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- [00:00]
A
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Every other weekday here on X at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. I think we're going to change the title. Right now we've got strategy buys 1.28 billion bitcoin during Extreme Fear, which I think is actually a very relevant story worth discussing, I believe also Bit mine, by the way, on the Tom Lee side and the Ethereum side bought over $100 million worth of Ethereum as well, which was announced today. But I think the bigger story at the moment, and obviously you can't extrapolate too much from things that happen in the short term. But right now we have global markets reeling. Obviously the Nikkei was down massively. Korea hit a circuit breaker last night, again down 8% when the markets opened. The Dow Jones opened down, I think 400 points. I think, I believe has continued down. And we have the S and p opened at 6700, currently trading at 6649. And that was already a big gap down from the close on Friday. And bitcoin, which was down slightly over the weekend, which has become a trend, is actually up at 69,000. So Bitcoin is up on the day, it's up on Friday's close, which was at around 68,000. And everything else is seemingly suffering the fate of volatile oil markets. So obviously we're not a macro show per se, but I'm sure you all have seen that oil on the Open yesterday basically pumped up to $119.50 both WTI and Brent. And then when there was news that the world was going to get together and start to release about 400 million barrels of oil from reserves that settled down to just over $100. I haven't checked it in the last 20 minutes, so I'm not sure where it stands, but that was the story. Up to 120 basically, and back down to 100. So a lot of volatility, a lot of insanity and bitcoin just kind of bitcoining, which I find very, very interesting for the it's correlated fan base, which I am not a part of.
- [02:09]
B
Yeah, well, I mean it's one of those days when you look and it actually is logical, but we've had so much ill, so much illogic that people see it and say, oh my God, look at how strange it is. But the truth is that if there's two certainties here and a lot of uncertainty, certainty number one is monetary inflation is going to rage full stop. They need to print just because of the war, just from the actual spending on defense spending, on munitions, we're talking literally the estimate is $500 billion more a year. And then that doesn't even count the cost of reconstruction when everything is all said and done. And so the amount of monetary printing is going to go higher. Those sorts of assets that react to that make sense. The other thing that is an absolute certainty is people having learned how hard it is to get their wealth out of countries they're trying to leave, will once again find bitcoin. And you can downplay that as much as you want, but there's a lot of wealth in a lot of the places and that people have been panicking, trying to get the hell out of, and they can't. You know, bitcoin's one of the only ways they can get their wealth out. And that narrative is going to happen. And so, yeah, to me, this is logical, Scott. You know, I said it, you know, on macro Monday, I'll say it again. You know, the sellers in bitcoin are exhausted, all the four year cycle stuff, whatever. But if you actually look at the risk reward on buying bitcoin, it may be higher now than it's ever been. And contrast that with, you know, software companies where, you know, some are going to do fine for, you know, even though they're going to do it with much fewer employees. And some are going to be like, you know, what the hell, we don't need you. We can build it ourselves using AI. You know, contrast that with, with so many other areas of the economy that AI is, is going to deal with. Contrast that with places that are actually impacted by war. And so, yeah, to me it makes sense, but we just haven't seen it before, so that's why it looks weird. Oh, come on. That had to.
- [04:24]
A
I agree. We gotta go to the panel. Throw your hands up, guys.
- [04:27]
B
I'm waiting for hands. I'm trying to say things to make people like, guy's an idiot. How dare he say that? I mean, come on, there has to be something. I know.
- [04:35]
A
Isn't it hard to be the guy who says things just to trigger people when you know that you don't necessarily agree with them and then you don't even get the response that you're looking for? It's tough.
- [04:43]
B
Well, actually, I do agree with what I just said.
- [04:45]
A
Just kidding.
- [04:46]
B
I was hoping for a response. Okay, William, you're the first one to raise your hand. Go.
- [04:49]
C
Okay, well, I mean, I'm not. I'm going to say something that I've been saying before. The Markets are being led by liquidity, liquidity on, liquidity off. Every week. It's something. Today, this week is oil, obviously, because of the, of the war before it was gold and you name it, interest rates and so on and so on. Inflation, like the, the narrative. We're not in control of the narrative. That's the tragedy of the industry. And I wished we could be talking more about what is going on in the industry as far as using the blockchain, using crypto for meaningful things, and not just talking about liquidity on or liquidity off and what's driving it. It's a sad situation we're in.
- [05:41]
A
Anyone else hands? All right, David. Okay, Carlo, go ahead.
- [05:47]
D
Good morning, Scott.
- [05:50]
A
Good morning, Carlo.
- [05:51]
D
First of all, listening to your piece with Giancarlo, I encourage everyone out there to check it out. Fantastic. Reinforces a lot of the conversations we're having right now, especially around bitcoin, especially around the massive adoption of digital assets and the existential threat that this poses to banks. Giancarlo nails it and your. Your interview with him is outstanding.
- [06:17]
A
Thank you.
- [06:18]
D
I think the bitcoin market, per Dave's take, is responding exactly the way I think it should. And you know, I listen a lot to Anas when it comes to kind of a realistic outlook on what is happening right now in Iran. And I'm by no means an expert on Iran, nor do I intend to be one on this stage. But I think the markets are largely in a wait and see posture here because a lot of the pressure is happening in Asia, where the indicators are that the Asian oil market is going to get pummeled by this continued limitation of oil going through the strait. And that ties into Dave's theory that, you know, you have people that are looking at ways to hedge against that and get their money out per se. And bitcoin is the obvious no brainer to that. I did put out a piece this morning which I think is interesting and I'd love to pin it. There has been a precipitous drop in yield in defi for stablecoins. And while many may come to the conclusion that that is an indicator of a lack of liquidity and a lack of risk on appetite in the marketplace, I think it also indicates an incredibly bullish sentiment for the future of stablecoin adoption just by way of a brief tldr, I think what we are seeing is defi and stablecoins are maturing. And the fact that you're not seeing those massive yields that were previously being offered by a lot of Platforms which may have not been totally justified but may have been somewhat manipulated in order to gain adoption and to gain interest from people parking their stable coins. What I think you're seeing is you're seeing a maturity of the marketplace where defi yield on stablecoins is becoming more of a. More akin to an institutional thing where there's an actual defi yield. And you know Brian Armstrong's take this weekend where he went out on Fox News and went directly after the banks and called them out for all the bullshit that they have been trying to perpetuate in trying to kill clarity. And this narrative is now broadening, Scott, beyond just rewards, which is already baked into the genius act. I'm starting to see this as a full frontal assault on any yield. And I agree with him and I agree with a lot of people in the space, including Dave, that I think this is going to backfire badly on the banks. And I think that defi is going to become a very interesting play for consumers and an alternative to the banks. So I think ultimately, while we're seeing yield in defi for stablecoins drop and that might be a sentiment that there is no liquidity or it's a risk off indicator. I think equally it is an indicator that the sector is maturing and there's no denying that we're seeing tons of on chain activity with stablecoins. So I think we just need to ride this out and hopefully this war, sad and tragic as it is, is not a long drawn out thing because then we really have a lot of other concerns that we need to factor into this conversation. Thank you, Scott.
- [09:34]
A
That was great. Carla. Thank you, Adam.
- [09:36]
E
Good morning, guys. Dave, I would just push back a little bit on, on the thesis that, you know, people leaving these countries are fleeing, are going to use bitcoin as their, their kind of exit strategy. How do you, I mean first, how do you think they're going to on ramp to bitcoin?
- [09:54]
A
Whatever.
- [09:55]
E
If I'm in Iran and I want to get out, how am I going to on ramp to bitcoin?
