We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC215: Global Macro and Bitcoin Q1 2025 w/ Luke Gromen (Bitcoin Podcast)

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

Luke Gromen unpacks the dynamics of stablecoins and T-bills, Bitcoin’s role as a fiscal policy marker, and the implications of yield curve control. We delve into U.S. dollar devaluation, global liquidity in 2025, and the interplay of tariff threats and international Bitcoin reserves. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: 00:00 - Intro 01:10 - Why total federal receipts over 18% of GDP have historically led to recessions. 11:25 - The connection between stablecoins and T-bill demand, and its influence on Bitcoin adoption. 21:58 - How the Bank of England’s yield curve control impacts Bitcoin’s bullish potential. 23:42 - Luke’s argument for early U.S. dollar devaluation to manage debt-to-GDP ratios. 24:46 - Luke’s perspective on global liquidity trends for 2025. 26:11 - The role of Bitcoin as a marker of U.S. fiscal policy failures. 28:29 - How tariff negotiations could push nations to adopt Bitcoin reserves. 29:35 - Developments in China, Canada, and France, and their potential effects on global finance. 34:26 - Steps for transitioning to a Bitcoin standard in global credit systems. 50:42 - Luke’s strategic approach if advising the U.S. government on managing deficits. Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Luke’s X Account. Luke’s FFTT Newsletter. Check out all the books mentioned and discussed in our podcast episodes here. Enjoy ad-free episodes when you subscribe to our Premium Feed. NEW TO THE SHOW? Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, Kyle, and the other community members. Follow our official social media accounts: X (Twitter) | LinkedIn | | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok. Check out our Bitcoin Fundamentals Starter Packs. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool. Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services. Get smarter about valuing businesses in just a few minutes each week through our newsletter, The Intrinsic Value Newsletter. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: SimpleMining Hardblock AnchorWatch DeleteMe CFI Education Vanta Indeed Shopify Vanta The Bitcoin Way Onramp Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

You're listening to TIP. Hey everyone, welcome to this Wednesday's release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast. On today's show, we have back one of the smartest macro thinkers on the planet with Mr. Luke Roman. During our conversation, we talk about many of the expected policy changes and what that might mean for global liquidity in 2025. We talk about the impact of the potentially stronger dollar and what that means for risk on assets and how much stronger and how much more it can strengthen from here.

We talk about tariff threats. And of course, we talk about the potential for the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, amongst many other topics. So there's a lot going on here, but sit back, get ready, and I hope you guys have fun with this banger from the one and only, Mr. Luke Roman. Celebrating 10 years. You are listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pish. Hey, everyone.

Welcome to the Investors podcast. Luke, welcome back to the show. Great to be here. Nice to talk with you again, my friend. Always a pleasure, Luke. This is where I want to start off. So, as everybody knows, I'm an avid reader of your newsletter. And recently you had a comment talking about this 18% when we've had the federal debt receipts when they get 18% of the GDP. We've always gotten a recession, always gotten a recession. And let me pull up a post here because you are, let me pull up your actual article here because I think that when people

see this, it's kind of crazy the chart that was posted. And this was Tom McClellan that posted this chart. And I guess my question is how people wrap their head around this, because the part that I find really interesting is this underline that you have in the note. It says, a recession is mathematically certain to trigger a U.S. debt spiral of U.S. up, U.S. Treasury yields up, stocks down, economy down until either the U.S. policy makers inject U.S. liquidity or the U.S. and global financial system and economies collapse. This is like a really bold statement. Help the generalist or the person who's not like intimately involved in macro

understand this from the simplest way that you can describe it. Yeah. So the simplest way I can describe it is we have a debt problem from multiple angles. The United States cannot get more than 18% of GDP and tax receipts without causing a recession. That goes back to 1933 and even the chart shows in summer of 2022. two, we had two straight quarters of GDP declines. When you have GDP decline with debt to GDP at 125 percent, number one, number two, with a deficit already at 7 percent of GDP, in the last three recessions, U.S. deficit to GDP has risen by 600 basis points of GDP, 800 basis points,

1,200 basis points. So we're already at 125% debt to GDP. If we have a recession, the deficit will go from 7% of GDP to 13 to 20% of GDP. Yeah, which is like flashing flashing red lights, right? Like this is... Flashing, flashing red lights. Yeah. And what does that mean for the average listener? It means the U.S. would have a severe recession and treasury yields would go up sharply, not down, like they have always done in America, number one. Number two, because foreigners, because of the structure of the dollar system and how it has been allowed to evolve, foreigners have borrowed $13 trillion in dollar denominated debt. Dollars, global reserve currency, it's a major funding currency, Eurodollar system.

