[00:01:31] Joe Carlasare: No, it’s horrible. So I was scanning through the cesspool these days of Bitcoin, Twitter, and it’s like, it’s something, man. It’s like everybody’s down, everybody’s depressed. Everybody’s like, this thing sucks. Let me get into the Yellow Rock. I don’t remember being this bad, like in the depths of the bear market.

[00:01:47] Preston Pysh: I think everybody’s expectations have been shattered. I think they’re used to the four year, kind of like that there’s this crazy pump that was supposed to happen over the last nine months. Nothing happened, like it was just completely sideways for the whole year so far. And I think people are very frustrated with that. I’m frustrated with that. I don’t know about you guys.

[00:02:09] HODL: Well, the frustration is it’s easy to understand emotionally because hoddling is a hard journey. And so, as a human being you expect to be rewarded for that journey. And like so far really there hasn’t been much of a reward. We’re not even up that much in inflation adjusted terms compared to something like the top of the 2021 cycle and last time we went below the prior all time high.

[00:02:33] HODL: So that was kind of a very tough moment post. Go back in your mind to post FTX, collapse and Sam Bankman-Fried. By the way, I’ve heard Sam Bankman-Fried is angling for a pardon these days. He’s trying to be like, what do you mean we were never insolvent? I didn’t steal everyone’s money and use it to gamble.

[00:02:48] HODL: Yes you did, bro. You’re not getting a pardon. Sit there and do your time. Alright.

[00:02:52] Preston Pysh: Who does an interview like that and releases it? I saw this like hit X, like this is ridiculous.

[00:02:57] HODL: Well, he thinks the Trump administration is basically so corrupt that he can, it’s pay for play for a pardon, right? Which like, I don’t know, maybe he’s right about that, but like, I don’t think any, but there’s any political will to let Sam Bankman free out of prison anytime soon.

[00:03:10] HODL: Anyway, go back to that place in your mind and just remember how awful the feeling was and how hard we all got, faces shoved in the dirt and then we were all expecting, two, three x and then beyond the prior all time highs.

[00:03:24] HODL: And we haven’t even gotten there. We haven’t even gotten to two x the prior all time high. And so to me, as a long time Bitcoin or who has a myopic Bitcoin view, this really doesn’t feel like a bull market to me in any meaningful sense. Some people will say it is because there was a big rally off of 15 K and now we’re obviously we’ve been to 125K and we’ve been solidly over a hundred for a long time, but as a Bitcoin nerd, this is not the Bitcoin bull market that I’m used to. And so, I’m a little addicted to the dopamine I’m getting, I’m antsy. I’m like, let’s go. Yeah. Come on, let’s pump this bad boy.

[00:03:53] Preston Pysh: Yeah, I think so, Jeff?

[00:03:55] Jeff Ross: And to put things in perspective a little bit, first of all, I’m a little sick, so sorry if I sound a little funny. I’ll try not to cough directly into the microphone.

[00:04:02] Jeff Ross: To put things in perspective. I think it’s up about 67% over the last 12 months. So that’s still a pretty good return for terrible people. Hey, imagine investing in Walmart or in, how would your returns be? So it’s a very different, we have very different expectations, and I’m sure we’ll get into this as we go on, but I continue to be super surprised that the manufacturing sector has not taken off yet.

[00:04:23] Jeff Ross: Like I’ve been talking for like a year, like any day now, like any day of this month, the ISM is going to come out and this is going to be the month where it finally starts taking off. And why do I bring that up? Because first of all, it’s been in a recession. The manufacturing here in the US according to ISM, since 2022.

[00:04:39] Jeff Ross: So we’re three years into this now. And what most people don’t know, and I think I brought this up last time, so sorry to be a broken record, but Bitcoin ramps, as everybody knows, based on what Global M2 or liquidity is doing, those are slightly different, but same difference, and I don’t know why it does this, but based on what the ISM manufacturing does as well.

[00:04:59] Jeff Ross: And so normally at this point, based since 2009, we’ve been on these four year, not just everybody thinks it’s a business cycle based on the having, and that’s why the Bitcoin price does. What it does is based on the having. It’s just nonsense. It does it based on liquidity and what the business cycle is doing.

[00:05:14] Jeff Ross: And so for whatever reason, this business cycle has refused to take off so far. It’s still sitting right around 50 or just sub 50. I still think everything I look at says we are going higher in the next nine to 12 months. And so if we do get higher, if we start to see a takeoff in the manufacturing sector and in the US economy as a whole and global liquidity continues to kind of move up into the right, I still think our best days are ahead of us.

[00:05:38] Jeff Ross: And I definitely think the four year cycle is dead and lots of people are going to get fooled by that. I think a lot of people are going to bail in December and think it’s over, and then it’s going to get fun after that and they’re going to miss it, and they’re going to be piling back in several hundred thousand dollars higher.

[00:05:52] Jeff Ross: So very personally, I’m very optimistic for what’s coming in 2026, and I’m the most surprised as anybody. I’ve been saying since early 2025, we’re going to peak in the fourth quarter, 475K Bitcoin, blah, blah, blah.

[00:06:05] Jeff Ross: Joe is right. I was wrong. So shout out to Joe. Joe said it was going to creep along higher and be about, what did you say, 150, maybe by the end of the year,

[00:06:12] Joe Carlasare: I think. No, my target all year long has been 130 and everybody like super bare man. Wow. Suck.

[00:06:17] Jeff Ross: Like, and you’re nailing it. And although, by the way, I still think we could get a surge, I think once the government shutdown gets cleared up, which it should. And once this whole Xi Trump meeting summit gets resolved on November 1st, I expect the November to be Up-vember in lieu of October, not being Up-tober.

[00:06:34] Joe Carlasare: The real story is the shattering of the four year cycle, whether it’s business cycle related or having cycle that thing, we need to cast that into the trash bin of history. We need to know that it can be green.green.green.green.like four in a row, right?

[00:06:48] Joe Carlasare: It can be higher for next year. It can be higher the year after that. And yeah, I’m very optimistic. I actually think that to your point, that we really have been the manufacturing, the numbers, the reason ISM is creeping right at 49 or under 50 is because they’re waiting for the rates to drop. They want the rates drop and then that’ll create a recovery.

[00:07:06] Joe Carlasare: And from there, Bitcoin and everything should do well. I expect a strong, strong year in 2026. I don’t know why people are just like glued to the calendar thinking like it’s Cinderella at the ball and it all comes apart. Like, it doesn’t make any sense to me.

[00:07:19] Preston Pysh: Yeah, I think it’s just oversimplification that it’s worked up until now and people don’t know why it’s worked, but they just, they think it was tied to the calendar and I’m with you guys a hundred percent.

[00:07:29] Joe Carlasare: How many times recently has, so have we been confronted with things like that? Like they’ll yield curve, always trigger some giant recession or there’s all these sort of like sacred cows and when they get slaughtered, I feel like we can finally use our brains again, which is awesome.

[00:07:41] Preston Pysh: I will say this, at the start of the year till now, I was so dead wrong as to what I thought was going to play out. I really thought that this year was going to be pretty massive as far as the price action, and it has been nothing of the sort, it has been just a sideways job the whole year. It feels like.

[00:08:00] Preston Pysh: I want to bring up a chart that Jeff, you sent over, because this is pretty mind-blowing. Let’s pull this baby up.

[00:08:07] Jeff Ross: You guys are going to get mad at me

[00:08:10] Preston Pysh: No, this chart is awesome. Okay. Alright, talk it over. Jeff.

[00:08:15] Jeff Ross: We talked about this last time, but this time I thought I’m going to set an updated chart. I think this is the most important chart in all of macro.

[00:08:21] Jeff Ross: So what it is, it’s a hundred plus year chart. It goes back to 1919 of the S&P 500 divided by gold. So price and gold. This isn’t for gold bugs, you know this. It’s for what it represents. And what I marked there is the peaks, which are in pinkish and the troughs in green. Why is this important? I think that every 15 to 30 years or so, we go into these major cycles and what they’re telling me is that for the years leading up to the red bars or the pink bars, people think that the US dollar is better than gold.

[00:08:57] Jeff Ross: US assets are pretty much the best thing you can invest in the world. They’re the best thing you can be in. And so they pour their capital or pour their purchasing power into the us. Americans do it. The rest of the world does it because there’s no better place than it right to invest. In America.

[00:09:12] Jeff Ross: There’s no better place, but at these certain points in time, it can get overdone and overheated. Like 19. Everybody and everybody knows these dates, right? 1929. 1967, the end of the sixties led to this huge bear market in the tumultuous 1970s. Obviously the 1930s were terrible. The two thousands, the.com peak, I keep telling people that we hit another one of these inflection points back in January of 2022 are actually December of 2021.

[00:09:38] Jeff Ross: Depending on what you’re looking at. If you factor in dividends, by the way, which the trading view doesn’t go back that far, it extends it just a little bit. So why is this important? There gets to be a point, and I think the best example of where we’re at right now, if you look at that tiny little red line where it is right now, so we’re sitting at 1.54, and you look across, it actually goes to the beginning of 1973.

[00:09:59] Jeff Ross: What was the atmosphere like back in the late sixties and early seventies? Right. The US was in a war, a very unpopular war in Vietnam. We were still on a sort of a quasi gold standard, and the rest of the countries, the European nations, who were sort of supporting us and our allies at that time were like, you know what?

[00:10:16] Jeff Ross: This war is crazy. Like there is no way you’re going to pay us back and sound money. We want our gold back. We don’t trust your dollar anymore. We think the only way that you can keep this facade going and maintain all of your debt is by basically debasing the crap out of your currency. And so we would like our gold back please.

[00:10:33] Jeff Ross: And then everybody shifts away from the US and into gold and into hard assets. So the seventies was a really great time. To be obviously in gold, right? And then also other hard assets and also emerging markets. So things that basically people had been avoiding for years and decades. Then they flipped over to that.

[00:10:51] Jeff Ross: I think this is really relevant because I think that same thing happened at the end of 2021, where basically we reached peaked Americanization, peak financialization, and China, by the way, figured this out all the way back in like 2014 and stopped buying US treasuries and let them start to roll off their balance sheet.

[00:11:07] Jeff Ross: But the rest of the world figured it out at the end of 2021 and basically after that huge bolus that we got from COVID and they’re like, you know what? This is crazy. Like you guys are just putting way too much into the system. There’s no way you can actually pay this back in sound money. We’re going to go back to gold.

[00:11:22] Jeff Ross: We don’t think the dollar is as good as gold anymore. So we’re going back to gold. We’re going back to hard assets, and now we live in the Bitcoin era, so I think that includes Bitcoin now. So we’re especially going into Bitcoin and other sound money and hard assets. So I think this chart just speaks a thousand words, but I’d love to hear you guys’ take on it.

