Addison, we meet again for a look forward in the year that is 2026.
Great to have you back, sir.
Great to be back.
I've been really looking forward to this one.
I have as well, especially after the weekend.
We wanted to record this before Christmas or between Christmas and New Year's,
but you were on a trip, and sometimes destiny just works out in certain ways.
We have a lot more to talk about today, I would imagine, than we did a week ago or two weeks ago even.
And that is because of the events happening in Venezuela over the weekend and into this week.
The Trump administration going in, four-hour mission taking out Maduro and basically waving the flag.
There is a new Monroe Doctrine.
We're going to own the Western Hemisphere.
And I think my favorite meme that's coming out of this is that what is international or rules-based order?
What is international law? It doesn't even exist.
Exactly. I mean, that's absolutely right.
I think the rules-based order was essentially a scam put in place by the United States post-World War II to give a structure to enforce what we wanted.
that started to fall apart. So we're no longer enforcing it. So it basically means nothing.
I think even if you go back to a lot of people talking about de-dollarization right now,
and this just incentivizes people, my take, and I think the consensus take is like what really
accelerated it was the seizing of Russian assets post the Ukrainian invasion. My take is that those
Russian assets would have never been seized if the powers that be didn't recognize that this
whole de-dollarization thing was already in play. And that the reason it didn't happen before 2022
is because there was still this sense that the dollar, the post-Bretton Woods system could work.
I think by 2022, the powers that be realized it couldn't work. And so it's like, what the hell,
that seized the Russian assets, these countries, the BRICS, everybody.
The jig is up on that.
The train's left the station.
You're not going to accelerate de-dollarization by this stuff.
That kind of modus operandi is in effect at as high of a volume as I think the powers
that be in places like China and Russia feel comfortable with because they don't want to
scare or flood the market and then, you know, ruin their own asset value. So I think they're
already moving as quickly as possible. So I don't think this speeds it up. I don't think the Russia
seizure speeded it up. I think it was in place. And the reason we seized the Russia assets was
because it was the de-dollarization play. That was already done. And the rules-based order is done.
All this is done. We're in a multipolar world now with three great powers. And the decisions that
need to be made, need to be made based on national security, national interest, economic
stability.
I mean, these are the driving forces.
And that is, to me, what led to this weekend's activities.
Yeah, and it was really interesting to see what happened in Venezuela over the weekend,
particularly after the national security strategy was released last month.
and the NSS is something that I never really paid attention to,
but enough people were making noise about it that I read the whole thing
and it made a lot of sense to me.
Let's get away from these forever wars in faraway lands across the oceans.
Let's focus on the Western Hemisphere and create economic partnerships
with people throughout Central and South America
and then economic partnerships with people abroad where it makes sense,
but we really want to bring it home.
And I was actually at an event in Dallas last month with a high-ranking ex-military official who was saying, ah, he was like hand-waving at it, like, don't worry, nobody takes these national security strategies seriously or they're never really implemented in the way in which they're sort of written.
But here we go, less than a month or two months after they released their national security strategy.
And it seems like they're trying to implement it.
A new Monroe Doctrine, the Donro Doctrine, as Donald Trump was calling it earlier this week.
I think even taking a step back and looking at it broader, it actually goes back to exactly what we talked about a year ago when we were sitting here post-election, prior inauguration.
And I was saying like raise cash, buy puts, because I think the market's underestimating how bold and kind of unconventional Trump will be.
And he's going to do some things. I called it my sour cream and salsa philosophy, that he had some negative things that would cool the economy that he wanted to do.
And also that he was going to do things that people that thought Trump 2.0 was going to be more or less a revamp of Trump 1.0 were not reading the room.
that this guy, and these are not like political things.
I'm not a big fan of Trump.
I'm not a hater of Trump.
I just want to read the room and try to see where markets and things are going.
And I think what people misread about him was like this guy really sees in his head
that he is a historical figure.
I mean, I think Gingrich, Newt Gingrich said something about him being the third greatest
president from a historical perspective after Washington and Lincoln, and Trump didn't like that.
That's the type of ego we are dealing with. And if you think that somebody with that type of an ego
is not willing to push things to places that people don't expect, you're not reading the room.
I think this guy is even going to get bolder. Last year, I said, look, he's going to do some
bold things that are going to freak people out, and there's going to be market turmoil in the
first half, but it's going to be a buying opportunity. I actually think the exact opposite
is at play right now. I think we had three months of basically nothing in equity markets. You can go
back to October. We're basically where we were on the S&P. Bitcoin's been disastrous in the last
three months. I messed up that call because I was totally bullish when it got around 98. I was like,
we're going to bounce from here. But I think what's happened is people have now pulled back.
And what they're doing is they were a little afraid because of what happened in the last three
months. And they're not seeing what's going to happen in the next six months. And that
while last year there were people, including like Tom Lee, who were like very bullish on 2025,
great first half, but watch out for the second half. I was saying, actually, watch out for the
first half, we're going to have, you know, a great second half. And I think the opposite is true this
year, where a lot of people are like, 2026 is going to be a great year, but be careful in the
first half. But then in the second half, things are going to do better. I'm actually worried about
the second half as we get closer to the midterms. I think this first half, and I think everything
that's been happening in just the first two trading days of the year are supporting this,
is that this first and second quarter of this year are going to be incredible.
I think crypto is going to be amazing.
I think Bitcoin is going to be outperform gold this year.
I mean, we're getting ahead of ourselves with some of these predictions,
but I think there's a foundational basis for it that is rooted in what is happening right now globally, geopolitically.
And it has to do with the fact that people are starting to realize the rules of the game are being slightly rewritten.
and while there's high risk involved in this, if it kind of threads the needle, and I always
talked about there's this needle to thread, things can work out in a pretty positive way.
And so far, I think they are. And I think there's a lot of people that are just doom and gloomers
out there. I'm always the ex-doom and gloomer. I'm like, be optimistic. At the end of our last call,
even given everything that happened, I looked at the transcript yesterday. I'm like, what did I
say at the end of the last call? I'm like, well, we'll probably be sitting here in three months in
the S&P will be somewhere around 68, 6,900 and up 4% or 5% from where it was when we did our last
call. And there'll be volatility. And sure enough, here we are exactly where I said we were. So I
think this is still going to go on and we're climbing this wall of worry. People don't want
to believe it. They don't want to think this is going to work. They think we're heading for a
disaster. They think a financial crash is coming. And I think once those people start to capitulate
and say, oh no, this is all figured out.
That is going to be the big sell time.
But I don't think we're there yet.
I don't think we're even close.
Well, you mentioned a few things there.
Threading the needle.
He's going to get bolder.
And I think building on what you just said,
a lot of our ongoing conversation
over the last couple of years has been,
okay, if he's going to thread the needle,
let's think of the positives.
What can happen?
Let's bring it back to Venezuela
and just use this example
of what happened over the weekend.
What's continuing to unfold now
and basically paint the picture of how this can be extremely positive for the U.S.
from an economic perspective, from a geopolitical strength perspective,
and what it means moving forward for the U.S. economy in the Western Hemisphere.
I mean, I think it makes a lot of sense.
I think it's very smart.
I think it's an asymmetrical risk that was worth taking.
And I think it still has yet to play out.
So when you take an asymmetrical risk, it's like taking a trade.
You're like, you know, buying futures and you're like, oh, I think we could go down a percent. I'll put my stop there. But I think we're ready to break out for a 5% move. And you're like, OK, I got a 5 to 1x. I think that's the type of trade this was for Trump was like, look.
And I know there's some conspiracies out there that this was actually all prearranged with Maduro and he wanted a escape route that would allow him to kind of deny giving into the U.S.
