Bitcoin Mastermind Q2 2025 w/ Joe Carlasare, Jeff Ross, & American HODL (BTC244)

(00:00) The most interesting thing about it to me is that we know that when Bitcoin runs, it runs hard. And you had this whole year, basically, we were just consolidating over the inauguration day high of, you know, what was it, 110, somewhere there. We're going to break here and we're going to go higher. And I think this persistent services inflation, which there's signs of it picking up again, is going to keep us closer to 3% than two.

(00:22) And what is the Fed going to do in that environment? Is the Fed really going to cut in the face of that? I know they're getting browbeat, but that, in some ways, makes the problem worse. So, really fascinating here. I think the overall TLDDR is that the recession risks are totally overblown based on the current data.

[Music]

(00:44) Hey everyone, welcome to the show. I'm here with the mastermind discussion. Everybody is smiling and laughing because they were all here waiting, and I thought this show was happening in an hour from now. So, we are literally on the fly making this up as we go. Just a very candid conversation, and that's this is how this is usually done anyway. I come up with questions, and we don't even go to them. We talk.

(01:05) So, where do you guys want to start off? I think I know where you want to start off, but where do you guys want to start off? New all-time high. All-time high day. It's all-time high day. Yeah, you guys told me that when we like first met, and I didn't even realize it. Any thoughts on that? Any thoughts on the all-time high? You know what's great about an all-time high day is it's just this special moment in time where nobody has ever been wrong about Bitcoin.

(01:29) Nobody ever in the history of Bitcoin has ever been wrong about Bitcoin. Now, that's going to change. We know that. But like, for right now, we can savor the moment. Yeah. The thing that's exciting about it for me is that Bitcoin, since really launched the ETFs, it makes a new all-time high, goes on a run, it goes up to a new level, and then it's consolidated for several months before breaking to a new level.

(01:50) And for as long as I've been in Bitcoin, I think it's trading very differently. I think it's trading in this massive range where there just aren't a lot of sellers. There are people steadily and in a very persistent way accumulating Bitcoin, and then we launch higher, and then we'll probably consolidate there for three, four months, and then launch higher.

(02:07) And I think we talked about one of the prior podcasts, like whether the cycle theory will die to some extent, the halving cycle. Obviously, we can have drawdowns that that can happen, but that's really interesting. We're getting to that point here. We're in, you know, Q3 now of 2025. So, it's interesting. It looks kind of dead, doesn't it? The cycle theory.

(02:27) We're trading like Nvidia or something. Yeah. I mean, we could pull back, of course, anytime, right? All markets pull back over time. Just the question of like, this predictable four-year cycle. I've got a theory on why I think that's why we're seeing these ranges kind of take place. But before we go there, Jeff, any thoughts on the all-time high? Let's go. All-time high. More to come.

(02:47) Well, we, I don't know how much we want to get in here, but, you know, I want to hear your theory first, Preston, but I'm very bullish, so I'll tell you why. But let's hear your theory. I just think the trading ranges that we're seeing, like it just hung around this 110 to call it 90K range for what feels like what, six months or so, if we've been here.

(03:07) I think it's the ETFs causing this. I think you got a lot of options that get constructed over. You get a big ramp, and then all the ETF owners that are here that are much more tourist-like than like long-term holders or whatever, and then you have all the options on top of it that are just building these, uh, resistance levels or bands kind of around where it just moved to.

(03:29) So, like, let's say this thing would run, and I'm just going to throw out numbers here. Let's just say it would run to like 140 pretty aggressively. You might have some bands that kind of get set up, maybe around 150, 160, and then maybe down at 130 or whatever, and it just kind of goes sideways in that range for a few months before it kind of pops through maybe another level.

(03:49) I don't know if this is the new norm or not. I just, I suspect it has something to do with the ETFs, though, because they're so big. These things are growing like crazy, way beyond what I think anybody anticipated when they launched what, a year and a half ago now. Yeah. Well, the other thing too here is just to piggyback your point, Preston, is I think that Wall Street traders, you know, institutional money has a totally different view of the RSI than people who are crypto traders or Bitcoin traders.

(04:18) And in Bitcoin, we're used to the RSI running really hot during bull markets. And I think that, uh, the Wall Street guys see that getting up into the 70 range, and they start getting pretty squeamish, and they want to take off, you know, trim their position, right? And so I think that's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy because those guys are the big money sitting at the table right now.

(04:37) And so it's trading a little differently than it used to. Just for people, the RSI is your relative strength index. This is a technical astrology for men. Um, this is a technical metric that is really popular, especially for fast money on Wall Street, and they're just looking at saying, hey, this thing's getting overheated, so let's go ahead and start lightening up on the position. And, uh, that's, to Hoddle's point there, anything else, it's basically like Preston said, it's a measure of how overheated the market is, and they believe that a market is

(05:06) overheated much sooner than the typical Bitcoiner believes. The typical Bitcoiner is like, what do you mean it can't be overheated? We haven't even seen a bajillion percent this year. Still many, many multiples to go. So, you guys clearly haven't heard my three-burner theory about how the Bitcoin price works in a bull market.

(05:23) So, I'll just lay it out here. I talked to Danny Nulls about this a little bit. So, but here it is. So, imagine, if you will, the price of Bitcoin is a pot of soup on the stove, and underneath that pot, you have three burners. Okay? Burner number one is global liquidity. Everybody knows about this now.

(05:41) Everybody, literally, and their grandma is talking about global liquidity now. Like, it, nobody knew about it a year ago. Now everybody talks about it. Burner number two that affects the price is the economy. You got to have an economy that's revving up. And when that starts to heat up, that's a second burner to get the pot boiling.

(05:57) Burner number three, which comes towards the end of a bull market, is leverage. So, when everybody is just feeling wild and animal spirits are going, everybody starts applying leverage. So, so far, all we've had is burner number one going at a pretty good rate. The economy, as you guys probably know, has been stuck in kind of muddling since 2022.

(06:15) We haven't really recovered. Manufacturing has basically been below 50 at or below 50 since 2022. Services have held us higher, and we're a services economy. So, that's been sitting kind of in the 50 to 55 range for a couple of years, and that's been propping it up, but it's still weak. And this is still a very unusual economy, which I still think goes all the way back to COVID and the response to COVID, what happened there, and all these kind of things that these interplays with the central intervention.

(06:45) So, anyways, what I think is going to happen, okay? And Joe, I see your smile, so I want to get your response to this. Liquidity is rising. I think that in the second half of this year, so basically starting July through December, we are finally going to see the American economy take off, and it's going to start ripping. And I think the global economy will follow, actually, and it will be a strong second half.

(07:07) And when the economy is booming, that means businesses are booming and are flushed with cash. It means people are employed and making decent money and have money to save and invest and speculate with. That gets burner number two going, and then the animal spirits start to pick up. And I still think there is a chance that we have this rip higher where we have that exponential hockey stick higher now.

(07:30) And then one interesting thing that I'm still waiting for, there's a chance it can still happen like it has in the past where we have these traditional kind of four-year economic cycles, and we get this by the fourth quarter of this year, and it kind of melts everybody's face off. That's possible. But what it's looking to me more like is the economy is actually going to stretch into the first half of 2026, and we're actually going to have an extended cycle.

(07:50) So, that's based on the forward metrics I look at. I think that's what's going to happen in this. So, we're probably going to be talking about all-time highs somewhere in Q2 of 2026 now, which is a surprise to me. Yeah, that sounds about right. Joe, I, I couldn't agree more with the latter part.

(08:06) I think there are signs here of green shoots all over the place with the real economy, and I think that the yield curve is telling you that, in particular, particularly the 30-year, like with we're rising. I think down 5% now with 30 yields are rising across the board. And to me, I think what you're seeing is you're seeing structurally higher nominal GDP and consistent inflation risks across services.

(08:26) I think the inflation swaps are starting to rise. I think you see crude and copper starting to rise, and recession fears are completely still. I was looking at the Goldman's index that has 35% probability of recession, that's way overblown. There's just no evidence of that. It's nowhere in sight. And, you know, for whatever reason, we've had this risk-off atmosphere, and I think the rise structurally in yields, personally, right here, I think is a reaction function to the big beautiful bill, to the stimulus that's coming into the system, to the

(08:52) fact that the recession risks were overblown. You got to remember, if you flash back six months ago, people were talking about Doge was somehow magically cutting $2 trillion. I don't know where that was coming from, but seemingly smart individuals on FinTwit were talking about that actually being real. It's not.

(09:09) I think it was completely fabricated. I don't know why people got that in their mind. You were talking about there being a massive reduction in government spending overall outside of Doge. And what do we see? We saw the fact that that was largely abandoned, a failed effort on Doge. And we see now the big beautiful bill, which is going to continue to drive consumption and potentially cause this boon in the economy that we've been waiting for some catalyst.

(09:31) Now, is this a problem that it's being driven by the sugar high of additional spending? Yes. But it's not a problem now, and it's not a problem in early 2026. And to me, to Jeff's point, right, if you're an investor, you're positioned. I fail to see the bear case here. Obviously, any black swan can arise. There can be something totally off the radar that it's going to have to get priced into the market.

