Anthony Scaramucci sits down with Noelle Acheson, author of the Crypto is Macro Now newsletter, for an insightful conversation exploring how Bitcoin and gold are the ideal hedges for these chaotic times of political instability, inflation, and rising economic inequality. They also discuss Noelle’s forecast for Bitcoin, stagflation risks, the rise of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and how the U.S. might adapt to a financial landscape being shaken by blockchain technology.
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Noelle Acheson 0:00
Currency debasement, as well as the widening inequality, which leads to greater polarization, which leads to greater political instability, which leads to chaos. And hedges against chaos, Bitcoin and gold, the US government is not going to be able to stop Bitcoin. This is heading into that dreaded word stagflation, which is not off the table for next year.
Anthony Scaramucci 0:29
Hi and welcome to speak up. I’m your host, Anthony Scaramucci, and joining us today as my guest is Noelle Atchison. She’s the author of crypto is macro. Now that’s an amazing newsletter, which is at the intersection of macroeconomic trends and the cryptocurrency markets. You can find Noel at Noel in Madrid, and I was saying to her before we joined the broadcast, I love the Twitter handle, so give us the genesis of that first before we get into the show.
Noelle Acheson 0:57
Thanks so much, Jazzy. It’s so good to be with you. Big fan of the show. You know, long time listener, first time caller. The reason I chose Noel in Madrid because once upon a time I had grandiose dreams of one day also having, you know, Noel in London, Noel in Tokyo. But I love Madrid so much that this is where I spend all my time now. I have for many, many years, and hope to continue to be able to do so. It’s a gorgeous city, yeah.
Anthony Scaramucci 1:18
Well, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, one of my favorite cities. And I just want to read a little bit of your bio for our listeners, okay, because you have an unbelievable amount of gravitas in so many different areas. But you were previously the Head of Research at CoinDesk and Genesis trading, lots of in depth analysis there on crypto and the digital asset sectors, you have 15 years of experience in the financial media and markets, and you’re recognized, obviously, as an expert at explaining these very complex things to people. But there’s a lot going on in crypto and a lot going on in macro. We both know that things like Bitcoin and other crypto assets are macro, economic potential, investment plays. I want to talk a little bit about that. And you have this premium email which goes out it is crypto is macro now, and it’s market commentary, news, commentary. And then you have a free weekly email focusing on the deepening overlay between these ecosystems, the crypto ecosystem and the traditional market and centralized structures, where, you know, a lot of these centralized structures, like I know, are about to be wrecked by all of this great technology once we can get past some of the regulatory nonsense that we see in the marketplace. Okay, so let’s get into it. If you don’t mind, I want your personal journey into finance, if you don’t mind, how did you get into finance? Me. I was a poor kid from Long Island. I thought a pathway to riches was to get into finance. That’s how simplistic my ambition and that’s how shallow I am as a human being. Figure, I would open up with that. How’d you get into finance? Do
Noelle Acheson 2:58
not believe for a second you’re shallow. Nice try. It was about it’s about numbers. I love numbers. I’m a maths major. I have to confess, numbers are clear. They’re correct as well. You got a seven is a seven, and the maths equation is right or it’s wrong. And and when I was young, that felt like a very appealing view on life, but then I started to realize that numbers, without a story behind them are actually pretty cold and narrative. Now, the story with people and puzzles, that’s where the fun starts. And if you’re going to marry numbers with narratives, that’s basically economics, isn’t it? And then markets are the manifestation of that. They’re the expression of the confluence of the numbers and the narratives. So that was how I fell into finance. It has been a journey. I was in tradfi for 10 years, corporate finance, fund management research. I ended up doing fund management in Spain, where I am now. Had my first child left that because, you know, managing futures and options is not really compatible with breathing. And then I set up one of the first e commerce companies in Spain back in the year 2000 ran that for 13 years, sold at 2013 figured out, okay, what’s going to be my third career was sitting in my parents living room in january 2014 in London and reading about what had been happening in the world. And I wasn’t paying attention, interested in finance, interested in technology, and I kept hearing about this thing called Bitcoin, and I hate not understanding some things and some analysts, I guess. I watched a video on Khan Academy. I don’t remember Khan Academy. They were so cool. And when I realized that what I was looking at was permissionless payments, I got goosebumps, because I grew up in central Africa and Zambia, and just thinking what it could do in that part of the world, I just dove head first into researching that. And the more I researched, the more I realized how complex it was going to be, and also just how this was definitely what I wanted to spend the next, you know, few decades of my life on
Anthony Scaramucci 4:53
so you’re a lot smarter than me. Let me explain why. Because I was introduced to Bitcoin in. In 2014 and I was actually introduced to a gentleman by the name of HAL Finney, which I’m sure you know who HAL is. And for our viewers and listeners, he was the first person to receive a Bitcoin from the Satoshi Nakamoto wallet in terms of a transfer. How was a great computer programmer? My friend Peter Diamandis introduced me to how in 2012 and they were explaining to me Bitcoin. And I looked at them like they were three headed monsters. No, I had no idea what it was. And so, what did you see? How did you see it? What was your eureka moment?
