# Bitcoin Resilience, Gold Liquidity Crisis, and Fed Policy Misalignment

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-03-23

## Transcript

And you can see why, in periods of uncertainty and volatility, it pays to just you know hold assets that can look through some of the short term noise.
And and then you know, just don't overtrade, don't outsmart yourself, and don't go chasing pumps right now.
I think this is a great time to just sit on your hands and watch what happens.
What's up, everybody?
It's LG Du Set here, and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that promises we are taking profits next time.
If there is a next time, today is March 23rd, 2026.
Listen, we do a lot of shows here at Milk Road.
Lots of nice and smart guests grace us with their presence every single day, every single week.
But some of our most popular episodes are actually when we cut the guests out and just focus on the voices of Milk Road, myself and John Gillen.
So starting today, every Monday, John and I will be co-hosting this podcast, and we're actually going to be revealing a lot more about Milk Road than usual.
One of the first things our team does on Monday mornings is actually a closed door huddle with all of our writers and analysts, all of our big brains.
We talk about what we've got our eye on, what we want to talk about this coming week across all our channels, and just generally what is most important.
What if people actually care about?
What do we care about this coming week?
And that's what this show will be about every single week.
We're gonna give you an inside look at Milk Road, what's top of the radar for us as we go into another crazy week.
Uh, especially this time.
This is this is a good time to start the show because there are very few times, hopefully, that the economy will be as crazy as it is right now.
Today's episode is brought to you by Shareland, trade real estate like stocks and nexo, earn interest, borrow and trade crypto.
John, are you hunkered down or what, man?
It's a great time to be hunkered down, LG.
Uh, I don't really even know what hunkered down means, but whatever your version of that is, I suggest you do it.
Now's a great time.
Are you are you buying all your groceries in advance and getting a deep freeze to put them in there?
Honestly, I'm I'm really not doing a whole lot of anything in response to all this, but I'm just paying very close attention.
It's this is like the world series of monitoring the situation.
That's a good way to put it.
Okay, I'll run down for you guys.
This is a new show, so we're gonna kind of ease into the format as we go, but I'm gonna run down for you guys listening uh what was top of mind in in the huddle this week, and then we'll talk about some of those uh throughout the show.
And John's gonna kind of give us uh a lot of his great analogies and and takes on those.
So obviously there's only one story, and we talked about this last week as well.
Uh, is is the situation in Iran.
Um is there a taco?
We don't know, but that was the main thing we talked about, whether the the Trump overnight thing was a taco or not.
So that's uh gonna be kind of the main topic today.
We talked about the net the potential for rate hikes and if that's something that the market is going to start to price in in May, even though there was just a Fed meeting last week.
Uh, the market is uh is definitely gonna start to react to that.
If it thinks it's gonna happen, if the polymarket odds change, whatever.
So that is something we discussed as well.
There was some clarity news below everything, uh below all the price action news, uh, you know, geopolitical experts on X uh today.
There was some news on the Clarity Act, which may or may not come to pass this coming month or next month.
And uh on the AI side, we did talk about SpaceX and NVIDIA, but I think we're gonna keep it crypto today, John.
We're gonna we're gonna avoid all that stuff.
It's not really very crypto related, so we'll save that uh for me and Kyle's AI show this coming Wednesday.
So let's talk, John, um, about the taco.
So I saw that a lot of people were saying uh the potential taco, and people don't what people don't know what don't know what a taco is.
It's basically where Trump uh says he's gonna do one thing, pushes hard on it, and then changes his mind at the last second.
A good example is the tariffs last year.
Tariffs not uh, you know, not as destructive, let's say, physically as uh this Iran conflict has been naturally.
Uh, but overnight, it looks like the bond, the treasury bond yields, John, were rising, and a lot of people are saying that that's what made Trump kind of de escalate his language and look for a peace deal.
Can you explain that whole situation to me?
Just pretend that I don't know anything about finance.
Like, just explain to me what what those yields are and why they would be bad, why it would be bad that they're going up.
So bond yields rising just means that there are fewer buyers in the market for those things.
So bond yields rising means that the market is willing to pay a higher premium for capital to hold those bonds.
So the government is looking for funding for its debt, and because there's less demand, they're trading at a higher rate.
Um, and so that is reflective of capital flight out of uh government debt.
This is not unique to the US debt.
It's been seen the same pattern in sovereign debt kind of across the West uh Western nations.
But the reason that's so concerning is that governments like to be able to fund themselves.
And if the market is saying we aren't interested in holding your debt, it's kind of a vote of uh lack of confidence in the government's ability to remain functional and solvent uh into the future.
So it's kind of the way if the market is telling the government with its capital that we don't like what you're doing, we don't like the course that you're on, we don't think it's sustainable, and it's a way of voting with your capital.
So that's why those yields rising is uh it gets the attention of anybody in government because it's the market telling you with dollars and cents, we don't believe in the course that you're on, we don't like the policy path you're on, we want to see a change.
Um, and so that got a lot of people's attention.
