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Ten31 Timestamp: Bitcoin and the Red Queen · TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast

• 0:00
  They say that a hero can save us.
• 0:06
  What is going on, Mr. Arnold?
• 0:08
  I was not expecting Nickelback to hit me this Monday morning.
• 0:11
  I haven't heard that song in 20 years.
• 0:13
  There was a meme going around with it this morning, so it's stuck in my head.
• 0:18
  What's going on, dude? How was your weekend? Happy belated Father's Day.
• 0:22
  Good. Yeah, it was good. Happy belated Father's Day to you, too.
• 0:25
  Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there.
• 0:27
  We need more strong fathers. So, you know, if you're if you're still considering fatherhood, step it up, dive in.
• 0:34
  That's what one big thing this country needs right now.
• 0:36
  But as far as what we're here to talk about, I felt like it was a very poetic weekend because I sent out the timestamp early, you know, like 10 a.m.
• 0:46
  Saturday morning and literally, you know, the whole headline, the big, big, big touchstone for the week is the U.S.
• 0:53
  Iran deal that we finally came to. We signed a memorandum of understanding to do further
• 0:58
  negotiations. But this seems like the most real milestone thus far on this whole thread that
• 1:05
  we've been on. And then not 20 minutes later, it took only 20 minutes for Iran to come out with a
• 1:11
  headline that actually they're closing straight before moves again because of one thing or another
• 1:17
  that the US or Israel or someone had dishonored or not respected in the agreement. So it looks like
• 1:22
  Maybe we're going to be back to square one.
• 1:23
  So we'll see how that plays out this week.
• 1:25
  We'll get into it.
• 1:26
  Yeah, and there was a delegation with J.D. Vance and others.
• 1:31
  Where are they?
• 1:31
  In France.
• 1:32
  And apparently there was supposed to be some backroom conversations happening there.
• 1:37
  There was a lot of – I tried to stay offline as much as possible this weekend,
• 1:41
  but I did catch that there was some missed photo op opportunity
• 1:45
  or some negging on behalf of the Iranian delegation to J.D. Vance and his crew.
• 1:51
  Yeah, I think so. I mean, very true to this whole conflict.
• 1:54
  You know, both both sides are constantly trying to portray themselves as the much stronger one and, you know, puffing out their chests and trying to make sure that their their various state medias are following the narrative that they want.
• 2:07
  So I think, you know, overall, we can flip to the next the next slide for some some additional color here.
• 2:14
  I think based on what we're seeing on the oil side, if you can believe the fake news media of Bloomberg and the failing New York Times and you want to look at oil price action over the last few weeks and even into this morning, it's WTI is now even lower than what you're seeing here.
• 2:32
  I think this would suggest that probably the U.S.'s framing of events thus far is closer to the truth that we're seeing on the ground than the Iranian state media portrayals.
• 2:45
  But again, it wouldn't be the U.S.-Iran conflict if there were not constant fog of war on every single little detail.
• 2:54
  Yeah.
• 2:55
  And so the saga in the Middle East continues.
• 2:58
  one thing we've been trying to do over the last six months or gosh it feels like six months but
• 3:03
  five months since this war broke out is to really just look at the data and as john said oil you
• 3:11
  have it here at 75 76 i'm looking at trading view it's trading at 74 25 now so down another percent
• 3:17
  and a half um looks like it's coming down it would be good headed into midterms if gas prices
• 3:23
  came down. I know I was driving on the highway this morning. It was good to see regular prices
• 3:28
  in the threes and not the fours. And so we'll see what goes on there as we continue through the
• 3:34
  summer. But overlaid on this is relative dollar strength too. I think this is telling a different
• 3:41
  story about where money needs to go despite what might be happening in the Middle East because of
• 3:45
  what's happening here with the re-industrialization and this CapEx build out and U.S. equities
• 3:51
  screaming as we ride this AI wave. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you mentioned midterms, and I think it's
• 3:57
  important to acknowledge that there's some analysts that I respect out there suggesting
• 4:03
  that this is basically kind of a six-month detente to keep gas prices in check going into midterms.
