Bitcoin Holds $86K While The Dollar Hits An 18-Month High | Michael Howell

this week it pays extra to be a milo's rewards member through october 14th members get ten dollars milo's money when you spend two hundred dollars or more on an eligible purchase during milo's money days also using your milo's rewards credit card even better that's an additional twenty dollars milo's money use it to save on your next lows haul exclusions restrictions and more terms apply see lows.com slash milo's money days for details milo's money expires 30 days after issuance subject to change credit offers subject to credit approval bitcoin continues to hold strong around 86 000 while the dollar it's an 18 month high also we're obviously going to talk about the pce numbers and the job numbers that came in last week unexpectedly soft giving the fed a bit of cover to maybe cut and stop the hiking cycle what a coincidence magic honestly we've got a very special guest with mike dave and i'd say we've got michael howell we're going to dive in with mike dave and i'd say we've got michael howell we're going to dive in with michael howell we're going to dive in with michael howell we're going to dive in with all of it right here on macro monday let's go let's go good morning everybody happy macro monday i'm going to go ahead and bring on the crew today we've got mike michael howell and dave michael welcome uh for your first time here on the today we've got mike michael howell and dave michael welcome uh for your first time here on the show okay so mike we're going to start with the bloomberg morning meeting but from new york offices instead of miami offices today yes we have the greenwich economic forum um starting tonight so i'm here for that honored to be part of that i'm moderating a crypto panel that'll be interesting last year was a commodity i forgot to get a chuck on a dave on that one um but so for the morning meeting andrew sasher a senior economist point out the big repricing started last week with fed president williamson would probably need some patience downward revisions in pce deflation and soft payrolls this week's about the fomc minutes which come out wednesday and the key questions were they leaning for further tightening before some of the data kind of came back a little bit obviously we've taken the tightening out of the october meeting right now they expect one more hike from the committee this year which is not going to be in october before the election and it's going to be good to see how much they might have had a higher rate view before the day that came out and really took a lot of the hiking out of the martin will hoffman on rates i kind of pointed out the he's kind of perplexed by the abrupt reversal in u.s rates last week still rising but it's global um u.s on a fx hedge basis is on near amongst the lowest yielding among the g10 or g7 countries um decent supply this week but last week is a little bit better than the last week and he does expect the fed and the treasury potentially do some more long-end buybacks and actually maybe cut supply in the longer end audrey chilled freeman our fx strategy point out the euros in the limelight mostly because partly french bond pressure but expects that to continue expecting you know maybe to head towards that one key 110 level psychological level but um her point was the headlines in the direction of um what's happening in like with france it may be best to be defensive and fx means short the euro chris can point out his key he's our f our equity strategy point out the weird stuff that's happening in equities a record amount of negative beta stocks now chris is very much technical and factor oriented about 29 now it's the highest in years um record low pairwise correlations and things like that he said 99 of outperformance from market cap versus equate in the past few months like to see whining out of the rally says he doesn't really know how much bearish this is but a lot of weird stuff and i and my outlook pointed i think we're nearing peak energy crisis i just pointed out a few facts like he did we've had the greatest rally in the bloomberg diesel total return index on a 12-month basis in history now it only goes back 30 years but it was 170 typically that kicks in low price cures and i just pointed out how metals um and cryptos in the same kind of space are completely stock puppets and then the key theme there is don't fight the fed back to you let's talk about don't fight the fed it's a great great great segue to what we should discuss next because i mean i can show you calci i just happened to bring it up but we had uh you know fed decision in october obviously uh until a week ago everybody thought they were going to hike again you can see here and now it's i believe an 82 chance that the fed maintains rates according to prediction markets of course that is because the fed's favorite inflation gauge pce came in magically i'm using the term magically because i'm literally at the point where i've never been a conspiracy theorist in my life i just don't believe any of the numbers but pce came in soft after they recalculated how they do pce and job numbers came in extremely soft and they revised back as usual the previous few months to make the job market obviously looks extremely weak so now the fed apparently is unlikely to continue hiking michael i want to ask you this doesn't the fed have data that they're looking at in real time why would they hike just a few weeks ago if they were to hike again this is what the job numbers in pce were likely to come in as well i think part of it is that the fed is the slave to the markets and the markets are pushing them in this direction uh the economy is red hot um bond markets are telling us that rates should be higher and the fed is pretty much responding to that message i think that there's a lot of narrative out there that says the bond yields are rising because of debt concerns because of disillusionment with the dollar but that's plainly rubbish i mean that clearly is not going on what's going on is that the fed is going to go up and the bond market is responding to that and the federal reserve is basically following the bond market and that's pretty much what always happens i wouldn't read too much into uh into the fact that rates are going up or whatever because i don't think fed funds rate means the same as it used to uh you're in a world where there is the you know the the federal government is in uh in hot to the private sector so in other words if they start to raise fed funds given particularly in america the the federal government is in uh in hot to the private sector so in other words if the federal government is in uh in hot to the private sector so in other words if they start to raise fed funds given particularly in america the the federal government is in uh in hot to the private sector so in other words if they start to raise fed funds given particularly in america the it's a big income transfer to the private sector that's a boost to incomes that's a boost to economic growth there's a lot of head scratching about what a fed funds rate uh change really means i'm i'm baffled i don't i'm not sure whether it's a tightening or a loosening i think uh you know a lot of people are in the same boat so i think we're going to start looking at uh you know some of the other dynamics and what i would say is you know we're living in a collateral-based world so the sort of metrics that we've got to watch now are things like the move-in day on volatility and actually the integrity of the pool of collateral that's behind lending and you got to remember that and this is a world bank figure so uh you know they've done the calculation 80 of all lending worldwide now is collateral-based that is a whopping great change uh you know over the last 10-15 years dave there's got to be some threads you want to pull there i saw you yeah i mean i i look at two things first this report that the the dichotomy between the the the the payroll numbers and the the household survey is you know backs up what michael was saying right you know the household survey shows uh increase in labor force participation uh etc average hourly earnings up a bit you know it's when you look at all this stuff i mean i don't trust the the bls numbers at all because for any in fact no sane person does because we know that there's going to be revisions etc but what is very relevant is in michael phrase it is the fed is in the the u.s government is in hock all of the g7 now are is in hock uh you know the germany used to be the outlier now they're they're starting to run deficits for defense etc but the truth is that we're in a situation where with fiscal dominance and there's no choice but to monetize this debt because it's the only way they can pay it and as i said you know when they raise rates every 25 basis points is