Bitcoin On Brink Of Collapse As Oil Prices SURGE? What You Need To Know!

Bitcoin is on the brink as the United States and Israel go to war with Iran.

Oil prices in Europe have surged as much as 50% as Qatar has cut off their oil supply

waiting for more clarity in the streets of Hamouk for mous.

All of this is way over my head.

So luckily we have the geniuses, Dave James, and Mike to unpack all of it for us.

I don't think there's ever been a day when we need a macro Monday more as people who

are watching the price and market in Bitcoin and crypto.

Let's go.

Let's go.

Good morning, everybody.

Welcome to another edition of macro Monday.

Mike McGlone is currently on TV.

He'll be here in three or four minutes.

And what's actually amazing is I was sent a ton of links to look at this morning for

the show news updates.

They can bring on the screen.

And McGlone's face was literally on three of them on TV, you know, like the video clips

on Yahoo Finance every time I clicked on a link, there was Mike McGlone.

So we're obviously being forced to share him with the world now, but he will be here momentarily.

We got Dave and James already here.

James is fresh, well rested, kept him up.

I mean, they could they just can't make air travel any more miserable.

Can they?

It's true.

It's incredible.

You know, it's funny.

You know, if you're not in first class, it's almost just unbearable.

We went back and forth from from Florida to South Valley and for flight segments.

Every one of the flights was on time.

No issues whatsoever.

And when we landed, as we landed as the plane hit the tarmac, I said to my wife, wow,

it's amazing.

We had the whole flight.

You know, nothing would happen.

And then we sat in the tarmac for half an hour because they couldn't get a plane out

of the gate.

I flew in from New York, yesterday to Tampa.

And we got landed a foot above the ground.

And all of a sudden, the guy goes straight vertical, like a F-15, and he completely

had missed the runway.

Like 10 feet left.

The land is going to fall from the background.

So it was a good time.

But anyways, as we went from a glono, I've had three hours of sleep.

We're good.

Let's go.

Good.

Okay.

Nothing going on.

What I missed last week.

Yeah.

I don't want to dive into oil yet or any of that because I want to wait for Mike.

So we do have a story here that has Mike's face right on it.

As I said, look at him.

Crypto loses its grip on retail crowd, now defecting to equities.

So this is coming from Bloomberg, no surprise, the fact that Mike's face on the article

like that, obviously, no surprise.

But effectively, all of the data here that retail has not participated at all in this market

for quite a while.

Can I fix the headline for you?

Please.

The headline is, if this article had been written in November, then I think I could go

with that headline.

But the truth is retail has not did not really was not really participating very much in crypto

in the the back half of last year's rally and after 10, 10, they were gone.

And you know, so it's like when you start reporting on stuff like that, that tells me the

bottom is in full stop.

I love that.

I love seeing those stories because we know that we talked about it two weeks ago, how

searched for Bitcoin is dead hit a peak.

We know what extreme fear looks like.

We understand where the participation is.

Retail has been out of altcoins now for months.

So when Bloomberg finally starts saying, I was doing this, this is trying to throw dirt

on the grave.

You know, that tends not to work in America.

I'm not a call last week, crypto is pointless, even the life out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, come on.

These are the.

I mean, look, the funniest part about all of this is this is at the same time that Morgan

Stanley is ramping up to not just trade crypto, but custody Bitcoin.

I mean, you know, look, there is, there's this huge great dichotomy and I talk about this

all the time, but I'm tired of people who are stupid on both sides.

The fact is that crypto rails and the technology are going to reformat the financial system.

They're going to reformat the artistic systems, meaning that, you know, if you're a creative,

it's going to change many, many verticals and industries.

We know this.

Some tokens will be able to be used for the incentive structures that tokens can do in

order to create value.

But if the token itself doesn't pass value through the token holders, they're going to

wither and dive and saying that for a long time.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, has survived through all of this and right now looks, looks

almost frighteningly cheap and hated, but that's exactly what you get at bottoms.

I mean, you literally, I mean, could it go lower?

Of course, anything can happen, but the truth is, is freaking war and cause it to break

below what when we said that, you know, we said to when it dropped below 60 to 58, you

know, or 59 or whatever it held it, it ticked on that wick that that's probably the bottom

and even over the weekend at the most desperate, lowest liquid period of time they couldn't

slam it below 62.

So you tell me what does this look like every time I see these news stories, it tells

me that, you know, it's like trying to, you know, when you have a fire, a fire and

there's no wood left in the fire and you're blowing at it and you're hoping the fire will

keep going.

Well, there's just no, there's no wood left.

I mean, who's left to sell within the crypto community?

The people who are left with the crypto community that will sell will be the people who need

to raise fun for life.

That's it because nobody is making discretionary sales at this point.

And so when I see these articles, I just laugh at them.

I mean, it's just, it's actually funny because it's exactly the wrong thing.

It's the same people who at the end of 2008 beginning of 2009 were saying the equity

markets are dying and retail is exited the equity market.

And you saw those stories.

You can go back and look at them.

It happens every time.

You know, GFC has been running its course.

It's been going crazy.

They've been throwing shit tons of liquidity, but it didn't matter.

Nobody wanted to buy anything.

Tom Lee.

But let's be, let's be clear though that clearly, I mean, like you said, the sentiment

is so low in Bitcoin and crypto currencies that obviously something else has been going

on.

And the funny thing is that when people are running to things like gold and silver, as

like, you know, a quick raid, you know that something is structurally wrong macroeconomically

or geopolitical world.

Oh, absolutely.

So, yeah, so watching central banks pile on the gold trade and then watching everybody

pile into the silver trade on the backs of EV and data center buildouts and demand, it

tells you that there's just, you know, we all know that people are now worried about inflation.

So if you just step back today now and look at what's going on, obviously you have oil

up.

And the funny thing is that Bitcoin's kind of holding in there.

Like Dave said, it's hung at 65,000 all weekend, even though, you know, this is the conflict

has now kind of, you know, expanded.

And it's not going to be just a one and done, you know, one and done daily thing.

This is going to, this is going to probably be ongoing for a few weeks from what we can

tell.

So, you've got features down a percent, you've got gold up one or two percent, you've

got silver kind of down a percent, you've got Bitcoin just pretty much unchanged.

And then you've got the 10 year, we're looking at the long bond, the TLT and the 10 year

and 20 year and 30 year, those rates are up, okay.

So the, the, we're back over 4% on the 10 year, which we dropped below 4% earlier this

week and late last week.

And so if you look at the TLT, you know, that is pre-market, it's down.