Noelle Acheson 5:36
You’ve met Hal Finney. I didn’t know that. That is absolutely awesome. I mean, talk about an OG. I mean, you are now the OG. Because of that, my eureka moment was that the technology
Anthony Scaramucci 5:45
not though, I want to interrupt you, I got into Bitcoin at 2020 I wasn’t smart enough. You were in the room. You were in the room. Understood it better. But unfortunately, I was an old geezer, and I was institutionalized, and not just a mental institution? No, I’m talking about being not just institutional investor. And so I missed one of the great, transformational things that are happening this century. But go ahead, it’s
Noelle Acheson 6:10
really hard. I mean, and you and I talk probably every single day to traditional investors, who will tell you it’s never going to work, or it’s just a risk asset. It’s not a I mean, this, it’s hard to get out of that. I’ll give you a personal anecdote. I’m married to a traditional investment strategist, and it took me a year of dinner table debates to finally get him to finally get the Satoshi to drop, as it were, and of course, now he’s he’s all in when they’re along the lines of, yeah, but what backs it and yeah, but what backs the dollar anyway? Went round and round, and that eventually came through. But you were asking what I asking what I saw in it. It was the technology. I didn’t rest until I understood how the technology worked. Because we’ve all heard so many times, and I’m sure you probably thought this when you were talking to Hal back in the day, decentralized. Yeah, right. Seen that before. Know about the E cash, it’s, it’s centralized somewhere, right? Because pure decentralization is just not possible. And this is a humbling reminder that what we think today is just not possible may well be possible one day. And I say the code, I made sure I understood how it worked, and I realized that, holy, yes, decentralization is actually possible. With this way, we have a way for the network to pay itself. That was always the point of vulnerability before and of course, permissionless payments not really practical when people aren’t familiar with technology in the first place. I mean, permissionless payments actually need rails to move on. People need to be familiar with the concept. And in many cash heavy sites, especially in the Global South, that’s not really practical. So the more I research this, the more I realize that permissionless payments okay, there’s a lot of barriers here, but what I was actually looking at, and this is where I got another set of goosebumps, was a new type of marketplace. And marketplaces, again, just the ability to spin up marketplaces pretty much anywhere in the world. That is in itself very powerful, because marketplaces are a force not just of redistribution, not just of price discovery, but in theory, markets should be a force for freedom, and we can agree that they’ve grown up gated and therefore they’re not really fulfilling their potential.
