BTC Sessions - QE on Steroids, Bitcoin Business Revolution, Public Miner Doom | Gary Cardone

Starting point is 00:00:00 The only thing more limited than Bitcoin is your time, and so Bitcoin gives it back to you. I look at Bitcoin as a primary business without me having an HR department when I get successful. The artist and creative types see Bitcoin quicker than the average person. I think it's because they think outside the box. There was the expedient and more profitable thing to do, and then there was the more honest thing to do. What has this allowed me? It has allowed me the freedom to not attend dumb meetings about dumb subjects. Once you have free time, then you can. kind of explore who you are and what you want to be and the things that you get fulfillment from.

Starting point is 00:00:35 You see, that's so important because that's never sold. This is never sold a Bitcoin this way. All right. Welcome to episode three of the Bitcoin boomers. We have Mr. Gary Cardone. Thank you so much for joining us, Gary. Thanks for being here. Thanks for asking. For those of you who aren't familiar with Gary, we're going to ask him to expand on this. But veteran of the energy markets, financial services. One thing I admire, it's actually very interesting, is those of you viewing, you can see some of Gary's art in the background. And he does a phenomenal job. I don't know if I've ever expressed that, but I really appreciate it.

Starting point is 00:01:17 And I find it actually very interesting, Gary, that so many Bitcoiners have this other side. Like you have, you have this artistic side. Our first guest, George Bodine, also an artist. Bob Murphy, who was their second guest, he's actually a singer. Like, I love to write. I'm kind of a creative writer. You know, we have the Satoshi Rakamoto band, you know, Samson Mao and Knut Svenholm and like these sort of guys.

Starting point is 00:01:51 I wonder if there's something there. I don't know, but I think maybe it's just that we have some well-rounded people. Or maybe Bitcoin, like I look at Bitcoin as a, primary business that has no human era exposure. I don't know why more people, as soon as I saw Bitcoin, I'm like, oh, wow, this is a private equity business without me having an HR department when I get successful. So what does this allow me? It has allowed me the freedom to not attend dumb meetings about dumb subjects when the most primary meetings and most primary meetings and most primary decisions are made by one or two people, even if the company's 4,000.

Starting point is 00:02:38 And the 4,000 show up to meetings about nothing, just to stroke everyone's wokeness. It, you know, it has given me time to get bored and then to go, hey, what am I, who am I? What is, is there more, look, I proved in my career that I can be in four industries, not like dedicate to one and get buried by one in its cycles. And it's really given me a lot of freedom to discover myself and do things that I was told were impossible to do for a guy like me. And like to me, that's really living a great life. Even though now, because I'm not so busy with dumb stuff,

Starting point is 00:03:20 I'm having to find how much time I actually have. Into your comment there. I've said for a while that creatives, artists and creative types, see Bitcoin quicker than the average person. And I think it's because they think outside the box. And that's why they're creative because they think outside the box. I'm like, Gary, I saw it immediately once someone sat down and gave me half an hour of time. But I think it's because I think outside the box, which I think most creative people do. I think that's an interesting observation.

Starting point is 00:03:54 I'm an engineer and kind of a math guy. So I have to admit, I missed it the first time, although I wasn't in 2017. So I think it would still be, you know, relatively early. Although I guess I would also say that I'm maybe unlike a lot of engineers in a lot of way. Well, and that's why I said once it was explained to me because the first time I said, oh, it was like online stocks. That was my whole explanation. So, yeah, I said, I'm not interested, you know, so I don't consider that really getting information to make a decision on. But I think I think what Gary's saying is, is incite.

Starting point is 00:04:27 though because what what just about freedom like like what does it give you you know kind of kind of even helping you define who you are right you know once you have free time then you can kind of explore who you are and what you want to be and the things that you get fulfillment from and like all those sort of things but because most people spend their life pursuing money yeah I think that's the huge thing that we all talk about so much but it's really important I've noticed it too in my life, is it allows you to get off of the Fiat treadmill. And Fiat really is a treadmill. You know, you're always kind of figuring.

Starting point is 00:05:07 And it's like the treadmill is speeding up and you're getting older and more tired. We're all boomers. And so, you know, the notion that you've got this compounding machine that you don't have a manager, as Gary points out, you don't have a management team to worry about it. You don't have to go to meetings to talk about it. You can just sit back and watch it do its thing. Suddenly you've got your life back. And that's just incredibly valuable because your time is really, you know, I mean, the only thing more limited than Bitcoin is your time.

Starting point is 00:05:33 And so Bitcoin gives it back to you. And I've observed that over the past five years. And it's really been fabulous. Well, if I could just add the cool thing to this is that you can decide what you do with your time. If you wanted to amplify your time into, look, I think a lot of people chase success. And then when they get it, they have to chase something. something else, which seems to be relevance. And depending on the state of your ego, you can up or down amplify how much activity you do and where you place your energy.

Starting point is 00:06:09 That's simply like I want to put my energy in really cool places that I enjoy. Now the problem with this, I think from many, many, many, many people, they will not use Bitcoin like the way I'm using it because they're still thriving for some kind of doveting dopamine or relevance hit. And that's cool. We need builders, right? Like if I was 40, I'd be building these SBRs and I'd be doing a lot of crazy shit. I wouldn't be building them the way they're building them. But I would be building them most certainly.

Starting point is 00:06:42 But for me, you know, doing a piece of art like this for me is more valuable. And wow, what freedom. And by the way, I'm a 2020 bit coiner. So I don't think you're late. I think you're so early. It's crazy. I sure hope that's right because I'm you know my average cost is 57 and I'm buying $90,000 Bitcoin and very happy to do it. I'm stunned I'm still able to buy five

Starting point is 00:07:07 five digit Bitcoin stunned and I think I'm going to have a chance to do it all year. Maybe. Maybe not. Before though Lawrence you know it's it's getting us more opportunities than anyone told me right. I mean we all know it's going to do what it's going to do one day, but it's, I see this as a real gift, but it's a frustrating gift. That's where I'm frustrated by. Yeah. Well, I, I, and I get that. I get that. And, you know, I think also that, like Larry, you mentioned the Fiat thing, it sucks on you. It tries to pull you back in. And, you know, I, I've had to resist that. So like, like Gary, you've said, you know, like I would probably still fit into the builder category because I'm still, you know, creating companies. I'm building

Starting point is 00:07:57 building my, but that's what I've done. I've spent my career designing laptops and servers and MP3 players and TV. That's, that's kind of where maybe most of my creative energy goes into that while you put it into painting as an example. Like, I've just done the math, okay? And I'm, I'm cool building a business if it's going to give me a 500, 800% return over six years. I have yet to do that, exit six years. If I do get everything going, I get attacked legally or whatever. And doing the math, quite frankly, even if all I did was read books or there's a lot of things I could not do that would be not good, but or do that would not be good. But the math to me says spend less money on doing inefficient things like going to dumb meetings and having to push human beings

Starting point is 00:08:52 to be motivated. I can't motivate any human being except myself. So the math is like, wow, keep my costs down, pour everything into Bitcoin, and I will be able to exit one of the greatest returns in less than eight years. And that's my point about the exit. Whether I exit or not, I've never been able to build a big company and exit with certainty and have liquidity without a bunch of hooks, right? Every company you've sold, man, you get hooks everywhere. And, you know, So this thing about like meetings, you may or man, I know it's about my background, Gary, but I was at Gateway. We were a Fortune 200 company.

Starting point is 00:09:29 I was the chief technical officer there. So I had a staff of about 5,000 people at one time. You want to talk about meetings like shit, just every freaking day, you know, the, and then we'd look, you know, I probably had maybe six or seven layers beneath me at that point. And then you look at the efficiency of the organization and say, how many, how many, how many, how many, minutes are we losing a day, man hours, because of these meetings and what meetings are working and trying to stop them is really difficult. Or to keep the spread, right? A meeting that should be three people is 13. And they sit there for an hour and it's horrible. But, you know, what also happens is I was talking about kind of like Fiat trying to suck you as a minor. One of the things that

Starting point is 00:10:20 I made a decision in 2021 when all the, a lot of the mining companies went public in that period and I didn't. And probably to be to be completely transparent, if you measure it in dollars, I made a bad decision. I made a very bad decision because guys like Fred Thiel and are sitting on tens of millions of dollars in cash and a whole bunch more in equity that I don't don't that I don't have that I didn't generate. But I would be subservient to that system. Like my freedom is more important to me. And by the way, my ability to even serve Bitcoin, I view myself as a citizen of Bitcoin. I can't serve Bitcoin and be the CEO of a public company. Those are mutually exclusive. But that fiat system sucks at you. Like it's tantalizing to want to go

Starting point is 00:11:15 there. I agree, man. You got to decide what you're going to chase. So, you know, for me, money has never been a difficult thing, whether it's a million or 10 million or 100 million. After some point, it really doesn't do anything for me. I have no real, oh, wow, I'm going to make another. Okay, well, what am I going to spend it on? I'm not controlled by remaining relevant. See, I think that's where I get back. to like this is what people work their whole life for right is to get some freedom to do what they

Starting point is 00:11:55 want yet very few people ever obtain it very few like less than a percent even the billionaires man i don't want it it comes with shit and i got i got a boat out here that i would i would literally pay somebody just to take away from me because i don't want the the headache on it it's noise it's a cool thing about you know going through becoming successful if you're just just clear about what's happening, you realize, oh, wow, this stuff is not making me happy. It is not creating value for the world or for myself. What I think is really sage about what you're saying, though, is at no point when you were defining success to you, did you say it's $5 million or $100 million or whatever the number

Starting point is 00:12:44 is. Success was expressed by your... freedom by your lifestyle that that you aspire to it. And I think that's one of the things is like I'm actually slightly different in, but, but I don't define my success in my life and my career by by money either. I never have. You know, I've measured it by more the things I've produced. And, you know, output of my work is kind of how I've defined my success. Now, I've been fortunate in that money has followed because of that. Not necessarily obscene wealth, but good enough. I'm very, very fortunate in financially in my life and probably could have done better if I chase dollars.

