BTC252: Bitcoin Mastermind Q3 2025 w/ Joe Carlasare, Jeff Ross, and American HODL (Bitcoin Podcast)

14:55Jeff Ross:yeah yeah so i would just again to encourage people out there in the audience be careful about pricing your life and your net worth and your investments only in the dollar you're going to be deceived people in the 70s actually thought they did okay there was a lot of chop but they kind of ended i think about slightly up or about even from 1968 ish to 1982 but in real terms they just got wiped out and so i just think gold terms not in real terms well in both in debasement terms and buying power terms yeah yeah because there's so much inflation in the 70s i think the official if you divide it if you uh factor in cpi officially i think it was a 50 decrease from 68 to 82.

15:35American HODL:oh the 70s yeah no i'm talking about the last like 20 years if you use the official cpi every stock is yeah not the last 20. right right like insanely outperformed what the official stats are about inflation.

15:47Joe Carlasare:Yep. So if I was a gold bug and I was watching this right now, I would be furious because you're showing a chart with the S &P 500 against gold, but you're not showing a chart of Bitcoin against gold. And so for those gold bugs watching, I'm going to go ahead and put it up. No, I think this is important. And when you look at it from this lens, like, look at this, we are since 2021, it's kind of depressing. I have to admit, this is pretty depressing. I'm sure Peter Schiff is just dancing all over people's graves. And until he is truly doing that online, this bull run is not going to be over. As soon as he starts tap dancing on our graves.

16:28Joe Carlasare:Oh, he's been doing that. Oh, so the turn's coming. My favorite Peter Schiff tweet recently was he was warning that Bitcoin could go as low as, you're ready for it$75 ,000 and I was like I think we've won if this is the worst world that Peter could imagine for Bitcoin any comments on this one guys I mean it's yeah I mean for the year I think last I looked we were down like 30 % in gold terms here let me figure like year to date what are we down in gold term here's the start of the oh wow yeah that is ugly it's right yeah I I mean, gold's been kicking our ass this year. Oh, it's good. Yeah, 37%.

17:05Right. That's brutal. I know. This is their year, man. The gold bucks are doing great. Good for them. We've been bullying them for the better part of 15 years.

17:15Jeff Ross:And I like to celebrate with them, you know? Hey, they're having a good year. That's great. And shout out to Peter, man. He's so funny. He's just relentless. And he's talking about how everybody's going to go to zero if they're holding Bitcoin and they got to get into gold now. He's just hilarious. He's almost like a comic.

17:29Joe Carlasare:Is this a setup somehow? Everybody piles in the gold and then all of a sudden Bitcoin just totally rips everything? What are your thoughts? I was just going to say, I think that they, like JP Morgan is saying, I think that they're both part of the debasement trade. And I do think that in a world in which Bitcoin does very well, it's long puzzled me actually, Preston, to see gold not doing so well alongside Bitcoin and Bitcoin being more of the canary in the coal mine, because you would think that gold would go up alongside Bitcoin. Now, I think, you know, as Bitcoiners, we're of the opinion that Bitcoin eventually demonetizes gold, but that's kind of on the long arc of history, you know, which it might take the entirety of our lives for that to happen.

18:09But yeah, I mean, if with all of this fiat monetary debasement, you would expect to see gold go up and Bitcoin go up.

18:15Joe Carlasare:I think traditional finance just always looked at the gold bugs as like, oh yeah, they're just continuing to say that, you know, there's this and that and that the whole system is going to fail. And now in the past year, it appears that even Wall Street, the veterans on Wall Street are also believing the gold bugs. And I think when they're looking at both of the assets, they're saying, I don't really fully understand Bitcoin. It seems like there's a lot of technical things there that I can't possibly audit or understand. But I do understand if I'm holding a gold bar that that thing's probably going to do pretty well in a debasement type situation.

18:47Joe Carlasare:So I think that it's getting a big run right now for people that just understand what's technically wrong with credit markets and all the things we've been talking about for a decade plus. And they're just looking at the two options and are saying, I don't really understand that one. There's a bunch of weirdos with weird hats and sunglasses and whatnot. And they just don't seem to be the same type of person that I am. I'm just going to buy this gold and not think about it. Would you guys agree? Yeah, essentially. I think many of them are of the age to where they were in the early part of their career when the seventies happened.

19:18And so this is kind of like, It's a self-fulfilling prophecy where they're like, it's about to do it again. And I want to be in on that. And they think that Bitcoin is going to do it as well alongside it, but they don't have the same faith in Bitcoin. And Bitcoin is not as large a market as gold is. So if you want to move large amounts of capital, gold probably still is a pretty good bet.

19:38Jeff Ross:I think that's definitely a large part of it, HODL. And I also think that they're getting bolstered. The gold bugs are being bolstered by central banks, right? So the world is in desperate need right now of a neutral reserve asset, which used to be the US Treasury. I'd say about half the world doesn't trust it as a neutral reserve asset anymore. It's a very biased reserve asset. And so they're just getting out, right? And so basically the BRICS block is moving on from treasuries and they need something else to be a reserve asset. And I think as of now, that's gold. Bitcoin, I think someday we'll be in the conversation, but it's way too small now.

20:10Jeff Ross:I think late 2030s, maybe 2040, somewhere around there, central banks will be buying Bitcoin in size, but we're much too early for that. And based on what this chart showed that we were looking at earlier, the S &P over gold, this may go on for another 10 years. I mean, we may be still talking about this in the 2030s, like 2033, 34, 35, somewhere around there before this chart bottoms. And so if I had to choose gun to my head today, you can only invest in either the S &P 500 or gold for the next five to 10 years, I would absolutely pick gold over the S &P 500. And I think that's a minority take right now, but I think by the 2030s, that will be a majority take.

20:48Jeff Ross:Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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24:33Joe Carlasare:It's just crazy to me to think that.

24:36American HODL:But Joe, go ahead. So Jeff, I just want to flash forward. We're doing a mastermind podcast, Q3, Q4 of 2026, and gold has suffered from these levels like a 30 % decline and stocks are higher by, let's say, 10%. What's your takeaway? Is that change? Is that just a momentary pause? Is anything structurally different?

24:55Jeff Ross:So it depends, right? First of all, if this chart, the way I run my hedge fund, I do momentum-based sort of things. So if the momentum, if the trend changes, then I will change with it. So I'll just say like, I was wrong. Yeah, right. My macro take was wrong. And I flip over what I do. If this chart completely goes the other direction and starts pulling in the late 1990s and starts ripping higher again, yeah, then I'll be like, okay, that's over for now. But we're probably going to get back into it again. I will say that the geopolitical world order and the way things are moving bolsters my opinion of this, that this is not only right, but it's going to be more right as the years go on.

25:32Jeff Ross:I think the rhetoric between the US and China and the US and the BRICS nations and the US losing India as an ally recently and all these sorts of things, I think only tell me that capital is moving away from the US and this whole, as we get away from globalization and internationalization and turn into a multipolar world, and we can talk about all this a little later, it requires tremendous amounts of money that the US doesn't have because we're already bankrupt, over-indebted right now. So how in the world are we going to pay for this in sound money? Everything to me plays together and says that this is going to continue and it's actually going to accelerate from here.

26:06Jeff Ross:But you're right, Joe, if it does change and the trend changes, I'll just change with it and I'll just say that's a nerve.

26:11American HODL:I was wrong. I'm not saying what your thesis here is wrong. I just been around long enough to see gold does this. It goes on these crazy runs. I mean, it went on that crazy run in 2011, it dropped 50 % thereafter. I remember reading a Luke Groman article about exactly what you're saying, gold becoming the new reserve asset in 2020, and it then dropped like 25%. And like, it languished through basically the end of 22 or 23 if memory serves. So like, it does this, it goes on these parabolic runs, resets, not to say it's not going to catch a bid, like it's not going to zero, right? If you put your money in gold, it's pretty fine.

