Bitcoin Inflows EXPLODE As The Fed & Wall Street Adoption Continues! What's Next?

Summary

The Wolf of All Streets

Episode: “Bitcoin Inflows EXPLODE As The Fed & Wall Street Adoption Continues! What's Next?”

Host: Scott Melker
Date: December 8, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the state of global markets as Bitcoin continues to see record inflows amidst expectations of Federal Reserve policy shifts and ongoing Wall Street adoption. Led by Scott Melker, and joined by veteran analysts Mike McGlone and Dave, the discussion covers inflation, Fed pivot prospects, the role of gold and traditional markets, equity concentration, Bitcoin’s place in the macro landscape, and sentiment—tying all of these to broader questions about stimulus, speculation, and the future of value.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Inflation, Fed Policy, and Economic Regime Uncertainty

• Fed’s Next Move: The consensus is that inflation is falling and the market overwhelmingly expects a 25 basis-point rate cut in the upcoming meeting ([00:00–03:22], [08:53–11:12]).
  • Mike: “If they don't cut 25 basis points, I would estimate the stock market drops 3 to 5% in a heartbeat.” ([03:22])
  • Expectations of a “hawkish cut”—with dissent among Fed participants—could rattle risk sentiment.
• QE by Another Name: Discussion of “reserve management purchases” and whether the Fed will restart balance sheet growth under different terminology ([11:12–13:55]).
• Liquidity and Risk: The Fed is expected to inject liquidity “not as a fire hose, but a steady trickle,” unless a credit event arises ([13:55–14:01]).

2. Equity Markets: Fragility Beneath the Surface

• Market Concentration: Noticeable concern about the stock market’s rally being driven by a handful of mega-cap stocks—the “Mag 7”—leaving indices vulnerable ([26:29–28:13]).
  • Scott: "If you got the stock market this concentrated in just seven to 10 names… that could really drive a quick drawdown that people haven’t seen before." ([26:34])
• Sentiment Paradoxes: Large institutional players are still “risk on,” but both the stock and crypto markets show fear/extreme fear in retail sentiment trackers, creating a “contrarian” setup ([25:58–26:29]).

3. Gold, Silver, and Sound Money Narratives

• Gold’s Position:
  • Mike: Gold’s outperformance vs. S&P is signaling something’s wrong; but he warns it’s “stretched” and potentially entering decades-long sideways action ([00:26–02:28], [14:01–14:29], [14:29–15:40]).
  • Dave: Disagrees on gold being overstretched, points out the importance of adjusting for the money supply, arguing gold could go to $5,500, even $16,000 in certain historical contexts ([03:34–05:54]).
    • Quote: "Divide the whole damn thing by the number of dollars in circulation... then tell me that the chart looks stretched. Because it doesn't." — Dave ([03:34])
• Silver: Seen as a geopolitical tool (e.g., China), with price targets around $75–80 for this cycle ([05:54]).
• Nominal vs. Real Values: Strong debate on whether assets should be measured in nominal terms or adjusted for monetary inflation ([08:01–08:53]).
  • Quote: "People need to know what their actual asset is valued at today's dollars. They don't care about whether it's adjusted or not." — Scott ([08:15])

4. Bitcoin: Market Position, Psychology, and Institutional Adoption

• Fear Despite Inflows: Noted that Bitcoin sentiment has been in “two months of fear or extreme fear” even as technicals suggest a bottoming ([23:49–24:17]).
  • Dave: “I think we’ve bottomed. I think most technical… most KOLs [Key Opinion Leaders] are still cautious.”
• Correlation and Decorrelation:
  • Bitcoin and crypto have decoupled from equities recently; widespread agreement they’d only recouple with stocks during a mass sell-off ([44:54–46:28]).
  • Quote: “Bitcoin is not correlated to anything right now.” — Scott ([46:11])
• Wall Street Flows & Broadening Access:
  • Inflows remain strong due to rising institutional allocations, new ETF structures, and financial advisors recommending portfolio additions (not just MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor; big Ether buys too) ([36:36], [59:42]).
  • Quote: “People that are buying it are buying it because their financial advisors are starting to say… you should put… 4% of your portfolio into this asset because it could 10x…” — Dave ([36:36])
• Cycles & Myth-Busting:
  • Debate on “four-year cycle” theory: Dave challenges the narrative, calling out “intellectual dishonesty” among long-term bulls who expect cycle amplitudes to compress further ([58:15]).
  • Quote: "If the four year cycle narrative is indeed intact, and if indeed we have decreasing amplitude of bitcoin rises, then by definition it will never get to where it goes… those two statements cannot be reconciled." — Dave ([58:15])

5. Macro Risks, Stimulus, and Everything Bubble

• Intervention as Default: Widespread belief that any significant risk-off event in stocks will trigger “massive liquidity infusion” by global authorities ([28:13–30:31]).
  • Quote: "Is there any anybody out there who thinks that the government doesn’t pull out the plunge protection team... start buying bonds, buying stocks, buying futures?” — Dave ([28:13])
• Manipulation & Late-Stage Behavior:
  • Markets are now so “trained” to expect intervention that the need for support is as strong as the want—a hallmark of “late-stage Roman Empire” excess ([19:44], [61:01]).

6. Crypto Market Structure: Altcoins, Innovation, and Morale

• Speculation vs. Real Value:
  • Many altcoins have little to no sustainable economic foundation; broad altcoin underperformance is both a symptom and a signal of broader risk-off sentiment ([37:55], [43:47]).
  • Quote: "If you look at the top 200, I’d probably estimate 180 of them have lots of error there." — Dave ([43:47])
• Industry Morale & “Bottom Signals”:
  • Noted exodus of “true believers” from crypto, with even long-term advocates publicly calling it a scam—seen by panelists as a classic sign of bottoming in sentiment ([52:37–53:10]).
  • Quote: “That’s bear market bottom stuff.” — Mike ([52:55])
• Casino/Gambling Narrative:
  • Surging interest in prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi is viewed as a symptom of economic desperation, not prosperity ([59:42–62:50]).
  • Quote: “When people start to wildly speculate, it’s not because they’re having fun, it’s because they’re feeling desperate…” — Scott ([59:42])

7. Long-Term Systemic Issues: Corruption, Fiat, and the Search for Alternatives

• Corruption & Late-Stage System Woes:
  • Extensive anecdotal discussion on corruption in politics, NGO campaign finance, and “death rattles” of the fiat system ([63:22]).
  • Quote: “That's late-stage Roman Empire stuff... and that's the kind of thing that tells me that the fiat system is having... these are the death rattles.” — Dave ([63:43])
• Investment Outlook:
  • Panelists agree that while there’s mounting evidence of systemic strain, policy responses guarantee more money printing—making it very hard to be “bearish in nominal terms” ([65:23]).

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Asset Valuation:
  • Dave ([03:34]): “Divide the whole damn thing by number of dollars in circulation… then tell me that the chart looks stretched. Because it doesn’t… If you start looking at gold as percentage of total financial assets, the peak in 1980—we’re not even close to it.”
• On Stock Market Support:
  • Dave ([19:44]): “If you think Mike McGlone is the only human being who understands how important the S&P500 and the NASDAQ are to GDP, then you’re not paying attention. Everybody in the government understands that they need markets to stay up. Now when it goes from want to need, that should make everybody’s spidey senses go crazy…”
• On Bitcoin Sentiment:
  • Dave ([23:49]): “In two days, we will be at two months of fear or extreme fear on sentiment.”
• On Liquidity & Speculation:
  • Scott ([59:42]): “…When people start to wildly speculate, it's not because they're having fun, it's because they're feeling desperate and know that they're on a hamster wheel, that they can't win and they need to take bigger and bigger bets and risks to survive.”
• On Cycles and Intellectual Honesty:
  • Dave ([58:15]): "You cannot be long term bullish on Bitcoin as a store of value and believe that the amplitudes of the four year cycles are decreased to this level... those two statements cannot be reconciled."

