The Wolf Of All Streets - Caroline’s SHOCKING Testimony | Inflation HOT! | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

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Hey, Alex, I got canceled by the Bitcoin maxis again yesterday because of our conversation. Oh, I'm sorry for doing that to you. Yeah, I tried to do a Bitcoin focused YouTube stream, but apparently I did not ask permission from the Council of Bitcoin Kings and Queens, the mythical council for the tone in which we were going to speak about Bitcoin and BitVM. And I've once again been canceled. Scott, I have warned you, you need to seek permission before talking about or using the permissionless decentralized network. I know. I should have asked permission, but I blame you because you didn't remind me that I

needed to ask permission. For anyone who's wondering what we're yammering on about, Alex and I did a YouTube stream yesterday, and we were talking about BitVM and the programmability of Bitcoin. And we dared talk about the benefits of potentially having layer twos on Bitcoin instead of doing it directly on Bitcoin. And that nuance was very troubling to the esteemed council of laser eyes who have to give you permission to talk about Bitcoin. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty astounding, but pretty much par for the course. And another reason that it's very hard in this community to ever get anything done. There's never consensus on what is OK and appropriate. I see that Mario is up on stage.

Ran will be joining immediately. Obviously, I think we have... I'm here, sir. I'm here, sir. I'm here. I'm right here, sir. I'm right here. Right here. I need to get that accent, man. I feel like it would make me seem way cooler than I am. So, Ran, obviously, we have, I think, some key stories. Maybe do you think I should just run through the really basic news here and then we can dive into it? Yeah, sure. Let's go. Yeah. So we've got the main stories here. There's not that much news. We know that it's kind of dry in the crypto news cycle at the moment, but CoinMarketCap has introduced its own plugin for chat GPT. I'm really looking forward to digging into that. You get immediate answers to complicated crypto questions. It looks very, very cool. JP Morgan, as we briefly

discussed yesterday, debuted their tokenization platform. They did a transaction you may have seen we talked about yesterday. It's pretty big news. The first one with BlackRock basically settling a money market account on chain with Barclays. So that's testing their new Onyx platform. And then First Abu Dhabi Bank is pleased to announce a successful completion of pilot testing with JP Morgan's coin system for blockchain-based cross-border payments. So the First Bank of Abu Dhabi also completed a cross-border payment using that same protocol. Obviously, we can get into the nuance of whether that is a private blockchain, a database, whether this even counts for crypto or not. But interesting to see

that this technology is definitely being used right now. We also had a couple other stories today that are hitting kind of in real time. Genesis to pay $175 million to FTX, a settlement approved by court expunging billions in claims. Creditors are having mixed views on this from the FTX side because it's only $175 million effectively that's being awarded here. And there were billions in claims for FTX against Genesis. And this also drops, I think, 14 other claims. Obviously, we'll get into core CPI. I don't want to necessarily talk about that right now. Stars Arena recovered 90% of stolen funds, but to my knowledge, the platform is still down. And then one of the great revelations, which I think will lead us right into what's happening

here with the FTX trial, Alameda Research lost 190 million to avoidable scams and simple mistakes, including phishing links and storing private keys in plain text files. You heard that right, guys. If you dig into this, they lost $100 million on one of their traders simply Google searching something, clicking on a phishing link, and losing $100 million, the most basic things. And all of their private keys to their accounts were sitting on plain text files on computers that were accessible to anybody in the FTX offices. These guys were absolute freaking morons. And then finally, I think it's worth talking about the fact Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and five other senators want the IRS to expedite crypto tax reporting requirements. As we discussed on this show, 2026, the year that these requirements are supposed to kick in,

but Lizzie, she doesn't like it. She thinks it needs to happen faster because they could be losing $50 billion in tax revenue. Last I saw, $50 billion is like three days of debt for the United States that were increasing by the day. But hey, got to get that $50 million in taxes from all these rich crypto traders. And she, of course, of course, Ran, had to throw in there that crypto is the not so secret financial weapon funding groups like Hamas. That's pretty much the rundown, I think, of all the news that we have today. She couldn't get she couldn't get out of it without saying that we are that crypto is funding Hamas, even though everybody who has read anything on the Internet knows that that stopped in april that hamas literally said don't send us any more crypto because it's too transparent and too dangerous for people sending it to us so i told you that they were going to bring crypto into the war yesterday i told you that's what was

going to happen and now they brought that brought crypto into the wall that's that's exactly what what they said um i think yeah i think that and i, and I think, I mean, CPI was hot, but it wasn't that hot at this point. It was a little bit hotter than expected. I think the market looks like it shrugged it off almost. I mean, the way I'm looking,

the futures are pretty flat. Market's pretty flat. The one thing that actually is up is the Dixie back over 106. So I guess that's what it is yeah the dollar is bouncing but the nasdaq is also up which is interesting yeah i think i mean again i think that it wasn't um it wasn't um very hot it was it was it was like a just a slight reading you know what i mean because it was a we expected 3.6 the cleveland

fed expected 3.7 we got 3.7 i guess it is what it is yeah that's on year over year to be clear maybe i'll just read the numbers core cpi month over month uh x was uh 0.3 was the actual expected 0.3 previous 0.3 very flat on core which is what a lot of people look at cpi non-core obviously september was 0.4 with expected 0.3, previous 0.6. So it's down, but up against expectations. Year over year, the number you're talking about, actual 3.7, expected 3.6, previous 3.7. I would love to ask Ross Gerber,

we have here, obviously, what do you think of this? Do you think that there's a story here? Do you think that these numbers are accurate? Do you think that there's a story here? Do you think that these numbers are accurate in any ways? Do you think that there's something to look at or maybe that inflation is not cooling as fast as they expect it to becoming sticky? What are your thoughts? Well, first of all, I think inflation is only a reading in comparison to itself because the numbers don't really represent anybody's real actual life experience. So it's really just a baskets of goods and services that aren't really relevant to modern

society that we compare costs to. For example, tobacco is still a major component of the CPI. And I can't think of anybody who smokes in all of California. I'm sure somebody does, but they smoke weed and weed actually is not a component of the CPI, nor are electric vehicles. And so things like higher energy prices affect people in California now very differently than they did in the past. So what we're seeing with CPI is really a battle over labor. On one hand, you have the culinary union in Las Vegas wanting to strike. You have United Auto Workers wanting to strike., you have the culinary union in Las Vegas wanting to strike,

you have United Auto workers wanting to strike, you still have the SAG strike going on, you had a grocery strike, you have workers saying, I want higher wages, we have fallen behind because of inflation, we want that made up, plus we want wages that will be above inflation for the next five years. And companies are pushing back saying no. So you have a battle between the Fed, which is saying we want lower wages in America. That is what core or super core CPI is. It's a it's a fake term for saying the average American is getting ahead and we cannot have this because it costs society too much money if these people make more money. So this is how the Fed exacerbates wealth inequality by focusing solely on wages. Now, this is a mistake in that higher

wages is wonderful for the economy, actually. So if the average American is making more money by three and a half percent a year or four percent a year, and it's above the actual inflation rate, that means people have money to spend in Las Vegas, where I have a very large investment in the MGM hotels. And so consumer discretionary, you know, has been a really tough sector. It's one of my sectors for two years because of the Fed. And I think that once we, you know, strip out shelter numbers, because we know shelter costs hasn't really been going up over the last year and the numbers lag by 18 months. I think that inflation is pretty much exactly where it should be for a great economy. Ross, dare I ask you then why Vegas is historically crowded?

