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00:00:01
The Golden Bull
200 Plays1 month ago
After a couple of months off, we're back! We dig into everything you've missed and share our thoughts on how you can play the next few months. Could this be the beginning of a golden era of crypto?
Recommended![CBDCs: The [Dark] Future of Money (Part 2 of 2) image](https://media.zencastr.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=112,quality=85/image-files/61fc0461fb20e00040aeb09e/5b9f1396-2a8e-418d-82a0-30fd00969266.jpg)
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Goals
00:00:11
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Decrypting Crypto Podcast. It's November 21st, 2024, and this is off Jane, your weekly recap of the biggest news in the crypto space. It's been quite a while. We took a little break. We decided, you know what?
Bitcoin and Election Predictions
00:00:30
Speaker
I'm not getting back behind this microphone until we're getting close to 100K. And Austin, we're back, baby. we're back We ran it back. It's turbocharged. 100K might even happen while we're recording. What a time to be alive. Matt, didn't you predict 100K by Friday?
00:00:48
Speaker
i I did. I did predict i didn't mention Witch Friday, I will say. But, you know, there is a prediction there. So maybe maybe I'll be correct. it It'll be one correct ah prediction out of hundreds of incorrect. So, you know, well to take from that what you think. How you been?
00:01:11
Speaker
I've been good, been running. A lot has happened here in the US, as we all know, over the course of the last couple of weeks. Plus, I mean, we're coming up on the end of the year. It's an exciting time. We've got a big 2025 ahead of us, I think, for this space, which we're certainly going to dig into here. um and Speaking of predictions, I do recall at the start of the year, that one of my predictions is that Biden wouldn't be the nominee. And I think that was a very good prediction. That was a very good prediction. I think nested in that was a prediction that the reason was because Trump was on track to win. um And I had predicted that actually Gavin Newsom would be the nominee yeah instead of Kamala Harris, because I thought that she had literally no path to victory, extremely unlikable.
00:02:04
Speaker
Candidate um and you know now we see the the outcome of that so interesting to see like how far um We've we've come and things have changed since the beginning of the year I think this has it goes without saying this has extreme implications For the crypto space. Oh, yeah, I mean
00:02:27
Speaker
I mean, this this is what we're going to talk about ah in the episode today. I think just to set the scene is a quick recap on some of the stuff, where we are today. And then more importantly, what we think this new administration means for crypto. And I think for everyone listening, how, how like we'll share our thoughts on how we would kind of be thinking about positioning ourselves in this market and where we think there's going to be interesting opportunities. And I agree with you, Austin. I mean, first of all,
00:02:57
Speaker
I think you may get all of your prediction correct, maybe by the next election in in Gavin Newsom. It wouldn't surprise me if he was the eventual next runner, but um I don't really know of.
00:03:14
Speaker
many people at all that actually predicted the way in which Trump would win in terms of the the the the size margin when we were coming in the run up. I was in ah SF during the election. And as we were coming up to election day, I was thinking, I thought for a while that I know we talked about this, that Trump was going to ah was going to clinch it, especially around the time after the assassination attempt, it felt like a lock in.
00:03:43
Speaker
By the time we got to the election day, I was like, man, I think Kamala might pip this now, actually. ah And either way, I was like, this is going to be one of the tightest races in in history. Not even close. Clean sweep, popular vote. I mean, it was it was a complete wipeout. And with that,
00:04:04
Speaker
um And I think what we can do in this is the politics of Trump and Harris have been taught to death. I think we just park even like how we feel about either of these candidates and talk more about the implications of of this on macro market, what we think it's ah what where we think this is going to kind of go clearly.
Crypto and Political Influence
00:04:25
Speaker
Yeah. Crypto is going to benefit along with basically any either highly regulated or lacking in regulatory clarity industry, any industry that was suffering from kind of almost being suffocated by regulators and um deals being blocked, anything around that, that's that's what's been rallying very hard. And it was interesting during the election to just watch Bitcoin price.
00:05:00
Speaker
It was like probably the greatest indicator of who was going to win in real time that I think I've ever seen. um So I think that was really interesting. And I mean, you know, you you look at the the yeah, the crypto market during during that time, ah equities, the prediction markets, I think played so much more of a role in this election. You know, it's interesting um because the that that sort of like surprise that you experienced there, right, Matt? um I didn't experience that at all. And that's why I was able to make some of the predictions that I did at the start of the year.
