[00:02:02] Jeff Ross: New all-time high.

[00:02:04] HODL: All-time high day!

[00:02:05] Jeff Ross: Yeah.

[00:02:05] Preston Pysh: You guys told me that when we like first met and I didn’t even realize. Any thoughts on that? Any thoughts on the all-time high? 

[00:02:13] HODL: 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. Nobody ever, I love that in the history of Bitcoin has ever been wrong about Bitcoin. Now that’s good to change, we know that, but like for right now, we can savor the moment.

[00:02:28] Joe Carlasare: Yeah, I mean the thing that’s exciting about it for me is that Bitcoin, since really the launch, the ETFs, it makes new to all-time high. It goes on a run, it goes to a new level. And then it’s consolidated for several months before breaking to a new level. And for as long as I’ve been in Bitcoin, I think it’s trading very differently.

[00:02:42] 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. We talked about one of the prior podcasts, like whether the cycle theory will die to some extent. The having cycle obviously we can have drawdowns that can happen, but that’s really interesting. We’re getting to that point here. We’re in Q3 now of 2025. So it’s interesting.

[00:03:10] HODL: Yeah, it looks kind of dead, doesn’t it? The Cycle Theory, we’re trading like Nvidia or something.

[00:03:15] Joe Carlasare: Yeah, we can pull back of course. Anytime. Right? All markets pull back over time. Just the question of like this predictable four year cycle. 

[00:03:22] Preston Pysh: 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? 

[00:03:30] Jeff Ross: Let’s go all-time high. More to come. Well, I don’t know how much we want to get in here, but you know, I want hear your theory first, Preston, but I’m very bullish, so I’ll tell you why, but let’s hear your theory first.

[00:03:40] Preston Pysh: Well, I just think the trading ranges that we’re seeing, like it just hung around this 110 to call it 90 k range for what fuels like. Six months or so. If we’ve been here, I think it’s the ETFs causing this. I think you got a lot of options that get constructed over, you know, 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.

[00:04:04] And then you have all the options on top of it that are just kind of building these resistance levels or bands kind of around where it just moved to. 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 one 40 pretty aggressively. You might have some bands that kind of get set up maybe around 1 50, 1 60 and then maybe done at one 30 or whatever.

[00:04:25] And it just kind of goes sideways in that range for a few months before it kind of pops through maybe another level. 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. I mean these things are growing like crazy way beyond what I think anybody anticipated when they launched, what, a year and a half ago now.

[00:04:47] HODL: Yeah. Well the other thing too here is, just to piggyback your point, Preston, is I think that Wall Street traders institutional money has a totally different view of the RSI than people who are crypto traders or bitcoin traders. And in Bitcoin we’re used to the RSI running really hot during bull markets and I think that the Wall Street guys see that getting up into the 70 range and they start getting pretty squeamish and they want to take off, trim their position, right?

[00:05:12] And so I think that’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy ’cause those guys are the big money sitting at the table right now. And so it’s trading a little differently than it used to. 

[00:05:19] Preston Pysh: Just for people the RSI is your relative strength index. This is a technical, you know, astrology for men. This is a technical metric that is really popular, especially for fast money on Wall Street, and they’re just looking at it and saying, ‘Hey, this thing’s getting overheated, so let’s go ahead and start lighting up on the position.’ And that’s to HODL’s point there. 

[00:05:40] HODL: It’s basically, like Preston said, it’s a measure of how overheated the market is and they believe that a market is overheated much sooner than the typical Bitcoin or believes the typical Bitcoin is like, what do you mean it can’t be overheated?

[00:05:50] We haven’t even seen a bajillion percent this year. It’s still many, many multiples to go. 

[00:05:56] Jeff Ross: So you guys clearly haven’t heard my three burner theory about how the Bitcoin price works in a bull market. So I’ll, I’ll just lay it out here. I talked to Danny Knowles about this a little bit, so, but here it is.

[00:06:06] 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. Everybody literally, and their grandma is talking about global liquidity now. Like it, nobody knew about it a year ago.

[00:06:23] Now everybody talks about it burner. Number two, that affects the price is the economy. You have got to have economy that’s revving up and when that starts to heat up, that’s a second burner to get the pot boiling 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.

[00:06:43] 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. 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.

[00:07:03] 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.

[00:07:21] 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.

[00:07:42] When the economy is booming, that means businesses are booming and are flushed with cash. It means people are employed in 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.

[00:08:05] 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.

[00:08:26] So that’s based on the forward metrics I look at. I think that’s what’s going to happen. And 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. 

[00:08:35] Joe Carlasare: Yeah, that sounds about right . I couldn’t agree more with the latter part, like I think there are signs here of green shoots all over the place with the real economy.

[00:08:43] And I think that the yield curve is telling you that in particular, particularly the 30 year like with we’re rising, I think we’re ing down at one 5% now with 30 year 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.

[00:08:59] I think the inflation swaps are starting to rise. I think you see crude and copper starting to rise and recession. Fear is completely, it’s still, I was looking at the Goldman’s index, that’s 35% probability of recession. That’s way overblown. There’s just no evidence of that. It’s nowhere in sight. And for whatever reason we’ve had this risk off atmosphere.

[00:09:17] And I think the rise structurally in yields personally, right here I think is a re reaction function to the big beautiful bill that the stimulus that’s coming into the system, to the fact that the recession risks were overblown. You have got to remember, if you flashbacks six months ago, people were talking about doge somehow magically cutting $2 trillion and know where that was coming from.

[00:09:36] Seemingly smart individuals on Fin Twit were talking about that actually being real. It’s not it. I think it’s was completely fabricated. I dunno 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?

[00:09:52] We saw the fact that that was largely abandoned at it 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. Now is this a problem that’s being driven by the sugar eye of additional spending?

[00:10:08] Yes, but it’s not a problem now and it’s not a problem in early 2026. And to me the Jess 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.

[00:10:24] 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 spending, and none of that’s really materialized. The tariff is largely a negotiation tactic and it’s been walk back and even now, the market like today, new tariff headlines, the boogieman tariff, it’s like just shrugging it off.

[00:10:43] Mm-hmm. It’s not just Bitcoin guys. Like Nasdaq has made a new all-time high today, the s and 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, what was it, one 10, somewhere there.

[00:11:02] 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 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 brow beat, but that in some ways makes the problem worse.

[00:11:19] So, really fascinating here. I think the overall TLDR is that the recession risks are totally overblown based on the current data. 

[00:11:26] Preston Pysh: Holy Bull in the house. 

[00:11:29] Joe Carlasare: Yeah. I mean, listen, I think this is an absolutely exciting time to be long risk assets across the board, but especially with Bitcoin. Yeah. ’cause we’ve got every catalyst in the world.

[00:11:38] We’ve 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’ve got a frenzy on that. 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.

[00:11:54] I think it’s the opposite. I would be curious, Jeff, your thoughts, or Preston and HODL, 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. 

[00:12:02] Jeff Ross: No, that’s what I’m saying. It hasn’t, that burner hasn’t even turned on yet. Yeah. So yeah, we’re not even close to the exciting part yet of a bull market. And I think to you guys’ point just a few days ago, I don’t post very much on social media, but on Nostr, I post 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 the price at about one 12 to one 13. I think it taps on the door and then it shoots higher.

