Daniel Creech 00:01

Hey everybody, welcome to “Wall Street Unplugged” on Thursday, July 23. I’m Daniel Creech, and I am solo today; the one and only Frank Curzio is out having the time of his life. Now, you know the drill: whenever I’m in charge, we get to talk about whatever the flying Florida I want to talk about. So Joe and I are running the show here. I can’t believe Frank continues to leave us in charge; I am both shocked and flattered about that. Let’s have some fun. Joe, let’s kick it off with sports. You guys know that I’m a big golfing fan, although I haven’t played in a long time. If you have a hat on, give a tip to Mr. Ryan Fox. Look at this guy. If you did not watch it, this was amazing. Number 1, because it was the last major of the year. Came down to the last putt on the last hole, something everybody dreams about. Hey, you got this putt to win a major. Boom, sinks it. What I want to say, though: this guy plays faster than your Weekend Warriors, including me. So if you guys go out on a four-some and you have your beers and your cigarettes and your cigars and you’re out there partying like rock stars, you probably do not play as fast as that guy.

Daniel Creech 01:06

Unbelievable. There’s a great video online—Sam Burns, who is also a fast player on the PGA—picks up his putt out of the 18th hole, and it was 22 seconds later from when he grabbed his putt till when Ryan Fox hit his putt to win the open. That’s amazing. For all of you guys that say golf is boring and hard to watch live, I agree with you, but not that guy. Not that—there it is. Yeah, that’s amazing. I’m not going to make everybody wait for 22 seconds, but you get my point. And then Joe brought it to my attention. Evidently, you baseball fans out there, there’s some things going on. The Red Sox, who Joe hates with a passion because he’s a Yankees fan, evidently have won 15 in a row. Now, a skeptical like me—you play 1,000 games a season—you’re probably going to win a handful and go on streaks. But jokes aside, this is impressive. I don’t care if I’m not a big sports fan, baseball fan. I like history, I like data, and streaks like this are impressive. And evidently, they have a lot of injuries, so they’re bringing people out of the minors and still winning.

Daniel Creech 02:09

So give a tip of the hat to the old management team there. I have a good friend from the Northeast, up in Boston, who lovingly thinks everybody cares about the Red Sox. Joe, you don’t care about the Red Sox. See, neither do I. But hey, congratulations on a streak there. Let’s get to something informative here. We’re going to talk oil, because oil is now coming up against a psychological value of $90 a barrel. Look at that, almost at $92 now. And what I want to point out here is, I want to—anybody that’s getting overly nervous here, I want to talk you back off of this ledge. And we’ve been on this energy play for a long time, and unfortunately, this tit-for-tat back and forth between the U.S. and Iran is only escalating. So as you can see from the chart here, obviously at the end of February, when this whole war started, oil spiked, has come down. Frank and I were pounding the table over the last couple of weeks as oil came down in price, as peace deals were being negotiated, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was picking up.

Daniel Creech 03:17

Nothing back to normal pre-war levels, but it was picking up and flowing a lot better versus the blockade that was going on. However, when oil dipped down to the 70s, we were telling you—and we’re not trading this day by day—but we were just simply saying, “Hey, be cautious on getting too bearish as prices continue to go down.” So I understand you want oil to fall when it’s 100-ish a barrel. At $70 a barrel, it’s hard to get much more bearish on oil because of everything we’ve been talking about the last couple of weeks, from production, refining, logistic movement, and all that kind of thing, with demand continues to surge. Now here, let me help you out. Do not get crazy bullish on oil going back to 120. Is it possible? Absolutely. Anything’s possible. And Trump, President Trump, has posted and basically hinted that the escalation is going to go higher between the U.S. and Iran. He even went to his Truth Social and posted about any rockets, drones, attacks on ships from Iran or the Houthis are going to be retaliated in—or, excuse me, are going to mean the U.S.

Daniel Creech 04:28

is going to retaliate against power plants and bridges. Obviously, not being a smart aleck here, that’s a major escalation when you talk about taking out major infrastructure that not only is aimed at harming the bad guys, but you take out bridges and power plants, that’s going to harm your civilians and just bring that boiling pot to another high. That’s not a good thing. And my perspective here on oil is: could we see oil spike to 100? Absolutely. But it’s not going to stay there, in my opinion. So I say all that to caution you on going out and chasing this. Now, how do you want to play this if you want to have exposure to energy, which you should? You can look at your big drillers, everybody that has operations from drilling to logistics to refining. So you can look at your big dogs on Exxon and Chevron. We like VG. Venture Global. Hell, I just forgot the name, Joe. I can remember the ticker. VG is getting a nice pop from this volatility and escalation as it should.

Daniel Creech 05:29

This is a liquefied natural gas player. And really, one of the differentiators about this company is they lock in the majority of their production in LNG for long-term contracts. We’re talking decades. But they also keep a portion—I’m rounding—let’s say 20 to 30 percent of their volumes to be able to sell at spot prices. So in situations like this, when oil and natural gas spike, they can capture some of that upside. It is a two-edged sword, though. If prices collapse and they want to sell that, they’re going to get lower prices. So keep that in mind. Manage that volatility and emotions accordingly. Another outside of the oil drilling is Nordic American tankers. If you put up NAT. And Nordic American tankers, I’ve talked about these guys a lot, and I will continue to hold my promise to you guys, and damn near guarantee that this stock will continue to climb higher because I’m not buying it, okay? My track record sucks on trading this, even recommending it. However, I’ve always been a fan of this because of the owners and operators are the largest shareholders.

