Latest / What Bitcoin Did / The Everything Rally Is About to Begin | Joe Carlasare
Transcript
- 0:00I think there's plenty of indications that the bottom is in. You're about to do a monthly close
- 0:06over the 10-month moving average, which historically has marked the end of every single
- 0:10Bitcoin bear cycle since at least 2016, 2017. You have a very compelling case that this was
- 0:15the most muted, mild drawdown in Bitcoin history. That is extremely persuasive. I think the vast
- 0:22majority of people will have exposure to Bitcoin in one form or another without even realizing.
- 0:27If you have a situation where you get back over 100K, you have an economy, which I think is starting to turn up and start to be humming along here.
- 0:34You could have a massive cycle here this time around that will shock people.
- 0:38And you have this Industrial Revolution 2.0 with AI, which is going to have huge effects on our economy that we can barely feel.
- 0:46And to me, the consistent picture through all commodity markets is higher structural inflation.
- 0:52Joe Carl Sari, how are you doing, my friend?
- 0:58I'm doing excellent. Good to see you.
- 1:00Good to see you too. One of my favorite people to speak to. You always have a bit of a,
- 1:04I don't want to say contrarian because I feel like Bitcoin is a contrarian,
- 1:07but you have a different view to the normal Bitcoiner on the state of the economy,
- 1:11what Bitcoin's doing. So I'm excited for this. We've got a lot to talk about.
- 1:14A lot to talk about. So where do you want to start?
- 1:17Well, I think we've got to start with the price. So Bitcoin's absolutely ripped in the last two
- 1:20weeks. We're just under 80K now. This kind of came on the back of the treasury announcement,
- 1:26the buybacks. How much do you think that played into this? I think it was sort of the match that
- 1:34lit the fuse. But to me, I think Bitcoin bottomed effectively in February when we hit that 60K
- 1:42down. Yes, it is true that we went slightly lower. I think, you know, it tested 58K gain,
- 1:48came through and held that report strong, which I thought was great. I love memes. Bitcoin is so
- 1:54sentimental that memes narratives really do control. But if you look, just sort of take a
- 1:59step back. For one, I was a big person, as you know, I think it faded this like four-year cycle
- 2:05theory because I didn't think fundamentally there was any reason for it, especially given the
- 2:10economic data, which I look at pretty closely, as you know, stock market, which has been doing
- 2:14really well just consistently all year, many other asset classes ripping. That being said,
- 2:18that was wrong, right? The idea of the four-year cycle, whether it is a self-fulfilling prophecy,
- 2:24whether it is something that is just something that is traded upon by Bitcoiners, sort of becomes
- 2:28that self-fulfilling prophecy, it doesn't really matter. It is what it is. So everybody that was
- 2:34fading that narrative was wrong. That being said, I think there's a lot of green shoots you can look
- 2:39at with the Bitcoin price that show you that fundamentally at this time is different, at least
- 2:44with respect to the mutedness of the drawdown, right?
- 2:47So if you go back and look,
- 2:49we had that cycle high in the fall
- 2:52where Bitcoin was at roughly 126, 127, thereabouts.
- 2:57And then you sold down hard very quickly.
- 2:59You were at 80K in November.
- 3:01And then you had to rally back.
- 3:03And then you had the whole sort of slow grind lower
- 3:06until February, which basically went down.
- 3:09And then really we've been bouncing around
- 3:11between 60 and 80 roughly for the entirety of the year.
- 3:14Right now, as we record this podcast,
- 3:16Bitcoin is at $79,000 after that big run.
- 3:19So what do you take away from that?
- 3:20You take away that to me, you had one of them,
- 3:24because I think personally the bottom's in.
- 3:25I think there's plenty of indications
- 3:26that the bottom's in.
- 3:27You're about to do a monthly close
- 3:29over the 10 month moving average,
- 3:31which historically has marked the end
- 3:32of every single Bitcoin bear cycle
- 3:34since at least 2016, 2017.
- 3:37If the bottom is in fact in,
- 3:39you have a very compelling case
- 3:41that this was the most muted, mild drawdown in Bitcoin history. That is extremely persuasive.
- 3:47The fact that Bitcoin roughly fell from peak to trough, you know, a little over 50% compared to
- 3:52prior 70 or 80% drawdowns, that's really encouraging. So yes, I mean, I thought that,
- 3:58I thought this was sort of a, I used the term artificial sell-off. It's sort of like it felt
- 4:04like it had to happen. Like people just didn't want to get burned again. So they had all these
- 4:09profits above 100k. They saw that nice run up since the 2022 bottom. So they felt like a prudent
- 4:14thing to do was, you know, don't fool me again. But I do think that the vast majority of Bitcoin,
- 4:20Twitter and Bitcoin traders were waiting for much lower numbers, which they may not get.
- 4:25And that's exactly what market does. Over time, the market evolves, it changes sort of the patterns
- 4:30that people come very familiar with. And whatever worked in the past tends to no longer work in the
- 4:34future. It certainly worked for people that sold in Q4, right? But when you sell, Danny, the difficult
- 4:41thing, why I sort of rage against people trying to trade and sell Bitcoin is that not only do you
- 4:46have to nail the top, you have to account if you're in certain jurisdictions for taxes, but
- 4:50you also have to nail the bottom. And there were plenty of people sitting at 60K where we were at
- 4:55for a very long time saying Bitcoin's going much lower, Bitcoin's going much lower. If the bottom
- 5:00is in and Bitcoin heads up from here, um, you know, your, your ability to sort of take
- 5:05advantage of that trade is very challenging.
- 5:07Um I know a lot of people now uh since we had that big move up into the high seventies they saying when are we getting a pullback when are we going to get a pullback um maybe you get one maybe get one in the low 70s but i bet there are going to be a lot of people afraid to buy that because they
- 5:21believe that you know we get we're going to go much lower so to me like i look at this whole year
- 5:26as basically sort of a game of chicken like people were playing games of chicken last year
- 5:30i don't want to sell they're playing games of chicken i'm going to buy to me what's more
- 5:35encouraging is where do we go from here? Because even among the cycle believers, even among the
- 5:39four-year cycle, they're telling you Bitcoin's going to bottom sometime in October, right? Well,
- 5:44October is less than 60 days away. We're in September by the time you record this.
- 5:50So to me, what is the compelling bear narrative? I don't really hear any. And given the fact that
- 5:55we're down roughly 40% as we record this podcast from the all-time high, to me, it's a very poor
- 6:02risk award. They're trying to mess around trading Bitcoin. And I think far more individuals are
- 6:08going to be front running that expectation that the bottom's in, we're going to have bright,
- 6:13sunny skies ahead, and Bitcoin's going considerably higher. So all of that is to say,
- 6:19I'm really bullish. I think that what you've done here is you've done what Jordy Visser calls the
- 6:25IPO moment of Bitcoin, where you've wiped out a lot of people that had psychologically that 100K
- 6:29mark in their head. They were going to sell. They were going to take some profit. You've gotten rid
- 6:34of that supply. You've made it, you diffused the supply. You've got it into stronger hands that
- 6:37are going to hold for the long term. And you had a very muted drawdown, you know, by Bitcoin terms,
- 6:42at least 50%. To put that in context, there are mega cap tech stocks that fell 50% not too long
- 6:49ago, right? A 50% drawdown in a high volatility asset, although it sucks, right? It's painful
- 6:55relative to a 70 or 80% drawdown,
- 6:58that is very constructive, right?
- 7:01So going forward, if you're a money manager,
- 7:03you're looking at this,
- 7:04Bitcoin's starting to trade differently.
- 7:06Bitcoin's starting to have a different risk profile
- 7:08relative to other assets.
- 7:10All of these things are little thumbs on the scale
- 7:12that you want to see as this matures
- 7:14into an institutional quality asset.
- 7:17And man, if we get back over 100K,
- 7:20I think the FOMO is going to kick in big time.
- 7:23And I think we're going to get moving very quick.
- 7:24I think you could be at new all-time highs, if not this year, later in 2026, early 2027.
- 7:30So you basically outlined every single reason I don't ever bother trading Bitcoin. Because
- 7:35realistically, normal people, it's very hard to call the top. The people who are creating
- 7:40the ITO moment in Bitcoin, that guy selling 80,000 coins back in 2025, which we all funnily call
- 7:47bullish selling, they're the ones that put the top in. But realistically, if you're trying to
- 7:50catch the top, you're probably going to be selling somewhere around the 100k range. Very few people
- 7:54get the actual top. And then the interesting thing is like when we were down at 60ish K,
- 7:58under my videos, like I did a video with Checkmate, every comment was calling for, you know,
- 8:02somewhere in the 40s. And so if you miss the 60K, like Bitcoin moves so fast that realistically,
- 8:09you're now looking at buying at 80K. And once you factor in tax, like, have you made any money?
