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Synquote Market Discussion
Recorded: April 21, 2025 Duration: 0:57:21Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, crypto enthusiasts explored the emerging trends of Bitcoin's decoupling from traditional markets, the implications of gold's all-time highs, and the potential risks posed by major holders in the crypto space. As market dynamics shift, the interconnectedness of crypto and equities remains a focal point, prompting calls for diversification and caution.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, good morning everybody.
Let's get started.
I think it looks like things yesterday are starting to pick up a bit.
I'll let one of you guys take it off with a little market summary.
I think probably the most notable thing is,
and I think it's too early to really draw any conclusions right now as people starting to point out a slight decoupling of BTC with markets starting to look a little bit more like gold, which is obviously something that would be quite welcome at this time.
you guys um take it away i mean do you you think that this uh sentiment shift is a little bit too
optimistic um based on maybe one day's one day's market movements or is there is there more to it
hey what's going on oh yeah i think it's obviously like way too optimistic there's a tendency to jump
on like one or two days worth of performance and extrapolate
on it a ton. Um, yeah, there was, uh, some decent relative performance obviously, uh, over the
weekend when equities are closed, uh, holiday weekend, things are relatively thin. I mean,
it wasn't like there was relative performance until early session. Um, because, uh, I mean,
even for an Easter weekend, like we were still trading within like the same range for eight days.
And then we had a really strong drive off of today's open.
It was spot driven to begin with,
but then at the highs at like 87K from that point forward,
there was like $1.6 billion in OI added
and not really any reward for that.
Some Binance spoofing going on, looking like
someone's trying to defend that position. And we did break out of this running diagonal that's now
been going back to February. And things like this tend to capture the attention of momentum traders
for possible shifts. But it is early and equities have continued down off
the open. Gold is actually down. Yields are racing back up right now. The dollar is getting crushed.
So I think it was like a little bit of a narrative that picked up on Twitter.
You know, the Japanese, excuse me, the Asian sessions started having some outperformance over
the last couple of days. And that was like one of the poorest sessions over the last couple of months.
So there's this idea that, you know, with the exodus of U.S. assets and the dollar that,
you know, not only were they going back into Asian equities more heavily, Asian markets
rather, but they're also buying BTC.
But this is like way too short term to be anything but spurious.
And now everything is trading lower again.
And CB on Coinbase in the last few minutes before this drop,
there was like $90 million in longs that were just absorbed right to a tick.
Someone just sucking all that up.
So yeah, I don't know if much has changed.
Like this seems to be just the norm for a little while.
And until something major changes on the policy front,
I think that we're just kind of along for this ride.
Yeah, not much to add.
I don't think pumping on the weekend while the market's closed is enough of a sign that this time it's different
and we're finally decoupling.
We didn't even really
pump that hard like i made a tweet about it i think on saturday i was like uh-oh ethereum
pumping on the weekend like usually this is bad news and uh someone funnily enough commented like
we're only up like a few percent it's kind of sad that we're calling this a pump which is kind of
true um but still seems very much lockstep like equities the s&p is down almost
three and a half percent now and q down 3.4 percent and we're just getting drugged down
dragged down with it so uh if equities can find some sort of bottom and bounce maybe we can kind
of continue this move up after breaking out of that downtrend line and continue to get some
relief but by no means do i think we're all of a sudden starting to track gold based on one
or two days of disjointedness.
Let's talk about gold, though.
I mean, it's right now at all-time highs to the day.
I think it broke 3,400 for the first time this week, if not today.
So yeah, it looks like today actually is the first time it's broke 3,400.
And over the last year, it's up 50%, close to 50%.
What do you guys make of this new shift in the overall market? And how do you think that it'll spill over to crypto in one way or another in the longer run?
Because, I mean, just to put it in context, we basically have decades of other countries investing heavily in the U.S.
U.S. companies benefiting from that
pretty significantly. And all of a sudden, you know, we have a new administration that's keen
to remake a lot of relationships with those other countries. It's clearly shaken the markets quite
a bit. I think the fact that there doesn't seem to be a strong pattern to it either is kind of waking a lot of people up to the fact that they're kind of
taking a huge risk right now. It's resulted in confidence being shaken. And I think the question is, is this something that's going to go away
once they announce these are the tariff outcomes
that we've reached,
we've reached a deal with these countries,
and then let's just go back to normal
and forget this happened.
Or how do you think that this plays out?
And maybe it's not relevant
in terms of like shorter term trading
or short term positions.
But yeah, I'm curious to hear what you guys make of it,
because it kind of feels like sometimes talking about like short term market movements in light
of like a bigger shift in market structure feels a little bit like missing the forest for the
trees kind of. What do you think? Yeah, I think, you know, one thing that I like to, the phrase I like to say often is big ships turn slowly.
And this is an example of that.
Like, this is a big ship having turned slowly.
And it's not a jet ski.
It's not going to just get right back onto course.
What has taken place?
