Bitcoin ETF Inflows Continue | 1000x

This is now the fourth or fifth time that Bitcoin is having this rip-roaring rally, and you just can’t fucking write it off anymore. It’s survived low interest rates, the period of apathy, the SEC onslaught—it’s survived all these things. It’s becoming obvious to the world. Looking at these ETF flows, you’re literally just hoping they stop in order to buy a dip.

Okay, welcome back to the much-delayed second—third?—second episode of the year. We were supposed to record an episode, but instead we went out and got drunk.

Oh yeah, we did do that. That was a hell of a night. It was awesome. We just drank whiskey at Churn for—I don’t know how long.

I wish we could have recorded that podcast. I think you guys would have really appreciated it, but I don’t think it would have gotten past our censors, unfortunately.

Which is great. Next time we’re both in London, maybe we’ll invite a few people out. We’ll post a picture, and if you can find us, you can come hang out with us.

We should start having 1,000x community get-togethers where we repeat our unwaveringly bullish thesis.

You didn’t miss much. The 1,000x podcast that happened at the bar was basically us talking about how we were bullish, which we talk about on Twitter and every podcast. The reality is, how could you not be bullish at this moment in time?

Let’s go through what happened. Post-approval of the ETF, this is something we’ve been talking about for a long time: GBTC held a ton of stale capital, and there was very likely a lot of directional capital held within that product that wasn’t able to exit for many years.

From the time—if I’m getting my dates right—around February 2021, the discount on the product went negative. A bunch of people started buying it to replicate their Bitcoin exposure, and at some point a bunch of people ended up directionally long this thing. They were going to start redeeming because one of the biggest reasons they were directionally long was the massive discount. At a 50% discount, you’re making a 100% return once that discount goes back to flat.

Everybody knows the story, so I don’t need to rehash it. There were going to be outflows. People saw the outflows and took that to mean there wouldn’t be any inflows, which is the opposite. There have been—and there are currently—some pretty insane inflows. This ETF is breaking a lot of records right now, and we knew it would because you have people like Larry Fink getting on TV and telling everybody that it’s time to make room for digital assets in their portfolios.

I was blown away by the FUD when the ETFs first launched. GBTC isn’t a hard product to understand. Before it became an ETF, it was a trust that held Bitcoin, and you couldn’t redeem the trust and take your Bitcoin out until it eventually, hopefully, became an ETF.

When that happened, trust shares—or, subsequently, ETF shares—were redeemed and Bitcoin was pulled out. In the day or three after the ETF approvals were first processed by the market, everybody looked at those outflows and panicked. They looked at the inflows in the other ETFs and panicked: “Oh my God, they said there were going to be billions and billions and billions of dollars worth of inflows, and it’s only a few hundred million going into IBIT and a few others, while even more is coming out of GBTC.”

You look at the panic merchants on crypto Twitter, and everybody takes it as if markets move based on the second derivative of the news, not what’s actually happening at the time. If you see outflows, that isn’t necessarily bearish in and of itself. You have to ask yourself whether those outflows are going to accelerate, decelerate, or reverse. That’s what moves the market.

I 100% agree with that statement. The issue people make is that they do the first-order deduction: “Outflows are bearish.” But it’s already priced in.

That’s true at a point in time, obviously, if you know about the outflows. The question is, over a period of time, are those outflows larger or smaller than expected? How is that expectation shifting over time?

I’ll give you an example. When Bitcoin was trading at $48,000, my initial estimate of the outflows was $2 billion. Then the pace of outflows changed at GBTC. They changed from being on track for $2 billion to actually being on track for $3.5 billion or $4 billion.

At that moment in time, you have to realize that your priors are incorrect and shift your opinion: “This is actually bearish.” But then you constantly have to take in new data. You’re surveying the market and asking what people think the outflows are going to be tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that.