Everything you hear a lot of people talk about. The recession would drive the dollar up as it tends to do in a recession. That puts foreigners who have borrowed $13 trillion, and that's just short. They are short $13 trillion in dollar. denominated debt, they will get short squeezed. They desperately need to raise dollars to cover their dollar short. But three, foreigners own $57 trillion of dollar denominated assets, $22 trillion net. Which is where the liquidity. That's where the liquidity comes from. It's a piggyback. All that is is you hear, oh, the U.S. runs deficit after deficit after deficit. Foreigners at surplus after surplus after

surplus and then it's recycled back into U.S. stocks and bonds. Yeah. And they've been borrowing against the other side to get closer to net flat. They're not net flat. So point three to all of this is as US rates go up in a recession, because U.S. deficit blows out to 13 to 20 percent GDP, one, two, foreigners are short, so you're going to have them getting short squeezed on their 13 trillion. Point three is they are going to sell dollar assets until their hands bleed, as we used to say on the sales desk. It's an old futures thing. Take it, take it, take it, take it, take it, right, till their hands bleed. And they will sell what they can, not what they want to necessarily. What they can sell are the $8.5 trillion of treasuries first. So again, you're going

to have the U.S. deficit at 13 to 20 percent of GDP in a recession. And foreigners adding on to that with up to $8.5 trillion more. And there's no balance sheet. There's no private sector balance sheet big enough to take this on. Banks, by the way, have been very, regulated into buying, dot, da, da, treasuries as a reserve asset. Banks are going to be taking losses in a recession. They're going to need to be selling treasuries. This isn't a speculation we saw it in 1Q23 with Silicon Valley and signature. What were they trying to sell to raise cash to pay out depositors?

Treasuries. Oh, by the way, mom and pop are all of a sudden recession out of a job. Well, who's been the biggest buyer of marginal buyer treasuries? Mom and pop, there's no buyer. And so you end up what, in plain English, the entire treasury market will turn seller in a U.S. recession. You will have, people can't fathom the trillions of net effective deaths. It's right.

U.S. will be 13 to 20% of GDP. That'll be more than big enough to drive yields up in a recession. However, you're going to have banks selling alongside that. You're going to foreigners selling alongside that. You're going to mom and pop selling alongside that. And there's only one buyer. And that's why you get to this very binary outcome of collapse or fed princet.

I'm sure you can see the smirk on my face as you're saying all this, because my immediate thought when you're talking about equities basically being the relief out for people to raise liquidity, they're going to sell what they can to raise the dollars that they're short. And I'm looking at this incoming administration and I'm looking at Donald Trump and I'm saying, this guy is never going to let the equity market sell off because it's almost like his entire, I mean, I'm just thinking about his last time he was in office. He was literally signing stock market charts that were bidding into the close on Friday,

literally putting his signature on them and passing them around and tweeting about it. So, like, I just don't see that happening, which means the dollar has to be the relief valve. And I think that's where you're going with your comments, right? They're going to devalue the dollar. He's not going to let equity sell off in any type of capacity that's, you know, more than 20% or more. At least I don't think that he would allow that to happen. And so then what's the mechanism? Does he have that control?

Or is the Treasury and Fed acting independently? Or talk us through what you actually think is going to play out here. Because I think he's just going to, the dollar is going to be the relief valve. I just don't see that happening. Yeah, I have as high a conviction, right? When we talk through and simple what we just talked to, you can't raise taxes. No. You can't raise rates.

If you cut spending, you're going to drive the dollar up and that's going to trigger that same dynamic. You can't cut spending. The only way out is to drive growth. The only way to drive a growth is to weaken the dollar. So I have as high a conviction as probably as I've had in my career of anything, that the dollar is going to be the release valve in 2025. that is if we're sitting here in December 2025, the dollar will be lower than where it trades today,

one, you know, whatever, 106, almost 107. It's, you know, not just a lot lower, but I think it goes, you know, 95 to 100, something like that. I have as high a conviction than anything I've had in a long, long time. Now, for the next three to four months, I have no conviction in how this will go. Because, A, we're between administrations, B, you, you. You've got very powerful personalities and almost like in Elon and Vivek pushing these cuts. You've got talk of tariffs. You've got geopolitics.

