Bitcoin, Gold & the Coming Liquidity Pivot | Lyn Alden

People kind of get into a mindset where they're owed a bull market, which no one's owed a bull market. Some percentage of people bought Bitcoin for maybe the wrong reason. They bought it cuz they think Uncle Sam's going to buy it rather than buying it for its own qualities and kind of the longer term story of what it is and what it changes.

A lot of people are either too heavily in treasury companies, too heavily in altcoins, or um they are too heavily in Bitcoin in the sense that their expectations don't match reality. I do expect that, you know, in 2026, we'll be back into the six figures and whether it's 2026 or 2027, I think we'll be seeing new all-time highs most likely.

There's no particular reason to believe that there's a 4-year cycle intact. uh we haven't hit euphoric levels this cycle. Therefore, there's less of a reason to expect kind of a major capitulation. The cycle could, you know, go on for longer than people expect because it's not driven by the having. It's driven by broader macro and interest in the asset itself.

>> Lyn Alden, great to see you. Always one of my favorite people to have on the show. How are you?

>> Good. Happy to chat. How have you been?

>> Yeah, really good. It's It's been quite a while since we've done a show talking about macro stuff. Um, we obviously did the one with Andy Conston about three months ago, but that was all about micro strategy, which we might talk a little bit about today. Um, but it's there's so much happening that I almost don't know where to start. We've got Bitcoin at just under 92K. Um, gold's had an an insane year, just a 12-month bull run. Um, we've got repo market crisis. There's liquidity drying up potentially. um maybe a liquidity injection coming. I don't know if this is like recency bias or just the stuff you see on Twitter, but does it feel like the macro world is at a really pivotal point right now?

>> Uh so, good question. I do think it's at a pivotal point. Um I think the magnitude is probably less than you'll see in a lot of sensationalist tweets or um podcasts and things like that. Um, but I do think that it's at a pretty pivotal point and kind of to the literal extent, which is that we're getting to the end of a multi-year reduction in the Fed's balance sheet. We're pivoting toward a more flat balance sheet and then probably eventually and and not that long eventually, a more upward tilting balance sheet. And that does mark a multi-year change. Um, even though it's not always what the the sensationalist headlines uh will say about it.

>> So, this is quantitative tightening coming to an end. I do want to get into that, but I c I want to start on Bitcoin because we're down quite a lot just over just under 92K. Um Lou Groman talks about Bitcoin as sort of the last functioning smoke alarm of liquidity. Do you view it the same way?

>> I I I do. I think it's one of the many hats that it wears. Right. So I I still think it's a small enough and volatile enough asset that that's not the only thing it is. um that basically that's and I've I've seen him describe that before uh that that's a because it's still a rather free market compared to other markets that are somewhat more controlled uh that that one is able to kind of uh show things before they happen. And then Sam Kalani Callahan and I did research that kind of correlated Bitcoin to liquidity and showed that while you can't do the thing you'll see on Twitter where you overlay the global liquidity chart, the Bitcoin chart and try to make like threemonth projections uh about Bitcoin that there still is a general causal and and interesting correlation there over a longer time frame and that it it generally gives you a pretty good insight into direction. Um, of course, the other variables is that because Bitcoin is this new and emerging asset, uh, and compared to other assets, even though it's been around for a while, it's still is still new and small, uh, that it's subject to idiosyncratic things. And so, for example, the election in November of last year, almost exactly a year ago, um, that gave a really big boost because it kind of changes the the forward estimates, what's going to happen with regulation, what's going to happen with with, you know, different things like that. and that has nothing to do with liquidity when something like that happens. Um, and and same thing with the ETF launch, same thing with some of the the the accounting changes for Bitcoin treasury companies. These are things that have nothing to do with macro liquidity that can really shift the asset around. Um, but then of course I think liquidity is a really big variable and I think that that Bitcoin is more correlated with liquidity than most other assets.

>> and and how much of a part do you think that's playing in this draw down now? Because I would say 2025 is probably in the time I've been in Bitcoin, the year that almost no one's been right on on Bitcoin. Like I don't think it's gone up nearly as much as people thought. There was a lot of calls for this being like the cycles being over. Potentially they still are, but um how do you like take this in? Like why do you think Bitcoin's crashing now?

>> Uh, so I think it's actually the more interesting factor is why it's been flat for so long because the crash itself, like even in the 2017 bull run, that was a fairly smooth and and kind of parabolic bull run, but it still had multiple sharp 30% corrections along the way, like several.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh, and it would just have these V corrections and go and shoot back up. So, it's not necessarily that this one's had really big magnitude. I mean, we were we touched like 75K back in April, uh, for example. um it's not the it's not really the size of the the corrections, it's more of the length of time uh of of lasting in the state. So the fact that we were 100K in November of last year and we're you know after a year we're basically flat and now we're down uh to some extent. Uh that's I think the more noteworthy uh item. So I don't really view Bitcoin as crashing. I I view it as basically stagnating uh at this time. That I think that's the the more noteworthy event. Um I there's a lot of factors that can go into that. I think that liquidity is a factor. Uh so we do have tighter liquidity now. Um but uh when you look at kind of broader measures of liquidity, they're really not that bad and I don't expect them to get that bad. I think we're kind of in the in the bottoming phase for domestic base liquidity uh at the current time and broader liquidity is is mostly fine. Um so I think that liquidity is doing it no favors this particular month. Uh I think there's a there's a broader issue. It's it's AI potentially sucking some kind of capital enthusiasm away from Bitcoin as kind of the fastest horse narrative. Um obviously gold has had a really good year. Uh and then there's also uh to some extent the disillusionment uh with the other catalyst for Bitcoin and so for example, you know, one of the most popular questions I got on Bitcoin podcasts in early this year was what do you think about a sovereign Bitcoin reserve? And I I found that the most the most boring question. I mean, people had to ask it, but I found it and I even said it a couple times, uh, that it was like the most boring question. Um, because one, as far as kind of the ethos of Bitcoin, I I find the decentralized aspects way more interesting than what is a nation state going to do with it. And two, I said I'd rather kind of have a price estimate that doesn't include, you know, Uncle Sam buying a half a million coins. I'd rather be surprised at the upside if that does happen than to factor that all in and then be surprised when it doesn't. Um, because my view at the time was that sure they're going to ring fence the coins they already have uh that they don't owe back to someone else. Um, but that any accumulation from there I think would would probably be marginal at best and I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but that was kind of my base case and I would just plan for that. I think a decent chunk of of Bitcoiners were kind of really bullish on that outcome. uh really bullish on a lot of things. And then when those expectations don't really align, even though it's otherwise a pretty good environment for Bitcoin, especially looking over two, three years rather than just the 12-month period, uh you start to get deflated expectations. And then lastly, because it's had this pretty small sample size of of this 4-year cycle behavior, so it peaked in in quarter 4, 2021, it peaked in quarter 4 2017 uh 2017. There are a lot of people saying, well, it's probably going to peak here in in quarter 4 of um 2025 and therefore they sell it preemptively and kind of create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Uh I think that the having cycles no longer are particularly relevant. Um I don't think even last cycle they were particularly relevant. I think they happen to correlate with the liquidity cycle. I think they certainly were relevant. The the first say three h havingings periods I think were pretty pretty relevant. I think they they've diminished to the point where it's no longer a factor I particularly uh concern myself with at all. It's more about those other factors. And so I think there's a bunch of disillusionment that's being kind of washed out. Um, and you can have an asset that is a good asset that's sometimes held for the wrong reasons. And so I think the coins are kind of rotating away from people that held for the wrong reasons or the wrong expectations uh and back toward the hands of those that um you know have have I think you know more conservative expectations while still of course being bullish which is why they hold it in the first place.

