Bitcoin Booms, Altcoins Die - Is China Back in Crypto? | Macro Monday

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Bitcoin Booms, Altcoins Die - Is China Back in Crypto? | Macro Monday"

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Wolf Of All Streets
• Host: Scott Melker
• Episode: "Bitcoin Booms, Altcoins Die - Is China Back in Crypto? | Macro Monday"
• Release Date: June 30, 2025

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1. Introduction to Market Status

The episode kicks off with host Scott Melker highlighting the stark contrast in the current financial landscape. While traditional markets and Bitcoin are reaching all-time highs, altcoins are experiencing significant downturns. Scott poses the pressing question: "Where is the recession that we were promised?" [00:04]

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2. Panel Introduction and Main Themes

Scott introduces an esteemed panel comprising Dave Weisberger, Mike McGlone, and Lawrence Lard, replacing the usual James Lavish. The discussion is set to delve deep into macroeconomic factors influencing the markets today. [00:04]

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3. Discussion on Fed Policies and Trump’s Influence

Lawrence Lard elaborates on the Fed's stance, referencing Gina Martin Adams' insights:

"If the Fed's not easing, it might throw a wrench in the market." [01:33]

He touches upon the limited impact of the anticipated tax reform bill and emphasizes the concentration risk within the S&P 500, particularly in tech stocks.

Mike McGlone provides an analysis of the Fed's potential moves amidst political pressures:

"They are going to appoint somebody who's extremely favorable to them... they're going to take the inflationary pain to keep things going." [04:29]

Dave Weisberger brings attention to recent media portrayals of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, suggesting political maneuvers aimed at his ousting:

"There's no way in hell this guy makes it to the end of his term." [06:52]

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4. Analysis of Altcoins vs Bitcoin

The panel delves into the declining performance of altcoins versus Bitcoin's resilience. Dave Weisberger criticizes the speculative nature of most altcoins, asserting:

"The token is fundamentally zero." [12:44]

He emphasizes Bitcoin's unique position as a digital gold with a clear valuation framework, contrasting it with the ambiguous value propositions of many altcoins.

Lawrence Lard supports this view, labeling the crypto market as "a massive casino" and advocating for a shift towards gold amidst the impending financial purge:

"I still stick with gold... Bitcoin's up 5%." [16:30]

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5. Bitcoin as Treasury Assets and Corporate Adoption

The conversation shifts to the increasing trend of companies adopting Bitcoin as a treasury asset. Highlighting Elon's MicroStrategy model, Mike McGlone praises its financial engineering approach:

"I think Saylor's actually done a pretty good job of financially engineering... a levered bet on Bitcoin." [50:32]

However, he cautions against excessive leverage, comparing it to past financial missteps:

"Leverage kills... speculating and leverage Bitcoin is not the same as owning core Bitcoin in cold storage." [52:35]

Scott Melker introduces Rick Edelman's perspective, advocating for significant crypto allocations in portfolios:

"Conservative investors should now have a 10% crypto allocation... Are you a fiduciary serving your client's best interests?" [41:33]

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6. Leverage and Risks in Crypto Investments

The panelists discuss the inherent risks of leveraging Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Mike McGlone warns against the allure of high returns and emphasizes the importance of understanding leverage's dangers:

"Leverage kills... don't eff it up and be greedy." [52:35]

Dave Weisberger echoes concerns about the sustainability of current crypto valuations, comparing the scenario to historical market bubbles.

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7. Impact of AI on Economy and Cryptocurrency

Dave Weisberger introduces an unconventional angle by linking the rise of AI to Bitcoin's trajectory:

"If there's anybody who believes that productivity for consumer prices isn't about to be impacted by AI, they're not paying attention." [41:33]

He argues that AI-driven productivity gains will lead to deflationary pressures, indirectly benefiting Bitcoin as a store of value amidst declining consumer prices.

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8. Final Predictions and Wrap-up

As the episode nears its end, the panelists share their forecasts:

• Lawrence Lard predicts a shift towards deflation and a subsequent market correction:

  "I'm looking forward to a purge to come." [21:06]

• Mike McGlone remains cautiously optimistic about Bitcoin but stresses the unpredictability of market dynamics:

  "I think bitcoin is going to go to somewhere between 200 and 500, but then it's going to correct 50%." [54:47]

• Dave Weisberger underscores Bitcoin's potential as a strategic asset supported by political forces:

  "When you have the US political structure supporting an asset and considering it undervalued, that's a very big thing." [61:19]

Scott Melker wraps up the episode by encouraging listeners to explore related literature, hinting at upcoming deep dives into the discussed topics:

"Trump deals poised to fall short of sweeping trade reforms... we have to see what the second half works out." [29:06]

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Key Takeaways:

• Bitcoin vs. Altcoins: Bitcoin stands robust amid market highs, overshadowing struggling altcoins largely due to its clear value proposition.
• Fed and Political Influence: The interplay between Fed policies and political pressures, especially from Trump, could shape future market dynamics.
• Corporate Adoption: Increasing adoption of Bitcoin as a treasury asset by major companies signifies growing institutional trust, albeit with risks tied to leverage.
• AI's Role: Advances in AI are expected to drive deflationary trends, potentially benefiting Bitcoin as a digital store of value.
• Market Predictions: The panel forecasts potential market corrections influenced by overleveraging in crypto markets and impending deflationary pressures.

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Notable Quotes:

• "If the Fed's not easing, it might throw a wrench in the market." — Lawrence Lard [01:33]
• "Leverage kills... don't eff it up and be greedy." — Mike McGlone [52:35]
• "When you have the US political structure supporting an asset and considering it undervalued, that's a very big thing." — Dave Weisberger [61:19]

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For listeners seeking a comprehensive understanding of the current crypto and macroeconomic landscape, this episode provides valuable insights from industry veterans navigating turbulent financial waters.

Transcript

[Scott]

Markets continue to fly and bitcoin is holding strong over $107,000. Where is the recession that we were promised? What is going on with the macro? Of course while all this is happening, altcoins are dying a slow death and China is potentially coming back into crypto. We're going to talk everything macro today with the legends Dave Weisberger, Mike McGlone and a very apt James Lavish replacement, Mr. Lawrence Lard. Let's go, let's do.

[Dave Weisberger]

Let'S do.

[Scott]

It doesn't seem like markets care very much about anything that's happening around the world. Geopolitics, tariffs, nothing but all time highs with markets. The S P making an all time high last week. The Nasdaq making an all time high last week. Bitcoin pushing very close to an all time high and of course altcoins going for all time lows, which is something worth discussing. I'm gonna go on and bring it on the amazing panel right now. We got Lawrence, Larry, Mike and Dave. Good morning gentlemen. How are you?

[Mike McGlone]

Hey, good morning, Scott. How are you guys doing?

[Scott]

All right, Mike, I gotta ask you man, all time highs on the S P, all time highs on the Nasdaq. Bitcoin a couple percent away. How you guys framing this? Obviously I know that the sentiment has generally been bearish at Bloomberg when we come on about the morning meetings. How can you frame this?

