Latest / TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast / #802: The Banks Are Fleecing You with Mel Mattison
Transcript
- 0:00You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.
- 0:10When you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts.
- 0:16So it's all acting like safe haven.
- 0:18I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their
- 0:23currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
- 0:28I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.
- 0:31If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
- 0:36Mill, as you were just saying, we seem to gather here during times of market tumult.
- 0:41What the heck is going on?
- 0:44And we've definitely had a lot of it this year.
- 0:47And I think that's important to keep in mind when these things happen, because it's like
- 0:52we were talking about we did one at the end of the first quarter.
- 0:56in the throes of the Iran war sell-off. And literally within weeks, we were basically back
- 1:06to flat on the year and then moving to all-time highs within basically six or seven weeks
- 1:12in one of the most impressive bull runs in probably equity market history. So
- 1:18these things turn around very quickly. And I think we're in the middle of another one of those
- 1:23emotional kind of I think it's kind of a time of indecision because there's just so many moving
- 1:33pieces on the chessboard right now that investors are having a little paralysis and saying, well,
- 1:39where do we put money? And, you know, in the last couple of days, that's been bonds and gold,
- 1:43basically, and sell everything else. But we've got midterm elections coming up. We've got an
- 1:50Iran war in flux. We've got a bunch of turmoil still in Europe with the Ukraine war. We've got
- 1:56turmoil in Europe with their fiscal situation. We've got a front runner in the French presidential
- 2:03campaign. You got Marie Le Pen on the right. And you've got this other guy, Melikon, on the left
- 2:10that literally wants to imprison the head of the French Central Bank and declare all French debt
- 2:17void held by the French central bank. You know, you, you've got, and that's just to name a few,
- 2:25I mean, we could go on and I haven't even mentioned what's happening in the AI world,
- 2:29which of course is, is what's also dominating this, this recent sell-off. So when you put
- 2:35that whole mix together and then earnings are on the horizon, you know, the bit, the big ones
- 2:42start next week with like meta or meta and Netflix. So when you put all of this on the horizon,
- 2:49it's not surprising that people are kind of like, well, maybe I should take some profits. Maybe,
- 2:55you know, these yields look good in bonds. You know, maybe I should invest in an asset like
- 3:01gold that's basically been doing nothing but going down all year since it peaked in January.
- 3:07So I think we're seeing a little bit of a flux and that's just the short term tactical.
- 3:12But I think strategically, the main drivers of what's been driving this market are still in effect.
- 3:18And that's AI, that's semiconductors, that's the NASDAQ.
- 3:23And increasingly, that's Bitcoin and crypto being merged with the AI trade, which I think is why you've seen Bitcoin so often the last few days is it's getting very tightly correlated with that now.
- 3:36And so all of this is going on.
- 3:38We can unpack a lot of it, but there's definitely a lot on the horizon.
- 3:41But I think this is setting up to be one of those opportunities, probably the best buying opportunity of the year since since the Iran war sell off at the end of March.
- 3:55Yeah, let's start. Let's start with yields, because that in the Bitcoin space, and this is something I've tried to become more nuanced around this year, particularly shout out to John Arnold from 1031.
- 4:08We do our Monday show, and he's really been on top of this.
- 4:11And yields have been drifting higher, obviously.
- 4:14And I think two weeks ago, they hit a point where people are like, okay, this is the great debt spiral coming.
- 4:20But it doesn't seem like that is the case.
- 4:22And I had a conversation with Tom Luongo last week in which we basically walked through yields, particularly on a relative basis to other government debt around the world.
- 4:33And like, even though yields are drifting higher, it looks like they want to go into a structural bear market.
- 4:38Everything seems to be relatively OK.
- 4:42Like if you were to tell me three years ago, the yields would be at five and a half percent, 10 year, 30 year, 10 year above 5 percent.
- 4:51I would have been like, OK, we're in a cataclysmic situation.
- 4:54But it seems like despite that, the economy is chugging forward.
- 4:58Yeah, I think that I think with yields, it was a couple of weeks ago.
- 5:07I basically said I think we topping here at least in the medium term And TLT was looking good to me I was buying some TLT calls out for spring expirations
- 5:19They went down.
- 5:20Now they're now they're positive.
- 5:23The thing about yields is.
- 5:27While we did break out to new highs, so, you know, we were in basically a range, right?
- 5:332023, we had five point zero three on the 10 year.
- 5:37And when we broke above that, we basically went up a quarter of a percent, you know, 530.
- 5:42We basically touched a couple of times and came back off of.
- 5:46And I think there is a point in the broad spectrum of asset classes where these these yields just become very attractive for certain entities,
- 5:59especially firms that are matching liabilities, like insurance companies, life insurance companies.
- 6:06pension funds, different endowments and places that have been really over allocated to things like, you know, private equity and alternatives and saying, hey, we can go into bonds here and, you know, corporate space gets six, seven percent.
- 6:26Treasuries get five and a half percent.
- 6:28And they're going to start to do that.
- 6:31And what really stopped it and I think put it over the edge a little bit to break to new highs was just a little bit of the competition of all this issuance coming from the tech sector, from the AI space.
- 6:45But at the end of the day, I think there's a cap on these yields because people understand that the governments simply cannot afford this type of interest rate expense.
- 6:56And it's not just the United States. It's actually more so in Europe than anywhere else.
- 7:03And they have the added dilemma of not being able to print their own currency and having different EU and ECB caps on deficits and so on and so forth.
- 7:18And so I think central bankers are really realizing that part of their job is, you know, they can't let the governments fail.
- 7:31And I think Kevin Warsh, you know, he's getting a little bit of cold water thrown in his face.
- 7:39I think he really made a mistake kind of coming out and saying inflation is a choice and, you know, we're going to be hawkish.
- 7:46he's backed himself into a corner here because the ability to raise rates, yes, he can raise rates.
- 7:54But as many people have pointed out, he raised those rates. What are you really doing? You know,
- 8:00you're raising mortgage rates, you're raising credit card rates, you're raising auto loan rates.
- 8:06Meanwhile, Microsoft or, you know, Amazon or Google has to pay an extra 35 or 50 basis points
- 8:14on their debt, and they're still willing to do that. So you're not slowing down the AI-driven
- 8:18inflation. You're not slowing down the energy-driven inflation from the war. And so you're
- 8:26actually just making matters worse. And we saw, I think, a shift with John Williams, who's the
- 8:34president of the New York Fed. And the New York Fed is by far the most important Federal Reserve
- 8:40bank branch. It's the one that does all the monetary operations. It's basically like a
- 8:48governor role, but also being a bank president. For those that don't know, the FOMC has voting
- 8:56members. There's always the seven members of the FOMC board. And then there's a number of presidents,
- 9:03but there's only one president that's always there. It's the New York Fed president. The other
- 9:08presidents, the Chicago Fed, the Richmond Fed, they all rotate through on a different schedule.
- 9:13Sometimes they get to vote, sometimes they don't. And John Williams basically came out and said,
- 9:18look, you know, we maybe do one more this year and that could be it.
- 9:23It's something that probably nobody looks at was earlier this week, there was like an 85, 90 percent
- 9:30built in expectation that the Central Bank of Singapore was going to hike rates and they didn't.
- 9:38And I think, you know, these central bankers, they get together every two months in Basel, Switzerland, at the Bank for International Settlements.
- 9:46Actually, Warsh referenced it in his last press conference.
- 9:50He didn't mention Bank for International Settlements.
- 9:52He just said, I met with my colleagues in Basel.
- 9:55But I think what I think what they're they're getting on board with and they're starting to understand the reality of the situation is that the governments for which they are there, they're created by.
- 10:10They don want them raising rates And what happening to Warsh is exactly what happened to Besson where when he in the private sector he talks about how Yellen shouldn be issuing a bunch of bills And you know we need to be doing more longer term medium term debt And she basically doing QE light with this And then he gets into the Treasury and he double downs on it and and adds a Treasury buybacks to the regime
- 10:39And so when these people get into these positions, they come in with these theories of what's supposed to happen.
- 10:44And then the reality smacks them in the face.
