 I'm going to use the rational part of my brain rather than the lizard brain and the limb existence and say, oh my god, I have to sell. The fact is, people look at Bitcoin and they say, well, it's too volatile for a store of value. Let me give you a couple of data points to understand why that is more or less an idiotic thing to say. What's up, YouTube? My name is Jackson. Today, I'm joined by CEO of Coinroots, Dave Weiserberger. How's it going today, Dave? That's going great. Can't complain. Excellent. So, a user poll of 400 VIP traders conducted in January by Kraken found that most traders are expecting Bitcoin to break all-time highs before 2021. The poll was conducted before the March market crashes, with the trader's average price target at nearly $23,000. Do you believe Bitcoin will live up to the January expectation of Kraken's traders despite the current economic crisis? Interestingly, I think it's possible, although obviously the likelihood is significantly lower. Consider what's happened since the crisis started and you're going from a lower base. The difference is, in the case of Bitcoin in the longer term, and when I say longer term in Bitcoin, Bitcoin time scales are compressed. Bitcoin will do its moves in a month what other assets ordinarily would do in a year. Although over the last month, Bitcoin is actually inarguably with the exception of a couple of Thursdays ago, it's actually been less volatile than the S&P or the Russell or some of the other indices that people follow. But be that as it may, I'd say that the macro backdrop would support that possibility, but it's going to be hard until there's some certainty and resolution with the pandemic for it to actually happen this year. It's possible, but there will need to be some certainty on the pandemic resolution front before a really strong sustained upward movement can happen. Got it. So, CoinTelegraph recently spoke to a number of experts to determine how central bank strategies of unlimited quantitative easing will affect Bitcoin in the long term. Maddie Greenspan said that in the short term, the stimulus would float all markets, including Bitcoin. What short term moves are you expecting Bitcoin to make? Do you expect further downside or an upside reversal? I mean, look, at the end of the day, the thing you have to understand is that there's two factors that are going on in any, in financial markets. There is conviction and there's need. Conviction is where people believe things are going to go, and quite often they follow through by investing to that conviction, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are many people who believe that Bitcoin will go significantly higher because the fact of the matter is the idea of Bitcoin is hard money, and what we're finding out is that all fiat currencies are really not hard money to the extent that had never really penetrated the consciousness of people. The idea of a Fed balance sheet exceeding $10 trillion was inconceivable. Even in the aftermath of the financial crisis, because the thought process was, even though it got to half that size, it was like, OK, we're going to back off now. I don't think there's a person who believes the Fed balance sheet will be less than 10 trillion and it might be more. Those are very large numbers, but the other side of it need to contump that. If you are, if you need to eat, you may believe Bitcoin is going to the moon, but if you need to sell it to eat, you're going to sell it to eat because people don't like to be hungry. Now, most of the selling that we've seen has not been from individuals who are hungry. That's a bit of an overstatement. But if you consider how many funds, crypto funds or hedge funds that have Bitcoin in their portfolio that have had wholesale redemptions because their clients need to eat or their clients need to raise money, and what you end up with is a situation that people sell assets, anything that's not nailed down gets sold, and the more liquid assets get sold pretty fast, regardless of conviction. That's why when you see these huge downdrafts in the market where all equities are selling off by like 10% or so, in those times, gold goes down, Bitcoin goes down, etc. All of that said, if you look over the last couple of days, yesterday was an extremely important day from a trading perspective though because yesterday you saw the markets in Europe and the United States were down 3% or 4%, which is pretty substantial for equities in a normal world, and even in the current world it's still a sizable move. Against that backdrop, Bitcoin rallied, and that's kind of important. Those sort of delinking days, the more often that they happen, the more emboldened traders will be, and you might see it building a base, but creating a bottom in a panic is a process. It's not a one day, and you have to balance that against the way markets work. People always look for V bottoms, but you don't get rich trying to pick a bottom, and you don't get because you end up catching what they call catching a falling knife. But at the end of the day, bottoming is usually a process, and when that bottom is found, then all of a sudden people who are shorting stop shorting. Now your supply goes down, and all of a sudden there's no one willing to sell, and that's when the market starts to move. I think we're in the process of a bottoming process in the 6,000 to 7,000 range, and it feels like we can go higher from here if the macro backdrop doesn't deteriorate causing people to say, crap, I need to sell this to pay my mortgage or eat or whatever. So I think those are the two cross currents that are going on. So you feel that the institutions have been forced out, as with the decoupling, with the correlation with the stock markets, and now it remains to be seen whether the retail investors will liquidate their assets in order to survive. As far as I understand, that's what you're getting at. Yeah, more or less, I think that's a little more nuanced, but there's a couple of data points there. Over the last week, both Crackett and Coinbase have reported increased retail account openings, which we haven't seen in a while. And so I don't know if that's a leading indicator or not. I suspect it is, but it's