Jeff Ross (00:02:44):

And so the downside of that is that people start to lose faith in the currency over time. And it’s all done on the backs of the citizens because we lose our purchasing power over the long run, so that’s really unfortunate. I think these kind of things are just inevitable. I think other countries are realizing that, hey, the US is kind of weak. This dollar dominance that we’ve had for the last, what, five to eight decades, depending on where we use our starting point from, probably from 1948 and on. It’s just we’re kind of seeing the final days. The US has been in this very privileged stance. And I think that now we’re watching it falter and it’s going to be kind of a tumultuous decade. And I think this announcement is just one of many that we’re going to be seeing in the coming decade for sure.

Joe Carlasare (00:03:27):

I was about ready to jump out of my chair when I heard Jeff say the final days, because I couldn’t disagree with that more, but then he clarified and I totally agree with the latter part of this. And I think one of the things that brings us all together is we’re all Bitcoiners. We realized the system is invariably broken. But what I think a lot of us disagree about in the Bitcoin space is how long it persist. And I’m a person that generally believes this can go on way longer than people think, even at the current levels.

Joe Carlasare (00:03:50):

And turning back to the original question, which was about Saudi Arabia. And if you go back, they have done this sort of economic stable rattling regarding oil being priced under currencies for the past 10 years. They’ve done it in 2015, they did it in 2013. So this is nothing new. The question is, do they mean it this time or are they just playing a political bargaining chip at this point to try to get the US to get involved? I know that they said they were pretty upset about the US lack of involvement in Yemen and other things. I tend to think it’s just a rattling. I think it’s just trying to get them to say, “Pay attention to us and quit ignoring the rest of the world, which I think is the path they’ve taken recently.” But I’d be curious as to Jay’s take.

Jay Gould (00:04:26):

Yeah, I mean, Joe and I, we go back and forth on this quite a bit in text messages and on Clubhouse and stuff and phone calls. And generally speaking, we are exactly aligned. We believe in Bitcoin for the long term, but I think it’s a timing issue. And I think that the challenge that I have most of the time with you, Joe, is that I think … not with you, but with your position on this is that, I think when people get a recency bias in bull markets, right. And we’ve had a bull market since 2009 basically. And I just don’t think that people realize that it’s all coming to an end right now. And I think you do, right. But it’s just the timing of these things. And then as it relates to the dollar. Look at Ray Dalio just released this video a couple weeks ago. Did you see that one Preston? The Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order.

Preston Pysh (00:05:09):

I hadn’t seen. I saw that it was out, but I didn’t watch it yet.

Jay Gould (00:05:13):

Yeah. And just one point, he just says, the decline comes from internal economic weakness together with internal fighting or costly external fighting or both and then gradually, and then very suddenly you see, and then of a collapse, right? I’m not saying that that’s what’s going to happen here, but he’s been calling this as we know for five years now, Dalio, right. And it’s kind of coming to an end.

Preston Pysh (00:05:32):

There’s some that been saying he’s been doing it for four decades.

Jay Gould (00:05:37):

Perhaps, but he’s been very vocal for the last few years, almost like on a book tour, right. And it just seems at this point, I don’t know, it seems like it’s all adding up. Everything he said seems to be coming to fruition now. And is it just opportunistic for Russia and Saudi and others to do what they’re doing in China, et cetera? I mean, I don’t know. Is it just an opportunistic for them to do these things at the moment? Was it planned? I don’t know, not going to be conspirator here.

Joe Carlasare (00:06:02):

Reality is there’s not an alternative to the dollar. There’s not a credible alternative globally.

Jay Gould (00:06:06):

Sure.

Joe Carlasare (00:06:07):

The markets are dependent on the dollar. So if you’re going to say we’re entering the final days of the dollar, tell me what is going to take the place, because it ain’t gold. I think we can all agree on that on this podcast, maybe we don’t, but I agree. I think there’s no way you can-

Jay Gould (00:06:19):

We’re probably talking past each other on this. I’m not saying that something’s replacing the dollar. Although the Fed just recently was asked about that and Jay Powell said there could be two world reserve currencies, which was interesting to hear that from a Federal Reserve. I’ve never heard them say something like that. It says in history it’s happened and it’s not canceling out the idea that it could happen again.

Preston Pysh (00:06:40):

Jeff, I’m going to push back a little bit too. I mean, the dollar’s going to be around I think for a very long time moving forward. It’s just going to be who really wants to kind of hold onto that hot potato, as you’re looking at these massive, unprecedented spreads, negative spreads that we’ve never seen in our lifetimes. Even if you go back to the ’80s when you had 12% inflation, you had yields that accompanied those rates or those inflationary prints.

Preston Pysh (00:07:12):

And so to have it persist for a year now, now I guess I’m arguing with you, Jeff, that I think that there’s major systematic issues here. What’s the alternative that has the capacity to take this on without having a quote unquote face ripping event that everything migrates to … and this is a Bitcoin show, right? Migrates to something like Bitcoin.

Preston Pysh (00:07:36):

I want to be very cautious in suggesting that that’s going to happen in a one year 12 month timeframe. I think that that’s ludicrous. I think that in the next five to 10 years, could we see an abrupt movement? I think that that could be a very real possibility and most of it would have to be them making very hard decisions to control the amount of the basement that’s being inserted into the system, right. Because that’s the crux of the issue here is the amount of debasement that everybody just seems to be bringing the fire hose to the world stage right now.

Jeff Ross (00:08:12):

Right. And since I got everybody’s attention by saying final days, and I obviously clarified that a little bit, but I think we’re in the final days and obviously this stretches for a long period of time, but of government fiat, centrally controlled money and people losing faith in that around the world. And the US dollar is clearly, clearly the strongest of the government fiat currencies, right? It is clearly the leader.

Jeff Ross (00:08:38):

And so if the US dollar is starting to crumble a bit and we’re starting to see cracks in the foundation, it’s the smaller government fiat currencies that are going to pay the price first. I think we’re going to see one by one, this decade and possibly this year, I think we are going to start seeing very small government fiat currencies, kind of one by one, start to crumble. Their citizens are going to lose faith in them. We’re going to see hyperinflation and people are going to transfer their stores of wealth into the US dollar.

Jeff Ross (00:09:08):

I think some are going to go into the Chinese yuan and then some into Bitcoin. And I think it’s going to be those are the big three. And those are the three that are going to kind of transcend all of the other ones and take the lead. I think the Euro will be in there a little bit, but it’s going to get kind of left behind. Japanese yen still has some clout, but that’s going to get left behind. I see kind of a race of the big three, Bitcoin, US dollar, Chinese yuan by around 2030. And I think all of these other ones are going to kind of one by one get picked off. That’s how I see it playing out. But who knows? On my timing, I could be years too early, but that’s what I say.

Jay Gould (00:09:41):

The projection’s pretty far out to say one way or the other.

Preston Pysh (00:09:44):

Yeah, so you are saying 10 years.

Jeff Ross (00:09:44):

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:09:46].

Jay Gould (00:09:46):

Did you see this new study that just came out? I’m looking at this study right here, Preston, it was from Ally Bank I think. Let me see where it’s at here. Ally Bank conducted a survey and I think I sent this to you, Joe. It shows that most Americans are optimistic about their finances this year, despite the rising inflation. It said 53% are confident about their personal financial standing, 59% believe that they’ll be better off financially in a year from now.

Jay Gould (00:10:10):

And two thirds say that they will likely achieve their financial goals for 2022. Even with these record high inflation and rising prices and outpacing wage growth. I don’t think we’ve hit a bottom right now. This is one point I wanted to kind of bring up. We could talk about that in this particular market that we’re in right now versus talking about what’s going to happen in 10 years. I don’t know what’s going to happen in 10 years, right?

Joe Carlasare (00:10:30):

Again, I don’t think you can look at any polls. I don’t know if people would trust any of these polls these days. But I’ll point to the Suffolk University poll, which came out at the end of February, which said that over 30% of the country thinks we’re in a recession. 20% thinks it’s a depression, so sentiment’s pretty awful out there. You see real wages fall consistently across the board. I don’t know, that’s not my gauge of sentiment. I’m looking at more technical data as I told you-

Jay Gould (00:10:52):

Well, here’s some data. There’s 8.2% of US homes, six million homes are now worth more than a million dollars. That is up from 4.8%, three and a half million homes in just two years ago, people feel rich, they’re not, but they feel like they are, right? We know that their value of their house isn’t really going up, but they see this equity and they think that they’re feeling okay, even though it’s crumbling right before their eyes, and it’s just [inaudible 00:11:13].

Joe Carlasare (00:11:13):

Yeah, I think it’s stratified, right? Because it depends on where you’re at in the socioeconomic ladder, so I think, yeah.

Jay Gould (00:11:18):

Well, this is another point. Did you know this? This is crazy. It’s no longer the 99% versus the 1%, it’s now the 92% versus the 8%. 8% of Americans are now worth a million dollars or more. It’s incredible. I mean, but it’s not a million dollars as we all know. But they feel like that because they’re conditioned to think that because it happened so rapidly they don’t realize.

Preston Pysh (00:11:38):

I think it’s important for people that would hear Jay say, we see the house value going up, but we know it’s not, he’s referring to, in nominal terms the prices are going up. But in buying power terms they’re not going up.

