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Speaker 2: Lots of news in crypto today, Gray Scale Investments filed
Speaker 2: publicly for an IPO. It's the latest crypto link company
Speaker 2: to test public markets under an administration more open to
Speaker 2: digital assets from one on crypto and bitcoin and bitcoin
Speaker 2: mining specifically joining us now and aam familiar to our audience.
Speaker 2: Eric Trump is the co founder and chief strategy officer
Speaker 2: of American Bitcoin. It's a publicly traded bitcoin mining and
Speaker 2: treasury company. It's got a market cap around four point
Speaker 2: four billion dollars. The company started trading on the Nasdaq
Speaker 2: back on September third, when it merged with a microcap shares.
Speaker 2: It a high on September ninth. They're down around forty
Speaker 2: seven percent since then. Eric, of course, also the executive
Speaker 2: vice president of the Trump Organization. He joins US from Florida. Eric,
Speaker 2: Good to have you on the program again. How are
Speaker 2: you guys?
Speaker 3: Great to be on.
Speaker 2: So if somebody wants exposure to bitcoin, why would they
Speaker 2: do that through American Bitcoin rather than just buying bitcoin
Speaker 2: out right on an exchange or even through an ETF.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great question. And maybe you go out
Speaker 4: and you buy bitcoin on ETF or you buy it
Speaker 4: an exchange. You kind of have one to one bitcoin.
Speaker 4: Right you go out and you buy one bitcoin, you're
Speaker 4: always going to have one bigcoin. Our entire ethos is
Speaker 4: increasing bigcoin per share right now, every day we're mining bitcoin,
Speaker 4: we're miney bitcoin at at roughly fifty percent of Spot
Speaker 4: prices a bitcoin, so roughly about fifty six thousand dollars
Speaker 4: per bitcoin. That's what we're able to mine in. We're
Speaker 4: able to mind because we have the best facilities anywhere
Speaker 4: on Earth. We've got some of the cheapest energy anywhere
Speaker 4: on Earth. We do it in America, we do it
Speaker 4: in West Texas. Right now, our average costs to produce
Speaker 4: a bitcoin is roughly fifty six thousand dollars, and we're
Speaker 4: mining bitcoin twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
Speaker 4: By doing that, you're able to increase bitcoin per share, right,
Speaker 4: and that's the ultimate metric that we chase every single day.
Speaker 4: How do you increase the amount of bitcoin you have
Speaker 4: per share you have of stock? And I think we
Speaker 4: can do that clearly. If you go buy on a
Speaker 4: one to one basis, you don't have that ability to do.
Speaker 4: And that's the one metric that we track every single day,
Speaker 4: and that's the one metric that we try and improve
Speaker 4: every single day. And we've done all hung job, guys,
Speaker 4: I mean we you know, this public was founded on
Speaker 4: March thirteenth, I'm sorry, March thirty first, roughly five months later,
Speaker 4: five months and three days to be exact, we were
Speaker 4: listed on the NASDAC under ABTC.
Speaker 3: We're less than three.
Speaker 4: Months old having been listed, and we're already well sour
Speaker 4: past four thousand bitcoin that have either mined or that
Speaker 4: we've accumulated, making us the twenty fifth largest BTC public
Speaker 4: treasury company in the world, and we're climbing that ladder
Speaker 4: very quickly every single day. So I couldn't be more
Speaker 4: proud of what we've been able to accomplish. And you know,
Speaker 4: everything they do said, I think you mentioned four billion
Speaker 4: dollar market cap and again, we've been listed for less
Speaker 4: than three months and growing, you know, growing by by,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of with lightning speed.
Speaker 2: You mentioned the cheapest source of energy in mining that bitcoin.
Speaker 2: Last time we spoke back in September, we had a
Speaker 2: discussion about wind energy that that powers some of this mining.
Speaker 2: Is it still wind that's powering the mining operations for
Speaker 2: American bitcoin?
Speaker 4: There's different sources, but certainly when there was a defunct
Speaker 4: wind farm, you know, the guys over at HOWT eight,
Speaker 4: which our sister company, were able to lock into incredibly
Speaker 4: cheap energy because frankly, it wasn't being utilized, because it
Speaker 4: wasn't being pumped at the grid and lock into a
Speaker 4: very cheap contract for a very long period of time.
Speaker 4: And so we've got unbelievable renewable energy that we're using
Speaker 4: to mine our our our bitcoin. But you can see
Speaker 4: a lot of other energy sources.
Speaker 3: Come on.
Speaker 4: I mean, we're on the the energy revolution in this country.
Speaker 4: I think you guys know that better than anybody. Look
Speaker 4: at oil, looking gas, you know, the policies are working.
Speaker 4: Look at these SMRs, look at you know kind of
Speaker 4: fusion reactions.
Speaker 5: Well, well wait a minute, Eric, because SMRs, I mean
Speaker 5: we do know. We're on it every day, and these
Speaker 5: small modular reactors, none of them are up and running.
Speaker 5: And anybody we talk to you who understands the nuclear
Speaker 5: industry says it it'll take a few years to get
Speaker 5: them up and running.
Speaker 4: You go, oh, guys, absolutely, don't. Don't think that I'm
Speaker 4: saying that they're up and running by by any means.
Speaker 4: What I'm saying is we're in the heyday, you know,
Speaker 4: of power and power exploration in this country right now.
Speaker 4: You have an administration that's held bent on on making
Speaker 4: sure you know, this country has incredibly cheap power.
Speaker 3: Well, that's really interesting.