Starting point is 00:13:35 But that's my advice when I talk to younger people too is like, you know, define success for you, but chasing a dollar figure is really dangerous. and it probably will not get you what you want. It's probably not going to be, give you the life fulfillment, you know. You know, pick, pick a great partner. Like, you know, like I've been married to the wrong person. I've been married to the right person. Like, like, that's, like, really important.

Starting point is 00:14:08 You know, be happy in what you pursue. And then, just like you said, Gary, I mean, I'm sure you have a list of these sort of thing. Maybe it's not a list. but you have these things like, these are my minimum standards in life. And I'm not going to dip below that. And I'll pay what I have to pay for that. Yeah, that's right.

Starting point is 00:14:31 And one of those things was, you know, I decided a long time in my career, I would not become a prostitute. And there are different levels of prostitutes you want along the corporate ladder. I don't know anybody that, right? the more you go into the Fiat system. For instance, this last company that I was involved with the fraud company in the payments industry, my partner was like, dude, you're being, you're really bitching on Visa MasterCard. You know, we cannot have that much exposure.

Starting point is 00:15:02 I'm like, sorry, but the truth is the truth and you can't start, well, I can't really say that because people aren't going to do business with me. And that, that is a. another reason that I come back to Bitcoin. Bitcoin does not require me to prostitute myself at any level to anyone for any reason whatsoever. I can say, I hate Lawrence Leppard. He's an idiot. He's a bad Arthur and his skin color is wrong. I mean, I could just be obnoxious and nothing changes my position. Nobody can hurt me. That's impressive. When you have a loud mouth like me and actually a belief system that people like me should stand up and say, this is wrong, period.

Starting point is 00:15:54 Okay? And anything else is prostitution in my opinion. I think that's right. I mean, I did observe in my career many, many times where, you know, there was the, there was the expedient and more profitable thing to do. And then there was the more honest thing to do. And, you know, And I was shocked at how early it appears. I think everybody in the Fiat world probably is confronted with these decisions. And, you know, you just, you have to start realizing. And I did. I was in the private equity firm world with some guys who were, you know, like typical private equity guys, right?

Starting point is 00:16:30 I mean, they knew how to cut corners and they were all about making as much money as possible as fast as possible. And, you know, even if it involved, you know, some deception and so forth. And, you know, I tried to walk a thin line there as long as I could until I couldn't take it anymore. And then I got out because I just realized that to be really successful in that world, you know, you had to be willing to, you know, more or less lie, cheat and steal, particularly with respect to your investors. I mean, they were never giving their investors what they said. They were giving them. They were just, you know, shaving them in every single way possible.

Starting point is 00:17:03 And so, you know, you just, I mean, I thought, at the end of the day, I'll probably end up comfortable, not as rich as some of these other guys, but I want to, you know, do it in a way that I know, you know, I did it in an ethical manner. And I don't know, you know, and I think I just came from my father who basically said, look, you know, you got to look at you up in the mirror and feel like you did it in the right way. And he also said, you know, that you just can't put a price. I think you probably did this, Gary. I know, Bob, you've done it since you left Gateway and Gary Lynn, and I think you did it as well. I mean, you can't put a dollar value. on working for yourself. I mean, the notion of not having a boss, of not having an asshole,

Starting point is 00:17:45 you know, that sets the ethical standards, it tells you what to do, that's, that's priceless, even if you make less money. So, you know, I went out of my own at a certain point of time, and I never, you know, looking back, I never regret it. I think, you know, it's not unusual for young people, I think to have to start out working for other people because you don't really know the system, you don't really know the game, you got to learn, you got to get in. You got to get in. into the whole system, no matter what you're doing. But I think pretty quickly over time, you can sort out what's real, what's not, who's good, who's not, where you want to be, where you don't. And it leads many, many people, it leads them to say, all right, I'm out of here. This is not what I,

Starting point is 00:18:26 this is not what I want to become. I'm not, I don't care about that money. And I'm going to do it in a way that I think, you know, I think it's sustainable and I feel comfortable with it. I joined Gateway, about three years before Gateway went public. And still by those standards, about I think it was maybe a three or four hundred million dollar company at the time, but growing 100% a year. And so, and the team that I was part of that eventually took Gateway Public was phenomenal.

Starting point is 00:18:58 Every one of those guys is still a friend. And high integrity, hardworking, very bright and we went public and became by external measurements very, very successful. But we never recaptured the magic of being pre-public. We lost it. Like there was a seminal moment when that happened and didn't realize until three, four years later that the magic was gone. And part of that was because I view it as a fiat infection called an infection,

Starting point is 00:19:33 an infection of the system because the pressure of working toward 90-day cycles. Like we always made great long-term decisions. And now the pressure of producing a report every 90 days that people on the outside would judge us by was ridiculous. And then like new hires. If we had a choice of hiring a new person, and by I know I know you, went to the Ivy League, Larry, for instance. But we got our success by, I'm from the University of Wisconsin.

Starting point is 00:20:11 We had guys from Iowa State and little community colleges all across the Midwest. That was the spirit of it. And we started hiring guys from Brown and Princeton and Duke and Kellogg School of Business and all this other stuff. And bright people, but not our culture, like changed, changed the company. And we lost it. 2004, we lost the company. And by the way, Bitcoiners, this is their Achilles' heel.

Starting point is 00:20:41 You guys study Bitcoin, but you do not study the legacy markets. They have weaknesses. And the Achilles Hill for Fiat companies, public companies, is the quarterly earnings. Stop spending money with the enemy. You will see these companies retract and retrace so fast. Budweiser, Cracker Barrel, soon to be Audi, BMW, Mercedes, these guys are going to get crushed because of quarterly earnings. And they're going to have to lie now.

Starting point is 00:21:14 So if you stop spending money with Netflix, their quarterly earnings will go down. They will not be able to merge with other companies. They'll just say no to these people. And buy Bitcoin with, and buy Bitcoin, man. Don't spend money with Netflix. Buy Bitcoin. $15 bucks at Bitcoin is worth all. a lot more a month than Netflix.

Starting point is 00:21:35 You know, Bob, I learned something some time ago, and that was these industries are not, but they are different, but they're only different in nomenclature. And it's a very common thread of them is five freaking consulting firms with a single playbook that they roll from industry to industry to industry,

Starting point is 00:21:53 and it's literally in eight year cycles, eight to 12 year cycles, and you see the steel industry go through, then the oil industry goes through it, funny enough, the oil industry is still the best commodity market in the world, the least fucked with and controlled. It's hilarious how it's all turning out. That deregulation policy in the 90s, in 80s is really taking bite across the world.

Starting point is 00:22:18 What was so disillusioning to me was it was my first real exposure, like you talked about these analysts. And so we were doing our roadshow and then we started doing our earnings. calls and meeting with these analysts, almost all fucking idiots. Like, they don't know shit. And if you're out there working with a broker or somebody telling you who to invest in and they're reading these reports and making decisions, they don't know jack shit. I was so disillusioned by it because I thought, oh, these must be really smart people.

Starting point is 00:23:00 No, they're not. And they're making ungodly sums of money for writing reports that have absolutely no value. They have no insight. They're just worms. Well, I mean, this just takes us back to the prostitution. Once you know there's problems, like I've had an investment banker for it. I'm like, hey, why didn't you tell me this was a problem? Like a year ago.

Starting point is 00:23:30 And, oh, well, they weren't really ready to sell me. anyway because they had already met their quota for the year. Okay? So they roll me into the next year. Well, the next year hits a recession, I can't get out. So anybody that's building companies, whether you're public or private and you're trying to go public or you're trying to liquidate and you've got an investment banker in the middle of it, assume he is a prostitute.

Starting point is 00:23:54 Yeah, I'm glad you're saying this because I think one of the things, you know, I kind of sit at the junction point of the Bitcoin technical community and the Bitcoin business community. I think that's part of the role I play in this community. And the, I would say largely the technical side comes with the cyphur punk mentality. You have a lot of the libertarians, a lot of the anti-state kind of folks. and they're trying, they have this dichotomy that they haven't resolved yet, which is Bitcoin can't rule the world

Starting point is 00:24:36 and not have financial institutions and nation states and corporations who are heavy users and heavy influencers of what happens with it. Those are, you know, you can either be this tiny little thing that's a niche, and, you know,

Starting point is 00:24:54 that's what Monero or something like that is. Or you can be this monster monetary asset and system that disables the existing system. But only with those guys participating. And that's the camp I'm in. Like, hey, I want this thing to be successful at a global level. And I want in every boardroom, even though I hate the boardrooms. I want every boardroom for that to be a discussion every quarter. Like, how much Bitcoin do we have?