[Lawrence Lard]

So I'll start with that with Gina first. Gina Martin Adams, our equity strategist, she pointed out she thinks stocks are rallying on this tax reform bill that's to be passed. And her announcements, it's not going to be that bullish partly because of caps spending. It's already doing pretty well. She, she doesn't think it's going to make a difference. Her key quotes were if the Fed's not easing it might throw a wrench in the market. The best case is we get some fiscal tax reform and Fed easing concentration risk. She's quite concerned about. 52 stocks basically are representing the vast majority of the S&P 500 total returns and growth for tech stocks. Tech outside the US is much stronger. So she's expected risks of rotation outside of the U.S. estelle O, who's filled in for Anna Wong, our economist, pointed out the Fed's not enough confident. Fed's not confident enough to change policy rate path. Their call is for one rate cut this year in December. The expectation is June. Payrolls will kick up to 4.3%. Expect 90k and non farm payroll and gains in leisure and hospitality are slowing down. That's kind of the key issue they're working at in terms of FX from Audrey Child Freeman. Evidence for the weaker dollars continuing. Expect the Dow to continue to weaker low. It's moved toward her targets rather quickly. And then I focused on what I think is the healthy bull market in gold that's had a bit of a dip and a healthy bear market in crude oil that's had a bit of a rally going back to those trends. I'm afraid that that ratio right now at 50, 50 barrels of WTI crude for 1 ounce of gold on a year end basis would be the highest ever. The highest was 39 in 1933 in 2020. So I'm afraid it can head towards 100 with fundamental backing. Key thing would be if the stock market rolls over. And I also then I pointed out what I see as a pretty enduring bull market, gold. If you look at gold ETF holdings, they just popped up to the highest since 2023. And I overlay that with the Bloomberg Galaxy crypto index, which is down 15% in the year, as you mentioned, with alts and the same level as in 2021. Thank you.

[Scott]

All right, Larry, I want to ask you about something specific. Obviously he mentioned the Fed. I've been reading your book. This is a soft promotion. You guys should all go buy the big print right here. Larry was kind enough to send it to me. I'm about halfway through it, but we have a series of stories here that I think highly relevant to your work. Trump says he wants interest rate cut to 1%. Would love if Powell resigned. Then goes on to say, Trump says I'll pick a Fed chair who wants to cut rates. Fed vs Trump on tariffs impact will soon be put to the test. Listen, the premise of your book obviously is that money's broken and they're gonna print, print, print, print, print. It's coming. And Trump saying the quiet parts out loud, right?

[Mike McGlone]

I think that's absolutely right. I mean, a lot of moves in the last week in this area. I mean, they talked about, I mean, I think one of the biggest and most interesting moves that they're talking about doing is the idea of appointing a shadow Fed president. For those who haven't heard of that whole concept. In May, right? In May, Powell's term ends, so he's gone. So Trump can't get him a cut because he's a Democrat and he's fighting Trump and he wants to be known as Volcker. So my sense is I lean towards the Fed not doing anything this year, but who knows? Obviously some breaks are going to do something, but they've got a workaround to that and they're talking about appointing a Fed president, knows the time a new Fed chairman. There was a time when they were saying it might come as recently, as rapidly as in the next few weeks, although percent walked that back the other day, said no, no, no, it's probably, you know, kind of October ish timeframe. So, you know, and obviously they're going to appoint somebody who's extremely favorable to them. And I think what they've decided to do is pivot. I mean, they've kind of come to recognize that, gee, growth has to exceed our rates and even if that's inflationary, they're going to take the inflationary pain to keep things going. I think that's why the stock market's at an all time new high and I think that's why they are going to do that. When the market becomes aware of them doing that, it's going to front run the Fed. And so even if the Fed isn't going to raise rates this year or even into next May, if they have a promise that come May, they're going to have ZIRP or 1% and a lot of money printing behind it in terms of qe, that might be enough to keep the market feeling good and continue to press these new highs. So to me, that's an enormous development. I mean, I retweeted this morning, Trump said something about guys, you know, this big, beautiful, obviously spending a lot, but you know, we're going to make it up in growth. And it's really interesting to watch the way the whole story has evolved from doge to, you know, to hey, we're going to grow our way out of it. And okay, maybe you can grow your way out of it, but you can't grow your way out of it without inflation in my estimation. So to me, that's the big story right now.

[Scott]

I mean, yeah, really quick, Dave, just before you jump in because yeah, it's right, but that's what I mean. Trump said this on Truth Social, I think yesterday for all cost cutting Republicans, of which I am one, remember, you still have to get reelected. Don't go too crazy. We'll make it up all up times 10 with growth more than ever before.

[Dave Weisberger]

So I was going to mention that post, but I also want to mention a story that was the front page of the New York Post, at least on the online edition, which has a picture of Powell, Fed Chair Jerome Powell accused of lying to Congress over a $2.5 billion palace of Versailles. And there's a picture of Powell, CGI to look like Pinocchio with his nose out. Now, yes, you can dismiss this as being the New York Post and being Rupert Murdoch, but where there's smoke, there's fire. And look, there's no way in hell this guy makes it to the end of his term. There's just no way. So I don't know where Poly Market is. I don't know. You know, I, I, if I feel like making bets with people, but no way they're going to push him out. But understand, they don't need to push him out now. They're going to want to push him out, you know, in the fall, toward the winter. Because what they've wanted, and I've been saying it on this program, people who have been listening for two years now or for, not for two years for, you know, since the beginning of this year at, is that, yeah, they, they never want the stock market go down and they don't want the economy to go down, but what they really want is the economy to look good and start booming as we go start approaching the election in the midterm elections. Well, what does that mean? That means they want to see the economy printing big GDP numbers and people feeling flush with cash come early next summer. If Powell stays till May, probably not going to get enough of an effect because there's a lag from any Fed toward the economy. So net, I would expect to see things happening and being shaken up toward the end of the year. And I think all the stars are aligning here now. You know, it's hard to read political tea leaves, but when you start seeing things like this, you know, it's unfortunate how this has been working in politics and not just national politics, but it's real. Right? You don't get stories accusing a, one of the most powerful people in the country of lying to Congress, which by the way, is a jailable offense. You don't, you don't, you don't see this. If there's not going to be enormous amounts of pressure. These things are, are tactical. And so it's important to understand that, that there's this crap going on now. The other thing to understand is that, you know, besent and, and forget Trump, but, but sent for sure has been very clear. Doge or not withstanding that the best thing that Doge could do and Musk actually said the best thing doge could do was decrease regulation to, to incentivize growth, that that's been that, that narrative. I mean, I've talked about it, but other people have talked about it. That's been the narrative. And so that's what they're trying to do. That's what they want to do. You know, I can't tell you how much disdain, I can't sum up the amount of disdain for putting everything in one quote. Big beautiful bill. I know why they're doing it because of Reconcil. But who the hell knows what they're doing, right? I don't know how many people have read the whole thing.

[Scott]

20 hours to read it yesterday or something. 16 hours, 17 hours, I don't know.

[Dave Weisberger]

But what I do know is everything. When I listen to Mike, I keep thinking there's a complete lack of understanding the denominator except for one metric which you mentioned, Mike, which I think is really important. You want to use the price of oil, you know, in gold. Do the same thing with the S and P, do the same thing with many other things. And all of a sudden it doesn't look nearly as crazy because what's happened is effectively the dollar to give you a plug, Larry, the dollar is melting because we're printing more of them and you can't print as much. You know, gold is elastic to price, but it's not, it's not incredibly inelastic. An asteroid hasn't been mined yet. So the truth is that you really do need to look at these things that way. Now we do want to talk about alts at some point today, Scott, because I think there are some things that have happened which kind of explain bitcoin dominance a little bit more within the crypto world. But from a macro point of view, all the moves you're seeing are just we are printing and we are trying to push for growth and that's going to cause differences in what assets go up and what assets in real terms languish. I'm not sure anything in nominal terms is going to languish if we're going to continue to inflate.

