The Wolf Of All Streets - Breaking: Bitcoin Closes Week Above $100,000! What Comes Next?

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

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 just achieved a miracle. It had its first close on the weekly and daily charts, over $100,000, leading many to wonder what's next. If you ask Plan B, who I had an amazing podcast conversation with yesterday, he says we can go to a million dollars in this cycle. But of course, the low end was still in the low hundreds of thousands. But a million dollars in this cycle, that was an eye-opener in that conversation. I'm wondering what James, Dave, and Mike think, but we have a lot more than just that to talk about. We have some more unrest in the Middle East. Of course, El Salvador paring back some of their Bitcoin plans and a deal with the IMF and what many are labeling a hit piece from 60 Minutes on the crypto industry. No surprises there. Let's do this, guys.

What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of All Streets. Before we get Let's shirt. I had to throw it on for OKX and McLaren. What a victory, Dave. We're champions. I mean, it's funny because when they, and OKX is an investor in a company that I co-founded as well. When they started, it was like, yeah, you know, well, you know, McLaren, they have cool looking cars and we all know that they're whatever. And then, I mean, the Grand Prix came and they won.

And all of a sudden, you know, it's like everything clicked this season. And it was it's fun to watch. Yeah, it was amazing. I know that's not why people are here. But if you're wondering why we're both wearing papaya shirts, that is the reason. Mike, let's just go ahead. We're going to do it the old school way. Let's start with the morning meeting.

What you're looking at. There's a few things, obviously, on the docket here, as I mentioned before, Syria, China market's price for that 80%. But the key point is unemployment is ticking higher and inflation progress is stalled. Now, is that a surprise with the record-setting stock market? But I think the key thing came over from our equity strategist, Audrey Child Freeman, just pointed out what's happening with monetary and fiscal stimulus in China and in Syria. The key thing from my standpoint of monetary and fiscal stimulus in China, it's completely expected. And every time every commodity trader gets it, give me a bounce, I can sell. And that's what's happening.

We're getting a bounce. We had another announcement, monetary and fiscal stimulus. But obviously, these are my views now. It's a cat and mouse game between a economy and a country that's doing essentially, in my view, what the Soviet Union and Japan did starting 30 years ago. It's heading lower. They see the tariffs are coming. And it's just way overdue for that continued reversion.

And here's one way, don't take my view for it, would start with 1.93. That's the 10-year yield on the Chinese government bond. It's just plunging. That's severe deflation. So, and from a macro standpoint, what's happening in Syria finally, it's nice to see that fall, but what's Syria fall, but what it signs of Iran and Russia getting way overextended. They couldn't support Syria anymore. It fell in the morning, knee-jerk reactions of bounce in crude oil, bounce in copper and

things like that from China and that. But the bottom line from a crude oil standpoint is, will there be a definable shift lower in supply? And the answer is still no, unless you see some kind of something happening with the tax on maybe a major oil producer like Saudi Arabia. And that's where for now, every oil producer gets it, give me a bounce. I'll look to sell it. It's a question of when. So those are key things that are somewhat deflationary and macro. And I'll tilt over to what we all want to talk about Bitcoin and stuff. I published this morning and something I last published on February when I pointed out Tether's 100 billion. Now it's 137 billion. And it's the most enduring trend in cryptos is the proliferation of crypto dollars. I remember I first started first looking at in 2018, it was two billion.

And now it's almost 200 billion for total crypto dollars. Tether is just one. It's the big one. But to me, this is one thing that the market that Trump finally figured out. So I'll end with this. I had to rewatch the Grinch that stole Christmas. And Trump was the crypto Grinch, and he completely flipped. So I think, and I don't know if Bitcoin or Bloomberg will let me put that in a headline.

I'm going to try to figure it out. But here's what I want. Here's what I, and I'm going to tee off Dave a little bit on this. So I've dug in some to the analysis. And my analysis shows that I think 100,000 within 20 to 30% in Bitcoin is a pretty significant ceiling for quite a while. And I'll dig into that as we can get into the call later. Yeah, there's one of the articles, actually, I'm trying to find it now, but basically called this

the mid cycle peak that we've just hit. So that kind of aligns actually, Mike, with what you're saying. This is coming from CoinDesk, but Crypto Daybook America's Bitcoin hits mid cycle peak as retail interest in all coin soars. I think that's the story. So even if Bitcoin is peaking around 100,000, this is going to consolidate, not today, but generally we've seen this renewed interest in the rest of the market, which has been kind of on fire. But Dave, I'll let you run with Mike's comments there. Yeah. I mean, the funny part is we were just looking at it from a technical point of view and looking at it from the flows that we've seen. I would tend to agree, but we're not just looking at that. And that's why it matters.

So, you know, you look at every indicator right now, the market looks like it's going to take a breather. And, you know, a couple of things that you saw, like last night, the fact that once again, you know, it's day after day. You look at you look at liquidations and you look at the liquidation chart and the biggest long liquidation was, you know, on the chart going back to June by a mile was on December 4th. Right. You know, last week, Last night was another significant liquidation night. I mean, without all that much happening, why is that? You know, why are we seeing that? What's happening is repeatedly people are over-leveraging

because they're trying to time the breakout of Bitcoin and others. It's not just Bitcoin. This is all of a crypto universe. And every time they're over-leveraging and then when it doesn't happen, they get their noses smacked. And we're seeing it time after time after time.

If you can bring up that candle from the other day, Scott, bring up the candle from Thursday. I mean, it's the most savage candle. I mean, I'll... Yeah. And by the way, I just want to add, as we're saying that, Dave, that if you're using leverage on alt coins, you're literally an insane person.

