Markets React to U.S. Capture of Maduro

All right, everybody. Welcome to the first 2026 edition of Bits and Bips, where we explore how crypto and macro collide one basis point at a time. I'm your host Austin Campbell, high scholar of Zero Knowledge Consulting, also recovering from having three sick children in the house over the holidays. So bear with me with the voice today. Here with me are our usual two co-conspirators, Ram Alawalia, Maester of Wealth, leader of Lumida, Chris Perkins, the golden hand of Coin Fund. And today, super excited to have our guest, Peter Chur, the northstar of macro at Academy Securities. He's the head of macro strategy there and we're going to be discussing a lot about the worlds of crypto, macro, and markets colliding today. But first, remember that nothing we say here is investment advice. Please check unchainedcrypto.com/bitsandbbits for more disclosures. And before we begin, here's a quick word from one of the sponsors who makes the show possible. Are you a builder who needs to add onchain trading to your product? The Uniswap trading API from Uniswap Labs offers plug-and-play access to some of the deepest liquidity in crypto. It's onchain execution at an enterprise level. More liquidity, less complexity. Visit hub.uniswap.org to learn more.

All right, welcome back everybody. And with the start of the year, the first day of markets open in the week right now, I think the right place to start is going to be what is happening with let's do Bitcoin. Currently, as I'm looking at it, a little bit over 94,000 and change. This is a pretty stark difference in performance from the close of the year where we had day after day of down and now we've bounced back up dramatically in a single day. Rahm, I'll start with you since you look at markets constantly. What do you see going on here? What's driving this?

So, you know, I think it's linked to the news over the weekend. People saw that Friday night, you know, there was an action in Venezuela, woke up Saturday, the action was done. People said, "Wow, what happened? Look at that." They saw millions of Venezuelans celebrating the streets. And I think that ignited animal spirits. You know, people feel proud, they feel confident, they feel excited. I think that's a big part of it. That's a I think it's a major part of it. I mean, overall, high beta has been working.

I think another reason for that has to do with the kind of the open AAI capex financing story, right? So, you've seen like the category of semiconductors trying to figure out what it's going to go do. It's about to roll over. Then the Wall Street Journal reports OpenAI is about to raise some money, starts going back up again. Then Wall Street says, "Wait, we don't trust that moment. It's going back down again." And then there's news that comes out that soft banks in for 40 billion. Starts going back up again. So that's another big part of this also is how much of the capex guzzling machine can be financed and for how long. And so long as markets can see that financing in place, then they can start saying, "Okay, these companies will report, they'll grow, they'll beat and beat, and we'll we'll we'll stay on the train up until such time that we see limits to financing."

Chris, what's your take?

I got a lot of takes on this one. I'll start by saying that once again, this shows the power of crypto and the power of tokenized products. Why? Because equity markets were fast asleep Saturday morning when Delta Force raided Maduro and took him and his wife, executed one of the most seamless, incredible missions in US military history, which I can't wait for us to talk about. That also like reaffirms to the world that the US has capabilities that are second to none and it puts a lot of bad guys back in the box. Right? As you saw how we left Afghanistan, it didn't look great and now it's like, "Oh, maybe we got it wrong, guys. So, we're going to stay back in our box." Like, we can we're going to talk a lot about geopolitics today. I can't wait to get Peter's take. Peter spends a lot of his day no longer place kicking. We'll talk about that. But he spends a lot of his day looking at this stuff.

But for me, from a macro perspective, it highlighted the point that crypto is awake. Traditional markets are asleep. We're not going to be able to go to through too many more stresses like this before people are going to be like, "Wait a second. I'm leaving the traditional markets behind. I'm using tokenized assets because I can risk manage them. I can add risk. I can take away risk in the middle of the night on a Saturday, early Saturday morning, whatever." Right? So that was very very important. It showed the fundamental strength of Bitcoin because again, normally when you have a geopolitical action in low liquid markets, the markets tend to pull back and it's a buying opportunity. Well, guess what? Now markets, we got real- time feedback. Wait a second. This is pretty good. Today markets are rallying. So before we get into the details and why I think this is like such a I like to say a real politic stroke of genius. Very very good for for for Bitcoin, very good for alts. And we're going to get into it today. I can't wait to do it.

