The Wolf Of All Streets - PlanB: Bitcoin Price Can Get To $100,000. Or $1 Million.

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

Legendary analyst PlanB is back! Is stock-to-flow dead? Did PlanB change his opinion on Bitcoin? Can we achieve a deflationary utopia? Will Bitcoin become a reserve asset? New price prediction from PlanB, why he choses the barbell strategy and his advice to everybody who wants to invest in crypto. PlanB: https://twitter.com/100trillionUSD ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen  GET UP TO A $8,000 BONUS IN USDT AND TRADE ALL SPOT PAIRS ON BITGET FOR ZERO FEES! ►► https://thewolfofallstreets.info/bitget   Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wolfofallstreets   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io  Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe  Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c  #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

As the last bull market commenced and went all the way up to 69,000, nobody was more popular than analyst Plan B and his stock-to-flow model. He had consecutive months over and over and over again where he accurately predicted the price, but he also warned that no model is perfect and that price would eventually break the model. We talked today about whether stock-to-flow model is broken. The fact that the stock-to-flow floor model is definitely broken. What the prospects are for Bitcoin in the future and whether we are looking at the depths

of the bear market and a generational buying opportunity. You do not want to miss this conversation with Legend Plan B. I believe the last time we talked, we were in the heart of a massive bull market. I don't remember the specific price, but we were talking about Bitcoin at 100 and 200 and a million. And I think everyone knows here we are in the depths of the bull market. What do you think happens? Yeah, we probably have another bull market, but the big question, of course, is when. On the other hand, the bear markets are part of the game. You know, in the bull markets, we're all partying, dreaming about the moon, buying Lambos. And the bear markets are good for building and talking about the fundamental stuff. And there's a lot of fundamental things

going on. So, well, I guess we can't do without the bear markets and have to embrace them. It's funny you talk about the buying Lambos and buying cars. And obviously, we saw people flexing their Rolexes and their gold and all of those things. And now we're seeing mainstream media stories about quote-unquote crypto bros selling their G-wagons and crashing the prices of McLarens and crashing the prices of Rolexes. I guess it's once again, an example that you can't have one without the other, right? That's it. That's it. So let's embrace it. And for sure, the next bull run will come unless Bitcoin is dead. But that's just not a scenario I think

is realistic. So assuming that Bitcoin is not dead after 12 years and the fundamental innovation that it really is. Given that, we might assume the bull market will resume in some time. Could be today, could be tomorrow or some months away. But yeah, that's very hopeful. I mean, during the last bull run, you obviously gained renown for being incredibly accurate with price predictions as to what was going to happen at any given month. And probably that was a bit of pressure for you, I would imagine, because nobody can be right all the time. And eventually, obviously, some of those predictions were going to be wrong. What are you looking at now that stock-to-flow, I don't even know if we can say it failed. I mean, maybe talk about where stock to flow is now, what you're doing with modeling and sort of what it was like to be viewed as this person who had almost a crystal ball, which inevitably meant there would be times when you

would be wrong in the future. Yeah, there was pressure. There was pressure. No matter how much you said, it's a bit of luck as well. I mean, I have very, very rough models and everybody that understand the model, they know that, but they're very rough. So being exactly right, and certainly three times in a row, that's just pure luck. But no matter how much you say that, I gained 1 million followers in two months. And that's purely based on that random lucky shot. And it's a blessing and a curse.

It's nice to have 2 million followers instead of one, maybe. But the curse is that I have a very schizophrenic following right now. So the first 1 million, those were the Soccer Flow followers from the first hour, and they know a bit about modeling and when the model was made and all the interviews I did in 2019 and 2020. But the second million, those were the guys that came in at 50,000, 60,000, 40,000 on the three lucky shots.

And they're all in a loss and they're hitting my guts. So, yeah, I was not, to be honest, I was not prepared for that. I'm just a traditional finance guy, an investor, institutional and ex-institutional investor, I should say, because I quit two years ago. But we were always working in the dark, never in the spotlight, and certainly not with 2 million people and more looking over your shoulders.

So my natural habit was to publish the stuff. I was excited about it. I had 100 followers in March 20, or maybe 1,000 in March 2019, and published that stuff. And then it exploded. And yeah, so it has been a steep learning curve. It has been fun.