Yeah, that's right. From 92 to 100 on Coinbase. investor, any market maker, anybody who, unless there is a strange situation such as funds, some gum in the works in terms of the ability to move money around that uses more than three to potentially as high as five leverage on any asset in hedge fund world, I'd see there are some that go 15 to 20 on assets that are one-fourth the average volatility of crypto. So if you're going 15 leverage on an asset in a hedge fund, it's likely super, you know, incredibly little volatility. Yeah, we're talking about 15 to 20 leverage in a hedge fund is generally on long, short portfolios with very tight correlations where you're managing your risk really well and you understand it. And the actual volatility of the returns is probably an order of magnitude less. So that's more than 10 times less than Bitcoin. So the fact that there are

degens who consider it completely normal to do 20 to 50 times leverage on altcoins or Bitcoin is just crazy because it means that that's the only way that you can get these candles, by the way. That is actually happening. I just want to refine that point,

but let's push that aside for a second. Okay, so what are we talking about? We're talking about whether it's midterm peak. We're seeing all the moves line up. I kind of look at it as war, and in warfare, you see various things. We've seen the acceleration of FUD against crypto, the 60 Minutes piece being won. I mean, John Reed Stark is actually a good guy. I love John.

We've had conversations with him. He's honest and forthright. And he will admit that in his brain, it is not wired to think that there's any value in crypto. And so in his brain, he thinks everything is a security. And he believes that our current laws that were written in the 30s and 40s are reasonable for, you know, for registering and handling securities. And on that hill, I would die that he's absolutely wrong. But what I will say about John, and this is important, is he's right in one very important sense and has admitted this multiple

times, which is that the job of the sec should be to go after fraud and he's right that when there's a lot of money and little regulation there's a lot of fraud and so yes those things happen but that has nothing to do with a coin yeah talk to us a good intent i mean it doesn't matter you know i've i've seen the same that happens in crypto in equity markets most notably in japan in the 90s because there was the the ministry of finance only cared about the market going up but we put up with all sorts of shenanigans to allow capital to flow there and you know they cracked down on it but you know that market was insane at one point and you know there are some great stories

about that. Anyway, to get back to the point, the point is, you're seeing all the FUD lineup, you're seeing more and more people come out of the woodwork, they're going to energy use, which is thoroughly debunked, you're seeing all this crap. Will it matter in the end? No. Is there some, is there psychological exhaustion here? Are people looking to take money and move it into altcoins? Sure. I mean, the rotation has been pretty large i mean you know you've gone through all coin charts i mean like whether it's suey or phantom or xrp or you know aptos doesn't matter some of the they all took a breather last night uh cardano etc i'm just looking at my chart over here. I'm sorry when I'm facing away from the camera. I brought this up, but Ether had a 428 million inflows into their ETF on Thursday.

Those are Bitcoin ETF numbers. Right. This is the market right now is as bullish a consolidation phase as I've seen. It could very well last. I mean, look, you know, for a few weeks could last through Christmas. I doubt it will actually, but that's because of news items. You know, we've all heard about the, you know, the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve conversation. The only, there have been lots of interesting things. Larry Summers coming out and saying things like, you know,

when you take an introductory logic course and they talk about fallacies, one of my favorite fallacies is people who beg the question. So you ask someone, does Bitcoin have value? They say no. And then they say, and of course, as a result of that, having a strategic reserve in Bitcoin makes no sense. OK, why does it make no sense? Well, it's because it has no value. People use the word reductive to talk about that reasoning. But the simple way of looking at what makes a good reserve asset is, is it fairly valued or is it fully valued relative to what you want it to be? If it were fully valued,

then it's a good reserve asset because it's lower volatility. But if what you're trying to do is dig yourself out of a hole, then the question is, where can you find asymmetric upside return? And that's the issue with Bitcoin. It's not just about the fact that it's volatile. It has, we believe, asymmetric upside. And one of the interesting things about trading, and we've seen this time after time after time after time, is there is such a thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and actors in the market do not operate independently of that. So if, for example, the United States were to say, Bitcoin is a reserve asset for us, and we have purchased some in the open market, what happens to the price of Bitcoin? That's the simple question. Because if you answer that

question and say, oh, everybody else is going to sell it to the United States, then we get killed. If the answer to the question is everyone else is going to say, crap, we need to do this too, then the one who'm going to play the 60 Minutes clip really quick of John Reed Stark. Just you can see it because it was the first time I've seen like all the fun laid out in bullet points. So quickly, let's just play this really quick so you guys can see it. John Reed Stark, former chief of Internet enforcement at the SEC, says he owns no cryptocurrency and has never worked for the industry. Like Garlinghouse, he believes voters have given President-elect Trump a mandate to govern. As far as these election results are concerned, the clear mandate is the SEC needs to lay off crypto, and that's exactly what's going to happen. But that doesn't mean this former SEC official

thinks the agency's actions were wrong. Crypto is a scourge. It's not something that you want in your society. It has no utility. It's just pure speculation. Remember, there's no balance sheet to crypto. There's no financial statements. You're talking about SEC filings. There's no public disclosure mandate. Exactly. Nothing.

But also, there's no audit, inspection, examination, net capital requirements, no licensure of the individuals involved, and there's no transparency into it. That creates real systemic risk, examination, net capital requirements, no licensure of the individuals involved, and there's no transparency into it. That creates real systemic risks, not just risk for investors. But the other part that people don't really talk about enough are the dire externalities that are enabled by crypto.

What do you mean? Every single crime you can conceive of is easier to do now because of crypto, especially ransomware, human sex trafficking, sanctions evasion, money laundering. North Korea is financing their nuclear weapons program using crypto. OK, James, before I let you let you jump in on that, because I know you're going to have fun. I just quickly like 10 minutes ago, I had my editor fix this to make a point. What if we replace crypto with another word? The part that people don't really talk about enough are the dire externalities that are enabled by crypto.

What do you mean? Every single crime you can conceive up is easier to do now because of crypto, especially ransomware, human sex trafficking, sanctions evasion. Okay, you get the idea, right? Aren't we just talking about a technology and any advance in technology obviously makes crime easier? I mean, should we punish Apple every time a drug dealer makes a phone call? Well, I mean, first, there's so much to unpack here. Let's talk first of how Stark, he groups everything together.