- 8:13These are the really like hard things about trading Bitcoin and so few people win.
- 8:18Well, I think the same is true right here, right? So like you can make a case,
- 8:22a very compelling case and i i i always scan some of the the comments to your point because they're
- 8:27very interesting like people are are the overwhelming majority thinks bitcoin needs to
- 8:32reset you had this awesome run so we need to retest lower it needs to go into the 70s or maybe
- 8:37it goes and retests you know even even the high 60s right um but the the challenge is that if the
- 8:43opposite is true let's just say you break through this 82 to 84k range all the ta traders they'll
- 8:51say, oh, the market structures change. Now we put in a higher high relative to where we were in the
- 8:55spring, right? So that move from 8284, say, upwards to the 90s, it's going to happen just as quick.
- 9:03You're going to have a bunch of fast money piled back in all the traders, all the momentum junkies,
- 9:07they're going to flow back in, and Bitcoin can rocket higher. So do you really want to gamble
- 9:12here? And it's like, you know, to me, when you have this incredible asset, I don't want to live
- 9:17with that sort of stress of, oh, I have to wait now to buy it back lower. And if I don't have to
- 9:23buy it back lower, then I have to move very quickly if it breaks through 84K because it's
- 9:27going to run even higher. It's just a mess, right? It's not something that I think, I mean,
- 9:33they're playing markets to trade. And I trade traditional markets all the time. It's way easier.
- 9:39I think Bitcoin is a much more challenging asset, particularly with size to trade. And I've seen
- 9:44weird things happen over the course of Bitcoin's existence where TA traders and people were telling
- 9:49me there's no way Bitcoin can do this. There's no way it can move this low or this high. And it
- 9:53doesn't. It seems to always find that max pain point and cause a lot of frustration for people.
- 9:58So to me, it's a loser's game to trade Bitcoin. I always say like you should be focused on having
- 10:03a sizable allocation that you feel is appropriate for your risk tolerance, that you feel is
- 10:08appropriate for your portfolio, and then let it go. Just forget about it. Yeah. And this is the
- 10:14crazy start in Bitcoin, which is I think if you take out the 10 or 12 most volatile days in Bitcoin,
- 10:19you basically wipe out all the gains Like Bitcoin is a very volatile asset but it does it in very short bursts and it sideways a lot And like holding is definitely the way But I interested to know
- 10:30why you think this time is different.
- 10:32Because like you,
- 10:33I thought the cycles were done.
- 10:35I still in my heart
- 10:35just can't believe that the calendar
- 10:37they take when the Bitcoin price goes up
- 10:38and I find it very hard
- 10:39to get into the four year cycle.
- 10:41And I'll probably be the first person
- 10:42saying it's done again next time.
- 10:44Because at some point
- 10:45that four year cycle has to break, I think.
- 10:47But why do you think this time is different?
- 10:50Well, first off, I want to just emphasize something you just said.
- 10:53If Bitcoin is perpetually locked into a four-year cycle, I don't think Bitcoin is fully realized
- 10:59that makes it a perpetual trading asset.
- 11:02There's no reason to own the asset if it's always going to boom bust every four years.
- 11:07So I think even the cycle theorists, right, they will concede, yes, at some point it has
- 11:12to break, but they will say, oh, we got two or three more cycles in where this pattern
- 11:17will repeat.
- 11:17to me okay fine but the one time you screw that up could be the most the biggest cycle in bitcoin's
- 11:23history or one of the bigger cycles relative to how much capital could float into the markets and
- 11:27that again that game of chicken i don't want to play i'd rather just hold through it particularly
- 11:32since you know i thought holding through this bear market although annoying and frustrating
- 11:36was perhaps the easiest to hold through i mean a 50 it was not even you know in prior bear markets
- 11:42people were legitimately saying bitcoin's going to zero it'll never come back this one we're
- 11:46debating about, will it bottom in the spring or will it bottom in the fall? You didn't have a
- 11:50contagion event like an FTX type event, which was causing panic and forced selling across the board.
- 11:56The most you had was STRC and strategy, which we'll put that aside. Why do I think it's different?
- 12:02I think it's different because psychologically, again, we talked about this and I'll credit
- 12:07Jordy Visser because I completely agree with his thesis on this. I think there was an IPO moment
- 12:11of Bitcoin, I think when you had the final coming of the ETFs, BlackRock, major institutions
- 12:18involved, and that wave of early hodlers who, to your point, they're selling Bitcoin at 80,000
- 12:25coin to clip. That's significant, right? So getting that supply diffused out into the marketplace
- 12:32was huge. I mean, I know personally, because I have some clients who told me anecdotally,
- 12:37like 100K was a threshold that are selling 20 to 30% of their Bitcoin, because they can buy
- 12:41that second or third house they can buy that yacht they can take advantage of hodling for the last 10
- 12:47years and i don't begrudge them that that's a good thing right if they if they want to sell because
- 12:51they're going to you know put in something else or diversify so be it um a lot of these guys are
- 12:56really still bullish on bitcoin they just they just realize like you know okay i bought bitcoin
- 13:00in my 20s now i'm coming into my 40s whatever uh it's time to sort of you know uh to diversify
- 13:08buy what I need to buy for the family, do what I need to do, right? They were hodlers for years.
- 13:14But what I find to be very bullish about that is you do that once, okay? You have that sale one time
- 13:20and that supply is diffused, right? Other people now have it as some allocation of their portfolio.
- 13:28That's hugely significant. You can't overstate the fact that if you really want Bitcoin to become
- 13:34more of diamond handedness, right? You don't want concentrations of supply because the
- 13:40concentration of supply make it altogether easier for those folks with the bigger allocations to
- 13:44just sell and do certain periods. You want it to be where people have their 5% allocation. They see
- 13:50that 5% or 10% double or triple into the future. And then they say, hey, maybe I want to just hold
- 13:55this. There's no real reason to. I have other assets. And I think that's increasingly going
- 14:00to become the story. I think the vast majority of people will have exposure to Bitcoin.
- 14:04in one form or another without even realizing.
- 14:06I think financial advisors already that I'm aware of
- 14:09are sticking 2%, 3%, 4% into Bitcoin.
- 14:12There are guys that will,
- 14:14I listen to a lot of Trot Fight podcasts.
- 14:16There are guys that absolutely do not care at all for Bitcoin
- 14:19and they're putting their client's Danny
- 14:21into a 2% or 3% allocation
- 14:22because they see what it does
- 14:24from a portfolio construction standpoint.
- 14:27And to me, that's awesome.
- 14:28I love that idea that you don't have to be in love
- 14:32with the asset.
- 14:33You don't have to get married to it.
- 14:35But you're going to realize, like from a portfolio construction standpoint, it makes sense to own some.
- 14:40You know, it's like the old Satoshi adage, you know, it would make sense to buy some just in case it catches on, you know, that type of thing.
- 14:46That's sort of the, I think, analysis that a lot of FAs are doing with real money at this point.
- 14:52I think it's only going to become more significant in the days ahead.
- 14:55And then, man, if you have a situation where you get back over 100K, you have an economy, which I think is starting to turn up and start to be coming along here.
- 15:06To me, I think you could have a massive cycle here this time around that will shock people.
- 15:11Because right now, here's what the dominant expectation is.
- 15:14The dominant expectation is Bitcoin is going to maybe give you a 1 or 2x.
- 15:18Okay?
- 15:19And what have we learned time and again?
- 15:21Whatever the majority consensus view is in markets, it's usually wrong.
- 15:25I don't care what market you're talking about.
- 15:27In 2025, people were saying we're going to go over 200K.
- 15:31I mean go look at some of the projections of people that they had They said 300 400 500K Bitcoin People were disappointed I wasn As you know I was going for 130K to be the high for the year
- 15:43I thought that was sort of a reasonable framework
- 15:47of where Bitcoin would be given the move it had.
- 15:49And I think it needed to reset from there.
- 15:51I certainly didn't expect it to draw down as much.
- 15:54But now, I mean, I don't see any reason
- 15:56why you can't be approaching well into the high twos
- 15:59the next time around, perhaps even higher.
