What Bitcoin Did - Inflation, War & $475K Bitcoin w/ Jeff Ross

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Jeff Ross is a macroeconomist, bitcoiner and Founder & CEO of Vailshire Capital Management. In this episode, we discuss why Jeff believes we're entering a new inflationary era that echoes the 1970s, why global capital is rotating out of U.S. assets, and how this sets up Bitcoin and gold for massive outperformance & why he thinks the next Bitcoin cycle could peak in late 2025. We also get into the risks of corporate Bitcoin treasury strategies, the geopolitical impact of war on markets, and why emerging markets and Bitcoin will benefit. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN: https://www.iren.com/ RIVER: https://river.com/wbd ANCHORWATCH: https://www.anchorwatch.com/ BLOCKWARE: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/wbd Follow: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny Jeff Ross: https://primal.net/DrJeff

If you own stocks, if you own Bitcoin, if you own real estate, you've been doing fantastically. But for the lower half of Americans who are in the lower income classes, they're getting destroyed. Anytime the government is manipulating the free markets, I don't like it. You do it for one reason, hoping to get a good effect, but the second order affects consequences are usually worse than the benefits that they provide. I truly think we're at an inflection point right now. Stocks were crashing. people were selling treasuries and yields were spiking. People are looking for a different reserve asset.

They don't want the dollar. They don't trust the dollar anymore. They don't trust treasuries anymore. Jeff Ross. Hey. How you doing, man? I'm great, Danny. How are you?

I'm struggling. The world did not want me to get to Denver. We were meant to do this like, I don't know, a month ago, and my flight was canceled. And then yesterday, flight was canceled again, another nine hours in the airport. Got into my hotel at 3 a.m. So you're going to have to do. some of the heavy lifting today, I'm afraid. I'll try. I'm tired too, but man, I feel bad for you. Yeah, that's terrible. It's been rough. And when I got to the hotel, they didn't, they sold my

room because I was there so late. So I had to go across the street to another hotel. It was a pretty shit trip. That's miserable. But I want to talk to you about a lot of things. All right. I think one of the things I definitely want to talk to you about is your Bitcoin price prediction that we did last time on the show. You said 475K, I believe. I want to know if that's still in play, but maybe we'll set the stage before that. Because last time we were speaking, we did a lot about sort of global liquidity and what was happening.

What's changed in sort of the last five months with that? What's change? Okay. Well, a major change I think that most people probably are aware of is the Trump administration came on board, right? And they, I mean, they came in just throwing punches and ready to go. So how did that change?

So as they were coming in, obviously the market was all hype and everything was ripping for a little. while. But then, and I know, I know you've talked about this with other guests, so we don't have to belabor it, but they tried austerity, right? They said, hey, what we're going to do is we're going to, we're going to try to do, we're going to lower the fiscal spending. We're going to do doge. We're going to cut waste, fraud and abuse. And we're going to sort of write our wrongs. The markets did not appreciate that, right? As everybody knows, basically from February to early April, they just crashed and

burn. So maybe it's worth explaining why that happened, because, like, on the face of it seems like a great idea. Maybe it was always an unachievable goal, but like a great idea. I look at it. That would have been a great idea for Main Street Americans. It would have been awesome if we didn't continue to do these, have these policies where we're just pumping cheap and easy money into the financial system propping up risk assets. Making rich people rich. Rich people are getting richer, right? And it's more of the same. It's that K-shaped economy that we talk about a lot. Yeah. The owner class continues to crush it. If you own stocks, if you own Bitcoin, if you own real estate, you've been doing fantastically. Inflation doesn't bother you because you're making

at least as much in money as inflation is going higher. But for the lower half of Americans who are in the lower income classes, they're getting destroyed. They're the renter class, so their rents are getting more expensive. There's no possible way they can buy a house, you know, with mortgage rates sitting at about 7% here, a little under 7% in the U.S., and with housing prices not budging, because the boomers who have their first and second homes, and that's their retirement plan, they don't want to sell their houses for cheaper. So they're hanging on to these higher prices,

and they're not selling, and they're also hanging on because they have mortgage rates where they've locked in at about 3%. So they're not going to sell a big house for not as much money as they're hoping for to buy a smaller house at a much higher mortgage rate. So real estate continues to be frozen. And it's just, it's tough.

the lower half of the U.S. economy, those participants, the renter class, they're getting crushed. And that's what Trump came in promising to help fix. The markets didn't like it. Trump does not like to be unpopular. And I'm very much non-political. I can't stand talking about politics, honestly. I'm with you that. Yeah, okay, perfect.

I'm critical of all sides, right? And I'm very critical of central control and central manipulation of the free markets, whether it's from the left or from the right, I don't like it. And maybe we can talk about that at some point too and what's happening. So that's what I think happened. And at one point, the bond market was starting to get unsteady. The move, the volatility index of the Treasury market was spiking, skyrocketing. And that was basically the day I think Jamie Diamond got on TV and said he thinks that Trump needs to change his plans. About an hour or two later, Trump got on the national airwaves and said, we're changing plans. And they went right back into, we're going to promote the

K-shaped economy again. And so instead of doing austerity, which they don't talk about anymore, they don't talk about Doge. Elon's gone now. They give it a little bit of lip service, but it basically gets no attention anymore. They've just put the kibosh on that. And they're going to try to grow the economy now. So they're going to grow us out of our debt problem, which is what they always say. And do you think that happened because they realized that they couldn't do austerity in the way they wanted or was it the pressure from wall street do you think i think it's it's both it's a little bit of both uh they just couldn't handle the pressure for sure and and and the disapproval ratings uh were two part either the people the rich and powerful if the rich and powerful don't like you

they will let you know and you're going to change course there's i think a lot of outsiders were hoping that trump was outsider enough that he could withstand the pressure but he's just not they're all just they're all just cogs in the system right yeah and then so i think the last time we recorded was either just after Trump had come in or maybe in the days proceeding. So it was really like close around that time. And obviously tariffs were like the big macro thing that happened in his first, I don't know, 40, 50 days or whatever it was. What's your kind of read on that bin?

First of all, I always like to say tariffs are not inflationary. I hear everybody saying tariffs are inflationary. It drives me nuts. In fact, I think that the biggest sleight of hand comes from central bankers. Jerome Powell himself says he's concerned about the inflationary effects of tariffs. drives me nuts. Tariffs are not inflationary, they're tax. So taxes are different. Taxes make goods more expensive, but that's not inflation. Inflation, as everybody knows, as Milton Freeman said, inflation is everywhere, always in everywhere a monetary phenomenon. So true inflation is debasing

the currency. So is this like a bit of a semantic thing really, where like it may mean prices go up, but it's not necessarily inflation. Yes, it is and it isn't, right? So prices do go up. So that's why people get confused. And I think that's why the central banker, central bankers want you to think that it's this other stuff. They want you to think, like, Biden was talking about grocery stores are being mean and they're raising prices on Americans. It was Elizabeth Warren who blamed big turkey company. It just drives me nuts. And they, they, I believe those people, not, maybe not Biden, but Elizabeth Warren was intelligent enough to know what she, she knows she's being deceptive.

