What Bitcoin Did - PREPARING FOR $475K BITCOIN w/ Dr. Jeff Ross

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

Jeff Ross is a macroeconomist, bitcoiner and Founder & CEO of Vailshire Capital Management. In this episode, we discuss global liquidity cycles and its impact on Bitcoin price movements, predictions for Bitcoin in 2025, and the potential for nation-state adoption. We also get intothe Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, the challenges of global stagflation, and why Jeff chose to go “Nostr-only”. MASSIVE THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN: https://www.iren.com/ RIVER: https://river.com/wbd CASA: https://casa.io/ LEDGER: https://www.ledger.com/

So my own view is we maybe get to 475K, so maybe 400, 500,000. I think we could fall all the way back down to below 100,000 again in 2026. So yes, I do think we're going to say until something changes, I think we're still going to see these economic cycles. And I believe, like, in my deepest heart of hearts, that it's liquidity based, that it's not because of the U.S. buying or not buying. It's not because of ETF flow or, you know, exits or inputs. It's just because of liquidity.

All right, good to see you, Jeff. How are you doing? Hey, Danny, good to see you. It has been a while. We're talking beforehand how long it's been, I think, about a year and a half or so maybe since our last show. I've been well. Life's been busy. Sounds like it's been busy for you too. But I think I'm having fun anyways. Life is good. Good stuff. And are you still doing the radiology? I actually just re-retired from radiology about 10 days ago or so. So thank you.

So, yep, I'm just running my hedge fund now. And it's been my goal for a long time just to be at this point. So I'm pretty excited about it. What Bitcoin did is brought to you by our lead sponsor and Massive Legends, Iron, the largest NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner using 100% renewable energy. Iron are not just powering the Bitcoin network. They're also providing cutting edge computing resources for AI, all backed by renewable energy.

We've been working with their founders, Dan and Will, for quite some time now, and have been really impressed with their values, especially their commitment to local communities and sustainable computing power. So whether you're interested in mining Bitcoin or harnessing AI compute, Iron is setting the standard. To find out more, head over to iron.com, which is iraen.com. So last time we spoke, the topic of that show was Bitcoin as the ultimate reserve asset, which aged like fine wine and is obviously very topical right now. So can we start talking about the Trump admin and what's going to happen with Bitcoin? I'm going to give you some hot takes, and I'll see what you agree with and see what you don't agree with. So I think day one, I do believe Trump all free Ross.

I think that's probably in terms of the Bitcoin a community, the most important promise for him to keep. But I don't think he's going to sign a strategic Bitcoin Reserve executive order on day one. I actually don't think he may even mention Bitcoin for a little while. And I think on the back of that, it'll be like a sell-and-use type event. Bitcoin will crash a little bit for a couple of days. back off to the races. I don't know what you think is going to happen here. Because we're only like, what, is it, six days out? Yeah, it's coming up next Monday, the 20th. So we're doing this on the 14th. Okay, I do think he will free Ross. If he does not free Ross, the Bitcoiners will come at them

with their pitchforks and torches and, you know, the cyber hornets will go off on him. So even if he didn't do it on day one, he'll do it on day two at the very latest. But I think it'll be a day one decision. The strategic Bitcoin Reserve, based on the comments I've heard of him, I think I'm aligned with you. I do not think he will sign something right off the bat. I think this is going to be more of a congressional issue. I won't be surprised if they hang on to the Bitcoin that was confiscated by the Department of Justice, you know, with the whole Silk Road deal. I hope they sell it, by the way. I just want to be on record. I've posted this on Noster too. I don't think the U.S. is worthy of the Bitcoin they seized. And if they're not going to give it back to the rightful

owners, which they're clearly not, that's, you know, that's what 11 years ago or 10 years ago or so, I think they should just put it on the free market and let the true bitcorners buy it up. Can we actually talk about that before we move on? Because that's interesting. Sure. If the Bitcoin was seized in like, on a legal basis, right? And if they seize cash on a legal basis, they keep it. So why do you think the Bitcoin should go back? Because, you know, this is sort of a morality issue. I just think they're unworthy of the Bitcoin that they seize. And I don't think you should be able to just take the property of somebody else, even if they don't like how it was done. Right. And I get it. I get it. This is a legal process. It was done legally. But I disagree with their implications that what Silk Road was was this horribly terrible thing. Oh, I agree with you that. Right. So it flew in the face of the U.S. government monetary and financial control, right? They do not like it. They did not like everything about it. So the whole framing of Ross is a bad guy. The whole framing of Silk Road is this illicit, horrible, terrible place. And it serves them right. We get to take their stuff away from it. I just don't like any of the framing of it. And so, and again, it's probably me as a libertarian. I tend to be more of a freedom maxi. They weren't hurting anybody for the most part through that. So I just disagree with the whole premise. So I don't think the Bitcoin, you know, if it doesn't belong to the Silk Road participants,

then it also doesn't belong to the government, even though it was obtained through legal measures. So what's the only solution? They obviously aren't going to give it back to anybody, so I think they should just sell it all in the free market. Okay, I can get on board with that. Sorry, I interrupted you. So carry on with you flow. It's okay. Okay, strategic Bitcoin Reserve, like you, I don't think it happens on day one. I think they may keep that Bitcoin, although I hope they actually do sell it. Will they actually start buying? You know, what's the term like 200,000 Bitcoin per year for five years?

So they have a million. I know that's been floated around. Maybe. You know, if they were smart, that's exactly what they would do. I'm not convinced that they all understand Bitcoin as well as Bitcoiners think they do. They're very pro-crypto, and that bothers me very much. You know, they get Bitcoin, but then the next thing they talk about, about is crypto and all this crypto legislation. And so I'm concerned that we're going to have another

circus clown show crypto bull market where people are going to go up a thousand X and they're going to lose their shirts and go down 99%. And it's going to be sort of backed by the current administration. That part concerns me. So what I really like to see are people when they first get into Bitcoin is do they really understand what it is they own? I keep, I keep using the phrase that the U.S. government is not worthy of Bitcoin yet. So until I see that they actually understand it, until, you know, the Kong, until somebody like Cynthia Lemus truly represents the heart of the government, then yes, they would be worthy of it.