- [10:00]
B
If you're in Iran and you're thinking of and you have a chance of leaving, you're already in bitcoin.
- [10:04]
D
Right?
- [10:04]
E
That's what I'm saying.
- [10:05]
F
Right.
- [10:05]
E
So where's the new buy pressure going to come from in that sort of scenario?
- [10:08]
B
It's not that it's narrative. It's narrative, Adam, 100%. You're right. I mean, I'm not saying people are going to run out and go, but if you look at like during COVID when the Canadian truckers were getting their accounts frozen, that created a lot of bitcoiners. Not immediately, but people said, oh, wait a minute. You know, it's, it's this, the notion of censorship, resistance, the notion of portability, the notion of scarcity, it creeps back up because it's easy to explain. And when you're trying to orange pill somebody in the United States, it, you can't even talk about that sort of stuff. Why? Because they don't have that issue. That's what I mean.
- [10:44]
E
No, I get that actually, that, that's, that's true. So you're just saying for narrative awareness building, it's actually a good thing, which I don't disagree with. I mean that truckers is the perfect, perfect analogy because I mean I, you know, so many of my normie friends had no idea that it was even taking place. Right. No idea that people were actually getting their accounts frozen and stuff in Canada. So I'm with that. So you're basically looking at it as more of a awareness building event for long term holders.
- [11:13]
B
Basically, yeah.
- [11:14]
A
We've had a few of these in time, Dave. Right. I mean, I agree with you, by the way. I don't think it like moves the needle massively, but you know, Cyprus, back in, what year was it that was kind of the first big bitcoin move?
- [11:24]
B
When they took the. When, yeah, when they.
- [11:26]
A
Silicon Valley Bank. I mean, Silicon Valley bank, bitcoin. You could argue that the Silicon Valley bank collapse was the unexpected catalyst of the entire last bull market, or at least the catalyst that ended the bear market. Right. Because it basically bitcoin had dumped on FTX. We sat there kind of 20 and below 1918 for all this time. Then Silicon Valley bank collapsed and in particular had some of Circle's holdings. Right. So even people like me said, well, I don't know what the story is going to be with USDC by Monday. So I'm just going to put it in bitcoin. By the way, I thought bitcoin would go down, not up. And bitcoin went from like 19 to 25.
- [12:02]
G
Right, right.
- [12:02]
A
And then that was the bottom.
- [12:04]
B
I think that's exactly my point. Look, I think, I hate to say it, but I think that that's exactly what's, what's playing out here, I think. And the con, it's actually funny when charts and things happen at the same time and time range. You know, we said, Look, I said October 10th would take six months to wipe through the system before we can Resume any sort of bull trend. We'll start doing the math. And you know.
- [12:35]
A
Absolutely.
- [12:36]
G
Here we are.
- [12:36]
B
That's that. By the way, for those who don't, we're talking. I, I, that's tomorrow. Now do I think that that prediction has any veracity? Of course not. I mean it's a, it's a, it's an absolute, you know, estimate of estimate. But you know, there, there, whether or not It's. Josh, man with 4, 4, you know, 444 based on 84, 000 on a particular date. I mean, come on. But, but the truth is that it, it is a lot easier to explain Bitcoin's use case to people when they see something in front of them.
- [13:06]
E
And it's easy, it's easy to see how the money printer is going to
- [13:09]
A
get turned on now too.
- [13:09]
F
Right?
- [13:10]
A
I mean this is like.
- [13:10]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean there's, there's just no, there's no way around it. I mean, you know, it, it's, it, there's just no way around it. I do want to go back to thing Carlos said because one of the things that I have always hated about Defi and despite being wildly bullish on Defi's future is this notion that people say, well this token has yield and you can't figure out where the hell the yield's coming from. Right. You know, because it doesn't make any sense. I mean it's not like the network's not generating the fees to pay the yield, et cetera. So there has always been in my head a need for a transparent, competitive, open sourced marketplace where real yield can be shared between, you know, based on market forces, between borrowers, you know, between the lenders and the servicers, et cetera. Defi has that potential. But one of the problems that we had is these stupid, you know, the famous Sam, Matt Levine interview with Sam where, well, there's this magic box and we saw UST paying 18% or whatever the hell it was paying toward the end. And it never makes any sense. The, the truth is that when you see stablecoin yields going down to the levels that they're at now, community banks actually are paying more. So them to argue that this is a problem is, is just insane. I mean it's truly insane because you know, markets will, will price markets. The difference is, is there's a lot of money that is at well below those levels and there's just no economic way for that to happen. And Defy will make that happen. I mean, arguably Defi will decrease Rates paid because you competitive market, you know, when in certain times. And, and so to me, this is incredibly healthy.
- [14:58]
D
And Carl, that's exactly my thesis. That is exactly my thesis.
- [15:02]
B
Okay, good. Well, hopefully I didn't, I didn't gunk it up for people. But, but I think that that's important and it's the fact that we have octogenarian senators who don't understand what's going on just drives me, just drives me bonkers. But, you know, we'll see. And you know, I, I think, Scott, you and I both think that the political process is so fubarred that, you know, that all these things. Well, we're going to get clarity by this. We're going to get it by that. It's like. Yeah, the truth is, is what we're getting is a situation where if the Democrats win the midterms, then do they continue to, to cow to Elizabeth Warren and take the risk that it fubars their 28 or do they worry about the midterms? I mean, if they think they're in a landslide, then they're not going to care. Right. You know, but if it's a wedge issue, then they will care. And, and I hate handicapping politics because I, I, I personally know Democrats who, who think that it makes sense. But you know, they, it's a question of what they want to make an issue out of. Right. And that, that's, that's the stupid stuff. But the truth is, is there's a lot at stake here. And you know, from a crypto point of view, it's huge. From a bitcoin point of view, it's relevant for sure. But you know, I thought there was headlines out this morning from certain people inside banks talking to reporters saying, you know, if we don't get this stuff passed, that we are going to be at a disadvantage and it's going to hurt us.
- [16:30]
A
Which I think I saw a story this morning that I had pulled up actually for our show that they were thinking about taking legal action against the regulator.
- [16:41]
D
It's incredible. The narrative is really shifting in real time.
- [16:45]
B
Well, because the narrative, the ABA, American Bankers association position is essentially two plus two equals seven. It's not even that it equals four or four and a half or whatever. I mean, it's just so unbelievably dumb and the math just isn't there. I mean. Brian, we see another hand.
- [17:06]
A
Yeah, just really quickly before Brian. Yeah. Just so I'm not misquoted, this is a story in the Guardian top US banks way suing federal Regulator over crypto banking rules Exclusive Bank Policy Institute representing lenders such as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs argues that new licenses can harm US consumers and financial system.
- [17:23]
B
Oh, that's the difference. That's because they don't, they don't want to have a fully reserved Kraken.
- [17:28]
A
Exactly.
- [17:30]
B
That is the, the. Interestingly, if that ever gets to the point, it'll be in the courts. But you're trying to make an argument. Just understand what that means, what they're saying. It's the same thing that happened with Custodia, only instead of buying closed doors, it'll be in the public. You're making an argument that banks that have 95% or 5% coverage of their assets on hand are somehow less risky than banks that have 100%. That's what that, that's what they're trying to argue. I mean, it's literally down is up and up is down. You know, it's, it's right, it's something right out of 1984 anyway. Brian.
- [18:07]
A
Yeah, Brian, Sorry, go ahead.