Yeah. She knows she's fooling people. Jerome Powell is intelligent enough as the chair of the Fed. He knows that he's being deceptive. It drives me nuts. I hate that. I think, you know, I strive for I think most Bitcoiners strive for honesty and we're seeking the truth. And so that bothers us greatly. So that bothers me greatly. So it's always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, meaning that if people think it's tariffs, if it's these mean Trump tariffs, whether you like them or not, by the way, causing prices to go up, that's one thing.

But what really is inflation is debasing of the currency. So the government is borrowing too much money. It's money that they don't have to borrow so they create more treasuries so they can spend more money that they don't have. and then the central bank is the buyer of treasuries of last resort. And so if the people don't want to buy all these treasuries at some point, if they run out of clever options and we can talk about the new clever things they've been doing so that the markets can absorb more treasuries.

But at some point, if the markets just won't do it or if interest rates get too high, that's when the Fed steps back in and we'll start buying treasuries again. Yeah, okay. And so, like, as a whole, like, what is your take on tariffs in terms of whether they are good or bad? So I as a free market economist, I don't like any central manipulation of the economy. Again, whether it's from the left or from the right, I don't care. So I, even if, say you like Trump, okay, and say you are, you know, encouraged by some of the things he's doing. He's kind of pro-business in general.

Anytime the government is manipulating the free markets, I don't like it. So I think that's bad in general. You get, you do it for one reason, hoping to get a good effect, but the second order affects consequences are usually. worse than the benefits that they provide. So I don't in general like tariffs. Although I understand the reason why they do them and I'm not naive, I understand that other countries also do that to the US. So it's sort of a tit for tat scuttle. I don't like any of it. Anything that messes with the free market is uncool. They have brought in quite a lot of money for the US though. Is it like 80 billion? Is that right? Something like that. So like even if you don't like them personally, like and I completely agree with you by the way, do you think they may be a benefit for the US economy? I think that they are. are a benefit for what their intentions are. I think the unsaid intentions of everything I hear Trump and Bessent and J.D. Vance and even Howard Lutnik saying

is we're trying to rev up the military industrial complex here in the US that's woefully underprepared for this upcoming increasingly inevitable, it seems, conflict with China. And I can't stand that either. That's another thing. It drives me nuts. Like, why are we on a, on a, a,

a B-lined straight direct course to fighting China, to going to war with China that's gonna be devastating. As a father of kids drives me nuts. I do not wanna send my kids overseas to fight some stupid war that somebody thinks is important, right? So all of this stuff, it feels so contrived to me. It's worthless and stupid. And so, sorry, I get a little emotional talking about,

but if we're talking about the tariffs and why they're doing what they're doing, they wanna bring back manufacturing, but they're not gonna bring back manufacturing jobs, even though that's what I think the general public kind of believes, because that's going to all be automated, I believe, or most of it will be. They want to rev up drone production, semiconductor production, the steel industry, things that you need for war,

for going into a large-scale war. That's what they're revving up. They're realizing they're way behind. In some ways, we're way ahead of China, you know, technologically speaking, probably, AI speaking a little bit, a little bit ahead of China. But in manufacturing, we're 100x worse than China. Okay. So, I mean, by the way, I completely agree with everything you just said then.

But like it does look like things are getting a little bit sketchy in the Middle East. Like we're recording this on the 21st of June. Who knows if the US will have bombed around by the time this goes out. But like what does, I know we started this by saying we don't want to talk about politics and all we don't talk about politics. But what does that mean, again, like not necessarily on the political or like moral side? What does that mean for markets and the economy? traditionally wars initially at the leading up to the wars and the rhetoric and the first bomb dropping

these kind of things are are bad for markets people panic they sell their assets they move to cash usually although it's been interesting this time and we'll get into this about how people are moving away from u.s based assets including the u.s. dollar i think which is really interesting people are moving into gold when they get scared more than they're moving into dollars or treasuries and then and then the market sort of gets sort of it's used to it. Like I already feel like the market's getting used to this Israel Iran and now the U.S. Iran stuff. I just want to go on record to say, I can't stand any of this. And I don't think we should have anything to do with any of this. It drives me nuts. And we're just creating

problems. Anyways, and it's hard for me as a 50-year-old cynic now, watching these wars come and go, that we're not just doing it for the sake of the military industrial complex. I don't see any real benefit to going into these wars. So anyways, but that's a different. As far as the markets are concerned, I think the markets will absorb it. It'll be initial shock and then we'll move forward. But it does have implications. And if we do get into a more major war, like say we do get involved, the U.S. gets involved with Iran, that's going to force the other side's hand, which I think they're trying to do,

which is unfortunate. And this could be the groundwork for a larger World War, right? We could be possibly heading into sort of a World War III type situation where it's the U.S. against Iran and their allies, which include China, which include Russia, and the BRICS nations, basically. This episode is brought to you by Anchor Watch. Now, one of the things that keeps us Bitcoiners up at night is an idea of a critical error in your Bitcoin cold storage. And this is where Anchor Watch comes in. With Anchor Watch, you're protected by two things.

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That's river.com forward slash WBD. Do you think that is like, because I struggle with the World War III narrative a little bit. Maybe that's me being just optimistic. But would you think that would be more like a proxy war rather than being like actually boots on the ground in? I don't know. We'll wait to see. I think everything that I see, and again, it's just like hints that people drop when

they're talking for like generals say things you know the presidential administration says things but they never quite come out right but i think that we are careening towards this place where at some point before the end of trump's term so somewhere by 2028 i think china's going to make a move for taiwan yeah that would not surprise me and i think we have already said we will back Taiwan if that happens and i think all of the pieces are coming together for that conflict and for me that's what could set off this more major war. What I'm really hoping and praying for is that this is if we do go into a major war with, say, a major opponent like China, that it's more of a technical war. It's a technology war. Yeah. I hope it's drone on drone, drone on ship and not man on man, right? I don't like to see

dudes die and all of this just needless death is insane. And so will it be like a full-scale world war? I don't know, but it will feel like a world war if it's the U.S. involved with like a China. two major players going against each other. So I really hope it doesn't come to that. But it feels to me like that's where we're headed. No, I really hope it doesn't as well. Honestly, there's probably not a single word you said that I disagree with so far. But that was kind of like all groundwork for liquidity.