[00:11:39] Preston Pysh: I just want to say that is the ugliest setup from a price action standpoint in the past year. For people looking at the chart, you can see he has the two moving averages there. He has a 50 and he has a 15. And these are in one month bars. Yep. And historically, when you see the death cross, if you will, between these two moving averages, it seems to persist for a decade at least after you get either a golden cross or a death cross on the chart.

[00:12:08] Preston Pysh: And so at the start of the year, it looks like we had the death cross on this. And boy, just zoomed out looking at it, it looks just disgusting.

[00:12:17] Jeff Ross: A little perspective. That’s well said, Preston, just so people understand the significance this of this, I went and looked at the peak in 1967 down to the trough in January of 1980.

[00:12:27] Jeff Ross: Yeah, that’s a, in gold terms, that’s a 95% decline in the S&P 500 relative to gold. Yeah. So this is like no joke. And I think that we’re at a very similar situation this time.

[00:12:37] Preston Pysh: Yeah. Wow. What a chart. You can see why. Go ahead. Go ahead.

[00:12:42] Jeff Ross: I just put in one more thing. The reason I’m so passionate about this is because, I used to be an investment advisor, right. I just run a hedge fund now, but 90% of Americans who work have 401Ks and IRAs with everything sitting in US stocks and US bonds.

[00:12:57] Jeff Ross: Yeah. And I am so concerned that Americans are just going to get decimated over the next 10 years Yeah. In their automatic repurchasing of stocks and bonds. And in real terms, in inflation adjusted terms, like debasement reflecting terms, I think Americans are going to get wiped out unless they think about doing something else and start thinking about hard assets. And especially start thinking about Bitcoin, obviously.

[00:13:19] Preston Pysh: You’re not even talking about bonds, and I would imagine that equities are going to outperform bonds over that same period. And I can’t even imagine how many of them are in just some type of bond index of some sort. Good Lord.

[00:13:34] Joe Carlasare: I’m just curious, have you run this chart in total return basis?

[00:13:37] Jeff Ross: Of the S&P 500?

[00:13:38] Joe Carlasare: Yeah.

[00:13:38] Jeff Ross: Yeah, so that’s what I was saying earlier. That chart only goes back to at least on trading view and I can pop it up. Whoa.

[00:13:44] Joe Carlasare: But is that the total return on looking?

[00:13:46] Jeff Ross: This is not the total return. because the total return only goes back to 1988, and so it’s not as dramatic, but it’s almost exactly the same.

[00:13:53] Jeff Ross: It has slightly delayed effects, but it’s almost exactly the same. And by the way, the NASDAQ looks exactly the same as well with just slight little delays in where the peaks and bottoms are.

[00:14:01] HODL: What’s interesting is we all know like that the 1970s was a amazing bull market for gold, and gold has been catching a bit here now, and you know the parallels between that 1967 peak and that 2022 peak are pretty.

[00:14:15] HODL: Interesting. And you confound this with like the fact that you have JP Morgan out there calling gold Bitcoin, the Debasement trade, which is obviously like as Bitcoiners, we’ve been at odds with JP Morgan and Jamie Diamond for over a decade now, and now they’ve just completely flipped and have joined our side of the table and it’s like, wait a second, I’m sitting next to this guy.

[00:14:35] Preston Pysh: Hold on. I need to sit somewhere else.

[00:14:37] HODL: Yeah. But I think they have cotton on to what Jeff has figured out as well. Yeah.

[00:14:41] Jeff Ross: Yeah, so I would just, again, to encourage people out there in the audience, be careful about pricing your life and your net worth and your investments only in the dollar. Yeah, you’re going to be deceived.

[00:14:51] Jeff Ross: People in the seventies actually thought they did okay. There was a lot of chop, but they kind of ended, I think about slightly up or about even from 1968 ish to 1982. But in real terms, they just got wiped out. And so I just think making gold terms, not in real terms, well, in both. In debasement terms and buying power terms.

[00:15:09] Joe Carlasare: Because there was so much inflation in the seventies.

[00:15:11] Jeff Ross: I think the official, if you divide it, if you, factor in CPI, yeah. Officially, I think it was a 50% decrease from 68 to 82. Oh, the seventies. Yeah.

[00:15:21] Jeff Ross: No, I’m telling about the last like 20 years. If you use the official CPI, every stock is Yeah.

[00:15:27] Jeff Ross: Not the last 20. No. Right. Right. It’s like insanely outperformed what the official stats are about inflation.

[00:15:32] Preston Pysh: Yep. So if I was a gold bug and I was watching this right now, I would be furious because you’re showing a chart with the S&P 500 against gold, but you’re not showing a chart of Bitcoin against gold.

[00:15:45] Preston Pysh: And so for those gold bugs watching, I’m going to go ahead and put it up. No, I think this is important. And yeah, and when you look at it from this lens, like look at this, we are since 2021, it’s kind of depressing. I have to admit this is pretty depressing. Like I’m sure Peter Schiff is just dancing all over people’s graves and until he’s truly doing that online, this bull run is not going to be over as soon as he starts tap dancing on our grid.

[00:16:14] Preston Pysh: Oh, he is. He’s been doing that. Oh, so the turn’s coming.

[00:16:18] Joe Carlasare: My favorite Peter SCH tweet recently was he was a warning that Bitcoin could go as low as you’re ready for it. $75,000. And I was like, I think we’ve won. If this is the worst world that Peter could imagine for Bitcoin.

[00:16:32] Preston Pysh: Any comments on this one, guys?

[00:16:34] HODL: Yeah, I mean for the year, I think last I looked, we were down like 30% in gold terms or something. Here, let figure it out like year to date, what are we down in gold terms? Here’s the start of the year.

[00:16:43] Preston Pysh: Oh wow. Yeah. That is ugly. It’s right here.

[00:16:46] HODL: Gold’s been kicking our what ass this year?

[00:16:47] HODL: Oh, it’s go, yeah.

[00:16:49] Preston Pysh: 37%. That’s brutal.

[00:16:51] HODL: I know the gold. This is their year, man. The gold are doing great. Good for them. We’ve been bullying them for the better part of 15 years.

[00:17:00] Jeff Ross: And I like to celebrate with them, Hey, they’re having a good year. That’s great. And shout out to Peter, man, he’s so funny.

[00:17:05] Jeff Ross: He’s just relentless and he is talking about how everybody’s going to go to zero be if they’re holding Bitcoin and they have got to get into gold now. Like he’s just hilarious. I think he’s almost like a, a comic.

[00:17:14] Preston Pysh: Is this a setup? Somehow everybody piles into gold and then all of a sudden Bitcoin just totally rips everything.

[00:17:21] Preston Pysh: What are your thoughts?

[00:17:22] Joe Carlasare: Well, I was just going to say, I think that they, like JP Morgan is saying, I think that they’re both part of the debasement trade, and I do think that in a world in which Bitcoin does very well, it’s long puzzled me, actually, Preston, to see gold not doing so well alongside Bitcoin, and Bitcoin being more of the canary in the coal mine.

[00:17:39] Joe Carlasare: Because you would think that gold would go up alongside Bitcoin. Now I think, as Bitcoiners were of the opinion that Bitcoin eventually demo monetizes gold, but that’s kind of on the long arc of history, which it might take the entirety of our lives for that to happen. But yeah, if with all of this fiat monetary debasement, you would expect to see gold go up and Bitcoin go up,

[00:17:59] Preston Pysh: I think traditional finance just always looked at the gold bugs as like, oh yeah, they’re just continuing to say that, there’s this and that and that the whole system’s going to fail.

[00:18:08] Preston Pysh: And now in the past year it appears that even Wall Street, the veterans on Wall Street are also believing the gold bugs. And I think when they’re looking at both of the assets, they’re saying, I don’t really fully understand Bitcoin. It seems like there’s a lot of technical things there that I can’t possibly audit or understand, but I do understand I, if I’m holding a gold bar, that that thing’s probably going to do pretty well in a debasement type situation.

[00:18:31] Preston Pysh: So I think that it’s getting a big run right now for people that just understand what’s technically wrong with. Credit markets and all the things that we’ve been talking about for a decade plus, then they’re just looking at the two options that are saying, I don’t under really understand that one.

[00:18:45] Preston Pysh: There’s a bunch of weirdos with weird hats and sunglasses and whatnot, and they just don’t seem to be the same type of person that I am, and I’m just going to buy this gold and not think about it. Would you guys agree?

[00:18:55] Joe Carlasare: Yeah. Essentially. I think many of them are of the age too, where they were in the early part of their career when the seventies happened.

[00:19:01] Joe Carlasare: Yeah. And so this kind of like, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy where they’re like, it’s about to do it again. And I, I want to be in on that. They think that Bitcoin’s going to do it as well alongside it, but they don’t have the same faith in Bitcoin. And Bitcoin is not as large a market as gold is. So if you want to move large amounts of capital like gold probably still is a pretty good bet.

[00:19:21] Jeff Ross: I think that’s definitely a large part of it. HODL and I, and I also think that they’re getting bolstered. The gold bugs are being bolstered by central banks, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So the world is in desperate need right now of a neutral reserve asset, which used to be the US Treasury. I’d say about half the world doesn’t trust it as a neutral reserve asset anymore.

[00:19:39] Jeff Ross: It’s a very biased reserve asset. And so they’re just getting out, right? And so basically the bricks block is moving on from treasuries and they need something else to be a reserve asset. And I think as of now, that’s gold. Bitcoin, I think someday will be in the conversation, but it’s way too small now.

[00:19:54] Jeff Ross: So I think, late 2030s, maybe 20, 40, somewhere around there, central banks will be buying Bitcoin in size. But we’re much too early for that. And based on what this chart showed that we were looking at earlier, the s and p over gold. This may go on for another 10 years. Yeah, I mean we maybe still talking about this in the 2030s, like 20, 33, 34, 35, somewhere around there before this chart, bottoms.

[00:20:15] Jeff Ross: And so if I had to choose gun to my head today, you can only invest in either the S&P 500 or gold for the next five to 10 years. I would absolutely pick gold over the S&P 500, and I think that’s a minority take right now. But I think by the 2030s that will be a a majority take.

[00:20:31] Preston Pysh: It’s just so mind bending. To think that a rock is going to, based on the chart, Jeff, I agree with you a hundred percent. I think that this is going to last for the next decade. It’s going to outperform the index at least. And it’s so insane to think that a rock is going to sit there and do a better performance than a real world business that’s supposedly adding value, but is so disproportionately priced because of the treasury market and what it’s done to prices that it’s going to outperform.

[00:21:01] Preston Pysh: It’s just crazy to me to think that. But Joe, go ahead.

[00:21:05] Joe Carlasare: So Jeff, I just want to flash forward like we’re doing a mastermind podcast, Q3, Q4 of 2026. Mm-hmm. And gold has suffered from these levels like a 30% decline and stocks are higher by, let’s say 10%. What’s your takeaway? Is that change, is that just a momentary pause? Is anything, structurally different?

