Latest / The Income Show / Doctor Quit Medicine to Manage a Bitcoin Hedge Fund | The Income Show | Ep. 15
Transcript
- 0:00I went from being like one of the biggest fans of strategy out there to now I kind of cringe a little bit.
- 0:05I just think their focus is way too much now on these Wall Street products, these fiat products and these crypto bro kind of ideas.
- 0:12And I would love to see them basically humble themselves and come full circle back to we want to stack Bitcoin.
- 0:19We want to increase Bitcoin per share for strategy holders.
- 0:22And this other stuff is just sort of a side show.
- 0:25But right now the side show is the main show.
- 0:27It's tough for me to watch.
- 0:28The stuff that you don't foresee is the stuff that kills you.
- 0:32If you think you can't lose on something and all I have to do is borrow approaching infinite
- 0:36amounts of money at 12% to buy Bitcoin, which has to appreciate at 30%, Bitcoin's not going
- 0:43to appreciate. It's going to sit there and wait until you get wrecked. And then it's going to
- 0:46flow to people who treat it with more respect and with less leverage. But in the meantime,
- 0:50the people who I think are applying copious amounts of leverage because they can't lose,
- 0:55I think are going to lose the sacrificial lamb of this bear market.
- 0:59The last one was a centralized exchanges and all of that crypto NFT garbage and stuff.
- 1:04This time it's.
- 1:12Hey, everybody, welcome back to The Income Show.
- 1:15This week I have on Dr. Jeff Ross, who is founder and CEO of Vailshire Capital Management.
- 1:21Jeff spent 13 years as a radiologist before leaving medicine and to run his own macro hedge fund, which is obviously a Bitcoin-focused hedge fund.
- 1:35I think he's one of the clearest voices on markets, global liquidity, and just understanding Bitcoin through all the cycles.
- 1:44So, Jeff, thank you for taking the time to do this. Welcome to the show.
- 1:48Thanks so much, Joe. It's great to be back on your show. I appreciate the invite.
- 1:52Absolutely. So, Dr. Jeff, like maybe we can rewind for those that may not fully know your background. Like I said, you were a doctor, a practicing doctor. You pivoted towards markets. Why did you make that initial pivot? What captivated you in regards to markets?
- 2:09so okay so we got to go way back for this so this would bring me all the way back to college where i
- 2:15had to decide at that point if i always had an interest in kind of investing in finance and
- 2:20in just numbers in general and then i had a real you know a desire a draw to go into medicine as
- 2:26well college i had to make the decision so i went down kind of the pre-med route and ended up doing
- 2:32that and had to leave finance stuff on the back burner for for quite a while so as you probably
- 2:38know, like the process to go, you know, med to do, you know, pre-med and then med school and then
- 2:42go to residency and then do a fellowship. Um, uh, basically was all consuming. I got married in
- 2:49there. I had some kids in there as well. And so by the time I got out of my fellowship training in
- 2:532008, uh, and was practicing, uh, like full-time as a radiologist and as an interventional radiologist,
- 3:00um, I, I, I basically, my, I felt like my head popped above the water and I finally took a breath
- 3:07and looked around me to see what was going on in the world since I last looked at it about 15 years
- 3:13earlier. And then within maybe a year or two of just working as a doctor, my kind of desire to
- 3:21start thinking, and it probably came because I finally had money to invest, right? So I was just
- 3:25basically living in poverty for about 15 years and had to think about what I wanted to do with
- 3:30my money. So I started reading a lot of newsletters and then I started my own kind of blog, actually,
- 3:36back when blogs were a thing way back then. It ended up doing all right enough so that I got
- 3:43noticed and got picked up by the Motley Fool. And I started writing for them and got to go out and
- 3:48meet the Gardner brothers, which is kind of fun, the founders, and then started doing some writing
- 3:52for Seeking Alpha as well. So I kind of started out as one of those guys who kind of talks about
- 3:56investment ideas. After a few years of doing that, I had developed enough of an audience that people
- 4:03were asking if I could manage their money for them. And I'm like, oh, I'm just a doctor. I just
- 4:07do this kind of for fun on the side. But it kind of put an idea in my head like, wow, what if I
- 4:11could do this? And actually, I love managing my own money. What if I could do it for other people
- 4:15as well? So fast forward 2013, 2014, I founded Vailshire in 2013, started running my hedge fund
- 4:22in 2014. I had another kind of attached business of an RIA. So I was managing by the time,
- 4:30And this is a whole different story. But by the time I shut that business down in 2024, the RIA side, I had about 120 clients at that point. So that was kind of a big move for me to shut that down. But I've continued on since early 2014 with my little friends and family hedge fund.
- 4:47so coming to where we are today no longer a doctor don't please you just call me jeff
- 4:53and i last worked as a doctor about a year and a half ago and i'm just running my friends and
- 4:58family hedge fund it's it's kind of a macro strategy um uh global macro multi-strategy
- 5:04bitcoin friendly hedge fund uh and i'm just having a great time doing that it's been a it's
- 5:09been a lot of fun i've learned a lot of lessons along the way for sure yeah i love it i'm definitely
- 5:13I'm going to ask you a lot of questions around that.
- 5:16I couldn't remember if you had shut down your fund or you'd shut down the RIA.
- 5:20So good to clarify that.
- 5:22Yeah, it's confusing.
- 5:23Yeah.
- 5:24Yeah.
- 5:25So I guess like from your perspective as a former doctor, like, do you think that that, you know, education and experience helped you see markets differently or no?
- 5:38I think so.
- 5:38And, you know, from the get go, it was kind of I've always been sort of an anomaly.
- 5:44Right. There's there's some people out there like me, but but but not really.
- 5:47So and here's how I look at it. Like I'm a radiologist or by training.
- 5:51And so I basically get paid to notice patterns.
- 5:55And, you know, so pattern recognition is important in learning to distinguish between like the normal appearance of an organ versus a disease state of an organ and putting the stories together, those kind of things and making a diagnosis.
- 6:07that actually works pretty well from a macro perspective.
- 6:10So to be able to kind of look at the whole financial system or the whole monetary system
- 6:14and be like, you know, this isn't quite right.
- 6:15I'm noticing these patterns.
- 6:17I go back and I love reading history and like financial history is super interesting to me.
- 6:22So like I'm really drawn towards things like Ray Dalio's work,
- 6:25the stuff he's done on the big debt cycles and things like that.
- 6:28And like, are there, you know, correlations in history?
- 6:31Does history rhyme?
- 6:32Are there patterns that we can look at and review?
- 6:36Fourth turning kind of stuff, Neil Howe, those sorts of things like are just super fascinating to me.
- 6:41Do these actually repeat? Are these like historical lessons that we can learn from?
- 6:46And then if so, you know, how can we apply that from a macro perspective to do well investing over the long run?
- 6:54So that sort of draws me to people like Ray Dalio and like Stan Drunkenmiller.
- 6:58Like those are two of my favorites in the macro hedge fund space.
- 7:02Um, and you know, I'm from my, my little home office, uh, in my little friends and family
- 7:08fund, I try to be kind of like them and run my fund from that sort of macro perspective.