at this point north of 100 billion dollars in annual extra interest expense that's not trivial that is not a trivial number i mean you know it's like it you have to look at it that way and so they are sitting in a situation where the market is the bond market is is leading and to quote mr mcglone the fed is a sock puppet they have no choice but to go along with them and if they didn't their fear is like for example i think the only reason it was unanimous was because they had felt they had no choice and if they weren't unanimous that they would lose the long end entirely now i don't know if that's true i think 25 basis points here there shouldn't matter but that's what's going on but i think the most important question is something that you know i wanted to pull on what michael has been writing which is you know on the global liquidity cycle which has been stubbornly stronger than forecast but i think it's stubbornly stronger than forecast because we're running north of two trillion dollar deficits in the united states and they have to monetize it and china has been monetizing all along and so i i don't see how that changes anytime soon if anything it feels like it's accelerating and the political situation in the u.s is such that both sides are trying to bribe the populace which gives you literally no hope of reigning this in anytime soon so i'm curious what you know what you don't even i mean they don't even pretend right no no there's no pretense yeah i mean you know a year ago we're gonna you know 40 trillion is too high of a number. We're going to work aggressively to cut the debt. Best a month ago 40 trillion is just a number we could grow our way past that no big deal i want to mention one other thing that i think is hysterical right so trump came out last week and made some comment that the only way to pay back the debt is he didn't say only but you know the way to pay back the debt is through inflation and i'm that may be the ultimate saying the quiet part out loud my guess is is that he was told that in briefings and wasn't supposed to say it but did anyway i don't think that quiet parts anymore yeah i mean but look we whether it was james lavish or i or or any one of a number of guests on the show we've made the point that there is no way to pay back the massive g7 government debt without inflation there just isn't we all kind of know that but the government has pretended and pretended and pretended for so long that it's it's actually hysterical to me that that now you have the president kind of saying you know saying it out loud and people are kind of reacting to it you know bitcoin caught a bid when that happened uh gold you know sort of caught a small bid when that happened but it's actually kind of important because it's not what the general population thinks anyway i've talked for a long time michael i i don't know if you you know what your thoughts are but i would love to hear what you think about the global liquidity cycle with because of fiscal dominance it's expanding well i think i 100 agree i think that what you've got is monetization uh across the g7 i mean that's pretty clear what's going on at least to you know those of us who actually look at monetary data and you can see it buried in the fact that uh in the u.s and the u.s is led here by doing a lot of bill financing now the question you've got to ask is if they start issuing a lot of bills who who buys the bills and the the question is or the answer is it's the banks now banks buy government debt that's monetization and plain and simple and so what you've got is a trend towards higher monetization that may be a sort of wonkish interpretation but it's something the majority of the people who are buying the money are buying the money right now and it's a fact uh there is monetization going on already okay uh and you know a lot of people attribute and i'll come back to this point a lot of people attribute the rising gold uh to monetization my point is that's not true it's not g7 monetization that's forcing the gold price up it's china the real monetization in the west hasn't started yet okay politicians are going to kick the can down the road as they have done for the last hundred and hundred and twenty years or so it doesn't mean to say you're going to get a financial crisis you're just going to have a permanent or progressive devaluation of paper money and that's what's going on that's why you've got to own things like cryptocurrencies and gold as some sort of monetary inflation hedge and i also disagree with the point that people say that this is financial repression it ain't financial repression it's monetary inflation uh financial financial repression destroys your income monetary inflation destroys your wealth and that's far more important for the majority of people and so you've got to take these monetary inflation hedges now i i made the point that uh you've got to take these monetary inflation hedges now that china is responsible for gold the gold inflation china is pricing the gold bullion market at the margin they're the important buyers uh the pboc is doing that the people's bank but also chinese retail are doing that now the reason is that china is suffering debt deflation when you look at the data on china this economy is slow they're seeing falling prices they're wholly dependent on fiscal spending or an export growth to get any sort of juice into the economy classic debt deflation is what japan's hands saw now what did how did japan dig its way out of that it devalued the yen it printed money it got the boj to buy uh jgb's japanese government bet with electric bonds with alacrity and what do you see is japan has now climbed out of its debt problem china has to do exactly the same thing so china doesn't have to revalue the yuan it has to actually devalue the yuan and that's the scary thought so this is the outlook that i would envision and what that means is monetization on mass uh the world politicians everywhere east and west are going to kick the can down the road that's why you need monetary inflation hedges i i mean i'd like mike to be able to to comment but i i do want to pull on a couple of threads there so specifically uh you know japan climbing out of its debt problem with their jgbs i mean i i think a lot of people in the world are of a lot more concern about japan's ability and what's got what happens with rising rising long end and in fact the short end there too but basically the interest rates in japan and what does that mean uh you know obviously we have the carry trade you know there's a lot of other things there but i don't think i've ever heard anybody use the words japan is climbing its way out of its debt problem a lot of people think it's more manifesting so i'm really interested in that well i think the point is the growth rate of the japanese economy uh the japanese economy uh what let's say five to ten years ago was basically flattened its back it wasn't growing at all now you're looking at any gdp growth normal gdp which is around the level of sort of four to five percent japan may have inflation problem but that's actually eroding the debt uh you know the the the japanese government debt progressively and that as you uh as you echoed is what trump is pretty much saying you know he can't keep a secret um and he's uh you know telling everybody this is what's gonna happen mike um i think we should express caution when everybody says the same thing there's something that's happened um and prices have gone up a lot markets usually make peaks in euphoria and the debt the gdp scenario is things that really got me bullish bitcoin almost a decade ago a little bit less and really jumped off even the horse of gold partly because you get to levels that historically say yeah great we all get it we all say the same thing and markets have already priced it in so for instance one lesson of history when gold gets exciting it's best for investors to be cautious right now on a 260 day basis gold's volatility is going to go up and it's going to go versus S&P 500 is 2.2 times. That's a high since 2007. That's a big headwind. Also, at the same time, people keep focusing on the asset or the liability without measuring the asset. Sure, $40 trillion is a problem in this country, but you look at the asset, $82 trillion, just simple real-time measure of U.S. stock market cap, that's the highest in 25 years, just like Bonio. So I look at this as when people all say the same thing after we've gone up, typically it's an end game. And I still look at it as an end game. Right now, you're fighting the Fed. If you're buying any type of risk asset that has a high correlation, certainly with the S&P 500, but any risk asset is a high correlation with the S&P 500 and a higher volatility, which includes Bitcoin and gold, you're taking more risk than you should be. And after we've had major