Anthony Scaramucci 8:15
So, you know, I don’t know. I learned about finance in an old school sort of way. Some professor told me in 1985 that interest rates are the physical gravity of financial assets. If they’re lower, the asset prices will levitate higher. It has to do with discounted cash flows. And it was a very, very boring lesson, but it did help me on my path in the world of finance, what? What would you say the impact is of interest rates today? Is it the same as it was 40 years ago? Are there other macro things that are happening in the market place? There’s there’s lots of technology that we have today, which is disinflationary. I know we’ve had a a spasm of inflation here, but I think most people would agree that was related to the covid 19 pandemic and some of the monetary and fiscal policy that got imposed globally. But what are your thoughts on where we are with inflation? What are your thoughts on interest rates and how important is Federal Reserve movements one way or the other? That
Noelle Acheson 9:18
is such a fascinating question, such a deep question, and such a such a good question to be asking now, because things are changing on pretty much all of those fronts. One of the my favorite sayings, which is incredibly annoying to anyone who will listen to me, is everything’s relative, and interest rates are the financial gravitas when there’s just not a lot of other competing forces for attention and money. And now that we have discovered, Anthony, that deficits don’t matter, and yes, I’m being somewhat ironic here, but yes, now that we have discovered that deficits don’t matter, do interest rates still matter? We have now. Embarked on an easing cycle, and is this really going to provide the liquidity stimulus that the market seems to be expecting when the tightening cycle didn’t tighten market liquidity at all. Financial conditions, according to the Chicago fed, even before we entered the easing cycle, they were as loose as before the tightening cycle started. So we can argue that the monetary policy is not having the impact it might have once had now that we have discovered that people actually don’t really want to talk about the deficit anymore. Have you heard any of the candidates mention it? Yeah,
Anthony Scaramucci 10:39
it’s interesting. Yeah, no, I think, yeah, I know. I mean, I think this is one of the things. I mean, I’m going to get to the debt crisis in a second. But yes, no, I think we’re in total agreement. And so that begs the question, then, how do you feel about things like Central Bank digital currencies?
Noelle Acheson 10:58
They are political. They are purely political, not even domestically political. They are geopolitical in some instances. Obviously, the United States is not going to have a retail central bank digital currency, because that’s a political third rail. Europe will have a retail central bank digital currency, but no one’s going to use it. China already has one, and they will do whatever it takes to make sure people use it. This is a very interesting example. Actually, China has one. It’s got several pilots. It’s rolling them out. It has had a big jump in transaction value as well. But we don’t really know who’s using this and why. China has been struggling to get adoption. It’s tried paying public workers in the central bank digital currency. They immediately convert it at the bank. So no one really wants to hold this. And if China, if China can’t get it the use case going, then then really who can? But it does become a geopolitical tool. And obviously China does have other intention, other other goals, perhaps in mind, I should say that with the cbdc Europe’s goals in getting the retail cbdc off the ground. Well, it just feels it needs to to remain relevant. They actually have said this, that European Central Bank officials have said, Yeah, we just need to remain relevant. And for the United States, obviously, different equation whatsoever. India is struggling. Thailand has a source of cbdc. It’s not really one. It’s wholesale cbdc. Now that’s the geopolitical tool that is super interesting. What’s going on there? There are very few central banks that aren’t experimenting with wholesale CBDCs and the connections that they can trigger. And especially at a time where the United States is increasingly weaponizing the dollar, there are many nation states that are scrambling to find an alternative.
Anthony Scaramucci 12:40
Okay, tell, tell our viewers and listeners what a wholesale cbdc is. What does that mean? It’s
Noelle Acheson 12:47
between banks, and this is why it is so much easier to get approval for, to get acceptance for, because actually is a pretty good idea right now, transcending money across borders. If anyone’s ever tried it, it can take days, and it is horrendously expensive, and the transaction can be stopped at any time. But with a wholesale cbdc, it’s on a digital ledger. It takes minutes. It takes seconds, and the conversion between the different currencies can be a question of smart contracts. So for wholesale, a wholesale cbdc, can oil grease the wheels of trade. That’s a very boring thing, but it really can. It can grease the wheels of trade. And here’s the kicker, Anthony, it can do so without touching the dollar system. There’s a fascinating project underway at the moment between this sort of run by China, but under the guidance of the bank into the BIS the bank, the central bank, central bank set up by China. The blockchain was built by China, but also the central banks of Hong Kong, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and also now Saudi Arabia are trialing wholesales, wholesale CBDCs, swapping amongst each other, and actually even testing cross border commodity trades, settling in wholesale CBDCs. And you gotta ask yourself, why?