And, like, I am just being, like, a complete tourist right now talking about macro and talking about policy and politics and geopolitics and all of this but i think it's safe to say that you know this is a moment where
you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube um trump has like shown his true colors uh and i
think what has been undone is like years of relationships that you know it's like someone
doesn't have to talk to show you their character. And when they do show you their character, you don't make the mistake of, you know,
allowing them to screw you over twice.
So I think that what has taken place is a significant shift in the climate rather than
the weather.
And we're seeing that across the board in positioning across all markets and across
the, you know, in terms of how the dollar is trading.
Gold has obviously done really well.
But, you know, everything since Trump came into office, pretty much everything, the dollar
has done poorly against everything.
Right.
So it's not like, you know, gold has just absolutely crushed it.
It has.
Right.
But it's important to put that in context.
I think that, you know, as long as vol remains elevated, VIX is what,
back at like 35? As long as vol is elevated, you're not going to see the same firepower that
is necessary to take the S&P back at all-time highs. And people make fun of me when I say,
oh, where would you buy the S&P again? It's like, well, I would buy all-time highs again,
because then you're literally telling everybody who was bearish that they're wrong and have to reconsider their thesis. So there's something to be said for buying all-time highs,
and I don't give a shit where I buy. That's the higher expected value setup in equities,
in my opinion. So I think BTC is clearly trading like risk. It's not like, it doesn't even seem like internally,
there's a whole lot of worry with BTC.
Like if you look at, you know,
to bring it back to like the options market,
if you look at the options markets,
SKUs are not really that smoked
in terms of being really negative.
If you look at like how butterflies are being priced,
it's just the 10 Delta, 25 Delta stuff.
It's not like the curve is that convex.
It seems pretty complacent.
Not a whole lot of buying of um you know the kind of i think uh tail risk insurance that maybe you might
expect to see bid up more in this kind of environment so it looks like a little bit of
complacency still here in this market and um yeah i have a really tough time like getting bullish
unless we're significantly higher trading back above like 88 is a great start, but already we saw a ton of positioning coming
and getting absorbed over the morning, over the last few hours.
So it makes it really tough, right?
And gold is actually off the highs right now.
Gold is off the highs.
Yields are back up.
The dollar is bouncing slightly and gold is against the dollar, is tracking lower almost
one for one, a negative correlation to the dollar this morning.
But I don't know.
I just think it's super dangerous, yeah, to assume that this changes in the near future.
It seems like a tidal shift.
And if equities continue lower, I don't think you're going to see gold continue to hold
up, honestly.
I think you get to a point where there's no alternative,
and you're seeing people sell gold positions that they don't want to shore up capital
for the positions that they're hoping to protect and maybe maintain long-term exposure to.
Last note, this is an earnings week.
I haven't really cared about earnings since trading single names,
but not like anything earnings-related in the near future is going to change
besides probably dropping of forward guidance.
But I think Tesla still has probably a ton of retail positioning that assumed that Tesla would be more or less a made position in this administration, given Elon Musk's relationship.
And they're still hanging on for due life.
So I don't know.
I think S&P is going to still continue to crater lower.
And I think that BTC is giving us a generous lag to position for that.
Yeah, basically same thoughts.
BTC likely gets dragged down with S&P.
Tesla, I believe, is tomorrow.
They're very likely obviously going to miss, to Ryan's point.
Yeah, I don't know.
We're seeing a massive, to what he said, title shift, right?
And this was apparent months ago when you saw a lot of large institutions of money move out of risk and we haven't seen anything to signal that that move is
is changing anytime soon i think the bull's best hope on crypto is like a wicked relief rally not
like the bottom being in and us immediately going back to all-time high uh i think you know anytime
we get any sort of
up movement i mean for fuck's sakes we had dave portnoy tweet out are we decoupling this morning
and then microstrategy announced that you know they bought another half billion dollars worth
of bitcoin um so it just seems like we're uh you know destined to kind of continue this for the
next little while every little bounce it just seems like michael saylor's buying i actually would love to hear ryan's opinion on this and anyone else who's
interested what do we think about the fact that saylor owns like two and a half percent of bitcoin
now like at what point is this no longer like a good thing yeah i i mean at what level are we comfortable with like him reaching in terms of how much btc
has under his own watch um yeah i used to make like the connection between him and this guy
brian hunter um uh and that was in natural gas and you know brian hunter was essentially the
egg man at one point um things were so elevated because of him and he couldn't go to offload it at all. And it looks
like, you know, I, I, I feel like sailor is not obviously in the same position because it's a
completely different instrument, different situation, but he is very much in many cases,
the egg man, right? I mean, from his cost basis recently, it's, it's decent. It was like 84, but
you know, he's the buyer in the market right now in
the spot market um and there's not a whole lot of it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of people
that are interested in btc at these levels besides him and if they were i mean it's difficult to
to be that interested in these prices when you know that someone is getting positioned up here
and they don't give a shit about their cost basis. And they also have another arrangement as well with micro strategy.
