# MARKET UPDATE: What Is MemeFi, WAR With Iran, & The Fed Not Backing Down — What You Need To Know 1000x · 2026-09-02 · 84 min · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmM2ghBGEig ## Transcript Jonah Van Bourg The ThousandX Capsule is back, better than ever. It’s Wednesday, September 2. The workday is approaching, but we’re back in the saddle. Summer is over. Shale gas is the biggest deflationary force of our lifetime, Avi. It was a technological discovery that allowed you to literally put the drill bit a mile deep, rotate it 90 degrees sideways, and extract a thin ocean of oil scattered across thousands of square miles. A closure of the Strait of Hormuz would raise the price of oil to $1,000 per barrel. Shale gas saved the world. Artificial intelligence is no different: It just creates deflation, and it will save the United States of America. Avi Felman Wow. Hey, Jonah. The market is doing interesting things. Today, we want to talk about several topics, in particular the absurdity happening in the world of Robinhood: these meme assets that tie their tokens to memecoins and grow in market capitalization on the Nasdaq. The midterms are getting closer, so we’ll look at some interesting data published this month regarding the polls and how they will affect your wallet. We’ll talk about how the Fed and Bessent are going blow for blow, essentially saying, “Bessent, I’m going to call your bluff.” Or maybe he does nothing but criticize. Perhaps he’s just a crook. In general, we’ll talk about what’s going on with Jonah, because I haven’t really talked to him in a whole week. Jonah, how are you? Jonah Van Bourg I’m fine, man. I’m having a hard time calling when we’re not in front of thousands of people on this podcast. First, I want to apologize: You called me, and I didn’t answer. That’s true. Actually, I didn’t answer that call, so you know what? It’s my fault. Sorry, dude. Avi Felman Come on. Let’s talk about your fresh cut. We have several people on the stream. We were going to watch the World Cup, and you said something like, “I want to look like one of those guys.” Jonah Van Bourg Yes, it was a bit of an inspiration. Besides, I seriously thought about rebranding this podcast as a 1980s-style Gordon Gekko podcast on the theme “Greed is good,” but we’re not going to talk about what was exciting in the ’80s; we’ll talk about what fascinates us now. ### What Is MemeFi? Inside The Robinhood Chain Mania I feel like a mustache can work for this. Maybe I’ll continue in the same spirit. I can be the only one who talks about the Robinhood network and all the other nonsense taking place in the crypto world, such as this naked coin that I just bought because of the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This is not financial advice. I’ll probably lose all my money on this. I was just playing around and trying to understand what to do here. Avi Felman Why are you doing this on this chain? Explain what you’re doing out of FOMO. Why did you do this to yourself? You’re an experienced guy. What’s going on there? Jonah Van Bourg Do you think I’m experienced? That’s probably the nicest thing I’ve ever heard someone say about me. I used to be. When I worked at a real hedge fund—the fund that managed $1 billion—I was much more experienced than I am now as a memecoin player, which is what I’ve unfortunately become. This is mainly because I feel a sharp need to know what kids are doing. As a newly minted 30-year-old, I’m the one they call a boomer, and I want to get rid of that title. I want to prove to you that I can still do what is necessary to earn money in modern markets. The first step is to go on these crazy platforms like FOMO, because I needed to understand what was happening. Social trading platforms are gaining momentum. I mean, FOMO’s revenue is going off the charts. We always knew that the idea that gambling would disappear was never really going to be true. There will always be an element of animal spirits returning to the markets. The question was always whether buying memecoins was the way to express this point of view. The answer is almost always no, because memecoins that aren’t popular now are unlikely to be popular in the future. It’s always a new generation. New things are always happening in the market that people really want to invest their money in. I need to find out what’s interesting to people—what people are actually going to put their money into. Before FOMO, it was quite difficult because I had to trawl Etherscan, go on Solscan, and independently track large wallets. People didn’t necessarily want to advertise their positions, so it was quite difficult to do. Now you have a way to find out who the trendsetters are, which is very important in crypto. You have to find out who buys what and for what reasons. That’s what we call due diligence in the world of memes. It’s just for people who need it, instead of doing something related to reality, such as looking at revenue or utility. Actual utility probably ranks last in terms of what you need to consider. Avi Felman Sorry to interrupt. I have to ask: Who are the 3 current tastemakers? The previous cycle was Ansem and a few others, right? Jonah Van Bourg Yes. That’s an interesting question. There’s a guy named Dumb Pencil Eater. He has 419,000 subscribers, and his FOMO grew by 8.6 million. You have UniPCS, with 430,000 subscribers. He grew from $5.6 million to $6.7 million on FOMO. You have Salem, with 151,000 subscribers, who made about $6 million more. Then you have Nate Benish, who I think was the first guy who actually called out your real name. His name is Nathan. It sounds very Israeli, like me. Avi Felman This guy Nathan Benish—maybe we need to lure him into the Capsule. We can talk about his Zionist tricks and how he uses them to— Dumb Money Eater. It sounds like he lives in Los Angeles. Jonah Van Bourg Hmm. It’s like an ordinary person who lives in Los Angeles, right? They’re so stupid. Avi Felman Pencil eaters are usually quite beautiful. So, Jonah, I really don’t know how you fit in there. For those of you listening on audio, I’m kidding. Jonah is beautiful. I have a face for radio, as they say. Jonah Van Bourg If you’re an uncle, then I think that makes you a grandfather. Avi Felman Yeah, you know, I was handsome 15 years ago, but now it all went to waste. This is what happens when you have 3 children and a good wife. Jonah Van Bourg You just say, “I’ve blocked everything. She can’t make me leave now.” Avi Felman She can. Divorce is the worst kind of gap there can be, so you have to hold yourself together, as it were. I don’t need to be the biggest killer on the profit-and-loss statement. People are talking. People think this is a long asset-maintenance trade. People think this is a bet on memes, but actually, the biggest amount of capital was destroyed not by, for example, Archegos. How much did Archegos lose? Jonah Van Bourg I don’t know. Tens of billions? Avi Felman Yes. How much did Bezos spend on his own divorce? Was it $50 billion to $60 billion? Something like that? Jonah Van Bourg Something like that. Avi Felman All I know is that the total amount of capital destroyed by divorce is greater than the total amount of capital destroyed through leverage. Jonah Van Bourg Great idea. 100%. Avi Felman Yes, actually, it’s worse. You have to be careful. Beware of the women you let into your life, Jonah. This is the worst kind of liquidation. Imagine the income statement: Jeff Bezos’s losses the day after those DocuSigns decreased by $60 billion. Just kidding aside, I have to look up the correct number. How much did Bezos lose during the divorce? Just $38.3 billion. I’m sure he looks at how much it was worth it now, because it was Amazon stock, isn’t that right? Archegos Capital Management lost approximately $20 billion. So, actually, Bezos’s divorce blew away $40 billion of capital, which is twice as much as the biggest crash in financial-market history. Jonah Van Bourg Oh. Well, actually, wait. How much did it cost in situational awareness? Just like these hedge fund crashes, divorce is zero-sum, right? Avi Felman Yes. Bezos’s losses are the profits of the former Mrs. Bezos—MacKenzie Bezos. Okay, let’s see. Leopold Aschenbrenner lost about $35 billion. So even Leopold, who just got married, may turn out to be a smart guy in the future. It’s possible that in the future he’ll lose more money getting divorced from his wife, the chief of staff at Anthropic, than he lost in this deal. It’s a warning to all young boys: Make sure you marry the right person. By the way, big failures in divorce only occur with smart guys. Jonah Van Bourg Avi, what about me? This whole FOMO concept is interesting. In the previous cycle, it was Pump.fun; in this cycle, it was Dumb Pencil Eater. In the previous cycle, it was Ansem or Zion, or whatever it’s actually called. Here, you need not simply be long the tail end of the memecoins or the tail ends of meme platforms. You can’t just invest in current memecoins; that probably won’t work. You need to invest in the current meme platform. You must be FOMO, right? Even FOMO won’t last that long, because every time the next memecoin explosion—the gambling explosion—happens, it will be on something else. Avi Felman That’s what makes this area so difficult for me. It’s as if even the foundation is unstable; it’s shifting. I can accept that, for each cycle, there are various meme coins. First it was Doge, then Shib, then WIF, and now it’s whatever happens to be experiencing FOMO. ### The NVIDIA Trade Post-Mortem But shouldn’t the platform at least remain unchanged? No. At first it was Binance, then it was, you know, pump.fun, and now it’s this. I remember a scene from Martin Scorsese’s movie Casino, starring Robert De Niro. There are very few movies I’ve seen that are