentioned, go ahead, Scott. Yeah, please. Well, you mentioned speculative froth, and this is where I like to point out, is it different for a highly speculative, wonderfully traded risk asset, speculative assets like crypto? So speculative froth really helped me be able to pick a peak in copper last year when it pinched $5.20. It dropped 20%. Now it dropped to four, just below four. Now it's hanging around four. That's really much indicating what's happening in China.

Copper going down. Industrial metals going down. China collapsing. Completely dependent on fiscal monetary stimulus and going to face even more and more problems. I just read the book, The World on the Brink, by Dmitry Peritovich. And it's pointed out all those issues. But to me, that's why I like to point out is I just don't think cryptos are that much different from the rules of markets in history and i get the whole thing about you know debt to ddp but that's the china basically has debt to gdp of around 300 japan is a little closer to

150 us is only 120 yet their yields have collapsed why it's because hang on one second let me finish one thing let me finish i know we're going to go with that. No, you go next, James. It's just the point is, the one thing the U.S. has going is if we've had elevated risk assets, the stock market on a tier on a global basis, the most expensive ever, and that's going to keep yields high. At some point when that gives is when you're going to see the test of yields in Bitcoin and stuff. And that's why I think bond prices will go up and Bitcoin will go down. Estimated U.S. unfunded liabilities are at $225 trillion. So I don't know what you want to use for debt to GDP, but that is money that's owed to the system in the future. It's just reality. But Elon Musk is going to fix all that. It's an off-balance sheet, you know, Enron. It's an Enron off-balance sheet, you know, liability. Well, but it's in all seriousness, you know, look, Elon Musk is going to fix a lot of things. If he and Vivek are allowed to do what they want to do, it will help a lot in terms of unleashing entrepreneurship and growth. It cannot fix unfunded liabilities unless politicians are

going to all change their behavior. And I think that the odds of that are about the same as me being the starting quarterback for the Jets next year, right? It's just not going to happen. That's actually a non-zero probability right now. Yeah, anything can happen. But what is relevant to what my question is, is when the Japanese government, when you calculate Japanese debt to GDP, do they push their version of Medicare, their version of Medicaid to Medicare and their version of Social Security off balance sheet? Or is it all part of the same budget? I think it's all part of the same budget. I'm glad you went there, Dave. It's the most important thing to mention is as far as

statistical analysis and reliability is, what country has the most reliable data on the planet? It's a country with the greatest discourse. We have people like me ripping into everything all the time. You don't have that in most other countries, particularly the top, particularly China. And that's the problem. So you can't really trust their data, but you can see things like bond yields, 1.6% in China. It's kind of hard to mess with the math of a bond yield telling you where things are going. Right. Now here's, here's the difference. The Chinese currency is not the global reserve currency. No. The US dollar is, and that's why things are the way they are, good and bad. Good is we've been importing standard of living from other countries for decades.

Bad, we've hollowed out our entire ability to make things in this country because we've made things more expensive to make in this country for two reasons. One, the one we're talking about, and the other, regulation. Now, I think regulations are going to normalize. I think that they're going to get I think that that part will will help. But don't be surprised if J.D. Vance is sitting there. If he was listening to us, he'd be nodding his head at some of this. And he would say, yeah, you're right. Right. Andconomic impacts of a U.S. government saying, you know what? We're OK with the U.S. dollar being strong, but maybe it's just a bit too strong. Well, that's the problem in history. We've never had problems, hardly ever problems of weak dollar. Plaza Corps, 1985.

It's always because of its too strong dollar. That's why things like a Bitcoin, strategic Bitcoin reserve to support that are kind of silly. The problem with the U.S. dollar is usually it's too strong dollar that's why things like a bitcoin strategic bitcoin reserve to support that they are kind of silly the problem with the u.s dollars usually it's too strong and that's the key thing that key point of that book it's no um no trade is free from lighthouses things i talked about in the trading pits decades ago it's about time that there is no there's no such thing as free trade in the planet with the u.s it just cannot happen no one can offer us any type of export market that we offer them it's have to have tariffs. I've said that. And that's what to me has really howled out the heartland where I'm from and the manufacturing. But you think it's a problem here? Go to Europe. And that's all that deflation from

the US tariffs on Chinese are going to be pressuring all those products are going to Europe and massive deflation. So to me, this is an overdue fix. The problem is going to be pain in the short term because tariffs will start day one. All the regulation and the potential improvements will take extra Congress and tax cuts will take extra Congress. And that's more of a 2026 thing. 2025, you're going to see major profits reductions, partly because why do we have, you know, why is the U.S. corporations offshore to everything for cheapness to for more profits? That's going to push back in the short term. Really quickly before we go, since we have the title here, Bitcoin will explode in the next two weeks.

