BTC Sessions - Warsh's Bluff, AI Bailout Risk & Bitcoin's Next Leg | Lepard & St. Onge

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

Mentor Sessions Ep. 081: Peter St. Onge and Larry Lepard discuss Fed rate cuts in 2026, AI industry bailout risk, Bitcoin price outlook,US debt debasement, and gold targets.The Fed's hawkish pivot is already unraveling — and Bitcoin, gold, and silver are the first to price it in. Peter St. Onge and Larry Lepard break down exactly why Kevin Warsh's tough talk is a script, not a policy, and what that means for sound money holders in 2026.You'll learn why Lepard believes rate cuts are coming before the midterms, why the AI industry is quietly lobbying for a defense-contractor-style bailout, and why the monetary debasement trade is nowhere near dead — despite what the financial press is saying. You'll also get specific price targets for Bitcoin ($180K–$200K), gold ($7,000), and silver ($200), plus an honest breakdown of Strategy/MSTR and Michael Saylor's evolving playbook. If you're trying to understand where macro is heading and how to position in sound money, this is the conversation.⏱️ Timestamps:0:00 - Intro1:00 - Warsh: Hawk or Secret Dove?2:40 - Warsh More Dovish Than Rhetoric5:00 - Balance Sheet Hawks Get Punched6:25 - Rate Cuts Locked in Pre-Election9:29 - Debt Forces Money Supply Growth10:30 - AI Sets Up Government Bailout13:43 - Bitcoin Volatility and Long View14:25 - AI Crony Capitalism Playbook17:28 - AI Commoditizes in Three Weeks19:24 - Dot-Com Lessons for AI Buildout29:03 - Legitimate AI Grievance Energy Costs33:37 - Europe's Decline and US Advantage37:18 - Japan Yen Debasement Midterm Play46:34 - Saylor Strategy Bear Market Attacks51:59 - Bitcoin Mirrors Fiat Boom Bust54:07 - Gold Silver Bitcoin 2026 Targets57:52 - Monetary Debasement Trade Accelerates1:00:10 - Markets Embarrass Most Investors🔗 Links & Resources:→ Professor Peter St. Onge on X: https://x.com/profstonge→ Professor Peter St. Onge: https://www.profstonge.com/→ Larry Lepard / EMA Gavekal: https://www.ema2.com→ Lawrence Lepard: https://x.com/LawrenceLepard💡BOOK Private Sessions with Nathan, Benn and the BTC Mentor Team: Master self-custody, hardware, multisig, Lightning, privacy, and more. 👉 Visit btcmentor.io • Sovereign Sessions — AI, Privacy, and Bitcoin education: http://youtube.com/@SovereignSessions?sub_confirmation=1📌 Previous Episodes: Joe Carlasare, American HODL & Dr. Jeff Ross → https://youtu.be/i14Y81EGcVY⚡ POWERED by Abundant Mines: Fully managed Bitcoin mining. Learn more at https://qrco.de/bgYKPB🔒 Lockdown your Bitcoin with the BEST gear on the market from Coinkite. Get the 5% Off the COLDCARD visit: https://qrco.de/bfiDBVFollow Us on X:• BTC Sessions: @BTCsessions• Nathan: @theBTCmentor#Bitcoin #BTC #BTCSessions #FedRateCuts #MonetaryDebasement #BitcoinPriceTarget #GoldOutlook #LarryLepard #PeterStOnge #SoundMoney #MichaelSaylor #AIBubble #BitcoinBearMarket #MacroEconomics #USDollarCollapse #ArtificialIntelligence #BitcoinPodcast #MonetaryPolicy #HardMoney

Kevin Warsh has been in the Fed chair for a little bit over a month now. And I'm curious just what your initial read on his is. He is hawkish for a modern Fed chair, which is like saying, you know, he's an honest car thief. Everyone's a balance sheet hawk until they get punched in the face. The fix is that they're going to cut rates before the election so that they get the economy going. When the next leg up starts, we're going to go to thoughts on the overall kind of AI space. You can basically invent God. And it turns out everybody else can copy you in like three weeks flat.

So these AI companies trying to get the government to buy a share, straight crony capitalism, it's straight out of the defense contractor, playbook. I wanted to get your sense of just sailor and strategy and everything going on there. All right, good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining me. Very excited to get you guys together. We got a lot to unpack. We can talk about Bitcoin, the U.S. economy, the debt situation.

But to kind of start things off, Peter, I want to come to you and ask, Kevin Warsh has been in the Fed chair for a little bit over a month now, but a month and a half. And I'm curious just what your initial read on his is. Is he actually the hawk that everyone thinks he is? Is there something else going on under the hood? What's your initial take on Kevin sitting in that chair? He is hawkish for a modern Fed chair, which is like saying, you know, he's an honest car thief. I'm sure, you know, if you compare him to somebody like Jerome Powell, then, you know,

Warsh himself calls it regime chains, so they're going to use different data. You know, they're not going to do as much forward guidance, which is one of the ways that the Fedman of plays markets. But, you know, fundamentally, from the perspective of a bick-coiner, it's rearranging the silverware on the table. This is not regime change, right? Regime change would mean unilaterally disarming, stepping, you know, letting interest rates float and telling banks that they're not going to get any bailouts.

We're not remotely close to that. So if you, you know, on a one to tail scale, on a one to ten scale of how Volker is he, he's probably a two, but, you know, Bernanke, Yellen, and Powell would be a one. So, you know, he's probably going to be more hawkish than markets expected given President Trump's preferences. Having said, you know, I don't think he's a vulgar and I don't think he's going to change much fundamentally at the Fed. Interesting. Larry, I'm curious if you agree or what you're seeing, what's I find kind of interesting on that note of they're kind of getting rid of the job boning the market aspect was recently as I'm talking about, you posted it, him having a fight with a family fight in four weeks, which I thought that was interesting for him to come out and make that comment when they're not even giving the dot plot

anymore or moving away from that sort of thing. Yeah. I mean, I pretty much agree with what Peter said in the sense that, you know, they're all bad and, you know, arguably maybe he's a little more hawkish. It's certainly more hawkish than Yellen and Bernacki. They were like free money everywhere. You know, I actually think the market kind of has this a little bit wrong. I think he's actually a lot more dougish than we now know or than he's letting on. I think he's, you know, it's, it's a script that he plays. I mean, if you really think about what the Fed is, I mean, the Fed is just, you know, it's a government division that's put in place to lie to us about inflation and to get us to accept inflation and then to accept the money printing that they have

to do to keep the system running. I mean, that's really all the Fed is. And, and so their, their whole existence is a lie intrinsically. And by definition, everybody who's there is a liar. And he's just another one. And, you know, my view is that he comes in. He emphasizes that they're going to, you know, get price stability. And he even bragged in this most recent presentation from Sinter yesterday, Portugal, that, you know, the inflation expectations are coming down.

