← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:00]
Scott Melker
Study and play come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds.
- [00:10]
Mike McGlone
Get the unreal college deal, everything you
- [00:12]
Scott Melker
need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more@windows.com studentoffer while supplies last ends June 30 terms at aka mscollegepc. Is Bitcoin headed to $10,000 as Mike McGlone says, or to $20,000 as Peter Schiff says? Or is it potentially bottoming now? As I say, and I assume Dave Weisberger believes is likely possible, we're going to all unpack our predictions and everything happening in the macro and with bitcoin. Now I've got Mike and Dave and joining us shortly, Peter Schiff. Let's go.
- [00:58]
Peter Schiff
Let's dope. That's dope.
- [01:13]
Scott Melker
Good morning everybody. Happy Macro Monday. To those who celebrate like and subscribe, do the thing. We've got Peter Schiff joining today. He'll be here hopefully momentarily. We have Mike and Dave here already. Dave on about two hours of sleep from winning a satellite tournament in Vegas, the World Series of Poker. Congratulations and thank you for, for still showing up.
- [01:34]
Dave Weisberger
It's a bit rough this morning. I'm not going to lie.
- [01:37]
Scott Melker
You had to show up. You had to show up. All right, Mike, let's start with the morning meeting and Peter will join when he joins.
- [01:43]
Mike McGlone
Good morning. Anna Wong pointed out her outlook for the payrolls, non farm payrolls coming out Thursday because the holiday is for 200,000. So she's got a very strong number. Consensus is about one she thinks the main driver would be leisure and hospitality due to the World Cup. One thing that's notable, state and local governments have been a drag for months, but looks like last month might next. Last month might see pretty significant contributions. Expects about 80k of contributions from stake and local governments. The point she points out is that this leisure and hospitality is usually transitory, usually goes away by summer. So state jobs are one to watch. And one thing she's worried about is the property market is not doing well, which is typically a big part of state and local governments. But one thing she did point out is we still have a bit of a hangover from the Biden administration, fiscal stimulus that's kicking in with construction workers and things there. She also pointed out war. She speech will be I think Wednesday but this week and probably focus on price stability. And she does think Counter consensus the Fed will be cutting rates by 2Q27 next year. Jenny Lee came on her equity strategist said the market's about AI and US dollar in AI she thinks there's definitely markets becoming much more valuation sensitive but dollar strength is a bit of a headwind. Didn't really add too much more. That was profound. Ira Jersey thinks the market might be incorrectly pricing for two hikes this coming year and then a cut next year. He says it's not the slim of the 1990s. He says it's kind of strange to do that. Data from non par farm payload is going to be most important but it's also on a long holiday weekend so expect maybe more volatility than normal and he still expects that to you know yield to inch higher but he thinks the best risk reward is at some point when they start cutting rates and it'll be in the shorter end. And the auctions last year were not a big deal. Davidson Santana spoke about effects didn't really reveal too much except you still kind of bullish the dollar. And then I dug into commodities. We can talk about that later. I just give you the basics I'm looking at. The key themes are elasticity and dependency. You're seeing that bull force. The bull force in elasticity mean it's the most powerful force in commodities. Why is crude oil $69 the same price as 2007? Because it can't stay up for any reason. Because there's a major paradigm shift and I fully expect that cycle to head toward crude oil making the call. It's going to head towards 40 in the second half of this year. Maybe you could get above 80 on something silly but heads towards 40. And one key theme and just a little backup in US stock market, little pickup in volatility which we're way overdue for. I also pointed out Another fact is 60 day volatility between gold and the S at 0.72 is the highest ever. If you can make a statement like that that that's what matters. The only time we've had spikes in that volatility in the past is usually when everything goes down together which is strange 2008, 2011, 2022 so that's a bit of a sign they should expect some pickup. And I also pointed out the bottom line for commodities is what does Mr. Trump want or need? He needs lower energy prices so they'll probably pressure commodities in the second half of the year. And Mr. Wash is focused on higher rates with account probably keep gold and metals Most notably gold and silver, under pressure. And I expect those markets to remain under pressure. Back to you.
- [04:58]
Scott Melker
Can't wait to get Peter's view on that. He will be here momentarily. Dave, you want to unpack any of that?
- [05:04]
Dave Weisberger
Well, I mean, I agree with the Bloomberg economist who thinks that the market is incorrectly pricing, you know, rate hikes. You know, look at the. At the end of the day, the Federal Reserve and Treasury want to do whatever they can to decrease the cost of funding to the United States government. And hiking rates is not one of those things. And so they're going to unless there's need, like absolute need for doing so because aggregate demand is skyrocketing. If you start seeing significant payrolls that are sustainably higher, wage cycle demands, that sort of thing, then yeah, then that could happen. Frankly, I don't think there's any sign of that. The oil market, I tend to think I'm kind of directionally aligned with Mike there. I don't know, about 40. I think going below the cost of production seems like a big ask, particularly with what's going on in an obviously intractable situation in the Middle East. But at the same time, given what is going on in the Middle east, the fact that the oil prices are doing what they're doing, which is to say not much at all, is pretty
- [06:13]
Peter Schiff
telling that
- [06:17]
Dave Weisberger
supply constraints caused by transportation difficulties as opposed to production is not causing. Basically it's not taking prices up. That scenario is not what people predicted. I mean, most oil analysts looked at it the other way around. Maybe there's a piece that's broken out that I haven't seen, but it doesn't look like everything's getting through the straits right now. And we haven't seen kind of as we predicted, we haven't seen oil go crazy. If oil doesn't go crazy, you won't see a lot of inflation. If you don't see a lot of inflation, you're not going to see rate increases. You're going to see rate cuts. You may not see short rate cuts. What you will see, however, is liquidity in the system because they need it. Because we're deficit financing, significant deficits. That hasn't changed. And that is the fact of life, that people keep ignoring that Everywhere in the G7, there's Mon. There's printing, right? So when you talk about gold and silver, well, gold in particular, under pressure, it's like maybe, you know, but it's at that point, it's below what I think is probably equilibrium, where it is today, which is why it's right. Not really doing very much. I mean, we've been talking for, you know, three or four weeks now, and markets are more or less where they were. The only one that has slid at right to where some people call it support. I mean, it's a. It's a magic line. You know, this 60 number is Bitcoin, but that's a different conversation, Right. You know, bitcoin is really a belief conversation in terms of the macro. The macro is basically sitting still and not a whole lot is happening. I mean, it's interesting. The one anecdotal fact I will say, which is which I find absolutely amazing, is everyone who talks about lack of disposable income for. Or money to gamble with. I will tell you, I'm sitting here in Vegas and I cannot believe how overcrowded it is here. I mean, it is unbelievable. Like, the biggest fields that they've had, like, ever, you know, in these things. And it's like you. You always talk about prediction markets, Scott. You know, people for. Maybe it's for the reason you say, because it's desperation. But the amount of money that's being gambled, the number of people willing to do so is. Is just staggering.
- [08:35]
Scott Melker
Yeah, it's unbelievable. And now everything is becoming a consolidated casino. Right. I'm surprised people even bother going to Vegas when you can bet on literally anything with leverage anywhere, anytime on a single app, which is what we're getting, right?
- [08:52]
Dave Weisberger
Yeah. Well, I mean, poker is different because you get to look, you know, get to look the people that you're betting against in the face. Right. You know, so it's people like that live action. But the fact that there's so much of it, I mean, it's just. It's incredible. I mean, it's incredible event now, like,
- [09:07]
Scott Melker
how many people are out there for the World Series at the moment?
