Why is Bitcoin currently up 50% against gold since March, even
though retail interest feels completely.
Dead doctor Jeff Ross is back on Bitcoin for millennials to
unpack the divergent between paper financial assets and hard,
sound money. We dive deep into why Bitcoin is
currently in a coiled spring and how institutional rotation is
shifting away from tech stocks and back into the hardest money
to ever exist. And wait until you hear Jeff's
crazy prediction for the next three years that traditional
finance is is completely ignoring.
If you're enjoying my content, it would mean a lot to me if you
could subscribe to the channel and like my video to support my
journey. Thanks a lot.
Now let's dive in to this episode.
All right, Doctor Jeff Ross, welcome back to Bitcoin for
Millennials. Thanks, Bram.
Thanks for having me. Yeah, good to have you back on.
I think last time was was over a year ago and a lot of stuff has
happened. So I'm excited to to talk with
you again. You know last time we spoke your
models and and you know, your thoughts around Bitcoin
suggested a really massive peak in 2025.
We went to 126 back to the low 60s at time of recording we're
at like 8081 K, but like not the exponential move yet.
What what do you think that you or like other models missed or
like are we too optimistic? Like what?
What? What didn't you catch basically?
Sure. So what I had expected was that
we would have a similar business cycle like we have had basically
since the global financial crisis back in 2009.
So what that means is that if if you look at long term Bitcoin
charts, it tends to follow global liquidity and it also
follows the economy. So economic cycles, which have
also basically run in four year cycles.
And specifically for whatever reason, it, the price closely
follows the manufacturing around the world and especially in the
US. So US manufacturing PMI for
whatever reason, is very correlated with the price of
Bitcoin, I think because manufacturing, the way I, I
think about this in my mind is manufacturing is physical labor,
is proof of actual work, it's expending energy to make things.
And Bitcoin is actual proof of work, energy, money.
And so I think for whatever reason, there's a correlation
between these two things. So that's just that's how I
think about it. So why?
So what happened in 2025 for basically from 2022 through
2025, US manufacturing PMI never stopped contracting.
It. It, it normally it contracts for
about a year and then it it starts to spike up again.
So I was waiting in late 2023 and in 2024 and in 2025 for US
manufacturing PMI to finally stop contracting, finally get
out of a recession and start to spike.
It never did. And so I think in my mind, I
know every, lots of people have their reasons or, you know,
explanations for why or why not things happened.
But I think the reason why the the end of 2025 was so
disappointing for Bitcoin, even though it did peak, as it kind
of should have, you know, from historically speaking, it did
peak in the fourth quarter of 2025.
It was very disappointing. We didn't have that blow off
top. I think it's because
manufacturing just never got out of its hole.
It never stopped contracting and so that was very disappointing.
It was I was in position for us to you know RIP higher into the
fourth quarter. We never got that.
So we never saw the D Gen. leverage longs people go in and
you know go all in with with 10X leverage as well to help push
that price exponentially at the very end.
And that's just just it is what it is.
So that's what happened. So I think it was a
disappointing peak, but I think it's reflected in the fact that
manufacturing never took off. And why do I say that now?
Because that leads us to where we are today, because it's, it's
maybe this is your next question, but where are we
today? US manufacturing PMI has the
last four months has been expansionary.
So for the first time since, you know, four years ago, it finally
looks like this is real. It's finally out of contraction,
it's out of a recession, it's starting to boom.
And that is very bullish. And so, so when you, when you
couple that, that and then there's a, there's a tricky part
because liquidity is on its own cycle.
Liquidity has sort of peaked and the rate of change shows that
it's kind of topping. If you look at the work that
Michael Howell does on liquidity, he suggests that it's
probably going to roll over and actually had lower, it's going
to decelerate for the, the next kind of 6 to 12 months.
And he's sort of bearish for that reason.
I share that sentimentality that it's a little concerning to me,
but it's being offset now, which is interesting.
And it doesn't normally happen this way.
It's being offset by manufacturing starting to spike.
And I think a lot of that has to do with fiscal dominance versus
monetary dominance that we had the the prior decade.
Now we're in a fiscal dominance regime.
So we can talk about any of that if you'd like to.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
No, it's, it's super interesting.
I recently had episodes with Plan C and also Sminston with
who Sminston is really deep into kind of this correlation between
PMI and Bitcoin. Actually, I think today or
yesterday he tweeted we kind of escaped the below 50 PMI and you
see that once that just, you know, has a little flick above
50, you see Bitcoin go. I find it strange that it's so
directly correlated and I just wonder what you think, right?
Like, you know, do people think like, oh, cheap money, let's go
into risk or like, how does that even work that there is such a
correlation in a very short time frame, I would say.
Yeah. So that correlation I think is
real and it continues to to show itself to be real for whatever
reason. The other thing that I think is
important besides just the whole liquidity expansion concept is
the financial repression concept.
So somebody, I think it was Jordy Visser where I first saw
it and maybe Darius Dale have been talking about this and some
other people. And I, I want to give credit to
whoever came up with this. When inflation is above what the
federal funds rate is doing. And, and, and the reason I bring
up these short term T-bills is because they tend to follow what
the federal funds rate are as well.
When inflation is rising above the short term interest rates,
you're getting financial repression right there.
So basically what's happening is the central bank, the Fed, the
Federal Reserve is holding short term rates below a certain level
or at a certain level, but inflation is rising.
Everybody knows inflation is spiking right now because of the
the Persian Gulf conflict and you know, spiking oil prices,
all that kind of things and D globalization, all of these
things are are tend to be very inflationary.
When that happened, somebody showed a chart, and I believe I
first saw that with Jordy Visser, that in 100% of bitcoins
gains over the last 10 plus years have been during these
periods where inflation is running hot and interest rates
are below that. So you're getting financial
repression. So holders of short term debt
like money market funds, T-bills and similar instruments are
actually losing purchasing power relative to the inflation rate.
