The Wolf Of All Streets - PETER SCHIFF LIVE | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

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Peter, Scott, how are you? I'm well. Can you hear me? Peter, we can hear you perfectly fine. How are you, sir? I'm okay. Do you hear any background noise or is it good? Sounds great. Sounds good. Where are you at the moment?

I'm in my hyperbaric chamber. Oh, wow. I was actually... Yeah, I do it every day, Peter. Today is the first day in like months i skip a day because i woke up really really late um but i i have it right in front of me i was gonna do the space from there but i'm like i need good audio for this show so i just said i'm gonna do sauna in a few minutes but i do it every day every day yeah i just start

much respect i haven't been doing it that long i bought bought the chamber, so I'm in there now. But I do cryo every day. I do red light, sauna. I've got this whole room in my house now that it's like a wellness center that has all this equipment in it. I do the same thing. So I just finished. Yeah, Peter, Peter. I just finished the cryo about 20 minutes ago. I do it same thing. So I just finished. Yeah, Peter, Peter, I just, I just, I just finished the cryo about 20 minutes ago.

I do it every day. And you'll hear a bit of background noise on my end in about 10 minutes because I'll be in the sauna and then I'll do the, in the red light and then sauna afterwards. I do the spaces from there. What kind of cryo are you doing? It's a full body cryo. The machine, I can check it it it's a clinic right next

to my house and i'll send you the details privately no i've got i work yeah i've got a full body it's in my home i don't go to a clinic it's a full body uh all electric cryo so i just go in there for four minutes every morning what temperature do you do it's it's minus 124 fahrenheit nice yeah i do i do minus 140 which is the max you could do for three minutes i can't do more but i yell i scream yeah i do i work in 140 degrees the extra the extra minute the extra minute really gets me because they say to do three but i just do four just to make sure i get the skin temperature drop that i need but um yeah yeah i mean it's it's the chamber temperature some of these other uh machines that advertise colder temperatures it's really the chamber doesn't really get that cold uh just

right at the source but uh yeah mine is mine is like a giant refrigerator so i don't need any of that nitrogen so it's a lot simpler. Okay, I'm going to check. I'd love to see which one you use. I'm obsessed with these things. I'm starting a show with David Sinclair and Christian Engelmayer and Greenfield, Ben Greenfield, on this stuff. I have a team that does it. This is all I care about in life.

Yeah, my hyperbaric is good because I can work in here. I got TV. I got my hyperbaric is good because I can work in here. I got TV. I got my computer, cell phone. And then my red light, I do this. It's a Neo. I do red light. I also have like green light.

I have other different lights, but I do the infrared, the red light. That's about eight and a half minutes, eight minutes on the red light. And then sometimes I do other colors too i do i do 30 minutes on the red light i do an hour in the sauna um and an hour in the chamber the happy break chamber but we'll chat we'll chat privately about it peter is that two hours hold on is that two hours every single day that you're spending on on biopsy i do four hours i do four hours i'm in my chamber two hours a day. I come in here two hours. But I do my work, so it's not downtime. Yeah, I do my work there as well.

If you're spending two hours a day and you don't live at least 25% longer, then you would have probably been better off not doing this. Again. If you're spending two of your waking hours. I'm not waking. We work, but not Ryan. We work work in there we work in there like it's like sitting in office yeah it doesn't matter if you work in there but if you're confined to a sauna or a chamber for so for 15 of your waking day then you better get at least double return yeah that's the only way it makes sense if i don't have any work to do i I watch a movie, I watch a Netflix series.

I'm not bored. I'm not bored while I'm in here. It's like sitting in an office. I'm sure you're not bored. But my whole calculation around biohacking, I mean, look, I do the basics of biohacking. I take NADs and I take the resveratrols and I have a drip every now and then. And I do do the infrared saunas and stuff like that. But my calculation is I said as follows.

I cannot be spending too much time trying to reverse aging if there's no empirical evidence that you can actually do it. Because if I'm going to spend 15% of my waking day doing something that I ordinarily wouldn't be doing, and I don't have a guarantee that I'm going to live at least 25% longer, then the risk of term pain just isn't worth it. Nothing is guaranteed. I do the intermittent fasting. I take supplements. I've done the drips. I've done stem cells.

I've done all kinds of crap. I'm 60 years old. I do tequila and jet lag, Rand. How I do. Wait, Peter, Peter, Peter, you've done – I do tequila and jet lag, man. How does that – Wait, Peter, you mean you've done all of this and you still haven't changed your mind about – you mean even the sauna hasn't been able to change your mind about Bitcoin? Well, I'm not going to lose clarity by doing all this.

I mean, you know – I would have thought – Look, I'm about so we're gonna kick off the show peter just funny enough i'm literally so you're in the chamber right now i'm getting into the you're gonna hear a bit of background noise in a few seconds because i'm getting into my red light uh red light chamber red light therapy so we're gonna be biohacking together as we as we uh do the show today so that that's the first let me know at the end of the at the end of the show if you guys i'm going i'm going with scott to a naked pool party

that's why we're going to arthur hayes pool party after this and i slept in four days go ahead peter yeah i said i'm also i got a cup of tea in here too that i'm drinking in the chamber so i have a i have a coffee a black coffee americano so there you go uh but let's let's kick it off ryan scott um you know peter's pleasure to have you again on the show thanks for joining us as we both get younger um but maybe ryan scott tell us about the inflation numbers today came in higher than expected headline inflation core was as expected uh dropped but maybe a quick overview there and peter would love to get your thoughts um on where we are in this fight against inflation that's all you ran i was uh i was busy flying i mean look long story short i don't think the

inflation numbers came in higher than we expected because the cleveland fed actually forecast the inflation numbers at 3.85 percent or 3.89 percent we've got 3.7 the consensus forecast was 3.6 um to be honest i think it's very much as we expected the next number to come out is the ppi we want to watch the ppi because the ppi is the producer price inflation or the producer price index. And that's going to tell us whether the producers are still feeling increases in the price of things. If that comes in surprisingly high, then we may say, look, we've got an inflation problem on our hands. If not, then I guess we couldn't expect inflation to go down in a straight line.