[00:21:23] Jeff Ross: So it depends, right? So first of all, if this charts the way I run my hedge fund, I do momentum based sort of things. Yeah. So if the momentum, if the trend changes, then I will change with it. So I’ll just say like, I was wrong. Yeah. Right. My macro take was wrong, and I flip over what I do.

[00:21:38] Jeff Ross: If this chart completely goes the other direction and starts pulling the ni the late 1990s and starts ripping higher again. Yeah. Then I’ll be like, okay, that’s over for now, but we’re probably going to get back into it again. I will say that the geopolitical world order and the way things are moving bolsters my opinion of this.

[00:21:56] Jeff Ross: That this is not only right, but it’s going to be more right as the years go on. I think the rhetoric between the US and China and the US and the bricks nations and the US losing India as an ally recently and all these sorts of things, I think only tell me that capital is moving away from the US and this whole, as we get away from globalization and internationalization and turn into a multipolar world, and we can talk about all this a little later, that requires tremendous amounts of money that the US doesn’t have because we’re already bankrupt over indebted right now.

[00:22:25] Jeff Ross: So how in the world are we going to pay for this and sound money, everything to me. Slays together and says that this is going to continue and it’s actually going to accelerate from here. But you’re right Joe, if it does change and the trend changes, I’ll just change with it and I’ll just say that’s another, I was wrong.

[00:22:40] Joe Carlasare: I’m not saying what your thesis here is wrong. I just, I’ve been around long enough to see gold does this, it goes on these crazy runs. I mean it went on that crazy run in 2011. It dropped 50% thereafter. I remember reading a Luke Groman article about exactly what you’re saying, gold becoming the new reserve asset in 2020, and it then dropped like 25% and like it languished through basically the end of 22 or 23 if memory serves.

[00:23:04] Joe Carlasare: So like it does this, it goes on these para block runs, resets. Not to say it’s not going to catch bid, like it’s not going to zero, right? If you put your money in gold, it’s pretty fine. But to Preston’s point, I mean in long run, defined as like four or five years, right? There are periods where gold has spectacular runs and then does nothing.

[00:23:20] Joe Carlasare: Absolutely nothing, just driving sideways.

[00:23:21] Preston Pysh: Joe, if I was if I was going to try to answer your question from Jeff’s perspective as far as this trend persisting. Yeah. When I’m looking at the chart that I have pulled up right now, going back to these moving averages, the reason that these moving averages really help you kind of gauge, something that has a large market cap for a long-term trend is because it helps wash out the volatility of the price action.

[00:23:43] Preston Pysh: So like when we’re looking at the price action right now of gold, it’s ripping compared to the S&P 500. Is it overdone? Probably a little bit. And would I expect in the next nine months for there to be somewhat of a recovery in S&P 500 terms relative to gold? Yeah. I actually kind of would expect it to the s and p to Bid against Gold because it’s just been so overdone.

[00:24:06] Preston Pysh: But the real question is how much of that is just standard volatility for the much bigger trend or the much bigger move? Where those moving averages really help you out in that is as long as we’re looking at this chart, as long as that orange line, which is your longer moving average, that’s a 50 month moving average versus the 15 month moving average, as long as it stays above it, I would say you’re just within the standard volatility range of the move itself.

[00:24:34] Preston Pysh: Does that make sense what I’m saying, Joe?

[00:24:36] Joe Carlasare: Oh yeah. No, I mean it definitely does, but look at that move in 2011. Like if you were just looking at the chart in a backward looking way in August, 2011, you’d say, oh, the dollar’s cooked it s and p is cooked. Yeah. Like, it’s all right. Well, so my, you see

[00:24:48] Preston Pysh: a 10 year run in the opposite direction.

[00:24:50] Preston Pysh: So I, I think when these moving averages crossover like they did shortly after, within a year after that move, that would be a huge red flag to me that maybe you’re wrong about the long-term trend. Right. But as long as you’re still having the longer moving average above the shorter one, I think that the overall trend is going to continue to persist.

[00:25:11] Preston Pysh: Yeah.

[00:25:12] Jeff Ross: And just so you know, like how I operate as a fund manager. So I start with this macro view, right? This is 106 year chart, and when it looks like the tide is turning and we’re rolling over and now it’s going to be basically, gold’s going to be better than the S&P 500, which it looks like to me is probably going to hold up and if it’s like history for maybe 12 years or so.

[00:25:32] Jeff Ross: So a long period of time. And why that matters is practically speaking, I flipped my hedge fund over from financialized assets to hard assets. We can talk about this too, and how we choose hard assets in which I think are going to do well because now we live in a central command economy and not a free market economy anymore, or we haven’t for a long time, but I switch over.

[00:25:53] Jeff Ross: And so instead of favoring things like the S&P 500 and small cap stocks or blah, blah, blah, now I look at hard assets. I look at how is the US going to build the military industrial complex and rebuild our manufacturing base? What are the signs that the administration is talking about? And I literally now invest in funds like copper funds, steel funds, titanium, aluminum, things that I wouldn’t have even considered four or five years ago.

[00:26:15] Jeff Ross: Now were like in size in these kind of things. Obviously Bitcoin as well, and gold and related things so,

[00:26:21] Preston Pysh: so this rare earth metal. Discussion is huge right now. Jeff, talk to us what you’re hearing on that, and it seems like your investment thesis is playing right into that.

[00:26:31] Jeff Ross: It is huge, and I tell people this, it’s so easy with Trump because Trump is so forthright about what he’s doing, and I think so many people don’t trust him because they don’t like him.

[00:26:42] Jeff Ross: So they don’t believe him. And I’m telling you, he’s just giving you the playbook, right? He’s saying we, we are woefully under-prepared for a coming war with China. Which we can talk about that too, but I think that’s just absolutely in the cards in the coming years. Mm-hmm. And he’s saying we sorely lack energy for AI and for military industrial complex.

[00:27:00] Jeff Ross: So we need to boost that. We need rare earth materials. China has a lock on that, obviously, which is an incredible asep, their sleeve for them and a great trading card for them. Then he tells you literally what materials like the government is actually investing in. Not just companies like Intel, but they’re investing in tiny, little rare earth companies as well as things like aluminum producers and other things that they consider critical elements for the expansion of manufacturing and the military industrial complex in the United States.

[00:27:29] Jeff Ross: So I literally just go through what I see the government doing, and then I do research on those topics and look for the best companies in these different things, or just pick ETFs that kind of hit these topics. And it’s been very successful and I think that’s what most people should be doing. Like they’re literally giving you the playbook.

[00:27:45] Jeff Ross: And similar to China, right? When China’s like, Hey, they literally tell their banks. You need to start investing in this. And when their stock market is down, they’ll just say, we command you to start buying stocks. The institutions in China, and what happens? Stocks go up and if they say, we’re going to boost the housing market, the housing market goes up, right?

[00:28:04] Jeff Ross: And so I’m telling you, when you have a very powerful government doing central command and telling you what they’re going to do, I would say don’t fight it. Just like the famous, don’t fight the Fed quote, I would say, don’t fight this administration. When they tell you what their game plan is, just invest accordingly.

[00:28:18] Preston Pysh: Guys, let’s move on to strategic Bitcoin reserve. So the White House EO says A seized Bitcoin is not to be sold. Where are we at with this thing? It seems like there was a lot of hoopla when Trump took office. Everybody was like, he’s going to sign this thing and it just seems to have died on the vine. The talking point that I heard when I was in DC what like two or three weeks ago, the Genius Act was passed and so now the focus is on the Clarity Act and to get market structure before we go to the SBR.

[00:28:51] Preston Pysh: But to me it just seems like this is just continuing to be kicked further and further to the right and it’s not really has a lot of support from everybody on the hill. I’m kind of curious, Joe, if you’ve heard anything, or HODL, if you’ve heard anything specific to any of these ideas or what you see happening in dc.

[00:29:09] Preston Pysh: Is it what you expected? Is it different than what you expected? Just kind of your general sentiment.

[00:29:14] Joe Carlasare: So, I believe that from the bill standpoint, something getting through Congress, that was always going to be an uphill climb. That was never a sort of my base case. And I think we talked about this in prior masterminds, it’s increasingly difficult to get anything through Congress.

[00:29:28] Joe Carlasare: There’s a lot of willing and dealing, it’s very difficult as the calendar starts to float and you have to pick priorities. And I think the lobbyists that are out there, let’s be honest, they’re mostly the crypto lobbyists and they want clarity more than they would want, Mm-hmm. I think the strategic Bitcoin reserve that’s in their interest, that’s probably got the juice that’s already getting floated and frankly, there’s a lot more money behind something like that occurring rather than doing something like the Bitcoin Reserve for Altru altruistic reasons, although I think it would benefit as crypto as a whole if there were strategic Bitcoin reserve, but.

[00:29:56] Joe Carlasare: Putting that aside, like that was always sort of like a tail event. I think that could have occurred. I don’t think it’s serious. I don’t think it’s likely to get through, certainly not before the midterms and with the strategic Bitcoin reserve, let’s be honest, like it was a massively optimistic bullish of development that we even got in SBR.

[00:30:12] Joe Carlasare: I think there were people that were really skeptical that we would get one, the United States government treats us as a strategic priority. I was on a podcast with Matt Pines talking about this and like that alone as a talking point that we say there’s a strategic necessity for holding Bitcoin is huge.

[00:30:24] Joe Carlasare: Now when it comes to like filling that out and developing ways and we haven’t heard a whole lot. I think there’s been sort of confusion internally how far they wanted to push the envelope on that. Whether they want to take the Exchange stabilization Act and try to acquire additional Bitcoin. All that’s sort of on the table, but I just don’t think it’s a serious priority at this point for the administration.

[00:30:43] Joe Carlasare: Now, the news recently broke about this seize Bitcoin, the, I think it’s an additional 14 billion approximately that was seized and the question there becomes. Is that going to be Bitcoin such that’s finally forfeited to the US government for what that means is like when you seize Bitcoin in a criminal proceeding, it’s not necessarily the government’s property.

[00:31:01] Joe Carlasare: It could belong to victims. It could belong to, mm-hmm. people that could have claims against it to pay restitution. So there needs to be a court order or some sort of plea that transfers that Bitcoin’s title to the US government that if it’s finally forfeited. So we’ll see how much of that ends up finally forfeited.

[00:31:16] Joe Carlasare: That’s the easiest budget neutral way to acquire more Bitcoin. Mm-hmm. But that’s a lengthy process and that, it’s going to take some time to hash out. But to me, like I still think it’s awesome that we got it to begin with. I don’t know why that wasn’t sufficient, why there was so much, I guess, hopium about the government going out into the open market and buying Bitcoin.

[00:31:33] Joe Carlasare: But the thing, these things take time and as Bitcoin continues to mature as an asset and the market begins to develop, I think that they, they’ve established a baseline for holding what’s in this SBR and that will only expand through

[00:31:44] Speaker 4: natural process. Yeah, I agree with a lot of what Joe said. I talked to the guys over at Bitcoin Policy Institute quite a bit and they, like Joe said, there’s a lot of crypto lobbying firms.

