The Wolf Of All Streets - China Is Collapsing! | Crypto Boom in East Asia? | Crypto Town Hall With Gareth Soloway, David Tawil, George Robertson, Dr Danish & Others

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

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Shit, you guys are early. I'm not used to looking at the panel and you're both there. It's good to see that I'm not the only one that gives a shit about being early. I'm always here. Give me a break. When you're not on leave. Why am I not on leave? By the way, can someone invite... I'm always here on time. Can someone invite... I don't know why I can't invite

OX Tracy maybe they blacklisted their shadow band oh there she is Tracy Wang perfect sent it out do you know who Tracy Wang is Scott I don't but that's not in type hints do you find it rude that we're inviting someone

you don't know who they are? No, I think that's become the case with half. By the way, I need to drop and come back on because it won't let my mic turn off, so I'll be right back. Yeah. Let me get the invites out. Ryan, what do you think of Trump's indictment yesterday?

I think it's... I mean, I think that the Democratic Party are weaponizing the justice system to make sure that they don't lose to Trump I mean it's as simple as that Do you think all of them are

politically motivated because there's been like 108 indictments now so do you think all of them are politically motivated or some of them yes some of them no I mean I think that enough of them are politically motivated? Or some of them, yes, some of them, no? I mean, I think that enough of them are politically motivated. I don't know if it's all. I mean, I can't call it, is it all, is it some?

But I mean, I think it's, I don't think this is, I think this is unprecedented. And I think that, you know, if you look for a crime with someone, you'll find a crime. He wasn't that said, show me the man, show me the person, I'll show you the crime. I'll tell you the crime. So that's, I mean, it's like, you know, if we want to find a crime, you'll find a crime, right? I think it's crazy.

And I think that it shows the desperation of the Democrats to keep Trump out of power. Actually, I've never asked you about this. What about Andrew Tate? Because we were meant to interview him. We were supposed to do it on the 7th of Jan actually. Remember, it was the 7th of Jan. He got arrested on the 1st of Jan, no? He got arrested. Look, I don't

know about Andrew Tate. I don't know enough about him. He's in a very sketchy industry. He's in a very sketchy industry. You know, he's in a very sketchy industry. And I could see how they want to build a case against him. But, you know, that said, I don't know enough about it to decide whether he's innocent or guilty. Personally, I mean, I don't like a lot of his views,

but I like the guy. You know what I mean? I don't agree with lots of his views, but I like the guy and I like what he's doing. I don't like his views. I don't subscribe to a lot of his views. But, you know, he has a huge target market, I guess. And the last one I'll ask you, I know it's unrelated, but what about Scott Melker's indictment last week as well?

Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I know. I mean, Scott Melker, I mean, that one I actually i actually agree with actually good um i actually want to bring up something and probably something that's a little bit uncomfortable but i think we need to address it here how how the incumbents are so scared of you that they're starting to publish garbage articles about you did you i was i was tempted to bring it up because it's such a it's like a blessing in disguise such an easy article to attack um like it just if there's a thread that's going to come out today where we break down a lot of stuff and you know our investigators got a lot of shit on how things were fabricated

um but it's such a such a i've read part of the article i haven't even bothered reading the whole thing but it's such an empty article it's so okay this this guy it's a very very so look i i wanted i mean look we'll start the crypto stuff just in a few minutes but i think it's important that we actually talk about this because uh to give people perspective so i must say like um one when i read the article that came out yesterday two things struck me there the first first thing is, a few things struck me. The first thing is how scared NBC are of what you're doing. Because if you think about, if you read the content of that article, it is an embarrassing, embarrassing, embarrassing article for NBC. It's an embarrassing article for even a junior news organization. It's embarrassing for traditional and for nbc to come up with an

article like that it just shows you how scared they are of what you're doing they're looking to do anything to discredit you uh in what you do now it's the same as coke coca-cola um attacking pepsi back in the day that actually puts put pepsi on the map kind of thing it's like it's a case of you know they they they being they they it. It's a case of they being... It's a very, very, very bad article. Second thing is if you look at the nature of that article, you can track it back

to exactly where the article comes from. It's the same people that have been attacking you over and over and over and it seems like they just go to any news outlet and do it. But it seems like there just go to any news outlet and do it but it seems like there's very very very little substance in that. Some of the

allegations that they make I'm like are you seriously writing about this? Are you seriously seriously seriously writing about this? Crazy like I mean if you're going to attack a potential competitor at least make the article credible and fill it up with meat. Yeah so that's the thing.

Like I, when I knew NBC, the guy, because that guy hates Elon. He's got a history of attacking Elon. So when I knew he was writing an article, my concern level was like zero. I'm like, guys, he was asking me questions to verify this. He's like, hey, this person says you owe them like $5,000 from 10 years ago. I'm like, okay, for one of your companies.