Peter, go for it.

Yeah. And I think I agree largely with the takes. I've got a slightly different play on it. think and part of it if you look like Bitcoin is clearly outperforming everything else right AI those stocks are doing well and to me I think it's kind of twofold one is I think this is a bit of a realization that Trump will get what he wants so even when you look at markets the Russell 2000's outperforming even the AI and you started at the start of the day right the mag 7 were leading but now you've seen this follow through so I think this is a little bit of a bet Trump will get what he wants and that was maybe coming off the table people were concerned about that so I think that was a big part of it and then you know when I look at this I do believe that a lot of the countries that have been trying to get around sanctions first during the days when everyone ignored the sanction they were probably taking in some crypto money and I think there was increased concern that they might be selling some of their crypto as sanctions were taking a bite and I think this starts taking sanctions off the table in fact if anything you know it would not surprise me that if you don't hear chatter that maybe the US will seize some of Maduro's crypto to the extent he has it and that might actually be what we can use to jumpst start the sovereign wealth fund that we've been talking about.

So, I think that, you know, there's going to be a lot of fights over the assets Maduro has, Venezuela has, but crypto might be one of the easier ones. And again, I think this all ties back to you go back to last spring when we were all excited. Trump was clearly for this. We put in a lot of legislation, but Bitcoin kind of faded. Maybe this is what jumpst starts that. So, I think it's to me a little bit twofold is Trump gets what he wants, so that's playing out through the markets. And also maybe this is an ability to seize some crypto and release the pressure of sanctions and not just here, right? If you take sanctions off Iran, maybe if something gets resolved there, I think that frees up crypto to really grow again and takes away some potential selling pressure. I don't know how much exists or not, but that's always been a concern of mine in particular.

Hey Peter, I wanted to add something and you said he gets what he wants. What does he want most of all right now? He wants his team to crush midterms. And I don't think the timing and the action could have been more perfect, right? He's an American first president. He shows that the military is back, baby. Like it it is it is not to be messed with. Check. There's definitely an immigration thing going on because if he has his hands in Venezuela, which is, you know, and and South America, which been a source of a lot of the illegal immigration, check. Got that. Fentanol in in America still is a big issue. Check. Got that. You know, economy, right? I'm gonna take oil. I'm going to keep I'm going to put money back into retail, right? Check. Amazing. For uh for midterms, uh rates are going to stay down because inflation is going to stay down. Like, this is all part of the narrative that's building towards midterms, which is very positive for him. Oh, and by the way, um what were we talking about before this cycle? We were talking about Epstein, right? any word of Epstein in the last news cycle? Absolutely not. That's what he doesn't want to talk about. And so he's recaptured the narrative. And the narrative of Trump doing having success in midterms is the same thing as crypto having success because right now, like it or not, those two things are tied. I don't think in reality it's it's, you know, partisan as people think about it. But this is a guy who wants to make the US the crypto capital of the planet. And it feeds right into that narrative if he's successful in mid.

