The Pomp Podcast - Pomp DESTROYS Peter Schiff on Gold, Bitcoin & Inflation

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

Peter Schiff is the Chief Economist of Euro Pacific Asset Management and the Chairman of Schiff Gold. In this conversation, we discuss the state of the U.S. economy, inflation, tariffs, the weakening dollar, and the outlook for gold, silver, and bitcoin. We also dive into global trade, monetary policy, and engage in a heated debate over whether tariffs and a weaker dollar help or hurt the economy.====================BitcoinIRA: Buy, sell, and swap 80+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Take 3 minutes to open your account & get connected to a team of IRA specialists that will guide you through every step of the process. Go to https://bitcoinira.com/pomp/ to earn up to $1,000 in rewards.As markets shift, headlines break, and interest rates swing, one thing stays true — opportunity is everywhere. At Arch Public, we help you do more than just buy and hold. Yes, our dynamic accumulation algorithms are built for long-term investors… but where we really shine? Our arbitrage algos — designed to farm volatility and turbocharge your core positions. The best part of Arch Public’s products is they are free! Yes, you heard that right, try Arch Public for free! Take advantage of wild moves in assets like $SOL, $SUI, and $DOGE, and use them to stack more Bitcoin — completely hands-free. Arch Public is already a preferred partner with Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, and Robinhood, and our team is here to help you build smarter in any market. Visit Arch Public today, at https://www.archpublic.com, your portfolio will thank you.====================0:00 – Intro2:31 – Why metals are ripping9:41 – Tariff fight: who pays + price examples20:02 – Inflation data debate (CPI vs real-time metrics)23:29 – AI: deflation vs inflation argument28:15 – Can the U.S. rebuild manufacturing fast?39:44 – Gold vs Bitcoin debate49:44 – Peter Schiff’s portfolio breakdown52:56 – “If inflation is low, why buy bitcoin?”56:56 – Schiff plugs: gold, funds, newsletter1:00:45 – Closing thoughts

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save and invest conditions apply visit scotiabank.com hisa to learn more scotia bank you're richer than you think. What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to The Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn.

So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments.

You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Bitcoin is more than 50% lower priced in gold than that peak. This thing is over. Do you own any Bitcoin? No.

I mean, I have a little teeny bit that was gifted to me for my strategic reserve. Oh, so you do have some Bitcoin. You finally capitulated. The tariffs are tax. Well, I don't know. I don't know if I agree. First of all, I don't know if I agree with that. That's a definition.

And then by definition, the consumer ends up paying. No, that's the China tariffs. Look, you are completely wrong. This is the bullshit that the Trump administration is trying to get Americans to swallow so it can tax them without realizing that they're being taxed. So why did every product coming out of China not go up over 100%? They are going up. They are going up. 100%?

No, not yet, but eventually, yes. But now so many Bitcoiners just want to kiss Trump's ass because the only thing propping up Bitcoin is Donald Trump. what's up everyone today we got a special treat i've got peter schiff the famous gold bug who's going to join us for a long conversation we talk about the state of the u.s economy what's going on with gold and silver how tariffs inflation bitcoin and much more is all playing out and we get into a very very very heated debate about the impact of tariffs and how a weakening dollar is either good or bad you are going to hear all sides of these disagreements right here me versus peter Schiff. I can't wait for you guys all to listen. Here's my conversation with good old Uncle Pete.

Before we get into this episode, I need your help. I want to get to a million subscribers on the Pomp podcast. That's this YouTube channel. Hit the subscribe button and let's get into this conversation with Peter. All right, Peter Schiff, the gold bug. You were wrong for a decade. Gold went nowhere, but now gold is doing very, very well. So you're going to come on. This is your victory lap. Please explain to us, the audience and me, why is gold, silver, copper and platinum I'm doing so well. And how are you changing your portfolio based on what's happening? Well, first of all, what's happening now proves that I wasn't wrong for a decade. I was right for a decade. It just took a decade for the markets to figure out what I already knew.

But even if you go back and look at my investment returns over the past 10 years, I'm well ahead of the S&P 500. Yes, all the gain happened in the last year and a half, but who cares, right? What matters is, where are we right now? And I am financially way better off having been 10 years early than had I just missed it, which is what most people are doing. I mean, most people haven't positioned themselves at all in physical metal or the mining stocks. And in fact, I think as of right now, the better opportunity is in the precious metals mining stocks, Because even though they have tripled, quadrupled over the past year or so, their profits have gone up much more than that. Their cash flow, by all objective measures, these stocks are substantially cheaper now than they were before the rally.

And I think that's because investors just don't believe the rally, don't understand it. Maybe they don't think it's sustainable. So they think that in the future, gold and silver prices are going to be back where they were a couple of years ago. And I think they're completely wrong. Not only are gold and silver prices not going to go back down, they will continue going up. So there is still an incredible opportunity to make money buying into these miners even now, even now. Hold on. I want I want to go through each one of these pieces here. So to me, let me tell you my view of what's happening with the metals and you tell me what I get right or wrong. Gold is going up because it has some industrial use case,

but really it's going up because central banks are buying it hand over fist. There is a, not just a de-dollarization, but there's a de-fiat currency process that's underway here. And the central banks are very big buyers. You have a scarce asset, the price goes up. Silver has a little bit of both.

It has a lot more industrial use cases than gold, but it also is being used as somewhat of a store of value. And then copper and platinum seem to be, you know, full-on industrial use cases. and there's some supply constraints going on in those assets. And so you get this kind of full metals mania, but it's actually each one of them is going up for a different reason. Do you agree with that?

Or am I being a little too small? No, and I don't think it's a metals mania. I think it's a reaction to inflationary monetary policies, in particular of the Federal Reserve and the expansionary fiscal policies of the current administration, which are highly inflationary. So it is a move. Wrong, I disagree.