And they're going to come up with a bunch of, you know, legalities that allow him to get out of there and or the case gets.
I don't know. I'm not even getting into all of those.
But what I do think is that the move to secure the Venezuelan resources was a great move.
I don't think that this has anything to do with international law or fentanyl.
I think obviously those are smokescreens.
I think this is the realization that Venezuela has probably the greatest concentration of
natural resources in our hemisphere and perhaps one of the greatest on the entire planet.
And that Russia and China were worming their way in to be in control of those resources.
And that allowing that to happen would be akin to allowing Russia to dominate critical minerals.
It's like shame on me once, fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
And I think we watched China go around the world and dominate critical minerals and then put us over a barrel when they needed to.
And we said they're getting ready to go into Venezuela and get their hands on that.
And in, you know, these shale reserves in the Permian, like you can look at them like they just they're they're going down.
The the the ROI you need, like like if there's a Permian Basin hole opened up and you put all that money in,
like the marginal cost to pump it out is like 10, $15 a barrel. So nobody's going to shut down and
open, you know, fracking well right now. But at the price of oil, there's not much incentive to
open up a bunch of new fracking opportunities, because you need like $60 a barrel to break even.
So and that's been going down. And, you know, there was a great piece that got like three and
a half million views from Sky News that basically just spelled out the different types of crude,
the light, the medium, the heavy, and talked about how, you know, these fracking wells produce light
crude. Light crude comes out of the ground almost clear, almost like a smoothie in some cases.
And they have pictures on it on this if you want to see it. But basically, it's not the heavy crude.
And a lot of people, they're talking about two things.
Number one, they're saying Venezuela doesn't have the reserves they claim to have.
So they're saying those were jacked up post-GFC.
I saw an analyst on Bloomberg this morning say that Venezuela doesn't really have the
reserves they claim to have.
They claim 300 billion barrels.
It's more like only 100 billion.
Like 100 billion is nothing.
And it's like the US known reserves are like 45 billion.
Okay, so even if you go and you cut their estimates by, you know, two-thirds,
you're still at twice all of the US reserves, even if it's only a hundred billion.
Then they say it's, well, it's a heavy crude.
Well, heavy crude is what used to come
from places like California when we actually drilled there And most of our refineries in the U are set up to manufacture heavy crude So even though we produce more oil every year than
we use, we have a huge amount of exports of oil and a huge amount of imports. And what do we do?
We export the light crude and we import the heavy crude. There's only three countries in the world
with large reserves of heavy crude, Canada, Russia, and Venezuela. We're kind of tapping out
our exports of Canadian heavy crude. We're obviously not importing heavy crude from Russia.
So there's only one other source of heavy crude out there, and it's Venezuela. And that's what we
need for our refineries. And you can't just, you know, flip a switch in a refinery and say, okay,
so if we need heavy crude, like that's what we need is heavy crude, the exact type of oil that's
there. They've got 100 billion barrels at the lowest estimate I've ever heard. And at the highest,
it's over 300 billion barrels, which is six plus times the U.S. reserves. They've got massive
amounts of gold. They've got critical minerals that we also need. And so I think what the Trump
administration did was they said, look, we've got the perfect smokescreen, the fentanyl,
Maduro is already indicted. Enough of this stuff of going to the Middle East.
Venezuela has more reserves than Iran and Iraq combined. We're going to secure these reserves
here. This is going to be a total resource grab, not make apologies for it. I don't think Trump
made apologies for it. I think then on Sunday when people like Rubio went on the shows, they tried to
make apologies for it. But I think Trump was pretty clear on Saturday in that press conference,
like this is basically about the oil. Yeah. And I think people, I don't even know if they forget,
I don't even think they even understand from first principles before Chavez took over 26 years
ago i mean what was exxon chevron bp essentially built the wheel and gas infrastructure within
venezuela and there was this beautiful symbiotic relationship between western ong companies and
the country of venezuela and as you mentioned we have these refineries in the gulf of america
that can refine this heavy crude and i think it's a win-win-win for everybody around not only
americans but venezuelans as well they're able to get their dictator out of office and again like
you said it's early days who knows how this is going to play out but i think we should try to
be optimistic like hopefully there can be um an incredibly positive outcome from this in terms of
venezuelans getting their freedom back and reinvigorating that market around the oil and
gas industry specifically and then so that's the economic side then you have the geopolitical side
where you basically show up in force and say,
hey, China, Russia, this is our part of the world.
We're taking control.
We're going to own this relationship with Venezuela.
And so you curb that, you lock down those sea lanes,
and then the economics plays into the geopolitical as well
because if you're able to refine and use that crude
and keep oil prices relatively low,
that's a huge bargaining chip with Russia on the geopolitical stage.
Yeah, exactly. And I think, I mean, for me, there's like a couple of things I don't like. Like, I don't like trying to nitpick, you know, international law and these things. I think, you know, as I mentioned in the beginning, we're kind of beyond that. But I also think like, yes, there are some positive side effects of this for the Venezuelan people and different things.
but at the end of the day I think even if there weren't it still is a good idea because I think
you have to kind of look at the world differently than say 2005 when the U.S. was like a dominant
unipolar like there's now kind of teams right and it's kind of like I think this is a great win for
like our team like the kind of western European Japan certain countries South America like and
I think it was important enough that it deserved the risk. And I think that this amount of resources
and this oil, if we can secure it, and I think there's still a lot of ifs in there. And I think,
you know, it's still to be determined whether or not this big asymmetrical bet is going to pay off.
I don't like rah-rah stuff. I don't like, oh, the U.S. military is invincible and we can do
whatever we want. There are limits to military power, even though I think we have the greatest
military. There are limits. So we've seen that in Iraq and Afghanistan. So this is not a fait
to complete on deal that this is going to work out well. It's still extremely early. But I think
the broad strategic viewpoint is more of like, look, we have adversaries around the world that
are clearly grabbing resources. China, the Belt and Road Initiative, what they're doing in Africa,
what they've been attempting to do in South America. We also still have an economy that is
very dependent on petro products. I think in the long run, it makes sense to get away from those,
not necessarily for environmental reasons, but for independence reasons. It would be great if we
could power everything in America from nuclear and solar and wind, not necessarily to save the
planet, although that could be a great side benefit, but just because we don't want to keep
having to go into the Middle East or needing to do these things in Venezuela. Like ideally,
in an ideal world, this would be, it'd be like whatever people want to do in South America,
let them do. But unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world. We live in the real world.
And this real world is still very dependent upon energy. And the U.S. shale boom is not likely to
continue. It's not likely to continue to grow. And in fact, it might even begin to decline.
And we had a kind of regular oil boom with the Rockefeller era and everything, and we became dominant in it.
And then that declined.
And we wound up in the 1970s.
We wound up in stagflation.
We wound up with gas lines.
We wound up in a big heap of trouble, basically, in a horrible decade economically.
And I think what people are looking at in the deep state, and I think Trump might even be like kind of more like about the fentanyl and the drugs things than people realize.
But I think there's also people in the CIA and the deep state and the NSA that are saying, hey, these resources are important.
Like we we need to, if not, you know, get control of them, we need to at least stop them falling into the total control of China and Russia, which is what was happening.
I mean, that is basically what's been going on.
I didn't mention this before, but like, you know, my wife's family is originally from
Colombia, but a number of her sisters wound up moving to Venezuela in the 60s.
And my wife has cousins and aunts and people that live in Caracas.
My wife's aunt was woken up at 2 a.m. by the bombing.
I mean, they're there.
They know what's going on.
When my wife heard the news, I mean, she came downstairs like it was Christmas morning.
