James Lavish: Wall Street "WALL OF MONEY" hasn't started in to Bitcoin, here's what happens
Investors are not ready for what is about to hit them what it comes to the price of bitcoin.
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James Lavish: Wall Street "WALL OF MONEY" hasn't started in to Bitcoin, here's what happens
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Playable Characters Show Ep038
Summary:
I sit down with James Lavish as he discusses the impact of Bitcoin ETFs, and the WALL of MONEY that hasn’t even trickled in yet, job losses and economic realities, and the 40-year trend of interest rates. The conversation covers the potential endgame of the current financial system, the possibility of war, the path to dollar devaluation, the unsustainability of the current fiscal path, the inevitability of the US dollar going away, the limited options to address the debt crisis, the state of treasury auctions, the challenges of treasury auctions, the role of social media in spreading information.
Presented by:
Bitcoin Trading Cards - https://btc-tc.com
Timestamps:
00:00 The Excitement and Potential of Bitcoin
12:47 The Impact of Bitcoin ETFs
28:50 Job Losses and Economic Realities
41:00 The 40-Year Trend of Interest Rates
44:43 The Endgame of the Current Financial System
45:27 The Potential for War
46:09 The Path to Dollar Devaluation
47:08 The Unsustainability of the Current Fiscal Path
48:17 The Inevitability of the US Dollar Going Away
49:40 The Limited Options to Address the Debt Crisis
50:23 The State of Treasury Auctions
52:07 The Challenges of Treasury Auctions
54:08 The Role of Social Media in Spreading Information
55:36 The Opportunities and Volatility in the Bitcoin Space
56:18 The Bitcoin Opportunity Fund and The Informationist Newsletter
01:02:13 The Transition from Hockey to Wall Street
01:09:30 The EndGAME
Bio:
A reformed hedge-fund manager | ex-@yale hockey | drafted by bruins, landed on wall street | author of the Informationist newsletter simplifying finance for all
Connect with James here:
Twitter: https://x.com/jameslavish?s=20
Bitcoin Opportunity Fund: bitcoinopportunity.fund
Informationist Newsletter: jameslavish.com/newsletter
Timestamps:
00:00 The Excitement and Potential of Bitcoin
12:47 The Impact of Bitcoin ETFs
28:50 Job Losses and Economic Realities
41:00 The 40-Year Trend of Interest Rates
44:43 The Endgame of the Current Financial System
45:27 The Potential for War
46:09 The Path to Dollar Devaluation
47:08 The Unsustainability of the Current Fiscal Path
48:17 The Inevitability of the US Dollar Going Away
49:40 The Limited Options to Address the Debt Crisis
50:23 The State of Treasury Auctions
52:07 The Challenges of Treasury Auctions
54:08 The Role of Social Media in Spreading Information
55:36 The Opportunities and Volatility in the Bitcoin Space
56:18 The Bitcoin Opportunity Fund and The Informationist Newsletter
01:02:13 The Transition from Hockey to Wall Street
01:09:30 The EndGAME
Transcript:
Brandon Gentile (05:03.697)
Mr. James Lavish, thank you so much for coming onto the show today. On the playable character show. I joke with everybody that, you know, we're in a sea of non-playable characters. So we're always trying to find the ones who can critically think and actually, you know, put forth an effort, I guess, when it comes to thinking. So thank you for coming on the show today, brother.
@jameslavish (03:56.606)
Yeah, of course. Great to be here, Brandon. Happy to talk to you.
Brandon Gentile (04:01.492)
So for those who don't know, James, just a little bit, he's a, I'm reading from his Twitter bio, which actually I'll share here for everybody. And so people can see it, but he's a reformed hedge fund manager played at Yale, played hockey at Yale. So we're kindred spirits in that regard, playing college hockey, drafted by the Bruins, landed on Wall Street. So very, very interesting background and the author of the informationist newsletter, which is a phenomenal letter. And I have talked to many Bitcoiners.
just that read your letter and really truly simplifying things for all. And also you are correct me if I'm wrong, but you're a GP, a general partner with the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund as well, which we'll touch on here as well. So just a little background on that.
@jameslavish (04:42.35)
Right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So I'm the, I'm one of the, I'm a co-managing partner with David Foley and the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund. And we are, we are actively investing and we just closed our, our capital raise. So we're, we're pretty excited. It's been a, it's been a fun ride for the last year and a half. So, but this is a, yeah, we're in a tremendous opportunity in my opinion. So it's good.
Yeah.
Brandon Gentile (05:09.728)
Oh, incredible. Well, we can touch on that a little bit. I was telling you off stage, I wanna kind of just get your lay the land from you. Like I was telling you, I was talking to some of the other fellas earlier this week and asking some pointed questions, but I wanted to kind of just maybe let you riff for a few minutes and just kind of like, what's keeping you up at night? What are you thinking about? It could be Bitcoin, it could be macro, could be the United States government, it could be economic malaise, the crazy things you see on social media and rioting, protesting, people beat each other up, not on the hockey rink.
@jameslavish (05:39.9)
Yeah
Brandon Gentile (05:39.964)
So what people, business, reads, kids, just craziness, kind of social decay everywhere. I mean, what's keeping James Lavish up at night right now?
@jameslavish (05:50.058)
Well, uh...
Okay, that's a lot of vectors to touch on, but I try to avoid the noise as much as I can. It's not easy. I will admit, especially on TwitterX, you have this constant stream of social consciousness. And so I do try to avoid that when I see some stuff that's super disturbing, I just say not interested and hopefully the algorithm picks up on that sooner or later.
Brandon Gentile (05:54.175)
I'm sorry.
@jameslavish (06:21.216)
night truly honestly is my excitement about Bitcoin right now and that's truthful I am not you know my portfolios personal portfolios the ones that I share on in my paid group for the informationist that I feel super well positioned for anything that happens here whether we have a melt up or we have a meltdown I feel like we're I'm protected I'm not I'm not worried about my personal portfolios I'm excited super excited about Bitcoin and the
Brandon Gentile (06:25.192)
Mmm.
@jameslavish (06:51.056)
And I mean, these ETFs have unlocked a tremendous amount of capital. So when, you know, if, if what, what has been on my mind, that's not keeping me up, that's keeping me stimulated. And I'm really been focused on is just the sheer wall of capital that is starting to trickle in. It's not even like it's
We have not been hit with the tsunami yet. I even posted about it last night and that wasn't tongue in cheek. I mean, I'm being dead serious that this is going to take a while. It's going to, it's going to, um, it's, it's going to continue to grow and gain momentum and that doesn't mean that we won't have volatility. I want, you know, I'm, I'm trying to make sure that people understand and are tempered in their enthusiasm as enthusiastic as I am, I still expect Bitcoin to be volatile.
It's normal for this asset. It's a growing asset. It's still nascent. We're not even 15 years in here. And so it's starting to gain that mass. It's not even momentum. It's just the understanding, the desire to understand it is growing. So let's put it that way.
So, but with the ETFs, what's been so important about that is, and I've talked about this so many times, but just in a really quick recap is, and I get this so often, like why would people buy ETFs rather than just Bitcoin itself? Well, there's a lot of reasons. Number one being the institutions just can't buy that. They just can't buy Bitcoin in a way that would...
suffice their compliance and their fiduciary duties. No portfolio manager from a big pension fund wants to be holding keys to Bitcoin, particularly not if you're managing hundreds of billions of dollars. You don't wanna be holding keys to billion dollars of Bitcoin. Nobody wants to do that. So, and...
