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- [00:01]
Scott Melker
Bitcoin made a beautiful push up to about $97,700, leading many to believe that 100,000 is inevitable and that new all time highs are coming soon. As usual, people want to search for a narrative as to why Price pushed. Was it the fact that India attacked Pakistan? Was it higher hopes that the United States and China are going to have a trade deal? Is it because of the Fed meeting today? I think we all agree that nobody knows exactly what, why it happens, but we can paint a macro picture for what's happening with bitcoin. When I want to do that, I bring on amazing experts like our friend Peter Cheer, who is here today to break it all down. Let's go, let's do, let's do. What is up everybody? I am Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of Allstreets. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and hit that like button. Yeah, bitcoin pushing up near a hundred thousand and as I said, so people wondering if that means it's about to absolutely fly. Peter, I have very measured optimism here, to be quite honest. I think that we're kind of in a range. We were just at 98,000 like a couple days ago. You know, I, I don't think that this is big news particularly, I think. Yeah, I mean On Friday, May 2, we were higher.
- [01:26]
Peter Cheer
Yeah. I think though at least people like myself are starting to look at this administration. They kind of pivoted a little bit from tariffs to other things. And clearly high on their list is something to do with crypto. Not quite sure what. And you know, I've been out around talking to a lot of, you know, different states in particular. I think you could see a lot of red states in particular adopt crypto if these federal government sets kind of a precedent. So I think that could be this next wave. And I don't know whether that's what's starting to get built in, but I'm starting to look at ways to participate in that. I think if that comes true, we should push through those $105,000 $7000 levels in terms of breaking a new high.
- [02:02]
Scott Melker
Yeah, so you obviously mentioned the states. It's definitely worth mentioning the fact that we finally got one. New Hampshire becomes first state to pass strategic Bitcoin reserve bill into law. That this is actually huge news because this week we had Arizona pass it through the House Senate committee, everything and then get vetoed on the desk of the governor. So there was a lot of optimism that Arizona was gonna be first and then Florida obviously a Very bitcoin forward state. Ron DeSantis has been very anti CBDC. There was a lot of tailwinds, said this isn't gonna happen in Florida as well. New Hampshire actually the perfect breeding ground. It's kind of its own animal, the libertarian spirit. And you know, but it happened. I mean, this is real. And maybe that should be the reason that we saw price go up at least a little bit.
- [02:51]
Peter Cheer
Yeah, live free or die, I guess, wins. So it's again, I don't think it's the direction the government should take, especially at the federal level where we have a lot of debt. So I don't see this whole magic bullet. I think the government should stay out of investing. But having said that, my job isn't to tell the government what to do. It's to figure out what the government seems likely to do and they seem likely to be on this push. So I think you kind of have to embrace it and it feels like it's really going to be dedicated towards, you know, bitcoin, maybe a couple others. I don't think you get this big alt rally. If anything, I think it probably continues to separate the altcoins that's kind of are just play and junk versus things that might become part of a, you know, proper infrastructure conference or conversation.
- [03:34]
Scott Melker
I don't necessarily disagree at all. Right. I think that, listen, I think that there will be select altcoins that do exceptionally well and even probably out perform bitcoin, but I think it's going to require extreme knowledge, great selectiveness and a bit of luck to pick them. The safest bet is going to remain buy Bitcoin and wait.
- [03:56]
Peter Cheer
Yeah. And you know, I've got to say, you know, the Trump coin, whether that does well or not, it's kind of interesting, right, that they are trying to use that. And of all the altcoins, it feels like the first one. Right. We haven't had a movie star or something say, hey, the top 200 holders get to meet me every two months or something like that. It's kind of neat. I'm not sure I agree with any of it. I think it's kind of very questionable from a political standpoint, but it does seem like it's attracted attention and kind of maybe shifting the use case.
- [04:22]
Scott Melker
Okay, so we had the meeting obviously on the Congress floor yesterday. I don't know if you watched any of it, but Maxine Waters is all over the place. My friend Alex Miller testified. But this was yet another opportunity for the industry to make its case on the floor of Congress for why we should get sensible legislation. And now the anti crypto army has pivoted to okay, crypto is fine, but Trump shouldn't be participating in it. Right. And as a family, which it's hard to disagree with that to be honest. To some degree I can see that argument, at least for the first time. And check this out. You mentioned the Trump coin top Trump crypto. Buyers vying for dinner seats are likely foreign data shows you can tell who's buying these things and what accounts and they're doing it all on foreign exchanges that are blocked to Americans. So a bunch of foreigners are basically bidding up Trump to get the opportunity to sit down with him. I could see why that would be a point of contention.
- [05:17]
Peter Cheer
Yeah. And I think again, I think that's going to be something we try, I think as a country to kind of, you know, restrict donations and try and, you know, keep some track of campaign finance. And these altcoins and things like that seem to be a way to get around that. And I don't know that the legal side of the political campaign donation has figured out anything on that front. So we're probably way behind. I suspect it is one reason you get so much support because there are ways, I think to influence people. And the crypto community has probably become to me one of the biggest lobby groups there is in terms of it's $3 trillion market cap. And everyone in that community is putting pulling the same direction. Right. When you look at big pharma, not even all the big pharma companies necessarily agree what they want and they're certainly competing with big oil etc for different rationale. You've got the crypto community that just wants one thing more and more embracement of crypto. So I think it's a very powerful lobby group and I do think though some of these altcoins make it easier to do stuff that wouldn't pass through necessarily typical campaign finance rules.
- [06:19]
Scott Melker
Okay, so let's dig into the macro obviously, which is where you specialize. I think the most obvious place to start is with the Fed today. Today, because today is fomc. We're going to get pal. I think everybody expects a Fed to hold rates steady as, as pressures mount here, as they say. But I would be very surprised if we get a rate cut today. I think we had pretty positive job numbers again on Friday which probably gives Powell some more cover. And you can say what you want about Powell, but he tells you exactly what it's going to do and he always has like you don't have to agree with what he does, but he's been pretty consistent in telling you. So I would lean that we're going to get a bit more of a hawkish continued tone from him.