- 7:12So, so yeah, so I think there is overlap.
- 7:15Most people don't see that as overlap, but I've also noticed by the way, there's also
- 7:19a strong correlation between people who are good at investing and people who are engineers
- 7:23by training.
- 7:23So I think of doctors as basically human engineers, but these, you know, mechanical electrical
- 7:28engineers and other types of people, they tend to view the world from a systematic process
- 7:32Like, what do we need to do to improve our system and make it better?
- 7:36And I think of like Preston Pysh and Lynn Alden, you know, friends of mine and other and lots of other people who are engineers turned investors and turned Bitcoiners.
- 7:44They just sort of see these and they have a dispassionate view of how the system works.
- 7:49And like, what can we do to have a systematic approach to do well?
- 7:53And from my perspective, to like earn, you know, money, earn profits for my clients over the long run.
- 7:58So there actually is more overlap than most people think.
- 8:02No, that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious from the perspective of your fund and like how you've
- 8:07been managing the fund, has your macro position always been the same? Has it evolved a good bit?
- 8:13Were you always into sound money and gold and Bitcoin or how has that evolved over time?
- 8:21So my macro view, well, first of all, macro is kind of always changing. That's what kind of
- 8:26makes it interesting. I think of it like a weather system, like there's four seasons and
- 8:30And you can kind of see what's coming a little bit if you peer ahead with macro.
- 8:34And you never be able to guess is it going to be raining a month from now on that exact day nobody knows that like guessing the future but you can kind of say well it it you know we approaching the fall so it probably going to be cooler weather and if you know if i look six
- 8:48months ahead it's probably going to be winter there might actually there's a good chance there'll be
- 8:51snow on the ground or you know maybe some icicles so you can sort of look ahead from a macro
- 8:56perspective and that's how i think about it um regarding like uh you know gold and sound money
- 9:02things like that. So I came to Bitcoin as a gold guy. So before I knew anything about Bitcoin,
- 9:07I actually had learned about gold. I knew that something was wrong with our money. I knew that
- 9:12inflation is a real problem, that the reason why we have inflation is basically because governments
- 9:17spend and borrow way more than they can actually afford. And when they do that, they basically
- 9:24accrue debt and that debt basically has to be absorbed by somebody. And so it's monetized.
- 9:28You know, we say it's we blame the central bankers for it, but it's basically congressional spending that that causes this in the first place.
- 9:34And then who pays for it's the holders of the currency.
- 9:37So anyone who owns dollars gets debased over time and that debasement comes out basically as higher prices over time.
- 9:44So so knowing that for a long time, I used to be a big fan of gold.
- 9:49I think gold has done a fantastic job of being a stable store of value for thousands of years.
- 9:54You can look back in history, you know, 2000 years ago, 3000 years ago, and kind of look that it has about the same purchasing power that it did back then.
- 10:02And then along came Bitcoin.
- 10:04And for me, once I finally figured out Bitcoin, I toyed with it for about five years.
- 10:09I was one of those crypto bros that had a diversified portfolio of crypto because I just didn't really know what I was doing yet and didn't understand Bitcoin.
- 10:16But by about 2020, and for me, the light came on after I read Seyfedean's book.
- 10:21Like that was sort of like the aha moment for me.
- 10:23And then everything, I kind of went a lot deeper into the rabbit hole at that point. But it occurred to me that we couldn't actually create for humanity the perfect form of money until the digital age. So it took all of the, you know, everything that makes Bitcoin what it is, it makes it a better form of money, even than the previous best form of money in the analog age, which was gold.
- 10:44now we're in the digital age and now we have this this more superior form of money so that's what
- 10:49kind of made me go all in uh with enthusiasm regarding bitcoin yeah no that makes a lot of
- 10:55sense you brought gold if you look you know over the last i guess i don't know 12 18 maybe 24 months
- 11:01gold has done exceptionally well bitcoin not so much necessarily what do you think has driven that
- 11:09specific divergence. So I don't know. Are you familiar with Michael Howell? Have you ever
- 11:15interviewed him? A little bit. Cross-border capital guy. So I agree with his take on it.
- 11:21So first of all, I'm a big liquidity fan, right? And he's sort of the godfather of liquidity,
- 11:24or at least the most prominent figure these days. I think that liquidity drives asset prices
- 11:30and that even though there is theoretically infinite currency, right? Fiat currency,
- 11:39you can print infinitely at any given time, it's a finite amount. And so at any given time,
- 11:44there's a scarcity in that currency and global currencies and where they can go. So regarding
- 11:52gold in particular, China has come down very definitively that they are using gold and not
- 11:58U.S. treasuries as their reserve asset. And they have a whole system that they are setting up and
- 12:04they've been setting up basically for at least over a decade to basically have a global monetary
- 12:09system that is based on gold foundationally. And so I think that when we see these spikes in gold,
- 12:17what we're really seeing more than anything is our continued spikes in Chinese liquidity. So
- 12:24they're having a deflationary kind of spiral right now. They have to print to sort of try to
- 12:29get their way out of this prop. So they have their own issues that are very different from
- 12:32the Western world. But they are encouraging their citizens and then their central banks
- 12:37as well, the PBOC, they are basically stacking gold whenever they can in order to basically
- 12:43solidify their own financial and monetary system. I think that has a lot to do with why gold is
- 12:49where it is. In fact, if you look at some of the work that Michael Hall does, for example,
- 12:53when there are movements in Chinese liquidity, several weeks later, you see basically a
- 12:59directional move in the same direction for gold price. And so I think that's the main reason why
- 13:03we've seen such a move in gold as China and then other nations have been kind of following suit and
- 13:08decreasing significantly the amount of treasuries they have as reserve assets and just U.S. assets
- 13:14in general. People are moving towards gold. So that's what I would say about gold. And I will
- 13:20say based on prior cycles, and I have shown this chart a few times on social media, looking at if
- 13:26you look over the vast expanse of modern history, so basically from like the early 1900s all the way
- 13:32until today, you see huge spikes, ebbs and flows basically in the S&P 500, so the U.S. stock market
- 13:38when you price it in gold. And it's super fascinating. And so you can see these huge
- 13:43spikes and peaks, like 1929 was the first major peak, after which basically gold significantly
- 13:52outperformed stocks. All the way, there's a first bottom, I think, in 1933 or so, and then a second
- 13:58bottom in the early 1940s, 1941, I believe. And then we had a run and I call it that we start
- 14:05seeing then a peak of financialization. So everybody piles back into US assets, which that
- 14:10lasted all the way until about 1967 or 1968. And then people basically said, what's going on? Like,
- 14:16you know, what are we doing, putting all our money in the US during this crazy war within Vietnam
- 14:20that they can't win, spending all this money, there's social upheaval, blah, blah, blah.
- 14:24So people started to basically go away from the financialized assets in the U.S. and towards hard assets.
- 14:31And I think gold is the best descriptor of that.
- 14:34Excuse me.
- 14:35And then that lasted all the way through the late 60s, all the way until the early 1980s, where gold massively outperformed stocks and hard assets and commodities massively outperformed these financialized assets.