[Scott]

Okay, but altcoins should be pretty far out on the risk on curve. And when you're seeing markets make all time highs, you should see a risk on sentiment and those things rising.

[Dave Weisberger]

Well, I, I, you know, look, I'm going to get hate mail for this. I don't care. The, the tr. The truth is that when you buy when, if investors willing to pay the market cap of circle the way they are today are because at least they know that whatever circle makes they get, no one can explain that you know there are all these stories over the weekend, Ethereum is going to be used for this, Ethereum is going to be used for that. Ethereum is a 200 billion dollar asset that apart from self providing yield, you know, in itself being used by, you know, for people who stake Ethereum, we don't know what the real demand curve for Ethereum is going to be. You know it's like I have this argument with XRP holders all the time and by the way I own xrp so I mean I don't know a lot of it but I own some of it. You know, I continue to, to struggle. Like XRP people, they sit there and they say oh great, we're solid, we're gonna have the lawsuit go away. Like that should matter for xrp. Let's be exceedingly clear here. They're in my mind the relationship between Ripple Labs remaining lawsuit, the SEC and xrp. The token is fundamentally zero.

[Scott]

Should be, it should be a company that makes money and then there's a token that xrp, the token could go to zero with Ripple being a successful.

[Dave Weisberger]

Company and that the other way around xrp. But the point is Ripple Labs making money doesn't help the token. It's in escrow, right? You know they have their, their schedule. It is none of that is being impacted. The only reason that case impacted XRP in the old was because their XRP was being delisted from exchanges and XRP was being called a security. Well, that's not really a risk right now. And all the machinations going on in this case have to do with the, the what happens if you trade an asset, if you sell an asset to fund a company, you know, before it's on exchange by direct sales. This has nothing to do with the token. And yet people talk about it. That's what goes on in the altcoin world. People. The, the actual buyers and traders in of most altcoins have absol. Absolutely no idea how financial markets work. I mean I'm sorry, I just insulted a lot of people but it's, it's insane to me how people get, you know, they get all excited about stories that don't matter. I mean I want to understand in Ethereum it's. If everything is built on Ethereum, what percentage of the revenues of the network will end up in the hands of Ethereum holders? That's what I want to know. And if the number it don't shrug your shoulders because I own Ethereum and I'm wondering is it, you know, what's that Percentage is it going to be, is it. Is 200 billion a good value? A fundamental fair value for that? Maybe, maybe it's 100 billion, maybe it's 2 trillion. I literally don't know. But I think most altcoins can't answer that question. They can't answer the question that if everything goes right, what is the value to the token holder? There's literally one coin that I know that you understand that you can fundamentally value and that's Bitcoin and that is as a replacement slash digital, you know, version of gold and beyond. And we could talk about why that makes sense. I still think it's trading at a 90 plus percent discount. None of that stuff has changed. But when you look at most altcoins you can't answer that question. Now there are those, some of them which people you don't like but they do a good job of explaining certain things that can talk about a lot of all coins and say okay well this one has this potential, you know. You know David Sachs famously said that about Bittensor and I own some bit Tensor and I've watched it go where are we? 330, it's been as high as 450, you know. So it's all you have to know is that even the ones that even the, the tokens that supposedly have ecosystem second return value to holders are languishing. Why? Because people don't believe it. Meanwhile circles. What's the market cap right now?

[Mike McGlone]

Let's.

[Dave Weisberger]

Should I look?

[Scott]

I'll look it up higher than the value of USDC at the top I think right?

[Dave Weisberger]

I mean, you know. Yeah, 60. So it's more than 10x what less than half a year ago was considered to be a good sale price for in the private markets. Now you know when you start talking throwing away 10x's with kind of verve and panache like ah, 10x who cares? That's not how financial markets work. I mean, you know, okay, yeah, we.

[Scott]

Gotta move on from that. But I mean it's even 10x what it was selling for the or at the peak it was 10x what it was selling for the day before the IPO on Robinhood.

[Dave Weisberger]

Right.

[Scott]

So not even just a year ago's financial markets at Mike and and Larry, I want to hear your takes on the altcoin market as well. Mike, I know that you believe they have to go to zero so they're well on their way.

[Lawrence Lard]

Well no you. I think it's well described. What Dave, well described is what happens near speculative frenzies in Massive bubbles. And you know what we have now? 17.9 million cryptocurrencies. Okay, A lot of it's bullshit. Just unlimited supply. We get that. Massive speculation. We get it. It works. When you have a US economy, GDP at almost two times or stock market almost two times. 2.1 times right now GDP, yeah, that stuff works. But there'll be. It's. If it's a. When you get a purge in this now we can maybe sustain this for a while, hopefully till midterms is what the Trump administration is trying to do. But the bottom line is it's very silly to expect the Fed to ease when you have a massive speculative frenzy going on in equities and cryptocurrencies, which is pumping up inflation. That's just typically. That's when you take the punchbowl away. So that's kind of a silly thing that Trump's fighting. To me, I see that's where the end game and I keep tilting over to gold. What's gold's been telling me for almost six months now by beating bitcoin, by taking off. And even with bond yields dropping lately, I think this is the whole the end game where we have maybe a number on Thursday to finally make people realize that the economy is slowing down, all the signs are there and that we will get that recession that we didn't get three years or two years ago. But in cryptos, it's just a massive. But snow. Understand what it is. It's a massive casino. It's wonderful to trade. Remember, I came from a highly leveraged trading environment. It's good to do that. And yeah, I get. Bitcoin's different. I've always been a fan of that. I think Circle is an awesome example of how revolutionary the technology is tokenization. But we all seen this before. When you have massive new technologies like this, you get the bump, you get the purge. Then you can buy Amazon about 7 bucks or when it's supposed to be going in there and that's when you're supposed to buy. We're still not there yet. We're still at the stage where we've had a few purchase. But we're not so excessive right now that you're supposed to say thank you. And if you double your money, take some profits and never do so here I like to end with this is in 2020 when Mr. Saylor discovered Bitcoin and got really bullish and most of us were already bullish and it was getting beat up and it was on 10,000. That was great. It's gone at 10x. That's been a wonderful return. Now it's at 100,000 and we see a lot of yelling you're supposed to be selling. And so far that's been working out in favor of gold. And I expect that to continue despite the stock market record high. So basically you need the stock market to keep going up for all the alts and it's not. It's your sign, I think that everything's going to tilt lower eventually and we still haven't. Now we're end of the first, end of first half. Let's see how that second works out. If we can stay here or in the stock market. I think they'll also continue to leak. The biggest trade of this. I think that maybe our entire career is if that stock market just starts doing what it has done in history. Tilt slower, massive deflation kicks in. It's already happened in China. We've seen it happen in Japan just a couple decades ago. And also showing that tilt lots unpacked there.

[Scott]

Larry?

[Mike McGlone]

Yeah, I'll make it quick. I mean I'm a maxi. I haven't seen a compelling use case for any altcoin. I'm sure they exist, but I haven't seen them and I don't own any of them. Never would own them or touch them. I think everybody should avoid them like the plague and I think they're all going to zero.

[Scott]

So it's interesting in the context of that. I think that's a fair assessment for many people and I can totally understand it. People invest in different things for different reasons. But Mike, the speculative bubble on all coins, considering how long they've been dropping, ended four years ago. So yes, we've had these quick bubbles where meme coins go crazy and all those things. But this isn't even like they need to die or they've just died. I mean they've just been. I mean these things are on life support for you know, half a decade almost. It feels like most of them.