We had 14 negative readings in a row. And I think that naturally, when you reduce inflation, it's not just going to be a straight line down because, you know, the measure didn't have a straight line down. So I think, for me, I think, you know, as expected, I think forecast solid inflation number is going to be 3% by the end of the year. And then slowly, slowly, slowly, the hardest part of getting inflation down to the first 2% target is going to be the last part. So I didn't see many surprises. The biggest contributor to inflation was the price of energy and specifically the price of gas and oil and related.

That was the biggest contributor to the price increases. I think that's pretty much the way I read it. I'd love to hear Peter's take on it. Peter, over to you, my friend. Well, first of all, these numbers are pretty much irrelevant in reality because they understate what's really happening with prices, which rise as a consequence of inflation. So you're just kind of looking for evidence of inflation

when you look at prices. That's not the inflation itself. The inflation is all the money that we've been printing, the Fed's been printing for over a decade. That money has lost purchasing power and prices go up. And also the easy credit. A lot of people use credit to buy things. and so the increase in supply of credit and the supply of money is the inflation and we experience the consequences of that in consumer prices which are actually rising quite a bit more than the official uh numbers will will will acknowledge but i think what's significant about the numbers that came out today is that the CPI year over year actually bottomed out in June at 3% year over year. And the last two months, we've seen the curve bend back up. In fact, this 0.6% gain for August was the biggest gain in quite some time.

I forget when you have to go. It was last year, not even this year. Sometime last year, there was a gain this big. So I think that we've already seen the lows on inflation. And now we're going back up. And we never got anywhere close to 2%. I mean, yeah, we got 3% briefly year over year, but we didn't get to 2%, and now we're heading back up. The core, I think, is also bottoming out. We got 4.3%, which is a little bit lower than the prior month, but I think we're pretty much hitting the bottom at the core. I think the headline is turning back up first, and the core is going to follow. But what that proves is that the rate hikes that

we've seen thus far have been completely inadequate to do this job and that we're likely to go back up to that nine percent level. That was the high watermark. That's where we're headed. We're not headed back down the two. You know, you look at oil prices, they're almost up 40 percent in the past four months. That's 10 percent a month. I mean, the main reason you got the big drop in CPI was you had a 50 percent decline in oil prices. Well, I think oil is going much higher. I think we're going to make new all time record highs, maybe above one hundred fifty dollars a barrel by the end of next year. I think we'll certainly finish this year above $100 a barrel. But it's not just oil prices. A lot of prices are going up. And ironically, the Fed rate hikes

are also going to be a driving factor in future CPI increases, because just like raw material costs, just like labor costs, businesses have debt. That debt needs to be serviced. The interest costs are going up. That's going to have to be passed on. Same thing with insurance. Insurance companies have had huge losses they have to make up. Rising interest rates has really hurt these insurance companies' portfolios.

Plus, you've got a lot of other losses from events. But those insurance rates are going to go up. So a lot of this is going to be pushing up consumer prices. Meanwhile, the deficits, you know, the budget deficits are over $2 trillion a year and rising because every month more low-yielding debt matures and it has to be rolled over. So you've got debt that's costing 25 basis points. It matures. And now the government has to roll it over at 525, 550 basis points.

So all this is adding tremendous amounts to the national debt. I mean, even if we don't go into a recession, we'll probably be looking at closer to three trillion a year in deficits by the end of next year. But if we're in recession, it could be five trillion, six trillion. Where's all that money going to come from? The Fed's obviously going to print it. And so, you know, inflation is just getting started. We've got a small taste of it in the last couple of years, But we're about to get a giant swallow.

We're going to see much higher numbers. And the market still hasn't comprehended that. The bond market hasn't priced that in yet. Stocks. I mean, nobody realizes that inflation is not going down to 2 percent and it's going to go much higher. Everybody knows that it's going back down and that the Fed is going to start cutting rates next year because inflation is going to be gone. So, Peter, I have a question for you. I mean, I think that we all realize that the Fed is probably not going to start cutting rates as quickly as we anticipated, or not re-anticipated,

as quickly as the market anticipated that the Fed was going to cut rates. But someone mentioned something quite smart to me. They said, look, if you take the US's growth rate, GDP, what is the US GDP growth rate going to be this year, more or less? Well, I don't know what they're looking for, you know, three, 4%, you know. I think it four percent? You know, I think it's I think it's actually I think it's actually a bit higher. I think it's actually around five percent. Well, that's one when you look at that, that's maybe one quarter, not for the whole year. I don't think I don't think the whole year is going to come out. But, you know, most of that is due to inflation, because remember, they have to adjust the GDP for inflation. And they do that with their deflator. But I think that deflator

by design doesn't even come close to capturing inflation. So I think that real GDP is actually a lot lower than what the government claims. But right now, the GDP growth is higher than inflation or equal to inflation, which means that for as long as they're getting real, real growth, they don't see any sign of danger. No, yes. But again, what if the inflation is being underestimated? What if inflation is really twice as high as they claim? And that changes all the numbers because the GDP number is adjusted by whatever they claim inflation is. So let's say nominal GDP is six and they claim inflation is three. Then they say, OK, GDP is three. But what if inflation is actually seven, not three? Well, then GDP is minus one. We're in recession. But you don't get to see that because the government has reported 7% inflation as if it was only 3%. So all the numbers get skewed based on the way the government measures inflation.

Peter, I want to link it to the kind of direct question, if you don't mind. But what got us in in this position and like this never-ending fight against inflation is is there a person by name that we can blame for this mess well there are a lot of people i mean but probably the the reason we got into this mess is democracy you know that's that's that's the the source it, because politicians wanted to get elected. And the way they got elected was by promising people something for nothing. And they paid for it through inflation. Politicians wanted to deliver all sorts of goodies to the electorate.