- 10:47And I think what Warsh is going to realize and these bankers are going to realize they can't keep raising rates, letting yields go to 6 percent and essentially turning the interest expense of the government into like a two trillion dollar a year expense line, which is where they're heading if they if they keep on this track.
- 11:06And so at the end of the day, I think what the bond market is starting to pick up on is that from comments from Williams this week and Jefferson, another influential member, and Warsh is going to speak later today.
- 11:24We're recording this Thursday morning.
- 11:26We'll see what he says.
- 11:27But I just don't think that the Fed has much room.
- 11:31I think we are in a fiscal dominant situation and that these yields, you know, on the long end ultimately reflect what the short end rate is.
- 11:40You know, it's two things really that that drive what the longer end rate should be.
- 11:48It's it's inflation and real growth. In other words, nominal GDP.
- 11:53And that's one component of it. That's what they should be in a theoretical perfect world.
- 11:57But on the other hand, they're also at the very same time. They're just a basically stepped out scenario of what the short term rate is going to be, you know, day after day, month after month.
- 12:10And once the bond market begins to believe and recognize that the central banks around the world, whether it's Japan, ECB, the United States, the Bank of England, they just can't hike rates to such a degree that they essentially bankrupt the governments they're there to serve.
- 12:34And furthermore, doing so, as some central bank members have said, although it's hard for them to say it because it essentially admits their impotence, is hiking rates isn't really addressing the inflationary concerns.
- 12:47And so despite all this tough talk, and that's what's really confused the market, is Warsh has just constantly talked like he's the Clint Eastwood of central bankers, and he's just not going to take any of this, and he's just going to hike rates until inflation comes down.
- 13:00It's he just can't do it. And my hope is that we can avoid him doing it, making huge policy mistakes, causing like a couple of banks and hedge funds doing the basis trade to fail.
- 13:14And then all of a sudden, you know, we've got some sort of a financial crisis on our hands. Hopefully they these bankers recognize it.
- 13:21But one way or another, we're just not going to have, you know, a six percent Fed funds rate.
- 13:28It's just it's just not possible with the amount of bill issuance we do.
- 13:32You know, I'll pause here. But tomorrow we get the final monthly treasury statement for fiscal year 2026.
- 13:40And interest expense is going to be the highest it's ever been.
- 13:43We're over 40 trillion in debt. We're going to quickly hit 50 trillion.
- 13:47We've got the Social Security Trust Fund expiring in 2032, and it could be sooner given we just okayed a 3.6, 3.7 percent cost of living adjustment for it.
- 14:00So all of these things combine to this situation where you just cannot do what Warsh has been basically kind of telegraphing he's prepared to do.
- 14:10Yeah, it's again, like to your point about raising rates, not lowering inflation. We saw that print yesterday, inflation above expectations, marginally, but still above expectations. And I guess that gets to the private sector. And I think the Trump administration has been very vocal about this.
- 14:34And I think between the last time we recorded in today, I mean, you had that Wall Street Journal headline of Trump saying, don't worry about inflation.
- 14:43We're going to grow our way out of this. And that's something that we've been keeping track of this year is the state of the real economy and GDP growth being driven heavily by this A.I. trade.
- 14:57What is the state of that in your mind?
- 15:00Yeah. I mean, growing your way out of it, the amount of growth we would need is just it's just ridiculous. It's not going to happen. It's really inflation as the only path forward to get us out of this with with a firm, a form of at least yield curve control light.
- 15:18It just it's the it's the only solution that that doesn't crash the economy and throw us into a depression.
- 15:25But the thing with the trade, you know, really, I think a lot of this.
- 15:33One of the things I been saying for a while is that for quite some time the market has been pricing in that open AI is not going to be the best thing since sliced bread
- 15:45Um, and I think you, you have to take a step back and just like there's that saying, you know, the market is not the economy.
- 15:52Um, you know, I think you have to realize that the AI trade is not AI.
- 15:57and so um what do i mean by that i mean you know ai i think is going to march forward
- 16:05like commute compute demand is going to be off the charts um you know companies are going to institute
- 16:12um uh their own systems where they want to they want to own the data own the chips own the stack
- 16:19that doesn't say good things for open AI and Anthropic.
- 16:26And I think, you know, the market's been pricing in that open AI is not great.
- 16:31And I think the best tell on that is really, you know, just looking at Oracle,
- 16:34which a lot of that run up in Oracle to over $300 a share was really all about their agreements with open AI.
- 16:44And quickly, the market basically priced all of that out.
- 16:47Open Oracle, last I checked, was around 120s, 130.
- 16:52I think 114 was its 2021 high.
- 16:57It's kind of post-COVID high there.
- 17:01We had that run-up before the 22 bear market.
- 17:04So basically for five years, Oracle has done nothing.
- 17:07And I think that's because people just are not anticipating that OpenAI is going to have the chops, the revenue, the profits to do half of the stuff they've said.
- 17:16That said, they thought Anthropic was kind of dominating enterprise.
- 17:24And they basically that was based off of their extreme jump in revenue earlier in the year because of the agentic phenomenon and because of enterprises token maxing.
- 17:37And last night, Anthropic announced that their quarterly revenue was less than 17 billion dollars, which was very disappointing.
- 17:46and only gets you to an annual run rate of around 70 billion.
- 17:51And a lot of people are hoping that they were going to be at 100, 110 billion by the end of the year.
- 17:56And I think that's, you know, kind of in jeopardy right now.
- 18:01And so I think what the shockwaves going through the market right now are the market,
- 18:06which is, in my opinion, already priced in OpenAI, not being that unbelievable.
- 18:11But now they're starting to price in that anthropic as well.
- 18:15And if you think about this and you are a open AI or an anthropic investor right now and you're saying, OK, I'm a little worried about the IPO.
- 18:28I want to hedge this, but there's no put options, you know, an anthropic you can go and buy.
- 18:34But you know what you can buy? You can buy core weave five year default swaps.
- 18:39And I think what we're seeing in the market right now is a lot of private investors in open AI and Anthropic going out into the market and hedging those positions by buying credit default swaps in some of these neoclubs or buying puts or selling short some of the very hyper AI correlated trades.
- 19:03And so we've got these market mechanics going on that are completely different from the fundamentals where you just had TSMC report, you know, just amazing blockbuster earnings.
- 19:17And, you know, the stock is obviously, you know, in essentially a bear market downtrend.
- 19:24And so you look at Micron, you look at these companies.
- 19:27So this broader thesis is basically to take a look at, you know, what is really going to benefit from a compute build out and think about where that's going to, you know, produce returns and to get yourself a little bit away from, you know, the models, the Gemini's, the open AIs, the anthropics, and realize that models are becoming commoditized.
- 19:54commoditized. And we don't know. We don't know if Anthropics is going to somehow start their
- 20:00bio lab and come up with cancer cures and be the most valuable company in the world. It certainly
- 20:04could. It also could become just a commoditized type of an entity that is a serious, important
- 20:11company, but it's not on the path to being the first $10 trillion company or something.
- 20:19Yeah, I think that's the big question right now. And we saw it yesterday with all the
- 20:21neoclouds turning down, Corweave, which we popped up,
- 20:25Nebius, Iron.
- 20:27And that's one thing-
- 20:28That was a big part of this is,
- 20:30is Corweave has debt expiring in 2032.
- 20:34And, you know, people are looking at rates rising
- 20:37and they're looking at the nervousness
- 20:39and they're saying,
- 20:40if Corweave's gonna need to refinance this,
- 20:43you know, we're talking, you know,
- 20:46mid to high teens potential for,
- 20:50the interest rate they're going to have to pay. And the thing is, I actually think CoreWeave is
- 20:55probably setting up for an opportunity here, because I do think the owners of compute
- 21:00are the ones that are going to be, the owners of compute and the people that make the things
- 21:06go into building compute are really the ones that I think have an advantageous position going forward.
- 21:14And you have to take a look and you have to say, there's so many things. We started off the show
- 21:18saying there's so many questions right now, but what do I feel fairly confident about?
- 21:24And one of the things I feel fairly confident about is that in the next five years, there's
- 21:29going to be huge, huge demand for AI compute.