Can I pile in for one more sec too? And you know, we've been talking about this for three or four months and I think it's taking place is I believe everything that's going on with the cartel or the drug trade in Venezuela is really a precursor to going after Mexican cartels. And if you think about kind of from, you know, a very astute political standpoint, right? If we blew up drug boats in the Gulf of America or Gulf of Mexico three months ago, everyone would have screamed, "Oh my gosh, we cannot do that." So, we did it in Venezuela, which is a little bit off everyone's radar screen. People don't have that kind of visceral response, but now we've established this ability to go after drugs. We've now established this ability to attack, you know, within the country facilities to do with the drug trade. I highly suspect that end of Q1, early Q2, we approach Shine Bomb in Mexico and say, "Hey, we want to deal with the cartels. We will help you do it or we will do it on our own." And again, it feeds in, I think, perfectly to the midterm election narrative, right? It goes on and I do think the immigration, you can't overstate this, I think, is that if we can create a safer country for people to stay, that's where they want to be. If you look at the amount of money that Mexicans in the US send back to Mexico, it's a huge amount. And part of that is because there it's where their family is. That's where they want to be. And so I think if you first clean up this and you make it safe for working environment, then the flip side of it is, you know, if you cut the head off the snake, which is the cartel in Venezuela, how efficient or good will those Venezuelan drug dealers or, you know, the people have been committing the crime here be? I think you can push this at both ends. So I think it's a really crucial part of a strategy. And again, it's multipronged. You get some of the oil, you send a message. You've got Putin now thinking, Zalinsky thinking, certainly whatever happens with Cuba next. So I think there this has been multifaceted and again is pushing towards an election result, but I think Mexico's cartels are next in sights because that will be the big thing for the US and it'll be an awesome thing for Mexico to be honest.

So on that note, I've also been eyeballing some of the implications of this from a macro perspective. And while Bitcoin caught my eye, I think there's a component here also dealing, you know, Chris, as you alluded to a little bit with energy. And so look at the things that are jointly exposed to though. If you look at the Bitcoin miner stocks today, like what Marathon's up like 7%, Cipher's up like 12 a.5, so on and so forth throughout the complex. I think, you know, as we look at markets implications for this, the action in Venezuela appears to have been interpreted as a significant positive, like very constructive for bringing energy prices and commodities prices back down. And to me, I think there are two elements to that. One, being very realistic. I think the call it prospect of adding additional significant supply out of Venezuela in the short term is very low. It's going to take a lot of work to get in there and develop oil fields. And I think there are some real questions about how much oil they actually have versus what the Chavez regime was reporting they had, which might be two very different numbers.

On the other hand, though, I think to go to the point Chris you were making earlier, from a geopolitical standpoint, this has probably taken a lot of concerns about energy disruption off the table. I think there were some people when we started blowing up drug boats off the coast of Venezuela who were very worried about like a long-term hot war destruction of infrastructure the United States moving in Chris as you noted like with Afghanistan and Iraq the playbook was boots on the ground and here nope showed up grabbed the guy left right it's like that old like panda book eats shoots and leaves right and so you have a very different operating model and I think that's part of what markets are reacting ing to is this new frame of warfare that is like surgical tactical extraction of key figures as opposed to we're going to go there and plant boots on the ground.

Love all the points and and nodding my head a few quick things. So, Bitcoin today is as much a polling on Trump as it is a price on an asset. Trump's ratings went up after this action that supports markets. That's why high beta is working. That's why Bitcoin went up. That's why many other high beta assets went up. That's what that's what this is primarily about. Um on on Venezuela, 10 years ago, Venezuela was about 5% of global oil production. Now it's less than a point. 10 years ago, Venezuela had about 80 active oil rigs. Now they have single low digits. They socialized the means of production, meaning they stole from Chevron and production fell off a cliff and their people went into abject poverty. Uh, and now Trump's also got a win with Malay in Argentina. And I think uh I think you're right. I think Mexico, you'll see some action there. The question is what happens with Greenland? I don't know if you saw this. Greenland said uh if there's some altercation then that would be the end of NATO. uh you know I don't know how article 5 works in that scenario and who adjudicates that if the United States is part of the security council and well it's UN but NATO I mean it's complicated things are out there uh but fundamentally you know that's what it's all about I don't think markets are discounting the NPV of Venezuela in terms of the energy calculus just yet natural gas is melting and falling off a cliff oil prices are low and and staying So, uh, but it it really was an incredible move and Chris really did a great job just identifying so many areas where it's like you put your finger in the dam and this one thing accomplishes so much. Uh, so uh and yeah, I do think it's it's setting up for the for the midterms and you start to see this transition from uh Department of Defense to Department of War that's previewing more things to come and Greenland is also going to be in the offing to see how that unfolds.