So we've kind of laid out the context there. But what has actually happened? Okay. So liquidity, nothing has changed with the fact that liquidity bottomed in the fourth quarter of 2022, and it's been creeping high ever since. And then we've had, we had, you know, I do my little things where I go from a bear market to bear crab to crab to bull crab to bull market. And it's based on liquidity and it's based on what the economy is doing. So liquidity has been generally increasing ever since that time

with with ebbs and flows. When we got into the first quarter of 2025, to my surprise, because they went so hard with the austerity stuff, that caused the dollar to skyrocket. It caused rates to spike. And that combination of things, what that means is for liquidity, liquidity is priced in U.S. dollars if you do like global M2 kind of concepts, even if liquidity is generally rising, if the dollar is, excuse me, if the dollar is like increasing in value, it'll make it look like liquidity is declining, whether it is or not. And yield and the dollar going up at the same time is a pretty unusual situation, right? It is, it is unusual. And what's, and, but what we're getting, so, let's let me, hold on for a

second. So we'll get, we'll get to that. So bookmark that. So, but what happened when the dollar spiked and interest rates went higher, the delayed effects of that in the way that affects risk assets and affects Bitcoin is there's usually a two to three month delay for the price effects on Bitcoin. And nobody, almost nobody believes it, although a growing number of people are starting to come to this point of view, I think. So I was saying, watch out for a spike in Bitcoin and then a significant drop lower. And we got that drop in April, I think April, early. Yeah, right. Yeah. And so it dropped down to about 74K or so. At that, that point, I was saying the delayed effects of liquidity and the dollar now breaking down,

looking ahead and the way that those things work, is starting in about mid-April, we should start seeing an increase again in the price of Bitcoin. And what I said, I think it was on Preston's show back then. We did one of our quarterly mastermind things. As I said, by mid-May to mid-June, probably by May 31st, and I posted this on Nosser as well, by May 31st or somewhere between mid-May to mid-June, we'll see a new all-time. high for Bitcoin, totally based on just liquidity, what liquidity is doing. And we got that new all-time high somewhere in kind of mid-May or so. A little bit of a pullback then. And now liquidity is, again, has been spiking higher for the last couple of months. So I actually think we're headed higher

from here. So there's a really long roundabout way to say liquidity continues to increase. Bitcoin has pulled back a little bit because of the Iran scare. I think from here on out, from where we are today at about 103, I think we're going to get to 120, 140, 150, and and probably are in that range, maybe even a little bit higher by the end of the summer, like July-August timeframe. So in terms of like the shock on the market from like the Iran stuff, you think that's just going to be a short-term blip and we're just going to keep going? I do.

I do. I mean, it could continue to escalate, right? And the market does not like that. But if it just continues to be tit for tat sort of thing, markets sort of take that in stride after all. They almost get bored with it. And it needs to be something new and dramatic to move the markets. It's all so silly.

But last time we're on the show, you said 475. So that was by the end of this like bull market. Yes. What kind of time for, are you still thinking, I think you said sort of quarter Q2, Q3 next year? So what I was, so I'm a patterns guy. And until the pattern changes, I go with what the patterns show. So I was assuming we were going to have another typical four year cycle.

Based on the stuff I did and based on prior cycles, we should see, you know, the four year peak roughly around Halloween of 2025. So October of 2025, what I've been targeting. and I had a $475,000 price target for October 2025 if we get that exponential rip higher at the end. That's about where I would see it topping out. Things have changed since Trump because of the austerity measures that then failed. It's pushed everything, and I'll get into this a little bit. I think that it's pushing the cycle.

So we're either going to have a really fast response where we do get that four-year cycle, and it does crescendo into that peak into the fourth quarter sure. but I think what's getting increasingly more likely is it does extend into the first half of 2026. Okay, and that's just from them pushing things back with austerity. So the thing that I've always had in my mind, and I may have said this on the show last time you're on, I can't actually remember,

is like midterms are obviously a very important thing for Trump. He's going to want to run things really hot in term, which I believe are like, are they end of Q2, start Q3, 26? Yeah. Something like that. And so like I just assume he's going to do everything he can to have markets absolutely flying by that point, which is why I've always had that kind of like

bookmarked in the back of my head. Do you think that's probably like a likely scenario? I do. Whether he tries to do this or not, I don't know how much direct control they have over the economy. They can usually hurt the economy more. It depends if he gets powell out. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think he will. And I think they're going to get somebody very doveish in there. And I think we are going to rip at some point. Here's the main thing that's holding back the price of Bitcoin. I hear a lot of people talking about manipulation, which I don't actually think is true. Me neither. I think of liquidity. I think of the Bitcoin price is like a big kettle of soup, Okay, sitting on a stove and you got three burners underneath.

The first burner that now almost everybody knows about is global liquidity, global M2. That has been increasing at a pretty, like a modest rate. It's been solid but not incredible, but it's also not decreasing, which is, so that's a good thing. The second thing that drives Bitcoin is basically the economy, so the global economy, but the US economy has been the primary driver. The US economy for people who have been paying attention has been in the dumps since 2022. People keep calling for a recession. Those people who are calling for recession, one of the reasons they are is because manufacturing

just refuses to get higher. The ISM has been hovering like around 50 or less. Why is that? That's the great question. Why is it not moving? I think it's because of demographics. I think it's because of these AI shifts. I think it's because of the manufacturing sector

in the U.S. has just been dying, a slow, painful death for a long time. It's also just a very small part of the economy. So in the U.S., we're about, it's off from this, but I like to say it's about 80, 20 services to manufacturing. Services, the services sector has been pretty healthy. Yeah. And has been doing quite a bit, it's been doing all of the heavy lifting and it has been pulling the economy or keeping it sort of above 50 for the last several years, but it's being dragged down by manufacturing. I think the Trump administration knows that and Bessent, especially, and they're trying to kind of rev up the manufacturing sector, which I think we'll see in the coming years as we talked about.

But you, like, you're not one of these people that thinks recession is anywhere near. No, I don't think we're going to have a recession. I've been saying that I thought we would have a recession in 2022, and you could argue we kind of did. We had a technical recession where we had two quarters of negative GDP growth. But it never did. And I think it's because of the Lynn Alden concept, right? Nothing stops astrain. The fiscal train has just been ripping and they've been pouring money into the economy in different ways

and helping to boost it and to keep things higher. And a lot of, you know, unemployment should have gone much higher by now, but the government was doing a lot of hiring in the last four years. So that's ending now as well. So here's where I think from an economic, and let me get back to my analogy real quick. I keep going on down all these rabbit holes. That is good.

We have our kettle of the Bitcoin price. We have burner number one on the stovetop is global monetary supply, global liquidity. The second thing is the economy. So the economy in the U.S. has been muddling along. It's been okay but not great, and it's definitely not accelerating like we should be seeing right now at this point in the cycle.

That's why I believe the Bitcoin price hasn't started to take off into that final parabolic move that everybody kind of anticipates. We need to have burner number one, global liquidity rising while the economy is getting red hot. And when the economy starts to really do very well, that means that people have jobs. They're getting paid well. They're flushed with cash relatively. They have money in their savings account and they have money to speculate with or to invest in. That's burner number three is leverage. So once you get these two burners going and things start heating up, people start gaining confidence.

You get your animal spirits going. Burner number three turns on and people are like, we can't lose. I just, you know, I put, you know, 100 bucks into fart coin and now it's up to a thousand. I can't lose. And so now I'm going to do it with 10x leverage or 50x leverage. And they start adding leverage. That's what you see. That's the blow off top part.