- 16:01And to me, I mean, I can't find a time in Bitcoin where I've been more bullish about the, you know,
- 16:09high movements and I think the allocation that is going to come to Bitcoin in the traditional finance world over the next, say, 18, 24 months.
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- 19:13Let's go.
- 19:13Because I mean, I was one of the people calling for way too high a number.
- 19:16I can't remember what I said.
- 19:17but yeah you were probably the most accurate call that I can think of
- 19:21I mean you basically nailed it
- 19:22I think 130k, 126k same thing
- 19:25but what I want to know from you
- 19:27because like for me as a Bitcoiner
- 19:29Bitcoin dropping 50% is obviously better than dropping 70%
- 19:32but I was never going to be a seller
- 19:34like I've been through worse bear markets
- 19:36but what does Bitcoin only dropping 50% mean
- 19:39for like the serious like TradFi investors with a lot of money
- 19:42like does that change their analysis of it
- 19:44when it only drops 50% during a bear market
- 19:46assuming the bottom's in. Yeah, absolutely. It changes the risk profile because if you have a,
- 19:54first of all, in our markets today, one of the things I think is critical, I don't care if it's
- 20:01the treasury market, if it's the equity market, the real estate market, Bitcoin market. And it's
- 20:06true in a weird way. It's true with the cycle theory. I think narratives are so important.
- 20:11We live in such a media driven world and you can see this from five minutes spent scrolling through
- 20:16your doom feed on Twitter, right? Whatever anybody's talking about. We live in such a hype
- 20:22and narrative driven world that when you start getting narratives like, you know, Bitcoin,
- 20:27the days of 60, 70, 80% wipeouts are gone. Now, maybe you see a pullback of 30, 40, 50%. That's
- 20:34going to be more normal going forward. People start to repeat that. You know, the idea of the
- 20:39debasement trade, the idea of the debt, the idea of, you know, a digital gold. These narratives
- 20:45are really helpful in people communicating it.
- 20:47And what I think you'll see from
- 20:50financial advisors and traditional financial allocators over again the next couple years here
- 20:55is if if knock on the wood the bottom is it and that was the bottom at 58k they will start to
- 21:01repeat the fact that you know bitcoin has matured to the point where we're no longer going to see
- 21:07the 70 80 drawdowns and we just had a case you know case study in that we just had a period
- 21:13where there was maximum negativity.
- 21:16I mean, look, if you go back and play,
- 21:18I save occasionally some of the spaces on Twitter
- 21:21where people are talking.
- 21:23They're talking about quantum.
- 21:24They're talking about Saylor going to jail, right?
- 21:27Like I heard a title of a space
- 21:30with about 2,000 people in it saying
- 21:31Michael Saylor was going to jail because of STRC.
- 21:36You had all of these narratives
- 21:38that Bitcoin can't survive quantum
- 21:40and can't survive XYZ.
- 21:41that's data technology, that there's just no more gains to be had. If Bitcoin actually starts
- 21:47ripping in that environment and you have the historical example of a muted drawdown,
- 21:52that will be something that people cling to. People will say, despite all that maximum
- 21:57negativity, there were not sellers to drive this thing under 60K for any significant amount of time.
- 22:02I think all in, you might know this better than that, but I think it was like 72 hours,
- 22:06we were under 60K, something. Yeah, it was no time.
- 22:09It was no time at all.
- 22:1160K Bitcoin, which tells me that there was a lack of sellers, that you had just the diamond-handed folks at the bottom.
- 22:20They were never going to sell.
- 22:22And I think that floor only gets higher.
- 22:25I think we will see a time in the near future where it's going to be really difficult for people to give up coins under 100K.
- 22:31And once you have that floor at 100K, psychologically, that unlocks multiples of 100K, 2, 3, 400, 500K.
- 22:39And then at each level, right, there's going to be some group of people.
- 22:43There's going to be some cohort that says, you know what?
- 22:45I've had a good run.
- 22:46200K might make sense here.
- 22:48300K might make sense to lighten up.
- 22:50That's going to be true for all of the rest of time.
- 22:53You're going to have some level where it unlocks more supply.
- 22:56But to me, the psychological support of 100K is significant.
- 23:01Having that firmly established as the floor makes every multiple of that look even more
- 23:05cheaper.
- 23:06So that's why I'm bullish.
- 23:08I mean, I think it's great.
- 23:08I mean, I'm super bullish at this point as well. And I want to bring up Checkmate one more time,
- 23:13because he, I mean, he's done really well calling this bear market. But one of the things that I
- 23:17really like is he says that the bull market author is the bear that follows. And because we didn't
- 23:23have a crazy exponential run up last time, do you think that's why we only got the 50% pull down?
- 23:28And then to add to that, what does that mean going forward? Does it mean we're going to have less
- 23:32volatile upside? Because you're talking, you know, high 200s, maybe 300k. Like that's a pretty
- 23:36significant bull market do you think the volatility is going to be dampened both ways going forward
- 23:42i think that any market and in the way i visualize it i think about a rubber band
- 23:47okay if you have a market that becomes stretched okay and it's unreasonably stretched you generally
- 23:55get a snapback okay um and we did not have i don't i don't think even at you know the high
- 24:01high to mid 20s on 120s I don't think Bitcoin was stretched as a market so yes I think that played
- 24:07into uh uh the downside being rather muted right because you didn't have the blow off I don't think
- 24:14you're going to have as big as big of a drawdown that that's not to say that can't happen in the
- 24:18future I mean if if I'm right and Bitcoin has a serious bull move which I don't think we've really
- 24:24seen since probably 2021 uh maybe even 2017 that was the last real move uh if you have that period
- 24:32like where you're getting up into the three or four hundred thousand then yes i i would expect
- 24:37there to be a pretty vicious snapback just because you know at that point you've exhausted so many
- 24:42buyers and i think there's going to be an incredible wave of sellers at that point it's just so to me
- 24:48what i would much rather see and again this is not like a call or a forecast it's just my preference
- 24:53I would much rather see a more slow and steady climb.
- 24:57I think that's more sustainable.
- 24:58I think slow and steady,
- 25:00where you build up sort of support levels
- 25:01is really positive long-term, and it's much better.
- 25:06Think about this, if you're trying to spur adoption,
- 25:09and I think your podcast talks about
- 25:11the idea behind getting broader adoption,
- 25:14and you view that as a goal, right?
- 25:16Yeah.
- 25:17Seeing somebody buy when there's massive FOMO
- 25:20and Bitcoin's ripping every day
- 25:22and you have massive gains and then having that person have to endure a 60 70 80 drawdown
- 25:28psychologically is devastating even even if they have a smaller amount of money in it i mean i know
- 25:33plenty of people who they bought you know between say two and five thousand dollars of bitcoin in
- 25:402017 and then they saw that you know if they're buying in november or december they saw that get
- 25:45cut in half or down 70 psychologically that's very difficult for people and although we can preach as
- 25:51Bitcoin is DCA, DCA.
- 25:53We know that's not what people are going to do.
- 25:55People are going to put the money in when it gets fast moving when there momentum and they going to take the money out when it keeps moving against them So what I would rather see is more like equity performance on steroids almost like NASDAQ performance on steroids where you have you know 15 20 gains year over year
- 26:13consistently. Maybe you don't have the five, you know, 10x moves, but you have consistent, you know,
- 26:19double digit returns. And when you have a drawdown, it's a 20, 30% digestion move, where you, you
- 26:26You attract buyers at lower prices and they come back in and then we off to the races.
- 26:31I mean, if you can break this cycle thesis, which the first step of that is, I think,
- 26:36putting in this low and making sure we don't go back to the 58K area.
- 26:41If you can break that cycle thesis that we have to pull back 70, 80%, to me, that's going
- 26:47to mean Bitcoin trades better in the future.
- 26:49And I think it's going to be less of an incentive to try to gain tops.
- 26:52You know, the equity market, one of the reasons the equity market trades like how it does, Danny, is because the investors in VU or the S&P 500 index funds, they have been conditioned that, yes, you'll occasionally get a 10 to 15 to 20% correction, but we will make new all-time highs within, you know, a month or two months or six months, whatever it is, right?