Here's why. The answer to that, as I said, the intro is the inauguration. We finally get to see Trump in action. But I think a lot of people would point to that as a sell the news event, at least in the short term. Right. You get all the expectations and then you see a sell-off. I can only say that we have this data here from CoinDesk, high stakes, 100K Bitcoin call signals expectation for record price jump after Trump's inaugurations. If you look at the option flow, people are betting on very big prices within the first month or two after the election. I don't know if that's something that you fade or ride the tail of, but just quickly around the word, gentlemen, your gut instinct, and this is not a price prediction or right. I think all of us maybe not might think that

Bitcoin goes up generally after the election because of the tailwinds. But do you think that at the election, we see high volatility or some sort of potential sell-off or huge pump because it's finally happening? James, I mean, what does your gut say to you if you were trading it? Well, my gut as a trader is it's a contrarian view with everybody's looking in the same direction. But I just have a longer term view. I mean, I think that you get into spring and summer and barring an economic meltdown and to Mike's point of the stock market being overvalued and all that, barring some sort of meltdown, I think Bitcoin is going to be somewhere between 20 and 50 percent higher going into the summer. That's just that's just reality. There's so much tailwind on it. Dave.

I mean, I agree with James. We know that. I think that there are going to be a lot, there's going to be a lot of volatility until around, you know, various and sundry appointments and what will happen, how fast will the Senate act,

how fast will things go? I think part of today's rally was, and it's a dumb story for it to matter, but Harris saying she would certify the results of the election today. I think there were people out there who thought that there was going to, you're laughing, but I think there were people out there who thought, oh, well, we're going to get saved by an 11th hour thing. And therefore people on the investing side are like, okay, maybe let's wait to see how this is going to happen. I think the Atlantic write an article about how this is going to happen?

Yes, they did. So, you know, there will be markets right now moving faster than light speed because of the way algorithms work. People are analyzing news. There's AI agents who are looking at all sorts of things. Like I know a lot about high- trading and I understand that that's not nearly the driver that people think it is, but the technology has made market reaction to news dramatically faster. And at the same time, you have a lot of potential news that's going to move markets, right?

There are so many different things. So I agree with Mike. I think you're going to see a lot of volatility. I think the direction for Bitcoin, I think that you'll see for Bitcoin to be higher. I think the direction for utility and tokens that are utility oriented to go higher. Right. I think that that's true. Sorry, Mike. Take care of that cat, man. That's like you could be on camera. It's a very pretty cat.

But yeah, but that's my thought. It's like we're going to see some ups and downs with a very large positive trend on Bitcoin and an interesting set of trends around crypto. Obviously, a rising head lifts all boats. So you'll see that. Mike, Seth? I think it's going to be a great year for traders, less so for buy and hold. And I think when the year ends, Bitcoin and cryptos are more likely to be up if the stock market's up, and they're more likely to be down if the stock market's down, but at a much higher volatility and a much greater

ratio. And I think the risks are reversion. I think that it'll be a volatile day or week, but I tend to agree that the trend will be up because four-year cycle has been working so far. And if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. I think 2025 is going to be a great year. And we're going to talk about this one next week. But if Trudeau leaves and you get Pierre Poiliev as the head of the Canadian government, we're going to have a Bitcoin strategic reserve probably in Canada as well.

Just worth noting that that will be another country where that will happen most likely if we do get that regime change and that's the guy in power. So much so that Trudeau actually acknowledged the fact that he hated Pierre's views on cryptocurrencies multiple times. Right. So it's a real thing. Yeah. Right. And he had told me a press conference today, by the way, which may be another reason. Yeah. So we'll see. It's just like endless tailwinds. It just it's all I see. But guys, it's so great to be back here on Macro Monday. I know that we ran over time once again. I got to rush back over to spaces that we also haven't done for quite a while. Great perspective. Always a pleasure.

It's going to be a really, really fun year regardless with the three of you gentlemen here. So thank you as always for coming. Thank you, everybody, for listening. And we will see you all next week on Monday. Everybody have a good one. Bye.