So they're losing their purchasing power even though
they're getting those games and it's Bitcoin sniffs that out.
So Bitcoin loves monetary financial repression.
And when that happens, basically people are like, why would I
have my money sitting in a money market fund, actually losing
purchasing power when I could put it in, you know, the
soundest, hardest money and make gains like that.
So, so over the, you can, you can look at charts that show
that this is when Bitcoin starts to perform.
And we just recently had a cross where where we're getting this
kind of short term financial repression.
And, you know, right on cue, Bitcoin also started to take
off. So I don't know if that's also
correlated with manufacturing doing well, if they're sort of
all interrelated. But whatever it is, for whatever
reason, Bitcoin is sniffing all this out and it's starting to
look quite bullish. Yeah.
You recently said that you think the four year cycle is dead.
I don't know if you think it it, it ever existed.
But if, if that's the case, what's what is then kind of the
new heartbeat of the price, Like what's what, what is the thing
we should follow the combination of the things we're just
mentioning or are you looking at like 1 specific?
So, so in the, so in the 20 tens the last decade, I think Bitcoin
was basically a collectible that was, it was in the collectible
phase where it was just sort of this interesting magic Internet
money that, you know, cypherpunks and other people got
into. So I think it traded very
tightly with its its own four years almost.
It's not quite a four year cycle, but 3-3 months and
three-year 11 month cycles is usually what kind of Bitcoin had
been following. I think it had a lot to do with
the big Bitcoin miners and sort of their whole financial
situation and and as the happenings would happen, the
effects that that had at miners, whether they were buying or
selling or expanding or contracting or not.
Now, I think this decade where Bitcoin and this is the store of
value decade for Bitcoin, where as it's becoming the world's
money, it does it in phases. So the so the 20 tens was the
collectible phase, the 20 twenties.
This is the store of value phase.
I think the twenty 30s will be the medium of exchange phase for
it. And then the fight, the 20
forties probably will be where it's kind of the world's unit of
account. So it has, you know, we're
growing, we're getting there. A lot of people want it to
happen right now, but I think we're still like, say 1520 years
away from that where it's the world's unit of account.
Why does that matter? Because Bitcoin is now
increasingly trading as a, a major global macro asset.
So it it like oil, like US equities, like gold and other
like bonds, things like that. It trades on the ebbs and flows
now of kind of global macro movements.
So what are the central banks doing?
Are we, you know, are we having a fiscal stimulus or
contraction? Are we having a monetary
stimulus or contraction? Those kind of things, Those
drive major asset prices. They drive the dollar, they
drive the yen, you know, are central banks protecting our
currency? Are they letting it, you know, a
drop those kind of things? So Bitcoin is officially on that
world stage. And I think it took it to become
sort of in the 2 trillion range for for it's kind of market cap.
Right now it's about 1.5 trillion ish.
As it gets to 2 trillion and higher, it will increasingly
just trade like another major global asset class.
So I just that's how I view it. And I think that it's going to
continue doing that for decades to come, even more so as as the
years move on. If your Bitcoin double tomorrow,
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down and and you know, little little crap sideways feeling
stuck, we had bit we had gold hitting all time highs like
really ripping silver to and this kind of took a few months.
Do you think gold is is a leading indicator for, you know,
the bigger turmoil dollar currency collapse?
You know, some people think that is very far away.
That is too too big of a thing to to say right, But it's an
indicator for something. Let's let's call it like that.
Do you think just gold is the leading thing because just most
people are, you know, just have that picture of gold while
while, you know, we probably know that Bitcoin is
fundamentally superior to to gold, right?
Is that just the case right now? And is Bitcoin, you know, kind
of like this coiled spring or is it lagging like how do you look
at that? Yeah.
So this is a bit counter intuitive to me just because
gold is, you know, gold is old and gold is analog, but gold
tends to lead Bitcoin price movement by about six months.
So that's pretty interesting. It tends to be gold is at the
front edge of what's happening financially and monetarily.
And then about 3 months behind that is global liquidity.
And then about 3 months behind global liquidity is Bitcoin.
And so, so that's all very interesting to me.
So it did break down a bit though before the last kind of
half a year. So, so if that trend is to
continue as it historically has, Bitcoin would have a lot of
making up to do basically. So while gold has been
weakening, we still need to see a serious ramp higher in Bitcoin
to kind of make up for lost time.
So yes, I think over the long run though, that both gold and
Bitcoin are doing the same thing, right?
They're both sound money. Bitcoin is the soundest money.
They're both hard assets. They both respond to financial
repression. They both are basically what
people should be getting out of. If you're, if people are sitting
in government bonds right now, they're going to be inflated
away, their value is going to be inflated away.
They're going to lose purchasing power.
So as more and more people and institutions figure this out,
they're going to be continually shifting over into commodities,
hard assets, gold and Bitcoin as well.
So I expect all of those to continue doing well for the next
at least five years or so. Isn't it's crazy that people
haven't figured out that, you know, bonds are just like a
Ponzi, basically, and you always lose your purchasing power, like
more than what the yield gives you.
It's it's just, yeah, it's just a side of it.
It's so crazy. I find it so crazy.
Well, I think it's hard because you know, the boomers in the
Silent generation before them, they did nothing but make money
in bonds from the early 80s all the way till like the early
twenty 20s. So for 40 straight years, bonds
were a really smart investment. And so they just, most people
don't think about it. They're like, yeah, that's just
what you do. You have a 64 year portfolio and
and bonds offset stocks and that's just no longer true.
But it takes a long time for people to figure that out.
So. So yeah, thankfully.
That's why it's so brilliant also, right?
It's a, it's a brilliant scheme, right?
I also, yeah, I really like what you said.
I also feel that, you know, the Bitcoin holders are, you know,
that holding is more structural. I feel that it's less, I want to
say like reactionary and more long term thinking, whereas I
think what we just saw with gold, like gold did nothing for
I don't know how long, you know, and and then it goes up.