- 27:12um so you know you saw that in april of this year you saw it the year before and during in april of
- 27:1825 you see these very sharp downturns but then it rapidly goes right back up if bitcoin can start
- 27:24to trade like that man um the whole noise about it being too volatile or uh not something for
- 27:31regular investors i think it all changes i think it goes to a position where like bitcoin is seen
- 27:36more as a fundamental pillar of your portfolio. Yeah. And I think to your point, it really doesn't
- 27:43matter how much money you have in Bitcoin. And if you take that to sort of the logical extreme,
- 27:48I love grassroots adoption in Bitcoin. And last year I was in Kenya and we went to Kibera, which
- 27:52is the largest slum in Kenya. There's like a million people in this slum. They have very,
- 27:56very little. And there's an awesome little Bitcoin circular economy that's built there.
- 28:00There's like 60 merchants. And the idea of people getting onboarded to that kind of program,
- 28:05buying Bitcoin at the top and then them losing half their net worth,
- 28:09which is a very small amount in Kibera, is a very, very poor area.
- 28:13That's devastating.
- 28:14And if we want real grassroots adoption, that does need to stop at some point.
- 28:18And I remember when we first spoke, I think, in Vegas,
- 28:21you were saying you like the idea of Bitcoin stair-stepping to a million dollars
- 28:24rather than these crazy moves up and down.
- 28:27Do you still think that's on the cards at all?
- 28:29Absolutely.
- 28:31I mean, here's the thing.
- 28:32the Bitcoin market, and I think this dovetails really nicely with what we've been going through
- 28:36with this cycle thesis. Bitcoin, perhaps more than any other asset, I think it survives and thrives
- 28:46on narratives. And the narratives have changed, to be clear. If you're being honest, the narratives
- 28:51from the early days to now, they've changed the narrative from peer-to-peer currency has changed,
- 28:58I think now to more store of value.
- 29:00And I don't view that as a negative.
- 29:02The narratives of companies change.
- 29:04The narrative of nations change.
- 29:05The narratives of even religions change.
- 29:07I don't view the fact that narratives change
- 29:10as somehow being a negative.
- 29:11I think what you're going to look at
- 29:13is an alternative to sovereign debt
- 29:15as closer to a digital gold,
- 29:17but far more versatile
- 29:19and having far more utility and verifiability.
- 29:22I think gold will have a place,
- 29:24or Bitcoin will have a place in a portfolio.
- 29:25I think that will be very encouraging moving forward.
- 29:28the narrative that we have that we have to have boom and bust cycles, although we will always
- 29:33have corrections and we'll have bold moves and consolidation moves, I think the boom and bust
- 29:38narrative may die. I think you may at some point in the near, not too distant future, put it that
- 29:43way, not too distant future, I think you may have a period where Bitcoin, instead of having these
- 29:48boom and bust, it has more of a stable growth within corrections. But the secular story of it
- 29:53being the world's greatest store of value that can survive and thrive.
- 29:57And it's only enhanced, right?
- 29:58If I'm going to present something as a store of value, one of the common knocks that I
- 30:02see from the Tradify people is, well, what kind of store of value loses 50% in a year
- 30:07or 60%, right?
- 30:09Well, I would say gold, right?
- 30:11Gold is, you know, look at gold at various different points.
- 30:16It's gone down 20, 30, 40%, even in recent history.
- 30:20So you always have those corrections, but you don't have it with the regularity that I think Bitcoin has. Bitcoin is far more regular. And to me, all that is, is that's the volatility, that's the angst of like a young child who is extremely volatile. If you have little kids, that's just a maturing asset. Okay. But mature assets trade differently from immature assets.
- 30:41so where where i draw the parallel with bitcoin is i think as bitcoin has more capital as bitcoin
- 30:47has more tools as bitcoin has you know ways where you can and i know of three three platforms where
- 30:52you can buy a mortgage with bitcoin as collateral right when you have more of that versatility
- 30:58and integration in the traditional finance system you have a less compelling reason to sell when you
- 31:03can buy in any u regulated brokerage account you can buy uh various derivatives to help protect your downside risk from holding Bitcoin it going to trade differently And I think some of these things coming online with the ETF which again I know that we lose sight of this
- 31:20but we're like a little over two years
- 31:23into the ETF era of Bitcoin.
- 31:26To me, that's nothing.
- 31:27It's absolutely nothing.
- 31:29So for people to tell you they know with certainty
- 31:31how Bitcoin is going to perform,
- 31:33I have a lot of skepticism over that.
- 31:36And I think that you will be surprised
- 31:38over the next five years,
- 31:40all the different ways in which Bitcoin
- 31:42is starting to adapt
- 31:44into looking very different
- 31:46from how it did in the early days.
- 31:48I think things like the mortgages as well
- 31:49are really interesting.
- 31:51If there was a mortgage with a Bitcoin kicker
- 31:52where I locked Bitcoin up,
- 31:54I would certainly take that.
- 31:55I think they don't exist in Australia at the moment.
- 31:57But that kind of changes the duration of the asset
- 31:59a little bit as well.
- 32:00If you're locking Bitcoin up on a 30-year mortgage,
- 32:02it changes your ability to sell
- 32:04at such tight intervals.
- 32:07Absolutely.
- 32:08Why do we have a lack of sellers, even among very negative, concerning economic news and inflation news and war and trade?
- 32:19Why do we have a lack of sellers in the equity market?
- 32:21Because a lot of that money is in 401k and retirement accounts where, you know, people just say, oh, I can't really, I can't.
- 32:28One partner of mine, he says he looks at his retirement accounts as sort of like fake money.
- 32:35Like he doesn't even acknowledge it exists because he can't really tap into it.
- 32:38And I think that's subconsciously like a lot of ways people in the United States and other countries that have access to 401k retirement type structures, they just think of it's like, it's there, whatever.
- 32:49I can't tap it.
- 32:50I can't really get liquidity of it.
- 32:51I'm just going to leave it.
- 32:53And that's becoming the dominant philosophy, the dominant mindset that, you know, we're not just going to mess with it.
- 32:58I think that will increasingly be the dominant view towards Bitcoin.
- 33:01You get a little, you hang on to it.
- 33:03You don't mess with it.
- 33:04You don't try to time it.
- 33:05And once more and more people do that, you're exhausting supply.
- 33:09You're taking those coins out of circulation and you're leaving only new marginal buyers, very limited marginal sellers, unless, of course, you move the price up.
- 33:18And then you move that price up and that will always unlock more supply.
- 33:21So it's always sort of going to be a balancing factor.
- 33:24But to me, I think there's going to be far more coins available for far more coins that are being huddled that are available for sale in the coming years.
- 33:34I mean, I do the same thing with my Bitcoin.
- 33:36I don't think of it as not real money, but I do have sort of a silo around it where I'm
- 33:41like, that's the last thing I touch.
- 33:43And that's something that I'm holding for a long time.
- 33:44But the more people we get thinking like that, the better.
- 33:47I have a question for you though, because you said you don't think Bitcoin being sort
- 33:52of just a store of value is a negative.
- 33:55And it has a place in a portfolio.
- 33:56I don't disagree with that.
- 33:58I think you're right.
- 33:59And I think that's how the world will view it.
- 34:00if Bitcoin doesn't become sort of like money,
- 34:04as in it's used as store value,
- 34:05medium exchange and unit account
- 34:07at some point in the future,
- 34:08I think this is a long way off.
- 34:10Do you think it's failed in any way?
- 34:12You wouldn't reuse a Bitcoin address.
- 34:14So why does your phone broadcast
- 34:15the same identifier for life?
- 34:17Every SIM has a static ID
- 34:19and carriers, ad networks and bad actors
- 34:21all use it to track you.
- 34:23The big carriers have been caught
- 34:24selling that data over and over again.
- 34:27CAPE is America's privacy first mobile carrier.
- 34:29Their identifier rotation feature changes your ID every 24 hours
- 34:33so you look like a different subscriber every single day.
- 34:36And SIM swaps are off the table.
- 34:37Your number can't move without a 24-word phrase that only you hold.
- 34:41There's also no name at sign up, no social security number,
- 34:44and there's no profile to build on you.
- 34:46If you're a Bitcoiner in America,
- 34:48I honestly don't know why you'd use any other network.