>> So this has been like a bit of a growing narrative in Bitcoin that it's the sort of long-term holders selling Bitcoin here. Um Checkmates talked a lot about this. Jordi Visa wrote that piece um about Bitcoin's IPO moment. Do you think that that is what's happening and that's what's causing this drop in price?

>> Well, I think yes, but not uniquely. So, so far in in every major bull cycle, there has been distribution from longerterm holders. Uh that's true for kind of any emerging asset. So, if you have a startup company that first starts with like three co-founders and then it's got a hand a few dozen early employees and then it's got hundreds and then it goes public and then it then it trades public for a long time. And you get that distribution by people that uh either want to rebalance or want to upgrade their lifestyles uh that have been holding for 5 10 plus years um into the newer buyers. So that that part Bitcoin is going through a similar distribution cycle. It happened in 2013, it happened in 2017, it happened in 2021 and it happened over the past two years really of this kind of like o OG's selling into the strength. Um, what's a little different is of course now that it's more integrated with the financial system. It's a little more complex because you have some saying, "Okay, I can actually own Bitcoin in and some of them want a more regul regulated environment to own it in." They'd rather not have a billion dollars on a on a wallet somewhere. They, you know, they of course they're more sophisticated as a whole with multi and stuff, but there's some that say, "I'd rather bring some of it back into the system." Um, even though it might not be the kind of the Bitcoin ethos. um you some of them that funded treasury companies to some extent, some of them converting into ETFs. Um and so that is generally happening, but that's actually pretty o overall aside from those specific reasons, the overall distribution of older coins uh is pretty much aligned with other bull markets. Uh that's not particularly um new. Uh what is new, there's been obviously more more selling pressure from 5 to sevenyear plus holders. But one thing I point out on Noster with a post is that there's there's a higher ratio of people that have h have held for 5 to seven years in the cycle. The long the older Bitcoin gets, the more of these kind of older like you know cohorts unlocked because 5 to seven years isn't even that old in in Bitcoin terms anymore. So you get people from two cycles ago of course selling into into some of this. So I generally discount that it's uniquely uh associated with this cycle even though that is that is the number one selling pressure. So it's not about new coins and the having. It's about what price will unlock existing tightly held coins into the market. I think another factor is that while most of the demand has been treasury companies and ETFs and by extension all of their investors, um there's been pretty weak kind of just broad retail demand. Um yeah uh that the narratives has been elsewhere. Uh and so the combination of pretty concentrated demand side stuff uh kind of moderate liquidity situation and then the ongoing pressure of of you know OGs or semiogs selling into the strength is is giving some weakness. Um the the bullish part I would say is that there's there's no particular reason to believe that there's a 4-year cycle intact. Uh we haven't hit euphoric levels this cycle compared to prior cycles. Uh therefore there's less of a reason to expect kind of a major capitulation of sorts. I mean that's I guess famous last words but um basically you hit you hit less euphoric highs there's kind of less to potentially wash out. Um and I think you as we return to more pro liquidity environment and as some of the the coins that were maybe held for the wrong reasons are already kind of evacuated. Um, I think this the cycle could, you know, go on for longer than people expect because it's not driven by the having. It's driven by broader macro and interest in the asset itself.

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>> So, do you think a lot of people are going to be caught offside by this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy narrative? Like, I've seen again huge amounts of respect for Luke Groman. I I really enjoy talking to him. I love having on the show, but he in his recent newsletter said that he was recommending people sort of trim Bitcoin positions. Um, do you think there's people that think the four-year cycle is still alive and well and might get caught really offside with this?

>> Uh, I I mean I think to some extent it's already happened. I I think I mean a lot of people are to either too heavily in treasury companies, too heavily in altcoins or um they are too heavily in bitcoin in the sense that their expectations don't match reality. So what too heavy in Bitcoin means can of course vary depending on the person, but it's either having too much exposure compared to your like your volatility tolerance.

>> Yeah.

>> Or ex or holding it because you expect a 10x gain in a very short period of time even though it's a $2 trillion asset. um uh as though it's a prior cycle uh and there rather than holding it as something that you know maybe you expect to you know outper perform significantly but not in that explosive time. I think that people kind of get into a mindset where they're owed a bull market.

>> Mhm.

>> Which no one's owed a bull market. Um but then I mean the emotional kind of roller coaster is pretty palpable. If you watch Twitter back back when, you know, whenever like Micro Strategy is at three times MNAV, the whole Twitter feed turns into like, well, I could actually go to five times MNAV, it could go to 10 times MNV. We're going to the moon now, guys. And then as soon as everything rolls over, it's like, oh, the cycle's dead. Uh, that's a Ponzi. This whole thing, it's just like the the the roller coaster is pretty palpable. If you have your if you're just watching it regularly, it's kind of like uh like a cartoon almost how these kind of roller coasters come and go. It's usually not as good as people expect and it's usually not as bad as people expect is often how these things play out.

>> So you can basically just counter trade Twitter. Um we should talk about the treasury companies a bit though because the last show we did was with Andy Constant and um this was pretty much solely focused on Micro Strategy. Um strategy of like the share price has dropped a lot. I think they're at 1.2 MNAV or something like that at the moment. a lot of these other sort of pure play treasury companies are now below 1xmnav. Do you see that as a buying opportunity maybe specifically to strategy? Um or do you think part of that trade is kind of unwinding?

>> Uh well it unwound back in 2022 uh and then restarted again. So I think the question is having unwound will it have another positive cycle? Um my base case is yes. I mean, so far, like, for example, in that discussion, one thing that Andy and I agreed on is that you don't want a particularly high MNAF. That's where you run into pretty significant risks. Uh, I think the number I gave in that one was obviously there's a lot of flexibility. I think something like a 1.5 is reasonable and I put like the 1.2 to 1.8 band around it for something like like them. So, now we're on the lower end, but still within roughly speaking that band. Um, I'm not that interested in the long tail of of of these pure play treasury companies because there's a self-reinforcing liquidity network effect. Um, and uh, so if if basically if you're the the fifth biggest one and you're not differentiated in any meaningful way, um, there's not a lot of demand for that. Now, obviously if you're the biggest in your own capital market, if you're the biggest in, you know, country XYZ, that's interesting because that's a that's a differentiated separate thing. So, I think the handful of ones that are leaders in their market, um, I still think the structure can make sense. Um, I'm more interested in the rise of ones that are cash flow positive personally. Um, that's actually where I think my I I think that'll be kind of a next interesting uh narrative, but in terms of the pure play ones, uh, my only focus is on the highest quality ones, kind of the leading one in a given jurisdiction. Um, whereas the other ones are more could be anyone's guess. Um and uh so we're kind of in that scenario where obviously it's it's dissaton that the the the whole like treasure thing got really overstretched this summer.

>> I think what surprised a lot of people including myself is how quickly these things turned. So for example, I'm on a record in the tweet saying I like Metaplanet. It was back in June. I was like I like MetaPlanet but I don't like it a six mnav. Um and so I was like I viewed it as overvalued. But if you were to ask me at the time, do you think it'll be at a 1 MNAV in a handful of months? I'd say, well, probably not. Something something big would have to happen. But the fact that it go from six to like sub one that quickly? Um, you know, these things can kind of move around so fast. So, the the direction of a lot of this cooling off was not surprising, but that it just kind of happens all at once, uh, is pretty surprising. And we'll see. I think the it'll be a test to the the biggest uh most reliable one to see how they handle it. Uh from here I think if you do get another bull cycle in Bitcoin uh the ones that survive the bearishness uh with their leverage intact um you know there will be demand for it because once kind of momentum shifts back again there will there will be people saying well if I'm bullish on Bitcoin why am I not bullish on uh Bitcoin with a little bit of kind of intelligent leverage attached to it. So the question is how can they manage their downside to get through these types of environments.

>> and we did see like almost all the treasury companies try and sort of delever over the last 12 months um I guess for a situation exactly like this. So you would look at something like MetaPlanet and strategy as being good value right now.

