“Grocery Price Emergency” & Crypto’s Tough 2026 6/30/26

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0:47Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash marketupdatepodcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts. Bring in show music, please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. The Supreme Court taking on the president's executive powers in the waning hours of its term. Who can be fired? Who can stay? We've talked to the people over the years about the benefit of having people on both sides. From a business perspective, you want some consistency. And what it all means for consumers and how people feel about the economy as the president delays signing a bipartisan housing bill.

1:28The big yawn. And a volatile first half of 26 for crypto investing. Coinbase's head of institutional strategy, John D 'Agostino, has hope yet.

1:39John D'Agostino:Really for the past 15 years. We've gone through about six of these cycles now, during each of which Bitcoin has achieved a new higher low. Plus, a Biden-era regulator, the former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Rohit Chopra, has declared a grocery price emergency in America. The average family, say, of four people, even one making a very decent income, they no longer have the cushion that they had just two years ago. It's Tuesday, June 30th, halfway through 2026. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in three, two, one. Cue it, please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC.

2:26We are live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. The time of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that President Trump had the authority to fire FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, that 6-3 ruling giving President Trump and future presidents the power to remove members of independent federal agencies that carry out functions under the executive branch of the government. Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing that independent agencies are not so independent after all. President Trump posted on Truth Social calling it a big win. Now, on the other end, separately, the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump does not have the authority to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook from the central bank, and that's for now.

3:08But it left open the possibility of firing her in the future that the court could rule that Trump's attempt failed, or I should say the court ruled that it failed because Cook was not given the due process that she was owed under federal law, but it seems to give the sense that the Fed is in a different category than some of these other agencies. And the court upheld a Mississippi law allowing mail-in ballots to be received up to five days after Election Day. Justice Amy Coney Barrett writing for the majority that the choice of a candidate made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received.

3:44Now, President Trump slammed the court for that, telling reporters that the decision gives people more time to vote illegally without citing evidence. Today is the final day of the Supreme Court's term. There are several major cases left, including the Trump administration's challenge to birthright citizenship, also a ruling on laws that ban trans girls and women from participating in women's sports at public schools, and also a GOP-backed challenge to campaign finance limits. But I think for the purposes of sort of the business community, the decision around this idea of independent agencies, FTC, this relates, the SEC relates to so many different agencies that historically have had some independent members.

4:28And we've talked to people over the years about the benefit of having people on both sides of a situation so that everyone doesn't, it's not all like-minded. But apparently that's not where the Supreme Court stands. Also, so you get a little consistency from a business perspective. You want some consistency. You don't want things to rotate every four years if you have a new administration that comes in, because it just makes it hard to follow the rules to figure out what's happening. Spans executive powers, no doubt. It does. But the agencies are under the executive branch. Right. Will you sign that housing bill?

5:02I have that. It hasn't been sent to me yet. It's coming, I understand. And then I'll make it. Here's what I would like to sign. much more than a bill that's a big deal. It's a yawn. Some people say it's wonderful. To me, compared to the Save America Act, just about everything is a big yawn. President Trump told reporters he hasn't decided yet whether to sign the bipartisan housing bill that would limit the amount of single-family homes that institutional investors can buy. This was kind of his idea initially about the big institutions gobbling up all the single-family homes, But the president abruptly canceled a signing ceremony last week, all relating to the SAVE Act.

5:46He's demanding Congress pass that voting reform bill. Yesterday, President Trump said the housing bill was so unimportant compared to the voting bill that he called it a big yawn, still making that point. We'll see whether he signs it. You know, it was a bit of a, you know, a fit of pique, just frustration that he can't get the SAVE Act pushed through on some of these issues. That that law, I mean, that bill will become law if he doesn't do anything about it in the next 10 days. Right. If he leaves it alone and doesn't veto it, it will become law anyway. But it's probably pretty frustrating to congressional members who are trying to show that they are getting things done before their election that comes up in midterms to.

6:28President Trump also posting last night about fuel prices at 7.39 p.m. He wrote gasoline retailers must get their prices down immediately. They're too high considering that oil is now at$68 a barrel and headed south. The retailers must quickly react to this statement and do what they know is right. Drop your price for our great American people. There will be no gouging, which is totally illegal. If retailers don't do this, big problems lie ahead. Start targeting around the$2.50 a gallon number, and California should stop charging such heavy taxes on their gasoline. Soon the tax will be higher than the product itself and the United States will not stand for it, nor will the people of California who are being abused by these ridiculous taxes and by their own government.