And again, I don't really know any of the details about that to be able to go into it without
completely LARPing. But I do know that this market has a tendency and markets in general have a
tendency to trade against positions. And what you don't want to do is beat a zebra that paints a big
red X on yourself when you're in the middle of some other larger players that could potentially push the market against you and exploit that.
That just doesn't sit well with me.
I know he's not near any kind of liquidation, but again, how much BTC is enough for him?
much BTC is enough for him, right?
I mean, he's placed some excellent trades,
but he's completely like price insensitive.
And, you know, by all means,
his strategy would not work with anyone else.
And he's kind of, you know,
he's done this and exhibited this behavior before
in the early dot-com bubble.
And I mean, he kind of hit with Apple
and his points about Apple
and, you know, what was coming with technology.
But the guy strikes me as like,
you know, more or less a madman, which, you know, you
either go out in a blaze of glory or you go out in a body bag.
So I don't know.
I mean, it doesn't sit well with me, but it's worked out so far.
But, you know, BTC has traded, it's had drift upward so far.
And, you know, I don't think it's safe to extrapolate too much on previous relationships, given we've had this kind of massive shift across the board.
Yeah, I think it's it's it's slightly worrisome. I mean, I think it's average price now is like
67,500. That's not very far below the current price. So you wonder if like the next system systemic issue that you know befalls
crypto is something sailor related does uh does sailor have a liquidation price like what would
that be i think similar to ryan i don't actually have enough knowledge i would love someone smarter
who might know to to hop in if they're listening because i i don't know if there's like some sort
of price that requires them to redeem some of this debt
or sell off some of the Bitcoin.
I don't actually know.
Yeah, and it's like one of those subjects
where you could have two people
that seem like they're complete experts
and they're CFAs and they're arguing on Twitter
from a stance of authority
and you still don't really come away
with an exact answer
as to whether or not he'd be in trouble at some point.
Yeah, I think it might be, I mean, maybe his average entry is $66,000, but I think it might
actually be pretty low.
I'm not 100% though.
To ask crypto, you requested speaker access.
I don't know if you want to chime in here.
All right, maybe you just requested access in here? All right.
Maybe use the progressive access to ask a question later.
But, yeah, I'll do a little research in the background
while we're talking here.
But, so I guess I think a lot of people are a little bit over-eager
not to miss the bulk of any recovery.
I think we see that in the reactions to any little pump.
Do you guys think that there's a chance, you know, that, you know, let's play double
back for a second.
Let's say like Trump, Trump announces,
care of fuels are reached tomorrow, market takes off,
and if you're sidelined, you're kind of like, you know, the guy who missed the COVID takeoff, post-COVID takeoff.
Do you guys think that that's a real worry here,
or would you say that you're more concerned
that you'd capture more of the
downside and there's more pain to come in markets, crypto and outside of crypto?
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely not COVID, right? Because COVID was, you know, sort of a one-off.
Obviously, you know, the saying is that like one-off events happen in markets all the time, but COVID was, you know, literally a one-of-one situation that
we haven't had in, you know, in forever, right. People locked inside with internet connections
and then being dropped money into their bank account. Um, so there was a, you know, there
was a ton of firepower, uh, whereas retail normally, like they're messing around with
like a thousand dollar account. They're not, they're messing around with a $1,000 account.
They're not really significantly pushing the needle
except in some meme names.
But I think given the nature of how this market trades
and how stretched the futures markets
get relative to the spot market,
I never really feel a sense of urgency to chase this market.
We know it's a 75-plus vol asset most of the time. The excitement in this
market tends to stretch out the futures in the short term. So you're going to have something
that really responds in a knee-jerk fashion. And you know it's going to get heavy, really heavy
fast. And the spot market isn't going to catch up with that. So you'd probably see a, you know, a scary looking bounce, but it's an inefficient move. That's probably going to fill out. And
yeah, I mean, would I start to really pay attention to, you know, um, flows at that point,
whether or not things are truly shifting. I mean, it would definitely have my attention.
Like, I think there's a bunch of keywords that you can keep watch on for a Trump phone call with
T, right? With whether or not it's constructive phone call or whatever. There's plenty of different
things that algos are going to be picking up on. That'd be a good sign. But I just, I don't know.
I just feel like this kind of change is like, like I said, it's, you've taken the mask off
and it's hard to imagine that something like this could be repaired
that quickly. Uh, so yeah, I mean, I'm still going to be pretty, um, like have pretty high
requirements for price at this point. And I don't care about buying higher in this market because
when momentum goes in this market, when momentum picks up, it's a, it's a And at that point, you're just looking to capture like 60% of the trend. So
missing the bottom doesn't really matter. I think you could always buy higher here.
And yeah, some news like that on that front would significantly send the market, but I imagine that
it would fill out pretty quickly because you'd see things get really top heavy and people like
to use a ton of leverage here.
So all it has to do is move 10% below and start triggering some of those liquidations.
Got it.
Yeah.