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Key Timestamps

• 00:00–03:22: Opening thoughts on inflation, the Fed, and market expectations
• 05:54–08:53: Debate on gold’s valuation, importance of denominators for asset pricing
• 14:01–14:29: Gold/S&P 500 ratio at historic inflection; technical market summary
• 26:29–28:13: Discussion of equity market concentration and “contrarian” fear signals
• 36:36–37:55: Institutional flows into Bitcoin/Ether and shifting advisor attitudes
• 44:54–46:28: Correlation–decoupling between Bitcoin and traditional markets, and what it means at extremes
• 52:37–53:10: Industry morale and “bear market bottom” commentary as pundits exit
• 58:15: Cycle amplitude debate and calling out intellectual dishonesty in crypto analysis

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Markets are “priced for perfection”: Any unexpected policy or liquidity move could catalyze sharp drawdowns.
• Bitcoin remains at the intersection of macro risk, institutional adoption, and shifting sentiment.
• Speculation and excess in both crypto and equity markets are symptoms of systemic, late-stage fiat malaise—printing and interventions remain the only consistent response.
• Sentiment extremes, both euphoria and despair, are ripe for reversals as history has shown.
• Panelists forecast volatility ahead in both directions, with strong skepticism about easy, one-way bets in any asset class.

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For listeners seeking actionable insight: Maintain humility, monitor the macro, and watch for both technical and emotional capitulation as signals of market turns—especially in environments as highly manipulated and sentiment-driven as today’s.

Transcript

[Mike McGlone]

Inflation is no longer an issue expected to be down, not up. She thinks that they're going to be pricing for another 25 basis points next year Case is not strong to drop that and it's hard for me a hawkish cut.

She'S thinking more of a neutral tendency in this meeting Ira Jersey came on reiterated that he said is the majority of the members likely expect inflation coming down.

He made some statements about funding QE he used the term reserve management purchases Looks like we might go back to that again Quote was there's not a lot of excesses and reserves available anymore why expect the Fed to increase the balance sheet And I'm sure in my thought I was thinking of James when he said I want to hear James comments and what he's thinking there. Michael Casper equity guy kind of reiterate most of the main mostly bullish outlooks from the equities he did point out a potential thorn in the side is their economic regime model which shows a 30% probability of expansion next year which is bad for stocks Kind of showing late stage rally stuff but it's check listed for favorable is still favorable for most of the stock market rally to continue. It's very valid. Russell 2k is very well supported and S and p struggling with MAG7 multiples as we know some people said there's potential shift that's going to be away to the other 493Sergey came in spoke a little bit about what's happened Russia and Ukraine war he that if it gets solved Hungary, Hungarian, Florence is number one call and then I tilted over to commodities and focus on the mighty soybean. The mighty soybean you should care about because it popped up from 10 to 1111 change looks like it's heading back downward. It's the world's most significant oil seed hit tech oil in that data and it's very much highly correlated depending on massive supply coming out of Brazil and looks like it's going to head back downward. It's up 20% since 2019 which is the main period. Crude oil is down 3% then I focus on what's happening today in natural gas. It's typically what happens peak winter Natural gas is down 6% this morning because it was up too much and I look at the Bloomberg energy index is down over 3% today. I fully expect it to continue lower because you basically need a shift in global warming trends a second colder than normal winter in a row for natural gas to stay high and then I tilt it over to what I think is happening with gold and copper and crude oil. I'm sorry. And bitcoin. I think the main to me things for bitcoin and gold is gold's telling us something's wrong. When gold takes alpha, that's a problem. And it's really taken alpha. And when it gets this stretched like silver, I get scared now from these levels, history shows, yeah, it can go up a lot, but then it can stay at these levels for decades. Not just years, decades. When it gets this stretched. And I just pointed out that bitcoin gold ratio I think is going to continue to decline just below 22 now. And the key level is 94. Got to be up on the air. If we can be up on the air, that would be wonderful. Above 94. And to me the re key risk is it drops below 84. And back to you.

[Dave]

Poly market for December is 95, but January is 64 and doing nothing.

[Scott]

Yeah, when Mike says it's 99, he's saying that the Fed fund's futures are 99.6%, meaning all the bond, all the bond traders are expecting it like 1, like 100%.

[Mike McGlone]

So just think of the concept now, if they don't cut 25 base points, I would estimate if stock market dropped 3 to 5% in a heartbeat, that's not going to happen. They're not going to do that. It's so priced in, they're going to cut 25 in couple days and then.

[Dave]

It'Ll drop a percent and a half or so because it'll be, you know, there you go until the news conference and then they'll be parsing every word and we'll look at it. I mean, I want to go back to something that you said because, you know, you and I often disagree, but I violently disagree with something that you said. So you're talking about gold and silver and you said when it gets this stretched, etc. And all I'll say is divide the whole damn thing by number of dollars in circulation, divide the whole damn thing by the amount of money that's been printed. And then, then tell me that the chart looks stretched. Because the answer is it doesn't. And you know, if you do, I, I've been doing a lot of analysis. I mean, it's, it's, I love AI it's just great because you can do all sorts of really cool stuff. But if you start looking at gold as percentage of total financial assets, the peak in 19, and by the way, there's different ways of measuring it, but the peak that we reached in 1980, we're not even close to it. In fact, to get to an all time peak would be somewhere between around 5,500 bucks. And that by the way, is only in the post Bretton woods era. To get to a peak based on. If you go back hundreds of years, we're talking about 16,000. Now funny enough is I had a conversation a few months ago with Josh Mann who he of the $84,000 time traveler fame. But Josh is actually at his core a pretty good trader and a pretty smart dude. And he had a 16,000 price target on gold and I could never figure out where it came from. And then after poking around with AI effectively what he's saying is gold to get to a all time high relative back to where it used to be, that would be very stretched in terms of percentage of financial assets. Now I don't think we'll get there because frankly, I think that bitcoin is going to start getting eating a lot of that data. But when you start looking at the amount of dollars and the lack of any willpower, and it's not just dollars, by the way, because it's a global thing. If you start looking at the dollar, the yen now, the.

However you want to call it. I never understood. Someone's going to have to explain to me how they have two names, same currency someday. But I just don't understand that the euro, etc, they're all printing and they're all printing tons. Scott, are you talking.

Oh, sorry. I just wanted to make sure that you weren't muted. Yeah, so the bottom line is that, you know, look, I personally disagree with you. Funny, because I'm more bullish on gold than you are. I think that we will see 5,500 in this rally and I think we will see $75 to $80 silver in this rally. And there's one other motivating reason here, and that is geopolitics. Chinese have considered silver money for thousands of years. Nothing in that has changed. It was. It is a great stick in the eye to us as well. So they get two birds with one stone.

Oops. Yeah, we're having all sorts of glitches. Mike, can you hear me by the way? Because you're muted. Just nod if you can.

[Mike McGlone]

Oh yeah, I, I hear you, Dave. And I was so waiting for here to talk today because you were fired up before the call. Just keep going. I love these races.

[Dave]

No, no, but, but we haven't even talked about bitcoin yet. I mean, we're just, I'm just Saying that, you know, from a gold and silver perspective, I think the denominator of dollars matters an absolute ton and people keep ignoring it. So you run charts in nominal values like we know nobody. No, no economist will run a nominal GDP chart because if they do, they'll get laughed at. So why the. Excuse my language. Why the f. Do we consider it reasonable to run nominal value price charts on assets that literally are valued based upon a. Changing the underlying currency? I don't understand. I know, James, you don't want to talk, but I mean, I think I've encapsulated you're. You're muted by the way I think I've encapsulated, you know, your thesis for the last, you know, whatever years. But the numbers are pretty interesting when you look at that. So that's really my only problem with it. But because, you know, we're conflating fundamentals and technicals on a technical basis, looking at nominal charts if that's the only information that were handed me. Everything you said, Mike, makes total sense. Except for what you haven't said yet about Bitcoin losing a zero. But you know, but everything you said in, in this morning I agree with. But we're not in a nominal world. We're in a real world and in the real world we're getting more dollars. So anyway, that's my thought of the day. There's a lot.