[Lawrence Lard]

Yeah, well we haven't seen, I think the real pain meaning when you see Dogecoin at worth $25,000 total market cap versus 25 billion. I'm not kidding. This is what happens. It's way life work. Those of us who've traded this for a long time and you have things that are silly and excessive and you see market cap to GDP that goes to 1 to 1 eventually maybe at least 1.5 to 1 this will happen. It's just a normal little recession that always has happened. In particular it's the end game I'm worried about. The key thing is we still have this sense that the Fed's going to ease with inflation high because our president said he should. And the spike the stock market at all time highs, that's just oxymoronic to what I've ever seen in my entire career. Almost 40 years in the business. And that's why I still stick with gold.

[Dave Weisberger]

Well, understand the reason they're talking about easing is because they're, they're, they're trying to push the accelerator on the financialization playbook. And by the way, this is both parties. So you know, this isn't even political. This is a very simple thing. Consumer inflation vis a vis asset inflation. They want asset inflation and they're willing to put up with more consumer inflation to get it, but would strongly prefer that things go into asset inflation. That's what they're looking to do. Now as far as investing is concerned, obviously if you're investing in something that's a hard asset like Bitcoin or gold, then you want this because it will go up. I mean just, that's just simple. Right. You know, it'll be a higher in and effectively from a goal perspective, you need to be levered or something. In Bitcoin, it's not that it's levered, it's that it's trading at a discount. But the fact is that their belief is that the rest of the world has interest rates that are dramatically lower. They've actually been lowering. Ours are not. And they look at this and they say, well, where's the money going to go? And that's, that's the pet. That's the big thing. You know, they, they really want to, to turbocharge asset inflation. And I, you've heard me say it. You know, they literally have to, Dave.

[Mike McGlone]

Or else the whole edifice collapses.

[Dave Weisberger]

I mean it's that, that, that's the point. So, but, but it isn't. I am not a proponent of this. I want to be very clear here. I think that the reason for the wealth gap is because of this, you know, is, is basically a combination of regulation and, but more importantly, this loose monetary policy causes the literal rich to get richer. Right. You know, it's, it, it is, it is absolutely the way it is. And you know, if you combine that with, you know, socialist impulses like we're seeing in New York, which is, is, I mean it's amazing the cope that people have, they do not understand. I mean, obviously the mayor of New York doesn't have nearly the power that, you know, that people think. But it is still, you know, unbelievable considering the fact that in 5,000 years of human history, there's literally not one example, not a single one where moving in that direction has not, has failed to decrease, to increase misery. It has failed every single time. Yet it's one of those ideas that sounds great. And so people look at it and, and that's, that's also a factor of, of the same thing, right? You know, when people get rich, when you see spectacles like, you know, a billionaire taking over a city, one of the most popular tourist cities in, in the world, that feeds envy. And the politics of envy are incredibly powerful. And so you see these things and you have to understand, you know, these are the trends that are going on. And so, you know, Mike, when you talk about, you know, the, you know, they're going to be flooding, they're going to, they're going to figure out a way to cut rates. It's just that simple. Unless consumer inflation, you know, reaccelerates and oh, by the way, if you're right about oil, and I think you are in real terms, maybe not in nominal terms, I think you absolutely are, then real inflation will be restrained because energy is such an important factor in real inflation. I mean, that's the, that's the real question is like, you know, what is all this done? I mean, gas prices have ticked up recently, I noticed. I mean, I don't know what's the data on that. I mean, I just see locally it is up by, you know, a few percent, but not a lot.

[Lawrence Lard]

So the average price is about a little less than $3.20. But the only way to really compare that is from the year ago at the same levels. Because it's the summer driving season, they're down almost 10%. My call is they're going to go down to two bucks. It's not profound. We've got dropped to near two bucks three times in the last 20 years and each time involves a recession. And one key prerequisite was a drop in the US Stock market. I mean, a drop which stays down not just for a couple days. That's my call and still sticking with it. And obviously the stock market's still higher. But the key thing to remember here is what you said has happened. We've got to the point where I think it's the end game of lifting risk assets, throwing money at the system, making everything go up. And now I think we're tilting towards that end game. That's why I still stick with gold and long bonds. Now long bonds are just maybe starting to ticket. They're the most, the cheapest ever versus gold. And I only go back a few years. Someone needs to put on them unmute because I think Larry's typing. But the, it's, it's, that's my point is what we're talking about here is what has already happened. We've had the biggest money pump in history. Now we're tilting towards the end game. It's just going to be hard and difficult for people to realize it. So here's key fact. So we have U.S. housing average home is the highest ever versus income. Okay, well that's been. Okay, that's going to revert. Just a question when and how, how much higher you're going to get Then I think the bottom line and of course I might point out the highest in about 100 years. US stock market versus the rest of the world's just starting to lower versus GDP potentially hasn't it ticked down ticking higher. And I think the biggest problem is it's just timing. The Trump administration is trying to do all these things that their timing is as bad as it was for Herbert Hoover. And sorry but this is the way cycles work. We've already reached that apex. That's why prove it wrong. That's my point is good way for gold to really have a problem this year. If the stock market to stay strong, interest rates stay high, gold should get hit. And to me it's more likely that we're going to realize by the end year that we're going to have that tilt lower. And the key thing also remember with crude oil is it's the technology replacing it every day. Cryptos are part of that. But I just look at from the macro from a commodity standpoint that there is. Well here's one thing. I was out for a week and my thing, the first thing I want to come back and write about was the gold crosses. The key thing they think about the gold is the gold. Bitcoin index is gold. Bitcoin cross is not showing endorsement of the stock rally showing a problem. You look at gold versus the stock market, it had breakout and now it's bounced. Now I think it's going to continue. And the key one, the most significant one is gold versus long bonds. I've been saying it for two years and I've been wrong. I think gold is going to pass that deflationary torch to long bonds. The point is remember it. It's all always happen in history when you get this kind of inflation, you always get the deflation. It's happening in China. Most of the rest of the world's having issues and they're having to stimulate. And to me, this is where we are at the end game is that the Fed stuck Trump and Besson gets in. So there's one thing I also want to mention from our morning meeting. I guess Trump made some comments recently about not to issue any coupons longer than nine months. And I think, yeah, I thought Dave might have caught that. And obviously it's the key point. They want yields lower. So the bottom line is to get yields and rates lower in the US Is one simple little thing. Just a little back up in the stock market, say 10% and stays down for a while. And I'm pretty sure that US 30 year yield is going to go back to our 10 year. It's going to go back to 3%. It stays strong. Stock market stay strong. It's, you're not going to get those yields to go lower, maybe very reluctantly, but it can happen quick. By midterms, get that little correction, stay down, everything goes lower. Crude oil goes at 40, gold goes to 4000 and who knows what the stock market does?

[Scott]

I mean, what's mind blowing though, I think this is the classic. Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, right? Because stocks have shrugged off a couple wars, some that people believed were going to be World War three just a week ago. Tariffs, I mean, remember those? I remember Fed versus Trump on tariff impact will soon be put to the test. Okay, but here you go. Trump deals poised to fall short of sweeping trade reforms. We're only a few days away from the deadline where we're supposed to have trade deals with everyone or we have these massive tariffs kick in. I mean, Larry, why don't markets care?