[00:12:27] And I think we’ll be at one 40 to one 60 before people can blink. And so people who are sitting on the sideline waiting for it to pull back again, I think they’re out of luck personally. 

[00:12:35] Preston Pysh: So I want to talk about a point that Joe brought up about how there’s been this massive policy shift. You started off the beginning of the year, Elon was supposed to go out and trim two, what was it? 2 trillion? Trillion. He backed it down to 1.5. And Bassett was supposed to raise a bunch of of revenue through the tax adjustment to the tariffs and all this. That was the plan.

[00:12:56] 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. Like 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.

[00:13:16] And sure enough, that’s exactly where I think the Trump organization found themselves. And I had a conversation with Luke Gromen. He was like, this is the biggest pivot I’ve ever seen in an administration where they’re basically saying, look at this bill. They passed. I heard rumors that Elon and Bessett came the 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.

[00:13:45] At the end of the day, 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 ’cause they have to, to keep the economy flowing and that you don’t get credit impairment.

[00:14:03] So guys, what are your thoughts on the pivot? And I know you, you think it’s going to just rip into the end of the year and I agree. Any comments on that or the pivot on and maybe the implications of it anymore? 

[00:14:15] Joe Carlasare: Well, I’ll just say I don’t think it was just rumors. It was like a, there were published articles about how Elon hurled his body into best essence, ribcage and body checked him like hockey style.

[00:14:24] So, but yeah, 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 the wall. You’re taking some of the most successful, innovative people currently alive across many different domains and subject matters.

[00:14:43] And they’re just running into realizing this, how incredibly difficult it is. And then the administration who desperately wants to make a deal and acknowledging like, look, name a better deal that we can get through the congress. This is how screwed up the system is. 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 with the best of intention.

[00:15:07] So to me it’s have got to be frustrating for those guys. ’cause 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. 

[00:15:15] Preston Pysh: 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.

[00:15:25] I think that they’re looking at Bitcoin is 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? 

[00:15:35] HODL: No, I think that’s 100% accurate. 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.

[00:15:45] I had a friend call me, I had Orange, this guy’s a pretty wealthy guy. I used to work for him back in the day in my twenties. He called me, I convinced him to buy five Bitcoin back in 2018. And he had gone from, he put in $20,000 to like a half million dollars. Right. And he called me and he goes, Hey, we were sitting around talking about Trump and everything that’s going on.

[00:16:03] And we decided finally, after all these years, you’re right. And we put 25% of our net worth into Bitcoin. Wow. And they’re like, they’re eight figure people. So that’s a significant position. Right, right. And I think that everybody has now, once Bitcoin crossed a hundred thousand dollars, the psychological phenomenon or effect that occurred was everyone now default believes the Bitcoin story.

[00:16:22] Mm-hmm. 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, many people do. They do. They just don’t admit it. I think everyone believes it, like deep in their heart. They know it’s about to happen.

[00:16:39] Even the critics, you think 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 the different crypto companies and like, come on, like everyone knows it. It’s like the iron shake, right? Like he’s playing the heel. Schiff is out there playing the, he like America ha.

[00:16:56] Preston Pysh: You know, like that’s what people, to HODL’s point, Joe to HODL’s point, I’ve heard a lot of like hardcore critics that will say something to the effect of, well, 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.

[00:17:13] 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? 

[00:17:20] Joe Carlasare: Yeah. Yeah. But don’t you think that’s just like, you know, saving face? ’cause they’ve been wrong for fricking forever. They still want to, they don’t want to try to call a top anymore.

[00:17:28] There’s, yeah. Yeah. Maybe. I mean, I’ve heard Michael Green say something like this, like, he’s like, oh, it could go higher. I’m not going to bet against it. 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.

[00:17:40] They actually thought it was going to a million dollars. They would put more money in. 

[00:17:43] HODL: Take the most staunch critics in the world out. Right? Because that’s a very small portion population. The intolerant minority. Right. I think that. The average person believes that Bitcoin is going to millions of dollars a coin.

[00:17:55] 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 I would agree with that.

[00:18:13] Jeff Ross: Yeah. 

[00:18:13] Preston Pysh: I miss that. It’s too expensive. Yeah. It’s for other people that are more well off and they just write it off as, I missed that boat. 

[00:18:21] HODL: And then that brings us to the treasury companies. Yes. Because the treasury companies say to the person who has this psychological effect where they go, I missed it.

[00:18:30] No. Hey, here’s another opportunity. This is a time machine to 2017 step in young man. Let’s go get you your Bitcoin mean. That’s, it’s crazy. 

[00:18:40] Preston Pysh: The comments that I see online in reference to the treasury companies is just asinine. Like all of it. 

[00:18:47] HODL: All of it. 

[00:18:48] Preston Pysh: This person bad, just people really don’t understand security analysis. 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?

[00:19:16] The plumbing that is now being wired up into Bitcoin and one in particular is just preferred stock. So this is a market that 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.

[00:19:41] Like massive. One of the reasons why is convertible debt creates this situation where it puts resistance levels into the common stock based on assuming this whole treasury strategy thing kind of gets way bigger than it is right now. 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.

[00:20:03] 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 M nav on the company to run. But when you do it with preferred stock, perpetual preferred stock where there’s no end date for the call on the principle of the initial issuance, you don’t get that.

[00:20:25] 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.

[00:20:43] And they don’t want that. Right? They don’t want that at all. So I see this market, this preferred market, getting so much bigger. And I don’t think your everyday per, I think most people don’t even understand preferred stock. If I have a conversation with a hundred people off the street, I think there might be one or two that actually even understand what preferred stock is. And I think this market’s about to get really big. 

[00:21:04] HODL: Yeah. I think in fact, 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 believe this is speculation, but I think he can potentially go up to the CAGR of Bitcoin, which means there’s a lot of room there to build that out using those preferred structures.

[00:21:20] And then you’re right about the treasury companies, like not all of them are going to like, here’s the nuanced opinion. ’cause you’re right, like 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 slash prediction, which is I think the treasury companies are a real thing.

[00:21:35] 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. In the short term, yeah. And , that’s over the course of like maybe three, 

[00:21:51] Joe Carlasare: four years.

[00:21:52] Totally agree. Here’s the distinction in my mind. So largely I would say the companies that have begun and grown and had traction as Bitcoin treasury company, I would say they’ve done it in a responsible way with both their debt issuance, with their share issuance. I would say so too. What tends to happen.

[00:22:08] In frenzy and in the short term, you know, things that attract a lot of attention, flavor of the month type strategies. I’m not saying this is, but I think at the beginning that you could have entrance 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.

[00:22:24] I don’t think we’ve even seen that yet, but somebody agree can come along and say, well, they’re having such success. If we just tweak a little bit, if we just take on a little bit of debt that set a higher rate, or you know, play a mildly different strategy, that’s where you introduce the real contagion risk.

[00:22:39] So that’s to me what I’m on the lookout for. That’s the sign of what we’re to this point, Joe, 

[00:22:42] Preston Pysh: 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 have 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.

