The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin’s $70K Breakout Will Be DECIDED in the Next 72 HOURS

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Bitcoin rebounds above $65,000 as Middle East tensions ease, but the market now faces its biggest macro test of the year with the Fed decision, Big Tech earnings, and key inflation data all ahead. We also cover Nvidia's massive OpenAI infrastructure deal, the outlook for gold and commodities, China's AI boom, and why more crypto exchange closures could be signaling a market bottom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Bitcoin 70K breakout will be decided in the next 72 hours. Well, a lot of people predicting that Bitcoin will continue up from here. and a lot of people looking to macro markets for a reason that that might happen. Of course, headlines about Iran, but more specifically for monster earnings this week, as well as some important inflation data.

We're going to dive into all that today. We got the three amigos, myself, Dave, and Mike McGlone back from two weeks off markets. Can't wait to hear what he has to say. Let's go. Good morning, everybody. And welcome to Macro Monday. I hope that you all had a wonderful weekend. I'm back in the studio here, as you can say.

And more importantly, we've got Mike back. So let's go ahead and bring him on right now. We have Mike and Dave. Good morning, gentlemen. Morning. Mike, morning meeting. Did you take off the morning meeting for two weeks too when you separated from markets?

Did you completely get out of there? I did. It was good to disengage. It's hard to stay away for markets when you're addicted. But I was nice to not log on for basically a week and a half. But so from the update from the, our economists, our meeting was this week's purely FOMC, Stuart Paul is our economist. He pointed out the Fed's two and two camps.

There's the uncertain and certainty, but they're all more willing to act now. They're all tipping towards uncertainty with inflation being the key issue and AI-associated investment, the top driver for inflation. He thinks in this meeting this week that the policy rates will remain unchanged. Data, we're getting Q2 GDP, expects it to be 2.0 percent. Household spending increased 2.4%, so still strong. And the PC deflator dropped about 3.7, which we all know is still above Fed's target. But so his quote is, expect a hot GDP number supported by AI investment.

Will Hoffman on rates had a few decent comments. He pointed out the oil beta to the shorthand, his. He doesn't think the Fed's going to be all this hiking price in the market will be materialized. He thinks the Fed's going to sit on their hands for the rest of year. Although the markets are priced for 2% inflation intent at some point next year, the price for hikes. He did point out the Tanyanos broke above 466 resistance. But here we are back below that.

Auctions, foreign demands and return to normal levels. hawkish hold expected from the Fed. Will we Hoffner made a few quotes on equities. Busiest weeks of earnings last week Tesla and Alphabet were not good. But he pointed out we have 800 billion of KAPX spendings from the hyperscalers in 2007 expects that increase to $1 trillion in 2008. Earnings growth is running 26%. Overall pace this year expects to be 23%. that's quite phenomenal. And the market as a whole is good shape as long as inflation does not mess it up.

Our FX strategy point out she needs some good reasons for the dollar to continue strong. We don't have to mention all those. The point is the Fed's hawkish. The data has been strong, geopolitical uncertainty, and it's pretty significant nervous about the yen,

although markets still quite, you know, specs are quite short. Then I pointed out on the back of her hawkish comments about the dollar, that's bad for most commodities, most notably metals. I viewed the whole metal sector There's a complete sock puppet to the stock market, including gold.

Stock market goes down. Correlations between most metals and the gold and the stock market about the highest ever and the market going up. It's never had this. That's like 60 days. And I pointed out the key thing that's like happening in agriculture, it's a complete sock puppet to crude oil. Crude oil's up 50%.

Soybean oil's up 50%. Crudel goes down. The whole agriculture sector goes down. And if you have any opinion on crude oil, just what does Mr. Trump need or one? for midterms, I fully expect those prices to be lower. And 80 is probably the key inflection point in crude. Back to you. Yeah, I'm just going to show really quickly, and Dave, I know you want to talk about oil. So we'll do that in a second. I just wanted to show the key events this week,

just so people have some context. Mike, you mentioned the earnings. It's Microsoft, meta, Apple, and Amazon all this week. And trailing what happened, obviously, with Google and Tesla last week, I think those are going to be the key events this week. But then I guess we can dive into oil and the hawkish Fed. But Dave, you and I were talking right before the show about oil and you kind of had a giggle. So I'd love for you to kind of follow up. I mean, markets, Mike and I both, one of the things Mike and I agree upon most, I mean, people always love, I mean, we like to fight and spar about a bunch of stuff. But one thing we absolutely agree upon is markets have a very strong

tendency of humbling everybody who participates. And as, you know, as recent as last week, the amount of chatter and the amount of confidence from pundits that oil was about to, that was it, we're running out of missiles, everything's bad and I ran, you know, the straits are still closed. China, there's some data out saying that, you know, they're draw, that they're reimporting, and so oil was going to rocket back up over 100. And sure enough, what happens going into the weekend? The short gets caught offside, you have a 6% fall right in their face. And why am I pointing this out?

I'm pointing this out because we always talk about that hot ball of money. Now, it's not a ball of money. It's individuals swarming. But the truth is there was a lot of speculation on oil last week on the long side. And they got rinsed. And it's the same thing we see in crypto. It's the same thing we see in gold. Same thing we see in the stock market.

Speculators get rinsed. And whenever you're absolute. So I would just basically make the point. And I did make it a lot. Anybody who is absolutely confident in something and speculates on significant margin, you know, a lot of oil is done on 20x leverage. You know, that's why you see what you see. And it's, it was a textbook case.

Now, does that mean that oil isn't going to go back higher if we can't, you know, if there's more war and, you know, the pipelines are destroyed? No, of course it can, but it's never as obvious as people make it out to be. And it's really, particularly in the case of a commodity where the cost of production is $55 a barrel. And so I will keep saying it. But why does this matter? Well, because a lot of this notion of inflation, most of it is from energy. Most of it is from oil.

Yeah, there's some people, you know, data centers and all the infrastructure and AI, but net AI is probably deflationary. And most importantly, whether or not you agree with me, the one person who has said this more than any other person is Kevin Orsch. And he kind of is an important person. You know, what he thinks is true. So the fact that AI's utility is deflationary, AI spending, it's only really inflationary if it jacks up the price of electricity, which it is doing. But it's really the energy side.