Media Bias and Tech Industry Politics
00:05:36
Speaker
Part of the reason for that is like SF is, you know, as you know, like, that's a very specific place with yeah a very, like, specific worldview and ah and everything like that. And obviously, you know, you're across the pond.
00:05:48
Speaker
So I think that like if if this election um comes as ah as a surprise, the ah the reason would be for like the sources of information that were consuming, right? That would have... Yeah, I think the European media for sure was um definitely downplaying Trump's potential for 100%. The media, the polls, um certainly, you know, but That feeling on the ground, I mean, obviously I live in Texas, but I live in Austin, which is a very purple place. And in some ways can kind of, you know, just your friends, the the people that you surround yourself with can give you an indication of um where things were going and the amount of buyer's remorse, I would say, over the course of the last couple of years um was palpable.
00:06:43
Speaker
and ah you know i do think that um despite the fact that during the lead up to the election, X or Twitter was was effectively labeled as like an echo chamber um ah you know for the the the right wing or conservatives or whatever you want to call it. It turned out that actually it was the most accurate depiction of society as a whole. And I saw a recent poll that showed that it since Elon Musk has taken over X, it has become a roughly 50-50 split between Democrats and Republicans right and left.
00:07:17
Speaker
uh in the united states whereas uh prior to that it was about 61 uh democrat so turns out like x is actually an interesting place to pay attention to from an american political perspective. um And I think a lot ah you know a lot of what was said there, um it you know it was correct. And you can also feel it like in in certain tech circles and stuff like that, which I think was a different, that was like a different thing this election. like When podcasts, like the all-in podcast started talking about you know something other than the obvious default that Silicon Valley would always go to. And that was probably a year and a half, two years ago.
00:08:00
Speaker
I thought that was the most interesting part of this. I think when I was on X, to your point right about like the narrative of it being an echo chamber and it wasn't the reality, I mean, I don't think anyone on my X timeline was talking positively about Kamala, but I just was thinking,
00:08:17
Speaker
Am I I think I'm just in obviously I've got largely crypto Twitter here. It's gonna always bias us towards Trump Yeah, it's this must be just an echo chamber here. So I'm like almost I think I went on the other side of being like, all right Something else outside of this needs to prove to me and validate and it was so starkly different from every other news source that I was getting there was just like this, you know, this is the the the the outlier here and the and but I think when I go back to the moments when I felt more strongly around Trump winning the election, a lot of it stemmed from this tectonic shift in tech, big tech VC, um that historically
00:09:08
Speaker
would have been blindly Democrat and would have been suicidal to even suggest in public that you would vote, not just for someone like Trump, but Republican, were now all swinging towards Republican. And I think there was something, this is where I think that the election where Trump first came in was distinctly different to this election where he's came in, ah where I think that um I don't know if you saw, there was a really interesting story that came out from Poly Market in that there was a um an individual based in France and you he put on quite a last minute massive trade. I think it was something like 15 million on Trump to win. um And it was like a huge trade. France then went on to say that Poly Market is illegal in France and tried to like... That was classic. But the way that he came to his his thesis is he put out and
Political Predictions and Crypto Policies
00:10:11
Speaker
ran a number of surveys and polls across America. And he asked the... The neighbor poll. The neighbor poll. And I think it's fantastic. Like, what would your neighbor vote for? Or who who do you think your neighbor would vote for? And it it came, it's such ah an interesting, like psychological kind of way to to frame this. And
00:10:31
Speaker
I think that was kind of like the the piece for me where I was like, okay, wow. I imagine in like the first election, like the neighbor poll would have a much bigger um just like deviation from like public polling in the first time Trump came in because it was kind of like, no one says when they vote for Trump, but they were voting for Trump. Whereas I think today, that there would be a deviation still, but so much more public openness around this, even outside of yeah of crypto. You've got like Marc Andreessen and Co. that each i Before, like, go back.
