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Ten31 Timestamp: Dog Days · TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast

• 0:00
  Mr. Arnold, how are we, sir?
• 0:02
  Doing all right. Dog days of summer. You know how it is.
• 0:05
  I can feel it shifting, people, at least here in the States.
• 0:09
  I don't know what the Europeans are doing. They're probably still away, not thinking about anything.
• 0:15
  But I'm beginning to see people talk about, like, okay, it's time to lock in and focus.
• 0:18
  Kids are going back for fall sports practice. People are getting engaged.
• 0:24
  People are getting engaged?
• 0:26
  Getting engaged.
• 0:26
  Is that a common signal of work returning?
• 0:28
  Yeah.
• 0:30
  for engaging more. I see. But I'm looking forward to it. I love summer, but it is a chaotic season
• 0:37
  for me because we go down the shore, as you know, and you're supposed to go relax, but we don't
• 0:42
  really relax as much as we should. The kids are relaxing. You don't have vacations with kids.
• 0:48
  Everything is a trip. It's very active. Very active. It's a game of survival, if you will.
• 0:55
  Speaking of which, we're officially a straight-up Hormuz podcast at this point.
• 0:59
  I feel like the last six months, it's the recurring theme.
• 1:04
  Guess what?
• 1:05
  It remains blocked.
• 1:06
  Shard.
• 1:07
  Yeah.
• 1:07
  I sent out a tweet last week from Groundhog Day with Bill Murray.
• 1:13
  It's Groundhog Day again.
• 1:15
  Yeah, look, I never thought that if you did a word cloud on the timestamp newsletter,
• 1:19
  that Hormuz would be the most commonly used.
• 1:22
  It's literally, it's like Bitcoin and Hormuz is like, I think the two big, biggest clouds right now.
• 1:26
  But here we are, same as it ever was over the last, call it six months.
• 1:32
  We've got our president saying he's going to turn the straight up Hormuz into another U.S. territory.
• 1:38
  So you can expect the Trump card island to open shortly.
• 1:42
  Both of them going back and forth saying each side is in control, insisting that they have control, they have the power.
• 1:48
  So, yeah, it remains basically a summer doldrum stalemate there.
• 1:52
  Yeah. And do you think this resolves anytime soon?
• 1:54
  You know, I'm increasingly less optimistic that you see definitive resolution on this through the end of the year.
• 2:03
  But, you know, a lot of it, I think, is going to come down to some of the dynamics we'll talk about on the rest of these slides.
• 2:08
  But you've clearly got multiple factions.
• 2:12
  We've talked about this a little bit on the show over the past couple months, but multiple factions in Iran of decision makers,
• 2:17
  There's some who are more pragmatic and willing to move negotiations forward and looking for a deal, probably acknowledging some of the pain being wrought by Treasury sanctions, which are apparently getting stepped up even further to the double secret sanctions tier, purbescent, this week.
• 2:36
  But you've got kind of a contingency feeling that and wanting to move forward.
• 2:40
  And then you've got the IRGC who are, depending on who you talk to, you know, if you talk to Tom Luongo, that's just an arm of City of London.
• 2:47
  But whether you believe that or not, they are certainly much more intransigent.
• 2:52
  So it kind of depends, I think, on how much economic pain is actually being wrought behind the scenes that we're not totally privy to and how that affects the relative standing of those two factions and who kind of has the upper hand to move things forward.
• 3:05
  But I've very much learned to think about this as a two weeks TM situation for the time being.
• 3:12
  It is. And as we've been saying for months, the signal to keep your eye on while this is unfolding or continuing to go in a Groundhog Day circle is what's going on in the bond markets.
• 3:25
  We currently have the U.S. 30-year trading at 5.279 and the 10-year at 4.7.
• 3:31
  So elevated, rising, seems to have broken the structural bull market that we had in bonds for 40 years, I think, cleanly.
• 3:40
  It looks like the trend has reversed over the last couple of years.
• 3:44
  But one thing we've been pointing out is to make sure that you're juxtaposing those rising yields with this Bank of America, U.S. bond market, option volatility index, the move index.
• 3:55
  And it seems relatively suppressed.
• 3:56
  We've been tracking this pretty closely for the last three months.
