The Great Reset Is Underway: Trade War, Treasury Risk, & Bitcoin's Ascent

Michael Tanguma (00:01.001) Hey guys, hope you... Jackson Mikalic (00:01.087) It's the last trade. Yeah. No, we're, we're live. It's the last trade. We have five of us here for the podcast today. We also have some landscapers that are joining the podcast as well. So apologies if you hear that a bit in the background, but it's the typical lineup. I feel like, you know, Tim, you're kind of old news. You're not that exciting anymore. Michael. Yeah. Your, days are long gone and Brian. Well, I still like Brian, of course. He always brings the house view. Michael Tanguma (00:04.703) We're live. Brian Cubellis (00:05.756) We're live. Five heads. Jackson Mikalic (00:28.649) But the special guest today is Peruvian Bull, PB. Welcome back to the show, man. It's nice to see you. How are you? Peruvian Bull (00:35.451) I'm doing really well, thanks for having me on again. It's exciting to have you guys as the first podcast after I got back from this trip. And there's a lot to talk about right when I got back. Brian Cubellis (00:46.13) And nothing's really happening. The markets are pretty calm. Peruvian Bull (00:47.611) Pretty boring, right? been a boring week. Michael Tanguma (00:51.005) Was it like PB's roundtrip to his portfolio from the flight from like Asia Pacific back to the States? What was the thing they showed like from Thursday you were up like 1 %? It was like some time period. Peruvian Bull (01:03.469) Yeah, I saw that. was like, if you had like, if you had like frozen time right before the terrorist to now, it's just like a complete just chaos and then just back up to where we were before. Minus like a tenth of a percent. Michael Tanguma (01:17.397) Before jumping into this stuff, is wild to see, before we were recording, was talking to Tim about... Being one of the hardest working men in Bitcoin, every time I open up Twitter, he's in a different big city, just wearing the tie, selling the dream of Bitcoin. And you think about just three years ago, let alone six, PBN Japan, what's going on with MetaPlanet, Paris, London, Latin America, like this thing is truly taking over and effecting, like intertwining with global finance at the highest levels. Peruvian Bull (01:52.057) Yeah, I mean, these are these are things that are unimaginable, right? Just like what you said, like five years ago and so funny because like I see people on Twitter all the time, doom posting about, you know, Bitcoin and saying that there's no adoption, there's no, you know, real use case. I'm like, guys, like five years ago, there were basically no public companies other than exchanges who had any Bitcoin whatsoever. There is no nation state ever talking about owning this on, you know, the Treasury level. There were no discussions of issuing debt to buy Bitcoin. Japan was completely un-Bitcoinized and had no idea about Bitcoin adoption or the use case or the value of this asset. And we're now sitting in situation where all of those things have changed. And yet these people will still claim that we're still living in like 2013 style Bitcoin adoption. Brian Cubellis (02:43.858) People like the Doom post. gets engagement for sure. But yeah, I totally agree, PB. I was saying earlier this week to the guys, it's hard to believe this, but this is by far and away the most bullish I've ever been on Bitcoin. Everything else that's happening outside of Bitcoin is just strengthening the value prop of a credibly neutral finite asset. And it's just like the pieces are falling into place. And most people are still totally unaware. very smart, sophisticated allocators are getting there as are literal nation states. Michael Tanguma (03:16.213) you Yeah, I I accidentally jumped the gun and our gracious host Jackson is ready to kick it off. And by the way, Jackson, think is a favorite of the show. I talked to a lot of clients that come in and they just reference Jackson. Well, I don't know if I share this with you, Brian, but they like his the positive takes and they want him to talk more. But then they also enjoy his youthful leftist liberal takes. Jackson Mikalic (03:19.571) Yeah. Brian Cubellis (03:32.242) It's the hair. It's gotta be the hair. Michael Tanguma (03:44.469) PB, you weren't on one of the pods where Jackson referenced that we should do UBI with Bitcoin. And we had to walk him through why that wouldn't work. And this particular person was like, you know, it was really nice though. You could see him go through how dumb a take that was. Brian Cubellis (03:49.362) You Peruvian Bull (03:50.567) my gosh. Peruvian Bull (04:01.135) Go ahead. Jackson Mikalic (04:03.271) I'm here to redeem myself. Thank you for all my gracious supporters. Yeah, I mean, I have some bad takes. I'll own up to it. But I guess I have some good takes too. So I appreciate some people that are here to support the show. So yeah, let's formally kick things off here today. As we do always, we got to just take a look at the price because where else would you start? mean, this is, it's actually worse. It's way worse than I would have ever expected because Brian Cubellis (04:29.882) Yeah, was really hoping, you we've been talking the past few weeks, we've been stuck in the 80s, and then, you know, last week I think we were cheering on the potential for being back in the 90s, and then we're back in the 70s. So, here we are. Jackson Mikalic (04:42.909) Yeah, no, so this is ugly to look at. We don't need to look at it for any longer, but I just want to at least acknowledge where we are today at 79K and you can kind of see here over the course of the week. It's been extremely volatile, not only in Bitcoin, but also in broader markets. So I think that's the obvious place to start. was, this was an easy episode to prep for because PB makes it easy. He's just got a wealth of knowledge. But there was also a lot of things that happened over the course of the past week. And so I was joking. It's like, man, I don't even know what to talk about this week. Nothing happened. But in reality, we recorded, think, last Wednesday. And so now we're recording Thursday, April 10th. So maybe just to recap things really quick for the audience and for ourselves. So April 2nd, last week, Donald Trump proclaimed Liberation Day. And so that was really initiating significant changes to U.S. trade policy that was really aimed at addressing trade imbalances and then also bolstering domestic manufacturing. So there's more and more chatter within the administration now talking about the hollowing out of U.S. manufacturing and just the massive trade deficits the country's been running for quite some time now. So there was I believe a universal tariff and if I get anything wrong please correct me but there was a universal tariff that was announced as like a baseline 10 percent tariff on all imported goods that were that was introduced on the 5th of April. And then there was also reciprocal tariffs. So that was targeting about 90 nations with rates varying based on existing trade imbalances. I think that's how they positioned it. And so Chinese imports faced a total tariff was 104 percent. It may even be higher now, maybe a 125. And then there were some like 20 percent, 25 percent, 30 percent, kind of all around the board. So initially, there's all these reciprocal tariffs were announced and the reaction from the markets was pretty catastrophic. I think in the next trading day wiped out like five or six percent. So, yeah, just so everyone knows, Bitcoin is not the only thing that actually has downside volatility. I don't think people know that. And then, so, in a matter of two or three more days, I think we saw maybe close to 15 % correction, certainly over 10 % correction, which was the largest, I believe the largest two-day decline since 1950 was Thursday and Friday of last week. So, pretty catastrophic things happening in the markets, but we're all long-term investors here, so I wasn't worried about it. Jackson Mikalic (07:08.743) And I wasn't worried as well because we're going to have PB tell us, what do you think of just the past week in markets? What, are the most, before even drilling into the details, what's like your 30,000 foot summary of what's happened? And, let's just start there. How about that? Peruvian Bull (07:25.819) Well, I would just say, know, it's like I wrote in that piece, you know, I have to have a couple glasses of wine with dinner to digest everything that has happened because this was like, you know, when we joke about the meme of roller coaster markets, where markets emotionally react to events and then move down and then move up and then move back down, this was essentially that entire... that entire roller coaster being played out in real time within the space of a week. Because not only do we have that, obviously the initial sell off that you mentioned on Thursday and Friday, credit spreads start to blow out, the 10 year, two year spread starts to un-invert at the fastest pace since before COVID. But we also had, a lot of people missed this, we had a tweet on Monday, erroneously saying that the tariffs were over and then markets ripped upwards. The Dow was up hundreds of points. in like 30 minutes after that tweet, just by an anonymous faceless account on Twitter. And then the White House came out and said that that was wrong. And then the markets continued to sell off. And then on Wednesday, the White House said, actually, they were right. There is a 90 day pause. And you guys can, you don't have to worry because most of these things aren't going to be implemented yet. And then markets rallied again. And so we've had this. You know, we've had this just escalating trade war, I guess, with the rest of the world, but particularly with China for the past two months. We started with that, obviously, that 10 % initial tariff in February, China retaliated. Then we escalated on certain goods, you know, to 25, 34 % and then threatened to take it all away, like you said, to 104%. And the 104 % the reason that