And lately, yeah, there is pressure. And I understand that. I understand that if you're at a loss and bought maybe because everybody was bullish and my models were bullish as well, then yeah, you're maybe angry or you're anxious for the next bull market and to be in a profit again. But yeah, so that's one. But maybe very specifically, the model that was right three times in a row wasn't even the stock-to-flow model. I think that's the biggest misunderstanding that's still present today.

That was a failed floor model. As a model guy, I make multiple models and everybody that follows me knows that. I mean, I must have like 20 models that I frequently tweet about and have charts about. But the floor model was sort of, yeah, like the name says, it was sort of predicting where the floor, what the absolute floor would be. But of course, Bitcoin crashed right through that. And yeah, so the floor model be. But of course, Bitcoin crashed right through that. And yeah, so the floor model failed. But the stock-to-flow model, in my opinion, did not fail yet. And yes, I have said, okay, when it's not hitting 100K, and of course, I was expecting 100K based on the model, and it's not hitting that, then the model has failed, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, you might say I changed my mind or I got more nuanced about it.

But just everybody has to make up their mind. If you think it's failed, then be my guest and it's failed for you. But for me, yes, the current price of Bitcoin is like three or four times below the model price. But look at the peak in 2013. At that time, it was 10x, Bitcoin was 10x above the model price. Did it fail back then? No, it didn't. It just crashed down back to the model price. And similarly, I really and sincerely think, in fact, I'm betting on it with my money, that the Bitcoin price will revert to the stock-to-flow model price. And maybe I should add that I had three versions of the model that didn't make it very easy to understand. So the original model was 55,000K. With hindsight, that seems to be the

best model. Later, I updated that model with yearly data and your data. And that's how we got to the 100K number. And then I got this very fundamental model, the Stock-to-Flow X model, that derived its values from other assets as well, gold, silver, etc. And that was the 288K model. And as much as we like to believe the 288 and the 100K, I think with hindsight, we should say that the original model, the 55K or let's say 60 or 70K model, that will probably turn out to be the better model. But you know, it's all very rough.

I think that's the most important thing. If you've been following me for the last few months, then you definitely know that I've But, you know, it's all very rough. I think that's the most important thing. crypto and also that they're a top five exchange by volume. Well, I was sold and I was convinced. I've been using it ever since to dollar cost average and to invest in Bitcoin. You can also trade there with leverage, but of course, be careful if you're going to do that. And I don't know if you saw the recent news, but they've also done a deal with Lionel Messi. Now you can get up to an $8,000 bonus using my link below, and you can trade spot with absolutely no fees. You also get a 15% discount on trading leverage.

Go ahead and sign up right now using the wolfofallstreets.info slash BitGet. Claim that huge reward and use the world's best trading platform. Hindsight is 20-20, right? And it's easy to talk about these things after looking back on them. But to be fair, at the time, especially when Bitcoin smashed through 65 and pushed to 69, it looked like it was ready to print a monster candle and jump directly to six figures.

Every model had that. Every person, pundit, analyst, with a few exceptions, believed we were going to 100K. I personally did, based on the parable of the ox, I did a model where we took the 100 top models we could find and averaged their price, and it was going to hit 235,000. We're all, quote unquote, guilty of this, but that's because none of us can see the future. So I think everybody was collectively wrong. And that's probably a lesson to be learned about the mentality of a bull market in general, right? Yeah, we could be collectively wrong right now as well on the downside. I mean, in fact, that's a very human treat, A very psychological thing. We overshoot up and down.

So we're FOMOing in and we're sort of crashing down. So the tops and the bottoms are, in that respect, the tops and the bottoms are maybe not the most interesting thing. It's more the general levels that you might

be able to predict. But the tops and the bottoms are always, we're always overshooting. If you Google overshooting with respect to investing, there's lots of scientific papers on that. And we're always overshooting. You saw that with COVID too. The market dropped and then shot up back the next month. So, yeah. But you're very right.

