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DCA Live: Where to Next for Markets and Crypto?
Recorded: April 7, 2025 Duration: 1:05:26Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, crypto enthusiasts analyzed the volatile market landscape, highlighting trends of growth and decline, particularly focusing on Bitcoin's resilience and Ethereum's significant price drop. The conversation also touched on the implications of tariffs, regulatory changes for stablecoins, and strategies for navigating market fluctuations.
Full Transcription
good morning good afternoon good night everyone
what a week what a day guys how are you doing james do you want to start yeah um
we expected some short-term pain. The expression I used was,
sometimes you've got to break a few eggs to make an omelet,
but I didn't expect somebody to take a baseball bat
to the refrigerator and smash everything.
And that's basically where we are now.
And a lot of experts in the place
didn't realize the impact of the tariff warning,
the subsequent tariffs, the subsequent tariffs.
But I think where we are on the markets right now,
the worst is probably behind us
because the S&P 500 cannot fall 6% three days in a row, historically.
Very unusual.
So we'll see.
But that's where we are.
We're beginning to see some money coming in this morning as well
into different assets.
We're not out of the woods.
Shout out to Rusted Woods.
But, you know
if if you've come this far all i say is do not panic sell the bottom because they're very close
to a bottom i believe mando how are we had a massive recovery like the last uh hour or so
that's two hours yeah i think people gotta gotta separate just normal volatility right now
from we are so back like the market um i said it's probably the traders i work with just that
it just felt like it was ready for a little bit of squeeze and you can have squeezes for like 10
on literally no news here there seems to be like a vague headline of of uh they may delay the
tariffs and there was something earlier about like a fed meeting which seemed to be a bit of a um actually just like a
regular meeting so i think we're just going to see a very high volatility right now um people
have got to get used to that um you've got to be prepared for it i was completely taken aback by
how the tariffs were done midweek um i was surprised. I do think it's interesting what's happened.
It seems to be kind of popular with Trump's base,
but not really with the stock market.
Yeah, I think it's going to be a very interesting few months
because I'm not too sure where the incentive lies
for all these different people
that are going to have to come to a negotiating table.
Yeah. Marty, what's your thoughts what's happening yeah guys oh yeah I've been here the whole weekend
yesterday we had a historic space um watching the crashes live on the global markets was insane
um yeah not much sleep but um I'm extremely bullish I've never been more bullish uh I think
the resilience of Bitcoin
and crypto through this market crash was something to behold. I even had Charles Hodgkinson on the
space for hours yesterday with us just hanging out and we were all admiring like where we've
come from, from what we wanted, where we were in crypto to where we are now. And you know,
Bitcoin would have dropped to 55,000 a year ago in the midst
of that kind of global panic and look at it back at 79 80,000 already it's just unbelievable I
think we made it um yeah as far as the whole week goes I think the biggest takeaway I had
was the people's absolute ignorance about what tariffs are. I think everyone was gaslit in the mainstream media
to believe tariffs were some kind of external tax
on other countries.
And that is completely false.
And the second narrative I thought was really astonishing
is that people thought tariffs were new.
They can understand that tariffs have been going
since the 60s.
And, I mean, Obama put a 35 percent of tariff on china and people didn't
even know that was democrats it's it's not a political thing tariffs are exist it's part of
the world trade organization it's been proposed here as renegotiation of these tariffs to make
it fairer and it was made political made into a narrative and used to flush the markets that's I don't know much about tariffs either.
I'm learning a lot.
It feels like something to do with the old world.
We're shipping goods.
We're living in the digital world.
So let's see.
Should we look at the agenda before we go deeper into the topics?
James, can you please pull up the agenda?
Sure.
There we go.
So let's talk about Bitcoin and then let's go deep into the tariffs.
Also, I'm not clear.
It seemed like there was a rumor now.
Is it delayed?
Are the tariffs delayed or not?
Then let's look at some polymarket odds.
Tariffs, will they be removed?
Will there be emergency rate cut?
Will there be U.S. recession?
Let's discuss those topics because it's the top of everyone's mind.
Let's talk about Saylor and MicroStrategy.
Is MicroStrategy going bankrupt or not?
Did Saylor buy last week when Bitcoin held up and so forth?
What do we think about the stock market the
main scenarios from here and then let's deep let's go deeper into the uh crypto market as a whole
with the usdt the genius act is it real will it be a problem let's look at the world coins and
opportunities in this carnage and also let's discuss how to relate to situations like this,
like James you said just before we started here. For many this is the first time they
experience something like this and let's see if we can share some insights how to
survive a day like this or a week like this rather.
So if I can start with the Bitcoin price structure, then I'll give the word over to you.
So I really want to recap a little bit here because
in a way this has laid out a little bit.
Textbook technical analysis. We had this range, you will remember if you listen here, from 19,800 up to about 106 or 109 depending if we count the weeks or not. That broke down in February.
Trend turned down. We retested it one time, retest failed, second time retest
failed and we came into this downtrend. And from a technical analysis perspective, the target of this
range breakdown and double top that confirmed here is the height of the channel. We can discuss if it should be logarithmic or linear scale and so on.
But this was the target circle from the technical analysis and today we hit that,
we had hit the center of that target circle exactly. So it doesn't always work, but there was a distinctive bearish development in the price chart
with the range breaking down, double top, trend turning down, and now we have kind of reached
that target. So that happened today. And then there was this big reaction back up. We joked
a bit, is the DCA pump back or you know or what happened here but that's
really what has happened um this this uh couple of weeks this the trend turned down here already a
month ago so it's actually not new it's just that i think most people thought that it wouldn't really
play out but it did and now we've kind of hit the target.
Will we reverse from here, reclaim this range,
and shoot up on the upside?
That's what we need to explore.
And CTO, while you're there on the chart,
pull up the 200-day and 50-day moving average.
We just flashed a death cross as well.
Now, a lot of people freak out when they hear death cross.