pumps and we're in dumps. So right now we've had pumps and dumps this year and Bitcoin, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, iron ore, copper's next on that list. Here's a fact, copper's 50-day correlation with the S&P 500 is about 0.64. That's the highest in the history of that futures contract trading in the U.S. Why? Is that important? Because of one human being, Mr. Trump. So I think anything you're looking at right now for that type of scenario, you have to be looking over if you're buying any type of asset, most notably broad cryptos, if it's not just Bitcoin, most notably broad metals, including gold. You have to be looking over that S&P 500 and say, yeah, thanks. As long as you go up, I'll make money. Just the facts of any value at risk model right now says they're all going down if the stock market goes down. And the bottom line to remember to help solve this problem of monetizing debt, some of the best places to be has been broad stock markets. Now we've learned that lesson in history. of the Weimar Republic and stuff, but I just point out in things that I've been bullish in the past, most notably gold last year, trade's over. Yeah, well, I mean, well said. I think we've got to differentiate the cycle from the trend. And I was referring to the trend, but we've got to be cognizant of the fact there's a cycle out there. And in a cycle, cycles are pretty ruthless. They will destroy trends temporarily. But I think the point I'm making to be more explicit is that if you get a sell-off in gold, you're going to have to be cognizant of the fact that there's a possibility of a dip in these assets. And I think that if you get a dip in these assets, it's worth adding to them, not piling out. Because what we know is that on the other side, there's going to be monetization, because there has to be. They've got no choice. I mean, I think that the important point here is a question of where you base things. So like gold, for example, let's just. Take a step back and look, right? Gold went from, you know, what, 3,000 or so. It was trading between 2,000 and 3,000. And it rallied all the way to 5,500. Now we sit with a. And then it did a classic 50% of the move retracement, literally. And that's exactly where, you know, where we sit a little bit above that now at 4,100. But it's more or less. I mean, you do the math. I mean, it's a little bit more than 50% from depending on where you start the rally. I mean, this does not feel like we're over. Overheated. This is the sort of thing where, yeah, maybe it got ahead of itself. In fact, we kept talking about it. One of the things, Michael, that I pointed out when gold was rallying was that there was this hot ball of money. People don't understand this. But one of the largest markets in the world is called Contract for Differences. It came out of the old FX world, right, where you could trade on 100x leverage on FX. And banks, not banks, but companies started offering this to retail and institutional gamblers or speculators, whatever you want to call them, professionally. Call them hedge funds. I don't really care. They're all the same to me. The fact is, is that I was talking with, right at the peak of gold, I was talking with a gentleman who ran one of the largest market makers division, which handled this. And he was telling me just how incredibly large the money flows were. And so to me, that was a red flag. And I knew there'd be a correction. And there was. And the correction, as normal, farther than I would have expected, being more than 50%. So when we talk about, you know, what's the actual fair price of gold, I mean, who the hell knows? I mean, gold, by my calculation, at its peak probably hit 85. Now it's probably 75% of its value is, quote, monetary value as opposed to jewelry and industrial value. And I get that by comparing gold to platinum, given platinum is significantly rarer, you know, more, you know, even today, it's considered if you ask someone, what's the platinum standard or the gold standard, you know, in any conference or anything, they still value platinum more, despite being gold being roughly twice the price. So you start looking at these things, and I don't know what fair value for gold is. What I do know is, when we talk about Bitcoin, is that most of the people who are buying Bitcoin, the smart money, look at it as. An option on its ability to actually eat into or surpass gold's monetary value, pure monetary value. And that number is dramatically higher than where we are today. And so they're very different pictures. In the case of gold, it's going to follow monetary inflation, full stop. It will do so with peaks and valleys and lots of speculation. So it will get ahead of itself, it will get under itself, it will do that. That is what it's doing unless a regime change happens. Unless, you know, China and other. Other central banks stop buying it as their inflation hedge, it's going to continue to do that. And I think it's probably under its trend right now. And so I would be inclined to be longer. Mike disagrees. He thinks it's going to go back toward 3,000. But that's where a large part of this is. And the Bitcoin question is different. It's, will it actually continue to grow and succeed? That's sort of how we have framed the argument. I mean, Mike will now. You know, you should give your side of it, but that's sort of the way that I was looking at it. I'm curious. What do you think, though? Yeah, well, I mean, I think both assets are good monetary inflation hedges. The fact is that if you look at crypto stroke Bitcoin, they're the most liquidity sensitive assets on the planet. They move, you know, many times, many fold more for every liquidity impulse compared to gold. So you don't need very much in a portfolio to give you a monetary inflation hedge. But I mean, my view is that you've got, what, 3,000, 4,000 years of history behind gold. You've got 15 years or so behind Bitcoin. And therefore, I've got to be more confident that gold in the long term is going to maintain the properties of monetary inflation hedging. Bitcoin certainly has done it in the last 15 years. And I hope it succeeds. But I think you need both in your portfolio, mixing them by their relative volatility. So it means having a lot more gold than Bitcoin. But both are good, I think. Well, right now we have a sort of Goldilocks moment for Bitcoin where it seemingly should be going down by most analysts' opinions. And it hasn't been, right? Bitcoin resilience tested as U.S. dollar climbs to 18-month high. Here's the DXY right now. I mean, it's exactly almost mirrors the Bitcoin chart, which has been rising for five or six weeks, you know, steadily after the huge move that it had at the end of August. And the dollar is also rising. That's supposed to be inversely correlated, right? We're supposed to see the dollar strength mean that risk assets sell off, Bitcoin not really trading like a risk asset. As we showed you on the gold chart before, gold is now. Below its 50 week moving average and dropping Bitcoin now, which is not here on this chart, is above its 50 week average moving average and rising. So Bitcoin has not, you know, Mike, we talk about the correlations endlessly, but Bitcoin has not traded like it should or in a correlated fashion to the assets that people historically expected to over the past six weeks. It just has not. Six weeks. Great. I do enjoy when Dave calls. Smart money. People invest in Bitcoin. If they're smart, they're poorly invested before and making poor performance, poor relative performance because you just look Bitcoin versus the Nasdaq. It's the same level as first touch in 2017. It's the same level as 2021. And over that time, it's traded three times of volatility. Now, that's just a fact. But I've heard that from prominent money managers at economic club events in Miami. They look over at Bitcoin. Yeah, great. I do much better risk adjusted than Nasdaq. Why would I touch this highly expected digital asset that has in a space? In a space of unlimited supply. And I like to bring that out because I started calling Bitcoin amongst a bunch of pigeons last year, at least precious metals are a bunch of doves. There's only four of them, gold, silver, platinum, platinum, and they've reached too high. So I'm glad how you mentioned platinum, Dave, the high in platinum was in 2008 was two thousand and two thousand and two, basically two thousand and two hundred dollars an ounce. Right now, we're seventeen hundred an ounce. That's a horrible investment, and I was part of it for a long time and just some of us got lucky to sell. And Q1 stuff we held for decades. But this is my point is now we have to be careful with how the answers have changed. The answers do change. And that is since when are central banks the best indicators of what and where to buy? I mean, we know things like Gordon Brown