@jameslavish (09:03.29)
even if you did, you're not going to get compliance to agree to that. You're going to have to go through hoops and, uh, you know, you don't have to walk on coals. And so, and the fiduciary and personal risk is just too high. So they're not doing it. And then registered investment advisors who advise, they advise clients, they actually invest money for their clients. They, they have not had the incentive or the ability to do so either because of the same problem.
You know, it's not like you can just buy this and put it in a wallet for your customers. These banks and the investment funds, they use what's called a prime broker. And you know this, Brandon, but for your listeners, they use a prime broker that actually cusses their assets for them.
And so you would have to have a qualified custodian and you'd have to have special agreements. Where is it gonna trade? Is that an exchange that has oversight from the SEC? How is it gonna settle? Who's gonna settle? There's just a litany of questions that have to be answered and problems have to be solved. Now, enter, and as for the other people.
Brandon Gentile (10:00.768)
has been.
@jameslavish (10:22.518)
why would an individual buy the ETF? Well, because they don't feel comfortable buying a signing device, what we call wallets. They're actually signing devices and having that risk. I mean, I'm gonna admit just a few years ago, I did it for the first time. It was nervy for me. I mean, I was like, where is this? How do I know it's settled? And so, and I'm not at my age, I wouldn't call myself a tech savant, but I'm tech savvy enough.
You know, I come from the Blackberry world, so I'm used to tack. And so, um, but even for me, it was, it was uncomfortable. It'll be gotten, get me out outside my comfort zone. Can you imagine someone who's in there in their, you know, 40s, 50s, 60s, seventies who are, are using a signing device like that just doesn't sound like it's, it's something they want to do. Now flash forward. Suddenly we have these ETFs that have splashed onto the stage.
Brandon Gentile (10:55.008)
Thanks for watching!
@jameslavish (11:20.63)
And you've got this superhighway that's built. So they're not stocks. They're basically trust. They're funds. But they own underlying Bitcoin in them. And that's supposed to match the amount of money that people have bought those shares for on these exchanges. And it's pretty simple, though. Those ETFs own the underlying Bitcoin. And the individuals who are buying that,
can buy it through their broker, their trading exchange. You can settle it with your prime broker if you're an institution, they can custody it. It's a same settlement process and DTC process for you putting margin on it or whatever you're doing with your regular trade. It probably requires, it certainly requires more margin than something that's a mainstay stock, like an Apple or something, but.
You know, it, you, you don't have any of the, those settlement issues. You don't have any of those custody issues. You know, exactly where it's going to be marked. You know how it's going to be, uh, custodyed and, and you don't have to have an, uh, you know, a special process that's designed by your chief compliance officer, by your general counsel, you just buy it and settle it just like a regular stock, it's super easy now, all that said, why have we not seen just a wall of capital, right? We're seeing this.
not a trickle, but a solid stream of capital coming in every single day. Uh, you know, Larry Lappard had, uh, retweeted something this morning that should just, just the sheer, I think it was, uh, from Bitcoin archive from Archie, you know, uh, where it's just this steady stream of capital comes in every single day, somewhere between a half of half a billion and a billion dollars are coming into these ETFs that's new money coming into the space every single day.
It's not a wall of capital, but what you're seeing is these on ramps are being built where you've got these registered investment advisors, the brokers, the institutions, the family offices, they've gotten their compliance in place. They've gotten their pamphlet in place. They can make their investors aware of the risks and they can have the check the box and go ahead and buy it and settle it just like a regular stock now. And it's starting to happen across the board. But it's happening.
@jameslavish (13:45.966)
Steadily but slowly and that's why I said last night that it's still not priced in you know, the amount of capital it's going to come to this space is magnitudes of multiples of what we've seen so far and it's going to be over the course of months and you know and uh, perhaps even longer so that is a long answer to what has been on my mind, but Truly that is that's been my focus recently
Brandon Gentile (14:16.508)
Well, yeah, I'm glad that I started with that because, yes, there's a lot on your mind, as with many Bitcoiners. And that's probably how a lot of the shows in a way should start, I guess, is, you know, what is on your mind? What's going on? As you know, Bitcoiners, there's always a lot on a Bitcoiner's mind. So I appreciate you sharing that. How do you know? It makes me think of a few things like the wall of cash. You know, it's it's.
inconceivable the wall of cash, the amount of cash. It's not in Bitcoin, obviously, it's all out into other assets, it's around emerging markets, you name it, real estate, bond market. It's really you can't even fathom it. You can't wrap your head around it. And then you have Larry, like I was saying earlier, I was talking to Larry the other day, too, and he was talking about the ETF multiplier, right, where you have these effects of just this. Like you said, the amount that you laid out coming in.
but the multiples of the increase of the price, the fiat price for a Bitcoin have just been exploding or in the market cap growing, I guess is probably the better way to look at it. That's, it's mind blowing. And then that's a small move, really. It's right. There's a small amount that's come in so far of the world liquidity. It's wild.
@jameslavish (15:22.324)
Yeah, so let's unpack that. So first of all, the multiplier.
Right. So if, if you said, if you step into the marketplace and there are no offers for Bitcoin between here and, and a hundred thousand say, there's just no offers there. You look at the book and there's nothing offered there. You could buy $1 of Bitcoin at a hundred thousand dollars price. And that takes that market cap all the way up to that. Now everybody's made, made that, you know, paper gain because there was just no liquidity and that's what you're seeing here.
you're seeing more buying demand than selling demand. It sounds super simple, it's stupid, but that's exactly what it is. It's just that there's been pockets of illiquidity and those pockets are closing on the way up. So even though we've had...
call it $10 billion net come in. The GBTC selling has been absorbed mostly by the other ETFs. And then the additional capital has come in as about $10 trillion ish. It's closer probably to 12 now, but let's call it that. But the point is that...
Bitcoin has risen by hundreds of billions of dollars in market value since the launch of these ETFs. So the multiplier is somewhere north of, I did it a few days ago, it was north of 40, 45, I think it was. So, but, you know, now, so,
Brandon Gentile (16:57.8)
Jeez, it was 37 on Monday. So now it's, yeah. And now here we are three days, two days later. It's wild.
@jameslavish (17:05.002)
So if you so and it'll settle down, you know, as we get more as we get higher in price, we get more it will settle down. And and remember, that's just you're just looking at the ETFs there. So the multiplier is probably lower than that. So but net, net. That's that's what's happening on the multiplier side. Now the amount of capital that's out there. So if you step back, Brandon, and you look at the investable assets in the world.
Right. The biggest thing in the world is, is real estate. Right. So you've got your residential real estate is at $500 trillion. You've got commercial real estate, which is about 115 or 120. You've got bonds, which are about 130 trillion. You've got stocks around the world, which are 110, 115. It's fluctuating. You've got about $90 trillion of just cash and equivalents out there.
Um, and then you've got gold, which is about 10 trillion. And then all the way at the bottom there, you've got Bitcoin, which is about 1 trillion. And you could add in things like, uh, art and collectibles for another 20 or 30 trillion, but that you're talking about somewhere about 950 trillion to one quadrillion dollars of assets out there, investable assets and Bitcoin is making up
just it's tiny. It's 0.1% of the total. So now when you let's dig in, let's just drill in a little bit deeper. So I posted something earlier this week again about Bitcoin had climbed up to the eighth largest asset in the world. It just toppled silver. And you've got things up there like Saudi
Brandon Gentile (18:50.975)
So, yeah.
