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- [00:01]
Scott
In a recent survey, 64% of US investors deemed Bitcoin very risky. Is it actually still a risk on asset, a risk asset at all? Or is it something completely different? Obviously this is a great conversation topic among the many other things happening in macro. For Macro Monday we've got James, Dave and Mike, the whole team here back together again. Let's go, let's go.
- [00:42]
Dave
Let'S dope.
- [00:43]
Scott
Good morning everybody and happy Macro Monday. To those who celebrate, we're gonna dive right into it. We've got Mike, Dave and James. Good morning gentlemen. How are you today?
- [00:55]
Mike
Good morning.
- [00:56]
Scott
Good morning everybody doing well? Okay, so first before we get into the topic that I talked about there at the beginning, we're obviously going to start with the macro and sort of the morning meeting right now. The big story. S P Futures Rise as EU US Deal Eases Trade Fears I want to dig more into kind of what's happening with tariffs. Some comments by the sense, but is this how it's being framed now? Mike, we're good to go. Deals are done. Move on with our lives apparently.
- [01:23]
Mike
Well, it's certainly a good sign of record setting US stock market low volatility, but I'll go over the obviously massive amount of data this week. So we'll see if that changes the landscape by the time we sit down for Macro Mondays next week. Starting with Anna Wong. Just pointing out consumer confidence expects to improve, most notably with the stock market going up in the big beautiful mill. Second quarter GDP they're expecting 2.6% which is above consensus around 2.4% and a lot of that's due to falling imports. Underlying growth is running around 1% because it's a bit of a distortion in second quarter which is well below the potential 1.7%. She expects the Fed dot plots to shift more hawkish potentially yet there's going to be potentially two descents at this next meeting which would be the most since Greenspan was the chairman. Expecting payrolls around 100 grand, unemployment to 4.2%. Right on consensus. One thing she did point out, a lot of fiscal stimulus from the last few years is peaking now. That's construction spending. Forward looking data will potentially vindicate the Fed's stance to keep rates on hold. From ira Jersey pointed out that we probably will see T bill heavy financing and the treasury market and coupon supply might not pick up until next year. In fact, they're reducing their estimates for more coupon supply as we front load the supply into the front end of the curve and expects front end yields to be lower by year end Gina Martin Adams point out where clearly inflation's interworkings are starting IN S&P 500 earnings which have been good but margins are weakening due to tariffs Pointed out how the extraordinary stock market rally from the 20 about 20% rally this year has been the most 50 years and pointed out there's 27 equities they identified outside the US have much better earnings potential and are doing better than the max 7 Audrey Trill Freeman FX Strategist point out to expect some more strength in the US dollar but still certainly with the deal structurally bearish still structurally bearish to $ and then I pointed out how we're in the stage in some of the most elastic commodities most notably crude oil and corn towards a low price cure and that means crude oil is probably more likely head towards 40 and stay above 80. Corn its harvest I was there last week it's massive supply it's a wonderful thing for superabundance it's bad for producers but corn more likely to drop towards 3 it's at 4 now then stay above 5 I pointed out from a gold standpoint I think what gold gets by being one of the best performing assets this year particularly in a weaker dollar environment I think gold gets this silliness of talking about Fed easing with risk assets on a tear record setting stock market running times above gdp, inflation above expectations. Some people from who've been looking at markets for 40 years and say that's kind of silly expect the Fed to ease in the environment Market's still expecting that. So I think that's what gold likes is expensive stocks and very low volatility and there's a lot of you know, how much better is it going to get and then I pointed out that I think the key, the keep the key nails, potential nails in the rest of the year to beta if it does, if it drops you know it's up 10 on the year. Analysts are looking for another 10 which is what human nature always does. The key nails I think potentially to beta dropping is our U S traded copper which is very expensive and bitcoin Back to you.
- [04:55]
Scott
Perfect.
- [04:57]
James
That's, that's interesting Mike because you know I read a lot of the Bloomberg articles quickly as I could this morning and yeah it's clear that we're, we're in a period and I'm looking over my screen here at some of the charts I pulled up but they're, it's, it's clear we're in a period of uncertainty and this week we have a massive amount of data. We've got what Facebook and, and Apple and Amazon and who else is today? There's another one today that we've got. He, we've got a huge amount of earnings that are coming. And part of the problem is we're, everybody's trying to figure out are we in a stagflation period or not. And that's where some of this uncertainty comes in. Right. And so we're trying to figure that out. So if I can just share my screen here with a couple of these charts. You can see that now, Scott, there it is. Okay, so this is the question, right? Are the PC comes in this week and we're expecting to be a little bit higher, the change in non farm payroll. So employment numbers are, you know, supposed to be a little bit lower than, than they have been. So are we getting into a period of stagflation or not? You know, one of the things that I was reading about this morning is just the confusion among the different industries, right? So you've got the wealthier industries, I'm sorry, the industries that catered to the wealthier demographic or even within the industries that have wealthier demographic offerings like airlines. Right. So you, so you heard Southwest got absolutely demolished in this last quarter because of what they're saying was tariffs. You don't have as many Europeans coming over, you don't have as many foreigners coming over the United States. We're seeing that here in Las Vegas, seeing a steep drop off in spending on the strip. And I mean you can get hotel rooms for like 50 bucks or 100 bucks a night right now. So that is, it's real. And the question is, is it because it's a complete slowdown in the economy or is it just that the lower demographic is struggling? Well, if the lower demographic is struggling, that's not really a surprise because let me share this window of this. Do you see that one, Scott, or is it the same one? Yeah, there you go. And so this is the share of wealth that's been created by the top 10%, which is that top line, the red line versus the bottom 50%.
- [07:43]
Scott
I didn't even see that blue line.
- [07:44]
James
You could barely see it. So this is the, this is the issue, right? And that goes back to 1990s. You can see how in, in that the, the, the curve kind of gets a lot steeper after the Great financial crisis 2009, 2010 really accelerates upwards. So the question is, is that, is that top demographic going to continue to drive this economy or not? And so you've got Chipotle, who's struggling, but then you've got, you know, outdoor. What was the out the, the, what's the, the conglomerate? My, obviously it's too early here for me to even think properly, but the conglomerate that, that has retailers is, they're, they're trying to figure out whether it's just the, the, the wealthy demographic they can sell to. Are they going to just continue seeing a stop, a drop off? Right. So that's, that's kind of a lot of the information we get this this week, which is the PCE and, and employment numbers and spending numbers and the health of the economy. So we should get a pretty good stage set for the rest of the year on the economy and the economic front. And on top of all of it, we haven't even talked about the fact that we, we've got. The Fed is going to be announcing their rate decision, which nobody expects them to move. But everybody's going to be on pins and needles to hear what the language is in the press release and how it's changed at all from the last one.