(09:50) But, you know, this idea that we were just going to collapse the economy, and that it was all going to be, take your medicine with tariffs and attack on the consumer and reduction in spending, and none of that's really materialized. The tariff, it was largely a negotiation tactic, and there's been walk back. Even the, now the market, like today, new tariff headlines, the boogeyman tariff, it's like just shrugging it off.

(10:10) It's not just Bitcoin, guys. NASDAQ has made a new all-time high today. The S&P 500, all-time high today. Bitcoin breaking out. And the most interesting thing about it to me is that we know that when Bitcoin runs, it runs hard. And you had this whole year, basically, we were just consolidating over the inauguration day high of, you know, what was it, 110, somewhere there.

(10:28) We're going to break here and we're going to go higher. And I think this persistent services inflation, which there's signs of it picking up again, is going to keep us closer to 3% than two. And the, what is the Fed going to do in that environment? Is the Fed really going to cut in the face of that? I know they're getting browbeat, but that, in some ways, makes the problem worse.

(10:46) So, really fascinating here. I think the overall TLDDR is that the recession risks are totally overblown based on the current data. Yep. Holy bull in the house. Yeah. I mean, it, listen, I think this is an absolutely exciting time to be long risk assets across the board, but especially with Bitcoin because we've got every catalyst in the world.

(11:06) We got massive Bitcoin treasury companies, which I'm sure we'll get into, sucking up Bitcoin, planning to buy Bitcoin, getting in the marketplace. We got a frenzy on that. We got Bitcoin, I think, structurally undervalued here. We look at all-time high, and sometimes we get this natural PTSD, like, oh, this seems a little weak. I think it's the opposite.

(11:22) I would be curious, Geoff, your thoughts or Preston, Hoddle, like, do you really feel like there's leverage in the Bitcoin space right now? I feel like there's a complete lack of leverage. Right. That's what I'm saying. It hasn't, that burner hasn't even turned on yet. Yeah. Yeah. We're not even close to the exciting part yet of a bull market.

(11:38) And I think to you guys' point, I just a few days ago, I don't post very much on on social media, but on Noster, I posted a little thing of a reverse head and shoulders pattern that I've been watching play out on with Bitcoin. And we're pretty much there right now. So, with a price at about 112 to 113, I think it taps on the door and then it shoots higher. And I think we'll be at 140 to 160 before people can blink.

(11:59) And so, people who are sitting on the sideline waiting for it to pull back again, I think they're out of luck, personally. So, I want to talk about a point that Joe brought up about how there's been this massive policy shift. You know, you started off the beginning of the year, Elon was supposed to go out and trim two, what was it? Two trillion.

(12:16) He backed it down to 1.5, and Basset was supposed to raise a bunch of revenue through the tax adjustment to the tariffs and all this. That was the plan. And all along, we had a conversation early in the year, and we were like, there's no way they can do this without offsetting it and still printing the money and inserting it into the system.

(12:35) If they pull out $2 trillion worth of liquidity in the system, they have to still print it somehow and get it in there regardless of like how much they're saving the government and doing all these things. And sure enough, that's exactly where I think the Trump organization found themselves. And I had a conversation with Luke Roman.

(12:54) He was like, "This is the biggest pivot I've ever seen in an administration where they're basically saying, I mean, look at this bill they passed." I heard rumors that Elon and Basset came to blows in the hallway. I'm sure that there's, I don't know if you guys heard any of that or what you've heard, because that Elon was just, he was given a fool's errand at the end of the day.

(13:17) He was given a fool's errand. And it's so ironic to me. This guy's the richest person on the planet, and yet he doesn't realize that this entire game is rigged. It doesn't matter who's in office, which party's in office. They're going to juice the numbers because they have to to keep the economies flowing, and you don't get credit impairment.

(13:36) So, guys, what are your thoughts on the pivot? And I know you think it's going to just rip into the end of the year, and I agree. Any comments on that or the pivot, and maybe the implications of it anymore? Well, I'll just say I don't think it was just rumors. It was like, there were published articles about how Elon hurled his body into Dubessan's rib cage and body checked him like hockey style.

(13:56) But yeah, I mean, this is the, this is good intention people, well-intentioned, going into a situation hoping they could fight the institutional inertia to spend more money and just running up against a wall. You're taking some of the most successful, innovative people currently alive across many different domains and subject matters, and they're just running into realizing just how incredibly difficult it is.

(14:19) And then the administration who desperately wants to make a deal and acknowledging like, look, name a better deal that we can get through Congress. This is how screwed up the system is. It Congress is so broken. We have to make all these sacrifices when what we're doing is effectively just agreeing to what we had before with slight incremental changes, the slightest change in the world, even if with the best of intentions.

(14:39) So, to me, it's got to be frustrating for those guys because I do think they went in there thinking they could cut out a lot of fat. But unfortunately, it's just, it's a tall order. But it seems like they're looking at, okay, we have to print, we have to print in style. We got midterms coming up, and they're looking at Bitcoin, and I think they're, I think they're all in, man.

(14:59) I think that they're looking at Bitcoin as the thing that the only thing that actually solves all of this, and they're loading their personal bags, is my impression. Do you guys disagree with this? No. I, I think that's 100% accurate. I think everyone, I, you know, it seems to me like everyone on Wall Street, everyone in a powerful position is like exactly like you said, just simply loading their bags.

(15:21) I had a friend call me. I had, uh, this guy's a pretty wealthy guy. I used to work for him back in the day in my 20s, and he called me. I had convinced him to buy five Bitcoin back in 2018. And, you know, he had gone from, he put in $20,000, it's at like a half million dollars. And he called me and he goes, "Hey, uh, we were sitting around talking about Trump and everything that's going on."

(15:40) "And we decided finally, after all these years, you're right. And we put 25% of our net worth into Bitcoin." And they're like, they're eight-figure people. So that's a significant position, right? And I think that everybody has now, once Bitcoin crossed $100,000, the psychological phenomenon or effect that occurred was everyone now default believes the Bitcoin story.

(16:00) Everybody believes that Bitcoin is going to millions of dollars a coin. That's a very recent and new phenomenon. I don't think everybody believes that. No, I think that I think they do. Many, they just don't admit it. I think everyone believes it, like deep in their heart, they know it's about to happen.

(16:18) Even the critics, you think even the, even the, even Peter Schiff knows it. He's on the board, dude. We, it's an open secret. Peter Schiff has got positions on the board of, you know, different crypto companies and like, come on. Like everyone knows it. It's like the iron shake, right? Like he's playing the heel.

(16:34) Schiff is out there playing the heel. Like America, you know, like that's what he is doing. I mean, Joe, to to Hoddle's point, I've heard a lot of like hardcore critics that that will say something to the effect of, it might go to a million, but that doesn't mean that it's going to end up being successful or something. Like they just acknowledge that it's possible that it's going to a million, but that it's somehow going to fail at a million, which, what is the, what are we at, 20 trillion at that point? Yeah. Yeah.

(17:02) Yeah, but don't you think that's just like saving face because they've been wrong for freaking forever? They still want to, they don't want to try to call a top anymore. There's, Yeah, it may go. I mean, I've heard Michael Green say something like this. He's like, "Oh, it could go higher. I'm not going to bet against it."

(17:16) "I'm not going to short it, but it'll, you know, I think that's just saving face." I don't think they actually believe it because they would position for that. They actually thought it was going to a million dollars, they would put more money in. Take the most staunch critics in the world out, right? Because that's a very small portion of the population, the intolerant minority, right? I think that the average person believes that Bitcoin is going to millions of dollars a coin.

(17:37) And that is something that obviously we were all laughed at and called insane for saying things like that. And now that is like a default assumption. So, everybody believes that the Bitcoin story is going to happen. The only thing going on in the minds of retail participants is they don't believe that they are going to be a participant in that story for whatever reason.

(17:55) I missed it. I missed it. It's too expensive. Yeah. It's for other people that are well more well-off, and they just write it off as, I missed that boat. And then that brings us to the treasury companies because the treasury companies say to the person who has this psychological effect where they go, I missed it. No.

(18:16) Hey, here's another opportunity. Here's this is a time machine to 2017. Step in, young man. Let's go get you your Bitcoin. I mean, that's is crazy. The the comments that I see online in reference to the treasury companies is just asinine. Like all of it, the all of the discourse is bad. Yeah. Really don't understand security analysis.

(18:39) Now, are there, is everybody going to be like MicroStrategy? Absolutely not. But there's going to be some companies that exercise this strategy that are going to crush it. They're going to absolutely murder it. And to something to Jeff's point that you made earlier in the show about these three burners, I would maybe even make the argument that there's a fourth burner, which is just liquidity pipes into Bitcoin, right? The plumbing that is now being wired up into Bitcoin. And one in particular is just preferred stock. So, this is a market

(19:16) that is was just really small in the grand scheme of things relative to debt markets, to credit markets, and I think that this the plumbing on this is just getting opened up, and I think it's going to become a massive market in the coming 10 years, like massive. Mhm. One of the reasons why is convertible debt creates this situation where it puts resistance, uh, levels into the common stock based on assuming this whole treasury strategy thing gets way bigger than it is right now.