And oil is the key thing to watch here. Because if that can stay in a moderated range, then inflation by every metric will come down. Now, the one thing you didn't talk about, Mike, and I'm curious what the people of Bloomberg are saying about, about this is it's pretty well established that the inflation metric that he wants to use by trimming, et cetera, is lower. It's closer to trueflation than it is to what the Fed's been using. And by that metric, inflation is almost within their target range. I think the last measure was like two and a half percent of his metric. And I'm curious, do people think that he's bluffing about that? or do they really still think that the Fed is going to lean hawkish?

Because I think that if they are, they're wrong and they're being caught. And I think a lot of people are going to be caught off sides. Although I don't believe he's going to cut race this week. I think no need to define hawkish in this case because traditionally you would think when you're talking about hawkish, that it means he's going to raise rates, but very few people really believe that's going to happen. Right. So it's more about tone or when we'll eventually get cuts or how long we'll pause. But just before Mike says, because I really do want to hear what you say.

There are a lot of people who think when there's a move, the next move is high or not lower. And I think that's absolutely just psychotically nuts. But I do think that that's what people there are. I think that's the mainstream, don't you? Yeah. Yeah, which I think is not. No, no, Mike, don't you mean, what do you guys think? I mean, do you think that's consensus?

Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. Well, futures are priced for two hikes by April. of next year. So that's priced in the market. It's unique how it's priced in. That's what the market thinks. But most economists think they're not going to hike. And even our, Anna Wong has pointed out, they might ease. But we have to focus on, I'll just point on my views, the top number one force for the Fed to do anything is the stock market. It keeps going up. They might have to tighten. It goes down. They will ease. It just goes down and stays down. That's your ease cycle that kicks in and brings everything lower,

which most notably bond yields. But I think the key theme here is, is for worse to focus on a less than significant inflation metric now is just plain suicide. Because that electric gets it, the whole population get it. All the poise of polls are pointed out to, sorry, guys, but you have to control inflation. You're going to be voted out. This is what's changed in the whole metric in the past of Mr. Trump and people like President Nixon, Prussian Arthur Burns, to cut rates, to goose the economy. that whole cycle has shifted.

It's over. The answers have changed. Now we have an issue with too how much inflation, most notably because massive wealth creation effect, and the Fed easing when they should have been cutting, when bond yields going up, we're telling them the cut. And now we're in the bad,

we're in the lose-lose case. So to me, that is, if worse even mentioned silly stuff, like inflation measures being lower or heading lower, this is going to make the, and it's going to hit headline tapes on the post in New York Times. And it's that bad now. It's so inflation's a number of problem.

The Fed's job is to control it. And worse gets it by his statement. So I think he's going to remain hawkish, but I think he's going to look over and say, you know, it's a stock market just has a little bit of volatility and drops a little. Problem solved. Hiking rates. And also there's the alternative for him to actually come in in hike rates and do a first rate hike just within the next two years of President Trump's term would be a complete profile and courage,

which is very unlikely. So to me, that's my scenario. This is part of that lose-lose that Bitcoin is picked up by peaking and just being a complete bare market that people haven't figured out yet, that gold has picked up by peaking, silver has peaked,

and things like crude oil bouncing a little bit, but the price of crude oil right now is the same as it was first trade in 2007. The number one source for inflation, bar none is what our economist said, and that is the AI-driven and massive wealth effect in the stock market. that's where we are. It's an end game.

So the thing about the stock market that's fascinating, I mean, there are two, there's two things that I think really matter, right? You know, one is definitely concerning, but not as concerning as I thought, which is margin debt. And the other is where are, where is the stock market relative to corporate earnings? You made the statement, and I know it's true, that corporate earnings, you know, growth has been phenomenal. you know, meaning the stock market is tracking it.

We know corporate earnings as a percentage of GDP are at all-time high is just like market valuation of GDP is at all-time high. And all of that is fascinating. You talk about the wealth effect. The wealth effect is a very big deal. It's a big deal for positives and negatives, right? I mean, the positive is obviously lots of spending. You know, a lot of the economy is based on boomers, you know,

who have either they borrow against or sell. stock slowly at these high prices in order to buy. I mean, that's what you're talking about. I mean, who knows what consumer demand does if the stock market crashes. We used to say that back, you know, 30 years ago, you know, the Main Street and Wall Street were very, very different. And now they're not so different, certainly in the affluent pieces of the economy. And that's what you're talking about, the wealth effect.

But because of that, that creates an interesting dynamic, which is what does the government do in a world where the wealth effect is the primary driver of, but not just consumer spending and not just the economy, but also tax receipts. And you know, you get Congresspeople out there, like Warren Davidson has had, and I have a lot of respect for him. And he made a lot of interesting statements about budget deficits. And he basically admitted that they can't really restrain spending. They certainly can't cut it because there's no political way to cut spending. But if there's no political way to cut spending. And revenues, if you did get a stock market crash, for example, revenues would go, would just dive bomb. And you'd end up with, you could end up with three to

five trillion dollar deficits. That is not crazy, particularly if bond yields don't come down. And so, you know, that morass basically puts them in a box, don't you think? Uh-oh, did Mike freeze? You may have. No, I'm, I'm, yeah, you got me? Yeah, we got you. Yeah, we got you. Yeah, I was just saying, don't you think they're in the box because of all that? Yeah, I caught all that. I agree that that's the situation.

The bottom line from I do enjoy this about for decades is the number one purpose of a politician is get reelected. And how are you going to get reelected? All of them. Trump gets it. Everyone gets it. Worse gets it. Besson gets it. You got to get inflation down. And crude oil's a problem. Okay, we'll get that fixed. You know, I'll try to plan. That's an issue. But this is come midterms, there's really only one thing to do.

Stock market staying strong is great, but that helps the rich people. And that's not helping you in the polls. This is where we are. This is where I think things like Bitcoin has figured it out. Stock, it's just over. And we just need what's the next move. And that's why I think it's telling us what the next move is. Even so I'm not saying a crash in the stock market. I'm just saying normalization. Maybe it goes down 10 or 20 percent. But the problem is 20 percent corrections, 50 percent of GDP. That's the most in 100 years.