So I checked with my team. No one knows anything about him. We go through our emails. Turns out it's like some agency that came, did an audit for our website without us requesting it. And that's invoiced us for 10, for 5k. We're like, guys, we don't even know who you are, whatever. So I'm like, NBC is asking about this stuff. It just means there's nothing there. And there's other similar questions they asked me. Like there's this website that has a picture of me. Like, Hey, there's a website that has a picture of you. I'm like, cool. I don't know who that website is and I don't know

anything about them. So it's like very silly questions. So I was not worried. I'm like, NBC will not publish an article based on such stuff. They need some meat. And I know there's no meat in my story. I have a pretty boring story from any issue. I haven't even had any civil lawsuits against me in over 10 years in business in multiple companies. But then they do publish an article. So for me, it's a blessing in disguise. Now, the reason they publish it, most people don't know this, is because their first article, so the article that got a lot of attention about FBI and SEC responding to complaints, again, responding to complaints, that's all they did. So whatever the complaint is, what they found out is that the source they used admitted in multiple recordings that they lied to nbc and

and the fbi and they talked about how they fabricated everything we know yeah yeah we're going to publish it yeah the thread the thread's going out today we're going now we're going fully out with everything and i love the way in this article they say, a rising Twitter star boosted by Elon Musk. I mean, you can see transparently what they're trying to do is they're trying to drag

Elon into it so that Elon starts questioning his support for you. You know what I mean? Has the past littered with broken promises? Say ex-colleagues.

I mean, is this a news article? Honestly, look. And I like how the first article is like, the FBI responded to complaints about money laundering and what was it embezzlement between and the embezzlement is like from one of my companies

that i own fully to another company that i own fully which is not embezzlement tax evasion even though i have zero tax here in dubai like crazy allegations now when they found out we with a source that they used was you know of credibility, a history of lying. Then they had to substantiate their claims. Otherwise, they'll be embarrassed. And that's the best they could do. So for me, it's a blessing in disguise because it just – I wasn't attacking mainstream media. I was trying to be more balanced about them.

But then NBC kind of gave me – No, no, no. Look, when I read it, i got a lot of people i must say a lot of people uh whatsapp me and emailed me and said you know you're you're you're partners with this guy in adventure and i said to him i said to him after reading this article and i'm more comfortable than ever with our partnership and the reason why i'm more comfortable than ever is because it just shows how scared they are of you you know i read article, and I know you quite well, Mario. I see that there's no substance in this article. If they were going to attack you, they should have attacked you with substance. Yeah. And it's actually like when their first article was so scary and putting all

these big words, and then their second article is like some random people saying that I owe the money, but then we have messages where they say, no, we don't owe us money. And you have to keep in mind, this is NBC spending months investigating me with ex-employees that tried to, some of them in court right now, one, two people, it's all two sources

that leaked everything. So they leaked all my financials, wallets, everything. And this is the best they could do after what, three months of investigation. No civil cases, nothing. They don't even, even in the article, there's no serious allegations whatsoever. So yeah, like we're going to come out today. I've been quiet about it, like letting it blow over. But you know, after this piece, we're like, okay, it's just too juicy not to reply. And I think when you see the thread, Ryan, you got an idea, you and Scott have not to reply. Um, and I think when you see the thread, Ryan,

you got an idea. You and Scott have an idea of the things we have, but when you see the thread and Danish is on stage. Yeah. So you'll see, we're going to come out with all the recordings and messages and how this was planned by the sources for many months and how NBC messed up. So it's going to be fun.

It's going to be fun day today. We're excited for that thread to come out, but, um, no, I don't want to digress too much. And I want to go back to Scott's indictmentment from last year let's talk yeah let's talk i don't even know what's happening i read three paragraphs of that article that my adhd picked in

and uh i haven't i haven't you've read that much stupid and so i just i promise scott i promise you you read more than me and i'm not exaggerating i haven't even read the article my team's like mario it's not even worth reading and i promise you that i just more than me, and I'm not exaggerating. I haven't even read the article. My team's like, Mario, it's not even worth reading. And I promise you that. I just skimmed through it. They told me what's in it, and I just moved on with my day. It's just such a – Yeah, anyway.

I mean, look. I'm telling them how both of you owe me money. But I like – but guys, guys, eat your heart out. I got an exclusive on the front page of NBC yesterday, exclusive. So just saying, eat your heart out, bro, because I owe people. The more – Apparently, I owe someone $5,000. The bigger you get – I said to you the first time that I met you, Mario,

I said to you, the bigger you get, the tougher the attacks are going to be. And I mean, I've learned my lesson when I was at CNBC and I learned my lesson and it's just, when you're a high-profile personality,

every move that you've ever made is going to be scrutinized. It's just one of those things that comes with great power great power comes great scrutiny um i mean you told me that eight months ago and i like an idiot i ignored you i'm like yeah okay cool there's nothing because i in my mind i'm like genuinely and i can call me naive i'm like but there's nothing there i'm like but bro like i'm like ryan it's nice of you but there's nothing there so i've never you know but never thought i could come up and make a story out of nothing i am pedantic about always paying bills on time um always like you know sometimes people have false allegations against us and whatever and in in my previous

life i wouldn't give a because but as soon as you become high profile unfortunately you've got to act with a much much much higher level of responsibility and things that you can ordinarily do you've got to stop doing you know what i mean like it's just it just is what it is um and i think one of the lessons that i that i that hopefully you've taken away from this is that you cannot have skirmishes or arguments with ex-employees even ex-employees have to leave you on good footing and i really make a point of that i kind of treat everybody in the family like family and even if they've got to leave they've good footing. And I really make a point of that. I kind of treat everybody in the family like family. And even if they've got to leave, everyone here has to leave on good footing.