- [09:11]
Dave Weisberger
I played in this event, the mystery millions. And there were five flights, five different days. The first day had a couple thousand entries. By the last day, there were 4, 5, 6,000 entries per day.
- [09:29]
Scott Melker
I see Peter's here, so I'm going to go ahead and bring him on. I'm not sure. Peter, is your stuff working? We give you the live sound check. Yeah, we got you. Can you hear us? Not sure he can hear us. We can hear him. But I'm sure that we'll get that figured out. So continuing on, he'll go ahead and just bring up what we're looking at. Hello? Yeah, can you hear us?
- [09:52]
Peter Schiff
Yeah, I had my computer on mute.
- [09:54]
Scott Melker
All right, Classic. We do that regularly. So let's move to medals first because Mike and Dave, I think you have opposing opinions. Mike, maybe just reiterate what the thinking was on gold and silver because I'm sure Peter might have a differing view.
- [10:11]
Mike McGlone
Yes. Well, hello, Peter. I don't know if you remember, we sat next to each other at the Weston Town Committee, Republican Tunnel committee clambake in 2010. I enjoyed that conversation. It was a long time ago.
- [10:24]
Peter Schiff
That's a while ago.
- [10:25]
Mike McGlone
That's right. So I've been an internal bull of gold for decades and I stopped that late last year, this year, and partly because of gold and silver, platinum and palladium all just went up too much. Classic example. So typically the way these markets work when they go this high is it takes years and years before they break out to new bull markets. So the key thing I like to point out in gold is right now we have the Fed working against it. That was a counter to the last few years, it's gone up a lot. And just one simple little fact. 60 day volatility and gold versus the S&P 500 is the highest ever. It's 0.72. We've never had that high. So it's just an indication what's happening. 180 or 270. 60 day volatility on gold is 2 times S&P 500. So it's not a store volume anymore. Right now it's a highly volatile, speculative risk asset. So I'm still worried about continued declines in gold. I don't know how long it lasts. Everybody gets the fundamentals. I'm sure Dave and Peter are going to point out all those, you know, the stuff we pointed out five years ago, we were really bullish gold, or I was. And now I think it's just part of a potential melting ice cube because what's happening is cryptos are clearly melting with the stock market going up. Gold and silver, platinum and palladium have pumped and then they're dumped. They've started melting. Bitcoin obviously is melting US Natural gas is melting. Iron ore is heading lower, corn's heading lower. And I think by then this year, everything's going to be dependent on the stock market. And if that goes down, then gold and all the metals will probably continue to decline and head lower.
- [11:50]
Peter Schiff
Yeah, no, I disagree with that. I mean, gold's just above $4,000 an ounce. And yeah, I mean, if you want to compare it to the $5,600 peak from February, it's come off what, 28% or something like that. But gold has never been a store of value every day, day to day. I mean, obviously things can happen that can temporarily increase gold's volatility. So from one day to the next, it's possible to have this kind of volatility. Now, it is rare. It doesn't happen a lot. But just because it happens sometime doesn't destroy thousands of years of history that says that gold is a store of value. I don't think we've changed that just based on what's happened in the last weeks or so. And the reason that you had this big drop in gold was because we had such an unprecedented rise in gold in the couple of months before it all happened. I mean, gold went from 4,000 to 5,600 in a matter of weeks. So volatility really picked up. And part of it was anticipating the war with Iran that broke out. And so when the war happened, you had to buy the rumor, sell the fact, which is something that's typical in markets. But the recent decline to retest those lows, because, remember, gold after the war broke out, gold fell from 5,500 to 4,100 and then immediately rallied back to like 4,800. And now back again around those lows. It took out 4,000 briefly for a couple days, but it's now kind of retesting that support, I believe, before it moves higher. Gold sold off on the false belief that we've gone from a dovish Fed under Powell that was preparing to cut rates to a now hawkish Fed under Warsh that is getting ready to substantially increase rates and fight inflation, which, of course, would fly in the face of why Trump nominated him in the first place, because he was upset at Powell because he wasn't dovish enough, and to replace him with the most hawkish chairman since Volcker obviously doesn't even make any sense. But I don't believe that narrative. I don't believe that we're going to get an aggressive Fed that's going to return inflation to 2%. We may not even get any of the rate hikes that are currently baked in. But even if we get those hikes, it's too little, too late to slow inflation. And real rates will still be falling even as the Fed nudges up nominal rates. So the markets are missing the bigger picture, that nominal rate hikes are meaningless. It's real rates that count. And regardless of what the Fed does with nominal rates, real rates are going to decline and maybe more importantly, the balance sheet is going to explode. I Don't care if Walsh might have been opposed to QE back when it first started, he's not going to oppose it now. In fact, he's still doing it. The balance sheet is still growing, even though he's now the chairman. And of course, if he really wanted to hike rates, he could have done it at the last meeting, but he didn't do it. Instead, he set up five task forces to go and study the problems, which is a classic way that politicians avoid doing anything about the problem. They create a committee or the task force. So I think it's all talk. I don't think you're going to see the action that has already been priced into the gold market. So I think the stage is set for a big rally again, new highs in gold. And we actually turned a lot of the bullish sentiment that kind of came into the market. Finally in late 2025, early 2026, we finally saw some bullishness because investors have been bearish on gold the entire rally. They were net sellers for 2024, 2025. They finally got into the market and now the sentiment is completely flipped and it's back to extreme negativity, which has reset the entire wall of worry that gold's been climbing for all these years. So I think the conditions are.
- [16:24]
Scott Melker
I mean, when retail piles in and starts getting in line at the store to pay a premium, it's usually a local top rate with any asset. So I think that aligns. And I want to just show a couple of things. This was a big kind of article on Bloomberg last week. The debasement trade is unraveling. And Kevin Warsh is one big reason. This is the narrative that you just pointed out, obviously. And people now saying that bitcoin selling off with gold and silver, they can't decide what it's, what it's actually trading like. But the other point I just want to make is that Kevin Warsh being hawkish is such a nonsensical narrative to me. I mean, he was on the Fed Board of governors from 2008-11. I mean, TARP, he was like Bernanke's little ally and Batman and Robin. So I think the idea that he's against rate hikes or QE is nonsense. In fact, I think they, and I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I think that they push that narrative to make it easier to, you know, make him the head of the Fed when he is obviously a tough and gonna do exactly what. What Trump asked him to do. I would be so shocked. I know Dave, you're gonna say this. If they hiked, I would be shocked. It's possible, but I'd be so.