And that's because of his tough talk. And I'm just like, come on, dude, stop taking victory laps. I mean, you've been in there fucking 10 days. And, you know, the market thinks he's going to raise rates. And I don't think he's going to raise rates. In fact, I think he's going to cut rates. I think he's foaming the runway to cut rates, you know, with this AI productivity argument. And then his so-called task force is going to come in and tell him that the inflation is overstated

and that we should be using the Dallas trimmed medium PCI, which is at 2.3 instead of 3-something. And therefore we can, you know, and he's a supply sider. we know that. And so his view is going to be, you know, we've got to, these numbers aren't any good. We've got to look through these numbers. They'll be coming down in the future. And the way to make the numbers lower is actually to encourage investment and encourage the supply of goods and services, which then will decrease the price. So the better way to encourage investment is to take interest rates down. I mean, the thing that's interesting about it is he's kind of a paradox. He, I think he's a interest rate dove for sure. And he's trying to play like he's a balance sheet

hawk. And, you know, everyone's a balance sheet hawk until they get punched in the face. And he's going to get punched in the face, but that he doesn't know that, or if he knows that, he's bluffing and gaslighting us. So, yeah, you know, but the market right now, the market is leaning very, was, you know, until yesterday, leaning very heavily on sound money assets, gold, silver, and Bitcoin based on the dot plot and based on everything he had said. And, um, you know, his seriousness about taming inflation. I think yesterday we saw a few cracks in his armor. You know, he made a comment where he said,

he thought maybe the inflation data was trending in the right direction. You know, we've heard Besant say this AI productivity thing is very real. You know, I think they're setting this up for, I mean, first of all, I think there's zero chance we'll have any rate hikes this year. I don't think that's going to happen. And the market, by the way, the market thinks that's going to happen. And so the prices of gold, silver and Bitcoin all reflect the fact that they think the real interest rate's going to go up because the Fed's going to increase rates. I mean, you know, if you go to the CME FedWFedS site, you'll see the odds are like 70% that the Fed increases this year, the balance of the six months.

So my view is that they will actually cut or they will actually leave them flat or cut. And I actually think they'll cut. And the clue to this is that when he had his first press conference and he, you know, he can, you know, kind of talked tough. And they asked President Trump about it. And Trump said, hey, I'm with him. He's my guy. You know, so what that told me was that the fix is in. And the fix is that they're going to cut rates before the election so that they get the economy going. I think they might cut them at the next meeting. And I thought the family fight comment was telling, too. You know, it alluded to the fact that there are obviously some people on the board who think that, you know, inflation is running hot,

which it is, and that rate hikes are going to be called for, which they probably would be with a regular Fed chair. And yet he's indicated that it could be a family fight. And I think a lot of people think, well, this is really 12 independent people and they all get to vote. That's a bunch of hooey. I mean, the fact of the matter is the Fed does what the chairman wants the Fed to do. The chairman bullies the board into doing it. All he's got to get is a majority. He doesn't have to have every vote. He just has to have half, more than half. And so my suspicion is that that family fight was a clue that, you know, he's going to go to the Hawks and say, guess what? This is the new program. I'm the new chairman. This is what we're doing. And we're cutting rates. And he could do that in

July. He could do it in September. You know, I hesitate to say he's going to do it in July. I thought he might cut him at the first meeting, which obviously he didn't. I kind of still think he might cut him in July, but I'll probably be wrong about that. I think there's a very high chance of cut him in September. They'll also probably get some good data. Between now and then. I mean, the price of oil has come in a lot. Employment report this morning was soft. They'll probably get some soft inflation data.

And then, you know, he'll use the AI argument. The productivity is going up. And therefore, this is not a crazy thing to do. We should be cutting rates, reshoring. So that's kind of where I see the world right now. Peter, I'd love to get your response to that. I also want to throw in there because I think I saw, I think he'd be it a comment that you'd say something along the lines

if I can make a case that were somewhat restrictive based on housing market. I think it was something along those lines. And then additionally, the employment data, if you've had a look at that one, because I think it showed that job participation rate had gone down. And I thought that might factor into falling prices as well, too. Yeah. So I think Larry's absolutely right that in his heart he wants to cut. He's been looking for excuse after excuse to cut. For years now, he's been talking about so-called Robin Hood monetary policy, right, with the ideas that the Fed flogues its stash.

I think it's six and a half or seven trillion on the balance sheet. right? So it sells all off. It cancels the dollars that can bring inflation down. That then allows him to cut rates. He's got the AI and deflation thing that he's been on for, I guess, six, nine months now. He's talking about the boosting growth, you know, questioning the Phillips curve. He seems to be trying to find any excuse to cut. It's possible that, you know, what's going through his head is he's got to at least make it look like the data drove it. He's going to get a gimmee on inflation. just because oil prices are coming down, and so those are going to feed through, and so he can pretend to be surprised about that. At which point he says, well, you know, I, you know, I'm a very cautious man by instinct, but boy, you know, when the data talks, he listened to it. And then he deploys all these, you know, myriad arguments for lower rates, and I'm sure he'll come up with new ones. And, you know, this kind of goes to the institutional bias of the Fed, which is that it's always leaning

towards lower rates. And, you know, part of the reason that's their job is to create inflation. The other reason is that that disarms any kind of political opposition from Congress and the president if the economy is growing. So, yeah, no, I think Larry makes a lot of good points, sir. No, fair enough. Larry, I'd love to throw in there too. I'm curious your thoughts on the current debt situation for the U.S.O. I think I saw you highlighted a chart that was showing a strong divergence between the amount of outstanding debt and the amount on the Fed's balance sheet. And I kind of want to wrap in that your thoughts on the overall kind of AI space and what you make of it. The reason being is that I think I saw it was Open AI was looking to give a 5% stake of the

company to the U.S. government. And to me, that just felt like set up for a coming, like they're delaying the IPO. They want to give some to the U.S. This feels like a setup for a bailout in that industry, but I could be misreading it. It does. And I've often thought that that might be possible. There are some other signals indicating that in the last six months. I mean, and you know, one of the things,

it's kind of the industry, the AI industry, has tried to paint themselves as a geopolitically strategically important industry that we cannot afford to lose this race to China. And I think that one of the things that will drive all of this administration's decisions if people bitch about them is, hey, look, we're in this existential race with China on all these different fronts. You know, it's like it's almost like World War II. You know, we got to do what we got to monetarily to, you know, get it funded. And so yield curve control, buying bonds, cutting rates, you know, hey, we can't lose this race. It's a national emergency. You know what I mean? I can kind of see that narrative. There have been hints at that narrative, and I can see that

narrative could certainly grow in, and certainly all the tech bros who, you know, are in all the AI stuff and gave Trump tons and tons of money and are, you know, deeply embedded in the, you know, in supporting the administration. Yeah, they're going to be crying for all kinds of help. And why not? Why, you know, why wouldn't that, right? I mean, if, I mean, the one thing that China does differently than us, I mean, China is a capitalist economy in some respects, but it's a state capitalist economy. And they, the state directs capital to the areas that it thinks are important. And I think that, you know, I think there's a certain group in America that's kind of come in the same conclusion that in order to compete with them, we need to do the same thing.