It's always people have this obsession with like trying to get the bottom.
It's like you don't know it's the bottom until like, you know, it's like well into the new trend.
And to Ryan's point earlier
about like buying back on all-time highs like sometimes just buying like the clear obvious
reclaim levels that have shown you like a trend change are way easier than to try and you know
time the bottom um i think one of the biggest issues people are going to have right now, both in crypto and equities, is they are confusing, like buying
the dip and dollar cost averaging, right? Because if you're dollar cost averaging into, let's say,
the S&P 500 or NASDAQ or some like big single name stocks, because you believe these are good
names, good stocks, right? A good basket to hold long term um when you're dollar cost averaging
like that's like a systematic like program of buying where regardless of the price you're buying
every day or every week because you're like okay we're 10 15 20 off the highs and you're just gonna
buy buy buy buy and you're gonna hold this for a long period of time the goal is to get like a really good average the problem with the buy the dip is buying the dip assumes that like
every one of these dumps is potentially the bottom and it is is going to reverse maybe back to new
highs or something like that and you just run the risk of like being wrong right like you can buy
the dip that keeps dipping and i think a lot of people are going to end up
doing that over with crypto and with with uh with equities right now as they're going to start
unloading trying to catch the bottom a little too early maybe get a little too sized on some of these
dips you know and end up themselves if you believe in this stuff long term if you believe that we're
getting good discounts on equities long terms i do do think dollar cost averaging as we get, you know, 20, 25, 30 percent lower on things like the S&P is good value.
But you got to be kind of systematic about it, even on the up days, like you got to continue that buying.
And I think we're going to just see a lot of people trying to time the bottom.
They're worried they're going to miss the bottom.
They're going to end up, you know, punting at 80K and then it goes to 60 and they're going to puke so you just got to be careful with
that yeah and it's much i think like to main's point with stocks i think there's obviously a
lot more meat there because you know like i've said before like when apple drops and it's 20
30 off the highs you know it's much easier and it's a much more
compelling or it seems like a more compelling opportunity because you probably have an iPhone,
you know, you probably have plenty of Apple products. You know that there's some kind of
fundamental value there. Whereas in crypto, it's so momentum driven, it's so reflexive and prices
often value. So lower prices, we get lower prices. You get people that know that it's
always a good idea to step out of the way because it's always going to go just a few percent lower.
And it makes these larger corrections much more self-fulfilling because, again,
the value or the fundamental value is much more ephemeral than in equity. I think one of the
things you can do, like Mayim was talking about market structure,
market structure tends to be really useful. So reclaims, again, the idea of everyone being wrong
by reclaiming and rebidding levels that served as very significant contextual shifts, but also
some just basic moving averages, honestly. I think some basic moving average crossovers in
this market have tended to be really useful to at least systematize a bias or make you lean in one direction over the other. And that's another
thing. Like right now, across the board, moving averages are not really supportive. And it is,
you know, it's an arithmetic mean. So it's not like showing you anything special,
but immediately it should give you some kind of idea of who's in control.
And right now it ain't the bulls.
Yeah, I actually had a question for you horse
what what do you think of the idea that equities just generally have more structural headwinds
than crypto because a lot of the mood like the first two legs down in equities are really driven
by like european outflows um and that kind of triggering ls you know long short funds
their spreads to blow out that triggering to grossing and you kind of triggering ls you know long short funds their spreads of blowout
that triggering degrossing and you kind of have this cascaded with clarity right
saccated limitations um crypto kind of got caught in that too but since the first two legs
there hasn't really been that much attachment i mean intraday there's been some correlate there's been a lot of correlation but what if what if like like crypto does just doesn't have that kind of outflow to it right now
because because i feel like last august when the yen carry trade unwinded crypto got the bigger
brunt of that leverage unwind than equities did and then momentum you know money kind of shifted
to go chase equities because i was the faster horse at the time you know mag 7 the ai trade and now it's now it kind of feels like the
reverse a little bit whereas like a lot more of that leverage is unwinding out of equities
and crypto although i mean it is a risk asset it does get it doesn't affect it by just general flows in the risk and flows out of risk.
But the magnitude doesn't feel the same.
Yeah.
I mean, like the initial move for the S&P off the highs was relatively controlled until recently.
Yeah.
And there's obviously a completely different gamut of participants in the index.
And the index also absorbs more optionality than literally
anything else so there's a you know in terms of the types of flows in that market you know this
market has minimal uh minimal you know origins of flows um but i i feel like we always get to
this point where in a larger correction and again like small sample size like there's a tendency to
believe that you know we've reached a point where we've reached a maximum pain point um you know
local maximum at least and you know we found the point in which no one's willing to sell their
bitcoin and i just i don't see it really i don't know i don't think you could say that. I have a tough time saying that at $87,000 for a Bitcoin.
I think one of the things that made 100K such an easy sell, so above 100K,
was like besides some of the more idiosyncratic stuff,
I think you just can't turn a level that was for a decade a high timeframe target,
a dream target, into a buying opportunity of a lifetime, a high timeframe target, a dream target into a buying opportunity
of a lifetime in a short period of time.