[00:31:53] Speaker 4: These are our guys, and they’re very intelligent and the work they do is very worthwhile and they were behind some of this and they’ve been very happy with it. It is sort of via confiscation rather than via open market buying like Joe was talking about. And this thing, like this pig butchering scam might be one of the things that helps sort of feather the nest.

[00:32:11] Speaker 4: That is the SBR. one something I didn’t know that was sort of interesting about the pig butchering scam is that these text messages, like where it’s like, Hey, what’s up? It’s me. You want to get lunch? Right? Like, I’m sure we all get these and I thought they were just like crypto specific things, like I’m on some hacked list from whatever years back or whatever.

[00:32:28] Speaker 4: Apparently they go out to everybody in America. And pig butchering is a specific type of scam in which you establish a personal relationship with the person and then you basically like build trust over time and then you butcher the pig all at once. You take them for as much money as you possibly can.

[00:32:43] Speaker 4: And this Cambodian pig butchering scam had made some insane amount of money and obviously there was some US nexus there that allowed them to nab this guy because there were US citizens who were being preyed on. So. I think that’s, I didn’t realize that’s how

[00:32:55] Preston Pysh: they, that’s how they came up with all the Bitcoin, is it was through something like that.

[00:32:59] Preston Pysh: HODL

[00:32:59] Speaker 4: through those text messages that come through your file. No way. Honestly. Yeah, seriously. So enough people, it’s like a Nigerian print scam, but in a modern day it’s called pig butchering. And what it basically is, is they will send you a text message that purports to be a wrong number or something.

[00:33:13] Speaker 4: Some amount of people will text back to it and they’ll be like, I’m your friend and whatever. Or they’ll make a personal friendship. And then they get the person on the line. They get them to deposit money into it. They say, oh, I’m doing this Forex trading stuff. You should do it with me. They get them to deposit money into a fake account that makes it look like they’re making a lot of money, but they’re not.

[00:33:30] Speaker 4: And then they get them to deposit even more money. And by the way, this is not just stupid people or, unsophisticated people that are being ganged by these scams that I had heard a story about, a friend of a friend who was a Yale educated attorney who had lost $5 million to one of these. Come on.

[00:33:45] Speaker 4: No, seriously. So because they built, they’re preying on your, it’s social engineering, they’re preying on your, your human instinct and your capacity for trust and relationship building. And then one day outta nowhere, they just, they butcher the pig. They kill you all at once. They take a large amount of money from you.

[00:34:00] Joe Carlasare: That is

[00:34:01] Speaker 4: nuts.

[00:34:02] Joe Carlasare: So just to add one final thing that I think is critical here. This is one of the primary reasons why we need to have a strong next year in Bitcoin, why Bitcoin needs to be considerably higher and hopefully following gold’s footsteps and follow, Dr. Jeff’s thesis here about hard assets rallying because.

[00:34:19] Joe Carlasare: An eo an executive order. It’s an executive order, right? The, the next president that comes in, if they have a different philosophical view than Trump, they can just, with a single stroke of a pen, undo that, right? But you can envision a world where we get a very strong bull run into 2026, and people start to view Bitcoin differently, right?

[00:34:36] Joe Carlasare: 80% busts are done. Right. It’s over. It’s a new modern Bitcoin. It’s been institutionalized. You’ve got, massive capital allocators that are following sailor’s footsteps. And this asset is no longer a joke. It’s to be taken seriously. If you have that sort of paradigm shift that occurs, I think that there will be more of an emphasis on not just holding, but acquiring.

[00:34:54] Joe Carlasare: And I think you could get, obviously the strategic Bitcoin reserve codified into law via a bill, right? Via law passed by Congress, which is key. Mm-hmm. And then potentially a signal that we’re trying to acquire more. And one thing on the gold discussion we didn’t reference, is that part of the price section Gold, I believe, and I’d love to hear Jeff take on this, I don’t think it’s all retail driven.

[00:35:12] Joe Carlasare: I think it’s some central bank buying. Particularly some of the, the Eastern central banks, I think they’re pushing the envelope, pushing the button on that. There’s some retail and other funds piling on, but it’s primarily Central Bank Catalyst that has lit this fire in gold. If you’re the United States and you want to move into the 21st century and you want to have a rival to that, you want to have the sovereign reserve asset.

[00:35:30] Joe Carlasare: That is not a US Treasury. You want to have some alternative hedge that’s Bitcoin, like that’s what the United States government should be doing from a geopolitical perspective. But I’m interested in anybody else’s thoughts on that.

[00:35:40] Jeff Ross: That. I touched on that a little bit earlier about how there isn’t a reserve asset that’s neutral other than gold anymore.

[00:35:47] Jeff Ross: So for these bricks nations, like they don’t trust the US and the US treasures anymore. So if I remember right, do you guys remember like maybe two, three years ago, China was actually urging its citizens to buy gold? Yes. Yeah. I think that’s real, right? I’m not just making that up. And so, yeah, and so I think that they’re doing that.

[00:36:03] Jeff Ross: I think the central banks are loading up and they’re, encouraging their citizens to do so. So I think that’s putting obviously a massive bid underneath

[00:36:09] Joe Carlasare: the place. So we should encourage Americans to buy Bitcoin and the US government to acquire Bitcoin and to codify the SPR R into law. That’s the geopolitical battle.

[00:36:17] Joe Carlasare: If you buy gold, you’re supporting China, right? Is that what you’re saying? Consensually.

[00:36:23] Jeff Ross: Mark it down. That’s what I said. Yes.

[00:36:26] Preston Pysh: Hey, I want to talk about the SOFR rate versus the effective funds federal funds rate and how we’re seeing spikes in this, which is typically seen right before liquidity issues in the market.

[00:36:39] Preston Pysh: So this is obviously a very short term kind of thing, and could be nothing. we see spikes all the time, but these ones seem to be pretty substantial. I’m curious, Jeff, or Joe or HODL, what you guys are thinking and whether this is kind of a, are we at a point right now where we’re seeing some, spicy, price action that’s on the horizon within weeks?

[00:37:04] Jeff Ross: I’ll just jump in quick and then we’ll get the real answer from these guys. But you know, I don’t know if you guys heard Powell speak yesterday at the nab, national Association of Business Entrepreneur, something like that. Mm-hmm. And he basically just threw out there like, yeah, we’re probably going to stop QT pretty soon because bank reserves are getting, he said they’re still like ample, but they’re getting close to these levels.

[00:37:23] Jeff Ross: So what, I think that’s his code for saying, we’re watching this too, Preston, and we don’t want it to have a repeat of 2019 with the reverse repo saga. So yeah, so we’re getting ready to take action and we see what’s happening, but we don’t want to cause a panic by, that

[00:37:36] Preston Pysh: was September, October. It was in the fall of 2019.

[00:37:40] Preston Pysh: Like September? Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere in there. And then, then COVID hit in March of 2020, what was it? Five, six months later. Yeah, so it does seem, it feels a little bit like that right back in the September of 2019 event. And I agree with you. I think that’s why he has kind of swiftly changed his messaging in this past week or two.

[00:38:02] Preston Pysh: And I think you’re right. I think that’s probably why he’s doing it. Joe HODL, you guys got anything else on that particular topic? No, I think the sofa

[00:38:08] Joe Carlasare: spikes for just noise, basically. I definitely think that, as Jeff pointed out, he explicitly said that there are signs starting to emerge of a gradual tightening of liquidity conditions.

[00:38:18] Joe Carlasare: So when he says something like that, he is, he is not hiding the ball. He’s telling you very clearly that like they’re nearing the end of that process. They’re nearing the end of qt. That does not mean like qe, fullblown, qe, right? It’s like we think that the current amount of the balance sheet, which I was listening to, Muhammad Ian, say that he thinks that’s a mistake, that they should be drawing it down further.

[00:38:37] Joe Carlasare: Getting it more normalized. We’ll see, everybody can always, it’s easy to, to judge, until something blows up and then you’re blamed for everything. But, from my perspective, like I think the clear path forward is to expect greater rate cuts moving forward. if the market is pricing on now, what is it, 75 basis points cuts by the end of the year.

[00:38:54] Joe Carlasare: Right? And, yep. Those trades are gaining some traction here. So I think you had, well who was it today? Was it, Waller? Say that they thought that the neutral rate was about a hundred plus. I saw BS mip slower. Yeah. So clearly that’s like auditioning for the next role. And I think some of the volatility in the forward looking curves are all responding to the fact of like, what is the next Fed chair going to do?

[00:39:16] Joe Carlasare: Mm-hmm. Because it’s really easy to say like, well, we should just cut, cut, cut. Here, which I get it. I’m sympathetic to that view. I’ll tell you for a couple reasons. because I think the rate hike regime is not curbing the higher consumer prices. I think you’re stuck near three. Regardless of what the Fed does, all you’re doing is hurting certain segments of the economy.

[00:39:34] Joe Carlasare: so I’m sympathetic to the view of like more cuts, but the question becomes like, if you’re so aggressive and you just become beholden to the administration, like that’s a new era. And I’m not casting judgment on it. I’m just saying it’s markedly different from at least the supposed appearance of independence.

[00:39:49] Joe Carlasare: And I want to emphasize the word appearance. I don’t think the Fed has ever truly been independent by any means. It’s clearly response to politics. But at least they tried to have this pretext that where they were somehow independent. Now it just seems like I’ll call up the president, what should we do on rates?

[00:40:02] Joe Carlasare: Like, let’s see what the Donald has to say. Like that’s going to be the answer. which is a different regime, right? Like that we have to be honest about it. And, and that swap happens in May.

[00:40:10] Preston Pysh: Is that right? For the Fed chair?

[00:40:12] Joe Carlasare: Yeah. Yeah. May He’s done. But the interesting thing is, and he won’t answer this chair, Powell won’t answer this question whether he’s going to stay on.

[00:40:18] Joe Carlasare: Right. Because it’s not just the chair. Right. The Powell, that’s one of the reason why the Lisa Cook issue is such a big deal. If they can ous Lisa Cook and Powell gives up his seat. because he’s still on for several years, just on board. Right. Then he gets a majority. Mm. And that’s really key. Mm-hmm. So that’s why that whole thing was filed.

[00:40:36] Joe Carlasare: If we didn’t cover that in one of the prior side,

[00:40:38] Preston Pysh: I can’t remember. I didn’t realize that Joe, I didn’t realize he was still going to be on the board.

[00:40:43] Joe Carlasare: Yeah. After

[00:40:43] Preston Pysh: May.

[00:40:43] Joe Carlasare: He’s still there. His, when is his term retired? Jeff, I’ll get you the date it Wow. as the chair? No, no, no. like yeah. After he’s done Overall.

[00:40:52] Joe Carlasare: Yeah. Overall.

[00:40:53] Jeff Ross: Yeah. I don’t know. I can’t remember

[00:40:55] Joe Carlasare: maybe, but, but his chair term ends in May, but he’s still on. wow. Let’s see here. I did not know that. Yeah. I’ll get it in a second.