So, yes, I could definitely see an AI-related bailout. I mean, the one thing I've said in that chart that you allude to that what I tweeted, has shown, and I also alluded to this in my book, is that, you know, the fundamental issue here that nobody's really addressing or that they're kind of sweeping under the rug. And Peter will totally agree with this and understand it, is that the debtor just keeps on growing. And the money supply has to grow to support the debt. That's a mathematical fact. I mean, when debt grows, you owe interest on it. So if there's a fixed amount of money in circulation with a growing debt burden, you can't make the interest payments. You don't have enough money

to do it. And so it's pretty simple. It's kind of a Stein's law situation. So they're going to figure out a way to create that money. Now, whether they're going to do it all at once, like they did in COVID or over three years like Bernacki did with, you know, the GFC. I mean, you know, and what's the excuse for it going to be? Is it going to be World War III? Is it going to be competitive AI? Is it going to be, you know, I mean, who knows? But, you know, they'll figure out with some excuse and the money will get bit printed. That's the one constant that I have very high confidence in. What I don't have as much confidence in, what's really tricky for all of us trying to invest it and play this game is you just don't know the timing on the shit, right? And so,

So in October, you own Bitcoin at 124, you're feeling like a genius. You think it's going to 250. And the next thing, you know, it's at 58, right? Or, you know, earlier this year you own silver at 120. You think it's going to 500. And now it's back at 60, you know. So volatility makes it really hard for the average investor, for people who can't keep their eye on the kind of five and 10 year ball.

I mean, the five and 10 year ball says that all of us who are participating in the sound money bet. We're in the right place. It's working, we're winning if you take a longer term perspective. But these countertrend moves, you know, I mean, God, Twitter feels like a war zone, right? I mean, the brother just going after Michael Saylor like he's the antichrist. And, you know, it's just, it's like, come on, guys, it's just a Bitcoin bear market. That's all. So, those are my thoughts. Peter? Yeah. The AI, so these AI companies trying to get the government to buy a share, right? I mean, that's, that's, you know, straight crony capitalism. It's straight out of the defense contractor playbook, and you do that so that you get sweetheart deals. I think there's

an additional urgency for AI, which is that is deeply, deeply unpopular, and that's cross-party. Everybody hates AI. And if the voters hate AI, then the politicians are going to hate AI. And so, you know, whether it's channeling money, whether it's generously funding, you know, presidential libraries or whatever it is, you got to fix that. And so I think that, that that's the opportunity I see. Meanwhile, Trump has been, I mean, really for a long time now, he's been excited at the prospect that the U.S. government would own various businesses. So, you know, he had the Intel deal, lithium. It's just endless. He wants to own a little bit of everything. It's like it has never occurred to him that his enemies are going to get control

the government at some point. So I would like him to stop that. But at any rate, you know, the AI companies, they see Trump. They see he loves this stuff. of course, they can grease the skids with the rest of Congress to get this stuff to happen. And then I think they figured that that buys them regulatory armor in a hostile environment. Now, what I think is interesting is, you know, the point that, so the closest analogy to AI, I think pretty much everybody knows is dot com. And what happened in dot com is that you had, you had two pieces of that. There was the application consumer facing side.

And then there was the guys who were, you know, the picks and shovels like Lucan. And what happened in dot com is that they built too many picks and shovels too fast. Right. So they had built like a 300 lane highway. And yes, traffic was increasing, but it turned out that, you know, it took a decade to fill that. And the trick is that the internet, aside from video, it really didn't find apps to fill that for a very, very long time. What I think is interesting in AI is that it's all, well, and so all the value of the internet accrued to the guys who had the eyeballs, the guys who had the relationships with customers.

So, you know, Google, Facebook, Amazon. What's interesting, I think, about AI is that is the precise opposite of that. So on the one hand, like Facebook just announced that they ran through two and a half billion dollars worth of tokens. There was another company. I think it was rumored to be Uber who blew out their budget in like six weeks or something. It was a massive budget. There is nearly, you don't want to use the word unlimited as an economist. But anyway, there is a lot of demand for,

tokens, like an enormous, like thousands and thousands of times what's currently being consumed. If you can build it, they will come by it. I think in that sense, the infrastructure is not at all like the dot com. You're talking, you can build a thousand lane highway, and it's going to be full next Tuesday, and you're going to need another thousand lanes on top of that, and they will pay for it. On the flip side, right, so that's very good for the picks and shovels guys in AI. I think that they're materially more attractive than lucent during.com. But the flip side of that is that AI itself, I think everybody, certainly me, has been shocked how commodity it is, that you can basically invent God.

And it turns out everybody else can copy you in like three weeks flat. Right. So like this Chinese, what is it, Z. A.I, I think, where its performance is now almost the same as mythos. Yep. Right. And this is an open source. outfit, right? They do not. Right. And like, so, you know, I use multiple AIs to ask different questions.

And I can't even remember which one I used for this question. Right. I'll be like, wait, was that GROC? Was that GPT? I don't know, because they're all the same. Right. They have tiny, tiny little distinctions. There's some stuff. They'll be like, no, I'm not a doctor. Or, you know, they'll say, no, I can't. If you ask GPT to write something with a conservative point of view, they'll lecture you on, on how that's evil. Very, very few distinctions in terms of actually using it for business applications, for example. So the end result is that unlike the internet, where the value did not, it went to lucent for like, you know, whatever, nine months, and then it all went away. And it went to the consumer facing. I think AI is going to be the exact opposite.

So I think that's why outfits like Anthropic, like OpenAI, ChatTPT, I think that's why they're interested in a bailout here is that the competitive pressure, like there is no money in AI. There's money in the picks and shovels, and somebody's going to monetize that at cost with their cost to capital. But it is not going to be generating the kinds of returns that like Google saw during dot com. I completely agree with that point of view. I mean, it reminds me a lot. I was a vestrum.com in the dot com era. And I remember all the big IPOs, you know, Lucent, WorldCom.

And as Peter alluded to, they were, you know, everyone thought, well, the demand for the fiber or the demand for bandwidth is growing, you know, it's doubling every month, which it was in the very beginning. You know, we've got to build all this fiber. It was just an enormous misallocation of capital. Of course, it ultimately was still there and it got used. It was like, same thing happened in the railroads in the 1800s. We built all these railroads to nowhere. People weren't using them.

