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Crypto Bulls Are Giving Up, Is Bitcoin In Danger? | Macro Monday
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Crypto Bulls Are Giving Up, Is Bitcoin In Danger? | Macro Monday
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- [00:01]
Noel Atchison
That's dope. Let's dope.
- [00:18]
Scott Melker
Hello everyone. If you're here for the really sharp Macro Monday insights normally hosted by Scott Melker, you're in the right place. I am not Scottish, Scott. My name is Noel Atchison, friend of the show, and I'm filling in for Scott today. And we have a lot to talk about. But before we dive in, do please hit the subscribe button. And if you've already done that, right next to it is the like button. Please hit that too. Now today obviously top of mind is going to be some of the macro data we've seen over the past week, which is showing that maybe there is some weakness seeping into the economy. This is on top of the talk of tariffs and the talk of layoffs and the talk of general uncertainty. I'm sure we'll get into that. Also, we do need to talk about Meme Coin Fury, which seems to have reached a peak after the antics over the weekend from Argentina's President Milei and the Libra token. I'm sure we'll get into that as well. And all of this is feeding into the overall malaise in crypto at the moment. I know you've all talked about this often before, but it seems to be getting even bleaker if that was possible. Is that a bullish sign or does that mean we're gearing up to head lower? With that, I am joined by the usual gang, Mike McClone, Dave Weisberger, but we're missing James Lavish to today. Instead we are joined by Lawrence Leopard. Thank you all so much for joining us and welcome Lawrence. Anyways, I hope you all had a good long weekend and I also want to thank everyone for being here on what is a US holiday. But as Mike was saying earlier, this doesn't work. This is breakfast and this is fun. So thank you all for being here. Now I want to Mike, I want to hit to you first and get your take on the macro situation. I'm imagining you didn't have your normal Monday meeting that the Bloomberg team today. But I do want to get your take. But before that, Lawrence, I want to give you a chance to tell us about your book.
- [02:05]
Lawrence Leopard
Oh yeah. So I'll hold it up here. So I published a book called the Big Print and it's just out. It came out about a week ago. Now it's on Amazon in hard copy, paperback and digital format. The audio will be out, audible will be out in a couple weeks. Central thesis of the book is the monetary system is broken and we need to fix it it talks about the history of the monetary system, talks about how to fix it and then suggest ways that investors can protect themselves from the inflation which I think is obviously has been bad, but I think it's actually going to get worse. I know a lot of people don't believe that, but I do. So that's the point of the book and hope people like it.
- [02:47]
Scott Melker
Often things do need to get worse before they can get better. Right. That's sort of one of my theses as well. And the topics that you mentioned are topics that we often discuss deeply on this show. So thank you for that and I'm sure you're going to have many insights to share with us today as we get deeper into the crypto weeds. But first let's, let's do the macro. The macro. Look, I mean Mike, we saw some pretty alarming figures last week. Retail sales came in way under expected. CPI was way above expect. Are you worried?
- [03:15]
Mike McClone
Oh yeah. Well, you know my bias. We can make a good market, Lawrence, and I'm the opposite. I think a major risk is towards normal deflation. Historically that's followed the inflation and retail sales last week has showed what I've been pointed out for almost two years now risk inflation adjusted resale. Retail sales are about the same as they were right before the financial crisis. They're hovering near zero inflation adjusted. If you overlay that with what's happening with the wealth competition and I'm sorry, the wealth effect. We created $12 billion of equity wealth last year and retail sales are still not good. It's a bad tilt and I, I want to share my screen to just show you the, the tilt in commodities. I can't see it. Just show me when you tell me when you got it up and I'll start with the Doctor of Copper. Dr. Copper last week put in a pretty good peak and that's just based on the shenanigans with risks in the U.S. potential tariffs and it's, there's bony. We got data going back almost 30 years on the CME traded copper versus LME. CME is US based dollar based copper peak last week at 848.
- [04:23]
Scott Melker
I think we have, we have your screen up now if you want to go to the.
- [04:26]
Lawrence Leopard
For what it's worth, we can't see.
- [04:27]
Mike McClone
A copper chart 520 last year and what I show you in this chart is the equivalent in LME copper.
- [04:33]
Scott Melker
Okay, your screens up just not showing copper.
- [04:38]
Lawrence Leopard
You've got, we've got your appointments.
- [04:40]
Scott Melker
I can pull it up. Let me see if I Can anyways I don't have a Bloomberg terminal. Not like some of us but.
- [04:46]
Mike McClone
All right, so we'll just forget to share screen. I'll just focus on what matters is the copper on the CME last week had a major spike. The biggest spike ever versus LME. Now that's going back 20 years. Every time that the last time was similar as last year it peaked. It's a sign of what's happening globally. This you know the doctor is not doing well because you see what's happening in China. China's imploding. Just look at their bond yields. About 165 in the 10 year now it's 300 basis points or so below the rest of the US you have England UK hilting towards recession. The latest GDP data. Germany tilting towards recession. The latest GDP Data. What are they facing? Severe tariffs from the US and I would not underestimate an emboldened president. This is his second chance, his last chance. So I think that's the key focus we have to look at. You can see that in commodities like I said, copper is tilting lower. The U.S. 1030 year bond yield maybe peaked around 5% this year at the same time that crude oil peaked around 80. Crude oil is tilting lower. What's the stated goals of our new president? Lower yields, not really rates, lower yields which is tilting that way. Lower energy prices which is tilting that way. So from my standpoint, from a commodity standpoint I see one commodity making record highs that matters and that's gold. Lawrence is all over that. I expect that to continue. The key thing I think from the macro that's significant is this Bitcoin, the gold ratio is tilting downward. The Bloomberg Galaxy crypto index which is I helped created with Galaxy and our index team is tilting downward. And I wanted to end with the key macro thing. I think that a lot of bitcoin missed people are missing. So that's the macro. The macro globally is tilting towards deflation worthy of the inflation. That's always happened in history long pick up on that unless you really print money. But the key thing I think that bitcoin people are missing is what we did just did with this reelection. The world changed on November 5th is I think people are missing that. There's a big difference than innovation creating companies that can create money and profits out of the innovation from tokenization and from cryptos and everything. And then there's a speculative excesses in prices I think they're missing. This is could be bad for prices as evidenced by 11.2 million cryptos lifted on coinmarketcap.com there's just too much supply in the space. Now, Yes, I get bitcoin is definable diminishing supply. But in terms of its competition, all the new ETFs now you're seeing anything to do or obviously all the other cryptos. So that's the way I look at it in the macro for commodities. Crude oil may be peaked, copper may be peaked, gold's the only one going higher. What stops that trajectory?