Every time I go there, it's so crowded. It doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like Americans are lacking in discretionary funds. That's right. And, you know, I think what it is, too, and I've been trying to explain this even to my economist friends at UCLA, because everybody's just like dumbfounded. I mean, Elon was saying we're going to have the worst recession ever six months ago. You know, everybody was, including myself, was really concerned about 8% mortgages destroying the real estate market. And there is a massive backup slowdown coming in real estate. But it's just not now. And there's still just tons of construction. So the Vegas observation is 100% correct, because consumers have basically said, you know, I'm kind of done buying furniture. And I'm kind

of done at Target. But I really really really want to go have fun so concerts have been sold out look at the Taylor Swift era's movie released this weekend I'm an owner now at Cinemark theaters is one of our positions in GK and and Cinemark is opening up these not only Taylor Swift but the Beyonce movie later this year and it's going to be like a massive blockbuster because people want to go have fun. And so bars and restaurants, all these things are doing really, really well at the expense of goods

where people aren't like buying new lamps as much. Right. I mean, you see, I was just joking today about the dollar general chart, which is like a Greek tragedy. And you see, obviously, you know, you see these retail, the big box stores just falling off cliffs, but anything to your point experiential is, you know, I mean, look at

flight. Anybody tried to fly to Europe lately? I mean, it's astounding. I know. Well, and I think like the Fed is stuck in a paradigm of the post-financial crisis where 2% inflation is somehow the number they've used. But I've been in finance probably longer than Jerome Powell. And I can tell you that we've always modeled 3% inflation for clients for retirement planning. So we've always modeled 3% average inflation. And in the old days, when I started, we were modeling 5% in like the early 90s. And then we were like, that's too high. Let's model 4%. And then we were like, well, now that's too high. So we've been modeling 3% for quite some time. So if I'm planning for your long term future, so why the Fed feels that basically, we have to have a no growth, no inflation economy is somehow

a better one might have to do with their ability to have power, you know, because if we have normalized interest rates, then the Fed really doesn't have power over the economy. And that's exactly what you want. Yeah, I always laugh at the idea. It's very easy to say we want people to have lower wages and less jobs from the ivory tower of Washington. But imagine Rome Powell having to walk down the street and ask people to give up their job for the for the good of the people. Don't think that that would go very well. Right. And I think employment's coming back into balance. And I think a lot of that was because of the lack of immigration. You know, under the pandemic era rules that Trump put in, you know, there were no immigrants for two years in the United States,

where we typically have over a million new workers essentially join the workforce here in the United States. So it's a substantial amount of people, actually. And once that flow started again, we've seen the labor shortages just disappear, especially in states like California, where we're driven by agriculture, construction and manufacturing, where these workers are finding $20 an hour jobs or higher. Now, many of these workers are working on my house and are waiting outside right now. And I've talked to them. And many of them are very happy. They're working very hard. They have worked seven days a week. And they're very concerned about their future, because it's been a good time for let's say, the construction industry. And they want to keep working, people want to keep working, everybody in Hollywood wants to keep working. So this battle

between labor and rates is really what's happening right now. And the equilibrium is going to shift continually towards or sort of against labor and towards rates as time goes on. And inflation will continue to come down with such restrictive rates. And so the next move in my mind is the Fed's going to have to start really worrying about, you know, the damage they're causing to commercial real estate and other areas of the market versus slowing inflation.

Yeah, causing or already caused 12 months ago and they just are using lagging data. Well, it's going to take five years. We thought about this extensively. Like I literally sat down and thought for hours about this because I actually am on the board of two real estate companies and both are in development, one residential and one commercial. And so I actually am now privy to sort of like what's actually happening from the people actually developing stuff. And, you know, people are just using alternative financing right now or cash, but that's running out, you know, it's like all the ideas are running out. And eventually, this backup is going to be this massive slowdown,

and lots of defaults for commercial real estate that people are still either paying rents on or holding on to that as their loans mature, they won't be able to refinance for reasonable rates and they'll lose the property. So this will be a five to 10 year process in my mind. Yeah, John, I would love to hear your perspective, man. First of all, how are you? Been a while, too long. John DeGerian, would love to hear your thoughts on all of this and unpack it a bit. It seems like the markets don't care about good or bad news. They just continue to melt onward and upward. Not sure if John can hear me there. William, while we wait to get John on, maybe you have some thoughts on the macro here. Yeah. Hi, everybody. Well, I'm still pessimistic right now because my feed is 80 percent my news feed 80 percent about bad stuff uh

regulatory headwinds uh lawsuits uh folks getting arrested hacks etc etc you know it right so we need less bad news i think we need more news about use cases apps doing things interesting with crypto and as much as we like to look at economic data and try to correlate that with what is going on with crypto, I think this is like grasping at straws. Inflation and high interest rates are going to be with us, it seems, for a while. So that's the new reality right now.

And we keep waiting for a Bitcoin ETF to drop on us. But I don't see Gary Gensler gifting the industry with an ETF anytime soon. I mean, that would be something tremendously positive. Why would he do that? He hates the industry. He might do it just a month or two before the elections to make it look like the Democrats are not all totally against crypto. And that might help Biden get reelected. But in the meantime, I don't see him doing that for us. So, again, I want to see some of the junk disappear before we can lift off again. Yeah, I was speaking even more on the macro, but I'm glad that you took it to the market, the crypto market, obviously, and Bitcoin. I think that we can all agree that right now we're at kind of historic low levels of being tied to the stock market, being even tied to the inverse correlation with the dollar. Bitcoin seems to be sort of traveling its own path at the moment, which I think is potentially a good thing as long as they don't recorrelate if it goes on the way down. But I mean, what do

you make of the Bitcoin price action at this point when we see, you know, this just complete lack of correlation? Yeah, I mean, there is a lack of, I mean, again, we're trying to correlate things that are not easily correlatable. What's going to lift everything up is the use cases, the applications. What's going to get people excited is, I mean, you named a few of those at the beginning, but I mean, enough of those pilots. I mean, enough of those pilots. I mean, people were doing pilots four years ago on Ethereum and so on.

And these are private blockchain. I mean, this is JP Morgan's private blockchain. Yeah. So the impact may not be great. We need to see more applications with users. We need to see traction. That's going to lift things up. And the rest will follow, I think.