Then they got used. I feel like the same thing is going on with AI. And we just don't know the economics of it yet. And so, you know, the people who are chasing it as a shiny object to invest in, I have a lot of friends who are like, gosh, I want to get some SpaceX or, you know, I got some SpaceX. What do I do with it? And I'm just kind of like, look, on a fundamental basis, this is not a good investment. It's too expensive. And so, you know, to me, I'm with Jeremy Grantham on this one particular issue. I'm not

with him on anything else. But I'm totally with him. It does have a frothy bubble-like feel to it. Now, it's going to change the world because I, you know, I use the stuff and I get it. It's extremely valuable. Although it is interesting the way they've been marching up the token thing. I've had a couple of my providers, you know, hey, you're out of tokens. You want to buy the next level. Oh, well, shit. And I think you alluded to that too. Some of these companies, they started using it. And it's like, holy crap, this stuff gets really expensive, really fast. And okay, that's fine. I mean, you know, you can spend that. The question is, what is it saving you that amount? If it costs X amount to do it, you know, how much revenue why or cost savings, why are being generated, because if those lines

don't cross, people are going to stop doing it. So all that's kind of on a, you know, to be determined basis. But look, it's really exciting stuff. I'm glad it's happening. And I do think it's going to bring a big productivity boost to the world. I mean, and the notion that's going to kill and take away jobs, yeah, it will, but, you know, it will, but it won't. I mean, you know, I mean, look, there are There are nobody, there are no people who, you know, weave, you know, clothing anymore because we have, you know, industrial weaving machines. And that doesn't mean that they're unemployed weavers running around in the world. I mean, and so, you know, the only thing that happens to, too, I remember, you know, so a mini version of this was I used to run spreadsheets on Wall Street by hand before Excel. And I went to Harvard Business School and a Lotus 1,23, the guy who founded it showed up and demoed it.

And it was like, hey, look at this. You can put all these numbers in a spreadsheet. You can run all these models, right? And I was like, holy crap. I just spent two years doing that by hand, you know, writing them down on a green tablet. And it turned out that, you know, in theory, a lot of people would say, well, that would make all these Wall Street financial analysts, you know, redundant. You don't need as many of them now that you can do it so much more. No, what really happened is we just ran more models.

You know, I could maybe run two models a day because I had to do it by hand. Now these guys can run 20 models in 10 minutes because they can use Excel. And so, you know, it's the same is true with AI. It's just going to make everybody more efficient. So a lot of good stuff coming in that area. And I'm very bullish on it long term. I'm curious, Peter, one I want to throw in there that, yes, with regards to like upping your models and you've run out of tokens and you must wait for four hours, it very much reminds me of like a drug dealer being like the first couple tastes are free. Like go ahead.

Use it. I love it. Oh, you want more? We're going to have to get a little more cash coming my way. Peter, I'm curious from a cultural perspective why you think there is this animosity on both sides towards AI. And I'm wondering if it's just like reflective of people, maybe like the case-shaped economy. For some reason, my brain is tagging in Mom Donnie's candidates winning the primaries in New York. And I'm wondering if this is almost like a, it's basically just people are struggling and so they're looking for something to blame.

Or maybe there's something else that you're seeing. Yeah, I mean, partly is human nature to get excited about threats. And, you know, this is adaptive. Right. If the, if you hear the leaves rustling and you assume it's a tiger, well, it usually isn't. But, you know, a type two error is catastrophic. So, you know, part of it's just human nature. If it bleeds, it leads.

And, you know, if you don't have anything bleeding, then make something up. I think there are a couple of deeper levels to it, though. So one of them is that, you know, when I went back and looked at predictions of job losses, when I was curious of is, you know, people have been talking about AI job losses for actually about 15 years now. There was a seminal paper in 2013 by a pair at Oxford. And from memory, they said something like one out of three jobs. they framed it academically something like would be impacted, but they, it went into the media and

they sort of allowed it to go into the media as one in three jobs would be lost by 2030. And here we are 13 out of 17 years into that and nothing. Like we have more jobs. If you try and look in the economic data for the AI jobs impact, you don't see it. It's noise. You can find individual layoffs. You know, you have like layoff trackers and these are, you know, kind of done as like YouTube channels or whatever, like basically just to get attention.

Click me. And there, yeah, companies, you know, they blame AI because they actually overhired during COVID because they were labor hoarding. David Sachs has talked about how Google was explicitly hogging up talent so that competitors could not get it. It was basically just paying them to start out and do nothing. Okay. And so now that the profit growth is not as good as it was during COVID, they're laying

these people off. And rather than saying, you know, we screwed up or we, you know, engage in anti-competitive behavior, they just say, ah, it's AI. What are you going to do? If you actually look at the numbers, it's not showing up. David Sacks is also, he shared a chart where he was talking about AI or programmer. Programmer hiring is actually up this year. And that was supposed to be ground zero for AI. And the reason is that you can go to GitHub and there are seven.

I think it's 7x or 13x more commitments year on year. Okay, and that used to grow like 20% a year. So in other words, there is 7 or 10 times more software being developed or people coming up what, maybe it's not useful, but trying to make changes of software. There's 7 to 10x where there used to be, you know, 1.2. And so exactly, as Larry said, it's the Excel moment. They're not actually laying off. So that's kind of, I think, the big picture on it.

You know, if you look at it in terms, I mean, even like the worst case predictions, you know, you're looking at like 20, 30 million jobs is a common number thrown around the next 10 or 15 years. Okay, in an average year, 40 million Americans change jobs. 20 million change careers. Okay. 20, 30 million jobs over 15, 20 years? It's noise. Like, they're changing.

jobs anyway, so instead of changing into the thing that's obsolete, they're going to change into the thing that's new, they're very small numbers. So why is it being hyped? You know, when I went back and looked at all those predictions, one of the things that struck me anyway is that the most, you know, I was looking for the most extreme ones because I want to make fun of them. And the most extreme ones all come from outfits like World Economic Forum. I thought, that's really weird.

Like, they were all left-wing predictions. So my working hypothesis at the moment is that global warming wasn't working out for them. People don't believe it. They don't think it's important enough. There was a survey in Canada a couple of years ago where they asked people, do you think global warming is a big problem? And something like 70% of Canadians said, yes, catastrophic, existential of future you met. And I said, okay, how much would you be willing to pay to stop global warming?

And the median number was like $8.8 Canadian. Right? which like we'll buy you like you can't even go to subway with that anymore yeah that was so you know people say yes yes this is a big deal and then you say well is it really so global warming's not working and so they needed a new catastrophe they need some new crisis to justify a government take over of the economy AI it is when i first got into bitcoin i was overwhelmed the jargon the security risks the fear that one mistake could cost everything i remember staring at my screen and wondering Are my keys safe?