Health care benefits, Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, you know, pensions, whatever, whatever it was. But they didn't want to raise anybody's taxes to pay for it because then, you know, the voters, you know, would be mad. So they ran these huge deficits and the Federal Reserve created the money to pay for all the spending. And that's where the inflation came from. And also in credit, they kept interest rates artificially low so that people can keep borrowing money and spend that too. So if people couldn't borrow money so cheaply, if there wasn't all this consumer credit available, if people couldn't refinance their mortgages and extract money, there would have been a lot less consumption and people would have spent a lot less. And so the economy would have been a lot smaller than it was. But inflation has been the source of the phony economic growth. It's also helped to prop up the stock market.

And so investors are richer on paper because of all this inflation that has been created. And that's also what's kept the banks from collapsing. That's how we bailed out of the financial crisis. We created inflation. Inflation was used to kick the can down the road so that we wouldn't have to deal with the consequences of all these bad policies because of elections nobody wanted to have a crisis and maybe not get re-elected so it was all about uh extend and pretend kick the can down the road make the problems bigger so that we eventually have a worse crash but we're not going to care about that because we may not be in office that'll be somebody else's problem. And that's Peter.

How does that ever change? Yeah, Peter, how does that ever change? Because, I mean, austerity is never getting anyone elected here to your point, right? Nobody's ever going to run on a platform of everybody gets less. Yeah, well, eventually we're going to have a crisis and then it's not going to be a question of, you know, being able to push the, you know, kick the can down the road. We're going to have to face the music, right? We're going to have a currency crisis. We're going to have a sovereign debt crisis. And then that's going to be it. See, right now we're able

to forestall all that by going deeper into debt and creating more inflation. But, you know, we're near the end of the line. And so at some point things are going to be horrible. And it's not going to be a question of the politicians telling people they have to take less. They're going to have less. They're going to have a lot less. They're going to be really bad. And then the question is going to be, OK, you know, this is a huge disaster. Where do we go from here? How do we get out of this hole? You know, and then it's OK. Well, we got to cut this. We got to do that. You know, but things are already going to be bad. And no politician is going to propose the proper solution until they've exhausted all the other opportunities, until things are so bad that they're probably not going to get reelected anyway. So they might as well do the right thing.

You said that we're reaching the end of the line, Peter. Can you tell us on how that end of the line looks like and what can the average investor do to hedge? Well, again, the way we've been able to postpone the pain is by creating inflation. But the pain of inflation, you know, we've been spared that because of the dollar's reserve status. We've been able to export all the inflation to our creditors and we've been able to just go deeper into debt to keep our whole thing going, this whole phony economy, our artificially high living standard. But once we can't do that anymore, once these huge deficits and all this money printing results in a dollar collapse, because the world doesn't want our dollars anymore, they don't want to keep on producing stuff

and then exchanging the stuff that they produce for the depreciating dollars that we print. Then we immediately feel the consequences of all the inflation, which is beginning now. And, you know, the dollar tanks and prices just skyrocket and then interest rates skyrocket because nobody wants to buy our bonds anymore. You know, the 10 year Treasury and 30 year Treasury right now, they're still yielding about 4.4, 4.3%. In the real world, they would be yielding 10% or more. But the Fed can't allow that. So the Fed has to print even more money. And then inflation just runs out of control. And then at some point, you have to do something to stop hyperinflation. But hyperinflation would wipe out the dollar completely. It'd be worth nothing.

But if we're going to stop the dollar from zeroing out, then at some point, we have to let interest rates go way up and we have to let all the debt go into default. We have to let a bunch of people lose money to prevent the money from losing its value. Peter, when do you think this collapse of sorts happens? Because the reason why I ask that is because I've been here for a long time, and I keep hearing about these collapses that are going to happen, the dollar collapse and the credit event and all these things. The problem is they just never seem to happen. So it always seems to be like there's another, the Fed just keeps kicking the can down the road and kicking the can down the road. I'm wondering like, how long do you think this can can be,

can be kicked down the road? The reason why I asked, the reason why I ask is because, you know, what I've learned is that a lot of people always call for a collapse or a crash, but markets just eventually always continue to go up and there's always headwinds. And I want to just know if we're in that cycle or if we really think that this time it's going to happen. Well, look, it's going to happen. It can't not happen.

But yes, we have succeeded in kicking a can down the road. That's why the national debt is $33 trillion. You know, we could have had a crisis when the national debt was $10 trillion or $15 or $20 or $30. But we didn't. So instead, the problems got bigger. Does that mean the national debt can't hit $35 trillion, can't hit $40 trillion? No.

Obviously, if it can get to $30, it can get to $40. But it can't keep going up indefinitely without a crisis. It's not like, you know, in 20 years, the national debt is going to be 100 trillion or 200 trillion. And, you know, debt's going to be 400 percent, 500 percent of GDP. And we're still going to be like, well, you know, it can't go on forever. The numbers are already getting so big. Interest on the national debt is now the third biggest monthly expense of the government. It's bigger than the defense. By the end of next year, I think interest on the national debt will be bigger than Social Security or Medicare.

It'll be the number one thing that the government is spending money on. And then, you know, it just keeps exponentially rising so do you think point we can't get to the point where 100 of tax revenue is needed just to pay interest on the national debt i mean that's where we're headed uh but do you think the fed do you think the fed is watching this and going hold on a second maybe we shouldn't increase interest rates because of the national debt or do you think the fed is going we've got a one mandate the mandate mandates. One is unemployment, another one is inflation. And the truth is that the national debt is actually somebody else's problem. The job you've given us is to manage inflation and employment.