Yeah, it is a move out of dollars into hard assets, into a monetary alternative to the dollar. You know, inflation ultimately is gonna lift all boats and it's not just metals that are gonna go higher, whether it's precious metals or industrial metals, it's agricultural commodities, it's energy. In fact, energy, I've been very bullish on the oil and gas sector recently, I thought we were putting in a very significant bottom and

we're ready for a rather an explosive move higher in energy costs. But, you know, gold is being bought by central banks and more central banks are going to be buying it this year than bought it last year. And the central banks that bought gold last year are going to buy more this year because there is a move out of U.S. dollars. And I think what foreign governments are doing is they are replacing dollar reserves and U.S. treasury reserves with gold. And the world wants to distance itself

from the economic monetary regime that has dominated the globe for decades, where the U.S. government gets to create the reserve currency out of thin air and Americans get to live beyond their means buying what everybody else produces on credit and just having this service sector economy with trillion dollar trade deficits,

trillion dollar budget deficits. So I think our days of living beyond our means and getting a free ride on the global gravy train are coming to an end. And you can see that in what central banks are doing. But it's not just central banks now that are diversifying out of a paper into gold. Private investors are now beginning to realize that they need to do the same thing, that inflation is going to erode away the value of what they have traditionally thought of as a safe haven part of their portfolio, which might be bonds or cash or things like that.

So investors are starting to move money that might otherwise have been allocated to the bond market to gold. And I also think that you're going to start to see portfolio managers that have zero exposure and that have had zero exposure to mining as a sector start to include mining stocks in their portfolios in addition to physical gold, which I think will come more out of the fixed income part of their portfolio than the equity part. I think the gold mining stocks, they'll come out of the equities. So maybe some money that might have gone into tech stocks or some other sector would go into mining, but money that would have been in bonds will go more into gold as the safe haven of a portfolio. And that has also broad implications because not only is the US government going to have problems selling its debt internationally. It's going to have problems selling it domestically.

So as U.S. budget deficits are exploding out of control, there's no buyers. There's no lenders who want the paper. And that's just going to put extraordinary pressure on the Fed to dramatically increase the size of the QE program to monetize an ever-increasing portion of exploding deficits And all of that does is fuel the fire. It just makes inflation burn hotter and it causes an even greater run out of U.S. dollars, out of U.S. treasuries. And it just feeds on itself. And the potential result is just a complete collapse of the dollar. You have runaway or hyperinflation. So that is what's out there as a potential. And that, of course, is a reason to be buying gold and silver right now. Okay. I'm going to tell you what I believe is the administration's

plan. And then you tell me what you think is smart or not smart. I think that they essentially have a four-part plan. The first thing that they are doing is they are trying to figure out how the heck that they can actually go ahead and use tariffs to drive revenue. They want to weaken the dollar to offset that tariff impact. They then want to go and deregulate and use tax cuts to drive growth. And then they are hoping that artificial intelligence and other innovative technologies will create a deflationary force that hits the economy. And they end up with a high growth, low inflation economy, which right now, Atlanta Fed GDP is showing over 5% growth in Q4. And if you look at something like Truflation, it is showing a reading below 1.2% on inflation.

What do you think is smart or not smart there? And what do you think is possible and not possible? Well, well, first of all, what you said about tariffs and a weak currency, the opposite is actually true. So the tariffs are tax that make imports more expensive. I mean, that is the purpose of the tariff, not only to raise revenue for the government, but to increase the cost of imports so that Americans will buy fewer imports and hopefully they'll buy more domestically made products. Well, I don't know. I don't know if I agree. First of all, I don't know if I know that's a definition. And then by definition, that's what tariffs do. And that is their purpose. It's called Peter. Peter. But this is an important part. I agree. It's a protectionist method. But I actually think that the purpose of the tariff is not to create a tax on the consumer, which it doesn't do. the fed admits that trump admits that the advisor does but that hold on hold on just listen hold on hold on it doesn't because the price of the products within 18 months of tariffs getting placed are lower than they were pre-tariff which you can see in 2018 with solar panels washing steel etc but hold on they're not they are first of all look hold on hold on just listen listen it's not this is not going to be a fun conversation for the audience if you don't listen so the reason

why i think it's a protectionist method is because it is actually a punishment to the producer to come and now start producing inside the united states it's not targeting the american consumer that wouldn't make sense of course it is it is targeting the producer and that's why you see let's say in 2018 the washing machine manufacturers when we put the tariff on they came and they set up facilities to manufacture the washing machines in the united states look first of all look i have I have purchased things that are now subject to tariff and they immediately increase the price that I have to pay. So when you bring something into the country, right, that I used to pay a hundred dollars for, and now they say, well, we got to charge you 120 because of the tariff.

I don't say, wait a minute, you eat the tariff. No, either I pay the tariff or I don't get the products, right? That's how it works. The tariff is a tax paid by the importer to bring a product into the country. And like any other tax, it gets added on to the cost of the product. Look, when I go into a store and I have to pay a sales tax, the business doesn't say, look, there's a 10% sales tax, but don't worry about it. We're going to pay that for you. We're not going to add the sales tax to the goods. We'll just eat that for you. No, that's not how excise taxes work. They always get passed on to the end consumer. And that is, in fact, what is happening. so why is inflation why is inflation lower look why is inflation lower a year later it's not it's

not low you you you believe government numbers but no i don't believe the government numbers i believe true flation which is a real-time alternative metric well i don't even know how true phrase against their numbers but i can tell you this let's say i'm an importer right and a tariff comes in i and i have to pay it right i have to write the check i have you don't have to but you don't just so we're clear just so the audience understands you don't have to pay it Because the Fed and the critiques of the Fed, they both agree that when the tariff is put, let's say that a 20 percent tariff is placed. What happens is the manufacturer eats some of it. The exporter in the foreign country eats some of it.