- [09:24]
Scott
Yeah, I want to show you guys something quickly and then Dave, you can give the first comment. So we have Besant here. And this aligns with the tariff talk that I brought up earlier, saying we've brought in nearly 100 billion in tariff revenue so far and on track for 300 billion this year. That's great. That's almost 1% of GDP. June delivered a budget surplus with higher revenue and lower spending. This is how we clean up the fiscal mess we inherited. I can actually play the video. I think it's worth watching for a couple of seconds. So we'll go tariffs.
- [09:50]
Mike
I know that we saw a budget surplus in the treasury in the month of June.
- [09:55]
Dave
Last time we saw a budget surplus.
- [09:57]
Mike
Was President Trump's first term.
- [09:59]
Dave
Is that largely because of the tariff revenue?
- [10:02]
Mike
And how much have you raised so far this year?
- [10:05]
Maria
What we're closing in on? 100 billion. I think we could annualize at 300 billion. So way to think about that is that's roughly 1% of our US 30 trillion GDP. So you know that that is a big, big number, Maria, and we didn't get any credit for that. And the CBO scoring, you know, I don't agree with the CBO scoring, but CBO scoring did say that there's a chance over the 10 year window we could take in 2 point trillion of tariff revenue. And the great thing about the June number was not only was it an increase in Tariff revenue, we brought down expenses. So it was a great combination. Lower expenses, higher revenues, and that's how we are going to get this budget mess that we were left, left with under control.
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Scott
Okay, so clearly they're not. This is the, you know, to me this is like saying I saved five bucks on my groceries but my credit card debt went up $500. Hooray for me. Because it's ignoring entirely the national debt and the fiscal situation. Correct. But still, I think, you know, if the balance sheet was in a surplus, that's good. But Dave, I mean, how do you unpack this? It seems to me like slightly misdirection, but still generally positive news.
- [11:29]
Dave
Well, I mean, look, they have no choice, right? You know, he's not wrong about the mess that they inherited. That's absolutely fact. Now of course, that mess they inherited has been from decades of both parties. So this is not a partisan statement. It's just a fact that 37 trillion dollar debt, another hundred plus, probably a lot more than that of unfunded liabilities, is a pretty nasty situation. And a government that is so bloated and that was financing, you know, paying, you know, that, you know, via USAID and others, paying for protests in the country. I mean, you know, come on. I mean, and we're starting to see that, and we're starting to see some good effects of some of the things that they've cut. But the truth is that the fiscal situation requires a lot of work and the tariff situation requires a lot of work. And the, the point about everything that Mike was saying is that when you look at gold and when you look at all of this stuff, it's all a question of the denominator. That chart on the rich versus the poor is literally textbook. If 40 years ago people sat around the table from both parties and said, okay boys, how are we going to make the rich richer, keep the middle class and the poor where they are and have nominal GDP look like everything is great and create the largest wealth inequality in human history, all while people are being told that things are awesome. What would they do? Well, they do exactly what they did. They would decouple from fiscal sanity. You would continue to pump asset prices and drive inflation into assets. Claim there's low consumer inflation because you're incentivizing investment in automation beyond what a rational upon what economic equilibrium would do. You would incentivize investment and outsourcing so that people who are willing to accept dramatically lower wages would be the ones who are doing it and you'd be where you are today. So that's where we are. And when you look at that, it's so important to understand. So whenever we talk about stocks to gdp, the headline number is incredibly worrying. And I very much tend to think there's no way this time is different, it's going to end badly. There's a huge but though. The but is that those companies and those stocks that are earning a higher percentage of GDP because they are benefiting from all this monetization are going to outperform and people are going to pay more for it because they expect it to go up. And those ones that aren't, that are just quote a new normal, we should accept a standard PE on a non growing company of 20. Well, they're going to get absolutely destroyed, you know, and that's the kind of thing that matters. Now I want to point out, because he won't pat himself on the back. One of my absolute favorite reads ever from Mr. Lavish was this weekend. And and there's an incredibly important concept here which I think gets at a lot of what our listeners, viewers, whatever, complain about, about Mike and I arguing. But there's a point that he makes about trying to look at logarithmic or exponential growth and value it in linear terms. And when you do that, bad things happen. So he points out Tiger Management, one of the premier hedge funds of its era, effectively getting destroyed and having to shut down because they totally didn't understand what was happening with Amazon. You know, points out how sorry you're going to get the information and stuff. Yeah, it is. I can't recommend strongly enough how important this is to read. But the important reason here is everything. This encapsulates why I scratch my head and bang my head against a wall whenever Mike talks about Bitcoin at 100,000 being just beta to the S and P. When Bitcoin we see as we're looking years in the future, we're looking at what it will be, not what it is. And that is exactly how the smartest people in the room made fortunes off of Amazon or made fortunes off of Nvidia if they saw what they were doing and understood what was happening with AI. The difference is here it's well telegraphed. The difference is in Bitcoin's case, there are multiple people who understand it. And so it's a real question that you have to ask yourself when you're valuing Bitcoin as a risk asset. Is Larry Fink manifesting or is he just telling you exactly how they see it playing out? Is he giving you a roadmap or if he is manifesting, is he likely to be accurate? And I'm picking on Larry not because of his position, but because he literally is being parroted by hundreds of wealth managers around the world right now, if not thousands, not to mention all the bitcoiners, everybody else. And so I think it's super important to understand that what we're seeing now, we saw last week something that's, it's that that was an event. And you know, there's a lot that I can say and a lot that I can't say about the event. The event was a sale of 80,000 Bitcoin, you know, nine, you know, plus trillion dollars of sale and less than 3% impact upon market prices. A year ago we saw 50,000 sold and it caused almost a 20% drop in the market. Now this time it was done by Galaxy Digital. They have a press release. People know it and they did so very skillfully. They used advanced technology. They use their intelligence of spreading out the risk and trading throughout all the, all the markets and you know, effectively all three days.
- [17:28]
James
Did it occur, Dave?
- [17:30]
Dave
They didn't say.
- [17:31]
Scott
We don't know. But if you do the math just based on the articles, it was like 9 billion or something, they said. So it would, it would, it would average out to about 112,000 a bitcoin. So it act. If that's all true, it would have been earlier, I think, than people thought.
- [17:44]
Dave
That's what I, I cannot comment.
- [17:47]
Scott
Yeah, okay.
- [17:48]
Dave
I, I literally can't comment, you know, and I won't. What I can say is they used. What, What'd you say, Scott?
- [17:59]
Scott
Dave knows something and can't share it.
