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The Investor's Podcast (We Study Billionaires) - The Investor’s Podcast Network
BTC252: Bitcoin Mastermind 3Q 2025 w/ Joe Carlasare, Jeff Ross, and American HODL (Bitcoin Podcast)
01:23:42
The Bitcoin mastermind group analyzes market sentiment, gold vs. stocks, strategic reserves, and bold BTC predictions heading into 2026.
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- [00:01]
Preston Pysh
You are listening to tip.
- [00:03]
Hey, everyone. Welcome to this Wednesday's release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast. Today we're back with our quarterly Mastermind discussion with Jeff Ross, American Hodl and Joe Carlisari. This is one of our most popular episodes that we do each quarter. We cover a whole bunch of things happening in the bitcoin landscape, from macro trends to market structure to policy moves and just investor sentiment in general. This is a sharp, no fluff discussion that you won't want to miss. So without further ado, let's jump right into the conversation.
- [00:36]
Celebrating 10 years, you are listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pysh.
- [00:54]
Podcast Host / Announcer
Hey, everyone.
- [00:55]
Preston Pysh
Welcome to the show. I'm here with the guys for the Mastermind conversation. I got American hodl, I got Joe Carlosari, I got Jeff Ross. Just a couple things to talk about this quarter. Just a couple things. And let's start off with just the sentiment because before I hit record, you guys only got about a minute of talking here before I hit the record button because I want this to be very candid, what you guys were just saying.
- [01:20]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah. Huddle said he bought gold. Like he loaded up. That's what he said right before. And I was shocked.
- [01:26]
Jeff Ross
Ever.
- [01:27]
American Hodl
I would never say that, shock.
- [01:28]
Preston Pysh
Although we're going to get to that. We're going to get to that sentiment. Joe, take it away.
- [01:34]
Joe Carlisari
No, it's horrible. So I was scanning through the cesspool these days of bitcoin Twitter and it's like, it's something. It's like everybody's down, everybody's depressed. Everybody's like, this thing sucks. Let me get into the yellow rock. I mean, I don't remember being this bad, like in the depths of the bear market.
- [01:51]
Preston Pysh
I think everybody's expectations have been shattered. I think they're used to the four year, kind of like that there's this crazy pump that was supposed to happen over the last nine months. Nothing happened. Like, it was just completely sideways for the whole year so far. And I think people are very frustrated with that. I'm frustrated with that. I don't know about you guys, but.
- [02:13]
American Hodl
Well, you know, the frustration is it's easy to understand emotionally because Hodling is a hard journey. And so, you know, as a human being, you expect to be rewarded for that journey. And like, so far, really, there hasn't been much of a reward. I mean, we're not even up that much in inflation adjusted terms compared to something like the top of the 2021 cycle. And last time we went below the prior all time high. So that was kind of a very tough moment. Post Go back in your mind to post FTX collapse and Sam Bankman Fried. By the way, I've heard Sam Bankman Fried is angling for a pardon these days. He's trying to be.
- [02:49]
Preston Pysh
What do you mean?
- [02:49]
American Hodl
We were never insolvent. I didn't steal everyone's money and use it to gamble. Yes, you did, bro. You're not getting a pardon. Sit there and do your time. All right?
- [02:56]
Preston Pysh
Who does an interview like that and releases it? I saw this like, hit X, like this ridiculous.
- [03:02]
American Hodl
Well, he thinks the Trump administration is basically so corrupt that he can, you know, it's pay for play for a pardon. Right. Which, like, I don't know, maybe he's right about that. But like, I don't think anybody there's any political will to let Sam Bankman freed out of prison anytime soon anyway. Go back to that place in your mind and just remember how awful the feeling was and how hard we all got our faces shoved in the dirt. And then we were all expecting, you know, 2, 3x and then beyond the prior all time highs and we haven't even gotten there. We haven't even gotten to 2x the prior all time high. And so to me, as a longtime bitcoiner who has a myopic bitcoin view, this really doesn't feel like a bull market to me in any meaningful sense. I mean, some people will say it is because there was a big rally off of 15k and now we're obviously, we've been to 125k and we've been solidly over 100 for a long time. But as a bitcoiner, this is not the bitcoin bull market that I'm used to. And so, you know, I'm a little addicted to the dopamine I'm getting. I'm antsy. I'm like, let's go, come on, let's pump this bad boy.
- [03:58]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, I think so, Jeff.
- [03:59]
Jeff Ross
I mean, and to put things in perspective a little bit, first of all, I'm a little sick, so sorry if I sound a little funny. I'll try not to cough directly into the microphone. To put things in perspective, I think it's up about 67% over the last 12 months. So that's still a pretty good return for normal people. Terrible terr. Right? I mean, imagine investing in Walmart or, you know, and how would your returns be? So it's a very different. We have very different expectations And I'm sure we'll get into this as we go on, but I continue to be super surprised that the manufacturing sector has not taken off yet. Like I've been talking for like a year, like any day now, like any day this month the ISM is going to come out and this is going to be the month where it finally starts taking off. And why do I bring that up? Because first of all, it's been in a recession, the manufacturing here in the U.S. according to ISM, since 2022. So we' three years into this now and what most people don't know, and I think I brought this up last time, so sorry to be a broken record, but bitcoin ramps, as everybody knows, based on what global M2 or liquidity is doing, those are slightly different but same difference. And I don't know why it does this, but based on what the ISM manufacturing does as well. And so normally at this point based since 2009 we've been on these four year not just everybody thinks it's a business cycle based on the having. And that's why the bitcoin price does what it does is based on the having. It's just nonsense. It does it based on liquidity and what the business cycle is doing. And so for whatever reason this business cycle has refused to take off so far. It's still sitting right around 50 or just sub 50. I still think everything I look at says we are going higher in the next nine to 12 months. And so if we do get higher, if we start to see a takeoff in the manufacturing sector and in the US economy as a whole and global liquidity continues to kind of move up and to the right. I still think our best days are ahead of us and I definitely think the four year cycle is dead and lots of people are going to get fooled by that. I think a lot of people are going to bail in December and think it's over and then it's going to get fun after that and they're going to miss it and they're going to be piling back in several hundred thousand dollars higher. So very personally I'm very optimistic for what's coming in 2026 and I'm the most surprised as anybody, right? I've been saying since early 2025 we're going to peak in the fourth quarter or 75k bitcoin, blah blah, blah. Joe is right, I was wrong. So shout out to Joe. Joe said it was going to creep along higher and be about what did you say? 150 maybe by the end of the year.
- [06:19]
Joe Carlisari
I think no, my target all year long has been 130 and everybody like.
- [06:22]
Jeff Ross
Super bare man suck like you and you're nailing it.
- [06:25]
American Hodl
And although by the way, let's see.
- [06:27]
Jeff Ross
Yeah, we'll see. I still think we could get a surge. I think once the government shutdown gets cleared up, which it should, and once this whole G Trump meeting summit gets resolved on November 1st, I expect November to be upvember in lieu of October not being October.
- [06:42]
Preston Pysh
So I would say the real story.
- [06:43]
Joe Carlisari
Is the shattering of the four year cycle. Whether it's business cycle related or having cycle that thing, we need to cast that into the trash bin of history. We need to know that it can be green dot, green dot, green dot, green dot, like four in a row. Right. It can be higher for next year, it can be higher the year after that. And yeah, I'm very optimistic. I actually think that to your point, that we really have been the manufacturing the numbers. The reason ISM is creeping right at 49 or you know, under 50 is because they're waiting for the rates to drop. They want the rates drop and then that'll create a recovery. And from there, you know, bitcoin, everything should do well. I expect a strong, strong year in 2026. I don't know why people are just like glued to the calendar thinking like it's Cinderella at the ball and it all comes apart. Like it doesn't make any sense to me.
- [07:28]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, I think it's just oversimplification that it's worked up until now and people don't know why it's worked, but they just, they think it was tied to the calendar. And I'm with you guys 100%. Like it has.
- [07:38]
Joe Carlisari
How many times recently have we been confronted with things like that? Like the yield curve always triggers some giant recession or you know, there's all these sort of like sacred cows and they. When they get slaughtered, I feel like we can finally use our brains again, which is awesome.
- [07:51]
Jeff Ross
Yeah.
- [07:52]
Preston Pysh
I will say this. At the start of the year till now, I was so dead wrong as to what I thought was going to play out. I really thought that this year was going to be pretty massive as far as the price action. And it has been nothing of the sort. It has been just a sideways chop the whole year. It feels like. I want to bring up a chart that Jeff, you sent over because this is pretty mind blowing. Let's pull this baby up.
- [08:18]
Jeff Ross
You guys are going to get mad at me now.
- [08:21]
Preston Pysh
I mean this chart is awesome. Okay. All right, talk it over, Jeff.
- [08:26]
Jeff Ross
We talked about this last time, but this time I thought I'm going to set an updated chart. I think this is the most important chart in all of macro. So what it is, It's a hundred plus year chart. It goes back to 1919 of the S&P 500 divided by gold. So price in gold. This isn't for gold bugs, you know this. It's for what it represents. And what I marked there is the peaks which are in pinkish and the troughs in green. Why is this important? I think that every 15 to 30 years or so we go into these major cycles and what they're telling me is that for the years leading up to the red bars or the pink bars, people think that the US dollar is better than gold and US assets are pretty much the best thing you can invest in the world. They're the best thing you can be in. And so they pour their capital or pour their purchasing power into the U.S. americans do it, the rest of the world does it. Because there's no better place than it, right? Invest in America, there's no better place. But at these certain points in time, it can get overdone and overheated. Like 19. Everybody. And everybody knows these dates, right? 1929, 1967, the end of the 60s led to this huge bear market in the tumultuous 1970s. Obviously the 1930s were terrible. The 2000, the.com peak. I keep telling people that we hit another one of these inflection points back in January of 2022 or actually December of 2021, depending on what you're looking at. If you factor in dividends, by the way, which the trading view doesn't go back that far, it extends it just a little bit. So why is this important? There gets to be a point and I think the best example of where we're at right now, if you look at that tiny little red line where it is right now, so we're sitting at 1.54 and you look across, it actually goes to the beginning of 1973. What was the atmosphere like back in the late 60s and early 70s, right. The US was in a war, a very unpopular war in Vietnam. We were still on a sort of a quasi gold standard. And the rest of the countries, the European nations who were sort of supporting us and our allies at that time were like, you know what? This war is crazy. Like there is no way you're going to pay us back in sound money. We want our gold back. We don't trust your dollar anymore. We think the only way that you can keep this facade going and maintain all of your debt is by basically debasing the crap out of your currency. And so we would like our gold back, please. And then everybody shifts away from the US and into gold and into hard assets. So the 70s was a really great time to be obviously in gold, right? And then also other hard assets and also emerging markets. So things that basically people had been avoiding for years and decades, then they flipped over to that. I think this is really relevant because I think that same thing happened at the end of 2021, where basically we reach peaked Americanization, peak financialization. And China, by the way, figured this out all the way back in like 2014 and stopped buy US Treasuries and let them start to roll off their balance sheet. But the rest of the world figured it out at the end of 2021, basically, after that huge bolus that we got from COVID They're like, you know what, this is crazy. Like, you guys are just putting way too much into the system. There's no way you can actually pay this back in sound money. We're going to go back to gold. We don't think the dollar is as good as gold anymore, so we're going back to gold. We're going back to hard assets. And now we live in the bitcoin era, so I think that includes bitcoin now. So we're especially going into bitcoin and other sound money and hard assets. So I think this chart just speaks a thousand words, but I'd love to hear you guys take on it.
