TRACK ASSETS

“I would be in favor of a Fed balance sheet, however large it was, that was largely invested at the very front end of the Treasury curve. If you go back and look at the data before 2008, half of the Fed's portfolio, I think, was in bills and 70 or 80 percent was in only out to the five-year point. Away from the zero bound and away from really extreme downturns, that would be my preference.”

“So somewhere between probably September or October of 2026, we should see an all-time low for this cycle, not an all-time low over at all. Before heading to the fourth quarter of the post-having year. So by March of 28, we'll see another having. And then I guess Q4 of 2029 Although it's getting earlier and earlier. So I'd almost speculate it would be the end of Q3 probably of 2029, where we'll see a new all time high.”

“The fiscal news is terrible, but markets have digested it and repriced and reset higher yields, and I attribute most of that to higher-term premium that bond markets require to hold sovereign bonds. The bottom line is the fiscal news is bad, but investors are being compensated for it. If you combine 6% of GDP budget deficits with a loss of central bank credibility, then you get into a much more challenging situation.”

“One potential area where these models can be helpful is, as a social scientist, there are important elements of group and committee dynamics that are for the most part completely left out of textbook models. If you really want to understand monetary policy, you've got to understand the social science and, if you will, anthropology of committee dynamics. It's not like you have a new FOMC each meeting.”

“This is the productive money meme, is that Ethereum is a productive asset, which is kind of like the first time you've had a productive monetary good in history. And this was kind of Warren Buffett's whole critique against gold. Because, like, people would ask him. He's like, gold is superior store of value in all these dimensions. Why don't you store your wealth in gold? And Warren Buffett's response was, it doesn't compound. Right? And it's unproductive.”

“All of these metrics are clipping up, and it's definitely looking like we said on the show two weeks ago—well, I said that we're going to 80k in the next few weeks, and we are well on our way there. We just are right under 76 right now. We've had about a 6% day on Bitcoin. It's waking up big time.”

“Right now, if you look at the price of ETH, it's kind of being valued mostly by transaction fees. Right? Like, if you, Fidelity put out a report a while ago, basically doing a DCF on their transaction fees. And they're kind of assuming no monetary premium. It's kind of priced into the market that Bitcoin has already won store value. And that's the only competitor to gold in the blockchain space. And the core argument of this is that ETH is actually better money than Bitcoin.”

“As we're making our way through this bear market as an industry, there's one part of crypto that's growing incredibly, and that is the institutional side, the Wall Street side, the banks, the people doing the tokenization. And this is where I think really Vivek shines in this conversation where we talk to Mike about his article, and then we go to Vivek and ask Vivek about the growth of education and understanding and awareness of Ethereum.”

“One of the things that, then this is just a theory, of course, is that it appears China and India and some of these other countries are buying gold and silver with their finances, instead of putting it into Bitcoin. And I just wonder, like, how much of that is because of Trump's family's involvement in the crypto space that maybe some of these nation states are, who may have drifted in that direction, are now drifting away from it. So, any thoughts on that?”

“Looking back now on the analytics on 2025, there's no liquidity really in the market to pump all this. And that, with tariffs, with a lot of uncertainty, and then probably the inflation from those ETFs that were exciting this last year, that was definitely fun to see ETFs come online. And that drove a lot of market sentiment. That's probably why we had that early run up that you were just talking about before that last halving, which was April of 2024. So, a lot of excitement, but excitement without liquidity.”

“The combined monetary premium of gold and Bitcoin is approximately 36,000,000,000,000. If Ethereum captured that premium distributed across roughly a 120,000,000 ETH in circulation, the implied price of 1 ETH would be approximately 250,000. Today, it trades around 2,000. This essay argues that the repricing is not only possible, but logically consistent given the monetary properties of ETH.”

“The story in the US in 2025, to some extent, was tariffs pushing up the price of goods. And that was offset by a decline in services inflation. And then, of course, in 2026, we have a sharp increase in global energy, oil and natural gas prices due to the hostilities in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. So certainly that is a non-monetary policy shock this year.”

“Bank of America jumping on the bandwagon here, they put Bitcoin on their thousand year chart of the most disruptive innovations in human history. Bitcoin, now on the same list as the printing press, steam engine, light bulb, and the Internet is just seventeen years old. You are not too late.”

“At minimum, if I were back in my old job, I would spend more time than certainly I did looking, as the Fed does at different projections, and looking at the implications of policy path for nominal GDP growth. There's already evidence there in that miss that there was a supply constraint. There was certainly no shortage of demand in 2021, and that would have been a period in retrospect in which cross-checking with the nominal GDP would have been quite helpful.”

“Having the US tied down in a complicated air, naval and missile war in the Middle East only redounds to China's benefit and to Russia's benefit as well. ... At the end of the day, Mike, what does Iran really get China? Geographically, the Chinese don't really get much from it. It's principally a market where they could invest, but it's been difficult to invest in Iran.”

“But at least as of 1 o'clock on the 10th of February, this one we're recording, the current price is $69,581, up about 15% from the low, which was $60,074, which was, I believe, 52% below or 52% correction from the all time high we saw in early October. So, yeah, just Will, what's going on? Well, it's good to be here. It's a sad day on one hand. From our last update, you were right in your prediction of Q1 2026.”

“The Chief Justice was not swayed. He ruled that the murder charge would remain suspended and not withdrawn until they had heard Regueil's side of the story. At this point, I have zero hope this guy will ever show up willingly. We already know he's a coward and selfish, so why would he risk his life to try and help a friend? He already let one down in 2007 so what's another one?”