• 4:00
  And it looks like it's falling quite a bit and settling in a range.
• 4:05
  Yeah.
• 4:05
  And I think this goes to your question.
• 4:07
  this is kind of one of the reasons that I also don't know that you see as long as you have this
• 4:11
  kind of move downtrend, you know, relatively intact. I think that's one less reason for
• 4:16
  the U.S. to kind of take a bad deal just to get it all over with. And, you know, I think this is,
• 4:22
  we've talked about this in the past, but this is just kind of a measure of treasury volatility.
• 4:27
  And I think there's increasing reason to believe that the real binding and strength of the governor
• 4:33
  on the treasury and on the U.S. government kind of in turn is not so much the absolute level of
• 4:39
  yields, although in the long run, it does matter. And we'll talk about some interesting math there
• 4:43
  in a couple of slides. But in the near term, kind of what you need is for this not to blow out
• 4:48
  so that various carry trades, treasury basis trade, et cetera, can be preserved and not blow
• 4:54
  up and cause a really negative feedback loop that actually leads to kind of a crisis scenario.
• 5:00
  You've seen big spikes in the past cause some froggy,
• 5:04
  or what was it that Trump said last year,
• 5:05
  some queasiness in the bond market on Liberation Day that led to the initial what was viewed as a taco perhaps that right perhaps that wrong But in any case clearly in the near term this is the main dynamic I think to watch and kind of keeping this pounded down allows
• 5:23
  for a lot more breathing room as yields probably continue to structurally rise or at least kind
• 5:27
  of stay where they are. And so I think it's related as well to the top chart or the top slide
• 5:33
  that we just scrolled past with the SPR drain.
• 5:36
  You know, we've talked in over the past few weeks,
• 5:38
  the past few months about the U.S. SPR,
• 5:41
  strategic patrol and reserve coming down
• 5:42
  to 40 plus year lows.
• 5:44
  And obviously that's not what you want to see,
• 5:48
  not ideal in the same way that, you know,
• 5:51
  four to 5% plus kind of yields
• 5:54
  on the 10 year, 30 year, the long end
• 5:56
  are also not what you want to see.
• 5:57
  I think both of those can be manageable
• 6:00
  in the near term as it relates to oil
• 6:03
  because the U.S. is in a net producer, net exporter position.
• 6:07
  And I think it's pretty clear based on executive orders we've seen this year
• 6:10
  that that's going up, not down in terms of government backstops
• 6:15
  for and support for the energy industry broadly.
• 6:18
  And then on the bond side, the other big piece,
• 6:21
  the two things are obviously related because higher energy prices lead to,
• 6:25
  we'll tend to push yields higher and potentially increase bond volatility.
• 6:28
  If there are steps on the margin that can be taken to keep this manageable,
• 6:31
  then you extend your runway to do the, what should we call it, the ego contest, for lack of a more
• 6:40
  polite term, between Trump and the IRGC. That extends the U.S.'s runway to kind of posture and
• 6:45
  play this game of chicken for longer. So those are both kind of the two dynamics that I'd be
• 6:50
  watching. And I don't yet see the desperation on the U.S. side to kind of cry uncle here.
• 6:54
  No, neither do I. While all that's going on, we have Japan needing some help. And the U.S. has stepped in to purchase yen for the first time in some time.
• 7:07
  And similarly, over across the Pacific and Japan, they're losing control of their yield curve.
• 7:13
  And Treasury Secretary Scott percent came out, I believe, a few days ago, basically reiterating that the U.S. is here to support Japan in their efforts to manage this bond situation they find themselves in.
• 7:28
  Yeah. And this is I think this is directly related to the move curve, the move chart that we were showing, because this is like on the margin, one of many little tools to kind of backstop that, you know, the volatility in the bond market.
• 7:42
  I mean, I guess logic being right that this is a few weeks ago, but the USDJPY cross kind of blowing out to 40 to 50 year lows and, you know, needing some sort of response to defend the currency from the BOJ and the Japanese government.
• 7:59
  One of the obvious ways you could see Japan moving on that and dealing with it is tapping into, I think it's 1.2 currently trillion of US Treasury reserves.