We were all dreaming about 100K, 1 million, and we're putting tattoos about the moon and rockets and our favorite coins. I luckily didn't get any tattoos, especially of any altcoins. So I don't have a Luna tattoo on my shoulder or anything like some people famously do. But I love the point that you made that maybe we're doing the same thing at the bottom, because that's my feeling. The lesson learned from that top should be to be skeptical when everybody is starting to, again, say Bitcoin's

going to zero, Bitcoin has failed, crypto is over, right? These are as classic, if not more bottom signals, then we're going to 100K was at the top. So to me, whether that means we go down three or 4,000 more or start to go up, this is an epic generational buying opportunity. Yeah, I think the exact same thing. And to be very specific, most people are talking about maybe $14,000 Bitcoin or $10,000. And I get that. I mean, if you look at the top $,000 and you take minus 80% from that, you get to the 14,000. And yeah, in the past, crashes would be 80% from the top, even 85%. So if you take 85% from the 70, you get to the 10K. So I get that.

But it's not a, I mean, those were one or two crashes. You can't make predictions like that. And yes, it could happen, but it might as well not happen. And so, yeah, I'm very much looking forward to what the future brings. And I hope we will not see too many FTXs or Ukraine wars or China mining bans, because those were, of course, the real causes that spoiled our party when we were all dreaming about 100K. I think we really would have made that 100K if China would not have spoiled the party at the time with the mining ban.

Yeah, I agree. I think that the models would have been fine in a vacuum where the FOMO and excitement continued and that we've had some fundamental events that have dampened the excitement or even eliminated it in the short term. You obviously alluded to FTX, which is the most recent. Is what's happening in the crypto industry? I love to separate Bitcoin and the assets from the industry because I think these are industry failures, not asset failures. But is there anything here that's just shocked the hell out of you? Did you see any of this kind of thing coming? Did you expect to see this level of contagion? I will go out on a limb and say I did not.

No, me neither. The only thing that really shocked me is that, again, it's the third parties, the exchanges, not the assets or the protocols itself, but the third parties, the ecosystem around it that caused the trouble. And why that has such a large impact still on the market is beyond me.

Yeah, I understand that companies that default have to sell their stuff and people that default or get margin calls, they have to sell their stuff too. So there's a lot of downward pressure. But it's very important to see it's not about the Bitcoin protocol or the other assets. It's not about the assets. It's about the third parties, the companies, the people that do bad things around it. Especially FTX is a classic example that makes me think of Mt. Gox. And I know one thing for sure, we'll see it again.

I mean, five years from now, another exchange will blow up and somebody will steal the money. That's a risk I thought by now we would know and not be. Yeah, by that same rationale, I would have thought that we would have learned the lessons of the 2008, 2009, 2010, you know, subprime mortgage crisis and Great Recession. And in my opinion, and I don't know how I didn't see this while it was happening, it took hindsight. But in my opinion, we effectively built those same systems, but with inferior rails in crypto, which is the antithesis of the ethos of what this was all created for in the first place. It's very, very disappointing. Yeah, it is. At the same time, maybe the repetition of it drills the message home that third parties are security holes. Bitcoin is a, I'm of course Bitcoin maximalist, so I'm talking Bitcoin, not crypto, but Bitcoin is a bearer asset and self-custody, owning your keys is key, literally, to this. So maybe it's a good thing. Maybe we need these blowups and these, yeah, to drill home that message. Yeah. I mean, there's no question that this has driven people towards self-custody.

Every single metric, sales of ledger devices, coins leaving exchange shows that that's the case. I guess the question then remains when the FOMO kicks back in and we have another bull market and you need to move those coins to exchanges to speculate on the big altcoin pumps and such and all the human things that we know people will do if they will quickly forget the lessons that they just learned and go right back to the old ways. I don't have as much faith in humanity as many. Yeah, well, I agree that humanity will be driven by greed and fear like last year and a thousand years ago. That will stay. That is human, greed and fear. So we will have cycles.