- 14:47Excuse me.
- 14:48And then we had another big run all the way up until like 1999, 2000, the dot-com bubble that everybody knows about.
- 14:55Another peak in financialization.
- 14:57Everybody was all gung-ho about U.S. assets.
- 14:59Then another rollover.
- 15:01Gold outperformed significantly all the way until about 2011 or so.
- 15:05And I'm sorry, this is getting long, but it brings us to where we are today.
- 15:08So then we had one more huge financialization rise where everybody piled back into U.S. assets again, which basically peaked in late 2021, early 2022.
- 15:19And since then, gold has been outperforming.
- 15:21And I bring all that up to say these cycles usually last about 10 to 15 years or so.
- 15:26And I think that we're a couple of years into that.
- 15:29So probably like four, three, four or five years into this new cycle where gold, hard assets, commodities, things like that will outperform financialized U.S. assets.
- 15:40And this has been a trend in history and you can actually see it very clearly going all the way back into basically 1910, 1920s.
- 15:46So we're just living at a very interesting time and where the old method that most older folks are used to with their 401ks of putting all your money in U.S. stocks and U.S. bonds, treasuries, and just like just all you do is make money for 40 straight years.
- 16:00Those days are over. We are no longer in that same regime. And so you have to adjust your investments accordingly.
- 16:07Would you, I guess, categorize Bitcoin into that segment of assets that would be a hard like asset like gold?
- 16:14And I would assume yes, but, you know, thinking back, you know, people have historically showed that there's been a high correlation of QQQ.
- 16:23So tech stocks in the U.S. to Bitcoin.
- 16:25Of course, kind of that's broken down as Bitcoin has broken down over the last eight months.
- 16:30And, you know, gold and Bitcoin being both potentially hard assets, again, kind of have diverged for a reason you kind of already pointed out.
- 16:38So I guess like would you still categorize Bitcoin as one of those hard assets that would do well in this forward looking period?
- 16:45I definitely do. But I think so. So yes. But first of all, we don't know for sure, because this is the first cycle now where where basically we've reached peak financialization in 2021, which also correlated, by the way, with a peak in Bitcoin.
- 16:59And then since then, gold and hard assets have been outperforming.
- 17:03There is a difference this time though.
- 17:06Well, first of all, I wanted to say, so Bitcoin didn't exist before 2009, obviously.
- 17:10So we don't know, we don't have any historical precedent to look at, but I do think so.
- 17:14I think it is the soundest money the hardest asset And so it should do well but because it so sensitive to liquidity and because we at a point right now a really unique point in US history where
- 17:29you know, the saying used to be don't fight the Fed. So and what they meant is don't fight the
- 17:33Federal Reserve when the Federal Reserve is doing quantitative easing. Great fund managers be like,
- 17:38this is the time to go all in on risk assets, you go all in on stocks, because liquidity is
- 17:43abundant and it pushes people out further on the yield curve. I think that saying, and Lynn,
- 17:48Alden is one of the first people to talk about this, this whole fiscal dominance.
- 17:52I think the more appropriate saying these days is don't fight the federal government. So don't
- 17:58fight fiscal stimulus. And so what do I mean by that? There's limited dollars and there is limited
- 18:05energy in the United States. And right now, all of that basically since October of 2025 has been
- 18:13directed with super intense purpose into AI, building data centers, rebuilding American
- 18:21infrastructure, rebuilding manufacturing, building up the military industrial complex,
- 18:25expanding rare earth capacity, other base metal capacity, doing all of this kind of stuff,
- 18:31blue collar-ish type stuff to bring this back away from China, away from globalization,
- 18:36and here in America. All of that costs a lot of money and requires a lot of energy.
- 18:41And there are limited amounts of that. And it's being funneled in this one direction.
- 18:46So what does that mean for Bitcoin? It means Bitcoin is kind of over here getting left
- 18:50in the dark at the moment. It's also, though, interestingly, just kind of a typical four-year
- 18:55bear market. And so I find that fascinating, the timing of all of this. But it's also...
- 19:00The most interesting thing that I think is about the last 10 months isn't that Bitcoin has been in a bear market.
- 19:06It's that the stock market has been continuing to rise.
- 19:10It should also be in a bear market based on historical cycles.
- 19:14So just like 2022, stocks went down, bonds went down, Bitcoin went down, gold went down.
- 19:18Everything went down for a while and they kind of recovered on their own timings.
- 19:22I think that stocks would have come down this year along with Bitcoin.
- 19:27But because there's so much fiscal stimulus going into the AI sector and the energy sector and all of these other sectors I was just talking about, they're propping up the stock market. There's so many investment dollars going into that space right now that it's basically causing this artificial spike in stocks right now.
- 19:45And at some point, I don't know if the like Besant and the team is going to be able to sort of like do a little liquidity patch to get us through this difficult segment that should have been a bear market.
- 19:57And we're just going to skip a stock bear market this time around.
- 20:00And we're just going to continue higher kind of like we did in the 90s.
- 20:03And it's possible.
- 20:04And that's how they're talking about it.
- 20:06They really want to let the economy boom, let stocks boom, let AI boom.
- 20:10We want to win the AI race they always talk about.
- 20:12It's imperative.
- 20:13It's a national strategy.
- 20:14so it's possible that there really won't be a stock bear market and then what's going to happen
- 20:20is liquidity will come flooding in at a higher level because as rates go higher at some point
- 20:26the the debt payments get to be so high and so unbearable that we have to print as and i know
- 20:32you know so we have to print more and more money borrow more and more money to pay off these debts
- 20:36that it's going to we're going to have to do some form we are the central bank is going to have to
- 20:40do some form of yield curve control, which I would argue they already are doing indirectly,
- 20:45but they're going to have to overtly do that. And once that happens, this is a very long roundabout
- 20:49way to say once that happens and we see signs that they have to do yield curve control, that is when
- 20:56I think Bitcoin is going to take off again. And that will kind of mark the beginning of the next
- 21:00bull market for Bitcoin. Yeah, you brought up some really great points there. I definitely agree. I
- 21:06I mean, looking at different sectors in the stock market, it's super clear that AI and energy and related companies have done extremely well, whereas any company that's not really directly or indirectly associated with that is kind of going sideways or down kind of since 2021, which to me is kind of telling that your thesis might be pretty correct.
- 21:29You mentioned yield curve control, and whenever that's more clearly implemented, Bitcoin could do quite well.
- 21:38What do you think will be the signs that that is being more clearly implemented?
- 21:43What should people be looking for?
- 21:45Well, first of all, obviously direct signs.
- 21:48So if Besant or Warsh signal that, hey, we just need to do yield curve control, or you hear headlines of bond market dysfunction, anything like that,
- 21:58That would be signs that they need to step in and do some definitive actions.
- 22:01In definitive, I mean, they would do some sort of quantitative easing and or yield curve
- 22:05control.
- 22:06What I watch for specifically is the move index, right?
- 22:10So the move shows the volatility of the bond market, basically.
- 22:14And you can tell that whenever it starts to spike a little bit too high, usually Besant
- 22:20or even Trump will come out and post something or say something that kind of calms down the
- 22:24bond markets.