- [17:31]
Dave Weisberger
I've been saying that for a while. Look, the funny part, and I always laugh about this, is I pretty much agree with everything Peter just said. We're going to disagree on one issue and we all know what that issue is, but we'll get there. We'll get there in a, in a, in a, in a blink. Let's talk about gold for a second. There's two points that, that are important in understanding what happened in the gold market and what will happen in the gold market. The first is gold reacts to the supply of dollars. You can't ignore that fiscal deficits and what's going on in the US you can't ignore the fiscal deficits of what's going on throughout the eu. Basically going everywhere in the civilized world except for Switzerland. You're seeing massive monetary debasement. In this clinical sense. Governments are spending more than they have and therefore more has to be created. We also understand what financial market, something Mike says all the time, stock market needs to go up. Well, sort of what needs to happen is the stock market can't crash or the economy crashes. What we've seen politically is a massive lurch to the left in the United States, a lurch to the right throughout the periphery in the third world. But this is not an environment where you're going to see less government spending. And if you're not seeing less government spending and you're not getting more tax revenue, then the money has to come from somewhere. And that money does get monetized. And the one thing that we know is that Warshin Besant and they have been very clear about this, are going to work together. Now you could talk about it in the context of post World War II deficits or not. I mean it's a different situation by a lot because we didn't have a world war to create the situation. We didn't have pent up demand of no one spending money for effectively the better part of five or six years when all that happened the last time. But their goal is to decrease the cost of government financing. So when Peter talks about real rates coming down, what he means practically what that means is whatever the government is paying to finance those deficits, we need those rates to, to come down, relatively speaking, because otherwise deficits will continue to spiral. And so that's what's going on there as far as gold is concerned. The second point that really does matter is the hot bowl of money. People who were in the gold markets who were not aware of what was going on in terms of the CFD contract for differences markets and the massive amount of liquidity that were impacting gold and silver markets earlier when gold went to 5600, silver went to 120. Are missing it friends with the heads of market making of multiple firms, including the largest market makers on the planet. I used to run a market maker in the US called Two Sigma securities. And I know the people who make these markets. And you know, I was told that the biggest single market that they were making, the most amount of money that they were dealing with was from retail globally, not in the US was in the precious metal markets, the CFD markets where you could easily get 100x leverage. And so that hot ball of money pushed gold at the same time that there was central bank buying. And that's why it went farther. So I make the comment that based on models that I've seen and people who I follow, equilibrium for gold is somewhere around 4,500, maybe 5,000 somewhere in that range that it got stretched way beyond it by the hot bowl of money. And of course when it sells off and it gets as negative, it goes below it. But that's why it's not continuing to drop. Because frankly, there's an equilibrium price based upon central bank demand and dollars. Understanding that momentum, it didn't all of a sudden become a risk asset. It became an asset that people were able to take risk with. That is different. And it's important to understand that because there's still a bid for gold from central banks, Indian housewives and others who use it as a store of value. And there's a lot of speculation that goes on because frankly, people love to gamble. And everything these days can become a risk asset because you can get leverage on pretty much anything today.
- [21:44]
Scott Melker
And you can trade it on this, we talked about this before, but you can trade it on the same exact platform with leverage as you can trade prediction markets, crypto gold stocks. So everything becomes just a cross margined portfolio.
- [21:58]
Dave Weisberger
The one, the one other point, the one other pinprick that happened in the gold market that is sort of unique to gold is there was a fair amount of selling of assets from people who were leaving Dubai while rockets were flying around Dubai. And so there was an actual outflow of funds. And that did accelerate it. And that's true. And that's true with Bitcoin. That's true with a lot of assets actually. But it's things that needed to be Sold by people who wanted to make their assets make themselves more portable. That did happen. Now how big was that? I don't know. I mean, it's impossible to quantify. Too much talking when it's fired.
- [22:39]
Peter Schiff
Sorry.
- [22:40]
Scott Melker
We got Dave up after two hours of sleep at the World Series of Poker so he has an excuse to cough. I mean, Mike, do you have any thoughts there?
- [22:46]
Mike McGlone
Let me show one shot, one chart. I think gold and silver put in highs in Q1 that'll last for if history is a guy decade. We've never got that stretched versus themselves versus other markets versus copper versus commodities in the disinflationary environment. I want to show you one chart. If you're overweighting gold here and underweighting treasures, you're doing it at the worst possible level in about four decades. I'm just taking a typical chart of fraud. You can use a basket of US Treasuries. I can use a bond index, total return index, total return and you know, 20 plus year bond index. Right now we're the lowest since about 1983. At the same time Bitcoin's peaking and potentially stock market cap to GDP is peaking. So I'm looking at second half of this year. Just a little pick and pick up in stock market. Voluntary. Everything goes down. And the most notable thing that will go down is bond yields, including gold will go down. Now that's just one quarter, that's just one half. To me that's just the beginning. But the point is overweight gold here versus Treasuries is you're doing it at a four decade poor relative value level.
- [23:49]
Peter Schiff
Yeah, I think that statement is kind of ridiculous to defend given where we are. We have almost a $40 trillion national debt now. It'll hit 50 trillion in the next few years. Interest on the national debt based on May was running at 1.6 trillion annually. It'll hit 2 trillion by next year and continue to rise. The amount of debt monetization, the sheer amount of inflation that the Fed is going to have to create to avoid outright default on the national debt. Given the enormity, there's no way to say that gold is just made a high that's going to last for 10 or 20 years. Given that the Fed is probably going to print more money in the next few years than it's done since it was created in 1913. We're about to get hit with a tsunami of inflation that's going to raise the price of everything. I don't know why gold and silver would go nowhere why the price of bread and coffee and beef and every other commodity doubles and triples, whatever because of this massive monetary debasement. And if you look at a chart, look at the silver chart and you look at the fact that we just took out overhead resistance that was established, what, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, in 1980, we took out the double top from 1980 and 2011. And sure, we went from $30 up to 120 in lightning speed. We pulled back to a little bit below 60. But to me that is a significant breakout of overhead resistance. Yeah, we overshot. But this is the beginning of something. This is not the end of something. This is not the beginning of a new 20, 30 year bear market in gold and silver. This is not 1980 where Volckers got interest rates at 20% and we're on the cusp of a 40 year bull market in bonds. Bonds just started their long term bear market in 2020. So we're about six years in to a bear market in bonds that could last for decades given what's about to happen. So no, I think you're overreacting to this short term volatility. And that's generally what happens. Bull markets climb a wall of worry. They shake out the weak players. And so maybe you looked at what happened recently and it scares you out of gold and silver. All right, that's fine. Maybe you'll, you know, maybe at 6 or 7,000 gold, maybe you'll come back in maybe at $200 silver you'll say, okay, you know, I guess I'll buy some.
- [26:44]
Dave Weisberger
I don't know.
- [26:45]
Peter Schiff
And I would never want to buy Treasuries here. You know, you're guaranteed to lose the yield on Treasuries. The yield on treasuries, you know, four and a half, not a 5% ish. Over the next 30 years, inflation is going to average a lot more than that. And your outlook on Treasuries is either one outright default, the government just simply doesn't pay you and you lose. B, a restructuring which would be the government lowers your maturity, lowers your coupon or extends your maturity. Meaning, hey, I bought a two year treasury at 4%, now I own a 30 year bond at 1%. So an effective default or there's massive inflation. Okay, yes, the government pays you your money, but it doesn't buy you anything because we have massive inflation. So you're going to lose for sure if you buy Treasuries, which is why you shouldn't buy them. You should be buying gold instead.
- [27:49]
Scott Melker
I want to make.
- [27:50]
Dave Weisberger
Can I make one point, Scott, before you go in? It's just the word inflation. And Peter, I use this all the time, but it's important is inflation is not monolithic, meaning that financial inflation they want asset inflation is good. Asset inflation will push bond prices up with things which will decrease funding costs for the Fed. And that's true stock market gold. Every financial assets going up considered good. The one financial asset that is not so good from a personal inflation point of view is home prices because that makes housing affordability bad. So politically that's a double edged sword. But generally speaking, they want that. Consumer inflation on the other hand, has been restrained by bull markets in technology and productivity. And we are on the cusp of one of the biggest ones. Yes, the AI revolution is uneven, just like the Internet was uneven, meaning there are companies which are massively overvalued and are delivering nowhere near the cash flows that adjust by their prices. But it is undeniable the impact on consumer goods production. Now you can't AI isn't going to help you dig gold out of the ground. It's not going to help you dig oil out of the ground. But fracking brought the cost of oil production in constant dollars way, way down. Right.