• 8:12
  And so we've seen other situations like this in the past with, you know, levered hedge funds in the U.S., right, or banks or large corporate counterparties who can come and instead of just outright selling treasuries to raise dollars or in Japan's case to defend the yen, you can come and get basically a tap into this repo facility, some kind of repo facility to access value against the collateral of those treasuries instead of outright selling them.
• 8:41
  So it's kind of a win-win for both sides. And we've seen iterations of that trade before. And this is just, I believe, the first time that this has happened in this incarnation with the U.S. supporting and helping the BOJ defend the yen.
• 8:56
  I think there's been speculation in the past that this has been happening in the background, but this one was kind of outright directly and explicitly confirmed.
• 9:03
  But this is just one of many little kind of tools on the margin to, you know, keep move in a reasonable spot, to keep treasure volatility in a reasonable spot and kind of, you know, you could call it extend and pretend.
• 9:14
  And I think that's fair. But the reality is that thus far it has been effective.
• 9:18
  And I think people who have been sitting there saying like any day now, the US is going to have to retrench and call uncle on all this because of these these imbalances and these pockets of volatility just have been nothing but wrong all year.
• 9:33
  And I think this is just the latest iteration of that.
• 9:35
  The last piece that I'd highlight here that I kind of circled in red is Besant saying the FEMA, the FIMA repo facility is an important backstop.
• 9:44
  We would encourage it to be upsized in the coming months.
• 9:46
  I think it's interesting because the facility is a Fed facility.
• 9:50
  So it's not something that the Treasury directly controls.
• 9:53
  But here you have the Treasury Secretary kind of publicly, you know, expressing his wish and his desire for that backstop to grow and to increase.
• 10:02
  And that's especially interesting because he's no longer dealing with a recalcitrant counterparty leading the Fed.
• 10:11
  He's dealing with his boy, Kevin Warsh, sitting in that seat.
• 10:14
  And so you know it just I think very much worth noting as it relates to a little signpost about how the you know the Fed relationship you know may perhaps be evolving over the coming years Yeah for those who are unaware the FEMA repo facility is the Foreign International Monetary
• 10:30
  Authorities Repo Facility, which is a standing tool created by the Fed,
• 10:34
  to allow approved foreign central banks and international monetary authorities to temporarily
• 10:38
  exchange U.S. Treasury securities for U.S. dollars. So essentially, I swap wine from the Fed to these
• 10:45
  governments. And on that note, building on all this is as this is going on, as yields are rising,
• 10:51
  as the war with Iran is raging on or the stalemate is raging on, whatever we want to classify it as,
• 10:57
  it is raging on. We have the fiscal situation here in the United States not getting any better.
• 11:01
  I believe we just had the largest July budget deficit at negative $432 billion.
• 11:07
  interest on u.s debt rose by 26 billion from last july it's approaching 120 billion dollars
• 11:16
  a month hit 118 in july so that puts total interest expense for fiscal year 2026 at 1.17
• 11:23
  trillion so i believe that's surpassing national defense and medicare i'm reading the kubalese letter
• 11:30
  tweet for the first time and trying to make sure i get all the details here but yeah the the
• 11:36
  fiscal situation is blowing out. We're increasing military spending. I believe we want to expand
• 11:41
  the budget there by 500 billion. And as we can see here on the right, it looks like Trump
• 11:48
  is calling Warsh quite frequently since it became the Fed chair as well. And so you have this
• 11:54
  sort of attempt to manage yields and the volatility on those yields and help out
• 12:00
  foreign nations to make sure they're not dumping our treasuries. But in the background, we keep
• 12:04
  running the tab here on the national debt should be hitting $40 trillion, I think, within the next
• 12:09
  couple of weeks. And I think that's a big question on many people's minds, is how do we manage this?
• 12:16
  What does this mean for the U.S. moving forward as a debtor nation?
• 12:20
  Yeah. I mean, look, I believe it was Nile Ferguson who had the famous quote about,
• 12:25
  you know, historically, when that government starts spending more on interest than it does on
• 12:30
  national defense, you know, you kind of are at the very least entering a meaningful new phase and
• 12:35
  generally not a good phase for governments historically. To be fair, you know, I don't
• 12:41
  know that you've ever seen a historical hegemon quite like the US. And so I think the trillion
• 12:47
  dollar question, the quadrillion dollar question is how much incremental room does that give it to
• 12:51
  maneuver? But like, look, obviously this is like fundamentally unsustainable. And it's, you know,
• 12:55
  I think it's something that if you're interested in this show, if you're interested in Bitcoin,
• 12:58
  This is obviously, you know, it's like being new to you. And it's one of the reasons that I think anyone who is interested in, you know, hard assets came to this, whether it's Bitcoin or gold or anything else.