[00:41:03] Jeff Ross: So while you’re looking for that, and speaking of the yield curve, I’ve just been thinking about this lately and I don’t know if it’s because I’m just old fashioned or what, but I just, Hey, do you guys know that the yield curve has been inverted for like three straight years and nobody even talks about it anymore?

[00:41:18] Jeff Ross: Yeah. Right. And. Yeah, you want to show this? Here’s how I look at the Fed funds rate. Like being a Fed share would be so simple because all you have to do is look at what the two year yield is and you say, okay, we have got to get below the two year yield. And right now the two year yield is sitting at 3.41% or so, and the one month and the Fed funds rate is still sitting up at about, 4.25 or whatever it is, 4.08.

[00:41:41] Jeff Ross: Yeah. So it’s not complicated. The market is telling the Fed, yeah, you need to lower the Fed funds rate to at least below three 50. Probably about 3.25% right now. Yeah. So you need to drop a hundred bips right now or as soon as you can. you have got to tell the market that’s your plan. And they’ve been so resistant to it for so long, talking about the need to get inflation down right.

[00:42:04] Jeff Ross: And the need to be, to not be accommodative. We need to be a little bit restrictive. We don’t want to cause inflation. It’s the market. The market is telling them you are making a mistake, you need to get it down lower. I don’t know if you guys have opinions on that, but we need to un invert the yield curve and bring back normalcy across the yield curve.

[00:42:19] Jeff Ross: And it’s just drives me nuts because it’s such an easy thing to do.

[00:42:23] Joe Carlasare: Paul’s term on the board ends 2028. Wow. 2028. Yeah. Wow. His chair turned, they’ll be there for a while. Yeah, well, no, he typically, and historically, once they sunset his chair, they’re done. They just give up the seat. That’s why they keep asking that question.

[00:42:38] Joe Carlasare: because we’ll see if he hangs around, they can’t kick him out of the Eccles building, but Oh, so they usually resign from the board? Yeah, they usually say it’s done. Like, listen, have the pinnacle of my, who wants to sit around. It’s like, who’s that president? That he was like president of the United States and then he ran for Senate and he was like hanging out in the Senate.

[00:42:53] Joe Carlasare: Like just, what’s the point of that? Yeah. You know what I’m talking about? I can’t remember that guy.

[00:42:56] Speaker 4: Hal does seem that part of his mission in life though is to resist Donald Trump so I could see him hanging around, I don’t think he likes Trump very much.

[00:43:07] Preston Pysh: Jeff, to your point on the, them needing to drop the rate.

[00:43:10] Preston Pysh: Yeah, I think that, and for people that might not be intimately familiar with the curves, the only thing that they really control is that overnight money rate. All the other ones that with duration are for all intents and purposes controlled by the market. I think a lot of people, there’s a lot of people out there that would argue with that, but for all intents and purposes, it’s very different than the federal funds rate.

[00:43:29] Preston Pysh: And with it riding, everybody can see here on the chart, it’s at 4.2 on the federal funds and the two year is at 3.4. And to Jeff’s point, yeah, they have got to drop it of a hundred bips at this point.

[00:43:42] Jeff Ross: Right. I don’t know why he keeps resi. He has a perfect excuse to just be like, the bond market is telling us we need to drop a hundred bips.

[00:43:49] Jeff Ross: Yeah.

[00:43:49] Joe Carlasare: Yeah. But they don’t look at the data. They look at the consumer price and core pc when they’re data dependent, they’re not looking at what the bond market is. Right, because the bond market independent. Yeah. Their, their data dependent is not based on the yield of the two year, or, and let’s be clear, like there have been times over the past couple years where the bond marks have been completely wrong, like yields were much lower, and then they ramped up.

[00:44:07] Joe Carlasare: Look at where yields were in the fall of last year and where they went to in January after the fed cut fed started cutting and then yields rose and everybody freaked out and people said, well, if you cut more, talk about bad takes somebody, people were arguing in January of 2025 that the Fed engaged in any more cuts, that they would lose the long end of the yield curve and we’d be rocketing above 5% and it was going to go berserk.

[00:44:27] Joe Carlasare: Right? It was sell off really hard. What has happened to the tenure is. Is it under four? It was, yeah. 3, 9, 6. Yeah, 3, 9, 6 as they’ve cut. So that was totally wrong. The idea that, that they would price insignificant more inflation when we were cutting. So these curves can react, they’re reacting primarily in my view, based on growth expectations.

[00:44:46] Joe Carlasare: Mm-hmm. And I think to your point, Jeff, like the growth expectations mm-hmm. Are weakening. So what do you expect to happen to yields? Yields are going to decline.

[00:44:55] Jeff Ross: Right. I just think it’s so simple. because he has an excuse, right? He doesn’t have to say he’s bowing to Trump. He’d just be like, look what the two year’s telling us, it’s telling us we need to come lower so therefore we should do that.

[00:45:05] Jeff Ross: His, I just think excuse is the

[00:45:06] Joe Carlasare: labor market, labor excuse now. Yeah.

[00:45:08] Jeff Ross: I would just love to end the Fed like tomorrow. And have it just, and it does have it be automated. Like this is so ridiculous. But anyways, yeah, just makes me mad.

[00:45:16] Speaker 4: Let’s just put chat GPT in charge of the phone. Let’s do it. It would do just as good a job.

[00:45:21] Speaker 4: Let’s be real.

[00:45:21] Preston Pysh: It’d do better. What are you guys thoughts on AI right now?

[00:45:25] Speaker 4: Well, I think there’s something kind of interesting going on in AI tech. I don’t know if you guys have been paying attention to like the deals that are going on between Nvidia and OpenAI and A MP, et cetera. There’s, there’s a lot of this round tripping.

[00:45:37] Speaker 4: Yeah. That, we remember seeing in the FTX land and the sandbag free days and it’s making me mildly uncomfortable. And if you talk to guys like Jensen Wong, they’ll tell you that general purpose compute is dead and the world is moving towards a specific compute, which is something that we can understand as Bitcoiners.

[00:45:54] Speaker 4: Like we’ve seen the move from CPU to GPU to asic, and now the broader market is going through that move. But I don’t know, man, I see all these round trip deals and I get a little sketched out with what’s going on over there in their market. And obviously what’s happening in high tech. Effects of the broader market in general and leads back to Jeff’s thesis about, it’s kind of over, it’s the swan song, just like it was in Crypto land.

[00:46:17] Jeff Ross: I was doing this because it’s that Spider-Man meme where there’s street the law pointing at each other. Like, who’s paying for this? Who’s paying for this? You are, you are. So yeah, that is going to be a too big to fail moment. I think at some point at the end of this, I don’t think we’re getting close to the end.

[00:46:30] Jeff Ross: I think we’re at the early stages of like a bubble, but like probably have years to go. Would be my guess. This stuff is fascinating. I tell you, I’ve been thinking a lot about this and geopolitics lately, and I don’t think much about Bitcoin anymore. because it’s going to just keep going up over time.

[00:46:46] Jeff Ross: But you know, there’s the optimistic side of this age of abundance that’s coming and then everybody’s concerned about AI taking all of the white collar jobs. And that’s, I think, a real concern.

[00:46:55] Jeff Ross: What I’ve been thinking about, and this doesn’t make me popular at all, so I don’t speak my mind, and I’ll do this here in front of just the three of us, so nobody else will know about it. I’m a hardcore free market capitalist.

[00:47:05] Preston Pysh: Yeah.

[00:47:06] Jeff Ross: But does free market capitalism work for humans, which is doggy dog. The best. Win the rest. Die. Creative destruction. What if our competition is all 10 x or a hundred x smarter than us and can do things 10 x to a hundred x better than us? Do we really want to be in free market competition with ai?

[00:47:26] Jeff Ross: And I’m totally serious. No. What if unemployment jumps to 40%? Do you want a capitalist to, so even though I think it’s the best for humans. Is free market capitalism the best way to run an economy in an AI world? And I think the answer is actually no. But I’d love to hear you guys’ thoughts on that.

[00:47:43] Preston Pysh: Wow. That’s bold. Okay. Yeah, go ahead guys.

[00:47:46] HODL: I’m more of the opinion. I think a lot of the talk about artificial general intelligence or super intelligence is, and I think it’s meant to create regulatory capture opportunities for the already powerful players in the markets, like an open ai. I don’t believe we’re going to see super intelligence anytime soon.

[00:48:03] HODL: There is like a potential fast takeoff scenario if Theis are able to rapidly iterate on themselves. But you know, GPT five kind of sucks my opinion. I was expecting a lot more of an improvement out of it, and it seemed to be sort of a plateau. Now, did it get nerfed because the researchers were worried about there’s all this stuff.

[00:48:19] HODL: Like that, right? Where they’re like, and then obviously you have the espionage angle where the Chinese are trying to steal the weights and they’re deeply embedded in every American company. And the whole thing is moving off a clip at 88 miles per hour, right? Like, and so, it’s, it’s hard to track what’s going on in AI at any given time.

[00:48:37] HODL: But I think my general framework here is that AI is something like the new handgun and that it’s a tool that humans are going to be able to leverage against other ai. So I don’t know that it’s me and you versus an ai, but I think it’s me and you plus AI versus other humans plus ai, right? So like we get these like super powerful computer symbiotes that we’re using to dual with each other, but we might actually reach a level of the, like the internet for instance, where you’ve heard of dead internet theory where like basically like.

[00:49:03] HODL: 90% of the internet is already made of bots. Well, it might move to a hundred percent and the internet just becomes like the machine battleground between the ais and we all operate on the other side of them. so like my AI goes out and does battle with your AI in the world or whatever. I don’t know, man.

[00:49:18] HODL: We’re heading towards interesting times. I do think it’s going to dematerialize a lot of industries and like probably the people that are in those industries now will seek, or they’ll go to the government and say, Hey, we’ve already, we’ve been in this industry too long. We’ve given up too much. We’re super important, here’s why.

[00:49:35] HODL: And they’ll be able to carve out these laws that basically allow them to continue doing it for some time, but then in the next generation it’s over. I don’t know that like what Jeff does, like radiology, that a robot’s going to do that. That one’s bad for sure.

[00:49:48] Jeff Ross: And then just as a quick aside, and I want hear what you guys say, I think I’m more optimistic on what it will do, or I don’t dunno if optimism is the right word.

[00:49:55] Jeff Ross: I think it’s a GI is going to be more impressive. And then a SI, I’m kind of a ray Kile, like I believe in him that he’s going to be right. And I think it’s going to be like at some point a thousand, 10,000 times smarter than humans. I look at radiology and other physician thing, first of all, by the way, guys, I’m not a doctor anymore.

[00:50:12] Jeff Ross: I quit doctoring in January of this year. So you don’t have to call me doctor anymore. Just, just, just Jeff and, if you say doctor, but I, I use ai. I use AI to, to test it, to see how it answers medical questions. It’s fantastic. Yeah. I think it’s already at the point where a lot of people could skip going to the doctor for a lot of things and just be like, Hey, I got this and this.