Speaker 5: Let me just jump in there, because we've done a
Speaker 5: deep analysis into the cost of electricity in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 5: Electricity cost a pen far more on where you're located,
Speaker 5: and a lot of it has to do with the
Speaker 5: AI build out and the cost of those data centers
Speaker 5: and tapping into the networks. You talk about Texas, I'm
Speaker 5: curious what you're paying per megawat an hour in Houston
Speaker 5: right now. It's twenty five dollars. It has gone up
Speaker 5: a lot since twenty twenty. If you go back to
Speaker 5: twenty twenty, it was seventeen dollars per hour. I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, those elections. I don't want to get political,
Speaker 5: but those elections. I mean part of it was electricity
Speaker 5: prices that people Americans have had enough.
Speaker 4: Caroly, you can't be serious, and honestly, I don't want
Speaker 4: to argue on Bloomberg. It's not what I came here
Speaker 4: to do. I've got plenty of things to do in
Speaker 4: my daily life. You had the last administration that had
Speaker 4: the greatest war on energy that we've ever seen in
Speaker 4: the country. Right You had an administration that was literally
Speaker 4: shutting down oiling gas exploration daily.
Speaker 3: They were shutting it down daily.
Speaker 4: They were cutting every pipeline, they were stopping every pipeline
Speaker 4: from being built. I mean, which ones do you want
Speaker 4: me to name? I could go through a list of
Speaker 4: fifteen of them. In fact, it was Joe Biden's first
Speaker 4: executive order to shut down the Keystone Pipeline. They shut
Speaker 4: down all permitting, they shut down all transmission of oiling gas.
Speaker 4: There was a war on energy in this country the
Speaker 4: likes of which you've never seen before. You know, we
Speaker 4: went from being energy independent under my father, where we're
Speaker 4: exporting energy to countries all around the world to being
Speaker 4: energy dependent under Joe don't even don't even try and say,
Speaker 4: you know that we're not seeking the lowest cost energies.
Speaker 4: They had power plants that they were trying to build
Speaker 4: for a fifteen year period of time, nuclear power plants,
Speaker 4: and guess what at the end of them, Joe Biden's
Speaker 4: administration would turn them down and deny them the permits
Speaker 4: for nuclear energy. Right, my father is hell bent on
Speaker 4: making this country energy And the reason, hold on, please
Speaker 4: let me finish.
Speaker 3: The reason he's hell bent on it is if you track.
Speaker 4: GDP, any GDP growth around the world, and you directly
Speaker 4: correlate that with energy costs, they're one hundred percent correlated.
Speaker 4: The lower your energy costs are for production of energy,
Speaker 4: the higher your GDP costs are. We have to win
Speaker 4: the war on cryptocurrency, we have to win the war
Speaker 4: on AI. We have to win these for our national security.
Speaker 4: We have to win these because we're the United States
Speaker 4: of America and we're the number one superpower.
Speaker 3: We must lead the way.
Speaker 4: We need energy generation and my father is hell bent
Speaker 4: of getting that through every single form, whether it's an
Speaker 4: actual gas and we're drilling, remember the slow and we're
Speaker 4: drilling again and we're exploring again, Eric, and nuclear power
Speaker 4: plants are getting permits again, which was not happening other
Speaker 4: So please don't, please, please don't talk to me about affordability.
Speaker 4: When you had an administration, they did everything they could the
Speaker 4: cross energy prices for a four year period of time.
Speaker 5: Eric, I respect your position and opinion on this, but
Speaker 5: I also will say that you know, the US is
Speaker 5: the largest oil producer that's out there. I want to
Speaker 5: go back to your company because on mining, we learned
Speaker 5: today that bitfarms it's one of the largest cryptocurrency miners.
Speaker 5: Set of plans to wind down those operations over the
Speaker 5: next two years, focus on providing infrastructure to generate power
Speaker 5: for artificial intelligence applications. We continue to see that a
Speaker 5: growing list of bitcoin miners are pivoting to AI and
Speaker 5: high performance compute services as profit margin shrink due in
Speaker 5: part to those falling prices of the tokens are the
Speaker 5: digital tokens that.
Speaker 6: Are out there?
Speaker 5: Do you have any plans for American bitcoin to pivot
Speaker 5: away from bitcoin mining into artificial intelligence?
Speaker 4: Now the exact opposite. We're only going to ramp up.
Speaker 4: We're going to ramp up every single day. I mean, Carol,
Speaker 4: you mentioned following prices. Let me just kind of hit
Speaker 4: on this one for you. You know, guess what biitcoin
Speaker 4: prices were exactly two years ago from today. I'll tell
Speaker 4: you because you would know, thirty six thousand, five hundred
Speaker 4: was the cost of a bigcoin two years ago. We
Speaker 4: are up one hundred and eighty percent in a twenty
Speaker 4: four month period the spot price of BTC. It's probably
Speaker 4: the number one performing asset you know, of any asset.
Speaker 3: And this is this coming.
Speaker 4: From a guy who believes in hard assets, right. I mean,
Speaker 4: I run one of the great real estate portfolio is
Speaker 4: anywhere in the world. Cryptocurrency is absolutely on fire. Cryptocurrency
Speaker 4: is taking on the well.
Speaker 5: Bitcoin is up this year by about five percent, the
Speaker 5: S and P is up fifteen percent, the Nazeq one
Speaker 5: hundreds up twenty percent, Gold is up plus this year.
Speaker 6: No, I'm just saying, do.
Speaker 4: You want to reverse hold on, Carol? Do you want
Speaker 4: do you want to reverse that? I mean, do you
Speaker 4: want to go back two years? You want to go
Speaker 4: back three years, you want to go back five years,
Speaker 4: you want to go back ten years. Prices to smartly
Speaker 4: have gone up on average of about seventy percent a
Speaker 4: year year over year for the last ten year period
Speaker 4: of time. All I'm saying is, if you invested in
Speaker 4: BTC two years ago, is probably the best investment you
Speaker 4: could have made. If you made invested BTC five years ago,
Speaker 4: you know, you're sitting on.