- 22:25These days, it relates to the Persian Gulf, right?
- 22:27So Trump will, like, if yields are starting to get too high and bond volatility is starting to get too high, lo and behold, Trump will post that, you know, there's another peace deal coming out any day now and talks are going really well.
- 22:39And that will calm everything down.
- 22:41And the risk assets like that and the bond market likes that as well.
- 22:44And it helps to soothe the rates.
- 22:47But I can't help but notice that the long end of the curve is really starting to get away from these guys.
- 22:52And so I think that, by the way, this is normal.
- 22:55I think we are in the early years of a multi-decade bond bear market.
- 23:01So just like we had the bull market from the early 80s all the way until basically 2021,
- 23:06now we're probably going to have a 40 to 50-year bear market, which means in general that rates
- 23:11are going to creep higher and higher and higher. We'll have this along the way where they come down
- 23:15for certain things. If there's a recession or something, it'll cause the rates to come down.
- 23:20But over the very long run, they're just going to be going up and to the right. The rates will be
- 23:25And so that's just kind of the new fact of life.
- 23:27And that's what makes it all so interesting and so different from the last 40 years.
- 23:31And that will have impacts on multiple sectors, including stocks, bonds.
- 23:37Obviously, a few people who just knew that bonds were the safe haven asset and a way to hedge your portfolio.
- 23:42That is no longer true.
- 23:44It's been untrue since 2021.
- 23:46It's going to continue to be untrue, I think, probably for the rest of my lifetime.
- 23:50So, you know, maybe when I'm 90 or 100, that'll be the bottom of the bear market.
- 23:54and then it'll be time to buy bonds again.
- 23:56But no time before that.
- 23:57It also has huge implications for real estate.
- 24:00And I think we're already seeing a lot of those effects
- 24:02because mortgage rates are based on
- 24:03what the treasuries are doing.
- 24:06And houses are just,
- 24:07because of that 40-year bull market in bonds
- 24:11and mortgage rates just kept going down,
- 24:13down, down, down, down for 40 straight years,
- 24:15that means prices indirectly went higher and higher on houses.
- 24:19And so now that's starting to flip and turn on its head.
- 24:21And so prices are still sitting at this plateau
- 24:24But rates are rising, so they're making houses more and more unaffordable, as you know, for millennials and for Gen Zers and alpha. And something has to give. And I think what's going to give eventually is house prices are going to give.
- 24:37So boomers who are hanging on to their second houses or holding onto a house as their retirement plan, I think are going to be disappointed and increasingly so over the coming years because the only thing to give when rates are rising is the prices of houses.
- 24:52So house prices, just in my mind, they have to just mathematically, they have to come lower.
- 24:57And that'll be good for the younger generation who will finally not be priced out of the housing market for the first time and alone.
- 25:03if you were to maybe look at a variety of different asset classes so u.s equities
- 25:10real estate bonds maybe bitcoin and gold those different classes over the next 10 years what
- 25:17would you say given all that perspective that you already just shared what would you say would be
- 25:21like an expected kager compound annual growth rate for all of those like in nominal terms like
- 25:28Do you still think they're all go up, but some go up very slowly?
- 25:32Do you think real estate may actually be down in nominal terms over the next 10 years?
- 25:36Where would you place those assets and roughly if you if you can estimate it?
- 25:40Sure, sure. So so first of all, who knows, right?
- 25:43This is just completely guessing.
- 25:45But I would say that, I mean, if I had to pick one horse, it would be Bitcoin.
- 25:48I think most likely Bitcoin is going to do the best.
- 25:51And I think that based on where we are today, which is sort of at the bottom of a bear market,
- 25:55We just kind of tinkering around the 200 week moving average Historically that been a fantastic time to buy And usually one year later historically speaking the worst return has been that it doubled in a
- 26:08year. I'm not saying it's going to do it this time, but if it follows history, then I think,
- 26:13you know, 50 to 100% higher one year from, you know, maybe next August or next September,
- 26:18next October, it'll be, you know, at least double probably where it is today.
- 26:22Okay. And then I think that continues on. Because we're starting from this low point,
- 26:27I would give Bitcoin a CAGR in the next 10 years of probably in the 30 to 45 or even 50% range.
- 26:35Next, I would say gold. If I had to pick another asset to hold for 10 years, it would be gold. I
- 26:39think even though it had that huge surge up and then it's been a disappointment so far this year
- 26:44in 2026, I think it's just consolidating and then it's going to continue its rise higher,
- 26:49similar to these past cycles that we've talked about. There usually is a spot somewhere in the
- 26:53middle, like the last time it was really pronounced was in the 1970s. And I think it was 73
- 27:00in the fourth quarter. So there was basically stocks had a rebound and gold kind of had a lot
- 27:06of weakness. And then it really, with authority, gold started to rise significantly higher and
- 27:11stocks, relatively speaking, did really poorly for basically the rest of that decade. So I would
- 27:18think gold would be somewhere in there, probably in like a CAGR of maybe like in the 15% range
- 27:23for the next like five to 10 years. My next favorite asset in general would be international
- 27:31stocks, so like emerging market stocks, similar to the 70s too, those kind of things as well.
- 27:37So basically what you get is you get a real weakening of the dollar. And so nations that
- 27:42have dollar denominated debt actually benefit greatly from that, and they tend to outperform.
- 27:47And they've underperformed U.S. assets for basically most of the last 15 to 20 years or so. So their time to do well, I think, would be. So if I had to choose, you know, would I do U.S. stocks or like, say, you know, international stocks, I would actually pick international stocks to do better than U.S. stocks.
- 28:03I still think U.S. stocks will have a positive nominal return, but a real return is another question. I don't know that they will. I think inflation is going to run pretty hot. And I think if you factor out inflation similar to the 70s, you might be about flat at the end of five or 10 years or maybe even up after five or 10 years. But inflation terms, you've probably lost purchasing power even with those gains.
- 28:26And then real estate, I think to me, real estate looks the worst. And mainly because,
- 28:33well, first of all, I view real estate like you should live in a house. I think the fact that it
- 28:38became an investment strategy over the last 30 years or so is an anomaly. And it's not good. And
- 28:43it basically, we've priced out all of the younger generation because of people who have treated it
- 28:48like an investment. And it's not just, you know, everybody likes to make fun of the boomers. It's
- 28:52not just the boomers, but it is the policies that have continued with the boomers and the
- 28:56silent generation before them. But it's Wall Street, you know, private equity firms have
- 29:00massive holdings of these single family houses. And that's just tragic. It's tragic for people
- 29:04who just need a place to live in, but they can't afford it. So they have to live in some
- 29:07scuzzy apartment instead and be renters instead of owners. So long story short, I think that
- 29:12there's a lot of reckoning still to come for housing in the United States. I still think it's
- 29:18grossly overpriced. And like I said, mathematically, as rates continue to rise and as mortgage rates
- 29:25continue to go higher, I don't think we're going to have a significant drop in mortgage rates
- 29:29anytime soon in our lifetime. I think just by definition, the prices of houses have to come
- 29:35down. So I would put those at the bottom. I think they're going to have actually a negative
- 29:38Kager in the next 10 years, probably a negative nominal Kager. And then when you factor in
- 29:42inflation, it's going to be very negative. Yeah. I mean, if mortgage rates soar significantly,
- 29:49it would be hard to see how the next generation could ever afford houses at near current prices.
