Latest / What Bitcoin Did / Bitcoin’s New Era: Liquidity, Macro, and the End of Four-Year Cycles | Nik Bhatia

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Bitcoin’s New Era: Liquidity, Macro, and the End of Four-Year Cycles | Nik Bhatia · What Bitcoin Did

0:00
Liquidity is exploding higher as we speak.
0:07
If the gentle ascent continues, does that extend the bull market beyond our typical four-year cycle?
0:16
I believe we could be in an environment now where the accumulation of Bitcoin remains steady for several years.
0:28
I would expect the price to be between $100,000 and $150,000 here over the next several months.
0:34
As that $50,000 realized price goes to $80,000, then the range then moves from, you know, to $160,000 to $240,000.
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I've never been able to put a year on Bitcoin hitting a million until this year.
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But I don't feel like it's speculative now.
0:53
Now it's within, you know, our current market reach.
0:58
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forward slash WBD. Mr. Nick Bartia, how you doing man? I'm doing great Danny, good to be with you
2:41
again. Good to be with you. I've not, we've not bumped into each other in a little while, this has
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been probably the longest I've not seen you for in a bit. Yeah, you're busy out in Australia. That's
2:49
why. I know just traveling all over the place, but things are going good, man. Bitcoin's absolutely
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ripping. I want to talk about macro with you, but we've got to start on Bitcoin. We're at what we
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are on just over 117k right now. That's pretty surreal on its own. But what's been your kind of
3:05
take on the Bitcoin market over the last few months? Slow and steady is my big takeaway for
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this bull market and a very impressive slow and steady because slow and steady is not really in
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Bitcoin's DNA, Danny, if we go back to its early history and even its recent history. So I find
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what I'm looking at more and more is the gentle ascent of Bitcoin's valuation relative to its
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underlying metrics. For example, realized value is one that I watch really closely. The gentle ascent
3:42
versus a violent ascent.
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And if the gentle ascent continues,
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does that extend the bull market
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beyond our typical four-year cycle?
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I think anybody that claims they have the answer
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as to whether we are in another four-year having cycle
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or not is ahead of their own skis.
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But I was joking around with our readers
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and community that I'm about 51 to 60% on the side that we have broken through this bull bear,
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this Bitcoin winter, two to three year Bitcoin winters every four years.
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I'm 51% certain that we've broken out of that.
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but any odds maker will tell you that even 60-40 is 50-50.
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I mean, 60-40 is how an odds maker just tries to get the action
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when they don't know when they're really 50-50.
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So I say it as a joke, meaning I'm somewhere between 50-50 and 60-40
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that we've broken out of that.
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But that's where I have a lot of my focus,
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trying to analyze that and trying to explain to the readers
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whether they should be thinking in terms of caution in six months, or is it okay to have an
5:17
aggressive strategy for the next six months as opposed to a cautious strategy for the next six
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months? And that's where a lot of my analysis is living right now. Yeah, I like that framing,
5:29
because I would be the same. And I think probably some of that comes down to a little bit of PTSD.
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So like last bull market, the super cycle narrative was pretty pervasive.
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And I've been really reluctant to say, has the cycle broken?
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Are we in a super cycle?
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Or is it even just like an elongated cycle?
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And that's probably the one that I think is most likely that this may just end up getting
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dragged out for another six months, a year for a few different reasons.
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One being, I think going into the midterms next year, Trump's going to want to run these
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things really hot and that's going to be good for Bitcoin if that happens.
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but at the same time like i i'm not willing to put my hat like my head on the line and say no
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the cycle's broken um so what would be the thing that breaks the cycle is this time like structurally
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very different i think that let's start with the word cycle because if we start with the word cycle
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then we're assuming that or let's actually start with the word super cycle because i don't know
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even want to use that word. What I'm thinking about in terms of the 60-40, what I'm thinking
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is that I believe we could be in an environment now where the accumulation of Bitcoin
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remained steady for several years,
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and the Bitcoin price oscillates
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around a multiple to realized value.
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As realized value continues to increase,
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Bitcoin continues to chop around
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two to three times its realized value
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and just is in a structural bull market
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that can have periodic consolidations or even bear markets where Bitcoin falls 20, 30, 40%.
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But it's in this oscillation around 2x its realized price. So right now the realized just
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crossed over $50,000 and the cap at a trillion. So two times that is $100,000. Three times that
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is $150,000. So I would expect the price to be between $100,000 and $150,000 here over the next
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several months. As that $50,000 realized price goes to $80,000, then the range then moves from,
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you know, to $160,000 to $240,000 and that we're oscillating. Now, if you go from $240,000
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to 160,000, that's a pullback of 33%.
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That could happen even over a year.
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And it still wouldn't be this previous,
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what I would call the cycle,
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the mining driven, the having driven cycle,
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where you get these rises up to four times realized price
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and then a crash back down to one or even 0.9.
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So that is the way that I'm thinking about the next few years.
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And would that be a super cycle?
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I wouldn't really describe it as that.
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It wouldn't be the word to describe it.
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Because super cycle might mean that you just continue on into elevated valuation metrics.