Daniel Creech 06:31

And Hanson, H-A-N-S-S-O-N, is the gentleman’s last name. I’m not even going to butcher his first. He’s the founder, chairman, and CEO. Their family owns a ton of stock, largest shareholders, and they put out these updates that just make you laugh and are comical. This one is actually from today, and it’s titled “An Optimistic Summer Message from NAT.” And he literally calls out the experts that don’t drill or transport oil and how they’ve been wrong. He says, “Many of them have been wrong for some time. Some of them have been wrong all the time.” I like that. That’s a good tongue-in-cheek comment right there. Now, these guys pay excellent dividend. At current prices, I believe it’s over 9 percent. Joe can scroll down and look at that. However, more than 50 percent of Nordic American tankers’ business is with the largest oil companies in the world. They highlight how they’re experts with cooperating with major oil. These guys run Suzemac boats. They carry a million barrels of crude. All their ships do.

Daniel Creech 07:30

And the management team is talking about the next year or two, the demand and shipping rates are going to be very high. The big headwind for this stock is money flowing into it. So you have a tight share structure where the family and operators own a majority. I just don’t know, and I’m not being funny here, I just don’t know that this gets a lot of love from Wall Street. And one of the things that you need in order to make money, as Frank talks about a lot, is a thesis, this momentum, this catalyst, and what is going to cause money, either money managers, institutions, or retail people to flow or to buy into a stock like that. You got to get the story out there. I like their kind of back and forth, not advertising, but updates and news feed they put out. But that just to keep you guys kind of keep this train on the tracks here, that’s one of the big headwinds. I don’t know how much money is going to flow into that. That being said, it’s an excellent, consistent dividend payer. It’s in the right field and right sector with the shipping to take advantage of what’s going on around the volatility.

Daniel Creech 08:38

So a couple of those to keep an eye on and trade. Like I said, NAT is basically going to go higher because I’m not buying it, and you guys are welcome for that. Email me and give me a thank you. Let’s turn to earnings and big tech. And we can’t talk about big tech without talking about the mighty Google. Now, Google, Joe, is Google still down? It is. It’s down about 7 percent. I saw pre-market, it was down 4-ish percent. Then before I started recording, it was down about 7. So momentum is to the downside today as everybody digests and kind of looks through these numbers. These numbers, by the way, Florida fantastic. Check this out. Earnings per share of $9.11, $6.23 better than estimates. $6.23 better. Okay. Services increased 15 percent. All right. Google Search, the big dog, 17 percent growth year over year. All right. You got to tip a hat to that. 13 percent in YouTube ads.

Daniel Creech 09:40

Now, what everybody is questioning, and rightfully so, it’s okay to be a critic. You just want to be able to listen to whatever the answer is on the other side. Don’t just be a critic and be quiet. That’s lazy. On the AI front, is AI leading to productivity? Is AI generating a return on investment? Is AI leading to more opportunity? Well, that’s going to remain to be seen, and it depends on where you’re at in this game, let’s say. So analysts rightfully say, we’re going to say, “Well, show me essentially the line item on your balance sheet or cash flow statement where AI is going to show up.” And as Frank’s been beating the drum on that, that’s not how this is going to work. Google’s perspective is all the amazing growth behind the income, the search, the YouTube, and everything else is related to AI. Now, some of you guys are going to roll your eyes on that and say, “Well, I don’t know about that. That just sounds like a scapegoat to justify high spending.” Well, it could be.

Daniel Creech 10:42

But at the same time, you can’t criticize somebody for investing billions of dollars into building out an idea and then not even let that idea be built and up and running before you criticize whether the results are. Unfortunately, that’s going to take some time that we all have to deal with. What’s going to happen between now and then? A lot of volatility. Google executives give a few interesting stats on their conference call. Now, you still have this massive company growing at unbelievable rates, okay? Just the revenue grew over 20 percent year over year. That’s magnificent. Gemini Enterprise, now we’re getting into its AI ideas. It has 90 percent of the Fortune 100 companies using it. And I’m just taking some snippets from the conference call. The Gemini app has 950 million monthly active users. Now, that’s a good number, but we need a comparison too. Most numbers are just dead and lazy when they don’t give you a comparison.

Daniel Creech 11:43

That’s tripling users in the last year. Now, if you’re a critic, you can say, “Well, let’s see if it can continue to grow at that pace.” Okay, that’s fair, I guess. However, you have to say that is somewhat to do with AI and the ability to create products people are willing to pay for and use. And that growth, tripling over the last year, definitely shows that. Now, let’s turn to this massive spending side because this is impressive. Frank has talked about, and rightfully so, the bond market is giving warnings to hyperscalers. Hey, you need to scale it back. We’ve talked about Oracle and how their share price is getting hurt because of the excess spending, the liabilities they’re on the hook for to build out this AI dream. Google, in my opinion, is in a different boat by itself. Google is separate from other hyperscalers, and let me explain why. When you look at the results for Q2, operating cash flow was $39.1 billion in the second quarter and $185.7 billion for the last 12 months.

