Bitcoin On Brink Of Collapse As Oil Prices SURGE? What You Need To Know!

Bitcoin is on the brink as the United States and Israel go to war with Iran. Oil prices in Europe have surged as much as 50% as Qatar has cut off their oil supply, waiting for more clarity in the Straits of Hormuz. All of this is way over my head. So luckily, we have the geniuses Dave, James, and Mike to unpack all of it for us. I don't think there's ever been a day when we need a Macro Monday more as people who are watching the price and market in Bitcoin and crypto. Let's go.

Let's do. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Macro Monday. Mike Mclo is currently on TV. He will be here in three or four minutes. And what's actually amazing is I was sent a ton of links to look at this morning for the show. News updates that I could bring on the screen. And Mcloone's face was literally on three of them on TV. You know, like the video clips on Yahoo Finance. Every time I clicked on a link, there was Mike Mcloone. So, uh, we're obviously being forced to share him with the world now. Ah, but he will be here momentarily. We've got Dave and James already here. James is fresh. Uh, well-rested, slept a lot.

I mean, they could they they just can't make air travel any more miserable, can they? It's true. It's incredible. You know, it's funny. We we. If you're not in first class, it's almost just unbearable. We la we we went back and forth from uh from Florida to Sun Valley and four flight segments. Every one of the flights was on time, no issues whatsoever. And when we landed, as we landed, as the plane hit the tarmac, I said to my wife, "Wow, it's amazing. We had the whole flight, you know, nothing, whatever." And then we sat on the tarmac for half an hour because they couldn't get a plane out of the gate. I flew in from I flew in from New York yesterday to Tampa and we got I landed a foot above the ground and all of a sudden the guy goes straight vertical like an F-15. I love that one left and he completely had missed the runway. He was like 10 feet left. So it was a good time. But anyways, listen, as we wait for a glow.

I've got I've had I've had three hours of sleep. We're good. Let's go. You're good. Okay. Yeah. Nothing going on. What What did I miss last week? Yeah. I don't want to dive into oil yet uh or any of that because I I want to wait for Mike. So, we do have a story here that has Mike's face right on it. As I said, look at him. Uh crypto loses its grip on retail crowd now defecting to equity. So, this is coming from Bloomberg, no surprise. Uh the fact that Mike's face on an article like that obviously no surprise but effectively all of the data here that uh retail has not participated at all in this market for quite a while.

Can I read can I fix the headline for you please? The the headline is uh if if this article had been written in November then I think I could go with that headline. But the the truth is retail has not did not really was not really participating very much uh in crypto in the the back half of last year's rally and after 1010 they were gone. Uh and you know so it's like when you start reporting on stuff like that that tells me the bottom is in full stop. I love that. I love seeing those stories because we know that we we talked about it two weeks ago how search for Bitcoin is dead hit a peak. We know what extreme fear looks like. We understand where their participation is. Retail has been out of of altcoins now for months. So when Bloomberg finally starts saying, "Oh, they're doing this. This is trying to throw dirt on the grave." You know, that tends not to work. You know, in market. Article last week, crypto is pointless. Even the white can't. Yeah. I mean, come on. These are the.

I mean, look, it there's the funniest part about all of this is this is at the same time that Morgan Stanley is ramping up to not just trade crypto, but custody Bitcoin. I mean it, you know, look, there is there's this huge great dichotomy, and I talk about this all the time, but I'm tired of people who who are are are stupid on both sides. The the fact is that crypto rails and the technology are going to reformat the financial system. They're going to reformat the artistic systems, meaning that, you know, if you're a a creative, uh it's going to change many many verticals and industries. We know this. Some some tokens will be able to be used for the incentive structures that tokens can do in order to create value. Uh but if the token itself doesn't pass value through the token holders, they're going to wither and die. I've been saying that for a long time. Bitcoin on the other hand has survived through all of this right now looks looks almost frighteningly cheap and hated. But that's exactly what you get at bottoms. I mean, you literally I mean, could it go lower? Of course, anything can happen. But the truth is is freaking war didn't cause it to break below what when we said that you know we said when it dropped below 60 to 58 you know or 59 or whatever the hell it it ticked on that wick uh that that's probably the bottom and and even over the weekend at the most desperate lowest liquid period of time they couldn't slam it below 62.

So you tell me uh what does this look like? Every time I see these news stories, it tells me that, you know, it's it's like trying to, you know, when you have a fire a fire and there's no wood left in the fire and you're blowing at it and you're hoping the fire will keep going. Well, there's just no there's no wood left. I mean, who who's left to sell within the crypto community? The people who are left in the crypto community that will sell will be the people who need to raise fund for life. That's it. Because nobody is making discretionary sales at this point. And so, when I see these articles, I just laugh at them. I mean, it's just it's it's actually funny because it's exactly the wrong thing. It's the same people who at the end of 2008, beginning of 2009 were saying the equity markets are dying and retail is has exited the equity market. And you saw those stories. You can go back and look at them. It happens every time. You know, GFC has been running its course. It's been going crazy. They've been throwing [ __ ] tons of liquidity, but it didn't matter. Nobody wanted to buy anything. Tom Lee.

But let's be but let's be let's be clear though that clear I mean like you said the sentiment is so low in in Bitcoin and crypto uh currencies that obviously something else has been going on. And the funny thing is that when people are running to things like gold and silver as like, you know, a a rich quick trade, you know that something is structurally wrong macroeconomically or geop world. And absolutely what. Yeah. So watching uh central banks pile on the the gold trade and then watching everybody pile into the silver trade on the backs of EV and uh and data center uh buildouts and demand. It it tells you that there's just you know we we all know that people are now worried about inflation. So, if you just step up step back today now and look at what's going on, obviously you have oil up and the funny thing is that Bitcoin's kind of holding in there. Like Dave said, it it's hung in at 65,000 all weekend. Even though you know this is uh the the conflict has now kind of um you know expanded and it's not it's not going to be a just a a one-and-done you know, one one and done day daily thing. It's this is going to uh this is going to probably be ongoing for a few weeks is from what we can tell. So, you've got futures down a percent, you've got gold up one or 2%, you've got silver kind of down a percent. Um, you've got Bitcoin just pretty much unchanged. Uh, and then you've got the 10-year or looking at the long bond, the T the TLT and the 10 10 year and and 20 year and 30-year, those rates are up. Okay, so the the we're back over 4% on the 10-year, which we had dropped below 4% uh earlier this week and late last week. And so if you look at the TLT, you know, um that is pre-market, it's it's down.