(19:50) That's what I think is going to happen. I think it's going to get way bigger, like monumental in size in the coming 10 years. And when you're looking at how convertible debt sets up like this delta hedge situation on the common stock, you put these resistance bands in that make it hard for the MNAV on the company to run.

(20:09) But when you do it with preferred stock, perpetual preferred stock, where there's no end date for the call on the principal of the initial issuance, you don't get that. And I think MicroStrategy has figured this out. And I would be really surprised to see them do much more convertible debt issuance because of the issues that it kind of creates in the options and everything, and all basically it sucks all the volatility out of the common stock every time they issue this, and they don't want that, that at all.

(20:42) So, I see this market, this preferred market, getting so much bigger, and I don't think you're everyday, I think most people don't even understand preferred stock. If I have a conversation with a 100 people off the street, I think there might be one or two that actually even understand what preferred stock is.

(20:58) And I think this market's about to get really big. Yeah. I think, in fact, if you can kind of look at what Sailor is doing as him building out his own yield curve, and he can go up to, I, I believe this is speculation, but I think he can potentially go up to the Kepler of Bitcoin, which means there's a lot of room there to build that out using those preferred structures.

(21:18) And then you're right about the, the treasury companies. Not all of them are going to, like, here's the nuanced opinion because you're right. People are out here, there's all this paper Bitcoin discourse on Twitter and everything, which is very fun and colorful. But I'll give you a bit of a nuanced opinion/prediction, which is I think the treasury companies are a real thing.

(21:34) They're a real phenomenon, and they're going to live large in the world over the next 10, 15, 20 years. I also think that we're in the infancy of a very large bubble. A bubble that could be like .com in nature in the short term. In the short term, and that's over the course of like maybe three, four years. Here's the distinction in my mind, Hoddle. So, the largely, I would say the companies that have begun and grown and had traction as a Bitcoin treasury company, I would say they've done it in a responsible way with both their debt issuance, with their share issuance.

(22:05) I would say what tends to happen in frenzies and in the short-term, you know, things that attract a lot of attention, flavor of the month type strategies, not saying this is, but I think at the beginning, that you could have entrants into the marketplace that move out on the risk curve. They start to do riskier things to acquire Bitcoin, and that's where it really gets introduced.

(22:24) I don't think we've even seen that yet, but somebody is going to come along and say, "Well, they're having such success, if we just tweak a little bit, if we just take out a little bit of debt that's at a higher rate, or, you know, play a mildly different strategy," that's where you introduce the real contagion risk.

(22:38) So, that's to me what I'm on the lookout for. That's the sign of overheating. To this point, I think that a lot of the amateurs that come in and try to do this, they're going to think that they've got to to provide better value in the issuance than MicroStrategy. But what I think is going to be discovered with enough time is that the smaller the company is that's implementing this without a whole bunch of operational risk behind it, okay, is actually more desirable to the market participants because as a percentage of how much more

(23:11) Bitcoin they can stack relative to the treasury that they have, it's going to yield way bigger and better results than the behemoths. And what's fascinating about this is it's almost like the laws in nature where the animal can only, like an elephant can only get so big, right? And then it has a disadvantage because it's too big.

(23:34) You have the same dynamic, I think, that's going to play out for these treasury companies. And so, I guess what I'm saying is, you don't have to, I don't think that the people implementing this this strategy really need to go out there and offer way better dividend yields on, let's say, they're doing a preferred issuance. I don't think it has to be all that much better than MicroStrategy for it to be desirable to the market because especially if there's a callability piece to it.

(24:02) They're going to have a lot of buyers, I think, that are going to want the issuance because I think that the yields that that the underlying will perform at is going to be pretty good. And I see Jeff, you're nodding. You seem like you agree with me on this. Yeah. Yeah. And I agree with that. And I have like multiple points about this. Is I think that several of these newer ones, probably, I'm sure there are some we haven't even heard of yet that are coming to the market soon, too.

(24:24) They, I think they have great potential to outperform MicroStrategy, who was the founding father of this strategy in the bull market. But I will be watching very closely as a fund manager for who is putting on the most leverage late in the cycle, who is hyping up on Twitter and all the social media accounts and talking about how awesome they are.

(24:43) I will be watching them closely because they will get absolutely wrecked in the in a bear market. If we get a bear market, if liquidity pulls away, if the economy turns, these are like basically the same thing that happened to miners in 2020, 2021. We saw some of these miners that were the best performers during that cycle that they put leverage late, put leverage on late in the cycle, and they paid, and lots of them went bankrupt because of that.

(25:06) And I think that same thing is going to happen this cycle. So, well, the tell's the bond issuance. It's not the equities. You're got to look at the bonds. I mean, that's going to be the tell, I think, because those bonds will trade pretty ugly before the equity collapses, I think. Yeah. It's another interesting dynamic with all this is when you look at MetaPlanet and you look at the MNAV that it's trading.

(25:25) Where is it at right now? Like eight times. It's something nuts, something like that. Yeah, I'm not sure. Let's just for simplicity, just say that it's like eight times. So, if they go out there and they raise $100 million, they can basically go buy the Bitcoin as if it's on sale for call it $30,000 right now instead of it being $110,000, right? Real ballpark numbers, right? And if you're buying it for 30,000, and today in the market it's worth 110, and let's say we have an 80% drawdown.

(25:57) They basically bought the Bitcoin at the drawdown level. And so from a risk standpoint, these companies that have the really high MNAV that are exercising and buying all this spot, they seem like they're going to be able to weather the downturns more easily. It depends on what they have to pay, right? It depends on what obligations they're writing.

(26:19) Yeah. So, the, how the debt is encumbered. Exactly. Yeah. Like, because they've all, they're all adopting Preston's this strategy. They're like, we're never going to sell the Bitcoin. We'll see about that. Like, you know, once you have to meet your obligations, that's the, now MicroStrategy,

(26:34) I think one of the reasons why I think, to Jeff's point, right, it trades where it trades is because he's put in place a system where it's very, I think it would be very likely that he's a forced seller. It almost, to me, I can't even envision a certain circumstance, even if Bitcoin were to fall 50%, he wouldn't be a forced seller. Just look at what they got out there.

(26:49) I don't know. Do you disagree, Jeff? No, I don't think they will ever have to sell. Not during Sailor's tenure. Anyways, if you interrupt his interest expense and all of the dividends, even the ones that he doesn't have to pay because they're non-cumulative, I think it's 200 million a year, right? It's a pittance compared to like what, even if you have an 80% drawdown, he can continue to do that.

(27:12) Not to mention he can just do more issuance and come up with more cash to make the payments. Anybody on here in here think it's going to make the S&P 500 right now? I take. Yeah. This year, you think it is? Yeah, I think so too. Put me as, I think the S&P is in a situation where if they don't include it, they're at risk of being undesirable from just because you got such a fast-rising star in the mix.

(27:38) If they don't include it, people are going to be like, I'm not owning that. I want to own whatever else that. Well, they shut out Tesla for far too long. I mean, we know that, right? I don't know. Geoff, you didn't weigh in. I'm 50/50. I don't have a strong opinion on it. I don't, and I don't know anybody on the panel, so I don't, I can't. This is the point of indexation, right? Like the indexers, in some sense, win again because eventually it will get into the S&P 500.

(28:00) Now, if it gets in this year or not, I don't know, but eventually, we even you agree, right, Joe? It'll. Oh, yeah. Eventually. It's just the Bitcoin is going to come to where you are if you're an indexer, and you're not going to get the same returns that the early guys like like us got, but you're going to do okay, like you're going to be all right.

(28:16) I think that's very important for, you know, not just Bitcoin, but the markets broadly and MSTR stock, but, you know, the markets broadly are going to be buoyed by the amount of Bitcoin that Michael Sailor is holding. Good lord. Do you guys think that, so slight switch of subject, but because I brought it up, do you think Bitcoin miners are going to catch any sort of a bid this bull market? I'm still all bag, but I'm not that hopeful.

(28:37) So, I hope. Go ahead, Joe. I think a lot of the miners are becoming treasury companies, really what's going on, you know. Well, if you, uh, if you spend any amount of time on Twitter Spaces with Mike Alfred, he, he'll tell you they already have, and he'll cite his favorite example of a stock, which I'm not going to name for obvious reasons, but there have been a few of them who in recent weeks, just looking at one here, it has pumped 300%.

(29:02) That's not a bad bid. It's pretty great. Yeah, I have a diversified portfolio of miners, which means that some of them are up 300% and others are down 99%. Right. It's diversified. Like I don't like the miners. I don't own any miners. The main reason that I like, when I'm looking at it, can they implement this same, the ones that are public, can they implement the same thing that Michael's doing? They can.

(29:29) The issue is they have this operational business with extreme risk relative to the treasury in addition to the other risks that we were talking about as just far as meeting interest rate or interest expense and dividend payments if you're issuing them in a cumulative way. So why would I own that versus something that doesn't have all that operational execution risk and liability? Um, especially when you look at how much of a cutthroat business all of that was.

