Swan Bitcoin (Uncut) 01-20-2025

How Will Bitcoin React to a Trump Presidency?

Well, let’s focus on Inauguration Day, first week. What do we expect from Trump? Do you guys think that this might be sort of a buy the rumor, sell the news kind of situation that you’re expecting all these things to happen on day one? If they don’t happen on day one, there’s going to be a sell-off for Bitcoin. What do you guys think is going to happen and how do you think it’ll affect price action in January? I don’t think if nothing happens on day one, there’s a sell-off.

I think if nothing happens in the first week, there may be a sell-off. I don’t think it’s so indexed to day one. Outside of that, so you basically just get the question, does he or does he not do something in the first day or first week of the presidency involving Bitcoin? I’m a very strong buyer of this idea.

I think almost certainly there are things which are done. I’m being vague there. There will be statements, there will be executive orders, there will be policy.

I think something along those lines happens. Now, will it be the SBR? The way I think of it currently is I would say I’m very confident there will be something resembling the stockpile. So I think that’s like a 90% odds that he’s going to draw a circle around the existing coins, probably minus the Bitfinex coins and say, we’re keeping these.

That’s low hanging fruit. I see little reason he won’t do that. Now, whether he adds to that with some sort of discussion, order or otherwise of purchasing, I’m still a buyer of that, probably something like 65-35 odds.

So it’s more uncertain, but I still think it’s more likely than not that there is some sort of purchasing discussion. That can take a lot of different forms. The thing I’m more skeptical on, I think the Loomis bill.

This is like at all or are you timeboxing these predictions? I’m saying something like in the first week or something. Right. Okay.

Just making sure. Yeah. We get it soon.

The Loomis bill is going to take much longer. That is going to, you know, that’s a much bigger thing. That’s harder to get.

I don’t have a strong read on that one. But I do think you see some sort of top-down action by Trump with Bitcoin. And there may be some things that people are not expecting.

I mean, I think there’s unknowns here that you should be bullish on. I think you’re going to see more action than people think. I think this is a serious drive for the administration.

And I don’t think it’s a sell the news event. If this happens, there will be a pump. There will not be a sell-off.

Yeah. I think by the rumor, sell the news situation, it would effectively be that there’s sort of a whimper, you know, relative to expectations. So maybe there’s something like an executive order that says, I direct all of the executive agencies to adopt a pro-crypto, blah, blah, blah, you know, do some research and that kind of thing.

That would be like, okay, well, a letdown, right? That would be a letdown I could see leading to a sell-off. If we get just the SAB 121 executive order, which sounds likely according to the Washington Post, I think they reported that here, expected to issue executive orders on the first day of his presidency that may address issues, including debanking and the repeal of controversial crypto accounting policy, requiring banks holding digital assets to count them as liabilities on the bank’s own balance sheet, which obviously strongly disincentivizes them to do so. If we get just that, while it would be, and we should talk a lot more about this, while it would be extremely bullish, there’s been so much focus on the SBR that if that doesn’t happen in the first day or the first week or soon after he takes office, there could be a sell-the-news kind of a situation.

I think so. I don’t think he can leave it unaddressed. No.

There’s a lot of pressure. There’s a lot of pressure. People are waiting.

There are dozens, if not a hundred, you know, executive orders that will be signed that day. Yeah. He has said it himself multiple times, not just in Nashville, but since he was elected, he has reiterated his support for this idea.

It’s in the New York Times, they’re talking about it, in Bloomberg, they’re talking about it, in Forbes, they’re talking about it. He can’t ignore it. He has to address it.

Yeah. We can’t forget Free Ross. I saw in the comments there.

Free Ross on day one. I expect that should happen. That was the first promise he made in Nashville.

I don’t think there’s a lot of political capital to expend on that one. So that one seems like a no-brainer. It seems that way.

Yeah. I think he, if he cares about anything, he cares about at least giving the appearance that he’s following through on things he promised. It may not take the exact shape that he said or that some people thought that he was going to deliver when he made a promise.

But I feel like it’s got to be something. And it’s also important to remember, it’s not just him. It’s the people that are now close to him.

Howard Lutnick, David Sachs, Cynthia Lummis, Vivek, RFK is part of his broader team now. If it was just Trump and Eric Trump making these comments, I might be like, ah, they’re going to get convinced otherwise. And maybe it’ll fall to the back burner or something like that.

But given that it’s their whole team and there’s other people in his inner circle that I’ve heard rumors about are kind of for this idea, it’s like you’re talking like almost a dozen people who seem to be on the same page. I think we’re going to see something, maybe not Monday, maybe not an immediate purchase plan, but I think we are going to see something. I mean, Bitcoin’s like marketing plan, you know, let’s just call it that for fun.