So what what is that telling you? Well, it's funny because I've read it. Yeah, yesterday I'm gonna I'm sorry to interrupt, keep going. I was just say yesterday we had this story that basically showed that the bonds were a flight to safety. I didn't even realize, you know, using yesterday's data. Go ahead. Yeah. And that's that's the funny that's that's that's the paradox now with the with the bonds. Bonds can be a flight to safety if you're going into um you know, T-bills. If you're going into T-bills, sure, that's a flight to safety. Uh but if you're going into long bonds, the problem here is that now people are concerned that with the conflict in the Middle East, it's a it's a particular issue geopolitically that is inflationary. War is inflationary number one and oil going up. It's the it's the main driver of prices of everything going up is inflationary. So people are clearly, you know, investors are clearly concerned that long-term inflation uh impacts from from a higher price in oil or an extended higher price in oil is an issue. So that's kind of what we're seeing across the board here today. And then the dollar on the back side of it is just it's an energy trade, you know. So but I would be interested to hear what what we got out of the morning meeting, Mike. uh assuming you went to it. Mike, you didn't hear this, but I I'm I'm operating at about three hours of sleep because of our great um air travel system in America.

Um so, but uh we're here, so let's let's go through it. Okay. Well, um the um Anowong came in pointed out that obviously if um if we have oil staying up staying up, that's going to have an inflationary impact, but she focused on non-farm payroll. You think it's going to be a negative number, a weak print due to weather, the unemployment rate staying at about 4.3%. So it might have a small uptick, but won't really be that significant. That should stay the same. Um, look, um, looks the takeaway is that expect the number to look weak, but the unemployment to stay steady. We had our geoeconomics expert come on Deanna Effend d e f e f e f e f e f e f e f e f e f e fender who pointed out um the Iran retaliation has been fast and wide spreading out to the Gulf states um trying to put on cost on the trying to expand the tax and put on cost on global economy. Her point was she thinks things could likely to get worse in the meantime. Uh Michael Casper, our equity strategist, has pointed out, you know, we have major oil shocks that usually is bad for equities. And that was really it from the morning meeting. I had to hop off early to talk to uh TV about guess what? Crude oil.

Let's hear your thoughts on crude oil for sure. Yeah, let's start with oil because that's where I wanted to go. Yeah. So, we need a sustained supply shock or disruption to keep Brent above last year's high, which was $82.63, which is about today's high. It's right now just below 80. You need some kind of that right now. It makes sense. You're supposed to pop up to those levels. Um, and that risk that the strait is closed, but not for military actions, but for normal, prudent get away. If Iran succeeds in closing that, which has never happened, that's a problem. I think by the time we get to the end of the week, we'll find out that the US military, this part of an operation, it usually does pretty well. It's very good at rendering enemies defenseless and offensive lists. So, if we're still seeing a lot of missiles coming out of um Iran by the end of the week, that's a problem. Otherwise, I fully expect this bid to be short-term to look very similar to what the Bitcoin bid looked like in January because the bottom line is this is people are talking they keep forgetting the answers have changed. The price maker status in Cordell switched to the western hemisphere. So put out probably republished for tomorrow is pointing out is Iran exports less than two million barrels a day. Obviously, it's very political where it is now, but the US and Canada, their supply demand surplus is running 8 million barrels a day. That's just that's the highest ever. That's where things are happening. So I guarantee you you can see that in the forward curve, all these producers are selling forward in the forward curve and you can see like D crude oil is running $62 or so. So this is short-term. Something bad has to happen. We have to hear about the US military having setbacks. But this is as we know and Dave, I'm sure you can get this part is this part of the operation for US military. They usually don't mess up. Their ability to take out bad guys and rip apart anything is easy. It's afterwards that's more complicated. But I think the key thing I want to point out between the light crude and and and the oil that's coming out of the Middle East though. So that's that that does matter. And the who the buyers are and the largest buyer um of uh or I'm sorry, China is uh you know, has been buying quite a bit of oil from Iran if I'm if I'm correct. I don't I'm I am not an oil expert, but you're you're on to something James, that that that is to me the funniest part of well, funny, I mean, if you look at at at the data today and what's going on, there's a bunch of things that are fascinating. I mean, one of them, first of all, Brent is up more than than than West Texas. That's not terribly surprising. You know, light sweet, you know, whatever that the premium there is for obvious reasons. What it's not about oil production, it's about oil transportation. The the, you know, look, you know, my my son, you know, left Dubai and got someplace else. So, I won't go through his personal life, but he managed to get by uh, you know, on Friday or Saturday. And you know, it it's it's it's a [ __ ] show over there. I mean, not in the sense of there's anything really bad, but there's generally speaking, you know, around the Straits of Hormuz, the fact is the Iranians, it's a very small thing. I mean, you know, it's like it doesn't take a whole lot to shut down oil transport. Now, their biggest ally is pissed. I mean, like really pissed. This is this is really bad for China. They don't want it to happen. And so geopolitically they're sort of in a ridiculous situation which is, you know, if they tried to help uh, in fact, if let's say for example, they use the Chinese provided weapons to hit oil tankers and close the straits for any extended period of time, that screws China. So you have to look at the geopolitics here as as very interesting. And many people, some of the ones I respect the most that I've seen, some of the commentators who actually understand what the hell's going on, basically see a large part of the reason for this action has to do with China. A as in general, uh, there are some people who are saying, "Well, China was using Iran to test out their weapon systems to see how well they're working." Uh, you know, stories not so good. They probably have to go back to the drawing board. But more importantly, the US sees this as a deterrent towards Taiwan. And so we're not going to back down. There's just zero probability of us backing down at this point. And so you need to understand what's actually happening. And the straits are are vulnerable for short or longer term. If you if there the insurance companies aren't giving people insurance, so they're not going through it right now. The truth is if a if major damage was done there, it could be a real headache for Chinese oil prices. So, you know, Mike, when you always talk about China's deflationary issues, you know, right? Well, all of a sudden they're going to have huge problems because they won't be able to get at the oil that they need. Whereas we, as Mike points out, have no problem. Exact same thing's playing out in natural gas. Natural gas in the US is cratered. It it's and it hasn't budged. It's $3. European natural gas is dramatically higher because of the geopolitical factors. The fact that that what was it? Was it I forgot who it was? Qatar. One of the Gulf states shut down their LNG factories. I read this morning, right? So it's like right 50% premium to European natural gas.