So what, what is that telling you?

Well, yeah, yesterday, I'm going to, I'm trying to interrupt, keep going.

I was just going to say yesterday we had this story that basically showed that the bonds

were flight to safety, that I didn't even realize, you know, using yesterday's data.

Go ahead.

That's the funny, that's, that's, that's the paradox now with the, with the bonds.

Bonds could be flight to safety if you're going into, you know, teabills.

If you're going into teabills, sure, that's a flight to safety.

But if you're going to the long bonds, the problem here is that now people are concerned

that with the conflict in the Middle East, it's a, it's a particular issue geopolitically

that is inflationary.

Here's inflation at number one, and oil going up, it's the, it's the main driver of prices

of everything going up is inflationary.

So people are clearly, the investors are clearly concerned that long-term inflation impacts

from, from a higher price and oil or an extended higher price and oil is an issue.

So that's kind of what we're seeing across the board here today.

And then the dollar on the back side of it is just, it's an energy trade, you know?

So, but I would be interested to hear what, what we got out of the morning meeting, Mike,

assuming you went to it.

Mike, you didn't hear of this, but I'm, I'm operating at about three hours of sleep because

of our great air travel system in America.

So, but we're here.

So let's, let's go through it.

Okay.

Well, the, uh, on a one came in pointed out that, uh, yeah, obviously if, um, if we have

oil staying, uh, staying up, that's going to have an inflationary impact, but she folks

just on non-farm payroll, she think it's going to be a negative number, a weak print due

to weather, the unemployment rate, you stay in about 4.3%, so it might have a small uptake,

but it won't really be that significant, that should stay the same, um, look, um, looks

to take away, is it expect the number to look weak, but the unemployment to stay steady.

We had our geoeconomics expert come on, Deanna Fendi, Dene Fendiary, who pointed out,

the ran retaliation has been fast and wide, spreading out to the Gulf States, um, trying

to put on cost on the, uh, trying to expand the tax and put on cost in global economy.

Her point was she thinks things could likely to get worse in the meantime.

Um, Michael Caspar, equity strategist, this pointed out, you know, we have major oil

shocks that use you bad for equities, and that was really it from the morning meeting.

I had a hop off early to, uh, talk to, uh, TV about, guess what, crude oil here, yeah,

yeah, let's start with the oil, because that's where I wanted to go.

Yeah, so we need a sustained supply shock or disruption to keep the, um, Brent above

last year's high, which is 82 dollars and 63 cents, which is about today's highs right

now, just below 80.

You need some kind of, now right now, it makes sense, you're supposed to pop up to those

levels, um, and that risk that the straight is closed, but not for military actions,

but for normal prudent getaway, if Iran succeeds in closing that, which has never happened,

that's a problem.

I think by the time we get to the end of the week, we'll find out that the US military,

this part of an operation is usually does pretty well.

It's very good at rendering enemies defenseless and offensive lists.

So if we're still seeing a lot of missiles coming out of, um, Iran by the end of the week,

that's a problem.

Otherwise, I fully expect this bid to be short term to look very similar to what the

Bitcoin bid looked like in January, because the bottom line is, this is people are talking,

they can keep forgetting the answers have changed.

The price maker status in Crotto switched to that Western hemisphere.

So what I'll probably republish for tomorrow is pointing out is Iran exports less than

two million barrels a day, obviously it's very political where it is now.

But the US and Canada, their supply demand surplus is running eight million barrels a day.

That's just, that's the highest ever.

That's where things are happening.

So I guarantee you, you can see that in the full record.

All these producers are selling forward in the forward curve.

And you can see like these Crotto, I was running 62 dollars or so.

So this is short term something bad has to happen.

We have here about the US military having setbacks, but this is, as we know, in date,

I'm sure you can get this part is this part of the operation for US military.

They usually don't mess up.

But they're ability to take out bad guys and rip apart anything is easy.

It's afterwards.

That's more complicated.

But I'll think the key thing I want to point out is that the light crude and the oil,

that's coming out of the Middle East though, so that's, that, that does matter.

And the who the buyers are, and the largest buyer of, or, I'm sorry, China is,

you know, has been buying quite a bit of oil from Iran, if I'm, if I'm correct.

I don't, I'm, I am not an oil expert, but you're, you're on something, James.

That, that is, to me, the funniest part of one funny.

I mean, if you look at, at, at the data today and what's going on,

there's a bunch of things that are fascinating.

I mean, one of them, first of all, Brent is up more than, than, than West Texas.

That's not terribly surprising, you know, light sweet, you know, it, whatever.

The premium there is for obvious reasons.

It's not about oil production.

It's about oil transportation.

The, the, you know, look, I, you know, my, my son, you know, left Dubai and got some

place else.

So I won't go through his personal life, but he managed to, you know, buy, you know,

on Friday or Saturday.

And, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a shit show over there.

I mean, not in the sense of there's anything really bad, but there is generally speaking,

you know, around the streets of her moves.

The fact is the Iranians, it's a very small thing.

I mean, you know, it's like it doesn't take a whole lot to shut down oil transport.

Now their biggest ally is pissed.

I mean, like really pissed.

This is, this is really bad for China.

They don't want it to happen.

So geopolitically, they're sort of in a, in a ridiculous situation, which is, you know,

if they tried to help, in fact, if, let's say, for example, they use the Chinese provided

weapons to hit oil tankers and, and close the streets for any extended period of time,

that's grew China.

So you have to look at the geopolitics here as, as very interesting.

And many people, some of the ones I respect the most that I've seen, some of the commentators

who actually understand what the hell is going on, basically see a large part of the

reason for this action has to do with China.

A, as, as in general, there are some people who are saying, well, China was using Iran

to test out their weapons systems, see how well they're working, you know, stories, not

so good.

They probably have to go back to the drawing board.

But more importantly, the U.S. sees this as a deterrent towards Taiwan.

And so we're not going to back down.

There's just zero probability of us backing down at this point.

So you need to understand what's actually happening on the streets are vulnerable for

short or longer term.

If you, if the insurance companies aren't giving people insurance, so they're not going

through it right now.

The truth is, if, if major damage was done there, it could be a real headache for Chinese

oil prices.

So you know, Mike, when you always talk about China's deflationary issues, you know, right?

Well, all of a sudden, they're going to have huge problems because they won't be able

to get at the oil that they need, whereas we, as Mike points out, have no problem, exact

same things playing out natural gas.

Natural gas in the U.S. is cratered, and it hasn't budged, it's $3.