- 29:56But we also mentioned earlier the Bitcoin four-year cycle. I think me and many others
- 30:02have thought the four-year cycle was over or is dying, but it seems to be on almost a perfect
- 30:09cadence for whatever reason. What do you make of that? Is that pure coincidence or is it something
- 30:15else? You know, Joe, I don't know. I went back a couple of years ago and did this whole study
- 30:21where I was just doing, you know, kind of like from a quant perspective, like exactly how many
- 30:25days and blah, blah, blah, you know, and it's in the cycle isn't we say the four year cycle,
- 30:29but it's actually three years and 11 months. Actually, it's more of like a 47 month cycle.
- 30:33That's why the peaks keep getting like a month earlier every cycle.
- 30:38I do not know why it keeps doing that.
- 30:40And people are like, well, it's got to be because of the halving.
- 30:42I'm like, well, maybe.
- 30:43I mean, I don't really get it.
- 30:45Like it made sense earlier on, like when the block rewards were so much larger and were
- 30:52coming down.
- 30:53But now like the block rewards aren't like it's that's not what drives it nearly as much
- 30:58now, right?
- 30:58Like it's the transaction fees anyways that are supporting the miners, you know, more
- 31:02even, you know, increasingly more relative to the block rewards. And so I don't know why it's doing
- 31:09that, but it's so weird. And I've said many times, I think the four-year cycle is dead.
- 31:13Bitcoin's a macro asset now. You can show very definitively how it trades with a bit of a lag.
- 31:21It used to be to global liquidity. Now it's more kind of Western US-based liquidity more. And I
- 31:26think that's just because, you know, China has banned Bitcoin ownership, even though there's,
- 31:29obviously black market Bitcoin, but they've basically funneled everybody into gold. And so
- 31:34most of Asia is kind of focused, not most of it, but most of China's allies in Asia are more focused
- 31:40on gold. And then the Western world is kind of more Bitcoin, although they've kind of gotten more
- 31:45crypto than Bitcoin, which is frustrating. But our liquidity here in the US has been,
- 31:50it basically peaked in 2021 after COVID. And it's been consolidating since 2021. So if you look at
- 31:57U.S. net liquidity, it's basically chopped sideways. Since then, we're still below the 2021
- 32:04peak. And so that for me is a big explainer for why Bitcoin isn't doing well. And again,
- 32:10once that starts to take off again, and once we start seeing liquidity flow, and once we start
- 32:14seeing basically AI not sucking up all of the energy and all of the capital from the U.S. system
- 32:22right now, then it will start to flow out again. And I think Bitcoin will be a primary beneficiary
- 32:28of that. One thing to look for, it's very interesting to see, right, the Bitcoin miners
- 32:32that have basically transitioned to become basically AI electricity providers. That's a
- 32:38very telling sign, right? I mean, they're literally called Bitcoin miners, and some of them aren't
- 32:42even mining Bitcoin anymore. They're just providing electricity for these data centers.
- 32:46And so if you start seeing that trend change, I would look for early adopters for people who are
- 32:51maybe like now they're starting to get back into Bitcoin mining or there's new Bitcoin miners coming
- 32:55up out of the woodwork, that would probably be a good sign that that like liquidity is going to
- 33:01start to flow kind of away from that AI blob and into Bitcoin again. But we'll see. I haven't seen
- 33:07any signs of it yet. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I've seen that the Bitcoin hash rate is like on its
- 33:14longest prolonged decline pretty much in the history of Bitcoin. I think it's kind of been
- 33:18down since the end of 2025, which is a pretty significant amount of time. And I think you're
- 33:24definitely right about obviously some of the public Bitcoin miners pivoting towards AI instead,
- 33:29because the market is currently rewarding that. So it kind of makes sense for them to maybe do that.
- 33:37We talked a little bit about like Bitcoin being at a potential bottom. I think that makes sense.
- 33:42I think that that's certainly possible. The one thing that concerns me, and I'm curious to hear
- 33:47your perspective on this. It's related to everything that you just mentioned, but thinking
- 33:52back to U.S. markets driven by the AI trade, stocks practically at all-time highs, volatility in U.S.
- 34:01markets pretty much near lows. BIX is relatively very low. Does it concern you at all that I feel
- 34:09like looking back at all the other major Bitcoin bottoms, it kind of bottomed with the stock market.
- 34:14it may not have been a huge correction, but there was typically like some sort of correction.
- 34:19Is it if there is some sort of significant correction in U.S. stocks, even if it's
- 34:25just temporary, do you expect Bitcoin to go down with it? Do you think that that's just a very low
- 34:30probability right now? How do you think about that in terms of when will the Bitcoin bottom
- 34:35actually occur? Yeah, so so I agree with you that I think we're sort of bobbling along the bottom
- 34:40right now. I kind of think, you know, I like my.
- 34:42crab metaphor. So that's like we're crabbing along the bottom of a lake right now, somewhere in the
- 34:47bottom. And I don't know, maybe that 57 or 8K, whatever that we had, maybe that was the low.
- 34:53Maybe we hit go back down there again. I don't know. I'm not into trying to call actual bottoms.
- 34:58I just think we're in the region of the bottom, which, by the way, as a side note, is the best
- 35:02time to be dollar cost averaging or buying Bitcoin, right? If you think we truly are in
- 35:06this bottom region and being near the 200 week moving average is a good time to buy,
- 35:10then you should take a hint and maybe up your purchases.
- 35:17That's how I would look at that.
- 35:22If we have that market correction, first of all, here's the macro to me from the sources I pay close attention to.
- 35:31Looks to me like we're actually, we have a good macro environment for the last half of this year for 2026.
- 35:37What I mean by that, I mean, I think we're going to have economic growth. So basically increasing acceleration in GDP growth in the US. And that's almost always just generally bullish for stocks from that standpoint. And if you get growth and then you get a little bit of inflation, but not too high of inflation, that's actually super bullish in general for risk assets. And generally that's super bullish for Bitcoin too.
- 36:02So I'm actually pretty optimistic that at least like in the fourth quarter or so, the macro setup looks good for Bitcoin generally doing well. So that's the caveat. I will say that it looks like it changes once we get into 2027, that all of the things that were like basically accelerating economy and just slightly increasing not too hot inflation.
- 36:24It looks like we might get the polar opposite of that where the economy looks like, at least from like a year over year comparison basis, might slow down significantly and we might have some deflation. And that's the combination that is the worst for risk assets. When you see these deflationary busts, that generally can pull stocks down significantly. They're very sensitive to that.
- 36:44And then to your question, would Bitcoin go down? So even if Bitcoin is near the bottom or chopping along the bottom, yes, I think it would for sure pull Bitcoin down in the short term and gold as well. And why does it do that? It's because what happens is when the market is doing really well, there's a lot of leverage built up in the system. People like to go levered long. And if you can go levered long, like 2x, why not go 3x? And if you can go 3x, why not go 10x, right? And so like all these people get like just super hyped up. And they get really stupid with leverage.