@jameslavish (18:55.718)
Apple and Microsoft and Google and so on and video like these are massive assets, but those are in that stock those that that's 110 trillion dollars of stock bucket, so But the point is that we'll start to see Reallocation out of things like stocks and gold we've seen the ETFs have been bleeding in gold
Brandon Gentile (19:07.232)
stock bucket.
@jameslavish (19:24.246)
And so that's been interesting but then also you've got people who buy real estate just for long-term investments and so that might be a bucket that starts to bleed into here but the first bucket that's gonna bleed in there is from these pension funds from the institutions the endowments that are saying okay, I need to have a half a percent or one percent allocation to Bitcoin and now we're seeing
BlackRock putting it into their funds. So it's an ETF that's being put into their big ETF fund that has a number of different assets, but they're going to allocate it in there. So now you're going to have people who own the BlackRock asset that's a BlackRock equity bond fund or whatever, and then that's going to be an allocation in there. So you'll have people who don't even realize that they own Bitcoin, but it's part of the allocation of this bigger fund. So when you look at BlackRock with
somewhere around $10 trillion of assets, you know, so if they make just 1%, I mean, 1% position allocation across the board, that's a, that's a massive amount for, for that, for that one institution. So, and they're just one institution, they're, they're one of, if not, the largest, but they're right up there in the top two or three, but you know, this is, this is what
Now, lastly, so unpacking this further, which will tie us back to that multiplier effect. When you're an institution and I've sat in this seat for many years and you need an allocation of something, you're not really price sensitive. You're not looking at going, oh, well, it's up 3% today. You're not doing that. You're saying, well, I need 1% in my portfolio. So you get the
and you call up your broker or you talk to your sales trader on the other side, Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs, you say, I need to buy $100,000 of Bitcoin today. So go in there and buy FBTC or IBIT, just participate. And so they just participate along with the rest of the volume. They may end up driving volume, but it's called volume weighted average price, the VWAP. They just want to participate. And they're not
Brandon Gentile (21:38.25)
Mm-hmm.
@jameslavish (21:49.65)
sit in there saying, oh, well, we're going to wait until it comes back to 63,000. They're just like, well, we need to buy it, buy it. And then when you're done, we're going to have a hundred, a hundred million more. And we're done with that. We're going to have a hundred million dollars more. And then when you're done with that, we're going to have a hundred million dollars more and it's literally, this is just what's happening. And this is going to happen in perpetuity, not in perpetuity, but for, I can see it a foreseeable future, whether it's the next number of weeks, the next number of months, but.
That's just the function and the way that Wall Street works, the way that institutional investing works. Now, lastly, this is all holding all else equal. We haven't even talked about interest rates, the Fed, what's going on in the deficits and with the overall markets. Those could have an impact certainly to an asset like Bitcoin as we've seen. So...
Brandon Gentile (22:33.64)
Yeah.
@jameslavish (22:46.098)
holding everything else equal, we're just in this period of, well, looks like we're gonna have this beautiful soft landing, this is what's happening.
Brandon Gentile (22:55.996)
Wild. It's absolutely wild. Really quickly on the, so some of the ETF stuff, I know this is a question that will come up, like it comes up in spaces a lot, or like you know, you have conferences or people will be thinking, or just chatter. How does, you know, how would the ETF settled, I guess? Is it cash settled? I'm assuming it is cash settled. I'm not positive. I'm...
@jameslavish (23:17.314)
This was a big, this was a big thing. Yeah. This is a big thing. I think with the sec is they didn't want, uh, investors be able to, to redeem. So there's two things they didn't want the investors to be able to redeem their, um, FBTC or either, or whatever the, uh, other, you know, um, they didn't want to say, well, I want Bitcoin. So they're going to be cash settled cash redeemable. That's it. Okay. So that was a big thing.
How are they buying Bitcoin throughout the day is probably what your real question is. And this is confusing. No, they aren't. So what's happening is you have approved participants and what they do is they're out there. These are professional traders, market makers. They're making the market in the different ETFs. And as people are buying,
Brandon Gentile (23:48.072)
Yeah, how do we make sure that they are buying it? I, or for the person that, yeah, yeah.
Brandon Gentile (24:10.112)
Mm-hmm.
@jameslavish (24:12.194)
Well, they're hedging that they're going out and buying futures or options or whatever they need to do to hedge it While they need that so then at the end of the training day, they said a lot. Okay, this is how much we need to buy I'm hedged a hundred percent on that so you're gonna see the Bitcoin price move throughout the day according to the price of the Activity in the market. It's not like people are buying in the day and then overnight it jumps because they had to buy overnight
Brandon Gentile (24:28.647)
Mm-hmm.
@jameslavish (24:39.23)
And then buy it during the day and then overnight jumps again. That's not the way it, they're settling it and they're, and they're, um, they're settling this or they're, they're filling those trades throughout the day. They're hedging them throughout the day. And then they're going to match up and swap basically have one, one big block trade, uh, after hours or the next morning where they settle it with the ETF. And you know, the ETF is buying and they're selling, and then they're all, and then,
you know, they're clean and then that's it. So, but that's what's happening essentially.
Brandon Gentile (25:16.188)
Is the market, I guess, I don't even know how this is done either. I mean, obviously, the back in the day in I don't know if it was like this when you started on Wall Street or if you had already missed it. But when, you know, guys are in the pit and, you know, right, you're trading back and forth and things are you're making deals, you're settling stuff there. How is it algorithmic now? Is it computers that are ones market making and selling? Are there guys doing it? Like, how is this and how is this pertaining to the Bitcoin part of this? Where how are these markets being made? And this.
@jameslavish (25:42.314)
All the above. I mean, they're using every, every single tool they have to their, at their disposal, that they're hedging it and, you know, and, you know, fair disclosure, I have not traded in many years I've been managing portfolios and had other people trading.
So these trading tools have gotten highly sophisticated. And they, you know, when I say, when I say just participate, be on the VWAP, we've got, I've got old school traders who can do it, you know, by instinct. But then you've got other people that just put it in this computer program and it does it automatically. So it's all of the above.
Brandon Gentile (26:22.496)
Wow. Is there any way to, to again, you know, making sure, obviously in the Bitcoin world, it's, you know, not your keys, not your coins, like you said, but there was a huge segment of society where the ETFs are that kind of first foray. It makes it easier for people to get into it. How do you make sure you're you're, you're sending cash to Ukraine and the politicians are like, well, we don't need the amendment to audit the cash. How do, how do we audit the ETFs? I mean, I know there's
You get some like Joe Calasaro say, well, that's the rules. Like it's a contract. They have to audit it. It's there. I tend to disagree. I don't trust the government that much or entities inside there. How are you making sure? How are we making sure that those purchases are happening?
@jameslavish (27:03.526)
Well, some of them are actually posting the addresses that have the Bitcoin in them. So we know that. The other ones are using approved auditors. You've got oversight from the SEC. It's in BlackRock's interest to own the Bitcoin. They're making fees off this. My opinion is that this is not going to be the rug pull of the century. They're in the business of making money.