26:44American HODL:But Preston's point, I mean, in long run defined as like four or five years, right? There are periods where gold has spectacular runs and then does nothing, absolutely nothing, just going sideways.

26:53Joe Carlasare:If I was going to try to answer your question from Jeff's perspective, as far as this trend persisting, when I'm looking at the chart that I have pulled up right now, going back to these moving averages, the reason that these moving averages really help you gauge something that has a large market cap for a long-term trend is because it helps wash out the volatility of the price action. So when we're looking at the price action right now of gold, it's ripping compared to the S &P 500. Is it overdone? Probably a little bit. And would I expect in the next nine months for there to be somewhat of a recovery in S &P 500 terms relative to gold?

27:33Joe Carlasare:Yeah, I actually kind of would expect the S &P to bid against gold because it's just been so overdone. But the real question is how much of that is just standard volatility for the much bigger trend or the much bigger move and where those moving averages really help you out in that is as long as, and we're looking at this chart, as long as that orange line, which is your longer moving average, that's a 50-month moving average versus the 15-month moving average, as long as it stays above it, I would say you're just within the standard volatility range of the move itself. Does that make sense, what I'm saying, Joe?

28:10American HODL:Oh, yeah. No, I mean, it definitely does, but look at that move in 2011. If you were just looking at the chart in a backward-looking way in August 2011, you'd say, oh, the dollar's cooked, S &P is cooked. It's all done, right? You see a 10-year run in the opposite direction.

28:24Joe Carlasare:I think when these moving averages cross over, like they did shortly after, within a year after that move, that would be a huge red flag to me that maybe you're wrong about the long-term trend, right? But as long as you're still having the longer moving average above the shorter one, I think that the overall trend is going to continue to persist. Yeah.

28:46Jeff Ross:And just so you know, like how I operate as a fund manager. So I start with this macro view, right? This is 106 year chart. And when it looks like the tide is turning and we're rolling over. And now it's going to be basically, gold's going to be better than the S &P 500, which it looks like to me is probably going to hold up. And if it's like history for maybe 12 years or so, so a long period of time. And why that matters is practically speaking, I've flipped my hedge fund over from financialized assets to hard assets. And we can talk about this too, and how we choose hard assets in which I think are going to do well, because now we live in a central command economy and not a free market economy anymore, or we haven't for a long time, but I switch over.

29:27Jeff Ross:And so instead of favoring things like the S &P 500 and small cap stocks or blah, blah, blah. Now I look at hard assets. I look at how is the US going to build the military industrial complex and rebuild our manufacturing base? What are the signs that the administration is talking about? And I literally now invest in funds like copper funds, steel funds, titanium, aluminum, things that I wouldn't have even considered four or five years ago. Now we're in size in these kinds of things. Obviously Bitcoin as well and gold. and related things.

29:55Joe Carlasare:So this rare earth metal discussion is huge right now, Jeff. Talk to us what you're hearing on that. And it seems like your investment thesis is playing right into that.

30:05Jeff Ross:It is huge. And I tell people this, it's so easy with Trump because Trump is so forthright about what he's doing. And I think so many people don't trust him because they don't like him. So they don't believe him. And I'm telling you, he's just giving you the playbook, right? He's saying, we are woefully underprepared for a coming war with China, which we can talk about that too, but I think that's just absolutely in the cards in the coming years. And he's saying, we sorely lack energy for AI and for military industrial complex. So we need to boost that. We need rare earth materials. China has a lock on that, obviously, which is an incredible ace up their sleeve for them and a great trading card for them.

30:43Jeff Ross:And then he tells you literally what materials, like the government is actually investing in not just companies like Intel, but they're investing in tiny little rare earth companies, as well as things like aluminum producers and other things that they consider critical elements for the expansion of manufacturing and the military industrial complex in the United States. So I literally just go through what I see the government doing. And then I do research on those topics and look for the best companies in these different things, or just pick ETFs that kind of hit these topics. And it's been very successful.

31:15Jeff Ross:And I think that's what most people should be doing. They're literally giving you the playbook. And similar to China, right? When China is like, hey, they literally tell their banks that you need to start investing in this. And when their stock market is down, they'll just say, we command you to start buying stocks, the institutions in China. And what happens? Stocks go up. And if they say, we're going to boost the housing market, the housing market goes up, right? And so I'm telling you, when you have a very powerful government doing central command and telling you what they're going to do, I would say, don't fight it.

31:45Jeff Ross:Just like the famous, don't fight the Fed quote, I would say don't fight this administration when they tell you what their game plan is, just invest accordingly.

31:51Joe Carlasare:Guys, let's move on to strategic Bitcoin reserve. So the White House EO says a seized Bitcoin is not to be sold. Where are we at with this thing? It seems like there was a lot of hoopla when Trump took office. Everybody was like, he's going to sign this thing. And it just seems to have died on the vine. The talking point that I heard when I was in DC, what, like two or three weeks ago, the Genius Act was passed. And so now the focus is on the Clarity Act and to get market structure before we go to the SBR. But to me, it just seems like this is just continuing to be kicked further and further to the right.

32:30Joe Carlasare:And it's not really has a lot of support from everybody on the Hill. I'm kind of curious, Joe, if you've heard anything or HODL, if you've heard anything specific to any of these ideas or what you see happening in DC? Is it what you expected? Is it different than what you expected? Just kind of your general sentiment.

32:48American HODL:So, you know, I believe that from the bill standpoint, something getting through Congress, that was always going to be an uphill climb. That was never a sort of my base case. And I think we talked about this in prior masterminds. It's increasingly difficult to get anything through Congress. There's a lot of dealing. It's very difficult as the calendar starts to float and you have to pick priorities. And I think the lobbyists that are out there, let's be honest, they're mostly the crypto lobbyists and they want clarity more than they would want, I think, a strategic Bitcoin reserve that's in their interest.

33:17American HODL:That's probably got the juice that's already getting floated. And frankly, there's a lot more money behind something like that occurring rather than doing something like the Bitcoin reserve for altruistic reasons. Although I think it would benefit as crypto as a whole if there were a strategic Bitcoin reserve. But putting that aside, that was always sort of like a tail event I think that could have occurred. I don't think it's serious. I don't think it's likely to get through, certainly not before the midterms. And with the strategic Bitcoin reserve, let's be honest, it was a massively optimistic, bullish development that we even got in SBR.

33:46American HODL:I think there were people that were really skeptical that we would get one. The United States government treats this as a strategic priority. I was on a podcast with Matt Pines talking about this and that alone as a talking point that we say there's a strategic necessity for holding Bitcoin is huge. Now, when it comes to filling that out and developing ways, We haven't heard a whole lot. I think there's been sort of confusion internally how far they wanted to push the envelope on that, whether they want to take the Exchange Stabilization Act and try to acquire additional Bitcoin. All that's sort of on the table, but I just don't think it's a serious priority at this point for the administration.

34:17American HODL:Now, the news recently broke about this seized Bitcoin, I think it's an additional 14 billion approximately that was seized. And the question there becomes, is that going to be Bitcoin such that's finally forfeited to the US government. For what that means is like when you seize Bitcoin in a criminal proceeding, it's not necessarily the government's property. It could belong to victims, could belong to people that could have claims against it to pay restitution. So there needs to be a court order or some sort of plea that transfers that Bitcoin's title to the US government, that if it's finally forfeited.

34:48American HODL:So we'll see how much of that ends up finally forfeited. That's the easiest budget neutral way to acquire more Bitcoin, but that's a lengthy process and that it's going to take some time to hash that out. But to me, I still think it's awesome that we got it to begin with. I don't know why that wasn't sufficient, why there was so much, I guess, hopium about the government going out into the open market and buying Bitcoin. But these things take time. And as Bitcoin continues to mature as an asset and the market begins to develop, I think that they've established a baseline for holding what's in this SBR, and that will only expand through natural process.