“I think we're at a reordering moment. The post-Cold War era is done. And we're now in a transitional interregnum between the old order and a new order. And right now we're going through the order dissolution process more than we're going through an order creation process. And I think that that order dissolution process is especially disorienting for Asia because of the centrality of the US to both the region's security and its economic development.”

“Using drugs in Singapore is a major offense, and it is rarely ever met with leniency. They could go to prison for 10 years, and if it resulted in the death or injury of someone else, that sentence could go up to 20 years. Once outside, the criminal duo took a taxi and headed off to Punggol Track 24, where they then dug a hole, put the box in there, lit it on fire, and then covered it back up with dirt.”

“What's happening is the Chinese are becoming a source of premature deindustrialization for economies in the region. In particular, the auto sector in Thailand, apparel, textiles, and steel in Indonesia, e-commerce in Vietnam. Because the Chinese are just flooding these markets with exports, as a way to keep their manufacturing economy alive.”

“I think Putin is an enormous, extraordinary beneficiary of this operation because of course it takes all the global attention off of Ukraine. It diverts scarce US military resources away from weapons transfers to Ukraine and more to the Middle East. It makes Putin look just as justified in his military invasion than anyone else.”

“Current homepage of Morgan Stanley investment management, Morgan Stanley now leading with crypto on their website. Crypto built into your portfolio. No wallet needed. Introducing cost efficient exchange trade away for clients to gain cryptocurrency exposure here. And so we've seen a full shift by Morgan Stanley.”

“Thirteen years later, investigators tried again by tracing these possessions, hoping that even a digital footprint, a serial number, or a transfer could lead to something concrete. That trail led them directly to someone they already talked to, Ahmad Danyal bin Mohammed Rafai. One of the two men Do had visited that night she vanished, was actually in possession of one of the items on that list.”

“On June 30th, 2007, just hours after leaving home and presumably the party at LaSalle, Thieu was seen entering the elevator at Marine Terrace with two young men, her friends Raghuille and Amaud Daniel, two friends she had hung out with a bunch of times before. Seeing as this was the last confirmed camera sighting of Thieu, police went and checked it out.”

“Raghu, who had been 32 in 2020, was no longer living in Singapore, so the police listed him as a fugitive, possibly living overseas by this point. He was placed on a wanted list, and an international search was initiated. On the day Ahmad Daniel's name hit the news, Raghu's social media accounts, including his LinkedIn profile, were deactivated.”

“Ahmad returned to court on October 14, 2022. He officially entered a guilty plea, not for murder, but for the related charges of obstruction, theft, and disposal of a corpse. The judge sentenced him to 26 months in prison, one month less than what the prosecution had recommended. Given that Ahmad had already spent significant time in remand, most of his sentence had effectively been served.”

“Wang Yi has done two major phone calls with his Iranian counterpart. ... Shifting from solidarity with Iran to de-escalation pressure, to me is really, really, really interesting. It's the result of this extensive shuttle diplomacy that China's special envoy to the Middle East conducted from March 8th to about the 25th in which their special envoy to the Middle East, a guy named Zhai Jun, went around to all the countries.”

“When Ahmad and Regue woke up six hours later, they found Dew dead. They weren't doctors, but they very likely saw obvious signs of someone no longer alive, like the person not breathing. As they began to panic, they landed on the most logical cause of death, the drugs. But instead of calling for help, the two men decided to keep it between themselves.”

“To me, on the energy security question, the key issue is the debate about energy security in Asia only about price and as a result, a macroeconomic issue that central banks and finance ministers manage or does it become about access to quantity? ... That could redound to the benefit of the United States because as you know, Mike, we are a net exporter of LNG and there are all sorts of interesting LNG projects.”

“Bounced off this support trend line. Potential bull flag breakout had a little bit of double confluence here, and this target also gave us really good confluence. The ETH played out beautifully. The playbook, you know, still working here.”

“The House passed it last July 2025 It was passed to the Senate. And there's two portions of the bill that need to pass. There's a Clarity Act A. The A stands for the Agriculture Committee. And they did pass their portion a couple of weeks ago. But there's a Clarity Act B, which is the Banking Committee. And the bankers have dug in their heels. So that second portion of the Clarity Act, they're literally talking to Trump today. Trump has bankers at the White House to see if they can find some common ground.”

“You have the Asian response, principally Japan, South Korea and Australia, which is to double down on the alliance, pull the US closer. We saw that with Taki Ichi's visit just a few weeks ago, right? Basically, hold on to the US and the alliance and hope a better day comes.”

“We could be in an era in which shocks to supply are going to be as big a part as shocks to demand in terms of global business cycle volatility. The reality, and I think where this is relevant to national bankers, is that their jobs are much easier when the shocks are to demand. The fact that your job is easier if shocks are to aggregate demand, doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't do your job when the shocks are to supply.”

“Because there's so much demand to hold this, right now, it's, like, dollars have a lot of monetary premium. Gold has a monetary premium because it's been tested for three thousand years. Because people demand that for liquidity or a way to store their wealth into the future, those assets, those monetary goods store value assets, will carry a premium to the intrinsic value. Gold, for example, maybe 10% of gold's value is in jewelry or industrial demand, and then the remaining 90% of gold's 30,000,000,000,000 market cap is its monetary premium.”

“Stretch is MicroStrategy's dividend stock. We've talked about it a lot here. $450,000,000. I've never seen anything like this. That's how much Sailor raised to buy Bitcoin in six hours. In six hours. So major amount of Bitcoin accumulation here.”