00:11:04
Speaker
five, seven years, you can't even fathom like that. Like I remember when P.I.T. or first was like, I'm Republican and people are like, you're the, you're, you're Satan, right? It's like- Palmer Lucky made a small donation to the Trump campaign and was completely ousted from Facebook. Palmer Lucky being, you know, the Oculus guy. I mean, when Chamath started talking about Trump and saying you know there were some things that he did well. And then Jason didn't go on an absolute crying fit over that. I started to think something might be happening here. And then you know you have Bill Ackman,
00:11:48
Speaker
um Yeah, Ackman, his shift. I even thought of Zuckerberg. Like, this was one for me where I was like, whoa, something's changed. When they asked him about like the as the assassination and he was like, yeah, it's the most badass thing I've ever seen. Just even like saying that, you know, not all things like that.
00:12:06
Speaker
it it was in that all and Also, when when Zuckerberg came out and testified in front of Congress that censorship had happened during the 2020 election in collusion with the ah federal government and ah bureaucracies, um that to me was ah was a bellwether as well, because you have to imagine that there's probably nobody ah in the world with a better social graph and understanding of like,
00:12:31
Speaker
where the winds are shifting and that to me was like oh he's getting ahead of this like he sees where it's going he knows that there's going to be scrutiny on it you know that letter that the Facebook team put out, I think we talked about it on this show, that is and a huge coordinated thing. That was the biggest thing, I think I said, the biggest thing that Facebook has shipped in years, right? um Things like that. And then, but you know, all of this goes back to Elon purchasing X or Twitter, in my opinion, I think that that's when um i agree you know, information started to flow more freely and certain certain things started to, the overt and window expanded, I guess I would say, in terms of like, it's in Silicon Valley, what it was acceptable to say and what, and and what was it, to to the point where even Jamie Diamond
00:13:22
Speaker
was going on CNBC and saying, look, I'm a lifelong Democrat. I hate Trump, but like, let's not pretend that he only did bad things. There were some good things that he did. I was like, wow, to hear this guy, like I never comfort saying stuff like that. Exactly. That was like a real, a real shift. And I think, um, so clearly huge shift.
00:13:44
Speaker
massive margin of ah of a win on on the Trump side. um Let's talk about now and shift into like the implications, in particular for crypto. Because, you know okay, crypto has been on an absolute tear. Today, we we passed 98K. We've retraced that a little bit. I mean, there's a huge amount of sell pressure between 98 and 100K, which doesn't surprise me. i i I wonder how long some of those sell orders at 100K have been sitting there in the book.
00:14:09
Speaker
um But I have no doubt in my mind we're going to absolutely blast through that, and it's the the terror is going to to continue. But the the question here is, why? right For people listening, like like, yeah, sure, Trump, good, crypto, he speaks about Bitcoin, but like what's what's materially going to or could change? And I think it's important when we think about What is impacting the market now? And what are the forces at play, especially if you're thinking about how you're going to position yourself, what are the forces at play that could swing to the downside and the upside in these different
Market Expectations Under New Administration
00:14:44
Speaker
few phases? I think there's some key moments, right? So we've got like from now through till Jan 20th, inauguration day is what I would kind of say the speculation on what is to come, right? It's the expectation, the hype phase.
00:14:58
Speaker
And this is kind of where we're seeing a lot of volatility as new ah cabinet picks are kind of like being announced or like nominations at least be announced. It's like, oh, this is, is this bullish? Maybe it is like, and you've seen these crazy movements one day, a little retracement and move day and ultimately Trump.
00:15:16
Speaker
cannot actually make any policies yet. So none of this is reality yet. I know that ah yesterday ah we had news that Trump's considering a crypto role within ah within this group as well. So I mean, that's very positive for crypto. And then we get to Jan 20 and beyond, and then it's reality. what i like What I expect is in the few weeks after Jan 20, I imagine we're going to see a little bit of a sell-off where Inevitably, I think that the the optimism will be so sky high and then the expectation of what's to come on day one is going to be so high. I just, I'm very um skeptical that with the clean sweep that Trump's had.
00:16:03
Speaker
the ability to actually pass through major bills and take action in major areas that he's been blocked on before, things like immigration, things that are probably much going to have much longer opposition in the past for him to push through, where he now has the ability to. I think the first three months that that's going to be his priority. I can't imagine we see an enormous amount of change in crypto. But then I think we start to see the few months after the first big moments of policy, and when that really starts to happen,
00:16:32
Speaker
I mean, it's going to be a huge ride upwards if if we see positive stuff happening there, along with i think you're Gary Gensler's exit, which I personally am very much looking forward to.