- [07:18]
Scott Melker
Well, much like among the commodities, there are many different narratives to all of the crypto as well. Lawrence, dive in.
- [07:25]
Lawrence Leopard
Well, no, I don't disagree with anything Mike has said. You know, I don't follow crypto very much. I'm kind of bitcoin only, and I think there's a lot of noise in crypto, and I think all crypto is, you know, destined to trend lower versus bitcoin over longer periods of time. Clearly, you know, copper is getting soft and oil is getting soft, and the economy does appear to be going down a bit. I mean, we had some light retail sales numbers. I think you're starting to see airline traffic or gate passages at the TSA are trending slightly lower. You know, it appears, though, the economy might be rolling over. I've got friends who are fund managers who watch the earnings reports and projections very carefully, and they say lots of companies are missing and guiding lower. So, you know, it feels to me like the economy might be truly rolling into, you know, the recession that we thought was going to happen last year and didn't. But we will just have to see, you know, certainly the gold price doesn't reflect that. And I think what gold is telling us is that, you know, the market for sound assets, I mean, people think we're in a sovereign debt crisis. And in my opinion, we are. And so, you know, sound assets are well bid. And, you know, bitcoin's just been kind of chopping around between 96 or 95 and 105, and I think it'll ultimately break out and squirt up to 140. I think gold's on its way to 3500, 4000. And this is really because the government spending situation is just completely out of control. And in spite of what Doge is saying they can do, the markets know they can't really do it. I mean, they can certainly, at the margin, reduce some of the expenditures and some of the stupid stuff. But, you know, when Elon came out and said he was going to take $2 trillion out of the deficit, or out of spending. I mean, there's just, there's no way, it's just impossible. So, and, and the, you know, the sound money alternatives, gold and bitcoin, smell that.
- [09:20]
Scott Melker
And so if assuming you're right and it sounds plausible for sure, then that does mean markets, probably stock markets are going to be heading lower. And this could be part of the short term pain that Trump is starting to hint at. Prepare us for. Does bitcoin decouple entirely?
- [09:37]
Lawrence Leopard
That's a great question. Yeah, I do believe stock markets will head lower. I mean, the stock markets in terms of valuations are just at unbelievable nosebleed record levels. If you look at any of John Hussman's data, I mean, this is, we haven't seen this since 29. It's even worse than that. Yeah, Bitcoin decoupling, it's unclear. I mean, it's, it's got a risk on component to it always has. It's been heavily correlated with the nasdaq, although I've recently seen that correlation start to weaken. And I think ultimately it will decouple because, you know, it benefits from Gresham's law, as does gold. And you know, it's when, you know, a lot of it depends, Noel, on the policy response and what, you know, what the government decides to do. I mean, the point of my book is that they're going to be forced into printing money. And when they are forced into printing money, then, you know, we're going to see what we saw in 2020 or what we saw in 2008, which is sound money, assets are going to take off. And you know, but, but when that, when that print occurs, who knows? And they're trying to figure out all kinds of stealth ways to print money but not say they're printing it. I mean, you know, they're talking about they're going to take the supplementary leverage ratio down to zero so the banks can buy more bonds. You know, there's a big Zero Hedge article this morning, Premium, that talks about how, you know, the, the, they're talking about possibly revaluing the gold that they hold. They have 261 million, 26, 1.5 million ounces of gold theoretically in Fort Knox and Denver and West Point, whether it's really there or not. A lot of us are somewhat skeptical. Right, Dave?
- [11:06]
Scott Melker
Not to mention what's under Wall Street.
- [11:08]
Lawrence Leopard
Yeah, but the theory is that they, they marked it up that that would be an immediate credit to the similar.
- [11:17]
Scott Melker
I'm, I'm over in Europe and already we're starting to freak out about the defense spending that's going to be needed given the new stance of the well expected stance of the United States. And what that, what's that going to do to money printing over here? Which is a reminder that this is not just a US phenomenon and crypto are not just US assets. And Dave, what's your take on that?
- [11:35]
Noel Atchison
Well, I mean it's funny listening to Mike, the first three quarters of everything he said I agree with completely. I definitely am on board with what Lawrence is just saying. But honestly, if you think about what are the macro things that have to happen for bitcoin to have an explosive second half of the year, they're all happening. So think about what it is that we care about. What is bitcoin verifiability? What have we seen over the last week in terms of massive news stories that are just getting started that even if they don't turn out to be true, still they're going to scare people. And if they do turn out to be true, are massive, number one, massive stories about the gold, the bank of England might not be there and calls for doge to audit Fort Knox and the Federal Reserve banks, etc. And a story out of Australia saying the bank of England based on serial numbers almost certainly has counterfeit gold bars. Well, when you compare bitcoin to gold, what is one of its largest advantages? Bitcoin is 100% verifiable and easily verifiable cheaply. And gold is not. And that is a very big story. And yet nothing in the markets yet. Okay, that's cool. We're used to things happening and it taking months for it to get digested. What's the second story? Elon is making claims that the Social Security database is completely fubarred and there is an enormous amount of fraud going on. Just absolutely enormous. What has he said we should be doing with all of these spending programs? Putting them on the blockchain, Whether that's good for Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever, blockchain, it doesn't matter. But in terms of public trust, in terms of becoming a risk off versus a risk on asset, the notion that using blockchain for something so important and finding a fraud on the scale of 100 enrons within Social Security and how no one is talking about what the long term implication of that is is mind boggling to me. I'm here out in Mammoth Mountain, you know, we're skiing and enjoying myself. I'm reading these stories and I'm thinking why is no one talking about this. This is a big, big deal. The third story that is huge for bitcoin and will ultimately be good for crypto is we're finally seeing the meme coin implosion, the thing that we have wanted for a long time. So when Mike says there's 2 or 11.1 million cryptos, it's like, yeah, that's right. Because we haven't punished anybody for doing shit that if they were doing it in a security they would get punished for in any major jurisdiction. And that's going to happen what happened in Argentina. And your newsletter lays it out really well. For those who don't know, crypto is macro. Now is Noel's newsletter. She did a phenomenal. She will not promote herself, but I will promote her. I was one of the first subscribers, I think.
- [14:25]
Scott Melker
Love you, Dave.
