A (6:46)

Yeah. James, I want to go to a point you made before we started, which is let's talk about why everything's up. Right. And I think you talked about in your newsletter, I mean I just, when Mike brought it up, I looked at the Japanese 10 year yield that gapped up today nicely. I mean that's a pretty big move for a Japanese yield that was flat for a few decades. And obviously as Mike sort of hinted at, we have gold up, bitcoin up, silver up, generally stocks up, bonds up.

C (7:14)

Yeah, it's kind of. Well, I think what we're seeing honestly is it's a little bit of a barbell trade. You've got gold and metals just, they're just screaming higher because of geopolitical tensions and, and fears about the, the long term effects of, of deficits and inflation. And so you've got that on one side and the other side you've got the relentless AI trade which is just, it's just not stopping. And that's the, you know, it's, it's portfolio managers saying I've got to have exposure to these, you know, these AI companies. And the, the largest story across the entire world for, for the economies and like this is literally, it's not just a play on whether these, these companies are going to have solid earnings. It's whether this AI phenomenon is, is or you know, the future of, of the economies. Are, are built, are going to be built around AI and so that's one side of it. And the other side is, well, I've got to have something in my portfolio that can protect me against this, this deflationary trade, you know, meaning the, the deficits are not going to stop. I mean it's cute that we think that we're going to, that we're going to solve all of this fraud and all of the improper payments, whatever this, it doesn't matter which government you have in place, doesn't matter which administrations. This is just not stopping. You know, I did see that waltz just said he's not going to get real. He's not going to go for reelection. So what's going to happen? You're going to have somebody else replace him? That likely. This stuff just doesn't stop.

A (9:05)

You know, broad is systemic.

C (9:08)

You can, yeah, you can.

A (9:09)

An affiliate voter. I hate the political side of it, but like I live in Florida and if you think what's happening in Minnesota on daycare fraud is bad. Take a look at the history of health care fraud in Florida. It 10x is it. And Rick Scott oversaw literally the largest fraud in Medicare history when he was a CEO of Columbia and ended up as our governor and a state senator.

C (9:31)

Right, exactly. So it's, it's systemic. Is that, that's the word that you used. And, and I agree with that, Scott. It's, it's systemic and that's not going to stop. So you are going to have long term inflationary pressures. In my opinion, that's just going to continue. Now the question is, and this is why it's kind of a barbell trade. It, you know, you have geopolitical tensions, you've got worries about AI being some sort of overbought bubble like Mike talks about every single week. You just have to look at the charts and see this stuff is just, I mean it has been screaming higher relentlessly. So what do you do? Do you own bonds to help yourself? Well, we saw what kind of trade that was in 2020. That ended up being a very bad trade for people to own bonds, long bonds, not just cash. There was no, there was no, you know, yield in, in, in Fed funds and, and money markets and people weren't sitting there. But, and yeah, so this is another thing is that what I wrote about this weekend was the TLT being a pretty crowded short trade. And for those, for those investors who are not as experienced in this stuff, you know, expecting there to be a possible short squeeze on this, it's not it's not the same as a stock which has limited supply of shares. So I explained in the newsletter how that functionally, actually structurally works and how logistically you borrow shares from a prime broker to short these things and where those shares are coming from, the ETF is different. So TLT is an ETF that follows the price of long bonds. And so that means that it owns underlying exposure to long bonds. And so, but the question here is just because it's such a large short out there, does it mean that it could squeeze higher like a gamestop? And the answer is emphatically no. It's not the same structure. You have authorized participants who actually go out there and create these shares. And if there's an arbitrage between the, between where the NAV is and where, meaning what, the underlying value of what that, what that ETF holds and where the ETF is trading, they can go create shares to take advantage of that arbitrage. It's a completely different function and, and logistically how you, how you short these things. So it's just, just be aware that that's not, that's, that's not the way that this will play out. There's not going to be a short squeeze in etf, in my opinion. Dave, maybe you have more light to shed on that because you've, you've actually been an authorized participant. I believe so. But you know, it's just, it's just something for people to be aware of. Now the question I, I brought up in the, in the newsletter because people have heard me say for a long time, I'm a long term bear bond pair. Sorry, it's. Well, you know, it's still dark here, so I'm finding my footing. But, but you know, being, being a bond bear doesn't mean that you could be wrong long, short term. And Mike, poor Mike, has learned this the hard way, like we all have over the long hall of being investors in Wall street. You can be right overall and be wrong short term. Like right long term, short, long, short term. So, and that's just, you know, but the question is, where's the long bond going? And I still believe that structurally we have deficits that are going to continue to put pressure on these things. And unless we have some sort of, you know, AI deflationary miracle, which would not be a miracle for the economy, truly, or we have the Fed step in and actually do real QE and yield curve control, the long bond is going to be where it is. So, but that's kind of, that's Kind of what that, that newsletter discussed and, and the push and pull of that, of that trade. And are we on the right side or the wrong side of that? And I'd be interested to hear what, what, what Mike has to say about that now going forward off of it. Well, my opinion, being an authorized participant, this is, this is just a different structure.