[Mike McGlone]

Well, that's a great question. I mean, so one, because Trump has indicated he might back off of those tariffs. And two, because everybody thinks they're going to hold the feet to the accelerator on all these pro growth policies, including deregulation, et cetera. And three, because you know, buying the dip is a strategy that's worked over and over and over again and it's going to be very, very hard to disabuse people that notion. Although I'm with Mike. I mean, it feels to me like we're carving out a top here in the stock market. There's a very good pod that just came out with Adam Taggart and Michael Oliver. And Michael's a technician who does some really good work and his momentum indicators suggest that we're kind of carving a long top and maybe we go on and hit some new highs here. I mean this kind of reminds me of 99, summer of 99 and things didn't really top until early March of 20 or of 2000 and then they really didn't start to fall in a big way until 2001. So there's a lot of money in this economy and it's sloshing around. One of the things that Doug Nolan does something called credit bubble bullet and he showed on the most recent Z1 report All the growth in debt. I mean people are just continuing to take on leverage because they feel like it's all good and leverage is going to pay to own these assets. So I think it's a bad strategy. And I pretty much share Mike's view on most everything except the long bond. I think that's Nichols in front of a steamroller. With respect to what Dave said earlier about getting Powell out of there, I don't know. I mean, yeah, they're attacking him politically and lot of ways but my sense is he's, he is not going anywhere. He is dug in and he's going to hold on to his ground and would rather go down with a ship now. You know, if something does break and there's a chance that something will break, then he will start to cut. But you know, I think there's a good chance we have him around for a while. It's, it's gonna, it's a really fascinating mix and difficult to figure out, you know, how this is going to play. But I think until proven otherwise, we have to assume that the trend in the stock market for now is up. But I wouldn't be buying it, not at these valuation levels. I think the easy trade is gold and bitcoin. Are the easy trade, our gold and bitcoin. Right.

[Lawrence Lard]

I like the way you described it Larry, and maybe Scott, you probably get this too is there's only one way to stop this psychology and I've only seen it minor in my life. I've only read about it in history in 1929 and I was part of what happened in Japan is the only way that stops is prices have to stop going up. People have to understand. Okay, well, yes, I enjoy meeting some 30 somethings. A lot of. I meant this week and I have a 32 year old son who just got engaged so I met a lot of 30 somethings and they have not seen this yet. They're so used to, oh, everything just goes up the government's going to save you. And that's why I like to point out is you get to limit in life and you have to realize that there is bear markets and there you have there will be times when buying it. The time to buy typically is when people give up and buying the dip. So we will hear that stage. I hope I live to see it. I hope it's sooner than later because we can have a chance. But that's the thing. It doesn't stop until it stops. And there's sometimes it takes a trigger. Like I remember 9, 11 hopping in a car and driving from New York to Chicago because we couldn't go to our office in New York. We didn't have work from home then and I was way overweight bonds then. But here the key thing I want to push back a little bit. You and Larry when people push back on like you said penny in front of a steam member from the long bond is let's look at the rest of the world. So look at the long bond and see if it stays above 5%. Now we saw there was massive duration buying in May at 5% still happening. You were able to lock in. I think that was a big buy opportunity and potential sell for bitcoin. But look at the iterations of it going above 5%. That's a major headwind for the US stock market when you can have risk free returns. Yes, let me finish. And also the rest of the world it's a major what it does for the dollar strengths of dollars to some extent. But it's a major pressure for risk assets because of that competition. And then it's compared to the rest of the world. You look at the average of the top three major countries in the world, China, Japan and Germany, all major exporters. Germany almost 50% to the US their average of their bond yields is below 2%. So to me this is why I look at it. It's the steamroller the other way. If you're short long bonds, obviously you're paying that coupon. But what happens if for yields to go up is very negative for a risk assets typically.

[Mike McGlone]

Mike, I don't disagree with you at all as a trade. I really don't. I mean in a three to six to maybe nine month window. I don't disagree with you but I think that I'm looking through that to the policy response which is as we all know in this system they cannot afford deflation of any way shape or form. And it takes deflation for that bond to rally. And I think that the policy response is just so obviously massive and overwhelming. That's the point at which everybody goes, oh my God, they can never stop printing. It's Lyn Alden's. Nothing stops this train. And at that point, right at that point, basically what happens is we get a melt up in sound money assets and a meltdown, a continued meltdown in bonds. But I think your analysis is right. I agree with you. I mean, I agree with you on a short term basis. It's fascinating though, how out of sync we are with the rest of the world. I wasn't aware of this, but if somebody pointed out to me, I was just at the show. Do you realize that in Switzerland right now they're at. Yeah, they have zero interest rates in Switzerland right now. It's like, wow. And I was being pitched somebody who would loan me some money against my Bitcoin that 200 basis points over zero. I was like, what?

[Scott]

Really?

[Mike McGlone]

Yeah.

[Lawrence Lard]

Minus 1.13% two year note yield in.

[Scott]

Switzerland minus lending against bitcoin right now.

[Lawrence Lard]

Is like minus 0.13.

[Mike McGlone]

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a Swiss bank and obviously you got all kinds of custody issues, everything else. But the point is that there are places where money is a lot cheaper than in the United States. And Mike, I'm very much aware of what's going on in China. I agree with you. I think you're right. We need a deflationary. I mean, given how much debt we've taken on, given how big this bubble is, the backside of this bubble is massive deflation. But I also think the backside of this bubble is the big print and how those two interact with one another. That's what we're all going to try and sort through. And it's very tough.

[Dave Weisberger]

Larry, I have a very hard time understanding to reconcile the last two statements. I mean, I get everything you're saying, except for the backside of the bubble is massive deflation. Is your expectation that it's deflation because the currency has failed and there has to be. We're going to do a Brazil where we're going to have a new currency on the backside of it. Because if you're constantly printing, by definition, because of the denominator, you have massive monetary inflation.

[Mike McGlone]

I think what Mike is pointing out is that all the debt we've created, when it starts to unwind and go the other. I mean, that is just bringing consumption forward. That is an enormously deflationary thing. And this is an enormous bubble. It's the everything bubble. It's absolutely everywhere. And if it really got rolling to the downside, there would be massive deflation. But yes, what you're saying is what I say as well and agree with, which is the policy response will be overwhelming printing in order to prevent that because, you know, we've seen this pattern over and over again. So, you know, Mike, I'm with you, but I just, I think it's timing, right? And I, I'd be curious to know, I mean, in that. So you, so you buy these long bonds, how long do you think that trade works for?

[Lawrence Lard]

So that's, that's a good point is. So the key thing is I really appreciate your book. And the only problem is we've had that happen. The biggest print in history has happened and by far, by every measure in 2020, 21, 22 and 2020, 2021. And we had the pump, we had the inflation. And the biggest thing we found out is what a great way to get rid of a president is have inflation and what a great way to elect a president is have them endorsed cryptocurrencies. We did that. It's just, I can't wait to write the books about this. Hope I live long enough to write the history and how it's going to work out. The key thing is, no, this is one of those things that this is a, I mean, I'm making a lifetime call here based on the facts of where things are we just when I can say that, you know, gold versus crude, gold versus silver, S&P GDP are at multi decade extremes and potentially tilting the other way as unemployment's picking up, as credit card delinquencies are picking up, as a housing market's rolling over, all this stuff that, that was supposed to happen a few years ago, but it was supported by massive fiscal spending and the biggest distortion in our lifetimes. This is going to be to me simply back to the trend that kicked in since 1980. Lower yields, pretty significant deflationary forces from technology, which is rapidly accelerating. You can see that in crude oil, which is being replaced by technology. Yes, we're going to get a print, but we've already learned the lessons of too much printing. And maybe we'll get some rationalization, say, hey, maybe we should come out of this a little more organically because the last time we did it, we had too much inflation. And that's the difference from every single time we've printed.