At some point, what ended up happening was that the outflows got priced at $5 billion, $6 billion, or $7 billion, when in reality they were still on track for $3 billion to $4 billion. People were putting them into an exponential curve instead of what should have been a more logarithmic curve. Now it’s priced the other way. Bitcoin at $40,000 is a very good level for people to come back in.

This is all hindsight talk.

What’s useful today is the second part of the thesis: Post this particular ETF, there’s going to be tremendous speculation on every other ETF down the line that should be coming into play.

At the moment, the ETH/BTC ratio is trading at 0.05275. That’s a very good level, in my opinion. You start scaling in because the reality is that ETH is the next product to be turned into an ETF. You might continue to see inflows into the spot Bitcoin product, and maybe the ratio goes to 0.048—another 10%—but at some point in the next 2 to 4 months, I think you’re going to see this ratio at 0.0665.

I agree. It’s a really interesting time to start coming in personally, and it’s what everybody out there should be doing.

Hindsight is hindsight. We can do our victory lap and talk about GBTC all we want, but what matters is the future now, not the past.

Go on Google and look up Farside Investors’ Bitcoin ETF flow dashboard at farside.co.uk. It’s one of 60 different dashboards out there that show you the inflows and outflows—the net flows—into every single ETF. Just bookmark it and look at it every day.

You can see that last Friday there were $542 million worth of inflows, and the Thursday before that there were $45 million. Keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on in terms of these flows.

To me, this year is going to be the story of flows. You have miner selling getting cut in half pretty soon, in April. You have this Bitcoin ETF flow that everybody was panicking about because it supposedly wasn’t big enough. Everyone was expecting billions on day 1, but that’s not how ETFs work. It’s going to be a steady tailwind throughout the year.

If your ETF dashboard shows that inflows are slowing down, and you’re a little bit levered or holding more Bitcoin than you’re comfortable with, maybe you should lighten up. For the most part, though, I expect steady inflows and a reduction in outflows, mainly because of reduced miner selling.

Other ETFs, like an ETH ETF that’s now on the table, open the door for non-Bitcoin tokens to be put into ETF form across the board. Is that going to telegraph securities regulation and the intentions of the SEC? All of these things are going to become narratives over the course of the next 9 months.

Flows are the story. There’s one thing that’s bothering me about crypto right now and one reason why I would be longer if it weren’t for this particular discomfort. Flows are a great story, but you also need fundamentals to make a market really go into a supercycle. Aside from the already-proven use cases, I’m perhaps disenchanted with the lack of new ones. Maybe Farcaster is going to blow up, but I’m just not feeling the fundamentals as much.

I think the reality of the situation is twofold. First, you have the S&P above 5,000 and the Nasdaq ripping. You have what seems to be a very robust economy in the United States.

The rest of the world—I’m not waiting with bated breath. I think China is under a lot of pressure right now, and Europe is stagnating a bit. But the United States is going, and the United States is what matters because that’s where all the money is flowing into the space.

As long as you have strong fundamentals from the equity side and the technology side, inflows into BTC keep going. We all know that at some point people get greedy. That’s the reality of this market.

There are a lot of people whose balance of holdings—people who own Bitcoin—used to be much less crypto-native. But because of the ETF speculation, you’ve seen a reallocation to Bitcoin, so people’s portfolios are more comprised of BTC now than they have been in the past. You’re still going to get that wealth effect, and it’s going to flow down to different assets. The fundamentals will follow.

Take NFTs, for example. Pudgy Penguins is doing very well—and what a ridiculous name. I can’t believe I have to say that out loud. But they’re not trading at $40,000 because they’ve managed to transform themselves into a TV show. They’ve managed to transform themselves into a TV show for adults. I actually don’t know the details, but they’re putting out products.

My view is that as wealth grows, you’re still going to see redistribution. That’s going to cause certain sectors to do extremely well, and then it’s going to cause fundamentals to improve in those sectors.

Take Blur, for example. If NFT volumes go up because people are respeculating on NFTs, then the value of Blur is going to go up. TAO is another example in the AI space. TAO has managed to start raising money for products being built on top of it. It’s becoming a platform. That wasn’t true 6 or 8 months ago, but it’s true today purely because there’s more money in the space and people are willing to go out and do this.