Already. So gas prices, these are all crosscurrents from an asset point of view. There are traders out there who are playing this in all sorts of different spreads within this market. I mean, that but what Mike is basically saying is the traders have also said this ain't lasting and oil shouldn't be at these prices, right? And so it that that's why when you see that kind of backwardization or you know of where where December is 15, 16, you know, 20% below uh June, you know, you you know that's a big number. I mean, that is not normal, right? You know, and and so Mike is right. I mean, the the world thinks this is going to be temporary. Now, whether it's true or not, that's also interesting. The last thing and I'm curious what Mike sees about this, the other the other really interesting trade this morning, the one that I think it may be most interesting is totally rational by the way. Makes total sense is gold up, silver down.

I think it makes complete sense because silver is a risk asset, right? You know, it's tied to the global economy. It's tied to, as you said, solar EVs. It's also tied to tomahawk missiles, but they don't need as much silver in those drones, which are what are what we're really using. Uh and a fascinating, you know, story about, you know, how we've managed to reverse engineer drone technology and get get it out in the field. But the fact that silver, and by the way, it's still at 92, so it's hardly exactly falling, but gold is is pushing 54 again. And that's basically gold as monetary value, silver as as risk asset. And so you're seeing silver trading more with the NASDAQ. That actually makes a huge amount of sense. Uh it's it one day does not make a trend, though. But I'm curious what you think about that, Mike. Yeah. Um Dave, I think you're spot on and it's a key thing. It always happens anytime you get a spike in stock market volatility. Gold always outperforms almost anything, particularly um leverage, gold, silver. But I think it's a smart to go there because I'm seeing potential peaks in all these metals on this event now. And let's put the in context when we had Russia's um and sorry, President Z and President Putin created their unlimited friendship four years ago. They um then then the war started in Ukraine. It was supposed to last two weeks, been four four years. Mr. Trump proved in Venezuela, you want to take out a government you don't like, he can do it in a couple hours. So that's kind of a shocker. So since then, what's happened? That was the bid for gold, but it took three years. Remember, it's stuck below 2,000 forever until 24. But what's happened since is now they've lost Syria. They've lost Venezuela. They've lost Iran is potentially toast. And this Iran thing, this is almost a 50-year event. Those of us who remember the, you know, the revolution in 1979, this is huge relief on a global cage put potentially picking in kicking in by end of this week if Iran is no longer able to lash out with missiles. And if the US military doesn't stop that or be able to control that, shame on them because they've had 40 years of wargaming for this. For to me, this is part of that geopolitical bid for gold getting poof. It's gone. It's not going to be necessary anymore. And the problem is it's priced in. The last thing you want to buy on this type of rally is a gold rally because it's like thank you, we've already done the rally and if you still got a few longs, it's supposed to be lightening up. My point is I think what's happening here is when the dust settles, which we know will if the the US should be able to suppress this situation quickly. I mean, it's if they can't, they shouldn't have gone in and we know we've obviously been prepared for this forever, but so to me this is part of that peak and like you have to expect something really bad for you know, crude to stay above 72 and Brent and and WTI and right now it's 79 in Brent. So I'm I'm looking that this is see all the dust settles, but what I'm really worried about is this might be the trigger for all that volatility and precious metals and the collapsing cryptos to trickle down to the stock market.

See, I I I look at it the opposite. Uh and and I'll tell you why. Uh well, first of all, I don't look at the opposite on gold. I actually kind of agree with you there. I think that we're at its equilibrium price. Uh I do think that that the reason for the bid for gold isn't geopolitical because it's not come the bid for gold, the the early bid for gold came from outside of the G7 and those countries aren't changing their their gold their gold accumulation. That's not going to happen. Uh I think that the the US use of sanctions etc. those there's no we're not going back from that. So I don't think it's nearly as dire as you think, but yes, I mean, it feels toppy right now in the in the short term. Can it run to 5500 as I said before? Yeah, it can uh, you know, can it go a little above that because markets always overcorrect? Yeah, okay, but but let's not talk about goal for a heartbeat. Let's talk about what is the the market ignoring as a potential and markets do this all the time. You know, the one one of the interesting things is when things when people are unhappy uh and things are bad uh people rarely price in the good tail events. People always want to try to price in the negative tail events. People always do. So you get people will buy put insurance, but no one buys insurance against world peace, right? You know, they just don't do it. And so what does that mean? Well, if you're an investor, you want to understand what the the the ultimately largest potential left tail, you know, good tail, whatever you want to call it, event is. It's no longer having Iran as the world's largest state sponsor of terror. And I'm not and by the way, this is one of those rare occasions because when we talk about markets, we we talk about, you know, what we think in terms of our favorite asset prices, but the the peace dividend would be absolutely massive at a time when we really need it given what's going on with AI. But it is it is not priced at you. People do not understand what the, you know, the amount of of economic breakage, the amount of uh the amount of economic drain having uh Iran stirring up trouble throughout the GCC. Talk to people in Dubai. Of course, be before this. Now, they they be y they're yelling it, but the entire Gulf as a global hub of economic activity is restrained by political and geopolitical risk. That goes away. Uh those regions will go absolutely batshit crazy. The demand side of the equation becomes huge. The amount of military spending is not going to decrease in the short run. It just isn't because we're we're literally spending enormous amounts of money. I mean, the entire increase probably in the defense budget that Trump has put in is probably getting going to armaments that are being used. So it's not like that's going to go anywhere. So you know in terms of fiscal the fiscal impetus is not going to decrease. You have rebuilding. You have all sorts of things that are going to go on, but the truth is it's a massive peace dividend and you know in terms of, you know, drain on economies and and productive use etc and markets are absolutely not pricing that in. Now, is it likely? You know, I'm not a geopolitical strategist. I'm not an expert. I've been reading lots of experts uh as a result, I would kind of I had to pull a number out of my ass. I would say somewhere in the the 10 to 20% range for that kind of goldilock scenario where Iran ends up with civilian elections uh whether it's under Palavi in the interim or not uh and and we don't want to delve into the details here, that's not this show, but that scenario where there is no where where the the that particular side of the global war of terror can end is an incredibly big deal and people don't understand it. Doesn't mean the little war on terror ends by the way, because I mean, as crazy as it is to see ISIS literally telling their fighters to help Israel against Iran because they see the opportunity to take out their enemies. Uh that should warn you that that terror doesn't stop just because you know, one pro the major provocator ends, but it is a very big deal. And so there there's a lot of crosscurrents here. And the reason the markets are the reason I said Scott, you know, you had a a post this weekend. You you quote posted someone who talked about today being the biggest bloodbath since 87. And you know, every time I hear that, I basically said this may be the dumbest post I've ever seen. And and you because look, the worst thing that could possibly happen is something we won't know today, which is that this drags on for months. The most likely scenario for this, and it is the most likely scenario, is within days Iran's ability to act as a coherent military power is gone. And you have splintered groups with access to portable missiles firing from random locations and we're playing whack-a-mole, you know, against them. And the real question that we won't know for probably weeks is will a a a is there will enough of the IRGC commanders and subcommanders and sub subcommanders effectively lay down their arms and submit to a civilian authority to where they can actually have a government because right because what it more what what it will start with is what you were saying over the weekend Scott is is will this be warlord central with you know, with anarchy? The likelihood of Iran surviving in its current form as a theocracy with a top-down theocracy with top-down control and authoritarian control over their military is close to zero. I don't want to repeat that and I mean close to zero because that is literally what we're not going to allow it. It could reestablish itself months from now, years from now, but it's not going to h not there's no way. Mike is right. There's no way in hell we're leaving. But the immediate economic impact is gonna came come out of the straight of Hormuz. So that's the that's.