Anthony Scaramucci 14:00
So I first of all, I think it’s a brilliant exposition. And thank you. A lot of people are just not familiar with all these terms yet. So that’s why I’m asking you the the macro trends. I’m not a macro trader, but I’ve been an observer of the economy for of too long, actually, almost 40 years. But I feel like the United States is still numero uno in so many different ways. And I think as a country, though, we have a tendency to denigrate ourselves now we are running a big deficit. And so I’m going to ask you three things, okay, number one is the United States. Numero uno in your mind in terms of economic growth, innovation, entrepreneurship, business startups, etc, yes or no, and if it’s not, who is eclipsing the United States. And then number two, we are spending a lot of money on deficit spending. And. Does it matter? We’ve had people come on and say, you know, it doesn’t really matter because everything’s denominated in dollars. Gentleman, by the way, Brent Johnson came on a few weeks ago and said that the fact that everything’s dominated in dollars in most places the world doesn’t really matter. So does it or does it not matter? And then the last one, and the most important one, how do you play that from an investment perspective, whatever your views are. So step one, tell us about what you think of the US. Okay,
Noelle Acheson 15:28
great. Thanks. Alexa. Have a terrible memory. Well, I remember all three in their order, but yes, the answer, the short answer, is yes, the US is the best place still to set up a business, unless perhaps you want to set up a crypto business. That’s a different question. Yes, it is the world’s strongest economy. Yes, it does have the strongest protection of law for any ideas you may have to come up with. So yes, the US is definitely still the leader on that. And a lot of the I guess, Pearl clutching, I can use an old phrase that we’re seeing is fear of losing that fear does, of course, get the clicks, as you know, and so a lot of people are paying attention to this risk, and it’s an important risk, especially with the weaponization of that power. We’re seeing the weaponization of that power, not just through denial of access to the dollar system, whenever a company, even in a friendly jurisdiction, does something that does not conform with US policy. We’re seeing that also militarily, the US is flexing power and eventually, for instance, Trump’s threat to implement 100% tariffs on any country moving away from the dollar. We have no idea what that even means, but eventually, the kids in the playground don’t want to play with the bully anymore, and now there is a new technology in the marketplace that does make it possible to develop alternative systems, not necessarily replacement systems, but alternative systems. And in the end, choice is the greatest luxury there is jurisdictions, nation states and even trading blocks, as well as individuals are they have a choice they didn’t have before, and this is going to terrify the United States, because it understandably sees that it could be losing power here, or the United States can embrace it and decide to build the necessary infrastructure help it develop and therefore get an inside leg, an inside lap, into the development of what could otherwise end up being a competitor. No, I do not think Bitcoin is going to replace the dollar anytime, nor should we want it to, to be honest, but it does provide an alternative that didn’t exist before.
Anthony Scaramucci 17:31
Okay, I I worry about the deficits a lot, and I don’t know why. You know Dick Cheney, and he’s in the news lately. He once said that deficits don’t matter. I look at it and I say, Well, if the dollar went from $35 an ounce to US dollar, $35 an ounce to one ounce of gold, 1971 to gold, now being at an all time high, you know, 2000 let’s just call it, for the sake of this broadcast, $300 we’ve knocked $1 down 98 99% that kills the working class, that kills the middle class. And I think the deficit has something to do with that, because we’re making more dollars to pay back the deficit with dollars that are worth less than the ones that we borrowed. What’s your reaction? Am I wrong about that? Maybe I’m not looking at it right. No, I
Noelle Acheson 18:26
think you’re totally right. They don’t matter until they matter, just like pretty much everything, right? And they will eventually matter because of the widening gap of inequality that you’ve mentioned the right now, asset inflation is increasing the inequality. Not everyone has the assets, and those that don’t have assets are just getting hit by inflation. And if indeed, we do end up with a weaker dollar because of that, then that’s just even more inflation. So yeah, it you know, you’ve probably heard that Lynn Alden has been, she’s been famous for getting this meme going, nothing stops this train. And yes, I totally agree with that, except it does eventually have to stop. Eventually the railroad runs out. Eventually the engine plunges into the ocean, right? And that’s going to be pretty ugly. Brent Johnson is totally right, and says, I follow what I’ve learned a lot about the dollar from him. He’s totally right when he says that, it’s still, you know, the best asset out there, as Luke Roman says as well, the dirt is the cleanest shirt in the laundry basket. That is true. That is probably likely to continue again, especially given its economic vibrancy compared to many other jurisdictions. But again, there is a choice now. It can still be the leader, but have a weaker influence than it used to, and that is not priced in yet.