- [18:09]
G
Oh, zero worries. I covered banks for over a decade and nothing coming out of the big banks makes much sense to me. Not this deposit issue which we've talked about before, but even on this specific issue like BPI is pushing back against the occ, making it easier for crypto and fintech firms to operate under a national bank trust charter. And basically what this does is it's kind of like this limited banking charter, so you can custody assets, you can manage trust, estate and client assets. You can do things like settlement, payment and asset servicing activities which include stablecoin reserve management, digital asset custody when you're approved by the regulators. But you cannot accept retail deposits, you cannot provide FDIC insured deposits, you cannot engage in lending as a core business. And so BPI is basically trying to say like you're providing bank like services without bank like regulation. But I fully disagree for three main reasons. So number one, trust banks are still regulated. They're supervised by the occ. They have to comply with capital governance and BSA AML requirements. Number two, they still have prohibitions on activities. So they're not this full equivalent full service bank and this shouldn't be regulated and such. And then lastly, you know, this encourages innovation under federal oversight where if you don't do this, you know, it's either under this fragmented state regulation or outside the scope of federal banking regulators. So I think that this is really just a continuation of the push by the big banks to slow down what they see as this competitive industry
- [19:54]
D
that actually plays into that whole Jamie Dimon narrative that if you want to be in stablecoin yield, you got to be a full blown, full pledged bank. And you're, you're making the point perfectly that that's not the case and that there is distinctions but it just shows how scared they are. They're scared of these Neo banks like Kraken because why would you ever touch a bank again when you have these other alternatives for on and off ramp.
- [20:20]
B
Yeah, I mean to be specific, I mean you've heard me talk about this. Carlo knows where I'm probably I'm going to go. The notion of stablecoin rewards and all that stuff is quite quaint and irrelevant. If Kraken, Coinbase, Robin Hood all can operate a, a skinny bank that can offer payment services, if you can have a, if you could have it linked into Zell and Venmo or even just Venmo, it doesn't matter. And, and it be easy to do that and pay your bills and write checks, you know, against a payment account and have automated sweeps from, you know, you pick your investment accounts in whatever order so you, you have just set it up so that if God forbid, you know, you run out of money in your, your, in your, your stablecoin balance that it goes and sells on because it's 24 7. Right. So it can do, it goes and sells Bitcoin or Ethereum or Dogecoin, I don't really care. Or B. Uidl. Right. You know, a tokenized bank deposit and do. So people are going to not have to have nearly as much in payment accounts anymore and consumers are going to love that because it's going to increase the amount of return that they have. That's the fear, that's what these guys are afraid of. They're afraid of a 247 financial services company that can handle and provide the service of payments that people rely on banks to do right now. That is the end game here, make no mistake. And if you're not watching that, I mean assuming the banks don't know that, it assumes that they're stupid. Now I worked in, in at Citigroup for years and yes, they're, they are not exactly. The organizational IQ average is definitely well below a lot of other companies that I've worked at. But the truth is they're not that dumb and there are smart people there and those people will know what I just said is true because it's just so damn obvious.
- [22:04]
D
We talked about this on Friday, Jamie and I actually Jamie came onto My show, my stablecoin solution show on Friday and we talked about this exact issue. So it's so funny you're saying this, Dave, because that is absolutely what they're scared of. They know they're being marginalized.
- [22:18]
B
Yeah, it's not the marginalized. It's. This happens in every single technology revolution, every single time. You know, it's like the difference is booksellers didn't have advocates, right? They didn't make enough money to be able to say, oh well, we, you know, local bookstores just didn't have the political advocates to say, well we, you know, we shouldn't be disintermediated, you know, but banks do. They've made billions, many of which because they were given a direct subsidy. I calculated over $500 billion of subsidy by the change in 2008. That allowed them to get interest on their Federal Reserve balances, which was supposed to just be, you know, sitting there, you know, basically sitting there as cash. Before 2008 they weren't allowed to part. People think that TARP was the big bailout of the banking industry. Well, it was a bailout, but the bigger one was there, it was the, the was both the ability to get balance money on balances, the Fed and changing their reserve ratio so that they can hold more in treasuries and other risk free things and lever it up and it's just, it's huge amounts of money that they've made on the back of federal gas and people don't know that it's, it's actually crazy in a month anyway. Jamie, I'm talking too much. You've got your hand up. Sorry.
- [23:35]
H
No, it's all good. I love the discussion. I mean, you know, the Kraken development, I think it's important. I mean it's a signal that choke point 2.0 is unlikely to happen again. And that's significant. And as more of these neobanks take that step, Coinbase and others, I think it's going to continue to solidify and build trust and build a direct connection as opposed to having to go through a middleman or through a middle bank to, to decide what they can do and what they can't. You know, as far as DeFi goes, I mean this is, people need to understand this is where innovation begins and TRADFI adopts and regulates. So you know, DEFI is important because this is where we get to play figure out what, what things can be approved from the, from the current, you know, the structures and, and you know, that's available to people. And then, and then the thing that, what elevates to the top, I think traffic is going to find a way to adopt it to make it safe for people and to allow more people to access it. We talked about the Iran conflict, obviously, and related to midterms, we were talking about it last night in our space. And it's just interesting because I just think people need to separate the two. Let Trump play this thing out, deal with Iran's oil price, Iran separately and the oil prices separately. And then after this resolves itself, I think the midterms will likely write its own narrative. And I just think we just have to let Trump govern and get this thing through, see where it ends up, and then deal with midterms afterwards. As far as bitcoin, we talked about the range. I mean, you're still a 71 to $60,000 near term range and it's been largely riding in the middle of that. But there's liquidity above somewhere, 83,000 at the top and 55 to 52,000 below. So I would continue to watch those areas for movements and price ranges as, as we go forward. But right now bitcoin's looking really strong given the conflict that's going on, and I think it's really encouraging.
- [25:39]
A
Yeah, Jamie, I would add to that that I think 74,000 is a very key level for technical analysts that, you know, is going to have to be broken before that 82 area just because it was kind of the March High of 24, you know, and low on the tariffs and just has kind of, you know, been a very key level. And above 74 to 80, there's like nothing. So I think you're right that if, if we kind of get above 74, there's been very little price action, maybe a week in each direction in that kind of 74 to 80 range. So it should be pretty smooth sailing. Richard?