It feels like this kind of like wake up moment for a certain
amount of, you know, capital allocators and also it
individuals, right, just to consumers that then are like,
OK, something is going on. I need to get into gold because
gold is this old idea of, you know, the exit, the exit and
like the, the, the the the parallel hedge or however, you
know, people, people define it. And yeah, I've, I've always felt
that this lag is just so interesting, right, That I
think, you know, Bitcoiners can all kind of articulate why,
again, why Bitcoin is better. But it's just this kind of like
story narrative around gold, just the history around gold
that, you know, makes it just a primary choice for people to to
get into when they have that feeling of, you know, now is the
time that I need to get out of whatever it is stocks or, or,
or, or bonds. Right, right.
What's interesting too, I don't know if I've, if I showed this
the, IT was a long time ago where I was on your show, but
there are the sort of 10 to 20 year cycles where financial
assets do very well relative to hard assets and relative to gold
specifically. So what I like to show, and I
see more people now showing the same chart, basically the 100
plus year chart of the S&P 500 priced in gold.
And what you see are these very large and obvious peaks and
cycles. So like basically in 1929, right
at the right before the Great Depression, the Great
Depression, there was this huge peak where financialized assets
did extremely well and then they cracked and they broke and all
the way until there was a bottom in 1933 and then a second
bottom. So like a double bottom in 1941.
And it took World War 2 to kind of get manufacturing going
again. And then you see this
financialization happen again from the early 40s all the way
to like 1968 or so. And then it rolled over again.
And then the 70s were a very difficult decade for financial
assets. People who just owned stocks and
held for 14 years from 1968 to 1982 basically flat line.
It just chopped sideways like a crap market, but in real terms.
And their purchasing power, they actually lost about 75% of their
purchasing power over that time. This happened again from the
early 80s all the way till basicallythe.com bust in 2000.
And then again, we had a a time where it rolled over stocks
basically went nowhere for a very long time.
And gold did very well from 2000 to 2011, we had one more run
higher and that it's same thing happened again where we had a
peak basically at the end of 2021.
And the way I view that is basically the world for like 15
to 20 years or so, I was like, they're all in on the US. the US
can do no wrong. They all that everybody wants to
own US tech stocks and you know, and be a part of this.
And it the system just builds and builds and builds on itself
and more and more leverage comes into it and more and more people
are borrowing and all of that is going into US based assets and
it becomes more and more financialized.
And then finally people are like, you know what?
It's gone too far. This is crazy.
Like US is so over indebted right now.
There's no chance they can pay back their debts and sound
money. Let's actually go to hard assets
and sound money, you know, And so that's when then gold starts
to outperform commodities, things like real estate,
farmland, and I think Bitcoin tend to outperform substantially
over financial assets during those times.
So we're in one of those periods right now.
You talked also about something that I hadn't heard of, but you
highlighted the return of something that is called 100%
bonus depreciation, which is something in the US, and you
talk about it that it could be a catalyst.
Now how? How does a corporate tax break
lead to more demand for Bitcoin? Well, so that's that's the
tough. So it's good for manufacturing
in general. So, so corporations right now
are being strongly incentivized and are actually doing this
where they are expanding their manufacturing capabilities in
the US because they have huge tax breaks for doing so.
They can depreciate their expenses basically in year 1.
So they are heavily incentivized to move very fast right now to
bring manufacturing and energy capacity, energy infrastructure,
manufacturing and the military industrial complex basically
back to the United States as fast as possible because I
because the Trump administration.
Believes we are at war right now.
I think in their minds we are in war.
And so everything they're doing and the executive orders that
the Trump administration is putting out is basically wartime
mentality, even though the majority of Americans still
don't think that we're in any kind of major war right now.
They think Trump's just kind of crazy.
And so, so so you asked, how does that, how does that go into
people buying Bitcoin? I don't know the correlation,
but there is a tight correlation like we discussed right at the
beginning of when manufacturing does well for whatever reason,
that correlates with Bitcoin doing well.
And again, the way I see that is proof of work begets more proof
of work. So proof of work manufacturing
in the building, the the, you know, expending time and energy
to build actual goods that people want valuable goods and
services gets reflected into the price of Bitcoin, which is proof
of work money that people want to have a durable energy based
money with a fixed supply. And for whatever reason, those
two things are heavily correlated.
So I don't know why but that that's how I figure it out in my
mind. Yeah.
So we're seeing Bitcoin now up, I think it's about 50% against
gold since, since March, which is, you know, related to what we
just talked about. I, I find that very interesting
because you would, you could argue that the underlying thesis
is the same, right? So they, they should be going up
together. But you know, the interest of
retail in Bitcoin I I feel is totally gone.
Like it's not 2017 or, or, or 2020 at all.
I did get a notification this morning, like from Spotify or
like this, this podcast tool that I use where it showed
Bitcoin searches are up, for example.
And you see in, in, in Google, you see Bitcoin searches up, but
I, I don't think it's reflecting in the price.
I also feel there's this unit bias, right?
Like people just think, you know, ADK is, is, is a crazy
price. Why do you think the more like
owner class, you know, more affluent, richer people are
actually stacking and the average person just still
thinks, you know, they missed it or it's still Ponzi or, you
know, this could never work or just their trust in Fiat is
still high. Like how, how do we reach more
people? Just I, I would say basically
with with the general thesis, right, loss of purchasing power,
inevitable inflation, etcetera. Well, to me, just from observing
from the outside, so I'm not a political person, right?
I'm a like a fierce independent. I'm not Republican, I'm not
Democrat in the US people that so the left is anti Bitcoin and
the right is pro Bitcoin. And I think that's a huge
bummer. And I think what what the left
has done is they associate Bitcoin and all things crypto
and crypto scams rightly with the Trump administration because
they're all involved in crypto too.