And can't control and and and you know. Can I make one more point James because I just want to make just complete because then I'm done. The point that that you just made and what I'm saying is one small battalion, one truck, you know, kind of on the road with one set of commanders with the right set of missiles could close the Strait of Hormuz even if it is not Iranian government policy. And what people don't understand the economic risk and why, by the way, Mike's right that it's temporary, is it doesn't mean that top down, but bottom up, somebody could decide to go ahead and and fire at all the ships that are there and try to and try to close the straits. That's that's that's the bigger risk. Okay, now I'm done. I'm sorry. That's exactly right. That's and that's the issue right there is that short term economically that's that's what we're staring at. So, how much is that how much impact do we have there? And then because of that, you know, how much does it damage um not that we have good relations with China right now, but how much does it damage the, you know, any of of the talks that are going on there? You know, how how much does it how much impact does it have? So, that's that's another issue. Um it's hard to tell. It's uh and we're we're going to be obviously watching closely, but you're you're watching oil move up and down and like you said that there's uh you know, the between the the Middle Eastern oil and the light sweet that comes out of here, they're just completely different products. I mean, we can't we don't even we we don't even refine our own oil. So, that's great that we have a ton of oil production. We don't have the refineries to do it. And that's a whole another conversation of why we can't get those built. But, you know, it's uh that that's that's one of the uh the problems we have here. And so, um but you're watching the markets try to game all of that out. And and I fully agree that's why silver's down because it's a it's basically a risk asset, you know, and it also ran so hard because it was one of the it was one of those assets that investors, you know, they pivoted to when when Bitcoin started rolling over because they thought, "Ah, that's it. Bitcoin's Bitcoin's done on this run. I need something else that's going to be running hard." And and Silver's got all of the, you know, AI and and EV narrative and we're gonna we're gonna take that up and that's going to be the next thing. You know, it's not like it was GameStop because it does actually have a you know, obviously it's got tremendous um value and uh you know, but but it's just that this is that you're watching traders move from one risk asset to another, try to figure out where they can actually make money. In the meantime, they are concerned about inflation or you wouldn't be seeing what's happening in the 10-year completely pivot from from uh, you know, falling below or getting driven below 4% yield and then now popping right back over it on Monday morning.

Yeah, I think we should just give the broad strokes on the oil situation as it is just so people know. I like that article said, Bloomberg thinks that the worst situation could go to $108 a barrel. Just really interesting here because Goldman did estimate specifically if you guys just want to look what each potential event would mean for the price of oil. And I think that that's relatively interesting. For example, $15 for a full one-month closure, etc. But also, I mean, people should know that Iran has been firing off missiles uh in basically every direction and it's not like they're just hitting Israel or United States interests. I mean, this is Saudi Arabia's Aramco, right? So clearly they're targeting things to destroy oil infrastructure in some way, shape or form. I mean, you can see the people bailing from that facility and.

Also and I I don't know I don't know about that if that really came out of Alzer. You got we also have to be really careful. Something to caution people is that I've already seen a few AI uh videos that are just not true about about hotels or whatever hit out in um in in resort areas and it's just yeah in Dubai and whatever it's just I you just got to be careful people just of what the source is. And the hyperbole, right? I mean, the EU has reached a panic moment as not all member states have sufficient energy reserves. Uh a leading energy analyst it's just one analyst says was likely to increase energy imports from Russia, which many people pointing to could be sort of a secondary negative effect that would not have necessarily been anticipated. I think the bottom line is that markets hate uncertainty and we are in the. Peak of uncertainty right now with oil. I mean, I I think that maybe is the uh kind of finisher there. I mean, Mike, do you think that that's accurate?

Oh, well, this this is the initial stage, but look how significant this is. James, you mentioned chi um President Trump meeting with um President Z pretty soon in China. Just imagine his upper hand now and kind of got sick of a a leader in the South American Venezuela is pushing back an American flag. Poof, he's gone. Um Cuba, we've already warned their leadership. Poof, you're going to be next. Um Iran's their leadership's gone. Okay, poof. US has kind of got pissed off, said you're done. I mean, this is a huge upper hand. There's only one country in oil that can do this and they're doing it, right? This is not good for hope.

So much so that even though Europe and UK want nothing to do with this, Canada wants nothing to do with this. They say that. They have absolutely. I love that they say it, but then they want open season to be able to trade. The US is providing that. Thank you. You're welcome very much. But Canada actually support I mean, I I was surprised. I I was McCarney came out with a statement basically, you know, saying, "Oh, Trump, good job. Let's let's let's let's work together, right?" You know, which which stunned me. But look, the geopolitics here for those who are fighting playing along at home should understand there's there's two huge effects.

Z does not is look, we're not taking out Z. We have no interest in it. It's this is a this is far more of a strategic don't [ __ ] with us in Taiwan deal. That that that that's what this is about as far as China is concerned. And you know what uh that is relevant and that and that is a large part of what of what we're doing. This is deterrence. Uh as far as Putin is concerned, there is a very real chance that this leads to peace. Uh in fact, if you noticed uh if you notice the tone of of what Putin has been saying and doing and you notice what Zalinsky has been saying and doing over the weekend, this is a gun pointed at Putin's head quite literally. Uh and at the same time uh it's not like, you know, it's not like Zillinsky hasn't been looking at this saying, okay, look, you know, he's basically praising the action and talking about it, right?

