We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC252: Bitcoin Mastermind Q3 2025 w/ Joe Carlasare, Jeff Ross, and American HODL (Bitcoin Podcast)

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Joe, Jeff, HODL, and Preston break down Q3 2025’s economic trends, market cycles, and BTC's performance. They dive into gold’s rise, AI's impact on capitalism, and the U.S.’s shifting global strategy, with bold Bitcoin price forecasts for 2026. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: 00:01:13 Why market sentiment feels bearish despite a 67% BTC gain 00:07:58 How the S&P 500 vs. gold ratio signals a macroeconomic inflection point 00:10:39 Why Jeff Ross sees gold outperforming stocks into the 2030s 00:28:12 The stalled progress of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve legislation 00:35:07 Central banks’ gold stockpiling and its effect on markets 00:37:09 How upcoming Fed policy could shape future rate cuts 00:46:58 The complex future of capitalism in an AI-driven economy 00:50:45 Insights into America’s $6-7 trillion infrastructure buildout 00:59:40 Why BTC treasury firms are underperforming while miners surge 01:05:35 2026 BTC price predictions and a playful nod to Peter Schiff Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Related Episode: ⁠⁠Bitcoin Mastermind Q1 2025⁠⁠. Related Episode: ⁠⁠⁠Bitcoin Mastermind Q2 2025. American HODL on ⁠⁠Nostr⁠⁠. Jeff Ross on ⁠⁠Nostr⁠⁠. Joe Carlasare on  ⁠⁠X (Twitter)⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Nostr⁠⁠. Check out all the books mentioned and discussed in our podcast episodes ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Enjoy ad-free episodes when you subscribe to our ⁠⁠Premium Feed⁠⁠. NEW TO THE SHOW? Join the exclusive ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Mastermind Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, Kyle, and the other community members. Follow our official social media accounts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X (Twitter)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Check out our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bitcoin Fundamentals Starter Packs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Finance Tool⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Enjoy exclusive perks from our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠favorite Apps and Services⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get smarter about valuing businesses in just a few minutes each week through our newsletter, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Intrinsic Value Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠best business podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our ⁠⁠sponsors⁠⁠: HardBlock Linkedin Talent Solutions Human Rights Foundation Simple Mining Vanta Netsuite Fundrise Masterworks Shopify Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

You're listening to TIP. Hey everyone, welcome to this Wednesday's release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast. Today, we're back with our quarterly mastermind discussion with Jeff Ross, American Hoddle, and Joe Carlisari. This is one of our most popular episodes that we do each quarter. We cover a whole bunch of things happening in the Bitcoin landscape, from macro trends, to market structure, to policy moves, and just investor sentiment in general. This is a sharp, no-fluff discussion that you won't want to miss. So without further ado, let's jump right into the conversation. Celebrating 10 years.

You are listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pish. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. I'm here with the guys for the mastermind conversation. I got American Hoddle. I got Joe Carlos Ari. I got Jeff Ross.

Just a couple things that talk about this quarter. Just a couple things. And let's start off with just. the sentiment because before I hit record, you guys only got about a minute of talking here before I hit the record button because I want this to be very candid what you guys were just saying. Yeah, Hottle said he bought gold. Like he loaded up on what he said right before and I was shocked. I would never say that. Shock. Although we're going to get to that. We're going to get to that. Sentiment, Joe, take it away. No, it's horrible. So I was scanning through the cesspool these days of

Bitcoin Twitter and it's like it's something. It's like everybody's down. Everybody's depressed. Everybody's like, this thing sucks. Let me get into the yellow rock. I mean, I don't remember being this bad like in the depths of the bear market. I don't know. I think everybody's expectations have been shattered.

I think they're used to the four year kind of like that there's this crazy pump that was supposed to happen over the last nine months. Nothing happened. Like it was just completely sideways for the whole year so far. And I think people are very frustrated with that. I'm frustrated with that. I don't know about you guys, but. Well, you know, the frustration is, it's easy to understand emotionally because

hoddling is a hard journey. And so, you know, as a human being, you expect to be rewarded for that journey. And like, so far, really, there hasn't been much of a reward. I mean, we're not even up that much in inflation-adjusted terms compared to something like the top of the 2021 cycle. And last time we went below the prior all-time high. So that was kind of a very tough moment post. Go back in your mind to post FTCS collapse and Sandbankman-Fried.

By the way, I've heard Sam Bankman-Fried is angling for a pardon these days. He's trying to be like, what do you mean? We were never insolvent. I didn't steal everyone's money and use it to gamble. Yes, you did, bro. You're not getting a pardon. Sit there and do your time, all right? Who does an interview like that and releases it?

I saw this hit X. Like, this is ridiculous. Well, he thinks the Trump administration is basically so corrupt that he can, you know, it's pay for play for a pardon, right? which like, I don't know, maybe he's right about that, but like, I don't think any, but there's any political will to let Sam Bankman freed out of prison anytime soon. Anyway, go back to that place in your mind and just remember how awful the feeling was and how hard we all got faces shoved in the dirt.

And then we were all expecting, you know, two, three X and then beyond the prior all-time highs. And we haven't even gotten there. We haven't even gotten to 2x, the prior all-time high. And so to me as a longtime bitterner who has a myopic Bitcoin view, So this really doesn't feel like a bull market to me in any meaningful sense. I mean, some people will say it is because there was a big rally off of 15K. And now we're obviously, we've been to 125K and we've been solidly over 100 for a long time. But as a Bitcoiner, this is not the Bitcoin bull market that I'm used to.

And so, you know, I'm a little addicted to the dopamine. I'm getting, I'm antsy. I'm like, let's go. Come on. Let's pump this bad boy. Yeah, I think so. Jeff. I mean, to put things in perspective a little bit.

First of all, I'm a little sick. So sorry if I sound a little funny. I'll try not to cough directly into the microphone. To put things in perspective, I think it's up about 67% over the last 12 months. So that's still a pretty good return for normal people. Terrible. Terrible, right? I mean, imagine investing in Walmart or, you know, and how would your returns be?

So it's a very different, we have very different expectations. And I'm sure we'll get into this as we go on, but I continue to be super surprised that the manufacturing sector has not taken off yet. Like, I've been talking for like a year. Like any day now, like any day of this month, the ISM is going to come out and this is going to be the month where it finally starts taking off. And why do I bring that up? Because first of all, it's been in a recession, the manufacturing here in the U.S., according to ISM, since 2022. So we're three years into this now. And what most people don't know, and I think I brought this up last time,

so sorry to be a broken record, but Bitcoin ramps, as everybody knows, based on what Global M2 or liquidity is doing, those are slightly different, but same difference. And I don't know why it does this, but based on what the ISM manufacturing does as well. And so normally at this point based since 2009, we've been on these four-year, not just everybody thinks it's a business cycle based on the halving, and that's why the Bitcoin price does what it does is based on the having. It's just nonsense. It does it based on liquidity and what the business cycle is doing. And so for whatever reason, this business cycle has refused to take off so far. It's still sitting right around 50 or just sub-50. I still think everything I look at says we are going higher.

in the next nine to 12 months. And so if we do get higher, if we start to see a takeoff in the manufacturing sector and in the U.S. economy as a whole and global liquidity continues to kind move up into the right, I still think our best days are ahead of us. And I definitely think the four-year cycle is dead. And lots of people are going to get fooled by that. I think a lot of people are going to bail in December and think it's over. And then it's going to get fun after that. And they're going to miss it. And they're going to be piling back in several hundred thousand higher. So very personally, I'm very optimistic for what's coming in 2026. And I'm the most surprise as anybody, right? I've been saying since early 2025, we're going to peak in the fourth quarter

or 75K Bitcoin, blah, blah, blah. Joe is right. I was wrong. So shout out to Joe. Joe said it was going to creep along higher and be about, what did you say, 150 maybe by the end of the year? I think, no, my target all year long has been 130. And everybody's like super bare, man. Wow. And you're nailing it. And although, by the way, let's see. Let's see. Yeah, we'll see. I still think we could get a surge. I think once the government shut down gets cleared up, which it should. And once this whole G. Trump meeting summit gets resolved on November 1st, I expect November to be up Vember in lieu of October not being uptober. So I was got to story is the shattering of the four year cycle, whether it's business cycle related or having cycle. That thing, we need to cast that into the trash bin of history. We need to know that it can be green dot, green dot, green dot, green dot, green dot, like four in a row, right? It's a It can be higher for next year. It can be higher the year after that. And yeah, I'm very optimistic.

I actually think to your point that we really have been the manufacturing, the numbers, the reason ISM is creeping right at 49 or, you know, under 50 is because they're waiting for the rates to drop. They want the rates drop. And then that'll create a recovery. And from there, you know, Bitcoin and everything should do well. I expect a strong, strong year in 2026. I don't know why people are just like glued to the calendar thinking like it's Cinderella

at the ball and it all comes apart. Like it doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah, I think it's just oversimplification that it's worked up until now and people don't know why it's worked, but they just, they think it was tied to the calendar and I'm with you guys 100%. How many times recently have we been confronted with things like that? Like the yield curve always triggers some giant recession or, you know, there's all these sort of like sacred cows and when they get slaughtered, I feel like we can finally use our brains again, which is awesome. Yeah. I will say this. at the start of the year till now, I was so dead wrong as to what I thought was going to play out.