Anthony Scaramucci 19:45
All right, give me the three. Okay, everything you just said, obviously I’m in sync with you, so we’d like to ask our guests for actionable ideas. So everything you just said, what are one or two investments? Actionable? I’ve got some spare change in my account. I want to put it into something. What would I put it into?
Noelle Acheson 20:02
I should say I’m not a professional investor, but I can disclose what I personally have been investing in, and that’s Bitcoin and gold, because I do think this train eventually will run out of railroad. As I said, we do have runaway deficits. I don’t know what’s going to stop it. This does mean currency debasement, and not just in the US, we’ve got Japan bumping up defense spending. We’ve got Europe that, you know, Mario draghi’s report a while ago was talking about, we need to spend another 800 billion euros a year on energy and defense. And in a fragmenting world, everyone’s going to be bumping up what they spend on defense. It’s not optional, right? And even the US, Congressional Budget Office has the deficit just climbing, climbing and climbing. We are already the United States. I should say we the United States is already spending more on interest payments than it is on defense. And the CBO projections assume that the defense spending is not going to have to pick up, so the deficit is going to be even worse than it expects. So currency debasement, as well as the widening inequality, which leads to greater polarization, which leads to greater political instability, which leads to chaos, and hedges against chaos, Bitcoin and gold,
Anthony Scaramucci 21:14
okay, I mean and both, both are doing well. Both are great assets. And I own a lot of Bitcoin, not that much gold, but I do own some gold, and I like gold. I like gold as an asset class. And I’ll just point out to people that gold, over the last two years, has outperformed the 500 best companies in the world. So there you go, right? You know,
Noelle Acheson 21:32
that’s telling us something, isn’t it? Gold is sending a message. You know, Bitcoin has not caught up with gold by any means, even though it is regarded by many investors of the digital peer because it has so many other things going on as well. It has the political lid. At the moment, the uncertainty is not helping it at all, uncertainty around rates, uncertainty around growth, but Bitcoin is a risk asset. It is also a long term hedge. This is something that so many and I don’t know how long it took you to figure this out, but it’s hard for people to understand that something can be a short term risk asset, but also a hedge against chaos. How is that even possible? And it’s all about time frames.
Anthony Scaramucci 22:10
You know, listen, I think it’s well said, and I think Bitcoin has obviously been the best performing asset over 14 years, but you would think at this level of its maturity, if gold’s at an all time high Bitcoin should be, and it’s not quite there at this moment. But you know, we’re both bullish. Let’s see what happens. We know that these things, they don’t the markets, don’t run on appointment or a time schedule, but they are weighing machines in the long term, as Buffett once said, right? They may be voting machines in the short term, but long term, I think will be okay. Before I take audience questions, I want to ask you one more question. Do politicians matter?
Noelle Acheson 22:46
Love that question. Yes. They really, really do they matter, not just for economic expectations setting, and we’ve seen a lot of that in the US presidential campaign so far. They matter for you, economics, expectation setting. They also matter for just how much a population can be inspired to withstand discomfort in times of adjustment. I mean, a case in point is Argentina. I mean, to vote in a government that has said, I am slashing budget and there will be a lot of pain to vote them in. One says a how, how bad things got. And God forbid that any of the the economies that we live in should get that bad. But it says how bad things got, that they were voting for pain. But two, they did so because of the force of personality, because of the hope one particular politician delivered. And I’m not, again, I’m not necessarily singing these praises here. There have been, you know, many unfortunate side effects of this, but still, we can look that as a case in point of why politicians do matter. Because if not, people are going to continue to vote for convenience, they’re going to continue to vote for yes, just give me more money. This worries me a lot about and again, this is slightly off topic, but it does tie in slightly to what you brought in about the central bank digital currencies, and that’s the idea of universal basic income that is starting to get some traction, again, in some circles. And again, who would not vote for free money? Yes, please give me more free money. But then how do you vote that party out?