Well, I was going to say, let let's actually get to the specifics of what happened in Venezuela then to set the table there because I'll be fair and say I don't think we're going to go like kidnap the presidents of uh Greenland. But so what happened was US forces captured Venezuelan President Maduro in an overnight raid authorized by President Trump. Um he has been brought to New York City where I am facing federal drug and weapons charges. Uh the operation was primarily aircraft about 150 dismantling Venezuela's air defenses before a small number of troops moved in on the ground. Current reporting is that no Americans were killed and allegedly Venezuelan casualties are in the tens of people. So approximately 80 currently. Um Trump has declared that the US will now alternately have influence over slashrun slash have a say in governance on Venezuela. Details unclear. The large focus is on oil and energy production. Inside of Venezuela, Rodriguez is now sworn in as the interim president. Uh while opposition leader Machado is still calling for recognition of her ally. Um the UN Security Council is holding an emergency meeting, but exactly as was just stated, the US has veto power there. And like let's be honest, international law is largely fake and a construct of what people are willing to agree to because enforcing that ultimately is a nation state question. So I don't know how much influence the UN has here but as I looked at that and I want to kick this to the group for comments after I frame it this way. The United States over the past, call it 40-ish years, you know, the if you will, posts Soviet, postvietnam era, has experimented with a couple of different methods of intervention in foreign places when we either liked or didn't like what was going on, right? Like we were tangentially and mildly involved, but sent people to Yugoslavia as it came apart, especially the Bosnia conflict there. We put a lot of people on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq. We put virtually nobody on the ground in Libya, but we're directly involved in like capture of a leader there. And now we've had a much more precise and targeted strike on Venezuela. So I'm largely looking at this both from a geopolitical context and also a macro markets context. Right? Trump's openly talking about bringing back the Monroe doctrine and having the US serve as a scalpel to deal with these interests rather than a sledgehammer. see also what we did with Iran's nuclear arsenal like what do you think this sets up for the next few years geopolitically and then how will markets react to that given the change in strategy Peter what do you what do you think

so you know great question I would say one thing and and this is going to depend a little bit whether you're an investor where you stand in your corporation or whatever but I would think one we got to be very careful when we talk about emerging markets I think we now have to really start distinguishing by region. I think there's a huge potential for Latin and South American stock markets to do phenomenally well right as you pointed out right we've created the swap lines with Buenos Aries that's getting Malay on our side we're doing some things there ultimately depending on if this plays out remotely according to any sort of plan that Trump has you get Venezuela coming if we're right about Mexico you get maybe Cuba then I I think you see this and I do have to say you got to probably be a little bit cautious when you look at that you know north south allian sorry the national security strategy piece, right? It really does focus on the Monroe Doctrine, North South Alliance and working on that. And so I think what you're going to see is and when we talk to corporations, we're saying if you're have a factory in Thailand and Vietnam, you're not really well diversified because those go through the same shipping lanes. You need to be thinking about shipping much more globally and as though there's risk that China may or may not decide to do something to interfere with your shipping. So I think you're going to see as this develops steam for a lot of investment to be done in Central and South America because there we can much easier protect our supply chains. Corporations can be much more assured that we are careful, right? The US still can project power towards Taiwan, but the tyranny of distance is real. It is more problematic for us to do it there than it is in Central and South America. Chinese Navy is nowhere near equipped to get anywhere near Central or South America in a meaningful way. So I think there is a safety there and what I think we've been calling this whole concept prosec or production for security where it's going to be things like chips rarest critical minerals which we haven't talked about much but that is another part that could be in Venezuela and I think that's actually more interesting than in Greenland because on the rare earths and critical minerals I'm pretty sure if it was really economically viable in Greenland someone would have figured it out already. I'm much more willing to believe that in Venezuela, as messy as it was, there's been this opportunity and no one's figured out how to do it because they're so corrupt and they don't need rarest and critical minerals when they can survive off of drugs. So, I think there could be opportunities there, but I think this is going to spread and the US government kickstarted it. I think it's US capitalism that's going to be the next step, right? You're going to see investments in this. You're seeing again the crypto companies do well today. I think you're going to see, you know, Intel's continue to do well. You're going to see this US investment. We talked to private equity companies who are looking at, hey, what sort of mines are out there that people have mining rights that no one's used? All these things that we kind of gave up as we de-industrialized, I think come back on shore. Some will be on shore, some will be done with our close neighbors. So, I think there's, if you're thinking about investing, North America into Central and South America is a huge opportunity here. I think Europe's going to be left a little bit in the dust. I I'm not sure what they are going to do. I ultimately think companies like BP and Royal Debt Shell will be phenomenal buys, but probably a year from now once Europe finally gives up and stops yelling at these companies who can actually provide the electricity they need to be to produce if they want to do data centers or anything else useful.