Everything's bad. Everything's bad. Everything's together. There's no difference between any of the utilities. And there's clearly utility with some of the cryptocurrencies that aren't even Bitcoin. We'll talk about Bitcoin over here as a store of value, true store of value,

an actual property, right? So that's a commodity. That separates it completely from everything else. And then you've got over here, crypto, which has some utility, things like Solana and Ethereum and others that actually have some utility to them. You have to start there. He doesn't even, he just groups everything together. Everything's bad. So that's number one. And he's talking about bad actors and all that. And, you know, the iPhones and that's that's a good point. But, you know, I mean, we're talking about things like balance sheets, you know, and and reporting. And, hey, WorldCom had reported everything that they did. So did Enron.

They reported everything they did, you know. And oh, and by the way everything that they did. So did Enron. They reported everything they did, you know. And oh, and by the way, so did long-term capital management. They almost took down the whole fucking financial system of the world. So that's not the issue. I mean, that is clearly not the issue, right? into uh you know and in look the the legislation that was uh vetoed by um by uh biden that had passed about uh the sab 121 yeah sab 121 about the overreach of the sec well he didn't talk about the overreach he just talked about the you know the crypto community wants to have the smaller agency and they feel that they can control because they're smaller agency at CFTC, that they can control

the outcome of legislation. No, that's not the issue. The issue is the overreach and this administration and this last banking committee, all of the Warrens, the anti-crypto army or whatever she had going and Chokepoint 2.0, that's what the cryptocurrency community is fighting against. We just want a fair playing ground. And of course, 60 Minutes, it was nauseating just to even listen to this because, of course, they just tee up all the fear and uncertainty and doubt and all of the same exact arguments back and they just amplify it because they don't really understand it and they don't want to. Why is that? Well, you always go back to, and I love Jeff Booth's assertion that you just have to keep going back to the incentives.

Like what's driving the incentives? Why would Jamie Dimon be railing against this industry? Because it's disruptive. It completely disrupts his fee structure and how banks make their money and how they charge fees and how they control it. And Stark's problem is that he sees a loss of control, absolute total control of the system of money and transactions. And that's what scares him to death. Yeah. I want to point out one thing really quick, Dave, is that they did have Brad Garlinghouse on as well. And he made some of those counterpoints. So I think they were attempting to do this false point counterpoint.

I will also say, we know that this was heavily edited for the clips that they wanted. I'm sure they talked to John Reed Stark for hours. And I have heard him say on Spaces that the SEC dramatically overreaching, that there would be a mandate here. And even him as an ex-SEC commissioner agreed that the tactics that the SEC has been using are wrong. He's not a huge fan of Gensler. And Brad Garlinghouse has openly now said they edited the crap out of me to make their narrative, to make the crypto industry look like we bought this election. I mean, it's very clear to me. I think if you watched that, maybe if you're a boomer and you don't get it, yes, it's just more confirmation

bias of the FUD. I think most people would look and say, this was a beaten down industry that has money. Of course, they played the game you have to play in politics to win. I don't think anybody can rationally point out crypto donating too much money when they know that Wall Street and every other industry in the world uses lobbyists. Let's start with the pharmaceuticals. Let's start with how much the pharmaceuticals donated. I mean, come on. Everybody knows that. Right. So I don't see how this is like a huge negative, but they tried. Go ahead, Dave. Well, I mean, look, CBS is clearly no more effective as a news agency than the National Enquirer staff. I mean, there is nothing newsworthy about what Viacom, or I think they still own them,

CBS does. I mean, there's nothing, there's no balance in anything that they do. And we've seen this time after time after time. And so I don't believe that there's any impact of this. We're all angry because it's, to be blunt, it's just annoying. So when John Reed Stark says stuff that he says, I mean, yes, there's fraud. Yeah, that's true.

There's fraud. What you could have done with other than iPhone, you could have said dollars. Of course. There were many more dollars of money laundering from TD Bank. It was billions. I mean, it just dwarfs the scale. I mean, they never report simple facts. Hamas told its donors, don't use Bitcoin. It's easier to catch. The FBI will tell everybody. They prefer the bad guys to use Bitcoin because

it's an indelible blockchain. It is so much better for the good guys when the bad guys use crypto than when they don't. It's just it's insane. And we have to talk about this every time. But the most important point of all of this, and in debate, we call this a turnaround, is the actual SEC strategy we've had for four years has helped the fraudsters. Full stop. It's encouraged it. The best way to discourage fraud is to put sunlight on the industry. And the best way for that is to encourage it to be in the United States, to encourage it to be where we can have some control and some transparency. We don't need lots. The industry doesn't want deregulation

in the sense of nothing, or some people might, but most of us don't. What? You said that. Garlinghouse said, she asked him, aren't you trying to get this deregulated or influence the policy? And he flat out said, which they included, no, we just want to know the clear rules of the road. He said, which by the way, we are trying to influence policy, so let's not lie. But he did say, we just want to know the clear rules of the road. He said, which, by the way, we are trying to influence policy, so let's not lie. But he did say, we just want to know what we can do. Look, I've seen Brad talk many times, and he absolutely is consistent on this point. The industry wants to understand how you talk about it from an issuer perspective. You issue a token.

What do you need to tell people? And then when you do tell them that, if you lie, you get punished. So you tell them what the token economics are. You tell them who the holders are. You tell them what lockups or lack of lockups are. You tell them what participation in the network is, if any. So you tell them all these things. By the way, none of that can be disclosed on the SEC forms. So you have to change the way it works of that can be disclosed on the SEC forms. So you have to change the way it works. Plus, why the hell are we using forms? There's this thing called the internet SEC. Maybe you've heard of it. You don't need a 30-day period to print. Oh, by the way, the machine though, Dave.