they're using the four numbers and China also said that too. They said, Obviously they've matched us tit for tat with their 34 % tariff and then they escalated to 84%. Is that four and eight, for example, are numbers in the Chinese numerology system that are significant. They're actually lucky numbers. So it's kind of like a twist of fate for them to say like, screw you guys, we'll still be good. We'll still be lucky even if you put tariffs on us. But this escalating trade war that we've seen has been... Peruvian Bull (09:39.213) ironic because again, it's like, it's almost as if it's a game of chicken and Trump is playing it as if he doesn't even want to do it really, he just wants to see where the other side is in the bargaining table and then try to come to come to come to agreement. But it's something that, you know, I don't think we've seen, at least in recent history, in terms of trade and economic policy. And it's just jarring to have markets move like this, just based on volatile economic policy. Brian Cubellis (10:10.502) Yeah, the whipsaw has been fascinating to watch. also just like, what's been interesting to me is the commentary around the strategy itself, like whether this is 5D chess or if it's completely reckless and there's not really a plan. I sort of land in the camp of like, it's somewhere between those two extremes. Like, I don't think it's like this perfectly crafted 5D chess plan, but I also don't think it's just like willy-nilly doing whatever, you know, Trump feels on the next morning. Michael Tanguma (10:14.933) Thank Brian Cubellis (10:39.75) I think there's some semblance of a plan. And that's really to your point is like to bring people to the negotiating table in some sense and try to sort of sort out who the dissenters are in terms of like this reordering of trade policy in general. like zooming out the bigger picture to me is not even like whether it's super strategic or reckless or it's not even really about tariffs to me. It's like there is sort of a broader reordering that is happening at the economic and monetary level and One clip that resurfaced this week, which I found fascinating was so this is pre-election Scott Bessent was being interviewed and he was basically talking about, know, Bretton Woods monetary theory and Him being like a student of monetary theory, you know, I think he's even self-proclaimed himself to be a gold bug from his Wall Street days Michael Tanguma (11:07.861) Cheers. Michael Tanguma (11:13.127) Thank you. Brian Cubellis (11:34.738) And he was basically saying like, I want to be part of the next global reordering. And so I think that's literally just what we're watching play out right now. And so like, if you're zooming out and sort of looking through all the noise of, of, you know, tariffs, escalating reversals, all of this, it's like, there's, there's something deeper going on here where, you know, if we just rewind a month or so ago, the U S created a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Like that seems to be, people just forgot about that, but that happened. And then you have Scott Bissett, who seems to appreciate sound money, stores of value. In another interview this past week, he unprompted brought up Bitcoin when they were talking about gold, they were talking about the recent price rally and it being exempt from tariffs. And he just out of the blue brought up Bitcoin as an emerging store of value. So this guy understands sound money and I think he's positioning us in a place in the broader administration too. I think it's sort of resetting things from a trade perspective while also embracing stable coins, trying to spread dollar dominance even further, plug somewhat of a hole in terms of treasury demand with these stable coin issuers and then also embracing hard assets like gold, Bitcoin and minerals and the like. And so I think it's like... You kind of got to just zoom out and look at the bigger picture here. Like there's a grand reordering happening. And so that's, that's, that's been my takeaway from the past week. Jackson Mikalic (13:04.221) Yeah, I love that, Brian. PB, I'm curious to get your thoughts on that as well, just because if anyone is extremely well-researched in this group between the five of us on just monetary history and just economic reshuffling and changes to the monetary order, it's got to be you. And so what are your thoughts? Michael Tanguma (13:19.278) I want to go with the lame intake before PB comes with his expertise because there's a few Jackson Mikalic (13:27.197) Boo. Michael Tanguma (13:28.159) There's a few things I was on mute and I wanted to respond to Brian's. One is, is Trump not like just the ultimate bro and like what's happening here in the sense that like A, if what PB said around the one, the four and eights, like just goading. If you think about if the internet existed back in the seventies and eighties, how much they would have just been like doing deals in front of everyone to mess around. Like they're just like, they're the old school kind of, you know, Brian Cubellis (13:28.434) You Michael Tanguma (13:54.921) Like this is just what they've always done. They're just getting to do it in front of people. Part of the volatility that's been fun is just like, again, this is outside of our portfolios, because that's not fun, is just seen on Twitter, the reaction between crypto Twitter and then the volatility and TradFi. Because they're like, this is just another Sunday night and like all the stuff that happens with like bonds trading like altcoins. It's just, it's funny, but it also is the reality that a good friend Parker would say that Bitcoin trades short term stability for long term volatility for long term stability where the dollar trades short-term volatility for long-term or short-term stability for long-term volatility like they're they're just supposed and ultimately the volatility like energy always live somewhere they're just pushing it out and that's why you see these like things come about the other the other take though is on Brian referencing it's in the middle I don't think you can be in the middle here like you like that's an out for a lot of things when somebody says well what is it I think there's a lot of things that aren't like you know, on the mar- on each side of like they know exactly what they're doing, they don't know. It's like they're playing like some crazy games of chicken and unless you have a plan... Like I can't imagine they're doing any of this stuff and then that underpins what you know breaking the pound Besant what's happened for the past two years with the etfs getting individuals exposure to hard assets like bitcoin via that gold Onshoring bringing all this gold on before they like are like it started to you know Do all of this so I think that they actually know what they're doing now to say if it works or not like you know I don't know if anybody can be 100 playing a game of chicken because somebody else might just kill kill you or you might just have to kill yourself, Michael Tanguma (15:36.295) But I do think they know exactly what the plan is. And the last part is, what's been funny is I think they know what they're doing. And I think Trump is like the guy that they gave the... It's like they're all at a bar and the other guys are smarter, but Trump's the only one willing to drive drunk home. And they give him the keys. Brian Cubellis (15:53.603) Haha Michael Tanguma (15:54.997) And he's like, look, I'm driving and they finally had to like move him out of the front seat. And this was like them putting Lutnick, because Lutnick and then the other guy Navarro are also crazy. And they're like, hey, like, can you guys move on? Let like dad drive us home. He drank probably the most, but he kind of got his stuff together, has the experience. And that's where Bascent comes in to step in and Jamie Dimon and all this stuff. it feels like he just went haywire Trump in making the markets more volatile than they should have. But again, that was the lame intake. I have no idea what I'm talking about. Jackson Mikalic (16:23.731) Yeah, clearly. mean, that was good. Thanks, Michael. So point point being is you really like Donald Trump. You want it if he listens to the show, you want to take him out for a Big Mac Diet Coke. Yeah, sounds good. So back to PB one of the more important things. We were the left bell curve. We'll hear the right bell curve take now. So PB, what I was trying to get at was so you've studied all sorts of Brian Cubellis (16:33.01) Avid listener Jackson Mikalic (16:51.647) monetary history in many different countries. You've looked at how financial systems are constructed, not only the U S but abroad. And you were just in Japan for what? Two, three weeks filming a documentary there. So I'm curious as you studied Bretton Woods, the, you know, 1971 next Nixon, Goldshock Plaza court, all these different things that have happened in the monetary system over the past century. What do you make of, if you drill down a little bit deeper into what's happened with these trade wars, what do you make of it all? And does it tie into what Brian shared about his thoughts on more of a monetary reset? Peruvian Bull (17:26.959) Yeah, absolutely. you know, something I, an axiom analogy I would provide here is basically what Trump has sped run through in the last few weeks, or you could say just few months in general, is like essentially what the Bank of Japan has done in the last three years with their monetary policy of, you know, having, in same sense that the BOJ pinned rates at the zero bound and did basically yield You know yield curve control and QE infinity and complete financial repression over the entire japanese economy and banking system For like 30 years the us has had the open border, you know WTO You know infinite globalization trend for the last, you know a few decades and trump has been the first one to come in and shake it up and I think that trump's mistake was Not understanding how fragile our fiat system is right how? how our markets