00:16:47
Speaker
Well, he wrote this letter, I don't know if you saw it last week, that effectively was like a goodbye letter. It's like, it's been a pleasure serving, et cetera. And so yeah, thank you for all your work, Gary. Good luck, have fun. So that I think that it's going to be key who comes in to run the SEC. If we have someone that is even remotely pro-crypto, it's going to be ah very, very positive for the crypto space. Because I think this is the area that's been the biggest headwind ah for crypto is on the SEC side. There's a lot of weight being put into the treasury piece as well, because I think this the strategic Bitcoin reserve is very ah kind of... like I was very skeptical that we'd even be talking about Bitcoin reserve. Now it seems like there's this is genuine
00:17:41
Speaker
potential i think it i think so and I think it comes down quite heavily to who the who's running the treasury. If that happens, i this will, in my opinion, be the single largest and most impactful moment in like upward trajectory of price in um buying activity that will have happened since the inception of Bitcoin. I agree. ah The US will lead, all other countries will have to follow, and the scale at which they're talking about, something like a million Bitcoins. Let's just pause for a moment.
00:18:21
Speaker
Fucking how much that is. That is the kind of stuff that takes this into the stratosphere. So I think this is the probably the area where I think there's the biggest potential gap in expectation to reality that could either swing massively to the upside or ah trickle downwards a little bit. if If bad appointments start happening, if it starts getting deprioritized, it will take a lot of the helium out of this balloon.
00:18:46
Speaker
um but I know that ah the name Bill Hagerty, a lot of names have been floated around for Treasury Secretary. Bill Hagerty is one of them. He's a Bitcoin and ah crypto advocate. um And David Bailey, the chief executive of Bitcoin ah Magazine publisher, Bitcoin Inc., and he's he's also an adviser to Trump on on Bitcoin strategy, said that he does think that Trump could appoint Senator Bill Haggerty. And and he went to X and said, quote, if it happens, back up the truck and dump everything you own into Bitcoin. The key is like this, there is a short list of maybe like four to six people, I think right now that are being thrown around for a treasury secretary and
00:19:36
Speaker
A good portion of them are very pro-crypto, if not own, crypto themselves. And then on top of this, you have this concept of a cryptozar that's being thrown around, which was recently leaked. And from what I understand, there are a lot of leaks happening around the point. It's being confirmed now. Oh, really? OK. It was leaked by... The scoop was by Bloomberg, I think, two days ago. It was confirmed today.
00:20:03
Speaker
Okay. that So conversations are happening. Uh, like that that was, that's as far as it's kind of gone. But then, you know, Trump met with Brian Armstrong yesterday, I think in Mar-a-Lago, um, to have direct conversation. I, I, I, I think my take here is like.
00:20:21
Speaker
Will the huge expectation of major policy change and you know ah Bitcoin strategic reserve, all of this all happen under Trump? I don't think so. Will the worst case scenario of what Trump does be 10x better ah from a crypto perspective than the current situation today of policy? Yes. So you know I think the SEC was a huge starting point here, and I think that's actually critical.
00:20:50
Speaker
um I think that's why we're starting to see you know this huge run in in particular i things like meme coins. I think meme coins are like the NFTs of of this cycle. And meme coins have been really challenging to list in the US because they've been they've been rife with just concerns that the SEC was going to just put the hammer down and in its enforcement wave um of of of regulating. um And you kind of saw the past couple of weeks um ourselves, Kraken, Coinbase, others all all of a sudden launching the likes of WIF, Pepe, et cetera, all again into the US market. There's an insatiable appetite for this right now in the market. And it's been interesting to watch. You're so bullish on WIF.
00:21:36
Speaker
ah Disclaimer. none ah None of those tokens are an endorsement by myself. ah but And I think like the The piece like that I would i would really kind of come back to is, let's look at kind of what's happening in the market right now. And ah we've we've had this extraordinary run from Bitcoin.