I think I've only had one employee at Bant to leave on not great footing. My learning lesson, Ryan, I agree with you. Sorry to interrupt, but this is the most important point. For me, I'd wrap it with this learning lesson that, Ryan, you kind of highlighted the same thing. If you're scaling really fast in the middle of a bull market, you risk because you don't do the same due diligence you would usually do. Now, I have over 100 employees, 150 across all my companies.

And taking the time to hire the right people, especially in executive positions, is so fucking important. And it's so difficult in bull markets, when you're scaling like crazy but also i think what's been interesting hey mario i was gonna say for me what's been interesting is how cloud chasing uh the current environment is that the reality is that first of all in that the photo for that article that elon musk in there twice and mario in there once i'm just saying it was kind of interesting how it was more about elon than even about mario and then two people on twitter have been incred you know it's been so interesting you can see who is a real person and a real person that would actually have your back versus how many people are using this to develop their own cloud i'm very surprised

by that dennis dennis don't think about don't think that that that the headline and the two pictures of elon were coincidental they know that one of the things that pushed mario up is elon's support and they very scared i think what they see here is an opportunity to get Elon to reconsider his relationship with Mario. This is very strategic. Very, very, very strategic. Why did they mention Elon in the headline? Boosted by Elon.

It's to get Elon's attention and to say to Elon, but I think Elon's not going to give a shit. I think he hates the mainstream media anyway. And I think that this organization, I know them very, very well. Don't ask me how I know them, but suffice to say that I used to be,

I used to be on TV a while ago. Yeah. And exactly why they're scared because they get, they, they are so scared of being disrupted. Okay. Listen, on that note,

I think we should move to the story of the day, which is China. Yeah. I just did. We got, we got G a – We got Gareth here as well. Yeah, I see that. I see that. So I did a whole show now about China. Again, I don't usually come here and show my show,

but today is one of those shows where we really covered the China situation, the Japan situation, because there's situations happening in China, Japan, Argentina, and then next week in South Africa, there is the BRICS summit. And the BRICS summit could have quite big implications. I mean, not immediate implications, but they could lay the foundations to eventually weaken the dollar. Not urgently, and I don't think a de-dollarization is going to happen next week, but I think that we must keep our eyes open on BRICS.

So I'm going to kick off and just give you a brief overview of what happened in China. And I think Gareth has a very in-depth opinion here, and I trust his opinion more than a lot of people. But essentially, China published some economic data today. The economic data, remember, you've got to remember one thing about Chinese economic data today. The economic data, remember, now you've got to remember one thing about Chinese economic data. Chinese economic data is always manipulated

to the favor of China to make China look good. That's the premise under which you need to read any kind of Chinese economic data. It is manipulated. And even after

the manipulated data, they had a miss on all their big metrics. So on unemployment, on industrial production, on fixed asset investment, which is a big thing. It shows what people are investing for the future. Their retail sales were the worst retail sales ever reported, except for the COVID lockdown.

And then the cherry on top, or two cherries on top. One is that they're actually in a deflationary environment. And the reason why that is so interesting is because in a deflationary environment, even though their currency has been devalued, because you kind of think when you devalue a currency, you're going to get inflation. They're still in a deflationary environment. And their youth unemployment, which they're not going to report anymore, is above 20%, which means one in five of the most productive people in society, which is the youth, is now unemployed. That is the extent of the economic slowdown in China. So I think with that, I want to hand over to Gareth, because I think Gareth probably has a lot of insight as to what this means. Before I hand over, I just want to remind

everybody that China is one of the biggest trading partners to the U.S. What we spoke about on the show, just because you may think, oh, this is happening in China. It doesn't affect us. Tesla, 22% of Tesla's revenue comes from China. Apple, 20% of Apple's revenue comes from China. Nike, 15% of Nike's revenue comes from China. So a slowdown in China affects US companies and affects US stock markets. And I mean, that is just, if you think this is isolated to China, think again, because China is a massive, massive, massive holder of US debt. And China is a massive, massive, massive trade

partner to the US. Gareth, the mic's yours. Hey, thank you, Ran. Thank you, Mario. Yeah, so like you said, I mean, the numbers were pretty ugly last night. The S&P futures immediately turned down and really things have just gotten worse since then. NASDAQ has now been crushed, even in spite of NVIDIA kind of carrying the tech sector yesterday and this morning. The NASDAQ's now turned decidedly negative. And I think the big thing here is to say, okay, you know, first of all,

their unemployment rate is much different than the U.S. And I think even during COVID, it was much, much different. Like the youth 20% unemployment has been something that's been consistently getting worse and worse. And it's, you know, it's bad when the government says, hey guys, we won't, we're not even going to talk about that anymore because you know that just tells you again that it's going to it's getting worse and it probably they see it getting worse from here so so these are all negatives gareth just sorry quick question on that point when i said we're not going to talk about it anymore did they say why i want to know what their explanation is i'm curious they i didn't read an explanation i just i just heard that they were now not going to be reporting that figure any longer.

So in general – Because it looks so bad. Hold on. I put a tweet up in the nest about this. So it's all the way to the right. They're hiding the rising youth unemployment. The reason why they're saying it is because economic and social changes. That's what they said. And that they're reassessing their methodology right now.

That is the official word from the government. Okay. Sounds pretty weak. Go ahead, Garrett. Yeah. So I think what you take from this is that number one is coming out of COVID, they didn't have the same sort of spending that you, the US citizens did and meant much of the world, right?

