Unchained - Bits + Bips: Why Warren Buffett's Strategy Would Lose Big Time in Crypto - Ep. 830

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Crypto doesn’t reward fundamentals. It rewards attention. So what does that say about how investors, like Warren Buffett, would fare today? In this week’s Bits + Bips, the crew dissects what’s really behind this rally, why Ethereum’s sentiment problem may run deeper than roadmap delays, and how the stablecoin bill turned into a political tug of war. Plus: Apple and NFTs: why this matters more than people think Whether tariffs are about politics or actual policy Why Bessent is “the best” in the Trump administration And why Buffett’s era may be ending, with Portnoy rising in his place 😬 Sponsor: Bitwise James Seyffart, Research Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence Alex Kruger, Founder of Asgard Ram Ahluwalia, CFA, CEO and Founder of Lumida Katalin Tischhauser, Head of Research at Sygnum Bank Macro  Bloomberg: Trump Suggests Some Trade Deals May Come as Soon as This Week -  Asymmetric Market Update™️ #29 May 2025 Newsletter: A Trade Breakdown - Lyn Alden Stagflation bears are wrong? Reuters: Dollar slips as Taiwan dollar surge sparks revaluation talk WSJ:  Tariffs Threaten Semiconductor Supply Chains, Chip-Equipment Maker Warns Bessent’s oped: Trump’s Three Steps to Economic Growth Buffett on Tariffs Buffet: The Natural Course of Government is to make Currency worth less overtime ETH pivot Unchained:  Ethereum Gave Away Too Much for Too Long. Will Its Pivot Be Enough? Ethereum Ecosystem Shifts Toward User Focus Ethereum Developers Vote EOF Out of Fusaka Hard Fork Vitalik Buterin Proposes Replacing Ethereum Virtual Machine The Block:  Vitalik and new Ethereum Foundation co-executive directors outline updated board structure, mission Vitalik Buterin- and StarkWare-backed Kakarot reveals alternative Ethereum ZK stack, targeting real-time STARK proofs on Layer 1 by end of 2025 CoinDesk: Ethereum Could Supercharge Transaction Speed to 2,000 TPS Thanks to Bold New Proposal Simplifying the L1 by Vitalik Buterin Stablecoin bill: POLITICO: Why the Senate crypto bill is in turmoil Latest on the Senate's "GENIUS Act" by Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy  Timestamps: 🚪 0:00 Intro 👋 1:01 Katalin’s background 📦 3:40 The real motive behind tariffs, according to Katalin 😬 11:43 What the market is forgetting to price in 🇪🇺  18:57 How Europe views Trump’s trade moves 🤝 21:33 Trump thinking that U.S. companies are cutting bad deals with China 🧠 26:04 Why Bessent’s op-ed made waves, and why Alex calls him the smartest in Trump’s crew 📉 29:13 The collapse in U.S. manufacturing employment, despite a surge in production 🧓 33:12 Buffett’s exit and his old-school take on tariffs in a new-school market 🌀 39:46 Will Ethereum’s pivot actually improve the price? ⚖️ 51:28 The impact of the political mess around the stablecoin bill 💸 53:53 Ripple’s attempted Circle acquisition and why Ram wouldn’t touch XRP 🍎 1:00:43 Importance of Apple quietly opening the door to NFTs and crypto sales 💱 1:03:34 What’s up with the Taiwanese dollar 💻 1:06:05 Why adding tariffs to chips could backfire big time Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When it comes to the market, I'm ready to basically sell, take profit significantly in the next week, 10 days. Stay long, but take profit because there's so much good price team, I think, relative, like we just went up nine days in a row, right? We have S&P down 77 basis points today. It's nothing. So if wrong and everything rally is very hard, there's plenty of times to get back in, right? Hi, everyone. Welcome to bits and bits, exploring how crypto and macro collide, one basis point at the time. Today we'll be talking about macro tariffs, Scott Besson's comments recently, Warren Buffett, stable coins and stable coin bills, and obviously crypto. But for both first, some quick intros. I'm your host, James Safer, trad by Archmaister, Lord of Bloomberg Zen.

I'm here with Alex Kruger, Kruger Macro of House Asgard, Protector of the Realm. Hi, everyone. Also with us is Rahm Al-Awalia, Mastor of Wealth, leader of Lumida. Hey, guys. And today we're joined by Catalan Tishauser, strategic enchantress of the Signam Order. We're here to discuss the latest stories in the world is crypto and macro. Just remember the nothing we say here is investment advice. Please check unchain crypto.com slash bits and bits for more disclosures.

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Subscribe now for free at bits and bibs.bips.bohev.com. That's bits and bibs.com. Find the link in the show notes. All right, guys, before we dive in, Catalan, it's late for you over there in Europe. But why don't you give some people a little bit of background on who you are and what you guys do and then we'll get into things. Yes, certainly. And thank you for the fun intro. at the start. I'm head of research at Cynum Bank in Switzerland. Actually, the bank is headquartered in Switzerland and Singapore from the start and now expanding

internationally. Increasingly, Cigom is a crypto-native bank built from the ground up with no legacy, no legacy ownership and no legacy infrastructure. conceived in 2017, incorporated in 2018, and we got our Swiss banking license in 2019. We offered the full spectrum of banking services to crypto clients, accounts, lending, brokerage, custody, and so on, staking, and also asset management, investment, tokenization services. Great. Can I take a loan with a fart coin? Yeah. Good collateral only, Alex.

We're working on it. You know, square words are a friend upon in Switzerland. So we're trying to have a work around. All right. I mean, let's just start with macro, I guess. You know, we have negative or really flat GDP. We can get into the jobs data, the outlook. Trump is suggesting there's a bunch of trade deals that are going to come as soon as this week.

I mean, I can keep going on and on. But I'll turn it over to you, Rom. What is your view on the macro topics of the day? Well, we just concluded what, a nine-day winning streak and yes. And Pete, it's when it happened once before. It would have been 10th date today. I think that's the local top. It's one of the most obvious local tops you can get.

At least for a few days. So I think peak PTSD is behind the world on tariffs. You can see that with the decline in the VIX. You had the resumption of share buybacks with earnings season. And you've had strong reporting on earnings, right? On average, they've been in expectations, which are lowered. So all that's been bullish. And then the talk from the admin has been bullish.

