Bitcoin Will Reach $8 Trillion Market Cap | Jan Van Eck

Bitcoin Will Reach $8 Trillion Market Cap | Jan Van Eck

[Music] let’s that’s so I’m quite sure that everyone here has heard the name Vanek at this point if they hadn’t before they’ve certainly heard it of late because of the uh Bitcoin spot ETFs that have been approved but perhaps you can quickly give us some background on yourself and on vanck yeah just a little bit um thanks thanks Scott I’m excited to be here and thank you for anyone who at 5:40 in the afternoon is hang out in a pitch black dark room you’re you’re Heroes of mine um so just a vanx background I think the most important thing is just how do we think about investing and I think it’s a very traditional European Dutch English uh perspective which is to look at what’s going on around the world and to say are there economic political or technical trends that are going to affect your portfolio either a way to make money or risks to avoid uh Americans why do you that probably seems natural to almost everyone in this room but Americans think oh I don’t even need to worry about that I always want to be invested in equities I always want to be invested in fixed income I don’t have anything to worry about uh and generally that’s true Americans been a great economy but uh we see even in my career asset classes emerge like emerging markets and the the event for Vanek uh my father started the first gold Fund in in 1968 and just to spend a little bit on that because it’s really uh he was a historian but used it functionally to try to describe how do you think about the future and we’re g talk about the future here um but the future can be crazy different we are built in as defective investors because we have recency bias so we just think oh the Market’s done this over the last 12 months it’s probably going to do that and that’s just not true so as a trick to kind of help about different think about different scenarios in the future we kind of like look at history it’s interesting that your father obviously as you said had the first gold fund and here you are now with a bitco Bitcoin fund which I think leads us to the topic why are we here so I think maybe we should get some give some context as to what here is for for our purposes well I’m excited this is the center of crypto as far as I’m concerned globally right now Europe is the largest retail Market where The Regulators are friendly I’ll say it to uh to crypto um and the other reason I think is why are we care why do we care about moving money around this is a whole conference really about money and there’s other things in life that are more fun arguably than that and and I think it’s because our existing financial institutions uh reflect what’s happened to at least Americans distrust or increasing uh concern about cons other institutions in our society and you probably all know this this is just one of the charts uh that you can maybe see um and it’s just this is a collection of you know religious Congress uh military uh the probably the most shocking lack of trust though when is when it comes to media and I think this is the most relevant to uh to financial markets in a way so uh the line that is at the highest at the end of this is people that have little or no trust in finan in the media in mainstream media defined as TV media and and newspapers and so that’s kind of incredible right so they just don’t believe anything that they’re told anymore um and so anyway I think that’s reflected and the the desire of the people to come to a conference like this because they want to have some of their wealth outside of the banking system which is systemically fragile it obviously shows a trend roughly 5% in the 1970s of people trusted mass media now as I look at it it’s around 39% have no trust no trust in mass media and we know institutions as you said there’s a lack of trust as well how much of that has to do with fiscal policy monetary policy the government’s handling of the economy right because I think that that’s probably a key Focus for a lot of people and where they lack that trust and what brings us obviously here yeah I mean if I had to put it in a phrase It’s the fragility of banks in Europe it’s hard to understand because the government’s support I’ll call it the national champion Banks and some people think that they should be Consolidated but you know no bank if all its customers went to the ATM could meet their meet their customers demands because of the structure of banks so they require uh governments to bail them out and last year even almost to the day right Silicon Valley Bank they not only uh you know almost allowed Banks to fail they literally put two Banks out of business because they were invested in crypto technology so um it’s a very fragile it’s a very fragile system and then that’s that’s why we’re here I think crypto investors in the United States face some major challenges one of them is that there’s almost no way to get exposure to the asset class inside of your traditional investment vehicles the other thing is the tactic they are absolutely atrocious what if I told you there was a way to solve both of these problems well there is and it’s with a