>> overall. Yes. I I think I mean they they obviously you potentially face regulatory challenges that that's been some of the news out of Japan a little bit a little bit of regulatory uh and kind of uh exchange push back potentially. Um uh with strategy I think the big question is obviously the ongoing interest expense that they uh now uh uh deal with. So I think you still have to approach even the best ones with caution. Um but uh I don't I think that you know once we once Bitcoin action itself kind of settles um I I still at pretty low MNAV multiples find the top names uh interesting. Uh and I think it's it's a matter of position sizing. I think when someone over over allocates portfolio to like levered Bitcoin that's going to be a challenge. Uh at the end of the day, it's kind of you want to own the core thing and to the extent that you use the others that's kind of the that's kind of the accelerator rather than a core position.

>> Yeah, it'll be interesting if Bitcoin price remains you know flat going down. It'll be interesting to see who who does survive and who keeps going for you know who's still here in four years time. That that's the big question especially when it gets to that long tale. But a little bit earlier you talked about um global liquidity and you were saying it's not actually that bad. you see the chart of almost like the sine wave of liquidity. Um where on that sine wave do you think we are at the moment?

>> Uh so I think it's it's messier than normal. So global liquidity is is still pretty good. I mean basically there's been liquidity out of China. Uh especially the first half of the year when the dollar was weakening u that was pretty good for global liquidity. Uh now that we've had the dollar kind of firming up a little bit. Uh and as you have kind of some of the the stock stuff rolling over a little bit. Uh it's it's more middling. Now the part where the pressure has been is been onshore US kind of base liquidity. That's where there's tightness. It's pretty similar to the September 2019 repo spike environment. Um which is to say it's one of those things that um takes over macro Twitter um for a few weeks um but then never reaches a scale um where you know the average person knows about it um because it's not that big of a of a macro fire. So uh and and so far it's actually in line roughly with what the Fed expected. They thought that by around and and they've been publishing reports in the in the New York Fed like these annual reports they do on their balance sheet. They've been kind of anticipating that sometime in 2025 2026 they're going to reach uh a level of QT uh where they kind of run into liquidity constraints and that their plan after that was to go back toward expanding the balance sheet in line with nominal GDP. Um, and so I think that we're kind of in that inflection point where we're not at the expansion phase yet, but we're at the point where they've already signaled that they're going to um end quantitative tightening and then some of the members are talking about potential expansion.

>> So, you talked about something there that was going to be one of my questions, which is like why does macro Twitter care so much about the repo market? Because obviously in 2019, this was a big story. A couple I don't know about a month ago, um, there was an issue in the repo market. Again, it became big news on Twitter. like why is it watched so closely?

>> Uh so I would separate into two buckets. I do think it's worth watching. For example, in in my research reports, it's often something I touch on. We've been kind of anticipating something like this happening for a while. Um because it when it does happen, it marks a pretty big shift. It it it goes from kind of structural multi-year balance sheet decreases to increases. Uh it's also the first time potentially you're going to have an expanding balance sheet uh in this era without zero interest rates. A lot of people have it in their mind that the balance sheet won't expand until they they cut rates all the way to zero.

>> But if it's expanding for a different reason, not for the purpose of economic stimulus, but the purpose of facilitating liquidity, it absolutely can expand without zero is zero interest rates and that's what happened before 2008. Uh that was kind of a general tendency. Now it'll be happening at a much higher reserve level. Uh so one is it just kind of represents a structural shift. Uh the part that I would generally disagree with is where the sensationalism comes into play. So when you when you have something that's happened, you have people coming out of the woodwork to say, "Oh, like uh there's a major crash going to happen or the Fed's going to have to print a trillion dollars or a major bank is failing or um you know, like a liquidity tsunami is coming. Uh you get that kind of excitement. Uh sometimes it's genuine in the sense that people want a reason to be bullish or bearish and so they do that. If you're bearish, you say, "Look, it's it's all going to be a problem." if you're bearish if you're bullish you say look it's a problem now but they're going to come with all liquidity so the assets I like are going to do great so you get that kind of like genuine emotionalism but then you also sometimes of course you know there are people that want clicks uh and will lean into uh these sensationalism because they know there are other people that want to know what's going on and they'll they'll watch that episode or read that tweet or uh read that substack uh that kind of leans into sensationalism. So I think that again the underlying pivot is real and substantial. Um but it's like less emphatic I I would say and it's the the numbers I think are almost certainly going to be more mild than a lot of people think.

>> So when this happened obviously there were people calling this like the repo crisis comparing it to 2019. You think it's it's more mild than that and it it's not um like a huge systemic issue. Even the 2019 repo crisis was basically a Twitter crisis. Like it it wasn't. So it happened then the Fed came in and did repo. Then there are people like myself and Luke Groman that were saying, "Okay, it's actually not really a repo problem. It's a T- bill over supply problem. They're going to go back to structurally buying T bills." They did a few weeks later. Uh then you had kind of a mildly positive liquidity environment. They still weren't trying to stimulate with their balance sheet. They were just trying to put out the liquidity fire and they did. Uh and that was kind of a it was good for asset prices uh until COVID hit a few months later and then of course everyone forgot about the repo spike and that became the multi-year um thing. Um this is very similar to that which is you have problems in repo. The difference is that now the Fed has a standing facility so they're already ready for it. So it's even a more mild issue back then which wasn't even a giant issue. It's one of those things that's like it freaks people out because if if unresolved, it is a massive issue. If if overnight lending rates spike like that, it's it's a disaster. But that's the but basically anyone that's in the markets knows that the Fed's going to put out that fire. They have the facilities specifically to put out that fire. And it doesn't take big numbers to put out that fire. So that's where you get that kind of disconnect where in you can theory craft why it's a catastrophe. In practice, it's this little thing that gets talked about on Twitter and Substack and and YouTube and you know, you'll see Bloomberg headlines around it, but it's not like uh it's not like the regional bank crisis 2023. It's not these kind of the bigger things uh and instead it's more of a a pivot uh where they have the tools to fix the problem uh that all involve money printing because that's how these these things go. And then the question is how judicious are they going to be with their tools? how are they going to frame the use of their tools? Um, and basically we're we're gradually going to go back toward a structural um environment of rising base liquidity rather than we've been in an environment of kind of flat base liquidity in the US. So, you've had a falling Fed balance sheet which has been offset by money coming out of the reverse repo facility. This is like all this plumbing stuff that I think we've talked about before, but the point is the the outcome is that it's it's been almost perfectly flat base liquidity. Uh but we've had rising broad liquidity. So broad money supply, all the IUs that are built on top of that base liquidity, that's been in a pretty good shape ever since 2023. Um and uh now we're kind of entering a period where base liquidity is going to start kind of rising as well. uh maybe early next year for example uh maybe mid next year I would say probably the latest but we'll see uh and that does mark a a transition just I think the numbers are going to be mild.

I'm interested to know what that means because you say like quantitative tightening coming to an end it'll go back to some form of QE and that might be in line with GDP growth but that's the first time that's happened with higher interest rates or first time in recent history at least um what does that actually mean for the market What does that what will be different.