[00:23:05] Okay. Is actually more desirable to the market participants because as a percentage of how much more 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?

[00:23:30] And then it has a disadvantage ’cause it’s too big. 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 strategy really need to go out there and offer way better dividend yields on, let’s say they’re doing a preferred issuance.

[00:23:52] 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. 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.

[00:24:11] And I see Jeff, you’re nodding. You seem like you agree with me on 

[00:24:14] Jeff Ross: 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’s some we haven’t even heard of yet that are coming to the market soon too. They, I think they have great potential to outperform MicroStrategy.

[00:24:29] Who is the, 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. I will be watching them closely because they will get absolutely wrecked in a bear market if we get a bear market, if liquidity pulls away, if the economy turns.

[00:24:51] I mean these are like basically the same thing that happened to miners in in 20 20, 20 21. 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. And I think that same thing is going to happen this cycle.

[00:25:07] So, 

[00:25:08] Joe Carlasare: well the, the tells the bond issuance, it’s not the equities. You, you have got to look at the bonds. I mean that’s going to be the tell I think. Yeah, because those bonds will trade pretty ugly before the equity collapses, I think. Yeah. 

[00:25:18] Preston Pysh: Another interesting dynamic with all this is when you look at Meta Planet and you look at the M nav that it’s trading, where’s it at right now?

[00:25:24] Like eight times? It’s treasury, treasury, 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 a hundred million dollars, they can basically go buy the Bitcoin as if it’s on sale for, call it $30,000 right now.

[00:25:42] Right? Instead of it being $110,000. Right. It’s just 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. They basically bought the Bitcoin at the drawdown level. And so from a risk standpoint, these companies that have the really high M nav that are exercising and buying all this spot, they seem like they’re going to be able to weather the downturns more easy.

[00:26:10] I see. Joe. Literally, it depends on 

[00:26:12] Joe Carlasare: what they have to pay, right? I mean, it depends on what obligations they’re writing. Yeah. So, well you’re saying, you’re saying dividends debt is encumbered. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Like, like, ’cause they’ve all, they’re all adopting us in this strategy. They’re like, well, we’re never going to sell the Bitcoin.

[00:26:25] Yeah, we, we’ll see about that. Like, you know, once you have to meet your obligations like MicroStrategy. I think one of the reasons why I think the just point right trades where it’s trades is ’cause the, he’s put in place a system where it’s very, I think it would be very unlikely that he’s a forced seller.

[00:26:39] 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. No. Just look at what they got out there. I don’t know. Do you disagree, Jeff? 

[00:26:48] Jeff Ross: No, I don’t think they will ever have to sell. Not during sailor’s tenure anyway. I 

[00:26:52] Preston Pysh: mean, if you add up 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.

[00:27:02] Right? It’s a pittance compared to like what, even if you have a 80% drawdown, he can continue to do that. Not to mention he can just do more issuance and come up with more cash to make the payments. 

[00:27:12] Joe Carlasare: Anybody on here? In here? I think it’s going to make the s and p 500 right now. Yeah. Hot take. Yeah, I think so.

[00:27:17] This year. Yeah, I think so too. I think, 

[00:27:21] Preston Pysh: I think the s and 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. If they don’t include it, people are going to be like, well, I’m not owning that. I want to own whatever else that, 

[00:27:37] Joe Carlasare: that.

[00:27:38] Well, they shut out Tesla for far too long. Yeah, we know that, right? Yeah. Like that. I dunno, Jeff, you didn’t weigh in. 

[00:27:44] Jeff Ross: I’m 50 50. Have, 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 I can’t, this is, 

[00:27:52] HODL: this is the point of indexation, right? Like the indexers in some sense win again.

[00:27:56] ’cause eventually it will get into the s and p 500. 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, yeah, no, 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.

[00:28:12] But you’re going to do okay. Like you’re going to be all right. Right. And I think that’s, 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.

[00:28:26] Jeff Ross: Do you guys think that, so slight switch of subject, but, ’cause I brought it up, do you think Bitcoin miners are going to catch any sort of a bid, this bull market? I just, small bag, but I’m not that hopeful, so 

[00:28:37] HODL: I Good Joe? Good Joe? I think a lot of the miners are becoming treasury companies is really what’s going on, 

[00:28:44] Joe Carlasare: you know, well.

[00:28:44] If you spend any amount of time on Twitter spaces with Mike Al Alfred, he, he’ll tell you they already have, and he will cite his favorite example of a stock, which I’m not going to name for obvious reasons. I mean, you know, there have been a few of them who in recent weeks looking at one here, it has, 300%.

[00:29:01] HODL: That’s not a bad bid. 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. I don’t like, don’t like, 

[00:29:12] Preston Pysh: 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?

[00:29:22] They can, the issue is, 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.

[00:29:48] Especially when you look at how much of a cutthroat business all of that is. Right. So 

[00:29:53] Jeff Ross: hugely capital intensive. By the way, I like Mike Alfred a lot, so I’m not, I’m not knocking him at all, but I just feel like 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.

[00:30:06] Yeah. It’s, it’s going to be 

[00:30:07] HODL: treasury companies this time around it. Yeah. Like so too. I actually personally believe the treasury company bubble can get, like I said, dot 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 an idea.

[00:30:22] 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, suddenly everybody and their mother was in on, on the thing, right?

[00:30:40] And like 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. Yeah. It’s a big deal that we all watch on the internet, right? But we don’t watch any of Mark Cubans.

[00:30:55] But Mark Cuban got paid a lot of money for that idea. And I think same thing with the treasury companies now, is that the big idea is Bitcoin. Everybody goes, Bitcoin’s going to 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 X, Y, Z, treasury versus what’s the difference between Nakamoto and CEP, or sorry, Jack Muller’s 21, or the meta Planete or this or that, or whatever, you need to have a credible story about how you’re differentiated from your competitors.

[00:31:28] That credible story is going to be something about SATs flow, Bitcoin specific businesses, how you generate Bitcoin capital. You know, 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. Right? 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.

[00:31:48] pets.com later became Chewy, which sold the 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 Post 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.

[00:32:09] And that’s the thing that’s going to cause the bubble I think, is 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, I think this could be a three or four year run with like a slight lull in between that takes us up to beyond a million dollars.

[00:32:28] Preston Pysh: Well, another, yeah, because of the dynamic of if these shelves that we’re talking about, like it, it gets a runup and then it goes sideways for six months, then it gets another runup. Maybe the derivatives market is preventing this euphoria from really kind of creating the 80% drawdown and the massive runup.

[00:32:44] I mean, when you look at the, 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, it is just going right down the center of that model. It’s not a 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.

[00:33:06] Right. 

[00:33:07] Jeff Ross: Yeah, and for me, I think the deciding factor will be 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. 

[00:33:21] HODL: 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 and Bitcoin itself, and I’m not sure which of those features plays out a bubble.

[00:33:33] In treasuries. Yeah, in Bitcoin. Treasury companies. Bitcoin, I thought I meant treasuries. US Treasury. No, sorry. No, sorry. Bitcoin Treasury Company. I have a very Bitcoin centric world Visa. I, I had the same reaction. Regular treasuries don’t mean anything to me. Like there’s a bubble in treasuries right now.