B (13:52)

There's no way, there's no structural short squeeze in an etf. You're, you're right. I mean, but, but you can certainly get squeezed in bond futures. You can certainly. Which is what the, which is what the people are using to hedge. You can certainly get squeezed on the ability to create because the way that bond creation works is there's baskets of what's on the run versus off the run for TLT, etc. I don't want to delve into the plumbing. It doesn't matter. What you need to know is where the push and the pull is coming from. So it's. Whose interest is it for the US to be at a. What are we, 170 basis points over the rest of the world now on average, Mike? I don't know, whatever the number is, something like that. Whose interest is it in to be for that? Now why do we have. Are we paying structurally higher rates than the rest of the world? Because dollars in the reserve currency. Every single time some human being makes the statement the world is getting de$ized. While I don't believe that to be true, if you do believe that to be true, then you are bullish on the long bond. You may not realize you're bullish on the long bond, but you are. Why? Because if the US wasn't the reserve currency, why the hell would the US bond rate be higher than Italy? I mean, it's completely illogical. And Mike points out that the Chinese situation on their long bond and their yield is well under ours as well. Same thing. So there's a lot of push and pull that goes on. And the bond markets are the most manipulated markets on the planet. And they're manipulated by monopolists in their own countries. So the JGB is manipulated by the bank of Japan. The US is definitely manipulated by the Fed and the other G7 central banks keeping a regime long. Betting in that game is perilous. You. And so most of the smart money bets on the advanced bets on the side of where they believe the interests of the monopolists are. And so just understand that because that's one of the reasons volatility is muted. There is no person who could make the Statement. Well, I know that the US is going to print 6 to 8% dollars every single year and purchasing power is going to go down that much, you know, or at least the supply is going to go up. So I'm going to be happy with my 4% yield on, on the long bond. Nobody's making that, that economic rational statement. What they're saying is this is the benchmark by which I am measured. And so I'm going to hold some of that benchmark because I won't get fired for holding some of that benchmark. Or if they're in the hedge fund universe, they're saying I can lever up 100 times and be smarter than the average bear and, and capture a 20 basis point, move one way or another over the next year, levered up 20 times or more and have good performance. And so they're doing that trade. And all of this is a lot of plumbing and stuff. And all the armchair analysts get it wrong. They don't understand that's what's actually happening. And so really, when you're looking at bond yields, we haven't had bond vigilantes for a very long time. The last time we saw even a breath of bond vigilantism was after Powell tried to put, you know, keep, you know, get Kamala into Office with the 50 basis point cut over. And, and you saw what that did to his credibility. In my mind, he lost his credibility by being built by, by doing that. And I think a lot of the market did because we watched the short rate go down 50 basis points and long rates go up 50 basis points because that was clearly politically done. And a lot of people are saying, well, the same thing's going to happen when whoever Trump nominates and they bring, you know, long rates out. I don't know, it's a bit different. One is to try to influence an election. Another is to try to implement an economic policy and we can talk about what those will be. So, you know, I look at the most important point on the long bond is the denominator. And the answer to why is everything going up? Well, there's, there's different reasons. I mean, Mike said it. If corporate profits are going to, are expected to grow by 14%, by the way, corporate profits are already at the highest percentage of GDP in recorded history. Expect the stock market to continue to perform at the same time. We have printing, printing, printing and printing. And the dollar is reserve currency when the, the exporters, the producers of crap China and their allies would want or have been hoarding gold. So Expect gold to go up because they can push on it and there's lots of momentum. Money still plumbing into gold and silver. Now silver, which we should talk about is another thing entirely. Silver, if you look at the history books, it's, it's you, you start to learn the longer term, and I mean very long term stat Arb trade says silver will revert, to use Mike's words, because I love, I love reversion. Silver's natural reversion would be to where it traded vis a vis gold in the 70s after Nixon unlocked the gold window. And if you look in the 70s, the average was in the 30s. It traded as low as like 31, 30, etc, traded at 40, but it was in the 30s. We're now at what, 52, 53, something like that. I mean it's, it's moved a bunch to, you know, this morning, it's moving a lot. But, and it, you know, if you look at it since that time it's been as high as 120 I think and it's probably averaged around 80. And so now people are looking at it with recency bias saying well, at 8, at 50, oh my God, you know, it's bound to revert back to 80. Ask yourself why? Why did gold get so much higher than silver? And the answer is because gold got a huge monetary premium. That's the fact. And that monetary premium was the only thing sustaining it. Except that the world, the entirety of the gold bug universe, has believed that gold's fair value against the dollar is somewhere between, depending on who you listen to. The lowest I've heard out of a gold bug is 5,000. Most people think 10,000. They think it's been manipulated lower all of this time. So it's a really interesting. Seriously, I mean if you, if you go down that rabbit hole, you would know what I mean.

A (19:58)

It's like going down the bitcoin rabbit hole, right?

B (20:00)

Exactly.

A (20:02)

By 2028.

B (20:03)

But the point is silver is in huge structural deficit, has been in structural deficit for a while. Only the difference, the change over the last three years, that's the massive change that people don't want to think about here is the massive difference by having the contract for differences market. So doing some research over the weekend and the best estimates are the contract for differences market, which is it offers 100x leverage on all this crap, is bigger than the CME for silver. Larger.

A (20:34)

That's wild.

B (20:35)

And the CME to heightening margin requirements when, when everyone thought it was going to prick the bubble down to 50 and you heard me two weeks ago saying, nope, it's actually long term bullish. And people thought I was nuts. And the reason I said it was long term bullish is because short term bearish, but long term bullish is because market makers now have a much harder time hedging because the more you hurt margin on the ones who are using that margin, the market makers who have to make markets onto the CFD market. And so if the retail FOMO crowd goes back into silver and it starts basing and starts moving higher again, you can expect that relentless kind of rally. And, and in fact, today we're back up over 75 again. Right. You know, so. And we'll see what actually happens. We don't know whose advantage this is. And China's export controls are a big deal. If they give out licenses to all the people who are currently exporting it, then expect silver to slide back into the 60s if they don't expect it to continue to rise. And this is the sort of thing that's going on there. So we talked about stocks, we talked about gold and silver. Yeah, crypto.

A (21:39)

Yeah, yeah. I want to say, like give you your flowers, you kind of have been pounding the pavement on this idea of the hot ball of money moving into metals. And maybe that that was part of the reason that crypto hasn't seen as much interest as it has in the past. And we have platinum making new all time highs, Palladium making new all time highs, silver making all new all time highs. I can't help but look at that as a corollary for what we used to see in the crypto market when bitcoin would make a high. If we make bitcoin the corollary to gold, how the money would trickle down into altcoins and we would see kind of these massive moves to the upside. That said, I will say just very, very quickly, we have Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, xrp, the only ones I looked at this morning, all breaking above their 50 daily MAs. Again, Ethereum's actually back above its 250 MA, which has not happened. So there's a lot of reasons to have some renewed interest here in crypto. And I say that because I want Mike to argue with me before we move on to Venezuela.

