The Wolf Of All Streets - Can Bitcoin Sustain Its Growth? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

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hello can you all hear me i'm just wondering if it's working yeah we can hear you nice i'm gonna force me to actually say something before we get everyone on stage i mean i mean i'm happy to just fill here i mean we should just chat right i mean uh i'm not sure what the what the thing i was waiting for someone to say hey go speak yeah we usually have a little bit of a gap at the beginning i'm actually i think i'm hearing myself through your mic yeah there's an echo when you're on and i'm speaking so maybe we can get that fixed bringing everybody else up yeah i'll make sure well i'm excited for this one but i do think the title like I would have preferred is Bitcoin sustainable versus can Bitcoin sustain its growth?

Those are two very different questions. My thread was more about the latter, obviously. Yeah, I'm not sure how people go into the thread if we don't have somebody to mine or something to deeply argue the other side, but we can definitely let you uh present uh what you discussed there i appreciate that thank you yeah yeah this is i have been finding a challenging to find good people to debate me i mean i have historically done a lot of debates already i've debated eric wall i've debated tone vase i've done i've done a ton of these before prominent figures but i

suppose they're getting tired of being beaten by me. I think we need some minors to have the conversation deeply. Maybe, Justin, while we're getting everyone on stage, maybe you can talk about the premise of the thread. Nobody has context here. And we're getting that echo again. Yeah, I'll make sure to mute. Sorry.

I'm not sure why it's doing that. So basically, and I've been saying this since, well, I've been warning of it since 2015. I've been saying it pretty much since 16, 17, I suppose. I think that that Bitcoin security model in its current state is unsustainable. And the thread that I put out just a few days ago, which did quite well over X, basically gives my prediction, which is a four to 12 year timeline before, you know, things really start to get bad in my view. budget falls so low that the security is effective, that the network is effectively insecure. And then it can come under attack. And that would basically force a inflation increase to occur in order to keep the network secure. I didn't explain why that would happen, but I can dive into that more. But that's the basic, basic premise. Feel free to dive into it a bit. Yeah. All right. So if I were to explain the dilemma, it's that Bitcoin was always meant to go through a bootstrapping phase initially. So it has high inflation initially

in order to bootstrap the network towards sustainability. That was always the original design of Bitcoin. Now, originally, and I think Satoshi was the founder of Bitcoin, was abundantly clear about this, is that originally it was supposed to be a high throughput network, where because of high capacity, you could have a large number of transactions, like money, like it's a form of money, it's a form of medium of exchange, right? Large number of transactions, each paying a small fee, right? And the idea is that through that type of utility, through that kind of foundational usage of, say, you know, internet infrastructure, you could actually have a sustainable fee revenue, which could then pay the miners, which would then fund security without inflation. Now, in my view, Bitcoin

basically pivoted. It pivoted very hard from the original vision, from the original design, and from the original purpose. And today we know that as the block size debates. I was a part of the block size debates. I advocated for bigger blocks. And today, I think Bitcoin is fundamentally broken because it lacks capacity, which means that the only way that it can be sustainable long term is if the fees approach really extreme highs. So a single transaction needs to cost somewhere between $70 to $100 per transaction in order for the network to actually be sustainable without inflation. And that's because of the limitation, because of the one minute, because of the 13 TPS, whatever limitation

it is, individual transaction fees need to be very high. And I just don't think that that's competitive in a free market, especially now in a world where, you know, alternative blockchains are faster, cheaper, more decentralized, and more secure. And especially if you kind of project this out into the future, I just don't see why or how Bitcoin could sustain such high fees. And because of that, it runs into deep trouble basically in 4 to 12 years from now, because obviously price cannot just keep doubling, right? If you understand how exponential functions work, and the limitations of an economy, money value just doesn't work that way. So that's why it needs to come from fees or inflation.

The good news, Justin, is that, please mute your mic, is that Simon and Iago both just showed up. Now I know that we can get the other side to this. Iago, please feel free, go ahead. Yeah, I agree with Justin on the fact there's no question that Bitcoin needs to see an increase in fees in order to be sustainable. No one has, I think, ever contradicted that. That was the whole reason that fees were introduced in the first place. And the genius of Satoshi was to create a subsidy that over time diminishes, while at the same time, the price of BTC increases and with it, the fees increase. And that is exactly what we've been seeing. In particular, over the last year, we've seen a massive spike in fee revenue. We've seen it exceed the block subsidy several times. And we're just getting

started. So over the next few months, we're going to start seeing ZK proofs being available in Bitcoin. We're going to start seeing rollups rolling up to Bitcoin. We're going to see the aggregation of thousands of transactions being aggregated into these proofs and fighting for space in the Bitcoin chain. And the Bitcoin chain is going to become a settlement layer. So for users, it's going to be fast and cheap transactions that they'll be able to make with their Bitcoin. And then all of those fast, cheap transactions will be aggregated into much more expensive transactions, which will happen on the settlement layer. And remember that Bitcoin is only four megabytes, four megabytes of space every 10 minutes, it is going to become absolutely the most expensive, scarce digital asset in existence. So the reason you don't see people panicking,

except those who are relatively ill-informed about the Bitcoin fee market is because everyone understands that the Bitcoin fee market was there from the beginning by design and that every single trend is leading to a situation where Bitcoin is more than capable, not in the far future, but in the very near future of sustaining itself. In fact, the problem is exactly the opposite. Bitcoin is already becoming so expensive that Lightning Network is too expensive to operate on it. We're going to need better scaling solutions. And so basically, transactions are going to migrate off of Bitcoin main chain where there will be aggregated settlement transactions and into various Bitcoin L2 layers, most probably primarily rollups.

Justin? Yeah. So, okay, let's just get a few facts straight here, okay? I mean, you're saying fees are going up. I don't see that. Like, if you look at the fee charts, what you see are these massive spikes in fee. And you see this throughout Bitcoin's history from when it first reached capacity. Okay? So, what happens, and everyone can look up these charts themselves and confirm this, what happens is fees, there's a new exciting use case that people get excited about,

right? And then people try to use it, right? And the reality is, is that Bitcoin cannot be used at any significant scale, because as soon as it does, fees will spike and they spike and spike. And what ends up happening is users leave for alternatives where the fees are not ridiculous and expensive and the network is congested this is why if you look at a chart of fees right um you actually see spike up back down dead dead dead spike up back down that's what it looks like i refer to this as the ratcheting effect of the fee market and this is also why i say that bitcoin needs sustained fees to survive this type of like spiking that occurs i'm not at all convinced that that can sustain security secondly you also said that um that this is the original design like Like, no, this is not at all what Bitcoin was originally designed to do.

Bitcoin was not designed to have very high transaction fees. Satoshi was abundantly clear about that. So let's at least, I mean, it's fine if you... No, no, no, sorry, sorry. That's not true. Satoshi envisioned a situation where the size of the blocks would increase over time in order to accept more and more transactions.