- 37:11and then they get liquidated and you have that leverage long liquidation cascade.
- 37:16And when that happens, you get margin called. And when you get margin called,
- 37:20you'd often, you don't have the time or the resources to pick and choose what you want to
- 37:24liquidate. The brokerage firm or whoever will just liquidate whatever is liquid,
- 37:29meaning whatever is available to be liquidated. And that's sort of one of the curses,
- 37:33the blessings and the curses of Bitcoin. It's available 24-7, 365. It's super liquid. It's
- 37:40just a fantastic asset. And so if you need cash right now, it will just your Bitcoin can instantly
- 37:47get liquidated and converted into cash. And that can cover your margin debt and cover your margin
- 37:51call. And so, yes, it will get pulled down. I think the way I am so far viewing this in my head
- 37:56is I see the government, the current administration, smashing fiscal stimulus, basically, like
- 38:02directing all these flows that are causing the stock market to be propped up. That's basically
- 38:06negating the bear market in stocks that we're supposed to have. It looks to me like they may
- 38:11not be able to keep it up in early 2027. And I hate making these timing predictions, but that's
- 38:17just sort of like how it looks to me. But it looks to me like it could play out similar to how COVID
- 38:22played out, where we have this huge, sudden, quick, massive drop in equities that then causes
- 38:27these margin calls, which pulls Bitcoin down with it, even pulls gold down with it, pulls basically
- 38:33every asset that's not US dollars down with it. But I think then the first things that would
- 38:38recover would be gold and Bitcoin. And especially because at that point, what we'd see, we'd see the
- 38:43move index spike, there would be bond market dysfunction like crazy. The Federal Reserve
- 38:49would be forced to step in at that point. That's when you get Larry Lepard's big print.
- 38:53That's when they just come out and say, we are supporting the markets at all costs and blah,
- 38:58blah, blah. And so here's our bazooka of liquidity. And then that's finally, you know,
- 39:03the episode that would take it. And I think then we're more likely to get sort of this V-shaped
- 39:07recovery like we saw during COVID instead of this long drawn out, drawdown like 2000 to 2002,
- 39:13or even 2008, 2009, or even like 2022. I think it's more likely that we get sort of more of a
- 39:21V-shaped response that's very violent, very fast and scary. But then we see a quick recovery. And
- 39:27the most liquidity sensitive assets like Bitcoin should recover fast and furiously. And it should
- 39:33be good, easygoing from that point. Yeah, that seems like a pretty reasonable thesis.
- 39:42I do want to shift topics a little bit, mainly towards digital credit. So I'm curious, maybe at
- 39:49a high level to start, like what's your perspective on it? Obviously, like Michael Saylor kind of
- 39:54pioneered the topic, stretches his product that he's out there talking about. What do you make of
- 40:01all of this? So, okay, how do I do this? So I used to be a huge fan of strategy and I'm a fan of
- 40:09Saylor. And I think he's done a lot of good for Bitcoin and Bitcoin education to the world and to
- 40:17Wall Street as well. I was a big fan and a big investor personally and in my hedge fund of
- 40:25strategy back when it was micro strategy back in the day. I loved the idea initially of using
- 40:32debt to basically pull money, I thought, cash from Wall Street and into Bitcoin. And I loved
- 40:40the focus of increasing Bitcoin per share for holders of strategy stock. I thought, well,
- 40:50if everybody's seeking, trying to get interest on their Bitcoin, and that didn't work out well,
- 40:56as we saw with the centralized exchanges back in 2022 But this is kind of a neat way to do it in a unique way to do it where all if you just hold shares of this mstr over time you have more sats per share i thought from a fund manager standpoint that pretty cool and i
- 41:12could get behind that i don't like talking bad about people okay and i'm not i'm a big fan of
- 41:19talking about ideas and and so so it's not people so what something changed though tangibly in the
- 41:25last sort of six to 12 months that's bothered me significantly where i feel like with the advent of
- 41:32stretch which i thought initially was cool this perpetual preferred offering has kind of taken
- 41:40over strategy to where it's become almost the number one focus it's what's marketed above
- 41:48Bitcoin and above the underlying stock, MSTR.
- 41:54In order to sustain the yield on it, they've been sacrificing their Bitcoin holdings and
- 42:01sacrificing their shareholders who have been getting massively diluted at not good levels.
- 42:09It's not at a premium to NAV.
- 42:11It's fine if it's at a premium to NAV, but it's no longer at a premium to NAV.
- 42:14They're basically just getting flat out diluted.
- 42:16And the sort of the initial promise of never sell Bitcoin, we're going to increase Bitcoin per share. The goal is to basically 2x the price or one and a half to 2x the price of Bitcoin performance over the long run. That's just gone. And that just all went somewhere. And I don't know where.
- 42:37And again, I'm not hacking on anybody individually, but it seems to me like the whole C-suite has turned into, they've kind of gone crypto bro.
- 42:50It's like they're going through their crypto bro phase.
- 42:52And I understand that.
- 42:53I talk about this all the time because I went through a crypto bro phase from basically 2016 to 2020 until I finally figured it out.
- 43:00And I feel like, well, maybe they won't go through their crypto bro phase because they're pretty hardcore about Bitcoin.
- 43:04But it seems like they've been like seduced by Wall Street to create these fiat products and to emphasize those and then to do it all at the expense of the underlying Bitcoin and the strategy shareholders.
- 43:19So that's so when they talk about digital credit.
- 43:22And I don't mean to offend anybody, but that that kind of makes me cringe a little bit.
- 43:27And I'm sort of, I guess I would be like a purist and I don't consider myself like a toxic Bitcoin maxi, but I do consider myself a person who just really believes that Bitcoin is the best form of money ever created.
- 43:40And then another thing I've been talking about since 2020, that Bitcoin was eventually going to get picked up by Wall Street and they were going to try to capture it and they're going to try to profit from it.
- 43:52this has been inevitable since 2020.
- 43:55At least I could see that.
- 43:57And I thought, we're going to see it happen
- 43:58and we're not going to really like what we see.
- 44:01And it's going to sort of be up to us
- 44:03to sort of protect the heart and soul of Bitcoin.
- 44:08But it's going to be kind of hard to watch.
- 44:10But it's such an amazing asset for the world
- 44:12that everybody is going to want to get their paws on it.
- 44:17So that's a really long answer to say
- 44:19I have really mixed feelings about it.
- 44:21I went from being like one of the biggest fans of strategy out there to now I kind of cringe a little bit.
- 44:28Even like if I see an orange tie, it makes me cringe a little bit.
- 44:31And I'm not like I'm not trying to be toxic and I'm not trying to be like, you know, confrontational.
- 44:36I like these people.
- 44:37Like I've met most of these people that are involved with this and had lots of conversations with them.
- 44:41They're good people.
- 44:42But I just think their focus is way too much now on these Wall Street products, these fiat products and these crypto bro kind of ideas.