- 21:33I don't know exactly how that compute is going to be executed from a software perspective.
- 21:39I don't know if it's going to be open AI, anthropic and open model.
- 21:42You know, XAI is going to somehow leapfrog everybody because, you know, they get data centers in space and and and they have, you know, just these massive scaling opportunities with TerraFab.
- 21:56I don't know how that whole situation is going to work itself out, but I do feel comfortable that compute is going to be in demand.
- 22:05And there are certain companies at the center of that.
- 22:08DSMC, I mentioned, Micron, SK Hynix, some of these other large semi providers.
- 22:14You look at Broadcom.
- 22:16And when you look at those massive providers, like the pillars of the infrastructure build
- 22:22out and the way that they are being sold off right now, I think you're getting a little
- 22:27bit of baby with the bathwater type situation here in semis.
- 22:31And throughout this bull market, there's been a clear trend.
- 22:34It's like the market does the best when the SOX is leading, when SOX relative to Qs is positive.
- 22:43And it does best when Qs relative to SPY is positive.
- 22:47And right now we're getting the opposite and we're in one of these moments.
- 22:51And I don't know if it's going to end next week when earnings from the big names start coming out or if it's going to end in November post midterms.
- 22:59Maybe there's some sort of a ran war resolution.
- 23:01But I do feel confident that sometime in the next four to eight weeks, that's called by the end of November, we're going to be well through this situation.
- 23:12And we're going to be people are going to be looking at the earnings of some of these companies that are trading at four times earnings like SK Hynix or something and realize that, you know, they want to own these names again.
- 23:25And we're going to get that dynamic, which is a very bullish dynamic of stocks over queues, queues over SPY.
- 23:33And I think what you want to watch for is when does that dynamic start to show up in the charts?
- 23:39And that's going to be your time to jump back in here.
- 23:43And that's really what I'm keeping an eye on.
- 23:45I'm also keeping an eye on Oracle.
- 23:48It hit a low of, I think, 114 earlier this year.
- 23:52I would like to see it kind of double bottom and get down there and bounce again.
- 23:58I think, you know, if we could get an anthropic IPO out of the way, midterms out of the way, a lot of these things will just become like clearing events.
- 24:09And then we have the potential for good news surprises like some sort of a resolution to the Iran war, perhaps inflation coming down.
- 24:26You know, the CPI report this week, what was really driving it was shelter.
- 24:29But yet if you listen to everybody, it's like the housing market is collapsing.
- 24:34Rents are collapsing.
- 24:35I mean, the way some of these numbers get calculated, they make no sense.
- 24:40And so I don't think that the underlying inflation in the economy is really that bad.
- 24:46I think it's energy that's really driving PPI, CPI, which is going to feed into the core
- 24:53PCE coming out later this month ahead of the Fed.
- 24:57And that's if we get the Iran war under control.
- 25:02And that's a big if, but I am hopeful about that.
- 25:06And I have a little bit of a theory on the on the on what's going to happen with the Iran war as well.
- 25:12Well, a lot to digest there. I'll start.
- 25:16Towards the end. And a bit of color to one of the things and then we'll get to Iran.
- 25:22But I mean, yeah, the inflation print, I think what was surprising to me, because at the beginning of this year with the Iran war,
- 25:28particularly with the natural gas refineries in Qatar and Oman getting hit there was a lot of
- 25:34fear-mongering about ammonia and fertilizer and we're going to see increased food prices
- 25:38in the fall because of all that and one of the one of the components of CPI that was released
- 25:46yesterday showed that like food prices actually came down month on month and year on year which
- 25:50is a bit surprising to me a pleasant surprise second comment additional to the AI trade like
- 25:56again we in the midst of some volatility but what do you believe in the long term And I was looking for this chart I sure you saw me a bit distracted but A16Z put this out a few weeks ago
- 26:09and it's just basically trying to measure AI adoption.
- 26:14Right now, 2.2% of US households have adopted AI in any capacity,
- 26:20mostly just using ChatGPT as a better Google search
- 26:25and the spend is at $30 a month.
- 26:29And I believe like the top 1% of AI users
- 26:32are spending upwards of $500 a month.
- 26:35And so to your point,
- 26:36like what do you believe in the long-term?
- 26:37Like are those adoption numbers going to go up?
- 26:39I think undoubtedly, yes.
- 26:43Undoubtedly they are.
- 26:44I think it's tough to pick the longer-term
- 26:48or even medium-term winners and losers though in it.
- 26:53And and that's why I go back to my my belief in demand for compute.
- 26:57So like at the end of last year, you know, I had written about what I expected for this year.
- 27:03And, you know, I said a volatile year.
- 27:06If you look at the final year or two of the dot com run up, you had numerous, you know, 10 percent pullbacks because people just get scared and people have big profits and people, you know, they worry about what's happening.
- 27:18And the other thing is that things change so quickly.
- 27:21It's like, well, this company is going to be the best Internet search engine or no, it's going to be not AOL.
- 27:29It's, you know, you know, Netscape or whatever browser you get.
- 27:34And I think that's what's going on in AI at the end of last year.
- 27:38It was like everybody was so on the Google train and meta sucks.
- 27:43And, you know, that was that was the I mean, meta was just the laughingstock of AI.
- 27:49and then all of a sudden they come out with Muse and the stock goes up like 30%, you know,
- 27:54a trillion dollar stock, you know, goes from like 500 some a share to over $700 a share in like a
- 27:59matter of weeks. And so trying to pick the winners and losers has been very difficult with like
- 28:06individual names that are, in my opinion, not part of the bricks and mortar build out of AI.
- 28:15And I think, you know, it's more of like a fashion trend.
- 28:22Like, you know, it's open AI.
- 28:24No, it's actually anthropic because they've got the enterprise.
- 28:26No, it's meta because they've got agents.
- 28:29And, you know, who knows, maybe in a year, you know, Elon will launch his first satellites in the space.
- 28:36And people will say this is just going to become he's going to be he's going to have TerraFab.
- 28:41Like eventually he's going to be insurmountable in the amount of compute and he'll catch up and pass all these guys, you know, or Gemini.
- 28:48Well, you know what? Google finally comes out with an agent and they already have, you know, the enterprise customers and they have the consumer customers and everybody already shares their Gmail and their data and they're comfortable with Google.
- 29:01And they're going to and now Meta is going to, you know, roll over and Google is going to, you know, shoot up 30 percent in six weeks.
- 29:08I mean, who knows what's going to happen? I mean, I think all those things are very possible. But all of those scenarios, they still involve semiconductors. And I mean, everybody is using TSMC. And then you look at memory. You know, one of the big stories lately is Chinese competition for memory. And it's like, AI is national security. I mean, look at what we've just gone through with rare earths.
- 29:35Do you honestly think that we're going to let the American AI companies build out their stacks with Chinese made memory?
- 29:46I mean, it's not going to happen.
- 29:49And you're going to have to use Micron.
- 29:51You're going to have to use SK Hines.
- 29:53And you're going to have to use Samsung.
- 29:55And preferably you're going to use Micron headquartered in Idaho.
- 29:59hope. And so these are things that are just going to come into effect, in my opinion,
- 30:06inevitably. And what you're getting is you're getting a narrative to fit the price action.
- 30:11And a lot of this price action, I think, is due to geopolitical uncertainties, election fears,
- 30:19temporary spikes in inflation, people hedging their open AI and anthropic by shorting publicly
- 30:30traded names and buying CDSs in core weave and all of these mechanical things. Who knows? Maybe
- 30:37Leo's getting liquidated again with his hedge fund. I mean, we don't know what's going on right
- 30:42now causing this. I think it's very possible. The guy, he seems to have this vision, but when he
- 30:51tries to carry it out in the marketplace, he's a swing for the fences type guy. I mean,
- 30:56makes billions, loses billions. He could be losing billions this week, probably is.
- 31:02And so the point is don get lost for the forest for the trees We came out here in the beginning of the year S was around 7 Looked like a disaster but you know my price target has been around that 8 level by the end of the year
- 31:22Next year, I think we could hit 10,000.
