The Wolf Of All Streets - SOL Pumping! | Druckenmiller: "l Should Own Bitcoin" | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

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Morning, everyone. Gareth, how are you doing today, buddy? Hey, I'm doing well. How about you? Doing pretty well. What do you make of the market at the moment? The stock market's on pause until we get the Fed tomorrow, and then Apple earnings Thursday and Friday, then on-farm payrolls. I think that the crypto market's on pause, waiting for the spot ETF, right? Yeah, I think that's true. Although every hint of news seems to move the market massively at this point, whether real or fake, right? Yeah, and that's exactly it. And you'recoins for now, the question is, you know,

my biggest question is, when we see that spot ETF approved, it's going to pop price. But does that put in a short term high on Bitcoin? Like is it a sell the news event afterwards? You know? Probably. I've been saying, you know, buy the rumor, by the after news dip yeah yeah i don't know that i want to get in front of that uh train picket you know as a dave weisberger always says picking up pennies in front of a steamroller not sure that i want to short something like that but uh certainly look to to get in if it does actually dip back we're waiting for ran to come up uh he's actually live uh at the moment at Solana DevCon. So we're going to get some perspective on what's happening there. We often

see, obviously, some significant price movement when we have conferences like this. So wondering if that had anything to do with this sort of large Solana move, Gareth, you talked about, you know, that maybe that was the catalyst and now it's continuing up during that. And once again, we often get a sort of a sell off afterwards. Have you taken a look at Solana at all, Garrett? Like the actual chart? Yeah, yeah. So, so interestingly enough, I have dabbled in on the short side just a little bit up in this range. So, you know, again, I'm not so familiar with the moves at different events, but just based on the chart, we're now getting back to levels around this 3637 level where there's a lot of resistance up here. And it doesn't mean it can't push through. But But to me, it's, it's getting a little long in the tooth. And again,

for me, it's it's a shorter term trades, I want to be clear on that. It's nothing against Solana, it's just I just look to make money on little moves in price. So if Solana pulls back two bucks, I'm out and I look to maybe buy the dip at that point. But I do think it's getting a little long in the tooth and I'd be interested to hear what Rain has to say. Yeah, I'm interested when he pops up too. Real quick, everybody, as we wait for them, I'm just going to go ahead and I guess cook through the main news stories that we do have today. There's a few. It's been surprisingly, even with all this price move, it's been sort of, I think, a calm time. As Garrett said, sort of on pause in a lot of markets waiting for FOMC.

The Bitcoin market showing a lot of signs of life, especially the altcoins with market cap going up, which indicates there is some actual new capital here. But I think the big money is still waiting for the ETF, to his point. But here's some of the sort of the bigger stories that we have today. Bitcoin address activity slows, but record 40 million in profit. 40 million wallets in profit is the most that we've ever had, even with price trading at half effectively of what the all-time high was. If you guys have looked at the metrics, for people who dollar cost averaged into Bitcoin at any amount weekly,

even if the first day the dollar cost averages at the all time high, you're massively in profit right now because price was so low for so long. I see that Rand is popping in right now. And so it's really just show you the the the benefit of doing that dollar cost averaging continuing to buy assets that you like, especially because then you get that sort of discount for a very long time. So even if you bought at the all-time high, doing well. A16Z plans new $3.4 billion fund. That one's going to give Mario wet dreams

because nobody loves talking about venture capital investment in the crypto space more than Mario. $3.4 billion fund is an absolutely massive, massive fund. Vitalik had a new blog post on L2s. It's worth checking out. Raoul Pal, this is one of the headlines. Funny because it came from my conversation with him on Sunday on my podcast. But he said a spot ETF coming after BTC.

I think that's probably a very likely conclusion to come to because there will be no reason for them to reject a spot ETF if the justifications for a Bitcoin spot ETF are there. Drunken Miller, I should own Bitcoin. We're going to dive into that later. CZ said that fiat currencies will vanish soon. And speaking of people that said things that are strange, not saying that one is. SPF says not sure 150 times on stand. Rand, I'm not sure if you're able. I'm keep trying to bring you up, but it's not showing you connected. But maybe you are. But yeah, SPF said the words not sure 150 times on the stand. He's playing the I don't recall that card. Spain brings forward

crypto rules by six months after EU pressure. Crypto asset manager Valkyrie amends spot Bitcoin ETF filing. I had Steve McClurg on my YouTube this morning manager Valkyrie amends spot Bitcoin ETF filing. I had Steve McClurg on my YouTube this morning from Valkyrie. He said that as much as it keeps being shown as a news headline, these slight updates to everyone's filings are absolute nothing burgers.