Starting point is 00:25:30 Like, that should be part of all those discussions. And maybe the single most important discussion is how big is the balance sheet? How much Bitcoin do we have? Well, the good news is that, you know, I mean, even though they adopt it, use it, invest in it, believe in it, support it, they can't really alter it. And that's the key, right? I mean, the rules are the rules. And, you know, I mean, we're going to make track.

Starting point is 00:25:54 to our rules, not the other way around. And to the degree they think they can alter it, and they decide to create paper Bitcoin, which they've been doing some more of that recently. If you see, if you look at the futures volumes, they're gonna get their asses hand into them when we ramp like we're doing this morning. So, you know, it's, it has to be adopted

Starting point is 00:26:15 at the institutional and the Tradfai level. But the good news is that they have to adopt it on our terms, not vice versa. you know, we don't have to rip up their terms. That is true, and I don't want to take us down into a technical rabbit hole, but there are things that, you know, for instance, how the MIMPool works, how relay policies work, how blocks are constructed,

Starting point is 00:26:40 that the development community does have a say in, and they can either make it harder. They can't stop it. They can't stop this, but they can either say, hey, we're going to embrace this, and Bitcoin is for everybody, and we're going to, we're going to make sure life is easier for these folks or we're going to make it harder.

Starting point is 00:26:59 And that's part of the battle I fight with these guys on the development side is like, hey guys, you're missing this. Like the simplest example, by the way, I like so I don't want to take us into the but I'm always, if if you are a corporation based on a Bitcoin standard, then you need to have some mechanism to know that. you can get access to the base layer at a reasonable cost at some point in the future. Like you, and right now the way that the market works, which says, hey, when you're ready to do your transaction, go, go see what's out there.

Starting point is 00:27:40 Are there 100,000 transactions or a million transactions in the MMP pool? And we'll tell you what the price is when you need it, as opposed to, you know, and we're working on solutions to that, but we're fighting, we're fighting the development community. instead of them. This is, you know, a big issue for the wallet to wallet business. Hey, when I want to move $10 million of Bitcoin or a thousand dollars of Bitcoin, what's my exit fee? Well, yeah. And that's the one that's really critical.

Starting point is 00:28:09 It's the key. And the only way I have been able to get around it because I'm a commodities, like my whole business, everything I've ever done was built on supply and demand. I get comfortable that the. market in 20 years will be the free market. Like if it's not intervened with, though, if you intervene with it, I'm worried, oh, shit, I could pay a million dollars to get a million dollars of Bitcoin off into the system. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:28:38 And the mentalities have to change. And Bitcoin's decentralization, which you mentioned earlier, is a little bit of a hampering point, just like it was in the marketing. It's also in the technical development. It's the least efficient method of doing anything, man. it is the least efficient if we if we all trusted lawrence was the angel of all angels and perfect we would centralize it through Lawrence right but nobody can be trusted that way and that's why it's why it works exactly yeah benevolent i think a benevolent dictator is the ultimate form of

Starting point is 00:29:12 um organizational management but it's it's not what we have and there's a good reason that we don't have it. But we also have to, we have to figure out, and it's part of what I think my role is, especially trying to bang on the development community, is trying to get them ready, because the past is not prologue. The Bitcoin that they perceive as being the way that it worked. Who was doing transactions? What was the nature of the transactions? how much urgency was tied to the transactions. Like those sort of things are very important. And, you know, Gary, like you said, you're a commodities guy.

Starting point is 00:29:59 Well, I view even more than Bitcoin itself, the ultimate commodity will be block space, which means how do you get access to a transaction in the future? And part of the reason I'm a minor is, I don't mean this in a bad way. I get to decide. I own a certain percentage of the hash rate. I get to decide.

Starting point is 00:30:22 And, you know, I can use whatever method I want to make that decision. It's a powerful position. Well, and as the block reward goes down, the fees will become a larger and larger percentage. Today, Bob, you're so close to this, you would know. What of minor revenue today, what percentage of that is the reward and what percentage of the fees today? I just ran these numbers for a paper I'm writing all time. it's 98.51% of all revenue was from the subsidy. And currently, it's way, way over 99%.

Starting point is 00:30:56 We're very, very low right now. It's subsidy. So fees are 1.5. So they're still quite small. Wow. Blockstream Jade is your easy-to-use Bitcoin-only cold storage solution made for both experts and beginners alike. Its simple, clean interface makes it a great gift to friends and family just starting down their Bitcoin journey.

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Starting point is 00:32:58 Because I think there's a lot happening that maybe is subtle, or maybe not. But it, you know, I think a lot of the community is probably pretty depressed with what's going on in the price. And I'm just completely sanguine, not worried, you know. I mean, I'd almost like to see it go down so I could buy some more. But, you know, as you guys know, I wrote this book, The Big Print, and I do believe print is coming. In fact, they've already started it gradually, Powell himself, all said that they have to grow the balance sheet in order to support the bank reserves because they were getting too skinny.

Starting point is 00:33:33 They were looking at a situation like the repo blowout of 2019, which was the precursor to the last big print. And, you know, they're saying, growing their balance. balance sheet, i.e., buying bonds is not QE, but of course it really is. And they're just lying about that. They're just trying to rebrand it. And then this week you saw Caruso and then somebody over the Bank of America come out saying that they think there might be some discussion this week.

Starting point is 00:33:55 And this is perhaps why we're saying that we're recording this on the Tuesday before Fed Day. Fed Day is tomorrow Wednesday. And both of these guys came out. And it would be reasonable to think they might have gotten some leaked information, suggesting that the Fed was going to kind of aim towards something like, a $40 billion a month purchase of Treasury securities to keep these reserves. And they're going to call it reserve management, not QE. And I think that thought leaking into the market might be why we see silver going through 60 and Bitcoin catching a bit off of 90.

Starting point is 00:34:30 It's now 93, almost 94 this morning. And so I, you know, I've often maintained that it's just a matter of time until they have to start printing again. It's really just kind of a mathematical certainty. And I've got a chart that I'd like to share that I think shows that. But what this is, I use this in a presentation that we just made to our investors. It's a chart done by a guy named Dan Oliver at Murmican Capital, was a gold investor, a good friend of mine. So what this is, is the exponential growth curve is just kind of a compound interest growth curve. It shows what happens when you compound something at 7% over time. And the black line, that's the lighter gray line that kind of goes up, you know, smoothly and a number.

Starting point is 00:35:11 arc. And the black line is the Fed balance sheet, which is a good proxy for the money supply or the money, the reserves that they put into the system that the banks then lend against and create M2. And what you can see here that I think is fascinating is that every time the Fed balance sheet or the money in the system, because we've got debt growing more rapidly than we have underlying money supply, you know, or GDP, you get to these points at which there's not enough money in the system to service the interest rate in the debt. And so you can see what happened. the black line slipped below the growth curve in 2008. And bingo, you had the panic of 2008 and the GFC.

Starting point is 00:35:45 And, of course, they fixed that very quickly. And they had what I call the first big print. And they took the Fed balance sheet from $800 billion to $3 plus trillion. But then, of course, they realized that was a problem. And there was some inflation and other issues. And so they came in and they started to tighten it again. And Yellen started the process. And then Powell added to it.

Starting point is 00:36:02 And that took you into 2019 when in the fall of 2019, the repo market blew out and went to 10%. and they realized bank reserves were too low. And he did a pivot and he turned around and started printing money again. And then three months later, COVID hit and they really hit the money printer accelerator. And up we went from a balance sheet, Fed balance sheet of $3 trillion to, I think at his peak, it was close to $9, maybe a little over $9 trillion. And of course, that led to the 9% inflation that, you know, it wasn't transitory because Paul lied about that.

Starting point is 00:36:31 And brought us back down to now $6.5 trillion. Look at what's the most interesting thing about this chart to me is look at where the two lines, are right now, you know, we're back to the point at which the liabilities are below the parabolic growth curve. And the last two times that occurred, it led to a quote unquote big print. And so to me, you know, that's why I say this big print is imminent. I mean, it's going to happen. It's got to happen. And I think, you know, Luke Roman says six months, you know, Lynn is a little more, Lynn is a little more thoughtful about it. She says, well, we could just have a gradual print. And she may be right. But I tend to think that more likely what will happen is once the floodgates open, they're going to really open.

Starting point is 00:37:13 You kind of see the indicators of all that going on because, you know, you've got Kevin Hassett is going to be probably appointed as Fed chairman. He's talked about much lower rates. You've got Powell attacking Fed governors. I mean, they threw out Bostick for insider trading. They threw out Kruble for the same thing. They're going after the woman who lied about her mortgages, you know, and he's basically trying to get control of the Fed board. And, you know, you've got Bessent, Treasury Secretary Boussaint out there trolling, you know, the whole Fed board saying, what is, what's the Federal Reserve? It's a, it's universal basic income for PhD economists. That's that comment was hilarious.