- [29:13]
Peter Schiff
Well, you know, AI could very well lower mining costs and drill depending on what it does. But just to correct something that you just said, so inflation is the expansion of money and credit. That's the definition. And when you have inflation, it impacts prices and it impacts capital goods prices, stocks, real estate, and it impacts consumer prices. But there are other factors that may offset the upward pressure on prices exerted by inflation. And one is productivity. So if you have increased productivity, that will be pushing prices down. Inflation pushes prices up. And so you have these counteracting forces. But even if prices fall, that doesn't mean there's no inflation because it just means that they might have fallen even more had the government not created inflation, robbing us of our, of our purchasing power. So falling prices is what capitalism creates and that's a good thing. Rising prices is what government creates and that's a bad thing. But yes, I agree that a lot of people like it when one of the results of inflation is that stock prices go up. But of course that's not good. If you want to buy stocks, that means you have to pay a higher price. That means you get a lower dividend yield. You know, if I want to buy stocks, I want to buy them cheap. You know, it's the same thing with real estate. Yeah, real estate prices go up that helps the guy that wants to sell his house, but it doesn't help the guy that needs to buy a house. So there's always winners and losers when asset prices go up. But asset prices going up are not real wealth. What's going up is an increase in the productive stock in the economy. So if we have more factories, we have more plant equipment, we have more mines, we have more oil wells, all this stuff, we have more infrastructure, that's wealth. If we just reprice our existing wealth at a higher level, nobody is actually net better off. Some people win, some people lose, but that's not real wealth. That's just a price and it's an illusion created by inflation. We all pretend we're richer because we have bigger numbers attached to our net worths. But at the end of the day, a lot of people are poor because the cost of living is going up more than the prices of these assets. And so that's a declining standard of living. And that's what's going to happen. Now. It's possible that AI in the long run could be a very, very powerful force for increasing output and lowering prices. But that is years in the future. In the very near term, AI is actually pushing prices higher. We haven't gotten the benefit yet. In fact, look at the prices increases announced by Apple Computer, the biggest in its history. I mean prices are up 15, 25% last week on every product they sell. A lot of other companies, the massive investment in building out the AI infrastructure, trillions of dollars on CapEx and energy. This is sucking capital out of the rest of the economy. This is putting a lot of upward pressure on prices. Now it may put downward pressure on prices three, four, five years from now, but right now that's not what's happening. And so you're going to see the short term cost of the AI investment in the cpi. It's going to be there with higher prices. The lower prices, that's the payoff down the line. But we've got to bear the cost now.
- [33:01]
Scott Melker
So I want Mike, you can't let it go that Peter's a bond bear and you're a bond bull. So we got to have that conversation.
- [33:10]
Mike McGlone
So I got to have that partly because I prefer to lose all the debates. Dave always likes debate. Let the market decide a year from now. Peter's check back in a year from now. What you're missing is what's changed. What's changed is in the past, if you wanted to pump the economy, the President put pressure on the Fed to ease Rates, that's just changed. The number one issue is affordability and inflation. The K shaped economy. These are the people who vote for our president or who did vote for him. They're all pissed off. It's the scale we are right now is you're also making a major assumption. You're just assuming the stock markets continue to go higher. It's already 2.5 times GDP. That's the number one source for inflation. I just pointed out in a lot of my recent stuff. But I want to point out what I think going to be the next
- [33:53]
Peter Schiff
stock market going up isn't creating inflation, it's gone up because of inflation. I mean, it does create a bit of a wealth effect for the people who own stock. Remember the President, the President is speaking out of both sides of his mouth because just again recently he reiterated he wants higher home prices. He doesn't want them to go down, he wants them to keep going up so that the people who own houses can feel good about being rich. So he wants to prop up real estate prices by making mortgage credit more available, cheaper. He wants to create inflation so people could buy real estate. And he talks about the stock market all the time. He wants it to keep going up. Trump wants inflation. In fact, the big beautiful bill was an inflation bill. It was a expansion in government financed by inflation. So forget about what Trump says, look at what he does. He is an inflationary president. He wants more money printing bigger deficits and that's what he's going to get. It's inflation. There's no way the Fed is now going to actually prioritize a 2% inflation. Because to do that we need a bear market in stocks, a bear market in real estate, which is going to cause potentially a financial crisis when real estate prices drop 30% or something like that, like it did before. And it's going to cause a big increase in the budget deficits in the short run because not only will the recession, the recession rob the government of tax revenues and cause the natural deficit to rise with increased spending, but interest costs are going to soar. And so now the government is going to be forced during the recession to slash government spending or raise middle class taxes. There's no way that's going to happen. So you have to understand the consequences. War said inflation is a choice. And he's right. The Fed chooses inflation for a reason and for the reason that every Fed chairman since, since Greenspan chose inflation, this Fed and this chairman are going to choose inflation for the same reason. So inflation is going up the Affordability crisis is going to get worse. They're just going to blame it on somebody else. They're going to blame it on Russia or Iran or greedy oil companies or whatever. But that is the reality.
- [36:11]
Scott Melker
Yeah. What I found so interesting, and it seemed to go underreported with all the things that Wash didn't say. One thing he definitely did say at fomc, when asked about inflation in the questions, he said, I'm more concerned with the two left of the decimal point than the number right of the decimal point. He basically said what we've all been kind of assuming was coming, which is maybe 2% isn't the rate, maybe it's a floating rate from 2 to 3%. What really is ideal, Right? And so, I mean, he said that,
- [36:37]
Peter Schiff
well, they're not even going to get it down to 3%. So he's not even going to get the number he wants to the left of the decimal point. He tried to walk that back later somebody asked him because he didn't want to acknowledge that. So he said, look, look, I still really want two with a zero to the right. So he kind of tried to do damage control. But look, the Fed knows that inflation is not going to go down to two. The only way they could do that is if they change the CPI again, which I wouldn't put it past them to do that. They could find a new way to, to recalculate it, to throw out more stuff that goes up. But you know, one of the things that was helping the CPI with was, was consumer electronics, you know, which were going down and offsetting, you know, stuff going up. But now consumer electronics is one of the fastest rising prices they got. I guess they're going to have to find a way to hedonically make those price hikes go away, but they're pretty substantial.
- [37:36]
Dave Weisberger
The cost of electricity going up is obviously a big problem. He already did say trimming rate. Basically he talked about using different metrics of inflation. One that's interesting is truflation. If you look at it, it's significantly lower than a lot of others. Does it make sense? Does it fit reality with what we're seeing? No, your terminology is terminology that Warsh would never allow because they want to jawbone down inflation. When you use inflation, you use it the way that I use it, which is the way that Milton Friedman use it. Inflation is monetary, but what they care about is prices. And to them, the notion that inflation, consumer prices are all they're focused on. So whatever hammers they can have to try to Push that down. You're right. When things like the Apple rises and the cost of electricity going up, that is a problem. And that's something that they have to figure a way around. But the real question is, does the Fed actually have tools to combat that? And the answer, as long as you're printing, as long as what's going on is no, not really. The Fed's only real tool is to decrease aggregate consumer demand by making it harder to invest.