still live on this knife's edge of liquidity. And if you just tip things over the wrong way, things can very quickly start moving in the wrong direction, especially when we're in a period where, you know, the Fed is not doing QE, the reverse repo has been drawn down and there's not much more left in the tank in the TGA. And so like the alternate sources of liquidity are kind of depleted and there's just difficulty in sustaining a market rally continually without that source of additional liquidity. And I think Trump very quickly found out how severe this was. so, you know, as to whether his actions are, you know, some sort of 4D or 5D chess, or if it's just a reaction to, you know, the severity of this move and kind of a surprise. I mean, I'll leave that for other people to guess, but overall, I see this as very similar to the strategy that the BOJ did starting in 2023 and 2024 where you know, they'd had these decades of monetary repression. And then they just decided to flip the switch and started raising the bans on yield curve control. And then they started, you know, they ended yield, yield curve control together, then they started hiking rates and shocking the markets with emergency rate hikes. And just doing everything they can, the interventions, everything they can to basically scare the markets and to make them think, hey, like we've had this Peruvian Bull (19:46.349) stability, this low volatility in our policy itself for these last 30 years. Now we're going to do the inverse. Now we're going to have volatility and bring the actual change of policy back into markets. And that, again, it could be cope. It could be just us rationalizing their actions, but it does make sense because these players become so entrenched and so lopsided in their positions that, you know, the BOJ was catching them off sides. It was forcing carry traders to short, you know, short close their position, short cover. And it did strengthen the yen, at least temporarily. As to their credibility, it's damaged it significantly. And I think that the same is true of this Trump trade war. Doing this, you know, we're going to do a full board trade, you know, full blown trade war one week and then, just kidding. It's all a joke. We're pausing it all for 90 days. The next week is, is kind of insane to watch. But I think at this point, You're right, like Trump doesn't really care about what other people think. He's just trying to the game as it's being shown to him. clearly the markets are not ready for this kind of economic pain. Michael Tanguma (20:56.189) Are we gonna do like a breaking news that Trump tariffs on China now total 145 %? White House clarifies and Bitcoin's tanking now we're at 78k. It says. Jackson Mikalic (20:56.904) Yep. Brian Cubellis (21:02.556) Cool. Peruvian Bull (21:06.619) There we go. Reversal. Reversal. You know, it's funny. sorry. One last thing. So it's funny. I tweeted out this the other night, I got some traction and I said, like, what if Trump just decides for the next few weeks just to randomly announce tariffs and then cancel them the next day and just makes markets whipsaw? And like, that's the new policy. It's just let's just confuse everybody and freak everyone out for the next few weeks and just show how much of a, you know, Jackson Mikalic (21:07.827) What are we at? Brian Cubellis (21:08.07) PB1, go ahead, go ahead. Peruvian Bull (21:35.643) narrative dependent system we have now. Like, this is what it's come to. Brian Cubellis (21:40.282) Yeah, that's an interesting thought. My question was kind of related. It's like, do you put any credibility behind the notion that like the chaos itself is purposeful and there's like, you know, some desire to force the hand of the Fed and Powell to cut rates? Do you look into that at all? Peruvian Bull (22:02.551) Yeah. And that's, that's kind of what I was getting at with the BOJ's moves, right? Like the BOJ, again, this, this policy volatility is, is kind of crazy to see in real time and it causes confusion in markets and obvious, obviously loss of credibility. But the one thing it does do is it, it, reveals the players for who they are. It shows their, their hands, right? Because they're forced to play their hands and respond to what they think is going to happen. And so in the same way that Yen shorts had to cover You know, every time the BOJ shock hiked rates or every time they did the intervention, Trump is forcing these nations to, to really show which ones are willing to retaliate and escalate and which ones are more amenable and willing to come to the table. And clearly China's kind of single itself out as the one that is the most adamant about keeping their trade relationship with the U S the way it's been. don't want to have, you know, a higher, more expensive tariffs and they don't want to lose access to the US markets. And so now that they're losing it, they're kind of overplaying their hand and overreacting and pushing their own tariffs to try to stop us out of their market. But it was kind of laughable because I think the amount of goods we export to China is very, very low. So because they're just a net export of so many things. Jackson Mikalic (23:24.029) Yeah, I feel like there's two things that I keep coming back to. And the first is that Trump really campaigned on. Shaking things up in the economy and trying to help the middle class and support. An area of the United States demographics that just been crushed over the past two decades by monetary and fiscal policies. And so I do think that there there I think that Trump's administration is sticking to their word and their plan that they actually see the severity of the trade imbalances and what's happened in terms of the manufacturing base being hollowed out over the past 50 years or so. And so I do think that if anything, it's just kind of sticking to the plan and also going through with, it's kind of like the promises made, promises kept idea that This is what we talked a lot about on the campaign trail. And so we're going to try to reshuffle things here to be more favorable toward the people who've been crushed over the past few decades. And I also think that ties into, you know, looking for external sources of revenue and potentially looking to decrease other tax loads, you know, income tax on people that earn less than a certain amount. And so I think that's one thing just that I've been thinking about is it just seems like we're at this point now where things are really breaking just the wealth concentration in the country that is due mostly to financial engineering since the great financial crisis and just how all this money has flown to the people who are closest to it. And that's just obviously structurally unsound and something that if it's not course correct and who knows it could be potentially too late to course corrected but if it's not addressed. then it ultimately ends up in calamity of one sort of another. So I think that they're just proactively trying to do something and shake things up that's different than what's been done over the past couple of decades here. Michael Tanguma (25:18.825) me. Brian Cubellis (25:26.598) Yeah, mean, Bascent and others have been pretty explicit about it. Like we don't, we don't care about Wall Street. is everything we're doing is geared towards Main Street. And you could just call that rhetoric if you want. But I do think that you're, you're spot on Jackson. Like they wanted to do something different and change sort of what the trajectory has been for the past few decades. Michael Tanguma (25:47.381) Yeah, I mean, think this all goes back to what we wrote about or what Gromit's been talking about a lot of from just a national security perspective, we have to onshore and make things here. And so if that's the case, well, you have to figure out the trade balance to incentivize for things to be made here. And so this is all just part of the playbook that they plan when coming into office to restructure trade. And then ultimately there's the amount like the currency flows, which is going to be a big component. think like that's the next shoe to drop, which works in a lot of people's favor if the prices lower to be able to absorb capital especially gold and Bitcoin so I think this is just like all part of that process and then the China thing is just like the wild card Jackson Mikalic (26:31.261) Yeah, PB, I'm curious. One thing we talked about over the summer, I think it was on a Twitter spaces was the idea that a Bitcoin strategic reserve and just pro Bitcoin policy in the United States could be a tool to leapfrog adversarial countries that have been moving toward gold over the past decade or so and moving away from US treasuries. Do you think, you know, how has your thesis or thoughts changed over the past, call it nine months or so since we spoke? in the summer. Do you think that the Trump's administration's policies and actions towards supporting Bitcoin and wanting America to be the crypto capital of the world, do you think that that supports a thesis or not? Do think that these countries are already kind of too far ahead with what they've done with gold and moving to a more apolitical form of capital? Peruvian Bull (27:24.707) No, absolutely. think the thesis is still in play. And my view has always been, as the dollar is the global reserve currency and really the linchpin of the world's financial system, the Fed holds unique power as a central bank that no other central bank holds. I view almost all central banks as basically vassals of the Fed in some sense, because whenever there's a crisis, especially like a financial crisis globally, they all ask the Fed for swap lines. They all open up swaps to get dollars and to use dollars to fund their banks who are usually short on dollar obligations. And their move and their strategic way to, I guess, disentangle themselves from the dollar system has been slow and tedious and difficult. And in some ways, it's even counterproductive because you can't You can't get rid of dollar demand