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Our 2024 Market Predictions
341 Plays11 months ago
In this episode, Matt and Austin share their predictions on where BTC and ETH price will top, whether the Fed will reduce rates (and if so, when), plus they share three big predictions for major events in 2024.
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Transcript
Return and Forecasts for 2024
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Decrypting Crypto Podcast. It's December 7th, 2023. And after a brief hiatus, after the holidays, we are back. And we're back with a slightly special episode, one that we may live to regret. We are going to be sharing our price predictions along with
00:00:33
Speaker
three predictions each for what we think are going to be some of the major events, outcomes of 2024.
Holiday Reflections and Humor
00:00:41
Speaker
We've typically, Austin, steered away from doing this kind of thing, but call me bullish, but I'm just caught up all in it right now. I'm excited. I feel like we need to put a stick in the ground and we can come back next year and see how wrong we were and we can have other people mock us as if that didn't happen enough already.
00:01:04
Speaker
Oh, man, sign me up, Matt. Well, how are you doing? It's been a while. We've had a couple of weeks out. You have a, I mean, Thanksgiving probably feels like a lifetime ago already. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I skipped Thanksgiving this year and went to the Caribbean, so. Yeah. I was still very thankful, though, and that's what matters, right?
00:01:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's good to be back, Matt. Holidays are kicking off, man. Did you go do some sightseeing of the old FTX?
00:01:39
Speaker
Oh, I didn't tell you. I actually bought the villa. Yeah. And I bought the FTX building and everything. I was going down to visit my property. That's amazing. I will take Suzu's super yacht and I'll come and visit you. That's wonderful. Yeah. Come on down.
Crypto Price Predictions for 2024
00:01:57
Speaker
And in a couple of years we can find ourselves being pursued by Interpol. Oh, we can only hope. We can only hope. Well, on that note, should we dive straight in?
00:02:18
Speaker
This is the moment where we potentially redeem all of our previous sins or we further exacerbate the lack of credibility that we have, where we take a moment to give a prediction for what we think BTC and ETH, the top price that it will hit in 2024. Austin and I have individually,
00:02:33
Speaker
Let's do it.
00:02:44
Speaker
put together some predictions, we'll share them and we'll talk through it. Why don't we start with Bitcoin? A few things going on with Bitcoin this year. You want to share, where did you net out as your price peak for 2024?
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I will tell you, I don't think too much about price peaks and annual predictions and things like that for BTC values. But I so this is more a proxy of kind of just how I think next year is going to go in general, if that makes sense. I know that there are a lot of predictions that Bitcoin could break 100K. I think that would be super interesting. I'm more at the 70K mark. The reason for that is I think that there are going to be externalities
00:03:33
Speaker
next year that will impact Bitcoin. I think that it's going to be on certainly on a growth trajectory and it's going to have some good rallies. I think once it gets to its all time high, given where where other things in the market are going to be at, it could create some downward pressure on it. So that put me at the 70K mark.
00:03:55
Speaker
It's a beautiful, beautiful price. I'd love it. And maybe we're thinking along the same lines here. If you'd have asked me this question two months ago, I'd probably have a very different response. But yeah, I've put in here 79K. I think we will push past the all-time high of BTC next year. And I think from my side,
00:04:24
Speaker
Something that gets me excited. So what we've seen this year is a glimmer of optimism. It's optimism in the market around one, a potential soft landing in the economy of the US at least.
00:04:43
Speaker
to the prospect of rate reductions next year. The market is aggressively pricing in, I think as close as March for that. And the increased likelihood that the BTC ETF is going
Economic Predictions and Rate Reductions
00:05:05
Speaker
to be approved. Approved, sorry.
00:05:08
Speaker
And I think, you know, with that last piece, the ETF, that has been a catalyst for price pressure. And when we think about news events that drive price, I am a big proponent in general of sell the news, right? Typically, most news in crypto doesn't actually have a structural impact, right? Like positively afterwards. I think about stuff like
00:05:35
Speaker
Airdrops or big partnerships, whatever, right? Airdrops typically will actually go in and create downward pressure, because it's just a flooding supply into the market that most people dump. Partnerships are cool, but when the partnership happens, unless there's something like fundamental that's actually creating buying activity, nothing stretches changed. And that's why I think NFT is a great example of that.