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So not that.
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And then you use elongated cycle.
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perhaps that could be a better way to describe what I'm thinking about is more of this but I
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wouldn't even use elongated I would just say that actually you break out of a cycle
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and then you're more subject to global macro factors when rates get hot it's going to be
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punitive, et cetera, that type of thing. And then more on the adoption story. So the reason why,
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let's go back to the reason why we get a market price to realized price ratio of 4X.
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The reason why you would get 4X, for example, Bitcoin at 70,000 in 2021, when realized price
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was at around 15,000, 17,000.
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You get that type of gap
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when you don't have structural selling in the market.
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You have so much exchange-based,
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futures-based leverage trading,
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and you get this extreme profitability in the market
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that is not really tapped
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because you don't have structural selling.
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You don't have selling calls on ETFs.
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You don't have all of these vehicles
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that are managing the volatility down.
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And so one of the charts we've been charting
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is Bitcoin's trailing 30-day volatility historically.
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And it's just compressed, compressed, compressed.
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And the last three years,
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the volatility can be described as muted
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versus trailing five to 10 years.
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Even if you look at 2021,
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the volatility was so much more than it is today.
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And so this compressed volatility
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is the new structure of the market, I believe.
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And compressed volatility prevents
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the 4X MVRV ratio.
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And if you can never get to 4X,
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then you can avoid the winter
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because the winter is so much destruction
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on the technical chart.
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And so you avoid the destruction.
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And I believe that the structural buyers,
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for example, the strategies of the world,
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they would love to prevent overheated Bitcoin prices
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because they believe that it could lead
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to a more winter-like environment
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in the subsequent months or years.
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So that's, I hope, Danny,
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I've answered a few of your questions
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in terms of how I'm thinking
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about this current bull market.
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Yeah, no, that makes sense.
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And so like what you're saying there
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is we won't get the blow off top
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like we have in previous cycles,
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but at the same time,
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it meets downside volatility.
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I'm in that 60-40 that we would avoid it.
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Yes, I'm hoping that.
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Yeah, and I like that idea
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for a couple of reasons.
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One, just I would prefer that. But I also think it makes it way more sustainable for people to build Bitcoin businesses.
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Because when we have the two years of just down only, obviously the first companies to go in the last cycle are all the fraudulent ones.
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But then there are real good Bitcoin businesses that just can't survive two years of negative price action.
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So I think that's a way more sustainable path if we can manage to do that.
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Is this just part of the market maturing?
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I do think that it is part of the market returing. And I use the word market structure a lot because it is about structure, options, hedging, calendar. Calendar is so important for risk management.
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If you can sell options one month, three months, six months, and 12 months forward, you can buy options three months and six months forward. You can plan. You can manage risk. And all of that mutes the volatility so that when you get, let's say we got a rise from today at 117 to 138, which is around my short-term, medium-term target.
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I'm not the only one that's looking at a 61.8% Fibonacci extension from previous breakouts.
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Everyone has their stop orders and their call options and their structure around the risk.
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And they understand that as this market matures, it's not going to go from 138 to 170 in the blink of an eye.
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They're not going to miss out.
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So they need to sell, lock in, create the income for themselves based on this basically herd mentality that we're not going to get the blow off top.
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So I see the call option volume at higher strikes, and it's not just Bitcoin. It's IBIT. It's MSTR. There's so many vehicles.
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And so all of that, you're talking about maturity. It's the maturity of the structure, the vehicles, the options, the calendar. That's what suppresses the volatility because remember, volatility is a function of options pricing, not realized volatility.
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Realized volatility is statistical look back, which in Bitcoin is declining, right?
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The realized variance looking backwards is declining.
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However, implied volatility is based off of options prices.
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And so if you are buying options, you are increasing volatility.
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But if you're an option seller, you knock that price of volatility back down.
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So it's the volatility sellers that have graduated from basically not even having the vehicles
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to now having the full suite of vehicles selling options on iBit, Bitcoin Futures, MSTR,
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across multiple vehicles across the entire calendar.
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the structural sellers physically mute implied volatility
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and dampen forward price action That how the stock market works Danny And so when we look at SPY options across the curve and across the calendar that how we manage risk in equities is that we
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know that there are levels at which volatility will, I'm sorry, the price will stop rising or
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stop falling because there's just a lot of buyers and sellers around those areas. Bitcoin players
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will always get rinsed in the absence of good risk management.
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And so it is alarming, Danny,
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the number of companies that are popping up.
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You have to think then they're all competing over capital.
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So which ones are able to raise the most equity?
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And of the equity holders,
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how long are those equity holders
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going to be willing to be patient
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not all of these companies are going to be able to issue debt or borrow in order to sustain.
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So the corporate finance expertise, I don't know if you just caught the news,
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that strategy released yet another vehicle, which is now targeting the shortest duration of fixed
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income money market funds, and is trying to offer a dividend or a yield with a stable net asset value
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at around 100 or par as we call it in money market fund land.
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So completely giving up capital appreciation,
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but also combining with a short duration.