Jay Gould (00:11:50):

That’s what I mean. Yeah, exactly.

Preston Pysh (00:11:55):

I forget who said this, but it was on CNBC. Somebody made the comment that … Oh, who was it? Anyway, they made the comment that once the Fed starts raising the federal funds rate, if you would fast forward 12 months into the future, the stock market was always higher, I forget how many times they ran their scenarios. Out of the last six times or seven times that the Fed hiked rates, one year later, the stock market was higher. And I was like, there is no way.

Preston Pysh (00:12:23):

I literally went, plotted it on trading view and sure enough it was an accurate statement. I couldn’t believe that that was true. I’m looking at all those scenarios and I think what’s so different and you got to always question when somebody says, “This time’s different.”

Joe Carlasare (00:12:40):

This time’s different.

Preston Pysh (00:12:42):

But what makes this so much different than those previous scenarios where you weren’t dealing with a negative spread like you’ve got right now. This spread of, just call it the 10 year at 2%, right? And you’ve got an inflation print at 7.9, God knows what the next one’s going to be. I mean, Jeff, what do you think, 10% on the next one? Joe, what do you think we’re going to have on that?

Jay Gould (00:13:07):

Dude, go out four or five months from now after this whole oil issue, that’s definitely going up.

Preston Pysh (00:13:13):

I mean, the bond market’s selling off. These yields are going up, but they’re nowhere close to 8% or higher, right? I mean, it’s going to take based on the rate that they’re selling off, it’s going to take well over a year. I’d have to plot out the trend at the sell off that they’re going right now. We’re not going to be close to that. So that’s where this is so different than all these other scenarios where they were raising rates and people were saying the market was going high. I’m just not buying it. Tell me why I’m wrong. Why do you guys disagree with that?

Joe Carlasare (00:13:45):

Well, I’ll start out, because I disagree with these CPI prints being triggered by monetary policy. I’ll just state that. I might be the minority in this and I may trigger a lot of bit coiners listening to this, but that’s just my view. I think this is a very logical explanation for how we ended up in the situation. You shut the economy down for a huge portion and consumers and businesses and people even I advised, they had trouble forecasting. They thought we were entering a great depression following COVID, okay.

Joe Carlasare (00:14:10):

So you had all this amount supply demand imbalance. And coming out of that, employers stocked up too much. They stocked up too little, they hoarded. There’s all sorts of behavior that distorted the market. And you had radical changes in labor markets, right? People didn’t want to go back to work. They got comfortable with the stay at home lifestyle. And this is having real repercussions in the economy.

Joe Carlasare (00:14:28):

When you see the CPI prints, I think personally, and again, this is going to trigger bit coiners. I think the Fed got it right in their initial research when they said this is transitory, the economy needs to rebalance. It’s going to take two, three years potentially to get these supply chains back in order after the havoc we caused by government policy was placed on them. It’s going to have long lasting repercussions. And once you get through that threshold, you’re going to actually be more concerned about deflation.

Joe Carlasare (00:14:54):

And I just think that when you’re looking at the CPI relative to where yields are at custom, that’s telling you the wrong message. I also think it’s important when you look at the bond curve, look at the yield curve as a whole, you look at long dates, long dated bonds versus short dated bonds. The short end says, yes, we’re responding to the Fed hikes. At the front end we’re saying we’re going to hike six, seven times, we believe the Fed’s going to do that. But the long end you’d expect it to be above 3%. You’d expect it to be above 4%, with 7% CPI rooms. You’re not seeing that.

Joe Carlasare (00:15:24):

So that tells me categorically the long end is rejecting the growth narrative. It’s projecting the inflation forever narrative. And it’s more likely that this is going to pivot and we’re going to see this, actually, if you look at the Euro, dollar, futures curve, I think it’s already inverted. And it’s telling you that you can expect probably a pivot in Fed policy sometime in the next 12 months from a hiking cycle to a cutting cycle.

Joe Carlasare (00:15:42):

You got a lot of cross currents and I am hesitant to say that this time is different. I think you could easily see this situation where the Fed starts hiking and you get positive bullish actions. June 2024, we hiked for years before we got significant decline in equity market. Equity market is not a good macroeconomic indicator, that’s just my overall thesis on it.

Jay Gould (00:16:01):

Sure. But you got to look at the inflation numbers you’re talking about that are coming down the pike based off of the Russia oil issues. Don’t you think that that’s going to end the fertilizer and food and et cetera, you don’t think that’s going to further accelerate this?

Joe Carlasare (00:16:12):

I mean, oil is down 20%, is that because of Russia and last week? I mean, these are commodities, distortions in the commodity markets, right? We know there’s a ton of leverage. We know there’s traders in there that take advantage of distortions in the marketplace. I don’t think you can read a whole lot in these wild fluctuations in the short term. I think you got to look at the broad message it’s sending. And the reality is oil, if you account for inflation is still below the 2008 peak, significantly below, like 40, 50 bucks.

Preston Pysh (00:16:39):

Hey Joe, I agreed with a lot of what you just said. The one part that I would push back a little bit, you were saying that on the long end of the yield curve, it’s not selling off like you had seen on the short end of the yield curve. But in the past, let me see here how many months this has been. Since the end of November, you have seen the long end of the curve selling off just as aggressively as you have the short end of the curve.

Preston Pysh (00:17:04):

And I would argue, I think the reason that you’ve seen that is because I think that’s when the market reality that this isn’t transitory, in fact this actually might be getting worse started to set in for much of the fixed income market. I think that was a real pivotal point, for whatever reason I don’t know necessarily why it was end of November, but you can see it in the chart and you can see that the 20 year and the 30 year was selling off, I’m looking at the chart right now. It’s selling off just as aggressively as the one year to the 10 year.

Joe Carlasare (00:17:36):

Well, hang on, Preston, spreads are at … we got 30 basis points between 10, two. I mean, look at the progression. The two has moved much faster than the 10. Otherwise the spread wouldn’t be narrowing like that.

Preston Pysh (00:17:48):

I’m looking at the … I’ll take the 20 year because that’s the one I got right in front of me. It was at 1.75% at the end of November. And today it’s at 2.56%. You can quickly do the math on that. Whereas the one year, it’s selling off a little bit faster, of course.

Joe Carlasare (00:18:07):

That’s my only point. That’s all I’m saying.

Preston Pysh (00:18:09):

But it’s not much. When I’m looking at the slope of them, they’re pretty similar. I think the concern and who knows what that turning point there was. But I mean, if these yields keep selling off, because I mean, at the end of the day, all economic calculations starts with what’s the inflation rate, right? You got to start there. That’s your keystone of economic calculation. And if the yields in fixed income are at 2.56% on a 20 year and we’re printing eight and looking at 10, it all comes down to whether the market believes that that’s going to persist. I think the market thinks that these yields or this inflation is going to persist for another year at least. I suspect that we’re going to-

Joe Carlasare (00:18:50):

Well, if that’s the case, why isn’t the ten year above 3%. I mean, that’s what you’d expect to see if the market actually believes and was embracing the long term inflation narrative, you’d see a 10 year above 3%. You’d see it selling up.

Jay Gould (00:19:03):

I think it’s what I go back to with you all the time is I think the markets are trying to be optimistic. They’re defaulting to optimism because it’s a recency bias that they haven’t seen. There’s a lot of investors in the market by the way that have never seen a bear market actually in their thirties, right? There’s all that. I’m not talking about institutional money though, but I don’t know. I just think there’s this optimism like, well, we’ll get through this, the Fed has to bail us out, it’s going to be okay.

Joe Carlasare (00:19:25):

I think it’s pessimism Jay. Because if the market is really believed in the long term growth narrative, you’d see bonds being bought up, you’d see yields continuing to sell off-

Jay Gould (00:19:36):

Well, I don’t think we’ve sold off. Yeah, I mean, I know you say that equity markets are a bad market for this, but when you look at the equity market sell off, it doesn’t seem reflective of where we’re at in this cycle right now and what’s on the horizon. It just seems too optimistic to me.

Joe Carlasare (00:19:50):

I mean, Jeff, get on this. Do you think that if the inflation narrative were for real, do you believe that yields would be at 2% here or do you think it’s somehow just too distorted?

Jeff Ross (00:19:59):

So I’m going to be the happy middle man here, and I think you guys are both right. And I think you’re both hitting on stuff. Personally I think that inflation rates are going to stay very high. But I think that they’re going to disinflate from here. I actually think we are peaking right about now in this first quarter, maybe March, maybe-

Preston Pysh (00:20:18):

Even with everything with Ukraine?

Jeff Ross (00:20:20):

Yes, I do. I think that we’re going to peak very soon. If oil hasn’t already peaked, I think we may have one more run up and then it deflates from there. And then I think CPI kind of follows it lower, not down, not low low. I think what we’re going to see is, right now we have the CPI just under eight. By the end of the year I think it slowly creeps down to about five or six, so still very high. And I still think that’s what’s kind of keep pulling the long end of the buns up.

Jeff Ross (00:20:48):

But to Joe’s point, I think that people are still very skeptical about long term growth. I definitely think we’re going to be stuck in a decade of stagflation with intermittent, deflationary busts. And I think it’s going to be ugly and volatile all along the way. And I’ll kind of segue us here a little bit, traditional assets I think like stocks and bonds are going to be horrifying to be interested in for most people. Most people who are used to what happened last decade, where you could put your money in a 60, 40 portfolio of Vanguard index funds. And all you had to care about is, was it low fee index funds or not?