• 13:07
  You know, if you came to that in the first place, it was likely partially because of this.
• 13:11
  I think it's worth thinking about how like 20 years ago, shortly before a financial crisis, and then even kind of immediately in the wake, I think this kind of curve was like very obvious.
• 13:23
  It's like very obvious this was happening with the way that U.S. debt GDP was going with an aging population transitioning into Social Security and doing massive liability from Medicare perspective with defense spending ramping up.
• 13:36
  it was kind of clear if you were paying attention that like this was happening and so you'd have
• 13:40
  you know kind of lone voices in the wilderness like like ron paul calling this out and uh you're
• 13:45
  saying that this is inevitably you know where we're headed if meaningful changes don't happen
• 13:49
  and i think vast majority of people you know didn't listen or didn't really care or you know
• 13:54
  the the game was going kind of well enough so it was you know it was somebody else's problem it was
• 13:58
  a problem for 20 years from now 30 years from now whatever and you know i actually don't think it
• 14:03
  was like super consensus to talk about this. Fast forward. And now I think, especially post COVID,
• 14:08
  this is, you know, there are a lot of empty suits in Washington still who probably don't even,
• 14:12
  who aren't thinking about this math a lot, but I, I increasingly think this is like, you know,
• 14:15
  way more consensus, like kind of everyone knows that everyone knows that this, that this is what
• 14:19
  the math says, and this is a problem. And so I think there's a danger for like Bitcoiners and
• 14:25
  gold bugs and hard money people to kind of sit on Twitter and post charts and shock and say, Oh,
• 14:30
  no one, no one's watching this. No one has any idea. You know, we're, we're driving straight
• 14:34
  off a cliff. Um, I think it's a legitimate concern, but at this point, I think it's much
• 14:39
  more kind of consensus and understood. And especially among, you know, let's say the
• 14:43
  triumvirate of Trump, Walsh and Besson. I think we can be confident that those guys understand
• 14:49
  the interest burden on the U S debt at this point. Right. And I say all that just because it's like,
• 14:53
  okay, let's like apply a theory of mind to the people who are in charge of this,
• 14:59
  especially since, you know, two of the three of them are like Druckenmiller protégés, right?
• 15:03
  And are able to kind of do basic arithmetic. And let's just think about what might they be
• 15:08
  thinking here and what might the, you know, policy coming out of that, falling out of that be.
• 15:13
  And I think at the very least we can say collectively, like I look at all these headlines,
• 15:17
  I look at what Bessent said and has done. I look at what Warsh has said, this headline here about,
• 15:22
  you know, his communication with the president. I look at the ongoing math that we all know about
• 15:26
  And I like OK we not going to hike rates because of the Phillips curve Right Like we not like we not in a position anymore where you know the the the consensus of like economics academia like means anything in terms of actual policy proposals like if it ever did
• 15:44
  Right. We are like well past the event horizon where, you know, the the halcyon golden days of the 90s, where you could kind of precisely calibrate the economy on like 25 basis point increments and, you know, have the illusion of tweaking the dials here and there to kind of get the optimal outcome.
• 15:59
  Like that's done. That's, that's over. So I just think it's, this all collectively comes together
• 16:03
  to me to point in one particular direction, which is like, this is going to be managed.
• 16:08
  Um, and I think it's completely open to debate how well it will be managed. Right. Um, but I,
• 16:14
  I think we can, we should just shut the book on the idea that, um, you know, the, the, this is
• 16:20
  going, it's going off a cliff. No one is, no one is even trying to drive it. No one's aware of it.