But until I see more evidence that they're not just treating it like some other crypto, you know, or some other kind of nonsense, then I don't think they should be keeping it as a reserve asset. And I will say, if I can say one more thing, it is inevitable. and I've been saying this for years and years and years, it's inevitable that Bitcoin will eventually become the world's reserve currency and the world's reserve asset. We're on that trajectory. People hate the term inevitable because they think that implies no human effort. I think there's going to be tons of human effort from bitquiners who understand Bitcoin and because of that effort, Bitcoin will become inevitably the world's reserve asset and the world's reserve currency

in time, in decades. I completely agree with that. And I think that hands are going to be forced as well. I'm fairly confident from people I've spoken to that the UAE hold a significant amount of Bitcoin, whether that's two, 300, 400,000,000 coins, whatever. That's going to play into it, and I think that may end up forcing the US's hand in some way, maybe quite quickly. But in terms of like this Bitcoin cycle, how important do you think the US involvement is? I think it's just basically the, I think it's important for this cycle, as you say. I think it's going to be the main driver that will push us to the next level. So I'm still holding on to my thesis or my guess of Bitcoin at a price target of about $475,000 by the fourth quarter of 2025. And that's because of now mild

nation state involvement. So the U.S. will probably get involved to some degree. That should start a bit of a foot race for Bitcoin. But I don't think it will be as impressive as a lot of people think. You know, we had micro strategy last cycle. Now we have a handful of companies doing the Bitcoin treasury strategy. It's great to see, but it's still just a teeny tiny drop in the bucket so far. But that's enough, I think, enough interest to help push the price higher in this next cycle. So once we see liquidity really start to take off, I think that's what will propel Bitcoin to a 500K valuation, maybe a million, who knows, my range is anywhere from 200,000 to a million at some point. And then I think people will get over leveraged again like people always do

because they get caught up in the hype and they do stupid things. And then we have another crash after that. And then the next cycle, I think, will be more of nation state involvement kind of early on. And we'll start seeing nation states stacking at a more significant level. And that's probably, I do want to talk to you about like the four-year cycle, but I guess when nation states are stacking at a significant level, that might be when that four-year cycle actually gets broken. But before we get to that, do you ever follow the halving tracker?

I do. But I don't put a ton of stock into it. Okay. Tell me why. Because I think that the, and this is what, to me it seems really obvious, but I think this confuses a lot of people. I think most people put too much stock in the halving, and I used to as well, but I do less and less. And I think what we're seeing in these huge waves that happen about every four years are just liquidity waves into Bitcoin itself. So, so what happens is we get to the

point in the economic cycle where countries as businesses and nations are trying to roll over their debt, they, the dollar, the dollar shortage gets acute. And actually, We're kind of at the state at that stage right now where we're starting to feel the pressure of this dollar shortage around the world. So central banks, by some action, there'll be something like the guilt crisis back in October, I think, of 2023. Something will happen that will cause central banks to get heavily involved, probably the, even though the U.S. itself is the economy is doing pretty well. The Federal Reserve will get involved maybe through liquidity swaps, maybe through who knows what actions they'll do. but they'll do some way to push out the dollar out around the world to our allies and maybe indirectly to like China or frenemies and places like that. And that will trigger, I think, finally, rates will roll over a bit.

The dollar will finally break and roll over. And then that will free up other central banks from other nations to finally start doing their own quantitative easing. That will be that rush of liquidity and we'll see that reflected in the price of Bitcoin, which will go up, up. And like as we said, at some point, we run out of buyers. Everybody has leverage, you know, and it's when your grandma finally calls and says, I'm all in right here. That's when we know we probably hit the top and we're going to have another 70 to 80% to climb. So I think it's going to be the same until I see otherwise.

I think we're going to see that same cycle. So do those four-year liquidity cycles, sorry, do those liquidity cycles tend to be in four-year cycles as well? Yes, they do. What drives that? Okay. So everything changed during the global financial crisis or the great financial crisis back in 2008, 2009. That was when the central banks and especially the Federal Reserve took control of the markets. They basically said, yeah, it was kind of free market stuff beforehand.

We were kind of piddling with it before, but now we've just taken control of it. They jammed the rates, the interest rate back down to zero. And that basically gave everybody free rein on their debt. Everybody got a debt jubilee when they did that. And that started when businesses started taking debt, they usually take debt that's about three to five years in length. So an average of four years. And about every three to five years or four years on average, they have to roll that debt over again. And so when they try to do that, what happens is we see this dollar shortage and euro dollar shortage, not just in the U.S.

But all around the world because the whole world runs on the U.S. obviously as a reserve currency and reserve asset. If there are not enough dollars out there, things start to get tight. So we see tremors in the system. And we're actually starting to see that now. One sign is you start seeing the dollar strengthened. So the Dixie rises. You can see treasury rates start to rise as well.

We're seeing that. We're talking beforehand. The guilt is above 5%. 10-year treasuries right now are about 4.8% or so. That's a kind of pressure that, you know, everybody thinks the Federal Reserve cares about the stock markets. They don't care about the stock markets. They care about the bond markets.

They care about treasuries. And so when they see that there is a liquidity problem happening, I wish they would proactively act like I wish they would start doing stuff right now. But what they're going to do is wait until some sort of crisis happens. And then that's going to trigger them until, okay, we're going to flood the system. Somehow it can be creative measures. It can be traditional measures. But they'll flood the system with new dollars or with new dollar collateral, which are just short-term T-bills or longer-term treasuries. And then that liquidity wave comes in.

And then companies then are able to roll. their debt for another three to five years, usually about four years or so. And that's why we get these cycles. So I think it's a red herring that it happens to be in sync with the presidential, the U.S. presidential cycle, and with the Bitcoin halving cycle. I think those are red herrings. I think what it really is that we're seeing are liquidity waves. This episode is brought to you by CASA. For those of you out there who want to protect your Bitcoin, I want to tell you about CASA, the leading Bitcoin self-custody solution. If you're serious about protecting your Bitcoin, then you need a rock-solid security plan and CASA gives you just that. With their multi-signisher security and

key management services, CASA makes it easier than ever to take control of your Bitcoin without the risk of a single point of failure. CASA also now has a private client option, which gives you a purpose-built security program with ongoing advisory, advanced verification inheritance, a 24-7 security emergency line and lots more. To find out more about CASA's private client solution, go to CASA.io, which is c-a-sa-o. I've got a million questions in that. So I'm going to go right back to the start here. Quite often, I think in Bitcoin, maybe not like the macro analyst like yourself,

but just the average bitcoiner, they'll, like me. Like the start of a cycle is always blamed on like what's happening in the economy. So COVID's a perfect example. We print fuck loads of money. Bitcoin goes to the moon. But I think at the kind of tops of cycles, people ignore the macro stuff. So in 2017, I know the Fed started tightening.

In 2021, they were tightening and M2 was dropping. Do you think they're the real real. reasons for like Bitcoin price topping out rather than anything else. Like the FTX thing obviously was a big deal in 2021. But do you put more on the macro side than you do in like the internal Bitcoin stuff? I put it all on the macro stuff. I mean, I run a macro hedge fund based on these kind of things. So the way I think it, here's the way it works in my world.

We see these flows of liquidity. First of all, everything is cyclical. So everything moves in a sine wave. And it took me years and years and years of investing to understand this. So if you're hearing this for the first time, take this seriously, and not to you, Danny, but to your listeners, everything is cyclical. I promise you. And so things go up and they go down and they go up and they go down.