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This is sophisticated layering
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of the liability side of the balance sheet,
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liability plus equity,
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all of that to leverage the assets,
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leverage up the assets
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and buy as much Bitcoin as possible.
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not everybody is going to be able to compete with that.
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So yes, if you have more companies,
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you have more Bitcoin demand,
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but the Bitcoin demand from the companies
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comes with owing debt and equity to people.
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And so their patients will be tested
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and they will withdraw when they don't see the results
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and that can create bankruptcies and all of that.
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But if you look at the number of coins
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that has come to market,
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let's just say with these recent 2011 coins
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that have started to move on chain,
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come into the custody of Galaxy,
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which we know is a big shop.
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Maybe the coins are moving for taking dollars out
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against collateral.
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Maybe it's to sell.
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Doesn't really matter.
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80,000 coins, how does it knock the market? It just doesn't. So you have strategy at 600,000 coins,
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but the rest of these companies buying a few hundred coins, or I don't even mean to,
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you know, dismiss a 4,000 coin purchase, but that's what micro strategy does when it's sleeping,
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You know, it'll buy another 4,000 coins. So if you have a few companies go under 4,000, 8,000, 20,000 that are, you know, spot liquidated.
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It really doesn't matter.
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I don't know that it hits the market, I mean, in a material way. Now, to all the people investing in the equity and debt instruments of these individual companies, I can't give all those people a pat on the back and say, best of luck to you.
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It's more, you know, may God be with you in your endeavors.
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But, you know, it's not my game.
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As you know, as a macro analyst, you can't necessarily be an equity analyst.
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And so I'm not going through the capital structure of these companies and saying which ones are good, which ones are not.
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Management will matter.
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And what I can tell you, Danny, is that reading the sophistication of MSTR's capital structure, the different vehicles, and how they are layering their approach to liability management, because that's the name of the game, I can promise you that the level of sophistication is going to be in the—I'm just making up a number.
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10x to 20x the skill set level that some of these other companies will employ. And that's not me
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discrediting the corporate finance officers at these companies. It's just the size that
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strategy has, the way that they're able to layer it out. It's very impressive to me as
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more of a corporate finance tourist myself, and I'd proudly call myself that, a corporate finance
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tourist. I teach corporate finance in its minutiae as it applies to fixed income, U.S. treasuries,
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thinking about economics, but I'm not a corporate balance sheet analyst by trade.
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and so but i can recognize those that are really good at it and i can also understand that those
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that are not really good at it can maybe fake it till they make it but that won't
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make you know every one of those last forever yeah that makes sense um just quickly back to
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the cycle thing um i've spoken to like a ton of macro people on the show over the last few months
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And one of the things that a lot of people tie the sort of traditional Bitcoin cycle to is not necessarily the halving cycle, although that definitely plays into it, but more a global liquidity cycle.
21:23
First of all, do you think that's the case?
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And then secondly, do you think that could mean that we don't actually exit this kind of four year cycle that we're in and instead like rather than staying in a super cycle or extended cycle, whatever you want to call it?
21:36
So as you know, Danny, I'm a liquidity, I've built a lot of the analysis that we're building at the Bitcoin layer around liquidity. We have our own index.
21:48
Liquidity maxi.
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I certainly am. But I'm not a liquidity cycle maxi. And so I don't know that just because
22:03
we had an inflation wave that was mostly supply side driven, as we saw inflation go from
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2 to 9 back to 2%. That was a pandemic-induced, a one-off. It's one-off structurally increased
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inflation from the 1 to 2% to now the 2 to 4%. I genuinely believe we're in this
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structurally higher inflation. But that doesn't mean that because there was restrictive in 2021
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and 2022 as rates were skyrocketing, that then we get easy in 24, 25, that then it's followed by
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restrictive in 26, 27. I don't necessarily follow that approach. I'm looking at liquidity
23:02
in the way that we analyze it,
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which is the size of the banking system,
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treasury volatility,
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and I'm analyzing it in the spot market.
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Like, where are we?
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Where have we gone?
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Rate of change matters a lot,
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but I'm not thinking it in terms of three, four, five, six-year cycles
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and how that liquidity cycles through the system.
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I now you know my mentor Michael Howell has this five-year number that
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every five years because of the quantity of debt and the size of the economy that every five years
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there's a rollover risk for the debt of the system I don't disagree with that either but
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Again, I'm more like, let's look at treasury volatility today. Let's look at the rate of
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change over the last 30, 60, 90 days. How is it going? Well, I'll tell you, it has collapsed.
24:08
Volatility has collapsed in treasury land. The move index has collapsed. I ran the numbers last
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night, 12 or 14 red weeks on the move index. What have stocks done? They've gone straight up.
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And so that is the framework working in real time for me to, I'm not like other analysts in that I can always think in this two to three to five year in advance and where the cycles are.
24:41
I have to more live in the now.
24:46
I was also running the numbers on treasury, 10-year treasury rates.
24:50
They're at four and a third today, approximately.
24:52
Well, guess when we were at four and a third two months ago, four months ago, 10 months ago, 18 months ago. I mean, you and you when we tagged in October of 2022, we tagged four and a third on the way up, but then you've been flat.