Starting point is 00:37:47 And, you know, he said, he said they always get it wrong. If, you know, if the Federal Reserve was the, you know, the FAA, nobody would fly in airplanes because these people don't know what the hell they're doing. And he's right. And so, you know, basically, it's clear to me that, you know, with an election coming up next fall and, you know, Powell's term expiring in May, assets going to get in there. They're going to run this thing hot. And the good news is the economy will probably hold together and stock market might even go higher nominally. But the bad news is that's going to be massively inflationary. And gold has already smelled it, which is why gold took off, you know, starting in September and went from 2,600 to 4,400.

Starting point is 00:38:26 Silver is smelling it. I mean, it's doubled in the last year, more than doubled actually. And Bitcoin, you know, Bitcoin has been a little bit of a laggard and a little bit sensitive to this tighter liquidity. It's got a more sensitive liquidity driven price to it. But my sense is that, you know, if you look historically another chart, I'm not going to show it, but I've shown it plenty of times with my Twitter feed. What we see is that gold, because it's more widely distributed, tends to move first and then Bitcoin follows. And so to me, gold has already sniffed out the monetary debasement that's moved heavily. heavily. And what's going on right now is Bitcoin is Bitcoin's in the process of starting to follow.

Starting point is 00:39:06 And so I fully expect. I said I've been wrong about earlier this year, my prediction was the end of the year silver would be a 50 or over. I'm right about that. I said gold would be 4,000 over. I've been right about that. And I said Bitcoin would be 140. I've been wrong about that. But I think that 140, 150 is coming, you know, sometime pretty early next year as these Fed changes take place. So just some kind of context on what I see going on in the, in the market right now. And I know a lot of people are very, very impatient. But, you know, I started buying this stuff in 2013 or 14.

Starting point is 00:39:36 I almost actually kind of forgot about it for a while. I was like, yeah, yeah. One day I opened up my wallet, you know, a coinbase is like, holy shit. There's actually some real money here because I paid three or four hundred for it and got up a few thousand. So, yeah, it's and so I think, you know, people have just got to become more patient here. I mean, we, we are winning. We're going to continue to win.

Starting point is 00:39:57 the power law is in full effect. We're right below the power law right now. This is a good time to be buying. If I had a lump sum distribution, I'd do it right now. You know, there will become a time when it's less good to be buying. I mean, we will go to one and a half time standard deviation above the power law, and that might be 200, and it won't be quite as good a time to be buying. But, you know, I just think everybody needs to relax and realize that we are in the right place at the right time,

Starting point is 00:40:25 and we're lucky to be here. So it was kind of long-winded, but I thought I'd give you my perspective on where we are now in the markets. Two things struck me. The first was that as you dipped below the curve, the violent reaction. Like it and so, but but but maybe that's indicative of the fact that the Fed is always just guessing, right? So when they see trouble, they don't really know how much trouble they're in. And so the reaction is violent because the ramifications of going further, the other side are so terrible in their mind. That's right.

Starting point is 00:41:14 And I mean, yeah, one could argue. I mean, and this is why we've seen interest rates of ping pong between, you know, back in the Volcker days, 20% and 0%. And, I mean, one could argue that, you know, you could almost AI the Fed and just set. interest rates at three or four percent and leave them alone. And we'd have better economic outcomes because you get these crazy swings. Yeah, you get these crazy swings. And the issue really becomes, you know, the Fed was originally created as a backstop to the banks. And the issue is that in the system we've got, the leverage is ever growing and ever increasing at all levels of society. And, you know, in a normally functioning society, we would have a corrective phase where

Starting point is 00:41:52 all the leverage would get weeded out, you know, and frankly, that would be very, very, painful, but that's what they, that's what kind of happened in 1929 to, you know, 1935 or six. But, um, but we've decided we can't have that anymore. That just isn't, that's not one of the options. It's become an unacceptable thing for politicians because they know that if, you know, we go into another depression, we squeeze all the leverage out, um, you know, there's going to be enormous pain. And so, you know, so basically the third Fed mandate has become, you know, printing, um, coming

Starting point is 00:42:25 with fire hoses and printing as necessary to keep the system functioning. And sadly, you know, as with anything else that compounds, Bob, as you know, the numbers just have to keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Right. And ultimately, I mean, I think there's going to, you know, as my book says, I mean, I ultimately think, you know, the Fiat currencies are going to fail because, you know, people are just going to lose faith in them. I mean, most Bitcoiners have already lost faith in them, but we're still a minority.

Starting point is 00:42:54 all gold people have certainly lost faith in them. They're still a minority too. But our ranks are growing. I mean, one of the things, a lot of things have happened the last six months. One of the things I thought was most interesting was Morgan Stanley, who traditionally, I think they advise like $7 or $8 trillion of customer wealth, I mean, a lot of money. And, you know, they used to be 60% stocks, 40% bonds is kind of their model. And they revised it to 60% stocks, 20% bonds, 20% gold.

Starting point is 00:43:24 I was like, what? You know, I fell out of my chair when I read that. Then somebody on Twitter did the math and said, you know, if they took, if all their customers listen to them and put 20% of their money in gold, the price of gold would double tomorrow. And that's probably close to correct. So, you know, I think this whole monetary debasement trade that gold, silver, and Bitcoin are are reflecting. It's a big deal.

Starting point is 00:43:47 And the other big deal about it is, you know, you've got this whole unit bias thing going on where everyone, I have all my friends like, well, yeah, I get gold. but I can't pay four, you bought it for a thousand. Yeah, I get Bitcoin. I can't pay $100. You bought it for $10. And I'm just kind of like, well, yeah, except look at it the other way. Let's look at total available market.

Starting point is 00:44:05 There's a trillion dollars of financial assets. There's, you know, $150 million of bonds, $150 million of equities. There's a bunch of cash. There's a bunch of real estate. All of this. And Bitcoin's $2 trillion and gold is $24 or $26, something like that. Actually, of that gold, only about half of it is really actually easily sale. because half of it's around, you know, female necks in, you know, all over the world and the form of jewelry.

Starting point is 00:44:30 And maybe 20% of it's actually in museums and antiquities that, you know, nobody's going to go, you know, melting down the pharaoh's mask to get the gold. So, so, yeah, I mean, it's, and so my sense is, you know, this debasement trade, we were just, this presentation I just gave to my investors. And that was the chart I took it from that presentation is that, you know, we're in the second inning here. You know, we've got a ways to go. So, you know, and I've used this, I've said this in a lot of podcasts, I'll re-say it just one more time. You know, yeah, okay, so if the financial system, the Fiat financial system, the dollar is Titanic, and you can argue whether it is or it's not. That's maybe a little bit extreme, but I think it could be, you know, and, you know,

Starting point is 00:45:12 and silver and gold and Bitcoin are seats in the lifeboat. Yeah, you know, you're right. I bought my seat cheaper. I was smart. I saw it five years ago. I bought a cheap seat. But you're still on that Titanic. I mean, I know a lot of people are very wealthy of all their money in stocks.

Starting point is 00:45:26 And I'm like, is that really what you want to do? I mean, yeah, the seats are more expensive now, but don't you want to at least buy one seat? You know, another perspective on that, Larry, I appreciate you sharing with us and with everybody, you know, your investor presentation. I'll share something that I do. I write a monthly newsletter for subscribers through Financial Advisor Magazine and goes to 400,000 wealth and financial advisors in North America. America. And I have a hypothesis, especially Gary and Larry as guys that are very familiar with commodity markets, you can tell me if you agree with this hypothesis. But my hypothesis is that the lower bound of a commodity, lower bound of the price of a commodity is somewhat set by

Starting point is 00:46:14 the cost of production of that commodity. And so certainly in the short, in short, windows market supply and demand issues can can play with that a little bit but not nothing sustainable so i for years have been tracking the average cost of bitcoin production across the industry and i found that it sets the lower bound pretty well for the price of bitcoin so in q1 in my newsletter i said that the the cost of production was 75,000. And in April, Q1 of 2020, 2025, in Q1, at the end of Q1, I think it was like April 9th, we bottomed at 75 and bounced off of that, right?

Starting point is 00:47:06 And in September, I did my revised number, and I said it in the high 80s. And I said average cost of production now is in the high 80s and, you know, I was more optimistic, Larry, and maybe we'll still see a big number before the end of the day, but I said, my, my bottom floor is in the, in the high 80s. And obviously, we had like a week or so, we went below that, but, but roughly that same number, we're bouncing off at the same number. So I think to your friends, like, part of the reason I'm bringing this up is to your friends say, well, you know, you bought Bitcoin when the cost of production was 10,000.

Starting point is 00:47:45 Well, cost of production now is 90. We'll call it 90 for right now. So, you know, it's no different than anything else, right? You know, what was the cost of production at the time that you bought it? It's not that the cost of production changed. Now, in a market like gold or in a commodity market like grains or something like that, the cost of production doesn't vary as much. But in Bitcoin, cost of production changes quite a bit in short windows.