B (22:36)

I'd like to make a point on crypto before because I think it is extremely important. Look, I made the comment on, when I retweeted the space this morning that 2025 should be considered from a crypto perspective. A mulligan. Now it's not really a mulligan. It was a, it was the Trump administration or Donald Trump himself took a gun, pointed it at foot of the crypto market and pulled trigger. You know, the Trump meme coin, Melania meme coin and Melee's Libre meme coin really, really, really damaged the, the crypto market in ways that we hadn't really seen before and took a lot of interest out of the market. And so the market really was harmed in terms of the popular opinion. And the fact that it got polarized. It basically meant half of the United States was not going to touch it because literally our, our country is so freaking polarized that if Trump says A, then there's. Half the country is going to say yay, and the other half of the country is going to say boo. And it doesn't matter what he says. He could say the sky is blue and you would get that.

C (23:39)

So I read, I read this, I read this one on, on this weekend. I thought it was pretty good. He could literally save a drowning child in the ocean and the liberals would come out and scream that he's starving the sharks.

B (23:54)

Yeah, that, that sounds about right. So I think crypto definitely got put into that. I would expect that the rest of this year. I mean, yeah, his kids are going to keep talking about it because that's their business, but he's gonna, gonna be, I think, let his people do the talking. Well, we'll see.

D (24:09)

Maybe.

A (24:11)

Yeah. I, I wrote a newsletter this morning that was about my predictions for 2025, and one of them actually was the return of the anti crypto army because of those exact things that you just talked about, Paul.

B (24:22)

Right.

D (24:23)

I think they've been full of Trump's.

A (24:24)

Involvement in the, in the industry.

B (24:26)

Yeah. And, and I think if that happens, that's the most bullish possible thing for crypto because it will cause the midterms not to go the way that everyone expects them to be.

A (24:34)

All I know is that we used to do well when Gary Gensler said stupid things, and now that everything's so positive, we don't have an enemy. But go ahead, Mike.

D (24:42)

Exactly. That's what I miss about Gary Gensler, Elizabeth Warren. They volunteered to be the antagonist, to be the, to be the Aaron Burrs of history. And I thank them for that because they give you, they give you something. What? Perfect. It was like, oh, now we've got a great. You know, here's the dark side, but here's the bright side. But the key thing, I want to tilt over to and show a few on my Screen is, is the nickname I saw I earned a weekend ago was called mcard. I love that nickname because that was, it was just, you know, sometimes MC idiot make retard. But it was, I saw that on X. I'm like, thank you very much. Because first of all now I know your position. I know you feel insure about it. I'm just a strategist making a call. I'm not, I don't have positions on the same feeling I got last year. I mean I started not the same thing, but I was getting that feeling from the questions people ask me about cryptos A year ago. They would start out with, okay, Mick retard, why are you thinking this? I'm getting the same thing. I just got it this morning in silver. I'm like, I'm sorry if you haven't been on silver for the last five years. Some of us have been bullish this space and metals forever. But you have to take the pain now that it's gone up the Lao point up the lessons of silver. And I'm going to show you, show you this chart in a second. Here's first of all the silver. This is the silver versus gold chart. It's broken down. Silver is just way too expensive versus gold. Now historically I didn't think it break below 80 and it did. On the same scale as I have gold versus the crude oil. It's crude oil, Mike.

B (26:10)

The gold silver card. Could you go back to 1970?

D (26:13)

I can't right now. 1985, 1970 I can. But this one only goes. Let me just see if we can. I doubt it. Let's double check. But I want to just finish the key theme I had on this and then we'll go back to that. So it's not, it's not doing it yet. Is the. Here we go. So we go back to 1970. The trend is typically higher. 1970 right there and right now it's at 58. The mean median load the last few years has been closer to around 75 80. So it's broken down. Can it stay below this 10 year low? The key thing I want to point out is those at the bottom line in this space now it feels to me very much like cryptos last year. It's the up too much risk and highly elastic commodities. I mean that's what to me cryptos are less commodities. They're just highly elastic. And people are learning that the hard ways just never want to buy silver after it goes up this much partly is the lessons of 1979. The last time it had a rally like this, it closed at $32 an ounce and this year's low was 28. But I want to tilt over to my key theme I think is going to be this year and show this on the chart. And that's tlt. I think TLT is going to be one of the best trades this year because I look at TLT right now, you get around four point, almost five return. If the price is unchanged on the air, you're getting 5%. I look at this as a put on the S P500 with no time decay, virtually no downside and nothing but upside. That's the way I look at now. That's my view. So once I'm showing you here, it's just the 30 year yield. The last time 30 year yields running at 4.86. The last time it ended the year above 5% was 2003. Now I like the views that inflation, the deflationary forces now are less than than now. I think they're more so than ever. But what I show you in this chart is copper, the S&P 500 on the same scale. The bottom line is why I see TTLT or the US bond market is basically just to put AN S&P 500 now is that's all that matters. When you get to 2.3 times GDP, if it drops 10%, that's almost 25% of GDP. It has to stay up. So I wrote that into copper, Copper, industrial metals. Industrial metals last year up about 20%. The total market cap of the global stock market cap went up to $151 trillion across according to a Bloomberg metric that was about 22%. You see the connection. Industrial metals will go up as long as the stock market goes up. Copper will go up as long as stock market goes up. Cryptos have to have the stock market go up or else they're going down. And either way I think they're going down. That to me is what's happening this year and that's what shifted. Gold is telling this by gold's rally last year. Gold has never rallied at this velocity ever without stock market volatility going up. And again, it's the first week of the new year. Everybody buys. It's the time to rope in. But it's what's going to be mattering next few weeks that's going to really make a difference.