[00:33:46] What are you talking about? The huddles all in on treasuries. I’m like, why would you guys invest in that? We’re talking about boomer money, like what the hell? 

[00:33:53] Preston Pysh: Love it. Joe, do you have any policy or up like Washington DC update with the Genius Act and all that kind of stuff? 

[00:34:01] Joe Carlasare: I, I promised Tol 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.

[00:34:13] Massive move. We also have to talk about our good friend. Tom Lee and his new comment that Ethereum is the new Bitcoin Preston, I really want to get your take on that, but we’ll go to ho first. 

[00:34:24] HODL: Didn’t, I didn’t even hear this from Tom Lee. Oh yeah. 

[00:34:26] Joe Carlasare: Did you? You didn’t hear he, he said on CNBC that Ethereum is the new Bitcoin.

[00:34:30] So your reaction, that’s just, that don’t make a lot of sense, Joe. Well, here, here’s his thesis. Okay. I don’t, don’t yell at me in the comments, but I’m just going to give you his thesis, okay? Mm-hmm. So his thesis is as follows. He has started a 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.

[00:35:02] So for those 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 four 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.

[00:35:19] 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 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 returns.

[00:35:50] So any commentary on that reaction 

[00:35:52] HODL: 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. Like, what ha, you know, you could do NFTs again. Like what happened to monkey pictures? Man? You know, at least that that was your narrative.

[00:36:08] Can 

[00:36:09] Preston Pysh: you believe that the, I mean, they were literally making pictures of JPEGs of rocks. In different shades and selling ’em for a hundred thousand. Like how did that even, 

[00:36:20] HODL: and it may have and, and here’s the crazy part, it may have been a better investment than an Ethereum treasury company. You know, 

[00:36:27] Preston Pysh: see, here’s the power law chart that I was saying that it seems like it’s just kind of like running up the middle.

[00:36:33] 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 comment. But anyway, just throwing it out there. 

[00:36:42] Joe Carlasare: So, do you guys think, is there any situation, Jeff, where stablecoins have any impact in the Bitcoin market? You see any positive callus for Bitcoin in the stablecoin?

[00:36:50] Is that just totally at the periphery, not even on our radar, not worthy of discussion? 

[00:36:55] Jeff Ross: Well, I think, well, a couple things. 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 facing from fiat to Bitcoin.

[00:37:06] 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? Getting every everybody on programmable money. And then you have the people like you can’t deny like tether. Those dudes, like, first of all, that’s the best business model that’s ever existed.

[00:37:23] 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, and they get Bitcoin. If I could create that business model, I would do that in a heartbeat, right?

[00:37:37] 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. 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 la like I think Bitcoin is built to last.

[00:37:54] These will have a limited lifespan probably of a few decades or so. That’s my guess. 

[00:37:59] Preston Pysh: 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 token? 

[00:38:10] Joe Carlasare: No, well mess up in the sense that they’re going to be shut out of many markets abroad.

[00:38:15] Yes, 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 the massive lobbying power of banks. Yeah. Because the banks fought very hard. To prevent the yields being transferred in any way given to customers.

[00:38:32] Because keep in mind, the stablecoin applies to non-financial institution. What does that mean? That means if you’re not a bank and you’re launching a stablecoin, you have to abide by the Genius Act. It does not apply to banks issuing stablecoins. So you may have noticed in the news about JPM, and so you have a question, but JP PM, for example, could launch their stablecoin and pay yield.

[00:38:51] No way. There’s no probation on that. Yes. Right. That’s crazy. That’s why I’m here dropping the alpha. 

[00:38:57] Preston Pysh: Wow. Now what’s going to be interesting is that’s going to be a bloodbath of competition for the incumbent banks. Yes. And if you are not a bank and you’re being forced to sweep the yield, the the coupons. And you sweep ’em into Bitcoin, you’re a way safer institution to use the coin.

[00:39:16] 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 

[00:39:30] Joe Carlasare: yield. Correct. And then you also will have a bifurcated market because under the Genius Act it becomes law entities outside the United States.

[00:39:39] So foreign issuers. Yeah. For example, Heather, they basically have to subject themself. To a comparable US regulator, they have to prove and get a permission to do the issuance. They have to abide, mm-hmm. 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 stablecoin Review Board.

[00:40:04] 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? But my prediction is you’re going to have this bifurcated market where you have tether that largely stays outside of the United States.

[00:40:22] Right? They’re going to be continuing to be out there and trying to have penetration on both the trading vehicles, the finances, and these different trading desks, but also locally. Right. And to me, if the goal is we want emerging markets to adopt stablecoins, I think that this is just my view. I’d be curious, Jeff and Howell and you, Preston, when you think about it.

[00:40:41] I don’t know why you would be more encouraged to adopt a stablecoin that somehow has Washington regulation behind it. To me, if anything, if you’re outside the United States, you’d want something that isn’t subject to Washington or they can’t freeze the accounts very easily. They won’t freeze the tether.

[00:40:56] You want to get far away from the reach of Washington outside the United States as possible. That’s just my read, but I’d be curious if you think that regulation Washington would cause emerging markets to adopt it. 

[00:41:05] Preston Pysh: 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.

[00:41:17] Mm-hmm. Think about it the, 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 might started tokenizing gold? 

[00:41:34] Joe Carlasare: I think it’s definitely an effort to potentially still have access to US markets.

[00:41:39] Yeah, I mean that’s, that’s a key thing. ’cause it’s not, it’s not dollars. Double coins is applying to dollar backed or purported PEG tokens. Yeah. So it’s fascinating. Wow. 

[00:41:48] Preston Pysh: What a play. But I think they messed up by, well maybe, I don’t know, like Well, that’s crazy. Well, it depends on 

[00:41:54] Joe Carlasare: who, who messed up, right. If you’re the banks.

[00:41:56] Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. The big, the Wall Street banks. Yeah. Yeah. Mean the banks. Why would the banks want there to be stablecoins that can pay yield? I mean, think about it. Think about the effect that would have on money markets. Well, I get, and money markets have systemic risk factors in our society.

[00:42:09] Right? If you money markets are just disrupted. That causes financial stability. 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 that 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 fast.

[00:42:31] Jeff Ross: So I, I got a question there. A couple for you Joe. So to me, so based on this, it looks to me like tethers 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 stablecoin concept is actually going to rise and be very popular in the coming five to 10 years.

[00:42:46] In like relatively, it’s going to rise in popularity, dollar will still stay popular, but gold 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 stablecoins. How do you see that playing out circle versus the bank coins? Yeah, like who 

[00:43:06] Joe Carlasare: wins that in the longer run?

[00:43:08] I think it’s going to be fascinating. I mean, to me it’s not just those two because I think 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 stablecoin. A Kraken has a stablecoin. A 

[00:43:22] Preston Pysh: hundred Joe.

[00:43:24] Joe Carlasare: Yeah. Wow. But, 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? They mm-hmm. They, 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?

[00:43:39] And ideally what you’d want is you want merchants to somehow incentivize people to accept the stables, right? Because staples are great for peer-to-peer transactions, but we know that a lot of people, they’re going to take that and they want us to buy things at Amazon or they want to buy things at other retailers.