7:14President Donald J. Trump. As of this morning, the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is three dollars and eighty five cents. In the meantime, the Trump administration has spoken with SpaceX about donating stock to the children's savings accounts, known as Trump accounts, which are set to launch next week. That's according to a report from Semaphore that says it's unclear how a contribution might be structured. And if you remember, Dealbook reported that about a month or a month and a half ago, that there was an effort underway to try to find ways for founders and individuals who had stock, SpaceX being one of them, but also they were looking at people like Warren Buffett and other people like that, that you could contribute your own company stock directly into the Trump accounts.

8:01The conundrum is the way the law has been structured is you have to effectively donate cash into the funds. and it creates a very interesting dynamic. The great news is if you could put stock in and if SpaceX goes up and up and up for 18 years, that would be unbelievable for a kid. The bad news is if you think that it's supposed to be a diversified fund, which is part of the whole effort right now, the way it's structured is it's all diversified. They're not trying to have you in one stock or the other because obviously it goes up, it's great. If it goes to zero, it's a problem. So the question is, how do you set that up?

8:41And if you could donate extraordinary amounts of stock, particular stock, and keep it there, you then lock it away. From the tax structure? No, not even just from the gains. No, I wasn't even thinking about the tax structure. From just being tradable over a very, very long period. If you can't sell it for 18 years, you effectively take it out of the, it's a little like, what's the float of the stock? It actually effectively takes the stock out of the float. So there's like a hundred different things that people inside Treasury and other parts of the government and people like Brad Gerstner and others have been talking about.

9:17How could you make something work where you could get some of these kinds of big IPOs and other things into these funds? That's for the Trump accounts that are being created today and funded by the government. You know, anybody who's under the age of 18 can have an account. So I've set one up for my 14 year old. He'll be able to sell in four years. I hope he won't. Right. No, no. Yes. But I don't think you can put an individual stock. Not right now. No, I can't. Right. So this would only be for the ones that they're for newborns that they're allowed to put the stock into if they change the rules for that.

9:48Well, I think there's a question. Could you put specific stocks in any of them for anybody? I think the broader the broader question is how do you incentivize, for example, people of great wealth like an Elon or a Warren or a Jensen or somebody who has a lot of stock? would like to donate it, but would like to not just donate it and have it turn into cash. Yeah, I want to donate it. But I want to donate it and have it stay with the kids that I'm donating it to. And how would you make that work? And can you make that work? Yeah. And it's a sexy idea for SpaceX, you know, because the kids are so young and it's this, you know, the potential is in the future and limitless to infinity and beyond, as Buzz would say.

10:32I mean, it's the size of the universe. as the market potential. So I understand why it's kind of, wow, we need to. And I might live, I think, you know, I saw Clint still walking around. I saw a picture of Shatner yesterday. I monitor these things because these guys are in their mid-90s. And maybe, you know, I hope I'm over 100, but people that are six years old might have a better chance than I do of seeing some of this stuff come to, than all of us, actually, for whom the bell toll. I mean, that's not because it... My grandma's turning 100 years old in August. And we all live one day at a time, right?

11:10And we need to maximize it. It's weird that two people would get a haircut on the same day without... Without consulting each other. Without consulting each other. High and tight. It looks nice. Yeah, both of us. We didn't enlist. We could potentially... You want to hear a dad joke? It used to be you had your ears lowered. You've heard that, right? not not that's got to be 100 years no i got them all cut yeah i got them all cut both of them there's an article last week that dad jokes do something positive for society i can't remember what it was but uh it gave me reason to continue so hopefully a pilot uh landed a jet blue uh passenger plane at jfk airport yesterday a morning and reported having hit a drone The pilot said the incident happened at 3 ,000 feet on the plane's final approach.

12:04The jet landed safely. No damage was immediately reported. The pilot told Air Traffic Control that the drone struck the plane right above the cockpit. JetBlue said that the plane was removed from service for a post-flight inspection, which found no damage or evidence of a collision. Like, you'd see something, doesn't it? These things are so tiny. I mean, if you looked at a DJI drone, it's so... But when you're going 300 miles an hour or whatever, it seems like if you hit a baseball, there'd be... If you hit a bird, same thing. Even a bird. You're going to hit a bird or go through some of these issues.