He was not anticipating high transaction fees. And I didn't say there would be high transaction fees. What I said is there would be a large number of transaction fees which would be aggregated onto the settlement layer, which will be what we talked today about as Bitcoin main layer or the main chain. And quick, Justin, you have to either reconnect or remain muted because we get a huge echo every time you lift your mic. Go ahead, Yago. Thank you. Yeah, I was wondering why that was happening. So we don't see individual transactions as being expensive. Individual transactions are going to get cheaper and cheaper. But it's the massive transactions and the aggregation of those transactions, which in aggregate, create increased fee volume and value. in any system. And I think Justin is a big proponent of Ethereum. And if you look at

what Ethereum have experienced, it's exactly this, right? Ethereum got very, very expensive. Ultimately, it became clear that it was necessary to scale the system. We've seen the introduction of roll-ups. Those roll-ups today see 80% of the total transaction volume in the Ethereum ecosystem. Those transactions are faster, they're cheaper, but they get aggregated and they pay their fees to Ethereum main chain. And we're going to see exactly the same thing happening in Bitcoin. And we'll see that happening over the course of the next year in particular. And I think, you know, I would be pretty confident to say that we're going to see more than 50% of Bitcoin transactions being processed on these Layer 2 systems within two years.

Simon and then Justin. Yeah, cool. So just on the comment of that. So the theory is that as the fees of Bitcoin gets higher, that Bitcoin is in economics, we call it a substitute good. And so you easily substitute it for something else that has a lower and cheaper fee. Throughout Bitcoin's entire history, people have tried to make that argument that cheaper, faster, better suddenly turns Bitcoin into a substitute good. And it turned out to be true only in the case of stable coins. So when you could put a stable coin on top of Ethereum instead of Bitcoin, then people substituted for tether built upon Bitcoin for tether built upon Ethereum. But nobody and there has never been any evidence throughout the entire history of Bitcoin, no matter how many times people try to make this very same argument that people are willing

to substitute Bitcoin for Ethereum or any other token, because one of the main values that they're getting from it is its reliability, its proof of work and everything else that no other coin has ever been able to replicate and still won't be able to replicate. So this whole concept of Bitcoin as a substitute good, there's no evidence for it. It's never happened. And it normally comes from somebody that has got a big bag in a different alternative chain and has lined up to that and wants to pitch.

Why cheaper, faster, better with no significant substitute of something else, which is always decentralization, matters. So it just doesn't exist. It doesn't scare me at all. Justin, you can give the last word,

then we'll move on to the market. Go ahead. All right. Simon, nice to bump heads with you again. I've always loved chatting with you. How did we get into speaking about the Bitcoin security model? Just on a day where there's CPI and when the scp drops their case against paxos i mean weird i wrote a thread yesterday it got four over 400 000 views so some people do care

about this i suppose i've been shouting this off the rooftops for years so yeah exactly the day after today the same tweet bitcoin's about to die you've been wrong for years and years every single day with the same tweet and and you'll continue to be. Okay, lovely, lovely ad hominem there. So I'm going to respond to some of these arguments because I really do care about this subject. So look, you can say a lot of things about me, but I am consistent. Okay, I was a Bitcoiner.

Okay, when Bitcoin pivoted and chose not to scale, I became a Bitcoin critic. And I moved over to Ethereum for a large part. And I've always been a pluralist, but, you know, I've been a big supporter of Ethereum. And as of today, I'm also now an Ethereum critic. Why? Because they pivoted and they're no longer doing scaling. They're no longer doing on-chain scaling, right? They're doing quote-unquote L2 scaling.

And I've written extensively on why I think that what Ethereum is doing with its quote-unquote L2 scaling roadmap is a failure. It's causing massive fragmentation. It's maybe good for some L2s. It's good for a bunch of L2s. People are making money. But what I'm saying is that Ethereum is being left behind

in all of this. Ethereum, the asset. Ethereum, the network is becoming irrelevant. Okay. So if I think that L2 scaling does not work over Ethereum, right? The idea that L2 scaling is going to work over Bitcoin is utterly ridiculous, right? Bitcoin is far less capable than Ethereum is in terms of creating solutions for layer twos, in terms of shared sequencing, in terms of having the type of programmability that you need on the base layer. Right. A lot of this just sounds like hopium to me, because as of today, you either have something like Lightning Network, which is just unbelievably bad. I'm not even going to get into why that's terrible. I think most people know that here today. Or you have things like Stacks or Rootstock, which are all federated systems, right? They all rely on some sort of trust. And we're going to do that. And none of it comes to fruition. Bitcoin is a dinosaur, which is why I don't think we'll be able to survive this. I don't think it will be able to adapt to change this fundamental flaw

in its design, especially when Bitcoiners are out there even denying that this is a problem. Okay. But the fact is security today, this security budget today is lower than what it was

three years ago. Okay. I proved that in my thread. Okay. That runs completely contrary to the narrative. Of course, we move to another subject. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We're moving on because this is going to the now. Of course, we move to another subject. Yes, yes, yes.

We're moving on because this is going to go nowhere, I can tell. It's just going to be an old argument that people will tag the thread and people can read it and decipher themselves. And, Bran, I think you're right that today we have Trump speaking at the Bitcoin conference, which actually Mario and I had done a video on for the street in advance of the news breaking, and they waited for it to break to put that out for the streets. Huge news, obviously, ran, as you mentioned, SEC versus Paxos. We have the CPI numbers.

So and we have some great, I think, macro minds here joining. And I don't want to waste those, obviously. Maybe we should start quickly with CPI and Mish, since we have you here, which is a rare pleasure. Maybe you can just give us the brief unpack on what happened and what it might mean. I'm sorry, are you asking me, Mish? I am. I am asking you. Hello. Well, it's so interesting because my mantra all year, well, more than just this year, really basically since last year, has been looking for inflation in all the wrong places. And so it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way where the areas of inflation that have come down, which would be expected because it climaxed completely distorted after COVID. It's good news. And obviously, we can see the shift in the market today with yields falling, dollar falling, money going into the areas that have been beat up like small caps in retail and biotechnology. And so that's all good,

except what happens is, of course, is that once you start to see the dollar fall, your definition of inflation has to shift a little bit because you have to say purchasing power is a huge part of that, which, of course, declines purchasing power, number one. And number two is if the Fed does get more dovish, which is what obviously the market is anticipating that in turn, of course, reenacts the idea of inflation. And then also, you know, the jobs claims today were pretty strong. So the labor market's still strong. So you know, essentially, what you have is what breaks first, you know, the fact that people are employed and out there spending money, or that the prices of used cars have come down. And if you look through, and I know I tweeted out somewhere in there, some of the rising costs, not everything