[Scott]

Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty simple.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Scott]

Dave said I didn't want to talk. My, my brother in law gave me some sort of chest cold and so I'm calling him out. He's sh. Shame, shame, shame to come to Thanksgiving.

[Dave]

With a chest cold.

[Scott]

So anyways, well, I mean, like think about it, Dave. It just wouldn't be reasonable to, to have everything in nominal in, in, in real charts if you're, you're looking at the dollars that you're going to get and you have to pay taxes on.

[Dave]

Right?

[Scott]

So I mean people, people need to know what their actual asset is valued at today's dollars. They don't care about whether it's adjusted or not. And you know, it works pretty well because as we continue to expand the money supply, everybody thinks that they're a genius. They're getting rich because they own stocks and houses. And so it just obfuscates.

Just the constant pressure on the purchasing power of the dollar. So it works out really well for the system. But going back to what Mike was saying and asking about and just talking about the Fed and whether or not the Fed's going to come in with QE or what's going to happen here? They're going to add to their balance sheet? Well, the answer is let's go, let's talk about the Fed high level first and we can get to the, to gold and get back to gold and back to Bitcoin. But the high level is, yeah, obviously the Fed has to cut. Now the market's telling them to cut. It would be a market shock if they didn't. So they're going to cut. The question now is, are they, and as Mike said, is it going to be a hawkish cut, meaning are they going to have three of the, of the participants of the, the voters on the Fed? Are they going to dissent and dissent loudly and is it going to force Powell to say, look, we're gonna, we're gonna be data dependent like he did last time, and if he does that, then the market's not going to love that. The market wants more cuts. Clearly we got to keep this train going.

[Dave]

So.

[Scott]

But he did already say that they're going to expand the balance sheet of the Fed. He didn't say it in those terms. What he said was we're going to shore up the balance, balance sheets of, of the, of the banks. The, the bank reserves. The bank reserves are getting to a point where it's, it's beginning to make them a little bit cautious, not nervous, it's a little bit wary that, okay, they're getting down now, we've got to, we've got to get them back up. And with the government being closed for over a month and there being almost a trillion dollars in the treasury general account that hasn't, that hasn't flowed back into the economy yet. It's still sitting there, most of it. And that's almost $200 billion that is sitting there that needs to get back into the economy. And some of that will go to the Fed balance or the, the reserve of the banks. So they're watching it and he's, but basically he just said where it's going to happen. We're going to be buying. Is that. Mike, you're trying to share something. Did it work?

[Mike McGlone]

Oh, wait, I'll wait till you're done. Sorry to interrupt.

[Scott]

Yeah, no, it's okay.

[Mike McGlone]

I was testing it. The technology works.

[Scott]

The technology works. So the bottom line is whatever they do is it, it's going to likely start out as just buying T bills at auctions, you know, and that way they can say it's not QT like, just like they did back in 2019 they said this is reserve management. These are reserve management purposes. Purchases of treasury bills. They're gonna do the same exact thing. They're gonna say it's not qe, it's not qe. Yeah, well, that those reserve balances that ended up on the federal, the Fed's balance sheet through their purchases, they stayed there, they never got rid of them. So it was qe. You know, whether or not you want to admit it, whatever you want to call it, Fed put assets on their balance sheet, that, that injected liquidity. And so what everybody thinks about qe, they think an injection of liquidity, it's not just purchase a long term treasury assets, you know, or sorry, treasury bonds. It could be anything that they're doing. It could be an acronym that's adding liquidity. So when people think qe, they think liquidity. And I know that it's a, it's a technicality and God, economists love to fight about this and the Fed loves to obfuscate it. But the reality is that when people hear QE they think liquidity and so they're going to start injecting liquidity. Now the question is how much? I don't think it's going to be that much at the beginning. I think it's just going to be like a steady flow. It's going to be maybe 20, 30 billion dollars a month that they're buying of treasury bills, T bills and they're just adding them to the balance sheets. They're adding reserves. The banks assure them back up because they've gotten to a level that it's starting to make them nervous. They need enough capital in there for velocity of capital to keep this GDP going. And when it gets down to 7% of GDP, they get, they start getting really nervous because at 7.7% is when we had the repo crisis in, in 2019 and then under 10% of the, of bank total assets, they get nervous. So we're not there yet, we're still in the 9% range. But next year I do expect them to start doing this if they don't start doing it this year. But it's not going to be a fire hose, it's going to be a steady trickle in my, in my opinion. And it won't be a fire hose until we have some sort of credit event or a serious spike in, in the use of the, of the repo overnight window. And we could talk about that. That's a completely different situation, a completely different problem the Fed has that they haven't been able to get that. They have not been able to get banks to use this. Which is why we're seeing the sofa rate spike every once in a while because they're borrowing from each other rather than the window. But we'll, we'll talk about that in a bit. Go ahead, Mike.

[Mike McGlone]

Well, much appreciated. And wherever you want to jump in, I just want to show two charts real quick on gold and I think it's important and I appreciate the disagreement Dave, but first I want to show part of the reason I'm just like it tilted way too early.

[Dave]

You what?

Yeah, we do. Oh you do? Oh, oh. We don't see it on the stream. I see.

[Mike McGlone]

Okay, well I'll talk, I'll talk about what I was trying to say. So right now the ratio of S P500 divided by gold is dropped significantly this year. It's the lowest since 2013. And if you look on it, this is a total return. By the way, if you have go back to 19977 it's the same. You basically last since 1997 you've been have an equal return in gold versus s P500 and potentially less volatility. But the key thing is also it's happening is 10 year yields just starting to roll over like it did in 2006 and 7. Remember being in that trade it looks like it's just starting to roll over downward. So I look at that macro in that and I just look over at gold. I look at gold in the five year average. It's gold relative to its five year average. It's the highest since 1980. And I get what you say, Dave. The point is the key thing that's happening to me is that gold divided by S&P 500 ratio is just starting to turn upward. And it's from buried for like decades. It's just starting to turn higher. So I look at this is the next big trade which probably means yields going down and just a little backup in the stock market. God help us if we ever get to the 200 day moving average in S&P 500. Bitcoin's already dropped below and telling we're going to do it. To me that's the next big trade that's happening. And the key thing I want to point out is gold is obviously I've been fundamentally technically bullish for gold way too long and you have to take the pain. I mean I kept calling it for gold above 2000 for certainly when Russia invaded Ukraine and they wouldn't, didn't, wouldn't do it. So finally 2024 broke up. Now we broke out to these relative highs. And this is where I have to point out you have to switch off my switch towards my risk manager hat. And risk manager hat is now that everybody's yelling for gold and those of us who've, a lot of us have been involved in overweight gold and doing very well, you're supp to say thank you and do the rational investment thing, not be emotional and take some profits and not overweight gold at these levels. It's just very scary. And that was my, my conclusions I defined this week. And I think that really hurts most bitcoiners and not most, I'll say many is they're way too emotional about an investment. You should never get emotional about investment. I hear this everywhere. I don't know how many podcasts I listen to talking about the Treasuries. And the key thing they end with is oh, but you have to believe in bitcoin. Like no, you should never believe in anything. You should use a rational investment. Is this expensive or is this cheap? And where it's going, and that's my bias is gold was cheap forever. Now I think it's expensive. Bitcoin I think was cheap forever and reached its plateau. And I think it's expensive. And now I think bonds are cheap. And particularly all we have to do is get to that 200 day moving average in S P500 and then we'll see what happens from there. And it's just going to be when question is, do we does the moving average go to the price of the price eventually get there. So I'll end with one key fact. If we drop 5% and the S&P 500, that's almost 13% of GDP. That's the most for a 5% move almost ever on a global basis. It's the most ever for market cap. It's just where we are now. You look for alternatives.

[Dave]

I mean virtually never, except for some very extraordinary circumstances, bought anything, right? They never bought assets. They would manage the treasury, they would help the treasury general account. You could park money there. You can move stuff in and out.

