Ten31 Timestamp: Bitcoin and the Red Queen

**Marty Bent** (0:00)
They say that a hero can save us. What's going on, Mr. Arnold?

**John Arnold** (0:08)
I was not expecting Nickelback to hit me this Monday morning. I haven't heard that song in 20 years.

**Marty Bent** (0:14)
There was a meeting going around with it this morning, so it's stuck in my head.
What's going on, dude? How was your weekend? Happy Belated Father's Day.

**John Arnold** (0:22)
Good, yeah, it was good. Happy Belated Father's Day to you, too. Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there. We need more strong fathers, so if you're still considering fatherhood, step it up, dive in. That's one big thing this country needs right now.
But as far as what we're here to talk about, I felt like it was a very poetic weekend because I sent out the timestamp early like 10 AM, Saturday morning, and literally the whole headline, the big touchstone for the week is the US-Iran deal that we finally came to. We signed a memorandum of understanding to do further negotiations, but this seems like the most real milestone thus far on this whole thread that we've been on. Then not 20 minutes later, it took only 20 minutes for Iran to come out with the headline. But actually, they're closing straight away again because of one thing or another that the US or Israel or someone had dishonored or not respected in the agreement. So it looks like maybe we're going to be back to square one. So we'll see how that plays out this week. We'll get into it.

**Marty Bent** (1:26)
Yeah, and there was a delegation with JD Vance and others, were they in France? And apparently, there was supposed to be some back room conversations happening there. There was a lot of, I tried to stay offline as much as possible this weekend, but I did catch that there was some missed photo op opportunity or some nagging on behalf of the Iranian delegation to JD Vance and his crew.

**John Arnold** (1:51)
Yeah, I think so. I mean, very true to this whole conflict.
Both sides are constantly trying to portray themselves as the much stronger one and puffing out their chests and trying to make sure that their various state medias are following the narrative that they want. So I think overall, we can flip to the next slide for some additional color here. I think based on what we're seeing on the oil side, if you can believe the fake news media of Bloomberg and the failing New York Times, and you want to look at oil price action over the last few weeks and even into this morning, WTI is now even lower than what you're seeing here. I think this would suggest that probably the US framing of events thus far is closer to the truth that we're seeing on the ground than the Iranian state media portrayals. But again, it wouldn't be the US-Iran conflict if there were not a constant fog of war on every single little detail.

**Marty Bent** (2:54)
Yeah. And so the saga in the Middle East continues. Though one thing we've been trying to do over the last six months, or gosh, it feels like six months, but five months since this war broke out, is to really just look at the data. And as John said, you have it here at 75, 76 I'm looking at trading view. It's trading at 74, 25 now, so down another percent and a half.
Looks like it's coming down. It would be good headed into midterms if gas prices came down. I know I was driving on the highway this morning. It was good to see regular prices in the threes and not the fours. And so we'll see what goes on there as we continue through the summer.
But overlaid on this is relative dollar strength too. I think this is telling a different story about where money needs to go, despite what might be happening in the Middle East because of what's happening here with the re-industrialization and this CapEx build out and US equity screaming as we ride this AI wave.

**John Arnold** (3:54)
Yeah.
Well, you mentioned midterms. I think it's important to acknowledge that there's some analysts that I respect out there suggesting that this is basically a six-month detente to keep gas prices in check going into midterms. And you're getting up to the point where you've got to really start pivoting back to domestic policy. And so this is an attempt to keep things reasonably cool until 27 And then you go in for the real regime change strike, then there's some suggestion that if you look at what Saudis and various other Gulf Coast nations have already have in progress and what they could have in a year in terms of pipeline infrastructure and ways to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and make it less strategically relevant, this time next year could look very different for how significant that choke point is. Obviously, you got a wide spectrum of opinions on how long any of that would take to ramp up. But in any case, I don't think it's insane to say we haven't heard the last of this. Even if this MOU fully goes through and we don't talk about the Strait of Hormuz again for a year, which would be, I think, a welcome blessing to all of us, there's definitely a possibility that everyone should keep in mind that 27 brings us right back to the four. So this may be a tactical pause more than a real settling of the situation. But I do think it's interesting that the subtitle of this week was a week of narrative violations. And the oil chart is that. We had a lot of people from a lot of different perspectives telling us in April, like oil is going to 200, oil is going to 250, this is a massive crisis. And there's no way around it. The US doesn't have enough rabbits that can follow the hat. Globally, we're just in for this massive shock. And we can argue about the sustainability of the ways that the US and other countries dealt with that. There were obviously a lot of big SPR drains. It looked like certainly both the US and China did that.