- [26:15]
I
Hey guys, I want to be the, the non American in this conversation. I mean, it's, I find this interesting when we get back to these regulations, political top nuances around bitcoin specifically. I mean, crypto in general. But, but, you know, Dave, I want to ask you this. I mean, you say you worked at Citi. I mean, is the belief that, you know, let's say 20, 28, the Democrats get into power, that the banks would be happy for crypto to go away completely, for defi to go away completely? I mean, I'm trying to understand, like if there's any belief that there's real value in, in what defi represents in
- [26:55]
B
the form of crypto here, here. Okay, so there's, there's two questions here that, that get conflated, right? The first is can you put the genie back in the bottle? That, that's, that's really what you're asking. And you know, look, if you're, if you're banks, what do you want? You don't want to try to put the beat genie back in the bottle because if you do, you know it's going to fail. So what do you want to do? You want to own it, you want to co opt it? You, you want to basically make it. You want to make reg. Competitive moats. There are, and it's not just finance, but in all of these industries there are armies of lobbyists and insiders that work with regulators, etc, that what they do is they write rules that give them advantage. In fact, you know, the, the, a lot of people, a lot of companies have enormous regulatory outreach, staffs that are very expensive and pay on lobbyists at a lot of money. And what they're doing is they're writing the real rules. So let's say Clarity passes. If clarity passes now then we have two, you know, almost three years of Paul Atkins SEC and a Mike Selig CFTC who are going to write rules that are relatively libertarian, that will be an open level playing field. And yeah, there'll be some things in those rules that get inserted that throw sand in the gears a bit, but it's not going to stop competition. Now if, on the other hand, Clarity passes in 20, you know, in, let's say it passes and they start writing rules in 2027. Right. You know, and, and we have an election around the corner and they can't and because it takes, it takes a lot of time. When an SEC does a rule or the CFTC does a rule, it first goes to a comment period and then they have to, and it all has to be documented to the Administrative Procedures Act. It takes time. Generally, I think probably the fastest they'll ever get a rule from, you know, proposed to implement it, except for something really trivial, is somewhere around 18 months. So it means that if you don't get Clarity this year, then it is entirely possible that the following SEC and CFTC and if you have a President AOC or a President Newsom, that could be Gensler 2.0. And so now you have, you know, you know, who knows whether they would do that. This is the, the, the ultimate downside in that scenario. Then yes, they've been directed to do this, but Maybe they, you know, they, they, they make it so that it's very favorable so that, yeah, you can trade crypto if you're an American, but only through if you have a brokerage account at a bank and only if you're an accredited investor and these other things. And you can imagine all of the various grist that they could throw into it. That's really the issue. None of that has anything to do with Bitcoin, right? I want that to be very clear because there is. The bitcoin horse has left the stable. Any of the reason why you want clarity for Bitcoin will play out regardless. So there's no real political risk there because that ship has sailed. And so it is much more nuanced of an answer to your question. I think when it comes to defi, I don't think that there is any chance that defi won't advance, but there is a huge chance that the banks will keep it as a cartel. Like for example, take one business that has a history of this stock borrow, right, the stock you buy. And this is a very fraud issue the way the markets work. The reason Paul Atkins is pushing for tokenization is because it's a much better market structure. One of the things that's better about it is instead of this notion that you can trade based upon a locate and you don't have to borrow until you settle and you can settle for, you can have days and you can have fails you whatever is under tokenization, you have to pre borrow. You actually have to borrow if you want to sell. And that has enormous implications throughout the market. One of those implications is it breaks the cartel and they're going to fight like hell against that. And we'll see how well they do. Right now that doesn't need clarity, that that's literally what they're trying to get done, but that those are the stakes. Richard, it's. You could literally spend hours and I and I have on talking about the nuances of the stock loan market and how it will influence defi and, and or any other asset market. So it's a much more complicated question than you're asking. But understand the battle will be fought behind closed doors in those sorts of rooms. I hope that answers what you were asking.
- [31:25]
I
Yeah, I mean, I think it does. My sense has always been that, you know, they just want to seat at the table and to take control of the, the table rather than to eradicate it completely. But yeah, that does give it a lot more context, you know, practically from your experience.
- [31:44]
B
I mean, look the other thing about that banks and the traditional financial markets are when the leaders talk, I'm not even sure that the people who are actually doing the businesses and working on the various pieces even are paying attention, except in cases where it's just dramatic. Right. So you have this level of dysfunction. JP Morgan has had teams of people working on various things in the world of crypto for years. Jamie Dimon has changed his tune dramatically, but it really hasn't changed a whole lot lot inside it because it's just, it's not the way these, these organizations work anyway. I think it's way too in the weeds for this. I think. I don't know, Scott, you want to go in another direction?
- [32:28]
A
I mean there's, you know, obviously the, we haven't even to any great degree discussed the macro, but I'm not sure that that's interesting when there's so many shows about it. We kind of started off with the fact that Michael Saylor is bought another $1.2 billion worth of Bitcoin, which I just find astounding, the success there of STRC to be able to do that and that Tom Lee has continued to buy Ethereum. But I think all that in context of the fact that we're about to mine 20 million bitcoin, it's really interesting as this becomes a serious buying floor continued from Saylor and others. And when you zoom out 30,000ft thing is becoming more scarce.
- [33:13]
B
But how much. Not to give a shameless plug to someone who isn't compensating me, but how much better would MicroStrategy be doing is if as they have their cash flow from strc they put it in an Arch Public kind of account.
- [33:27]
A
Yeah, I mean they would. I think they did, they did that study. They did that study. So for anyone who doesn't know, like Arch Public is a company that I work very closely with, I'm an equity holder, but it's an algorithm for buying bitcoin dips and I, I use it so it's not really shilling when it's the, it's how I buy bitcoin, but I don't have it in front of me. But they did a study on using the algorithms back tested versus strategy's actual thing and the cost basis would be like, like I said, I don't want to misquote it, but I think it was rather than 77, it was like 30.
- [33:59]
B
Well, I don't know if it's gonna be that big, but I mean the point is that when you look at last week the fact that you paid, I mean anything over like you know 67, 68 is just, it's just giving money away. I mean it's just what was the
- [34:11]
A
cost basis on the buys? I didn't even see these. I didn't look, I can look it
- [34:17]
B
up.70946 meaning he did all of his buys in that in the run up to 70 to where it got rejected at 74. So he bought it was earlier in the week right on the rally and you know and to some degree strc inflows this space was downloaded via spaces down.com visit to download your spaces today. Going to be bigger on bitcoin updates but this notion that you have to deploy the cash immediately, it's like I don't know, it just seems silly but at someone will build a better mousetrap which won't and then you know, then they'll out compete. I mean who knows maybe you know, you know, maybe Jack Mers is listening. Jack, if you are then you know design an algorithmic strategy to implement the cash that if you're, if that's what you're going to be doing. But you know, and as I said I have no, no skin in this game. I mean I could design probably the right kind of algorithm because that's exactly what you want to do. But the reason that it matters is because of all the stupid chatter on, on, on saying well look how bad strategy as is it trading and okay maybe but you know they're making a long term bet on multiples of this and they're either right or they're wrong. You know STRC is a really interesting vehicle for a lot of reasons and I think a lot of people misunderstand it but you know, that's just me. Should we talk about try to find that data?
- [35:38]
A
Yeah, go ahead.
- [35:41]
B
Yeah, no, I was going to say so you know we got, we have war where no one knows what's going on. We have blackrock, you know and the private credit saga which is yet another, yet another thing where you know the private markets a lot of that money that you know, people are wondering where catalyst coming from for Bitcoin. If people sour on certain asset classes that helps, you know, it helps the, it, it helps what's going on. And, and that's something that you know Gary, I see you're up here. I mean you talked about this. You know, you don't see where the catalyst is going to be. Well, if silver stays in this, in the range that it's been and it's been in a pretty tight range recently. Even though, I mean, I guess, you know, for it, I guess last week it dropped 6% because it had gone up over 90. But it's still right around where it's been after this breakout is that is hot money likely to come back to assets that show relative strength? So the question is, what does it take for bitcoin to show relative strength? And if you go back and look at the math, it's been more or less within a few thousand dollars, but on every Monday for the last four weeks, it's been around 68,000 somewhere, give or take a thousand. And that's, that's pretty dead. There's been a lot of volatility in the middle, but it's pretty dead.
- [37:01]
F
I gotta say, I've been very impressed with how bitcoin's done this weekend. It's once again betrayed my logic. It's hilarious. So I, I don't know where the buying's coming from other than Saylor.
- [37:22]
B
Well, he bought last week. We, we can tell you. Can you get forensically to help by price?
- [37:26]
F
Yeah, he buys every week, man.
- [37:28]
B
No, but he bought early last week when bitcoin ran and then failed at 74 and didn't buy anything as it, as it fell back and now probably will be buying again tomorrow.