and everything, but the analogy I use for being really bullish gold when it was below two thousand. Yes, central banks are buying. But now you have the price of gold you look at versus a bond index. We have a bond index, Treasury bond index in the US going back to nineteen seventy three. And that price of gold versus that bond index is the highest in forty years since nineteen eighty seven. I just look at it. OK, this whole space is great, but the whole thing now is all stock puppets. And then I also point out then just like the US stock market cap, the public debt, the highest in twenty five years. Forget about GDP, all that stuff. And then you look at the examples of people say what's happening in Japan while they have three hundred, three hundred, three hundred percent stock market side, public debt to GDP and their bond yields are in two handles. So. It's similar in Japan. They're coming out of it. So I look at it this this way is let's be careful, calling smart money and look at the facts. And that's why I like to point out the facts of poor performance, higher volatility, same performance. I my rules of portfolio management and risk management is that the debt and I see show six months last six months been great. So nice to see that bounce. Well, we have not see the test. That's what I want to see. Let me just see the quote from Mr. From head. Vanguard, Robert, Mr. Bogle, Jack Bogle. But if you can't handle 20, if you can't imagine a 20 percent correction, the stock market shouldn't be in stock. So I can't even imagine a 10 percent correction because that would be 25 percent of GDP. I fully expect everything my space knows about the copper industrial metals to drop if SMBs drop 10 percent to drop 20 percent. If we expect all cryptos to drop 20 percent. But I'd like to see that test so I can flip over and get out of this mantra of thinking we're all stockpilots. And right now we are giving me a test so we can see who's. Wearing clothes right now at home. By the way, it's October being October. I just remember running P's and L's this summer. I had my most extremes winning and losing in October, which is how that works out. And I think it's five days from now. Cryptos put in their peak last year. But I mean, as I showed, I mean, I know I agree with you that long correlations should be determined over the long term. But Bitcoin has been wildly outperforming at a time when it shouldn't have been. And yes, that's not the 10 percent stock market drop, but we have gotten 10 percent. 10 percent stock market drops over the past few years. It hasn't been devastating. Right. And when's the last one we had? That really that's my point. We see the test. We just haven't seen one lately as we head towards October. I'd like to see a test because I can flip my views and I agree with you. But let's be careful. One year, two years basis coins, a dog certainly versus gold and S&P 500. Sure. It bounced from an oversold levels that you guys nailed. Certainly you did, Dave, and you did. Scott, it's bounced from that oversold levels. Key support around 60. But here we are. We are. Let's see how this works. Maybe this month will tell the test. And also then we have midterms coming up and people associate a current president with inflation and Bitcoin before we go down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Dave, because I know that once we go, we will fall endlessly and not talk about anything else. I do want to talk about this because Besson backs off bond market bravado saying the House doesn't always win. I don't know if you all saw this, but this circles back to sort of the power of the bond market calling, I think the Fed and the Treasury's bluff right now. But you'll remember. You'll remember that he made the comment that I'm the House. Good luck betting against me. Right. He talked about that with Japan and the bond market in general. Now, to be clear, his actual quote here was the House doesn't win every hand. The House plays the percentages. So it's being a bit overreported, but he has said now that that he can't control the bond market. He's clearly said that he made the quote, I can't control the bond market. And I think that he gave the impression about eight weeks ago that he could. Right. That's actually when bond when Bitcoin skyrocketed was when Besson announced the intervention, albeit small, it was the signal that they were going to intervene. And there was some level of pain that they were not willing to endure. But yeah, Michael, I would love your take on this because we had Besson's obviously say we're going to, you know, inject some liquidity or increase the bond buybacks. Nothing that either the Treasury or the Fed has done has stopped the bond market from calling their bluff. Is there anything you can say about that? Is there anything that they can do? I know you spoke to this a bit earlier. Now, do we just, you know, in your estimation, buy gold and Bitcoin and call it a day? Well, I think the point is to come back to why why the bond market in the U.S. and let me just draw that distinction, because there are other markets where you are getting negative effects from too much debt. And I think Japan is one of those. France is clearly another. But I think in the case of the U.S., it's pretty clear that it's a strong economy and it's not really the debt outlook that's really affecting the bond market yet. It may be to come, but it's not right now. Term Premier in the U.S. have been either flat or falling, which is a pretty good indication that debt is not really a worry to investors. It's a strong economy that is and it's basically rates expectations that are really pushing yields higher now that in a way is self-curing because. The more the yields rise, the more that is going to weigh on the economy. And you're likely to see some sort of adjustment. And I think that, you know, from that standpoint, and I think Mike makes a good point that, you know, we are in a cycle. You've got to remember that. From where we stand right now, I would say on a 12-month view, bond markets look pretty attractive to me, particularly the tips market. So I think you could be getting some not bad gains. I'd much rather be there than in stocks. But as I say, go back to the gold and Bitcoin point. I think those are long-term asset holds in a portfolio. And if they do come down, which they're likely to, if the monetary environment gets squeezed more, it's a buying opportunity, not a selling opportunity. But I think you've got to start to think about, you know, what's going on in a world where collateral is very important. And two of the key indicators of, let's say, deteriorating collateral is the rise in bond volatility through the move index, which to my mind is way, way more important than the Fed funds rate because that determines the collateral. The collateral multiplier and basically the whole credit system. And the other thing is basically what the Fed itself is doing in terms of money markets and allocating liquidity into the repo markets. And at the moment, that's pretty quiescent. That's not a problem. But we saw basically many episodes in the last two years that that could blow up as well. But I think the problem is in the backdrop is you suddenly see this progressive tightening through the collateral markets, through the rising U.S. dollar. And, you know, what Scott Besant is trying to do is to manage volatility as best he can. You know, a lot of the media have been way off on what he's trying to do, suggesting that, you know, six billion of buybacks is going to try and suppress yields. I mean, that's just bonkers. I mean, Besant's a clever guy. He's not that foolish. What he's trying to do is dampen volatility. And that's the name of the game. If you dampen volatility, you're going to encourage more of the basis trade, which is going to help to depress yields generally. But it's not, you know, he's not trying to buy back to push yields down directly. That's for sure. He's trying to encourage the market to short the future and buy and just play the carry trade effectively. Yeah, keep volatility low. That's what you've got to do. Treasury market's all important. Yeah, the most interesting part of all of this is how strong the dollar has been. And that is a direct result, what you're saying, and I think you're right, of U.S. economic growth. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that matters because normally when the dollar rallies, that's bad for, you know, gold, Bitcoin, et cetera, right? You know, typically, if you go to historical relationships, although in this particular case, I don't think it's terribly, I think it's coincidental. I don't know that there's anything causal that goes on there. But, you know, people in the U.S., we have this conceit where we always look at everything, you know, everything is in U.S. dollar terms, right? Fiat, fiat, fiat, except for the fact that the dollar rising kind of. That tells people that this isn't the U.S. dollar falling apart. I mean, if you sit in Bitcoin chat rooms, and I'd be really curious what your panel's going to be like, Mike, you know, you get a lot of people talking about, well, obviously, the dollar's debasing, et cetera, except for the rest of the world's paper is debasing even more. And that's extremely important, I think. Yeah. I mean, I think you start to look at Europe. I mean, it's a complete mess. You know, the euro is a fragile. It's a fragile institution. And you've got a situation where the euro system has no safe asset. I mean, this is crazy. I mean, whoever designed this was, you know, mad. The only safe asset in the euro area is the German bond. So as soon as you get a crisis, everybody piles into German bonds. You get spreads blowing out between oats, Italian bonds and German bonds. And what the ECB is committed to do is whatever it takes, which means basically printing money. So whenever there's a crisis, euro supply implicitly. It goes up massively. It devalues more against the dollar. And then Japan, we've got pretty much the same situation where the prime minister is basically saying there there's going to be no austerity, full speed ahead with monetization. So the Japanese yen doesn't look to be that solid. So there's no every reason why the dollar is going up. And, you know, the plain fact, as Dave says, is that all money that's anywhere must be somewhere. So if you've got a strong economy, it's not in financial markets and it's not it's not you're creating a scarcity of dollars. And that's simply what's going on. I mean, I look at Europe and I find it, you know, the bond markets are just just fascinating, right? You know, France having their their 10 year yield being above Italy, you know, unless unless I'm missing the fiscal situation, that seems a reaction to the newspaper article newspaper. The videos we keep seeing on TikTok of all the protests in France are probably a large part of that. But, you know, the spread between that and Germany is blowing out. I mean, you know, over the. It not by a small amount. I mean, it looks like, you know, 60 basis points over the last, you know, this year. You know, that's a pretty big move. You know, I mean, this is the question of the rising debt GDP ratio, all these protests. And you've got to remember the presidential elections next year. So there's not going to be any great cutback in spending. I mean, that's for sure. So, you know, at the end of the day, France is going to accumulate more and more debt. The economy is going to look more and more fragile. The Germans ultimately going to have to pay it out. But at some stage, they're going to blink. If they come to their senses, they will pretty shortly. But what? But the implication of a bailout is more liquidity, right? I don't see any other alternative. Whatever it takes. That's the line. That's the draggy line. Whatever it takes. I mean, is there any truth that you're sitting in Oxford right now? I mean, you know, the U.K. yields are higher than or 50, actually more 60 basis points, more than even even France. You know, I was reading over the weekend someone talking about, you know, Brent, whatever. Anyway, you know, the U.K. trying to rejoin the Eurozone because get them part of that German bailout, possibly. I don't know. I'm just curious. You know, is there any any possibility of that? Or is the U.K. basically just on the sad train to nowhere when it comes to financial, you know, the financial situation? I think you've I think you've nailed it. I think it's on the sad train to nowhere. I think there's no way out. I mean, they've got socialist policy. They've got no interest in austerity. That's what's needed. You know, U.K. guilt yields are actually high. And they're probably from a short term perspective, quite attractive at these levels. But, you know, notwithstanding the fact the longer term outlook is not great, they're going to have to monetize as well. And it's very interesting that all these, you know, these central banks or governments are now talking exactly the same story as Scott Bessner saying we're going to do a lot more bill issuance. Why are they doing bill issuance? Because it's easy. Banks buy that stuff with alacrity. But that's monetization. And that's what these long term monetary inflation hedges are going to get their juice from. This is a very different world. I mean, people don't don't realize how much the world has changed. Only thing they can do, these guys can do is kick the can down the road. And you look at the response to every crisis since 2008. They printed money. They haven't thought about reducing deficits. No one is. It's not. You can't do it in this sort of fragile geopolitical world. We did. A few years ago. It was basically all about the idea that you're in competition. America and China are loggerheads in competition. No one is going to force a recession. No one's going to cut back fiscally in this world. They're going to keep on going, plowing more money into the system. And that's exactly what's going on. And I could, you know, I describe what's going on in the U.S. It's not Fed QE. It's Treasury QE. That's the difference. But it's good for the economy. And that's why the economy is racing ahead in the short term, because there's so much spending going on. Yeah, Mike, Scott, I had a glitch, but one thing I want to bring out is piggyback. And I heard part of what you were saying, Michael, and you, David, is the latest headline from UK expected to follow EU with China EV tariffs, Time says. And also my colleague, Javier Blas, who I saw in London last week, will click what my new EV says about the future oil demand. My EV is 12 years old. But this this severe deflationary forces, most notably renewables and awesome vehicles that are making the rest of the vehicles that some of us. Germany and U.S. are making look like buggies coming out of China. It's just the fact that we have 100 percent tariffs on to show you where it's going. This is a pure deflationary force. And look at the A.I. The A.I. I heard who was an A.I. Expect to say maybe 22 or so percent of A.I. Use in the U.S. in the next few years will be from Chinese type entities. Now, I know that I don't know if that's true, but just the valuation of our equities are so dependent on this technology and the deflation out of China. I see in terms of commodities. I like people say crude oil. It's going to go to 150. I'm like, what are you missing about what's happening with this global paradigm shift where the world's largest demand pull source on the planet for like energy is replacing with EVs and exporting all that to the rest of the world? And their EV sales are rolling over. Now they're pressuring the whole EU. The fact that U.S. has 100 percent tariffs on shows how good those vehicles are. And then you see massive supply commodity. This is all that rapidly advancing technology. And I see a stronger dollar. The Fed tightening most central banks tightening from terms of commodities. This is wonderful. If I mean, this is a terrible environment, particularly if they've gone up so much. This is just a classic, I think, sell. And then I also tilt over to the metals, which makes me related to cryptos. I put them in the same bucket is the Bloomberg All Metals Index in beginning year was up 22 percent on the year. That's the time in beginning year the U.S. was priced for the Fed to cut 50 base points by the end of the year. Now the metals are down in the year and we're looking for the Fed to hike three times. To me, this is just part of that lose lose. We're absolutely positively any bullish position you have on almost any position. position, even bond yields depends on the stock market. And right now it has to go up. And so i just kind of make it keep it simple so mike the one one point i i i just have to make because it's so important is people conflate consumer inflation and asset and monetary inflation and technology being what has been over the last 25 years in a normal scenario if monitor was if there was zero monetary inflation in the last you know in this century we would have had massive deflation because there's been massive increases in productivity ai is going to drive a lot more on the service economy but before that we had massive productivity improvements massive other improvements on technology etc all of that is consumer deflationary but we don't see it as as deflationary because of monetary inflation so what does that mean it means that the that the bifurcation between things that technology can't affect and what technology can affect goes much wider and that's how people perceive it but i every time you conflate and say well ai is causing deflation therefore bonds it's like no they're very different ai doesn't affect bond prices it