• 16:24
  Um, and ask yourself, like, if there is someone at the controls now, or a group of people at
• 16:27
  controls. Maybe you think they have a bad idea of what to do, but like, what do you think they're
• 16:31
  actually going to do to try to manage this? And, you know, I think there's maybe some stuff we can
• 16:35
  talk about in the next few slides, but at the very least, you know, perhaps a new Fed-Treasury
• 16:41
  relationship, or we might even say a new Fed-Treasury accord might be kind of in the
• 16:45
  works for, you know, managing this now very kind of obvious problem. Yeah. And you don't have this
• 16:50
  in the chart book, but I want to mention before we get to the next slide, which is AI focus,
• 16:54
  but as it pertains to Bitcoin and crypto more broadly,
• 16:58
  I think the signal that points to what you just said
• 17:01
  is they're going to try and manage it.
• 17:02
  I do think Bitcoin and stablecoins,
• 17:05
  whether we like it or not, real-world asset tokenization
• 17:08
  is a part of that managed decline or managed facilitation
• 17:13
  of getting us to the other side of this debt issue,
• 17:17
  potentially to a new system.
• 17:18
  You just see the moves that the administration is making
• 17:22
  where the agencies below the executive branch right now are making, like the OCC, basically
• 17:27
  opening up the floodgates for Bitcoin and crypto related firms and exchanges to get banking
• 17:34
  charters. The SEC has come out and said, we're not waiting for Clarity Act. We're going to begin
• 17:38
  making rulings to make it so that businesses and entrepreneurs can operate with some sense
• 17:45
  of clarity, even without the Clarity Act specifically. And the Genius Act, too, I think
• 17:52
  Bissent came out last week and said we were going to be ready January 17th, 2027, to make sure that
• 17:58
  all the banks and pertinent companies are ready to go to implement the Genius Act. And again,
• 18:05
  separating what I believe as a Bitcoiner and about sound money and separation of money in state,
• 18:11
  just objectively looking at the chessboard right now and the moves that are being made.
• 18:16
  It seems like they are really running full steam ahead, not waiting for Congress and the Senate
• 18:21
  to get things done to make sure that this infrastructure is ready to go to play a part
• 18:28
  in this managed situation. Yeah, I think that's right. The dollar system is transitioning right
• 18:33
  now, right? Like a new, we are in between systems. It remains to be seen how well that transition
• 18:38
  will take place or how well it'll work, all the bells and whistles behind it, the mechanisms,
• 18:42
  you know, what it will ultimately mean. But I think, you know, the operating from the perspective
• 18:48
  of 20 that dominated 20 years ago is, I think, just a losing strategy at this point. Like we are
• 18:54
  well and truly into a shift here. And, you know, I think it's worth asking, like, what types of
• 18:59
  assets might ultimately collateralize and underpin a new dollar system to the extent that it's being
• 19:04
  steered in the direction that looks different from a fully unbacked kind of Fed note and back
• 19:13
  towards something that looks a little more like a historical traditional dollar over the last
• 19:17
  couple hundred years. If you were moving in that direction, how would you do it and what might it
• 19:22
  imply for certain assets that might be useful in making that transition? So remains to be seen,
• 19:29
  But yeah, I definitely think that that is happening.
• 19:32
  Yeah.
• 19:33
  AI, I think the other big chess piece that is being utilized to manage this transition.
• 19:40
  Obviously, there's a ton of productivity to be gained.
• 19:43
  It's obviously attracting an amount of capital that would have been unfathomable a decade ago.
• 19:49
  And I think as this build out continues, we're speed running.
• 19:56
  There's sort of like the financialization of this industry.
• 19:59
  You have Compute Futures.
• 20:01
  And I think the biggest headline the last few weeks as it pertains to AI financing is this deal that NVIDIA and a bunch of the larger asset managers, Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman, KKR, came to the table to put together and then announce on CNBC and a consolidated front, which is basically how we're going to finance the build out.
• 20:22
  And so NVIDIA and all these institutional investor partners
• 20:27
  got together to mobilize over $500 billion
• 20:29
  of third party capital to finance this build out.
• 20:32
  And NVIDIA, I think it's really unique
• 20:36
  what they're doing on the chip side
• 20:37
  to de-risk things for the banks.
• 20:40
  Yeah, I mean, there's a ton to say here.
• 20:43
  I think you could make multiple credible arguments
• 20:45
  about kind of what this signals about
• 20:48
  where we are kind of in the cycle.