No, I think eventually the Fed is going to drop those mandates. The only mandate it's going to have is going to be to monetize the debt and to prevent the government from defaulting because, you know, they got to keep interest rates down. I mean, that's what they're going to be doing. Like the Bank of Japan already went to yield curve control because they see how much debt the government has. Well, we have an even bigger problem with an even larger amount of unpayable debt. But look at look at Powell. He refuses to criticize the deficits. He doesn't have any harsh words to say. The Fed is running two trillion dollar deficits. We have the most stimulative fiscal policy in history. While the Fed is trying to put out an inflation fire with tight money, but it can't be done when

you have expansionary fiscal policy. The Fed is providing this massive stimulus. I mean, the Congress and Powell refuses to criticize the government for running these deficits. He's like, well, we don't care about these deficits. Well, the deficits are the source of inflation. You know, so he can't he can't do anything about it. The rate hikes aren't going to do anything to stop inflation. He's got to cut back on money supply, and he's got to cut back these deficits. The government has to cut spending. Let's bring the conversation back into something a little bit more actionable

and maybe a little bit more close on the time around. How do you see the next 12 months playing out? You know, like if I would say to you, Peter, in 12 months, do you see interest rates higher than they are today or lower than they are today? Do you see the markets higher than they are today or lower than they are today? Do you see gold higher than it is today, lower than it is today? And maybe, you know, how do you see Bitcoin higher or lower than they are today do you see um do you see gold higher than it is today lower than it's there and maybe you know how do you see bitcoin higher or lower than it is all right and let's only look 12 months because you know it's it's easy for us to kick the can down the road and say there's going to be a massive credit event it has to come at some point but most investors

are looking like one year out so let's talk about one year how does peter schiff see the world one year out yeah well you know i think inflation is going to keep getting worse between now and a year from now. So I think the euro... Give me a number. Give me a number. Give me a number in December and give me a number one year from now. I don't know what the numbers are. I think the numbers are going to be higher than they are now. So I think that the Fed is going to be further away from its 2% inflation goal a year from now than it is today. I think that the Fed is going to be further away from its 2% inflation goal a year from now than it is today. I think that the bond market is going to continue to fall. So I think yields on the longer term bonds, 10 year out to 30 year, will be higher than they are now, probably considerably

higher. I would say that there will at least be a five handle, if not a six handle on the long end of the yield curve. As far as where the Fed will be with the short end, that is harder to say. I mean, they may in fact cut by then. They may have actually started cutting, but I don't think the cuts would be significant. But they may try to do it. I think the Fed will probably be back to quantitative easing by a year from now. I think the balance sheet, which is still shrinking, I think a year from now, it'll be back expanding. So I think the Fed, regardless of what happens to interest rates, I think the Fed will be back at QE because of the enormity of the deficits and potentially because we'll be in an official recession a year from now. So it sounds like a bull market to me from that.

It's not. It's going to be back in QE. Yeah, the stock market is harder to say. I think the Nasdaq should be lower a year from now. It's harder to say about the Dow. I think the dollar will be lower. I mean, it's been going up, but I think the dollar will be lower. I mean, it's been going up, but I think within a year, people will realize that high inflation is bad

for the dollar, not good for the dollar. I would think gold would be a lot higher because I think the same thing will apply to the gold market. I think gold is being held back by the belief that the Fed is going to fight hard to make sure inflation is 2%. When investors realize that there's no way they can fight hard enough to do that, and that the Fed is surrendering and that inflation is going to be much higher, I think gold has to be higher. As far as Bitcoin, look, Bitcoin, it's a pure guess. But again, you know, I would guess lower. But I mean, I could be wrong. But I just think that, you know, by a year from now, there maybe there will be one or two Bitcoin ETFs, maybe more.

And so I think that the world will no longer be waiting for a Bitcoin ETF. So that news will be in the rearview mirror. You mean that for good or for bad? I don't know what's coming for Bitcoin. Do you mean the ETF will be behind us for good or for bad? I mean, when I say that, do you mean that the ETF will be approved and therefore people will realize what a disappointment it is and actually no one wants to invest in Bitcoin? Or do you think the ETF will be approved and then we're going to get all this buying from all these institutions because the asset class has been, you know. No, I don't think there's going to be a lot of buying into these ETFs.

I think there's a lot of buying in front of the ETFs because people are anticipating that the ETFs will lead to more buying. I just don't think they will. So how much money? When Grayscale becomes an ETF, if it does, there's going to be massive liquidations out of Grayscale. And right now there's a lot of Bitcoin that are trapped in Grayscale and that are not out there for sale. But I think once Grayscale becomes an ETF and it trades at NAV, a lot of people are going to try redeeming or they're going to want their money back. And that's going to force Grayscale to start dumping Bitcoin in the market. And, you know, when Bitcoin went way up initially, it was in large part due to Grayscale buying.

Grayscale kept buying Bitcoin as it was issuing shares. Well, now when it starts redeeming those shares, it has to start selling Bitcoin. I think I agree with you there, Peter. I think I agree with you there on the Grayscale thing. And I think the best case for Bitcoin

is that actually the SEC approves all the ETFs at once, including Grayscale. And then hopefully, you know, we get some kind of institutional demand, which is equal to or bigger than the selling pressure that we're going to get, the inevitable selling pressure that we're going to get from GBDC. When I look at the GLD ETF, today, I think there's 55 billion, I don't know the exact price, but call it over 50 billion invested in GLD. If I were to say to you one year from now, the Bitcoin ETF is approved,

what do you reckon will be the market cap or the amount of money in a Bitcoin ETF? I mean, I know it's not the same comparing like for like, but let's say GLD's got 50 billion invested. What do you think the Bitcoin ETF will have invested? You know, I don't know. I just think, again, but there's no real reason to have a Bitcoin ETF. For gold, you know, the whole, the thing about gold is you actually have to store it. And some people don't want to take possession of their gold. They'd rather own it in an ETF. But Bitcoin, anybody can just go out and buy Bitcoin.

There's no storage. But not really, Peter, not really, because private keys are very complicated. Wallet management is very, very scary. Even for me, private key management is quite a stressful thing. So to be honest, if you were to say to me, look, would you rather hold actual Bitcoin or hold ETF? You know, unless I was a real liberalist. Here's the thing, though. Remember, the main selling point of Bitcoin over gold was that, well, you don't need a third party to store it. You know, you own your own Bitcoin.

You don't have to pay custodian fees. If you're going to say that Bitcoin is – wait, let me finish this point. If you're going to say that Bitcoin is so complex and so difficult to understand and difficult to hold that you need to hire a third party to store your Bitcoin and you have to pay him a fee, then why the hell do you have it? Why not pay somebody to hold your gold then? Because at least they're holding something real. Bitcoin is nothing. And what you're saying proves it. On that point, Peter, and Scott, I know you want to try to jump in as well. On the point of Bitcoin is nothing, how has your stance changed about Bitcoin over the last few years, especially with all the adoption regulatory clarity that we're seeing? And I know you said some positive things about ordinals, if I remember correctly.