Well, here's the thing here geopolitically Dave, this is something that's really important and and then to I'm going to tee you up here, but in Trump's first term, everything he said seemed seemed to just be hyperbolic, like he just there's threat after threat after threat and people are like, well, he's crazy. We don't know if he would do anything. Well, now you know. Now you know that the threats are not hyperbolic. He's he he will act and he's got, you know, he's got the uh the Department of Defense aligned in a way that he can do it. Now, this first term, he couldn't do it because he didn't he didn't put people in place that uh he actually was aligned with. But now he's got people aligned with him that are are ready to do exactly what he's saying he wants to do and figure out ways to do it rather than saying we can't do that and just move on to the next thing. And that's what's got everybody on notice. President Xi, President, you know, Putin, you Castro, they're all on notice.

Yeah. I mean, he said uh he sees a world where uh, you know, we take control of Cuba. Look, it it was we all kind of laughed. They did two things when he in the first within the first month of the term that we laughed about. Calling the Gulf of Mexico turning it into the Gulf of America and changing the Department of Defense back to its original name, the Department of War. And it is exceedingly obvious that neither one of those was irrelevant. They were they were a very strong that I missed. I didn't really think that it mattered. Well, no, it matters. It's like, okay, if we're going to have this capability, we're going to use this capability and we're going to try to be a force for what we believe to be good. Whether you agree with it or not, it doesn't matter, right? You know, at this point, you know, you could we could talk about regime change. Look, I have I have been so outspoken on against the notion of foreign interventions for regime change most of my life. Uh, I thought the original Gulf War in Iraq was literally the single dumbest thing that that the United States government has ever done, destabilizing a region. Now, if you want to know why I thought it was the dumbest, it was because it it Iraq was the counterweight to Iran. So, you know, this is different and I keep saying.

Take out the Department of Terrorism is the problem, right? The issue here is the single most destabilizing wild card. There were two wild cards in this world. One, Trump resolved through diplomacy and one is resolving through violence. Diplomacy was North Korea. Now, is it resolved? No. But have you heard a peep out of out of them? You know, no. And you won't for a very good reason, right? Uh, you know, if you think about those are the the wild cards. North Korea has nuclear bombs. Iran, there is no way they can have it. Anyone no one everyone in America ignores. Death to America was not just a slogan that they you they're not selling cereal boxes. Literally, that's what they believe. You don't give somebody who has that opportunity, who has that as their their mantra the the power to to actually do it. And and that's that's what's going on. I mean, this is going back a long time. You have to be old. Scott, you're probably not old enough, but Mike and James, you do remember. Remember in the 80s Iran was getting close to nuclear weapons. What happened? Well, Israel obviously with our help went in and destroyed the plants. Preemptive strike, boom, done, right? You know, they didn't take out the rest of the military because there wasn't, you know, the threat was.

There's also there's also something else and that and this points back to that and back to Benghazi during uh when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of uh of state that the difference is if you're going to storm our embassies now, we are going to defend ourselves. You know, back in the 80s, we were we were clueless. We were like, "Oh, well, we didn't have enough Marines or enough firepower to defend the embassy." Now we do. You know, that's obviously become abundantly clear. And that's a difference, too. It's a different stance. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's true.

Who's going to come out next and say death? Go ahead. Who's going to come out next and say death to America? I mean, this this is a paradigm shift on a global stage and there's not too many countries on the planet that are favorable to Iran, but now they're realizing, okay, this this marks a major shift in geopolitical trend which to me is I don't want to hold gold in this environment. It's all going safe now. That that access that included Iran and Venezuela and South and North Korea is crumbling. It's just and we'll see this by the end of the week. I can't see how the US military cannot render Iran defenseless and offenseless and they can't shame then. This is, you know, they've had 40 years to plan for this.

So now remember, remember Mike, it's not about that. Iran as a functioning unified command and control entity is already gone. It's already done. Gone. Iran having however massive amounts of weaponry and people desperate uh, you know, with individual ability to fire weapons based on what they think they individual commanders can do and whatever that that it's a country of of what 90 million people. This is not small. Overlay the map of Iran over the United States. It is not small. I mean, it t this isn't Gaza. This isn't, you know, this isn't, you know, a war in a in in that you can measure in single digit or double digit miles. You know, this is this is a huge country. So, it it's that's why they're warning you this is going to be what in statistics we call this a fat tail, meaning that the the initial thing happens and you've you've crippled their command and control and now you have and now you have to go after the rest of it unless the people start laying down their arms. Yeah. Which is what happened in.

Yeah. I think hearken back to our conversation about Venezuela and just to clarify my points Dave, because you know, you and I kind of debated about this a bit. I think you can both be excited that Kmeni is gone and the potential that that government will be gone and that that evil will be gone, but also be skeptical of the United States right or uh reason for going in to do it. And I'm sorry, it I'm glad he's gone, much like I was glad Maduro's gone. But the United States leaving a power vacuum has notoriously been bad long-term for those regions, even if you replace someone evil uh because we don't have a plan and we're terrible at nation building. That's a and b. I'm sorry, when I see last year in June, the White House saying all of Iran's nuclear capabilities have been destroyed. Anything else is fake news as an official statement. And then we start hearing they're a week away, they're a month away, which we've been hearing for decades, literally. I am not comfortable going to war on false pretenses, even if I agree with the outcome of that war. And so I I and I do not I do not think Iran is any different. Uh I I know you do. I don't think it's different. I think it's different to people who are more personally close to, you know, Israel or Jewish and all those things make perfect sense. But I think if you zoom out and look at it in a vacuum, it's very similar to previous.