Daniel Creech 12:50

CapEx surged to $44.9 billion. Approximately 60 percent of the investment is in technical infrastructure and 40 percent is in data centers. Okay, remember that. Data centers. They had negative cash flow. All you critics, get your cocktails out and cheers. Negative $5.9 billion in the second quarter. That should get your attention. That’s a lot. However, you can be a critic, but you’re lazy if you don’t listen to the other side of it. Free cash flow, $53.3 billion over the last 12 months. Here’s the kicker. Google has $242.5 billion in cash and marketable securities. That’s $87.1 billion in equity securities. Long-term debt of $98.2 billion. If memory serves me correct, over the last year or so, the debt has gone from roughly $16, let’s round, $15 to $20 billion to $100 billion. That’s incredible. That’s huge growth.

Daniel Creech 13:50

However, yes, they went negative this quarter on free cash flow. Yes, they might go a little bit in the future. They still have $242.5 billion in cash, other securities, and they can manage their cash flows. Okay? Over the last 12 months, they had $53.3 billion in free cash flow. They can manage that and match that with what they see for opportunity to invest in. Another reason they are in a league of their own is, Joe, you ever heard of a little company called Berkshire Hathaway? Yeah? Berkshire. Big dogs, lots of cash, big long-term, big buyers and holders and such. Now, why do I say this? Because Berkshire, under Warren Buffett, before he stepped down and kind of semi-retired, he’s still obviously very involved, built a multi-billion dollar stake in Google. And I commented on this recently, and I was very impressed when Mr. Buffett sat down with Becky Quick of CNBC in the last couple of weeks. He talked about how he initiated the position in Google, and now the new guy in charge is just taking that battalion and running with it.

Daniel Creech 14:55

And he talked about Google going from an asset-light business, thinking tech, to an asset-heavy business, CapEx, data centers, etc. And Mr. Buffett pointed out and said he thinks that they can win in that environment of competition because of the management team, because of their past, yada, yada, yada. That’s impressive. Now, in addition to the debt that I just highlighted on Google, they did do an equity offering. They raised $80 billion, and they issued new shares. And that was very unprecedented in recent times from big tech companies. Berkshire Hathaway bought $10 billion in that private placement. Now, I say this. If Berkshire Hathaway is one of your largest shareholders, and they are committed to you in the long term, and you have open lines of communication with them, don’t you think that, A, those guys are some of the smartest guys in the investing world? And B, do you think they would be deploying and putting billions of dollars of their shareholder and their own money in Google if they really thought this AI build-out was just farce?

Daniel Creech 15:55

Now, just because they’re Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t mean they’re right all the time. Mr. Buffett got fooled with the whole Peak Oil years and years ago. I’m not going to beat him up over that. I’m just saying everybody’s human. I look at Google here, and we took good profits on this. I think Google’s in a league of its own because of its YouTube, because of its Google search reach, and because of the way it can manage its cash flows and its big heavy hitter in Berkshire Hathaway. If you have a year chart on that, I believe if we look at it on Finviz, let me pull this up. Joe, can you switch over to finviz.com? Just because I’m lazy and they put on some moving averages. Making Joe work on the fly here. I apologize. But I believe if you look at a yearly chart of Google, it’s very close to its 200-day moving average. And I am a ooh, it dropped below it. Look at that. It gapped down. I like that even more. Click on the weekly chart if you would, please. They’re in the middle.

Daniel Creech 16:55

All right. So it’s close to its 50-day there. I like to watch simple moving averages. I think this pullback is very healthy. I wouldn’t rush out and buy it today. Again, we’ve already taken profits, but you can always revisit ideas. But these guys are able to manage cash flows. Everything I just said is why I think Google is in a league of its own. So don’t just lump all AI investments together. That’s my fair warning there. Yes, it can be volatile. You can always have the skeptics. It can see it’s down 7, 8 percent, but do not throw Google out here. Don’t write it off is my point here. Now, moving from Google to this more on AI data centers. And Google, to their point in credit, the management team said, “Listen, if we see more opportunities, we’re going to invest in it.” And they still talk about how demand is outpacing supply, and that’s positive for the power owners and everything Frank and I have been pounding the table on. Joe, if you would, pull up the data center revolt.

Daniel Creech 17:58

Now, this is a news article from ZeroHedge. And the reason I want to point this out is because this is going to be an ongoing story that I think you need to pay attention to as investors. And you need to pay attention to it because, A, it’s going to have big consequences and/or repercussions and/or positivity on how things unfold with our wonderful leaders. B, we’re coming up on midterm elections, so this is going to be stuffed down your throats, whether you want to hear about it or not. Data centers are all over the news right now. There’s, A, it’s a huge part of our GDP. It’s leading investments across our economy. It’s causing shortages, supply chain issues, and some inflation on all types of different products and services. And it’s also getting a lot of backlash because they’re noisy and they take up space. And they’re going to use up all of our water and all of our clean air and all of our land. And you know the doomsday predictions. We’ve even had states like Frank’s home state of New York put moratoriums on them, kind of delays.