But I've analyzed every single
Bitcoin death cross over the last 14, 15 years, and half the time it works, half the time it
doesn't. So don't freak out about the death cross. No, exactly. I don't actually even use it. So
I think it's nothing strange or unexpected that has happened here.
And the question now is if we can find the bottom and start trending up again.
But I think it depends a lot on the macro factors.
Clearly Bitcoin is steered a lot by the macro factors, though it held out much better last week than the stocks.
Remarkably better. We'll come back to that again. So, should we start talking about
if I share this? If I can share this the other one? No, sorry. Juggling. Yes, so maybe we should reload it. Will Trump reduce majority of tariffs before July? And earlier today, let's go to one day. Earlier today, like an hour ago, this was at 45%. Then it went up to 71%.
When is this?
Half an hour ago.
And now it's at 55%.
Yeah, there was some fake news report.
Like Nando said, there was fake news that came out that said White House had suspended
tariffs for 90 days.
And then the White House came back and said it's not true.
There was that little spark.
Okay, so that is debunked.
Yeah, tariffs are still going into effect.
The negotiations are in progress, but there's no 90-day suspension.
And this is a crazy thing, right? And people get this wrong all the time.
People think there's one magic button in Scott Bessent's office
or Howard Lepnick's office that presses tariffs.
Trump is the guy who gives out the message.
The people behind him are the ones making the decision,
and they just want reciprocal equity with different nations.
Now, when you look at remove all tariffs, that's not how this works.
It's a country-by-country negotiation.
So far, by my count, Argentina gone to zero tariffs.
India are coming to the table to negotiate.
Switzerland is as well.
Taiwan is.
Israel, Vietnam, Japan.
Maloney is flying from Italy.
Shout out to the Italians in the audience, if there are any, to negotiate tariffs.
Starmer in the UK, last night, apparently,
you probably heard this, Mando, he said,
yeah, I don't agree with this president of the United States guy,
but however, this globalization is not working for the people,
and he sees that loud and clear.
So the UK is also willing to negotiate on tariffs.
This is what we've said from day one.
This is a negotiations tactic.
And yes, you've got to smash the refrigerator with a baseball bat to get the results.
But the other thing that's happening behind the scenes,
which is even more important, liquidity is coming.
Rates are coming down 10 years under 4%.
Inflation is down.
It's actually almost on the risk of becoming deflationary,
which is not good. Oil is tanking. Eggs are down everything. You know, the stuff that they said they were going to do, they have done. And I must say, I am very surprised how fast it all happened. So everybody don't read the news. Look at the fundamentals. And this is short term pain. I do believe three months from now, everybody will say, oh, I wish I bought more.
It's always the same way.
I wish I bought more during the day.
Sorry, Marty?
That's what's going to happen.
You're 100% right.
I wish I bought more.
I agree with you.
Do you guys feel that, you know, we saw Elon Musk posting a bunch of posts about open market, global market, free market is good and so on and so forth.
Do you think that there is a disagreement inside the team who wants to go first?
I'll test that.
Yeah, Mando, you go.
Yeah, look, I'm not a big fan of these tariffs.
I don't think they've been put in in a way that I thought made that much sense.
Because it's actually, if you go behind the numbers, it's less on reciprocal tariffs.
It's more on trade imbalances and trade deficits, which has been kind of part of Trump's messaging throughout the campaign.
which has been kind of part of Trump's messaging
throughout the campaign.
But it's not necessarily, I think,
what people thought he would enact in the way that he did.
I think when people thought about reciprocal tariffs,
they thought, you know, we're going to go after the EU,
we're going to go after maybe Japan, India,
these places with big tariffs.
And this is kind of what I thought it would be,
you know, 10 days ago.
What has actually come in and said,
actually, if you have a trade deficit with us, we're going to put tariffs on you.
So for example, Vietnam has 45% tariffs now against it. Vietnam only has 3% to 5% tariffs
against US imports. So it's not a situation of reciprocal tariffs by the nature of just tariffs.
They've actually gone after trade imbalances. And that makes, I think, this is why markets
are freaked out slightly because they've gone, how can Vietnam even come to the table there
and negotiate? It doesn't have 45% tariffs. So what's it got to say um and this there's kind of a part of this is to do with just
the idea that we need to like re re-onshore basically um some of the manufacturing base of
the u.s it's not necessarily it's going to have been lumped in with the tariff stuff that actually
we want to get rid of um trade trade deficits, that's actually quite a different economic argument.
Let's just use a theoretical argument of rural places and urban places.
You would assume that there will be trade deficits between two of those.
Cities are probably going to always import more from rural areas than they export.
And there's always going to be a trade deficit between them.
And that's kind of like the basis of some economics that, you know,
that there is trade between countries and areas.
And that leads to both becoming necessarily wealth wealthier.
Part of this has now been the argument is,
is that we actually need to do more of, let's say, the farming in the city.
Like they're saying this has actually led to massive income inequality in these richer countries.
And one of the better ways to get rid of this now is to try and close out these trade deficits rather than tax the rich in the US. I think Trump wants to continue with this, honestly. I think
his base is energized by this. I don't necessarily
think he feels like he needs to do a deal very, very soon. I think you can even hear the comments
from Besson. He's like, this is going to affect people who own the stock market,
but that's not everyone. And that's definitely not all of Trump's base. So I think we're in for a
few... This is not something that I think is going to get resolved in the next week or so. I think this could go on for quite a bit longer.
I do think there are certain countries that will come to the negotiating table and
which do have high tariffs, like the EU. We already spoke about, you know, 5% to 20%
common import tariff on various different goods. Like, yeah, there should be a deal there. And it's great if the EU does reduce their tariffs. But this has not just been an attack on retaliatory
tariffs. It's been an attack on just general trade imbalances. And part of dealing with those
is a solution to kind of deal with income inequality in the US. And if you actually read a
lot of kind of the commentary coming out of his base, part of that is this, like we don't really care if big corporations go down. Like
we want to re-onshore jobs. We want to fix kind of the income inequality in the US, which has
been there for a long time. And that's why I think this could be like a complex and more drawn out
negotiating process than it has been in the past.