No, you order eats some of it. The consumer ends up paying. No, that's the China tariffs. You are completely look, you are completely wrong. This is the bullshit that the Trump administration is trying to get Americans to swallow so it can tax them without realizing that they're being taxed. So why did every product coming out of China not go up over 100%? They are going up. They are going up.

100%? 100%? No. Initially. 100%? Not yet, but eventually, yes. Because initially, when the tariff gets hit, right, and you get it initially, okay, I have to find out how to adjust things for the tariff.

Is it permanent? Is it temporary? Do I want to increase my prices? There's a lot of factors. But ultimately, the prices are going to go up by the amount of the tariff. I mean, that's mainly why tariffs have been used, that the purpose of the tariff is to increase the price of the import. That's why it's there. That's the whole point. Why do you think when a domestic manufacturer wants tariffs on foreign competitors, it's because it makes the foreign competitors' products more expensive?

because that's what tariffs do. It's nonsense to believe that they get absorbed. There's two, but there's two potential outcomes. This is, I think, an important part. And this is why I think people got the tariffs. Because look, if we go back, when the tariffs got implemented, I very clearly said,

they're going to be deflationary. There will not be high inflation. I was dead on right about it. And here's why. It's because everyone believes that just because there is a tariff, that the producer of the good says, okay, 20% tariff, raise prices 20%.

The other thing that they could do is they could say we can keep the prices the same and we can just eat into our margin. No, you have. OK, OK. Hold on. Hold on. We have your question. We have seen. We have seen your question. Hold on. Domestic companies and international companies say that they are doing that. All right. OK, so why didn't they do that before? Why didn't they just have lower margins before and sell more goods? But let me ask you a question. So let's say my margins are slim. Let's say I have a 10 percent margin. right? And there's a 20% tariff. Am I just going to lose money for the privilege of selling goods to America? Am I going to say, hey, I'm going to keep selling goods to America, even though I lose money on every single sale, I'm going to do it anyway. Well, how many, first of all, let's just

take out of 100% of the goods. Is that what you believe is going to happen? Out of 100% of the goods that get put into the United States from external producers, there is some very small percentage of them with after the tariffs they would be losing money so there's a very small percentage of people who that are in that situation most so what are the okay what are those companies going to do are they going to lose money or are they going to raise their prices well let's just let's just talk about specifics because you know the academic conversation doesn't really get me that excited so if we go back to 2018 the solar panels learn something about tariffs start i'm going to show you exactly what happened the solar panels in 2018 the original tariff was 30 tax on

foreign-made solar panels and modules imported into the United States. That tariff decreased by 5% each year until it bottomed out at 15%. That was under Trump. Eventually, Biden ended up increasing it even further on China specifically. But here's what's interesting about this. We continued to see domestic manufacturing of American solar panels after the tariffs were implemented. We also saw the price of solar panels drop. They went from, and I'm reading directly off the chart domestic solar panel prices continued to fall in price as they had been for years before the tariffs so for the american consumer when the tariffs started to the time when they actually expired the price of solar panels that were being bought by the

american consumer went down while the united states forget what you while the united states was punishing external producers of the solar panel and what you are forgetting is had the tariffs not been imposed, then the prices would have declined by more. But this is a different argument. See, you're moving the goalposts. You just told me that the price is saying that the prices decreased, but they wouldn't increase more without the tariff. No. Well, they're always coming up with more efficient ways to produce things and make things better. And so let's say the prices of something would have gone down from 100 to 80, but they put a tariff in. And so instead of going from 100 to 80, the price goes from 100 to 90 because there was a $10 tariff. The price went

down, but it would have been down more if the consumer wasn't forced to pay the tariff. The consumer pays. But the other point I wanted to make- That's like saying I was going to be 6-3, but I only ended up 6-4, but I would have been 6-3. If you can't understand this, this is your problem. This is very simple stuff, Anthony. So you're trying to protect the president's bad policies by denying what's obvious but by the way i wanted to point out just so we're clear i i actually think i actually think that the part of the story that doesn't get told is that both trump and biden both of them have leveraged tariffs over the last decade and both of them republicans and democrats have been successful using terror no they haven't been successful

but the other point is that you said about weakening the dollar weakening the dollar also increases the prices that Americans pay for their imports. So by having tariffs and a weak dollar, the American consumer gets hit with a double whammy. Not only does he have to pay higher prices for the tariffs. Why are prices going down? Food, gas, and homes are all going down? The oil, gas went down, yes,

because we had a temporary decline in oil prices, which is now coming to an end. But did food prices go down? Food prices are going up. Everything is going up. In fact, why do you think consumer confidence just plunged to a 12-year low? Because you're looking at data that's wrong, and I'll explain why. So that data is wrong, but your inflation data is right.

Hold on a second. I don't believe any of the government data, and that's why I use Truflation, which is a real-time alternative metric that actually looks at 14 million real-time price points. But what data do you believe? You don't believe the consumer confidence, but you believe the GDP numbers. You're telling me how strong the GDP numbers are, but then you don't look at the confidence numbers. Just listen for a second. We're going to talk about three data points. I think it's very important for people to understand.

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Republicans are reporting it at 96 percent. So Republicans think it's way too good. Democrats think it's way too low. The Consumer Survey recently, in the last two years, changed the way that they actually look at the methodology, and they used to survey 50% Republicans, 50% Democrats. Today, they now survey two-thirds Democrats, one-third Republican. So what they are actually doing is they change the methodology of how they collect the information, and because Republicans say that it's going so amazing and Democrats say it's going so badly, by now surveying more Democrats than Republicans, you get a lower reading. So that's first. The second thing is the reason why I trust Truflation, which I think you and I agree,

the CPI metric is completely nonsense. 40% of the inputs are estimated and it's lagging. It's looking backwards. If you look at Truflation, they use 14 million independent data points that are coming from 40 different independent data sources. And what it looks at is not things like owner equivalent rent and nonsense. They actually look and say, what was the clearing price for this product? So if it's rent, what did things get rented for?