And there was a full core press last week, like almost wall to wall. almost every day. Well, but it's all been in the spirit of talking up markets. Then Friday, you had a non-farm payrolls beat that came in strong, very much on the high side of expectations. That led to a gap up in markets,

a lot of enthusiasm on a Friday. A very, very classic sell Monday setup and weakness, probably for a few days at the very least. Although, I got to say, it's quite an interesting setup because if you look at hedge funds out there, their net exposures are very low. And if the S&P continues to perform, they can get caught up in a performance chase. They can't really buy more. Their gross long is at 98th percentile. So really the only action they can take is one of two things. They can sell gross longs. They haven't. They didn't do that

through a wild correction. They're not going to do it now. Or they can cover their shorts to increase from that exposure. So overall, I think we're in a buy-the-dip regime, although the question of kind of the macro turns on the end state of tariffs, which still isn't clear.

You want to go, Kathleen? Yes, I look at fundamentals and zoom at more than whether the ninth day will be followed by a 10th day. Well, as it happens, it wasn't. But it's actually interesting that nine days, it has

very rarely ever happened like a nine consecutive days but interestingly after nine days it almost never went on to a tense i i think it has ever but mostly it hasn't so there's there's something special sentiment wise clearly about the nine days uh but i think to me it's um i see actually the fundamental picture improving going forward. I'm not really basing it on Scott Basson's comments or Trump's promise of various deals. I see that more a necessity. Basically, the way the administration went about the tariffs was not going to work. It hit a wall with reality. If you, if, If the objective was, and I don't think that was the primary objective, but if the objective was reshoring industry to the US

and reduce or cut dependence on China, this would not have been the right policy package to go forward with. And I think the objectives probably were slightly different than what was stated. If the objectives were what was stated, then they did a poor job of it. you know, basically slap dash not thinking through the supply chains. Apple said 80% of our phones come from China. What are we going to do? And just there's a host of industries and products where the US is deeply,

deeply dependent on China that are indispensable. And, you know, Trump kind of gave this interview saying that, well, the children will have fewer dolls, you know. But actually, it's not about that at all. It's it's antibiotics. it's anti-inflammatories, it's rare earth minerals, essential products for also the defense industry and the whole host of things where the US is deeply dependent on China. And cutting this off, I think maybe it was a bluff that China will break and they didn't.

But basically, it sounds like it wasn't so true. If you want to reassure industry, there's a certain policy package that should go with it in terms of infrastructure education and also a certain graduality of how you replace your supply chains. And actually, when I say I think they have a different objective. I base it on what Scott Besson said a few weeks back, which is that they want to use these 90-day negotiations to get other countries to basically blockade China. And I think that was probably the primary objective and reshoring in the secondary, and that's why it was executed like that.

But basically, this didn't work very well. First of all, China didn't crack to start with. They saw it coming and they were prepared. Various industries raised the alarm that there's a problem with surprise change. So immediately there was the 90-day, you know, pause and then the various Carvats ever since. And basically, I think the policy package hit reality. And now what is happening is more and more Carvats. or some carvards from China towards the US.

And basically the situation seems to be normalizing and moving out of necessity in a direction that is much more positive, workable and favorable. So I think the news from here on is going to improve the bad news is kind of in the price. There's a lot of, you know, out of this, a lot of global slowdown. And I'm not talking about the US GDP. I think that was primarily a technical one due to imports being brought forward, right? because imports are a minus in the GDP calculation, but generally a global slowdown to some extent

is in the cards, which means liquidity provision by central banks. So I actually see this setup from here on with everything in the price that's quite positive. Yeah. So I'll go to you, Alex, in a second. But like, I kind of tend to agree. Like, if their goal was to, like, do more on-shoring, like, Biden was kind of doing that with the Chips Act. Like, it seems to have been at least successful from the beginning. The inflation reduction act had aspects of this. This seems like, we've been saying in this podcast for a while, it seems very haphazard. The rollout, even if you wanted to do targeted tariffs, which I know plenty of people are against, like it would have made more sense to go it that way.

But I want to go to you, Alex, like, do you think this is what we've seen these nine days, this is a bare market rally or have the impacts of like what's going on in these tariffs not hit yet? My view is like I think we might be in like a bit of a mirage. Like before the, we haven't had any of the impacts really happened just yet. So if they're going to happen, the impact from what Trump has done and what this administration has done, my view is like it's likely to happen in a few, like a few weeks, a few months from now. And then we'll see how bad it really is. So we could be in a process, right? I think back to like the one of the elections where they kept talking about the mirage, like the blue wave mirage because of the early voting and like don't focus on those because we need to wait until we get more of the votes in.

Like I feel like we could be in a situation right now where we're kind of like in this mirage of like kind of stagnant or at least somewhat positive macro indicators. economic indicators. And if there really isn't a ton of those carve-outs that Catalin was just talking about, we could actually not be past the worst of it. I guess, Alex, do you think we're in a bare market rally or do you think like the worst of it is past us? To be honest, I don't really know. That's a thing. And I think we will know by basically, we have 60 days to go for us to know where we're heading. And in the meantime, it's very high uncertainty. In the meantime, the macro data is not important. It's about the headlines and it's about basically signaling by the administration that they want to be friendly towards the rest of the world. What's priced in though, Alex? That's another

way to look at it. I think a recession is not priced in fully. It's like in fact that's, there is numbers. I don't have them from me, but it's, it's, I don't think the market is pricing in as much as it should. Right. But it's, it's, it's, what it should is is so subjective and is we don't really know what it should at the end. It's like it's hocus pocus because we don't really know what's going to happen. What I wanted to say is like the main thing is it's on the tariffs. I think it's important to split it in three. One is it doesn't mean the end of the world or everything collapses. It does mean that equilibrium GDP for the U.S. and the world is a little bit lower. That's one thing. And that's very long term. That's not for traders to be worrying about.

then we have the fact that the data, the hard data is going to start getting that in late May, June, not before. So basically, it's something you start saying in June or July, maybe August, not before. We have the GDP data right before. The GDP put basically negative growth for the U.S. was close to consensus. The reason that there was the country started front-run. running imports. And basically, just mathematically speaking, higher imports, lower GDP. And at the same time, on the other hand, to balance that, half of the higher inputs was balanced by basically higher inventories that fits into investments. What's going to happen in Q2? We don't really know

if we're going to see the same or the exact opposite. We could actually see the exact opposite. The consumer was relatively strong. I think it's fair to think that consumer slowdown, we only see that in Q3. So what's Q2 going to do when it comes to the macro? It's an incognita. And again, more important than that is guidance from Trump and Bessent, I think. And finally, when it comes to the market, I'm ready to basically sell, take profit significantly in the next week, 10 days.