12:40It seems like there'd be a dent or scratch or something. A half hour later, a JFK, a helicopter pilot, reported coming very close to a collision with what they called a remote-controlled plane. That was a rather large remote-controlled plane. They didn't hit it, but they came very near to it. And last week, there was a pilot at Newark who, I think also there was a collision with a drone then, too. That's scary. So my understanding of drones, at least commercial drones that you can buy at the store, like a DGI drone, is that it has, you know, they've ring-fenced, from a GPS perspective, all the airports.

13:20So they can't do that. Technically, these things can't do that. But I don't know how hackable they are or breakable they are.

13:29I heard the pilot speaking to the helicopter. I mean, the pilot of the helicopter speaking to air traffic control. There was a recording that was played of that. And that air traffic control person said that they had not, it didn't show on their radar any of the stuff that was there. But you can imagine there's a lot of drones out there. You can imagine. It's what we kind of always worried about, the crowded skies and what would happen. Yeah. A lot of room, you would think, but it takes one. Cheese will be next. Coming up on Squawk Pod, to bet or not to bet on crypto, the asset's volatile year, and Bitcoin's true value with CornBase's John D 'Agostino.

14:14John D'Agostino:Every 40 to 50 years, we create as a global society new stores of value. So I would posit to you that Bitcoin has reached that threshold. Now, could it go away like other stores of value have gone away? Absolutely. It could, but D 'Agostino doesn't expect it will. A lively discussion. Hey, is this stuff really worth anything? Right after this break.

14:41This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash market update podcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Serena Williams, and I'm healthier on Roe. I've lost 34 pounds in a year with GLP-1's Diet and Exercise. On Roe, you can access GLP-1 options, including the first FDA-approved GLP-1 pill for weight loss.

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16:14Welcome back to Squawk Pod from CNBC with Joe Kernan, Becky Quek, and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Here's Joe. It has been a volatile year for crypto so far. And joining us right now is John D 'Agostino. He's the head of institutional strategy for Coinbase. Good morning to you. We've all been trying to make sense of what's happening in Bitcoin world in particular, but maybe the broader crypto world. But we've watched the price obviously drop pretty precipitously. And I'd love to get your perspective on what you think is happening.

16:47John D'Agostino:First of all, Andrew, great to be here. Always great to join you. You tend to invite me on when things are going badly. So I consider it an honor. We like it when it's up or down. We're into the up part or the down part. It's always great to be here. When it's sort of just middling, that's when we're less interested. Fair point. Who wants that? Look, there's no question from a price perspective, it's been brutal. Now, I will say we've seen this before. I was really entertained by the back and forth that you had the other day between Joe and Jeremy Grantham. Jeremy's a legend. He's an icon. I have enormous respect for him.

17:24John D'Agostino:I haven't so much read his letters over the years as devoured them. and particularly his commentary recently on price action and what that represents for blockchain and crypto. Now, I'm encouraged by the fact that his arguments and most of the arguments we're hearing now are not new. They're sort of recycled really for the past 15 years. We've gone through about six of these cycles now, during each of which Bitcoin has achieved a new higher low. And then And once the kind of retail panic has settled out, has gone on to achieve a new higher high. So that encourages me. The one thing that does surprise me about the commentary is when you read the GMO letters, kind of what sticks out is this message of resiliency, which I love.

18:09John D'Agostino:And even though value investing trailed growth for a long time, the message was always retain conviction with your beliefs. There's this wonderful quote, I'm going to paraphrase, The market is gloriously inefficient and wanders from fair price. And your job is to survive. And so I would ask anyone making these arguments, is it that insane that there would be hundreds of millions of people who have a deep conviction that an ASIC, which is the first and only digitally native portable store of value, which is effectively this marvelous consensus mechanism for storing energy and compute, two of the most valuable commodities in the world.

18:46John D'Agostino:And that has turned roughly$100 in 2011 into roughly$30 million now. Is it insane that they would have conviction in that position? So they may have conviction in that position. I think the question I would ask you is for those folks who got into Bitcoin not at$10 ,000 but at$100 ,000, whether they should still have that conviction? And what is the catalyst that would put them back in the black? So in terms of everyone has to develop their own risk tolerance. But in terms of folks who are looking for conviction, again, I'll quote Jeremy. One of his one of my favorites, he says, is the point here is that there's nothing wrong with waiting.