European natural gas is dramatically higher because of the geopolitical factor is the

fact that that was it, I forgot who was Qatar.

One of the Gulf states on your LNG factories, so I read this morning, right, 50% premium

to European natural gas.

Already.

So the gas prices, these are, these are all cross currents.

From an asset point of view, there are traders out there who are playing this in all sorts

of different spreads within this market.

I mean, but what Mike is basically saying is the traders have also said this ain't last

in, and oil shouldn't be at these prices, right?

And so that's why when you see that kind of backwardization or, you know, of where December

is 15, 16, you know, 20% below June, you know, that's a big number, and that is not normal,

right?

And so Mike is right.

I mean, the world thinks this is going to be temporary.

Now, whether it's true or not, that's also interesting.

The last thing, and I'm curious what Mike sees about this, the other, the other really

interesting trade this morning, the one that I think it may be the most interesting is,

is totally rational, by the way, makes total sense is gold up, silver down, I think it

makes complete sense because silver is a risk asset, right?

You know, it's tied to the global economy.

It's tied to, as you said, it's solar reviews.

It's also tied to top of Hawk missiles, but they don't need as much silver in those drones,

which are what we're really using, and a fascinating, you know, story about, you know,

how we've managed to reverse engineer drone technology and get it out in the field.

The fact that silver, and by the way, it's still at 92, so it's hardly exactly falling,

but gold is, is, is pushing 54 again.

And that's basically gold is monetary value, silver as, as risk asset, and so you're

seeing silver trading more with the NASDAQ.

That actually makes a huge amount of sense.

Uh, it's, it, one day does not make a trend, though, but I'm curious what you think about

that Mike.

Yeah, I think you're spot on, it's a key thing that always happens, anytime you get

a spike in stock market volatility, gold always outperforms almost anything, particularly

um, leverage gold silver, but I think it's a smart to go there because I'm seeing potential

peaks in all these metals on this event now, and let's put their, it's in context.

When we had rushes, um, and so in President Zee and President Putin created their unlimited

friendship four years ago, they, um, and then the war started in Ukraine, it was supposed

to last two weeks, been four, four years, Mr. Trump proved in Venezuela.

If you want to take out a government like he can do it in a couple hours.

So that's kind of a shocker.

So since then, what's happened?

That was the bid for gold, but it took three years, remember, it stuck below 2000 forever

until 24.

But what's happened since is now they've lost Syria, they've lost Venezuela, they've lost

Iran is potentially toast and this Iran thing, this is almost a 50 year event.

Those of us who remember the, you know, the revolution in 1979, this is huge relief

on a global cage, put it potentially picking in, kicking in by end of this week, if Iran

is no longer able to last shot with missiles, and if the U.S. military doesn't stop that

or be able to control that shame on them, because they've had 40 years of war gaming for

this.

For me, this is part of that geopolitical bid for gold, getting poof, it's gone, it's

not going to be necessary anymore.

And the problem is it's priced in, the last thing you want to buy on this type of rally

is a gold rally, because it's like, thank you, it's already done the rally, and if you

still got a few longs, it's supposed to be lightening up.

My point is, I think what's happening in here is one of the dust settles, which we know

will, the U.S. should be able to suppress this situation quickly.

I mean, if they can't, they shouldn't have gone in.

And we know we've obviously been prepared for this forever, but so to me, this is part

of that peak, and like you have to expect something really bad for, you know, crude to stay

above 72 in Brant, and WTI, and right now it's 79 in Brant.

So I'm, I'm looking at this is, see all the dust settles, but what I'm really worried

about is this might be the trigger for all that volatility and precious metals and the

collapsing cryptos to trickle down to the stock market.

See, I look at it the opposite, and I'll tell you why, well, first of all, I don't look

at the opposite on gold.

I actually kind of agree with you there.

I think that we're at its equilibrium price.

I do think that the reason for the bid for gold isn't geopolitical, because it's not

come, the bid for gold, the early bid for gold came from outside of the G7, and those countries

aren't changing their gold, their gold accumulation, that's not going to happen.

I think that the US use of sanctions, et cetera, those are the, we're not going back

from that.

So I don't think it's nearly as dire as you think, but yes, I mean, it feels top right

now in the, in the short term, couldn't it run to 5,500 as I said before, yeah, can, you

know, kind of go a little above that, because markets always over correct, yeah, okay.

But let's not talk about gold for a heartbeat.

Let's talk about what is the market ignoring as a potential, and markets do this all the

time.

The one, one of the interesting things is when things, when people are unhappy, and things

are bad, people rarely price in the good tail events.

People always want to try to price in the negative tail events.

People always do.

So you have people will buy, put insurance, but no one buys insurance against world peace,

right?

Now, they just don't do it.

And so what does that mean?

Well, if you're an investor, you want to understand what the, the, the ultimately largest

potential left tail, you know, good tail, whatever you want to call it event is, it's

no longer having Iran as the world's largest state sponsor of terror.

And I'm not, and by the way, this is one of those rare occasions, because when we talk

about markets, we, we talk about, you know, what we think in terms of our favorite asset

prices, but the, the peace dividend would be absolutely massive at a time when we really

need it, given what's going on with AI.

But it is, it is not priced at you.

People do not understand what the, you know, the amount of, of economic breakage, the

amount of, the amount of economic drain, having Iran stirring up trouble throughout the

GCC.

Talk to people in Dubai, of course, before this, now they're, they're yelling it.

But the entire Gulf as a global hub of economic activity is restrained by political and geopolitical

risk.

That goes away.

Those regions will go absolutely batch at crazy.

The demand side of the equation becomes huge.

The amount of military spending is not going to decrease in the short run, it just isn't,

because we're, we're literally spending enormous amounts of money.

I mean, the entire increase probably in the defense budget that Trump has put in is probably

getting going to armaments that are being used.

So it's not like that's going to go anywhere.

So you know, in terms of fiscal, the fiscal impetus is not going to decrease.

You have rebuilding.

You have all sorts of things that are going to go on.

But the truth is, it's a massive piece dividend.

And you know, in terms of, you know, drain on economies and productive use, et cetera.

And markets are absolutely not pricing that in.

Now is it likely?

You know, I'm not geopolitical strategist.

I'm not an expert.

I've been reading lots of experts.

I, as a result, I would kind of, I had to pull a number out of my ass.

I would say somewhere in the, the 10 to 20 percent range for that kind of Goldilocks

scenario where Iran ends up with civilian elections, whether it's under Pallavi in the

interim or not.