[Mike McGlone]

Maybe they print, but it doesn't do enough to arrest the deflation.

[Lawrence Lard]

Well, it's that high. I mean, when you have the world's Largest economy at most ever versus GDP in terms of stock market capillation. Yeah, it's the biggest ever. Now we've seen the prints. Like we said, what bottomed the deflationary environment in 1933 was the USD base versus gold. Okay, what bottom. What helped Japan debase bottom deflations. They've been debasing forever and these are the kind of things. But let's keep. My point is you have to have that first iteration is right now we're stuck in that stage of silliness where people are expecting the Fed to ease despite we have record highs in stock market. I'm sorry they made that mistake last time. He's being nice about it. They cut too early. Bond yields said they were cutting too early and look where we are now. Now we're stuck in this inflation sticky. We're at record highs and we have a president just needs everything to keep going higher. And that's why I think you see like just as of today the gold ETF holdings after four years outflows that just reached the highest since 2023 and central banks and it's on top of central banks buying too.

[Scott]

I want to slightly pivot to other people who are buying. Dave, if you have a comment go ahead but I want to talk about the specifically about treasury companies and Saylor and what's going on here. So let's start with Saylor. Another 4,980 Bitcoin at 597,325. I remember not long ago talking about wow, is Sailor really going to get to a half a million. He's about to be at 600,000. Bitcoin spent another 531 million. Meta Planet buys a thousand more Bitcoin. We have Bakkt or if you remember them, Bakkt is now talking about buying a billion dollars worth of bitcoin. Obviously these are headlines every single day. A I want to talk about bitcoin treasury companies because we haven't talked about it with Larry. But I want to dig into this perspective from rick Edelman who's 300 billion dollar investment advisory firm Edelman Financial Engines says the traditional 6040 is dead. He says that conservative investors should now have a 10 crypto allocation. I would change that to bitcoin. Moderate clients should place 25 in crypto and aggressive clients should allocate 40% should. He says it's no longer a speculative position. He said that it's outperformed everything for the last 15 years. And the kicker here, the real question Are you a fiduciary serving your client's best interests? Are you simply an order taker avoiding difficult conversations? So wrap that all up. We have obviously a lot of companies either jumping on a hype wave or deeply believing that they need to have Bitcoin on their balance sheet and or financial engineer their balance sheet to get more Bitcoin. But then we literally have huge financial advisors starting to say 6040 is dead and Bitcoin should be replacing it.

[Dave Weisberger]

He said, well, there are two completely separate things where escape velocity has been reached and they both matter enormously to this conversation. And I'll start with AI, but it's AI and Bitcoin. So let's talk about what I, what do I mean by that? I mean if there's anybody who believes that productivity for consumer prices isn't about to be impacted by AI, they're not paying attention. We had goods impacted by technology and outsourcing. And so when we, you know, printed like crazy over the last three decades, it went into, it became financialization. We talk about this all the time. That asset prices, house prices, things, you know, whatever are all up. You know, you called it, one of you guys called it an everything bubble, whatever. But the reason consumer prices didn't go up was because we could outsource to cheaper places and manufacture at a fraction of the cost or extract at a fraction of the cost. That's technology. But the one thing that didn't come down was services. Except for that's about to. I mean, you know, if 10 years from now people are still spending close to in today's dollars, a hundred thousand dollars a year to put their kids in colle and effectively party for four years and be fed, you know, bullshit that teaches 50% of the, of the college kids on America that think socialism is a better economic system when AI could be done with, you know, doesn't have to be pure AI, sit in front of a computer. But AI augmented teaching, you know, is so much better. You're, you know, I'll take the other side of that bet all day long. I think that anyone who makes that bet is, it's crazy. You're going to have country clubs for kids, sure you want to socialize them, great, but you don't have to spend money on Harvard and Yale to be, you know, to be indoctrinated at the same time. Anyone talk to Dr. Dhanish about what AI is doing for medicine and you start going down every single possible service, it's going to be deflationary in the Sense of forget the monetary side. It will be decreasing costs so that it is reach escape velocity. There's no question anyone's mind anymore this is going to happen. Now why am I using that analogy with bitcoin? Well, bitcoin, if it gets to critical mass, I. E. Where is bitcoin going? The first stop on the bitcoin train. First stop, I mean it may very well stop there, although I don't think it will, will be to coexist on a pari pursuit basis with gold's monetary value. And we could talk about what those numbers are, but Roughly speaking, it's 10x today. This is the view of most of the administration. This is the view of Larry Fink. This is, you know, from blackrock, this is the view of quite a few smart people. And so all these bitcoin treasury companies, they're effectively saying, listen, you know, I can buy this thing that's at a 90% discount and that will then hold its value versus inflating and debasing dollars. Why wouldn't I? And so that's what they're doing. Meanwhile, the people who are selling bitcoin to them at this price, which is why we've had lower volatility. And I've been gently chiding Mike over the weekend on, on X about bitcoin's volatility being much lower and its beta being much lower is because the people who got into bitcoin saying, you know, beating their chest, saying we're going to change the world. This is great. Where does are saying, well, hold on, wait a minute. I'm rich. I can afford to, you know, to, to live and to buy a house. I can afford to take vacations. I can afford to buy, in some of the cases, private bets. Right. Why the hell wouldn't I sell here? Because I didn't really believe this was going to go up this high. I just kind of, you know, it just kind of happened and I'm here and this has been going on for months now. We've been talking about it, but it's, it's. The data is overwhelming that original bitcoin sellers are the ones who are selling. The problem is, is I don't know how much more there is and we'll see how that plays out. But the reason that all these bitcoin treasury companies are happening is because it's becoming, you know, a guy, you know, epsilon theory. You know, Ben Hunt writes this newsletter that I love to read because it talks about, you know, what's going on in common knowledge and how things are happening in the media. But bitcoin becoming digital gold is becoming common knowledge. When it reaches that, it will happen much quicker than people think. And that's why people are doing this. And if it happens, then every bitcoin treasury company that actually buys bitcoin down at these prices is going to be worth much more than they otherwise would have been. And if it doesn't happen, okay, well then bitcoin may fail. But that's the issue. Will it fail and has it reached that escape velocity? I think it has. And so that to me is, is, is where, is where you're at now. Does that not mean that a bitcoin treasury company that buys it when bitcoin has already reached. Because you'll hear it it when bitcoin first reaches gold, you will hear, oh well, gold only covers.

[Scott]

Oh, it's going to be way before that.

[Dave Weisberger]

You will, you will start hearing all the people self justifying why it needs to go. You know, sailors already doing it right. You know, bitcoin going to a million is one thing. Bitcoin going to what is his latest thing? 17 million or whatever number. How many companies could easily get wrecked if bitcoin gets to this price? And they pile in then. And then there's a normal correction. Well, now there's more leverage in the system and so you'll start seeing those things. So you know what's fascinating is how many bitcoiners look at what's happening now, which is clearly the beginning of a trend. Not the, not the middle or even, or even close to the end and saying, oh God, the last time we saw this, it all fell apart. So I want to get out now. To me, that's what, what is interesting. I mean, Larry, you're smiling, but you.

[Scott]

Know, the bitcoin treasury company you have.

[Dave Weisberger]

I'm trying to, I'm trying to get my hand out here to say you have the firm hand on the tiller at the bitcoin opportunity fund. I mean, you guys are like, yeah, you know, guys, we've been doing this for a while and we're smarter about it. You're muted, Larry.

[Scott]

You're muted there. Yeah, Larry, you're on mute.