Starting point is 00:48:12 Bob, let me ask you a question. you're 75 and 90 for Q4. Does it take all the mining into account? Because there's a huge spread between the way you mine it and the way Fred Thiel minds it. Right. Yeah. It's the industry average. So I can mine Bitcoin for 50.

Starting point is 00:48:32 See, I think this is a problem. The way, this is the problem with your math, if I may. Yeah. Oh, it's okay. Because, you know, I hear this in the oil complex all the time. I heard some guy with 3,000 listeners last night, hoodwinking the audience that they see $100 crude oil again. And if that happens, the whole world follows part.

Starting point is 00:48:52 It's like, yeah, no shit, dude, $100 crude oil. And you get a treasury tenure at seven. Okay, good, the whole world's falling part. But you can't base a premise of superinflation in the future. See, I don't see inflation coming. I see a massive deflationary event the next 10 years, maybe five, maybe three. I think we're seeing it right now. You remove 12 million immigrants from this country, whether they go voluntarily or you remove them.

Starting point is 00:49:24 I think there's four million houses that are going to be on the market. By the way, I use 12 million people assuming four living in a house. It's a staggering amount of homes, a staggering amount of rentals, a staggering amount of jobs, a staggering amount of job. that have been underpriced and taken from Americans. Great companies are going to be built in America. We get rid of the immigration issue. But people are going to have to understand the retailers in particular. You're not going to be selling an $80,000 automobile estate.

Starting point is 00:49:56 It's not happening. I think there could be two worlds. Fred Thiel is not making money mining Bitcoin the way he's mining it. He's at $135,000. And then you have you sitting down. here making a big, oh, chunky margin. Crude oil producers in the United States produced for $45 a barrel.

Starting point is 00:50:15 This was my point. And they're selling it for 65. And the word dry hole has been completely removed from pet to come up. There is no dry hole. This is now science, dude. It is not an art farm. It is white art.

Starting point is 00:50:29 Oh my God. Look at the size of that fucking fuel. Let's go drill it fast. So we're not going to, I think all these prices come down, including electricity. you've just got the the United States government took an 18% stake in the Westinghouse. This is to Lawrence's view comments on QE. I think QE is on steroids right now under a different name.

Starting point is 00:50:56 The U.S. governments just told Westinghouse, dude, we're going to support the fuck out of you. And we're going to build a nuclear. It's the best tenant you could get. Okay. They did the same thing with Intel, 10% stake. You're bragging now. Look at that. $40 billion. Hey, I'll give you some contracts and I'm going to take an investment in your company.

Starting point is 00:51:16 The pure Bitcoiners will hate that. And I say, no, no, no, this is good. This is much better than QE. This isn't just handing money to people. This is taking an investment back for contracts. And I guarantee you those contracts are going to have to be lived up to if we're monitoring what we're entering into, right? And everyone that the United States government is competing with, their sovereigns invest in their primary companies. So this has to happen, man. You're not going to fight the global polymarket gig that's going on now that we're going to do for the next 20 years and not support your biggest industries. It's just not going to happen. Not when you can.

Starting point is 00:52:03 Europe can't. Well, yeah, they've completely blown it. You know, the Asians got it right, though. So the Asians got it right because if you go back to the 70s and the 80s, and I think you said something about this earlier, we can learn a lot from the roads we've already traveled, right? Well, why is there chip dominance, LCD production dominance, for instance, in Asia? It's because Japan, Taiwan, China, South Korea, all recognized way back in the 80s that these were the industries

Starting point is 00:52:37 that would dominate the future. And the governments worked in kind of public-private cooperations and funded these massive developments that became Samsung, TSM, LG, Foxcon, like all of these powerhouses of technology. And they kicked our ass and even took companies like Intel. I mean, maybe we can save Intel through something like this, but Intel's dying, and they were the king. I mean, they were the absolute king at that point.

Starting point is 00:53:15 But, you know, if we're going to win in AI, if we're going to win in energy, if we're going to win in Bitcoin, like these sort of things, when I say we, I mean the U.S., it's going to be a major player, has to do this shit. Yeah, where I was trying to get to, though, with the point on the mining, is if there's two markets really, right? And that I think there's a lot of opportunity if the Bitcoin miners or the Bitcoin miners without intervention are going to be forced to the source. Like I still maintain zero cost.

Starting point is 00:53:46 And this is what my question to you is, if you're maintaining that the high price, the 7590 is the floor, I actually challenge that because I think the floor is somewhere between remove all the threads of. the world, the 137,000 costs, those guys are not going to survive this. They're going to be replaced with miners in Alaska and Russia, Saudi Arabia with zero input cost. As I said, that's been my hypothesis. But that's what I do. I mean, my company, we produce our own energy now. We own our own hydro. We use anaerobic digestion from cow manure. We own our own gas wells. And we, you know, we can't get zero, I mean, because we have to run engines and we have maintenance on the engines and things like that. But we can see cost of electricity down even under two cents per kilowatt hour. So by building it ourselves and managing that. But you might even say, I'm less a minor than I am an energy producer,

Starting point is 00:54:50 you know, and I'm just a low cost energy producers, maybe another way to say it. You're just using Bitcoin as a sink for the energy that you're zero. You're getting nothing for right now. That's why I say your input cost is zero because without the Bitcoin, you don't exist. There's zero for the hydro. That is correct. Okay. So like that's new energy that's showing up to the market. It's not displacing the electric grid.

Starting point is 00:55:14 It's not displacing Arcot, but it's fucking competing with anybody buying energy at Arcot. Absolutely. Yeah. To mine Bitcoin, you're going to get your head ripped off because they'll, this is what decentralization is going to work because decentralization is going to work because decentralization. utilization isn't going to work at Arcock.

Starting point is 00:55:33 It's going to work because you have 10,000 mining guys going, dude, I have cheap energy. I have cheap energy. And it doesn't really matter where you are. You just might be sitting on some cheap energy because where you were born. You know, my job is to go find those spots. Now, the only thing is. You see, that's so important because that's never sold. This is never sold by Bitcoin this way.

Starting point is 00:55:55 Hey, we're a sinkhole for vacant energy, unmonetized energy, dude. I'm a sinko. Yeah, no, it's one of the beautiful parts of it all. Most people don't understand it. I mean, look, look, a guy like Howard Ham is going to spend 30 cents, MMBT, which is a unit of natural gas, a month, to store a $4.50 product. These energy markets, they kind of behave like this, where in the winter, they're supposed to be really high, in the summer they're supposed to be low.

Starting point is 00:56:26 So you then hide the gas in the summertime at 30 cents a decathorm, or a M&BTU, and then you sell it into the winter, which then of course brings the winter prices down. But that's $1.50, man. You have to see $6, $1.50 and $4.50. You have to have $6 to make a margin on that. When Howard Ham could be spending, getting paid to stick his natural gas into Bitcoin and reserve it and go,

Starting point is 00:56:55 dude, I'll let you guys know when I want to sell while it's making money. Oh my God. And Howard Ham gave that 30 cents a month to Columbia. It's not even the same company. So we know this is going to happen. This is, you're going to help make the markets much, much, much, much more efficient. Yeah, we, like I said, we, I think this is the future. It's the path we started pursuing in 2021 because I could see where this is going.

Starting point is 00:57:23 Now, a lot of it, a lot of times, at least right now, it has to happen at a smaller scale. So it's, you know, we can find these opportunities for. a megawatt or five megawatts or 10 megawatts, but not for 300 megawatts. And you're, you almost have a moat, by the way, that's a reverse moat because, uh, the big public companies can't chase these opportunities. Yeah, that's, you're exactly right. They are the immune. And, you know, I think the only, the thing with the public mining companies, which I am, as you probably can gather, I am not a fan of. I think they've done a huge disservice to Bitcoin and the community. Um, but they might get saved

Starting point is 00:58:00 because they can get taken over by some of the AI guys who are willing to pay for their energy assets right now. If the demand for AI keeps going up, I think they can get bailed out. But I think they'll go away. Their future is either death or acquisition by another industry that will pay more for their asset right now. Abundant Mines is an Oregon-based husband and wife owned Bitcoin Mining Company, making Bitcoin mining accessible to investors of all. ages and experience levels. They're fully managed.

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Starting point is 00:59:00 Bitcoin Well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the U.S. And now with Bitcoin Well Infinite, it's also the best place to be making large buys at their OTC desk of over $50,000. Their white glove service gives you fast transactions, no slippage, and the lowest fees. You can scan the QR code on the screen or simply head to Bitcoinwell.com slash BTC Sessions to sign up today. and you can share your own personalized referral link to earn commissions. So maybe a different attack here is, you know, we haven't really talked about maybe some of the younger people. Like if you're a younger person, and I'd love to get your advice, Gary, you're a younger person, you're that 30-year-old, 35-year-old professional, you're starting to, for the first time in your life,

Starting point is 00:59:59 maybe make more money than you're consuming. What advice would you give to them? Like, you know, they're, the world's pushing them toward 401Ks and index funds and things like that. What would you tell them? Well, look, the first thing I would do is if you're 12, 22, 42, 42, you, you cannot spend more than you have that. You have to fix that.