(29:59) So, hugely capital intensive. By the way, I like Mike Alfred a lot. I'm not knocking him at all, but I just feel like I miners were the flavor of the last cycle, and I just, it's hard for me to see how they catch a sustained bid this time around. Personally. Yeah, it's, it's going to be treasury companies this time around.

(30:15) It like I think so, too. I actually personally believe the treasury company bubble can get like I said, .com level large, which was 11 trillion in that era, because basically when you have this big type of bubble, it's like around an idea. The .com bubble was around the internet, and every, it was like the thing I said earlier, everybody now believes in the Bitcoin story. Well, in 1996, everybody believed in the internet story, they just weren't really participating, and then the fever caught them at some point between '97 and 2000, and suddenly everybody and their

(30:44) mother was in on the thing, right? And like every, every idea that was possibly going to happen on the internet had a company that was associated with it doing a rudimentary or crappy or fake version of that idea in 1996, right? Like broadcast.com. I mean, yeah, it's a big deal that we all watch on the internet, right? But we don't watch any of Mark Cuban, but Mark Cuban got paid a lot of money for that idea.

(31:08) And I think same thing with the treasury companies now is that the big idea is Bitcoin. Everybody goes, "Bitcoin's gonna happen. I missed it, but it's going to happen, right?" And we're in the infancy of this bubble. And what's going to happen, I think, is that the treasury companies need to differentiate themselves because if you look at XYZ Treasury versus what's the difference between Nakamoto and C or sorry, Jack Mer 21 or, you know, the MetaPlanet or this or that or whatever, you need to have a credible story about how you're differentiated

(31:35) from your competitors. That credible story is going to be something about SAS flow, Bitcoin specific businesses, how you generate Bitcoin capital. Oh, we're doing it on the Lightning Network. Oh, we're doing it over here with insurance. Oh, we're doing it over here with this. We're doing it over here with that.

(31:50) And like Pets.com before it in the .com bubble, a lot of these ideas are going to be real ideas that will happen in the future. Pets.com later became Chewy, which sold to Petsmart for $3 billion. But in the interim, we have no ability in 1997 to ship giant bags of dog food through the mail, through the US Postal Service, right? So, like, there's missing infrastructure that's going to cause some of these ideas not to come to fruition, but people are going to want to bet on them now.

(32:18) And that's the thing that's going to cause the bubble, I think, because everyone's going to get really excited about the internet of money, Bitcoin, the future of where this is happening. And that's why I think, like Jeff was saying, we could expand into Q2 of '26. Dude, I think we could be a three or four-year run with like a slight lull in between that takes us up to beyond a million dollars.

(32:36) Well, another, because the dynamic of if these shelves that we're talking about, like it gets a run-up and then it goes sideways for six months and it gets another run-up. Maybe the derivatives market is preventing this euphoria from really kind of creating the 80% drawdown and the massive run-up.

(32:54) I mean, when you look just using power law, and I'm not saying I'm like a huge promoter of this power law stuff, but when you look at the price action, I mean, it is just going right down the center of that model. It's not going out to the extremes. Now, whether it stays there or not, I don't know, but it's, I find it interesting that it's just running like this really clean path right down the middle of the model right now.

(33:16) Yeah. Again, for me, I think the deciding factor will be if they act, if the Trump administration is able to successfully rev up the economy, and especially if they can overheat it, then I think we see it start to rise significantly above that line where we, it can go exponential at that point. That's my take.

(33:33) I have the chart here somewhere. I have no idea where I put it on my desktop. Anyway, I also think there's a potential future where you could have a massive bubble in treasuries with a more stable, steady power law like climb in Bitcoin itself. And I'm not sure which of those futures plays out. A bubble in treasuries.

(33:52) Yeah, in Bitcoin treasury companies. Bitcoin. I thought you meant treasuries. US. Sorry. Sorry. No, sorry. Bitcoin treasury. I have a very Bitcoin-centric worldview. I had the same reaction. Regular treasuries don't mean anything to me. I mean, like there's a bubble in treasuries right now. What are you talking about? Hoddle's all in on treasuries.

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(35:11) com/preston because elite investors choose abundance. Joe, do you have any policy or up, like Washington D.C. update with the act and all? I promised Hoddle before we got on that I would ask him about his thoughts on stablecoins, which I was at the stablecoin conference back in Vegas, and I wanted to make sure that we had sufficient attention paid to the stablecoin massive move.

(35:36) We also have to talk about our good friend Tom Lee and his, uh, new comment that Ethereum is the new Bitcoin, Preston. And I really want to get your take on that, but we'll go to Hoddle first. Didn't I didn't even hear this from Tom. Oh, yeah. Did you? You didn't hear he was, he said on CNBC that Ethereum is the new Bitcoin.

(35:53) So, your reaction? Yeah, that's Oh, wait. I'm not allowed to talk like that on Preston. Joe, that's just, don't make a lot of sense. Joe, here's his thesis. Okay, I don't yell at me in the comments, but I'm just going to give you his thesis. Okay, so his thesis is as follows. He has started an Ethereum treasury company, and his thought process is that Ethereum, as the second largest adopted, quote unquote, blockchain, is going to be ripe for massive transaction usage as all these companies and financial institutions implement stablecoins. So, for those

(36:26) that aren't familiar, we have a massive piece of legislation that looks like it's going to be signed by the president, the Genius Act for stablecoins. It's going to make non-financial institutions have a clear regulatory path to issuing stablecoins. So, market participants are really excited about this.

(36:43) A lot of crypto companies are excited about this. And the bet that Tom Lee is making is that he thinks there's going to be this huge demand for Ethereum. And he thinks that the, that if he launches this Ethereum treasury company, he's going to be able to adopt the Sailor strategy, and then he's going to continue to increase his returns because not only is he going to continue to borrow and buy Ethereum, which will be needed for transactions, but he can stake the Ethereum, Preston, and when he stakes the Ethereum, it will only in this perpetual money machine advance his

(37:13) returns. Any commentary on that reaction to that? Does anything prove how dead Ethereum is more than the fact that they don't even have their own narrative this cycle? They had to steal our narrative. You know, you couldn't do NFTs again. Like, what happened to monkey pictures, man? At least that's that was your narrative.

(37:30) Can you believe that the, they were literally making rock pictures of JPEGs of rocks in different shades and selling them for $100,000? Like, how did that even? And it may have, and here's the crazy part, it may have been a better investment than an Ethereum treasury company, you know. So, here's the, uh, power law chart that I was saying that it seems like it's just like running up the middle.

(37:57) There's a lot more time that would have to play out with it continuing to do that for that to kind of looks kind of good. Warrant the con. Anyway, just throwing it out. So, do you guys think is there any situation, Jeff, where stablecoins have any impact in the Bitcoin market? Do you see any any positive catalyst for Bitcoin and the stablecoin, or is that just totally at the at the periphery, not even on our radar, not worthy of discussion? Well, a couple things.

(38:22) I think that it's expected from where we are right now in history. I think we're at a transition point, right, where we're phasing from analog to digital. We're phasing from fiat to Bitcoin. And I think that stablecoins are the perfect sort of segue to get into Bitcoin from the analog world. So, it's getting everybody digital, right? Get everybody on programmable money.

(38:42) And then you have the people like you, you can't deny, like Tether, those dudes, like first of all, that's the best business model that's ever existed. I think that's inarguable at this point, at least to date. And they're buying a ton of Bitcoin and they're putting on their balance sheet. So, they're not stupid. They're sort of fundamentally Bitcoiners to some degree, at least.

(38:57) And they get Bitcoin. If I could create that business model, I would do that in

A heartbeat, right? If I could give somebody a token for a dollar and then buy treasuries and then just collect the interest and not have to pay anybody and then buy Bitcoin with that, I would do that all day every day. (39:11) So, it's a great business model. So, I think it's a natural segue into where we're going. I don't think that they'll last. Like, I think Bitcoin is built to last. These will have a limited lifespan, probably of a few decades or so, is my guess. Joe, don't you think that the US messed up on the Genius Act with the part where they're saying that the issuers can't pay the interest of the coupons to the holders of the tokens?

It's no, it's a mess up in the sense that they're going to be shut out of many markets abroad. (39:41) Yes, I think that's true. So, just for the benefit, and again, I'm sorry this is not cool on the Bitcoin podcast, but I think it's fascinating because what it's showing is this massive lobbying power of banks, because the banks fought very hard to prevent the yields being transferred in any way given to customers, because keep in mind, the stable coin applies to non-financial institutions. (40:04) What does that mean? That means if you're not a bank and you're launching a stable coin, you have to abide by the Genius Act. It does not apply to banks issuing stable coins. So, you may have noticed in the news about JPM, and see, you have a question, but JPM, for example, could launch their stable coin and pay yield. (40:20) There's no prohibition on that. Yes. That's crazy. That's why I'm here dropping the alpha. Wow. Now, what's going to be interesting is that's going to be a bloodbath of competition for the incumbent banks. Yes. If you're not a bank and you're being forced to sweep the yield, the coupons, and you sweep them into Bitcoin, you're a way safer institution to use the coin. (40:45) Like, if you're not, and nobody's using these things for the yield right now. They're using them to get in and out of all their degenerate gambling in the crypto economy. So, I don't think that the typical person that's using these coins are using it for the yield.