25:08
So the rate of change was punitive in 2021 and 2022, but then it stopped being punitive so that four and a third looked like a disaster in October of 22. But today it's not a disaster. In fact, it's actually a supportive. It's not even normal. It's supportive because stocks are at the all time high. And that's crazy. That's that's how we have to think about it.
25:32
So where is liquidity?
25:36
Liquidity is exploding higher as we speak,
25:41
despite four and a third on tens,
25:44
because if you think about four and a third on tens
25:46
three years ago, you're thinking about it wrong.
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It's four and a third today and collapsing volatility
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as opposed to four and a third three years ago
25:55
and spiking volatility.
25:57
While stocks are at the all-time high today,
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it means that four and a third is a good liquidity condition. It's providing liquidity.
26:08
And that's how I have to live in my analysis is I have to look at where we are, rate of change,
26:15
how it's affecting multiple asset classes. I think for sure that Bitcoin's 2022 bear market
26:26
is driven by a spiking of broad macro volatility
26:33
due to the inflation wave due to interest rates.
26:37
And we talked about it.
26:38
It's not that the Fed is hiking.
26:40
The market sells the bonds before the Fed hikes.
26:43
So it's the market punishing
26:45
and liquidity being sucked out of the system,
26:48
volatility spiking, markets stopping to be made,
26:52
people pull back from their Bitcoin position,
26:54
and then the reversal happens in the subsequent years.
27:00
So that's how I'm thinking about it.
27:03
So I definitely want to get deeper into the macro stuff
27:05
and what that means for Bitcoin.
27:06
But before we move on from kind of the cycle stuff,
27:09
do you have a sort of target in mind for this year,
27:14
next 12 months, whatever it is?
27:16
And no one's going to hold you to this, Nick.
27:18
But I did see you tweet recently that Bitcoin is going to a million,
27:21
but it's not going to be straightforward.
27:22
I mean, we know Bitcoin is going to a million.
27:23
is when not if right and that i think that that's part of what's making this new era of bitcoin fun
27:33
is the increasing certainty that it gets to a million in the 2030 to 2032 area that's i mean
27:42
that's something itself that i've never been able to put a a year on bitcoin hitting a million
27:48
until this year. So this is the first year I've been like, okay, by 2032, you might expect Bitcoin
27:55
to be at a million dollars. That's seven years from now. The next order of magnitude,
28:00
we hit 10,000 in 2017. So seven, eight years from 10 to 100, another seven to a million.
28:12
And you can really put it there and be like, yeah, the next order of magnitude is seven years away.
28:16
That's amazing. And I love that. It also means that the obsession over a million on this current cycle, that's not where the action is or the analysis is to me.
28:31
It means that at this portion of the cycle, we should be thinking about 200, 250. And so I am starting to think that 200 to 300 is what my expectation has been for the last few years.
28:50
but it's starting to lock in.
28:53
I think I was doing some back of the envelope
28:55
that 225, somewhere around there
28:59
in the next 12 to 18 months
29:03
seems very, very realistic to me.
29:06
The numbers that I was using there,
29:09
70,000 unrealized and 3X on the MVRV
29:13
puts us at 210.
29:16
And I really like thinking about 210
29:19
And it's a nice multiple of 21 as well.
29:22
And so we'll put it there at 210, Danny.
29:25
I don't want to put a time on it, but I'm not talking about five years here.
29:30
I'm really, I really am talking about one to two years now looking at like the next.
29:38
When we, remember when you guys were in my corner and we did that in person, we were
29:45
talking about we're talking about 300 and what would it take to get to 300k and that was i felt
29:57
like it was much more speculative at the time but it's i don't feel like it's speculative now now
30:04
it's within you know our current market reach it is wild though that the idea of throwing out a
30:11
million dollar Bitcoin, isn't that crazy anymore? I remember saying to people that Bitcoin is going
30:15
to go to a million dollars in like 2017. And people looked like you were fucking nuts.
30:20
And if I say that to people now, even if they're not very into Bitcoin, people are like, okay,
30:24
I can see that. And that mind shift is crazy. It's wild to see. And it's bullish.
30:32
It is. You have to lean into it too, because you have to normalize it. And it's my responsibility
30:39
to normalize it to the readers because, you know, I'll single out a reader that I have,
30:45
and God bless him, but he pinged me around the week of Liberation Day and he said I sold it all.
30:51
He an older gentleman not an American had set himself up very well but you know he out and he was a longtime reader and it wasn enough What we were doing wasn enough to keep him from doing that Not that it our responsibility to prevent him
31:09
from selling or to hold it all the way to the end, but okay, then yes, we do need to do a better job
31:16
or change the language, alter it to make it more as something that people expect.
31:24
yeah that's one of the reasons i do as well it's more to kind of shock people into taking it
31:28
seriously like i want people who i care about to own bitcoin and i feel like that's a really
31:34
easy way to make them take this thing seriously if they think it's going from 100k to a million
31:38
dollars in relatively short amount of time um but let's get on to the macro stuff i think to kind of
31:45
set everything up that i want to talk to you about we should probably talk about jerome powell and
31:49
Trump. Because Trump seems to be doing everything he possibly can to push Powell out of that seat.