Well, I mean, I did an ordinal. Some people bought them. But I thought the value was the artwork, not the ordinal. The ordinal was a way of like kind of keeping track of it. But other than that, I mean, my views have entrenched on Bitcoin. I mean, nothing has happened to question anything that I said originally. I mean, everything just backs it up. And, you know, Bitcoin is becoming even more difficult to use as a medium of exchange than it was when it first was adopted, because the transaction costs are higher, but the regulatory costs and all that, the compliance and

all that stuff is building up and building up. I mean, more people, I would say that more companies were advertising that they would accept Bitcoin, you know, at their businesses than now. I mean, nobody talks about it. It's not even an issue. I mean, it's all about speculation. Bitcoin is all about buying it. It's all about buying it because you think the price is going to go up. There is nothing different.

And in fact, that's all that's going on with these ETFs. It's just another way to gamble on Bitcoin. It's another way to buy it because you think the price is going to go up. There is nothing different. And in fact, that's all that's going on with these ETFs. It's just another way to gamble on Bitcoin. It's another way to buy it because you think the price is going to go up. There is nothing that's happening to have gold the same. Isn't gold the same? Forgive me for my ignorance, but isn't the only reason why somebody would buy gold now because you're expecting it to the price to go up or at least the price. So a jeweler doesn't buy gold because they think the price is off. They need to make jewelry. A computer company doesn't buy gold because they think the price is off.

They need to make a chip. You know, gold is an actual commodity that is used by a lot of people and a lot of industries that need gold. Now, also, as far as why would an individual who's not a jeweler or not a dentist or, you know, a computer chip maker, why would somebody like that own gold? Well, they would own it as a store of value because they can hold gold. It holds its value. It doesn't lose value over time. And then in the future, they can sell it to a jeweler. They can sell it to a dentist or a computer company.

It's a store of value. It's not about betting the price is going to go up. It's just betting that people are going to keep using it the way they've been using it for 5000 years. Like it's not going to lose that value. But you go into bitcoin nobody needs bitcoin now nobody's going to need it in the future you're buying it because not it's not because it's a story you can't tell me somebody needs you can't tell me somebody needs gold because they need you you can't tell me somebody needs gold because they need jewelry you know if you're telling me that the only real use case for gold is is because of jewelry you can't tell me something wait a minute jewelry is 50 50 of all the gold that's mined every year goes into jewelry now i mean why is that why people obviously they want to wear gold jewelry that is a use for gold you

know so and people have been wearing gold jewelry but people want to send money but people want to send money over the internet without a centralized intermediary that is a use case for bitcoin that they use stable coins for that listen i'm a bitcoiner but but we have to get money yeah bitcoin's not money so you can send bitcoin without a third party but it's not money you're not sending money yeah but there are substitutes i I mean, I could say that platinum is a better substitute for jewelry. You ask my wife today, she doesn't want gold jewelry. She's much happier wearing platinum rings and platinum earrings. I mean, there are substitutes for everything. Each one has its own properties, no? I'm not saying that platinum doesn't have any value. And I'm not

saying that gold is the only metal that you could use in jewelry. But the fact is, a lot of gold is used in jewelry. You can't deny that. That is a real use for gold. Now, it's not the only use. It's the best conductor of electricity we have. And it has a lot of other uses. You know, I mentioned, I talked about that that that's uh space uh they launched this uh telescope into space and uh that has these huge mirrors and they had to coat them all in gold it was very expensive but they needed to use gold because no other uh element was going to do the job the only the only metal that could do what they needed was gold and so they had to use it. But I mean, gold is an actual thing. I mean, it's like so ridiculous that in order to justify having value in Bitcoin,

you have to try to diminish the value of gold. And saying gold has no value, gold's worthless. That's even more ridiculous than the claims that Bitcoin has value. It doesn't. Bitcoin is nothing. But yes, if people want to buy it because they think somebody else is going to buy it, it can have a price.

Bitcoin has a price. It has no value, but it has a price. And that price right now is about twenty six thousand dollars a Bitcoin. That's an idiot will give you twenty six thousand dollars for your Bitcoin. Right. Is it? Is it anything? It's going to run out and and they're not going to be any idiots left to buy your bitcoin in the future anything that you could see that changes your mind is there any level of adoption any any utilities that be like all right now bitcoin is starting to make more sense as a store of value or how can it be a store of value

in order to store value you have to start out with value you can't store what you don't have but the value but i mean but i mean the value if if enough people treat it as a store of value it becomes a store of value is that is that an unfair statement no if it's it's it becomes a bubble if you're saying if a bunch of people think it's a store of value then automatically it becomes a store of value. Well, what happens if the people who think it's a store of value stop thinking it's a store of value? What if they start doubting that it's a store of value? So what are your thoughts on institutions?

Let's talk about Grayscale ETF. Sorry, the BlackRock ETF. What was your first response when you saw that news, that level of adoption? Because if Bitcoin has no value, it's all speculative. Why would institutions like BlackRock get involved? Does that change your mind in any way? Because they want to make money off of it. If there's a bunch of fools that want to buy something, Wall Street has a long history of supplying it. There's an old saying on Wall Street, feed the ducks while they're quacking. So you got a bunch of ducks quacking for Bitcoin.

Wall Street wants to get in on the action and sell them whatever it is they want to eat. You know, they're not they're not making a judgment on whether or not they think it's a good investment. They just know that there's people who want it and they can make money selling it to them. So that's what it's all about. It's just about trying to get. But this is not adoption. This is just another way to gamble on Bitcoin and bet that there will be adoption in the future. Adoption would be I want to walk into a supermarket and say, how would you like to check out?