00:22:01
Speaker
from 69k i think we were at just uh by the election we're uh i think we've just put back there was there was a run-up even going into the election from like the low 60s like 62 that was 62 i i remember it yes 62 we're at 96 right now but we hit uh 98 and a half earlier today um and you'll you'll see this like you know these like retracements and pushup but it's the story has been a little bit mean coins, but really it's been the Bitcoin show. That's where I think there's been um clearly ah the the boost of confidence and a lot of the narratives been around Bitcoin. This is what happens every cycle, but don't forget really the
00:22:43
Speaker
A lot of the new capital inflows are going to come post policy measures coming in. There's still an enormous leg up to be had, especially if it's been it's going to be made a lot easier for corporations to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet, which I think is one of the major policy unlocks that helps bring in net new capital into space.
00:23:04
Speaker
There's obviously been a lot of FUD around ETH not really kind of moving alongside all of this. This doesn't really surprise me. I did think it would probably have more of a movement alongside this, but again, it has ETH ETF. It's just reversed into pretty significant um positive inflows from a huge amount of negative inflows for for several, several consecutive weeks. That's shaping up nicely. No doubt.
00:23:29
Speaker
No doubt Q1 is going to be all about meme coins, I think. That's where all of this is going to come out. And then I think when we start to see policy movements, this is where I really believe we're going to see things like DeFi come again. And the thing that is exciting for me about DeFi is DeFi has been the thing.
00:23:44
Speaker
it's the use case. right the Probably the number one great, amazing use case that we've delivered so far in crypto has been stablecoins. um And DeFi is the way to truly leverage those stablecoins and create truly interesting, exciting, novel financial primitives. They have been suffocated by the the current regulatory regime. When that gets unlocked, I think we're going to see a wave ah of innovation happening. And I think that's really where a lot of this stuff kind of comes to the fore. What's your take on where you you see, let's just even say like, I mean, crypto, we can kind of talk a lot about, but what about more broadly? ah where what are What are some of the areas you're looking at as in in the markets as being industries, areas where you think are going to benefit the most from from a Trump kind of administration?
00:24:41
Speaker
Well, I do think that um you know we're we're going to see clear rules and regulation around crypto and a halting of the lawfare that we were experiencing under the Gensler SEC. And that's evidenced not only by the fact that, yeah, folks like Brian Armstrong, who you know has been a very vocal proponent of clear and fair regulation are talking to the president-elect, but also just the fact that this is a much more tech-oriented administration, I think, than it was in 2016. I mean, JD Vance was essentially a Peter Thiel pick from what I can tell. And I think that that a lot of that that groundwork
00:25:29
Speaker
um that you know was laid around those voices that we were just talking about from Silicon Valley, um getting involved in this race will play out in the administration I mean obviously there are like literal ah Bitcoin Maxers in you know in various parts of the administration even ah RFK has had some amazing quotes talking about like Bitcoin being the currency of freedom um a hedge against inflation for middle-class Americans a remedy against the dollars downgrade from the world's reserve currency um and an offer from ruinous national debt
00:26:05
Speaker
ah I mean, he's not going to be making any any decisions on um crypto policy, but um the administration is stacked with people that I do think are are going to ah bring a lot of clarity and growth to this space. So that is like where a lot of my attention is focused. I think we're going to see a lot of IPOs. I mean, IPOs basically died.
00:26:27
Speaker
Um, over the course of this administration, uh, and deal making like private equity as well. It's just like, so private equity has been in a horrible place to be able to make deals happen. And I think it's the exact same as being in the IPO market. I mean, it has been a ghost town, uh, from an IPO perspective.
Republican Economic Policies and Market Impact
00:26:48
Speaker
It has. Yeah. So, um, you know, I think that we're, we're going to see a lot of.
00:26:54
Speaker
companies that were kind of sitting on the sidelines thinking this is not a very friendly environment from a regulatory or a market perspective to IPO. um They're going to start moving ahead with those plans that's going to be a huge amount of capital infusion into the market and wealth generation for Americans.
00:27:15
Speaker
um So that's an area that I'm paying attention to. you know ah I do think that Trump is going to continue his push to bring a lot of traditional industry back to the United States.