• 4:10
  And you're getting up to the point where you've got to really start pivoting back to domestic
• 4:14
  policy. And so this is an attempt to keep things reasonably cool until 27. And then you go in for
• 4:22
  the real regime change, regime change strike, then, you know, there's some suggestion that if
• 4:27
  you look at what Saudis and various other Gulf Coast nations have already have in progress and
• 4:33
  what they could have in a year in terms of pipeline infrastructure and ways to bypass
• 4:38
  straight-up or moves and make it less strategically relevant, you know, this time next year could look
• 4:42
  very different for how significant that choke point is. Obviously, you got to, you know,
• 4:47
  their wide spectrum of opinions on how long any of that would take to ramp up. But in any case,
• 4:54
  I don't think it's insane to say we haven't heard the last of this. Like even if this MOU
• 4:58
  fully goes through and, you know, we don't talk about, you know, the straighter four moves again
• 5:02
  for a year, which would be, I think, a welcome blessing to all of us. There's definitely a
• 5:06
  possibility that everyone should keep in mind that 27 kind of, you know, brings us right back to the
• 5:11
  So this may be a tactical pause more than a real settling of the situation.
• 5:16
  But I do think it's interesting that, you know, the subtitle of this week was a week of narrative violations.
• 5:22
  And the oil chart is that, you know, we had a lot of people from a lot of different perspectives telling us in April, like oil is going to 200, oil is going to 250.
• 5:32
  This is a massive crisis and there's no way around it.
• 5:36
  The U.S. doesn't have enough rabbits that can pull out of the hat.
• 5:38
  globally there we're we're just in for this massive shock and we can argue about the the
• 5:44
  sustainability of the ways that the u.s and other countries dealt with that there were obviously a
• 5:47
  lot of big spr drains it looked like it certainly both the u.s and china did that and there were a
• 5:53
  lot of things that needed to happen to keep caps on oil prices maybe some some job owning and some
• 5:57
  market manipulation but in any case you know we're down at 75 and probably if i had to bet that chart
• 6:04
  It looks like it's telling me we're not headed rampantly higher very soon.
• 6:07
  And then you've got the, you know, the Dixie here, the dollar index, which we'll note is well above now where it was right before the war started.
• 6:17
  It's kind of just been been in this range, maybe kind of breaking out from this recent range.
• 6:21
  We'll see. But again, narrative violation that, you know, this was the this was going to drive massive dollar weakening and the final, you know, nail in the coffin of the USD that many people have been calling for.
• 6:32
  So none of this is to say that the U.S. again, the U.S. dollar is invincible or that oil can't go a lot higher eventually or that we won't eventually enter, you know, Weimar style hyperinflation.
• 6:43
  And, you know, that ushers in a Bitcoin standard overnight.
• 6:46
  But I think it's all just worth keeping in mind that a lot of analysts, again, from a lot of different frameworks and viewpoints, spent the last couple of months telling you that this was all going in exactly the opposite direction.
• 6:59
  So I think it just speaks to the relative, the much more complicated picture that we're looking at, where all these different things are intertwined.
• 7:08
  It makes it a lot harder to just say, you know, the U.S., despite all of its faults, despite all of its weaknesses and its sclerotic decay in a lot of areas, you know, is not still in possession of some major rabbits to pull out of its hat.
• 7:22
  No, where else are you going to go, especially with the AI wave?
• 7:26
  Yeah, it's a relative game for sure.
• 7:28
  right and we'll definitely talk more about the the AI build out because I
• 7:32
  think that's gonna be very relevant to some other headlines but we talked about
• 7:35
  last week like with US capital markets you know look at QQQ this year over CQQ right US versus China capital markets The Frontier Labs are here You know for now they still have a meaningful lead over open source
• 7:49
  See how long that lasts, but we'll talk about it later.
• 7:52
  There may be some things in the works to sustain that lead.
• 7:55
  But, you know, all the hyperscalers are here.