Going back to Blast, it’s the same thing. They’ve introduced a new layer 2, and people are willing to deploy capital into building products on these platforms.

You’re saying that the fundamentals will follow the flows. I have this antiquated commodities mindset that fundamentals lead the flows and create them. Maybe in crypto it’s different. You might be right.

I think that’s what we’re going to see happening. What I’m focused on right now is figuring out exactly where the flows are going to go in the beginning.

ETH is the no-brainer for me. How is it so far behind? I couldn’t agree with you more on ETH/BTC. That’s a crazy one.

The only issue with ETH is whether you’ve used Sei or any of these other platforms.

No, I’ve written them off entirely, which is lazy. But they’re very easy to use, they’re very consumer-friendly, and the applications are smooth and easy.

When you go back to ETH, what you realize is that it’s just not a great user experience. I think that matters less because the thesis around ETH is more concentrated around institutional flows than anything else.

In the same way that you can’t really use things on Bitcoin, it doesn’t matter.

Exactly. Let’s not forget that centralized databases and centralized infrastructure—Amazon Web Services and all the things that crypto stands in opposition to—have a much better user experience than even Sei or Aptos.

At the end of the day, it’s about a decentralized settlement layer that has a network effect, economies of scale, and a first-mover advantage. That’s why I’m bullish on ETH.

I don’t think anyone is going to flock to NEAR or, maybe, Solana because they’ve done something special, or to any of these other alt-L1s further out on the risk spectrum just because of user experience. What matters is security and decentralization. Otherwise, you just go centralized.

I agree with that. Talking about price action for a second, where do you see this? If you’re trading this market and you’re thinking, “Let’s say you’re 50% deployed or 40% deployed and want to get more deployed,” are you buying here? Are you buying at $50,000? Is this short-term or long-term in your view?

Let me preface this by saying that, with the way I form a view in my trading mindset, I start by testing the absolute extremes. I ask, “What do I want to have on right now? What do I want to have on for 10 years?” I don’t usually have much conviction in the super-short term, so I like to start at the other end of the spectrum.

In terms of what I want to have on for 10 years, I have never had more conviction in my life over any 10-year period in any asset class than I currently have in Bitcoin.

You can’t give people 10-year advice.

Hear me out. I’m working my way backward. If you’re trying not to chop yourself up—if you’re trying not to buy high and sell low, like selling $38,000 Bitcoin after the ETF comes out because some crypto Twitter bear says it looks bearish, and then buying it back at $45,000—it helps to have a very long-term thesis that you can cling to when you’re losing money.

My very long-term thesis is that Bitcoin is a no-brainer, most of crypto is probably going to zero, but some of crypto will probably take over large swaths of technology and finance.

Coming back to your question, if I were 50% allocated, I would probably allocate myself 80% to 90%. I would take the 50% that was unallocated for crypto but undeployed, and I would put maybe 70% or 80% of that into Bitcoin, which is the most secure crypto asset and has the lowest volatility.

Then I would save the remainder of that dry powder to either add Bitcoin on dips or selectively bet on alts with no leverage that I saw emerging in various ecosystems with some sort of potential.

Same question back to you: What would you be doing?

Wow, great question. I’m glad you asked it.

My spicy view, as somebody who trades a little bit more short-term than 10 years, is that I’m in Monaco right now and feeling a little bit spicy. I’m a gambler at heart. I’ve seen this price action play out a lot.

You’re wearing a black turtleneck like all the French people there. Is that what you mean?

What do you mean? Do French people wear black turtlenecks? Is that a thing?

Of course it is. Watch every French movie. They’re all wearing black turtlenecks.

Name one French movie.

Léon. That guy took a child, Natalie Portman, and turned her into a killer.

Name another French movie.

Amélie. There’s definitely a guy with a fixie bicycle and a black turtleneck in there.