- [38:45]
Peter Schiff
Yeah, but the Fed has the tools. The Fed has the tools. It could shrink the money supply. It can jack up interest rates. The problem is it can't use them. Not really that it won't use them because of the consequences. That is the problem. They have to choose between two evils. Creating more inflation or crashing the whole bubble economy that was created by the inflation. So do they want another financial crisis? No, they don't want that. They don't want stocks to crash, they don't want the bond market to crash. They don't want the government to be forced to slash spending. So it's not going to happen. If it's ever going to happen, it's only going to be in a crisis. So that means that until we have a sovereign debt and a dollar crisis, until things are horrible because there's rioting in the streets, because the shelves are empty and there's nothing and the power is out, I mean, until stuff really bad happens, the politicians will do nothing but kick the can down the road. And creating inflation is the only way they know to do that.
- [39:55]
Scott Melker
Okay, go ahead, Dave.
- [39:57]
Dave Weisberger
Yeah, I was going to say, has anyone noticed or it, I haven't seen anything, you know, worrying about it, but I think it is worrisome when the, the, the yen has weakened as much as it is. It's, it's now past 160, pushing towards 162 or you know, 161.9 or whatever it is that technically that usually is, is a troublesome point because of carry trade dynamics and other dynamics. It's not surprising, but it is interesting. I haven't seen anybody complaining about it.
- [40:28]
Scott Melker
Mike, Anyone actually like is history. Great context at this point. If we think that that carry trade
- [40:34]
Mike McGlone
is unwound, it is unwinding, just like the mania and cryptos are unwinding. It's all just getting started. But we have to be careful. When people sound like Irving Fisher in 1929, we've reached a permanently high plateau. The next trade is post inflation deflation. It's almost always the way it works. It's A simple way for that to happen. The Fed's being vigilant. They're not going to tighten, I don't think, but they'll get what they need by just a little bit of tightening in the stock market. And if that doesn't happen, then they have to tighten, which might be difficult, but this is a stage right now. But the key thing to remember is right now is if you're an advocate and if you're in power, advocate inflation, your party is going to be completely voted out. That's the main focus right now. People who are voting. And the next president is going to be a Democrat. Just almost a guaranteed cycle and also a key also way to get the next president.
- [41:21]
Peter Schiff
I agree with that, by the way.
- [41:23]
Mike McGlone
Yeah. So then what they're going to do, they'll do the socialist system. To me, that's the cycle we're in right now. This second half is going to be the best indication for that. And the bottom line is for everything, I look at metals and crude oil and copper, even gold, the stock market has to go up. So if we just get a little bit of midterm. So maybe it's a short term thing, right? Just a midterm backup in the stock market that's trading at a severe discount volatility in the stock market, then that is to sit the trickle that kicks in that might not be stoppable. It's the arguments Dave and I had about Bitcoin above 100,000 last year. Once that trigger kicks in, you start moving lower, the trend continues. So this to me right now is just the beginning of a great opportunity. And I look at one other thing. I also point out, if you look at the Bloomberg commodity index, it just peaked at the same high as 2008 versus T bonds. So I'm like, where's the value? I know what you point out, Dave. Peter, but just the risks here are 5% longbound. We might look back a year from now and say, yeah, 3% is where we are now. It's just, oh, another, another, just another normal cycle. Next year CPI potentially will be negative. Just a normal cycle. What happens in crude oil, the bottom line, make that happen is just a little backup in the stock market.
- [42:32]
Scott Melker
Yeah, we talk bitcoin. Yeah.
- [42:35]
Peter Schiff
I don't think, I don't think the moving crude oil down is sustainable. I think, I think we're, I think we're headed higher in crude prices and other commodity prices. But again, I agree. I do think that the Democrats are gonna win in 2028 for the same reason that Trump won in 2024 and the same reason that Biden won in 2020 and the same reason that Trump won in 2016. We keep going back and forth because the party in power gets blamed for the problems and the party out of power promises to make them better. And so this is gonna just continue because the economy is gonna be worse in 2028 than it was in 2024. And so the Republicans are gonna be out and the Dems are gonna be in and they're going to make the problems even worse than that. I mean, that is the trend. Everything keeps getting worse, no matter who is leading the charge. And I think it's gonna start with the midterms. The Republicans are gonna lose the House and they may even lose the Senate. We'll see, depending on how much worse things get between now and November.
- [43:37]
Scott Melker
So it got to 945 without even talking about bitcoin or strategy. I think that's pretty impressive.
- [43:43]
Peter Schiff
Let's talk about it.
- [43:44]
Scott Melker
We should, because obviously I think we're relatively balanced here. Mike, you've been making the 10k call for a long time. Peter, I think you said 20, but on the way to zero. Dave and I I think believe that we could be in the bottoming process here, at least for quite a few reasons, with sentiment and technicals. But there are some overhangs that the market is definitely pricing in right now, strategy being one of them. I'm not sure if you guys saw the framework that was released this morning,
- [44:12]
Peter Schiff
commented on it already.
- [44:14]
Scott Melker
Yeah, because a lot of people obviously were looking for another bitcoin buy. That's not what happened. They effectively increased the SDRC dividend to 12%, said that they have 2 billion in cash and cash equivalents. And I think they're gonna need more clarity on that because cash equivalents is a bit vague. They're saying that they're going to keep a formal USD reserve between 12 and 24 months. The board has authorized, I think 1.2 billion in theory, if they need to, to sell bitcoin. People are reporting it as Saylor will sell 1.2 in Bitcoin. That is absolutely just not what it says for clarity.
- [44:46]
Peter Schiff
Well, also don't forget there's another 2 billion in Bitcoin that he's authorized to sell to cover buybacks of both the preferreds and the common. So in total, he's off. He's three and a quarter billion worth of bitcoin to sell.
- [45:01]
Scott Melker
Right. Which is.
- [45:02]
Peter Schiff
And that's just the beginning.
- [45:04]
Scott Melker
So the market likes It, Right. I mean strategy's up. It was like 5 or 7% or something pre market. Last I checked, STRC was up a bit, but we'll see.
- [45:12]
Peter Schiff
Right, but I think you're talking about a knee jerk reaction to shore up the preferreds. The dividend just got raised to 12%, which means the people that bought on Friday at like 72 there. I, I haven't calculated that yield. I mean, let me do it right now. So if you're going to get, if you paid, if you paid 7, if you, if you're getting 12 now 17 or something, 12 divided by 72, you're getting, yeah, almost 17%. But. So the knee jerk reaction there was up. But of course bitcoin is selling off. It's, you know, 59,400 as we're talking. But the significance of this for bitcoin itself is that Sailor basically just surrendered. Strategy has now gone from the biggest bitcoin buyer having spent $60 billion buying Bitcoin, they're now a seller. He can hide and say, we're still a net buyer. He's not, he's going to be a net seller now. He needs to sell bitcoin to pay the dividends on the preferreds, to raise the reserves, to cover the interest and principal obligation on the debt and to buy back stock and to buy back, you know, he sold some preferreds at 100, why not buy them back at 80? Right. That's what he's thinking. I should buy back my common. The common's at a huge discount. So I don't see how the market is going to absorb this shift where the biggest buyer becomes the biggest seller. And it's not just strategy. A lot of people bought knowing that strategy was going to buy. That was kind of their comfort, their safety buyer, hey, there's a bid in the markets, they're going to keep on buying. So I'm going to buy. And you know, on his coat strings, now that the markets are anticipating that strategy is a seller, it's going to be the reverse. Oh, strategy is going to sell. Let me get out first. I don't want to stick around.