Like it's just, you can't like take that out of people's heads.
It's embedded for so long.
It's tough to just immediately go, oh yeah, a hundred K is just like a great buying opportunity.
It's like, no, I've been thinking about selling Bitcoin over a hundred K now for like the
last nine years.
Um, yeah, so we're only at a hundred, we're only at 87k and to be honest i think it's been
kind of tame so far and i'm always a little bit sketched out by assuming that you know we've
reached like this new paradigm with btc off of very like it's a very short look back period where
the relationship has somewhat abated whereas like
most of the time it's trading like more like actually the russell than anything else um but
hey the russell is like the shit coins of the stock market um but it's you know it's more the
relationship that i think you can lean on most reliably is that it's going to continue right
that their relationship will continue and if stocks stocks continue, that this is just, again, a brief period where it was able to, you know, minorly decouple. But I think another
thing that's worth mentioning is like, there was a period a couple of weeks ago where the Russell
was kind of getting bid, but the S&P wasn't. And BTC actually was getting bid at the same time.
And it was actually during the first blowout in the VIX. And I think one of
the things that you have to account for is that when vol blows out that much, there are some
people that are just taking profit on shorts based on that. It's like, okay, well, every time vol
blows out at this extreme, this tends to be a local low. So I'm not going to just hold my
positions with hope that we continue lower.
So some of those flows, I think, acted as support
and gave us that brief decoupling.
But I really think it's risky to assume
that in the face of this major paradigm shift,
that you should kind of stick your head over the berm
and jump in early.
Whereas I'd be much more inclined to be like, yeah, bro, absolutely, if we were trading back in the 90Ks. But at that point, we're 15%
off the highs. Obviously, some of the move is in the rear view. I've seen so many times before where
we get this brief period of decoupling, and then it's like, no, Bitcoin's doing its thing. We've
reached a point where now people are unwilling to sell it. It to sell it it's like i don't know man this doesn't
really i've never seen this last for that long it's always a it's always a little bit of a
canary in the coal mine if anything when that conversation comes up
yeah i know definitely but it is interesting that age has been bidding and that's pretty clear
um yeah for sure but similarly like 87k feels cheaper than 87k did before he reached 100k
too okay so check this out like asia's bidding absolutely but sailor's been buying this entire
time absolute boatloads and yards of btc and we're lower than where he's been buying that so
the last four days in asia you know are kind of a drop in the bucket compared to that.
Yeah, that's true.
Speaking of sailor, just to revisit the subject of sailor liquidation levels,
it seems like it's relatively unlikely to be a forced liquidation scenario.
It looks like they have $44 billion in BTC and around $8 billion in debt.
This is based on a Kobesi letter thread I found, and it's from February.
So I don't know if that's changed since then.
I think probably the bigger risk is less about all of a sudden,
Saylor needing to liquidate $44 billion of BTC.
It seems like that would be a pretty... I mean, the leverage ratio at the time of the writing of this thread was something like 20%.
I think the bigger risk is probably that they're not able to continue doing what they're doing and being like the buyer of last resort when everybody else is not bidding.
But yeah, it'll be interesting to watch.
I mean, I do think that if the company can't raise more capital to service debt,
there's a situation where they could maybe sell BTC voluntarily to help cover it,
but they could also just issue shares at worse prices and not care about that.
So I don't know if i'm fully
understanding this is not my area of expertise but it sounds like there this isn't like a situation
where you know their average entry price is like 66k and then if we dip below that all of a sudden
there's like a big cascade it seems like you'd need something um a lot more dramatic than that for that for that to factor in yeah and Taylor's also not the
sole owner of the BTC I mean I think that's a subject that kind of gets it's
kind of confusing there's a lot of people don't really look at the capital
structure of my MSCR a lot of the bondholders I mean it's a good way it's
a good way if you have a big BTC allocation, if you're like BlackRock or Fidelity, who need more inventory, but you kind of have enough for now and you
might want to get some yield, it's not a bad way to try and attack that problem, right?
Yeah.
Get some yield on unused BTC or get some yield in the means of wanting to get more inventory
later.
Because Saylor's not the owner of the 2.5%.
That ownership is scattered amongst mostly the bondholders.
Yeah, I mean, he does have 48% voting power.
But in any case, I do want to go on from the subject.
We do have other things to cover.
Cass, I'll let you get a chance to ask a question first,
if you've been waiting for a little while.
All right.
Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about the macro stuff. I mean, I think one of the interesting things I saw recently was a
tweet about how Besant got Trump to announce a rollback of tariffs. And it sounds like
essentially they waited for some other guy named Peter Navarro to be out of the Oval Office or something or to have some other meeting going on.