I’ll go watch Amélie and see if I can find any turtlenecks. I forgot you married a French woman.

Yeah, I’m up to my turtleneck in Frenchness.

We were talking about something serious before you distracted me. We were talking about what to do if you’re underallocated.

Here’s the thing: When you’re looking at this type of price action, it reminds me a lot of the $20,000 and $30,000 breaks. With any round-number break, you tend to get this type of price action, where you have to test the liquidity first.

At any moment, there are a ton of people who, for psychological reasons, will sell at round numbers. There’s no actual expected value to selling at a round number—whether you’re selling at $40,000 or $30,000. There’s no reason to do it other than that people are psychologically wired to sell at round numbers because they like to say, “I sold at $50,000.”

When that happens, the first time you hit that number, you tend to get a lot of people who come in and sell.

I’m sorry to interrupt, but what makes round numbers important? Why wouldn’t you just buy here, expecting a break in the future? Maybe I’m stupid, but I don’t understand.

Generally, what you tend to get are those 10% to 15% sell-offs once a round number doesn’t break. Almost always, the prudent move is not to buy the first time.

You’re not saying to buy the dip. You’re saying to buy the break.

You can buy the dip or buy the break. The first part of the statement is that you buy the break. The second part is that I don’t think the inflows are stopping anytime soon.

I think any amount of selling by the people who already own this asset—whether they’re miners in China or people in the United States who have been holding for a long time—isn’t going to be enough supply to take this thing lower and overwhelm the inflows. You have to remember that we’re just getting started.

That’s why I’m not trying to buy a dip. The price of IBIT, the ETF that most normies are buying, is $284 a share. There’s no round number there, and those inflows are unstoppable.

To me, the idea of trying to get cute with it and dance between the raindrops might be a great way to extract extra alpha from this market, but I’m not good enough to do that. I don’t even look at it that way.

We’re traders at the end of the day. You can talk long-term and I’ll talk short-term, but when I see situations like this, I see opportunity. My job is to exploit that opportunity.

That being said, I think Q1 is an interesting one. The only people buying now are the people who already decided to do so. A lot of the bigger players who are willing to get into this market either decided in Q4 of last year or expedited some processes to buy.

I think the largest number of people are going to come into this market in Q2. The ETF was approved in Q1, and that galvanized a lot of people to take this more seriously. Starting in Q2, you’re finally going to get those people to get their boards to sign off on it.

The halving happens then, too.

I’ve been talking to a lot of exchanges. I think the best way to evaluate this market is to see who new is coming into it.

As far as I can tell, a tremendous number of new people are coming in from both the retail and institutional sides. I’m seeing the same thing. A lot of the investment banks and hedge funds that stepped away after FTX are coming back in full force because they’ve realized that this isn’t going away.

That’s going to make life a little bit harder to trade, especially the large caps. I think you’re seeing this in the market, whether it’s conscious or not.

A lot of the natives have moved away from levered trading in large caps—anything in the top 30. The amount and preponderance of people trading those large caps on leverage, at least as far as I see on Twitter, is declining. They’re moving toward on-chain metrics, shitcoins, and all this other stuff.

That area has become, and will continue to become, more competitive as these new people come in. But it will provide a boost in liquidity, a boost in inflows, and a boost in value to a lot of the top 10 and top 20 assets.

There are a lot of midcaps and large caps that have underperformed. If you look at Solana relative to BTC, or MATIC in a huge way versus BTC, maybe around Q2 you’ll see some of these assets get pumped.

I have a half-formed thesis that the new allocators coming in are going to pump some of these assets. Even if they don’t, the rising tide you describe will lift all ships. That’s no excuse for bad investing, but it does allow you to be wrong for a little bit longer when you’re trying to time a difficult speculative thesis on alts.

Interestingly enough, it’s funny you mention that you’re talking to new people getting into the space. I am too. I spend most of my days now dancing between the raindrops, actively and systematically trading things like gasoline, naphtha, and other random parts of crude oil that most people don’t like—the altcoins of crude oil.