Amanda, well said.
There's another thing as well that some people miss too, and that is the element of hidden tariffs.
It's not just tariffs, tariffs.
There's a lot of hidden tariffs all around the place as well.
But again, I'll go back to what Scott Bessent said.
He wanted to bring the 10-year down.
He wanted to bring the price of oil down.
He wanted to control inflation. He's done all of that in miraculous time. And the other thing that I do
want to stress too, I think Stanley Drucker-Miller said, this tariff stuff is the lesser of two evils.
If it is going to continue, the trade deficit for the US has just gone down, down, down for the last
50 years. They have to fix it. Now, there is a problem to that as well, which is very cryptic.
This goes into your era digital as CTO.
You know, you have China now.
China can't afford local labor.
China are offshoring to Southeast Asia for cheaper labor.
Do you think, you know, the U.S. will be able to make a $1,000 iPhone with their labor?
What's needed is automation and bots.
That's what's going to be critical for the future.
So if a nation has to become competitive, they've got to figure out how they equalize this cost of labor piece.
That's the other big factor here, too.
that's why you know bots are going to be so important in the future so anyway your original
That's why bots are going to be so important in the future.
question cto was do do i think it's causing a slight division inside the the actual republican
party here like i don't necessarily think the tariffs that it's not like a right it's not
necessarily like a free market policy this like if you if you generally would assume that like
often right wing is more free markets you know like super
competitive this is slightly different to that and i think that that is causing slight you can
already see it's causing slight tension there like is this kind of what we want to do um because it's
less business friendly at times but it's actually weirdly does energize a lot of trump space and i
and i i'm not saying it's
good or bad. I just think that
he doesn't necessarily feel like he needs to
change that.
Even today, for example, Ackman
came out and was like, oh, I don't agree with this.
Some of the people...
Ackman is long stocks.
He's exposed.
Don't listen to Ackman like he's long stocks.
Listen, guys, there's a lot of confusion about tariffs,
and it's ongoing, and I can hear it even here.
Tariff is a tax imposed on your own people, okay?
Tax is saying if you import from Canada,
you will have to pay 10% more.
It's got very little to do with Canada.
Canada will reciprocate and say to the Canadian people,
if you import from America now,
it's going to cost 30% more. Tariffs are an internal policy, internal to a country. Now,
they do externalize the terms of countries involved. The problem is China has a massive
deficit, and Mando hit on that. That's what this is really about. This deficit was started way
long ago in the Obama era era and basically if you look
at the deficit between china and the us it is completely unfair china import almost everything
food all of their soy most of their basic commodity food agriculture from the us it's one to four
versus china it needs to correct and this is the only way to correct it, unfortunately.
So I have a totally different view of the tariff thing.
I think it's a total narrative.
Once again, tariffs have existed forever.
You can go to WTO.org, the World Trade Organization.
They have a full document.
You can read what tariffs are, what's exempt.
They even say, if you can't, if there's a product you can't manufacture in your
country because your region doesn't have the resource like a special tree or a truffle or
some raw mineral, it's exempt. It's extremely fair. Basically says countries should manufacture
what they can and use what they can and use their own markets
only when they need to should they go outside their country and import etc and that was
completely chaotic it was taken for granted that document over the last 10 years it's been a total
mess a shit show if I can say that. And it needed to be fixed.
So I think that this is just a massive move with aggression. It's a business tactic out of the deal to get everyone to the table,
to renegotiate those existing tariffs, which have been there for a long time,
to make them fairer, to incentivize American growth,
to incentivize American manufacturing,
to make sure people aren't importing things
they don't need to, which the problem is what they're importing is of a low quality.
That's prescription drugs, food from China, et cetera, from India.
Not good quality, not good for the American people.
It's caused obesity, depression, all of this stuff.
If you look back to what it's from, poorly manufactured goods.
Doesn't work anymore. We need to
upgrade America. It's time. So anyway,
that's my take. So be very,
read about tariffs, what they are.
They are an internal tax
on your own people.
Okay, it's basically saying to Americans,
use domestic, make
domestic. If you import,
you better make sure you need to.
If not, there's going to be additional
tax. And that's just tariffs. That's all they are. Anyway, go ahead.
I think a notable point here is that the tariffs discussed are on goods, while the US exports a lot
of services, which doesn't have tariff. I don't know, do you guys think this could escalate?
Like you said, how could Vietnam negotiate?
Or even the EU, if they really wanted to hit the US,
wouldn't they start talking about tariff on services?
Like Google's products, which don't ship steel on the boat they are
services i don't think so i think third world company countries are in big trouble if america
does not import from vietnam vietnam's economy collapses significantly oh yeah absolutely 100
that's what's going on right now. If the US stops importing from China,
China will collapse. That's
why China's panicking.
This is how it's done. So services
wise, I think it's the same tariff.
I think it's on goods and services,
I believe, but it's a good question.
I think
the tariffs discussed are only goods.
That's why I think it's a bit more complicated. I think
the first term, Trump came out and really went after China,
which had had, they'd been, you know,
obviously talk about devaluing their currency,
but also had a lot of tariffs, came to a deal,
pretty good deal, I think, in the end for the US.
This is more broad than that.
It's every country at the same time.
And it's, for some countries, there's a clear path to negotiation time um and it's for some countries there's a
clear path to negotiation in my opinion and some is less so so yeah it is it is a tax on a lot of
third world countries that quite frankly can't well never like vietnam will never get to a trade
surplus with the u.s like not for decades uh it'd have to be a huge upending of global wealth for that to happen.