And so first, usually what we see are waves of liquidity. And about some time after that, usually nine to 12 months or so, we see the economic cycle recover. And then what happens is the cycle starts to heat up. We see commodity prices start to rise. Ironically, that's what we're seeing right now. We're seeing oil and other commodities are really starting to take off again. They get to the point where sort of mid-cycle, we start seeing that reflected in goods, in prices or goods inflation. And then we see services inflation at the end, and that's sort of late cycle stuff.

So what happens is when we start getting high and we start to see the economy overheat, which is what I expect in 2025. I think we're going to have a strong economy as 2025 takes off. I think manufacturing is going to take off. I think the U.S. will actually pull the rest of the world out of this sort of slump that they're in, this stagflationary. slump that Europe is in and China is certainly in as well, although China is kind of its own deal, but definitely the U.S.-centric companies. What happens is as the economy starts to overheat, we start to see interest rates continue to go higher because long-term treasury rates are based on future growth and inflation expectations. When they start to get too high, that gets hard on the

markets, and it gets also hard on the lower classes, right? Because if inflation is running too high, like we saw back in 2022 and so on. It gets very difficult for people just to pay the bills. What happens in is the central banks, especially the Fed, will start saying, you know what? The economy is getting too strong. It's getting overheated, too hot.

We need to withdraw liquidity. So that's what I watch that like a hawk because I want to see what's happening because that's a leading indicator. So when we see the Fed even start talking about, okay, we need to start withdrawing liquidity again. There's a lag. And then the economic cycle starts to turn. turnover as well. And when that's somewhere in there, depending on which asset we're talking about,

if we're talking about Bitcoin, it's super sensitive to liquidity. It usually trades on about somewhere between like a seven and 15 week lag. And I got to give credit for this to Michael Howell of cross-border capital. He actually did some work to discover this. So there's about a seven to 15 week leg with an average of about 12 weeks. So about a 12 week leg after we see an action in global liquidity. Bitcoin does that. It kind of follows that same action. And then everything just starts over again. So basically liquidity gets withdrawn. People start having a tough time paying their debts. The economy starts to roll over. Stocks sense that. So stocks start crashing as well. And then you usually have a traditional bear market. So that's how it always works.

Sometimes it doesn't. I will say one last thing. And then I'll quit blathering. COVID really threw a lot of things off. That was that that didn't happen at exactly the right time, although it was close to the right time, but it was such a huge hit to the system and where, you know, they disrupted the supply chain and then the government came in, especially here in the U.S., and they just gave everybody money, so transfer payments directly into the bank accounts of people with the supply chain stopped and these huge cash influxes that caused inflation to spike. And it just threw off the markets. And then the markets since then have basically just been normalizing and recovering. But I think now we're sort of back into a traditional cycle where I expect to see the,

economic growth and inflation to both be increasing throughout 2025. One of the interesting things you said there, I mean, I've honestly written about 20 questions down from that. But one of the interesting things said there was COVID didn't fall at quite the right time. But I remember a really interesting interview that we did on what Bitcoin did, probably end of 2019 with Travis Kling and Caitlin Long. And it was when the repo market was blowing out. And they were then saying, something's wrong.

We don't know what it is, but something's going to break. And then COVID happened. And I wondered if that was like kind of efficient market hypothesis sort of thing, like seeing around a corner that you don't, you don't know the event, but something's going to happen. Exactly. But I want to get back to the cycles because obviously one of the things that are quite often blamed on like Bitcoin tops is every man on his dog getting in is always a sign. And then like leverage blowing out. Like people just going all in on Bitcoin like above their means. Is that just a symptom of like the global liquidity cycle? It is because when liquidity is increasing, what that does is it.

puts a, first of all, the, like, so what happens here in the U.S., the Federal Reserve says, we've got treasuries covered. We're going to start buying treasuries, and what that means is the rest of you, investment institutions and regular, you know, plebs here on the street, you can move further out on the risk curve. So we got this part of the low risk curve. You guys move out on the risk curve. So basically, there's a huge buyer that wasn't here. Like right now, they're not here. We're doing technically QT. We're allowing treasuries and mortgage back to securities to roll off of the Fed balance sheet. At some point, they're going to pop back in. Boom. And what that does is everybody shifts over on the risk curve. And so that's what

starts this move higher in risk assets. And people start to think, man, I'm an awesome investor. And I made 2X in Bitcoin, but man, I bought Doge and I'm up 100x. I'm a brilliant investor, right? That people start thinking like that. And then they're like, man, if I can make 100x in Why wouldn't I use leverage? And then I could make a thousand X in Doge. So they start doing that. And basically they confuse good returns. And importantly, what happens in equity markets is we have expanding multiples.

So even though things are expensive from a multiple perspective, like a high price to earnings or high price to sales ratios like we see. And things right now in the U.S. are pretty high. They're not crazy high, but they're pretty high. When liquidity is expanding, those multiples continue to expand even higher. So I expect to see PEs getting even higher for the S&P 500, for the Q's, for small cap stocks as well in this next year. And then basically everything reaches such an extreme as that liquidity is then being withdrawn. Suddenly everything just falls apart. And the people who are levered long, they get wrecked first.

So we see, I call it a leverage long liquidation cascade, LLC. And they just get wiped out instantly. Then you usually see a bit of a rebound. and then people have, they're still holding on to hope, and then the real bear market starts and everybody gets crushed for the next, say, six to 12 months or so. So it's just like everyone's a genius in a bull market thing. Exactly.

So we spoke a little bit before the show about the bond market. UK guilts have blown out to like over 5.5%. Can you explain what's actually happening there and what that is signaling? This is another thing, and I might not be right in this, but this is how I view it. So I think that U.S. Treasuries, which are the world's reserve asset, basically, they move based on future growth and inflation expectations. Most people kind of understand that, but I see a lot of people sort of mixing that up.

A lot of people think the Fed, by the way, controls the long end of the treasury curve, and they don't. They're like the Fed lowered rates over the last five months or so. Like, why are bond yields rising on the long end or why are mortgage rates going up there? Because they lowered rates. And it's like they don't have anything to do with each other. The Fed controls the very, very short end of the yield curve. They don't have anything to do with the long end. So that's that.

I'm sorry to be annoying here and interrupt you again, but I want to ask a question on that part. Even though they control the short end, does that influence the long end? It does, but only a little bit. It doesn't really affect it. There are two just kind of totally separate things. So the short end that the Fed has to do it, they can control and sort of heat up or slow down the economy

because when they say what they've done recently, right, they lowered the federal funds rate from 5.5 to 4.5%. The U.S. prime rate is derived specifically from the federal funds rate. So the prime rate is like the Fed funds rate plus I think 3% or so. Why is that important? Because like credit card debt, he locks, you know, home equity lines of credit, small business debt is all short term variable rate debt that's based on the prime rate, which is based on the federal funds rate. So if they say, hey, we're going to lower the Fed funds rate from 5.5 to 4.5% instantly, literally like overnight, anyone who has a home equity line, you know, credit card debt, small business debt, variable rate debt, they have lowered their payment.