We got a huge bump of retail spending from people saving over COVID. They didn't have that. And a part of that, I think, is their unemployment was so high already, that they didn't have people that were able to save a lot of money from the lockdown. The other side of it, and this is something that not a lot of people are talking about, but it's probably has to do with a lot of diversification of trading and business away from China, right? So because of the trade war, because of the chip war, because of all these other things that have been going on, even the threat of China invading Taiwan, you have a lot of businesses in the U.S. that are now opening manufacturing and plants in other countries.

And that is all coming now back to roots. So you have an issue where the government in China has kind of made it very unpopular or not positive for businesses to continue to put all their eggs in one basket. And now because of that switchover, their economy is now suffering quite a bit. Danish, anything to add? Because I know you covered it extensively

in the morning show today. Yeah, so I've been talking, I mean, not to tout our morning show. Toot your own horn, but you've been talking about China. You've been concerned about China for six months. Yes, about six months. And so the reason why I've been worried about China is the reopening sputtered. You know, they had trouble with the reopening. There's multiple things that have happened alongside this China issue. People aren't talking about the yen carry trade, but that also affects China directly. We know that the reopening was not as good as they were expecting.

But the one thing, if I can point to one major event, which is the decoupling of U.S. interests in China and them actually following through with private capital, that has been a catalyst alongside all these other death by a thousand cuts. Their real estate market was already suffering. It suffered even stronger in the reopening. But the real big thing, which is youth unemployment, I want to paint a really simple picture for everybody. In China, it's not a bunch of, and I like saying this because it's a little bit provocative, but it's not a bunch of history majors that don't have jobs. These are people that woke up in the morning at 7 a.m.

and studied till 10 p.m. every single day. If you know what these Chinese kids are going through, they're going through real hardcore STEM work. They're studying math and science and they are graduating expecting jobs and there are no jobs out there. And that is incredibly scary. That is the catalyst for a for civil unrest. For context, if you look at major revolutions that occur or major civil

unrest is the exact words on the papers. But the civil unrest that follows high youth unemployment, it's usually the leading factor is high youth unemployment leads to civil unrest. And so there's a lot of concerns around China. I think China made a huge tactical error citing or not by, you know, not joining Europe and the U.S. and the Russia, Ukraine situation, aligning themselves talking about bricks i will respectfully disagree with rand bricks is not going to be a thing in my opinion i think india is pulling out of it we are seeing a ton of work on that right now i think bricks is not going to be a thing and in fact how about saudi how about saudi don't um i'm not worried about saudi at all joining bricks i think i mean let's not let's not turn this into a BRICS discussion.

This was a test move, in my opinion, on India's part. Let's not turn this into a BRICS discussion. Let's just focus on China. We can have a BRICS discussion. No, that's fair. BRICS. So we all agree BRICS. So Ryan, BRICS sucks.

So I'm glad we agree on that. Well, I think what we'll do is we'll leave the BRICS discussion for next week where I'll be at the BRICS summit and then I'll come live from the BRICS Summit. Ram, one last thing on China that I wanted to mention is when China sneezes, the world has a cold. The reality is, let's remind ourselves that in 2008, it was mortgage-backed securities in the residential real estate market in the US that took down the entire global economy. So we need to be very careful about being excited about China being in trouble. This is incredibly scary because they could export deflation to the rest of the world. We're not excited about China in trouble. We're actually

very, very, very nervous. Oh, no, no. I'm saying there are people out there that are super excited. Not you guys, specifically. I think we all understand. I think it's very, very, very scary. You correctly mentioned that the unemployment rates have never looked at this. I saw a video, and I actually showed the video on my show, where people are actually, youth are actually failing their

exams on purpose because they know they're not going to get a job, and they'd rather stay in the state universities. Hold on ran ran can i ran can i can i try can i do one thing i want to see if anyone disagrees with ran gareth danish even myself and scott probably that china is in trouble uh let's see if there's joe are you on the other side of that argument or you agree with us no china is in trouble in trouble, but I can expand on it, which is why are they in trouble? Part of the reason, right?

U.S. printed more money per capita than any other country during COVID. They then raised rates, which exports inflation. Major traders are who gets hurt the most. And then secondary, the trading partners of those trading partners get hurt. This has been repeated several times throughout U.S. history.

Governments don't like this because they're the ones that suffer in U.S. benefits. So the BRICS argument has nothing to do with China's economy. It has to do with how can they begin to protect themselves from US inflation all the time? And, Joe, by the way, you're chopping a lot. I want a question to you, and then I want to ask Ryan that question. I was going to ask it earlier. And Gareth. Gareth, I know you have to leave.

So probably Joe, Gareth, and Ryan, if that's okay, Ryan, because I know Gareth has to jump off. If you could pivot, Joe, what that means to crypto, since this is the crypto town hall. Is that good, bad, and why? And Joe, Gareth, and that means to crypto, since this is the crypto town hall. Is that good, bad, and why? Joao, Gareth, and obviously, Ryan, you covered it heavily earlier today. Watch out. What this means for crypto, I think we first have to look at what the Chinese government is doing. I think that's the most important thing. So the first thing is they decreased interest rates. And the reason why they decreased interest rates,

they decreased interest rates for the second time because the first time they decreased interest rates was in June and that didn't have any effect. And now they decreased interest rates by the biggest amount and for the second time. So that is one thing that they're going to do. But in the absence of these interest rate reductions working, they may be forced to do massive, massive, massive stimulus. I mean, I'm not a central bank, but I cannot see any other way out of this other than reducing interest rates and pumping the economy full of money, a US-type stimulus package. First of all, if China collapses, it's going to be really bad.