They're not in the business of scamming people. And in order to do that, they need to uphold their agreement. I'm with Joe Carlisari on this, that this is the way that it's structured and the way it works. It's just like Apple. How do you know that your custodian is actually owning Apple? I mean, look, this is not Bernie Madoff where
Brandon Gentile (27:55.84)
Absolutely.
@jameslavish (28:00.922)
he just lied about it and told his investors he was doing all these things. And the, and the auditors just kind of glance right past it and just signed off on it and went out to dinner instead, which was, it's an incredible story. But this is, you know, this, this involves thousands and thousands of people in these firms that you'll have dozens, if not hundreds of people who will be touching these things daily, you know, um, in each firm.
So this is a big deal. I just, I don't see how they would, it would have to be a systematic, you know, collusion from the top down, including the sec, including black rock, including fidelity. And like, it would just, I just don't see how that could, that could happen.
Brandon Gentile (28:50.592)
Hopefully it lends confidence to people watching or just over time people seeing that. So that's good, good news. Transitioning a little bit here, what are your thoughts on Gromen and Preston in their day were talking about Warren Buffett's cash position? And again, we get it, he's 95 years old. That's probably part of what's going on. However, he's still looked at obviously as the Oracle and he's a guy, but he signifies a lot of society though.
in a way, right? So you have these cash positions building and things of that nature, and it's just melting away. I mean, what, you know, in your eyes, I mean, what is, what did Michael Saylor see that Warren Buffett doesn't see? Or, you know, people like them, right? Paul Tudor Jones and Druckenmiller versus, you know, whoever on the Buffett side, right?
@jameslavish (29:37.71)
You can't get any more traditional old school than Warren Buffett. And you know, I cannot, I can't criticize Warren Buffett. He's, he's made an absolute fortune in the world that he lives in and the world that we've lived in institutionally, you know, institutional investing. So what is he doing? Well, he's being paid more to sit on cash now than he has in 20 years. So why wouldn't he do that? If he thinks that there's risks to market turmoil, which I believe there are
absolutely then why wouldn't he sit on that cash he's sitting on you know he's not just sitting on cash that's not earning anything he's earning somewhere north of five percent I would imagine on average on that cash he's sitting on
while he waits for opportunities. If we do have market turmoil, he'll step in and take advantage of it. That's his MO. He's a value investor, deep, deep value. And so he wants cash generating businesses that he can value. He can't value Bitcoin. That's the problem. He looks at it and he says, I don't know how to value that. That's not in my purview. It's not in, it's not on my fairway that I've made all this money all these years on. Now I do, I agree.
wrong about Bitcoin he and Charlie Munger have been wrong all along but he's been right about other things you know to a great degree so is it disappointing to hear them speak so badly about it sure it is but they're not you know
Brandon Gentile (30:59.028)
Yeah.
@jameslavish (31:13.274)
Charlie's gone. He you get the timeline for Warren Buffett isn't 40 years. The timeline hopefully for you and me you longer than me is that or longer, you know, we don't know but that's what our hope is and so we have a long time and this is a long term thesis for us. So why is he doing that he's getting paid now is it milk melting away. Well,
You and I would argue yes, why? Because I believe that the inflation rate is closer to the expansion of the money supply rate, which is over 7% since the 1970s. And if you're only getting paid 5%, you're losing money on purchasing power. But when you look at...
the real rate versus what the published CPI rate is, you're getting paid. So that's the argument. Does he care about possibly losing 1.5% on purchasing power annually if he's going to be able to turn around and take advantage of a massive downturn or a huge opportunity somewhere? I don't think so. That's what I think.
I don't know Warren, I've never met him. I respect him greatly, but that is my guess of what he's thinking.
Brandon Gentile (32:44.972)
And cash, then days, it's an option premium you're paying, right, for being nimble, you know, I guess. And that's how he looks at it, right? Like he keeps increasing over the last 15 years. That's because he sees chaos.
@jameslavish (32:56.356)
I have cash in my portfolio that's generating interest as well because I do believe that there will be pockets of opportunity here. It's a good ballast in periods of uncertainty. We were certainly in a period of uncertainty. Certainly in a period of uncertainty.
Brandon Gentile (33:12.348)
or? Yeah, yeah. Well said. Is are those generally in? Like Warren's, for example, would he have those whatever is 130 billion or 150? Are those in like 12 months like t bills or like, you know, what is he what would? Okay. Three. Okay, even shorter duration. Yeah, yeah, just real short. Yeah.
@jameslavish (33:28.378)
shorter probably three months even
Probably because, well, I mean, look, if the Fed lowers rates, then that's good. So maybe he's got to blend because he's expecting the Fed to lower rates. Maybe he's got to blend out too. But I would say the average maturity is probably three months to a year at most.
Brandon Gentile (33:48.7)
Yeah, true.
Brandon Gentile (33:56.104)
Yeah, yeah. All right, so transitioning in a little bit here, I get, so one of the emails I get, which is pretty funny email as well, besides yours, is the Litquidity email, which is from, you know, whatever Wall Street or whatever, it's a pretty big letter and they always have, you know, great memes in there and just stuff like that. But, you know, just anecdotally from my perspective, just seeing this email every single day with, you know, just the different metrics and things like that, I have seen...
I don't even know, millions of jobs. I mean, every day it seems like there's, you count up the headlines, like 10,000 there, 50,000 there. I mean, this is like a year and a half, jobs just evaporating everywhere, everywhere. And I wish I would have had a tally, a counter of just from this email of all the jobs being lost. But then you go out in the world and it's just like, well, everything's fine. And there's segments of society, things are fine. And then there's other segments, like we were saying earlier, it's societal decay.
Where is this like, what is a rubber meet the road? Where does reality like actually set in? And I feel like we're just bugs money, like flying off the cliff or they're coyote and just, we haven't looked down yet. I just, it boggles my mind that you can have an economy seemingly like, hey, things are running. There's not total nuclear war going on, but yet just job losses everywhere for a year and a half. What do you make of that? I don't know, or help me understand.
@jameslavish (35:12.89)
Yeah, there's a few things here and Lynn Alden goes into great detail about this. And I'll give a brief and quick overview for your listeners. And I like to keep things simple. But basically what's happening is we've seen the Fed tighten quite a bit over the past, you know, the last year. They've been paused since, for almost six months now. But they, what happened is the Fed, as the Fed has been tightening,
that is restrictive. And so you're, you're seeing pockets of, of the economy that are suffering from high rates. So if you're a company that is, it has to depend on leverage for instance, then in borrowing, then you're likely seeing your margins being compressed here because your margin of profitability being compressed because the cost of capital has gone up.
Uh, and so those companies are, they've been unwilling to let employees go because it was so difficult to find people who will work when you're coming out of the pandemic. So part of it is that waited very long. And so now they're just having, you're seeing swaths of people laid off. Cause it's like, okay, enough's enough. We can't keep up.