In my world of commodities traders, pretty much everybody has now asked me, “Is this a good time to buy crypto?”

So in your commodities world, people are coming back? They’re coming to you to talk about crypto for the first time ever?

For the first time. This didn’t even happen in 2021. In 2021, I was laughed out of the room for pursuing a career in crypto.

What do you think changed in these people’s minds?

They’re obviously very commodity-focused, oil-focused traders. It’s not like I’m some visionary. The light bulb went off for me toward the highs, but similarly, this is now the fourth or fifth time that Bitcoin has had this rip-roaring rally, and you just can’t write it off anymore.

It survived low interest rates, the period of apathy, the SEC onslaught—it survived all these things. I think the light bulb going off for the commodities community is the same light bulb that went off for me.

This is a digital commodity. It’s something that governments, citizens, non-state actors, and all sorts of other entities will need and want to hold on their balance sheets in order to facilitate important functions: wealth preservation, value transfer, and occasionally a medium of exchange for hard goods.

It’s just becoming obvious to the world. ETH as a settlement layer is also a topic that a lot of people in commodities are focused on because settlement layers in commodities are notoriously tricky and problematic.

They’re asking, “Is now a good time?” If you’re 0% allocated to crypto—which is still true of a lot of people—now is as good a time as ever. The 10-year thesis is so bullish that you should allocate something.

If you’re 50% allocated or more and looking to add, even if I were still actively trading Bitcoin, I don’t know if I would wait. I just don’t like looking at these ETF flows and hoping they stop so that I can buy a dip.

I want to go back to the commodities point for a second. You’re trading oil all day, every day. A year ago, you talked to me a little bit about the overlap between the two industries—not just that Bitcoin is a digital commodity, but also that there might be some overlap. You’ve seen some exploration in actually settling deals using Tether, Bitcoin, or whatever it is.

Has that progressed in any meaningful way?

Functionally, no. Other than the redenomination of hydrocarbon trade in certain trade lanes, you could say that some things have started moving in that direction.

China and Russia trade crude oil denominated in renminbi. India buys some crude oil denominated in non-U.S.-dollar terms. Aside from that little baby step toward a world where there’s a new global reserve currency that everyone—even if they hate each other—can understand, not much has happened.

But I think there are a few different strands of the rope where crypto and commodities will eventually merge.

First, commodities traders need to get their heads around digital assets. That’s belatedly starting to happen in a big way. Then crypto will replace the commodities back office, which is a much bigger mess than the traditional finance back office.

Settling an oil transaction between Nigeria and China involves more nodes, pieces of paper, faxes, and other complications than you would believe. That needs a decentralized database. It also needs a decentralized denominator, at least for some transactions. The dollar is great, but it isn’t perfect for everybody.

It definitely isn’t now. You saw it 2 years ago when the United States first froze Russia’s asset reserves and locked up $800 billion.

It’s getting worse now. There’s agitation to take those reserves and give them to Ukraine because of the slowdown in aid. That would be a death blow.

It wouldn’t be instantaneous, obviously, but in my opinion it would be the crossing of the Danube—the point of no return.

I thought the crossing of the Rubicon was the point of no return.

The Danube is a nice river too. I like it. I was just in Serbia, so it was stuck in my head.

You’re a Bohemian guy. What can I say?

I thought crossing the Rubicon was the point of no return when they took the assets in the first place. But if they just fucking fork them over to Ukraine to buy weapons, oh my God.

The final thing I think crypto could be useful for in the world of commodities—and we’re getting there fast—is that most commodities relevant to most of the world are not just opaque; they’re impossible to trade.

The types of oil, corn, wheat, and other commodities that you can see on a screen as an institution constitute only a couple of basis points of global consumption. Imagine there’s a market for West Coast jet fuel or Indonesian rice, but the exchanges don’t have time to create markets for institutional counterparties.