[00:50:35] Jeff Ross: What do you think? I think doctors are going to fight it tooth and nail because they don’t want to lose their income and their profession and their reputation. But I think it’s inevitable and I think it’s going to be, it’s changed the world technology. I don’t know, maybe I’m too optimistic. I’d love to hear that.

[00:50:49] HODL: No, no. It’s a, it’s a big deal. I just don’t know that AGI is like, literally the machines are become gods. So that’s why I’m like, I don’t, yeah, Joe.

[00:50:58] Joe Carlasare: Well, to me the biggest story, we’re talking about economics and the going forward expectations for how the economy’s going to perform is the build out. Because McKinsey says we’re going to spend between six and $7 trillion through 20 20 30.

[00:51:11] Joe Carlasare: The CapEx expenditures from just the Mag seven are estimated loan to be over a trillion dollars by Goldman Sachs. It’s a massive infusion of private capital, and this isn’t borrowed money. These people are tapping. They’re cash rich balance sheets to do that build out. We’re talking data centers, accelerators, networking, real estate, power grid upgrades, all these things.

[00:51:31] Joe Carlasare: That’s the story. Okay? So for people wondering why these companies are like just absolutely soaring is because they’re fighting to win the future. They’re fighting to have their continued monopoly over the infrastructure that will be the life and soul of our economy and all the things we’re talking about in this call, and I don’t think anybody fully understands it.

[00:51:48] Joe Carlasare: But it’s sort of a need to know, need to own asset, right? You need to own these stocks because of the SA fact that they will have this monopoly over the future. And I don’t think it’s one of those things where you’re going to have a bunch of GarageBand startups that are going to overcome some of this AI data center buildup.

[00:52:02] Joe Carlasare: It’s very different from other technologies. The amount of compute and energy and hardware and infrastructure is going to be massive. So like that’s a huge story and there’s going to be jobs that come along with that. So I think the fear about destroying jobs and massive unemployment skyrocketing, that may be real.

[00:52:18] Joe Carlasare: And I wouldn’t totally fade that, but I would push that. The timeframe for that, it takes a little bit longer, as we know in Bitcoin for things to develop than we expect. So that might be a 2030s issue, whereas for the next five years, I could see it actually like causing a surge of certainly skilled jobs to help build, do the build out.

[00:52:34] Joe Carlasare: So that’s a huge story in my opinion. But you know, I’ll just finish one thing in terms of the actual. And this is just what I’m encountering in terms of the actual use case of the, some of these current tools. I have got to tell you, I feel myself very much blessed because I’m seeing sludge filed, filed all the time in lawsuits, garbage, terrible complaints.

[00:52:51] Joe Carlasare: Pro se thinks that they understand it because they’re asking g PT to do something and it will spit out something that is complete garbage. So it’s actually leading to an increase. we’re hiring, my firm’s hiring because of like, we’re slammed with all these pro se litigants who they can going to type something into GPT and get it right and it’s garbage.

[00:53:06] Joe Carlasare: Right. So, and frankly it’s frustrating the courts because they’re saying like, why are all these new complaints getting filed? Wow. Why is there this massive influx of Yeah. people that now think they’re lawyers and they know not even enough to be dangerous, they know enough to waste people’s time.

[00:53:19] Joe Carlasare: That’s basically it. Literally with the filing. So I think that if all AI is going to do is going to increase the amount of sludge out there in terms of shoddy work product, and it’s going to cause people to be lazy and turn off their brains, those who will turn on their brains will be exceedingly profitable.

[00:53:34] Joe Carlasare: They’ll be very skilled and they’ll make a lot of money. So it’s really important, like any other muscle, your brain, should be utilized and it should be relied on and tuned, and you should use this as a supplement, not a replacement. I think the most, currently with all the technologies I’ve seen, the most effective use of AI is always to supplement someone who’s already smart and savvy and have them test their thinking.

[00:53:55] Joe Carlasare: That’s the way I use it. That’s the way really smart people I know use it, but not to just be like, tell me what to do, AI chat bot, because you’re the AI chat bot and I don’t want to read something.

[00:54:04] Preston Pysh: Amen. Yes, amen to that. By the way. What are your guys’ thoughts on the humanoid robots like the Tesla?

[00:54:13] Preston Pysh: Because when you’re talking about the jobs that are going to be created through some of the change that’s here, the numbers that I’m hearing, what is it like a million humanoid robots of at least the Tesla version by 2030 is what they’re kind of shooting for and like, what’s that going to mean for just augmented labor?

[00:54:30] Preston Pysh: HODL. Go ahead.

[00:54:31] HODL: Yeah, I, I think if Elon gets robots even a little bit, right? It’s very obvious that he’s the world’s first trillionaire. And I do think that right. Tesla has a massive leap forward in real world ai. And like that’s what the whole robotics revolution is actually about. Like, Boston Dynamics, we’ve all seen those videos.

[00:54:46] HODL: They do it like Christmas time where they make the robots dance and stuff. Like we have had the ability to like hydraulically control and articulate robot arms for 20 years now. And actually it’s gotten really good and the hardware side is, it’s not completely figured out. Like they don’t move or talk as move or walk as fluidly as we do, but they can get around, they’re ambulatory and they can do things.

[00:55:08] HODL: And Boston Dynamics has basically figured out that quaded robots with a weird, freaky articulating arm on top of their head is sort of the way to go about things. And so it’s about the visual learning and it’s about the real world application of large language models. I had a. A self-driving Tesla, my wife’s car, a Model X.

[00:55:27] HODL: And when there was a switchover to FSD 12 from FSD 11, that was when Elon and the engineers went back and started training it via LLM, like via neural network. And there was a massive leap forward in the tech. So like if you were a Tesla driver and you were using autopilot from 11 to 12, massive leap. It went from being a car driven by a janky robot trying to kill me to a car that was driving much more like a teenage girl who was only occasionally trying to kill me.

[00:55:55] HODL: Which is a huge leap forward, So I think, yeah, real world AI is a massive, it’s a really big deal. The robotics industry is obviously going to be the biggest industry in the history of the world. Up to this point. And so I’m wildly bullish on all of that. But I do think it’s more of a 2030s phenomenon where it gets, it kicks into high gear, like probably mid 2030s is when we’re all fully ensconced in the robotic revolution,

[00:56:18] Preston Pysh: which a lot of this goes to Jeff’s original comment where he’s concerned as to like, if you’re competing with something like this, let’s say somebody has five of these things, these humanoid robots, like can you imagine how much you could get done just around the house, let alone like all the other things you could stick these things on if they’re armed with, who knows what level of intelligence at that point that you can just give them random tasks to go out there and do things.

[00:56:43] Preston Pysh: And I don’t know, guys, this is getting really strange.

[00:56:47] Joe Carlasare: Let me give you an example of something that you could see in the future is like, imagine a Spotify, but instead of songs, it has recipes. And those recipes come from the world’s greatest chefs. And then in everybody’s kitchen is a set of articulating robot arms that can cook, Gordon Ramsey style meals for you directly in your kitchen.

[00:57:05] Joe Carlasare: That’s just one example of the kind of world that we’re heading into. And I don’t think any of us are capable of understanding all the other myriad examples of things that could happen in that world.

[00:57:15] Preston Pysh: The humanoid robot could go out and get the ingredients Yeah. From the store and come back and cook it and like all of that, right?

[00:57:21] Preston Pysh: Like, and I think people might hear that and they’re like, yeah, come on dude. We are decades. I don’t think we’re decades away from this. I think we’re like five years to seven years out from something like this.

[00:57:32] HODL: Yeah. It’s coming up quick, quick, quick.

[00:57:35] Joe Carlasare: What does that do to prices?

[00:57:36] Preston Pysh: Yes, I know that’s, yes.

[00:57:37] Joe Carlasare: What does that, to eating out, what does that do to eating in, what does that do across the board to these things? It craters them. Yeah. It doesn’t cause them to rise, it causes them to fall. Yeah. And that’s the takeaway, right? This, the inflation e says, I never understood this argument. Like you’re on the verge of a massive boon in productivity that’s going to send prices across the board through the floor.

[00:57:56] Joe Carlasare: So I just don’t, I’d be curious any of your thoughts on this. because I find it very difficult when I listen to these folks saying that, CPI is going to run back up to 10% on a persistent basis, or we’ll have hyperinflation on our doorstep. maybe a few BI becomes a thing, but that doesn’t really fix the problem. That just artificially raises the cost of things temporarily, and then technology advances and it still causes the same problem.

[00:58:18] Jeff Ross: Yeah, I think a short term spike in inflation as we do the build out, as we bring back manufacturing, we have to pay for it somehow, and it’s with money that’s not very sound in the near term.

[00:58:30] Joe Carlasare: And which is great by the way, which is a huge advantage, right?

[00:58:32] Joe Carlasare: Like I would say if you own assets. Yeah, buy as much, like they should be spending a trillion dollars right now to build out the AI. Spend more money.

[00:58:40] Jeff Ross: I mean, yeah, it’ll be terrible for the bottom 60% of income orders. Right. It’s so, so I think first we have inflation, not massive and not out of control, but then we have that big disinflationary streak that’s going to be for the rest of our lives probably.

[00:58:54] Jeff Ross: That’s how I look at it.

[00:58:55] Preston Pysh: I think it’s important to define like in dollar terms, in Bitcoin terms and in what terms? because when I’m looking at this M two growth rate of just the sheer fiat in the system like that, thing’s not slowing down anytime soon, at least not by the trends that I’m looking at.

[00:59:10] Preston Pysh: So if there’s that many more units in the system, like what’s that going to do to the prices of desirable things? And I think that’s the key. That’s the key word. I think they’re going to keep going up in fiat terms, but like in Bitcoin terms, everybody knows like what’s happening there, which is the prices just keep going down and down.

[00:59:28] Preston Pysh: Yeah. So I think that’s the important kind of distinction is what are you actually looking at the unit in? That you’re measuring against. And you guys got anything else you want to make sure we cover?

[00:59:39] HODL: Oh, I have got to do a mea culpa about the treasury companies. God, was I wrong about the treasury companies?

[00:59:47] HODL: I was like, man, this thing is going to snowball up upward, like we’re going into a Bitcoin treasury company bubble. No. In fact, what happened is they all became Bitcoin penny stocks. That’s what I call ’em now. I don’t even, I don’t even call them treasury companies. I call them penny stocks, Bitcoin, penny stocks. The MNAVs have just collapsed on these.

[01:00:03] Preston Pysh: And what’s happened with NACA? What’s going on with it?

[01:00:06] HODL: I saw the NACA is below its pipe price. I think I checked it today. It was at 76 cents. It’s, yeah, it’s kind of opaque. I can’t really figure out what the MNAV is on NACA at the moment, but it’s 76 cents.