Daniel Creech 19:04

Everybody’s trying to say, “Not in my backyard” type deal. And think whatever you want to, but listen to some facts here. Now, this data center revolt is led by a Tea Party veteran. Okay, remember the Tea Party? Those guys are all fiscal responsibility, get your act in order financially. They have a good idea. Not going to happen. Failure, but good all around. You got to give them credit where credit is due. They had 100 this guy led, and through social media, of course, they had 142 protests across 42 states. Naples, Florida. Joe, I don’t see anything anywhere close to us. There was one in Jackson, but I wouldn’t have gone anyway, just as a heads up. I would have avoided it as I go to a dive bar. I don’t want you guys interrupting my time.

Daniel Creech 19:55

Let’s see. 142 protests across 42 states. And are you showing some of the if you scroll down, you can see some of these individuals holding signs. Listen, if you want to protest, protest. That’s fine. Now, I want to sprinkle in some information here on data centers. Now, Frank and I have talked about how many gigawatts we need to add to the grid, this demand outpacing supply and such. If you look at the Energy Information Administration, the EIA, they are projecting that through the end of 2026, we’re going to have to add we’re on pace to add about 86 gigawatts of power to the grid. S&P Global, another research firm, they suggest about 90 gigawatts are going to be added. Okay? So we’re rounding. The exact numbers are not important here. How does that break down? Well, solar, now we’re using this 86 to 90 gigawatts number. Solar is going to represent and add about 43.4 gigawatts. That’s 51-ish percent of total additions.

Daniel Creech 20:59

Battery storage is 28 percent of the power at 24.3 gigawatts. Wind is 14 percent at around 11.8 gigawatts. And natural gas is about 7 percent of that with 6.3 gigawatts. Now, I say that because over the coming weeks, I’ll kind of share some more info with you. But I just want to highlight here that by 2030, there are reports that we need 445 more gigawatts. And these numbers are getting kind of crazy. Think about this. If you want a solar farm, it’s 5 to 10 acres per megawatt. If you want wind, so solar is making up 51 percent of the total additions of our gigawatts. Okay? 5 to 10 acres per megawatt. Just think of that in land type. Wind, which is going to add 14-ish percent of the gigawatts through 2026, you need 30 to 100 acres per megawatt.

Daniel Creech 22:09

Now, you can say not in my backyard on data centers, but data centers have a much smaller footprint than wind or solar. Battery is even better because it’s smaller as well. I’m not trying to bash wind and solar, and I’m not trying to prop up data centers. I’m simply saying if you don’t want it in your backyard because of situations with resources, water, whatever, not every place is a right spot to put a data center or a wind farm or a solar farm. I get that. However, don’t just fall for the knack or the doom tactics that it’s going to erase all of our resources and it’s going to be a negative. It is actually going to be a net positive. No matter who wins, company-specific stock-wise, we obviously want to pick great stocks to help make above-average returns as this gets built out. Regardless of who wins, this is a net positive for the electrical grid, power generation, and individuals at the consumer level across the board. Yes, it’s going to take time to play out.

Daniel Creech 23:10

Yes, it could be inflationary in the short term, but long term, it is a net benefit and cost will go down. That is going to be I hate to sound arrogant, but that is just economic history. And that will continue to play out just as it is over the past. So don’t get too caught up in that. The other reason I want to highlight this, Joe, is because as the midterms come up, would it shock you that AI companies like Anthropic are doubling their donations ahead of the midterms? I’m having fun with this people because that’s what we do here. I’m not knocking them for upping their donations. I’m knocking them for being hypocrites and running to the government and trying to put cages up and stifle competition in their favor, which is what, in my opinion, as I alluded to yesterday, OpenAI and Anthropic are doing. Anthropic is going all in. They doubled their political donations to 40 million, up from 20 million.

Daniel Creech 24:15

And this is to the public first action. And supposedly, this is not going to be used to persuade anybody. It’s just for the good of AI. All right. Well, if you believe that, I got a bridge to sell you from my formal hometown in Arizona that has beautiful oceanfront property. I also have to like that Anthropic is getting political. Did you know they added Ben Bernanke? Does that name ring a bell, people? Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke to their some kind of board of truster BS. Talk about getting political. Put a former Fed Chair on your payroll or on your goody list, and now you up your donations, but it’s all just to get the message out and to make the world sing Kumbaya. Telling you, people, I cannot wait for OpenAI and Anthropic to go public. I will have much more sarcasm to share with you then. Let’s see. So keeping on data centers here.

Daniel Creech 25:18

The data center build-out is going to happen. And if it gets much more political, you’re going to see it divide just like the taxes and just like your all kinds of rules and laws. You can argue why people are leaving certain states and going elsewhere. It’s for taxes. It’s for the COVID response. It’s for all kinds of things. If the data center continues down this route, it’ll do the same thing. It’ll leave places like New York that aren’t already grandfathered in, and they’ll go to friendly places. Money flows to where it’s treated best is a great true saying. Well, so will projects, and so will talent, and so will innovation. Okay. I say all that because that is not stopping. And one of these companies is going to continue to benefit, and that’s GE Vernova. And Joe is going to pull that stock up. And I’m not going to go through a lot of the details here from their earnings, but I want to highlight something that just stuck out, just smacks you in the face. And this is an amazing thing.