35:19Yeah, I agree with a lot of what Joe said. I talked to the guys over at Bitcoin Policy Institute quite a bit. And they, like Joe said, there's a lot of crypto lobbying firms. These are our guys and they're very intelligent and the work they do is very worthwhile. And they were behind some of this and they've been very happy with it. It is sort of via confiscation rather than via open market buying, like Joe was talking about. And this thing, like this pig butchering scam might be one of the things that helps sort of feather the nest that is the SBR. Something I didn't know that was sort of interesting about the pig butchering scam is that these text messages where it's like, hey, what's up?

35:53It's me. You want to get lunch, right? I'm sure we all get these. And I thought they were just crypto-specific things, like I'm on some hacked list from whatever years back or whatever. Apparently, they go out to everybody in America. And pig butchering is a specific type of scam in which you establish a personal relationship with the person. And then you basically build trust over time. And then you butcher the pig all at once. You take them for as much money as you possibly can. And this Cambodian pig butchering scam had made some insane amount of money. And obviously there was some US nexus there that allowed them to nab this guy because there were US citizens who were being preyed on.

36:27So I think that - I didn't realize that's how they came up with all the Bitcoin.

36:31Joe Carlasare:It was through something like that, Hodl? Through those text messages that come through your phone. No way. Honestly. Yeah, seriously. So enough people, it's like a Nigerian print scam, but in a modern day, it's called pig butchering. And what it basically is, is they will send you a text message that purports to be a wrong number or something, some amount of people will text back to it and they'll be like, I'm your friend and whatever, or they'll make a personal friendship. And then they get the person on the line, they get them to deposit money into it. They say, oh, I'm doing this Forex trading stuff.

36:58You should do it with me. They get them to deposit money into a fake account that makes it look like they're making a lot of money, but they're not. And then they get them to deposit even more money. And by the way, this is not just stupid people or unsophisticated people that are being ganked by these scams. I had heard a story about a friend of a friend who was a Yale well-educated attorney who had lost$5 million to one of these. Come on. No, seriously. So, because they built, they're preying on your, it's social engineering. They're preying on your, you know, your human instinct and your capacity for trust and relationship building.

37:28And then one day out of nowhere, they just, they butcher the pig. They kill you all at once. They take a large amount of money from you.

37:34American HODL:That is nuts. So just to add one final thing that I think is critical here. This is one of the primary reasons why we need to have a strong next year in Bitcoin, why Bitcoin needs to be considerably higher and hopefully follow in Gold's footsteps and follow Dr. Jeff's thesis here about hard assets rallying. Because an EO, an executive order, it's an executive order, right? The next president that comes in, if they have a different philosophical view than Trump, they can just, with a single stroke of a pen, undo that, right? But you can envision a world where we get a very strong bull run into 2026 and people start to view Bitcoin differently, right?

38:10American HODL:The 80 % busts are done, right? It's over. It's a new modern Bitcoin. it's been institutionalized. You've got massive capital allocators that are following in sailors' footsteps, and this asset is no longer a joke. It's to be taken seriously. If you have that sort of paradigm shift that occurs, I think that there will be more of an emphasis on not just holding, but acquiring. And I think you could get, obviously, the strategic Bitcoin reserve codified into law via a bill, right? Via a law passed by Congress, which is key, and then potentially a signal that we're trying to acquire more. And one thing on the gold discussion we didn't reference is that part of the price action gold, I believe, and I'd love to hear Jeff's take on this, I don't think it's all retail driven.

38:46American HODL:I think it's some central bank buying, particularly some of the Eastern central banks. I think they're pushing the envelope, pushing the button on that. There's some retail and other funds piling on, but it's primarily central bank catalyst that has lit this fire in gold. If you're the United States and you want to move into the 21st century and you want to have a rival to that, you want to have the sovereign reserve asset that is not a US treasury, you want to have some alternative hedge, that's Bitcoin. That's what the United state's government should be doing from a geopolitical perspective.

39:12American HODL:But I'm interested in anybody else's thoughts on that.

39:14Jeff Ross:I touched on that a little bit earlier about how there isn't a reserve asset that's neutral other than gold anymore. So for these BRICS nations, they don't trust the US and the US Treasuries anymore. So if I remember right, do you guys remember maybe two, three years ago, China was actually urging its citizens to buy gold? Yes. Yeah. I think that's real, right? I'm not just making that up. And so I think that they're doing that. I think the central banks are loading up and they're encouraging their citizens to do so. So I think that's putting obviously a massive bid underneath.

39:43American HODL:So we should encourage Americans to buy Bitcoin and the US government to acquire Bitcoin and to codify the SBR into law. That's the geopolitical battle. If you buy gold, you're supporting China, right? Is that what you're saying?

39:57Jeff Ross:Mark it down. That's what I said. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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42:58Joe Carlasare:Whether you're a fast-growing startup or a global enterprise, Vanta is here to help you automate your security and compliance and earn, improve trust. Get started today at vanta.com slash tip. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash tip. All right, back to the show. Hey, I want to talk about the SOFR rate versus the effective funds, federal funds rate, and how we're seeing spikes in this, which is typically seen right before liquidity issues in the market. So this is obviously a very short term kind of thing and could be nothing. I mean, we see spikes all the time, but these ones seem to be pretty substantial.

43:42Joe Carlasare:I'm curious, Jeff or Joe or Hoddle, what you guys are thinking and whether this is kind of a, are we at a point right now where we're seeing some, you know, spicy price action that's on the horizon within weeks?

43:57Jeff Ross:Well, I'll just jump in quick and then we'll get the real answer from these guys. But, you know, I don't know if you guys heard Powell speak yesterday at the NAIB, National Association a business entrepreneur, something like that. And he basically just threw out there like, yeah, we're probably going to stop QT pretty soon because bank reserves are getting, he said, they're still like ample, but they're getting close to these levels. So what I think that's his code for saying, we're watching this too, Preston, and we don't want to have a repeat of 2019 with the reverse repo saga. So we're getting ready to take action and we see what's happening, but we don't want to cause a panic.

44:29Joe Carlasare:That was September, October. It was in the fall of 2019. September. Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere in there. And then, you know, then COVID hit in March of 2020. What was it? Five, six months later. Yeah. So it does seem, it feels a little bit like that, right? Back in the September of 2019 event. And I agree with you. I think that's why he has kind of swiftly changed his messaging in this past week or two. And I think you're right. I think that's probably why he's doing it. Joe Hoddle, you guys got anything else on that particular topic?

45:00American HODL:No, I think the sulfur spikes are just noise. Basically, I definitely think that, as Jeff pointed out, he explicitly said that there are signs starting to emerge of a gradual tightening of liquidity conditions. So when he says something like that, he's not hiding the ball. He's telling you very clearly that they're nearing the end of that process. They're nearing the end of QT. That does not mean QE, full-blown QE, right? It's like we think that the current amount of the balance sheet, which I was listening to Mohamed O 'Leary and say that he thinks that's mistake that they should be drawing it down further and getting it more normalized.

45:31American HODL:We'll see. I mean, everybody can always, it's easy to judge until something blows up and then you're blamed for everything. But from my perspective, I think the clear path forward is to expect greater rate cuts moving forward. I mean, the market is pricing right now, what is it? 75 basis points cuts by the end of the year, right? And those traders are gaining some traction here. So I think you had, who was it today? Was it Waller say that they thought that the neutral rate was about 100 plus 120 bips slower. So clearly that's like auditioning for the next role. And I think some of the volatility in the forward looking curves are all responding to the fact of like, what is the next Fed chair going to do?