I think that this is uh a great example of um financial Twitter, crypto Twitter um being a little bit too plugged in and reading too much into the tea leaves about these things because you know there was a lot of speculation that Trump wasn't actually in talks with Iran because they said that they weren't in talks with Trump about 30 minutes after he said that he was.
Um, and they said, well, he's just saying that because the market has turned against him, not just the bond market, but the overall market has turned against him.
And so he's tacoing chickening out on this.
Um, but you know, the the other reporting I've seen on this now is that Trump has been in uh communication with the who the man I believe is the head of the Iranian parliament, not the supreme leader who, you know, there's rumors that he may be dead or at least in a coma.
So obviously Trump's not in talks with him.
But um, in any event, there's been defections from Iran, there's been a lot of shakeup in the leadership there.
So what I think has happened here is that, you know, Trump has had communications with this, this guy who's the parliamentary leader of Iran, but because of the devastation and deaths that there's been amongst the leadership of the Iranian regime, there's not a lot of coordination and communication across that government right now.
And so the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
So, you know, he had talks with one of their leaders, and another leader said, I haven't had talks with him, so that they put out that message.
In any event, it seems like there's been some promising conversations happening.
Trump himself seems very positive on this, and that's really important.
Um, so it seems like we might be moving towards a place of of a de-escalation of military activity and hopefully finding a way to resolve this so that the strait opens.
But um, yeah, so that's a little bit about the bond market, how the market has been sort of rejecting the policy path we're on, and hopefully some uh olive branches and hope for a peaceful resolution that brings back um the the flow of of goods, services, and economic activity around the Gulf region.
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And this is something I think last week when we had this meeting, this is also something that Thomas, our our our macro expert on, and you're a macro expert as well.
But Thomas, who who writes our newsletters, is uh he had warned that anything getting close to five was cause for warning.
And we saw this go, I think overnight from like 4.25 to like 4.6 or something like that.
Are you waiting hold on?
I just want to circle back on what you're saying.
Are you telling me that that is uh a case of uh the internet sluice, crypto Twitter, whatever we call ourselves now, being a little too plugged in that that's not necessarily the cause for the sudden kind of change in language?
Yeah, I think that's my read of it.
But I mean, this is just kind of like armchair quarterbacking a little bit.
I agree with Thomas.
And when you say five, what we're talking about there is the 5% yield on the US tenure note.
Um, just so people know that.
But um, yeah, so uh but I I agree with Thomas's analysis.
I agree with the analysis from crypto Twitter.
I think it's it's it's definitely something that gets the attention of leadership.
Certainly, Scott Bessant has been watching that a lot.
Um, and I know he's talking to Trump about that too.
And that they understand how important these markets are.
The bond market is a very important thing that all governments consider.
However, um, I think that there are a lot of other factors that go into this and a lot of other strategic things to consider at this moment.
So it I think you know, crypto Twitter, in absence of a clear, like the Iranians stepping up and saying, yes, we'd had this talks with him.
A lot of people are like, oh, it must have been the bond market selling off.
So I think that was just a little bit of a quick jump there.
And like, you know, in the in the 15 minutes between Iran tweeting that they weren't talking to Trump and Trump going out to reporters and clarifying to them, uh, and then going on Fox Business and CNBC and like making sure he's getting out in front of the the financial community and communicating what's going on.
Um, there was some speculation that was happening, but that that happens all the time.
And that's there's nothing wrong with that necessarily.
It's you know, it's people trying to figure out things in the absence of information.
But you know, sometimes it takes a few minutes for for more reliable information to come out because this is a rapidly evolving situation, and there's always going to be a little bit of gap between um things happening and uh things being confirmed and like just like the dissemination of information.
I want to bring it back to crypto, obviously, a crypto show.
Um during this whole conflict, John, I think we're on week three or four now, or 20 plus days.
Um have you been surprised at how crypto has not really reacted, right?
Because crypto seems to clearly has been doing its own thing.
We've talked about this on prior episodes, you and I myself and obviously interview a lot of different people about it.
Um, but crypto seems to be on its own agenda, let's say, irrelevant of this.
Is that surprised you is this something where you would have expected in the past for crypto to uh buck the trend here to be to be moving differently than than a lot of the the rest of the market, really?
So I did an interview on the macro channel with a guy named David Brickle asking him this question because he spent his career in macro, actually was working at Lehman Brothers during the great financial crisis, and then pivoted his career to go full-time crypto.
Um, but he said this I thought quite well, which is that Bitcoin has always been a heads I win, tails you lose asset.
And so what he means by that, and why I like it so much is that in a risk-on environment when there's high liquidity, high risk-seeking behavior in the markets, a lot of people looking for alpha, Bitcoin tends to perform strongest or among the strongest during those environments, right?
Bitcoin gets a lot of uh capital um in that kind of an environment.
In an environment where there's a huge amount of uncertainty, where you have the risk of governmental collapse, where you have a lack of confidence and trust in the fiat currency of a certain region, Bitcoin also does very well in those circumstances because it's much easier to store and transact and and move value over Bitcoin's network than it is uh you know to migrate gold.