Speaker 3: Infinite amounts of money. Right.
Speaker 4: BTC has been probably the highest performing asset of the
Speaker 4: last decade.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And now also with BTC comes volatility. With crypto comes volatility.
Speaker 4: Volatility is our friend. Volatility is something that should be harnessed, right,
Speaker 4: and and so I think Bitcoin is going to continue
Speaker 4: to massively overperform the you know the markets. Of course,
Speaker 4: you're going to have drawdowns, right, I mean every cycle
Speaker 4: has drawdowns. You're seeing you were talking about in Navidia,
Speaker 4: you know in the intro click to to introducing me
Speaker 4: today and how they're down four percent to this one
Speaker 4: large companies on Earth, if not the largest company on Earth, Right,
Speaker 4: I mean, that's down four percent.
Speaker 3: You're going to have draw downs and things. That's that's life.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 4: Look at the historical performance of an asset, and nothing
Speaker 4: has compared to what Bitcoin is.
Speaker 5: Totally understand markets, the ups and downs, and sometimes the
Speaker 5: downs are an indication of either even moving down further. Hey,
Speaker 5: one thing I want to ask you is, I think
Speaker 5: you're on with Bloomberg. Back in September, you owned about
Speaker 5: seven and a half percent of the company. Has that
Speaker 5: number change because it sounds I can hear your conviction.
Speaker 5: It sounds like it's a long term conviction when it
Speaker 5: comes to the digital world and bitcoin in particular.
Speaker 6: So are you buying more shares?
Speaker 3: That number has not changed at all.
Speaker 4: I have every share that I started this company with,
Speaker 4: and I plan to for you know, a long time
Speaker 4: to come. I love it, I believe in it. I
Speaker 4: think the people that we're doing it with are the
Speaker 4: smartest people in the world. We've got some of the
Speaker 4: greatest energy contracts, We've got the most sophisticated facilities, and guys,
Speaker 4: what I'll tell you. You know, I spent a lot
Speaker 4: of time all over the world. I think you know
Speaker 4: that from our real estate projects.
Speaker 3: Everywhere.
Speaker 4: Everybody wants cryptocurrency, everybody believes in cryptocurrency. Everybody's tremendously worried
Speaker 4: about their respective governments, everybody's tremendously worried about their respective
Speaker 4: financial systems. Especially when you leave the United States, you know,
Speaker 4: people in so many countries around the world, they get paid,
Speaker 4: you know, they may as well burn that paycheck because
Speaker 4: of inflation. It absolutely kills them all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: you know kind of You know, bitcoin is digital gold.
Speaker 4: People believe in it. It's a great asset. It's an
Speaker 4: asset that can't be inflated. It's an asset.
Speaker 3: They'll only have twenty one million coins.
Speaker 4: Ever, you know, if the price of gold ever went
Speaker 4: to forty thousand bucks an ounce, guys, I would tear
Speaker 4: down this building and I would find gold in the columns.
Speaker 4: I'd find gold in the concrete. Right, you're going to
Speaker 4: you're gonna you know, you're going to dig deeper, and
Speaker 4: you're going to go farther, and you're going to spend
Speaker 4: more money. You know, so you're never going to actually
Speaker 4: have caps supply. With bitcoin, you have cap supply. And
Speaker 4: I can tell you whether it's Asia, whether it's Middle East,
Speaker 4: whether it's South America. You know, there is a longingness,
Speaker 4: you know, to treasury bitcoin, and you're seeing that from
Speaker 4: even some of the very biggest companies in the United States.
Speaker 4: They're putting it on their balance sheets in ways that
Speaker 4: they've never done before. Because they believe in digital assets
Speaker 4: and and they you know, they believe in the attributes
Speaker 4: of them, right, you know, and again, I'm a real
Speaker 4: estate guy.
Speaker 3: I love assets.
Speaker 4: But think about something that's you know, transferable twenty four
Speaker 4: hours a day, seven days a week.
Speaker 3: Think about something that lobal. Think about something that's easier
Speaker 3: to transport.
Speaker 5: You do love assets, and you guys, your family is
Speaker 5: so entrenched obviously in real estate.
Speaker 6: You think Trump, you think real estate.
Speaker 5: But I'm just curious, if you had to choose between
Speaker 5: owning real estate or bitcoin, what.
Speaker 3: Would it be both both?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 6: No, no, no, you have to choose. Come on, Eric, You're smart.
Speaker 3: I grew up. I grew up when I was eleven
Speaker 3: years old on construction sites. Right.
Speaker 4: I clearly love tangible assets and I believe in them,
Speaker 4: and I think bitcoin is is the greatest heage toward
Speaker 4: those tangible assets. You know that there is what I
Speaker 4: will tell you is, in any place other than the
Speaker 4: United States, I would probably take cryptocurrency. I mean, imagine
Speaker 4: if you lived in one of various South American countries
Speaker 4: or one of you know, various you know, African kind
Speaker 4: of countries that have instability where government can come in
Speaker 4: at any time and steal your house, steal your piece
Speaker 4: of property, steal your hotel.
Speaker 3: Right, you don't have a chance. You know, you don't.