31:55
But let's start with Powell. Do you think, if you take into account everything that he's gone
32:01
through sort of after the pandemic and high inflation, do you think he's done a good job
32:06
as Fed chair? The reason I like Powell, Danny, has less to do with his policy.
32:13
and we'll talk about his policy too.
32:18
But the reason I like Powell
32:20
is we're coming off of Yellen and Bernanke.
32:24
And I was on the desk for both.
32:26
So I got to experience, you know,
32:30
it's my third Fed chair, let's just say, in my career.
32:33
I like Powell because he doesn't insult my intelligence
32:36
when he talks.
32:38
Doesn't mean he doesn't have a political slant.
32:41
Sometimes you can hear his political slant.
32:43
But he doesn't talk down to the financial participant and try to tell them the condition.
32:52
He's more descriptive, and he's a financial market practitioner, so he does understand
32:59
things like volatility, bid-ask spreads, and options pricing.
33:05
he's not that economist guy
33:11
that Bernanke and Yellen were and are.
33:15
The hardcore academic economist.
33:19
He's a private equity guy.
33:21
He's a private sector background guy.
33:27
He is a long Fed career.
33:30
So I don't want to just put him as, you know,
33:33
as like a besant, for example,
33:35
which, you know, spent four decades in the private sector, a drug guy, a Soros guy, and then he comes into the Treasury Department.
33:47
So I've always liked Powell more than the previous two, because when he does the presser, I don't feel offended.
33:57
I mean, it might sound silly, but whenever Yellen or Bernanke spoke, I felt personally
34:05
insulted that you think this, you're taking my time if I'm going to listen to you.
34:12
I don't want to hear propaganda.
34:14
I want to hear more ascription of the situation.
34:19
So that's how I feel about Powell generally.
34:22
The policy, yeah, he was late.
34:27
in 2021 by a mile, the 2021 and 2022 QE will, I think, forever be inexplicable
34:43
from a pure Fed independent standpoint. But if you, and I know that you've done lots of work on
34:54
this, Danny, the arrangement between the Treasury and the Fed Department during the 40s up until the
34:59
1951 Treasury-Fed Accord, when they unpegged rates from where the government was setting them.
35:10
The 40s were a war period, and this was a non-war period, war-like spending program,
35:18
and the government needed to do that to prevent collapsing GDP.
35:23
So instead of blaming Powell,
35:29
maybe we assume that he didn't really have much choice
35:33
on the 2022 decisions to do extended QE.
35:37
Maybe he didn't have any choice.
35:39
Maybe he was tapped on the shoulder to do that
35:41
because of the CARES Act and the $3 trillion that had to be
35:48
rolled out to the market in the excess treasury supply that needed to be absorbed to not shock
35:54
the market. So we're on the topic of Fed independence. That's where this conversation
36:01
is going. Let's think about whether even that was independent, Powell, or whether it wasn't.
36:09
I don't think there's much of an argument to say that he was independent when they were doing that
36:18
secondary QE infinity.
36:21
That doesn't, I mean, it was terrible monetary policy,
36:26
but what if you didn't do it
36:28
and that spending package still had the green light?
36:35
What would that have done to the treasury market?
36:40
So what about Powell's policy?
36:45
Another thing is the SOFR wave.
36:47
he was one of the architects. I believe the acronym was AARC. I was studying it when I was
36:57
on the desk. The Alternative Rates Committee, that's what the ARC, I can't remember exactly
37:04
what it is. The Alternative Rates Committee, it was like the LIBOR cert, the search for the
37:10
replacement of LIBOR. This was going on during 2017. Powell was one of the architects of this.
37:15
and then he came in, he pounded the table on SOFR
37:18
and it all went over my head at the time.
37:21
I did not understand this.
37:23
I was barely getting into LIBOR.
37:26
My first real LIBOR mentor was 2018
37:29
as SOFR was popping up.
37:31
I'm like, what is LIBOR?
37:33
Why is it so important?
37:34
I was actually asking,
37:35
why are all these bonds that I'm trading
37:37
issued out of London and trading off of LIBOR?
37:41
I don't understand it.
37:45
It was the offshore dollar system, but I didn't understand what I was trading at the time.
37:48
So I definitely didn't understand the foresight of trying to bring a repo rate into the U.S. dollar capital market to anchor activity going forward.
38:02
I understood repo.
38:03
I understood why it was a great rate.
38:05
I traded repo.
38:07
So I understood why this is a brilliant rate to use.
38:10
I still didn't put the pieces together.
38:13
So Howell's ability to help the nation, or I shouldn't even say help the nation. Maybe he is patriotic in that way, or maybe his directive was to protect the United States of America as a nation.
38:31
But from a capital markets perspective, he was trying to reduce the influence of non-U.S. banks. Where is that in any of the conversations? See, it's not really present.
38:47
So how do I feel about Powell versus Trump?
38:53
Well, I don't actually know that it has anything to do with Fed independence at this point versus 2022 versus 2024.