And the zeitgeist among sort of the financial, sort of traditional financial minds is that we can just cut. And like, that's 100% wrong. Like they will blow up the system full stop. If they do anything that strengthens the dollar. Yeah. And so that's why I say no conviction of the next three to four months. There's a lot of very powerful people that are seen hell bent on doing things that will strengthen the dollar first. And if that's the case, things will blow up. And I, at that point,

I agree 100% with you that that isn't going to be allowed to happen for more than a cup of coffee. And so for me, practically speaking, I've been thinking about it as almost a turbocharged version of even the markets of 2020, possibly, right? Which is, you know, if you remember, markets peaked like last week of December or last week of January, excuse me, in January 2020, if I remember. And sort of bled through February as COVID fears picked up and then just fell out of bed sort of late February, first half of March. And then like third week of March, Fed comes in like, hey, $600 billion a week, let's go. And like it was off to the races. And point being is basically if you're running a portfolio of any real size, you could be right from January through mid-A March or you could have been right

for the rest of the year. But it was almost impossible to have completely restructured your portfolio from end of January through third week of March to get ready for the COVID crash and then anywhere near the bottom to completely restructure that portfolio to then benefit from 600 billion a week in QE. You were either right before and wrong after or you were wrong before and right after. And I think this would be even more compressed for exactly the reason you said, which is anything that causes stocks to hit an air pocket is a direct indictment of Trump policies. Full stop. He owns it now. And so I don't think it's going to be allowed to last for very long. So to me, that speaks to that, oh, they can't fall. Of course, they can fall. And they

will fall very fast, very sharply if they do anything to weaken the dollar. Tariffs, geopolitics, recession. You mean if they allow the dollar to bid, not for the dollar rises any more basically from here. I mean, look, we're at 106, 107. Last three, four weeks, we've had two punk 20-year auctions, a punk 30-year auction, and that 10 years already over 4-4-1 and acting spry, right? 4.41% in acting spry. So, like, the long end of the bond market is acting the way it has when the dollar is too strong. The auctions are kind of eh. And so here we are. So if they do anything, Elon, Vivek. I want to pull something up because everything that you're saying reminded me of this tweet that you recently had where you responded to Elon. I'm

I want to pull this up for folks. So Elon says, yes, if action's not taken, the curb deficit, America's in deep trouble, no different than a person who gets into too much debt. You reply with, all we need to do is drop the deficit by more than a trillion next year is the cut rates back to 0% and issue 100% of the debt in three-month T bills bought by the Fed if needed. Yes, inflation and assets will surge, but so will receipts. US deficit will be close to the surplus by this time in 2026.

what you're really getting at with this, Luke. Yeah. When you have debt, a fiscal position of ours, debt deficit where they are, you don't get to act in increments. Small increments, it's leverage. Leverage cuts both ways. So what I was saying is we just ran through exactly why it is a mathematical certainty that if anything strengthens a dollar, they will trigger the worst financial, I mean,

the 3Q23, 22, dollar up, everything else down until either, you know, we have a failed Treasury auction or someone injects dollar liquidity. Okay. So Musk in the meantime is talking about exactly this. Hey, let's do something. It's going to strengthen the dollar to cut down. Right. And that was where you, and this is where people who don't know you, don't realize that it's

a little tongue in cheek in your reply of like, hey, great idea. Like, I think everybody wants the government to get more responsible and just not be blowing money. But if you start doing this, you're going to make the dollar rip, which is going to cause all these other implications and meltdown because we're dealing with a. fractional reserve banking system that is dependent on the expansion of the units, right, to just print more units. Is that, did I capture that correctly? I mean, the punchline is we know empirically that if they do this a year from now, if they do it by trying to cut

anything except interest, the deficit as a percent of GDP will be higher. Yes. Because we'll be pushed into recession by virtue of these dollar mechanics. We know this because Obamacare did it. Yeah. In 2014, Wall Street Journal said it's going to reduce the deficit by more efficiently allocating government spent health care. Because the top line goes away. Because the top line. Yeah. Yeah.

So what you do. Like so this was Doge 1.0. We're going to push health care onto the people. Great. That sounds makes perfect logical sense. In the real world, what happened was is my premiums and lots of other small business premiums went up 20, 30, 40 percent.

