Latest / Simply Bitcoin / Coinbase JUST DESTROYED NEW Bill but NOT For The Reasons You Think...| EP 1419

Transcript

Coinbase JUST DESTROYED NEW Bill but NOT For The Reasons You Think...| EP 1419 · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:01
  The new bill that was supposed to save the Bitcoin industry has
• 0:05
  officially been thrown out. But why?
• 0:09
  Surprisingly, Coinbase dropped their support for the bill and
• 0:13
  literally hours later, the bill was officially postponed.
• 0:18
  As crazy as this might sound, is Coinbase actually protecting
• 0:23
  Bitcoin, or is there something deeper and darker going on
• 0:28
  behind the scenes? I literally can't believe I'm
• 0:31
  going to say this, but I think I'm on the size of Coinbase on
• 0:37
  this one, which is I know it's ludicrous.
• 0:38
  I'd I'd, I, you know, hear me out, hear me out here, but it
• 0:42
  does confirm a lot of things that I was saying on yesterday's
• 0:45
  show around this, you know, financial markup bill regarding
• 0:50
  the Bitcoin regulatory clarity. And as I was telling you
• 0:54
  yesterday, I'm like, this looks like a a heaping pile of
• 0:57
  monstrosity here that is probably going to do more harm
• 1:01
  than good. Well, couple hours after the
• 1:03
  show, it turns out that there was a huge drama in DC
• 1:08
  surrounding the bill. Again, I showed you guys the
• 1:11
  receipt. It seems like the big banks got
• 1:14
  in there through Elizabeth Warren and amended it.
• 1:17
  And there is all this confusion and it seems as of now to have
• 1:23
  been postponed. We really don't know when
• 1:25
  they're going to do this again. It's dead, bro.
• 1:28
  Yeah, exactly exactly like it's it's I I didn't want to say
• 1:32
  officially it's over, but it's pretty much over.
• 1:35
  Anyways, let's go into some of the the details here.
• 1:39
  I'll cover the official, or rather the first post that kind
• 1:42
  of set this off, and then you'll see kind of how the speculation
• 1:45
  spiraled. So First off, Bryan Armstrong
• 1:48
  tweets after reviewing the Senate Banking draft over the
• 1:51
  last 48 hours. Coinbase unfortunately can't
• 1:54
  support the bill as written. There are too many issues,
• 1:57
  including a de facto ban on tokenized equities, D5
• 2:01
  prohibitions, giving the government unlimited access to
• 2:04
  your financial records and removing your right to privacy,
• 2:07
  erosion of the CFT CS authority, stifling innovation and making
• 2:11
  it subservient to the SEC. See draft amendments that would
• 2:15
  kill rewards on stable coins, allowing banks to ban their
• 2:18
  competition again. I covered this yesterday.
• 2:20
  This whole kind of argument with Elizabeth Warren and JP Morgan
• 2:24
  about stable coin yields and actually some of the, some of
• 2:27
  the data, if you, if you dive deep into it, I think JP Morgan
• 2:30
  is giving like .01% returns on savings account and stablecoins
• 2:36
  was like 3%. I, I wonder where the
• 2:38
  competition is, is falling, you know, anyways, we appreciate the
• 2:41
  hard work by members of the Senate to reach a bipartisan
• 2:44
  outcome, but this version would be materially worse and then the
• 2:47
  current status quo. We'd rather have no bill than a
• 2:50
  bad bill. Hopefully we can all get to a
• 2:52
  better draft. We'll keep fighting for all
• 2:54
  Americans and for economic freedom.
• 2:56
  Crypto needs to be treated on a level playing field with the
• 2:59
  rest of financial services so we can build this industry in a
• 3:02
  safe and trusted way in America. And then later on in the day, I
• 3:07
  thought, Nico want to respond later on in the day, Eleanor
• 3:09
  Terrett, again, I've been covering a lot of her work
• 3:12
  because she is doing some very good journalism.
• 3:14
  She's actually doing incredible work.
• 3:16
  I highly recommend you guys follow her Twitter account.
• 3:18
  She goes just in at 9:00 PM at night.
• 3:21
  So that happened kind of right around when we were going live.
• 3:25
  And then later on in the evening, this came out and it
• 3:28
  was just in The Senate Banking Committee has decided to pull
• 3:31
  tomorrow's scheduled market structure, which is today.
• 3:34
  Following today's drama with Coinbase, it's unclear whether a
• 3:38
  new date has been set. You can see here is the official
• 3:42
  announcement. Senate Banking Committee
• 3:43
  Chairman Tim Scott today announced the committee will
• 3:46
  postpone its market of digital asset market structure
• 3:48
  legislation as bar bipartisan negotiations continue.
• 3:52
  Here's the quote I've spoken with leaders across the crypto
• 3:56
  industry, the financial sector and my Democratic and colleagues
• 3:59
  and everyone remains at the table working in good faith.
• 4:02
  This bill reflects months of serious bipartisan negotiations
• 4:05
  and real input from innovators, investors and law enforcement.
• 4:09
  The goal is to deliver clear rules of the road that protect
• 4:12
  consumers, strengthen our national security and ensure the
• 4:15
  future of finances built in the United States.
• 4:19
  And then again shortly after that, Senator Lummis responds
• 4:22
  here his her official response and it goes.
• 4:26
  We have spent thousands of hours working in good faith to deliver
• 4:29
  a bill that offers the digital asset industry the clarity it
• 4:32
  needs to thrive on US soil and solidify America's leadership
• 4:35
  and financial innovation for generations to come.
• 4:38
  Today's response from some in the industry prove they are just
• 4:41
  not ready and why I am deeply disappointed.
• 4:44
  I am committed to taking this feedback and partnering with the
• 4:47
  industry to deliver a product that helps them thrive.
• 4:51
  When Senator Gillibrand and I started this mission to create a
• 4:53
  clear and common sense framework for digital asset since more
• 4:56
  than four years ago, our goal was to protect consumers and
• 4:59
  ensure digital asset innovation happens here on US soil.
• 5:03
  And that mission is not changed. Everyone is still at the
• 5:06
  negotiating table, and I'm incredibly grateful to Chairman
• 5:09
  Scott. First, tireless efforts and
• 5:11
  continued commitment to finding common ground.
• 5:14
  Now Anika, you want to pop in here?
• 5:18
  You want to know why Bo Hines resigned?
• 5:22
  You want to know why Senator Lummis is not running for re
• 5:26
  election? Ladies and gentlemen, the Genius
• 5:29
  Act, which again was passed extremely quickly.
• 5:37
  The Genius Act was a stable coin bill, which is great, but the
• 5:43
  reason that act was passed so fast was because stable coins
• 5:48
  fundamentally help the US dollar.
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  It helps perpetuate the US dollar.
• 5:54
  It helps expand U.S. dollar usage globally around the world.
• 5:59
  So if you want to take a look at the outcome, take a look at the
• 6:03
  incentives, right? They passed that bill very
• 6:08
  quickly. I know some members of the
• 6:10
  Democratic Party weren't 100% on board, but it was pretty effing
• 6:15
  bipartisan and it passed right? Now, the reason some of the
• 6:19
  Democrats didn't want to get behind it is because it's not a
• 6:22
  central bank digital currency. They wanted to CBDC.
• 6:25
  But regardless, they saw the writing on the wall.
• 6:27
  They weighed the pros and cons and they said, you know what
• 6:31
  this is going to help the dollar.
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  This this is going to help the money printer.
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  Us as politicians benefit from the money printer.
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  Whoop Dee Doo. Let's effing pass that The
• 6:41
  clarity Act, which was the actual bill that was going to
• 6:45
  help the Bitcoin and crypto industry got sabotaged.
• 6:53
  It got taken hostage and what they did was they took the bill
• 7:00
  and they Frankenstein the F out of it.
• 7:02
  They started putting provisions in there that would actually
• 7:07
  make it worse than it is now. The banking industry got in
• 7:12
  there and the Democratic Party got in there and they said, oh,
• 7:16
  you guys want a bill, We'll give you a bill.
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  But the bills actually going to make things worse than they are
• 7:23
  now, right? Forget about the self custody
• 7:26
  protections. We're going to add even more red
• 7:29
  tape and even more regulations, right?
• 7:32
  So it's so bad that Brian Armstrong, who is the CEO of the
• 7:38
  largest crypto casino on the face of the planet, Coinbase,
• 7:42
  whether you like them or not, they're the they're literally
• 7:46
  the most profitable US base exchange.
• 7:49
  They custody all the ETFs, all the Bitcoin for all the major
• 7:53
  ETFs except for Fidelity. So they're a major player.
• 7:57
  They hold a lot of weight, but fundamentally they're a casino.
• 8:02
  They sell a lot of alt coins, right?
• 8:04
  You know, to each their own. If you wanna buy that, that's on
• 8:08
  you. I'm, I'm not gonna tell you what
• 8:10
  you can and cannot do with your money, but it's so bad that
• 8:14
  Bryant Armstrong, the CEO of the largest crypto casino in the US,
• 8:19
  is going out there and saying, yo, wait a second, this is going
• 8:22
  to make things worse. That's when you know things are
• 8:24
  bad. And The thing is, this is not
• 8:27
  surprising to me whatsoever. Why is it not surprising to you,
• 8:30
  Nico? Because the writing was all the
• 8:33
  writing was on the wall for the entire year.
• 8:36
  When Bo Hines resigned, I knew shit was getting bad.
• 8:40
  When Senator Lummus announced that she wasn't going to run for
• 8:43
  re election, I was like, strategic, we're cooked.
• 8:47
  Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Let me tell you something.
• 8:51
  And then when they delayed the bill and then delayed the bill,
• 8:55
  and then they made the announcement that the Clarity
• 8:57
  Act wasn't going to get passed in December.
• 9:00
  So pushing the can down the road.
• 9:02
  And now we're in early January and they're saying, listen, this
• 9:05
  isn't going to this. This isn't clarity.
• 9:08
  They're just under the guise of clarity.
• 9:11
  They're sneaking in more regulations to protect the
• 9:14
  system and to protect the big banks, right?
• 9:18
  Because the, The thing is, the big banks are threatened by the
• 9:21
  stable coins. You guys have to understand
• 9:23
  that. And the reason they're
• 9:24
  threatened by the stable coins is if you open a bank account
• 9:27
  today, they're supposed to pay you interest because they're
• 9:30
  holding your money. And what they're doing with your
• 9:32
  money is they're lending you that money out.
• 9:35
  Back in the day, you used to actually get paid for that.
• 9:39
  Now you still technically get paid, but the interest rate is
• 9:43
  like .01%. Have you guys looked at your
• 9:46
  bank account and it's like there's like one statement every
• 9:49
  month that says the interest payment, it's like $0.05 or
• 9:52
  something like that. That's they're worried because
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  what they think is going to happen is, and this is how, by
• 10:00
  the way, a lot of the stable coin providers, this is how they
• 10:02
  make the money that they do, right?