Yeah, exactly. If you ever know what an IPO does, you know how expensive it is to go public? Part of it is because of the idiotic restrictions that assume it takes 30 days to go to a printer to print a prospectus, which is where your information is that nobody would read as opposed to indexed information on a website. One of the first things we would do as private equities, if it was a public company that was going private, you'd be able to, you just knew that you're going to be able to clear two to $3 million off the top just on regulatory framework and expenses to remain a public company because it's so unheard. Yeah. Now I'm going to say something that's going to make Mike cringe. Mike, you can't respond to this because uh you'd get in trouble but the re one of the reasons that the existing system is so fucked up is because the incumbents make a lot of money

so bloomberg one of the things it did and michael bloomberg was brilliant in doing so was he bad keep that mic muted keep that mic on mike mclone. No, no. Bloomberg was brilliant. There's no question about it. He was the first person to pull together all of this non-digital analog crap, both on the bond side, on the equity side, and put all of it in one place for people to use to understand the financial markets. And it kept its business. And he then added on things like messaging. There's lots of reasons why Bloomberg has been a brilliantly executed business strategy. But it is not good for that executed business strategy for information to become completely public and widely available. And so, yes, there's lots of reasons why the existing rules have never been

attacked. They've never, because they don't make any sense. I mean, you listen to Ryan Selkis talk before, you know, he went all MAGA, you know, although I actually agree with a lot of what he says, although he says it in a crazy way sometimes. But, you know, you listen to him talk about Edgar, which is the SEC's website, vis-a-vis Masari and what they were building for crypto. And what he's basically saying and what Masari was trying to do, and there are others who have done stuff. You use the Tide, and I think you work with Josh as well. These are sources that pull together information that people could use. So what should happen?

Well, there should be requirements on what information. And then if an issuer breaks that, they go to jail or they get fined. It's simple. Set the issuer aside. The second thing that people care about for regulation is they want to make sure that when they see a price on the screen, it's real. And that it's they understand I'm buying something for X. It's going to cost me X. They want to they want to understand that.

They want to understand what all the hidden fees are. They want to understand all of that. It's called best execution. And it's something that we take into account. And the corollary to best execution is no manipulation. In the word of securities, it's called fair and orderly markets. You try to find me somebody who's professional in crypto that doesn't want fair and orderly markets. Find me someone. Do we like markets where we think there's manipulation? Of course not. Do we like rug pulls? No. What's the best way to stop that? Actually have some rules that talk about what can happen and when it happens and then investigate people if they do things that are wrong. We had an incident last week where I publicly told the world that I think that a

momentum ignition strategy, which is generally considered to be illegal in most jurisdictions, was probably triggered on Bitcoin futures or Bitcoin perpetual swaps vis-a-vis stock. Is there anybody who would prefer that that actually was being surveilled? The answer is yes, most people would. So my problem with John Reed Stark's point isn't that there's fraud, because yeah, of course there is. It's probably less than he thinks, and maybe as a percentage vis-a-vis the dollar,

it's actually less. But that the only way to stop it is to fully have basic rules and rules that are workable. And they have made it impossible for that for four years. And we are likely to get that. And now that's finally going to change. And so that means we're going to have a better market.

And that is, is inathema to the people who want to see this all succeed or all fail. And let's go. I want to, and Mike, even there's plenty for you to unpack there. If you want to. No,

you are muted. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done talking about it. Do you want to talk about it first, Mike? Cause I, cause then we can go back to something else that we were talking about

before. Once you're done. No. Yeah. Let Mike jump. I got a, I got a wrap here. I want to add.

And number one thing is the outlook for Bitcoin, which that's probably what our listeners want. What do we think where it's going to go and why? And so, as you know, I've been Bloomberg has asked me curtail coverage. And that was over a year ago. And the world changed on November 5th. I see like we had now have the grand shifts tilted and he's the head of our government. The key thing I want to point about crypto is I want to push back in some of the misnomers I hear all the time.

It's like when someone says, oh, a currency has declined over 100 years. They always forget to include the interest rate. Right now, I'm getting 4.5% on my T-bills in the U.S. dollar. And that's more than most of the top five countries in the world in terms of GDP. It's 100 basis points more. But the key thing I want to point about Bitcoin is when you compare and say things like Bitcoin is going to go here or there and then talk about. OK, so you would say I've done some analysis right now. Let's talk about ETFs. Right now, Bitcoin total amount holdings in ETFs is about 130 billion, rounding up. Total holdings of gold ETFs is about

220 billion. They're reaching a wall, a very significant wall in terms of what investors will do. And here's what Bitcoin people miss. And that's what my colleague, Paul Sweeney, points out every time he interviews me on radio. So how do you value this asset? Because he's an equity guy. Here's the problem I've learned in commodities and gold investors forever. They want earnings.

So my point is, I'm doing the analysis, is Bitcoin's reaching a significant, serious wall of price resistance in terms of ETFs indication. It's not going to get much higher. So that's if you do it on a one-to-one basis. But if you include what's number one thing you pointed out earlier about leverage, and Dave said, you don't leverage something that has trades with volatility of 40% and 50%. You leverage things like treasuries.

It's the most widely leveraged market in the world because their volatility is low. Bitcoin volatility is three times gold. So my point is, I was going to try to put, here's a level Bitcoin would go to if it reaches the same value of gold ETFs. The point is right now, in terms of volatility, three times gold, Bitcoin ETFs holdings are about 165% greater than gold ETFs. So you're a money manager. You're not going to load up on Bitcoin that has this massive volatility and positive correlation

with your equities more so every day. It's just not the way it works. It never has. And so my point is, I think this is why this is a significant threshold for Bitcoin. This price level, we all got to $100,000. It's as speculative as I've ever seen, certainly other ones. And the key thing is you want to look back. So those are technical reasons.

Also, let's also look at gold ETF holdings on gold holdings by central banks. The total is about two point five trillion. But Bitcoin trades three times the volatility gold. So when they start accumulating, I don't think I do think they will, according to Sabedina Amis. It's going to be very low because, number one, there's that correlation. But the bottom line I want to point out is that you look back from the future what happened this year, and it's unprecedented and it's unrepeatable, virtually guaranteed. We had, first of all, ETFs launched. The Gary Gensler pushback. Now, we defeated him.