- [18:01]
Dave
Well, I mean, yeah, if you look at the shirt that I'm wearing, right. You know, I'm still the, I'm still a senior advisor and on the board directors of a company that, that, that.
- [18:12]
Scott
That, that executes things, exactly.
- [18:15]
Dave
Things. And what I can say is the most important thing to understand for a lot of our viewers is what Galaxy and the way they traded this was not dissimilar to the way they would have traded a block of Nvidia or a block of Amazon or a block of Google. They use all the channels that professional investors use, which is not what most crypto traders do. They use. They look for natural liquidity. They use algorithms in the market on both derivatives as well as on spot. They did so intelligently and as a result, what they proved to anybody who is paying attention, and there's lots of conspiracy Theorists who say all sorts of things. There are a lot of, lot of people who are butthurt about the hell that people are butthurt about. Luna still in terms of Mike Novogratz, which is completely, you know, look, I think we're all past that now. But they don't understand that. What they did is they showed the investability of Bitcoin. And Mike has been screaming that bitcoin is so volatile, so much beta, so much everything. Sorry Mike, but if you were right, then that would have cost a lot more to trade. People would have front run it. It would have been driven down. The reality is the market is more liquid and less volatile than, than is generally assumed in most of the financial models. Now we can make, we can argue how much is it, you know, how much more liquid, how much less volatile than the financial models would, would make. And that's it. That's an interesting argument, but it's undeniable to me that this proves that it's less. Now why this matters, it matters for two reasons, really matters for reason number one, and this is the most important. Every hedge fund, every portfolio manager who sizes positions, sizes their positions based on what it would cost them to get out of it. And, and that's just the way it is. Like I, I worked at a very large, very large hedge fund. I worked on the street. I actually built one of the first impact cost models. So the one that Robert I'm going to. Neal, Chris effectively improved.
- [20:21]
James
It's called trade friction.
- [20:23]
Dave
And it, you know, and, and the core of every model that is used in impact cost today. And, and this is something, this is, we're going underneath the curtain here is, is you look at the assets volatility and a square root of the percent of volume traded. And that is, is how it all works. Now volatility is very unstable. As beta is unstable, volatility goes up, it goes down. If you look at bitcoin's volatility, it literally has. If you do go on bitbo and you look at the chart of bitcoin volatility, we're like 1.3% now. Whatever, you can look at the numbers, it doesn't matter. But the point that it could quadruple over the course of a year, although it hasn't over the last year. And so it's interesting how you measure it. Volume, people want to measure it also matters. So to do bitcoin volume, you can't look at volume in bitcoin. You have to look at volume of bitcoin versus dollar bitcoin versus tether, bitcoin trading in perpetual swaps, bitcoin trading on futures markets and aggregate, all of that together and with somewhat of a, of a, of a divisor because some of that is recursive. Right. You know, when you do an arbitrage between bitcoin and futures, obviously you don't want to double count that. So it's not trivial to do this. But why I'm mentioning it, Scott, is the world changed last week in terms of the way people are going to model and the way people are going to size positions now. I'm not talking about degens, I'm not talking about treasury companies. I'm talking about asset managers, wealth managers. When rick Edelman says 40% to really aggressive people, those really aggressive people are going to say, yeah, but you know, if it's part of a large pool of capital, they're going to say, yeah, but I can't, you know, they're going to, they're going to limit the size based upon, you know, the investability. Those models are going to take a while to change, but change they will. So that's, that's my, that's, that's my diatribe. I think it's important and I think it was an event that I don't, I think is underappreciated in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
- [22:26]
Scott
80,000 Bitcoin is a lot of bitcoin to be sold on the open market, bottom line. And it was clearly sent to exchanges. So we know regardless of how it was executed, it was actually likely sold on the market. I guess, Dave, one day you'll be able to give us more information.
- [22:41]
Dave
Well, all I can say is it's never digital, meaning it's not all or none.
- [22:47]
Scott
Right.
- [22:48]
Dave
Some were sold on the open market, some was sold by a natural, some were synthetically for added derivatives. Obviously I know more than that, but it doesn't matter. The fact is that the, the estate, the, the beneficiaries received their money. And we could talk about your other post this weekend, which is another.
- [23:09]
Scott
I want to get to that next, but I want to. In a minute. But I want to ask Mike a question first because that was a fun one.
- [23:15]
Dave
Anyway, that's my observation for this morning.
- [23:17]
Scott
Remind me never to use the word co opted without being.
- [23:21]
James
Yeah, that was.
- [23:21]
Scott
Let me, yeah, let me. Yeah, we'll get to that a second. Mike, I want to ask you about this. It's the title crypto still seen as risky among US investors despite ownership surging 8x since 2018. Survey, this is what I said at the beginning. 64 still say very risky. So obviously trading like a risk asset, which we talk about all the time, and a perception of it being very risky or not necessarily the same thing. Also I think I saw in a similar survey there was a 16% of Americans have exposure to bitcoin or crypto, which I thought was exceptionally high. But what do you make of this survey or this assessment?
- [23:56]
Mike
Well, first it's the concept of risk. Risk is the opportunity in markets. It's how you manage it. Like when people say bitcoin's risk gets only one pushback, I'll say with Dave is I've never claimed bitcoin volatility is the risk, it's the opportunity in a market. So I think what I look at risk is it's the problem with bitcoin and cryptos. It's a high correlation to beta. That's the risk is if the stock market goes down. And the key thing I like to look back from history is everybody keeps using that example of Amazon. There was a lot of companies that failed. Amazon is the only one that worked well. But why? Because everybody hated it in 1999, headline on Barron's Amazon bomb. My colleague John Ericman posted that this week and I had to resurface it because everybody keeps pointing to Amazon and yes, bitcoin's a new Amazon. Like it's the absolute wrong thing to look. Look back from a human nature standpoint, you should be selling when you're yelling and buying when you're crying. Amazon's on. You were supposed to be buying in 1999. Bitcoin, you were supposed to be buying around 10,000, 2020. But now that everybody's yelling, good luck. And that's why I like to point out the facts of poor performance. First of all, high correlation to beta, it's very. It's the highest correlation ever to the stock market. Certainly the Bloomberg Galaxy crypto indexes, we have the stock market up about 10% this year. Galaxy Crypto Index is about 10%. Yet it trades three to four times the volatility. That's high risk. If you want to get long. If you want to get long risk assets like Rick Edelman says, you want to go 40% bitcoin, great. You better expect that spark market to go up. You're going to lose a lot more than everybody else. And that's why I keep pointing out the facts I've been pointing out for years now with gold versus S and P500 and certainly gold versus Bitcoin, most notably this year and since Trump became president. It's not good that this stupid rock keeps beating this highly hyped crypto asset. And that's why I keep pointing out, yes, wonderful, if we can add another 10% in the stock market by the end of the year, which some analysts are looking for, because that's what you have to do when you get to that stage. It's always only happened a few times in history. That can only go up. The only thing that stops it from going up is going down then. Yes, everything cycles that way. That's my key point in this space is that's why I still stick with gold. And Treasuries is potentially the best performing assets this year. Yes, I'm underwater now, not in gold, but let's give it to the end of the year. That's why I keep saying I have to point this emphasis out to those in the world who. I mean, I see a lot of them. I've been in markets for a long time. Everybody's exposure to bitcoin now. It's just the census, the consent. There's no one telling me it's going to go to zero anymore. That's when I usually get bearish or get bullish. This is the point of the stock.