- 31:24I think next year could be the crescendo of this bubble.
- 31:27But, you know, we basically hit, you know, 7,800 around the end of this quarter.
- 31:36I think we'll be around 8,000 by the end of the year.
- 31:38And then I think things could start to kick into high gear if we get and I think is a big if, but I think it's possible we get a resolution to both of the wars.
- 31:50Energy. I mean, just imagine if both those wars and energy starts flowing again and the Federal Reserve people start pricing in cuts again.
- 32:00And if we have that situation materialize, and that's basically my base case, that's why I'm foreseeing that Qs are actually going to pass buys as far as price, and they're both going to be over $850 a share sometime in the first half of next year.
- 32:19because I think we're going to get resolution on those issues and we're going to get a cooperative
- 32:26central banks around the world because one, inflation is coming down and two, they need to
- 32:31because interest expense globally is getting out of control.
- 32:35What's up, Freaks? This was brought to you by our good friends, the Bitcoin team at Block.
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- 35:13All right.
- 35:13Can you hear me?
- 35:15Yes.
- 35:15All right.
- 35:16Yeah, we've had some technical difficulties.
- 35:18Getting back to it, shifting gears to focus on Iran.
- 35:23Big story of the year.
- 35:24I think the war is going on much longer than I would like that many American citizens would
- 35:29like.
- 35:29And I even think the Trump administration would have liked. It seems like the the blockade, the economic blockade is starting to have an effect.
- 35:39It seems like the IRGC is getting desperate. At least we're being led to believe that is the case.
- 35:45What what is your take on the current state of the Iran war and how it may come to a resolution?
- 35:50I think really what's going on here is I think Trump wants both of these wars over. We're starting to see some fraying with Ukraine.
- 36:04Uh, our shield, which is the military version of Starlink, uh, was allegedly being throttled,
- 36:14uh, by the Trump administration.
- 36:16Um this is what Ukraine uses for for targeting uh enemy positions um and and and uses for their drones and and different weaponry Um he He basically said Ukraine needs a new president And I think on the Iran side I honestly think what we might be seeing and why he has for weeks now been saying this is going to end after the midterms
- 36:42is he's prepared to make concessions and and end this thing.
- 36:49He doesn't want to do it ahead of the midterms because that would put Republican members of Congress in the position of either agreeing with Trump or agreeing with AIPAC and the Israel lobby.
- 37:06And so it I think, you know, it was very clear when he did the MOU that the Hawks, the Ted Cruz type people that, you know, have been essentially funded and backed by the Israel lobby since they were starting out in politics, came out and were very forcefully against the deal and didn't want that to happen.
- 37:31And so he was essentially forced back into the war footing with, as you mentioned, economic fury and the blockade.
- 37:43And and that just isn't working.
- 37:46And the idea that this.
- 37:50This is something that I literally think he was on a high after Venezuela and he just thought this could be quick and this is going to get his face on Mount Rushmore.
- 38:00He's going to go in there. He's going to topple the regime. He saw those riots on the street, which were obviously CIA and Mossad, you know, instigated. But nonetheless, there is a popular, you know, there is an element or at least there was an element of Iranian society that that wanted to change.
- 38:17and he thought he could go in there. And I think his hand was forced as well, as mentioned by Marco
- 38:25Rubio immediately after the attack, where he said, look, we had the ships in the position. Israel said
- 38:30they were going to attack. And we felt if we didn't join them, it was going to be worse for
- 38:34our exposed position. So we were essentially forced to do it to protect our sailors. I mean,
- 38:40I think that's how we got into this. And of course, they've completely always tried to spin it as this
- 38:46is part of a plan. This is a strategy. And no, it's not. It's a disaster that they were forced
- 38:52into by the Israelis. And everybody that's followed this can see it. And Marco Rubio
- 38:59basically said as much. And then you never heard another word about it really since that happened.
- 39:03But it was a mistake. He knew it when he said it, and he's never really talked about it.
- 39:10But the truth of the matter is the U.S. didn't want this thing to start the way it did. And
- 39:15Israel forced the hand. And we got on this path dependency type of a situation. And I think,
- 39:23you know, Trump realized that there was a lot of blowback when he did the MOU and he restarted it.
- 39:29And I think he's he's got it in his mind that he's going to end this thing one way or the other
- 39:33after the midterms. Does that mean he's going to do a bombing spurt so he can look powerful and say
- 39:39that last three days of bombing, really put them in there and then go right back to like an MOU?
- 39:46I mean, possibly. And I think, you know, there is an element in Iran who also really wants this
- 39:51war to end. They don't want to see more innocent people get killed. They don't want to see their
- 39:56economy, which is in tatters, get destroyed even more. But that said, they're not going to
- 40:00compromise. They're willing to do it. I mean, they do see it as an existential war, as everybody
- 40:07has said. And when you have that situation, I mean, really, we haven't done anything to them
- 40:12in that type of a situation. Look at the United States, you know, where I live in North Carolina,
- 40:17in the South, what it took to get the South to surrender was essentially like 25 percent
- 40:24of the fighting age population of white males killed. You know, Sherman had to march through
- 40:32Atlanta and essentially burned down every single thing in the South. They had to send in an invading
- 40:38army and still Lee didn't want to surrender. It wasn't until his men were literally starving to
- 40:43death in the hills of Virginia. And he's basically like, if we try to fight one more battle, it's
- 40:49just going to be a suicide and every single one of his going to die. Finally, he's like, okay,
- 40:54I guess I better surrender. And I don't think there's any reason to think that it would take
- 40:58anything less than that to get Iran to surrender. And you look at like, you know, internal
- 41:06strife when people in the North didn't want to be drafted. And there are those draft riots in
- 41:13New York that they actually graphically display at the end of the movie Gangs of New York. Those
- 41:20were real riots that happened. You know, Lincoln ordered the bombing, the shelling of New York City
- 41:24because people weren't succumbing to the draft.
- 41:28And internal dissension will be quelled,
- 41:32whether they've got to kill thousands of Iranians to do it or not.
- 41:35They've proven they're willing to do that.
- 41:37And as far as willing to surrender,
- 41:39you know, taking out their useless Navy and bombing the same, you know, 500, you know,
- 41:48military targets which have been hit. I mean, and I don't think Trump is willing to, one, you know,
- 41:54nuclear bomb, use nukes or send in ground forces. Now, would Israel perhaps be willing to use nukes?
- 42:03maybe. But I just think that's a less likely situation. I wouldn't say it's an impossible
- 42:09situation that if we do a deal that somehow Israel doesn't try to confabulate a reason to
- 42:15restart this thing and then use a nuclear weapon. I mean, these are like worst case scenarios. I
- 42:22think you've got to entertain that they're possible. But again, for me, the base case is
- 42:27that he recognizes he needs to get out of this or his entire second term is going to be even more
- 42:34than a disaster that it's already turning out to be because he has just shot himself in the foot
- 42:38so many times. I was so optimistic about what could happen this year at the beginning of the year.
- 42:43The Supreme Court was going to roll off tariffs. We were going to get companies were getting tariff
- 42:48refunds. We had all of this stimulus from the one big, beautiful bill. We had the AI build out.
- 42:54I mean, I honestly think if this Iran war had not happened, we could we could be at 8,500 on the S&P, maybe even pushing near 9000 by the end of this year.
- 43:05But because of the Iran war, it just caused all these jitters.
- 43:09It has caused interest rates to spike.
- 43:11It's caused inflation to spike, which is basically compressed multiples.
- 43:16It's put a damper on sentiment, you know, all of these negative things.
- 43:20And I think he can be obtuse about certain things, but I think instinctually he's kind of understanding that this war is just a noose around his neck and he needs to get rid of it.
- 43:32And, you know, if he doesn't get rid of it, it is it could get worse.
- 43:38And I think, you know, it's not improper to to say if you're doing like a scenario analysis, like, OK, Mel, you just laid out a pretty optimistic base case that this thing is going to end in the next three months.