The halving. The election of President Donald Trump and the record-setting stock market. All this kicked in for Bitcoin to make a new high. We have all this. And to me, we're going to look back and say, yeah, thank you very much for 100 grand. I'll end with this. So it trades about 40% volatility. I'm sorry, on an annual basis, maybe 50%. So that means next year, first standard deviation movement should be up or down, let's say 50%. No one in this world is really, I think,

imagining, just imagine by the end of next year, say Bitcoin's down 20%. What does that mean for everything? So I look at it from a macro standpoint. If I'm running a macro strategy portfolio, I get Bitcoin involved in there, I might want to consider a little bit of a bearish bias, negative put strategy. Because if it goes down, to me, it means in the stock markets, everything is going down, even bond yields. Because it has to go up now, Mark, because we have elected a crypto president. It's just so much enthusiasm upside, because we have elected a crypto president. It's just so

much enthusiasm upside, yet we've reached a major threshold. Okay. So let's start with, first of all, Mike, and I appreciate your viewpoint. I do. I think first we've got to start with, are we trading Bitcoin or are we investing in it for long-term store value? That's the first thing. So I would not use leverage. I have a hedge fund. We don't use leverage on it because I think it's just suicide. People putting 25, 50, 100 times leverage on these futures is just insanity to me.

But that's me. I'm not trying to clip it or scalp it and make a whole bunch of money really quickly. I'm trying to protect my assets. So if you're looking at it from a long-term view and we're thinking about, okay, we could have an economic downturn, that is absolutely true. I think where you and I differ on the road on that, Mike, is that I believe because of just the sheer size of our deficits, the sheer size of our debt, and the problem we have with maintaining a positive growth in GDP nominally, we will have to do something in order to counteract that because otherwise that deficit grows to a massive size. And two trillion is big enough, but you're getting three, four, five trillion dollar deficits, you're in trouble. And so we can't have that. What do we

do to prevent that? We flood the market with liquidity. That's clearly what we would do. I just can't see any other way around it. Every single road, to me, leads to inflation. Whether it's short-term or long-term, it leads to inflation. And because of that, you have to look at things like liquidity. And I shared something, Scott, you can bring up. And this is Michael Howell's most recent note on liquidity about five or six days ago. And he's talking about, you know, this is a really good indicator for where we are. Now, where I agree with you, Mike, is that, yeah, Bitcoin's gotten ahead of itself here on the liquidity indicator. And this is the best indicator we have. But you can see it does get ahead of itself in times of euphoria. And I

think we're entering that moment of euphoria for Bitcoin, where you have this FOMO where people want to get ahead of this huge price move. And that just happens. It's just reality of the adoption of a new technology and a new store of value. I believe that if you look back on periods of gold, you would show something similar, you know, so and especially the volatility. The second thing is and I'm going to stop sharing that. The second thing is I'll share this one is, you know, we talk about the addressable market of Bitcoin. And, you know, this is my this is my chart. I've got to get the latest one from Coase.

He said I can use his from now on. The one that Michael Saylor uses, I've got to get his. But it's close enough. We came to pretty close values using different research methods. But Bitcoin is now, this is the part that we talk about the ETFs. And that's interesting, Mike. I think that that is interesting, the is the part that we talk about the ETFs. And that's interesting, Mike. I think that that is interesting, the metrics you gave there. But Bitcoin is a tenth of the size of gold.

And Bitcoin is actually about $2 trillion now. So over the tenth of the size of gold. This is talking about global value, asset value. And it's been around for 15 years. That is absolutely, utterly mind-blowing. So if you think about that, it is going to absolutely take market share from gold continuously. And some of that will be taken from the physical value of gold. That just will happen. And it's not just going to be ETFs. And then you have to look

all the way to the right there. And you look at real estate. Think about just how difficult it is to own real estate as an investment, not as your home, but as an investment. You know, talk about you have to have you have to have cap rates that work out. You've got to get residents. You've got to get you know, you're being a landlord. You've got maintenance costs. You that work out. You've got to get residents. You're being a landlord. You've got maintenance costs. You've got taxes. There's just so much that goes into it. Whereas if you buy Bitcoin and hold it for a long period of time, you're going to outpace your real estate investment. And people are catching on to that. It's just so much easier to buy Bitcoin and hold it than to put your money in real estate. Now, the difference is,

like you said, people want income. You can get income from real estate. You're not going to get income from Bitcoin, at least not now. And I don't recommend people try to do that, at least yet. So Bitcoin will eat into some of these other assets that people are looking to store their money in. And so that is an important distinction here other than just ETFs. And they haven't really yet. This is just the beginning of it. And that's the interesting part. And so when Bitcoin does eat into 1% of these assets, right now at 1.7 to 2 trillion, it's just like 0.2% of all of this. It gets to be 1% of all this. You're talking about Bitcoin price up at about $450,000. And that's assuming that the global assets remain the same at $900 trillion. But looking at Michael Howell's chart, you know

damn well that that's not the reality. The reality is that global assets are going to double in the next, you know, 10 or 20 years. That's just, that's just the way it works with Fiat. We're going to continue to keep printing and you've got to protect yourself. And people are catching on to that. And I think that this is the first wake, real wake up call we've had since the eighties about inflation. And that is what's important. The distinction there, you've got a whole, you've got a whole demographic of people that, you know, from the millennials down that are younger that are struggling because of inflation. And, you know, if they're not in these tech jobs, they're not in the cushy tech jobs, they're struggling. And that's been something that's been, it's been a shift in thinking. And I think that's why the cryptocurrency industry has been embraced so heavily. And that's why you see things like XRP and Solana ripping on multiple betas to Bitcoin

because people, they're reaching, they're taking risk in order to try to make money and catch up. They can't fucking catch up and that's killing them. And that's the difference here. It's just a different mentality than when I was a kid. You know, I mean, our worst, our worst fear is that we couldn't get a tank of gas and get to my hockey games, you know, because it was a different structural problem than we have today. I like James that you mentioned cushy tech jobs though. And when you look at the number of government jobs and the research they just did on it, I can't quote the

numbers, but the work from home was like 90% of government workers spend less than one hour in the office, something absurd like that. But you know, and obviously I think Musk is- My view is long-term. I just want to make that clear. view is long-term. I just want to make that clear. It is long-term. As well it should be. We can talk about what happens after 100,000. That should be qualified with in a year, in five years, in 10 years, in 20 years. Very important point.