I really thought that this year was going to be pretty massive as far as the price action. And it has been nothing of the sort. It has been just a sideways chop the whole year. It feels like I want to bring up a chart that Jeff, you sent over because this is pretty mind-blowing. Let's pull this baby up. You guys are going to get mad at me. No. No, I mean, this chart is awesome.

Okay. All right. Talk it over, Jeff. We talked about this last time, but this time I thought I'm going to set an updated chart. I think this is the most important chart in all of macro. So what it is, it's a 100 plus year chart. It goes back to 1919 of the S&P 500 divided by gold. So price in gold. This isn't for gold bugs. You know, it's for what it represents. And what I mark there is the peaks, which are in pinkish and the troughs in green. Why is this important? I think that every. 15 to 30 years or so, we go into these major cycles. And what they're telling me is that for the

years leading up to the red bars or the pink bars, people think that the U.S. dollar is better than gold and U.S. assets are pretty much the best thing you can invest in the world. They're the best thing you can be in. And so they pour their capital or pour their purchasing power into the U.S. Americans do it. The rest of the world does it because there's no better place than it right, invest in America. There's no better place. But at these certain points in time, it can get overdone and overheated. And everybody knows these dates, right? 1929, 1967, the end of the 60s led to this huge bear market in the tumultuous 1970s. Obviously, the 1930s were terrible. The 2000s is the dot-com peak. I keep telling people that we hit another one of these inflection points back in January of 2022,

or actually December of 2021, depending on what you're looking at. If you factor in dividends, by the way, which the trading view doesn't go back that far. It extends it just a little bit. So why is this important? There gets to be a point, and I think the best example of where we're at right now, if you look at that tiny little red line where it is right now, so we're sitting at 1.54 and you look across, it actually goes to the beginning of 1973. What was the atmosphere like back in the late 60s and early 70s, right? The U.S. was in a war, a very unpopular war in Vietnam. We were still on a sort of a quasi-gold standard and the rest of the countries, the European nations who are sort of supporting us and our allies at that time, we're like, you know what? This war is crazy. Like, there is no way

you're going to pay us back and sound money. We want our gold back. We don't trust your dollar anymore. We think the only way that you can keep this facade going and maintain all of your debt is by basically debasing the crap out of your currency. And so we would like our gold back, please. And then everybody shifts away from the U.S. and into gold and into hard assets. So the 70s was a really great time to be obviously in gold, right? And then also other hard assets and also emerging markets. So things that basically people had been avoiding for years and decades, then they flipped over to that. I think this is really relevant because I think that same thing happened at the end of 2021, where basically we reach peak Americanization, peak financialization.

And China, by the way, figured this out all the way back in 2014 and stopped buying US treasuries and let them start to roll off their balance sheet. But the rest of the world figured, it out at the end of 2021. And basically after that huge bolus that we got from COVID, they're like, you know what? This is crazy. Like, you guys are just putting way too much into the system. There's no way you can actually pay this back in sound money. We're going to go back to gold.

We don't think the dollar is as good as gold anymore. So we're going back to gold. We're going back to hard assets. And now we live in the Bitcoin era. So I think that includes Bitcoin now. So we're especially going into Bitcoin and other sound money and hard assets. So I think this chart just speaks a thousand words, but I'd love to hear you guys as take on it. I just want to say that is the ugliest setup from a price action standpoint in the past year.

For people looking at the chart, you can see he has the two moving averages there. He has a 50 and he has a 15. And these are in one month bars. Yep. And historically when you see the death cross, if you will, between these two moving averages, it seems to persist for a decade at least after you get either a golden cross or a death cross on the chart. And so at the start of the year, it looks like we had the death cross on this. And boy, I mean, just zoomed out looking at it.

It looks just disgusting. Like it's, it's about to be bad. And just for a little perspective, that's well said, Preston. Just so people understand the significance of this, I went and looked at the peak in 1967 down to the trough in January of 1980. Yeah. That's in gold terms. That's a 95% decline in the S&P 500 relative to gold.

Yeah. So this is like, no joke. And I think that we're at a very similar situation. situation this time. Yeah. Wow. What a chart. I mean, you can see why. Go ahead. Sorry, I just put in one more thing. The reason I'm so passionate about this is because, you know, I used to be an investment advisor, right? I just run a hedge fund out. But 90% of Americans who work have 401ks and IRAs with everything sitting in U.S. stocks and U.S. bonds. And I am so concerned that Americans are just going to get decimated over the next 10 years. Yeah. And their automatic repurchasing of stocks and bonds.

And in real terms, in inflation-adjusted terms, like debasement reflecting terms, I think Americans are going to get wiped out unless they think about doing something else and start thinking about hard assets and especially start thinking about Bitcoin, obviously. I mean, you're not even talking about bonds. And I would imagine that equities are going to outperform bonds over that same period. And I can't even imagine how many of them are in just some type of bond index of some sort. I mean, good Lord. Yeah. I'm just curious, have you run this chart in total return basis? Of the S&P 500? Yeah. Yeah, so that's what I was saying earlier. That chart only goes back to, at least on Trading View, and I can pop it up, whoa.

But is that the total return? Hold on now. This is not the total return, because the total return only goes back to 1988. And so it's not as dramatic, but it's almost exactly the same. It has slightly delayed effects, but it's almost exactly the same. And by the way, the NASDAQ looks exactly the same as well with just slight little delays and where the peaks and bottoms are. Yeah, what's interesting is we all know that the 1970s was an amazing bull market for gold, and gold has been catching a bit here now. And the parallels between that 1967 peak and that 2022 peak are pretty interesting. And you can found this with like the fact that you have JP Morgan out there calling gold and Bitcoin the debasement trade, which is obviously like as Bitcoiners, we've been at odds with J.P. Morgan and Jamie Diamond for over a decade now.

and now they've just completely flipped and have joined our side of the table and it's like, wait a second, I'm sitting next to this guy. Hold on, I need this in somewhere else. But I think they have cottoned on to what Jeff has figured out as well. Yeah.

Yeah. So I would just, again, to encourage people out there in the audience, be careful about pricing your life and your net worth and your investments only in the dollar. You're going to be deceived. People in the 70s actually thought they did okay.

There was a lot of chop, but they kind of ended, I think, about slightly up or about even from 1968-ish to 1982, but in real terms, they just got wiped out. And so I just think...

In gold terms, not in real terms. Well, in both. In debasement terms and in gold terms. Yeah, because there's so much inflation in the 70s. I think the official, if you divide it, if you factor in CPI, officially, I think it was a 50% decrease from 68 to 82. Oh, the 70s, yeah.

No, I've talking about the last like 20 years. If you use the official CPI, every stock is like, yeah, not the last 20. Right, right. It's like insanely outperformed what the official stats are about inflation. Yep. So if I was a gold bug and I was watching this right now,

I would be furious because you're showing a chart with the S&P 500 against gold, but you're not showing a chart of Bitcoin against gold. And so for those gold bugs watching, I'm going to go ahead and put it up. No, I think this is important. And when you look at it from this lens, like, look at the, We are since 2021, it's kind of depressing. I have to admit, this is pretty depressing. Like, I'm sure Peter Schiff is just dancing all over people's graves.

And until he is truly doing that online, you know, this bull run is not going to be over. As soon as he starts tap dancing on our graves. Oh, he's been doing that. Oh, so the turn's coming. My favorite Peter Schiff tweet recently was he was a warning that Bitcoin could go as low as you're ready for it, $75,000. And I was like, I think we won if this is the worst world that Peter hit imagine for Bitcoin. Any comments on this one, guys? I mean, for the year, I think last I looked, we were down like 30% in gold terms.

Here, let me figure it. Like year to date, what are we down in gold term? Here's the start of the, oh, wow, yeah, that is ugly. It's right now. Gold's been kicking our ass this year. Oh, it's got. You know. Yeah, 37%.

Right. That's brutal. I know. This is their year, man. the gold ones are doing great. Good for them. We've been bullying them for the better part of 15 years. And I like to celebrate with him. You know, hey, they're having a good year. That's great. And shout out to Peter, man, he's so funny. He's just relentless. And he's talking about how everybody's going to go to zero if they're holding Bitcoin and they've got to get into gold now. Like,

he's just hilarious. He's almost like a comic. Is this a setup somehow? Everybody piles into gold and then all of a sudden Bitcoin just totally rips everything. Like, what are your thoughts? I was just going to say, I think that they, you know, like J.P. Morgan is saying, I think that they're both part of the debasement trade. And I do think that in a world in which Bitcoin does very well, you know, it's long puzzled me actually, Preston, to see gold not doing so well alongside Bitcoin and Bitcoin being more of the canary in the coal line, because you would think that gold would go up alongside Bitcoin. Now, I think, you know, as Bitcoiners were of the opinion that Bitcoin eventually demonetizes gold, but that's kind of on the long arc of history, you know, which it might take the entirety of our lives for that to happen. But yeah, I mean, with all of this Fiat monetary debasement, you would expect to see gold go up and Bitcoin go up. I think traditional finance just always looked at the gold bugs as like, oh yeah, they're just continuing to say that, you know, there's this and that and that the whole system's going to fail. And now in the past year, it appears that even Wall Street, you know, the veterans on Wall Street are also believing the

gold bugs. And I think when they're looking at both of the assets, they're saying, I don't really fully understand Bitcoin. It seems like there's a lot of technical things there that I can't possibly audit or understand. But I do understand if I'm holding a gold bar that that thing's probably going to do pretty well in a debasement type situation. So I think that it's getting a big run right now for people that just understand what's technically wrong with credit markets and all the things we've been talking about for a decade plus. And they're just looking at the two options and they're saying, I don't really understand that one. There's a bunch of weirdos with weird hats and sunglasses and whatnot, and they just don't seem to be the same type of person