as phenomenal as that. Incredible—simply a wonderful, great movie. Then there’s a parody of that movie that I often think about when I’m trying to trade these meme assets, called Mafia! This is one of the best parodies of all time. In the opening scene, a gangster who sounds Italian talks about the casino they created, and the joke culminates with him saying that people stopped coming to the casino and simply sent them money in envelopes and parcels so they wouldn’t have to spend money on plane tickets. The casino was doing so well that there was a room full of people collecting money and opening envelopes full of cash. That’s how I feel about meme coin traders. They’re literally just transferring money to whoever created FOMO, Uniswap, Aerodrome, or whatever. You need to figure out where the value is accumulating, and it’s obvious that this value is not accumulating for the average or even the top-decile speculator. Perhaps it’s going to the top 1% of speculators. I’m a pencil pusher, but no one else gets it, so I mean, just stay away from this FOMO. Listen, I know that no matter what I say—or what I don’t say out loud—people are watching this, and they’re not going to stay away. They’re going to log in and ape. So the only thing I can do is give you some framework for how you can actually approach this market. When you look at what’s taking place on Robinhood Chain, it reminds me a lot of what happened on Base. There’s a new platform that doesn’t have much legacy baggage. It doesn’t have old assets that suck up liquidity. It seems new and fascinating, and people invest their capital in it because they feel that maybe this time everything will be different. Any platform that allows you to do this can generate escape velocity, at least for a short period of time. If you can say that about a platform, then this one is potentially another example. It’s a crack for the average player, investor, trader, or someone else, because it gives hope. And hope is the most powerful drug in trading. Robinhood has a great history. Robinhood is a huge platform, Jonah. It has assets in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and it has access to a huge number of retail traders who have never gambled on the blockchain. Management is promoting it. Are people in crypto really early to a platform that can grow 10 times over the next 5 years? Or does this mean that the meme coins on Robinhood will continue to work well? I don’t know. But I do know that, right now, attention is focused on this, and capital is flowing there. There’s a certain set of meme coins that are showing very good results. Again, that tells you to go back to what I just said: this time, everything is different. What’s different about these meme coins? Robinhood Chain is structured as an RWA platform, and tokenized shares are a hot topic. Therefore, these meme coins are attached to tokenized shares. If you buy Noods, you’re essentially buying Snapchat shares by paying commissions, and that creates a kind of reserve of Snapchat shares. If you’re buying Shiba AI or something like that—I forgot the exact name—you’re directing your money to Nvidia. If you buy Boner, you’re directing your money to Hims. There’s a great tweet published by 0xSammy that describes approximately 20 different meme coins that have launched and are actually just simple things for degenerates, as he calls them. Jonah Van Bourg I have a question. I have to ask this guy something, 100%. Avi Felman So this is really what’s going on: a new meme coin appears. Will it last long? Absolutely not. But today, something really interesting is happening. There’s an asset called Femi that was supposed to be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange for trading below $1 and with zero volume. It’s a coin with a market capitalization of $3 million. Someone launched a coin called Jin Kang—sorry, I don’t speak Chinese, so excuse me if I’m mispronouncing it—and supposedly this coin has the same structure. It’s tied to this small-cap asset. The small-cap asset literally doubled, increasing by 100%. Femi grew by 100%, and Jin Kang is going crazy. In fact, there’s no connection between them. It’s kind of a joke: there’s no real mechanism for Jin Kang to buy FEMY. It’s simply implied that this may happen at some point in time. But this tells you that we’ve invented a new way of speculating. We bind small-cap assets to meme coins. The idea is that they’re not actually tied together. There is no connection. But let me finish my tirade. The idea here is simple: if we can pump a meme coin, then, if the shares are small enough, we can also pump the stock. And we can create a virtuous cycle. You stimulate the creation of real tokenized assets through meme coins. If these coins—for example, if Noods or Boner—increase 5 times, and people buy those tokens, they’re buying tokenized Hims and tokenized Snap. Then there may be a bid related to those tokenized shares. You can see how Snap traded at a 10% premium to the underlying asset. That will stimulate market makers to come into the coin, take their actual Snap shares, take their actual Hims shares, mint tokenized versions on Robinhood, and then sell them to capture the difference. That seems to be what’s happening, which is quite interesting. I think we’re probably in the late stages of this from a short-term perspective, because I registered on Robinhood Chain today, and I’m pretty good at recognizing when I’m late to something, considering that I’m a crypto native and I’m barely paying attention. But I wanted to experiment with this so I could talk intelligently with you guys about what’s going on. At some point, I think Robinhood Chain could collapse next week. But I also think this prepares us for a bigger crash later. That’s why I’m paying attention to this space. I’m buying some of these coins just to experiment. It’s a simple reminder that patience is everything, and forecasting means thinking about the future, not the present. Two months ago, people looked at Robinhood Chain and thought it was completely dead. There were memes about it. Even 2 weeks ago, people looked at Robinhood Chain, and nothing special was happening. But you have to understand that Robinhood would not launch a network if it weren’t going to allocate significant resources to pumping it. Vlad Tenev talks about meme coins on Robinhood. He seems to know when this thing is about to explode, and you can simply deploy capital and wait. A lot of trading and investing is just thinking: Where will the money go? Where will incentives eventually level out, and where should capital be invested now to pay off in the future? This partially explains why I think that, even if we get a short-term collapse in Robinhood Chain, for now it will only affect crypto natives—people who are very early to this meta. At some point, ordinary people will see the funny price action taking place on Robinhood Chain, and they’ll come. They’ll probably buy as well, potentially on a dip, potentially accelerating the current movement. ### Where Does The Value Actually Accrue? All I know is that some of these meme coins will probably be very popular in the future because, I repeat, people can say that this time everything is different. That was my tirade. Jonah Van Bourg No, that’s a great tirade. This time, everything is not different. Of course, Vlad Tenev speaks about meme coins. Vlad Tenev is literally Robert De Niro from Casino—or his equivalent in the parody—just receiving envelopes of money from people because they’re saying, “I’ll lose anyway. I don’t want to play. I’ll just send you my money by mail.” It’s literally as ridiculous as it sounds. So you have to ask yourself—not you, Avi, but the listener, the royal “you,” whoever we are—which, for example, where does the value accumulate? Who gets the money? It’s not you. If it’s Vlad Tenev, perhaps it’s Robinhood Chain, if they launch it in a way where the tokenomics imitate Hyperliquid, with a redemption of approximately 99%. That’s unlikely. Robinhood has external shareholders, who wouldn’t be happy with that, would they? Maybe then you can buy some base layer, some kind of “fat” protocol asset that accumulates value from all this speculation and gambling. But this is the most common error I see in junior traders: they watch some tiny participants in a base-layer subsector make a lot of money, and they assume they can make money, too. That’s the honey, the nectar, that lures them into the trap. I see all of this as a trap. There were times when I was into Bitcoin pretty early, but I think the rest of cryptocurrency was a bit of a mystery to me. I dove into Ethereum when it was nascent. But I was also in Solana. Then I made a few errors in 2021 and 2022 when I bought things because I thought a revolution was happening, while a lot of more sober voices in the commodity-trader community—traders who aren't coiners—were actually right. They said, “No, it doesn't matter what NEAR is doing with sharding. You don't need to buy this for $20 just because this sharding on Ethereum's roadmap will take place in 2 years.” Nobody cared, damn it. It didn't matter whether we were in a bear market or not, right? We were already in a bear market. Avi Felman You have your sound turned off, sir. Jonah Van Bourg Oh, you intentionally turned off the sound. Avi Felman Yes, yes, I know. I said that I'm just repeating what I was saying about the gramps community. Jonah Van Bourg People don't need to hear me. This is just so funny. Avi Felman Yes, I like it. Maybe we should create a chat for gramps. Jonah Van Bourg We should—for the sake of all people over 35 in cryptocurrency. Avi Felman A grandpa chat. Conversations about grandpa. Stories about grandpa. Confessions about grandpa. Jonah Van Bourg In any case, yes, basically, this is my