without also getting rid of dollar debt. And it's essentially impossible to get rid of dollar debt, obviously, in a system that is continually adding more and more dollar debt every single day. And so for these, for these entities, like the question is not, should we not use dollars? It's okay. If we're going to hold a reserve asset, what should the reserve asset be? And historically that was the 30 year treasury bond, right? And for 30 years that performed extremely well. under Volcker, Greenspan, Bernanke, rates kept lowering, bonds were performing well, inflation was low globally. So it was like a winning trade on all fronts and it made sense for these nations to recycle their dollar surpluses back into the US and specifically back into US treasuries and even long bonds, obviously. But the change we've seen in the last few years has been these nation states are selling their treasury portfolio, but it's basically exclusively on the long end. So they're not getting rid of their their bills, they're not getting rid of one year bills or two year notes or five year notes. What they're getting rid of really is the 10, 20 and 30 year bonds. And I think this will move down the yield curve as we get towards this more terminal debt situation and the sovereign debt crisis at least domestically starts to exacerbate. But. Peruvian Bull (29:41.903) These are the early warning signs, right? That something's wrong with the global monetary system. If these central banks are dumping their long-term years, treasury bonds and buying gold. But ultimately, like I've said on that space, the real differentiator is the difference between gold and Bitcoin as a reserve asset. Gold fails the intermediation test because it doesn't allow for easy, you know, easy settlement and transfer of value, right? If you want to... settle some trade balance between the UK and Canada, you actually have to physically ship the gold and have it guarded with, you know, the Canadian Royal Mounted Police or whatever, over the ocean to settle a trade balance. And it's like that's, we don't live in the 1800s anymore. That's insane to think of doing that in the 21st century. And Bitcoin is really the, you know, you could call it the, the, the, nuclear bomb that can hit the Death Star of this global financial system and really change the entire structure of the global monetary order overnight. And the Fed is the Fed in the US and the US Treasury by extension, obviously is are the people to do that, right? If you if you get the US on board, my thesis is that every other nation state will have a target on their back, right? If the US is issuing bonds and stacking Bitcoin, then if you're Japan, if you're China, if you're the UK, if you're Canada, if you're Germany, like this suddenly is no longer an option. Your US treasuries are now not only melting ice cubes, they're complete water and they're just flowing out the door and you have no option other than to start copying the US treasury or you'll be left behind in the dust. And so I think it's extremely bullish that the US has made so much advancement in the last. nine months, let's say, towards more Bitcoin adoption. And although the SBR obviously hasn't been implemented yet, it's still a fact that's even been talking about is something that's definitely turned the heads of world leaders. Michael Tanguma (31:46.547) Yeah, I think the one thing I would say on that is we probably end up with like bit gold bonds before pure bit bonds. It's kind of interesting that that narrative is coming. It's like the BPI stuff and Bitcoin is referencing it. I don't know if gold bugs aren't clever enough or whatever, like why that or maybe it's been talked about maybe for years. I think what PB referenced on the intermediary delivery and all the aspects of why Bitcoin is better and more valuable are true. But I think the notion of somebody going from no exposure to understanding Bitcoin in the lens of gold and then why it does that is like a multi-year process. And Save had a good podcast like years ago, referencing like what this would look like. And I think it ties into they wake up one day because they're net settling with different countries in gold and then you show up with a pallet of gold and there's a bunch of tungsten. wrapped in it. And then you're like, wait, what did I just do? Like, why do I have to assay this? And you naturally like start to progress through that. So I think it's a slower process than we're probably expecting. And part of that is putting some component of gold and Bitcoin in the treasury until you realize, well, wait, why am I even backing this with this gold thing? And that's what I've just been keying in on. Like, I personally hope I'm wrong. I hope like our bags pump faster and Bitcoin becomes a reserve currency. I mean, we all have calls and discussions with institutions and people in high finance. And they're just so far from here to like what we're describing about Bitcoin's properties that like it just feels it's gonna be a longer thread than what we're what we think Peruvian Bull (33:14.209) Absolutely. Yeah. And I, you know, I incorporate that into my thinking, right? I know that like, this is going to be a process. This is an, you know, complete reeducation and maybe Tim obviously would know more about this, a complete reeducation of like the financial professionals and a retooling of their, of their mental toolkit, right? They have to completely change how they think about assets, how they think about some money, how they think about storing wealth for the longterm, because again, for the last 30 years, this 30 year treasury bond was a safe investment and it just no longer is. Michael Tanguma (33:47.155) Yeah, it's a great call because on the other side of it on the retail and it's something we're just thinking about internally and like how do you form partnerships and take products to the market is historically the market was literally, you know, the 60 40 and everyone just assumed they like they made up the reasons I think somebody had a post about this. Like it's always narrative driven around the multiples around equities and they're eventually going to what you're describing is changing narrative away. All this stuff was overvalued and then going back to like what derives value and then you end up back at Golden. and then everyone's like, well now I need this in my portfolio. But when you think about the structure of a checking account all the way to your brokerage, it has no place for Bitcoin or gold. Right? Like it just doesn't have a spot in how the APIs are integrated or how they're custodied and how you're secure. So it's just a fundamentally different change in the landscape from sovereigns all the way down to individuals and how they protect their wealth. That's probably where we're going to be like, it's going to be changed over and there's going be people that are just refused to like adopt it. Jackson Mikalic (34:47.005) Yeah, there's two things I wanted to touch on PB time back into some of your previous points and you can decide which direction you want to go in first. And so you mentioned the aspect of liquidity and how crucial liquidity is to driving asset prices. So a lot of people have been talking about liquidity trending upward over the past couple of months. But to your point, QE hasn't picked up again yet. So I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are on global liquidity. What do you pay attention to on the global liquidity side? And what would you point people to to show that it is trending upward? And I guess what does that mean for the price of of Bitcoin and other assets. So that's one piece is just like liquidity. And then the second, you can figure out what you want to discuss first would be more so around bond yields. And maybe these are interconnected probably, but just with the long end of the curve, you mentioned sovereigns moving away from 30, 20 year bonds. So someone has to step in. I guess I know who that someone is, but what are your thoughts just on the bond market right now and where it goes? Peruvian Bull (35:50.683) Sure, I'll answer the liquidity question first because that's an interesting one. It's puzzle I've been trying to piece together for the last two or three years, setting macro, because if you look at, there's a really simple metric to check out called Fed balance sheet, or SPI divided by Fed balance sheet, and you see the metric, the ratio obviously climbing in the early 2000s and then crashing with the tech bubble, and then it's slowly climbing during 2008 in the lead up to 2000s. 2008 and then collapsing completely and then basically staying flat for the last, you know 16 years and that Essentially to me showed me the change in the monetary system where we went from fundamentals and at least you know moderately based Economic system and financial system to a completely liquidity driven one where the markets would rally just based on if the Fed was doing QE or not that day. And if they weren't, then the markets would fall. And expectations now became so warped that good news became bad and bad news became good, right? Because everything became dependent on the Fed's response. So if there's a bad jobs print, it's like, great, the Fed's gonna do more QE for longer. Let's rally markets. And then, there's a good jobs print or there's a good unemployment number. Well. then we need to pull back because the Fed might be tightening and the Fed might be allowing a taper. And so we live in this kind of upside down world where fundamentals are kind of disconnected now from markets. And the liquidity picture is complex because there's no single metric that I would say encompasses the entire liquidity picture, right? It's very, very difficult. You have to think about liquidity on the corporate side, on the banking side, on the retail side, on the government side. and then try to piece all that together. And all those pieces have moving parts and the data isn't always available minute to minute. I would say it's very difficult