[00:43:54] So the key thing for me is how do you get this to get outside of the crypto trading apparatus and used as medium of exchange credit card companies would’ve 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 like I have a JPM account.

[00:44:10] I don’t know why I would use the JPM stablecoin. 

[00:44:13] Jeff Ross: See, what I think is going to 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 us to custody or Bitcoin first? You know, send your cash in here, convert it to the JPMD and then convert some of that into Bitcoin.

[00:44:29] 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 they’re going to introduce it. Joe, are they one rea Oh, go ahead. 

[00:44:38] Preston Pysh: Are they doing this on Solana Tron? Like what are they using to do 

[00:44:43] Joe Carlasare: this? Well, JPM, I think, I just want to confirm this.

[00:44:45] I think they just, they selected base, this base network, which I am by no means an expert on HODL, probably is all over that. He’s probably got a ton of base token. He’s based, HODL’s based, totally bags of 

[00:44:57] Preston Pysh: base. Hold on, I have got to figure this out. Go ahead, toddle. What were you going to say? I’m going to do a little 

[00:45:01] HODL: research.

[00:45:01] No, I, you know what I was going to say is, 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, they’re essentially going to be the Iron Bank for the new emerging network state, which respects sovereigns.

[00:45:21] And that’s a very large worldview and it’s kind of 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. So. Another thing on the stablecoin thing is the reason, one reason, Joe, you tell me what you think about this, but I’ve heard that there might be a proliferation of smaller, stablecoins under 10 billion because under 10 billion, they’re state regulated and not federally, 

[00:45:43] Joe Carlasare: right?

[00:45:43] Yeah, that’s correct. 

[00:45:43] HODL: There’s a reg arbitrage there. 

[00:45:45] Joe Carlasare: Absolutely. And that’s where, where you get this massive number, right? You’re going to have these effective regional banks offering. There will be big winners, but you’ll have these small regional banks that have their, their own. You’ve got a great read on like the consumer.

[00:45:56] Like if a local bank is issuing and pumping up a stablecoin, do you really think that as a product market fit, do you think people are going to be like, you know, is, 

[00:46:03] HODL: I’ll give you a, I’ll give you a consumer perspective. I was thinking about a little bit in regards to this, which is an expansion of the gift card industry essentially in a way that, like, let’s say I’m a, you know, normal family in the Midwest.

[00:46:14] 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 stablecoin with the money I know I’m going to spend at Walmart. 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.

[00:46:33] Joe Carlasare: That makes a ton of sense. But don’t you, you need the, you need the merchants, you need the merchant buy-in. And this is the, the problem, I don’t. Maybe they get that through. I don’t, I don’t know. That seems like it has to be merchant tripping. It has to be you, Amazon, Walmart, major retailers saying you have to use this for some.

[00:46:49] I think so. I think so too. Yeah. You need the, you need Amazon, 

[00:46:51] HODL: you need Walmart, Starbucks, et cetera. 

[00:46:53] Preston Pysh: You guys ready for this? Yeah. Okay, so base is an Ethereum layer two 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.

[00:47:13] HODL: Wow. There you go. You only need one. You only need one. 

[00:47:17] Preston Pysh: This is nuts. This is so funny. 

[00:47:19] Jeff Ross: Coinbase is just taking over the world. I mean the non Bitcoin 

[00:47:24] HODL: world coin. Yeah. Coinbase is like, basically they’re like, 

[00:47:26] Jeff Ross: they’re like the Lex 

[00:47:27] HODL: Luther 

[00:47:27] Jeff Ross: of the 

[00:47:28] HODL: government exchange. Brian Armstrong has been respecting Bitcoin lately.

[00:47:32] He has, here’s the quote, respecting Bitcoin again, 

[00:47:34] Joe Carlasare: the quote Preston. We’re thrilled to see one of the, the nation’s most prominent banks come on chain said, Jesse Pollock, creator of base and VP Engineering Coinbase base offers subsecond sub cent 24 hour seven settlement, which makes fund transfers between JPM institutional clients.

[00:47:48] 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. 

[00:47:56] Preston Pysh: I mean, one sequencer. Of course, it’s instant. 

[00:47:59] Joe Carlasare: Hey, question, what’s, 

[00:48:00] HODL: what’s 

[00:48:00] Preston Pysh: the point of Ripple? 

[00:48:03] HODL: Isn’t this ripple soul, Emma? 

[00:48:07] Preston Pysh: Yo, he’s on the hill a bit, huh? Oh yeah.

[00:48:10] Oh yeah. Oh my God. This is such a, but you know what? 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 of 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 dis What a Rube Goldberg machine.

[00:48:31] Disaster of just, you know, terminology and nonsense. Total nonsense. 

[00:48:38] Joe Carlasare: Well, and the big problem is like, 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 across protocol. So you got like entire ecosystem, like, well, I’ve got stables on Solana and Ethereum.

[00:48:52] Yes. Tron and all these. That’s a mess. The consumer experience there is terrible. Yeah. It’s just absolutely awful. 

[00:48:58] Preston Pysh: 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.

[00:49:10] There’s no, to your point, there’s no interoperability whatsoever. And like where this is all going is the one that’s the most interoperable Bitcoin wins, right. 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.

[00:49:29] Man. It is crazy. 

[00:49:30] Joe Carlasare: You think we get stablecoins on some sort of layer two or some sort of derivative of a Bitcoin? I mean, is there Well, I, well I think, tethers already said they’re doing it. Yeah. 

[00:49:39] Preston Pysh: Tethers already made that announcement in January that they’re doing stables on Bitcoin. 

[00:49:42] Joe Carlasare: Yeah. Is that going to be, they’re not in the United States, right?

[00:49:44] Preston Pysh: Because they’re, well, I mean, they’re doing it on layer two lightning. Mm-hmm. So, and you don’t need a token to run it on lightning. So, yeah, I don’t know. It’s, this is really interesting. And that was just JP Morgan. I can’t imagine what the other, what you’re seeing. The others are using it for their quote unquote tech to run these things.

[00:50:04] Jeff Ross: I was just going to say, some of you guys are too young probably, but like in the nineties, the internet phase took over for a very long time. Several years. And that’s what I think is going to happen with these stablecoins, right? That they’re going to spend tons and tons and tons of marketing dollars and like what you’re talking about with, you know, trying to get you to Walmart here, give you all these discounts.

[00:50:24] Here’s a Disney stablecoin, park your money here, we’ll give you cheaper tickets. And I think they’re going to really push hard for about three, four or five years and then it’s just going to fizzle because they’re going to realize it’s not worth the effort. And then, yeah, ’cause all roads do eventually lead to Bitcoin for sure.

[00:50:38] This is just this transition period that we’re in 

[00:50:40] HODL: completely. I think that the intranet 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.

[00:50:56] All roads lead to Bitcoin. Can I change the subject? Yeah, of course. And 

[00:50:59] Jeff Ross: Preston, are you able to put to, I dunno if you have Tradervue or something. Yeah, if can get in, yeah, I can put something up. 

[00:51:03] Preston Pysh: Yeah. 