[Scott]

Now what they did do though, Dave, is they, that Greenspan in 1987, you remember this, he said, we got your back. The Feds got your back. They didn't do anything, but they basically said they got their. Then in 1998, they, they engineered that bailout for Long Term Capital Management. Even though they didn't put assets on their, on their balance sheet, they engineered it. But yeah, go ahead.

[Dave]

But the point is then, you know, with the global financial crisis and with, and there's a very famous YouTube about QE with these two, with, with older stuff, you know, going, the Ben Bernanke is buying qe. It's really funny, but they've normalized it to the point where people just kind of are immune to the fact that they're going to be a buyer. Now Japan quite famously owns, what is it, 40% of the Japanese government bond market, JDB, JGBs. And that's been normalized over 50%. Right. So there, you know, it's all become normalized. Let's, let's call this by it, by any other name, this is market manipulation. Right. But what James basically told you was that the very small.

Allowing bonds to mature, not selling, but allowing bonds to mature is now going to stop. So what does that mean? Well, that means that they have to resume a bond buying program. Actually they never stopped it because they didn't let them all mature. And so you have monthly, daily, basically injections into the economy of more money and they need to keep doing so. And Mike said something that was profound.

And it's really, really important politically to understand. If you think Mike McGlone is the only human being who understands how important the s and P500 and the NASDAQ are to GDP, then you're not paying attention. Everybody in the government understands that they need markets to stay up. Now when it goes from want to need, that should make everybody's spidey senses go crazy because need is exactly what people shoot against. And so when the bank of England needed the pound to stay up and George Soros shot against him, that became really interesting. But the difference is the stock market has been trained over years not to fight the howitzer of money that could come. And so unlike anything else, no hedge funds are going to have the ability to short markets. Plus they don't really have a good reason to. Plus it's technically harder to. And so, you know, this is the battle that's going on. But as long as there's more money being printed, it's hard to stay at a risk assets. I mean it doesn't matter what your risk asset is. I'm just laughing because we were looking on Long beach island where we have a house and we're looking to move from the oceanside to the bay to get a little bit quieter. And the house that we were, a house that we were looking at has literally doubled since 2020. Our current house, if you believe it has literally doubled since 2020. That's a housing market. Five year doubling in houses. Does that make sense to anyone? Well, it does when you consider that we've basically doubled the money supply. So of course. So when my wife says, oh my God, it's doubled, it's going to come back down, I go, well, no, we've doubled the amount of money. And so of course, on a real basis it looks like prices are up, but they're not. And that, that is the most profound point here. And, and I hate to harp on it, actually, I don't hate it. I enjoy harping on it because I think people keep missing it. But that's why there's a. That's why. But I want to go back to silver, Mike. You know, gold and silver, you know, you say gold is stretched here. Okay, now let's just say. Go with me for a second. If let's just say that up to 3,000, 3,500, the largest buyers were central banks and everything beyond that are speculators, that's probably a reasonable way of looking at it. I mean, it may actually be more, but where's the supply going to come from for it to get sold? Are people queuing up like they did in previous gold rallies at Cash for Gold?

Right, so that is the interesting question. And it usually is true. It's true in the spot silver market for sure, because I own silver coins, I've owned them for a long time and I've been wondering, hey, I just checked, I wasn't planning on selling anything, but I was checking and you can't sell above spot or for silver eagles anymore. And you used to be able to for pretty much for decades. You could sell one or two dollars above spot and they would charge three or four dollars above spot, which by the way, is a crazy bid ask spread for anybody who cares about these things. But it looks like there's a lot of supply of above ground gold and silver coming onto the market. And that's meeting the derivative and other speculation. And so we'll see where that goes. Right now it's churning supply and kind of basing at these levels. But you're right. You could be right. It's really a question of supply, but that's on the gold and silver side. On the bitcoin side, I've maintained it. And people, I've been getting louder and louder. We should pivot to bitcoin being that we like to talk about crypto here. Right? Scott, can you hear us?

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

I hope you can hear me. I took the Cartridge out and I blew on it. And then I put it back in. I took it out, I blew on it again, and then I put it back in.

[Mike McGlone]

We. We hear you fine.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

Super Mario Brothers, let's go. Very professional here. Cool.

[Dave]

Well, whatever. You know, there's a lot of people cheering off and on again, a lot.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

Of very stressed guys behind the screen waving their arms a lot and doing this.

[Scott]

All good, all good.

[Dave]

Yeah. Well, you know, you're a professional. We even got the blazer to look like.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

At least I dressed up to be quiet, you know.

[Dave]

Yeah, but. But I mean. But the thing about. The thing about bitcoin that's interesting is we are now going on.

[Mike McGlone]

We.

[Dave]

In two days, we will be at two months of fear or extreme fear on sentiment. You know, I've had arguments over the weekend with people who think that the consensus. Because within the bubble of bitcoin today, people are still bullish. Although if you listen, people say, well, I'm bullish in the long term, but I don't know about the next. I'm one of the only people out there who is saying, I think we've bottomed. I think most technical, most kol.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

Tom Lee agrees.

[Dave]

Well, Tom Lee has to. Once again, Tom Lee and Michael Saylor. Tom Lee is Atlas holding up the world of Ethereum. Michael Saylor is trying to hold up the world of bitcoin. And generally when do that, the rest of the world shoots against them and overwhelms them.

[Scott]

Let's put a caveat on that, Dave, because sentiment and stocks are still risk on. I saw an article just before coming on here on Bloomberg, and there was a chart, and there I cannot share, but it basically said that investors are. Are pretty optimistic about stocks in 2026. And out of 37 managers that they surveyed, 30% of them are risk on and only 3% are risk off. 4% are kind of mixed, so. Or not. Sorry, not percent. 30 versus third versus three. So the vast majority of them are risk on. Here's the caveat to what you're saying about whether or not bitcoin has bottomed. If the general market does sell off, I agree with Mike that that bitcoin will be dragged down with it, as will gold, as will silver, as well. Everything else in your portfolio. If the stock market sells off or draws down steeply, that will happen. And that chart right there is the one that gives me pause. The one that says everybody's risk on. That's a contrarian chart. Everybody needs to understand this. When you see everybody say, hey, it's time to buy the stock market. It's time to buy the stock market. Get long Nvidia. Get long. Apple. Get long. Google. That means that they're long. So just remember that if you're a new investor. Yeah. That means that they're already invested, the money's already there and the only place it could go is down. But go ahead. Sorry, Scott.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

I'm going to say if we're risk gone, then why are we still seeing even the stock market in fear? Is that a retail view versus the hedge fund and Wall street and institutional view or is it like immediate sense versus an optimism about 2026.

[Scott]

The stock market is in fear. Is that, I didn't see that the.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

Stock market fear and greed. And it's also been in fear or extreme fear for as long as the bitcoin one, which kind of counteracts the study, you know, and the numbers that you're talking about, which are the crazy, the crazy part.

[Scott]

Look, the, the crazy part is that we're, we're within 1% of all time highs.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

It's crazy.

[Scott]

You know, so, so and I wrote all about this. The, the stock, the stock market fear and greed versus the bitcoin fear and greed, they're different measures. They, they, they measured the fear and greed differently. But you know, with, with the stock market they've got market momentum, stock price strength, stock price breadth, the put and call options market volatility, safe haven demand and junk buy bond demand. One thing to, to get your head around on this, Scott, is the, one of the reasons that it could show fear yet the market is at all time highs is just because the pure concentration of the market, you've got just a few handful of names that are driving the entire fucking market. It's, it's, it's mind blowing. And that's another fear that people ought to assess, you know, or another concern that they ought to assess. And that is if you got the stock market this concentrated in just seven to 10 names, right? And you, you've got all, you've got the stock market buying and selling concentrated in ETFs. That's passive investing. That, that could really drive a, a quick drawdown that people haven't seen before. That's where in this day and age it is a little bit different. Even with all the stock market breakers that we have, you know, it is a little bit different than before. And so that's the part that gives me the pause. Both the concentration and the, the optimism right now. And bitcoin can get caught up in that Again, I'm not a bear at all. I think we have never left the bull market from bitcoin. I think we're going to go higher along with liquidity in the markets. But that's a longer term view than just a few weeks.