to piece together the entire picture, but we do have major puzzle pieces. And so some of the major puzzle pieces I look at are, for one is FedNet liquidity, which is just the Fed's balance sheet, minus TGA minus reverse repo. You can also add in foreign repo pool. Peruvian Bull (38:09.357) if you want in there as well as BTFP when it was active. For the global side, you do the same thing as the Fed Net liquidity, but you just add the balance sheets of the Bank of Japan, the ECB, the Bank of England and the People's Bank of China. And that metric, like you've mentioned, it's been basically slowly grinding upwards. But when I say like, you know, slowly grinding upwards, I mean that literally like it's basically been flat slash up a couple hundred billion for the last two years. And historically that essentially means it hasn't moved at all because usually it's moving upwards much faster than that. So globally, the liquidity picture has been pretty flat, which has meant that markets have had obviously not much more downside, but also at least from the central bank side, not enough overt support that would push them to like the 2021 mania highs. You know, in the US, we've seen markets continue to grind higher, but that's because of a multitude of factors that are separate from global liquidity. So, you you obviously have the carry trades, you obviously have portfolio rebalancing effects and just the buying power of Americans that continually auto buys ETFs, which pushes money into SPY and to, you know, the MAG 7 just continues to grind these stocks higher. And then obviously dollar milkshake effect of pulling all this capital globally into the US. Um, but the thing to look at, would say, especially on the shorter term would be something like, you know, cash assets at banks or reserve balances at banks. And you can see how that correlates very quickly with more immediate market, market movements. So something I was tracking is that starting on March 3rd of, you know, this year, cash assets, assets at banks at commercial banks, according to Fred data started to contract. And it's down, still down by about a hundred billion dollars for the first time in like about a year. And so that indicated to me that like we were preparing for some potential downside in markets just because there's a little bit more, I guess, a constrainment or, or, you know, whatever you, where do you want to use on the bank, on the bank side for, lending, for borrowing. And that could affect, you know, customers. And clearly we've seen that, that play out. Now, again, these things aren't Peruvian Bull (40:31.643) You can't tick for tick trade this like it's not, oh, cash assets go down 50 billion. I want to short the this week because that's what's going to happen in markets. No, but what it means is that markets just have more air gaps to fill, right? It's like there's less of a ready buyer. And, um, I think that's exactly what we've seen play out right. These last few weeks with the trade war. If you had told me like a year ago that we would have a 20 % or basically a 20 % correction in spy within a two months just based on tariffs. I would have thought that wouldn't be the case because I would have said the liquidity picture was strong enough. But in late February, we saw an end of the basically like the two year long drawdown of reverse repo and it bottomed around 80 billion. Now it's refilling, which means that liquidity is being drained again from the system. Again, the TGA hasn't been increasing to its highs. So that liquidity pump has been kind of frozen for now. And so we've had this kind of like, I would call it like doldrums of liquidity. It's like, there's no huge drain on it, but there's no huge additive component to it. So the markets are kind of just like in limbo. And that means that this, you know, anything that Trump does or anything that happens globally will now cause more volatility than otherwise would if we were in a global easing cycle. for example, because if you remember like during COVID, during the 2021, you know, I guess you would call it QE4 or QE infinity cycle, there were tons of days with bad news and the markets would knee jerk, but then the next day they would rally back to the all time highs and beyond. And it was just like kind of this upwards jigsaw pattern for basically two years. And that was just because of the huge amount of cash that was flowing into the global financial system. Again, I have those metrics and I post them on Twitter. So if you want to check those out, you can go check those out. And so that's what I would say for the liquidity side. And then your last question was about bond yields, right? And where they're moving. Jackson Mikalic (42:44.167) Yeah, exactly. And particularly in the context of just what you mentioned around sovereigns and the trend of moving away their assets from US treasuries into gold and potentially into Bitcoin in the future. Peruvian Bull (42:46.181) Okay. Peruvian Bull (42:59.067) Yeah, absolutely. Okay. That's a great, yeah, that's a really great point. Um, and so, I mean, obviously we've seen like the 20 year go to almost 5 % or actually it went to 5%. The 30 year went to almost 5 % like 4.98 or something. Um, last I checked in trading Wednesday night and, the, the overall consensus has been like this move in, in races has been very severe, right? And people have been asking why is You know, why, especially the 20 and 30 year bonds, why are they moving like meme coins? Why are they trading with, with such volatility when typically this market's so suppressed? And I would bring it back to something I pointed out in a, sub-stack piece back in, I think it was April of 2024, which is if you look at the feds balance sheet and you break it down, by, by the treasury holdings by maturity, and then you stack that year over year, you can see like what they're actually doing with each, you know, tenor and how they're either buying or selling it during the QE or QE cycles. And you see obviously during QE four, they're buying all across the yield curve, you know, 20 year, 30 year, they're buying FRNs, they're buying, you know, five year notes, seven year notes, and then obviously all the bills. And then when they started QT, they started laying everything off, including, you know, 20 or 30 year bonds, but on net. They didn't lay enough off to actually cause a dent, meaning like there are total holdings, you know, might've decreased of, of bonds, but their 20 and 30 year holdings essentially remained stagnant or, and, or like slightly increased. So they were unable to completely lay off the 20 and 30 year bonds. and they were able to, obviously to get rid of bills and short-term notes. And so what that told me at the time was that. You know, if the Fed itself can't do a cutting cycle or, you know, a tapering cycle, excuse me, without actually laying off the bonds, long bonds, what does that tell you about the health of the long-term treasury market? What does that tell you about the health of demand if they're not even able to do this during a tapering cycle? And so again, I think that this, this problem of, you know, trust and, and, fidelity in the, in the long-term, Peruvian Bull (45:21.583) debt of the United States has been emerging in the last few years. And it's been getting worse and worse. And obviously, as we continue down this debt spiral path, it's going to move inwards on the yield curve. It's going to move to shorter and shorter term debt as the debt crisis gets worse. But it starts, obviously, with the weakest links in the chain. The weakest links are the 30 year, and then the 20 year, and the 10 year bonds. so having the bonds trade with so much volatility is not that surprising. you know, not going to be shocked if Yellen continues her trend of also moving her issuance towards the short end and, you know, reducing issuance of the long bonds just because the appetite is no longer there for them. Global central banks don't want them. Global sovereigns don't want them. You know, hedge funds don't really want them except to maybe do basis trades. You know, holding your debt now for or holding long-term debt just exposes you to way too much risk. It's, know, either inflation risk or interest rate risk. And I think everyone's slowly realizing that this long-term store of value thesis for the US Treasury is finally dying. Jackson Mikalic (46:29.791) banger. I have some thoughts that we go in two directions, but first, Tim, can we do the tire reveal? Tim Kotzman (46:44.044) You know, it's extra long today. This is, it just kind of keeps going. So, and like, just, just to give you an idea, like it's just, this is way up, right? It's like way too long for where we are in the, in the eighties. So I'm going to have to adjust it a little bit shorter because we need, we need some rope for when, we're over a hundred thousand again, right? It seems like. Jackson Mikalic (46:50.847) haha Brian Cubellis (46:51.494) Jesus. Peruvian Bull (46:53.251) Whoa, that's very long. Brian Cubellis (46:59.269) well. Tim Kotzman (47:11.892) that almost never it didn't even happen but it happened. Jackson Mikalic (47:15.955) Yeah. And Tim, Tim, I guess you told me this in confidence, but I'll share it anyway. You said you weren't going to do next week's episode. You mentioned, so you came back from Paris last night. you were at the Bitcoin investor day in Paris and you were exhausted, but you decided to show up today, put on the suit, put on the orange tie, particularly long orange tie. You did that for the listeners. You didn't do this for yourself. So is it, is it true that if, is it true you're not going to do next week's episode? Tim Kotzman (47:25.933) Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (47:45.743) if people don't like the video. Tim Kotzman (47:49.698) mean, we can only do so much, right? I don't know. We have a lot going on next week. We're going to be in Boston. Is that next week? OK, well then maybe I can be here next week. But only if people like, subscribe, and