- [11:50]
Preston Pysh
I just want to say that is the ugliest setup from a price action standpoint in the past year for people looking at the chart, you can see he has the two moving averages there. He has a 50 and he has a 15. And these are in one month bars. Yep. And historically, when you see the death cross, if you will, between these two moving averages, it seems to persist for a decade at least after you get either a golden cross or a death cross on the chart. And so at the start of the year, it looks like we had the death cross on this. And boy, I mean, just zoomed out looking at it, it looks just disgusting like it's.
- [12:30]
Jeff Ross
And just for a little perspective, that's well said, Preston. Just so people understand the significance of this, I went and looked at the peak in 1967 down to the trough in January of 1980. That's in gold terms, that's a 95% decline in the S&P 500 relative to gold.
- [12:45]
Preston Pysh
Yeah.
- [12:45]
Jeff Ross
So this is like no joke. And I think that we're at a very similar situation this time.
- [12:50]
Preston Pysh
Yeah. Wow, what a chart. I mean, you can see why. Go ahead, go ahead.
- [12:55]
Jeff Ross
Sorry. I just put in one more thing. The reason I'm so passionate about this is because, you know, I used to be an investment advisor. Right. I just run a hedge fund now. But 90% of Americans who work have 401ks and IRAs with everything sitting in US stocks, in US bonds. And I am so concerned that Americans are just going to get decimated over the next 10 years.
- [13:15]
Preston Pysh
Yeah.
- [13:16]
Jeff Ross
In their automatic repurchasing of stocks and bonds and in real terms, in inflation adjusted terms like debasement reflecting terms. I think Americans are going to get wiped out unless they think about doing something else and start thinking about hard assets and especially start thinking about bitcoin, obviously.
- [13:33]
Preston Pysh
I mean you're not even talking about bonds. And I would imagine that equities are going to outperform bonds over that same period. And I can't even imagine how many of them are in just some type of bond index of some sort of. I mean, good lord.
- [13:48]
Jeff Ross
Yeah.
- [13:48]
Joe Carlisari
I'm just curious, have you run this chart in total return basis of The S&P 500? Yeah.
- [13:53]
Jeff Ross
Yeah. So that's what I was saying earlier. That chart only goes back to at least on trading view and I can pop it up wall.
- [13:58]
Joe Carlisari
But is that the total return?
- [14:00]
Jeff Ross
This is not the total return because the total return only goes back to 1988. And so it's not as dramatic, but it's almost exactly the same. It has slightly delayed effects, but it's almost exactly the same. And by the way, the NASDAQ looks exactly the same as well with just slight little delays in where the peaks and bottoms are.
- [14:16]
American Hodl
Yeah. What's interesting is we all know like that the 1970s was a amazing bull market for gold. And gold has been catching a bit here now. And you know, the parallels between that 1967 peak and that 2022 peak are pretty interesting. And you can found this with like the fact that you have JP Morgan out there calling gold and bitcoin the debasement trade, which is obviously like as bitcoiners, we've been at odds with JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon for over a decade now. And now they've just completely flipped and have joined our side of the table and it's like, wait a second, I'm sitting next to this guy.
- [14:50]
Preston Pysh
Hold on, I need to sit Somewhere else.
- [14:52]
American Hodl
But I think they have cottoned on to what Jeff has figured out as well.
- [14:56]
Jeff Ross
Yeah, yeah. So I would just, again, to encourage people out there in the audience, be careful about pricing your life and your net worth and your investments. Only in the dollar. You're going to be deceived. People in the 70s actually thought they did okay. There was a lot of chop, but they kind of ended, I think about slightly up or about even from 1968ish to 1982. But in real terms, they just got wiped out. And so I just think gold terms.
- [15:19]
Joe Carlisari
Not in real terms.
- [15:20]
Jeff Ross
Well, in both. In debasement terms.
- [15:24]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah.
- [15:24]
Jeff Ross
Yeah.
- [15:25]
American Hodl
Because there was so much inflation in the 70s.
- [15:27]
Jeff Ross
I think the official. If you divide it, if you factor in CPI, officially, I think it was a 50 decrease from 68 to 82.
- [15:36]
Joe Carlisari
Oh, in the 70s. Yeah. No, I'm talking about the last, like 20 years. If you use the official CPI, every.
- [15:42]
American Hodl
Stock is not the last 20. Right.
- [15:43]
Joe Carlisari
It's like insanely outperformed what the official stats are on inflation. Yep.
- [15:48]
Preston Pysh
So if I was a gold bug and I was watching this right now, I would be furious because you're showing a chart with the S&P 500 against gold, but you're not showing a chart of bitcoin against gold. And so for those gold bugs watching, I'm going to go ahead and put it up. No, I think this is important. And. And when you look at it from this lens, like, look at this. We are since 2021. That's kind of depressing. I have to admit. This is pretty depressing. Like, I'm sure Peter Schiff is just dancing all over people's graves. And until he is truly doing that online, you know, this bull run is not going to be over as soon as he starts tap dancing on our gr.
- [16:28]
American Hodl
Oh, he's. He's been doing that.
- [16:31]
Jeff Ross
Oh.
- [16:31]
Preston Pysh
So the turns coming.
- [16:33]
American Hodl
My favorite Peter Schiff tweet recently was he was warning that bitcoin could go as low as you're ready for it. $75,000. And I was like, I think we won. If this is the worst world that Peter could imagine for bitcoin, you know.
- [16:47]
Preston Pysh
Any comments on this one, guys?
- [16:49]
American Hodl
I mean, it's. Yeah. I mean, for the year, I think last I looked, we were down like 30 in gold terms.
- [16:55]
Preston Pysh
Here, let me.
- [16:55]
American Hodl
Year to date, what are we down in gold term?
- [16:57]
Preston Pysh
Here's the start of the. Oh, wow. Yeah. That is ugly.
- [17:00]
Podcast Host / Announcer
It's.
- [17:00]
Preston Pysh
Right.
- [17:00]
American Hodl
Yeah. I mean, gold's been this year, you know.
- [17:03]
Preston Pysh
Yeah. 37.
- [17:05]
American Hodl
Right.
- [17:06]
Preston Pysh
That's brutal.
- [17:07]
American Hodl
I know. The gold. This is their year, man. The gold. Great. Good for them. We've been bullying them for the better part of 15 years, and I like.
- [17:16]
Jeff Ross
To celebrate with them, you know, hey, having a good year, that's great. And shout out to Peter, man. He's so funny. He's just relentless and he's talking about how everybody's going to go to zero if they're holding bitcoin and they got to get into gold now. Like, he's just hilarious. I think he's almost like a comic.
- [17:30]
Preston Pysh
Is this a setup somehow everybody piles into gold and then all of a sudden bitcoin just totally rips everything. Like, what are your thoughts?
- [17:38]
Jeff Ross
Well, I do think. Sorry, go.
- [17:39]
American Hodl
Well, I was just going to say, I think that they, you know, like JP Morgan is saying, I think that they're both part of the debasement trade. And I do think that in a world in which bitcoin does very well, you know, it's puzzled me, actually, Preston, to see gold not doing so well alongside bitcoin and bitcoin being more of the canary in the coal mine, because you would think that gold would go up alongside bitcoin. Now, I think, you know, as bitcoiners, we're of the opinion that bitcoin eventually demonetizes gold, but that's kind of on the long arc of history, you know, which. It might take the entirety of our lives for that to happen. But, yeah, I mean, if with all of this fiat monetary debasement, you would expect to see gold go up and.
- [18:15]
Preston Pysh
Bitcoin go up, I think traditional finance just always looked at the gold bugs as like, oh, yeah, they're just continuing, say that, you know, there's this and that and that the whole system's going to fail. And now in the past year, it appears that even Wall street, you know, the veterans on Wall street are also believing the gold bugs. And I think when they're looking at both of the assets, they're saying, I don't really fully understand bitcoin. It seems like there's a lot of technical things there that I can't possibly audit or understand. But I do understand, I. If I'm holding a gold bar, that that thing's probably going to do pretty well in a debasement type situation. So I think that it's getting a big run right now for people that just understand what' wrong with credit markets and all the things that we've been talking about for a decade plus, and they're Just looking at the two options and they're saying I don't really understand that one. There's a bunch of weirdos with weird hats and sunglasses and whatnot and they just don't seem to be the same type of person that I am. And I'm just going to buy this gold and not think about it. Would you guys agree?
- [19:12]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah.
- [19:13]
American Hodl
Essentially I think many of them are of the age too where they were in the early part of their career when the 70s happened. And so this kind of like it's a self fulfilling prophecy where they're like it's about to do it again and you know, I, I want to be in on that. And they think that bitcoin's gonna do it as well alongside it. But they don't have the same faith in bitcoin. And bitcoin is not as large a market as gold is. So if you wanna move large amounts of capital like gold probably still is a pretty good bet.