But – and I don't see – I see a massive problem here if China collapses because I think it will take down the US economy with it and a lot of the other economies that you know you think about all the mining economies they're all based on chinese manufacturing you think about the consumption economies i think china is one of the biggest consumers consuming economies in the world so what the what the chinese government is doing is the chinese government is reducing interest rates and that's not working the next step may have to be full-blown stimulus u.s style stimulus if that happens, it's not a good thing, but it does bring a lot of liquidity into the markets. And if we do get a lot

of liquidity into the markets, well, then the liquidity party may be on again. So I think we need to follow what the government's doing here. If they go into stimulus, then party time, liquidity. Gareth, I see your hands up. Ran, sorry. Unless other people also want to comment. China doesn't have the ability to add liquidity to the global markets like the US does because the yuan doesn't leave China like other countries. Sorry, I wanted to push back a little, but I'll let other people speak. Yeah, actually, I would go the other way. You look historically, I mean, at least in the United

States, you have obviously yield curve inversion, followed by a Fed pivot, followed by a stock crash. So everybody seems to think that a pivot means that stocks are going to go up party time liquidity. That is not what happens anytime. Eventually, yes, but every single time this happens in the United States, you get the pivot, then you get the crash. So I don't know why people are so excited that the Fed might pivot, but certainly not good news right now that China is pivoting, in my opinion. Yeah, I was just going to say the same thing. Essentially, Scott's right in that it's when the yield curve un-inverts is usually when the recession hits. So I mean, everyone's been expecting this recession now for the last six months, but it's really when that un-inversion occurs.

And then going back to China, I think what we have to recognize is that the China government wants to keep their people happy, just like every government. And again, I agree with Rand that it probably means, especially since they're in a deflationary environment, that they will turn on those printing presses like crazy, which also leads me as an investor. And again, I'm bringing in stocks and you guys are mostly crypto. But for me, all of a sudden, I'm thinking, okay, what are the probabilities that China invades Taiwan when they're already under so much domestic stress for the economy? It's probably almost zero. Now, there's still always a small chance, but this then leads me to even be more focused on China equities. And again, whether it's Alibaba or Baidu or any of these other ones, I mean, some of these things are trading at historic lows in terms of valuation. And if they turn on those printing presses and the risks of them cracking down on their own companies seem to be kind of in the past now, it definitely makes me more interested in owning some equities in China.

Okay. And Joe, where do you stand on this? Yeah. I mean, I believe that anytime, if you take the US out of it and you look at the rest of the world, the greatest adoption has happened because of escaping inflation. You can look at Turkey, you can look at Lebanon, you can look at Brazil, Argentina, many countries have been, they adopted crypto because they're escaping inflation. China starts printing money. I think that's good for crypto because they know inflation is coming and they'll adopt

crypto. The speculation side is very much a US thing, except for like the gamers in Asia. But escaping inflation, escaping inflation, to me globally is the number one thing that helps adoption for crypto. I don't think I mean, I think that that I don't think that China is going to turn to crypto it's going to have any effect on crypto. I think there's two sides to the coin here. The first side to the coin is that they don't do stimulus. Somehow the markets collapse here. The markets collapse, rest assured that the whole world is going down the nasdaq's going down the

snb is going down the chinese market's going down the african market's all going down because they're all the mining economies i mean it's a it's a catastrophe the flip side of it is that they're going to into full stimulus mode in which case they're propping up the market artificial like the us did um and again i think that there's a that it's not it's not that easy for the chinese to do stimulus like it is for the us to do stimulus because the us is the global reserve currency as well as the global reserve currency so if that happens i do think that we get a pump in the nasdaq we get a pump in S&P because you're getting Chinese consumers consuming more. So, I think that's the two sides of the coin here.

You're either going to get a collapse or you're going to get stimulus by the Chinese government. All these interest rate cuts actually start working, which I don't see happening because, I mean, I think the economy is way past interest rates being able to fix something like this. Danish, I wanted to get your, because I know you probably debated this in the finance space and got both sides to discuss it. Was there anyone that was making the counter-argument that China is not as bad of a state? You know, GDP numbers aren't that bad from what I've checked.

And are we over-exaggerating the China problem problem because we've been talking about china about to collapse china about to collapse for like two decades now yeah well the the reality is that the people that are making that commentary are saying hey it's already been priced in the markets in china have already had 30, 40 percent drop in their value over the last year. Right. And so the reality is that we in the U.S. are just waking up. But in China, it's already been priced in. That is the best argument I have heard. The other is that they're not using any of the the the monetary policy techniques that we're using. Kind of what Rand, you know of what other people have been saying, I can't remember who's ran somebody else, that they haven't done stimulus, that they haven't done

significant interest rate cuts. They haven't done any sort of major approaches. I will say they go about things differently. The counter argument to that for me has been, well, what are they doing in real estate? You know, if you are a real estate developer, you don't have to make payments until the end of the year that you haven't had to make payments all year. And so the reality is that they're doing their own version of communist stimulus is what I would call it, which is essentially just changing the rules as needed to give stimulus without actually using capitalism to do it. And I will push back on the commentary and maybe from Joe around, well, you know, we just printed a lot of money. Sure. Our balance sheet looks like crap right now. Sure.