And we don't want to delve into the details here as that's not this show.

But that scenario where there is no, where, where the, that particular side of the global

war against terror can end is a incredibly big deal.

And people don't understand, does it mean the lower enterer ends, by the way?

Because, I mean, as crazy as it is to see ISIS literally telling their fighters to help

Israel against Iran because they see the opportunity to take out their enemies, that should

warn you that that terror doesn't stop just because, you know, one, probably what the

major provocateur ends, but it is a very big deal.

And so there's a lot of cross currents here.

And the reason the markets are, the reason I said Scott, you know, you had a post this

week and you, you quote, posted someone who talked about today being the biggest blood

bath since 87.

And, you know, every time I hear that, I basically said this may be the dumbest post I've ever

seen.

And you, because look, the worst thing that could possibly happen is something we won't

know today, which is that this drags on for months.

The most likely scenario for this and it is the most likely scenario is within days Iran's

ability to act as a coherent military power is gone.

And you have splintered groups with access to portable missiles firing from random locations

and we're playing whack-a-mole, you know, against them.

And the real question that we won't know for probably weeks is will a, is there, it will

enough of the IRGC commanders and sub commanders and sub, sub commanders effectively lay down

their arms and submit to a civilian authority to where they can actually have a government.

Because right, because what it, what it, what it will start with is what you were saying

over the weekends, God, is, will this be warlord central with, you know, with anarchy?

The likelihood of Iran surviving in its current form as a theocracy with a top down, theocracy

with top down control and authoritarian control over their military is close to zero.

I don't want to repeat that.

I mean, close to zero because that is literally what we're not going to allow.

It would, it could reestablish itself months from now, years from now, but it's not going

to happen.

Well, there's no way.

Mike is right.

There's no way in hell we're leaving.

But the immediate economic impact is going to come out of the strait of her moves.

So that's the duck.

But understand, control and, and, you know, can I make one more point, James, because

I just want to make just this complete because then I'm done.

The point that that you just made and what I'm saying is one small battalion, one truck,

you know, kind of on the road with one set of commanders with the right set of missiles

could close the strait of her moves, even if it is not Iranian government policy and

what people don't understand the economic risk.

And why, by the way, Mike's right that's temporary is it doesn't mean that top down,

but bottom up, somebody could decide to go ahead and, and fire at all the ships that

are there and try to, and try to close the straits.

Right.

That's, that's, that's the bigger risk.

Okay.

Now I'm done.

I'm sorry.

Well, that's exactly right.

And that's, and that's the issue right there is that short-term economically, that's,

that's what we're staring at.

So how much is it, how much impact do we have there?

And then because of that, you know, how much is it damaged, not that we have good relations

with China right now, but how much is it damaged the, you know, any of, of the talks that

are going on there, you know, how, how much is it, how much impact does it have?

So that's, that's another issue.

It's hard to tell.

It's, and we're, we're going to be obviously watching closely, but you're, you're watching

oil move up and down, like you said, that there's, you know, the, between the, the Middle

Eastern oil and the light sweet that comes out of here, they're just completely different

products.

We can't, we don't even, we, we don't even refine our own oil.

So that's great that we have a ton of oil production, we don't have the refineries

to do it.

And it's another conversation of why we can't get those built.

But, you know, it's, that, that's, that's one of the, the problems we have here.

And so, but you're watching the markets try to game all of that out and you, and I fully

agree.

That's why silver's down because it's, it's basically a risk asset, you know, and

it also ran so hard because it was one of the, it was one of those assets that investors,

you know, they pivoted to when, when Bitcoin started rolling over because they thought,

ah, that's it.

Bitcoin's, Bitcoin's done on this run.

I need something else that's going to be running hard and, and silver's got all of the,

you know, AI and, and EV narrative and we're going to, we're going to take that up and

that's going to be the next thing, you know, it's not like it was GameStop because it

does actually have a, you know, obviously it's got tremendous value and, you know, but,

but it's just, this is, that you're watching traders move from one risk asset to another,

try to figure out where they can actually make money.

And the meantime, they are concerned about inflation or you wouldn't be seeing what's

happening in the 10 year, completely pivot from, from, ah, you know, falling below or

getting driven below 4% yield and then now popping right back over it on Monday morning.

Yeah, I think we should just give the broad strokes on the oil situation as it is, just

so people know I, like that article said, Bloomberg thinks that the worst situation can

go to 100 native barrel just really interesting here because Goldman did estimate specifically

if you guys just want to look what each potential event would mean for the price of oil.

And I think that that, that's relatively interesting.

For example, $15 for a full one month closure, et cetera.

But also, I mean, people should know that Iran has been firing off missiles in basically

every direction and it's not like they're just hitting Israel or United States interests.

I mean, this is Saudi Arabia's aramco, right?

So clearly they're targeting things to destroy oil infrastructure in some way, shape or

form.

I mean, you can see that people bailing from that facility.

And I don't know, I don't know about that, if that really came out of Al Jazeera.

We also have to be really careful of something to caution people is that I've already seen

a few AI videos that are just not true about hotels or whatever hit out in, in, in resort

areas.

And it's just, yeah, in Dubai and whatever it says, I, you just got to be careful in people

just of what the source is.

And the hyperbole, right?

I mean, the U has reached a panic moment as not all member states have sufficient energy

reserves.

A leading energy analyst, it's just one analyst, as the EU is likely to increase energy

imports from Russia, which many people pointing to could be sort of a secondary, negative

effect that would not have necessarily been anticipated.

I think the bottom line is that market hate uncertainty and we are in the equal uncertainty

right now with oil.

I mean, I think that maybe is the kind of finish of there.

I mean, Mike, do you think that that's accurate?

This is the initial stage, but look how significant this is, James, you mentioned President Trent

meeting with President Z pretty soon in China.

Just imagine his upper hand now, I'm kind of got sick of a leader in the South American

Venezuelan who was pushing back in America, but like, poof, he's gone, Cuba, we've already

worn their leadership, poof, you're going to be next, Iran's, or their leadership's

gone, okay, poof, U.S. has kind of got pissed off, said you're done, I mean, this is a huge

upper hand.

There's only one country in a world that can do this and they're doing it.

I mean, it's so much so that even though you're even though Europe and UK want nothing

to do with this, Canada wants nothing to do with this, they have actually, they have absolutely

it.

I love that.

They say it, but then they want open season to be able to trade the U.S. and provide

that.

Thank you.

You're welcome very much.