- [19:38]
Jeff Ross
I think that's definitely a large part of it. Hodl And I and I also think that they're getting bolstered. The gold bugs are being bolstered by central banks. Right. So the world is in desperate need right now of a neutral reserve asset, which used to be the U.S. treasury. But I'd say about half the world doesn't trust it as a neutral reserve asset anymore. It's a very biased reserve asset. And so they're just getting out. Right. And so basically the BRICS block is moving on from Treasuries and they need something else to be a reserve asset. And I think as of now that's gold. Bitcoin. I think someday will be in the conversation, but it's way too small now. So I think late 2000-30s, maybe 20, 40, somewhere around there central banks will be buying bitcoin in size, but we're much too early for that. And based on what this chart showed that we were looking at earlier, the S and P over gold, this may go on for another 10 years. I mean maybe you're still talking about this in the2030s, like 20, 33, 34, 35, somewhere around there before this chart bottoms. And so if I had to choose, gun to my head today you can only invest in either the S&P 500 or gold for the next five to 10 years. I would absolutely pick gold over the S&P 500. And I think that's a minority take right now. But I think by the2030s that will be a, a majority take. Let's take a Quick break and hear from today's sponsors.
- [20:51]
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- [24:45]
Jeff Ross
All right, back to the show.
- [24:47]
Preston Pysh
It's just so mind bending to think that a rock is going to, I mean, based on the chart, Jeff, I agree with you 100%. I think that this is going to last for the next decade. It's going to outperform the index at least. And it's so insane to think that a rock is going to sit there and do a better performance than a real world business that's supposedly adding value but is so disproportionately priced because of the treasury market and what it's done to prices that it's going to outperform. It's just crazy to me to think that. But Joe, go ahead.
- [25:22]
Joe Carlisari
So Jeff, I just want to flash forward like we're doing a mastermind podcast Q3 Q4 of 2026 and gold has suffered from these levels, like a 30% decline and stocks are higher by, let's say, 10%. What's your takeaway? Does that change? Is that just a momentary pause? Is anything, you know, structurally different?
- [25:39]
Jeff Ross
So it depends, right? First of all, if this charts the way I run my hedge fund, I do momentum based sort of things. So if the momentum, if the trend changes, then I will change with it. So I will just say, like, I was wrong. Yeah, right. My Macro take was wrong, and I flip over what I do. If this chart completely goes the other direction and starts pulling the late 1990s and starts ripping higher again. Yeah. Then I'll be like, okay, that's over for now, but we're probably going to get back into it again. I will say that the geopolitical world order, in the way things are moving bolsters my opinion of this, that this is not only right, but it's going to be more right as the years go on. I think the rhetoric between the US and China and the US and the BRICS nations and the US losing India as an ally recently and all these sorts of things I think only tell me that capital is moving away from the US and this whole. As we get away from globalization and internationalization and turn into a multipolar world and we can talk about all this a little later, it requires tremendous amounts of money that the US doesn't have because we're already bankrupt, over indebted right now. So how in the world are we going to pay for this in sound money? Everything to me plays together and says that this is going to continue and it's actually going to accelerate from here. But you're right, Joe. If it does change and the trend changes, I'll just change with it and I'll just say that's it. I was wrong. Again.
- [26:56]
Joe Carlisari
I'm not saying what your thesis here is wrong. I just been around long enough to see gold does this. It goes on these crazy runs. I mean, it went on that crazy run in 2011, it dropped 50% thereafter. I remember reading a Luke Gromen article about exactly what you're saying. Gold becoming the new reserve asset in 2020. And it then dropped like 25% and like it languished through basically the end of 22 or 23, if memory serves. So, like, it does this. It goes on these parabolic runs, resets. Not to say it's not gonna catch bid. Like it's not going to zero. Right. If you put your money in gold, it's pretty fine. But to Preston's point, I mean, in long run, defined as like four or five years, right? There are periods where gold has spectacular runs and then does nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just chilling sideways.
- [27:37]
Jeff Ross
If I was definitely. I'm sorry, go ahead.
- [27:39]
Joe Carlisari
No, yeah, I was.
- [27:40]
Preston Pysh
If I was gonna try to answer your question from Jeff's perspective as far as this trend persisting, when I'm looking at the chart that I have pulled up right now, going back to these moving averages, the reason that These moving averages really help you kind of gauge something that has a large market cap for a long term trend is because it helps wash out the volatility of the price action. So like when we're looking at the price action right now of gold, it's ripping compared to the S and P 500. Is it overdone? Probably a little bit. And would I expect in the next nine months for there to be somewhat of a recovery in S&P 500 terms relative to gold? Yeah, I actually kind of would expect it to the S and P to bid against gold because it's just been so overdone. But the real question is how much of that is just standard volatility for the much bigger trend or the much bigger move? And where those moving averages really help you out in that is as long as, you know we're looking at this chart, as long as that orange line, which is your longer moving average, that's a 50 month moving average versus the 15 month moving average. As long as it stays above it, I would say you're just within the standard volatility range of the move itself. Does that make sense, what I'm saying, Joe?
- [28:54]
Joe Carlisari
Oh, yeah, no, I mean it definitely does. But look at that move in 2011. Like if you were just looking at the chart in a backward looking way in August 2011, you'd say, oh, the dollar's cooked, it's S, P is cooked. Like you know it's right. So my 10 year run in the opposite direction.
- [29:08]
Preston Pysh
So I think when these moving averages cross over like they did shortly after, within a year after that move, that would be a huge red flag to me that maybe you're wrong about the long term trend.
- [29:21]
Joe Carlisari
Right.
- [29:21]
Preston Pysh
But as long as you're still having the longer moving average above the shorter one, I think that the overall trend is going to continue to persist. Yeah.
- [29:30]
Jeff Ross
And just so you know, like how I operate as a fund manager, so I start with this macro view, right? This is 106 year chart. And when it looks like the tide is turning and we're rolling over and now it's going to be basically, you know, gold's going to be better than the S&P 500, which it looks like to me is probably going to hold up and if it's like history for maybe 12 years or so, so a long period of time, and why that matters is practically speaking, I flip my hedge fund over from financialized assets to hard assets. And we can talk about this too and how we choose hard assets in which I think are going to do well because now we live in a central command economy and not a free market economy anym or we haven't for a long time. But I switch over. And so instead of favoring things like the s and P 500 and small cap stocks or blah blah blah, now I look at hard assets, I look at how is the US going to build the military industrial complex and rebuild our manufacturing base. What are the signs that the administration is talking about? And I literally now invest in funds like copper funds, steel funds, titanium, aluminum, things that I wouldn't have even considered four or five years ago. Now we're like in size in these kind of things, obviously bitcoin as well and gold and related things.
- [30:40]
Preston Pysh
So this rare earth metal discussion is huge right now. Jeff, talk to us what you're hearing on that. And it seems like your investment thesis is playing right into that.
- [30:49]
Jeff Ross
It is huge. And I tell people this, it's so easy with Trump because Trump is so forthright about what he's doing. And I think so many people don't trust him because they don't like him. So they don't believe him. And I'm telling you, he's just giving you the playbook, right? He's saying we are woefully underprepared for a coming war with China, which we can talk about that too. But I think that's just absolutely in the cards in the coming years. And he's saying we sorely lack energy for AI and for military industrial complex, so we need to boost that. We need rare earth materials. China has a lock on that obviously, which is an incredible ace up their sleeve for them and a great trading card for them. And then he tells you literally what materials like the government is actually investing in. Not just companies like intel, but they're investing in tiny little rare earth companies as well as things like aluminum producers and other things that they consider critical elements for the expansion of manufacturing and the military industrial complex in the United States. So I literally just go through what I see the government doing and then I do research on those topics and look for the best companies in these different things or just pick ETFs that kind of hit these topics. And it's been very successful and I think that's what most people should be doing. Like they're literally giving you the playbook. And similar to China, right? When China is like, hey, they literally tell their banks that you need to start investing in this. And when their stock market is down, they'll just say we command you to start buying Stocks, the institutions in China. And what happens? Stocks go up. And if they say we're going to boost the housing market, the housing market goes up. Right. And so I'm telling you, when you have a very powerful government doing central command and telling you what they're going to do, I would say don't fight it. Just like the famous don't fight the Fed quote. I would say don't fight this administration when they tell you what their game plan is. Just invest accordingly.
- [32:36]
Preston Pysh
Guys, let's move on to strategic bitcoin reserve. So the White House EO says a seized bitcoin is not to be sold. Where are we at with this thing? It seems like there was a lot of hoopla when Trump took office. Everybody was like, he's going to sign this thing. And it just seems to have died on the vine. The talking point that I heard when I was in dc, what, like two or three weeks ago, the Genius act was passed. And so now the focus is on the Clarity act and to get market structure before we go to the sbr. But to me, it just seems like this is just continuing to be kicked further and further to the right, and it's not really has a lot of support from everybody on the Hill. I'm kind of curious, Joe, if you've heard anything, or Hodl, if you've heard anything specific to any of these ideas or what you see happening in D.C. is it what you expected? Is it different than what you expected? Just kind of your general sentiment?
- [33:32]
Joe Carlisari
So, you know, I believe that from the bill standpoint, something getting through Congress, that was always going to be an uphill climb. That was never sort of my base case. And I think we talked about this in prior masterminds. It's increasingly difficult to get anything through Congress. There's a lot of wheeling, dealing. It's very difficult as the calendar starts to float and you have to pick priorities. And I think the lobbyists that are out there, let's be honest, they're mostly the crypto lobbyists, and they want clarity more than they would want, you know, I think a strategic bitcoin reserve that's in their interest, that's probably got the juice that's already getting floated. And frankly, there's a lot more money behind something like that occurring, rather than doing something like the bitcoin reserve for altruistic reasons. Although I think it would benefit crypto as a whole if there were a strategic bitcoin reserve. But putting that aside like that was always sort of like a tail event. I think that could have occurred. I don't think it's serious. I don't think it's likely to get through. Certainly not before the midterms. And with the strategic bitcoin reserve, let's be honest, it was a massively optimistic, bullish development that we even got in sbr. I think there were people that were really skeptical that we would get one. United States government treats this as a strategic priority. I was on a podcast with Matt Pines talking about this and like that alone as a talking point that we say there's a strategic necessity for holding bitcoin is huge. Now when it comes to like filling that out and developing ways, we haven't heard a whole lot. I think there's been sort of confusion internally how far they wanted to push the envelope on that, whether they want to take the Exchange Stabilization act and try to acquire additional bitcoin, all that sort of on the table. But I just don't think it's a serious priority at this point for the administration. Now, the news recently broke about this seized bitcoin. The I think it's an additional 14 billion approximately that was seized. And the question there becomes, is that going to be bitcoin such that's finally forfeited to the US Government. For what that means is like when you seize bitcoin in a criminal proceeding, it's not necessarily the government's property. It could belong to victims, it could belong to, you know, people that could have claims against it to pay restitution. So there needs to be a court order or some sort of plea that transfers that bitcoin's title to the US Government that if it's finally forfeited. So we'll see how much of that ends up finally forfeited. That's the easiest budget neutral way to acquire more bitcoin. But that's a lengthy process and that, you know, it's going to take some time to hashed out. But to me, like, I still think it's awesome that we got it to begin with. I don't know why that wasn't sufficient, why there was so much, I guess, opium about the government going out into the open market and buying bitcoin. But these things take time. And as bitcoin continues to mature as an asset and the market begins to develop, I think that they've established a baseline for holding what's in this sbr and that will only expand through natural process.
