BTC257: Bitcoin Mastermind Q1 2026 w/ Jeff Ross, Joe Carlasare, and American HODL (Bitcoin Podcast)

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20:14Joe Carlasare:The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash study. netsuite.com slash study. All right, back to the show. So just to put some context on the size of what Venezuela represents from an oil export standpoint, right now, their exports are about 1 % of the total world oil production. It's estimated that it's about 17 % of the world's proven oil reserves, which those numbers are obviously tricky to actually fully understand, but that's the number that I'm coming up with is 17%. So just to kind of put some context on the sizing here as to maybe why you're not seeing Russia or China respond as to the situation.

20:59Joe Carlasare:They're looking at it from just a numeric standpoint. It's only 1 % of the total oil that's being exported globally. So it's kind of like, yeah, it's not worth it. But maybe if it's something bigger, I would argue that the Taiwan FAB chips issue is an absolute... I mean, we saw in COVID the impact of delayed chips coming to the US with car manufacturers and whatnot. I mean, it was somewhat disastrous, the impact there. So I can only imagine if something like that came under China control, what that would mean for getting such vital components in the supply chains. But yeah, to Jeff's point, you have a change of administration, let's say that you have a complete change out in the next, not here at the midterms, but in the next presidential election, that might be from a timing standpoint where you could see something like that.

21:53All right.

21:53Joe Carlasare:Any other comments on this particular topic? It's just fascinating stuff. Obviously, the four of us, we're just out here spitballing. Some chumps. Yeah. We're just spitballing ideas. But I think it is a really, going back to what we normally talk about, which is Bitcoin. The change in the dollar system, the petrodollar system, is where I think this is all really relevant to fully understand. And I don't think that this really kind of changes anything today or in the next year, but it's just another knowledge point, if you will, in this continued defense of the petrodollar system that exists. So I want to play a clip.

22:32Joe Carlasare:I'm really excited to play this clip for you guys. It's about five minutes long. But I really want you guys to listen to this clip because it's Peter Diamandis recently did an interview with Elon Musk. And everybody knows Elon is making all these autonomous cars. He's making all these Optimus robots. And the talking point is that it's going to bring in just extreme abundance to anybody that has one of these robots in their house, call it in five years from now or whatever it is. And long story short, it's going to lead to this situation where the governments are going to have to print to offset all of this technological deflation that's expected.

23:13Joe Carlasare:And this is the conversation that they had on this particular topic. I want you guys to listen to the whole clip, and then I want to have a conversation about a bunch of different ideas that kind of pop out of this. So let me bring this up and I'll play the clip. So, but you have a solution to this. which is uhi yes everyone can have whatever they want so how does that work how does uhi it's a good question like we have to figure out some like i mean it's not a region it's not a really bumpy road it yeah i mean so my concern isn't the long run it's the next three to seven years yes the transition will be bumpy because we humans don't like simultaneously yes a radical change social unrest and immense prosperity and you can buy all all the cyber trucks you want Things are going to get very cheap.

24:02Joe Carlasare:So this is actually, in fact, if this doesn't happen, we'd go bankrupt as a country. So the national debt is enormous. The interest on the national debt exceeds not just the military budget, but the military budget, I think, plus Medicare or Medicaid, one of the two. It's like one point something trillion of interest. Which is growing. Yes. And the deficit is growing. Yes. So if we don't have AI and robots, we're all going to go bankrupt. and we're headed for economic doom. We're going back...

24:33American HODL:There's also competitive pressure from China, so this is definitely going to happen, I guess.

24:37Joe Carlasare:We're going back to the theme of this talk, how can AI and exponential tech save America and the world? Don't you think that... But I want to hit this because... I was quite pessimistic about it. Ultimately, I decided to be fatalistic and look on the bright side. You're sitting down the yellow hood road. We're crucified. But this is not about taxation and redistribution. No, it's... So how does it work? Reason through it with me. Listen, by the way, I'm open to ideas here. So it's not like I got this all figured out. All right. So I'm wondering if instead of universal high income, if it's universal high stuff and services.

25:18Joe Carlasare:Yes. UHSS. I guess... Okay, this is my guess for how things play out. And by the way, this is going to be a bumpy ride and it's not like I know the answers here, but I have decided to look on the bright side and thank you guys for being an inspiration in this regard. Thank you. Happy to help. Yeah.

25:40American HODL:Because I actually think it's better to be an optimist and wrong than a pessimist and right. Yes, for sure.

25:46Joe Carlasare:For quality of life. And by the way, there's also - It's not a force of nature. It's under, to me, it's really clear that we don't have any system right now to make this go well. But AI is a critical part of making it go well.

25:58American HODL:And at some point, Grok is going to be addressing this exact topic that we're talking about. It has to be one of the big four AI machines that is dealing with it.

26:09Joe Carlasare:It's no velocity knob, right? There's no on-off switch. It is coming and accelerating. I call AI and robotics the supersonic tsunami. Yes. Which maybe is a little alarming. It's good. It's good. Well, because the world needs a wake-up call. This is important for folks to grok because I don't want to leave people depressed. I want people to understand what's coming. So we're basically demonetizing everything. I mean, labor becomes the cost of capex and electricity. AI is basically intelligence available at a de minimis price. So you're able to produce almost anything. Things get down to basic costs of materials and electricity.

26:51Joe Carlasare:So people can have whatever stuff they want, whatever services they need. When we see universal high income, it sounds like it's a tax and redistribute, but that's not the case. I think my best guess for how this will manifest is that prices will drop.

27:06American HODL:So as the efficiency of production or the provision of services drops, prices will drop. Prices in dollar terms are the ratio between the output of goods and services and the money

27:18Joe Carlasare:supply sure so if your output of goods and services increases faster than the money supply you will have deflation and or vice versa so it's a good thing we're growing the money supply so quickly

27:29American HODL:then right yes that's why i came to like let's not worry about growing the money supply won't matter because the output of goods and services actually will grow faster than the money supply and i think

27:39Joe Carlasare:we'll be in this and this is a prediction i think some others have made but i will add to it which is that I think governments will actually be pushing to increase money supply. Like faster? Yes. They won't be able to waste the money fast enough, which is saying something for government. Isn't it crazy how close those timelines just randomly worked out?

27:58American HODL:I mean, at the rate, because we're expanding the national debt, not because we're anticipating AI. We were going to do that no matter what. Yes. It's like right on the edge of becoming Argentina. But yes, it's just at the time that AI is...

28:10Joe Carlasare:So productivity is going to improve dramatically, and it is improving dramatically. I think we'll see like high double digit output of goods and services. We have to be a little careful about how economists measure things. Yeah. All right, guys. This is a crazy clip, right? No response.

28:26Jeff Ross:Well, I'll start with something and then you guys can jump in. I spend a ton of time thinking about this very thing. And I think we touched on this last time a little bit too, is the conclusion I came to like three months or more ago was capitalism is the best system for humanity, I think. But when we reach a point where AI and robots can do everything or most things quite a bit better or magnitude of orders better than humans can, you don't want to be in a capitalist system at that point. Because if you're competing against things that are 100 times smarter or better than you or faster or more efficient than you, you're going to lose every single time, and you're going to be unemployed.