Um, correct. And then you also will have a bifurcated market because under the Genius Act, if it becomes law, entities outside the United States, so foreign issuers, for example, Tether, they basically have to subject themselves to a comparable US regulator. They have to (41:17) prove and get permission to do the issuance. They have to abide by most of the major banking regulations and laws, which I am skeptical they will ever do. And the big one, they have to subject their entire organization to safety and soundness reviews from the Washington stable coin review board. (41:34) So, because of that, right, you're going to have these entities outside the United States that have to pick and choose. Do you want to access United States capital markets and play in the sandbox and know that your organization is now subject to US jurisdiction, or do you want to stay outside? So, my prediction is you're going to have this bifurcated market where you have Tether that largely stays outside of the United States, right? They're going to be continuing to be out there and trying to have penetration on both the trading vehicles, the Binances (41:59) and these different trading desks, but also locally, right? And to me, if you, if the goal is we want emerging markets to adopt stable coins, I think that, and this is just my view, I'd be curious, Jeff, and Hoddle and you, Preston, what you think about it, but I don't know why you would be more encouraged to adopt a stable coin that somehow has Washington regulation behind it. (42:19) To me, if anything, if you're outside the United States, you'd want something that isn't subject to Washington, where they, they can't freeze the accounts very easily. They won't freeze the Tether. You want to get far away from the reach of Washington outside the United States as possible. (42:32) That's just my read, but I'd be curious if you think that regulation Washington would cause emerging markets to adopt it.