So we're the most dependent on the stock market in history. Yeah, now that's very clear. We are the most dependent. I mean, you keep talking about, you know, Bitcoin sniffing out. I mean, Bitcoin is the same price as it was when you went on vacation. It has been bouncing around, you know, this 64, 65 level after it kind of, seem to have bottomed at around 60. Time is the friend of this bottoming process thesis.

It feels very much like it. I mean, I guess we'll see, you know, how it boils down. But there's all sorts of interesting bits. I mean, Bitcoin is still speculative. It's still trading at a tremendous discount to what it would be if it were what its proponents think it is, which is digital gold. And, you know, gold is, the chart pattern is the same. I mean, every attempt to fall below 4,000 is met with buying, and it's sitting around 4,000 and it's been stuck.

Exactly, we know who's buying because China imported 173 tons of gold in June, the largest monthly import since March 2024. Well, it just shows China is better at trading their assets than Sailor is at trading, you know, Bitcoin because they're buying it when they think it's cheap, right? I don't know, but I'll bet you they didn't import a whole lot over 5,000. I think at 4,000, it's a different story. But it is undeniable that we are printing, that all markets, China included, are all printing more money. And so the nominal prices of these things is going up, but there's a lot more money sloshing around the system. There's no way around it. I mean, $2 trillion deficits when the economy is doing well, in a world where corporate earnings,

are up, you know, double digits and, you know, over 20% and the economy is humming, according to, you know, rich people. I mean, the K-shaped economy effect is very real. And it's funny, I had some interesting conversations this week with, you know, people in my age bracket, wealthy people, former investment bankers, semi-retired people, etc. And when I started talking about some of the K-shaped economy stuff, they're like, ah, that's just, you know, the kids just aren't working hard enough. And I started spitting out data, you know, for, you know, you know, 25% longer to be able to afford a house and of your career, you know, over 10 years longer than it used to be, you know, what happens when you print money and all

these things go up in price? I mean, if you look actually, Mike, I don't know if you ever did this. I did this when you were away. I looked at home, the Kay Schiller Home Price Index and how home prices have risen since 2000, and it's literally tracked money supply almost perfectly. It hasn't outperformed. And the stock market did outperform, but it's almost all in the last five years. So it's essentially, you have to look at this when you do historical. It's just very important. Now, why am I mentioning this? I'm mentioning this because we're so trained on nominal price numbers.

The only nominal price numbers that haven't been affected by this are ones where productivity has allowed us to do it faster. I mean, clearly oil, we can drill with fracking natural gas. We get it way cheaper. Anything technological, anything that requires manufacturing. And then when you look at the things that have that technology doesn't do any good for or hasn't like education, well, it's outperformed inflation. And so it's, so when we look at charts of stuff, you know, we have to do that. Now, Bitcoin, that is a totally different story. To Bitcoin, we all know, I think, is an option.

And I think that more and more smart money believes in that option. And the narratives that were suppressing Bitcoin are becoming digested. I think when this whole BIP 110 thing, and I don't want to dive into it, we talk about that way too much on Cryptotown Hall. And the notion of what will happen with quantum fades, Bitcoin will outperform or will crash if, in fact, the bad narratives really surface. I think that that's really what's going on there. But if we talk about this is a macro show, we're talking about gold. I mean, gold is reacting to the fact there's more dollars and there's more remniby and there's more euros. I mean, that's the thing that's going on.

And the dichotomy, like, if you look in Bitcoin, Scott, what was the data last week on long-term holders or at an all-time high? Yeah, I mean, we keep seeing those, that long-term holders and whales are once again accumulating, and it's mostly retail and short-term sellers that have been capitulating, which is highly predictable when you trade in the same range for six months. Sure, but you also don't fade. That's the number of times that that turns out to be,

anything other than a contrary, well, I don't know what contrary, whatever. That's a very bullish signal for any asset. It doesn't matter. When retail is, hates it and institutions are accumulating it, that's not generally the time to sell. Yeah, we've been seeing that for quite a while, actually. I remember there was a river chart, that river research, you know, the platform that showed, you know, institutional in the first quarter, so I don't have the second quarter, had added, 69,000 Bitcoin or something.

Well, retail had puked effectively the same amount. really quickly. I mean, let's talk about some quick bottom signals because we have a few stories. First of all, I guess we can talk about Sailor in a moment. But I would say, Mike, I'm interested in your take on this because he's clearly been priced, like the market is no longer pricing sailor as a buyer and the market is up 10%-ish since it started pricing that. So for anyone who didn't see, he sold more strategy and we can get into a long debate over whether he should be doing that and obviously that's dilutive without adding Bitcoin per share, which I don't think is their main metric anymore. But he did buy back some STRC here at an extreme discount and raise

enough cash that now their dividend coverage is more than two years. But to me, the most important part is he's not going to be buying Bitcoin anytime soon. If he sold 3,000, he's, you know, unlikely to be a buyer and you can see what he's doing. So I've always been impressed in markets how smart people can overcomplicate simple things. Bitcoin is a bear market. Respect the bear. It had its best run in history to above 100,000. That was the time to sell, just like gold above 5,000,

just like silver above $100 an ounce. Those were some of the best markets ever. And the narrative was from 2005. All the facts that Dave point out, you can find on a normal AI chat now. Yeah, every country's bidding currencies or printing money. They're trying to support their economies, their currency to base. I mean, that's just classic basic stuff that everybody gets and everybody repeats.

But that trade is over. Markets look ahead. Now we have an issue where you get gold. It's four decade high versus the total treasury index. Like, okay, well, it's time to make. And Dave, you make comments about smart people. Be careful. You're so in the space.

Bitcoin is off the radar for smart people. That trade is over. We have to continue the purves. The purge is far from done. The problem is just from a normal supply demand rules of economic standpoint, there is one in 2009, and now there's millions, maybe 100 that matters. At least I look at commodity, there's only 24 that matters, and they all have a basis. Bitcoin has a basis.

The only thing has a basis in cryptos are crypto dollars or stable coins. That's going to continue to proliferate. So this is a bear market. Stop fighting the bear. And anytime you get a chance, maybe we get up to 69 or so. Why is that important? That was the high from 2021. Maybe you get a chance to test another short.