confession to grandpa. Nobody said, “Jonah, it doesn't matter what NEAR is doing with sharding. You don't need to buy this for $20, even if this sharding on Ethereum's roadmap will take place in 2 years.” Nobody, damn it, cared. It didn't matter whether the market was in a bear market or not, right? We were already in a bear market. The cycle for these meme coins is so short, and the oscillation is so compressed, that it doesn't matter whether you're early or not. Whatever you bought has no value. You're already in a bear market. You can get bursts of a bull market, but you have to act as if the bottom is about to fall out from under you. It's the most terrible and absurd pyramid-style gambling adventure I've ever seen on a large scale. I thought meme coins were dead. Now you're sitting here talking about the “$BONER” meme asset, where some guys created it with a few clicks and promised to buy HIMS shares—shares that you can also just buy yourself. If the market capitalization of BONER reaches a certain level, arbitrageurs will probably appear who trade HIMS against BONER, based on the probability that the guys behind BONER will actually buy HIMS. If they do, then there's some systematic basis on which they can trade. It's funny. When I was at DRW, we sat next to the guys from Eonia. Ergonia is a systematic fund in blockchain—it's like a mini-Wintermute. They did very well during the Solana meme-coin frenzy. Before that, they would tell me stories about people in these communities who were doing sandwich trading and MEV arbitrage. There were 17-year-old Dutch guys—two of them, with their laptops—earning $50 million apiece from MEV and sandwich trading when it first became relevant, when Ethereum exploded in 2021. Then one of them lost his laptop, and the other supposedly went bankrupt somehow or lost all his money. Then Ergonia became the next case of this. Now, probably, some new Dutch teenagers are doing the same thing, extracting money from retail players. Honestly, there's very little you can understand here. Either you're an extremely technologically savvy person who can systematically exploit the feeding frenzy and gambling madness through some systematic arbitrage, either on-chain or off-chain; or you're Vlad Tenev; or you're one of the luckiest lottery winners, Mr. “Gobbler Pencils of the Fool Face”[?]; or you just convert your money into Ether, which you'll never get back. ### If You're Going To Gamble, Here Are The Rules That money isn't just worth what it costs today. You have to think about how much it will be worth in the future if you simply put it in the SPY and earn 10% to 20% per year. I can't emphasize enough how pointless this is and how impossible it is to capture the value that seems to be so large. It's just not there. It's all an illusion. Avi Felman Listen, Jonah, I'm not going to disagree with what you said. I just want to go back to what I said at the beginning: I know that people don't care. They're going to do it. So, if you're going to do this, let me explain some rules. Number 1: Understand what part of the cycle you're in. You're not early. I'm not early in this Robinhood Ponzi. You need to think about it in such a way that every dollar you invest in Robinhood is probably equal to 0, but over the next week or so, there could be potential for a high multiple. So, if you're going to try for those high multiples, put in a small amount of capital. Don't invest any significant capital in Robinhood memes, if possible. I invested approximately $10,000. That's fine. If I lose it all, whatever. I treat it almost like a game—not necessarily like a real game, but like a real investment. Second, make sure you monitor the situation very carefully and trade. You're not investing in these meme coins for a 100x. That has probably already happened. You already have bets at $400 million that are starting to play out on the Robinhood platform. You have the InVideo token at a $250 million level. You have tens of millions of dollars in volume passing through these things. So, I would play this on a very short leash. I'm not looking for 10x now. I'm looking for 2x, and then I'm leaving. I hope the rest of the people don't necessarily understand that and continue holding for 10x, because they'll get wrecked. If you want to play meme coins, you need to think about the future, not the current state of things. That's the most important point. The people who have achieved great success are those who, 2 months ago, had a thesis on Robinhood, allocated capital, and are now watching it very carefully. If you're just starting out, pay attention now. How do you feel about this? Is it like a casino, where you pull the lever and play? Is there a way to gain an advantage? Potentially. If you pay attention and track these big wallets—sorry, all of this is very emergent—you can learn something. If you look at all the best wallets on FOMO and all the best coins that have already passed, the people who earned a lot of money somehow managed to buy these things at a $100,000 market capitalization or a $200,000 market capitalization. This, in my opinion, suggests that they were involved in creating the coin, which means that their entire profit is probably just a free roll. I think it's very difficult to imitate. You can see someone with an $8 million position, but that's very difficult to follow because they were probably involved in the actual creation of the coin itself. I'm not slandering them. I'm just saying that, more likely than not, they were involved in creating the coin. You have to know what game you're playing. There are moments—and I think this is one—when you can potentially get a quick 50% to 100% profit because of all the liquidity coming in. You just need to know that you're playing a game of hot potato. This very much reminds me of DeFi in 2020, when DeFi had just started and all these coins on Ethereum were completely crazy. It was a great deal. It was as if you knew everything would end, but you also knew there was still a lot of capital sitting on the sidelines, ready to invest in these assets. That's why I got involved early by chance, because I literally looked at things on the blockchain all day. I managed to pull out a decent amount of capital. In the DeFi era, everything started on Ethereum and then spread to other blockchains. All these other blockchains, such as Avalanche and NEAR, tried to create their own versions of DeFi Summer. It actually ended with Binance Smart Chain. When Binance Smart Chain launched its own EVM-compatible version, they started launching all these DeFi assets, and that was actually the end. But if you were among the first to receive money on Binance Smart Chain, you left with a good amount of money. All I'm trying to say is that I think this has been going on for 5 days. Maybe it will continue for 5 more days, maybe 14 more days, but you have to know what game you're playing. This is very much a game of hot potato. With these dynamics, you can probably make a lot of money from a small amount of money, and I wouldn't advise investing more than 1% of your portfolio in it. If you believe in the long-term thesis, then it's probably best to just buy Robinhood itself, which I've been doing for a long time. I think Robinhood is one of the best expressions of cryptocurrency trading. It has protection from negative consequences: if stock markets return, if AI trading returns, Robinhood will grow rapidly because options volume will return. If cryptocurrency increases rapidly while stocks remain unchanged, Robinhood will grow. Robinhood has many different ways to win. I love stocks and investments where you have many different ways to win. Meme coins are the antithesis of that. There is one way to win, and that's being the first capital in. Again, I think I'm the first capital in now, so I took a small position in these assets, but that's why I like Robinhood. Arbitrum is also something of a dark horse. I believe they get 10% of the fees generated by the Robinhood network, and the volume on the Robinhood network increased from $500 million to $1.5 billion last week. That's crazy. You'll see a lot of fees generated from this. The Robinhood network will eventually earn a decent amount of money, and after 2 years, I think the Robinhood network will probably be bigger than Robinhood is today. Interestingly, this is almost a bullish scenario for Ethereum. I hate Ethereum, you hate Ethereum, everyone hates Ethereum, but the largest activity is now happening on this new chain, which is based on Arbitrum and ultimately boils down to Ethereum. Regarding the actual income, Ethereum is not going to make significant money from this, but from a narrative perspective, this may happen—especially if Solana starts to lose flows to it. Maybe what you’re seeing is an institutional narrative that unites around Ethereum. If Bitcoin goes up, Ethereum can become the second-fastest horse in the race. Now I want to talk about my general thoughts and your general thoughts about the market, because people are nervous about Bitcoin. You seem to have silenced your voice. Before we move on, can I just take 30 seconds to talk about what you just said? Jonah Van Bourg Of course. Avi Felman The most interesting price action for me is the coin ANSEM. Jonah Van Bourg Hmm, this thing from MemeFi— Avi Felman Tell me why. You said that the last 5–10 days were when the MemeFi bubble really occurred. Jonah Van Bourg Hmm. This price action corresponds to that. ANSEM just falls to local minima, and other assets like MemeFi, such as bot, fall again. This tells me that there is not much capital on the sidelines. It’s something like squeezing one part of an air ball, and then another part inflates. Then you squeeze this part, and the first part inflates. It feels like capital outpouring. Avi Felman It feels like a tidal wave, like what you saw between 2020 and November 2021. Jonah Van Bourg No, no, no. Here, there is capital on the sidelines. These are the very degenerates who rush from one story to another. As you said, the best thing you can do, if you listen to us, is not to ape into memes with dollar signs. You need to be focused on Discord, in the trenches of CT, to profit from this and to be early. And, in your opinion about bonds, Avi—I know I’m over 30 seconds, but I promise I’ll finish soon. ### How Wall Street Fakes Alpha Avi Felman Listen, we have all day here, Jonah. Let’s— This thing with the bonds you’re talking about reminded me of something. Actually, this is what Mr. Doomberg points out: potentially one of the people involved in the synthetic dollar nonsense, or whatever the hell is happening. Honestly, if this takes place at scale, this is Wall Street, right? Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense, on a scale, Jonah. Did you hear that here first? You heard it here first: nonsense on a grand scale. Basically, there is huge business on Wall Street. For example, our guy Flood posted something really amazing. He talked about the difference between finance and trading and real estate. I spent a lot of time in finance in New York and London doing this, and very few people lead a Herculean battle with the market, managing their own money and just getting profit in a vacuum. Much of what takes place in finance, in general, consists of rethinking some information about bonds, stocks, or business operations—people who are already earning money are presented as geniuses or progressive thinkers. If you get enough support, whether from Gen Z through FOMO, or from the upper management of Goldman Sachs or Vitol, you get more opportunities with extremely high alpha to which no one else has access. Using your words, Avi, if you can make a free roll because you intellectually came up with some new form of profit, the benefits are enormous. I’ll give you an example. At Goldman, there was a group of guys who traded petroleum products in New York. They had huge deals with oil refineries. They built an investment-banking department, and supply and offtake were processed and hedged by traders. Obviously, the traders were ripping the eyes out of the oil refineries on pricing and just generating endless money. Why were the oil refineries ready to be deceived like that? I mean, you could assume that in competitive conditions, those margins would fall. It was like a banking relationship: when you’re an oil refinery and you’re in despair and really need money, you take out a loan from a company like Goldman. Then they put something like a poison pill in the contract, writing, “By the way, you need to trade with our trading department when you need to hedge, to ensure stable cash flows.” And they’re like, “Okay, okay. They don’t really understand.” Then, apparently, they come and say, “Hey, I’m just selling a billion barrels per day of some exchange-traded oil-refinery product on margin.” It’s on the table, and they say, “Oh, really? I know that you can’t compete with me, so I’ll just show you an aggressive price, but one that’s only slightly within the limits of legality.” This continues, and that’s how money is earned. Jonah Van Bourg Too wide, or would this be illegal? I don’t understand. Avi Felman I don’t know. Perhaps there will be a lawsuit or some kind of claim regarding a violation. I’m not a lawyer. But the point is that the same thing happened at Vitol, right? Jonah Van Bourg Yes? Avi Felman Essentially, you’re giving people money, and they sign documents that contain unpredictable consequences, one of which is that they trade with you. Supply and offtake. So, in essence, you’re paying for take-or-pay arrangements and all kinds of small wiles. I could make a whole podcast about it. Anyway, the guys at those desks who receive these agreements use something called reserve profit and loss. They say, “Oh, you know, it’s illiquid. I can’t sell this now, so I’m going to hide part of this profit in reserves and losses.” Then they release it from the reserve on their own schedule, and it can create a profit-and-loss trajectory that isn’t real, right? Then they spend all day talking about working at the desk, discussing fundamental indicators and research, pretending that they have incredibly relevant knowledge. In the eyes of management, they create this new cash flow, and they do this because they’re so smart and know so much about fundamental indicators. I saw this again and again. I saw this in the macroeconomic area, where someone just has a connection in Washington, turns that into profit, and positions himself beforehand, as if he knows that he’s the best trader in the world. Jonah Van Bourg So I have to imagine that, basically, the Trump administration does this every day when oil moves around. Avi Felman I mean, yes—no, that’s right. That’s very true. I’m just a little—I’ll talk to you about that. Can I just quickly finish? I’m almost finished. I really like it. I know I’ve been saying this for a long time. Basically, I wanted to say that if you can make something like a business or a freeroll look as if you’re really generating money from trading, people will throw money at you. They’ll throw you a raise, a title, and opportunities. A lot of financial careers were founded on the fact that you simply depicted a stream of cash or a freeroll as real, perceived profit. Don’t give in to it. Don’t be one of those people who throw money at such situations. Well, that’s literally what is happening in cryptocurrency, right? Jonah Van Bourg Yes? Avi Felman You have all these people. In my opinion, FOMO works so well because we always appreciate people who seem to have figured it all out—quote-unquote. There isn’t much digging required to find out how they supposedly figured it all out. I think what you often see in cryptocurrency is a combination of 2 things. First of all, there is a meme. You’ve seen the meme about survivorship bias with the plane, where all the bullet holes on the plane appear as red dots. Basically, this comes from the Second World War. When the planes were returning, the army looked at them and asked, “Okay, where are these planes most likely to be shot down?” They looked at all the airplanes that were returning and said, “They’re most likely getting shot at in the wings and probably in the nose.” So they armored those parts. But they didn’t realize that the airplanes that were actually shot down were hit in critical places where no armor had been applied. This is the problem of survivorship bias. It’s the same problem we encounter in cryptocurrency. Many of your favorite KOLs, and many people who have finally earned a lot of money, are people who were really lucky. It happens in the world of finance, too. If you have 100,000 people gambling, 1 in 30 of those people will make a series of consecutive trades and eventually become extremely rich, even if they don’t have any skills. They’ll present themselves as someone who has those skills. It’s your job, as someone watching these markets—especially all these crypto KOLs—to figure out who actually has a thoughtful approach to the markets that you can learn from, and who is simply an example of survivorship bias. Someone may have just gotten lucky but somehow received a lot of profits and losses. Jonah Van Bourg The best disinfectant for survivorship bias is duration of time, right? Avi Felman How long have you been successful? The longer you’ve been successful, the less likely it is that you’re lucky. That’s exactly what I would look for. That’s why I’m offended by all these new people who came in during 2023, calling people who have been here since 2016 and 2017 “unlucky” and saying that they lost. We managed to hold out approximately twice—maybe 3 times, maybe 4 times—longer than some people. Whatever your profit and loss is now, the main thing is not just to make money. Making money on the bullish side of the market is the easiest thing in the world. You are throwing darts: the price is rising, you make money, you show off your profit and loss, and you pretend to be a god. The most difficult thing is to keep your money during a bear market. Most of these people did not work at all to do that. When people talk about Ansem, they talk about me, they talk about the Jonahs of the world, and they talk about all the KOLs—for example, Gainzy and DonAlt, and all these people who have already been through several cycles. These are the guys, especially DonAlt, to whom I pay my respects. He is a friend, and I think he is a phenomenal trader. These are the people you should follow if you want to emulate someone—not the guys from the new era who come in and immediately proclaim themselves gods. Those are the people you really should avoid, because they will make you feel good by speculating on crazy meme coins, but you do not earn real money. You lose it when the next bear market comes. In general, my opinion on trading and investing is that there are very few people worth listening to if you want real trading ideas. The people whose content is best to consume are the people who give you a framework for navigating things. Everything else depends on you—your skills, your abilities, and your courage to actually go out and earn money, followed by being smart enough to save it. It depends on finding people who can help you build that framework, not people who spoon-feed things to you and tell you, “Buy this ticker. Keep this ticker.” That is why it is funny: I often meet people—or, when I say often, I mean maybe every 18 months—who listen to the podcast, and they tell me, “The only thing you should do is give us more tickers.” I avoid that, because if I am hinting at something or talking