B (28:56)

So can I go back to that chart, the gold silver chart? You want to put that back up again?

A (29:01)

And Dave, when you're done with this Point. I want to talk Venezuela.

B (29:03)

Yeah. But I think that if you go back and look at the 70s, I think in the middle of the 70s is where we're going.

D (29:11)

Okay, that's about 35.

B (29:14)

That's exactly right. That's exactly where, where I think we're going. And why do I think that? I think that the reason for gold to have gone to this level, there was lots of reasons. If you believe the Fiat era is being shaken, if you believe the geopolitical order is changing and if you look at what was happening in the 70s in the geopolitical order, I think it's the closest thing to what we have today. You made the point about elasticity. Silver is in a structural deficit. There is literally no price elasticity of supply in silver. You can't get it right away.

D (29:52)

Silver can come out of your underwear drawer. My mother just said she just sold a silver bracelet. That's the thing. Don't forget silver comes out of underwear drawers.

B (29:59)

Over. That's. I'm totally, I totally hear you. I know. Hey, look, dude, you know, you see what these are? Hold this up to the camera.

A (30:09)

There he goes.

B (30:10)

We're talking, you know. Yes, you know, 50 Cent, whatever.

A (30:15)

I soloed you like we can see.

D (30:17)

I love those.

B (30:17)

There you go.

D (30:18)

I give him ways gifts.

B (30:20)

I have, I have plenty of silver that I've been thinking about and I can tell you that it's in the US because the silver smelters are running full bore. Literally full bore. You cannot get. You're getting discount to the spot price. I'm actually thinking I'm not gonna sell it until you. Until the price because I think the price is going to be elevated for a while. I'm not selling it until you get back to spot price because it doesn't make any sense to. Right. The same thing is true with that. That is true. But the mining of silver is not as elastic as it used to be and the industrial demand is huge and increasing. Things like the new battery technology, things like basically everything that we're using, cruise missiles, they all use enormous amounts of it. You point out copper and that copper chart is hugely important. Important. Right. Copper is, is so correlated to the S and P and to the global GDP and everything that's going on. You know, silver is more correlated to the AI trade. So just understand that there are some very interesting dynamics this AI trade and the, the, the, the, the meta trends evs. Right. And then the AI trade and alternative energy are all silver bullish and have all been worked through and so Honestly when you start looking at supply demand dynamics to think that we. That that we can't return to a gold server rat 70s before gold took on its own. You know big monetarist thing relative to fiat is. I mean I think that that's a perfectly reasonable outcome and it could happen and that's really, that's really the only point. I'm just talking about a much longer term reversion than you are. That's all.

D (31:57)

Let me give you my 2026 outlook for silver. It could momentum's heading towards 100. It can easily get 100 and back towards 50 on a first standard deviation move on annualized volatility which is around 30% down. That's a normal range. The key thing to remember is everything you pointed out Dave. We've been in place for years. These are things that what happens in markets once it hits the mainstream that people who don't dig in the market and like I had a guy this morning give me, give me the Mick idiot the Mick retard question because I wasn't pointing how bullish I was in silver because that's the point is you're supposed to be bullish these things years ago. I'll give you an example like gold I was bullish. For cold to break above 2021, 22 and 23 finally did in 24. That took three years of being Mick retard. They finally broke out then lessons you learn is do not buy these levels. I'm just cautioning people that risks are normal here after you go up. That's why I tilt over the T tlt. Just imagine a year where we don't. It's completely assumed S&P 500 is gonna be up 10%. Just imagine if we end up down 10%. That's a massive trade is TLT. And the thing is the key thing to remember what's. Look at that divergent weakness or strength. Now silver's already had its run. Good luck buying it here. TLT was up about 5% last year despite the S&P 500 total return up 15% see that despite that excess inflation kicking in. But the key thing I'll remember remind you also even copper. Copper's approach and it's one of the best performing commodities today. Not because of what's happening in Venezuela because it's just been the momentum but it might get to near 6. It probably is. It's 591 but every single time in history it's done that. It's correct did significantly particularly when everybody gets Bulls. Now the fundamentals are no nuns. We all get that. But the bottom line is deflation in China. When you talk industrial metals and that set yield in China 1.86, that's iron ore hasn't gone up. Crude oil hasn't gone up. So these are industrial metals that are. There's major signs that they can easily just revert.

B (33:51)

Yeah, no, I, the funny part is is that change some of the numbers. And you and I agree silver is going to be volatile this year. I don't what my, my assessment, my assertion is we have not seen the blow off top yet and we will see a blow off top and I just think it'll it that blow off top could be higher than you do.

D (34:08)

Don't disagree.

B (34:09)

Is, is, is. Yeah. You know, once you get that blow off top there's going to be an unrelenting bear market because people are going, there's a huge incentive among all the people who are using it to drive the price down and to push and kick this momentum trade out and suck the life out of the momentum trade. So you and I don't disagree. I'm just stating my target is based upon a gold silver ratio of that. And the gold I think has some structural tailwinds from the, you know, from China and other places that are probably buying it and have hoarded it. And so we'll see what happens. But I do think that this is a year and I made the statement and my prediction is simple. I think that gold silver stocks will end the year up. Well, will go up at some point. I think the stock. I want to talk about the stock market a bit in predictions. I think the stock market's going to have some interesting things going on. But I think bitcoin will outperform all of them for a bunch of different reasons. I think that it's absorbed every body blow and has the market is like, you know, if you think of a bellows, you know, in terms of whatever, all the air is out of the crypto market. Right. All the crypto speculators are out. And so any sign of strength, any sign of movement, any sign that the supply overhang isn't there anymore will. You will see a rally and it will be a, a historic rally in nominal terms. But in percentage terms it's not going to be as big as other historical rallies. I mean I don't think we're seeing a 5x or 10x like we've seen in other cycles, but a 2x 2 to 3x I absolutely think can happen. And that's actually my prediction is somewhere around two to two. Between two and three times from here, from here because of this reason. And I don't think the stock market will be down now. The stock market, there's one other prediction that we, that we should make. I just want to put a line in the sand. The thing I don't know that the bubble gets pricked because honestly with earnings projected to grow by 14% and AI driving earnings better vis a vis GDP, I don't see a massive stock market correction. But I do see one massive headwind to a lot of growth stocks. And that's a simple thing. A massive incoming wave of IPOs. The massive IPOs of all of the AI companies are going to take oxygen from a lot of today's growth companies. Companies. And you should watch for that because it is literally what happened in 2000. I mean, you know, it was after all of the IPOs that happened in 89. And it takes a while for this to occur. I don't know if we'll see the impact of that this year or not. But watch the space. How the anthropic XAI OpenAI IPOs go and how much money and where that money's coming from is going to be very relevant. But we'll talk about that more when we get closer to it.