- 43:49but what's you know possible is yes that it escalates and there's a danger of that and
- 43:56there's a danger of escalation in Europe and and this is one of the walls of worry that the markets
- 44:02are climbing I'm hopeful that that doesn't happen but I'm not naive enough to think you know peace
- 44:10in the Middle East and peace in in Russia Ukraine is a given it's not but wars do come to an end
- 44:18And even Iraq is over. Afghanistan is over. Vietnam is over. The Civil War is over. World War II is over.
- 44:24Like wars don't typically just go on forever. And I think that these wars, everybody wants them to end, including Russia and Iran.
- 44:34Yeah, I hope they come to an end.
- 44:36Because, again, like you said, there's so much potential when we get this distraction and this side quest.
- 44:43Resolved, I'm an anti-war guy at heart.
- 44:48Just like to your point about innocent civilians sitting in the middle of these warring factions.
- 44:57It's senseless to a certain degree in my mind.
- 45:02And there's so much potential energy built up in a positive direction in the economy right now.
- 45:11Going back to the AI conversation, I think, again, to your point, who knows exactly who's going to be the horse to win a decade from now.
- 45:22But one thing is certainly clear, the productivity gains are real.
- 45:25The ability to reverse engineer software right now that's been happening over the last month has been awe-inspiring.
- 45:32it does beg a lot of questions like what are these these sass companies going to do if somebody can
- 45:39just replicate their software and forego paying a monthly subscription service but i think
- 45:45undeniably the end result is going to be more productive capacity in the hands of individuals
- 45:50and there's a lot of positive energy that can come from that that's what we need to get focused on and
- 45:57If we can come to a resolution of the wars in Iran and between Russia and Ukraine, I can only imagine the run that we could go on.
- 46:08Yeah, it would be incredible. But I think you brought up a good point with the impact of AI on some of these companies.
- 46:17And I think financial services to bring this into Bitcoin and into crypto and what's happening and what's going to happen, you know, that's one area that, you know, I think has I think Jordy Visser called it a bank apocalypse.
- 46:37And I think that's, you know, a little bit of an underestimation of what's what could happen with tokenization.
- 46:44I think I think a lot of people when Trump was elected felt like maybe the the for legitimization of tokenization and digital assets had been won but I don think it really was I think there still a big fight going on because
- 47:03these banks, and this is why Clarity didn't get passed, this is why when the Genesis Act did get
- 47:11passed, it didn't allow stable coins to pay interest, is that there is this trillion dollar,
- 47:19you know, financial services industry that is basically dependent upon holding your money
- 47:26and not paying you interest. You know, it's my first job out of college was sales for ADP,
- 47:36automatic data processing, the payroll company. And one of the first things they taught us is
- 47:40basically we make money on the float. Like we're able to sell our payroll services essentially for
- 47:45free or at cost. And then our profit just comes from the fact that billions and billions of dollars
- 47:52get sent to us. We hold it for three or four days and then we finally pay it out into people's
- 47:56paychecks. And they constantly have this float of hundreds of billions of dollars of people's
- 48:02paychecks that they collect interest on. And that's how the payroll industry makes money.
- 48:06And if you look at like Bank of America, you know, they had their earnings call yesterday.
- 48:12They, you know, they list their cost for deposits, their cost for deposits, like that's their marketing and everything that they have to do to get that money.
- 48:20It's basically like one 140 basis points.
- 48:24And we know what Fed funds rate is right now.
- 48:27Right. We know what the two year yield is right now.
- 48:30And that's essentially like, you know, they're minting money off of people and people are starting to realize that.
- 48:36And what the industry pushback is two things that I think are complete bullshit.
- 48:41I mean, number one, they're like, well, the average balance is very small in most accounts.
- 48:45Well, averages can be very misleading.
- 48:47There's a lot of guys that are living paycheck to paycheck.
- 48:49They keep 200 bucks in their checking account if they're lucky.
- 48:53And and then there are all these other people that have 100,000, 50,000, 80,000.
- 48:58You know, they have all this money in their checking accounts.
- 49:01And a lot of that is because, you know, they have money in motion.
- 49:05They have things happening.
- 49:06But why do they need that money in there? Because there's not instant settlement.
- 49:11Imagine when we get agents talking to agents so that I can say, you know what, I've got
- 49:17$25,000 in a money market account, in a T-bill, whatever it is, that can be settled,
- 49:25atomic settlement instantaneous. And, you know, let's say that the power company needs $200 from
- 49:33me. Right now, I need to have that $200 sitting in a checking account so that they can come in
- 49:38and ACH it out and it gets transferred. Well, what's going to happen when the power company
- 49:43has an agent that contacts my agent and says, Mel's agent, you owe $250. And the agent says,
- 49:51okay. And it could be at 2.32 in the morning on a Sunday because it's 24-7 tokenization,
- 49:58atomic settlement. And my agent says, OK, wait, you know, 25 milliseconds, goes in, atomically
- 50:04settles a money market fund, a tokenized T-bill, whatever it is in the 24-7 marketplace,
- 50:12turns it into 250 USD and sends it or just sends that stable coin or tokenized asset,
- 50:19you know, directly to the power company and they take ownership of it so that there's no need for
- 50:25this money to be, there's not going to be, nobody's going to have a checking account 10 years from now
- 50:29in the way that we think about checking accounts. There's just not going to be any reason to hold
- 50:34cash in a non-interest bearing account because there's going to be 24-7 instant settlement
- 50:40at essentially zero cost. And that's going to be, that's going to wipe out, I mean, it's going to
- 50:48wipe out Visa. It's going to wipe out MasterCard. It's going to wipe out banks. I'm not saying these
- 50:53companies are going away, but their business models are going to have to do massive pivots.
- 50:58And to me, this is bigger than the SaaS apocalypse in many ways. All right, freaks, you know, I don't
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- 53:33Well, imagine that's the negative consequences for those businesses
- 53:36who are becoming Luddites and refusing to adapt with the times.
- 53:40But imagine the wealth effect when people have the ability
- 53:44to seamlessly go in and out of these assets
- 53:47to actually have their money working for them
- 53:49and participating in the yield that's generated from the different assets, the short-term liquid
- 53:54assets that their money sits in. Yeah, it's huge. I mean, it's true. There's trillions of dollars
- 54:00of Americans' money just sitting around basically making money for the Bank of America, Citibank's
- 54:05visas, ADPs of the world. And, you know, once that gets unlocked, you know, individual, it's
- 54:12essentially like a real cost of living adjustment. You know, it's essentially free money to people
- 54:16from the perspective of this is something they never had before and now they have it.
- 54:21And this is the thing. And the other side effect of that is where is that money likely to be held?
- 54:28It's likely to be held in T-bills. And what where is all the issuance of the U.S. government right
- 54:33now? It is basically in T-bills. And so it helps to ameliorate this issue of the debt, which I
- 54:42think there are ways to finesse our ways through this without the collapse that some people
- 54:51predict as being necessary. Growth is a component. Earlier, I laughed like that's not going to be
- 54:58the solution, but that's part of the solution. Then you're going to have this expansion of
- 55:03T-bills. This desire for people to hold T-bills, not just in the United States, but around the
- 55:10world is going to explode and stable coins are going to enable this.
- 55:15But all of these financial services companies are just fighting tooth and nail because they
- 55:20know this is an existential war for them.
- 55:23And it's not easy and it's not quick.
- 55:26And it's not like I said, the battle for digital assets and tokenization and what that can
- 55:33do was not won, you know, in November of 2024 when Trump was elected.
- 55:39And in many ways, it just got started. But I do think that we're we're still in this phase and that the best is yet to come for for all of these assets.
- 55:49And I think the cornerstone of this digital asset infrastructure is, of course, going to be Bitcoin.
- 55:56And and so you've got like higher beta right now and things like ETH that were shooting up.
- 56:02And then I looked today before we came on, ETH was down three or four percent.
- 56:05Bitcoin was down maybe a percent and a half. I'm not sure what they're at since we started talking.
- 56:10But, you know, you know, these are kind of the high beta names and the favored instrument for operational control.
- 56:17Right now it could be ETH. Maybe it'll be Sol. Maybe something else will come up.
- 56:21But when you look at what's the cornerstone asset behind all that, I think that is a Bitcoin in the way that gold has served as a cornerstone in the currency world.