- [26:28]
Scott
Market'S going to zero anymore either because the stock market has been, you know, accepted as a mainstream asset and a place to put your money. And maybe bitcoin's maturing, which is why.
- [26:37]
Mike
People don't say exactly who doesn't agree with that now. I mean it's.
- [26:41]
Scott
Everybody thinks that the stock market will trend up and to the right over time. So why not Bitcoin?
- [26:46]
Mike
Exactly. And then it gets a certain point can only go so much higher. Now let's look at fundamentals of. Okay. I do enjoy what Dave says about. You can't just can compare it to gdp. So I'll compare to a stock market versus the rest of world. Okay, it was the highest ever. Ever is kind of a long time, but it was a few months ago versus sales, about the highest ever. Versus gold, very high. Versus commodities, the highest ever. The things you can say that okay stuff we're going to look from the future and say, yeah, they probably did matter. That's my point is at some point you get reached an end game. So we're an end game now. I think it's to me what's happening. First of all, we see substantial inflows in gold ETFs. I have to check the difference between Bitcoin ETFs, but we've had four years of outflows in gold ETFs and this year they're up 10%. Big difference. We still have central banks buying gold. The point is that I think that's prudent money figuring out that there's an end game here coming up. And the key thing I'm worried about that is the consensus is so far that can only go up. We have some major fundamental reasons that might end this US Exceptionalism premium and that is for solid tariffs. What really got the US market earnings really pumped up the last 20, 30, 50 years is offshoring. Okay, that's helped and now we have some of that doge kicking and we do have some cutbacks there. But it's also the Fed, Trump's pushback on the Fed. I mean every day that goes back, I think gold saying, oh, I love that pushback on the Fed. What helped the US gain this exceptionalism is Fed independence.
- [28:13]
Dave
I, I think that that's wrong. I don't think that I, I don't think Fed independent. I think Fed independence is an illusion. That independence is basically something that was sold to the American people as a, which is a, a excuse my language, but a bill of goods. You have independence, I. E. You have the bankers that have a private corporation with ties to all the big, to the banking cartel who controls money. The most important price in the economy, the US Cover. The fact that there is an independent Fed was something that, and that illusion of independence was sold to people to justify a all powerful organization that can do what it's going to do. There is no proof whatsoever that a Fed that, that, you know, that was more accountable would be worse. There has been an audit of the Fed ever. We don't know what the hell they're doing most. The average human being has no idea that it's a private company. You know, all you have to do is listen to Caitlin long for 10 minutes and you'd run from the room screaming if you thought that, you know, that having the ability to have regulatory power as well as money control power in an unaccountable group is a good idea. I'm sorry, but I couldn't disagree with that one more. I think that auditing the Fed is one of the most important things that needs to happen. I think that the idea of a centrally planned and controlled price is probably a bad idea in the first place. But that said, there's no proof whatsoever. In fact, the only thing we know for a fact is the creation of the Federal Reserve has created dramatic wealth inequality and has led to a variety of social issues. And I frankly disagree with virtually the entirety of the notion that the Federal Reserve is even necessary. Much less is there. So I know I'm a little bit out there.
- [30:06]
James
Well, we've talked about, we've talked about that a lot before. The Cantillon Effect. The Cantillon effect, you know, it's like whoever's closest to the spigot is going to benefit the most.
- [30:14]
Dave
That's right.
- [30:14]
James
In, in money creation. The problem with the Fed isn't just that they're manipulating rates, is that they're literally enabling the treasury to print money and buy their own bonds to manipulate the curve and then dump that money into the market, which wasn't prior there.
- [30:30]
Dave
Prior.
- [30:30]
James
And that is, that's, you know, the, the, the definition of it. And so, yeah, I mean, look, this is, this has also been a sticking point. Besent was all over, you know, he was, he was all over Janet Yellen about her inability to move out on the curve before they, before the election. Now what does that mean? Means that they were issuing T bills and, and playing chicken like they were, they were literally playing chicken with the Fed. The Fed helped them a little bit, but it didn't end up helping the long end of the curve like they hoped it would. It ended up exacerbating it. And they, they lower rates by a percent and, and the 10 year goes up by a percent so that it didn't work. And then Trump gets elected, Descent comes into office and he's like, yeah, there's nothing we can do. We can't move out on the curve. We, we. He was hoping that the Fed rates would come down too and that all the rates have come down, but that's not happening. And so because of that, that, that headline you just put up, Scott, the besense, I mean, he's frustrated too because he can't move out on the curve. So he's, he's having to issue more and more and more T bills to manage this 2 trillion dollar deficit that we have. And you know, it's, and so what are they going to do? Well, they're gonna have a stablecoin bill. The stablecoin bill will help, you know, create demand for Treasuries because they need more and more and more demand. Like more they, they need more money market instruments basically from all over the world from pockets they don't currently have liquidity in. It's a really important point.
- [32:09]
Scott
You know, quickly, James, the risk asset question I mean, I don't want to get into the old conversations we have, but I guess the question being, are you surprised that 64% of Americans still not only just see it as risky, but very risky?
