Latest / Merryn Talks Money / Bitcoin Treasuries: Inflation Hedge or Hype-Driven Bubble?
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. Welcome to Meren Talk
- 0:17Speaker 1: to Your Money, the personal finance edition of Meron talks Money.
- 0:20Speaker 1: In these bonus podcasts, we talk about the best strategies
- 0:23Speaker 1: for making the most of your money. I'm Meren Thumset
- 0:25Speaker 1: Web and with me senior reporter of Money Distilled author
- 0:28Speaker 1: John steppegg Hi, John Hi, melm Okay. So in this episode,
- 0:32Speaker 1: we are going to talk about something actually we have
- 0:35Speaker 1: never talked about before. We've talked about bitcoin a lot,
- 0:37Speaker 1: but we haven't talked about this new thing. Bitcoin treasury
- 0:41Speaker 1: is actually not that new, but relatively new to the UK.
- 0:43Speaker 1: So we think this deserves a conversation, maybe a little scrutiny.
- 0:46Speaker 1: I think possibly UK investors are beginning to be aware
- 0:50Speaker 1: of what's happening. So we've got London listed companies, mainly
- 0:53Speaker 1: smaller companies, some actual companies that are originally minus we're
- 0:56Speaker 1: going to talk about in a minute who are started
- 0:58Speaker 1: stockpiling bitcoin in order to get their share price up.
- 1:01Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about why they're doing this,
- 1:04Speaker 1: why it might be a concerning trend to investors. Maybe
- 1:07Speaker 1: there are better ways to get access to cryptocurrencies. So
- 1:10Speaker 1: to help us dig into all this, we have invited
- 1:12Speaker 1: our old friend Dominic Frisbee to join us. Now. Dominic,
- 1:14Speaker 1: many of you will know he's the author of the
- 1:16Speaker 1: investment newsletter of the Flying Frisbee. He's written a lot
- 1:19Speaker 1: of very good books. He's sings some great songs, and
- 1:21Speaker 1: loyal listeners might know him as a recurring guest on
- 1:24Speaker 1: the Adam Smith panel show that we do at the
- 1:26Speaker 1: Frinch Festival every year. Dominic, welcome, Thank you so much
- 1:30Speaker 1: for joining us today.
- 1:33Speaker 2: It's a pleasure to be here.
- 1:34Speaker 3: Good.
- 1:35Speaker 1: Now, I've probably said everything wrong in my introduction, so
- 1:37Speaker 1: let's start like this. Will you tell us what we're
- 1:41Speaker 1: talking about? What is a bitcoin treasury? Why have they
- 1:43Speaker 1: come to the UK?
- 1:44Speaker 2: Well, it's funny enough. Actually in your introduction I think
- 1:48Speaker 2: you said absolutely everything right, and not for the first
- 1:53Speaker 2: time Mary.
- 1:53Speaker 1: Thank you, Dominic.
- 1:54Speaker 2: But in your sort of intro to your intro, you
- 1:57Speaker 2: said about how this is a show for people who
- 2:00Speaker 2: were thinking about what to do with their money. And
- 2:03Speaker 2: this whole thing began with an American CEO called Michael
- 2:08Speaker 2: Sailor who in twenty twenty was looking around at what
- 2:12Speaker 2: was going on during COVID and he was wondering what
- 2:16Speaker 2: to do with his corporate treasury to protect it from
- 2:19Speaker 2: getting eroded by inflation, and so he knew he couldn't
- 2:23Speaker 2: hold US dollars because effectively he was going to lose
- 2:26Speaker 2: ten or fifteen percent to money printing every year, probably
- 2:30Speaker 2: more during COVID. I think at the moment, money printing
- 2:33Speaker 2: or you know, money supply growth, whatever you want to
- 2:35Speaker 2: call it, is at seven or eight percent globally, So
- 2:39Speaker 2: you have to make seven or eight percent just to
- 2:41Speaker 2: stand still. If you're a corporation running a business, you
- 2:45Speaker 2: have to grow at seven or eight percent just to
- 2:47Speaker 2: stand still. And I think that's quite an interesting way
- 2:50Speaker 2: of framing the gradual erosion of everything that's taking place.