We want to check out with Bitcoin. You know, I mean, I mean, that would be adoption where people are using the Bitcoin and not through BitPay. The supermarket doesn't take my Bitcoin and convert them to dollars. The supermarket takes my Bitcoin and holds them and then pays its rent in Bitcoin and then pays its employees their wages in Bitcoin. We start seeing Bitcoin actually circulating as a medium of exchange. In fact, I go down the supermarket and all the prices are in Satoshi's. Oh, OK. Yes, it's actually working.

But right now I go to a supermarket. Everything is priced in dollars. Nothing is priced in Bitcoin. If you have Bitcoin and you want to buy groceries you have to sell your bitcoin and get dollars and then use those dollars to buy groceries the only thing you can do with your bitcoin is sell it to another speculator that's it going back to the to the to the blackrock etf would blackrock risk their reputation and we know the size of blackrock would they risk their reputation for making a small amount of money with something like Bitcoin? If you think there's a possibility it could go to zero. No, no.

Just because you have an ETF about something, right, it doesn't mean that the ETF has to go up or down. You're just trying to service a market. So they think there may be a demand for this ETF. And that doesn't mean the ETF is going to be a good investment. And it doesn't mean they're saying it's going to be a good investment. I mean, they're just saying that, hey, people want to buy Bitcoin and we're going to create an ETF that lets them do it. That's all they're doing. And they're saying we're going to make money off of that. They're not saying that if you buy this ETF, as an investor, you're going to make money.

I doubt they're going to put their own money. I doubt that the people at BlackRock are going to invest their own money in this ETF. No, that's for customers. They're not going to put their own money in there. Scott Rand, do you remember what uh the ceo of the think said about uh bitcoin because he was bullish on bitcoin as well it's not just launching an etf but i can't remember the exact quotes we've talked about it in previous spaces but larry yeah i don't know the exact quote he said he's very bullish about it specifically as an inflation hedge and because of its limited supply and he said bitcoin is really becoming a serious thing and he also mentioned that he's very very bullish on the tokenization of assets.

He thinks that's a thing. So he said, yes, Ryan, I've got some quotes here. He said crypto and Bitcoin will revolutionize finance, which is a pretty big reversal from his previous position when he called Bitcoin nothing more than an index of money laundering. That was obviously a few years ago. There have been a lot of people that have been, you know, have converted when it was financially, you know, incentivized to do that. Like look at Kevin O'Leary. Right. He was a big Bitcoin critic until a bankman freed paid him a bunch of money. And now all of a sudden he started touting Bitcoin and crypto once once he was incentivized to do it.

So obviously, you've got Wall Street trying to make money. They're trying to launch these products. They want to hype it up to generate interest. Maybe they even bought some Bitcoin that they can sell into these ETFs. So, yeah, I mean, it's just classic pump and dump type stuff. I mean, people are just trying to make money for themselves and so they're hey they're just hyping this thing up yeah uh because they think they think they can make money that's all i mean that's why kevin o'leary i mean he knew it was bullshit he said it but you know

he he he got paid all this money to go out and be an ftx spokesman and so all of a sudden to be fair you know uh uh cuban mark cuban had the same thing he was a big critic until he all of a sudden to be fair you know uh uh cuban mark cuban had the same thing he was a big critic until he all of a sudden got in on some crypto investments and then all of a sudden oh yeah this is great these guys are just talking uh their own financial interest peter to be fair i think a lot of them were not specifically talking about bitcoin but it does raise an interesting point. And I'm curious to your position. When we go, I think we can stop litigating Bitcoin. I think we know where we all stand on that. When you go further into blockchain technology,

into crypto, is there anything that you see value of? Because I find it very interesting and I want to know your take. Arguably outside of Bitcoin, the killer app for crypto has been dollarized fiat, right? Obviously, stable coins. And we talk about cross-border transactions and the value of these things. But we know that even Visa and the large payment companies, PayPal, are investing in stable coins because it is a bit faster and cheaper. Do you see value knowing that there's people all over the world?

You obviously are passionate about the problems with inflation and hyperinflation. Do you see value then in people utilizing the technology to transact in dollars, digital dollars? I don't see that much value with respect to dollars because there's already so many ways to digitally transact in dollars you know paypal venmo you know ach transfers uh you know apple pay you know and all over the world you know yeah but not for people in lebanon and venezuela to you know right but what i think would be a lot better for those people. If you're going to get a stable coin, if you're going to deal in a token that's backed by something, you might as well just back it by real money. So a token backed by gold is much better than one backed by dollars or euros or yen, because

now you have real money that's going to hold its value over time and have that. And that's international. So why should people be dealing in dollars? What about somebody who's in Europe and they want euros or someone in Japan wants yen? Universally, everybody can deal in gold. And so if people have a digital currency backed by something, it should be backed by real money,

just like all the initial paper currencies used to be backed by something, it should be backed by real money, just like all the initial paper currencies used to be backed by gold. The first Federal Reserve notes were backed by gold, right? That's how they started. And so we can now have notes backed by gold digitally. In fact, before the Federal Reserve, private banks issued notes and they were all backed by gold. Every all bank currency was backed by gold. And so all digital currencies were all backed by gold. Every all bank currency was backed by gold. And so all digital currencies should be backed by gold, too. And then then they would work. Then they would be a unit of account, a medium of exchange, a store of value.

It works perfectly. Now, of course, the governments don't want that, right, because nobody is going to use their crappy currency when they could use gold. You know, the reason people aren't using gold now as money is it's not as efficient to deal with it. But through, you know, what you're talking about through tokenization and blockchain and the Internet, it's even easier to use gold as money than their fiat currencies. Right.

It's even easier. That's my point. It's also even easier to use the actual money. But I agree with you that I would much rather see a stable coin that's backed by gold. We've seen even conjecture, and I know that's not necessarily going to happen. I don't expect it that BRICS, for example, would have a gold-backed currency of some sort to compete with the dollar. I don't live in that fantasy world, to be quite honest. The main reason that this is not going on is regulation.