00:27:28
Speaker
um that's gonna probably You'll probably start to see the initial groundwork being laid for that in those first few months that you were talking about. Things that seem like more sort of traditional aspects of of his campaign actually are, you know, part of his economic policy, like addressing the border, um addressing the, you know, tax policy versus tariffs and all this stuff, um which People tend to... Where do you sit, at Austin, on less so terrace but the narrative? so Something that where me and you have kind of disagreed a little bit through this year is is inflation going to come back with a vengeance, right? I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but we had slightly different like models and and you were definitely of the view that inflation was a real risk of coming back. I think one of the biggest
00:28:22
Speaker
criticism, well concerns coming in from from Trump is like, will a lot of his policies be very inflationary over like the next couple of years? What's your kind of take from from that perspective? I'm worried about it. um You know, I I worry that there that we could experience a moderate recession over the course of his term. I think that those things are on the table. Part of this is hinging on his feud with Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve and the you know aggressive approach that it seems he and several people in his administration are going to take
00:29:05
Speaker
toward the Federal Reserve, which as I've said you know many times over, i'm not a fan of um I'm not a fan of Powell's, but I do think that he's done a very difficult thing the last yeah couple of years um by raising ah the federal funds rate. And I think that that's that's resulted in some positive things. But I also think that there has been a lot of ah misreporting and data forgery intentionally from our federal government that has made it look like inflation wasn't as bad as it was or maybe it was going down at a rate greater than it was. And I think that there is going to be a lot of sunlight shown on that that could potentially spook markets, could have some downstream effects.
00:29:50
Speaker
tariffs are so i've loved I've loved, actually, on the inflation piece through this year, just the yo-yoing between, okay, we're going to pay attention mainly just to the jobs report this time out. Actually, no, we don't care about jobs report. That looks kind of bad. We're going to go with CPI. Actually, let's forget forget CPI this week. PPI, looking very positive. Oh, actually, um by the way, that last jobs report, yeah, it's got bigger now.
00:30:12
Speaker
um Exactly. you know Like all of these moments, what what I agree with you that you know it is it is an extremely difficult job. I think there's two things I would say from like the way the Fed have dealt with this past year of um of of of inflation.
00:30:28
Speaker
is undoubtedly, they at the beginning of the rise of inflation, they dropped the ball, they were way too slow to act. And at the same time, I would argue maybe they they probably recovered and they did as good a job as they probably could have based on them actually making things worse to begin with. And we've landed in today, an okay place. so I also share your concerns around long term through the term, right? Remember, this is a five year term.
00:30:57
Speaker
for Trump. I think there are real concerns around inflation picking back up. I think Trump will do everything in his power to make that not felt. um But and and we come up to tariffs, but My view at least from a market perspective is that the next nine to 18 months are a golden period of making money. This is this is kind of coming into COVID 2021 period of time. Macro is set up, like rates are coming down.
00:31:32
Speaker
We're seeing deregulation, loosening of tax. All of the settings in the kind of like macro environment are ripe for broad sectors to flourish. I think some sectors and are going to suffer a little bit and there's some risks. I think probably the biggest risk in my perspective across the whole Trump term is Taiwan um and a potential conflict there that could really nuke stuff. But that's ah that's a separate piece.
00:32:01
Speaker
it's I think if you can not wipe yourself out during this next nine to 18 months, you can make more money than you've made in the past 10 years. But it's it's about placing bets wisely and and not kind of like blowing everything too early on. Yeah, I totally agree. And you know I certainly think that the answer to inflation was not ah to put price caps on grocery stores or to tax unrealized capital gains. right So we definitely had ah a you know pretty binary choice um to to make in this election. And I think that this is our our best shot at a at an economic renaissance in a long time. I mean, you know ah Trump's economy was
00:32:54
Speaker
the best that this country has seen in decades by practically every measure until a Black Swan event happened, which was COVID. And then he spent ungodly amounts of money, and then Biden like 3x'd that, um which I think, you know, ultimately hurt the American people.
00:33:13
Speaker
um And I think that we're going to be paying for that along with our massive ballooning 30 plus trillion dollar national debt um for for quite some time. But I do think that this is the the first time that like really addressing rampant spending, bureaucratic bloat, national debt,
00:33:38
Speaker
has truly and honestly made its way into the political realm. And you can even see this manifest itself in this sort of anti-war stance that historically like was always flipped, like the Democrats were anti-war and Republicans were like the war hawks.