Speaker 4: You don't have that problem with bitcoin. You don't have
Speaker 4: that asset problem with either assets. That's you know, that's
Speaker 4: that's literally qualified on Ledger twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 4: So there's there's a real need for this asset class
Speaker 4: around the world. And by the way, even in the
Speaker 4: United States, I mean, guys, I became one of the
Speaker 4: most debanked persons, you know people, you know American history,
Speaker 4: for having never done anything wrong, you know, operating great
Speaker 4: golf courses, operating great residential buildings, condominium associations, hotels, right,
Speaker 4: and all of that got pulled out from under me
Speaker 4: because my father happened to wear a hat.
Speaker 3: I wasn't a politician, and I've never been politician. I've
Speaker 3: never worked for the government.
Speaker 4: We're wearing a hat that said make America great again.
Speaker 4: All of a sudden, I start getting canceled left and right.
Speaker 4: You know the interesting thing about crypto, you know, technology, blockchain,
Speaker 4: pain technology, digital assets, digital wallets, can't cancel them, you
Speaker 4: can't take them away, right, And that's a few lifful
Speaker 4: thing and there's a flight to safety. There's a flight
Speaker 4: to safety that a lot of people in America have
Speaker 4: a harder time appreciating. Albeit when people see what happened
Speaker 4: to us, they can appreciate more. But a lot of
Speaker 4: people around the world can really appreciate. I think if
Speaker 4: you lived in a lot of the Asian countries, you'd
Speaker 4: appreciate it. I think if you lived lived in a
Speaker 4: lot of places, and let me ask, just say here
Speaker 4: in Africa, you probably appreciate that.
Speaker 5: Now I understand what you're saying. And I think, you know,
Speaker 5: we've been talking about cryptocurrencies for a long long time
Speaker 5: here at Bloomberg, and I think time will tell whether
Speaker 5: or not, Uh, this is something that becomes well entrenched
Speaker 5: within our financial system because at this point people are
Speaker 5: still buying things like stocks and bonds.
Speaker 6: No, I do.
Speaker 5: But what I wanted to ask you is, and I
Speaker 5: think it's something that we talked about in our planning call.
Speaker 5: Do you do you feel like, you know, Tim asked about,
Speaker 5: you know, maybe the advantage of you know, buying into
Speaker 5: your company versus maybe a micro strategy or something else.
Speaker 6: Do you feel like you.
Speaker 5: Guys do have an advantage because of your proximity to
Speaker 5: the White House. And I asked this full disclosure. When
Speaker 5: we talk about paramount's guidance, we say the same thing
Speaker 5: because we know that David Ellison certainly is looked upon
Speaker 5: favorably by the White House when it comes to maybe
Speaker 5: doing another acquisition. So do you think you have a
Speaker 5: little bit of an advantage?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Carol, it's such a frustrating question.
Speaker 4: Now, you know my advantage is are our advantage with
Speaker 4: American Bigcoin is we can mind bigcoin at fifty cents
Speaker 4: on the dollar roughly, you know, and we're mining bigcoin
Speaker 4: every single day any other And by the way, Michael
Speaker 4: is a very close friend of mine, and there's no
Speaker 4: person in the world you know, virtually that I respect more.
Speaker 4: He's an amazing human being, an incredible visionary and everything
Speaker 4: he's accomplished. Our advantage to mining bitcoin is every single
Speaker 4: day we mind a lot of bitcoin, and we do
Speaker 4: so for fifty cents on the dollar. But wedn't even
Speaker 4: another commodity you can do that with right every other
Speaker 4: treasury company virtually out there, they have to go buy
Speaker 4: bitcoin at the spot price at bitcoin that day. I
Speaker 4: can effectively go out right now and mine bitcoin at
Speaker 4: fifty percent of that number. I can also go out
Speaker 4: and I can acquire bitcoin and American bitcoin, can go
Speaker 4: out and acquire bitcoin at spot prices and guess what,
Speaker 4: as I do that, I can also yield manage down pricing,
Speaker 4: you know, based on the bigcoin that we mine each
Speaker 4: and every day. Obviously, the amount that you can mine
Speaker 4: is somewhat finite, even though our mining operations are growing
Speaker 4: on a daily basis. But that's a great advantage that
Speaker 4: I believe we have. We can increase the amount of
Speaker 4: bitcoin for share of our shareholders, and we do, and
Speaker 4: that's why we're growing as quickly as we are.
Speaker 3: So I clearly believe in our strategy. I'm really really
Speaker 3: proud that you.
Speaker 6: Understand why you do.
Speaker 5: Understand why we ask it, right, I mean full disclosure,
Speaker 5: like we try to be as so many.
Speaker 4: So many of the questions here I've just been. I
Speaker 4: understand clearly where you stand, right but you know it's
Speaker 4: not snow shock to me. I understand why you're asking
Speaker 4: the question. I also understand that I have absolutely nothing
Speaker 4: to do with the federal government. I want nothing to
Speaker 4: do with the federal government. I have no internactional with
Speaker 4: the federal government when it comes to crypto policy, I
Speaker 4: stay in my own damn lane, and my lane is
Speaker 4: operating the greatest hospitality company on Earth, an operating company
Speaker 4: that I truly believe in with every ounce of my
Speaker 4: heart and soul, which is what we're doing with bitcoin,
Speaker 4: which again historically has been an incredible asset. He eric
Speaker 4: when I hear so when I hear questions about how
Speaker 4: you know somebody could possibly argue that that Biden had
Speaker 4: better energy policies for the United States than the Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: like like, give.
Speaker 6: Me, give me a p I didn't argue that.
Speaker 5: I just you know, we are we are a data
Speaker 5: driven company, and so I look at Databata apartment.
Speaker 3: Give me, give me the data.
Speaker 4: Give me one quantifiable metric where Joe Biden was a
Speaker 4: better energy president.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, you can't Well, they just can't.
Speaker 6: Well, I will see.