So their negative cash flow just got less negative. So now they have more cash in the bank, more cash to invest or whatever. So they can, they can either warm up the economy or slow down the economy based on what they do with that rate. That's separate, though, from what's going on here on the long end of the curve. So the 10 to 30 year rates are just based on, and even the two year, the two year is sort of a blend between the two and that I think is more affected. The two year, what you can do is see where the, the market thinks the federal fund rate is sort of going to be on a trajectory over the next two years. But distal to that, 10 years, 20, 30 years is more future growth and inflation expectations. So, but that's not what's happening in the UK, right?

So UK, Europe, their rates are rising, but their economy is, look weak. They're in sort of a stagflationary type picture right now, meaning slow or negative or weak economic growth, but rising rates. And so what happens with those countries is they tend to rise in sympathy to what the treasuries are doing. So basically, they follow in lockstep with the treasuries. And that's really hard on those nations. So countries that have a weak economy, but have rising rates, that is a world to hurt for them. So they're in a lot of pain right now. So their corporate profits are coming down. They're having a hard time paying debt, especially if they're paying, you know,

U.S. debt on top of that with high rates and a low conversion rate now relative to the U.S. dollar. It makes it like doubly or triply hard to pay those debts. So they're dying for the dollar to break and they're dying for rates to go lower as well. And then one more thing. The BRICS nations, I see people talking about those too. The BRICs are basically a separate system. They're tied to the U.S. dollar system, but they're sort of separate too, right?

they want to be completely separate. So, you know, Brazil, Russia, India, China, those are the big four that are affected. They're sort of on their own pathway right now. So they all look very ugly. They're in basically flat out recessions right now. And their rates are actually dropping. So they mostly follow what China is doing, where China is having growth deceleration and basically deflation or disinflation at the same time. So that's why their treasury, treasury rates, their government bond rates,

are falling because they're just sort of a separate financial system. Okay. So I've seen a lot of like financial influences on Twitter claiming that this, like what's happening in the, in the bond market in the UK and in America on the long end, is a sign of massive recession incoming. Like people are comparing it to like the 2008 financial crisis. But I know you completely disagree with that. So what do you think they're missing?

I disagree. I agree and I disagree. What I think is going to happen. And I think we're in the final year. So this is when in the last year of an economic cycle, we have everything is sort of falling in line. So here's what I think is going to happen at some point, similar to 2017, by the way. This is something that's astonishing, by the way, and I want to talk about this. When Trump was nominated in 2016 to become president in 2017, the dollar shot higher.

Bitcoin first shot higher and then dumped right leading up. to prior to his inauguration. And this is just uncanny because I was telling people to watch for this correlation. In 2017, if I remember right, Bitcoin had a local bottom on January 12th of 2017. And yesterday, January 13th of 2025, I think we hit our local bottom. In 2017, that was the low for the year. And then it basically just took off after that. I would not be surprised if yesterday, January 13th was the low for Bitcoin. Now, I hate to say that. And the main reason why I didn't say that publicly,

because it's really stupid to say something like this publicly, is because the Department of Justice got cleared to sell 65,000 Bitcoin. You probably saw that announcement. If they dump that on the market, that will cause a spike down for sure. So I don't want to call that. If they don't do that, I think that January 13th, which is only one day off of the 2017 correlation, it could be the low for the year.

So that's pretty amazing. But what happened is Trump came in in 2017, and he's doing the exact same thing here. He's saying the dollar is too high. We need to break the dollar. Yield rates, treasury yields are too high. We need to break that as well. And so what I think they're going to do is something is going to happen, like we talked about earlier, like what happened in October of 2023.

Some market somewhere is going to basically just freeze and suddenly everything is going to panic. It could be an overnight type thing where suddenly yields spike maybe, you know, who knows where it's going to be. Something will happen somewhere, and that will be the cue for the Federal Reserve to step in and act and flood some markets with liquidity. That will break the dollar. It will break Treasury yields for the short term, and then that will help lead to the spike in Bitcoin heading throughout 2025. I say I agree in part with them, because I think that at some point, possibly by the end of 2025, conditions will change.

And I am concerned that because of extreme valuations, and if we do have liquidity withdrawn significantly, that we could be in store for a major drop in risk assets and in Bitcoin towards the end of 2025 and heading into 26. To me, it looks like everything is sort of setting up for that. But I think people who are bearish right now, they're bearish too early. This is not the time to be on the sidelines. I think we have the blow-off top first and then the fall after that. So in terms of Bitcoin then, obviously these four-year cycles have been going for a long time. There's a lot of people calling for the end of them, especially with like ETFs. And we saw after the gold ETF, there was basically an eight-year bull market.

You think we're still going to have another 80-ish percent drawdown at the end of this year? Maybe not 80. It depends how high it goes. So if we go to a million, then I'm like, for sure, we'll see an 80% drop down. I think we could go as well. So my own, you know, view is we maybe get to 475K. So maybe 400, 500,000. I think we could fall all the way back down to below 100,000 again in 2026.

So yes, I do think we're going to say until something changes, I think we're still going to see these economic cycles. And I believe, like, in my deepest heart of heart, that it's liquidity base, that it's not because of U.S. buying or not buying. It's not because of ETF flow or, you know, exits or inputs. It's just because of liquidity. That's what causes these price spikes. And that's what causes the price to drop down again. Okay. So I want to get into what Trump is going to do with the economy.

But before we do that, you said before that the U.S. will. pull Europe and other countries out of this kind of like recessionary environment. How will they do that? It's not really anything they do. It's just that America leads most of the world still. So we're still the engine of the, so, you know, China has been the manufacturing hub of the world for the last 20 years. That's being withdrawn, right? We're becoming more nationalized for sure. A lot of right-wing politicians are winning, a lot of populist president. So everyone is going to become more nation-centric. In the U.S., I think it's going to be legit. I think the Trump administration is going to funnel.

And it already started with Biden, but they're funneling tons of money into rebuilding U.S. manufacturing. So I think that kind of stuff is going to start again. I think what happens in the U.S. tends to happen around the world. So we're already seeing it in Canada, right? Trudeau has announced his resignation. I think we're going to get sort of a far right guy in Canada. I think we're going to see that across Europe as well. And it's going to go from kind of that left socialist,

leaning to more of that nationalistic right kind of leaning, and I'm not really political, so it kind of depends on what you think. I'm not really making a statement. But I think when that happens, the other nations tend to follow that. So as U.S. ramps up and the dollar starts to break, these other countries, especially Europe and the UK and possibly Japan to some extent, but they will be able to do their own floods of QE. So they can't do a lot of QE right now because that weakens their currency and they're already very weak relative to the dollar. If they were to do a ton of QE right now, it would go even more like this and get even more distorted. So first, the dollar needs to break and yields need to come down and then they can really ramp up QE at that

point. So I think the majority of the liquidity for this next cycle won't actually come from the U.S. I think it's going to actually come from Europe and from Japan and from China. And that liquidity because Bitcoin is a global asset will flow into Bitcoin and cause that Bitcoin and surge as we had throughout 2025. This episode is brought to you by River. There are many places to buy Bitcoin, but there's no exchange like River. They have innovative products, phone support, and a dedication to security that you just don't get elsewhere.