That's just the nature of different countries. They have trade deficits. But I do think that
now we're getting to a scenario where, yeah, I think this could go on for a while. I think that
we ideally deal with the UK. The UK has a trade surplus with the US. so does australia for example um the eu has always been a very high
tariff place and it would be really good remember we spoke about in the show last week if it gets
to a world which is kind of what elon's saying that like actually those tariffs come down and
we get to a lower tariff kind of world between those two potentially um and that would be good
like that's kind of what you don't you don't
was saying here but for some of them it's going to be very very difficult and i don't i think the
china versus us one i don't know if it feels like it's going to get resolved maybe it does but i
feel like both of them kind of have incentives for this not to get resolved well the chinese
as well uh are devaluing their currency and they cut the repo rate which is
taking it down which is making their stuff even cheaper anyway which technically overcomes some
of the tariff stuff anyway let's move on with the agenda let's move forward so i think one thing that
i i understand the administration hope that this will lead to is rate cuts. So if we look at the Polymarket, we have to reload this
because it has changed by the minute just before the show.
So Polymarket bettors give it a 24% chance of an emergency rate cut.
So not just a rate cut, but like an emergency rate cut soonish.
What do you guys think?
It was 100% guarantee of rate cut.
I think half of that is a double rate cut in June.
The question is, May, will it happen?
And those months are a little bit far away.
And the dual mandate of the Fed is to make sure unemployment doesn't go through the roof. Now, when company stocks go down,
it rattles everybody. Hiring stops. The Fed is looking at that very carefully.
And the Fed is also...
They've just declared on the Federal Reserve website, I just posted it earlier, 11.30 today,
there will be an emergency closed meeting. And especially for a closed meeting, the Board of
Governors of Federal Reserve, 11 1130 today will be held.
So they're ready.
That's going to happen.
That was the thing that came out.
I think it's actually a regular meeting for them.
It's not an emergency one.
At least that's what it was said.
It's a regular one.
They did do emergency ones before SVP collapsed and in 2020,
but I believe that it's just a regular one.
But they may do that.
It says matters to be considered.
Number one, review and determination by the
Board of Governors of the advance and discount rates
to be charged by the Federal Reserve Banks.
This was not planned.
I think it is planned.
I think there's two of them a month.
I retweeted it before we went live.
But that being said, they may come in and do something.
The Fed is in a strange scenario here where, as you said,
they could get inflation, but they also could get bad unemployment.
He came out on Friday and was a bit more like,
oh, I'm not going to do anything.
But at the end of the day if the stock
market's down generally the fret the fed comes in and tries to help out which way if it's not
lowering interest rates they could they could improve liquidity in the system
uh i reckon yeah fed put time so there's definitely an element of increasing pressure on
an element of increasing pressure on the Fed here, I think, as part of this strategy. The final
betting market I thought we could look at today is the US recession in 2025. And I mean, see here like yeah one hour ago it was yeah now it's 57 an hour ago it was 66 so it's dramatic
changes really and let's zoom in on the day so i mean i would go it was like two thirds of people
who thought us would go into recession in 2025 based on their money betting.
What do you guys think?
Q1 guaranteed negative GDP for sure because of everything that's happened.
That's a foregone conclusion.
The question is, will it be two quarters in a row?
I don't think so.
And what's the implications of that, James?
What does it mean?
Nothing.
It doesn't mean anything.
So basically, as I say, there's always a recession happening.
You take manufacturing in the US, it's in a recession.
Commercial real estate, in a recession.
Residential real estate, in a recession.
And so much more.
And that's been happening for a long time.
It's a stupid crude indicator.
And remember last time as well, there were two negative quarters,
and they had some makeup shop say,
well, two negative quarters doesn't actually mean a recession.
So it's all BS, like the BLS labor data.
It's all BS.
They wind it down 12 weeks later.
It's just don't trust government data.
Just look at what's happening on the street.
Well, don't trust the words.
Just remember the words inflation, recession, depression. They're just government invented words
to cause fear. That's it. To stop you spending money. Yep.
Okay, thanks for that. Let's move on. We had something very interesting a couple of days ago that I think is worth revisiting.
We had this massive, massive, massive dump in the stock market on Thursday and Friday.
And those days, Bitcoin didn't dump.
After having followed the stock market one to one for months and months and months, suddenly
the stock market dumps like this and Bitcoin doesn't.
I thought that was very noteworthy.
And I'm not sure why or what happened there.
My speculation was if there was like a big sailor buy, but nothing has been announced
today. Was there like a big sailor buy, but nothing has been announced today?
Or did the market suddenly start treating Bitcoin differently than the stock market? Or after trading Bitcoin like a tech stock for half a year?
What do you guys think happened?
Now there came a bit of a dump over the weekend, but not as deep.
I just think one thing people have to always understand that over the weekend the only thing people can sell is crypto so if they are
feeling fear try to find people anybody gold people anybody the markets are closed so they'll
sell crypto and that's been going on for months years on the weekend if there's any fear going
into the friday night you know over the weekend we sell off on crypto because it's the only thing people can sell the same efficiency of the old
markets we have to go 24 7. but anyway that's my theory but what happened last week why didn't
bitcoin dump along with the stock market after tracking this so closely for so long
for so long.
I think Bitcoin is declining.
i think
Yeah, I was going to say,
we said last week that it was an in-between,
a correlation between gold and stocks, right?
And gold held up very well last week.
Interestingly, gold started to sell off
towards the end of last week
and went from about 3,200, right?
Back down to around 3,000.
And Bitcoin still held up for a little bit
and then did sell off a little bit then. i think it's it's kind of stuck in between this correlation between
gold and stocks at the moment um yeah you can kind of see that right like uh that gives it a bit more
clarity like it held up pretty well when gold was going high but then when gold also started to dip
um then then we started to see uh I agree with you there, yep.
Head south a lot.
So I think it's actually just kept the same correlation in between those two as it has before.
I think this points to massive monetary stimulus still as well.
Like, that's my gut here.