And we said, oh, now I have to pay for my own health care more. We're not going to go out to eat as much. going to buy a new car. We're not going to go on a vacate. Consumer spending in 2015 dropped. GDP, the revenues, like you just said, slowed massively. And 12 to 14 months later, the U.S. deficit as a percent of GDP was higher than the deficit to GDP when they passed Obamacare. And this was like a small cut, not a big cut like Elon's talking about, with lower debt to GDP than we have now. So it is a mathematical certainty that if they cut anything other than interest, they will have a higher deficit to GDP in under 12 months and Trump will be discredited for the next four years.

And Elon's political, whatever this is will be, it's not a game he wants to play. Now, that brings me to the tweet, which is sort of the special case asterisk to this, which I always like to extremes inform the means, right? So let's take it to the far end because we can learn something from the, you know, let's go hyperbolic with it. And that's kind of the point of that tweet, but it's like, it's only partially tongue and cheek. Second biggest line item after entitlements is interest. Yeah.

Wow. And right now we're on pace next year. You know, we get a $7 trillion bolus of debt that's going to have to be refinanced next year at a higher rate, quite a bit higher rate in some cases. So let's just use 4% average interest rate on 36 trillion in debt to make the illustration. Which is very kind, which is very kind. It's kind. It's kind. Because that assumes no more debt next year. We're not going to grow debt next year. When in reality, we're going to grow up probably 8% Kager as we have every year since 2018. Or 2008, excuse me. So let's just keep it flat at 36 trillion. 4%. That's a trillion two. That's a trillion four five. Let's just round it up to a trillion five.

For easy math. So we're going to have a trillion five in interest expense next year at 4%. That's insane. This is insane. This is like double the budget of DOD or close to like maybe 1.5. 150% yeah, it's 160% of DOD. It's 50% of all in entitlements. Yeah. Okay, how can we get rid of this? Let's cut the rate to zero and finance it all in the bill markets. Which tether's buying. We'll get into that.

We'll get into that in a second. Yeah, let's not jump ahead. But, okay, that's going to take a trillion five wine item out of the budget. Financing in bills versus it further out in durations is secularly inflationary. Right. Because it's much closer to a sense. potentially money printing. The issuing in bills at zero is very close to money printing versus, you know, issuing in longer durations at some sort of yield. The longer durations sterilizes that inflation more. But you get to the point. We get our deficit down. Percentage wise. Yeah. As a percentage of GDP. Yeah. And receipts are going to explode. Receipts are going to explode. Because the stock market's going to explode.

economic growth is going to explode. Luke, I don't mean to interrupt you, but what the person who's listening to this is thinking, I would imagine, is, but yeah, so does the price for the stake that I'm already paying $50 or $60 for? Like, that's going to explode. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah.

And these are things we should have thought about and maybe been a little more aggressive as citizens of this country when our government did the galactically stupid things it did with borrowed money over the last 30 years. People say, well, it's going to make steak more expensive. Steak's already more expensive. It hasn't been marked to market yet because, again, your choice isn't, I want a $60 steak or I want an $80 steak. That's not the choice.

The choice is I want a $60 steak or I want a $30 steak except unemployment is at 30% plus and in Great Depression. And I don't eat anything but dog food because I'm out of a job. Those are your choices because of, because of, of the debt level that we have. When you're a company and you spend $8 trillion on a investment that yields zero, actually yields net losses.

So basically imagine being a business and you said, I'm gonna make a giant acquisition. I'm gonna spend $8 trillion on the acquisition. And not only is the acquisition not accretive to your earnings, and not only do you have to wipe that value completely off, that basically you buy a fraudulent business that's worth zero with the $8 trillion. So you have to write that down to zero. But the fraudulent business you took legal control of has an asbestos liability that goes on

for $350 billion a year growing 8% in perpetuity. What is the value of that of your corporation? The answer is you're zeroed out. You're going bankrupt. You've got to write it all off and start over. Now, why do I bring up that example? The United States government borrowed $8 trillion to go to the Middle East. What did we do?