• 10:05
  And they get paid interest, right?
• 10:07
  That's how they, that's how they make money, right?
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  They get, they buy U.S. dollar equivalents like U.S.
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  Treasuries and they get paid interest for that.
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  So if you were competing against the banking system, what would
• 10:22
  happen? And credit card companies, what
• 10:25
  would happen if all of a sudden you said, wait a second, instead
• 10:28
  of us just collecting this 4%, let's actually give 1% back to
• 10:35
  anybody who's using this stable coin.
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  And now all of a sudden, right, that stable coin is a lot easier
• 10:44
  to use than a bank account. It's paying you interest.
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  There's no friction when you're sending a wire overseas.
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  It's instantaneous settlement like anywhere around the world.
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  You essentially are able to send dollars instantaneously
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  worldwide. You could take custody of those
• 11:08
  wall of those dollars themselves.
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  You don't even need a bank account technically.
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  So what did the big banks do? They knocked on the door in
• 11:19
  Washington and they said, no, you can't do this, right?
• 11:24
  So Coinbase try to get around this and say, listen, OK, fine,
• 11:28
  stable coins don't offer interest.
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  Get it, but we're going to get around that by offering rewards
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  on the platform. They don't even want that right,
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  like and and this is how you know we're winning now.
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  From a Bitcoiners perspective, it's a little bit unfortunate
• 11:44
  because you want Bitcoin to be at the front and center of this
• 11:49
  right? But the market reality and
• 11:52
  fundamentally we are free market maximus here at simply Bitcoin
• 11:56
  is telling us that listen, people are just not prepared for
• 12:00
  to use Bitcoin as money. They're using Bitcoin as
• 12:03
  savings. That's undeniable, but they
• 12:06
  still consider the dollar money. That's what we're seeing all
• 12:10
  around the developing world. The reason that stablecoins are
• 12:14
  so popular is because the local Fiat currencies are so trash
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  that people are seeking alternatives.
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  And This is why stablecoins are so wide are being so widely
• 12:25
  adopted worldwide. The problem is that here in the
• 12:28
  United States, the banking system itself is freaking out
• 12:32
  because what happens? Like I don't want to dox Opti or
• 12:36
  anything like like there's just people that just don't like, you
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  know, Jill, they, they, they, they don't even, they like, they
• 12:47
  don't even like bank accounts. Like they don't even like bank
• 12:50
  accounts. They don't like bank accounts
• 12:52
  like a traditional bank accounts where you go to Chase or you go
• 12:56
  to Bank of America or you go to Wells Fargo or you go to any of
• 13:01
  these banks, right? Listen, I have one, but it takes
• 13:08
  an hour and a half to get signed up, right?
• 13:11
  Sending a wire over a certain amount is an effing nightmare,
• 13:15
  OK, It's a nightmare. You're you, you wire out the
• 13:18
  money, you don't know where it is.
• 13:19
  It's in limbo, right? And you have to pay them if you
• 13:26
  don't have a certain balance in your account on a monthly basis,
• 13:30
  like a a a convenience fee, a maintenance fee.
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  Right? Who?
• 13:35
  Excuse my language, who the fuck in the right mind if you're
• 13:39
  making 1000 bucks a month or $500 a month would want to open
• 13:44
  a bank account where they charge you $15.00 a month for holding
• 13:50
  your money of which they're making money off of that money
• 13:54
  and like to spit in your face. The interest rate that they give
• 13:57
  you is .001%. This is where stablecoins come
• 14:02
  in as disruptors and say, hey, you don't even have to go
• 14:06
  through any of go into a branch, sit there, you know, they probe
• 14:11
  you essentially takes an hour and a half to open the account.
• 14:15
  You finally open the account, takes another week for them to
• 14:19
  send you the, the plastic card, right?
• 14:22
  It's a mission, It's a, it's a, it's a, you could just download
• 14:26
  a stablecoin wallet and you're ready to receive dollars.
• 14:28
  Like it's instantaneous. It's very quick, right?
• 14:34
  So the clarity act, what they did is they literally wanted to
• 14:38
  sabotage. That's the keyword sabotage the,
• 14:44
  the potential competitors. They, they use the government to
• 14:49
  sabotage a, a, a potential disruptor and competitor to the
• 14:55
  banking industry. That is not capitalism.
• 14:58
  That is not competition. They're using government in
• 15:02
  order to stifle potential competitors and disruptors.
• 15:08
  That's the banking system for you, right?
• 15:10
  That's what happened. This is what happened to the
• 15:12
  Clarity Act and the reason the politicians and I love Senator
• 15:16
  Lummis and bless her heart, the reason most politicians are not
• 15:21
  as enthusiastic and not as motivated to pass this bill,
• 15:27
  even though it would help the American people, is because they
• 15:32
  don't have the incentive. It doesn't it doesn't it
• 15:36
  perpetuate the US dollar system. It, it actually kind of protects
• 15:42
  A competing alternative system. So it's exposing the incentives.
• 15:47
  That's what's going on here. Let's be real.
• 15:49
  Like that is the situation. I knew the moment Bo Hines
• 15:54
  resigned. I knew right then and there.
• 15:56
  And then when Senator Lummus says I'm not running for real,
• 15:59
  I'm like, I, I told Optius and I've and I've and I got it 100%
• 16:03
  right. I was like, it's over.
• 16:04
  It's done, you know, so you got a pro Bitcoin president Fried
• 16:08
  Ross Albrecht, established strategic reserve.
• 16:11
  We were dancing on the moon. The show was like, I had over
• 16:15
  1000 live viewers on YouTube. And a year later, what we've
• 16:19
  come to realize is the system is so entrenched, so corrupt,
• 16:24
  really to be blank, to be blunt, that, you know, you had the,
• 16:31
  the, the head of the Federal Reserve make a video that he
• 16:35
  looked like an effing hostage go on TV and basically says or did
• 16:40
  not commit any crimes. Even though we're spending $3
• 16:44
  billion to renovate the Federal Reserve.
• 16:48
  Like this is, this is like, have you guys seen the show House of
• 16:52
  Cards, like with Kevin Spacey? And it like shows all the
• 16:56
  corruption and power, power plays that happened in
• 17:00
  Washington reality in 2026 would put that effing show to shame.
• 17:06
  OK, put that show to shame. Listen, let me walk you guys
• 17:10
  through this, all right? They perp walk the president.
• 17:17
  The bullet missed by like 1 centimeter.
• 17:22
  The guy won election anyways with RFK Junior.
• 17:26
  So, Kennedy Freeze, Ross Albrecht tweets from the White
• 17:31
  House. The United States is going to be
• 17:33
  the Bitcoin capital of the world.
• 17:36
  The head of the federal. Reserve is like, please don't
• 17:39
  indict me in a hostage video. And we kidnapped the president
• 17:45
  of a foreign country in three hours and took him to New York
• 17:50
  City. Are you not entertained?
• 17:54
  Are you not entertained? The only thing that would have
• 17:56
  put the cherry on the top, to be honest with you guys, is if
• 18:00
  Bitcoin actually fucking pumped. Then then I would be super.
• 18:05
  Super. Then I would be super, super
• 18:08
  hyped. But man, this last year has been
• 18:11
  fantastic. It's been a great year.
• 18:14
  Entertainment wise. It's been, it's been really
• 18:16
  good. Anyways, I didn't mean to
• 18:17
  derail. No, no, that was great.
• 18:19
  That material. No, that was that.
• 18:21
  Literally you could, you broke it down better than than I could
• 18:24
  have, but that was great. I mean, I was covering it
• 18:27
  yesterday and I really wanted Nico here yesterday because as
• 18:29
  you can tell, he is more politically inclined with this
• 18:32
  stuff. All I was saying yesterday was
• 18:35
  basically exactly what Bryan Armstrong said, and it is kind
• 18:39
  of crazy to see that Brian Armstrong is on the right side
• 18:41
  of things for once. It's been a long time since I
• 18:44
  probably agreed with Brian Armstrong, though.
• 18:46
  The one interesting aspect of this to not really rehash
• 18:49
  everything you said is I find it very interesting just how much
• 18:54
  power Coinbase has in Washington.
• 18:56
  The fact that they pulled out of this and it's just completely
• 18:58
  dead on arrival. Like to me, it's super
• 19:00
  interesting. Obviously they, they are they,
• 19:04
  I'm pretty sure they, you know, donate a lot of money to
• 19:07
  Washington. I I don't know if you have those
• 19:09
  numbers, but to me that was like probably the most interesting
• 19:12
  aspect of. This look from a political
• 19:14
  perspective, I like Coinbase. Like from a political
• 19:17
  perspective, I like Coinbase like they are helping the the
• 19:22
  Bitcoin. From a policy perspective,
• 19:24
  they're the most well funded. I think it was like one of the
• 19:27
  first publicly traded crypto exchanges.
• 19:32
  They have a tremendous amount of influence.
• 19:34
  Again, they custody 11 out of the 12 ETFs.
• 19:38
  So they have a lot of political influence.
• 19:42
  And ultimately, like ultimately, you know, we don't 100% align
• 19:49
  with the, the Coinbase Etho 'cause we're Bitcoin, not crypto
• 19:53
  here at simply Bitcoin. But again, from a political
• 19:57
  standpoint, Coinbase I think has done a a very good job.
• 20:02
  In DC pushing forward pro, I'll be blunt, pro crypto
• 20:07
  legislation, which again is pro Bitcoin, right, because you're
• 20:12
  not going to have a pro Bitcoin legislation being passed.
• 20:15
  That's anti Bitcoin, right? I bitcoiners want just pro
• 20:19
  Bitcoin legislation, but I'll take pro crypto over anti crypto
• 20:23
  legislation, right, which we had anti crypto policy under the
• 20:28
  previous administration and that was terrible, but at least the
• 20:31
  price was pumping. So maybe we maybe we maybe we go
• 20:34
  back to that, right? But yeah, I mean, look, I'll be
• 20:40
  honest with you. I think this is going to take a
• 20:42
  lot longer than we anticipated. I think we all had very high
• 20:47
  hopes for the Trump administration from the policy
• 20:52
  aspect. But this is a major defeat
• 20:54
  because in that bill, it had it protected self custody.
• 20:59
  So there was going to be a bill that was going to be passed on
• 21:02
  the federal level that would protect the individual's right
• 21:05
  to self custody. And I told you guys like what
• 21:07
  they're going to come after is self custody because self
• 21:11
  fundamentally changes the the power dynamic between citizen
• 21:15
  and state, right? Like never in the history of
• 21:19
  humanity or the human race was a human being able to memorize a
• 21:23
  12 word, 24 word seed phrase and then store 1,000,000 billions,
• 21:28
  trillions of dollars in their mind if they needed to.