Well, what I find interesting is because I didn't understand that, Joe, what you just said, but I find it interesting that Tether made the decision to start tokenizing gold in the face of what you just said. (42:49) Think about it. That instead of buying treasuries, they're saying, "Okay, well, gold's kind of better than the dollar anyway, so why don't we just tokenize that for people that want dollar-like stability and performance?" Is that why they went, started tokenizing gold? I think it's definitely an effort to potentially still have access to US markets. (43:12) Yeah. And that's the key, you know, thing because it's not dollars. Stable coins is applying to dollar-backed or purported pegged current pegged tokens. Yeah. So, it's fascinating. Wow. What a play. But I, yeah, I think they messed up by Well, maybe I don't know. Like, well, it depends on who, who messed up, right? If you're the banks. (43:32) Yeah, that's what I'm saying. The big, yeah, I mean, the banks. Why would the banks want there to be stable coins that can pay yield? I mean, think about it. Think about the effect that would have on money markets. And money markets have systemic risk factors in our society, right? If you, if money markets are just disrupted, that causes financial stability. (43:51) The Fed is going to be on that very closely watching if money markets get disrupted. And money markets have had issues before historically. So, I think there was an impetus to try to keep the yield part of it out. These can be rails and peg tokens and these types of things, but once you start playing with yield, that really threatens the model of the banking sector. (44:08) So, I got a question or a couple for you, Joe. So, to me, so based on this, it looks to me like so Tether is going to remain XUS. It's going to be the international option, and I think they're going to pivot to gold, and I think that gold stable coin concept is actually going to rise and be very popular in the coming five to 10 years in like, relatively, it's going to rise in popularity. (44:27) Dollar will still stay popular, but gold will will quickly rise. Here in the US, it's basically Circle now, which is outside of the banks versus like the JPMD and the other bank stable coins. How do you see that playing out? Circle versus the bank coins. Who wins that in the longer run? I think it's going to be fascinating to me. (44:49) It's not just those two because I think I, we track at our firm. I think there's a hundred stables that are have plans to launch or already launching. I mean, most of the major exchanges have some version of a stable coin. Kraken has a stable coin, for example. A hundred? Yeah. Yeah. But it's going to be like the ETFs, right? You're going to have this massive flood of a bunch of vehicles and then it'll consolidate down to the few winners, right? (45:08) It. It's like, think of it like a sport, right? You have to get market penetration. And to do that, you're going to have to figure out how do I get this into the hands of customers. And ideally, what you'd want is you want merchants to somehow incentivize people to accept the stables, right? Because stables are great for peer-to-peer transactions, but we know that a lot of people, you know, they're going to take that and they want to buy things at Amazon or they want to buy things at other retailers. (45:31) So, the key thing for me is how do you get this to get outside of the crypto trading apparatus and used as a medium of exchange. Credit card companies would have a very easy path to doing that. I have not heard credit card companies doing that. I'd be curious though. I don't really see an avenue. I mean, I have a JPM account. (45:48) I don't know why I would use the JPM stable coin. See, what I think is gonna happen is I think they're going to introduce them through, they're going to talk about they're finally going to take on Bitcoin custody and they're going to be like, "Okay, you want you want us to custody your Bitcoin first? You know, send your cash in here, convert it to the JPMD, and then convert some of that into Bitcoin, and then why not have a little bit of yield over here in the JPMD coin and hold Bitcoin, and we'll custody all of it for you." I think that's how (46:13) they're going to introduce it. Joey, are they doing this on Solana, Tron, like what are they using? Well, JPM, I think, I just want to confirm this. I think they just they selected Base, this Base network, which I am by no means an expert and Hoddle probably is all over that. He's probably got a ton of Base tokens. (46:29) He's based. Hoddle's based. Totally bags of Base. Hold on. I got to figure this out. Go ahead, Todd. What we say? I'm going to do a little No, I was going to say one thing I've heard about the Tether guys is that they sort of have this worldview that China is going to be this perfected version of communism, that America is sliding into feudalism, and that they're building, you know, they are essentially going to be the iron bank for the new emerging network state which respects sovereigns. And that's a very large (46:59) worldview and it's crazy that they're actually in a position to do something of that nature. They could actually do that. They could actually pull it off. Oh, another thing on the stable coin thing is one reason, Joe, you tell me what you think about this, but I've heard that there might be a proliferation of smaller stable coins under 10 billion because under 10 billion they're state regulated and not federally. (47:18) That's correct. There's an arbitrage there. Absolutely. And that's where you get this massive number, right? You're going to have these these effective regional banks. There will be big winners, but you'll have these small regional banks that have their own. You've got a great read on the consumer. Like if my local, if a local bank is issuing and pumping up a stable coin, do you really think that as a product market fit? You think people are going to be like, I'll give you a, I'll give you a consumer perspective. I was thinking about a (47:42) little bit in regards to this, which is an expansion of the gift card industry essentially in a way that let's say I, I'm a normal family in the Midwest. I do a lot of my shopping at Walmart, and Walmart has a stable that they offer me, right? And so I park X portion of my check direct deposit with Walmart into this stable coin with the money I know I'm going to spend at Walmart. (48:02) And Walmart gives me huge discounts and incentives for doing so because they can't offer me yield, but they can offer me crazy discounts and incentives. That makes a ton of sense. But don't you need the, you need the merchant buy-in, and this is the problem. I don't, maybe they get that through. I don't know. That seems like they it has to be merchant driven. (48:20) It has to be Amazon, Walmart, major retailers that are saying you have to use this. I think so too. Yeah. You need the, you need Amazon, you need Walmart, Starbucks, etc. You guys ready for this? Yeah. Okay. So, Base is an Ethereum layer 2 chain developed by Coinbase. I asked it. Okay. So, who runs the nodes of Base? And the answer came back, Coinbase is currently the sole sequencer node on Base. (48:48) Wow. There you go. You only need one. You only need one. This is nuts. This is so funny. Coinbase is just taking over the world. I mean, the non-Bitcoin world is they're like the Lex Luthor of the Ryan Armstrong has been respecting Bitcoin lately. Here's the respecting Bitcoin again. The quote Preston, we're thrilled to see one of the nation's most prominent banks come on chain, said Jesse Pollack, creator of Base and VP Engineering Coinbase. (49:18) Base offers sub-second 24/7 settlement, which makes fund transfers between JPM institutional clients instant. We're proud to partner with JPM and this pilot combines the credibility of JPM to help us bring institutional money into a global economy. I mean, one sequencer. Of course, it's instant. Hey, question. What's what's the point of Ripple? Oh, isn't this Ripple's whole MO? Yo, he's on the hill a bit, huh? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. (49:48) Oh my god, this is such a But you know what? For I'm just thinking about all this through the lens of your typical person who doesn't care about finance at all. They see all this, all this fancy language and terminology. Oh, it's a sequencer on top of the layer two of Ethereum and just like, what a Rube Goldberg machine disaster of just terminology and nonsense. (50:11) Total nonsense. And the big problem is, okay, you have one chain that this Base chain that's got one coin running on it. There's no interoperability because it's not cross-protocol. So, you got like the entire ecosystem like, well, I've got stables on Solana and Ethereum and Tron and all these. That's a mess. The consumer experience there is terrible. (50:31) It's just absolutely awful. Well, it's going to be, yeah, it's going to be such a walled garden that either you're a JPM client and they force feed you that you're now using their blockchain, but nobody's taking that thing outside of their ecosystem. There's, to your point, there's no interoperability whatsoever. (50:48) And like where this is all going is the one that's the most interoperable, Bitcoin, wins and is actually backed and has tens of thousands of people running nodes because they want to, not because they're being forced to. Like, I just don't know how people can't see this, man. Is do you think we get stable coins on some sort of layer 2 or some sort of derivative of Bitcoin? I mean, is there doing it? Yeah, Tether's already made that announcement in January that they're doing stables on Bitcoin. (51:18) Is that going to be But not in the United States, right? Because they're Well, I mean, they're doing it on layer 2 Lightning. So, and you don't need a token to run it on Lightning. Yeah. I don't know. It's This is really And that was just JP Morgan. I can't imagine what the other, what you're seeing. (51:35) The others are using it for their quote unquote tech to run things. I was just going to say some of you guys are too young probably, but like in the '90s, the internet phase took over for a very long time, several years. And that's what I think is going to happen with these stable coins, right? That they're going to spend tons and tons and tons of marketing dollars and like what you're talking about with trying to get you to Walmart here, give you all these discounts. (52:00) Here's a Disney stable coin. Park your money here, we'll give you cheaper tickets. And I think they're gonna really push hard for about three, four, five years, and then it's just gonna fizzle because they're gonna realize it's not worth the effort. And then, yeah, because all roads do eventually lead to Bitcoin for sure. This is just this transition period that we're in completely. (52:18) I think that the internet is very analogous to private blockchains and it will likely meet the same fate, and we've seen that with many different private blockchain projects over the 15-year history of Bitcoin. So, yeah, all roads lead to Bitcoin, man. All roads lead to Bitcoin. Can I change the subject? Yeah. And Preston, are you able to put to I don't know if you have Trader View or something. (52:40) If you can get in something else. Yeah. An XPX divided by gold. XPX divided by gold. Okay. And as long as like the longest term possible, 100 years, hit the hole. Uh, let's see here. This is what I can't stop thinking about and I, I've been going on this for a couple months now. And my leading question to you guys is divided by gold. (52:58) Is that what you said? Yeah. Okay. And if you do it on TradingView, you can go back to like the 1920s. And my question I'd pose to you guys is, do you think that the period of American exceptionalism, as people talk about, is it over for now? Are we, and, and yes or no? And I'm, and I'll take the other side of that, Joe. I think it is. (53:19) I think we're in a period, and I think this chart is very helpful in showing this, that I think that we've reached the point where the dollar strength, it's strengthened enough that investment in US assets, financial assets has reached a peak, and we're now rolling over, similar to 1929 and then into the '30s, similar to the late 1960s and through the '70s, and similar to basically the dot-com bust through about 2011. 