is coming down in costs, things that really matter, for example, like insurance for your home or for your car have risen. You know, so it's nuanced inflation. But if you put that aside, the other thing that's so interesting to me, and this is another mantra that we've been talking about for quite some time, is certain commodities, of course, have really come down a lot. But we do have a tremendous amount of stress out there geopolitically. When I was on Fox with Charles Payne this week, the person that was on before me was a NATO expert. And she was just talking about how concerned there is among the powers that be on the geopolitics and the global situation and some of the trends that are happening all over the place. I mean, of course, not the least of which is what's happening with Ukraine, but how that's trickling to other places. And now we are having some issues in Africa. There's been a bunch of stuff, even Bolivia. So, you know, you're starting to get

these pockets where these are the type of things that come back and haunt the market at some point. So I guess what I'm saying is, is that I'm loving this shift right now. And economically in the US, we're still somewhat sheltered from what's happening all over the world. And that's our best asset is that we produce our own natural resources. We're bordered by two oceans, Mexico and Canada, you know, very peaceful nations. But we are seeing silver and gold continue to go up and you have to ask why. So that's kind of like the top macro kind of thing that I'm looking at right now. In terms of crypto, I mean, I am certainly not as educated as some of the speakers were before me. That's not really my thing.

But I will say I do love to trade crypto, and I've been watching very carefully. And I actually put into the chat there, Will Clemente, who I have a lot of respect for some of his comments, which actually are quite bullish for crypto. So if you're just looking at Bitcoin alone, I would get interested now if it got through, let's say, $60,500, more from a technical standpoint than anything else, but also because I actually do believe that we will see at some point, maybe September, a big run in the Bitcoin prices. Yeah, Mish, technically, that's definitely the line, right?

Because that's the bottom of the range that it kind of just broke down from. So I think that a lot of people are range that it kind of just broke down from. So I think that a lot of people are watching that area and would be a lot more convinced of this bounce if price got back above it. But Mike, I would love to get your thoughts on what Mitch just said. Obviously, it's perk up when you hear silver and gold. Yeah, my main bias is gold should continue outperforming i think in the second half it's going to beat almost everything and i'm really concerned what that's going to mean we're overdue for a little bit of normal reversion and equities everybody knows that everybody knows specs are really long and overweight but i think the key thing about what happened today is that pendulum

that swung last year way towards recession and didn't happen and then swung at the beginning this year way towards no recession is starting to swing back in the middle. And what you're seeing now in this data, it's been almost six months now. If you look at the economic surprise index from Bloomberg, it's the lowest, it's the deepest since 2015. That's nine years, meaning all the economic prices are still in tilt towards negative. The data you saw today is what I think is a normal tilt towards recession. When inflation

expectations start to underperform what everybody expects, this has been the trend for a few months. This is just a normal cycle. And I've clearly seen it in commodities. I like to point out, we've had declining demand for unleaded gas and diesel and container boards for a year. That's last time we had this kind of trajectories was during the Great Recession. So I look at Bitcoin as a tremendously leading indicator. And I think what's happened is smart money took some profits early in the year. Smart money is lightening up on equities and looking for alternatives. One of those alternatives was Bitcoin, but now it's been underperforming for a few months. Now it looks

like it's still going to head lower. And I think when the stock market does have its normal 10% correction, we're going to look over and say, well, thank you, Bitcoin, for warning us that, which means I think there's still more downside. And the key question is, can we continue to have this unstoppable stock market that's stretched by so many measures that some of us have seen this back in the 80s and the 90s and 2000 and 2007 that we all know that these things can last a while and then when they revert all it takes is a spark and you look for alternatives that's why i'm still sticking with gold less silver because silver is um a little more like copper a little more industrial related.

But the key thing is what came out of NATO and what's happening lately with China is a significant enabler is what NATO is calling China. We're seeing this everywhere. Everybody's starting to realize what's happening with China. And you look at Chinese government bond yields, they're collapsing. The amount of deflation coming out of China is unprecedented on a macroeconomic scale as far as percentage of global GDP and dollar numbers. It's just getting started, just like Japan was 30 years ago. So, to me, this reversion that some of us were too early about talking about is just starting to kick in. And then we have things like the little election and everything.

And Bitcoin, I think, is right in the middle. But the fastest horse in the race is warning you. I think it's still warning you that you should be very careful with risk assets and look for more things like gold and long bonds and actually i'll end with this on the day so far tlt is up 1.3 percent and i think that's going to be the next big trade for the next few years is the the worst performer the beat up u.s treasury bond market that yields 200 basis points above the next biggest country in the world, that's China, is probably going to have a little shining star as everything tilts towards deflation.

I wasn't even paying attention. But basically, since we started this Bitcoin dropped off 1000 bucks, it's bouncing a bit now. And I don't really know, I wasn't watching to see what happened. But Mike, your point about smart money is interesting, because I think there's the macro smart money, and then there's crypto smart money, right, which are the whales that accumulate or sell at various times. And we saw, to your point, very clear data on chain that above 70,000, some of those long term holders, those coins that had not moved in years, they were definitely selling. But showing now that they've actually been accumulating once again, sort of down here in the 50,000. So at least the quote unquote smart money or big money in the crypto market

itself is reaccumulating down in this area, which is just an interesting fact. I think it was reported yesterday, like a 6.5% increase in the holdings of their, their wallets. Jonathan, go ahead. Yeah. of their wallets. Jonathan, go ahead. Yeah, just last night, I was going through the ETF wallets and on net, they've added 2,969 Bitcoins

since July 1st. Fidelity and Grayscale were the only ones that have gotten rid of Bitcoin. The others have all added. BlackRock added like 1,860 grayscale. They basically ate up what grayscale dumped.

Well, the TradFi and boomers as I guess we call anyone who's in TradFi not based on age, but ETF buyers who have put these in their IRAs, they've been more diamond-handed than Bitcoin natives. It's been proven. It's incredible that we've seen net inflows through this entire drop.

