Bitcoin's Great Run Will Continue, MARA's Thiel Says

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00:00The Bitcoin miner and accumulator, Mara Holdings, knows all too well about the drop.

00:04Its own stock down more than 36% so far this year. Nearly 28% of the float is shorted.

00:09With more, we head to Paris and to Fred Thiele, chairman and CEO of Mara.

00:13Fred, good to have you on the program. The decline in the asset price this year,

00:19certainly $126,000, that was a major high earlier this year. That was a big moment

00:26for the cryptocurrency, but down close to 30% or more than 30% from that. How much lower does

00:32Bitcoin go? I think Bitcoin at this level is finding support in the kind of 84,000 range,

00:40which is just about where the break-even point is on most ETF purchases, Bitcoin ETF purchases. And

00:48that seems to be a level of support where essentially people, large investors who are trying to

00:55defend their positions if you would want to keep it above that level, which if it falls below that,

01:01you'd see more sales most probably out of the ETFs back into liquidity. Bitcoin, it's very much

01:09driven by global liquidity. You had expectations of more from the Fed and more clarity around market

01:20structure. But I think what you really have to look at is there was a huge run-up in the kind of

01:26August through September into October period. And a number of us felt the market was frothy

01:36in the beginning of Q3 and things were getting a little bit overheated. And now we've seen some of

01:43that come off. You've also seen a lot of money that rotated into AI now, rotating out of AI and

01:49starting to rotate into more Dow stocks. And so I think you're generally seeing a risk-off environment.

01:55Risk-off tends to drive people out of Bitcoin. But the liquidity that the federal government is going

02:02to inject in the marketplace now that quantitative tightening is over, we're starting to see easing

02:07again. We believe that we'll bode well, the dollar's down, which also bodes well for Bitcoin.

02:13And I think you're going to continue to see Bitcoin appreciate. But you've got to realize it's a very

02:18large asset class. It's a couple trillion dollars in size, and it takes a lot to move the price.

02:25And I think what we're seeing now is just some healthy retracement.

02:28Hey, if I may, just jump in for a moment. I am wondering, Fred, you say that it's a risk-off

02:38environment. And yet, I'm looking at an S&P 500 that's still near its all-time high. We've seen

02:43quite a bounce back when it comes to the S&P 500, also a very big market. So I'm just curious,

02:50you know, how do you square that if we're seeing investors still willing to move into

02:57the equity markets, but not crypto, that disconnect?

03:02Well, I think you have to, in regards to crypto, you have to look at the derivatives market,

03:07which is much bigger than the actual spot Bitcoin market. And you have to see the sheer amount of

03:13leverage and positions that have come off since the peak. You know, you've gone from the $90 billion-ish

03:22range down to the $30 billion range of open positions. And so that's a huge amount of leverage

03:29that comes off, which essentially sucks wind out of the marketplace. And people have been moving their

03:35money out of Bitcoin and into other things. I think you've also seen, look at the AI stocks. Most of

03:41the second tier AI stocks have all seen a pretty large come down since the peak, even stocks such

03:48as Oracle, look at CoreWeave, you know, look at these stocks and how they've performed. And I think

03:54what you're seeing is a rotation out of some of those and into other stocks. And Bitcoin is associated

04:00with technology, it's associated with the risk on assets, and it's very associated with liquidity.

04:05So having said that, and you talked about the run-up that we saw earlier in terms of crypto that

04:13where it got to maybe like frothy levels, we're now at what, 87,302 and change. So what do you

04:23think should be the level of crypto that makes more sense? I think you have to look at the long-term

04:29trend. But more importantly, go back a little over a year ago, go 14, 15 months ago, no US

04:38money-centered bank would deal with crypto-related companies, nor would they take crypto deposits,

04:46nor would they let you trade crypto, nor would they let you wire money to crypto exchanges almost.

04:51And today, you have every bank, including JP Morgan, now moving ahead and doing all sorts of

04:57things with crypto. You're seeing tokenization of assets. DTCC has now gotten a no-action letter

05:03from the SEC around tokenizing assets. You're seeing all sorts of activities around the traditional

05:10finance environment where they're embracing crypto. And I believe that part of the effect of that

05:17is you're now going to see all sorts of things wrapped around crypto, which will make the space

05:23much more relevant. But it takes time for those products to take effect, get launched.

05:28And I think, again, Bitcoin has had a great run. Over the past 15 years, it's been one of the best

05:35performing assets on record. And I think that we're going to continue to see great performance

05:40sort of Bitcoin over the coming years.

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