[01:00:16] HODL: Clearly below it’s MNAV and then it’s, Saquon’s, or however you say that one, that one got creamed. And, Asti, Strive, that one’s not doing well. Basically none of them are doing well. 21 Jack Mallers is holding up pretty solidly. And then I think MSTR is still kind of the goat here, and people prognosticating the death of MSTR, I think are completely oblivious to what’s happening. But what we’ve found out is that there’s a big difference between some of these smaller ones and MSTR.

[01:00:47] Joe Carlasare: Do any of you think that recent price action and Bitcoin is a byproduct of some of the turmoil in the Bitcoin treasury companies?

[01:00:54] Preston Pysh: Absolutely.

[01:00:55] Joe Carlasare: Walk me through, walk me through that, explain why you think that is.

[01:00:58] Preston Pysh: Well, if Bitcoin key, at the end of the day, bitcoin’s the engine of these treasury companies and it’s completely predicated on, or at least if they’re securitizing Bitcoin and issuing preferred stock or mm-hmm. Convertible debt. If the whole thing’s predicated on Bitcoin going up 40% a year and they’re issuing their credit instruments at 10% a year, then they’re going to capture a 30% spread.

[01:01:20] Preston Pysh: That’s the whole premise of not having an operational business and being able to securitize Bitcoin through a corporate entity. Right. And so if Bitcoin’s going sideways and it’s not doing the 40% thing. You kind of get yourself in a position where you can’t keep growing the Bitcoin on the balance sheet because it’s literally gone sideways, and you’re going to get too levered as it continues to go sideways.

[01:01:43] Preston Pysh: But if it keeps going up and keeps going up very consistently, let’s just say that the Bitcoin price runs at 40% very consistently and very smoothly with not a lot of volatility, and you’re issuing 10% dividends or whatever from a convertible debt standpoint, which you know, it’s way less than that, but then you have to pay the principle on it after five years.

[01:02:02] Preston Pysh: So I think 10 percent’s a better number to use when you’re comparing these two. But if it was just going up nice and Bitcoin’s going up nice and smooth at 40% and you’re issuing 10% against it, that you’re going to continue to accumulate more and more Bitcoin on the balance sheet. As soon as that stops,

[01:02:16] Joe Carlasare: So you’re saying, the tourmoil in the treasury companies is leading to an absence of buyers, right? The buyers are gone from the treasury companies.

[01:02:23] Preston Pysh: I would say that the lack of underlying Bitcoin price action continuing to go up is what’s causing a lot of issues because they can’t get too over levered. Like you can only securitize it so much and you’re basically over collateralizing the Bitcoin on your balance sheet.

[01:02:37] Preston Pysh: But once you collateralize it to a certain point and Bitcoin isn’t going up higher, which allows you to keep collateralizing it in dollar terms, right? That ratio of, call it five to one, like if it goes sideways, you can’t do that anymore. So you’re just sitting there flapping.

[01:02:52] Joe Carlasare: The circular Bitcoin economy, right?

[01:02:54] Jeff Ross: Yeah, exactly. They remind me of, you guys remember bumper cars? You remember those people who would be stuck in the middle of bumper cars and they couldn’t get out because there’s no other people driving around them. So they’re just sitting there the entire time while the music span.

[01:03:07] Jeff Ross: That’s what these guys remind me of because they whole model, at least to start, is we need to get an MA of 2, 3, 4, exceeding our underlying Bitcoin and then when we do. Inevitably they said, or so they thought, then we’re going to sell shares at this elevated price and then we’re going to use the proceeds to buy Bitcoin. But what happens if you don’t get that MNAV? Or it just comes down.

[01:03:27] Jeff Ross: You know what this reminds me of? I know all you guys were around that it reminds me of GBTC back in 2021. Mm, yeah. Yeah. Do you remember I owned that in my hedge fund and that was so disappointing because that was basically brutal. The O one of the only ways I could get good Bitcoin exposure.

[01:03:40] Jeff Ross: And that ended 2021, I think Bitcoin was up about 70% in 2021 and GBTC was flat on the year, and it just was just terrible. And th this reminds me of that. And in fact, I owned little pieces of lots of these treasury companies in my hedge fund this year just in case. We had this bull market and a pretty good size of strategy.

[01:04:01] Jeff Ross: All of them have hit my trailing stop. I’ve stopped out of all of them because they’re just basically dead in the water right now. So I do think they’ll catch a bid once the bull market starts up again, but totally very disappointing.

[01:04:11] HODL: It’s been very surprising because if you would’ve talk to me six months to a year ago and asked me, do you think miners or treasury companies are going to perform better? I would said treasury company’s hands down. And I look at my mining portfolio and it’s gone crazy. I ran is up like 2700% or something.

[01:04:27] Joe Carlasare: Yeah, but that’s AI. That’s AI.

[01:04:29] HODL: Well, that’s where the bid’s coming from. That’s my point, Joe is like, so the interesting thing about the miners is you would think to yourself, well, okay, like it doesn’t make sense that the AI, that the AI bubble is affecting the miners because you can’t switch The Rackspace and the Bitcoin asics aren’t set up to do, these GPU clusters, et cetera, et cetera.

[01:04:47] HODL: But it’s the energy contracts. These guys got to the energy first. They were first to the key on the energy. And so the AI companies have to come and partner with them because the Bitcoin miners are like energy pirates, and they got all the contracts. And so they just deal each other in and boom. Profits galore. Like it’s crazy. So the miners have done exceptionally well compared to the treasury companies?

[01:05:07] Jeff Ross: Okay. Do you guys remember last quarter I actually asked if you thought if any of you thought miners would catch a bid? Because they’ve had such a disappointing performance. Yeah, we all were like, nah, we all sort of chuckled. And they’ve just been crushing it.

[01:05:19] Joe Carlasare: So before we go here though, I want to hear, let’s get some, give some alpha. Where is Bitcoin going to be HODL in like four months? Geez. Or where are we going to be?

[01:05:26] HODL: Are you saying end of the year or four months?

[01:05:28] Joe Carlasare: No, four months. Like January. Let’s say like January. January.

[01:05:31] Joe Carlasare: I want to get into, actually let’s do like six months. I want to say, I want to get this into like into, so Q1 of deep into Q1 of 2026, where are we at?

[01:05:39] HODL: So like you, I’m bullish on a Q1, Q2, increase in price. I think that the four year cycle thing, it is dead, but we still have yet to exhaust the four year cycle sellers. Because there are a lot of people that still believe in the four year cycle and because of the distribution of Bitcoin, a lot of those people actually hold a lot of Bitcoin, right? There are people with 10,000 Bitcoin.

[01:06:01] Joe Carlasare: Stop selling your 10,000 Bitcoin.

[01:06:02] HODL: There are people with 10,000 Bitcoin and they believe in the four year cycle. There was a guy who sold 80,000 Bitcoin earlier this year. There have been other large cells of 30,000 Bitcoin, et cetera. So some of these OGs are, they’re getting out. And also I think chopping at a hundred K is just like causing people to go buy Lamborghinis and mansions because I’m seeing a lot of that too.

[01:06:21] HODL: It’s like Fordham, where they’re just like, I’m just going to go, oh, I’ve been delaying gratification long enough. I’m just going to go finally buy that Porsche or whatever. So yeah, I think we have got to get through all that. We have got to get over the perception of the four year cycle, which is credit to Joe.

[01:06:32] HODL: Joe’s been actually saying that for many years, and me and Joe go back and forth because I’m a bit of a four year cycle, recovering addict myself. I love the four year cycle.

[01:06:41] Preston Pysh: Same, same.

[01:06:43] HODL: Yeah. So I think it’s over. We get past it and then it’s like green, green, green, green. Like let’s do bullish. I don’t see any reason why next year can’t be bullish. People are starting to talk about it as if it’s some immutable law of the universe that like Bitcoin has to go down.

[01:06:59] HODL: It’s like, well, Bitcoin didn’t even go up this year. So, Jeff gave the one year chart, but like, or sorry, the one year percentage, but if you look at the year to date percentage, I’ll check it right now it’s at 14.95. So that’s crap. Sorry guys. Like that’s not a bull market.

[01:07:14] Joe Carlasare: That’s not, weren’t we 110,000 on election day or inauguration day? Inauguration day. We were 110, I think. Thereabouts. Yeah, something like that. When Trump got inaugurated, that was like the all time. We’re more or less, we’re at 109 right now during the time of this recording, so.

[01:07:27] HODL: There wasn’t really a bull market, so I don’t really see any like immutable law of the universe that says there has to be a bear market. And frankly, this irrational exuberance never showed up. Retail never showed up. What’s going to cause the bear market? I don’t see it.

[01:07:38] Joe Carlasare: Which is awesome, by the way. I know that people wanted this blow off move, but like look at the base of, I don’t know if you’re like one of these TA people or volume profile people.

[01:07:46] Joe Carlasare: I’ll defer to Jeff on this, but like, look at the base of bids, like you’ve got it like a hundred k. every time it dips down, it just seems like there’s money that it’s ready to deploy. Very steady institutional bid. Am I wrong, Jeff?

[01:07:58] Jeff Ross: Like that? You’re right.

[01:08:00] Preston Pysh: Joe, what was your price target for the end of the year? At the beginning of the year?

[01:08:04] Joe Carlasare: 130K.

[01:08:05] Preston Pysh: Alright, I’m going to, price is right you, I’m going to say 129K, at the end of this year.

[01:08:14] HODL: I’ll go 131.

[01:08:15] Joe Carlasare: No, we’re going to get there guys. I’m really bullish here. Like, I honestly think this is awesome. Like, I’ve never felt sentiment this bad with the price where it’s at. And I think there are zero tourists in Bitcoin, like all the tourists are in quantum stocks and all these like high flyers.

[01:08:30] Joe Carlasare: I feel like people are just kind of like you said, HODL. They’re kind of bored with Bitcoin. Very bored. And you never want a short, boring market. That’s like an old adage. Somebody told me, I think Jeff.

[01:08:38] HODL: I’m bored as hell. I’m so bored.

[01:08:40] Joe Carlasare: I mean that to me is exceedingly positive. And if Jeff’s right, all you need to do is get the investing community to think like, okay, wait a second. If this is truly the Debasement trade and this the hard asset trade, like money can come flowing in.

[01:08:53] Joe Carlasare: We’ve got the ETFs. Literally just click a button. Like you don’t have to mess around. I saw how absurd I saw this line guys, where like people were out the door. Waiting to buy gold. There was this photo of people like ready to buy physical gold, like sitting like a line out the door, like the latest iPhone or something. You know what I’m talking about. You saw it.

[01:09:12] Preston Pysh: This is it.

[01:09:13] HODL: This is it. Australia. Australia, huh?

[01:09:16] Joe Carlasare: Yep.

[01:09:16] Jeff Ross: They’re front running us. They heard this conversation.