- [07:02]
Peter Cheer
Yeah, I'm kind of the same way. I think there's no chance of a cut today and he may push back on June because I do think, listen, he does not want to cut while Trump tariffs are kind of so uncertain. Right. I think his biggest fear is he cuts preemptively trying to help with the tariff issues. And, and then Trump completely backs off all the tariffs. We get inflation spiking. So his, you know, his predilection is not to cut anyways. And the jobs number, I think gave him the air cover. I think the jobs number was heavily overstated. I think, you know, I look at the birth death model and I don't know how much you get into the weeds on it, but what that tries to do is estimate how many new businesses were formed. 400,000 of the jobs came from new businesses. They tend to look at ein, so the employment identification number to figure that out. And I think five years ago that was a realistic way to do it. The reality is, to me, I think people are getting laid off or concerned about their jobs and they set up EIN so they can join the gig economy. And to me, that's very consistent. When I look, the number of law school applications are skyrocketing and that to me is always. Well, grad students are like, can't really find a good job. Right. So to me, like, that was such an outlier. So I think in a couple months when we get some of these revisions. Well, turn out this job report was way overstated. Right. So this, I mean, for the last.
- [08:18]
Scott Melker
For the last two years, certainly.
- [08:20]
Peter Cheer
Yeah. And I think this is a big part of it. They still don't know how to adjust for things like the gig economy and what that means in terms of jobs. So I think that'll get adjusted down, but it gives Powell all the air cover he needs coming into this. And he does view energy prices as transitory. I think if Trump would make better arguments and get away from eggs and energy, maybe he'd have a more compelling story for the Fed. But he just seems so simplistic in his, you know, battering of the Fed.
- [08:47]
Scott Melker
Which, by the way, he's done his entire, like, career as president. There's, there's nothing new there, but he's always wanted cut, cut, cut. Right. And then to be honest, in the first case, maybe he was Right. Because we overshot probably in the other direction. But the question is, I guess if you take all the politics and all the job numbers and everything out of it, and you're sitting in Powell's shoes, if we have, theoretically, if you believe them, strong job numbers and inflation kind of sticky where it is. I guess some would say it's coming down if you look at truflation, but from their perspective, sticky, you wouldn't cut anyways. Right. And so the numbers give you cover, but the tariffs certainly give you cover because the majority of people believe that tariffs and trade wars would be inflationary.
- [09:30]
Peter Cheer
Right. And you're starting to see more and more reports that the ports are emptying out. Right. That there's fewer ships coming in, freight traffic is dropping in the US So the worst thing you could do is cut rates and increase demand. If we are having a supply shock. Right. So I think it was very different in Covet. Right. We had a supply shock, but we had an economic shock. Jobs were getting shut down everywhere. So he needed to cut to support that. I think right now you have the supply shock, potentially, that he, if he cuts, that would just drive the price of everything higher. So I think he has to wait to see where this plays out.
- [10:01]
Scott Melker
Yeah. I mean, even if Trump is totally right here and the people who are saying to cut, the most pragmatic decision for the Fed probably is to wait a few months and see what happens. There's no real rush to cut because, like, staying here is not going to break anything.
- [10:18]
Peter Cheer
Right. And you go back, historically, we're not at levels that are, you know, particularly punitive and it lets people make some money. And, you know, you keep hearing what it does to credit card debt or something. That to me is the silliest argument. Credit card debt rates at 19 or 20 or 25%, whatever, they, they have nothing really to do with fed funds. Right. And so I think they can just leave it here. It's prudent if you start getting deflation or, you know, real risk of that. They can cut quickly. They can implement qe. I think it's harder for them to stop inflation once it starts, which we saw kind of last time. So they are much more prudent. Just wait, let's see how this plays out and see what these tariff deals look like. Like, hey, we might get some great tariff deals, in which case rates are probably fine.
- [10:58]
Scott Melker
So let's talk about that. We have, obviously, bitcoin rises as US China trade talks spark bullish crypto bets. So I find it very Interesting that markets react so quickly to headlines from China when we know that you can't trust China and the words that are coming out are from random ministers and confirmed or denied by another random minister a day later. I don't think we've had clarity. Maybe I'm wrong from the top, from anyone in China that you can firmly trust and believe that said, yes, we're entering trade talks. Right. Maybe I missed it, but the headline I saw was that the Ministry of something or other, you name it, confirms that China intends to maybe have trade talks with the United States.
- [11:45]
Peter Cheer
Yeah, we're happen to be in Switzerland. You're in Switzerland. Why don't we connect? It's probably. And I, I suspect that we reached out to them. So this reminds me a lot of the gfc and I think we all forget. Everyone talks about the Lehman moment which happened October 2008, but from early 2007, you saw cracks in the system and it would break, then fix, break and then fix. I think it was 2007 when Merrill had to cut their dividend, all those things. And this reminds me a lot of that, where people seem to be so desperate to believe that this is going to get solved and that Trump is going to back down, that China's going to come in. And I remember it was the hardest thing to ever trade because you'd wake up one morning, market selling off, you're short. And I think it was, you know, Bush would announce some sort of thing to help homeowners and like the market would rip 3%, you'd cry with your shorts, you'd have to cut some and then four days later you'd be lower again. So it feels like everyone's grasping at straws here. And I don't think anything has changed about tariffs. And what concerns me more and more is I'm completely convinced I could be wrong, but that we had a vague plan, we took some steps, people didn't respond to us the way we thought. We doubled down, they did not respond again. And now we're just scrambling and I don't think we hold the cards. And I think every other country has now seen us back down, jumble things. Even the Ukraine minerals deals was weak. If I'm the other side, I'm playing much harder than I would have otherwise.
- [13:03]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I mean, I think China is very transparently being vague with the United States and being very direct with other countries. I don't think you can debate that. We've seen movement between China and Europe to circumvent what's happening in the United States. It's not conjecture.