Brandon Gentile (36:21.12)
Yeah
@jameslavish (36:31.542)
So you've got that going on in one area of the economy, where in their pockets of pain, and you can see it. And then on the other side, you've got this tremendous fiscal spending going on. There's just the incredible irresponsibility coming out of Washington. We're running $2 trillion deficits, which is 7% of GDP, which...
is just it's unbelievable. We've never done this in a period where we're not in recession. You would expect unemployment to be somewhere between five and ten percent for us to be running deficits like this, yet we're doing it and where the deficits are growing. And as the interest rates stay here and we pay more interest on our debt and we grow our debt because of this, the continued deficits, the perpetual deficits, which requires more borrowing, which requires more interest on
It's just getting worse. And so, but that is stimulative. It's a bunch of money being poured into the economy in infrastructure. But like the, the inflation reduction act is literally causing inflation. I mean, that's the whole it's, it's laughable that they, and I saw the, the Babylon Bee had an article yesterday, which I love the Babylon Bee.
had an article that White House just went ahead and replaced the press secretary with an actual gas light. So, you know, I mean, it's it and it's laughable. You know, and it's both parties. Let's be fair. It's not it's not just the Democrats. It's all government. But it's just it's silly. We're running these deficit deficits and it's stimulating pockets of the economy. And so you can see that. So you've got some people who are doing well.
Brandon Gentile (38:08.517)
I'm sorry.
Brandon Gentile (38:14.532)
It is. It is. Yeah.
@jameslavish (38:28.626)
You've got, you've certainly got, um, bankers who have done well and are doing well, and then you've got pockets of technology. It's not of employees that are not doing great. Uh, they're being laid off and some of that is AI. Uh, I don't think a ton of it is yet, but some of it, uh, but some of it is just. Enough's enough. The cost of leverage is too high. We have to start laying off people to retain the margins. So, uh, you're seeing that push and pull.
And, uh, it's clear, it's obvious when you look at the screens, you look at my screens and what I'm looking at all day long, well, the fiscal deficits are winning and, uh, I said it on, uh, Scott Melker show on Monday morning that it just feels like you've got Godzilla, uh, the, the treasury fighting the fed King Kong and Godzilla's winning and
It's kind of amazing that we're seeing this play out and it's not really a soft landing as much as just a continued flush of capital and liquidity into the markets or into the economy. That doesn't mean that there aren't people who are feeling pain. Of course they are. You're seeing defaults on credit cards with younger people rise. You're seeing defaults on mortgages, particularly with millennials rise.
There are definitely pockets of pain because people can't keep up with the payments. And now you're seeing this surge in buy now pay later. You're seeing a surge in the amount of just the amount that people are putting on credit cards, the balances that they're carrying. And so there will be pockets of pain. It will continue. It's just a question of is...
Does it break the camel's back at some point where we just, we see an onslaught of, of unemployment and job losses from it. It's hard to tell.
Brandon Gentile (40:33.436)
Wild. Yeah. And that's the question that no one knows, which is, what's that straw? That's the answer that, hey, if someone knew the answer for what breaks it, where in the economy something will break, I guess. And then, hey, you're Nostradamus. You win the prize. But that's the question everyone asks. What do you think the 40-year trend of rates? We were talking about this briefly offstage. But what is your thought? Just, I guess,
It could be short-term and long-term thoughts, but obviously this 40-year trend that we saw from, you know, what was it, the 40s in essence, World War II to 1980 and then 1980 to basically now. Are we really, you know, like in this, you know, elongated, you know, rising rate environment going forward? I mean, what are your thoughts that they're going to try to suppress now, yield control, right, and do what they got to do. But what do we look like long-term and what is what does the world look like in the coming years and decades here?
@jameslavish (41:27.562)
Yeah, barring any financial, structural, large scale incident, some sort of credit event.
Barring a credit event, I believe that we're going to can, you can see that inflation has kind of settled in around the 3% range. I've said this for a long time. I've been saying this for over a year that there, we will have high perpetual inflation. That's what it's going to be. That inflation is due to fiscal stimulus. That's what's going on. The deficits are creating inflation. And so,
@jameslavish (42:08.152)
inflation, well, interest rates are going to stay higher. That's the inflation that we're admitting to. I mean, the real inflation is closer to probably to 7%, but maybe even higher. And so we're still running rates that are that are stimulative.
I mean, you'd have to have real rates negative to you. But what you want is real rates to be negative in order to continue this charade, which means that you're gonna allow inflation to continue on. So I don't see rates going to the Volcker era of the 80s. I don't see them going to 16, 18, 20%.
But I can see rates structurally remaining higher here for a period of time as inflation continues to run a little bit hot Does that mean that the Fed won't lower rates? No, I don't think so. I think there's tremendous pressure from the White House in particular the because and it doesn't matter again, which Parties in control they all do it they want stimulation before
Brandon Gentile (43:16.113)
Right, they all do it.
@jameslavish (43:21.302)
They want the economy roaring before an election. Even if it's, even if they, they want to err on the side of inflation, as long as it's not out of control, rather than the side of deflation or recession. So they're gonna allow it to continue here, which means that...
Um, when I don't see the fed raising rates, I can see them lowering a little bit, but then inflation just becomes entrenched here, which I believe it's entrenched at 3%, 3 to 4% somewhere in there. Maybe it becomes entrenched at 6, 7, 8%. Um, Luke, I think believes that could get in the teens. It's going to have to though. Inflation is going to have to get up into the teens.
in order to keep this the debt from spiring out of control. And that means allowing inflation to run hot without raising rates to the point where you're burdening the treasury with too much interest cost. And then so that's kind of the push and pull there.
Brandon Gentile (44:29.424)
Man, I had to go down these rabbit holes all day. This is just, it's wild. Do you think that, really quick, we wanna talk about the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund and the information is here as we kind of gather towards the end here, but do you think that, I always get that, yeah, exactly. We gotta talk about hockey for a minute. 1971, there's no, at that time, the US military is pretty big. I mean, we were in war, but it was just.
@jameslavish (44:43.566)
We can talk about hockey.
Brandon Gentile (44:56.02)
There's a lot going on. We have a pretty big military. There's a lot of might here at that point. So, yeah, I mean, you rug pull the world of their gold. You know, what are you going to do? Come get us, I guess. Right. So there wasn't a world war somehow. But I mean, again, how like how does it end at the end of the day? Like a debt jubilee and it's just like, yeah, kumbaya. Like, sorry, we rug pulled you guys again. You know, like, how does this how does it work at the end of the day? I mean, these are the things that keep me up at night where I'm like, what, how does this how does this end? You know, where are we going? Which I'd be preparing for.
a war like what are we doing here?
@jameslavish (45:27.074)
Yeah, that's a good point. We did have an injury war when I was a kid. We did have the oil crisis and that was painful. And so inflation was hot and it was painful. See, I mean, we sat in line in my car for gas every other week. And so just for me to get to hockey. So...
How do we, how does it end? I, this could take a very long time or it could happen in a flash. Uh, I believe it takes a long time. I believe that we're on this path of just continuing to grind down other currencies and have them basically fold into ours, fold in this dollar.
while we just keep running these huge deficits and allow our interest rate is, the US Treasury rate is higher, the 10 year is higher than rates around the world, way higher than the Japanese, the JGBs, higher than Italy, Germany, the UK, it's higher across the board. And so,
Brandon Gentile (46:29.193)
and or, yep, yep.
@jameslavish (46:39.766)
that it just continues to drive money to the dollar and to the treasury. And so this could continue for a while. And I think what happens though is that they eventually kind of lose control and inflation gets out of control when people lose confidence in the long-term treasuries because they're seeing how much personal
purchasing power they're losing every single day. And so why do they want to hold something that's 10 years or longer? And as that happens, then rates are going to structurally move higher. And that's where you see it get out of control. But I think that's, that you're gonna see hints of it and an inkling of it. You could see.