We will have crashes again and FOMO tops and bull markets. But yeah, at least the self, if the number of people that does self custody doubles because of this crash, it's all worth it. Yeah, it's a huge win. I just hope that they stay with it. That's my point. And remember the real reason that they went there. And you obviously, as you self-described Bitcoin maximalist, we've talked at length in the past about your beliefs in the asset and why you're so supportive and believe in it in the first place. Has any of that changed

through this process? Because obviously we've had the should have been an inflation hedge narrative, should have been a store of value. Can't be those things if it's crashed by these price. So has anything for you changed in your perception of the asset? No, not at all. Not at all. Even the inflation hedge thing. For me, Bitcoin is not per se an inflation hedge. It's far more. I like these old clips from the internet. What is the internet? What people in 2000 explained what the internet is. Even Bill Gates cannot really describe what it is and what it does for the world right now. I think Bitcoin has a similar function. And we can't really describe very well what Bitcoin is. And Satoshi said something like that as well in the beginning. But no, nothing has changed.

I'm still in awe with the simplicity of Bitcoin, of combining the encryption and the proof of work and the peer-to-peer, those three fundamental technologies into one thing where we don't need anybody to make an account. It's just a random number. The account, the private key, and the derived address is just a random number. Everybody can, the private key, and the derived address is just a random number. Everybody can make their own.

Nobody needed for that. Transactions, same thing. You can just make and send your own transactions. No need for a bank. And the network, peer-to-peer, that's how the music downloads and BitTorrent. You can't kill that. So good luck.

It's here to stay. It's like I see it as electricity, as the invention of the automobile or the internet itself. Indeed, it's not going away. And it's funny to see the central bank struggling with that. Like it reminds me of the telcos at the time. Like, hey, yeah, yeah, when Skype came. Yeah, yeah, shit. Now you can do voice calls for free on the internet

and our business model is gone. Oh, we're going to ban Skype and voice over IP from our internet subscriptions. Yeah. And right now the banks are saying, hey, you can't do Bitcoin transactions to fiat or we cap it at $1,000 or whatever. And they're all fighting their existential threat. But in the end, probably they'll embrace it like the telcos embraced it.

And that's very optimistic, actually. Yeah. I love your point about the central banks because very recently the European central bank, the ECB, came out with a statement basically on their blog that I believe it was entitled Bitcoin's Last Stand. And they sent out a tweet that said that Bitcoin was effectively being propped up artificially before its road to irrelevance. The exact quote, I found it. Artificially induced last gasp before the road to irrelevance. Is this not as glaring a bottom signal as you could possibly find. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And I say this as a person who worked with central banks for 25 years, day in, day out, on a daily basis. So, I mean, I know central banks have a great role, have played a great role in the past. It was necessary to have central banks. Not anymore, but they don't know that yet. It's logical. They're sort of myopic to that new invention because it threatens their business. But yeah, look at the pictures of the central bankers. It's mostly old people. They have no clue. Sometimes I think it's not even evil what they do. It's just a normal reaction of fighting a threat, a perceived threat. And it's just ignorance.

And that's what I see when I read headlines like that and reports and tweets like that. I see ignorance. What's interesting, it's like all of us, our parents said that our music was terrible, and then we grow up and we tell our kids that their music is terrible. It's the exact same phenomenon that you're describing. It's the grumpy old man who doesn't think that things should change. But that leads to the question, does the European Central Bank put out blog posts like this because they're ignorant and they don't get it? Or do you think it's more sinister and they're accepting that it's now a threat and trying to tear it down? Sort of, you know, first they laugh at you, then they fight you. Then they fight you stage.

It could be both. But I think it was Churchill that made that famous quote. This is classic. they fight you being in the then they fight you stage it could be both but i think was it churchill that made that famous quote this is classic of course this this question is classic question uh is it evil or is it ignorance uh and i think churchill said something and he like don't describe to evil what can be described to ignorance. So I guess 80-90% it's ignorance perceived as evilness. So yeah, I'd like to believe that. I think they really mean good. And again, talking as somebody who

has friends at the central bank and worked with central bankers for almost my entire life, they're not stupid. They're not the most innovative people either. Because the most innovative people in finance, they go work for a bank in the structured finance departments or the derivatives areas. And not at a central bank. So by definition, the central bankers are not very innovative, but they mean well. I think the only thing is they have a wrong, let's say,

old classic Keynes framework they use for all their actions so they really think that inflation a modest level of inflation like the two percent aim of the central bank is a good thing right where in fact it means that you'll lose your you you you certainly lose 2% of everything you own every year, and that adds up really quickly. Compounding, right. Yeah, the pounding. And that's an effect, of course, that even people like Einstein have described as the one thing that people don't understand.