Stay long, but take profit because there's so much good price team, I think, relative, like we just went up nine days in a row, right? We have a S&P down 77 basis points today. It's nothing. So if wrong and everything rally is very hard, there is plenty of times to get back in, right? I like the summary. No, no, I agree. I agree. I mean, there's a lot of good news and optimism priced in around trade deals and peace deals at this point. And if they execute against those trade deals and market expectations will be met, it's hard to exceed them. where we are now. This is something is interesting before you go into that thing.

Just quickly, is this thing that we have this political chasm, right? Like left and right, more divided than never because of Trump. What that means, basically, is there's a lot of people that get very biased, and just because they know that everything is going to go to zero, the macro, or I'm being hyperbolic, right? It's very easy. You know, let's forget about the day. very easy to get dragged into political biases and ignore the fact that the economy is not the

market. And if the conditions are right and markets see that the economic, even a recession, is not going to be just two quarters, and then things are going to be good. Markets should continue going higher despite some volatility. And on the other hand, you have the very strong Trump advocates that they refuse to see no wrong. You know, they stick to the plan. And if things go bad, they're going to suffer. So I think it's important to be somewhere in the middle and flexible. I would agree that data at the moment, they don't really matter too much.

Anything that happened prior to Liberation Day is already discounted as old news. It doesn't reflect the impact of the tariffs. and if the news flow as it has been improving, if it continues to improve, then the bad data that we are going to see, I think we'll also be largely ignored and discounted and say, well, that just reflected that initial shock, but that's behind us and everything is improving. Now, I think the data tends to have an impact

when it's kind of worse than expected in some areas. So, for example, the PCE, we would have hoped that we go into the Liberation Day and the tariff situation with somewhat lower, it's likely surprised to the upside. Something like that, I think, matters, certainly in terms of how the Fed will react and how they think about everything. But generally, a lot of the data right now, if it was before liberation day, it doesn't matter, including corporate earnings, including economic data.

And now the next April and the current months, I think if things improve, then it will equally be just shrugged off as well, yeah, that's in the past. Yeah, I'm just going to share this again, which was on the screen already. But this kind of feels like what happened to last like eight days or so. It remains to be seen if this is actually what's happening. I think it is. Look, the liquidity in markets are so thin combined with the fact that retail investors are buying, they have this unusual phenomenon where the retail investors are bidding up markets. and it's that red curve that's reading up markets.

You can see it in animal spirit names that have run up quite a bit. But they're taking a breather today. You can cheerlead markets for like a week at best. A lot of cheerleading, including today with Bestinent Milken, because he gave a very short speech and he said, the U.S. always bounces back and he cited the Great Depression, the great financial crisis, and that, the other thing. But, you know, what?

Well, the big depression. six years now. And it was exacerbated by a terrible policy response, right? It was exacerbated by the threat with the drawing liquidity and smooth holly. The difference is what's our policy. The United States can get off the mat with a good policy response. It's not like it always gets there's such a thing as bad policy, which can just weigh on earnings. I thought the point earlier around the lower growth expectations for the United States and for the rest of the world is very accurate. In the long run, that's very accurate.

No question. Short term, it's all technicals. I'm curious, Katalin, what are people saying in Switzerland? You're in Zurich, right? Well, I mean, at this time of the day, I'm at home, which is not exactly great, but striking distance. I'm wondering like the mood in the office, right? People working in finance that you see that you talk to,

what are they saying about what's happening with Trump and tariffs and so on? Well, I mean, on the surface, I think the general reaction is that it makes no sense. The policies as they were proposed then started to be implemented, make no sense at all. They're self-destructive. They're hurting the US. Obviously, they're hurting the rest of the world as well.

but they're not actually achieving the stated objectives of reshoring industry and cutting China, well, you can cut China dependence by cutting of trade entirely, but that causes a whole lot of problems, so that doesn't make sense either. So the superficial opinion is generally that incompetence, right? Like that's the superficial impression. It's not my opinion. I'm just, you know, you asked me what people generally think, and I think. And I think the general impression from a distance is that this administration is not

not doing a great job and they're not very competent. It's not my opinion, personally. I think it's more that they're working to different objectives than what they say they're working to. And actually, they're very smart. I mean, that's what you hear from people. David Sachs in the All In podcasts has been saying, like, look, this is we, this conversation's happening.

This conversation hasn't been happening. now we have people okay with 10% like global terrorists around the world like we've shifted the window of like what people think is acceptable and it's going to be better for the country and like that's their argument but at the same time the rollout as we've said a million times just feels broken

like it feels like they did it it wasn't thought out very clearly there's only sticks no carrots like there's just something just doesn't feel right and I think that's what most people feel and I guess that's the Europeans feel too that is the impression and I think to me because I actually think that the administration is full of incredibly intelligent people,

and I find it very difficult to conclude that they just didn't think of. I disagree. It's incoherent. It's the messaging is coherent across people, across Bessent, Lutnik, Navarro, and Trump, across the four of them. You get different messaging. It's not aligned. Trump, this Sunday, was interviewed.

He said, look. Yeah, he said, look, Americans have the deal. with three dollars, not $30. My daughter has one dollar, by the way. My daughter is one dollar. I don't know what the $30 is about. But the comment he made is he said,

we're losing, we're getting ripped off by China $5 billion a day. Now let's think through that. Let's think through that. Because look, if you hear the same thing a thousand times from your leader, your president, you generally want to respect your leaders and presidents and their thoughts. You start to believe things, right? But the United States Treasury is not writing a

$5 billion check to China. China. We're not writing in fact. So it's clearly in the United States not getting ripped off. So what's really happening is there. Trump is saying that Apple and Nike and the doll manufacturer and the toy manufacturing that all of them are getting ripped off, they just don't know it. That they're engaging in voluntary contracts to import at a highly negotiated cost from China and that the decision they're making is wrong. That's, and he's saying Trump is saying he knows better than those companies and they're getting ripped off and they don't know it. But that, the government knows better. Very dangerous message, I think. Yeah. I mean, obviously what he means is like what, you know, what China gets paid for these products is a fraction of, you know, of what the U.S. companies that import a certain, you know, components and whatever get paid. So it's not that I think what he means is just simply the trade deficit with China that that shouldn't exist.

that shouldn't be there. That's the rip-off. But, you know, to me, like, when you say the messaging is different from various people in the administration, that, to me, sounds like that would, that's exactly what would happen when your stated goal is different than your actual goal. So you're trying to not say what you're really doing, and you're trying to say something else, and then it kind of sounds confusing and inconsistent across, you know, Besson phrases it differently, Trump phrases it differently, and none of them are saying what they're

actually trying to do. It's not just the phrasing, it's the substance of what they're saying, though. Right? The substance of what they're saying is different. Like today at Milken, that's since I might get frictionless, like we expect more frictionless training, which is what I want to hear. Fantastic. He's the only one saying that.