But the key thing I pointed out is what I really enjoy reading over my vacation was Brendan Greeley's book, The Almighty Dollar. There's a great quote in there about Irving Fisher, which I always pointed out. He tried to believe that what he thought was just wrong. Sometimes prices just go out. They look forward. They price ahead and it's over. Just look at the fact now is if you're bullish Bitcoin, you have to be looking over that

S&B 500. Yeah, maybe if it goes up 10%, maybe I'll make it. 5%. But if the SSP 500 drops 10%, if you're holding copper or gold or Bitcoin, you're going to lose 20 or 30% almost guaranteed on any normal value at risk model. If your value at risk model doesn't show that it's wrong. And by the way, that's the key thing I want to point out. Bitcoin has already flunked the big test. And the big test has not even started. That is when we see a peak in the S&P 500 for a year or two and or drops 20% or 10% and stays down a while. This stuff will happen. Maybe the setup's therefore. My point, my key point is Bitcoin's the best leading

indicator. It led the way up. It's leading the way down. It's July. This is a time it's nothing supposed to matter. Now, but as we get to August, September, October, fourth quarter of this year, if Bitcoin stays up and the stock market goes down, that's a wonderful thing. But the key risk is we've seen volatility trickle up a little bit from commodities to stocks. This disparity has never been this wide. We can get through fourth quarter with stock market hanging in. Okay, maybe Bitcoin can get above 70. But if S&P just drops 10%, you fully expect Bitcoin to drop towards $50,000, $50,000. It's a bare market that's consolidating.

So I'd be very careful if people are in the space who are not looking out of the macro and realizing, yeah, if you're bullish Bitcoin is the same as kind of being bullish AOL and Netscape. I mean, this is, it's just one of many now. I still, if you're bullish, that space, stick with an index that has survivor bias. Well, I mean, the comparison to AOL and Netscape is fascinating. it depends when. Bullish, Google, bullish Amazon is far more likely. If you believe Bitcoin is the winner of the digital store of value thesis, then buying Bitcoin is like buying Amazon. And the question is, is it buying Amazon when it was at $90 before it fell to nine? Or is it buying Amazon when it was at $9 before it went to over $1,000? And it, and, and, And those are the numbers. I mean, you know, it is what it is. I mean, and that is really the question. And so the notion that Bitcoin peaked and was a signal, I think belies the reasoning behind it. There are two narratives that meant that the 25 bull market was dramatically lower than all the other bull markets. And that's, by the way, in terms of amplitude, that's not that that's just factual. Doubling instead of quadrupling or more. There are two narratives. One was quantum. And, you know, it's still an issue, but if people who have dug into it understand that there are ways of making a quantum resistance, we can go through all of that.

The other narrative, that's a big narrative, and it is playing out in Congress right now, is half the country associated Bitcoin with Trump and half the country hates Trump. And so one could make a very strong argument that the thing that breaks the four-year cycle is having President Trump. and so whoever is president in 2028 will not be named Trump. And so that effect goes away. So that is an effect that is literally going to end, and it has an expiration date two years from now. And so the question is, it's not that they're selling it because Trump owns, and it's that people just refuse to be associated with an asset.

And, you know, I was poo-pooing that effect, but watching the absolute stupidity of the state, coming out of senators who aren't that dumb. I mean, Chris Burphy from Connecticut is he's not a functional moron. He really isn't. But what he said this past week was one of the dumbest things I have ever heard come out of an adult's mouth. He basically said, because Trump made a lot of money in crypto using meme coins that his administration under Biden, Warren, and Gensler made legal that he would rather leave crypto unregulated than put in a regulation that doesn't go back and punish him for what he's done in the past or allow or would potentially allow in the future around the edges.

I mean, that's just dumb. I mean, it makes no sense. But people, when it comes to Trump, I mean, if you don't think TDS is a actual clinical thing, here we have U.S. senators saying things that a middle school student would know make no sense. I mean, it's literally that dumb. And that is what's driving policy, but it's not just policy. It's driving investments. And so, yeah, I think that that was a big deal. And the over-leveraging and what happened on October 10th, that's the typical flush. That happens. There's no doubt about it. And there's another other narratives that are going on in crypto as well, the non-Bitcoin crypto. You know, Scott and I were talking about Ethereum is finally breaking out to the high side. But the reason it was so bad is because

people realize that the valuations of most crypto assets are quite a few of them that are, well, frankly, irrelevant. I mean, they don't make any sense because the corporate profits don't go. The profits that are going to be made don't go to the asset holder, right? And this is all the legacy of, you know, of the, of the Gensler SEC where basically said you cannot have a token that passes on economic value. And so you have all these narratives going together. And it makes it very, very squishy.

But as far as Bitcoin leading, I mean, I just don't get, like, Mike, I still go back to this. I mean, we were saying that for a year and nothing else is down. Where is it leading anyone? Yeah, I mean, it's been uncorrelated, but it's not. I get what you're saying. It's just, doesn't everything still have to go down? Like, at what point do we say it wasn't a leading indicator? It just went into its own bare market, which we all agree on, by the way.

Exactly. So if it were easy, something's wrong. And Dave, you nailed that at the beginning. So let's give you one example of what's happened in grains this year. At the end of June, the December corn contract made a life of contract low. That was crude oil dropping. And just a couple days ago, the November soybean future, which are the most relevant futures this year, made a life of contract high as crude out rally. You got to screw people.

Unfortunately, that's the problem with some of us have been trading forever. If something's easy and you make good money and you taunt the market, markets will get you. And that's what's happening. It's getting people. And that's what I think is happening. So right now, it's the it's the moribun summertime. And yes, you're supposed to question everybody's got to stay bullish to equities because that's the only way it goes. And that's why I point out, I have some connection with smart money that will never talk to us, part because they're that clandestine and that big in the connection is some of these people help me get bullish GBTC back when it's trading eight. And I see a lot of people saying, yeah, even gold might be over. looking at bonds like you mcgloan because you've been wrong for three years maybe it'll be right so that's the key thing though that's why this second half the rest of this year might set the tone for decades so here's my scenario and i'm sticking with it so far because it's work the only thing i've really been wrong on as far as responsive shorts is copper above six and that one is really risky because copper is just a complete sock puppet to the stock market it goes up when stocks go down and stocks go down it goes down a lot more

It's been underperforming for decades. So my key theme is, you know, was sell rallies and risk assets. Bitcoin near 100, that's dropped lower, gold above 5,000s, that dropped lower, silver above 100. Now we're at that stage this, it's July. But all you need is just a little bit of a 10. Let's say this year, we end the SMP 500 down a little bit. That might start a cascade. Well, all you have is what happened in crypto is in October 10s.