- [47:09]
Scott Melker
You know, I don't agree with that, but I do think the point that you made is the one that's correct for probably the last month, which is not will he sell, it's will he be unable to buy and wondering if he's the only person who is right. If the flywheel has stopped and the buying machine is not there, is there another buyer to set that floor? I think that has been probably the more rational narrative personally. And obviously to add to your point, like Bitcoin ETF set for worst month with 4 billion outflows. I think if you zoom out 6, 7 weeks, it's 8 billion or something. It's a lot. Yeah.
- [47:40]
Peter Schiff
And I think a lot more money is going to come out now, now that Saylor's not buying anymore. And I think this is a big PR blow for the whole industry, what's going on and the lawsuits that are going to come against Saylor and strategy because he did make materially false and misleading statements. In fact, I just watched an interview today where he described Scratch and the other securities, the digital credit, as a bank account with zero worries and zero volatility that pays 10%. I mean when you lie like that to investors and you are the chairman of a publicly traded company regulated by the SEC and you have all these anti fraud laws and regulations, you can't say stuff like that. And you can't hide behind the prospectus that nobody reads. Right. It's like, hey, yeah, I can't go and lie and lie and lie and say, but look, the small print of the prospectus said you could lose all your money and it's high risk. Yeah. You know, so grandma who bought it with her retirement money didn't see that prospectus, wouldn't even understand it if she read it and she goes to the jury or the arbitrator, whatever. Yes, I put my life savings into this because I listened to Saylor and I trusted him and I've lost 20, 30% of my money. You know, they're going to get it back. So all of these legal liabilities that strategy is going to have, they have to sell Bitcoin to cover those too. You know, how, where else they going to get the money?
- [49:11]
Dave Weisberger
So there's, there's a, but there are three different threads here and, and they all get conflated. I mean this, this notion of anything being forced for selling, not true. The notion that people are buying bitcoin over the last few weeks because they expect strategy to come in and save them. No, it's exactly the opposite. That was the case clearly as it was rampaging towards at 120, 100% true post the 1010 liquidation. I don't think there was a whole lot of people buying. I think people were comforted by the fact that strategy was buying for sure. And so we've seen a pretty significant sell off especially relative to gold stocks and other financial assets in this, you know, during this period. Of time. It's a question of what's looking backward versus looking forward. And every time people say, well, this is what's been happening, it's the exact same thing in reverse for when, you know, people at 120 are like, oh, I have to buy bitcoin. Because look, we got Sailor, a perpetual buyer and it's the more he buys a bit, whatever. Look, anyone who looks at stretch or as anything other than high yield debt where instead of valuing the credit worthiness of that debt based upon the, in the case of companies, the ability for a company to generate cash flow to pay their, to pay the interest based upon the potential future price of bitcoin. That's it. That's what it is. It's really very straightforward. Now, I tend to agree with you that his words are problematic. You'll see stuff like that. I will, however, caution people if when all those things became talked about, about Tesla, the price did drop around 10%, 15% from the time that people started talking about shareholder lawsuits. It's up 15x since then, however, and understand that arguably Elon was far closer to the SEC's crosshairs than Saylor is. But yes, you're right, it is undeniably a short term problem.
- [51:18]
Peter Schiff
I think Sailor statements are way worse than, you know, than, than, you know, Musk's, you know, one tweet, Financing assured or whatever that was, you know, yeah, it's.
- [51:29]
Dave Weisberger
Look, but you and I aren't going to disagree very much on that. I have never been a, I, I have always thought that, that, that, that Michael Saylor has been too much of a cheerleader. I've never really liked this notion of digital credit. Look, the reality is either you believe, as you did about 20 minutes ago, that the US dollar and treasuries that are a melting ice cube and you want to hedge versus something else, or you don't. Now, we could believe that whether Bitcoin is going to be that or not, that is the crux of the argument. It is incredibly recursive to say that Bitcoin is going to fall because Bitcoin is going to fall. The truth is, is there a value there? Yes or no. And if the answer is yes, then it will be much higher than it is today. If the answer is no, it won't. Because bitcoin is trading like an option on its own adoption. I've said this a million times on this show. I've written about it. It's very, very clear that that's true. It has to do with what is the monetary value even of gold. And you and I disagreed on a crypto town hall a few weeks ago. We were talking about this because I think that about 85% of gold's value is its monetary value value, not its use in jewelry or any other tangible thing that you look at. The reason you can look at that, it's comparison versus platinum or silver to get to those numbers. To me that's the key thing. Either bitcoin will is perceived as a long term potential store of value and people will buy it or not. That's really the question. And so you look at the network and you look at all the underlying metrics and based on those metrics, bitcoin looks very cheap right now. It's that simple. And it was looking expensive or at least getting close to expensive when the massive deleveraging event happened.
- [53:10]
Peter Schiff
Yeah, well, regardless of what ultimately happens with bitcoin, and we could disagree as to gold's value and where it comes from, but regardless of that, in the here and now, bitcoin has a big short term problem. Based on the situation created by strategy and also by Wall street, with all the other bitcoin treasury companies that followed on Saylor's lead and on all the ETFs, you've got a lot of bitcoin that is owned by institutions and speculators that could very easily be selling in the very short run because bitcoin no longer suits their purpose or there's no longer a demand for what they're doing. And that could create a tremendous amount of selling in a very short period of time where there aren't enough true believers who think that bitcoin is the future of money and want to use it as money in a medium, exchange a unit of account and think it's going to replace Fiat or think it's going to replace gold. There's not enough of those people who already don't own bitcoin and have enough dry powder to get out all the ETF speculators, the bitcoin treasury companies, Saylor, you're going to have so much bitcoin coming on the market potentially in a short period of time that the price has to go way down first. Regardless of where it goes. Eventually I think it goes way down first. And you know, bitcoin has a history of going down, you know, 70, 80 from its peak. And so we're not even close. We're down about 50 right now, so from the peak. So, you know, we got a ways to go. Just if this is just a Typical bear market for bitcoin. Yeah, but it'll be a lot more than typical. It could be a brutal. It could be the worst bear market we've had since the early days, you know, when it went from a dollar to a dime or whatever.
- [55:09]
Scott Melker
I don't know.
- [55:09]
Peter Schiff
But you know, this could be a real big bear market given what what happened, given what ran it up and all the speculative buying that ran it up and now what's going to happen is that is trying to withdraw.
- [55:21]
Scott Melker
Mike, I'm sure you've got some thoughts here. I know we're kind of getting towards time, but go ahead.
- [55:25]
Mike McGlone
Well, I like to fire up Peter on this topic because I'll just read my headline. I'm probably unless editors take it out publishing tomorrow, a path towards 10,000 bitcoin, 3,400 gold and $40 crude oil. And 2H comes on the back of one simple little fact. Just a little backup in the stock market that stays down the while. Now obviously that's very conditional but this is the key thing is what Peter, you make some statements about Micah Saylor. Well, how about my thought is when Mr. Trump first got elected, I called this a Faustian bargain. What about Major, you know, his sons and members administration pumping up coins and things and then buying them and trying to get and getting people to buy this. This is just the populations turning way against. It's a potential legality here is shocking. The key point though is there. I started beating on the market a lot when Dogecoin got to 30, 60 billion dollars in 2024. Now it's 11. I think it's going to $11. It's still 11 billion. It's worth nothing. There's just the point is bitcoin was won in 2009 and now there's millions of competitors which is flush out the competitors, work this out and get back to decent value. But the most significant trend in cryptos is tether flipping in everything that's great value. And I think that's going to irony
- [56:37]
Peter Schiff
of Doge is that it was just bitcoin with a different, with a different name. But I was a very big critic of Trump Coin and Melania Coin the day they were launched.
- [56:49]
Scott Melker
Me too.