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By the end, you don't just hope your Bitcoin is safe. You know it is. If you're ready for that level of confidence, then head to BTC Mentor.io and book a call with us today. Well, let me add one thing, too, Nathan, that I think is important. And there actually is one semi-legitimate. I mean, I totally agree with everything Peter just said, and I think a lot of those complaints are illegitimate.

But there's a legitimate complaint that people are experiencing in their pocketbook, right? As we all know, the AI requires a lot of power and a lot of electricity and a lot of data centers. And so you've got two things going on there. You've got the NIMBY fact that, you know, hey, we have this nice, you know, field outside our towns. They're going to build an enormous data center here. And then related to that NIMBY, you know,

not in my backyard thing, you've got the fact that that data center is going to absorb one shit ton of electricity. And, hey, how come my electrical bill went up 20% last year or 30%? Do you know what I mean? It's all AI. And, you know, and that, That's legitimate. I mean, in a world where the K-shaped economy where half the country is really, you know, live in paycheck to paycheck and any increase in their living costs hurts, you know, watching their electrical bill go up sharply year after year, and then they connect the dots and go, oh, that's happening because AI is building a data center and the data center needs the power. Power company doesn't have enough power.

They've got to buy it from somewhere else, so the rates go up, right? So that's a legitimate, you know, complaint. And the interesting thing, I remember I was talking to Michael Saylor once about nuclear power. And he said, I said, yeah, you know, it's a shame we don't have it. And he said, don't worry. AI is going to make the entire country nuclear. And he's right. I mean, because there's really no other way to, I mean, the power required to do all the things

that we want to do, we almost can't do it with fossil fuels. I mean, we've got to, you know, we've got to go nukes, you know, hard and heavy. And it's nice to finally see the tide starting to turn on that, right? Agreed. I think we had it was like three mile island was bought up by Microsoft or somebody. Yeah, right. Restarting that for nuclear power. The trends there are very, very positive.

And that's a good thing because every great increase in human well-being, you know, throughout our history has come, often come with a, with an, the use and the utilization of a new, lower cost, more efficient power source. And nuclear is an extremely efficient power source. So it's a shame. We should have been investing in it 20 years ago, more heavily. Sure. Yeah, I've got a friend at the U.S. Oil and Gas Association. He loved sharing a chart that, you know, if you plot out countries by per capita GDP and energy usage, there is no such thing as a low energy rich country. Doesn't happen. Energy is massive. We've been hugely under-investing it. China, to their credit, has been just outstanding. Now, I mean, there's various reasons they

can do that. I'm going to say some of this dirty coal, as you know. They burn coal, and then there's speculation that they fund climate activism in the West to handicap us. You know, the externalities, so the energy costs, another one are the physical externalities when they put a data center in your small town, and now you can't sleep at night because it's humming. So they're, you know, those are real. The industry to a certain, I think the industry in general has dragged their feet on that. They've, you know, Trump stepped in a little bit. He's got a new rule now where data centers are supposed to provide their own power.

So specifically, I think they talk to like the local energy producer and they prepay. And then in theory, they're going to build it out. Now, of course, if we had perfectly competitive energy markets, then you wouldn't care if somebody else's coming in because you would actually get economies of scale. You could build it very quickly and so on. So part of that is running into this antiquated energy industry that, you know, it was barely working before. We had rolling blackouts and brownouts all over the country before AI started. And so now it's absolutely stressing that. Point two is, you know, you've got NIMBYs who don't want data centers in their towns, which, you know, I completely understand. Some of the smart

harder ones have started just bribing them. You know, they basically just go in. I mean, which, like, is so obvious. I don't know why I didn't do this before, but basically you go in and you say, okay, listen, guys, we are going to pay your town enough that you don't have to pay property taxes anymore. Okay. Or we're going to reverse it.

Okay. I mean, duh. But anyway, some of them are starting to do this. But, you know, it's always amazing to me as economists, like, why didn't this occur to you earlier, right? You've got this, you know, whatever, billion dollar data center. and you couldn't squeeze off 10 million a year to go bribe the locals. It should be easy enough at that point.

Okay, I want to jump back for just a second because we mentioned China there as well. Peter, starting with you, I'm curious. If we take a look at the broader economic situation outside of the U.S., I'm thinking of like Dixie's rising right now, the yen's been falling in value. Is there anything in the international markets that has your attention? Yeah, I mean, I've been talking a lot about Europe. I think Europe's in pretty dire straits. I think really the West, outside of the U.S., the West has been following almost an identical script

where they've been very close to zero growth. So this is Canada, of course, Europe, Japan. They've been very close to zero growth. And they're sort of accumulation of regulations, government spending. I think COVID was a big part of that. There were a number of countries that had not really done. caught up on the suicidal debt, where they made up a lot of lost ground during COVID, you know, essentially use the crisis to permanently grow the government.

That's the crisis in Leviathan by Bob Higgs, right, the idea that every crisis grows your government, then you never really grow back to the original shape. I think that's really happening now across the entire West. You're seeing a lot of commonalities where, I mean, it almost looks like there's like some orchestrating, you know, you see migrant crises and, you know, out of control. spending out of control, social spending that is functionally a slush fund for an organized left. Like, you're seeing this really across the West. So I think that is, you know, progressively handicapping the West. That is, you know, part of the conversation when people talk about

China and sort of praise its model, it does not have that for better or for worse. So I think that that's probably going to be continuing. The reason that's interesting for Americans, For the moment, I think we're relatively insulated from it because of Trump. However, Trump won't be around forever. The odds are about 50-50 that we're going to have a Democrat back in office in 28, and then we'll rejoin that party. So I think in the long run, we do have a lot of trouble coming for us. That then goes into, you know, debt conversations,

whether we can sustain economic growth to grow into the debt we already have, never mind the debt that's coming next. And it's also interesting for Americans because Trump is, very aggressively trying to court these countries over to the U.S. You know, a lot of the discussion about tariff-onshoring focuses on China. And for most Chinese companies, the manufacturing environment is so much more attractive in China that you don't really want to leave. You only leave if you have to.

You've got ecosystems where all the talent is there. Everybody knows what they're doing. It's very, you know, easy to get things done. The regulations and taxes may look bad on paper, but in reality they're not. On the other hand, you look at somewhere like Europe, so somewhere like Germany, like you would have to be insane to keep your company somewhere like Germany. The taxes are twice what they are in the U.S. The red or the regulations are closer to three times. If you look at employee hours spent on compliance, energy prices, of course, two times.