If it's home purchases, what do they actually get purchased for? It's a thing that they verify what is the actual data point. Truflation today shows that inflation is under 1.2% because deflation is a much bigger risk than inflation at this exact moment. Well, I haven't looked into the Truflation index to show 1.2. So I don't know what factors are weighing heavily on that. that there's a couple of prices that are disproportionately impacting it. But, you know, even if prices were only rising at 1.2 percent, you know, that's still an increase. I mean, prices were expensive and then they're even more expensive.

But if we're going from three if we're going from three percent to one percent and the risk is deflation, the first cutting rate deflation isn't a risk. Deflation would be relief. Americans want prices to come down. They're too high. So to say there's a risk that prices might fall, that's what we want, right? That would relieve some of the pressure on consumers. It would be great if prices went down. The risk is that they're not going to go down. They're just going to keep going up. And even true inflation, probably by next year, is going to start to show significantly higher numbers. The inflationary pressures are building so dramatically beneath the economy. The weak

dollar that we're going to have. We're also going to start to see the reversal of energy prices. But all this, look at the producer prices, too, as a leading indicator. They've been even stronger than the consumer prices. So obviously, as producer prices are rising, that's going to be feeding into the CPI. And yes, a lot of the tariffs, to the extent that the consumer hasn't had to pay the full boat because the producer has absorbed some of that hit, that's also going to get passed on to the consumer. Everything ultimately is paid by the consumer. The consumer pays all the costs of the business, all the labor costs, all the rent, all the interest, and all of the tariffs. All of that is built in to the price that the consumer pays for whatever

he's buying. Okay. But what we are watching is we are watching the tariffs discourage external producers of these goods. That then opens up the opportunity for there to actually be domestic manufacturing of many of these goods. That's the protectionist policies. On top of that, we have deregulation and tax cuts. Those both should spur growth. But I think the part that people miss in this entire evaluation is artificial intelligence is probably the single greatest deflationary force that has ever hit the United States economy. And so as that happens, you are seeing prices fall off a cliff. A great example is the insurance company Lemonade that just came out and said, if you have full self-driving activated in a Tesla, they are going

to drop your insurance premium 50%, five, 0% decline in your insurance. If you are using this new innovative technology that leverages artificial intelligence across the economy, we are seeing artificial intelligence be implemented in all of these different ways. Every public company who's embracing this stuff is telling you more revenue, more profit. I'm going to do it with less employees. Yeah, I'm sure what more profitable. Yeah, I'm sure that, you know, that technology for insurance will make the industry more efficient because they can monitor your driving habits. And so better drivers will pay less and worse drivers will actually pay more. So some people will see their auto insurance go down, but others are going to see their auto

insurance go up. But, you know, that's fine. And I like, you know, innovation and I like all that. But that is not deflation. Yes, efficiency and productivity brings prices down. That does not give the government carte blanche to create inflation. Because let's say that economic efficiencies and capitalism would have lowered prices by 5%. But because the government creates inflation, they go up by 2% instead. That's not a good thing. The government has stolen 7% of my gain, right? I would have been able to buy stuff 5% cheaper, but because they created inflation to finance their budget deficits, everything costs me 2% more. That's a 7% swing out of my pocket. So I would rather have the government not create any inflation and let the prices come down so that

I as a consumer can enjoy the benefit of buying stuff for less money, because then I have money left over to buy other things that maybe I can't even afford because the government made prices go up. But I think a lot of the benefits from, you know, AI, you know, are not going to be here right away. They're going to take more years than people realize to really filter through in a more significant way. And as far as our ability to just flip a switch and start manufacturing, that ain't going to happen, right? So just because imports become a lot more expensive doesn't mean we're just going to start making this stuff ourselves because we can't do it. It's going to take years and years of construction and capital investment and training and

reconstitution of non-existent supply chains. And a lot of companies, A, they don't even have the money to make the investment. But if they did, they don't necessarily want to risk it on building a factory that may be obsolete because a future president may allow the tariffs to go away. So it's hard to make the investment that is only economical based on a protectionist tariff when you have no clarity as to how long it's going to be in place, whether the Supreme Court might correctly just throw it out as being unconstitutional, which these tariffs clearly are. But even if, collectively, we were going to make the investment in rebuilding non-existent infrastructure and supply chains, where is the money going to come from? I mean, what, as a society, are we going to give up?

What are we going to stop doing to pay for all this, right? So there would have to be a massive economic downturn. We'd have to seriously reduce our consumption to free up the resources necessary to rebuild our manufacturing base. So it's just not going to happen. All that these tariffs are going to do is drive up prices and make American manufacturers that we still have even less competitive than they are now. You know, I love you, but that's not true. Let me explain. It is true. OK, I'm going to give you a real example. You're using academic theory. I live in the real world of facts. Here's the first one. When we put the tariffs on the washing machine manufacturers and when they were domestic or internationally producing these and shipping to the United States, you know what they did? they came to the United States and they took over existing facilities that were no longer being used

and they began manufacturing very quickly within 12 months. Second of all is U.S. steel. When we put the tariffs in 2018, what people didn't realize was we have steel manufacturers here in the United States. They were only operating at about 40 to 50 percent capacity. When we put the tariffs on the international producers of steel, all of a sudden the U.S. manufacturers went to over 80% capacity. Yeah, if we have unused capacity, we can ramp it up. But for a lot of the goods, we have zero capacity. We don't have excess capacity.

We have no capacity. Hold on. So that was two of the three things that we tariffed in 2018 was a direct example where that didn't happen. Yes, and it made prices go up, didn't it? No, no, no. Actually, steel went down, washing machines went down, and solar panels went down.