- [13:17]
Peter Cheer
No. And I think you even saw Carney. You know, again, I'm Canadian. He sat there and kind of listened to some things that I think are nonsensical about. You know, again, somehow we've converted trade balance to subsidizing. And you know, I really wonder sometimes, like if history would be different if trade balances included goods where we are crushing most nations and if they had any measure of profitability. Right. We tend to export high profit margin stuff and import low profit margin. So we've been fixated on this. We've pushed people away and I think we have set in motion something where the rest of the world doesn't view us as the same quality of trading partner we once were, who would.
- [13:55]
Scott Melker
And maybe that's part of the plan. But like if, if the person you're trading with changes the deal every week, you can't obviously view them as a reliable trade partner. Once again, I don't think that's a political take. I think that's very clear. If you and your friend are making a deal, if you're buying a house and you go into contract and then they try to change the price, they can't because there's a contract. Right. But imagine if there wasn't and you sent the money in and they said no, actually 30% higher.
- [14:19]
Peter Cheer
Yeah. I've traded in this business for a long time, been a market maker and you know, you have a client, makes you go to the tape. So I think I said this. Okay. Makes you just agree, maybe you go to the tapes. The second I'm at by then I don't want to deal with this person. If everything's going to be an argument, if everything's going to be questioning, this is not it. That's not how our business world works. That's not how trading works. And I think we're translating this and I think countries are right to say something. But here's, I think the big issue. China companies in China, you know, the government are one and the same. Just China Inc. Is a real thing. U.S. corporations, the U.S. government are not one of the same things. Right. 40% of earnings in the S&P 500 come from overseas sales. First, they have constituents over there. They've got lots of reasons to do things in various countries. I think we're going to see a pushback on sales of US brands globally. I think we've seen it in tourism, we saw it look like in Tesla. I think that's going to gain momentum and that's going to be really problematic for US corporate earnings and push the S&P 500 further down, I believe. I think you're muted, Scott.
- [15:19]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I tend to agree with all that. Sorry, I've got a little bit of the post conference crud. So every time I'm about to sneeze or cough, it's happened to me multiple of times here. But. So I think one of the big risks, as you sort of alluded to though, is what happens with the dollar if people don't trust us anymore. Our main export is the global reserve currency. This could put a lot of pressure on the dollar. Now given I think people want a weaker dollar, but maybe all weaker dollars are not the same. It matters the path that we take to get there. Dollar faces 2.5 trillion avalanche of Asian sales. Right. And this isn't just from Asian countries. This is largely from Asian exporters and investors alone. So this isn't even talking about China or Japan as countries selling off our debt, which I think we know that China is probably. I mean that Japan is definitely, probably doing that to defend the yen. I think that that's pretty clear and that's why we've seen some dollar weakness to some degree. But if exporters are trying to get out of the dollar and talking about $2.5 trillion, this is a pretty meaningful number.
- [16:21]
Peter Cheer
Yeah, I think it's exporters, I think it's pension funds, it's insurance companies. You look at Taiwan, right? Taiwanese, Taiwanese insurance companies have been huge buyers of US debt. It's not just government debt, it's the corporate debt as well. And when these large pension funds or insurance companies sell corporate debt, they sell it on a yield basis. If they don't sell it to a person who buys it on the yield basis, if they sell it to the street or to the hedge fund, that person goes, puts on a rate hedge. So it doesn't matter whether they're selling Treasuries or corporate bonds. It's going to put upward pressure on US yields as a whole. I think that's occurring. I think it's going to occur out of the equity markets. It's going to be slow. Not everyone has to rush out today or tomorrow. But Moran has talked about putting fees on foreign holders of U.S. government bonds, potentially corporate bonds. I think the huge benefit of all these trade imbalances was we funded ourselves cheaply, both at a corporate level but at a government level. And our stocks traded at higher multiples because people wanted to invest here. I think that's going away over time.
- [17:21]
Scott Melker
I'll once again address briefly the fact that every time we have a conversation that involves politics, the people in the comments say that we hate Trump. You can disagree with a economic policy from a president without having, without extrapolating that to your feeling about that president. I've never met, I've never met a politician where I agreed with everything that they did.
- [17:40]
Peter Cheer
Yeah, I've been taking some heat and I have to keep going back. It's, you know, I hammered on the Inflation Reduction act because the Inflation Reduction act was not reduction of inflation at all. So, you know, I think if anything probably have a bias to be anti establishment. But to be honest, back in January I was so positive and I like what Bessant was saying. The other day we talked about the three legged stool where it's, you know, build baby, build. Right.
- [18:02]
Scott Melker
Those are the things, everyone loves that.
- [18:04]
Peter Cheer
Right. I thought Trump was coming in, it was going to be deregulation, it was going to be aggressive policy like, hey, we will commit to buy $1 billion of lithium dioxide in 10 years. So you now have a 10 year Runway to produce refining of lithium into lithium dioxide. That was what we were looking for for Trump and I think that's where he excels. We went down this really weird path and to be honest too, we work with 20 some odd retired generals and admirals at Academy Securities. We had come in so focused on China as a national security risk. Right. We, we are all on board for, we need chips at home, we need medicines, all these things made at home. But we felt that it was going to be us versus China and kind of aligning with our closer allies, including Canada, Mexico, probably NATO. And instead we picked a fight with the entire world. So I saw a huge path of opportunity. It changed and I backed off. I don't know that we're headed towards depression because at least we backed off some of the worst of the tariff policies. But it's still very uncertain.
- [19:03]
Scott Melker
Yeah. And we know that markets hate uncertainty. So it's going to be interesting. I mean we just did just have a face ripping rally V shaped recovery right off the lows right to back before liberation day. So markets still are looking for any excuse to go up, it would feel, but you also have to be sort of measured and honest about it because we see that when things are bad as well, these huge moves to the upside can come in bear markets. Makes me a little hesitant.