So we're still in in those in that period unfortunately and again we need to get the bad stuff we have to have the best stuff behind us uh you know that yeah true i see you have your hand up. Go ahead. And then Michael. Yeah, I just think there's a growing difference between asset owners and wage earners. And I think that difference is going to continue, especially around where I am in Florida. Land, property, other assets are increasing rapidly in price. And for wage earners, you're making around the same amount year over year with small increases. And the cost of goods that you're buying keeps going up.

I mean, look at the grocery store bills across the board. You pay more for less quantity of food. And it's just an interesting thing to keep an eye on um as property prices are rising those that earn that own property are growing in wealth versus those that don't yeah i mean the florida market we all know that that obviously real estate is hyper sort of regional but man there's never been even a hint of a bear market. I live in Florida as well. Never even a hint of a bear market. I thought I was actually buying the top when I bought a house a year and a half ago, and it's just still continued to skyrocket.

Do you mind saying where you are in Florida? You don't have to tell me. I'm just curious. Yeah, I'm in Orlando on the north side of town. Yeah, but all around florida i mean my friends that live down in south florida see it rapidly as well especially around the naples miami and then across the coast on the miami area i think florida has the highest inflation in the country it It's fast. So the asset owners, though, are getting a competitive advantage, but it's that gap. Yeah, but Drew, it's only a competitive advantage, A, if they can find a buyer, which I don't think is the case, and B, if they have somewhere to move that they're not

going to suffer from the same inflation when purchasing their next place. I mean, I think that's why we all agree that the real estate market is so frozen. I mean, Tampa has been the hottest, I think, real estate market in the entire country, which is part of that sort of inflation we're talking about in Florida. And we sort of just casually looked around Tampa last year, and there were like three houses for sale a year and a half ago in Tampa, period, and one for rent in all of Tampa that had four bedrooms. I mean, the lack of supply, I think, is what's really driving that. There's no supply anywhere. There's literally no supply anywhere of houses.

It's really crazy. But that's why people think the market should be crashing. I think it's not so surprising that the market is just frozen. When you have people who are sitting on sub 3% mortgages looking that they would have to sell and buy a house at an 8% mortgage with the inflation of the asset price, there's just no reason for anyone to do anything on either side. I think, Scott, like I keep saying it, I think that you guys are complaining about a real estate halt. The real estate halt is not the problem. What happens is a year from now, people get really, really, really desperate to sell their houses if rates stay high for that long.

People become really, really, really desperate to sell. And then you could get the same situation like we have in South Africa. Agreed. We have a situation, as I mentioned last time, where properties that I paid like, you know, 300K for 10 years ago, I now can't sell for 150K. And the same, and the currency is also devalued by half. So you're talking about like, I'm sending them for the equivalent of 75K. That is like a real estate collapse.

What you guys are getting is just like a neutral slowdown. Right, but I think a lot of people point to the neutral slowdown as the predecessor to exactly what you're describing, right? And it just hasn't happened yet. But it's a long time. I think a lot of people believe. It takes a long time. Well, there's also supply and demand imbalance.

There's just a lack of supply of houses. Yeah. Ross, what I find, maybe you could address this idea. I actually have been kind of pondering it. You said you sit around and think about these things. So do I. But actually, if we see a drop in rates, that could finally be the catalyst for this huge dip in real estate because then people might actually start selling because rates are lower. It could open up the market and unlock it. This is exactly correct. And this is exactly why the Fed's actions have been so reckless, because normally you would raise rates at a slower pace,

like if they started when they should have when inflation started in November of 21 instead of March of 22, that would have given them, let's say, five or six more months that they could have raised rates slower. And then owners and sellers, buyers and sellers would have time, you know, if I'm going from two and a half to three and a half or three to five, you know, the change isn't as much. And, you know, I bought my house sort of rushed to lock in my rate. And it was about, I think, 14 months ago. And my rate is four and a quarter percent.

And now it would be seven and a half percent a year later. But weren't you mad? Weren't you angry? Because everybody in my office has two and a half percent rate. That's right. I moved maybe 18 months ago. So just a bit before you, and I gave up a 2.75% mortgage for a 3.8% mortgage and was pissed. $10,000 or more a month just to own the house versus renting, which is another thing, which is a lot of my clients are just like renting houses because they're like, it's like stupid to buy

right now because I got to put down, you know, prices haven't gone down and the mortgages are just unaffordable for people. And so exactly what you're saying is what I think will happen too, is that when the Fed actually starts lowering rates, this huge pent up demand to sell will just start unleashing as people are like, oh, okay, you know, maybe my loan's maturing, or maybe my loan matures in like three to five years. So I really want to move because I have six kids now, you know, like, I just got to move and pay the high rate. And there'll sort of be that Goldilocks moment when the asset price is still high right before it drops down with it. And they'll be selling the top when rates are dropping. But I still think, you know, we own some Lenar and from the home builder and one of my

companies that I'm on the board is a home builder. And I can tell you the demand is so strong just for home ownership. And this is a secular shift away from the office, you know, like I went into my office yesterday, because we don't require people to go in, but, but we highly encourage it, but they just really don't come in that much. And our numbers are, you know, record numbers. So I can't like be mad at anybody. And so like, you know, I go in and I'm like, you know, truthfully, people's homes are really their offices now for the most part. And that's changed how much space we need and the way we value a home too. So commercial real estate, in my mind, has lost 50% of its value.

Well, your primary residence has gained a certain amount of value because it's also your workspace now. That makes a lot of sense. Michael, go ahead. Yeah, I agree with all the real estate comments just mentioned. I just wanted to make a quick comment on the catalyst. Someone earlier said use cases, and I'm really excited about use cases too. It just seems to me, we've seen a lot of really cool use cases for crypto over the last couple of months, and it really hasn't done much to get us out of the current sideways trend we've been stuck in. The one thing I wanted to say is I think what

we're really looking for is some kind of green light to let big money know that this industry is not going to be under such a harsh attack as we've kind of been under over the last couple months. And I think a Bitcoin spot ETF could be really big for that. And one of the things I'm watching really closely is whether or not the SEC actually appeals to grayscale decision. They have to appeal by Friday. So I think that's going to be a big tell on whether or not the SEC actually appeals the grayscale decision. They have to appeal by Friday. So I think that's going to be a big tell on whether or not the SEC strategy here, right, is just to keep holding off the decision longer and longer to try to stifle

the industry or whether or not we're actually going to make some progress. Can we, can we talk about the SEC grayscale decision just for a second? Yeah. I was talking with my team earlier today. And I said, well, what's the upside of the SEC challenging the decision? And I want to explain what I mean here. If they don't challenge the decision, okay, cool. The courts ruled that a Bitcoin futures ETF is similar enough to a Bitcoin spot ETF,