- [56:49]
Peter Schiff
And of course they're down 99%. But it was Trump taking advantage and exploiting his presidency, his popularity and basically stealing money from his most loyal supporters in the crypto industry who rushed in to buy that crap. And I pointed out at the time that Trump had had created a mechanism to legally bribe him. Like if you Want to win Trump's favor. You don't have to hand him money. You just buy his tokens and just prove to him how much you spent on Melania Coin. And now you get a dinner at the White House. You get his ear, you get to pitch him whatever it is you want to try to extract some kind of favor from the President. I mean, he took what the Republicans accused Biden of doing, you know, with. With Hunter, you know, and took that to a whole new stratosphere. I mean, they put the Bidens to shame. The grift, you know, you know, of. Of the Trump family, you know, you know, they. I mean, they opened a. A club in Washington, D.C. that, you know, you. It's basically a bribery club. You pay $500,000 a year to join this club where you can, you know, schmooze with the Trump insiders to try to. Try to get what you want and talk to them, you know, and then they made deals. They went all around the world getting money from, you know, the Middle east and all these countries in exchange for favorable treatment and whatever it was they needed. The money just went all into these Trump companies. They invested, and a lot of it was through crypto, and the money came in. So, yeah, it's. It's horrible. It is a terrible precedent. You know, instead of using the presidency to kind of go after the stuff that the Bidens did, they just did it even worse. So, I mean, now. I mean, now this is just basically business as usual now. So I'm sure that when the Democrats come in, that they'll just, you know, take that ball and run with it.
- [58:48]
Dave Weisberger
I mean, I made. I said two things that are funny here. First is, I think Trump. The Trump coins were the. The ringing of the bell on the downside. And it. It was unbelievably bad for most of crypto. Now, here's the thing. I think that most of crypto, literally, numerically, in terms of number of crypto assets, most of crypto assets are valueless or will be valueless in the long term. I mean, let's be really clear about that. I think most crypto coins are. I think there are some who have infrastructure and a path towards economics that you can understand. And I keep bitcoin different than that. By the way, Doge was. Litecoin was a litecoin clone, not a bitcoin. But that's okay. That's immaterial. The one thing someone asked me, what's the best reason for million dollar Bitcoin? And I said, president Aoc And I wasn't joking. I think that there is no way that a Democrat administration could do anything other than spend even more. I mean, they could try to tax the rich. They can try. It doesn't work.
- [60:00]
Peter Schiff
But they're also likely to be very hostile. I think the Republicans have politicized bitcoin to a degree that the Democrats will do everything they can to go after it legislatively and go after a lot of the promoters.
- [60:12]
Dave Weisberger
But there's no reason to.
- [60:14]
Peter Schiff
I mean, there is because it's just because a lot of Republican donors and Republican Paul are now part of bitcoin. And in fact, if, when, if I'm right about the big decline in bitcoin and all the losses.
- [60:28]
Dave Weisberger
Did Larry Fink. Did Larry Fink change parties? So when we weren't looking. I mean, it. Look.
- [60:34]
Peter Schiff
Well, he's. Wall street only has one party and that's money. So these guys, these guys got rich off of crypto that, that they'll sell anything if they can make money off it. They, they have, they have no morality really there. It's like, you know, and so they just go where the money is.
- [60:50]
Dave Weisberger
Legislative possibility is, is. Look, we live this, we understand it, you know, it. The country has bigger problems if they start packing the Supreme Court and putting in, you know, people like Gensler again to run and, you know, and basically they'd have to pack the Supreme Court to do. To do what you're suggesting and maybe they will. That would be a particularly bad thing to do in order to do that. Of course, not only they have to win the Senate, they have to win it significantly.
- [61:17]
Scott Melker
Yeah.
- [61:18]
Peter Schiff
Another thing they'll probably do, if the Democrats get back, they're going to dump all the bitcoin out of that strategic reserve. Whatever's there, they're going to sell.
- [61:25]
Scott Melker
I don't know how much it is at the moment.
- [61:27]
Peter Schiff
I don't know. Yeah, but they're not going to keep it.
- [61:30]
Dave Weisberger
Yeah. Assuming that these, that these people that the Democrats that you're talking about are stupid is generally a bad thing to do. I mean, they have bigger fish to fry. I mean, would they want to do something about meme coins and going after the grift. Yeah, of course they will and that will.
- [61:48]
Peter Schiff
Why not do it? Why not go after bitcoin too? If that's part of the power base of the Republican Party, if that's where a lot of the donations are coming from. Sure.
- [61:56]
Dave Weisberger
It's a small piece. I mean, you know, crypto were the
- [62:00]
Peter Schiff
biggest donors in 2020, 2024. Election cycle.
- [62:03]
Dave Weisberger
That was because. But there were a lot of Democrats, and that was very, very mostly went to Republicans.
- [62:09]
Peter Schiff
But, yeah, some Democrats got some money. But look, the whole Trump campaign, the big. The big backer was crypto. Right. They weren't backing Harris, they were backing Trump. And when you think about it, from what you just said, the president that would have been better for bitcoin was Harris. In that if you believe that the Democrats are bigger spenders and bigger deficits and more inflation, then you would think, okay, yeah, let's have a bunch of reckless socialists running the country. That'll be better for bitcoin. They wanted Trump to win because Trump was going to do all this stuff for bitcoin, specifically bitcoin President Bitcoin strategic reserve. He was going to pump up bitcoin for them. That's why they wanted Trump. And nothing to do with the fundamentals of bitcoin. It was that they needed him because they were running out of hype.
- [62:58]
Dave Weisberger
It depends on who you are. Look, I sat in enough of the meetings and understanding what's going on, the amount of regulatory. There's no other. There's no good word for it. The lawfare that was going on against crypto companies was extreme. You know, the operation Choke Point was extremely real. A lot of the money had to do with that.
- [63:21]
Mike McGlone
Yes.
- [63:21]
Dave Weisberger
On the fringe, there are people who were pushing for, you know, for their own grift. Yeah. There's no doubt. But a lot more of it had to do with the things that arguably are very hard to do in the light of day. Right. You know, it's like you can't go back again. And as I said, there's bigger fish to fry here. I mean, Wall Street's already changed. At the time, Wall street was very much against it. Right now you have this thing called the Genius act, and Wall street is perfectly happy with it. The big banks are not happy with it because they don't want alternatives. Right. You know, there's also.
- [64:00]
Peter Schiff
Wall street didn't like crypto for the same reason I didn't like crypto until they realized they could make money off of crypto. And once they started making money off of it, they loved it. They're making a ton of fees on the ETFs. But you know how. Who they made the most money from? Sailor? Strategy. You know how much money Wall street made in commissions off all these ATM sales of strategy stock and all the issuing of all these securities and all these other. I got a friend of mine who the BD that I Sold. You know, that I used to own. I sold a Puerto Rico. They made a fortune last year, a bloody fortune on all these Trump deals, on underwriting, all these deals. I mean, Wall street got so much banking fees from all this crypto nonsense. Now, everything that was bought, right? I mean, look at. Look at David Bailey's. You know, Nakamoto. It's down, like, 99%. But the banks made a lot of money bringing this thing public, but the investors got killed. All the investors are losing on all this stuff. All the. The average bitcoin ETF buyer has lost money, but Wall Street's making a fortune off it. They're booking all the bets. They're raking in everything. But the investors are losing. They lost on Trump coin. They lost on Melania coin.
- [65:15]
Dave Weisberger
Right?