You know, there's been a lot of speculation about this, but you can see a lot of on-chain activity while it's uh in the area of Iran that are coming online, people are moving their capital into Bitcoin because if they're trying to flee the region or protect their capital or whatever the case may be, in periods of high uncertainty like that, uh Bitcoin does well.
So you've seen a lot of buying pressure coming from that direction.
Uh, and because it's you know, it's like I said, that's either either it's gonna be the the thesis that we're in a bull run and there's a lot of risk-seeking behavior and Bitcoin does well there, or you know, if you're in Iran and the rail is collapsing and you you don't want to have to try to flee the country with thousands of tons of gold bars or something, right?
Um, you you suddenly get much more interested in Bitcoin.
So I don't know if I've been surprised.
I think the stability is kind of just where Bitcoin is right now.
It's it's in this indecision period that I've I've talked about a lot.
It's either going to follow the rest of the market down and go retest that 60K level, or at some point it's gonna break out above 85k.
And it's not clear to me yet which way that's gonna go.
I also think that the market is telling you, hey, it's not clear to us either.
A lot of market participants think that Bitcoin will make a new low below 60K.
And a lot of people are saying that maybe this Clarity Act resolution uh coming through and being passed brings in a new wave of interest, and there's some speculation and front running on that.
And that's why you're seeing this indecision in the markets.
The bulls and the bears are battling it out between those two levels of 80K and 60K.
And so as a result, Bitcoin is somewhere around 70K.
So this is not super surprising to me.
I'm mostly just watching to see which way it finally chooses to go and who kind of wins that battle there.
But I think, you know, like I said, like the the headside wind tails you lose nature of Bitcoin is playing out in real time.
And you can see why in periods of uncertainty and volatility, it pays to just you know hold assets that that uh can look through some of the short-term noise and and then you know, just don't overtrade, don't outsmart yourself, uh, and don't go chasing pumps right now.
I think this is a great time to just sit on your hands and watch what happens.
What happened to gold, John?
This is that's probably the the biggest uh at least price action story of the last couple days, and I'll pull up the chart really quick.
Uh, is something that I mean, I don't know if this is something that we expected or anybody really could have foreseen.
I've probably a lot of people that thought maybe you did, obviously, that it would crash this hard.
But if you look at this chart, this is a this is a pretty catastrophic chart after topping uh let's see, uh January 29th, just a couple days before, uh maybe a week before the the another big crypto implosion, uh drops significantly, like huge, like a maybe a 15, 20 percent drop before kind of crawling back up and now really coming down.
What's going on with gold, John?
Why suddenly it's uh selling off?
Yeah, so I'm not an expert on the gold markets, but I have some thoughts on this.
First of all, people looking at this chart can't really see how much of a move that is, but that is the biggest sell-off in a 43-year history of gold's price action.
Um, it's multiple trillions of dollars disappearing in a period of I think uh like a around a day, um, from you know, peak to to bottom of the the wicks on that.
Um, that there's a huge amount of volatility and it's a huge amount of market cap.
Uh so it yeah, like that gives you a little bit more of a perspective on that.
Um, okay you said you told me before that it that it lost the entire pretty much the entire market cap of crypto or of Bitcoin in the last in about 15 minutes, yeah.
15 minutes of like I I think I'm I can you don't quote me on this exactly, but I think it lost about about a half a bitcoin in about a 15 minute candle at one point.
Um, but in any event, that's just by market cap.
But okay, so so what's what's going on with this?
Uh obviously there's been a huge run up in gold, which to say the least, right?
And so I think it's one of the few assets left where people are sitting in profits.
And if you have to sell something, if you have to get defensive, if you want to take some risk off the table and you're looking at huge profits and returns on gold, you do some rebalancing.
Everybody suddenly gets that idea at the same time because there's this huge wave of uncertainty that comes in, and and you know, you kind of clear the order books and suddenly you get a big correction like this.
Uh, another thing I would say is that I think there's been a lot of selling again from uh players in the Middle East who are trying to get more liquid assets than gold because it's a great store of value, but it isn't necessarily the easiest thing to transport or to protect.
Um, and so it's you know, there's a lot of custody risk if you're just carrying around huge amounts of gold.
So uh I'm not sure exactly.
We've heard I've heard some reports and rumors again.
This is Twitter, so grain of salt.
I don't know if this is true or not, but I've heard rumors that some people are being forced to liquidate.
And because, see, Bitcoin has an advantage of being a global 24 hour liquid, highly liquid market.
Gold, when you're trying to exit a position on gold and silver, you usually have to take a pretty severe haircut.
And I've heard people exiting large gold positions taking 20 to 30 percent haircuts on their positions just to be have the luxury of getting liquid immediately.
Um so this is starting to impact the order books, it's starting to play out like that, and you're getting these huge swings of volatility.
But yeah, when you're seeing, I mean, this is like end of empire stuff, right?
Like when you're seeing this amount of volatility in an asset, a 10,000-year-old uh investment technology like gold.