A (36:50)

So James, Dave obviously said he's bullish on bitcoin this year. I, I also am, but I, I first, I would love your take on what you think for 2026, but then I do want to pivot to Venezuela because we have these kind of takes about Venezuela that the price action right now of bitcoin is a result of what's happening in Venezuela, that gold and silver are a result of what's happening in Venezuela. I think you could just make the argument that's the top of the year and all these things are up a bit.

C (37:14)

It's coincidence.

A (37:17)

92,000 is not like if it jumped at 110 or something. If it was like a silver val, you know that like when the banking collapse or something and we saw Bitcoin make a 20 move overnight that would get my, you know, get, get me going. But this just seems like we're ranging but, but go ahead. I would love.

C (37:33)

Yeah, no, I agree, I agree. It's just a year end phenomenon for, for bitcoin where you had massive, you know, loss harvesting tax loss harvesting I think at the end of the year for hedge funds, especially ones who had two sided trades on. And so you had, you had part of that going on. Then you had, you know, obviously there's been massive debate on Twitter whether or not OGs are selling, but every single chart I've seen has suggested that they had been selling relentlessly since July and they just let up this last couple of weeks. So. And now they look like they're kind of done. And maybe it was tax loss harvest for them too. I know, or you know, the way that they were trading around them, who knows. But because they have obviously billions of dollars of, of long term gains in there overall, but it's hard to tell who's been doing what. You just have. One of the things that you have in bitcoin that other securities don't have is you could, you could literally sell something for loss, turn around and buy it it the next day and it's not going to be a wash sale. So it's just a different. It's a different. Yeah, it's a different animal.

A (38:50)

So I did it with some altcoins that I actually wanted to hold. I had some losses at the end of the year. I sold and rebought at the exact same price and took, took the loss.

C (39:00)

Yeah. So if you bought, if you bought bitcoin at the beginning of the year you could, you know, beginning of 25, you could have sold it at the end of 25, bought it back the next day and harvested some tax losses. You know, it's just, it's just the way it is. So it's kind of a. I just think that that's been keeping it in a range where, where it goes from here. I think it goes higher this year. That's all I know. I don't know. I hate price predictions.

B (39:26)

Yeah, I don't.

C (39:27)

I have no idea.

A (39:28)

I mean, I mean I think it just gives the separation of general trajectory expected by, by each person here. We know Mike kind of down. I think all of us sort of up. I guess what I would ask all of you, and maybe we go to Mike first on this, like the impact of what actually happened Venezuela. There's been some bad tastes. Dave, Dave will tell you that some of them are mine about what's happening in Venezuela. But how do you, I mean, I guess handicap the, the rhetoric to some degree. Right. So we have what happened and we can all unpack whether it was right. Wrong. I think it's both. So, so there's that. Right. I think Maduro being gone.

C (40:03)

I love how everybody's a geopolitical expert.

A (40:05)

And I think it's good that Maduro is gone. No question there What I question as sort of like a libertarian leaning is whether it was our job to do it and what comes next. Because the United States has a very long history of people celebrating in the short term but being very bad for the people of a country in the long term when we affect regime change, whether you like that or not. But then you have, you know, Trump coming out and saying, hey, we need Greenland too, and you know, what about Columbia and things like that. So, Mike, I mean, you know, is there a. Does this change at all sort of the environment or is it. Is this on your DI list? I don't know where it stands.

D (40:37)

It's very important. One thing is that just my colleagues sitting behind me had to flee our Caracas office. She was in news because she was physically threatened by the Maduro administration. That's with her family. And so there's a significant elation of hope here in Miami that oh, maybe Cuba's next and maybe Colombia, because most of the people, tons of people you meet here are refugees and very successful because they're very motivated, but they all have family and friends. So the excitement is enlightenment. Obviously, everybody wants peaceful transition to power and we all know that's a risk. But the key thing from a market standpoint is, yeah, it makes sense that you'd see a little bid in safety assets like gold and bonds. But cryptos, to me, that's more what's happening for the time of year. The significance though for Venezuela is the macro. I think for crude oil, it's a pressure factor. Overall it means more supply. It's the geopolitics, which Dave and you and James I think can dig or better than me. But I'll just point out in Miami there's so much optimistic hope about what's happened. But I want to tilt over a little bit now. Just point out my few views on because we're talking about cryptos and you can tilt back to Venezuela unless you want to go there. I just had to show you two quick charts on cryptos and why look alone is still McHard or McBarish whichever way you want to call me. And this is just looking the Bloomberg Galaxy crypto in this. I knew this is a worthy short. It was down 20% last year. I over relate with S&P 500. It's the same level as it was in 2021 S&P 500 March Tire. It's just horrible performance, high volatility. Market piled on great backtest and now the masses are in it. Great trades over. Show me the proof and then I look at the Bloomberg Galaxy crypto index divided by S&P 500, it's been flatlined since 2017, so it's showing nothing. And then here's the short little trade. This is we're in the pinprick, we're in the breakout. Say this is the S and the bitcoin stuck in that narrow range, it's ready to break out. So coiled spring, it's got a set above 94,000. Maybe it does in the short term, but the bottom line is volatility. 30 day volatility is lowest absolute lowest since 2023 when it broke above the 100 week moving average. Now it's just hovering on that support. The key thing, it's never hovered on 100 week moving average without going below it. So maybe it's different this time, but to me that's the key thing to watch is that in this absolute has to be up. And that's why I want to tilt over to a question to all of you and Dave. If you're bullish bitcoin, I suspect you're bullish the stock market because, okay, I just don't see if we can have a year up with bitcoin. The stock market down. Now that's pretty substantial paradigm shift. That would be quite positive. But right now I think the sense is, yeah, we all get it. Greatest back test in history, masses are in, it trades over.