Trump, the day before, saying, we're getting ripped off. Who's getting ripped off that? show me the person getting ripped off and what decision there means. The middle class people that are losing jobs to manufacturers and China are the people he's arguing is ripped off. But part of the problem is he's looking at goods, imports, exports and all that stuff. Meanwhile, you have Apple and like other countries, companies making billions and billions of dollars in these other countries that aren't showing up in these trade deficits necessarily

because it's just on these companies balance sheets. So it's kind of like, I don't know. I don't know. I think it's warring factions. I don't think it's necessary. I don't think they're all on the same page. And we know that because there was a story that came out about, you know, Lutnik and Besson sneaking into Trump to, like, steal his time away and get him to tweet out that thing about the pause and tariffs and things with Navarro and other people weren't around. Like, I just think there's like literally warring factions about like what these tariffs are.

100%. Check out this clip. This went viral today. 11 million. This is Shenz that I wouldn't have said. or if it's like a So this step kind of blows my mind. Our friend here is... I mean, okay, okay, that's a job.

Who's ripping who off here? That's a... Which American wants the job to load up on vape pens? I mean, we're exporting cancer to China and we're importing record earnings for Philip Morris, which is that old-time highest. So we're saying, oh, Philip Morris,

you're getting ripped off. You don't know you're getting ripped off. You don't know it. You're getting ripped off, buddy. We're going to tear off you 145% Philip Morris. So you stop doing that. And that's what's actually happening here. Again, they would say it's not Philip Morris is getting ripped off. It's the people that are losing jobs. But then again, I mean, that specific clip is ridiculous because there has to be a better way to test those. Who wants that job? Who wants their job? Who wants their daughter or son to have that job? Let's get into Best and Top Ed real quick. Does anyone have any strong thoughts?

I'll just read you some of the quotes. Says the president recognized the critical role of Wall Street and financing the American Dream, but Main Street's shared turn to share in the prosperity. Again, that goes back to what we were just talking about. He's talking about people whose jobs are potentially moving overseas. This is how we restore the working class, reestablished the U.S. as industrial powerhouse. These are all things.

He said, honestly, my question on this is, one, I don't know if you have any thoughts on the things that Besson said. He kind of is saying the same stuff he said in weeks past. Where do you think the stock market would be if Bessent wasn't a key part of this administration, I guess? Besson is the fig leaf for the economic policy. Behind the fig leaf, it's raw and, you know, you don't want to go behind the fig leaf. Okay.

Alex, you have any thoughts on Besson? No, I think it's the best there is, you know. And, yeah, vaping is illegal in Thailand. But, yeah, I think it's the best there is in the administration, like without him and the stocks be, the SPMP, be 10% lower or something like that. I don't have, I don't keep a lot on whatever he says, but I've caught every single person in the administration

saying things that are factually wrong, like awfully wrong to the point that you go and makes you think, are they do they really believe this thing? Is it part of an orchestrated maneuver tactic to misinform for boats

or for generating chaos? I don't know, but at the same time, I mean, we can talk about this and we can get outraged and we can yap and, you know, go back and forth and entertain ourselves, but those things don't really move

the market unless on extraordinary, unless we go to some extraordinary extremes like what happened on April 2nd, right, on their formula. Otherwise, it's okay. I think Besson is very good. He's very calming. Makes me think of Powell.

He's very commanding and calming, which is what we need. Yeah. Besson knows how to talk to markets. But to your point, remember, the April rollout of these reciprocal tariffs or anything but reciprocal. If it were reciprocal, you'd have a 3% tariff. because that's the average global tariff, actually, around 3%. You wouldn't have placard cards at 25, 40, 50%, 50%.

It's not reciprocal. Yeah, I mean, the way I think about it with Besson specifically is like what friend of the pod, Quinn Thompson said, I want to be Bessett when I grow up. Like, he just seems like he has everything together. Whenever he talks, he kind of calms the market. He just seems like he knows everything that's going on. And sometimes you see some of these other people from the going on. You're like, I don't understand how somebody's saying this stuff, like to Alex's

point, like that it's just factually inaccurate can be in such a position that they're in. But that is the world we live in. I guess let's go to Warren Buffett. Rom, you had, you had, James, if before we change the subject, I'd like to share a chart with you. It's basically a chart showing how how basically U.S. industrial production has been trending higher for decades. And so same with manufacturing output, and then you have manufacturing employment in the U.S. pretty much plummeting. I think it's worth sharing. And here, what I wanted to basically say around this, this is, by the way, is AMFX as a chart by Brand Donnelly.

The point here is that if the goal of administration talking economics is to basically bring back manufacturing jobs, that's a wonderful thing to talk about for boats, but it's the wrong thing strategically to do long term. That chart shows you that. That's not China. That's basically the fact that we are, I mean, the manufacturing is just becoming more and more efficient and progress in technology. It just accentuates and accelerates this trend. The other part of it is like if you listen to people who know trade and what's going on,

for the most part, from the last time that Trump instituted tariffs and Biden basically kept them on in many areas of the economy abroad that we've been pushing away from China. It's been, it's kind of a, it's a bipartisan issue, right? Like both sides of the House and Senate kind of agreed that China, I don't, I won't say enemy, but they're, they're not exactly our ally and they're trying to push us away. So anyone who can like take their manufacturing out of China, for the most part has done it. They've gone to other Asia countries. They've gone to India.

They've done other things. So for the most part, like a lot of people that still manufacture in China in many instances, it's not because like it's super cheap and the labor is super cheap and all those reasons. there's a lot of tariffs. It's because they have manufacturing expertise, a lot of automation. They're really efficient at doing things. It's not solely because they can do it cheaper,

which I also feel like gets missed when you talk to a lot of the people on the right-wing side of things on this front. I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on that. Small business cannot refactor the supply chain out of China very quickly. Now, consider how many merchants are on Shopify, powered by Alibaba Express, for example. So Apple can refactor. and spend a couple of billion dollars doing that and they'll get by.