00:06:05
Speaker
The ETF is different and I appreciate that. That's a bit of a cliche. It's different this time, right? But this is a, this is a structural change. It is the moment that this ETF fingers crossed gets approved. Capital will almost immediately be injected into the market. More importantly, directly creating spot demand for BTC.
00:06:30
Speaker
And it's just hard to see how that doesn't positively impact BTC price. Now, do I think it's going to fire up to 79K from there? No, but then there's momentum. We've got the price of the BTC halving that I think is May, right? So I'm estimating that we get the ETF approval in the middle of January.
00:06:55
Speaker
We have a nice rally, maybe things kind of settle a bit. And then we've got the halving happening pretty soon after that. It's just momentum. I don't think the halving would have had that much of an effect if we didn't have the ETF or at the level that I think we see. And that's where I feel like, you know, Q2
00:07:12
Speaker
could be just a real, real big quarter. And if, if we see rate reductions come in from the Fed, that's when I think this thing goes to and pushes past all time high.
Macroeconomic Factors Impacting 2024
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think that's really solid rationale. I mean, definitely the ETF is going, I think that's going to have a considerable effect. And then if we can build momentum from there. Yeah, it's definitely in the cards.
00:07:47
Speaker
And what do we think about ETH? So, you know, we've been talking probably the most about Bitcoin since, like, 2017. Like, nothing really ever happened in Bitcoin since, really, like, 2017. And, you know, the whole, like, Bitcoin cash, segwit stuff.
00:08:03
Speaker
that was really of interest you know there's a bunch of stuff that's happened like the taper upgrade but it happened in like the depths of the bear so nobody cared and everything is usually centered around like eth or a another flashy blockchain that comes up and out um what what do we think next year's got in store for eth
00:08:25
Speaker
I think ETH will go up considerably next year, but I think it's going to kind of slow out near its all-time high again. So similar to my prediction for Bitcoin, I think ETH will, I mean, there is some good news on the horizon for ETH. I also think it will benefit from
00:08:46
Speaker
Bitcoin's growth as it generally tends to so just sort of you know The rising tide raises all boats or at least the you know, the boats that are closest to the giant hopefully my boat is No kidding But yeah, I think I'm thinking somewhere around the the $4,500 mark
00:09:08
Speaker
Yeah, that would be great. I mean, the all-time high is like 4,800, I think it is. Let me just check. Yeah, 4,878. That was November, 2021. It went down like 54% from there today. And I'm kind of with you on this. I think that it will...
00:09:33
Speaker
It doesn't have the same catalysts in the first half of the year. I think that BTC does. ETH, I think is, I've kind of put down my prediction as 4,100. I think it doesn't end up hitting into the all-time high territory in 2024. I think 2025 gets super exciting for ETH, which I'll come on to a little bit later as to why I think that is. But, you know,
00:10:02
Speaker
the SEC just delayed BlackRock's first application for the ETH ETF. We've got this, like you say, rising tide effect that comes from BTC. We nearly always see this. When BTC, I think BTC dominance is going to grow in 2024.
00:10:26
Speaker
And typically the way I think this all plays out really is we get back to the classic cycle effect that we see every big cycle. BTC leads, ETH slightly lags, ETH has a massive pump, and then that kind of pulls back and then we see the cycle into the altcoins. And that's when we see the peak frenzy and when altcoins peak,
00:10:53
Speaker
That's when you want to be out and on the sidelines. And then we kind of start again. So I feel like we're kind of aligned here. It's looking a lot rosier than probably me and you both thought when we were starting this year as to what we were expecting for 2020. I know that a lot of our earlier episodes we were kind of saying, look, we're at least a couple of years out. I mean, we were still licking our wounds from FDX at the start of this year, right?