Well, then you've got Trump announcing that, well, all of the people that he had lined up and thought could be successors, well, they were killed, too. Oops. So, you know. It wasn't an oops. It it it's look, it separate space. We go into into depth from a macro point of view. I think that people need to understand one thing which is the messiness that you're talking about is going to drag on. We're not going to have answers to this. We'll be talking about this for months as long as we're going to be talking about the messiness and the power vacuum and what will actually happen if anything other than that happened. i.e. Havi comes back uh and shepherds and and and is good to his word. And and and by the way, for those who don't know, uh Mario did an amazingly detailed interview with Palavi last summer, which was a a great interview and he talked about a lot of things. The most important takeaway from that me from that interview was that was, you know, the son of the Shah basically said he has no interest in being a monarch. What he wants to do is help them transition to a constitutional uh, you know, parliamentary republic, whatever I mean, but basically an elected, you know, civilian-run country, a secular civilian country, that's that's his goal. Now, if he's good to his word and if he has enough popular support and that happens, that is a a massively right tail like a good tail event. Will that happen? I mean, look how the hell do you do it? But if it does, what what normally happens as Scott says, you we're stuck in in in an unknown uncertain uh environment for months. This is we'll be talking about this. There's no way in hell that we're going to have this resolved. And if we do have something resolved.

Talk about Afghanistan and Iraq, you know, it's that the these things.

Never end because there's no plan in place. Uh, I, I do want to pivot, I guess, off of Iran a bit because some of the other secondary offense effects now. Odds of the Fed, Fed not cutting rates in March have surged to 95.7%. I would love, uh, your opinions on this.

"If defense secretary is listening, that I think that the Fed is within weeks of a nuclear weapon, so we should um..."

"Where is, where, what is the, the rate when you look at the curve, though? The curve is, is, I was on this before, so go back to do the, to, to the, the full, the full curve. So right now, uh, the market is 50% rate cut within, uh, a year is, is 50 is basically three, three and a half and then flat, you know, effectively flat to two years, flat to three years, flatish to five years, and it just starts ticking back up to, you know, 379 at the seven-year to get to that four. So you have, you know, a, a yield curve that more or less, uh, is saying there'll be one or two, depending on what rate cuts and then..."

"...cut two cuts by the end of this, by the end of this year."

"Two."

"Right? And then nothing in the, in the out years is, is what, what the, what the bond market is saying, obviously. Um, obviously that's not true because of the way steepening yield."

"Well, let me, let me, let me share this so you could see the Fed, the Fed futures off of, um, off of Bloomberg and then you, you know, we can, we can talk about it. But, uh, you got this there, Mike."

"Or Scott, you got this?"

"I'm bringing it."

"Dude, is it even showing?"

"Yeah. No, I got it. I just..."

"All right. So, so what, what you're seeing here is that you've got two cuts basically that are priced in to the end of the year. Okay. So here's 1209. So it's 2.2, two cuts. But then you're saying the, the market is saying that the, you know, the, the, uh, ultimate rate, uh, not the neutral rate. What's the word I'm looking for here, guys? Um, anyway, the, you know, you're, you're getting down to the, uh, the number of the number of cuts is 3.4 and your implied rate is 2.8. So, you know, um, that's, that's in 2028. Of course, the market is always good at just kind of hedging itself, which gets to your point, Dave. And so, where do we end up? You know, I mean, right now, this, this is not a very dramatic, uh, curve. And it means that the Fed's going to be sitting on its hands quite a bit."

"So, the neutral rate closer, saying the neutral rate is closer to 3% is what they're saying. No expectation for March anyway, effectively, because we're on a slower curve going through the end of the year, and that doesn't change the fact that people believe we'll get..."

"...the word I was looking for is a terminal rate, by the way, right?"

"I could, I could point out the one key factor that'll get the Fed to ease, get rates to go down, yields to go down, um, risk assets, Bitcoin, even crude oil to continue to go down because it's still bare market, it's just the upper end in the range is, um, NASDAQ 180-day volatility at 15%, the lowest in eight years, just recovering a little bit. That's my base case for this year. It's still the lowest in eight years. Volatility, stock market volatility will go up is my base case, and I don't see a reason to end that. All this volatility we're seeing in other markets, still not pressuring that, still not trickling down the US stock market. To me, that's the key thing. Is until that happens, until the stock market backs up, and there's no reason for the Fed to do anything."

"Well, there, there is if we have, if we have a large spike in unemployment. There is. And then here's the other thing. Here's the funny thing is that last week, you had, you had, uh, you know, Jack Dorsey, the, for those who don't know who, who, who cut half of his workforce at Block, 4,000 employees, not a lot of employees in, in, you know, the scheme of the US American workforce, but it was a, it was a huge, huge red flag of, wow, he just cut out half his workforce in one fell swoop. Okay, that's number one. Number two, here's another data point that some people have not heard, maybe, is that I was on stage with Michael Saylor and, uh, Fong Lee last week at the strategy conference, and we were talking about AI and how much they use AI and how much middle management has just been absolutely eliminated from the conversation because they just don't need them. And now he's not out there just slashing workforce, but he's saying that he goes from, you know, they, they have the heads of each department. You've got your legal officer, and you've got your financial officer. You've got your marketing officer. You've got your investment officer, and you've got those heads who are there, okay? They, they have, they have long deep experience. And then you've got the underlings that are around the, uh, you know, intern level or entry level that understand how to prompt engineer. And then you work with that. They're going bypassing all those people, going to the prompt engineer and talking to them, who's just a kid, and then they come up with these ideas and these plans, these models, and then they go to the head of that department and say, is this a good idea or not? Because now you need the critical thinking. But the vacuum that has been created between the two levels is astounding. And that's the shot over the bow that we heard last week from Jack Dorsey. That that's something to me that is kind of a, it's kind of a bell that's been rung that you we ought to be watching unemployment closely now. I mean, week to week to see where it's ticking through all of this AI innovation."

"I have warned us about..."

"Yeah."

"Can I make one point there on that because..."

"What's that?"

"...said is that what Jeff warned us about?"

"Yeah."

"This is a Jeff Booth scenario, just rapid technologies, deflationary. There are there are two. Oh god, I hate..."

"However. No, wait. What I don't think Jeff. Well, yeah. So, but to talk about the rapid, the just the rapidity of what's happening and how it's accelerating with AI, like I don't think anybody expected it to be like this. We'll see what happens, you know, and I'm, I'm somebody who who believes that..."

"...jobs will be, you know, people will be displaced, not discarded, you know, and you'll have to adjust how you're interacting with your profession, but I don't think everybody's laid off. But this is, you know, this is just an interesting moment here. And that would be one of the two, you know, uh, the Fed has two mandates, and one of them is full employment. And if you start having a massive tick up in unemployment, you're going to see them pivot pretty quickly in my opinion."