- 44:49And I would love to see them basically humble themselves and come full circle back to, we want to stack Bitcoin. We want to increase Bitcoin per share for strategy holders. And this other stuff is just sort of a side show. But right now, the side show is the main show. And it's tough for me to watch.
- 45:10yeah no i think it's that's a very interesting perspective uh of course and i think it's
- 45:17important that you know people hear both sides of of the story because it's an interesting debate
- 45:23so i guess like to re-characterize your your view is you view the focuses for strategy in particular
- 45:29we'll focus on them for now um the focus is too much on stretch their perpetual preferred equity
- 45:36product, you think that they've sacrificed like the Bitcoin and the common shareholders
- 45:41to support that?
- 45:43Is that kind of your perspective?
- 45:45Yeah.
- 45:45And then I think taking the and I think, by the way, part of this is because I know that
- 45:51Saylor has had a lot to do with the current administration and the administration's way
- 45:56of thinking about things.
- 45:59And well, first, so there's proof of stake crypto, right?
- 46:02And then there's Bitcoin.
- 46:03There's two separate things.
- 46:04And first of all, the general public still doesn't understand that there's a difference. And that's driven me nuts for like six years. And that's what I spend a lot of my time like trying to teach people like those are two different things. But all your listeners know that already. So that's kind of a different thing.
- 46:16left-leaning politicians in general hate the idea of something like Bitcoin or crypto
- 46:27competing with the US dollar. So people who are more statist by nature have been very
- 46:35adversarial to Bitcoiners, as well as the proof of state crypto. I think it's deserved against
- 46:41these guys. I think Bitcoin is truly freedom money, right? It's decentralized, secure. It is
- 46:46of the people, by the people, for the people. It is not controlled by the US government or any
- 46:50government. So people who are super proud US dollar statists, and I would say like Elizabeth
- 46:58Warren is like example number one, right? She hates Bitcoin for good reason, because she sees
- 47:03it as competition. I wish she would think like, I wish she would view it as this is great for
- 47:08freedom and for Americans and for the prosperity of Americans, we should get behind this and use it
- 47:14as like a strategic reserve asset, but she doesn't.
- 47:18And that's not gonna happen,
- 47:19I don't think any time in her lifetime.
- 47:22Okay why did I bring all that up Saylor has spent time with Trump and the trump or with the trump administration discussing things and i think uh probably shrewdly as the ceo of a company that holds the most bitcoin of any company
- 47:38in the world he wanted to make it abundantly clear that this isn't competition to the u.s dollar
- 47:44like you don't need to get the treasury on my case the trump administration or the banking
- 47:50committee on my case, like, let's just call it digital credit. You're not going to use Bitcoin
- 47:55to buy coffee, right? You said that, like, you store it to preserve your wealth. And then we'll
- 48:02focus on these other products, like perpetual preferred stock, and we'll call that. That's
- 48:06how you use this digital credit to have cash, cash-like substitutes. Therefore, you don't have
- 48:14to worry about Bitcoin competing with the dollar. That's what I think happened subtly somewhere in
- 48:21there where it's like, we're not trying to compete. I'm not your enemy. And in doing that,
- 48:29and all very well intended, it sort of changed the ethos from this cypherpunk,
- 48:35libertarian, we do our own thing. Let's build our own monetary and financial system over here
- 48:41on Bitcoin to let's meld Wall Street and the dollar together in a way that's acceptable
- 48:47to the politicians.
- 48:50And that's a crazy, probably crazy answer and maybe more than you're asking.
- 48:53But I think that happened somewhere along the way.
- 48:56And I think that's why we're having this weird thing now where it's like, well, do you think
- 49:01it's money or you don't think it's money?
- 49:02And like, well, you obviously can use it to buy coffee if you want to.
- 49:06it's very cumbersome to do so. You know, as a guy who pays a lot of taxes, I hate using Bitcoin to
- 49:13pay for things because I have it causes a tax, you know, situation every single time I do a capital
- 49:19gains or losses. I have to record that I have to pay taxes on it. And I do, by the way, I'm not one
- 49:25of those people who, you know, I'm not thwarting the system or anything like that. But it's
- 49:29needlessly frustrating. And because the government still treats it like it's this adversarial thing,
- 49:35and they want to tax it to gain part of that for their own usages.
- 49:42So that was a really long answer.
- 49:44So I have very mixed feelings.
- 49:46I still, like I said, I will come back to strategy
- 49:51if I feel like they have kind of a come to Jesus moment
- 49:54and they humble themselves and say,
- 49:56you know what, we went too far to this side.
- 49:59We're not fiat bros.
- 50:01We're sorry that we sacrificed the Bitcoin and the MSDR shareholders for this perpetual preferred product that we thought was changing the world.
- 50:10It's really not. In fact, it's probably harming us and it's making us lose Bitcoin and lose MSDR shareholders.
- 50:18And so I'm waiting for that moment. It hasn't come yet, but I'm hopeful that it will.
- 50:22What do you think of like the idea that Pierre Richard and others have suggested in the past, like this idea of a speculative attack where you obviously can create dollar like credit and various possible forms and acquire Bitcoin over time?
- 50:39and that's potentially how a monetary tool gets adopted.
- 50:46Do you reconcile that with strategy at all
- 50:50or do you think that's completely different?
- 50:52Do you think that those are just different ideas completely?
- 50:56So they're related and it started out that way with strategy.
- 50:59And I'm a huge proponent of that.
- 51:01I've talked lots and lots about this and written about this,
- 51:03that probably the number one trade of this decade
- 51:06and probably the next decade
- 51:07is to short a depreciating fiat currency
- 51:10and buy an appreciating king of assets called Bitcoin.
- 51:13So short the dollar, buy Bitcoin,
- 51:16meaning borrow and borrow.
- 51:18So that works mathematically up to a point, right?
- 51:22And so the problem with this is it works to an extent,
- 51:27but leverage is super dangerous and it's like dynamite.
- 51:31And like, it can be super beneficial
- 51:32if applied shrewdly and in limited fashion.
- 51:35but when you start applying it like oh my gosh we can't lose because bitcoin has a kegger of
- 51:4130 and if i'm only giving out 12 oh my gosh i get a pocket the extra 28 is kind of the logic
- 51:46but that's not always how it works and and what i've learned from my many years of investing now
- 51:52is it the stuff that you don't foresee is the stuff that kills you right and and and it's like
- 51:59if you think you can't lose on something and all i have to do is borrow you know approaching
- 52:05infinite amounts of money at 12% to buy Bitcoin, which has to appreciate at 30%.
- 52:11Bitcoin is not going to appreciate. It's going to sit there and wait until you get wrecked.
- 52:15And then it's going to flow to people who treat it with more respect and with less leverage.
- 52:19And then it'll start going up again. But in the meantime, the people who I think are applying
- 52:24copious amounts of leverage because they can't lose, I think are going to lose. And I've been
- 52:29saying that for the last couple of years that I think the sacrificial lamb of this bear market
- 52:34like the last one was a centralized exchanges and all of that crypto NFT garbage and stuff.