Speaker 4: Who president on the first day of his term cancel
Speaker 4: every pipeline, including the Keystone Xcel pipeline, which is why
Speaker 4: every gas pump in the United States of America had
Speaker 4: a little sticker on us saying I did that. And
Speaker 4: there's a picture of Joe Biden pointing to the price
Speaker 4: of gas. Please spare me this conversation. You've got some
Speaker 4: of the lowest gas prices in the history of our country.
Speaker 4: They're coming down every single day. You've got an administration
Speaker 4: that are putting through permits for nuclear reactors like their pays,
Speaker 4: because we need it if we're going to be successful.
Speaker 4: Based on all the metrics site I gave you, no
Speaker 4: one can credibly tell me. You know, as these guys
Speaker 4: build the build wind farms in the middle of nowhere
Speaker 4: that aren't even plugged into the grid.
Speaker 3: I mean, and I say that with all due respect Carrol.
Speaker 6: Now I know, I know, and I don't want to argue.
Speaker 5: I mean, but there's a reason that you know, WTI
Speaker 5: crewed is below sixty dollars a barrel. And you know,
Speaker 5: you know, the oil giants will talk and they'll say, listen.
Speaker 6: We're only going to d.
Speaker 5: We're only going to do it if it makes sense,
Speaker 5: if the if the price of oil goes up, because
Speaker 5: there is you know, balance sheets, there's going to be
Speaker 5: a cost of drilling and doing exploration, and they're not
Speaker 5: going to do it unless the price of oil, whether
Speaker 5: the demand is there, and as.
Speaker 4: There is oiler do you think any of it has
Speaker 4: anything to do with the transportation of oil. Right when
Speaker 4: when you're shutting down pipelines every single day, you know
Speaker 4: what else is affecting price the fact that you can't
Speaker 4: move something that's naturally heavy, right, And that's what Joe
Speaker 4: Biden was doing.
Speaker 3: It was the biggest It was the biggest.
Speaker 4: War on oil and gas, all for the purpose of
Speaker 4: creating ev cars that the consumers around this country did
Speaker 4: not want to buy. I mean, how many billions of
Speaker 4: dollars did they spend building four charging stations in the
Speaker 4: middle of absolutely nowhere, you know, under Pete boudha Jed
Speaker 4: your transportation sectary, who is completely competent.
Speaker 5: All right, I don't want I don't want to get
Speaker 5: too political, but anyway, listen, in five years, what do
Speaker 5: you hope your company is just to wrap up?
Speaker 6: Where do where do you see?
Speaker 7: It's its role?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm glad we came back to this.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I think we're gonna create one of the
Speaker 4: great bigcoin companies anywhere in America.
Speaker 3: We're sending the ladder very quickly. I think I mentioned that.
Speaker 4: You know we're under three months old, and you know
Speaker 4: we're a twenty fifth largest public bitcoin Treasury Company on
Speaker 4: all the lists, and we're sending that list very quickly.
Speaker 4: We just passed GEM and I very good friends of ours,
Speaker 4: the Winkle Losses, who you know, they actually invested in
Speaker 4: America Bitcoin and they're good friends of ours.
Speaker 3: And it seems like every day we're kind of climbing
Speaker 3: another step up that ladder.
Speaker 4: I think we're doing it well. I think we're doing
Speaker 4: which my disheart and soul. I think we're doing it
Speaker 4: here in the United States of America. I think that's
Speaker 4: film rapic to this country. And uh, you know, we
Speaker 4: need to lead the world in the financial you know,
Speaker 4: digital financial revolution. Bigcoin is clearly leading that charge right
Speaker 4: now based on based on market cap and uh and
Speaker 4: I'm very very proud of the company.
Speaker 3: We're building and the speed of our growth right and
Speaker 3: I think we're going to I'm.
Speaker 5: Sure all that financial execs too like this probably played
Speaker 5: into it, possibly as well as regulatory stuff when they
Speaker 5: were there at the White House. It's all coming at us. Hey, Eric,
Speaker 5: thank you so much, really appreciate it. We went around
Speaker 5: and around, and I'm glad we were able to cover
Speaker 5: a lot of ground. Eric Trump, co founder, chief strategy
Speaker 5: Officer of American Bitcoin in Executi, vice president of the
Speaker 5: Trump Organization, joining us there in Florida.
Speaker 2: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming
Speaker 2: up after this.
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Speaker 5: As you know, we've got to sell off on Wall
Speaker 5: Street traders bracing for a wave of economic releases after
Speaker 5: the US government shutdown ended.
Speaker 6: It has driven those stocks and bonds lower.
Speaker 5: A concern on whether the data that we ultimately get
Speaker 5: from the US government is they play catch up and
Speaker 5: then start to get back on schedule. Whether or not
Speaker 5: it clears the way for another cut by the US
Speaker 5: Central Bank, it's kind of in question right now.
Speaker 2: Another thing in question is just what this economy looks like.
Speaker 2: So we're hearing from different companies, and we're hearing different things.
Speaker 2: The latest Verizon discussing plans to announce job cuts across
Speaker 2: the company next week. This according to people familiar with
Speaker 2: the plans, the move a major step in a transformation
Speaker 2: led by new CEO Dan Shulman. Nonetheless, Carol, it's another
Speaker 2: example of another big company cutting some jobs.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly. And then you do have FED speakers out there.
Speaker 5: A Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco president Mary to
Speaker 5: Hilly said it's too soon to decide whether policymakers should
Speaker 5: lower interest rates in December.
Speaker 3: Here's where we are.