29:07Jeff Ross:And so I think if this, Elon talks about it, Peter Diamandis talks about this, this sort of age of abundance, basically because manufacturing efficiency becomes so pronounced, it drives the cost of goods down close to zero. I don't know that I agree with that, but I think in some things it will, in some forms of technology, it will, but not in everything. But even in the things that they're talking about, what do you do? So does that mean everybody gets something? Do you turn into a socialist or a communist system even? Do you force the government to be like, okay, so everybody is unemployed now or 30 % or 40 % of Americans are basically unemployed.

29:43Jeff Ross:We have to do something. So therefore, we are going to actually tax these companies that are just crushing it. And we're going to give everybody entertainment, internet, electricity, food that they need. It's a very interesting question. I'll stop talking. I want to hear what you guys have to say.

29:58Joe Carlasare:I think one of the things that's going to happen is you can't have idleness in a population because like everybody's grandmother used to say, the devil makes work for idle hands. Idleness leads to political revolution. It leads to social and cultural revolution. And during COVID, when people had all day long to sit around, they got up to some really bad things really quickly. And so I think my version of how I think society is going to solve for this coming wave of hyper deflation or abundance or whatever you want to call it is that the productive output will be robots and AIs. Okay, fine. You're still going to need human beings in the loop to certify it.

30:35Joe Carlasare:You're going to need human beings to basically, we're still going to have jobs so that we can provision status, mainly status, who deserves what, who is what caste in society. And you're going to also need something for people to do so that they're busy all day long so they don't foment you know revolution against the government so like like elon is saying like will your personal home robot be able to do like an emergency appendectomy on you like maybe i don't know and if that happens do we need doctors anymore like maybe not but we're still going to need high status human beings who have some sort of a role in certifying the output of the ais or you know i don't think you can just do away with work i think that's like unless you're going to have an ethnic cleansing you know which you probably shouldn't do.

31:20American HODL:Joe? Okay. So not to take anything away from Elon, but his notions and predictions regarding timing are probably some of the worst of any technological innovator. And I mean, he said that by 2018, there were going to be 10 times as many self-driving cars in the vehicle on the road that we have right now, 10 times as many, right? So that was 2018. So while he is quite, and I would never take away the fact that he's a visionary and a genius, For me, his expectations of how quickly this is going to roll out are, I think, perhaps misguided. Moreover, I think, you know, I've been doing similar to Jeff, sort of a review of this.

31:55American HODL:There's a few books I've picked up recently where I've looked into some of like the expectations and sort of tried to find a balanced view of how quickly some of this is going to roll out, whether these things like artificial general intelligence are realistically within the pipeline. It's kind of like quantum, right? It's like all over the place as to terms of how quickly this is going to actually take hold. And then from a sociological perspective, what I think you're seeing, even with the rollout of some of the tech right now, is that you had the GPT moment where people in certain fields and sectors widely adopted it, said this is the latest craze.

32:27American HODL:But from a cultural perspective, I think you're reaching points where you're seeing diminishing adoption rates. We've actually seen some people walk away from the technology with some data that I've seen recently that found that there are far more efficient ways of going about doing it. I'll give you one particular example. I have a client who routinely uses GPT in almost every conversation I have with him. And what we found is that it's actually slowing us down because of the bot giving crazy advice that I have to expend five minutes explaining why it isn't applicable or doesn't work, or it's trained on something that's not for this particular jurisdiction.

32:58American HODL:Definitely interesting discussions, right? But in terms of its efficiency, overall input, it really not having a value add. And then the final thing that I think I will say is that if you look back historically, industrial revolution, the automobile age, the computer age, the recurring thread. You can go back and capture news clippings where they say, I've seen them recently, the exact same thing we're talking about right now, that this revolution, this technological revolution is going to completely wipe out all of the people that depend on agriculture, right? Completely eliminate all agriculture jobs, and there'll be nothing for society to do.

33:29American HODL:And then we're going to lose blacksmiths, we're going to lose stable hands, we're going to lose elevator operators, they'll never find anything to do. And every revolution, right? There's a subsequent new class of jobs, where in many cases, they're adopting the tech or they're facilitating or maintaining the tech. And that is the next segment of society that has that employment. So I agree with Hada. I don't think you're going to see a mass exodus of nobody has to work. There will always be people that can harness the technology. What I do think is a fair sort of viewpoint is that for certain classes and segments of society, they may get left behind very quickly, right?

34:03American HODL:And that causes societal unrest, which they allude to in the clip. That's spot on. So where do you do? What would a central planner or policymaker do in that? You come in, you smooth over the edges, you do UBI, you do things to make it easier to transition, because a lot of the people will be able to leverage that technology to actually maximize their returns and become far more productive. By the way, we'll get to the discussion here about, I'd love to hear Jeff's take on the productivity numbers we saw just recently in the last few days here. Massive productivity boosts, I think. And I think that's sort of going to be the par, right?

34:33American HODL:You're going to look at the aggregate data, you're going to see these productivity boost that is shown up in the aggregate data, but then you see whole swaths of this country that are left behind, which to me, that's not an economic issue, that's a political one, where the political unrest is going to cause most of the societal distress over, I think, the next 10, 15, 20 years.

34:52Joe Carlasare:What about the comment that things are going to get really cheap in dollar, and they specifically said in dollar terms? I think anything that's made in a factory is going to get really cheap. I mean, think about like how many times have you been walking through a Target recently and you've seen a 75 inch, you know, Vizio television for$200 and you think to yourself, nah, not going to buy that. Right. Because you already have a cheap television at home and eventually that television will be$27. So anything that's made in a factory is going to get cheaper and cheaper over time. And that's a trend that's already happening.

35:26Joe Carlasare:And it's only going to accelerate with, you know, enhancements in robotics and artificial intelligence. So that's true. But like Jeff said, it won't be true for all sectors of the economy.

35:35American HODL:I don't think that, sorry, Jeff, but I don't think that's at all dissimilar for what we see historically, right? There's always, like Tal said, there's always things that get cheaper. There's always things that remain relatively high priced or increase in their value. So to me, I think that's, again, it's consistent with all the revolutions we've seen from a technological perspective over the last several hundred years.

35:54Jeff Ross:Right, right. And I think Elon kind of contradicted himself a little bit talking about as technology becomes more and more efficient, it drives the cost down. We all know that. That's just a rule. That's the price of tomorrow, Jeff Booth, right? And so, but then he was talking about how the government is going to be printing like crazy to try to keep up with it. So that printing like crazy is going to show up somewhere in the goods that aren't is deflationary. We're going to see prices of things skyrocket. I think that means we're going to have more volatility in prices. So it really depends on what is your measuring stick.

36:22Jeff Ross:And I would say that's why I try to encourage people, and I'm sure we'll talk about this later, but consider pricing things in gold or in Bitcoin if you want to see how much things are actually costing in the future. Go ahead.

36:34American HODL:No, sorry, Jeff. Finish.