- [14:27]
Noel Atchison
I read it religiously and she did a good job of pointing this out. Basically, what goes on with sniping in meme coins is no different. It is literally the same with modern technology as the shit that happened in boiler rooms back. And they still happen in boiler rooms, but happen in boiler rooms in securities. Back in the early 2000s, we all saw the Wolf of Wall street because it was a cool movie and people like Margot Robbie, et cetera. But the fact is is this stuff happens and there are people who would do this for a living. Now the Internet and the global scale of it has made this much larger. Between the Trump and Melania sniping and now the Libra sniping. What is sniping? Sniping are insiders front running the rest of the world and then dumping on them. There is no person who is serious who believes that shouldn't be considered fraud and punishable by law in every jurisdiction that it happens, I don't know of one who thinks.
- [15:25]
Scott Melker
And the scale at which is happening, as you pointed out, is different.
- [15:28]
Noel Atchison
Now here's the. Yeah, the scale is huge. But I just want to Let me finish and then, then you can go off. What is one of the big things that changed on November 5th? Instead of having, instead of having an administration that basically said sure do memes, we don't care, just don't do anything serious and we're gonna. We'll let you go. We now have an actual cryptos are. We have an actual, you know, actual infrastructure. We now have Paul Atkins and. And Brian Kintens getting ready to take the reins at the SEC and CFT with the words I just said. The people who are running crypto policy, United States all agree that this shit should Stop. And we should have a reasonable, principles based way of regulating this stuff. Now, it's going to take time, but these examples are going to be incredibly helpful to make it obvious. Okay, now you should talk about the scale. Why is it so obvious?
- [16:18]
Scott Melker
What, you hit the nail on the head there when you say this should be regulated. But just last week, Hester Pierce, the head of the crypto committee on the sec, said that no, mean coins are not, not part of our purview. They're not part of our, that's right, our box. And yes, obviously they're not. And I myself have said in the past, no meme coins should not be regulated. They're like gambling. But, but I think this weekend even those of us who thought leave me coins alone have said, enough. This is enough. This is fraud.
- [16:45]
Noel Atchison
Can I just interrupt you really quickly? Get it is gambling. And gambling is fine. Can you go to Las Vegas? Can you go to Atlantic City? Can you go to a casino where the casino is legally allowed to weight the dice? Have mechanics operating at the blackjack table. For those who don't know, mechanic is someone who can like deal bottoms or seconds and, and, and cause winners and losers or, or, or fix the roulette wheel to. So as to make people lose more than they win. Though in every jurisdiction, gambling is regulated. And, and so it may not very well. It may not be the sec. I don't think it should be the sec, but it doesn't mean it should be nobody. And that's the point.
- [17:26]
Scott Melker
And what I'm excited about is the possibility, which is higher now than it has ever been in the past, that now we actually do get comprehensive crypto rules. Not, not bucking them, not bucketing the assets into pre established buckets which were, you know, set up 100 years ago, creating entirely new definitions and hopefully maybe creating entirely new division, entirely new team to give this asset class its due. Not trying to convince us that tokenized securities are the same as traditional securities. I'm not trying to convince us that mean coins don't need some rules around them. Insider trading is fraud and sniping is a type of fraud as well. So, and crypto and casinos do have rules. So I think this weekend did change the narrative a lot. Once we do start getting regulation, then to Mike's point, we will see most of those crypto tokens disappear. We will continue, continue to see froth. We will continue to see innovation. That's just simply human, spiritual, but they will be cleaner and it will be better trusted and the institutions will be More comfortable, especially if we do start to get deeper institutional grade services as we saw last week as well. Reports that Citi and State street are now working on crypto custody. BNY are already doing that. They're probably going to ramp up the marketing of that and that is one of the catalysts, I think that will bring the big institutions into the crypto market. And, and to Lawrence's point, they're probably going to start at Bitcoin because it's the deepest, it's the one with the most off ramps and it is the only one that is clearly not a security. Lawrence, do you want to take it?
- [18:58]
Lawrence Leopard
Yeah, no, I just agree. I mean I, I think, I think it's sad and my book talks about this. I think it's sad how much crypto and you know, the Sam Bankman Fried actors and others like him, I mean now we know that President Malay is one of them. Have, have distorted what Dave and I understand to be, you know, an incredible technological innovation which is what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin, they solved the, you know, the Byzantine General's problem. It was a math problem that couldn't be solved for years. They solved it and so they created legitimate digital scarcity. So it's kind of, you know, there's, there's money pre bitcoin and money post bitcoin. I mean until the right blood is flu, humans didn't fly. Now we fly. And that's really the kind of level of development this is. And sadly, you know, there's nothing else like Bitcoin. All these other coins are, you know, proof of proof of stake, not proof of work. And so, you know, they're just, they're just gambling tokens and you know, they confuse people and it really, they hurt Bitcoin a lot in my opinion and they should be heavily, in my opinion, they should be heavily regulated or shut down. I mean, I, I suppose it is legal in this country to gamble and we do have a lottery and all that. I, I don't think those are particularly great activities. But, but Dave's point is fair that if you're going to do that, at least make the rules fair so that, you know, they can't, you can't just obviously, you know, fraud people. And you know, to that point, you know, you know, look at, look at our new, our new president who kind of immediately pre being inaugurated, you know, launched his own coin and then had his wife launch a coin. I mean, it was just, it was just so sad. I was just so disappointed in that behavior.
- [20:38]
Noel Atchison
So I mean, it's important to understand what people are. And look, I've been listening and it's funny. I saw, I think the interesting. About the most interesting thing about the meme economy when I said we may finally be seeing what we've seen is arguably the human being who expressed the bull case for meme coins better than anyone was Rand Nunier. And I don't know. I'm not sure how I know Rand. I don't know how he pronounces his name. I'm sorry if I'm butchering it, but, you know, he. He talked about for years, you know, you build a community and then you can eventually monetize the community and you get all the eyeballs together and, you know, you, etc. Etc. That's fine, you know, whatever. I mean, I've always kind of shrugged my shoulders at this and, you know, I think the things that are interesting and bright and shiny and new, hell, I'm not gonna lie, I got involved in one meme coin. I think it's kind of cool. But it's, you know, it depends on what kind of community. And it's called Sparky Token because it's about an AI roboticized dog as opposed to all these, you know, whatever dogs.
- [21:34]
Scott Melker
Not investment advice. Right?
- [21:35]
Noel Atchison
Not. No. And did I put any ser. No, of course.
- [21:38]
Lawrence Leopard
Kill me, man. You're killing me.