Right? I mean, pretty incredible. And down here in the 50,000, we're seeing over 100 million in inflows a day. And I guess on the sustained rally of three or four days of inflows again. So I think that it proves a point. A lot of us said at the beginning, there were concerns that if we had a drop, we would see obviously people selling off the ETFs rapidly, they would run for the hills and they would never come back. But I think what crypto people maybe don't understand about those investors is when someone buys something and

puts it in their IRA, they might not even be checking the price until every three or six months. I don't think they're paying attention to the 5% swings that we obsess about here on this show on a daily basis. And if it does go down, they probably just look at their premise and say, I was buying this for something that was not correlated and they add more. So I don't think that we've had that problem that so many people were fearful of. Simon, go ahead. Yeah, I guess that's pretty consistent with portfolio management as well. So if the price is dropping, then the percentage allocation is going down. So maybe they're adding to their position to stick to the original allocation. And I guess it would be interesting to see whether they do the same on the way up. Yeah, I mean, I think you just have to get

into the mind of those investors. Go ahead, miss. I just wanted to add one, two things, really one, one thing to what Mike said, which, you know, we've kind of been looking, it could be a speed bump of stagflation right into recession, I wouldn't certainly rule it out. And in terms of the long bonds, there are a lot of people who are looking at that as the next big move potential through the TLTs. And certainly, if you start to see that, and of course, it's that question of, do we really want lower interest rates? Because what does that mean? So I wanted to add that. But the other thing I wanted to add in terms of crypto is, I am, for our clients, long blockchain. I am a huge believer in

blockchain. So regardless of what's happening here with crypto and the down move, I'm not saying that blockchain couldn't go down. But at this point right now, I really like the fundamental story of blockchain as the ledger for the future, number one. And number two is from a technical standpoint, by the way, if you want to take a look at the chart. And my favorite thing, for those of you who don't know me, is if I have a good fundamental story, and then I can confirm it with a technical analysis. That's always been my best trades through the 40 years of experience that I've had in the markets. And that is that 37.20 really has been the most recent high. If we get a close up here today over 36.50, that would be the highest close we've had in quite some time. That to me would signal more strength to come. So keep your eye on that. Oh, and Mike, the other

thing is silver. You know, what's great about silver right now is it's moving up and it's obviously outperforming gold, which many people use as an inflationary indicator. But silver has got two things going for it besides that. And that is with all of this switch to data centers and AI and solar panels. Silver is a huge industrial usage metal. So we may see silver stay in the game until, like you say, we have some kind of major recession, which, of course, we're all hoping will happen. Okay, I'm done.

Michelle, could I ask a question? As a traditional investor, I'm very curious about the mindset um when you say you're bullish on blockchain um how would you get exposure to that investment thesis of being bullish on blockchain as a concept blok is the etf that you can trade for blockchain so that is that like the the vanguard or blackrock one this is mainly invested in Bitcoin mining companies and stuff like that? Or is it? Yeah, it's got a basket. But yeah, it's it's it. But it really has the best exposure to blockchain technology in general. If you want to trade it as an ETF, that's where I would go. And it doesn't have, you know, it's been around for quite some time, actually, even before we had the bitcoin etf and of course now

with the talk of the ethereum one so yeah i like it i that's that's where i go it's slow moving it's not volatile but we that's all i'm okay with that okay yes i mean it's it's it's effectively i think it's coined um now i'll look it up so i don't have to yeah coinbase core core scientific galaxy coinbase micro strategy robin hood new holdings hot 8 sbi paypal interestingly which i guess makes that clean spark or the largest and then it kind of goes from there but those are the top 10 starting at five percent going down to three percent yes yes brought it brought exposure to things that have brought exposure to bitcoin and crypto in the market. Yeah, it's heavily weighed towards Bitcoin just because of all the mining stuff.

And then the blockchain exposure would be when you have a company like Coinbase, they've obviously got to be up to scratch on all the different trends and all the latest gizmos and NFTs and stablecoins. And then they earn cheese on everything. And Robinhood's there too. Robinhood's there and Galaxy. But yeah, it's obviously heavily skewed towards Bitcoin because Bitcoin obviously has the most representation, I think, in the stock market regardless. I'm sorry to interrupt you. But however, with the big dump we've just seen recently in Bitcoin, blockchains actually held up pretty darn well because of some of the other issues that are in there. And yes, obviously, if there comes something else comes about that gives you more pure exposure to just the blockchain technology or the mining companies start to look better.

So far, I haven't really been all that interested in them. You know that I would switch over. But for now, that seems to be the best of the breed. Well, yeah, Misha, miners have wildly outperformed Bitcoin on this move down, right? So that's probably where the waiting in block performs well. And outside of whether this is investable or not, her thesis basically on blockchain, I think it's very important to note how many institutions are making that same bet with their technology and their moves and what they're doing. I mean, Goldman Sachs, I think announced yesterday, they're going to be launching three tokenized products, whether that means you can't make an investment in that per se,

in that action. But it's very we know jp morgan has onyx obviously and there's quite a few legacy companies that have invested massively in tokenization i mean blackrock larry fink is out on a permanent road show saying that tokenization is the future and that's how uh we will transact and that's that that all asks to be tokenized so i think your point is well taken there. Go ahead, Dwayne. Yes, good morning. Just a couple of comments in regards to some of the comments thus far. So at the top of the year here, we were hearing a lot of different narratives and a lot of different ideas about what would occur this year from investors.

So there was the cohort that was saying we're going to have another wave of big inflation. There was the expectation of perhaps rate cuts because of a weakening economy. There was also a camp which was saying that there would be a risk of hard of a hard landing. And then there were others who are, you know, basically looking at the at the actual numbers and saying, OK, you know, we believe that these numbers are true or at least investors will react to these numbers as if they're correct. So there's a prevailing narrative here of a rate cut. So there are high expectations of a rate cut. And I do believe there will be a rate cut,

even if it's a perfunctory rate cut of, say, 25.25 basis points. And that's definitely going to affect the market and it's going to, you know, drive us into some exuberance here. I think it'll be very positive for gold as well as copper, as well as some of the, you know, some of the metals here that we've been looking at

because generally, I believe we're in a very, I think we're in like maybe the 14th, 15th month of tightening here. And generally over the last five cycles, we had an average of about eight. So generally the Fed's going to keep this going until something breaks. But I think the expectation of rate cuts will definitely drive gold and drive some of the other metals. Copper was surprisingly resilient over the last couple of years. And now we're seeing um you know we've seen

some good price action this year and i think one of the main drivers that's going to be a bit of a transition here is that the in the last cycle the um the tenants was really on the growth of china industrialization in china but i think really the supply imbalance is going to be the main driver here of supply for copper, gold, as well as some of the other metals here. general finance or financial institutions, then Bitcoin should possibly be more affected by the general macroeconomics and general factors, as well as other indices that we look to, to study the market. So, you know, perhaps VIX or another indice. I've seen some studies which show that there is a relationship or an inverse relationship possibly between VIX and Bitcoin. So, it's just some interesting things that I've been thinking about, but I'll, you know, I'll take a listen to, to, you know, some of the comments here. I'm dying to have these same conversations

one year from now, when we can see if the Bitcoin four-year cycle has repeated itself, right? Because for anyone who's obviously in Bitcoin, you know that you could basically fall on your head and you could have ignored the last God knows how many years and we would be outside of the ETF exactly where we are today in the general crypto cycle. Bitcoin would probably be trading $20,000 lower, not for the ETF, but ranging sideways, post halving, summer doldrums.