- [19:30]
Peter Cheer
Yeah, I think it's, I'm with you on that. And again, I think liberation is the right sort of Target because they've launched those things that kind of caught everyone by surprise. They've largely pulled back. So it doesn't make sense to me that we're somewhere back around where we were on Liberation Day. I think it's probably a bit overextended. And the longer this drags on, I do think we are going to start seeing those supply issues and that probably sends the market a bit lower. And I also think we're going to see things like tourism stuff aren't temporary and that's an economic hit to this country.
- [19:58]
Scott Melker
Yeah. And you have a unique perspective. I think that's worth diving into because of who you work with. Right. People probably don't know, but you work very closely with a huge swath of the ex military. And we're not talking about random people who were, you know, out on the front lines, admirals, generals. That's basically your business. They've got to. Actually, maybe you could just tell me. I don't want to make any assumptions, but seems like geopolitical risk is increasing right now. I mean, yesterday, obviously, India attacking Pakistan, Pakistan saying they're going to retaliate. Russia, Ukraine, clearly not resolved yet, although I think maybe they're working towards that. But doesn't seem like we're in a place of geopolitical stability right now.
- [20:42]
Peter Cheer
No, not at all. I think you also had China kind of actually put foot in some of the reefs or shoals that have been contested with the Philippines. So that's escalating. You're seeing, you know, I think we're having to try and work with Israel because Israel wants to ensure that Iran has no capacity for nuclear weapon production. I think we're trying to negotiate something. There are so many hotspots going on. I think, you know, I get lost. But what's going on in Africa? There's, you know, fighting in Africa as well. And I think the one big risk is as we kind of pull back a little bit and the US kind of tries to focus on what is most important to the US that these hotspots continue to erupt. Right. It's kind of scary that you have two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan now actually aggressively attacking each other.
- [21:25]
Scott Melker
Way scarier in theory than Ukraine and Russia if it escalates. Way scary.
- [21:31]
Peter Cheer
Way scarier. And you know, we have far less control over it. You know, again, it's. I think with Russia and Ukraine, you had NATO there and we are pretty good in Europe. It's very hard for us to do anything in that part of Asia. It's Again, that's always when, you know, one of the, they call it the tyranny of distance. Whenever we do war games or look at China versus Taiwan, that tyranny of distance is hard. Guam is further from, you know, out of it than, you know, China versus Taiwan. And we're so far away from Guam even, which is our main base. So, yeah, these things have that real risk of escalating. And it's unclear to me what President Trump thinks about various things and countries may want to test that uncertainty. Are we willing to risk U.S. troops? I think the general conclusion is probably not very much. Right.
- [22:17]
Scott Melker
Trump is not pretty clear about, I mean, he's been pretty clear that his policy is to end, you know, de escalate foreign wars. I found it kind of curious when we had the rhetoric about bombing Iran with, you know, with, with that being, being the focus. But I think, you know, we know that that's just, you know, flexing, which the United States probably should at certain times. But like, it definitely feels like we just always have these endless existential risk, I guess, to focus on markets here to markets in the US and just more uncertainty than uncertainty still.
- [22:50]
Peter Cheer
And again, that to me is one reason, again, we should be building up more domestically. We should also be looking to South America. Right. It's when you kind of look at the supply chains of the world, why do you want things going in and around China? And you know, so many of our suppliers from Asia Pacific, they have to go through territorial water or what China likes to think is territorial water, pretends of territorial water. We could do so much more with South America, Central America, Canada, Mexico and domestically that takes away those things. Right. We have much better line of sight, much better naval capacity in South America than China. It's a huge win for us. That's where I think our policy should be figuring out is kind of this, you know, almost it's a Monroe Doctrine where you go back to a north south alliance within the Americas. There's huge opportunity there. And then we also have to figure out how to get back into Africa because that is going to be a key source of these rares and critical minerals. China has done a much better job than us. And part of this, this is one thing I would say I agree with Trump, is we put so many restrictions on our businesses in terms of dealing with these foreign countries that it's hard. Right. We want to tell them, well, you can't. You have to have all these human rights things. A dictator doesn't want to do that. And if we Want their minerals. We have to do this. And the other thing, one of our generals who did work under Trump points out, China's all over South America, and they've got, you know, pictures of Xi every mile of road, because China's helping to build the road. But we put billions and billions and billions into the country, but not just from the, you know, the U.S. perspective, but from U.S. companies. And we got to do a better job of harmonizing just how much US Corporations spend in these countries and provide jobs.
- [24:19]
Scott Melker
I mean, that's always been sort of the partnership between the United States, CIA, World Bank, IMF through the 70s and 80s. Certainly go into a country, get rid of the dictator, replace it with them, with somebody favorable, give them a huge predatory loan from the, the imf and send in American corporations to spend the money that you gave them. This isn't like there's no. That's not for debate, people. It's not like tinfoil hat.
- [24:43]
Peter Cheer
Right.
- [24:43]
Scott Melker
And I think the same thing now is China just stepping in and basically saying, we'll give you that big loan. We'll spend the money. Just put our friendly dictator's face all over your streets.
- [24:54]
Peter Cheer
Yeah, I think that's what's been happening for years. We had one general who was, you know, working with the country in Africa to get their cobalt, and he went and said, hey, we want your cobalt, but you have to do this, this. And say, no, no. And two years later, they come back trying to negotiate. No, no. Two years later, he comes in like, oh, don't worry about it. We already signed a deal with China. So when we were competing with the Soviet Union, so when we look at this academy, we get what they call the dime framework. Diplomacy, information, military, and economics. The four main levers of power. Soviet Union had nothing on economics. I don't think we are prepared at all to fight on economics. And China figured out through this belt and road initiative how they can get their tendrils into all these countries and up the ante for us there.
- [25:33]
Scott Melker
I guess the next question then is, where does China get all this money? Because China seems to be heading much more aggressively into a major recession while they're in a major recession, I would say, and maybe into a depression than we are. And they're definitely a perfect example of how stimulus has higher lows each, lower highs each time. Right. Do they continue to stimulate? It has less of an effect each time. We know that that's how this works. But I mean, China is in trouble economically.