- [21:40]
Noel Atchison
But, but, but my point is it's something to, you know, you want to build. If you want to build a community, you want to get eyeballs. We have an attention economy. We have people who have the. The attention span of hummingbirds out there. You know, it's like the. The things that are. Go. Actually going on. Fundamental things that are happening are really important. Right. You know, I talked about two of the three of them. The third one is what's going on vis a vis freedom of speech, which is. If anyone's been following my ex account, I've always been. It's been in my profile since I started it. Right. You know, I'm a free speech maximalist. I think it's really important. You know, we literally had an anchor at 60 minutes say the single dumbest thing that any news person has ever said in the history of television broadcast journalism. And people are like, kind of shrugging their shoulders at it. I mean, we had a woman who said that Germany used. And this. This is relevant to this for. For a big. For a lot. And I'll. I'll get to it. But she literally said that Germany, you know, committed genocide because of freedom of Speech, weaponization of free speech, literally ignoring the fact that the very first thing that Hitler did in 33 was ban free speech and made it illegal to criticize his government. Because Joseph Goebbels, which was the propaganda minister, said, if we can't get public opinion behind us, people are not going to be willing to, you know, do the things that we're going to ask them to do. It literally the opposite. Free speech is the one thing that stops genocides like this from happening. In every single case of genocide, in everyone throughout human history, it's always been based upon scapegoating and blaming and getting the population behind the genocide. And yet we have this now. Why does this matter? Because freedom, and freedom of speech is literally one of the core tenants in bitcoin. How many times have you heard bitcoin a speech from people saying why it needs to be protected, why you shouldn't be able to ban it, et cetera. And so you're seeing the last gasps of the old institutions who are trying to stop a freedom economy from taking root. And I think this time with the vice President, United States gave one of the great expositions of the importance of freedom of speech that I've seen. I mean, yeah, you know, the Germans are not very happy about it because within days they were invading people and literally putting them in jail for posting memes or criticisms of the German government. You know, what does that sound like? You know, I'm going to be on. You will see me be, you know, and I will engage with anybody who wants to discuss this. But it matters for. For crypto. You mentioned the lottery. Larry, you like Lawrence better than Larry, right? Yeah. Lawrence mentioned the lotteries are state use. Governments use lotteries as a tax on the poor to raise money because the payouts are so bad. I mean, come on, at least when a charity does a 50, 50 drawing, you know, half the profits are going to the state. People use lotteries to do that. What are meme coins? At its core, what are people investing in meme coins for? They're trying to buy lottery tickets. They're trying to buy the next Shiba Inu. And. And to that degree, the entire category of that, which is what I was asking them for, the show matters. So when you look at 11 million cryptos, okay, how many of them are real companies? Probably less than a thousand. The rest of them are, quote, projects. And what are those projects? They're lottery tickets. And should, you know, should people be allowed to try to make them. Sure. But understand what they are Anyway, so there's a rambling answer there because there's a lot of stuff in the middle of all of this.
- [25:08]
Scott Melker
I want to get Mike's take on something on a narrative that's related. I mean we've lived through the meme stock craze and the mean token, the mean coin craze is not totally dissimilar and indicative of a certain amount of froth. And let's face it, financial conditions have been loose. We then that that got wiped out while it did attract basically all of the attention. But then did we get back to fundamentals in the stock market when that changed? Will we see something similar in crypto?
- [25:37]
Mike McClone
Well, that's the problem. I like and Dave appreciate him pushing back on me. This is so important we have this discourse is crypto on a broad basis we all can agree is a leveraged version of beta. And the question is bitcoin. It still trades three times the volatility of gold and three times the volatility of the S P500. And we haven't seen the S P500 print its 200 day moving average since October of 2023. It's going to do that this year. My, you know, blame me if I'm wrong. And when it does that, I fully expect the whole crypto market is going to get clobbered. Bitcoin might not get down as much, but we have not even started the purge. Shibu Inu and Doge Doge and Most of those 11 million cryptos have to lop off zeros. We've seen this happen before. Those of us who traded things back in 1999. It's happening. It's happened. It's just way overdue. This is just silly massive speculation and it's pumped up and it's melting every day now. That's my point is this is a process that's happening despite the S P5 making new highs. And Larry's point, Larry pointed out how we know what's happening in earnings. They're tilting lower for equities. We know it's borrowed time. Everybody gets it, even President Trump. And he gets it. He's got great advice from Mr. Besson. He's a trader. Traders get this. You don't want to buy when everybody's saying bye. That's what's happening when it's super expensive. And this is what got me out of the trading pits 30 years ago is when I pointed out just the screens and this is where we are right now. So I think based on that too is I think bitcoin meets the major threshold at a hundred thousand dollars. And now that all the majority mainstream saying to buy it and all the insiders who did buy it when they figured it out 10 years ago are saying thank you very much. But now the mainstream is buying. You got to be very careful and it's just human nature to try to jump on board and buy things like Shibu Inu that have you know, 0.000 and it goes to $0.01, you make a killing. This is extreme stuff. This is as bad as the dot com bubble. And that's why tilting over to gold. But even gold's getting expensive near $3,000. So the macro and you see in commodities is everything tilting that way. And that's why I think that you see it from breast and Trump. I think they're going to have a great trade in getting that 10 year note yield to go lower. And part of the key thing they'll make that go lower. So what's, what's I'm going to piggyback on this is, is Larry, you mentioned 140 Bitcoin. 140 Bitcoin this year implies that we might add another $10 trillion in US stock market Mac capitalization. Unless you're expecting complete divergence meaning that that that correlation we've had forever to go reverse. I mean that might work. Well good luck with that one. That also means more Fed tightening, more inflation, more wealth effect. That's why the Fed stopped. Stopped. One of the reasons they stopped easing or would say we get a normal correction. Bitcoin to say drops the same amount drops to 60,000. Not a big deal. We're just there a few months ago. Months ago. That brings the Fed back in. That probably means a little bit correction in stock market which we're way overdue for. Brings Fed easing back on. You see the bent here. Higher Bitcoin is the problem. It means more speculative excesses, more inflation. Fed's got to tighten.
- [28:33]
Lawrence Leopard
There's no doubt there's correlation there. Mike, I don't disagree with you at all. And I think both of those prices are very much in the realm of possibility. The thing you said that really resonated with me because I and you, you know, we're older, you know, we've all been through these markets and all and I was very active in the 2000. This feels very much like March of 2000 to me. I mean I think we are really. I don't know if it does. I see you nodding. I mean it just feels to me like we're building a top here. And it was interesting when that bubble burst. You know, it took a little while for it to get momentum. I mean kind of all of 2000 the market chopped around, up down, up down, up down. I mean the real speculative stuff started blowing up. But it wasn't until, you know, I was short things, it wasn't until late 2000 and then 2001 look out. I mean the bottom just fell out. And that's kind of how I feel about these markets right here. But, but to be fair and to criticize myself, I felt that way probably for a year. So I might be too early.