Humans are really bad at understanding compounded interest, but that's exactly what it is. And why is that good? Central bankers deeply believe that if you have a thing like a deflationary currency like Bitcoin or no inflation, that people are going to hoard it and that it will not be available anymore for doing transactions.

So it will hinder the transactions and the real economy if you make it not inflationary. I think there's a very fundamental and interesting discussion to be had with the more innovative and intelligent central bankers. So I don't mean Lagarde or the other or the Powell guy. Those are just the CEOs, the presidents, and just talking the narrative. But the strategists at central banks, really, they are not stupid. And I think they would welcome a discussion like that as well about this fundamental framework. Is 2% inflation really the best thing for humanity?

Or could a deflationary asset or currency, money, I should say, lead to better solutions for humanity and better outcomes. And yeah, of course, I think the latter. Yeah, I mean, inflation is contrived growth, right? It's growth for the sake of growth. And then you can point to how things are going up and there's more jobs and all those things, but it's all artificial if the value of your money is decreasing. I mean, you've obviously, I'm sure I've had Jeff Booth on a number of times. He champions the idea of deflation being sort of utopian and clearly

you agree. But is there a way, even if we do have innovative central bankers who are younger, is there a way that we actually transition from the current ethos of monetary policy and inflation without a Great Depression to that deflationary utopia? I think we will because of the law of entropy, because that's how things go. If it is better, we will go there. And we can have attacks and FTX-like defaults and central banks not agreeing with it.

But in the end, if it's better, it will happen. And yeah, I think it is better. But we'll have to frame the discussion. We'll have to do the discussion in a way that even the old goats at the central bank understand it within their old frameworks. Or we just, I mean, that's more like the cyber or the cypherpunks solution. We just write the code and see where it ends. And I think that's what's playing out right now.

But yeah, I'm breaking my mind in coming up with a reasoning in central bank terms so that central bank people, not the Lagarde and Powells, but the strategists at the central bank can understand it. And where it's like the fundamental steel argument that drives this home. Right. I mean, Bitcoiners have been screaming from the top of the mountaintop that hyperinflation was coming, that inflation was an issue. These are not new arguments, but over the last year, that 2% has quickly, or last two years, has quickly risen to 8%, 9%, 10%, 11%, 12%, or 40% or 50%, depending on where you live in the world. Is this a train that they can slow? Or do you think that we were actually on that road to hyperinflation now? I mean, all of this hawkish tone and tightening hasn't had that much of an effect in a lot of places.

Yeah, well, I think I've been pretty clear in the past about it and that didn't change as well. Yes, I think we're on the road to quote unquote hyper you know, the money is printed. COVID happened, but it could have been any other emergency. The global financial crisis happened in 2008. The reason why Bitcoin was made as well, right? It was made at the height of the global financial crisis. Satoshi saw it coming. He didn't see COVID coming,

but he for sure knew there would be another emergency after the global financial crisis. It happened. It was COVID. And we printed trillions and trillions. The numbers don't even make sense anymore. It's just numbers. It's just zeros. So it happened.

You cannot turn that back. So the ghost is out of the bowl, and we'll have to deal with that. So will we have hyperinflation? I don't know. We had asset inflation. We see now it trickling down to real inflation. Like you say, a lot of people saw that coming and predicted that it's happening. And it will get worse. But, I mean, it's also like greed and fear. It's something that happens for centuries, even thousands of years. Even the Romans had this debasement thing. Satoshi liked to call it debasement instead of inflation.

I think that's more accurate. Because what does it mean, the hyperinflation? It just means that the money dies. It's not that everything is getting more expensive. No, it's just that the denominator, the currency, is getting worthless. And I like this example from the Romans that they, of course, diminished the silver, decreased later the silver content of their denarius. Of the coins.

Right. Yeah. And who were the ones to break that? To break that? That were their own soldiers. So they had to fight a lot of wars, a bit similar to today. I mean, not only wars with bombs, like in Ukraine,

but also wars of the mind, the SIOP wars, the media wars. Perception management is a military term now, I think. But the soldiers of the Romans said, hey, okay, we're going to fight that war for you, but you can keep your denarius and give us gold. If you give us gold or land, we will fight, but not that worthless paper coin that you have, your fiat. You can keep your fiat.