Daniel Creech 26:17

So they actually came out and they missed earnings per share by 70 cents. $2.47 was less than the $3.17 expected. Revenue rose nicely, about 22 percent a year. They talk about their how many gigawatts of power gas turbines they’re delivering, and they’re growing that. So they’re on track to deliver 20 gigawatts of annual gas turbine output in the third quarter. That goes up to 24 gigawatts in 2028, etc., etc. The knock here, and the stock was down a little bit, is they didn’t raise their EBITDA, earnings before interest taxes, depreciation, and amortization margin. They maintain that between 12 and 14 percent. Okay. You can put that on the negative side of the T chart because you have this growth and this robust demand. However, their expected free cash flow and revenue was boosted higher. Joe, I’m glad you’re sitting down for this. Their old projections for free cash flow, that’s the money left after you pay all your employees, pay all your bills, and invest in future projects.

Daniel Creech 27:25

Okay? This is the stuff you can put under your bed or in your safe if you’re Scrooge McDuck. Their projections were between 6.5 and 7.5 billion dollars. They raised that to 11.5 to 12.5 billion dollars. Are you Florida kidding me? That deserves a golf clapper clip. That’s amazing. Ryan Fox is back there partying with free cash flow numbers from GEV. Now, thinking out loud here, you’re not raising your EBITDA margins. You’re essentially backlogged like crazy. On Finviz earlier today before it started trading, the market cap was around 260, 265 billion. GE management says their backlog grew 10 to 13 billion dollars from the last quarter, and they think it’s going to be around 200 billion next year in 2027. So essentially, you call up GEV, Joe and I are going to order a gas turbine, and they’re going to tell you, “Well, get in line. Be about two years.” Well, all right. Well, can I pay?

Daniel Creech 28:27

Can I skip like Frank’s doing at the amusement park right now? He’s buying passes so he can cut off everybody in line. That’s what people are going to try to do with these gas turbines. It’s not going to work. You have a wait list, and this takes time to build out. But this is a tremendous opportunity. And if you look at the stock, it’s kind of double-topped around its recent highs. But if you want exposure, and this is something that we wear many hats here at Curzio Research. Yes, we recommend a lot of stocks specifically, but we try to generate a lot of ideas. And we’ve stopped shy of recommending this, so I’m not going to pat ourselves too much on the back. However, we have talked about this stock for well over a year, probably going on two years now. I don’t want to exaggerate. And we’ve talked about this as a buying on pullbacks. And if you’ve ever listened to us, you’ve been up on this stock. And my point is, unless you and it’s okay, whatever side you choose, Red Rover, Red Rover, you can run to whatever side you want to.

Daniel Creech 29:26

If you think the AI bubble is a thing of the past, the investments are just gotten ahead of themselves, and there’s a big pullback and/or crash, and the return isn’t there, that’s fine. If you still think that this is going to play out and it still deserves the benefit of the doubt because the numbers these guys are putting up and the amount of capital and spending that’s flowing into this area, you want to play this. This is a great way to play the AI build-out and the power theme that we’ve been talking about. Who owns the power? Who generates the power? Those are going to be the real winners because, as we’ve said, open source, closed source. Does Gemini beat Anthropic? Does Anthropic beat OpenAI, Grok? It doesn’t matter who the winner is. They all need power, and that’s what we’ve absolutely hit the nail on the head there. If you’re buying this today now, I know there’s a lot of traders out there. I’m not talking short-term trading and such. I’m simply saying I wouldn’t buy this today unless you’re willing to hold this for some time and also add to that position either higher or lower.

Daniel Creech 30:31

Again, this is a way to take advantage of this macro theme of building out the need for data centers, power, and power generation. And that free cash flow number, I’m telling you, that didn’t hardly get anything across CNBC or major news networks. And that’s horrible because this is the best nerd information you could ask for. We just damn near doubled our extra free cash flow. Think of the parties they’re going to throw in management. Crazy. All right, Joe, let’s move on to Bitcoin. I think I’m staying on track here. I’ve ranted about just about everything I want to. Bitcoin, where is Bitcoin at? We are around 64, 65-ish. I continue to be impressed. If you pull up the year-to-date chart, I just want to highlight that last basically April to mid-May to about 80,000. I admit that gave me a head fake, and I bought into that. I added to some positions, and I thought that was kind of the new normal.

Daniel Creech 31:33

Here we are being humbled and pulled back. However, I’ve talked about a lot of catalysts coming up for Bitcoin as we get closer to the end of the year. We’ve talked about the four-year cycle, this 200-weekly moving average, which is I’m rounding in the low 60,000s. So depending on how you’re looking at that, it’s positive for Bitcoin to have been under that and now recaptured that price. I think that’s something to note. And you also have some momentum that’s coming back to the space. Joe, if you could go over to that so-so-value and so-so-value.com, excellent website, and it tracks all kinds of things and metrics across inflows and outflows of Bitcoin. And what we do is here we click on the ETF, and it shows you in ranking order of all the ETFs. And then it’s got this great graph, show you inflows and outshows. Now, Joe’s got it on the daily right there on the bottom left of your screen. Obviously, the green numbers are positive showing inflows, and the red bars are when money is flowing out.