00:11:24
Speaker
Oh yeah, the start of this year was bad. It only was. Now speaking of a rough year, what do you think for next year with regards to the federal funds rate? Well, this is a super important one. This year,
00:11:44
Speaker
I love this on Twitter. Everyone now becomes a macro expert. You know, we had this in there during the pandemic and I think it's been great actually for the conversation and more people to dig deeper into macro. And I don't think that we can understate the importance of central banks in
00:12:11
Speaker
the wider kind of crypto kind of asset class, but also the knock-on effect that this has across pretty much all financial markets. Now, people were talking earlier this year, sorry, in the middle of this year, we would see a rate decrease before the end of this year. I did not think that. And actually,
00:12:31
Speaker
Up until recently, my take was that it was touch and go on whether we would even see an interest rate reduction from the Fed next year. There's two kind of camps, right, before we kind of even answer the question of whether we think that there's going to be rate reductions.
00:12:53
Speaker
There's two reasons why the Fed would reduce rates. I think we can probably both agree that inflation is probably not gonna just break out, right? It feels like inflation, we've by and large got a handle on it. And more of the conversation now is about, has the Fed gone too far? And will there be a major recession? I think there's two reasons why the Fed would reduce rates next year.
00:13:23
Speaker
One, which is the worst case scenario, is that we hit a hard landing. It's a big recession. The Fed realizes that they overdid it and they have to aggressively reduce rates. Sounds great when you're like, oh, aggressively reduced rates. Wonderful. But if you're in max recession,
00:13:44
Speaker
growth assets, largely equities, I think also crypto could get hurt with this, will hurt. And I think that's the biggest risk towards having a big breakout year as a big recession. The second reason, which I think is going to be one of the discussions that keeps coming up over the next few months, which reminds me a little bit of the
00:14:08
Speaker
end of the pandemic, is inflation sticky or is it transitory? Remember that whole great kind of like months we had to enjoy the back and forth? Well, I think this is now like, are we going to experience the Fed introducing rate normalization? Where the idea being, the Fed just wants to naturally bring down that rate so that individuals, companies,
00:14:35
Speaker
institutions are not getting squeezed on lending. They want to open up credit markets. They want to make it so that, you know, we're getting back to a reasonable rate and just adjust that down a little bit. You know, how many basis points that that is is nothing. I am in the camp that it will be the Fed will look at like some kind of rate normalization. And so my take care is that I think we will see rate reduction next year.
00:15:03
Speaker
And I actually think the first rate reduction is going to come in May. And I know that's pretty early. I think the market's pricing in March, which I think is way too optimistic. And I think if I were to kind of say, where do I think we'll be at the end of the year? We're at, what, 5.5% now of fund rate? I think we go down a full basis point. Sorry, a full point. So 100 bits.
00:15:29
Speaker
4.5% by the end of the year. So I think that's kind of my take. That might be a bit aggressive, but that's where I think we're at. What about you, Austin?
00:15:41
Speaker
Yeah, so I agree with you. I think that the Fed is going to reduce interest rates next year. In terms of the timing of it, I've really bounced around on this. And I'm just going to say Q3. I think that if it were going to happen in Q2, it would be as late in Q2 as possible. I'm feeling more and more like it's going to start in Q3.
00:16:06
Speaker
And I think that we may see something like a total next year of 100 basis points reduction split over four separate cuts of 25 basis points. So we've got a rate of five and a half percent right now that would get us down to four and a half percent-ish. That's sort of what I would expect. You talk about the rationale for that. Would it be this sort of
00:16:38
Speaker
Like an economic recession that we that the Fed feels that they need to recover from or is it more related to inflation, I think that
00:16:50
Speaker
I'm a little bit bearish next year as to whether we're really going to experience that economic recovery. And I think that the Fed will be under some pressure to reduce rates partway through the year as a result of that. And I'm not convinced that that will
00:17:11
Speaker
have the effect that they will intend it to have when they do. We can get into that when we get into our predictions. But that's kind of how I'm thinking about the Fed rate. I think it's going to be a fascinating year. And I do think the way you sit in the timings of all of this, people I've seen talking about Q1, we get rate reductions, then it'll be party time. My take is, if the Fed are pushing a Q1,
00:17:40
Speaker
Rate reduction it means something's really bad in the economy and i don't think that's part time i don't think it can be overstated like how much that would have especially.