comment mostly nice things on the video. Jackson Mikalic (47:57.94) No, that's the following. That's the following, Tim. Brian Cubellis (47:58.386) trip two weeks Jackson Mikalic (48:10.079) That's a good call out though. So yeah, for anyone who is based in Boston or the area, Tim, Brian, myself, and some others will be doing a presentation on Wednesday, April 23rd. So please join us. We'll be talking about Bitcoin treasuries and we'll also be talking about evolution of Bitcoin custody. And so yeah, now back to the show PB. So I appreciate all that. think there's a mindful of time. We've been recording for about 45 minutes or so. Tim Kotzman (48:30.232) Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (48:39.739) I do have, if you could answer like somewhat, it's probably a complex question, but I'm just curious like what will happen in the next couple of months here with $7 trillion of us debt maturing. And so there's something that Brian mentioned. It's kind of been passed around on the internet quite a bit, just the idea that maybe part of the strategy is to just drive yields lower. Typically the federal reserve, right, is the one in charge of monetary policy and they're allegedly making informed decisions on what the interest rate should be based on all this economic data that they monitor and who, you who's to say how effective that is. But typically the fed is the one calling the shots on monetary policy. But then you also have on the fiscal side, this is a big issue, right? $7 trillion of debt rates are much higher than they have been over like the past previous decade. So what are your thoughts there just in terms of refinancing the debt and what does that mean for America's fiscal situation? And then I really want to get into the Japan stuff with whatever remaining time we have and GameStop too. Peruvian Bull (49:40.791) yeah, I mean, that's, I would even say that's like a bigger. Jackson Mikalic (49:45.629) Yeah, so you can keep it quick. I'm just curious, like high level thoughts on the debt stuff. Peruvian Bull (49:49.635) Yeah, sure. So no, absolutely. The seven trillion rolling over, you know, is a huge, huge burden on the, on the treasury. And again, this is part of this kind of like 40 chess that, that Janet and, you know, and Powell are playing is how do we, how do we refinance all this? How do we keep everything, you know, under the hood running without letting anyone know that like, the engine, the oil's leaking, the carburetor isn't working, the coolant is seeping out. How do we basically not tell them that there are serious, serious problems in our financial system? And I think there are multiple ways to do this. Obviously, there's been rumors of an exemption for the SLR, for example, for US treasuries, for major banks, which basically means it's kind of like complex finance jargon speak for letting the banks. hold treasuries without any capital against them. And historically, that's been a constraining factor on the bank's ability to swallow treasury issuance because post 2008 and especially post 2014, the regulatory changes to the banks meant that they could, or that they had to buy US treasuries as part of HQLA assets to maintain their capital ratios. And the problem with that obviously is that when you have a capital ratio or you have leverage ratios and you're for you know, forcibly swallowing all this debt, especially on the long end, you have to hold actual, you know, capital against that debt. And if you have so much, you know, so much US Treasury debt coming down the pipeline that you're needing the banks to swallow 60 % of it, that becomes a constraining factor for banks. And so for them to propose, you know, in March of last year to basically make a permanent exemption. It's just an example of like them trying to jockey the system around to allow more and more treasury issuance to be shoved into the banks without having appropriate safeguards against that. So I think that that's one move they could make. probably the move that is gonna be most used is the shifting of issuance. they'll just try to refinance the debt by basically issuing a bunch of bills because... Peruvian Bull (52:10.639) they have a lot more appetite for bills, the investor appetite for bills than they do for bonds. And so I think that we're going to see a continued pull of the issuance table towards the short end. And there's obviously the third option of just outright QE again. And that's something else that I've been arguing with people on Twitter about is, there's this talk of the slow and steady cutting cycle, this talk of this like moderating inflation and you know, mild recession that might be coming up. But if you look at the past, you know, 20 years of monetary policy, we haven't had a rate cutting cycle that ever, first of all, that ever didn't end with us going basically back to zero. And second of all, that didn't end with QE. So if those two things are true and we're beginning a rate cutting cycle, you know, now, then you know, would this time be different when the debt situation is worse? Why wouldn't we be cutting eventually back to zero and why wouldn't that also mean QE at the end of it? And so, and no one's been able to answer that for me. So I think that's the base case is that the most likely option is eventual restart of QE and, you know, a complete compression of rates back down to zero or maybe, you know, below 1%. Jackson Mikalic (53:30.109) Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. So Tim, I guess the main takeaway for you is that $1 million per BTC is still in play for your target by the end of the year. So just hang in there, man. It's going to be okay. Tim Kotzman (53:42.798) I'll tell you a story real quick. I was at the Louvre. We're walking through. Adam Back is flanked by me on his left-hand side and Alexander Lisay, the CEO of the blockchain group on the other side. I realized at one point as we're walking that there's a videographer walking backwards in front of us. I don't know what's going to happen with that footage. It was just like this surreal experience where we walk and walk and room to room to room and we finally get Brian Cubellis (53:47.634) You Tim Kotzman (54:12.206) into the room where they have the Mona Lisa. And it's a private event, but there's still like 50 people in the room, right? So we're talking, we're talking. And then the one guy said, hey, can I be really annoying and try and get a picture with Adam right in front of the Mona Lisa? And I thought there was still gonna be like 50 people in front of us. You could barely see it, whatever. And Adam goes, oh yeah, that'd be really cool. And he's like, I think we can get closer. And so I'm like, okay, so I walk a few feet. And then like I walk a few feet more and before I know it, I'm like right up against the rail and we get this awesome picture just the two of us with the freaking Mona Lisa. I'm like, this is the highlight of my year so far, obviously. And, you know, probably tied with meeting you guys, right? At Bitcoin Investor Week here in New York. But it's like, I think we can get a little bit closer. And I think that's going to be the theme of the rest of this year is, oh, we're at 200,000. Oh, we're at 300,000. Brian Cubellis (54:53.426) You Tim Kotzman (55:11.458) Like just think about everything with this administration and the volatility. And if that really is vitality, I'll wrap it up here, but like, I think we can get a little bit closer and I think people will be shocked at how close we are to $1.2 million Bitcoin by the end of the year. I just think anything's possible and like being optimistic. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, Brian Cubellis (55:34.726) That's fantastic, fantastic moon juice, Tim. I appreciate it. Jackson Mikalic (55:39.145) That sounds like financial advice actually. Michael Tanguma (55:39.347) I mean, Timmy, I think it's possible if you keep traveling the way you are with that tie and evangelizing for corporate adoption of Bitcoin, I think that's kind of a base case at least. So we just got to you on the road. Peruvian Bull (55:41.571) Yeah. Tim Kotzman (55:56.142) All right, I'm going back to the airport right after this. Michael Tanguma (55:58.451) Haha! Jackson Mikalic (55:58.74) Ha! Peruvian Bull (55:58.958) You Jackson Mikalic (56:01.439) PB, I want to be respectful of your time. What do you want to talk about? So you went to Japan. There's been a ton of GameStop news as well. So I'll toss it over to you. What do you want to talk about? Peruvian Bull (56:13.711) think the GameStop stuff is more interesting. I mean, the Japan stuff is obviously fascinating, but I'll have a whole doc come out about that in hopefully like a month or two. So, you know, we're going to have, you know, potentially more time to talk about that later, especially once it comes out and there's like an actual doc to see. But the big news, obviously, is that GameStop has finally, you know, taken the orange pill. And so I don't know, I think Sailor was the one who really drove the nail home. for us, like retail investors who've invested in GameStop, especially back in 2021, and we followed the story, it's been really encouraging to see because the question has been for the last year or so, ever since they raised that 4.5, now $4.7 billion of cash, what are they gonna do with this money? Once you fund an ATM and once you get that amount of capital at your disposal, the question is like, what are they going to do with it? And everyone had said that they're going to do a merger or acquisition that they were going to find some dying retail store and reinvented another Bed Bath and Beyond or potentially, know, Toys R Us or Sears or, you know, any number of dead, you know, old retail companies to reinvent. But me as well as, you know, Ben Wehrman, like some other Bitcoiners and GameStop people have been promoting this idea of them moving their treasury into Bitcoin. And we wrote a letter to the board in July of 2024 that was ignored. We wrote multiple