to you about something like Robinhood, you know that I am taking a long-term perspective on what I have spent time building. ### Warsh Has No Spine: Why There's No Rate Hike This is a belief. I am not trying to guide you to slaughter. This is what I sincerely believe from a long-term point of view, and I have worked on it. Based on this, I think we are now in a consolidation phase for cryptocurrencies, and I am quite sure that we will reach higher highs. I met with our good friend Jonah, with whom perhaps you had lunch or dinner in Los Angeles, and he told me that he had to convince you not to sell your BTC. But you kept your own—you held your BTC. He talked me down. He rejected you. Jonah Van Bourg At that time, I was very bullish on gold. Gold has now retraced significantly, and I think this is another good entry for gold, because I do not think the debasement trade is over. What proves that, in my view, is the toothless jawboning by Kevin Warsh at Jackson Hole. I do not know if you saw what happened there, but he was quite hawkish, and the market thought—or thinks—that we could be heading toward a battle between the Fed and the Treasury. I do not think so. Kevin Warsh has no spine. He is trying to calm the markets and prevent them from getting out of control. I think we will get a rate cut in September. You heard it here first. If we do not get a rate cut, I will come on the show, eat my words, and tell you that I was wrong. But I think it is very unlikely that we will not get a rate cut, and I think we are preparing for the next leg higher in both bitcoin and gold. Avi Felman Jonah, it is the day before the big holidays. Jonah Van Bourg Shana Tova. Avi Felman Yes, Shana Tova. That is it. You brought up so many interesting things, and I am sorry that we departed from cryptocurrencies for a second. If we get a bull market in gold, bitcoin, and stocks, that would really just be a bear market for the dollar, right? Jonah Van Bourg Whenever I remind myself how much money has been printed, I look at M1, which is basically clown world. I look at M2, which is still almost clown world—perhaps it is clown world. I look at the United States’ debt and our debt-to-GDP ratio, and that is also clown world. We are on relentless megatrends. You can just own 3 things that work when the currency degrades: stocks, gold, and bitcoin. I do not know what to think about Warsh. In general, every time a new chairman takes the position, you start scratching your head and deeply analyzing every word he or she says. ### AI Is The New Shale Generally speaking, after a chair has worked for a little while, as in the case of Yellen, you begin to know from what they say what is going to happen. I agree with you: I do not think we will get a rate hike. I do not think this guy will simply start to relieve pressure from the economy. However, if you scale everything very quickly, artificial intelligence is the same as shale. First, it creates inflation, right? There are huge expenses and huge investments. Hundreds of billions of dollars rush into different places, like the Bakken in North Dakota, the Eagle Ford in Texas, and all these random places in the Permian Basin that most people had never heard of before. The same thing is happening with artificial intelligence. There is massive capitalization, and everyone has heard of Nvidia, of course, but billions, tens of billions, and hundreds of billions are pouring into companies you have never heard of, such as CoreWeave, VAST, Nebius, and all these neoclouds. First, it creates inflation, and then I think the same thing will happen with artificial intelligence that already happened with shale. Shale was the biggest deflationary force of our lives. If not for the technology that allows you to literally insert a tube a mile down, turn it 90 degrees to the side, and then drink from a thin ocean of oil scattered across thousands of square miles, we wouldn't have had this most extraordinary story. If we had not achieved energy independence, the price of oil would have risen to $1,000 a barrel. There would be queues around the corner at gas stations. Tesla’s price would be $300,000. Honestly, Avi, shale oil saved the world, and it was the most deflationary thing in history. Artificial intelligence is no exception. All this fear, uncertainty, doubt, and disgust around artificial intelligence—whether it will be worth it or not—will ultimately create deflation. It will save the United States. I am an optimist. Everything will be fine. We do not need to raise rates and cool the economy. Inflation will cool down by itself when people understand that they can simply do their jobs without paying $150,000 a year for secretaries. Avi Felman Do you understand how this directly contradicts the debasement trade? You were talking about a debasement trade over a period of 1 to 6 months, right? Jonah Van Bourg Yes, yes. I want to clarify this clearly. As we always try to do here, we will tell you our train of thought: why we are making a trade, why we are talking about what we think, and also what could refute it. Regarding the debasement trade, the reason AI has flourished so greatly, while bitcoin and cryptocurrency have not sold well and gold has rolled over, is that we observed real economic growth from investments in data centers and from the $600 billion invested in American infrastructure through the rebuilding of power systems. That is real growth. AI contributed to real growth. Then what happened is that this growth was priced in. The AI trade was sold, and we returned to a certain stable state. We are not quite sure where the next stage of economic growth will come from. We need to see whether these advanced models will really begin to evolve. We need something more from AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic to show us that they will radically change the economy. Where we stand today, what they will be able to change is already priced in. Before this, that was not the case. Then Bessent came out and announced that he could use $2 trillion in Treasury bonds for yield-curve control, and inflation began to feel like a real problem. If we do not see significant movement and significant development in the world of artificial intelligence—something that increases productivity and promotes GDP growth—that means we will not be able to get out of this problem through deflation. Yields will begin to rise, and then the Treasury will have to start printing in order to prevent yields from rising too high and the whole economy from falling. So we have entered a period that seemed as though it would be favorable for the debasement trade. What could change this? The appearance of advanced models—new advanced models that prove we have not yet reached the point where we will see another major increase in productivity. We need to see how Microsoft integrates artificial intelligence and suddenly becomes twice as productive as it was before. New products need to come out. Software companies need to start declining because the CFOs of large companies are replacing software developers with artificial intelligence and significantly reducing costs. Then we will begin to see real deflation. Avi Felman Maybe we're starting to see how companies like Atoms and Prometheus are actively working to make production cheaper in the United States. Suddenly, your chairs, tables, headsets—everything—starts to fall in price, and we see real wage growth and real productivity. That would obviously hurt the deflation trade. I don't think that's going to happen within at least 6 months, though. Now, I agree: if we see it happen, you have to realize, “Oh my God, our thesis about the deflation trade isn't real.” I'm not your father, right? This isn't us; we're not your parents. I don't post every day. If this happens on Thursday and I don't go live until next Wednesday and the market falls, whatever. Please don't shout at me, because remember that I said this, and remember what you need to consider independently. You need to make these decisions on your own. If you see evidence that frontier models radically improve productivity, that's bad for Bitcoin. That's bad for gold. Take steps to protect your portfolio. Maybe I'm no longer alive. Although I hope I will be alive, because I really want to start streaming more. I say this every week, and I never follow through because I'm a lazy piece of shit. Sorry. I'm actually quite regular: I go live on Wednesdays. Streams on Wednesdays are wonderful. I think I've done one on a Friday. I'm going to do them eventually. It's hard to conduct a monologue, but I need you guys to keep the comments interesting, because that's where I get my real dopamine. If you guys don't send me comments, it's very difficult for me to lead a stream, because it's actually very boring to monologue. I need an audience. Respect to Megan Kelly, Ben Shapiro, and all these people who sit and talk for 2 hours. This is difficult, man. I mean, it's improvised. Here's what I learned: They're really preparing for this sort of thing. They don't completely read the script, but sometimes they go off script, and that's much easier for me. I can start doing it. It's easy to choose a topic, delve into it, and talk to you guys. I could do it before we finish this stream. Yes, Jonah, there are many things I'd like to talk about here. Jonah Van Bourg I'm not going anywhere today. Hard stop, if you want to continue a little bit. Avi Felman Yeah, I need to use the toilet, friend. Jonah Van Bourg But mostly, we can continue. Just pee, seriously. Why not? If you need, I can try to read a monologue for a second. Avi Felman I already spilled coffee on my cuff. I don't know whether you can see it. I'm a complete mess, but at least my P&L increased. I wanted to briefly talk about the Nvidia trade