One thing FTX actually did a good job of was tokenizing new markets and throwing them out there. Sure, half of it was probably illegal, but at some point in the future, the nature of tokenized assets will make it possible for most commodities trading to be tokenized and take place either on-chain or off-chain in tokenized form.

I think that’s a real innovation for value transfer, hedging, speculation, and all the things that make commodities markets tick.

Somebody needs to take that step. It’s been prognosticated for a long time across all markets, and it is slowly happening in traditional markets.

You’re seeing tokenized money-market funds pop up left and right. Franklin Templeton was leading the way. I don’t know why they picked such a strange name, but they did attempt to tokenize their money-market fund.

This is coming at a certain point. Once it’s tokenized, a lot of people make the argument that it isn’t good for crypto. No, it’s amazing because it becomes interoperable with all the networks.

Whether that specific asset or product delivers a bottom line to any particular network doesn’t really matter. It’s now part and parcel of being able to interact with that world. When you’re able to interact with a whole new world, that’s going to bring value to that world and drag it away from traditional architecture.

I can see that happening with commodities in the long run.

Even dogwifhat is good for crypto. Any use is good for crypto. Even the casino stuff is good.

Use cases are good, even if they aren’t necessarily the most blue-chip use cases.

Something interesting is cooking in crypto aside from the broader resurgence of interest, the ETFs bringing in flows, and all that good stuff: The regulators have gone quiet, haven’t they?

This is an election year, and I expected them to start banging the drum, but they’re kind of hoping people will forget the war they just lost against crypto using taxpayer money.

It’s a political issue at the end of the day. It’s such a bad look for them. They spent so many resources and so much time coming after this space, and they have absolutely nothing to show for it. In fact, they’ve taken massive losses.

One of the best trades we’ve done was buying Ripple equity because it was trading at a 99.5% discount to the company’s actual balance sheet. Why was it trading at such a massive discount? Because the company was embroiled in a battle with the regulators, and it was entirely possible that it would lose.

But after we saw the SEC lose and lose and lose, it started to make us pretty bullish. Before that arrangement or the decision the SEC came to with Ripple regarding XRP, which absolved them of a lot of the different issues—obviously there’s an appeal or whatnot—we started buying a lot because you could buy the equity for $1 billion to $1.5 billion, while the company had roughly $25 billion to $30 billion worth of assets on its balance sheet.

Most of that was in Ripple tokens, but it also had cash, venture investments, and a lot of other things.

I’m telling you this anecdote because there are a lot of other opportunities like that today. The regulators are taking their foot off the pedal, in my opinion.

If you look at what has historically been priced poorly in this industry because regulators have been so aggressive with certain assets and products, you now know that regulators aren’t going to be as aggressive—especially in an election year. It’s not going to happen.

You start identifying those pockets of opportunity and bidding them up. If Trump gets elected, you’re going to make a lot of money. Even if Biden gets elected again and the status quo remains, they’ve lost the political will to come after this industry in a big way.

What’s the worst-case political scenario for crypto? Is it that Biden steps down because he’s too old or infirm, and Elizabeth Warren takes over?

Are you kidding? If Biden stepped down, it would probably be a good thing for crypto.

Obviously.

If Elizabeth Warren comes up, then that’s basically it. She’s the only one I’d underwrite. Nobody else cares about this industry.

Biden—or Biden’s lackeys—probably cared more than anybody about trying to kill crypto, and they just got ironed out. They’re done. They can’t do it anymore.

They completely nuked the industry. They hollowed out the American trading industry, made it harder for some American firms to trade crypto, spent a ton of money slowing down progress in the space, sent a lot of talent offshore, bankrupted a lot of startups that ran out of runway, and prolonged the winter.

But it’s over now. Everybody ended up moving to London or Dubai because of this.

It would be amazing if, politics aside, a reasonable person got elected on this issue—or somebody on the right got elected. It would be wonderful to see all those people come back.

The American invention, historically, has been the ability to pursue success. That’s always been the case. We’ve done such a poor job with it in this particular industry, and it would be amazing to get that back. I think we have the opportunity to do it.