So I think you're sort of in this interesting trio where you've got some countries like China and the Chinese model. China's been intentionally promoting their model. which is basically economy first. Don't talk about politics. They've been explicitly promoting that model really around the world, but to Africa, to Latin America. So on the one hand, you've got that model, which economically, I think, is extremely successful. And then you've got Europe and Japan, which are all, I think, falling down the hole. You've got the U.S. right now, which I think is on Knife's Edge.

At best, we're falling down the hole, but slower, but that could accelerate. it. Interesting. Larry, any thoughts on that and on international markets? Is there anything else that you're paying attention to? No, I mean, I'm watching the yen, which is kind of getting weak again. Lynn pointed out this morning that they've intervened. And I watched that because Japan was the source of the cheapest money on the planet,

and so it was leading to a lot of liquidity growth on the carry trade. I'm watching the M2 growth, which took a big bump up last month. You know, that's monetary debasement. You know, they're not printing a lot of money. They're printing some money in this reserve management program, but it's not a big number. But, you know, I guess just at a macro level, my sense is what they're going to try and do is just run this economy hot. And, you know, it might. And so the stock market is not necessarily going to go down.

Bond market might have a problem with it. Probably will have a problem with it eventually, but maybe not initially. and, you know, lower interest rates and credit growth and pushing the banks to loan and keep things going. I mean, that's kind of their kick-the-can strategy. And, you know, it's probably going to work. I mean, I think they're very, very focused on the midterms. You know, if they lose the midterms in November, you know, then their lives get much more difficult. And so I think they're focused on trying to, you know, and there's a lag, by the way, you know, between, I mean, if percent gets more.

dovish and drops rates and banks make more loans, you know, it's not like it necessarily that shows up with the inflation data immediately. I mean, it will eventually, but not immediately. And all they've got to do is make it to November. So, you know, I think that to me, that's really the unspoken thing that's going on right now is what can they do to make the economy run hot to increase their odds of maintaining power in the November elections? I'm curious, Larry, I'll just actually double click on that for a second. What is your your view, just even just boots on the ground, your feel right now, people you talk to, what does it look like going into the November elections? Do you think that they actually are

losing? I don't know. I'm not very good at handicapping that stuff. I've been wrong a lot of times on what's going on there. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I look at some of the stuff Trump has done, and I think to myself, you know, how can it possibly not cause him to, you know, cause the Republicans to have a real problem. But then, of course, I look at the other side and just how bad the blue team is. And I'm kind of like, you know, who can vote for them. So I just don't know. It's a, it's a very, you know, it's very much kind of a jump ball in my mind. You know, I don't, I don't think Trump has done himself a lot of favors, though. I mean, it should have been a situation where it was, it was just a no-brainer that they were going to retain power and, you know, a combination

of the war and the Epstein problem and, you know, so many other things. And just his overall general behavior in my view. It's not, certainly hasn't helped, right? And there's a piece of the country that's sympathetic to the other side. I mean, look at what's going on in New York and Mandami and Colorado and some other places, you know, that, I mean, remember, you know, the average American, you know, isn't that bright. And then half the people are below that. So, you know, there's going to be a, you know, there could very easily be a lot of people who listen to the siren song and the blue team and and going that direction. So, you know, personally, I'm not real fan of either team. I'm kind of a libertarian. I think the system's broken. We got to repair it. But so I'm really not the

best person to ask in terms of how to handicap it. Peter, I'm curious your read on things going into midterms. And also, funny enough, like I was talking with Hoddle and Dr. Jeff and Joe about this. But in preparation, I realized that Venezuela was basically like six months. ago and it's been completely forgotten. If Iran actually is wrapped up now come November, it might not even be an issue going into midterms, but I'm curious your thoughts.

I agree. I think that's 100% true. You know, the funny thing, okay, so if you zoom out the out party, in other words, the other party than the president, they win midterms 90% of the time.

And, you know, they're currently, I think it's like a, three or five seat difference or something, especially on knife edge. So they started the game at 90% odds of losing. The current on CalShe is something like 75% or 80% for Democrats to win the midterms. I mean, in the grand scheme, that's outperforming.

But either way, I think that Republicans, if they haven't written off the House, they're idiots, you know, you're up against 90%. That's a century-long trend. The question is whether they can save the Senate. So there's about two or three seats in the Senate that are still in play, places like Ohio. That's really what they're going for. But the trick here, you know, part of it is, as Larry said, you can, you only have so many economic levers that you can pull that are going to affect things in the next four months.

Right. So Fed rates typically will not. The lag on that is at least 12 months. 18 months is, you know, sort of the rule of thumb. Certainly ending the war, bringing oil prices. down, even though there's a little bit of a lag, but four months should clear you. Other than that, there's not a whole much you can do on prices. You know, the main thing that the Fed could do in such a short time frame like that would just be dumping money into the markets, which Kevin Warsh just said

he doesn't want to do. But, you know, I guess if the Senate seats are in question and, you know, of course, senators are the ones who approve Trump's administration. So it's possible that he may do some favors. But yeah, there's not a whole lot that they can do for it. So, you know, if I had to guess, Democrats are going to win the House. That means that new laws basically grind into a halt and said they're replaced with hearings about, you know, what did Pete Hegsseth have for dinner last night, which, you know, as a libertarian, you could argue that's a good thing. You know, you'd rather Washington sit around and fight instead of come up with bipartisan things to do to us. And the Senate, You know, I think, I mean, it's 50-50.

If I had to guess the Republicans are probably going to hold on to it, which matters. Certainly if there's any Supreme Court changes. But, you know, I think the smart money at this point is saying that the next two years are going to be basically paralysis in Congress, which isn't much of a difference. I mean, Congress has been paralyzed for 50 years now because of the filibuster. So it doesn't change that much. We get fewer pork-filled housing bills, but nobody even notices those anyway. and then beyond that, you know, I mean, Trump will keep trying to do what he's doing, which is essentially try to run the country with executive orders.

Honestly, like, if you look at his polling, when he has a really good couple of months, it's like 46%. When he has a really bad couple of months, it's like 42%. Like almost the entire country has chosen their team. And, you know, I think it was during his first run when he said, that if he shot somebody on Fifth Avenue, his people wouldn't care. And that, yeah, I think that's probably true. More concerningly, I think that's probably true for both parties going forward now. That's as pretty much where we are, is that, you know, both groups are tribal. All the things that,

you know, might have upset us about Joe Biden, you know, a true Democrat didn't care. They had explanations for all of it. It's the same, you know, for people who love Trump. They've got reasons for everything. I think that's pretty much the world where we're going. And so the concern about that is that if politicians know that they can shoot people on Fifth Avenue, they will. They'll basically say, look, I'm just going to do shit and, you know, my people aren't going to care. There's about 4% in the middle and then just figure out some way to appeal to them. So whether that's, you know, 50-year mortgages in order to get rates that, you know, whatever, or, you know, whatever sort of gimmick that they can pull out of their bag to try to get that,

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Interesting. Larry, did you have any thoughts on that, or anything you want to add there? No, not really. I think he summarized it well. Beautiful. Then I'll pivot to you. I want to talk about a few things in the Bitcoin space. We mentioned Sailor earlier. So speaking of travel, we have some nice infighting going on as per usual in a bear market. But I just wanted to start. And Larry, I'll start you on to get your sense of just Sailor and strategy and everything going on there. Particularly like we had recently, they announced that they were setting up for allowing, it was the Bitcoin Monetization Program, allowing for $1.25 billion in Bitcoin sales.