Um, you you it the market is telling you that uncertainty is going to be the order of the day, volatility is going to remain higher for longer, and there's nobody who's going to be able to accurately predict this, right?
Like you would think, oh, war breaks out, gold's gonna do great.
Well, it sold off by the most it's ever sold off in 43 years.
So um there's just uh it's trying to call this and time this is not the right move right now.
Like just get into something that you feel comfortable holding through this and then hold through this, is is kind of how I'm playing it.
But others can do what they want, but that's how I see it.
I wasn't asking you if I should buy gold bars, man.
That's not what I was doing.
I just wanted to know what was going on.
But no, it's been hard, it's been hard to tell the crypto story in the last couple months.
Um, you know, especially in the time that that you and I have been have been uh hosting these episodes for crypto and and you on the macro side too, last six months and you're on before that.
But um, I think it's been hard to tell the Bitcoin story without often talking about gold really mooning because they decoupled in September.
And you know, there's been the whole question of you know, the the you know, what's a safe store of value outside of all the turmoil going on, and people are saying we've heard many times Kyle and I even debated Peter Schiff on the show, uh, talking about the you know, the the crypto hater himself, gold gold bug himself, um, about why gold made more sense and it was more accepted by people, and and now we're seeing even gold has not been um safe from this volatility.
And this is yet another commodity, John, as well, that's trading like a meme coin, right?
I think that's the other part too.
It's something I I mean, I haven't been a financial person for very long, only been in crypto five, six years.
Uh you it's been your entire career, and I'm assuming for you, seeing like silver and oil and gold like move like this is relatively unprecedented, right?
Like you're saying 43 years, uh gold has never made this kind of move.
And I'm assuming 43 years ago was what, at some point where they where be it it lost its it being the the global store of value, the global monetary uh whatever it is.
Right.
Yeah.
So somewhere in there, I don't know exactly when the last move it made was like this, but like it is historic volatility, it's historic price action, it's unprecedented in all levels in all respects, and it doesn't look like it's over or slowing down.
So um I'll yeah, all I can say about that is just hang on, you know.
And like uh, there's gonna be a lot of things that are gonna be trading like a meme coin.
Um, but you know, the the dollar's gonna keep going in the same direction.
The dollar is still uh holding around 100 on the DXY, but the dollar is still getting obliterated, right?
We crossed 39 trillion dollars of national debt, we'll be at 40 before you know it.
Um, and we'll be at 50 before you can realize so we've gone past 40, right?
So yeah, there's there's a lot that's happening.
It's gonna be unprecedented, it's gonna continue.
It's it doesn't look like it's over yet.
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So do you think that the sell-off for gold, which is pretty substantial, right?
Um, is this you're saying that you also said that a lot of people are trying to get liquid and they're taking huge haircuts um on the on the price to do that because it's not, you know, uh it's a little more complicated just to take your gold bars out of your backyard and and sell them.
Um is this is this do you anticipate that these are investors?
Oh, it's hard to know who they are, are preparing for juicier prices across the board.
Like, is this an anticipation of a larger collapse, which a lot a lot of people keep calling for?
And obviously, with the war scares and everything, that's a huge part of it, right?
And and and you've mentioned a lot of that as well.
Is that what you think is happening here?
Or is it just gold pumped like crazy for the last year, and now it's time to get out with some profit and everybody's doing it at the same time?
Yeah, I think that a lot of people think that the music has stopped and it's time to rush for one of the chairs and try not to be the last guy who falls on his ass on the ground, right?
So I think that's what's happening.
It's been a really long sustained uptrend for gold and silver, and you know, the the silver's pulled back even more than gold.
But um, yeah, I think gold uh is just is just pulling back after a really long rush.
I don't think that it's necessarily people trying to position to buy back in lower.
Um, but I'm sure there are some people who are expecting that, and there's a lot of people in the market who are expecting a much deeper correction, some people are expecting a deeper crash.
I'm saying that I think that we could see global economic recession, maybe depression.
Um, if this keeps going into May and we still don't have clarity and uh on the Strait of Hormoes and like actual open flow and and operation of you know, no resumption of normal economic circumstances, right?
So unless that happens by May, I think that we're gonna see a lot more volatility, a lot more economic impact, and a lot more room to the downside for a lot of things.
But the risk, you know, in betting on that is that everybody on the whole planet knows that this is a huge problem, and they're all working to try to solve it, and it can be solved relatively simply, right?
Like it's just a few different players all making an agreement.
So that could happen at any time, and it does seem like they're moving in that direction.
So, yeah, I think that there is a lot of potential for volatility.
Well, obviously, volatility, but like volatility to the downside, but that isn't a guaranteed outcome yet.
So, again, I'm just gonna kind of watch and see what happens because it's uh a huge risk of trying to bet heavily on one way or the other right now.
So, one thing that's interesting that happened in Milk Road last week.
Um, is on Monday morning, and we we interviewed him on Friday.
I had him on the show on Friday.
Uh, was Martin, our our crypto researcher, shared that he had liquidated half his portfolio.