[Dave]

So I want to pull on that thread a bit because I actually agree with a lot of what you said, except for and for Joe Collar, Sarah and other people who say I tend to go along too much. I actually think the stock market is climbing a wall of worry here in nominal terms, not in real terms because we're going to continue to print. I think that markets tend to anticipate government movements and the truth is that you and Mike are right that the stock market could come unraveled really quickly if there was a world, and this world doesn't exist by the way. If there was a world where people started selling and just randomly did for whatever reason, it doesn't matter. It could be a, you know, a massive fund deciding to unwind their stock market holdings to trigger liquidations. Kind of like what happened in Bitcoin and not Bitcoin in altcoins on October 10th. But let's just say it started and let's say there was a news story that started it. I don't know. It doesn't matter what it is. Is there any anybody out there who thinks that the government doesn't pull out the plunge protection team and start buying, I mean literally buying bonds, buying stocks, you know, buying futures? Is there any? At this point the market has been trained to think that the government can't afford the stock market to drop. Now I don't believe that that's all necessarily true. I'm just saying what people actually think. So the question is, let's just say, let's just hypothesize a massive, you know, what will be massive these days would be like a 10% two day or 15% two day, something like around what happened around the tariff tantrum last spring. What happens? What's the natural result? The natural result is a massive infusion of liquidity. The question is, will Bitcoin's beta be high to the downside or will it be low like it was last time? Because last time bitcoin moved more or less in tandem. It didn't move at a higher amount. And bitcoin's already been down farther, right?

[Scott]

Bitcoin's already down 30%. So, you know, I mean, in a.

[Dave]

Stock market crash of, you know, where we get to an actual bear market, a 20% downdraft. You'd be nuts to say that bitcoin wouldn't be testing those 70,000 ish levels. That's true. But what happens at the resulting liquidity infusion that comes in in order to prop up the stock market?

[Scott]

Try to time that.

[Dave]

Yeah, I think you'd be nuts to say that bitcoin doesn't go even higher than it did last time. All of the things being equal and so timing it is very, very difficult. But let's just take the bear case. Let's just take the contrary case. Let's say the fact that the market just keeps grinding higher like it did in 2009, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, with occasional pauses. In that scenario, where will bitcoin go as long as there's continued money printing, et cetera, et cetera? That's the question. And in my mind there's a level of stretch versus fair value models and it depends whose fair value model you get to. Mark Yusko was on talking about how the four year cycle is intact, et cetera, and he and I could debate that. And I don't want to pick on you, Mark, without being able to do that. We should do a one on one on this one. But the truth is that versus the average of fair value models, which according to Grok, is around 105ish to 125 right now, or 135. It goes as high as that and on the low end is around the mid-90s. We're slightly undervalued. Bitcoin has never been this undervalued for this long without a pretty strong snapback bounce. All of the things being equal. And to me that is what matters here. I dispute the four year cycle myth because we had never had euphoria in this cycle. This is the first cycle if there was such a thing as a cycle. There has never been one where bitcoin didn't get to expensive versus fair value models. This is the first time it never did.

[Mike McGlone]

I got to follow up on that in a little bit. Let's praise the bitcoin gods and I'll pass the ammunition.

[Dave]

It's not gods, it's data, Mike.

[Mike McGlone]

So here's the data. The market was up 30% in the year. Now it's down 3%. That's beginning of the end. I'm making my call that this is the beginning of the next 50% drawdown. The S&P 500. It's only been two since the beginning of this, this millennium. And I think this is another one. It's getting started. And here's one exactly why. I mean you just don't want to be outright long overweight, long US Stock market. Here you look for alternatives. This is the Warren Buffett model. I'm just using S&P 500 divided by GDP. And here's one of the most beautiful charts. I just love this chart. Bottom out, head and shoulders. This is. Look at the gold divided S&P 500. It's starting to break out upward. I'll take that. I mean it looks like it's going up. So that's uber long term. Let's switch over to shorter term. And I can show.

[Dave]

Can we stop there for a second?

[Mike McGlone]

Yeah, sure.

[Dave]

So, and I agree the gold versus S and P 500, which is basically normalizing or trying to normalize gold based on an asset that is more or less moving with liquidity.

I agree with that. I mean I think gold goes much, much higher. Higher, right. Versus this reason.

[Mike McGlone]

So here's we disagree. I think it's going to go higher because S P 500 is going lower. First. Let's start with getting to the 200 day moving average. So that's my bias and I think it also follows. My base case is bitcoin is going to end the year below 84,000. Everything will follow. Now that's obviously contrary, but it's so fun to be consensus.

[Dave]

And here's the thing about. I think that's consensus, by the way, within the bitcoin community. It is.

[Mike McGlone]

Well then I'm concerned, honestly. But let's look at consensus. Consensus we all know is there is going to be no end in consumer spending, wealth creation until the stock market goes down. That's just the way history works. And then the government will buy like they did in Japan and now China, and they'll buy everything. That's just the way it'll happen. But the key thing is it's price. In the next 5% move in, the stock market has to be up. If it's down, the dominoes tumble. And that's what I show you in this chart. Just getting started. But let's show a little bit shorter term. Here's the key thing that I remember in the summer. Dave, you and I completely disagreed with this. This is the ratio of bitcoin debate divided by S&P 500. That ratio was pushing like this is never where you want to sell equities and buy stocks. And that's what your average person buying ETFs are doing. And now it's done at 13 classic little island top. It's breaking down hard. And it's one reason thing you never buy bitcoin when volatility is low in the stock market, which is. It is. And the prices are really high in stock market which is. It is. And this is, I just show that 120 day volatility s and P500. That's not a level you want to be buying Bitcoin. I'm like good luck with that. When it's buried at near the lowest level. If we end here it'll be the lowest level on the end of year basis since 2017. This is just starting to kick in. And then we're just point out one other shorter term chart that everybody loves. I love showing that. I usually don't like but I show it which is compare 1929 Dow to 1925 Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto index. It's that same chart. Dow ended up down 20% wasn't a big deal. It was the next year that mattered. And Bloomberg Galaxy crypto index is down like 16% on the year. What happens for the rest of the year? That's why right now, this week, the market has to go up. There's no doubt. And if we end up down in the week, your trade, that trade I've been talking about for too long is just getting started. It'll be just like 2007. Remember those last two years of 2007 when the stock market just kind of gave up those gains and then it all trickled down. Yeah. The risk I made was trying to play for that for too long and then it worked out great. But this is the thing we're right now the Fed's going to ease market has to go up market's price for it yet cryptos, the leading edge of risk assets have already started tilting lower. My bias is I guess it's scary when I'm with consensus. I don't like being with consensus. But just think of the end of the year bitcoin being below 84,000. Those Domos are tumbling for next year and we're overdue for a down year in S&P 500. Just a down year. What big deal that used to happen.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

It's not a good time to buy bitcoin. I think somebody disagrees. Michael Saylor bought another billion dollars, $962 million worth of Bitcoin at 90,615 per coin. Where did he get a billion more dollars?

[Dave]

Guys, I don't know. And I, and, and I just one wonders given where it was over the course of the week, how we paid that much. But that's besides the point. I don't know. I would love to actually help them figure out how do you conserve dry powder and buy, buy, buy better. But you know, and in fact most people in the crypto world think of that as a contrarian signal. That is, why is it sailor buying it? We'd prefer, you know, most people would prefer to see much more broad based buying. Right. Than, than microstrategy. But you know, it is what it is.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

We are, we are. I mean, you know, we had massive inflows actually, even with the price being where it is. We had 760.