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- 35:48i think it's interesting that we borrow a lot of this rhetoric about store of value medium
- 35:55exchange unit of count uh really from aristotle um there's some similar philosophers of of his
- 36:03era that talked about the different various attributes of money and what i think is fascinating
- 36:08is that you know we're applying sort of this framework that it has to be all of the above
- 36:13Um and I would argue that in the future I not certain that that has to be the case I don really understand why a money can be primarily the store of value because if you think about it from an emphasis standpoint what matters more to you what matters the most to people is their net worth overall right the fact that you
- 36:34don't have it liquid to be used for coffee every day to me although it it somehow it disintermediates
- 36:43sort of the the tangible nature of money like okay i'm using this for a purchase with technology i
- 36:49think you're just going to see this seamless integration between all these things. Like I'm
- 36:53aware of a company that is now letting you access payments for shares of VOO, the S&P 500 ETF.
- 37:00Like literally you can go buy a coffee and you can use a partial share of your VOO, right? I think
- 37:07you're going to see technological innovation blur the framework of medium of exchange to the point
- 37:13where really there's no distinction between any asset that could be a store of value and also a
- 37:19medium of exchange. Now to your point, like, is there some sort of drawback to it never becoming
- 37:25the dominant medium of exchange? I don't really think so. And the analogy I would use is the
- 37:29treasury market. You know, you and I have talked at length about how important and integral treasuries
- 37:36are to the global system, right? I think there's not a single individual that's an economist in the
- 37:42world who would say that the treasury market is not one of the top, if not the top global reserve
- 37:48asset, period, full stop. It's the whole backbone of our credit system, our banking system. It's the
- 37:54backbone of U.S. hegemony. The treasury market is massive, right? My question to you, Danny, is
- 38:01when was the last time you went and took a 30-year bond and used it to buy bread at the grocery store
- 38:07or used it to buy a cup of coffee? Do you walk in with 10-year notes and say, here's my 10-year
- 38:13note i would like to buy a cup of coffee no you don't but its place is paramount among the reserve
- 38:20assets it's the highest quality liquid collateral that's accepted everywhere you know through banking
- 38:26systems so to me like the lack of payment systems that are tailored around bitcoin i think you know
- 38:34obviously you want something one day where that becomes a more dominant medium exchange i don't
- 38:38see any reason why that's not a good thing i definitely would encourage that i'm not negative
- 38:42on that. I just don't necessarily think that that needs to be a necessary condition for Bitcoin to
- 38:47have success. You know, I frequently quote it in spaces on Twitter, and I think it's the single
- 38:55most pressing thing that was said in the early Bitcoin talk forums, and I really mean that,
- 39:01when Hal Finney talks about his belief that the end game for Bitcoin is to be high power money
- 39:07among between banks with banks issuing you know various different coins on higher layers to me
- 39:14that makes way more sense i mean if you had a banking system that was built on the back of
- 39:19bitcoin as opposed to sovereign debt how it currently has i think the world would be a much
- 39:23better place i think there would be a lot more of a disincentive to do the types of malinvestment
- 39:29and you know too big to fail type public policies that we have uh than currently uh to me that i
- 39:36think that is key even if it wasn't even the dominant form even if they had a blend of treasuries
- 39:40gold and bitcoin i think you'd have a more stable banking system with that under the hood then we
- 39:46have to have all sovereign debt sovereign that's the only name in town i think private sector forces
- 39:52that would put a uh you know a curtail on the government excess saying like okay we have a
- 39:58choice between gold bitcoin and uh treasuries what what do we want to hold as a central banking
- 40:04institution as high quality, uh, collateral, that would be positive. Okay. Rather than right now,
- 40:10which you have compulsion where they're almost forced, many institutions are forced to hold
- 40:14treasuries by law, uh, which to me, that's not as healthy of a system. I think the only sort of
- 40:21cancer to that is from like an ideological perspective, does that mean that we don't
- 40:26really get the full benefit of permissionless freedom money? Because you're still, you,
- 40:30you have that as your sort of savings, your store of value, but you don't necessarily have that.
- 40:33you still work within a mission system to actually interact with the economy well this is where i
- 40:38differ okay from many bitcoiners i i don't i think the uh i don't mean to use a pejorative but i'll
- 40:45just i can't think of a different a crypto anarchist okay version of permissionless freedom
- 40:51money that we're not going to have any curtail or any laws that would be applicable uh to our
- 40:58financial transactions i think that is a fantasy i think it will never come to pass i think there
- 41:03will always be rules in place. The question we should be asking ourselves is not a system of no
- 41:08rules. It's what rules make sense? What rules are authoritarian? What rules are far too pernicious
- 41:15in terms of undermining privacy and liberty considerations? What is the right balance of
- 41:21rules? I wrote a book recently that we will probably get into, where I try to explain this
- 41:28tension, okay?
- 41:29There are real reasons why we would want to have some order and structure
- 41:34on financial transactions, okay?
- 41:36Now, I'm not at all defending the current regime because I think there
- 41:39are many problems with the current regime that we all know about. And we're all Bitcoiners because
- 41:43we care about trying to make something better. That being said, the idea of a laissez-faire
- 41:49where there's no restrictions whatsoever on financial transactions, I just don't think
- 41:54that's realistic. I think society on balance will reject that. And you'll have more of a situation
- 41:59where, well, maybe we don't want that much regulation. Maybe we don't want that much
- 42:03control. We need to have the pendulum swing far back in the favor of liberty and privacy and
- 42:09and more of a, you know, I won't say freedom money, but a freer money, right? Probably just
- 42:15on the spectrum, you'd want it to be closer to the ideals of what, you know, I think a lot of the
- 42:20original intent of Bitcoin was. And so from that perspective, do you think that Bitcoin essentially
- 42:26acts as like a check and balance in this new system? Yes, 100%. I mean, that, like, that, that,
- 42:32if you had a banking institution, okay, that, let's just imagine this with me, you had a banking
- 42:38institution where one of the major assets that's that it held is bitcoin okay and it's not just all
- 42:44sovereign debt then the notion of too big to fail radically changes okay which you know satoshi is
- 42:49creating bitcoin in the wake of the financial crisis right when you chance around the break
- 42:55of second bail out of the banks right that i think most human beings look at that and say there's
- 43:00there's something wrong with that if it's something we have for a working system if you have to have
- 43:05skin in the game. You can't just make a ton of risky bets and then get bailed out and parachute
- 43:11out with payments and bonuses and have no repercussions to your negative decision making,
- 43:19your bad decision making. I think if you had a banking system there that was built with some
- 43:23core of it being Bitcoin, there's a real practical consequence that comes from a bank going down.
- 43:31right that bitcoin that had a run on it is gone you're not going to be able to bail that person
- 43:37out there's real consequence that no public policy maker can just tap a few keys and print
- 43:42more bitcoin uh so that that to me would encourage more prudent decision making at the commercial
- 43:48banking level which to be clear like you know the the non-fiction book that i've been writing
- 43:55is about bitcoin in the credit markets and how that works and to me that's the most interesting
- 43:59discussion in Bitcoin today is like, how do you forecast credit markets in the future? You have
- 44:04the extreme of, there's going to be no credit, it's going to be Bitcoin only. Then you have sort
- 44:08of the more, I think, realistic perspective that you're going to always have some form of credit
- 44:12because credit is just a private arrangement between actors that is regulated, right? So like,
- 44:17how do you marry these two? What's the appropriate level of credit? How do you put a curve on excess
- 44:22credit that leads to volatility in markets that is not good? You know, when crises happen, when
- 44:28there's liquidation events, it's always an asset liability mismatch. That's what it really is.
- 44:32That's the core of most crashes, asset liability mismatch. So how do we create more of a yin and
- 44:38the yang, more of a balance that is somehow curtailed by the inclusion of Bitcoin into the
- 44:44system so that people have more free market potential for how to store their capital,
- 44:49where to store it, what degrees, what reliance you want to put on somebody. I mean, there's this
- 44:54whole debate right now, Danny, about like custody versus non-custody Bitcoin, et cetera. To me,
- 44:59Bitcoin succeeds so long as I have the choice. If I have the choice to be able to decide if I want
- 45:05custody or not custody, to me, that's an infinitely better system than one in which I'm required to
- 45:11rely on custodians. Absolutely. I totally agree with that. Okay. I mean, first of all, I want to
- 45:18read this book. When is it going to be out? Well, it's a fiction book. I think we talked
- 45:24about it in the past August. It is out.
- 45:26You can buy it right now on Amazon.
- 45:28By the way, if you
- 45:29have an Audible
- 45:32account, Audible Premium, or
- 45:34you have a
- 45:36Spotify Premium account, you can download
- 45:38it. It's got an audiobook.
- 45:40It is a Bitcoin thriller.