that I am. I'm just going to buy this gold and not think about it. Would you guys agree? Essentially. I think many of them are of the age, too, where they were in the early part of their career when the 70s happened. And so this is kind of like, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy where they're like, it's about to do it again. And, you know, I want to be in on that. And they think that Bitcoin's going to do it as well alongside it, but they don't have the same faith in Bitcoin. And Bitcoin is not as large a market. as gold is. So if you want to move large amounts of capital, like gold probably still is a pretty good bet. I think that's definitely a large part of it, huddle. And I also think that they're getting

bolstered. The gold bugs are being bolstered by central banks, right? So the world is in desperate need right now of a neutral reserve asset, which used to be the U.S. Treasury. I'd say about half the world doesn't trust it as a neutral reserve asset. It's a very biased reserve asset. And so they're just getting out, right? And so basically the bricks block is moving on from treasuries, and they need something else to be a reserve asset. And I think as of now, that's gold. Bitcoin, I think someday will be in the conversation, but it's way too small now. So I think, you know, late 2030s, maybe 2040, somewhere around there, central banks will be buying Bitcoin in size, but we're much too early for that. And based on what this chart showed that we were

looking at earlier, the S&P over gold, this may go on for another 10 years. I mean, maybe you're still talking about this in the 2030s, like 20303, 34, 35, somewhere around there before this chart bottoms. And so if I had to choose gun to my head today, you can only invest in either the S&P 500 or gold for the next five to 10 years. I would absolutely pick gold over the S&P 500. And I think that's a minority take right now. But I think by the 2030s, that will be a majority take. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right.

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All right. back to the show. It's just so mind-bending to think that a rock is going to, I mean, based on the chart, Jeff, I agree with you 100%. I think that this is going to last for the next decade. It's going to outperform the index at least. And it's so insane to think that a rock is going to sit there and do a better performance than a real world business that's supposedly adding value, but is so disproportionately priced because of the treasury market and what it's done to prices, that it's going to outperform. It's just crazy to me to think that.

But Joe, go ahead. So, Jeff, I just want to flash forward. Like, we're doing a mastermind podcast, Q3, Q4 of 2026. And gold has suffered from these levels like a 30% decline. And stocks are higher, like let's say 10%. What's your takeaway? Is that change? Is that just a momentary pause?

Is anything structurally different? So it depends, right? First of all, if this charts, the way I run my hedge fund, I do momentum-based sort of things. So if the momentum, if the trend changes, then I will change with it. So I'll just say, like, I was wrong. Yeah, right. My macro take was wrong. And I flip over what I do.

If this chart completely goes the other direction and starts pulling the late 1990s and starts ripping higher again, yeah, then I'll be like, okay, that's over for now. But we're probably going to get back into it again. I will say that the geopolitical world order in the way things are moving bolsters my opinion of this, that this is not only right, but it's going to be more right. as the years go on. I think the rhetoric between the U.S. and China and the U.S. and the Bricks nations and the U.S. losing India as an ally recently and all these sorts of things, I think only tell me that capital is moving away from the U.S. and this whole, as we get away from

globalization and into nationalization and turn into a multipolar world, and we can talk about all this a little later, that requires tremendous amounts of money that the U.S. doesn't have because we're already bankrupt over indebted right now. So how in the world are we going to pay for this and sound money. Everything to me plays together and says that this is going to continue and it's actually going to accelerate from here. But you're right, Joe, if it does change and the trend changes, I'll just change with it and I'll just say that's a nerve. I was wrong. I'm not saying what your thesis here is wrong. I just been around long enough to see gold does this. It goes on these crazy runs. I mean, it went on that crazy run in 2011. It dropped 50% thereafter. I remember reading

a Luke Groman article about exactly what you're saying, gold becoming the new reserve asset in 2020 and it then dropped like 25% and like it languished through basically the end of 22 or 23 if memory serves. So like it does this. It goes on these parabolic runs, resets. Not to say it's not going to catch a bit. Like it's not going to zero, right? If you put your money in gold, it's pretty fine. But to Preston's point, I mean, in long run to find is like four or five years, right? There are periods where gold has spectacular runs and then does nothing, absolutely nothing. Joe, if I was going to. I'm sorry, go ahead, Preston. No, yeah, I was, if I was going to try to answer your question from Jeff's perspective as far as this trend persisting. When I'm looking at the chart

that I have pulled up right now, going back to these moving averages, the reason that these moving averages really help you kind of gauge something that has a large market cap for a long-term trend is because it helps wash out the volatility of the price action. So like when we're looking at the price action right now of gold, it's ripping compared to the S&P 500. Is it overdone? Probably a little bit. And would I expect in the next nine months for there to be somewhat of a recovery in S&P 500 terms relative to gold? Yeah, I actually kind of would expect it to the S&P to bid against gold because it's just been so overdone. But the real question is how much of that is just standard volatility for the much bigger trend or the much bigger move. And where those moving

averages really help you out in that is as long as, you know, and we're looking at this chart, As long as that orange line, which is your longer moving average, that's a 50-month moving average versus the 15-month moving average, as long as it stays above it, I would say you're just within the standard volatility range of the move itself. Does that make sense what I'm saying, Joe? Oh, yeah. No, I mean, it definitely does. But look at that move in 2011. Like, if you were just looking at the chart in a backward-looking way in August 2011, you'd say, oh, the dollar's cooked, the S&P is cooked. Like, you know, it's all done, right? So my, my, I see a 10-year run in the opposite direction. So I think when these moving averages cross over like they did shortly after, within a year after that move, that would be a huge red flag to me that maybe you're wrong about the long-term trend, right? But as long as you're still having the longer moving average above the shorter one, I think that the overall trend is going to continue to persist. Yeah.

And just so, you know, like how I operate as a fund manager. So I start with this macro view, right? This is a hundred and six year chart. And when it looks like the tide is turning and we're rolling over and now it's going to be basically, you know, gold's going to be better than the S&P 500, which it looks like to me is probably going to hold up. And if it's like history for maybe 12 years or so, so a long period of time. And why that matters is practically speaking, I flip my hedge fund over from financialized assets to hard assets. And we can talk about this too and how we choose hard assets in which I think are going to do well because now we live in a central. command economy and not a free market economy anymore. Or we haven't for a long time. But I switch

over. And so instead of favoring things like the S&P 500 and small cap stocks or blah, blah, blah, now I look at hard assets. I look at how is the U.S. going to build the military industrial complex and rebuild our manufacturing base? What are the signs that the administration is talking about? And I literally now invest in funds like copper funds, steel funds, titanium, aluminum, them, things that I wouldn't have even considered four or five years ago. Now we're like in size in these kind of things. Obviously, Bitcoin as well and gold and related things. So this rare earth metal discussion is huge right now, Jeff. Talk to us what you're hearing on that. And it seems like your investment thesis is playing right into that. It is huge. And I tell people this,

it's so easy with Trump because Trump is so forthright about what he's doing. And I think so many people don't trust him because they don't like him, so they don't believe him. And I'm telling you, he's just giving you the playbook, right? He's saying, we are woefully underprepared for a coming war with China, which we can talk about that too, but I think that's just absolutely in the cards in the coming years. And he's saying, we sorely lack energy for AI and for military industrial complex, so we need to boost that. We need rare earth materials. China has a lock on that, obviously, which is an incredible ace up their sleeve for them and a great trading card for them. And then he tells you literally what materials, like the government is actually investing in

not just companies like Intel, but they're investing in tiny little rare earth companies as well as things like aluminum producers and other things that they consider critical elements for the expansion of manufacturing and the military industrial complex in the United States. So I literally just go through what I see the government doing. And then I do research on those topics and look for the best companies in these different things or just pick ETFs that kind of hit these topics. And it's been very successful. And I think that's what most people should be doing. Like, they're literally giving you the playbook. And similar to China, right? When China is like, hey, they literally tell their banks that you need to start investing in this. And when their stock

market is down, they'll just say, we command you to start buying stocks, the institutions in China. And what happens? Stocks go up. And if they say, we're going to boost the housing market, the housing market goes up. Right. And so I'm telling you, when you have a very powerful government doing central command and telling you what they're going to do, I would say don't fight it. Just like the famous don't fight the Fed quote, I would say don't fight this administration when they tell you what their game plan is just to invest accordingly. Guys, let's move on to strategic Bitcoin Reserve. So the White House EO says a seized Bitcoin is not to be sold.

Where are we at with this thing? It seems like there was a lot of hoopla when Trump took office. Everybody was like he's going to sign this thing. and it just seems to have died on the vine. The talking point that I heard when I was in D.C. What, like two or three weeks ago, the Genius Act was passed. And so now the focus is on the Clarity Act and to get market structure before we go to the SBR. But to me, it just seems like this is just continuing to be kicked further and further to the right.