- 2:56Speaker 2: And so Sailor was looking around at you know, do
- 2:58Speaker 2: I put my corporate treasury in really stake? Do I
- 3:00Speaker 2: put it in gold? Do I put it in s
- 3:03Speaker 2: and p track of funds? What do I do? And
- 3:06Speaker 2: he eventually arrived at the conclusion of bitcoin, and then
- 3:11Speaker 2: in quite an astounding way, he took as we call it,
- 3:14Speaker 2: the orange pill. He was orange pilled in a way
- 3:17Speaker 2: that I've never seen anyone orange pill before, and has
- 3:20Speaker 2: transformed himself into the most articulate proponent of bitcoin that
- 3:25Speaker 2: there is.
- 3:26Speaker 1: Yeah, Ben, so just be clear, anyone who held micro
- 3:29Speaker 1: Strategy shares then when he made this decision has made
- 3:32Speaker 1: an atholete fortune because he's ridden the whole bitcoin wave.
- 3:35Speaker 2: So micro Strategy was what you would call a zombie company.
- 3:39Speaker 2: It had a sort of bit of a boom in
- 3:41Speaker 2: during dot Com, and then basically after dot Com, for
- 3:45Speaker 2: the next twenty years it just range traded between ten
- 3:48Speaker 2: and twenty dollars. It just went absolutely nowhere. And you know,
- 3:52Speaker 2: it had quite a good software business, but it wasn't
- 3:55Speaker 2: changing the world, and it wasn't making fortunes for its
- 3:58Speaker 2: investors and so on. But the shinto transforming it. Since
- 4:01Speaker 2: transforming his company, he basically initially just held his corporate
- 4:05Speaker 2: treasury in bitcoin. But this model worked so well that
- 4:09Speaker 2: he just kept raising more and more money and just
- 4:12Speaker 2: simply buying bitcoin with it. He was doing.
- 4:14Speaker 1: Issuing shares, using the cash to buy bitcoin and iss
- 4:17Speaker 1: your debt as well, okay debt. Stopped piling more and
- 4:20Speaker 1: more bitcoin and effectively becoming a play on the bitcoin
- 4:22Speaker 1: price for.
- 4:24Speaker 2: A levered play on the bitcoin price, And I think
- 4:27Speaker 2: he's going to end up the richest man in the
- 4:28Speaker 2: world as a result of all of this, and I
- 4:30Speaker 2: think micro Strategy it's already now in the s and
- 4:33Speaker 2: P five hundred in terms of market cap, and I
- 4:36Speaker 2: think it'll be one of the top ten companies in
- 4:38Speaker 2: the world by market cap by the end of this decade.
- 4:41Speaker 1: If you're in the US, then you want it, and
- 4:42Speaker 1: you want to hold bitcoin or have a leverage play
- 4:45Speaker 1: on bitcoin, micro Strategy is an obvious place to go.
- 4:48Speaker 1: Although not everyone is happy with the share price that
- 4:51Speaker 1: was sleep well.
- 4:52Speaker 2: Funnily enough, a lot of his buyers came from the
- 4:54Speaker 2: UK because the FCA and its wisdom made it impossible
- 4:58Speaker 2: for UK investors to investing bitcoin when it was five
- 5:01Speaker 2: thousand dollars. The only way you could get exposure was
- 5:04Speaker 2: to buy stock in micro Strategy, and so I remember
- 5:08Speaker 2: writing articles in Money Week and on the Flying Frisbee
- 5:10Speaker 2: saying to people, look, if you want exposure to bitcoin
- 5:12Speaker 2: in the UK, just buy micro Strategy, and you.
- 5:16Speaker 1: Can also just open a coin based account and hold bitcoin.
- 5:18Speaker 1: You couldn't you have been able to for some years now.
- 5:23Speaker 2: It's a nightmare. Merry.