"Okay. I, I, this needs some a little bit of of explanation, but if you looked at what happened to Dorsey's company, 4,000 people un, you know, unemployed, stock screams higher. That is going to replicate itself throughout the entire industry. The AI is going to make assets more valuable at large. Now, some will go out of business. Yes. In any disruptive change, you know, there are losers, but the aggregate will be more profitable capital, less profitable wages, which is exactly the societal problem pathology that we're facing now, a so-called K-shaped economy. I mean, I'm going to get on faces today, and I'm sure Robert Infra and a few other people who've been screaming at this stuff, and I will yell at each other in a bit, although in truth, I agree with him. The, the fact is that this basically is putting the United States into a crossroads. And the crossroads is the tools to actually come out of this with a reasonable society is re-industrialization, re-eliminating offshoring. By the way, this makes eliminating offshoring in services really easy because you don't need to pay people in call centers in Bangalore. You don't need to make voters in Bangalore. But you're seeing a prioritization..."

"...being enforced of capital over labor. It is deflationary in the consumer sense. It is deflationary in the expense sense. It is not deflationary in a world where what are the policies the US government needs to do to stop pitchforks and and knives coming out from the populace saying, 'Oh my god, we're all unemployed.' The answer is two things. Same two things that that this administration wants to do: deregulate and re-industrialize. And re-industrialization requires lower rates. It does. And and they're going to want to flood the market. And and what, what you end up with is something that is politically unpopular, not with people, but with our, our, our oxygenarian representatives and senators because what needs to happen is big companies are being are going to get eaten by smaller companies because you don't need to be big anymore. I mean, when you start talking about middle management, look, I don't know you guys. I mean, Mike's working for Bloomberg. They're a fairly big company. I work for Citi Group, and I can tell you that a third of their workforce is useless. Absolutely useless. You have middle manager after middle manager after middle manager in a world where the actual expert is now empowered. The experts who, the smart ones who raise themselves up are now empowered to do the job that they didn't need. You know, they didn't have these tools. Anybody who's using AI to any extent, and I, I'm not by any means an expert, but I use it every day just for content creation. I mean, you may have noticed I was on vacation last week, and I wrote what, two or three articles that are as good as anything that I've written before. Yes, they're my ideas, but AI makes it just so much easier. If you think that having armies of analysts at, you know, just think of the analyst programs at Goldman Sachs,..."

"...you know, the people who used to work 90, 90 hours a week to prepare spreadsheets and prepare powerpoints. That's all AI. Now, does that mean that the analysts won't, won't be involved? Of course, they will be. Just need less of them. But it'll be..."

"...those analysts also are the ones who become VPs and, uh, you know, that's the training program."

"And by the way, by the way, what does that mean? That means that the older you are, the more likely the less likely that you're going to continue to get raises because you could be replaced easier. There's so many dynamics going on here that are going to make stocks better, but are going to cause a lot more people to have to go out and create newer, smaller businesses. And so if you don't have the, the, if you don't have the, the setup to do that from a regulatory point of view, from a raising capital point of view, you're in trouble. Now, if you think Ben doesn't know what I just said, then you're smoking something because he absolutely does. They get it. And and that, that those are big trends. We can go in one of two directions with a few minutes left. Uh, A, we haven't talked about Bitcoin at all, and there's obviously a discussion to be had, at least conjecture. Do we believe that Bitcoin trades like a risk asset depending on how this goes, or can it actually pull a Silicon Valley Bank or a Bank of Cyprus and be a, you know, store of value, flight to safety? And the other..."

"Interesting. It's 2% today is pretty interesting. It's, you know, I mean, it's, it's just the, the continued, uh, uncorrelation to the regular markets is, uh, it's, it's pretty interesting."

"Well, no. I, I bet you. I think that all markets, pretty much all markets except for oil. Well, oil probably will be, but depending on when you measure it from, but I think markets are going to be green today. I mean, I've been, that was my base case going into today. And..."

"...not Black Monday."

"Yeah, I agree."

"No, I think it's going to be a green Monday. I mean, we're only down half a percent on the S&P, uh, and on the NASDAQ right now, right? You know, it, and Bitcoin is slightly higher. I mean, you know, whatever. I look, I wrote my, I option thesis last week as an article form. You can all read it if you want. I'm not going to speak to it, but I think that that answers my view of your question. Bitcoin right now is a hated asset in retail. It is the, the speculators are not there, and there have been people who are quietly buying, and it's either going to die or it isn't going to die. And if it isn't going to die, it's going to, it's going to move higher. And I think that it may be a relief rally now. You know, it's not anything, whatever. I still think it grinds higher. Yeah, it's just doing nothing, right? And which is fine. Like, I think it's positive that it's just doing nothing, right? But, uh, it is up slightly today."

"Well, but, you know, people keep making all these stupid statements like Iran's, uh, like they mine a lot of Bitcoin, so it's going to be a ton of supply, and other people saying it's going to be a supply shock. The answer is, Bitcoin has been a lifeline to certain people in Iraq. That's true. The government, who knows what the government situation is? We don't know. We have no idea. Uh, and so, you know, to, to even comment on it makes no sense. But, you know, look, risk assets, I think are set up. I'm contra Mike. Mike keeps talking about a disaster. I think that that risk assets are set up to have yet another good year. Uh, I think Bitcoin and the risk assets that will perform the best are the ones who are companies that will benefit from AI as opposed to be disintermediated, and things like Bitcoin, which are foundational for an ecosystem. That's generally my belief. Uh, I have thought this for a long time. I still think it. I think that, you know, we're still working through the bottoms of the technical damages and blah, blah, blah. Uh, uh, and all of the, the, the, the wash out from 1010,..."

"...you know, but I thought it was worth because James, you wrote about Jane Street,..."

"...if you're going to talk about Bitcoin,..."

"...you know, look, I've been in an argument with Justin Beckler and a few other people online about this, uh, defending Matt Hogan because they got, they're all butt-hurt because Matt didn't diverge, didn't divulge that Jane Street's an authorized participant, which, by the way, is public record, has been public record, and anyone who knows anything about ETFs knows that pretty much if you're in an ETF that Jane Street's in, they're an authorized participant. They, because they're, they're literally an 800-pound gorilla, uh, in a lot of, especially in the non-equity ETFs. So,..."

"...you know, this notion that that they've had a systematic 10:00, you know, suppression of Bitcoin price is completely absurd. What is not absurd, not absurd, is it is entirely possible, and I don't know this, but entirely possible that there have been some large derivative contract related selling of of Bitcoin. So you could do a spot, you could do a swap, you could do lots of things, and we'll talk about this. I'll probably go on Bitcoin today and talk about it just to explain it to people."