46:10American HODL:Because it's really easy to say like, well, we should just cut, cut, cut here, which I get it. I'm sympathetic to that view. I'll tell you for a couple of reasons, because I think the rate hike regime is not curbing the higher consumer prices. I think you're stuck near three, regardless of what the Fed does. All you're doing is hurting certain segments of the economy. So I'm sympathetic to the view of like more cuts. But the question becomes like, if you're so aggressive and you just become beholden to the administration, like that's a new era. And I'm not casting judgment on it. I'm just saying it's markedly different from at least the supposed appearance of independence.

46:42American HODL:And I want to emphasize the word appearance. I don't think the Fed has ever truly been independent by any means. It's clearly a response to politics, but at least they tried to have this pretext that where they were somehow independent. Now it just seems like I'll call up the president. What should we do on rates? Like, let's see what the Donald has to say. Like, that's going to be the answer, which is a different regime, right? Like that we have to be honest about it. And that swap happens in May. Is that right? For the Fed chair?

47:06Joe Carlasare:Yeah.

47:06American HODL:Yeah. He's done. But the interesting thing is, and he won't answer this, Chair Powell won't answer this question, whether he's going to stay on, right? Because it's not just the chair, right? Powell, that's one of the reasons why the Lisa Cook issue is such a big deal if they can oust lisa cook and powell gives up his seat because he's still on for several years just on board right then he gets a majority and that's really key so that's why that whole thing was filed we didn't cover that in one of the prior i didn't realize that

47:33Joe Carlasare:joe i didn't realize he was still going to be on the board yeah after may he's still there his when

47:38American HODL:is his term retired jeff i'll get you the date wow uh as the chair no no no like yeah after he's Yeah, overall.

47:46Jeff Ross:Yeah, I don't know. I can't remember.

47:48American HODL:But his chair term ends in May, but he's still on. Wow. I did not know that. Yeah. I'll get it in a second.

47:56Jeff Ross:So while you're looking for that, you know, and speaking of the yield curve, I've just been thinking about this lately and I don't know if it's because I'm just old fashioned or what, but I just, do you guys know that the yield curve has been inverted for like three straight years and nobody even talks about it anymore? Yeah, right. And yeah, you want to show this? here's how i look at the fed funds rate like being a fed share would be so simple because all you have to do is look at what the two-year yield is and you say okay we got to get below the two-year yield and right now the two-year yield is sitting at 3.41 or so and the one month and the fed funds rate is still sitting up at about you know 4.25 or whatever it is 4.08 yeah so it's not complicated the market is telling the fed yeah you need to lower the fed funds rate to at least below 350 probably about 3.25 % right now.

48:46Jeff Ross:So you need to drop a hundred bips right now, or as soon as you can, you know, you got to tell the market that's your plan. And they've been so resistant to it for so long, talking about the need to get inflation down, right. And the need to be, to not be accommodative. We need to be a little bit restrictive. We don't want to cause inflation. It's the market. The market is telling them you're making a mistake. You need to get it down lower. I don't know if you guys have opinions on that, but we need to un-invert the yield curve and bring back normalcy across the yield curve. And it's just drives me nuts because it's such an easy thing to do.

49:16American HODL:Paul's term on the board ends 2028. Wow. 2028. Yeah. Wow. He'll be there for a while. Yeah. Well, no, typically and historically, once they sunset his chair, they're done. They just give up the seat. That's why they keep asking him that question because we'll see if he hangs around and they can't kick him out of the Eccles building. Oh, so they usually resign from the board. Yeah. They usually say it's done. Like, listen, we have the pinnacle. I'm like, who wants to sit around? It's like, you know, who's that president that where he was like president of the United States and then he ran for Senate and he was like hanging out in the Senate.

49:46American HODL:Like, just what's the point of that? You know what I'm talking about? I can't remember that guy. Hal does seem that part of his mission in life, though, is to resist Donald Trump. So I could see him hanging around. You know, I don't think he likes Trump very much.

50:00Joe Carlasare:Jeff, to your point on the, you know, them needing to drop the rate. Yeah, I think that, and for people that might not be intimately familiar with the curves, the only thing that they really control is that overnight money rate. All the other ones with duration are, for all intents and purposes, controlled by the market. I think there's a lot of people out there that would argue with that. But for all intents and purposes, it's very different than the federal funds rate. And with it riding, everybody can see here on the chart, it's at 4.2 on the federal funds. And the two-year is at 3.4. And to Jeff's point, yeah, they got to drop it 100 bps at this point.

50:35Jeff Ross:Right. I don't know why he keeps, he has a perfect excuse to just be like, the bond market is telling us we need to drop 100 bps. Yeah.

50:42American HODL:Yeah. But they don't look at the data. They look at the consumer price and core PC. When they're data dependent, they're not looking at what the bond market is. Right. Because the bond market is. Yeah. Their data dependence is not based on the yield of the two year. I mean, and let's be clear, like there have been times over the past couple of years where the bond markets have been completely wrong. like yields were much lower and then they ramped up. Look at where yields were in the fall of last year and where they went to in January after the Fed cut. Fed started cutting and then yields rose.

51:08American HODL:And everybody freaked out and people said, well, if you cut more, I mean, talk about bad takes. People were arguing in January of 2025 that the Fed engaged in any more cuts that they would lose the long end of the yield curve and we'd be rocketing above 5 % and it was going to go berserk, right? It was sell off really hard. What has happened? The 10 years, is it under four? It was 3.96 as they've cut. So that was totally wrong. The idea that they would price in significant more inflation when we were cutting. So these curves can react. They're reacting primarily, in my view, based on growth expectations.

51:40American HODL:And I think to your point, Jeff, the growth expectations are weakening. So what do you expect to happen to yields? Yields are going to decline.

51:48Jeff Ross:Right. I just think it's so simple because he has an excuse, right? He doesn't have to say he's bowing to trump he's just be like look what the two years telling us it's telling us we need to come lower so therefore we should do that his excuse is the labor market labor yeah i would just love to end the fed like tomorrow and have it just and it doesn't have it be automated like this is so ridiculous but anyways yeah this makes me mad let's just put chat gpt in charge of the fed let's do it it would do just as good a job let's be real it'd do better what are you guys thoughts on ai right now well i think there's something kind of interesting going on in ai tech.

52:22I don't know if you guys have been paying attention to the deals that are going on between NVIDIA and OpenAI and AMD, et cetera. There's a lot of this round tripping that we remember seeing in the FTX land and the Sandbagman Freed days, and it's making me mildly uncomfortable. And if you talk to guys like Jensen Wong, they'll tell you that general purpose compute is dead, and the world is moving towards specific compute, which is something that we can understand as Bitcoiners, like we've seen the move from CPU to GPU to ASIC. And now the broader market is going through that move. But I don't know, man, I see all these round trip deals and I get a little sketched out with what's going on over there in their market.

52:59And obviously what's happening in high tech affects the broader market in general and leads back to Jeff's thesis about it's kind of over. It's the swan song, just like it was in Crypto Land.

53:11Jeff Ross:I was doing this because it's that Spider-Man meme where there's three of them all pointing at each other. Like who's paying for this? Who's paying for this? You are. So yeah, that is going to be a too big to fail moment. I think at some point at the end of this, I don't think we're getting close to the end. I think we are at the early stages of like a bubble, but like five years to go would be my guess. This stuff is fascinating. I tell you, I've been thinking a lot about this and geopolitics lately, and I don't think much about Bitcoin anymore because it's going to just keep going up over time.

53:39Jeff Ross:But there's the optimistic side of this age of abundance that's coming. And then everybody's concerned about AI taking all of the white collar jobs. And that's, I think, a real concern. What I've been thinking about, and this doesn't make me popular at all, so I don't speak my mind and I'll do this here in front of just the three of us so nobody else will know about it. I'm a hardcore free market capitalist. But does free market capitalism work for humans, which is dog eat dog, the best win, the rest die, creative destruction? What if our competition is all 10X or 100X smarter than us and can do things 10X to 100X better than us, do we really want to be in free market competition with AI?