- 45:42It explores the tension between
- 45:44the law, something I live every day,
- 45:46and Bitcoin. I've
- 45:48tried to use sort of a realistic
- 45:50plot to the extent you can make a
- 45:52realistic plot between how judges
- 45:54I've experienced treated Bitcoin, some animosity I've seen towards Bitcoin.
- 45:58And I try to do it in a compelling way because I believe there have been a lot of great books written by very smart people about Bitcoin explaining, right?
- 46:08But one of the great things about fiction that lets you play in the sandbox and actually communicate in a different level to people is that it lets you have people learn through the act of entertainment.
- 46:18I mean, I believe most people want to be entertained rather than sit down, read a dry thousand year history of money and how one island used giant large rocks as money.
- 46:30I think they want to get immersed into a narrative.
- 46:32The example I always use is like The Big Short, right?
- 46:35The Big Short I think taught more about some of the issues with our economic system than a lot of other stories because you went and you went into the movie and there was all these funny stories and backdrop that was engaging and people learned a lot along the way along a pretty interesting story I tried to do that that in a fiction setting um and uh i hope i succeeded i i gotten some great early reaction to it and uh it called
- 46:58unconfiscatable you can pick it up on audible or amazon um right now and and uh highly recommend
- 47:04the audiobook because the guy that did the voiceover he's a professional voice actor he's
- 47:08fantastic he nailed all the characters uh so it's a good ride um yeah and uh i'm excited to hear what
- 47:14people think about it.
- 47:15I was trying to trying to introduce Bitcoin to a mainstream audience.
- 47:18But I think if you're a Bitcoiner, like you'll love the book, because there's
- 47:21so many references to a lot of the stuff we talk about in the same themes of,
- 47:25you know, the individual versus the state and the government
- 47:28and non-governmental actors and how they have tension between the two.
- 47:33I love it.
- 47:34I've literally just ordered it while you were talking then.
- 47:36And I've got the hardcover for the bookshelf, but I need the
- 47:39Kindle version when this is fully released.
- 47:43Absolutely.
- 47:44Okay. I want to go back to the sort of very start of this conversation where we're talking about
- 47:48one of the catalysts for this move, at least from a narrative perspective,
- 47:50was what happened in the treasury market. Or what Scott Percent said, came out and said.
- 47:55Do you want to explain what happened there? You'll do a better job than I will.
- 47:59Sure. Okay. So again, we'll start from the standpoint of narratives. Okay? Because again,
- 48:08as I told you, I think, and as I get older and more of a student of markets, I consider myself
- 48:13evolving student markets i i continue to remind myself is that it's not necessarily about the
- 48:20reality it's about the perception of the reality perception of reality governs people's actions
- 48:25okay so you know lynn alden who i i love her work um she put out this you know sort of breakdown of
- 48:33common things you see about the treasury market and misnomers and is this deal curve control is
- 48:38is this not yield curve control?
- 48:40Is it QE?
- 48:41Not QE?
- 48:43You know, all the different monikers.
- 48:44But at the end of the day,
- 48:45I think there was a message
- 48:47that was intended to be sent by Besant
- 48:49when he said we're going to double the size
- 48:51of the buybacks.
- 48:53But I want to make sure people understand
- 48:55as we sort of conflate things
- 48:57what we're actually talking about
- 48:58with the buybacks, okay?
- 49:00So when people think about the treasury market,
- 49:03you or I,
- 49:04we may naturally think about like Bitcoin, right?
- 49:08The idea of one Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin, right?
- 49:11You know, if I have a Bitcoin, you have a Bitcoin,
- 49:13for all intents and purposes, they're equal.
- 49:15That's not true in the treasury market, Danny.
- 49:17It's not.
- 49:18There are different tenors of treasuries.
- 49:20There are what's called on-the-run treasuries,
- 49:24off-the-run, right?
- 49:25Off-the-run treasuries are more illiquid.
- 49:27So just think about it like this.
- 49:28There are certain tranches of treasury market securities
- 49:32that are thinly traded,
- 49:34that because of when they were issued,
- 49:36at what time there was more of a variety of different tenors.
- 49:40There's more than less.
- 49:42Some don't have liquidity as some of the other instruments.
- 49:46And when we talk about the treasury,
- 49:47we really talk about the treasury curve.
- 49:49You're familiar with the treasury curve, right?
- 49:51All the different durations.
- 49:53You've got the bills, notes, bonds.
- 49:56And yes, it's all government debt, right?
- 49:58But it's not really equal.
- 50:00You know, warehousing a 20-year is different
- 50:03than warehousing three-month bills.
- 50:05and for your audience to think about this is like, okay, if I have three month bills,
- 50:09those are effectively cash in three months. I'm going to get whatever the, the, the yield is plus
- 50:15the cash back. Okay. Now that's different. If you're an institution, if you're housing that
- 50:21three month bill on your books, that's different from housing a 20 year, right? Cause you're still
- 50:25going to get paid with that 20 year, but you got to house that thing for decades, or maybe there's
- 50:30eight years left on it. And it was issued during the pandemic, you know, it was a note issued in
- 50:352020 yielding 0.4, 0.5%, and you've got X amount of years left on that particular security.
- 50:42So why does that matter? Well, the treasury market has the ability, and they have consistently had
- 50:47this ability, to manage their profile of debt however they see fit. So in other words, if they
- 50:55think that there are certain tenors or tranches of the treasury market that are thinly traded,
- 51:00that are not good for liquidity overall, they have the right, and they've done this repeatedly,
- 51:05they did this in the early 2000s and at other periods to exercise a buyback. So they say,
- 51:10okay, we're going to take all these off the run treasuries that are thinly traded,
- 51:14and we're going to swap them. And then how do you make up the difference? Because unlike the Fed,
- 51:20as you know, and your listeners know, the Fed can just print money, Fed can just go buy things,
- 51:24right? You know, tap the computer, ding, ding, ding, bought X amount of, you know, whatever
- 51:29would engage in QE. The Treasury can't. Every single thing the Treasury has to do has to come
- 51:34from an expenditure of the Treasury, the TGA. And the way they do that is through either taxes,
- 51:41which we know they're running structural deficits. So they have to borrow, okay? Because the taxes
- 51:46don't make up the full outlay that the Treasury market does, the expenditures the U.S. government
- 51:51does. So they have to go borrow money from the bills market or the short rate market,
- 51:56and then they take that borrowed money
- 51:58to swap out the longer treasury So they had a buyback program for years now It was instituted in 2023 I believe And they said well we going to double the size of it So the idea is to improve
- 52:10liquidity. We're going to go buy more of a certain vintage or a certain tenor of these securities.
- 52:17Now, why does that matter? Well, it matters because I think from a market perspective,
- 52:22from a trader perspective, the message is clear. And it's always the message. It never changes,
- 52:26whatever it takes. I mean, this is why I frequently fade the treasury market doomers,
- 52:32because to me, I think the constant rule, the only rule that matters is whatever it takes.
- 52:37We'll do literally whatever it takes, including rewriting all the rules that we have to,
- 52:41to make it work. So for me, like hearing the message of asset, we'll do up to 4 billion or
- 52:47more. What he's clearly saying is, look, if these rates get out of control, we're going to do what
- 52:51we need to do and improve liquidity. Now, to be clear, that is not yield curve control. That's
- 52:56very different from a yield curve control type approach where you just say, look, there's,
- 52:59you know, Japan style, there's going to be an infinite bid. We're not going to let the yields
- 53:04rise higher than a certain level. That may or may not be the policy of the United States at some
- 53:08point, but it's not today. Okay. We have done yield curve control in the past. I think we've
- 53:14done a whole variety of things, but really right now, I think what they're saying is we don't need
- 53:18to go that far. We don't need to fire that, that bullet in the gun at this point. What we can do
- 53:22is just say, look, to the extent there's illiquidity in certain tranches or tenors of the
- 53:27treasury market, we're just going to go buy those. We're going to take them off the books,
- 53:32we're going to swap them for bills, and that'll make it far easier for these institutions to hold.
- 53:36Because again, it's easier to hold short bills because they're basically cash than have duration
- 53:43risk with longer dated instruments. So if that's what it takes, we'll do it.