- 56:34And so I'm still extremely bullish on gold and Bitcoin.
- 56:40I think that the AI infrastructure build out is going to roll on once we get through some of the concerns that the market's working through right now, which I've mentioned are mechanical, I think, in many ways.
- 56:52And babies are getting thrown out with the bathwater.
- 56:55And all of this stuff is going to ramble on.
- 56:57And it dispels volatility.
- 56:59It dispels the changing of the guard.
- 57:01There are going to be corpses on the field, whether that's in software or financial services.
- 57:09And so it a time of a lot of change and a lot of volatility But I think to your point about productivity you know the general thrust of this is going to be a more productive society that uses its resources more efficiently
- 57:27And that also kind of starts to more and more cut out the middlemen in our society,
- 57:33which is really what we need to do. We have we need to have less people moving bits and more
- 57:39people moving atoms right now. And we've just been way too bloated with white collar workers
- 57:44in this country for way too long. And we need to get, you know, things moving again and not just,
- 57:50you know, some company with six levels of middle management, you know, heading off to corporate
- 57:57picnics. Yeah. So Bitcoin, when we first started recording a drop below 80, taps high 79s. Now
- 58:05it's back towards 82 so a quick rebound so it looks like 80s 80 thousands being defended
- 58:10right now but your point about bank of america bank of america too and the headlines this week
- 58:14for their money laundering on behalf of uh terrorists and oh no but that's all bitcoin's
- 58:21good for didn't you elizabeth warren said no that's the it's only the crypto industry that
- 58:26crypto industry doesn't conceal shit compared to the traditional financial sir i mean
- 58:32guys in Central America, South America, you know, it's Citibank, the private wells, the private
- 58:38banks, the bank. I mean, this is all part and parcel of their business model. It's screwing
- 58:44people over just like it is the way that they own the Federal Reserve Bank branches. And this is why
- 58:50the left leader in France wants to get rid of the central bank. He wants to imprison, you know,
- 58:55the head of the central bank. This is this is a cartel. This is a criminal cartel that's fleecing
- 59:03society, that's fleecing America. There is no reason that we even have a Federal Reserve.
- 59:09It's the dumbest institution that's ever been created. It's there to protect the banks.
- 59:14It it makes it makes absolutely no sense that that the U.S. government cannot issue zero interest
- 59:22bearing debt, but the Federal Reserve can. You look at a Federal Reserve note. It's a Federal
- 59:27Reserve note. Well, it's a note. It's a bond. It's paper. What's the interest they're paying
- 59:32on it? Zero. They get to create dollars out of nothing, pay no interest. Meanwhile, the U.S.
- 59:38Treasury has to go to the market and pay interest. It makes no sense.
- 59:46No. And like Bank of America, $1.2 billion fine. But because yields are where they are and they
- 59:51have so much cash and they're not sharing the yield with their customers it's like the cost of
- 59:54doing business they did something like 8.1 billion in profit in the last quarter and they have to pay
- 59:59this 1.2 billion dollar fine that comes around maybe once every five years and it's like yeah
- 1:00:04okay meanwhile you have open source developers like kian rodriguez and bill hill who basically
- 1:00:10created non-custodial software to help people transacting in bitcoin do so in a private fashion
- 1:00:18and they're sitting in jail for money laundering,
- 1:00:20and they weren't even money service businesses,
- 1:00:23money transmitters.
- 1:00:26It's completely insane.
- 1:00:27It's a two-tier society.
- 1:00:29But staying on this tip,
- 1:00:32despite the fact the Clarity Act did not pass,
- 1:00:34it seems like the Trump administration
- 1:00:35sort of recognizes this,
- 1:00:36and I think the Treasury fining Bank of America
- 1:00:40may have been retaliation
- 1:00:42of the American Banking Association lobby
- 1:00:45sort of killing Clarity Act at the last minute.
- 1:00:48The Trump administration is basically saying,
- 1:00:51SEC, CFTC, OCC, who cares if Clary didn't pass,
- 1:00:55go rule-make, we're going to start integrating this,
- 1:00:57which is the executive stepping in and saying,
- 1:01:00okay, if we can't get this through Congress
- 1:01:01because the banking lobbyists are going to squash it out,
- 1:01:04we're going to move ahead for the last two years of this administration.
- 1:01:07Hopefully, the rule-making enables infrastructure to get built out.
- 1:01:11It'll be so ingrained it's impossible to basically rip out
- 1:01:15if Democrats take over in 2028.
- 1:01:18Yeah, I think I think it's inevitable. It's just going to take a little longer than maybe the hopes were last year because of the amount of pushback that is going to come from the industry and the way they have their claws in these lawmakers.
- 1:01:33and were able to basically squash interest-yielding stablecoins as well as the Clarity Act.
- 1:01:41Because, you know, I mean, Cynthia Loomis, you know, after Trump was elected,
- 1:01:47she put together a very simple three-part plan, and it was Genius Act, Clarity Act, Sovereign Wealth Fund, you know.
- 1:01:57Strategic Bitcoin.
- 1:01:58That that entire plan basically got out of those three pieces, basically like point seven five was completed, which was a watered down genius act.
- 1:02:09And to your point, what's happening now is the Trump administration is doing what they can with their executive authority.
- 1:02:18And and you're right. You know, if Democrats take over in twenty nine, they they they'd be able to reverse those.
- 1:02:25But if they can get themselves ingrained in the system, if they can get consumers used
- 1:02:29to some of the benefits that could come from this.
- 1:02:32If they can get, you know, an ecosystem of companies making profits of it that can afford
- 1:02:37their own lobbyists to fight the bank lobbyists, then I think we can get it ingrained enough
- 1:02:44because it's a little bit like, you know, Schwab had their earnings today and they are
- 1:02:50selling off hard.
- 1:02:51And it's like Schwab, you know, these big companies, you know, they laughed at like,
- 1:02:55you know, the Robin Hoods of the world when they came out and said, we're going to do zero
- 1:02:58commissions.
- 1:02:59And eventually they had to do it and they had to pivot their business models.
- 1:03:04And now Schwab is selling off because people are realizing that they can get higher interest in other accounts in certain ways.
- 1:03:12And people are, you know, withdrawing funds.
- 1:03:15And I mean, like I did that myself.
- 1:03:17I mean, I was a big, you know, pity Ameritrade guy before they got bought by Schwab.
- 1:03:23I really was used to and like think or swim their interface for trading.
- 1:03:27but it just got to a point where, and I still have some, some accounts with them. Um, but for a lot
- 1:03:35of my like very fast trading, I'm like, I'm, I'm just going to move money into Robinhood. They're,
- 1:03:40they're giving me like a 3% match. They've got Robinhood legend, which is an okay platform.
- 1:03:45It's not as good as think or swim. And you know, there's just zero costs, there's zero fees. And
- 1:03:50it's like, yeah, stocks in, in, at Schwab are zero commission, but options aren't zero commission.
- 1:03:56And, you know, if you're doing a bunch of contracts, I mean, you know, that stuff adds up. So all of these things, they're kind of like inevitable. And I think that these business models are going to collapse, but they're not going to go down without a fight and they're not going to go down overnight. And really, we don't want them to go down overnight.
- 1:04:14You wouldn't want these banks to just completely fall out of bed overnight because their tentacles are so integrated into every area of society that it would be problematic for the economy as a whole.
- 1:04:27And so it's going to be a phase out and it's going to be margins compressed.
- 1:04:32And it's going to be the same thing with the software companies and Adobe and people decompiling Photoshop and putting, you know, like all of these moats that once existed.