And these guys are they say they're pro Bitcoin, but they're
really crypto Bros disguised as Bitcoiners, kind of like the
Bitcoin conference, the big conferences says it's a Bitcoin
conference, but it's really more of a crypto bro and stable coin
conference, which I think is unfortunate.
So, so it's confused in the media and, and in the US, US
the, and this is just proven, this is factual.
The majority of mainstream media is left-leaning.
And so left-leaning media, which most regular people see to your
point, like why don't regular people embrace Bitcoin?
What don't they understand? They're being told still the
same kind of tired arguments that we've been talking about
for the last five or ten years. It's a Ponzi scheme.
You know, these they're, they're, it's a casino.
It's going to 0. There's no intrinsic value.
All of these it's it's boiling the ocean, blah, blah, blah,
blah, all of the same nonsense. It's just being spewed day after
day by the left-leaning mainstream media.
And then also I think what's super interesting is the
majority of investment advisors and fund managers in the United
States also lean left, also donate politically to the left.
And again, I don't this is even it.
It's just very interesting to me.
And so to me, the, the, they're either then avoid Bitcoin
because they think it's a Trumpan coin and it's a scam and
it's going to 0 or they, if they do own Bitcoin, they still don't
understand it and they treat it like it's a software stock
basically. So we've seen lots of charts
showing the correlation with software stocks and Bitcoin over
the last 6 plus months. And to me, that's because Wall
Street is now involved and they think of it like this tech bet
basically. And, and you know, and is AI
going to replace Bitcoin? And what if, you know, what if
quantum computing breaks Bitcoin and all these kind of things
that they're concerned about, but because they don't truly
understand what's going on with Bitcoin and at kind of a
protocol level, there's just a lot of education that needs to
be done. And unfortunately, in America,
it's become a political issue. And at any time anything becomes
politicized, people basically stop thinking.
They basically just they repeat what their leaders say.
They repeat what the mainstream media or social media says.
And so it's either good or bad. And so right now, everybody on
the left thinks it's bad and everybody on the right thinks
it's good and they don't. And almost nobody really thinks
about what it is that they own and they don't understand that
it's just sound money. It's a it's a better asset.
It's a better savings vehicle. So that that's how I look at it.
And we saw that gives people like you Bitcoin podcasters, you
know, a ton of job security because there is so much
education that needs to happen both in the United States and
around the world to help people understand what Bitcoin actually
is. It's this new asset class that
most people haven't taken the time to figure out.
You know, Bitcoin is neutral money.
I do think it's neutral money, right?
Like it's new. It's it's money for enemies.
Anyone can adopt it. You know, anyone can deal with
block space, whatever they want, even if they want to do like
idiots, cat pictures or or whatever.
But the underlying idea, I think under neutral money is actually
somewhat political, right? Like a libertarian, perhaps a
bit conservative type idea. So that's something that I later
learned or just people pointed out to me is that, you know, a
lot of people on the left who actually call themselves
progressives, which, which I think is funny, like it's a
hijacked word because they're totally not progressive, right?
But they, they, they do want more centralized control, right?
Like that. I, I do think that is a central
to, central to their, to their ideology.
So in, in that sense, I, I, I would say that Bitcoin is kind
of a threat to, to death. What, what do you think about
that as, as someone who positions themselves, you know,
in in the middle? Yeah.
Well, it's definitely so I agree with you.
So that, and we see proof of that, right?
Like so China, which is all about control communism, they
ban Bitcoin. They don't like Bitcoin, they
don't like it because they can't control it.
Bitcoin is sort of this freedom money outside of their control.
And so a nation like China or say North Korea would not like
such a thing, even though I think it would be great for
their citizens. And so, so I agree with you, I
think and, and most of the people who are very and there
are people who are vehemently opposed to Bitcoin in the USA.
Lot of Gen. Xers talk about this very
intelligent people who I would just say are they tend to lean
left and are quite statist like. They just think that the the
creation and control of money should lie only with the US
government. And then they talk about all of
the reasons why Bitcoin could be bad be and how it's.
Just not progressive. Sorry, I just.
Yeah, yeah, right, right. And I don't want to get
political about this. I just like to like just make
these observations. And to their point, a fixed
supply money is antithetical to government Fiat currencies.
So the whole Fiat system is based on the expansion of credit
and it has to constantly expand. And so they have to constant you
at the Congress and other, you know, Western governments.
And whoever has these Fiat currencies have to constantly
borrow and spend money to expand the monetary supply, to continue
to roll over for these ever increasing debts.
And that continues and it continues and continues until it
can't continue anymore. And so that's what brings us to
these points of geopolitical tensions and major world wars
and conflicts, civil wars, civil wars are happening all over the
world right now. Countries are are battling each
other. There's more global client
conflict right now than there has been since World War Two.
We haven't seen this much hot war fighting since World War 2.
So it's, it's, it's not a good time and it's all interrelated.
And basically as the government's reached this point
where they have expanded the debt supply so much that it's
beyond even, it's not even possible to repay the amount of
debt that we owe right now in sound money.
And when you have that, you see massive rises in income
inequality. So where it starts, like right
after World War Two, there was income equality.
And now that that gap has widened and it's become so
extreme that the people just can't take it anymore.
So the working class on the bottom that's just trying to
like literally just survive by working their jobs and working
as hard as they can, usually with two or sometimes three
careers and side gigs and all these other things.
They still can barely survive right now because inflation has
been running hot and all of this borrowing and spending by the
governments have basically created this huge gap.
And that's where you have these basically 4th turnings, these
events where the, the, the, the, the global humanity can't take
it anymore and governments are getting desperate.
And so we start to go to war, you know, internally and
externally as well. And so nobody understands that
though, like you try to talk to any regular person on the
street, they have no idea what's happening.