• 20:49
  I think I probably would skew toward you can be afraid about how greater securitization and financialization of any asset class, especially at this scale over time, leads to potentially to malinvestment and the need for a wave of liquidations on unprofitable and reasonable investments.
• 21:07
  But I think this looks like we're at the start of the curve, kind of not the end of the curve of if meaningful malinvestment is to come, I think maybe something like this would ultimately drive it and support it.
• 21:19
  But, you know, who can say if that's a year away, multiple years away or whatever.
• 21:23
  But this, this to me still looks a little more like kind of the start than the end.
• 21:28
  That's kind of another debate.
• 21:29
  I think for, for our purposes, the couple interesting things to me here, like the way
• 21:34
  that this links back to everything we've talked about is like, if you remember back to Bestin's
• 21:38
  three, three, three plan.
• 21:40
  So I think it's like, it was three, $3 gas, 3% unemployment, I think, but then crucially
• 21:45
  3% deficit to GDP.
• 21:47
  So that's basically cutting in half or maybe a little less than that, but a meaningful improvement on where the deficit sits to GDP.
• 21:55
  We just talked about how spending is not slowing down, right?
• 21:58
  And interest is accelerating.
• 22:00
  At these rates will only continue to be a larger and larger piece of the overall spending burden.
• 22:06
  Obviously, defense spending is going up.
• 22:08
  Boomers aren't getting any younger, Social Security, Medicare, et cetera.
• 22:11
  So spending is not slowing down.
• 22:12
  So that element of the ratio is not going to go down.
• 22:16
  So the numerator is kind of has that pressure on it. So then what can you do on the other side?
• 22:20
  Well, you have the denominator, right? Like you could have you could you could run it hot.
• 22:24
  You could have GDP go up meaningfully and have some sort of massive industrial impulse to kind of force that to happen.
• 22:30
  And then, you know, you're skimming basically tax revenue off a much larger kind of GDP base.
• 22:35
  And, you know, certainly you can maybe maybe give some help to on the rate side with all the coordination we've just talked about in this episode.
• 22:41
  But just as it relates to kind of GDP, I think both of these data points we have here.
• 22:45
  So on the left-hand side, the press release from NVIDIA and the rest of the asset managers,
• 22:50
  and then on the right-hand side, the latest manufacturing PMI, which is now back to basically
• 22:55
  close to 2022 highs, levels not seen in over four years. In this PR, this NVIDIA PR, there's just an
• 23:01
  interesting quote from our good friend, Uncle Larry at BlackRock saying that the AI build-out
• 23:06
  will require unprecedented investment and a skilled workforce to turn that investment into
• 23:10
  the infrastructure that helps power future growth. So I think like all of, you know, if you're
• 23:15
  squinting, like it starts to look like all of these things kind of play nicely together for
• 23:19
  the initiatives that the administration wants to run. And you're starting to see with the PMI
• 23:24
  evidence that, you know, it is having a noticeable impact in kind of the sclerotic U.S. industrial
• 23:29
  economy, which is good for another piece that we'll talk about in a second. But this is kind of
• 23:34
  what you would have to believe, right? If you were, if you were best and if you were bullish on the
• 23:38
  three, three, three plan and doing, you know, what needs to be done to get there,
• 23:41
  assuming spending is not slowing down, you would need to see like a Titanic,
• 23:45
  unprecedented wave of new investment into us industry Right And what better way to do it than you know the the industry that you know if you an AGI maxi you know intelligence has has infinite demand you know what better way to do it than than investing in that with the biggest companies in the world
• 24:00
  And so I think like, this is, it's all directionally confirmatory of kind of the strategy that we've been talking about kind of all year.
• 24:06
  And I think the, you know, the, the run at hot playbook is, is very clear here and not slowing down, but I, you know, I'll stop there, but I think we should just put a pin specifically in the skilled workforce thing.
• 24:15
  Because I think that's going to be very relevant to think about over the coming months for a few reasons.
• 24:19
  Yeah. And we'll talk about that in two slides.
• 24:21
  But before we get to that, I think the setup for that is this showdown we've been talking about as well.
• 24:26
  One of the other sub themes of the show over the course of this year is all this being a massive proxy war for the superpowers that are China and the United States.