but they can't use those grounds to reject a Bitcoin ETF and a Bitcoin spot ETF, but they can't use those grounds to reject a Bitcoin spot ETF. And so they're not going to reject based on those grounds. And if they want to delay, they're going to just reapply or reject on different grounds going forward. I don't see the value that SEC has in actually appealing the case because unless they can fundamentally prove that a spot etf and a futures etf are very different there's nothing really to to to uh challenge it so in my mind like if i was ac it's like a cool great i'm not we're not going to appeal this one and but we're still

not approving an etf anytime soon well ran i i completely i completely agree with you but kind of the funny thing is is i was talking to multiple multiple ex SEC officials on whether or not it made any sense for the SEC to use an interlocutory appeal to appeal the ripple case. And most of these ex SEC officials thought that this strategy of using interlocutory appeal didn't make any sense in the SEC would just be wasting time. So I just wonder if the SEC strategy here, right, is just to appeal to appeal, because that's Gary Gensler's MO. And if he can do anything to kind of hinder the industry, that's what he's going to do. So I don't even think it necessarily has to be a logical conclusion. A lot of the SEC's approach towards crypto really hasn't been that logical. They've just kind of been acting on a whim, or whatever Elizabeth Warren is saying behind the scenes. You know, I do know some information about what you guys are talking about being sort of one of the few RIAs active in crypto and still alive doing it.

Crypto is coming in a big way next year with institutional trading. And the SEC is in with Citadel, Fidelity, BlackRock, and the other players. And they are building an ecosystem as we speak. The collapse of FTX encouraged the traditional players that this was now the time to come in because trust and integrity is really what's holding Bitcoin back today, is that people have lost faith after the FTX fraud, that one fraud after the next is just

going to happen if I put my money into the system. And so if legitimate players in a system develops, then a spot ETF, you know, can exist. And many of my clients want exposure to cryptocurrencies, and they would buy an ETF for this, even though I tell them to buy Bitcoin. But Fidelity is the leader in Bitcoin in traditional finance. They have moved so far ahead of everybody else. And, you know, I think what we're going to see next year will be incredibly cool as these companies adapt trading platforms. And then the SEC will approve it once Citadel and the other companies are trading it. So the SEC is really just a pawn of the government. And so if the people paying the politicians are trading Bitcoin,

Bitcoin will be approved. And I think that's all going to happen next year. Mikkel, you said, I want to go back to, I want to ask Mikkel, you said that a lot of apps came about a few months ago, but it didn't do anything. Which apps are we talking about? Because I'm not seeing... I'm not talking about a few months ago, but it didn't do anything. Which apps are we talking about? Because I'm not seeing... I'm not talking about a specific app particularly.

I was just more making comments on, I don't know, like the PayPal stablecoin and stuff like that, news that people got very excited about that didn't really have any material impact on turning the market around. So I just... These are announcements. There are lots of announcements.

Yeah, exactly. So I think there's a couple of interesting things. One, we saw like very minor updates to people's Bitcoin spot ETF applications yesterday, especially ARKs, implying at least that the SEC didn't have substantive comments. So I think we might be closer to approval

than I think the pest, you know, sort of our fatigue of dealing with Gary and the SEC might cause us to be. But I think the flip side to that is I'll take the position of I think it's probably mostly priced in on Bitcoin at this point, maybe not in the long term, but certainly in the short term, right? And crypto obviously has a very long history and tradition of, you know, buying, buying the speculate, you know, buying, buying the rumor and selling the actual news. So I don't think in the short term, we're going to see that much movement, even if we got, you know, spot ETFs approved tomorrow. But I think the other reason for that is, and this is an idea that maybe we start seeing something really happen next year. But the fundamental issue is a lot of people got burned

in the bust out from the last bull run. And one cool app being introduced or one spot ETF being approved is not going to change that and cause people to pile in tomorrow, especially with everything going on in the world. And I think this is where it really ties back to macro, is that fundamentally people are scared right now. They're uncertain about things. And crypto is still fundamentally a growth and speculative area. And so they're not going to pile in tomorrow.

They're going to, you know, if another bull run starts and people are getting optimistic and they're feeling better about things overall and inflation more under control, I think they're a lot more willing to experiment. We still need the real use cases for people to use, but especially, you know, talking about like the retail and the user side, they're not going to come back until I think they're feeling better about things and they see the path to the user side, they're not going to come back until I think they're feeling better about things and they see the path to the future. Can I ask a question here?

If you were an institution and we know that the institutions, the pension funds, et cetera, et cetera, they have most of the money. They have most of the cash right now. If you wanted exposure to Bitcoin today, how would you get your exposure in a legal way that, that, that, that could work? Like, how would you get your exposure in a legal way that that that uh that that could work like how would you get your exposure i mean i'm either gonna you know long the future assuming i'm long i'm gonna either you know buy a bunch myself um depending on you know what regulatory regime i exist under and then just custody with Coinbase.

Or again, if I'm more regulated, I'm probably just buying futures ETFs. Most institutional players are playing with fidelity. Yeah, exactly. But the futures ETF is the better ETF, underperforms the spike ETF. So you're adding an extra element of risk into the equation here. Now, I agree with you.

I don't think it's going to happen overnight, but I do think that the significance of the ETF is the immediate institutionalization of Bitcoin. That's what I think is the significance here. All of a sudden, you remove the barriers of institutionalization. What does that mean? It means that if you do get a war like a Russian-Ukraine war or something like that, people do want to run from one place to another very, very quickly. All of a sudden, they can, and they haven't been able to do that before.

That's really all you need. So I think, I don't think, I agree with you that price is the best advertisement for an asset, but I don't think that, I think that you shouldn't underestimate the increase in bond that we're going to get all of a sudden, because all of a sudden the way to get in and out becomes really, really quick as opposed to where it is now, which is, as you say, either coin-based custody means you have to open an account,

are you allowed to open an account, are you regulated in that regime to be able to open an account, all of those things. And that's the part that I think we need to pay attention to. I think the other thing that we need to pay attention to, which I don't know if anybody else has been watching, I think we need to pay attention to. I think the other thing that we need to pay attention to, which I don't know if anybody else has been watching, I think we need to pay attention to the GBTC discounts. And the reason why we need to pay attention to the GBTC discount, which by the way,

has gone from 45% discount to now 17 or 16%. I haven't checked it today, but the closer that that gets to zero, the safer we are. And the reason why zero, the safer we are. And the reason why I say the safer we are is because for as long as there has been a discount, if the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust was approved before all the other ETFs, either because the court ruled something or because of the court case or whatever else, we would have an overhang of 600,000 Bitcoin,

which could now hit the market because there was a big difference between the price of the Grayscale shares and the actual power price of the Bitcoin, which means that, you know, people could have bought the shares at a discount and then sold the Bitcoin at spot almost immediately. I think the closer that that gets to zero, and the closer that gets to zero, the bigger the chance that we don't get that overhang.