The mental level of 100,000 is massive. It cannot be understated. I agree 100% with Mike on that. I said it weeks ago. I said, we're going to bump up against $100,000. We're just going to bump against it and bump against it. Because it is a massive headline. And it makes a great headline.

So I want to push back at one thing to say everything that I agree with everything James just said. So let's just start with that. But when you look at the math, gold demonetized silver because of similar reasons that Bitcoin would demonetize gold. It is more portable. It is easier to use in commerce. And so gold demonetized silver. What do I mean by that? The math is simple. In the earth's crust, the ratio between gold and silver is between 15 and 19. In actual percolation, it's somewhere less than 10. Yet gold is worth 85 times more than silver. You put that math together and it tells you that basically that if you look at that ratio and say,

okay, what part of gold is monetary versus its use in jewelry or electronics or whatever it is. Silver is more utility than gold in pretty much every application, you know, for both medical and, you know, industrial, et cetera. But if you look at that, it tells you that basically that percentage is of gold. If you then do the math and say, okay, what would that mean? And if you took that percentage, it basically says that of gold's market cap, that Bitcoin is somewhere around 6.9. We'll call it 7. So Bitcoin would have to go rise by 7x to equal the monetary component of gold's market cap.

That is the upper ceiling of where people would say, now, James has made an argument that it should go beyond that, and I think a lot of people believe that. But quite literally, 7x from here is where you get to that monetary component of gold. And do I think it's going to happen this cycle? I don't know anymore. But I would have said no before we've recent news. Go. Well, that's again, if you don't

volatility weight it. Again, you run portfolios, you run money, you don't weight in your portfolio something that has a 50% volatility with the same weight that someone has a 13% volatility. You just compare those two assets. That's the difference right now. So here's what's going to happen. Virtually guaranteed. Bitcoin's past performance is not indicative of future returns. It's going to be coming less and less volatile on a daily basis as people get more and more involved. And yes, we all agree it's reached a threshold in the short term. The bottom line I like to point out is when you point out things like that is we have to adjust for the risk. And it's a much riskier asset. And then, of course, there's a two million wannabes. But there's key things I want to

point out in what you both and James has said. I've been wrong on this trade. I think the next big trade is going to be severe deflation reciprocal to the inflation. All the risk history books point that out and focus on inflation after the inflation is usually the wrong trade. The time to focus on inflation was, near the lows. I captured some of that in Bitcoin and gold, but maybe in some other things I missed it. Now it's the opposite. And I'll point out evidence of this happening. It's happening globally. 1.93% is the yield and the 10-year yield in the world's most significant producer of goods and demandable source of commodities. That's China. Now,

that's just getting started. They're in severe deflationary forces, potentially just getting started, just like Japan. Japan's GDP now, 4.2 trillion. It's the same as it was 30 years ago. I expect the same thing out of China. The US is completely holding up the world, yet our stock market cap to GDP is 2x, $64 billion. We've already had the biggest inflation since in 100 years in terms of our asset prices. You pointed out housing. The stock market is the highest ever versus housing. It's the highest ever versus the rest of the world. So we've had that asset price inflation. To me, to get to James' next step, to get to that massive liquidity pump, you have to have the deflation first in risk assets. It's always a prerequisite. That's why we got to, and just a matter of time. Now we're getting some of this

unique thing where the Fed's cutting, yet we have this massive inflation still picking up, but unemployment's picking up. And now we have some, so much extreme enthusiasm for the new Trump administration, but the bottom line, the cycle is just very unfavorable. I'll end with this. The rest of the world is tilting there. Europe's tilting towards inflation. Look at their bond yields. The average of the top five bond yields by GDP in the whole rest of the world is 100 basis points less than US. I focus on bond yields. So to me, that's where now we have this inordinate burden on Bitcoin. It absolutely has to go up because to me, that's still the trade we haven't seen. We haven't seen a test. Say if it does a normal, much less than first standard deviation move and drops a third.

We know every single time the stock market's dropped 10%, Bitcoin usually drops three times that. Maybe it's changed, but we got to get through that. Once we get through that, to me, that's the next big trade. And one thing I'll end with is this US 10-year treasury yield at 4.18 is like two times China. It's ticking down despite the new trump administration coming in so i i've been wrong on that one but to me that's the next potential big trade is we do what the one book um well jeff booth you mess the prices tomorrow that deflationary forces to technology but also the price of time by edward chancellor just pointing out every time

we have massive pumps of liquidity like this in history, always tilt towards deflation. I have to answer the first thing you said, because it's just blindingly obviously wrong. You can't look at volatility in an asset that is, it's like if you looked at by this exact same measure, you would have said that being long NVIDIA two years ago was unbelievably more risky and you would lower the weight of the portfolio. Volatility, when something is appreciating in value because it's becoming fairly valued or becoming understood, is not the same thing as volatility for a stable asset. It is just different. That's Michael Saylor. So let's just look at one key indicator for that.

I ran a market, Mike. I ran a market. I understand how you look at beta. And when you, there is a relationship that is considered to be strong and you talk about it. So I know, you know, this is true, which is when markets are dumping the VIX or the implied volatility goes higher. That is the relationship between when it is generally assumed that when you see volatility, it means the markets are dropping. That relationship is there. With Bitcoin, it's literally flipped. I just got through telling you that the market,

that the smart players believe it's at least seven times undervalued, seven times, not 70%, 700%. But another thing, Dave, is, and look, one of the key things that I've been watching for the last two or three years is institutional interest in adoption and we are still so far behind the curve on that mike i mean i'm talking to people but that's the key thing is consider consider to institutional adoption in etfs of gold why is it much different that's my point it's been it's been peaked in ETS forever. You asked the question, let me answer it. Because gold has been, for thousands of years, you could value gold based on purchasing power parity.