Speaker 5: Let's see what Elizabeth Renter has to say. She's senior
Speaker 5: economist over at nerd Wallet. She's with us from Durham,
Speaker 5: North Carolina. Hey Elizabeth, good to be talking with you
Speaker 5: once again. So what conviction, first of all, do you
Speaker 5: have in making calls on the US economy, on the
Speaker 5: US labor market, on inflation.
Speaker 7: Hey, well, thanks for having me again.
Speaker 9: You know, it's tough to make sense of what's going
Speaker 9: on in the economy right now because the access to
Speaker 9: data is so limited. We're looking at private data sources
Speaker 9: and trying to infer what the BLS would have said
Speaker 9: over the past several weeks.
Speaker 7: And that's difficult. That's not to say it's brand new, right.
Speaker 9: Myself and the FED and economists across the country have
Speaker 9: been looking at private data sources in addition to federal
Speaker 9: data sources for some time. We're just having to put
Speaker 9: more weight on them now than we would have.
Speaker 3: I do think that just want to jump in.
Speaker 2: What private data sources are the ones to you that
Speaker 2: are most important? What do you think tells the fullest story?
Speaker 9: Yeah, well, I think when it comes to the labor market,
Speaker 9: there's several great private data sources. So the ADP is
Speaker 9: a reliable data source. But all of these private data
Speaker 9: sources have unique caveats. They're measuring slightly different things, and
Speaker 9: you need to take that into consideration. So ADP misses
Speaker 9: government jobs entirely. They are more likely to overstate the
Speaker 9: number of jobs being added to the economy right now
Speaker 9: because they're not catching federal jobs for example, which we
Speaker 9: know is a big item this year, entirely in twenty
Speaker 9: twenty five.
Speaker 7: Then you have a source like Revellio Labs.
Speaker 9: They're another solid source of labor market data, but they're
Speaker 9: searching job profiles, professional profiles, so there may be a
Speaker 9: delay in their data because they're catching if you're open
Speaker 9: to work on LinkedIn for example. Putting all of these
Speaker 9: together takes a little more work than just looking at
Speaker 9: the jobs report every month, but I think that's what
Speaker 9: we have to do in.
Speaker 7: The current environment.
Speaker 6: All right, So labor market just quickly, how do you
Speaker 6: see it?
Speaker 9: Solid but gradually cooling, which is I think in alignment
Speaker 9: with what FED share Pole said just a couple of
Speaker 9: weeks ago. You know, there is some weakness. Hiring is slow,
Speaker 9: but the unemployment rate, according to the Cleveland or the
Speaker 9: Chicago Fed now cast, remains in that four four and
Speaker 9: a half percent range, So not alarming. We are hearing
Speaker 9: a lot about layoffs in the headlines, but the headlines
Speaker 9: and what happens in practice or what would have been
Speaker 9: reflected in the BLS data are two different things.
Speaker 6: All right.
Speaker 5: Inflation, so I want to just point out. In an
Speaker 5: interview with MarketWatch published today, Cleveland FED President Beth Hammick
Speaker 5: said she's worried market participants might doubt the Fed's commitment
Speaker 5: to its two percent inflation target as the central bank
Speaker 5: continues to lower rates two percent that target and then
Speaker 5: where we are in terms of US inflation, how sticky
Speaker 5: it is as we get kind of closer to two
Speaker 5: percent but not quite there.
Speaker 9: Well, I think we can so confidently say that inflation
Speaker 9: is high, it's above target, but it's not accelerating rapidly.
Speaker 9: So another source I look to for this one is the.
Speaker 7: Cleveland FED now cast.
Speaker 9: They compile data from commodity prices and other high frequency
Speaker 9: sources to estimate where the CPI would be, and it
Speaker 9: says that, you know, just that inflation is steadily high
Speaker 9: but not accelerating right now. I think expectations are in alignment,
Speaker 9: whether you're asking the FED or asking consumers.
Speaker 7: Up in the short term is what people anticipate.
Speaker 9: Right Inflation is going to remain above that target but
Speaker 9: then come down in the long term.
Speaker 5: Can I just ask you, you know, I know, I
Speaker 5: understand that prices are not going up like they were
Speaker 5: a year, year and a half, two years ago. I
Speaker 5: get that, but they're also not going down. And I
Speaker 5: mean the reality of kind of what we're all paying
Speaker 5: for things?
Speaker 6: Is this just it and that's just the way it is?
Speaker 5: And why does it feel like we are still paying
Speaker 5: a lot for stuff? And is that a new reality
Speaker 5: that things are just costing more in today's society?
Speaker 9: Well, I think there's several reasons for that right now
Speaker 9: this year, there are several sources of inflationary pressure, and
Speaker 9: we're seeing that we have seen that up until this
Speaker 9: point in the inflation data.
Speaker 8: You know, the.
Speaker 9: Impact of tariffs has kind of been trickling in, but
Speaker 9: also demand for services has kept services inflation high. I
Speaker 9: think also it's because we're all hyper attuned to it.
Speaker 9: You know, there's research out there that says after a
Speaker 9: period of high inflation, we're all going to be extra
Speaker 9: sensitive to inflation, and I think that also plays a role.
Speaker 9: We're all we all have our eyes out for it, right, So,
Speaker 9: because inflation is higher than we'd like, it's going to
Speaker 9: be particularly paid in light of the recent high inflation period.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth, I had an interesting conversation with somebody today about
Speaker 2: the Federal Reserve and just the idea of FED independence,
Speaker 2: and I'm curious about your view on this. Her argument
Speaker 2: to me was, we're starting to look at monetary policy
Speaker 2: in the United States that represents not necessarily monetary policy
Speaker 2: historically in the US, but one that's under more political
Speaker 2: pressure than we've seen, at least in recent years. And
Speaker 2: to her, it's starting to look like something more out
Speaker 2: of the developing world, where Monterey policy is more politically influenced.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering your view on that.