And I think people will, that will be the ultimate sign for me if people just stop using the dollar. And we're seeing that, actually. Not in Europe, where I am, and not in the U.S., or maybe a little bit on a personal level, but we see it in the BRICS countries. So, especially in Russia, the Middle East, China. Yeah, Russia. But Brazil, I think Brazil embracing Bitcoin recently is a very important step, not only because Brazil is a very large country

with more than 200 million population, which is, well, it's a little smaller than the U.S., but not much. But it's also part of the BRICS, together with India, Russia, China. So, yeah, it's the 1 billion U.S. and Europeans against the, what is it, 6 billion, 7 billion BRICS countries, I don't know who's going to win. But if they stop accepting our worthless dollars and euros, it's the end of it. It's really interesting you touch on Brazil having effectively adopted laws to embrace cryptocurrency trading and use as payments. Huge news, completely underreported and almost missed, I would say, by mainstream media.

You go back a year and a half and El Salvador making Bitcoin legal tender. OK, it was legal tender, so it's a more compelling term. But that was the biggest news in the world. And Brazil is a much larger country. This is much bigger news, in my opinion. Oh, absolutely. And they didn't make it. So Brazil didn't make it legal tender yet, like El Salvador did.

But it's also a bit of a naming game. I guess they're in talks with the IMF and being pressured by the IMF as well, Brazil, as to not to call it legal tender. But as soon as shops can accept Bitcoin and you can pay taxes in Bitcoin, et cetera, et cetera, then it is as much legal tender. So, yeah, you're right. I had to think about that same event, El Salvador. For years, we have dreamed about a country adopting Bitcoin. Then it happened and nothing, nothing with the price, a lot of media, but nothing really. And it is huge news, also legal from a legal point of view. So, but,

but yeah, so, so those things, those things are the real, it could as well be the, the trigger for, for the next bull run. Who knows?

I mean, we had China mining ban, we had the war in Ukraine, we had COVID, blah, blah, blah, for sure.

So the macro environment was bad. Maybe it will stay bad for a couple of months, but it will not stay bad forever. So there will be... It never does. It never does. Yeah. All you have to do is be patient.

I don't think there's anyone who, outside of maybe the mainstream or people who are not crypto native, who believes that we're never going to see another bull run again. Everybody knows we're going to eventually see new highs and that those things are going to happen. I think people just can't stand waiting. And I mean, you talked about the fact that we printed trillions of dollars. I mean, the statistics are out of

control. Almost half the money that was ever printed in the United States was printed in an 18-month period. And in November, we saw the U.S. Treasury Department report that U.S. gross national debt was over $30 trillion. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when a trillion dollars was a lot of money. $30 trillion, you never serviced that debt. No. It's funny that all institutional investors, all the pension funds, all the big banks, we all know the debt is never going to be repaid.

And it doesn't have to be repaid as long as it's rolled through, as rolled over into new debt. It's all okay. But I guess that will be difficult with higher rates, right? I mean, if the U.S. is already paying 25% of its revenue tax income, so the tax, 25% of tax revenue is paid on the on the paying off the debt and that's against those low rates so if those double well it yeah it runs out of steam very fast yeah it once again compounds in all the wrong in all the

wrong ways and you would think that that would just naturally lead people rationally to Bitcoin. And I don't think that that's really happened yet. And we've talked about, obviously, certain institutions. Everyone was hyped when MicroStrategy and Tesla came on board and put it in their treasury to protect against the inflation of their cash. Do you think that all the things that have happened since then will dampen that mood for any other pensions, endowments, the big wall of money from coming in? Or do you think that they're still looking at Bitcoin

as a realistic treasury asset? Yeah, I don't think at the moment a lot of institutions are looking at putting it on a balance sheet. They are, however, putting it in the funds. So that's not for their risk and return, but for the client's risk and return. So yeah, that will be the first step. And the ETF, of course, is a big thing. Why that isn't approved is something for the historians

and the lawyers later on. But you could say that all this, and I certainly see that like that, this whole FTX debacle with people bringing their money to the Bahamas outside the U S yours, jurisdiction, um, is in part to blame on this sec for not approving the, the, the a hundred percent. Yeah.