They've had the preferred equity product that was doing fairly well, but I think it's, I think it's approaching Megas's way back to par. I just want to get your read, not just what your overall take is and your thoughts going forward. Well, look, I think that obviously, you know, bear markets create a lot of fear. And, you know, they had a, there was a liquidity cascade in stretch, which was their preferred product. And yeah, it is trending back up. It's now, it hit a low of 72. It's now at 87. You know, but, you know, Michael, by saying, when he said it, and he introduced, he said, this is going to be a money market-like product.

And I think he probably believed that at the time. As it turned out, it's a little more volatile than a money market-like product, even though the dividend is very well covered. The market is skittish on this thing. And so, you know, I think what the market just told micro strategy is, hey, look, you've gone far enough in terms of leverage. And so in a funny backward way, I'm kind of glad it happened because I think it'll maybe slow them down a little bit. I believe in the notion of a treasury company. I think that

the purists who don't think we should have treasury companies are being naive, just like they don't think we should have ETFs. I mean, there's no way that Bitcoin really becomes the widely adopted monetary standard that we hope it to be without it infiltrating and kind of crawling through what's now kind of Wall Street where all the money is. And of course, eventually a lot of Wall Street shit will die, but you can't get from here to there without having these products in the interim. And so, look, I think strategy in general has done all of the right stuff and has done a very good job of, you know, pivoting as needed. You know, obviously he's made some changes. He's done some things that he said he wouldn't do.

But I think he did them after he learned, you know, something new about the conditions. And to my way of seeing it, the fact that he's kind of keeping everybody off balance and saying, you know, I'm going to do what's ever in the company's best. interest. And if that means selling Bitcoin, I'll sell Bitcoin. Because if he's selling it, if the price of the company, if the market value is a discount to the underlying value of the Bitcoin, he's better off buying the stock back than he is buying Bitcoin. So, you know, to me, he's just, he's giving himself more levers. And I think he's maturing as a manager. And, you know, I'm a big strategy holder, a big believer, a big bull. I think it's going to go to a thousand plus a share on the common.

And, you know, but I own more Bitcoin than I do strategy because it's a levered bet. And I never advocate that anyway you use leverage, you know, too much leverage. I think a little bit of leverage if you want to be aggressive, it's fine. But somebody, you know, I think you start, if you're in the sound money, you know, if you believe in the sound money thesis, you start by owning the prime asset, which is Bitcoin and the best way to own us in self-custody. But, you know, there are some people who aren't prepared for that. And so if they want to buy an ETF, fine.

And then there's some people who want more, you know, know, more juice. And so if they want to buy micro strategy, fine, but understand what you're doing. It's more volatile. I mean, Bitcoin's down 50 percent. Microstratory is down 70 percent from its high last year. So that's the nature of leverage. So I think the company's evolving. I'm incredibly bullish. I was disappointed to see some of the people in the industry attack him and say he was being disingenuous or not fully disclosing what's going on. I mean, if you go to the strategy website, I mean, they've got literally every single fact. I mean, you can watch what this company is doing day by day, almost hour by hour.

So to my way of seeing it, there's really nothing they're hiding. And, you know, you either believe that Bitcoin's going to work, in which case this company will work. Or if you think Bitcoin's going to fail, well, then you can make an argument that strategy will fail sooner because it's leverage. And that's an acceptable argument. But I don't think Bitcoin's going to fail. I think the return on Bitcoin is going to well exceed the cost of strategy's capital, which right now is 12% on the preferred. I think the ARR on Bitcoin is going to be well above 12% for decades. So I'm not very worried about it, but it's interesting to me.

I mean, one of the problems with this whole Bitcoin adoption thesis is that we've got people coming into Bitcoin who don't know anything about markets. And if you've been in markets a long time, you understand what markets do when they go up and down. And if you study Bitcoin, it's got a bunch of big corrections. This correction, by the way, is the smallest of all the ones up until now. And with everyone, it gets less. I mean, first one's 90%, then 80, then 70, then 60,

you know, this one's 55 or something percent. So to me, we're going in the right direction. As volatile as it is, it's becoming less volatile. So I'm a big bull on strategy, and I'm a big bull on Bitcoin. And I'm disappointed in some people who've, you know, taking shots at strategy. Because I think I'm balanced strategy has been a huge positive for the Bitcoin community. Peter?

Yeah, so, you know, I think a lot of this is just downstream of our world is sort of mimicking the boom bust of the Fiat world. Now, in the case of Fiat world, that's by design, right? It's designed to overinflate, and then it's designed to cut that off with recession. Of course, they don't want recessions. It's just to inflate forever, but it's essentially designed to have this boom bust mechanism. And during the boom stage, you're going to get all kinds of exotic, you know, leverage product. and then during the bus stage, a lot of those are going to tank. Now, in our case, I think sort of the cause of this is simply the volatility in Bitcoin,

as Larry mentioned, that's decreasing over time. I think it's also important that, you know, people sort of put this in perspective. So gold, for example, since it was demonetized in 1971, gold has gone through multiple periods where it doubled or dropped by two or three X, or by half, two-thirds, in like a two-to-three-year period. Right. So naively, if somebody did not know the history of gold, you would say, that's ridiculous.

This can never be a currency. How the hell could you have a currency that booms and busts? And, of course, the reason is because it's not the dominant currency at the moment. So it doesn't have that ballast, right? So I don't think, you know, the sort of boom-bust aspect of Bitcoin price, I think is, it's just part of the territory. Gold has it too. Now, gold, you don't get, I mean, to a certain degree, you also with gold, you get, you know, you get like gold back credit cards and, you know, you get certain financial innovations when gold's having a good time. It tends,

you know, gold is like the ultimate, what is it, the diamond hands, right, because it's got so much history that the major buyers and gold stick around. But, Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, this is just our version of the Fiat boom bust. I don't think it's a problem with Bitcoin. It's just part of the path towards becoming the dominant currency. You know, we're going to keep gaining market share gradually, but we're still a couple decades away from that flip. Very interesting.