36:35Jeff Ross:One other thing I wanted to throw up, Joe, based on what you said is Microsoft just put out this AI diffusion report from the AI Economy Institute dated January, 2026. Very interesting. I think it's also worth a read for you guys. They were talking about comparing the first half of 2025 to the second half of 2025, working age population in the global north and the global south. And in the global north, the amount of working age population that are regularly using AI has increased from 22.9 % to 24.7%. And I think the US is about 28%. The global south is a little bit behind the global north. And the UAE has about 64%.

37:15Jeff Ross:64 % of its working age population is using AI regularly for their work. All of those numbers across the board are basically increasing. So I still think it has its kinks. I'm a little more optimistic about it. I think that it is improving rapidly. And I think that the use cases are going to only increase. So I tend to take the more kind of optimistic view. And then one other thing, and then I'll stop. Do you guys see that OpenAI just released this OpenAI Health that was approved by the government? And it's not violating HIPAA. You can actually upload all of your data into OpenAI, and it will basically be your personal physician, your concierge physician.

37:52Jeff Ross:That's amazing to me. Preston Pyshko, Ph.D.: Wow. I didn't know that.

37:55Joe Carlasare:Preston Pyshko, Ph.D.: How often, by the way, are you guys using AI? Because I'm an everyday, multiple times a day user of pretty much like five or six different AI services.

38:04Jeff Ross:Preston Pyshko, Ph.D.: I'm daily, probably only about 30 minutes a day. I'm trying to increase it, but having a hard time.

38:08American HODL:Preston Pyshko, Ph.D.: I'd say it's case specific, because one of the challenges with it is that if you're in my field where you have sensitive information, attorney-client privilege, right? You can't just trust any of the online models relying on it and going into a big black box. Clients wouldn't appreciate that. You don't want to waive privilege. It's very useful, I think, to talk in hypotheticals. That said, I think frequently, at least in my experience, I've had issues with it giving reliable information. One of the things really interesting to me is how bad it is with case law. It hallucinates probably more than it gets it correct in my expectation.

38:41American HODL:But my one big takeaway, just go back to wrap up with the video is i couldn't help but chuckle a little bit when i heard elon talk about how we're not printing fast enough when he had the whole doge campaign like did he just suddenly realize this in the last you know year since he took like oh you know now it's now it makes sense elon like after you know having this whole campaign of doge it seems inconsistent

39:02Joe Carlasare:yeah wasn't that crazy he's flipped he's an accelerationist now yeah well i think he i think the front row seat of trying to tame that beast taught them firsthand. There ain't no taming the beast. In fact, you got to feed the beast. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination. Risk and regulation are ramping up and customers now expect proof of security just to do business. That's why Vanta is a game changer. Vanta automates your compliance process and brings compliance, risk, and customer trust together on one AI-powered platform. So whether you're prepping for a SOC 2 or running an enterprise GRC program, Vanta keeps you secure and keeps your deals moving.

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42:37Joe Carlasare:This is a paid advertisement. All right, back to the show. There was an interesting comment in that same interview, And I want to make sure we give credit to Peter Diamandis' podcast, because that's where that came from. And we'll have a link to that in the show notes. But one of the things that they said was, is it smart to go to college to become a doctor right now? And Elon literally said, absolutely not. He looked at him with that question of like, that's an idiotic decision right now, because an optimist robot armed with AI is going to be far superior to any doctor, even providing surgery.

43:11Joe Carlasare:within, and I'm right on track with you, Joe, on the timeline. If Elon says it's going to be three years, it's going to probably be nine years or whatever, based on historical calls. But I found that to be really fascinating and just kind of like, wow, here's the world's richest person, literally almost laughing at people wanting to go to med school, which whether you agree with him or not, I think you got to look at whatever he knows and whatever he's seeing and just say, wow, like what the hell is he seeing or what is it that he's expecting in call it 10 years or 15 years that's going to, you know, and he's saying this in like three or three to five years, but yeah.

43:50Joe Carlasare:I think the rate of change is something that, you know, we're just not accustomed to this type of speed. 10 years ago, journalists were telling truckers that they were going to have to learn to code. Well, it turns out that these AIs are better at coding than they are at trucking. And they're going to be able to do both things. They're going to be able to do trucking and coding. I do also think it's ironic that they came for basically like journalists and artists and musicians. I mean, you can now make songs on Suno that sound like top 10 hits and just do them in the click of a button. It's crazy.

44:21Joe Carlasare:So yeah, we're just not used to this type of technological change. And the only way is to just adapt as rapidly as you possibly can. There's nothing else to do. Hold on. Hoddle, do you have your own music? Is that what you were saying? I will make music for this episode and send it to your guys we need an outro send it over give us something

44:44Joe Carlasare:are you rapping singing what are you doing in this no I mean it's I literally just type like I will type you know Preston Pysh mastermind discussion and then it will spit out a top 10 banger song and not like a crap song like a good song that the audience will be pleased to listen to I'm serious. It's crazy. Preston Pyshaw Oh my God. Preston Pyshaw They had another comment in that clip about white collar labor going first or being impacted the most. I'm just looking at Joe's comment. He's like, I'm getting all this feedback from clients where they've used AI a bunch, and it's actually taking us more time to go through it.

45:20Joe Carlasare:I'm just thinking, oh, so he has more billable hours because he has to go through all the AI slop that's getting fed. And I would imagine this isn't just in legal services. This is across the board. People are dealing with AI slop, and maybe it's actually more valuable for people that have to sift through. And maybe this is just an interim thing. Maybe this is like the next two years we're dealing with AI slop, and then all of a sudden you have an AI that deals with AI slop. I don't know. But what are your thoughts on the white collar labor first?

45:53American HODL:Well, my thoughts are that I think what it's going to do, it's going to attack the margins, right? The bottom 50%, the people that are arguably not even competent in some of the higher quality fields that they're already just copying and pasting someone else's work that they don't understand philosophically or conceptually why something is done, they're just copying what their boss or someone told them, they will struggle, right? Because I think the bot is able to provide advice and it's able to analyze far better than what I think they have been accustomed to, so it's really competitive for them.

46:26American HODL:The upper, say, 25%, they become superhuman when properly utilizing these tools, not only to the sense that they can analyze and execute better, but they also have the ability to increase their productivity. So they can pull in more of the workload from that bottom 50%. So it makes it much harder, right? The upper 25%, they're going to be fine, I think, for the foreseeable future, because they're able to utilize the tools in combination with their knowledge, skill, and experience to have a much bigger client base. And then the sort of median white collar worker, he's going to really struggle, he or she, because ultimately, that they're going to say like, what are you doing better than this thing?

47:05American HODL:And there's a lot of those people out there. So I definitely understand that concept, but the notion that it just all goes away, I don't see that happening anywhere on the near horizon.

47:14Joe Carlasare:I think in terms of AI slop, it's not a problem that's ever going to be solved because it's structural. And what I mean by that is that the errors that AI is making will probably reduce significantly or maybe even go away entirely at some point in the future. And all of the AI outputs will be more or less good, something that you would want. But just based on the ability for any one of us here, I could create a Gentic bot using Claude code that goes on Nano Banana Pro V3 and generates 100 ,000 images a week, a million images a month, whatever. And that's just me, one person with one bot. If I have 1 ,000 bots, I can do 1 ,000 times more.