It's going to be very interesting to see if we get the fall and into 2025 rally that's been the hallmark of all previous cycles if that happens it's we're going to all look back and be like say it was uncorrelated why did we talk about any of this the macro didn't matter if it doesn't it's going to be a very, very interesting conversation, I think. Because I think anyone who's in that crypto bubble, Dwayne, we're just going par for the course. Great. Bitcoin at 57, 58 is kind of a dream if you looked at where we are in the cycle. And maybe all coins catch up and we go parabolic and we had nothing to talk about.

But I think a lot of people have been pointing to what you're saying, Dwayne, which is that this could become an institutionalized asset, could reduce volatility, and it could just be another thing in people's portfolios. I mean, Mike, was there anything you wanted to sort of unpack from anything you heard there from Mish and Dwayne? Yes, I have to. They mentioned a lot of known knowns. I really appreciate that. But everything that was said is priced in the market. I mean, because the things about silver and copper and supply and demand is, yeah, everybody gets that. Everybody's got a position on knowns that. It's the unknown things that are really going to matter. And that's why I'm pointing out where the risks are. With first point about copper, at least compared to crude oil, copper made a new high this year, but it was on the back

of significant speculative excesses for managed money net positions so i look at copper if there's any position i think it's it's going to do what the silver's nickname is the devil's metal copper is very much the same i think it's going to go down back to where it came from at the beginning of the year is copper partly because of what drove it and what's the key thing to drive copper in the future you have to be very bullish demand pull from china you're talking about an economy that's an epic mean reversion and just these kind of things i can't i can't wait to write the textbooks about from the future it's just rarely that these kind of things happen so copper's got that problem yes everybody gets the decarbonization electrification

all that when i hear my kids talk about it well my kids are adults now you have to be careful there's ways to express that but i like to point out the most enduring thing here is we have the second largest economy in the world who's been selling treasuries and buying gold and printing money and they're doing more of that i think they got treasuries too cheap the rest of world's starting to get on board with gold me understanding that there's a pretty significant war going on and the de-dollarization isn't so much bad for the dollar but it's really good for gold so to me that's the most enduring silver yeah i'd be great but that's the metal that gets everybody bullish near the highs and then rips their faces off so i'd be careful there but from an overall commodity standpoint i published on today there's one key

commodity that definitely beats all commodities over time and that's gold and it's breaking out versus commodities it's broken out above a resistance since 1988 in just the last few weeks i published that and i posted on x and all it needs is one little catalyst just imagine if we have a five percent or ten percent reversion in this 19 rallying equity market that is a severe i think catalyst for kicking in deflationary forces that are really much worthy of the inflation we got to the peak in 2022. And I think it's all getting started. Bitcoin has been a great leading indicator of that. Thank you. Yeah, just combining Scott's comment and Mike's comment, I think the ultimate unknown, which I think is the ultimate trade that we're going to be looking at, is what does Bitcoin do in that event that you're referring to, Mike?

Because if it turns out that macro doesn't matter and Bitcoin supply and demand, despite what happens with the stock markets and the various other markets, then that is the ultimate thesis of Bitcoin and the entire point of it. And so if it prevails through and proves itself that it still holds the four-year cycle, even in the types of scenarios you're talking about, I think that's the ultimate unknown. And that's why I think so many people are intrigued by it. And whether it's a leading indicator just for a stock market and falls with a stock market is completely unknown at this stage. We haven't really been able to test that thesis of what would happen in an environment where the feds just isn't propping up the stock market you basically just unpack every week of macro monday that i do with mike and dave uh on my youtube channel exactly because that is the uh debate that we always have is that

everybody has their theory on what's happening now mike always says it's a leading indicator dave and i sort of push back that it's just ranging and uncorrelated. And we all are holding our breath, sort of, as Mike says, to prove it, you know, show it to him that if stocks drop, that Bitcoin can outperform. But Dave, go ahead. You're more eloquent on the topic than I am. And then after that, I want to move on to Trump speaking in Nashville at the Bitcoin conference. Yeah, I mean, you can't have it both ways, Mike. You can't say that gold, which has been performing well this year and in the global financial crisis, went down with a perfect correlation to a stock market correction, that you think that we could have a stock market collection and gold not go down at the same time. Admittedly, three months later, gold rallied after the GFC

went on an epic rally. I get that. But it's been rallying pretty strong this year. Meanwhile, Bitcoin, as you so eloquently noted, has been range bound. To think that a stock market correction would hit Bitcoin harder than gold is interesting. It requires the notion that Bitcoin is a beta play of risk assets. And what we've seen recently, even on large moves, less leverage in the system would indicate that that's probably not true. But we'll find out. And, you know, look, correlations will go to one. They'll all move down together. That's point number one. Point number two is to say that we are in a deflationary world is absolute crap. I've made the point many times, and I'll make it again for those who haven't heard it, that asset inflation and consumer inflation are different. And in point of fact, sometimes asset inflation can lead, can be consumer

disinflationary, meaning you create excess supply for lots of stuff you can do. You can outsource and spend more money on it. You can create more kiosks and automation. I mean, anyone who's gone shopping, who does the family grocery shopping in various places, knows that the percentage of self-service checkouts has been steadily increasing. Well, yeah. I mean, that's disinflationary because it allows grocery stores to charge less over time, but it costs money to invest in it. And so you needed to have investment demand. So the fact is, is we have authorities who are trying to engineer asset inflation while suppressing consumer inflation. But asset inflation

is what we're talking about here in terms of whether assets are going to go up or down. Because you can have disinflation in a world where you're printing $2 trillion a year, and that's just in the United States. The amount of fiat currency that's being printed is going up. So that means the denominator is such that somehow some prices are going somewhere. I know I'm very Milton Friedman-esque that inflation is monetary, but it is. The last thing I would say about today's market action is the markets are getting it right. If you look at people said the dollar is being hit, not really. But it is.

But the biggest component of it by like a mile is the Japanese yen down, you know, three points down to 158.66. You know, it's almost a 2% drop. All the others are very muted reactions. So that's the biggest reason the dollar index is down is the yen. Now, why do I say the yen relief, it's less likely there'll be a massive liquidity push to defend the yen. And that's good news for now. And so, you know, do I think this is a long term good news? No, I think this is temporary, just a, you know, bear market bounce. But the fact is, is the market at least is consistent. And that's why, by the way, gold is going up at the same time, because gold is basically measuring the amount of money in the system and risk.