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coverage. Visit anchorwatch.com today. That is anchorwatch.com. That's interesting to hear because
41:15
like I've always thought it was a bit of a charade that the Fed is independent. Like clearly it's not
41:20
fully independent. But if Trump does manage to get Powell out and bring in someone who's basically
41:26
going to work on behalf of the Treasury. That line gets blurred way further. Do you see that
41:32
as being a problem then or not really? It sounds like you're saying that may not even be a big issue.
41:38
It becomes a little bit political in that it's going to be more overt
41:44
as opposed to the 2022 when it's less overt.
41:50
that it's just the Fed responding to conditions, independent monetary policy.
41:57
Oh, and it so happens that Congress and the president are passing $2 trillion deficits also.
42:06
So is it a problem? Perhaps.
42:09
Besant is on the tape today, again, saying that the independence of the Fed is so crucial to the health of the U.S. economy.
42:19
So they're saying all the right words in terms of the independence. He's saying, but they also are doing all these other things. There's mission creep. So we have to open up the whole thing to investigation.
42:32
I think that it would be material if they overtly strip away some of the independents. But material to what? Material to the current politics.
42:46
But if you go back to the 40s, it's not even remotely different than something that's happened only eight decades ago in a period that, hey, we are also in a new period to what happened in 1944.
43:09
Bretton Woods Agreement, there was a new monetary system that was arranged in 1944.
43:13
It didn't even really kick off until 1958 because of capital controls in Europe.
43:22
That's something that was in my book, and I know it's something that you've talked about on your show as well, that the Bretton Woods Agreement and the system didn't even really get going until 58, and it basically died in 68.
43:41
So what are we living through? So if 44 was a time that the U.S. had to redo the monetary system and protect itself, and it had a Treasury Fed accord for many years during that time, how is this that different?
44:03
And if it's the same, is that bad or is that in the national interest? And if it is in the national interest, should we criticize a faltering of independence when you have – it's not even a speculation whether it went non-independent during the 40s until 51.
44:26
that's what it was, it was not independent
44:29
the treasury was pegging rates of the bills
44:33
and the Fed would buy them at
44:36
and actually what you learn when you learn about the history
44:41
is that the Fed didn't really even have to move the market
44:44
the Fed didn't really have to participate
44:48
it just kind of guides by its policy and then the market adheres to it
44:52
so it it's quite natural i think for it to go back this way doesn't mean you won't get critics
45:01
of the of the faltering of independence but again that's probably another 10 questions
45:09
um because obviously like the start of this fallout between trump and powell is really that
45:15
trump wants to cut rates and powell's been really reluctant to do so do you think there's an argument
45:21
that Powell should be cutting rates?
45:25
Yes.
45:27
Why is that argument?
45:28
The argument that Powell should be cutting rates
45:31
is that the curve isn't necessarily steep enough.
45:35
It's at about 50 basis points.
45:37
I'm talking about twos, tens.
45:39
It could be at 100,
45:40
and that, I would argue,
45:42
would be even healthier for the economy.
45:45
A steeper yield curve is good for banks.
45:47
They borrow short, and they lend long.
45:51
and they capture the curve.
45:54
And with more steepness in the yield curve,
45:58
they have more protection for their profitability.
46:03
And the two-year yield has been guided a little bit lower
46:09
than where the Fed Fund's rate is today,
46:11
which means the market has room for them to cut.
46:15
I don't know that rates need to be at 2%
46:18
because again, it goes back to what we said about four and a third. And I realize that's
46:25
tens and we talking about twos different parts of the yield curve With tens at four and a third and the stock market raging on do we need lower rates No I would argue no we don
46:39
really need lower rates because stocks are doing great with tens at four and a third.
46:44
So why do you need twos to go from four and a third to three and a half? Not necessarily.
46:50
Can I ask you a question on that just so I can understand a little bit more?
46:52
But are rates of that while stock market is at basically all-time highs because the market is factoring in inflation?
47:00
Is the market saying they think inflation is coming back?
47:03
No, and I think that we talked about this last time.
47:06
When you decompose the yield of tens into the tips yield, which is the real yield, that's a market yield that you get plus inflation, you get this coupon plus inflation.
47:20
you strip out the real yield, then what you're left over is the break-even, the inflation break-even,
47:26
the assumption of CPI going forward. It's frozen at two. It just doesn't really move from two to
47:33
two and a quarter and hasn't for the last three years. So there are not, there are the expectation
47:42
for inflation going forward is somewhere in the two to two and a half percent. It's not very high.
47:49
and the real yield is also around two to two and a quarter percent and which means that if you own
47:56
treasuries you have an option i can either get four percent from the notes or i can get two percent
48:04
from the tips i expect them to come out even because i could either get four or two plus two
48:12
that's going to be the same. If it wasn't, if you had, let's say they expected 5%
48:19
inflation, you know, in three years from now, you would be buying tips at two because you get
48:26
two plus five. I'm going to get 7% next year or in two years. That's a buy all day, all day.