Jeff Ross (00:21:22):

And then you saw your portfolio grow and grow 200% over a decade or so, that’s not going to be this decade. This is going to be the decade of hard assets of volatility of Bitcoin commodities. And I think stocks are going to suffer. Bonds are going to suffer. Growth is going to go through spurts and fits and we’re going to have periods where it’s going to ramp up and then it’s just going to crash down. We’re going to see, Cathie Wood is just going to be devastated and then she’ll be elated and then she’s going to be devastated again. To me that’s what we’re facing this decade. And all of this is intertwined together. You were going to say something Preston.

Preston Pysh (00:21:54):

No, I want to throw this out here. Bill Gross had a comment yesterday. For people not familiar with Bill Gross, billionaire, known as the Bond King. This was his post yesterday. Global markets delevering due to inflation, Ukraine, China, and more. There will be bargains if the 10 year holds at 2.15% on the yield, if not, watch out. I find that really interesting because if we look at the 10 year today as we’re recording this, the 10 is at 2.149, at 2.15.

Preston Pysh (00:22:28):

It seems that Bill is suggesting that for whatever reason, this point where we’re at right now in the yield for the 10 year is a very critical number. And if it sells off beyond that 2.15 mark, he thinks things are going to get a little bit ugly, so who knows? I find the comment interesting. Like I said, he just posted it yesterday. Joe, I love the fact that you’re pushing back on this because it’s very contrarian to what I think most people, especially on Twitter would be suggesting, because I think everybody’s similar to Jeff and Jay and myself saying that this is a monster that’s only going to get worse and this time is different and everything else. I really like how you’re pushing back on it.

Jay Gould (00:23:09):

I’m saying it’s not different. Based on the economic, so the macro backdrop, it just seems … I guess I’m going with what I think the old playbook is. And I think Joe might be saying that it’s just changed a little bit.

Joe Carlasare (00:23:18):

What’s the most bearish thing right now? Nothing like price to change sentiment of people, but what is causing you to be so bearish on this?

Jay Gould (00:23:29):

Well, it started before the war, that earlier last year we saw that the rates on the 10 year were starting to move, right? And then we see that inflation starts to follow that later. And then the Fed saying, “It’s not a big deal, it’s transitory,” et cetera. And then as they start to talk about potentially raising rates, which everybody was saying they’ll never do again. But as soon as they start talking about raising the rates again, we start to enter into their fall.

Jay Gould (00:23:52):

And then we start seeing this hiccup that we see now with Ukraine and it becomes real. And then, well, first they started to say they were raising, it then becomes real. And now we can see that the inflation rates that are continually rising still, I think for anybody that’s looking at what’s happening in the war right now and the sanctions and what have you and how that may in fact impact inflation even further, that’s what I’m seeing. And it seems like in the face of that, you’re just like, “No, it’s not a big deal.” I think it is a big deal, but I don’t know.

Preston Pysh (00:24:18):

So Joe I’ll answer that. As I’m looking at it from just a math standpoint, if you’re inflation, let’s just say the inflation is 5%. Let’s just say it’s not even at the levels that it’s at or where we think it’s going higher and it’s just 5%. Those yields in the fixed income space have to provide a premium for anybody to want to own them above that 5% hurdle rate of inflation. If those yields go to 5%, I’m sorry, the stock market is not valued where it’s currently at, it needs to go way lower in order to then put a premium.

Preston Pysh (00:24:49):

What you need in equities, you need a premium above those fixed income yields. So the sell off has to be quite a bit more from where we’re at right now, significantly more from where we’re at right now. So for me, I’m just looking at it from a math standpoint and saying, “Hey, if inflation is at 7.8, we think it might even go to 10, the sell off in fixed income has to go so much more in equities, even more than that.” I mean, that’s why I’m bearish, it’s just a math problem.

Joe Carlasare (00:25:17):

Well, Preston, just as a follow up to that, you’re bearish because of where the 10 year might go as opposed to where it’s at right now. Is that what I’m hearing?

Preston Pysh (00:25:25):

Absolutely.

Joe Carlasare (00:25:26):

Okay. And again, I think it’s suspect whether it’s going to go higher. I think that’s a genuine point of contention here, I don’t. I think maybe you go up to 2.2, 2.3. Historically, that’s still very low and you’re going to own equities at that point I think. From my standpoint, you’re selling off the bonds, where is that cash going? Is that cash going to sit in the money market? No. It’s going to go into equities, right? Particularly after a 12% decline. So you got to own something guys.

Jay Gould (00:25:53):

Holds the cash and waits for the bottom. That’s what happens when they think a crash is coming. You just don’t think there’s a crash coming so you don’t see why they would do that. That’s what people do, they hide in cash while they wait.

Joe Carlasare (00:26:02):

Do you think there’s a crash coming right here [crosstalk 00:26:04]?

Jay Gould (00:26:04):

Listen, 2008, I lived through it and all year the market just kept sliding. In 2000, for three years, they-

Joe Carlasare (00:26:10):

Hang on. 2008, Jay, there’s a systemic problem in the banking sector. Look at the Chicago financial conditions index, we’re below any norm of stress in the financial system. You’re not seeing that guys, the labor market is tight.

Jay Gould (00:26:22):

There’s no stress yet, but there could be because of the amount of leverage in the system.

Joe Carlasare (00:26:25):

What does that mean? I’m just saying right now the data does not reflect what … I mean, listen, go back to similar period. Any of these periods we talked about and I posted a bunch of charts, go look at my Twitter about this. All the parallels you want to draw with 2008, we don’t have that right now. There aren’t clear parallels with the financial stress and the signs of deterioration in the market that you add back then guys. So if you want to draw this parallel with 2008, I think the [inaudible 00:26:52].

Jay Gould (00:26:51):

There’s a lot of charts. I just posted this the other day. I just pulled it up. There’s this post that I can share with you guys in the group chat for a second. And then I’ll read something to you if you don’t mind Preston. Here, so you can see what I’m looking at.

Preston Pysh (00:27:04):

After you’re done, I have a point to defend Joe’s position, that I think is important.

Jay Gould (00:27:09):

Sure. Yeah. Just the other day on Friday, I posted this and it was basically saying there’s a variety of different things that are kind of adding up that aren’t feeling good. I don’t know that this means there’s going to be a crash, Joe, right? But all time highs, US valuations. Multiples are just out of control. If you look back from 1990 to now. Oil prices could be the catalyst for finally contracting those high earning multiples and valuations. Oil reached $120 a barrel. And then there’s some believe it can go to $200 to $300 barrel. We can talk about that.

Jay Gould (00:27:39):

But then there’s stagflation, which is a risk that Jeff identified. That’s on the horizon. Rate hikes, reverse the flow of money from assets to cash and raises the discount rate to the discount future cash flows, lowering asset values, potentially leading to a bear market. They show whole chart of how the cycle basically happens over and over again. And then they look at the worsening credit conditions as well in a chart.

Jay Gould (00:27:58):

And then there’s also now an increased risk of contagion. I’m no expert at this, but I read this somewhere. From commodity markets, Russian commodities have been used as collateral for loans, so large dips could lead to margin calls. That could be another problem if things start to slide. And then profit margins of US stock markets are historical peaks as well. It just seems like we’re setting up for major correction that the market hasn’t seen in 13 years in any real meaningful way. And then there’s obviously the yield curve inversion that we always talk about has led to every recession and that’s getting closer and closer essentially.

Preston Pysh (00:28:30):

Jay, this is where I would agree with Joe. If you have Fed policy that steps in and says, “All right, we’re just going to provide a backstop across the whole duration. For the 30 year it’s going to be 2.7. For the 10 year it’s going to be 2.4 or whatever.” Anything that sells off beyond that yield, we’re just going to step in and we’re going to become a buyer. I think that is what causes everything to just kind of come to this sell off, to come to a screeching call. And then I’m there with Joe, I’m like, hey, yeah, this-

Jay Gould (00:29:05):

Yeah. I mean, I think that’s where the markets at? Which is why we haven’t seen the equity markets drop so much so dramatically. They think that that’s coming I guess.

Preston Pysh (00:29:12):

But as soon as they do that, you are now debasing that currency, which is going to cause more price issues in the market, which is going to cause more perturbation in the supply chains and everything else that basically takes this entire thing and unglues it. Although you might have equities continue to kind of hold whatever price they’re at, you’re not fundamentally solving that negative spread. You’re totally manipulating that negative spread to provide a backstop. And that’s where I think that this has the potential to really get crazy. Joe, what are [crosstalk 00:29:57].

Jay Gould (00:29:59):

I feel like Jeff should jump in because this kind of goes to the currency potentially collapsing, because that’s what you’re alluding to. It’s like it’s just not good here.

Jeff Ross (00:30:06):

I think what we need to discern is what our timeframes are with what we’re talking about these things.

Jay Gould (00:30:10):

That’s probably right.

Jeff Ross (00:30:11):

I would love to know from you guys, if we could, what do you think in the next couple weeks to months, and then what do you think maybe a year or two out and then maybe like the 10 year picture. Because I think we’re all kind of saying the same thing, honestly, but we’re just sort of focusing on different time events. For instance, what I see and you guys know this, they call me Dr. Bear now all over Twitter spaces.