[00:51:04] Jeff Ross: An XPX divided by gold, 

[00:51:06] Preston Pysh: XPX divided by gold. Okay, 

[00:51:08] Jeff Ross: let me lemme, and as long as po like the longest term possible a hundred years hit the all.

[00:51:13] Preston Pysh: Okay, let’s see here. 

[00:51:13] Jeff Ross: This is what I can’t stop thinking about now. It’s, I’ve been going on this for a couple months now and my leading question to you guys is you X PX divided 

[00:51:20] Preston Pysh: by gold? Is that what you said? 

[00:51:22] Jeff Ross: Yeah. 

[00:51:22] Preston Pysh: Okay. 

[00:51:23] Jeff Ross: And if you do it on trading, you can go back to like the 1920s. Oh really? 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?

[00:51:35] No. Are we And, and yes or no? And I’m, and I’ll take the other side of that, Joe. I think it is. I think we’re in a period and, and I think this chart is very helpful in showing this, that I think that we’ve reached a 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 thirties, similar to the late 1960s and through the seventies.

[00:52:04] And similar to basically the.com bust through about 2011. And I think it’s sort of shocking to me at least how well you can see these huge secular trends when you have like the s and 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.

[00:52:25] And I wish I had the chart chart up to show you. I, I can show I have it right here if you want to 

[00:52:28] Joe Carlasare: see it. Yeah, go ahead 

[00:52:29] Jeff Ross: and pull it up, 

[00:52:29] Joe Carlasare: Joe. Okay. Okay. Sorry to put you guys on this. This is No, no, no, it’s no problem. This is the SPX over gold. This is a charge of the 18, 18 84. 

[00:52:39] Jeff Ross: Yeah, so and so the bars are monthly.

[00:52:42] Oh yeah. Yearly bars. Can you do monthly? 

[00:52:44] Joe Carlasare: You don’t like the yearly? It’s too, that’s too big. 

[00:52:46] Jeff Ross: That’s fine. But it shows the same thing. But I feel like you can see the, the waves a little better. Okay, 

[00:52:51] Joe Carlasare: hang on. 

[00:52:52] Jeff Ross: Either way. But you guys can see it anyways. So where that first peak is, 

[00:52:56] Joe Carlasare: I’m going to go a, I’m going to go to monthly.

[00:52:57] Here’s monthly. Okay. There we go. 

[00:52:59] Jeff Ross: Okay. So, and you can see, so that first peak, that’s 1929, that hump number two, that’s about 1968 ish. Peak number three. That’s the, that’s the.com bubble com 

[00:53:10] Joe Carlasare: bubble. Yep. 

[00:53:12] Jeff Ross: Okay. I think that we’re at the, almost the exact same period right now as we were kind of in the early seventies.

[00:53:18] 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, 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, mainly ai.

[00:53:42] 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 an inflation adjusted returns over the next five to 10 years or so. And tell me why I’m wrong. 

[00:54:00] Joe Carlasare: Well, my response is going to be look at VTI versus VX US, which is what you’re looking at.

[00:54:07] This is the, actually, let’s look at it the other way. 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, this thing to me. This tells the whole story. Look, you see repeatedly, you could have made the same argument going back.

[00:54:30] This is 2011. Here, here, here. It’d be awesome if you were able to see 

[00:54:34] Preston Pysh: it back with the timelines that Jeff was. Yeah, no, 

[00:54:37] Jeff Ross: 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. It’s 

[00:54:49] Joe Carlasare: rolling over here yet again.

[00:54:51] Yep. Okay. I expect it to make a lower low. And the reason it’s 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. Yep. Yeah. I personally expect a massive productivity burst.

[00:55:08] I think nominal GP is going to run a lot hotter than we expect. I think we can’t even measure it correctly because of the technologies that are a little er 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.

[00:55:24] Those things are going to print cash over the next 20 years. And the majority of the world’s companies, although meaningful in 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 we have the end of American exceptionalism.

[00:55:52] 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 and American stocks are going to do fantastic. 

[00:56:05] Jeff Ross: 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.

[00:56:19] And I think all companies around the world ’cause right? ’cause 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 of human workers.

[00:56:35] It’s going to create companies, cause 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 value-based companies. And so it’s not just the AI companies that are going to make money, it’s the AI tech itself is going to diffuse throughout the world and actually cause all companies across the world to do well.

[00:57:04] Joe Carlasare: 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 cap. It’s a massive, massive CapEx. Yep. In the United States and Yes. Which is terrible for margins. Sure. It’s terrible for margins, assuming there isn’t huge amounts of stimulus coming from the US government running structural deficits of six to 7% GDP and potentially getting bigger.

[00:57:26] So to me that’s going to be nonstop cash investments, and you can do that as long as nominal GDP is running hot. They’re telling you the strategy cent came out and he told you we’re going to run this economy hot. How do you run an economy hot? You running hot by effectively borrowing a lot of money and pumping out a huge fiscal impulse that is the, nothing stops this train that is the massive go ahead.

[00:57:48] Totally agree, but 

[00:57:50] Jeff Ross: so is the rest of the world doing that? They’re everyone is, they can’t compete though. They’re not going to be able to compete and, and compete in what? Just AI tech you mean? ’cause we’re behind on, on the data center front. I’m saying they’re going to compete by, they’re going to be doing even more relative stimulus.

[00:58:04] They’re going to be pumping more currency into their markets, which 

[00:58:07] Joe Carlasare: will be converted to dollars. That’s the dollar milkshake theory. That’s so, yeah. So 

[00:58:11] Jeff Ross: I disagree with that. I think we already are, have reached the period where we’re going to have basically 10 years-ish of declining dollar value. I think the dollar is going to get weaker over the next 10 years, not stronger.

[00:58:22] So that’s, this remains to be seen. We’ll have to back just to, just to clear to, 

[00:58:25] Joe Carlasare: when we’re talking about the dollar for the audience, we’re not talking about the consumer prices that are big people paying the cost of goods and services. What we’re talking about is the relative foreign exchange value as measured.

[00:58:36] 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 denominating dollars, regardless of the settlement mechanism.

[00:58:55] 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.

[00:59:11] But are they going to do it in the ruble? Are they going to do it in the gold, gold, gold? I think 

[00:59:16] Jeff Ross: 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 that the, 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.

[00:59:37] Yeah. 

[00:59:37] Joe Carlasare: My, my view is, this is very 

[00:59:38] Jeff Ross: esoteric. Sorry guys. No, no. It’s, 

[00:59:40] Joe Carlasare: 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 failed to see a country out there that can truly rival the United States in terms of its relative power.

[00:59:56] I could see regional blocks. Of course. But that’s, but, but they’re not one country. Jeff, one entities, 

[01:00:01] Preston Pysh: Jeff, to your, to the two charts that you threw up there as far as gold outperforming, call it the s and p. Mm-hmm. 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.

[01:00:19] 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, 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.

[01:00:38] So you might be right, but that was since 2011. 

[01:00:40] Jeff Ross: That only went back to 2011. 