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very friendly with Jerome Powell. He's always kind of run on this idea of the US having the strongest economy ever under him. He's talking about buying a country. What do you think is going to happen there? Well, first, a couple things. The economy and the stock market are two separate things. So you can actually have a strong economy and have a poorly performing stock market. So just for your listeners to understand that. Do you think he cares about both? I think he cares mostly about the stock market. And he likes to take credit for the stock market going up and down. But I think he's doing things. The policies that I see, and again, I'm not very political. I don't really care much. But I like the policies that they're doing. I think if you remove regulations

and you lower taxes for business owners, that only has a positive effect on businesses going forward. If people can keep more of their money, that gives them more money to spend. We're a highly consumptive nation, so we will only be able to increase our ability to consume in America. And the effects then get felt around the world as well. And especially if we have that weaker dollar, which Trump wants, that will help our manufacturing base to increase because we can export our products or the rest of the world because the rest of the world, you know, can buy more relatively if we have a weaker currency. I think all of that, I think he's going to butt heads for sure with Powell.

Powell likes to, you know, he's taking a stand already against Trump, but man, Trump's got an intense personality. I, for one, think this is all just hilarious. Like, I know people get really offended by it, especially on the left. I think it's hilarious that he's talking about buying Greenland and buying Canada and, you know, taking the Panama Canal back. I don't, I think he's bluffing as far as military action. there's no way we would do military action against any of these countries. There's just no way.

And even these tariff, the tariff talk as well. It's just a negotiation tactic. It's what we saw last time. Tariffs, you know, every country puts tariffs on other countries. We look at it like it's this super bad thing. It is if it's done if it's done too intensely. Yeah, he's talking about very extreme tariffs, though. Exactly. But that's just, we all know Trump now, right? This is the second time through for the world. So we know that these. are just negotiating tactics for him. At some point, he's going to try to get what he wants. We'll meet somewhere in the middle. Once we meet in the middle, then things will be good again. And so that's, again, what's going to happen is I think having a strong dollar is a great negotiating

tactic because right now countries are really suffering, you know, like we talked about earlier, if you have high interest rates and a weak currency, you are really weak on a national scale. And that gives the U.S. intense leverage for negotiating. So I think at some point, we're going to reach an agreement with these various countries. And then what's going to happen is that'll cause the dollar to break, yields to come down. And then these other countries can finally do QE and strengthen their economies. And that's what allows for the next boom. So specifically on Jerome Powell, like Trump likes to have control. And Jerome Powell, at least right now, doesn't look like he's going to play ball with that at all. Do you think he will be able to either force his hand in

terms of decision making or force him out of office? If he forces him out, it will be because Powell quits, not because Trump is able to force him out. He could stiff arm them and frustrate him so much that Powell's just like, I'm out. I don't think that'll happen, at least not yet. I could see that happening if the economy turns south and we head into a recession and Paul's was like, I don't want to be at the helm for this again. I'm out. That would make sense to me. I think what's probably going to happen, And similar to right now, Powell and Janet Yellen discuss a lot, I think, behind closed doors and with other central bankers and, you know, and with the Treasury Secretary. Scott Bessent is coming in as Treasury Secretary.

And I think that he and Powell. I like him. Yeah, he's a good guy. He's smart. He's very intelligent. And so, and I think he's kind of aligned with Trump in general. So I think he'll sort of be the middleman spokesperson to talk to Powell. And I think that even if Trump says what he says on his social news.

media that what really the real movers and shakers are going to be Bessent and Powell for the next couple of years. And what do you think they're going to do or try and do in terms of monetary policy? Do you think there'll be a sort of phase shift and things will change or do you think it's going to be just more of the same? I think it's not going to be more of the same. And I think that's what the market is sensing right now is we're in this sort of transitionary phase shift. And, you know, I pay really close attention to this. I don't know what the outcome is going to be. I love the idea of Doge, right? The Department of Government Efficiency. I don't think, I don't think they can clean out $2 trillion in excess spending. But I do think, and I was talking about this on

Pressons show like a month or two ago, I think they're going to do more than people think they're going to do, though. And I think they're going to turn heads and they're going to upset people. And I'm here for it. I want to see the federal government disrupted and shrunk down. I want to see people packing bags and having their boxes and moving out of the, you know, of Washington, D.C. and downsizing DC, I think they will do some things that will have some effect. And it's probably going to be more tumultuous than many people think. I think most people think they basically have no chance. But I think that combo of Elon and Vivek with Trump supporting them is more potent than most people believe.

I agree. I think whatever you think of Elon, he's not afraid of pissing people off. Right. Nor is Trump and nor is Vivek. So that's a pretty potent combination of people. I think they don't, and they don't care. You know, they're self-made billionaires that just don't care about what the other people think of them. And they're in a lover hate Elon, he's very good at efficiency.

He knows how to run a good business. And so he's not afraid to just be like, you know what? You're out. You guys, I don't see any need for you. I can do it. I can get a couple guys to come and program what you do and we can fire a thousand of you if we have a programmer take over. So anyways, I think that'll be. And as a guy who tends to lean libertarian and small government,

I'm here for it. I want them to clean house. So we'll see what happens. Now, Luke Grumman does a good job of explaining that if they do this before they weaken the dollar, this could be catastrophic. So they got to be careful about the timing of what they do. So I hope that they're paying attention to Luke Gromon. And I know Scott Bessent is a super sharp dude.

What I would like to see really early on is a plan from Bessent to weaken the dollar and to maybe let Trump do his negotiating for a little bit. and then be like, okay, we've done enough. The dollar's too strong, rates are too high, let's break them. And then once they start to break, then they can go, come in with Doge and start to clean house. If they don't do that, it may be too big of a hit to the US GDP, and that actually could trigger a recession a little bit too early and it would thwart all their plans. So I hope they don't do that.

Can you explain that bit in more detail? Because I don't understand that. Why is it important from the week and the dollar first? Because the dollar right now is, so everything, right now is sort of topy looking. The economy, the economy is, is, is, uh, has been weak, but is starting to pick up. Inflation is low, but it has been picking up again. Uh, and I expect that to continue. Um, if they do what they do, what's going to happen is they'll actually drop several points out of the GDP growth. So instead of going from a GDP growth, uh, accelerating,

they'll start to decelerate and they can actually possibly get negative GP growth. Um, what that can do. it can just spiral the country into a recession. And if they did that, no American is going to thank them if they push us into a big recession. So what I think they need to do first, kind of what we talk about is first they need to fix the whole strong dollar problem. Once they get that fixed, then they have the weakening dollar. And then we see economic growth picking up again and even inflation picking up again. Then they can step in and do all these cuts.