- [26:00]
Peter Cheer
They are definitely in trouble. And, you know, we've been talking about this. My view has been that what China is trying to do is switch from made in China to made by China. So they used to just make goods particular primarily for us and let us sell those goods. And they are trying to sell their brands. They've actually had a lot of success across the globe. The top three cell phone sales in India are Chinese brands. I think to some degree this actually, unfortunately, what we're doing plays well into that because they are now going to go and aggressively offer their brands to these countries because the only way I think they can get out of their economic malaise is to make the profit margin that comes with making your own brands. So manufacturing our brands isn't sufficient for China anymore. They need to sell their own brands to kind of dig themselves out of their hole. And, you know, some of what Trump's saying is all great, but people have not been investing in China for years in terms of manufacturing. Right. The US Kind of figured that out post Covid. Certainly, you know, the IP theft, everything. Most US Companies have been pulling out of China or certainly not putting new amounts of money. When we talk to corporations, they're running it as bare bones as they can in China. So that's already been happening. I'm a little bit afraid that this kind of accelerates China's ability to say, well, you know what, now that we're trade war with us, we're going to push really hard to sell our brands. And that's where they have that advantage of China Inc. That they can put government policy in line with corporate policy and push these things much more aggressively and coordinated than we can.
- [27:18]
Scott Melker
It was interesting. I was in Dubai last week and I had never seen BYD cars driving around. Driving around, because obviously I'm in the States. I don't see them. They were everywhere. They were everywhere. Listen, there were a lot of Teslas, too. It's not. There's not debate. But I'm just saying it was very clear that outside the United States, Chinese automobiles are all over the place.
- [27:38]
Peter Cheer
Yeah. And it's literally a brand that until probably three years ago, I don't think I ever heard of and had really no minimal curiosity up until about a year and a half ago. And now I'd actually like to see one because clearly they are taking the world by storm.
- [27:50]
Scott Melker
Yeah, they're cool cars. So listen, let's take. I know we got to let you go in a second. But taking the opposite view, if China is in deep economic trouble, is Trump Maybe actually playing 4D chess here? By putting pressure on them and breaking them. Like, is this one of those things for, you know, short term pain for long term gain?
- [28:08]
Peter Cheer
It could be my biggest fear there is, I think twofold. One is I think we run sort of mistakes because we have a very tight time frame. Right. He has to get things done quickly so that we can see the results by the midterms. So we have to act aggressively, which I think put some risk to our own strategy too. I think we're massively understaffed. We just don't have, you know, we have too few cabinet people and it seems there's a select people trying to handle all these global, you know, that makes me concerned. And to be honest, I just feel like who's more willing to go through six months of absolute pain, China or the U.S. right?
- [28:40]
Scott Melker
I. Oh, years of it.
- [28:43]
Peter Cheer
Correct. So like, you know, information is so low. And if anything, the one thing I keep hearing from our China contacts, I think this is fairly public anyways, is it feels like the Chinese citizens are rallying around Xi because they're positioning Trump as being so evil. So that even gives them possibly more staying power. So I think they might go through more pain than us. I think their willingness to bear it through is much, much higher. Much, much greater. And that to me is the risk with that strategy.
- [29:12]
Scott Melker
So to summarize, we've still got a lot of uncertainty, A lot of uncertainty.
- [29:16]
Peter Cheer
I think a little bit more downside from here on. The markets again.
- [29:19]
Scott Melker
Yeah, that seems honestly like from the most people that I trust, that seems to somewhat be the consensus that we kind of had this big bounce and even the most bullish people think maybe it'll be very choppy for a few months before we get resolution, before heading way up. Which by the way means either like we crash terribly or we like go to new all time highs next week and surprise everyone because.
- [29:39]
Peter Cheer
Yeah, and it just feels like I thought best in speech was really good. Markets couldn't really rally that and NASDAQ's barely up this morning after this talk, so I think people hit the point. Let's see deals. We can't talk about deals anymore. We need to see something on the table and maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised by the deals on the table.
- [29:56]
Scott Melker
Yeah, absolutely. Peter, always a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much. We had to keep doing this more often. I love you're just like, you just nail them point by point. You know, you make this very easy on me.
- [30:07]
Peter Cheer
Awesome. Well, thanks again for having me. Love your show.
- [30:09]
Scott Melker
Of course. Man. Everybody give Peter a follow on X. It's pinned down below. Thanks, man.
- [30:14]
Peter Cheer
Thanks. Take care.
- [30:15]
Scott Melker
All right, guys, awesome. Gonna let Peter go now. And before we move on to Chris, which has been a while, feels like I haven't gotten the opportunity to talk to Chris for. For quite a while. Just gonna give the brief update on aptos. So I got super lucky. I was in Dubai, I was shooting a few pieces of content for the street, which you guys know. And Avery from Aptos happened to walk by, so I got the opportunity. I was like, let's sit down for 20 minutes and just record. So I got the full update on everything that's happening with Aptos, and every time I talk to him, it makes me so much more bullish. Not even more specifically on Aptos, which is great, obviously, but on the space in general, which was the feeling that I got in token. It's crazy when you dig into the metrics on how fast Aptos is growing and how fast the industry is growing, even if prices haven't been reflecting it. There's a great thread here from, you know, about a week, week and a Half ago summarizing 2024 on Aptos. This is from Nansen. So complete third party that uses AI to analyze blockchain data. I mean, 700% TVL growth, major RWA integration, stablecoins going cross chain. They now have the three major stable coins all in Aptos and a surge in real world adoption. I mean, you guys can dig into these network activity, massively up defi growth, stable coins, real world assets, payments and user experience. They go through all of it. So definitely a thread worth checking out and aptos worth checking out. Especially if you're trying to build in this space right now, it makes a whole lot of sense to go to the fastest, cheapest and most secure chains, and they're clearly one of them. Now I'm going to go ahead and bring on Mr. Inks. How are you, buddy? Been a while.