• 7:58
  A lot of brain draining has gone on in terms of bringing over the best talent from all around the world in the U.S. over the last 30 years.
• 8:06
  So, yeah, it's got a lot of faults, but so does everyone else.
• 8:10
  And it, you know, it often ends up being a tallest of the seven dwarfs type game.
• 8:15
  Yeah. And I think talking about monetary matters here, it is important to to recognize that we have a new Fed chair.
• 8:23
  And he had his first FOMC meeting and press conference last week where the Fed, I think, in line with expectations of the market, held rates steady.
• 8:35
  I think what maybe was not in line with expectations was the dot plot shifting demonstrably more hawkish.
• 8:43
  And the headlines out of CNBC were Warsh experience is worse.
• 8:47
  Fed day S&P 500 performance for a new chair since 1994.
• 8:51
  for. Yeah. Which of course, because it's this kind of market, you know, I think we quickly
• 8:55
  recovered from that the next day, but, um, you know, not a bit of a bit of a puke that day on
• 9:00
  the dot plot. Uh, I think nine of 19 officials indicated, um, uh, preference for a rate hike
• 9:07
  later in the year that was up from zero officials indicating that in March. So definitely kind of
• 9:14
  moving more in that direction. I think people are also trying to figure out, uh, if you look at
• 9:18
  worse, his red line of his speech that he gave, his official statement that he gave coming out of
• 9:25
  the FOMC meeting this week relative to the last one from Powell, you know, true to true to form,
• 9:29
  true to what he said he wants to do. He dramatically cut out a bunch of text because he wants to move
• 9:34
  away from this kind of, you know, Bernanke-esque forward guidance mantra and framework where
• 9:40
  Fed officials are constantly out there jawboning things into where they want them so that there's
• 9:45
  never any surprise or any real meaningful update on FOMC day. So if you look at, you know, what he
• 9:50
  did there, really cutting out a lot of language in the guidance, just said, you know, we're going
• 9:54
  to make price stability happen as it relates to, you know, the Fed's inflation targeting, whatever
• 9:59
  that means. So I think there's also a bit of, you know, consternation or wait and see mode on
• 10:04
  what that's actually going to mean in practice and how much or how little he's going to reveal.
• 10:08
  But I think in general, yeah, like there's definitely this narrative floating around
• 10:13
  that. And I think understandably so to some degree, because of the dot plots and his comments that,
• 10:17
  you know, he's going to be the worst Fed is going to be kind of meaningfully more hawkish.
• 10:22
  And I definitely think you can make that argument based on what he said about the balance sheet. And
• 10:27
  he instituted a new task force to review the Fed's $7 trillion balance sheet. And he's constantly
• 10:32
  said that he wants to get that lower and thinks that's too high. And, you know, I think all of
• 10:37
  that is reasonable. If you're going to draw that conclusion, he's going to be more hawkish. But I
• 10:42
  think there are a lot of constraints that he faces, some of which we've talked about before,
• 10:48
  some of which we can get into in the next couple of slides that should really color the way that
• 10:53
  people read what his options set actually is. And I don't think he's a moron based on everything
• 10:59
  I've seen. He's well acquainted, as we'll talk about probably a little more with Scott Besant,
• 11:06
  both via Stan Druckenmiller. Generally, you don't get into the positions those guys are in by being
• 11:10
  you know, a complete imbecile or completely situationally unaware. So I think regardless
• 11:16
  of how everything plays out, not going to call exactly what weird monetary policy tricks, you
• 11:21
  know, could be used, what facilities could be invented, what kind of, you know, end rounds could
• 11:25
  be worked out with other central banks globally. But I think there are a lot of options people
• 11:30
  haven't thought through. And I think more importantly, like whatever the ultimate manifestation
• 11:35
  is because of some of the stuff that we'll talk about here. Being meaningfully net hawkish,
• 11:41
  whatever that means, being Volcker 2.0, still just seems to me very, very off the table.