48:34
But it's not. I mean, tips would be trading at 0% or negative, which they had. You know,
48:41
tips had traded at a negative yield for quite often over the last few years. I should say
48:49
going back 10 years, it's traded negative. It just means that the inflation expectation going
48:59
forward is not much more than two. If it was, you wouldn't be able to buy tips at two because it's
49:05
free money. That makes sense. It's free money, right? It's a breakeven. So if we get into like
49:09
the more speculative side of this, then let's say Jerome Powell does get ousted, Trump brings
49:14
someone in. I imagine the easy assumption there is the first thing they do is start cutting rates.
49:19
Does that then lead to a higher chance of inflation going forwards?
49:24
Of course. Well, when you pump the economy, when you lower rates, we'll just go first,
49:32
second order, third order, right? When you lower rates, you spur borrowing. When you spur borrowing,
49:38
you create new money, right? That's credit creation. When you create new money,
49:44
you increase aggregate demand because they're just new borrowers. There's just more money.
49:49
When you increase aggregate demand, inflation goes up. So it's one, two, three, four,
49:54
and it happens. Boom, boom, boom, boom. That's it. So yes. And do you think the,
50:02
I guess the question is, what else do you think the next Fed chair will likely do? Do you think
50:07
things like QE will come back? I don't think you need, and I think they're trying to go away from
50:13
that. I think they're trying to go away from the swelling of the Fed's balance sheet being
50:21
such an influential part. I think back to
50:29
the dual public good that this administration is trying to address.
50:38
They have come out and said,
50:40
we are providing the world a dual public good
50:42
of treasuries as a reserve asset and global security.
50:47
We are going to reduce the public nature of that good,
50:51
meaning you have to pay for it now.
50:54
So the defense is easy because you just have to
50:59
purchase more weapons. If you purchase the weapons, then we will protect you. So that's easy.
51:06
But how do you get them to reduce their reliance on treasuries as the reserve asset? You actually
51:12
have to buy less from them on net. And so you send less dollars out. So if you send less dollars out,
51:21
they have less money to buy treasuries. Well, then you better not issue so many treasuries.
51:26
you better reduce the amount of treasuries that you're issuing.
51:32
And so the shift into Bitcoin policies and supporting the idea of Bitcoin, even talking
51:41
about gold, you know, the whole Fort Knox thing, something that's so funny because I
51:47
saw an absolutely epic meme of Trump.
51:51
It's the mom in the pool holding up a smiling baby.
51:56
The smiling baby is Coca-Cola with real sugar.
51:59
The other baby is drowning and it's the Epstein files.
52:03
And then at the bottom of the pool, the skeleton is the Fort Knox audit.
52:07
Yeah, we didn't get that live stream audit that they promised.
52:10
We certainly did it.
52:12
But I say all this to say that increasing the legitimacy and popularity of gold and Bitcoin
52:19
as neutral reserve assets reduces the necessity
52:24
of foreign governments to stockpile treasuries
52:27
as the reserve asset.
52:28
Because, oh, the U.S. is doing it too,
52:32
you know, stockpiling these other reserve assets.
52:34
This is going to be good for us.
52:35
So your question was about QE.
52:38
I say all of this to say the U.S. government,
52:42
from a policy perspective, actually wants less treasuries
52:49
debt relative to the GDP. They want that number to go down. And if it goes down,
52:57
you are less so reliant on the central bank to stockpile treasuries and all of that kind of
53:03
stuff. Do I think that they're trying to get their own Fed share so that they can do their
53:10
own version of the CARES Act or this, you know, big, beautiful bill cubed where they
53:18
borrow and spend $10 trillion on energy grids and energy infrastructure and new nuclear power
53:25
plants. I don't really think so, Danny, that that's part of what they're trying to do is like
53:34
a blank check for 100 new nuclear power plants and rewiring the electricity grid around the country
53:43
and, you know, rebuilding bridges and ports and all of that kind of stuff. I don't think so. I
53:54
actually really don't believe that that's what they're trying to do. They want the private sector
53:58
to do it. They want US banks to lend. It's actually the same thing as the CBDC versus
54:05
stablecoin thing. It's all about public versus private. They want digital dollars. They just
54:11
don't want to issue. They don't want the central bank to issue. They don't want to issue them.
54:14
They just want the banks to do it. So they want the private sector to do all this growth,
54:21
build out. They want the banks to lend, and they just want to be supportive. Low regulation,
54:26
low taxes i i know it's a very long answer but i don't believe that it's a qe for the blank check
54:35
for 100 nuclear power plants funded by the u.s treasury okay interesting um so on the bitcoin
54:43
stuff i got you to speculate a little bit if you had to speculate here do you think
54:47
again let's say in the next 12 months probably sooner power loses his job and rates get cut
54:52
politically I do believe that's where we're going.
54:57
I don't know how healthy it would be to slash rates,
55:01
let's just say, right?
55:02
Stock's at an all-time high.
55:05
Inflation isn't reined in.
55:07
It'd be good for Bitcoin.
55:13
I want to see Bitcoin weather all the storms,
55:18
not just get a free ride,
55:20
which is why I don't really believe that,
55:24
again, four and a third stocks at all time high.