All they know is that the groceries are expensive and that
gas is expensive right now. And Dang, Trump, this war has
made gas expensive. And you know, and Dang, whatever
political party, like they, you know, they just kind of want to
blame somebody. But it's a system, it's a system
wide problem. It's not individual people that
are doing this. And we've been on this trend for
the last basically 80 years or so.
And, and, and, and so we, we, we're reaching this point of
inflection where something massive has to happen to reset
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You've spent a very long time kind of training yourself for
this, you know, pattern recognition.
So when you look at at all of this stuff that we're talking
about, what, what do you think that you are seeing that others
are, are missing? Like what?
What underpins your current thesis that that you think not a
lot of people see? Let's see so, so it goes back to
some of the things we've talked about already is I think that
the most of the world is a has already started to figure out
that financialized assets have kind of had their heyday and
they've peaked already and they're rolling over.
And so people want sound money and they want hard assets and
they, and they don't believe that the Western world
governments are going to be able to repay their debts in anything
sound. And so they're, they're starting
to get out of that. So that drives a lot of what I
do as a fund manager. So, so whereas like in
2020-2021, I was maybe focused like on these, you know, tech
companies and all things financial, like anything that
basically did well because of monetary stimulus, quantitative
using those types of things. Now what I've done is pivoted to
this sort of hard asset focus. So looking at different
commodities, you know, China figured this out all the way
back in like 2014. They started making changes.
So instead of they had all these surpluses and they had been just
buying U.S. Treasuries as their primary way
to store their surpluses. In 2014, they thought, you know
what, we're going to stop doing that and we're going to, you
know, because we don't think this is going to last too much
longer what the US is doing. So we're going to front run it.
So they started buying hard assets.
They started stockpiling commodities all throughout
China. They obviously have had a super
robust energy infrastructure, manufacturing infrastructure as
well. They made investments all across
the world. They tried to do it in the US,
but we've kind of pushed them back.
But you know, all throughout Central South America, Africa,
Asia as well, they've made a lot of investments and kind of form
their own alliances. And so as more of the world has
figured that out, what happens is the flows of liquidity start
to move in these different directions.
So whereas before it was just all moving into basically the
mega cap tech stocks, right, the Meg 7 stocks is all including
global central banks. We're putting their a lot of
their assets into these equities.
Now it's all switching over. So it's going into gold again,
we're watching gold like skyrocket move, going parabolic
for, you know, foreign reserves, while U.S.
Treasuries are declining parabolically as well.
So it's it's falling off, Gold is rising.
And I think that trend is only just begun.
And that's going to continue to expand.
I think as more and more people figure this out, they're going
to continue to realize that these traditional financial
assets they've been holding like treasuries, like any kind of
debt, for the most part, like most equities, they just can't
hold water anymore against this debasement that's coming.
So as we see more financial repression occurring, we're
we're going to continue to see that shift.
And I think one thing that we're what's super interesting as an
institutional investor is watching how institutional
investors rotate out of different assets.
So it, it's like they, they go all in on something and then
when they feel like they've milked that asset enough, they
sort of just switch over and they say move their gains over.
So they, so it was gold and then it was gold miners and silver
and silver miners and those kind of things.
And everybody was just going crazy for it.
And then it just shifted and it kind of took the lifeblood away
from that and it shifted out of that.
And then it's been shifting into all things AI related.
So we're going to continue to see that I think happen for the
next 5 to 10 years or so. AI, energy, infrastructure,
military industrial complex investments, they're going to
ebb and flow, but continue to go up into the right because
they're being supported by their their governments.
But right now, I think we're seeing a real rotation back into
Bitcoin right now. So getting back to your question
from, you know, a while back, gold front runs it for whatever
reason, but now it looks like the shift is happening back
where Bitcoin had been just sort of in the doldrums, but now it
looks like it's formed a real bottom and it's really starting
to strengthen. So hopefully that continues at
at least as of today, we're sitting at what 81,000 and it's
starting to retake a lot of it. It's it's regaining short and
medium term momentum. It's just about to retake its
200 day moving average, which is right now sitting at about
83,400. So that will be another big
sign. So for a lot of longer term
traders, they look at that 200 day moving average and if like
if we can regain that, that means it's officially long term
bullish momentum. So they'll start scaling in as
well. So we'll see if it holds.
I'm just, you know, just making observations, I'm making
predictions. But for now, it looks like this
is actually a real rotation that's taking hold.
I also saw now the majority of short term holders is in profit,
which is always also a really, really good sign.
Like that was the first time in in quite some time.
And and yeah, to add to what you said, I, I also think it's
interesting you see city, what is it City Bank and JP Morgan,
etcetera, like moving into Bitcoin.
I like what you said about milking a certain cow, right?
I mean, eventually they're all capital allocators that have to,
well, the, the main job is preserve the capital, right?
And the second is, is grow the capital.
And yeah, I, I always thought, you know, if if a random pleb
like me figured out that, you know, there's an end to stocks,
there's an end to Treasuries, I, I can imagine that, you know,
the people that do this every day should figure this out too,
right? But there's probably, you know,
there's more, there's more things for them to arrange
before they can actually move into something like like
Bitcoin, right? Like the first of proxies as in
the ETFs, rather than, you know, just just spot Bitcoin.
Do you think that will change actually like that, that these
kinds of entities they, they will have like ETFs, but
eventually also hold, you know, just spot Bitcoin?
I would like to see that, but I'm not overly confident that
will happen. I think the way that governments
work, as they want to have their tentacles in everything, they
want to have some control over it.
So I think that government regulators and tax authorities
will continue to encourage or coerce people to get into things
like ETFs, you know, Bitcoin proxies themselves to have them
centralized on brokerage platform so they can have sort
of access and oversight to them. And I think that most of it
seems to be lip service where they're OK with people holding
it privately, holding their own private keys and things because
they it's outside of the system. So they don't like things
outside of the system. So far we've tolerated it here
in the US and depending on who's in charge, it's more or less
tolerated. But I mean, the last
administration was extremely opposed to anything like that,
any private ownership and, and tried to shut everything down,
mixers and, you know, and, and didn't like any of it.