The three things that we tariffed in 2018. Now, here's the other thing that people forget, is that let's take defense equipment as an example. If you actually look at where we are getting savings and we're seeing manufacturing and production, this is one of the hardest things to do in the United States. Build ships, build missiles, build all of this equipment. We are funding that via the private sector through venture capital. Anduril, Saronic, all of these companies, they are actually not being built with public dollars. They are being built by being funded by venture capitalists. people who are taking the risk to fund this stuff.

And so I don't believe we need any sort of economic downturn. Instead, what we're seeing, it is a pro-growth approach where people are saying, I am willing to risk dollars to get an economic return as long as we can step in and solve this. The problem is, you know, the president's policies, by and large, are not pro-growth. They are Keynesian style, a demand-focused stimulus, cutting taxes, you know no tax on tips no tax on overtime no tax on social security this is all these are all inflationary policies they don't grow the economy they grow the prices and then why is the economy

growing then forget for a second who's doing it whether biden did it or trump did i don't care who the person is if what you're saying is right then why is the economy cranking and inflation is falling it's not cranking and inflation is not falling that's that that that's my answer You know, we have blown more air into the bubble by, you know, running up the deficits even bigger. We gave out some tax cuts. We increased government spending. But also we have a massive investment, CapEx investment in AI, which is driving like 80 or 90 percent of the GDP growth is all this spending on AI and these data centers by these hyperscalers. And and so we'll see, you know, if this spending is justified or if they've they've they've overspent.

But there's there's been a lot of misallocations. I think, look, a lot of money has been spent on all this crypto nonsense. That's all all a big waste. But, you know, it's goose the GDP. And I do think that the deflator is is too small. I think that that the there's actually more inflation than is being assumed by the government when it adjusts nominal GDP gains to to real. So I and I also think I also think there's a good chance growing. You can't say he's growing, but it's AI. It's like I would have been six three, but I'm only six foot. No, I'm just saying where it's coming from.

So, you know, whether it's sustainable because, you know, they can pull back on the AI spending. But also, I think a lot of the numbers may end up being revised lower in the future. And so just because the government comes out and says, hey, look at the GDP growth, it may not be the case. If you remember, you know, when we had the Great Recession in 2008, the government had to backdate the recession for a year. And they went back and they took a year's worth of positive GDP numbers and revised them to negative numbers. So, you know, they can come back a year later and say, oh, the number was completely wrong. In fact, not only wasn't it, you know, it was wrong, it was actually negative, not positive. So I wouldn't put a lot of stock in it.

I would take I would put more stock in the fact that gold prices and silver prices are soaring, that the dollar is tanking, that the yields on long term treasuries are rising despite the Fed rate cuts. These are all signs of weakness and inflation. Today's episode is brought to you by ArchPublic. As markets shift, headlines break, and interest rates swing, one thing stays true. Opportunity is everywhere. At ArchPublic, they help you do more than just buy and hold. Yes, their dynamic accumulation algorithms are built for long-term investors. But where they really shine?

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do you use artificial intelligence on a daily basis like how do you use yeah i well yeah i mean I use it, you know, uh, you know, yeah. I mean, I'd say every day I use chat GBG grok for, for something. I mean, you know, I don't know, you know, how much money it saves me, but, and, and we use it in the business for certain things. I mean, I think obviously people are starting to use it. I'm not saying that, you know, it's, it's, it's not good. I'm, I think there's a lot of potential, a lot of promise there, but it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't, again, it doesn't give the government and the Fed a license to create inflation just because they think, oh, well, we're going to get downward pressure on prices from AI. So that gives us

carte blanche to create inflation. No, I want sound monetary and fiscal policies. I don't want the government creating inflation. I want sound money. That's what you should want, too. That's what Bitcoiners used to want back when they first started it. Right. They were they were on board. But now so many Bitcoiners just want to kiss Trump's ass because the only thing propping up Bitcoin is Donald Trump. So you have to basically pretend that everything this guy does is great because he could destroy your whole net worth with a single post on Truth Social. So a couple of things. First is I actually think that the policies being implemented are coming from Stephen Myron. I think that a lot of what's happening here are things that people have been talking about for a long time.

And again, I think that folks who don't want to debate the details of the economic policy try to make it political as to like the person behind it. But actually, what we have seen is we saw Democrats for 20 years talk about the fact that the trade deficit was a huge problem. We now have the Republicans who are saying that. So regardless of Democrat, Republican, whatever, there are people in Washington, D.C. on both sides of the aisle that know that that's a major problem. The second thing is that Trump implemented a bunch of tariffs in his first term, which whether he liked it or not, he did it. We can now look at it as a case study in terms of what happened. Biden came in and Biden actually extended a number of those, including the tariff on China. So hold on.

The trade deficits were larger when Trump finished his first term than when he began it. So the trade deficits got worse under Trump. And the trade deficits, they're a problem, but they're they're more of a symptom of an underlying problem that is causing the deficits. And I'm not arguing. I'm not arguing. All I'm the point I'm trying to make is I don't think that it's a red or blue thing. I actually think that people in Washington, D.C., agree way more on what the problems are. They may disagree on how to solve it, but they understand the trade deficit. They understand the weaker, strong dollar like they understand this.

I don't know if they understand it. Well, here's what they're trying to do is the current administration. I think they want to get to a high growth, low inflation environment. Here's what I want you to do. I have a challenge. Opposite of that. I have a I have a challenge for you. I think you're the perfect person.

We built a product. It's called CFO Sylvia. You should go on there and you attach all of your attach your bank account, your crypto account, your stock account, all that kind of stuff. You put your credit cards. You can put your real estate cars, all that stuff. And then you can talk to an AI model and you can start asking a question. You can ask it, you know, hey, how do I save money on my taxes? How do I analyze my portfolio to identify risk?