• 11:47
  Yeah. Well, and we'll get to the next slide, which would make you think it's off the table
• 11:52
  because we're looking at hyperscaler CapEx exploding higher alongside free cash flow
• 11:57
  plummeting. Are you foreseeing some sort of liquidity crunch with the hyperscalers if the
• 12:03
  ROI on this CapEx expenditure doesn't manifest in a timely manner. I mean, I think that's a piece
• 12:10
  of it. I think probably you wouldn't really get the answer to that one way or the other in 26 and
• 12:15
  maybe early 27. I think with this though, you know, these are kind of like, these charts are
• 12:19
  kind of two sides of the same coin with just the, you know, the way that CapEx is a detractor from
• 12:24
  free cashflow. But I think the chart on the left, you know, we had that in a previous episode a few
• 12:29
  months ago. I think it's even higher now. So I couldn't find the updated, the best updated version,
• 12:32
  But I think it's well over 600 projected and then, you know, even more for 27.
• 12:38
  So I think the upshot of this or the way that this is a constraint is up until now, like the AI bill has really been driven primarily by, you know, these hypers, these massive free cash flowing hypers, largely funding their build out out of that massive free cash flow pool.
• 12:55
  that they haven't, you know, have been some of the best businesses in the world for the last 20 years,
• 12:59
  don't consume a lot of incremental capital and have great unit economics.
• 13:03
  And they're just spitting off all this cash.
• 13:05
  And for a long time, they were just basically, you know, directing that to dividends and a lot of share buybacks.
• 13:10
  That's pivoted meaningfully over the last couple of years into actual AI build out.
• 13:15
  But, you know, if you look at the chart on the right, we are swiftly approaching the point at which, you know,
• 13:20
  we're back down to like kind of 2016-ish levels on free cash flow for a lot of these companies,
• 13:26
  for the hypers. And, you know, if that continues, like we're swiftly pivoting to the point where,
• 13:30
  you know, the zero bound is like not far away, right? And then the negative bound.
• 13:34
  And once you get to the negative bound, you know, what happens? Well, we're already seeing it with
• 13:37
  Google and a few others. You know, Oracle's not in this group, but, you know, they've already
• 13:43
  gone to the debt markets. Google's gone to issue a bunch of equity, which Berkshire participated in
• 13:47
  famously a couple of weeks ago. So maybe my point here as it relates to how this is a constraint on
• 13:53
  Warsh is where the direction of travel is that we are swiftly approaching the point where these guys
• 13:58
  need to go actually tap the capital markets, right? And some of that is going to be equity,
• 14:02
  but likely, you know, some of it will probably be debt too. And, you know, I think that implies
• 14:08
  like you need favorable financing conditions. You need accommodative, we might say, financing
• 14:14
  conditions, you know, whether that's in the debt or the equity markets are again, likely both.
• 14:18
  And this isn't just like, there are a few businesses over here that want to spend a lot
• 14:22
  of money on this thing. And yeah, maybe like they think it's a good idea, but like, you know,
• 14:26
  we're the government who cares, you know, AI has swiftly become, you know, borderline too big to
• 14:31
  fail for the, for the Trump administration's goals. And again, we talked about, we've talked
• 14:36
  about that before in other episodes, we'll talk about a little more in a few slides, but to the
• 14:41
  think you believe that's the case, it's kind of kind of increasingly becomes like, you know, in
• 14:45
  their mind, I would think a matter of national security, or at least a matter of deep national
• 14:50
  strategic interest for financing conditions to be accommodative enough to allow for this to
• 14:55
  continue to happen. So that build out can happen. And so that they can do kind of the run out
• 14:59
  playbook that, you know, they've talked about quite, quite openly. Yeah, and I'm sure we'll
• 15:04
  touch on this later too, but just looking at the chart on the left specifically with the hyperscalers
• 15:10
  and you look at Meta, Google, specifically,
• 15:12
  and even Microsoft, and you think about where they are
• 15:15
  in terms of keeping up with the frontier labs,
• 15:17
  most notably Anthropic and OpenAI and they seem to be falling behind I mean Meta is I think it hit the tape last week that their internal AI team is in complete disarray They calling it like a gulag All their
• 15:30
  engineers have been reduced to data labelers, essentially. Google, Gemini hasn't really kept
• 15:38
  up with Opus and ChatGPT, and then Microsoft openly saying like, hey, maybe we're mismanaging
• 15:45
  co-pilot here. Maybe we explore implementing something like DeepSeq
• 15:49
  in co-pilot. You have a ton of investment in this space.