>> Uh at first? Not a ton. It it basically it it means banks kind of have less anxiety on their liquidity. Uh it potentially frees up lending. It's more about what managing what won't happen. So for example, if the regulators say, "Okay, there's this much. You have to have these liquidity requirements." Um and then they don't expand the base layer the the balance sheet. What happens is you kind of reach like a limit of how much lending you can do as a banking system. And then you got to stop making loans. Kind of like how if you had a a gold or a bitcoin based system, if you're over your skis in terms of fractional reserve banking, there's no there's no bailout on the way. You have to you have to actually manage risk and liquidity. Um uh and so you would have basically banks saying, "Hey, we're at our liquidity constraints. We can't make loans." Um or we can only make loans as you replace other loans. um but instead um uh because they're going to go back to increasing the balance sheet, it allows that type of lending to continue. So, it's more about being anti-dflationary than it is like some sort of you know inflationary stimulatory jolt. Um on average, the expanding balance sheet does have positive correlations with asset prices. Doesn't mean it's always like that. Adam, if you have an an an AI capexfueled market, that's disconnected from the balance sheet, but it is it is one variable that has historically uh been pretty positive uh for asset prices broadly uh including Bitcoin. Um and basically it just goes back to that kind of rising structural period. Um it also is generally good for banks because then they'll have uh more reserves that are also paying them interest. Um and uh it's just generally kind of pro liquidity, slightly anti-doll uh and a slight upward tilt on other assets. Um but then it's just a question of magnitude. It's not the same thing as the Fed coming in in like 2020 and and printing, you know, trillions of dollars. Their estimates for how much they're likely going to increase the balance sheet when they get to that point are pretty mild in line with nominal GDP. In addition, um they are specifically trying to only buy treasuries. So, they're still going to continue letting mortgage back securities mature off their balance sheet. Uh which means they're not really coming to help with the housing market. Um and part of a really dovish cycle is they they cut rates and they also buy mortgage back securities in an effort to try to lower mortgage rates. Uh and if you get really low mortgage rates, you can have a big refinancing cycle. people can take their money out of their home equity, especially in the US because we have all these like long fixed rate mortgages that are not super common in other parts of the world. Uh, and it's kind of a free lunch for consumer spending when that happens. Of course, it it shows up elsewhere, but from the from the refinance consumer's perspective, it's all upside. Uh, and basically because I don't think we're going to get to a lower low in mortgage rates, partially because of the Fed, partially because of other factors, that whole thing's off the table. So I think that the stimulus is just generally going to be weaker going forward, but it instead will be kind of what what'll be notable about it is the persistence of it. So it it goes back to the nothing stops this train thesis, which is more about duration than magnitude. Um so I think that basically we're going to get to a period where it's a more grinding higher Fed balance sheet, but not really in that explosive sense most likely. Of course, certain wars or certain certain totally unpredictable outcomes could always trigger a an extra liquidity boost, but the structural backdrop is toward a more kind of gradually inclining uh Fed balance sheet uh rather than these kind of multi-trillion short-term injections.

>> So, when I talk to people about this, like one of the common things is that once the Feds start doing QE again, it's going to have to be at a scale much bigger than we've ever seen before. It sounds like you're kind of fading that narrative and saying they're going to be able to do this at, you know, 3 4% a year or whatever it is. Will they be able to keep that going at a low rate for a long time, do you think?

>> Uh, potentially. Yeah. Uh, so my base case is that it it will be generally slower. You're starting from a higher um when they started QE back in like the 2008 2009 period like bank cash was something like 3% of total bank assets in the US. it was the most it was the most highly levered the system was since literally 20 uh 1929 right in the US. Um we're starting this period much like much like September 2019 we're starting this period from a higher kind of liquidity threshold. Now in 2019 of course what was coming was COVID right? So you lock lock down the economy and then giga stimulus everything. Uh assuming we don't have a crazy war, a crazy like economic. So taking those just things off the table cuz that's you know out of the scope. Just normal macro stuff. There's no particular reason to expect that this next one's going to be bigger than the one we had in the in the prior kind of extreme cycle. 2019 and this time are more liquiditydriven reasons for the balance sheet to go up rather than intentional stimulus. Uh and sometimes 2019 gets lost in the noise of COVID because it was so kind of close to that.

>> Um but this I mean assuming again something like a COVID level thing doesn't happen which was which was external. Um, it's likely to be far more gradual this time and it's different than QE1, QE2, QE3 or or kind of COVID QE. It's a it's it's more like what was happening in late 2019 alone before these other big variables hit.

>> Okay. And so and what does this mean for things like inflation and markets? Because you've been talking for a long long time now about the fact that we're in like a fiscal dominance era and monetary policy has less of an impact on the economy during that. So what does this mean for maybe particularly inflation?

>> Uh the short answer is not a ton because fis the fiscal side is way more impactful. What this mainly does is it keeps enabling the fiscal uh which was always part of the nothing stops his train thesis is that for example when when the fiscal uh authorities keep running these deficits when eventually you know banks get kind of tight on how much treasuries they can hold and as you start getting strains in either the treasury market or the repo market that's when the Fed comes in and they keep the party going. Back in the global financial crisis, a lot of people thought that the balance sheet expansion they would they were going to do would be inflationary or some even said hyperinflationary. Uh, and for the most part, it wasn't. And the reason was that money didn't really get out to the public. It wasn't helicopter money. It was recapitalizing the banking system, which is why I've described it as anti-dflationary rather than outright inflationary. Uh and during 2020 when they were doing this like latest round of like the massive balance sheet increases some of the people were saying look all the people said it'd be inflationary last time it's not going to be inflationary this time either. Uh whereas like one thing I was focusing on is this isn't like last time. This was literally helicopter money. This was massive fiscal spending that was then supported by all this QE and that's why we had that really big inflationary impulse. It was a huge increase in the broad money supply. all this um the type of QE that we're likely to see going forward is more like older QE, which is that it's not combined with with necessarily any new fiscal stimulus. Um, now, those could be separate decisions by the administration. They could send out a a check that they call like say a tariff dividend or they could do another tax cut like they they could separately decide to do something fiscally. um but they already have this kind of structural large fiscal deficit and mostly what this change with the Fed does is it just keeps that train going that that part's already there. So I do think that part of the reason we have above target inflation right now based on most ways that they measure it is is largely because of the fiscal side and it just keeps that going.

>> So is this really entering a period of much healthier economic and balance sheet growth?

>> I would say no. Not particularly because it's but it's not emanating from the Fed.

>> The fiscal side is is sickly in the sense that.

>> we have basically a two-speed economy right now in the US and certain other parts of the world. Uh which is the deficits are largely fl like if you're on the right side of fiscal deficits or or AI capex you're doing great.

>> If you're not on the right side of those two things you're pretty much in a world of hurt. And so there's very like right now consumer sentiment in the US is near record lows even as the stock market is near record highs. Um which is a pretty unusual environment. It's something you you tend to see in like fiscal dominance. Um and and so basically what this means is that state continues which is um right now the fiscal deficits are flowing towards social security, Medicare, defense and interest expense primarily. Those are the four biggest buckets. Uh and then to some extent it then trickles out from there like you know all all the DoD and and defense contractor employees they of course they spend their income into the broader economy and healthcare workers spend them into the broader economy and social security recipients spend that in the broader economy. So that's who gets it kind of first and then the countdown effect it kind of gets gets out there that's a stimulus for certain parts that are either directly or indirectly in in the line of sight of it. But if someone is say a a young family, not really on the right side of of deficits, uh homes are expensive right now because mortgage rates are pretty high while also home prices are elevated. They're feeling and then they're getting all the inflationary effects from the fiscal stimulus uh and some limited pockets tariffs. Um they're not they're doing pretty bad right now uh on average unless they just happen to get a great new job or something. So the the average there is pretty weak. So it it tend instead of being like a big macro crash or anything like that, it tends to manifest in just growing dissatisfaction where people are like, well, I see the stock market's alltime high, but I'm struggling. And you get more of that is is in my opinion set to continue. Um, now to the extent that AI capex eventually runs into kind of constraint, that could be a rollover period uh for the market. Um, but the actual fiscal and monetary situation is mostly maintaining this the status quo with the exception that the Fed balance sheet has to kind of gradually pivot in order to keep that fiscal train doing what it's doing.

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So if this fiscal dominance era sort of drives greater and greater wealth inequality, um, I know you say nothing stops this train, but does something have to stop it eventually? Like, do they have to move from a fiscal dominance era into, I guess, the opposite is a monetary dominant era?