And the GDP could take a hit because it would be absorbed better if we have a stronger economy, if that makes sense. That does make sense. I just want to pull up a chart and check something. Is M2 money growth dropping at the moment? Yes. But it's... Sorry. So, no, I was just going to say, so M2 is dropping, the Fed are still tightening, they're still reducing their balance sheet. Do you think this is going to be like a marked shift as well?

Are they going to start printing money again? Are they going to start QA, basically? So the reason we're seeing such a decline in Global M2, and we've been watching this happen since the beginning of October. That's exactly when the dollar took off again. So when the dollar strengthens, it has a negative effect. First, in two ways. One, just because of the exchange rate. So when we're measuring global M2 monetary supply, we're measuring it in dollars. If the dollar is increasing, even if China and Europe and other countries are doing QE, it doesn't look like they're doing QE because relative to the strength of the dollar, they're actually going down.

That's part of it. Yeah. And then on top of it, when you have a strong dollar and these higher rates, these countries just have less leeway. They're less productive. They can do less from a monetary expansion perspective. And so that also hurts global M2. So when the dollar breaks and when rates come down, I instantly we're going to see that being reflected in global M2 monetary supply. It'll literally pivot on that day and start going higher again.

Some things just clicked that probably should have clicked years ago for me in the sense that as the dollar gets weaker, or M2 can actually go up without huge money printing. Correct. Okay. And so one of the strange things from a Bitcoin lens in the last couple of months is that the Dixie, so the dollar strength has been going up massively while Bitcoin has been performing pretty well, which doesn't, normally they have like an inverse correlation. Why do you think that is? Well, first of all, there's usually a delay, right? We talked about that earlier. So when the monetary, so the dollar affects global M2 monetary supply. It's been going up. So that's, that makes the global M2 monetary supply. It's been going up. So that's, that makes the global M2. monetary supply look like it's going down almost perfectly in sync. There is about a 12-week delay, though, somewhere between 7 and 15 weeks, but usually on

average about 12 weeks, we see that delay. So that's why I think, you know, that it first started happening in the beginning of October. What we notice is Bitcoin actually peaked at 108,000 in mid-December, I think, right around there. And then since it's been weakening, that's that basically delay, that 12-week delay or so, or 10-week worse, somewhere in that time frame. I expect that weakness to persist a little bit until the dollar breaks again, then that'll free Bitcoin up to go again. So all that is is people are getting fooled by that delay of basically

two to two and a half months or so. Got you. And you say before you were talking about inflation a little bit. Right now in the US, CPI is just under 3%, I think. You think that's going to now rise again in 2025? I do. I think for most of 2025, at least what I can, can see for the first, at least for the first half and maybe extending into the third quarter, we're going to see economic growth accelerate and we're going to see inflation accelerate. The problem with this, by the way, and the reason why, so I was very bullish for the last about a year and a half to two years or so. I start to get a little nervous that we're getting closer to the end. So the music is still playing. This is still time to be out on the dance floor

dancing, but you got to start watching the exits at this point. And that's just because at some point, the rates could actually get too high. So if we have what I, and this is what Trump does, he, he, he just like lights a fire under the economy and he'll pressure Powell and he'll pressure Bessent and he's going to, you know, he's like, I want a strong economy. I want a riproar in stock market. We might see treasury rates not only above 5% in the 10 year. We might be, we might see 10 year treasury rates above 6%, I think, by the end of 2025. So within 12, you know, months or so. That gets, so what, so for me, that's the kind of the no-no target. Like if it gets that high, now that starts to have real pressure, put real pressure on risk assets. So on stocks, on Bitcoin, on growth in general,

that's just getting really hard for the market to absorb those kind of rates at that point. And then I would get nervous that we're heading into more of like a late 1960s, early 1970s situation where the rates are starting to get so hot and inflation is picking up. I still don't think, by the way, I know a lot of people think we're going to have this double peak like we had in the 70s where, you know, inflation spiked came down like it did back in 2022. And then they think it's going to spike even higher again really soon. I don't think that's likely to happen. I think we're just going to see kind of persistent inflation in the three to four percent range. Okay.

But it's that inflation plus economic growth that pushes these treasury yields higher. And when they get above 6 percent, 5 percent, you start getting concerned. CERN, 6% is like, okay, this is getting kind of ridiculous at this point. And what people, you know, regular investors are like, well, why would I invest in stocks that are really overpriced if I could put my money in a treasury yield yielding 6%. Yeah. Treasury bond yielding 6%. So just it's a different world.

And we're coming into this different world where we've, from 1981 or so to about 2020, we had a bond, a bull market where, you know, prices only went up, yields only went down. but from 2020, and I was saying this back in 2020, 2020, that we've bottomed and we're at the beginning of a new secular bear market where rates are going from about 0% to who knows, 10%, 15%, 20%, similar to like they did last cycle. But these usually last about 30 to 40 years or so.

And it's tough. It's tough on risk assets, it's tough on stocks. You don't want to own bonds. You don't really want to own stocks during these time periods. You have to really be choosy and creative as an investor to make money in those kind of climates. So if we're going to a period of prolonged, reasonably high inflation

without being very high, you think the long end of the bond market is going to blow out in terms of yield. What do you think the Fed will do in terms of how they influence the short end? It gets tough for the Fed at that point. Because what happens is as the economy continues to grow and strengthen and inflation persists, they don't have the same effects that they do. So they're going to have to keep ratcheting up the federal funds rate. And so the whole yield curve, which started out really low, like in the two, you know, one to two percent range or so.

And then it inverted. And then it kind of corrects again. And now it's higher in this sort of 4 percent range. I think it's going to creep higher on the low. So the federal, at some point, the Fed will be forced to increase. And now if we're not in a recession, right? So a recession is a deflationary event. When that happens, what they always do is just drop the federal funds rate down to help kind of boost the economy.

Before that happens, though, they're going to be forced to ratchet up the federal funds rate because they're going to talk about, like we talked about earlier, they're going to say, man, the economy is really getting overheated. Inflation is really running hot. Treasury rates are at 6%. We need to do something. So they'll ratchet up that federal funds rate in order to try to slow it down. And if they can't, that's when you get into the Volker situation of the late 70s, early 80s, we're like, dang, treasury rates at that point were 15%. Like, we got to do something crazy. And, you know, so that's when he jacked up the federal funds rate. I think. 20% to try to just stop everything and just melt the system down, basically a hard reboot. So we're nowhere near that right now, but it starts to get tricky for them at that point when you're in a bond bear market. It's tricky to be a Fed official in those time periods. So at the end of 2025, what do you think is going to happen? Obviously, you're saying it's going to be really bad for risk assets, but is this a very serious sort of global recession? Is that or are you concerned about? It depends.