I think it's difficult for others to do it. You're right. Like being bipartisan, hard on China, it makes sense. It's actually a global issue, not just a bipartisan issue. But unfortunately, the bilateral approach made it difficult to create a tearfall on China. Right? Europe is actually trying to cut trade deals with China. Basically, what we're looking at here is U.S. manufacturing and the light blue is at the GDP and current dollars.

an actual dollar's amount is going through the roof. So is industrial production, real output, inflation adjusted. But employment is, you know, falling through the floor, kind of. It was mostly flat. It's just been kind of is what it is. And I guess the goal of this administration is to increase that percentage, I guess, the percentage of employment that comes from manufacturing. Is that what that is or is that number of people?

That's the goal. This is like very similar to the chart of agriculture, right? At the beginning of the 20th century, 1900, one in two Americans had a job in agriculture. And then with technology, John Deere, Caterpillar, better fertilizer, nitrogen, know-how. Now 1% of Americans are in agriculture, and technologies is driving the same impact in manufacturing. If you go to a GM plant, you do see a lot of automation. I mean, Tesla is, of course, leading, but GM has plenty of automation and lots of robotics. actually. And it turns out private companies automatically invest in innovation and technology

that improves product. You don't need to tell them to do that because they have a profit motive to do so. And it lowers their costs and it creates more returns for shareholders. This is just a top-down technocratic fallacy. It's the government saying they know better than private enterprise. All right. Rom, why don't you, why don't we go to Warren Buffett? So for those, I'm going to assume everyone listening knows who Warren Buffett is. If you don't know, he's one of the most legendary investors at all time, is finally stepping down from running Berkshire Hathaway. I know, Ron, you wanted to talk that you have a lot of thoughts. Sure. Yeah, look, I said, yeah, at the end of his annual investor talk, he announced that he'll be stepping down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. There's a 10-minute standing

ovation in applause. Classic Buffett. I mean, he, you know, he ended with humor. He said, look, that applause can mean one of two possible things, either they're happy to see him go or they're applauding him, obviously. And, you know, classic humility too, right? Buffett is classic Americana, right? I mean, he's as classic as Cherry Coke, Dairy Queen, American Express, Wrigley's, and an apple pie, right? And I was hoping one day I could take my kids there to go see him.

They're too young. But it is a turning of the tide. He did comment on tariffs a few times. And, you know, I think Buffett has significant reputation and credibility. And people listen to what you have to say. People, I'll course, are thinking to Buffett. So Buffett had this clip around trade, which I thought was very insightful and a different angle on the tariff story. I'll play here.

And the United States. The United States, we've won. We have become an incredibly important country, starting from nothing. 250 years ago, there's nothing than anything like it. And it's a big mistake, in my view, when you have 7.5 billion people that don't like you very well, and you've got 300 million that are crowing in some way about how well they've done. and I don't think it's right and I don't think it's wise. I do think that the more the more prosperous the rest of the world becomes, it won't be in our expense, the more prosperous will become,

and with the answer for it will feel and your children will feel so. That's the fundamental distinction, right? Either trade creates mutual wealth through voluntary gains or it's a zero sum. Both to the same, trade creates wealth. You know, in the U.S. people have been talking about people in the Republicans be talking about for, what is it, two decades, 15 years. I don't know what you guys think. There's so much talk against the globalists. And before it was, it was, okay, unonsequential.

It's okay, whatever. They're like, you know, who cares? But now they're finally putting that to work and going against globalization, which I think is being very good. and it's definitely not a zero sum. I'm on the side of Buffett here. And by the way, it's Buffett is crazy because I despise value investing. But he's still the most, I really admire him. He gets, it's only two people out there that I respect enormously in markets.

And are Buffett and Dracon Miller. And Buffett is way about Drac and Miller. He's incredible. Really? I mean, Dr. Camilla had one losing year. I'd put Drunk over Buffett, but I mean, Buffett's performance track record, longevity, perspective, the ability to deploy that much capital and performance, that scale is incredible. The other thing I'd point out on it is that, so the stock is down like 5% today.

So the question is, does the Buffett premium pull out of the stock? I think it does. So Berkshire Hathaway trades at two times price to book value. And Berkshire Hathaway has a lot of capital. cash and a lot of treasuries. So you're paying twice the price for cash and treasuries for that component of their balance sheet. The other thing I would say is that Buffett's style of investing, to Alex's point, is difficult to do now and today. If you look at quality companies that have a moat, they're all expensive, right? Costco's more expensive than the video. It's got a 50 times

4-P earnings ratio. So Berkshire Hathaway itself is more. expensive than S&P 500. Where's the value there? So yeah, it's an end of an era. I don't think the next Buffett will be applying Buffett strategies except in maybe small caps where there are still opportunities that have the kind of quality compounding traits that that Buffett is looking for. Yeah, I mean, I just, Alex, I don't think I've ever heard somebody say that they absolutely hate value in that thing, which was... Well, I mean, I went to Columbia Business School and studied a lot of value investing. And basically the, and I'd been, like, I've done a lot of value investing in my life.

And I think in most cases, it costs people money. When I was in college, like the takeaway was basically long Walmart, short Amazon, you know, because of valuations. All right. All right, that's enough about Buffett. Before we move on, let's just hear from our sponsors. What could stop this year's bull market in crypto? In a word, politicians. This is Matt Hogan, the chief investment officer for Bitwise asset management.

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Which one do you want to talk about first? Alex, you choose. I haven't paid much attention to either, to be honest. I haven't paid too much attention to the east pivot. I mean, it seems like no matter what you do, you're looking at anything eth related, it just keeps getting worse and worse. It just seems very dysfunctional. But I mean, like even a couple of months ago, I was looking at this stuff. And I was like, it can't get much worse, can it? And it just seems to keep getting worse and worse.

So, I mean, at some point, they'll hit a bottom. I don't know. Do you have any strong thoughts on this? Alex, last time we talked about, you said short it, I think. What are your thoughts now? I think it's not a good asset, to be honest. That's what I think. And on a relative basis, it's related to other crypto assets. I think anybody can

outperform ETH by basically holding Bitcoin and Seoul or Bitcoin Sol and a few others like, say, Sonic Tao, etc. This is a few. It's the VARVAL approach in this case is better.

And yeah, people I understand they get very upset if you've been holding ETH forever. I mean, ETH right now is barely, what is it, 20% above 2018's, January 2018. The usage

is flat, it's flatlined, revenue has flatlined. Maybe the pivot makes EF do much better. I sincerely hope it's the case. you know, I want to, I want people who hold these to make money as well and be happy, you know. Rah, any thoughts? Yeah, I do.