B (43:19)

Yeah, I think that this is a massive recency bias issue and it completely ignores the fundamentals. If you look at the growth of the bitcoin network over the same period of time, it's up 7x. It's sort of like ignoring Nvidia's profits and looking at Nvidia's chart from four years ago and saying where would it go? And if you did that, you, you then you really would be McD, but you're not and you wouldn't do that. So I think that it's extremely important to look at the fundamentals because if you don't look at the fundamentals, then looking at charts just as line squiggles, you, you miss the big moves, you miss Amazon, you miss Apple, you miss Nvidia and you'd miss pot. Bitcoin, I think it's as simple as that. I think it's a large part of it. You know, bitcoin, by all accounts, when Luna happened in 2022, there were waves of forced selling. People who didn't want to sell, had to or if there. And I hate dredging this up, Scott, because I mean it's it's still painful for you. When Voyager collapsed, you lost piles of money. When Celsius collapsed, a lot of people lost piles of money. When FTX collapsed, people lost piles of money. And many people were forced and through all of that, forced selling from people who didn't want to sell, who were told they had to, all of that, they got bitcoin down to 16,000. That's what happened. And at the same time the network is 7x or 6 1/2x what it was back then. So to think that bitcoin could go to those levels because of chart squiggles I think is the height of silliness. I just think it's literally silly. It's the same thing as people who predicted Google and Nvidia were massively overvalued five years ago. And oh, by the way, there are a lot of people who thought the Mag 7 were overvalued five, five years ago. A lot of people, many of which I respect. I'm not saying you're one of them.

D (45:06)

Like I have no Dave, it's because of what you said that makes me even more bearish. Bitcoin is showing divergent weakness against what used to be a fundamental factor. The market has changed, the answers have changed. Now what matters in cryptos is we've put in a significant peak with the election of Donald Trump. That was a Faustian bargain. It's working out that way. And now we do see this is a space that tracks an an unlimited supply of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin was just the luxury of being first stop.

B (45:31)

No, I'm not part of my unfiltered is. Don't say stupid. Bitcoin is not unlimited. There are Bitcoin is no, no more similar to Solana or Pump Dot Fun, you know, Pepe the Frog than Nvidia is to General Motors.

C (45:49)

So that's. But let's talk about that because the, the General world believes what Mike says says they don't understand it. The if you talk to any normie out there, they do not understand the difference. They just think it's the oldest one. So I believe there's an arbitrage there and the arbitrage is in knowledge and that knowledge as it does come to market people more, more and more people understand it. They understand how these ETFs work and ibit and it's a gateway to, to getting a piece of something that is, is a digital gold. It's a gold upgrade digitally now, right, that, that, that's going to take Some time. And it's going to take the mainstream media to stop hammering it every single time it moves. But you know, it's it that, that again, it's a, it's a learning process and, and that, that presents, it presents opportunity. That, that there's a, there's a, there's a knowledge arbitrage going on there.

B (46:45)

Right?

D (46:48)

Here's a wager.

A (46:48)

Wait, Mike's got a bet. We gotta, we gotta tlt.

D (46:51)

TLT beats I bet this year. TLT beats. I bet. That's my view.

C (46:56)

No, we'll take that way.

D (46:58)

Good. So McGlone's the retard with. Hopefully I'll be right now.

C (47:06)

Because we like to rib you, Mike. We're calling you.

D (47:08)

I appreciate it. I love it. It's love, man. It's love. The big family.

B (47:12)

I like, I like McGloom better personally. I know you to be a smart dude. You're a gloomy dude.

A (47:17)

Yeah. But we're allowed to say retard again, Dave. And that's the. What's.

B (47:20)

Okay, well, cool.

A (47:23)

In the 80s. Yeah, go ahead.

B (47:24)

I think that the, the, the, the point that is missed when you look at 20, 25 is you people just keep missing something is that for bitcoin to become digital gold, there need to be wave upon wave, wave of distribution. You can't have bitcoin being held by the people who were all cypherpunks and have bitcoin being digital gold. It has to end up in the pockets of the average people and in pools of capital all around the world. And in order for that to happen, people have to sell.

C (47:54)

And we had looks like about a million coin. More than a million coins came out of old, old pockets, by the way.

B (48:02)

I think it's double that if you take different treasuries into account.

D (48:05)

Account.

B (48:06)

And you know, the, you know, the tac, you know, that are before, while it lasted, people, you know, fell over themselves to be able to on a tax efficient basis, you know, find exit liquidity from morons like me who bought Nakamoto and, and others, you know, by a lot. But you know, whatever. It's like you, you, you see, you saw that. So we saw a lot of distribution last year. Now is it going to continue? Will it continue to hold it down? I mean, when you talk about the stock market going up and bitcoin went down in a year, the stock market was up, up. I mean that correlation was broken. You know, the four year cycle said that last year should have been an up year. It was a down year. Obviously a four year cycle is because it's three data points and to look at that is dumb. But I just don't see these relationships being relevant. What I do think is, what I see is the ultimate stat r play is that bitcoin today is still at the cheapest it has ever been relative to its own network strength, strength. And every other time it's done that, it snapped back and gone into some version of euphoria. Now will we see no more new euphoria ever again in bitcoin? I don't know. I mean, today I think was the first day breaking the longest streak. I haven't looked at the fear and greed index this morning, but I'm gonna.