So we're, this current administration is more in favor
of it, but who knows what the next administration and who
knows what the next election cycle will bring about.
So I think in general, governments want to have control
over everything as much as possible as possible and it's up
to the people to resist and to find sort of a happy medium of
what you can do. So I encourage all Bitcoiners
like to continue to hold your own Bitcoin, hold your own keys,
you know, run a node, do all those sorts of things as long as
you're able to and, and willing to do that.
Yeah, Well, this is a nice bridge to a question I got from
from X. There was someone who asked what
are the biggest risks to Bitcoin specifically within the US?
Like do you see a modern, you know, 61-O2 gold seizure order
as something that is, you know, could be an actual threat?
You know, you kind of just mentioned, you know, they, they,
they want you to buy decentralized forms of, of
Bitcoin Or do you think, you know, the Bitcoin ETF kind of
made Bitcoin too big to fail? You know, this is something you
shouldn't touch. You know what are what are your
thoughts? So regarding AI, don't think
A61-O2 is likely. And I think the reason is, is
because back in the 30's the US dollar was actually on a gold
standard still. And so the reason they did what
they did was basically to because it it it, they wanted to
devalue or debase the dollar massively in order to spur the
economy. So they did what they did
because the dollar was specifically linked to gold,
because Bitcoin is not currently or gold are not currently tied
to the dollar or the dollar is not tied to them.
I think something like that is very unlikely.
But to answer that question, I think what's more likely is just
what we sort of touched on is I think the government will want
to consolidate Bitcoin in ETF's, in brokerage houses, in banks.
They're going to make it easier and easier for like banks to
custody Bitcoin and people are going to start doing that and be
enticed to do that. And then I think the, the real
risk is coming. So in a fourth turning, which
again, I'm a, I'm a big adherent of that.
I think we're heading towards like major war and I think we're
headed towards massive, even more massive government
borrowing and spending and financial repression that it's
going to necessarily come from that.
And I think we're going to see more and more pushes to tax
everything. And so we're already seeing that
in some states around the US where these billionaire wealth
taxes, it always starts like that always starts with this
select group of tiny people and people like, yeah, tax the rich,
tax the billionaires. But then it starts to expand
across basically the entire population.
So like back in the 40s around World War 2 and just after World
War 2, the the income tax rate in the US went above 90% for the
highest earners. And I think that it's likely
that we start to trend in that direction again.
And so you can't tax Bitcoin that's sitting in cold storage,
right? So that you can only tax it if
it's sort of on a, on a system in a brokerage house and in an
ETF, those kind of things. And once it's there, then the
government can put their tentacles on it and, and extract
taxes through quarters, you know, whatever, whatever they
do. So I think that's going to be
the most, the biggest risk to Bitcoin is Bitcoiners may make,
you know, a lot of profits over time, but it may be at risk to a
government at war, especially if there's some sort of global war
where they're going to be like, look, if you're, if you're a
patriot, you will give us 90% of your gains that you've made over
the last 10 years. And if you're not, you know,
we're going to throw you in jail and penalize you.
So it's your choice. I think that's a decision.
To me, that's the biggest risk probably in the next five years
or so. So with, with all that we talked
about, right? And, and I would say adding in a
new Fed governor, you know, Kevin Wash, who described
Bitcoin as, you know, new gold, I think for younger generations,
he's coming in. There's these growing debt
payment obligations this year. The Clarity Act looks like it's
going to pass you, you know, of course, Iran war, yen carry
trade unwinding, you know, it is just so logical to buy Bitcoin,
but we're still at 801K. What would be an actual
inflection point like what you just said?
Or is that too late? You know what, what, what do you
think? There's, there's so many signals
right now and it's just, yeah, again, I I just find it
fascinating that people are still asleep.
But like, sure, what would you say could be an inflection
point? Well, based on historical
precedent, some, we've already seen some inflection points and
we've talked about them. So manufacturing starting to
take off again is tends to be strongly correlative to the
price of Bitcoin when you see actual financial repression.
So when inflation is running hotter than the prevailing
interest rates, Bitcoin sniffs that out and tends to do very
well. And it looks like we just passed
that inflection point. So I was still waffling kind of,
you know, leaning bearish based on things.
But when I see manufacturing continuing to expand and when I
see financial repression actually starting to happen in
real time and including on the short end of the, the yield
curve, to me, those are real inflection points.
And so I think that we're going to start seeing that and what
brings like normal people in who don't think about Bitcoin or who
don't care, they just care about price action.
Once we start hit saying, Oh my gosh, Bitcoin, it got back to
100K. Oh my gosh, it's a, it's a new
all time high, those kind of things.
That's what gets the normies who don't think that's that'll get
them interested again in Bitcoin.
And they've been, you know, they sold it all and don't care.
And they, they thought, well, maybe it is going to zero.
I'm just going to sell it all. They'll all come back in when
it's back above like 1:20 or 1:30 or so.
And so it's just how these cycles always work.
Yeah, I've talked to many people whose story is similar to this,
right. Like I bought at price X, then
you know, it's went down, I got scared, I sold it went further
down. I felt really great.
And then, you know, years later, I looked at Bitcoin again and it
was higher than, you know, when I bought it and I realized it
still didn't die. It's not a Ponzi and whatever.
And then I actually, you know, started to study what this is
because I just kind of wanted to redeem myself for missing
something, right? And I agree, this probably
happens at every price level. Like this is going to happen
AT56700K back to 300. You know, people will be like,
OK, now it's really over. And then, you know, three years
later, it's at a million and, and, and, and they wake up
again. So, yeah, again, you know, I,
yeah, I use the word fascinating and entertaining a lot.