It’s baked into the protocol. It’s part of the system is that buyers who become HODLers are basically paid to evangelize Bitcoin. And that’s what we’re doing here.

Right. I’ve basically been paid to evangelize Bitcoin for seven years by Bitcoin, not just by Swan, right, but by Bitcoin and a lot more by Bitcoin. So these people are HODLers.

Right. The administration is full of HODLers. And we elected a hundred pro-crypto, you know, and if you’re in crypto, Bitcoin’s the king.

There might be people out there trading crypto, but if you’re into crypto, quote unquote, and you’re an advocate of crypto, that includes Bitcoin for you. And almost certainly. Right.

So there are pro-Bitcoin people all over the government now. And they’re being effectively paid by Bitcoin to advocate for it. And so that cannot be underestimated here.

This is just the incentives of the network at play. And this is how it spreads. And I agree with you, John.

Like, it’s not just those two guys. It’s this close team of people you mentioned, plus hundreds and hundreds, thousands of others who are going to be a part of that administration and in other parts of branches of the government who are Bitcoiners. And that just number just grows, you know, year after year.

I also think it’s important to remember that it’s nation state adoption, U.S. SBR. That’s not like the only thing Bitcoin is waiting on here. Like, you have to remember the adoption is coming from so much more than nation states.

And I’m still actually a believer that the nation states take longer to get on board and to actually develop a plan and do something about it. I think the corporate adoption is going to be a bigger story for 2025 as a whole. And then just like the broader adoption from family offices, financial advisors, individuals, hedge funds, like that whole community, that story is playing out almost certainly.

The nation state adoption, I think there’s a lot more variables. But I think it’s important to note that it’s not like Bitcoin’s waiting on nation state adoption. And if it doesn’t happen, oh, my gosh, no one else cares about Bitcoin.

You know, that’s that’s certainly not the case. This does get into the whole debate of reserve versus stockpile. And one of the times that I had the chance to chat with Lynn this week, I brought it up to her.

I was just like, where do you come down on this debate of reserve versus stockpile? To give a super condensed version of that debate, reserve is more like a monetary asset, monetary stability back, potentially backing the dollar either explicitly or implicitly. Stockpile is more think like a sovereign wealth fund. And Lynn had a I said to her, I said, my quick take is that it’s going to be more like a stockpile regardless of what they call it, because I think we’re so far away from a Bitcoin holding of the U.S. government backing the dollar in any meaningful sense.

So I said, I think it’s going to be a stockpile. And she said, she said, yeah, I could see that. But then she brought up a good point.

She’s like the weird thing about a country like the U.S. having a stockpile sovereign wealth fund style is how much debt we have. Like we’re a net debtor nation. So it’s kind of weird to say we’re going to come up with a stockpile like that makes sense for Saudi Arabia, for Norway, these countries that have a sovereign wealth fund and they’re not debtor nations when you’re already in the red on like a trade trading balance perspective.

It becomes a little weird to say this is our stockpiled asset. And it’s like this big compared to our debt, which is which is this big. Right.

Anyway, it was I thought it was an interesting point that Lynn made. I mean, I actually had the same thought. If we hold a hundred billion dollars in Bitcoin, it’s like a rounding error on our interest payments or something like that.

That’s the thing, though. And I actually had this conversation with Lynn at the event, too, and a few other people. It’s like there’s this needle you need to thread here.

They cannot be seen as coming out and saying they’re doing the SBR because to stabilize the dollar. Right. Which is not.

And some people say, well, anything they do will be seen as that way. I disagree. I disagree.

It’s how you don’t hold gold or oil to stabilize the dollar. It’s how you size it. It’s what you say.

10 billion, 20 billion dollars is a rounding error on on on the US dollar market. It’s like the US, like some people are arguing that like, oh, they won’t do it because it’ll it’ll cause chaos. I don’t agree.

20 billion dollars. It doesn’t matter. But you do you do run into this theme that you have to navigate.

Yeah, I don’t think buying the US buying Bitcoin like could possibly or should ever have anything to do with shoring up the dollar. Right. That’s just not going to happen.

We’re not at that point. Bitcoin’s not big enough, but it is a strategic investment. It’s a strategic asset.

It has become a geopolitically strategic asset like oil, like gold, even though gold isn’t, you know, doesn’t back money anymore. It’s still a strategically important asset in the world. And Bitcoin fits in that definition now.

So we should be stockpiling it because at some point there’s going to be a strategic reason for us to have that Bitcoin. And so we should have it and we should get it now and sooner than before other countries. That’s the way it needs to be sold.

That’s the way I’ve always understood it. But people who are outside of Bitcoin kind of looking in, that needs to be explained clearly. It does.

It does need to be threaded very carefully.