• 15:54
  Objectively looking at it, just on the model side, it doesn't look like
• 15:57
  they're keeping up, but I think SpaceX, like we discussed
• 16:01
  last week, has proven that if you do build this infrastructure,
• 16:05
  you do have optionality because you can then sell it to Frontier Labs as well.
• 16:09
  Maybe some of these open source implementations will buy compute
• 16:13
  as well. So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out and if they can keep up. And you think
• 16:17
  of Google, they have optionality on the TPU side. And obviously they have a massive business that
• 16:22
  can leverage AI to surface things to people, but not diving too deep into that rabbit hole and
• 16:27
  staying on some of the conditions surrounding the economy that may put pressure on Chairman Warsh.
• 16:34
  You have the home buying conditions index here as well, which doesn't look great.
• 16:38
  Yeah, for sure. Look, this is from a recent Apollo chart pack. And I think there's even a more updated version, but you could pick through 20 different charts in there and you're getting kind of the same message that this remains a very unaffordable, difficult home buying environment, which is partially the result of mortgage rates, 30 year mortgage rates being much higher than they were just a few years ago and well outside of kind of a recent channel.
• 17:00
  So this is putting a lot of pressure on a huge amount of the voting base on both sides of the aisle, but certainly the MAGA voting base, the Trump voter base.
• 17:09
  And I think this is the other the second piece that Trump and Besson have been very clear that, you know, they they whether they've instituted or not, I can't remember.
• 17:19
  But they've talked in the past about wanting to declare a national housing emergency.
• 17:23
  Right. That we need to radically improve home affordability.
• 17:27
  I think there are a couple of ways you could do that and think about that.
• 17:30
  I think it's maybe in conflict with the notion of kind of keeping asset values sufficiently inflated for the boomer cohort to be happy.
• 17:39
  And so that's kind of a different question.
• 17:40
  But I think this is the second piece that makes it really hard to see a world where you can allow the long end to kind of meaningfully rewrite higher.
• 17:49
  Just like it affects, you know, your hypers, your frontier labs, your SpaceX's, like you're talking about, that all really need and benefit from accommodative financing.
• 17:59
  and there are bonds in the stocks with those, right?
• 18:02
  So if the 10-year goes much higher,
• 18:04
  the long-end goes much higher,
• 18:04
  that has direct effect,
• 18:06
  as we've seen very recently in 22 on equity valuations
• 18:09
  and what people can pay,
• 18:10
  what people are willing to pay.
• 18:11
  Same thing here or similar thing here
• 18:13
  where the long-end is a meaningful benchmark
• 18:15
  for 30-year mortgage rates
• 18:18
  and long-dated debt that people use for home buying.
• 18:21
  So again, this is the second piece
• 18:24
  where to the extent that you believe
• 18:26
  that the government is generally getting everyone on sides. You know, we've talked about that
• 18:31
  in past episodes. And there's a headline I have on a couple of slides down, but just, you know,
• 18:38
  Worsh's relationship with Besant, they've both kind of acknowledged the need or a desire for a
• 18:43
  new Fed treasury accord. They both seem, if you look at what they're saying, quite on sides with
• 18:48
  the Trump administration's general view on growth and, you know, running it hot. And if you were to
• 18:54
  believe that, well, the Fed is just kind of this truly independent thing that's sitting over here
• 18:57
  and doesn't really, you know, it's up on a mountaintop, you know, contemplating the forms and
• 19:03
  fully dispassionately just considering, you know, how to most dutifully execute the Phillips curve,
• 19:09
  then yeah, maybe you wouldn't agree with this. But based on the historical moment that we're in,
• 19:13
  which we've gone to great pains to document on this show, increasingly, it feels like correlation
• 19:18
  is going to one across all these institutions. And if you are in Warsh's position and you take
• 19:23
  that view, you got to take this seriously, right? As a major constraint on how hawkish you can really
• 19:29
  be to the extent that this is a major piece of the administration's goals. Well, I mean, just to
• 19:34
  continue this thread, I mean, not only is that true in the private sector, but I mean, I think
• 19:38
  in the public sector, particularly non-discretionary federal outlays as a percentage of receipts,
• 19:44
  if you're thinking about the national debts and what elevated interest rates do to affect the
• 19:49
  interest expense on that debt. I mean, looking at the different scenarios that could manifest
• 19:55
  in the coming years, like it could get out of control pretty quickly.