Daniel Creech 32:34

And clearly, over the last month or so, it was red, red, red, red, red, and now a little bit of green. Is that weekly? I’m sorry, that’s weekly. So we’ve seen several weeks in a row, and then the last two or three weeks, it’s finally managing to come back. Why do I say that? Well, because you can’t look across news headlines and financial headlines and not see more news about big banks, trading firms, everybody from Interactive Brokers. Now, we knew Coinbase and the Robin Hoods were more crypto-ish and throttle-heavy. But Interactive Brokers and your big banks and your other platforms that are bringing the ability to already trusted names and brands to their clients, the ability to just buy Bitcoin or have exposure to Bitcoin through ETFs or spot holding or whatever very easily. And that is a huge difference. And so we even highlighted Larry Fink from BlackRock, largest asset manager.

Daniel Creech 33:37

We even highlighted his comments where he quickly just said, “Hey, there was a lot of leverage, a lot of froth in the Bitcoin markets. That’s been washed out, and that’s why we have support around these levels.” That was when BlackRock, yeah, BlackRock, announced earnings, I believe, last week when Larry Fink went on CNBC and Bitcoin was around the 60-ish thousand. That is very positive, in my opinion. Now, to tie this in with, well, I have a crystal ball. It’s not always working. What’s going on with the Bitcoin price outside of this 200-weekly moving average, outside of this four-year cycle? Well, there’s other momentum catalysts and thesis playing out, as Frank talks about, and it’s the Clarity Act. And this is the piece of legislation that’s going to really help solidify and make rules and regulations a little easier, and it’s going to unleash innovation in the crypto space. What it really will do, in my opinion, just from a psychological standpoint, and this is what a lot of people were talking about, is, “Hey, we got the Genius Act passed.

Daniel Creech 34:39

If now we get this Clarity Act passed and we get some ideas around rules and regulation, innovation will take off, but more importantly, capital will flow into the space. And if you get capital, just like we showed you with so-so-value, if you start to get capital flowing back into this, look out. We could be on I was head faked on the last kind of uptick and then pull back, but I do believe it’s a win, not if that’ll happen. Now, what’s different about the Clarity Act this time? Supposedly, there’s been some negotiations between Republicans and Democrats about the ethics because nothing says ethics like our amazing representatives that make $180,000 a year and somehow generate millions in net worth or billions if you’re Trump. It made $2 billion. Now, they’re going to outlaw any political holder, office holder, president from issuing new coins. Joe, evidently, President Trump agreed to this. And why wouldn’t he? He already did his coin. He already made his money.

Daniel Creech 35:41

Of course, who cares if you want to do another one? That just shows you how ridiculous all this is, people. Sorry about that. Anyway, we have politicians and Senator Cynthia Lumis out of Wyoming. She has been a huge component of this trying to push this across the finish line. So you got some positives on Republicans and Democrats a little bit. It’s not done here yet. Don’t get too crazy. Don’t give either one of them too much credit. But we also have politicians like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying, “Joe, we’re on the one-yard line. One-yard line.” Let’s hope that is the opponent’s one-yard line for all you football players, not your own one-yard line. And they push it through before recess and all this kind of stuff. But then you have another CEO come out. Obviously, you’re going to have your Coinbases, your Galaxy Digital, Mike Novogratz. He’s out there. He even offered to buy everybody drinks if they pass it. It’s kind of silly, I thought, but whatever.

Daniel Creech 36:41

I’m going to move on from that, Joe. Goldman Sachs CEO came out in favor of the Clarity Act. Okay? This sticks out to me because Goldman, love them to death, they are not your average banker, of course. They’re not like your JP Morgan or Citigroup. And for them to throw their weight behind it tells you one thing. Wall Street feels like they can make a ton of Florida money off of this. Now, I’m not going to attack Wall Street here. I’m simply going to say, if Wall Street thinks it’s a good idea to make money, then it’s also a good idea for you to be able to make money with the one big red flag. And Frank always highlights it. What’s his park bench comment? They’ll come by and all you have is your shoe left and they take your shoes or something like that. And he’s not wrong. I just love how it sounds. Yes, Wall Street will try to sell you and use this to their advantage, but you don’t have to go down that silly path. The general idea here is you don’t need to buy through Wall Street.

Daniel Creech 37:46

You can accumulate certain stocks, certain ideas, certain plays through power, through Bitcoin, whatever. And if this does pass, and I don’t know what Polymarket had. I saw Polymarket had it like 51%, then it dropped to like 35% or something like that. I’m sure it’s bouncing around. The idea, though, if Goldman Sachs and Wall Street think that they can get this through or if it’s going to pass and they can make money, that’s a net positive because that means you can make money. You don’t have to use their products. You don’t have to fall for their silliness that’s coming down the pike and what they’re going to promise you and all that kind of stuff. Just know this is a major breakthrough for the regulatory side, but more importantly, for the ability for capital, global capital to flow into this space. And that is absolutely huge. One quick thing about Coinbase.