But the reality is that unemployment is low. We have a robust economy. People still have savings. There are still things that are looking good in the U.S. And some would say that we went about it correctly and that Jerome Powell does actually get some additional positive feedback from the financial community saying, hey, you did a good job, and maybe China could have worked. Is there any argument that would explain that could lead to crypto benefiting if China collapses? Or there's nowhere that could happen? The only argument, maybe Bitcoin being a store of value is that maybe one argument that could be made out of it might be worth noting that China started to switch their social policy a little

bit on crypto they've just started allowing in Hong Kong retail traders to get involved in crypto again. So I think there's a broad move. I think it's probably a reaction against the US anti-crypto movements that's happening. But one thing that could really help crypto out is if retail trading starts to come in in China, which is starting to happen, I think. Do you think that could be related to the economy in any way? Because the Chinese renminbi is one of the worst performing currencies in Asia.

I think it's dropped like 5% so far this year against the US dollar. Or bring innovation, bring investment back into the country. I'm just trying to figure out if there's any causation with the economic slowdown in China, the economic weaknesses in China relative to their openness to crypto. I think they're looking for new value. I think the government themselves released a Metaverse paper a few weeks ago. What's in that Metaverse paper? I'm actually curious. Yeah, it was basically a white paper saying that China are investing. I think they said they were going to bring in 10,000 new people into working in blockchain,

cryptocurrency, NFTs, metaverse. Yeah, they're really looking to invest heavily into crypto infrastructure, basically.

So, I think they're looking for new value. I think, like everyone, everyone needs something new to drive the economy, whether it's AI

or crypto. So, they're just looking for the new source that brings more value. Yeah, and can anyone – go ahead, Scott. No, I was going to say – go ahead, bro. I was going to say that, yeah, that news was back in May, just to give you guys the clarity. No, we've talked about it earlier, but we've never really dug into it. But, Scott, what do you think of Yatsu's – 14 million a year.

What do you think of Yatsu's discussion? And it's always been on my mind. Do you remember when he came in and said, Mario, the narrative in the US and the West around NFTs and crypto in general, crypto gaming, et cetera, is very different to what's in the East. Even the term NFT is like toxic in the West. You've seen that as well. Does that make you bullish?

Have you looked into it? I've told you. I mean, last year, I literally went from Masari Mainnet in New York City in October or September. I went directly from there to Token 2049 in Singapore. And I can tell you that I was at Masari Mainnet. It was muted. Everybody was depressed. Nobody was excited about anything.

And all anyone was still talking about, this a year ago was regulation in the market and then i flew to token 2049 in singapore and it was like crypto coachella like people were parting their asses off everybody was excited they still believed in every single one of these use use cases people were building and i think that that's only that sort of dichotomy or bipolarity has only increased since then right and i think we'll probably see the same thing this year but i absolutely think that this market is in asia i mean the united states is dead we've had multiple guests come on here and say listen everyone i know who has a fund or investing whatever they've left the united states or they've shut down right you just can't operate here uh in the same way that you can in those

other places so if you know i wouldn't you're going you're going you're going extreme remember we read we read some numbers when we did the uh we talked about vc funding the collapse of vc funding we talked about the us is still the source of the most investments and most of the projects that we see that's because that's all money that has to be deployed by vcs who already raised it in the bull market so i think that's very misleading right we're not seeing i mean you remember in 2021, it was like Andreessen raises $4 billion, and then somebody leaves Andreessen and raises a billion. You don't see those numbers anymore, and people forget that – I mean, given that a lot of that money will never come in. Even Yat and Anamoka talked about their increasing focus to the east and, yeah, spending a lot more time. Actually, that was his main narrative when we had him the first time i think or the second time that was his main narrative it's like east east

east asia and and every time we talk about gaming we talk about the metaverse talk about crypto in general he really shifts to the to the sentiment in uh east asia so it's a really interesting observation i think for any investor listening any project listening it's um definitely something to pay attention to especially if you're just kind of depressed by the bearishness in the in the west but does anyone disagree about the ryan what's your stance on the on the narrative about crypto and nfts and metaverse and web3 gaming in the east versus the west i think ryan was having a time interesting take no no no that was a great take a great great take, I agree. Always the best takes.

China's massively into Bitcoin. I think China is probably, by nation, the biggest Bitcoin holders. They have been in for a long time, and that's mainly due to the capital controls. So as things start getting edgy in the economy in China, people will flood to Bitcoin. They've been there since 2012,

2011, 2013, mainly to avoid the capital controls that they get there. So Bitcoin is still a value and China do love it. And Nick, let me, by the way, anyone requesting to speak, just DM me and tell us why you want to come up. Just for the team to know, because if we don't know you, we might not bring you up. But just a quick question to you, David. David, can you maybe tell us, I think it was you that was on the show yesterday and out of nowhere you started to come up and just for the team to know because if we don't know you might not bring you up um but just a quick question to you david david can you maybe tell us i think it was you that was on the show yesterday and out of nowhere he started talking about the news in argentina

which we didn't we should have focused on and we didn't and today's part is a big part of the agenda was it you david that jumped in with that news that was me yeah i appreciate it so can you tell us again because i think this is actually pretty interesting news because there is a new president i think i'll let you do it because there is a new president, I think. I'll let you do it because I haven't looked into as much as you have. No problem. So, no, they had their primary elections on Sunday. And the surprise leader in the primary is an absolute libertarian. Pro-Bitcoin wants to go ahead and dollarize the economy, so do away with the Argentine peso, which in the last 10 years has gone from…

Just quickly, and Joe, Joe, Joe's in the audience. Did you hear Joe or David said Joe? I know you dropped down to the audience. He just said dollarize the pesos, not remnant buys or brick eyes or joint bricks. Dollarize it, Joe. But yeah, sorry. Continue, David. It's gone.