Hong Kong advances CBDC pilot bringing EHTD trials to phase two and the Bitcoin white paper, of course, turning 15 here. so we're trying to get uh ran up on stage just not see oh brand you're here can you hear i'm up i'm up i'm up i'm up yeah okay okay listen we did it we started talking about the fact that solana obviously is pumping the fact that sometimes that can be driven by hype coming into conferences hype hype at conferences, but I want the on-the-ground update. What's it like? Is it crowded? What's the vibe?

Yeah, so I came here just, I actually didn't come here to make content. I came here because I wanted to understand what's really happening in the Solana ecosystem. Let's just say that I'm hugely, hugely, hugely impressed. It's in Amsterdam. The halls are full. When I say full, probably 3,500 to 4,500 people at the conference. A very well-organized event.

But I think the thing that impresses me the most about this conference and the most about the people that are here is that this is not retail investors. What's left here are 3,500 to 4,500 active developers, geeks, people funding. It's that kind of market. So I'm really, really, really excited to see what I saw here today. I walked into this pretty bullish and as i've seen um the the caliber of people that are in here and the number of people that are in here and the energy that's here i think i'm much more confident that i think solana becomes the number three i think i think

eventually it goes bitcoin ethereum solana and um you know i just don't think that there's any layer one that should that has anything close to this other than Ethereum. That's interesting. That's bigger than consensus in the United States, which wasn't obviously a conference just for a single protocol or blockchain. You and I keep talking about the fact that once you exit the United States, it's like there's no bear market. You really get the excitement for what's being built and what's happening. But I mean, 3,500 to 4,500 people not retail is insane. The big thing here, Scott, is that Solana was dead exactly a year ago because FTX collapsed. And everyone just thought because FTX was seeding all these projects that Solana would just collapse. The big talk now is that actually at that point,

FTX was, I'm not going to say toxic because they weren't negative, but they weren't all good because they were just investing in projects. They were investing without doing any kind of due diligence. And they were bringing, if you want to call it, the wrong kind of project onto chain here. All that's out, all the frost is out. And now what you're seeing is you're seeing real development.

For those people who are really technical in the crowd, Solana is launching a thing called FireDancer, which is a reconstruction of their validator infrastructure, which is being done by jump, which should get this thing to millions of

transactions per second like you're talking like serious numbers here numbers that you can't even describe them in blockchain and i mean they launched in testnet they either have launched or they are launching a testnet now which i think it's actually live now on testnet and it's actually working which means that it's you know you could soon see a much, much, much faster Solana and much cheaper Solana. So, yeah, I mean, I must say I walked in here pretty neutral. I mean, bullish, but more I came here quite inquisitive. And I'm here now and I'm bullish as can be on Solana. I really think it's going to be Solana number three, Ethereum number two, and Bitcoin number one for the next cycle.

Yeah, I mean, we talked to Raoul Paul last week. I had him on the podcast on Sunday. And you basically just described his thesis. I mean, he thinks the same thing. We sort of had everything on ETH cycle last time. And he thinks it's going to be everything on Solana because he finally did a deep dive into Firedancer, which you just described. I mean, there's a lot of people now who are thinking, you know also i think you get some of the like people were angry i was saying i remember when i went to ethereum devcon um in the midst of the bear market the first bear market that ethereum was alive in

and i remember i went to the first ethereum devcon and i remember the thing that impressed me about the ethereum devcon was the Assyrium Defcon was the caliber of brainpower walking in the halls. Because that was like, like, I just remember, I'd never seen so many smart people in one place. And I'm getting the same kind of feeling now. I'm getting the same feeling now. I guess the question that like, that we always come back to is it's amazing that we have things like fire dancer or obviously the merge and scaling for all these protocols but how do we actually utilize that speed in other words where does the adoption come from that that's even necessary