I mean, Venezuelans and people in that region are very, very happy about this.
And that's a great side effect. But I don't even think you need to justify it by that. I think you can justify this by what happens if the entire kind of global economic system begins to collapse. And I think you can justify expansion of the Federal Reserve balance sheet to ridiculous amounts to absorb treasuries.
I think you can justify actions like this because we've seen what happens when the world financial system begins to collapse.
The biggest one happened in recent memory in the 1930s, and it led to the rise of Hitler.
It led to World War II.
And I think people that think, oh, well, that's being crazy and you're making a bunch of leaps here.
And I honestly don't.
I think in a way, going into Venezuela might wind up saving millions of lives in Africa.
And it's like, well, how does that happen? Because if we if we can keep the economic and the world order going in a way that actually gets gas to pumps and banks don't collapse and the system doesn't collapse, you really drastically lower the chances of a World War Three of regional conflicts in places like Africa, because it's always the poorest people who are hit hardest.
then they start starving once people start starving they're willing so you want to keep
this whole system of like eight billion people somehow getting food energy everything they need
to survive you really want to keep this system going because if if it breaks down it's going to
be a big disaster and i'm not talking about like you know five thousand people killed i'm talking
about millions you know i'm talking about world war ii uh i'm talking about like billions of people
on the line if the entire world order just collapses into absolute chaos.
Yeah.
No, especially if we are going to need some monetary stimulus
and you're able to lock down more secure and abundant oil supplies,
like that could help in that environment where it's like,
hey, we're able to produce oil cheaply.
We're keeping the price of oil down,
which is a base input of the economy to a great extent.
And so you can sort of hedge that inflation risk
or the monetary inflation risk.
And then another thing I wanted to add on too,
I'm not a big rah-rah, I got into Bitcoin
because I'm very anti-war.
But I think another thing,
we can maybe end it on this, the Venezuela topic,
but another thing that really pleased me
was setting the precedent.
And I guess this was the second precedent after Iran
in the summer of like, hey, we don't need
to boots on the ground, be in these places for weeks, years, decades even.
We can get in and out in four hours and accomplish what we want to,
which I think is an incredibly strong precedent to say,
hey, if Trump was able to do this, why do we need to, going forward,
if you get another president, we don't need to get in a forever war.
If you really want to accomplish this, he was able to do it in four hours.
Why can't you?
Yeah.
It's showing the way they're handling it now is really showing
that they learned some lessons and took them to heart. I think, you know, a lot of people,
including my wife, Sam, she's like, why is the U.S. kind of talking to this Delce Rodriguez? Like,
she's a total chavista, doesn't like her. She's the vice president who took over. And it's like,
the U.S. doesn't want to go down there, right? I mean, yes, on the one hand, we want to help
the Venezuelans. We want to turn this into a free market economy and democracy, but that's not the
primary goal. Rubio stated as much directly in the news shows this past Sunday. The primary goal is,
you know, I think U.S. national energy security, U.S. national interests. Side goals are the
narco trafficking stuff. And then tertiary is like, let's help the Venezuelan people. So I think
we want to do that. That's the ultimate goal is like, let's try to get there. But ultimately,
at this point, it's like, look, if she's willing to keep the military and the state security
apparatus in line, but also play ball with us.
OK, you know, and I think I think what we're doing is we're giving her some time to decide
what she wants to do.
I think if she doesn't play ball, that the U.S. is committed.
And I think Donald Trump also said this.
If we have to put boots on the ground, we will.
So they've learned the lessons.
They don't want to do this.
And I don't think it's a good idea to do it.
But again, my read on this is that this is such an important strategic move, much more important, in my opinion, than Iraq or Afghanistan, that I think the decisions has been made at the highest levels that we're willing to take this where we need to take it.
and hopefully, and I think this actually is my base case, the people in Venezuela will realize
that and realize that resistance is futile, you know, to use like a Star Trek term. Like,
like if we say, okay, I'm going to be the new Maduro and I'm going to give the finger to the
U.S. and like, I don't think the U.S. is going to let it die. And I think if they realize that,
that there is a chance to once again, thread this needle without having to put a bunch of
Marines on the ground or do that type of operation, which, you know, is great. And I think
one of the things, one of the worries I have going forward for longer term is just
if that does work out, like you're starting to get some good results from the Trump administration
and you have to also guard against good results, just like you do if you're a trader,
you start having a bunch of wins, you have to be careful not to start thinking,
you know everything that's going on. I did a little bit of that this year. I had such a
great beginning of the year. I made some bigger bets than I probably should have around the third
quarter. You see this in world history, you know, where people have successes. They do what people
told them is impossible. They get away with it. Hitler did this. People told him, don't go into
Czechoslovakia. You're going to get killed. Don't go into Austria. You'll get killed. Don't go into
Poland. You'll get killed. Don't go into France. You'll get killed. He kept doing everything that
His advisors and generals told him not to do, and it kept working out great.
Eventually he said I going into Russia right Soviet Union was their allies in the beginning of World War II And he said I turning on them He got killed Napoleon same type of situation
So what the Trump administration really needs to guard against is getting too cocky and thinking
that, okay, things worked out pretty good in Iran. So far, things working out pretty good here in
Venezuela. Let's do Cuba. Let's do Mexico. Let's just keep going. And so I think there are risks
out there. Like, I'm not like, oh, this is a done deal. Mark is going to skyrocket. Like,
there are risks out there. And that's the wall worry I think markets are going to climb in 2026
is where is this all going? And where does Trump, you know, kind of draw the line on what he's able
to accomplish? Yeah, because on top of all this, you have this tension between domestic and external
forces where there's obviously another big headline over the last two weeks is this Medicaid
fraud being laid bare not only in Minnesota but across the country and many people asking why are
we even paying taxes if it's becoming abundantly clear that billions tens of billions potentially
hundreds of billions maybe trillions over the course of many years is simply going to
to people who aren't working or contributing to the system at all and there is a palpable sort of
anger and a desire for the Trump administration to be more strong-willed in terms of their
domestic policy, immigration specifically.
Yeah, I mean, we've got this, I mean, we've got so many balls in the air right now.
And I think that's really what markets are trying to figure out.
Like, they're looking at all these things, they're looking at how do we make sense of
the job market?
And we haven't even talked about AI yet, which is obviously huge and and in the background of everything that's going on.
So it's like, how is that affecting the job market? How is that affecting the economy?
And we're seeing these huge nominal GDP numbers. I think it was like eight percent last quarter.
We've got, you know, almost no employment growth in GDP going through the roof, earnings going through the roof, margins going through the roof.
and and people are like they're looking at this and they're like this is not what we've seen before
and this this goes I think all the way back like like I said what we talked about last year is that
these are not normal times the we're in an era whether we recognize it or not because maybe we're
living through it it's harder to recognize but we're going through a very historic area we're
going we're going through an area that you know 50 100 years from now people will look back on and
they'll be like, this was an extremely transformative time for the world, for the globe,
with a lot of ramifications from technology, from geopolitics, from just everything that's going on.
And so it's really kind of astounding, really, when you look at market behavior. And I think
it's not surprising to me to see precious metals have the year that they have. I've long been a big
precious metals bull. I've always said that's where I started before even I thought about Bitcoin.
I was a big precious metal guy. I mean, I literally have like, you know, my hundred ounce
bar of silver that I bought for like eleven hundred bucks, which is now like eight thousand.