We took Afghanistan from the Taliban and then 20 years later gave it back to the Taliban. That's less than zero. We security rocks oil for China, who's now the biggest oil producer in Iraq. Okay, zero. And for the benefit of spending that $8 trillion, our VA budget, Veterans Affairs, budget is now $350 billion a year, which is bigger than the entire federal deficit when we began spending $8 trillion on these two zero corporate acquisitions. And so when you look at it that way, that's why I say like the choice isn't, oh, I want a $60 stake or a $30 stake. No, no, no. You can have an $80

stake and we write off the $8 trillion loss plus the $350 billion of asbestos liabilities that go on in perpetuity. And you have a job. And you have a job. Or, you know, 20, 30% of people don't have a job. And oh, by the way, that will bring stake down to 30 bucks for like six months, maybe 12 months. Because the reality is when 20, 30% of people don't have a job, they don't pay their house. They don't pay their mortgage, their car loans, their student loans, or credit cards. And so banks start to default again. And so now we go right back to 2008. We go right back to 2020. We go right back to 2023. is the Fed going to stand aside and let the banking system fail?

Are they going to let it fail and then compensate depositors over 250,000? Because if they don't do over 250,000, corporations will, unemployment will go 60% and forget it. It's over. So you know they're going to do that. And so you're going to get a, your choice isn't $30 stake or $80 stake from $60 state today. Your choice is $80 stake and we start growing and it allows us to inflate away and write off the terrible corporate acquisition we made, we just wasted $8 trillion on, or we go to $30, the $30 stake for like six months and then we go right back to $100 stake because guess what? The Fed's going to turn around

and bail out those banks from that 20% unemployment. We know it. It has to happen. So like, there are people that understand this. Yeah. In Washington at the highest level. What I have no conviction and is whether said people have the political juice to talk sense or to overwhelm Elon. He's a force of nature. He hasn't in his head that this is a good idea. There's an order of operations that must be respected. Will it be respected? I have no idea.

However, I'm very high conviction that his boss, Mr. Trump, will not allow stock markets to do what they will mathematically certainly do if Elon gets his way in terms of cutting first, before devaluing the dollar. So hopefully that helps people understandly. Yes, it was tongue in cheek in terms of cutting rates, but you have to devalue the dollar first before you cut. If you do it in the other direction, you'll kill your political credibility,

and then you'll devalue the dollar via billing out the banks. And everyone in Maga, Maha, we'll just go, ugh, they're the same frigging thing. Banks first. And the next guy we get, we vote for will be even less pleasant to half this country. Yeah, a lot going on there. And for the record, when I said $60, Stakes. I'm talking about a pack of four at Costco and they're large. Just for the record. Now, if you're listening to this in the future and let's say it's 2028, which a lot of our listeners are from the future. And then I'm talking about one steak.

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All right. Back to the show. All right. There was another interesting thing in your report that I want to talk about because I wasn't really fully wrapping my head around this. You're talking about this three card Monty with the Bank of England and how they're doing like this mild version of yield curve controlled. Walk us through this.

Help us understand this from like a big picture. And in this part of the report, you said you think this is bullish for Bitcoin. So I want to hear what you got on this one. Yeah, there was a Bloomberg article reporting on what the Bank of England one of the governors, I think, said last week or two weeks ago that basically we are setting up this facility. Yet again. Yet again. And this facility will allow what will preserve the functioning of the guilt market in times of stress.

And anybody can tap it, banks, pensions, hedge funds, anybody. And we're not going to tell anybody who taps it so that if anybody needs it, they'll can just tap it. So you're effectively, you're getting the merging of the Bank of England and the Fed. Right. Like that's, that's all this is, is it's emerging if they can enter into a swap line anytime they want and you don't have to talk about who it is. I mean, it's basically just emerging of two central banks, right? Functionally, yeah, it's not really indistinguishable from that, right? I highlighted, look, the 10-year guilt and the 10-year treasury have been tied at the hip for the last three to four years. Yep. The biggest marginal buyer of U.S. treasuries, individual buyer of treasuries from a foreign standpoint this year by far has been the United Kingdom, UK. They only own $8 billion less in treasuries as a nation than China does. Now, the difference is China runs a $300 billion surplus against the U.S. And the U.K. is a twin deficit nation, right? So that tells us the U.K.'s treasury buying has nothing to do with trade.

It's all financial buyers. So if the U.K. is by far the biggest marginal buyer of treasuries, and we know it's a twin-deficit nation, so we know it's all financial buyers. And the Bank of England just came out and said, well, the big marginal financial buyers of debt in our country can tap this credit line. Anytime things get crazy to buy guilt, yeah,

it's de facto yield curve control light for the UK and for the U.S. particularly if you grab a U.S. swap line in there with the Bank of England, a Fed swap line. So, you know, for me, it's one of these things where, you know, some people get all, you know, enraged or shock bite. And it's trade the markets we have, not we want. We knew this is going to happen. This is the only way out.