Do all this stuff. I think that you will not only, one, be blown away by the power of this stuff when it has the context of your own financial life. But the second thing is, my guess is that you will actually spend less money on advisors, you know, financial assistants, investment bankers, whatever. and to me that isn't it's giving out investment advice no it's no so for example if you asked something like uh how do i get my tax rate down it will go and it'll go asset by asset in your portfolio and it will tell you a number of different options that you have so it's trying to inform you you got to go and make the decisions right but it's trying to inform you if you go and you say to it um you know hey take a look at uh i don't know pound tier stock you know is that

something that i should buy it will go and it'll look at fundamental analysis sentiment analysis technical analysis but then it will present you what happens if you ask if you ask it if you should buy bitcoin what's it going to say the first thing it says is peter schiff has been wrong for 15 years he should have bought bitcoin and he would be way richer because if it tells me i can try if it tells me to buy bitcoin i know it's a completely worthless program all right biased based on whoever wrote it speaking of bitcoin i want you to take your victory lap for last year or so uh gold has done very very well it's up you know 80 plus percent uh bitcoin has not participated in this rally uh i've seen you taking your victory lap online but i figured that

i would give you the floor to go ahead and explain why you think gold is taking off and bitcoin isn't well you know gold's obviously we're set a record high as we're speaking it's just under 5 300 an ounce and you know it really broke out two years ago uh because in january of 2024 it was just below 3 000 so it's gone from 3 000 to over 5 000 uh in in that period of time last year was the best year for gold since 1979 and this year is probably the best january for gold ever. And, you know, this may be an even better year than last year. And during that period of time, Bitcoin went down. Bitcoin was down last year. And I don't know, it's about flat this year. You know, but it is not participating in an environment where people are looking for

alternatives to the dollar. They're looking for an inflation hedge, a safe haven. It's de-dollarization. This is the exact environment in which Bitcoin was supposed to outshine gold. The whole selling point of Bitcoin was that it is better than gold. It's a digital version, like high octane gold 2.0. And if gold goes up, well, Bitcoin will just go up even more. So buy Bitcoin instead of gold, right? It's going to serve the same purpose, only better, right? And that narrative was completely destroyed by Bitcoin's failure to rally. And in fact, look at the poster boy of Bitcoin buyers, Michael Saylor and strategy, where he spent over five years accumulating Bitcoin. And this is supposed to be the greatest thing you can do with your money, the greatest asset, the best returns, just buy, you know, nothing but Bitcoin, leverage your life, mortgage your business and your house and throw it all into Bitcoin, according to Michael Saylor.

Well, he's been doing this for over five years, and the average cost on his Bitcoin is $76,000. And right now, Bitcoin is still below $90,000. What is it, $89,000? Where is it right now? Where's Bitcoin? $90K. Yeah, so $90,000, right? He's barely, what is he up, 15%, 16%?

That's all he's got to show for five years of nonstop Bitcoin buying. I mean, had he bought gold or silver, he would have way more money right now in MicroStrategy. They would have had a much better return on that investment and they could get out of it if they wanted to. Michael Saylor, if he tried to unload that Bitcoin, the market would implode. He would have a huge loss. The only reason he has a gain is because he hasn't tried to sell. In fact, if he stops buying, I think he'll have a loss. That's why he keeps on buying more Bitcoin, even though a MicroStrategy stock is now trading at a discount to devalue the Bitcoin.

What he really should be doing is selling Bitcoin and buying back his stock. But he can't do that. So he keeps doing the opposite to destroy more shareholder value. So the point is, if Bitcoin couldn't go up when it had everything going for it, it ain't going to go up. it's going down. And I have always said that the best thing that Bitcoin had going for it from a PR perspective was gold's failure to go up. Gold was stuck in a range for almost all of Bitcoin's existence. Gold, before Bitcoin came on the scene, gold went from under 300 to 1900, right huge one right six tax gains bitcoin shows up during a period of time where 12 13 years gold traded sideways in a range and that was very frustrating for a lot of gold buyers that

weren't getting the immediate you know uh you know reward and the gratification of of seeing the gold that they own or silver go up and bitcoin was saying or bitcoin promoters look you know So gold and silver are not going up because they're no longer the hedge because now it's we got Bitcoin. Bitcoin has replaced gold. It's the new gold. It's gold 2.0. And look, it's going up. Look at how much it's going up. People are getting rich in Bitcoin and you're just going to stay in poor owning gold and silver. And so that was great marketing for Bitcoin. But now that gold and silver are performing and that they're going up almost every day.

right? And Bitcoin is the one that's going sideways. It's hard to make the argument now that people should sell their gold and silver to buy Bitcoin or that people should not buy gold and silver and they should buy Bitcoin instead when Bitcoin is the one that's going sideways and gold and silver are going up. In fact, if you go to the peak of the prior cycle, which was November 2021, Bitcoin is more than 50% lower priced in gold than that peak. And that is a significant decline. That's despite all of the Bitcoin ETFs that were launched, despite the election of Donald Trump and the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, and despite Michael Saylor's buying and all of the copycat crypto companies that have come on the scene to buy

crypto and all the other crazes that have come and el salvador buying bitcoin uh all that hype super bowl commercials celebrity endorsements all of that and gold you know is is or bitcoin is down 50 relative to gold so i mean that really shows that you know that this thing is over you know the money has already been made in bitcoin and now the key is you know who's going to get out And who's going to be stuck holding the bag? Do you own any Bitcoin? No. All right.

I mean, I have a little teeny bit that was gifted to me for my strategic reserve. Oh, so you do have some Bitcoin. You finally capitulated. No, I didn't buy any. I got it for free. What is that? Does it count? Well, if you don't sell it, that's an active decision to hold it.