So we're nowhere near that point right now. We still need the burner number two to turn on, which is the economy. And coming full circle, based on. the metrics I look at forward-looking indicators, I think that in the second half of 2025, the economy is finally going to wake up and it's going to start revving up here in the U.S. and probably around the world as well. So I'm bullish from that perspective. Okay, cool. So when you talk about cycles, are you talking about Bitcoin cycles or liquidity cycles, or are they just the same thing? Or economic cycles. So all three and they're all interrelated.

And so Bitcoin usually peaks and has these parabolic moves when the economy is red, hot when liquidity is very high and rising and actually still rising. So one other- Interesting. I thought that, I thought liquidity would have been, have already talked to mid on the way down when Bitcoin was kind of hit. What's interesting is liquidity front runs Bitcoin on at the bottom. Yeah. And as we move higher, it catches up. But at the top, Bitcoin front runs liquidity. Ah, interesting. And so at some point, Bitcoin will peak and then at least based on past cycles. And then liquidity will go a bit higher and then roll over again. And then we'll head into the next bear market. Interesting.

I was not fully sold, but I was starting to be a little convinced that maybe the cycles in Bitcoin have changed. The thing that's kind of changed my mind on that is all these Bitcoin treasury companies. Because I can, I think you almost have to sort of set micro strategy aside or strategy aside because they are just like orders of magnitude bigger than everything else. But I can totally see a scenario where we have a ton of these Bitcoin treasury companies coming in, hoovering up all the coins they can, and then at some point having to spit them out again. Do you think that could be one of the kind of Bitcoin catalysts, not necessarily macroeconomic catalyst, that means we do go into like another prolonged bear market?

Yes. I don't think we're, and I think it was Joe Carlos Ari, who's a friend of mine who was on your show. He was great. I really enjoyed that show. He's wonderful. I like Joe a lot. He's a good friend. I think he doesn't think we're going to have the huge blow off top and the huge drawdown.

I say, I'll believe it when I see it. So if we do have this exponential move higher and we get that, you know, that big curve higher, the hockey stick higher, then I think absolutely we're going to have a large drawdown. You just can't not have that. You have to de-leverage. And de-leveraging usually involves these leverage-long liquidation cascades, which means these huge price drops really quickly as people get wiped out and get margin called. So I do think that's coming. If we don't have a blow off top, then sure, we might just kind of muddle along and continue to scrape higher. Yeah, because I think Joe's take is that we're just going to bore ourselves to a million, is what he said on the show, which I mean, I think would be

great. I would love it. Yeah. But just like generally, what is your, I'm doing a bit of a sidetrack here, but what is your take on the Bitcoin Treasury companies? Again, maybe taking micro strategy aside or maybe like separate the two and talk about the two. So first of all, I think it's inevitable. Yeah. And I think you need to, when you talk about Bitcoin treasury companies, you need to look at two different things. There's a difference between simply putting Bitcoin on your balance sheet. Yeah, like I'm a Bitcoin treasury company. Right, exactly. I think that all companies someday within probably 10 years, all companies that still exist, will be Bitcoin, they'll have Bitcoin on their balance sheet.

You just have to. It's so stupid not to. So if you're a company owner and you're watching this, get Bitcoin on your balance sheet. It has a better kegger than any investment you can be made, almost any investment you can be making. So I think it's a bad asset allocation decision to not have some of your capital in Bitcoin on your balance sheet. Okay, that's them. It's different than if you're doing debt and. Exactly.

Exactly. So strategy and their copycats, Metaplanet. I think is the second best company in Japan. Dylan Leclair's doing that strategy, which is fantastic. Friend of mine, Hey, Dylan. You're doing a great job.

And then all of the other companies coming down, right? Like Jack's company, Jack Mallors. Similar. I mean, Nakamara's done it. Yeah, yeah, a ton of them now. Sailor is brilliant and is writing the playbook. I've told people for several years,

I think since 2023, that the only company, at least at the time that I can see that has a legit chance at beating Bitcoin, outperforming Bitcoin over the next decade is strategy, microsatogy at the time. Now that's changing a little bit. As more copycats come down the pike,

I think what that means is strategy won't be able to do as well because it's not the only game in town, right? There's limited capital going after these companies. So you're going to have to decide, do you like strategy or do you think it's a little bit pricey? Metaplanet's done amazing, but man, they're way more expensive, you know, from a valuation perspective than strategy. Is that legit?

You know, so you have to wait. Yeah, they're like 7X navels. Right, right. It's pretty wild. And then, you know, and then what, you know, maybe you like David Bailey and you just like Bitcoin magazine. So you want to support him. So you're going to put your dollars with him.

Or maybe you like Jack and you like strike and you want to, you know. So, so your dollars are going to get spread out. So I think the effects and the chances to go way above the MNAV are going to shrink over time. And the outperformance of Bitcoin should shrink over time. And the other thing that I think is worthy of consideration, some of these companies will be traders. and some will just be long-term holders.

Saylor has decreed that he will never sell his Bitcoin. That strategy will not. So they're going to ride that up and down. I think that probably Metaplanet will be the same. I'm guessing. I think Dylan has inferred that. These other companies, I don't think so. They might be trading.

Maybe they'll feel like they're getting close to a peak in the price of Bitcoin, and they may actually decide they want to sell it at some point. So they're going to be thinking that they can trade it and they can buy it back cheaper. You have to decide. you think, you know, maybe, and I don't know, I don't have any insight on this, but maybe David Bailey will do that. And so do you think he's going to be a better trader? And when you factor in tax consequences and other sorts of things, you can actually get more Bitcoin per share by doing that or not. That remains to be seen. Yeah, there was the company, I think they're an insurance

company at the UK, I believe, who in like 21, 22 bought Bitcoin and they sold it. They did really well. But like I agree that I think there'll be some people that try and do that. But I think maybe the more interesting part of that is whether they're forced sellers rather than they're choosing to sell. And do you think there is a risk that some of these companies are going to get worse terms on their debt and end up having to sell Bitcoin? 100%. That's definitely going to happen. I don't know who, but it will. People will try to, they think, well, if I can just mimic sailor, that's one thing, but what if I, you know, get way more aggressive? And they're going to look smart in the bull market. Yeah. And then they're going to get wrecked in a bare market and they're

going to lose their Bitcoin. Yeah. And so I've been kind of making this analogy and it may be a little bit wrong, but it almost seems like a similar dynamic, obviously without all the fraud of like the FTX Celsius blockfire, all that kind of thing. And I think it could, I think without this, we may not have the same kind of bear market, but with it, we probably will. And like, again, I agree with you that it's inevitable people are going to try and do this. I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing for Bitcoin, but I think it's probably going to happen. Bitcoin always flows to where it's treated best. So if people get too goofy with it and funny and tricky with it, they're going to lose their Bitcoin for sure. And those shareholders who trust the C-suite of people who

who are doing that, they're also going to lose their Bitcoin. And then the other problem I have with it is the fact that I think a lot of, especially the kind of retail coming in now are going to things like strategy and Metaplanet and all these other things, not necessarily understanding the true value of buying, holding self-custody Bitcoin. And I don't know. I have some just issues with that, but maybe this kind of thing's inevitable. But I want to get back to the dollar and yields thing.