- 1:04:44are being broken down. And, you know, this bank charter moat and the fact that banks get to
- 1:04:51hold this interest is really something that I think is inevitably going to crumble, but it's
- 1:05:00not going to happen like in the next, you know, 12 to 24 months. It's going to take years, but
- 1:05:04eventually it's going to be, like I said, like my agent talking to some company's agent,
- 1:05:09atomic settlement here's the cash and there's not going to be any any money sitting in a checking
- 1:05:15account idle uh so bank of america can uh you know pay for i don't know money laundering classes or
- 1:05:23something yeah and i think the demographics are going to play into this too now that you got you
- 1:05:30got the juices flowing here i think it's gonna be harder for the boomers to break from their
- 1:05:36consumer tendencies and the brokers and platforms that they use. And obviously they have most of the
- 1:05:42wealth, but as these competing products become available, particularly for millennials, Gen Z,
- 1:05:48and eventually generation alpha, they're going to say, well, um, tech forward, I'm tech native
- 1:05:54and bank of America. It sucks going to a branch. I hate going to an ATM. Like I can use Robin hood.
- 1:06:01I can use stable coins. And by the way, I'm not making that much money. However, I'll take the 4%
- 1:06:07on the yield share with these protocols over the banking system. To your point about a gradual
- 1:06:13transition, I think that's how it can happen. You just have the boomers who are not only laggards,
- 1:06:19they're probably never going to adopt the tech because they're not tech native and are set in
- 1:06:25their ways and so that's how i can see like the generational like boomer retirement sort of
- 1:06:31morbidly die out um and so you can see a gradual transition and then just nooks and crannies on
- 1:06:40like recapitalizing the credit the credit stack i've been bullish on this for years and still am
- 1:06:45actually the mortgage in my house is dual collateralized with the house and bitcoin like
- 1:06:49I think you're going to see that as more tech native millennials, particularly.
- 1:06:53And some Gen Z have some of their wealth in Bitcoin.
- 1:06:57They're able to get houses and cars and other things by dual collateralizing with Bitcoin instead of putting cash down.
- 1:07:06And that's happening slowly but surely as well.
- 1:07:08yeah i mean and right now i mean they had the uh
- 1:07:13expose they saw circling around it goes from the federal reserve about changes in wealth basically
- 1:07:19since the pandemic by age group and you just see like 75 plus like their wealth is up like 30 i
- 1:07:26mean they have all the wealth right now and they're still intertwined in the legacy systems
- 1:07:31They don't want to use Robinhood.
- 1:07:32They don't want to use crypto.
- 1:07:37They trust the big banks still They still think of JP Morgan as you know and Bank of America is like upstanding corporate citizens that are providing valuable services
- 1:07:50And that is going to fade away. I mean, this this this geratocracy, this theft of younger generations by the older generations, it is going to come to an end.
- 1:08:01And, you know, I mean, the situation with these 80 year old presidents and, you know, these Social Security increases and you have this situation, which is just it really is insanity where you you have all the wealth in these people, 75 and older.
- 1:08:21And you at the same time have essentially all of the tax revenue being transferred from the younger generations to these people in the form of Medicare and Social Security payments, as well as interest on the debt, which is who is the owner of bonds.
- 1:08:34It's these boomers in their target data accounts or their balanced portfolios where they own bonds because younger people don't own bonds.
- 1:08:44So, I mean, this is really an insane situation that we're in and people just really need to recognize it.
- 1:08:52And I think what's going to cause this, and a lot of people do recognize it, but what's going to make this, I think, a national conversation is going to be in the 2028 presidential campaign.
- 1:09:05The fact that you're going to have to talk about Social Security.
- 1:09:09Social Security is going to have to be amended.
- 1:09:12It has to be because we're running out of money in the trust fund.
- 1:09:16And I could take just a quick minute on Social Security because I think it's very misunderstood of how Social Security works.
- 1:09:23I think people don't realize that there's no like cash that the government has in some trust fund somewhere that covers the shortfall in Social Security.
- 1:09:34So Social Security takes in money on payroll checks.
- 1:09:38It's like maybe 80 percent of what's needed.
- 1:09:41And then the other 20 percent is paid for by the U.S. government going out to the debt markets and raising new debt and paying for it.
- 1:09:49But it gets it gets masked. And the way it's masked is because there are these special treasury securities.
- 1:09:57They're they're they're intergovernmental treasury securities that only governmental agencies can own.
- 1:10:03Social Security Trust Fund owns over a trillion dollars of these treasury securities right now.
- 1:10:11And what happens is, is there is when the government, the Treasury goes to pay Social Security checks every month, it basically just does an accounting trick where it says, OK, we need 100 billion to make up the Social Security shortfall.
- 1:10:27So we're going to cancel 100 billion in these intergovernmental agencies.
- 1:10:31But the government doesn't have the 100 billion.
- 1:10:33So what it has to do is it has to borrow the hundred billion as the issue T bills or whatever to get the hundred billion in order to cancel out the Social Security debt.
- 1:10:42And so what people misunderstand is they think that when the Social Security trust fund runs out, then all of a sudden the U.S. government is going to have to start borrowing a bunch more money in order to make up the shortfall.
- 1:10:56And they're really not. What's what's happening right now is the government's going to the public markets to borrow that money, but it's not showing up as additive to the national debt clock because you're doing this accounting trick where 100 billion of Social Security, Treasury securities get canceled out and 100 billion of publicly sold Treasury bonds get issued.
- 1:11:19But because they were intergovernmental, the government was not paying money to anybody outside.
- 1:11:24It was just paying money to itself. Now it's got to pay money outside.
- 1:11:28That is already happening. And so what's going to happen as this debate around Social Security trust fund comes up is people are going to start to understand this situation.
- 1:11:39Now, the difference is, is that this situation, even though it's just an accounting gimmick,
- 1:11:44it's the only way, according to the Social Security law, in which it can be paid.
- 1:11:50And so if when the trust fund runs out, the law is not amended, the government cannot just on its
- 1:11:56own decide, well, we're going to go out. We've been going out to the debt markets to make up
- 1:12:00the shortfall, so we're just going to continue doing that. They can't do that. And so a law is
- 1:12:04going to have to be passed. People are going to start to realize this. This is going to lead into
- 1:12:08the broader discussion about all of this wealth that's going to the geriatrics of our society.
- 1:12:15And I think people are going to be prepared to do things they haven't been prepared to do before,
- 1:12:21including at the very least institute means testing and stop sending Social Security checks
- 1:12:26to Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. And, you know, at the very least, and probably going to wind up
- 1:12:34moving back to Social Security age and probably going to raise the Social Security tax a little
- 1:12:40bit. But Social Security, as everybody knows, isn't really the big problem. It's really Medicare.
- 1:12:47And I think that is something where AI is going to be able to help But I do think that that that really you know going to be a big issue heading into the 2030s is how are we going to pay for all these Medicare bills
- 1:13:04Well, apparently you just give them to, I mean, and then the fraud in Medicare,
- 1:13:09that's what I was going to get at. Yeah. Oh my God.
- 1:13:14Eliminate the hundreds of billions of fraud that exists in the system first.
- 1:13:17Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, I think what's going to happen is that, you know, a lot of people, they make the point you can't print hips or they can't print knee replacements.
- 1:13:28I mean, it's just, again, I think the healthcare, some of these healthcare companies are going to be in trouble because this is part of that administrative middleman inefficiency class that's out there, just as it is in financial services, just as it is in corporate America writ large, that needs to be expunged from our society where we start moving atoms and stop moving so many bits.
- 1:13:58or where everybody's job revolves around moving bits, let's say.
- 1:14:02And I think, you know, we could wind up in a situation.
- 1:14:06We have these socialist tendencies in this country going back hundreds of years where
- 1:14:11people say, look, you know, enough is enough.
- 1:14:13Like we are going to have a government run hip replacement center.
- 1:14:18And you know what?
- 1:14:19It's going to use AI and it's going to we're going to pay the nurses and we're going to
- 1:14:25pay the doctors and we're going to lower the certification requirements because of AI.
- 1:14:30And these things like the fat margins on all of this stuff that these companies get, the
- 1:14:37pharmaceutical companies, the health care companies, I mean, the margins are just out
- 1:14:41of control.
- 1:14:42And it's a lot of an administrative class.
- 1:14:45It's not really the nurses and the doctors.
- 1:14:47It's the tort law.
- 1:14:48It's the worries about liabilities.
- 1:14:50We need to amend the tort law.
- 1:14:52There are ways to fix these problems.