00:33:59
Speaker
um And now the Republican Party is like very, very anti-war. I think that there are many reasons for that, some of which do relate to economics and the national debt and corruption that is being felt by the middle middle class and the working class, which overall, I would say the Republican Party has mostly aligned itself with at this point. So your average American,
00:34:27
Speaker
um Is is wanting to see an end to the war the Russian war in Ukraine to the Hamas Israel war and not wanting to see you know a conflict spark up.
00:34:45
Speaker
in ah in Taiwan. um no I think that there is going to be a lot of attention put to that. And as much money as there is to be made from war, you know or at least certain wars, like you see the economic booms that that came after World War I and World War II and everything like that.
00:35:02
Speaker
in the United States. The reality is that the the last several decades of of war that the United States has um participated in have effectively looted our economy and your average taxpayer. And I think that the overwhelming majority of Americans would say that they were unnecessary. And I mean, I'm talking about trillions of dollars. You know, you look at the way that we pulled out from Afghanistan after after spending upwards of $3 trillion dollars and like four administrations there and all kinds of stuff. um It's it's ah disgraceful. So I think that if you if you see just fractions
00:35:45
Speaker
of the capital that were distracted with or wasted on um you know bureaucratic bloat war, these these huge ah policy issues that were discussed during the campaign trail, even even things like bringing internet to rural America or bringing electric car chargers to ah parts parts of America that previously didn't have them and the billions upon billions of dollars that were wasted in that process. And nobody has gotten internet and nobody has gotten an electric car charger.
00:36:21
Speaker
um you know It's kind of shocking that that means especially I hadn't heard much about the the electric charges. And then I heard the story around how much has been just set on fire around that. It it blows my mind. Billions of dollars. And you know this is this comes after seven consecutive years of the Pentagon failing its financial audit. This was incredible to me yeah because they they failed it for the seventh time. And it was like, what, two days ago? Something like that. you Unbelievable.
00:36:50
Speaker
There's over a trillion dollars that they don't know where it is. They're just like, where's a trillion dollars? Meanwhile, I have the IRS like banging down my door if if I can't account for a $650 Venmo transaction.
00:37:05
Speaker
Oh, God, it's so true. It hurts. You know, I still fuck. I haven't lived in the U.S. since 20... When did I move back? 2019. I swear to God, every fucking year, the IRS like send me a message and they're like, you owe us 30 bucks. I'm like, fuck!
00:37:25
Speaker
you And it'll be like, you and you're going to start earning interest on this um in like 10 days. And it's like, the letter will be dated like four months ago. And it's just arrived to me. I'm like, what the fuck is this? It's such a hassle. um But yeah. This is where the tariffs thing is interesting, by the way, because I saw this study that was showing like the amount of money and human hours that are spent just on annual tax record keeping and paying in the United States and it is incredible, incredible, the amount of waste, so ah you know, I mean this is not something that we're taught in in school but for a significant portion of the United States history we had
00:38:13
Speaker
no income tax.
US Economic History and Future Predictions
00:38:14
Speaker
I think the first income tax was introduced post-World War I. I think it was the 30s. In the 1930s and it was like a 1% income tax for only like the absolute top earners in the country. And then now, you know of course, everybody ah faces an income tax and and our our highest tax bracket, if you you take like your your you know your full burden can be over 60%, depending on where you live and um you know what property you have and and everything like that. um And so ah you know a lot of that, at least the the thesis is that um a lot of that tax burden has basically been put into place because of um the winding down of tariffs in the United States.
00:39:08
Speaker
Um, which has like an interesting effect on the economy because theoretically, like it allows, you know, uh, external, uh, companies, you know, and other, in other countries to, uh, sell to the U S market without employing people in the U S market, et cetera, et cetera. it's And that, you know, that creates an erosion of our sort of manufacturing or production capabilities, which increases the cost in the longterm to do anything here, which.