The treasury say, oh, we got to, you know, we're going to have to issue $2 trillion this quarter. We expected half a trillion and the bond market freak out. And you could see something close to a bond market failure where it goes no bid, but that's where the treasury and the Fed step in, print more and we start the charade again. And so, and that's just another step toward.
the inevitability of the US dollar going away. And, but you can't, we can't continue on this path forever. It's a, we, they all know it. They've all admitted to it. The treasury put out a report every single year and they've, they labeled the report last year an unsustainable fiscal path.
They literally labeled it for the whole world to see, which is a red flag to, not to the world, they're trying to warn Congress. They're like, you guys gotta stop spending. We can't keep pumping debt like this. And then you've got Powell said it on 60 minutes and a few weeks ago. Yellen has said it, this is unsustainable. It's unsustainable, it's unsustainable. That's the word they use, this is unsustainable. We all know it. So.
Brandon Gentile (48:19.795)
right.
@jameslavish (48:44.79)
What do they do? Are they going to cut spending? No. Nobody's going to cut spending. Biden just said he wants to spend $7.3 trillion starting this fiscal year. What? So that's OK. So it's political suicide. Nobody will do it. Everybody wants to spend money for their constituents. So you can do that. You can raise taxes, which he's talking about raising taxes on billionaires.
And the amount that he's talking about raising is just a drop on the bucket. It's not, it's going to take, I think it takes care of three days of the, of spending each year is what he's talking about. It's ridiculous. So that that's not going to, raising taxes. Ultimately, if you raise taxes on companies and people, it just doesn't work. It, it, it disincentivized productivity. It disincentivized, uh, reinvesting back into your, into your company and products. And so your, your productivity ends up contracting.
eventually. And so you have a higher tax rate and lower productivity, you get to the same spot. And so, or you could just keep issuing bonds, which we do, we just keep borrowing. But if you do that, you have to allow for high structural inflation, which we're also doing. And that's the path we're on. And we're just going to continue doing it until it just spirals out of control. It'd be like, you know, whoops, helicopter blade came off and that's it.
Thanks for watching!
Brandon Gentile (50:06.432)
Um, really, we could go down again and go down forever. Really quick. I want to get user quick thoughts, um, on like an update, I guess, just on the treasury auctions, like where, where are we standing? You kind of touch on that for a second. I know we've had some, some wild rides here to last like what six months or so. Um, where are we? Where do we kind of stand in that world right now?
@jameslavish (50:23.415)
Yeah.
@jameslavish (50:28.81)
Well, the Treasury has been really nimble at managing expectations on the street and how much debt they're going to be asking for, how much borrowing they're going to need.
And so back in late last year, in November, we had a 30 year auction that was absolutely dismal, it was eye opening. It was ugly. And so the treasury managed through that, changed expectations, managed expectations that we're going to manage the amount of debt that we have to issue here. It shored up the market, auctions continued on, kind of unabated. We had some soft
tailing auctions, which means that they trade beforehand in a when issued market. It's like pre auction. And if that if those prices are higher, meaning they the interest rate is lower than when the actual auction happens, it's not a good thing because expectations were better than the actual reality. We've seen a bunch of tailing auctions.
We had a 20 year auction about a month ago that was just awful. It was abysmal. It looked very much like the 30 year auction. It didn't, it wasn't in any, I wanna make it clear, it wasn't in any danger of failing, but it was a red flag to the treasury on just how much demand there is for that duration, which is, which was.
That was not encouraging. So then we just had a 30 year treasury auction today. It wasn't that big, but again, it was fine. It went off without a hitch. It actually looked fine. It actually stopped through, meaning that the bids on the actual auction were better than the pre-auction. The price is paid. So we're gonna see.
Brandon Gentile (52:09.919)
Mm.
@jameslavish (52:33.43)
We're going to see here Brandon, as we continue to spend money, as we continue to run these deficits, we're going to have to continue to borrow more and more. It's unclear exactly where the tax receipts are going to come in the next month. We'll see where that comes in and just how much the Treasury has to issue over the second quarter. But I'm going to be watching these auctions carefully because if you get into a period here where you've drawn down the reverse repo market,
So you can't just keep issuing T-bills anymore. You've got to move further out on the yield curve, on the duration and start issuing more 10 year, more 20 year, more 30 year treasuries. Well, that could present a problem. It could crimp on liquidity, especially as banks will, as their reserves wind down, they're at...
they're over three trillion now if they're, you know, if they're down under two and a half trillion, the fed starts getting nervous. The treasury starts getting nervous on these auctions. So we're gonna be watching that for sure.
Brandon Gentile (53:39.772)
Do you do you foresee and part of this too, I guess is social media. There's been a lot of talk about this lately as well. I mean, the government, you know, the ruling class, they are very aware of way. Whoa, these things are spreading. The bank crisis spread because of you people on social media. And, you know, they don't like Bitcoin and they don't like social media because they don't like how fast word can spread or being outed or being called out or whatever it is. It feels like it's going to be something to that effect. Like a black swan, I guess you could call it in a way, but.
like if there's some auctions that go no bid or there's successive things that are happening and then all of a sudden you have Bitcoiners, you have people that are in the know or paying attention and they're like shouting from the rooftops like, hey guys, this is not good. And then you see this spark, just like we saw a year ago with the banks or it was a New York community bank. Now, I mean, things like that happening where it's like, whoa, and just lights a fire.
@jameslavish (54:28.754)
Yeah, I mean, that's definitely possible. Like, for instance, you would never have had so many people keyed in on treasury auctions as you do now. If I post something on treasury auctions, I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of people watching that, you know, tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands are, are seeing those posts. And that's just, and so, uh, that's not normal. That's, that's not, uh, it is, it's a new, it's a new normal.
Brandon Gentile (54:38.883)
Yeah.
Brandon Gentile (54:45.928)
Wild.
Brandon Gentile (54:57.088)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
@jameslavish (54:58.214)
When I started on Wall Street, if you didn't have a Bloomberg terminal, you didn't know what happened in the treasury auction. Now you can just pull up on Twitter or X and you'll see what happened in just minutes. So pull up zero hedge or, you know, often mine and you'll see what happens.
Brandon Gentile (55:03.592)
Yeah.
@jameslavish (55:18.802)
Yeah, so it is a different world we're living in for sure. And, but that can also create opportunities because it creates outsized unreasonable movements and volatility. And so because of the herd mentality and just the sheer number of people coming into that, into that trade or into that event at that very moment.
Brandon Gentile (55:36.852)
Mm-hmm.
@jameslavish (55:45.223)
it often produces some, I would say, it's inefficiency.
Brandon Gentile (55:53.428)
Yeah. What is the transitioning here a little bit Bitcoin opportunity fund and your newsletter informationist would love you to touch on these for a couple of minutes, maybe a minute or two to seeing what you're you know, you guys getting to see, you know, companies and things that are going on as new technologies, whatever it might be in the Bitcoin space to talk to us for a minute about, you know, each of these and kind of what you're working on here in those two spaces.