>> Uh, so the short answer is that if they eventually stop it, it's because they accelerate it so much that it, it, it kind of gets, it gets the next like 10 years done in one year, right? That, that's kind of how it is. Death by fire rather than death by ice. Um, which is that they can't really stop it until there's a pretty big reset in terms of the debt values and in terms of global trade flows. Um, and as things get worse, that actually tends to accelerate the train. Um, and when I use the "nothing stops train" kind of approach, it's basically the time horizon from an investment standpoint is like 10 years, right? So, it's not talking what's going to happen in 2070. It's talking from now to like the mid-2030s where we have some degree of visibility. Um, beyond things like that or or like just total like political nonlinear moments, that type of thing is is a separate matter. But basically, it's that because of demographics, because of voting patterns, because of polarized Congress, um, because of the nature of the fiat system that has to grow or die, and then now it's more funded by the fiscal side rather than the bank lending side, you get into this pretty persistent state of running it hot, but only for part of the economy. And the other part kind of gets dragged along with the inflation and kind of some of the fiscal boost. Uh, and people keep wondering, well, manufacturing activity is flat. Um, inflation's hot. Um, obviously the, uh, um, both commercial and residential real estate are struggling. And it's like, well, who's winning? Cuz like, you know, they see hot GDP numbers, but they're like, well, it's not here, here, here, here. And the answer is it's primarily those on the right side of fiscal deficits and AI.

>> So that I guess that kind of brings it back to the balance sheet expansion. You said that the, it's going to be all treasuries, not these mortgage-backed securities. And, um, Trump's recently come out talking about like a 50-year mortgage. Do you think that is all part of the same picture there? And it's really like a way of attempting to help the housing market without directly like cutting rates and offering and and buying these mortgage-backed securities?

I do because I think left to its own devices, the housing market has ended like a generational cycle, which is to say, you've had lower and lower interest rates both in the short term and the long term for 40-ish years. Uh, and I think that's structurally behind us. We kind of bounced off zero. Now we're, let's call it sideways interest rates, let alone up. Let's just say we're in a, we're in a sideways band now. Uh, you don't get lower lows, which means that any sort of refinancing cycle, like anytime we get moderately lower mortgage rates, um, the only people that are going to refinance are like those who took out a mortgage fairly recently and volumes have been low there. So any sort of refinancing cycle is very weak. So normally when the Fed cuts rates and when the market pushes down longer-term rates and sometimes the Fed helps with that by buying longer-term, longer-duration securities. When you get that lower rate cycle, it does a couple things. Obviously, um, you know, businesses can take out kind of cheaper loans now and invest in things they might not have done at higher rates. Um, but the biggest one of the biggest things is the consumer, kind of homeowner market can refinance their homes and spend more without really sacrificing anywhere else. Uh, and that's done. Uh, that to the extent that that happens, it's only that kind of smaller, re-tiny, like refinancing cycle rather than a big one. Um, which means when they cut and as things stagnate, it doesn't fix the problem like it did in prior cycles. You, you kind of have a longer-term stagnation. We've already seen, for example, like usually manufacturing PMI, it looks like a sine wave where activity is soaring for maybe, uh, 18 months and then it's kind of contracting for 18 months and it's soaring for 18 months and it contracts and it's kind of it keeps going through the cycles. It kind of mirrors the liquidity cycle. Um, and this has been like the longest stretch. We had the longest inverted yield curve in US history combined with like manufacturing kind of like stagnated and just stayed down. It didn't collapse, but it just stayed weak for like 3 years. Um, and and and obviously housing has kind of been in a similar boat. Commercial real estate, um, a lot of private equity ran into headwinds in this environment. And it's on one hand, it's it's held up by the fiscal spending. That's it's stimulatory. It's run it hot. It's like pre-stimulus before a recession. So, it kind of prevents the bottom from falling out, at least for the economy as a whole. But there's also this tight lid on the top, too. So, you get that more stagflationary feeling where, you know, you have like like F-tier consumer sentiment, but you still have inflation above target, even though a lot of areas are kind of grinding to a halt and you have a few pillars holding up the whole thing. Uh, and that's that's that's that's the, uh, the fiscally dominant era. Um, and so it, it feels sickly to a lot of people because it is sickly. Um, and it's, you're more likely to obviously get rising social discontent in those types of environments, not just in the US, but globally. Uh, and I think that's that's kind of the probably the biggest story we'll be facing, uh, over the next several years is kind of how both policymakers and the public deal with this situation that is kind of structurally different than prior cycles.

Could you actually argue that the 50-year mortgages are another driver of wealth inequality in the sense that if you own scarce assets, gold, Bitcoin, equities, whatever, um, and you're essentially shorting the dollar over a longer time period with a 50-year mortgage, you'll potentially do quite well. On the other side, if you are like low income and you would take out a 50-year mortgage, you just have longer paying off interest and and all that part of it?

>> To some extent. And I think that on average, I mean, the whole kind of the whole modern system, it's really rewarded those who have taken out like have good access to long-term debt and use it to buy scarcer assets. Um, and the 50-year mortgage in some sense is no different. I, I generally like the, the 50-year mortgage concept is making a lot of headlines. I generally view it as less impactful than what other people seem to think. Um, if you kind of do the calculations for how much it can lower a monthly payment on the same house, it's, it's not, I mean, it's not immaterial, but it's not like a game-changer. Um, and it's kind of like an artificial extension of what I just talked about, which is they, they basically ran out of runway with the 30-year mortgage. Uh, it's like we're not getting, almost certainly not getting lower lows. Uh, that doesn't mean it doesn't mean we'll get lower. You know, we could get lower than we are now, but it's like not like the series of ever lower lows for 40 years, which is, you know, lower highs and lower lows. And because of that, it really kind of puts a cap on real estate appreciation, also puts a cap on, um, housing affordability and all this. And so it's, this is like a way of saying, well, we can't fix that, so let's try this like band-aid. Um, we don't even know if that's going to fully get into effect, but even assuming it does, I think that at most that gives you like another half cycle and maybe not even that. It's just like it's not, it's, it's not as big of a factor as a structurally falling interest rates and that kind of perpetual refinancing cycle. Um, and so, you know, it, it benefits those who take out as long and low of a mortgage as they can buy a property in a, in a place that ends up being better than average. Like, it's a rising environment, for example, like a city that's going from a tertiary city to a secondary city, for example, a kind of a booming area. Um, but I don't think outside of kind of more limited contexts, uh, that it'll have kind of macro-scale significance. The, the other part I wanted to touch on was the Fed. So they've obviously were tipped to be doing rate cuts going into the end of the year. I know that the next one in December is sort of called into question now. Um, what do you think will happen with interest rates?

>> Uh, so first answer is I think that that, that's one of the kind of the minor catalysts for why Bitcoin might have sold off recently is that the market had to kind of readjust to slightly less dovish Fed potentially for the remainder of this year. Now, one rate cut is not like like a giant story, but when the market was expecting A and then they get B, even if B is not that different, it does have to kind of reprice things. And when you already have a spooked market for other reasons and you get these repo issues and stuff like that, it's not that surprising to see, uh, frictions in especially the most volatile parts of the market. Um, uh, so there's that. Uh, you know, I, I generally don't have great insight in what they're going to do in a given FOMC meeting. Mostly whatever the market says is almost always what happens. And then the problem is itself, it's recursive. Like the Fed governors do look at what the market is expecting. And if the market is way off course of what they're intending to say, that's when Fed speakers usually come out and if it's if it, if the market's too hawkish, then they'll come and say some dovish things. If the market's too dovish, they'll come in and say some hawkish things and they try to get it a little bit closer to what they kind of are already anticipating what they're going to do. So, um, rather than try to play that game, I kind of focus on the on the the longer term. I do think that within 2026, we will see a handful of rate cuts. Whether or not we have one in December or not, for me is like a coin flip right now. Um, and it's more about what happens next year. And I, so yeah, I think we'll see mildly lower interest rates. Um, while we're also going back toward balance sheet increases, but I think that they're largely separate variables. You don't have to have one to have the other.