And they went and convinced him to make some announcement and post it on Truth Social then and there in order to lock in this tariff delay or something of that nature, which seems a little bit ridiculous.
which which seems a little bit ridiculous I mean do you like looking at this I mean I know we no
one really knows what's gonna happen and it's hard to say how the next couple months plays out but
that certainly doesn't inspire confidence if this is the state if this is the state that we were in
like if you guys had to choose like what percentage to be in cash versus let's not even like say just crypto let's say
you know because you know stocks might get hit pretty hard too from here i mean if you had to
choose what percent to be in cash versus you know risk assets whether it's stocks and um
stocks crypto other stuff where would you you'd be looking to sit right now because
it's potentially a good time to
to wait for a mild recession or something of that nature and and you maybe want to have some dry
powder to buy the lows at that point or how are you guys thinking about it i'll let sorry my bad
i'll let uh main take this one because i've been talking too long um but uh i'll just say this the the administration is absolute clown show like p the defense
secretary right now i think is getting booted out um they're looking to replace him so after
all that updates about him and his text messages talking about the bombings and lebanon or wherever
um so it's just a clown show but i'll let me jump on this yeah listen I mean I
think now is um a really good opportunity to um you know have have dry powder like I think at the
end of the day my my biggest concern is like just like where the U.S. goes from here like you know
I still would like to believe we you know you bet on America and this is your kind of 2008 moment where you get to potentially buy at what could be seen as some of the best buying opportunities for the next decade coming up here.
So I've got a bunch of cash. I feel very comfy with that fact that I have, you know, cash. Do I still have crypto? Yeah.
with that fact that I have, you know, cash.
Do I still have crypto?
Yeah.
Do I wish I sold more crypto at, you know,
the day that Trump got into office
and he launched a meme coin and everything in hindsight?
Of course.
But I do have dry powder
and I think that's a comfy spot to be in.
We're at best having a mini recession
where, you know, we're 20, 25 25 off of the highs in equities in crypto
uh even a little more uh and those end up generally being very good buying opportunities
um and you know worse this could be you know a drawn out correction where we go down another
10 15 20 percent uh but uh i think having cash and being financially literate right now and having
the ability to take advantage of these discounts is gonna you know serve you well if you if you
have the ability to to buy some you know as we get deeper and deeper into these discounts because a
lot of this stuff is naturally gonna bounce back at some point it's just a matter of you know how
fast this thing can turn around and
based on to exactly what ryan just said right now like initially when all this tariff stuff
started happening i was like okay maybe there's a game of 4d chess being played uh but it seems
like every single day that passes it becomes more and more clear uh you know that trump is playing
with like checkers or something uh and it just doesn't seem like there's a lot of you know
rhyme to the reason but we'll see i wouldn't be if i was fully allocated to risk here i don't know
i don't know how comfy i'd feel about that even the argument i'm seeing a lot of people make for
bitcoin is the digital gold argument they're saying bitcoin's going to decouple this is what
it's made for digital gold and if that ends up playing out, fantastic. But then that's also acknowledging that, OK, we're in a risk asset recession and Bitcoin has now become this flight to safety, digital gold like asset.
But I don't see any evidence of that. And we've seen a lot of evidence of us being in a recession and maybe worse. So I don't know, man, not, not would not be super comfy if I was fully, fully exposed. Yeah, I think, um, so just to add some,
some context, I think, or just my thoughts rather, I think that if I was going to guess,
like just spitballing that from July to labor day, I've said Labor Day every year for the last few years,
is probably, if I had to guess when the lows would be put in,
be between that period.
And one of the reasons is, at some point,
the market is going to get used to everything
that Trump is throwing at it,
and positioning should get crowded at an extreme.
And just from a positioning standpoint
because markets are positions i have a hard time believing that you know i could see the
s p trading back to the lows and that would obviously have a drag on btc but i have a hard
time believing that we don't have a period where you know let's say um we're into a recession we
see some kind of fed intervention um we see Fed step into the bond market.
There's agreements months from now with the tariffs where they've been somewhat realized
and the market is starting to adjust with them.
It seems like we're getting to an extreme right now, but I think the correction, like
I've said, through price is one thing and the correction through time is another. So I'm getting, I'm optimistic into the end of the year that we'll,
we'll be looking at some kind of, you know, longer term bottom,
whether it's like a six month plus or a year, you know,
a bottom for a year.
But you know, everything from now until then is, is really sketchy.
What's up guys. Yeah. Just to add, I agree with the sentiment
here. I mean, other than cash, I wouldn't really want to be buying anything other than like, you
know, coastal real estate and like really good spots. I feel like that was really the trade at
like a hundred, a hundred K plus plus get out buy coastal real estate maybe
buy some put options um it just feels like the stock market's one in one of those phases where
you know everybody's going to be trying to buy the bottom and guess the bottom and there's great
trades but like in terms of actually knowing where the bottom is on this it's a dangerous game to play
with with uh the stock market.
Because you know that's how these events generally work out.
It's like they just kind of go on and drag on longer than most people expect.
And I just think a lot of people get too excited with Bitcoin.
It tends to always over-exaggerate.