look most projects that i speak to him and i ask them you know why solana why not ethereum and they say look for what for what we're trying to build, you can't use Ethereum. Because it's just, you know, like, for example, order books on-chain. You can't do that on Ethereum because every time you move an order from, you know, one cent up, one cent down,

you need to put in a new transaction and pay new gas fees on Solana. And specifically, if you add Solana FireDance onto it, then all of a sudden, you can do real world applications. Funny enough, on stage now a few minutes ago was, I think her name is Catherine Gu and she's the head of CBDCs and payment or crypto at Visa. And they were very, very, very excited

about the transaction speeds. And if you look at Jeremy Allais, Jeremy Allais also tweeted today. He said, like, with these numbers, we can get really, really, really excited. So I think what may happen is that Solana will become the money blockchain. And I think today Tron kind of fulfills that. But I think Solana may actually become the money blockchain with all the developments that are going on here. Yeah, the USDC news was kind of one of those bear market things that nobody talked about we did obviously maybe a couple months ago and seems like one of those that's going to just gain major

traction as price goes up right i mean faster cheaper stable coins on solana and we always try to talk about that the USDT, most of the transaction volume, like you said, comes on Tron and nobody has a favorable view of Tron. Literally. Well, look, I've asked, I've gone around there and I've asked many companies that are developing on Solana. I said, look, why are you developing

on Solana? And I was very, like, you know me, once I start chewing the bone, I don't let it go. And so I putted them, I said, okay, why not Ethereum? And they said, look, too slow, too expensive. I said, okay, great. So use Ethereum Layer 2. They said, look, the problem with Ethereum Layer 2

is that you're constantly bridging between Layer 1 and Layer 2. And bridges represent, I mean, we know what bridges represent. We know what the problem is with bridges and stuff like that. And they said it's a very clunky experience. They call layer one, layer two. Now apparently there's a new thing called layer threes. And they say that's just a layer of headaches you have to go through as a

developer when you're developing on the protocol. Then I prodded them and said, okay, well, why not develop on Aptos and Sui? Because, you know, in theory, Aptos and Sui are built using a language called move move is a a newer derivative of of of rush which is solana's language and most of them say that the culture of the aptos and sui blockchains doesn't suit what they're trying to do and that they don't have any kind of community and i agree and what

we're realizing with solana is that a they've got very good technology b vcs are starting to feel more comfortable that they've turned that corner the same corner that east turned when we when everyone declared east dead at 80 or whatever it was in the in the previous bear markets and then you know the third thing is solana's got a very vibrant community. You know, the community follows them around the world. We're here in Amsterdam. The conference venue is about 25 to 30 minutes away from the central city. So it's not very similar to the setup that they had in Lisbon.

And what you have there is you have coffee shops in Amsterdam filled with people talking about crypto, talking about Solana. You can see the meetings happening in the lobbies of the hotels and stuff like that. And remember, this is unlike a normal consensus where everything happens around the hotel. This is half an hour away from any kind of hotel. That's really interesting. Let us know when you need to run i know that you uh we weren't even expecting i i'm i'm here to talk i'm here to talk for a while i'm actually i've

just got away from the uh the space the uh conference and all the the hype i'm sitting in a corner in the dining room here talking to you guys i'm sorry to keep going with you i know we have a big panel but you but you're on the ground. What are the most exciting things that you've seen? Was there anything new that's being built that was unexpected? New use cases for blockchain, new crypto use cases? Or is it more of like people building just the same ideas that were on Ethereum now doing it on Solana? I think so far day one has been really about Solana the protocol.

I haven't spent much time talking to projects, talking to new projects that I'm going to do tomorrow. Day one is focused on Solana the protocol, big partnerships, Visa in about an hour. Google is going to be on stage. Their Google Cloud team are going to be on stage, talking on stage.

I don't know what they're going to talk about. As I said, Visa was on. It just feels like today is about the protocol. FireDance was on earlier today. They're on again tomorrow. So today it's been less about projects and more about how good this Layer 1 is. And let me tell you, this layer one is unbelievable.

It's like, you know, I've been to lots of dev cons. I've never seen this combination before. I haven't seen it for many years. I mean, probably I saw it in Ethereum a long time ago, but since then I haven't seen this kind of combination before.