[Mike McGlone]

Sorry, my bad. Yeah, any organization that buys or supports bitcoin, I'm in favor of. Okay, let me just start there. And obviously Saylor has got a great flywheel and it's been an enormous positive impact on bitcoin, bitcoin price and the treasury market. My only cautionary note is just that these things are clearly worth 1x, they're M nav. I mean, they're clearly worth what the bitcoin is. One could argue that from time to time they could be worth a little less than 1x. And that's in particular because is management adding value and management's extracting salaries. And so owning bitcoin and cold storage is still, in my view, the preferred way to play bitcoin. And there's plenty of upside in doing that. You take a company, as Saylor points out, a company can do things that an individual can't do. It can issue securities, use them to buy bitcoin. And so what you're really doing is you're introducing bitcoin leverage, you know, to the, to the bet. And that's okay within reason. I think Saylor's been modest in the way he's done it. I mean, I think his debt is about 15% of the underlying value of his bitcoin. The bitcoin could fall in half in price and he'd still be okay. And some of the debt isn't callable and some of it's in the form of preferreds, which I think is kind of brilliant. So my view is that Saylor's actually done a pretty good job of financially engineering, you know, kind of a, you know, a. A levered bet on bitcoin through his company. There've been a lot of people who've jumped into the space and are copying it, doing me toos. And I think there'll be a mix of outcomes in terms of how well they do it, how aggressive they are, what kind of debt they take on, how much they pay themselves in salaries, what their multiple m nav is, et cetera, et cetera. And you know, my caution to most people, I mean, I think I saw somebody on Twitter said, and this is not a knock on Dylan and Metaplan. I think I saw some young guy on Twitter say, well, yeah, I sold all my bitcoin. I bought Metapro Planet. I thought, well, you're really kind of missing the. You're kind of missing the theme here, dude. You know, that's great. Yeah, right. It reminded me very much back in the day when Plan B had a model where they said bitcoin, bitcoin was at 40. And they said, bitcoin's going to 150. And some of the young guys were like, great. And they, you know, Binance would loan them, you know, four to one against their underlying bitcoin. Right. They went out, they borrowed against it, and of course the thing came down and they lost what they had. And so, you know, I would only say that leverage kills. And so I think it's an area that one has to be careful in. And if one wants to speculate and leverage Bitcoin, have at it. But be aware that speculating and leverage bitcoin is not the same as owning core bitcoin in cold storage. They're two different.

[Scott]

It should never be your whole position. You say have at it, but have at it with 10% of your.

[Mike McGlone]

Exactly.

[Lawrence Lard]

Whatever.

[Mike McGlone]

Well, it depends on your risk preference. Right. But I mean, the guy who sold all his bitcoin to buy Meta Planet, I was just like, oh my God, you know, dude, why did you do that? I mean, Meta Planet might be a fabulous investment. I'm not saying one way or the other. I'm just saying, you know, it. We haven't seen a bear market in these things. I don't think bear markets have been outlawed. I think, though, my personal belief is bitcoin is going to go to somewhere between 2 and 500, but then it's going to correct 50%. And so we'll have to see how some of these companies that, you know, get too far out over their skis do, you know, with respect to that kind of thing. So, look, I'm all in favor of an ecosystem that supports buying and holding more bitcoin. I think having bitcoin as your core treasury asset makes a ton of sense. I really like the ones that have other operating businesses and have cash flow.

[Dave Weisberger]

Yes.

[Mike McGlone]

I mean, Semler, for example, is. They've got a business, you know, they're.

[Scott]

Making money as a business.

[Mike McGlone]

Yeah. And, and, and you know, to me, that's, that's a big positive because that guy can buy, you know, if we have a bitcoin. Correction, he's a buyer, not a seller. You know, whereas some of the other folks might be put into a position where they're forced to sell bitcoin to buy back their undervalued stock or do something else. So, you know, it's, it's tricky, you know, and all the frenzy around it doesn't feel quite right to me. You know, the chest thumping and the, you know, these things are going to the moon. That doesn't feel quite right to me. I don't like that.

[Scott]

That reminds me, the ICOs of 2025, man.

[Mike McGlone]

Well, yeah, there was a video recently with a high profile guy saying this is like the ICO market. I was like, oh, dude, why are you drawing?

[Scott]

Because I've been saying that since.

[Mike McGlone]

Why are you trying that. So anyway, that's kind of my long and short on it. I think if people want to play around with it, great. I, I don't think there's really any substitute for owning, you know, the best asset in the world. And by the way, the best asset in the world is going to perform income incredibly well. So don't be, don't eff it up and be greedy and try and get 2x incredibly well. You know, recognize when you take on leverage, you take on risk.

[Scott]

Yeah. Larry might say the problem is a lot of people don't view it as taking on leverage. Which blows my mind though.

[Mike McGlone]

Yeah, I don't see that. I mean it's, it's clearly taking on leverage in most cases.

[Scott]

You know, in my opinion, like, and Dave, we've discussed this a lot, but you know, there's, there's two kinds of bitcoin treasury companies, Dave, and I say it's all the time, but there's the balance sheet companies, Tesla Square, you know, the ones who say, hey, like you said, this is a superior treasury asset. I just want my money in bitcoin, at least a percentage of it. Then there's financially engineering your balance sheet and your stock price to buy more bitcoin and trade at a huge premium. The bulk of those are getting wrecked. I don't care. I don't know when, I'm not saying it. Soon. Hold on, not the ones now. Once again, it's going to be the 90% who are buying it who start doing it at, at 200,000, who are just hedge funds lARPing as Bitcoin. Treasury companies who are going to puke all their bitcoin and those notes are going to go to zero. That's my.

[Mike McGlone]

Fair enough.

[Scott]

Fair enough.

[Dave Weisberger]

Yeah. I don't know at what price that happens. I think it's whether it's two, three, four, five, a million, it doesn't matter. It is the end is for ordained. It is written in the books, the tablets. You know, I like to read fantasy books. The prophecy is there. I don't know what the level will be, but if you're asking me will in fact you see a leverage meltdown from these things? Yes. Is this something to worry about today? No, not unless you're a shareholder of those companies. Right. I mean there's a huge difference between what MicroStrategy is doing, which is intelligent financial engineering that is, you know, released right now and what some of these LARPers are doing. And you're absolutely right and will do. I mean it's I think we're in 1996 or seven relative to the Internet bubble. You know, it's like when you saw the Netscape moment and you see all this stuff. I mean, yeah, the valuations of bitcoin treasury companies, although meta planets because of the constrained ability to invest in Bitcoin.

[Scott]

It'S the only way to get bitcoin in Japan.

[Dave Weisberger]

Yeah, right. So that's a bit different. But you know, when you're talking about one act, you know, maybe between one and two times leverage, that's not really going to scare me. What scares me is people are going, it will ultimately do. They will do more. They will do just like what happens.

[Scott]

In the derivative market. Why buy mine? You got to buy my note, dude, not their note. My notes gotta offer better terms.

[Dave Weisberger]

That's, that's right.

[Scott]

It's like CFI out competing for who can offer the most yield on usdc.