You guys remember that Bezos transformation before and after? I'm going to share my screen so you can see it. It's where Bezos goes from like Lean and Scroni to Buff and Jacked. This is it right here, right? You see it on the screen? Go up. The Tollicbuterine, the Talekbuterin has to adopt a carnivore diet, go to CrossFit, lift heavy weights,

listen to like some rock music or something, and that will create a bit for Eith. It's about the leader. Who do you identify Epoeth? It's Vitalik. And Vatelic is passive behind the scenes. If you're like, I would totally do with Solana. He's identified with Solana. He's articulating the message.

You know, Vitalik needs to play offense. And he needs to do a Bezos-like transformation. It seems hard for him. to do that, to be honest, you know? Like, he seems to have actually, he's saying like a true. I don't know him, but he seems autistic, really autistic. Yeah, I agree. He's probably going to ask for him.

If desert came out jacked, okay, with Stummer Beach attire, and there were memes around Vitalik going viral, okay? Combine that with banks putting assets on chain and doing decentralized settlement, then you have something. But right now, the vibes are off. Crypto, half of crypto is about the vibes. The vibes are off. Yeah, he needs to become like his dad.

Yeah. So, I mean, the whole push here, like they're simplifying to L1. They want to increase transaction and throughput on the L1. It seems to be, like from my outsider point of view, I'm not a crypto native, though I play one sometimes. Seems to be like they're heading in the right direction. But Catalan, what are your thoughts on eth? And I think if, you know, if Ethereum's future.

future hinges on Vitalik's charisma, then I think they're doomed. I don't think is ever going to come at, you know. And it is really lacking and it would really help, but, you know, it is what it is. And the sentiment is terrible on Eath and various things that might have been a catalyst that, you know, reshaping the foundation and pivoting and, you know, saying the kinds of things that, you know, moving forward items on the roadmap that were far in the future, but they're moving it, you know, to right now because they're reacting to the environment. Like, these might have been catalysts, and they weren't.

The market's just not viking with Ethereum right now. And I think what could change this, because they've kind of, they, you know, they've changed the messaging, they changed the roadmap, they're talking about all the kinds of things that people have leveled as criticism against them, and this hasn't helped. And I think what we have to wait for is really when these major TREDFI use cases really get going, that the administration is really behind. And TRETFI is really behind with stable coins and tokenization,

which platform will they really do most of the transactions on? And Ethereum still has the largest market sharing all of these things, and the network effects are pretty hard to compete against in crypto. And on top of that, the security is ever important in these kinds of things. You know, like Solana just fixed another bug and so on. And I think it could be, of course, we don't know, we'll have to wait and see, but it could be that really the big stratify volumes and use cases will, will still go with Ethereum primarily, and that will change the trajectory. But now the only things people offer are, you know, it's too oversawed. It's time for it to bounce.

The sentiment is too negative. And I mean, that can, of course, happen just on the base of sentiment. But in terms of fundamental drivers, the market hasn't beaten on anything that Ethereum put out since January. More seriously, if the government can enable investment banks and banks to utilize a decentralized currency to tokenize move value, as opposed to what they're going to today, which are private subnets on AVEX, which is kind of like, what's the point? Because it's not decentralized, right? Then ETH gets a policy win. We don't have that yet. They should focus on that. Right now, ETH is caught in the middle.

ETH was trying to position around ultrasound money, which never made sense. I was very clear. It didn't make any sense. Bitcoin holds that narrative. And then Solana is leading with application layer and end user value delivery as opposed to infrastructure. So ETH wasn't able to cut through from that narrative perspective. and the policy is such that the banks aren't in a place to adopt it. Yeah, but that can change.

I expect it would change. Why wouldn't it change? Yeah, I mean, all three two things on this front. Samar Cohen, who's one of the way higher ups at BlackRock, talked about this and basically said, for the most part, it's their clients. They only really care about Bitcoin right now in the Tradfai world. And then it's a distant second, but Ethereum is still second. That's what most people are looking to.

It could be the case that Ethereum becomes, you know, with the institutional grade base layer. Who knows what's going to happen there. But from my point of view, it just kind of, it like feels, Ethereum to me now feels very academic, which seems crazy considering like the NFTs and the different things that we see on there,

what they're kind of known for. But it sees very academic, extremely idealistic, whereas like other things like Solana just feel like, they feel way more pragmatic and way more user focus. And like I feel like there's just disconnect there. Obviously, I'm not the first person to say things. this, but that just seems to be a problem.

And it seems like maybe they're going to be focusing more from a programmatic point of view, but not fully. Anybody else have any thoughts on each before you go to the stable coin bills? Yeah. So, I mean, this is something that's been on Twitter for a while, but if there's one place where I would support tariffs would be actually on Ethereum to put some sort of tax or higher. I like tax the L2s to try to bring some value into it because it's getting, it's getting Bumpire attacked in a way by its L2s are like parasites in a way, if you think about it.

And they could address that thing very fast. But yeah, I think they're thinking about things, not exactly that, but basically where they shift the economics back towards the L one. And the other issue is the narrative is so badly shaped. And for Solano, it's so well done. because actually in terms of value leakage, Solana has kind of a similar problem that Ethereum has with the L2s. Solana has, with value going to the validators and not to the tokens, actually Solana earns currently double the fees of Ethereum, but half of the revenues. If only Joe were here, he'd be bashing.

be batching a lot more than anybody. Yeah, we can move past ETH, but like ETH is a marketing problem. And there's a lot of genius behind the ETH technology infrastructure growth. That's, let me say, so back to value investing, connecting value investing with crypto. If I would have gone with value investing,

I would have been out of soul in the 20s. It was overpriced in the 20s. I don't even want to look at any numbers now right now because it's quite likely even now after basically the meme coin volume being down so much, I'm pretty sure it's from a fundamental metrics perspective traditional. Like for example, P.E., it's very overvalued. And who cares? I agree, Alex.

Crypto is fundamentally a momentum asset. So the asset that has momentum, has the attention. It attracts the bid, and then it goes. and it sucks the capital, oxygen, liquidity out of the room. That's what it's all about. That's fundamentally what all crypto assets are about. It's not backed by free cash on buybacks. It's about attention.