self-directed IRA from I trust Capital guys not only can you open a new self-directed IRA and fund it with the limits each year but you can actually convert over from your 401k your Roth IRA any other Ira that you already have and you can do that taxfree just transferring over the balance and then you can go to cash buy as much Bitcoin and you want and not pay taxes when you sell it you absolutely have to try this if you are in the United States use the link down below it’s bit. l/ itrust Scott that’s bit. litr us- seot you have to try this now I agree and then there’s the fact that we’re adding a trillion dollars in the United States to our debt every hundred days which is absolutely unsustainable to anyone with a brain but they’ll tell you obviously that our economy is Str jobs are strong inflation is coming down wages are rising but people don’t feel that and people see numbers uh with spending and they have to scratch their head and say what’s going on here yeah I mean listen that’s the the base case for a store of value Asset like gold uh or Bitcoin but I’ve got a particular thesis about 2025 uh that I that I’d like to share just some a couple more charts and then I promise no more charts so uh why is gold r in so strongly now is the question and in major newspapers I’ve heard that asked and not answered and so I’ve got this I’ve got this theory that the markets are starting to price in a big fiscal problem in the United States in 2025 so let me unpack that why 2025 in the United States we generally only solve our big policy problems the year after a presidential election because then it’s safe for Republicans to talk to Democrats Fact one Fact Two Social Security in the US is going bankrupt in 2033 I mean that’s it’s only accelerating actually and coming closer so we have two years where we can solve this problem 2025 or 2029 you don’t solve a 80-year-old problem in three years so it 2029 is going to be too late so I think that’s why the markets are looking at 2025 okay and they look at the two presidential candidates who are the biggest Spenders in US history and they’re going like I’m not sure this problem is going to be solved give me a little gold give me a little bit more Bitcoin um and then you might say well Yan that’s obvious but really things are so great unemployment is low are there any other indicators and I’m just going to flip uh two quick ones I’m not going to show you the so this is uh my favorite Us credit default swaps going back to the time of the financial crisis so you can see how they spiked uh you know let’s call 12 years ago stayed high and then came down but look at how they spiked in 2023 because of the budget impact and they’ve stayed elevated and we could talk about this for an hour but that to me is a signal where the markets are worried about this 2025 problem as I call it and then my last one um is just the the green line you don’t have to read it what it is it’s U uh Emerging Market local currency debt performance against US Government debt and like who would have thought that for the last three straight years and that’s the span of this chart that actually Brazil South Africa um all the EM countries combined are outperforming US Government we’re spending our fiscal deficits are 6 and a half% in the US they’re about five and a half in France 2% in Germany and the Dutch come in at less than 1% you’re an internal Optimist clearly as you said we have two candidates who are the biggest Spenders in history one of them is obviously going to and be the president presiding over that 2025 problem that we have coming how do you think that it’s solved or do you think that it’s solvable at all many pessimists would say runaway train debt spiral impossible to fix this problem so again going back to history I just wanted what are the possible scenarios and what are the odds so don’t say like Russia will never invade Ukraine we don’t know put out all the scenarios so I’m just saying listen if 10 to 20% the Market’s price in a fiscal problem in the US what would you want to own and are those the right odds so yeah maybe your odds are 50% okay then adjust your portfolio and become a Bitcoin Maxi so I’m just asking the question um and I and I like to identify there’s a lot of charts on Wall Street right I’m sure you see this all the time I like to try to pick out and that’s why I wanted to show you my favorite charts uh because I think we just have to watch this problem and maybe it disappears but it’s interesting because investment advisers in the United States not only do they not generally allocate to bitcoin but they don’t allocate to anything outside of stocks and bonds so you still see the 60/40 portfolio which we know is the worst performing in history in 2022 that we’ve ever seen they’re not even looking at gold as a hard asset they’re not allocating to anything outside of stocks and bonds which are as we know are massively exposed to this problem so they outflows out of gold bullion ETFs in the United States this year even as it hits all highs and has risen rather dramatically this year it’s up what 14% okay it’s not Bitcoin 70% but still is that because of Bitcoin ETFs a lot of people will say that the money is