11. (53:48) And I think it, it's sort of shocking to me, at least, how well you can see these huge secular trends when you have like the S&P 500 divided by gold. And it looks very clear to me, at least, that we're at the start of that. Now, we may reverse that and go back again. And I wish I had the chart up to show you. I have it right here if you want to see it. Yeah. (54:09) This is the S&P over gold. This is a, uh, chart of the 18, 184. Yeah. So, and so the bars are monthly. Oh, yeah. Yearly bars. Can you do monthly? You don't like the yearly? It's too, that's too big. That's fine. But it shows the same thing, but I, I feel like you can see the waves a little better. Okay. Hang on. Either way, but you guys can see it anyways. (54:33) So, where that first peak is, I'm going to go, I'm going to go to monthly. Here's monthly. Okay, there we go. Then zoom out. Yeah, there you go. Okay. And you can see, so that first peak, that's 1929. That hump number two, that's about 1968ish. Peak number three, that's the, that's the dot-com boom bubble. Yep. Okay. (54:56) I think that we're at the almost the exact same period right now as we were kind of in the early '70s. And I will be very surprised if gold does not outperform US stocks. And if emerging markets and international stocks don't outperform most US stocks for the next five to 10 years, okay? And I think Bitcoin, and I think global assets are the place to be, and I think US assets in general are not the place to be, except with a few exceptions. (55:24) Mainly AI, the tech stocks I think can still do well. AI, robotics, semiconductors, I think still can outperform. But I think in general, US investors who are only in US stocks and US bonds are going to get decimated, as in inflation-adjusted returns over the next five to 10 years or so. And tell me why I'm wrong. My response is going to be, look at VTI versus VXUS, which is what you're looking at. (55:53) This is the, actually, let's look at it the other way. The VXUS is the Vanguard Total International Stock Market excluding US stocks, and then there's a Total US Stock Market VTI. This is the chart. Okay. And we're going to zoom out as they say. This is the path of this thing. To me, this tells the whole story. Look what you see repeatedly. (56:15) You could have made the same argument going back. You know, this is 2011 here, here, here. Awesome. If you were able back with the timelines that Jeff was Yeah, I No, but you can. So, 2011, notice that's when this starts. That's when the last bubble started. So, gold last peaked in 2011 relative to stocks, and then it's been free falling since then. (56:38) It's rolling over here yet again. Okay, I expect it to make a lower low. And the reason is very simple. And you're going into an age where the companies that are dominating the artificial intelligence space are based in the United States. They're part of the US capital markets. Yeah. (56:57) I personally expect a massive productivity burst. I think nominal GDP is going to run a lot hotter than we expect. I think we can't even measure it correctly because of the technologies that our little rodent brains can't wrap our heads around. And because those are largely domiciled and have access to US capital markets, you're going to have to own those things. (57:14) Those things are going to print cash over the next 20 years, and the majority of the world's companies, although meaningful and having a competitive advantage on raw materials, they will need the AI, they will need features and the AI resources that will be based in the United States. So, I find it very difficult that people actually, I don't understand it at all, how people make the argument that we're going to have this massive boon, economic boon where AI companies are going to drive productivity and just print cash effectively, and then they also think (57:41) we have the end of American exceptionalism. Those two things seem completely at odds with one another. Either the AI narrative is total fluff and that's not going to transform and cause a productivity burst, or alternatively, it is, and American equities and American investments, American stocks are going to do fantastic. (57:58) So, can I counter that? So, I think that I totally agree actually with almost everything you said, but I think the difference is AI will become commoditized and will diffuse throughout all markets, global markets, and I think all companies around the world, cuz, because you can be in Sri Lanka and you can subscribe to OpenAI if you want to, or whatever. And I think we're going to see the benefits and operating margins of all companies are going to massively improve, and then we also have robotics, right? Robotics is going to replace lots (58:26) of human workers. It's going to allow companies to be more efficient, improve margins even further. But I think because of where the US valuations are currently, that we're going to see more margin expansion and margin improvement across the globe and throughout based companies. And so it's not just the AI companies that are going to make money. (58:46) It's the AI tech itself is going to diffuse throughout the world and actually cause all companies across the world to do well. Well, it'll diffuse, but the, I mean, the data centers, we're going to spend trillions of dollars over the next 10 years with data centers in the United States. Massive, a massive, massive capex. Yep. (59:04) In the United States. And yes, which is terrible for margins. Sure. Uh, but it's terrible for margins assuming there isn't huge amounts of stimulus coming from the US government running structural deficits of 6 to 7% GDP and potentially getting bigger. So, to me, that's going to be a non-stop cash investments. (59:24) And you can do that as long as NGD, as long as nominal GDP is running hot. As long as nom, if I mean, they're telling you the strategy. Bessent came out and he told you, we're going to run this economy hot. How do you run an economy hot? You run it hot by effectively borrowing a lot of money and pumping out a huge fiscal impulse. That is the, nothing stops this train. (59:43) That is the massive Go ahead. Totally agree. But that's, but all the, so is the rest of the world doing that? They're everyone though. They're not going to be able to compete and compete in what? Just AI tech, you mean? Because we're behind on the data center front. I'm saying they're going to compete by P. (1:00:01) They're going to be doing even more relative stimulus. They're going to be pumping more dollar, more currency into their markets, which will get converted to dollars. That's the dollar milkshake theory. So, that's So, yeah, so I disagree with that. I think we are at the, we already are have reached the period where we're going to have basically 10 years-ish of declining dollar value. (1:00:20) I think the dollar is going to get weaker over the next 10 years, not stronger. So, this is, this remains to be seen. We'll have to just, just to be clear, when we're talking about the dollar for the audience, we're not talking about the consumer prices that are be people paying the cost of goods and services. What we're talking about is the relative foreign exchange value as measured. (1:00:38) I think most people use the DXY as a proxy for currencies. And the problem I have with the argument is that most of the major lending still to this day, even after the Russian sanctions where people says, "Oh, everybody's going to flee the dollar." We have more transactions going through dollars. We have more credit creation that's denominated in dollars, regardless of the settlement mechanism. (1:00:57) And I fail to see how that structural dynamic is going to change unless you're going to get the entire Eurodollar system to start issuing more denominations of credit in other currencies, which I can't, I can't really find one other than maybe Bitcoin, which maybe that comes, maybe that transforms things and disrupts it. (1:01:14) But are they going to do it in the Ruble? Are they going to do it in the gold? I think gold and then Bitcoin are coming. And I think gold is already rising quickly as a reserve asset. It's the second largest for credit creation. Not for credit creation, but that I think that's also coming. I think the world is shifting from US dominance to global hard asset dominance, and we're just at the early days of that, and that's going to continue for the next 10 years or so. (1:01:39) Yeah. My, my view is this is very esoteric. Sorry, guys. No, no, my view is it's a weakening of US hegemony. You have more regionalization. I totally buy that argument. But you framed it as the end of American exceptionalism. And I fail to see a country out there that can truly rival the United States in terms of its relative power. (1:01:59) I could see regional blocks, of course, but they're not one country, one entity. Jeff, to your, to the two charts that you threw up there as far as gold outperforming, call it the S&P. Mhm. I think that you, I would agree with that. I don't know how long it runs though, before kind of this whole AI, I think everything's getting rewired for levels of efficiency that we can't even comprehend. (1:02:24) So, I don't understand how long that would run, but I think in the coming five years, I think you're going to be right about that. On the second one, I mean, the chart that Joe threw up there was amazing, and it was showing that there has been no trend line that has broken with respect to the US economy getting weaker versus relatively everybody else. (1:02:43) So, you might, but that was since 2011. That only went back to 2011. You know, I, I know that, but I'm saying right now as we're looking at it, I'm looking at that trend. I'm saying that has definitely not been broken in any type of average true range or any type of momentum metric that you want to use. You know, I think it's yet to be seen whether your thesis, the second thesis there is is demonstrating any type of performance or validity. Yeah. (1:03:08) So, a couple points I'll just throw out there and then I'll stop. I think that the amount of debasement that's going to happen in the US as we delobalize and ramp up manufacturing here is going to be like, it's the, nothing stops this, stops this train. Legit. And we are going to debase the crap out of our currency, and that's going to cause the globe to lose confidence in US dollars relatively, not completely. (1:03:31) I'm not saying hyperinflation. I'm not one of those people. I'm saying relatively speaking, we're going to increase the pace of people losing confidence in the dollar. The dollar is going to weaken. Treasuries and on an inflation-adjusted term are going to get absolutely decimated. The amount of money we have to spend to do the things that we're going to do are just going to cause a huge amount of debasement. (1:03:55) And to your point, Preston, I think yes, we haven't seen a definitive change yet. But what if you look back just year to date, emerging markets, European stocks, Asian stocks have all significantly outperformed US stocks to date, as has gold. And I think I'm, what I'm saying is this is the beginning. Six months a trend does not make, but I think we're going to be talking about this five years from now and even 10 years from now, and we're going to look back at this as this was the pivot period right around this time. The only thing I'll say is that the (1:04:26) debasement of the dollar, letting the economy run hot, it's a coordinated strategy to manage US debt, yes, and to me, long run, if you use that strategy, you're going to hurt your people, you're going to make the cost of living increase, it's going to have very pernicious effects for society, potentially societal instability, but it makes your debt situation far more manageable. Yeah. (1:04:49) Which means that the plates can keep spinning in the air. And so I'm agreeing with you and I'm saying that's what we're going to do, and that's why that's going, this is why this is going to because smart people and nations are realizing this, and they're going to pull their capital out and let us do, we're going to inflate our debt away and get our debt to GDP under control. (1:05:07) Yeah. But nobody's going to want to own our assets because of that, is my kind of my point. So Americans were like the '70s. They're going to think they're doing okay, but they're actually going to get decimated in risk-adjusted returns. Excuse me, real returns, inflation-adjusted returns. I threw up this chart real fast to talk because we've been mentioning gold quite a bit during the conversation, and I think this chart is totally, this is an amazing chart. (1:05:32) I think about this chart all the time based on the trend line. Like as you lie awake at night, you think about this chart. I do. I literally do because it looks like the Wier chart, right? It's crazy. For people that are just listening, we're showing all of the gold ETP, the ETFs, and all that stuff that's holding gold, the performance, and mostly just the total value if you add it all up relative to the Bitcoin vehicles that the ETFs and the IBITs and all that kind of stuff. (1:06:02) And what you see is this chart where Bitcoin is just like a rocket ship quickly approaching the levels that the gold value is at. Whether the trend continues, who knows? I mean, we obviously we're hardcore Bitcoiners, we think it is. But if you interpolate some of these lines out, it's getting really interesting here in the coming five years. (1:06:22) Like, really interesting. I don't know. I find the whole pivot with Tether doing tokenizing gold really interesting. Really interesting. I think it's going to catch on personally. Why would anyone want to own gold though? Why would you want to own gold? Is it because you're too stupid to understand Bitcoin or Absolutely. (1:06:42) Well, I think most people are older. They just, they understand gold, they understand the dollar, and that's the end of their level of thinking and caring about any of this stuff. It's, yeah, it's for the boomers and some Gen Xers, but yeah, people just want to hold the political party and then just blame the other side for all the woes in their life, and it's the end of the analysis. (1:07:05) Like, that's where 90% of the population. A friend, a friend told me this thing today that I've been chewing on ever since where he said, when you grow up and you become incurious, you know, all kids are curious, and you become incurious, you stop having a true-false framework running your head, and you start having an us-them framework running your head. (1:07:22) Huh. I think that's what it is. Bitcoin people are people who are searching for truth, and everybody else is us versus them. Yeah, I would agree with that. All right. Any other topics? You guys are satisfied. It's all that preparation. No, I, we have to give the red meat to the audience. (1:07:39) So, we have to talk about price right going forward here. We, Jeff is very ex-bullish. I think everybody's bullish on this podcast. Where do we see this going? Do we think it's going to stair-step up, crawl higher through the end of the year? Do we expect any pullbacks during the fall? I know we've kind of alluded to it going higher next year. (1:07:57) I think that's generally the consensus view of the panel here. Let's see if we're right about that. Any other, how, where we at in in Christmas time? When's our next, is this our Q2 or Q3? I forgot. Is this Q2? I, I think I'm staring at this chart. I think I'm a power law believer. Look at it. It looks real. I'm in power law. (1:08:15) No, I, I think that the most likely thing is that we get this Q2 '26 expansion. I agree with Jeff. I think that's sort of like a consensus view at the moment amongst Bitcoiners who've been here for a while. And but again, we could easily go into, I don't know, man. It's so hard to pick because it's like we could get the diminished returns narrative where we go to like 180 and then we, you know, go have a 50% correction or something, or we could just keep going. (1:08:46) So, I'm going to go, here's my prediction. I, my prediction is going to be, I think that the bull run is going to go on for four years. I'm just going to go out there. I haven't heard other people saying this. Wow. I think we're going from here to 2028. I think it takes us beyond a million dollars. I think it's on the back of this (1:09:07) dot-com style treasury Bitcoin treasury company bubble, and I think that there will be a probably a lull period in there or one or two lull periods where, you know, it climbs up, it grabs onto a new all-time high, and then we have a 30, 40, 50% correction. There's a lull, but in the meantime, the treasury companies keep going hockey-sticking up and to the right because if you look, if you check Bitcoin treasuries. (1:09:30) com, NVK's site, every week there are more and more and more treasury company, and they are not going to stop being added. And every single person I was talking to in Las Vegas was telling me that they were gearing up to start a treasury company. And again, a lot of these people are rank amateurs who have no clue what they're doing. (1:09:46) And there are podcasters on the board. By the way, are you guys on any boards you're not telling me about? But like, I, you can't, the excesses are going to be there. The leverage is going to be there. The amateurs are going to do all the wrong things, and we're going to get this collapse. Yes. But this idea is so big, this narrative is so big, it can carry us through. (1:10:07) And I think there's an inherent reflexivity here to to this big idea that now everybody has figured out, which is like, yes, Bitcoin is going to millions. I mean, just think of it. Just take a step back here. Just pause for a second and think to yourself, the president of the United States believes that Bitcoin is going to millions of dollars. (1:10:23) The Treasury Secretary believes that. Okay? Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, believes that and thinks fiat money is hopeless. We all believe that, right? Your friend who you met at the bar for drinks when Bitcoin crossed $100,000, he now believes that. Everyone believes, Wall Street believes, everyone believes, China believes it. (1:10:40) Everyone believes it. Okay? And the only logical thing to do when everybody believes in a big new idea, whether it's AI or the internet or Bitcoin, is to have a super massive dot-com style bubble about the whole thing. So, I think that's what's going to happen, and I think it's going to take us to the million-dollar range over the course of three, four years. (1:11:00) Appreciate that narrative response. We're looking for a number of the price prediction by the end of the year. For the end of the year, it's like when I'm taking a deposition, nobody answers the question. What is the price at the end of the year? At the end of this year? Yes. 2025? Like 160? Like pretty low. Wow. (1:11:16) Yeah. Jeff, I will be watching closely what the economy is doing and what leverage is doing. And if they're both ripping, I think Bitcoin could go very high by the end of the year. I thought we were going to 400. Isn't that still happening? 475K has been my call based on past cycles, but the economy is so weird right now. (1:11:38) Like we talked about, it's been muddling along since 2022. So, I'm still waiting for the economy to pick up. So, I use that as my excuse. First of all, I'm planning on being wrong with that call, but so many people have used it as clickbait on their YouTube things. So, I feel like I'm like it's like tattooed on my forehead. (1:11:55) I think that we're going to extend. I don't know if we go three or four years like Hoddle says, but I think we at least extend into the second quarter of 2026. Now, that just kind of changes everything. So, if maybe we hockey stick in the second quarter of 2026, then I would actually have a higher price target. So, here's what I'll say. (1:12:11) If we hockey stick in the, if the economy is booming in the second quarter of 2026, then I'll raise my price target to 525,000. Preston, what's the target? I bought some options today. Oh man. And I priced when I was looking at what I think the the conservative estimate of where it's going to be by the end of the year because normally when I buy an option, I always do two years. (1:12:36) I always give myself enough runway. But these ones I bought are due in January. And I don't want to say too much because I don't want people to all follow you into the trade, get wrecked. I'm kidding. I bought these. They're out of the money by a decent amount. Like they're pretty levered, but got the timeline, so they come due in January of 2026, and I was using a base Bitcoin price of about 160, 170 for like a planning factor of like where I thought the underlying was going to go when I priced them. (1:13:13) Um, do I think it can go more than that? I do think it can go more than that. But I guess I felt pretty confident that we could get to those price levels by call it Christmas of this year. Definitely. We'll see if I'm right. I mean, if not, it's going to be a painful situation, but I obviously didn't do it with a whole lot of capital. (1:13:32) This is not a very high conviction position. This is like ashtray money. I'm going to have a little fun money. I'd take that bet though, Preston. I think that's a good one. So, we'll see. What about you, Joe? I've had the same target all year. It's public. This is important. What's that? I bought it this morning and it closed the day up 20%. (1:13:50) See? Nice. Huge. Nailed it. So, we'll see tomorrow it'll be down 30%. Go ahead, Joe. I've had the same target all year. I think we we end the year between 130 and 140, but I also think we go a lot higher next year because to your point, I think the economy is going to heat up. Before we go, real quick, can we do like a lightning round? I want like three things, three answers very quickly. (1:14:11) Can be yes or no. Number one, Hoddle, and everybody, does Powell finish his term? Number two, answer about do we get any rate cuts this year? And number three, No. Sorry, what was that? No. And no. No rate cuts the entire year. Okay. And then the third one, which is just just kind of for fun. (1:14:29) Do we get any other major pieces of legislation out of the administration this year? Also, no. I'm going no across the board. No. No. What do you mean by major? Well, some, I mean that I wouldn't consider like, like the Bitcoin Act or something like a, Yeah, Strategic Reserve Act, something Cynthia Lummis, anything. You know, we're talking about these things getting passed, and anything major on a Bitcoin front other than the stable coin, which is not really Bitcoin, but okay. You, you know my point. (1:14:51) So, those three. Go ahead. Go ahead. I'll take the exact opposite of Hoddle. Yes. Yes. And yes. And number four. I think the four of us should start a mastermind treasury company. Jump on board with everybody. Absolutely. Let's go. You think Powell's done? Hey, hang on a second. I got to You think Powell gets out this year? You think he's out? No. Hoddle said that. (1:15:08) Yeah. There's a lot of, there's a lot of talk about him resigning. Oh, I'm sorry. Rumors. You think he's gone? I think he stays. Powell's pretty stubborn, but there's a lot of pressure politically, so I'm not, I think he stays. And I think we get rate cuts. And I think we pass major legislation. What piece of legislation do you think? I don't know. Something major. (1:15:26) Okay. Something awesome. I don't think I think Powell's not going anywhere. And if true, then I don't think we're going to get any rate cuts. And I think they are going to pass the Bitcoin Act. Ooh. Wow. They did. That's huge. That's crazy. I mean, I guess that's more me just being optimistic because I really, I honestly don't have a beat or have even heard a rumor as to what the probability on that is. (1:15:50) I'm actually really curious what you think on that one, Joe. Yeah, I, again, that's one of those things where I really wish we would get it through. It's just going to be challenging. I think that they used up a lot of political capital on this big beautiful bill, and I just think it's going to be hard to get anything through Congress, and you got to remember with the window, basically once you get into the fall, there's the holidays, there's not a whole lot of work going, and then boom, we're into midterm elections, and there's going to be, I (1:16:14) think I expect a very heated midterm election. I think, and not to get into some of the recent headlines the last 48 hours here, but even it seems like conservatives and people in the MAGA world are upset and frustrated. We'll see how that pans out. You think Elon's new party is going to actually be a thing or is this just all talk? I think it's all talk. (1:16:33) It could, and the simple reason is this. There aren't national elections. There are 435 congressional districts, right, that have local elections, and you got to get on the ballots in those specific areas. And to get on as a third party, the system is rigged to prevent that. It's so difficult. I mean, some congressional districts, you have to get like between 5 to 10% of registered voters in the actual district to get on the ballot. (1:16:55) They make it prohibitive so that third parties can't. Um, this is the big secret, right? Like the two-party monopoly is built at the state and local level so people can't get on the ballot. In some ways, the easiest office to run for as a third party is the president. Aside from that, it's very challenging. (1:17:11) And then to coordinate candidates all across the whole country in individual congressional districts, it's going to be very difficult. Now, can he recruit a handful of people to uh go after some of his enemies on the hill? Absolutely, he can do that, and I expect him to do that, right? But the notion that's going to be in the majority of the congressional districts, I just don't see it. (1:17:30) Interesting. One, just your response, Joe. What's your response? Uh, so I think that Powell's not going anywhere. I completely agree with that. I do think we get a rate cut for two simple reasons. Number one, the reason we thought uh that he ostensibly was not going to do rate cuts was because he wanted to wait and see in his own words about the tariffs. (1:17:48) So that's a huge reason, right? We wait and see. We haven't seen inflation manifest itself yet to a degree that would cause him to hold back in the rate cuts. But the bigger reason is he's an institutionalist, and I think he's being attacked, and the only way to ease off that pressure is to do the cut. So, I don't think a 25 basis point cut, a face-saving cut is going to amount to a hill of anything. (1:18:07) I don't think it changes really anything in the real economy. But it's very easy for him to take the heat off him politically because if he doesn't, he's going to face this shadow Fed chair that they're dangling over him like this chair waiting. I think all of this is again posturing to try to get him to do some modest face-saving cut, and then they're hoping the entire yield curve reacts to it. (1:18:26) That's a hope and a prayer. I don't know. I don't think it will, given the, uh, the state of the economy, but is what it is. My one thought, Joe, to your midterm election being contentious is I would say a booming economy covers a multitude of sins. And so if they can truly get it up and running by then, which I actually think there's a good chance that they do finally, that could sway the elections pretty significantly. Completely agree. (1:18:48) And that's what the strategy is. Yep. So, we'll see. That's why that's why they're pounding the table on cuts. They're pounding the table on all this stuff. Yep. I agree. All right, gentlemen. What a pleasure. I look forward to the next one. Thank you for always making time. Let's go around the horn. Starting off with Jeff. (1:19:03) Uh, give people a handoff where they can learn more about you. First of all, Preston, I want to thank you for preparing for this so hard and being ready for it when that it was awesome. Ad lib. I run a little friends and family hedge fund, and that's about it. Go touch grass, and you should follow Hoddle, Joe, and Preston. (1:19:20) Don't follow me. We'll have a link in the show notes to Oh, hey, I'm sorry. Can I say one more thing? Public service announcement. I am not on any other social media. And I know you guys probably have this problem too. If you see anybody that looks like me on anywhere on social media other than Nostr, it is not me. (1:19:35) So, do not click any links. Don't send anybody any money. Please don't do that. It's an impostor. Thank you, Joe. Joe Carlasari. I'm at Joe Carlasari on Twitter, where I'm quite active talking about financial things. I do have a day job that I work as a litigator. So, if you have a litigated dispute, please contact me. (1:19:53) If I can't help you, someone else will. Uh, we handle, uh, representation for a variety of Bitcoin miners, complex commercial disputes, fraud claims, some securities work, and really anything in the courtroom, litigation. We do have a regulatory practice for crypto businesses, Bitcoin businesses as well. Look forward to trying to help you if you do. (1:20:09) If you're an innovator in the space, definitely reach out because I'd like to help. Best lawyer in America right there. Uh, Hoddle, go ahead. I don't have anything to shill. I don't care if you follow me, but these homies of mine on Nostr, they make this ghee called Great Ghee. Check it out. It says, "Highest quality animal fat for the hardest money on earth." (1:20:28) Nice. And it's made from raw Jersey cow milk. It's really, I can't swear on Preston's show. It's really delicious. It's really good. So, they, you can only buy it on Nostr. It's a Nostr only business. Check them out. Great Ghee, Great Ghee, everybody available on Nostr. All right, gentlemen. Really appreciate your time. (1:20:49) This is always such a pleasure, and I really do look forward to the next one. So, thank you guys. Thanks, Preston. Thanks for having me, man. The United States has a strategic fund of Bitcoin. That narrative is incredibly valuable. We got Bitcoin that's sitting on their books, right? That is already appreciated, a lot of it that has been seized. (1:21:09) And you're going to tell you, "We're not going to sell this into the market. We're just going to hold it."