You talked to bookmark it. I've bookmarked it. Tell me about that. Well, let's get back to this. So people have noticed. that I don't spend much time on social media. Yeah. And that's intentional.

I'm trying to, I'm trying to. Are you still on last step? I am, but I haven't posted for a couple weeks. And I think I said, on my last post, I said something like, my next post will be like waiting for a Godot. So the concept of people are going to be waiting for the post that never comes. I'm hoping to peel away completely from social media, but why is that just because you don't think it's a healthy thing to be on?

You know, I used to love it. And especially as I was trying to. to grow my business. It was great. And I love the banter and I love the, the ability to just teach people who are interested, like-minded people find their ways and band together. And we all kind of learn from each other

and that's a lot of fun. But I've noticed increasingly over the last few years that it's basically a net negative for me, that almost every time I use social media, I'm in a worse mood by the end of it. And I think, man, I just, killed an hour or two that I'll never get back again. And you feel shit at the end of it.

Right, exactly. And so I just got kind of tired of that. And I'm like, you know what? I just enjoy real life so much more. And I enjoy my real friends so much more. And being face to face instead of just talking to digital people all the time. So that's a big part of it. It's just a kind of a personal decision.

I'm sort of reaching the point where I don't care about promoting my brand so much anymore. So I get it, by the way. I like to tell people this. I'm not hacking on people who use it. I understand the pressure. to need to do that, to grow your business. If you're trying to grow your subscriber base or sell a book or do whatever, that's fantastic.

I don't have any problem with it. Or teach people. Some people are just fantastic teachers. I think of like a Lynn Alden. She should be online teaching people because she's really good at that or safe or whoever. There's tons of tons and tons of people in the Bitcoin space.

So personally, this is just sort of a personal decision that I'm going to kind of peel back and be a little more private going forward. Pop up for the occasional interview. You were one of the first people to go, like, really Noster only. And, like, I think one of the interesting things about Nostra is, as of sort of right now, I feel like it is a much nicer place to be than sort of X or whatever. But as that scales, it's going to become the same thing.

Like, that's just inevitable. And, like, I totally agree with you that, like, I would, I'm terrible on social media because I don't like it. If I didn't have to, like, promote the show and stuff, I would, there's no chance I'd be on it. I would run away and touch grass. Yeah, yeah. Should we pull up this chart? You sent me a chart before the, before. we did this show, let me get it. Yeah, and while you're doing that, I'll say that just a public

service announcement that I believe that Noster is by far the best form of social media. I love it, that the algorithms aren't trying to actively program your mind. And so I've enjoyed my time on Noster, but I don't miss any of the other social media. See, I totally agree with that. But at the same time, I think for Noster to get to the point where it has everyone, it's going to have to have all the same algorithms. And, oops. Yeah, I think that's probably inevitable too. Garbage will come as it grows for sure. Okay, let's do this chart. So this is the S&P in pricing gold.

S&P 500, price and gold. It's a hundred year chart goes back to, I think this chart is back to about 1924. I cannot stop thinking about this chart. And, you know, I'm a hedge fund manager. We had a great year last year. It was the, and not the flex, but it was the top performing multi-strategy hedge fund

in the world last year. Let's go, Jeff. According to Barclay hedge database, we returned 10099% after fees. So I just, I only say that not to flex, but to just give credence. Like I,

I'm a pretty good investor. I'm not, I'll flex for you, Jeff. You know what's going on. That's fucking incredible. I'm not a terrible investor. And so I only say that just for you guys to take a little bit of credence

into what I'm saying and to actually consider this. Can I just quickly explain this for anyone who's listening on audio and can't see the chart? So this is, there's some Priced in gold. We have four highs, which is September 929, just before the Great Depression.

October, 1967, which is just before everything got superinflationary, is that right? Yep. Then 99.com boom. And then you also have Jan 22 in here. Yep. Okay. So run us through it. Okay.

So the way I explained it initially to people is if you were given the choice, if you understand financial history and most people who are in Bitcoin or in the investment world do, if I asked you, if it was the year 1929 or 1999, and you've, could invest in either U.S. stocks for the next 10 years or gold for the next 10 years, what would you do? Easy answer. Easy answer, right? Everybody would say that. And so I think based on this chart, but not just based on the chart, I think when you look at everything that's happening in the whole geopolitical sphere, this is clearly what's happening. There are 10 to 20 year segments or even longer where the world shifts to the U.S. So they shift into U.S. dollars and the dollar strengthens

over about a 20-year period or so. U.S. stocks do really well. U.S. Treasuries do well in general. Can we go through that a little bit? Because I assume after 1980, that is kind of like the internet boom that is why stocks start doing really well, especially going into like later on in that sort of period.

2011, I guess tech stocks, things like the Mag 7. What happened after the Great Depression that meant money was going back into the U.S.? So it wasn't, so even though I have night so February 1933 was that the actual low point but it really if you go a little bit further on in the chart is actually in the early 40s like yeah it didn't do anything three or so it's kind of a double bottom so I hated to put it on 33 because I think it's more accurate to think about basically early 40s so kind of mid-world war two when it started to look like the US and the

allies we're going to start winning the war where like the tide was starting to turn a little bit that's when suddenly things started changing again. And so optimism was just barely starting to return a little bit. And then the government did all these things where they did all of this stimulus, right? They were selling bonds to pay for the war. And then they decided to do this financial repression, basically, where they held rates at a certain point and they let inflation run hot. So they basically printed their way out of their war debt.

And Americans took it like a champ because they couldn't invest in gold at that time. And obviously the rest of the world was just, you know, destroyed and trying to rebuild. So we had this huge advantage at that time of being the non-destroyed country that could basically be the manufacturing center of the world. And so that carried us all the way from the early 40s all the way up until the late 60s or so. And then as people know, again, if you pay attention to history, there was back in the late 60s, there were these stocks called the nifty 50 stocks. They were the hype tech stocks of the day. there were the McDonald's and the Disney's and the Xerox and those kind of companies that were just awesome. All you had to do is put your money in one of the nifty 50s or all of them, and you made money.

So they were the Mach 7 of that time? They were the Meg 7, exactly. And then at one point, though, they just reached such a high valuation. And note what was happening in history, right? We were in the thick of the Vietnam War at that point. Yep. We were the World Reserve currency backed by gold. And countries were starting to say, you know what?

I don't like the way this war is going. I don't like your policy. we would prefer to have our gold back instead of having your dollars and your treasuries, please. Yeah. And most people know how that ended, right, with Nixon breaking us off of the gold standard. I was going to say that's the end of the Bretton Woods era. Exactly. And then what happened is global capital shifted from the U.S. and said, no thanks.