00:17:52
Speaker
the run in equities in particular that, you know, recessions are bad for equities because it really hurts earnings. And the knock on effect that that will be. Could we see a flight into crypto off the back of that? Maybe crazier things have happened. But
Regulation and Political Implications
00:18:11
Speaker
I'm not sure. I think what we will see
00:18:14
Speaker
is I think the FX market's gonna be super interesting because while I feel with a relatively high degree of confidence that the Fed will reduce rates in 2024, like whenever that is, I don't believe that the Bank of England will follow a similar path. I think the UK,
00:18:42
Speaker
may keep rates steady. Now, I will say there's an election year along with the US, right? So that also throws a wrench in the works, so to speak. But if the UK does not reduce rates, that's bullish for sterling, right? Because you want to have pound sterling because you've got a higher bank rate, which means you're going to earn more interest. So it should gain on the dollar. I think that generally speaking, the US economy is probably one of the
00:19:11
Speaker
of the major economies that have experienced high inflation, which is the majority of them, that are most likely to reduce rates, which would signal to me the US dollar weakens. The Euro likely, the European Central Bank is hinting towards rate reductions next year. So yeah, I look at this and I'm like, okay, it's going to be kind of interesting, but typically when the dollar performs really well,
00:19:41
Speaker
it's not always great for crypto. So a weakening dollar should also potentially be a tailwind here as well. So I think macro is going to be really interesting, but now we've kind of wrapped up that piece. Why don't we dive into our three kind of high level predictions for next year? Why don't you kick us off, Austin?
00:20:11
Speaker
I think we're going to experience some additional crypto regulation crackdown. I know that's not some groundbreaking prediction, but we're definitely I think that that train and trend is going to continue. I think CZ is going to have a rough year. But I also think that Gensler will probably have a rough year and continue to come under additional pressure for the the aggressive
00:20:37
Speaker
and opaque approach that has been taken to crypto regulation, especially considering that next year is going to be one of political turmoil. And Gensler will be no exception to that. So how do you think that plays out in the context of the US election? Yeah. Do you think crypto will be a theme? I think, you know, we saw Elizabeth Warren and Jimmy Diamond, you know, he's always up to his ultra expert kind of saying, you know, that
00:21:05
Speaker
Crypto is a huge threat. They'd kill it if they could.
Economic Growth and Recovery Skepticism
00:21:08
Speaker
Feels like they're gearing up a narrative, which is usually to take the attention away to something else. But what's your take on that? For sure. I think that.
00:21:22
Speaker
the US establishment doesn't like crypto until they're in control of it. And so you're going to continue to hear that from people like Elizabeth Warren and Jamie Diamond and establishment Republicans and most Democrats. Of course, there are exceptions.
00:21:47
Speaker
um i also think that gensler is starting to come under pretty direct attack from uh maybe the anti-establishment wing of the republican party like vivek for example has directly called him out um i don't think vivek is gonna win or anything like that but i do think that he's a mag he's become a magnet and a force
00:22:10
Speaker
in US politics and definitely is getting people to think about things that maybe they weren't thinking about before. So I could see that even if the establishment prevails or if Democrats win or whatever it may be, still may not spell well for Gensler. I think that he's on some shaky ground here. I completely agree with you there. You mentioned as well CZ having a rough year.
00:22:40
Speaker
It's worth remembering, he's pleaded guilty, he's due for sentencing personally in, I think it's the 23rd, 24th of February, something like that next year. He faces up to 18 months in prison, which to be honest,
00:22:54
Speaker
considering the charges that he's been going to, right? You know, not reporting FinCEN, like violations or red flags. Whew, 18 months. That's, it's looking pretty good, especially if you're Sam Bankman freed and looking at that, you're thinking, damn, that guy got off pretty nice. So yeah, I don't agree with you. I'll take one of my predictions. So my prediction,
00:23:23
Speaker
is that we escape a US recession.