You flip the switch and people realize the best is over and then it flips to bear market. If I'm wrong on that, then I'll reassess. But this is only July. Let's talk in November and see what this looks like. And I stick with that theme. So far, like I said, the key theme I've had that's wrong this year of all the ones I want to short, it's copper is above six. Right now it's $6.50. The problem is manage money net positions.

All the specs are almost 30% long, maybe 25%. The average is 5%. Just had to hit a few stops. It goes to five. And that trickles down everything because basically copper is the same trade as the S&P 500. Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating. I mean, copper is obviously enormously highly correlated to everything, building construction, pitch, you know, shovels in the ground stuff, which is a big piece of the S&B 500.

Actually, it's been the piece of the SAB 500s have been performing better, right? The MAG 7 have been kind of faltering, you know, blah, blah. But, you know, this year, the real stuff has been outperforming the other stuff. And copper is obviously huge to that. And it makes sense that it is, right? You walk around here, we have a house on Long Beach Island. I mean, every single piece of dirt somebody is either thinking about buying it and building new houses. When you build a new house, what do you need?

You need copper. You use a lot of it, right? It's a big deal. And so that to me is it feels topy. I'm right there with you. But if they can keep the economy humming along, and they keep the wealth effect humming, it will hang in there. So do I think it'll crash?

No, do I think that a natural reversion back towards six between, you know, five and a half to six, you know, probably makes sense. I mean, in the same way that gold going from 5,000 plus down to 4,000 plus made sense. Yeah. And I blithely talk about a 20-some-odd percent drop in gold, but it's it feels like that's right. I mean, it's not surprising that it's, uh, it's, uh, it's not surprising that it's, uh, took those numbers on the way down, even though it would have been surprising in historical context. The more interesting question really is the stock market and piece in its relationship

to earnings, et cetera. And it is, as we get into the year end, the fiscal year end, which is that October period, that's why you pick November. I think that it's important. Mike and I kind of take it as on faith that October is the most dangerous month for the stock market because that's a lot of asset managers have a fiscal year that ends at the end of October. But the full side of that is that it'll be a month before the election. And for those who believe in the four-year cycle for Bitcoin, that's when it's supposed to start going up again, assuming that it peaked last October. Just, yeah, look, I, from a macro perspective, there's not much more to say about Bitcoin.

We could argue about it until the cows come home. The truth is, is I think Bitcoin is a macro asset in the same. in a sense. But if it were a real macro asset, its price would be three to four, five times where it is today because of all the money printing and everything that's going on. But it hasn't been trading that way because of its own idiosyncratic news. And so from a macro perspective, you know, Bitcoin should have done, traded more in line with where gold was, but didn't. And we all understand it. I feel like it's bottoming now. And this, the way it's trading feels, I mean, this is almost textbook bottoming, right? You know, fake rallies.

but kind of bouncing around, you know, where it is. I mean, that's what it looks like. The overwhelming negative sentiment on the asset class for months and months. And we've been watching it is not a top. I mean, that's not what tops look like. Tops look like when everyone's happy. And everyone in October, when Mike was right, was dramatically happy, even when it crashed.

And let's give Micah's flowers here before I let you speak. I was bullish after it crashed from 126 down to 90. I thought 90 was holding, but people were still bullish. And that didn't get squeezed out until it dropped below 60 and stayed there, right? And stayed in this range for months at a time. So you were right there. But please, I mean, I sit in that all I can tell you is the amount of attention and the sentiment in crypto and Bitcoin right now is as low as I've seen it.

The last time I saw it this low was before FTX crashed in the summer of 22. You know that we have some quiet petitions here really quickly, Mike. I just wanted to bring this up before because he obviously mentioned FTX. We talk about Voyager Celsius, all of those. Those were these massive fraud-adjacent liquidation events. But we do have Bitmex closing last week, Bitmark closing this week. I don't know if you guys saw. but storage, which was one of the big, that's not it, it's here somewhere,

decentralized storage firm storage files voluntary chapter 11, movement labs filed chapter 11. So these are quieter exits and maybe not the exact same thing, but we are getting the bankruptcies and failures. They're just not a result of main characters committing fraud. But these are the similar things that we saw at that bottom. Go ahead. The key thing that's missing in all this is this is what you'd expect,

to hear in a down stock market. That's not what's happening. That's the main problem. And that's what I need to point out to my sit at, I matterated a panel at the global office conference. The guy right next to me was so bullish copper, he pointed at all the fundamental things that most of us have known for five years. I said, so what do you think that's going to be 500? I'm like, well, if you're bullish copper, you got to be a bullish the stock market. I'm like, same thing with Bitcoin. I'm just, this is the facts of where we are. So let's put some numbers on it, look forward. So it's nice to get some things right. I get a lot wrong and sometimes it's better to focus on what you got wrong. But the bottom line is looking forward is volatility has never been this high in gold

and crude oil with its staying this low in the stock market. It's just starting to pick up. You got to look at 30, 60, 90, 180 day hasn't really mattered yet. But remember, those are annualized and always going to be lower at the end of the year than their beginning year. So that's just getting started. And then we look at what's happening. People are still fighting, but Bitcoin's collapsed. It's below its 200 day moving average. Gold is below its turn. 200-day movement average. And if the SB 500 just goes back to its 200-day movement, it's around 7,000, I'll put some numbers on this. I fully expect if it goes down to near its 200-day moving average, and maybe by the end of the air is added or below, if it's not above it,