I'll continue with that then, Peter. So just if we're looking out, just for the fun of it, if we're looking out towards the end of the year, what do you kind of thinking for the sound money camp, Bitcoin, gold, silver, where do you see things in the shortish, to medium term? I mean, if I had the guess, we're going to stabilize. I think that the, I think most of the drops so far this year has been AI sucking the oxygen

out of the room where the number go up crowd, you know, are playing over there for the moment. Maybe they'll stick around. Maybe they'll come back if AI crashes. But I think the other part of it was just a reaction. Like, people forget how, I mean, gold and silver were absolutely on fire last year. And, you know, Costco to buy gold.

Costco. Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, I think some of that is just reversion to the mean. The reversion of the mean spooks some people. And so they exit when they actually like

the asset, but, you know, they get sick of getting punched in the face. But their memories are short. And, you know, so I think there's going to be a certain reversion to the mean of that where, you know, we're going to get back to some growth. At which point, it hands off to interest rates And, you know, the $64,000 or the $5,000 gold question is whether Warsh is going to push through cuts or, you know, is he going to sort of let rates creep up?

And, you know, I agree with Larry that most likely the market is undervaluing the odds of cuts. Excellent. Larry, gold, silver, Bitcoin. Where are we looking end of year? Next year? What are your thoughts? So I'm pretty sure that when the next leg up starts, we're going to go. to $7,000 gold, maybe $200 silver, and probably, ultimately, I think, $180,000 to $200,000

Bitcoin, but it could take, you know, a year, year and a half to unfold. I mean, by the end, so we got six months left in this year. I kind of think we'll be at least back to testing the highs that we were at and all of them. I'm not sure we'll make new highs again in six months. That'd be an awful lot, awfully quickly. but I kind of feel like, you know, gold will be back in the, you know, 54 to 6,000 range by year end, and Bitcoin will be back up in the 120 to 130 range. And they'll all kind of be on their way to much higher numbers.

And I think what really drives that is that, you know, just like there was a time, if you recall, when Doge was going to control government spending, right? And, you know, Trump and Elon, remember that whole story? We're going to cut $2 trillion. We're going to cut $1 trillion. And at the end of the day, Elon threw up his hand and said, this is hopeless. And he walked out. And, you know, what do they cut?

Maybe $100? A billion? We don't know. But it wasn't a lot. And I think the same thing is going to happen with regards to the Fed. You know, I mean, the billing and the narrative is, you know, Morris is going to get things under control and he's going to raise interest rates and he's bulk or two-oh. And it's all going to be fine.

And you don't need, you know, I've seen these articles recently. I said the monetary debasement trade is dead. right. And I'm like, no. Right. No, I don't think so. I think it's just getting warmed up. It's like sent to the woman. No, I'm just getting warmed up. I mean, we had the first act and yep, okay, they got a little head of themselves. I'll grant you that. Silver went from 50 to 120 really quickly. That's a little crazy, right? And we had to get rid of some of that froth and tourists and the excess steam. It's come back down to 60. But, you know, the next leg is coming. And, you know, the debasement trade's not dead. I mean, I'll tell you when the monetary, you know, we'll know the monetary debasement trade is dead when they talk about entitlement reform

and debt reform and balancing the budget and cutting government spending and, you know, reducing the defense budget and blah, blah, blah. I mean, all the kinds of things that you would actually need to think that the government was being responsible. And, I mean, you literally hear none of that. You know, I was commenting to somebody the other day, I just think it's amazing that Even guys like Jerome Powell, who's trying to be Volcker, were saying things like, this can't go on forever. We can't just keep increasing the debt faster than GDP.

It's a problem. We're going to have a problem at some point. And yet then you kind of, you know, no bid the answer. Okay, Jerome, what are we going to do about it? And nothing, silence, you know? So it's a real problem. Until it gets resolved. I mean, we're in an inflationary world, right?

Well, and unfortunately, if you look into history, it's not going to get it resolved until there's a crisis. Well, that's right. That's exactly right, Peter. That's exactly right. And then maybe that crisis leads to a big print. I don't know. Somebody should write a book. It probably does. Well, I just got to say that I, for one, think that the bottom will be October and we'll start moving up again then. For no reason than other, it's incredibly entertaining for everyone to say that there was no cycles or cycles are dead. And then without any possible explanation, we'll peak in October and start the next run on the next October. just to fuck with everybody. It's possible. Maybe call me an optimist, a bullish optimist. I actually think we've seen the bottom in all three of these things right now. I think the mask on the Fed is starting to slip.

I think by the end of the year, the mask will be completely falling off. And everybody goes, oh, shit. It's the same old, same old. They're just going to have to print their way out of this. And when that becomes, remember, right now the market's still thinking rate hikes, you know, Volker 2O, all that kind of stuff. And I think, again, with his centrist speech, I watched it very carefully, the body language, and I'm sure the whole market did too.

He showed the mass started to slip, just ever so slightly. And right after that speech, gold and silver caught a serious bid. Like, boom, they're up. And then Bitcoin kind of caught a bit. And so now, you know, I mean, the last three, four days. I mean, it's just the beginning. I could be wrong. We could go back and retest the lows, go to $40,000 or $50,000 on Bitcoin.

Who knows? That's entirely possible. Bottom in October. That's one scenario. I'm a little bit more optimistic. I think the bottoms are in and I think we're going to start climbing out and by the end of the year

we're going to be well into the next bull cycle. And one of the most yeah, one of the most important lines on Wall Street, the market will do whatever will embarrass the greatest number of people. Well, that's true. That is true for sure. Whenever I make a prediction, I'm like, you know, literally this could

like do the exact opposite of everything I say in 10 minutes. I've been wrong so much. I don't know. I just, you just have to go with kind of what your gut feeling is based on watching the power. You do your best if you win 55. The thing that, you know, to counter what I, you know, that I could be wrong. I don't think I'm long term wrong. I mean, I'm thinking give me a year or two and it's pretty certain I'm right. But in the short term, yeah, anything could happen. Agreed. Gentlemen, this is absolutely wonderful. Peter, where can everybody go to find you, your work, follow you? I'm over on Twitter X as Prof. San Ange, P-R-O-F-S-T-O-F-S-T-O-N-G-E.

I also do a weekly newsletter, and I'm doing a new podcast interview series, which is coming out at end of the month. Nice. Love it. Larry, where can everybody go to follow you and your work? So you go to Amazon, buy the book. It kind of tells the story about everything we've been talking about. I'm on Twitter as well, just under my name, Lawrence Lepard. And I, too, have a website that has a free quarterly newsletter that lays out. kind of our macro views. That website is EMA2, Edward Mark Alpha, the number two.com. And, you know, we got 10 years worth of newsletters up there and our investment results and so

forth. So.