You know, like precious metals are a big part of my investment philosophy, my core position,
as well as is Bitcoin. What's happened with Bitcoin in the last quarter has been confounding
to me. To me, it's like this was a great opportunity. But when I look back on it, what I think of is
that what Bitcoin has been responding to in the last three months is Bitcoin is not a Nasdaq
correlated asset. Bitcoin is not a gold correlated asset. Bitcoin is like a global liquidity
correlated asset. And I think there was a pulldown in liquidity in the fourth quarter. I think
if you look at the September monthly treasury statement, we actually ran a surplus for the U.S.
government. Then we went into the government shutdown, which kept funds at bay. We were still
running QT until December. And I think you had this global liquidity drain that essentially
collapsed high momentum things, you know, you know, the quantum names, the nuclear names,
and it kind of quashed crypto and Bitcoin. And that's just one of three things that happened.
The other thing was the October 10th liquidation in crypto, which are market makers. And then you
We kind of have the digestion of some of the things that were perhaps hoped for in the beginning of the year not coming to fruition.
The Clarity Act not getting passed, the Strategic Wealth Fund where it was talked about.
There was a report that was given to the White House, you know, 90 days after Trump signed the executive order.
And it talked about the difficulty to create this strategic wealth fund without congressional approval and how they were going to do things through these like really shady defense investment funds.
And that's what they've been doing for things like Intel.
So a lot of these things that were expected, you know, kind of collapsed.
We had a pulldown in global liquidity.
And when you look at it through that lens, it actually Bitcoin's response makes sense.
Like it's not like, oh, the four year cycle is here and then that's what happened.
Or, oh, Bitcoin, it's not the real deal.
It's not, you know, digital gold after all.
And that story is done.
And it's not even, oh, it's, you know, people don't want to get into it because of quantum.
I think there's a lot of those things out there right now about why did Bitcoin not have a good fourth quarter?
and because it had a great third quarter.
I mean, it was at all time highs in October.
So like why the last two or three months
it hasn't done good?
I think that's why.
And I think it makes sense.
And I think a lot of those reasons why are changing.
And that's why, you know, I'm very bullish on Bitcoin.
And I don't think that while it's totally possible I'm wrong
and it makes one more leg lower.
I just see this as like the year to think about it as last year was a consolidation year and this year it's going to have an excellent return.
I completely agree.
And I was very bullish going into last year too, obviously with the Trump administration coming in, the ETFs really catching their legs and was a bit disappointed.
But I always like to zoom out.
If you zoom out, we did a between November 21 and October of last year, we did like an 8x.
It's like, OK, we can take.
It's ridiculous.
I mean, 23 and 24 were 100 percent plus years, both of them.
I mean, then you have a 6 percent down year and people are like, oh, I'm worried about Bitcoin.
It's like, I mean, come on.
I mean, I mean, but it's good for everybody.
I mean, the markets are this way, too.
The markets give people opportunities like they did in April.
I mean, you could have bought Nvidia for $89 a share.
In 2022, you could have bought Meadow for $89 a share.
Markets give opportunities.
And the thing is, when those times are there to buy,
is like there's no narrative out there in the zeitgeist that reinforces buying.
And all the narratives out there are negative.
And so it's very hard for people to come on,
especially if they work at like a Morgan Stanley or somewhere.
and they come on to CNBC or something.
And because all the accepted narratives around Bitcoin,
I think were very negative.
I think, frankly, Bitcoin wanted to rally in December,
but it didn't because it was a victim of tax loss harvesting.
I mean, a couple of big things with that.
Okay, this was an incredible year for almost all assets.
So if you were looking for what can I sell and take a loss on,
and you were somebody who maybe said,
oh, I want to get in and invest in IBIT in my portfolio at, you know, 108,000. And now
Bitcoin's at 88. You're like, let me sell my IBIT and let me harvest that loss. And let me offset
some of these gains. That's real money, especially if you're a wealthy person, like your net taxes are
like 40%. Like you could have had a hundred thousand dollar loss in your IBIT position and
you sell it and you basically make $50,000 in tax loss harvesting. Like it was so blatant
that you basically saw the calendar flip and crypto and Bitcoin take off like a rocket ship,
because there was so much selling going on at the very end of the year. And then you compound
onto that the fact that because Bitcoin is not a stock, so I just gave the example of somebody
that owned iBit, if you actually own Bitcoin, there's no wash sale rule. So, I mean, if you
own NVIDIA and you sell it on December 15th and you buy it back on January 1st, the government
says, no, you didn't sell it. It's a wash sale. You didn't wait 30 days. In crypto, there's no
wash sale rule. People were able to literally sell their Bitcoin on December 31st and buy it back on
January 1st and claim that tax loss. That's a market inefficiency. That's a tax-related
in efficiency that is real, that was there. And when you look at the crypto moves, and we're on
January 5th, and you look at where a bucket of crypto is at, it's up 20, 30%. If you bought things
like ADA or virtual or Arbitron or Solana or whatever, and Bitcoin's up a lot too. But a lot
of these cryptos are up 10, 15, some of them up 30, 40%. I think virtual protocol, which is like
an AI based coin. And I never play in these things, but I was buying them at the end of the
year because I'm like, this is the beta. Like, you know, these are just short term trades playing
for beta. But like, and it's, I'm shocked at how well they have done. Like, it's ridiculous.
And I mean, I don't even know. I mean, if I even just take a quick look, I mean, virtual is like,
ridiculous this is just a protocol uh it's it's up a percent today it's up year to date
uh or the past week oh no sorry that was that was solana uh virtual is up 10.58 percent today
this past week, 62.9%.
Okay, virtual protocol.
Crypto, tradable on Robinhood, whatever.
62% in five days.
That's insane.
I mean, it's insane.
I mean, some of these crypto moves are ridiculous.
And I'm a total Bitcoin believer.
I don't believe in these coins for long-term trades, right?
But I'm also a trader.
I want to make money.
And I'm like, where's some of the beta?
um and i mean people want to talk about silver or gold this year virtual is up 65 this is january 5th
um now is that going to continue i don't know i mean at some point i'm going to take some profits
in that thing but right now i'm i'm letting this i mean you look at solana this like 120 level on
solana i mean you can go back five years and every time it gets around 120 it starts to bounce
these are like long-term levels and what this is going to do when you start seeing returns like 62
percent people that are like oh I was playing all the beta and silver wait a minute I could
have been playing this then you start getting that momo going then you start getting the activity on
the exchanges this is all financial plumbing right then you started saying oh then then the
trend followers come in and then people of course you know you know there's going to be a moment
this year where, you know, the financial advisors are going to say, you know what, I've kind of
wanted to put my clients into Bitcoin, but I was a little scared, but it went down to 80 something.
Now it's at 98. You know, maybe now's the time to put a 2% allocation from my clients into it,
that we can maybe even leg into it. I'll put a 1% allocation. And this is going to start to build
on it and build on it and build on it. And that's why I think, you know, what I've been saying since
the beginning of last year was my next target price for Bitcoin was 150. When we hit 150,
I'll reevaluate it. I think we're going to 150 in the first half of the year.
We need to see what the markets in the world looks like at that point to come up with another thing.
But I think on a percentage basis, Bitcoin is going to outperform gold this year. And that was
my number one prediction for 2026 is Bitcoin over gold. Yeah. It feels like it. I love
I mean, I'm not a technical analysis.
I'm left side of the bell curve on bitbo.io.
Just look at the five-year zoom out,
and it looks like we made a higher low compared to last year.
Just like OK we settled at 84 on the monthly and it was 78 last year We gone up and down between then but it feels like we made a very strong base over the last three months and then the fundamentals are only
getting stronger like what we're talking about with venezuela this multi-polar world the rules
based order going out the window and only heightens the demand for the fundamental value prop of
bitcoin as this neutral reserve asset that can't be controlled by anybody yeah and and you know i'm
I follow technicals a lot, but at the end of the day, I've seen them so much that like,
even when you get all the signs, sometimes the market just does something else.