A (49:17)

Guess are we out of fear that.

B (49:19)

We might be out of fear for the first time? The longest streak in its history of bitcoin being in fear and extreme fear, I think might have just ended from October through through to now. That is an insane statistic year when it was literally down 10% which as Mike points out is a blip. It's nothing. Right. And so understand that those are the reasons that I think that. But I think we all have that much time. We should talk about Venezuela. And I'll go last.

A (49:48)

Depends on where you look, by the way. Because I'm looking. Let me just see. I'm looking at the crypto fear and greed that I have here. And we're still in fear.

B (49:54)

Well, there you go. Okay. Is that alternative me? That's.

A (49:57)

Yeah, I don't. Yeah, so yeah, that one.

B (50:00)

You know, we're still there. But it's, it's, it's. It, it is what it is in, in over a month that bitcoin didn't, didn't collapse at 9:45.

D (50:09)

Right.

B (50:09)

Actually it rallied because I think people expected the short and when, when shorts get crowded, they tend to turn into longs. You know, it's just you always want to be contrarian. I mean if I really believed that everyone that if. And I actually don't like the fact that Mike's being called MCD by people. Although I think they may be more on silver. I hate going with the crowd. I agree with buying when they're crying and selling when they're yelling. Oh, absolutely agree. I just think that people in bitcoin are, you know, it's morose and still. And now they're cheering. But we're still at the top of a range. I mean we would need to break out basically well over a hundred for people to get squeezed. And yet almost every technician that that even the ones that turn long that, that said, okay fine, we're not going to go down to below 80. All believe that 100 is going to be. Is a bear market rally. And so it really is that strong.

A (51:03)

So it is the weekly 50. You know I have for the chart squigglers, they just kind of see that's never, you know, we, if we lose that with strength, we usually go to the 200. So I see that but let's. Yeah, we only. I realize we don't have that much time. James, you were jumping in.

C (51:16)

No, I mean just about Venezuela because people are wondering about that. So there's a few things. Yeah. That that does. It produces a little bit of, of, of investor angst and, and you know, geopolitical, you know, possible conflict. There's not a war going on. It, you know, I think it, it took like six minutes to extract this guy. You know, so it's not like it was, it's not this ongoing conflict. However, like Dave said, we just created a situation that's it's possibly unstable. So we've got to, we've got to stabilize it. So that's why you could see things like gold up in a, in a, you know, a risk off trade. Now as far as oil is concerned, you know, Mike, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is going to take years for this to resolve. And the reason for that is the infrastructure in Venezuela is it. It is. It's not been maintained and up to date. And so it is. It's going to take billions, many billions of dollars, possibly, you know, tens of billions of dollars to fix this infrastructure to get it productive. There's a few things for people understand, you know, it's not going to be the United States spending money on it. It's going to be Chevron. It's going to be, you know, I think Chevron's the only oil company who's allowed to operate this there from, from the US right now. But it, that that's where the money is going to come from and they're going to profit from it for sure. Was this about oil? Of course it was. I mean it did. That's just the, the united. You heard the administration say it themselves last night. It's about oil too. You know, they're going to, you know, reap benefits from that. It's also about just realigning global political alliance like Global Alliance Sciences. And so you're, you know, we're literally looking to realign in a way that's, that's not just strategic, but it's. It's, you know, geographical. Now, I'm not a geopolitical expert, and that's about all I can really say about that. From my limited perspective. I don't know exactly what all of those levers are. This is a massively complicated situation. It's not as simple as. As oil. It's not as simple as just removing a dictator. So this has to do with China and Russia and Taiwan. These are all factors in this. It's not something that's just as simple and straightforward as. As mainstream media likes to make it.

A (53:55)

I love that. And I just. That that's where, like, I get mentally stuck, because I hate the arguments where people are like, the United States government wanted to free the Venezuelan people. Like, we don't give a shit about Venezuelan people. And if we wanted to free people from dictators, fly over to Africa. Come on.

B (54:11)

I got to push back there. So we Is a really complicated thing. Marco Rubio gives a lot of crap about the Venezuelan people. Yeah, Marco Rubio cares. It is literally the single most important thing to Marco Rubio, and he has been so consistent about this forever, is freeing the people who are under Marxist dictators in Latin America, starting with.

C (54:32)

To get that done, Dave, you need a benefit.

D (54:35)

It.

C (54:35)

And the benefit.

B (54:36)

I. I understand. I understand.

C (54:39)

You know, it's not.

B (54:39)

Let me make three really quick points. Three hot takes. Number one is we. It is the closest corollary to what happened was Noriega in Panama. And I'm old enough to remember when that happened. And we made one mistake in Panama, by the way, the Supreme Court said we had. All because Noriega, just like Maduro, was indicted in a US Court for drug trafficking. The Supreme Court's already ruled it was legal. So all these, excuse me, retards with all their talking points are ignoring one of them. And by the way. And many of them are lawyers, which means that they probably would fail their bar exam if they had to take it again. Or ignoring the fact Supreme Court's already said this.

C (55:21)

The Biden administration put a $25 million bounty.

A (55:26)

I want to remind people when I say these things, it has nothing to do with Trump.

B (55:29)

Trump.

A (55:29)

It's a United States policy going back to the 1960s.

B (55:32)

Oh, no, no, no. We're gonna. We're gonna get there in a second. But so point one, Supreme Court's already said it was legal. Panama was the biggest thing. The problem in Panama was we took Noriega out and we didn't. Didn't help stabilize the country.

C (55:47)

Stabilization is key. That's why you're.