@jameslavish (56:18.782)
Yeah, so the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund is, we launched it this last year. We started investing over the fall and it's a public private partnership for accredited investors and we're closed. We've already taken in all our investors for this fund, but
We're super excited about how the capital raise went and we've been investing along the way, especially because we were in a period of extreme pain with FTX and, you know, Celsius and all that. But what we do is we invest in and we serve ourselves as deep value investors in the Bitcoin opportunity space and we're looking for any opportunity. What's unique about us is
hedge fund, we can invest anywhere in the space. It's public, private, early stage, late stage, we can invest in stocks in the New York Stock Exchange, miners in the New York Stock Exchange, we can invest in private miners, we can invest in debt, we can use hedging strategies that perhaps the venture funds can't do, so it's a little bit different.
in that way in that we take the capital, we invest it, we start investing it right away. And then as we see opportunities in the private space, we're due diligence, diligence in those and then making allocations to those. But we've had some super exciting investments, you know, we're invested in a company in West Texas, Cormint, that is using stranded energy that is just stranded out in West Texas and they're mining Bitcoin.
Uh, and a very attractive price and, uh, selling back to the grid when, uh, when they want to, or, or when it's opportunistic, um, you know, and, uh, that's it, we love investments like that because we construction in a way that we remain exposed to Bitcoin all the way along. Um, and, uh, we've just, um, partnered with, uh, anchor watch, um, you know, uh, and, uh,
@jameslavish (58:26.702)
That is, that's Becca Rubinfeld and Rob's doing that one. And they're doing insurance for holders of Bitcoin and using Lloyds of London to back them. And super exciting because this is really important for, especially something like a family office that does want to hold their own keys, but wants to make sure that they have a backstop there. Especially if you're an investment advisor.
Brandon Gentile (58:52.546)
Yeah.
@jameslavish (58:55.018)
in a family office and you're not part of the family, that's something you might look for. So we're super excited about that. And we've got some other private investments that we've done and that we're due diligence and then diligencing now. And then of course in the public space, we've done quite a bit.
quite a few things, including volatility trading, volatility hedging on some of our positions and investing in the miners. I won't name names because they're public companies, but yeah, it's been an exciting space. That was longer than a minute, sorry. And Bob Burnett is another guy that we've partnered with in the private side doing some, as a lot of people know here, we've got a West Bay Mining venture with him. And...
Brandon Gentile (59:34.24)
We're not... We're all good.
Brandon Gentile (59:41.105)
That's right.
@jameslavish (59:48.238)
we're using stranded energy out in the Dakotas. And so that's been exciting. The informationist is a newsletter I started a little over a year ago, and it's been great. I started it truly, Brandon, just to give people insight into what's going on in the world, in my world of institutional investing and how all these things work, but in a super simplistic way.
Brandon Gentile (01:00:09.696)
Mm-hmm.
@jameslavish (01:00:15.894)
So I try to simplify everything that anybody can understand. We've got, I've got anybody from nurses, firefighters, EMTs, lawyers, I've got chemical engineers, I've got professional dancers, I've got photographers, it's a wide range of interests and backgrounds there. And the common theme is that they're all interested in investing and interested.
in knowing all these things, but they were never taught them. None of us were. And they don't want to hear they don't want to go read a textbook about it. But they want to know what these acronyms mean. When the Fed does this, you know, the BTFP, like what is that and how does it work? Tell me in simple terms. And it's not like tell me like I'm five, but it's like, tell me like I'm a super, super interested and curious person.
Brandon Gentile (01:00:59.159)
Yep.
@jameslavish (01:01:13.186)
but I have none of the financial terminology. Tell me that way. And so it's been great. It's grown over, it's over 30,000 subscribers now. It's free. You can find it on jameslavish.com and just sign up. It comes out every Sunday. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I've gotten great feedback. We have an awesome community there. So, yeah.
Brandon Gentile (01:01:22.688)
Amazing. Congrats.
Brandon Gentile (01:01:29.16)
Yeah, we'll link to it. Amazing.
Brandon Gentile (01:01:37.147)
Is it just you writing it and doing everything for it?
@jameslavish (01:01:40.885)
I'm a one man show. Thank you.
Brandon Gentile (01:01:42.292)
That's amazing. It is. It's phenomenal. It is one of the best, better, best, better ones. I'll say better just to be conservative, I guess, but it's one of the better ones out there. It really is. It's, it's, uh, it's really good, but we'll link to it and stuff. So yeah, absolutely. All right. So we, we got to play work quick word association game here in a minute, but really quickly, the, the brief story of, you know, hockey again, that's for anyone that knows, you know, we both played college hockey. Uh, I played Michigan state,
@jameslavish (01:01:51.562)
Thank you. I really appreciate that. Yeah, yeah.
Brandon Gentile (01:02:11.964)
James played at Yale and then, not against each other, we're a couple years apart, but have a background in that space and it's cool to see more people coming in from athletics and different world into Bitcoin. So give me the brief kind of overview for the people, just what that was like and just kind of the lessons you kind of learned from that, just to where you are now.
@jameslavish (01:02:13.95)
Not against each other.
@jameslavish (01:02:35.966)
Yeah, I mean, look, when I was in high school, I...
I was playing a number of sports, I was playing soccer, baseball, hockey. And as we did when we were kids, you guys did, but when I was a kid, you played everything. And I didn't really commit to hockey until I was about a junior. But senior year, I grew a lot. I had some really good games and I got noticed by the Boston Bruins scouts. And so one of the summer games out in Boston, we played in leagues out there.
You may remember hockey night in Boston that stuff I got I got noticed out there and in a different league but and so They drafted me when I was 18 and as you know and for your listeners when you're when you in hockey you get drafted 18 and then you go off to university and the team that drafted you basically owned your rights for four years and then they have to decide what to do and so I went and I played at Yale and
Was doing great. Everything was awesome. Uh, my line, I was, I was fortunate to be on a line with the all-time leading scorer for Yale all time history. Uh, Mark Kaufman, he was phenomenal player. Um, and basically I was super fortunate to be on the line with him and some of the best players in the whole league. Uh, we had a number of all Americans on that line. Um, and so, uh,
Everything's going great. It's awesome. I'm on, I'm on the U S national team, trying out for the Olympics. Uh, and, uh, and senior year, I, I take one hit. Is this a regular game playing against St. Lawrence and was taking a puck out of the zone. I got hit the wrong way. My knee popped and, uh, and I tore my ligaments and I basically just didn't recover from that. Uh, it was terrible timing. And I, I was.
@jameslavish (01:04:36.994)
Like I was on my way, I was 100% sure I was going to be signed by the Bruins. I couldn't have an agent yet, but I was talking to agents and they were kind of edging in to figure, yeah, I mean, I wasn't the best one on the team, but I was one of the guys that had high potential to go as a senior. And it was just like that. It was over in a flash.
Brandon Gentile (01:04:48.328)
giving you the scoop. Yeah.
Brandon Gentile (01:04:58.889)
Mm-hmm.
@jameslavish (01:05:07.378)
I made the tough decision to be truthful. I made the tough decision. I wasn't going to kind of going to be the guy who's just going to splash into the NHL and be a starter. I would have had to ground grind it out in the AHL or whatever for a little bit. Even if, even if I was perfectly healthy, but I went to New York rangers camp. Um, and Mark Messier was there. These are long stories. So I can, we will have to have another podcast about this.
Brandon Gentile (01:05:32.304)
Yeah. Cool.