from last week, because it worked and, at the same time, didn't work. I wanted to give you the opportunity to learn from it. Last week, an idea came to me, and I spent 2 minutes talking about how, after Nvidia's earnings, we would see for the first time whether the thesis would actually play out. For the last 7 or 8 earnings reports, Nvidia's stock had fallen after the earnings announcements. I turned out to be right. In the end, I earned a little money on the trade, but I didn't execute it perfectly, and I want to talk to you about the conclusions. First, I wrote down what I wanted to happen. I actually wanted Nvidia to beat earnings because I have other assets that are related to it. My base case—my wish—was that Nvidia would beat earnings. The first thing you need to admit is, “Do I have a bias starting from this?” I was biased. But could I really make a strong argument that Nvidia would beat earnings and then go up? What was I looking for? It seemed like the world was short. As I said, Nvidia had fallen after 7 of the last 8 earnings announcements. But what happened before those earnings? Nvidia had risen, on average, by 8% to 10% going into earnings. For the first time, Nvidia had actually fallen. It fell by 7% to 8% on the eve of those earnings. That's why we had a sign that maybe something had changed. The entire artificial-intelligence complex had sold off into Nvidia's earnings. It was very unlikely that Nvidia wouldn't beat expectations, because analysts tend to be extremely conservative about these things. They don't like to set estimates too high, because then they look like fools and get pushed out. That's why I thought Nvidia would beat. But I knew that wasn't enough to push it higher. So I had to see where people were short. It turned out that people were actively shorting Nvidia in larger quantities than they had before any of the last 8 earnings reports. Nvidia fell after those earnings, and, structurally, it also seemed that systematic models had exited AI trades in a meaningful way. I thought that created the conditions for a good bounce in Nvidia. What actually happened? At the moment Nvidia's earnings report was published, the stock initially traded down. Looking back, why did Nvidia initially trade down? What did I do, and what didn't I do perfectly? I sold half of my Nvidia shares immediately after the earnings release. In the end, I held on to half and made a small profit on the trade, but I sold the first half at the moment the earnings were released because I thought the algorithms had caught something I hadn't realized. My thesis was based on discretionary traders and retail investors who had shorted Nvidia covering their short positions. What I think happened is that algorithms and quantitative funds followed the same pattern they follow every time Nvidia beats earnings expectations. Nvidia didn't have a massive miss, so after the actual numbers were released, the algorithms entered and sold Nvidia shares, or sold their positions. Then, as soon as the earnings report came through, Jensen came out and said they expected up to 70% revenue growth. Those people covered, which allowed the discretionary traders to come in. The next day, Nvidia opened up 7% to 8%. I didn't take into account that when a certain pattern is repeated again and again, the first instinct—even if you think the pattern will break—is often to assume that it will persist. For a very short period, these models continue to work because of how people trade, and because quantitative funds trade based on models that regularly recur. My mistake was allowing them to shake me out of the trade instead of waiting until my actual thesis was established—namely, until the discretionary traders came in. I just wanted to talk about this Nvidia trade. Next time, I'll execute better, and you guys can hold me accountable. Jonah Van Bourg It was a great trade. I think it was one of your best ultra-short-term options trades. I liked it. ### Iran Is Getting Stopped Out Avi Felman And just to be clear, it was a short-term trade. I no longer hold Nvidia shares. Should we briefly touch on Iran before we get out of here? Let's take a break, shall we? Do you need to go now? Jonah Van Bourg Yes. Avi Felman Yes, let's go. Let's talk about Iran. What can you say, Jonah? Jonah Van Bourg Yeah, I mean, no comment. I think this war is a good idea. Avi Felman I think, if you leave that aside, from the point of view of your ethnic loyalty, my friend— Jonah Van Bourg I'm the type of person who has a face like a human being who considers this war a good idea, right? It's simply physiognomy in general. Anyway, a deadlock arose. There were some attempts at negotiations, and all of them failed. The fighting resumed. The price of Brent returned to $95 per barrel this morning. Everything starts again. What I want to emphasize is that Iran is trying with all its might to forcefully close the Strait of Hormuz. Oil is still flowing—not quite 20 million barrels a day, or something like that; 21 million a day, as previously reported. But the Saudis' East-West Pipeline now has 7 million barrels per day of capacity. I think transit through the Strait of Hormuz is 11 million barrels per day, according to most sources. Kpler, a ship-tracking company used by everyone in the industry, recently updated its data, which had been too low, with data from the dark fleet that's passing through. They've spent time dredging this Omani route to get more ships out. If you had told me 10 years ago, when I was in the thick of the oil trade, that the Strait of Hormuz would be like this—that Iran would simply hold the red line, close it, and try to keep it mostly closed for many months in a row—I would have told you that the world economy would be in the toilet, that everyone would be poor, and that the world was approaching its end. The fact that they're trying to do this—I mean Iran—and oil is still flowing pretty well speaks to how Iran's ability to impact the Strait of Hormuz degrades every day. This has no staying power. Apparently, the oil will flow out. It will continue to flow, and more of it will leak out, not less. They're showing a tremendous amount of ingenuity. They're building pipelines, dredging random small streams and rivers, and if a route didn't exist before, now it does. If everything is fine now, then in a couple of weeks everything will be even better, and a month later it will be better still. This is exactly the situation in which Iran will be excluded from this trade. I know there's a lot of discussion in the media—“Oh, that's really expensive,” and American people are against this—but let's just investigate the facts. We would have exhausted our oil reserves if the Strait of Hormuz had remained closed for this long. We're not running out of supplies. Commercial storage tanks, you know, have no depletion; their levels are much higher. They're definitely not at bottom levels, and definitely not in the middle. There is something like 25–30% above the bottom-tank level in commercial storage facilities all over the world. In my view, this is the type of thing that will continue to accumulate, not decrease over time. The levers of influence have disappeared. Iran got slapped with a complete military siege and blockade, Israeli-style. They can't import anything, and their currency is spiraling into the highest inflation abyss since Zimbabwe. This literally means that their currency will stop functioning. Mojtaba Khamenei, supposedly the Supreme Leader of Iran, reportedly fell into a state of brain death. Half of his face and jaw were torn off, and there was a pile of shrapnel in his brain from an explosion in his bunker. The IRGC seems to be manipulating him. The only 2 times he was seen were in deepfake videos that weren't comparable to the latest and best Hollywood deepfakes. It looks like a couple of boys in Iran, with limited access to the internet, are doing something on Midjourney. So, in essence, he hasn't come out, has he? I think Masoud Pezeshkian is opposed to continuing the war, while the IRGC has hard-line supporters who want it to continue. There is an internal struggle in Iran between the hard-liners and the president. I don't know how to pronounce the name, so I apologize in advance to all my Persian friends. Essentially, the president, who is something like a moderate, becomes the leader if the Assembly of Experts cannot nominate a successor to Mojtaba. As soon as it becomes obvious that he is dead—which, according to rumors, he currently is, or is a vegetable—this charade can't last a long time. Therefore, the main question is: can the IRGC bribe enough members of the Assembly of Experts—the religious equivalent of cardinals in Iran—so that they actually appoint a new hard-line leader connected to the IRGC as Supreme Leader of Iran? This isn't defined yet, but the population is sometimes strongly opposed to the hard line, because the hard-liners brought this upon themselves by striving to obtain nuclear weapons. If you believe, as I do, that Iran was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons, then all of this makes sense. If you think it was just a fraudulent conspiracy theory, you're probably a little more angry about this, but it isn't worth getting angry about, because even if you don't believe it, the oil price has remained contained in the most extreme possible scenario that anyone in the history of the oil market could imagine. This lever of influence decreases every day. I have to say, I'm glad. I didn't expect the war to resolve this quickly. I didn't expect Iran to have such great control over the Strait of Hormuz, but that control has degraded to such a degree that, in my opinion, it is no longer relevant. It's literally autonomous U.S. Navy drone boats. Again, necessity is the mother