00:23:27
Speaker
Next year, I'm team soft landing now. My prediction at the start of last year was that we have the mother of all recessions. So quite the turnaround from me. I'll call that out. And I think that equities have the mother of all rallies in Q2, Q3. And I think it's going to be led by tech.
00:23:55
Speaker
the crowd that don't believe Nvidia and Co. can go any higher are going to be left in amazement as to what happens in Q2, Q3. I think if we see, as I have kind of suggested, a reduction in interest rates and we escape a recession, equities pump led by tech. And I think the AI kind of
00:24:20
Speaker
goes crazy. I will point out I don't have exposure there, but that's my first prediction is that's going to happen. It's going to happen pretty well. I would love to see that happen. Yeah, it's been a while since I've even
00:24:39
Speaker
I mean, I just avoid looking at equities. I mean, we've started having like good, nice pockets here and there, but I'm largely, I think I only just got out of being underwater for the first time in quite some time on my equities portfolio. So it would be welcome, that's for sure.
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah. I'm a little bit on the other side of the fence as far as the economy goes. My prediction there would be, I don't think that we're going to have a hard landing. I also don't think that the soft landing that was promised is really still on the table. I think we're going to have a slow move. I saw someone holding back being interviewed. It's actually
00:25:20
Speaker
I can't remember if it was BMP Parabas or someone like that, and they were like, we're expecting a soft-ish landing. I feel like this is it. That's become soft-ish. Nice. Oh, man. Yeah, so I don't think that economic recovery is going to happen next year, though I certainly think that there will be attempts at it.
00:25:41
Speaker
And I think that the Fed reducing rates will be one of those attempts, but I think that the real estate market is going to continue to struggle obviously commercial real estate has been, you know, on the fritz for some time if not full on collapsing when you depending on how you slice the market now.
00:26:00
Speaker
you know, single family homes all across the US are struggling with significant reductions in major metros. I also think that in Q1, we could see some pops of CPI that could, could spook folks. Like I'm not fully convinced that inflation is perfectly under control. Although I do think that like generally it's, it's stabilized, but I think that there could be some news.
00:26:28
Speaker
coming out about inflation and CPI pops early next year. Is there any part of CPI in particular that you think might drive that? We're talking more like goods or we think in energy or just in general. I think that the way that I would put it is that it could potentially work through areas that it hasn't worked through yet, if that makes sense.
00:26:55
Speaker
So I also think that CPI is a fundamentally flawed measure. So you could even get some bad data in there. That could be the cause of a pop. But the main point here is that I'm not fully convinced that we're not going to have some volatility in CPI early next year. I also think that layoffs,
00:27:24
Speaker
could continue to spread to other industries that they haven't hit yet. I agree with that.
00:27:32
Speaker
Yeah. That's not going to be a great story. Like, especially to, to sort of the traditional industry, like, you know, layoffs have obviously already really harshly worked their way through tech, but less so to the sort of traditional facets of the economy. Um, when it starts to hit there, I think we'll see a new round of that in tech, you know, we had, was it Spotify announcing 1400, uh, layoffs yesterday. I do think that Q1.
00:28:03
Speaker
will be a lot of tech layoffs with, if you're in tech and you're anticipating that that isn't going to be a soft landing,
00:28:15
Speaker
You know, you're probably, you're probably saying, hmm, maybe we should be cutting back here, assuming, you know, that you're, you're already operating in a, either like negative EBITR, or in a non profitable in general, like place.
00:28:33
Speaker
We will definitely see this. And I looked at Spotify, I think it was yesterday, yesterday before, when they announced the layoffs, the stock price popped. It's what investors are calling for. Yeah, it really is. And yeah, I'm with you on the tech layoffs as well. I think that's likely to tick up again next year. But I don't think it's going to be so tech focused, which actually, that is bad news.