Jeff Ross (00:30:37):

I think we’re getting close to peak inflation and I think we start to disinflate for the rest of the year. Maybe we peaked in February, maybe we go one more higher in March into the 8% or 9%. But then I think we disinflate from there. And I think we’re already seeing decelerating GDP for sure. That’s just inarguable at the fourth quarter of 2021. I think we’re clearly going to see decelerating earning from companies and it’s going to get kind of ugly from that perspective. And I don’t think the market has picked up on that yet. That’s where I’m so curious, Joe, I want to hear your take on this, especially because all I see on the horizon in the near term, so weeks to months are negative catalyst, negative catalyst, weakness, weakness, weakness. I can’t see anything positive.

Jeff Ross (00:31:21):

And we go back and forth, Joe, you and I all the time, and there’s other guys like you that say the same. I have people who agree with everything I’m saying right now. And they say, “But Bitcoin is going to reach new all time highs in a month.” And it makes my brain want to explode. And I’m not making fun of you. I can’t understand how you can come to that conclusion because all I see is negative. I see 2018 fourth quarter, and we can get this with Bitcoin. Bitcoin was wobbling down, it went from just under 20,000 to 6,500. And then in about September, it went like this. And then it went flat line for a month and a half. And then all of a sudden it went boop, and it dropped 50% from November to the beginning of December. And so I think we’re setting up for that exact same situation here again and you clearly don’t. I would love you to fill me with some hope here.

Joe Carlasare (00:32:10):

Let me state just at the outset, anyone who calls you Dr. Bear or any of that stuff, I think it’s much of nonsense. And I’ll just state that as much as we disagree on certain things, I respect you tremendously. I respect your viewpoint where we diverse. What I’ll say is this, I think that we’re headed towards a recession. I think it’s going to be a slow grinding, lower growth. I think that right now, if you look at the curve, particularly at the long end and you look at your dollar futures, we are setting up for a situation where the Fed is going to pivot this year.

Joe Carlasare (00:32:36):

I think the Fed will pivot this year. I’m not going to tell exact timing, because obviously I’m bad with timing, but I think we change from a hiking cycle to a cutting cycle. And to go back to 2018, the big difference between 2018 and now is that in 2018 not only were they hiking for most of the year, they actually were rolling off the balance sheet, which the data I’ve looked at when I crunched these things, the actual roll off of the balance sheet was far more significant. That was draining real liquidity from the system. And I believe that that’s what triggered the decline in Q4 of 2018 in Bitcoin and in stocks.

Joe Carlasare (00:33:09):

As long as they’re not rolling off the balance sheet, I still think we have a window here. I think you have a situation where we’re at peak pessimism and once we get these cuts and the world doesn’t end, you are going to see sentiment shift slowly, gradually than suddenly to say, “Okay, everything’s clear, the coast is clear. We can actually power forward with higher rate hikes and the system’s not going to collapse.” That’s my base case. I still think we’re headed to a recession into the next part of next year.

Joe Carlasare (00:33:36):

And I think once the Fed pivots, that’s going to have the market say, “That’s it, the risk on trade is back. You can plow back into these things, Bitcoin, Ark, tech stocks, and they’re all going to go higher. It’s not just going to be Bitcoin. I agree with you on the point that if the equity market does not stabilize, you’re not going to see Bitcoin continue higher. There’s too much correlation between the markets. There’s traditional fund managers that are trading both, and there’s either one trade, it’s risk on or it’s risk off.

Joe Carlasare (00:34:03):

In my mind, I think you got a window here, but I look at it, to Preston’s point, I pointed this chart out. I look at it kind of like a suckers rally. I think you see it’s similar to some of the movements you saw leading up to the great financial crisis, and I’m not drawing that parallel lightly. I really do think the system’s headed for a recession where no matter what the Fed is doing, no matter how much easing is into the system, we’re seeing diminishing returns and it’s not going to keep us out of a recession. But I think that comes from much higher levels than where we’re at right now. My view is we got one more rally in us here in spite of the deterioration of the real economy, because stocks don’t reflect the real economy.

Jeff Ross (00:34:40):

Great. Appreciate that. What are you guys saying? Preston, what’s your take on it?

Preston Pysh (00:34:45):

As far as timeline goes, it’s really hard to know when you’re going to get a bounce in equities or kind of a brief correction. Unlike you I’m very bearish simply because there’s just such a massive spread that needs to figure itself out. And I don’t think that the inflation numbers are going to come anywhere close to where they were before any of this started kicking off.

Preston Pysh (00:35:09):

As long as you have that fixed income market sell off, I think as long as that keeps selling off, you’re going to continue to see equities sell off as a second order effect of the fixed income market. And I think it’s going to be a bumpy road. If you do get some big bounces in the equity market, I think you sell into them and you continue to ride this down. As long as the Fed is continuing to act like they’re going to tighten into this thing.

Preston Pysh (00:35:36):

I mean, my expectation, I’m curious what everyone’s expectation is for tomorrow. This isn’t airing until next week, so it’s going to be known what happened. But I’m expecting a 25 basis point hike tomorrow, not because they’re going to be fundamentally really doing anything, but it’s more to act like they’re still in control even though they are clearly not even close.

Jay Gould (00:35:59):

Well, I think, wasn’t he asked directly and he basically said 25 basis points, right? So he can’t back off that now, it’s about managing expectations I guess.

Preston Pysh (00:36:07):

I didn’t know that, but yeah, that wouldn’t surprise me. But I mean, they’re not raising it because they’re actually fundamentally doing anything at this point, they’re just kind of like hanging onto the back of the car with a rope and getting dragged down the street with the sell off that’s naturally happening in the rest of the duration of the curve. Anybody opposed to that idea or think differently about it, just on the federal funds rate.

Joe Carlasare (00:36:28):

No, they’re going to hike 25.

Preston Pysh (00:36:30):

Yeah.

Joe Carlasare (00:36:32):

I think Jay’s right.

Jeff Ross (00:36:33):

Yeah, I think 25 too. I think he’s going to talk all about inflation. They’re going to raise 25 and then he’s going to spend the whole, after the conference hedging, we’re going to keep an eye on the markets. We’re going to keep an eye on price stability, blah, blah, blah, blah. But they are totally screwed. And I tweeted this out last week. They’re stuck between a rock and a hard place because all the Federal Reserve does, I believe, I don’t think they have nearly the impact that people think they do. They don’t have control over inflation at all.

Jeff Ross (00:36:57):

And I think what they do is they manage public perception. And so I think they’re going to try to get the public to believe we’re doing something about inflation. And then they’re going to say, “Oh, and by the way, we’re keeping an eye on the markets too.” And they can’t do that. You can’t ride two horses with one butt as they say.

Jeff Ross (00:37:14):

And so I just think that they’re stuck. And so I think they’re going to try to continue to raise rates 25 bips in March. And then at some point though, again, cracks in the foundation, the markets are not going to like that. And I think we all agree that they’re going to pivot at some point, probably in 2022, where they’re going to go from tightening back to easing again. Do you guys all think that, that happens in 2022? Because that’s what I think.

Joe Carlasare (00:37:37):

Yeah. So does that change the bear case Jeff, if they pivot?

Jay Gould (00:37:41):

If they pivot, yeah, it would. I think that’s probably right. But the assumption is I don’t know that they’re going to do that as soon as everybody thinks they will.

Preston Pysh (00:37:48):

They’re going to need yield curve control if they’re going to stop the sell off. Assuming that your inflation prints continue to come in as hot as they’ve come in. I think anything over 5% or 6% without yield curve control, this thing’s going to continue to try to sell itself off.

Jeff Ross (00:38:05):

The answer to your question, Joe. I don’t care what the Fed does, believe it or not. For how much we talk about them, I just look at how the data is flowing. And so again, I see everything decelerating and ugly right now, right? Q2 is ugly. We’re heading into Q2, that’s why everything I look at is just negative, negative, negative, things are going down.

Jeff Ross (00:38:26):

Q3 actually, I think we bottom sometime in Q2 and it looks like we’re going to pivot because the year over year comparisons are actually not so bad. I think we bottom, maybe March, April, May. I think Bitcoin is probably going to be the first to bottom, small cap stocks, look for risk on assets to suddenly turn back on again. All these tech stocks that are plunging 50%, 60%, 70%, they’re going to bounce.

Jeff Ross (00:38:47):

And I think we’re going to have a rally into the summer and people are going to be super psyched. And they’re going to think that all the bad news is over. And the Fed did a wonderful job managing this, good for the fed. And then fourth quarter, at the end of the year, it’s going to get really ugly again. And I just think 2022 is going to be just a terrible year for most people, especially for risk on investors, that’s what I think.

Joe Carlasare (00:39:09):

Jeff, I was going to ask you about Bitcoin. It’s been 70 days since we made a new low on the Bitcoin chart. I think you tweeted at one point to me that you’d be shocked if by the end of March and April we weren’t breaking down new lows. Have you been impressed with Bitcoin’s performance here, given that the major indices, NASDAQ and S&P have actually made new lows recently in the last couple weeks?

