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Yeah well good morning John. Well we have to at Bitcoin because
a lot of the headlines you're seeing is that Bitcoin volatility

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while it's at it again yesterday you're seeing a six percent
drop in Bitcoin against the dollar. But here's the thing. A 6

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percent drop isn't even a two standard deviation move. And
that's really what inspired my chart of the day today for our

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radio listeners. It's it's bitcoin on a classic Tom Keene
logarithmic chart. But what I really want to point out is the

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line over the last five years is kind of trades basically
sideways for the first three and a half years. Then this massive

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boom in 2020 and then you hit 2021 where once again on a longer
term chart you kind of see bitcoin largely trade sideways a

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slight uptrend. But at the end of the day not as much these days
not as much of a reward for the risk that you're taking on not

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just regulatory risk of course in the United States and in China
as well. But the idea is simply volatility. Sure you can make

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big gains from Bitcoin but you could also lose a lot. And that's
really what my chart illustrates here. Well and Christy wasn't

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this supposed to be the year that things started to change that
you were going to get more institutional adoption you were going

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to start to get the regulation coming in which actually might
stabilize the market give it you know a little bit more

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credentials. And you were going to get a Bitcoin ETF which we
got the futures when all of those things though didn't

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necessarily have the effect that they thought they would. They
would. Well a lot of the optimism Caylee was based on this kind

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of monumental gains that you saw really in 2020 a massive boom
in 2020 that is actually kind of plateaued in 2021. And the

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assumption there was that it was all because of this kind of
institutional adoption. But if you actually look at what the

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trade was a lot of it was kind of macro a lot of it was based on
this recovery trade that bitcoin kind of became this risk proxy

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of. If you compare to say emerging markets to the S&P 500 for
example to even to those inflation break evens. Both of you for

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break as I say that kind of predict what inflation is going to
be like in five or 10 years. That's going to be the risk proxy

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that Bitcoin kind of follow. So really brings to the question
how much of that trade was actually fundamental in nature based

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on this broader adoption as opposed to how much of it was more
of a symptom of the broader macroeconomic trade. Well I would

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argue that the drop we've seen in December has been really
related to the macro trends as well as as John knows very well.

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I started covering Bitcoin myself about 10 years ago and I
delved deep into the community at various bitcoin bars and

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online in forums. A lot of the concern at the beginning of this
thing was that fiat currencies would just be endlessly printed

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and devalued. And that's why they would argue you saw bitcoin
rise as we saw the Fed balance sheet aswell and fiscal stimulus

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pour out the U.S. debt levels rise. Now as the Fed turns around
and we've seen basically that happen at the beginning of the

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month at the same time as Bitcoin began to come back down from
another high that's when you see this big drop in December as

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they start to take away the punch bowl and talk about at least
ending bond purchases and starting to unwind the balance sheet.

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Kelly points out the sequencing isn't clear but we know that's
their plan and that may be why we see Bitcoin coming down. Yeah.

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Totally a possibility. And what you're also bringing to the
point which I think is really crucial in this whole conversation

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is the dollar and how much of the story is actually the dollar
as opposed to the cryptocurrency as a result of what you're

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seeing not only with the Fed but perhaps haven flows around the
world. This was a point that yesterday the Coin CEO brought on

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our afternoon close program. He said that when you're kind of
evaluating the long term ability of bitcoin compared to the

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dollar compared to the idea that Bitcoin is not only is being
used for more transactions but it's not Bitcoin alone that's

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kind of growing its crypto currencies broadly. He was talking
about blocking technology. The bull case for crypto currencies

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isn't just in the use case of Bitcoin. It's in things like block
chain technology which he said is becoming essentially the new

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revolution the new kind of early adoption of what will be a
revolution in application software. So that's something to

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consider as we go. Like you said into really the longer term
bitcoin and cryptocurrency trade.