And um he gave a lot of good reasons why, and all that's in Milk Road Pro for anybody who wants to check it out.
But Martin this morning was also very concerned about the potential for rate hikes coming uh in May, and that the market would start to price that in.
Can you explain that to me?
What what about this whole situation would suddenly cause the Fed to hike rates in a few months' time, just just after last week doing nothing.
So, first of all, I think that this comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of economics.
I don't think that an adjustment in rates is going to solve this problem or is the proper tool to solve.
Which problem?
What's the problem?
Right.
So, what is the problem is exactly the question, right?
So, like usually speaking, when the Fed wants to deal with elevated inflation, they will adjust monetary policy because that's one of the tools they have to deal with that.
But a raise in interest rates is not necessarily going to bring down inflation because the driver of this is a a structural shortage in a commodity, a consumable commodity, right?
So it's like it's not just uh uh a monetary phenomenon.
So monetary policy is not the right tool.
It's not, and the other thing too is that we don't, we have we have enough oil, it's just not in the right places in the world, right?
So, like the United States, West Texas crude, like there's there's buying from Asian markets on now coming for for that oil because it's needed.
Um, but uh the Federal Reserve adjusting monetary policy is not really going to help this situation and it's not the right tool to solve it.
We need to get the oil to the right places, and and there's other tools that do that, other ways to do that, but that's not a monetary policy thing.
However, you know, if if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and that's what the Federal Reserve is gonna do.
They're gonna say inflation is coming up and there's a risk to inflation coming up.
And so the market now is is pricing in an expectation.
So the market was pricing in, I think it was between two to three rate cuts for 2026, and that was the outlook.
After this whole situation with Iran has happened, that has flipped, and now I think the market is pricing in two maybe more rate hikes in 2026.
But again, just like I said, like that is subject to change rapidly, right?
So like that's the outlook right now that the market has.
However, if Trump and the prime minister of Iran, you know, do a uh TV interview together, shaking hands and kissing babies, right?
Then maybe suddenly that whole outlook shifts as well.
So I I'm not certain how this is gonna play out.
I think there's going to remain a diversity of opinion on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve itself about whether or not this is the proper response, because that will have a detrimental impact to the labor market, which is continuing to soften.
And it's like I said, it's not really the right tool.
If you have a massive structural shortage in many hundreds of millions of barrels of oil, raising interest rates doesn't solve that.
Um, and it just puts an another and different unnecessary strain on the economy.
So it's not clear to me that that's what's gonna happen.
The market's expecting it to because that's what happens when inflation goes up as the Fed raises rates, but uh that could change a lot.
So between now and the the next FOMC meeting, which I believe is at the end of April, Fed uh Fed chair Powell is gonna be chairing that meeting.
Between now and then, that's 30 days.
That's a long time.
That outlook could change, the data could change.
I don't think the Federal Reserve themselves is settled in their minds about this, but the market is pricing it in, um, which shows that there's an expectation that that the risk of that has increased, which is true.
Um, but I just think it's still too soon to call.
There's there's a lot more that can change in that time.
And for me, I I just don't I don't think that you're going to get like this like broad consensus around a rate hike here.
Um, it could happen, but and like, you know, I don't know, it's not gonna like when we got rate cuts before, it didn't radically change the world either.
And a 25 basis point rate hike is gonna, you know, obviously be um a signal to the markets to cool off, slow down, and people aren't gonna like that, but I don't think ultimately that's gonna have a massive sledgehammer impact either.
Um, so I'm a little shoulder shruggy about it, and it's a little too soon to call.
In three weeks, I think we'll have a better picture.
Okay, so sorry, that my my initial basic question there was the hike would be because of inflation.
Yeah, it would be because of inflation.
You're saying that that that wouldn't even matter because one of the underlying uh materials needed that that would pump CPI is oil, and raising rates would not actually make more oil, it wouldn't just magically make more oil overnight.
You're doing great, LG.
You got it, you got it right.
That's it.
I don't know why it's raising rates, hikes.
There's a there's good tongue twisters in there.
I don't know why.
It's something that's I was just struggle with.
Even I think a few other guys in the meeting this morning were like rate hikes, hike raising.
It's hard to, it's hard to kind of say all that at the same time.
Um, okay, that makes sense.
Yeah, that it's something that it's like you can't really combat that with Fed policies.
That's something that we're you need the flow, you need the flow of energy resources to continue as is set up.
If not, you need the market or the I guess the industry to adapt, which takes years to changing in energy infrastructure.
All right, they might still hike rates, but I I don't I don't it's not going to solve things, and I you I think you could argue it make it make it worse.
So uh we'll we'll see what they actually end up doing.
Rate hikes occur when you hike rates.
God, that's this is an impossible.
I really hope I really hope they don't edit this part out because this is gold, basically.
Okay, let's just hike rates.
Welcome to Milk Road Macron.
It's a Dr.
Zeus book, suddenly.
Um, all right.
Let's uh let's let's shift back to crypto bed.