affects ai affects the ability of a human to create a output of work and and that by the way is is is massive and it's one of the reasons why the biggest jaw chart we've seen has been corporate profits vis-a-vis wage growth corporate profits have gone crazy on the upside and wage growth has not and we're seeing that and and but that has nothing to do with the fact that there's a massive liquidity impulse and massive fiscal deficits it's there those are two fighting trends in a sense but when you're talking about assets to ignore it is a problem and and i i want to set up michael for this because this has been you you and i have this is literally the stasis the literal place where you and i disagree the most right whereas i'm more monetarist and you're more monetarist and you're more monetarist and you're more monetarist and you're more more keynesian i understand that but this is a real important point it's like technology we are living in the next industrial revolution we've had two waves the internet in the 2000s you know in the early you know end of the 90s in the 2000s and ai now and you know of course they politicize both uh and etc but it's inexorable you can't stop innovation you can try to slow it you can let other people have it but you can't stop it and that's a it's a very very big impact and let's tilt over the michael i'm neither monetarist genius or anything i'm just realistic and we have to point out that we have the number one thing the number one thing driving the whole world economy right now is the excessive valuation of the stock market in the back of ai driven my hyperscalers basically in terms of the top seven or whatever all kind of related we've seen this before there's always a good reason it could continue but it's going to lead to severe deflation in the future partly because of the technology those of us who all adopting it completely just a matter of shifting over the jobs the key point is right now we're in that inflationary period which is bad for bonds i mean just the fact that we have most central bank's hiking rates we have the set and the number one issue in this country is affordabilities as we head to midterms is a key fact also we're getting that major shift where we're getting pretty hedonistic republican or capitalist republicans um slinging white and the whole system always swings back the other that's what we're going to get in a few months and i think it's a significant blue way but a lot of them are voting against this inflation and energy and food and all the rich people make more money particularly the people in our government and them not doing it that's the bulk of the bell curve of votes i'm pointing out the macro here that you did see is how we're all stock puppets right now particularly if you're bullish bitcoin or gold you got to have a stock market go up no snow the u.s so that's why i ask you or anyone if we drop 20 sb 500 stay down a while what does that mean for any position and anything of course that's a significant if statement but stuff that used to happen like i quote jack bogle if you can't imagine that then you shouldn't be in stocks i can't imagine it right now that's why i think i need to imagine it michael a lot to unpack there good boy yeah i mean i'm very much of the view that um you know but piling into risk assets now is not a great idea but as i said earlier on you've got to separate trend uh from cycle and the fact is if if there is a major sell-off in risk assets um you're going to have to get policymakers coming back and reflate the system uh they can't afford to have a recession so you're going to get more fiscal spending and more liquidity pumped into the system as sure as x or x i mean i think that that's the backdrop so the trend is there and you know people say that you know this is the end of the financial system you know capitalism is going to end or whatever look for heaven's sake politicians have been doing this for 150 years okay look at the value of the dollar in sort of 1900 or 1914 where it is now it's it's basically a few cents compared to what a dollar was then okay this is going to go on forever uh you're looking at this sort of continued devaluation but what i'm saying is that there's more impetus now because there's a great reluctance uh to sort of but for politicians to bite the bullet and go to austerity or whatever it may be so you're going to have to have money printing and that's what they're pretty much doing but i do take the point and i agree with what mike has been saying is that you are somewhere near the peak in these risk asset markets and i think the bond markets are telling you uh that there's a lot of opportunity in fixed income over the next 12 months i mean to buy tips at around three percent uh yields is that is a fantastic opportunity uh you know it's very rare you can make three percent real in financial markets over the long term but the u.s government is guaranteeing that so i think that that's not a bad place to be uh do i want to be in bonds long term no way but certainly it's a trade i think it looks pretty decent to me michael let me ask you this because as i listen to everybody there's a consensus that money printing is the only way that that's inevitable and what is guaranteed to happen i guess the question that we never really discuss is what happens if money printing does come in and fails i think that's what mike is sort of talking about here right is that you get the money printing it doesn't work and then you see the deflationary collapse and we go into a depression mike i don't want to put words in your mouth but i think maybe we're not going further enough down the timeline at what could happen if the printing failed well let's pass it over to michael but that's the fact that what's happened in japan 30 years ago what's happening in china right now back to you michael well you know what's so what's going to happen here is that debt i mean the problem in japan and maybe the problem in a lot of western economies is that there is a growing burden of debt and that that debt saddles the economy and it makes it slows down the rate of economic growth so you've basically got to devalue debt now as i said the big debt problem far and away the biggest debt problem right now is not the us nor europe it's china and china's the economy it's got to get out of its debt problem and uh you know the the difficulty there or the difficulty china faces is is that the whole integrity of the prc is all about uh creating wealth or continual wealth for chinese residents if they fail to do that then the whole system becomes questionable um so i think they're going to have to bite the bullet and somehow devalue the yuan internally now i stress the word internally because i think with this array of capital controls uh large forex reserves and compliance state banks they can pretty much achieve what is called a dual circulation between an internal yuan and an external yuan that basically you know doesn't change much against the dollar but the fact is that if they start printing money which there's every evidence they're doing right now the gold price goes up and when the pboc began printing money uh was around about uh you know around about well in fact the the early 2020s it pretty much coincided or led an increase in the gold bullion price because it was china who was buying who's the marginal price now of gold it's the chinese whether it's the central bank or whether it's chinese retail and that's all about money printing in china so you know the story isn't really about what the us is going to do or what europe's going to do they're going to follow as well there's you know absolutely certain uh they've got no choice but it's the chinese we've got to think about and uh you know that ultimately is uh is how the system will will reflate does it mean you're going to get more high street inflation almost certainly uh but i think the question is are we talking about what scale are we talking about uh in the us are we talking about you know four to five percent underlying uh probably we're not talking about ten twelve percent uh but this is quite manageable i think within the system um the system won't break down on those sort of levels dave i was gonna let mike talk but mike you're muted no go ahead dave i figured you'd have something on that one yeah i mean look i you know i first principles you know it's like it it's funny so this morning we just saw a bad u.s consumer confidence and bitcoin jumps 500 bucks i mean does it matter you know back up over 86 again you know it's like it the point that you've made michael which is absolutely true is that bitcoin trades directionally as the highest beta to perceived monetary inflows to receive liquidity full stop i can't see a scenario where bonds rally and bitcoin doesn't rally with them i i can't see it i i mean it it feels