00:29:02
Speaker
Oh, you have much bigger numbers, right? Yeah, yeah. I also think that these, you know, the wars that the horrific wars that we're seeing across the world in Europe, in the Middle East, potentially some stuff kicking up in South America, who knows what's going to happen with China and Taiwan. I know that that's been a boogeyman for a long time, but nevertheless, I think that these are going to continue to be a problem. I also think that
00:29:31
Speaker
there's likely going to be some social unrest and chaos in the Western world, definitely in the United States. It's an election year next year. And when there is social unrest and chaos in the United States, it tends to spread all throughout the Western world because of the internet and media and this dispersal of information and culture.
00:29:57
Speaker
So all of this is to say, I think that these factors are going to reduce the likelihood that we have a true economic recovery next year. I think that the Fed is going to cut rates. But as I hinted at earlier, I don't think that that is going to lead to an economic recovery.
Future of Real-World Asset Protocols
00:30:19
Speaker
I think it may even be a reaction to some of these things.
00:30:25
Speaker
With that said, likely what that means is that there will be some good opportunities to purchase assets, whether that be hard assets,
00:30:33
Speaker
or assets like Bitcoin. I think that actually this could, depending on how all of this unfolds, it could be a bullish thing for Bitcoin as folks look to put their money into assets or into alternative monetary systems. Well, I'm not sure if you followed this this week. I think gold hit an all time high. It's retraced now. And I think that was
00:31:02
Speaker
from what I understand, there were murmurs of news that additional conflict, I believe with Russia, were kind of on the horizon with the US. So it just shows the fragility in some of this and how it can tip over into assets. One thing that's kind of left me a little bit perplexed in
00:31:28
Speaker
December time, end of November, is oil. Oil had been just on this massive upward trajectory for obvious reasons. We saw that off the back of the Israel, the
00:31:46
Speaker
war with Hamas, and oil and Brent crude kind of pushing up to kind of the $90 a barrel mark. Most people, myself included, thinking that was going to hit up to $100 plus barrels max paying for consumers going into the peak of winter.
00:32:04
Speaker
and you know it's it's dropped down something like 73, 74 dollars on Brant Crude and OPEC just met they said they were going to kind of pull back supply and the market shrugged it off and kind of said no we don't believe it you know it's just i'd feel like there's just stuff that's on the precipice of just causing chaos so yeah i can see how a lot of this plays out
00:32:29
Speaker
All right, my last two. So I'll cover these two together and then we can jump into your last one, Austin. So I think real world asset protocols, they're being hyped up a little bit this year. I think it's going to be a major, if not the major crypto narrative in the second half of 2024. And I think this kicks off a new wave of excitement in DeFi, like a lot
00:32:55
Speaker
When I think about what are some of the stuff that's been really built during this kind of crypto winter, a lot of where I've been spending my time and speaking to founders and really playing around myself as being in the real world asset space, tokenized bonds, treasuries, real estate, you know, even
00:33:18
Speaker
like physical collectibles which I'm albeit slightly less bullish on but I think it's
US Presidential Election Speculation
00:33:25
Speaker
interesting in itself like even accounts payables we saw tokenized debt for claims bankruptcy claims on FTX you know so it's all this kind of stuff I think we're going to see a lot of super interesting protocols I won't go into detail on like the protocols I like but maybe that's a different show
00:33:43
Speaker
So I think that's going to be a huge one. I think that will be the leading charge of when we rotate into alts, which I do think will happen next year. And then my big one, honestly, that I think will be a huge moment next year.
00:33:59
Speaker
is I think in Q4, 2024, that we get the ETH spot ETF approved. I would love it to happen earlier than that, but I think it even happening in 2024 is optimistic, but I think it happens in Q4. And I think that just sends us into overdrive going into 2025 where we see ETH hit all time highs. So they're my big ones. Yeah, awesome. Some exciting things ahead there.
00:34:28
Speaker
Oh, you want some more excitement and entertainment. I'll serve some up to you, Matt. My last and final prediction is that Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump will be the US presidential candidates in 2024.
00:34:43
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, so why do I think this, um, I, I just don't think that it's likely that, that Joe Biden will be the candidate that the Democrats will want to run. And that is assuming that he even can run by that time. Obviously he's had, this is a real contrarian take. Uh, yeah. Yeah. You think, you think, uh, a man from California has enough support?