And it's not really has a lot of support from everybody on the Hill. I'm kind of curious, Joe, if you've heard anything or Hoddle, if you've heard anything specific to any of these ideas or what you see happening in D.C. Is it what you expected? Is it different than what you expected? Just kind of your general sentiment. So, you know, I believe that from the bill standpoint, something getting through Congress, that was always going to be an uphill climb. That was never sort of my base case. And I think we talked about this on prior masterminds. It's increasingly difficult to get anything through Congress. There's a lot of willing and dealing. It's very difficult as the calendar starts to float and you have to pick priorities. And I think the lobbyists that are

there. Let's be honest, they're mostly the crypto lobbyists and they want clarity more than they would want, you know, I think the strategic Bitcoin reserve that's in their interest. That's probably got the juice that's already getting floated. And frankly, there's a lot more money behind something like that occurring rather than doing something like the Bitcoin Reserve for altruistic reasons. Although I think it would benefit as crypto as a whole if there were strategic Bitcoin Reserve. But putting that aside, like that was always sort of like a tail event. I think that could have occurred. I don't think it's serious. I don't think it's likely to get through certainly not before the midterms. And you, you know, that was always sort of,

And with the strategic Bitcoin Reserve, let's be honest, like, it was a massively optimistic, bullish development that we even got in SBR. I think there were people that were really skeptical that we would get one. The United States government treats this as a strategic priority. I was on a podcast with Matt Pines talking about this. And like, that alone as a talking point that we say there's a strategic necessity for holding Bitcoin is huge. Now, when it comes to like filling that out and developing ways, we haven't heard a whole lot. I think there's been sort of confusion internally how far they wanted to push the envelope on that, whether they want to take the Exchange Stabilization Act and try to acquire additional Bitcoin, all of that sort of on the table. But I just don't think

it's a serious priority at this point for the administration. Now, the news recently broke about this seized Bitcoin, I think it's an additional $14 billion approximately that was seized. And the question there becomes, is that going to be Bitcoin such that's finally forfeited to the U.S. government. For what that means is like, when you seize Bitcoin in a criminal proceeding, it's not necessarily the government's property. It could belong to victims, could belong to people that could have claims against it to pay restitution. So there needs to be a court order or some sort of plea that transfers that Bitcoin's title to the U.S. government, that if it's finally forfeited. So we'll see how much of that ends up finally forfeited. That's

the easiest budget neutral way to acquire more Bitcoin. But that's a lengthy process and that, you know, it's going to take some time to hash that out. But to me, like, I still think it's awesome that we got it to begin with. I don't know why that wasn't sufficient, why there was so much, I guess, hopium about the government going out and the open market and buying Bitcoin. But these things take time. And as Bitcoin continues to mature as an asset and the market begins to develop, I think that they've established a baseline for holding what's in this SBR and that will only expand through natural process. Yeah, I agree with a lot of what Joe said. I talked to the guys over at Bitcoin Policy Institute quite a bit. And they, like Joe said,

there's a lot of crypto lobbying firms. These are our guys and they're very intelligent and the work they do is very worthwhile. And they were behind some of this. And they've been very happy with it. It is sort of via confiscation rather than via open market buying like Joe was talking about. And this thing, like this pig butchering scam, might be one of the things that helps sort of feather the nest that is the SBR. You know, something I didn't know that was sort of interesting about the pig butchering scam is that these text messages where it's like, hey, what's up? It's me.

You want to get lunch, right? Like, I'm sure we all get these. And I thought they were just like crypto-specific things. Like I'm on some hacked list from whatever years back or whatever. Apparently, they got to everybody in America. And pig butchering is a specific type of scam in which you establish a personal relationship with the person. And then you basically like build trust over time and then you butcher the pig all at once.

You take them for as much money as you possibly can. And this Cambodian pig butchering scam had made some insane amount of money. And obviously there was some US nexus there that allowed them to nab this guy because there were a US citizens who were being preyed on. So I think that I didn't realize that's how they came up with all the Bitcoin. It was through something like that, Hodel? through those text messages that come through your phone. No way.

Honestly. Yeah, seriously. So enough people, it's like a Nigerian print scam, but in a modern day, it's called pig butchering. And what it basically is, is they will send you a text message that purports to be a wrong number or something, some amount of people will text back to it. And they'll be like, I'm your friend and, you know, whatever, or they'll make a personal friendship.

And then they get the person on the line. They get them to deposit money into it. They say, oh, I'm doing this Forex trading stuff. You should do it with me. They get them to deposit money into a fake account that makes it look like they're making a lot of money. But they're not. And then they get them to deposit even more money. And by the way, this is not just stupid people or, you know, unsophisticated people that are being ganged by these scams. I had heard a story about a friend of a friend who was a Yale educated attorney who had lost $5 million to one of these. Come on. No, seriously. So because they built, they're praying on your, it's social engineering. They're praying on your, you know, your human instinct and your capacity for trust and relationship building. And then one day out of nowhere, they just, they butcher the pig. They kill you all at once. They take a large,

amount of money from you. That is nuts. So just to add one final thing that I think is critical here. This is one of the primary reasons why we need to have a strong next year in Bitcoin, what Bitcoin needs to be considerably higher and hopefully following Gold's footsteps and follow Dr. Jeff's thesis here about hard assets rallying. Because in EEO, an executive order, it's an executive order, right? the next president that comes in, if they have a different philosophical view than Trump, they can just, with a single stroke of a pen, undo that, right? But you can envision a world where we get a very strong bull run into 2026, and people start to view Bitcoin differently, right?

The 80% busts are done, right? It's over. It's a new modern Bitcoin. It's been institutionalized. You've got massive capital allocators that are following in sailors' footsteps, and this asset is no longer a joke. It's to be taken seriously. If you have that sort of paradigm shift that occurs,

I think that there will be more of an emphasis on not just holding, but acquiring. And I think you could get, obviously, the Strategic Bricorn Reserve codified into law via a bill, right, via a law passed by Congress, which is key, and then potentially a signal that we're trying to acquire more. And one thing on the gold discussion we didn't reference is that part of the price section gold, I believe, and I'd love to hear Jeff's take on this, I don't think it's all retail-driven. I think it's some central bank buying, particularly some of the eastern central banks. I think they're pushing the envelope, pushing the button on that.

There's some retail and other funds piling on, but it's primarily central bank catalyst that has lit this fire in gold. If you're the United States and you want to move into the 21st century and you want to have a rival to that, you want to have the sovereign reserve asset that is not a U.S. Treasury, you want to have some alternative hedge. That's Bitcoin. Like, that's what the United States government should be doing from a geopolitical perspective. But I'm interested in anybody else's thoughts on that.

I touched on that a little bit earlier about how there isn't a reserve asset that's neutral other than gold anymore. So for these BRICS nations, like, they don't trust the U.S. treasures anymore. So if I remember, right, do you guys remember like maybe two, three years ago, China was actually urging its citizens to buy gold? Yes. And yeah, I think that's real, right? I'm not just making that up. And so, yeah, and so I think that they're doing that. I think the central banks are loading up and they're, you know, encouraging their citizens to do so. So I think that's putting, obviously, a massive bid underneath the place. So we should encourage Americans to buy Bitcoin and the U.S. government to acquire Bitcoin and to codify the SPR into law. That's the geopolitical

battle. If you buy gold, you're supporting China, right? Is that what you're saying? Mark it down. That's what I said. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination. Risk and regulation are ramping up and customers now expect proof of security just to do business. That's why VANTA is a game changer. VANTA automates your compliance process and brings compliance, risk, and customer trust together on one AI-powered platform. So whether you're prepping for a SOC two or running an enterprise GRC program, VANTA keeps you secure and keeps your deals moving. Instead of chasing spreadsheets and screenshots, VANTA gives you continuous automation across more than 35 security and privacy frameworks.

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1231, 2025. Carefully consider the investment material before investing, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the income fund's prospectus at fundrise.com slash income. This is a paid advertisement. All right. Back to the show. Hey, I want to talk about the Sofer rate versus the effective federal funds rate and how we're seeing spikes in this, which is typically seen right before liquidity issues in the market. So this is obviously a very short term kind of thing and could be nothing. I mean, we see spikes all the time, but these ones seem to be pretty substantial. I'm curious, Jeff or Joe or Hoddle, what you guys are thinking and whether this is kind of a,

are we at a point right now where we're seeing some, you know, spicy price action that's on the horizon within weeks? Well, I'll just jump in quick and then we'll get the real answer from these guys, but, you know, I don't know if you guys heard Powell speak yesterday at the Nabe National Association of Business Entrepreneur or something like that. And he basically just threw out there like, yeah, we're probably going to stop QT pretty soon because bank reserves are getting, he said they're still like ample, but they're getting close to these levels. So what I think that's his code for saying, we're watching this to Preston. And we don't want to have a repeat of 2019 with the reverse repo saga. So we're getting ready to take action and we see what's happening, but we don't want to cause a panic.

That was September, October. It was in the fall of 2019. September. Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere in there. and then, you know, then COVID hit in March of 2020, what was it five, six months later. Yeah. So it does seem, it feels a little bit like that, right? Back in the September of 2019 event.