And I think that's a big thing that we need to start paying attention to. Ran, I have a comment about the institutional pull. To start with, they have to start to advise their clients to go into crypto. And right now, as far as I know, the BlackRock's of the world are not advising their clients, their high net worth clients to go into crypto. Because there's no way in. There's no way in.

There's no way in. How do you want them to go in? So it has to start there. They're getting set up. They're getting set up as we speak. Yeah, exactly. Right now, there's no way in. I mean, if you're BlackRock and you start pushing Bitcoin to your clients, how do you expect your clients to be getting in? And why would you be pushing into something that you can't supply to them if you're BlackRock? Remember, BlackRock's running a business like every other business. It's running the biggest investment distribution business in the world. That's correct. So they're not going to be pushing the asset.

Rest assured, they ain't going to be pushing the asset when there's no way that they can profit from you getting in. But rest assured, when you can get in, they're going to start pushing it. I don't know if you remember, but just a few days ago when the ETH Futures ETFs launched, we saw VanEck running advertisements for Ethereum. I don't know if any of you guys saw those advertisements. Now, you can extrapolate that to BlackRock and say, look, if VanEck is running advertisements for Ethereum so that people can start

buying into its future ETF, there's no reason why BlackRock shouldn't do, I'm not going to say something as extreme, but certainly have marketing efforts that are similar in nature to try and get people to buy Bitcoin and say that the easiest way and the cheapest way to get to Bitcoin

is through the ETF. Scott, are you back? Yeah, I agree with that. I just came back. Sorry, guys. I literally, we got struck by lightning of a huge storm here and all the power and phones went down. Not the first time that that's happened, but I am back. But I just was listening in to try to catch up. And I do agree. But I heard someone ring in and say, but they're getting set up. And I do think that that's true. Even in the last cycle, we saw some of the banks that are arguably the most dismissive towards the industry, Jamie Dimon, right, start to offer Bitcoin services to their higher net worth clients. But like you said, they need sort of an ETF or a safe vehicle to be able to do that.

So I do think it's just a matter of time. Carlo, do you have thoughts on that? Well, you know, before we pivot to Caroline's shocking testimony in the SBF case, I wanted to make an ask for a call to action. I'd like to pin something up in the nest, circling back to Elizabeth Warren and this digital asset reporting regulation, which frankly is disastrous for the future of crypto in the United States, creates huge privacy issues, and also is completely unworkable. The call to action is, and may I pin something, please? Yeah, go ahead, please. I'd love everyone in this space to really send this viral because we have until October 30th to comment on this. I'm trying to build a solution, a compromise here

on this reporting requirement. And I've asked to testify before the Treasury at the public hearing on November 7th. But given the pressure Elizabeth Warren is putting on Treasury, I'm concerned that they're not going to extend the comment period for this thing. And the fact that she wants to accelerate the enforcement of these regulations in their current state would be devastating. So I would encourage everyone in the space who cares about this topic to take a look at that, retweet that post, and also follow the link I've got in there to make a public comment, because we really need to flood the Treasury with comments from people who understand how this technology works, explaining how this is completely unworkable.

We'll all take a look at that. Rand, do you think we should move, since you gave us a nice segue into Caroline's shocking testimony, as it says above? I mean, listen, I think it was shocking. I know you're being sarcastic, but I think it's true. No, I do think it's shocking. Actually, I think it confirms what we know, but it's just the manner, the hubris, the like.

It's insane. I mean, I think that some of her testimony could actually put SPF in jail for life. I mean, there was testimony. There was a lot of testimony, but specifically there was testimony around the bribe to the Chinese officials. Scott, I'm not an expert in U.S. law,

but I mean, that doesn't sound like it's not punishable. Yeah, I mean, you know that my opinion's always been that Sam's going away for a very, very, very, very long time. I've never bought into any of the conspiracy theories that the judges are for sale or that his political connections were going to help him at all. In fact, I would argue that his political connections in a situation like this hurt them because every single one of those people that were complicit or talking to him want

him buried as far under the jail as humanly possible so that they don't have to hear about it anymore. But yes, I was actually talking to James Murphy, met a lawman who's been suspended from Twitter for seemingly months now. Unfortunately, it was one of my favorite accounts. Yeah, he had one of those, you know, like Peter Brandt and John Deaton, someone took over his account

and did the whole like tweeting scams. And for some reason, then the account got suspended unlike those other people instead of recovered. And he's never been able to get it back, which is just like brutal, you know? And there's still, there's a hundred fake versions of his account that are still there. Classic. And his real account, you know, with the blue check is gone. But I did have him on YouTube today, which was awesome.

And he pointed out that even just the revelation that Sam had asked Caroline to make fake balance sheets to send to the lenders, that alone puts him in jail for eternity. The level of fraud in doing that and lying to people that have lent you money or in an effort to get money by creating different fake balance sheets without even the Chinese officials or customer funds, all of that is enough fraud for him to go away for 20, 30 years. Can I also point out the amazingness, Scott, of the balance sheet that got leaked and published on Coindesk that started this whole run was a fake balance sheet. They had already doctored that one up to try and make it look better. And it was still so fucking bad. It started to run on FDX. Yeah, that's right. It was the Coindesk article that was showing on their doctored fake balance sheet, which they thought was good enough to pass muster, that showed so much FTT and how much

of this sort of vaporware token was actually backing their numbers. It's really crazy now that you point that out. Carlo, go ahead. Yeah, so we can't obviously see broadcasts of the trial, but there are great journalists in the space. And one that I'd encourage everyone to take a look at is Laura Shin, her Unchained. She's a journalist, respected author in the space, and she's been attending the trial every day and giving great breakdowns of what's going on. And Caroline's testimony, it's not an understatement to say that that was absolutely devastating to SBF's defense team, because she has painted an inside picture of his state of mind, of the tactics that he's allegedly used to try to cover up the multiple sets of books, the alleged misrepresentation to the lenders who wanted

to call in the loans on Alameda to show stability, and the deployment of all these investor funds to try to prop up and give the illusion that FTX was secure and was stable, when the reality based on her testimony is quite the opposite. The judge is taking notes, I can promise you, and he's listening to all of this, because in the end, it will be the judge who presides over the sentencing. I agree with you, Scott. I've been saying it all along since he got indicted that I think this is going to be a made-off level sentence given the amount of abuse of trust that went on and given the measures that were taken to try to cover this up and the misrepresentations that have been

alleged. I think this is going to come back very badly. Today is a critical day because now the defense is going to really jump into their cross-examination and they've got their hands full. Having done a lot of federal trials, I can tell you the quote-unquote snitch cross-examination of, you know, you have a motive here, you're trying to get a sentence reduction, etc. It kind of starts to get flat with the jury and a little bit tedious when you start doing it to witness after witness so the defense is going to have their hands full here trying to expose her motive and bias and poke holes in the credibility of her story and there's carlo

something that also i was just discussing with james earlier he said that there are pretty wide reports here that the jury is glossed over their eyes eyes are glossed over. They're confused. It's really over their heads. And it's just moving exceptionally fast. And also, James pointed out that the way in which this testimony is happening on appeal, certainly SBF, if he loses, is going to say that a lot of it's not permissible because generally you ask questions. Is this a document? What does this document say, et cetera? And what's actually happening here is the first things they're asking Gary and Carolyn, which she said may not even be permissible in hindsight, is these people are just outright coming out from the day one, from the first moment saying, Sam and I did crimes together, right? Like we committed fraud. No questioning to get there.