It just like, you can look at it and you, you, you study the RSIs and there's a divergence
here and you know, the, the, the moving averages are here and the trend lines are here.
And it's like, you know, I think you have to overlay the technical.
I think technicals are very important, but you also have to overlay it with the fundamental
story.
And I think, as I said, I think the fundamental story last year was coming into the year, there's all these amazing things that are going to happen.
Some of them happened. Some of them didn't.
When some of the amazing ones didn't happen, then you layered on this basically liquidity rug pull from September fiscal surplus and the government shut down and basically the kind of, let's say, profit taking ethos that I think came into the market.
You know, like a lot of people that had gotten into the markets in April and May saying, hey, you know, I got a great.
All these things came in and then all of a sudden you see everything completely flip when the calendar flips.
And a lot of people will come on and they'll say there's nothing special about a calendar.
You know, on the one hand, they're completely right.
There's nothing special about a calendar.
But on the other hand, there is like it's kind of both.
Like there are tax things that happen.
There are financial plumbing market inefficiencies that happen.
And I think there was a lot of market inefficiencies going on at the end of 2025 that were keeping the Bitcoin price suppressed.
I think people didn't want to see it go higher.
I think there was the tax loss selling, all these things.
I think a lot of those just got lifted when the calendar flipped.
And that's why you're seeing a completely different reaction.
Now, a lot of people will say, yeah, this is just rebalancing.
It's the first few days.
Let's see what happens.
And I would just say I completely agree.
Like, it's only been a few days.
I'm not going to start saying that this is a long term trend.
And that's why, like I said, for some of these crypto plays, I'll probably be taking profits as we reach some of the levels that I'm looking at.
You know, virtual is around a buck right now.
I think 114 or something was what I looked at on the technicals where I wanted to take profits.
But basically, like these are these are things that are happening.
And then you look at gold.
I put out a post right after Venezuela thing happened on Saturday, like this is very bullish gold, equities, Bitcoin and even bonds.
And they're all up today. And I think a lot of people when this first happened wouldn't have thought that.
And they might have thought gold would be up, but they might not have thought equities or bonds or Bitcoin would be up.
And I think this is part of the long term strategic plan that Trump has in his mind around interest rates.
and what it has to do with, and this actually is very rooted in modern monetary theory,
which is that one of the key drivers of inflation is oil and energy prices.
And that if you keep oil and energy prices low, you open the door for a lot of money printing,
low interest rates, all this stuff.
And I think that even though there's not going to be a bunch of Venezuela oil coming online
immediately, from what I've read, it might be possible to get a couple hundred, two,
three, 400,000 barrels a day, like, you know, fix some of the broken rigs and different things,
and you can get a little bit. But Venezuela used to produce 4 million barrels a day. Right now,
they're at under 500,000. To get them back to 4 million, it's going to take years.
But you can get a little bit of supply on the market immediately. And then you put that 4 million
coming online overhang over the market. And what you begin to do is you begin to control the energy
price. And if you control the energy price, you kind of can control inflation. And if you can
control inflation, then you open the door for all these other things that I think are going to be
necessary, including massive expansion of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet. I think these
$40 billion T-bill purchases are just the beginning. I think the whole idea of like foreign
nations buying treasuries and that's where they go, that's done. And that basically the government
is coming up with a plan to allow banks to store treasuries, to allow the Federal Reserve to expand
the balance sheet. And really the Federal Reserve balance sheet is extremely, extremely low
in regards to their holdings of treasuries historically, if you look at it as percentage
of outstanding U.S. treasuries. So if you look at it like, oh, how many treasuries does the Fed
hold. Okay, well, they were at nine, then they went down to like seven, and now they're increasing
again. Well, like 7 trillion out of a $38 trillion treasury market, that percentage is way low, way
low. They could have 10, 12 trillion on their balance sheet just to get to like a historical
norm of percentage of treasuries outstanding that they hold. So I think if then the consensus
opinion is if you do that, that's money printing, it's massive inflation, disaster. The thought
process in the Trump administration is no, it's not going to be because of AI, deflationary forces,
oil, all of this. And then if you look at some of the pundits that are saying, well, Bitcoin is
down because it's the greatest smoke detector for liquidity and the liquidity era is over.
And therefore, you know, you need to get out of it. What I'm saying is the liquidity area
is just beginning. And that this expansion, this isn't going to happen in one month or two months.
It's definitely not going to happen under Powell. But over time, the next one, two, three years,
we're going to see liquidity expand massively. And that's what's going to be amazing for gold,
amazing for Bitcoin. It's going to be good for equities too.
Well, building on this, I think another sort of needle to thread here is what is the average
American consumer citizen, how are they handling this as asset prices are screaming and they're
not, most aren't participating in it. And what if price inflation does manifest? And a big topic
of last year, one that you were pretty vocal about was tariffs. And so I think doing a retrospective
on Trump's tariff plan, has it been successful? It seems like it has been massively successful.
Are they going to lean into it more? And then what does that do to the revenue side of the fiscal side of the equation and the levers they can pull with income tax specifically?
Well, I do think probably in the first quarter, that's probably the biggest known risk out there is that the Supreme Court comes out and in some way curtails the tariff policy, which introduces uncertainty.
I do think that's holding people back.
That's part of this wall of worry is there's probably a big group of people, institutional size type buyers that want to get more involved in this market, but they're holding back because of that ruling.
and I think what they're hoping for is that that ruling comes out it curtails the tariff policies
causes a sell-off I don't think it's going to be a 20% sell-off like we had in the first quarter
of or actually it was the second quarter of last year but I don't think that's going to happen but
could it be a five or ten percent sell-off which is basically what we had in November we had a five
to ten percent sell-off especially on the Nasdaq I think it went down almost eight percent from the
highs. So and that's that's still not a new highs. So I think people what people are hoping for is
we're going to get a tariff surprise from the Supreme Court. Not a surprise, because actually
most. But see, that's the thing. Most people are expecting it. Like, so is it really going to be a
surprise if the Supreme Court comes out? I don't know. I think it could be almost like a two, three
day thing where like the Supreme Court comes out, knocks down tariffs, futures drop three percent.
They drop another 3% the next day.
They drop another 3% the third day.
And we're down 9% highest to lows.
And on that third day, it just hits a bottom.
Like it's a total hammer wick and goes down somewhere and starts going up.
And people are like, whoa, this wasn't really something to flip out about.
They're going to figure ways to put on tariffs.
And in the meantime, it's going to actually alleviate some of the uncertainty because now Trump can't do what he did last year, which is just throw out 50 percent tariffs on rent.
It could actually be a good thing for markets.
So I think a lot of these things that people are worried about, I think there are real things to be worried about that could really cause some issues.
But I think a lot of this is noise when you look at it through the perspective of a year.
If you're a short term trader and you're like, oh, I'm going to buy a bunch of QQQ call options because I think earnings are going to be good and the earnings do do do well.
But then a week before the big Nasdaq earning comes out, the Supreme Court comes out and rips the Trump tariffs and the market, you know, goes down 8 percent.
That whole play is not going to work.
So I think there's a lot of risk that people want to take right now.
They're not taking it because of that overhang.
The Venezuelan thing was an overhang.
They knew that we had this armada out there in the Caribbean.
So that seems to be lessening. I think that's a lot of the reason why you're seeing a lift today.
The other big overhang, and it's I think bigger than Venezuela, is what the Supreme Court says.