- 1:14:55Just like there's ways to fix homeownership. I mean, I think there's so much federal land that is owned and it's like, you know, just open up some of it, you know, and, you know, I'm not talking about, you know, paving Yosemite Valley.
- 1:15:08I'm talking about like relatively useless, like Bureau of Land Management territories out west that, you know, people would die to have some sort of a homesteading ability again, where you could just say, look, here's what you're going to do.
- 1:15:23You're going to go there. You're going to build the house yourself. You're going to have to work.
- 1:15:27We're going to have government trained, you know, supervisors and foremen that are going to show you how to frame a house and, you know, maybe, you know, whatever the situation is.
- 1:15:37And you tell people like you go there and you build a house and your mortgage is going to be to the U.S. government.
- 1:15:43And if you don't pay us back, it's not like a student loan.
- 1:15:46We're going to, you know, student loan, you don't pay it back.
- 1:15:48How can you confiscate someone's education?
- 1:15:50You know, you don't pay us back, you know, in the next 10 years after you build this thing and we help you do it.
- 1:15:55We're going to we're going to we're going to repossess the home.
- 1:16:00And I mean, like all of these solutions exist out there.
- 1:16:03I think that the boomer generation needs to kind of get out of the way.
- 1:16:09And then I think we need like radical solutions.
- 1:16:12Twenty first. We're trying to solve 21st century problems with 20th century solutions.
- 1:16:16And we need 21st century AI native crypto native solutions that just think outside of the box.
- 1:16:25They get this country back to doing what it knows how to do, which is to explore and build and innovate and grow and stop it where everybody like, you know, sitting in front of screens all day, you know, doing essentially mid-level administrative tasks, moving Excel spreadsheet to Excel spreadsheet, paperwork to paperwork, moving these bits around and not actually accomplishing anything in the real world.
- 1:16:55It's not going to be easy. It's not going to be quick. But I think, you know, humanity tends to persevere and eventually rectify situations once they get to be unbearable.
- 1:17:05And we're getting into an unbearable situation with the economy, with the fiscal situation.
- 1:17:11And so I do think these radical changes are coming, you know, in the 2030s.
- 1:17:17It's not going to take forever. I think I think it's going to happen.
- 1:17:19And I think we're going to have a young president for the first time in a long time.
- 1:17:232029, whether it's AOC, J.D. Vance, I don't know.
- 1:17:27But, you know, honestly, at this point, like this, get get these 80 year olds out of there, man.
- 1:17:34I mean, the Pelosi's, Trump's, the Biden's, the Bush's, the Clinton's, the Obama's.
- 1:17:39We're just be done with these people.
- 1:17:42Yeah, I completely agree and hope that we get it.
- 1:17:44Because, again, there's so much potential here.
- 1:17:46Just unleash it.
- 1:17:47It's right there.
- 1:17:48yeah it's the younger generations and that's the i mean i don't want to get
- 1:17:53uh too bombastic here but i i do think we're getting to a point socially where
- 1:17:58you either going to do this in a controlled fashion and recognize the reality of the situation and hand over the baton or gen z younger millennials are going to take it from you in some aggressive way is what I would say We got to wrap up here
- 1:18:16I got to catch a train a little bit. But before we do, two weeks away from midterms,
- 1:18:20what are you looking for? How are you viewing this? How pivotal is this midterm election season to you?
- 1:18:27I think it's pretty clear, right? The House is going to be taken by the Democrats and the Senate. It seems close, but I mean, my guess is, is that there's an underestimation of how many people really hate this war and and that the Democrats are going to.
- 1:18:50take the Senate as well. And it's going to create, obviously, a situation where Trump is going to be
- 1:18:59impeached. The House is going to impeach him, going to go to a trial in the Senate.
- 1:19:06We might actually have a situation where the majority of the Senate votes for the removal of
- 1:19:10Trump. But I believe it's two thirds that's necessary, which isn't going to happen.
- 1:19:16And so I don't think Trump's going to be removed from office, but I think we're going to head into a period where these types of stories are going to begin to dominate a lot of the headlines.
- 1:19:30And this is going to tie up a lot of government energy.
- 1:19:34And so I don't think there's going to be a lot of some of the things that I was hopeful, like a really transformative bill for housing.
- 1:19:42You know, I was hoping like there'd be a housing emergency declared and like a lot of things that I think Trump had the possibility to do.
- 1:19:51He's never going to get to do because of the war.
- 1:19:55Now he's going to lose support in Congress.
- 1:19:57But I think this is pivotal in the sense that it's not necessarily going to be a negative for for the economy.
- 1:20:07And Trump's still going to have his executive powers.
- 1:20:10But I think that's just what it's going to be limited to.
- 1:20:12And so, you know, the CFTC and the SEC will be able to continue to work on digital asset reform.
- 1:20:19We'll still get AI moving forward without much regulation.
- 1:20:23We'll still get a lot of those things that are kind of under executive control happening.
- 1:20:29But we're definitely going to get different scares about that ceiling.
- 1:20:35You know, all these things are just going to start coming back.
- 1:20:38And and and I'm actually hopeful that there's, you know, some sort of, you know, threat about, you know, funding, you know, don't fund the government if if if he's going to keep, you know.
- 1:20:54Keep on with this Iran war, you know, you know, ways that maybe he could the Congress could actually positively force his hand into things.
- 1:21:04But the problem is, is that a lot of Congress is in the pockets of the Israel lobby. And it's the same thing on Ukraine front. You know, you had you had even Republican Congress people coming out saying it was just abominable of an abomination that, you know, Star Shield was was throttled and things.
- 1:21:22So, you know, the deep state fight is going to continue. And it's like it's kind of like Star Wars, like Empire Strikes Back, like, you know, the Empire is still out there and the Empire is not dying a slow death.
- 1:21:35And and so I think the fights are going to continue. But as far as how pivotal is the midterm, I think it's more pivotal from a market perspective as a clearing event and just getting that unknown out of the way.
- 1:21:48And then I think it also maybe frees Trump up to do certain things that are unpopular with the deep state, like ending the Iran war and giving concessions to Iran, because he knows like, you know, on October 30th, Republican congressman running in a contested district isn't going to be asked, do you support the MOU?
- 1:22:11and if he says yes, then AIPAC pulls the funding.
- 1:22:15If he says no, then it looks like he's going against Trump.
- 1:22:18I think that dilemma is why Trump keeps saying
- 1:22:21after the midterm, after the midterm.
- 1:22:24And I do think that after the midterm,
- 1:22:25he's gonna threaten to annihilate them.
- 1:22:27He's gonna threaten to blow them to kingdom come.
- 1:22:30And then I'm hopeful that miraculously,
- 1:22:33that China helps mediate some sort of a peace treaty
- 1:22:37with Qatar and an MOU comes in.
- 1:22:39And and we get some resolution because that's what makes sense.
- 1:22:44Now, what makes sense doesn't always happen.
- 1:22:46But but, you know, fingers crossed, like like that's that that's what happens.
- 1:22:52And I think if it does, it could be just the beginning of good things starting to happen because we've had a year where just there's been a lot of bad things going on.
- 1:23:02And one thing I've learned in life is that if you just hang on, like luck eventually tends to change and things tend to change.
- 1:23:09It's always darkest before the dawn.
- 1:23:12And when you're in a situation and you think something's never going to end, I'm sure in 1862, people thought the Civil War was never going to end.
- 1:23:19And in 1942, they didn't see an end to World War II.
- 1:23:23I mean, I think people, it's hard to see past these things, but yet we do always get past them.
- 1:23:29And I think that's going to happen and it's going to be a positive surprise.
- 1:23:34Here's to hoping for the positive surprise.
- 1:23:36Mel, it's always a pleasure.
- 1:23:37We will be catching up at the end of the year to do our 2027 predictions, which I can't wait for.
- 1:23:43So we're going to have midterms.
- 1:23:45It's going to be a lot of activity in the markets between now and the end of the year.
- 1:23:49So I'm sure we'll have plenty to talk about for our 2027 prediction episode.
- 1:23:54Looking forward to it.
- 1:23:56All right. Peace and love, freaks.
- 1:23:57Thank you for listening to this episode of TFTC.
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