Like, even if there's no trade deal between the US and China,
all that China can really do then is print money. Like even today, this morning, they said, hey,
we're going to do more monetary stimulus. We're going to bring it forward. If everyone's going to
dig in here and there's no deal, I still think that just means money printing. Maybe not out of
the Fed because of what happens with inflation, but I think you'll see global M2 go up a lot. And weirdly, that may, again, be driven by China more than anywhere else.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, China has begun to devalue. And I mean, even though the moves are
small, we saw the Chinese market suffered the most last night watching Chinese market
live, which was by far the the scariest chart
of all um but this is a signal to washington right if the dollar has been falling what's going up
today shouldn't the one the one be rising but it's not why is that that's a signal so i think uh
there's some kind of trade way to terms being renegotiated here in China is probably going to have to do a massive QE.
Or has already started.
Yeah.
About the MicroStrategy and Saylor, what do you think, James?
Could there be a big buy last week?
Or what is happening with MicroStrategy?
He didn't buy last week.
It's kind of funny.
He's kind of cautious as to buys.
Now they do have a thing called STRF and STRK, which are two kind of preferred shares that they sell to buy Bitcoin.
And also, they sometimes hit the ATM.
But he waits for the right moments.
And unfortunately, when price of Bitcoin is low, it's typically the right moment. But that's when the market's rattled.
And that's when the market can't absorb a lot of, you know, ATM preferred shares so he did not buy this week and he's buying less than that but
remember last week was a huge buy monster buy so um two billion right more yeah just a little over
do you think there's any risk um i know the answer but just to expand on it, because a lot of people are worried.
Is there a systematic risk with MicroStrategy here?
You know, he has bought a lot that's underwater here.
Yes, his average cost is, I think, around $70,000
or thereabouts.
The problem is, well, the good thing for them
is they know how to manage risk.
The second other thing is their debt is unencumbered, which means people can't draw against it.
So they're fine.
They can weather the storm, and they can weather a bear market, and they can go underwater like they did in the last bear, too.
So they're fine.
They're clever.
There are no demos.
So the average price here doesn't mean that they go insolvent or something like that.
I think that's what people are confused about, maybe.
It means I've been in MicroStrategy since 2020.
It's the biggest FUD magnet you'll ever find in the world.
Everybody's willing to throw poop at it.
A lot of to Solana.
The Bitcoin price went to like 50% of his average price during the last bear, right?
It was at like 16 and his average price was in the mid 30s.
So that is not the important factor here.
Yeah, exactly.
Well said, Mando.
Okay, then we covered that.
I think the stock market is relevant to study here
because it feels like Bitcoin has everything
going for it now. The support of the US government, bigger than ever buys from Saylor,
a red 21% of American adults own crypto now. There's one in five. And it's like an enormous momentum all over the world.
The only thing that's against it now is the rest of the market.
Like the stock market is tanking and everyone's worried.
And of course, that affects every high risk asset, which Bitcoin has been up till now.
So what will happen here with the stock
market if we can figure that out? Because I think that the moment that this turns around,
I think Bitcoin will run too. Because that's what's left. That's the headwind that Bitcoin
has right now. And then it hasn't helped with all the buys from Saylor and President of the United States
shilling Bitcoin on prime time every day.
So should we talk about the stock market? When is this turning?
Mando, you have a lot of experience in traditional markets. What are we looking at here really?
Except a huge dump. I think you're muted.
Just look at the date where that started. Just identify the date where the bottom of where this move started.
It was the election day, November 4th.
Did you see this?
It took back the whole Trump pump.
There's Trump headline right now, which is,
if China does not withdraw tariffs by April 8th,
the US will impose an additional 50% tariffs on April 9th.
There you go.
Chinese trade deficit.
It's all about negotiating the deficit or to pull out of china
so basically yeah uh brinkmanship here to see if they'll do a deal i i personally i genuinely do
not think they're going to come to a deal um at least u.s and china i think the u.s can come to
a deal with a lot of different countries but but not necessarily with china and yeah let's see how
this one plays out.
But yeah, like you said, CTO,
this is one of those scenarios
where global M2 has been going higher,
gold has been going higher.
And it's really a question of,
can Bitcoin go higher in a world
where stocks potentially can continue to go lower?
And I don't know, like it's decoupled.
It has decoupled slightly for the last few weeks, right?
I personally think that it will continue to decouple
and that will continue to kind of follow more gold in them too.
But you're going to have days like you had yesterday
where Bitcoin's down 10%
because everyone's just freaking out about macro.
And the volatility is going to be really, really high.
And remember, the Chinese need the U.S. more than the U.S.
Well, the U.S. need the Chinese for sure.
But the trade deficit is 300 billion or something like that.
250 billion.
It's monstrous.
440 to 4 billion.
It's almost half a trade.
But you're right, Mando,
that Xi is one tough cookie
negotiating. He doesn't
bend the knee like
many of the other players, so that is the brinkmanship
you're talking about, which could be a little bit risky.
Well, the bullish
thing here is that even if I
am less confident in them coming to a deal,
I think the only solution for that
is that China needs to literally print $500 billion of money.
Trillion. Trillion more. Yeah. They're going to do that.
Maybe a trillion. It's going to have to deal with that.
So one of the bullish things about Bitcoin here is that you either get a trade deal, okay, and this all deescalates.
And maybe then you have a relief rally across all
markets or you get unbelievable amounts of money printing coming out of um china in particular
and i think that's why you can still have a bullish view on on bitcoin here yeah and the
the other thing that people forget about china too is the demographic issues
so many alarm bells right now they simply have very bad aging population not enough young people
and that's why they're quadrupling down on robots too because they know they need them and as i
mentioned at the beginning they're offshoring to southeast asia because they don't have enough
workers and the workers aren't cheap enough right now in china so they do have fundamental problems problems as well. They should open their borders.
Yeah, China made a catastrophic mistake. They had this one-child policy for the
longest time. I spoke to a mother, one of the kids' classmates, and she's married to the same husband and they have a child with 10 years
apart and I asked about the story and it wasn't literally that she worked at the state bank and if
you had two children not only was there a fine but you get fired from your job so you can only
have one child and then when they removed the policy, they had the second child.