Flowing out of gold spot ETFs gold ETFs into Bitcoin spot ETFs okay I wasn’t gonna do this do it no but since you asked um let me see I have to find the chart okay um so a clever colleague of mine looked at Google searches of gold against Bitcoin and I guess in the theater It’s probably hard to see this but uh the the blue line is gold and the red line is searches for Bitcoin so this is basically Google’s way of sort of consolidating investor interest in the two assets and uh yeah what you see is Bitcoin is dominating gold um the interest in Gold geographically is in uh Asia very much in Asia we don’t know China because they don’t use Google but we also know that the reason that gold is primarily spiking is because those central banks are buying gold yes very much and so does that explain we have this sort of strange stranger things upside down World we’re living in where stocks go up the dollar goes up gold goes up Bitcoin goes up there’s supposed to be some inverse correlations there why are we here because the because investors outside the United States increasingly don’t want to be tied into Swift and the US Financial system and the political control that comes with it we didn’t discuss this in advance but do you think that central banks are or could be in the future adding Bitcoin the same way that they’re adding gold we we hope so um you know I don’t know what you think about El Salvador’s actions but my colleague Matt seagull who writes great research on our website says look it’s going to be Frontier central banks first you know saudi’s mining Bitcoin so you can are you know what do you how do you categorize that exactly but they’re definitely you know accumulating crypto related assets Bitcoin related assets a and you talked about how people are seeing this problem coming and they’re trying to get ahead of it by buying things like gold and Bitcoin do you think that the majority who are buying Bitcoin are doing it for that reason or do you think that it’s still a largely specul Speculator driven Market I I I think it’s listen you know people say oh is is Bitcoin digital gold and unfortunately early in Trends you can’t prove it because the trend hasn’t proven out for a long period of time but it’s hard for me to look at gold hitting all-time highs whenever it was 21 and and Bitcoin same year and this year same thing both assets they don’t correlate on a daily basis I can’t show you some like very fancy math around this but to me the narrative has always been there uh since 2016 2017 it’s just different Generations reach for different tools so when do you think Bitcoin reaches that level of adoption across all investor classes viewing it in that way because I think you’re correct it’s probably primarily Millennials maybe gen xers the Boomers haven’t quite yet come to bitcoin but now we do have an investable way for them to get access in a manner that they’re familiar obviously with the ETFs but uh do you think that there will become that General awareness that Bitcoin is an asset that you have to have in your portfolio even with a small percentage of the population I think it’ll take um you know I I I say it’ll eventually become H at least half the market cap of gold so I think that takes another five or 10 years years I mean the trifly our trifly clients are still very confused by Bitcoin and they don’t want to talk about it but their clients make them talk about it so we have a long a long ways to go and also you know buying activity is is not helpful right they want to buy it at the top and then it’s going to go to zero at the bottom and so they’re they’re they’re bad at allocating how do you educate them to become better at allocating is it to literally tell them listen your dollar cost averaging into 1% of a client portfolio that’s it be done don’t be worried about price and check it every six months I think that’s the solution and that’s you know proven to be the way to do it and that’s what I tell people I think emotionally it’s hard for people to do that so in the United States there are a lot of firms um obviously in Europe as well that allocate people’s portfolios for them and so my hope is those allocators will be open-minded enough to consider gold or Bitcoin at the right time in the cycle and um you know disciplined to take advantage of those trends for their clients because I kind of give up that the and clients will get it I want to quickly Circle back to something you said right at the beginning why we’re here because Europe has a Forward Thinking regulator and is a much more friendly environment I don’t think a lot of people view it that way I think a lot of people still look at uh other jurisdictions or playing regulatory Arbitrage Dubai Singapore even Hong Kong now I was I was actually surprised to view Europe as friendly per se is it just that there’s Clarity there’s there’s a the first thing you want is a regulator that you can talk to and say you know can we do this or not not you know yeah visit enforcement and getting subpoenas so we have an operation vanc is about 100 billion in assets uh we have about approaching 10 billion in ETFs here in Europe we have 12 etns uh in Europe that track one token or multiple