[Dave]

Right. Well, I think that you'll see, you'll see more of it because people aren't buying Bitcoin because of these short term movements. People that are buying it are buying it because their financial advisors are starting to say, listen, you should put, depending on who you listen to, if you're Rick Edelman, 40% and if you're JP Morgan, 4% of your portfolio into this asset because it could 10x within the next five years. And that's what people like Larry Fink are talking about. You have to understand people don't look at it. Financial advisors are trained to say, don't try to time the squiggles, don't worry about it, just do your allocations. And so it's really an interesting question. It comes back to this whole binary option play. But I want to go back to what Mike was talking about because I don't disagree that if the stock market bubble, if you call it a bubble, and I don't, I think it's just inflation. But let's say you believe the stock market is going to drop and we've already seen softening in the AI narrative despite the incredible strength of actually underlying AI. I mean, you know, you're seeing all sorts of weirdness. And the one thing about the Galaxy Crypto Index that's interesting is when you go apart from Bitcoin and apart from Ethereum because of the Tom Lee effect, and you look at altcoins, they've been, they've been like dog this year, right?

Well, right, but they've been like dog shit for a reason. Because there are a lot of them where other than true believers and adherents and people who've drunk Kool Aid within various communities, you know, rational financial analysts look at this and say, my God, where's the, where's the beef here? To use Mike's term. And so could that continue? Of course. Could it also be that if bitcoin rallies because you know, the animal spirits take bitcoin up, these things will move up with it. Sure. You know, there's, there's lots of uncertainty in my head about this, but the, the rotation towards real value. I mean, the stuff about tokenization is very, very real. But it doesn't necessarily mean that every layer one is going to move higher with it. Right. So, you know, there's all sorts of stuff. We talk. This isn't really a crypto show, it's a macro show. But the macro trend of AI isn't going anywhere. It's the next industrial revolution. And in the short run, it is much better for the overall economy in the long run. In the short run, you know, as you're training models, as you're doing this, it doesn't have a downward draft on jobs, but it does create a whole massive amount of new investment.

We need massive, more, massively more electricity. We need more data centers, we need more compute power. There's a lot of things that are getting built and that's what the stock market's reacting to because that's all true. Now, in the long run, it's really great for corporate profits, but it's really bad for overall jobs. And that's the other thing that's going on here. Now ask yourself the question. Play out the game theory, James. What's the likelihood of more or less government stimulus into the economy as people get unemployed by AI.

High likely.

I know your partner Larry, who often joins us on this show, Lepard would say that that to me is the reverse overhang. In financial markets we always talk about overhangs. People talk about Satoshi's coins on the market.

Lockups expiring. Understand that. I don't think that there is even remotely close to the will in either political party to avoid mass stimulus if in fact employment starts to get impacted by AI. Now, I don't expect employment to be impacted by AI for several years because there's new jobs. I mean, everyone who is a subject matter expert in their field is going to be required to spend years training LLM models that are specific to industries. There's all sorts of reasons that will drive it. And I think it was Jason no who I can't remember the, the podcast that I listen to that talked through this. But that level of expenditure, that level of investment, that's what the administration is trying to get to stimulate. And that's why they want lower rates, because that will actually impact everything. But in the long term, it all leads to More to more money being printed. We are on that hamster wheel and I just don't see any way of getting off of it.

[Scott]

Yeah, and the other thing is Mike, to have a 1929 style drawdown in the markets like 50% down, we would go into depression. We go into great Depression here.

[Mike McGlone]

I wrote about that happening in cryptos in September and it's happening in cryptos. I'm just using 1920 as an example, 29 as an example. That all happened in October, November. I'm pointing about cryptos right now. I use the cryptos.

[Scott]

If the stock market goes down like that, we would have a great Depression.

[Mike McGlone]

No disagreement. But we're overdue for just a normal correction. How about we get to 200 day moving average? Let's start there. That's 10%. That's 23%, Mike.

[Scott]

It's up every day.

[Mike McGlone]

It's never going to happen. That's that. It's part of my point.

[Scott]

But I never going down again.

[Mike McGlone]

Exactly, exactly. So the, the so many calls I have been on lately that it's not a bubble. Always happen near the end of bubbles because you don't have those things at bear markets, you have those things in extreme bull markets. But I just want to tilt back to one thing.

[Scott]

Tremendously resilient. I agree it's insane.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

It's only because of the Mag 7 really.

[Mike McGlone]

But well that's the key thing is.

[Scott]

A handful of stocks, right.

[Mike McGlone]

But you look as a trader, you look for alternatives. To me it was bitcoin. Remember Those days in 2019 and 20 when Michael Saylor finally flipped. I remember being very lonely, bullish bitcoin and being told by a lot of people internally how much of an idiot I was. And I remember thanking him completely because he helped embolden my bullishness when he discovered it, found out his software company is not making money, might as well tilt to bitcoin. I said intentionally because that's part of what happened. We can argue but. And then I thank him very much for doing the exact wrong thing as an emotional trader should never do. Double dunk down on a 10x last year and making fun of Warren Buffett. So far both of those trades have worked out well and it's thank you very much for the signals. It's just sometimes you get contrarian positive just for me. Sometimes people realize if you do the opposite of what McGlone says you might do fine. But now everything's tilting downward and expect it just to flip. The key thing is it's complete consensus and Known, known that will be massive stimulus. When we have a bit of a drawdown in risk assets, we will get that. We will get both. Japan did it and look what happened. The US okay, we did, certainly did it after 2008, 9 and look what happened. It's kind of to the level now and China's doing it now. That's my point. It's the next trade. So my next thought is what's the next trade is still think bitcoin's going to go lower. Stock market, it absolutely has to go up. But if it drops by the end of the year, I don't see why you shouldn't do anything but be short. And that's the key thing is shorting things like the US stock market is very risky. You look for alternatives until you can start defining a good reason for it to roll over. And that's my point is if we just like I thought way too early in bitcoin but was willing to start short cryptos a few months ago, if we start getting a down period in equity now, there'll be people willing to short it because they can see an end game.

[Dave]

We already saw a natural downdraft in crypto which was dramatically higher in altcoins than bitcoin because there is no, there's not nearly a long term real economic analysis behind a lot of altcoins. A lot of them have, you know, if you look at TVLs or other metrics, a lot of them are stupidly expensive. Now some of them are cheap and can be valued. And I'm not talking about the entire market, but if you look at the top 200, I'd probably estimate that 180 of them have lots of error there. Obviously we've made fun of a few, FTT being the most obvious example, EOS others. But what if the stock market is supported institutionally, which is a nice way of saying manipulated. And so we've already had the downdraft. The reason that it looks like it's a leading edge of the spear is because people have already sold. And now the question is will the stock market drop and then what happens after? That's the question. And what if at the same time the stock market is in real terms, hasn't really done very much because gold is real. And so if you look at what's going on, if you go from nominal to in gold terms, if gold price, let's say gold was real and it's not excessively speculated, which is I think the underlying assumption, it changes the narrative, right? Doesn't it because honestly, the notion of bitcoin being the leading edge of the sphere seems kind of crazy in this scenario. It feels like they're.

[Scott]

Can we just say tip of the spear?

[Dave]

Yeah, tip of the spear. Leading edge of this wave, whatever. Okay, I'm mixing my, my medieval warfare analogies, but my point is that we've had two months of crypto being soggy and a significant downdraft where it was completely delinked from the stock market. Two full months. Now does that mean that there is no relationship? Of course not. Everything correlations go to one if there's a massive downdraft. But if there isn't, then what happens? I would say that if there's no massive move in the stock market, there's no reason to believe that crypto will be correlated because it isn't. Correlations will go up. If you're right, Mike, there's no doubt.

[Scott]

100% agree. Bitcoin is not correlated to anything right now.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

Bitcoin is not.

[Scott]

Bitcoin is not correlated to anything.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

No way.

[Scott]

In crypto in general. But I agree, Dave, that you need a massive drawdown for everything to correlate to one. And that'll pull gold with it.

[Dave]

Yeah, of course, and it will because gold, especially silver because there's a lot of speculative money in both right now.

That's really interesting. And we've also said that when gold and silver plateau.