No, because I told the people that if they put Bitcoin into my reserve, I would not sell it. Because I'm not going to ask people to give me money and then use it. But I said, look, I'm going to set up this strategic reserve just as an example. And if you want to fund it, then go ahead. I'm not going to use it. I'm not going to take advantage of the fact that you gave me some Bitcoin and sell it and go out and go out to dinner or something. So I made a commitment.

If somebody gives me Bitcoin, I'm going down with the ship. I'm just going to hold it till it's worthless. But if I was you, you know what I'd be saying? Do you know what the five-year return of Bitcoin is and the five-year return of gold? Well, it could be pretty good right now because Bitcoin went from $69,000 down to $15,000, right? It had a big drop. And so if you're going to measure it from below point... No, no, no. I'm going to help you. I'm going to help you.

Bitcoin's return over the last five years as of today is 160%. What is it over four years? What is it over four years? hold on gold's five-year return as of today is 186 so gold is outperforming bitcoin over the last five years but what about four years though it's probably even greater and three years and two years in one year i'm just on google finance so you know yeah i mean but five years because what happened to bitcoin is bitcoin had a big drop and then a big rally so if you start measuring it kind of at the low point it yields a big return but you know if you measure it before that big drop you know so the time frames can can influence it but what's i think more relevant is what did

bitcoin do last year what did it do you know how how it returns loud the most recent time period that you have and bitcoin has been lousy i agree but and in fact for most people for most people right bitcoin has not been a good investment for the people who got in very early it's the best investment they've ever made. No question about it. I mean, I know people, I know many of them who have high net worths, half a billion to a couple of billion. I know a bunch of these guys and they own their net worths to Bitcoin, Ethereum, stuff like that. Because they got in really, really early. Okay, great. Fantastic. They hit the lottery with crypto. But the majority of people who made that wealth possible by bidding up the price of Bitcoin, right, who got into the

Bitcoin in the last three, four or five years, they haven't made a lot of money. A lot of them have lost money. So it really hasn't been a good investment for the majority of people. For some people, it's been an investment of a lifetime. Right. But, you know, for the vast majority, that's not the case. And a lot of people still don't realize how much money they've lost in Bitcoin because they haven't sold it yet. And they're just looking at the current value and they think they have money that they've gained, but they haven't really gained anything because by the time they go to sell it,

it's gonna be a fraction of its current price. What are you excited about in this year? And how are you positioning in your portfolio? Well, now that I beat you up about the economy and ran circles around you, now tell us what you're doing in your portfolio. Well, I'm not really doing much to my portfolio. it's the same portfolio I had a year or two ago. It's just a lot bigger as far as the number

on the statement. But what I have been doing personally is I haven't been buying much in miners right now because I'm so heavily weighted. There was a recent correction a few months ago where I actually added. I mean, every time I've been able to add to my miners, I'm kind of surprised because I didn't expect the pullback that I got. And so I bought some more. But based on what's happened recently, I've been focusing on emerging markets. I really increased my energy exposure because I'm trying to diversify more away from the gold and silver mining stocks that are so dominant in my portfolio. And then I expect to continue to outperform everything else that I own. But I'm obviously, I'm cautious by nature. And so I want to have some other assets in my

portfolio. But, you know, if someone were to come to me today from scratch and say, hey, I don't even have any stocks at all. I've just got, you know, I just got cash or I got crypto, right? Well, what should I do? The first stocks I would probably buy them and say, we got to get these mining stocks, you know, because there's so much potential and they're so cheap. You know, that's Yeah, the price has gone up a lot, but the value of the underlying business has gone up more than the price of the business, which is like the opposite of what happens during a bubble where the price far exceeds the value of the business. And you have these rising PEs, right? People are paying more and more money to buy a dollar of earnings. But today you could buy a dollar of

earnings from a gold stock a lot cheaper than you could buy it a year ago. And that's again, because the markets don't believe what's happening. And not only don't they believe it, they don't understand it. I understand exactly what's happening because I've been waiting for it. I've known about this for years. And what's happening is exactly what I said

was going to happen for the exact reasons that I knew it was going to happen. I hope that your portfolio continues to go up. I think that if you become a billionaire, which I know you're getting closer to, I'd be really, I'd be really happy for you. You know, you've been completely wrong about Bitcoin, but gold has done well as well. And I think that it's important that although we may disagree on the exact details, there is an element to me of Bitcoin and gold, they're brothers in arms in the sound money fight. But I do think that right now,

you know, you may be missing a little bit in terms of what's happening in the economy. I don't give a shit who's sitting in uh in the white house all i care about is if we can get a high growth low inflation economy we can grow our way out of some of these problems that would be but we're not going to get that we're going to get a low growth high inflation economy that that's where that's what we're going to have that's that that's what i think that the difference of our viewpoint is and so look the beauty of this is we're going to keep doing this you know uh for the next couple of years and then at some point in the future we'll have a definitive answer but so far the data that we're getting suggest i'm right and you're not which is a question if you're so

optimistic on the economy if you know we're going to have all this growth there's going to be no inflation what what's why buy bitcoin i mean you know this is a great question i actually think this is one of the uh biggest risks to bitcoin in the short term that a lot of the bitcoiners don't talk about is if we do not have high inflation then a very big portion of the argument for Bitcoin would not be there. Now, there's still reasons why you would want to buy Bitcoin in terms of it will still store value over a long period of time. There's censorship. But why do you need to store value if there's not going to be any inflation? I mean, why not, you know, why not earn interest and own treasuries, for example? Well, I think that there's a lot of people. That's

what they are doing right now. Not the Bitcoiners, but I think just people in general are saying, wait a second, there's not going to be this inflation. Now, I think that over the long run is very different than over the short run. And as you mentioned earlier, there's obviously a very rapid changing economic policy given who's in the white house uh in terms of how what their approach is and i have no doubt that when this administration leaves the next administration is going to come in they're going to roll back some of this stuff there's going to be changes etc so i don't think if everything is as good as you think right if everything is great the next president should be like jd vance who's going to continue these policies that you think are so good