- [32:23]
James
No. I mean, look, that was the part of, the point of my article is that in the adoption phase of a fast growing technology and a strengthening technology, there's, there's a lot of skepticism. I mean, we, we literally saw Julian Robertson blown up. I, I'm, you know, I was in a hedge fund where a manager refused to listen to us, that Amazon was a real company and he shorted it until he got his face ripped off. Literally had to close the position at the top. It was awful. And that is, that was the definition of getting your face ripped off. You couldn't borrow it anymore, you couldn't pay for the borrow and it was just going up by tens of a percent a day and it was just ripping, literally rip your, you know, your earnings out of your book. And so that's what happened to them. And ultimately he had to shut his doors and give the money back. And it kind of felt like, well, I don't understand this economy anymore. I give up. You know, and it was a capitulation, so, and yeah, Mike remembers it well. It was kind of a crazy time. And then you, you know, but he was obviously a great investor all the way through up to that point. And you know, you have the tiger cubs who all spun off and did their own shops, you know, and so, but the, the point is that what's the difference here? And Scott, if you can bring my newsletter back up and it's this week, was free for everybody to see, so there's no, there's no paywall on it. But the, the, the point was that. Go, go back up a little bit. Okay. And keep going up right there. So this is Amazon. Nope, go back down. This is Amazon in the, in the late 90s, right? And early 2000 during the collapse. And I had to do percentage wise, it wouldn't make sense to people with the, with the dollar terms with, with all the splits and son. But that's what Amazon did. Now go down a little bit. Okay. And this is Amazon. Keep going right there. See that little bump there on the left? That was that huge mountain, that little bump all the way to the left there? That's it, that's that huge mountain. So it produces a bias to recency. And if you have a fast growing asset, asset that's been continuing to growing and compounding over many, many, many years, Which Amazon has done. And I understand Mike's argument. We'll get back to a second. But if you have a compounding, you know, effect like that, everything today looks far, far, far, you know, more dramatic than if you go down now. Keep going down. If you put it into log form and you use a percentage scale. Keep going down. Yeah, it's regular gold. Regular bitcoin. Look at how similar those two look, by the way. Yeah, right. So look at, look at regular regular scale gold. And now you go into Amazon log scale. Right, okay. So those two.
- [35:14]
Scott
Scroll master. I'm doing bad job right there.
- [35:17]
James
So now if you look at that 1999-2001 debacle, you can actually see it. And you can see, yeah, that was a very rough moment. But then you see that the, the trajectory of up and to the right for many, many years. Yeah, there's plenty, there's volatility. But now it's taken in context of that early volatility and you can see, you know, what, what the actual moves are in a way that helps you as a long. This is not for traders, this is for long term investors. Right. And then if you go down and charts, BTC put a great chart up that showed the difference between looking at, you know, there's gold. Sorry, that, that is not regular scale. That's. That, that's labeled improperly. That's log scale. And then that's bitcoin log scale. Okay, yeah, now you can see it. It is the, the curve is not as steep as it used to be, but, but there's log scale versus linear scale and that's charts. Btc, that, this is the rainbow chart.
- [36:16]
Scott
Yeah, Bitcoin rainbow chart.
- [36:18]
James
So look at how if you look at Bitcoin today on just day to day regular scale, that's that black line. It looks psychotic. But if you put it in context over the life of it and how it's been growing, that's what it looks like. So now the argument is, is it Amazon or not? And our argument is, yeah, of course it's the premier store of value, digital store of value that's never been created before. And so it's going to continue to grow. And the network effect and the strength of it is a network. It's not the price, it's the network. And so that is why it will continue to grow on a scale that probably is close to the power law. You know. Now some people argue that we have a collapse in total collapse in fiat and then that is thrown out the window. Yeah, that could happen and then there all bets are off and it swallows Jesse Meyer's chart, you know, almost whole. But the, the, which is, the, which is the total global investable assets chart that you've all seen with big blocks of bonds and stocks and you know, M2 and all that. But, but that's the point is that if you believe, which I do, that Bitcoin is continuing to being adopted as a new technology, then that, then that scale makes sense and that's why you can compare it to Amazon.
- [37:44]
Dave
Right. And the other two pieces just to pile on a bit are this week we saw an all time high in the hash rate. And I know a lot of our listeners think that hash rate is a terrible way to evaluate. I think they're wrong. I think it's actually quite relevant because it's telling you a lot about the, the, the amount of investment going in which is, I call that smart money. Yes, miners could get difficult. Although frankly I've been pretty happy with some of my mining investments and so have you, Scott. So you know, some of your friends have done okay, but if you contextualize where we are in terms of hash rate versus the bump that we saw in 22 or the bump that we saw in 18, in both cases we are somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/6 the amount of euphoria that was seen in those times. So you know, it's, it's a very, there's a lot of potential room for the market to run if we actually got ahead of the log scale towards euphoria right now. Now do I think we're going to get that far ahead? No, I actually don't. But I think it is important to understand that is the case. Now one other last point because I think something that matters. I am not a Bitcoin maxi in the sense of I do think there is value in other crypto assets. I do however think that many of them will, as Mike calls it, go to zero over the next decade or effectively zero. I think that many of them are completely crap. I think some of the, I think they all have to be valued based upon the. The other than Bitcoin's value is as exactly as we said, it's as the denominator. Everything else has to be valued based upon the economic value that would be supported by the ecosystem and supported by the token. Those are very different ways of looking at the world. It doesn't mean that they're not potentially important, but it does mean there has to be a model, the poster child for this, which I'm happy to see. And I haven't checked this morning, so I'm looking, sorry. Happy to see pump Fun, you know, below 3, you know, 0.003. Because I can't stand the fact that they really, they drop dump this token on people without saying anything about what the value of it is within their ecosystem. And I think that that is the sort of tell the fact that it's dropped so much and that you know, even the diehards are like okay, what is this? I think everybody matters. Well, they hate it because there's nothing there. There's no there there. It's not like they're getting a part of the revenue. They're not like they're getting a part of a product. It's not like they get, there's any scarcity. There's no, there's, there's no burning schedule, there's no transparency. In the same week that BNB hit an all time high by the way, which has those things is, is I think fascinating and is telling me that the market is starting to heal. I. E. Some of the stupidity is being ground out of the market. Now we could debate how much stupidity is left in the market and I think the answer is a fair amount. But it's important to look at it that way. So when every time Mike starts talking about the risk in crypto, in fact when you ask people about crypto, those 64%, I'd hazard a guess that a huge percentage of those 64% think of crypto as dogecoin and other stuff. Not necessarily bitcoin. Bitcoin. I think that those who invest in crypto as primarily in bitcoin probably don't see it the same as those who invest and play around in meme coins and tokens. I think that that is different and it will be interesting.
- [41:25]
Scott
What's cryptocurrency specifically in the question? The question, or at least in the article to your point, was not bitcoin, it was cryptocurrency. So should have been more specific about that.
- [41:34]
Dave
Right?
- [41:34]
Scott
And it was 14% have exposure to crypto in some way, not necessarily bitcoin.
- [41:38]
Dave
Right. I think it's important. I also we, you know, I hate the term cryptocurrency. It should be crypto assets. There is one cryptocurrency, right. And, and that's bitcoin. Everything else is an asset, it's not a currency. And that matters. Now all the bitcoin maxis listening are like oh wow, Dave kind of gets it. And then, then I, then they Hear me say that it's not going to zero.
- [41:59]
Scott
And like, ah, okay, whatever.