[01:00:41] Preston Pysh: Yeah, no, I, I know that, but I’m saying like right now as we’re looking at it, I’m looking at that trend. I’m saying that has definitely not been broken and any type of. Average true range or any type of like momentum metric that you want to use.

[01:00:55] So I think it’s yet to be seen whether your thesis, the second thesis there is demonstrating any type of performance or validity. 

[01:01:03] Jeff Ross: Yeah. 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 deglobalize and ramp up manufacturing here is going to be like, it’s the, nothing stops the strain, it’s 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.

[01:01:24] Relatively, not completely. 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’s 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.

[01:01:47] And to your point. Preston, I think yes, we, it hasn’t, 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.

[01:02:05] So 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 

[01:02:17] Joe Carlasare: thing I’ll say is that the debasement of the dollar, letting the economy run hot.

[01:02:22] Is a direct, 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 are 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.

[01:02:41] Yes. Which means that the plates can keep spinning in the air. 

[01:02:44] Jeff Ross: 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 ’cause 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.

[01:02:59] 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 seventies. 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. 

[01:03:13] Preston Pysh: I threw up this chart real fast to talk, ’cause we’ve been mentioning gold quite a bit during the conversation and I think this chart is totally nuts.

[01:03:21] This is an amazing chart. This is, think about this chart all the time. Like based on the trend line, like as you 

[01:03:27] HODL: lie 

[01:03:27] Joe Carlasare: awake at night, you think 

[01:03:28] HODL: about this. I do. I literally do because it looks 

[01:03:31] Preston Pysh: like the wine mart 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 I bits and all that kind of stuff.

[01:03:52] 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. So whether the trend continues, who knows? We obviously we’re hardcore bitcoiners, we think it is, but if you interpretate some of these lines out, it’s getting really interesting here in the coming five years.

[01:04:13] Like really interesting. Yeah. So, mm-hmm. I don’t know. I find the whole pivot with Tether doing tokenizing gold. Really 

[01:04:21] HODL: interesting. 

[01:04:22] Jeff Ross: Think I was going to 

[01:04:23] HODL: catch on personally. Why would anyone want to own gold though? Why would you want to own gold? I think ’cause you’re too stupid to understand Bitcoin or, 

[01:04:29] Preston Pysh: well, I think most people that are older, they just, they understand gold, they understand the dollar and they, that’s the end of their, their level of thinking and caring about any of this stuff.

[01:04:41] Jeff Ross: Yeah. It’s the boomers and some Gen Xers, but yeah. Ha. And most people just 

[01:04:45] Preston Pysh: want to just join a political party and then just blame the other side for all the woes in their life and Right. That’s the end of the analysis. Like that’s where 90% of the population at whatever friend, 

[01:04:56] HODL: 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, all kids are curious.

[01:05:02] Then you become incurious. You stop having a true false framework run in your head and you start having an us them framework run in your head. Huh. I think that’s, I think that’s what it is, is like, you know, Bitcoin people are people who are searching for truth and everybody else is us versus them. Yeah, I would agree with that.

[01:05:18] Preston Pysh: Alright, any other topics? You guys are satisfied. It’s all that preparation. 

[01:05:23] Joe Carlasare: No, I, I, well, we have, we have to give the red meat to the audience, so we have to talk about price, right? Going forward here. Okay. 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 stare, step up, crawl higher through the end of the year?

[01:05:39] Do we expect any pullbacks during the fall? I know we’ve kind of alluded to it going higher next year. I think that’s generally the consensus view of the panel here. Let’s see if we’re right about that. Where are we at in Christmas time? Where are we? Or I’m, when’s, when’s our next? This is our Q2 or Q3. I forgot.

[01:05:56] This is Q2. 

[01:05:57] HODL: Well, 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, babe. no. I, I think that the most likely, 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.

[01:06:19] Bitcoiners who’ve been here for a while, but again, we could easily go into, I don’t know, man, it’s so hard to pick because it’s like that we could get the diminished returns narrative where we go to like 180 and then we go have a 50% correction or something. Or we could just keep going. So here’s my prediction.

[01:06:35] 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 say 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.com style treasury, Bitcoin treasury company bubble.

[01:06:55] 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 an all-time high and then 30, 40, 50% correction, there’s a lull. But in the meantime, the treasury companies keep going, you know, hockey sticking up into the right, because if you look, if you check bitcoin treasuries.com and VK site, every week there are more and more and more treasury companies and they’re not going to stop being added.

[01:07:21] And every single person I was talking to in Las Vegas was telling me that they were gear gearing up to start a treasury company. And again, a lot of these people are rank amateur who have no clue what they’re doing. And there are podcasters on the board. By the way, are you guys on any boards You’re not telling me about, but like, you know, 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.

[01:07:45] Yes. But this idea is so big. This narrative is so big, it can carry us through. And I think there’s, you know, an inherent reflexivity here to this big idea that now everybody has figured out, which is like, yes, Bitcoin is going to millions dollars. I mean, just think about it. Just take it a step back here.

[01:08:01] Just pause for a second and think to yourself, the president of the United States believes that Bitcoin’s 20 millions of dollars. 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 a hundred thousand dollars, he now believes that everyone believes Wall Street believes.

[01:08:22] Everyone believes China believes it. 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.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.

[01:08:43] I 

[01:08:43] Joe Carlasare: appreciate that narrative response, but we’re looking for a number for the price prediction by the end of the year. For the end of the year. It’s like when I’m taking a position, nobody answers the question. What is the price at the end of the year? At the end of this year? Yes. 2025. Like 

[01:08:57] HODL: one 60. Pretty low.

[01:08:59] Wow. 

[01:08:59] Jeff Ross: 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? Four 70 5K has been my call based on past cycles, but the economy is so weird right now.

[01:09:19] 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 thing. So I feel like I’m like, it’s like tattooed on my forehead.

[01:09:36] I think that we’re going to extend, I don’t know if we go three or four years, like huddle says, but I think we at least extend into, you know, 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.

[01:09:51] So here’s what I’ll say. If we hockey stick, if the economy is booming in the second quarter of 2026. Then I’ll raise my price Target to 525,000. He 

[01:10:02] Preston Pysh: wants an Preston. What’s the target? I’m kind of with HODL. I bought some options today. Oh man. Nice. And I priced when I was looking at what I think, you know, the conservative estimate of where it’s going to be by the end of the year.

[01:10:16] ’cause normally when I buy an option, I always do two years. I always give myself enough runway. But these ones I bought are due in January. And I don’t want to say too much ’cause I don’t want people 

[01:10:27] Joe Carlasare: to all follow you into the trade direct. I don’t want people following. Yeah, no 

[01:10:31] Preston Pysh: I’m kidding. But I bought these, they’re out of the money by a decent amount.

[01:10:35] Like they’re pretty lever. But I got the timeline, the, 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. So do I think it can go more than that? I do think it can go more than that, but I, I guess I felt pretty confident that we could get to those price levels by, call it Christmas of this year.

[01:11:05] So definitely, we’ll see if I’m right. If not, it’s going to be a painful situation, but I obviously didn’t do it with a whole lot of capital. I mean this is not a very high conviction position. This is more like ashtray money. I’m going to have a little fun money.

[01:11:19] Jeff Ross: I’d take that bet though, Preston. I think that’s a good one.