I feel like to expect gold to be closer to 3,000, head towards 3,000, copper to head towards 5, below 6, Bitcoin to head below 50, and bond yields to head from 5 towards 4. That's just the normal cycle. The thing is, everything is dependent on that stock market going up even crude all now crude is a wildcard but trump's going to make that go lower so go ahead. That's going to go ahead. It's 200 moving average. That's just for clarity and it's been there for her month and actually the fact that it tapped that 200 day movie average closed below and then closed back above is what we've seen at bottoms. So I'm just saying it has been above it factually for a month now. It tapped the 50 MA on the

monthly and likely is going to close above that. I mean these are bottom signals, not fair market continuation right I mean it's just a different feature sorry go ahead the 200 day moving average in Bitcoin is 72,000 I don't know what I'm missing here but you're talking about on the weekly or you're talking about

the daily that might be the uh I just I just said 200 day I'm sorry 200 days the 200 weekly has been the one that everybody sort of watches you're correct on the daily let them but the key theme Scott I have to point out some I'm a neutral unbiased strategies now it took me a while to get to that. It's hard to do that. I admit sometimes I'm a Republican. I have to switch over and not let politics affect my view. Like I've noticed that with a lot of people hate Trump.

They don't understand what it means for crude oil. But the fact is people who have a vested interest in a market going up will always find excuses for it to not be a bare market. It's a clear bare market. I love looking at all the I've watched podcasts in the space for five years. And they keep coming with excuses. This is a bare market. Oh, it's bottom here. It's bottom. No, it's not even started.

The key point is, bottom line is you have to have that stock market go up for Bitcoin not to go down. Stock market drops 10%. Bitcoin's dropping 20 or 30%. Almost guaranteed on a value of risk model. Now, that's my point. If I'm wrong on that, that might flip me bullish and people like me bullish. But I'm telling this whole space is losing everybody and everything. And if you think it's grain and gain institutional, you're missing out the facts of

a highly correlated. correlated asset that's underperformed beta for five years, almost four years now, and trades it double the volatility. This is a horrible investment. And I just point that out. Copper has been similar. It just hasn't broken down yet. It's interesting because I tend to agree with you that Bitcoin has not become an institutionally

adopted asset. And there's a conversation I had a multiple times last week. I think the notion of institutional adoption has two sides and we've focused on the wrong one. So for Bitcoin specifically, I think what we've viewed as institutional adoption is institutions giving retail access to Bitcoin through their products, but not adopting it themselves as a treasury asset or something they care about like BlackRock. For all of Larry thinks sounding like Satoshi, which he does, I mean, they're offering a product that's highly profitable for them, and it doesn't really matter if it goes up or down as long as there's volume, right? So the,

the ETF is not an institutional product. It's a product from an institution for retail. And I think The institutional adoption of crypto actually has not been Bitcoin. It's largely been our plumbing and rails and infrastructure, which is the thousands of stories that we see about different institutions. Like DTCC, tokenizing everything, literally doesn't help any of us at all. It's a walled garden that they are updating their technology, right? It's the same. It doesn't really matter at all, I think, to retail.

So they're adopting the plumbing and rails, but that's not really investable. So I do tend to agree with you that we are not at the point yet where Bitcoin has received institutional adoption as far as big institutions all unanimously wanting to hold it. So I think it's just a, yeah, I think there's nuance there, but I do think you're correct on that point. Well, I mean, the fact that is a bare market is has been is undeniable, right? I mean, we can't argue. You drop 50% I mean, that's a, you know, 20% is a bare market. 50% is a bare market. What question is, is it hated enough?

I mean, in 2009, early 2009, the entire world thought that equities were going much, much lower. It did. But it had been in a massive bare market since the global financial crisis. And it didn't. And it stopped going down. And it bounced around a little bit. And there were shoots and it started moving higher. And ultimately, we look back on that and we go, how could we all been that stupid?

Because it went up for 15, you know, actually now almost uninterrupted, you know, 16, 17 years. couple of blips with some, you know, the liberation day or whatever the hell he called the tariff stuff and a few other little tantrums. But it's been, as you said, up and to the right and at all-time highs versus GDP and every other metric. The fact is Bitcoin's been in a bare market. There's no question about that. The question is, is, is, or is there anyone left to sell that is likely sellers and who are who are accumulating? And what's the, what is the power law say? What is the adoption? curve say, what are all the metrics say? And what's missing in the notion of it being a pure

bare market is the fact that adoption continues to do well. I mean, I talk about hash rate all the time. We have been hearing for over a year now all these stories of it, miners capitulating and moving away from mining towards AI. And yet the hash rate is still pretty damn close to the highs. It's much closer to the highs than it is to the lows. We've seen, we've finally seeing, We've seen, you know, multiple Bitcoin treasury companies unloading their Bitcoin or, you know, basically exiting that business because that was, I mean, there was a tax arbitrage there, but, you know, Scott and I, I don't want to relitigate because we all agree that that was a ridiculous trend, right? You know, and yet none of the major drivers of using Bitcoin as collateral have effectively become normal.

I mean, yeah, there are some companies who are doing some really interesting things with Bitcoin as collateral, you know, whether it's on the retail side with, you know, leaden or people's reserve or on the institutional side with what, you know, coin routes is doing in terms of helping traders and using Bitcoin as collateral. All sorts of interesting stuff's happening. But the accounting rules, whether it's Basel or FASB still treat it punitively is probably the best word for it. And if that changes, then there's other businesses there. But the entirety of of the Bitcoin Treasury situation has been a drag on this market the whole way down. And the reason strategy, MSTR, you know, my uncle Sailor is doing what he's doing, is they made a massive tactical mistake, right? They, by buying back that convertible bond and getting rid of their dividend coverage, you know, they effectively were making a bet that the bare market was over and it was ready to go straight back up. And it wasn't.

And that caused all sorts of stories about that have since been preempt. proven wrong about how it will create a doom loop. So now they realized that. And so they basically said, okay, look, there's no doom loop here. And so that's not going to happen. You don't get doom loop stories at tops. You get them at bottoms. That's all I was trying to say about that. But as far as the stock market goes, I mean, look, it is at elevated levels, right? We haven't talked about margin debt. Margin debt's an interesting one. In absolute terms, it's at off the charts high. But it's still well below the level of margin debt relative on a percentage basis that was in 2000 and 2007. Now, if it gets to those levels, if things keep going up and it gets there, I mean, it's already scaring me.