47:57Joe Carlasare:So it's just a sheer volume problem for the amount of potential slop that's out there. And then we have all of these online feedback networks, like the social networks, that are going to want more of this slop content and amplify. I mean, i'm already getting caught on x and on instagram reels uh seeing video i saw a video of a guy getting chased by a grizzly bear you know like caught accidentally caught by drone and i was like oh my god i can't believe this guy's being chased it's fake it's a fake video i saw yeah i saw a picture of nicholas maduro with blood running down his clothes because we used a sonic weapon on him at like and maybe we did use the sonic weapon on him but the image is fake right and so i'm getting got by ai content all day long you know i can only imagine my parents i mean they're just getting one shot and let you know at one after another on any type of on facebook because where you know where they're at it's just so bad yeah yeah it's just i mean it's just consuming the living hell out of people's time energy focus attention all of it which is very concerning well the one thing that i want to bring it back to from that clip is bitcoin so jeff you had said it's important to look at the price of things in gold or bitcoin terms because that's how you're going to actually see it.

49:10Joe Carlasare:But for me, I'm looking at this and I'm saying, let's just say that maybe their timeline is really accelerated with the next three years. Let's just say it's seven years. The thing that just makes my head spin is the printing, the government printing globally is going to continue to get mass if what they're saying is true, even half of what they're saying is true. And so people are going to be able to afford, I was looking at the prices of an Uber to the airport. Let's say you had a$100 fee to go to the airport on an Uber. With this robotaxi, it might be$10 or$20. So you start getting these types of savings where the cost is reduced by 90%, 80 % on things that consume a lot of your income on an annualized basis.

49:58Joe Carlasare:And people, they're just going to continue to be duped by all of this printing because they're going to look at it and be like, well, I can still go do these things because all these other things got cheaper. And it's just like this mask never seems to come off of the lie, which is fiat currency because of all this tech revolution that's happening in AI and robotics. Any comments or thoughts? Do you agree?

50:23Jeff Ross:Let me just say, if you talk to Jeff Booth, he would say, well, that's been going on throughout the history of humanity, right? Humans are always progressing and making things better. And so it's driving the cost down, the marginal cost of production. And so it's always being masked by government fiat. And so you're going to get duped by that. You're going to continually get duped by that if you're pricing your life in government fiat currency. That's just a fact. And so that's why you see, I know we've all done this stuff, where you look at charts of housing in gold or in Bitcoin, and it's just gotten cheaper and cheaper and cheaper.

50:53Jeff Ross:And if you can look at pretty much any technology and it's done that. And so I just think that continues. I do think that if you have this massive deflationary sort of bust because... And by the way, I think China is actually starting to experience that. The manufacturing capabilities that they have right now, they're just churning out goods right now that more than their own money supply, more than buyers are keeping up with and more than their own money supply is keeping up with, and they're having a huge deflationary problem right now. That's a problem for governments, right? It's not a problem for people.

51:25Jeff Ross:Stuff getting cheaper is awesome for people. It's not good for government. So if you have a credit-based fiat currency system, deflation is actually your worst nightmare. And so they are going to have to start fighting that at some point. So I'm really curious to see what they're going to do. They've been on a cadence recently that's basically the opposite of the US. So as the US has been increasing their monetary expansion, China has been decreasing theirs. And it looks like they're about to flip again, where China is going to start rotating higher and start printing like crazy to keep up with this deflation that they're experiencing right now, versus the US, it looks like we're going to actually slow down a little bit for the foreseeable future.

52:00Jeff Ross:The rate of change is going to slow down a little bit.

52:02Joe Carlasare:Joe, can you talk to us at all on the Clarity Act and what's happening

52:06American HODL:with this market structure stuff? Well, I mean, I'm still optimistic that we get it. We've got a few more weeks. I think the real key deadline is the, I think it's March. That's when I think the last sort of window to pass it comes through. But I definitely think there's a realistic push. if you had a gun to my head, I think the odds are better than 65%, 70 % that we get it through. There's this big hiccup where I was just reading earlier that the banks were pushing forward to try to, again, clamp down on yield type instruments being issued. They're very much focused on that. So we'll see - And which side, because I read this,

52:42Joe Carlasare:well, I didn't read it very thoroughly, but I saw that this was an issue, getting it through the Senate is the banks are back at it again as to how the yield should be treated on stablecoins. Do you know the specifics on what it is that they're for or against? Because right now, as it stands, they cannot pay any of the yield to any of the clients. They just basically get to retain it as the banking entity and sweep it all into retained earnings. So they want to sustain that, I'm assuming.

53:10American HODL:Well, the banks have said that the stablecoin reserves are going to siphon money from the traditional banking system. So they're clearly against that. So that's, obviously, they have a big pull. They were helpful, arguably, in getting portions of the Genius Act passed, right? The banking lobby was helpful in getting that across. So it's a question of whether that you're going to see this coalition, which is, I think, I would describe it as pretty fragile based on all the folks I've talked to. If it starts to fall apart, for example, like Coinbase is talking about, basically, they're saying they're going to reconsider its support of the Clarity Act.

53:42American HODL:If you have these restrictions in place that prevent the reward system that let them fairly compete, they want a level playing field. So that's the big question, right? If some of the more pillar type crypto institutions like Coinbase and others start exiting from the bill, then it could just, the bottom would fall out. But really, we're winding it through. As you know, the lawmaking process is like making sausage. It's very messy. And there's all constant changes and back and forth and horse trading over different aspects of it. So it's still to be determined, but I still think we have a narrow window here that we can get it done really before the spring.

54:14American HODL:If you don't hear about this getting through to the president's desk, you say at the latest by April, March, roughly, it's a no-go, I think, before the midterms.

54:23Joe Carlasare:Preston Pyshko What's the impact if this doesn't go through from just how... Because I would imagine it's very Wall Street-centric. Like Wall Street's really going to lean into Bitcoin and crypto at large if this goes through, because then they don't have to worry about whether it's SEC governed, whether it's CFTC governed, like all that, which is my understanding. That's the whole purpose of the Clarity Act is to kind of like draw these lines as to who the regulator is and all of that.

54:50American HODL:It's clear divisions of jurisdictions, including options for sort of a hybrid approach, depending on the asset and its constitutional makeup. So yeah, I mean, it's going to make it far easier, I think, to launch some assets, some digital asset in the United States, if they get it across much clearer definitions that are actually codified in the law, which is what you want. You don't want case law, in my opinion, you don't want case law to develop these things on an ad hoc basis, because as you know, that may be precedential, it may be binding, but there's always subject of interpretation. You can say, oh, this asset's different from this asset.

55:24American HODL:So then the developer has to sort of guess in combination with their legal counsel, you want an actual law that you can point to and say, here's what the text of the bill says, and here's what we can say based on that text. But this issue of the stablecoin rewards and the yield, I think is really critical to see how that shakes out. That's the key question now.