- [36:04]
American Hodl
Yeah, I agree with a lot of what Joe said. I talked to the guys over at Bitcoin Policy Institute quite a Bit and they, like Joe said, there's a lot of crypto lobbying firms. These are our guys, and they're very intelligent and the work they do is very worthwhile. And they were behind some of this and they've been very happy with it. It is sort of via confiscation rather than via open market buying, like Joe was talking about. And this thing, like this pig butchering scam, it might be one of the things that helps sort of feather the nest that is the sbr.
- [36:30]
Joe Carlisari
You know.
- [36:31]
American Hodl
One something I didn't know that was sort of interesting about the pig butchering scam is that these text messages, like, where it's like, hey, what's up? It's me. You want to get lunch? Right? Like, I'm sure we all get these. And I thought they were just like crypto specific things, like I'm on some hacked list from whatever years back or whatever. Apparently they got to everybody in America. And pig butchering is a specific type of scam in which you establish a personal relationship with the person and then you basically like build trust over time and then you butcher the pig all at once. You take them for as much money as you possibly can. And this Cambodian pig butchering scam had made some insane amount of money. And obviously there was some US Nexus there that allowed them to nab this guy because there were US citizens who were being preyed on. So I think that I didn't realize that's how they.
- [37:13]
Preston Pysh
That's how they came up with all the bitcoin is it was through something like that. Hodl.
- [37:18]
American Hodl
Through those text messages that come through your phone.
- [37:20]
Joe Carlisari
No way.
- [37:20]
American Hodl
Honestly? Yeah, Seriously. So enough people. It's like a Nigerian prince scam, but in a modern day it's called pig butchering. And what it basically is, is they will send you a text message that purports to be a wrong number or something. Some amount of people will text back to it and they'll be like, I'm your friend and you know, whatever, or they'll make a personal friendship. And then they get the person on the line, they get them to deposit money into it. They say, oh, I'm doing this forex trading stuff, you should do it with me. They get them to deposit money into a fake account that makes it look like they're making a lot of money, but they're not. And then they get them to deposit even more money. And by the way, this is not just stupid people or, you know, unsophisticated people that are being ganked by these Scams. I had heard a story about a friend of a friend who was a Yale educated attorney who had lost $5 million to one of these.
- [38:02]
Preston Pysh
Come on.
- [38:03]
American Hodl
No, seriously. So because they built, they're preying on your, it's social engineering. They're preying on your, you know, your human instinct and your capacity for trust and relationship building. And then one day out of nowhere, they just, they butcher the pig. They kill you all at once. They take a large amount of money from you.
- [38:18]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, that is nuts.
- [38:20]
Joe Carlisari
So just to add one final thing that I think is critical here. This is one of the primary reasons why we need to have a strong next year in bitcoin. Why Bitcoin needs to be considerably higher and hopefully following gold's footsteps. And follow, you know, Dr. Jeff's thesis here about hard assets rallying. Because an EO, an executive order, it's an executive order, right? The, the next president that comes in, if they have a different philosophical view than Trump, they can just with a single stroke of a pen undo that. Right? But you can envision a world where we get a very strong bull run into 2026 and people start to view Bitcoin differently, right. The 80% busts are done, right. It's over there. It's a new modern bitcoin. It's been institutionalized. You've got, you know, massive capital allocators that are following in sailors footsteps. And this asset is no longer a joke. It's to be taken seriously. If you have that sort of paradigm shift that occurs, I think that there will be more of an emphasis on not just holding but acquiring. And I think you could get obviously the strategic Bitcoin reserve codified into law via a bill, right? Via a law passed by Congress, which is key and then potentially a signal that we're trying to acquire more. And one thing on the gold discussion we didn't reference is that part of the price action Gold, I believe, and I'd love to hear Jeff's take on this. I don't think it's all retail driven. I think it's some central bank buying, particularly some of the eastern central banks. I think they're pushing the envelope, pushing the button on that. There's some retail and other funds piling on, but it's primarily central bank catalyst that has lit this fire in gold. If you're the United States and you want to move into the 21st century and you want to have a rival to that, you want to have the sovereign reserve asset that is not a US treasury, you want to have some alternative hedge that's bitcoin. Like that's what the United States government should be doing from a geopolitical perspective. But I'm interested in anybody else's thoughts on that.
- [39:59]
Jeff Ross
I touched on that a little bit earlier about how there isn't a reserve asset that's neutral other than gold anymore. So for these brics nations, they don't trust the US and the US Treasuries anymore. So if I remember right, do you guys remember like maybe two, three years ago China was actually urging its citizens to buy gold?
- [40:16]
Joe Carlisari
Yes.
- [40:16]
Jeff Ross
Yeah, I think that's real. Right? I'm not just making that up. And so, yeah, and so I think that they're doing that. I think the central banks are loading up and they're encouraging their citizens to do so. So I think that's putting obviously a massive bid underneath.
- [40:27]
Joe Carlisari
So we should encourage Americans to buy bitcoin and the US government to acquire Bitcoin and to codify the SPR into law. That's the geopolitical battle. If you buy gold, you're supporting China, right? Is that what you're saying?
- [40:41]
Jeff Ross
Mark it down. That's what I said. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.
- [40:47]
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- [44:08]
Jeff Ross
All right, back to the show.
- [44:10]
Preston Pysh
Hey, I want to talk about the SOFR rate versus the effective Funds federal funds rate and how we're seeing spikes in this, which is typically seen right before liquidity issues in the market. So this is obviously a very short term kind of thing and could be nothing. I mean we see spikes all the time, but these ones seem to be pretty substantial. I'm curious, Jeff or Joe or Hodl, what you guys are thinking and whether this is kind of a. Are we at a point right now where we're seeing some, you know, spicy price action that's on the horizon within weeks?
- [44:48]
Jeff Ross
Well, I'll just jump in quick and then we'll get the real answer from these Guys. But, you know, I don't know if you guys heard Powell speak yesterday at the nabe, national association of Business Entrepreneurs, something like that. And he basically just threw out there like, yeah, we're probably going to stop QT pretty soon because bank reserves are getting. He said they're still like, ample, but they're getting close to these levels. So what? I think that's his code for saying, we're watching this too, Preston, and we don't want to have a repeat of 2019 with the reverse repo saga. So. So we're getting ready to take action and we see what's happening, but we don't want to cause a panic.
- [45:20]
Preston Pysh
But that was September. October. It was in the fall of 2019.
- [45:24]
Joe Carlisari
In like September.
- [45:25]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, yeah. Somewhere in there. And then, you know, then Covid hit in March of 2020. What was it, five, six months later? Yeah. So it does seem. It feels a little bit like that right back in the September of 2019 event. And I agree with you. I think that's why he has kind of swiftly changed his messaging in this past week or two. And I think you're right. I think that's probably why he's doing it. Joe Hodl, you guys got anything else on that particular topic?
- [45:52]
Joe Carlisari
No, I think the sofa spikes are just noise, basically. I definitely think that, as Jeff pointed out, he explicitly said that there are signs starting to emerge of a gradual tightening of liquidity conditions. So when he says something like that, he's not hiding the ball. He's telling you very clearly that, like, they're nearing the end of that process. They're nearing the end of qt. That does not mean like qe, full blown qe. Right. It's like we think that the current amount of the balance sheet, which I was listening to Muhammad Alerian say that he thinks that's a mistake, that they should be drawing it down further and getting it more normalized. We'll see. I mean, everybody can always. It's easy to. To judge, you know, until something blows up and then you're blamed for everything. But you know, from my perspective, like, I think the clear path forward is to expect greater rate cuts moving forward. I mean, if the market is pricing in and out, what is it, 75 basis points cuts by the end of the year. Right. And those trades are gaining some traction here. So I think you had. Who is it today? Was it Waller say that they thought that the neutral rate was about a hundred plus mips lower.
- [46:51]
Preston Pysh
Yeah.
- [46:51]
Joe Carlisari
So clearly that's like auditioning for the next role And I think some of the volatility in the forward looking curves are all responding to the fact of like, what is the next Fed chair going to do? Because it's really easy to say like, well we should just cut, cut, cut here. Which I get it. I'm sympathetic to that view, I'll tell you for a couple of reasons because I think the rate hike regime is not curbing the higher consumer prices. I think you're stuck near three. Regardless of what the Fed does, all you're doing is hurting certain segments of the economy. So I'm sympathetic to the view of like more cuts. But the question becomes like if you're so aggressive and you just become beholden to the administration, like that's a new era and I'm not casting judgment on it. I'm just saying it's markedly different from at least the supposed appearance of independence. And I want to emphasize the word appearance. I don't think the Fed has ever truly been independent by any means. It's clearly responds to politics. But at least they tried to have this pretext that where they were somehow independent. Now it just seems like. I'll call up the President. What should we do on rates? Like let's see what the Donald has to say. Like that's going to be the answer. Which is a different regime. Right. Like that we have to be honest about it.
- [47:52]
Preston Pysh
And. And that swap happens in May. Is that right for the Fed chair?
- [47:56]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah, he's done. But the interesting thing is. And he won't answer this chair Powell won't answer this question whether he's going to stay on. Right. Because it's not just the chair. Right. Powell. That's one of the reasons why the Lisa Cook issue is such a big deal. If they can oust Lisa Cook and Powell gives up his seat because he's still on for several years, just on board. Right. Then he gets a majority and that's really key. So that's why that whole thing was filed. If we didn't cover that in one of the priorities.
- [48:22]
Preston Pysh
I didn't realize that, Joe. I didn't realize he was still going to be on the board after me.
- [48:27]
Joe Carlisari
He's still there. When does his term retire, Jeff? I'll get you the date.
- [48:31]
Preston Pysh
Wow.
- [48:32]
Jeff Ross
As the chair.
- [48:33]
Joe Carlisari
No, no, no.
- [48:34]
Preston Pysh
Like yeah, after he's. Yeah, overall.
- [48:37]
Jeff Ross
Yeah, I don't know, I can't remember.
- [48:39]
Joe Carlisari
But his chair term ends in May. But he's still on.