So if we have a blow-off top in stocks, which, by the way, well, if we have a blow-off top in stocks and we have a traditional blow-off top in Bitcoin somewhere around the second half of 2025, which I expect, then, yes, I would be very concerned at that point. So say we're in this, say, you know, it's January 14th right now. So say it's December 14th, 11 months from today, Bitcoin's at 400,000. 75,000 or so. The stock market, you know, is, so the S&P 500 is currently at 5842. Say that's at like 7,000 or 7,100 or something. And the Fed is talking about, man, the economy is hot. We need to slow it down. I will at that point be exceedingly concerned for these types of assets. And

because at that point, they would be so richly valued stocks at that point. We would see like average PE multiples, maybe 27, 28, 30 price to sales ratios, kind of, off the chart similar to 1929, similar to 2000, 1999, 2000 valuations. And yes, then you could have an epic drawdown at that point. And there's not much the Fed can do at that point. At some point, people are just like, look, we have to withdraw liquidity. We have to cool things off. The risk assets are very quick to notice those types of things.

Everyone would run for the doors. And we could see a crash both in stocks and in Bitcoin. Bitcoin, we all expect it, right? We're all used to 70 to 80% drops. So I would say just expect that again. And if you're in the stock markets, then my gosh, yeah, you'd have to be very careful there. That would be a time where you would just want to be sitting in cash away from all the chaos. So the interesting thing to me there is what does Bitcoin do next?

Like if we do have a very serious global recession, how will Bitcoin perform there? I don't think well. Because usually in a global recession is what's happening is the liquidity is just drying up. And another way that it dries up, right, banks stop lending, people who have loans. they get underwater in their loans and they can't afford them, so they just default. It's not only bad for that person, it's bad for the banks, too, and that's actually bad for the money supply, because when you default on a loan, that money just literally just disappears. So it's like when you create a loan, right, you're creating new money out of thin air the banks are,

and when the loans default or people pay off their loans, that money just disappears again. The credit shrinks or contracts. It's just not good for these types of asset. If Bitcoin is the great absorber of liquidity, and that's what I believe it is, it's better than any other asset at absorbing liquidity. If there's no liquidity, it doesn't have anywhere to go but down until we find a new bottom again. So I like to think about everybody gets all excited about bull markets and what are these top price predictions.

To me, I'm way more interested in what's the baseline growth, like what's the bare market price? And where will we be? So I look at, okay, right now it's, you know, January 2025, maybe fourth quarter of 2026, if the cycles continue to repeat again, we might be sitting down. at like 70k Bitcoin. And I think, how am I going to feel then, right? If we go from 190K to maybe 500K to 70K, how will I feel, will I be able to support my family? Can I keep my business afloat in that case? You know, that, that I think is a healthier way to think about how to think about Bitcoin in general. Don't get so caught up in the bull markets. Think more about

that baseline growth. And you see that baseline growth only during bear markets. And one more thing. Why do we see that? Because there is a group, a growing group of dollar cost average bitcoins who are the buyers of last resort, right? We all buy. We all know lots of people you host them on your show every week. There are people who believe in Bitcoin who are going to be just dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin regardless of price for forever. And so that causes that slow baseline up into the right growth. And that's what you find only during bear markets. What is that base price, like last cycle, it was about $15,800 or so, whatever that price was. And then that's when it bottomed. And so I think that next price, this next cycle in 2026 will probably be around

70,000 or so. This episode is brought to you by Ledger. If you're serious about protecting your Bitcoin, Ledger has the solution you need. Their hardware wallets give you complete control over your private keys, ensuring that your Bitcoin stay safe from hacks, fishing, and malware. With Ledger's easy-to-use devices and the Ledger Live app, managing your Bitcoin has never been more convenient. Whether you're a long-time holder or new to the world of Bitcoin, Leger makes it simple to keep your assets protected. If you want to find out more, visit ledger.com and secure your Bitcoin today. That is L-E-D-G-E-R.com. So quarter four, 2025, Dr. Bear is back. Tell me how Bayleshire are sort of planning for this. Basically, so I have my thesis that I, I, I,

you know, have, which I hold the stuff I say I hold very loosely to. What, what the way I invest is I follow these markets. First, I look at what liquidity is doing. I look at where we are in the business cycle. I look at what growth, economic growth and inflation are doing. And I'm primarily US centric. So that makes it easy because I tend to focus mostly on the US. Um, but I'll go, you know, external to the US if we have to. Um, and then, and then what the Fed is doing in, in response to that. And all of this stuff is actually fairly predictable once you understand how these cycles work and how they play off of each other. Fairly predictable. It's all probabilities based. So when you see different sequences of events happening, different asset classes perform accordingly. So I talk about

like risk assets and Bitcoin. They perform similarly, but slightly differently. But they also perform differently than say what treasuries do or what gold would do or, you know, different types of things. when you have these events where you have a deflationary bust where the liquidity has rolled over, and then maybe months later, the economic cycle starts to roll over, that's when I have all these red flags. I'm going to be Dr. Barragut. And I don't know. I think it's going to be about the fourth quarter of 2025, but, you know, who knows? I'll reserve judgment for when it actually happens. When I start seeing those red flags coming, honestly, the best thing to do, it seems like the best thing to do would be to just short stocks or even to short Bitcoin. First of all, I never recommend shorting

Bitcoin. That's a great way to get wrecked because it's a waste. It's so volatile. Plus, just conceptually, you just don't want to short the king of assets. Shorting stocks, though, is generally a good idea, but you can get burned on that. You know, Larry Lepard has a great story. I think you interviewed Larry recently. I did, yeah. And he was talking about this because in 2008, he saw the financial crisis coming, he was running a fund, he was shorting financial stocks. He did everything exactly perfectly. And then I think the SEC came in and said, that's illegal to short financial stocks. You have to close your positions immediately. And his 50% gain suddenly went back. We're all instantly erased. That's the kind of thing that happens. We're not playing in a fair,

on a fair playing field, right? And so I think the wisest thing for people to do is when you see these really bearish things happening are to move to cash and just protect your gains at that point. So that's, and then one last thing I'd like to say, I'm a fund manager, but I'm also just a regular dude, right? You know, a married guy with kids. This is what I do for my hedge fund. I trade. I look at cycles, you know, if I think if we've made very big gains, I want to protect those

gains because my investors don't want me to lose 70 to 80% of their value over a 12 month period. Individually, honestly, all I do is I just buy Bitcoin, regardless of the price. I don't care what it is. In fact, I kind of just live on a Bitcoin standard at this point. I don't care what the price of Bitcoin is. If I get money, I put it into Bitcoin, I pay my bills with Bitcoin. And that's about it.