But, you know, the fact is that the yen is the only currency that's the one that deserves least to rally against the dollar because of this, because our interest rate differential is a 25 basis. One move won't matter in terms of relative currency valuations, I think is illustrative. Jonathan? Yeah, not to go too off-topic here, but that Japanese yen, if you wanted to look at a chart that scares the piss out of me, and probably should scare the piss out of anybody it is that japanese yen it i mean it's called the widow maker for a reason and that is going to mess things up really bad when the japanese ministers from the ministry of finance uh to to on down the end to the bank of japan they they keep going dog we're to do something. We're just, you just wait. And we've been waiting. They're going to call

our, they're going to, some weekend, they're just going to pull it and go to town. And it's just going to mess everything up. The carry trades are going to be toast. Everything's just going to be crazy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We can definitely unpack that. We're going to see how that sort of plays out. Go ahead,

Dave. I just want to say real quick, that has been one of Arthur Hayes's, and I love reading his stuff, one of his most obviously correct, in my opinion, points is that we know the Fed pulls out the fire hose of liquidity to stop catastrophes. So banks going down, a yen blow up is literally exactly the kind of thing that will cause, in his words, bad girl yelling, which always cracks me up when I read it, to pull out the liquidity bazooka. And that's why it matters so much. So yeah, it's frightening because we understand they've had decades of supposedly inescapable debt trap that hasn't come to roost. Now, will that happen tomorrow? Probably not.

But is it something the Fed is very, very aware of? Absolutely. So obviously the other huge story, as I discussed at the beginning, that Mario and I actually, like I said, were discussed on the street yesterday is that Trump finally confirmed there was conjecture two weeks ago that Trump would be speaking at the Bitcoin conference. But there was a lot of obviously negotiating and figuring that out to make it happen. But he will be keynoting at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville in two weeks. I can't imagine what that's done to hotels and flights and such to get to Nashville in two weeks. Already seeing, obviously, we know how politics work.

If a candidate is going to be showing up anywhere, that means there's going to be a big fundraiser, right? And they have a minimum probably they need to reach. I've been a part of a lot of these. I'm seeing pretty big numbers for what it would take to be at Trump's fundraiser, 50,000 to 70,000. How does it work? So for them to be able to get Trump to the event, do they have to promise him a minimum? If that'll reach the minimum during the fundraiser, what happens? I don't know.

They don't have to pay him. But usually it's like an organizer of an event. If you want him to speak, they also throw a fundraiser. And there's a basically understood minimum of what would have to be raised to make it worth their while like do they have to come up with that money afterwards like a bar guarantee i'm not sure uh i'm sure that's case by case bruce is giving the hundred over here bruce you're in politics could you just could you just uh make this clear for us yeah i'll be there and if anybody wants to go meet the next president of the united states let me know and you're welcome to join but have you checked how much

it's 60 50 70 what do we got your first guess is exactly right you must be some kind of trader yes i heard rumors that it would be you know between like 50 and 75 so yeah yeah i mean you if you really want to be cool you donate 100 but yeah i mean that's typical you know is there a minimum i would imagine for him it's got to be at least a million bucks i know when you know like senatorial candidates and stuff it's usually like 50 you know campaigns like this especially the busiest campaign ever trump is is a different league and that's just whether you like him or not, that's just the facts. Anybody in politics knows that Trump is an animal like nothing else, like the amount of crowds and enthusiasm that he gets is unmatched by almost any politician

we've seen in our lifetime, whether you like him or not, that's just a fact. So, you know, they have a lot to evaluate. And what they do is they look at, you know, what can move the needle? What state is it in? Is it a contentious state? Who's going to be there? How influential are the people? How big is the crowd? The fact that it's 10,000 plus people, there's a lot of press around it. Those are big pluses. And then, like you say, you know, you do this. So when you're pitching a campaign to try and get any candidate, you say, hey, you know, I mean, I had Vivek come to our house for an event. So the pitch is like, hey, we got, you know, I'm well known in the libertarian New Hampshire circles. We got 300 people who are going to show up and we got a few OGs that are going to hang out with you privately and donate. And then and that's that's and then the campaign says, sure. And so that's how you do it if you want to get any candidate to show up other than Biden, because he's not able to do that, obviously. as himself and his team have seen the steamroller that this constituency is and how much, you know, steam he's been able to gather by simply, you know, making statements that are pro-crypto.

And now, obviously, it's part of the Republican platform. I think that was a natural funnel right into this conference. Like timing wise, it's the biggest one. It's Bitcoiners primarily. They're excited about it. But I mean, what does this mean? I guess, Bruce, like for the conference itself, obviously, we know this means it sells out. They sell two times as many tickets. God knows the bigger venue. I don't even know how they do this. But I mean, what does this statement mean politically? I mean, yesterday, literally,

they had the Democrat roundtable that Ro Khanna has actually been trying to put together for years. I know a lot of people think Ro Khanna just did that to capitalize on sort of this momentum on crypto and trying to lead the Democrats. But to his credit, I've had him on the podcast years ago, he's been trying to put a roundtable like this together for years. But go ahead. Yeah, I think politically, a lot of people are focused on the US. And there's the obvious, which is that, you know, Trump is making this, you know, big and important move. And that does affect US politics, it affects the Democrats, they are on catch up mode trying to not lose this big constituent constituency. One thing that interests me that

a lot of people haven't talked about is the political impact globally. Because the United States, with its stupid commie-driven tyranny and its ridiculous, you know, OFAC and KYC and all this other, you know, utter immoral, evil tyranny that it exports to the world and scolds countries like the UAE about, you watch out, you're going to be on the gray list when they're running circles around us in innovation and growth and capitalism that has an effect because the reason that these countries employ these utterly ridiculous stupid regulations is because they're worried about uncle sam they don't want to end up like saddam where they go off the off the script and say you know in his case hey we're going to trade oil for something other than dollars and then all of a sudden he finds herself being bombed because, you know, whatever reasons.

And so, you know, I think there's a lot of pressure on countries like these Gulf countries, Latin America, you know, Asia, all over the world. There's a whole bunch of countries who have mountains and mountains of utterly stupid, counterproductive paperwork because they're worried about Uncle Sam. I mean, the whole world, billions of people are burdened by these stupid regulations, all because the so-called freest country in the world burdens them and says they're going to shut them off from the system. None of these laws should exist. They're all broken. They're all stupid.

And there's a lot of fear from these countries about Bitcoin because, oh boy, we don't want to allow Bitcoin because Uncle Sam might get mad. By Trump, just being a former president and a leading candidate, just by him saying that, that changes the narrative in all these central banks and all these offices around the world. So I can go back to the leaders that I meet in the Gulf and I can go to Saudi Arabians and they say, oh boy, I'm afraid of Bitcoin because we're worried about the banking and the way banking is worried about the US. You say, hey, look, the president of the United States, former president has made, showed up at our event and here he is. And I think that's a big deal because it at least helps counter the image that we're all a bunch of crazy money launderers or whatever, bunch of criminals and it gets people to say yeah you know what you know and especially if they know that he's if they think he's going to win or if he does win then it's clearly like okay obviously uncle sam is not

going to come down on you and put on sanctions on you because you're allowing freedom money yeah bruce at 60 000 a ticket so like there were some people that were saying it you know it would take a million bucks to get him there. That's literally like 15 people. How big is the room for this? He's going to raise tens of millions of dollars. 200 people in the room, right? About $2.4 million.