- [48:42]
Preston Pysh
Wow here. I did not know that.
- [48:45]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah. I'll get in a second.
- [48:47]
Jeff Ross
So while you're Looking for that, you know, and speaking of the yield curve, I just been thinking about this lately and I don't know if it's because I'm just old fashioned or what, but I just. Do you guys know that the yield curve has been inverted for like three straight years and nobody even talks about it anymore?
- [49:02]
Preston Pysh
Yeah.
- [49:02]
Joe Carlisari
Right.
- [49:03]
Jeff Ross
And yeah, you want to show this? Here's how I look at the fed funds rate. Like being a Fed chair would be so simple because all you have to do is look at what the two year yield is and you say, okay, we got to get below the two year yield. And right now the two year yield is sitting at 3.41% or so. And the one month and the fed funds rate is still sitting up at about, you know, 4.25 or whatever it is.
- [49:24]
Preston Pysh
4.08. Yeah.
- [49:26]
Jeff Ross
So it's not complicated. The market is telling the Fed, yeah, you need to lower the fed funds rate to at least below 350, probably about 3.25% right now. So you need to drop a hundred bips right now or as soon as you can. You know, you gotta tell the market that's your plan. And they've been so resistant to it for so long. Talking about the need to get inflation down. Right. And the need to be, to not be accommodative. We need to be a little bit restrictive. We don't want to cause inflation. It's the market. The market is telling them you're making a mistake, you need to get it down lower. I don't know if you guys have opinions on that, but we need to uninvert the yield curve and bring back normalcy across the yield curve. And it just drives me nuts. Nuts. Because it's such an easy thing to do.
- [50:07]
Joe Carlisari
Paul's term on the board ends 2028. 2028, yeah. Wow. This chair, he'll be there for a while. Yeah, well, no, he typically and historically once they sunset as chair, they're done. They just give up the seat. That's why they keep asking that question, because we'll see if he hangs around. They can't kick him out of the Eccles Building, but.
- [50:26]
American Hodl
Oh, so they usually resign from the board?
- [50:28]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah, they usually say it's done. Like listen, we had the pinnacle of Mike, who wants to sit around, it's like, you know, who's that president? That where he was like, president United States, then he ran for Senate. He was like, ha, out in the Senate, like just what's the point of that? Yeah, I'm talking about I can't remember that guy.
- [50:41]
American Hodl
How does seem that part of his mission in life though is to resist Donald Trump. So I could see him hanging around, you know, I don't think he likes Trump very much.
- [50:51]
Preston Pysh
Jeff, to your point on the, you know, them needing to drop the rate. Yeah. I think that. And for people that might not be intimately familiar with the curves, the only thing that they really control is that overnight money rate. All the other ones with duration are for all intensive purposes controlled by the market. I think a lot of people, there's a lot of people out there that would argue with that. But for all intensive purposes it's very different than the federal funds rate. And with it riding, everybody can see here on the chart it's at 4.2 on the federal funds and the two year is at 3.4. And to Jeff's point, yeah, they got to drop it 100 bips at this point.
- [51:26]
Jeff Ross
Right. I don't know why he keeps. He has a perfect excuse to just be like the bond market is telling us we need to drop 100 bips.
- [51:33]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah, yeah. But they don't look at the data. They look at the consumer price and core PC when they're data dependent, they're not looking at what the bond market.
- [51:39]
Jeff Ross
Market is because the bottom market dependence.
- [51:41]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah their, their data dependence is not based on the yield of the two year or I mean and let's be clear, like there have been times over the past couple years where the bond markets been completely wrong. Like yields were much lower and then they ramped up. Look at where yields were in the fall of last year and where they went to in January after the Fed cut. Fed started cutting and then yields rose and everybody freaked out and people said well if you cut more, I mean talk about bad takes. Somebody. People were arguing in January of 2025 that the Fed engaged in any more cuts that they would lose long end of the yield curve and we'd be rocketing above 5% and it was going to go berserk. Right. It was sell off really hard. What has happened to the 10 years? Is it under four? It was yeah, 396 as they've cut. So that was totally wrong. The idea that, you know, that they would price in significant more inflation when we were cutting. So these curves can react. You know, they're reacting primarily in my view based on growth expectations. And I think to your point Jeff, like the growth expectations are weakening. So what do you expect to happen to yields? Yields are going to decline.
- [52:39]
Jeff Ross
Right. I just think it's so simple because he has an excuse, right? He doesn't have to say he's bowing to Trump. He's just be like, look what the two years telling us, it's telling us we need to come lower so therefore we should do that.
- [52:49]
Joe Carlisari
I just think this is the labor market.
- [52:52]
Jeff Ross
I would just love to end the Fed like tomorrow and have it just. And it doesn't have it be automated. Like this is so ridiculous. But anyways, yeah, makes me mad.
- [53:01]
American Hodl
Let's just put Chat GPT in charge of the Fed.
- [53:03]
Jeff Ross
Let's do it.
- [53:04]
American Hodl
It would do just as good a job.
- [53:05]
Preston Pysh
Let's be real.
- [53:06]
Jeff Ross
It'd do better.
- [53:07]
Preston Pysh
What are you guys thoughts on AI right now?
- [53:09]
American Hodl
Well, I think there's something kind of interesting going on in AI tech. I don't know if you guys have been paying attention to like the deals that are going on between Nvidia and Open AI and AMD et cetera. There's, there's a lot of this round tripping that you know, we remember seeing in the FTX land in the Sandbank and Freed days and it's making me mildly uncomfortable. And if you talk to guys like Jensen Huang, they'll tell you that general purpose compute is dead and the world is moving towards specific compute, which is something that we can understand as Bitcoiners. Like we've seen the move from CPU to GPU to asic and now the broader market is going through that move. But I don't know man, I see all these round trip deals and I get a little sketched out with what's going on over there in their market. And obviously what's happening in high tech affects the broader market in general and leads back to Jeff's thesis about it's kind of over. It's the swan song, just like it was in Cryptoland.
- [54:01]
Jeff Ross
I was doing this because it's that Spider man meme where there's three of them all pointing at each other like, who's paying for this? Who's paying for this? You are, you are. So yeah, that is going to be a too big to fail moment I think at some point at the end of this. I don't think we're getting close to the end. I think we are at the early stages of like a bubble. But like I have years to go would be my guess. This stuff is fascinating, I tell you. I've been thinking a lot about this and geopolitics lately and I don't think much about bitcoin anymore because it's going to just keep going up over time. But there's the optimistic side of this age of abundance that's coming. And then everybody's concerned about AI taking all of the white collar jobs. And that's I think a real concern. What I've been thinking about and this doesn't make me popular at all. So I don't speak my mind. And I'll do this here in front of just the three of us so nobody else will know about it. It I'm a hardcore free market capitalist. Yeah, but does free market capitalism work for humans? Which is dog eat dog. The best win, the rest die creative destruction. What if our Competition is all 10x or 100x smarter than us and can do things 10x to 100x better than us? Do we really want to be in free market competition with AI? And I'm totally serious. What if unemployment jumps to 40%? Do you want a capitalist? So. So even though I think it's the best for humans, is free market capitalism the best way to run an economy in an AI world? And I think the answer is actually no. But I'd love to hear you guys.
- [55:27]
Joe Carlisari
Wow.
- [55:28]
Preston Pysh
Wow, that's bold. Okay. Yeah, go ahead guys.
- [55:31]
American Hodl
I'm more of the opinion. You know, I think a lot of the talk about artificial general intelligence or super intelligence is I think it's meant to create regulatory capture opportunities for the already powerful players in the markets. Like an open AI. I don't believe we're going to see super intelligence anytime soon. There is like a potential fast takeoff scenario if the AIs are able to rapidly iterate on themselves. But you know, GPT5 kind of sucks. My opinion, I was expecting a lot more of an improvement out of it and it seemed to be sort of a plateau now. Did it get nerfed because the researchers were worried about. There's all this stuff like that, right, where they're like, you know, and then obviously you have the espionage angle where the Chinese are trying to steal the weights and they're are deeply embedded in every American company and the whole thing is moving off a clip at 88 miles per hour. Right? Like, and so, you know, it's, it's hard to track what's going on in AI at any given time. But I think my general framework here is that AI is something like the new handgun and that it's a tool that humans are going to be able to leverage against other AI. So I don't know that it's me and you versus an AI, but I think it's me and you. Plus AI versus other humans plus AI, right? So like, we get these like super powerful computer symbiotes that we're using to duel with each other, but we might actually reach a level of the, like the Internet, for instance, where you've heard of dead Internet theory, where like, basically like 90% of the Internet is already made of bots. Well, it might move to a hundred percent and the Internet just becomes like the machine battleground between the AIs and we all operate on the other side of them, you know, so like my AI goes out and does battle with your AI in the world or whatever. I don't know, man. We're heading towards interesting times. I do think it's going to dematerialize a lot of industries. And like, probably the people that are in those industries now will seek or they'll go to the government and say, hey, we've already, we've been in this industry too long, we've given up too much. We're super important. Here's why. And they'll be able to carve out these laws that basically allow them to continue doing it for some time, but then in the next generation, it's over. I don't know that like, like what Jeff does, like radiology, that a robot's gonna do that. That one's for sure, you know?
- [57:33]
Jeff Ross
And then just as a quick aside, I want to hear what you guys say. I think I'm more optimistic on what it will do. I don't know if optimism is the right word. I think it's AGI is going to be more impressive. And then asi. I'm kind of a Ray Kurzweil. Like, I believe in him, that he's going to be right. And I think it's going to be like at some point, a thousand, ten thousand times smarter than humans. I look at radiology and other physician things. First of all, by the way, guys, I'm not a doctor anymore. I quit doctoring in January of this year. So you don't call me doctor anymore. It's just Jeff. And if you say I use AI to test it to see how it answers medical questions, it's fantastic. Yeah, I think it's already at the point where a lot of people could skip going to the doctor for a lot of things and just be like, hey, I got this and this. What do you think? I think doctors are going to fight it tooth and nail because they don't want to lose their income and their profession and their reputation. But I think it's inevitable and I think it's going to be, it's change the world, technology. I don't know, maybe I'm too optimistic. I'd love to hear.
- [58:34]
American Hodl
No, no, it's a, it's a big deal. I just don't know that AGI is like literally the machines become gods. So that's why I'm like Joe.