I will say, Avi, that I’m so proud of the American court system. When you have government overreach, the checks and balances worked. They genuinely worked.

You had bad arguments by bad people, those arguments got dismantled, and the industry won. That’s what we need more of.

I think I’ve outlined how to make money on it. One thing I’d love to hear from anybody listening is what you think the most targeted sectors have been.

My mind goes to things like dYdX, SNX, and a lot of DeFi products. I think there are opportunities to pick up things that regulators tried to stomp on but that haven’t necessarily been repriced yet.

I think that’s really good advice. One thing I’d like to add for the listeners is what I’m doing in my career right now.

I’m drilling deeply into a sector I know really well, which is petroleum and refined products, building trading strategies, and day trading my way around that market. Then I’m taking the gains and investing them into Bitcoin on a more passive basis.

You’re trading crypto a little bit—or maybe a lot—more actively than I am. But I think the broader lesson from what the two of us are doing is to pick your niche, dive into it, and learn it really well.

Get in the Telegram channels. Read the publications that matter. Get on Twitter and follow the accounts that tweet important information and philosophy about your narrow niche. Trade that niche, but don’t spread yourself too thin trying to day trade 100 things or 50 things.

Day trade your niche, get good at it, and then take your profits and feed them back into broader, more passive long positions that you have a 10-year thesis on and don’t need to trade actively. I think that could turn into a really lucrative process for people.

I think that’s great advice, Jonah. As always, it’s good talking to you.

I apologize because I’ve been in Monaco trying to learn roulette for the last week.

Trying to learn roulette?

Yes.

Do you say black or red?

No, no, no. Listen. There are many things to learn, apparently. I’m probably going to stick to blackjack and poker, though.

I stayed up all night watching the 49ers lose. That’s what I did with my life. I’d rather be in Monaco gambling with you.

You really think they were going to let the 49ers win? You realize it was scripted, right? They have to do it for the greater good.

My favorite argument, by the way—and this has nothing to do with crypto—is that it was scripted specifically because they’re trying to encourage pronatalism.

What’s that?

The lizard people.

Exactly. The lizard people—or the powers that be—are trying to promote pronatalism. They’re trying to showcase a powerful couple together and encourage people to get together and have babies.

People write pages about this. How do they have the time?

I had a different thesis. My working hypothesis is that Joe Biden died in 2021 and that the Deep State reanimated his corpse with alien technology from Area 51.

I figured that whoever reanimated him would probably want to promote the city that will reelect him with a 90% margin. It’s called San Francisco.

I grew up there. They fucking love him—or love whatever.

How did you grow up in San Francisco and end up a well-adjusted human?

Back then, it was a really interesting place. It had artists, musicians, counterculture, good writing, and all kinds of things. It was a multifaceted place with the whole spectrum of professions.

My parents, on government salaries, could afford a house and a nice life there. It was the American dream. Now it’s turned into something pretty ridiculous and sinister. I wouldn’t go back. It’s not my kind of place.

It used to be freaking awesome—absolutely incredible. Physically, aside from the problems it has with urban blight right now, it’s the most beautiful city in America, with the hills and the skyline rolling around Coit Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s awesome.

When BTC hits $100,000, I’m expecting you to try to take over San Francisco and make San Francisco great again.

That’s the problem. When BTC hits $100,000, that’ll get me into the lower-middle class in San Francisco. You need to be a fucking plutocrat to own a single-family home there. It’s crazy.

That’s nuts. Maybe one of our listeners will get there eventually. They’ll invest in it.

Maybe somebody put some money in TAO at $1, and now it’s $586.

If you know any good French movies, let me know, because Avi didn’t know a single one despite being married to a French woman.

Rabbi Jacob, watch that one. Okay, thank you. All right, guys, we’ll see you soon. Great talking to you, Avi. Not investment advice. Love you all. Do your research, and if you lose your money, it’s not my fault—it’s J’s fault. No, please. Good talking to you, Avi. See you next time.