hard to tell. The other thing that is really important here is basically the state of the global economy. At the end of the day, you can want, as I said, conviction over need. There is still plenty of money sloshing around, and a lot of that money has yet to get into the hands of people. The Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have both indicated they're going to be pumping more and more money into the economy. A lot of it hasn't gotten to the point where it can actually start floating the market. It will. And so it's really a question of what happens when that happens. Great. So billionaire venture capitalist Mike Novogratz appears to be bullish on Bitcoin in the long term. On March 22nd, he tweeted, Bitcoin will continue to be volatile over the next few months, but the macro backdrop is why it was created. This will be and needs to be Bitcoin's year. Do you agree with Mike, why is this year in particular so important? Well, I agree with him very strongly. I don't know about the this year part. I know about this event part. The fact is fiat money, what we take for granted as the dollar or the pound or the euro didn't exist as a concept financially until 1971. So the fact that Bitcoin is only 10 years old, but 10 years ago, whoever Satoshi Nakamoto is said, you know, look, this isn't going to work. It's going to break down. So we should have something that doesn't need an intermediary bank that we can establish trust among people on something that's mathematical that cannot be manipulated. That experiment is really being put to the test now because as all the central banks start revving up the printing presses and you start talking about trillions of dollars and euros going into the economy with no backing, the idea of Bitcoin really is to counter that and to say, we don't need the central banks. We want to have something that is back that we know is a store of value that we can actually depend upon. So the first part of what Mike said, absolutely I agree with. The only reason I hedge a little is because I don't know if we're going to exit the panic stage in 2020. I don't know that. I want that to be true. God knows pretty much everybody wants that to be true. But if we do exit the patent stage and people are then saying, okay, I'm going to use the rational part of my brain rather than the lizard brain, the limbic system saying, oh my God, I have to sell. Once we get to rationality, then I think he will be proven correct and I think that that is what we're seeing. But it may be later in the year than people realize and so that's the only reason I hedge. And continuing to look to the longer term, Garrick Heilman, head of research at Blockchain.com, told CoinTelegraph that the aftermath of the fiscal crisis will push up hard assets like Bitcoin in agreement with your statements. However, Ariel Zeitlin-Jones, associate professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University, thinks Bitcoin would still be one of the riskiest stores of value in the world because Bitcoin price volatility is more than five times that of gold or equity markets, usually. How do you see Bitcoin evolving in the aftermath of the current crisis? Well, the problem with academics are academics love to live in the rearview mirror. And he's missing the forest for the trees. I've actually had this conversation with a couple of my economic professor friends and it's really fascinating. The fact is people look at Bitcoin and they say, well, it's too volatile for a store of value. Let me give you a couple of data points to understand why that is more or less an idiotic thing to say. It is true today as Bitcoin stands, it is not a store of value. In 1971, somewhere around the over 90% of monetary aggregates were backed by gold. Gold's market cap and the total monetary aggregates in the world were more or less the same. Today, gold represents around 10% of global monetary aggregates. That's really a very important factor. But what's really important is the market cap of gold at somewhere around 9 trillion, which is 10% of the 90 trillion of total monetary aggregates represents over or somewhere in the neighborhood of what is that, 50 times or 40 times Bitcoin's market cap. So Bitcoin in its infancy, as it grows towards a sizable percentage of global monetary aggregates, the volatility of its price moves is obviously going to be exaggerated. The issue with Bitcoin as a store of value will be very simple. If it becomes trusted, if it gains critical mass of acceptance of among enough people worldwide to be a store of value, by the time that happens its market cap will at least be near where gold is and be approaching monetary aggregates. Now when that happens, it will have a much, much, much, much larger numerator, meaning the price fluctuations of $100 in a day is de minimis and won't matter. But looking at the volatility of Bitcoin today when it is undeniably a risk asset is not relevant to understanding whether or not it can become a store of value. The issue is the two are absolutely unrelated. What is relevant is will it develop that critical mass of acceptance? Will enough people over time decide this is important, this is what I want to put my value in? And as that gets critical mass, that's when you'll see the price go through its next big movement. If you listen to people like Mark Yusko and Pomp from Morgan Creek, they'll talk about the need for establishing trust and the economy of trust. What does that mean? That means people accept it. People start to accept Bitcoin as, yes, this is what I want the denominator to be of my financial assets as opposed to the dollar. At that point, it won't be volatile in the sense of what you see today because the price will be substantially higher and those small moves won't matter as much. But we're a long way from there. Now, will it happen? Obviously, I don't know that. Obviously, I'm bullish on it to the extent that I think that this macro backdrop will make it more likely. But the absolute reality here is to look backwards, that's just wrong. Histories is being made. Well, Dave, thank you very much for coming on the show today. It was a pleasure talking with you. Thank you. Cointelegraph, like, subscribe, and hodl.