- [31:48]
Chris
What's going on, man?
- [31:49]
Scott Melker
Been a while, you know, just. Just hanging in there, working. Working through the. The post. The post conference Covid situation, which is always. I'm like, every single time I think I've ever had Covid that I've actually officially known that I have coveted. It's been after a crypto conference. Miami 2021.
- [32:07]
Chris
Yeah.
- [32:08]
Scott Melker
Singapore 23. Dubai 25. I think there's even another one in there somewhere. Good times.
- [32:14]
Chris
Good times, man. I'll tell you. Yeah, I remember that.
- [32:17]
Peter Cheer
I remember.
- [32:18]
Chris
You can. You know, it seems like every time you go out there, you know, you're a man of the world. You travel a bit, you meet Dana White and others.
- [32:23]
Scott Melker
You know, too many handshakes. It's too many. Too many handshakes. I don't know if it's that. Well, I think it's the combination of, like, you're beat down from jet lag and travel, you know, so obviously, like. But, like, everyone shakes your hand and then you get into loud places and people just scream in your face. Like, I definitely get it from someone pitching me some terrible project at like, midnight while there's a DJ playing. Every time. Every time. Anyways, let's talk about the charge, because bitcoin had a really nice move. Obviously, it was funny. I was kind of watching it last night. Cause I was laying around doing nothing and I was like, 94, 95, 96, 97. All in, like two hours.
- [33:04]
Chris
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it was good. You know, the chart looks pretty great here on the weekly. Again, we had this nice, you know, this held here at the yearly pivot. Something I had talked about was likely to happen. We did dip down a little bit lower here. I expected it to hold here, but hey, you know, swept the low again, rallied up, nice breakout. You know, we have this accumulation range here that we cleanly broke out of. This is what we call a jump across the creek, which is basically just your breakout above that overhanging resistance. And so now here we come up right into this area where we've got all this other previous kind of resistance. Right. We got that 100,000 area. And I think, you know, again, I've been telling the guys over there and the gals over there at the academy that, you know, we should be looking toward a hundred thousand regardless. You know, we kind of try and watch the interior movement and whatnot, but ultimately, you should at least be looking at a hundred thousand. And so, you know, as we jump on back here to the daily, you know, again, we had this. You see this nice, clean, just accumulation range here from March 11th to. We finally broke out here April 22nd. So a month long there. Nice move up here. And again, we get some sideways here and then there's that move you're talking about yesterday. I was. I was looking for it to. To likely come on down here and sweep this low here. Yeah, but we didn't get that. But now we're getting kind of stopped up here. So the way I'm playing this right now is if we're going to continue to get rejected here, I'm going to look for it possibly to sweep this low here still come on down here toward. Let me see here. Let me kind of pull up this weekly pivot area here. Yeah, so we've got the weekly pivot here. So potentially, you know, if we lose this right here at around 95,000 or so, 95,100, I would look for it potentially to get on down here toward about 92, 240. And that was where I was looking for it to get to here to originally. But you know, this is a pretty strong move up and through here. As long as we're staying above this 95,000 kind of 100 area here, I think we continue looking up. A hundred thousand should be, you know, that just that generic kind of target that we're looking at.
- [35:14]
Scott Melker
Yeah, like why not test, why not test the most obvious number ever.
- [35:18]
Chris
Yeah, exactly right. But I mean, you know, overall, you know, everything else aside, just based on the, the height of the pullback here, we've got a pattern target at 138,864/11 on this Bitcoin all time high index here. So, you know, I mean, I'm minimally look, looking for it to get up. I think we get higher than that. I think we do like, like a wave one up here maybe to around 110,000, 111,000, then we get a wave two pullback and then we kind of bust out. And if we're doing something like that, you know, around that area, we could actually be seeing this going up to, oh, I don't know here, let me see. Just take on a little guess here. You know, potentially up here around 200 000, a little bit more than that. And if you get more of a blow off top, if we got that, you know, you could see that even pop up to 300 000, which is kind of crazy to say today because people were talking about that, you know, I was talking about that possibility a year ago. But at the time we were like, but, you know, we're way off. We have to see how this kind of goes.
- [36:20]
Scott Melker
And now my target last cycle was 235. Oops.
- [36:24]
Chris
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, you know, we're kind of there. You know, things are where they're at. You know, everybody and their grandmother these days talks about, you know, global liquidity, which is great because that's really kind of the driver of, of all things, risk asset wise. Right. Because, you know, and people don't, I don't think people kind of sit there and understand why. But you Know, the easiest way to understand is, listen, if you've got money flowing in, if you've got, you know, all this extra kind of cash coming in there, it's got to go somewhere. So, yeah, it's going to go toward your more riskier assets, you know, and so you get it, you know, in stocks, you get it in, in crypto and whatnot. And you know, I don't think, I don't think we're near the top at the moment here. I still see some people amazingly still saying that the top is in. But, you know, I've been pretty sure.
- [37:11]
Scott Melker
That doesn't mean we have to test it immediately. Right. Just so people know, that doesn't mean like you're not calling for 125 or 200, 000 next week.
- [37:19]
Chris
Right, right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, we've, we've still got probably toward, you know, the end of the year, you know, Q4. That's been what I've been.
- [37:28]
Scott Melker
Usually summer sucks. Usually summer sucks. Like, especially even in the cycle when we're in the bull cycle. Yeah. Like if you go back four years, I think it was 20, wasn't it 20, 21 that we went to 65, back to 28 to 69 in the same year over the summer.