55:43Joe Carlasare:Any other comments, guys, that you got on this one?

55:45Jeff Ross:Not really. The only interesting thought I have about it is what I think Luke Groman has brought this up and maybe others, but that assuming that these stablecoins attract lots of interest and therefore attract lots of T-bills, that the government basically can force a lower T-bill rate onto these stable coin holders. So basically the deal that Tether has going right now, where they make whatever, 3.5 % and just pocket it right now. And the government's going to be like, yeah, no, that's not going to work anymore. And so if you're going to be buying T-bills, there's going to be either a special kind of T-bill, or they're actually going to force the Fed to lower the Fed funds rate so much that they're going to just artificially keep this very low rate T-bill so they can borrow so much more money at a much lower rate.

56:28Jeff Ross:I think that's actually probably going to happen.

56:30Joe Carlasare:I'm really surprised. I'm surprised that that hasn't happened yet, to be quite honest with you. I mean, it's such a gravy train with what we've seen Tether specifically and anybody else that's doing this in order to sweep all those coupons to just basically issue digital instruments on top of. I'm just surprised that the US hasn't gone and said, okay, so we're going to allow you to back this, but you're going to get a completely different rate.

56:53American HODL:How would they do that? I'm confused. What is the... I mean, you could just piece, how would you force, just think about it, like the assets are held at a financial institution on behalf of the issuer of the token, right? So are you going to say that, you know, by law, the issuer of the token is not allowed to buy standard market treasury bills? Yeah, I think so.

57:13Jeff Ross:So either they create a special kind of T-bill that's just for these stable coins, or, and what I think they're trying to do also is the Trump administration is obviously trying to pressure the Fed funds rate down, which would lower the T-bill rate as well. so just whatever they have to do to suppress the short end of the curve so that they can just issue you know 12 trillion or whatever they need to do to roll over the 2026 uh role that they have whatever they can do to get the rates down to borrow more cheap well this comes up every year

57:41American HODL:right the role of the seven to eight i heard this at the beginning of last year we rolled eight and a half trillion i mean like every year this comes up there's no and by the way we rolled that$8 trillion while yields decline throughout the year. So I don't think that supply issuance is causing as much issues with the yield as people think.

58:02Joe Carlasare:So Joe, I would agree with you as long as yields are low. If the yields start spiking again, or we start getting really high yields in treasuries, I think that's exactly what any government is going to do that has stable coins being issued on top of their treasuries, is it's going to be like, all right, and I'm just going to use this as an example, right? Let's say yields blow out to 7 % on the 10-year or something like that. I think that's when they're going to step in and are like, all right, there's two different market rates here. If you're tokenizing dollars on top of this, we're only paying 2 % or 3%.

58:35Joe Carlasare:The rest of the market has these other treasuries that they're going to buy and they're at these percentages. Yeah.

58:42American HODL:I think that would face challenges getting through Congress. That's just my view. I don't know. I'd be curious if Jeff or Hott will have any thoughts on that.

58:48Joe Carlasare:And you might be right about that. I'm not speaking to the viability. I guess I'm speaking to the incentives of the government to do that. Yeah.

58:55Jeff Ross:I think there's already a lot of manipulation of the yield curve going on, and they're going to continue to apply a lot of pressure to the Fed on the short end and on the 10-year until they can't do it anymore. So right now, they're kind of doing an operation twist already. Do you guys know they're buying off the run 10 years right now to keep the rate down since the 10 years.

59:13American HODL:Very few, very few.

59:15Jeff Ross:Right. But they're also not, they're not, but they're doing that and they're not, and they're also issuing a relatively very low amount of 10 year treasuries right now. Right.

59:23American HODL:So that's, that's been the status quo for years now. Exactly.

59:26Jeff Ross:First of all, I think that inflation for the first half of 2026 looks like it's going to continue to fall and surprise people to the downside. And I think a lot of people are going to be surprised by that. At some point though, I think with all of the borrowing we're going to need to do to bring back the amount of manufacturing we want to bring back and to get the energy renaissance we're trying to foster here. At some point, that's going to drive yields higher. And I think that at some point, probably by 2027 or so, we're going to actually institute yield curve control. And that's when things will get exciting.

59:56Joe Carlasare:I mean, according to Elon, the prices of everything are going to drop to nothing. So, you know,

1:00:03American HODL:the end of scarcity. If you roll back the tape and listen to most of the experts, economic experts talking about the tariffs. There were many forecasters who said that CPI was going to get back up into the mid threes, even approaching four. They said that this was going to be a second wave and reacceleration of inflation just about a year ago at this time, given the tariffs. What did we actually see? We actually see based on Goldman Sachs, they said that there were roughly 50 basis points of pass-through effects on CPI, 50 basis points, right? Which is nothing, right? Which is basically like, If you're looking at the 2.9 or 3 % of favorable inflation rate that we had in December, we didn't have the shelter data included.

1:00:42American HODL:That was a little funky, but that they just completely dropped the shelter from the basket. But still, if you isolate for the 50 bps through the terrace, we're seeing CPI in the low twos. I mean, that's nothing. That's historically where it was for 10 years. So I mean, is it a little bit hot still? Yes. And I agree with Jeff. I think it's going to continue to fall. But to Preston's point about what's going to cause yields to spike, you need an inflation impulse. And where's that going to come from? particularly with an unemployment creeping up highly. I mean, that is accomplishing the Fed's goal.

1:01:10American HODL:Jerome Powell said in 2022, he said the labor market was out of balance. They set out by jacking up interest rates to pump the brakes, slow down to the labor market, and they wanted these price pressures to come off. And the only way to do that is to destroy demand by causing unemployment to rise. And they ever so slightly caused unemployment to rise. To me, that's why you've seen yields decline, is because we finally are seeing some tick up in unemployment. But this just came out two hours ago.

1:01:36Joe Carlasare:So an hour before we started recording federal prosecutor, this is on CNN, federal prosecutors open criminal investigation into the Fed and Jerome Powell. You were talking about Jerome Powell. So I figured I'll throw this one out there. Any thoughts or comments on this breaking news?

1:01:53Jeff Ross:Yeah, it looks like they did it over the central bank's renovation of its Washington headquarters and whether Powell lied to Congress about the project scope. Wow. And then Powell issued a statement saying, this is completely because we didn't listen to Trump and didn't lower rates. He literally said that.

1:02:10American HODL:It is wild. The quote, just for the audience here, and this is directly what he released tonight. He said that this new threat about, he's talking about indictment, is not about my testimony last June of the renovation of the Federal Reserve Billions. It's not about Congress's oversight role. The Fed, through testimony and other disclosures, made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project. Those are pretextes. I mean, it's fake, basically. The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the American public, rather than the preferences of the president.

1:02:41American HODL:That's Rome Paul tonight.

1:02:42Jeff Ross:And one final follow-up is Trump just put a quote out saying, I don't know anything about it, but he's certainly not very good at the Fed, and he's not very good at building buildings.

1:02:54Jeff Ross:What a time to be alive.