• 21:32
  And that gives the individual tremendous amount of power,
• 21:35
  right? The more people find that out,
• 21:40
  the balance of power shifts. So if if that to me was always
• 21:44
  the crux, like ultimately what what I think they're going to go
• 21:48
  after eventually is, is self custody, right?
• 21:53
  I have no doubt in my mind. I think that's what ultimately
• 21:57
  it boils down to. And this bill, we were very
• 22:00
  close for that to be, you know, enshrined.
• 22:05
  But they ran into this giant bureaucratic wall that is funded
• 22:11
  by the central Bank of the United States.
• 22:15
  People call it the deep state. It's the administrative state.
• 22:18
  What that means is there's an unelected bureaucracy that
• 22:22
  remains employed regardless of who gets elected, elected to
• 22:26
  office. Therefore, they don't have the
• 22:30
  accountability that elected officials have, right?
• 22:34
  That's what it comes down to. And ultimately that body, which
• 22:39
  really started during World War 2 and it's just ballooned ever
• 22:44
  since, is ultimately funded by the money printer and we can't
• 22:50
  even afford to pay for it. By the way, we cannot afford to
• 22:53
  pay for the federal government. the US federal government has a
• 22:58
  $2 trillion deficit on a yearly basis, meaning they spend $2
• 23:02
  trillion more than they collect in tax revenue.
• 23:07
  How are they able to do that? They're able to do that by
• 23:10
  printing the difference, which is a form of taxation, right?
• 23:15
  That, that bureaucracy is what stopped this bill.
• 23:20
  And there's an evil alliance between the banking system and
• 23:24
  that bureaucracy because the banking system essentially says
• 23:28
  we will act as an enforcer for you, right?
• 23:32
  Since the Bank Secrecy Act was passed in 1971, I believe that
• 23:35
  was the date the banking system has become an enforcer for the
• 23:42
  state. So the, the analogy that I
• 23:45
  always use is think about a two of three multi sig and where
• 23:51
  like that's a bank account that like that's your bank account.
• 23:54
  Your bank account is a two of three multi sig where the state
• 23:58
  controls a key, you control a key and the bank controls a key.
• 24:03
  Who do you think wins in that situation?
• 24:06
  The reason there's been so much friction with Bitcoin is that it
• 24:11
  removes the middleman. And the reason that the state is
• 24:15
  so effective at controlling capital flows and controlling
• 24:20
  thought, to be honest with you, and I'll get to that in a
• 24:22
  second, is because they acted as the middle man.
• 24:26
  They acted as that intermediary, right?
• 24:29
  So basically, if they can Co opt that intermediary, if they Co
• 24:34
  opt that middle man, they have total control.
• 24:37
  And it's not that hard because there's only a handful of banks,
• 24:42
  so they only have to knock on a dozen doors.
• 24:46
  And those doors are going to comply because the state has a
• 24:49
  monopoly on violence. Bitcoin puts that on its head
• 24:53
  because it basically says if enough people take self custody,
• 24:57
  what are they going to do? They're going to knock on the
• 24:59
  doors of of 10s of millions of people.
• 25:02
  And they want those people to no, that doesn't work anymore.
• 25:06
  And, and to kind of give you guys an example of what this
• 25:09
  would look like, I, I love giving the social media example
• 25:13
  because what it did is it disintermediated information.
• 25:17
  So all of a sudden before social media, you had a handful of, of
• 25:23
  TV stations and a handful of, of news outlets.
• 25:27
  So it was very easy to control the narrative.
• 25:33
  This is why they they bunkered down.
• 25:35
  This is why they doubled down on the censorship.
• 25:37
  Do you guys remember the Ministry of Truth in that Lady
• 25:40
  with the crazy eyes? That was like singing the Mary
• 25:42
  Poppins songs and stuff? Like they freaked out.
• 25:45
  Listen, they were not ready for the Internet.
• 25:48
  They're not ready. This nation state model that was
• 25:51
  developed during the Napoleonic era was not ready for what the
• 25:56
  Internet would do and the power that the Internet would give the
• 26:00
  everyday citizen. And this is the whole thesis of
• 26:04
  the sovereign individual. And this is what's happening
• 26:06
  right now, right? So Opti knew this because I
• 26:10
  guess he is black pilled AF. No, I'm just a genius.
• 26:14
  No, no, no, no. I am black pilled on politics.
• 26:17
  And genius. But Opti knew this.
• 26:20
  But basically like I was super hyped because I was like OK,
• 26:24
  like this man survived 2 assassination attempts, there
• 26:28
  was a law fair against him, they debanked his family.
• 26:32
  Like he went through the wringer just as much as the rest of us.
• 26:37
  And I'm hyped, you know, that that Maduro thing was bad ass,
• 26:42
  like the memes were. Not going to lie, the edits were
• 26:44
  lit. The edits were fantastic.
• 26:47
  So like, I, I, I'm happy. It's it's nice, but at the same
• 26:52
  time, from a bitcoiners perspective, I'm, I'm
• 26:55
  disappointed. Maybe I wouldn't be as
• 26:57
  disappointed if we were at 250K. Maybe it'd be like, you know
• 27:00
  what ETFs are the way to go, bro, but you know, no number go
• 27:07
  up and this regulatory bullshit. I'm not a big fan.
• 27:11
  By the way, the samurai guys, where are they?
• 27:15
  Where are they? They're still in prison, bro.
• 27:19
  And, and Trump knows, he said he was going to take a look at it.
• 27:25
  I I think the silence is speaking volumes, he said.
• 27:27
  He. Was going to take a look at it.
• 27:29
  So those are my thoughts. I'll shut up now.
• 27:33
  I I just want to ask you again, you're more of the political
• 27:38
  nerd here. The more political, actually,
• 27:40
  sorry, sorry, political expert here.
• 27:42
  I guess that's probably the better way to say it.
• 27:46
  How do you know that this means the bill is just is is DOA that
• 27:50
  it's over? Bill Hines resignation and
• 27:53
  Senator Lomas announcing she's not running for.
• 27:55
  So you don't put any weight in this whole it's going to be
• 27:57
  postponed the. Republicans are going to lose
• 27:59
  the House in in December. What if they get something going
• 28:04
  before April? I think, I think that the
• 28:09
  opposing party is going to do whatever it takes to run down
• 28:11
  the clock. And I think that I think that
• 28:19
  any type of bill that is going to be presented is going to have
• 28:25
  clauses in it that it it's kind of like Taproot, like to use a
• 28:31
  Bitcoin analogy, it's like we were all so hyped about the
• 28:36
  Taproot implementation. And then we got ordinals.
• 28:39
  And then we got ordinals like like unintended consequences of
• 28:44
  that. This is a very thick and complex
• 28:47
  bill. And like the people writing the
• 28:52
  bill, like I don't trust them, right?
• 28:56
  And their, their incentives are not aligned with ours.
• 29:01
  So you know that there's a nuclear bomb in that bell,
• 29:05
  right? That you know that there's some,
• 29:06
  some, some, some mines in there, right?
• 29:11
  So I, I'm just not look, I could have told you this, though, the
• 29:15
  moment Bo Hines resigned and he joined Tether, which is
• 29:18
  fantastic, right? It's great.
• 29:20
  It's great. Yeah, it's it's actually kind of
• 29:22
  poetic now in hindsight. It's great.
• 29:24
  It's good for him. I'm super happy.
• 29:26
  Like, I'm super happy for him. But like the moment that
• 29:32
  happened, I was like, we're not getting a, we're not getting a
• 29:35
  strategic Bitcoin reserve. And then the moment that Senator
• 29:37
  Lummus is like, I'm not running for off.
• 29:39
  I'm not running for re election. I was like, yeah, because like
• 29:42
  she said it and this is not open to interpretation.
• 29:46
  Like she said it in her resignation letter, by the way
• 29:51
  she said it. She said like this is going to
• 29:54
  be a marathon and not a Sprint. The problem that people have, I
• 29:59
  think that like people don't understand or like they, they
• 30:03
  like it's hard for them to understand is that when the
• 30:09
  Republicans lose the House, the first thing the Democrats are
• 30:13
  going to do is impeach Trump. And all of a sudden, any type of
• 30:21
  pro Bitcoin anything grinds to a halt.
• 30:24
  So the only type, the only way that any type of pro Bitcoin
• 30:29
  legislation gets passed with the current party policies is if you
• 30:36
  have a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a
• 30:38
  Republican presidency. That's the only way.
• 30:44
  And then you have some type of bipartisanship from some
• 30:48
  Democrats that are pro industry, right?
• 30:51
  That's the only type. That's the only situation where
• 30:54
  you're going to have pro Bitcoin legislation get passed.
• 30:58
  If you have any type of other situation, it's it's not the
• 31:03
  it's not the priority. It's not the priority.
• 31:06
  So when The question is when is the next time the Republicans
• 31:11
  are going to have a trifecta because it doesn't happen very
• 31:15
  often. When is the next time?
• 31:17
  28 So 28 doubtful. 28 JD would need to win.
• 31:25
  Yeah, that's why it's not going to happen.
• 31:28
  The Republicans are very set up, set up very well for the Senate.
• 31:32
  The Senate, like it's difficult for for the the Dems are are
• 31:36
  fighting an uphill battle, but the House, the House is like
• 31:43
  they have a tiny majority. That's another problem too that
• 31:47
  I want to talk about. Like if you have a majority of
• 31:51
  like 3 or 4 people, you get one or two defectors and it's
• 31:56
  fucked. Excuse my language, but it's
• 31:59
  screwed right. So there's two, there's two like
• 32:05
  ways forward here. It's like you either have a
• 32:10
  shift in mindset from a portion of the Democratic Party to be
• 32:18
  more pro Bitcoin, or you have a full sweep of the house by a a a
• 32:28
  big majority of Republicans because you know, some are just
• 32:31
  not going to be for it. And then there is a there's
• 32:36
  still a small possibility it passes because in the Senate you
• 32:40
  need 60 votes. So even if the Republicans got
• 32:44
  55 or 56 senators, they still need 4 Democratic votes.
• 32:50
  So in order to get those Democratic votes, like the
• 32:52
  reason this bill got so Frankenstein is because you need
• 32:56
  to reach across the aisle and you say, hey, listen, let's
• 33:00
  reach a compromise. The problem is, what the fuck is
• 33:03
  that compromise? Like what's going to be in that
• 33:06
  compromise? What are they?
• 33:08
  What are they telling you? I think we saw what it was.
• 33:10
  What are they asking you to compromise?
• 33:13
  And what they're asking to compromise is like, oh, you know
• 33:15
  what they want A bill, huh? Let's make it worse than it was
• 33:19
  before. Like yeah bro, it's crazy but.
• 33:24
  And he goes scoot, scoot over in no, in the word towards me.
• 33:28
  Yeah, yeah, OK. Sorry about that guys.