- 53:47Okay, I've got a ton of questions on that. But let's start with the swapping the older
- 53:51are liquid bonds for, like you say, the bills that are effectively cash. What does that actually
- 53:55do to the economy? If it has the perceived result, which is that there is a backstop between,
- 54:01you know, the treasury market and investments working with Warsh, and, you know, there's no
- 54:06need to fear any concerns about debt. If that is the perception, I think practically what it does
- 54:12is it puts a lid on yields. It puts a floor on the bond market, and it gives investors confidence
- 54:17to say, you know, we don't really need to worry about, you know, a runaway 2022 style
- 54:23sell-off in the bond market.
- 54:24If that is the perception, right?
- 54:26You know, Ben Bernanke, former chair of the Federal Reserve, he said, and again, we're
- 54:31talking about treasury here, so just be mindful of the difference, but he said, you know,
- 54:36the chief tool of the Federal Reserve chairman is to talk, right?
- 54:41His most powerful, one of his most powerful policy tools is to set expectations.
- 54:45Now, we have a Fed chair now who's sort of raging against that, who doesn't want to set forward guidance. In many ways, he's deferring, I think, to the Treasury Secretary, which is altogether fitting, I think, because you're in an era of fiscal dominance, where fiscal deficits are perhaps the most important factor in the economy overall, you know, 6% to 7% deficit GDP.
- 55:10in that era, whose voice is more impactful? Is it the treasury secretary or is it the Fed chair?
- 55:16I think that they're in a coordinated way sort of trying to say, look, the Fed is going to take
- 55:21a backseat to treasury. We're going to let the voice of the treasury secretary speak more loudly
- 55:26and clearly about the intention of fiscal policy. And I think in terms of the economy, again,
- 55:33if you set a floor on the bond market, meaning a ceiling on the yields, to me, that's really
- 55:38positive um we'll see i mean i think that part of the reason you're dealing with high yields uh is
- 55:45you've got oil shocks which continue to be pervasive longer than people expect you've got
- 55:52massive capex coming from the hyperscalers which is causing inflationary pressures i mean go talk
- 55:59to builders about raw commodities and the prices there i mean i was uh my wife and i are looking at
- 56:05building a house and we were talking to the builder and he's saying, look, every single
- 56:08raw component, the copper, et cetera, it's all going through the roof because the hyperskills
- 56:13are gobbling everything up and all that puts upward pressure on yields. So the question is,
- 56:17can the policymakers, can they talk down the real inflationary pressures you're seeing in society
- 56:24just by talking? Is that going to be enough? We'll see.
- 56:29And I know you say it's not yield code control and I get that like technically it's not. They're
- 56:33not saying at this price we're biased,
- 56:35but they're doing something a little more ambiguous,
- 56:37which is like, we'll step in when we see fit, essentially.
- 56:41Does it have the same impact as your curve control?
- 56:45I mean, that remains to be seen, right?
- 56:48So to me, I think its intention is to have the same impact.
- 56:52You know, I got to remember,
- 56:54I think folks don't appreciate it fully enough.
- 56:58I certainly didn't used to until I studied it deeply.
- 57:00how much confidence, how big of a role confidence plays. Okay. You can have a bank. And the example
- 57:07is if you go read some of the uh some of the fallout even from recently like 2023 Silicon Valley right On paper there will be people that swear up and down to this day Silicon Valley was entirely sound And there were other banks that were
- 57:23entirely sound that didn't need to fail. And what happened? You had a rumor, you had a rumor be
- 57:30pushed by very prominent people, and it causes a bankrupt. Okay? It causes panic. When it causes
- 57:37panic, what that perception is that their bank is somehow unsound, it takes hold. And that
- 57:42perception can literally bring down an institution. The same is true of governments, to varying
- 57:48degrees, right? The same is true of companies. You could have a company that on paper is just
- 57:53humming along, making a ton of money. If there's a bad scandal that hits, if there's negative
- 57:57press that hits, if there's a scandal about a button-like commercial, right? That company can
- 58:03can sink overnight because of that perception. So to me, like if you are, if you have confidence
- 58:10in Besson, if you have confidence in Warsh, that actually can move markets and that confidence can
- 58:16have the practical result, which is to answer your question of something akin to yield curve control.
- 58:22You know, it also has the practical result of yield curve control, actual yield curve control.
- 58:25Actually, we're going to do an infinite bid, right? But if you were trying to convince people
- 58:31to have confidence, you don't want to go to the extreme unless necessary, right? Unless they stop
- 58:37believing you then, and we see this with the yen market, right? Like I think it's amazing. If you
- 58:43follow like the Japanese yen market, right? The yen will sell off against the dollar and all of a
- 58:49sudden, like on a random Sunday night or, you know, middle of the week, the bank of Japan will come in
- 58:55and scare, put the fear of God into some of the traders. They'll just come in like a massive amount
- 59:00of defensive policy to defend the yen, defend a certain threshold. And then what do you see? You
- 59:06see the yen, you know, skyrocket against the dollar because the policymakers have intervened.
- 59:11That is not, I think, a isolated aberration. It's not a one-off, right? That's sort of what
- 59:18policymakers do. They try to keep this fragile system together through jawboning, through
- 59:24cajoling, through policies when they need to make the policies. And then they're always debating
- 59:29how much do we need to do? What's the minimal effective dosage, to borrow a medical term,
- 59:34minimal effective dosage we need to use in terms of central planning to get a desired outcome?
- 59:39So, and I think it's important to say, talk about the scale of this, because it's gone from two to
- 59:43four billion, which is like a drop in the ocean when we talk about these kind of numbers.
- 59:47Yeah. And I think the Treasury General Account has about a trillion dollars in it. Is that right?
- 59:52Something like that. And so the people that have seen this happen and are starting to talk about
- 59:58like this is the start of the next big print. And again, I know the Treasury can't print money,
- 1:00:02but saying this is kind of like the escalation point and eventually the Fed might step in.
- 1:00:06Do you think that's overstating what's happening right now?
- 1:00:09Yeah, I don't think it's anywhere near the next big print. I think it is mostly a narrative that
- 1:00:15has taken hold. I think it was coincident with this other narrative that I think the $40 trillion
- 1:00:20psychological debt, you know, it hit is it permeated. I think it got some media traction.
- 1:00:27It's a big round number.
- 1:00:28People love big round numbers.
- 1:00:29They repeat it.
- 1:00:30It's very easy.
- 1:00:31It's 30, you know, 38 trillion or 37 trillion just isn't as impactful as 40 trillion.
- 1:00:37Right.
- 1:00:38And then I think you do have real inflationary pressures in society with the things we mentioned,
- 1:00:42oil and trade and tariffs and CapEx build out.
- 1:00:46So to me, like, I think it's a little bit overblown.
- 1:00:49I don't think it's a big print.
- 1:00:51I think it's sort of a cajole.
- 1:00:52is like we're really not comfortable with rates in the high fours,
- 1:00:57or we're not really willing to accept that.
- 1:01:01But it's not a catastrophe.
- 1:01:04It's not like we're bearing down on 5.1% tenure,
- 1:01:07which I think at 5% is a real line in the sand.
- 1:01:10I mean, it has been consistent.
- 1:01:11I think if you were above 5%,
- 1:01:13you might actually see more overt policy action that was taken,
- 1:01:18but we're not there yet.
- 1:01:19So we'll see to be determined.
- 1:01:20I think the question right now for people is, can they talk down the yields?
- 1:01:26Can you get a bid on bonds right now just by the Treasury Secretary and Worsh talking?
- 1:01:32And I also think, coincidentally, if you listen to Jackson Hole, I was playing around with the speech.
- 1:01:38I was looking at the text.
- 1:01:40And I mean, if you just looked at that speech, and it's a fun exercise, like you could ask an LLN to do it.
- 1:01:46like just take the text of the speech and without looking at any other indicator, any other market
- 1:01:51pricing, if a venture is giving this speech, what are the chances of a hike in the near future?
- 1:01:57And some of the LMs I was running through were like, oh, it's like 80, 90%, right? Well,
- 1:02:01the bond market says the chances of a hike right now are like a coin flow. It's like 50-50.
- 1:02:06That's telling, right? When you give a maximum hawkishness speech, because he went through
- 1:02:11sort of out of his way at Jackson Hole last Friday,
- 1:02:14as we're recording this on the 31st of August,
- 1:02:16Chair Warsh went out of his way to talk about how
- 1:02:19corporate profits are great, unemployment is low,
- 1:02:22we've got massive capex,
- 1:02:25we've got low signs of stress in the credit markets,
- 1:02:27basically painting all of the steps and saying,
- 1:02:29and you've got a bad inflation where it's running higher than the trend.