And there's no and it goes into a range, they go into a range and they stay there for a few months that that speculative money will start looking for a new home. And I, and people keep said, oh. And so everyone, I've had people say, oh well look, it hasn't moved in the last like week. And I'm like, no guys, you don't understand. We're talking, you know, months of, of boring market. Like there was another tweet someone made a comment about. Well, Max Payne and bitcoin would be a drawdown. No know Max Payne in crypto markets is range bound boring trading. It drives everybody nuts. Scott wouldn't. Do you disagree with that? No.

Well, you say obviously not, but you and I are alone on this. Within the crypto world, most people consider Max Payne, you know, to be down. And I don't think so. I think Max pain is, is when people are, you know, when trade, at least the max pain around traders is when it, when volatility drops.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

That's time based capitulation is Max Payne. Because people see it sideways, they want to do something they can't keep Their finger off the trigger, they can't sit on their hands, and they make bad decisions. Actually, bear markets I find to be exceptionally easy for most people, emotionally difficult, but there's no decisions to make. It's kind of the joke that selling is a lot harder than buying, unless you're just giving up. In a bear market, you're generally just sitting there doing nothing and waiting for the grass to grow. But when you're in a period like this, people feel like they need to make some sort of active decision on their portfolio, and it's always the wrong one.

That's painful.

[Dave]

But I think that the funny thing is you have to slip it out. So if you're trying to put together an option strategy where you buy, basically, to put it in perspective, if you wanted to buy out of the money, put options on a much lower volatility asset, aka the S& P, to hedge your Bitcoin for exposure, that is not a dumb trade. And I know of, of several smart people who told me that's precisely what they're doing is because they, they say Mike McGlone's point about stock market dropping is exactly right. Now, will we have.

[Scott]

We have done similar trades.

[Dave]

Okay, well, you're a smart person, so there you go. Yeah, so, but you know, from a macro point of view, though, I mean, we are, we are in a manipulated world. I mean, and that's the thing. So, like Wednesday, the fact that we're all going to be sitting here watching, so they're going to, they're going to cut rates and you'll see the market will do whatever the market's going to do, probably nothing, maybe soften a bit, and then everyone's going to be glued to the press conference. What's the tone of Powell's voice? What's his. What words is he saying? Is he going to poke Trump in the eye with a sharp stick again on his way out the door? What's he.

Think of what we're talking about? What we're basically doing is we're attributing almost godlike powers to a human being who's going to be out of a job in six months.

That is what we're doing.

[Mike McGlone]

So let's analyze the iterations. And this is what I really appreciate we do. And that's why I think going up here is completely priced in, in risk assets. There's no trade there. It's the going down. That's why it's a good time to be out of the market. So the key question you ask yourself is now we've seen massive profit taking and de risk in cryptos. If we just get by the end of the year, another 2 to 3% drop in the S&P 500. Those are dominoes collapsing. Remember, this is a year that we've had gold, the best year since 1979. Now that's nominal. This is where I defend you completely, Dave. Nominal. But as you notice, I've been pointing out gold as a ratio, you don't have nominality, you don't have to worry about the nominal amount. When you Compare the ratio versus the S&P 500 or Bitcoin, it's just about assets to assets, all based in dollars. So to me, that's the trade right now. Sit around being flat. Had a great year. Do you want to be buying you overweight equities into the end of the year? Have a great year? Probably not. You're already seeing cryptos get hammered. That's my point is if we just start leaking a couple percent, this starts kicking in. In a year that crude oil's down and you know, had its worst year versus gold ever. That's macro. Pretty serious stuff's kicking in and. Exactly right. Who does not expect massive fiscal skimmers? That's my point is the whole market is telling me we've reached the end game. Crypto's rolling over gold blasting off. This is the end game for risk assets being supported by fiscal monetary stimulus. And have we at. Are we at lofty levels? Yeah, the highest ever versus the rest of the world and versus gdp. Okay, I'm just waiting for that next big trade right now. It was gold for this year and now it's time to be out. And that's why I'm looking for the next one. Just looking for the signals where you should see it in a few weeks, maybe even this week.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

Explain to me why the oil to gold ratio is particularly relevant when they obviously want the price of oil down, gold or otherwise.

[Mike McGlone]

Well, yeah, exactly.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

The administration to send oil as low as possible to fight inflation.

[Mike McGlone]

And it's a good point. It's changed. That's what's changed. So that's a deflationary force. And the administration does have the power to do that. They're doing it. I just look at the facts of history. Right now that oil to gold ratio is 70. The highest year end ever was 39, 1934 and in 2020, just. I don't care so much. This is why I switch over to the risk management. Point is the fundamentals are no knowns And I do love when I point out certain things like this. I've been on top of a trade forever and then I point out it's towards the end and then someone will point out to me the fundamentals that I pointed out four years ago. This is where you have to be very careful. It's, it's what markets are telling us. And this is why I'm trying to interpret as a strategist is this is my interpretation of what markets are telling us. And it's basically saying you've had a great run. Anybody who's been long equities in the US has had the best like 15 year period since part of it was 1929. They're all boomers are cashing in and certainly versus the rest of the world. And things like cryptos are telling you those who are in now are the late ones and they're hoping for wealth to be like the people who got it before got in when people hated it. And this is when you're supposed to just say thank you, find alternatives. This is, it's happening.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

I've seen like five think pieces this week on why crypto is a scam and people wasted the last decade of their lives building in crypto and how it's time to finally leave. Even from the most ardent believers, these are just desperate, depressed, horrid signals to be the bottom.

[Mike McGlone]

That's bear mark bottom stuff.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

But I mean people that you would have have stuck with this for 15 years saying they dedicated their lives to building in it, now calling it a scam in a casino and saying they're exiting forever and they regret it even from their mansion.

[Mike McGlone]

I hope they made money because that's the key thing. Remember it's just a giant casino. If you make money, just get out before the house wins. And to me the house is starting to win.

[Dave]

I'd like to make two points. Point number one, the negative point is I think that the ringing the bell on and the ending prematurely of the four year cycle at three years, which is empirically what happened was Trump among Melania coins. I think the, you know, basically the Trump family giving a middle finger to the entire industry.

Was a seminal event. And I think that it poked the meme coin bubble. It created the casino narrative. I think it was literally the top signal for value. None of that has anything to do with bitcoin. I think that people over this year have conflated what Donald Jr. And Eric are doing at World Liberty vis a vis with bitcoin. And from a bitcoin perspective and from a defi perspective with those and the sting and the taint has been hard to get out. But those are two very different narratives. And historically, when we look back on this five or 10 years from now, I think people will realize that there were two very different things happening. The second thing that I'll say is that the ratio and I'll never forget Mike Novogratz standing up in front of an audience back in the crypto winter of 2018 saying, Listen, the one thing we know is look at the amount of talent, look at the amount of people who are investing. Look at what's going on in the world of crypto. And if you're bearish on an industry which has attracted that kind of talent and continues to, then you're nuts. Now fast forward to today and yeah, there's more people moving into AI, but there's a lot of people who are still in the crypto rails as a corresponding feature or necessity for AI. It hasn't changed. But the when you get the sentiment looking like that, I mean, look, we need. Mike has said many times, and it's one thing that I've always agreed with. We need all the zombie chain, all the platforms that have no hope in hell of delivering real value to vaporize and all the projects. We always hear projects in crypto, what's your project? Everyone uses that word. And most of them aren't companies. Most of them have no economic hope of doing anything but dumping on retail if they buy the tokens. When we move to what Atkins is trying to do with the sec, when we move to a world where innovators can build companies that provide economic value that may or may not involve tokens as part of their capital raising strategy, that is an incredibly healthy sign. And so we do have cross currents going on. None of this by the way, has anything to do with bitcoin. Nor does it have anything to do with large established tokens, which are proving things out. Because my second point is what happened with the Internet? What happened with the Internet? What were the two use cases that drove the the all the money into building HTTPs before we got to anywhere near a bubble? The answer? Porn and gambling.