And she said that that's a huge problem because a lot of young families now in China, they were a single child, both of them.
So they get married and now they have four old people to take care of.
And that puts a lot of strain because in the culture there you do take care of the grandparents so two working people have to take care of four old people and she said
this has become a massive massive problem and it's maybe not discussed as much in western media so
they do have a big demographic problem and this is it they realized that change that policy too late
i think but yeah i it's it's very interesting china manufactures basically everything and it's
not like cheap labor it's difficult to find the competence and the precision and everything to
even do it in say europe or the us the US. So it's a massive problem.
And I don't know.
Phones and I guess Elon Musk's companies,
they must have a lot of reliance on China
in different parts of the supply chain, iPhones and whatnot.
I think there's interesting game theory happening
behind the scenes now.
Ursula von der Leyen is all over Twitter now saying they want to negotiate.
There's a quarter of a trillion dollar deficit
with Europe,
between the US and Europe,
and 300 billion with China.
If Europe folds,
that will be a sign to China
they have to fold too.
They can't be the odd man out,
not negotiating.
What do you think of that, Mando?
Our CTO? Marty?
I think there's a lot higher chance of the EU and the US doing a deal
than China. Just because
they have NATO, they have
other things. They have common interests
in various different bits of policy there.
I do think that the US and China could be in this for a little bit of time here.
You see, there's some headlines, you know, China's going to now restrict rare earths,
which is very important.
There's some talk about them basically saying, letting loose all the copyright infringement
stuff that they've tried to contain or they say they've tried to contain
over the last few years.
And then the other big one is Taiwan.
Like they could invade Taiwan
and that would have an impact
on the semiconductor industry for the US.
So I just feel like that one could simmer
for a lot longer than some of the others.
Yeah, I think it's all about China. china personally i think this is all about china this is the us and china
trade imbalance it's been cooking for a long time and uh this is out of the deal this is how trump
gets things done this is his style um threats end of the world threats china has more to lose
threats, end of the world threats, China has more to lose.
They're being stubborn.
They'll come to the table.
The trading balance is very unfair.
They need to drop it at least half so that there's a little bit more balance.
And I think it will be sad.
I think these deals will happen faster than you think.
I personally don't think these will drag on much longer than 30 to 60 days.
I personally don't think these will drag on much longer than 30 to 60 days.
I think 100% there is an element of negotiation here.
Definitely.
Come out with tough tariffs, bring everyone to the table, try to bring it down.
100%.
The only thing I'm even more sure about is that Trump is not going to end four years of presidency with the stock market
down if there's anything he can do to avoid it.
So he will do anything, like love Trump or hate Trump.
Everyone agrees that he does have a bit, quite big ego.
So that scenario just doesn't exist.
He's going to cut everything, forget about the tariffs. That's what needed. Do anything to make,
you know, the markets go up, I think. So I'm not worried about that. I'm not worried on a four-year
horizon. I think, you know, they would do anything to bring the markets up.
Short term, I don't know.
I don't know how long this negotiation will go.
I do think that there will come to some agreement
and find some reasonable solution to all the tariff situation.
I do think so.
That's beneficial for the U.S.
And I don't think beneficial for the U.S.
simply isn't to manufacture everything in country.
That's just not possible today.
I don't think even with robotics and everything,
it will get so expensive.
Like a Vietnamese factory worker, I checked the numbers, they work 48 to 60 hours per
week and they earn $300 per month.
So that's the cost of labor for Nike today.
And yeah, probably, you know, you can cut some cost with robotics and everything.
That's going to take time to build.
It will take years to perfect those processes and robots and install them and build factories
and everything.
That's going to take forever.
Fun story.
I hired a guy on Saturday to repair a fence.
$700 a day. And he only repair a fence. $700 a day.
And he only does six hours.
$700.
Exactly.
And he's just hammering nails in wood.
That's it.
So that's not skilled.
Anyway, let's move on to some crypto stuff.
One last thing I do want to say about the stock market, though.
We are way under the $200 moving average in the S&P 500.
And that doesn't stay down there for long.
So you're right.
And the other factor as well from looking at history,
the faster things fall, the faster things rebound.
So that's been my observation.
Be ready.
All right.
Let's talk about some crypto and some altcoins.
Should we have you any of you followed this Genius Act discussion with USDT?
I don't have so much to add.
So...
Marty has.
Marty, did you follow that?
Yeah, I speak to Paolo.
It's pretty clear.
It's a pretty similar situation to the micro rules in the EU.
If the US Genius Act is signed in as it is right now, then
current USDT's backing will be insufficient. And so
they'll have to create a US-specific USDT version, like they did
in the EU. And they're ready to do that, no problem.
So we'll see what the actual text of the Genius Act demands
with regards to the collateral,
whether it has to be a certain percentage in short-term treasuries,
a certain percentage in bank money, etc., etc.,
and those rules are still being hashed out between the two parties.
It's sort of a bipartisan thing.
Once the Genius Act is actually written up in its final form,
we'll know Tether's strategy.
But I think think once again,
Palo is in the White House is with Latnik. They'll work it out.
But the current USDT, absolutely, there's a chance that it's not compliant in the US,
depending if I mean, if the US signs the stable coin act to MICA, it won't be compliant.
Same thing as Europe, but they're they're ready to to create an american
stable coin um but what it does say is that usdc is definitely the chosen one right now circle
you're still circle announcing the ipo making big inroads in all kinds of things government
so circle seems to be the most compliant and But current Tether, with their backing, won't be compliant.
But Paolo is very open to create a US-compliant stablecoin.
But just understand, like everything, nobody really knows.
The rules aren't set.
So once the rules are set, they're going to be...
Amazing lobbying by Circle here.
Because I presume if that happens, they're going to take massive, massive market share. And just for everyone's up to date, USDT is delisted now from European exchanges.
It's gone already.
Yep.
Circle's going to take over.