- [58:42]
Joe Carlisari
Well to me the biggest story we're talking about economics and the going forward expectations for how the economy is going to perform is the build out. Because McKinsey says we're going to spend between 6 and $7 trillion through 2020 30. The CapEx expenditures from just the MAG7 are estimated alone to be over a trillion dollars by Goldman Sachs. It's a massive infusion of private capital and this isn't borrowed money. These people are tapping their cash rich balance sheets to do that build out. We're talking data centers, accelerators, networking, real estate, power grid upgrades, all these things. That's the story. Okay, so for people wondering why these companies are like just absolutely soaring is because they're fighting to win the future. They're fighting to have their continued monopoly over the infrastructure that will be the life and soul of our economy. And all the things we're talking about in this call and I don't think anybody fully understands it but it's sort of a need to know, need to own asset. Right? You need to own these stocks because of the fact that they will have this monopoly over the future. And I don't think it's one of those things where you're going to have a bunch of garageband startups that are going to overcome some of this AI data center buildup. It's very different from other technologies. The mountain amount of compute and energy and hardware and infrastructure is going to be massive. So like that's a huge story and there's gonna be jobs that come along with that. So I think the fear about destroying jobs and massive unemployment, skyrocking, that may be real and I wouldn't totally fade that, but I would push that. The timeframe for that, it takes a little bit longer as we know in Bitcoin for things to develop than we expect. So that might be a 2030s issue. Whereas for the next five years I could see it actually like causing a surge of certainly skilled jobs to help build do the build out. So that's a huge story in my opinion. But you know, I'll just finish one thing in terms of the actual and this is just what I'm encountering in terms of the actual use case of the Some of these current tools, I gotta tell you, I feel myself very much blessed because I'm seeing sludge filed, filed all the time in lawsuits, garbage, terrible complaints. Pro se thinks that they understand it because they're asking GPT to do something and it will spit out something that is complete garbage. So it's actually leading to an increase. You know, we're hiring, my firm's hiring because they're like we're slammed with all these pro salitians who they can type something into GPT and get it right and it's garbage. Right. So. And frankly it's frustrating the courts because they're saying like, why are all these new complaints getting filed? Why is there this massage influx of people that now think they're lawyers and they know not even enough to be dangerous. They know enough to waste people's time. That's basically it, like literally with the filing. So I think that, that if all AI is going to do is going to increase the amount of sludge out there in terms of shoddy work product and it's going to cause people to be lazy and turn off their brains, those who will turn on their brains will be exceedingly profitable. They will be very skilled and they'll make a lot of money. So it's really important. Like any other muscle, your brain, you know, should be utilized and it should be relied on and tuned. And you should use this as a supplement, not a replacement. I think the most currently with all the technologies I've seen, the most effective use of AI is always to supplement someone who's already smart and savvy and have them test their thinking. That's the way I use it. That's why really smart people I know use it. But not to just be like, tell me what to do, AI Chatbot. Because you're the AI chatbot and I don't want to read something. Amen.
- [61:51]
Preston Pysh
Yes, amen to that. By the way, what are your guys thoughts on the humanoid robots like the Tesla? Because when you're talking about the jobs that are going to be created through some of the change that's here, I mean the numbers that I'm hearing, what is it like a million humanoid robots of at least the Tesla version by 2030 is what they're kind of shooting for. And like, what's that gonna mean for just augmented labor? Hodl, go ahead.
- [62:17]
American Hodl
Yeah, I, I think if Elon gets robots even a little bit right, it's very obvious that he's the world's first trillionaire. And I do think that like Tesla has a massive leap forward in real world AI. And like that's what the whole robotics revolution is actually about. Like, like, you know, Boston Dynamics, we've all seen those videos, they do it like Christmas time where they make the robots dance and stuff. Like we have had the ability to like hydraulically control and articulate Robot Arms for 20 years now. And actually it's gotten really good. And the hardware side is, it's not completely figured out. Like they don't move or talk as move or walk as fluidly as we do, but they can get around their ambulatory and they can do things. And Boston Dynamics has basically figured out that quadruped robots with a, a weird freaky articulating arm on top of their head is sort of the way to go about things. And so it's about the visual learning and it's about the real world application of large language models. You know, I had a, a self driving Tesla, my wife's car, a Model X. And when there was a switch over to FSD12 from FSD11, that was when Elon and the engineers went back and started training it via LLM, like via neural network. And there was a massive leap forward in the tech. So like if you were a Tesla driver and you were using autopilot from 11 to 12, massive leap. It went from being a car driven by a janky robot trying to kill me to a car that was driving much more like a teenage girl who was only occasionally trying to kill me, which is a huge leap forward, you know. So I think yeah, real world AI is a massive, it's a really big deal. The robotics industry is obviously going to be the biggest industry in the history of the world world up to this point. And so I'm wildly bullish on all of that, but I do think it's more of a 2000 and 30s phenomenon where it gets, it kicks into high gear. Like probably mid-2030s is when we're all fully ensconced in the robotic revolution, which.
- [64:04]
Preston Pysh
A lot of this goes to Jeff's original comment where he's concerned as to like, if you're competing with something like this, let's say somebody has five of these things, these humanoid robots. Like can you imagine how much you could get done just around the house, let alone like all the other things you could stick these things on if they're armed with, you know, who knows what level of intelligence at that point that you can just give them random tasks to go out there and do things. And I don't know, guys this is getting really strange.
- [64:33]
American Hodl
And let me give you an example of something that you could see in the future is like imagine a Spotify, but instead of songs, it has recipes. And those recipes come from the world's greatest chefs. And then in everybody's kitchen is a set of articulating robot arms that can cook, you know, Gordon Ramsay style meals for you directly in your kitchen. That's just one example of the kind of world that we're heading into. And I don't think any of us are capable of understanding all the other myriad examples of things that could happen in that world.
- [65:00]
Preston Pysh
I mean, the humanoid robot could go out and get the ingredients from the store and come back and cook it and like all of that. Right. Like, and I think people might hear that and they're like, yeah, come on, dude, we are, are decades. I don't think we're decades away from this. I think we're like five years to seven years out from something like this.
- [65:18]
American Hodl
Yeah, it's coming up quick, quick.
- [65:21]
Joe Carlisari
But what does that do to prices?
- [65:23]
Preston Pysh
Yes, I know.
- [65:23]
Joe Carlisari
What does that do to eating out? What does that do to eating in? What does that do across the board to these things? It craters them. It doesn't cause them to rise, it causes them to fall. Yeah. And that's the takeaway. Right. This is the inflationist says, I never understood this argument. Like you're on the verge of a massive boon in productivity that's going to send prices across the board through the floor. So I just don't, I'd be curious any of your thoughts on this because I find it very difficult when I listen to these folks saying that, you know, CPI is going to run back up to 10% on a persistent basis or we'll have hyperinflation on our doorstep. I mean, maybe if UBI becomes a thing, but that doesn't really fix the problem. That just artificially raises the cost of things temporarily and then technology advances and it still causes the same problem.
- [66:05]
Jeff Ross
Yeah, I think a short term spike in inflation as we do the buildup out, as we bring back manufacturing, I mean we have to pay for it somehow and it's with money. That's not very sound in the near term and which is great, by the.
- [66:17]
Joe Carlisari
Way, which is a huge advantage. Right. Like I, I would say if you own assets.
- [66:21]
Jeff Ross
Yeah.
- [66:21]
Joe Carlisari
Buy as much like they should be spending a trillion dollars right now to build out the AI and spend more money.
- [66:27]
Jeff Ross
I mean, yeah, it'll be terrible for the bottom 60% of income earners. Right. So I think first we have inflation, not massive and not out of control, but then we have that big disinflationary streak that's going to be for the rest of our lives. Probably. That's how I look at it.
- [66:41]
Preston Pysh
I think it's important to define, like, in dollar terms and Bitcoin terms and in what terms? Because, you know, when I'm looking at this M2 growth rate of just the sheer fiat in the system, like, that thing's not slowing down anytime soon, at least not by the trends that I'm looking at. So if there's that many more units in the system, like, what's that going to do to the prices of desirable things? And I think that's the key. That's the key word. I think they're going to keep going up in fiat terms, but, like, in bitcoin terms, everybody knows, like, what's happening there, which is the prices just keep going down and down.
- [67:14]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah.
- [67:15]
Preston Pysh
So I think that's the important kind of distinction is what are you actually looking at the unit in that you're measuring against.
- [67:23]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah, yeah.
- [67:24]
Preston Pysh
And you guys got anything else you want to make sure we cover?
- [67:27]
American Hodl
Oh, I got to do a mea culpa about the treasury companies. God, was I wrong about the treasury company. I was like, man, this thing is gonna snow all upward. Like we're going into a bitcoin treasury company bubble. No, in fact, what happened is they all became bitcoin penny stocks. That's what I call them now. I don't even. I don't even call them treasury companies. I call them penny stocks. Bitcoin penny stocks. I mean, the M Nabs have just collapsed on these.
- [67:51]
Preston Pysh
What's happened with Naka?
- [67:53]
American Hodl
What's. What's going on with Naka is below its pipe price. I think I checked it today. It was at 76 cents. It's. Yeah, it's kind of opaque. I can't really figure out what the M Nav is on NACA at the moment, but it's definitely sense.
- [68:04]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah.
- [68:05]
American Hodl
Clearly below it's M Nav and then it's SA or however you say. That one. That one got creamed and, you know, ASTI Strive. That one's not doing well. I mean, basically none of them are doing well. 21 Jack Mers is holding up pretty solidly. And then I think MSTR is still kind of the goat here. And people prognosticating the death of mstr, I think, are completely oblivious to what's happening. But what we found out is that there's a big difference between Some of these smaller ones and mstr.
- [68:36]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah.
- [68:37]
American Hodl
You know.
- [68:37]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, yeah.
- [68:38]
Joe Carlisari
Do any of you think that Greece and price action in bitcoin is a byproduct of some of the turmoil in the bitcoin treasury companies?
- [68:45]
Preston Pysh
Absolutely.
- [68:47]
Joe Carlisari
Walk me through that, Explain why you think that is.
- [68:49]
Preston Pysh
Well, if bitcoin, I mean, at the end of the day, bitcoin's the engine of these treasury companies and it's completely predicated on, or at least if they're securitizing bitcoin and issuing preferred stock or convertible debt. If the whole thing's predicated on bitcoin going up 40% a year and they're issuing their credit instruments at 10% a year, then they're going to capture a 30% spread. That's the whole premise of not having an operational business and being able to securitize bitcoin through a corporate entity.
- [69:19]
Joe Carlisari
Right.