They're very creative about it. I must give them credit, right? You've got to do like this three card Monty of like find the ace. But there it is. And ultimately what that tells me is as an investor away from day to day and trading and monthly is the United States and the United Kingdom will not allow 10 year treasury yields and 10 year guilt yields to be priced by the market beyond a certain point. that liquidity will come in.

And that's very, very powerful knowledge. It tells me, great. Bitcoin can move up and down and can be volatile. There's going to be liquidity provided to keep those bond markets functioning. And there's nothing more bullish for Bitcoin than that. I mean, at the end of the day, Bitcoin's just this relief out for all of this printing that has to happen. If we're just going to simplify this for the listener, we're talking about a lot of kind of fancy economic terminology, which I'm sure if people aren't intimately familiar with markets. I can be maybe frustrating to hear the depth of the conversation and not fully understand

like the context or the so what to some of this. But Luke, it seems that you agree. Like, all of these things are just more monetary units that are going to be clacked on keys that are going to be created. And the relief valve is Bitcoin, it appears. I mean, some of the comments from Putin himself, from you name it world leaders, we've had, you know, we didn't even talk about the Bitcoin treasury that the US is potentially going to do with an executive order. border on the very first day of Trump taking office on the 20th of January, which I've heard is a million Bitcoin that the U.S. is going to try to acquire. And then I'm also hearing that other nation states are going to co-announce their strategic reserve and that some of them are already

building their strategic reserve in the Middle East. So like all of these announcements, we're seeing states. I saw Ohio is trying to do their own Bitcoin strategic reserve for the state. There's some other states that are working some of these things. This is the relief file of it appears for all of this crazy activity and global coordination between central bankers that just blood the system with more Fiat units to paper over all these really bad policy decisions, fiscal policy decisions through all the years. Is that properly summarized if we were going to just kind of wrap all this into like a midpoint for the listener as to like, what does this all mean? What does it all mean? No, I think it is fair. Ultimately, when you make bad investment

decisions, whether you are a person, a company, a state, or a sovereign, you either take the loss or you inflate it away. And we just described when I laid out the $8 trillion going to zero with a $350 billion a year, asbestos liability going forward in perpetuity growing 10%. There's no chance they're going to cut off VA. Okay. There's no chance they're going to write that debt down because that debt is the collateral backing the banking system and all these other asset markets. They have to inflate it. And so if the real value has been impaired, the only thing to do is increase the nominal value is to inflate. And so, yeah, absolutely. I mean, to me, it's, you know, that's been one of the big powerful things about Bitcoin that's really, you know, it was very skeptical where initially

and what turned me, you know, years ago was ultimately, I came to the conclusion was that its structure meant it was the smoke detector that couldn't be turned off. You know, gold has long been a smoke detector and it's been manipulated for that exact reason via any number of ways. And, you know, maybe that's changing. Certainly a binary global system starts allowing gold to move more freely, but not like Bitcoin, as you can see, up and down, right? I mean, that volatility is not a bug. It's a feature of what's happening in the underlying.

I mean, I've highlighted this chart multiple times on X that, look, you want to see a really volatile chart? Call up the month-to-month volatility of gold in Weimar German Reichsmarks. It makes the volatility of Bitcoin look like a frigging three-month T-bilt. From the early 1920s is what Lucas was going to do. Early 1920s, right? Yeah. That's a currency that's having a problem.

You know, look at a hyperinflating currency today in terms of dollars. It looks like a Bitcoin chart. I mean, the only way to look at it is in long terms. The only way to look at it is in long terms to really kind of wrap your head around it. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, talk to us about tariffs. So Trump has come out with some really kind of bold statements.

And it seems to be one of his, I guess when he was calling Justin Trudeau, the governor of Canada, some of the stuff that's happening, man, this is crazy, was calling him the governor of Canada. You know, he's throwing around all this tariff talk, hey, you want to play hardball? Well, we can play hardball. This is how we're going to do it. What are the implications of this, Luke? So people hear this, they don't know if it's good, if it's bad. What's the knock on effect if he would go into this and step into it pretty heavily?