Jeff Ross (00:39:29):

I’m not going to say I told you so, to the people on Twitter, not to you, Joe, but to the people on Twitter. But what I said was, and this is a month ago, that we’re going to see volatility come down on Bitcoin. And then it’s going to flatline for a month or two. Again, I can’t get 2018 out of my head and I know you think it’s different and it is different slightly, but I think we’re going to have it. I think we’re perfectly setting up for another event where the stock market kind of grinds lower. Bitcoin stabilizes and flatlines and then it capitulates.

Jeff Ross (00:39:58):

And I think a 50% drop is not unreasonable. I could see from 40 to 20K, just like that within a week, two, three, maybe four weeks at the longest. And to me, that’s the bottom. And by the way, I really want to say this, I really hope this happens right before the Bitcoin conference, because I want it to bottom right around that time, so then we can come in and say, “This is the time to back up the truck.” This is the time to be buying because I think that’s going to be a generational opportunity to buy Bitcoin on the cheap, and it will never be lower than that price again, that’s my take. And because I think it so strongly, I’m going to be wrong for sure. So I don’t know what it’s going to do, but that’s what I think it’s setting up to do right now.

Joe Carlasare (00:40:33):

What did you say? 20K?

Jeff Ross (00:40:35):

Yeah.

Jay Gould (00:40:35):

Possibly.

Jeff Ross (00:40:36):

Possibly. I mean, this isn’t a call, but I actually think that’s the most likely that we get flatline and then people think it’s holding in there and it’s going to decouple from risk on assets completely. And then suddenly the floors are going to drop out.

Jay Gould (00:40:53):

I don’t think it’ll ever get that low because I think people will just start coming in trying to front run it, but you’re right, it’ll probably intend to get that low and then [crosstalk 00:40:57].

Joe Carlasare (00:40:57):

That’s a 70% decline off that, the 69 case.

Jeff Ross (00:40:59):

I’m probably wrong.

Jay Gould (00:41:00):

Bitcoin’s never been through a bear market in the equity markets, right? So we don’t know how it’ll perform.

Preston Pysh (00:41:10):

I’m a little hesitant to think that it’s going to drop that much. And most of the reason why is just because I don’t think that you got the full upside in the cycle like you got on the previous cycle. I think pulling on a string, if it goes astronomically high and in short order, I think it also kind of might tend to have a bigger sell off, so that would be my case for maybe not going clear down to 20. Now, 27, 28K, I think that could potentially happen.

Jay Gould (00:41:38):

Off the front run, yeah. But Willy was saying that like, he thinks that the reason why we didn’t get to the highs on the plan B stock flow and everything is because of all the other assets and all the other digital assets, the NFT, the money that went into that could have otherwise went to Bitcoin. It’s going to all these things like Solana and that may have just taken some of the demand out of Bitcoin, so that’s probably why it didn’t happen. I don’t know if I agree with it, but it’s an interesting thought.

Preston Pysh (00:42:00):

I like that point. I think it might be very valid.

Jeff Ross (00:42:03):

I got two points to say there. First is a 70% drop from highs would be an improvement from 2017 and 2018, it dropped 85%, so that’s 15% less, so that’s still an improvement. And I think we should see an improvement because we didn’t go as high, you guys are right. Second, I think that we were robbed of a parabolic move higher in 2021 because of China. I think we were on our way to ramping up and going parabolic. And then China literally came out of … that was a true, I believe black swan event for Bitcoin.

Jeff Ross (00:42:33):

Because yes, they’ve banned Bitcoin many times, but this was the first time they were actually serious and they kicked out the miners and that was a huge, huge blow to Bitcoin. Obviously Bitcoin still hung in there, it didn’t affect the network. It still was secured. It still was printing out Bitcoin like it should, even though it slowed down, it wasn’t every 10 minutes. But that was literally out of left field.

Jeff Ross (00:42:55):

And I think, I look at those charts and if you guys go back and look at that, if you put it on a monthly chart and then you look at where it was ramping up into April and then how it dipped down into, and then went back up to November. In my mind, I take that and I flip that dip up like this, I go 180 degrees vertical. And that’s what I think it was going to do. But China came out and just totally crashed the plans. Because of that, I think we didn’t get that parabolic move higher. I don’t think we drop 85% after the peak. I do think we’ve peaked.

Jeff Ross (00:43:26):

I also don’t think we have four year cycles anymore, by the way. I think that’s just old news now. And now it just trades like any macro asset based on kind of what the economy is doing and other factors. That’s how I look at it. That’s why I think it’s actually … And oh, I know, sorry, one other point I want to bring up, sorry.

Jeff Ross (00:43:41):

The third point was in June, July, it did drop down to 28500, 29000, that range. That was in a good macroeconomic environment. That’s what I keep telling people. Yes, that did hold. But we have not seen a really ugly macro environment and that’s what we’re coming into right now. That’s why I think that wall at 29 is not going to hold. And I think when it doesn’t hold, that’s when people just lose it because they’re going to be like, “I thought that was holding. I thought it could never go below that level. I thought it could never go below maybe the past high of 2017 when it was 20,000.” And that’s why it could dip and people are going to lose faith in it. And that’s when we hit a bottom, when people capitulate, when the OG panics.

Jay Gould (00:44:22):

We just haven’t had that.

Jeff Ross (00:44:23):

Yeah, that’s how I look at it.

Joe Carlasare (00:44:25):

Jeff, what do you mean a really bad macro economic environment? I just want to know how you’re defining, you mean like a recession, something more than a recession?

Jeff Ross (00:44:33):

It doesn’t have to be a recession, Joe, but it’s like the stuff that leads to a recession. Again, the same stuff I keep saying, so the decelerating GDP, decelerating flatlining earnings. I think company earnings are going to literally just go to zero or go negative. And it’s year over year. And so all of that stuff isn’t priced in yet.

Joe Carlasare (00:44:52):

Hang on. We had that in Bitcoin, 2018. And we had decelerating growth. We had PMI’s coming down. We had the Fed hiking, similar sort of situation. I guess you’re basically saying a similar to 2018 scenario where we have that capitation or is it different? Because I think when Jay’s comments, he thinks it’s something different. He thinks something we haven’t seen at any point in the history of Bitcoin, a real bear market inequities as I understand it.

Jay Gould (00:45:18):

Yeah.

Jeff Ross (00:45:19):

I’m saying regardless of that, I’m saying similar to 2018. Similar to how throughout 2018 we had an 85% drop and it ended with the fourth quarter where it dropped 50%. It went 65% down and then it quickly dropped the final 50% and that was the bottom. That’s what I think is going to happen here. I think we’re already down what, 45% from the peak back in November, another 50% drop from here would push us down to about a 70% decline. And then again, I think that’s the bottom and that’s the time where you load up and then we’re going to have a serious bull market from there.

Jay Gould (00:45:50):

Joe, you have the confidence and conviction that we’ve seen the bottom and it just all roses from here, is that where you’re from?

Joe Carlasare (00:45:57):

No. To be clear-

Jay Gould (00:45:58):

You just think it’s going to drag on slowly up from here then. Is that what you … like a ladder up?

Joe Carlasare (00:46:02):

I think my view of Bitcoin is a side seat to the equity market. Unless the equity market stabilize and goes higher, I don’t think Bitcoin can continue higher, but the opposite is also true. If the equity bottom is close, which again, given the wall of worry and the bad news that’s coming at us relentlessly and all those things we talked about on this podcast. The fact that we’re 12% or 11% off the all time high in the S&P 500.

Jay Gould (00:46:24):

Which is nothing.

Joe Carlasare (00:46:25):

You could say it’s nothing

Jay Gould (00:46:26):

It’s nothing.

Joe Carlasare (00:46:28):

No. Historically I get it, it’s nothing significant in historical context. What I’m saying is considering it’s still hanging in there at these levels, you have to say-

Jay Gould (00:46:38):

That shows me that there’s optimism in the market, not pessimism. You’re seeing the opposite of that, which it doesn’t make sense. Because it’s like if we haven’t had a capitulating bottom and we haven’t seen it, just sell off, at a rapid sell off to a bottom, you’re feeling optimistic in the face of what the market’s telling you otherwise. And the market’s showing optimism like you. Every time it ladders up itself, it tries to jump every piece of good news that potentially comes out. Markets are up in the morning 2%, you’re like, “Really?” And two days later, they crash back down again. It’s like, oh no, reality, this is really actually bad. It’s really not getting better.

Joe Carlasare (00:47:08):

I’m just looking at traditional gauges of market sentiment, okay. American Association of Individual Investors is printing one of the worst prints of the last 10 years recently, okay. Now you’re seeing sort of this significant malaise and frustration and anger even in the markets. And we talked about this, we go back and forth on a million different indicators and you can get lost in the sea of indicators. You can find something to justify your position all across the board.

Jay Gould (00:47:32):

Totally.

Joe Carlasare (00:47:33):

I’m just saying there’s devastation in some of these markets. Look at Ark, okay. Ark is [inaudible 00:47:38].

Jay Gould (00:47:37):

That happens in every crash, high growth sells off and goes to value. It happens all the time.

Joe Carlasare (00:47:41):

Yeah. Do you think it’s going to sell off-

Preston Pysh (00:47:43):

Or every correction I should say, I don’t [crosstalk 00:47:45].

Joe Carlasare (00:47:44):

… 40% more from the current levels. I mean, people have lost their [inaudible 00:47:48].