Starting point is 01:00:25 Everyone on this call should be going, oh, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm good. good to go. You have to fix that whether Bitcoin's around or not. So when I was growing up, and this is going to be harsh to the young people, but nobody fucking guaranteed me the right to buy a house. They didn't guarantee me a salary that was going to allow me to buy a Rolls-Royce. I've never owned a Rolls-Royce. I never will. Gosh, you know, the zip code I was growing in did not offer me the opportunities that I wanted to be. I needed to leave my zip code and go get a career and go build value. So the first thing I need to do is figure out who I am. I need to invest in myself. That's where the real investment comes. Read a book. Find out who you are. Write yourself a

Starting point is 01:01:18 note. Hey, I am not a prostitute. If you are a prostitute, get to know it early on, dude, embrace it and fucking become a trillionaire. But at least, decide what you're doing. This is a huge mistake for somebody who started investing $500. You invest $500 or not in Bitcoin. Go invest $500 in some books, man. Okay, follow Lawrence, follow Bob Burnett, follow whoever, pay him a dollar a week. Get a mentor, man. Your dad and mom did not teach you how to be successful. So I just think that, you know, your teachers are not successful. They did not teach you how to compete in the world.

Starting point is 01:02:04 And teachers are getting ready to be replaced by robots that do a much better job. So to me, that's the first thing you do. The second thing you do is once you start asking yourself who the hell you're going to be when you grow up, you have to get a great platform. Don't worry about being your own guy. Go learn something from a master. Or do what I did and make every mistake. and make every mistake imaginable.

Starting point is 01:02:30 I don't know, man. You don't have to make the mistakes I made. I'll probably sell them to you for $10 a month. You know, today, and the point I'm making about that, I actually give all my stuff away for free. The access to information, I am so sick and tired of hearing you guys say, you don't have an opportunity. You have the greatest opportunity in the history of mankind.

Starting point is 01:02:51 Your MBA has cost you zero today. Okay? I can't get an NBA. Hey, dude, you guys can get an MBA. Harvard's office. offering free classes right now online. MIT's doing the same. And not to mention you get to access Gary, Lawrence, Bob,

Starting point is 01:03:08 anytime you want, and there are more and more people coming like us. This is the mistake the young people are making. Your egos are completely out of connection with reality. No, I think everything you say is right. I would emphasize a couple of points. Go buy The Richest Man in Babylon by Claussen. It's a really simple book, but basically the message, or don't buy it and just remember this.

Starting point is 01:03:29 this, pay yourself first, you know, 10% of everything you make has to go into savings, then go buy yourself an HP12C financial calculator and fiddle around with whatever kind of IRA you want to use. And, you know, the thing that young people have is an advantage that the four of us do not have is you've got years, decades literally of compounding ahead of you. And so really small acorns grow into really big oak trees. And so, you know, if you're in your teens or your 20s, your 30s, and you start saving 10% of your income, and you put it someplace that grows at north of 7%. And of course, in Bitcoin recently,

Starting point is 01:04:03 it's been grown at 30 or 40% a year. It's virtually impossible that you won't end up in your later years, rich. It's literally impossible. And so, you know, to me, that's probably the one habit that's more important than anything else that you can adopt. And that is to live within your means and pay yourself first and then learn how to be an investor and make your money, make money for you so that eventually you won't have to work anymore and you'll have nothing but passive income.

Starting point is 01:04:32 And, you know, that's how, you know, Gary did it. That's how we all have done it. That's how your brother did it with real estate. Everyone's done it. I mean, Kiyosaki is a guy. Robert Kiyosaki wrote Rich Dad Poor Day. He's become a personal friend and he's a big supporter of my book. And I'm grateful for that.

Starting point is 01:04:46 And he wrote the ultimate book on how to do this. I mean, he grew up, you know, with a father who was an academic and was, didn't understand what to do. And then, but his neighbor was a very smart entrepreneur. and he went and said, hey, you're rich, I want to be rich too. How do I do that? And so then he took the lesson and he wrote it all down in this book. That book, it blew my mind when he told me this. They've sold 50 million copies in that book since 1993. So yeah, right? Isn't that something? Best all-time selling finance book in the history of the world. So I think young people, you know, you've got to get the basics right and you've got to understand the value of compound.

Starting point is 01:05:23 compounding. I mean, Buffett and others have said, like Einstein even said it, compound interest is one of the seven wonders of the world. It really is kind of amazing. The trick is how do you get out? How do you get out? I just like to use an analogy, okay? I need to escape friction and gravity. Okay. And like this has always been my problem. I always felt even in school, I'm like, oh man, there's so much gravity. Why don't you let me go and do my deal? So what does it rocket do? You know, when Elon, if these are actually real, they launch a rocket, or maybe NASA is a better example. As soon as it hits outside of atmosphere into space, what does it do? The first thing it does, at least this is what we're told by these, because I've never seen one of these rockets actually do this,

Starting point is 01:06:09 is they jettison all the material that got them there. People should question at 18 years old, what baggage am I carrying into the world that I think. think is right, but is actually I'm either just so clueless. I've put some stuff in there, which is to Lawrence's point, he said, hey, pay yourself first. What he really means is, hey, you're going to take all your income and pay yourself for what you spend your car on everything. But then you need to invest 10% into yourself. Like, and he's saying, do that first. Like that's an investment into the future, whether it's in Intel or Bitcoin or whatever, you can't go broke if you're investing money first and then spending it. This is a huge discipline.

Starting point is 01:06:59 It sets you up at 18 to realize that at 26, you're like, it's no longer suffering. And you're going to look at your friends and go, wow, what's wrong with you guys? Your job should be to think about leaving your group of friends, not staying with them. Like just go check it out, man. Anybody that stayed in their local area for too long? I mean, could they have done more? This is not true for every, every case, okay? But just getting rid of all the stuff that's in your baggage.

Starting point is 01:07:32 And I have to do this as someone that thinks he's a professional. I have to get rid of my thought process sometimes. Bitcoin taught me that. Oh, wow, what do I not know about finance? And I have learned a lot that I thought I knew that I did not. So get yourself around a great coach, great teachers, and great lessons, and you're not, it's going to be very, very hard to, you know, destroy yourself and not do well. I just don't know anybody with a bunch of mentors and learnings that have done poorly. Somebody is, and we've got an internal chat going.

Starting point is 01:08:10 Somebody asks, is it too late to start at 30, 35, 40? Absolutely not. particularly when you consider the average lifespan now is 70, 80, 90 years old. You know, starting at 30, 40 years old, it's fine. You know, and, you know, if you can, if you're lucky, I mean, obviously saving 10% is kind of the minimum. You know, you get some bonuses. You do particularly well. You have a hit.

Starting point is 01:08:29 Well, then you do a catch-up. You know, you take that bonus instead of buying a Porsche, you put it into your savings account, you know. I mean, the fact is we can all live with a lot less, you mean, we're very, we're all, in the Western world, we all have food on the table. thank God. And when you consider, if you read about human history, you know, for millennia, that was a real issue. And, you know, and we can all do with without the latest gadget. And, you know, so savings is a key, in my view, it's a long time preference item and it's a key part of, you know, ensuring this mental and physical peace that we all seek to achieve. And then, you know, the beauty of it all is, as you know, as a Bitcoin broadcast is that here you've got this

Starting point is 01:09:13 turbocharged form of savings that, you know, there's a great chart that shows what the ARR on Bitcoin is right now. It's in the mid-40s now. And over time, as it gets adopted, it is going down. But even 10, I think even when we hit a million dollars, the power law of 2030-3, it's still in the 20% range. I mean, get that financial calculator, plug in 20% and over a couple of decades and look at what happens. Oh, my God. I mean, it's just, it's impossible not to end up rich. And so with that knowledge, you know, suddenly I think, you know, a lot of the fear that people have felt for so many years that's beaten into all of us, I'm not going to make it, I'm going to run out of money. You know, the world's unfair. Everything sucks. You know, once you have this knowledge, your perspective changes.

Starting point is 01:09:59 And, you know, is it simple? No. Is it doable? Yes. And once you do it, you know, then you can suddenly say, all right, you know, I've solved for that problem. Now what do I want to do with my valuable time? Seems to me that a lot of young people live for the here and now, rather than for the later. You know, I mean, I see him. And maybe they just make a hell of a lot more money than I do. I'm not sure. But we'll go out and go find dining. And maybe we're spending $300, $400, $400 on dinner in a really nice restaurant.

Starting point is 01:10:30 And I'll see all these people there in their 30s. I'm going, where in the hell of these kids getting this money at? I mean, I know I certainly did that. I know I drove the same car forever. until it was like, I got to get a new car because I didn't want to like buy a new car. That's the one that blows me away. I see these young people driving these cars that are just insanely expensive. I'm like, what?