- [29:29]
Noel Atchison
Yeah, I'm sorry. Well look, there's two points there. First one, 2000 was the March 2000 mass NASDAQ sell off that got triggered from tax. People who had all those taxable gains had to sell and there wasn't a buyer because there was a liquidity. And then by August it had rallied back to recover all those. And then the slide started and it was more gentle. Yeah, there was some docks down. And then we all know what happened in 2001 and we all know that the proximate cause for the real depth of that market was the Twin towers, et cetera, et cetera. We know what happened. The idiocy of going to Iraq, we could go down that rabbit hole. But the most important thing you just said, Lawrence, which is really, really important, is that the market bifurcated. And yes, Amazon and Cisco and other high flyers got absolutely annihilated down. Amazon down 90%. And people, people remember this stuff, right? Yet at the same time thousands and I mean literally thousands of OTC stocks and smaller small cap NASDAQ stocks got wiped out to zero. Meanwhile within 10 years Amazon was worth 10 to actually 100x of where it was at the bottom. And the entirety of the Internet sector was up a lot. People tend to remember these things. So Bitcoin I will tell you, I believe is 90 plus percent undervalued right now with, with exact monetary conditions relative to gold and everything else. And you don't have to see that if it were to drop 90% it will be 100 times undervalued. There are, is a lot of money, a lot more money than is necessary to keep Bitcoin at these prices. Look who agree with me that it's 90% undervalued right now world. And in a world where markets do implode like that, liquidity is going to be injected in like a friggin fire hose. Mike always talks about that's the point.
- [31:24]
Mike McClone
Where's that money coming from? That's my point is we are so addicted to this US stock market going up. And I point out last year that $12 trillion is the most in the history of mankind of wealth creation. Why is retail sales dipping that environment and CPI high? We've reached an apex. Yeah. Market bubbles can get big and, and, but you got to be careful. And just these coins and Milana coins and just what happened copper last week the bell rang in copper that you should sell. That's from a commodity guy. Yeah, I've been stopped out before, but that's what I'm seeing.
- [31:55]
Noel Atchison
So, so, so let's try to keep things on, on a very simple playing field here. Right. If the argument is that the stock market is going to implode and it doesn't do that, I mean it's not, you know, we, we've outlawed crashes. Right. You know, the markets will close. We'll, you know, they'll be high plateau. No, we haven't outlawed falling but you know, it's not going to go drop 90 a day. It, you know, we saw. Anyone who lived through 2008 knows exactly what will happen. You will have massive bazookas of liquidity being talked about. The plunge protection team will get together. There will be all sorts of things will happen ultimately. Will they succeed? No. If markets are going to find a new level. Yeah. We could see a major correction in the market. Absolutely. But along the way, certain things are going to go, are going to change. I always point out, Mike, and you always have to admit that there was a delay and a lag. But in the Great Depression or in the mid-30s, Homestake Mining, which was the proxy for gold and the only proxy for gold I possibly have, went up dramatically when the stock market was getting crushed that well, and I've said this before, bitcoin's going to be.
- [33:08]
Lawrence Leopard
Let's look at the 2000 example. So if Bitcoin is digital gold, in 2000, the stock market basically in the next two years lost 55 of its value. That kicked off the bull market in gold. Gold was at 250 at the time. And in the next two years it went to 5 or 600 on its way to 1900. So you know, gold, gold and stocks are countercyclical and there's a lot of data to prove that they move inversely, you know, and, and so, you know, when the stock market is healthy and credit's expanding healthy and there's no monetary debasement, stocks win gold Loses when the stock market's blowing apart and there's a lot of monetary debasement. Witness what you just alluded to, Dave. You know, they're going to come in and do a big print. Gold takes off like a scalded dog. And so, so I think, Mike, one of the things you got to factor in is if bitcoin is now digital gold and we have a stock downturn with a lot of printing, Dave's going to be right.
- [34:02]
Noel Atchison
Here's the key thing, Lawrence. It's not digital gold yet, but there are a ton of people that we've been seeing for eight months and we're seeing it accelerate now. A rotation from people who buy bitcoin and sell bitcoin on massive leverage. I mean, you know, 100x leverage, whatever nonsense. Two people who are accumulating it and holding it because they think is 90% undervalued relative to gold. And those same people generally are more likely to be investing in gold alongside it than saying no, no, no, no, no. I mean, you find me a bitcoiner who is at our age that doesn't own gold also. And I would say that'd be the first one I've ever found.
- [34:42]
Scott Melker
Yeah, there aren't many of them, but that's our age. And the big wave of investors coming in are younger.
- [34:51]
Mike McClone
Our discussion's missing. I'm not pointing out stock market crashes and I'm just pointing out relative valuations. Historically, we all know it's worked that way. The difference with the last corrections and we've learned the lesson of too much liquidity and inflation it created. And that's part of what helped Mr. Trump get collected because elected, because inflation helps people like us. Anybody who owns assets and has a home and stocks, that hurts Your average person a 50, 55 of the wage earners in this country. And that we've learned that also. What tilted him also was figuring out bitcoin. The key thing that's pointed out here is Lawrence, part of US Gold, we all know this has zero correlation in the stock market. Historically, yes, if it crashes, it'll go down initially. But we know cryptos have a very high correlation to equities. That's my point is let's get past that hump. My point is right now, as far as a relative value risk assets on a global basis, US is the most expensive ever US stocks. Bitcoin is the most expensive ever relative to many other things. It's a hundred thousand threshold. I agree with that. Then we have the other that massive amount of Competition supply. Remember you don't have that in precious metals. There's only three other ones. Silver, platinum and plating. In cryptos there's gazillions and then there's this massive issue of what's the. What's happening in the rest of the world. Just look at their sovereign bond yields. The average of the five year of the of the five top countries in the world by GDP. Their tenure note yields starting with China are about 130 basis points less than the U.S. that's signs of a problem that includes India. Before the financial crisis they were about 100 basis points above the US so what's the tilt here when we have a little bit of normalization the next big trade I think will be those treasury bonds. And the key thing you're missing about pumping and dumping. We've learned that lesson. When it comes time to do that everybody can say well you did that last time and you ruined my life. The total CPI is up maybe 30% since end of 2019. Did I'm your average wage owner is not making 30% more.