Jay Gould (00:47:48):

No, it’s going to come out of value, they’re going to go to cash. They’ve been rotating. That’s why the markets haven’t gone down 20% plus, right. They’re rotating mostly, they’re going to [inaudible 00:47:56] cash, which is why it comes down. But then they’re also rotating from growth to value. And so that rotation growth to value doesn’t go back to growth if there’s more concern, it comes out of the market, so that’s when you start seeing everything.

Preston Pysh (00:48:07):

Joe, I would argue that based on how negative the spreads are, if inflation continues to persist, yes, I think it can sell off significantly from here, if the Fed doesn’t step in and do anything.

Jay Gould (00:48:20):

Or if the market doesn’t believe that it will help.

Preston Pysh (00:48:23):

I think that’s the question is, do you guys think the Fed would actually allow that to take place for any meaningful amount of time with further sell off? Let’s say the market sells off 10% from here. Do we really think that the Fed’s going to not step in and try to do some type of-

Jay Gould (00:48:39):

No, don’t step in. I think 20% correction is where they really start to get concerned.

Joe Carlasare (00:48:43):

I think it’s important to distinguish, when you’re saying the Fed pressing, you mean the federal government or the Federal Reserve? Because the Federal Reserve-

Preston Pysh (00:48:49):

The Federal Reserve.

Joe Carlasare (00:48:51):

Okay. The Federal Reserves, they’re effectively out of choices right here, right? With effective Fed funds rate of 0.08 and QE to the moon. What else are they going to do legally? I mean, honestly.

Preston Pysh (00:49:02):

They’ve got to do yield curve.

Joe Carlasare (00:49:03):

Sure. And okay, so you’re going to buy up every single duration, you’re going to buy up and down the curve, okay. And if you buy up and down the curve to force rates down, how are you going to actually consistently drive it down? Because those are going to get sold off. I don’t follow the logic there. I think they’ve reached the point … I mean, I was interviewing with Josh Jalinski, Lacy Hunt, and we were talking about this and ultimately the bond market is way more … the Fed follows what the bond market is ultimately telling it historically. The bond market is telling the Fed, here’s the policies you need to take. And I don’t think any Fed policy at this point is going to be able to get us out of this funnel. I agree with you in the notion that legislatively our fiscal authority, the Congress can do a whole lot. And maybe we can get to that [crosstalk 00:49:45].

Preston Pysh (00:49:45):

Joe, so I guess this is where I’m not … you’re looking at it from a policy lens of like, how can we solve the problem? Based on what you were saying there. I’m looking at it from the lens of, what’s the most probabilistic outcome for them to act based on the total disaster that they’ve been served? I’m not trying to solve the problem, I’m just trying to figure out from a probabilistic standpoint how they’re going to respond when all this starts to go haywire.

Preston Pysh (00:50:14):

I think the highest probability is they’re going to do something like they did with operation twist, where they step in and they do yield curve control across the whole duration of the curve, which is going to make all of this way worse. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not going to do it. I think that there’s a very high probability that that’s where this is leading. And I think it’s going to make everything worse, but that’s obviously, I don’t want things to be worse. I want there to be a solution. I think we all know what the solution is here, but I think that’s what’s going to happen.

Joe Carlasare (00:50:46):

Yeah. I guess my view is that before they reach that, you’re going to see significant pressure on the Congress. And I know it’s an election year, so that may throw wrench in things, but you’re going to see significant pressure on the Congress to do something in the form of additional stimulus. I thought I heard you at one point. I don’t want to misquote you, but saying that you thought there might be a move towards UBI in the near future [crosstalk 00:51:08].

Preston Pysh (00:51:08):

But Joe, that makes everything worse, right? If they’re stepping in with more stimulus, they’re distorting price signals even worse, which is jacking the supply chains, the same thing you do with price control, right? You’re just making all of these signals for a free and open market to function efficiently as efficiently as possible, you’re distorting all of that, which is raising inflation, which is the issue at hand that all the economic calculation is trying to correct itself to and provide a premium to with respect to yields.

Joe Carlasare (00:51:40):

But again, we’re talking about two different things. I agree with you. The system’s fundamentally broken and there’s no way out, no matter what the Fed does, no matter what the fiscal authority, we all agree with that. What Jay and I have been going back and forth and Jeff, we’re talking about risk assets.

Preston Pysh (00:51:51):

Mostly timing.

Joe Carlasare (00:51:52):

No, not just timing. We’re talking about risk assets. And what we know from the stimulus check data, Betterment did a survey about this, is 46% of the money that came out for stimulus ended up in the stock market and other assets. They took the stimulus dollars public grants, and they said, “We’ve been a bid up SBYQQQ, we’re going to buy call options on Robin and do whatever we need.” In the event you put cash into people’s hands, I’m not going to be short risk assets. I think that’s insanity, if that comes down. I think I see here Jeff’s nodding his hands, or not nodding his head. I don’t know if you agree with that, but-

Jeff Ross (00:52:23):

I do.

Joe Carlasare (00:52:23):

… it is stimulus. Okay. What are your thoughts on that? So your whole thesis here shifts if there are stimulus coming in from the Congress here, is that right?

Jeff Ross (00:52:35):

It’s uncanny the way the movements of the Fed go in parallel to what the macro conditions are saying. Couple months ago when I was looking at it and we were talking about this, when I was saying that we’re coming into a period really of economic deceleration, decelerating earnings and disinflation, and that’s bad for risk on assets. And I said, “Every time this happens, there’s some major event. We’re going to see some sort of news event, that’s going to be like a gray swan event.”

Jeff Ross (00:53:01):

I said, “I don’t know if it’s going to be another COVID variant that’s going to rock the world. Maybe there’ll be a war. Maybe there’ll be something, blah, blah, blah.” But so what did we get? We got Russia, Ukraine, right? This stuff just happens. The Fed always starts tightening at exactly the wrong time.

Jeff Ross (00:53:17):

I was on Jay and Preston show talking about this as they should have been tightening last year back when the economy was still accelerating, when inflation was a little bit more under control, but it was starting to rise. They should have taken the bull by the horns back then, but they didn’t, they always wait on us. So I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to have these big ugly events in the markets. The risk on assets are going to continue to signal that they’re very unhappy. That’s going to force the Fed to make a switch.

Jeff Ross (00:53:43):

And I totally agree with you, they’re going to do all this stuff. We’re talking about yield curve control is absolutely coming. I think UBI is absolutely coming as a political discussion and it’s going to actually happen sooner than later. The Fed will pivot from tightening to dovish and it’s all because the market is driving them to do this. And all is this kind of funny symphony, this interplay of factors with each other, where that all happens. And I think the Fed is actually less powerful. I think they’re more being pushed along by these macroeconomic indicators into being forced to make the decisions they’re doing. I don’t know if that answered your question.

Joe Carlasare (00:54:13):

Jeff, well, here’s the thing, you’re saying the Fed is behind the curve and I get that and I agree, they are behind the curve. But look at the bond market right now, and Jay and I were talking about this the other day, the market’s priced in these hikes. You see the short end, right?

Jeff Ross (00:54:26):

Yeah, for sure.

Joe Carlasare (00:54:27):

The hikes have already been absorbed by the system. So to me, that’s why you’re seeing S&P down 12% off the hikes, because it’s priced it in. Go ahead.

Jeff Ross (00:54:37):

This is where I agree with Jay on this is that I think you are too optimistic. And I still think there’s too many optimist out there that are saying, “Look at the resilience, it’s still holding on. It’s only down 13%.” I say it’s because the bottom hasn’t fallen out yet. And the floor still needs to fall out. Again, and I’m like a natural optimist, it’s hard for me to say, but I still think the ugly stuff is still coming. And then the floor drops out. And then that’s when everything resets.

Jay Gould (00:55:00):

You don’t want to be a pessimist or an optimist in this market. You just want to be a realist and see it for what it is. But Joe, you just said that the stimulus 40%, maybe you missed … Look at the tweet that I just … the DM that you sent on Twitter, is this what you were referring to? Possibly. It was 40 billion dollars of stimulus money went to Bitcoin. And that was 10% of the money that was sent out, not 40%, different study.

Joe Carlasare (00:55:23):

Yeah, Betterment [inaudible 00:55:24].

Jay Gould (00:55:23):

Okay. But you said earlier, just not to bust your chops because you know I love screwing with you. But what you said earlier when I told you about the Ally Bank surveys, you don’t like surveys. This is a survey I don’t really know.

Joe Carlasare (00:55:35):

No, listen-

Jay Gould (00:55:38):

This is what people do in fallacy, right? You’re using data to support your argument, but you’re not looking at all of that.

Joe Carlasare (00:55:44):

No. Jay, all I’m saying is that I think it’s crazy to think that the money from the stimulus didn’t end up into risk assets. I mean, there’s so many [crosstalk 00:55:52].

Jay Gould (00:55:51):

I’m saying it didn’t either. Clearly it went into real estate and all kinds of things, house, there was a lot of home repair, businesses and stuff are doing phenomenally well. All my friends that have landscaping companies and construction companies, they’re so booked man, there’s no question. But that’s the money that didn’t belong to the [inaudible 00:56:07]. It shouldn’t have gone to those individual, it should have gone to the people that actually needed it and they gave it to everybody, to your point. But a lot of it just went to things that just pushes prices up. It doesn’t go into the investments, right.