1:02:55Joe Carlasare:what a time i remember that i remember they were both at the building site powell and trump and they were you know they were in front of the news cameras and trump was going you feel they just have quite a nest here and powell was just like i never i don't know what you're talking about you know it's ridiculous man we live in a reality show it is nuts okay did you guys have any other topics that you guys want to make sure we address why do you think that he hasn't named

1:03:18American HODL:uh jeff or hodl or press anything he hasn't named the successor chair because besant said back in the summer to expect the new fed chair to be named in september october then he moved to november then there was a recent interview of batson and i think november where he said we could get the name before december or excuse me before before christmas they keep pushing it back you know if for someone wanting to undermine powell you think he would just name the successor then that guy goes out there and you know right the market's forward thinking they're going to be looking to the new

1:03:47Joe Carlasare:guy or girl there was a lot of talk about them doing that basically putting in a shadow fed chair yeah i think they just kind of backed down on it because they decided it wasn't a prudent course of action i think that's why they haven't announced yet by the way the bizarre thing

1:04:01American HODL:about this comment tonight this uh information about the indictment is that you know they cut in december and september and october so like three cuts in a row right so why why now why is this uh still an issue because it wasn't 50 it wasn't 50 joe it was 25. maybe maybe pow really

1:04:22Joe Carlasare:did steal all those instruction funds we'll never know i i don't know why they're delaying the announcement i mean maybe they're just testing the waters to see kind of what they get the best reaction market reaction from i don't know i'm wondering if it's because they

1:04:36Jeff Ross:knew this case was coming and to see what the fallout will be you know maybe they could pressure powell out maybe he'll quit if he's you know being subpoenaed maybe they can strong arm him out yeah i'm just wondering if that's why they waited though let's see what the fallout from this is And then after this, he'll name somebody.

1:04:53Joe Carlasare:There was a cryptic tweet from Stephen Miller. I'm trying to find it, but it was something to the effect of, you know, over the next 10 days, wait, and you're going to see justice be served. So I don't know if this is one of those actions and there's more incoming. Not sure. Final question for me to you guys. What is causing Bitcoin to go sideways for a year while gold is ripping? Like, what is your take on just the frustration of a sideways market? Yeah, it's a weird one, isn't it? I've been thinking about it for a while. It was interesting to watch the metals top, especially silver. The metals guys were like, it's not our top.

1:05:31Joe Carlasare:It's like the silver guys were. And it's like, I think it's your top, man. I've been through a few of these myself.

1:05:36American HODL:Well, as you're recording this, we made a new all-time high in silver and gold. So the silver guys keep winning.

1:05:43Joe Carlasare:It's a Sunday night. It's a Sunday night.

1:05:46Jeff Ross:Well, can I use this to segue into that chart I sent, Preston?

1:05:50Joe Carlasare:Yeah.

1:05:51Jeff Ross:Oh, yeah. Because I feel like I got to keep talking about that. To me, it's the most important chart in all of finance and investing. We talked about it last time, the last two times, I think. Here it is again. It's a 100 plus year chart, the S &P 500 priced in gold. It doesn't include dividend reinvested because that chart doesn't go back as far. It only goes back to like 1980 or something. But it shows basically the same thing. And basically, again, what it shows is we have periods where everybody rushes into the US, and US assets are the cream of the crop, and they get financialized by not just the US, but by the world.

1:06:25Jeff Ross:And then that peaks, and it rolls over, and then everybody wants hard assets, and they flee the US in general, and go to hard assets, and gold is like an easy and primary beneficiary of that. I think we had the most recent peak basically in January of 2022. and that's when basically the transition happened. And since then, it's been like all gold. And I think if you look at this, this chart suggests that these periods will go on for about 10 to 15 years or so. So I think we might be talking about this still in 2030 or longer or later, where gold is going to continue to outperform US stocks by a wide margin.

1:07:03Jeff Ross:And that's only accelerated since the last time we met. And I think it's going to continue to accelerate for the next several years. So long, hard assets, be careful with US-based financial assets is the take-home point.

1:07:16Joe Carlasare:Okay. And I'm not disagreeing with you. And I love the conversation we had in the last Mastermind where you brought this up and we were talking about the volatility. You might get a bump in the next year. As far as the trend, I'm with you, Jeff, on this. As far as the long term, we zoom out 10 years from now, I think you're going to have been very right about all that. But it goes back to the question, it's like, what is going on with Bitcoin?

1:07:39American HODL:Bitcoin looks fine. I don't understand what the concern is. So the way I look at it, if you pull up a weekly chart, I don't know if you could pull that up Preston. Preston Pyshko Yeah, I will. Preston Pyshko To me, it looks like you have a higher low from the April low. Last April, we were at 78 ,000. You have a higher low here. I think Bitcoin looks great. We've been 50 plus days where we haven't taken out that bottom we've set on November 22nd. I think Bitcoin can make a new all-time high this year. I don't know why people are convinced they can't. I think the only reason people are upset is because they got this idea of the four-year cycle stuck in their head, which all that goes out the window if you make a new all-time high.

1:08:14American HODL:All that myth is shattered once and for all if you do. I mean, tonight, as we record this, we're at 92.2 on Bitcoin. You retake 100K, this thing can move very quickly, especially with stocks breaking out. I mean, you're in a market where the S &P just hit a new all-time high recently. IWM is ripping out even VXUX, which is the ETF for foreign stocks outside the United States, new all-time highs. I mean, pull up the chart of, is that Bitcoin? That's a week. Yeah, there's Bitcoin.

1:08:41Joe Carlasare:I mean, from a volatility standpoint, I'm with you, Joe. It's right where it should be. I think the frustration though is typically when we've seen risk on moves is when Bitcoin is just outperforming and shellacking everything, right? It's shellacking the S &P 500, the NASDAQ, gold, you name it, Bitcoin's outperforming. And for the last year, that has not been the case. It seems like it's decoupled from risk on assets. And I think that's where a lot of people are having frustration, including myself. I'm frustrated with that, but I can't say why.

1:09:14American HODL:I don't really know. I think you have to just look back at the ETF launch, the massive amount of redistribution of coins that came with 100K Bitcoin. Psychologically, people had in their heads, I want to lighten up at 100K. You had a lot of long-term holders sell, not because they lost faith in Bitcoin, just because that was the mark in their head. They said, okay, here's where I'm going to buy that yacht because we hit 100K Bitcoin. To me, that's inherently healthy. You want that redistribution. I think you've seen that. And as long as Bitcoin stays around these levels and creeps higher, I think, and breaks out, you destroy this myth of the four-year cycle, which I think was always kind of a myth.

1:09:55American HODL:It was more tied to liquidity and business cycle. And if Jeff's right, which I think I understand his position, which I agree with, is that we're entering into a re-acceleration of the US economy, a manufacturing, I think, broadening out from a services base to a manufacturing rally here, which I think is screaming through the charts. One of the interesting things is if you look at the metals, right? Throw out the precious metals. Look at the industrial metals. The industrial metals are breaking out. Those people aren't holding copper for debasement. That's showing you an economic impulse. That's showing manufacturing growth that's coming.