Yeah, yeah. There's people who donate more. There's people who already have donated more. He's going to do just fine from this. I think we're going to be on the map as significant. There's a lot of different efforts efforts there's a lot of people who should get a lot of credit from a lot of different angles who have approached this you know political thing and you know mostly mostly you know let's just be honest it's mostly republicans i mean there just really is a very very poor effort and i'm sorry for those people in the audience who are

democrats but you're i think we all hope it changes, too. And I think these pendulums swing for both parties. And I think anyone, whether on either side, would hope that this becomes a bipartisan issue, regardless of—should be for everybody. Oh, did Robbie just leave? Too bad. I was going to ask him because I know he's going to the conference. I'm sure I see him at every single conference when he was thinking about this. But, Iago, go ahead go ahead yes just two things i would point out that the this conference the bitcoin nashville

has um its highest ticket tier is twelve thousand dollars a ticket um and that just gets you slightly fancier uh is that the whale ticket like that's the first day and a party right yeah so you're basically getting access to an additional party. That's $12,000. They have between 1,200 and 1,400 people who have already bought that ticket. So $60,000 to be at the fundraiser for Trump is easily going to attract masses of that same audience. And I think this has a huge implication because I think my perception from the side is that Trump, if there's one thing that he really wants, it's loyalty and support.

That seems to be what he rewards. And to have a major fundraiser, like one of his bigger fundraisers, come from a very specific community and a very specific asset class. You can already see. He was messaging out yesterday that he's going to back the U.S. dollar with BTC. So this is a sea change. And probably anyone listening can tell from my accent, I'm not American.

I don't particularly care about- I had no idea all this time. Literally no idea. It's crazy. I'm shocked. Don't particularly care about US politics. But two things strike me about this. First of all, the overall crypto market, and Bitcoin in in particular has been suppressed for years by FUD and fear and anxiety and the sense that the regulator doesn't like it. So everything that we've seen up until now has evolved in an ecosystem which has been extremely hostile. And we're about to see a big flippening of that. So I think the year ahead is going to be fireworks. I think the fact is that it's extremely likely that Trump will win.

But even if he doesn't, the entire narrative has changed. There's the time before and the time after, and we're now in the time after. And then the second thing is, I think there's, if I was American, this is what I would be thinking about. It's an extremely rare situation, maybe never happens, that you can literally go to the ballot box and post a vote, which is going to double that for you but in this particular election uh for people who hold bitcoin for people hold crypto trump being elected is is a is an instant two or three xer or more well hey yago even if it's not a two or three x uh at least you can vote to not have it cut down by two or three x no but that's the thing right cool? Cool. Yes. Fear is a good motivator. But when before think it's, you know, elections are usually meaningless and impersonal for the vast majority of people. This makes it extremely personal, makes it extremely valuable in the most, you know, concrete way. I think it's going to have a very major

impact. It's symbolic because we all know our votes don't matter unless we live in a couple states and districts but uh yes in theory i think it's a important statement simon and dave and then mario i think you're gonna probably jump in right go ahead simon yeah cool i mean it is that um it's a really smart thing for a politician to do now obviously there'll be diminishing returns to doing this in the future um but it's become a really smart thing. And the Bitcoin conference has become this symbolic event for the last four years, where it started with Bacali saying that he's going to make Bitcoin legal tender. And then there was a bit of a downer the next year, because we had a bunch of countries where you thought they were going to be legal tender.

But then they were like yeah we'll uh we'll collect some tax in bitcoin and in kind of the next year we had rfk um the the said he'll collect taxes in bitcoin and and said he's going to put the government on the blockchain um kind of showing his ignorance to the community um but then like trump now it's connecting it's just showing that there is a wealth class that's been created in bitcoin um definitely a chunk of it is in america and now connecting yourself to the bitcoin community has become a good political move. And because I expect Trump to win, we get this, what Yago was talking about, this opportunity for people to align their Bitcoin position with a political campaign, which is the complete opposite and antithesis of what

Bitcoin's here for. But we always knew that one day, Bitcoin is the freest market in the world, it is for everybody. And so just as anyone can buy Bitcoin, Congress can buy ETFs and change Bitcoin laws. And nation states can eventually back their central bank digital currencies by Bitcoin. And governments like Germany, we will look back, and I think it was Dave who reminded me that there was a very famous event in the UK where the bottom of the gold market, $250, was when Gordon Brown sold the UK's gold supply. We'll look back at Germany into the years in the future

and calculate Germany Pizza Day or whatever we at Germany into the years in the future and calculate Germany pizza day or whatever we call it into the future of how much of a bad move that was when eventually that bitcoin stack could have superseded the country's national debt and so the political side the sovereign side it's all coming together into what used to be just very crazy conversations that a bunch of us used to have in a very small room with a few hundred or thousand Bitcoiners into Trump having to come to us in order to try and push forward his campaign, which I think is a testament to where we've all come as a sector and as an industry. Yeah, Dave, final thoughts there to kind of wrap this up. And then I know Mario wants to chat. Yeah, first, I mean, you know, Simon and I have our differences, but I give you and a lot of your colleagues a lot of credit. And your last point is extraordinarily true.

But I do want to push back on something Iago said. I think that the time for victory laps is after November. I think there's a lot of risk between now and then. You know, the fact that that SAB, you know, 121 couldn't be, you know, basically it was that they couldn't even get a vote down because the Democrats are still voting as a bloc on something that is so incredibly obviously bad for consumers, something that blocs regulated. I mean, essentially, Maxine Waters, her entire speech yesterday was upside down. They're still doing that. There is a lot of risk here. In a world where statists effectively won both elections in France and the UK, never fear that statements don't matter, actions matter. Putting Carolyn Crenshaw back up on the SEC despite what she's written about

Bitcoin, which was not just factually bad. I mean, factually bad, okay, everyone makes mistakes, but literally ignored what the courts have said, literally distorted research. And I wrote a whole paper on this. So, you know, you putting her on the SEC, that's what the administration is doing. If this administration can somehow convince the crypto community that Yago's wrong on the thing I totally agree with, which is that voting for Trump in this particular case over them is a multiple on your net worth, if they can convince them that they'll best be neutral, that's very dangerous. Because the last thing you want to do is give someone who's proven to be your enemy another chance

until they actually prove that they're not. And so to me, there has to be, it's very important about that. Now, the other thing that I'll make a point about is, yes, the community has done a great job to convince the Trump campaign. And I know Ryan Selkis and others have done a lot. Vivek, I think, had a lot to do with this as well. But keep in mind something. Bitcoin fits far more with someone whose most important domestic priority is deregulation than it fits with someone whose most important domestic priority is deregulation than it fits with someone whose most important domestic priority is increase of regulation. It is literally that simple of an issue. And I think that people need to understand that. So when you say there are a lot of people out there saying, well, you know, Trump, it's just politically expedient. Well, it might be politically expedient. Certainly you can raise money. But it fits. It fits with the notion of deregulation. And I don't know how many of this

audience follows Vivek, but probably most do. If you see, pretty much everything that they're talking about is chopping at the regulatory state. And obviously, Bitcoin with decentralization is a way forward. Keep in mind, the CBDC being against the CBDC so publicly is equally important here because it's the same thing, whereas the other side absolutely is for it, just like the new leader of your country, Simon, basically came out in favor of a digital pound. You know, it literally is that sort of world. Mario, I think that wraps it up. Question, no, I've got one question.