Daniel Creech 38:37

Coinbase legal let’s see, who is this guy? I’m going to go off on a little tangent here. The chief legal officer of Coinbase wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Grewal, G-R-E-W-A-L, for all you guys. They start off with a quote by Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat out of California. And I will have to say, Maxine and I don’t see eye to eye on damn near anything, but I agree with her on this one quote out of context, probably. “I don’t believe that an American citizen should have their bank accounts closed down and nobody tells them why, or you have nowhere to appeal.” Now, this is, of course, Operation Chokepoint 2.0. Frank talked about this. He got debunked. Curzio Research got debunked by Bank of America, those bastards.

Daniel Creech 39:29

And it is true. They can cause harm and stress and mistakes and problems for businesses large and small. However, this was a political attack, and credit to Maxine Waters for saying that. Now, the legal officer of Coinbase talks about how Coinbase went and sued the SEC, the FDIC, and all this for this Operation Chokepoint 2.0. Beginning in 2022, the FDIC sent letters to nearly two dozen banks with a message of basically, “Pause all crypto asset-related activity.” In 2023, that same FDIC denied that they ever did that. So Coinbase did a Freedom of Information Act let’s see, Freedom what is that, Joe? Freedom of Information Act settlement and sued them about that. Then they went further and they went after the SEC for mishandling and doing all kinds of stuff. Lying is what they did.

Daniel Creech 40:36

I’m going to do my best to stay resolved here. Frank is allowed to cuss and say whatever he wants. It’s his program. I’m not. I’m going to do my best to stick to Florida. Gary Gensler was the former chair of the SEC, and I ranted about him a lot. And one of the reasons I ranted about him was because I thought that because of his time at MIT and the rumors around digital assets and teachings and his knowledge, supposedly, this guy’s an intelligent guy, I thought they would be more friendly to crypto politically. I was dead wrong about that. That’s humbling. Gary Gensler led the charge, and they’re talking about from 2021 this is through the findings of the court. From April 2021 to January 2025, the SEC, under Chairman Gary Gensler, who would beat Elmer Fudd in an Elmer Fudd lookalike contest, just to give you an idea who we’re dealing with. They pursued crypto companies through more than 100 legal actions and imposed billions in penalties to these companies. Then the SEC somehow, Joe, accidentally, on purpose, got rid of, deleted, lost all kinds of Mr.

Daniel Creech 41:50

Gary Gensler’s communications, text. Now, listen to this. The SEC blames a process that automatically wiped certain data, a hollow excuse for an agency that extracted billions of dollars in penalties from financial services for basically the same failures. This is just your typical story of rules for the not-for-me type deal. Now, this will make everybody happy. SEC is going to pay $150,000, one of the largest FOIA awards in history. The agency has also fixed its record retention policies. Joe, are you more impressed with a $150,000 fine or that they fixed the record retention policy all of a sudden? A, do you believe any of that? Number one, the 150,000 is a joke. In these terms, it’s even a bigger joke because it’s taxpayer dollars. Who the flying Florida at the SEC is coughing up 150 grand? Is it Gary Gensler? Is he going to sell his Elmer Fudd hat online and get a GoFundMe account to pay this?

Daniel Creech 42:51

Absolutely not. And the record retention is already fixed. That’s the same excuse New Jersey just used for having 6,000-plus voters on their rolls that weren’t supposed to be there. Oh, hell, it’s just an error. Okay. This is unbelievable. I need to look at the let’s see here. There’s one line here. Okay. The agency tasked with policing corporate record keeping somehow lost this is from Coinbase, obviously, talking in the op-ed somehow lost reams of its own text messages between Mr. Gensler and other officials during the most intense period of the anti-crypto campaign. Why do I say all this? Well, because the more this kind of stuff gets out and the more you realize that if you don’t kill an industry or sector, the more it can survive and thrive. To its defense, I’m not trying to convince you of anything on crypto. I know some of you are anti-crypto. That’s fine. You’re allowed to think that. My point that I want to make for other people is, if you’re just looking at risk-reward and the ability to make money and higher returns than average, you want to look at this space because they have basically thrown everything but the kitchen sink at crypto.

Daniel Creech 44:06

Yes, it’s been a long, volatile, hard trail, but you have a sitting president. You have more power, money, and influence pushing crypto higher, expansion higher, adoption higher than you ever had before. I know I use paradigm shift quite a bit, maybe overuse it, but you cannot understand the difference and the paradigm shift between attacking an industry and supporting an industry like what we’ve seen from the last administration to the current administration. Who knows where it’ll go in the future? Things can change. I understand that. However, you get this Clarity Act passed. That opens the floodgates for more money to flow in, and that rising tide is going to lift all boats. And you want to focus on the big dogs, which is Bitcoin and some of the other stocks we’ve talked about in the past. I will leave you because we want to generate ideas and such with all kinds of opportunities. So you have your Bitcoin, your Ethereums, your Galaxy Digitals are a big play there.

