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