Which is funny because I still think there's a perception even pre-FTX that Solana was the chain that shuts down or doesn't work or fails. But it's actually been quite a long time. Yeah, I think it's, don't quote me on the numbers, but I think it's had about 10 months of no shutdowns or something like that, which is, you know, also remember why Solana was being shut down. Solana was being shut down because the transaction fees are so low

that it's actually viable for you to spam the network. Because to spam the network and try and shut it down costs you almost nothing. You couldn't do the same thing on Ethereum because the gas fees are just not worth the bot attack. Now, it seems like they've solved it through a whole lot of very smart engineering. It seems like they've solved it, as I said, I think they've had about whole lot of very smart engineering. It seems like they've solved it, as I said, in about 10 months of straight-up time. And, yeah, I mean, it's, again, very bullish.

Just seems positive. Everything's positive here. Anybody else on the panel closely following Solana in development? Tony, obviously, you have a podcast. You're interviewing a lot of people in this space. Do you have any thoughts here? Nothing in addition to add, but like you, I've spoken to Raul Pal and quite a few folks who are bullish on Solana, but you know, I personally don't think it's going to be an ETH killer,

but certainly we'll see how things play out. But nothing else to add. Yeah. Rand, are people still even using the term eve killer no no i mean look i think everyone knows that ethereum is going to be the biggest layer one uh for smart contracts at least for the next cycle i don't know what happens after that um but i think what you get a sense when you talk to developers is that building on a layer two is not as elegant as building directly onto layer one.

And I think what these guys are talking about is they're building onto layer one. Now again, the big question is if you want to build directly onto layer one, there's a lot of applications that want to build directly onto layer one. Where do you go if you're not going to go into Ethereum because of the gas fees?

Yeah, a year ago, you would have thought that nobody would touch Solana with a 10-foot pole. So it's really interesting that they've been able to overcome that sort of stigma and all that happened a year ago. I thought that was really impressive. Go ahead, Nick. I was actually just going to ask Ryan a question. And the question is, you know, what is their plan? Or have you heard of new wallets there? What's their plan to get user acquisition away from EVM compatible chains

and MetaMask and what people are familiar with and to start using Solana like Phantom Wallet or is there new wallets? And then kind of what's their strategy to get that to happen? I think it feels like to me me, their strategy is to cultivate the developer network. And that's why I said, this is not a retail-centric conference. The talks are not retail-centric at all.

In fact, I think most of retail, with respect, I think most of retail probably wouldn't enjoy or understand a lot of the tech talk that's here. It's become much more of a, I'm not going to say it's a dev conference,

because it's not exactly a developer conference. But I think their structure here is to nurture the developer ecosystem to build really cool shit. And I'll just, I'll read you something because I took a photo.

I'm going to go into my photos. I try to read you something about NFTs. So if you were to mint 10,000 NFTs on Solana, it will cost you 18 to mint 10 000 of the same nfts on ethereum would cost you 30 000 and to mint the same 10 000 on polygon would cost you 52 now let's go into a higher number let's go into a million nfts if you wanted to mint a million nfts on solana 141 if you wanted to mint a million NFTs on Solana, $141.

If you wanted to mint on Ethereum, it would cost you $3 million. And if you want to do it on Polygon, it would cost you $5,000. So you're talking about how do you get adoption? You get adoption by creating NFTs that don't cost a lot of money to mint and to move around. And so that's what they're focusing on. They're saying, look, if we can build the network, the developers will build the cool shit and the investors and then the retailers will come and use the product.

They're not doing it in a fake approach. When I say fake approach, a fake approach for me is we'll incentivize you with an airdrop. Because we know what happens with those airdrop farms. We know exactly what happens. You know, you get the airdrop, you sell your airdrop, and then you leave and you probably never come back to the chain, even though you've downloaded the wallet. But hey, you count as a user, so good for you. You know what I mean?

So I think their approach is just keep building cool shit. Build it and they will it and see what happens. If you build it, they will come. Exactly. Marshall, go ahead. Yeah. Hey, Ren. Look, I'm not going to bash anything about Solana.