- [37:41]
F
Let me ask this question maybe just because, I mean, is anybody surprised that bitcoin didn't puke out this weekend? I, I would have thought it would have done that. And it, it's held up very well, surprisingly well. I think
- [38:02]
A
I, I agree with that.
- [38:06]
B
Yeah. I mean, it. Look, I, I personally expected, you know, I, I was, I was, I was at the World Baseball Classic use, you know, everyone in between innings looking at what was going on when I saw oil go to 120 and I looked and I saw bitcoin was still at 66. I'm saying, well, that's, that's pretty good. You know, like, that's surprising. I thought I would do to see 64 or 63 here. And then I saw oil drop all the way down to like 115 and it was, it was a bit higher. And I'm like, wow, this is, this is, this is interesting. So even I, and I'm. And we all know I've been one of the more bullish people. I, I'll admit. Yeah, I mean, I think most people were surprised because it, it, look, it feels, Gary, like, like there, there's not that there's set. This is what, what they call it Bottoms they call call it sellers exhaustion. Right. And and I'm not saying that that they are done. I mean who the hell knows but you know it, it certainly feels that way. That's the only thing I can say. Well it certainly felt we will see
- [39:05]
F
we have a lot of levels to get through here. You're going to see a lot of sellers at 95, 92.
- [39:11]
B
Hell 74 is a really hard level to get through.
- [39:14]
F
That's right.
- [39:15]
B
Yeah.
- [39:16]
F
And that's what people need to understand. This is going to be a rocky road if you haven't hedged it's probably a little late. I mean it's probably a lot late to do anything and just hold on for the ride. I, you know the crude oil thing. I mean does anybody think crude oil is really going to explode to the. What's Bloomberg, what's McGlone saying? Is Bloomberg like believe as gas prompts promoting 150 to 200 crude oil which I think is just stupid.
- [39:47]
B
I think that yeah we didn't. I think Mike thinks that that the 119120 level will was a great short tactically look the. This isn't changing the cost of production. It changes people's ability to get at it. Right. So you know all you have to do is look at the December. The fact that December is in the 70s is really high. I think that's what he's focusing more on than on the front month.
- [40:14]
A
Yeah.
- [40:16]
B
Oh, you're back. Okay, good.
- [40:17]
A
I think I, I don't know what happened. I was trying to get back. I think I'm back. But yeah, I, I would say Mike, Mike's actually bearish oil so I, you know is he's kind of their lead commodity guy. He thinks that this is a temporary spike.
- [40:28]
B
Gary, I mean Gary, you've said it. What's the average cost of oil production these days? Somewhere in the 40s.
- [40:36]
F
Yep. In the u. S. Maybe 55, 60 in in middle East. I mean but at a hundred dollars the entire planet comes on stream.
- [40:45]
B
Yeah.
- [40:45]
F
And, and the entire planet and can
- [40:47]
B
you imagine if it lasted for any length of time like it did in the 70s? I mean just imagine ire at the oil companies for how much money they'd be making. 100%.
- [40:58]
A
Yeah but Dave and Gary quickly. Gary, you just said 100. Everybody comes on. But we saw obviously I think Qatar shut down. That was last week before it was 100. And Saudi Aramco shut down two major fields today. And I kind of asked mglone this too. I get what historically happens based on certain prices. But is this time a bit different because the straits are actually closed and there's literally nowhere no way to ship that or is it just another narrative?
- [41:27]
F
Well, look, I. Let's remember that everything got shut down during COVID So my, my theory is that the entire industrial complex is now almost anti fragile. It has been been supply shocked so many times by these psychopaths that within weeks we will be up and running like at a hundred dollars. Guys, there's $30 of transport, okay? I can pay somebody $10 to take a bribe. This is what happens in oil, okay? This never stops flowing. You can embargo this into oblivion, but it's not on the blockchain. You can't trace it and track it. It's black crude oil, man. It's got a few different flavors to it, but I mean you, you put a logo on a ship and you move it. So I'm, and I'm not convinced the Hormuz is completely shut down. I'm not even confused who actually shut it down. I mean, based on every supply disruption we've had, every the wrong players are being blamed for, I mean, it sounds
- [42:36]
A
like the quote unquote shutdown is more like nobody wants to take the risk more than you're not.
- [42:42]
F
You're not going to pay $50 for an insurance premium to move something that's worth a hundred.
- [42:47]
A
Exactly. That's what I'm saying. So shut down is anecdote. Sort of like it's not the correct. Effectively.
- [42:54]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's.
- [42:57]
F
But I, I just don't see this lasting like, you know, and people are blaming, saying, hey, Putin's taking a bath. Putin is getting like he's got, he's going to sell discounted crude oil to everybody he can so that he can get long term contracts after this is done. He loves this smart cat dude. Well, he doesn't want $100 crude oil though. I promise you he does not want that or 150, because he knows 150 means we're back at 30. In about six months, the whole world will start drilling toward. If you see the futures curve, think what can happen if the futures curve goes to 70, $75 and you could get volume off of that, say out one year. You don't think Exxon, who drills for 40 isn't going to sell $75 crude oil in one year?
- [43:48]
B
Of course they will.
- [43:49]
F
Of course. Dude, this is a monster margin. I mean it's. That, that's an incredible margin. Nothing has changed for Exxon. The Cost of production has not changed one penny. The cost of consumption is going to change in different areas. I mean, Europe is so. It's unbelievable. We are going to watch the. The total, entire collapse of Europe. We're literally going to watch it unfold right here, right. Right in front of the next two years.
- [44:24]
A
It's pretty wild. I mean, it's amazing.
- [44:27]
F
Destroys demand.
- [44:29]
A
Yeah, it's amazing. Like when you zoom out and see there was a great book. I mean, he's a bit of an alarmist. Peter Zion. Is that his name?
- [44:36]
D
The.
- [44:37]
A
Try to remember the exact name, but, you know, the end of the world is just the beginning, something to that effect. And he goes very deeply into how, like, as a result of many unique properties geographically and resources and stuff, the United States could basically just survive anything on its own. And this is one of those scenarios where you start to see that, you know, I mean, even Mike was talking about that this morning. We have plenty of corn, plenty of wheat, plenty of oil. We can just basically go about our business while the rest of the world, you know, explodes. It's really pretty crazy. But, Gary, I think, you know, I don't know how what, what Europe coming apart before our eyes looks like in two years, but I think we've been watching it slowly happen for quite a long time.
- [45:23]
B
Yeah.
- [45:24]
A
Anymore.
- [45:24]
C
Yeah.
- [45:24]
B
No, look, the. The. We always make the statement about markets, how markets hate uncertainty. And, you know, and so the. The notion of, well, okay, you know, we think there's going to be a war. We're uncertain about it, so let's sell it off. Okay, the war started. Okay, we're. But when you get to this sort of situation where nobody really knows what the hell is going to happen, that's one of those things where it lasts for until it resolves. And that's markets now. That's in general, but within markets, the longer it goes, the more people start to make bets on rotation and where things are actually headed. And I think that's what we're starting to see. Right. I think that it's starting to become a consensus that no matter what, there's going to be monetary printing, that no matter what the need for, certain assets are going to go higher and other assets, they may do whatever, but if you start looking at the internals, you know, like, you know, oil is like, you saw what the CME did. Right? I mean, this was. This was crazy in my mind. And not crazy that they raised margin requirements on oil. That makes perfect sense. I mean, they always tend to do that, but evidently they Cut margin requirements on gold and silver, which I, I don't really understand that. I, I, you know, Gary, you're more a commodity guy than me. I mean, I thought that the gold and silver, what they had done was they made a margin requirement based on price so that if it goes up it margin would go higher and vice versa. But it is, is that all that happened or did they actually change the rules? Do you know? Yeah, this is where McGlone would know the answer to this. But I, I don't know, but I thought that was interesting. I mean, it's like people always talk about manipulation in markets and they always conveniently laugh at what's called the ppt, the plunge Protection team. I mean, who knows what's actually happening under the covers in some of these markets. But the fact that oil seems to be pegged right around 100 and it doesn't seem to be able to get too far above it right now, today, and I doubt seriously you're going to see it go much lower is fascinating.