I just think it's. So it's just so fun to follow
this. And you see the repetitive
pattern. But you know, with every one of
these, you know, kind of like cycles or moments, it's kind of
like this little step change, right?
Like there's always a, a, a bigger group of people that
stick around and then and so on and so on and and, and and so
on. And yeah, the, the underlying
thesis is just getting stronger and validated basically every
day, I would say at least every month.
You know, if, if you, if you just talk about the monetary
debasement so slowly but surely we're, we're just going to see
it. Yeah.
Do do you think, you know, we, we, we talked about this, right.
So, so Bitcoin is kind of lagging this, this thesis for,
let's say, a big enough group of people, right?
The debasement of of the dollar and other currencies.
Do you think, you know, 80K is still a gift?
Do you think eventually we could, you know, go back to 58K
gang? You know that that would even be
a bigger gift in my opinion. But like, you know, it's 80K
extremely undervalued. Fair, you know, What do you
think? So, so I'm, I'm also an adherent
in the power law concept of Bitcoin and I think it does
follow this. So, so I believe that that model
is accurate until it's not. So some point it may breakdown,
but for the last 16 years it has been accurate.
And so until it breaks down, I think that that's a good model
to go by. And that's what I get a lot of
grief for like these calls that I make when when, you know, I so
Bitcoin I think moves according to this power law, but it's
going up and down in this band over time.
And so when people ask me, what do you think the price get hit
in this given year? And so in my mind, I think, OK,
so if we have liquidity doing really well and global
manufacturing doing really well and animal spirits taking off,
so everybody is using leverage, then bitcoins going to get to
the top end of this channel. And so that's what people so I
get. And so that whole like everybody
use it as this headline for me back in 2024 and 25 it could hit
470 five, 475,000 and that's all that is, is the top of this
channel. So you can go online.
Top 1% the one percentile so if. Everything is working right.
If the economy is just ripping, if liquidity is flowing, if
leverage is going bananas and mark markets risk assets are
just going bananas, Bitcoin will be at the top end of that and
that will always be true. And so so.
And the point is, sorry to interrupt that it happened
before, right? So if you look at the power law
and you have the channel, right, it hits the top of the channel
maybe for a day or an hour, right?
But then you know. And then it falls down just as
fast as so it rises up and then it falls down just as fast and
it's terrible. It's that's the backside of the
hockey stick. And so likewise, if liquidity is
not flowing and it's contracting, if the economy is
in a contraction or a recession or depression or you know, and
global manufacturing is contracting and there's no
leverage because not only are people not using leverage,
they're getting margin called and getting wiped out, which
we've experienced a little bit this year and we experienced
greatly in 2022. We also did back in 2018, we
also did back in 2014. So in 2026, we've also had this
basically bear market where factors were kind of working
against it that manufacturing was still kind of didn't.
We didn't know if it was going to remain in contraction and all
those kind of factors. So it's going to be at the
bottom end of that Channel. So when people ask me like,
could it go lower? I don't think it's going to go
lower because this has been pretty accurate throughout this
whole time and why doesn't it go be so there.
So right now the lower bound of this channel and and by the way,
props to Giovanni who came up with this kind of who has
popularized the whole concept and he has a start that anybody
can go look at online, which I still think is a fantastic model
right now. The lower bound of this boundary
is basically 55,000. And so at the beginning of this
year, I said, I think Bitcoin is unlikely in 2026 to go below and
stay below 50,000 throughout the entire year.
And I think it's unlikely to go above and stay above 700,000.
That's basically the top end of this band at the end of 2026.
That's all I'm doing when I'm saying these sorts of things.
So if the economy is booming, it could get this high.
And if the economy is terrible and things are everything's
going wrong and we're at war and blah, blah, blah, it'll be at
the lower end. And so to your question now
going back, is 80,000 a good price to buy?
We're very close still to the bottom of this channel.
I think at the end of this year, the price of Bitcoin is unlikely
to be below 70,000 based again, on the power law in these
channels. I will be very surprised if it
goes below. It's not to say that it can't,
it's to say that I would be surprised if it is.
So 80,000, yes, if you only have about a 10 to 15% downside from
here over the very long term, that's a pretty good risk
reward. If it's a downside of about
that, but in the next one to two or three years, we could go up
to say 700,000 or 900,000 at the end of 2027 or above a million
in 2028. That's a very good risk reward
if you're willing to just sit and hold it.
And what I like to tell people one last, cuz this is the
caveat. I like to say I, I look at these
things cuz I'm a fund manager. So I'm trying to, to chop off
the left tail risk. Basically, if we, we, I don't
want to see 80% drawdowns in my hedge fund because you know,
Bitcoin and is, is crashing like that.
So we, we basically cut it off with trailing stops.
Most people, I believe in 99% of the world should just simply
view Bitcoin as your savings account.
So it's the way you save your purchasing power.
So I don't think people should trade Bitcoin.
I think, and this is what I personally do individually, I
just, if I get paid, I put it into Bitcoin, I save in Bitcoin
and I don't care that it's well, in fact, volatility, it's a good
thing when you're just dollar cost averaging because if it's
spikes lower, you're buying it when it's spiking lower.
So you're getting more sats for your dollar or whatever currency
you're using. So I, I'd recommend to all
people just dollar cost average into it, just saving it.
And I have a long term perspective, like think at least
in five years, but ideally 10 or 20 year time increments where
you're just saving your purchasing power for the next
decade or multiple decades. Yeah.
So there's still this talk, you know, I just mentioned clarity
ACT, but there's also still this talk of US strategic Bitcoin
Reserve. I've always thought that the
kind of like Geo, like Geo, how do you say like like the global
game theory between sovereigns, like the line between that
actually kick starting from my mind is like extremely thin.
And I I said this recently, right, like, you know, El
Salvador buying OK, that, that, that, you know, I think it's
amazing what's happening there. But that was was not a a serious
country, right? Like that was literally at the
at the almost the bottom of the of the bottom.