Literally just going right to the end of it and saying that, you know, we committed this fraud collectively. He asked me to do it. This is the crime and laying it out. I mean, do you think that that's an issue? No, I think that's a very typical way that a conspiracy trial is presented. So what you have here is you have co-conspirators who have pled guilty and accepted responsibility for their conduct. And now they're offering the jury insight into their conduct. And indirectly, by talking about what they did at the direction of SBF, they are giving the jury a mindset because this is a fraud case. So they're going to have to prove that he willfully participated in a scheme to defraud. And the only way to fill those gaps is by these defendants who have pled guilty and who have agreed to cooperate because they're giving the context. Because if SBF exercises his Fifth Amendment right not to testify, and we'll all be waiting on the edge of our seat to see what happens when the government rests, the case is built based upon the insiders in the company, because they're making the case that this is not just a well-intentioned executive who got over his skis and over leveraged the company trying to do these grandiose dreams.

This is someone who was trying to cover up the communications. I mean, I hear talk from the trial of people referring to these alleged bribes to these Chinese officials as being the thing. This takes me back to the like organized crime cases that I've worked where they talk in this cryptic language, kind of like from Analyze This, with Billy Crystal and De Niro talking about, did you take care of the thing? The first thing, the second thing, the other thing. I mean, it's laughable that this is going to fly. And it only goes to show the jury that this goes well beyond just someone who was over their skis.

Yeah, I mean, Caroline, literally, she made it very transparent about how they were deleting all of their messages and the language that Sam used to tell her how to refer to things. And he actually said, imagine your message as a Wall Street Journal headline, right? And if you think it would look poorly for us, don't talk in that manner. It's pretty crazy. I don't know if you guys even saw the story. I mean, I don't have it pulled up, but that he was trying to use the wallets of Thai car call girls to bribe the Chinese officials. And this is so crazy. And we've tried not even to dive that deeply into it. But there's just so much here. It really is just quite, quite interesting.

I think he's going away for a long time. David Bailey, I know you had a question brought up. Yo, what's up, people? I will keep this quick. My question was about one of the revelations from yesterday where Caroline described her communication with Genesis and what Sam told her about the state of Genesis. Have any of y'all like have a take on on what exactly that admission, whatever you want to call it, testimony was really said and done an analysis on the timeline. Yeah, David, I was gonna ask, do you have the quote? I remember seeing it sort of briefly on inner city press, but it got buried pretty quickly with the rest of these stories. what was the gist of it and then i'll go to carlo yeah um hold on one second uh she said uh okay so he's asking her about a telegram message and she says it's my message to Matt Ball and Swag at Genesis with a link to my Google Doc. He said, I just got caught up

with Sam. Then they talk about what a Google Doc is. And then she said Genesis was getting recalls from retail lending platforms, so they asked us for $500 million. And then the this is all like

the summary version from inner city press. So I haven't read the actual word for word testimony. And then the U.S. attorney says, what did the defendant tell you about his call with Matt of Genesis? And Caroline says that Genesis might go under, so we should

send it to them. I mean, it's crazy every it's yeah i mean i'm gonna go to carlo but it seems that we know that this was this huge like since incestuous circle of companies that were borrowing and lending from one another and everyone seemingly knew that everyone else was potentially on the verge of collapse, right? Yeah, and the date on that is June 29th, I believe, which if you run the kind of from, I haven't had time to do like a full analysis, but my understanding is like it's after this conversation that they circulate a balance sheet

to all of the Genesis borrowers claiming that they're fully solvent. And it's after this point that Barry borrows 20,000 bitcoins from Genesis with no collateral and no repayment terms. And so it seems like if you're communicating to your biggest borrower that you're likely to go bankrupt, that would imply that there could be liability for the full debts owed at Genesis. Yeah, this is crazy. Go ahead, Carlo. I know you wanted to respond to that. Yeah, you know, based on the reporting that we're getting from the trial, it really ties into that kind of timeline of the summer and the Luna collapse, which caused everyone in crypto to get very skittish, which then triggered Genesis to want to recall these loans from

Alameda. And obviously, the internal communications between the players at FTX and Alameda, they knew that the only way that they could cover these was to either sell shares in FTX to other outside investors to do an equity raise, or to continue to liquidate these customer funds, which were very, very carefully crafted in these summary reports to not be reflected as actually being customer funds that were loaned. Because obviously, that's the crux of the case. These aren't loans. And this this all sort of had a domino effect. The testimony is very, very damning, because it really paints the picture of they were essentially running multiple sets of books and sending these lenders who were trying to call back their loans, reports suggesting that

they were fully solvent and stable, when in fact, that's the quite the opposite of what was going on. Fake, fake balance sheets. 100%. Yeah, David, I'm going to do some more research and see what we can find on that. But I you know, I know that obviously, you've been circling Genesis and DCG for quite a while, while here. So and as of all of us, I think there's a lot of interest in seeing what their involvement is here, what their role is. Yeah role is yeah i mean just you know i i am very cynical on the whole situation but like my just like initial gut read when i when i kind of saw that interaction um like you're asking for 500 million dollars uh while you're also communicating at the same time that bankruptcy is possible

to me that reads like um uh to me that reads like two accomplices uh coordinating to uh for one to prop up the other so that the other doesn't take down the latter, if that makes sense. It would make more sense for them to demand all their money back if they were worried about the solvency of FTX than it does to be like, hey, we got some people asking for redemptions.

Give us $500 million so we can take care of them. And the fact that Sam's saying, let's do it because they might go bankrupt like i don't know i i feel like there's this weird uh dynamic in the two pieces of information that they only make sense together if you're basically uh aware of the situation of the other party if that makes sense yeah it does go ahead william yeah one thing I'm surprised about, of course, I'm not surprised about Caroline trying to get her sentence reduced and trying to appear that it's not just her that did this, although they were in cahoots, obviously, and I dealt with them directly at the time. They have no sense of accounting whatsoever. What I'm surprised about

is that nothing is coming out about their relationship with the SEC. As you know, prior to the trial, everybody's saying like, what happened to those meetings with Gary Gensler and so on? I wonder if that's going to enter at some point in time, these trials, and if we would uncover something. My cynical side says no, that we will conveniently not hear about politicians and regulators in this. I'll tell you what I'm surprised we haven't heard, Ran, and not even tinfoil hatting this, but where the hell is Sam Tribucco? I keep asking the same question. I keep asking the same question. We heard a little bit about him yesterday. But, I mean, has anyone – if he took a plea bargain, would they have to disclose it by now?