- [47:27]
A
But I guess you always sign narratives to things. We laugh about that after they happen. But I mean, doesn't it make sense that oil trading was basically closed all weekend and then you see all this news and then you had the huge spike and then the government step in and say, hey, we're going to release 3 or 400 million barrels. I think it was 300 of the 1.2 in reserves and prices calm down. That's one of those, that actually kind of rationally makes sense to me.
- [47:53]
B
Not that I know much about oil, of course. It's not just oil though. I mean, it's just, it's like everything else, you know, in the indices and what's going, you know, what people are investing in. I mean, it's just, it Mondays are always weird that way because the expectation, the weekend, at least historically has been dramatically worse. The downside expectations on the weekend are all tend to, to peter out Monday morning. Now that's not, that's, that can't happen all the time. Right. Because one of these days, you know, things will actually be as bad as people expect. But that just hasn't happened.
- [48:30]
A
Absolutely. Any other topics that we missed? I think we pretty much covered it.
- [48:35]
B
Yeah. I mean, look, I think when you start talking about, you know, there's all sorts of stuff inside the world of crypto that one of these days maybe we'll talk about again, you know, things like, you know, what's going on with Bittensor.
- [48:48]
A
Hyper liquid.
- [48:49]
B
Right, Hyper liquid. Or you know, and there is A lot there or you know, or our favorite xrp because you know, I did
- [48:57]
A
see something funny by the way. I don't know if this is exact. It was somebody in his ballpark that like only three of the top 10 assets traded on hyper liquid are actually crypto. Well, I mean, you know, tokenized everything or contracts on oil and all those things and not actually crypto anymore. Yeah, Richard's here.
- [49:12]
B
Thumbs up.
- [49:13]
A
I don't know if it was three or four, but it was a pretty astounding.
- [49:15]
B
Well, I, I, I know because you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of precious metals are trading on hyper liquid for sure. Which is, which is a very interesting use case that I don't think people truly understand how important that is. You know, it's like, you know, it's, it's essentially creating, putting much more transparency on the gambling market with regard to a lot of these things.
- [49:37]
J
You could have, you could have traded
- [49:38]
I
oil on Sunday before the markets open. There was one real advantage. Arthur Hayes was, was pushing that quite heavily, which I thought was quite interesting
- [49:47]
B
there. It's, it's, it is very much going to become a fixture. Not just hyper liquid in general, but just the notion of, of per Dex's Trading Products 24 7. If, if you, if you think that, that, that the CFTC isn't paying attention to this, you're not paying attention because they definitely get it. William, I see your hand up.
- [50:13]
C
Yeah. I was going to ask you, David, why not talk about these other things now? Why delay? I mean this is the time to talk about things like today. The NASDAQ has a deal with Kraken to do tokenization of assets. We have a company called cast raising $80 million for stable coins. We have the government saying they will relax their views on privacy of some tokens. I mean there are some developments and again, sound like a broken record. We should be talking about these and let those kinds of stories drive the narrative instead of just talking about liquidity and the war and oil and all of that. Why not? I mean this is, this, this should be dominating the, the discussion.
- [51:05]
B
No, I think you're right. And actually, you know, I just don't know the details. I saw the headline on NASDAQ and Kraken. That is a, it, it is a very big deal. I sort of teased it before. I mean people don't understand what happens, you know, why, why, you know, everyone in, in the world of crypto, not everyone, but a lot of people look at it and McGlone always talks about it and his, he's a much more negative version of it, but that there's a lot of overvalued and crap assets that are there because they were cheap to bring to market. They got their liquidity, whatever. But what happens when you can trade interchangeably on the same platform? And what, what does that mean? Well, it means a lot of things. One of them is it means that you'll see competition and value will need to be created. But it also means that, that, that founders and foundations and controllers of various tokens will have the ability to actually tap into real liquidity. And so it's going to be really interesting how that plays out. I mean, look, my thesis for years has been that there's a massive total addressable market for well designed utility tokens. I just don't know that there are any. I'm not joking about that. That's a pretty hyperbolic statement, I realize, but I don't know that there are any where it's very clear other than exchange tokens where they have a specific schedule. So yeah, I mean, I think these things are a very big deal and I think that this is the time when people want that the building is going to increase. And the question is, can it happen? And I don't know the answer. What do you think?
- [52:37]
C
Yeah, I mean with the Kraken deal, what it does is it makes US stocks available to international markets. That, that, that was not possible before. So it allows anyone to invest in, in those companies, for example. I mean that's, that's one, one aspect of it. Tokenized stocks, bringing them to the international markets. That's interesting in itself.
- [53:12]
A
Brian. Brilliant. I think makes a great point about. We do generally like it. I think we do get bogged down obviously in prices and whatever, but we should make a concerted effort to go back to at least listing the important news stories that nobody views as important each day. Something that we used to do and you know, I think we do generally like cover them. The thing is we have a three second conversation about it and then everybody moves on.
- [53:35]
B
Yeah, yeah, we're all like dory in Finding Nemo at times. Look, a boat.
- [53:40]
A
I seen a boat.
- [53:42]
B
Boat. What boat?
- [53:45]
A
Short term memory loss.
- [53:46]
B
I saw you raise your hand.
- [53:48]
G
It's just gonna say, I think this is the part of crypto and blockchain that I'm currently most excited about. And I think Kraken's announcement with NASDAQ is, is pretty massive. And so to me this is just a further movement on this inevitable trend. I'M like super bullish on tokenization. See it as inevitable for two reasons. One is finance is built on these antiquated Rails, literally things like ACH and the credit card issuer networks that were created 50 plus years ago. But we can reimagine these rails with blockchains and Internet based Rails, things like tokenization. And then number two, finance is rife with intermediaries. And all these intermediaries extract rent and we can remove that with blockchain technology. And so end result is you get these massive speed and cost benefits. You get other benefits like enhanced transparency, composability, access to capital. And I just think you continue to see movement here. So even before today, NASDAQ had filed with the SEC to enable tokenized securities to trade on the same order book as traditional securities. NYSE is building their tokenized stock trading platform. DTCC announced plans to to make all their 1.4 million securities that it custodies digitally eligible. And to me a lot of this stuff could happen on public blockchains. So there's a big emphasis in nasdaq's press release today about connecting both permissioned and permissionless environments. Similarly, DTCC said in their press release they're not dictating which wallet or blockchains clients should use. So I think like this is the big massive unlock. And lastly what I'll say is like the thing that gets me so excited is this is not being led by individuals because I think it generally takes decades for people to change their behaviors. Like people still go into banks and deposit checks physically when they can do it on their phone 20 years ago, is being led by the institutions. And when that happens they're going to abstract away all of the complicated like back end of it. And so people will just start to utilize and adopt blockchain based solutions. And that to me, you know, they can onboard tons, like millions or billions of people pretty quickly. So I'm pumped for this whole movement.