But Canada, Canada actually supported me, I was surprised, I mean, I mean, Karney came

out with a statement basically saying, you know, saying, you're a Trump good job, let's

let's let's what's worked together, right?

You know, which, which suddenly, but look, the geopolitics here for those who are fighting

playing along at home should understand there's two huge effects.

Z does not, look, we're not taking out Z. We have no interest in it.

It's, this is a, this is far more of a strategic don't fuck with us in Taiwan deal.

That, that, that's what this is about as far as China is concerned.

And you know what, that is relevant and that, and that is a large part of what we're doing.

This is deterrence.

As far as Putin is concerned, there is a very real chance that this leads to peace.

In fact, if you noticed, if you noticed the tone of what Putin has been saying and doing,

and you notice what Zelensky has been saying and doing over the weekend, this is a gun pointed

Putin's head, quite literally, and at the same time, it's not like, you know, it's not

like Zelensky hasn't been looking at this saying, okay, look, you know, he's basically praising

the action and talking about it, right?

Well, here's a thing, geopolitically, Dave, this is something that's really important

and, and then to, I'm going to tell you up here, but in Trump's first term, everything

he said seemed to just be hyperbolic.

Like he just, there's threat after threat after threat and people are like, well, he's crazy.

We don't know if he would do anything.

Well, now you know, now you know that the threats are not hyperbolic, he's, he, he will act,

and he's got, you know, he's got the, he's got the Department of Defense aligned in a way

that he can do it now.

This first term, he couldn't do it because he didn't, he didn't put people in place that

he actually was aligned with.

But now he's got people aligned with him that are, are ready to do exactly what he's

saying he wants to do and figure out ways to do it rather than saying we can't do that

and just move on to the next thing.

And that's what's got everybody on notice, President Xi, President, you know, Putin, you know,

Castro, they're all on notice.

Yeah, I mean, he said he sees a world where, you know, we take control of Cuba.

Look, it was, we all kind of left.

They did two things when he, in the first, in the first month of the term that we laughed

about, calling the Gulf of Mexico, turning it into the Gulf of America and changing the

Department of Defense back to its original name, the Department of War.

And it is exceedingly obvious that neither one of those was irrelevant.

They were very responsible.

I missed.

I didn't really think that it mattered.

Well, no, it matters.

It's like, okay, if we're going to have this capability, we're going to use this capability

and we're going to try to be a force for what we believe to be good, whether you agree

with it or not, it doesn't matter, right?

You know, at this point, you know, you could, we could talk about regime change.

Look, I have been, I have been so outspoken on against the notion of foreign interventions

for regime change most of my life.

I thought the original Gulf War in Iraq was literally the single dumbest thing that, that

the United States government has ever done destabilizing a region.

Now, if you want to know why I thought it was a dumbest, it was because it, it, Iraq

was the counterweight to Iran.

So, you know, this is different, and I keep saying the Department of Terrorism is the

problem.

Right.

Right.

The issue here is the single most destabilizing wild card.

There were two wild cards in this world.

One, Trump resolved through diplomacy and one is resolving through violence.

diplomacy was North Korea.

Now, is it resolved?

No.

But have you heard of peep out of them, you know, no, and you won't, for a very good reason.

Right.

You know, if you think about those are the wild cards, the North Korea has nuclear bombs.

Iran, there is no way they can have it.

Anyone, no one, everyone in America ignores.

Death to America was not just a slogan that they, you know, they're not the selling cereal

boxes.

Literally, that's what they believe.

You don't give somebody who has that opportunity, who has that as their mantra, the power to

it to actually do it.

And that's what's going on.

I mean, this is going back a long time, but you have to be old, Scott, you're probably

not old enough.

Mike and James, you do remember, remember in the 80s, Iran was getting closer nuclear weapons,

what happened?

Well, Israel obviously with their help went in and destroyed the plants, preemptive strike

boom done.

Right.

You know, they didn't take out the rest of the military because there wasn't, you know,

the threat was there.

There's also something else in that, in this point, back to that and back to Benghazi during,

when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, the difference is, if you're going to storm

our embassies now, we are going to defend ourselves, you know, back in the East, we're,

we're clueless.

We're like, oh, well, we didn't have enough Marines or enough firepower to defend the

embassy.

Now we do, you know, that's obviously become abundantly clear, and that's a difference

to it.

Different stance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, that's true.

So we're going to come up next and say death, that, go ahead.

No, I'm just going to come up next and say death to America.

I mean, this, this is a paradigm shift on a global stage and there's not too many countries

on the plant that are favorable to Iran, but now they're realizing, okay, this, this

marks a major shift in geopolitical trend, which to me is, I don't want to hold goal

in this environment.

It's going safe now that, that access that included Iran, Venezuela, and South, and North

Korea is crumbling and it's just, and we'll see that's quite in the week.

I can't see how the US military cannot render Iran defenseless on offensive, but they can't

shame on them.

This is, you know, they've had 40 years for this.

So now, remember, remember, Mike, it's not about that, Iran as a functioning unified

command and control entity is already gone.

It's already done.

Gone.

Iran having, however, massive amounts of weaponry and people disparate, you know, with

individual ability to fire weapons based on what they think the individual commanders can

do and whatever, that, that, that looks a country of, what, 90 million people.

This is not small, overlay the map of Iran over the United States.

It is not small.

I mean, it takes, this isn't Gaza.

This isn't, you know, this isn't a, you know, a war in, in, in, that you can measure

in single digit or double digit miles, you know, this is, this is a huge country.

So it's, that's why they're warning you.

This is going to be, in statistics, we call this a fat tail, meaning that the, the initial

thing happens and, and you, you crippled their command and control.

And now you have, and now you have to go after the rest of it, unless the people start

laying down their arms.

Yeah.

What happened in there?

Yeah.

I want to start back to our conversation about Venezuela and just to clarify my point, David,

because, you know, you're not kind of debated about this a bit.

I think you can both be excited that Kamani is gone and the potential that that government

will be gone and that, that evil will be gone, but also be skeptical of the United States

right or reason for going in to do it.

And I'm sorry, I'm glad he's gone, much like I was glad Maduro's gone, but the United

States leaving a power vacuum has notoriously, notoriously been bad long term for those

regions, even if you replace someone evil, because we don't have a plan and we're terrible

at nation building.

That's a, and b, I'm sorry, when I see last year in June, the White House saying, all

of Iran's nuclear capabilities have been destroyed, anything else is fake news as an official

statement.

And then we start hearing, they're a week away, they're a month away, which we've been

hearing for decades, literally, I am not comfortable going to war on false pretenses,

even if I agree with the outcome of that war.