That said, I do think we put some of our adversaries back in their box. So if you look at what was going on in Taiwan right before this raid and I think the weather dictated the raid. So they may have tried to pull it off a couple of days previous uh but China was operating and exercising the largest um maneuvers versus Taiwan I think in history. They were simulating a a naval bar uh blockade. And so this sends a message to China and I think this is good for markets because if they're rethinking hey maybe it's not a good time to invade Taiwan. The US military and national security apparatus just sliced through Venezuela's national defenses like they were butter. Those national defenses were largely imported for I I believe Peter correct me if I'm wrong Russian and Iranian technology. So we can pretty much go any place anywhere any time. People are thinking twice before messing around. I think a strong America leads to a more stable geopolitical environment which I think is good for markets.

Yeah. And sorry to interrupt again or pile in, but the other area we've been trying to talk about is Africa, right? Africa is going to be critical both in terms of the population growth also in terms of the risk of destabilization because there are so many um you know homeless effectively and you know refugees right there. It's a big mess. Russia and China both been involved. I think the fact that Russia has zero response to Venezuela will make countries I think a little bit more leer about, okay, yeah, if Russia's our buddy, how much does that count? It's kind of like as Iran lost all their proxies. Hm. I'm not going to mess maybe with Israel because Iran's not there to protect me like I thought. You see a bit that with Russia. And again, there's going to be lots of legal challenges over who gets what in Venezuela. China's going to try and protect that, but China has to really do a good job for their own benefit. Or else I think they could see country after country kind of tip over and say, "Hey, you know what? China was never as good as we thought. Yeah, they built the project, but it didn't last anywhere near as long as we expected. We didn't get the jobs. We didn't get the IP. So, I think there's that opportunity. And I've got to be very careful because I I think this administration's turning more transactional, particularly in Africa. And why I've got to be careful. I think you say transactional, people are like, "Oo, that's got negative connotations." I don't think it does necessarily, right? I think in Africa, our policy was admonishment. Oh, we'll give you this, but you have to do this. Well, I'm a dictator. Why would I possibly do that? I don't care. And now all of a sudden, okay, we just want your things. We can have a transactional relationship. And I think that gets us a little bit more of a playing field. So to me, like what's going on in Venezuela right now is the first time and we've had this economic friction with China, but it's always kind of been mainland China versus, you know, mainland USA. This is the first time we're kind of taking this fight to Venezuela. And we're going to see how Venezuela responds, how the neighbors respond. It's very different. It's almost to me like when we had with the Soviet Union, there were all sorts of hot spots and it was never the US versus the Soviet Union directly, but we had our proxies. We had who we were supplying. We are testing out our things. So I think Venezuela's always been a bit of a microcosm. I what I think Russia's kind of fallen down, looks very weak. I think they're getting taken out of the global equation, which would be good in Africa where they still have a pretty strong foothold. And also I want to see where India comes out in this because India is this kind of potentially emerging superpower. They're very involved in that region. They've been very quiet.