- 1:02:34He went through all the things you would say
- 1:02:36if you're trying to state the case for a hike
- 1:02:38and you have 50% odds in the betting market.
- 1:02:42To me, that's really interesting
- 1:02:43because I think what he was trying to do
- 1:02:45is trying to talk up maximum hawkish
- 1:02:47so he could just hold.
- 1:02:49Because if you think about it,
- 1:02:50you and I can't borrow at the funds rate.
- 1:02:52We have to rely on the private sector.
- 1:02:54So if the curve sells off
- 1:02:56and the curve actually has a steepening,
- 1:02:59you know we have rates go higher in some ways that's already doing the practical effect of a
- 1:03:04hike without actually having the hike which which is significant right like trump was pounding the
- 1:03:09table for for two years about how the fed is behind the curve and should be cutting it should
- 1:03:13be cutting um you know i think he does a bona fide chairman that comes in but really shortly
- 1:03:18into his tenure he's he's hiking rates i think the far better thing is to let the curve do the
- 1:03:23work for you let the curve through talking it up let it sell off and that yields rise and then
- 1:03:29hopefully by the election and post-election, you'll have let these inflationary forces abate.
- 1:03:35You'll get a 10-year back down into the lower fours, which if you come back down into the lower
- 1:03:39fours, I think they're perfectly happy with a 10-year sitting there. I don't think they care
- 1:03:43much about having to do more than that. That war speech kind of asked the question of who
- 1:03:49really dictates what the rates are. He obviously gets to set them, but is he just listening to the
- 1:03:54bond market? Is the bond market a place you get the actual signal from? Absolutely. We've
- 1:03:59talked about this like you know on other podcasts um and and i think on one of one of the versions
- 1:04:04we did together i think that the federal reserve mostly you know you had this language they're
- 1:04:09always behind the curve well if you believe that they're behind the curve by definition you mean
- 1:04:14that they're sort of following uh uh wherever the wherever the private rate market is going
- 1:04:19the private rate market is is setting these rates and what i think is interesting about his whole
- 1:04:24thing about forward guidance is like he's like i don't want to give the market forward guidance
- 1:04:28Well okay if you not going to give the market forward guidance it not like it not going to still make prognostications on what you going to do Might just be worse guesses Right
- 1:04:39I mean, it's just going to be more guessing.
- 1:04:41Think about this.
- 1:04:42The Fed has people that leave the Fed and know how their models work, knows how the Taylor rule works, knows the personalities.
- 1:04:52I mean, if you're at the highest level trading fixed income, you are able to forecast not only what the raw econometric models say, but also the personalities involved, also the politics of it, also all these factors.
- 1:05:06It's no different than betting on a sports game, right?
- 1:05:08If you go at the highest levels and you're betting on NFL football games, they will say, well, how does this tackle match up against this running back? How does this quarterback match up in this arena, which is a dome versus an open field, and there's going to be cold weather on Sunday?
- 1:05:25They're going to match all those variables up and they're going to make a model as to what their probability forecast is.
- 1:05:30The same is true of the bond market dealing with huge amounts of money.
- 1:05:34They're going to make a forecast based on all the personalities, all the data and all the knowledge that they have about how the Fed makes decisions.
- 1:05:41So the removal of order guidance like that's going to somehow eliminate market conjecture as to what is going to happen, what's going to take place.
- 1:05:49To me, I don't I think it's always going to be there.
- 1:05:51It's just a question of what information you want to give.
- 1:05:53Okay, so with this move by the Treasury, I understand you don't think this is the start of the big print.
- 1:05:59Is there anything that worries you about this move?
- 1:06:01Does it signify anything to you that concerns you?
- 1:06:04In the bond market?
- 1:06:06In the economy in general, but yes, the bond market as well.
- 1:06:09I think the economy looks great.
- 1:06:11I think the economy is humming along.
- 1:06:14You've got second quarter GDI, 4.2%.
- 1:06:182%. You've got corporate profits, very strong, $400 billion corporate profits. I mean, I think
- 1:06:25that you've got sticky, higher inflation. When we talked about this last time, my view is for the
- 1:06:30rest of the decade you going to have stickier higher inflation closer to 3 than 2 I think you going to have a yield curve that constantly under some sort of stress I will fade the narratives that we going back to a 2
- 1:06:42you know, 10 year or 3%, 10 year, anytime soon. I think you're stuck in a range.
- 1:06:47I think you've established sort of an equilibrium, say between four and five. And I think it's going
- 1:06:52to chop there for a long time. I think you could chop there for the rest of the decade, the next
- 1:06:56four years. I don't expect there to be anywhere near the move that the bond bears are thinking
- 1:07:01that we're going to go to like 10%, you know, 10 year rates. I don't expect that. But I also think
- 1:07:06that the doves, the people that think we're going to go back down to the pre-COVID era,
- 1:07:10they're also crazy. I think you've established this equilibrium. I think that the most concerning
- 1:07:15thing, if you're looking at, you know, economic news, the biggest event last week was not the
- 1:07:20Jackson Hole or Besant talking. It's really NVIDIA and NVIDIA earnings and the AI CapEx.
- 1:07:27And is there any slowing in sight of that?
- 1:07:29Because if that is finally cooling off and the capex associated with that is truly going to be drying up, that's going to be significant.
- 1:07:38But, you know, to me, I don't really see any of that.
- 1:07:41I mean, there's even manufacturing PMI about 55.
- 1:07:46I mean, that's a killer number compared to where we've been in recent years.
- 1:07:50So very encouraging, very positive.
- 1:07:53I think you can make a case that looking back, say, five years from now, we will say that the period from really 2022 to 2026, that was all this massive digestion of the higher interest rate environment.
- 1:08:08A lot of assets went nowhere.
- 1:08:10A lot of productive capacity was really struggling in the manufacturing sense just because we had to deal and react and respond to these rates.
- 1:08:18rates. We had the shock of 2022, but we're seeing finally the green shoots come into the economy
- 1:08:23where we're adapting and we're able to overcome this. And you have this industrial revolution 2.0
- 1:08:29with AI, which is going to have huge effects on our economy that we can barely feel.
- 1:08:35And to me the consistent picture through all commodity markets is higher structural inflation Doesn doesn mean runaway It doesn mean hyperinflation It means higher structural inflation again closer to
- 1:08:453D, low threes than 2%. And I don't think there's anything they can do about it. I think in Warsh,
- 1:08:52by the way, I think he has basically resolved himself to that fact. I think he thinks no matter
- 1:08:56what we do or say, I can't get inflation back down 2% because we're in a different era and
- 1:09:02there's too many inflationary forces that we're going to have to deal with from commodities and
- 1:09:06labor, et cetera, for the next, you know, five, 10 years. So, so for a takeaway, Joe, is it,
- 1:09:11is it like you're, you're bearish on inflation, bullish on the economy, bullish on assets,
- 1:09:16most bullish on Bitcoin? 100%. Yeah, no, I mean, that, that, that's generally it. Um,
- 1:09:22I got a break here in a little bit. We're running a time on my end, but, uh, but yeah, I mean, I,
- 1:09:26that, that's it. I, I, I find it very difficult for people to believe that any of these things
- 1:09:31really breaks hard for example like what would change my mind we're suddenly going to become
- 1:09:36fiscally prudent and engage in austerity not going to happen we're suddenly going to have a huge
- 1:09:42influx of housing that brings shelter costs down which is the main driver inflation i don't think
- 1:09:47that's going to happen i think people are locked into two percent uh houses for a long time in the
- 1:09:51future suddenly we're going to have a a massive amount of you know raw materials come into you
- 1:09:57you know, into circulation.
- 1:09:59No, no, we're going to have refinery
- 1:10:00and capacity issues for the coming future.
- 1:10:04I just think you're in this environment
- 1:10:06where it's not great,
- 1:10:08but it's very,
- 1:10:09there are pockets of greatness, right?
- 1:10:11There's pockets of really a lot of strikes.
- 1:10:14So with that, I think that's a good summary.
- 1:10:17All right, Joe, I love it.
- 1:10:18I always love to talk to you.
- 1:10:19Thank you, man.
- 1:10:20And go out and buy Joe's book.
- 1:10:21I'm very excited to read this.
- 1:10:22I've got it on the way.
- 1:10:24But appreciate it, man.
- 1:10:25I'll speak to you soon.
- 1:10:26Absolutely. Take care.
- 1:10:27you