- [36:39]
Lawrence Leopard
Yeah. Oh there's no doubt.
- [36:41]
Noel Atchison
Absolutely.
- [36:42]
Scott Melker
I want to pull on the thread of will the Fed come in and just print money? Should we get that correction we're waiting for?
- [36:47]
Lawrence Leopard
Oh yeah, will it.
- [36:49]
Scott Melker
I mean that's the easy thing to do. But then again most of the current narrative especially from the the current administration is that that is precisely what led to part of the problem certainly in the heartland. It has it boosted assets, it boosted stock markets. It didn't actually help people. And this comes down to a question I want to throw back at you, Mike. We've been taught, I certainly was taught in school that the stock market is not the economy. Has that changed?
- [37:13]
Mike McClone
That's the key thing I enjoy about this. The lessons of Einstein. The questions are the same. The answers have changed. Particularly crude oil. I really enjoyed pointing it out when it pumped above 100 last couple years ago. This is the seed start to go back to 50. Now it's still heading that way because the answers have changed and that's the big difference now is we've learned the lesson of too much liquidity and inflation. We got that check mark is the biggest inflation since most of us since the 70s which I was most of us were really young. It's just the macro now. It's at that point now and we all know it's just the complete every time we have create human nature complete optimism for this new president just get a little bit of tilt back to normalization The Europeans are pointing it out. But the rest of the world world facing these now these are tariff things that I remember speaking with clients 30 years ago and here was a quote I used to use. This is the macro open in where we used to say yeah, everybody in the world says they want free trade as long as they can run a surplus with us. It's impossible to have free trade with the rest of the world because we're the demand pool economy the greatest. We can't have the currency adjustment and we provide security. There has to be higher tariffs than anybody else coming to us. It's just to. To even it out. And that's happening. My point is the tilt is already that way as I point out in bondials the rest of the world heading towards a deflationary recession. Will they print? They have to. But they also have to pay for their own security. Now the US has been and I have a lot of skin in the game in the military and I don't want my kids, the people I know dying overseas. And most Americans get that. Now the rest of the world. So this is my point is it's not Smoot Hawley. It's worse. It's. And it's completely defendable and it's completely. The world has become accustomed to exporting to us that trades over.
- [38:50]
Scott Melker
And yet at the same time.
- [38:54]
Noel Atchison
Number one, Smoot Hawley was the US at the time of Smoot Hawley was the net exporter, the massive net exporter. And so the effects of tariffs would be different. Number two. And we could go down that rabbit hole. Number two, Trump's tariff policy that is starting to emerge looks a hell of a lot more, more rational than certain people who, you know on this, on this thing, you know, have said what is the emerging tariff policy. Use tariffs as a threat for geopolitical things which has been successful. Things like curbing fentanyl and go to reciprocal tariffs pointing out where people are going back to fundamental fairness. Now what will that do? That will tilt and cause certain. There will be lots of issues to that that. But it won't be smooth Hawley. It's not going to be global depression, you know, sort of things. But, but the most important point when we talk about inflation is we have a. You said it. Scott Besant is a trader inflation people in, in, in all the economists and I love making fun of stupid economists make this argument that we, that we managed to have monetary printing, you know, huge monetary printing without inflation. They're absolutely wrong. We had huge monetary printing and we channeled Inflation toward assets as opposed to toward consumer goods by prioritizing capital over labor. I'll get all Thomas Piketty on them because he's right in what he's saying. And by doing things such as making it more, you know, overly cheap effectively to invest in technology and automation, overly cheap to make the investments, to do outsourcing. Outsourcing is not cheap. It's not free. You know, it costs money for companies to set up outsourcing to do that. And so what we did is where we prioritized something that was guaranteed to increase the wealth gap. And so that, that massive 30% print, what was that? Because that was because both Trump and then Biden on steroids decided to put money in the hands of the average person. Right. So, you know, the actual stimulus checks and all that other stuff, they broke the taboo. They broke. They literally changed the flow of money from assets to consumers. And that triggered 30% inflation. And they realized that mistake. People have figured it out and they're not doing it again. And now we're in a situation where they're trying to get the genie back in the bottle. Will they succeed? Well, if you believe true inflation, they're starting to succeed. Right. So if that's true and monetary printing is going to continue to happen, then shorting asset price based on the denominator of the money probably isn't the smart move.
- [41:32]
Mike McClone
One quote and we'll piggyback is from Robert Lighthizer's book no Trade is Free. The US has been exporting wealth to the rest of the world for decades. That's stopping. That's my point is it's shifting that backwards. And this is not my view. This is Robert Lighthizer, that the largest military in the world is built in US Dollars and it's not in the US this is what's focusing. I would, I would behoove people not to underestimate the motivation of President Trump right now, by the way. He's got less than, less than four years left and he's done. He's going to make sure it happens soon.
- [42:04]
Scott Melker
And depending on how to the midterms, maybe even less. Just, you know, who knows. But you know, Dave, coming back to something you said, and this was something I was going to throw your way, we do have going back to U. S. Main street, inflation expectations are blowing out not only on the surveys but also in the TIPS yield inflation expectations are blowing out. Is that tariffs expectations or is that money printing expectations or is that just people are scared?
- [42:27]
Noel Atchison
Well, it's. People are scared But I mean, at the. You have. The vice President has said it very eloquently that we need to bring things back to the United States. Well, what does that mean? Well, right now building the United States is dramatically more expensive than in a lot of these other countries. And it's not just wages. It's, you know, environmental laws. It's oceans of red tape. We could go chapter and verse, look at what's happening in California. I mean, people are going to get back into those houses for what, a year? And that's with Newsom claiming he's going to cut red tape. I mean, we, we have made it almost impossible to build factories at anything close to the cost that it's done in Mexico or, you know, or China. And the wages are only 20% of that. And everyone always looks at the wages that you're looking at the 20%. Unless that changes now. Will it change? Well, that's the promise. We'll see. But, you know, if I'm an American, average American, I'm taking a survey, do I believe that they're actually going to fix something that's so structural? Look at the screaming that's going on from, you know, from almost half of the politicians in Washington about doing things to actually stop fraud, waste and abuse. Look at the screen. I mean, you know, it's. We knew this was going to happen, but this, this, this is actually the debate, the fight. Because if we are capable of, of reforming our system to the point where, where going into politics isn't a way to get rich, which, by the way, has been the truth in every single command and control economy ever. But when we look down at our own, you know, look at how, look at the average wealth in the Senate and the House, it's not pretty. Right. You know, it really isn't beautiful. And you see why we're now hearing the stories. We're seeing the truth, that money is getting sent around to their families. Right. You know, it's the stuff that we're seeing.