>> I think you're right in that whatever happens next year is going to be the most interesting thing with the Fed. Um, Jerome Powell's going to be done. Um, I don't think we know who's going to step in yet. I, I know there's people sort of guessing who that's going to be. Um, but if it does become someone who is essentially like a Trump stooge and is just going to do whatever he wants, what does that mean both in terms of like fiscal dominance and just Fed independence?

>> Uh, so obviously be a reduction in Fed independence if that were to happen. Fiscal dominance in general chips away at Fed independence. Um, like the fact that the Fed is going to go back to increasing their balance sheet in line with nominal GDP. One of the challenges there is that the fiscal deficits, the size of them, contribute to nominal GDP. It, it's one of the inputs into that. So basically the Fed is kind of indirectly saying, our rate of balance sheet increases will be partially dependent on how big the fiscal deficit is. Um, and so you, that's already at least a minor reduction, um, and a kind of a persistent reduction in Fed independence, I would argue. Um, now, what they mean generally by Fed independence at the root layer is that there's at least some separation between like near-term rate decisions and the election cycle. So, it'd be very bad if like an incumbent administration could say, "Okay, cut interest rates right now a ton because they got an election coming up and then, you know, go back and maybe raise them." That, that's kind of the, the, the kind of the cycle they try to avoid. There's no such thing as pure Fed independence. More like how acutely, uh, can the Fed kind of operate on their own terms? Now, that again, you can call in question the entire purpose of the Fed. Should, should a central board of 12 people be setting interest rates? I, I would argue no. But it's still the case that you have a somewhat independent board doing it. Um, even if they replace, you know, a couple governors at a time, you still generally are likely to have some degree of independence where they don't want to look like a total sham, especially because it can backfire. If they look super dovish, the bond market could freak out and say, "Well, I don't want to own any duration yet." So, if, if they perceive the Fed is acting too political, um, they could sell off mortgages, the market, and you could get higher mortgage rates even if you have shorter, uh, short-term rates, which is not what a, even a say, a hypothetical like, uh, Trump stooge Fed, they wouldn't want that. M so they, they always have to project some degree of kind of pseudo credibility to say, here's what we're, what we're doing now. Uh, so I wouldn't expect like a just a 180-degree change in what they're doing. But that's separate from the fact that because we're in fiscal dominance, like they're going to go back to increasing their balance sheet even if inflation's above target because it's just, it's, it's keeping the treasury market kind of liquid. Um, and I mean, they can also, they have other availables they could tweak. I mean, they can tweak the supplemental leverage ratio, which sounds really wonky, but it's like, it's almost like a shadow QE for banks. It just kind of frees up some of their liquidity constraints that they have and allows them, it kind of for them acts like QE. Um, and so there's various levers they can pull, but all those levers have in common is that they allow kind of the existing thing to keep going without causing acute liquidity constraints. So just the, not the trains keeps going, the fiscal deficits stay high. The Fed doesn't go out of its way to stimulate, but they do keep a lid on on little fires that that pop up and it just keeps running at this kind of stagflationary pace.

>> Um, Lynn, is there anything else on the macro side that you want to touch on? I just have a few questions on gold before we close out.

>> Right. The other one would I guess the final touch would be AI in the sense that if, if you get like a rollover in really big asset prices, whether it's Nvidia, Apple, um, you know, Microsoft, things like that. I'm not predicting it, but like that's where you can get kind of a disconnect where the Fed could be stimulating. Uh, the fiscal could be stimulating, but if you got a multi-trillion dollar destruction in in just kind of capital, um, that that wealth effect can reduce then consumer spending, uh, you can have things like Bitcoin get caught up in it. Uh, which is why I separate when I say nothing stops this train, I'm I'm talking about the fiscal deficits, um, and the liquidity to keep fueling the fiscal deficits, which over the long run does have implications for asset prices, but it does have implications for asset prices on a year-by-year basis or quarter-by-quarter basis. You can get all these crazy fluctuations. Valuations do matter in the longer run. And instead, it's more of like that macro backdrop that gives you a foundation that other analysis can be done. Uh, on top of.

>> On the AI side, there's a lot of talk of like AI bubbles. There's these sort of circular deals between Nvidia and Oracle and all these major companies. Do you think we are potentially in a bubble in the AI side?

>> I think we're, we're kind of in this like euphoric kind of local bubble phase, most likely, but that I think the underlying trend for the most part is real, which is that this is a, you know, pretty big transformation and especially white-collar types of work. Um, kind of like how if someone asks, "Was Bitcoin in a bubble in 2017?" It's yes and no. It's a, it's like a local bubble built on a structural thing. Uh, that, that's kind of how I view AI right now. Maybe less extreme, but it's kind of saying, "Sure, I think certain things are overdone. Uh, sure, I think euphoria is high. It's crowded. Uh, some of the deals have become somewhat incestuous, uh, in that sense. Uh, and you get that kind of circular aspect, which can be, which can be frightening. Um, but that I do think that when that kind of washes out, I think that sets, that still sets the stage for growth. So I do think that, you know, when we, when we look back 10 years from now, you know, will there be quite a lot of data center activity running AI that's that's doing all sorts of stuff for us? Yes. Uh, and and in bigger numbers than they are now. Um, but that occasionally you front-run and kind of pull too much forward and have to cool off for a period.

>> Yeah, that makes sense. Um, when I had Luke Groman on the show a couple months ago, we talked a lot about AI and the impacts that that might have on the economy. Um, and I don't actually know what the term is for this. It's almost like a black swan that you can see coming at some point. Like, if AI does start replacing a meaningful number of jobs, how does the economy sort of cope with that?

Well, on one hand, it it's just like prior kind of productivity cycles, which is like when hydrocarbons started to become used at scale and we made like the, the tractor, like one farmer could do the work of like 10 farmers.

>> Right. So, what that does, that freed up the other nine farmers to go work in other areas, right? So instead of like, you know, 80% of the society running our agriculture and 20% doing other things, over time we would have it so that like 2% of people can feed everyone, the other 98% of people can do other stuff, like build technology or take care of things or do healthcare. Uh, and what this does is it kind of is like another version of that. It's saying some percentage of human labor can be replaced by basically pure energy, um, combined with hardware. So you say, okay, well, we can take electricity and GPUs, and that can replace some percentage of especially our white-collar labor force. Uh, which is disruptive when it happens. Um, but then it frees up people to do other things. In general, we want machines to do a lot of the routine stuff for us so we can do other things. Um, where people get spooked is when you have machines so good that like a lot of people can't find any work that they can do that is better than a machine. So even though tractors replaced farmers at farming or at least allowed one farmer to do the work of 10, those people could still say, "Okay, well, the tractor's doing that, so I'll go research medicine or something, right? You had other types of work." The, the where that game could change is if you have machines that are so good that like a meaningful percentage population, um, not just, you know, certain, say, at the current stage, there are disabled people that have trouble being economically kind of, uh, functioning in any capacity, but if that, if the kind of the percentage of population has that happened to them and it becomes a very meaningful percent, that's when you get kind of unforeseen territory. What does that look like? Um, people have talked about UBI, people have talked about revolution. That, I, that's where it's, it's, it's hard to predict the outcome. Uh, but in general, there's that difference between what happens in the kind of disruptive near-term versus structurally what we want, which is we do want machines and energy to replace as much work as possible to to free people up, and that there's that kind of march toward that end wherever possible.