And institutions say, okay, I want to maintain my purchasing power, the ability to buy hamburgers or whatever, and I'm going to own gold. That relationship has not changed in thousands of years. And it's less than 1% of total portfolios because institutions typically say, sorry for the world I go to. They say, I'm not completely in cryptos like you. They usually say, but what are the earnings? That's the question I point out.

I get it all the time. Where are the earnings? There are two reasons people buy something. They buy something because there'll be future earnings or because they think something is undervalued. Those are two reasons. There is a third reason, which is as a hedge in your portfolio against inflation, yada, yada, yada.

That's where gold is. That is way lower down the list. The two big reasons people buy things are, I think that this company is undervalued. It has earnings potential that has yet to unlock. Or I think that this asset is undervalued. This oil company just found a ton of oil in the lands that they own. It's therefore worth more because I can pull more stuff out. This real estate boom, this company, which is a REIT, has gotten approvals that we never expected them to get to be able to build what is going to be an amazing community. And therefore, we want to buy it. In the case of Bitcoin, it's because this asset is going to be digital gold or beyond. And therefore, it is 700% undervalued. That is a much bigger investment driver than just hedging. Remember, you're pointing out some views of some people. That's wonderful. Let's point out facts.

The Bitcoin to gold ratio is stuck at 37. I get it. I agree with you. But show me the beef. It's just not doing. I see the stock market blasting off. And every single time I used to compare this for years. I mean, I watched this Bitcoin gold ratio, well, a decade ago.

And it was always a great early indicator. It's still showing the same thing I'm worried about. Yes, it pumped up to new high. It's back down low. It's just a point I like to make. And I'll put it to the first iteration. I don't disagree with what you're saying, but if you're running money, you want to think of what's the next big trade? Yeah, everybody's bullish Bitcoin.

Oh, you're gold Bitcoin. But what's the big one? It's if it drops. That's the trade. Great. It's not supposed to happen. That's my point. I can't say that in this show because everybody's already factors.

I just have to say, though, for the Bitcoin to gold ratio, it's done nothing but go up since the end of 22 besides consolidation. And it is now retesting that previous all time high as support. If you look at it, it looks like it's stuck there. OK, if you overlay that with the stock market, it is a major lagging factor. So it's got to catch up. That's my point. So I just look, what's the next big trade? What if it doesn't? But I would say, wait, wait, wait, wait. Before we get our listeners confused, Mike, I think you would agree that you wouldn't short Bitcoin here. You may not.

You may underweight yourself. But I've never, ever considered that at all. But also there's ways you can structure things. When you say trade, people hear, hear oh the next big trade going lower okay i mean position it's just the position dave it's what you say that scares me james you're into it but everybody tells me we're getting inflation like we've had the inflation it's classic human nature regency bias the things i read historically is and you look at a global macro in the world in terms of commodities severe deflation just getting. And why do we have to wake up

everyone to hear about stimulus in China? It's not because they're expanding rapidly because there's deflation. Why do we OPEC? You have to restrict supply because there's massive excess of stuff, just like Mr. Booth pointed out in the price of Jeff Booth point out in the price of tomorrow. So it's just, and the U S is just a shining star yet. U S stock didn't, you just got our simple stock market. So expensive. Great. It's got to keep going up.

My point is now the inordinate burden I pointed out years ago for this, the commodities to go up is U S stock market to go up. Now that's happened yet. Commodities are still trickling down like crude oil. Now at the point is that inordinate burdens on, I think, because of, let's look at our next president. It's got to go up. Okay. Because Mike, I don't think that you're wrong that there are economic indicators that look like we are turning over. I mean, I agree. I'm talking about markets. I'm talking actual markets. HSI index, the Hongcheng Shenzhen index versus S&P 500 is the lowest in 50 years. Other markets, commodities, it's all global macro. Crude oil, even copper is bumping up. I mean, soybeans, corn, all these things and commodities, they're supposed to go down, but they're showing deflation. Yet I hear people talking about inflation and risk assets. I'm like, yeah, there's a massive inflation. That's keeping CPI levels high, keeping people spending.

My point is, as far as the wealth effect, it's the most in 100 years from risk assets. And that's why I'm worried about just a little bit of reversion in that, which is deflation. I agree. And that's why we do have some general hedges on for those kinds of events that I can't predict in my hedge fund. But I think, you know, because of the long-term view of it, I cannot be long Bitcoin and Bitcoin-related assets here because of the long-term view of it. And so I wouldn't, I personally, you know, if people ask me, Hey, which I'm starting to get phone calls again and text message about, Hey, this Bitcoin thing you were talking about, should I put all my money in it now? And the answer is no, you shouldn't just

dump all your money in it, but you should call. Yeah, you should, but you should start thinking about allocating how much you want to allocate and start biting at it. And then if it does come back to, like you're saying, Mike, 80,000, 85,000, 80,000, 75,000, 70,000, that's when you really start chomping at it because that's a big reversion. That's 30% reversion off of a possible 10 or 20% reversion on the NASDAQ or S&P. And that would be normal. But again, we are not living in normal time. This isn't normal? This is because we now have a president who we know wants a fire hose of liquidity. He attaches so much of his personal achievements in the presidency. And where's the stock market? How high is the stock market? He pointed to it almost weekly in his the presidency and how where's the stock market how high is the stock market he

pointed to it almost weekly in his first in his first presidency and that's the big difference from he was elected last time the stock market was extraordinarily fairly valued bitcoin was around 600 net just like versus this hundred week moving average it was flat on versus gdp was maybe 1.4 now it's 26 percent above this 100-week moving average. And versus GDP, it's the highest in 100 years. I'm like, I get it. That's my point. As markets look ahead, it's price for perfection.

Spread yields, even just credits are just so narrow. I mean, this is not the time. To me, this is a time to look for reversion. Not to look for it, but to be priced, to be careful. And Bitcoin is just probably the best leading indicator. Be prepared for it. I agree. Always. Did I just say? No, no. The times you want to be overweight. And Bitcoin is just probably the best leading indicator. Be prepared for it. I agree. But I just say, you want to be overweight, like Warren Buffett. Here's one thing I'll end with. I love when people talk about this high level of cash. It's the lowest. It's right now.