Anthony Scaramucci 24:15
You know? You know, it’s an interesting thing, you know. And I would say policy matters right, and tax policy matters right. They they limited the state and local income tax deductions in the United States and the blue states that have heavy safety nets. A lot of people said, Okay, well, I’m going to migrate to a lower tax state. We had half a million people leave New York. So policy, people, politicians, they matter, right? Do you
Noelle Acheson 24:42
think that tax is political, or is it also influenced by other factors?
Anthony Scaramucci 24:51
It’s a good question. I have to think about that. So, you know, I, I’m gonna, I’m gonna say that. Um. Uh, the big driver for me. And again, I could be wrong, and maybe this is me being a businessman and business centric, but the big driver for me is tax policy. I think tax policy is the central root of all policy, because people will move their behavior pursuant to taxes. And said differently, I live here in New York, so if I make $1.52 goes to my government. That would include Kathy oakle and Joe Biden. 48 cents goes to the Scaramucci family. So I’m a minority partner in my own life. My majority partner are the politicians as a result of tax policy, and so some of my friends have said, I don’t really like that. I’d like to be a majority partner, and they’ve moved down to Florida, where it’s now 6040 so
Noelle Acheson 25:45
that’s a really interesting way of looking at it. I hadn’t thought of that’s really interesting. But then the more people that do that, that also changes Florida’s economics, which might, in the end, end up impacting its tax policy. Oh
Anthony Scaramucci 25:57
yeah, no, they’re going to turn Florida Blue, because people are going it’ll lead to more economic growth. It’ll lead to more poor people. See people forget this. Why do you have these high tax states in the port cities? We a lot of poor people show up at the port, and you need a safety net. And one of the big economic achievements for the United States is the great immigration story here. We have very poor people that can show up here. Sergey Brin, he’s a refugee from Eastern Europe. He goes on to be worth 100 plus billion dollars. Develops Google alongside of Larry Page, and we can name hundreds and hundreds of people. Andrew Carnegie, throughout the course of economic history in the United States that come penniless and go on to be quite rich. But in these port cities, they’re blue for a reason. They they, they are teaming with poor people. And sometimes poor people need a little lift or a little help to get get to the starting block in in the country’s capitalism and so. So, you know, I thought it was a mistake to reduce or limit that state and local income tax could, because what people tend to forget is the economics the port cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, etc. They’re the economic engine for the country, okay? And they percolate all of the economic activity in an innovation throughout the country. I’m not saying you can’t have economic innovation in the center of the country, but just study, study the country, you know. And that’s how it’s by and large been so but hey, listen, you know, what do I know? Tax, to me, is the central policy. You get the taxes right and you motivate people through the right incentives, you can create a lot of economic growth. That is
Noelle Acheson 27:40
interesting. Do you think it’s changed in the US? I’m asking you questions here, but I’m interested. Do you think it’s changed in the US over the decades? The importance of tax policy?
Anthony Scaramucci 27:49
Well, I think, I think the way they taxes change, you know, I think it started out is that, you know, we’re going to tax you, and this is literally a bill for services. Your tax represents a bill for services, and now it’s like, we’re going to tax you, and it may or may not be a bill for services, but it’s going to be policy. It’s going to be political policy. We’re going to tax you in a way that’s going to foment or create political policy. So if we don’t want a big corporation like Amazon in Long Island City. Well, then we’ll make sure the taxes are such that they won’t be able to arrive in Long Island City, even though that would have created an unbelievable amount of jobs in the city of New York. There was a group of progressives or socialists. They didn’t want that that that big business here. They want the business to benefit from those tax breaks, and so they spited themselves by not allowing for that business. So, so listen, I mean, you know, there’s, I don’t know, I think they become very political with the tax policy. It’s no longer a bill for services,
Noelle Acheson 28:53
and not even just income tax, which would be the technical things like inheritance tax, which influences real estate investment, etc. Here in Madrid, for instance, there’s no inheritance tax, which means you get downtown in beautiful old apartments, young people living next to old people, because the young people who inherit these apartments from their grandparents don’t have to sell it to pay the inheritance tax.