>> Yeah. I think the scary part of this is that it's not only going to replace sort of manual labor. It's, you know, it's almost everything, like accountants, teachers, finance people, people working in medicine. Like it, I, it seems like across the board it's going to replace a pretty decent number of jobs. And and what's left, I guess, is is the question. And this is why like UBI at this point, I don't know if I'm being doomed here, but just seems baked in the cake. Like I don't, I don't know what other outcome there could be.

>> Yeah. I think there are pockets that will end up demanding it. I think I think the silver lining is that basically there's a huge difference between data center AI and portable AI, aka robots. Um, I mean, the human brain runs on 20 watts of power. Um, in order to do that in a data center, you need megawatts of power, like this same amount of processing power. Now, obviously certain things a computer can do really cheaply, like a calculator. We've had that for like a century. But in terms of all the things a human brain does, the, the amount of bandwidth it takes in from the environment, uh, all the automatic processes that are running, and then on top of that, a conscious decision-making process that can help handle edge cases. Um, and then it's a, it's a self-healing robot, uh, as well. That's super advanced technology. Um, and so I'm actually kind of like, especially in timelines like I, robotics certainly will play a bigger role in our life. But we already see if you go to Japan, I mean, robots play a bigger role in in their, a lot of their functions than here. So first stages get to Japan and then we'll get further than that. So we are going to get more robotified. Um, but for example, the idea of a robot coming out to your house and like, uh, fixing your HVAC system, right? And basically going out into the field, dealing with all the edge cases. That I think is an extraordinarily long way off. Um, it's, it's data center AI that I think is the star of the show right now, which is basically displacing a lot of white-collar work. Um, the bonus is that it allows each remaining white-collar person to kind of do more because rather than just all those tools running completely autonomously, it's basically extensions of a person where they can, they can have some data collection do something for them. They can have this thing edit their thing better, you know, faster and cheaper than a human could, and all that stuff. But there's still, there's still decision-makers and governors in that whole process. Um, and so, yeah, I think we get disruption of white-collar stuff a lot quicker and ironically, I think you can get kind of a boom in some, especially in the field blue-collar stuff. So it's easier to automate things in a very controlled environment like a manufacturing floor. Uh, it's much harder to automate things out in the, out in the broader world where all those edge cases come into play. Uh, and then when you have say, a massive number of robots, mass amount of data center, all of that has really high turnover. GPUs have to be replaced. None of this is self-healing. This is like literally a constant replacement cost. A lot of it relies on, uh, you know, kind of semi-rare materials, uh, that can run into shortages and get expensive. You could have environments where a society starts pushing back on robots and they, like, vandalize robots if they find them kind of out in public and almost like, kind of forced keeping human in the loop. So I,

>> I think that will happen too.

>> I, I think there are kind of basically self-correcting loops, both positive ones and some negative ones. Um, that especially in terms of like all work across all fields, I generally fade that sort of hyper-bullish, uh, thing, at least in any sort of investment or kind of planning time horizon. I'm not talking what happens in the, in the, you know, 50 years or next century, but what happens in say, a 10 to 20-year period. Data center AI is a much bigger deal in my opinion than like portable, uh, uh, AI, uh, and and basically in the field. So I think that there's kind of a potentially a forced shift toward, you know, people kind of doing more physical work and also communities somewhat being more self-sufficient. If a whole kind of area gets kind of disenfranchised by AI, that's a lot of people out of work. Well, that's a lot of people that together are out of work. So, it's like someone's got to build the homes, someone's got to, uh, do all this, and they don't have enough, I guess, if there's robots, they can't afford the robots to come in and do it. So, they got to work with each other. Uh, and you kind of almost restart the whole, what an economy is. Um, and of course, the, the challenge there is the path dependence along the way, as you have societal breakdown, as you have deterioration of social contract, and then more extremism or whatever based on that. That's where the, I think the real issue is, rather than that say AI replaces 99% of jobs in, in sort of a generation. That's not, that's not what I'm concerned about. It's more like what happens when it replaces 10% of jobs and those 10% of people are really angry. That's, that's, I think the actual thing I worry about, rather than that kind of more extreme scenario.

>> Yeah, that's a scary scenario anyway. But I mean, it's good to hear that you're bullish on humanity at least for the short term. I'm, I needed to hear that. Um, before we close out, can we just very quickly touch on gold? Cuz

>> If you'd have asked me a year ago, um, if gold would have this insane bull market while Bitcoin was flat, I would have put that at a pretty low probability. Why do you think that's happened? What's going on there?

>> Well, it's funny because I, I've been a gold bull, but I'm surprised as well that it hit 4,000 this year. Um, I, you know, when it was in the, the, when it still had a 2,000 handle on it, I was kind of eventually looking forward to the 3,000. Um, but I didn't think you'd kind of just race right to 4,000. Uh, so I'm, I'm happy it did, but, uh, wouldn't, wouldn't put it as my base case, especially given the size of the market. Uh, it's a, it's a huge kind of multi-trillion dollar market cap increase, uh, in it. Um, there's multiple shifts happening. One is, uh, ever since 2009, you've had a gradual shift towards sovereign reaccumulation of gold. So prior to then, you had a multi-decade kind of divestment of gold among sovereigns and toward treasuries. Starting in 2009, that gradually reversed. Uh, it got kicked into overdrive in 2022 because then you have, you have potential risk of confiscation or freezing of assets. If, if, if a sovereign is holding their, uh, securities of another nation, they're not really sovereign assets. Um, and so there's kind of been a shift toward that. Then there's the increasing awareness of fiscal dominance and the increasing awareness that nothing stops this train, which says, well, if, if this is just going to happen for 5, 10, 15 years, maybe I want to own some gold. That's the one that's got an established track record. So big pools of capital already know what to do with it. They don't have to research it. They already know what gold is. Um, and then in addition, this is not really, even though the stock market is near all-time highs, it's it's because it's so narrow, it's mostly not even a risk-on environment. Like I mentioned before, we've been in usually long periods of kind of like like flat yield curve, PMIs, like purchasing managers indices of like manufacturing and other other signs that are just kind of like in stagnation. Um, outside of AI, the stock market is pretty flattish, kind of consolidating, uh, and so it's not a very risk-on environment, even though liquidity is good. So when you have kind of pretty decent liquidity up until maybe very recently, and then you have kind of stagnating broader economy, the Fed still trying to tighten things where it can. Um, the things that have taken off has been AI, gold, uh, like kind of the, what what the market ironically looks as low risk. They they view AI as low risk, even though the pockets of it that are obviously not, but they view as low risk because they view it as like a sure thing. It's like, okay, that's cycle resistant. Let's, let's go to AI. Then they say gold, okay, that's low risk. Um, Bitcoin until pretty recently was in that bucket, was benefiting, uh, from liquidity, um, from kind of gradual adoption. Um, but as you have kind of like a flattish environment, um, Bitcoin cooled off. Um, so I, I think basically gold's behaving kind of, you know, rationally, uh, just a little bit. You know, these things tend to not be linear. So you tend to overshoot to the upside, then overshoot to the downside, then overshoot to the upside. So, this did overshoot the upside faster than I would have thought, but I think it's a gradual realignment for things we've talked about in prior podcasts, a more multipolar world, less kind of a focus on every country just holding one country's bonds as the reserve asset and saying, "Okay, we'll hold those, but we also want to hold these other, say, three things. We want to hold gold, maybe want to hold another trading partner's currency around the margins." Smaller ones might say, "Let's, let's look at Bitcoin a little bit." You get that kind of gradual broadening of assets that are viewed as kind of reserve assets, and and gold, you know, as the incumbent is has kind of been the chief beneficiary when we're talking about the market's being increasingly spooked about these tens of trillions of dollars of sovereign debt. So whether it's the US, it's Europe, it's elsewhere, the market is kind of long-term says, "Okay, what's the endgame here?" Uh, and you have gold, which is a much smaller market, despite being huge, than those sovereign bonds. It only takes a small gradual spillover for investors to start kind of going into gold. They don't have to do a ton of research because they know what gold is.