[Dave Weisberger]

It's, it's, it's the same thing. I, I was just, just looking at something just, just to be curious. You know, we in Bitcoin all understand, understand that you know, we've looked in our past and we've seen you know, these massive corrections, you know, 50, 70, even though the last year, you know, the correction was 30. I was just looking at Nvidia, you know, which is at its all time high now. Right. And Nvidia at its all time high. It's interesting over the course, you know, in 2020, late 21 to later in 22 it dropped by what, 60%. You know it then, you know, it's been up and down and sawtooth with 20, 30 corrections. I guess the most recent one was, you know, was where are we? 138 down to 94. So you know, 40%. And then we've been on this epic run to its all time high. I mean it is not, it will surprise me if Bitcoin actually isn't lower volatility than individual stocks like Nvidia. But being that Nvidia is the world's most profitable company or at least world's most valuable company and it's at its all time high. I think it's worth understanding that if you start comparing Bitcoin to that just on an investment point of view, the difference is is we all think the fundamentals in Bitcoin are that it's cheap. I know that that gives Mike dyspepsia, but I'll keep saying it, but it, what's fascinating is how people look at this and they don't go and they look at leverage and they say oh well, I'm going to leverage. Are people 10x leveraging on Nvidia? If so, you know you're going to get wiped out. You know it just, it literally.

[Scott]

I want to let Mike. Yeah, I, I want to let Mike jump in and wrap that. I just happened to pull up the Nvidia chart when you said that because I haven't been paying attention. It went down 44 already this year and is already back above the all time high from that low in just over two months, almost three months. I mean Mike, is that 44 drop not just an extremely accelerated version of what you've been warning against this whole time?

[Lawrence Lard]

Well, that's a bull market. Nvidia, as Dave pointed out, a very profitable company and a great niche faces significant competition. As Jeff points out. That'll be an issue but to me it's more of an issue that it's part of the concentration risk of tech in stocks and the key thing you have to look forward to. Yes, it's momentum, everything's momentum. You buy the dips. But, but the difference I like to point out with Bitcoin is the near certainty from Dave and Larry and some other people that it's going to go up at record highs. Is where I as a commodity person. Sorry, I think of it more as it's a number on the screen by the way. It is more of a number on screen than things like gold and crude oil. And it's a commodity, there's massive competition and let me finish. And everybody seems to quite bullish and long and as a commodity guy I back off and say thank you. I know once it hit 100,000 that was my threshold. I still think gold is a better investment and I think it will be for well and once we get and I'll look forward. So I was looking forward to gold ETFs. I'm sorry to Bitcoin ETFs as a bit of a put a peak in the market. I stick with that. So far you're seeing that with a Bloomberg Galaxy crypto index. And now I'm looking forward to a purge to come out in the future again get as bullish as I did when it's at 10,000. Michael Sayler was like it and right now, sorry, just can't do it. I want to go down in history as the idiot. Fine, I'm happy to take that risk. And if I can write that book from the future to said that that'll say, you know, it was different this Time. You weren't supposed to be selling when they're yelling. And that's what Bitcoin was in, in 20, 25 and 24. I would love to be able to write that. And right now I'm going to take the risk being the idiot to say sorry. You're not supposed to be overweight, long. This risk asset. You're supposed to be overweight, you're supposed to be underweight, longness risk asset. Particularly when people at micro sale are buying more at record highs.

[Mike McGlone]

Let me help you on that, Mike, because it actually is different this time. Let me explain why this is what, the future.

[Lawrence Lard]

Define that.

[Mike McGlone]

No, but, but let me, let me. Look, let me. Like a logical.

[Lawrence Lard]

But you did already. You told us it's going up. I got it.

[Mike McGlone]

No, no, you didn't. You're not listening. Take a minute and listen. Okay? Every single commodity in the world, when the price goes up, the supply increases.

[Lawrence Lard]

So please don't explain. I wrote about this a decade ago. I got it. Let's not state the obvious. I get it. It's this overweight, leverage long.

[Mike McGlone]

Now, this particular commodity, when the price goes up, the supply doesn't increase. It doesn't behave like that again.

[Lawrence Lard]

You're repeating the same thing we've wrote about decades, a decade ago. Let's not say the same. I get it. The problem is it's overweight, leveraged long. Now it's leveraged long. It's just a classic example. And there's 17 million of them. That's never happened in any commodity I've ever seen. I look at the precious metals. There's gold, and there's only three precious metals. It's silver, platinum plate.

[Mike McGlone]

Different beast. Mike, It's a complete. This is what Wall street misses. It's a completely different beast. It's different. It's got it.

[Lawrence Lard]

Exactly. It's different this time. Good luck.

[Mike McGlone]

I'm not disagreeing with you that we can't have a 50 correction. I just don't think we're at the overbought, over leveraged point you think we're at. I think that that'll be at 300, 400, 500. And then we will have a 50% correction.

[Lawrence Lard]

So I've made the call early. I still stick with over 100,000 is overbought, over leveraged, and I'm sticking with gold. Since we first reached 100,000 in December 6th, gold's up 25%. Bitcoin's up 5%.

[Dave Weisberger]

Scott, can I. Can I repeat? It's been a few months Since I've.

[Scott]

Made to wrap us up because it's 1004 and I don't want to keep.

[Dave Weisberger]

Bitcoin is, is an price, is an option. It's full. It, it realizes at 10 roughly gold, you know, you know 80 to 90 of gold's market cap. And so when you value that, that you trade a com. When you look at options on a commodity, it's very different. Especially a commodity that is inelastic. As Larry explained. It is very different than looking at a mature commodity who claim that bitcoin is a mature commodity when virtually all the people who are buying it believe that it is underpriced. That is not the same thing as something that has had the same price for years. It just isn't. You know, it's going to go up, it's going to go down, it's going to be more volatile. But honestly to treat it the same is just.

[Lawrence Lard]

Why would, why would buy anybody by who buys anything think it's not underpriced? It's just a silly thing to say. Come on. It's just. And by the way, anybody who disagrees with you with it's not going up is dumb. I'm dumb dumb. That's happy first dumb person.

[Dave Weisberger]

No go up or go down, whatever. You know, everyone markets are what markets are. I'm just saying, you know, when you get these sorts of things, Bitcoin right now on a risk adjusted basis, I think is. Is cheaper than it was when it was at 10,000. That I really genuinely believe and I genuinely believe it because the risk adjustment is that bitcoin will, will bitcoin die at this point and when it is considered a strategic asset by the entire administration. And oh by the way, don't expect even when the Democrats win because the Republicans implode or if the Democrats win because the Republicans implode in 2028, don't expect the Democrats to make the mistake of going full on attacking, you know, crypto, you know, the anti crypto army because then they won't win. And I think they know that. I think they learned it. So you know, when you have the US political structure supporting an asset and considering it undervalued, I mean that's a very big thing. I mean fighting that is like. It's like fighting the Fed. You know, it's. It's like you don't want to fight forces that have the power and that, that's really what's going on here. And so anyway, you know, we could talk about this forever. You know, there's a. This is, this is like the argument clinic from Monty Python. This is not an argument. It's just contradiction. No, an argument is, you know, it's like one of my absolute favorite, favorite skits in the history of comedy television. And sometimes we get like that. So. I agree. Let's just stop.

[Scott]

I'm gonna do it one more time. The big print what Happened to America and How Sound Money Will Fix It. We don't get the honor of Larry every week. James is coming back. Of course, you guys go buy it.

[Mike McGlone]

Good chat. I really enjoyed it.

[Scott]

Yeah, I think James will be back next week or the week after. He's been on, been on holiday, but he has not left us. Just for those who keep commenting on that. And that was a spicy ending. But you know, the beauty of this show is it keeps on going and we get to see what happens. So we'll all, we'll all be there to find out. Thank you, gentlemen, Larry, especially for, for joining. We will see you guys next Monday for another macro Monday.

[Dave Weisberger]

Bye.

[Scott]

Let's see if this.

[Dave Weisberger]

That's dope. Let's do.