Um, I mean, you already gave us a great take on crypto, and I think all this stuff is is really important, right?
And I think, especially in this bear market, there are a lot of crypto stories to tell, but so much of it comes from this.
And um, you know, uh uh tomorrow on the show, we have the Bitwise guys again, we have Matt Hogan.
And one thing that he told me, and I'm sure a lot of people agree with this, and and I doubt the take is unique to him, but when he told me this, it really stuck is that Bitcoin has a way to really front run a lot of stuff.
And now, you know, Bitcoin was the first thing to come down, and now across the broader economy, you're seeing issues, you're seeing uh potential tops on the SP, you're seeing a lot of scares.
Uh John, at this point in time, I don't think we've actually had done a show in a few weeks, just you and I.
What's your current feeling on crypto?
Like, is it is this is have we passed the the the worst of the bear market?
Are we set to recover faster if these things all get resolved?
What is your kind of like you know, uh, you know, today, Monday, March 23rd take on where we're at?
So I did an interview with Jordy Visser last week and spoke to him a little bit about this.
He thinks that the combination of the price shock in oil and the stress in the private credit markets is ultimately going to result in some kind of a need for a liquidity event, which basically means the treasury and the Federal Reserve stepping in to support the markets in some way, intervening basically.
I can't remember where I saw this was being considered, but um, I think it's India, maybe or Japan.
But in any event, some other nations are already talking about stepping in to intervene uh because of the the price action in in oil and in other places.
Um, so that there's uh a likelihood, I think rising that we're going to see liquidity uh events and interventions by central banks and by governments to stabilize markets in that environment.
What Jordy Visser said was that he thinks that Bitcoin often sells off and gets hit the hardest when these like stresses come in in the markets and liquidity stresses come in the markets.
But once that liquidity event comes, once that uh you know injection of capital comes, Bitcoin is usually one of the things that runs first, runs hardest, and runs longest.
Um, and so it's it's kind of one of those again, it goes back to the heads you win tails you lose thing.
Overall, where what am I feeling about crypto here?
I think that the the signaling from Washington is that there's been a compromise reached on the stable coin yield question, which has been the thing that's been holding up the Clarity Act, which means that there's and there's today, as we're talking right now, there's conversations going on on the Hill about finalizing the details in the language of the bill to you know, like uh take the the agreement that's been reached in principle and turn it into um legal uh code, right?
So uh coded language.
So they're going to do that, they're gonna like announce what that means.
That's gonna be a bullish catalyst.
Then once that actually passes, if it actually passes, that would be another super bullish catalyst.
There's going to be people front running that once that news comes out.
So that'll be a uh a tailwind for Bitcoin and crypto.
Overall, though, I think until the broader um economic and liquidity landscape improves, we're not going to see another huge breakout of Bitcoin to the all-time high.
So, does that look like a big crash and then the Fed steps in?
Maybe.
Does that look like we get through this to the other side, and then towards the end of the year, things start to go up again?
Maybe that's what a lot of people are expecting.
So I I don't really know.
I'm much more content at this point to just watch the price action.
I think that there's a lot of reasons to be very concerned about the economy.
Very concerned.
We're at risk of global economic collapse, and that's non-zero.
And so it's difficult to get super bullish on anything at that this exact moment.
Um, so yeah, I think that like I said, that there's a few headwinds that I'm seeing, but the the overall risks in the market posed by this like huge shutdown on oil flows and fertilizer flows, uh, to me means that there's a lot of risks right now.
And I'm I'm not gonna get wildly bullish on anything at the moment.
Um, but yeah, overall, though, crypto has already sold off a lot.
It doesn't seem to be getting hammered or during this, it's outperforming a lot of other assets since uh the the start of this conflict.
So I don't see a a huge catalyst for like collapse in Bitcoin in the short term.
Um, but if we do see this conflict and crisis go on longer, then the economic impact and fallout of that'll be even more severe, and that could ultimately shake the foundations for all markets.
Um so it you know there's there's a lot to to digest right now, and an easy way for me to do it is to just hodl and watch and uh not try to force a trade or get like you know super dogmatic about what must happen, but just watch as the market and Bitcoin collectively make up its mind about what to do here.
Some of the news this morning, just to circle back to clarity, and it came from a few different sources.
So I'm gonna have a chance to look into it, but I feel like you maybe had a chance to read a little bit more about it.
Was that there is an agreement in principle and the white white house is aligned, although I'm not sure what that means.
I'm not sure if they were aligned or not last time.
What John, what maybe just recap for me and and for anybody listening who doesn't know like what what exactly is happening there?
So there's a conversation happening between some of the leaders of the Senate banking committee, I believe, um, and the the House uh agricultural committee, um, basically horse trading and compromising on what this looks like.
Um, the the White House being aligned probably just means that Patrick DeWitt, who's the the head of uh uh digital assets for for the White House, has probably been read in on the conversations and is you know somewhat happy about it.