And I agree with you. I think that's why he has kind of swiftly changed his messaging in this past week or two. And I think you're right. I think that's probably why he's doing it. Joe Hoddle, you guys got anything else on that particular topic? No, I think that so for spikes are just noise basically. I definitely think that, as Jeff pointed out, he's explicitly. at least said that there are signs starting to emerge of a gradual tightening of liquidity

condition. So when he says something like that, he's not hiding the ball. He's telling you very clearly that like they're nearing the end of that process. They're nearing the end of QT. That does not mean like QE, full blown QE, right? It's like we think that the current amount of the balance sheet, which I was listening to Muhammad Alarion say that he thinks that's a mistake that they should be drawing it down further and getting it more normalized. We'll see. Everybody can always, it's easy to judge, you know, until something. blows up and then you're a blame for everything. But, you know, from my perspective, like, I think the clear path forward is to expect greater rate cuts moving forward. I mean, the market

is pricing and now, what is it? 75 basis points cuts by the end of the year, right? And those trades are gaining some traction here. So I think you had, well, who is it today? Was it, Waller say that they thought that the neutral rate was about 100 plus 120 bits slower. Yeah. So clearly that's like auditioning for the next role. And I think some of the volatility in the forward-looking curves are all responding to the fact of, like, what is the next Fed you're going to do? Because it's really easy to say, like, well, we should just cut, cut, cut, cut here, which I get it. I'm sympathetic to that view. I'll tell you for a couple of reasons, because I think the rate hike regime is not curving the higher consumer prices. I think you're

stuck near three, regardless of what the Fed does. All you're doing is hurting certain segments of the economy. So I'm sympathetic to the view of like more cuts. But the question becomes like, if you're so aggressive and you just become a beholden to the administration, like, that's a new era. And I'm not casting judgment on it. I'm just saying it's markedly different from at least the supposed appearance of independence. And I want to emphasize the word appearance. I don't think the Fed has ever truly been independent by any means. It's clearly response to politics. But at least they tried to have this pretext that where they were somehow independent. Now it just seems like, I'll call up the president. What should we do on rates? Like, let's see what the Donald has to say.

Like that's going to be the answer, which is a different regime, right? Like that we have to be honest. right. And that swap happens in May, is that right? For the Fed Chair Chair. He's done. But the interesting thing is, and he won't answer this, Chair Powell won't answer this question, whether he's going to stay on, right? Because it's not just the chair, right? That's one of the the reason why the Lisa Cook issue is such a big deal. If they can oust Lisa Cook and Powell gives up his seat, because he's still on for several years, just on board, right? Then he gets a majority. And that's really key. So that's why that whole thing was filed. If we didn't cover that in one of the prior sessions. I didn't realize that, Joe. I didn't realize he was still going to

be on the board after May. He's still there. When is his term retired, Jeff? I'll get to the date. Wow. As the chair? No, no, no. Like, yeah, after he's done. Yeah, overall. Yeah, I don't know. I can't remember. But his chair term ends in May, but he's still on. Wow. I did not know that. Yeah. I'll get it in a second. So while you're looking for that, you know, and speaking of the yield curve, I've just been thinking about this lately, and I don't know if it's because I'm just old-fashioned or what, but I just, do you guys know that the yield curve has been inverted for like three straight years and nobody even talks about it anymore? Yeah, right. And yeah, you want to show this? Here's how I look at the Fed funds rate. Like being a Fed share would be so simple, because all you

have to do is look at what the two-year yield is. And you say, okay, we got to get below the two-year yield. And right now the two-year yield is sitting at 3.41% or so, and the one month and the Fed funds rate is still sitting up at about, you know, 4.25 or whatever it is. 4.08, yeah. So it's not complicated. The market is telling the Fed, yeah, you need to lower the Fed funds rate to at least below 350, probably about 3.25% right now. So you need to drop 100 bips right now or as soon as you can. You know, you got to tell the market that's your plan. And they've been so resistant to it. for so long talking about the need to get inflation down, right? And the need to be to not be accommodative. We need to be a little bit restrictive. We don't want to cause inflation. It's the market.

The market is telling them you're making a mistake. You need to get it down lower. I don't know if you guys have opinions on that, but we need to uninvert the yield curve and bring back normalcy across the yield curve. And it just drives me nuts because it's such an easy thing to do. Paul's term on the board ends 2008, January, 2008. Wow. This chair term.

He'll be there for a while, yeah. Well, no, typically and historically, once they sunset his chair, they're done. They just give up the seat. That's why they keep asking that question because we'll see if he hangs around, they can't kick him out of the Eccles building. Oh, so they usually resign from the board. Yeah, they usually say it's done. Like, listen, we have the pinnacle. Who wants to sit around?

It's like, you know, who's that president that were? He was like president in the United States and then he ran for Senate. He was like hanging out in the Senate. Like, just what's the point of that? You know what I'm talking about? I can't remember that. How does seem that part of his mission in life, though, is to resist Donald Trump. So I could see him hanging around.

You know. I don't think he likes Trump very much. Jeff, to your point on the, you know, them needing the drop the rate, yeah, I think that. And for people that might not be intimately familiar with the curves, the only thing that they really control is that overnight money rate. All the other ones with duration are for all intents of purposes controlled by the market. I think a lot of people, there's a lot of people out there that would argue with that. But for all intents of purposes, it's very different than the federal funds rate. And with it riding, everybody can see here on the chart, it's at 4.2 on the federal funds.

And the two year is at 3.4. And to Jeff's point, yeah, they got to drop it of 100 bips at this point. Right. I don't know why he keeps a reason. He has a perfect excuse to just be like, the bond market is telling us we need to drop 100 bips. Yeah, but they look at the data. They look at the consumer price and core PC. When they're data dependent, they're not looking at it with the bond market.

Right. Because the bond market is. Yeah, their data dependence is not based on the yield of. the two-year, I mean, and let's be clear, like there have been times over the past couple years where the bottom marks were completely wrong. Like, yields were much lower and then they ramped up. Look at where yields were in the fall of last year and where they went to in January after the Fed cut. Fed started cutting and then yields rose. And everybody freaked out and people said, well, if you cut more, I mean, talking about bad takes, somebody, people were arguing in January of 2025

that the Fed engaged in any more cuts that they would lose the long end of the yield curve and we'd be rocketing above 5%. It was going to go berserk, right? It was sell off really hard. What has happen. The 10 years, is it under four? It was, yeah, 396, yeah. 396, as they've cut. So that was totally wrong, the idea that, you know, that they would price in significant more inflation when we were cutting. So these curves can react, you know, they're reacting primarily in my view based on growth expectations. And I think in your point, Jeff, like the growth expectations are weakening. So what do you expect to happen to yields? Yields are going to decline. Right. I just think it's so simple because he has an excuse, right? He doesn't have to say he's bowing to Trump. He's just

be like, look what the two years telling us. It's telling us we need to come lower. So therefore, we should do that. His excuse is the labor market. Right. Yeah. I would just love to end the Fed like tomorrow and have it just, and it does have it be automated. Like, this is so ridiculous. But anyways, yeah, it makes me mad. Let's just put chat GPT in charge of the Fed. Let's do it. It would do just as good a job. Let's be real. It'd do better. What do you guys' thoughts on AI right now? Well, I, I think there's something kind of interesting going on in AI tech. I don't know if you guys have been paying attention to like the deals that are going on between

Nvidia and OpenAI and AMD, etc. There's a lot of this round-tripping that, you know, we remember seeing in the FTX land in the San Bangin-Fried days and it's making me mildly uncomfortable. And if you talk to guys like Jensen Wong, they'll tell you that general purpose compute is dead and the world is moving towards a specific compute, which is something that we can understand as Bitcoiners, like we've seen the move from CPU to GPU. to ASIC and now the broader market is going through that move. But I don't know, man, I see all these round trip deals and I get a little sketched out with what's going on over there in their market.

And obviously what's happening in high tech affects the broader market in general and leads back to Jeff's thesis about it's kind of over. It's the swan song, just like it was in CryptoLand. I was doing this because it's that Spider-Man meme where there's three of the law pointing at each other. Like, who's paying for this? Who's paying for this? You are. You are. So yeah, that is going to be a two big to fail moment, I think at some point at the end of this. I don't think we're getting close to the end. I think we are at the early stages of like a bubble, but like I have years to go would be my guess. This stuff is fascinating. I tell you, I've been thinking a lot about this and geopolitics lately, and I don't think much about Bitcoin anymore because, you know, it's going to just keep going

up over time. But, you know, there's the optimistic side of this age of abundance that's coming. And then everybody's concerned about AI taking all of the white collar jobs. And that's, I think, a real concern. What I've been thinking about, and this doesn't make me popular at all, so I don't speak my mind, and I'll do this here in front of just the three of us, so nobody else will know about it. I'm a hardcore free market capitalist. But does free market capitalism work for humans, which is doggy, dog, the best win, the rest die, creative destruction? What if our competition is all 10x or 100x smarter than us and can do things 10x to 100x better than us, do we really want to be in free market competition with AI? And I'm totally serious. What if unemployment jumps to

40%? Do you want a capitalistist? So even though I think it's the best for humans, is free market capitalism the best way to run an economy in an AI world? And I think the answer is actually no, but I'd love to hear you guys. Wow. Wow, that's bold. Okay. Yeah, good guys. I'm more of the opinion. I think a lot of the talk about artificial general intelligence or superintelligence is, and I think it's meant to create regulatory capture opportunities for the already powerful players in the markets, like an open AI. I don't believe we're going to see super intelligence anytime soon. There is like a potential fast takeoff scenario if the AIs are able to rapidly iterate on themselves.

But, you know, GPT5 kind of sucks, my opinion. I was expecting a lot more of an improvement out of it, and it seemed to be sort of a plateau. Now, did it get nerved because the researchers were worried about? There's all this stuff like that, right, where they're like, you know, and then obviously you have the espionage angle where the Chinese are trying to steal the weights and they're deeply embedded in every American company and the whole thing is moving off a clip at 88 miles per hour, right? And so, you know, it's hard to track what's going on in AI at any given time.