• 33:31
  So. OK, Nico, actually be we, we,
• 33:34
  we're going a little long here. And we got a guest in like 7
• 33:36
  minutes. Oh, do we?
• 33:37
  OK, I was unaware of that. OK, rapid fire question here.
• 33:42
  Don't don't do a Nico rant, but I want to put you on the spot
• 33:46
  right now. Are you willing to go on record
• 33:51
  that we will not see any regulatory or quote regulatory
• 33:54
  clarity for Bitcoin or crypto in 2026?
• 33:58
  Not in the way that we had expectations for when we voted
• 34:05
  for Trump. Like that's the reality.
• 34:09
  OK, so it's going to do more harm than good.
• 34:13
  I don't think we're going to get like from a from a bitcoiners
• 34:17
  perspective, I want one thing which is the protection of self
• 34:20
  custody. Well, maybe two things.
• 34:23
  What's the other one? Eliminated capital gain get.
• 34:26
  Out of it like that, that's not going to happen.
• 34:28
  That's not going to happen. Quick tidbit on that.
• 34:33
  You know why reversing like why ending central banking is so
• 34:39
  politically unpopular and why ending taxation is is would be
• 34:44
  so politically unpopular? It's because more people benefit
• 34:49
  from taxation than than get hurt by taxation.
• 34:57
  So like. So the roads.
• 35:00
  More people are are collecting from taxation in the form of I
• 35:06
  don't want to go down that political rabbit hole daycares
• 35:14
  than than than contribute. So like more people contribute
• 35:21
  less. More people benefit than
• 35:23
  contribute to it. Like, they're like, people have
• 35:26
  to understand like a huge portion of the country doesn't
• 35:29
  work. Sounds lit.
• 35:33
  They don't work right. I don't want to work either.
• 35:37
  So you would obviously be against it, you'd be against it.
• 35:42
  I don't want to go down that. Way.
• 35:44
  OK, OK, I said rapid fire. OK, so Nico says yes, no
• 35:51
  regulatory clarity this year. No, no, no.
• 35:53
  I never said that I I said no regulatory clarity the way that
• 35:57
  we imagined it when Trump got elected.
• 36:01
  I think the BLOB is so powerful that I just think that like,
• 36:09
  like you got, you need individuals taking self custody
• 36:11
  and that's the only way that things are actually going to
• 36:13
  change and you got to change the culture.
• 36:16
  Like this is going to be a multi generational thing.
• 36:20
  If we win, well, it's nice to see you finally coming around
• 36:27
  Nico in a very roundabout way. But hey, we'll, we'll get him
• 36:30
  over the finish line, guys, we'll.
• 36:32
  Get him over the finish line it it's.
• 36:34
  Actually funny watching you watching the progression from
• 36:38
  the beginning of the year to now just being completely
• 36:40
  demoralized on the whole political process.
• 36:42
  I'm like, dude, I This is why I was right the whole.
• 36:44
  Time, I mean, like, it was like, do we go down the
• 36:48
  accelerationist path? And it's like, all right, you
• 36:51
  know what, Cackle and Kamala, we're going to the gulags.
• 36:55
  Fuck yeah. And then like the thing, like
• 36:58
  they just print so much money, it goes to hyperinflation.
• 37:02
  They roll out the CBDC. Like people start to let's say,
• 37:06
  do we go down that route? Are we like, Oh well, what?
• 37:09
  We can vote ourselves out of this.
• 37:11
  Right. Anyways, I think we should hit a
• 37:13
  commercial break and then we'll welcome Chris.
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• 39:30
  Welcome back, Chris. Welcome to the show.
• 39:33
  How's it going, brother? Thanks for joining us, bro.
• 39:37
  It was great getting to hang out with you in Miami.
• 39:41
  And welcome to Simply Bitcoin. How you doing?
• 39:44
  You guys are kicking butt. Always a good show.
• 39:46
  I appreciate it. I appreciate it.
• 39:48
  Chris, why don't you introduce yourself, guys?
• 39:50
  We have a we have a legend joining us on the show today.
• 39:56
  Thank you. Yeah, Chris Sullivan, Co founder
• 39:59
  and portfolio manager of Hyperion Decimus.
• 40:02
  We were one of the first asset managers and hedge fund
• 40:05
  companies to jump in in 2017 and then we brought in clients
• 40:10
  beginning in 2018. And yeah, so we've got two hedge
• 40:13
  funds. One's a multi Strat, 1 is a
• 40:16
  long, short, just single Strat and you know, we're OG
• 40:20
  cypherpunks and Arco capitalists.
• 40:23
  Bro cypherpunks running a hedge fund.
• 40:26
  I'm all about it. So Chris, talk to me about this
• 40:30
  man, because it seems like things have changed since the
• 40:34
  introduction of the ETFs in the beginning of January of 2024.
• 40:42
  We've seen again kind of institutional interest in
• 40:45
  Bitcoin this cycle has played out completely different than
• 40:48
  prior cycles. Retail has no interest in
• 40:52
  Bitcoin whatsoever. It's all institutional demands.
• 40:56
  We reached an all time high before the halving.
• 41:00
  I would say 2025 was a little bit a little bit of a
• 41:03
  disappointment based on people's expectations, based on the
• 41:07
  performance of Bitcoin in prior cycles.
• 41:09
  So what's going on here man? Is, is it paper Bitcoin?
• 41:13
  Of course, the Bitcoin treasury companies right coming into the
• 41:16
  game. So what's going on here man?
• 41:19
  Is it good that you have this institutional interest in
• 41:22
  Bitcoin as Wall Street Co opted Bitcoin?
• 41:25
  What's your take? It's not a one-size-fits-all.
• 41:31
  To your point, I think you know Rogers mostly correct with sort
• 41:36
  of the Co opting, so to speak, if you if you want to call it
• 41:40
  that. I like using the following
• 41:42
  phrase. And Nico is that it's been
• 41:44
  silver, right? And and those who know what I'm
• 41:48
  speaking about will get exactly what I'm saying.
• 41:50
  So let me let me break down the mechanics and and then I'll go
• 41:55
  on the the other side and and explain how bitcoins different
• 41:58
  than commodities and has its own built in protections.
• 42:03
  So let's look at USOZSL, which is a short silver.
• 42:09
  Let's look at commodity based ETFs.
• 42:12
  Well, most, I don't know any of them that are actually going to
• 42:17
  ever deliver you silver or gold or oil, and only a few even
• 42:22
  collateralize against actual spot.
• 42:24
  Most are just a second derivative of the futures
• 42:28
  contract, which is also a second derivative, effectively just a
• 42:33
  price betting instrument on the actual spot commodity.
• 42:36
  So we've got, you know, all these I, I, I don't even think
• 42:40
  ETFs are investable, but they're tradable.
• 42:42
  All of these things kind of really exploded post 2000 and
• 42:46
  and then really exploded post 2008.
• 42:49
  Myself and most of my team were actually on the street before
• 42:53
  the so-called GFC and learned a lot of shenanigans on on both
• 42:58
  the mechanics of pipes and the securities structure.
• 43:02
  So I I challenge and advise everybody who is listening to go
• 43:07
  and read the prospectus of I bet.
• 43:10
  And if it doesn't give you nightmares, then you're probably
• 43:12
  in on it. So that being said, what they've
• 43:17
  how I could best answer you is that what's been Co opted is
• 43:20
  essentially concentrated just to the dollar price.
• 43:26
  How have they done that? If you look there's futures
• 43:28
  ETFs, there's inverse futures ETFs, there's yield ETFs and
• 43:34
  then there's spot ETFs etcetera. All of that kind of creates a
• 43:39
  number of problems with price signal.
• 43:42
  The 1st I'll answer is that the ETFs that are futures and or
• 43:47
  yield based are negatively convex and create a short gamma
• 43:51
  situation. How are they even paying the
• 43:53
  yield? They're all set mostly selling
• 43:55
  calls. So when you sell a call you're
• 43:58
  literally selling upside. How does that work?
• 44:01
  And then I know I'm just diatribing.
• 44:03
  You want me to keep going? Do you have any questions?
• 44:05
  Yeah dude, you're dropping a ton of alpha, so please keep going
• 44:10
  and then I'll I'll ask you questions about what I didn't
• 44:12
  understand. Also, guys, Chris is a legend.
• 44:15
  Drop your questions in the chat. No Ruggles popping off,
• 44:17
  YouTube's popping off, X is popping off.
• 44:19
  So you have any questions for Chris again?
• 44:22
  He's a hedge fund cypherpunk man, very, very successful.
• 44:27
  So he's he's very qualified to answer any types of questions in
• 44:32
  terms of of of Bitcoin, the institutional markets, the
• 44:35
  capital markets. So if you want to pick his brain
• 44:38
  now, drop your questions in the chat.
• 44:40
  Chris, please keep going. Yeah.
• 44:42
  All right. So let me go to mechanics.
• 44:44
  Let's create this this yield if let's say it's I shares,
• 44:49
  whatever the F is, I'm going to pay you 12% annualized on
• 44:54
  somewhat correlated Bitcoin. So you go and sell calls right
• 44:59
  now there is over the counter swap markets on options on
• 45:03
  Bitcoin. There's Darabit, which almost no
• 45:05
  US entities really trade on and then which is technically a DEX,
• 45:09
  but it's owned by Coinbase now. And then you have see me, I
• 45:13
  don't, I don't know of any. So I don't want to misspeak that
• 45:17
  trade over the counter negotiate options, which would be a realer
• 45:20
  market than the CME, which is then an options on a paper
• 45:23
  contract on Bitcoin, right. So that's third derivative.
• 45:27
  And when they do that, the other side of that trade is typically
• 45:30
  a market maker. So if the market maker is buying
• 45:33
  that call to hedge their deltas, they have to short.
• 45:38
  So in, in options terms, we call it gamma pinning.
• 45:43
  All right. So then you've got N number of
• 45:45
  billions in these ETFs. It's not surprising that despite
• 45:50
  very large demand, price was compressed under what people had
• 45:55
  expectations to. But I will say, in general, if
• 45:58
  people are all expecting 200K, it's not going to 200 K.
• 46:00
  Conversely, if they're expecting it to go to 50K, it's not going
• 46:02
  to 50K. This is just how markets work.
• 46:04
  Everybody's going to be wrong all the time.
• 46:06
  And anybody who can tell who tells you otherwise is full of
• 46:09
  shit, because this is how markets work.
• 46:12
  So and let me let me. Am I allowed to swear?
• 46:16
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're, yeah. You're good.
• 46:18
  You're good. You're good.
• 46:19
  OK. Just we try to be family
• 46:22
  friendly, but you can cuss. Yeah, exactly.
• 46:24
  But so Chris, couple of questions, right.
• 46:28
  So it basically, things did change, right?
• 46:33
  Retiredly, yeah. And.