Um, and you know, the the there's conversations basically saying, and this is rumors, I don't know, and like I haven't looked into this a ton either, but the the the the conversation, the tenor of the conversation seems to be around whether or not the capital stored in stable coins can be uh you know yield generating based on how active it is.
So if you're just like leaving a pile of money in stable coins, are we gonna allow you to earn yield on that?
Versus if you're actually using the stable coins and actively transacting out of your wallet or whatever, maybe that's eligible for stable coin yield versus money you're just leaving languishing in stable coins is not um because they want to try to promote liquidity and like movement of stable coins, not just like dead capital sitting in it.
Um I don't I don't know.
I don't know who that benefits, I don't know why people would be happier with that than alternative solutions.
Really, I just I think that as long as we get a solution to move forward here, um, that's the main thing.
Cause I do think it is important to get some legislation on the books here.
And if the stable coin yield thing is has been the holdup, I'm kind of you know not happy with any compromise, but happy that there is a compromise.
So we'll we'll see when the details of this come out.
It's it's you know, this is another one of those things where it's like, you know, like we started this conversation talking about this little gap between you know, people getting some there's something happening and then getting confirmation of it.
There's that speculation moment that happens.
I think that's where we are on this, but probably by the end of this week, we'll probably have more information on this.
Um, because I do think they need to get this moving.
This has to get out of committee, out of committee and onto the floor in April, I think to have a shot of getting passed.
And so the the timelines on this are pretty tight.
So we should hear more soon.
Why?
Why does it need to be on the floor by April?
Because they're gonna adjourn, they're gonna go back to campaign, and there's gonna be elections.
There's just if it doesn't get going really soon, I think that the likelihood of it passing, if it doesn't get out of committee by April, the timelines for it to get passed in Congress before um recess in August, it it it kind of evaporates.
And so uh yeah, it's like you might wait probably.
I mean, there's an outside chance you could wait six years to get legislation on this again.
Um, so they really kind of got to get this moving.
Hmm.
Okay, so oh wow, okay.
So I didn't realize it was that tight.
So basically, if this doesn't, if this comes back to the floor in April, which is kind of what's being uh previewed here or and uh insinuated, if it doesn't pass then things take too long for them to do it again before they take their summer vacation, and then after summer vacation, everybody's in midterm mode anyway, so there's no time to pass laws.
There's no time to go home anything, right?
Right, they all go home to campaign because there's an election in November and everybody in Congress wants to campaign, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, okay, that makes sense.
Okay.
All right.
Uh John, we have to uh there is one thing we have to talk about as well.
Uh, thank you again for all your takes there so far.
Um, we have a special offer going on right now at Milk Road.
Um, we have completely redone Milk Road Pro.
We talked about this last week a few times on the show.
You've been hearing plugs for it.
Uh, but John is also part of this, just so you guys know.
Uh, and you guys know really know and love John.
And now you listen to his fantastic opinions for the last 30 minutes.
And um, if you want to know more, you want to talk to him more often, you can be part of Milk Road Pro.
And there's a lot of other wonderful things that we've done in there.
The most significant, which is um totally upgrade the way uh we do our portfolios, and basically, what Milk Road Pro is now is a series of portfolios from our analysts like people like John and Martin, who was on the show last week, Melvin and Vincent on the AI side, and Kyle, the head honcho himself, is there with a portfolio.
And basically the point of doing this is that, you know, in this type of economy, like you're saying, you know, John, even right now is telling us that it's like it's really hard to know what to do.
Uh, it's really hard to do anything at all.
That's one strategy that John is giving us.
Um, we realize that having a diversity of opinions from from all our analysts, all our big brains at Milk Road made a lot more sense um in terms of what we wanted to offer pro members.
And we really want you guys, our listeners, to come and check it out.
It's just a dollar for for you get it, you get it free, basically free for two weeks with by paying a dollar.
Um, and we're doing it that way because we just want you to come in and see, and if you like it.
Um, and in there, John has a portfolio.
All those guys each have portfolios.
When they make moves, they write a nice little write-up about why they're making that move, why they're buying or selling, like Martin selling half his portfolio last week, has a nice big rationale there.
Um, and we really want you guys to come check it out.
And John, um, if you if you well, we're not gonna reveal your portfolio because I think people should have to go pay their dollar for that.
If you want to pay your dollar to go see John's portfolio, you can, and the link will be in the description.
Uh, but John, maybe, you know, in case it hasn't been clear, you're approaching something like this.
It's it's a public portfolio.
So it's a little uh uh, you know, not public, but uh accessible to pro members.
How did you go about kind of constructing what you have?
Maybe just give us your kind of strategy.
Well, assets is something people can go and see themselves.
But how do you how do you go about constructing something like this, especially in a time like this?
We just started this a month ago, right?
So this is you know, uh good for you guys, the analyst, you get to kind of construct a portfolio, at least in the in the the crypto bottoms, and although for the AI guys maybe a little bit different.
But John, for you, how did you go about building this?
So I have uh very different, I think, investment philosophy and strategy to a lot of other milk road content creators.
I don't like having a huge portfolio of a lot of different investments.
I don't like trading a lot.