like and and i think you're right i think there will be a bond rally here i think that that you know there are there is opportunity to make money and people lever up and and and it's look i work for two sigma i i i spend a lot of time you know five years at at one of the the larger quantitative hedge funds although it wasn't one of the larger ones when i started but what you learn you know very quickly is how much leverage can be put into exploiting, you know, some small number of basis point gain, you know, pickups. And so all these yield differentials matter. And when the entire world is moving in the same direction, you see that trend continuing. I think that what's going on with bond yields now is cyclical. Yes, there's, it's based on economic growth. But if that economic growth starts to slow, you could see a rip roaring bond rally. When you see a rip roaring bond rally, what is that going to mean? Well, you're going to see more monetization when that happens, because it's the timing, right? You know, Besson's a trader, if nothing else. And I just don't, I can't see a scenario where the most important asset from a, not important, most beta driven asset to liquidity doesn't do well in a global bond market rally, which I do think we're, even if it's just a relief rally or a dead cat rally, we're due for one fairly soon. So we'll see. Let me ask you, I know, Mike, you're about to jump in, but isn't there a world where bonds rally because stocks are crashing? And that makes us wonder what happens to something like a Bitcoin, which you think would go down, right? Dave's saying basically a bond rally, Bitcoin goes up alongside it. You would probably see bonds rally if the stock market had one of those corrections you're talking about, wouldn't you? The number one factor for bonds to rally, for the Fed to ease back on their tightening switch ease is one simple thing. 10% correction, S&P 500 stays down the well. That's it. Don't fight the Fed. If you're buying Bitcoin, gold, metals, copper, stock market, you're fighting the Fed. That's the number one factor. Very simple stuff that used to happen. That doesn't happen anymore. That can't even imagine. But then, so I go to Michael though, there, then is there a world where bonds rally and Bitcoin does not? Because there's a fundamental divergence there in how Mike and Dave are viewing this. Well, I think the fact is that I would argue that if bonds rally, we're living in a collateral-based world, and the bulk of collateral is US Treasuries, if you get a strong bond market and bond volatility on top comes down, you're going to see a big collateral multiplier boosting liquidity. And in that situation, Bitcoin will go up. So I think that the question really is, is that what out of those things breaks? And I can't see it. I think the two will be correlated. I kind of agree with Dave, that if you're going to get this situation, it looks pretty good for, as I say, these monetary inflation hedges, because coming out of the solution, what the bond market is pretty much telling us is that the Federal Reserve is going to have to ease simply because the economy is looking ropey. And that's where you got to start looking pretty closely at the long end of the market to see if there's any signs that it's beginning to, the yields are beginning to peak. I mean, already, if you look at term premiere, that's starting to edge lower, which I think is the first sign of this. And I've been saying that for a long time. And I've been saying to our clients, look, what we're facing here is, you know, maybe an odd stock market cycle, but it's certainly a classic bond market cycle. This is actually plain vanilla in bonds, and it looks pretty plain vanilla in commodities, too. But cycles go up and cycles come down. Isn't there a world where you can both be right, depending on time frame? Time frame is everything. Because we all know that correlations will go to one if there's a black swan event, and you know, the stock market drops in a day, you know, or in a week, 15 or 20%, or something, from a black swan, I think we all probably agree that gold, Bitcoin, everything will drop in that scenario. So Mike, you could be right there. But then the debasement trade narrative could come back. And depending on how people view Bitcoin, it certainly could do what Dave and Michael are talking about, which is rise. It's all time frame, but there's a big problem with a flock of pigeons versus a couple doves. We all agree that there's many of these millions of cryptos that need purging, something within the next top ten years. Yeah. You know, Dogecoin is number 11. Some of this needs purging. We all know that the only way you can sustain this type of silliness in market valuations and stuff that tracks nothing is when you have a stock market cap at the historic 100-year high. And that's maybe a question we can ask the group. Has there ever been a time in history where these things have been sustained? There's only one example, 1929 U.S., 1989 Japan, and they last a while and then they go away. But that's the key thing to remember here is we have not seen the test for Bitcoin and cryptos. Let me see a stock market cap. We're going to go down and stay down a little while, maybe not make a new high for a year and see how this lags. Now, I fully think it's I really appreciate people think Bitcoin will rally in that environment. I wish you luck. Virtually no value at risk model will show that, particularly since we launched ETFs. And then what did ETFs do? Those of us who are on top of this when the futures are launched and ETFs are launched, they're in the mainstream now. This is not the old days when people like Scott jumped on it about 100 and maybe even me below 5,000. Now it's mainstream. It's a mainstream asset. It's volatile is going down. It trades. It's just a stock puppet. And then the key thing to remember is don't underestimate midterms and midterms are coming up. And after we get to midterms, we're going to probably see a major check and balance. So here's what's going to happen. We've had some pretty prolific spending in this current government and then certainly the builder and president. There can be a major check and balance against that after midterms, but it's actually a pretty significant blue wave. That's very good for bonds. And there's only one key market. I can see that we've had pretty significant buying when they're crying senses in that. And that's a bond market, U.S. bond market. There's certainly crying in that market. Dead wrong on that one. But we had some major sound when they're yelling in cleans in Bitcoin within a year ago and all the metals a year ago. But the key thing was also look at copper. It's the fact that it's correlation 50 day, 50 week basis with the stock market's highest in its history on the way up. There's warnings coming on here as we head volatility season. I just like I know, Dave, you have to jump in, but I just got to say, like, I, I, I, it's hard for me because I agree and disagree with you so much in the same paragraph. Yeah, it's hard for me because I agree about the pigeons in New York City. We used to call pigeons flying rats. Right. So if they're eradicated, then by by all means, I don't think anyone would mind. I agree with that on the meme coins and the nonsense and the long tail of crypto assets. But Bitcoin is not a pigeon. It's a falcon or a bald eagle. And it has nothing to do with the pigeons, in my opinion. I don't think that coin market cap number 75 is going to do well on a debasement trade narrative if the stock market crashes. But that doesn't mean Bitcoin won't, you know, I know that we diverge on this, but I agree with a lot of what you're saying. There needs to be a pair. I just don't think the numbers 75 is injecting probably do, too. And it's worth, you know, look, the argument about crypto versus Bitcoin, you know, Michael, to see you can hear it really quickly is I consider myself a Bitcoin monetary maximalist, but I think there is value in crypto. I think most of the coins have absolutely no value. absolutely no value. And some will be winners. And it's going to look a lot like the internet bubble, but it's a slow motion train wreck. Because in the internet bubble, what people don't understand is stocks, when they die, they die. Cryptos, there's no carrying cost. You know, you want to keep a corporation going, you have to pay to have humans and it's expensive and companies go bankrupt and then the stocks get delisted or even go boof on the pink sheets. Some of the bankrupt stocks trade like, you know, crazy for a while on OTC, but the truth is that they do die. Crypto, you know, FTT still has value, the token from FTX, despite whatever, because there's no carrying cost for it. The tokens just exist and people could trade them like they trade Pokemon cards. And so you have this weird thing