[01:11:21] Preston Pysh: We’ll see. What about you Joe?

[01:11:22] So, and by the way, hold on Joe, this is important. I bought it. What’s that? I bought it this morning and it closed the day up 20%. See? Huge. Nailed it. So we’ll see. Tomorrow it’ll be down 30%. Go ahead Joe. 

[01:11:37] Joe Carlasare: I had the same target all year. I think we end the year between one 30 and one 40, but I also think we go a lot higher next year because to your point, I think the economy’s going to heat up.

[01:11:45] Before we go real quick, can we do like a lightning round? I want like three things, three answers very quickly. Can be yes. No. Number one, HODL and everybody. Does Powell finish his term? Number two answer about do we get any rate cuts this year? No. And number three, and then the third one, which is just, is kind of for fun. Do we get any other major piece of legislation out of the administration this year also?

[01:12:06] HODL: No, I’m going, no, across the board. No, no, no. 

[01:12:07] Jeff Ross: What do you mean by major?

[01:12:09] Well, some, I mean the, I wouldn’t consider like this, like the Bitcoin act or something.

[01:12:12] Joe Carlasare: Like a, yeah. Strategic reserve act, something. Cynthia, alums, anything. You know, we were talking about these things getting passed and anything major on the Bitcoin front other than the stablecoin, which is not really Bitcoin, but you know my point.

[01:12:23] Go ahead. Go ahead Jeff.

[01:12:23] Jeff Ross: I’ll take the exact opposite of HODL. 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.

[01:12:33] Joe Carlasare: You think Powell’s done? Hang on a second. I have got to, you think Powell gets out this year? You think he’s out? No, HODL said that. 

[01:12:39] HODL: Yeah. There’s a lot of talk about him resigning.

[01:12:40] Joe Carlasare: Oh, I’m sorry. Rumor, he’s gone.

[01:12:43] Jeff Ross: I think he stays.

[01:12:44] HODL: Powell’s pretty stubborn, but there’s a lot of pressure politically, so I’m not sure.

[01:12:48] Jeff Ross: I think he stays and I think we get rate cuts. And I think we passed major leg legislation.

[01:12:53] Joe Carlasare: What piece of legislation?

[01:12:53] Jeff Ross: I don’t know, something major.

[01:12:54] Joe Carlasare: Okay, Preston?

[01:12:55] Preston Pysh: I don’t think Powell’s 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, so. Ooh. Wow. That’s huge. That’s crazy. I guess that’s more me just being. Optimistic. ’cause I really, I honestly don’t have a beat or have even heard a rumor as to what the probability on that is.

[01:13:16] I’m actually really curious what you think on that one, Joe. 

[01:13:19] Joe Carlasare: Yeah. 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 the Congress.

[01:13:30] And you have 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 think, I expect a very heated midterm election. And not to get into some of the recent headlines last 48 hours here, but even it seems like conservatives and, people in the MAGA world are upset and frustrated. So, we’ll see how that pans out. 

[01:13:51] Preston Pysh: Oh, do you think, Elon’s new party is going to actually be a thing? Or is this just all talk? 

[01:13:57] Joe Carlasare: It’s all talk. 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 have got to get on the ballots in those specific.

[01:14:08] Areas and to get on as a third party, the system is rigged. To prevent that, it’s so difficult. Some congressional districts, you have to get like between five to 10% of registered voters in the actual district to get on the ballot. They make it prohibitive so that third parties can’t, this is the big secret, right?

[01:14:24] 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 and then interesting to coordinate candidates intern, all, across the whole country in individual congressional districts, it’s going to be very difficult.

[01:14:43] Now, can he recruit a handful of people to go after some of his enemies on the hill? He absolutely, he can do that, and I expect him to do that. Right. But the notion that it’s going to be in, you know, the majority of the congressional districts, I just don’t see it. Interesting. 

[01:14:55] Preston Pysh: Well, what, what’s your response, Joe?

[01:14:57] Joe Carlasare: So I think that Paul’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 that he is ostensibly was not going to do rate cuts was ’cause he wanted to wait and see in his own words about the tariffs. So that’s a huge reason, right?

[01:15:12] We wait and see. We haven’t seen inflation manifests 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 BIP cut a face saving cut is going to mount to a hill of anything.

[01:15:29] I don’t think he 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, like. A chair waiting. I think all of this is, again, posturing to try to get him to do some modest space saving cut, and then they’re hoping the entire yield curve reacts to it.

[01:15:50] That’s a hope and a prayer. I don’t know, I don’t think it will given the, the state of the economy, but, okay. 

[01:15:54] Jeff Ross: It’s what, it’s 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, I think.

[01:16:11] Joe Carlasare: Completely agree. And that’s what the strategy is. That’s why they’re pounding the table on cuts. They’re pounding the table on all this stuff. 

[01:16:16] Jeff Ross: Yep. I agree. 

[01:16:17] Preston Pysh: Alright, 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.

[01:16:24] Give people a handoff where they can learn more about you. 

[01:16:26] Jeff Ross: First of all, Preston, I want to thank you for preparing this so hard and being ready for it.

[01:16:30] It was awesome. Ad lib. I run a little friends and family hedge fund and that’s about it. Go. Go touch grass and you should follow HODL, Joe, and Preston. Don’t follow me. 

[01:16:39] Preston Pysh: We’ll have a link in the show notes. 

[01:16:40] Jeff Ross: I’m sorry. Can I say one more thing? Yeah. Public service announcement. I am not on any other social media. 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.

[01:16:52] So do not click any links. Don’t send anybody any money. Please don’t do that. It’s an imposter. Thank you. 

[01:16:58] Joe Carlasare: Joe. Joe Carlasare. Sorry. I’m at Joe Carlasare on Twitter where I’m quite active talking about financial things. I do have a day job that I work as litigator, so if you have a litigated dispute, please contact me.

[01:17:09] If I can’t help you, someone else will. We handle a representation for a variety of Bitcoin minors, complex commercial disputes, fraud claims, some securities work, and really anything in the courtroom litigation. So we do have a regulatory practice for crypto businesses, Bitcoin businesses as well. So I look forward to trying to help you.

[01:17:25] If you do, if you’re an innovator in the space, definitely reach out ’cause I’d like to help. 

[01:17:28] Preston Pysh: Best Lawyer in America right there. HODL, go ahead. 

[01:17:32] HODL: I don’t have anything. I don’t care if you follow me, but these homies of mine on Nostr, they make this gee called Great Ghee, check it out. It says highest quality animal fat for the hardest money on Earth. And it’s made from raw jersey cow milk. It’s really delicious. It’s really good though. You can only buy it on Nostr. It’s a Nostr only business. Check ’em out. Great Ghee, Great Ghee, everybody! Available on Nostr.

[01:17:57] Preston Pysh: Alright, gentlement, really appreciate your time. This is always such a pleasure, and I really do look forward to the next one. So thank you guys. 

[01:18:05] Jeff Ross: Thanks, Preston. 

[01:18:06] HODL: Thanks man. 

[01:18:07] Outro: Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Bitcoin Fundamentals on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com.

[01:18:22] This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.