- [56:06]
C
There's one more thing I want to say that also Coinbase today is rolling out crypto futures trading across 26 European countries. That's also important. I want to ask one question. Has anybody seen the SEC proposal for a new token taxonomy? They announced it last week and I
- [56:26]
A
saw a headline doing it, but I don't think that they've shown it yet.
- [56:29]
B
Yeah, I couldn't.
- [56:30]
C
Okay, so I'm not the only one not able to find it.
- [56:32]
A
I want to actually I looked and I couldn't find it.
- [56:34]
C
Yeah, I would like to read something so we can make comments on it. So this was a tease.
- [56:40]
B
Yeah, no, I was thinking I literally saw the release and I went back to, to try to find it. I went on the SEC website and I couldn't find it. Yeah, anyone does. If it's actually out there, love to see it.
- [56:51]
C
Yeah, I know.
- [56:52]
B
I think that the more important point though, and this is what you know, we're at, I will be, you know, in New York on what I guess a month from now, April 13 is the security Traders association conference. And the head of trading and markets, Jamie Selway will be there. And that's going to be the main question is he knows full well that there are certain rules that are incompatible with crypto issuance, namely most importantly the accredited investor rule. But there are several others that to me is the bigger, the bigger deal. Right. You know, because if you call something a security and those rules are no longer, or there's no action relief or whatever around it, around them, then it's not that big of a deal. In fact, it may actually be better. You can make a very strong argument that the, the reason the sec, apart from a few rules such as the need for transfer agents and all sorts of other grunky stuff in the middle of it and the way that SIPIC works, that's a securities industry protection corporation. If you get rid of the grunky rules and you get rid of the, the need for seasoned liquidity and you get rid of the accredited investor rules, why does anyone care this notion, and I love when lawyers talk about this, because you try to find a lawyer who's ever dealt with enforcement against this from the CFTC vis a vis the SEC and get them and tell them, you try explaining to the lawyer that the CFTC is like, you know, like a teddy bear compared to the SEC on enforcement and they all look at you like you got two heads. Because that is totally not true. Right. The reason the SEC is considered to be bad for crypto is because they had archaic rules that didn't apply that made the, made the tokens non workable. And so that's really the question. It's not the taxonomy that matters nearly as much as how they will apply the rules to the, to those tokens. So if what they're doing is coming up with a taxonomy that will, it will qualify for certain exemptions or different paths through the system that could be extraordinarily bullish. On the other hand, if they're not doing it that way, well then it could be pretty bad. So we'll see. I, I actually Think the former is more likely though, based on my conversations. I just don't know. I haven't had. I don't know the details.
- [58:57]
A
I said I would normally rap, but like Brand Newer is here. His face is on the show.
- [59:03]
J
I just decided to join. I was driving home and I just decided to listen up and, and see what you guys are.
- [59:09]
F
Oh my God, we're blessed.
- [59:10]
B
Wow.
- [59:11]
A
This is like.
- [59:12]
F
Dude, ran, happy 2026.
- [59:17]
J
What's going on, guys? Why. Why is bitcoin pumping well? Why is bitcoin more stable than all other world assets? Is it because bitcoin's the real store of value or what do you think
- [59:27]
A
it's finally happening today? Yeah, finally happening.
- [59:31]
B
I think, Look, Ran, I think it's sellers exhaustion and the fact that all the reasons to sell have already happened. So it's your basic, you know, they're not selling and the buyers that are buying it are still looking at, looking at the long term and saying, okay, this is accumulation. And, and you know, you see it. I mean volumes aren't, aren't particularly high. So it feels more like that than anything else.
- [59:52]
J
But I must say, yeah, exhaustion, it
- [59:55]
B
is divergent strength though, or however you want to look at it. Yeah. By the way, Ran, I, I think you still have me on my old account, so if you could follow my new one, that would be helpful because I've tried to.
- [60:08]
J
Okay, I'll definitely. I think I was on both of them.
- [60:10]
B
But yeah, no, I had, I got, I got hacked and you know, Ran,
- [60:15]
F
how bearish were you Saturday when you saw crude doing what it was doing? And how surprised you that bitcoin's holding your.
- [60:23]
J
What I did on Friday and I did it again on is on Friday. I went long oil, short cost be long bitcoin. So the, the. So what is my logic? My logic is I knew there was going to be an escalation. I didn't realize just how big it was going to be. So I took a long on oil and then I thought if oil goes up, risk is going to go down. What's the highest beta risk at the moment? So my options were NASDAQ or to go more, more oil related risk, which is Cosby or Nikkei. So I went Cosby. So I went the long, long oil, short Cosby and then I went long Bitcoin. I took long Bitcoin because it's a contrarian trade. In other words, everyone believes that bitcoin is going to get smashed now because of the, because of the, you know, because it's the highest beta risk asset. But I think it's already had its correction. That's why I went, I went long Bitcoin and so far the trade's three for three. I mean, I'm not, I'm not speaking too soon because I probably should have cut the trade when the oil futures went to like 115 or whatever. The problem is I was asleep when that happened, so couldn't do that. Yeah, but I mean, so, so that's, I'm still holding that, that trade, that trade's still open for me.
- [61:30]
A
Can we still, can we full circle this Ran, because right before you showed up, we were talking about how the bulk of assets being traded on hyper liquid or non crypto. Were you trading oil on hyper liquid on the weekend?
- [61:40]
J
So. The weekend, yes. But the problem with hyperliquid is it went because, so it went up more than what I thought the oil futures were going to go up. It was because it was, you know, such a thin market that it is, it went up much more than. So like when I looked at it on, on it was already on $103 or something when I looked at it on, on the weekend. And like my whole play was that the oil futures were going to spike. So the big trade that I took was actually last week where I took, I think it was like I started at 77 a barrel and I kept progressively going up until like 85 or 86 on Friday. And then, and then I stopped. Then I stopped. And then, and then, yeah, I probably should have sold them through the night, but I didn't.
- [62:24]
A
Crazy. So Gary, I guess Gary, Gary, to answer your question, ran went long while everybody was trying to get short.
- [62:32]
J
I think another one now, by the way, I think, I think the next trade that I'm setting myself up for now is Dubai real estate. So, so I think that I love Dubai and I think that Dubai have got it right. And I think just the way that they have set up, set themselves up in this war and how they've survived these attacks for such a small, small nation is incredible. But Dubai, Dubai real estate is very, very, very highly leveraged. And when I say highly leveraged, I don't really mean bank debt, but I mean the fact that a lot of developers are building off plan or selling off plan. So you, I don't know if you know how it works, but effectively you secure your apartment by giving them $10,000 today or whatever it is, and then that's considered that the apartment sold, right. And then the developer basically starts developing right now the thing with Dubai is that not a lot of people actually are Emiratis. A lot of people just live there as expats. And what you see now is the troubles here and they're basically all left. So you've got a lot of these empty apartment buildings now. You've got a whole lot of these people panicking about Dubai real estate prices, right? So I've been following a couple of ticker symbols from either developers or real estate indices or whatever, and some of them are down as much as like 20% now. I mean, Dubai is going to come back. Dubai is like today's New York. It's like the society is New York that it's a tax haven. It's where everybody gets pushed to go to because they're making so much money they'll end up going to Dubai and they want to protect themselves against taxes. The quality of life is amazing. It is one of the safest cities in the world. Even though, you know, now it's got debris falling and drones coming in or whatever else.
- [64:10]
A
Did that affect real estate prices by the way? Like in the very short term, Crazy, crazy, crazy.