- 5:25Speaker 1: You can do it. Anyone can know you know how
- 5:29Speaker 1: you dominice You've known me decades now, you know I
- 5:32Speaker 1: can't do admin. I've got coin Base account.
- 5:36Speaker 2: Most banks would not allow you to send money to
- 5:38Speaker 2: crypto exchanges on.
- 5:40Speaker 1: My credit card.
- 5:42Speaker 2: Okay, well first Direct Okay, well you maybe First Direct
- 5:45Speaker 2: was one of the most modern griovy ones, but most
- 5:47Speaker 2: banks people found it impossible to send money, and Coinbase
- 5:51Speaker 2: is one of the more regular ones. Gemini too. It's
- 5:53Speaker 2: a real headache, and especially you can't buy it and
- 5:56Speaker 2: your SIP and your ES and whereas you can buy
- 5:59Speaker 2: micro Strategy. It was just much much easier to buy
- 6:01Speaker 2: micro Strategy stock than it was to buy bitcoin. And
- 6:04Speaker 2: in fact, the situation we have now is directly a
- 6:07Speaker 2: cause of the FCA making it so impossible to buy bitcoin.
- 6:11Speaker 2: I mean it's direct, So the.
- 6:12Speaker 1: FCA has made it hard to buy bitcoin in general,
- 6:14Speaker 1: but also in particular, and this possibly is the key
- 6:17Speaker 1: point here, is that you cannot buy a cryptocurrency in
- 6:20Speaker 1: any way inside one of the tax wrappers available in
- 6:22Speaker 1: the UK, so you can't put those are the things
- 6:25Speaker 1: an ISO account on Coinbase, you can't buy bitcoin or
- 6:28Speaker 1: any cryptocurrency or did an NFT or anything nuse like
- 6:32Speaker 1: that and shovel it into your step or your I SEP.
- 6:34Speaker 1: So what we're talking about here is the market going, well, okay,
- 6:37Speaker 1: let's give you another way to do that. Yeah. So
- 6:40Speaker 1: this is very recent in the UK, right, So Smarter
- 6:43Speaker 1: Web they announced that this is what they were going
- 6:44Speaker 1: to do only towards the end of April, correct, And
- 6:47Speaker 1: if you look at the share price at its peak,
- 6:50Speaker 1: it was up over six thousand percent from the date
- 6:54Speaker 1: of that announcement. That all these bitcoin treasury companies have
- 6:57Speaker 1: now come off in the UK, so it's up four
- 7:00Speaker 1: thousand percent at the moment.
- 7:02Speaker 2: I think it's two hundred and fifty p or something.
- 7:04Speaker 1: So that's still I mean, that is extraordinary shift, which
- 7:08Speaker 1: by the way, surely doesn't reflect the actual value of
- 7:11Speaker 1: the bitcoin that they hold.
- 7:12Speaker 2: Well, this is the next this is the big argument.
- 7:15Speaker 1: Yeah. So actually before we get onto that, let's just
- 7:17Speaker 1: talk about the other companies. What kind of companies have
- 7:19Speaker 1: done that, because I mean I've got a list of
- 7:21Speaker 1: them here and there's what, there's ten eleven companies that
- 7:24Speaker 1: have done this, made an announcement that they're going to
- 7:26Speaker 1: adopt at bitcoin treasury strategy. I mean, they're all companies
- 7:30Speaker 1: that I have never heard of before Bluebird Mining Ventures,
- 7:34Speaker 1: Vault Ventures, True Spuying Technologies, panther Metals, et cetera. So
- 7:39Speaker 1: companies that were dabbling in other things. A couple of
- 7:41Speaker 1: helium explorers, right.
- 7:43Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a couple of helium exposures of pivoting.
- 7:46Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's one hell of a pivot, although
- 7:48Speaker 1: I suppose it's all hot.