Anthony Scaramucci 29:17
Yeah, yeah. I agree. Man. You know, it’s fascinating. All right, want to take some questions, if you don’t mind. All right, you look great, by the way. I love the shot. Okay, that’s got to be a very popular room for you. Let’s take let’s take questions. Noel, do you think we’ll see faster crypto adoption in the developing world versus the developers? A great question from Greg in California. Greg,
Noelle Acheson 29:43
that is a brilliant question. And I’m going to nitpick slightly and say by adoption, we have to separate out what we mean, adoption for speculation, developed world, large markets, ETFs, trading, relatives, etc. That is a type of adoption, and that’s largely going to be not necessarily just the developed world. Me, for instance, many traders in Nigeria, for instance, India, etc, very happy to try and make their money as they can trading and now, but adoption for store of value, that probably makes more sense if you are living in the country with 70% inflation and such as, I’m thinking Turkey, I’m thinking Nigeria. I’m thinking many regions in the global south that’s a different type of adoption and adoption for payments. I mean, we can sit in our comfortable financial jurisdictions and say, why would we use Bitcoin to make payments when we have so many other better solutions, but many people don’t have better solutions, and even Bitcoin, with its 10 minute wait and it’s relatively high fees at times, is better than what they have, and they don’t have to ask permission. So depends what you mean by adoption. Adoption for speculation, that’s probably going to continue to grow faster in the regulated markets, as we have seen so far, but adoption for many other reasons, including the technological development we’re seeing that’s probably going to be outside of the US.
Anthony Scaramucci 30:58
Very cool. Let’s go to the next one. So Brent Johnson told Anthony that the US dollar is the government’s ultimate weapon, and that it conflicts with crypto. He did say all of that, and he also said that we don’t have to worry about these deficits, because everything in the in the ecosystem is dollar dependent. What’s your opinion of all that see on from Florida?
Noelle Acheson 31:20
It’s a conflict in the very short term. It’s a compliment. Further down the road, the US government is not going to be able to stop Bitcoin. It could tax it into oblivion within its shores, but bitcoin is going to continue to flourish elsewhere, obviously at a lower price, because there’d be lower demand, but it would still continue to flourish. And I think the United States is eventually going to realize that the more that the United States would try to push Bitcoin outside its boundaries, the bigger, the better the case it makes for why it is a good asset to hold outside the system. The more financial oppression that they try to use to quelch its adoption, the more appealing it will become. And I do think the United States is smart enough to realize that, and so it will eventually end up embracing the innovation that Bitcoin can bring, not just for things like data storage and some smart contracts and some tokenization, but also for its impact on market infrastructure. It is a financial innovation that’s basically the United States has the world’s largest financial market because it has traditionally embraced financial innovation compete with the dollar, maybe now, sort of not really medium, long term compliment. Okay.
Anthony Scaramucci 32:34
Well, Said, we’ll leave that there. Let’s go to the next one. Noel, do you think crypto assets like Bitcoin will increasingly correlate to traditional assets like gold? Alex of Ohio,
Noelle Acheson 32:47
I think so. Yes, longer term. But the thing we have to remember is that the price is always set by the last trade, and for many, Bitcoin is a speculative asset, and there’s a lot of churn. We’ve got the high frequency traders. We got the day traders. We got the short term position. Hold momentum trade, etc. They are involved in the Bitcoin market, and they generally are one leg of any trade on any given moment. And so the short term viewpoint, which is generally speculative, sets the price. And that for now, seems to be very tied to liquidity expectations, incorrectly, in my opinion, but there you are tied to liquidity expectations, but longer term, zooming out, Bitcoin is a safe haven. It is a store of value, much like gold, you also get a lot of people insist that gold has intrinsic value, it has industrial use, and Bitcoin is useless beyond the Ponzi game. That’s actually not true. Bitcoin is a technology. There’s an evolving technology at that there’s a lot of work going on on Bitcoin defy even Michael Saylor is working on building a decentralized identity solution on the Bitcoin network. There’s a lot of technological development going on in Bitcoin, which suggests that we’re underpricing block space, but it also reminds us that we as human beings are terrible at knowing what new technologies are going to be used for. And as this becomes more widely spread, as we start to understand its potential better, then that is going to change its correlations, in my opinion.