So on a moment like this where now it's like the bond trade the safe haven trade
while the bonds are down the stock market's down kind of just a positioning thing maybe just
squeezing out shorts and i don't know to be is this you know we have to bounce off the lows and
make a lower high somewhere right so that's the game right now is it going to be 91.5 to 93k
was it today and we trade back down to the 78s to the low 70s everyone was kind of
expecting 72 and it's funny how we didn't hit that we just we bought them then a technically
you know kind of like what i expected the area to bottom and then uh and now it's a question of do
we make new lows do we trade sideways um let's let's see what happens
but uh i do think it was more of like a controlled demolition in a way of the stock market i know
it's more like a conspiracy uh mindset but i expected it was like there was so much focus
on crypto with the trump admin and i'm just like is this a smoke screen for a stock market crash
like where's the talk for the economy and the stocks and then
he just comes out with the tariffs after launching a meme coin days before president i mean it's just
like i don't know man the conspiracy guy in me is just like this was a controlled demo of the
stock market but uh yeah great convo and uh get to uh chat so great points i don't know who was
just talking,
but so you're just telling me that all retail needed to do next time is buy
homes on the water.
I've heard Tampa's got some really good deals on coastal real estate right
now.
Outside of the U S of course,
outside of the U S.
Oh man.
We'll see.
We'll see in the South.
I'll see in the south of france my friend
i do think something that's interesting that you brought like i think even with the bond trade like
i think a lot of people are still positioned this is more like a trad fi thing than a crypto thing
even i think a lot of people still are spending and positioned as if they're like still richer
than they are um it's like they think it's still like
2021 2022 and that this is just gonna everything's just gonna bounce back to new highs and they don't
need to do any sort of repositioning like i still think there might even be a lag where
there's some repositioning of people being like oh shit like i don't think my portfolio is is
weighted properly at this point.
And, you know, we can see another wave of selling from this kind of group of people.
But like I've got some friends who are more like TradFi focused and they think that they're like, well, I'm only down 15%.
It's like for now.
So who knows?
That's just an anecdote. But I don't know if anyone's fully on board,
like outside of the institutional level, guys,
like fully shifted away from risk yet.
I still think there's a large cohort of people,
and this is apparent on Twitter as well,
that thinks this is just a bull market correction.
Yeah, I mean, I'd say we're in a macro bull globally based off of you know a hyperinflationary environment that we've been on but truly what is anybody here rushing to buy in the stock market
right now let's say like what what really stands out as valuable to you i mean we had a huge drop
in tech a while back and Q went down
to like the low 10 Ks or around there. And okay. Then you had meta at 90, you had, you had some
stocks that were like really good buys, but like for a while now it's been just like, where's the
value, right? Like that's why Warren Buffett, that, that should have been a warning to everybody,
right? That he piled up so much cash. It it's just you have like the greatest long-term investor in like stock market history maybe uh piling up cash like you should
be and doesn't he have to pay taxes on that when he cashes out i don't know right but like you
would think we're gonna get a bigger correction overall by the time this is over yeah i mean i
think um one interesting uh well i'll ask guard I'll ask our question first before we move on, because you've been waiting for a while.
Yeah, hello, everyone. So, yeah, I just had a, it's a bit more of a tradfire question, but I just was wondering, let's say a lot of the U.S. tech companies aren't allowed to do business in China.
companies aren't allowed to do business in China.
Several European companies may start to do less business with the US and the dollar drops
further in value.
How do you guys see that affecting both crypto and other markets?
I was actually listening to the All In pod the other day and chamath was talking about like some
sort of like backdoor deals all of these chip manufacturers are doing through like butan i
think he said it was so i mean i'm sure there's like they're gonna like find ways um but like
there's an argument to be made that we're seeing like a bit of like a
like de-dollarization going on you know um of the u.s kind of empire and it's going to be more like
uh you know a transition away from potentially u.s dollar dominance. I think Macron tweeted something out about the euro should be the
new reserve
currency and
I don't know, it worries me for a country
like Canada where I am because I think we're
the only country without gold reserves anymore
because our now current prime minister
sold it all.
I don't know. I don't think
it would be good for crypto
if the US dollar if the u.s dollar uh you
know continues to crater well I didn't know that uh Canada sold its gold reserves what was 1200
and Alex bro he sold that he was the like and this guy's now our premise I hate it so much but
he sold all of our gold reserve at 1200 and ounce to England and then he went became the governor of
the Bank of England after he's the the governor of the bank of england
after is the bank governor of the bank canada right after and everyone's like oh he's an amazing
economist i'm like i don't know his only public trade i've seen is like shipping our gold out at
the bottom wow that seems that actually seems like pretty crazy uh i'm surprised it hasn't
gotten more attention sold sold the gold to england and went we only have um like canada is like it'd be like america if there was only cnn so we only have one like major news
company here that is like government sponsored and it's only on the left whereas at least in
america you get kind of both like if you want the left-wing spin you watch cnn you want the right
wing spin you watch Fox News or whatever.