It's always the. You laugh, but it's true. And so the use cases in crypto being a casino, I mean, you make fun of Solana all you want because of Pump Fun. People who played in Pump Fun was had worse odds than Kino in in Las Vegas casinos, but they played it anyway because it was fun. But Solana proved it could handle high speed High volume trading on a decentralized basis. If you don't look at that as a proof of concept, whether it be for Solana or, or something else, to how trading and how assets. And if you look at Polymarket, like everyone says, well, Polymarket you've actually said it goes shot. You think Polymarket's taken away a lot of the funding from Altcoins? Maybe, but they're different payouts you need. You know, Poly Market is still binary. Yes, no, yes, no is valuable. Right? You know, we have a lot of gambling on that, but lots of people want lottery tickets. And so if you think that that penny stocks or other investments or private markets aren't going to start coming to a chain near you, then you're not paying attention. So there's a lot that's going on under the surface here. My point is you have to focus your narrative. The Bitcoin narrative is based on monetary printing and acceptance period. When it gets ahead of its acceptance matrix, by a lot, I mean euphoria, it crashes. Calling for a 70% correction after we haven't had euphoria is it just doesn't make any sense, the amplitude of the moves. The other point that I will make, because this is this and this one you may want to collect is people who call for this. Everyone who says the four year cycles are intact and they are decreasing in amplitude. So it goes up in amount and it goes up. If this is the amplitude that we're at now, even if it doesn't decrease, but certainly if it continues to decrease, that means if you believe that, then you believe Bitcoin has reached terminal velocity and this is it.

The notion that Bitcoin will ever be a global store of value, you are literally selling that notion and saying and stomping on it. Now you may end up being right, it may not. But understand that anybody who uses the words I'm long term bullish on Bitcoin but short term because of the four year cycle are intellectually dishonest and they are stealing your viewership. People, if you're following them on X or you're paying for subscription because you cannot be long term bullish on Bitcoin as a store of value and believe that the amplitudes of the four year cycles are decreased to this level to where it will never get where you're saying it will go, those two statements cannot be reconciled. Now I'm not saying that the long term view, bullish view is right. I mean, I obviously believe it is. But you can't make those two statements and be intellectually honest. So I'm going to call out all of the Kols on crypto Twitter and there are many of them who I would happily debate this for. If Layla Helper were willing to debate me. It will be a bad day for her because she has said this and she has hundreds of thousands of subscribers and there are so many other people like that. It just, it sickens me that people can't understand the basic math behind that. If the four year cycle narrative is indeed intact, and if indeed we have decreasing amplitude of bitcoin rises, then by definition it will never get to where it goes. And that's the essence of where I would like to talk and see what Mark Yesko has to say. So I know you watch this. So Mark, love to have the conversation.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

So as we wrap here, just quickly, Tom Lee's bit mine immersion ramped UP Ether acquisition added 435 million of ETH to the treasury this week, by the way. So Saylor's not the only one who's supporting a market and continuing to buy massively. But I just want to make one final point about the poly market thing before we wrap. I'm all for people's freedom to do whatever they want with their money, but I don't think that it's a sign of good economic times that people are going to be aggressively gambling on the weather. And I think that it's just a signal, like in the Weimar Republic, right before we had the Great Depression and the collapse of their currency. When people start to wildly speculate, it's not because they're having fun, it's because they're feeling desperate and know that they're on a hamster wheel, that they can't win and they need to take bigger and bigger bets and risks and gambles to survive. And that is what Kalshi and Polymarket are a harbinger of for me. And the fact that we're still seeing multibillion dollar liquidations on a regular basis, even after what we saw on October 10th when we thought that all the leverage was out of the system. People are coming right back to the casino. They're letting the wind fly them back in on the jumbo jet to lose the rest of their money, it's a signal to me that things are going to get much earlier. This level of speculative excess has been a huge warning of destruction in the past two.

[Scott]

Two counterpoints to that though, Scott and I agree with you generally. Absolutely. We are, you know, late stage Roman Empire here. But you know, one thing about the poly market, that just the, the function of it is it allows you to actually hedge for things too. So if you're a major hedge fund and you're in a district that you, it's going to really, it's going to powerfully hurt you if Democrats are elected or something, you can hedge for that. You could hedge against certain things if you know, or if you're, if you're a farmer that, that needs cotton or soybeans to be a certain. Instead of going in the markets and, and actually having futures, you could just, you could trade quickly on poly market, something like that. That's, that, that's, that's one thing, you know, the other thing is how much manipulation have we seen? And I don't want to get into politics, but how much manipulation have we seen in the canvassing of votes.

And the likelihood of elections in the last two election cycles? You know, like.

Those polls are so faulty and this eliminates that kind of faultiness but it does raise the possibility of them to be manipulated with real money. And so that is a counterpoint to that. But there is a use case for Polymarket that's not just speculation. However, in general I do agree with the big bubble of it. Yeah.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

I'm not saying that it's Polymarket's fault. I think that Polymarket has an incredible use. It will be an incredible platform. I think it's much more accurate than the Michigan poll that you love to ran against and things like that, that 100. But I just think that the way your average person uses it is a signal.

[Scott]

Yeah, it's speculation.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott]

We got, we, you're, you're, you're at the casino every day because you know damn well that you can't keep up just going to work making money and paying your rent every day. You, you've got to do something. You got to get on the risk curve somewhere and that's yet just another way to do it. It's true.

[Mike McGlone]

It's a double down risk. I'm worried about James. It's just when people start losing, they try to gamble the makeup and then you get hammer. That's usually how it works in history. Human nature will never change.

[Scott]

Everybody be wary of leverage.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

It's one thing when you're losing in markets and double down to do it. It's another thing when you're losing in life and start to get to do it.

[Dave]

Exactly.

[Mike McGlone]

And you mentioned the Trump sons. There's going to be laws in the future when you're sitting president's sons advocate an asset and tell people to buy it and Morgan's their homes and Saylor did and their president is a billionaire already and actively owns it. There's going to be conflict of interest laws in the future against those kind of things, almost guaranteed.

[Dave]

And there should be just like there should be laws that no NGO could, can, can possibly can donate to a political campaign ever that you lose your 501c3 status. That's probably the easiest law ever. And the only reason it doesn't happen is because people in Congress make so much fricking money from them getting donated. What we're seeing in Minnesota and if you think that this, this story is going to go away, this is so much bigger than Watergate, this is literally the biggest story that no one's talking about up. We literally now know that there are people in Congress and in the governor's office who have been donated money from organizations that were literally set up to commit, to commit fraud. And so you're not hearing about it because people, because if depending on who you are, I mean you're hearing it screamed, if you're in a red state, you're hearing nothing about it if you're in a blue state. But here's the point. What Mike said is right. There is corruption and graft on both sides, which is to use James words, that's late stage Roman Empire stuff, stuff. And that's the kind of thing that tells me that the fiat system is having. These are the death rattles of a system where we continually pop up the money supply and we continue to manipulate it. Now do I think that we're going to be able to grow our way out and kick our can down the road? I don't know. I think they're going to try. And so as an investor, I just look at every one of these signs as there's going to be more money printed. They're going to try to paper over here it again and extend and pretend. As Gary Cardone likes to say, it's the only choice. And that is, it's really hard for me to be bearish in nominal terms in that world. It's that simple. Because I listen to you and my, my gut is telling me, God, Mike's making such great points.

But, but it's just, you know, what the policy response has to be and you understand what's going on. And, and so to me that's, that's what it boils down to anyway. We are way over time.

[Scott (Tech/Moderator)]

So we're way over time. Guys. Everybody, thank, thank you for watching us blow on the Nintendo cartridge and get the stream back up and back down. We're going to work out the kinks. This was a live pilot for everybody out there, so I had three consummate professionals next to me to make sure that it went well. Look at that. We got new camera angles. That thing's moving. You guys see that? You can't see it on zoom. It's really cool. All right, guys. Well, you'll all see them. We got some impressive things. Mike. Next time we'll get your charts up. Everybody, thanks for amazing Macro Monday. Dave and I obviously heading over to Crypto Town hall right now and I'll be back with Andrew and Tillman tomorrow. Thank you everybody. Have a great day. Later.

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