- [37:44]
Chris
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and it's, it's, it's, it just is what it is. Right. And the one thing, you know, again that we've been talking about this year, but you know, we're always careful in the markets to say, you know, well, this time is different, but legitimately, with bitcoin, this time is different. Up until, you know, January of last year, bitcoin was retail driven. It is now an institutional product. And whether you like it or not, it is the way it is. You know, a lot of people are gonna, you know, they're out there and they argue and they complain about it because it is. But you know, at the end of the day, if you're here to, you know, either make money and, or, you know, protect yourself, become more sovereign, I guess you could say you have to understand what's going on and you have to, you know, trade, invest and whatnot with those ideas in place and, you know, that's something we're always talking about, you know, Andrew and, and Tillman and myself there on Wednesdays on the beers of Bitcoin show, you know, and sometimes it upsets people when we say things about the way that things are likely headed and it doesn't mean that we necessarily agree with it. It doesn't mean that we're big fans of it. But you know, the idea is always to, you know, to give, just give people real information because most people that are in the market have no clue. Right. They have no clue about tradfi and what's going on. They have no clue about markets and what's going on. And you know, the, the thing with bitcoin is this, this is a once in a generation type thing and you know, and we're smack dab in the middle of it and people are scared. They got unit bias and they're scared of 97,000, 100,000. They think they have to go put all their money into, into some shitcoin because you know that that makes them feel richer. They can own 10 billion of whatever the latest shit coin is versus, you know, partial, you know, a few sats of bitcoin.
- [39:31]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I literally just pulled up the chart just for 20, 21, just, just to mess with people, just because this will make them feel uncomfortable and be fun, trigger people. Yeah. So if you go back to, it was April of 21, so four years ago, if you're looking at the cycle that we topped at 64 and then had a 55.622% drawdown into the summer and finally kind of started going back up in July, still only back up to 40 at that time, and then obviously raged into November. If we just did that right now you're looking at going back to the 50 ma there on the monthly and hitting $49,000 and it would be. And that went on to make a new all time high. Just in case you guys are wondering. I do think, by the way, this time is different. I think we get shallower drawdowns. I think there's just a very different bid under bitcoin. But like nothing's crazy in this thing.
- [40:16]
Chris
Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's. I, you know, I don't think we get, you know, another double top. That usually doesn't happen like that.
- [40:24]
Scott Melker
That was before the double top. That was the low between the tops.
- [40:28]
Chris
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, you know, I think, you know, a lot of people, they pull that up. And this is another thing you'll see with a lot of amateur traders online is they, they kind of say, oh well look what happened this time, we're going to do it again this time. I always like, well that was one time. You know, you can't base something on what happens one time. Right. You know, you're kind of looking for does it happen consistently? So you Know, obviously we can't guarantee it won't happen, but you know, the odds are. Usually what you don't get is a double top and then another double top following. You know, usually it's a, it's kind of an alternating type thing that we have that we happen. So right.
- [41:06]
Scott Melker
What we had before as a double top, you know, 108 and 109 or whatever, we've already more than exceeded the top. Yeah, the, the targets from that. So.
- [41:14]
Chris
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [41:15]
Scott Melker
We've gotten the double top.
- [41:16]
Chris
Yeah, right there.
- [41:17]
Scott Melker
It's like going back down the 70s. Yeah. I mean, 74 was like the. Literally. I mean it never plays out this way. But that's exactly like the previous all time high. Getting almost retested as support and then up. I mean that was as gratuitous a tradable bottom as you can find.
- [41:32]
Chris
Exactly, exactly. I mean there's so, there's so many more reasons to believe that this was the low here. You know what I was talking about, the pivot here, what you're talking about, you know, testing that previous swing high, all time high there, you know, low volume note. I mean we can look at so many different ways to look at this. The, the fact that here on the weekly. Something I've been pointing out as well was that every time on this cycle that we got a major pullback, it was always to this 42, 43 area. So right in here, you know, the first sideways we had and then over here we had the touches here and then again right in here, have it here. And so, you know, it's, it's hard. I think the only reason you're. You'd be bearish at this point is just because you're just like stuck on.
- [42:15]
Scott Melker
Being bearish or, or if you are like a super like global doomer, like if you just believe that the world is coming to an end and that all markets are going to crash. Right.
- [42:26]
Chris
But yeah, yeah, I mean I, you know, that can come a little bit further down the road. I don't think that comes for at least another, you know, at least after this year or something. But. But yeah, you know, so we're sitting here. Lost your mic there.
- [42:41]
Scott Melker
Yeah. We obviously know where we stand on bitcoin. We talked about for 15 minutes. You know, what is that? Where does that put everything else in context?
- [42:47]
Chris
Yeah. So, you know, when it comes to alts, you know, again, I've been very, you know, adamant about this since, you know, bitcoin came in the, the ETFS came in in January last Year and again, I, you know, I'm, I'm really cautious about this idea that we have a in all season like we used to having precisely because the mechanics have changed now. You know, we had the all seasons before because it was basically retail for the most part. And you know, they ran bitcoin up, they cycled into, you know, mega caps, large caps, mid caps, small caps, you know, and whatnot. And they cycle through it and back. And that's why we would get that all season. I'm, you know, again, I'm really cautious about saying that we're going to get it. You're going to get select alts, you know, that are going to continue to go. Last year we had a lot of memes. Memes were the big thing. But you're going to get sectors or specific types of alts that'll go, I think. But in all out all season, I mean, I'd love to see it, but I'm not really sure that we're going to get that. So that said, right now what I'm looking at, this is loca, USD L O K A we got the nice pullback to the S1 pivots about a 68, 618 pullback. I think, you know, that's a 2. So we're gonna look forward to break out further. If we can get out above wave X here at 0992, that's gonna add confidence to that count. If this is just an ABC, we'll look for a 1506-1801 target. If it's a 1, 2, 3, we'll look for a 2405 target. So it just makes it easy, you know, if you're going long on that breakout, you know, 1506, 1801, then 2405 of your targets, you know, and if we get up here, this is great because then we pull back to 15 and then we're up here around 32. And so, you know, we're kind of looking at that GTC USD, same idea here. I'm looking for this to potentially come down a little bit further here to this 25 cent mark at the S1 pivot on the weekly. But regardless, if we're breaking out above 33 cents here, we should be on our way up. Again, if it's an ABC, we'll look at 46 cents and then 52 cents. If it's a wave three, we'll look up here at 65 cents. So there's your three targets. With any of these, if you can get an impulsive breakout and close above the pivot. In this case, it's 30 cents here. That's going to indicate the lows likely in. But as far as the count goes, we got to break out above, like, in this case, 33 cents to kind of add confidence to that count to have it going. Pyre for a while there was pretty exciting, you know, back in the day, you know, a year ago, two years ago, something like that.