Starting point is 01:10:51 Yeah. I mean, I'm going, where's the money coming from? So to me, they're obviously not, maybe some of them, you know, are doing great. But they're all, all those people in that restaurant are not doing great. All those people I see with those cars. No, there's a lot of debt being used. Hey, guys, I got a conflict with an investor call, but I've super enjoyed talking. talking to all of you. I'm just going to mute and sign off for a bit and I will, we'll do it again

Starting point is 01:11:15 soon. See you. So I see you. I'm perplexed by that too, Gary. It blows me away because you know that this is just credit card debt piling on. That's the reality is it's it's too easy. And cars, cars just suck money. Like Gary, you said you'd never own a rolls. I, I don't. I, I don't I won't either. No, to be fair, I own some nice cars, but they're not, like, super extravagant. And I haven't bought a new car for decades. You know, I'll buy one that's a couple years old in good shape. And it might be a BMW or a Mercedes or something like that, but I'm at a stage in my life where I can handle that.

Starting point is 01:12:02 Same thing. I drove my last car of Mercedes for 20-7 years. Yeah. But, you know, by the way, nobody cares. like nobody cares what car you drive and if they do who cares yeah fuck them right fuck them if you care what car i drive or what watch is on my hand like you you you guys in the audience letting your women make 500 and 700 000 two million dollar investment decisions on a house like this is not an investment so the worst investment you could possibly make in your life and at 22 to get

Starting point is 01:12:36 talked into buying a house Like, dude, you're, you're buying into someone else's made up dream. It's not even your dream. It's someone else's made up bullshit story of how to trap you on a zip code and on a mortgage, a long-term rental rate. You do not own that home. Gary, I saw your video of you in front of your house that you just sold, doing the math on why you got rid of that house.

Starting point is 01:13:07 and that was pretty, I mean, people should find that. That was pretty enlightening. Yeah, I mean, listen, I own my primary home here when I bought it relative to Bitcoin. By the way, to Bob's point, I would assume a 12% interest rate, a 12% annualized return over 10 years. Every 10 years, you know, it's 120% return. You know what, for Bitcoin. I don't need 40 and 30. This is double the size.

Starting point is 01:13:37 This is double the position of the real estate I do with my brother, who is a fucking baller. Okay. He has given me unbelievable returns on the real estate. And I still get paid, I don't know, 50, 60 grand a month. And that was at six or seven percent. I'm just assuming 12. You will end up stupidly rich at 12 percent if you're disciplined. Even at 32.

Starting point is 01:14:06 Somebody said, hey, is it too late to start? The only business I would consider starting is Bitcoin business, where you actually hold Bitcoin and you learn about Bitcoin and all your assets are in Bitcoin. And not every asset, you're going to have to live in this world for a while. But you don't consider buying homes and stupid cars. I own a Range Rover cost me $230,000. You can't afford these vehicles right now. out. You're actually doing the world of service. If you pull back your demand,

Starting point is 01:14:42 okay, stop consuming everything because you're now chasing me. I don't need anything else. You're no longer chasing rich people do. We're peaked out on consumption. We are now going to be peak investors. I guarantee we have peak consumption has been achieved four or five years ago. There is not a sheik on the planet that can handle another chick or villa or airplane or yacht. We're really at peak consumption. I really, really believe that. You people are getting ready to see a deflationary environment and an event that you should capture massively on. Because like what I said to Bob, I don't think anybody's ever told that to Bob. Hey, Bob, you have a moat. Your moat is an inverted moat because Fred Teal at a marathon can't even go after the kind of

Starting point is 01:15:33 and he's going after. It's too small, man. It won't even ring the bell. No one will even listen to Fred. They won't have an analyst call over that deal. But there'll be a thousand Bob's that go, dude, I can get rich doing this. And listen to what the gap is. Fred's at $130,000 Bitcoin producing. And Bob, you said you were at what? 50. We can do it about 50. Dude, the spread there, who's going to win? That is a mode. So if you don't think that's a good business, I would immediately go, hey, Bob, you got any jobs? Dude, if I'm 32 years old, hey, can I come work for you? I'll get your coffee.

Starting point is 01:16:12 I'll get you. No, shit, no, I'll get your coffee. Let me hang around with you because I'm going to bring zero value to you. I'm going to be a headache for you. You're going to have to take time to teach me. And if you don't take time to teach me, I'm going to become a liability. So let me get you some coffee. And I'll just hang around.

Starting point is 01:16:27 You won't even know I'm here. I'll clean up the trash cans. And no one does that today. Why? You got no competition whatsoever. You don't need to go to school. You need to figure out how to knock on somebody's door and get their attention. You know, it's funny you say that too, because I think you guys are probably the same.

Starting point is 01:16:48 My DMs are open on Twitter, for instance. I'm easy to find. And I would say maybe once a month or so, somebody will reach out and ask me a question or ask for advice. or something like that. And I try to always respond and give a thoughtful response to it. Now, if it was 50 a day, I'd probably have an issue. But, and I've had that in my life, too. As you said, mentors and coaches and people that took me under their wing,

Starting point is 01:17:20 taught me a lot. And most of the time, people are pretty flattered that you ask them, and they're happy to share that. Because, you know, I think there's a, for me, it's like a, there's like a good karma, right, that just comes from it. I feel good helping somebody. And that's, that's all I need. I don't need anything else. Just feel like I help somebody is good enough.

Starting point is 01:17:44 Yeah. The truth is, you know, I'm not preaching to you. I'm preaching to the guy that needs it. His parents should be calling Bob up going, hey, Bob, instead of me sending my kids to a four-year program, then it costs me $250. How about if I pay you $50,000 to take this kid under his, wing and mentor them. See, there has to be an exchange of both pieces of information. Otherwise, the guy's not even going to consume it properly.

Starting point is 01:18:09 You know, and you know what they are? They got to be willing to go throw on a pair of work boots and help us drag a trench for a gas line or load servers that weigh 80 pounds in 20-degree weather into a container. Like, if you want to do, if you want to get involved, like you're going to have to do the dirty work. But by the way, I did the dirty work too, even at my advance. I've been on our sites and I've dug the trenches and ran the jackhammers and, you know, got on the cranes and like did all this shit because I want to because I, if I don't do that, I don't know how my business operates.

Starting point is 01:18:50 And that's what you have to do. You have to learn how to do all that sort of shit. And eventually you'll either go like, hey, I think I got. it let me maybe you'll go off on your own or maybe you say hey can i be a partner on a project can i you know and and and and then then you start out on your own and whether that's in mining or whatever the hell it doesn't really matter right if it's if if if you want to go work in a restaurant you got to do the same thing you got to wash the dishes and and cut the onions before you're the the the chef or own the restaurant right yeah the bitcoin industry is a very interesting industry in

Starting point is 01:19:27 that, I mean, people do have options. They go work for a restaurant. You could probably reach out to SpaceX. Maybe reach out to the AI guys, but no one's going to respond to you. Unlike Bitcoin community, it's extremely, this is one of the things I was like, wow, everyone's willing to meet with me. Zero people in five years said no. That is unheard of.

Starting point is 01:19:55 Okay, if you've ever been in another industry, I mean, it takes months, years to get meetings with certain people. In two years, this will be done. There won't be any jobs in the Bitcoin industry for newbies. For people with no experience, we won't need you. There will be so much experience around the hoop that you're going to be competing with MBAs by then. But if you're in and near the hoop right now, you're going to be assumed to be an NBA. you're going to be called an OG. And don't bitch in two years when this is gone, man.

Starting point is 01:20:31 Guys like me have been telling you, like I know an opportunity when I see it. And people should be going, why is that guy like painting and only doing Bitcoin and not even going to any of the big meetings? Like I've stopped going to the conventions and shit. I'm like, they're just selling shit. I can meet with everybody and have a dinner that I need to.

Starting point is 01:20:52 And when I need to, this will not always be available, man. Yeah, it's funny you say that. Not funny, it's sage, because I was blessed to enter the personal computer industry in the 80s, early to mid-80s. And that's exactly how it was. And no, I had an engineering degree

Starting point is 01:21:11 and I had something, at least something to offer, but I didn't know jack shit about designing a computer. But I was able to get somebody to take a chance on me because, frankly, there were no other people willing to enter the industry. They were dying to attract people. Ten years later, that was all... How many people tell you you were making a mistake? Oh, all kinds of people told me I was making a mistake.

Starting point is 01:21:33 Because I had other job offers. I had other places I could have gone. I don't know, something felt right to me about that. And I saw something that was world changing to. It wasn't a money thing. It was like, this is where the future is. And I was right, right? You know, the personal computer ended up being, in my opinion,

Starting point is 01:21:52 one of the most important technological developments of all time. But Bitcoin is maturing rapidly. And we're very close to, as you said, the cusp where the kids with big educations coming from prestigious schools or even the guys that are on Wall Street today or they're going to want to come work in Bitcoin soon. we're already seeing some of them come. So this period of opportunity is just about over. It is a small window left.

Starting point is 01:22:34 Yeah, Bob, the same thing, you know, since I was e-commerce in the mid-90s. Everybody told me I was an idiot. First of all, people wouldn't buy stuff on the Internet. And then people, I had no idea who they were. I was getting emails. Every time I messed up telling me what I did, here was an error, here's how to correct it.