- 7:49Speaker 2: Indeed, what you always see when you see these incredible
- 7:54Speaker 2: bubbles is loads of people jump on the bandwagon. I
- 7:57Speaker 2: remember uranium in two thousand and six. I was planning
- 8:00Speaker 2: to set up a uranium explorer based on ones with
- 8:02Speaker 2: Common because there was just you know, everyone was just
- 8:05Speaker 2: getting in. So there are lots of operations there.
- 8:08Speaker 1: Again, you can have a go. I mean there are.
- 8:09Speaker 1: If you look at this list, there are a couple
- 8:11Speaker 1: of you know, uranium on one'sworth common type companies and
- 8:15Speaker 1: there absolutely yeah, I mean there's one. There's one. And
- 8:18Speaker 1: I don't mean to libel you, Amazing AI, because I'm
- 8:21Speaker 1: sure you're doing something good. But the company is called
- 8:22Speaker 1: Amazing AI and they only announced their strategy on the
- 8:26Speaker 1: twenty fourth of Junet, not very long ago, and sadly
- 8:28Speaker 1: for them, they have not gone up six thousand percent,
- 8:30Speaker 1: actually down twelve percent since, Yeah.
- 8:32Speaker 2: They rose a bit and then fell back a bit,
- 8:34Speaker 2: but they've only got they raised a bit naughty in
- 8:37Speaker 2: a way that they raised one hundred and twenty grand
- 8:40Speaker 2: and the share price was trading at four p and
- 8:43Speaker 2: I think all the directors got the shares at half
- 8:45Speaker 2: a p.
- 8:48Speaker 1: Right moving on, we have these bitcoinstragery companies now, and
- 8:52Speaker 1: we're effectively putting them into their own sector, aren't we
- 8:54Speaker 1: bitcoin treasuries. We're forgetting anything else they ever did. Should
- 9:00Speaker 1: retail investors be buying these things? Dominic?
- 9:04Speaker 2: Well, you know, Marin, what is a bubble? Tell me
- 9:09Speaker 2: what a bubble is, and I'll tell you what a
- 9:10Speaker 2: bubble is.
- 9:13Speaker 1: Did you tell me what a bubble is?
- 9:14Speaker 3: First?
- 9:15Speaker 2: A bubble is a bull market in which you don't
- 9:17Speaker 2: have a position. Hmm, it's very easy. You know. Everyone
- 9:23Speaker 2: has been saying bitcoin is a bubble. Bitcoin is a
- 9:25Speaker 2: bubble for fifteen years now, and it's always people that
- 9:29Speaker 2: don't have a position, and it's a it's a psychological
- 9:33Speaker 2: way of coping with the fact that you didn't invest
- 9:35Speaker 2: and now worried about investing too late. You dismissed it
- 9:38Speaker 2: as a bubble.
- 9:39Speaker 1: Okay, Levin, I think I have to interrupt you right now.
- 9:41Speaker 1: Just ask John a question. John, is bitcoin a bubble?
- 9:46Speaker 3: Oh? We bitcoin itself as a postive easing.
- 9:49Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm asking him that first dominic because he's the
- 9:53Speaker 1: only one of us on this podcast who doesn't have
- 9:55Speaker 1: any bitcoin.
- 9:58Speaker 3: Well, I resented furiously, but I think it's a bubble,
- 10:01Speaker 3: nor a doint has been that owned for two I nically,
- 10:04Speaker 3: if you look at the chart, isn't very bubbily.
- 10:08Speaker 1: Okay, well you haven't. You haven't got a coinbased account,
- 10:11Speaker 1: you haven't got any bitcoin, got any other crypto. So
- 10:14Speaker 1: let's talk about John. Let's pretend that he's too admin
- 10:17Speaker 1: useless to open a coin based account, is even worse
- 10:21Speaker 1: than I am.
- 10:22Speaker 3: Surely, just one thing, John, The reason I don't own
- 10:26Speaker 3: bitcoin is because my bank, which was nationwide, stopped me
- 10:29Speaker 3: from transfer nine hundred quid to my coin base account
- 10:32Speaker 3: in twenty fifteen. Please do not tell me how much
- 10:35Speaker 3: that one hundred quid would be.