- [45:27]
Scott Melker
Shocker. There's an altcoin that was hyped at some point. It's now a bit down.
- [45:32]
Chris
Exactly, exactly. But here we are again. Pull Back to the S1 pivot here on the weekly. We've rallied up into the pivot. We're looking for a breakout above this. Swing high here at a dollar twenty four and a half or so. And if we can get that, once again, A$53, A$69, and then A$99 or so. Are your targets coming up through that? So. But it looks like the setup may be there. It's looking pretty decent. Let me see here. C98. There's another one here again, same.
- [46:08]
Scott Melker
I've never heard of this one. I can. I can firmly say I have no idea what this is.
- [46:13]
Chris
I could say that about most of them. I have no Clue. This is coin 98, though. But, you know, again, we're getting the same structural movement here. You got the move. You got the pullback into that weekly S1 pivot. Looking for a breakout above 0.0655. That'll give us targets of.081 3.09.03. And then point 1071 here would be the targets on that. But again, you know, if you can get an impulsive breakout and close above this 0.059, this weekly pivot here, that's. That's probably an easy earlier indication than breaking out through here to say that that low is probably in and we're headed up higher. And finally, you know, I've got. What is this sand here again?
- [46:57]
Scott Melker
Same metaverse is coming back in a big way. We all know it.
- [47:00]
Chris
Do what now?
- [47:01]
Scott Melker
I said the metaverse is coming back in a big way. We all know it.
- [47:04]
Chris
You know, everything's coming back all the time, right?
- [47:07]
Scott Melker
Until it's not mana and sand. Go get my mansion next to Snoop Dogg. Right, There you go. There you go. Headquarters.
- [47:13]
Chris
You can rub elbows, right? But once again, same structure. We've got the pullback to the S1. We need a breakout above, you know, 3107.31.07 gives us targets of 0.392604321 and then 0.5408. But again, impulsive breakout and close above the weekly Pivot here at 0.287 is probably an earlier warning heads up than you're breaking above wave B to say that lows probably in and we're heading up. But you know, none of these say, listen, you need to jump in right now and trade, you know, on any of these. If you were to just not be patient enough to at least wait for the impulsive breakout and close above the pivot or the breakout above, you know, the wave B or the wave X. If you're going to trade it, absolutely. The only way you would trade this would be something like this. You put your stop loss just right below. People get crazy and they're scared to lose money so they'll stick it, you know, down here or down here. Don't. No, there's no reason to do it. Listen, do it here, right? Get your target up there. I mean that right there is already almost a 10 hour trade right there. Worst case scenarios, this thing breaks down lower and then you wait because what's going to likely happen then is you can get a chance to get in lower. And so like if it, let's say it did end up sweeping down here instead of putting this way back here because you're scared to lose. You know, if you're using proper risk management just 1%, you can get it down here and you get this move up here and you're looking usually at more than what you would make on your initial one anyway. But it's the hardest thing to get new traders into is this idea that, you know, I'm going to be losing money as a trader, I'm going to lose money. And so they, they put these really big stops in there just because they're scared to. And then it hits the stop. And even if it didn't, if they're using proper risk management, you know, they limit their upside profit potential and it just, it gets really kind of crazy out there. Makes it difficult for people to, you know, to live the life that they want to live. You know, as traders you got to, you got to be ready to lose money. Not that you need to make big huge losses, but you have to understand proper risk management and you have to.
- [49:20]
Scott Melker
Be able to take a loss. You have to take a small loss. It should be absolutely, you shouldn't be ready to take a big loss because you should never be in a position to take a big loss.
- [49:28]
Chris
100% exactly.
- [49:30]
Scott Melker
Really quickly, before I let you go, even though I know we're like at time here, like with this V shaped recovery in the market in general, I mean, do you think that this is one of those sort of like, we had a big dip and it's over, or do you think that this was one of those face ripping nine day rallies where maybe things are still a bit uncertain and bearish?
- [49:47]
Chris
Oh, no, no, I think, I think, I think we're, I think the lows in, obviously, you know, I don't have a crystal ball. I can't, you know, guarantee anything, but if I'm looking at it, everything seems to be screaming that the low is in. So that's how I'm playing it. You know, what is it, Peter Brent, that says strong opinions, loosely held?
- [50:06]
Scott Melker
Yeah.
- [50:06]
Chris
And so, you know, it's really important to be. You have to have an opinion strong enough that you can trade it, but loose enough that if new information comes in and tells you that you're wrong, well, then you do that. For me, if we were to lose, you know, right now, the monthly pivot, I'd be more cautious. If we lose the yearly pivot, I'm definitely thinking, you know, there's a good chance the top is probably in. But, you know, those are my big kind of more macro looks at what we're looking at here. And so for me, I believe that 74,000 was kind of that low and we'll be heading to, you know, break out higher here. You know, with, with any luck, we'll get a nice big new all time high, you know, prior to maybe the end of June. And then we'll kind of pull back through the summer and then Q4, we'll really just kick it up like we're used to doing in the past.
- [50:53]
Scott Melker
That's when we start buying land in the metaverse again.
- [50:56]
Chris
That's right. That's right, exactly.
- [50:58]
Scott Melker
Guys, TX west capital on X. Give him a follow, check out his academy and everything that he's doing elsewhere. Gotta run and get ready for X spaces. I called it X. I just did it for like the first time. I think Twitter spaces feel pretty good about that. All right, guys, thank you so much. Thank you, Chris. We'll see you guys tomorrow. Later, guys.
- [51:18]
Chris
Let's dope.