We don't like your policies. You're way too indebted. We don't want to have anything to do with this crazy warrior that you're in. We're going to go back and we're going to take our money home. We're going to repatriate our capital. That happened basically from the late 60s all the way until the early. 80s and then the cycle started again. And so as a fund manager, I look at these major trends. And one of the things I'm pretty good at is looking at the 30,000 foot view. I'm not very

smart, but I can see major trends. You clearly are, best performing hedge fund. Can I just ask you a very quick question before you explain that? So the 70s is obviously a decade of super high inflation. And what happened like in the late 80s that meant we hit a bottom there? Or sorry, in the late 70s, early 80s? So basically what That's when we had the peak. So interest rates were surging throughout that time. Inflation ran really, really hot. The 70s are basically a whole decade of stagflation.

So stagnant economy, choppy inflation, but high inflation in general. Up to even like around 20% of something. Yeah, right. So Paul Volcker had to do his famous move in the early 80s where he spiked the federal funds rate and got it going. And so that basically set off the next bull market. Then came Reagan, right? And it started out tumultuousness.

We had this recession in the US. that was pretty severe in like 81, 82. But that was a resetting of the economy. In fact, that's what I was thinking Trump and Bessent were going to try to do. And I think they actually, they thought that's what they were going to do too. But it was so unpopular that I think they quit before they could really let the effects sink in. Interesting. And I also think that we're not at the right point.

Notice in 1980, nobody liked stocks. Nobody invested in U.S. stocks because if you had invested in stocks back in 1967, you basically chopped around for 13 straight years and nominally. Dollar denominated, but in inflation-adjusted terms, you were actually down, I want to say 70% or so. You just got annihilated. And so this is a good precursor. I think that's the closest precursor to where we are today.

If I had to guess, I'd say if we have this conversation in, say, 2035, call it 13 years from the most recent peak, I'm guessing that, that U.S. stocks will have chopped around maybe gone a little bit up over those 13 years, but if you do it in inflation-adjusted terms, that they're actually going to be down over 50%. And so people who are, and this is why I talk about this stuff. Like I consider myself kind of a nice guy. So when I have these major revelations, I just want to share it with people. I know that most Americans are sitting with their retirement accounts, their 401Ks and their IRAs,

and they're sitting in U.S. stocks, the Meg 7, and U.S. treasuries. the 60-40 portfolio or some variation of that portfolio. Yep. They are going to, I'm just telling you, based on this and based on all of this stuff that we're talking about, I think there's a super high probability that you're going to get decimated. You're purchasing power, even if it looks like you're making money in the brokerage account, from a purchasing power standpoint, you're going to lose purchasing power over the next 13 years if that's your portfolio. So you have to start thinking of an alternative. We all know what that alternative is. Okay, so tell me, so from 2011 when this thing bottomed, the chart looks quite different to any of the previous cycles.

Like, it's been choppy for a lot longer and it's not gone up as much. Why do you think that is? I think, so, I mean, who knows why, right? I'm just guessing. But I think it's because it went too high in 1999. I think we had that late boom to end the 90s, which was, which was like a real boom. We suddenly had this internet thing, the dot-com boom. And that was real productivity growth. And so that spurred it along. And it caused Americans to believe that we were actually at some new sort of plateau, right? Kind of like 1929. And they believe they were at this.

Notice it looks pretty similar to 1929, 1999 and 1999 are kind of similar. And then the 67 and 2022 peaks are sort of similar, how they're sort of topy and rolling over slowly. Yep. So I think we're more at that kind of situation right now where most of the people just don't really believe it. Most of the people I talk to when you watch CNBC and Bloomberg, They're still talking about the Meg 7. They're going to be talking about the Meg 7 for the next five years, even while stocks like Brazil stocks, Argentina stocks, European equities,

they're going to outperform, I think, the Meg 7 and these other stocks for the next five years. And nobody's going to even notice in America because we're going to be talking about, we're making America great again. We still believe in our awesome internet monopoly companies. And meanwhile, they're going to underperform the rest of the world. And they're definitely going to underperform gold at a minimum. and not to mention Bitcoin, right? Yeah.

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And I don't even enjoy it that much. Yeah. But it's really interesting hearing like the kind of tech boroughs perspective on all this stuff. And like you say, all they're talking about is the Mag 7 still. But so why do you think money's going to go? Because I've heard a lot of people talk about like European markets going to do really well for a while. Same with, say, South American markets. Like, why is that? So first of all, what woke me up to it is when we hit our first patch of trouble in this, it was this year in February, March, early April.

what happened was astonishing. And we haven't seen that in a very long time here. When the market started panicking and stocks tend to be the first movers, when they started going, and Bitcoin, of course, was going down because it front runs everything. So Bitcoin is crashing. Stocks were crashing. People were selling treasuries and yields were spiking, which is really weird because normally they're a flight to safety.

And the dollar was decreasing. That's really weird. Because normally what happens is people panic. They sell. risk assets, they buy the dollar or they buy treasuries. And so that little section of time, that didn't happen. The exact opposite happened. And so what that is saying to me is people are looking for a different reserve asset.

They don't want the dollar. They don't trust the dollar anymore. They don't trust treasuries anymore. That's what opened my eyes to it. And I started really looking into it. Second is just geopolitical policies. Trump is basically telling China and its allies to get the heck out of America. We don't want your dollars, right?

that's a huge deal. When you have massive, wealthy countries that had a lot of their wealth parked here in the US, I know you've talked about this with other guests, because there is no alternative to US-based assets, and then you force them out, you're taking one of the largest buyers away from US-based assets. The price has to come down because of that.

And so that's honestly, that's kind of the main thing. I think the period of US exceptionalism has come to an end, whether we're doing it by force, and who knows what the history books will say, It's because Trump did this. It's because of the tariffs. It's because of policies. It could have just been the time in the cycle that, look, they just got too overpriced.

Valuations were way too high. You know, and in all fairness, if you look at emerging market equities, if you look at European stocks, a lot of international equities, they're very cheaply priced. They're very fairly valued right now. And so we may just see this shift from U.S. growth assets into value-based assets around the world. And again, based on these charts and the way these cycles happen, this could last for the next 10 to 15 years or so.

And so I think what you're saying here, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that you think we're going to go into a period like the 70s. Yes. So I've had Jeff Snyder on the show, and Joe Culleseri is obviously a fan of Jeff Snyder and thinks quite similarly. They kind of laugh at the idea,

or Jeff is, I don't know about Joe, but Jeff laughs at the idea that people say we're going to go into a 70s-like period. Why are you so confident in that? Why am I, well, let's see, Why am I confident? Why do you think it's going to happen? Because I think that's just where we're headed.

I think when I see so much hubris and how awesome America is, and I still hear many very intelligent economists saying there is no alternative to US stocks. Nobody does it like the US. I think we're going to find a rude awakening this decade, sort of like, again, the 70s were, right? We kind of went toe to toe with OPEC

and we had lots of the oil crisis and the embargo. We had a lot of terror. issues, those sorts of things. It was, people were starting to doubt U.S. exceptionalism. I think we are at early stages of that. And I think the world who wakes up for, you know, Americans, we're all sort of hubristic, right? We sort of think we're the best.