- 52:40This time it's the treasury companies. And I think the strongest will survive,
- 52:44but I'm watching very closely these treasury companies to see who is applying leverage shrewdly
- 52:51and who just went bananas because they thought they couldn't lose. And I never thought I'd be
- 52:59saying that about strategy and seller, but, but I, I just, they've, they've pushed it too far and
- 53:04they're already losing Bitcoin and they're losing strategy and they're, they're already diluting
- 53:08their strategy shareholders because of it at, at inappropriate prices. And I just, I hate to see it,
- 53:13but it's not unexpected. And I think the weaker ones are, um, might go bankrupt and might just,
- 53:20uh, you know, um, be, uh, be an afterthought during the next bull market. So anyways,
- 53:26that's what I watch as a fund manager.
- 53:28I just see who's being wise
- 53:30and who's being excessive with their leverage.
- 53:32And those who are being excessive,
- 53:34they get eaten up during the bear markets.
- 53:37Yeah, I mean, where I definitely agree is,
- 53:40you know, if Bitcoin doesn't have a CAGR
- 53:42of 12% or greater over the next five to 10 years,
- 53:46then yeah I certainly agree that strategy And amplified Bitcoin in general is obviously not not necessarily a good trade I curious like do you see the like something like stretch being interesting to maybe not necessarily you since obviously like you like Bitcoin gold and other assets
- 54:04Do you see that being interesting to maybe like the 99% of people that think Bitcoin is still too volatile, that it provides no cash flow, that they want something that pays like a relatively high yield compared to everything else?
- 54:22Do you think that that's appealing to like the broader population or would you disagree with that?
- 54:29I think it definitely is to an extent.
- 54:32And again, though, it's sort of like, I mean, it's sort of like as a doctor, right?
- 54:38It's sort of like as medicine, if people think like, or taking supplements or something,
- 54:42people think like, well, if taking this one supplement pill is good for me, why not take
- 54:46five?
- 54:47And why not take a whole bottle if I could, if this is good for me?
- 54:51And that's how people overdose.
- 54:52And that's how people die.
- 54:53Like you can do too much of a good thing and turn it into a bad thing or even a fatal error.
- 54:59And that's what I think is happening right now.
- 55:01I think people have gone so far in this other direction that they're just going to get wrecked.
- 55:07Now, I want to be abundantly clear.
- 55:09I don't think strategy is going to go bankrupt.
- 55:11I don't think they're going to lose all of their Bitcoin.
- 55:14I don't think they're going to lose all of their shareholders.
- 55:16I think they're sort of in recovery mode at the moment.
- 55:19I think they think of themselves as kind of, and I've said this before, I think Saylor is like a hedge fund manager in the Bitcoin space.
- 55:25And he has these different levers and tools he can use.
- 55:28If done properly, it can be very lucrative.
- 55:31So like if we get a bull market again, you can do all these things they're talking about, right?
- 55:37You can buy Bitcoin when it's lucrative to do and you can sell it when it's a good idea.
- 55:42You can issue more shares when the MNAV is high on strategy and you can buy back shares and you can do the same.
- 55:50And you can do that with Stretch and you can do that with their converts too.
- 55:53You can do that all across the board.
- 55:55And if you do it shrewdly and you time it well, that will be accretive to the shareholders.
- 55:59And so that's a good thing. So that's my side comment that it's possible. And I think they will escape this intact. But I think they're going to be there's like continued injury along the way until they sort of right the wrongs.
- 56:14Is there a market for high yielding products based on Bitcoin as collateral? Absolutely.
- 56:20Absolutely. But I think what people so so everyone loves a high yield, right? And but again, what I've learned is there's, there's a high yield, and then there's reaching for yield. And almost every time people reach for yield in the long run, they end up losing money, because those those companies that are providing extra high yield are usually in that situation for a reason, and they can't sustain it for as long as they think they can.
- 56:48And again, the way leverage works with this super choppy, volatile action. So if you already have high volatility in Bitcoin to begin with, and now you have leverage, now it's doing this. And if you just time things incorrectly while we're down here, when Bitcoin price is dipping hard, it can just ruin people.
- 57:08That's when you get the margin calls.
- 57:10That's when you are forced to do things like strategy has been forced to sell things at
- 57:15prices they would not want to be selling at.
- 57:17They don't want to be selling Bitcoin at these bear market bottoms.
- 57:20They don't want to be selling strategy shares or diluting shareholders at these low MNAVs.
- 57:27And so that's what I'm saying leverage does.
- 57:30It forces people to do stupid things and to do inappropriate things and unwise things at
- 57:36exactly the wrong time.
- 57:37And that's what's happening right now to strategy. So that's what I get concerned about for these treasury companies. I think the ones who manage shrewdly and conservatively through this time are going to come out and be the leaders in the next bull market. And the ones that don't, they're either going to, you know, they're either going to go to zero and lose all their Bitcoin for their shareholders and their share prices are going to go to zero. Or like maybe like a strategy, they're just going to be knocked way down. And they're going to have to start building back up again from a more humble, lower level.
- 58:04Yeah, no, this has been an interesting, worthy conversation, I feel like, on this topic of, you know, digital credit. I think, you know, hearing both sides is healthy. I think it's important for people to understand it.
- 58:20Obviously, I think we you and I probably agreed on like 99 percent of the first conversation and then maybe like 50 percent of the of that second half of the conversation.
- 58:29But I still think that that's, you know, fantastic and healthy to see both sides.
- 58:34Do you have any final closing thoughts?
- 58:36Maybe not necessarily on digital credit, but on Bitcoin, on markets, on how people should be thinking about the future?
- 58:43I guess I would come back to, you know, since this is a Bitcoin focus show.
- 58:47So I think we're back in the age of hard assets.
- 58:51And I think like we talked about earlier, Bitcoin is the best hard asset.
- 58:54It's the soundest money.
- 58:56I think we are still early days in this, meaning I still think we have many years to go where
- 59:03things like gold and probably Bitcoin will significantly outperform is how I would look
- 59:09at it.
- 59:09It's just my guess.
- 59:10I'm not giving individual investment advice.
- 59:11but historically speaking uh and we've talked about this twice now when the price of bitcoin
- 59:17is around the 200 week moving average so like it's basically at its bear market bottom and it's kind
- 59:22of bouncing along there that has historically speaking been a fantastic time to be loading up
- 59:27on more because usually one two three years later uh it's doing significantly better so
- 59:33i would just encourage people like don't try to get tricky don't use leverage unless you really
- 59:38know what you're doing. If you do use leverage, use it shrewdly and sparingly. And just stack
- 59:45sats. Odell, he still has, I think, the best advice in this area. Just stay humble and stack
- 59:50sats. And if you do that for a long period of time, like over a 10-year time period,
- 59:56you're going to do really well after 10 years. And so that's still my advice, and I'm still
- 1:00:00sticking to that. Stay humble and stack sats. I think that's great advice. Jeff, thanks so much
- 1:00:06again for your time. This was a great conversation. I think people are going to love it.
- 1:00:10I appreciate you having me on, Joe. It's good to talk to you.
- 1:00:13Absolutely.