My gut's telling me that what they're going to say is they're going to try to walk a fine line and they're going to curtail his powers a little bit.
but they're going to, within their opinions, give him an opening to continue to use tariffs
in almost a unilateral way. And that people will recognize, okay, he's going to have to do things
maybe a different way, but he's going to be able to do it. And, you know, it could be, like I said,
a two, three day hiccup that people get freaked out about. And then, you know, the fundamentals
get are the drivers and the fundamentals are strong GDP, earnings going up, productivity
increasing, margins increasing.
Like that's what's driving these equity prices.
And I think the liquidity is going to come in and that's going to continue to drive gold
and the Bitcoin prices.
Do you think there's an overhang with the fiscal spending again, particularly with this
fraud being laid bare?
I mean, there's some people throwing out stats that if you were to get rid of 50 percent
of the fraud, you could eliminate income taxes for people making under $200,000.
That seems like it could be a massive thing.
I think it would be very stimulative, right?
Because what you would do then if you got rid of income taxes for people under $200,000
is those are the people that spend the money that they have.
And so I just struggle to find a way that this whole card game works out without expansion.
I mean, I mean, this is essentially the primary basis of Bitcoin, right?
It's like the whole world is set up to expand the money supply, to expand it through inflation,
because the whole economic system is built upon this.
And therefore, an asset that has a fixed cap that is what it is, can't be printed, has
real value that will over time increase.
And so I think if you're betting that like we're going to put ourselves into a deflationary
cycle, you're wrong. And I think if we get massive deflationary forces, which some people are
predicting, that the response from the federal government and the Federal Reserve will be to
work their damnedest to contradict those deflationary forces, which are essentially
money printing, asset purchases, all of that. And so, look, I think it's going to be another
year of volatility, a lot of volatility, probably more even than last year.
Um, but I think at the end it's, it's going to be a good year unless, unless, and this
is why in my 2026 predictions, I didn't give a full year S and P target.
I said, my target is we're going to hit 7,700 sometime in the first half of the year.
That first half is going to be really good.
I want to see where we're at with that.
And I'm also a little concerned about, like I said, the, the mid, the midterm elections,
I think what's going to happen right after that is presidential candidates coming out.
And the market could look at some of these people that might start running on rolling back deregulation, increasing taxes, more of a socialist agenda.
And I think the market, if it anticipates things six to nine months in advance, by the time you get to July or August, you're going to in six to nine months from there, you're going to have a slew of Democrats out there talking about.
You know, rolling back everything that Trump has translated.
tried to do these first two years. And so I think the general thought process is like,
there's a lot of people being held back right now because they're worried about the Supreme
Court ruling. But the Republican administration is going to really try to juice things ahead of
the midterm. So the economy is on complete gangbusters by November. I think the economy
will be on complete gangbusters by November. But the market itself is going to start anticipating
that, okay, the midterms are going to be over. We've got these Democratic politicians out here
talking about socialist ideas. Maybe we want to rein in the risk a little bit. And so therefore,
you see a second half substantial pullback, not just a five or 10, but more of a 10 to 15,
or even a 20% pullback in the third or fourth quarters.
So is that incumbent upon Democrats taking ground in the House and the Senate?
think what if um i i think i think if that happens that it's going to probably push the rally even
higher i i think i think if if the if things work out really well and even if they don't necessarily
um keep the house in the senate but let's just say the republicans lose the house but they
hang on to the Senate somehow. And it seems like, you know, there's a good chance that a lot of
these policies are doing so well that the far left wing of the Democratic Party becomes marginalized.
That maybe the Mondami election and inauguration was like a high watermark for far left policies.
And that the bulk of the American people are seeing this and the prediction markets start saying
most likely president next year in 2029 is J.D. Vance and that these types of policies are can
continue, then I think you can get things, you know, rip roaring again. And again, this is kind
of why I'm kind of hesitant to give a full year prediction, because I think, number one, it doesn't
really do any good to give a 12 month prediction if, you know, right now we're looking at what's
going to happen in the next six months and then we can reevaluate it when we get there. But I think
that seeing how these things shape up, that's the, this whole Venezuela thing collapse on itself and
turn into a big kerfuffle that is horrible. And the economy doesn't do what I think it's going to
do. And the Republicans get, are going to get killed in November. And it becomes clear that
it's almost a guarantee that we're going to have a democratic president in 2029 and market starts
getting worried. Well, then I might start getting worried, right? I'm not a permeable. I'm not
someone that's like there's no way that things can go down i think they definitely can i think if
they do and they're not going to stay down long um but yeah could there be a 30 40 sell-off because
of stuff absolutely um but right now i just don't see that in any sort of base case that i'm looking
at yeah let's lean into ai too i mean we've mentioned it a couple of times but i i'm sure
you've been using it we've been leaning into it i've been telling people this behind the scenes
actually i said it on air on rabbit hole recap uh last week too with matt odell like i like
claude's anthropics claude opus 4.5 and claude code it feels like we're getting close to agi
like the stuff that we can build with this the stuff that we're building with this at tftc is
insane it's making us extremely productive allowing us to do uh much more with very little
capex for for lack of a better term very little overhead investment in it and it seems like this
could be a massive boon particularly for people of high agency who are actually willing to play
with this stuff and experiment yeah no i i i i don't i don't think it's all hype i mean i think
i think it's real and i think i think actually there's a lot more already done it's just a
matter of it being absorbed in society. I, I, and a lot of people say the bottlenecks energy,
no, the bottlenecks memory, no, the bottlenecks commute compute. I think the bottleneck is human
nature right now that there's already so much potential out there with AI. But when you look
at like large organizations, like it, it, you know, let's just imagine like your job, you work in,
you know, FP and a like financial processes and, you know, and you're, you do a monthly report,
you know, closing the books and everything. And you kind of look at it and you're like,
okay, if I really create an agent and I get all the data in there, like basically what I spend
the last week of every month doing, this thing's going to do automatically. And then it's kind of
like, well, do I want to do that? Yes, I do. Do I want to share that? Do I want to tell people I'm
doing it? Like, I think there's a lot of stuff happening just with human nature that like,
there's all this productivity going on and companies aren't even completely recognizing
it because there's a lot of workers that are just used to work 45 hours a week.
Now they're working 25 hours a week and they don't want anyone to know about it.
And they're like, look, I used to spend 25 hours putting this report together.
Now I spend 25 minutes and nobody really knows.
And so I'm going to protect that.
So I think there's actually so much more potential that's already exists.
And then you do have these bottlenecks.
But I think that these kind of, you know, speed bumps are good.
Like organizations not fully embracing it as much as they can are good.
Eventually, they're all going to have to because other organizations are.
Startups are going to come along embracing it.
But I think there's a lot of speed bumps in the road, which is actually a good thing.
We talked about this on one of our episodes last year where, you know, people have talked
about how you need AI to come along at just the right pace.
If it comes around too fast, it creates a collapse, you know, too slow.
It's not enough productivity.
I think things are coming along at a good pace.
I think it's actually a good, like, it's not taking things over, like, overnight, even
though that potential is there.
But what's happening is if it did take good things over overnight, we'd have too high
of layoffs.