- [42:01]
Dave
So, you know, like, I don't. I don't really care, but I. But I think it does matter and narratives matter and people don't understand. And I've talked to many people who have started in their bitcoin journey this year, and I've made it very clear that they are very different. I mean, I sat at a poker table again. Well, this weekend wasn't so much. It was actually an interesting experiment. I played in a seniors event, and I think I'm done playing the seniors event. I like playing the other ones. Playing at the seniors event wearing a bitcoin ring, I get absolutely. Nobody asks me anything. I play at a regular event. I end up in conversations every time. And generally the conversations are, what do you think of Doge or XRP or stuff like that?
- [42:46]
Scott
I guess you got a chart here.
- [42:48]
Mike
I got to show one chart that, yes, I'm a commodity guy. I admit it. This is a Bloomberg Galaxy index divided by gold. It's the same as 2017. I cannot get bullish. A space that has unlimited supply, massive speculation, obviously a lot of volatility, 19 million or so cryptos and underperforms gold at the same time. You just look at. This is from 2017. This index actually was. I started at Bloomberg, I came here, I'm like, we got to have an index in this space. And then Galaxy helped us with. It was initially my id, partly because I came from an indexing background, but it's unchanged. It's horribly. It's trading. The high was 2021. A high. A lower high in 24. About the same high in 24 and low now. And we're supposed to. I'm supposed to get bullish cryptos. There's a goal. I'm like, okay, well, can I ask. This is my point. This is the S P. It's basically tripled almost there in that period. And that's my point. And then the correlation is very high.
- [43:49]
Dave
No, no.
- [43:52]
Mike
S P versus gold has actually been declining until what point this year has been declined for almost four years. So this is a little bit longer term. But the key point is the crypto space has.
- [44:05]
James
Mike, Mike, Mike. Let's. Let's make it clear that, that, that yellow line, the orange line is. That is the crypto index divided by gold. So it's. That's the level of the gold, right? And then the, the white chart, the white, blue chart behind the white line with the, with the blue area behind it is the beta. The reason I show that listening understands exactly what that yellow line is.
- [44:31]
Mike
The point is that this whole crypto space from a rational commodity supply and demand economic standpoint is silly, expensive, and at some point we're going to look back from future said, yeah, that stuff didn't make sense. We had to purge it. Bitcoin's part of it, unfortunately. And we're at the stage now that it's just so much bullishness as a commodity. I can't join the party. I've learned that lesson. Yes, I get it. These things are different. Stocks are different. They go up because they go up. Commodities are the opposite. Now I guess you tell me it's not a commodity. I get it. Gold is a commodity. But this is the key thing of the macro big picture. With the stock market at record highs and the market up 10% a year, do you really want to be buying any form of crypto when you can buy something like gold or Treasuries? And that's my point is you look at right now, people are saying to buy Bitcoin right now are buying it at the highest ever versus S&P 500. I look at that ratio, Bitcoin S&P 500 is about 18.5 is about the highest ever and versus gold it's the same as 2021. So I still look at it as you're aggressively bullish long the market. Sure, cryptos makes sense here, but your risk are normalization and then your cryptos are going to go down a lot more than beta. When it goes down, it's just a question of when. And maybe it's five years, maybe it's by then this year. But that's the point. We're at that stage in the cycle where it's just so much extreme bullishness. You have to look for alternatives. And that's why unfortunately stupid rock is still beating stocks and bitcoin this year.
- [45:54]
Dave
Yeah, but the problem with your chart is is that you need to show not this, you need to have the SMB divided by gold on that chart and then I'll show that too.
- [46:02]
Mike
I can bring that up. But for me, the key thing it's beta. If we see cryptos, the headline was cryptos are risky. Well, sure, risk, they're showing very poor performance, most notably versus the base store value for thousands of years. And they're showing, maybe they're keeping up with the S&P 500, but. But on a very poor. If you look at a hedge fund risk adjusted basis, this trader here has taken three times of risk for the same performance as this trader here taking a fraction of the risk. Which trader is more valuable? You pointed that out.
- [46:32]
Dave
And I look at this chart and I see this is really fascinating. So if you look at the first peak, the second peak and where the third peak is likely to be and you overlay the network growth of bitcoin and I would prefer this not be the galaxy crypto index. I prefer it to be Bitcoin. If you do that, it becomes maybe the most bullish chart that any human being will ever look at. And so it depends. Now the other thing about crypto versus because it's important is you're right about beta. And the stock market has been dropping versus gold. What does that tell you? It tells you that the stock markets, this incredible returns that people are looking at are almost completely related to money. Pretty printing. It's basically telling you because gold has tracked the money supply really well. That's the other chart that, that bitcoin so was big. Of course they have. Because gold and bitcoin according to that chart have tracked each other pretty well. Bitcoin with an irrationally exuberant peak in. In. In 1718 and irrationally exuberant peak in 21 and then a, a completely over correction based on.
- [47:37]
James
Share that one. Scott, while we talking.
- [47:39]
Scott
Yeah, I'm trying to. Who's got it?
- [47:41]
Dave
And so it's, it's, it's important to contextualize all, all of these things.
- [47:47]
James
Another one I, I just put up. Scott.
- [47:49]
Scott
Oh, sorry. I thought we were looking at Mike's. Okay. So many things. It gets to a point where they start to go default down below the next window and I can't see them.
- [47:58]
James
So this is, this is bitcoin over gold. Yeah, it did have that irrational blow off in 21, but it hasn't had. It also has had a higher peak in the end of 24. And now it's, you know, it's, it's. It did have a pullback because gold had such a run here and, but you know, bitcoin, you can see clearly the trajectories up. It is not a head and shoulders trajectory.
- [48:22]
Dave
No pull up the hash rate.
- [48:25]
Mike
Let's put this in context. Bitcoin versus gold made its peak during the biggest money pump in history in 2020. That's the peak is still there day points at all time. I get it. The point is also that to me this is a sign of an extreme peak when you're supposed to at some point say thank you very much I'll sell that Amazon I bought in 1990 when anybody hates it and I'll sell it when everybody loves it. We're in this stage, nobody loves it. That's my point, is that chart will go up as long as the stock market goes up. In the past, that chart led the stock market. That's what I've been showing is divergent weakness for a little bit of. Why now? A while now that is the problem.
- [48:59]
Dave
Okay, let's go back to that, that what you just said. Because this is where you lose. Look at the Amazon.
- [49:06]
Mike
Only the future will determine if I. How I lose.
- [49:08]
Dave
No, no, the reason you lose. People hated Amazon during the 2000s. The, the single digit 2000s. And then when the market started to move in 2010, after Tom Lee took his victory lap and people started doing it and you look at Amazon, that's when it started to rocket. You go in the linear scale. So all you have to do is, is that. Go, go to the linear scale of Amazon.