• 24:36
  And if you're reading the headlines, the proxy war seems to be heating up as both countries are trying to silo off their populations and economies from each other in one way or another.
• 24:48
  And so we have three headlines here.
• 24:49
  China tightens exit rules over tech security risk.
• 24:52
  The U.S. is urging Apple not to buy Chinese memory chips.
• 24:54
  And the U.S. is going to tell their partners they must pick sides in the AI race with China.
• 24:59
  Yeah.
• 24:59
  So, I mean, all fairly self-explanatory.
• 25:01
  I think the top ones are really interesting as it relates to, you know, not trying to not allowing, you know, some of the basically if you're strategically valuable to the country as like an AI researcher or, you know, one of a gigabrain who's responsible for one strategic injury in industry or another, like you may not be able to leave the country anymore for a little while.
• 25:18
  I think that certainly says a lot about where we are. But all these I just put on here to indicate, like, you know, the decoupling narrative, the decoupling theme that we've talked about throughout the this year on the show is not it's not slowing down.
• 25:31
  It's very clear. And a lot of the fault lines on that particularly seem to be the AI race and advanced critical industries like it'll be AI.
• 25:41
  We've talked about robotics, robotics export bans and import bans in the past over the past couple of weeks.
• 25:47
  Rare Earths, which are obviously an input to both of those industries.
• 25:50
  So I think you'll continue to see more and more kind of deglobalization and decoupling and fracturing, especially on the most significant industries that are going to be necessary to establish geopolitical dominance and economic dominance over the coming century.
• 26:08
  And I think that has that interestingly also ties back to the skilled workforce point.
• 26:13
  Right. Yeah. In terms of. Yeah. And it's interesting, too, because right before we hopped on a record here, I published a TFTC episode with Mark Mitchell from the honest poll previously from Rasmussen.
• 26:25
  And we talked heavily about the sentiment and how U.S. citizens are feeling about the state of the economy and the Trump administration's initiatives.
• 26:34
  Sometimes Iran war, very unpopular in the economy, is the priority that most Americans
• 26:39
  would like in Trump administration to focus on the domestic economy.
• 26:44
  And I think the tenor or the pulse that Mark was relaying to me is that people don't think
• 26:51
  the economy is going well but this chart on the left here would say otherwise I think wage growth is salary growth is something that been top of mind for people The K economy
• 27:02
  the permanent underclass has been a meme for many years. And I think when we talk about
• 27:05
  threading a needle for the Trump administration's initiatives across the board, that's international
• 27:11
  sort of war with Iran, that's China versus the US, but the AI build out, the re-industrialization
• 27:18
  and really need to get proof in the pudding that things are working.
• 27:23
  And I was shocked to see this chart, just that the wage growth for different levels of wealth in the United States,
• 27:31
  it looks like lower, middle, and higher incomes, excluding the top 5%, are on the way up, trending up,
• 27:38
  while top 5% wage growth or salary growth is falling,
• 27:42
  falling, which would signal that maybe this re-industrialization and this AI build out is
• 27:48
  beginning to manifest in higher wages for lower income Americans. Yeah. I mean, I think that's,
• 27:55
  it's an interesting confluence of data points at the very least, right? Like I think it's tough to
• 27:59
  call a future, you know, not going to necessarily extrapolate that chart continues to look exactly
• 28:04
  the same, but that's kind of like what you would, that's what you would want to see if you were
• 28:08
  writing this playbook, right? You want to see PMI meaningfully picking up, you'd want to see,
• 28:11
  you know, national champions of major industries investing massive amounts into, you know,
• 28:16
  the most important industrial theme in a century, you would generally like to have some sort of
• 28:23
  increasing bifurcation between your economy and the other major superpower economy and thereby
• 28:29
  create perhaps some artificial stimulus to your national champions. And collectively, like,
• 28:36
  What's the result of that?
• 28:38
  Well, it's what, you know, what Larry Fink was alluding to, right?
• 28:41
  The need for what falls out of that is the need for, you know, more skilled trades, more
• 28:45
  people with high-paying skilled workforce jobs to build all that out for AI, robotics,
• 28:52
  re-industrialization broadly.
• 28:54
  And so I think all of that looks to be going in a certain direction.