I guess the question is if a lot of people believe that Solana is going to be the money chain, because it is so easy, I guess maybe by design or not, I'm not an expert, to restart their money chain because it is so easy i guess maybe by design or not i'm not an expert um to like restart their chain and move it is there anybody talking about like regulatory concerns where maybe there's a lot more oversight on this chain from government entities because it can be shut down etc etc well look number one i think and as i say i don't want to speak too soon but it sounds to me like they've resolved a lot of those shutdown issues again the reason why those shutdown issues happened is because it was so cheap to attack the network with transactions that's why it happened which is now no longer the case um again i said it's had 10 months of of uptime and touch wood it continues um in terms of regulatory i think that

there's not much talk about it here we haven't had this is not an american conference we haven't had the you know american conferences and america in general is all about regulation right that's the narrative in the states but i think as soon as you move out of the out of the states the talk is very little about regulation and it's much more about innovation so like when i went to korea earlier this year um same thing like they're not really talking about regulation that's like their approach is that the regulators will regulate around the innovation in the u.s it's the other way around the innovators will innovate around the regulation and that's very that's very, very much an American mentality.

And as soon as you leave America, regardless of whether you're in Amsterdam or Lisbon last year or Korea or Hong Kong, that's not their mentality. That's very much an American way of thinking. A hundred percent. I mean, we've said it a million times, but I couldn't believe the stark contrast both years that I've now basically gone from a conference in the United States right over to Singapore for a conference in Asia. It's like worlds apart. Nobody's talking about SDF. Well, maybe at Solana they might be. But certainly in Singapore, nobody's talking about SDF. Nobody's talking about BlockFi or Southeast Asia Voyager.

They're not talking about Gary Gensler. They literally don't give a shit. It's like there was never a bear market and never this contagion. Yeah. I mean, look, after having attended the token 2049 in Singapore and, you know, being here and I've done my fair share of conferences, I must say my appetite to go back to the U S conferences next year is very, very, very, very low. I mean mean i'll probably do some of them just because i have a lot of you know a lot of our channel and a lot of people here uh i like to go and network with the community so i'll probably do it but in terms of priority in terms of which conferences

are the most important the ones that are the most important are the ones outside of the u.s the ones in korea the ones in japan uh the ones here in Amsterdam, or this one's moving to Singapore next year. And what you can see is that they also now, they've broken away from running these conferences in the US. They're not running these conferences in the US. They don't want to worry about regulation. Here, sponsors, any sponsor can be a sponsor without worrying about the SEC taking them down

or giving them a penalty or perhaps saying that they're trying to woo American participation. So I think what's ended up happening is that the U.S. conferences are actually quite unimportant in the big scheme of things now. It's unfortunate. I think the U.S. is unimportant. Yeah. of things now it's unfortunate because i think the u.s is an important challenge yeah i think you can take that a step further and say the u.s is becoming unimportant in the grand scheme of things for crypto which is a really sad thing to say as an american but like how many people are aggressively trying to build something here well it is but then what's happening now is you're

realizing just how important the u.s is and that's the second part of what we want to speak about today on The Spaces, which is talking about the investors in America who control so much money now saying that they don't own enough Bitcoin or that they should own Bitcoin. So, you know, maybe you can say, okay, America's become a little bit unimportant, but now look at the price action that is being created because of the ETF in the United States. Actually, I should be more clear. I think American money is very important.

I just think that the innovation in the space is moving offshore and it's going to continue with or without us. And so the sort of idea of the United States was a bastion of technology and leading in every single new technological innovation, when you have a gerontocracy of 85-year-olds who scream, hey, you kids, get off my lawns, anything new that they don't understand. And this is not unique to blockchain anymore.

It's the same for AI, right? We've talked about this, but they're making the same arguments against AI now that they have been making against Bitcoin for years. They're just scared of anything new that they don't understand and they can't control. But that was a nice segue, obviously, because you're talking about clearly Druckenmiller, who said he should own Bitcoin. I'll read you guys his exact quote. Of course, Stanley Druckenmiller is one of the most famous investors of all time. The context is he was having a fireside chat with Paul Tudor Jones. So that should be noted since Paul Tudor Jones is a notorious Bitcoin bull.