So this is what I encourage, you know, 99% of the people to do. Don't try to time it. Don't be a trader. It takes a lot of effort to understand how to do this. And even if you do understand it, it doesn't mean you'll get it right. You have to pay taxes when you sell things. that's a big hit. There's a lot of things that can go wrong doing it this way.

If you do it this way and you just stack that's hard for like 10 years, regardless of price, you'll do really well by the end of that 10 year period. So that's what I encourage basically everybody to do. Yeah. So when a couple years ago when you were last on the show, I think you said about 60% of your clients with Vailshire were interest in a Bitcoin or held some amount of Bitcoin through the fund. Is that gone up?

Well, so what happened in the meantime is, have to be cautious in how I so I shut down my RIA where I had about 120 clients because the regulators and I were conflicting greatly about how I should run client accounts. I ran them like I think I should as a hedge fund manager what I thought was best for my clients. They don't like Bitcoin. They don't like things like inverse funds. And we don't have to get into that. but I humbly submitted to them that inverse funds are really smart during a bear market

because you make money when the markets go down and they didn't like that and they didn't like my attitude, so I didn't like them. Anyways, that's probably more than I should have said. So all I run now is my hedge fund. It's a small friends and family fund and we're very much, and we have a very large Bitcoin and proxy position in our hedge fund. So all of Elshire clients are now just very into Bitcoin. Love it.

Is there anything I've missed in terms of like the macro outlook? that we should have talked about? I don't think so. Other than I think that things are setting up, I was thinking about what I should say before we started this interview. Should I go full on bullish? Because everything I look at is bullish,

but from a technical perspective, it also looks like we could be close to a top. So we're in this choppy transition phase right now. So there's a possibility that when Trump gets inaugurated and we have the whole new administration coming in, that might be the catalyst for a whole new bull run higher. And I think that will be the catalyst for 2025 being basically a blowoff top in stocks and in Bitcoin. There is a chance based on structures that things are just topy and they're right now looking peaky.

And say we have that example where Doge comes in and tries to just, they, you know, fire 80% of the government and that really harms GDP, and we actually get pushed into a recession, that could cause everything to roll over. So my advice to people would be to be invested right now, but to use trailing stop losses or have some way to cut your losses in case this stuff rolls over, you know, maybe early 2025 or any time, I always think it's wise for people in general to use trailing stop losses. That's basically losses that rise as your investment is going higher and higher. if it falls down below a certain point, just sell it and sit in cash and wait for the dust to clear.

Because if we do have a huge rollover and if we do have an epic market drop, it sounds cool to say I'm just going to hold through it like in the stock market. But if you watch your net worth drop 80% holding through it over a year or two years, it feels really, really bad. It gets painful. And so it is very painful to get through. We just lived through it in 2022, but 2022 wasn't even that bad. of a year. There have been much worse years like 2008, 2009. So just be careful out there. Don't be afraid to increase your cash position if we're starting to see a lot of red flags. And yeah, that would be my macro advice.

Well, I imagine that would be a disaster for the Trump administration. So I think they'll probably do everything they can to make sure that doesn't happen. But I really appreciate the time, Jeff. Where do you want to send anyone before we close out? You know, so I'm, I nuked my Twitter X account. I'm, oh, public service. announcement. I only have a Nostra account. So please come find me on Nostra. I'm Dr. Jeff on Noster. I have no other social media account. So there's like an Instagram account that keeps trying to get people to invest in some fund. They get telegram messages for me. It's not me. I do not have any other account other than Noster. If you see me anywhere else, please report that account

because it's not me. So come find me on Noster. Noster is awesome. It's decentralized. It's sort of like the, you know, Bitcoin of social media. It's a great platform. I think it's the future. And instead of competing for advertising dollars and impressions like they do on regular social media, it's value for value. So if you like people and their content, you just zap them, Satoshis, you zap them Bitcoin for their content. And it's just a whole different paradigm over there. And it's fantastic.

So I would recommend that everybody tries out Noster. And it's getting better. There are multiple applications that are easier to use. And they feel good and smooth at this point. They're getting better and better every day. So come over to Nostr and find me. Yeah, it's very cool that you went Nostroenly. Was it a big deal for you to get rid of your Twitter account?

Yes, it was very easy for me to nuke my Facebook, LinkedIn accounts. I had a couple other things. Those were all really easy. Twitter was very hard for me. I love the interaction on Twitter. Although it stressed me out. The algorithms are set to get you to be involved in as emotional as possible. the day I finally nuked my ex account was I think in September of 2024.

I instantly felt like this monkey just fell off my shoulders and I was just like free. And it's been so pleasant over on Noster. And it's so fun to talk to the developers, the people who are actually building Noster. And all of the hardcore bitcoinsers are over there and spend a lot of time there too. So that's really fun. And it was so, yes, it was extremely hard. It took me a while to do it. And I used to double post.

I'd post on Twitter and it'd post on Noster. And after a while, I'm like, I just feel like a hypocrite. And it's, you know, who is the main culprit two people? Matt O'Dell, who just berates people for, you know, if they keep their Twitter account. But mainly it was Jeff Booth for me because he keeps talking about why are you building a system that you hate. The system hates you, right? The Fiat system hates you. These centrally owned social media companies, they own you and your profile and your

competing for advertising dollars. They hate you. Like, why are you feeding them? Come over here and feed Noster and help build a better future, like engineer a better tomorrow. So that's what I felt like. And when I finally grasped that myself, the transition was easy.

And I haven't looked back. I love Nostra at this point. And I'll never go back to these other centralized social media platforms. Yeah, it's very cool. And I know this is purely cope. But the thing that I feel like I would miss the most is Twitter does have a really good news feed. Like if you want to stay on top of what's happening in Bitcoin, like that's the thing I feel I'd miss. So I did too. And I, in fact, I publicly said that on Noster. Like I really, I feel like

I'm out of the loop because I'm not seeing the news as it's coming through. And so there's smart people over there. And literally a handful of developers reach out and said, well, what, what news sources would you like? And so I brought a couple, I mentioned like 10 or something. And they literally just created these news bot feeds that are based off of their sites. And they just pull the information and plop it on to Nostra now. So all of the stuff I missed is now on there. Now, I will say the one other thing that Noster, at least the app that I use, I use Primal, which is awesome for almost everything. It doesn't have spaces. And I miss Twitter spaces. I miss talking to people and talking about macro and talking about Bitcoin or current events.

They have things that they're working on for that. There's corny chat and there's, I don't know, there's other different things. But they're not really incorporated. into the app very well yet, so I'm waiting for that to happen. Once that happens, it'll be, I think, like, the perfect experience. Yeah, I think spaces is missed. And also, like, I want live streams in my feed, which I'm sure both those things are coming. I really will send me those news feeds because that might make me use primal a little bit more. Sure. Perfect. Well, thank you very much, Jeff. I will speak to you very soon. Thanks for the time. Thanks, Danny. Thanks for having me on.