55:28
You don't need stimulation.
55:32
It's actually stimulative.
55:37
It's unbelievable to see the economy
55:40
and the stock market both do what they have
55:43
with tens at four and a third for three years.
55:46
It's incredible.
55:48
You actually, one must marvel at it.
55:50
Think about, Danny, all the, and I'm going to pick on maybe some of the people you interview.
55:56
Think about all the hysteria about treasury auctions.
55:59
Oh, my God.
56:00
Treasury auctions are failing.
56:02
Every three months, like, one 20-year goes bad.
56:05
And everyone's like, treasury auctions, are you kidding me?
56:11
Three years with rates absolutely flat, the last five, 10-year auctions have gone stop through,
56:19
meaning more demand in the moment than where the going-in price was.
56:23
It's called when issued, the when-issued market.
56:25
Five straight months that tens have beat the when-issued market.
56:29
This is a—I wouldn't say you're in a raging bull market,
56:34
but this is a very stable market.
56:37
Not only is it stable, but volatility is collapsing,
56:40
which rewards all the risk holders.
56:42
Treasury market stability has been the name of the game for three straight years.
56:53
so what does the fed what does trump or besant need to get the fed to do for them other than
57:04
one thing
57:05
annual interest expense right which feeds directly back into how much they can cut taxes and all that
57:14
kind of stuff that's this fiscal dominance idea annual interest expense the actual dollars that
57:20
they spend. They're like, hey, please cut the rate so that our actual interest dollars that we spend
57:27
can go down so that we can cut taxes and not get scored by the CBO in this negative way that makes
57:35
all the headlines say you're increasing the deficit. They're not actually increasing the
57:40
deficit. They're reducing taxes, hoping that the deficit doesn't continue to spiral. But
57:49
yes, that's the way that it gets spun and that the CBO scores it is that when you reduce taxes,
57:59
well, if the interest rate doesn't come down, you're going to have a deficit and it is going
58:07
to grow. That's just math. So it is about math. They want it lower because of this first order
58:14
effect reason not to do all this. And I want to mention one more thing. I was in Washington in
58:24
January, and I got to go to the Capitol and chat. It was obvious to me that this false narrative of
58:33
poor treasury auctions was an underlying scare tactic for the government to get the votes,
58:41
to get stable coins so that you can have an additional buyer of treasuries.
58:46
It was a psyop.
58:47
Everyone was talking about it.
58:49
It was obvious to me.
58:52
It doesn't, I actually think it's good, right?
58:54
The stable coins being another source of treasury demand.
58:57
It's good.
58:58
It's not going to save the treasury market.
59:00
It wasn't necessary to save the treasury market, but they got it.
59:05
It's another buyer.
59:07
The treasury market didn't need saving.
59:09
it is, again, it's stable, it doesn't mean that they can ignore it. Like, they're doing everything
59:19
they can to structurally reduce the amount of net imports, right? I mean, everything from tariffs to
59:30
the tomato ban now on Mexico, every little marginal thing that they can to prevent
59:39
the export of dollars, the stockpiling of treasuries abroad. They can. They're trying to do.
59:46
And maybe it is contributing and maybe it's not. But the U.S. Treasury right now
59:53
is in a decent place. And look at the June numbers. I literally fell out of my chair
59:59
when I saw that they had a surplus in June. I mean, is that a weak treasury market or a good
1:00:07
treasury market where you're actually turning a surplus even if it's one month um it's a little
1:00:14
surprising to the upside to try and take this back to like the start of the conversation when
1:00:20
we're talking about bitcoin cycles is there a bit of a strange irony here where someone coming
1:00:25
into replace powell cutting rates might lead to bitcoin pumping and be one of the things that mean
1:00:30
we stay in the four-year type cycle if we have more of a blow-off top type event and things do
1:00:35
have to pull that down. I can't really see that happening. I don't think that a new Fed chair
1:00:43
pumps Bitcoin. There's the quote. I don't think that one person, even Donald Trump,
1:00:54
can have that type of effect. Remember that the current wave of pro-Bitcoin policy is driven by
1:01:00
the electorate. Trump is responding to the electorate. It's not a Trump. Trump is not the
1:01:06
one that's like, let's use Bitcoin to save the nation. He tells us that it's him pumping Bitcoin.
1:01:14
Yeah. He loves himself. Yes, that's clear. Well, Nick, you're the best. I've really enjoyed talking
1:01:23
to you. Always do. Where do you want to send anyone to find out more about Bitcoin layer,
1:01:28
the Bitcoin age, all the work you do. The Bitcoin layer.com is where people can find
1:01:34
all of the work. So you get links to the channel. It links to our research offering
1:01:38
and my two books, layered money and Bitcoin age. So the Bitcoin layer.com, you guys can find
1:01:45
everything that we're doing over there. Amazing. Thank you so much for this, Nick. It was good.
1:01:49
And I'll, uh, we'll definitely catch up in October as well when I'm in LA.
1:01:52
Danny, all the best. Thank you so much. Appreciate you.
1:01:55
Thank you, man.
1:01:58
Thank you.