- 10:36Speaker 1: What I say, John, myself out of the window, move
- 10:39Speaker 1: the first direct and just start using your credit cards.
- 10:42Speaker 1: That's all I'm saying. But which one of these bitcoin
- 10:46Speaker 1: treasury companies does John buy? I would like him to
- 10:49Speaker 1: buy panther Metals because you know, they've been looking for
- 10:52Speaker 1: zinc deposits in Canada. Maybe they'll find some of those too,
- 10:54Speaker 1: So that you're hedging, John, you're hedging.
- 10:56Speaker 3: Well, yes, yes, that's a diversify portfolio.
- 11:01Speaker 1: Sure, Dominic, Sorry, we're gossiping over you do tell us
- 11:05Speaker 1: what to do.
- 11:05Speaker 2: I think panther Metals might even be funding their exploration
- 11:08Speaker 2: of said zinc deposits with their bitcoin treasury. I think
- 11:12Speaker 2: that's the purpose of it.
- 11:13Speaker 1: You know, they only have one bitcoin, right.
- 11:15Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So if we go back to the original bubble,
- 11:20Speaker 2: if you like, which was tulips. You know, there was
- 11:22Speaker 2: obviously a tulip bubble in sixteen thirty eight, but that
- 11:26Speaker 2: tulip bubble built an industry that has, you know, brought
- 11:30Speaker 2: prosperity to Holland for four hundred years and it remains
- 11:33Speaker 2: at the center of the flower industry today. You could
- 11:35Speaker 2: say the same back dot com. Dot Com was obviously stupid,
- 11:39Speaker 2: but the Internet it's bigger than it ever was, and
- 11:42Speaker 2: so we're seeing that same pattern. So if you ask
- 11:45Speaker 2: me where are these stocks going next? I will say
- 11:48Speaker 2: higher and lower and lower and higher. I mean, it's
- 11:51Speaker 2: a speculative bubble, and there's obviously a lot of opportunists,
- 11:54Speaker 2: but some of these companies, and the Smarter Web Company
- 11:58Speaker 2: being one of them, and coincilly and being an other,
- 12:00Speaker 2: are legitimate. You know, if you like bitcoin believers and
- 12:05Speaker 2: they are following the Sailor crypto model and they're not
- 12:08Speaker 2: just sort of fly by nights. And if Bitcoin goes
- 12:12Speaker 2: from one ten to say one fifty or wherever it's
- 12:14Speaker 2: going next, then these companies will double and triple them.
- 12:17Speaker 2: More so, if bitcoin goes back to seventy or fifty
- 12:19Speaker 2: or whatever, these companies will lose similar amounts.
- 12:23Speaker 3: The only reason I'd sort of struggle with it is
- 12:25Speaker 3: because they're specifically. So let's say I'm agnostic one betcoin.
- 12:30Speaker 3: I don't know strong view either way, but why I
- 12:36Speaker 3: don't quite get why I would buy what I most
- 12:38Speaker 3: and investment trust trading a massive premium to its now,
- 12:42Speaker 3: which is like you know, investing vet coins. And then
- 12:45Speaker 3: I suppose at least Sailor was the FoST in the space,
- 12:49Speaker 3: But as far as I'm aware, it's like trading that
- 12:51Speaker 3: a big premium to the bitcoin holdings up in double
- 12:55Speaker 3: check that maybe I'm wrong twice. Yeah, And I mean,
- 13:00Speaker 3: you've got all these new ones, and clearly some of
- 13:02Speaker 3: them are blake junior uranium minos that explored. Does that
- 13:06Speaker 3: I haven't got anything. It's a bit like whenever the
- 13:08Speaker 3: gold ETFs got launched in the gold minos that didn't
- 13:12Speaker 3: ended up losing a lot of flows because people could
- 13:14Speaker 3: just access gold directly, except even more so because at
- 13:19Speaker 3: least the gold miners yard actually digging some gold out
- 13:22Speaker 3: of the ground at a courst and then selling it,
- 13:25Speaker 3: whereas with bitcoin they're just buying backcoin and then holding it.