"But when those things are done, so a large seller X says, 'I have 50,000 Bitcoin I'm going to sell over the next six months.' What they often do is structure this as a product which picks a period of time and takes a volume weighted average price during that period of time to strike the swap at. And this goes on for days and days and days, weeks and weeks and weeks, months and months and months. It happens all the time. When that is being done, who are the people who are actually selling? Well, it's the market makers because it's whoever is on the other side of the derivative. Now, I don't know if it's Jane Street. I don't know if it's Citadel. I don't know if it's Morgan Stanley. It doesn't matter who it is. It's there could be someone doing that. I used to sit on equity derivative desks. I know this happens. That is so much more likely than some sophisticated manipulation plot that people are telegraphing for other people to front-run. I can't even describe it. I mean, I, I would assign the probability of it being manipulation at less than 1%. The probability that there have been derivative trades at probably over 80 to 90%. And that, that's generally my statement. So, you can..."

"...take that as you wish. I'm curious, James, what, how do you react to that?"

"Well, not, not. Yeah, exactly. And not, and not withstand, you know, also the, the difference here is you, Bitcoin has has the ability to be levered 50, 100 times in plain view. You know, you could see this on your monitor that there's a certain amount of perpetual leverage that's sitting on the books. That's like that's that's something different for Wall Street up until today. You know, they may have contacts that would give them an idea that there was exposure from some big hedge funds that may have a certain amount of leverage. They don't get, they didn't get a run of orders to see exactly where they were exposed, how much they were levered, where the derivatives and swaps were. Like back in 1998 when Long-Term Capital Management blew up, we're all trying to figure out who it was, what they held, why it was happening, and what we need to do about it next. Whereas here, it's like, well, you could see right on the screen there where the leverage is. So if they want to slam it down and take advantage of people who are way over their ski tips and just, you know, wipe out all of that leverage and then swoop in and buy it below. That's not illegal. It's sitting there for them to see it, you know. And do they have the power to do it? Of course they do because Dave said they, he described them in a simple way. They're an 800-pound gorilla. Good luck fighting that. You know, we, if I was at a $5 billion hedge fund back in 2000, 2002, if we wanted to move something, we could. And we weren't even on leverage. So, just imagine what guys like this can do. Like the power that you have at one of these huge institutions is, it's, uh, unwieldy at best. So,..."

"Right. I mean, look, I wrote this, I wrote an article last week specifically and let me, I'll just throw the link up here for anyone who cares. Um,..."

"...although it is interesting, Dave, that that 9:30, 10:00 sell-off was it did seem like clockwork. Not every day."

"I mean, it is. Yeah. Go ahead."

"Go ahead, Scott. Because..."

"...when open."

"Well, I was gonna say, it's also when markets open. So, uh, and we have 10 o'clock things, right? So like, whatever happened, you understand..."

"...why it happens that way is because when you're running a derivative contract or something and you want to have a baseline price, the open is very messy."

"Yep."

"So what, what do they do? Time. And by the way, the same is true into the close, but the into the close doesn't work as well because Europe and and and Asia is already asleep. Whereas when the US open happens, yeah, there's still late night traders in Asia and Europe is is in the middle of their trading day. So picking a time period from like 10 to 11 or 10 to 10:30 is considered to be the most pristine time period from a cleanliness point of view. And so that's why they do it that way. It's, it's not nefarious. It's just, it is, it is what it is."

"Um, but, but it is important to understand. I literally went through and described and wrote the the mechanics of how, not saying it was Jane Street at all because I have no knowledge, but the mechanics of how you can manipulate crypto markets that are five times more liquid on the on the perpetuals versus the versus the spot because it's literally the same thing that was true in the Japanese stock market in the '90s, right? You know, I, I was there. So, I've seen this thing. And by the way, the Japanese regulators ignored it until a few years later and then they cottoned on and it doesn't happen anymore. And my point is that if Celig in the CFTC, uh, you know, wants to stop this, he can. He has the tools at his disposal. But anyway, I sent you the link Scott for that that article which explains it. And if it is true that Jane Street was actually doing this, and it is possible given their history, I'm not saying they they aren't or aren't. I'm not, I, I have no opinion because I don't know. Somebody was involved in 1010. And if, if that was not a market manipulation attack, then I, I don't know. I, I then fool me. You know, I would be beyond stunned if that was not orchestrated and the moral equivalent of an arsonist trying to burn down a building not knowing it had a big pile of thermite in the basement."

"Well, Mike, you got any final thoughts..."

"...before we go? I know we're kind of over time, but..."

"Um, Bitcoin. Yeah, Bitcoin, simple, sweet. Bitcoin is the tip of the risk assets ice, um, iceberg. The whole crypto market's in a bare market with stock market volatility at an 8-year low. Respect it. Sell rallies initially in the year. 94 is key level. Now I think it's got to prove me wrong. Stay above 74. I think rallies near there should be sold. And I still think it's going to go much lower, particularly when the stock market volatility recovers. It's not, and that's it's not calling for a crash, Dave. It's calling for, you know, 180-day volatility on the S&P, on the all markets, just to go back to their norms and maybe catch up to precious metals a little bit. So still bearish..."

"Bitcoin."

"Yeah. Yeah."

"The other topic we didn't get to is going to be Anthropic, open, open AI, and the United States government. Uh, if you guys missed it, Anthropic basically said, 'F you to the government.' Then Sam Altman went on TV that day and said,..."

"...'I defend Anthropic. They're doing exactly the right thing.' And then six hours later gave in to the United States government. So that was a good time. Uh, for anybody who missed it, literally within six hours, I think Sam Altman went on TV, defended Anthropic, and then wrote a long tweet thread about how he's giving the United States government all of what they were asking for from Anthropic. And B, just to say, I always say this, in times of war, it's hard sometimes rationally to want to talk about markets because there's a human element obviously, and it's a horrifying thing that I think everybody rationally is against. But it is our job to show up and talk about what it means for markets. But I don't want that to be minimizing of the human toll or the humanity that that goes into all of it. Uh, thank you, gentlemen. I, listen, we're going to be talking about this for a while. This is going to be a main topic of this show and others for a very long time. I appreciate you showing up, especially James. I know you're tired. Uh, Mike, Dave, thank you, gentlemen. And we will see you guys all next week for the next Macro Monday. Peace. That's dope. Let's."