But I think my general framework here is that AI is something like the new handgun and that it's a tool that humans are going to be able to leverage against other AI. So I don't know that it's me and you versus an AI, but I think it's me and you plus AI versus other humans plus AI, right? So like we get these like super powerful computer symbiotes that we're using to duel with each other. But we might actually reach a level of the like the internet, for instance, where you've heard of dead internet theory where like basically like 90% of the internet is already made of bots. Well, it might move to 100%. And the internet just becomes like the machine battleground between the AIs and we all operate on the other side of them. So like my AI goes out and does battle with your AI in the world or whatever.

I don't know, man. We're heading towards interesting times. I do think it's going to dematerialize a lot of industries. And like probably the people that are in those industries now will seek or they'll go to the government and say, hey, we've already, we've been in this industry too long. We've given up too much. We're super important. Here's why.

And they'll be able to carve out these laws that basically allow them to continue doing it for some time. But then in the next generation, it's over. I don't know that like what Jeff does like radiology. A robot's going to do that. That one's dead. For sure. You know.

And just as a quick aside, and I want to hear what you guys say, I think I'm more optimistic on what it will do. I don't know if optimism is the right word. I think it's AGI is going to be more impressive and then ASI. I'm kind of a Ray Kurzweil like I believe in him that he's going to be right. And I think it's going to be like at some point a thousand, 10,000 times smarter than humans. I look at radiology and other physician things.

First of all, by the way, guys, I'm not a doctor anymore. I quit doctoring in January of this year, so you don't have to call me doctor anymore. Just just, just Jeff. If you say so, I use AI to test it to see how it answers medical questions. It's fantastic. Yeah. I think it's already at the point where a lot of people could skip going to the doctor for a lot of things and just be like,

hey, I got this and this. What do you think? I think doctors are going to fight it tooth and nail because they don't want to lose their income and their profession and their reputation. But I think it's inevitable. And I think it's going to be, it's changed the world technology. I don't know. Maybe I'm too optimistic. I love to hear. No, no, it's a big deal. I just don't know that AGI is like literally the machines become gods. So that's why I'm like, I don't. Joe. Well, the me, the biggest story, we're talking about economics and the going forward expectations for how the economy is going

to perform as the build out because McKinsey says we're going to spend between six and seven trillion dollars through 2020-30, the KAPX expenditures from just the MAG-7 are estimated loan to be over a trillion dollars by Goldman Sachs. It's a massive infusion of private capital, and this isn't borrowed money. These people are tapping their cash-rich balance sheets to do that build-out. We're talking data centers, accelerators, networking, real estate, power grid upgrades, all these things. That's the story. Okay, so for people wondering why these companies are like just absolutely soaring is because they're fighting to win the future, they're fighting to have their continued monopoly over the infrastructure that will be the life and soul of our economy and all the things

we're talking about in this call. And I don't think anybody fully understands it, but it's sort of a need to know, need to own asset, right? You need to own these stocks because of the fact that they will have this monopoly over the future. And I don't think it's one of those things where you're going to have a bunch of garage band startups that are going to overcome some of this AI data center buildup. It's very different from other technologies. The amount of compute and energy and hardware and infrastructure is going to be massive. So like that's a huge story. and there's going to be jobs that come along with that. So I think the fear about destroying jobs and massive unemployment skyrocketing, that may be real.

And I wouldn't totally fade that, but I would push the timeframe for that. It takes a little bit longer, as we know in Bitcoin for things to develop than we expect. So that might be a 2030s issue, whereas for the next five years, I could see it actually like causing a surge of certainly skilled jobs to help do the buildout. So that's a huge story, in my opinion. But, you know, I'll just finish one thing. In terms of the actual, and this is just what I'm encountering, in terms of the actual use case of some of these current tools, I got to tell you, I feel myself very much blessed because I'm seeing sludge filed all the time in lawsuits, garbage, terrible complaints, pro se thinks that they understand it because they're asking GPT to do something and it will spit out something that is complete garbage. So it's actually leading to an increase. You know, we're hiring. My firm's hiring because we're like, we're slammed with all these pro se litigants who they can type something into GPT and get it right. And it's garbage, right? So in Frankly, it's frustrating the courts because they're saying, like, why are all these new complaints getting filed?

Wow. Why is there this massage influx of people that now think they're lawyers? And they know not even enough to be dangerous. They know enough to waste people's time. That's basically, like literally with the filing. So I think that if all AI is going to do is going to increase the amount of sludge out there in terms of shoddy work product and it's going to cause people to be lazy and turn off their brains, those who will turn on their brains will be exceedingly profitable.

They will be very skilled and they'll make a lot of. lot of money. So it's really important like any other muscle, your brain, you know, should be utilized and it should be relied on and tuned. And you should use this as a supplement, not a replacement. I think the most currently, with all the technologies I've seen, the most effective use of AI is always to supplement someone who's already smart and savvy and have them test their thinking. That's the way I use it. That's way really smart people I know use it. But not to just be like, tell me what to do AI chatbot because you're the AI chat pod and I don't want to read something. Amen.

Yes, amen to that, by the way. What are your guys' thoughts on the humanoid robots, like the Tesla? Because when you're talking about the jobs that are going to be created through some of the change that's here, I mean, the numbers that I'm hearing, what is it, like a million humanoid robots of at least the Tesla version by 2030 is what they're kind of shooting for? And like, what's that going to mean for just augmented labor? Hautele, go ahead. Yeah, I think if Elon gets robots even a little bit right, it's very obvious. that he's the world's first trillioner.

And I do think that, like, Tesla has a massive leap forward in real world AI. And, like, that's what the whole robotics revolution is actually about, like, you know, Boston Dynamics, we've all seen those videos. They do at, like, Christmas time where they make the robot stance and stuff. Like, we have had the ability to, like, hydraulically control and articulate robot arms for 20 years now. And actually, it's gotten really good. And the hardware side is, it's not completely figured out.

Like, they don't move or talk as move or walk as fluidly as we do. But they can get around. They're ambulatory and they can do things. And Boston Dynamics has basically figured out that quadruped robots with a weird, freaky articulating arm on top of their head is sort of the way to go about things. And so it's about the visual learning and it's about the real world application of large language models. You know, I had a self-driving Tesla, my wife's car, a Model X.

And when there was a switchover to FSD 12 from FSD 11, that was when Elon and the engineers went back and started training it via LLM, like via neural network. And there was a massive leap forward in the tech. So like if you were a Tesla driver and you were using autopilot from 11 to 12, massive leap. It went from being a car driven by a janky robot trying to kill me to a car that was driving much more like a teenage girl who was only occasionally trying to kill me, which is a huge leap forward. So I think, yeah, real world AI is a massive, it's a really big deal.

The robotics industry is obviously going to be the biggest, industry in the history of the world up to this point. And so I'm wildly bullish on all of that. But I do think it's more of a 2030s phenomenon where it kicks into high gear. Like probably mid-2030s is when we're all fully ensconced in the robotic revolution. Which a lot of this goes to Jeff's original comment where he's concerned as to like if you're competing with something like this. Let's say somebody has five of these things, these humanoid robots. Like, can you imagine how much you could get done just around the house, let alone like all the other things you could stick these things on

if they're armed with, you know, who knows what level of intelligence at that point, that you can just give them random tasks to go out there and do things. And I don't know, guys, this is getting really strange. Let me give you an example of something that you could see in the future. It's like,

imagine a Spotify, but instead of songs, it has recipes and those recipes come from the world's greatest chefs. And then in everybody's kitchen is a set of our, articulating robot arms that can cook, you know, Gordon Ramsey-style meals for you directly in your kitchen. That's just one example of the kind of world that we're heading into. And I don't think any of us are capable of understanding all the other myriad examples of things that could happen in that world. I mean, the humanoid robot could go out and get the ingredients from the

store and come back and cook it and like all of that, right? Like, and I think people might hear that and they're like, yeah, come on, dude, we are decades. I don't think we're decades away from this. I think we're like five years to seven years out from something like this. Yeah, it's coming up quick, quick, quick. But what does that do to prices? Yes, I know. What does that do to eating out? What does that do to eating out? What does that do to cross the board of these things?

It craters them. It doesn't cause them to rise. It causes them to fall. Yeah. And that's the takeaway, right? The inflation he says, I never understood this argument. Like, you're on the verge of a massive boon in productivity that's going to send prices across the board through the floor. So I just don't, I'd be curious.

any of your thoughts on this because I find it very difficult when I listen to these folks saying that, you know, CPI is going to run back up to 10% on a persistent basis or we'll have hyperinflation on our doorstep. I mean, maybe if UBI becomes a thing, but that doesn't really fix the problem that just artificially raises the cost of things temporarily and then technology advances and it still causes the same problem. Yeah, I think a short-term spike in inflation as we do the buildout as we bring back manufacturing. I mean, so we have to pay for it somehow and with money that's not very sound in the near term. Which is great, by the way, which is a huge advantage, right?

Like, I was saying, if you old assets. Yeah, buy as much. Like, they should be sending a trillion dollars right now to build out the AI. Right. Spend more money. Yeah. It'll be terrible for the bottom 60% of income earners, right? So I think first we have inflation, not massive and not out of control,

but then we have that big disinflationary streak that's going to be for the rest of our lives, probably. That's how I look at it. I think it's important to define. like in dollar terms and Bitcoin terms and in what terms because, you know, when I'm looking at this M2 growth rate of just the sheer Fiat in the system, like that thing's not slowing down anytime soon, at least not by the trends that I'm looking at. So if there's that many more units in the system, like what's that going to do to the prices of desirable things? And I think that's the key.