54:20Jeff Ross:And I'm totally serious. What if unemployment jumps to 40 %? Do you want a capitalist? So even though I think it's the best for humans, is free market capitalism the best way to run an economy in an AI world? And I think the answer is actually no, but I'd love to hear you guys' thoughts on that. Wow. Wow.

54:37Joe Carlasare:That's bold. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead, guys. I'm more of the opinion. I think a lot of the talk about artificial general intelligence or super intelligence is, and I think it's meant to create regulatory capture opportunities for the already powerful players in the markets, like an open AI. I don't believe we're going to see super intelligence anytime soon. There is like a potential fast takeoff scenario if the AIs are able to rapidly iterate on themselves. But GPT-5 kind of sucks, my opinion. I was expecting a lot more of an improvement out of it and it seemed to be sort of a plateau now did it get nerfed because the researchers were worried about there's all this stuff like that right where they're like you know and then obviously you have the espionage angle where the chinese are trying to steal the weights and they're deeply embedded in every american company and the whole thing is moving off a clip at 88 miles per hour right like and so you know it's it's hard to track what's going on in ai at any given time but i think my general framework here is that ai is something like the new handgun and that it's a tool that humans are going to be able to leverage against other AI.

55:39So I don't know that it's me and you versus an AI, but I think it's me and you plus AI versus other humans plus AI, right? So like we get these like super powerful computer symbiotes that we're using to duel with each other. But we might actually reach a level of the internet, for instance, where you've heard of dead internet theory, where like basically like 90 % of the internet is already made of bots. Well, it might move to 100 % and the internet just becomes like the machine battleground between the AIs and we all operate on the other side of them. So my AI goes out and does battle with your AI in the world or whatever.

56:12I don't know, man. We're heading towards interesting times. I do think it's going to dematerialize a lot of industries. And probably the people that are in those industries now will seek or they'll go to the government and say, hey, we've been in this industry too long. We've given up too much. We're super important. Here's why. And they'll be able to carve out these laws that basically allow them to continue doing it for some time. But then in the next generation, it's over. I don't know that like what Jeff does, like radiology, that a robot's going to do that. That one's for sure, you know.

56:43Jeff Ross:And then just as a quick aside, and I want to hear what you guys say. I think I'm more optimistic on what it will do. I don't know if optimism is the right word. I think it's AGI is going to be more impressive. And then ASI, I'm kind of a Ray Kurzweil, like I believe in him, that he's going to be right. And I think it's going to be like at some point, a thousand, 10 ,000 times smarter than humans. I look at radiology and other physician things. First of all, by the way, guys, I'm not a doctor anymore. I quit doctoring in January of this year. So you don't have to call me doctor anymore. Just, just, just, and, uh, if you say, but I use, I use AI to, to test it, to see how it answers medical questions.

57:20Jeff Ross:It's fantastic. Yeah. I think it's already at the point where a lot of people could skip going to the doctor for a lot of things and just be like, Hey, I got this and this, what do you think i think doctors are going to fight it tooth and nail because they don't want to lose their income and their profession and their reputation but i think it's inevitable and i think it's going to be it's changed the world technology i don't know maybe i'm too optimistic i'd love to hear no no it's a it's a big deal i just don't know that agi is like literally the machines are become gods so that's why i'm like i don't joe well the me the biggest

57:53American HODL:story we're talking about economics and the going forward expectations for how the economy is going to perform is the build out. Because McKinsey says, we're going to spend between$6 and$7 trillion through 2020-30. The CapEx expenditures from just the Mag-7 are estimated loaned to be over a trillion dollars by Goldman Sachs. It's a massive infusion of private capital, and this isn't borrowed money. These people are tapping their cash-rich balance sheets to do that build out. We're talking data centers, accelerators, networking, real estate, power grid upgrades, It's all these things. That's the story.

58:25American HODL:Okay. So for people wondering why these companies are just absolutely soaring is because they're fighting to win the future. They're fighting to have their continued monopoly over the infrastructure that will be the life and soul of our economy and all the things we're talking about in this call. And I don't think anybody fully understands it, but it's sort of a need to own asset, right? You need to own these stocks because of the fact that they will have this monopoly over the future. And I don't think it's one of those things where you're going to have a bunch of garage band startups that are going to overcome some of this AI data center buildup.

58:55American HODL:It's very different from other technologies. The amount of compute and energy and hardware and infrastructure is going to be massive. So that's a huge story. And there's going to be jobs that come along with that. So I think the fear about destroying jobs and massive unemployment skyrocketing, that may be real. And I wouldn't totally fade that, but I would push the timeframe for that. It takes a little bit longer, as we know, in Bitcoin for things to develop than we expect. So that might be a 2030s issue. Whereas for the next five years, I could see it actually causing a surge of certainly skilled jobs to help do the build out.

59:27American HODL:So that's a huge story, in my opinion. But I'll just finish one thing. In terms of the actual, and this is just what I'm encountering, in terms of the actual use case of some of these current tools, I got to tell you, I feel myself very much blessed because I'm seeing sludge filed all the time in lawsuits, garbage, terrible complaints, pro se thinks that they understand it because they're asking GPD to do something and it will spit out something that is complete garbage. So it's actually leading to an increase. We're hiring. My firm's hiring because we're slammed with all these pro se litigants who think you're going to type something into GPT and get it right and it's garbage.

1:00:00American HODL:And frankly, it's frustrating the courts because they're saying like, why are all these new complaints getting filed? Why is there this massive influx of people that now think they're lawyers and they know not even enough to be dangerous. They know enough to waste people's time. That's basically like literally with the filing. So I think that if all AI is going to do is going to increase the amount of sludge out there in terms of shoddy work product, and it's going to cause people to be lazy and turn off their brains, those who will turn on their brains will be exceedingly profitable. They will be very skilled and they'll make a lot of money.

1:00:31American HODL:So it's really important like any other muscle, your brain should be utilized and it should be relied on and tuned and you should use this as a supplement, not a replacement. I think the most currently with all the technologies I've seen, the most effective use of AI is always to supplement someone who's already smart and savvy and have them test their thinking. That's the way I use it. That's the way really smart people I know use it, but not to just be like, tell me what to do, AI chatbot, because you're the AI chatbot and I don't want to read something.

1:01:00Joe Carlasare:Amen. Yes. Amen to that, by the way. What are your guys' thoughts on the humanoid robots, like the Tesla? Because when you're talking about the jobs that are going to be created through some of the change that's here, I mean, the numbers that I'm hearing, what is it? Like a million humanoid robots of at least the Tesla version by 2030 is what they're kind of shooting for. And like, what's that going to mean for just augmented labor? HODL, go ahead. Yeah. I think if Elon gets robots even a little bit right, it's very obvious that he's the world's first trillionaire. And I do think that Tesla has a massive leap forward in real world AI.

1:01:36And that's what the whole robotics revolution is actually about. Boston Dynamics, we've all seen those videos they do at Christmas time where they make the robots dance and stuff. We have had the ability to hydraulically control and articulate robot arms for 20 years now. And actually, it's gotten really good. And the hardware side is, it's not completely figured out. They don't move or talk as a mover walk as fluidly as we do, but they can get around their ambulatory and they can do things. And Boston Dynamics has basically figured out that quadruped robots with a weird, freaky articulating arm on top of their head is sort of the way to go about things.

1:02:12And so it's about the visual learning and it's about the real world application of large language models. I had a self-driving Tesla, my wife's car, a Model X. And when there was a switch over to FST12 from FSD 11, that was when Elon and the engineers went back and started training it via LLM, like via neural network. And there was a massive leap forward in the tech. So like if you were a Tesla driver and you were using autopilot from 11 to 12, massive leap. It went from being a car driven by a janky robot trying to kill me to a car that was driving much more like a teenage girl who was only occasionally trying to kill me, which is a huge leap forward.