• 19:59
  Yeah. Like, you know, we've, we've talked about this chart before on the, on the show,
• 20:02
  I think this was on one of our first episodes, but, and it's, it's by no means gospel. And there,
• 20:07
  you know, a lot of different levers within the model that you can play with. But basically I
• 20:11
  think that the offshot is it's, we're not in a position where blended interest on the debt that
• 20:17
  we have to roll can go meaningfully higher given how we're already bumping up against
• 20:22
  non-discretionary spend relative to tax receipts. Right. So once we're, once we're at a point where
• 20:29
  that's over a hundred percent, uh, durably you're, you know, you're, you're printing, uh, you're,
• 20:34
  you're either, you're either defaulting on these, you're radically, you know, you're instituting
• 20:37
  radical austerity, you're cutting defense spending, right. Which is the exact opposite of what we've
• 20:42
  said we're going to do and what we want to do. It doesn't really work either with like a run it
• 20:46
  hot reshoring playbook or you're printing the difference, right? Not necessarily saying that
• 20:51
  we're going to get into like a, you know, Bernanke, Yellen, Powell, like radical balance sheet
• 20:57
  expansion. Maybe that'll happen depending on, you know, what kind of crisis events may or may not
• 21:01
  crop up. But again, just to frame the overall constraint that I think the worst faces on the
• 21:07
  budget side, you know, even in like a run at hot scenario where we do get crazy GDP growth because
• 21:13
  of everything we're seeing with AI and, you know, funneling more into defense spending and
• 21:18
  industrial reshoring. Generally, rates are pro-cyclical, right? So it doesn't, the rates
• 21:23
  don't want to be pro-cyclical historically. So it's not necessarily self-evident that just because
• 21:29
  you had a hot GDP growth that you would necessarily get a massive compression in rates. Typically,
• 21:34
  you would kind of see it go the other way. So I don't think it's as easy as maybe some analysts
• 21:39
  kind of want to want to think it is. And this is just the third piece of, you know, there's the
• 21:44
  federal budget does not leave Warsh in a fantastic position to, again, get meaningfully more hawkish,
• 21:50
  however you kind of want to define that. Yeah. And you alluded to it earlier, but I think one
• 21:54
  thing we've been consistent on is if they're going to try and thread this needle and navigate
• 21:57
  these interesting times, and they've been choreographing this, the Fed and the Treasury
• 22:03
  are going to have to work together pretty closely to make sure that everything stays on the tracks.
• 22:09
  Yeah. And, you know, both sides have said that, right? It's not just Besant kind of strong-arming
• 22:14
  Warsh, or maybe he is in the background, I don't know, but it's not just him kind of going on CNBC
• 22:18
  and suggesting this while Warsh kind of shies away from it. You know, their public statements
• 22:22
  suggest they're kind of in lockstep on this. I think, again, that can mean a lot of different
• 22:26
  things. I think the Treasury clearly has a lot of cards up its sleeve as it relates to how it
• 22:30
  manages issuance. And that's been discussed a good amount in the past couple of years.
• 22:34
  But again, I think this just highlights that you're not dealing with the kind of these two
• 22:40
  discoordinated or adversarial institutions that are looking at totally different frameworks and
• 22:46
  optimizing for totally different things. You know, that might've been true in the past,
• 22:50
  but it's going very much the other direction now, it seems based on these statements.