- [49:35]
Scott
I'm trying, man. You know, I didn't really memorize newsletter exactly.
- [49:39]
Dave
It was hated up until the bump that, you know, you can move the cursor. Oh, you know, you could. Yeah, keep going. Yeah, keep going to the right. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, it was hated until here. And then all of a sudden people started loving it. They loved it here. And look what aws.
- [49:55]
James
AWS was the numbers are released and boom.
- [49:58]
Dave
And then. And then what? Look at it. And it's, it's. What is it? What's that number?
- [50:03]
Scott
40Ish. It's 1040.
- [50:05]
Dave
10X since they started to love it for loving it for a couple of years as it was performing well, it's 10x since then. And that's my point. And so people are looking at bitcoin and you know, we think in the next 10 years it's going to 10x as well, or maybe 5 years, whatever. But you know.
- [50:22]
Mike
So what's the problem with that, Dave? You're extrapolating past performance of an infant commodity asset a lot of people hated into the future. And that's the key thing is volatility. Volatility in bitcoin is near the lowest, lowest since 2020.
- [50:37]
Scott
Is infinite. Or you're saying crypto's infinite. Sorry.
- [50:39]
Mike
Just, just remember volatility. Now bitcoin is in the mainstream. We launched the ETFs, expecting the same kind of 10x performance over a similar period of time. Maybe should maybe triple that time period that you might get it. As long as stock market goes up now it's, it is in the stock market, it is in the S P 500. That's what's changed versus five years ago.
- [50:57]
Dave
Yeah, there's. That's truth. But its adoption compared to gold is still minute. It's still less than 1/10. And that's the point. The point is.
- [51:05]
James
That's right.
- [51:07]
Mike
So if you could say I'm going to be wrong about a future prediction, that is absolutely wrong. You have to measure, you have to measure gold based on similar circumstances. How about ETFs? Bitcoin holding in ETFs are actually much higher than gold on a risk adjusted basis. I hold gold my finger. You're never going to hold gold as jewelry Bitcoin.
- [51:26]
Dave
Yeah.
- [51:27]
Scott
I mean if you're really dumb you might because I remember Ledger made necklaces where you can hold your hardware wallet.
- [51:32]
Dave
But yeah, that dumb doesn't even begin to cut that. But the point is that the financial adopters are buying it on the basis of what they saw with Amazon and people who did that, who loved it. This, it was euphoric during some of those years and it's still 10x beyond the euphoria. That's the point. So to say that we're at euphoria in bitcoin now is of course absurd by every measure. Whether it's funding rates or whether it's mentions in the news or whatever. We're hardly euphoric. They're slow, steady buying. There's no question about that. There's accumulation. There's no question about that. Euphoria isn't there. Is the stock market expensive? Yes. Is bitcoin expensive? No. Will a major correction in the stock market take gold and bitcoin down with it? Yeah, it would. Did. It's done every other time. People sell what they have to sell, not what they want to sell. So if you do get a crash of some sort, yeah, everything will go down. But if you don't, then, you know, then you won't and, and its outperformance will continue. And look, I think that Saylor and what he talks about and what a lot of people talk about. If you look at what the prediction of the power law is of bitcoin, it looks a lot like that Amazon chart from the early 2000 and tens to now. It just.
- [52:49]
James
Amazon's Amazon is a power law. Fantastically. Right, so, right.
- [52:54]
Dave
And so, but, but it's important because it contextualizes the argument that on the Barron's article, Amazon dot bomb. Yeah, you're right. That should. And obviously things have accelerated from 19 that the peak, it dropped 80 to 90% and then proceeded to go up by, you know, I think it was 95.
- [53:13]
James
Amazon.
- [53:14]
Dave
Yeah, I think that from the, from the trough to today, I think it's somewhere in what, what in percentage. 10,000%, 20,000%. I don't know, some, some stupid amount.
- [53:24]
Scott
Right.
- [53:24]
Dave
You know, it just gets to big, big numbers. I mean it went from what is effectively $0.04 to what is 200 and what in split adjusted terms to 200. So you know, it's cra. Crazy numbers. Now am I suggesting that the same thing is going to happen in bitcoin from its Nader at 16,000? No, actually others are. I'm not that, that euphoric. I just think that you need to contextualize that newspaper article about Barron's because I remember it, you know, sadly I was trading in the markets back then. So, you know, just like all of us, we all have the gray hair to prove it. But that's all I was saying is that they were, it was a lost decade after that. Now will bitcoin have a lost decade? I guess it's possible, but things tend to be quicker now. And it's also, it's gaining adoption faster. This is more, this feels more, more like the AWS adoption in Amazon decade than it did the decade before it.
- [54:20]
James
And so we'll see because now you've got, now you've got corporations and sovereigns who are dying.
- [54:24]
Dave
So that's the way I, I look at it. And you know, and, but as far as crypto is concerned, if we go crypto x bitcoin, I don't think we disagree all that much. I think there's some very interesting technologies and some very interesting values and some things that are absolutely insane. Absolutely insane. And I will continue to say that and get people crazy. I mean, you know, Gorav comes on crypto town hall, he can yell at me and saying how I'm missing the boat on what will happen in the next decade. And he might be right. And maybe I am missing it or maybe, maybe there, there are things that will do great, but I think that you can't. That's where your infinite supply comes from. Just like there's an infant supply of equities, people will forget that one of the reasons that the Internet bubble popped was because every IPO and secondary that that was just flooding into the market in, at the, you know, in early 2000, I mean there was just so much supply. There were IPOs and you know, like I worked for Salomon Brothers, we had Jack Grubman pushing anything that, that had the word.com or, or telco or telcom in it. And so there was a ton of new supply coming on the market. And that definitely was one of the reasons the bubble pop. That plus a bunch of other reasons.
- [55:32]
James
So, so just before, you know, I know we have a few minutes left, but just to circle back to the big picture for this week, for everybody to be thinking about and watching what's happening, the big things, you got to watch out for it. It's, it's Facebook and Microsoft are announcing, Apple and Amazon are announcing this week. Those are big numbers. Okay? The market's gonna react to them. The, the company I was thinking about, Dave, was Deckers Outdoors. And they're talking, we're talking about, they have no problem selling, you know, Ugg boots and, and sneakers. And they're, they're literally said Uggs and Hocus are doing great. And then you've got your airline saying that we can't, you know, we're, we've been struggling with the lower demographic, but the, you know, the, the business travelers and the, you know, the upper income class class travelers are doing fine. So you're going to look at PCE and you're going to look at consumer health numbers. Like, there's a lot of data that comes out this week. So to set the stage and what Mike said at the Earth in the beginning of the whole conversation here and what Anna Wong was talking about, it is a, it is a really big week of data. And then on top of all of it, you've got the Fed jawboning whatever they're gonna, whatever they're gonna say. And, you know, Powell is not, I mean, I expect him to push back on Trump a little bit this week after he was embarrassed at the Fed building. You know, I think he's gonna, he's gonna push back and he's gonna have some strong language. That's kind of what I expect. Meaning he's not going to be dovish. You know, he may say, look, we're looking at everything and the numbers are, we're comfortable with where we are and we're not going to be moving rates anytime soon, according to the data we have today. And we all know, and we've talked about it ad nauseam, that the Fed is a lagging indicator themselves because they look at and react to lagging indicators, and they have even admitted that and say, and they say, look, we react to indicators that are often lagging. So it's the Best we can do. We have to deal in data and that's what we're going to do. And so expect the Fed to be late. They always are.