- [44:13]
Lawrence Leopard
No, let me take this inflation thing a little bit. You know, Mike earlier mentioned that there might be a trade in some of these bonds because we've got a little bit of a deflationary impulse here, and I don't disagree with that. But I think that, you know, we had 40 years of deflation based on the China price and a lot of other things that happened from, you know, Volcker to the present. And when Covid happened that that trend got snapped and it's very hard to turn it around. And we now, in my view we now live in a secularly inflationary world. And I'll just cite a few examples. You know, the longshoremen went out last fall and struck on, you know, their wages. They got a six year deal for 10% a year, up 60% over, over six years. 10% is a long ways away from the Fed's 2% target. You know, the DBA Agricultural ETF last year was up 28% for the year. By the way, that's why your grocery bill hurts so much. I mean, you know, and, and as we all know, you know, they have hedonics and a lot of other things they do to cook the inflation numbers. You know, I personally had a house where the, the Insurance went up 100% year over year year. The homeowner's insurance, my automobile Insurance went up 33% last year. I mean, the notion that inflation is kind of really running at what they tell us this 2 or 3%, that's just a fantasy. I mean we, you know, we live in an inflationary world now. Oh, and by the way, nobody's talking about it, but tariffs are inflationary, right? So you know, in an inflationary world, what do you not want to own? I mean, with all due respect to Mike, you might want to own bonds for a trade, but you sure don't want to own them long term, right? And you probably don't want to own stocks because in the 70s stocks did pretty poorly because, you know, you're not able to necessarily have the pricing power to maintain your, your margins. And what you want to own are things that can't be debased. And you know, so there we go, gold and bitcoin, right?
- [46:02]
Mike McClone
So gold can, I mean bitcoin is, the competition is massive. So I'll give you the deflationary tilt. First of all, profits. Let's look at the number one thing that reason that U.S. corporations, which are profit maximalists, have done, why they reshored and why did we created all this import markets for profits. What's going to get hit hard? What are expectations for way high profits? So let's give an example of that right now. Our trade deficit, which you said is going to be, you know, tariffs are inflationary short term. So maybe it's about a trillion dollars. You may say you add 20% on that, that's $200 billion, not a big deal. If the stock market drops 10%, would you, to be normal, that's $6 trillion. That's what, 20% of GDP? I mean it's, that's massive deflation look at the price of unleaded gas. The number one measure of, of two measures of consumer sentiment over time is as gas prices going up or down and stock market price is going up or down. Gas prices right now, $3.16 on a national basis was first traded in 2007. So yes, you're seeing some pockets of inflation on the back of the number one factor, the big pump from, from COVID But I'll mention two books. The Price of Tomorrow by Jeff Booth. A big bitcoiner. Massive deflationary forces from these little things called technology. I see it every day. The Price of Time by Edward Chancellor. Pointing out deflation always comes in back of massive pumps and liquidity. What's happening in China right now, the property crisis, severe deflation. So I think the key thing you're pointing out is anecdotal things. It's the maximum you've also it's all dependent on the stock market going up.
- [47:39]
Lawrence Leopard
Right, right.
- [47:40]
Mike McClone
See that tide going out. So that's the next big trade. Is the US Catching up to China's bond yields? We've seen it happen in Japan. It's just happening globally and the tariffs are part of that tilt. That's my point is I think best it and Trump get it. You can't just have a stock market go straight up over time. But if you get that correction over with early. To me I'm talking about a trade. But also there's one other thing I want to mention. We have the world's largest demand employer. The US Government is, is cutting workforce like we've never seen before. Now we knew what Trump and Elon were going to do. Go fast, move fast and break things. I love the criticizing like criticizing the president for trying to end killing in, in, in the, in the war. I mean at least he's trying. We haven't come to greens. He's trying to stop the death and it's. I love the criticize him but it's great. I completely defend what he's doing. But we, we are purging this massive imp employer. It's just getting started in this deflation and it always comes at peaks when people are worried about inflation is when you get the opposite.
- [48:35]
Lawrence Leopard
I hear you, Mike, and I don't disagree And Jeff Sputh is great and I've read Chancellor's book as well. And we live in a deflationary world, but we've got a monetary system that actually requires inflation or else it blows up.
- [48:47]
Mike McClone
It has to expand and we learned.
- [48:50]
Lawrence Leopard
Yeah, it's like a Shark. It has to swim and expand. And so, fine.
- [48:54]
Scott Melker
And it's a tool to bring down the debt relative to gdp.
- [48:56]
Lawrence Leopard
Fine. So what you, you know, what you're talking about occurs, the natural deflation takes place. And then guess what, you know, the base level of money can't support the debt structure. And guess what, Here comes another big print. You know, I mean, right. I mean, we know that the third Fed mandate is financial stability. And so we know, and we know there's a Fed put underneath the stock market. So the stock market falls 30%, unemployment starts to spike. I mean, we're going to be back to QE and zirp, you know, so fast your head will spin. Right.
- [49:27]
Mike McClone
So if the stock market falls 30, what happens to Bitcoin? My point is you're missing. We're not missing, but I don't disagree.
- [49:32]
Lawrence Leopard
That Bitcoin goes down in that instance. I don't disagree with that.
- [49:35]
Mike McClone
Briefly, I look at it as a trader. There's going to be a great trade here that might be the time to buy risk assets, but right now isn't.
- [49:43]
Scott Melker
I want to, I want to start bringing. I want to start. Because we haven't got much time left. I want to start wrapping this up by bringing this to the uncertainty that is of course, underlying all of these conversations. We have no idea how successful Trump and those team are going to be in getting down the deficit. We have no idea what's going to be happening on the military spending front. And we don't even know if we're going to have a functioning government after March 14, which is when the debt con. The debt conversations. I think that's the next deadline for them to reach an agreement on. What do you guys think is going to happen there? Because that depends. That affects a lot. Not just the regulation that we know we need for crypto, but it also affects the spending.