I think that the most important thing an investor can do is to get highly concentrated positions in a small number of key bets that articulate their thesis as well as they can, and then to stay in those positions uh while they play out.
One of the most important things to do as a trader is to protect yourself from yourself.
You are the the most the biggest risk you have is your own ignorance and your own mistakes, your own emotions, right?
So the more trades you make, the more likely you are to make a bad trade.
And uh yeah, so it's it's my strategy is to get concentrated positions in things I believe in for the long term and then to not outsmart myself or overtrade my positions uh while I let that thesis play out.
Um, I think that you know, one example of this, and this is not necessarily what I'm I'm calling for to happen here, but I think an example of how I think about this.
If you were a gold investor, you spent a very long time watching the SP 500 and everybody outperform you, and then suddenly in the last couple of years, you outperformed all of them for the last 20 years because the market finally priced in your thesis and it it played out, right?
So I'm not necessarily saying that you know the right trade isn't to be in the SP up until that switches and then jump over to gold.
Like, yeah, if you can do that and you can time all that, wonderful.
Other than that, though, um, I think that you should get a thesis on uh develop a thesis of your own, not rent conviction from me or somebody else, but develop a thesis of your own that makes sense for your circumstances, your capital, your financial goals, and your investment needs, and then uh in your risk appetite, frankly, and then stick with that while it plays out, right?
Like Michael Burry said this in the big short.
He said, I might be early, but I'm not wrong.
Well, in investing, being early is the same thing as being wrong.
But if you know that your thesis hasn't finished playing out yet, and you have confidence and conviction in it, that gives you the ability to be very sanguine and you know tranquil while you wait for that to happen.
Uh Charlie Munger said that like the the key to life for something like that is some quote about his is like if you can't endure your portfolio dropping by 50% with equanimity, uh, you're never gonna make it as an investor.
Um, and so I'm not saying that you know we all have to hottle through every bear market that comes, but my view on this is just I have the most, I'll tell you that I have the most Ethereum and the most Bitcoin of any analyst in those portfolios, and that is the goal.
If I will tell you this too, I also have a lot of cash because I'm expecting an opportunity for for buying.
Um, I don't know if it'll be buying altcoins or if it'll be buying Bitcoin and Ethereum, more Bitcoin and Ethereum on a severe dip that comes, but either way, I have some dry powder on the sidelines, a lot of dry powder too, relative to the other analysts.
Um, and and so I'm not diversified into 30 positions, I'm concentrated.
This is the Stanley Druck and Miller approach, and then I've got some dry powder to use.
I think dry powder accumulation is a great strategy for right now because while all this uncertainty and volatility is happening, there's going to be opportunities.
But once we get some certainty and clarity about what the next six to 12 months looks like, um, that'll be a great opportunity to deploy some dry powder into the markets and you'll have a clearer view of the road ahead as opposed to try to trade through all this volatility and chop right now.
So that's kind of the strategy I'm taking here.
Um, if anybody else ends up getting more Bitcoin or Ethereum than me, I will deploy some capital to get more than them because I view that as the goal here.
Life is a contest to see who can get the most Bitcoin, and I'm gonna win.
So that's that's my thesis here.
That's what we got to write right at the top of your portfolio in your little bio is you know, determined to be the top holder of Bitcoin and Ethereum across all Milk Road.
I like that.
Uh and that's a good strategy, man.
Thank you for sharing.
And for anybody else who wants to check that out, Milk Road Pro is the way to go.
It's only a dollar for 14 days.
So make sure you guys check it out.
It's it's literally designed this campaign so that you guys can just take a look at the new stuff that we built.
Uh and and I'm very excited about.
I'm very excited to see your portfolio out in the flesh, John.
It's great to see it.
It's great to see what you're actually doing.
And then you you you walk the walk.
You you uh got all your Bitcoin and ETH and and a a smattering of other assets, but that's the main, that's the main highlight.
And people have to go see what those other ones are uh by going pro.
Um great.
Well, let's wrap up.
John, if there's any one last thing on your on your radar for this week, the one thing that you're like, I need to, this is the thing I gotta wake up every morning and check.
What would that be?
Let's leave us with that.
Watch Trump.
Trump is the thing to watch right now.
He's gonna move the markets.
He's done it several times this week.
Whatever he says, if he announces that there's a deal, um, whatever happens is gonna be uh a big deal.
It's gonna come from him.
It's gonna come out on Truth Social and Twitter.
Um so just pay attention to that.
And yeah, I would say watch the Friday close too.
He does tend to drop a lot of news around Friday PM Eastern time.
Um, so just uh be paying attention to that and uh react.
Don't don't don't try to trade, don't get long, don't use leverage, stay safe, stay educated, but stay bullish, I think a little bit for right now.
Um yeah, those are my thoughts.
How do you manage to say that the exact same way every time unless you have it written now, man?
It's like you're playing a recording, it's so good.
What a great line.
Uh great.
Well, thank you, John, and thank you, everybody else.
Have yourselves uh a great and very volatile week.
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