Anthony Scaramucci 34:11
Okay, women get one last question in there. I know we have to get you back to Madrid and away from this show that we love doing. Let’s go to the next question. Okay, for Noel and Anthony, what’s your outlook for the economy? Do you think a recession is in the cars for 2025 so says, So says you’re the expert. Tell me what you think. First,
Noelle Acheson 34:33
I have been calling for a recession for some time. I’ve been wrong. So I say that as a caveat. I do still think that we are going to have a very sharp slowdown next year, more than most are expecting. Because while I don’t think the jobs market is collapsing right now, I do think the fears of that are being thoroughly overblown. When unemployment starts to move, it moves fast, and that is going to impact consumption, which is going to impact revenues, which, etc, etc, and all of. Us at a time when inflation is going to have a very hard time coming down much further from where it is now, in my opinion. And this is not a good recipe, this is heading into that dreaded word stagflation, which is not off the table for next year. So I’m pessimistic for next year’s economic outlook. I do think all of the expectations of strong growth are wildly overdone, full blown, deep, deep recession, I would have said so definitely a few months ago. Now, I’m not so sure it’ll be that deep. What do you think, Anthony,
Anthony Scaramucci 35:32
yeah, so I, you know, I think we are because I think the Fed is behind the curve. They should have cut rates. I think they don’t want to be perceived as a political beast. You know, Alan Greenspan raised rates going into the 1992 election. He was roundly criticized. There’s been other times where the Fed is either raised or lowered rates pursuant to their independent streak that they’ve been called political I don’t think they want to be castigated specifically by Donald Trump so they haven’t lowered rates to where they need to be lowered, and a result of which they are going to tip us into a recession. But I am in agreement with you, but it’ll probably be a shallow recession, and probably a good time to buy assets if they weaken. But I want to give you the last word, so, and I’m going to, I’m going to put it to you a little bit, okay, and I’m sorry to do this to you. Don’t be mad at me, but I want a price prediction. I want a price prediction on Bitcoin. Noel, before we leave, sure
Noelle Acheson 36:27
I can do that up. How’s that up? That’s probably the best I can do. I Timing. I think we are in for some fairly bleak, disappointing, frustrating.
Anthony Scaramucci 36:40
When is my bitcoin going to reach 150,000
Noelle Acheson 36:43
funnily enough, that’s actually not out of the question. The journalist asked me the other day, why do experts keep making outlandish predictions? It’s going to reach 100,000 by the end of this year, but for it to I did some numbers for it to reach 100k by the end of this year, it has to go up per day by point four, 5% that’s it. And that’s not out of the question. We also know, you’ve seen this before. We know that when Bitcoin starts to move again, it’s going to move fast, because, as you know, it’s got a hard cap, and when the world starts to pay attention, then there’s going to be a scramble, because there’s not a lot of Bitcoin available. A lot of it is already socked away in long term wallets. So it’s going to be a scramble for something that does not have flexible supply, no matter what the price. And this is actually a difference between Bitcoin and gold. And not everyone understands when, if gold got to 100,000 then we’d be mining asteroids. We’d be squeezing gold out of seaweed. We’d find new production methods at a new price, they would become profitable, and that would impact the supply curve for gold. But bitcoin does not care what the price is, nothing is going to change its supply. So 100,000 by the end of this year. Again. This isn’t my official prediction, but it’s really not out of question. Okay,
Anthony Scaramucci 37:59
I love that prediction, so I want to leave it there. It was very, very wonderful to have you on the show. You’re at Noel in Madrid. That is the call sign on x, and it’s Nicole Atchison. I think hopefully I’m getting close enough to the right pronunciation. But remember, I’m a Long Island from Italian, American Long Island. You’re never going to get the pronunciations right with somebody like me, but it’s somebody like me, but I hope you’ll come back and Noelle is the author of crypto is macro now, which is an award winning premium newsletter. Thank you so much for joining us on speak up. Thank
Noelle Acheson 38:34
you so much, Anthony, and I hope to see you out in Madrid soon.
Anthony Scaramucci 38:36
Yeah, absolutely. If you like this video, you like this video as well. Check it out. You.