right because the reason that we might have a different administration is because the economy is so weak and inflation is so high that the republicans get kicked out and that and the voters go for a democrat right because it's about change right so if the next election is about continuing the the the policies that have been so productive then we you know we get you know more uh trump we get more you know we get a continuation of what we're doing the only reason that we would have a switch is if what we're doing now doesn't work if the economy is not good if inflation is not low right so i agree yeah and so what if you're saying well i want to buy bitcoin bitcoin would be well because i want to own bitcoin in case i'm wrong and it turns out that we have a

lot of inflation and a weak economy but if you're right there's also i think there's also an element of um there's other reasons why somebody who holds bitcoin today may not sell it and go do something else right so for example i still am a believer that bitcoin is going to do well because i think that for the same reason that central banks are buying gold i don't think central banks are buying gold because of inflation i think that central banks are buying gold because they see the view of de-dollarization and defiat currency process right but they're not buying bitcoin what makes you think they're going to buy bitcoin in the future well some of them are and Which central banks are buying Bitcoin?

Well, if you look at, let's take a second, El Salvador, they don't have a true central bank. El Salvador doesn't count. I mean, I'm actually going to El Salvador tomorrow. Have you been there? Are you? Yeah, I'm going tomorrow. I'm talking at the Tether Conference.

Well, I'm doing a debate with Saifedean, gold versus Bitcoin. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Have you been there? Should I come to the conference? Yeah, why not? Why not come? And we go back.

We come back to Puerto Rico on Sunday. I got another seat in my plane. Hop on board. I won't charge you. All right. Well, yeah, I mean, you can come here to Puerto Rico. Gold's up so much. Gold's up so much.

Now, listen, gold's up so much. I mean, you should just be giving out free flights to anyone who wants to use the plane. No, I don't. I don't have. Look, I don't. I don't have. I don't have that big a plane. You know, I'm not.

You know, not yet. The goal is. Oh, you only got a helicopter. Only a couple. You only got four seats in there. All right. I appreciate it very much. Listen, I got.

Listen, where can we send people to see your stuff? Where do you want people to go? Well, you know, I do my podcast. I'm doing a podcast. You know, we got the Fed decision later today and the press conference. So I'm doing a podcast tonight to discuss that at shiftradio.com and on my YouTube channel.

So check that out. For people who want to get in on gold and silver, especially silver, because I think we're going to be running out of silver. I've already seen some of the smaller dealers running out of inventory. It's getting harder to get the physical silver. So I think the premiums are really going to start to go up.

So not just the silver is going to be more expensive, but to actually get one of the coins or bars, it's going to be more expensive. So we got them now. So you go to shiftgold.com and get some gold and silver. And for the people who like crypto, and I did that debate with CZ and I talked about tokenized gold and T-gold,

we're going to be rolling out a gold-backed token, which is the best stable coin there is. Forget about tokenized dollars. What good is that? Tokenized gold, that's the real deal, right? That does everything that Bitcoin promised to do, but can't. So if you want to get yourself some gold and silver that you could ultimately withdraw in a token

and hold it in your wallet right next to your Bitcoin, then you can go to tgold.com and sign up for an account. And if you want to get in on the gold and silver mining stocks, which I think is your best speculative play right now, I think the risk reward in the mining stocks is so much greater than it is with Bitcoin. I mean, even if Bitcoin is going to go up,

it isn't going to go up as much as these mining stocks. And I think the downside risk is much greater in Bitcoin than in a portfolio of mining stocks. So if you're looking to go to the moon, I think you're going to get there in the mining stocks. My gold fund, which has a lot of juniors in it, which I think are going to really outperform this year, the no-load symbol is EPGIX, and you can buy that at any discount broker, EPGIX. You can get information on all my funds at Europe Pacific Asset Management, europac.com website.

In fact, my dividend payer fund was the best performing fund tracked by Morningstar last year out of 350 funds or so. It was up about 62% last year. It's already up 12% this year and it's still January. So it's running circles around the S&P 500. And this is not even a gold fund. This is dividend paying foreign stocks. This is about getting out of US assets and into foreign assets.

so you know and we have separately managed accounts as well so if you're a larger investor and you don't want to be in one of my mutual funds you can have an account directly with my asset management company and we'll manage a portfolio for you in these foreign dividend paying stocks or if you want a a portfolio of gold and silver mining stocks you know we're we're doing that too so you can get information there on europac.com and again remember follow me on social media I just moved up to just over 1.3 million followers. I'm still not up in your numbers there, Anthony. But hopefully this interview I just did with Tucker Carlson will help.

My Tucker interviewed the first part of it anyway. Hopefully, you know, because he aired about half the interview. But the first part is up on Tucker's X channel. And he's got about 17 million followers. So hopefully some of those followers start following me, but you should follow me on, on social media and also check out my free newsletter at shiftsovereign.com. We're,

we're putting out a lot of excellent content there as well. Peter, this is like, uh, I said, where are you going to send people? We just sent out to like the whole internet. You're just like,

go to google.com. Jesus. Oh my God. All right. Thank you for doing this. I appreciate it as much as I think there, you know? Yeah.

Well, listen, you're a smart guy, you know, very successful, very rich. Um, been right about gold,

uh, last year or so. So listen, I think that we should keep doing this. We'll find time maybe. So are you coming to El Salvador? Let me think about it. I'll message you after. You got to hurry up.

The conference starts on Friday. So I'm coming down on Thursday. Peter, I know that in the gold world, you guys are real slow to like horse and buggy stuff. In the Bitcoin world, we make decisions and we move, man. It just happens. Yeah, but you can't transport yourself down there on a blockchain. You actually have to physically get in a plane, fly down there.

Well, now that I got your supersonic jet at my disposal, then I'll be there in a jiffy. All right, bye. All right, take care.