We think we're like Rocky Babo and we win every fight and all that and we'll come from behind. I think we will be great again, but probably not until we reset. I think there's a long, painful reset. Could part of that be that, like, nobody does do the, like, the U.S. in the sense of like the Mag 7. There's no real competitors to the Mag 7. But could it be really down to like the valuation of the Mag 7 is just way overblown?

So yes, and the world is shifting. So the Mag 7 dominated the last 20 years. You could argue the last basically 15 years, especially since the global financial crisis. But things are changing. AI is coming. And the Meg 7 won't necessarily benefit from AI. I think what we'll see, and we can get into this a little bit, we are going to see margin improvement across the board for companies that deploy.

I'm sure you've used it. You see the efficiencies that you can see. It's coming and it's evolving really fast. The companies who are embracing it the most quickly, like the Microsofts, the Metas, Amazon, the Meg 7, these guys, Tesla, they already have super high margins. And that's why they have such extreme valuations. Those margins are going to get even better in the coming. like year or two. But then what's going to happen is AI is going to spread into the rest of the economy and not just the U.S. economy, the world's economy, and every company's margins are going to start

improve. And the main way that it improves is you don't need as many employees. You increase revenues and you increase efficiency and you decrease the amount of employees. So your cost of capital is going down while your revenues are increasing. Revenue per employee will be just kind of going off the charts. It's going to start with, it's going to be a top down thing. And as that happens, we're going to see massive improvements in these smaller companies that have kind of been left by the wayside for the last decade or so. So that's why I think, I think the Meg 7 stocks aren't going to be special anymore. They're not AI company. They are, but they aren't. They're trying to stay important. Like, I don't know if you've been seeing the headlines. Apparently,

Zuckerberg has been offering a hundred million dollar signing bonuses. Plus 100 million a year. Yes. Wild. To the open AI people. And they're declining him, which says something. That, that means they think we're going to be more valuable than that and we don't want anything. So the guys who are the heroes of the last generation are going to be the lame ducks of the coming generation. Yeah, that is one of the most crazy things I've ever heard. 100 million signing bonus plus 100 billion salary package. It's wild.

Even I would be tempted by 100 million. Holy shit, I'd be in a heartbeat. Think how much Bitcoin you get. So when it comes, I want to ask you a question that I talked to Joe a lot about on the show. He was kind of fading this idea that a lot of kind of Bitcoin macro people have in terms of like the dollar doom loop. I know you're friends with Joe, but I think this might be an area you disagree with him on. Actually, not really. So I think the dollar is here to stay. So we've talked about this for a long time. There's like 160 global currencies right now.

The dollar is by far the dominant currency. Before the dollar dies, all 159 or whatever of the other currencies first have to die. For sure. And we're not even seeing that. We're seeing just, it's still kind of the similar ones. Like we're seeing a few, you know, a few at the bottom that are, that are going into hyperinflation. The only way, and so, and so, and I, and I used to call people out on this on Twitter, on Twitter, people love to speak in hyperbole. That's what gets the most clicks and the likes and gets the YouTube headlines. Um, but hyperbole is basically never what actually happens, right? We're not, we're not, I do not think we are going to have a US dollar hyperinflation anytime soon. The only way that I could see that happening would be if we truly did get into a massive global

World War III type situation, where we're already. over indebted and now we suddenly need way, way, way more money. And US exceptionalism is dying so other nations aren't buying our treasuries. So our central bank has to step in by all of our treasuries. We do massive borrowing and spending and we debase the currency. That could possibly cause hyperinflation, but only possibly. And I think the chances of that happening are very small. So I think the US dollar will be with us for a very long time still.

Okay. So you don't think we're going to go into hyperinflation, but you do think we're going to go into an inflationary decade. decade. Yes. And what kind of, I know this is impossible to predict, but like roughly, what, are you thinking like double-digit inflation or just high single figures? Probably high single. So I think for the next five years, we're most likely to have just kind of like higher inflation. So that's one of the problems with Paul right now, right? Is he keeps talking about this 2% target that he's shooting for? Have they not changed it to 3?

No, he's still at 2. Okay. And so that's, that's, he's not being realistic, I think, with the way the world is changing and the fact that we're getting away from globalization, we're trying to bring the war machine back to the U.S. That is very inflationary. And so, but by very inflation, I mean three to four percent-ish kind of CPI ranges. Again, though. Still really impactful. Still impactful.

It's still really hurt. And it still really hurts the bottom part of the K a lot, which is unfortunate. But yeah, I don't see massive runaway inflation unless we have a major war. And so do you think, like, I've obviously had Larry LaPard on the show a few times. I really like Larry. He thinks we're sort of on the brink of the next big print. Do you agree with that as a framework? So Larry's also a good friend of mine.

I usually get together and have a meal with Larry about once a year. So, hey, Larry. So I think another print is inevitable for sure. I think he's right about that. I don't think it's hyperinflation leading to an unsustainable print. I think a lot of people have in their minds, Weimar Germany and that kind of hyperinflation and that we're going to see that.

And then we'll see the response in Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, again, I don't think that's likely. I could be wrong. And that might be right. But I think that's a little too, that's too extreme from what I think. Okay. So going into this next period, obviously, again, back to this chart, you think we're going

to see a big down tick. European stocks, South American stocks, you think will do well. But we know that the winner here is going to be things like gold and Bitcoin. So like with the best performing hedge fund in the world, I'm going to show you again. What would you do to prepare for this? So I'll tell you what I am doing. So it's what would I do? And this is not individual investment advice.

I always have to have that disclaimer. This is just what I'm doing. I think the way I think about it is, okay, looking out over the next 10 years, what's the most likely outcome? Which assets are the most likely to perform well and in what order? That's the kind of stuff I sit around thinking about. I think far and away Bitcoin is going to do the best. So Bitcoin, I think should be your primary asset of choice.

Second, I think gold will actually do well. And by the way, so I've gotten on a history with gold. I started out as a gold bug before I knew Bitcoin. Then I discovered Bitcoin. And I was of the belief. And remember, this is back in probably the 2017 to 2021 frame. I said regularly that I think gold is being demonetized by Bitcoin, meaning that it's a relic. People won't invest in it anymore.

The monetary premium would dissolve. Now that we're entering this phase of shifting out of U.S. assets and into global assets, I don't think that's true anymore. I think gold is having a run, and I think it's just the beginning. I think this could continue on for about 10 years or so. So the way I look at it, Bitcoin number one, I think gold is number two. I think international equities and emerging markets are number three for performance. They've lagged for a very, very long time.

And when you have a declining U.S. dollar that generally lasts for about a decade or so, which is the period I think we're entering, because people are shifting out of dollars, that generally bodes well for emerging markets and international stocks. So I'd put those at number three. Then I would say select. And this is where it gets hard.

There are select AI related things and robotics. So I'm a big believer. So agentic AI is coming, which you probably know about. No, I don't. So agents. So basically. Oh, okay. Sorry.