appeals on Twitter, obviously no response back. And to see them completely switch from basically just sitting on their hands to actively pursuing a Bitcoin strategy has been extremely encouraging, right? The first thing that was like a hint that this could happen was the the post with Ryan Cohen and Michael Saylor and then some of Ryan Cohen's tweets obviously that were Kind of like interpreted as pro Bitcoin Were were also very encouraging but the big news is that obviously, you know during earnings week just a few weeks ago in late March they Peruvian Bull (58:36.731) announced that they were adopting a Bitcoin treasury strategy and considering Bitcoin as an investment for their $4.6, $4.7 billion of cash. But then they followed that up with instead of just buying Bitcoin outright with the cash, they issued a convertible bond for like $1.3 billion. And then their plans are to use that to buy the Bitcoin. So, you know, when that... When that came out, like that was even more encouraging to me because it showed that they really understood at least, you know, on paper, the, the sailor strategy, but not only that they were keeping, um, you know, this asset on their balance sheet, the cash that was yielding four and a half percent or 4.7 % or whatever it's yielding. Um, and they're funding the debt with extremely low interest or the funding, the Bitcoin purchases with extremely low interest rate debt. So they're essentially creating their own arbitrage, right? Like if investors are willing to fund them. at 0 % for a Bitcoin bond, then they can just service that with the cash that they get from their, the interest they get from their cash on hand. And then they don't even have to worry about X-X spending their own capital. They can just use the investor capital to buy Bitcoin and just shove it on their balance sheet. And then from there, like the possibilities for the company's reinvention are innumerable. Brian Cubellis (59:56.786) What do you make of the actual sort of implementation of the strategy over the past month or so? Because I think one thing that's has stuck out to me is like, obviously when Sailor started doing this, he was extremely overt in his strategy, like going on pods, talking about it constantly, really enumerating the strategy, how he was thinking about it. I don't think we've seen the same level of articulation from Cohen and the team. It's obviously some plan in place with the issuing of the convertible debt, but curious what you make of that. Do you think that they need to be articulating their strategy more upfront, get ahead of it, let existing shareholders and prospective shareholders know how they're thinking about Bitcoin? Peruvian Bull (01:00:43.419) Um, you know, I think that for any normal company that would be the case, but you have to remember that that GameStop is basically a one of a kind, um, in the, in all senses because it's the most right. This is stock that is for one was one of the most manipulated stocks in history, obviously in the lead up to 2021. Um, it's one of the most flooded and, uh, propagandized stocks from the mainstream media. were thousands of fake news articles that came out, especially during the initial squeeze. but also during the subsequent squeezes about GameStop that were miscalculating their cash position, blatantly lying about the short interest positions, claiming that certain funds were bankrupt shorting GameStop when they weren't so that people would assume that those shorts are closed. And Cohen has responded by obviously taking all these strategic steps to try to reinvent GameStop. but be extremely cautious with how he does it. Because again, he's worried about libel lawsuits, right? If these hedge funds are underwater on these shorts and he comes out and does anything that would appear to be promoting his own stock or manipulative or, I guess, retail gaming in some sort of sense, then he could be sued for that very easily, right? And that would be an unnecessary cost and burden. And so the last few years, they've been very... tight lipped about their operations. know, Cohen has essentially just been tweeting mystic, almost like, you know, puzzle tweets that everyone has to figure out. And we still don't fully know the meaning. Roaring Kitty has done that as well. Obviously when he returned, he came back with a bunch of memes and, you know, video clips with captions on them. You know, everything from the Matrix to, you know, Orange. is the new black to, you know, like all these movies and shows and just clipping them together and then, you know, having them, I guess, kind of hint at his future actions, but not actually say it overtly so that he couldn't be pulled, you know, tried in court for it. So this entire community has been used to this kind of backroom deal, quiet, like here's a little hint, here's a little like tin foil over here attitude and mindset of the GameStop board for the last two or three years. Peruvian Bull (01:03:07.961) And so this is nothing new. You know, I didn't expect them to, to make some grand announcement or to go around and hit the, you know, hit the ground running with all the major podcasts. Ryan Cohen himself has done maybe two podcasts in the last four years with GME. So, yeah, I think they're going to continue this. They're going to, going to do the work behind the scenes, be quiet, buy Bitcoin. And hopefully they're going to incorporate Bitcoin into their business model as well. Right. Like being able to be buying, to be buying games. or getting redemption rewards in Bitcoin for your GameStop reward points would be amazing things they could do. And obviously Bitcoiners would be happy because now you have another business that you can go to and spend your Bitcoin at and potentially get rewards to get your cash back in Bitcoin. And that could obviously increase adoption and further promote the cryptocurrency. Michael Tanguma (01:03:59.977) Yeah, that's an interesting angle in itself. Trump saw this with the evangelical nature of this. sector digital assets and Bitcoin particular like just mobilizing that for your company's advantage But also makes sense from a pure being a listed company being careful, which always has brought up I think people have brought up about sailor like he kind of is pumping his bags and nobody's ever You know slapped him on the wrist. I'm curious Tim and PB, anybody else here just rumblings on thinking about this strategy because when you referenced the cryptic tweets, who else? I think we kind of forgot was Michael Dell. And what's interesting about Dell is we just hear Dell and I think we're all old enough to remember when Dell's were in every school and I don't know if they still are, but he's the 10th richest man in the world. Right, like he's no slouch. There's, like I just wonder how long, because like how much of a snowflake, in the truest sense of like, not a snowflake in a pejorative, but like a snowflake in the... like different business structure and governance that MSDR had versus all these other companies that do they take 12 to 24 months to actually get consensus from a board level to execute on a strategy like this and that's what we're seeing and that's where this period is taken from whether it's Dell to GameStop to other listed companies. Michael Tanguma (01:05:35.614) You're the expert, Tim, here. You're the... Yeah. Tim Kotzman (01:05:38.37) Yeah, I don't know. I've kind of dumbfounded that GameStop has not announced any Bitcoin purchases yet. They have the cash, now they have the convert. why would you make the announcement if you didn't have everybody on your board on board? Why would you make the announcement if you didn't have custodians sorted out? Why would you make the announcement if you weren't kind of ready to go? Maybe they're a lot smarter than I am. Brian Cubellis (01:05:39.634) you Tim Kotzman (01:06:08.012) just like from a like common sense, simplest answer perspective without going into all the high society. All these guys talk about whatever. Yeah, it's beyond it's beyond my intelligence level of a oxum's razor, blah, blah, blah. It's like, yeah, but like, if you're to do a Bitcoin strategy, just do it. Are you gonna do it? Are we doing it? That is my expert opinion, I have no idea. Brian Cubellis (01:06:38.738) You Michael Tanguma (01:06:40.393) You know who else. Michael Tanguma (01:06:44.511) You know who else has a lot of cash is Warren Buffett. And if we're to get to your 1.2 million target, I think we see Warren Buffett is going to, will be buying Bitcoin between that period, if that's how we get there. Tim Kotzman (01:06:57.87) I mean, if say we're just takes 1 % or just some basis points out of the bond market, right? He wants 1 % of the $300 trillion bond market. I mean, if he does 3 trillion worth of buying, that might get us a little higher. But again, Michael Tanguma (01:07:13.705) I got a bull call for Jackson because Jackson's always trying to put me on a price prediction. think within 12 months, Tim is head of strategy for strategy or head of corporate strategy for strategy. Like who better? Tim Kotzman (01:07:18.574) Yeah. Brian Cubellis (01:07:25.074) Head of Thai procurement. Tim Kotzman (01:07:30.208) Yeah, mean, Saylor did like my tweet when I tweeted out the $2.50 set orange tie available on Amazon. After I saw that he liked the tweet, I went to the link that I sent out. There were only four ties left, so I bought all of them, so it was sold out. Because I can't run out of orange ties, right? Like something that people don't know about Pomp is like the tie he wears, they're not making it anymore. So when he actually like ruins or loses all of his ties, he doesn't know what he's going to do. Brian Cubellis (01:07:43.282) You Tim Kotzman (01:07:57.932) You might have to edit that part out. It's probably confidential, but yeah, like I can't lose these orange ties. Jackson Mikalic (01:07:59.892) Well, you know. Michael Tanguma (01:08:00.341) Ha Jackson Mikalic (01:08:03.081) Well, you know what else you can't lose is your