I would share a few observations. One is I wouldn't underestimate Europe or investing in Europe. I I agree with the points around Mexico and Brazil. I think Latin America is very promising. I think Mexico is a beneficiary of French shoring and Mexico is an ally to the US as an alternative to China production. But if you look at say Europe you've you've got international banks in Europe that are doing extremely well. Deutsche Bank is get this up 130% in a year. HSBC is up 70%. This is a these are boring decades old banks in Europe. The MAG 7 names are up about 20% in a year about the same rate as the S&P. They're no longer outrunning other names in the S&P. So I think international names actually can do quite well. And this rotation from these max seven names to other areas really started with the uh Trump tariff war last year. It also created a bid for alternatives to bonds like gold. I don't think that trend changes because the value in these names and the earnings growth is still attractive. South Korea is interesting. Japan is interesting.

All right. So I'll I'll pile in here and say on that front one to get to the previous theme and how I think it connects to what Rahm just said, Europe is a very interesting pivot point for me as the Trump administration does openly become more transactional. And I agree transactional is neither good nor bad. It kind of depends how you do it. It's just a thing. Um, Europe is kind of caught between a rock and a hard place here because you have to ask the question of what do they have to offer to the United States in the current configuration of Europe? That is to say, they don't have a lot of tech. They don't have a lot of exports that we really, really want. They've been kind of antagonistic towards us politically in a way that I think people don't understand. Like if you're not paying attention to the drama between the EU, the UK and the United States over free speech where offcom and the UK and some of the EU people attempted to reach over here and tell American platforms how Americans were allowed to speak to Americans on speech, you've really missed some geopolitical fault lines emerging between the United States and Europe. So, as the US pivots towards a more western hemispheric strategy, I'm just not sure what the utility of Europe as an ally is in the eyes of the Trump administration. And again, that's not a statement of like good or bad. That's functional analysis. And that for me makes me significantly more skeptical about investing in Europe right now because if you think about Trump and tariffs and rewarding allies and punishing enemies, Europe could very much be on the receiving end of some pretty ugly stuff if they continue with the antagonism over tech speech. And then again, you know, as Peter said earlier, they're not producing a lot themselves. So that I think that leads us to Greenland real quick.

Yes. Everything Trump has punished is up. China's up 35% beating the S&P. Europe's up. Brazil's up. Mexico's up. Gold is up. Everything the thing that's not up, even bonds actually went up, too. Bonds. So, uh, hey, when everything's up, it's just inflation, Rob.

Yeah. Not printed is up, you know. Not printed goes up.

Well, listen. I don't I wouldn't read too much into like Trump this, Trump that, and in terms of if you're the enemy of Trump and things go down, it's I I'm a little more skeptical specifically on Europe there, though. I actually agree with you about a lot of the rest of that. Europe, I think, is uniquely vulnerable in this one because of their geopolitical situation. That is to say, if Trump slaps large tariffs on Europe, or more likely starts retaliating in kind for things like fines on US tech companies, I think that could get really disruptive. Like, I'll remind everybody, the Granite Act in Wyoming allows for US companies to sue EU regulators for overreach and essentially seize assets on that basis. If things like that continue rolling, that's going to be very destroy. Generally agree like their pockets like even France is being the United States by the way, put in perspective. France. Let that sink in for a moment.