• 22:55
  And there's historical precedent for that too, right? We've talked about on the show,
• 22:57
  but like in the forties right And kind of a similar wartime economy you had an explicit Fed Treasury accord where the Fed was subservient essentially to the needs of the Treasury and the exigencies of national defense
• 23:13
  So we'll see if that fully plays out here.
• 23:16
  Maybe some other lighter version of it does, but there is meaningful historical precedent for it that both of these guys have explicitly highlighted in public statements.
• 23:23
  So it's not the craziest thing in the world.
• 23:26
  No.
• 23:26
  Yeah. And I mean, shifting gears to the, I guess, the seriousness with which the administration views AI.
• 23:34
  I mean, we talked about Fable 5 last week, but that story is not only about Anthropic and the U.S. government.
• 23:44
  It's about sort of AI as a general theme and how the U.S. government views it as a national security issue.
• 23:52
  And we're beginning to see the manifestation of this reality.
• 23:57
  I think Fable 5 being pulled and having export controls put on it was a big shot across the bow.
• 24:03
  And then we're getting more information about what was actually happening behind the scenes, not only between Anthropik and the U.S. government, but the U.S. government and other governments and the U.K. being one of them, which was requesting a carve out from the embargo on Anthropik's mythos and Fable models for British nationals and companies, which was denied.
• 24:23
  And so you're beginning to see the U.S. government hold this AI tech close to the chest.
• 24:28
  And I think this was also for like for all G7 countries, too.
• 24:31
  So it's not just like, well, China can't have it.
• 24:34
  Iran can't have it, like, you know, obviously, or kind of more marginal middle powers.
• 24:38
  Like, theoretically, the U.S.'s closest allies, all of our NATO allies are being denied this.
• 24:46
  And I think just speaks to your point, like we said last week, how the U.S. is going to flex and try to flex every single muscle it has, every advantage that it has.
• 24:56
  And right now, frontier intelligence is one of those advantages.
• 24:59
  and i think you know if you're thinking that this is just the the result of a spat between like
• 25:06
  lutnik and dario or like you know the hexa doesn't like anthropic because they wouldn't you know do
• 25:12
  xyz during a few months ago when the department of war was demanding different things you know i
• 25:17
  think that's a way too narrow view like this again is i think it's a piece of a much bigger story that
• 25:22
  we've been documenting here for a while and same thing with these these other headlines that i
• 25:26
  throw in here, right? The Hegseth came out with a pretty scathing rebuke of NATO and said he's
• 25:32
  going to review the U.S.'s relationship to NATO and try to shift a lot of the burden back onto
• 25:37
  European countries and basically demand that they spend a lot more on defense spending,
• 25:41
  despite the fact that a lot of them are in even worse debt positions than we are with their social
• 25:46
  safety nets. And then Cuba, we've been getting these veiled threats from Trump for the last few
• 25:54
  months. And, you know, finally, it seems to have resulted in all the arm twisting has resulted in
• 26:00
  a bunch of new reforms to the country's economic policies that move it allegedly much more toward,
• 26:06
  you know, privatized economy. You can argue about how effective any of those will be. But it's
• 26:10
  certainly I think it's close to like 100 different meaningful reforms for the first time since
• 26:15
  Castro took over. So all of these, I think, are just a piece with like, kind of what time it is
• 26:20
  and being aware of the situation that we're in and how the U.S. is viewing its influence around the world, rightly or wrongly.
• 26:29
  And I think that just goes back to what we were talking about with, you know, Warsh and Besant, right?
• 26:33
  That they seem to be on sides, they seem to be on the same page, and that page seems to be delivered, you know, directly from above.
• 26:41
  And I think, you know, all these things kind of look disconnected, but when you start looking at it with that lens, I think it's all really kind of the same story.
• 26:46
  Yeah, while this is going on in the background, our baby, our reason for living, the reason we get up in the morning and do the things that we do and do this show is Bitcoin.