- [69:20]
Preston Pysh
And so if bitcoin's going sideways and it's not doing the 40% thing, you kind of get yourself in a position where you can't keep growing the bitcoin on the balance sheet because it's literally gone sideways and you're going to get too levered as it continues to go sideways. But if it keeps going up and keeps going up very consistently, let's just say that the bitcoin price runs at 40% very consistently and very smoothly with not a lot of volatility, and you're issuing 10% dividends or whatever from a convertible debt standpoint, which, you know, it's way less than that, but then you have to pay the principal on it after five years. So I think 10%'s a better number to use when you're comparing these two. But if it was just going up nice and bitcoin's going up nice and smooth at 40% and you're issuing 10% against it, that you're going to continue to accumulate more and more bitcoin on the balance sheet as soon as that stops.
- [70:07]
Joe Carlisari
Like so you're saying, you're saying the terminal in the treasury companies is leading to an absence of buyers. Right. The buyers are gone.
- [70:14]
Preston Pysh
I would say that the lack of underlying bitcoin price action continuing to go up is what's causing a lot of issues because they can't get too over levered. Like you can only securitize it so much and you're basically over collateralizing the bitcoin on your balance sheet. But once you collateralize it to a certain point and bitcoin isn't going up higher which allows you to keep collateralizing it in dollar terms. Right. That ratio of. Call it five to one, like if it goes sideways, you can't do that anymore.
- [70:42]
Joe Carlisari
So you're sitting there flapping the circular bitcoin economy, right?
- [70:46]
Jeff Ross
Yeah, exactly. They remind me of you guys. Remember bumper cars? Remember those people who would be stuck in the middle of bumper cars and they couldn't get out because there's no other people driving around them. So they're just sitting there the entire time, all the music. That's what these guys remind me of. Because their whole model, at least to start is we need to get an M Nav of 2, 3, 4, you know, exceeding our underlying bitcoin. And then when we do, inevitably they said, or so they thought, then we're going to sell shares at this elevated price and then we're going to use the proceeds to buy bitcoin. But what happens if you don't get that M Nav or it just comes down? You know what this reminds me of? I know all you guys were around that. It reminds me of GBTC back in 2021.
- [71:24]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah, yeah.
- [71:25]
Jeff Ross
Do you remember I owned that in my hedge fund and that was so disappointing because that was basically one of the only ways I could get good bitcoin exposure. And that ended 2021. I think Bitcoin was up about 70% in 2021 and GBTC was flat on the year and it just was just terrible. And this reminds me of that. And in fact I owned little pieces of lots of these treasury companies in my hedge fund this year just in case we had this bull market and a pretty good size of strategy. All of them have hit my trailing stop. I've stopped out of all of them because they're just basically dead in the water right now. So I do think they'll catch a bid once the bull market starts up again. But totally very disappointing start.
- [72:03]
American Hodl
It's been very surprising because if you were to talk to me six months to a year ago and asked me, do you think miners or treasury companies are going to perform better? I would say treasury companies, hands down.
- [72:12]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah.
- [72:13]
American Hodl
And I look at my mining portfolio and it's gone crazy. I mean, iron is up like 2700% or something.
- [72:20]
Joe Carlisari
But that's AI. That's AI. Well, that's, that's coming from.
- [72:23]
American Hodl
That's my point, Joe, is like, so the interesting thing about the miners is you would think to yourself, well, okay, like it doesn't make sense that the AI, you know, that the AI bubble is affecting the miners because you can't switch the rack space. And the Bitcoin AS6 aren't set up to do, you know, these GPU clusters, et cetera, et cetera. But it's the energy contracts. These guys got to the energy first. They were first to the key on the energy.
- [72:45]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah.
- [72:46]
American Hodl
So the AI companies have to come and partner with them because the bitcoin miners are like energy energy pirates and they got all the contracts right. And so they just deal each other in and boom, profits galore. Like, it's crazy. So the miners have done exceptionally well compared to the treasury companies.
- [73:01]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah.
- [73:01]
Jeff Ross
Okay, you guys remember last quarter I actually asked if you thought, if any of you thought miners would catch a bid because they've had such a disappointing performance.
- [73:09]
American Hodl
Yeah, we all were like, we all sort of chuckled.
- [73:12]
Joe Carlisari
Yes.
- [73:12]
Jeff Ross
And they've just been crushing it.
- [73:13]
Joe Carlisari
So before we go here though, I want to hear, let's get some, some give some alpha. Where is bitcoin going to be hoddle in like four months? Where are we going to be?
- [73:20]
American Hodl
Are you saying end of the year or four months?
- [73:23]
Joe Carlisari
No, four months. Like January. Let's say like January. I want to get into actually, let's do like six months. I want to say, I want to get this into like into Q1 of deep into Q1 of 2026. Where are we at?
- [73:33]
American Hodl
So like you, I'm bullish on a Q1, Q2, you know, increase in price. I think that the four year cycle thing, it is dead. But we still have yet to exhaust the four year cycle sellers because there are a lot of people that still believe in the four year cycle. And because of the distribution of bitcoin, a lot of those people actually hold a lot of bitcoin. Right. There are people with 10,000 Bitcoin that.
- [73:56]
Joe Carlisari
Delete, stop selling your 10,000 Bitcoin.
- [73:58]
American Hodl
Right. There are people with bitcoin and they believe in the four year cycle. I mean, there was a guy who sold 80,000 bitcoin earlier this year. There have been other large cells of 30,000 Bitcoin, et cetera. So some of these OGs, they're getting out, out. And also I think chopping at 100k is just like causing people to go buy Lamborghinis and mansions. Because I'm seeing a lot of that too. It's like Fordham where they're just like, I'm just gonna go, I've been delaying gratification long enough. I'm just gonna go finally buy that Porsche or whatever. So yeah, I think we got to get through all that we got to get over the perception of the four year cycle, which is credit to Joe. Joe's been actually saying that for many years. And me and Joe go back and forth because I'm a bit of a four year cycle, you know, recovering addict myself. I love the four year cycle. Cycle.
- [74:38]
Preston Pysh
Same, same.
- [74:39]
American Hodl
Yeah. So I think it's over. We get past it and then it's like green, green, green, green. Like let's be bullish. You know, I, I don't see any reason why next year can't be bullish. People are starting to talk about is if it's some immutable law of the universe that like bitcoin has to go down. It's like, well, bitcoin didn't even go up this year. So I mean Jeff gave the one year chart, but like. Or, sorry, the one year percentage. But if you look at the year to date percentage, I'll check it right out. It's at 14.95. So I mean that's crap. Sorry guys. Like that's not a bull market.
- [75:11]
Joe Carlisari
Were we 110,000 on election day or inauguration day? Inauguration day, we were 110. I think thereabouts.
- [75:17]
American Hodl
Something like that.
- [75:18]
Joe Carlisari
Right when Trump got inaugurated. That was like the all time.
- [75:20]
American Hodl
And we're more or less, we're at 109 right now during the time of this recording. So there wasn't really a bull market. So I don't really see any like immutable law of the universe that says there has to be a bear market. And you know, frankly, this irrational exuberance never showed up. Retail never showed up. What's going to cause the bear market? I don't.
- [75:35]
Joe Carlisari
Which is awesome by the way. I know that people wanted this blow move but like look at the base of. I don't know if you're like one of these TA people or volume profile people. I'll defer to Jeff on this. But like look at the base of bids like you've got it like a hundred K. I mean every time it dips down, it just seems like there's money that's ready to deploy. Very steady institutional bid. Yeah. Am I wrong, Jeff? Like that.
- [75:57]
Jeff Ross
You're right.
- [75:58]
Preston Pysh
Joe, what was your price target for the end of the year at the beginning of the year?
- [76:02]
Joe Carlisari
130K.
- [76:03]
Preston Pysh
All right, I'm to prices write you. I'm going to say 129k at the end of this year.
- [76:11]
American Hodl
I'll go 131.
- [76:12]
Joe Carlisari
I'll go. No, we're going to get there, guys. I'm really bullish here. Like, I honestly think this is awesome. Like, I've never felt sentiment this bad with the price where it's at. And I think there are zero tourists in bitcoin. Like, all the tourists are in quantum stocks and, you know, all these, like, high flyers. I feel like people are just kind of like you said, H, they're kind of bored. Bored with bitcoin. Never want to short a boring market.
- [76:35]
American Hodl
Right?
- [76:36]
Joe Carlisari
That's like an old adage. Somebody told me, I think, Jeff, I'm bored as hell.
- [76:39]
American Hodl
I'm so bored.
- [76:40]
Joe Carlisari
Right, right. I mean, that to me is exceedingly positive. And if Jeff is right, all you need to do is get the investing community to think like, okay, wait a second. If this is truly the debasement trade and this, the hard asset trade, like money can come flowing in. We've got the ETFs. Literally just click a button. Like, you don't have to mess around. Around. I mean, I saw how absurd. I saw this line, guys, where, like, people are out the door waiting to buy gold. There was this photo of people, like, ready to buy physical gold. Like, sit, like a line out the door, like the latest iPhone or something.
- [77:10]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, there you go.
- [77:11]
Joe Carlisari
You know what? You know what I'm talking about. You saw it. Yeah.
- [77:14]
Preston Pysh
This is it. This is Australia.
- [77:16]
American Hodl
Australia, huh?
- [77:17]
Joe Carlisari
Yep.
- [77:18]
Jeff Ross
They're front running us. They heard this conversation.
- [77:20]
Joe Carlisari
So. So how, how absurd in 2025 that people are sitting to buy gold, like waiting in line, like, it's. It's so weird. It's weird. And then you can just click and buy bitcoin right now. And even better, even if you don't want to go buy it off a exchange, go buy the etf. It's simple, right click of a button.
- [77:36]
American Hodl
You want to assay your bitcoin, you run your own node. You want to assay your gold, some guy at the pawn shop takes out a DeWalt drill and goes, yeah, we'll.
- [77:43]
Preston Pysh
Assay it for you.
- [77:47]
Joe Carlisari
But Jeff, where are we going? Preston, I didn't. Mine was 129 into 20, into Q1 of 2026.
- [77:56]
American Hodl
That's.
- [77:57]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, that's the start of the new year. I'm saying 129k. Okay, yeah, I'm with you.
- [78:02]
Jeff Ross
And so to be clear, because I was so horribly wrong and off in my 475k prediction, you want to know what I think it's going to do in the next. Yes, 75. Like, I haven't been embarrassed enough.