00:39:34
Speaker
builds upon the problem causing more people to go overseas. if you've If you've ever tried to manufacture a physical product in the United States, which I recently have been doing, um it's incredibly difficult to even find somebody to do it. um And then when you do, it's expensive and the quality is low. And you're just so much better off going to China or Vietnam or you know a handful of other places, depending on what you're making. I'm an um i'm an investor in a couple of companies that um that ah basically doing this exact thing. And yeah, the the struggle is is real. I am, I will say personally, I'm skeptical that the tariffs will be a net positive over an extended time horizon, but I'm very interested to see how it does all play out. I think that, you know, um there are a lot of ways in which ah tariffs can be extremely valuable, yeah also from a geopolitical ah standpoint as well. But I think really that the main
00:40:33
Speaker
ah potential pothole here is going to be around how inflationary they are. If that doesn't materialize, then I think it will be a net positive. Time will tell. right you know this is This is the game that we've kind of been in, really, yo-yoing back and forth over the past three or four years. um Not tariffs, but you know the lagging effect of inflation. And I think that's going to be a a huge part of of all of this.
00:40:59
Speaker
But I think you're spot on, you know, yeah, I think that that's kind of the challenge, right? That we always have is it's it's a lag. And I think a lag. Yeah. And if we summarize some of the the things we're kind of saying here, I think overall, um in the short term, when we talk about the duration of like Trump's term, short term, nine, 12 months, right, like the first year or so.
00:41:24
Speaker
um I think is going to be kind of the the golden period. I think in particular because if we do see any of those negative effects, that lag isn't going to really show its face in its truest, ugliest form until probably the the year or so after. and If it does show, right? So I think that is the period of time where you know you should be capitalizing on momentum. There's a lot of new capital coming into crypto, into the wider equity space. um We're going to see a lot more innovation. I think you're going to see a lot of companies that left the US come back in, especially in the tech side, certainly in crypto, seeing this a huge amount. yeah So I think it's just going to be a lot of positive momentum on on that side. Definitely, I think a lot of the risks come around geopolitics and and how that's all going to play out.
00:42:10
Speaker
We'll only really know you know how that that comes, but I think very positive crypto. And while I don't think we do our price predictions for 2025 in this episode, where we'll hold that up, I am going to throw at you, what is your 2024 from today? Bitcoin, all time high, and by what date, up until the end of this year?
00:42:34
Speaker
Hmm. I mean, I do think we're going to break 100k. I know that there's serious resistance because there are so many cell orders or there appear to be so many cell orders between that 98 and 100k sort of range. um But I think the momentum is there. I think it's going to happen. I don't see us going too high above that this year, um essentially for that reason. Once it's it starts to break 100k, I do think that therere the We may see some cell pressure. The one, um, caveat to this is the holidays, you know, people get bored. They start Thanksgiving. Yeah. I remember it in 2021. Very well. It was monumental.
00:43:21
Speaker
And in 2017, actually. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, if we saw one 10, one 20, it wouldn't surprise me, but I do, I do feel more confident about the trend toward a hundred and actually breaking that ceiling.
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think I'm gonna go. ah I'll wrap us out with a bullish 120 by December 19. We're gonna we're gonna rip. We're gonna which Usually in that week is like when we have these, the past two bull markets that week has been, our I'll never forget when we hit that, what was it, 19K in 2017? I think we had an episode around that time.
Bullish Bitcoin Market Predictions
00:43:58
Speaker
And then 2021, we won an absolute tear. I think it was more so ETH around that time ah that was that was really pumping at that point, but around the 69K mark or whatever it was. um So yeah, I i feel really bullish. More importantly, Austin,
00:44:17
Speaker
I'm glad to be back. Glad that we're back. We're back recording. We saw it in more ways than one. Oh yeah, we're so back. We're the most back we've been in a long time. And we're going to enjoy it as well. Oh yeah, now let's just not bring back the SPF and SUSU. Oh, let's do it.
00:44:36
Speaker
No, bring back the Ponzi's. Let's run it turbo. ah So, 1000x max leverage long. Let's go. Turbo charge it up. I'll see you on the other side, Austin. See you then, Matt.
00:45:12
Speaker
The information, opinions and views expressed in this podcast are for informational and entertainment purposes only. They don't constitute financial, investment or legal advice. The hosts and guests are not financial advisors and the content shouldn't be taken as professional advice. Please always do your own research before making any investment decisions.
00:45:35
Speaker
Finally, the views and opinions expressed by the hosts are their own and do not reflect the views of their respective employers.