And not providing a legal framework is as bad as, as, as a not allowing the, it, yeah, not allowing the ETF is, is worse than allowing the ETF. By many multitudes.

And not only so, they didn't approve the ETF, obviously, which forces institutional investors either offshore into GBTC, which is trading at like a 50% discount now. But what I find insane is that they tried to effectively regulate by enforcement. So try to sue anyone who does anything they don't like. Never offer clarity. Force everyone offshore. When it inevitably blows up because they forced everyone offshore, then they try to come back in and use that as an excuse for heavy-handed regulation.

Yeah, and that's how you lose the game. And again, we've seen this for centuries, for centuries, countries come and countries go. I mean, Holland was once the ruler of the world with a big fleet going around the world and a reserve currency was the guildilder, the Dutch Gilder. But that ended and the Roman Empire ended. Why? Because in the end, you're going to do stupid things. Stupid leadership, stupid monetary policy, a lot of debasement, stupid wars, a lot of extravagancy. I don't know the English word for that, but it's decadency.

Crazy things. And I guess that's all okay. I mean, let Europe and the US ban it, make stupid laws. Brazil and the other BRICS countries will embrace it. And there's no doubt. And El Salvador. I always, for some reason, see this as a unique opportunity in history for Africa, South America, and parts of Asia, but also the Middle East. Don't forget the Middle East, who have been hijacked or bribed, I should say, by the US and Europe for their oil for decades.

What if they want a larger role than just being a supplier and be very rich, but a larger role in the world? And you see Dubai also already moving in that direction. It's like the new Hong Kong. It's so much energy, so much craziness as well. But yeah, I think it's an opportunity for the non-Europe, non-US part of the world. And that's 80, 90%. Yeah, you can absolutely see that happening, certainly in China, with the proliferation of

their central bank digital currency, right? I mean, that's a clear move to try to reduce dollar dominance. Yeah, yeah. To be honest, I don't think central bank digital currency is all bad, is 100% a bad thing. It's just something completely different than Bitcoin, for example. It's just a fiat with a more advanced database or more international and open interface. But of course, it has the same debasement. It has the same controls and freezing opportunities for the government. They're in full control. So it's not Bitcoin at all.

But it could be an adaption to the digital world like Africa also did with telco, right? They never had landlines really. Straight to mobile phones. Straight to mobile, yeah. So, no, even that, the harder the U.S. pushes for strict and crazy laws and does not allow ETFs. I mean, there's ETFs in Canada, in Sweden, in Germany, even Singapore.

Yeah, the hell with the US ETF. It all goes offshore. Yeah, I think they missed their opportunity with the ETF, to be quite honest. I think that when it's been rejected repeatedly, people have just found other ways to gain exposure to the asset class. And it would only be the door for those same institutions we talked about before, which would be huge, the endowments and such. But they exist elsewhere

and people are just going to eventually continue to move away from the United States. And it's sad. I mean, why would you ever, ever try to start a crypto-based or technology company in the United States at this point? Yeah, true, true. And it's also what I find really interesting. And I have lived a part of my life in the US. The population movement, the movement from California to Texas and from New York to Florida, that's very, very clear and ongoing. So, yeah, that should say something. And that at least is within the country, but it could

as well go outside the country and to places that are more welcoming to capital and entrepreneurs. I'm going to ask you a question you definitely don't want to answer, which is since we've said that the stock-to-flow model is still intact, assuming this next bull run comes, can we still talk about 100,000 and 288,000 and higher numbers than that? Yeah, I think so. I put the tweet out the other day that if we assume that the old model, the original 2019 model is correct, the 55,000 model, then the next halving could lead to prices somewhere,

and I make a very right range. some people don't like it, but somewhere between 100,000 and a million. So that's on average would be like indeed those 300,000 times three or divided by three as a range. But yeah,

one, two, 300,000. I would be really surprised. I'd be surprised if we don't. Yeah, I was 2, 300,000. I would be really surprised. I'd be surprised if we don't. Yeah, I was just going to say, if you don't want to say it, I'll say that. I'd be very surprised if that doesn't happen. Yeah, unless the stock-to-flow is really invalid or Bitcoin dies or something like that. Even removing stock-to-flow or, yes, of course, if Bitcoin dies, we have nothing to talk about. But removing even any of the models, if you just look at the cycles of Bitcoin, we are a few hundred days. every single halving to bottom back to halving cycle has repeated.