00:35:09
Speaker
You know, I think that it can be drummed up. I think that that's part of the reason why he was doing, why he did the debate with Ron DeSantis. I think it's why he recently vetoed several bills in California that would have been popular in California, but would have been very unpopular.
00:35:29
Speaker
on the national stage. I think he's exactly the type of politician. He's a brilliant politician. I don't know how familiar you are with him. I'll be honest. I mean, I know at a surface level really some of the work he's done as governor of California, but not to any level of degree as I would for some of the other candidates.
00:35:51
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, watch a couple videos of him speaking. He's an excellent speaker. There was one interview that he did recently where he was asked why he's doing the debate with Ron DeSantis and his answer was incredible. I mean, he leveled Ron DeSantis with his answer.
00:36:09
Speaker
Um, so yeah, excellent speaker. I also think that, um, you know, he's one of, of a handful of folks that the Democrats have that could really give Trump a run for his money. If you look at the national polls right now, they have Trump winning over Biden. Um, I think that Biden would have a really hard time in, in debates with Trump. Um, and Gavin, he might fall, he might fall asleep or fall over.
00:36:38
Speaker
That's yeah, I mean, it's sad, but I think that's, you know, that's that's kind of where we're at there. And I also think that they can't do the same thing that they did in 2020 and kind of hide him away. I don't think that that will go over quite so well this time around, because now he has a little bit more of a track record and you even see, you know, lifelong Democrats starting to say that they're
00:37:06
Speaker
turning on him, which is a bizarre thing to see. Even celebrities that were very, very anti-Trump saying, I might consider it. And I have to imagine that the Democrats are scared. And so I think that either Gavin Newsom or
00:37:26
Speaker
you know, some somebody else. I think they're going to try to shoehorn in and to Joe Biden's
Reflections and Optimism for 2024
00:37:33
Speaker
place. I think it's going to be a difficult thing to do. Don't get me wrong. I think it will be very awkward, especially with Kamala Harris sitting there. Right. That was going to be my question is like, what about Kamala and all this? You know, if I were going to make a prediction, I think Sleepy Joe gets another term. And my my main rationale behind that is that
00:37:54
Speaker
I don't buy a lot of this polling around Donald Trump, to be completely honest. I think Trump is a weaker candidate now than he was actually in the last election run. I think there's some of the staff, for his existing base,
00:38:17
Speaker
A large chunk of those are not going to care about all of the legal battles and stuff like that. I think people on the edge, it's enough to put them off. And I think with all of the turmoil that we've been kind of facing over the past kind of few years,
00:38:30
Speaker
I kind of, I wonder if what people want is just a little bit of stability. I could be completely off on that. And I think maybe, you know, if there was a stronger candidate than Trump, someone that was just like new, fresh energy that, and I don't think the Republicans have anything close to that, right? Otherwise Trump would never be in the frame. I mean, it's kind of crazy to think that Trump is likely going to be the US presidential candidate after the last election campaign, right? And,
00:38:59
Speaker
It really shows the state of affairs, I think, in the Republican party at this point, in terms of the caliber of other candidates. So I just think Joe can kind of get in there. But yeah, with Kamala, that would have been my natural, if Joe doesn't run, that's who's running. The interest to get your... Well, I think that's what's going to be awkward for the Democrats is that I think the Democrats don't want Kamala.
00:39:23
Speaker
Um, but I, and, and also Kamala is incredibly unpopular on the national stage. Um, so that, that would be tough for them, but I, how they come up with the excuse for putting a white, another white guy in front of her. I mean, good luck, you know, this is America.
00:39:44
Speaker
But you know, it's interesting. I hear what you're saying with ignoring the polling. I mean, this stuff has been inaccurate time and time again, right? So I think that's a good take. At the same time, I can't ignore the fact that the more
00:39:57
Speaker
that the criminal prosecutions and lawsuits have come after Trump, the more he's grown in the polls, it's actually created a tailwind for him. It's wild really, isn't it? When you think about it logically.