Starting point is 01:22:52 And I still don't know who these people were, but they were so helpful. And I think that is the way when something news coming out, like you said, you both, you know, someone contacts you a DM, you answer them. You know, that's the way something is when it's new. That's the way podcasting was when it was new. You know, I got into that one of the first 50.

Starting point is 01:23:11 And podcasters all helped each other. It was like, you know, let me help you. Let me tell you what to do. But that stuff ends, you know, in every niche as it gets developed. and more and more people get into it, it's over, and it goes away. You know, and that's where we're at right now in Bitcoin for sure. But I agree with you, Gary. That's going to disappear.

Starting point is 01:23:29 You know, there's a, I think there's a very telling sign as to when you reach that point, too. I'll tell you guys a story about the personal computer industry. So in, I think it would have been 86. I went to my very first personal computer conference. It was called Comdex held in Vegas every year, or maybe four or five thousand people there. A few years later, same conference held in November every year, 25,000 people. In 1998, 225,000 people showed up for one conference, an unimaginable number, right? It took over all of Vegas.

Starting point is 01:24:09 It wasn't just like at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Every single casino that had a showroom had a display, you know, I had a section for exhibitors. Six years later, the conference was dead. It was defunct. So what happened? How does something go from being 225,000 people to nothing? It's not that the personal computer became irrelevant.

Starting point is 01:24:36 It just became ubiquitous. It had become part of everyday life. It was no longer exciting, I guess, to a certain degree. degree, right? And I know this sounds kind of funny, given where we are at Bitcoin, you know, at some point that will happen. Like at this year in in Las Vegas, Bitcoin was like 25,000 people. It'll probably be bigger this year. It may even be bigger the year after. I bet we'll see it reverse. And we're probably a handful of years away from it going away. Now, I think there will be a spot for Gary runs a conference called Bitblock Boom. But it's a full.

Starting point is 01:25:17 Focus conference. What do you have normally like 400 people, Gary? Yeah, four to 500. I would think that biggest has been seven. I think those kind of things will still exist. But just like they do in the computing industry, you still have these pockets. But they're the real enthusiasts, the real diehards.

Starting point is 01:25:36 But everybody else moves on. And these conferences, like the ones in Vegas, you know, they cost a lot of money. You spend a lot of time. you really don't see anybody. If you're going to go, go to ones like Gary's, the small ones, where you can actually network and interface with people. Yeah, I think you're right.

Starting point is 01:25:55 You know, and the same thing happened in podcasting for the most part. You know, I'm going back to something I mentioned this a minute ago, but when they started, they got huge. You know, I had a podcasting conference, which I had sold off, and now it's just mediocre size compared to what it was at one time because everybody knows what a podcast is or everybody that wants. wants to be into it, get into it easily. It's not something you really have to go to a conference all the way on the other side

Starting point is 01:26:21 of the country to learn how to do. You know, the tools are so easy. You know, so it's the same thing. Well, you know, Gary, I think maybe this is a good point to kind of maybe wrap things up. Do you have any final words you'd like to say? When we started this, I talked about a little, you know, I think a lot of people in Bitcoin are frustrated. And I think you're frustrated.

Starting point is 01:26:44 I think I'm frustrated over what I have assumed to be true, but may not be. And that is the four-year cycle that everyone relies upon that is this kind of, it's a flag in the sand, man, that everybody looks to. I actually just need to challenge the community. Is there a possibility that this was made up post facto? And that it's never really been a thing. and that it's suited a really cool story, but it doesn't really make a lot of sense for the way Satoshi set up the issuance of Bitcoin, front-loading the volume into the market,

Starting point is 01:27:29 and then restricting what could be lifted or created out of the market. I think this is a very, I understand how you could assume that this narrative makes sense, but in fact it looks something very different. from me, most certainly going forward, I don't see any relevance whatsoever to this so-called four-year cycle. And so there's two challenges. One, did it really ever exist? And two, if you're betting on it in the future, I think that's why you're frustrated right now, because you're like, hey, it didn't do what it was supposed to do. And if it did, it poop-poot all over itself. Like it did not do good, dude. Lost gas, lost air, boom, it's at 92. I think you have to

Starting point is 01:28:16 get your head wrapped around. That four-year cycle is a narrative, just like Santa Claus. It's a story, man. I agree with you. I don't think it ever existed. That would be my belief, just like Santa never existed, right? I don't think it ever existed. And, you know, I'm, I'm a, a math guy. Like, even to the degree we saw some reaction three times is not a relevant pattern. I mean, that's, that's not a pattern. That's, that's irrelevant. You at least have to remove the first two cycles. Come on, there was no liquidity there, man. So I agree. The only relevance of the having is to the guys in my business, because as long as we are relying on the subsidy, then you better be ready, right? So why, why do I,

Starting point is 01:29:08 produce $50,000 Bitcoin? Well, you know, part of it is I can make more money at it now, but I also have to make sure that the operation I've set up can survive the next having. If the price of Bitcoin doesn't go up, I know the having's coming. So I go, well, I can survive. So beyond that, I don't think it's relevant to anybody. But just one thing, though, if you're a minor, you really just care about the first. four years, you're not really like, you can shut your mining down and do something else with your time and your energy. No, because I don't build that way, Gary. I build, because my mentality is not Bitcoin mining. My mentality is energy production. And so I'm building. I just want you bringing that back.

Starting point is 01:29:57 See, it's a different driver. Yeah. That's why Bitcoin's going to be so cool because you need to find energy producers that are going, hey, I want to produce into that sinkhole. Yeah. So I'm, that's the way You're looking at this. You're looking at it differently than a Bitcoin miner. Bitcoin miners going, I produce corn. All my inputs are fucked up. I need to be able to sell corn for more than I had all my inputs while Bob Burnett's producing 50 cents on the dollar. Right.

Starting point is 01:30:23 And by the way, my $50,000 includes engine maintenance, cost of engine rebuilds, and a reserve to replace the servers on a four-year cycle. So. Oh. So. So you're really, you're 30,020. Well, you can measure it how you wish. I'm saying like I, this is the money I have to put away, right? So.

Starting point is 01:30:48 Yeah. And by the way, I, I, those reserves are all in Bitcoin too. So if, if, if, if things go well, I don't need all the reserve, right? Yeah. And, and then that's a, then that's a big bonus on the backside. But, you know, I need to be careful and make sure that that. that I'm handling that right. You're a smart man, mom.

Starting point is 01:31:12 Well, I'm just doing my best. I think just making hopefully logical decisions about how to construct the business. But I see, like I said, I was very critical earlier, and I have been for years of the public minors, because I see very poorly run organizations with massive overheads. They've done massive destruction. to the ecosystem. What they have done well is leverage a fiat system that was willing to pour massive amounts

Starting point is 01:31:47 of capital, probably by stupid analysts that we talked about before, who really didn't know what the fuck they were doing, and encouraged people to put money into these organizations. And it caused an overbuild of hash rate. and it actually flushed out in hard times, like in the bear of 2022 and 2023, it flushed out some guys who were well-meaning, pretty good business people who just didn't have the capital resources

Starting point is 01:32:17 to sustain through the difficult period. So anyway, I have a lot of angst toward them. But, you know, I said, it'll all flush out. I think the future, as you've, said, Gary, and it's, you know, the way my business is, is there will be tens of thousands of these. I call them horse class sites. I have a name for it, which you're going to see half a megawatt, one megawatt, three megawatt, five megawatt sites all over the world. Anywhere there's

Starting point is 01:32:46 energy, a lot of gas, a lot of oil, there's wind, there's cow manure, there's all kinds of things that we can utilize. And that is, I think, the greatest, hope for a decentralized mining network, by the way, too. Oh, it's the only hope. See, if you didn't have that, you would never get there. You'd only get to what we have with AI and Visa MasterCard and with social media. 72% of all three of those industries are controlled by two companies, whereas this will never happen the way we're, see, this is very, very different.

Starting point is 01:33:24 Because you can't, EQT can only control EQT is a very large player in the Pennsylvania. in the Marcella Shell, they can only control so many of these free units of energy that are floating around. It's a very, it's like a puzzle, man. It's a massive puzzle. And if the energy isn't in the right place, it has no home. Yeah. And that's what Bob's looking for.

Starting point is 01:33:51 I think it's a great time to wrap. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Gary. Nice talking with you, Gary. Thank you, man. Hey, you. Yes, you watching the Bitcoin. price movements and the latest exciting news. It's awesome to stay informed, but the real power of

Starting point is 01:34:06 Bitcoin comes from taking control. Don't just watch, take action. Head over to bTCsessions.ca slash learn for free step-by-step tutorials that guide you through every major skill you need to know, plus full video playlist for deeper dives on any topic you like. And if you're ready for the ultimate fast track, scroll to the bottom and check out Bitcoin Mentor.io for premium one-on-one experience with my team of Bitcoin experts to ensure you get it right the first time. Don't wait, secure your Bitcoin future today. Hit the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen. If you enjoyed this episode of the Bitcoin boomer of Gary Cardone, please do like and subscribe and check out the previous episode with Dr. Bob Murphy.

BTC Sessions - QE on Steroids, Bitcoin Business Revolution, Public Miner Doom | Gary Cardone

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