Yeah. One of the things I found really interesting is the kind of retail FOMO around gold. Um, because as we were saying earlier in the show, there's really not been a huge influx of new retail participants in Bitcoin, but I don't know if you saw the pictures going around Twitter and stuff of people literally queuing on the street outside gold shops. I think they were actually here in Australia. Um, yeah, has that surprised you? And like, one of the things we talk about often in Bitcoin is like the unit bias. Obviously the unit bias for gold is lower, but as a market it's huge compared to Bitcoin. So the short answer is it hasn't surprised me because so back when gold was like 3,000, one of the interesting things at the time was that it was not retail driving it. So when you looked at like interest in gold ETFs or interest in physical coinage, uh, it was kind of lukewarm. Uh, whereas the price was going up anyway, and it was because sovereigns, institutions were driving it.

>> It was kind of like gold's moment of like, um, the treasury company thing, right? It's like big pools were interested in it. China and India were interested, so their retail was interested, but kind of the Western retail was like, they other things are going on when the Mag 7 was soaring and no one's like, they're like, yeah, gold's okay, but, you know, I'm not really interested in it. It's only really in in in kind of the second half of this year, uh, where where retail Western retail did start to FOMO into gold. So that's kind of a later, later stage portion of it. So, first first institutional, then retail. Um, and that's generally how things go. So, if anything, if you'd asked me last year, I'd be, I'm surprised there's not a little bit more retail FOMO than there is right now. Um, but then I would also not have guessed you gotten to 4,000. Um, but when you do get to 4,000, I'm not surprised that yeah, you started seeing lines outside of gold stores. Uh, either to buy it or sell it, because actually both tends to happen. There are people that need money and have, you know, a gold ring and they want to go sell it, and there are other people that are then FOMOing into it, is how these things tend to go. Um, and, you know, if you, Bitcoin can have a cycle like that where if you break the four-year cycle, you, you have an up year, institutions are positioned, and it starts to rip, you can bring in retail. So, it's like, just because retail is not here now doesn't mean they can't come later. And unfortunately, retail tends to be kind of the later phase of a given, uh, bull run. U now, but I think I view gold in a similar way that I would view AI, which is that it can get into a local bubble. Um, but that I still think it's structurally fine. Um, you know, the last time I gave a warning of of that sort was back in 2020, gold, of course, had a very big moment. Um, and I was like, I can see it taking a breather here. Uh, it took a little longer breather than I thought, but then it, it, you know, did this whole kind of next doubling that it did. Um, and I, I view it kind of similarly, which is sure, it's over skis right now. Um, but I don't view it as like structurally overvalued. If anything, it's going from being just kind of structurally undervalued to like back closer to like what I think makes sense. Um, and so, um, yeah, I just view gold and Bitcoin as kind of two different assets. Gold still, because it's the incumbent, it has more of a risk-off aspect to it, it's got more of a sovereign interest in it. Whereas Bitcoin is still kind of collectively lumped into a tech play, even though from those that deeply understand it, it does have, you know, digital gold, digital cash attributes that can be viewed as risk-off as well. Just the price action tends to correlate more the risk-on type asset.

>> That makes sense. Okay, Lynn, last question. Um, Bitcoin's just above 90,000 now. I'm not asking for a price prediction here, but just just like directionally over the next 12 months, what do you think? How are you looking at Bitcoin?

>> My guess is is up. I don't, I don't have a view of the next quarter. Um, I've, I always do try to avoid price predictions. When I get quartered into one, like for 2025, I was like, "Yeah, anything under like, if we don't hit 150, be a little disappointing." Of course, we only got to like 125 or so, so it's on the disappointing end. Um, I, I do expect that, you know, in 2026, we'll be back into the six figures. I mean, anything can happen between now and year-end. Um, and whether it's 2026 or 2027, I think we'll be seeing new all-time highs, most likely. Um, and it's funny when I, I, cuz I, I watch Twitter sentiment. When Bitcoin is absolutely soaring, I get sometimes dunked on by Bitcoiners saying, "Why do you own any gold? Why do you own any stocks? Why aren't you 100% Bitcoin?" And it's like, well, because I like some degree of diversification here. Uh, and then when Bitcoin's crashing, I get the gold bugs coming out saying, uh, like, uh, you know, they should just own all gold or like, why do you own any Bitcoin at all? And it's like, funny how that emotional trend goes. And one of the ways is is to say, okay, well, you don't want to, you don't want to de-diversify so that you own a little bit of everything. Uh, you still want to have opinions on assets and you can make concentrated bets. I mean, I'm quite structurally bullish on Bitcoin, for example. Um, but that's also why I own gold and I own equities that have nothing to do with Bitcoin. Um, because there are different size markets, different performance kind of patterns that they go through. And for me, it's not just about owning what I think is going to be the fastest horse. It's okay, I, I'll put extra on the fastest horse, but I want to own a handful of horses. Um, and so when you structure a portfolio like this, it's like, well, okay, I'm disappointed in Bitcoin this year. Um, but I'm over, like, I'm enthused by what gold did. Um, and if you structure a portfolio that way, you take the edge off, uh, for a lot of these things. Um, and so I, you know, I think we'll see a rotation at some point where I'll be disappointed in the gold side of my portfolio and I'll be enthused about the Bitcoin side and then probably it'll repeat again. So, um, yeah, nothing's really changed on my view of any of these assets. It's just they, they catch on at different speeds and they had different correlations. And like I said before, I think that a year ago or, you know, six months ago, some percentage people bought Bitcoin for maybe the wrong reason that they, you know, they bought it because they think Uncle Sam's going to buy it, >> rather than buying it for its own qualities and kind of the longer-term story of what it is and what it changes.

>> Uh, in addition, um, I, I, I think the broader crypto space is basically out of narratives. Um, and that's basically dead weight now. So, other than Bitcoin and stablecoins, couple small tech rails to run that kind of stuff. Uh, at a macro scale, there's really no there there in the in the broader crypto space. Um, and so I think that that's part of why kind of the whole space is bearish because a lot of a lot of people that own Bitcoin own other assets and they view it as not just a bad cycle, but that there's just, what's the next narrative? You had ICOs, you had NFTs, you had DeFi, um, uh, you had memecoins, which is basically the most cynical narrative is saying that we're just flat out saying there's no there there. Uh, then even that kind of eventually rolls over. Um, and, you know, there's really no, you can always be surprised by another one kind of coming out of the hat, but, uh, I think a lot of that is kind of tested almost every directional narrative that it could, um, and is kind of set for structural stagnation. Um, so Bitcoin has to kind of decouple from that dead weight to the extent that it's going to keep kind of reaching higher highs.

>> I totally agree with that. I mean, the altcoin side of things, I think, is is over. Um, I don't want to speak too definitively because you never know what might come out, but um, I've been, I've started having the texts from the people sort of close to me who may might have bought Bitcoin for the wrong reasons being like, is this going to go down to 50K and all this stuff? And I, I obviously have no idea. But like the, the best message I think is just, just do nothing. If you're not sure, just do nothing. Like, just wait, because like I know that 90k is not going to be the top of Bitcoin forever. Um, Lynn, I always love talking to you. Thank you so much for doing this. Um, I'm going to see you at Gode in March.

>> Yeah, I missed last year, but I was there the, the year prior, I believe. So definitely, I, I definitely think it's worth going. I love the conference. Uh, and it's great to see everyone.

>> It's going to be fun. We've got you announced as a keynote and Jack Mallers at the moment. We're going to be dropping some more speakers soon. So, gcode.co.uk. There's my little shill. Um, Lynn, where do you want to send anyone who wants to find out? Everyone knows who you are, but who wants to find out more?

>> Uh, just check out lynalden.com. Everything that can be found from there or lyn contact on Twitter or broken on Amazon or elsewhere. But, uh, thanks for having me.