These are attention markets. Yeah. One of the things I hear constantly talk to around the crypto space is like we're going to apply multiples and valuations to these things. And I always think back to that Silicon Valley like show from HBO where the guys like you're pre-revenue. Once you have revenue, it's never good enough. And like I just think people are like, we're going to,

value these things. Look at the cash that are spinning off of these things. And I'm like, if we value these, you know, these change and these protocols based off the cash and the cash flow that they're earning, they are trading at insanely rich multiples. And I think bankless actually had somebody on. I'm forgetting what the guest name was, but he talked about this whole process of like, we shouldn't be thinking about this and you shouldn't be trying to revenue. And it's like, yeah, because things will go to zero if you look at fundamentals. Like there are. Yeah, one of the interesting crypto assets is Doche right now, purely because of technical's momentum. This is a guy that values free cash flow buybacks, relative valuation, quality balance sheet,

though. But we got to think about crypto differently. It's momentum. It's a momentum asset. I think we actually all agree. I don't think anyone disagrees here. I think, I think, Catalan, we completely agree with you on this one. We're already almost an hour into this.

Let's get to stable coins because I feel like that's probably the biggest topic that we haven't talked about yet. There's a few other things we can get into. But yeah, so stable coin bills, essentially the whole story is a group of nine U.S. Senate Democrats have reportedly pulled their support for bipartisan stablecoin bill. This is the genius act. Five of them previously voted to advance out of the committee. And six of them, five of those six, six of them are on the Senate banking committee. So they can actually really hold this thing up. It seems to be like they're just not getting the things they want out of the stable coin bill. My overall view, I should have talked to our policy guide that I know down in D.C. He works in my department. He's been very confident that some sort of stable coin bill is going to get passed. Overall, I just think it's kind of insane that we have like the Democrats now kind of

siding with the big banks when it comes to this types of stuff and the regulations that they want. It's like it seems insane to me from somebody who kind of agrees and like why it almost seems like we don't want to. It's either we get exactly the regulation we want or we don't want it to be regulated. going to push it off shore. So I don't know. I have to assume they're going to get something through in the next few months. I feel like they're so close, but who knows what can happen?

But I don't know. What are your guys that thought from the stable coin bill? Do you think it's going to get through here? Do you think any of this matters? What are your views on the Democrats kind of pulling support here? No, I have no views. Yeah. I think politicians will keep crypto as an hotball.

ball issue for as many years they can to extract as many political donations from Fair Shake Pack. That's what's going to happen. They could have passed Stablecoin in the last administration because it had bipartisan support. I think people have too high expectations of elected officials representing their interests. They'll get some wins on the board. And yeah, I think StableCoin Act will get done. But, you know, the way D.C. works is you got to have some conflict. You got to have some dopamine to motivate a base to raise funds for their election. You have to have an enemy.

Let's say on the stable coins thing a little bit here. I'm assuming you guys saw the news about, you know, Ripple trying to buy Circle. And they went up to a $5 billion offer, right? possibly higher, but like I guess what is your thoughts? So, Ripple has obviously a massive, massive war chest of XRP that they own. They own worth many, many billions of dollars. They could pretty much buy anything they want as far as I'm concerned. I think they hold 40% of the supply, think.

Yeah. Yeah, they own something like near four and a half billion XRP, which is like 90 something billion dollars, if that number is correct, which is just absolutely fascinating. But I guess what are your thoughts of them trying to buy Circle here? I mean, they bought a prime broker, essentially, I think is what they bought most recently. It seems like they're kind of on a buying spree. Do you have any thoughts here, Rahm, on Ripple offering a buy circle? I mean, Ripple is trying to get a real asset, right?

So in that sense, there's a logic there. It reminds me of AOL and an inflated valuation trying to buy Time Warner in the dot-com era. AOL was buying a real business with an inflated market cap. I think that's what the case is here. The ultimate owner of circle should be a bank because a bank can re-hypothecate. Circles of earning net interest income and you can amplify the net interest income you make if you have a bank and you can re-hypothicate and you only need to capitalize your balance sheet with 10% of equity.

If they got bought by a bank, they'd be valued like a bank. That's the conundrum here. Coinbase has thought about it too, undoubtedly, whether they should become a bank or not. It's great for your net income, but it's bad for your valuation. Yeah. All right. I don't really have any more thoughts on that. It's just interesting.

The way I think of XRP is they were always pitched as, you know, they were going to need it back end of financial infrastructure. You're going to move XRP around to move money around. My view is like stable coins have largely been like, you know, that that's where they fit. Like what XRP was originally going to do, what I heard about in 2017. and even prior was is now like stable coins can fit that bill right stable coins have that market they have product market fit so one area that works and so now um ripple or xrp is launching xrpL their own stable coins trying to buy circle i it kind of makes sense if all this assets they in there in there for for trying to go after circle i think you're right rom it's a it's a real asset

the only other thing that i wanted to point out i don't know if you guys have any other thoughts but the one i wanted to bring up was some news that came out today, which basically said that it was real that FinCEN explicitly told the prosecutors of the samurai wallet, which DOJ basically said that samurai wallet wasn't a money transmitter due to its non-custodial design. And then the DOJ prosecuted those developers anyway and kind of like getting used, they suppressed exculpatory evidence that would have gotten samurai wallet kind of off because FinCEN was saying it doesn't fit what you're trying to do, which is absolutely fascinating to me. It's kind of like everyone in crypto was like, this is insane.

They're going after somebody who doesn't have custody. And it's like they actually went to FinCent and FinCin explicitly disagreed with their thesis. And then they went and brought the case anyway, which to me, and then didn't bring up the fact that FinCin, they hid the fact that Vincent explicitly told them they disagreed. So obviously, I'm not a lawyer. But it's just like fascinating to me. Like, I don't know. I feel like somebody should get in trouble for this type. of stuff. Do you guys have any thoughts here? I don't even know if you saw this news.

Alex, did you see any of this? Do you have any thoughts here? No, I didn't see it. I mean, I can't keep on going on Ripple for a long time, but no, I didn't see the news. Wait, wait, what were you going to say on Ripple? Let's hear it. I just wanted to share that news at the very least on the samurai thing, because, I mean, if this is, if this news is accurate, I think that's, one, fantastic for Samurai wallet, and two, just a bad look for the G or J. Under Biden. Alex, what were you going to go, keep going on Ripple? So on, let's say, you have the good side and the bad side of the force, right?

