Notes from Jay Gould’s interview of Dr. Jeff Ross (bitcoin, medicine, macro)

Jeff Ross – Founder Vailshire investment fund
47yo

His Top 5 people (chats with / respects most?): Preston Pysh; American Hodl; Joe Carlosari; James Lavish; Mike Alfred; Swan bitcoin team (Cory, Alex)

Midwest kid

Biology major, Minnesota medical school, became board certified Radiologist (2008-2021)

Loved Rockies, moved to Colorado Springs in 2008

Not interested in school, but good grades
Failed handwriting in 2nd grade

Played tennis in HS and college

Founded Vailshire in 2013, started managing others $ in 2014 (two careers until he retired from medicine in 2021)
Did tele-radiology for a NY group for a few years

Got MBA in finance a few years ago, but wasn’t worth it

Started finance blog after med school, picked up by Motley Fool, also wrote for Seeking Alpha
Got inbound requests to manage money

Grew up poor and redneck

People scared to take first step

At some point bitcoin will clash with governments around the world

US gov weapon of choice is sanctions
US is socialist and centrally controlled

Game theory – which country will go first to start adopting and mining Bitcoin?

Nation states cannot stop bitcoin but can make life miserable for hodlers

Short-term bearish on bitcoin the currency but long-term wildly bullish
affected by Powell hawkish, Fed raising rates, risk-off environment
but long-term, will be more accepted and more ubiquitous year after year

Fed’s uncanny ability to do things at the wrong time

In low rate environments, growth companies do very well
conversely, during rising rates, value companies do better

Similar to Q4 2018 – Powell was new, began to tighten, stocks tanked, and he flipped, didn’t raise, became very accommodative

Fed true mandate is supporting stock and bond markets, and/or inflation

Will try to raise rates, maybe 2-4 times, but then markets tank, and Fed will be forced to change

Doesn’t believe in bitcoin’s 4-year price cycle

Gensler makes clear difference between bitcoin and altcoins
Holding spot ETF hostage to get exchanges cleaned up (KYC / AML)

GBTC 30% discount to NAV – but when spot ETF approved (thinks eoy 2022) – will get back to NAV on top of bitcoin return

Similar to Q4 2018, bitcoin dropped from 20K to 6K, and then a massive dump
Now expects will continue going down, sideways, down, and then something crushes everyones’ souls – $27K, but could go down to $15K

“Macro supersedes everything”

// Finished about half of the interview