1:02:53So I think, Yeah, real world AI is a massive, it's a really big deal. The robotics industry is obviously going to be the biggest industry in the history of the world up to this point. And so I'm wildly bullish on all of that. But I do think it's more of a 2030s phenomenon where it gets, it kicks into high gear, like probably mid 2030s is when we're all fully ensconced in the robotic revolution.

1:03:12Joe Carlasare:which a lot of this goes to Jeff's original comment where he's concerned as to like, if you're competing with something like this, let's say somebody has five of these things, these humanoid robots. Like, can you imagine how much you could get done just around the house, let alone like all the other things you could stick these things on if they're armed with, you know, who knows what level of intelligence at that point that you can just give them random tasks to go out there and do things. And I don't know, guys, this is getting really strange. And Let me give you an example of something that you could see in the future.

1:03:45It's like, imagine a Spotify, but instead of songs, it has recipes. And those recipes come from the world's greatest chefs. And then in everybody's kitchen is a set of articulating robot arms that can cook Gordon Ramsay style meals for you directly in your kitchen. That's just one example of the kind of world that we're heading into. And I don't think any of us are capable of understanding all the other myriad examples of things that could happen in that world.

1:04:09Joe Carlasare:I mean, the humanoid robot could go out and get the ingredients from the store and come back and cook it and like all of that. Right. Like, and I think people might hear that and they're like, yeah, come on, dude, we are decades. I don't think we're decades away from this. I think we're like five years to seven years out from something like this. Yeah. It's coming up quick, quick, quick.

1:04:30American HODL:But what does that do to prices?

1:04:32Joe Carlasare:Yes. I know. What does that do to eating out?

1:04:34American HODL:What does that do to eating in? What does that do across the board of these things? It craters them. It doesn't cause them to rise. It causes them to fall. And that's the takeaway, right? The inflation he says, I never understood this argument. You're on the verge of a massive boon in productivity that's going to send prices across the board through the floor. So I'd be curious any of your thoughts on this because I find it very difficult when I listen to these folks saying that CPI is going to run back up to 10 % on a persistent basis, or we'll have hyperinflation on our doorstep. I mean, maybe if UBI becomes a thing, but that doesn't really fix the problem.

1:05:07American HODL:that just artificially raises the cost of things temporarily and then technology advances and it still causes the same problem.

1:05:14Jeff Ross:Yeah. I think a short-term spike in inflation as we do the build out, as we bring back manufacturing, I mean, so we have to pay for it somehow and it's with money that's not very sound in the near term.

1:05:26American HODL:Which is great, by the way, which is a huge advantage, right? Like I was saying - If you own assets. Yeah. Buy as much, like they should be spending a trillion dollars right now to build out the AI and spend more money.

1:05:36Jeff Ross:I mean - Yeah. It'll be terrible for the bottom 60 % of income owners, right? So I think first we have inflation, not massive and not out of control, but then we have that big disinflationary streak that's going to be for the rest of our lives, probably. That's how I look at it. I think it's important to define

1:05:52Joe Carlasare:like in dollar terms and Bitcoin terms and in what terms, because when I'm looking at this M2 growth rate of just the sheer fiat in the system, that thing's not slowing down anytime soon, at least not by the trends that I'm looking at. So if there's that many more units in the system, like what's that going to do to the prices of desirable things? And I think that's the key, that's the key word. I think they're going to keep going up in fiat terms, but like in Bitcoin terms, everybody knows like what's happening there, which is the prices just keep going down and down. Yeah. So I think that's the important kind of distinction is what are you actually looking at the unit in that you're bashing against yeah yeah and you guys got anything else you want to make sure we cover oh i gotta do a mea culpa about the treasury companies god was i wrong about the treasury company i was like man this thing is gonna snowball upward like we're going into a bitcoin treasury company bubble no in fact what happened is they all became bitcoin penny stocks that's what i call them now i don't even i don't even call them treasury companies i call them penny stocks bitcoin penny stocks i mean the mnavs have just collapsed on these what's happened with naka what's going on with it i saw that is below its pipe price i think i checked it today it was at 76 cents it's yeah it's kind of opaque i can't really figure out what the mnav is on naka at the moment but it's 76 cents yeah clearly below its mnav and then it's uh saquon's or however you say that one that one got creamed and you know asti uh strive that one's not doing well I mean, basically none of them are doing well.

1:07:2721 Jack Maulers is holding up pretty solidly. And then I think MSTR is still kind of the goat here and people prognosticating the death of MSTR, I think are completely oblivious to what's happening. But what we've found out is that there's a big difference between some of these smaller ones and MSTR.

1:07:46American HODL:Yeah. Yeah. Do any of you think the recent price action in Bitcoin is a byproduct of some of the turmoil in the Bitcoin treasury companies? Absolutely. Walk me through that. Explain why you think that is.

1:07:58Joe Carlasare:Well, if Bitcoin, I mean, at the end of the day, Bitcoin's the engine of these treasury companies and it's completely predicated on, or at least if they're securitizing Bitcoin and issuing preferred stock or convertible debt, if the whole thing's predicated on Bitcoin going up 40 % a year and they're issuing their credit instruments at 10 % a year, then they're going to capture a 30 % spread. said, that's the whole premise of not having an operational business and being able to securitize Bitcoin through a corporate entity, right? And so if Bitcoin is going sideways and it's not doing the 40 % thing, you kind of get yourself in a position where you can't keep growing the Bitcoin on the balance sheet because it's literally gone sideways and you're going to get too levered as it continues to go sideways.

1:08:42Joe Carlasare:But if it keeps going up and keeps going up very consistently, let's just say that the Bitcoin price runs at 40 % very consistently and very smoothly with not a lot of volatility. And you're issuing 10 % dividends or whatever from a convertible debt standpoint, which it's way less than that, but then you have to pay the principal on it after five years. So I think 10 % is a better number to use when you're comparing these two. But if it was just going up nice and Bitcoin's going up nice and smooth at 40 % and you're issuing 10 % against it, that you're going to continue to accumulate more and more Bitcoin on the balance sheet.

1:09:15Joe Carlasare:As soon as that stops, like -

1:09:17American HODL:So you're saying the turmoil in the treasury companies is leading to an absence of buyers, right? The buyers are gone.

1:09:22Joe Carlasare:I would say that the lack of underlying Bitcoin price action continuing to go up is what's causing a lot of issues because they can't get too over levered. You can only securitize it so much and you're basically over collateralizing the Bitcoin on your balance sheet. But once you collateralize it to a certain point and Bitcoin isn't going up higher, which allows you to keep collateralizing it in dollar terms, right? That ratio of call it five to one. Like if it goes sideways, you can't do that anymore. So you're just sitting there flapping.

1:09:52American HODL:The circular Bitcoin economy, right? Yeah, exactly.

1:09:56Jeff Ross:They remind me of, you guys remember bumper cars? Remember those people who would be stuck in the middle of bumper cars and they couldn't get out because there's no other people driving around them. So they're just sitting there the entire time while the music's That's what these guys remind me of because their whole model, at least to start, is we need to get an MNAV of two, three, four, exceeding our underlying Bitcoin. And then when we do, inevitably, they said, or so they thought, then we're going to sell shares at this elevated price and then we're going to use the proceeds to buy Bitcoin.

1:10:24Jeff Ross:But what happens if you don't get that MNAV or it just comes down? You know what this reminds me of? I know all you guys were around that. It reminds me of GBTC back in 2021. Yeah. Do you remember? I own that in my hedge fund and that was so disappointing because that was basically one of the only ways I could get good Bitcoin exposure. And that ended 2021. I think Bitcoin was up about 70 % in 2021 and GBTC was flat on the year and it just was just terrible. And this reminds me of that. And in fact, I owned little pieces of lots of these treasury companies in my hedge fund this year, just in case we had this bull market and a pretty good size of strategy.