• 46:34
  Let me break it down like price fractal.
• 46:36
  So if you go from inception till D5 summer of 21, every one of
• 46:43
  the impulsive moves mirrored that of commodity markets, then
• 46:49
  you can easily look at the specifically consolidation move
• 46:52
  since then and the bear market of 2022 and it looks equity
• 46:57
  like. So you have to understand
• 46:58
  there's been a regime change and not ask oh why did it happen?
• 47:03
  Because that's not ever the right question.
• 47:05
  This is always the right question.
• 47:06
  How did it happen? Because that question is
• 47:08
  narrowing in on what are the mechanics and the flow of funds
• 47:11
  differentials and the participants.
• 47:14
  So adding on top of the things that you just said, so much
• 47:17
  alpha in there. Chris, what the hell happened in
• 47:20
  2025, right, 'cause you said it got silvered, right?
• 47:25
  Silver pump, You know, it only took a couple decades, right?
• 47:31
  But it only took a couple decades.
• 47:34
  But silver went on a tear, right?
• 47:36
  Like 100 and something dollars, the gold's up 60 something
• 47:41
  percent and then Bitcoin down 8% of the year.
• 47:47
  There's some. There's a relation there, isn't
• 47:50
  there? Yeah, I people just need to
• 47:54
  understand that once you anchor to a correlation of like an
• 47:59
  R-squared, there's no guarantee. First off, there's no
• 48:02
  guarantees, but there's no maybe predicting that that
• 48:06
  relationship is going to to maintain.
• 48:08
  So OK, it's correlated to gold with an 8 week lag.
• 48:11
  OK, it's correlated to NASDAQ with two times the Vol, sure,
• 48:16
  but that doesn't mean that continues into the future.
• 48:20
  I think in gold and silver, it's very, very unique to treasury
• 48:26
  and political policy out of the Trump administration.
• 48:29
  I can dive into that if you want me to, as well as immense multi
• 48:35
  decade long suppression of price via pay for futures out of the
• 48:39
  CME and and COMEX and the LBMA which is in London and I can let
• 48:47
  me know where you want me to go from there.
• 48:48
  I can dive in on the metal side and and explain that.
• 48:50
  Yeah. So let's, let's, I, I want to
• 48:53
  take the, the questions from the chat during the new segment,
• 48:57
  during the next segment. And then let's talk about the
• 49:00
  kind of the policy aspect of it because we did start the show on
• 49:03
  the policy side of things towards the latter half of the
• 49:06
  show. But I want to keep going down.
• 49:08
  I don't want to take away the momentum from where we're where
• 49:11
  we're going on this. So things have changed to, to
• 49:16
  use your words, I love that there was a regime change.
• 49:19
  Things have fundamentally changed since Wall Street got
• 49:22
  involved, since these institutions got involved.
• 49:25
  What I'm getting at is that there is, of course, we all know
• 49:30
  there's no more than 21 million Bitcoin.
• 49:32
  But what I'm getting at based on what we're discussing is that
• 49:36
  the market is pricing it in as if there is more than 21 million
• 49:42
  Bitcoin at the moment, even though if there physically isn't
• 49:45
  more than 21 million Bitcoin, but more Bitcoin is being sold
• 49:52
  than actually exists. Is that safe to say?
• 49:56
  How are you quantifying that? Exactly the way I said it.
• 50:01
  Well, so I let me let me interpolate that OK.
• 50:06
  What you mean to say is there are paper contracts and
• 50:10
  securities that exceed the underlying spot quantity of
• 50:16
  Bitcoin? Perfect.
• 50:18
  True, that is true and we can measure most and then there's
• 50:23
  the naked side, which we cannot measure because it's not
• 50:25
  disclosed. So yes like it on the perps.
• 50:32
  We can see a why like that. I I'm not a fan of perp because
• 50:36
  of perp perpetual. That's just insane and and silly
• 50:39
  and immature. But I like transparent free
• 50:44
  markets and healthy price discovery perps.
• 50:47
  As wacky as the instrument is, it's actually not a destructive
• 50:53
  force. A an ETF over a commodity is a
• 50:59
  destructive force. How is it being destructive?
• 51:01
  It's destroying the price signalling from organic supply
• 51:05
  and demand. Interesting, interesting.
• 51:09
  The ETF is a destructive force because it's disrupting the
• 51:13
  organic price signaling. That is absolutely fascinating.
• 51:18
  And I think we all had a hunch that this was happening.
• 51:22
  But I'm super glad that you came on the show to to kind of break
• 51:26
  it down now before we moved on to next segment.
• 51:29
  Chris, could you and a guy guys, again, Chris is an expert in all
• 51:33
  this. So if you guys have any
• 51:34
  questions as it relates to what's going on in the Bitcoin
• 51:37
  markets, please drop them in the YouTube chat, please drop them
• 51:41
  in the Rumble chat, please drop them on X and we'll make sure to
• 51:45
  cover them in the next segment. But before we move on, Chris,
• 51:48
  could you break down the mechanism?
• 51:50
  How does that work 'cause that line that you said was was very
• 51:55
  deep, man, right? It's so organic demand and and
• 52:03
  supply creates a real price that then sends a signal to the
• 52:07
  market, not the other way around, right.
• 52:11
  And with instruments like I and then again, I, people should
• 52:15
  read the prospectuses of all these various instruments
• 52:18
  because OK, if if equity hours are 9:30 to 4:00, but Bitcoin
• 52:23
  hours are 24/7, then what's what's going on behind the
• 52:28
  scenes after close? OK, create redeem on shares.
• 52:31
  So that means conjuring new shares or burning existing
• 52:35
  shares depending on flows and then a settlement that has to
• 52:39
  occur. So you've got mismatch time,
• 52:43
  deltas, costs and opacity, right?
• 52:47
  That then muddy out of bare minimum.
• 52:49
  Like we're not even using the word manipulate or or distort
• 52:52
  yet. We're just saying muddy the what
• 52:57
  would be or could be the organic price.
• 52:58
  And I'll give you like a couple examples that are relatable with
• 53:01
  all of the, let's say, good news and institutional adoption,
• 53:05
  whether it's size of volume from Bhutan, epic or news pieces
• 53:11
  related to the use of Bitcoin as collateral.
• 53:15
  If that were 5-6 years ago, that those would be, you know, 10
• 53:19
  point God candles intraday like without a doubt.
• 53:22
  So you have to and I don't have enough data yet in this period.
• 53:27
  It's just been a few years to give you like black and white.
• 53:30
  This is all of the aspects of the distortions.
• 53:34
  Nonetheless, we can. We can see them and we know the
• 53:37
  backdrop of how they're created. All right, ladies and gentlemen,
• 53:41
  but after the break we're going to talk more to Chris about all
• 53:45
  of this, what the future of Bitcoin holds.
• 53:47
  Now that the game has changed it, to use his words, the regime
• 53:50
  has changed what is the future of Bitcoin holds?
• 53:53
  Of course, we're going to ask some of the questions that you
• 53:56
  guys have dropped in the chat. And then towards the latter half
• 53:59
  of the show, we're going to be talking about the the political
• 54:03
  environment, right? Like, what does it mean that the
• 54:05
  Trump administration is so heavily involved in Bitcoin from
• 54:08
  a policy perspective, like we were talking about in the
• 54:11
  beginning of the show, it seems doesn't seem like the Clarity
• 54:14
  Act is making a lot of progress. Clarity.
• 54:19
  Sorry, exactly right. The Clarity Act is not providing
• 54:22
  clarity. In fact, it's doing the exact
• 54:23
  opposite. So we're going to be talking
• 54:25
  about all that. You guys are going to want to
• 54:26
  stay tuned. We're going to be back in a
• 54:27
  minute or so after the commercial break.
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• 57:32
  Anyways Chris, welcome back. Opti had a question for you.
• 57:36
  Yeah, yeah. I want to talk about, I remember
• 57:40
  when we had dinner, you blew Nico's brain about the four year
• 57:43
  cycle and and he still hasn't recovered.
• 57:45
  He's still a four year cycle. Yeah, metaphorically, he's still
• 57:48
  a four year cycle Maxi. So can you rehash that
• 57:51
  conversation here for the audience?
• 57:54
  Or rather, maybe they'll tee. It out, Yeah, no.
• 57:57
  Four year cycle. Let me so time is is non linear
• 58:01
  and it's relative right. So anchoring to any time
• 58:06
  signaling is is just malpractice period.
• 58:08
  So was there a price correlation at at at modest modestly
• 58:16
  measurable degrees related to happenings, Yes, is there was
• 58:23
  there a for yourself? No, it was not there.
• 58:26
  There was a liquidity cycle that may have made it look like a
• 58:31
  four year cycle, but it had Jack to do with like locking into
• 58:35
  some esoteric astrological time sequence.
• 58:41
  OK, love it. So Nico, are you convinced now
• 58:46
  about there not being a four year?
• 58:47
  Cycle. This isn't.
• 58:48
  This isn't a debate, it's mathematics.
• 58:51
  I'm not a mathematician, so I don't know.
• 58:54
  I can't, I can't look. I I I'm look.
• 58:58
  He's struggling because he's. Having.
• 59:00
  He's having cognitive dissonance right now.
• 59:03
  Right. And that's fine.
• 59:03
  I'm not trying to, you know, jerk your chain, Nico.
• 59:06
  But math is math. It doesn't matter what we feel
• 59:08
  or think. OK, So if there isn't a four
• 59:10
  year, I agree with that. But if if there if there is math
• 59:14
  is math, it's true, but if there isn't a four year cycle, then
• 59:17
  what? What exactly is playing out?
• 59:19
  Like you don't expect the traditional bear market to
• 59:23
  happen this year, the year after the having, you don't see that
• 59:27
  playing out. I don't roll with trying to, you
• 59:30
  know, I have a little more humility than trying to predict
• 59:32
  the future, dude. So I don't roll that way.
• 59:36
  Like it doesn't matter. The only people that care about
• 59:38
  that are are in bit to get rich, so to speak and get rich.
• 59:42
  That's a Fiat policy. Like, 'cause you're, you're, I
• 59:45
  want to be in bid to get more Fiat.
• 59:47
  Well, that's not why I started buying it in 2013.
• 59:50
  Certainly not why I started a hedge fund company in 2017 to
• 59:53
  get around it. And tough shit if you don't like
• 59:55
  what the price did. So you know, I, we have to
• 59:59
  anchor 2 facts, right? There are mathematical
• 1:00:03
  statistics that provide evidence within a probability
• 1:00:07
  distribution curve of potential outcomes.
• 1:00:09
  And we have to be cognizant. I like to divide them in thirds
• 1:00:12
  where you have kind of a bull bearing base case.
• 1:00:15
  Then you I can try and put a a time scope around that.
• 1:00:21
  Got it, got it. All right, everybody, we're
• 1:00:23
  we're gonna pull up, OK? I, I have one question here.