• 26:58
  been range bound between 60,000 and the mid 70s, I would say for the last since the since the Iran
• 27:05
  war popped off. And as many people wondering what's happening here, what's happening,
• 27:10
  Bitcoin's range bound. And I think you have a a bunch of headlines and sort of reports here
• 27:17
  on the last slide to highlight like, hey, well, this is going on front and center with the
• 27:24
  geopolitical saber rattling, the AI raced towards AGI and the sort of political positioning
• 27:31
  and geopolitical positioning there. Bitcoin is still chugging along in the background and things
• 27:37
  are happening. Yeah. I mean, it's, I feel like every week it's just kind of like highlighting
• 27:42
  these and, you know, I know it's not sexy or exciting, but when you get an asset that's well
• 27:48
  off recent highs, it's just kind of chugging along in a certain range, you know, not to say
• 27:52
  that it can't go lower or that we won't pop out of this range sometime soon. But these are the
• 27:57
  kinds of things that I just, whether it's Bitcoin or anything else, like have always wanted to focus
• 28:00
  on just what's actually happening fundamentally. And, you know, there are just a few here that I
• 28:05
  highlight. And again, I feel like it's basically this every week. There are these drips of stories,
• 28:10
  but two on the top are from BPI, our friends at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, which does great work.
• 28:15
  A couple of the folks from BPI went over to visit regulators and policymakers at Taiwan's
• 28:20
  central bank after they got wind of a really good paper BPI put out about why Bitcoin could be a
• 28:25
  strategically advantageous thing for Taiwan's central bank to hold. Apparently did a couple
• 28:30
  of days of meetings and I believe scheduled even more discussions for the future. And on the right,
• 28:36
  just a discussion that I thought was interesting with Representative Nick Bagich, who recently
• 28:40
  proposed the ARMA bill, which is kind of an updated revamped version of the Bitcoin
• 28:45
  Institute of Reserve bill that would codify that in the law and have the U.S. buy a million Bitcoin
• 28:50
  over a certain amount of time. Don't know if that's the pathway it'll ultimately take, but it did get,
• 28:55
  I think, close to 20 co-sponsors. And I think Congressman Begich comes off very well in this
• 28:59
  interview. But you see these things on the policy side, just continuing to drip through again at a
• 29:05
  time when like none of this has to be happening. We're kind of in a bear market. It's pretty
• 29:08
  unexciting relative to a lot of other things. Yet you still see this stuff in the background.
• 29:12
  Same thing on the institutional side, you know, new products from BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, neither of whom have any obligation to keep this running right now.
• 29:19
  They got a thousand other things they'd be focusing on with AI and everything else.
• 29:23
  But you're still kind of seeing these products get more and more penetration into, you know, the wealth management channel, the RIA channel and become more and more available.
• 29:32
  And with real blue chip sponsors like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, you know, not very like third tier also rands, but household names, again, during a bear market.
• 29:42
  So we've made this kind of comment before on prior shows, but just ongoing steady cadence of, you know, drip feed of fundamentally positive news for Bitcoin and indicators for what's actually going on with it in the background outside of price entirely.
• 29:57
  So, you know, just I'm not going to call that your bull juice for the week, because, again, it's all each one of those individually is fairly boring, perhaps.
• 30:06
  But taken collectively with the kind of backdrop that we're looking at, both with Bitcoin's price action and just macro in general and all these things we talked about ahead of this.
• 30:14
  You know, if you're paying attention, if you have a decent, decently long time frame, I think this is exactly the kind of stuff that you would be looking for and the kind of stuff you'd want to see.
• 30:23
  It's happening. It's boring.
• 30:25
  embrace the boring nature of Bitcoin right now though.
• 30:28
  It's when stuff actually gets done
• 30:30
  and stuff is happening.
• 30:32
  And that's all we have today.
• 30:33
  We'll be back next week.
• 30:34
  John, a pleasure as always, sir.
• 30:37
  Always.
• 30:38
  Adios.