That's the key word. I think they're going to keep going up in Fiat terms. But like in Bitcoin terms, everybody knows like what's happening there, which is the prices. just keep going down and down. Yeah. So I think that's the important kind of distinction is what are you actually looking at the unit in that you're measuring against? Yeah. Yeah.

And you guys got anything else you want to make sure we cover? Oh, I got to do a mea culpa about the treasury companies. God was I wrong about the treasury company. I was like, man, this thing is going to snowball upward. Like we're going into a Bitcoin treasury company bubble. No. In fact, what happened is they all became Bitcoin. penny stocks. That's what I call them now. I don't even, I don't even call them treasury companies.

I call them penny stocks, Bitcoin penny stocks. I mean, the MNAVs have just collapsed on these. What's happened with NACA? What's going on with it? NACA is below its pipe price. I think I checked it today. It was at 76 cents. It's kind of opaque. I can't really figure out what the MNAV is on NACA at the moment, but it's really six cents. Yeah. Clearly below it's MNAV. And then it's Sequans or however you say that one, that one got creamed and, you know, Asty, uh,

strive, that one's not doing well. I mean, basically none of them are doing well. 21 Jack Muller's is holding up pretty solidly. And then I think MSTR is still kind of the goat here. And people prognosticating the death of MSTR, I think are completely oblivious to what's happening.

Exactly. But what we've found out is that there's a big difference between some of these smaller ones and MSTR. Yeah. Yeah. So, do any of you think that Greece and price? section of Bitcoin is a byproduct of some of the turmoil and the Bitcoin treasury companies?

Absolutely. Walk me through that. Explain why you think that is. Well, if Bitcoin, I mean, at the end of the day, Bitcoin's the engine of these treasury companies. And it's completely predicated on, or at least if they're securitizing Bitcoin and issuing preferred stock or convertible debt, if the whole thing's predicated on Bitcoin going up 40% a year and they're issuing their credit instruments at 10% a year, then they're going to

capture a 30% spread, that's the whole premise of not having an operational business and being able to securitize Bitcoin through a corporate entity, right? And so if Bitcoin's going sideways and it's not doing the 40% thing, you kind of get yourself in a position where you can't keep growing the Bitcoin on the balance sheet because it's literally gone sideways and you're going to get too levered as it continues to go sideways. But if it keeps going up and keeps going up But very consistently, let's just say that the Bitcoin price runs at 40%, very consistently and very smoothly with not a lot of volatility. And you're issuing 10% dividends or whatever from a convertible debt standpoint, which, you know, it's way less than that, but then you have to pay the principal on it after five years. So I think 10%'s a better number to use when you're comparing these two.

But if it was just going up nice and Bitcoin's going up nice and smooth at 40%, and you're issuing 10% against it, that you're going to continue to accumulate more and more Bitcoin on the balance. sheet. As soon as that stops, like, so you're saying the turmoil in the treasury company is leading to an absence of buyers, right? The buyers are gone. I would say that the lack of underlying Bitcoin price action continuing to go up is what's causing a lot of issues because they can't get too over levered. Like, you can only securitize it so much. And you're basically over collateralizing the Bitcoin on your balance sheet.

But once you collateralize it to a certain point, and Bitcoin isn't going up higher, which allows you to keep collateralizing it in dollar. terms, right? That ratio, call it five to one. Like, if it goes sideways, you can't do that anymore. So you're sitting there flapping. The circular Bitcoin economy, right? Yeah, exactly. They remind me of you guys remember bumper cars? Remember those people who would be stuck in the middle of bumper cars and they couldn't get out because there's no other people driving around them? So they're just sitting there the entire time while the music's playing. That's what these guys remind me of because their whole model, at least to start, is we need to get an MNAV of two, three, four,

you know, exceeding our underlying Bitcoin. And then when we do, inevitably, they said, or so they thought, then we're going to sell shares at this elevated price and then we're going to use the proceeds to buy Bitcoin. But what happens if you don't get that MNAV or it just comes down? You know what this reminds me of? I know all you guys were around that. It reminds me of GBT back in 2020. Yeah.

Do you remember I owned that in my hedge fund and that was so disappointing because that was basically one of the only ways I could get good Bitcoin exposure. And that ended 2021. I think Bitcoin was up about 70% in 2021. And GBTC was flat on the year. And it just was just terrible. And this reminds me of that. And in fact, I owned little pieces of lots of these treasury companies in my hedge fund this year, just in case we had this bull market and a pretty good size of strategy. All of them have hit my trailing stop. I've stopped out of all of them because they're just basically dead in the water right now. So I do think they'll catch a bid once the bull market starts up again. Totally.

Very disappointing start. It's been very surprising because if you were to talk to me six months to a year ago and asked me, do you think miners or treasury companies are going to perform better? I would say treasury companies hands down. And I look at my mining portfolio and it's gone crazy. I mean, I rent is up like 2,700 percent or something. Yeah, but that's AI. That's AI.

That's where the bid's coming from. That's my point, Joe. So the interesting thing about the miners is, you would think, get to yourself, well, okay, like, it doesn't make sense that the AI, you know, that the AI bubble is affecting the miners because you can't switch the rack space and the Bitcoin A6 aren't set up to do, you know, these GPU clusters, et cetera, et cetera. But it's the energy contracts. These guys got to the energy first. They were first to the key on the energy. Yeah. So the AI companies have to come partner with them because the Bitcoin miners are like energy pirates and they got all the contracts,

right? And so they just deal each other in and boom, profits galore. Like, it's crazy. So, The miners have done exceptionally well compared to the treasury companies. Yeah. Okay. Do you guys remember last quarter, I actually asked if you thought, if any of you thought miners would catch a bid because they've had such a disappointing performance? Yeah, we all like, not. We all sort of chuckled.

Yes. And they've just been crushing it. So before we go here, though, I want to hear, let's get some, give some alpha. Where is Bitcoin going to be hot all in like four months? Where are we going to be? Are you saying end of the year or four months? No, four months. It's like January.

Let's say like January. I want to get into, actually, let's do like six months. I want to get this into like into Q1 of deep into Q1 of 2026. Yeah. Where are we at? So like you, I'm bullish on a Q1, Q2, you know, increase in price. I think that the four year cycle thing, it is dead, but we still have yet to exhaust the four year cycle sellers. Because there are a lot of people that still believe in the four year cycle.

And because of the distribution of Bitcoin, a lot of those people actually hold a lot of Bitcoin, right? There are people with 10,000 Bitcoin. And stop selling your 10,000 Bitcoin. Right. There are people with 10,000 Bitcoin, and they believe in the four-year cycle. I mean, there was a guy who sold 80,000 Bitcoin earlier this year. There have been other large sales of 30,000 Bitcoin, et cetera. So some of these OGs are, they're getting out.

And also, I think chopping at 100K is just, like, causing people to go buy Lamborghinis and mansions. Because I'm seeing a lot of that, too. It's like, Fordham, where they're just like, I'm just like, I'm just going to go, I've been delaying gratification long enough. I'm just going to go finally buy that, Porsche or whatever. So, yeah, I think we've got to get through all that. we got to get over the perception of the four-year cycle, which is credit to Joe. Joe's been actually saying that for many years, and me and Joe go back and forth because I'm a bit of a

four-year cycle, you know, recovering addict myself. I love the four-year cycle. Same. Same. Yeah, so I think it's over. We'll get past it. And then it's like green, green, green, green? Like, let's do bullish, you know? I don't see any reason why next year can't be bullish. People are starting to talk about it as if it's some immutable law of the universe that like Bitcoin has to go down. It's like, well, Bitcoin didn't even go up this year. So I mean, Jeff gave the one year chart, but like, or sorry, the one year percentage. But if you look at the year to date percentage, I'll check it right now. It's at 14.95. So, I mean, that's crap. Sorry, guys. Like, that's not a bull market. Were we 110,000 on election day or inauguration day. We were 110,

I think. Yeah, something like that. When Trump got inaugurated, that was like the all time. And we're more or less, we're at 109 right now during the time of this recording. So there wasn't really a bull market, so I don't really see any like immutable law of the universe that says there has to be a bear market. And, you know, frankly, this irrational exuberance never showed up, retail never showed up. What's going to cause the bear market? I don't see it. Which is awesome, by the way. I know that people wanted this blow off move, but like look at the base of, I don't know, if you're like one of these TA people or volume profile people, I'll defer to Jeff on this, but like look at the base of bids. Like you've got it like 100K. I mean, every time it dips down,

it just seems like there's money that's ready to deploy very steady institutional business. Yeah. Am I wrong, Jeff? That you're right. Joe, what was your price target for the end of the year at the beginning of the year? 130K. All right. I'm going to, prices right you. I'm going to say 129K at the end of this year. I'll go 131. No, we're going to get there, guys. I'm really bullish here.

Like, I honestly think this is awesome. Like, I've never felt sentiment this bad with the price where it's at. And I think there are zero tourists in Bitcoin. Like, all the tourists. star in quantum stocks and, you know, all these like high flyers. I feel like people are just kind of, like you said, they're kind of bored with Bitcoin. And you never want a short boring market. That's like a little adage somebody told me. I think Jeff. I'm bored as hell. I'm so bored. Right, right. I mean, that to me is exceedingly positive. And if Jeff's right, all you need to do

is get the investing community to think like, okay, wait a second. If this is truly the debasement trade and the hard asset trade, like money can come flowing in. We've got the ETFs. literally just click a button. Like, you don't have to mess around. I mean, how absurd. I saw this line guys where, like, people are out the door waiting to buy gold. There was this photo of people like ready to buy physical gold, like sit, like a line out the door, like the latest iPhone or something.