That would be a very dangerous signal. We will see what happens over the next two or three months. But if you get another rally and people, you know, start buying more and more stock on margin and we end up at those, let me get the exact. level hold on a minute um so right now the long-term average of uh of it is 1.88 percent we're at 1.99 the historical rate the highs were over two and a half percent to almost three percent and so we're that's margin debt that keeps moving higher that's that's going to be that is the fuel for something bad to happen. And if that bad to happen happens, here's the question that I ask you. What is the single asset that when the stock market has crashed and the Fed has been forced to intervene, what has

performed best subsequent to that? The answer is Bitcoin, right? Buy a lot. And I think that there's a lot of people who don't want to wait for that. If the stock market crashes, will Bitcoin drop more than the stock market, maybe for a few minutes, but not for days and not for weeks. Because Bitcoin will be the biggest beneficiary. The only way that that would happen where the market drops and Bitcoin drops more and stays down is if the Fed does nothing. It's possible, but that would have to be the case. Mike has said that, right? It's not just the stock market dropping. It's the stock market dropping and staying, right? Which I think. Yeah. It will happen. So this This is where I think we add value day. We can't agree, we agree in a lot, but this is one where I will short Bitcoin to you right now. I will short stocks, copper, silver, gold, everything. By the end of the year, I expect to be up. And there's only one thing I want to buy for me is long bonds at 513, because I fully expect to make a couple hundred base points on the next hundred years, next couple years. Been wrong in that. So just give me till the end of the year, happy to short it to you right now. And to me, it's very simple. The problem we have to really admit about Bitcoin.

is there's an unlimited supply of cryptos. Bitcoin has four of them. There's four. There's cash. There's Satoshi Nakamoto. There's Bitcoin gold. That's the problem is just a commodity guy. I see crude oil is a lot of supply.

And prices went up and bringing on more supply. But the correlations here are, it's July. And I think people are being complacent. And yes, I'm fully expect to get haters for expressing a view. But this is facts of where we are. It's not about haters, Mike. S&P disagrees with you. Freaking, Kathy Clay, who, I love Kathy Clay.

She's great. She's now at S&P. They just literally came out with a crypto index. And their crypto index does not have Bitcoin because they recognize that Bitcoin is in crypto. It's a totally different use case. And so whenever you talk about the unlimited supply, it's like, I don't see how Joe's bar and grill going public has anything to do with NVIDIA. And yeah, there's a lot of bullshit OTC stocks that Apple doesn't care about.

Honestly, that's the problem that I have. Let's point out the view versus the price. I was quite bullish Bitcoin at 10,000 when Michael Sayo jumped in 2020. I stayed bullish for quite a while. I jumped off the horse too long. But the key fact is there is an unlimited supply of crypto. And people can push back on that all they want. but prices are validating that view and prices are proving your view as wrong.

So maybe you'll be right. When I'm pointing out, I'm going to give you a macro view by the end of the year. This is probably a short and everything except long bonds. Stock has to go up. And certainly we're going to get a little volatility. We haven't had that. But just the fact that it's become a bit of a trickling ponies scheme, I point out, we're at the end game. Fed's got a tighten because inflation's too high because of too high AI caps expending.

in massive wealth creation the most in history. And it's not supposed to be easy near peaks. I remember how my haters I got pointing out you're supposed to be selling gold and silver and Bitcoin, but that's part of the game. As a strategist, people have to disagree with you. And that's why I pointed out now. We have to disagree.

But I'll take that trade with you. Let's put some numbers on it. I'll short everything to you except long bonds at these levels. And I think by then you're helping making money. Well, I guess we'll see. I think Bitcoin outperforms for the very idiosyncratic. reasons that I mentioned. I think gold is going to basically stay in the $4,000 to $5,000 range for a while

unless we get President AOC, in which case gold will be $10,000 and Bitcoin will be somewhere between $600,000 and a million within her term. And I say that and it's not, people think I'm joking. I am absolutely not joking. I think that there is literally you know, this is not a Republican Democrat thing. This is a, we have socialist tendencies, you know, the spending will be off the hook and they can't, taxes just can't raise, you can't do it enough, right? You know, it's, the amount of money printing will be off the

charts. The, it is, it is a very big deal. And that's, we're literally facing that. In terms of easing or cut in it, there is literally no way that the Fed is going to use an instrument, that the only way that it affects inflation is by cutting consumer demand and causing, you know, recessionary impulses throughout the economy, there is zero chance they're going to do that. I'm sorry, it's just not going to happen. Not before the midterms. And even, even after the midterms seems extremely unlikely going into 2008, unless there is union demand driven inflation, you know, union, you know, in terms of, you know, wage push inflation. If we see wage push inflation, yeah, you're right. But we're not seeing that, right? That is literally not

happening. Wages are actually falling relative to GDP. But Dave, I want to back that up with a big picture macro view. You mentioned the potential for AOC being the next president. That's the cycle we're in right now. It's very reminiscent of I enjoyed writing about President Trump having the timing of Herbert Hoover. That's where we are the most dependent in history on the stock market going up. So just picture this. Now, we all know that crypto's got trumped. Basically got Trump. We're going to go down to history and say, yeah, the president jumping on a trade and his two sons telling people to buy it and it's going to go higher, might go down to somebody legal in the future.

We'll see how that works out. But so far, they got Trump. They're sounding like Irving Fisher in 1929, the permanent high plateau. If the stock market just gets a little bit Trump, that's the complete shift. Now, we're already seeing a normal shift in human nature and cycles when you're. you get extreme Republicans. If things don't go perfectly well, you always go back to the other side for midterms. Now, we're getting that.

The key thing is midterms are already lost. Something big has got to happen is got to get energy lower, which means lower inflation, lower bond yields. Can't have the stock market lower, but that might help. But by the time we get to the next election, if we just have a normal correction in the stock market, the sentiment in this country is so negative on those rich people getting richer. and the rest of the wage earners, the 55% of the economy of the population who actually work, getting worse off. It's a complete shift to socialism.