And so I, and I do not think you monitor any different, I know you do.

I don't think it's different.

I think it's different to people who are more personally close to, you know, Israel

or Jewish and all those things make perfect sense.

But I think if you zoom out and look at it in a vacuum, it's very similar to previous

things.

And then you've got Trump announcing that, well, all of the people that he had lined up

and thought could be successors, well, they were killed too, oops.

So, you know, it's, look, separate space, you go into depth, from a macro point of view,

I think that people need to understand one thing, which is the messiness that you're

talking about is going to drag on, we're not going to have answers to this, we'll be

talking about this for months.

As long as we're going to be talking about the messiness and the power of vacuum and

what will actually happen.

If anything, other than that happened, i.e., Palavi comes back and shepherds and is good

to his word.

And by the way, for those who don't know, Mario did an amazingly detailed interview with

Palavi last summer, which was a great interview and he talked about a lot of things.

The most important takeaway from that meet, from that interview was that was, you know,

the son of the Shah basically said he has no interest in being a monarch, what he wants

to do is help them transition to a constitutional, you know, parliamentary or republic, whatever.

I mean, but basically an elected, you know, civilian run country, a secular civilian run

country.

That's his goal.

Now, if he's good to his word and if he has enough popular support and that happens,

that is a massively right tail, like, you know, good tail event.

Will that happen?

I look at how the hell do you do it?

But if it does what normally happens, as Scott says, we're stuck in an unknown, uncertain

environment for months, this is, we'll be talking about this next, there's no way in hell

that we're going to have this resolved and if we do have something resolved, you know,

Afghanistan and Iraq, you know, these things never end because there's no plan in place.

But I do want to pivot, I guess, off of Iran a bit because some of the other secondary

offense facts.

Now, odds of the Fed not cutting rates in March have surged to 95.7%.

I would love your opinions on this, if the fence secretary is listening, I think that

the Fed is within weeks of a nuclear weapon, so we should, um, I mean, where is, what

is the rate?

If you look at the curve, though, the curve is, is, I was on this before.

So let's go back to the full, the full curve.

So right now, the market is 50% rate cut within a year is basically three and a half.

And then flat, you know, effectively flat to two years, flat to three years, flat ish to

five years.

And it just starts taking back up to, you know, three, seven, nine, at the seven year to

get to that four.

So you have, you know, a yield curve that more or less, uh, is saying there'll be one or

two depending on whatever rate cuts and then, uh, two cuts by the end of, by the end of

this year, two.

Right.

And then nothing in the, in the out years is, is what the, what the, what the bond market

is saying.

Obviously, um, obviously that's not true because of the way steepening the yield curve.

Well, let me, let me, let me share this so you could see the fed, the fed futures off

of, um, off of Bloomberg.

And then you, you know, we can, we can talk about it, but, uh, you got this, there it

might, or Scott, you got this, I'm bringing it to, is it even showing?

Yeah.

No, I got it.

I just have.

All right.

So, so what you're, what you're seeing here is that you've got two cuts basically that

are priced in to the end of the year.

Okay.

So here's 12 online.

So it's 2.2 cuts.

But then you're saying the, the market is saying that the, you know, the, the, uh, ultimate

rate, uh, not the neutral rate.

What's the word I'm looking for here, guys?

Um, anyway, the, you know, you're, you're getting down to the, uh, the number of, the

number of cuts is 3.4 and your implied rate is 2.8.

So, you know, um, that's, and that's in 2028.

Of course, the market is always good at just kind of hedging itself, which gets to your

point, Dave.

And so where do we end up, you know, I mean, right now that's, this, this, this curve is

not, this is not a very dramatic, uh, curve.

And it means that the, the bed's going to be sitting on his hands quite a bit.

So the neutral rate, it's going to be a huge raise, close to the free percent is what

they're saying.

Right.

Anyway, effectively, because we're on a slower curve going through the end of the year and

that doesn't change the fact that people believe will get, but the word I was looking

for is a terminal rate.

By the way, right.

I could, yeah, I could point out the one key factor that'll get the fed the ease, get

rates to go down, yields to go down, um, risk passes Bitcoin, even crude oil to continue

to go down, because it's still bear markets is the upper and the range is, um, NASDAQ 180

A volatility at 15 percent, the lowest and eight years, just recovering a little bit.

That's my base case for this year.

It's still the lowest and eight years, volatility, stock market, volatility will go up with my

base case.

And I don't see a reason to end that all this volatility we're seeing in other markets,

still not pressuring that, still not trickling down the US stock market.

To me, that's the key thing is until that happens, until the stock market backs up, and there's

no reason for the fed to do any well, there is, there is, if we have, if we have a large

spike in unemployment, there is.

And then there's the other thing, here's the only thing is that last week you had, you

had, uh, you know, Jack Dorsey, the, those who don't know, who, who, who cut half of this

workforce at block, 4,000 employees, not a lot of employees in, you know, the scheme

of US American workforce, but it was a, it was a huge, huge red flag of, wow, he just

cut out half his workforce in one fell swoop.

Okay, that's number one.

Number two, here's another data point that some people have not heard, maybe, is that

I was on stage with Michael, uh, sailor and, uh, Fong Lee last week at the strategy conference.

And we were talking about AI and how much they use AI and how much middle management has

just been absolutely eliminated from the conversation because they just don't need them.

And now he's not out there just slashing workforce, but he's saying that he goes from, you

know, they, they have their heads of each department.

You've got your legal officer and you've got your financial officer, you've got your

marketing officer, you've got your investment officer and you've got those heads who were

there.

Okay, they, they have, they have a long, deep experience.

And then you've got the underlings that are around the, uh, you know, intern level or

entry level that understand how to prompt engineer.

And then you work with, they're going bypassing all those people going to prompt

engineer and talking to them, who's just a kid.

And then they come up with these ideas and these plans and these models.

And then they go to the head of that department and say, is this a good idea or not?

Because now you need the critical thinking, but the vacuum that is being created between

the two levels is astounding.

And that's the shot over the bow that we heard last week from Jack Dorsey that that's something

to me that is kind of a, it's, it's kind of a, a bell that's been wrong that we ought

to be watching unemployment closely now.

I mean, week to week to see where it's ticking through all of this AI innovation.

I have a Jeff, I mean, what is about, yeah, could I point there on that because what's

that right?

That is that what Jeff warned us about.

Yeah.

That's that blue scenario just wrapping technology's deflationary.