Yeah, good or good or bad, it's just a function of positioning, right? I think there's an immediate sort of tactical knock on effects mechanically we can describe. And then I think there's a structural impact that I think is important to highlight. So let's start with a tactical. I think it's relatively well understood that, okay, it's going to drive dollar up, right? It's going to probably be slightly inflationary here. Which we have already thoroughly discussed at the start of the show. If you're wondering what that means, it means that you're going to.

That's exactly right, right? Like dollar up is going to touch off the U.S. and global debt, death spiral. That won't work. Doesn't mean they won't try. But we kind of, we so, you know, dollar up, bad economic outcomes that way, bad market outcomes that way, and probably slightly inflationary here. Deflationary for China, in particular, okay, that's a tactical.

The structural, I don't think, has gotten nearly as much air time because it's second derivative and because it's not immediate. And so those things don't get much airtime in our media. And that is that the structure of the U.S. US dollars reserve status since 1971 requires low tariffs and free capital flows. When Trump said that, oh, that 100% tariff if people try to move away from the dollar, like that to me was like a splinter in my brain because I'm like 100% tariff, they move away from the dollar. Like, 100% tariff ends the dollar system as it's been structured.

Like that is, you know, a 50% tariff ends the dollar system as it's been structured because that's basically capital controls, capital flow. The way that system works, we send our factories and jobs to China et al. They make the stuff. They send us the stuff. We send them the dollars. They send the dollars back into our markets. Washington and Wall Street get rich.

The rest of the country gets poorer on a real basis. China gets rich on a real basis, starts buying our companies back and telling our corporations what to do and buying our politicians. Like that's what the last 25 years have essentially been, being somewhat flipped, but not that flip. So when you have a guy come in and say, I'm going to put 100% tariffs to China tries to move away from the dollar. Okay, well, then that breaks that whole like that. That is the dollar system, those flows I just described to you.

And this completely stops those. So what are the implications of that? What does that mean breaks the dollar system, changes the dollar system? Well, we kind of have an idea because we got a dry run with Russia in 2022, right? We're going to sanction Russian FX reserves. The rubble will be rubble. Well, everyone looked at it and said, holy cow. And they sold treasuries and they bought gold at the central bank level at the fastest pace.

They bought a central bank's about a thousand tons of gold a year since we sanctioned Russian FX reserves. Treasury holdings are roughly flat. They fell for a while. They've come back a bit with the dollars after the dollar got, you know, fell from 3Q22 to 114 to 107 today. Treasury holdings have bounced back somewhat from a foreign perspective, foreign official perspective. But that gives us an idea.

If we put 100% tariffs on people, like the first derivative thinking is, He's like, oh, China's just going to starve. No, they're not. No, they're not. They're going to go around. They're going to sign different individual deals at different, you know, they're going to net settle in gold, at a different gold to oil ratio than London. They're going to drain London at gold. There's going to be massive impact.

I'm not saying China won't get hurt. But this view of like all we need to do to chip over China and their banking system is put these tariffs on them is stupid. It's like it's so unipolar, stupid thinking. It's big ego thinking. It's people here thinking, oh, well, we're the best. we're the greatest and we can do anything we want to be. And it's just so idiotic. It's so out of time of reality.

Oh, completely. Completely. So it would be very disruptive. But I think there is, like I said, there are these tactical impacts that we know. There's this structural dynamic that is huge. I mean, huge in terms of not just how it completely breaks the flows that define the structure of the post-71 system, right? where we're net settling in financial assets, right, bonds and stocks, that is broken.

And so there's going to be something else that starts to be settled in. We're basing 100% tariffs is take your capital elsewhere. Go do something else with it. They're going to move to a neutral reserve asset because we know China's got a closed capital account. Yeah. We're not going to let you buy Chinese government bonds to sell this crap. They're certainly not going to let you buy Chinese industry. It's going to be gold.

Or increasingly in the last, it's been fascinating to me to watch post our, you know, our conversation, in July in Nashville, it's really accelerated. It increasingly looks like Bitcoin is sort of like the, at least a, if not the neutral reserve asset choice of the West. Like I tweeted, retweeted it on Friday or Saturday. Like, Bessens is meeting with Loomis. Like, that's fascinating to me. That's absolutely fascinating to me.