of invention: U.S. Navy drone boats are floating across the strait, neutralizing Iranian mines and mine-laying boats pretending to be fishing boats. I thought this thing would be blocked by now, if it wasn't already. For me, it's a simple return to the situation with Venezuela. They didn't use sonic weapons, Maduro wasn't kidnapped in the middle of the night, and Iran's leadership wasn't removed or the country instantly changed the way it was in Venezuela, but it's close enough. It will be done by the end of next year, and we'll actually control a country with oil reserves capable of producing 5 million barrels per day of the highest-quality crude oil. Avi Felman You touched on something really important, Jonah: the preparation that the U.S. armed forces now have. The capabilities of the U.S. armed forces have probably increased 5-fold compared with the period before this war, because, again, we had to win. We're working with defense contractors in a way we haven't since the Gulf War. Even during the Iraq War, we never faced real challenges; there was no need for invention or the deployment of new military technologies like there is in this war with Iran, right? To control the situation, we must use all these new analytical tools and deploy new drone technologies. We're also cooperating more closely with Ukraine on this question, and that better prepares us for a dangerous world. Although this war may not have gone the way you and I hoped or expected at the beginning, it ensures that any future wars we get involved in will be completed more quickly. I think we'll have another megatrend over the next few years: an absolute explosion in contracts for defense contractors. Our military will raise its level thanks to the lessons and technologies we'll develop in this war. I really think that's what people didn't expect, because we definitely don't see this every day, and we definitely haven't seen it in any of the other wars we've led. In general, we were so extremely powerful that we didn't need to deploy any new technologies to achieve our goals. Now that the U.S. obviously needs this technology, it will be developed, and we'll probably see an explosion from Palantir and Anduril in the ability to wage war, which I'm really glad to see. Jonah Van Bourg It's more than just Palantir and Anduril; you're absolutely right. Every day I go on LinkedIn at least once, and I see something new. Every day it seems that a new startup from El Segundo attracts $1 billion from a16z or Sequoia, or someone else, to create really cool military technology. I've started listening to their podcasts. All this equipment looks amazing. Anduril is just the tip of the spear. Avi Felman 100%. It's worth a lot. You see that practically everyone who has anything to do with defense can raise money very easily in Silicon Valley, which is good. We finally returned to hardware. I know they've talked about it for the last 2 years, but we finally see how it's being implemented. The coolest part of everything is this dredging you mentioned. People didn't like it, but we're doing what someone said on Twitter the Romans would have done: we're literally just digging out a new lane. Let's take away all the levers of influence in Iran, so that the Strait of Hormuz is never important again. Unfortunately, this morning I reviewed a Pew Research poll conducted about a month ago on what worries Americans ahead of the midterm elections. Concern about gasoline prices jumped from 30% to 55% of Americans who believe gas prices are out of control. This obviously means we need to deal with this quickly: the midterm elections are just around the corner, and we need to see some victory before people go to the polls. Otherwise, we're very likely to see Democrats take the majority, at least in the House of Representatives, if not the Senate, although the Senate will obviously be much more difficult. That would be very good for the debasement trade. It would be very bad for your AI shares, I think. It would be neutral-to-positive for BTC. When I say “debasement trade,” I mean it would probably be very good for gold, neutral-to-positive for BTC, and very negative for all your favorite crypto assets that actually generate income, because you won't see any good legislation for crypto. This is what we need to pay attention to: the conclusion of this war is still important for your pockets, regardless of how it plays out. We think everything is going well now, but we need to see a conclusion for that reason. I'll quickly revisit the topic of the war. Sometimes you choose the lesser of 2 evils. Sometimes there isn't a golden path or a way out of complete shit. I won't use the word that starts with C. I think that if you believe, as I do, that they were quite close to nuclear capability, energy prices would perhaps be a little lower now. If Iran's previous ayatollah were still in power and they had nuclear weapons, and they started testing them, flaunting them, and making scary noises, maybe everything would be good for a while. But I think it's naive to suppose that if Iran simply gave a nuclear bomb to one of its proxies, which then used it, the price of gas would be completely under control and America—above all, isolationist American politics—would be protected from that. Jonah Van Bourg Oh, I wonder if there will be a nuclear war in the Middle East. Avi Felman For me, that's too naive. Therefore, I think the administration, despite all the criticism it receives, didn't have a choice. They dodged a serious medium-scale problem. Jonah Van Bourg Yes, I agree with you on that idea. Obviously, I'm pro-war. I'm for bombing the Middle East in general—but I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. But I think it's necessary. Avi Felman You have to consider how the average American sees it. Sorry, this message doesn’t work. For example, you can’t hit the ordinary American on the head and say, “It’s good in the long-term perspective. This is good in the long term.” People take care of the here and now. This is why most people aren’t good traders, by the way: everyone thinks about the present. No one thinks about the future. Very few people can think about what will happen in 5 years, not to mention 5 minutes, right? Jonah Van Bourg So you must ask Trump. I’m very glad that he does. Avi Felman And Trump—sorry that I interrupted you—but Trump is usually a crowd master. I think that’s the talent. Maybe he’s a savant. Maybe he just really understands how to control the reaction of the population. I have in mind how he previously went out onstage and literally said what the crowd liked most. Then he checked what caused the most applause. Whatever caused him the most applause, he doubled down on it. It seems that he is insisting on his position in a way we haven’t seen from him before regarding this war, because he considers it really important for the future of the USA. More importantly, he considers it his own inheritance. He doesn’t want to let go of his legacy, regardless of how people currently perceive it. Jonah Van Bourg Even though it makes things difficult for candidates who are running for office, on the contrary, isn’t it? Avi Felman It is harmful to candidates who are running, because people are now tired of it and dissatisfied, as confirmed by the polls. I have in mind that his approval rating among Republicans is still 70%, but I think it will decrease if he doesn’t get inflation and gas prices under control by the day before the midterm elections. As they always say, the biggest danger to your pocketbook is inflation. My greatest concern about Trump, when he first started appearing onstage in 2014 and 2015, was: What will happen to a person who simply does whatever gets the most applause? If you decided to withdraw your candidacy and just held a referendum among ordinary Americans, asking them “yes” or “no” about some scary ethical issues, how could you get the right answer? You must have a leader who doesn’t just pull the audience to see what gets the most applause and then do it. So he was faced with an unpopular decision and, in fact, made the right choice, which makes me a little amazed. I actually—that’s not what I expected. This is really great. Respect to Donald Trump for doing the right thing. But after doing the right thing, instead of publishing an AI-generated video where you blow up one of these random islands in the Strait of Hormuz, do something like Roosevelt: sit down and talk by the fireplace. Say something like, “Hey, so here’s why we had to make this difficult choice. I’m not doing this to fail; it was just the lesser of 2 evils.” Jonah Van Bourg Which one of these? Avi Felman Well, where is it? You know, I think he took it because he was on “60 Minutes.” He gave an interview. Actually, people just aren’t paying attention. Jonah, everyone sits in their own echo bubble. What scares me is that when you talk to Republicans, they understand the point. Many Republicans understand the essence of the argument. Many people who like Trump understand it and support it. It’s simply a huge political problem now. Jonah Van Bourg One of the funniest things I encountered in all this research was a Pew poll about the American view of the economy and how it changed over time. Literally, 45% of Democrats considered the economy to be in good or excellent condition in October 2024. By January 2024, that number had dropped to 10% after Trump’s election. That’s a 30% drop in whether people think the economy is moving in the right direction. He literally hadn’t even come to power. He couldn’t have done anything to undermine the economy. This is completely political. The main problem is that people are really against this war, and I think that, without a doubt, Israel is related to this in many ways. In many ways, this is