• 28:58
  And then I look at, from a couple of weeks ago, there's a headline on Elon Musk, apparently
• 29:02
  coming back to the table, despite his, his kayfabe fight with Trump last year to spend,
• 29:08
  you know, a hundred million dollars or more on, um, to, to boost Republican turnout into midterms.
• 29:13
  And, you know, I'll defer to guys like Mark on whether that's going to work or what, you know,
• 29:17
  sentiment actually looks like on the ground, but all of that collectively comes together to me to
• 29:21
  just point to like an interesting possible, like counter consensus outcome in November. I think
• 29:26
  it's, it's like, everyone's just assuming that, you know, it's going to be an absolute Republican
• 29:29
  bloodbath in the fall and it very well maybe just given like that's usually how it works for the
• 29:34
  incumbent party in midterms but um it's just a lot of interesting data points if if you're uh you
• 29:40
  know fully kind of falling into line with that consensus narrative and i think it's it's worth
• 29:43
  watching at the very least into the fall yeah midterms coming up summer doldrums winding down
• 29:49
  and we will end it with bitcoin talk macroscope great follow if you don't follow i'm just
• 29:54
  highlighting a few thing a couple things here tutor investment paul tudor Jones increased his IBIT shares So it an increase from 579 shares to 688 So almost a 20 increase in his position there
• 30:12
  And then Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund, Mubadala reported owning 14.7 million shares of IBIT on June 30th, valued at almost half a billion dollars unchanged from the previous quarter.
• 30:25
  And it's their second largest holding in their entire 13F filing for Mubadala.
• 30:31
  And then in the filing last week as well, Abu Dhabi Investment Council, which is another sovereign wealth fund in the region, reported owning 8.2 million shares of IBIT,
• 30:39
  which is also unchanged from the previous quarter.
• 30:43
  So you have a position,
• 30:44
  is by far the largest for ADIC
• 30:47
  and their entire 13F filings in the Middle East.
• 30:49
  Coming into Bitcoin in a big way,
• 30:52
  Paul Trader-Jones increasing his position.
• 30:54
  And at the same time,
• 30:55
  we have Bitcoins rolling one month realized volatility,
• 30:58
  I believe at all time lows.
• 31:00
  It is very,
• 31:02
  Bitcoin is trading like a stable coin right now.
• 31:04
  I was actually looking at it.
• 31:05
  We've been basically in a $4,000 range
• 31:09
  for $5,000 range since June 2nd. So the summer of COIL, if you will.
• 31:14
  Yeah. I think, you know, these are probably fairly self-explanatory, but, you know, PTJ
• 31:19
  upping his allocation is always, you know, something you generally like to see now that's
• 31:24
  as of June 30th. So maybe he's brought it back down again, but, you know, positive signal there.
• 31:28
  But then also I just thought it was really interesting to see Abu Dhabi hold pat on Bitcoin
• 31:33
  through Q2, despite all of the kind of ongoing volatility in the region and what that's done
• 31:40
  for oil revenues and how that has flowed through to the way that the sovereigns in the region have
• 31:45
  had to kind of manage reserves. There's some speculation, I think, decently well-founded
• 31:50
  that that was a big headwind to gold in Q1 and Q2, selling to offset some lost revenue.
• 31:57
  and it's I think it's interesting in contrast that you know Bitcoin you know was held pat there now
• 32:03
  it's a much smaller allocation most likely so may or may not have made a difference but that's at
• 32:07
  least kind of the you know direction what you'd like to see and then of course like the on the
• 32:11
  volatility piece like I think if we're not at all-time lows it's it's close I think clearly
• 32:15
  down channel and volatility for the last few years and again this is like not going to tell
• 32:20
  you like we're not going to have another leg down but this that's what you want to see in
• 32:24
  accumulation zone, right, is big buyers stepping in or kind of holding pat and then volatility is
• 32:29
  coming down and down and down and getting into that kind of coil spring territory. So generally
• 32:33
  with the coil springs, you either you eventually spring hard and fast one way or the other. So
• 32:38
  we can officially say Bitcoin will either go up or go down from here. But either way, this is the
• 32:44
  the setup you generally like to see to presage the start of a, you know, a new a new bull run.
• 32:50
  Yeah. And with that, we'll see you guys next week.
• 32:54
  Thank you.