There are two, however, no wait, wait, what I don't think Jeff, well, yeah, so, but to talk

about the repeat them, just the, the rapidity of what's happening and how it's accelerating

with AI.

Like, I don't think anybody expected it to be like this.

We'll see what happens, you know, I'm, I'm somebody who believes that jobs will be, you

know, people will be displaced, not discarded, you know, and you'll have to adjust how you're

interacting with your profession.

But I don't think everybody's laid off, but this is, you know, this is just an interesting

moment here.

And that would be one of the two, you know, the Fed has two mandates and one of them is

full employment.

And if you start having a massive tick up and unemployment, you're going to see them

pivot pretty quickly, in my opinion, okay, this needs some a little bit of explanation.

But if you look to what happened to Dorsey's company, 4,000 people on them, you know, unemployed

stock screams higher, that is going to replicate itself throughout the entire industry.

The AI is going to make assets more valuable, writ large, now some will go out of business.

Yes, in any disruptive change, you know, there are losers.

But the aggregate will be more profitable capital, less profitable wages, which is exactly

the societal problem pathology that we're facing now at what so-called K-shape economy.

I mean, I'm going to get on basis today and I'm sure Robert, in front of a few other

people who've been screaming at this stuff and I will yell at each other in a bit, although

in truth, I agree with him.

The fact is that this basically is put in the United States into a crossroads.

And the crossroads is the tools to actually come out of this with a reasonable society

as re-industrialization, eliminating off-shoring.

By the way, this makes eliminating off-shoring and services really easy, because you don't

need to pay people in call centers in Bangalore, you don't need to take voters in Bangalore.

But you're seeing a prioritization being enforced of capital over labor.

It is deflationary in the consumer sense, it is deflationary in the expense sense.

It is not deflationary in a world where what are the policies the U.S. government needs

to do to stop pitchforks and knives coming out from the populist saying, oh my God, we're

all unemployed.

The answer is two things.

Same two things that this administration wants to do.

Deregulate and re-industrialize.

And re-industrialization requires lower rates.

It does.

And they're going to want to flood the market and what you end up with is something that

is politically unpopular, not with people, but with our octogenarian representatives and

senators, because what needs to happen is big companies are being, are going to get

eaten by smaller companies, because you don't need to be big anymore.

I mean, when you start talking about middle management, look, I don't know you guys, I mean,

Mike's working for Bloomberg.

They're a fairly big company.

I work for Citigroup.

And I can tell you that their workforce is useless, absolutely useless.

You have middle manager after middle manager after middle manager in a world where the

actual expert is now empowered.

The experts who rate the smart ones who raise themselves up are now empowered to do the

job that they didn't need, you know, they didn't have these tools.

Anybody who's using AI to any extent, and I'm not by any means an expert, but I use it

every day just for content creation.

I mean, you may have noticed I was on vacation last week.

And I wrote two or three articles that are as good as anything that I've written before.

Yes, they're my ideas, but AI makes it just so much easier.

If you think that having armies of analysts at, you know, just to get the analyst programs

of Goldman Sachs, you know, people who work 90, 90 hours a week to prepare spreadsheets

and prepare PowerPoints, that's all AI.

Now, does that mean that the analysts won't be involved?

Of course, they will be.

Just need less of them.

But if you go to the panel for the ones who become VPs and, you know, that's a training

program.

And by the way, by the way, what does that mean?

That means that the older you are, the more likely, the less likely that you're going

to continue to get raises because you can be replaced easier.

There's so many dynamics going on here that are going to make stocks better, but are

going to cause a lot more people to have to go out and create newer, smaller businesses.

And so if you don't have the, if you don't have the setup to do that from a regulatory

point of view, from a raising capital point of view, you're in trouble.

Now, if you think the cent doesn't know what I just said, then you're smoking something

because he absolutely does.

They get it.

And those are big trends.

We can go in one of two directions with a few minutes left.

A, we haven't talked about Bitcoin at all.

And there's obviously a discussion to be had, at least conjecture.

Do we believe that Bitcoin trades like a risk asset, depending on how this goes.

Or can it actually pull a silicon valley bank or a bank of Cyprus and be a, you know,

a store of value flight to safety and the other, you see a few percent today, it's

pretty interesting.

It's been, I mean, it's, it's, it's just the, the, the continued on, on correlation

to the regular markets is, it's, it's, it's pretty interesting.

Oh, no, I bet you, I think that all markets, pretty much all markets, except for oil,

oil probably will be, but for, depending on when you measure it from, but I think markets

are going to be green today.

I mean, I've been, I, that was my base case going into today.

But not last Monday, I agree.

No, I think it's going to be a green Monday.

I mean, we're only down half a percent on the S&P, uh, and on the NASDAQ right now,

right?

You know, and Bitcoin is slightly higher.

I mean, you know, whatever.

I look, I wrote my, I option thesis last week as an article for him.

You can all read it if you want.

I'm not going to speak to it.

But I think that that answers my view of your question.

Bitcoin right now is a hated asset in retail.

It is the speculators are not there.

And there have been people who are quietly buying.

And it's either going to die or it isn't going to die.

And if it isn't going to die, it's going to, it's going to move higher.

And I think that it may be a relief rally now.

You know, it's not anything, whatever.

I still think it grinds higher.

Uh, right.

And which is fine.

Like I think it's positive that it's just doing nothing, right?

But uh, it is absolutely today.

Well, but you know, people keep baking all these stupid statements like Iran's, uh,

like they'd mind a lot of Bitcoin.

So it's going to be a ton of supply and other people saying it's going to be a supply shock.

The answer is Bitcoin has been a lifeline to certain people in Iran.

That's true.

The government who knows what the government situation is.

We don't know.

We have no idea.

Uh, and so you know, to even comment on it makes no sense.

But you know, look, risk assets, I think are set up.

Uh, I'm contra, I might keep talking about a disaster.

I think that that risk assets are set up to have yet another good year.

Uh, I think Bitcoin and the risk assets that will perform the best are the ones who are companies that will benefit from AI as opposed to be disintermediated and things like Bitcoin, which are foundational for an ecosystem.

That's generally my belief.

Uh, I have thought this for a long time.

I still think it.

I think that, you know, we're still working through the bottoms of the technical damages and blah, blah, blah.

Uh, and all of the, the, the wash out from 1010, you know, but I thought it was worth because James, you wrote about Jane Street.

You're going to talk about Bitcoin, you know, I've been in an argument with Justin Beckler and a few other people online about this, uh, defending Madhogan because they got, they're all but hurt because Matt didn't diverge, didn't divulge that Jane Streets and authorized participant, which by the way is public record has been public record.