19:30John D'Agostino:Now, in terms of catalysts, you know, you've had me on a couple of times. I don't tell people what to buy. I don't tell them when to buy it. We are what's exciting. So most people are looking at, say, the Clarity Act passing as a central catalyst. You know, I have the luxury of being at Coinbase where I'm seeing what I call micro catalysts almost every day. Stuff that doesn't really make the front page of the news. But the other day we just did the first stablecoin based payment for independent journalists to condense the time they take to receive money from their advertisements from 90 days to one day.

20:04John D'Agostino:We've seen things like Scott Stornetta, who was on your show, using blockchain and cryptocurrency to solve the problem of deepfakes of the artificial intelligence. We've seen over 40 countries commit to buying Bitcoin in some fashion for their national balance sheets or other. So I'm seeing every day a deluge of new institutional investors that are interested in the asset class. So I appreciate for folks who don't have that perspective. They're looking for some grand gesture or grand event. But for those of us who have the luxury of being on the inside, all we're all we're seeing is steady growth, even if the headlines don't match that.

20:41You're nice, you know, and very conciliatory. You're leaving out, you know, to call digital currency or crypto or Bitcoin a is worthless as a steaming bucket of piss. and it shows, I think, a complete lack of any investigation or insight into what we're talking about, about the nature of money, about the nature of money in general, John. I mentioned, well, started to mention shells on an island a thousand years ago, and just a basic understanding of what a unit of anything represents. Nothing has gold isn't valuable because it's pretty and shiny and because you make rings out of it. There's six things.

21:30There's you got to be scarce, durable, portable, verifiable and accepted. And every form of currency that's ever been invented or around or that is a store of value. Bitcoin has every one of those qualities and probably better in a lot of manners than a lot of other things. And I mean, that just looked to me like a totally uninformed, high level of ignorance about the whole the whole nature of money.

21:58John D'Agostino:Well, I have to be nice. I'm not as famous as I like that. You know, you're so nice. But I mean, great. So, Joe, I have to be nice. I'm not as famous as you were, Jeremy. Look, I've been I come from traditional finance. And I think if you recall, I used to be head of strategy for the world's largest commodities exchange, the New York Mercantile Exchange. So I've been ever since I pivoted into digital assets and blockchain, I've been hearing this from my colleagues. I debated Nouriel Roubini at Carnegie Hall roughly five years ago and had a wonderful time. That's a waste. That's a waste of time.

22:31John D'Agostino:No, he's a dear friend. I think we have to listen to smart people who disagree with us. So so here's here's the great news. Legends can be wrong. Icons can be wrong. Geniuses can be wrong. And I think at some point, whether it's 5, 10, 15, 20, 50 years, I prefer to let the track record. You can be done. You can be factually wrong, too. If you if you predict a crash and you finally get a crash and it gets in it and it goes down to a level that's still double where you started predicting the crash. What good is that? Right. Missing missing the 100 100 percent up to avoid the 10 percent down. It's 400 percent.

23:06John D'Agostino:Yeah, or in Bitcoin's case, 10 ,000. But again, I'm sympathetic to folks. I've heard this, Joe. I heard when I was head of strategy at NYMEX, there was a, people forget, there was a very real effort to just kill derivatives. It's kind of reminiscent of what we're seeing with prediction markets and blockchain. Back then, there was just no need for natural gas derivatives. So forget about that processing plant that wants to finance its going forward natural gas sales or purchases. We just didn't think we needed them because they were difficult to understand. So I've sort of seen this before. from even very, very smart people.

23:36John D'Agostino:And I just kind of chalk it up to they don't have time to look into everything because if they really took the time to do the work, I don't think they'd think. John, I just want to push back on the following. It's not so much that the argument is being made that there's no purpose for cryptocurrencies or blockchain at all. I think that almost everybody, and I want to say even Jeremy Grantham would appreciate, there's a value proposition for something like an Ethereum or other parts of the blockchain, where you actually need said currency, if you will, to operate the chain itself. The question is a different question about Bitcoin, given what it does or doesn't do.

24:18And the idea that, yes, you can track it. And yes, it may be like a shell or a store of value. It's only a store of value if you value it. And that's it's not just just because I dig a hole in the ground doesn't mean that my energy that I use to dig that hole has some value to something. Because you may not value that hole or you may have wished that I had made the hole across the street on the other side of the street where it would have had value. And so and now we're into a very philosophical conversation about all of this. But I think the broader question I'm asking is not, again, not for the folks who bought it at$10 ,000.