He's been favorable on Bitcoin for a very long time. So you should know who he was talking to and why they were saying it. This is what he said. He said, I'm 70 years old. I own gold. I was surprised that Bitcoin got going. But you know, it's clear that the young people look at it as a store of value because it's a lot easier to do stuff with.

17 years, to me, it's a brand. I like gold because it's a 5,000-year-old brand, but the young people have all the money, certainly the ones on the West Coast do, he told Paul Tudor Jones. So I like them both. I don't own any Bitcoin, but I should. And you guys, now I'm looking for the actual tweet. I know we have it, but he's not the only person who is rapidly changing their tone on this asset class. I'll find it. But El-Erian also had a very similar comment, which was out of nowhere.

I'm going to pull it up right now. And this was in the context, I believe, basically, that the Treasury sees demand slump in $35 billion 10-year option amid bond yield surges. And so Mohamed El-Erian at the Dubai AIM Summit said he likes a barbell portfolio of cash and Bitcoin. Anyone who's read Nassim Tlaib understands the idea of the barbell, basically avoiding everything in the middle and being heavy on both ends. Who said that, Scott? That was Mohamed El-Erian. So obviously, CIO of PIMCO, Harvard management,

chief economist, advisor to Insure Alliance. I mean, you know, one of the bigger sort of legacy market voices now saying that that's his preferred strategy. So this isn't just Druckenmiller. These guys obviously get it. Larry Fink is on TV doing a roadshow, whether it's in the interest of BlackRock or he actually believes it, saying that crypto is a flight to quality. Like, this is where the United States, to your point, is really, really important. Tony, I see you have your hand up.

And after you, I want to ask Andy a couple of questions about this. Go ahead, Tony. Yeah, Scott, I wanted to just say that. Oh, OK. I just want to say that we've seen this story before. If you recall back in 2020, Paul Tudor Jones kicked off

that bullish narrative around Bitcoin when he said it was the fastest horse in the race. And then Druckenmiller came about a month or two after that. And there was some other, Bill Miller and these guys started popping out of the woodwork. We're seeing that story play out again. And to your point, many of them are going on mainstream TV and media and pushing that narrative. So it certainly makes me bullish. And it just takes me back to 2020 when they were making the rounds doing this.

Yeah, and this time they'll likely have a spot ETF to buy if they're afraid of buying spot Bitcoin for better or for worse, right? Okay, Andy, I wanted to talk to you. Yeah, Andy, I want to talk to you about this narrative. Obviously, owners of Miles Franklin, you have pretty deep perspective on metals. Hearing them compare this to gold,

do you view Bitcoin as a digital gold? Do you think it's a risk asset? Where do you really think this falls? I don't really, I've never really looked at it as digital gold, but I look, I've always believed that they, in many ways, are cut from the same cloth. They speak to the same issues, and they ought to speak to the same person. I have always, always been of the belief that it shouldn't be an either or it should be a both. I think they complement one another. To me, Bitcoin represents opportunity. It represents many of the same things that gold does in terms of freedom from the matrix or the ability to have your assets and your own possession free from any counterparty risk. To me, that's really the most important thing, at least from

a standpoint of the way that I look at the world. I think counterparty risk will be a very nasty buzzword in the future as things start to unwind a bit. And I think that, you know, from a historical point of view, the world has used government bonds as a savings vehicle. And I think this is not a historical precedent. This is somewhat, in terms of history, a relatively new concept. And I think it's beginning to fade. And as it does, I think the main benefactors will be not only gold and silver, but also Bitcoin. And I have no problem in saying that. But I think the way that I look at the world would say that both gold and Bitcoin should be owned,

both gold and Bitcoin should be part of everyone's portfolio. And I think it was Stanley Druckenmiller who was saying, if I understood that right, that you're right. I mean, gold has that history. Gold is being accumulated by central banks. That doesn't mean I don't understand the virtues of Bitcoin. I certainly do. And I guess if I were going to appeal to anyone out there, it's that this doesn't have to be a contentious either or situation. I think your portfolio is only stronger having allocations to both. And we see that with our client base, and we advocate for it. So it's, it's certainly not all gold all the time. But I do think that they're very similar, and at least in the way that they both should be part of people's portfolio. Yeah, I mean, you talked about the fact that bonds or treasuries have sort of become a de facto

savings account, people see 5%, they obviously jump on it. I almost joked that it's like stimulus for wealthy people. They can just get 5% with their cash on the sidelines. But we just saw that the US Treasury is going to estimate to borrow $776 billion more in the fourth quarter, right? After, I believe, over a trillion in the last quarter before that, we know that the debt has now gone up from $31 trillion to over $33 trillion in a matter of months since the debt ceiling was raised. And we're seeing extremely poor demand in these auctions. Nobody wants these things. That's right.