• 1:00:27
  Well, I have one that I'm going to start with and it is in
• 1:00:31
  response to what you were saying about the ETF and commodities
• 1:00:36
  and it's skip onwards. So it's more of a comment, but
• 1:00:38
  it's, I'm, I'm going to phrase it as a question and he goes,
• 1:00:42
  but the gold price rose massively in the years following
• 1:00:44
  the intro of the gold ETF. So how, how would you explain
• 1:00:49
  what you were saying about how this is potentially not
• 1:00:53
  necessarily the best thing for Bitcoin, but how this might have
• 1:00:56
  a parallel with what we saw in gold 'cause it had, you know,
• 1:00:59
  like a decade? Long Yeah, this this is a good
• 1:01:01
  question worthy of me unpacking it What did the ETF do after it
• 1:01:06
  was launched on Bitcoin went. Up went up.
• 1:01:10
  Side of it right and then what happened to gold the the two
• 1:01:14
  years after the gold ETF was introduced it went nowhere for a
• 1:01:17
  very very long time right and then if you if you M2 adjusted
• 1:01:21
  to gold price it's I think about 2425 thousand so yeah I mean
• 1:01:26
  that the gold and silver are like the best example of of what
• 1:01:30
  is being done to Bitcoin now so to answer the the viewer's
• 1:01:34
  question very specifically it was a new product that gave
• 1:01:37
  humans access to something new but that they kind of knew about
• 1:01:40
  right gold and and Bitcoin did the very same thing when the
• 1:01:44
  Bitcoin ETFs now oh look look at all these flows and demands and
• 1:01:48
  we had a nice structure associated with that newness but
• 1:01:52
  as soon as you paper something you're putting control in the in
• 1:01:54
  the hands of people who have no other interest in their own.
• 1:01:58
  So, and who and who benefits from this?
• 1:02:01
  The cui bono is is effectively central banks 1st, Wall Street
• 1:02:05
  second. OK.
• 1:02:07
  And then what is how, what's the mechanism in which they benefit
• 1:02:10
  from the because you would think like everyone benefits from
• 1:02:14
  number go up, anyone would benefit from gold going up,
• 1:02:16
  anyone would benefit from silver going up.
• 1:02:18
  Like why? How do they benefit from it not
• 1:02:22
  going up? Well, First off, it it just
• 1:02:25
  shows its fractional reserve banking is fraud on its face.
• 1:02:30
  Second, the second derivative signaling from commodity prices
• 1:02:34
  rising is also input costs going up and everybody having a a more
• 1:02:38
  inflated experience than they would from just the money supply
• 1:02:41
  increasing. And then it's more about control
• 1:02:45
  member the central banking apparatus globally does not want
• 1:02:48
  anybody to have fun, feel good or like their neighbor, right.
• 1:02:52
  So nobody, nobody benefits outside of their agenda lanes.
• 1:02:58
  And so they just want to control.
• 1:03:00
  What you just saw in Q4 on silver and gold was them losing
• 1:03:04
  control. It took there was a big lag
• 1:03:07
  between the policy decisions made right when Trump got in
• 1:03:10
  office, mainly by Besent because he's a Jedi and he is keeping
• 1:03:14
  the whole entire thing together all things considered by pulling
• 1:03:18
  back gold to the NY Fed vaults. That changed the game right?
• 1:03:25
  And now I don't have the ratio in front of me but there is
• 1:03:29
  hundreds of degrees of paper over available spot.
• 1:03:33
  There was a 240 million oz mismatch on last month's
• 1:03:38
  delivery. So this has become another shit
• 1:03:40
  show based on the greed and darkness of the overlords of the
• 1:03:45
  price, right? And so it it cuts both ways.
• 1:03:49
  These types of vehicles and because we don't have free and
• 1:03:53
  fair markets anywhere, like stocks are the some of the most
• 1:03:56
  manipulated assets, but those they manipulate to go up, right?
• 1:03:59
  They don't let them go down or they try not to let them go down
• 1:04:03
  with commodities. It's it's a different ball game,
• 1:04:06
  right? Because stocks going up doesn't
• 1:04:07
  cause downstream effects that either show so that these guys
• 1:04:12
  are a combination of sociopathic, psychopathic, inept
• 1:04:15
  morons and the real inflation numbers, right?
• 1:04:20
  Because economic statistics forever have never been
• 1:04:22
  accurate. Anybody who thinks they are is,
• 1:04:24
  is a fool. So the more that the consumer
• 1:04:28
  feels the burn of which will come like all computer parts are
• 1:04:32
  going to go sky high because of the Q4 move in metals, then
• 1:04:36
  people get ticked off. So it's it's kind of managing
• 1:04:40
  the control apparatus and then managing what they can control,
• 1:04:44
  the consumer feels. Dude, this is I'm I'm this is
• 1:04:48
  fascinating. I'm really enjoying this.
• 1:04:50
  Chris yeah, I mean question by the by the audience member.
• 1:04:53
  Before we go on to the. Next.
• 1:04:55
  Wait, I do have one more question.
• 1:04:56
  I think he's low key trolling me, but I I'm gonna pass it over
• 1:05:00
  to you. He's asking about indicators.
• 1:05:02
  Here he goes question thoughts on Bitcoin being in the Gaussian
• 1:05:07
  channel on the one week and the Super guppy indicator that has
• 1:05:11
  gone into Gray usually a sign that the bear is very close to
• 1:05:14
  beginning I I don't even know what these indicators are, but
• 1:05:17
  apparently he's. Not yeah, I mean, I don't I've
• 1:05:20
  never heard of a gup. I mean, I know what a guppy is
• 1:05:22
  from fishing, but I I know what a Boston channel is.
• 1:05:27
  Yeah. I mean I I can give you a bull,
• 1:05:31
  bear and base case scenario, but you know, if if you're worried
• 1:05:37
  about that then you shouldn't be in the trade is the best answer.
• 1:05:42
  That's a really, that's a good answer, Chris.
• 1:05:44
  Before we move on to the next segment, what did you think
• 1:05:48
  about Jerome Powell's hostage video where he's basically
• 1:05:53
  claiming that, you know, he's under DOJ attack by the Trump
• 1:05:58
  administration? What's your take?
• 1:06:02
  On the video or the alligator or all of the above?
• 1:06:05
  I mean, look like basically he just started crying wolf and
• 1:06:09
  then all of a sudden, which I found really sketchy by the way,
• 1:06:13
  the European Central Bank comes out with a tweet saying we stand
• 1:06:17
  in solidarity with Jerome Powell, which I was like, what
• 1:06:21
  the like, what do you? Guys, well, no shit.
• 1:06:23
  They're owned by the same people.
• 1:06:25
  Who are they owned by? Well, you can do your own
• 1:06:28
  research. And find that.
• 1:06:31
  So I, you know, we're on. Well, I don't.
• 1:06:34
  You want me to get you kicked off YouTube by telling?
• 1:06:36
  No, no, no, no. OK.
• 1:06:39
  I mean, maybe, you know. Code word we we we get away with
• 1:06:42
  some code words. Syllabus fine.
• 1:06:45
  There you go. There we go, The families, you
• 1:06:48
  know the families, right? I think what was funniest about
• 1:06:51
  that because what they do is they invert, right?
• 1:06:54
  One of the headlines that I've got a Bloomberg Terminal rate
• 1:06:56
  popped up goes, you know, ECB stand solidarity Fed.
• 1:07:00
  And then Fed commentator says, oh, Fed independence has lost.
• 1:07:04
  Inflation's going to go up when they are literally the only
• 1:07:07
  source of inflation. The only there is no other
• 1:07:12
  source than them, period, end of story.
• 1:07:15
  And that's just the inversion. So that if, if you're smart and
• 1:07:18
  you've researched this and you understand markets, you, you can
• 1:07:22
  get the Hegelian dialectic and go, oh, they're really telling
• 1:07:25
  me that there will be deflation if there's no central bank.
• 1:07:29
  Yeah, and it's it's and it's also too like a vile threat.
• 1:07:33
  It's like, oh, you're going to keep, you're going to keep
• 1:07:36
  effing with us, you know? Part of me thinks that it's just
• 1:07:40
  a show between the administration and the Fed, but
• 1:07:44
  the Fed has no bearing in law, right?
• 1:07:47
  What? The IRS and the Fed were created
• 1:07:49
  in the same act. Not ratified by Congress on
• 1:07:52
  December 23rd, 1913. Not ratified the income tax,
• 1:07:56
  same thing. All of this is bullshit.
• 1:07:59
  And then the the United States of America has filed bankruptcy
• 1:08:02
  twice. Under FTR they changed it to USA
• 1:08:06
  Inc. If the viewers don't know that,
• 1:08:07
  they need to dive into that and understand that.
• 1:08:11
  So really we have no, we have no ownership over the liabilities
• 1:08:16
  that the Federal Reserve has. And we should.
• 1:08:20
  We should, you know, unite as one population across the planet
• 1:08:24
  and just stop paying taxes. Well, we, we can't endorse that
• 1:08:29
  on YouTube. But what I will say in an
• 1:08:32
  indirect way is that whole daycare thing didn't sit with me
• 1:08:40
  too well, right? That's where your tax money is,
• 1:08:44
  is, is going, right? Anyways, guys, we're going to be
• 1:08:48
  back after this short commercial break.
• 1:08:51
  I do want to talk to Chris about the policy, like what his
• 1:08:57
  thoughts are with the current Trump administration has been
• 1:09:01
  positive for Bitcoin, has been negative for Bitcoin.
• 1:09:04
  And then I want to end it with, since Bitcoin has changed
• 1:09:09
  fundamentally because of, you know, this institutional, this
• 1:09:14
  institutional involvement, what is the way forward?
• 1:09:17
  So we're going to be right back in just a bit.
• 1:09:21
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• 1:11:18
  Chris, I got a question for you, man.
• 1:11:20
  The Clarity Act doesn't provide got shot down this morning.
• 1:11:26
  Coinbase, Brian Armstrong pulled their support and they're
• 1:11:29
  basically saying like, look, if this bill gets passed, it's just
• 1:11:32
  going to make things significantly worse then the
• 1:11:36
  status quo. Why are we, why are we, why are
• 1:11:39
  we even going to back this? I'm not a huge fan of Coinbase.
• 1:11:42
  Obviously it's kind of like a casino, a crypto casino.
• 1:11:45
  But at the same time, I trust them a whole lot more than, you
• 1:11:50
  know, our representatives in Washington DC, so to speak.
• 1:11:55
  So I want to get your thoughts on that man.
• 1:11:57
  And then I want to get your thoughts also on the Trump
• 1:11:59
  administration. But first, the Clarity Act.
• 1:12:01
  Yeah. So you know, we've advised on
• 1:12:04
  legislation here in Florida and and then some of the stuff in DC
• 1:12:09
  for bills that passed here in Florida.