@jameslavish (01:05:33.434)
But, um, and I, you know, I tried, I, I tried, but I wasn't there. I wasn't, I wasn't healthy enough. And I was like, this is going to take me years to get back to where I was. And I just graduated Yale and I was like, I need money. Um, I don't, I, I just, I knew in my heart that it was going to take, it was going to take too long to get there. And I wasn't sure if I would ever get back to a hundred percent. I mean, my knee was shattered. Um,
Brandon Gentile (01:06:02.068)
Cheers.
@jameslavish (01:06:02.45)
And so, and back then, we didn't have the kind of surgeries you do now where you're, you, you have an ACL blowout, you're back on, on the field or back on the ice. And that's in a year. I mean, we, I would have been back on the ice in a year, but it would have been a long, anyway, so I decided, made the tough decision that it, I was going to have to pivot and talk to some of my friends, hockey players who were on Wall Street. And they said, you got to see what we do.
Brandon Gentile (01:06:08.265)
Yeah.
Brandon Gentile (01:06:12.215)
Yeah.
Brandon Gentile (01:06:18.953)
Yeah.
@jameslavish (01:06:31.522)
And they introduced me to a bunch of people and I got hired to be a clerk on the floor of the New York stock exchange, uh, you know, getting coffee and tuna fish sandwiches for the brokers. But I, my, my first job was, I mean, honestly, it was, uh, because I was pretty good at math. It was, it was trading ADR arbitrage on the floor of the stock exchange. So, which is basically just trading the arbitrage between foreign shares and, and domestic shares that trade on between London or Europe or
Brandon Gentile (01:06:32.713)
Wow.
Brandon Gentile (01:06:42.722)
That's amazing.
@jameslavish (01:07:01.559)
Asia or Mexico on the floor. So yeah, it was pretty wild So that's how I landed I got drafted by the boss and I landed on Wall Street
Brandon Gentile (01:07:06.562)
Wow. Well, next time we are.
Yeah, there you go. Next time, yeah, like you said, we'll maybe in person or whatever, it's maybe a few months when we do it on here. Next conference, we'll have to do, we're gonna do a hockey stories pod for sit down for 30 minutes and just we'll share stories and record it because that's how, even in the beginning, a year and a half ago was we had some very similar stories, played for the US national team, got really hurt when I was 18 years old and played for a handful of years still, but had to make that tough decision of like, yeah, this is, I just, yeah.
@jameslavish (01:07:26.414)
That sounds good.
@jameslavish (01:07:38.454)
You know what? Yeah. But once you get injured like that in hockey, it's, I mean, it's a, we've seen it in the pros. You see some of the guys, you just never, they're just never the same because it's such a physical game. I mean, you see it in football. Often you just, if you get hurt in football, often you're just knocked out. So, but you don't see people like Tony Romo recovering from a back injury. And I think that's just, it's tough. It's, these games are...They're physical. They're really physical. But it was awesome. I loved it. I'm thankful for it. It definitely set me on the right path. It did. And going to your initial question, which is really important, I do believe it kept me on the rails as far as just learning that grit, that determination, that shared determination and tenacity to go after what I wanted and have the discipline to do it in a way that got me there.
Um, and hockey players are, they're, they're typically, uh, pretty humble and low key. Uh, they don't, you know, they don't dance around. You'll get your head chopped off if you do. Um, so, uh, you know, um, and, uh, so it keeps you, it keeps you grounded. And, uh, and it has, uh, I'm way, I'm definitely way more grounded today than I was when I was a 21 year old high flying kid. Uh, but, um,
Brandon Gentile (01:08:51.165)
True.
@jameslavish (01:09:06.822)
I got grounded pretty quickly after that injury. I'll tell you that much. So, yeah, life is strange, but you just pivot and you do it, you just keep going. That's what we do.
Brandon Gentile (01:09:20.552)
Yeah, yeah, it's a great lesson. Such a great lesson. All right, last segment, last segment presented by kind of grab them Bitcoin trading cards. So our podcast here presented by Bitcoin trading cards, orange pill in the world, a new segment presented by Bitcoin trading cards, the word association. So we're going to do a word association this time. Got a list of words, just rattle them off, whatever's in your head. And then we'll, we'll end this bad boy…
The Bitcoin ETFs.
@jameslavish (01:09:48.175)
Oh, money.
Brandon Gentile (01:09:51.092)
Hyper Bitcoinization.
@jameslavish (01:09:53.256)
Soon.
Brandon Gentile (01:09:56.157)
Michael Saylor.
@jameslavish (01:09:58.282)
Oh, genius.
Brandon Gentile (01:10:00.66)
Sam Bankman, Fried.
@jameslavish (01:10:02.894)
fraud.
Brandon Gentile (01:10:05.906)
Politics.
@jameslavish (01:10:08.307)
lies.
Brandon Gentile (01:10:10.868)
wizards.
@jameslavish (01:10:13.928)
Harry Potter.
Brandon Gentile (01:10:25.52)
Ooh, women in Bitcoin.
@jameslavish (01:10:28.982)
needed.
Brandon Gentile (01:10:30.684)
Mmm, I like that.
Bitcoin conferences
@jameslavish (01:10:35.925)
It's stimulating.
Brandon Gentile (01:10:38.112)
community.
@jameslavish (01:10:40.359)
Oh, strength.
Brandon Gentile (01:10:43.016)
Janet Yellen.
@jameslavish (01:10:45.895)
Retire.
Brandon Gentile (01:10:49.013)
Jerome Powell.
@jameslavish (01:10:52.266)
should be retired.
Oh, sorry, one word. All right, you know what? Honestly, the word that really does come into mind for Powell is: pickle.
Brandon Gentile (01:10:57.426)
Debt spiral
@jameslavish (01:11:15.641)
In it.
Brandon Gentile (01:11:19.294)
Ben Bernanke.
@jameslavish (01:11:24.193)
I would say over, what's the word I'm looking for? There's a word I'm looking for, overrevered.
Brandon Gentile (01:11:35.86)
Ooh, I like that.
Bitcoin trading cards.
@jameslavish (01:11:43.616)
I um classic is the word that comes in my mind but that's it.
Brandon Gentile (01:11:49.716)
Love that. Bitcoin Opportunity Fund.
@jameslavish (01:11:53.234)
Opportunity.
Brandon Gentile (01:11:55.284)
The Informationist.
@jameslavish (01:11:57.366)
Simple.
Brandon Gentile (01:11:59.008)
I love that. James, thank you so much. Appreciate it, brother. Thank you for coming on today. It was an absolute blast being good. Yeah, I've got some good feedback over this past week. I just started doing this week. Spetsky was like dying too. He was like, this is hilarious. So I appreciate you. Appreciate you coming on and look forward to doing it again soon, seeing you soon. And appreciate you being a playable character because boy, do we need more of them. Thanks, brother.
@jameslavish (01:12:03.466)
Yeah, of course. It's a pleasure to be here, Brandon. I look forward to talking about hockey sometime soon.
Brandon Gentile (01:12:27.996)
Absolutely. And where can people find you?
@jameslavish (01:12:31.538)
Obviously on Twitter, I'm just James Lavish. My the information is at just JamesLavish.com. There's a link in my Twitter bio. And if you're interested in being on the list for a future Bitcoin opportunity funds or investments, then you can email us there at Bitcoin Opportunity Fund and sign up and test that you're accredited investor and we can send you information.
Brandon Gentile (01:13:02.132)
Beautiful. Thank you, sir. I appreciate you.
@jameslavish (01:13:04.73)
Awesome. See you next time.
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