Speaker 9: I don't know if I would take that quite of
Speaker 9: a bleak look. I mean I believe the risk is there,
Speaker 9: you know. I think it was just earlier this week
Speaker 9: where bost It came out and said he plans on
Speaker 9: retiring next year, which opens up another seat on the FED.
Speaker 9: And the risk is always there that as an administration
Speaker 9: has undew influence on who is who takes a seat
Speaker 9: at those decision making tables, there could be more pressure
Speaker 9: than usual.
Speaker 7: Do have pretty deep.
Speaker 9: Faith in the independence of the FED and sort of
Speaker 9: the dedication to independent monetary policy that these people have
Speaker 9: in these positions, But I do think we have higher
Speaker 9: risks now than we did, say a couple of years ago.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, you know, part of I think confusion
Speaker 5: on maybe the part of investors when they're thinking about
Speaker 5: the data that's going to come and whether or not
Speaker 5: it provides conviction for another rate cut come December. The
Speaker 5: part of it is, I mean FED officials themselves are
Speaker 5: divided right on the best path ahead for interest rates
Speaker 5: due to high inflation and continued weakness in the labor market,
Speaker 5: you know. So you know, it's a dual mandate that's
Speaker 5: tough when both parts of the mandate are tricky right now,
Speaker 5: right and maybe create some problems or would determine a
Speaker 5: different FED policy for each And you do wonder that
Speaker 5: debate and which voices are going to sound the loudest
Speaker 5: and perhaps have more swaite assuming feed your Jay Powells
Speaker 5: among them, But how we need to think about that
Speaker 5: in the next FED decision.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 9: So not only is the data pointing to the dual
Speaker 9: mandate sort of the two sides of the dual mandate
Speaker 9: being at odds, right, we still have high inflation and
Speaker 9: the labor market is cooling, but neither one of those
Speaker 9: things are sort.
Speaker 7: Of at a tipping point.
Speaker 9: Right. We're not seeing a skyrocketing unemployment rate, and inflation
Speaker 9: is not at target, but it's not alarmingly high.
Speaker 7: So it makes sense that there's sort of more gray.
Speaker 9: Area and people are going to fall on either side
Speaker 9: of these decisions a little bit more than they normally win.
Speaker 3: But I think we got to go.
Speaker 5: I think I do listen, there's a lot going on,
Speaker 5: and I guess as the data comes in ultimately, see,
Speaker 5: it is certainly an interesting time to be talking about
Speaker 5: the US economy, that is for sure.
Speaker 6: Hey, Elizabeth, thank you so much. Elizabeth rent Or.
Speaker 5: She's senior economist at Nerdwallet joining us from Durham at
Speaker 5: North Carolina.
Speaker 2: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming
Speaker 2: up after this.
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Speaker 6: Us live on YouTube. We got another stock on our radar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, another stock that's moving lower. In fact, there's a
Speaker 2: Disney down about eight percent. Shows that it's not so
Speaker 2: magical at least today in the Magic Kingdom shares the
Speaker 2: Wall Street our stands of the Walt Disney Company or
Speaker 2: either down the most into April. This is the company
Speaker 2: reported sales that fell short of Wall Street estimates and
Speaker 2: set a slate of big budget films, including the new
Speaker 2: Avatar picture Carol. Are going to weig on results for
Speaker 2: the first quarter of its new fiscal year.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's definitely played out in today's session. Hey, Disney
Speaker 5: CFO CHI financial Officer Hugh Johnston joined Bloomberg Television earlier.
Speaker 5: Today covered a variety of topics, including a succession plan
Speaker 5: for the current CEO, Bob Iker.
Speaker 10: What the board is indicated is that will take place
Speaker 10: sometime during the first calendar quarter of twenty six. We
Speaker 10: report in in next February. Whether that'll be before or after,
Speaker 10: it'll be up to the board. But we should have
Speaker 10: it done by the end of March.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 5: That again is Disney CFO Hugh Johnson. As he said,
Speaker 5: Disney expects to name a successor to Bob Iger by
Speaker 5: the end of March.
Speaker 6: Keep in mind, Iger was there for a long time.
Speaker 2: Named Bob or not one named Bob.
Speaker 6: That's a good points, that's my question.
Speaker 2: But it was Bob followed by Bob, followed by Bob.
Speaker 5: But okay, Bob Iger there for a long time, considered
Speaker 5: kind of a mastermind in terms of CEOs and what
Speaker 5: he did with Disney. Then Bob Jpek came in and
Speaker 5: there was a lot of focus right on streaming and
Speaker 5: then things just.
Speaker 2: Everybody about the succession last time Bob.
Speaker 5: Iger came back exactly. Okay, So we'll see whether or
Speaker 5: not they have to be named Bob. Let's see what
Speaker 5: our get to bring. An ath On has to say.
Speaker 5: She's Bloomberg Intelligence senior media analyst. She's at BI headquarters
Speaker 5: in Princeton. We're going to talk succession in a moment,
Speaker 5: whether or not the next CEO Gita has to be
Speaker 5: named Bob. But more importantly, let's talk about the quarter
Speaker 5: that was and the outlook that is.
Speaker 6: What do we need to know about earnings?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Quarter that was was fine. It was pretty much in
Speaker 8: line with expectations, Carol, I think what really has kind
Speaker 8: of spooked the street a little bit is guidance. Again,
Speaker 8: overall guidance for fiscal twenty twenty six seems to be okay.