• 1:12:13
  So you know, what I can say is that this is pretty much what we
• 1:12:17
  expected. The banks didn't want stable
• 1:12:19
  coins to pay yield because it takes money out of their zero
• 1:12:23
  reserve requirement and gives rewards to people who are in the
• 1:12:28
  decentralized ecosystem. Obviously that's going to be the
• 1:12:31
  case. It kind of entraps D5, has
• 1:12:36
  regulatory filings, business filings, etcetera, records
• 1:12:40
  keeping that makes D5 effectively not D5.
• 1:12:43
  And then it muddies the water and kind of usurp some of the
• 1:12:46
  CFT CS jurisdiction and power over commodity assets, which has
• 1:12:51
  already been designated like that in East, for example, to
• 1:12:54
  the SEC, which is effectively an arm of both the Fed and Wall
• 1:12:57
  Street. So it's no one should be shocked
• 1:13:00
  that the the space is trying to be taken over by the same bad
• 1:13:04
  actors who run the central banking grift.
• 1:13:08
  Chris, what's your take on the first year of the Trump
• 1:13:11
  administration? I personally, you know, I was
• 1:13:14
  very hyped, yet a pro Bitcoin president who himself got
• 1:13:18
  debanked. He was a victim of lawfare
• 1:13:20
  himself. Overall, happier than I was with
• 1:13:26
  the previous administration, but simultaneously I, I gotta say
• 1:13:32
  it's a little bit of a, a let down.
• 1:13:35
  I know that Trump knows President Trump knows about the
• 1:13:38
  samurai wallet developers. I know that he took a question,
• 1:13:41
  said he'll look into it. We haven't heard anything since.
• 1:13:44
  I want to get your take on your stance on the Trump
• 1:13:48
  administration 'cause I'm a little bit divided here, right?
• 1:13:50
  The previous administration operation show .2 point O.
• 1:13:53
  It was not at all fun for the industry.
• 1:13:56
  It caused the industry a lot of harm.
• 1:13:59
  The Trump administration is definitely better.
• 1:14:01
  They freeze. They freed Ross Ulbricht, which
• 1:14:03
  I think is a positive. He had the executive orders.
• 1:14:07
  The Trump family themselves, they own a lot of interest in in
• 1:14:12
  the industry. I think they have the 6th
• 1:14:13
  largest Bitcoin treasury company.
• 1:14:15
  So I want to get your take on President Trump's first year in
• 1:14:19
  his second term. I think we all have to thank our
• 1:14:22
  creator that it, it, it went the way that it did.
• 1:14:26
  So the pathway we were down was really quite dark, let's say.
• 1:14:34
  And maybe, you know, this is all we get to the next three years
• 1:14:37
  and they they come back and we have COVID 8 point O and
• 1:14:40
  lockdowns and bank shut blah, blah, blah.
• 1:14:42
  Fine. But it it's fair to separate the
• 1:14:47
  critique of Trump administration versus the critique of
• 1:14:50
  Washington and Wall Street, right.
• 1:14:52
  So you you've just mentioned some things that are kind of
• 1:14:55
  bipolar. I quite well, obviously we're
• 1:14:57
  going to cheer and support American Bitcoin something I I
• 1:15:01
  don't know the exact title. It's not in front of me.
• 1:15:03
  Cool. You have a dat great good for
• 1:15:05
  you guys. But then you juxtapose that with
• 1:15:10
  mean coin grift that's a little beneath A respectable gentleman.
• 1:15:13
  So those kind of neutralize each other, but the United States
• 1:15:18
  owns 198,000 Bitcoin, China owns 190,000 Bitcoin.
• 1:15:21
  That's not a sign that we're taking an anti Bitcoin stance.
• 1:15:25
  And let me make this very clear to your audience.
• 1:15:28
  The powers that should ought not be, we're trying to destroy it.
• 1:15:32
  From 2017 to 2022, they could not.
• 1:15:35
  And now it's let's usurp it so and let me go back.
• 1:15:40
  Sorry. Go ahead, Nico.
• 1:15:42
  Yeah, so and and and I, I love the way that you phrased it
• 1:15:45
  right. And and they've been quite
• 1:15:46
  successful at usurping it rather than trying to destroy it.
• 1:15:50
  I would say they failed at destroying it, but so far it
• 1:15:53
  seems like they've done an excellent job at Co opting it.
• 1:15:58
  If you take a look at some of the numbers, the amount of
• 1:16:01
  people that are taking self custody is in as at record lows.
• 1:16:05
  That usually never has never happened throughout bitcoins
• 1:16:07
  history. Before the ETF, the amount of
• 1:16:10
  people that were taking self custody continued to rise
• 1:16:13
  throughout the years since the launch of the ETF's.
• 1:16:16
  The people that are actively taking self custody of their
• 1:16:19
  Bitcoin is actually going lower. So people are trading freedom
• 1:16:24
  for convenience, or at least that's the way that I see it
• 1:16:27
  from my perspective, 100. Percent, I mean, you could and
• 1:16:31
  I'll get back to answering the earlier question and and maybe
• 1:16:34
  correcting you, forgive me for doing so.
• 1:16:36
  The fundamentals of Bitcoin have not changed.
• 1:16:39
  The nature of the traded market has changed.
• 1:16:41
  That's the regime change. So I I just want to clarify that
• 1:16:43
  for folks because fundamentally bitcoins actually never been
• 1:16:46
  stronger. So getting to the the self
• 1:16:51
  sovereignty side, you look at silver and gold it, it, it's not
• 1:16:56
  even .5% of institutional portfolios.
• 1:16:59
  Nico, like what, what, what's your thought of that?
• 1:17:01
  That seems like gross negligence, doesn't it?
• 1:17:04
  Absolutely. For me in order of importance,
• 1:17:08
  it's Bitcoin, gold, silver and has been you know, gold, silver,
• 1:17:14
  I've been in much longer than I've been in or not much longer,
• 1:17:16
  but longer than I've been in Bitcoin.
• 1:17:18
  But it's obvious that scarce assets, hard money protects you.
• 1:17:24
  Yet investor portfolios have ignored that, just like they're
• 1:17:28
  ignoring the self custody option, which is much more
• 1:17:32
  dynamic and freeing than gold. Gold self custody is a little
• 1:17:35
  scary, right at a certain point. So you just have to, it's not
• 1:17:40
  one of the other. It's both at the right cadence
• 1:17:43
  and the right the right magnitude.
• 1:17:46
  Absolutely. So Chris, what is the way
• 1:17:49
  forward right? You know that you have some of
• 1:17:52
  the most powerful forces institutions, you know,
• 1:17:57
  basically not wanting Bitcoin to succeed, Co opting it in a way.
• 1:18:06
  What is the way forward for for for Bitcoin from here, you know,
• 1:18:12
  from a price perspective, from an adoption perspective.
• 1:18:16
  What's your take? Let me first address the
• 1:18:19
  coiners. You guys cheered.
• 1:18:24
  The freaking ETFII was speaking at the conferences.
• 1:18:27
  I I me and Fred Krueger on stage warn people, right?
• 1:18:31
  Oh, the institution's coming into oh, ETFETF then then you
• 1:18:34
  want states to buy it and then you want stocks to buy it.
• 1:18:39
  And then you also want to keep the self sovereignty.
• 1:18:42
  No man, you just traded it. So I blame the so-called
• 1:18:47
  cheerleaders of the Bitcoin space for most of that
• 1:18:51
  propaganda that led to that. Now let me talk about price.
• 1:18:56
  And so I think there should be a reversion to 1st principles and
• 1:19:01
  what are what are the freedoms and liberties afforded us by
• 1:19:04
  God? And then how do we get out of
• 1:19:07
  this Fiat system in a non violent, peaceful way that's in
• 1:19:11
  the highest consciousness manner available to us and that is
• 1:19:15
  Bitcoin price. Honestly, it doesn't matter.
• 1:19:23
  That's my answer. What isn't number go up The
• 1:19:28
  biggest converter of of people adopting Bitcoin?
• 1:19:32
  I'm sure smart people. Yeah, but I would say, how do I
• 1:19:37
  say this in a politically correct way?
• 1:19:42
  The there's a reason, man, I I don't know how to say this in a
• 1:19:45
  political figure. Do you want to take a crack at
• 1:19:46
  it? I can't do it political.
• 1:19:48
  You got. It I would say the average
• 1:19:51
  person isn't that smart. That's the easy way to say.
• 1:19:55
  It well, maybe, maybe a better, better term is awake.
• 1:19:59
  OK. Yeah, that, that's a great,
• 1:20:01
  that's a great way to. Phrase that I'd argue the
• 1:20:03
  average person isn't awake either.
• 1:20:04
  Well, guess what can wake him up real quick?
• 1:20:06
  Go look up web's the great taking and if that doesn't wake
• 1:20:10
  you up, you deserve everything that's coming.
• 1:20:13
  So there you go people, but I'll I'll help you out Nico, because
• 1:20:16
  I kind of teed that up. I'll give you the what you're
• 1:20:17
  what you asked me for. So bull bear base case in USD
• 1:20:21
  terms here I would expect. Let's do bear market scenario
• 1:20:26
  first because those are fun. The bearer contention would
• 1:20:30
  argue were in a flag or flat bear, flat flag or flat pattern.
• 1:20:36
  That's going to take another 30 to 45 days to play out.
• 1:20:40
  That has the following resistance points.
• 1:20:43
  That would likely the second one take create a bull trap.
• 1:20:46
  So it's one O 7 range and then one 11112 range, especially if
• 1:20:52
  it Wicks the 1-12. That would create kind of a bull
• 1:20:55
  trap scenario and then it would puke lower in what Austin
• 1:20:59
  Elliott Wave or Dow Theory would call the body of the decline,
• 1:21:05
  which is is a high degree 3rd wave that would take us through
• 1:21:10
  the 80 low likely to low 70s, maybe even as low as 56.
• 1:21:16
  We'd get another intermediate degree bounce probably in
• 1:21:21
  between the 80 mark and the consolidation at 89 and then it
• 1:21:27
  would ultimately either truncate, not make a new low or
• 1:21:31
  double bottom in that 56 range. That's sort of the the worst
• 1:21:35
  case scenario, right. The best case scenario, so I'll
• 1:21:39
  do Max bold, is that we are now completing the first impulse of
• 1:21:45
  a bull market extension that would take us probably into Q2
• 1:21:51
  before any major pull backs. And I'm doing this like a major
• 1:21:55
  pullback isn't going 95 to 90, right?