due to the fact that both sides have very strong emotions about why we are in this war, and Israel is a key component. It is true that Israel probably stood up for it—I mean, Israel probably advocated for this war. That’s the point. This is true. But people perceive this support as the reason for our participation in this war, precisely because of Israel. That makes it very difficult to figure out what is wrong, because Netanyahu talked about war with Iran for 40 years. Trump finally decided that it was in the interests of the United States to start a war. But people still accuse Israel, right? So it became a very political issue. I think that, in order for Republicans to perform well in the midterm elections, we need this war to be over as soon as possible so that the collective zeitgeist can move past it. Actually, no message can do anything. There’s nothing you can say to convince people that the actions taken were correct. You just need people to forget about it. That’s the point of politics. You need to wait until people forget about the actions they don’t like, and a period of rest or a good period will come so that people can’t say, “Hey, he spoils everything.” Avi Felman Exactly. This is what I want to see: Republicans holding both chambers. Instead, I think this will be a simple referendum on this war, which now looks pretty risky. Jonah Van Bourg The war would obviously be very cool. What if we literally announced that we dug a new lane? Avi Felman Yes, and he tweeted today. What did he do today? He said, “We have full control over the Strait of Hormuz. We will call it the American Strait.” Jonah Van Bourg The same as when we just renamed Lake Ontario Lake America. Was it Lake Ontario? Avi Felman Yes, to Lake America. It has now been updated on Google Maps. Everyone will look it up and say, “Wow, today it is much more beautiful than it was before.” It would be the same party as the other side. Well, if only a Democrat would listen to this, in that case we still love you. You guys are wonderful. We love everyone across the spectrum. Jonah Van Bourg Except people who are part of the DSA. We don’t love you. Get out of here. Avi Felman Yes, we don’t love you. You’re harming our bags. How long will it be before they rename the Atlantic and Pacific oceans American Ocean 1 and American Ocean 2? Jonah Van Bourg I agree. Where’s the Polymarket market on that? Can we have it created? Avi Felman By the way, Kalshi dominates Polymarket. Have you seen it? It has destroyed you, Jonah. Do something. Become a sponsor of this podcast. You pay us $5 million per year. I guarantee that Polymarket will add at least 15 users if you sponsor this podcast. But seriously, I think Kalshi just performed on another level. This has always been a problem for people in cryptocurrency: there are very few good operators. Jeff Yen is a once-in-a-generation talent, bringing Hyperliquid to the heights it will achieve. But for the majority of people working in cryptocurrency, you don’t get the best result. You get good people, but Kalshi just performed on another level, you understand? You need to involve people who are already rich. You remember I told you about the sliding-scale test, where I should have checked the real-estate value of this guy’s house before going to work with him? Jonah Van Bourg Yes, yes, yes, yes. Avi Felman He spoke as if he was worth $500 million, but lived in a rowhouse worth $1.25 million in North Chicago. I was like, “This guy is actually just a loser with a big title.” Losers with big titles are, as a rule, somewhat greedy people who are bad at doing the work. Meanwhile, Jeff Yen was already rich, so he probably wasn’t like, “Okay, I just need to do it right when this token reaches a certain price.” He was more like, “No, no, I’m already good. Let’s build something durable here.” Jonah Van Bourg He’ll pass the sliding-scale test, Avi. Avi Felman Yes. Actually, one of the most important things I look at is: Was your wife hot, and is she not hot anymore? If you stayed with a woman who has completely lost her attractiveness, I know that you’ll stick it out, building a company and eating glass. I’m really looking for people who got married to hot women and whose wives have now gained about 20 kilograms. That’s such a good indicator. I had never thought about this before. I just said it out loud, but I’ll start looking for it. I’ll start looking for this, Jonah. Jonah Van Bourg Okay, now we know Avi’s criteria for marriage. Avi Felman No, no, no. They must start hot, because if they start ugly, it simply means that you’re a terrible salesman. Ugly boys must have the opportunity to win hot women just through good conversation. Surprisingly, rizz is much more important than appearance. I’m 168 cm tall, and somehow I’ve managed to meet several very beautiful women in my lifetime. So look at me: I’m not a particularly nice guy, so I’m just telling you, it all depends on your ability to charm those who listen. Jonah Van Bourg Anyway—who cares? Avi Felman To meet a really incredible, exceptional partner—an outlier—you must look at Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley. Jonah Van Bourg Oh my God, this guy. Can we do this show on air? Avi Felman Yes, wait. Brad, can you show Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley shoulder to shoulder? By the way, I want to express gratitude to Brad, our silent partner in this. Going back to that point about how short people's attention spans are, you said that it's scary and dangerous. Here in Los Angeles, it's actually physically dangerous. For example, I drove around, and when the light turns green, none of the cars start. Literally everyone is still sitting on their phones and writing a message. What usually happens when the guy in front of you is at the first traffic light that you're passing? Oh, what a discrepancy. Yes, dude. This simply shows that Christie Brinkley in the movie “What a Like” looked like Marilyn Monroe of the '80s, right? And Billy Joel—come on. Let's see the truth in his eyes, right? A good Jewish boy, not the prettiest man. Jonah Van Bourg Hmm, is Billy Joel Jewish? Avi Felman Yes, I think so. Anyway, my opinion is that this is usually what happens. Here's how social idiocracy is developing: A year ago in Los Angeles, if the first person in line was writing a message and the light had been green for 3 seconds, the man behind him or her would beep, and then the queue would move forward. Now, you will literally be the fifth car in a row, and the first 4 cars ahead of you will all be texting for 5 seconds while the light is green. I just think that people can't hold out, even when their life is at stake. They can't stop writing on Instagram. I need to go in a few minutes, but I'm terrified by the fact that people's attention spans have become so short, both physically on the road and financially, regarding my portfolio. I'll leave you with this, but then we can all get out of here. I read a research paper recently that described in detail how short-form content actively reduces your attention span. It not only torches your dopamine receptors. Every time you turn to TikTok or Instagram—or do you use Reels? Even X, unfortunately. All of you guys on X are victims of this, too. You get short dopamine surges, and you become addicted to them. It actually hinders your ability to enjoy things, because it makes your baseline dopamine level so high that when you do ordinary things, such as eat, communicate with a loved one, take a walk, or contemplate a beautiful sunset, your dopamine receptors are completely burned out, and you don't get any pleasure from things that used to literally fill us with reverence. Think about it. 200 years ago, if you went out at night and looked at the stars, you were full of reverence. It was incredible to see, because it was rare to experience similar stimulation. If you saw an incredible event and it happened once every 100 days, you would have this amazing feeling. Nobody feels this anymore, and everyone is simply dependent on short-term dopamine. I really think that everyone here should delete these apps from their phone so you're not exposing yourself to short-term dopamine impacts. From time to time, take a full break. By the way, here's why Shabbat is so important. Shabbat is the answer. Jonah Van Bourg That's exactly what I wanted to say. Avi Felman That's why observing Shabbat is for all of you—Jews and gentiles. Gentiles, you can also observe Shabbat. This is not a religious thing. Do not use electricity on Saturday, and watch how your brain starts to heal itself. It's truly an incredible thing. Jonah Van Bourg Today is Wednesday. I'll probably see you on Friday, but just in case I don't, Shabbat shalom. Shana Tova to everyone who celebrates. Avi Felman We're celebrating, it seems, on the 12th. Jonah Van Bourg On the 11th? The first night. Avi Felman Well, whatever. Jonah, this is perfect. We reached 3.2K live viewers on the air. And just remember, every time you listen to this podcast, you are listening to 2 Jews, and the Jews rule the world, so pay attention. Jonah Van Bourg Yes, we fixed the weather in Los Angeles. Avi Felman We did. We did something good there. Jonah Van Bourg What? Why? No one thanks you for that. What do you control? How is the weather here? Avi Felman I don't know. This is true, you know. We need to thank you more for all the good that we do. Jonah Van Bourg By all means. Avi Felman By all media, banks, and pornography. Jonah Van Bourg Don't forget about pornography. Avi Felman Oh, yes. Yes, that too. Jonah Van Bourg Yes, that's right. Please, if you've ever watched pornography— Avi Felman Yes, that was us. Jonah Van Bourg It's great to see you, Avi. I love you, my friend. Thank you for finding the time. Take care of yourself, as always.