Speaker 8: I think really what investors are having a hard time
Speaker 8: kind of wrapping their heads around is the fact that,
Speaker 8: you know, Fiscal one Q looks really soft, which means
Speaker 8: everything is going to get pushed to the back half
Speaker 8: of fiscal twenty twenty six. And I think that's what's
Speaker 8: causing a lot of the nervousness that we're seeing today.
Speaker 2: I want to go right to the successor. Disney board
Speaker 2: will name a successor to CEO Bob Iger.
Speaker 6: Does it have to be named Bob?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean who's on the shortlist right now?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 8: So, I mean the first big question, Tim was is
Speaker 8: this going to be an external candidate? Is there going
Speaker 8: to be an internal candidate? So it looks like initially
Speaker 8: when they started out, it was all for internal unit
Speaker 8: heads that were in the race. So we're talking ESPN's
Speaker 8: Jimmy Pittaro, we're talking Josh Tomorrow of the Parks, Dana Walden,
Speaker 8: and Alan Bergman from the Studio and Content division. It
Speaker 8: looks like that race has kind of now narrowed down
Speaker 8: to two potential candidates. So we're looking at Dana Walden,
Speaker 8: who is a creative genius, and of course you have
Speaker 8: Josh Tomorrow, who is you know, who's headed Parks and
Speaker 8: as a Parks veteran, has an absolutely stellar track record there.
Speaker 8: So it's kind of going to come down to this
Speaker 8: internal question. Right, for Disney, the content is the start
Speaker 8: of everything. It is the source of everything, including you know, Parks.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 8: The ip of Parks is all from the movies and
Speaker 8: all the other creatives that they have going on at
Speaker 8: film and TV. So again, which one is more important?
Speaker 8: The last time they had a Park's Guide that didn't
Speaker 8: go so well, so we'll have to wait and watch.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, and right, they used to do things
Speaker 5: I remember like reporting on Disney Kidden like people would
Speaker 5: switch jobs, right the CFO with Parks, I think or
Speaker 5: something you know, as they were kind of like a
Speaker 5: CEO race, if you will, and let people kind of
Speaker 5: get another view of the company looking at Dana Walden,
Speaker 5: you know, coach chairman. Disney Entertainment does have a big portfolio.
Speaker 2: Jimmy Kimmel when he spoke to Lucas Shaw earlier this
Speaker 2: year at Bloomberg's screen time, he was Jimmy Kimmel. That
Speaker 2: is incredibly complimentary of Dana Walden. Her name came up
Speaker 2: so much during that interview.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a really good point. I didn't realize she Yeah,
Speaker 5: so she's done a lot of interesting things. Handmaid's Tale, Kardashians,
Speaker 5: only murders in the building.
Speaker 6: So what does Disney need?
Speaker 7: In your view?
Speaker 5: You understand this space and kind of how media has
Speaker 5: continued to evolve in Disney's place within it, and Disney's
Speaker 5: not just media, but they are media content and kind
Speaker 5: of just putting it across their platforms.
Speaker 6: What kind of CEO does Disney need?
Speaker 8: They need somebody who can do everything right exactly is
Speaker 8: what Bob Iger has done. I mean, so these are
Speaker 8: some really big shoes to fill. I just wonder with
Speaker 8: kind of you know, obviously, Dana Walden really good at
Speaker 8: handling talent. You just brought up the Jimmy Kimmel controversy.
Speaker 8: I mean, you need to be able to have a
Speaker 8: lot of charisma, You need to be able to kind
Speaker 8: of work with a lot of these very very hard
Speaker 8: personalities in Hollywood. So I think Dana Walden definitely knows
Speaker 8: her way around there. She obviously has a great reputation,
Speaker 8: a great track record. But at the same time, and
Speaker 8: you kind of look at the bread and butter of
Speaker 8: the business that is the parks business, and you have
Speaker 8: to kind of be an operations geek and an operations
Speaker 8: nerd to really get the day to day running at
Speaker 8: all of the parks, at all of the cruise ships,
Speaker 8: the vacation's properties, and of course Josh Tomorrow is the
Speaker 8: absolute superstar there. I really wonder whether they actually need
Speaker 8: to have kind of a COSEO structure. I mean, we
Speaker 8: know Netflix has done that pretty successfully. Spotify is looking
Speaker 8: to do that starting in January, so you know, I
Speaker 8: think it could work. But then again, you know, it's
Speaker 8: also a recipe for disasters.
Speaker 2: Hey, I love that. Maybe yeah, who knows, Well, maybe
Speaker 2: we'll find out just in a few months before we
Speaker 2: let you go in an environment where so many of
Speaker 2: these large media companies are shedding assets or combining to
Speaker 2: form new ones, are looking to buy more Disney's assets.
Speaker 2: Is it the right size right now? Does it need
Speaker 2: to shed any.
Speaker 8: I don't think they need to shed anything, if at
Speaker 8: all something comes up. It's pretty much just the linear
Speaker 8: TV networks, but that is a smaller and smaller part
Speaker 8: of the business. As we kind of look at the portfolio,
Speaker 8: tim you just look at the theme parks business along
Speaker 8: with all of the cruises, and then you put streaming together.
Speaker 8: Just those two pieces of the business would be close
Speaker 8: about seventy to seventy five percent percent of earnings in
Speaker 8: twenty twenty fiscal twenty twenty six. So really those are
Speaker 8: the big drivers in terms of earnings. I don't really
Speaker 8: think they need to shed anything, but of course the
Speaker 8: question is going to keep coming up whether they do
Speaker 8: need to kind of spin off their cable TV networks.
Speaker 5: I love it that it's like though it comes down
Speaker 5: to like parks like being so important to the company. Hey, Gita,
Speaker 5: thank you, Thank you. Gita ringing Athon. She's senior media
Speaker 5: analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence.
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