There's also probably not enough compute out there to really get done everything that would
needed to be done, if it was embraced as much as its potential now entails. You have the power
constraints on it. And then you also have, you know, the memory constraints on it, which is one
of the reasons why one of my predictions of like a sleeper stock was GSIT, GSI Technologies, which
is like an SRAM company, you know, like memory is a big bottleneck on this. And you've seen the DRAM
companies and the microns and everything take off. And, you know, there's ways to do a lot of
the AI computing with a lot less power, a lot less latency, where you have the memory embedded in the
chip which is basically SRAM You know and I not a big technical guy but I look into this stuff closely enough because I was I started looking into it after NVIDIA deal with Grok And I was like why are they doing this And what does GroK do What do they have And I think NVIDIA recognizes the GPUs are great but there are certain inference paths that can be
done more efficiently with less power with SRAM, which is static random access memory instead of
DRAM dynamic. And, you know, I just looked like what's like a SRAM play with a low market cap,
you know, that has a potential for like a really big, you know, 510x move, basically. And I came
up with the GSI Technologies, which is like an SRAM company involved in aerospace. It's only like
158 employees. It's a $250 million market cap. It's trading around six bucks a share.
and I'm like thinking about it like a call option could definitely go to zero could definitely go to
60 bucks in the next like let's say some company wants to buy it for two billion you know that's
like a you know an 8x move right like like it's so small it's ridiculous at a 250 million dollar
thing and so far this year it's been doing good I think it's up 10 or 15 percent in the first two
trading days of the year but you know so there are these things out there that I think AI gives
opportunities for. And, you know, there's a lot of risk involved in some of these things.
But there's also just this amazing opportunity that AI is presenting. And I do think that it's
eventually going to become part and parcel of everything that people do. But I don't think
it's going to happen so quick that everything's going to just collapse. Yeah, that would co-sign
that i think the the point that there's a ton of human potential that's untapped right now because
human nature is such that you want to protect your your job and not really um shake the cart if you
will is definitely out there but there's going to be forces i mean you're just observing yeah having
jumped down the rabbit hole myself trying to teach myself and how am i teaching myself i'm going
online and finding zoomers that are just cracked out building a bunch of these agent flows and skill
markdown files and just highlighting how they're using it to build products and processes. And
it seems like there is a portion of the younger generation, particularly Gen Z, that has really
latched onto this and see it as a way to actually be successful in the economy since they can't get
jobs at regular companies. And I guess that gets to something I think you've been talking about
as well as this sort of changing dynamic in the workforce
and who's actually going to be successful moving forward.
Yeah, I mean, definitely.
I think, you know, a good like corollary example of this would be like,
you know, Robinhood came out and they recognized like off of order flow
and different things, we can actually run a profitable brokerage.
And because of that, we're going to not charge any commissions on equity trades.
And Schwab and everybody's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
whoa, this is our cash cow. We could do it too and make money off of it, but they weren't going
to rush to do it. Eventually, they had to do it, but they didn't rush to do it. And I think that's
a little bit of the situation with AI right now is people are recognizing, corporations are
recognizing with AI, I could basically get rid of commissions in this analogy, but they don't
want to do it too quick because it's, you know, either the individual's bread or butter or the
corporation's bread and butter. And so there's a lot of slow playing going on. But eventually,
market forces went out and eventually Schwab and all the big ones went to zero commissions on
equities. And so that's what's going on with AI right now. Everybody knows that this potential is
out there. It's just not happening because there are forces at play that incentivize slow rolling.
Yeah, no, it's funny. I've been watching like one of the strategies is kids will just go out,
download a massive unicorn B2B SaaS app or something like that and just screen record
the UX flow and go in and do everything they can and feed it to Claude and say, all right,
I want you to make this app for me, and I'm just going to go out there and undercut the B2B SaaS company while Claude builds this for me in a few days.
It's insane what's happening out there right now.
It's insane.
I mean, all this, the visual stuff, the Nano Banana, the coding.
I mean, Claude Code, I mean, to be honest with you, like if I could invest in either Anthropic or OpenAI right now, I'd do Anthropic probably, you know.
I think OpenAI is cut.
it yeah and i'm a little nervous about them and that's probably another risk out there is that i
almost i think i said in one of my posts maybe brad uh gessner when uh aldman said you want to
sell your shares right now like maybe he should have said yes because like i mean these hyperscalers
are a little bit like and this is part of like where i think the market's seeing is like it's
now time for AI is helping out. We've got this commodity bull run going on. We've got all this
other stuff going on. And then we're starting to see this disseminate out this type of margin
increasing potential for the other 493 different areas of the global economy. And some of these
massive hyperscalers have not been doing too well. I actually think they're going to have a good year
because a lot of them are not at good places in the charts. Like Meta is not at a good place in
the charts as it comes into the year. Microsoft isn't. And so I think that in a way, because of
where they're starting position, the Mag 7 is probably going to outperform the SPY this year.
But to me, that's not where the beta is. That's not where the big gains are going to be. It's not
in buying Meta or Microsoft, although I think they're going to have great years because of how
they're coming into the year. I think there's these other plays out there. I mentioned GSI Tech,
But that's a small one. But I think when you look at some of the bigger companies like a Capital One Financial, one of their biggest cost items is call centers for customer service.
Like, are they ever going to need to hire anybody again for customer service? And that's one of their biggest expenses.
I mean, these things are going to really improve profit margins.
So, I mean, all this stuff that's out there, like I said, I think it's just it could be happening quicker if there was enough compute, enough power and not this organizational speed bumps and individual speed bumps.
And it's just it's going to play out and it's going to be, I think, very beneficial in the long run.
But it seems to be now playing out at pretty good speed, actually.
Speed the market likes.
After some technical difficulties you may notice by Mel new headphones here beautiful headphones No but I think I uh i was just asking it seems like we in this inflection point where you have all these things intersecting at once whether it the reshuffling of the geopolitical order bitcoin
rising even though it had a bad year ai really taking off and feels like we'll be in a
transitionary period for at least the next two to three years but like what's it look like
like after that? What does the economy look like after that? And I think you've been very optimistic
in the past and I'm becoming more optimistic personally by the day. I think it's going to
look really good on the other side of all this if we can thread these needles. Yeah, I mean, it's
definitely sometimes kind of hard to see the light before the dawn. And I think a lot of times when
you kind of look out on that horizon and you see all of the massive issues that are out there.
And you can make a very competitive narrative, a very compelling case for why,
you know, market should collapse or, you know, the banking system can no longer continue the way it is.
But one thing I've noticed over the last 25 years is you've always been able to make that case.
You were able to make that case in 2000. You were able to make that case in 2009.
You were able to make that case in 2020.
There's always this kind of impending doom, this wall of worry kind of hanging over markets.
And then you take a step back and you say, well, what is this all?
Is it really just kind of a human construct or is there actually some sort of external
constraint on it?
And there's not really an external constraint.
There's not anybody that says the Federal Reserve can't hold $15 trillion on their balance sheet. There's not anybody that's saying you can't issue massive stimulus checks to get the economy going when there's a global pandemic.
Like there are these exits and I think there's a great tendency to underestimate the ability of policymakers to keep this shell game going.
And all the incentives for everybody pretty much are to keep the shell game going.
Like, is it in China's interest for the United States to have a financial collapse?
Some people might say, yes, it is.
But actually it's not.
like is it is it in the u.s interest for china to collapse some people might say yeah that would be
great you know but what happens then you know who take like right now they're a known entity
they're reasonable they have they have a nuclear arsenal do we really want them to collapse and
have everything go into the hands of some madman i mean no like actually the whole balance of power
and global status quo right now i think it's something we can live with we can live with three
great powers. We can live with the situation we're in. And so I think everybody's incentivized
to just keep this thing going. And if every single global power is incentivized to keep this thing
going, why do you think it's all going to collapse? That's my question. The debt spiral.