The governments are cracking down on it and preventing it from happening. Look what happened in gold money. I mean, gold money in Toronto, I've been involved with them. I mean, they had the idea to do this, but the government cracked down, the Canadian government even cracked down on them so hard on their compliance and their KYC and their AML that they had to completely give up their plans to allow people to use gold as money. Because the regulators just saw this as a threat. And they're like, oh, no, we can't allow the private sector to compete with our monopoly on money. And so we need to crush them with the cost of regulation. And that's what happened. You know, and they had to give it up because they couldn't

afford the regulation on these, you know, on these transactions. They made it so onerous that it wasn't profitable to do it. But in a free free market it would have already happened if the government wasn't punishing uh the market this would already we'd all we'd all be using gold right now already right but to your point though gold we understand is very difficult to use in and of itself as a medium of exchange so a tokenized dollar backed by gold, you're agreeing would be a dollar. You would just tokenize the gold itself. Right. So I have an ounce of gold and I tokenize it.

And now I can I can send any fraction of that ounce of gold instantly to somebody else anywhere around the world. And now they own whatever fraction of that ounce of gold I just sent them. You know, you just have the gold sitting there in a depository and we all transact in the tokens. That's how it used to work. The first currency was when somebody took their gold to a blacksmith and they left it there and the blacksmith gave them an IOU for that gold. And then whoever had that IOU, gave it to somebody else in exchange for some goods and services. That was the first transaction in currency. It was an IOU of a blacksmith who was holding on the gold. That's how it all started. Peter, I just want to circle back. I know

you probably have limited time to the beginning of the conversation. I think we've spoken endlessly about all the problems with the government's policy, with the Fed, with inflation the depression that would have come and we would have probably emerged stronger but here we are in 2023 with the same problems that we had back then and you could argue even larger with inflation out of control what is the solution at this point to solvus well remember there there is no like easy fix. Right. So the solution is to allow the free market to function again, which means the Fed has to get out of the way of interest rates and just allow interest rates to go wherever the market wants to take them. But at the same time, the Fed has to start continue to shrink its balance sheet by continuing to to, you know, sell off treasuries and mortgage backed securities, I think, at a faster pace than it's done. And the Fed needs to make it clear that they're not going to buy any more government bonds that they're done with that. They're out of that business. The Fed is not going to no matter what. And if a bank fails, the Fed is not going to provide any liquidity to bail them out. That it's a free market in banking. Right. So the banks have to survive based on their own credit quality.

Right. You know, all that has to be made known. Now, of course, when that happens, almost all the banks are going to fail. And so we have to be prepared for that. And we have to be prepared for a restructuring, new owners to come in, you know, people are going to lose a lot of money. And the government's going to have to slash spending because there's not going to be any money, you know, to pay Social Security and Medicare. And so the government's going to have to cut spending dramatically, including it's going to have to, you know, cut spending on social security and Medicare, not in the future. The government's going to have to tell people who are getting social security right now, you're going to get less than we were. We promise. Now, that's going to happen anyway,

because inflation is going to destroy the value of social security. So you might as well be honest about it. And maybe people will end up with more by having a legitimate reduction in benefits. But look, and the country is going to have to transform. We're going to have to start building things again. We're going to have to start producing factories. And people are going to have to start, you know, sweating, you know, coming home. You know, people are going to have to work in this country again, we can't all just be in the service sector, we're gonna have to make stuff because we're not going to be able to run trillion dollar a year trade deficits. You know, we won't be able

to live off the backs of the Chinese or wherever else we have, you know, this transition has to happen, just we have to let the free market come in and, you know, interest rates going to go up, government spending is going to come down, consumption is going to go down. Americans are not going to be buying stuff that they can't afford anymore. Right. If you want to buy something and you don't have the money, you have to save your money until you can afford it. It's not about, well, I don't have the money. I'll just use my credit card. That's got to stop. Right. I mean, you know, we can't keep living like that. And the only reason we are is because the government is financing it and backstopping it and making it all possible. But once the government gets out

of the way and lets the markets know that that's it, you know, and let the market know if the stock market crashes, there's no there's no Fed put. The Fed is not going to do anything. If the economy goes into recession, the Fed's not going to do anything. The Fed's not going to try to artificially stimulate the economy. The Fed is just going to keep the money supply stable. But Peter, my concern goes back to a point you made earlier, probably for me the highlight of the show. You said that the problem that we have is due to democracy, due to the incentives alignment that we have. And that won't change.

So everything you've said will likely – most of it will likely not happen. So my question is – I was speaking to one of the regular panelists on the show, and he told me a few days ago, almost a week ago now. He goes, Mario, I'm genuinely getting a sense of pre-Lehman right now, talking to all the other investors, talking to companies, and I'm just surprised equities are where they are today and the sentiment is where it is because behind the scenes, things look really scary. So my question to you is, comparisons to 2008, what is the best case scenario over the next 12 to 24 months and the worst case scenario? And probably the last question that I have for you, Peter. Well, the best case scenario is that the crash starts now. The worst case scenario is that we kick the can down the road for another year and it starts later. I mean, the sooner it starts,

the better, because the longer it takes to start, the worse it's going to be. Now, it's already going to be really, really bad. But, you know, I'd just rather rip the bandaid off now. I mean, but, you know, they're going to try to delay that as long as they can. But when the crisis happens, it's going to be so much worse. And the worst part about it, of course, is they're going to blame capitalism. That's what they always do. So this is going to be horrific. What's about to happen is going to impoverish so many people. People's lives are going to get ruined. And what is the government going to do? They're going to say, you see, look how bad capitalism is. This is what capitalism, this is what the free markets did. We need more government. We need the government to take more

control over the economy. We have to nationalize the banks. We have to nationalize all these industries. And basically, it's just going to make it worse. And it's going to make sure that we never recover, that our living standards never bounce back, that they continue to deteriorate, because we're going to surrender more power. And of course, all of our individual liberties, whatever we have left, will have to be surrendered because the government's going to say, look, this is what people did. We need government control. Government has to be in charge of everything because this is what happens when you don't have enough regulation. We don't have enough government. You end. It ends up like this. You know, and that's been the mindset because they did the same thing after 2008.