And right now in November, December, January would be the theoretical bottom, even just looking at the movement of Bitcoin's price between halvings. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I have no doubt whatsoever that we go to that 100,000, 1 million range. And no matter how you look at it, the current price is a steal if that's what you believe. So yeah, I'm very optimistic. But again, a model is a model.

But you can come to those numbers the way you did, just looking fundamentally. If adoption goes on, if more countries come in, if new buyers come in, don't forget that all the buyers above 60,000 already sold. They're gone. Yeah.

I mean, we're looking at 80% from the top, but there is nobody who bought at the top left anymore. So it's a crazy number to look at, essentially. And there's a lot of coins being sold last couple of months. And that's all at the 20 or sub-20,000 level. So all the new buyers, all the ones that have the coins right now are looking at 20,000, maybe a little bit less price. And they're

hoping, of course, for 100,000 or more. And they have the time. They'll wait a couple of years. No problem. I don't think it's going to take that long, to be quite honest. So in light of all of these meltdowns, Luna, 3AC, Voyager, Block 5, Celsius, FTX, the list continues.

What would you say to people who are looking to gain exposure to this market for the first time or who got burnt by one of those platforms and are still looking for a reason to stick around? Just stack stats. Just buy. If you believe in it, gain some exposure. If you don't have it, just start small. You probably have to if you lost a lot of money, which is a very different perspective than maybe fresh newcomers, but even to the newcomers that have a bunch of cash at the sidelines, I would suggest to start small just to gain experience with it. Read about it, read the newspaper, read the Bullish Case of Bitcoin article

and read the Bitcoin Standard. Those are the classics. And then just download an app from the App Store so that you hold your own keys, really. You have to have your own keys. And then open an account at an exchange, buy some coins, maybe $100 or less if that's too much or more if you want but uh and then play with it just just buy a beer uh send some to some some to the wallet of your wife or your kids or whatever and and then if you get familiar and and and at ease with it then raise, go from 100 to 1,000, and then maybe to whatever amount you want to risk.

But of course, never, ever invest more in Bitcoin or whatever other asset, but never invest more than you can afford to lose. But yeah, that's investment 101. Before I let you go, is there anything else besides Bitcoin that in amongst all this insanity in the world that you're looking at, are you still looking at metals? Are there any other assets that you still think are interesting and will be very important moving forward? No, I have to say I'm very much a-focused, and the other assets, once you're Bitcoin-focused, are not that interesting anymore. So, yeah.

Yeah, that's one thing. We call it a barbel in investment speak, a barbel strategy. And it means that most of the times, if you invest in the least risky assets, so that would be cash, for example, and the most risky asset, that would be Bitcoin. So partly 50% in the risk asset, 50% in cash, that often outperforms the 25 in this, 25 in that, and 10% in that, a well-spread portfolio with the middle risk assets. So I really like the barbell asset, the barbell strategy. Yeah, I know Talib talked about that a lot in Anti-Fragile, the barbell strategy, and it makes a ton of sense. I just

wish he was still a Bitcoiner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what happened to him. I love him. I love his books, but he has gone, something happened to him, I guess, lately. It seems that way. He wrote a book called Anti-Fragile, but he seems like the most fragile person in the world. I hate to say it because as you said, I love his books. It's one of those things where you say, you know, never meet your heroes. I think he has me blocked on Twitter for simply asking him a question about something. He did champion the barbell idea. He did. A lot of institutional investors like the idea, even if they haven't heard of TileApp. Yeah. Maybe the last thing, I think zero exposure is not the right exposure. If you're a retail investor or institutional investor, zero exposure to this new asset

would be a mistake, in my opinion. I could not agree more. And I think that's a great place to conclude. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this again. I know that you're exceptionally busy and very much in demand. I look forward, hopefully, to the next conversation being back in a more exciting price range for Bitcoin. What do you think? Thank you very much. And I'll sure be back. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Pleasure speaking with you.