Lawyers, I mean, he could. Yeah, that would be a matter of if. Yeah. If he signed a plea agreement and it was set for a plea hearing, obviously that would be public record. If he's in an ongoing cooperation agreement that hasn't been reduced down to a formal plea agreement, then that might be something that they can keep under wraps for now. But it certainly would generate reports, which I think the defense would want to take a look at,

of interviews he's given and statements he's made that might be relevant. Don't they plan on having Sam testify? We don't know, I think. Yeah, that's a tactical decision the defense is going to make. They're not going to tip their hand on that because they don't want... What about Tribuco? I thought I had seen somewhere that Sam Tribuco... I did not see that. You know, we'd have to look and see if they did make a proposed witness list. Some judges,

and I think in this court, there was at least a government witness list. I don't know if the judge compelled the defense to produce a witness list. So that's a moving target. It's a strategic decision. The government has Tribuco on their witness list so they's a moving target strategic decision the government has trabuko on their witness list so they can call him they haven't indicated if they actually are but he's on their list and they can call i've read somewhere i've also read somewhere that apparently he's changed he's changed his appearance so apparently he was going to show up like a shadow or something like that trabuko that that i've not heard. I will say just to the idea of like whether SEC and political stuff comes in here,

I think it's incredibly unlikely, but that's I think just good tactic from the prosecutors. Remember all of the bribery stuff because of the issues with the Bahamas has been split out into a second trial that's expected for like March or April of 24. That's where that type of content conduct and that kind of thing might come in. But like the prosecutors have an airtight damn case with the core fraud,

you know, making fake balance sheets, that kind of stuff, introducing relationships with other parties or other things he might've done. It just complicates it. It confuses the jury. A good prosecutor, even outside the political implications, a good prosecutor would not introduce that as part of the trial. Of course. You're 100% right. We want to see that as a community, but they have him dead to rights and want to focus on their job is not to implicate politicians, right? There was another angle that I thought was really interesting that I was talking about with James this morning that I wasn't aware of. Apparently, in the midst of Carolyn's testimony, obviously, she pointed out, which has been widely reported, that Sam was very fearful

of Binance and was working with regulators in theory to crush Binance. That was something that was even before this trial discussed pretty widely. But she also apparently made the admission in some way, shape, or form that the deal to buy out CZ from FTX was effectively using customer funds. We know that everything he did, including political donations, were using customer funds. We saw that FTX is clawing back a bit from Genesis today. I don't remember the number. I said it earlier, just under $200 million. But now that we have to talk about potential clawbacks and things that customer funds were used for, I wonder how much damage that could do if they attempt to go to Binance to claw back the money that FTX bought Binance out with.

Has anybody looked at that at all? I know it was mentioned, Scott, but I think the reality is that the idea that they could go back to Binance for getting their shares, I think it was debunked by the lawyers back in the day. Yeah, I mean, this would have nothing to do with this trial. This would be, you know, John Ray and the FTX, current FTX leadership going for all these clawbacks for creditors. We've got some here, so we should skim, I mean, and then we'll get to it later. macro and micro events all the time. The known black swan event right now in crypto is Binance. And with everything we're learning in the trial, which is a comical movie at best, that a year ago, nobody or a year and a half ago, despite everyone saying they knew what a fraud Sam was, a year and a half ago, at every conference, FTX, Sam would have been hailed as a hero. And the black swan is, who here today is going to bet their life on CZ and Binance

that these same shenanigans aren't going on there, and that the black swan event is not predictable for moving forward? And it's crazy because all of these companies and, you know, Scott just said it, they were all moving money back and forth in a game of roulette where everyone was betting on everyone else's numbers with everyone else's leverage and everyone else's collateral. And it was all the same. If Binance collapses, and, you know, if you really want to be a conspiracy theorist with mainstream large companies, Fidelity, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, all these guys are rushing in right now. Their goal is going to be to lower the price of Bitcoin, accumulate as much as possible, knock out all of the non-governmental regulatory players who they can play nice with, and simply use the new system to launch

what everyone here is completely talking about moving forward. All of the benefits of crypto now under full regulation with people who work with the government. And I really think- With legacy custodians and the big banks and Wall Street basically being the gatekeepers. A hundred percent. I mean, that's what we're angling towards right now.

And what would it take to be the next round of the next bull run to get Bitcoin to a million dollars of Bitcoin? It's going to require a fresh round of money to a tune that we haven't seen before to get all these players in. You know, I see all the time people talk about it, 5% or 10% of people of, you know, the investment community put money into crypto, the doubling and the tripling. But right now, it's predictable what's going to happen here. The next shoe to fall is Binance.

It's going to happen here. The next shoe to fall is Binance. It's going to wipe out. And then the government regulators, whether or not you like Gensler or not, who does Gensler want to work with? Gensler wants to work with all of the next round of people who have done the Bitcoin ETFs, the spot ETFs. That's who Gensler wants to work with.

And everyone in crypto wants those to pass. This is not a hard prediction to make. Yeah, I guess we'll see if they pass. Go ahead, William. Yeah, no, I tend to agree. There's a lot of truth there in what might happen. That's why I said I don't think Gary Gensler is rushing to approve the Bitcoin ETFs with the current set of players right now. Yeah, you mentioned that obviously very clearly earlier. But it's interesting because

even the Bloomberg analysts think that there's a very high likelihood this will get approved in the coming months. And I mean, one of the stories obviously that we kind of shared was that ARK has sort of restructured the language of their ETF application based on the questions that were sent to the SEC. So some would say at least this time, the SEC isn't just blindly kicking the can down the road without asking for any commentary. They're actually going to the people who are filing for ETFs and asking more questions. And then we're seeing them filed in another way. So, I mean, I'm a little more optimistic, not because I disagree with you,

but because I think this is actually Gary's out. I think that there's a situation where Gary Gensler just kind of throws this bone and then continues to go after everything not named Bitcoin in an aggressive manner and says, listen, we gave you the Bitcoin ETF. Everything else I think is still security. But that's going down the tin hat road, I think a bit. Any final thoughts, anyone here on SBF and the trial? Otherwise, I think we're heading towards wrapping here. I think that we covered it well. Go ahead, Ran.