- [65:15]
Peter Schiff
Wall street is making money, and all their customers are going broke.
- [65:20]
Dave Weisberger
Well, it's all about the verb tense. You're right. You know, Nakamoto was terrible
- [65:27]
Scott Melker
for.
- [65:27]
Dave Weisberger
For lots of reasons. I mean, he used it to buy his own company. I, I, I, I. I can't possibly begin to describe the amount of derision by which I. Bailey ran that company and, And. And how he did it, but so be it.
- [65:43]
Peter Schiff
My only point is. But the bankers made a bunch of money. They underwrote it.
- [65:48]
Dave Weisberger
They always do and they always will, and they can't.
- [65:50]
Peter Schiff
That's why they're into crypto. They went where the money is as soon as it got big enough where they can make money. That's when they liked it.
- [65:58]
Mike McGlone
Right?
- [65:58]
Peter Schiff
They. It wasn't genuine. It was. Right. And. And that's always what happens on Wall street, you know? And, you know, they. They can't resist. And part of it is like, well, if I don't get in on it, my competitors will. And so, yeah, I got to do it, too. I gotta hold my nose.
- [66:16]
Dave Weisberger
You say the same thing about the Internet bubble. I mean, we could go there, but.
- [66:19]
Scott Melker
Yeah.
- [66:19]
Peter Schiff
And I did say the same thing in the. During the Internet. That was happening. That was exactly happening back then. The public wanted dot coms, and Wall street manufactured them. Wall street doesn't tell the public what they need to hear. It gives the public what they want, even if it knows they're wrong. Even if it knows they're going to lose money. They don't care, because they're making money in the process. They're making the commission, they're making the fees. That's what it's about.
- [66:47]
Dave Weisberger
Yep, 100%. And I think that you will see a very similar thing happen here as played out There. If you bought the value proposition of the Internet back in the day. Well, you did extremely well, extraordinarily well. But most of.
- [67:04]
Peter Schiff
Oh no. If you bought, if you bought Amazon and held it or, but 99% of the stocks went to zero.
- [67:12]
Dave Weisberger
It's exactly right. But the aggregate market cap of the sector is many, many multiples. I mean it's up.
- [67:18]
Peter Schiff
Yes, because, because Google didn't even exist as a public company during that bubble. It wasn't even there.
- [67:26]
Dave Weisberger
You know, I know people who were in it and I remember when it IPO'd and when an IPO people were like kind of, you know, whatever they were still they had the post Internet hangover. You did extremely well. So people did have a chance to get into it. But it's, it's always buying when people, when people are yelling about how, what do you say? Selling when they're yelling. Yeah, you know, you want to be
- [67:52]
Peter Schiff
buying when they're yelling and buying when they're crying.
- [67:56]
Dave Weisberger
And right now people in the crypto markets are crying.
- [67:58]
Peter Schiff
That's, that's, they're not crying yet from. I, I think they're still very complacent. They're very assure themselves they're not worried about this decline. They think it's all just like another decline and it's going to run and make new highs. I mean I, you know, I mean I don't see, yeah, you can point to some of these fear and greed indexes and oh, you know, but, but the die hard crypto guys that you know, they're hodling, no problem. You know, they, they're not worried about this. I, I, you know, only thing I have seen flip go to sailors page on X and read through the comments. Yeah, I mean he's not the vitriol there now they hate your sailor. Right? I never seen this before on his page. It was all, you know, adulation. You're great, you're great. Fantastic. Look at it now. Just read the stuff that's on his page.
- [68:50]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I agree with that. And so like the funny thing is, I'll once again say we, you know Peter, obviously we disagree on bitcoin, but I think it's common. There's a lot of common ground between bitcoiners and gold bugs and certainly you and our community. It just stopped at bitcoin.
- [69:03]
Peter Schiff
But I think it gets more hate now. Saylor gets a lot more hate from the crypto than I do. I mean I get my share but nothing like sailor. Sailor is a much bigger villain now
- [69:13]
Scott Melker
than me and Everybody on this panel, we were, I think as aggressive skeptics, not strategy specific, but the second wave after strategy of bitcoin treasury companies. I mean, I can't, I was getting the sailor type comments because of how much I hated those treasury companies. And now just because I try to correct some facts, people think that I'm a homer for Taylor. I like to see factual things. But you're saying a lot of things are true. So is everyone else where the market's going to prove us right or wrong. I think the one thing that people are discounting is that there's just consensus that bitcoin is going to go down further and if it does not and just rises, a lot of the problems are going to disappear.
- [69:49]
Peter Schiff
Yeah, well that's what people are hoping for. Meanwhile, as we're talking, we're just breaking through 59,000 and if we get through 58,000, which seemed to be the couple over the last week or so, that support level, you know, again I don't see what stops it from hitting 50. But then if you look at the chart, the long term chart, there's really nothing below 50 and 30. I mean it just doesn't, I don't see what would stop it from going down there. Now somewhere in the 20,000 to 30,000 you could draw a long term support line and think maybe there'll be some buying that comes in down around those levels. But at those levels, I mean the heat is going to be so much higher on strategy, on stretch, on all this and just the liquidations and I know just even from talking to people, a lot of people that got into bitcoin a long, long time ago, you know, and when it was up around 100,000 and they had a lot of money in bitcoin, they wanted to start spending some of their money. They wanted to buy stuff, they wanted to leave their parents basements and get their own place or get a car, take a vacation. And a lot of companies were established to loan money to these crypto millionaires so they wouldn't have to sell the bitcoin, give up the upside, pay the taxes. Once you get down around, you know, 30,000, they're all margin called out. They're, they're, they, you know, they're gonna have to sell their bitcoin and so there's going to be so much selling. It's just to me, you know, the downside looks so enormous relative to the upside. I, I, it's just the risk is just risk, reward is just not there, you know, not now. I mean you, you, you, you. There's. It's going to be a while before you may think it's worth it to, to, to buy it.
- [71:40]
Dave Weisberger
Well, unfortunately we have to go, but we gotta go. Given the fact that, that, that one. That the largest single bitcoin lender is a friend and he, he would disagree with that sentence.
- [71:53]
Peter Schiff
What do you mean people put up. What's the collateral behind bitcoin loans?
- [71:58]
Dave Weisberger
It. But the rate of margin and the TVL is much. It would take dramatically more than that.
- [72:04]
Peter Schiff
That's what I'm talking. 30,000.
- [72:06]
Scott Melker
If you borrowed 20 or 30s that most those people would probably be slowly start to get liquidated.
- [72:13]
Peter Schiff
Not just slowly. If you generally these, these loans require a lot of bitcoin collateral. So if I had a million dollars worth of bitcoin and I took out a 3 or $400,000 loan, okay, but now that Bitcoin is only worth 3 or 400,000, the lender's not going to just sit there. He's going to want more collateral. Hey, put up or I'm going to sell your bitcoin. Otherwise the lender is in trouble. The lender can't allow the loans to go bad.
- [72:36]
Scott Melker
We'll run this conversation back. If Bitcoin's at 40,000, we have to jump to speculate. Peter, thank you for joining. All right guys, enjoyed not talking about bitcoin for the first 45 minutes. I was going to have you wrap it up, but we ran out of time here. Gentlemen, we're back. Obviously Dave, jump into crypto town hall, but then I'll be back for the Daily Wolf. Thank you guys. See you soon.
- [73:03]
Peter Schiff
That's dope.
- [73:22]
Mike McGlone
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Dave Weisberger
You think you know a browser, but
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Mike McGlone
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Dave Weisberger
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