[01:09:18] Joe Carlasare: So how absurd in 2025 that people are sitting to buy gold, like waiting in line. Like it’s weird. And then you can just click and buy Bitcoin right now. And even better, even if you don’t want to go buy it off a exchange, go buy the ETF. Like it’s simple, right?

[01:09:31] HODL: You want to assay your Bitcoin, you run your own node, you want to assay your gold. Some guy at the pawn shop takes out a DeWalt drill and goes, yeah, we’ll assay it four years.

[01:09:43] Joe Carlasare: But Jeff, where are we going? Preston?

[01:09:44] Preston Pysh: Mine was 129.

[01:09:46] Joe Carlasare: Into Q1 of 2026?

[01:09:51] Preston Pysh: Yeah, that’s the start of the new year. I’m saying 129K.

[01:09:54] Jeff Ross: To be clear, because I was so horribly wrong and off in my 475K prediction, you want to know what I think it’s going to do in the next, like I haven’t been embarrassed enough.

[01:10:04] Preston Pysh: We want to be able to throw it in your face, Jeff. That’s the only reason he asks this question every time.

[01:10:10] Jeff Ross: Right? And then put me on record for being wrong again. So I think Bitcoin moves in a long term up into the right channel. Basically, a log channel, power law style. So I think the further in time you go out, the higher it could potentially go if we rip with the economy. So I’m still looking at forward looking indicators that tell me, looking in well into 2026 now, like summer 2026, I still think the economy looks like it’s going to be booming at that point. And if it’s booming, that tells me that Bitcoin could go, I said 4 75 by Q4 of this year.

[01:10:46] Jeff Ross: If we extend it, we could go up to five 50, 600,000. Third quarter of 2026. Oh yeah. And that might not be the end of it either. We might just continue in this bull market. I think the Trump administration is going to do everything they can to goose the economy for the next, and through the midterms. And if they do that, then they’re going to get majorities in the house and the Senate and then they’re going to run it even hotter, I think. And I think it could go even higher.

[01:11:12] Jeff Ross: So this is just going to be a very, it’s already been a really weird cycle. Like as we started saying at the very beginning, because the, manufacturing’s been in a recession for three straight years. I think it’s going to pop out and we’re going to have a really weird cycle to the other side, hopefully to the upside in the next couple of years.

[01:11:28] Joe Carlasare: Have you’ve given up on the 400 for this year? You’ve given up on it?

[01:11:31] Jeff Ross: No, I’m still sticking to it.

[01:11:33] Preston Pysh: Oh wow.

[01:11:33] Jeff Ross: I given about like a 5% chance of it.

[01:11:35] Joe Carlasare: Well, there’s a time traveler on Twitter. Bitcoin, Twitter these days. Who says we’re going to 444.

[01:11:40] Preston Pysh: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:11:41] Jeff Ross: He puts those weird poems in the sneaky clues or whatever. Yeah, yeah. I’m like, well, hey, maybe he knows something because that was my original target.

[01:11:49] Joe Carlasare: 30 days HODL. 30 days we could be at 400 k. What are you doing?

[01:11:52] HODL: Well, cocaine, obviously.

[01:11:56] Preston Pysh: Hey, what’s up with the lights behind you? Are you doing like some weird George Costanza on a couch photo shoot back there? What’s going on?

[01:12:03] HODL: So I’ve been making vlogs on Nostr. Making blogs and been putting them out on Nostr exclusively.

[01:12:09] Preston Pysh: I love it. I’ve seen the shooting ones.

[01:12:12] HODL: I’m like a YouTuber but for Nostr which means, 300 people watch the video.

[01:12:20] Preston Pysh: Alright, you guys got anything else? We’re going to wrap it up.

[01:12:22] HODL: Oh, all right. I got, maybe, maybe we close on this. So earlier, Preston, you said, I haven’t really seen Peter Schiff. He’s not dancing like he’s not I, well, I don’t know that you had checked his Twitter today. I got it right here.

[01:12:34] HODL: And it says. Gold is eating Bitcoin’s lunch. Bitcoin is now down 32% pricing gold since its August high. This Bitcoin bear market will be brutal. HODLers, sell your fool’s gold now and buy the real thing or have fun going broke. He didn’t even get it right. It’s have fun staying broke, he didn’t even get it right at the end. He didn’t stick the landing.

[01:12:58] HODL: Listen, if you don’t fade that I don’t know what to, yeah. That’s the most obvious guy to fade in the world at the most obvious time.

[01:13:04] Jeff Ross: I’ll tell from a technical standpoint, and gold is very overbought right now, so it looks like it. it needs to consolidate for a while.

[01:13:10] Joe Carlasare: Well, before we go, one, one quick thing, I have to get Preston and Jeff’s take on this. What is going on with the price of oil? It appears to be in just complete nosedives this entire year, right? We started out the year what at? We were at 56 bucks a barrel.

[01:13:24] Joe Carlasare: What’s your take on that? We started out the year at 80 in January, we’re at 80 bucks.

[01:13:29] Preston Pysh: I haven’t looked at it to be honest with you, Joe, I would just assume it’s demand. The demand’s fallen off.

[01:13:35] Joe Carlasare: More sellers than buyers?

[01:13:36] Jeff Ross: Yeah. I look at it like it’s an economic indicator, so yeah. The economies around the world are weak right now. And once they start taking off, like we all hopefully think they will in the next year, I think oil will start to pick up again. That’s my take. I want to talk about something, but I think we’re running out of time.

[01:13:51] Preston Pysh: What’s your point? What do you think?

[01:13:53] Joe Carlasare: No, I think there’s clearly, like OPEC keeps ramping, OPEC keeps ramping up the supply. So I think there’s a lot of supply. There’s tons. if you look at this guys, and I’m just talking about, we talk about inflation quite a bit, right?

[01:14:04] Joe Carlasare: In inflation adjusted terms, oil is now cheaper than it was in 2004. All the printing of money and everything else were like, it’s amazing. I actually believed a lot of the oil bulls, there were a lot of oil bulls in the last couple of years who said we’re going to a hundred bucks a barrel plus is a shortage of oil chronically. The supply’s coming from somewhere. If maybe it really is that the global economy outside of the United States is just really that weak.

[01:14:28] Preston Pysh: Yeah, it’s down. That’s for sure. Jeff, go ahead with your last one that you had.

[01:14:31] Jeff Ross: Well, this is like a two hour long discussion. Oh. But I’ll just tell you what the point of it is. I can’t stop thinking about stuff like, I just saw this survey today. You guys know that 40% of Americans think we’re going to get into a civil war in the next couple of years. 40%.

[01:14:45] Jeff Ross: And I think the whole geopolitical situation and the changing world order is fascinating right now. And I think everything is changing. And Preston, at some point I want to talk to you since you’re ex-military, I’d love to get your take on it because I’m where I am currently. I’m around a lot of people in the military who talk about, and I touched on this just a bit, about how basically a conflict with Taiwan is they talk about it like it’s inevitable.

[01:15:09] Jeff Ross: We’re all trading for it, and so I’m just waiting for that shoe to drop. Yeah. And then beyond that, other things I’m hearing of not just Taiwan, but possibly South Korea and Japan and the South China Sea. Also, and what is America’s role? And is America pulling back into the Western hemisphere and basically giving up the Eastern hemisphere?

[01:15:31] Jeff Ross: And were there closed door meetings? Like this is all like tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, but watching the signs, it sure looks like this kind of stuff is coming and it’s crazy. Like I think we’re just heading towards a really crazy next five years.

[01:15:45] Preston Pysh: I think the whole supply chains with the precious metals and all that kind of stuff, all the inputs to all this complex machinery is kind of the thing to watch because if you cannot, there’s a saying in the military that the amateurs talk tactics and the professionals talk logistics, when you look at sustaining any type of fight, especially that far off, the US you know over in Asia and talk about a logistics nightmare to sustain anything that’s going to last, especially against somebody like China.

[01:16:15] Preston Pysh: When you look at how dependent we are on the inputs of all these supply chains for all this complex machinery to fight a war with any kind of length, like that’s the number one thing I’d be focused on and seeing what they’re doing right now. And I’m not one of these people that’s like beating the drum on, that we’re going to war here in the next six months or anything like that.

[01:16:35] Preston Pysh: And in fact, I have no idea. It’s quite a bit out of my purview because I just don’t really pay too much attention to that stuff. to be quite honest with you, all the politics is outta my feed. If somebody even talks about politics, it’s just an immediate mute or, block. Or block. I honestly don’t see it in my day-to-day consumption of news. I really don’t. So, but those are just some of my initial thoughts with a background in the military.

[01:17:02] HODL: I think geopolitically, China’s going to make a move on Taiwan by 2028. That’s what I think.

[01:17:07] Jeff Ross: Me too. Another fascinating thing, and then I’ll stop because I can talk about this for the next couple hours, but our sudden interest in the Caribbean and in South America and the massive oil deposits that Venezuela has.

[01:17:18] Jeff Ross: And now we’re talking about CIA action in like an actual coup going on in Venezuela and we’re suddenly buddies chummy with Argentina and cheering for Malay. I think we’re giving up the Middle East and South America and Central America are the new Middle East for us. And this is a whole different discussion, but this is the kind of stuff I’ve been spending a lot of time studying and the world is changing.

[01:17:40] Preston Pysh: Oh yeah, yeah. That’s for sure. That’s for sure. Maybe a topic for the next show.

[01:17:44] Jeff Ross: Next show.

[01:17:46] Preston Pysh: Guys, can’t thank you enough. We’re just going to go around the horn. You guys can give a handoff if people want to learn more about you, we’ll start off with Joe, the best lawyer in America. Go ahead Joe.

[01:17:56] Joe Carlasare: Very kind. Joe. Carlasare. You can find me on Twitter at Joe Carlasare.

[01:18:00] Joe Carlasare: If you need legal advice or are involved in a litigated matter, which is my specialty, you can just Google my name. My firm will pop up at Amundsen Davis. First full service law firm. We have a huge book of a Bitcoin miners we represent, as well as individuals involved with regulatory issues and civil lawsuits. So thanks for having me on.

[01:18:17] Preston Pysh: Yeah, Jeff?

[01:18:18] Jeff Ross: I’m trying not to be on social media anymore, so I may come back next quarter for this interview, and that’s about it.

[01:18:24] Preston Pysh: That’s the ultimate block and mute right there. Just, yes. I’m not even logging in anymore. HODL?

[01:18:31] Speaker 4: I’m on Nostr only at the moment, not because I’m a principal ideological cyberpunk, but because I simply lost my phone, which had my Twitter login on it. So I don’t have access to my Twitter anymore, so, there you go.

[01:18:45] Preston Pysh: Well, social media is exhausting, man. It’s hard. It’s so exhaust. It’s getting exhaust. It’s getting so hard to even log in these days.

[01:18:51] Preston Pysh: Gents, thank you. I truly look forward to this conversation every quarter, so thank you for making time, truly thank you for making time, and we always get some really fun feedback from these episodes. So thanks guys.

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