1:10:26American HODL:Palladium, even the silver industrial output. I mean, I think that is a huge piece of that move. But the other one I want to show you, pull up EEM, the Emerging Markets ETF. And if this doesn't get you bullish, I don't know what will. Look at the Emerging Markets ETF, okay? Pull up a monthly chart. Is that a monthly chart? No, that's weekly, but I can get monthly up there. You are, wow. You are breaking out to new all-time highs not visited since 2007. Yeah. 2007. I'd be really curious Jeff's take on this because I think this chart is screaming at you.

1:10:59Jeff Ross:Yeah. And I hate to keep beating the same dead horse, but this is what we talked about last time too, is that when you have these periods where basically people are getting out of the financialized U.S. where it's peaked and rolled over, then you have these basically decade-long trajectories where emerging markets tend to outperform as well. So it tends to trade, you tend to see a secular weak dollar and a strong performance in precious metals, industrial metals, farmland, real estate, and emerging markets as well. And so they just kind of go hand in hand. So yeah, I expect emerging markets to also outperform US stocks in general for the next, say, five plus years or so.

1:11:37Joe Carlasare:I mean, there's no way this current administration is going to let the markets be idle or going sideways into the midterms. I just don't think that's going to be the case.

1:11:48American HODL:I think they're going to run it very hot into the midterms. I tend to agree. The question I think, well, number one, I think the market is underestimating the potential for Trump to get negative real rates at the Fed with the new chair. I think that that is, I won't say certain, but that's a highly probable, which is going to have serious investing implications. And to me -

1:12:09Joe Carlasare:the end of the into the end of 2026 you're saying yes sir yeah yes and then to me what i would be

1:12:14American HODL:very curious because i think this is the biggest story in bitcoin right now if you want to stay focused on bitcoin if we can make a new all-time high you know we have a very sentimental bitcoin market it flips from you know we're all headed to goblin town to we're all back in like a week based on one candle right uh so three days sir three days not even so bad not even a week we're so bad so i'd be really curious i mean listen i know it's not the base case for a lot of people but if bitcoin were to make a new all-time high i love you guys get on the record right now what you think the sentiment would be what you think the thought process would be because i think that could be massive i think it's discounted by the market right now but you know sometimes the discounted thing happens well i i think i don't have a problem going on

1:12:56Joe Carlasare:our record and saying i think we will see an all-time high this year or several all-time highs but I'm also kind of of the opinion that they're going to be kind of underwhelming. So, you know, an all-time high to 140, like, woo, like, it's pretty good.

1:13:10Jeff Ross:A little bit underwhelming. So for whatever reason, Bitcoin, everybody knows that it trades in sympathy with global liquidity, right? And then, but what it also does, and again, we talked about this last time, I feel like I'm keep beating a dead horse. It trades in sympathy with ISM manufacturing PMI. You could like it directly correlated. So to go way back to your question, Preston, why has it been such a disappointing last several years for Bitcoin? To me, that just explains it. When you see manufacturing finally take off, and I'm all on board with Joe, the current administration is doing everything they can to cause the manufacturing sector to explode higher.

1:13:45Jeff Ross:And so I thought it was going to happen in 2025. It did not. I've been disappointed. Even new orders just came out recently. I don't know if you guys saw that still in contraction, still like 47.7 or something like that, which was at 47.4, I think was the most recent, which is a bummer to see that. Yeah, there you go.

1:14:01Joe Carlasare:So this is Jeff's point. I just threw up a chart of Bitcoin's price historically over the last 15 years against the manufacturing, the ISM and the PMI indexes.

1:14:12Jeff Ross:And for the record, what the ISM has been doing manufacturing, this is unprecedented. It does not do that. It has not done that since the post-World War II era, since they've been keeping track of this. So it's very unusual that it's been lagging and being contractionary like this, the manufacturing sector has basically been in a recession since 2022. And people are feeling that. That's the bottom portion of the K too, right? The blue collar workers have been getting just hammered and continue to get hammered year after year. And so I think that's reflected personally in the price of Bitcoin. And I think as that recovers, which I finally expect to happen this year, 2026, I think that will be reflected in the enthusiasm of the price of Bitcoin.

1:14:51American HODL:Yeah. So I completely agree. I think there are indications based on the metals and some of the other indicators that you could be early cycle, not late cycle. And everybody seems to think we're late cycle for some reason. That's really exciting to me in terms of my bullish outlook. But you have to remember, okay, and I think people lose sight of this, is, you know, Preston, people talk about like, what if China dumped all their treasuries? What if Japan dumped all their treasuries, right? Like you hear this constant refrain, right? China, they have, I think, what, about 800 billion in treasuries, right, Jeff, somewhere thereabouts.

1:15:22American HODL:I'll look it up for you. I'll look it up for you. Yeah. But get the actual data. I think China's got around 800. I think Japan's got 1.3, 1.2, somewhere. But let's just round up. Let's just say China and Japan, collectively, they got 2.5 trillion in treasuries. Well, pull up the chart of the Federal Reserve balance sheet. They've drawn down their balance sheet by$3 trillion over the last several years. So this entire market has basically been on hard mode for all assets, as they've rolled off$3 trillion of the balance sheet. And I think people lose sight of that because they constantly just say, well, nothing's exploded.

1:15:54American HODL:There hasn't been some Armageddon where we're all under a bridge eating cat food. So because of that, because there hasn't been some big blow up that hasn't been on hard mode, we've been on hard mode in financial markets, not easy mode. And I think Bitcoin, a lot of other asset classes have shown that. You can see the S &P grinding up, the major indices driven by the tech, you know, boom, et cetera. But there's a lot of companies, a lot of stocks, a lot of high growers that have done nothing, that have just languished for years.

1:16:20Joe Carlasare:Okay. The number for China is 700 billion, and for Japan, it's 1.2 trillion.

1:16:27American HODL:So 2 trillion. So is it the equivalent of dumping all of China and all of Japan's holdings of treasuries plus another trillion dollars? That's what's rolled off the Fed's balance sheet. Wow. Yeah.

1:16:36Joe Carlasare:To your point on the AI driving the indices, the equity indices, I think that that's also been somewhat of a liquidity suck for Bitcoin, which is on the really aggressive moves, there's just tons of speculators that come in. And if you've got these moves that are happening with Nvidia and Tesla and you name it, right? Some of these moves are huge. I read that Nvidia moved, it cycled up, it cycled down in one week. And the number was like a trillion dollars worth of market cap had changed in just one week. So, I mean, it's pretty crazy Like how much of a liquidity suck that is in and of itself, just from speculative animal spirits out of what I would say is Bitcoin's, you know, Bitcoin makes really big moves.

1:17:24Joe Carlasare:It's because of all the speculators.

1:17:26Jeff Ross:I think it's important for people to remember too, like to Joe's point, because liquidity has been tightening for several years, it only can go to certain sectors. And this central command control government has been dictating where it goes, right? It's going into AI CapEx for sure. It's going into energy. And then globally, if you're China, Russia, India, it's going into gold reserves as well. And so to me, that explains that. There's limited liquidity. The governments are directing where it should go as liquidity starts to expand again. And hopefully things get bullish from a political point of view in 2026 for Bitcoin as well.