1:11:01Jeff Ross:all of them have hit my trailing stop. I've stopped out of all of them because they're just basically dead in the water right now. So I do think they'll catch a bid once the bull market starts up again, but very disappointing start. It's been very surprising because if you were to talk to me six months to a year ago and ask me, do you think miners or treasury companies are going to perform better? I would say treasury companies hands down. And I look at my mining portfolio and it's gone crazy. I mean, IREN is up like 2 ,700 % or something. That's AI. That's AI. That's where the bid's coming from.

1:11:32That's my point, Joe. So the interesting thing about the miners is you would think to yourself, okay, it doesn't make sense that the AI bubble is affecting the miners because you can't switch the rack space and the Bitcoin ASICs aren't set up to do these GPU clusters, et cetera, et cetera. But it's the energy contracts. These guys got to the energy first. They were first to the key on the energy. And so the AI companies have to come partner with them because the Bitcoin miners are like energy pirates and they got all the contracts right and so they just deal each other in and boom profits galore like it's crazy so the miners have done exceptionally well compared to the treasury

1:12:09Jeff Ross:companies yeah okay you guys remember last quarter i actually asked if you thought if any of you thought miners would catch a bid because they've had such a disappointing performance yeah we all

1:12:18American HODL:like not we all sort of chuckled yes and they've just been crushing it so before we go here though I want to hear, let's give some alpha. Where is Bitcoin going to be, HODL, in like four months? Where are we going to be? Are you saying end of the year or four months? No, four months, like January. Let's say like January. I want to get into, actually, let's do like six months. I want to get this deep into Q1 of 2026. Where are we at? So like you, I'm bullish on a Q1, Q2 increase in price. I think that the four-year cycle thing, it is dead, but we still have yet to exhaust the four-year cycle sellers because there are a lot of people that still believe in the four-year cycle.

1:12:58And because of the distribution of Bitcoin, a lot of those people actually hold a lot of Bitcoin, right? There are people with 10 ,000 Bitcoin that believe - Stop selling your 10 ,000 Bitcoin. Right. There are people with 10 ,000 Bitcoin and they believe in the four-year cycle. I mean, there was a guy who sold 80 ,000 Bitcoin earlier this year. There have been other large cells of 30 ,000 Bitcoin, et cetera. So some of these OGs, they're getting out. And also I think chopping at 100K is just like causing people to go buy Lamborghinis and mansions because I'm seeing a lot of that too. It's like boredom where they're just like, I'm just going to go.

1:13:29I've been delaying gratification long enough. I'm just going to go finally buy that Porsche or whatever. So yeah, I think we got to get through all that. We got to get over the perception of the four-year cycle, which is credit to Joe. Joe has been actually saying that for many years and me and Joe go back and forth because I'm a bit of a four-year cycle, recovering addict myself. I love the four-year cycle. Same, same. Yeah. So I think it's over. We'll get past it. And then it's like green, green, green, green, like let's be bullish. I don't see any reason why next year can't be bullish. People are starting to talk about it as if it's some immutable law of the universe that Bitcoin has to go down.

1:14:05It's like, well, Bitcoin didn't even go up this year. So I mean, Jeff gave the one year chart, but like, or sorry, the one year percentage. But if you look at the year to date percentage, I'll check it right out. It's at 14.95. So, I mean, that's crap. Sorry guys. Like that's not a bull market.

1:14:20American HODL:That's not a hundred and 10 ,000 on election day or inauguration day. Inauguration day. We were 110. I think there was something like that. Right. When Trump got inaugurated, that was like the all time. And we're more or less, we're at one Oh nine right now during the time of this recording. So there wasn't really a bull market. So I don't really see any like immutable law of the universe that says there has to be a bear market. And frankly, this irrational exuberance never showed up. Retail never showed up. What's going to cause the bear market? Which is awesome, by the way. I know that people wanted this blow off move, but look at the base of, I don't know, if you're one of these TA people or volume profile people, I'll defer to Jeff on this, but look at the base of bids.

1:14:56American HODL:You've got it like 100K. I mean, every time it dips down, it just seems like there's money that's ready to deploy very steady institutional bid. Am I wrong, Jeff?

1:15:06Joe Carlasare:You're right. Joe, what was your price target for the end of the year at the beginning of the year? 130K. All right. I'm going to, price is right you. I'm going to say 129K at the end of this year. I'll go 131. I'll go.

1:15:23American HODL:We're going to get there guys. I'm really bullish here. I honestly think this is awesome. I've never felt sentiment this bad with the price where it's at. And I think there are zero tourists in Bitcoin. Like all the tourists are in quantum stocks and all these like high flyers. I feel like people are just kind of, like you said, they're kind of bored with Bitcoin. And you never want a short boring market. That's like an old adage somebody told me, I think Jeff. I'm bored as hell. I'm so bored. Right, right. I mean, that to me is exceedingly positive. And if Jeff's right, all you need to do is get the investing community to think like, okay, wait a second.

1:15:57American HODL:If this is truly the debasement trade and the hard asset trade, like money can come flowing in. We've got the ETFs literally just click a button. Like you don't have to mess around. I mean, I saw how absurd. I saw this line guys where like people are out the door waiting to buy gold. There was this photo of people like ready to buy physical gold, like sit, like a line out the door, like the latest iPhone or something. Yeah. There you go. You know what I'm talking about. You saw it. This is it. This is it. Australia. Australia.

1:16:26Jeff Ross:Yep. They're front running us. They heard this conversation.

1:16:29American HODL:So how absurd in 2025 that people are sitting to buy gold, like waiting in line, like it's so weird. It's weird. And then you can just click and buy Bitcoin right now. And even better, even if you don't want to go buy it off an exchange, go buy the ETF. It's simple. Click on the bottom. You want to assay your Bitcoin? You run your own node? You want to assay your gold? Some guy at the pawn shop takes out a DeWalt drill and goes, yeah, we'll assay it for you.

1:16:57American HODL:But Jeff, where are we going? Preston.

1:16:58Joe Carlasare:I didn't, I, mine was one 29, into 20, into Q one of 20, 26. That's yeah. That's the start of the new year. I'm saying 129 K. Okay. Yeah. I'm with you.

1:17:11Jeff Ross:And so to be clear, because I was so horribly wrong and off in my 475 K prediction, you want to know what I think it's going to do in the next year. Yes. Exactly. Yes.

1:17:22Joe Carlasare:Like I haven't been embarrassed enough. We want to be able to throw it in your face, Jeff. stuff it's the only reason he asks this question every time right and then put me on record for

1:17:32Jeff Ross:being wrong again so i think bitcoin moves in it long term up into the right channel basically you know a log channel power law style so i think the further in time you go out the higher it could potentially go if we rip with the economy so i'm still looking at forward-looking indicators that tell me looking in well into 2026 now, like summer 2026, I still think the economy looks like it's going to be booming at that point. And if it's booming, that tells me that Bitcoin could go, you know, I said 475 by Q4 of this year. If we extend it, we could go up to 550, 600 ,000 by the third quarter of 2006.

1:18:14Jeff Ross:And that might not be the end of it either. We might just continue in this bull market. I think the Trump administration is going to do everything they can to goose the economy for the next several years and run it hot, hot, hot.

1:18:26Joe Carlasare:For the midterms, you're saying? They're going to goose it.

1:18:28Jeff Ross:Through the midterms. And if they do that, then they're going to get majorities in the House and the Senate, and then they're going to run it even hotter, I think. And I think it could go even higher. So this is just going to be a very, it's already been a really weird cycle. Like as we started saying at the very beginning, because the manufacturing has been in a recession for three straight years, I think it's going to pop out and we're going to have a really weird cycle to the other side, hopefully to the upside in the next couple of years.