Joe Carlasare (00:56:16):

Yeah. 46% of those who got a stimulus check invested at least some of their stimulus in the stock market.

Jay Gould (00:56:23):

Okay. Well, these are just studies, to your point, you don’t like studies.

Joe Carlasare (00:56:26):

No. Who knows? I mean, take it with a great grain of salt. I think it’s not-

Jay Gould (00:56:29):

But you’re allowing that to form opinions for you, but not the ones that I send you that are the bearish sentiment.

Preston Pysh (00:56:35):

Jay, that’s because it’s coming from you, man.

Jay Gould (00:56:37):

Yeah, exactly. I didn’t create the study.

Joe Carlasare (00:56:41):

I’m just saying there was a ton of cash in the system. There was a ton of the cash, that’s why you saw everything across the board rise last year. You could have thrown a dart at the board, the most unprofitable company you could do was going to rise. See, Jeff nodding his head again. I mean, it was obvious to me that this was driven primarily by fiscal stimulus. It’s not Fed policy per se. It’s more handing out trillions of dollar to people and they have money to invest.

Preston Pysh (00:57:05):

Guys, we’re a little beyond-

Jay Gould (00:57:07):

Probably right.

Preston Pysh (00:57:07):

We’re about one hour and I got through the first question.

Joe Carlasare (00:57:14):

Or later maybe.

Preston Pysh (00:57:16):

The one point that I want to go back to here specifically with Jeff, so people hearing this discussion, they’re saying, “Wow, this sounds really bad.” What I think is a little concerning for a person who owns Bitcoin. They completely understand the Bitcoin narrative, right? They’ve been in the space and they’re thinking, maybe I could be a little cute with this and sell some of my Bitcoin. And like Jeff, try to buy this at 20K and steal everybody’s corn at half the price of what it is right now.

Preston Pysh (00:57:45):

Talk to us about the risk of a sovereign entity entering the space and what that could do to the price overnight. Depending on who that sovereign entrant would be. And I’m not saying that there is one, I’m just saying as an example, there’s risk to not being in the space. And how do you think through that math of how much you continue to have in your portfolio because of that risk.

Jeff Ross (00:58:17):

Yeah, great point. Lot of things I can say about that. First is there’s no greater opportunity cost than not being in Bitcoin over the long term. So trying to time Bitcoin is really foolish for the most part. Second point, know yourself. Are you a trader? If you’re nodding your head to the things I’m saying like, “Hey, yeah, I think it’s going to drop. Yes, I’m going to buy in. I might sell it now, blah, blah, blah.” Or are you a long term investor?

Jeff Ross (00:58:42):

Most people should be long term investor savers. I would say 99% of the population, almost everyone listening to this should be just buying and holding dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin. You will do very, very well for yourself over the long run if that’s what you do. If you are a trader, okay, and you think what I think might happen and could actually happen, then traders are selling right now because they’re bearish.

Jeff Ross (00:59:07):

When traders are selling, long term investors and savers should be buying, that’s how it works. That’s how the market dynamics works. That means we’re closer to a bottom, we’re getting close to very, very cheap prices that in the long run are going to be just much, much, much higher. This is when you want to be buying, when people like me who trade for a living and are managing volatility. When I’m saying that I think it’s going to be negative, you should be buying, okay. Not individual investment advice, this is just what I think. And vice versa.

Jeff Ross (00:59:35):

When traders are buying in general, that means we’re getting closer to the top. They tend to ride the waves, the strength of a cycle. And then that’s when the OG, they actually sell into strength and they buy into weakness. So that’s that other point. What happens if a country comes in and says, hey, look, maybe at the Bitcoin conference, there’s this major announcement, right. That who knows, some country is coming in way bigger than El Salvador. And look, hey, starting today, we’re going to buy just freaky amounts of Bitcoin.

Jeff Ross (01:00:05):

That would be a horrible opportunity cost to pay if you were waiting for 20K. And it was say only at that point 21K, right? You have a limit order in here, I’m going to go on all in it, 20, because Dr. Jeff said 20. I’m not saying that, don’t trust me on this. I think by far the smartest thing to do is to be buying all the way down. If you believe in Bitcoin, where it’s going to be in the long term. And I think we all agree it’s going much, much, much higher than where it is today in the long run, then just buy it.

Jeff Ross (01:00:34):

And don’t risk that opportunity cost because I have a system that flips, so if this kind of thing happens and I’ve been bearish, but my momentum indicators flip back to bullish, I’ll be right back in again. I might be saying yesterday that you should be selling and then today, look, I flip bullish and I’m buying again. That’s a trader mentality. And that’s really stupid for most people. Most people lose money doing what I’m doing, so not recommending that. I don’t know if I answered your question Preston, but please, please, please, don’t miss out on Bitcoin because you think you can outsmart the Bitcoin price market.

Joe Carlasare (01:01:05):

By the way, as we’re recording this, we just popped up again about 41,000 again on Bitcoin.

Preston Pysh (01:01:10):

Yeah, look at that.

Jeff Ross (01:01:10):

Nice.

Jay Gould (01:01:13):

Jeff, would you say there’s different types of … Sorry, Preston.

Preston Pysh (01:01:15):

No. Go ahead, Jay.

Jay Gould (01:01:16):

Speak to different constituencies, right? Because there’s the people that have the dollar cost average, those people that have lump sums that are out there in the world, right? The inheritance maybe, sold a company, who knows what those people are. And there’s a variety of different constituents out there for different purchases. So if you’re somebody that has cash and you’ve been waiting, don’t wait, to your point, right? You should be buying. But as it drops as a percentage, should they be laying in more and more? Because it comes probable at some point that it’s not going to keep dropping, right?

Jeff Ross (01:01:42):

I think so. I think the smartest way to do it that doesn’t require much. This is what I tell people in the current market environment, again, not individual advice. But when people ask me personally like my clients. Say you got an inheritance, you got $100,000 or something like that. What I tell people is if you don’t own any Bitcoin, I would put half of it in today, just buy it, whatever price it is today. And then maybe once a week, once a month, whatever your system wants to be, just dollar cost average, maybe put a $1,000 in or $5,000 in, something like that. Have it just be staggered so that … you’ll really kick yourself if you don’t buy some right now and the price jacks higher to Joe’s point. And maybe we get new all time highs.

Jeff Ross (01:02:17):

But at the same time, you’ll be kicking yourself if you go 100% all in now, and then it drops 50%, you’ll be like, “Oh my gosh, what have I done?” And you’ll be knowing how people are, because I do this for a living, you’re going to want to sell if it does, if we capitulate, you’re going to panic, freak out and you’re going to be hitting the sell, sell, sell, sell, sell button at any price. And then you’re really, really going to regret doing that, so please don’t do that either.

Jay Gould (01:02:39):

I asked that because I was a lump sum guy, right? I got a windfall, right? That’s all the company. I know what that feeling is like. And I went back and forth with Joe about this because he’s like, “I don’t have those feelings in this bear markets anymore.” I’m like, “Well, if you had your entire net worth that you have given to you and this one lump sum, would you say at this point right now, I’m going to put all my money into the market.”

Jay Gould (01:02:57):

And to your point, what I tell people is you put half your money in the market, that’s the right way to do it. You take half the money you put in the market and then you say, “I’ll buy it over two years or four years.” And you evenly put it into the market over that period of time. And you won’t care because as it’s dropping down, you could load up and you could put more. So if that’s like $5,000 a week or whatever the number is for everybody, you might start doing 10, you might start doing $25,000 a week. But you still never say this is the bottom, put all the rest of it in, because it could drop another 50%, even it went down 50%. So yeah, I think that’s good advice for people. Just be very cautious about where you’re at.

Preston Pysh (01:03:26):

Joe, I want to ask you about the policy piece of where you see Bitcoin legislature going, coming into the next two quarters. Out of anybody that I know, you probably have the beat on where a lot of this is going. I know the European proof of work was voted down.

Joe Carlasare (01:03:47):

It’s great.

Preston Pysh (01:03:48):

I found it amazing that the price on Bitcoin didn’t budge at all to the entire vote. And I think it just shows you no one cared. At least people who owned Bitcoin didn’t care whether that was voted down or not, it wasn’t going to make a difference. But tell us where you think a lot of this is going.

Joe Carlasare (01:04:08):

Over the last couple years now you’ve seen a rising chorus of folks on the hill. And even in state capitals that have said, “We’re going to have to get our hands on this market. We’re going to have to do something here.” I think that many folks expected that the broader crypto, not just Bitcoin market, the broader crypto market would’ve faced perhaps a different shift with Gensler getting in and him taking a different approach. He’s taking the exact same approach as his predecessor and as his predecessor’s predecessor, which is enforcement effectively through litigation, through trying to prosecute one off basis rather than broad decrees. Mostly because I think he doesn’t believe he has the legislative authority to handle a lot of these things beyond just filing civil cases and doing enforcement actions.

Joe Carlasare (01:04:51):

What I think you’re going to see, and if you have to kind of piece together all the different policy makers and regulators and treasury and The White House, and you see a consistent frame of sort of two major things that are concerned about. Number one, I think they’re very much concerned about stable coins. That’s a huge focus. If you recall the executive order, it calls for three separate reports. I think this is under reported part about this, three separate reports on stable coins.