- [78:15]
Preston Pysh
We want to be able to throw it in your face, Jeff. It's the only reason he asked this question every time.
- [78:21]
Jeff Ross
Right. And then put me on record for being WR again. So I think bitcoin moves in a long term up into the right channel, basically, you know, a log channel power law style. So I think the further in time you go out, the higher it could potentially go if we rip with the economy. So I'm still looking at forward looking indicators that tell me looking in well into 2026 now, like summer 2026, I still think the economy looks like it's going to be booming at that point. Point. And if it's booming that tells me that bitcoin could go, you know, I said 475 by Q4 of this year. If we extend it we could go up to 5560000.
- [79:02]
Joe Carlisari
Wow.
- [79:02]
Jeff Ross
Third quarter of 2026.
- [79:04]
American Hodl
Oh yeah.
- [79:05]
Jeff Ross
And that might not be the end of it either. We might just continue in this bull market. I, I think the Trump administration is going to do everything they can to goose the economy for the next, for the mid several years and run it.
- [79:16]
Preston Pysh
Hot, hot, hot for the midterms. You're saying they're going to go and.
- [79:19]
Jeff Ross
Through the midterms and if they do that then they're going to get majorities in the House and the Senate and then they're going to run it even hotter I think and I think it could go even higher. So this is just going to be a very, it's already been a really weird cycle. Like as we started saying at the very beginning because the, you know, manufacturing has been in a recession for three straight years. I think it's going to pop out and we're going to have a really weird cycle to the other side, hopefully to the upside in the next couple of years. Years.
- [79:43]
Joe Carlisari
Well, you've given up on the 400 for this year. You've given up on it.
- [79:47]
Jeff Ross
No, I'm still sticking to it. I'm just, I know I'm going to, I give it about like a 5% chance of it.
- [79:52]
Joe Carlisari
Well, there's a time traveler on Twitter, bitcoin Twitter these days who says we're going to 444 by.
- [79:59]
Jeff Ross
He puts those weird poems in the sneaky clues or whatever. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, well hey, maybe he knows something because that was my original target.
- [80:07]
Joe Carlisari
30 days. Hle 30 days we could be at 400k. What are you doing?
- [80:10]
American Hodl
Well, cocaine pain obviously.
- [80:14]
Preston Pysh
Hey, what's up with the lights behind you? Are you doing like some weird George Costanza on a Couch photo shoot back there. What's going on?
- [80:23]
American Hodl
I've been making vlogs on Noster back at back making. I've seen everything. Making vlogs, and wow. Been putting them out on Noster exclusively. So it's just this. I love it.
- [80:35]
Preston Pysh
I've seen the shooting ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [80:38]
American Hodl
I'm like a YouTuber, but for Noster, you know, I'd love it. Which is. Which means, you know, 300 people watch the video.
- [80:47]
Preston Pysh
All right, you guys got anything else? We're gonna wrap it up.
- [80:50]
American Hodl
All right, I got maybe. Maybe close on this. So earlier, Preston, you said, you know, I haven't really seen Peter Schiff. He's not dancing like, he's not d. I. Well, I don't know that you had checked his Twitter today. I have blocked because. Yeah, I got it right here. And it says, gold is eating bitcoin's lunch. Bitcoin is now down 32% price in gold since its August high. Buy this. Bitcoin bear market will be brutal. Hodlers. Sell your fool's gold now and buy the real thing or have fun going broke. He didn't even get it right. It's. Have fun staying for. He didn't even get it right at the end. He didn't stick the landing. You know, he didn't stick the landing. I mean, listen, if you don't. If you don't fade that. I don't know what to. That's the most obvious guy to fade in the world at the most obvious time.
- [81:36]
Jeff Ross
He's.
- [81:37]
Preston Pysh
He's got perfect timing.
- [81:38]
Jeff Ross
From a technical standpoint, gold is very overbought right now, so it looks like it needs to consolidate for a while.
- [81:44]
Joe Carlisari
Before we go, one. One quick thing. I have to get Preston and Jeff's take on this. What is going on with the price of oil? I mean, it is appears to be in just complete nose dive this entire year. Right. We started out the year what we were at 56 bucks a barrel. What's your take on that? We started out the year at 80. In January, we're at 80 bucks.
- [82:04]
Preston Pysh
Bucks, yeah.
- [82:05]
Joe Carlisari
Wow. I haven't looked at it a little.
- [82:07]
Preston Pysh
Bit, to be honest with you, Joe. I would just assume it's demand. The demand's falling off.
- [82:12]
Podcast Host / Announcer
Right.
- [82:12]
Joe Carlisari
More sellers than buyers.
- [82:14]
Preston Pysh
Yeah. Yeah. More sellers than buyers. Thank you, sir.
- [82:17]
Jeff Ross
Thank you. Yeah. I look at it like it's an economic indicator. So the economies around the world are weak right now.
- [82:23]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah.
- [82:23]
Jeff Ross
And once they start taking off, like we all hopefully think they will in the next year, I think Oil will start to pick up again. Again. That's my take. I want to talk about something but I think we're running out of time.
- [82:34]
Preston Pysh
Joe, what's your point? What do you think?
- [82:35]
Joe Carlisari
No, I mean I think there's clearly like OPEC keeps ramping OBEC plus keeps ramping up supply. So I think there's a lot of supply. There's ton. I mean if you look at this guys, and I'm just talking about, you know, we talk about inflation quite a bit. Right. In inflation adjusted terms, oil is now cheaper than it was in 2004. 2004. All the printing of money and everything else were like it's amazing.
- [82:58]
Preston Pysh
Amazing.
- [82:59]
Joe Carlisari
I actually believed a lot of the oil bulls. There were a lot of oil bulls in the last couple years who said we're going to 100 bucks a barrel. Plus there's a shortage of oil chronically. I mean the supply is coming from somewhere. If maybe it really is that the global economy outside the United States is just really that weak.
- [83:12]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, it's down, that's for sure. Jeff, go ahead with your last one that you have.
- [83:16]
Jeff Ross
Well, this is like a two hour long discussion. But I'll just tell you what the point of it is. I can't stop thinking about stuff like I just saw this survey today. You guys know that 40% of Americans think we're going to get into a civil war in the next couple of years. Years. 40%, yeah. And I think the whole geopolitical situation and the changing world order is fascinating right now and I think everything is changing. And Preston, at some point I want to talk to you since you're ex military. I'd love to get your take on it because I'm where I am currently. I'm around a lot of people in the military who talk about and I touched on this just a bit about how basically a conflict with Taiwan is. They talk about it like it's inevitable, like we're all training for it. And so I'm just waiting for the that shoe to drop.
- [83:59]
Preston Pysh
Yeah.
- [83:59]
Jeff Ross
And then beyond that, other things I'm hearing of not just Taiwan, but possibly South Korea and Japan and the South China Sea also. And what is America's role and is America pulling back into the western hemisphere and basically giving up the eastern hemisphere? And were there closed door meetings? Like this is all like tin foil hat conspiracy theory. But watching the signs it sure looks like like this kind of stuff is coming and it's crazy. Like I think we're just heading towards a really crazy next five years.
- [84:31]
Preston Pysh
I Think the whole supply chains with the precious metals and all that kind of stuff, all the inputs to all this complex machinery is kind of the thing to watch because if you cannot, there's a saying in the military that the amateurs talk tactics and the professionals talk logistics. When you look at sustaining any type of fight, especially that far off, you know, the U.S. you know, over in Asia, and talk about a logistics nightmare to sustain anything that's going to last, especially against somebody like China, when you look at how dependent we are on the inputs of all these supply chains for all this complex machinery to fight a war with any kind of length, like, that's the number one thing I'd be focused on and seeing what they're doing right now. And I'm not one of these people that's like beating the drum on, you know, that we're going to war here in the next six months or anything like that. In fact, I have no idea. It's quite a bit out of my purview because I just don't really pay too much attention to that stuff, to be quite honest with you. All the politics is out of my feed. If somebody even talks about politics, it's just an immediate mute or block or block. I honestly don't see it in my day to day consumption of news. I really don't. So. But those are just some of my initial thoughts. With a background in the military, I.
- [85:49]
American Hodl
Think geopolitically China is going to make a move on Taiwan by 2020. That's what I think.
- [85:53]
Jeff Ross
Me too. Another fascinating thing. And then I'll stop because I can talk about this for the next couple hours, but our sudden interest in the Caribbean and in South America and the massive oil deposits that Venezuela has, and now we're talking about CIA action in like an actual coup going on in Venezuela and we're suddenly buddies, chummy with Argentina and cheering for Malay. I think we're giving up the Middle east and South America and Central America are the new Middle east, least for us. And this is a whole different discussion. But this is the kind of stuff I've been spending a lot of time studying. And the world is changing and it's.
- [86:27]
Preston Pysh
Oh yeah, yeah, that's for sure. That's for sure. Maybe a topic for the next show next year. Guys, can't thank you enough. We're just going to go around the horn. You guys can give a hand off if people want to learn more about you. We'll start off with Joe, the best lawyer in America. Go ahead, Joe.
- [86:44]
Joe Carlisari
Very kind, Joe. Carlos, are you can find me on Twitter at Joe Carlasari. If you need legal advice or are involved in a litigated matter, which is my specialty, you can just Google my name. My firm will pop up at Amundsen Davis first full service law firm. We have a huge book of bitcoin miners. We represent as well as individuals involved in regulatory issues and civil lawsuits. So thanks for having me on.
- [87:05]
Jeff Ross
Yeah, Jeff, I'm trying not to be on social media anymore, so I may come back next quarter for this interview. And that's about it.
- [87:11]
Preston Pysh
That's the ultimate block and mute right there. Just I'm not even logging in anymore, hobby model.
- [87:19]
American Hodl
I'm on Noster only at the moment. Not because I'm a principal ideological cyberpunk, but because I simply lost my phone, which had my Twitter login on it.
- [87:29]
Preston Pysh
I don't.
- [87:29]
American Hodl
I don't have access to my Twitter anymore. So there you go.
- [87:33]
Preston Pysh
Social media is exhausting, man. It's getting so hard to even log in these days.
- [87:39]
American Hodl
Yeah.
- [87:40]
Joe Carlisari
Yeah.
- [87:40]
Preston Pysh
Gents, thank you. I truly look forward to this conversation every quarter. So thank you for making time. Truly thank you for making time. And we appreciate we always get some really fun feedback from these episodes. So thanks, guys.
- [87:52]
Thank you for listening to Tip. Make sure to follow bitcoin fundamentals on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com this show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.