We've seen this before. It's happening in cities. President Mondami in Miami. I've met Mary Higgins. She's now a Democrat. This is the cycle. What stops it? There's only one thing.

The stock market absolutely has to go up. If it does a normal correction, it's a normal cycle, and it might end up with a couple, like, similar to what we had with FDR. That's the cycle we're in right now. We've got two years left and the midterms are going to be very decisive. So that's why I'm sticking with off all risk assets. He's sticking in bonds. So let's talk about FDR for one second before we go because it's not a bad, bad analogy.

If you own homestake mining, which was the only proxy for gold back then, based on what was happening, you did phenomenally well. I believe that Bitcoin will be that asset that does phenomenally well in that scenario. That's the difference. It's obviously more speculative, but I certainly wouldn't mind gold in that scenario either, right? But I want to point out. The key things I miss is we all expect printing, which talk about printing. In China, that 10-year-note yields 1.73%. And now it's making sense how low it with crude oil and inability to stay above 100.

They've completely stopped importing that stop, but they're importing 11 million barrels a day. Now it's 5 million barrels. They just don't need it anymore. They fill up their SPR and then using EVs and batteries and renewables. at a scale that's unprecedented. But their stock market cap, their debt to GDP is 300%. The U.S. it's 130%. Their money supply is running double the U.S.

almost $50 trillion. Let's the second largest economy. It's 10-year-note is 1.73. Let's look at the third largest economy. Japan. It's stock market cap to GDP. I'm sorry, it's debt to GDP is running around 250%. It's 10-you-note yields, two and change.

That's where we're going. So the key theme is when people point out this endless printing, Yes, I get it. Priced in. That was 2025's trade. We had the best year ever for gold in a disinflation in your environment. That was your signal. Say, thank you very much.

That was your signal to get out of gold and Bitcoin and all those assets that have no income. And to me, it was a signal to look over long bonds and say 5%. That's my point is if I'm wrong on this and the stock market has to go up by the year. If I'm right on this, just a little volatility pick up in stock market. This is where we are. It's July. It's the best time to reassess and see what the market's in.

Even August is typically quiet. I mean, you and I look at the same data and come up with totally different conclusions. It's fascinating. I mean, I agree with everything you just said about debt to GDP, although our debt to GDP is very close to Japan's if you take unfunded liabilities into account. If you take, you know, Social Security and Medicare into account, and particularly with Medicare for all on the horizon, if you do get what it is in 2008, but even just today's Medicare, we're over 200.

So we're pretty close to Japan. that has put the entire civilized world in a box. The currencies, every Fiat currency through the history has always failed. And this is what failure looks like. It's a debt to GDP getting to an unrecoverable. The only interesting point there is, is you and I look at the bond yields, and you say we're going to become more like them, and I say they're going to become more like us.

The reason the dollars yields are higher is because it's a global reserve currency, right? We get a lot of benefit for that, but the penalty for that is our yields are higher. And that's the reality. I mean, do you loan a government that's running, you know, 200% debt to GDP deficits and fiscal deficits at 30 to 40% of spending? Do you loan that and assume that they're going to repay you in that just as valuable dollars in 30 years? The answer is no. You know, monetary inflation is very, very real.

and it's going to be expressed somewhere. We've had decades. I mean, literally three or four decades where technology should have delivered massive deflation on the consumer side, but didn't because we've had massive monetary inflation on the asset and every side. And that trend is, I don't see that trend changing.

If anything, I see it accelerating. And so that creates differences. And does that, is there a difference in the price of, lumber or in the ability to create medical care. Well, no. I mean, you know, we're seeing expenses escalate out of control in places where technology is not helping. We haven't come up with a better way to grow trees yet. That's why lumber prices are much higher, right? But we certainly have a better base of what? We have with food, yeah. Poisonous food because we allow our food companies to use all sorts of shit that we shouldn't allow them to. It's not a joke.

spend, do a health check on yourself after you spend two weeks in, you know, in Europe, you know, compared to two weeks here. You mean, food instead of plastic. Yeah. Just a little bit more in the macro. The average acre of corn farmland in the U.S. produces about 183 four bushels of a of corn. 50 years ago was half that. Same with soybeans. And that's why the price of soybeans right now is the same as it was peaked in like 1973.

But one key fact that I want to point out. The one key fact I need to point out is if you look at our debt, our stock market cap to our debt ratio is two times, over two times. That's the highest since 2007. It's also the same time we have bond yields, the highest is 2007. So our debt is minuscule versus our stock market cap. I hate to keep going back there, but that's all that matters as volatility picks up in commodities and trickles over to stock market. Stock market has to go up. So to me, this is a trade potentially just starting.

It was my theme at the beginning of the year. It's not going to be easy. But as we get towards any year, this trade, I think, is just getting started. And it's not going to be easy. But just look like I mentioned what happened. Corn was a life of contract low just a month ago. And soybeans, a life of contract high just a day ago. You got to make it difficult for people.

Yeah. I want to just point out one thing, Mike, that I get to show right before we leave. You know, to be happy to know that Shiba Inu. 22% in a week. And it's funny because on top of that, I want to just read something that literally just hit. I got a Coin desk daily email that comes through. The two largest meme coins Doge and Shib together represent just 1.02% of Bitcoin's market cap,

down from 7% at the 2021 peak. That collapse tells the structural story of the week. Institutional capital flowing into crypto has no interest in internet, joke tokens and higher real yields mean the era of easy, speculative money is over. Just to, you know, I think the memes are dying, even though

we've got one that went up 20% this week. Up 20% when you're down 99% really isn't a big deal. Biggest rallies happen in in bare markets. Yep, that's true. 100% true. All right, gentlemen, thank you. 10.05.

Three of us did it. Mike, it's great to have you back. We're back next week. See you all soon. Thanks, everyone. Okay. Bye. Go ahead, Dave. I thought you were off next week.

I thought you were off, but I'm hoping that you, gentlemen, with two amazing guests, will show up and do the show. Okay. I guess we'll see. See next week. Bye. Today's video is sponsored by Securitize. You've heard the word tokenization putting assets like funds, bonds, treasuries, and stocks on chain. Securitize is the regulated infrastructure, the biggest names in finance build on.

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