and Mike and I both agree that it would be better if these things died. But the truth is, if there's no one to sell, then the price doesn't go to zero. Right. And so there's that carrying cost. I'm tired of this. $90 million fully diluted. Yeah, well, because the people who own it are kind of keeping it in frames or, you know, it's like, you know, I've said that to Mike, though, those things are dead because nobody's trading them. They're sitting there. Nobody's going to sell it. Nobody's going to buy it. It's dead with a $90 million market cap. People trade them like Pokemon cards. That's what they do. But that's why I want to ask you and the whole group and have our whole audience get the part of I get about tokenization. But I've been so bullish on that space forever. The proliferation of dollars because it's just a better way to transact dollars globally. Learn that Hong Kong almost a decade ago. But when you get a tokenized real value asset with earnings next to Dogecoin on a screen, which one are you going to buy? Which are you going to short? That's my point. Once this tokenization. Let me explain tokenization very quickly. All assets will be tokenized full stop because it's better than paper. But that doesn't mean anything. It's just a question of compare asset A to asset B. I've been making the point. You just made for three years. I will continue to make it. And you're seeing it. I mean, I can tell you based on I have like stuff in my portfolio that that became worthless. That's useless. So I haven't sold it. I think I have like, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of under $50 worth of probably 20 or 30 things that who knows what they were worth at their high. I don't know. But they just I didn't sell it quick enough. And then they died. I mean, smoking chicken fish tokens is my is the one I always come back to. I mean, I think I put 300 bucks into that. And at one point, it was worth 600. And now it's probably worth $6. Right? You know, I got a bunch of those things where I got it wrong. You know, there's no question about that. But none of that has a damn thing to do with Bitcoin. None of that has a damn thing to do with Solana, that matter or Ethereum. Those are totally different things, because those are both fighting for to be the base layer of a lot of stuff. Now what the valuation is what will happen to those things massively overvalued or they undervalued, you could go have entire shows based on that. But this market, what matters is there was this huge OTC market. I mean, anyone who's sitting on a trading desk in 2000 and 1999 remembers this. you know, every day somebody would run over to the desk. Hey, did you see this thing? You know, NetTaxi, that was one. And there were a whole bunch of others. There were thousands of these things and everyone was trading them and they would go crazy. I mean, you're talking about things that would go from, there was this company, NetTaxi, that was formerly in 1997 was Swan Valley Snowmobiles. I'm not making this up. They renamed it to NetTaxi, claimed to have a payments processing system. And the thing went to almost a billion dollars of market cap. And, you know, I was lucky enough to sell a quarter of my position, you know, halfway up to the high. And so I actually made money on this thing. But at one point, my paper wealth was huge. And then, of course, the whole thing went crashing down, right? You know, and it was bankrupt within two years. Crypto doesn't have the same discipline because of what happens to companies. So these things don't crash the same way. I mean, we saw BitConnect. Remember that one, Scott? Oh, yeah. Coin market cap on the- The site said, we believe this is a scam. It had a billion dollar market cap before it's back. It's because it's because of the carrying costs. So, yes, there's insanity in markets. Yes, there's crazy crap. But as analysts, we are trying to help people understand where value pockets are. And I do don't think, I think that correlation is semi-spurious. Doge is a different animal. I don't own any, or if I do, it's a dog end in a portfolio. I don't understand what it is. I think the model for Dogecoin are Pokemon cards or baseball cards. I think that's what you're looking at. Collectibles. That's amazing. Well, honestly, I actually owe some because I was at a dinner table with my son and a bunch of friends years ago. And we were just putting hundreds of dollars in. And it was just like a bar banter. And it was fun. But I just point out, you know, same chart syndrome. They just go up together. They go down together with Bitcoin. Most of the alts. I'm just pointing out facts. I know Bitcoin's out of conform. I get to get it. But they do have same chart syndrome. Right. But there is just two things. And I want Michael to wrap us up. But two things is that there are worlds where altcoins crash and Bitcoin goes up. In fact, like if Bitcoin rips, historically, you see a major rise in Bitcoin dominance and major fall in altcoin valuations versus Bitcoin. So that does happen. I will tell you that what's going to solve this problem largely, and I'm just saying it already, is that all of those useless tokens that have market cap are going to be liquidated via AI hacks because there's nobody with a security budget paying attention. And that's going to clean itself out. Sadly, you're holding a token that's number 200 and doesn't have a team working on it. Eventually, like all of these ones we've been seeing over the past few months, somebody is just going to exploit it, steal four or five million dollars. It's going to trend towards zero and that'll be the end of it. But Michael, yeah, Michael, I would love your kind of final thoughts. I guess maybe we can talk a little bit more about Bitcoin. I don't know if maybe on the Bitcoin and crypto side, since that's where we're at. And then we'll move on to next week. Well, I think as Warren Buffett said, when the liquidity tide goes up, you see he's swimming naked. And I think you can see that probably with a whole raft of these cryptocurrencies. That's going to be playing. But I come back to the point that you've got to separate cycle from trend. I think the trend is towards monetary inflation. I think that's inevitable. Whichever country, whichever region you look at, governments simply can't afford to tax us anymore. And the bond markets are exercising a discipline, which means they've got to print money. And that's a fact. And that means China. It means Europe. It means the US. Everybody has got to inflate over the medium term. But that's a progressive whirring in the backdrop. And it may mean that monetary inflation is going up seven to eight percent per annum or that sort of pace. And I think that's the trend we've got to start looking at. But make no mistake, as Mike says, there is a cycle we've got to recognize. And that cycle is telling us. In many cases that or bond markets are the truth. And they're telling us that we're somewhere near the peak. Yields have picked up and bond markets on a 12 month view look to me pretty attractive, much more than stocks. Stocks are in a bubble. I don't know when they're going to break, but they're going to break. And, you know, as regarding the AI thing, I mean, I'm old enough to remember Global Crossing and just look what happened there. The fiber optic market. I mean, that was the darling of Wall Street. What was it? Well, 20 years ago, probably now. But, you know, what happened to fiber optic prices? They went down 80 percent because of competition. And within five years, Global Crossing was in Chapter 11. And let's not single out any particular AI company. But, you know, the switching cost between these is actually pretty low. So at the end of the day, I think there's problems afoot for many of these stocks. And therefore, I'd be very wary about them on a one to two year view. I think bonds look a lot safer and I'd be thinking of bonds, but I'd be buying back into monetary inflation hedges with alacrity after any sell off. It would be an opportunity to buy if these things come down, not to sell them. You guys are all extremely intelligent, humbled to be able to sit here with you. And all I hear is that it's all about time frame once again. Not like Mike has forever buying for 12 months and rotate back into Bitcoin, which Mike thinks will be going to 10 at the same. Yeah, I got it. We have a lot of opinions on the same things, but I. You know, I'm an optimist. I hear the agreements more than I hear the disagreements. And there's quite a few of them in there. Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. You are literally welcome back anytime. If you'll have a pleasure. Thank you. And David, Mike, as always, thank you for the banter and for the perspective. We'll see you guys next week. Bye, everyone. Let's go. 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