It's around 11%. When you look at these money markets of stock market cap to GDP at the end of 2007, 17% cash levels are so low, but it's that distorted view. You hear people say that sports a position. Remember, I'm a commodity guys. I remember 10, 15 years ago, everybody was supposed to buy commodities. It was the worst trade in history because it was the buying the wrong thing. Should have bought equities. So can I point out a couple of things that have been going on? Just look, as Mike was talking, Bitcoin moved from over 100,000.

So I wanted to keep talking, Mike. But the other thing that happened during this move, which is fascinating, is Tether, for a bit, was trading below par, which hasn't happened in weeks. And nothing sustained. Now, when Tether trades slightly below par, what does that mean? That means it's fairly close, but when it goes above par, it's because they're spot buying, and it just flipped to slightly above par again, although it's more or less exactly even. Funding rates are still at double where they, what I call a neutral, but not high. It goes much higher than this, and it'll be there. This was clearly spot

led buying. Clearly what happened was market makers were given big ETF orders or whatever. They came in and said, oh, F, we need to buy some. And when you try to find the liquidity, things move higher. And I could dig in and look to see whether it was in the futures markets or in spot, it doesn't matter. But the fact is there's natural demand here. I will tell you this. My line in the sand, and look, we made the gold-bitcoin ratio effectively well below this. If Bitcoin stays at this price, I win. I capitulated on that one already.

When we got a November 5th change of world, admit on that. You win. Yeah, but the reason is, I think that we pause here is literally when you see a war, you're seeing this is the we've gone beyond the outer Bailey here, you know, in terms of defense mechanisms, the amount of FUD and the amount of people looking at volatility reasons or psychological reasons, et cetera. When we go through this 100,000, the longer we stay here, the more explosive the rally will be ultimately in this cycle. As a long-term bull, I hope we stay in the 90 to 100,000 range through to February. I don't think we will, but I hope we do. Because if so, when it chews through that level it because it's more of that coiling spring just like between 50 and 70 000 the you saw it went from 70 000 100 000 like that right there was nothing to stop it right and and and i think you'll see something very similar only the numbers might be bigger based upon what could be going on. The issue here is if you're running your portfolios

and you're using betas that are notoriously unstable and you're using correlations. I mean, S&P 500 has beta, the measure. That's right. Beta to the S&P 500 for assets that are completely different than the S&P 500, although there is a causal factor that we all agree on that is true for the S&P and Bitcoin and gold, which is liquidity. That's where the correlation comes from. Because sure, the more liquidity, everything goes higher. Ask yourself a question if you're in the audience. Do you think that any major market, that any major central bank is going to decrease the amount of liquidity because they're going to all of a sudden develop austerity and stop

decreasing spending and not have to fund large structural deficits? If you think that that's going to happen, then Mike is right and you should hedge the hell out of everything. If you don't think that's going to happen, then pick assets that are going to benefit from liquidity without having the drag on their performance based upon extended valuation. That's the issue. So part of the issue is a lot of that has happened. I'm just pointing out how extended markets are based on what you said is going to happen. Everybody's expecting it. It's as prime as now.

Remember, I've been in Bitcoin as long as you, like 10 years. And I just remember what really stuck people, how mad they got me when I pointed out how expensive it was in 2017. And then it dropped 90%. I'm just pointing out the same thing now. It's not that complicated. That's right. And I completely understand that. The sole question, the only question that really matters is, has Bitcoin reached escape velocity to toward of where the ultimate gravity of zero is or wherever to towards institutional and public acceptance of it as a store of value?

That's my point. I point out, look at gold. That's right. As we wrap here, it's 10.02, but there's a couple of stories I just want to highlight. You kind of just gave a nice segue if you're talking about escape velocity. I think 100K, as we said, was a meaningful level. It's in the news everywhere. You're talking about it now on 60 Minutes Crypto.

It's a headline story talking about it changing the entire United States election. If we want to talk about narratives reaching escape velocity, the narratives that Donald Trump won an election because he's pro-crypto. If you look at Walter Bloomberg here, I was going to look for a story. MicroStrategy acquired 21,550 Bitcoins in several seconds. He owns 2% of Bitcoin. Like five days. Another couple billion. But if you go down, Riot Platform shares down 6.5% pre-market after company announces proposed

private offering of 500 million of convertible senior notes. We saw Marathon do it. Now Riot Platforms is going to take the MicroStrategy. Then you go down to here, El Salvador to scale back Bitcoin dreams to see a 1.39 billion IMF deal. This guy's mainstream financial and news media feed. And we have MicroStrategy, Riot Platforms, and El Salvador on Bitcoin within two hours. One hour, actually, if you look at his spread. Obviously, Michael Saylor here buying El Salvador. If you look at this story, it's being used as FUD. But this is an incredible story. They're just saying they're not going to require every single merchant to accept Bitcoin. They're not getting rid of it as a currency legal tender for many people who look. And then the next, we can dive into all these as full shows. Amazon shareholders pushed for a minimum 5% Bitcoin allocation. I mean, escape velocity,

every story is about Bitcoin and it's all positive. Yes, Mike, I understand those are frothy signs. That makes me scared at a certain point. But to me, this feels like the adoption is just reaching that escape of velocity that dave's talking about yeah and so i just think that's important to note how prevalent this now is as a mainstream story and generally in a positive light except for 60 minutes i like that i like that as our ending that's good yeah perfect guys 1004 we did it another amazing show. I love that.

I could literally not show up. I don't even think I need to moderate. I should say something at the beginning and let you guys go. It's really fun. We need to stop from talking at times as I go on. It's fine. It's fine. That's why we have the next week,

you know, guys, thank you so much. We'll be back. Of course, next week for macro Monday from Mike, Dave, James,

and myself have a great week. Later guys.