You know, like so agent. And things like that. Things that can do things for you. That's happening right now. It's insane. It's insane. And it's, we're at the very early stages, but it's being deployed already. That's why Microsoft can fire 6,000 engineers and coders and all that kind of stuff, because it can do this stuff for them. And that's just the beginning phases.

Next is embodied AI. So basically robots with AI brains, that's coming. So I bring that up to say those companies, if you can figure out the winners and they're actually public equity so you can actually buy them, like you can't buy open AI. Otherwise, I would own a lot of open AI. You can buy Tesla. You can buy Tesla. And I do. So that's actually one of my few US stock holdings in my, in my hedge fund. Those types of stocks will do well. And then the S&P 500 is down here. And then further below are US treasuries.

And then the US dollar is down here. I would, I think these things are going to have for sure negative real returns. So why do you own them? So I only own a few select things and I own them based on momentum. So if we do have runs and we do, and you know, these, the thicker lines go down. straight lines, but the monthly candles, those are the red and green things that are showing the actual price movements, you can have months or even quarters where it goes against you. And so there are certain periods where stock, like from early, you see that the 67 arrow, the last arrow

happened in 72, which is about where our line is now. I get up and point it. But if you look across, it's right about where we were in the fall of 1972. It dipped down and then it spiked. And then it spiked. back higher again because things look good for a little bit. And then it resumed its fall again. So that's kind of like a hedge for those moments where it spikes the other way. So there are periods where US stocks will do okay, but they're only brief periods and I would only, I view those as a trade and not a long-term hold.

Do you think there's a chance that this chart might end up being broken in the next 10 years in the sense that like this move isn't a short-term move before we see it go the other way? And it's actually a complete shift into a new global monetary order. It could. It could. So I could always be wrong. So I will say I'm wrong and I'll swap my trading things if these trends are broken. And that's just how I do my fund. I'm just a momentum guy. So I have my macro views, which I... I more mean it kind of breaks to the downside and the way you're saying and just keep going down. And if like gold or Bitcoin or something like that actually gets monetized to a degree that like countries all over the world are using it in some bigger capacities. Yes. Could it break further like go down to where it was in 1980 or even... Or further. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. In fact, I think that that's likely.

So people be like, well, where's the bottom going to be? I have no idea. You can see there's a wide range from 2011 to 1980. It could be not too severe like it was in 2011 or just crazy where everybody had given up on stocks in U.S. assets by early 1980. And then that was the perfect time to be buying U.S. stocks and U.S. assets and U.S. treasuries. Okay. Amazing. Last thing I want to ask you about is the Fed.

We touched on it a little bit, but I want to know what your kind of take is on basically what Powell's done if you think Trump is right in trying to get rid of him and what kind of comes next. Well, as far as I understand it, Trump can't get rid of him. I get what Trump, so I actually get, well, first of all, I think we should end the Fed. Let me say that first. It's central manipulation. They have a bunch of dudes and a few ladies decide the price of money is insane to me. This should be another free market thing. So I'm totally with Larry. Larry, I disagree with you on an earlier point. Larry, I do agree with you that we should end the Fed. Immediately. That would be one of my first actions if I were president for a day. But the president

can't just fire Powell. So I think what we're going to see very soon is he's going to get a doveish candidate who's going to do his bidding and they're going to start promoting him. And so even though Powell is still in power, he's going to be like a lame duck guy. And the markets will start anticipating the new Fed chair, whoever. I'm just front run out. Trump has a point that what Powell and the Fed do in the FMC, what they do is they do set the short term price, right? The federal funds rate is what the US, the one month and three month treasuries are based on, that directly sets the prime rate here in the U.S. And we've talked about this before. People who borrow variable rate debt here in the U.S., whether it's a HELOC or credit card debt or pick your short-term debt,

your variable rate debt, it's all based on that prime rate, which is based on the federal funds rate. So to Trump's point, he's saying, dude, lower it a point or two. If you lowered it from four and a half to three and a half or two and a half, that would, then what could happen is Bessent could come in from the Treasury and issue a crazy amount of short-term T-bills at this lower rate. And America would have to pay less interest.

So he's like, you can intentionally manipulate the interest rate so that we pay, who cares of the effects that it has on inflation, who cares about all this other stuff. And on the inflation point, I think he said that like, if inflation comes back, then react to it then. But do this for now. Exactly. And I think there is some validity to that. Like, why wouldn't you do it?

And it's, it's, it's, I can, and see why he thinks that it's politically motivated. Like he's like, look, you lowered it towards the end of Biden's regime right before the elections, and now you won't do it, even though inflation is hitting these lows right now. I think everybody, though, unfortunately, looks ahead and says, especially what I look at is I see the price of oil spiking because of all of this stuff going on in the Middle East.

That's a huge driver of CPI. So I think what we're going to see in the coming months is we've probably bottomed from a CPI level, and it's actually going to start increasing again from here on out. So then his hands may be tied in terms of cutting further. Because I think at the moment, I could be wrong here, but the market's indicating we may get cuts later this year. But if oil starts spiking, CPI goes up again, the likelihood is they don't do that.

Exactly. So now because of what he has said, because of what Paula said, we're in a bit of a quandary. So even if he wanted to and felt pressure to lower rates, now he's really going to look stupid if he lowers rates because inflation's going to start increasing again. But you think he's going to hold that seat until 26 or whenever he's actually...

I don't know how he gets fired. I mean, maybe they pressure him to step down. Yeah, that's kind of the way I was thinking about more than like directly getting fired, just getting pushed to the point where he can't do the job anymore, essentially. He seems like he's digging in, though, so I'll be surprised. They're kind of button heads over this stuff. Well, Jeff, this has been amazing. Thank you.

It was worth coming to Denver before. Is there anything that we didn't talk about, though, that you want to? Not really. Other than that because I don't go on, I'm not on social media anymore and I only do a few interviews. Thanks for having me by the day. It's just for people to truly consider. what I'm saying is I truly think we're at an inflection point right now. Two inflection points, two major ones.

One is this chart we're talking about where I think there is a true shift away. And you're going to hear headlines of retail investors in the U.S. are buying stocks and buying Bitcoin and buying whatever. That does not matter. What moves the markets over the long terms are what institutional investors and country, nation state investors are doing. They are moving out of America, whether by choice or by force. they're moving away from America, and that has huge implications.

And the fund manager and the nice guy in me just wants to beg you, if all you have are U.S. stocks and U.S. bonds and your retirement portfolio, consider something else. I mean, maybe just add some international stock exposure. If you can add gold, add gold, and by all means, own Bitcoin. If you can own Bitcoin. Totally. You can't give financial advice, but buy Bitcoin.

Buy and hold self-custody Bitcoin. You can give what I can. Exactly. Thank you, Jeff. I was going to say where do you want people to go, but you don't want anyone to follow you anywhere now. So I just appreciate the time. Thank you.

Yep, go touch some grass. That's my recommendation. There you go. Thank you, Jeff. Thanks, Danny.