00:40:13
Speaker
Well, I mean, Americans love an underdog. And I think there's a pretty broad perception that this is a political persecution that's happening. I'm not saying that the whole country feels that way or that there's any consensus on it. I'm saying that's what the tailwind is. The more that people see so, so much coalescing around attacking Trump from so many different institutions and things like that, the more that he may gain some sympathy. I mean, Americans love an underdog story, not to say
00:40:43
Speaker
Trump is an underdog. But you know, it can be painted that way, right? Yeah, he'll make exactly the underdog. Yeah. And that's his that's position. Yeah, you know, if I were to take the other side of the of my previous take, I look at
00:40:57
Speaker
to one of your previous points, right? Lots of social unrest and chaos. There is a lot of highly contentious topics that big, bold, precious statements and contrarian opinions can be formed around, you know, like the Israel situation, Russia. I'm waiting for the moment of, I guess, we're seeing this in some countries in Europe where people are saying,
00:41:25
Speaker
Should we still be funding this? This is an hour of war, right? You know, we're all struggling domestically. I feel like that narrative starts to appear in the race. Oh, yeah. That's a very, very popular narrative in the US right now, the anti-war narrative. Yeah. You also have the border crisis. And by the way, both of those issues are issues where Donald Trump's policies have been vindicated.
00:41:53
Speaker
Um, and so I, you know, like Trump was like super, super big on the border. And then now we have a border crisis. Like, wow, that's an easy one for him. He was the only president in modern American history to not get us into wars. In fact, to create historic Middle East peace deals. I mean, wow, that fell right into his hands. Uh, so.
00:42:15
Speaker
I think that it's tough. I think that the Republicans do have some strong candidates. I've seen a lot of Democrat interests early on in Nikki Haley. That's kind of petered off a little bit. A lot of interest, especially from Silicon Valley, of course, in Vivek. And if you look at Vivek, he's like a more polished and palatable Trump. But I don't think he's totally palatable to Trump's base.
00:42:45
Speaker
I was just going to say, can he capture the Trump base? And I think that's, you know, if there was a vacuum, right, of Trump, like, yeah, I could cut and maybe see the argument for Vivek, but I just, I think he just, he can't.
00:43:03
Speaker
His battle is winning, you know, the Republicans versus kind of getting kind of the swing voters. I think he will probably do a good job of that. It's just getting that Trump base away is, I guess it's the kind of albatross that's kind of hanging over the next, I guess, to a certain extent of the Republican party in many ways.
00:43:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's so true. I mean, I think if Trump were to just like f off and endorse somebody, you know, it may be maybe it would be possible, but he's not doing that. So, you know, here's where we are. So we'll see what happens in in 2024. I think it's going to be a wild year, man. I mean, yeah, if
00:43:43
Speaker
I feel optimistic, though. You know, we were sat in December time, January time, and we were kind of we were very downbeat about the process. This year was really has actually surpassed my expectations in in many ways, actually, of where I thought this would all play out. And I'm not saying it's been a good year by any stretch of the imagination.
00:44:09
Speaker
But I think from a asset appreciation across many different asset classes, a lot more positive. And, you know, we've obviously talked about the fight against inflation. I feel like that fight has went a lot better than I thought it would have. Let's just say so.
00:44:33
Speaker
I'm feeling next year, there's going to be a lot of craziness. I feel like every year we have a Black Swan event, so we have the SVP crash and the retail banking crisis, which you forget was this year. It wasn't even that long ago. It feels like years ago already now.
00:44:51
Speaker
The one penny that feels like it hasn't dropped this year that we probably, I seem to remember us talking a little bit about is the housing market. And I am firmly with your prediction that we're going to get Max Payne real estate market next year. So we'll see how that all plays out. But
00:45:09
Speaker
This has been fun. We should do this more often. Let's check in on how we're trending on some of these predictions as we go through the year. We'll wrap things up now because I feel like we're rambling off into the tangents of U.S. politics at this point.
00:45:28
Speaker
And yeah, we'll follow up. And Austin, I don't know about you, but I can't wait for a 70k plus BTC. So, you know. Oh yeah, man. See you there, Matt.
00:46:00
Speaker
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