tokens so we’ve had a Bitcoin etn for three years we just added staking to our ethereum etn so the US is so far behind and I was asking my colleague earlier today they don’t interact with Regulators too often I mean they have to follow the rules in the US like we talked to the reg I mean not in the voluntary way but we had to talk to them to get approval for all our early ETFs but we’re getting subpoenas or inquiries or sweeps once a quarter and we talk to them very regularly so and they’re incredible L hostile to to crypto I mean I don’t think that’s news to anyone but I don’t of my conversations today I don’t think people appreciated how hostile they are I mean again they put two Banks out of business 12 months ago for doing nothing illegal they just didn’t provide them the line of credit they needed to stay in business even with Barney Frank a f you know famous uh former legislator on the board of one of those Banks yeah and they put one of them out of business on a Sunday yeah that’s it it really is incredible you talk about fixing the economic problem next year what fixes the regulatory problem uh changing and and president um I mean who knows what if if Trump gets elected what Trump 2 will look like but I I’ve met with some of his officials um you know crypto Daddy and Brian Brooks and all these people and you know they have a very they’re very Pro crypto so it would be a completely different regulatory regime uh but I think right now like don’t I just tend tell people don’t spend time in the United States focus on Europe focus on uh other parts where where you can actually do stuff and build stuff is there a hope with if we don’t have regime change that we could at least see new people at the top of the SEC or a more friendly regulator uh with the same president you know Biden cut a deal with Elizabeth war and she really drives a lot of our financial regulation so if if she’s going to be calling the shots no the answer crypto Army seems very unpopular so at least we have that I think going for us I know we’re coming near to time I want to Circle back obviously to the why are we here maybe to to wrap it up final thoughts on why it’s important for people to buy Bitcoin whether it’s through one of these financialized products or to buy it spot and hold it yourself and uh how we get more people to do that yeah I mean there’s a okay there’s a narrative I talked about with respect to bitcoin but there’s so many other things happening um in crypto that that vanc is hoping to get involved with um you know besides I I would call wrapping you know all these tokens in rather traditional products uh we’re getting engaged we have a web three initiative that was sort of an entrepreneurial thing that we seated out of vanac we took over the New York Stock Exchange last uh last Friday with the pudgy Penguins uh some good some good stuff on Twitter um and then we’re uh we’re going to be baging the assets for one of the newer stable coins that’s just announced that they’re coming to Market so that’s exactly what black proc is doing with circle uh we think there’s you know room for competition the stable coin Market itself is super exciting there’s 12 trillion dollars trillion dollars of volume on stable coins today uh I think if that grows five times the world will be upside down right I don’t think people realize how rapidly this technology actually will work and if they adapt it and adopt it and and and what will happen to payment systems and Banks yeah the numbers on stable coins are astounding and the attribution how quickly they’re being adopted is crazy what’s interesting is it’s usually usdt on Tron which I don’t think people necessarily realize but but that is soling that to me has been the killer app for for crypto outside of Bitcoin as an asset yeah but it’s it’s I just what I try to underline is the growth potential and just think about that that alone forgetting all the other exciting things that people are working on at this conf conference that alone will have a huge you know political um and financial impacts I think we can’t wait to see what uh Vanek works on and produces and releases next it’s really been an honor thank you so much well Scott thanks for having me thanks again to the heroes who stuck out for Heroes you’re all heroes you hear that this late afternoon every one of you wear capes um and you know if you want to stay in touch uh I’m on Twitter I’m on LinkedIn so love to continue the dialogue absolutely thank you so much [Music] let let’s do

Jan van Eck, the CEO of VanEck, an ETF Fund Manager, talks about Bitcoin, Gold, and the massive problem that will push the price of Bitcoin in the next few years. This is an interview I did with Jan at Paris Blockchain Week 2024. Enjoy!

Jan van Eck: https://x.com/janvaneck3

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#Bitcoin #Crypto #Gold

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:30 Trust
5:18 iTrustCapital
6:16 Gold rally & fiscal problems 2025
11:20 Gold & Bitcoin
15:30 European regulation
17:30 Fixing the regulatory problem
18:40 Why you should buy Bitcoin

The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to “Buy,” “Sell,” or “Hold” an investment.