- [50:17]
Noel Atchison
It's such political theater. I mean, come on. I mean, you know, Lawrence and I are both going to shake our heads and say there is only one direction the debt goes that's up. Now. The only thing that can change that is two things and they both have to happen. One, what they're doing with, with Doge and everything else, you know, finding all this stuff, downsizing government and decreasing, you know, what we're actively spending on to buy us a little bit of time. And two, cutting the bureaucracy to encourage hyper growth, which would be, may show up in the current stock market. It may be new companies. You know, you can talk about where it is. It's literally the only way out long term as far as March is concerned, it's really a question of can the Republicans hold their shit together to get some of this stuff passed or are we going to blow up in a paroxysm of screaming matches again? I mean, you know the amount. I don't think I've ever seen more absolute lies being screamed at by people ever. I've never seen this. I mean, things that are factually untrue, like, you know, dumb like getting rid of the Department of Educational lend the Pell Grants. No, that's not the proposal to move the Pell Grants under the Treasury. I mean you can go through a whole litany of these things. So many things from literally this, the, the presumpt. The ranking member, the, the speaker of the House of the Democrats win the Congress, Hakeem Jeffries. Literally lying to people. I mean, and not in a subtle way. We're seeing, you know, all of them do this, so. And yet now we have this big theater that will come up in March. The question is, will the Republicans be able to pass something before that? Because what do they want to do? They want to make it a $4 trillion increase so that they don't have to fucking worry about this for the next two years and can get on with business. What does all this mean? It means more liquidity being pumped into the economy.
- [52:01]
Lawrence Leopard
I see Mike smiling. I mean this is. We've seen this movie. We know what's going to happen. They're going to pass a debt increase. That's all. That's all a rounding error and it's all very predictable. What will be interesting to see is if percent goes for a gold reset, which is kind of being kicked around and very much possible in my view, and something they probably need to do. They've got to figure out ways to get more liquidity into the system. And he's as much as said that he wants to liquefy the asset side of the balance sheet. The only thing that's really liquid there is the gold and silver, the, that they hold. So, you know, I think that's going to be the story of the next six months.
- [52:38]
Noel Atchison
And can I make one other point, Lawrence? I'm curious what you think about that. So we all know that as far as the US Government balance sheet, the single largest land holder in the United states is the U.S. government. And I started to see it getting floated. Talk about the ultimate rug pull on land.
- [52:54]
Lawrence Leopard
Yeah, they start selling land, it's possible. I don't know. My gut is the defense Department not going to let them. I think they think a lot of that strategic stuff, but who knows?
- [53:04]
Scott Melker
So to wrap it all up, there's a lot of tension, there's a lot of people screaming. Bitcoin could shoot up to 150 or it could come crashing down to 60. It very much depends what the stock market's going to do. We don't really know in terms of that. Let's quick fire round here. Seconds each because we've got three minutes left. Catalysts, Mike, what catalyst do you think will start the move going that you're waiting for?
- [53:27]
Mike McClone
What's always happened in history is risk. Assets just get too expensive and they mean revert and it's a question of timing. I feel like I have to point out from my colleague Gina Martin. Adam, she's pointing one thing about the US stock market rally, it has earnings. We remember in the bubble in 2000 it didn't have earnings. But cryptos don't have earnings. So to me this is very much a dot com bubble. Levels in cryptos, we need to lap off zeros. Catalyst, I don't think. I don't know what will be next, but I like to did point out we are the world's largest employers purging its biggest purge probably in history. And this everything cutting out that waste means all that excess spending is being pulled from the economy. Remember what we have, like 6 to 7% of GDP needs to be contracted at least a little bit. And that's my point. As I look at it, as I'm just looking for the next little for to make major decision differences. Why might put out a bullish bitcoin comment or mate, put out a bullish gold comment. I'm not gold, I'm bullish gold. A bullish copper, a bullish crude oil. Typically you need a lower price cure and I don't. I think we're still at the risk of bitcoin's just too expensive. Risk assets are just too expensive. And as far as the catalyst, I'm waiting. But right now I think bitcoin might be the leading indicator for everything it needs to stay above 100 grand. If it doesn't, everything trickles down.
- [54:41]
Lawrence Leopard
It's definitely a liquidity widget. I think Mike makes a very good point that a lot of people have not focused on, which is if Doge is successful, that's very recessionary, you know what I mean? You cut expenses and you know, it shows up somewhere else.
- [54:56]
Scott Melker
Right, we're seeing that. I mean, I read an article this morning about house Prices in the Washington D.C. area, just right. It's just frightening. Just and the house price, the mortgages are held on bank balance sheets. Again, frightening. LAWRENCE CATALYST SECONDS I think it's going.
- [55:12]
Lawrence Leopard
To be very interesting to watch what the treasury does with both the term maturities on the debt they have to roll over. I mean very few people have focused on that. We haven't talked about they've got a rollover between 7 and $10 trillion of the debt this year. And so Mike is all over this because he's a bond guy. I mean, oh my God. I mean this is going to how the hell are they going to do that? I mean, I think the SLR change is one thing they'll do. I think they're probably using the tariffs as a club to try and get foreigners to buy the bonds and then they'll say, hey, give you a swap line if you need it. I mean it's, they've got a, they've got a to me, the treasury market and what, what Besent decides to do, revaluing the gold, etc. I mean it's just, it's fascinating and I to me, I think it's going to be the biggest catalyst of what's going to happen.
- [55:55]
Scott Melker
Watch the auctions then, right? Dave, what's your favorite, what's your favorite catalyst?
- [56:00]
Noel Atchison
My favorite catalyst is the, the absolute certainty that all of Wall street is going to be unleashed to offer crypto and most importantly Bitcoin and potentially Ethereum and other trading services, allowing the unlock to finally happen where it gets its share of all wealth. And then the stories start about what does it actually mean. And so all this delinking stuff, trading at a 90% discount, these are very powerful narratives. At the same time, money printing I believe that's why the back half of this year and I think it'll probably happen further sooner. I think that's why you'll see that rally. It will, I think the, the trade is if you figure out which are the companies that, that can't take advantage of this or cannot, as Mike puts it, you know, keep their margins because they don't have the ability to do so, the trade is going to be long. Bitcoin is short. That and a bunch of other crap within the crypto sphere, I think there are some winners in the crypto sphere that will take place. But I do think that bitcoin being able to be offered by the entire brokerage community in the United States, that all of these things is a very, very big deal because still when you ask people, you mention Bitcoin to people, what do you hear? The first question, how do you invest in it? Name one other asset where the first question that you mentioned, you're asked is, how do you invest in it?
- [57:20]
Scott Melker
So up, down, sideways, we don't know. What we do know is things have never been this. That's interesting. Thank you all so much for watching. Thank you so much, Dave, Mike Lawrence, for being here. Tune in again next week.
- [57:49]
Noel Atchison
Let's do.