1:18:04Jeff Ross:That may channel some of that liquidity into Bitcoin, which will be reflected in the price.

1:18:08Joe Carlasare:Jeff, to this point, I see every conversation that I'm watching from studying all the tech is it's all about energy. We have to have nuclear. We have to have all of this energy infrastructure stood up. And if it's not energy infrastructure, it's fabs. And when you look at the capex on both of those things, it is astronomical the amount of fiat that needs to be pointed at those things. So yeah, it is interesting. It's almost like the whole world is retooling and rewiring itself for this next phase transition that we're going through. And hey, maybe that's one of the reasons why you just don't see the liquidity getting pointed at Bitcoin is because it's getting pointed at these other things to build out.

1:18:49Joe Carlasare:But I don't know. I don't have a good answer, that's for sure. And I'm trying my hardest to figure it out, and I don't seem to be able to, but yeah, go ahead, Joe.

1:18:57American HODL:Preston Pysh Can we talk about this productivity, US productivity surging to 4.9 % in six years? Any thoughts on that?

1:19:04Joe Carlasare:I mean, at first blush, it seems kind of like an AI story. Is there more to it than that?

1:19:10American HODL:Well, labor units fell by 2%, which is one of the biggest declines in recent years as well. So that's showing you the labor costs aren't driving the inflationary pressures. That's fascinating to me. Yeah. I mean, the other number, which I, again, it's one of those things I just shake my head. I don't fully understand and haven't had a chance to dig into, but Atlanta Fed GDP now is showing 5.1 % for the fourth quarter, 5.1%. That's crazy.

1:19:32Jeff Ross:So it's spiked higher. A big reason is because of the import exports is because the US exported a crazy amount of gold to Switzerland and that had that big spike like that. But it's still very high regardless of that as well. I mean, we're going to see, I think, amazing GDP numbers going forward. Even if we have unemployment basically kind of staying the same or creeping higher, and we continue to see the young population, the college grads are just not getting hired. We have a bunch of people like Joe, like super lawyer, who is going to use AI efficiently and become the top 1 % lawyer. Joe will be the last remaining lawyer.

1:20:08Jeff Ross:The last lawyer on earth. Yeah, everybody is going to go to Joe. But these poor kids are coming out and they can't get hired. And that's an issue. But these companies are going to become more and more efficient. I think we're going to see that. It's going to be an amazing productivity boom in the next few years. That's my take.

1:20:24American HODL:So, Jeff, are you optimistic on assets here? I mean, I don't remember you weighing in. do you think Bitcoin hits a new all-time high in 26?

1:20:31Jeff Ross:So I do the same thing. I've learned to be cautious with how I say things. Here's how I look at Bitcoin. So I think it's unlikely to go below 50K in 2026 or ever again. I think it's unlikely to go higher than 700K. And I think the average price will be$145 ,000. And last year, I thought the average price based on my stuff would be$101 ,000. And I think I got it within 1 % of that. So to me, the average price for people who just save in Bitcoin is the most important part. The fluctuations don't really matter. What matters is just kind of what is the price that you're living off of.

1:21:07American HODL:So you're saying unlikely to go above 700 ,000 in 2026 or ever?

1:21:12Jeff Ross:2026.

1:21:13American HODL:2026.

1:21:14Jeff Ross:So even if the economy takes off and liquidity is flush and crushing it, there's people still calling for a million or 2 million, right? I think that's not reasonable. I think it won't go above 700 K, but it won't go below 50 K either.

1:21:26Joe Carlasare:He just called you unreasonable. I think it's quite bearish of Jeff. No, I mean, obviously like pretty reasonable call, pretty reasonable.

1:21:35Jeff Ross:I'm trying to be more reasonable on my calls. Cause I don't like getting flayed by people. You don't like getting trolled on Twitter. I do not like that. Yeah.

1:21:41Joe Carlasare:I mean, all, all that needs to be said is the volatility is crazy intense. And based on the history, those are the ranges that, that you could see. and two, the most important thing that you said, Jeff, is just dollar cost average. That's the thing I've learned through all the years is just dollar cost average. And I have, me and Joe used to argue about this a lot back in probably the 2021, 2022 cycle, but I was a total cycle guy and I fully capitulated. I think the cycles are completely, it's over. It probably was just an illusion. It probably never was real, but it's certainly dead now and like i do think bitcoin could trade you know next year 500 000 like yeah that could happen next year 50 000 yeah that could happen you know so like we'll see what happens i'm here we've seen a lot of volatility yeah okay you know with the advent of ai you know while we were having this conversation hodl literally texted me a song that he created with a to close out the show so yes uh Here we go.

1:22:51Joe Carlasare:This is so bad. My interest in the subject only comes around four times a year. It's the quarterly mastermind. Baby, let's go. you know it's my favorite show politics and bitcoin it's time to turn it on it's time to learn from the best what is this that's a bad what is this try to turn it down i can't even turn it down and you made a whole song with lyrics and all like that too i can't even turn it down all right this was a blast thank you guys so much for always making time and making it fun and making it hilarious. We're going to go around the horn. Jeff, if you have anything you want to promote or hand people off to, go ahead and take it away.

1:23:47Jeff Ross:Jeff Lerner I never have anything to promote. I'm only on Primal. I think my handle is less on there. Actually, I want to encourage you all to read, going back to the very beginning of our conversation, the National Security Strategy of the United States of America that was published in November, 2025. That's where I get a lot of my views in case you think I have a tinfoil hat. My only recommendation is to go, if you need an attorney, go to Joe Carlosari. He is the last great American attorney. Human attorney.

1:24:14Joe Carlasare:Human attorney, Joe Carlosari, take it away.

1:24:17American HODL:Thanks for having me on. I always appreciate it. You can find me very quickly by Googling my name and my firm's website. If you have a litigated matter you're involved with. Otherwise, I'm looking forward to the next one and an exciting quarter. I really want to just leave everybody with the idea that I think this is going to be a massive quarter. I know that there are people very negative here, but I think you see a lot of signs that things could be turning in a very favorable way.

1:24:39Joe Carlasare:Tottle? I'm on Noster. You can find me on Noster. And I would like to say it's not the Monroe Doctrine. It's the Donro Doctrine. Okay. All right, gentlemen, appreciate your time and always coming on the show and just sharing your opinions and thoughts. And hopefully it's valuable for others. So everyone out there, thank you for joining us. And until next quarter, that's our quarterly mastermind. Thanks for listening to TIP. Follow Bitcoin Fundamentals on your favorite podcast app and visit theinvestorspodcast.com for show notes and educational resources. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not provide financial, investment, tax or legal advice.

1:25:19Joe Carlasare:The content is impersonal and does not consider your objectives, financial situation or needs. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principle and past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Listeners should do their own research and consult a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. Nothing on this show is a recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any security or other financial product. Hosts, guests, and the Investors Podcast Network may hold positions in securities discussed and may change those positions at any time without notice. References to any third-party products, services, or advertisers do not constitute endorsements, and the Investors Podcast Network is not responsible for any claims made by them.

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