- [57:40]
Scott
I think that wraps it up pretty nicely. David, Go ahead Dave.
- [57:44]
Dave
The PCE comes out when and, and you know, obviously they'll know the PC it's coming out.
- [57:51]
James
PCE comes out out on the 30th. So what's that? It's in two days and Wednesday.
- [57:58]
Dave
And they talk on Wednesday.
- [58:01]
James
And they talk on Wednesday.
- [58:02]
Dave
Okay, so they'll know what the PCE is.
- [58:04]
James
Okay, they'll know but they don't, but they don't react to it in real time. It takes them, it takes them days and weeks to react to whatever information was already lagging. They, some, some may change their dot that day but even Powell said by and large most do not. It's what they already had. They're not reacting today's information, they're reacting to last week or last month's information because you know, it's just too hard to keep up with everything. And you 21000 employees and underlings is not enough.
- [58:33]
Scott
So when you're spending $74 billion a day on new construction, hard to keep up. You know.
- [58:41]
Mike
Let'S be careful about that silly argument what the primary purpose of the Fed is. So I'll end that. Dave asked about this chart. We'll just show this last chart. It would take cryptos divided by gold. That's me 500 divided by gold. Since cryptos, you know that launch industry's first launch and I'm using a total return S&P 500. Remember a big difference is S&P 500 has returns. All equities have returns. And Amazon makes money, has profits. Dogecoin bitcoin gold doesn't. But that's the key thing. These things are flat for this period. I think I'm going to in my book in the future look back and say that was your warning risk cats are getting expensive. The stupid rock has been outperforming or at least keeping up with these highly speculative assets forever and we're going to have a little bit of normalization and we're not even starting this year. Maybe a shot across the bar. I haven't even started that Dave.
- [59:28]
Scott
I won't even dig into the article. Mike, I want to say something I forgot last week you guys may have seen Cointelegraph had a head to head of Mike and I like bullish versus bearish and when they interviewed me I didn't even know that it was you and I debating.
- [59:43]
Mike
I didn't either.
- [59:44]
Scott
Did they tell you?
- [59:45]
Mike
No, they, they asked me.
- [59:47]
Scott
They.
- [59:47]
Mike
I do an interview with and they asked. I was unaware of that. I haven't seen. I have to look at that. But that's great.
- [59:54]
Scott
They asked me a question about you. Like, halfway through, he like went off camera. He's like, hey, we might do a counterpoint. He was like, so Mike McGlone and I. And it's in the interview, I'm like, mike is one of my favorite people in the world. Let's not do this kind of thing. But the whole article was positioned as if they even like, put us next to each other, like we were arguing.
- [60:10]
Mike
I'd love that. But think about this, Scott. We have been doing this for quite a while. We have to disagree sometimes. And many, most of the reason is we really have agreed in the past. Now that's when bitcoin was cheap. I just think it's just too expensive now, that's all.
- [60:25]
Scott
You and I met on a panel probably for Cointelegraph. I'm trying to find it now, but probably for Cointelegraph as like the bitcoin bulls on the panel. But I wish I could. It won't show the thing. But here's the. I wish I had the thumbnail. Oh, see, I'm bad at the wrong one. It's literally like bull versus bear. Really. 150. There's me talking bullish. There's Mike talking bearish, like head to head. Guys, we didn't even know we were going. And as Dave, I, I, I posted a tweet kind of flippantly. Two seconds, here it is. That I said bitcoin was amazing. I unfortunately used the word co opted. But this was in a thread where I said that many of the early ardent whales have seen their face shake and been selling at these prices and really jumped out of that tweet. And then I went on to say I continue to ask my guests who's selling bitcoin? And that this was the words of Iago and Bruce Fenton, who have railed against this. But I got a absolute onyx from the bitcoin maxi community for my comments, which weren't even mine. The best was that Cointelegraph wrote about. At least he said what I said. Then coindesk writes an article that it was about the guy selling, which I never literally said and was completely not about that. Then Yahoo jumped on it and did the same thing trading View and oh my God, man, it's like it's Hard. But yeah. So you know, I got my weekly cleansing community things I didn't mean to say if I just hadn't said co. Opted, you know, Gladstein, just real quick, Gladstein made a great point. He said, listen, the network is as cypherpunk as ever. Like you can't co op the code, blah blah. I was talking about obviously the narrative and the entities talking about it, not the code itself.
- [62:05]
Dave
But yeah, I, I do think it.
- [62:07]
Scott
Sparked a great debate and some good conversation.
- [62:09]
Dave
It is funny how people think that you could go to a bitcoin standard where bitcoin is, is well beyond gold and representing all financial assets and doing so without any of the banks or any of the wealthy people in the world adopting bitcoin and, and, and, and broadening out the investor base.
- [62:26]
James
I mean it's, it's, it's delusional.
- [62:28]
Dave
Yeah, it's delusional. Doesn't go far. You know, you think of someone with a VR glasses in his mom's basement. I don't know what this is that this is like incapable of. You know, this feels more like Larry Niven. The people with, with the electrodes plugged into their brain as opposed to VR glasses. I mean, you know, which is. I forgot what he called it, but it was Larry Newman's a science fiction writer. Ringworld is his most famous one. One. I mean, it's just, it's hard for me to fathom how people actually can get out of bed in the morning and actually think that you could do this without literally what we've been seeing.
- [63:05]
Scott
You can't. I think they just, you know, there's people who are earlier and they're like, this isn't what I signed up for. And also I have billions of dollars, so I'm gonna go ahead and buy that yacht and keep half my bitcoin and whatever. All right guys, we gotta run. Thank you. I look forward to future arguments. I don't have know that I'm having with you guys on the media. And we will be back next Monday. Guys, you're amazing. Thanks for staying over time as usual. Thanks everybody for watching. See you guys next week.
- [63:30]
Mike
Bye.
- [63:32]
Dave
Let's do.