Life imprisonment, sir. Yeah, see, I've been saying it since the beginning, man. I know everybody thinks that there's this major corruption here, but that corruption is not in the judicial system. And I think the judicial system has made it very clear that they're pretty objective when it comes to our industry. Luckily. What I didn't understand is I didn't understand that in the U S you know, like I always thought that you can get 20 years, but then you could serve two and then you'd serve 18 on probation at home and

stuff like that. I didn't realize that in federal that wasn't the case. If that's the case, I don't think we'll ever see Sam Bankman freed free again. I wonder if his parents are going to go to jail. That's one question and the other question and I do not think this

will happen, by the way, but the one way you can get out of something federal is a presidential pardon. I don't see President Trump. No, but it would be what could happen is if you believe President Trump wins. And guys, I do not believe this is going to happen, making this very clear. But, you know, if Biden loses in November and is still president until January, we've seen Clinton do it.

We saw Trump do it. Tons of sort of sweeping pardons on their way out the door that go largely unnoticed in that lame duck time. So between November and January, Biden would be on his way out. I don't think he has any reasons to pardon to pardon SBF, to be quite frank. But that would be, you know, if what is your what is your probability right now of Biden winning the next election? Give it to me in percentages. I think that's 55%. You think 55%? If he runs...

Now, I think if you start counting the percentage chance, he may not be the candidate. Hold on. Let me rephrase my question. What is your probability right now that Biden is the next president of the United States? I would say over 50%. John, I want to go through the panel.

John, what do you think? What do you think is the probability of Joe Biden serving another term? I would say less than 20%. That's not to say that there couldn't be a Democrat in the White House, but it won't be this old fossil. So you think that he gets that's what I was saying. Yeah, for him being replaced. The question is, the question is, the question is, it's a black and white question.

Well, William, what do you think? What's the probability of Joe Biden being the president in the next election, after the next election? It's a tough one right now. I would go 55% not. Not. Okay. David? I'm going to go right now 50-50 that he's the likely Democratic frontrunner.

How are you statistically going to bet against the likely Democratic frontrunner? Who's the incumbent? Who's the incumbent? Kyle, what do you think? Lawyer against lawyer here. I think it's the Jimmy Carter factor all over again. The economy and what's happening right now globally is going to really pull down his numbers. And I don't see much probability.

Give me a number. Man, I'd say less than 20%. Great. Wow. Drew? 35%. Alex? Alex is conveniently opting out of that one.

All right. I'm going to put the probability at 20%. I'm doing this to a 20% chance. Wait, what? Alex, I got a percentage. Sorry, what was the question? Percentage, probability, percentage chance that Joe Biden is the next, is president of the United States in 2025.

50-50. Honestly, with these numbers, Ran, I'm raising mine to 60%. I mean, I think it also depends. 60% that he is the president. Correct. I give it 20%. But anyway, I mean, that's all here. Let's chat about this again tomorrow. I think the wild cards are whether he ends

up even being the candidate. And the wild cards, obviously, are that Trump is under a bit of legal trouble if you haven't been following. So there could be a situation where if Trump ends up even being the candidate. And the wild cards, obviously, are that Trump is, you know, under a bit of legal trouble if you haven't been following. So there could be a situation where if Trump ends up getting the nomination, but then can't even get to the finish line. There's so many wild cards here. My hope is that they both just drop on stage together during a debate. I think I will tell you this.

And this is, guys, this is not my politics. I'm an unaffiliated. I despise both parties. But I think that Trump is the only person Biden can beat. Oh, without a doubt. But but the funny thing is, the only person Biden can beat or Trump is the only person that can beat Biden. No, no, the opposite. I think that if Biden is forced to run against any of the younger or other Republican potential candidates that he gets slaughtered. I think that there's enough people who dislike Trump and don't want it again that Biden can beat him. Do you think if it's a Biden-Vivek showdown, you think Vivek beats Biden?

I think that would definitely be possible. I just don't see how Vivek gets there unless Trump gets in legal trouble. I think we're headed toward Biden-Trump and that all of the like theories about what will likely happen are probably, you know, outliers. John, I saw you lift your mic, so you disagree. This John? No, I didn't touch the mic. Oh, sorry. I just saw your mic was off. I thought maybe you had a hot take. No, no. But I would say one thing to keep your eye on, folks, is that I called it this morning whistling by the graveyard. This isn't about the election, but I'll make it quick. This is about when rates are doing what they're doing.

Right now, the only reason rates are down, the only reason that we're not pushing 5% for the 10-year is the war in the Middle East. And depending how long that goes, you know, people will continue to believe that the Fed won't raise during a war. But when you look at the companies that are being negatively impacted by this, Scott, for instance, we just had this medical device or, you know, I guess they're a medical device company. I am. I'm sorry. It's I N M D. This one, they made a comment just as Carvana has, as everybody that's facing these higher interest rates has. And they said that constraints for the consumer in both the consumer and financing of medical equipment, in their case, as a company, are marked by these higher interest rates. And they are lowering guidance, many of these firms, because of it. That's why that firm's down 20 percent today.

Carvana's down 11. It's down 33% in a month. Carvana is, you know, and I'm not making a comment on their business model. I'm just saying if rates are this high, people can't buy anything. Yeah, exactly. So it's to what you guys all said collectively about the real estate market. And you could move that right on over to anything people buy on time. So the medical device companies that have to stock up these supplies and so forth, the Carvanhas and Vrooms and all the rest. I mean, this you are truly whistling by the graveyard if you're seeing four percent inflation versus one point four when he came into office, which is why I think, again, back to the election, that Biden is a nonstarter into this election.

Yeah, I guess a lot would have to change economically between now and then to make him viable. Yes. And look, this is the reason I tell people never to wish for a certain person on, you know, quote, the other side to your person to be elected to be the nominee right uh democrats ran into this problem big time in 2016 being thrilled that donald trump was the nominee because who could who could who could lose this is the problem with two-party races or you know two-party system two-party race like everything comes down to like the last

month anything can change it's's a frigging coin flip. So like we can sit here and prognosticate all we want, but the fact is we're still, you know, 13 months out from the election and have no frigging idea what the world looks like in 12 months from now or what exogenic shocks there's going to be. So the answer is... So 50-50. Yeah, 50-50. I'll have a better prediction for you in October of next year.

Got it. I think that that's fair. All right, guys, I think that this was great. Really crazy what's happening in this trial and the revelations and how much, if you look back, maybe that impacted what happened with the actual markets and the prices of assets and such. So you wonder without something like that what the last market actually would have looked like, but that's a conversation for another day. I think we're going to wrap up. Great conversation. Thank you to all the guests.

Once again, I'm going to say it at the end, which I don't always say, but follow all of our guests, guys. They're only up here because we love them. We trust their opinions and we know they're not going to come up here and spew a bunch of half-baked conspiracy theories and nonsense as masquerading as news. And once again, also follow crypto underscore town hall, that big red logo on stage. Now you guys have come over already, but we will never be hosting this show on mario's account again the three of us will be rotating as co-hosts uh we think it's very very important to move to our own brand into our own account so please uh put on the alerts and follow that account

that's all we got for you guys today thank you so much see you all tomorrow same time same place great job guys thanks thanks john thanks everyone bye thanks bye