They have MSNBC on left.
Here we only got one.
So they're propping this guy up like he's like the second coming.
And I'm like, I'm not so sure.
Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting time in the market, though, because usually USD is the reference point, right?
Like you look at BTC price, it's in USD.
Everything is priced in USD. But we Like you look at BTC prices in USD, everything's priced in USD,
but we're kind of at a interesting spot.
I mean, if you look at USD versus Euro,
it's down like 10% since late February, early March.
Used to be $1 was 0.96 to a peak of 0.97, 0.98 Euros.
Now it's 0.88
So I think that like
The and this is kind of where I go into you know
What I when I was talking earlier about are we missing the forest for the trees a little bit?
It's like guys like that, you know, what what if we are in this scenario where the confidence is shaking forever?
You know, nobody steps in, no, no adult steps in and it's like, all right, guys,
you know, we own the world's money printer.
Like what, what, what the hell are we exactly doing right now?
Like, why are we, why are we starting fights with everybody when they're
treating the money that we can print, that we just print out of thin air?
You know, why are we being so, why are we being so rude to everybody when
they're treating the money that we print as
thin air as their base currency? It seems like, you know, we still have the upper hand to an
extent, and maybe there's some revisiting of, you know, trade relationships with other countries
that's needed, but we should do it a little bit more surgically and a little bit more thoughtfully
and not with like some guy standing with like a poster board with like for the you
know 30 different percentages derived from like a simple formula you know it just seems a little bit
like we've you know like somebody's crazy uncle is like negotiating the world's like trade deals
and they and they're kind of missing a lot of the parental controls that you would want to have in that situation.
So I don't know, like, could, how would you account for this risk to the dollar specifically?
Like, would you be looking at, I don't know, maybe having like more golden portfolio reference point that's a basket of assets rather than just USD?
Or hopefully this all just blows over,
but in that kind of doomsday scenario,
what, first, do you think
this is something that's even worth accounting for at this time?
And if so, how would you account for that?
Would you just have a greater percentage of
of gold in your like doomsday portfolio.
gold in your doomsday portfolio?
All right, and you're mute.
Looks like the space may be having some technical issues right now.
Yeah, I'm seeing the speaker labels come and go, so it's
Ryan looks like you're appearing as a speaker again
let's see hey can you hear me yep okay uh did i just cut out were you would you would you i'm sorry what did you just ask i think i just cut out yeah i think there might have been a space
What did you just ask?
I think I just cut out.
Yeah, I think there might have been a space issue because the speaker label was coming and going.
But yeah, I was just asking, I mean, given the shift in the way the world looks at the dollar, like, is this something that's even worth accounting for?
Like, when we talk about having cash ready to deploy, like, is it a good idea to have a significant fraction of that in gold
or something that's a little bit more suited to the doomsday scenario just in case we are at like
a moment of um like you know shift in history where you know before that point usd is the
base currency that's what you measure your portfolio against and after that point um that
you know it could leave you kind of holding the bag a little bit while the rest of the world go to diversify.
Because, I mean, I think one advantage that we have versus a nation state that's sitting on the U.S. treasuries is we can get in and out of whatever currency we're in with no impact on the market.
If you were a large holder of treasuries or bonds,
that's not something that you could do.
But if that's the direction things are going,
it's better to kind of get ahead of it
because whoever is unwinding something like that
is going to have to do it in a much more controlled way
that's going to take a lot of time.
Well, you know, we don't really have to think about that yeah well i think like there's definitely now a lot of evidence that
you should have some gold exposure and i like i think you you know there's also reason to have
along those lines some level of btc exposure relative to that. Myself, personally, I don't have a ton of gold exposure.
I definitely have more BTC exposure than gold exposure.
But that was a mistake on my part.
I don't know how...
Like I said, it's hard to imagine that this persists to the same magnitude
over the next six months.
You know, the next maybe three to four months.
So I have like a tough time now chasing gold, given how far it has moved already,
even though clearly this could be the beginning of again, something much, much longer.
So, you know, I don't know. I don't have a really good answer for that.
I, I think, uh, buying a little bit of gold now makes sense, right? But I do feel like this could easily give back a good amount if we do have some kind of announcement.
things have shifted. But in terms of like buying gold right here, I don't know, I'm a little bit,
I feel like I missed it a little bit, which is dangerous because it obviously can continue up
much further. Yeah, definitely. All right. I think that kind of takes us to the end of this
week's topics. It's definitely an interesting time. Before we finish, what do you feel about the Swiss franc and euro and other currencies,
other than just BTC and gold?
Oh, you know me, man.
I don't have opinions on foreign currencies.
None that are worth listening to.
I stick to my thing and that's it.
All right, cool. Well, that takes us to the end of the spaces. So I stick to my thing and that's it.
All right, cool.
Well, that takes us to the end of the spaces.
Thanks everybody for tuning in and thanks Ryan and May as usual for the insights.