Joe Carlasare (01:05:15):

They’re going to introduce some piece of legislation on stable coins. And I think the second big part that Gensler has sort of been nudging people forward about is additional regulation, digital legislation on exchanges. I think you do get some sort of omnibus crypto piece of legislation that is going to be put forward in the Congress. It’s going to have the backing of The White House. Then the question becomes, can they get it through the Congress?

Joe Carlasare (01:05:39):

Now just looking at a calendar, when the executive order was handed down, some of the reports were not due to be delivered to the president for 180 days. That’s going to put you at September 5th, which is right before the election. Everybody’s going to be back in their district, they’re going to be campaigning. They’re going to be trying to save their seats. So you’re not going to get anything done before the election.

Joe Carlasare (01:05:57):

The real question in my mind is after the election, if you have potentially a lame duck house where Democrats are on the way out, because they’ve lost to Republicans. I think in that situation, do you get some sort of mad push to get some bill through the Congress? I think you’re going to see that, could be wrong on that. But I think that would be the earliest you’d see any sort of omnibus crypto legislation coming through. And I think there are serious questions, whether it has the votes to get past the filibuster. I mean, you’ve got … I know people say it’s only a couple senators that are pro Bitcoin or pro crypto generally, that’s significant.

Joe Carlasare (01:06:30):

In a body as deeply divided as the United States Senate, one or two folks can hold up the whole bill. We saw that when Joe mentioned, for example, recently with some of the stimulus package. In terms of being bearish, I’m bearish on new crypto legislation getting through the Congress. I do believe you’re going to get some regulatory fixes and regulatory changes from The White House. The question is always, how far can they really go with that? We can talk about some of the specifics, but in terms of overall game change legislation in this market, I don’t see it coming anytime soon. Certainly not this year.

Preston Pysh (01:07:02):

When you say you’re bearish, does that mean you’re bullish on Bitcoin or?

Joe Carlasare (01:07:08):

Oh, yeah. Well, I’m always bullish on Bitcoin. Put it this way, I’m negative on them passing an omnibus piece of legislation to regulate this market. I don’t believe it will happen.

Preston Pysh (01:07:20):

Michael Saylor has the opinion that he thinks that more definition of the laws is going to suck a whole lot more people into the space because now they have clarity of their left and right limits. With what you described, which was an amazing overview of how this is, probably going to play out here in the coming year and a half. Do you think that that’s going to prevent major entities from stepping into the space and allocating into Bitcoin onto their balance sheet because they don’t have that regulatory clarity?

Joe Carlasare (01:07:53):

Well, when I’ve heard him talk about this and I’m just going to respond to him, because I do think there are regulatory fixes that need to be made and we can go through some of those. But Michael Saylor comments on this as I’ve heard them, have mostly been focused on FASB, is really focused on the accounting treatment. And when Bitcoin price dips, people having to carry forward these losses on the balance sheet, that’s pretty difficult for companies.

Joe Carlasare (01:08:14):

The accounting treatment, that’s not a legislative fix, that’s a private entity FASB. I think he’s been lobbying and others related have been lobbying to try to get the accounting treatment fixed for how Bitcoin is treated as an intangible asset. I think that’s going to be done. I think that’s coming and that’s going to be a huge boom to institutional involvement in the market. That’s not really coming through Congress.

Joe Carlasare (01:08:34):

I think that if you’re just talking about Congress driving adoption, there’s not a whole lot that Congress is going to do. It’s more a do no harm, to borrow from the Hippocratic Oath. I don’t want the Congress to do anything draconian that’s going to make it difficult for businesses and other entities to put this on their balance sheet. So that’s my view overall and what’s going to drive institutional adoption.

Preston Pysh (01:08:57):

And I don’t know how doubting you are internationally, but it seems Singapore really understands this. There’s a couple different jurisdictions that seem to really understand it. From what I’ve seen over in Europe, they seem to be moving in a similar direction as the US as far as not really banning anything. But it seems like they’re putting up a little bit more of a fight, especially on the proof of work because of ESG concerns, which I think will get a smirk out of anybody that’s in the Bitcoin space, as far as the real implications there.

Preston Pysh (01:09:26):

But regardless of what your belief structure is behind that, it’s still not going to change the way people could potentially vote in the future over there. And then kind of your thoughts on maybe the Ukraine piece and how the energy discussion might be shaping a lot of the European policies in a different direction because of the predicament that it’s kind of put them in.

Joe Carlasare (01:09:49):

Yeah. I mean, again, this is one of those situations where there’s a lot of cross currents. I think that it was very positive that this bill got voted down the other day on the proof of work. I mean, actually folks I trust like Jake Servinsky and others that were following it very closely, they were pretty pessimistic. They thought it was actually going to be pass. And then there might be a secondary effort to revise it later on.

Joe Carlasare (01:10:10):

I do think that there are countries slowly and steadily understanding the economic boom that Bitcoin mining can provide. There are states that are keenly aware of it, and it’s kind of a trickle up effect with this because you usually get some of the local mayors and governors and folks, city council members, they understand very quickly, this is attracting business. This is creating jobs locally.

Joe Carlasare (01:10:31):

And then they kind of implore the senators, the federal representatives, the congressmen say, you have to take note of what’s going on here because this is a boom to our economy. Texas is a perfect example. One of the reasons in addition to many Bitcoiners approaching Ted Cruz, there were mayors and there were local state lawmakers in Texas that were lobbying Ted Cruz and others in Texas and the governor get behind proof of work mining, this is really causing economic growth.

Joe Carlasare (01:10:56):

And I think you see that across the world. I think you are going to see all across Europe in areas where energy is cheap, the drive to have more and more probate Bitcoin policies. China made a huge mistake with banning proof of work mining as Jeff alluded to earlier. I think it’s going to come back to bite them very hard because you’re going to see a lot of centers of proof of work mining expanding. As much as we’ll have to deal with the ESG fund for a while, I’m not one of these people who thinks it’s going to be legislatively possible to ban it in large margin in the United States. I don’t see it coming. In Ukraine, I think the got bigger problems than proof of work mining right now.

Preston Pysh (01:11:34):

Well, the reason I brought that up Joe is because I think that you’ve seen the EU really step away from any type of energy efficiency or energy that they control within their domain. And I think that the whole Ukraine situation has really highlighted how important it is that they don’t shut down their nuclear and that they stand it back up and they start taking control of their energy once again. And maybe that might have influenced this vote that we saw more recently where this could be an opportunity for them to harness as they’re trying to take a lot of that ownership back into their own jurisdiction, opposed to being reliant on Russia, but who knows?

Joe Carlasare (01:12:14):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that that narrative has to be the refrain of anybody listening to this show. Bitcoiners that are supportive or exploring the asset, you have to understand the positives. It’s not just a drain on the grid, the ability for Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining to strengthen the electoral grid is really critical. And it’s critical that to let your legislators and policy makers understand that connection because I don’t think that’s clear Preston. I think a lot of people see this as wasted energy. It’s just a drain on the system. It’s useless and they don’t tie the connection that this is actually positive and strength and grid.

Preston Pysh (01:12:44):

Big time. Margin of safety, it’s that simple. Anyone who understands the basics of engineering is putting a margin of safety on the entire electrical grid. It’s pretty amazing. Gents, we have been going here for quite a while. I’m going to go ahead and just be respectful of your time and just thank you so much for coming on. I really hope we can do this again because I just love the dynamics of you three all talking and at the same table here. Thank you so much for making time and coming on the show, this was a blast. And go around the horn and give people hand off to your Twitter feed or anything that you guys want to highlight. Joe, we’ll start with you.

Joe Carlasare (01:13:22):

I’m a commercial litigator at SmithAmundsen, you can always reach out to me if you need a legal matter, legal assistance, particularly I’m trying to work with Bitcoiners who are involved in litigation. You can Google my name and you’ll find me on that. Or if you go on Twitter, I’m at Joe Carlasare, probably easier way to looking for me, because I’m usually on Twitter.

Preston Pysh (01:13:39):

Jay.

Jay Gould (01:13:40):

Sure. You can find me on Twitter at Jay Gould and also on YouTube, I have a channel as well.

Preston Pysh (01:13:45):

Jeff.

Jeff Ross (01:13:46):

Yeah. I’m on Twitter a lot too at VailshireCap. And then if you want to learn anything more about Vailshire and what I do and my trading strategies and stuff, you can check out vailshire.com, and I’m pretty open to emails. And then obviously if you want to reach out on Twitter, DM as well.

Preston Pysh (01:14:01):

Guys, this was a blast. Thanks for making time.

Jay Gould (01:14:02):

Thanks bro.

Jeff Ross (01:14:04):

Yeah. Thanks, Preston. That was awesome.

Joe Carlasare (01:14:04):

Thanks, Preston.

Preston Pysh (01:14:07):

If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show on whatever podcast application you use, just search for We Study Billionaires, the Bitcoin specific shows come out every Wednesday and I’d love to have you as a regular listener. If you enjoyed the show or you learned something new or you found it valuable, if you can leave a review, we would really appreciate that. And it’s something that helps others find the interview in the search algorithm. Anything you can do to help out with a review, we would just greatly appreciate. And with that, thanks for listening. And I’ll catch you again next week.

Outro (01:14:40):

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