1:18:52American HODL:Well, you've given up on the 400 for this year. You've given up on it.

1:18:56Jeff Ross:No, I'm still sticking to it. I'm just kidding. I know I'm going to, I'd give it about like a 5 % chance of it.

1:19:01American HODL:Well, there's a time traveler on Twitter, Bitcoin Twitter these days, who says we're going to 444 by. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:19:08Jeff Ross:He puts those weird poems and the sneaky clues or whatever. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, well hey maybe he knows something because that was my original target 30 days huddle 30 days we

1:19:17American HODL:could be at 400k what are you doing well cocaine obviously hey what's up with the lights behind

1:19:25Joe Carlasare:you are you doing like some weird george costanzo on a couch photo shoot back there what's going on so i've been making uh i've been making vlogs on nostr back in back making i've got cameras making blogs and wow been putting them out on Noster exclusively so it's just a I love it I've seen the shooting ones yeah yeah yeah I'm like a youtuber but for Noster you know I'd love it which is which means you know 300 people watch the video all right you guys got anything else we're gonna wrap it up all right I got maybe maybe close on this so earlier Preston you said you know I haven't really seen Peter Schiff he's not dancing like he's not a dan i well i don't know that you had checked his twitter today i have a locked because yeah i got it right here and it says gold is eating bitcoin's lunch bitcoin is now down 32 percent price in gold since its august high this bitcoin bear market will be brutal hodlers sell your fool's gold now and buy the real thing or have fun going broke he didn't even get it right it's have fun staying for he didn't even get it right at the end he didn't stick the landing you know he didn't stick the landing i mean listen if you don't if you don't fade that i don't know what yeah that's the most obvious guy to fade in the world at the most obvious time

1:20:45Jeff Ross:he's got perfect timing from a technical standpoint gold is very overbought right now so it looks like

1:20:51American HODL:yeah it needs to consolidate for a while before we go one one quick thing i have to get preston and jeff's take on this what is going on with the price of oil i mean it is appears to be in just complete nosedives this entire year, right? We started out the year, what? We were at 56 bucks a barrel. What's your take on that? We started out the year at 80 in January or at 80 bucks. Yeah. Wow.

1:21:15Joe Carlasare:I haven't looked at it a little bit, to be honest with you, Joe. I would just assume it's demand. The demand's fallen off, right? More sellers than buyers. Yeah. Yeah. More sellers than buyers. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

1:21:27Jeff Ross:Yeah. I look at it like it's an economic indicator. So economies around the world are weak right now. And once they start taking off, like we all hopefully think they will in the next year, I think oil will start to pick up again. That's my take. I want to talk about something, but I think we're running out of time. Joe, what's your point?

1:21:44Joe Carlasare:What do you think?

1:21:45American HODL:No, I mean, I think there's clearly like OPEC keeps ramping, OPEC plus keeps ramping up the supply. So I think there's a lot of supply. There's tons. I mean, if you look at this guys, I'm just talking about, you know, we talk about inflation quite a bit, right? In inflation adjusted terms, oil is now cheaper than it was in 2004. All the printing of money and everything else were like, it's amazing. I actually believed a lot of the oil bulls. There were a lot of oil bulls in the last couple of years who said, we're going to a hundred bucks of Aero Plus. There's a shortage of oil chronically. I mean, the supply is coming from somewhere.

1:22:17American HODL:If maybe it really is that the global economy outside of the United States is just really that weak.

1:22:21Joe Carlasare:Yeah, it's down. That's for sure. Jeff, go ahead with your last one that you had.

1:22:25Jeff Ross:Well, this is like a two hour long discussion, but I'll just tell you what the point of it is. I can't stop thinking about stuff like, I just saw this survey today. You guys know that 40 % of Americans think we're going to get into a civil war in the next couple of years, 40%. Yeah. And I think the whole geopolitical situation and the changing world order is fascinating right now. And I think everything is changing. And Preston, at some point, I want to talk to you since you're ex-military, I'd love to get your take on it. Cause I'm where I am currently, I'm around a lot of people in the military who talk about, and I touched on this just a bit about how basically a conflict with Taiwan is, they talk about it like it's inevitable, like we're all training for it.

1:23:06Jeff Ross:And so I'm just waiting for that shoe to drop. And then beyond that, other things I'm hearing of not just Taiwan, but possibly South Korea and Japan and the South China sea also. And what is America's role in his America pulling back into the Western hemisphere and basically giving up the Eastern hemisphere and where there are closed door meetings. Like this is all like tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, but watching the signs, it sure looks like this kind of stuff is coming and it's crazy. Like, I think we're just heading towards a really crazy next five years.

1:23:41Joe Carlasare:I think the whole supply chains with the precious metals and all that kind of stuff, all the inputs to all this complex machinery is kind of the thing to watch. Because if you cannot, there's a saying in the military that the amateurs talk tactics and the professionals talk logistics. When you look at sustaining any type of fight, especially that far off, you know, the U.S., you know, over in Asia, talk about a logistics nightmare to sustain anything that's going to last, especially against somebody like China. up. When you look at how dependent we are on the inputs of all these supply chains for all this complex machinery to fight a war with any kind of length, that's the number one thing I'd be focused on and seeing what they're doing right now.

1:24:24Joe Carlasare:And I'm not one of these people that's beating the drum on that we're going to war here in the next six months or anything like that. And in fact, I have no idea. It's quite a bit out of my purview because I just don't really pay too much attention to that stuff, to be quite honest with you. All the politics is out of my feed. If somebody even talks about politics, it's just an immediate mute or a block. I honestly don't see it in my day-to-day consumption of news. I really don't. But those are just some of my initial thoughts with a background in the military. I think geopolitically, China is going to make a move on Taiwan by 2028.

1:25:01That's what I think.

1:25:02Jeff Ross:Me too. Another fascinating thing, and then I'll stop because I could talk about this for the next couple hours, but our sudden interest in the Caribbean and in South America and the massive oil deposits that Venezuela has. And now we're talking about CIA action in like an actual coup going on in Venezuela. And we're suddenly buddies chummy with Argentina and cheering for Malay. I think we're giving up the Middle East and South America and Central America are the new Middle East for us. And this is a whole different discussion, but this is the kind of stuff I've been spending a lot of time studying and the world is changing and it's - Oh yeah.

1:25:37Joe Carlasare:Yeah. That's for sure. That's for sure. Maybe a topic for the next show.

1:25:41Jeff Ross:Next show.

1:25:43Joe Carlasare:Guys, can't thank you enough. We're just going to go around the horn. You guys can give a handoff if people want to learn more about you. We'll start off with Joe, the best lawyer in America. Go ahead, Joe.

1:25:53American HODL:Very kind. Joe Carlosari. You can find me on Twitter at Joe Carlosari. If you need legal advice or are involved in a litigated matter, which is my specialty, you can just Google my name. My firm will pop up at Amundsen Davis, first full service law firm. We have a huge book of Bitcoin miners we represent, as well as individuals involved in regulatory issues and civil lawsuits. So thanks for having me on.

1:26:14Jeff Ross:Yeah. Jeff? I'm trying not to be on social media anymore. So I may come back next quarter for this interview and that's about it.

1:26:21Joe Carlasare:That's the ultimate block and mute right there. Just I'm not even logging in anymore. hodl i'm on nostril only at the moment not because i'm a principal ideological cyberpunk but because i simply lost my phone which had my twitter logging on it i don't know i don't have access to my twitter anymore so there you go social media is exhausting man it's getting it's getting so hard to even log in these days yeah yeah gents thank you i truly look forward to this conversation every quarter. So thank you for making time. Truly thank you for making time. And we always get some really fun feedback from these episodes.

1:27:00Joe Carlasare:So thanks guys.

1:27:22Jeff Ross:This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.