Bitcoin because you can't make any more Bitcoin. So just something for people to pay attention to. I didn't come prepared with a single point of failure, which could be a good thing for the industry, which means I didn't see any news of people losing their Bitcoin or their Bitcoin being hacked, but you got to treat your Bitcoin like you treat POMP's tie and you can't lose it. It can't be stolen. And so just something for investors to pay attention to. got to secure that Bitcoin like it's 10 X the value. And if you listen to Tim's podcast, Tim Kotzman (01:08:26.062) you Jackson Mikalic (01:08:32.625) It may be sooner than you think. Peruvian Bull (01:08:37.379) Yeah, I mean, something, something I would say though, to Tim's earlier or yet Tim's earlier point about like why they haven't done this yet. So again, like you have to realize that the whole game stop, like this is like its own rabbit hole. This is his own, like there's its own community with tin foil, with weird things going on. know, Ryan Cohen, for example, is listed as a creditor to Bed Bath and Beyond and a debtor. Tim Kotzman (01:08:37.646) Amen. Amen, brother. Peruvian Bull (01:09:05.987) And there's evidence that his law firm has also been billed for 800 hours of &A activity with Bed Bath & Beyond's bankruptcy from April of last year. And that lawsuit is still continuing. And so it's hopefully wrapping up end of April, early May. So, you know, there's potential here for, you know, he's doing, he's playing, he's doing multiple plays out a single time, right? He's not just buying Bitcoin. He's trying to revive another dying brick and mortar, or he's trying to You know, take this company out from, under the ground and get his assets all together. And he wants to make sure that all of his ducks are in a row before, before he does everything. and again, I'm not, I'm not a full-fledged member of their tin foil bed bath and beyond community where this, you know, this and blockbuster and Toys R are all going to rise from the dead in the nineties are going to re revive and, we're all going to be living, you know, playing game boys and hanging out at GameStop and, and, Bed Bath and Beyond for for every Friday night, you know, I think that this, again, this is just very on brand. Like for people who are not familiar with GameStop, it seems like very strange. Like why is he, you know, tweeting cryptically and why is he not doing things immediately with when he has the cash? It's like, yeah, that's true, but that's also been what he has been doing for the last four years. They raised cash in June of 2021 and they didn't really do anything with it for months until they finally paid off a bond with it. Yeah, trying to use like conventional logic here to understand this like meme stock is very, it's very difficult to do. But I'm, I'm, I'm, pretty certain that given their announcements for the Bitcoin treasury and they're obvious, obviously the issuance of the convertible debt that they're going to do it eventually. And you have to remember that Ryan Cohen and the board, right? They're like reluctant Bitcoiners. They're not people that are as hard. hardline as Michael Saylor and it took Saylor meeting with him personally to finally pull him over the edge. Despite the, like I said, the multiple letters to the board and shareholder proposals we made for them to buy Bitcoin, it's just like all that fell on deaf ears. Finally, was Saylor pounding into him in person and just yelling at him about Bitcoin and hard money and energy that really pulled it over the edge. Brian Cubellis (01:11:29.842) It would be nice if they bought now though. mean, we're still in the 70s, 78, 79. Might not be here for long. Jackson Mikalic (01:11:35.998) Let's wrap up here with anyone wants to go rapid fire, bullish and bearish takes, I'll start. Bullish take, pay attention to Michael's private jet because we might see, if we pull up the flight tracker, we might see him meeting with Warren Buffett and Donald Trump over a couple of Big Macs. And that could be a very bullish indicator for where Bitcoin's going. Peruvian Bull (01:11:37.851) Absolutely. Michael Tanguma (01:11:41.077) you Jackson Mikalic (01:12:04.639) But in serious seriously, there's so much news. One thing we forget about is that Eric Trump was added to MetaPlanet's Board of Advisors last month. So just remember, there are these nuggets of information hanging out there. The bearish take real quick is I think we're living through it right now. We're about a year out or a year after the halving of April of 2024. And the price is about 12 percent higher than it was this time last April. So I think we're already living through the. the bearish timeline at this current point of moment. Brian Cubellis (01:12:38.598) I like to look at like instead of just starting at the halving, I think it's a little more useful to look at like from prior low, like bear market low. It looks a little less bearish if you look at it that way. One thing that caught my eye this week was there was a report put out by VanEck that China and Russia were settling some energy transactions in Bitcoin. Michael Tanguma (01:12:52.501) Good. Brian Cubellis (01:13:08.134) That seems pretty bullish and constructive in my mind that not only are people recognizing increasingly Bitcoin as a store of value, but also as superior payment rails, superior settlement network. So that was what caught my eye. I don't know if I have anything bearish necessarily. Like I said at the beginning, I'm very bullish right now. Michael Tanguma (01:13:08.661) Yeah. Michael Tanguma (01:13:31.059) Yeah, to piggyback on the bullish stuff, think like the geopolitical nature of the asset, what Brian just referenced, it makes complete sense in settling large-scale trade with a form of money that is immutable. You can't reverse, you can't seize. because know, Treasury is the best example of that with Russia. But then also Pakistan coming out and I saw it multiple times, I didn't fact check it, so I'm hoping this is true, but Pakistan adding one of the largest or wealthiest people and head of Binance and CZ, or I he's not head of Binance now, CZ to their board of advisors, like this notion of... figuring this stuff out at the sovereign level and where this sits. And I think that ties into the price action because we've seen some of this like deleveraging before. We've seen what happened to Bitcoin in March 2020. We saw that through 3800. This feels a little different where the dips are getting bought even at these price points. And it feels like we should be even lower based on everything that, you know, PB's walk through. So I think that that's pretty bullish in itself. Peruvian Bull (01:14:38.073) I can go next. Things I'm bullish and bearish on. Bullish on trips to Japan. It was very, a really eye-opening experience. I highly recommend everyone who has thought about a trip to Japan or wants to go, you have to go. And you especially have to go during cherry blossom season because it's absolutely beautiful. There's tons of people. There's tons of things to do. The food there is incredible. And you know, the people are, are one of a kind, like it's one of the most unique cultures you could ever be a part of. I'm, I would say I'm bearish on the Japanese debt situation and just the global debt situation after being there and, and seeing like how zombified the entire economy has become, you know, essentially no growth for 30 years. And 260 % debt to GDP means that everyone's kind of frozen in time. And no one can really innovate or do anything because all the capital is misallocated to these zombified companies and zombified players So again, that'll all come out in the dock, but that's a bullish and bearish for you Jackson Mikalic (01:15:50.748) I love it. Brian Cubellis (01:15:51.57) Timber, what do you got? Tim Kotzman (01:15:53.644) I am bearish and I'm never bearish, but I'm bearish today on the US dollar and I'm bullish on US publicly listed zombie companies because they're in the best spot to adopt a Bitcoin treasury strategy. And I think someone should come out with like a zombie company ETF or something, right? I think that'd be kind of a interesting take on everything. So yeah. Jackson Mikalic (01:16:21.971) Yeah, why not you Tim? You don't have enough on your plate, so maybe you should start that ETF. Peruvian Bull (01:16:25.113) Yeah. Tim Kotzman (01:16:26.658) Zombie ETF incoming. Peruvian Bull (01:16:30.832) Is there an ETF of all the companies that buy Bitcoin for the balance sheet? Like that follow the Seller strategy? If not, then- Tim Kotzman (01:16:36.214) Yeah, there's a bitwise Bitcoin standard ETF for every company that has over a thousand Bitcoin and it's capped at 20%. So like strategies, like 20 % of it and then marathons, X % of it. Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (01:16:53.289) Well, yeah, it was a fun episode. PB, if people are not aware of your work, where do you want to send them? I know you mentioned the documentary. So when should people expect that and where could they find it? Tim Kotzman (01:16:53.678) Hold Peruvian Bull (01:17:03.291) Sure, so that will be dropping on the GetBased YouTube channel. Just look up GetBased on YouTube and it's run by Julian and Isabella and Adam. And so those three have been instrumental in filming and helping to plan that doc. But my work is mainly on Substack. So if you look up dollar and game at Substack.com, that'll be... The link you can use you can also check out my Twitter, which is Peruvian underscore bowl I also have a YouTube channel I've been posted on there in three weeks obviously because I've been traveling but I'll be back to posting some more live streams as well as just You know long form market commentary videos so you can find me there Jackson Mikalic (01:17:46.865) Awesome. Well, PB, Tim, Brian, and Michael, thanks for the time. Michael Tanguma (01:17:50.965) Good stuff, guys. Brian Cubellis (01:17:52.166) Thanks gentlemen, good stuff. Tim Kotzman (01:17:53.166) You can find me wherever.