- 13:30Speaker 3: So this is what I don't understand the nationale for
- 13:33Speaker 3: these being the good ways to play backcoin.
- 13:35Speaker 2: I guess I shall attempt to explain the rationale. I
- 13:39Speaker 2: hope I'm being clear that that My overall position is
- 13:44Speaker 2: that there is a lot of hot air and you know,
- 13:48Speaker 2: rolics in this story, but there is also an underlying
- 13:51Speaker 2: truth to it as well.
- 13:53Speaker 3: Now it's clear to me that you are saying that
- 13:56Speaker 3: there's a lot of speavy companies in the space where
- 13:58Speaker 3: I am. I'm kind of windomly why does this space
- 14:01Speaker 3: exist at all beyond the regulatory arbertrage element, which I
- 14:05Speaker 3: think is completely. That makes sense. It makes sense, and
- 14:09Speaker 3: as much as until there's a bitcoin eta, if evering
- 14:13Speaker 3: can easily get hold of, which presumably isn't that far away.
- 14:16Speaker 3: I think the FC is looking at something on noise lanes.
- 14:20Speaker 2: The traditional way of valuing an investment trust is you go, yeah,
- 14:23Speaker 2: this investment trust has got a million pounds worth of assets.
- 14:26Speaker 2: It's only trading at half a million quid. I'm going
- 14:28Speaker 2: to buy it because it's worth twice its assets. Bizarrely,
- 14:32Speaker 2: in the bitcoin treasury space, it's almost like the reverse applies. Now.
- 14:38Speaker 2: MicroStrategy is trading at a value of roughly twice it's
- 14:41Speaker 2: the value of its bitcoin. So it's the expression is
- 14:45Speaker 2: m NAV it's market cap to NAV ratio. So Strategy
- 14:50Speaker 2: has an m NAV of two. And I think that
- 14:52Speaker 2: Strategy that price is deserved because of what I call
- 14:55Speaker 2: the sale at premium. The guy's just so charismatic and
- 14:58Speaker 2: such a articulate proponed to bitcoin. You just get a
- 15:03Speaker 2: premium because it's Michael Sailor, and he's the visionary and
- 15:05Speaker 2: he's the leader and so on. But some of these
- 15:08Speaker 2: other companies. There's another company called Semlar Scientific which is
- 15:12Speaker 2: training on the navstat and I think it has five
- 15:16Speaker 2: thousand bitcoins something like that, and its market cap is
- 15:20Speaker 2: half a billion, so it's trading at an m NAV
- 15:22Speaker 2: of one. And the CEO of the company, Eric Semler,
- 15:26Speaker 2: is a very nice man, but he doesn't have the
- 15:28Speaker 2: charisma that Michael Sailor has, and so you get no
- 15:32Speaker 2: premium for the management. But if you look at a
- 15:35Speaker 2: company like Metaplanet, I don't even know what it's m
- 15:37Speaker 2: NAV is at the moment, but it's many multiples of
- 15:41Speaker 2: what its actual bitcoins holdings are. And in the case
- 15:45Speaker 2: of Coincillium, for example, at one point last week, Coincillium
- 15:49Speaker 2: had a market cap of maybe one hundred and twenty
- 15:51Speaker 2: million quid and the value of its bitcoin holdings was
- 15:56Speaker 2: less than five million quid. And similarly, at one extra
- 16:00Speaker 2: dreen point, smarter Web company at a valuation above a
- 16:03Speaker 2: billion and I think it's bitcoin holdings worth maybe fifty
- 16:07Speaker 2: million or something like that. So you know, there was
- 16:11Speaker 2: a huge premium to m NAV. So there's this new
- 16:15Speaker 2: thing which people talk about called time to m NAV.
- 16:20Speaker 2: So if a company has an m NAV of one,
- 16:23Speaker 2: it can only issue more shares and more debt to
- 16:26Speaker 2: the value of its bitcoins. Whereas if it has an
- 16:28Speaker 2: m NAV of ten, it's able to issue paper at
- 16:31Speaker 2: ten times its value and buy bitcoins with this overvalued paper.