The debt spiral. It's here. Yeah, the debt spiral. Yeah, we're heading to a debt spiral,
and nobody's going to be able to get us out of it. And they're not going to get together at Basel,
Switzerland at the Bank for International Settlements and all the central bankers are
going to be like, that's not going to happen. They're not going to get together and figure
something out. And then on a Sunday night, come out with this massive stimulus plan that all of a
sudden, you know, we've got the biggest bazooka you've ever seen to buy corporate debt. Like,
of course, that's going to happen. And so why do you think if all those kind of band-aids in the
past works to create a band-aid solution and then keep the status quo going, why do you think that
now this time is going to be different? This is the time when the band-aid solutions aren't going
to work. This is the time when it's really going to all come tumbling down. And I think the smart
bet is to bet that if we do get into another one of those situations, that the band-aid solution
they come up with will work for at least another four or five, eight years, and then they'll come
up with another band-aid solution the next time there's another risk of system collapse.
What do you say to people looking at gold and silver prices right now,
saying that there's a margin call in the paper markets and the banks are in trouble?
Yeah, I think they're going to have a great year. I mean, I love precious metals.
I think the dollar, like I've said, I think the whole dollarization world and everybody buys
Treasury. I think all that is done. And I think the assumption that a lot of people make is if
it's done, it's going to lead to this collapse. And I don't see that. But I think we're moving
to a new world order. We're moving to a non-rules-based order, a multipolar world,
something more akin to, say, 1900 than 2000. We're moving to a situation which, if you look
at 1900, it was a gold-based order. And I do think that gold is the central monetary asset
of the future as it was the central monetary asset of the past. That doesn't mean that Bitcoin
can't play a role at some point in the future. But I think at this point, and I've made this
point before because I know there are certain people that like to say Bitcoin is superior to
gold in every way. And I've always maintained there are aspects of gold that are superior to
Bitcoin. There are aspects of Bitcoin superior to gold. One of the biggest superior aspects to gold
is if you look at things through a central bank perspective is its physicality its ability to be
melted down no no ledger no no history of transactions you can get bars from somewhere
melted down create new bars nobody knows where you got it where like there are certain aspects
of gold that are benefits and superior to bitcoin for central banks and different um
large purchasers of gold. And that's why they like gold. But could they expand to silver?
Could they expand to Bitcoin? Certainly. And I think what Bitcoin offers is right now we have
this situation, and I think it was Jordy Visser talking about this in his latest video,
where the largest holders of wealth right now are still that baby boomer older generation.
And once that wealth transfer begins to happen, the younger generations are much more comfortable with digital assets and they'll be much more willing to look at Bitcoin in that fashion. It's not happened yet. I think in a sense, I think Bitcoin is going through a awkward puberty right now that, you know, when it was born, it had this great growth and it was sustainable.
And then like a person when you hit puberty you might have a growth spurt you might have a little year where you don do much and you know all these things that happen And with Bitcoin right now is it still trying to find out exactly who it is Okay it not exactly digital gold It not exactly the NASDAQ What is it I think it becoming
its own asset class. And that's a maturation process that is probably going to finish up at
the end of the decade. And by the time that happens, I think financial people in the TradFi
world will be much more comfortable with what Bitcoin is. And it becomes even more and more,
you know, embedded into the way that the economy works. And it's, this is, this is very bullish.
It's, it's, it's a $1.8 trillion market cap right now. I mean, all these things are so bullish
longer term, but that doesn't mean that every year it's going to go at 50%, you know, and,
and I think that doesn't mean it's not going to be the best performing asset over the next five
or 10 years. I think it will be, but I think it's a matter of this maturation process and people
figuring out what is it. And I think it's a liquidity correlated asset. And I think the
fact that it's not completely correlated with gold or the NASDAQ or the bond market is huge
because anybody that puts together portfolios knows the most important asset in that portfolio
is the one that's least correlated to the other assets. And if Bitcoin can carve out a path where
it's got its own correlations.
I mean, there's no reason not to put it in every portfolio in the world.
And if you do that, it goes from $1.8 trillion to $18 trillion pretty quickly.
Well, that's the point I was going to make, too.
The digital gold meme is good.
Bitcoin's scarce, divisible, fungible, all that, and certainly has those properties of gold.
But in terms of digital gold and the aspect of it being used as a central bank or nation-state reserve asset,
at scale i don't think it has liquidity profile quite yet 1.88 trillion is certainly nothing to
scoff at but when you're talking about reserves at that level you need tens of trillions hundreds
of trillions eventually so we're to your point going to that puberty stage where we got to make
that order of magnitude jump to the next liquidity stage and if you look at that and you think okay
neutral reserve assets need to have that type of a liquidity profile. I think that's why you're
seeing gold do what it is. Like it needs an even bigger liquidity profile. In my book, Quaz,
basically gold and silver come in as neutral reserve assets into the central banking system
in 2027, once quantum AI kind of takes over the markets. And the estimates in my fictional book
of where gold needed to be to begin that was $25,000. Just looking at how much wealth is there
in the world, I estimated a quadrillion worth of asset. And I said, how much does gold need to be
to account for a quadrillion worth of assets? And I came up with, it needs to be somewhere around
$100,000 an ounce. I said, that's just too big of a leap. And in my book, the government offers
There's a program where they start buying gold and they offer 25,000 an ounce because they know that it needs to go to like 100.
I think the liquidity that's needed for a neutral reserve asset is so huge that people are underestimating what gold can go to.
I think that Bitcoin, as it begins to play a role in this, you know, non-cash flow related
neutral asset game, it doesn't need to, like, it's still relatively small. I mean,
NVIDIA's market cap is more than twice as much of all the Bitcoin in the world. Like,
it needs to get a lot bigger than it is. It will. But I think, like I said, it's in a puberty stage
right now. It's growing and it's going to have a growth spurt at some point. And when it does,
it's going to skyrocket to five, 10 trillion. And people are going to be like, oh, wow, I need that.
Like this is, I think, all going to happen. It's just not necessarily happening out as fast or as
quickly as people hoped. And all I have to do is look no further than that bar of silver on my desk
and say I bought that thing 20 years ago for $11 an ounce it was at. I watched it skyrocket to
$50 an ounce in 2011. And then I watched it go right back to $11 an ounce in 2020. And now it's
at $80. Assets don't always move at the rates that we want them to. And I'm sure everybody would
love to see Bitcoin go to $500,000 next year, but I just don't think that's going to happen.
All right. We've covered a lot. What haven't we covered in preparation for 2026 that you think
people should be on the lookout for? I think we covered it all. I mean, I think my main thing is
like, don't be too bearish now because of the Supreme Court thing and the geopolitical stuff.
Because the time to make money is when there's that wall of worry. Once everybody, if they hit
that point, like they did this past year, Rick Reader came out, best investment environment ever.
Paul Tudor Jones, we're in the beginning stages of a bubble. This is when once those people started
coming out and people believed the market could do nothing but go up, that's when it went down.
And I think people right now, they're out there saying, well, we think the market could have a
rough first half and all that. This is probably the time to get it. And in the summer and early
fall, there'll probably be a point where everybody thinks this can't end. And hopefully we'll be on
together and I'll refer them to here and I'll say, I'm taking profits now because the time to buy was
in January, not in July. Oh yeah. Well, I can't wait for that. Mel, congrats on a very good 2025.
Not perfect, but very good. And here's to a very good 2026. It's always fun doing these with you.
Yes, I appreciate it. And sorry for the technical difficulties, but always a great time and best to you and yours and to everybody that listens. I know I'm a little bit out there sometimes, especially with my ex posts and different things. But, you know, I just do this because I love to share it. I trade, I invest. I don't have a newsletter or research arm.
I just think that it's a great opportunity to actually develop my views when I have to present them to others and also a good way to keep me humble, keep me on track.
And so I really appreciate the opportunity.
Well, thank you for doing what you do.
I've grown to love these conversations more and more as we continue to have more of them.
So we'll probably meet beginning of Q2, catch up, see where we are, and then go on from there.
That was perfect.
Alright, peace and love, freaks.