And the other thing that's interesting is you look at the VCs right now, guess where they are investing in crypto?
They're going all in on stable coins because they know
what's coming that's big big money that's huge let's move on we have shocking developments in
ethereum and i don't know i guess um the trump sons should have watched a little bit more DCA shows because
Ethereum is now back at January 2018 levels.
January 2018.
I have to think now.
That's seven years ago.
Seven years ago, Ethereum is hitting the same price. So top buyers in January 2018 are now at the same price point.
And I mean... 7.4 dominance.
Yeah.
And...
It's crazy.
I don't know, but a lot of things have been difficult to analyze this period, but this
is not one of them.
This is not one of them guys for the past year or so.
This has been and still is a straight line down.
ETH to B2C straight line down, uninterrupted. And ETH to USD, even though Bitcoin had this
enormous rally, made a top pattern and went into downtrend. And this has not been in any
way unclear. But of course, Solana has also taken a major beating, but if we look at the
Sol-2-Eth relative strength, that has not changed now. It's still the same. It kind of has followed
this channel after Solana had the massive run-up and then they went into this channel after Solana had the massive run up and then they went into this channel where
Solana has gained relative strength on Ethereum very consistently all the way since
2023 basically and before that of course Solana gained much faster. So
I think it's important to see that in this light but of course
Sol has been down a lot also and what's your take on on Sol here guys
James do you want to well it is a wicked I don't know what you call that a mini bear market bear
market but either way I look at it in simple terms if it goes back to all-time high, it's a triple.
And that's rare that that happens at this stage of the bull market.
So this bull market is quite different.
Drawdowns are brutal.
Bitcoin's been holding up pretty well.
Yeah, it has.
It has.
I mean, I'll have a lot of information about Solana if you want to know.
Yeah, Mark, you can go ahead.
A couple of things.
I mean, obviously, we're all aware from January 12th,
I started tracking a lot of selling of Solana
through the market make-out of London called Wintermute,
offices all over the world.
And it was coming through Binance.
And lately, last week, we found evidence that actually found
the original court document from the FTX bankruptcy
that appointed Wintermute as the market maker to execute
the selling of FTX bankruptcy assets into cash to pay back creditors.
And so it appears as if Wintermute was selling of Solana
to go into cash to pay back creditors.
And it started around 300.
Yeah, 300 down to 100.
So, you know, there was a very extensive selling pressure from that. And it's all once again,
historic coming from the FTX bankruptcy. But still, it remains 2.23% dominance,
which is quite amazing. Once again, I said yesterday, I think the resilience of these assets is spectacular.
And now we have to all turn our heads to,
the way markets correct is,
you know, everyone goes in,
there's an event, there's panic.
Everyone goes back to stable coins or to fiat.
And then when the time is ready to move back in,
everyone reallocates differently.
That goes for black rock
sovereign countries the fed themselves people on the streets you guys your decisions about where
you put your money in again the second time are not going to be where you were before when you
sold and i think what we're seeing is less money will go into ethereum i mean it's at 7.65
dominance right now more money will go into solana holding is 2.23 percent and being a stable
coin king at this point so i think what we're just seeing rebalance everything you know the waters
go out of the bay and then the waters come back in the bay but it's a very different setup as to
which assets are going to get the capital and that includes the stock market i think you'll see a
giant rebalancing that's what i call it and
that's very much part of a bull market this is a bull market pullback and the 10 on the stock
market is a typical bull market pullback and crypto saw around a 10 pullback as well so i think this
is just a great redistribution and uh nothing but positive news coming out of solana on the other
hand ethereum nothing but negative news coming out of Solana. On the other hand, Ethereum, nothing but negative news coming out of Ethereum.
They delayed their thing.
They had all kinds of issues on the test nets.
Charles Hodgkins yesterday talking about the origins of Ethereum.
We spoke about the actual days when Ethereum was invented.
It was spectacular.
The people in the room at the time, the thoughts, when they left, what they did.
And there were issues in Ethereum
from that day that were never solved. So I have a lot more information. I'll slowly start to be
sharing around this. I don't want to hurt too many feelings, but there are reasons for Ethereum's
decline and it's not totally market driven. There are issues. Anyway, that's my uptake. Also,
Sui Walrus came out last week. I don't know if you guys saw it.
It was pretty much the most resilient of all the micro coins. It barely moved in the stump.
I thought that was pretty spectacular. That's Walrus on Sui. That was amazing too to watch.
Okay, we have a hard stop in a couple of minutes. Let's take one more agenda point because for many it's been a very tough period.
First time maybe experiencing this kind of drawdown. Let's share some tips how to survive
these situations because I guarantee you it won't be the last. James do you want to start?
Yeah so one of the things that scares me the most is people throw in the towel at the very
worst time. they panic sell the
bottom don't let that happen and as we always stress you know when markets go to new all-time
highs that's your signal there's a very crude caveman signal but i've been using it my whole
life that's when you start either stacking cash or taking a little bit off the table and you know
get ready for the downturn because the downturn coming. You don't necessarily know what will cause it,
but after an all-time high, there's always mean reversion.
Everything mean reverts to the upside and to the downside.
So be ready for that.
And just one final point on tariffs.
An easy way for people, and shout out to Sean Donnelly here
and TNT Tesla, who understands soccer.
And Mando, you probably understand soccer too.
Where do we lose CTO? There he is.
Should everybody play by the same rules?
Or should Germany have different soccer rules when they play the United States or France or China?
That's a very easy way to think about the calculus of what this is all about.
The rules are not fair and they're not equally applied.
And it's not a political statement, but it's a crude analogy.
Compare it to sports.
Then you'll get it.
Final note for me.
Very nice.
Mando, you want to share some tips how to survive these kind of drawdowns?
You're muted.