And that's my point. That's not a very good saving. No, it's not. And that's why if very good saving no it's not and that's why if you're buying treasuries it better be really really short-term duration and i guess the bigger issue to me and you're right and when we talk about that 33 trillion dollar debt it it it excludes the elephant in the room and that is medicare medicaid social, and government military pensions, which exceed 130 trillion in and of themselves a trillion seconds ago, being 31,688 years ago. The numbers are so big, it's incredible. But the bigger argument or the bigger, I guess you could say, point for both gold and

Bitcoin is that, you know, we have eclipsed 130% debt to GDP. And if you go back through history, literally every single time, 100% of the time, any country that has eclipsed a debt to GDP ratio of 130% has defaulted on their debt. And whether it be through massively high inflation or outright default, it's a line that once you cross, no one has successfully came back from. So when you talk about the reasons to own precious metals and the reasons to own cryptocurrencies, I think the main deviation is this. I mean, if I had to sum it up and say, what do I think is the main difference in opinion or in ideology, to me, I'm not looking to get rich when I buy gold and silver. Now, I think there's a very

compelling argument with silver, where you could make a lot of money on many levels. But when I'm buying gold and silver, I am using it because it is wealth that has outlived two world wars, German hyperinflation, the Great Depression, to what Stanley Druckenmiller says for 5,000 years, it's been considered wealth. I think people don't buy Bitcoin to protect themselves as much as they do looking for the wild profit potential. And in the back of their mind, they understand that it offers an exodus from the matrix. And that is certainly icing on

the cake. But so if you look at it that way, the way that you can marry the two is, is to scrape profits from your cryptocurrency holdings and put it into gold and build both portfolios, you know, take a certain amount of profit, leave the the principal let it continue to grow and take that profit off the table in gold and both items give you liberation and freedom from a matrix that is closing in upon us rapidly so yeah like them both that was a very good yeah that was a very nice way of saying that most people who buy bitcoin are speculating and trying to get rich but that's a transition and most people, I think that the idea there is people buy gold and silver, not necessarily to get rich, but to make sure they don't go poor, right? That's right.

And that's why they should be together. Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's wealth protection. I think it's interesting that still the registered investment advisor community in the United States and the overwhelming sentiment and strategy is still a 60-40 portfolio, even though it's performed worse. It is the worst performing time for a 60% equity, 40% bond portfolio in history. I can't comprehend why we don't at least hear a 60-35-5 portfolio and literally choose the five. You like silver? Great. You like Bitcoin? Great. You like gold? Great. Why are we not hearing these people?

Why are we not hearing these investment advisors and such at least saying to have some sort of alternative asset at this point in your portfolio? And Andy and David, I want to ask you the same question. It sure ought to. I mean, when you the bitcoin spot etf or these etfs that all the big money managers are advocating for oh perhaps they'll change their tune it's a situation where a lot of these advisors and i'm not speaking all of them because certainly there are a lot who understand what's going on but many have their head buried you know where where they've learned more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing. They focus so singularly upon one ideology like the 60-40 ideology, which to your point was the worst performing ever and the worst performing 10-year treasury ever. when you inject as much money into the system as we have more in the last four years than in the history of the country before it, while keeping interest rates suppressed, you create anomalies

in asset values. And as these asset values find equilibrium in a rising interest rate environment, that 60-40 portfolio is going to get its ass handed to it. So you're right. I think it's more along the lines of if you're going to delegate authority to a financial advisor or a money manager, you're missing perhaps the most important thing to take accountability for. And the people on this Twitter space, I would venture to say, understand the world better than the majority of the people who are managing everyone's money, because they look at it from more of a holistic view rather than this, this microscopic view that is getting smaller and smaller and smaller based upon a, a, an investment ideology that is getting tougher and tougher and tougher to, to squeeze the profits out of as, as things are changing. So I guess I would simply say say you let your gut be your,