- 16:36Speaker 2: And then the idea is that the company the value
- 16:40Speaker 2: of the bitcoin holdings eventually catches up with the value
- 16:43Speaker 2: of the company. So you have this thing called time
- 16:45Speaker 2: to m NAV, which is a sort of measure that's
- 16:48Speaker 2: been devised. And if you can pick up a company
- 16:51Speaker 2: with a greater time to m NAV, the potential of
- 16:55Speaker 2: that company to grow its bitcoin holdings to reach its
- 16:59Speaker 2: m NAV grows greater. But there are also, at the
- 17:03Speaker 2: same time, loads and loads of parallels, if you like,
- 17:08Speaker 2: to the old fashioned pyramid scheme, and the earlier you
- 17:11Speaker 2: get in the pyramid scheme, the more money you make.
- 17:14Speaker 2: And because this is just suddenly happened in the last month,
- 17:17Speaker 2: everyone's really trying to get in early to be the
- 17:19Speaker 2: guy who you know, makes all the money. I was
- 17:22Speaker 2: lucky enough to buy coincillion at six p ten days
- 17:26Speaker 2: later it was ninety p ten day. That includes a
- 17:29Speaker 2: Saturday and a Sunday.
- 17:30Speaker 1: So did you keep it? Did you sell it?
- 17:34Speaker 2: I took my initial steak off the table they're in,
- 17:37Speaker 2: and I took a little bit more off the table,
- 17:39Speaker 2: and looking back, the stock is now twenty five p.
- 17:42Speaker 2: I should have taken more off the table, but my
- 17:44Speaker 2: attitude was I'll just let the run, I'll enjoy, I'll
- 17:47Speaker 2: get the rest of the free and see what happens.
- 17:49Speaker 2: There are some people who are using this measure with
- 17:53Speaker 2: great success. So we can mock and scorn and all
- 17:56Speaker 2: the rest of it, but they are making a great
- 17:58Speaker 2: deal more money.
- 17:59Speaker 1: They're making money. Not I get that. I mean, I
- 18:02Speaker 1: suppose that the positive side to this, John, and the
- 18:05Speaker 1: thing that well we should bring out before we finish,
- 18:07Speaker 1: is that it is however it happening. It is great
- 18:12Speaker 1: to see retail and festas engaged with the listed store market.
- 18:16Speaker 1: I know this is not the way you want it
- 18:18Speaker 1: to happen, but I still look at it and I
- 18:20Speaker 1: think that more people are engaged with the store market,
- 18:22Speaker 1: the better. And what the stock market is doing here
- 18:25Speaker 1: is saying there's something you guys want, and that's what
- 18:27Speaker 1: the market is supposed to do. So we should approve
- 18:31Speaker 1: of that mechanism, and we should approve of people using
- 18:33Speaker 1: that mechanism to get what they want, even if you
- 18:35Speaker 1: don't approve of the thing they're buying. Am I right,
- 18:37Speaker 1: Dominic work with me here. Yes.
- 18:40Speaker 2: The thing is there's so much pent up demand over
- 18:43Speaker 2: many years, and you know that sort of tap has
- 18:48Speaker 2: suddenly been opened, and that's what's created this wild helter
- 18:52Speaker 2: skelter ride. You have to think psychologically, where are we
- 18:56Speaker 2: in the bubble? Where are we in the hype cycle
- 18:58Speaker 2: rather than in turn of traditional investment metrics.
- 19:02Speaker 1: Dominic, thank you so much for joining us today, and John,
- 19:05Speaker 1: thank you as ever. Thanks for listening to this week's
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- 19:17Speaker 1: Dominic of course, what are you on Twitter?
- 19:19Speaker 2: Dominic, I'm at Dominic Frisbee and the website is the
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- 19:23Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm at marinsw and John is John Underscore Stepic.
- 19:28Speaker 1: This episode was produced by some Asadi Productions of Broughton
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