I think that if a somewhat serious country, let's say
Czechoslovakia or, or, you know, Poland or whatever, you know,
starts buying Bitcoin that that it's already on because, you
know, why would you let you know a smaller, lesser country to,
you know, whatever point of view, you know, I would compete
you with with Bitcoin. Now there's still this US
strategic Bitcoin Reserve talk. If that actually happens, do you
think that that will actually happens?
Maybe that's the first question, but like what happens after that
If and and do you agree with this line being kind of kind of
thin? Yeah, as a global game theory.
So first of all, we do have a strategic Bitcoin reserve, but
it's with confiscated Bitcoin. So I don't like the way we've
accumulated the Bitcoin we have. We've taken it from.
And unverified, right? Like exactly.
We don't know how much it actually.
Is right. Yeah, yeah, I, I, I do think
I've seen people saying, you know, you can see the amounts we
have. I, I don't know.
So I obviously I'm an outsider. I'm just looking in.
I have no idea if the government truly does have that or not.
I just, I think they probably do.
But but I think all of the Bitcoin that the government has,
it's taken from people and they've, because they said these
people are criminals, so they've taken their Bitcoin.
I don't like that, right. I want you to work for your
Bitcoin or earn it. So that's one, two, I'll believe
that we, we're going to start buying Bitcoin as a country only
when I see it. I hear, you know, Cynthia Lemus
has been talking for a couple years now about how they're, you
know, going to put this bill through Congress and they're
blah, blah, blah. And everybody gets all excited
and then it it goes nowhere. So, and I know there's a lot of
animosity towards it. And a lot of the especially
people on the left, the Elizabeth Warren people and her
types, they fight this tooth and nail.
They hate, they hate the idea of a Bitcoin strategic reserve
because it gives validity to Bitcoin as an alternative to the
US dollar system. So I understand their point of
view. I just think they're wrong and
they're they're, they're trying to fight a technology whose time
has come. So they're going to lose
eventually. I think embrace, embrace it
while you can. So Step 3, as countries start to
do this, yes, game theory suggests that they will be in
the pole position. So El Salvador is is making
great strides in other countries that are starting to do this, I
think are very wise to do so. I think if the US started buying
Bitcoin strategically, like Congress mandates that we are
going to buy X number of Bitcoin, that would be massively
bullish. And, and I think that would
start off it would ignite this sort of race and this game
theory. And I think, by the way, that we
should do that because Step 4 is, you know, we have a lot of,
we allegedly have a lot of gold reserves still here in the US,
although we still haven't seen proof of it.
For the most part, these other nations, the BRIC nations,
right? So China, Russia and their their
colleagues, they're all saving in gold.
They're all basically using gold as their strategic reserve.
I think the way to counter that would be to we're going to use
and, and that would be a great way to revive the American
spirit in the American psyche and the Western world psyche to
say we are embracing freedom, money.
We want what's best for our citizens.
We do not, you know, we're anti communism, we're anti central
control. So therefore we embrace Bitcoin
and we encourage our citizens to just like China encourages their
citizens to buy real estate and buy gold and you know, and India
does that for gold as well. I think America should and and
then the rest of the Western world should encourage their
citizens to actually buy Bitcoin and promote Bitcoin.
And I think that would be a way we could basically surge ahead
or regain the lead. And if that, you know, we've
lost a lot of ground over the last couple of decades, that
would help put us back on a glide path towards success for
the next several decades. But I'm not holding my breath.
Like I said, I don't think we have true bitcoiners in the
White House. I think they're crypto Bros who
are disguised as bitcoiners pretending to be Bitcoiners.
And so I just, I'll believe it when I see it, But as of now, I
still don't believe it because I haven't seen it.
Yeah. All right.
My my last question, what is a view you hold, you know about
the next, let's say 3 to 510 years that you think others
think is absolutely insane, but for you it's perfectly.
Clear Oh man, I could do a lot of things there.
Well, I think one one thing we've touched on is I actually
think World War 3 has already started.
I believe we're in a fourth turning already and similar to
the 19 and most Americans don't get this because a lot of
Americans don't understand histories and I'm not making fun
of them. It's just like, that's just how
we are. Most Americans think World War 2
started in 1941 once Pearl Harbor was bombed.
But actually World War 2 started in the mid 1930s.
Japan was invading China, Italy was invading, I think northern
Africa. Germany started to expand and,
and, and occupy the surrounding nations all in the 1930s.
And it wasn't until, you know, the early 40s where the US got
involved. But World War 2 started before
that. I think when we look back,
historically speaking, we're going to look at this time be
like, yeah, it had already started at this point.
And so that the Russian Ukraine deal, you know, Israel fighting
and now the US getting involved against Iran and all this kind
of stuff, I think these are all sort of the precursor smaller
battles that are leading to a more major World War.
I'm not looking forward to that. I don't want that to happen.
But I do think that's where we are.
And I also note that based on these past wars, at least from
an American perspective, Americans don't get into the war
or don't support it until something happens like a Pearl
Harbor type event or like a 9/11 type event that happened back,
you know, in 2001. Or like even there's a sinking
of a ship back in world during World War One that got the
United States involved that because Americans were involved
and lost their lives. I'm waiting for, and I don't
mean to sound like a cynic or you know, whatever a bearish
person or Cassandra, those kind of names.
I'm concerned that we are going to have an event like that
that's going to happen that will finally unite Americans and and
convince us, at least as a nation that we actually are at
war. And I think that that is coming
before this decades out and probably within the next couple
of years, two or three years if I had to guess.
All right. Yeah.
Well, that's, that's not really a positive note to end it on,
but I appreciate you sharing. And yeah, in general, I, I think
it was a great conversation, some good exploration.
So I want to thank you for your insights and your time.
And yeah, let's stay in touch and we're going to see how it
goes. Great.
Thanks for having me on your show, Bram.
Cheers man, Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
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