And anyone who knows anything about ETFs knows that pretty much if you're in an ETF that Jane Streets in there and authorized participant name it because they're literally 800 pound gorilla.

Uh, in a lot of, especially the non equity ETFs, you know, you know, this notion that, that they've had a systematic 10 o'clock, you know, suppression of Bitcoin price is completely absurd.

What is not absurd, not absurd is it is entirely possible.

And, and I don't know this, but entirely possible that there have been some large derivative contracts related selling of, of Bitcoin.

So you could do a spot, you could do a swap, you could do lots of things and we'll talk about this. I'll probably go on Bitcoin today and talk about it as to explain it to people.

But when those things are done. So large seller X says I have 50,000 Bitcoin. I'm going to sell over the next six months.

What they often do is structure this is a product which picks a period of time and takes a volume weighted average price during that period of time to strike the swap back.

And this goes on for days and days and days, weeks and weeks and weeks, months and months and months. It happens all the time.

When that is being done, who are the people who are actually selling? Well, it's the market makers because it's whoever is on the other side of the derivative. Now, I don't know if it's Jane Streets. I don't know if it's Citadel. I don't know if it's Morgan Stanley. It doesn't matter who it is.

It's there could be someone doing it. I used to sit on equity derivative. So I know this happens. That is so much more likely than some sophisticated manipulation plot that people are telegraphing for other people to frontrun.

I can't even describe it. I mean, I would assign the probability of it being manipulation at less than 1% the probability that there have been derivative trades at probably over 80 to 90% and that that's that's generally my statement. So you can

take that as you wish. I'm curious James. How do you react to that? Well, not yeah, exactly. And not and not with staying, you know, also the the difference here is

Bitcoin has has the ability to be levered 50 100 times in plain view. You know, you could see this on your monitor that there's a certain amount of perpetual leverage that's sitting on the books.

That's like that's that's something different for Wall Street up until today, you know, they may have contacts that we give them an idea that there was exposure from some big hedge funds that may have a certain amount of leverage.

They don't get they didn't get a run of orders to see exactly where they were exposed how much they were levered where the derivatives and swaps were like back in 1998 when long term capital management blew up.

We're all trying to figure out who it was, what they held, why it was happening and what we need to do about it next, whereas here it's like, well, you could see right on the screen, the leverages.

So if they want to slam it down and take advantage of people who are way over their ski tips and just, you know, wipe out all of that leverage and then swoop in and buy it below.

That's not illegal. It's sitting there for them to see it, you know, and do they have the power to do it? Of course they do because Dave said they described him in a simple way.

They're an 800 pound gorilla. Good luck fighting that, you know, I was at a $5 billion hedge fund back in 2000, 2002 if we wanted to move something we could and we weren't even on leverage.

So just imagine what guys like this can do, like the power that you have at one of these huge institutions is it's unwieldy at best.

So right, I mean, look, I wrote this, I wrote an article last week, specifically, I mean, I'll just throw the link up here for anyone who cares.

Although it is interesting, Dave, that that 9, 30, 10 o'clock sell off was, it did seem like clockwork, not every day.

Go ahead, Scott, because

love you say it's also when markets open. So, and we have

10 o'clock, yeah, right? So like whatever.

Why it happens that way is because when you're running a derivative contract or something and you want to have a baseline price, the open is very messy.

But what do they do?

And by the way, it the same is true into the close, but into the close doesn't work as well because Europe and Asia is already asleep, whereas when the US open happens,

there's still late night traders in Asia and Europe is is in the middle of their training day.

So picking a time period from like 10 to 11 or 10 to 10 30 is considered to be the most pristine time period from a cleanliness point of view.

And so that's why they do it that way. It's not nefarious. It's just it is what it is.

But but it is important to understand. I literally went through and described and wrote the the mechanics of how not saying it was James treat it all because I have no knowledge.

But the mechanics of how you can manipulate crypto markets that are five times more liquid on the on the perpetuals versus the stuff versus the spot because it's literally the same thing that was true in the Japanese stock market in the 90s, right?

You know, I was there. So I've seen this thing. And by the way, the Japanese regulators ignored it until a few years later and then they caught on it doesn't happen anymore.

And my point is that if Selig in the CFTC, you know, wants to stop this, he can.

He has the tools it is disposal. But anyway, I sent you the link Scott for that article, which explains it.

And if it is true, the James treat was actually doing this and it is possible given their history. I'm not saying they they aren't or aren't. I'm not.

I have no opinion because I don't know.

Somebody was involved in 1010. And if that was not a market manipulation attack, then I don't know. I then didn't fool me, you know, I would be beyond stunned if that was not orchestrated.

And the moral equivalent of an arsonist, trying to burn down a building, not knowing it had a big pile of thermite in the basement.

Mike, you got any final thoughts?

I know I know over time. But yeah.

Good point.

Yeah, a bit simple, sweet. Big coins, the tip of the risk assets ice iceberg, the whole crypto markets in the bear market with stock market volatility and eight year low respect. It's

sell rallies. Initial in the year, 94 is key level. Now I think it's got to prove me wrong. Stay above 74. I think rallies near there should be sold. I still think it's going to go much lower, particularly in the stock market volatility recolors. It's not and that's not it's not

time for crash. Dave is calling for, you know, 180 day volatility on the SV all markets just to go back to their norms and maybe catch up to precious metals a little bit. So still bear.

Big coin. Yeah.

Yeah, the other topic we didn't get to is going to be an anthropic open open AI and the United States government. If you guys missed it and

thropic basically said a few to the government, then Sam Altman went on TV that day and said, I defend anthropic. They're doing exactly the right thing. And then six hours later gave into the

United States government. So that was a good time for anybody who missed literally within six hours. I think Sam Altman went on TV, defended anthropic, and then wrote a long tweet right about how he's giving the United States government all of what they were asking for from anthropic and be just to say, I always say this in times of war. It's hard, sometimes rashly to want to talk about markets because there's a human element obviously and it's a horrifying thing that I think everybody rationally is against, but it is our job to show up and talk about what it means for markets.

But I don't want that to be minimizing of the human toll or the humanity that goes into all of it. Thank you, gentlemen. Listen, we're going to be talking about this for a while. This is going to be a main topic of this show and others for a very long time. I appreciate you showing up, especially James. I know you're tired. Mike Dave. Thank you, gentlemen. And we will see you guys all next week for the next macro Monday.