The peso has gone from $40 to $1 in the last 10 years to today. It's 700 pesos to the dollar. Inflation in that country is around 120% year over year. They had to raise interest rates in the country to 120%. And right now, so this was an incredible surprise. It is the absolute opposite of what Argentina is known for in terms of socialism and Kirchnerism. And therefore, the country's future at this point politically is big question mark. The elections, the final round will start in October, probably go to a second round of final rounds in November. But if this gentleman, Millet, Javier Millet is his name, if he wins, Argentina is in for a radical change.

I don't know if their economy can survive this kind of change because it's going from one extreme to the other extreme. But at the end of the day, it is a country that has been in constant up and down changes politically and economically over the decades, certainly since World War II. And I brought up Mickey as well. Mickey, I'm not sure if you looked into the Argentine news, but the reason I brought you up as well is to get your take on the China news because I do think it's probably the most important piece of news today, something we should focus a lot more because of the impact it could have on the global economy, as Danish mentioned earlier.

Yeah, good to see you, Mario. I hope you're doing well um yeah i've been watching china for the last few weeks and um just sort of anecdotally before we talk about the news like the last couple of months you know i have i have an it company around 200 employees so not a huge company but um you know my family is taiwanese and huge connections in Chinese diaspora. I lived in China for a bit. And for the first time, you know, I can remember in more than a decade, I'm just starting to get these anecdotes, like people's parents are hitting me up like, hey, can you can you help my son stay in the US? Can you, you know, I have an accountant who is from China. And basically, there was a chance she had to go home and she started crying and was really afraid to go home. And it's the first time this happened. I mean, China's been booming for a very long time. And I'm just sort of starting to feel in my own community, the sort of impact of people, young people really wanting to leave China. And that's very new. That was never the sentiment over the past decade. I mean, China's probably the economic, you know, economic miracle of our lifetimes,

considering where it came from. But now what we're starting to see in China, in my opinion, is the beginning or maybe in the middle, early middle of a credit crisis. You know, you guys sort of you all know about what was happening during China, these extreme lockdowns. But before the extreme lockdowns, we were already starting to see deflation in certain assets, right? You essentially had an economy that was built on cheap money. And that's all well and good when your assets are inflating. But when your assets start to deflate, all of a sudden, the assets that you, let's say for a very simple example, you bought a house for $300,000, you borrowed $280,000, then the value of your house, for a simple example, goes to $200,000, you're all of a sudden underwater.

And in Chinese news, you're seeing lots of news people losing their homes being underwater, suicide rates going up. And this is happening all across China, this deflation. And that is cataclysmic for the Chinese economy, given much debt there is and what's very troubling in my opinion is that the information we're getting it was always sort of touch and go if the information was good but now we know for sure that there's no way to really have good clear information on what's happening in china and you have to remember why did communism not work it wasn't because of bombs or bullets or guns or an invasion. Communism didn't work in Russia, in Eastern Europe, and partially in China because of accounting. You know, the Central Committee would demand, you know, we need 100,000 ball bearings from Province A.

And Province A knew they couldn't make the goods. So what did they do? They lied because they knew if they told the the the good so what did they do they lied because they knew if they if they told the truth they'd be disappeared so they would lie like oh sure we're making these ball bearings for you and the this systematic lying is what collapsed communism and this is what we're starting to see in my opinion again in china nobody is incentivized to tell the truth and a credit crisis is looming i don don't know when, but it's inevitable. It could be, but you just don't know when. Timing it is impossible.

Again, these are discussions we've had for a different reason for a pretty long time. I've been waiting for China to collapse for over a decade now, well over a decade. It could happen next week. It could happen in five years' time. But either way, I think we all agree. Maybe I'll get Scott and Ran's final thoughts. Is there any way, and before doing that, I just want to remind the audience,

look how many pinned tweets we have today, Jesus. Let me remove all the pinned tweets because you've got to all check out Bybit's competition. So anyone that wants to join our trading team for Bybit, check out the pinned tweet. And there's $8 million in prizes by our sponsor, Bybit. So check it out. Go on your phone right now. Quickly go at the top, scroll up. There's a Bybit. Check out the pinned tweet. And there's $8 million in prizes by our sponsor, Bybit. So check it out. Go on your phone right now. Quickly go at the top.

Scroll up. There's a Bybit tweet with a trading competition. Click on the link and join us. Again, there's $8 million in prizes. So it's worth for you to go in there and you can have fun with the rest of the group, the team that we have. But Scott Rand, final quick thoughts. Is there an argument that can be made of Bitcoin becoming a store of value with the worries around the US dollar and the credit in the US? And then now with the fears around China, what other safe havens are left?