Yeah, I mean, I've been trading for a long time probably not as long as
some of you guys but yeah this is a super volatile market like don't don't don't be um you can
forgive yourself for for uh getting caught up in it or refreshing the prices all the time like the
volatility has been fairly wild i would um I would say for the last month or
two, I definitely did not time the top, but moving into an asset which you want to hold throughout
potentially a chop or downward period is not a bad move. For me, that was more Bitcoin-based.
Before that, it was more JLP, but there's been more Bitcoin. But know that you have um you want to hold an asset or want to buy more
of it on a back down day is quite a good thing um so make sure you have full conviction in your bags
and then potentially have a game plan for the volatility so i even think you can trade around
the volatility a little bit even with like 10 to 10 to 20 of your bag have set orders uh five to
10 below and similarly for above above, like you can,
you can trade around this or both even today, right? We went from 76K to 81K basically in
20 minutes. Know that that happens a lot in these sort of a sell off. I'm pretty bullish at this
time, just, but, but still really, what I feel most confident about is Bitcoin,
just because of what I just said,
where I think that even if there's a sustained trade war,
GlobalM2 is just going to go absolutely wild.
And I think in that world, we do well,
and probably so does things like gold.
But I'm less certain on some of the others I think
you could be holding those and it's difficult to know where the bottom is if if some of the
activity continues to dwindle like they'll they'll be the first to go parabolic on the way out but
I've been less certain on some of the some of the L1 trades trades since activities started to dwindle across them.
Morty, some tips how to survive this crazy drawdowns?
I'm a technical investor, so I focus on the technology, the use cases, and I invest to maturity. I think that's something people have to learn as well. They're VCs in crypto.
You're an early stage investor. These are all
speculative assets until they actually prove what they're trying to prove, right? And nothing's
really proved what it's trying to prove except Bitcoin and Solana and Ethereum. They've actually
solved problems and are being used. So you need to hold them to maturity. That's the first problem.
People just bail out. The second thing is they don't focus on the technology. They just look at
charts and analysts and influencers and make the decisions like that, and they will always lose their money.
Learn the technology. If you invest in something, understand it, understand its use case,
its business model, the maturity indicators, the signals, the targets, the regulation,
and play the game correctly. And then you exit at the end of QE. You don't exit in quantitative tightening.
Okay.
Anybody that is exiting right now, you're literally exiting a speculative asset class that you've been holding in the bottom of the Federal Reserve's quantitative tightening process.
Literally when they've sold their entire balance sheet.
This is the worst time to buy, to sell.
This is the to buy.
Okay.
You buy now. you run as they add
liquidity there's always going to be a crisis there's always going to be a crisis i love crises
why it lets new people get in so new people to crypto welcome you get solana at 100 you get
suya 2 you get bitcoin at 75 you you at 100 going, should I buy at 100?
If you bought at 100, you'll learn.
You won't do it again.
Be patient.
Learn that crises will be created and there are opportunities to get in.
Increase your bag or get in at the bottom.
And use low leverage, high leverage traders.
I hope you finally learned your lesson.
There's some record liquidations this cycle.
Just don't play with high leverage.
The house is stacked.
You have no way of winning.
You will lose your money.
Low leverage only, spot buying, hold to maturity.
Take advantage of dips.
Expect corrections.
Now, in hindsight, we all should have sold the Trump announcements.
Obviously, the top, we should have sold it,
and everyone's kicking
themselves going oh we were so stupid we thought that you know the trump pump would go on forever
we should have sold the top and that's part of trading just learn from that mistake it'll happen
again like i tell people in my community there's always another trade people there's always another
trade it's not until it's never never over. And keep rock harder.
Yeah, definitely.
So the only thing I'd like to add to those, because I mean, you summed it up very well.
Most people do the same mistakes.
They buy at the euphoria, which is at the top, and they hold it all the way down.
And then they sell it at the depression, which is at the bottom.
It's better to do the other way around. Secondly, I would like to add this concept about position sizing.
Like when the market is easy you can have full position size, more exposure. It's difficult and
you have no idea what's going on. You have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow and everything is
very uncertain. You don't need to put in all the money in either direction if you don no idea what's going on. You have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow and everything is very uncertain.
You don't need to put in all the money in either direction if you don't know what's going on.
You can have less position size. You know, Warren Buffett put more cash, maybe because he feels he didn't know really what's going on.
Turned out pretty right. And yeah, so the concept of position sizing, when you are more certain, you have more exposure.
When you are less certain, you can have less exposure.
Like for example, right now, I don't know really what's going to happen.
I felt if they would have delayed the tariffs today, I would have said 100% okay, go all in here, but they didn't.
I don't really know. Maybe you know this negotiation, this turmoil might continue for a while.
And yeah, I don't really know. So that's what I would like to add. Second, you don't need
to hold through the downtrends. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, whatever your favorite coin is, is not going to go to 1 million with the trend up.
So that's another way to kind of contain your losses if you have been wrecked.
Any other final words, anyone?
Stay healthy, stay strong. Keep the head in the game.
This will pass.
James, what's your thoughts on the XAR? Elon Musk moved.
Did you see he wrote off the X acquisition entirely
and valued X at $33 billion now,
so he actually made $14 billion on the deal
that everyone thought was the worst deal of all time?
And then he played video games.
I thought of you when I read that.
I was like, James must be loving that.
Don't fade the best capital allocators on earth.
Watch them.
Study them.
Watch the winners.
And there's very few of them.
You can count them on two hands, maybe one hand.
Follow them all.
The Stanley Druckenmillers, Paul Tudor Joneses, the Elon Musks, the David Sachses.
They all know what's up.
Thank you, everybody. Thanks, up. Thank you, everybody.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you very much.
Remember to subscribe to everyone.
Links below on all the forums and channels.
I believe the bottom is in.
That's the final message.
I think the bottom is in.
Looking at the Chinese stock market,
I think we're going to bounce.
Awesome.
Good to see everybody.
Good to see you, Mando, Marty, CTO.
Thank you all.
Happy weekend.
Brilliant show.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you all very much.
Yep.
See you next week.
Take care.
Take care.