On the good side, what these guys have is they have a lot of money. They have a very capable team, and they can find ways to drive value into XRP when the time comes. They can. It's in their fingertips. and like one of the main things why one of the main reasons why XRP I think has been doing so well is because it's a matter of ownership and flows pretty much XRP was until recently

not allowed to trade and it couldn't be traded was the listed from all the exchanges in the US so it's the same way ETH was overowned like pretty much everybody in crypto owned ETH almost nobody in crypto all the crypto natives they didn't own XRP on the bad side it's it's kind of like they are very good at what we i call nowadays gas lighting they tell you i mean they've been telling this narrative of of ripple replacing swift

since i have memory you know and it's the same stupid sorry my french again it's the same thing over and over and over again um yeah i i can get very harsh there and i'd rather not do it but yeah I literally saw in your face the wheel spinning in your head and you're like there's there was like there's a devil and an angel on each shoulder. I'm not going to go there. I do trade XRP every now and then I hold it for X amount of time and I sell it, right? It's but you know I wouldn't invest long term on XRP or actually almost anything to be honest in crypto. All right. Any other thoughts there, Rom?

It just tells you how much money is in the system, how much liquidity is in the system when you look at these assets that have these significant market caps. And I mentioned earlier, Berkshire Hathaway is valued at twice its book value. Warren Buffett does not like buying businesses that trade materially above book value. So I think that's really what it is. We are in the post-COVID market economy. where retail investing plus social media, plus trading view, plus community has transformed how markets work and how assets are valued. And it's a one-way door.

We're not going back. One more thing that I wanted to, that we should talk about is the fact that the Apple App Store is now going to allow NFTs and crypto sales from within like the IOS ecosystem. Kind of seen, do you guys have any strong thoughts on this in either way? I just think that it's going to drive a lot of depths to basically start generating revenue. I think it's very good. And in fact, it's something interesting that conceptually, a crypto finder once told me how basically in crypto blockchains, they basically pay developers to come and build in their

blockchains. And when you go to Apple is exactly the other way. around. They have all the power. So it's not only they don't pay you, you pay out of your extremities, you know. So that's changing now. That's good. It's very good.

I think it's just another trend of more mainstream acceptance of the space. It's not going away at this point. We're in a funny world, right? Like, Berkshire is losing Buffett and Dave Portnoy is rising in influence. Right? I mean, isn't that

the symbol to look at. Portnoy about a month ago had a video on tariffs to win viral, which I thought was fantastic, by the way. Yeah, he was right. Yeah, he laid out a wonderful, pragmatic, easy and or saying critique of tariffs. And then this weekend, he had a viral video on anti-Semitism at a bar he owns in Philadelphia. I'm like, man, the guy, he's good, like Portnoy. Oh, I'm not like a Portnoy fan, by the way. I'm just like, Buffett is in recession and pornois is in a session.

This is the changing of the car. You could short Berkshire and long pornois shit coin. I don't think I would go long pornois anything. Yeah, he was launching a bunch of meme coins. I don't think he's doing that anymore. It's only going to zero. The funny thing about he was the first to actually understand community. You think about how many tens of thousands of people descend upon Omaha.

And there are people that go there every year like a religious pilgrimage. And they enjoy Cherry Coke. And in all the different investment companies that Buffett Invest in like Seas Candy, they're there. You load up on 4,000 calories of fun. And it's about community. And what we're seeing now is hyper community, hyper financialization, hyper everything. Berkshire was the first hyper-liquid influencer, right, for financial markets. Okay, hyper-liquid, hyper-thus.

And now we're at the Portnoy level. Like, this is where we are now. Yeah, yeah. I'm curious to get your thought. If either do you have any. So for anyone who's paying attention to real markets, the time of these dollar is ripping, essentially. Like, do you guys have any thoughts there and any implications that could mean? Is that just volatility and, you know, low liquidity in markets, generally speaking?

Or do you guys, I don't know if you have any strong thoughts? Rob shook his head now. I don't. I've been reading about it a lot trying to understand. What I've noticed is that actually nobody knows. There's a lot of theories and about basically Taiwanese selling dollar assets. There's a lot of theories. But it's something I wanted to point out here, which I think is very interesting, is on the Hong Kong dollar side.

This, by the way, what's happening with the Taiwanese daughter is happening all across Asian currencies right now. It's basically they're strengthening against the dollar in the last two weeks. And particularly the last one. And the Taiwanese is the one that is like a 19 standard deviation move. So everybody's talking about it. And it's very interesting for chip makers,

and BD, etc. Now, I wanted to quickly point out the Hong Kong dollar. This is actually funny. You have someone who basically Kyle Las, right? Someone very vocal on Twitter against China and Hong Kong forever for over 15 years. And he has this short Hong Kong dollar trade forever,

maybe like six years, right? He's been talking about it. It's an expensive trade to keep open because you have to fund it. And he finally has his wet dream, which is basically an ultra-hot. U.S. administration and what happens to the Hong Kong dollar? It goes the other way. It's threatening

to break the peg, but on the upside, the dollar honky down, not up. 100%. Which is like, I mean, yeah, it's the irony of markets. They can't really fuck you up even when you get it right and then, yeah.

Well, he was short JGBs too, right? Japanese debt as well, saying, look, hey, rates, given their fiscal picture, how they're He was in that for 10 years also. It's like, would you rather be right or make money? He'd rather be right. And one day he'll be right, 12 years later.

And you'd be better off not having done when he didn't just bought T-bills. Ideology, a profitable strategy. Yeah. Yeah, the last thing I'll say is there's rumors that we could be seeing, you know, an instituted, you know, tariffs on chips actually, despite them being carved out previously and now they'd actually be coming back. That's a rumor. That's concerning.

Like, what the hell? How do you win the AI race if you're going to have tariffs on GPUs or you're importing from that? How do you win that race? That would impact all of the hypers, which are spending tens and tens of billions of dollars on this. Microsoft and meta, both reiterated the KAPEX. Microsoft has trillions of tokens that they've sold in the last quarter. The AI product market fit is there. So if you have all these MagS7 hypers, now having to have a 25% increase to their KAPX, that would absolutely hurt their stock prices. I mean, that would be a bare market right there. Now, we don't know that that'll actually happen. That's just reported news. You know, over the weekend, I saw a random news site in Taiwan say that

in the video is thinking about putting Bitcoin in the balance sheet. I think that's a BS, right? So this is, we just need to see where the actual policy lands. We don't know. I don't think Trump knows either. I think he wants it to land somewhere, but he's getting pushback from markets. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Bits and Bips. We'll be back in one week to discuss more about how the worlds of crypto and macro are colliding.

Until then, everyone.