Well, I mean, that may have been a statement of starting point for France, but we'll come back to that one. I think, you know, it's hard to look at these indices, too. I I tend to look at the European indices. They do tend to be heavily concentrated their banks. Their banks have underperformed for a while. And again, their banks were all excited about the potential for growth, the potential for rearming. You know, the one thing I can't get over right now about Europe, and why I'm a little bit more skeptical coming for this year, is I think Europe had one job to do in terms of Russia and Ukraine. They were supposed to seize Russia's frozen reserves. if they wanted to play a meaningful part, the only thing they could do is seize Russia's reserves and use that money to pay for US weapons. I think that might have changed the story with Trump where he said, "Okay, you seized 100 billion of they chose not to. In the end, they couldn't get there. They and I think even right now you see it again was they're trying to figure out what to say to Trump about there's macaron talks, but no one has any power. There's no single person power. I think that's one reason he even likes UK. At least you've got Stormer who's like in charge of it. There's no one in charge of the EU. I think they struggle with that. I think they were supposed to try and seize Russia's frozen reserves. They tried to get there. They could not get there. They add nothing now to the war effort there. And I keep coming back to this concept of production for security. I think it's going to replace ESG. It's kind of the evolution of ESG. We were, if you think about Maso's hierarchy of needs, we were kind of altruistic on what sustainable meant, but that was really based on the fact that we felt we had everything we needed from China to a large degree. You start ripping that away and you realize your foundations crumbled. So for Maslo's hierarchy of needs, you got to go back to that base layer and produce those things shelter. And that's what I think the US is doing. We're there. I think US capitalism starting to see that. That will drive American companies. And I think somewhere six months to a year down the road, Europe's going to realize it too. Europe's going to take longer because ESG was much more embedded into their thought process. But I had a fight with um you know Baroness who's actually the house of lords last summer and she was like oh eur London or the UK is going to lead the way in Europe on data centers and AI like you don't produce your own electricity it's impossible it's an unrealistic goal and she's like well we get most of our electricity from France okay well what happens if France needs their electricity as we saw a couple years ago I I think everyone's going to go back to having to produce some basic level and once Europe starts seeing that then I think they can really rip and do very well again but I think that They haven't seen that yet. I think you're seeing a bit of that in Canada where Canada is starting to realize this and I think this was a big wakeup call for the tar sands and things in Canada. They'll still do fine, but okay, we better get on board with this. And I think you're seeing Australia, right, negotiating deals with the US. So people are trying to figure out how do we become part of this production for security and you know, you still look to me at Europe, they're still blowing up, you know, the remnants of nuclear reactors and still kind of trying to rely on wind despite pretty obvious things like this doesn't really work. this was a bad strategy that's failed. How do we get ourselves over? And look at, you know, Northern Europe. You know, the Hibernia oil fields, it's like they get criticized. Like, why would you use those? That's awful. This is horrible. Like, you need those things. So, I I think we need to see this mentality. I think the US is leading the way. I think this is part of a multi-year investment thesis at a policy level. And even within the US, I think you're going to create very different dynamics state-to-state. Some states will embrace this. Some states will fight it tooth and nail. Um I I think it Europe's going to have to figure this out. Again, BYD automobiles, right? It sells more auto EVs in Germany than Volkswagen. Volkswagen turned their entire business model to EVs. Like you kind of want to do face plant after face plant when you read some of these things. And Europe doesn't seem to have hit realization whereas Trump has. And that's why I'm kind of very much on board for this.

So I'm going to chime in on Europe and then I'm going to pull it back to Venezuela. Um, let's look, let's remind ourselves of the way Germany uh treated Bitcoin. I think they seized 50,000 Bitcoin. They dumped it as soon as possible. Um, when Bitcoin was 50,000 and then it took off. Um, there's a lot of folks who believe that Venezuela has a pretty big pot of Bitcoin. And if the US does lay claim to it, I will tell you one thing that this administration's not going to do. They're not going to dump it, right? And I think that's an additional tailwind for the asset class because it could be the way forward to create and incubate the Bitcoin strategic reserve. Um, and again, totally different than what the Europeans have done in the past, particularly the Germans. Just another tailwind for for the situation that's unfolding.

All right. So, before we go even further into that, we are going to take a break um hear from our sponsor once more and then I have some