- [64:15]
J
People are panicking. People are panicking. And that's like, on the one hand, if you've got time and effort, you can go and buy actual apartments and you can get them for a lot less than you could have got them a week ago. But you can actually buy indices. Like there's, there's, I don't remember the ticker, but there's a Dubai real estate index and it's down 20 in the last week or so. 20. I mean that to me, if you want an entry into the Dubai real estate market, I've been waiting for an entry into Dubai real estate market. Just couldn't find it. Kept thinking the market was overheated. This is a black swan. Like you've got to take this opportunity when it's given to you.
- [64:50]
A
Well, it's literally some of the best things I've ever done financially in my life was I bought apartment in Miami between 2010 and 2012 during the massive crash. Mostly just because of luck, because I wanted to move to Miami. It doubled basically in value in like three years. And then we kind of had a similar situation. I guess Gary knows better than anyone because he wrote it out. But the hurricanes in Tampa, that sent the market here down massively. And buy a house. As long as you don't believe there's going to be 100 year storm every year or that there's going to be a war in Dubai every year. Probably buy the dip.
- [65:28]
J
But you see the thing for me, I don't want to buy actual apartments because I'm not there.
- [65:32]
B
I don't want to.
- [65:33]
J
Every time I've done that, every time I've done that and I've bought, I'm always like, you know, you try and manage from afar. It's very difficult. You know, your agent's not amazing. He doesn't answer the phone.
- [65:41]
F
Are you telling me you're not good with plumbing? Dude, come on. I could see you with that little, that little waist belt with all the tools.
- [65:50]
J
You know, it's a, it's a very big race belt. It's a very big.
- [65:53]
F
I'm sure it is, bro.
- [65:55]
J
No, but I'm saying like, for me, like, I think Dubai real estate, if, if the market carries on coming down, it's a no brainer. Like, or if you've been waiting for an, for an entry to Dubai real estate.
- [66:03]
A
Yeah, I wasn't aware there was those indexes. That's brilliant.
- [66:06]
B
I mean it feels, it feels to me, I actually was talking to my son about this because they, you know, they have an apartment and they were panicking about it. I said, listen, anyone who sold New York FIDI real estate after 911 felt like, like the world's biggest idiot within a year. And even bigger. This is, yeah, it is it. Unless you think somehow that this is existential to Dubai and I don't. I agree with you completely. I think that. But it's, it's what markets do, Ran. It's what people do. People panic. People make emotional. Yeah.
- [66:39]
J
And you've got, you know what markets also do is they're focused on the, in times of panic, they're focused on the fear mongers. So in times of panic, there's this professor, which is Professor Zhang, is that his name? The, the, the Asian dude that's going around saying it's the end of the world and the end of Dubai and, and the U.S. is going to lose this war. And I mean, I don't know if you guys have been following this, this guy, but he's literally, he's he's calling the end of the world.
- [67:03]
B
Look, there's so many cross currents and so many people, but the reality is saying stay calm gets 10 clicks. Staying panic, hair on fire gets 10,000 clicks. What do you think is going to happen?
- [67:16]
A
Happen?
- [67:16]
B
I mean, it's just, it just, it's unfortunate, but it's just the reality
- [67:21]
G
run's
- [67:22]
I
also on the southernmost tip of Africa. He's perfectly Safe down there, huh?
- [67:28]
J
We're not feeling any of this. We really not feeling any of this. Except. Except the fact that you can't get flights because we used to fly through Emirates all the time and now you can't get flats anymore.
- [67:39]
B
Yeah, this too, this too shall pass though. But yeah, you're right, exactly. And it's just you don't invest for, for the next. Well, you can, you can trade for the next week. You don't invest for the next week. Right.
- [67:49]
F
You trade just on this real estate thing in Dubai though, we have to be honest, there's 12, 500 people left the UK that were very wealthy. I bet you a good half of them went to Dubai. Most certainly no one is making themselves decision in the UK today or France to go run and buy an apartment in Dubai.
- [68:12]
B
No, not today.
- [68:13]
F
And this will take some time.
- [68:15]
B
Yes, of course.
- [68:16]
F
Like, right, because it's no longer the safe haven that, like, you only you break that one time. The safe haven thing. I mean, if Switzerland had ever been bombed, you could never say, okay, that's a neutral spot. So.
- [68:29]
J
But I think, I think people confuse Dubai with like, when they say safe haven, they mean safe haven against crime and stuff like that. Because, you know, there's a lot of, I don't know if you ever, you know, how often you spend time.
- [68:39]
F
I include bombs dropping on my head is, is safe haven event for sure during a war.
- [68:46]
J
Like, you think that that could ruin a safe haven status. I think when people move to Dubai, it's because they don't want, they want to be in a place where they don't get mugged and the car doesn't get stolen and you know, they don't get scammed and stuff like that. And I think Dubai's got that completely underground control.
- [69:00]
F
Yeah, but I'm a UK citizen, I can go to the Cayman Islands. Dude, I'm pretty sure the Caymans isn't going to get it bombed. Right? I mean, I have options. That's all I'm saying. I have options. It's not as safe as it was Friday. Right. So it, you just got to admit, hey, it's not as safe as it was Friday. Let's see if we can get back to some normalcy. But that real estate takes time for that kind of migration to occur.
- [69:23]
J
So at what, I mean, at what kind of correction would you be looking to buy like 25%, 30% from the top?
- [69:28]
F
Like what, what's most illi, most illiquid asset on the planet? And now the etf, the Problem with your ETF that you don't enjoy if you go pick a piece of real estate is you don't get the deep discount. Right?
- [69:44]
D
Yeah.
- [69:44]
J
I mean, if you've got an agent working on the ground, I agree with you.
- [69:49]
F
You're not equipped. I was joking about. Yeah, you don't want to be a plumber. Of course you don't want to be a plumber, dude. Like, that's not your business. You'd lose money on your deal. So I just think that. I mean, these are very liquid. Nobody's gonna, like, nobody has to have a second home in Dubai. That's all I'm saying. Right. Like, I just see this whole luxury market. I think we have met peak demand. Like, I don't think rich people need any more villas right now.
- [70:20]
J
I went to Dubai. I went to Dubai. And you cannot. You can't rent anything. It's always full. You can't buy anything. It went on to the market, and
- [70:28]
A
three minutes later it was sold.
- [70:30]
J
Every single time. Like, there was a crazy, crazy, crazy, insatiable demand for these things.
- [70:36]
F
Yeah, I mean, listen, I've seen it. Look at what Scott just said, though. I've seen Florida. Florida goes from. I have at least a thousand homes within 10 minutes for me that are worth $350,000. Like, you can buy these thousands all day long. I mean, it is a buyer's dream right now in Florida. But for four, two and a half years ago, there wasn't a house on Zillow, not one for sale. This market is really weird. It goes from extremely tight to grossly oversupplied. So I, you know, I think that that'll be the same for any. Any place they'll overbuild, but I just can't. You know, we had a big exodus from countries. People wanting to move to places for tax reasons, for safety reasons. You know, they were leaving the UK because it was so Draconian. But I think you're just going to have people go, well, maybe that's not the. The right place for us to go right now this year. You know, I. I just think this kind of slows everything down.
- [71:48]
J
Fair point. Fair point. All right, guys, I'm gonna go watch my kids play soccer. I'll catch up with you guys again soon.
- [71:57]
B
Okay. Well, I think it's ready to wrap, right, Scott? Oh, did Scott leave? Well, it looks like he did. So on that note, since we're way over time, we'll see you, I guess, on Wednesday. Wednesday. If that's the deal. I'm not 100. Sure, but we'll see. And everyone, have a great, safe day out there. It should be interesting.