• 1:21:57
  That's not a major pullback. So it really would be on the
• 1:22:02
  ferocity of the breakout. If we take out 126, you really
• 1:22:06
  only have a 17180 pivot after that and then kind of green
• 1:22:11
  pastures to a 240 trend line. So that's, that's your sort of
• 1:22:17
  bullish count. But I I guarantee you no one is
• 1:22:21
  going to I'm not selling and anybody who's planning on
• 1:22:24
  selling shouldn't be a listener. And you know, we're getting to
• 1:22:28
  that point where this is already becoming this institutional rich
• 1:22:31
  man's hedge because that's why you see so self sovereignty not
• 1:22:35
  permeating. But how much is being pulled off
• 1:22:37
  exchange Nico absolutely. But Jesus tons, which means the
• 1:22:42
  people that maybe have a lot more capital and a lot more
• 1:22:45
  nefarious ways go Oh, I need bitcoins.
• 1:22:47
  It's for me. I want all the Bitcoin.
• 1:22:49
  So people have to like understand if if you everybody's
• 1:22:53
  goals to be a whole coin or off exchange period and there's only
• 1:22:57
  21 million and I have a lot of them myself, So too bad, no.
• 1:23:02
  Kidding. Amen.
• 1:23:03
  Amen to that. It's been an honor.
• 1:23:06
  Wait, wait, wait. Can I, can I ask a quick one?
• 1:23:08
  Yeah. I'm I'm here.
• 1:23:09
  Just keep it coming. Yeah, yeah, Chris, I I'd like to
• 1:23:11
  kind of, you know, Nico asked you all of like the Trump
• 1:23:14
  administration, all that going on recently, I've been diving a
• 1:23:18
  lot more into like the macro landscape.
• 1:23:20
  So I want to like pick your brain or rather maybe just
• 1:23:22
  broadly ask, like, what do you think is the macro forecast for
• 1:23:25
  2026? Like what are you watching and
• 1:23:28
  and what should the audience be looking out for?
• 1:23:31
  Define macro 'cause when when I hear macro as a asset manager,
• 1:23:35
  I'm thinking monetary and fiscal policy.
• 1:23:38
  But what do you what do you mean?
• 1:23:39
  Yeah, that, that's basically what I mean, yeah.
• 1:23:41
  Yeah, it it. I mean, dudes, we're queuing at
• 1:23:44
  an all time high like OK, so so then back to.
• 1:23:48
  Gold and silver Zika's messing with the soundboard over.
• 1:23:53
  Here, that's the real. My thought so.
• 1:23:57
  So gold and silver are a known counterparty hedge.
• 1:24:02
  What I think some know, but not everyone.
• 1:24:04
  Bitcoins probably a better counterparty hedge.
• 1:24:07
  Gold and silver are sniffing out the fact that the banks are all
• 1:24:10
  insolvent, right? If they weren't insolvent, you
• 1:24:14
  wouldn't see repo going girls gone wild and you wouldn't see
• 1:24:18
  Kiwi, right? Just that's black and white.
• 1:24:22
  So to answer your question more more like strategy wise, either
• 1:24:28
  we're we're going to get sort of, you know, Larry's big print
• 1:24:33
  which may have kicked off or all these institutions are going to
• 1:24:38
  fail and they're going to run the great taking and CBDC
• 1:24:41
  everything they're prepared for either one.
• 1:24:47
  Honestly, Nico, look, I I know I have a 42 IQ here, but me and
• 1:24:52
  Chris are very aligned on this take here.
• 1:24:54
  Nico, you're the Midwest here today, so I.
• 1:24:56
  Guess so? I guess so.
• 1:24:58
  What's the middle? Tell me the middle.
• 1:25:01
  I don't know whatever Niko say, because I, I literally, I, I've
• 1:25:04
  been saying this exact obviously not as eloquent, but I've been
• 1:25:08
  saying all these different factors.
• 1:25:09
  Like you said, you know, Q TS ending QE is just ramping up.
• 1:25:14
  We're seeing the liquidity kind of get added to back into the
• 1:25:18
  system. We're seeing the Fed repo
• 1:25:20
  markets go up like we're seeing what's happening in Japan and
• 1:25:23
  all of this is like Larry's big print is seems to be right
• 1:25:26
  around the corner or a more like you said, you know, worst case
• 1:25:31
  scenarios like are all these institutions going to blow up
• 1:25:33
  now? I think that's probably has a
• 1:25:35
  little less of a chance just because I think they have a lot
• 1:25:38
  of tools and a lot of people aren't really well informed on
• 1:25:40
  what's going on. So they can kind of paper over
• 1:25:42
  the problem And it's like, it's all right, you know, burning,
• 1:25:45
  building me like everything's fine here.
• 1:25:47
  And This is why I'm like, it seems to me like we are getting
• 1:25:52
  a very good set up into Bitcoin just from all of the different
• 1:25:55
  stuff I'm seeing coming from like a macro.
• 1:25:57
  Perspective on my because both both looking great are awesome
• 1:26:01
  for Bitcoin yeah right because one to back to the adoption if
• 1:26:06
  everybody's banks start doing bail insurance which is the plan
• 1:26:09
  this is already written people are are gonna be forced into
• 1:26:13
  define forced into Bitcoin. What do you guys I see guys
• 1:26:16
  smirking back and forth I. Don't know, I don't know.
• 1:26:18
  Niko's smirking at me. So I'm I'm.
• 1:26:20
  I'm. Smirking because he keeps
• 1:26:21
  changing the camera. Yeah, I want to see Niko's face
• 1:26:23
  on on the. Screen so that that's in the
• 1:26:27
  works and then if if you if you go the other direction, we're
• 1:26:31
  going to print Infinity, then people are going to be you know,
• 1:26:34
  aping into a bunch of crap regardless.
• 1:26:36
  So either way, Bitcoin wins and people being all uppity about
• 1:26:44
  low volatility like this is to me, this whole 2-3 years
• 1:26:48
  market's been boring as hell. It was it was lovely when it was
• 1:26:50
  180 Volt, not a 34 to 40 Volt like come on people.
• 1:26:56
  So I I'm I'm in the camp that there are only super hard hedge
• 1:27:01
  assets. There's only a little bit of
• 1:27:03
  them and you only have less than a dozen choices for those and
• 1:27:07
  bitcoins, probably the best of them that we have the ability to
• 1:27:12
  get into quickly. Amen to that.
• 1:27:16
  Well, Chris, thank you so much for joining us on the show.
• 1:27:19
  To me man, let me give your I'll give your folks some super A1
• 1:27:23
  thing they're missing in that four year cycle, those previous
• 1:27:27
  peaks ISM also peaked along with that price.
• 1:27:30
  Pull up optic, pull up a chart, put up the ISM and overlay
• 1:27:34
  Bitcoin's price. Could you?
• 1:27:35
  Define the what ISM is Chris. It, it's, it's two supply
• 1:27:41
  managers, ISM, it's like a business.
• 1:27:44
  Measurement statistic. Oh, so it's just like the
• 1:27:47
  business cycle? It's not like, yeah, it's like a
• 1:27:50
  business cycle. So if you go to Fred, which is
• 1:27:54
  the Saint Louis Federal Reserve Board site, their data which we
• 1:27:57
  can discount its efficacy has an ISM number and it's released
• 1:28:01
  monthly. If you grab that chart and you
• 1:28:04
  put the previous peaks that do make it look for your cycly,
• 1:28:08
  there's a business cycle peak to that, it's just rising.
• 1:28:11
  And then the rate, the other thing that's really important to
• 1:28:13
  look at that also has correlation is the S&P over IWM,
• 1:28:17
  which is the mid cap or small mid cap when and that's broken
• 1:28:22
  out actually looks kind of like the East PTC pair, which is
• 1:28:25
  interesting. Those have correlations to sort
• 1:28:29
  of Max risk or euphoria and we're nowhere near any of that
• 1:28:35
  yet. I I found the Twitter one with
• 1:28:39
  it overlaid here. It this one, this one's a little
• 1:28:41
  yeah, this one's like it's not fully updated yet, but here, let
• 1:28:45
  me let me pull it up. And Nikko doesn't have his
• 1:28:46
  computer here, but this is, you know, already overlaid.
• 1:28:51
  This is this is this is like a a week.
• 1:28:55
  That looks like 22. Weeks old.
• 1:28:58
  Like charts? Yeah, that that's what I'm
• 1:29:04
  saying. Oh that, that is fascinating.
• 1:29:09
  That is really so the So the party hasn't even started, huh?
• 1:29:15
  What do you mean? The party has been ensued since
• 1:29:18
  the genesis block, right? Let me leave you with this.
• 1:29:26
  How scared, frustrated, annoyed and angry would you be if we
• 1:29:32
  didn't have this as an option? Oh, it would be terrible.
• 1:29:35
  We would be forced to care about politics.
• 1:29:37
  Like, and, and I, I get feisty with people 'cause I'm, I'm
• 1:29:41
  around all of our community all the time.
• 1:29:43
  Well, I wanted it to go to 150 and OK, well, you're going to
• 1:29:46
  sell. No, all right, who cares?
• 1:29:50
  Like people, they have conditioned people to look at a
• 1:29:52
  balance on a graphical unit user interface that is archaic.
• 1:29:57
  I'm I'm speaking about banks and associate their harmony
• 1:30:01
  psychologically with a balance that at a minute I'll give you
• 1:30:05
  the lowest number 8.21% is how much people lose in USD every
• 1:30:10
  year since 1913 like that. So your benchmark is wrong.
• 1:30:16
  And the benchmark shouldn't be quantity of losing Fiat, it
• 1:30:20
  should always be quantity of assets.
• 1:30:23
  Quantity. Yep.
• 1:30:24
  Quantity of Bitcoin? Hell yeah.
• 1:30:29
  And look. What's awesome is you and I know
• 1:30:31
  that they tried to destroy it three ways from Sunday China bet
• 1:30:34
  mining back, blah blah blah. Oh we're shorting central banks
• 1:30:38
  and they couldn't do it. So like I'm a buyer at any price
• 1:30:43
  and it doesn't matter if you have cause a lot of us think and
• 1:30:45
  live on on Sats anyways, or at least the degree we can.
• 1:30:48
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, man, this is this is exciting time.
• 1:30:53
  What a time. What a time to be alive.
• 1:30:55
  Thank God for Satoshi, Chris, it's been a pleasure.
• 1:30:59
  It's been an honor. Thank you so much for joining us
• 1:31:00
  on the show. I'd love to have you back on,
• 1:31:02
  man. Yeah, anytime.
• 1:31:03
  Just ping me, let me know. Yeah, that the chat saying you
• 1:31:06
  guys need to bring Chris on literally every quarter.
• 1:31:08
  We're going to make it happen. We're going to make it happen.
• 1:31:12
  Well, Chris, thank you so much for joining us on the show
• 1:31:14
  today, brother. We appreciate it.
• 1:31:16
  See you guys appreciate it. Take care.
• 1:31:18
  Today's episode was brought to you by bitcoinwell.com, a
• 1:31:21
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• 1:31:24
  independence.