They blamed it on capitalism. They blamed it on greedy bankers or whoever it was. And they didn't accept any responsibility of the Fed or government or their regulations or subsidies or things that they incentivized and prevented the market from working. So that is the worst part and that's what i'm out here you know trying to get as many people to understand the source of these problems it's going to get a lot worse not because of capitalism but because of socialism because of government capitalism is the cure government is the disease and we've got to we

if you if we want to be healthy've got to excise the disease. We've got to get rid of all this government and allow capitalism to work. Peter, I think this is a great discussion. Scott, I'm not sure if you have any further questions, but I would love to have you again. The last question I have for you, and maybe a small request, is I'm in a sauna right now. You're in your hyperbaric chamber. I'm going to go into the chamber after the sauna.

I changed my mind. I thought I was going to skip today for the first time. But message me. I'm not sure if we have your number. My team has your number or your PA's number. But if we don't have your number, hit me up on Twitter. Send me a DM.

Would love to share the biohacks that I do and the ones you do especially the chamber that you mentioned because the one you have is different to mine yeah i'm in oxy life right now i'm in this multi-chamber but i'm out i've been here an hour and 48 minutes so in two more minutes it's basically i'm running a protocol which is the healthy aging protocol and so after an hour and 50 minutes i'll take the oxygen out of my nose and it'll start decompressing i put the oxygen up with the oxygen it'll start decompressing in your your ears will start to to to unblock or start to pop and but also can you guys put it can you

go ahead i was gonna ask if you can put a golf simulator inside the hyperbaric chamber well i don't know if it was big enough you you could do that. You can play golf in here. I mean, people ride stationary bikes in these things. I just you know, I don't I don't want to do that when I'm in here. I want to be physically active when I want to be outside. I don't want to do my exercise in here. But I just do work in here. But I was going to say, Peter, scientifically proven that if you buy Bitcoin,

you live 13 years. Peter, on that point, look, on a serious note, though, you'd be surprised on how fast the space is evolving. Like a lot of money is flowing into it from a business perspective. But on a serious note, though, you'd be surprised on how fast the space is evolving. A lot of money is flowing into it from a business perspective. But on a personal level, there's a gentleman called Brian Johnson. He popped up out of nowhere over the last few months.

And his metrics, the way he's slowed his aging to such a level that it's surprisingly optimistic and moving a lot faster than I thought. Now, I don't know Brian Johnson well. I know David Sinclair, which I'm sure you know, Ben Greenfield and that group. But you'd be surprised. And there's a lot of things being developed. And he's testing a lot of stuff. But it's fascinating.

I mean, I just turned 60. So I'm doing it now. I started, you know, but I know that this is supposed to lengthen the telomeres on yourself. Exactly, yep. And I'm doing the same thing with my intermittent fasting. That, you know, I mean, that's... I do that this is supposed to lengthen the telomeres on your cell. Exactly, yep. And I'm doing the same thing with my intermittent fasting. I do that as well. I'm still fasting. I still have 15 minutes left before I finish my 18 hours.

I haven't had any food today other than this tea that I'm sipping since dinner last night, which was around 6.30, 7 o'clock. That was the last food I ate. But, yeah, I used to be a guy. I used to eat a lot of food at night because I used to like to watch a movie and snack. I don't do any of that anymore. I eat my dinner. And then if I'm up at night, you know, watching a movie, I'll just drink water or tea. I don't I don't nibble on anything. I just and I'm totally at this point, I've even lost the craving. I mean, my wife will sit next to me, show me eating crap and I, you know, it's fine.

And I just, you know, I don't eat anything until until i have a late breakfast around 11 11 30 you know and then i eat breakfast and then i have a you know i just i i still eat three meals between like breakfast and dinner but you know the lunch is usually just like a salad or something and then i have a regular dinner but if you peter if you want to take it if you want to go to the extreme uh i'll send you through some stuff that are more recent um and um you know i think you'd be pretty fascinated but also some of the results that um one group of people they're following something called the blueprint i'm starting to follow it now um the the results they're getting um but it's fascinating and in a very optimistic way for you know delaying aging and getting

very very close to reversing aging and a lot faster than we expected so you know much respect that you're doing it i think cells i mean look my cells should be getting healthier and reproducing i think the cryo i mean i think that's helping and the red light all this stuff you know combined uh you know is gonna you know i mean why why do we age the way we do? Why do our cells start breaking down? I mean, all we have to do is keep them healthy. And there's no reason that we can't live longer. But yeah, we'll chat about it offline. I'm geeking out over this for hours. Peter, it's a pleasure to chat to you. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Peter. All right, guys, I think it's a pretty cool show.

I like one-on-one chats like this where we dig deep. What are you going to do now, Scott? Go to sleep? Ran, thanks. I'm joining him for Arthur Hayes' pool party. Yeah, he's not listening now. He's avatarsy, but he's not here. I prefer sleep to standing by a party with 99% dudes talking about their Web3 projects at 11 30 at night in singapore

yeah i prefer i prefer um doing anything than sitting there listening to people talk about their projects so dude brian johnson's on a whole other level though man you know peter's gone so maybe now i can talk about the fact that brian johnson tracks his nighttime erections and is doing penis rejuvenation and that's what you're obsessed with his penis you need to get over his penis everyone in new york i don't understand you you idolize a guy who's paid two million dollars a year to look like he's made out of plastic i don't understand bro i i i idolize anyone that understands that aging is the biggest problem that we've all faced right now period what's the science behind tequila shots

seriously um uh very good i think if you take five a day in the morning um it generally uh reverses aging by 20 i'm joking everyone by the way some people might i prefer to wake up in the morning you know like mid-sleep for a couple shots before before people before people jump off please make sure that red logo on stage there's only four four of us on stage, three dudes and a red logo. Follow the red logo because we'll be hosting shows from there. It's giving love hearts right now. Make sure you follow that.

If you want to come on the show, we're going to start accepting sponsors again, I think in the next couple of days when Ran and Scott are back from their little holiday in Singapore. But if you want to come on the show, make sure you hit us up, DM any of the three of us

or you can email us. I didn't pin the tweet. Otherwise, we'll see you again tomorrow, same really appreciate it and scott get some sleep uh ran he's not here so uh um yeah all good guys bye