Daniel Creech 45:07

Frank has talked about some of the crypto miners and AI data center plays. If you would, Joe, pull up BMNR. This is the Ethereum play. And the only reason I point this out is because I know we have a lot of traders and short-term guys and risk takers and things. And when you look at this company, they put out a sorry, BMNR. My speech is almost as bad as my handwriting. These guys put out an update, and this was on July 20th. Their holdings between Ethereum, they’re trying to get to 5% of all Ethereum in circulation, and they are at 4.8% as of July 20th. But what they say is, “Hey, if you combine all of our holdings in tech and investments, you get about $11.5 billion.” Scroll down for me, please. Let’s just see what the market cap here is.

Daniel Creech 46:09

About 10-ish, let’s round, $10 billion. This is a good trading opportunity potentially because if you get a lot of momentum and you get some of this money flowing into it, people like leverage and think, “Oh, this stock could outpace Ethereum or Bitcoin with strategy.” We know those narratives. However, if you can buy a company trading for less than the cash and investments, which are volatile, of course, but you have a chance to buy or trade Bitmine immersion, the market cap is lower than its Ethereum and such holding. If you’re bullish on Ethereum and its other moonshot – I think these cats are in Mr. Beast or whoever – then you want to look at that because that is an excellent risk-reward if you’re into the momentum side because it’s not going to take long for people to say, “Well, hell, it’s trading for less than the cash and holdings. That deserves some sort of a premium.” And you can make great returns very quickly. It’s a two-edged sword. Be prepared for the downside. But I just wanted to highlight that.

Daniel Creech 47:09

These guys, to their defense, they put out these updates on a regular basis. So I’m sure you can just Google search this. It’s not that big of a deal. Check out what their holdings are valued at and then compare that to the market cap. Last thing I will say, XXI, I believe, is the ticker, Joe, for 21. I’m lying to you. 21 Capital, XXI. Down about 7% today. If you pull up a long-term chart, it’s going to get ugly, people. Get a cocktail. Look at that. Man. Back in November, you were probably beating your dog. Come the end of the year, you were selling the dog. I know we have some animal lovers. Yeah, we’re going to get some feedback on that. Daniel@curzioresearch.com. I point this out quickly here. Jack Mahler, we’ve traded this incorrectly in the past at much higher prices. That’s why you use stops, people. You don’t want to hold this on and be on a park bench. This is down 90-ish or more percent since it’s come out.

Daniel Creech 48:14

These guys are a Bitcoin treasury. You’re going to do all these great businesses, stack Bitcoin, all this. Jack Mahler, I don’t know him personally. I’ve listened to quite a bit of his speeches. He’s on the is it Strike, Joe? Is that what he does? Is it Strike or Stripe? Let me see here. I apologize there, Mr. Jack. But it’s about Bitcoin payments, accessible transfer. I like the idea. He’s put out results of his company. Months ago, he actually put out some figures from that company as he was taking on this role as CEO. Stripe. Thank you. And listen, Twitter’s X, social media is having its fun because he recently stepped down. Now, does he deserve some criticism? Absolutely. This stock has been absolutely horrible for anybody that’s bought in it, unless you’re an insider. You’ve gotten your butt kicked, your teeth knocked in, all that kind of stuff.

Daniel Creech 49:14

And now this guy just steps away talking about how great Bitcoin still is and how he’s going to take the message to the world. That’s great. Okay. However, you do deserve some criticism there because there’s easily the internet’s for free. I’m humbled by it. You look back, it sucks to be wrong. But he was on camera and record several times saying, “Listen, I’m going to be CEO of this company forever. That’s my intentions. Here’s what we’re going to do.” And then when the darn thing falls so bad, you leave all these bag holders and just say, “Well, I’m going back to my original project and spreading the gospel of Bitcoin.” Nobody’s looking after your money more than you. Not Jack, not Daniel, not anybody. And this is a good way to just continue to remind yourself about that lesson. Deadcat bounce, possibly in this. But most of these Bitcoin treasury companies or a lot of these things are not buy-and-holds, in my opinions. These are trading ideas. If you want to buy and hold a crypto and look for leverage, use your head.

Daniel Creech 50:15

You can do that other ways, especially now as the floodgates are getting opened. Companies are allowing you to do options. If you want leverage, you can do it in several ways. If you believe in the idea, have exposure to those ideas. You can buy Bitcoin, you can buy Ethereum, you can buy certain stocks. Just be cautious on these guys that are getting paid, getting stocks, getting all kinds of sweetheart deals that are already rich and wealthy, acting like they are looking out for the better of you. It’s complete BS, and the least we can do is call it out. So I wish Jack well with his existing adventure. I hope he does get the Bitcoin message out, but this is horrible, and it looks as bad as it is. And if you’re in this stock, that’s lessons on position sizing and stop losses. How about that? We’ll wrap it up there. Love me, hate me, don’t ignore me. Daniel@curzioresearch.com. It’s a privilege to host this solo. I miss Frank.

Daniel Creech 51:15

He will be back next week. For all you Alpha members, I will see you mañana. I have some updates, some stock-specific stocks to go through. That will be exciting. A lot of movement and a lot going on there, people. Until then, next week, cheers. 

Announcer 51:22

Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry. The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its host and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money and your responsibility.