your financial advisor and take control away from the people who are supposedly looking out for your best interest, because perhaps you are, even if you are not an accredited advisor, perhaps your wisdom, your intellect and your due diligence and, and education through alternative media sources like this, perhaps they make you more qualified to be an advisor at this time in the world. So I guess that would be my two cents that your guts, your best and financial advisor these days. Love that. I saw that David actually left. Preston, you haven't had a chance to weigh in

any thoughts on what we've been discussing. No, not really. I mean, I'm a lawyer. If I had thoughts on investment, I wouldn't be a lawyer. I'd be on a beach in Tahiti. Most people have thoughts on investments or not on the beach in Tahiti, to be quite honest. They usually lose all their money. So I think you're doing quite well, probably a lawyer. Tony, Nick, any thoughts? The panel got thinner here. Well, I guess not. I guess we will move on and move on to wrap since we lost Rand and lost David there. Really incredible conversation, I think, specifically about Salon and what's happening on the ground there. Definitely made me feel more bullish on that. Not something that I've been particularly invested in or looking at too deeply either.

Then, of course, the fact that we have El-Erian and Druckenmiller and, once again, Paul Tudor Jones, Bill Miller, all of them talking about this. I think this ETF is coming, and this is sort of the advanced roadshow. Go ahead, Nick. Yeah, I was just going to follow up and comment on Solana as well. Something I haven't followed too much. I've used a little bit. I've done trading publicly on Twitter and whatever around around it but definitely sold this rally a little early just uh i guess i need to revisit based on what ron is rain is saying the excitement he has for the future of solana

and i think a lot of the fud is as far as the fear of ftx having to liquidate the solana is is subsiding and the reason being is people actually did the research the vesting terms on that solana is a bull isn't even going to be available for FTX to do anything with until 2025. And then that extends all the way out until 2028. Didn't they stake a bunch of it? They staked about $5 million. Yeah, I think they actually, to say the estate, I mean, not that they can't pull that out or it's not future selling pressure, but I think the idea that they were going to mass liquidate any of these assets and by the way those are just the same repetitive stupid

narratives that we get over and over to get over and over again in this space i'm still waiting for mount cox uh bitcoin to be dumped on us and crush the market which hasn't happened since the day i joined this space in 2016 celsius was supposed to kill the market voyager sell sell off was supposed to crush the market none ofager's sell-off was supposed to crush the market. None of that is valid narratives. It's just talking heads trying to come up with something. Yeah, but I think that's why I follow a lot of the speakers in these spaces, just because you're level-headed, looking for the details. It behooves these people not to just market sell and crush the prices, because that just means they get less cash to try to make their former customers whole. And, you know, like I said, the vesting schedule,

a bulk of this isn't until 2025. A lot of us think that being the height of the bull market. So you have some time to trade and hold and utilize Solana before you even need to worry about that once again. Like you said, historically, these conferences, you have a rally and then we have some kind of subsequent sell the news event, some red candles. But even like I think it was Tony, he's doing a short up here, but still looking. He said it looking to buy back and get long again, even if it only was Gareth. Yeah. Yeah. Just to be clear, I don't want everybody to think that Tony shorting Solana. That was Gareth. Sorry about that. Sorry about that. He popped off. So, but nonetheless, I think this tells me I need to take a deeper look at Solana and

maybe make some content around Solana and see what's really going on there. And it looks like they have a lot of exciting products coming in the very short term future. Conversations with Raul. Go ahead. How do you know I'm not shorting Solana, my friend? I don't, but I know that you didn't say it. And we've all gotten caught in the fun of crypto before. So I just wouldn't want anyone to think that.

But Tony, now I'm going to say maybe could possibly potentially be shorting Solana. I don't know. All right, guys. Listen, you're probably already following the follow Crypto Town Hall. Follow all the speakers up here. Incredible perspective. Really enjoyed the conversation as always. And we will be back tomorrow,

10, 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Thanks, guys.