There's not many there. I can say it's behaving like one right now. I mean, right. I mean, we haven't seen Bitcoin move. It's acting like a store of value and a stable asset over the past few weeks. Certainly, that's not something that you can extrapolate, I think, out into the future. But, I mean, stocks are down today. Dollars down today.

China getting crushed today, obviously. And you just have Bitcoin kind of completely uncorrelated and doing its thing. And I think that that's something that's been a trend for quite a while and can continue into the future. I think the Argentina story for Bitcoin is overblown. I mean, I talked about it quite a bit today. It's part of a bigger narrative, no? The crypto and Bitcoin becoming part of the political discussions, even in the US.

That's right. And something that I said kind of yesterday when David pointed out the fact of what was happening in Argentina and that they were going to dollarize, only a country really that has the dollar as their currency right now can even consider, even if they're not, but consider any sort of state level adoption of Bitcoin, legal tender, the kind of things we saw in El Salvador. El Salvador is a very unique, and we talked about this yesterday, I don't want to go too deeply, but El Salvador is a very unique case because,

yes, they're in Central America, but the dollar is their currency and therefore they can adopt uh bitcoin as legal tender and not be concerned about the united states imf world bank etc etc attacking their currency and weaponizing the dollar because it's their currency so you guys might remember argentina was making big waves and people thought they were likely to be the next to adopt Bitcoin. Right. And they were talking about it. They had people in government talking about it. The IMF literally came in and said, you don't get a loan if you mention the word Bitcoin again. Right. And they needed that IMF loan and you never heard about it again. But if they go on to the dollar as their standard, it becomes much more likely, whether it happens or not, that they could adopt it.

And I do think, to your point, Bitcoin is just a part of the conversation. I would have never thought that we would be having every single presidential candidate a year and a half, basically, before the election, having to come out and have an opinion on it.

It's really astounding. I don't want to end with a can of worms here, but I think one thing we haven't spoken about is Japan. Because Japan also reported numbers today. They reported their annualized GDP numbers at 6%, which was almost double what analysts were expecting. And the big fear about this is that Japan has never had inflation

and never had high interest rates, or not in recent times. And now they're going to have to increase their interest rates in Japan now one of the things that most people don't know about Japan is that because it's so cheap to borrow money in Japan a lot of people borrowed money in Japan and invested it in the west proper western markets the big fear now is that the only way that the Japanese are going to curb this inflation problem is actually by increasing interest rates if they increase interest rates all those loans that were made at close to zero or at zero whatever the numbers are

are going to have to be you know not recalled but there's going to be pressure on loans and that may cause disinvestment from a lot of the Western markets. I mean, I don't want to sound alarmist, but I think that that's a massive, massive, massive story. Yeah, and just to give you an idea for the audience, this is Japan's fastest expansion in over 20 years. And as Ran mentioned, double expectations. But how does that compare? Could that, we're looking at the global economy, could that counter the slowdown in China? No, it's bad. It's very, very bad because you have the Japanese economy, which is exploding.

And the reason why it's exploding is because they're getting into a point where there's too much yen in circulation and they're going to start getting inflation. And the only way that they're going to be able to curb this inflation is by raising interest rates. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. You see, and they're going to raise interest rates. And the problem is there's been this thing called the carry trade in Japan. Now, what's the carry trade? You borrow in Japan because the rates are close to zero and you invest it in the West. How long has that been? That's been going on for a long time, hasn't it?

For years because there's been no interest rates. Now, you're increasing the interest rates in Japan. And now people are saying, hold on a second, maybe we should invest back in Japan or maybe these loans that we took that were on zero interest and now start accruing interest. Maybe they're not such a good idea. Maybe we should recall them and take them out of the U S market and

wherever else we've been investing. Lastly, I want to just say that the U S is the biggest holder of U S T bulls. Again, why? Because they get interest rates on u.s t-balls um and so and so this you know if if it starts to become more attractive to put your money in japan than to put your money in the united states it could mean that the u.s

that japan starts dumping u.s t-balls so it's i think it's a massive story i don't know if anyone's got anything else to add but i think that that's actually one of the biggest stories of the day too. And the yen is already above the June highs. So just indicating exactly what you're talking about, the expectation of increase of interest rates. All right, so you've got two pieces of bad news in terms of the macro economy. And then your final question for you, Ryan, is what does that mean for crypto and especially the argument of Bitcoin being a store of value?

I think that would be a good place to end it. I mean, I don't know if this is I think that these are much bigger problems than Bitcoin and I think that, you know, we're talking about collapses of economies and collapses of risk assets. I don't think that, you know, you can be a crypto bro and say,

oh, this is all great for Bitcoin, but this is all bad for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is going to act like a risk asset and when it does act like a risk asset, it's not going to be good for bitcoin uh when these markets collapse if these markets collapse and when japan takes liquidity out of the economy um and starts tightening it's not going to be good for bitcoin these these things are not great for bitcoin cool on that beautiful positive note for everyone listening um unless the the course have any the hosts around us can't have anything to say, I think it's a good place to hit us up if you want to come on the show.

We've got a really exciting sponsor coming in soon. We jumped on a call with them yesterday. It's one of my favorites. It's a really cool project. Rand and Scott both know it really well. I've learned about it yesterday. I know the guy that we spoke with really well, but yesterday we looked into the project. Really excited to have him on board.

Otherwise, yeah, if you want to come on the show hit us up and we'll see you tomorrow same time thanks guys