Yeah, there you go. You know what I'm talking about. You saw it. Yeah. This is it. Australia. Australia, huh? Yep.

They're front running us. They heard this conversation. So how absurd in 2025 that people are sitting to buy gold, like waiting in line? like it's so weird it's weird it's weird and then you can just click and buy bitcoin right now and even better even if you don't want to go buy it off a exchange go buy the etf it's simple right click you want to assay your bitcoin you run your own node you want to assay your gold some guy at the pawn shop takes out a DeWalt drill and goes yeah we'll assay it for you but jeff where are we going preston I didn't mine was 129 no no into 20 into Q1 a few one of

2026. That's, yeah, that's the start of the new year. I'm saying 129K. Yeah, I'm with you. And so to be clear, because I was so horribly wrong and off in my 475K prediction, you want to know what I think it's going to do in the next. Yes, 475. Like, I haven't been embarrassed enough. We want to be able to throw it in your face, Jeff. It's the only reason he asks this question every time. Right. And then put me on record for being wrong again. So I think, Bitcoin moves in it long term up into the right channel, basically, you know, a log channel, power law style. So I think the further in time you go out, the higher it could potentially go if we rip with the economy. So I'm still looking at forward-looking indicators that tell me

looking in well into 2026 now, like summer 2026, I still think the economy looks like it's going to be booming at that point. And if it's booming, that tells me that Bitcoin could go, I said 475 by Q4 of this year. If we extend it, we could go up to 550,600,000 by the third quarter of 5-106. Oh, yeah. And that might not be the end of it either. We might just continue in this bullmark.

I think the Trump administration is going to do everything they can to goose the economy for the next several years and run it hot, hot, hot. For the midterms, you're saying. They're going to goose it. And through the midterms. And if they do that, then they're going to get majorities in the house. in the Senate, and then they're going to run it even hotter, I think. And I think it could go even higher. So this is just going to be a very, it's already been a really weird cycle, like, as we

started saying at the very beginning, because the, you know, manufacturing has been in a recession for three straight years. I think it's going to pop out and we're going to have a really weird cycle to the other side, hopefully to the upside in the next couple of years. Well, you've given up on the 400 for this year. You've given up on it. No, I'm still sticking to it. I'm just going to, I know I'm giving about like a 5% chance of it. Well, there's a time traveler on. You're giving up on. You're on Twitter, Bitcoin Twitter these days, who says we're going to 444 by... Yeah, yeah, yeah. He puts those weird poems in the sneaky clues or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. I'm like, well, hey, maybe he knows something because that was my original target. 30 days, Hidal. 30 days we could be at 400K. What are you doing? Well, cocaine, obviously. Hey, what's up with the lights behind you? Are you doing like some weird George Costanzo on a couch photo shoot back there?

What's going on? So I've been making... I've been making vlogs on Noster back making, I've seen this. Oh, wow. I've got making blogs and, wow. Been putting them out on Noster exclusively. So it's just a, I love it. I've seen the shooting ones.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm like a YouTuber, but for Noster, you know. I'd love it. Which is, which means, you know, 300 people watch the video. All right. You guys got anything else. We're going to wrap it up.

Oh, all right. I got maybe, maybe close on this. So earlier. her press and you said, you know, I haven't really seen Peter Schiff. He's not dancing. Like, he's not a dance. Well, I don't know that you had checked his Twitter today. I haven't blocked. I don't know. Because yeah, I got it right here. And it says, gold is eating Bitcoin's lunch. Bitcoin is now down 32% pricing gold since it's August high. This Bitcoin bear market will be brutal. Hodlers, sell your fools gold now and buy the real

thing. Or have fun going broke. He didn't even get it right. It's have fun staying for. He didn't even get it right at the end. He didn't stick to landing. You know? He didn't stick the landing. I mean, listen, if you don't, if you don't fade that, I don't know what to. Yeah. That's the most obvious guy to fade in the world at the most obvious time. He's got perfect timing. From a technical standpoint, gold is very overbought right now. So it looks like it. Yeah. And he's a consolidate for a while. Before we go, one, one quick thing, I have to get Preston and Jeff's take on this. What is going on with the price of oil? I mean, it is, appears to be. It. It is. It is. and just complete nosedives this entire year, right?

We started out the year, what? We were at 56 bucks a barrel. What's your take on that? We started out the year at 80 in January or at 80 bucks? Yeah, wow. I haven't looked at it a little bit, to be honest with you, Joe. I would just assume it's demand. The demand's falling off, right?

More sellers than buyers. Yeah, more sellers than buyers. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Yeah, I look at it like it's an economic indicator. So economies around the world are weak, right? now. And once they start taking off, like we all hopefully think they will in the next year, I think oil will start to pick up again. That's my take. I want to talk about something, but I think

we're running out of time. Joe, what's your point? What do you think? No, I mean, I think there's clearly, like OPEC keeps ramming, OPEC plus keeps rambling up supply. So I think there's a lot of supply. There's ton. I mean, if you look at this guys, I'm just talking about, you know, we talk about inflation quite a bit, right? In inflation just a terms, oil is now cheaper than it was in 2004. It doesn't for. All the printing of money and everything else were like, it's amazing. I actually believed a lot of the oil bulls. There were a lot of oil bulls in the last couple of years who said we're going to

100 bucks of barrel plus. There's a shortage of oil chronically. I mean, the supply is coming from somewhere. If maybe it really is that the global economy outside the United States is just really that week. Yeah, it's down. That's for sure. Jeff, go ahead with your last one that you have.

Well, this is like a two hour long discussion. But I'll just tell you what the point of it is. I can't stop thinking about stuff like I just saw this. survey today. You guys know that 40% of Americans think we're going to get into a civil war in the next couple of years, 40%. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the whole geopolitical situation in the changing world order is fascinating right now. And I think everything is changing. And I'm present at some point, I want to talk to you since you're ex-military. I'd love to get your take on it because I'm where I am currently, I'm around a lot of people in the military who talk about, and I touched on this just a bit,

about how basically a conflict with Taiwan is, they talk about it like it's inevitable. Inevitable. We're all training for it. And so I'm just waiting for that shoe to drop. And then beyond that, other things I'm hearing of not just Taiwan, but possibly South Korea and Japan

and the South China Sea also. And what is America's role and is America pulling back into the Western Hemisphere and basically giving up the Eastern Hemisphere and where they're closed door meeting like this is all like chin foil hat conspiracy theory but watching the signs it sure looks like this kind of stuff is coming and it's crazy like I think we're just heading towards a really crazy next five years I think the whole supply chains with the precious metals and all that kind of stuff

all the inputs to all this complex machinery is kind of the thing to watch because if you cannot there's a saying in the military that the amateurs talk tactics and the professionals talk logistics. When you look at sustaining any type of fight, especially that far off, you know, the U.S. over in Asia, and talk about a logistics nightmare to sustain anything that's going to last, especially against somebody like China. When you look at how dependent we are on the inputs of all these supply chains for all this complex machinery to fight a war with any kind of length, like that's the number one thing I'd be focused on and seeing what they're doing right now. I'm not one of these people that's like beating the drum on, you know, that we're going to war here in the next six months or anything like that.

In fact, I have no idea. It's quite a bit out of my purview because I just don't really pay too much attention to that stuff, to be quite honest with you. All the politics is out of my feed. If somebody even talks about politics, it's just an immediate mute or a block or block. I honestly don't see it in my day-to-day consumption of news. I really don't. So, but those are just some of my, you know, initial thoughts with a background in the military. I think geopolitically, China is going to make a move on Taiwan by 2028. That's what I think.

Me too. Another fascinating thing. And then I'll stop because I can talk about this for the next couple hours. But our sudden interest in the Caribbean and in South America and the massive oil deposits that Venezuela has and now we're talking about CIA action in like an actual coup going on in Venezuela and we're suddenly buddies chummy with Argentina and cheering for Malay. I think we're giving up the Middle East and South America and Central America are the new Middle East for us. And this is a whole different discussion. But this is the kind of stuff I've been spent a lot of time studying. And the world is changing. And it's, oh yeah. Yeah, that's for sure. That's for sure. Maybe a topic for the next show. Next show. Guys can't thank you enough. We're just going to go around the horn.

and you guys can give a handoff if people want to learn more about you. We'll start off with Joe, the best lawyer in America. Go ahead, Joe. Very kind. Joe Carlisar, you can find me on Twitter at Joe Carlisari. If you need legal advice or are involved in a litigated matter, which is my specialty. You can just Google my name. My firm will pop up at Amundsen Davis for full service law firm. We have a huge book of Bitcoin miners we represent, as well as individuals involved in regulatory issues and civil lawsuit. So thanks for having me on. Yeah, Jeff.

I'm trying not to be on social media anymore. So I may come back next quarter for this interview and that's about it. That's the ultimate block and mute right there. I'm not even logging in anymore. Hoddle. I'm on Noster only at the moment. Not because I'm a principal ideological cyberpunk, but because I simply lost my phone which had my Twitter logging on it.

I don't have access to my Twitter anymore. So there you go. Social media is exhausting, man. It's getting so hard to even log in these days. Yeah. Gents, thank you. I truly look forward to this conversation every quarter. So thank you for making time.

Truly, thank you for making time. And we always get some really fun feedback from these episodes. So thanks, guys. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Bitcoin Fundamentals on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to the. Investorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only, before making any decision consult a professional.

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