B (55:49)

What happened was 10 years, 15 years later, Panama was in a much better place for having taken Noriega out. But it sucked. And there was chaos in the interim. And historians will tell you, and I have friends who are in Panama who say it's a great place now who operate businesses in Panama. But they will tell you that the history shows that they only wish that after the US Took out Noriega that they helped, that literally helped stabilize the situation so that the drug cartels, the chaos wouldn't happen. So that is the learning from history. And Rubio knows this far better than I do. And he's sitting in as a secretary of state. So understand when Trump stood up and said what he was, it was with that hat. Does he know any of this? Was he indirectly involved? Of course not. He knows as much as I do, which is what Marco Rubio is telling him, what the historians in the military are telling him. So that's thing number one. So I don't give, I give him a lot of credit. That's why I'm using the, this for, for actually saying what he did, because that was a mistake. We made it. If you're going to take out somebody legally who was a drug basically no different than the head of a cartel, because in fact they proven, well alleged, they prove enough for a grand jury to believe it that Maduro was ahead of a cartel. So that's thing one, thing two, Monroe Doctrine, 1823, that's how far back you go. And the Monroe Doctrine says we are not going to let, in that case, it was Europe. We're not going to let foreign powers operate in our hemisphere unimpeded. And is undeniable that China and Iran were operating in Venezuela. And if you think that isn't the issue is that oil, it's more than oil, it's oil. And I don't know if Bill Ackman is right about it being rarers. I don't really give a crap. What I will tell you is this is Trump basically saying the Monroe Doctrine matters. We're extending it to the rest of the world, period. And we have the perfect pretext for doing so. That's what he's doing. Now, you could argue that we shouldn't be having the Monroe Doctrine anymore make that argument. That's fine. But to say that we're deviating from history once again, Absolutely.

A (57:47)

No, I think that we have a very long history of doing this exact same thing.

B (57:52)

Exactly right. And I think that the point is to try to do it better because we've done so much worse.

A (57:57)

If we can do it better, that.

B (57:58)

Would be done in terms of putting up dictators and doing regime change. And I am massively against regime change in general. It's just, it's. Look, whether it's the Shah of Iran or in Chile or, you know, in, in Argentina, it doesn't matter. There are so many places where we have done horrible things in the American history. This is. This potentially might not be a horrible thing. This might be a good thing. And there's a chance to make that happen. The third thing I want to talk about is the rumor running around about bitcoin because there's all sorts of rumors. Zero Hedge published an article that Venezuela has a huge amount of bitcoin and that it was all. And it wasn't Venezuela, that Maduro had laundered drug money money to create an enormous amount of bitcoin. All I will say is I, I don't necessarily believe that's true. I don't have any notion whatever if it is true. It may be the single most bullish thing that could possibly come out of this because it would effectively mean that the United States, when they've been talking about we're going to have a strategic bitcoin reserve. We're going to get it through confiscation. We're going to have it. I think it would mean they have it because we're not talking about now. And by the way, they don't have to take all it. They could give some back to the Venezuelan people. They could use it to pay for doing a lot of what they're doing.

A (59:11)

They get it back to the victims of the pig butchering or whatever we call that.

B (59:15)

They could go back to. They could do whatever the hell they're going to do. But to think that that doesn't make a. A. To think that if it is true, that it doesn't create a massive incentive for the United States government to see bitcoin go higher is. Is literally putting your head in the sand. So I'm not saying it's true. True, but just understand if it's true because I've seen takes saying, oh, this is really bearish. It's like, no, I don't. It would be monstrously bullish. I also think it's probably bullshit. So I just wanted to make those.

A (59:45)

Mike, you get the final word on Venezuela before we jump.

C (59:50)

Oil.

D (59:51)

Well, it's definitely oil, but I think it's more the macro that Dave is. And we're Focusing on this. What does this mean? Let's just look at Putin. He's still running a war that he's horribly losing. And look at Mr. Trump because he wanted to get rid of a leader. Trump did it overnight. I mean it's just amazing how this shows how there's some of a little bit of American supremacy doing things right now. Obviously it's, it's the post, it's the peaceful transfer of power that matters, but it's just to show that. Am I still with you? It's just the show of that it can be done. So who else like the quote from Marco Rubio is any leader in Cuba should be concerned. The whole world should be concerned. Are you going to push back on Trump? I just look at obviously that's bullish for gold, but the bottom line is, is that bullish for our highly volatile cryptos? I don't think so.

A (60:41)

Yeah, I think it's insanely complicated and I think we did a decent job.

C (60:47)

At least showing how complicated it is. I mean it's just none of us really know. It's just. It's pretty complicated.

A (60:52)

Yeah, I'm just, you know, like it blows my mind sometimes when I hear bitcoins who describe themselves as libertarians then cheering when the United States does the most anti libertarian thing is which is intervene in foreign affairs and countries that are not our own. Maybe it'll be a great thing for the people this time. I have no idea. I have my doubts. But we're going to go ahead and leave it. People think it's tbs. It's so funny. Like I see it in the comments all the time. I think it's equal. If you think that any of us here have tds, you should have watched the show when Biden was president. I think that we're more hypercritical and once again I think that this is a United States policy and certainly not a political one considering as you said, Biden had a $25 million bounty on Amadora's head. Let's hope for the best guys. 1005. It's great to be back. Thank you. Dave for President. I told you my new background is going to be the Oval Office and I love the energy today. It's great to be back. We will be back of course, next, next Monday as well. Gentlemen, that's all I've got for you. Thank you so much. Happy New Year. Even though we're not allowed to say it and, and we're going back to M. In my opinion, Mike.

D (62:02)

Okay, got it.

C (62:03)

Love it.

D (62:04)

All Right.

A (62:04)

Thank you, gentlemen. See you next week.

B (62:06)

Bye. Let's do.

D (62:17)

Foreign.

A (62:22)

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