I think you focused a lot about Trump attending the event, but what about the truth social post? I was on a flight, so I didn't read the post yet. But didn't he talk about, I think, Iago, you were referring to it. Didn't he talk about a hint at Bitcoin being or becoming a reserve asset? I don't know if he directly mentioned that or he kind of indirectly hinted at that. Iago?

Iago, are you there? Has anyone seen the post? I'm just bringing up the quote because I want to be able to quote it exactly. Okay, so I'm seeing here. It's a direct quote. Oh, there it is. Yeah, I've got it here. There it is. Let me open it up. The post. Cool. So vote for Trump Bitcoin mining, maybe maybe our last line of defense against the CBDC. Great. Biden's hatred of Bitcoin only helps China, Russia and the radical communist left, we want all the remaining Bitcoin to be made in the USA, which is more kind of relatable to the audience,

then feasible, it will help us be energy dominant. All right, so he's starting to, I don't think that hints, because you did mention, Iago, about the US dollar being backed by Bitcoin. I don't know if there's another post where he mentions that or you're referring to that one there. Yeah, so. I don't know if there's another post where he mentions that or you're referring to that one name. Yeah. But there is an article talking about Bitcoin, the movement of Bitcoin being classified as a strategic reserve asset. He talks warning that any policy that seeks to hamper Bitcoin only helps China and Russia.

Could this even have a bigger impact on the industry as the narrative gets more and more bullish? There is one other, so the reason they hate Bitcoin is because they can't, all caps, they can't control it. I'm a huge fan of Bitcoin. When I return to office, I will back the US dollar with Bitcoin! Okay, so I'd love the panel's thoughts on this. How much of this is just political rhetoric to energize voters, and how much of it is feasible in terms of backing the US dollar with Bitcoin? Well, keep in mind, Trump at his

core is, well, I mean, his core is helping Trump, but he wants to look good, and he has a trading kind of mentality. If he has the ability to accumulate Bitcoin and then announce that he's doing it, which would, of course, make it go up, it's one of those things that would appeal to him. It's the kind of inside information trade that would be beneficial to many of the people listening here. But once again, I'm going to use the same word, Mario, it fits. It fits with the narrative.

If you were going to do that, it would make you look good. And he wants to look good. But what do you think he's elected with that? He actually does that once he's elected or if he's elected? Well, I mean, it's very... And what's the process like? I'm generally curious what the process is like to get the Bitcoin as a reserve asset. It would be good to have some of the lawyers comment on it, but there are a couple of things

he could do. The first thing he could do very easily is all of the confiscated Bitcoin that they're thinking of selling, they haven't sold. He could basically write a new executive order and say, we're not selling it. We're putting it into the treasury. Boom, done. And he could signal that. And then all of a sudden the price, God knows what the price would do, but it wouldn't be small. That he could do easily. There are probably other things they could do, but that would require Congress.

Dave, wouldn't it be a Fed decision of what the Fed holds as a reserve asset? Not the Fed, the treasury. Okay, so for something like this to happen... You've got Treasury for the DOJ and Bitcoin. But in terms of if backing the Bitcoin, wouldn't that mean that the Fed actually holds some Bitcoin? Well, it was an executive order by Nixon

to remove the backing of the dollar to gold. And so it would only require an executive order to reverse that. That's right. Exactly right, Yaga, is what I was going to say. But there's a lot of – people don't understand the Federal Reserve is a private company. It does not own assets, the U.S. assets. It has a balance sheet, and it can play with that balance sheet. It can do it, and they might very well be able to do the same thing, but that's a separate,

it's a separate matter. The U.S. Treasury is different. Fort Knox is under the control of the Treasury, right? And a digital Fort Knox, which, I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist. It's not a crazy thing to say that they would establish a digital Fort Knox. And that would be the kind of thing, but that would be the Treasury. He could do that. The administrative state, the executive has the power to do that. That's the united states saying that he's going to do this will he do this i don't know but the very fact that the next likely president of the united states is putting that out as a potential piece of policy is insane well let's hold him to account with um russell brick and the 9-11 files first well you said i think dave you said we need a lawyer to get on stage or Yago. Joe just came up on stage

before kind of wrapping it up. Joe, would love your thoughts on the discussion and how feasible it is, what the process is like if a country or if the US wants to back the US dollar or add Bitcoin as a reserve currency, as a reserve asset. Joe, are you there?

I see you as a listener. Ah, cool. I think he's glitching. All right, guys. Yeah, yeah. All good, Joe. We can't hear you. It glitched, so maybe next time. Otherwise, everyone... By the way, who's going to Nashville? Who's going to the Bitcoin conference? Obviously, you're going. We're going together.

No, there's no... Listen, I'm having... I'll tell you privately but uh we'll see i might go but um i was having i was trying to have my first holiday since the ftx collapsed and my show blew up uh exactly in that period mario and then the united states yeah i know but yeah we'll see what's I'm guessing, obviously, Bruce is going to be the headline there. We're going to be there. Simon, are you going to be there? I won't, no. My days of Bitcoin conferences are over. I'll be cheering on the side watching on TV.

Yeah, I've never seen you at any event. Who else is going to be there? days of Bitcoin only on stage, but then you can walk down into the conference room and it'll be 7,000 NFT projects that are funding the Bitcoin only conversation. You know, we should do a bit of a day, me and you, Scott. We should do a challenge. If one of us loses it, we have to go to the conference with a Biden t-shirt and see what happens.

I'll be there and I think I'm going to be bringing you something special as well. You want to tell us what that is? So much suspense. No, no, no. Bring me on again, I'll tell you. Can you tell me privately if I message you?

Let's talk about it. We have a group. That's a nice note. Where was that question? Ring of power. Truth social. I can send it to you if you want.

Yeah, please. You know, I'll just post it on my Twitter. Cool. All right. Appreciate it, everyone. See you tomorrow. Bye.