And she's saying, like, we're talking about a Bitcoin Reserve. Like, I would not have bet that that tweet would have taken place, even a week before. So things seem to be moving really fast to your point about Russian language. media came out this week, or two weeks ago, excuse me, State Dumas introduced a Bitcoin reserve, all in Russian. You got to, you know, I didn't see it anywhere on Bloomberg. I didn't see it anywhere on Reuters. I didn't see anywhere on CNBC. I had to translate the frigging article from Russian and Google translate, but there it is. And so, like, think about the implications of the world's biggest commodity producer bidding for Bitcoin. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding

me? The implications. Insane. Insane. And saying that it's not even covered. Not even covered. And that's why I say that the big structural impact ultimately is, tactically, you know, inflation, dollar up, disruption, whatever. Okay. Interesting.

But to me, that's not the real. That's the warm up. Like, to me, the main event is 100% tariffs to force people from stop, you know, exiting the dollar system will instantaneously drive, nearly instantaneously drive the ending of the post-7701. because the world is not going to sit and, oh, we're going to starve because of these tariffs. No, they're going to go, hey, Russia, I see you're settling in Bitcoin, great, or gold. Whatever they got to do, they're going to move to golden Bitcoin, some mixed way, shape, or form.

And the reality is, it's like, gold and Bitcoin aren't priced in the correct zip code. Yeah. If this is even directionally accurate. Yeah. Bitcoin need at least one, a different digit in front of it, at least. And gold probably needs one too. But anyway, that's how I would answer that. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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risks, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the income funds prospectus at fundrise.com slash income. This is a paid advertisement. All right, back to the show. Let's look at this tweet you had. This one here is miraculous to me. Forbes, BlackRock recommends Bitcoin for your 6040 portfolio. And then I'll let you talk your test here. This was so funny. The reply that you had, this is massive, right? Because I mean, for the listener that doesn't understand in the financial world, how Black Rock is perceived from a, you know, you go to your ordinary, everyday, not analyst, but professional investment advisor. How does that person look at a recommendation from Black Rock as to portfolio construction and their recommendations, Luke? And then talk

through your retweet and your comment that you had on this. It's like the Pope if you're a Roman Catholic. You know, it's like, you know, so much of Wall Street, sort of traditional Wall Street is around managing career risk. And it's not polite to say, but it's true. I was at a, I gave a speech year or so ago, and I was told, look, Luke, everything you lay out makes perfect sense. And, you know, my conclusion was basically, you know, about a year ago, buy gold, sell treasures, buy Bitcoin sell treasures. And it's worked out pretty well. But again, 12, 14 months ago, I was told, look, if I buy gold and it goes down 30 percent, I lose my job. If I buy Treasury's and they go down 30%. I keep my job. And so like the key when I say it's like the Pope for

a Roman Catholic is like when Black Rock tells you to do something, there is an army of financial advisors, et cetera, RIAs out there that go, okay, this is now, we've been greenlighted. I can point, well, Black Rock's advising it, so now it's safe. So I thought that was really big from that point. The lesser understood part of that is, remember in Jim Rickard's book, Road to Ruint, 24, He details a meeting in which he is sitting in, in which Larry Fink at Black Rock, the CEO of Black Rocks, Rickers doesn't name this woman, but says he's basically, she's basically Finx concierge. And that this woman's job is the interaction between the U.S. government and BlackRock. And that she tells Rickards that, oh, yeah, like at a moment's notice, the U.S. government could tell BlackRock stop selling

And it was the ICE nine. I think there's a book where Rickards coined the term, you use the, from Fahrenheit, I think it's Fahrenheit 454. Anyway, the ice nine term, like freeze the markets,

like just like stop. And so that, like, I think the whole Black Rock as, you know, Pope to the Catholics for sort of the managing of career risk for an army of RIA and investment advisors, is somewhat well understood.

I'm not sure it's as well understood that like, black rock wouldn't do that probably unless parts of the U.S. government at least were like at the very least benign neglect right at the very least i'll give you another example on that and what i mean by benign neglect all it i don't know it was post it was post 2014 it was probably 15 or 16 i don't know i was told there was an investment fund that had done all the analysis on russian bonds and objectively from a fiduciary responsibility they were superior to to some dollar bond. And so they were a big enough investment fund.

Obviously, we were tensions with Russia were already high by 2015 or 2016. The fund went to their compliance department internal, which all funds, all big funds have internal compliance departments and said, this, we are thinking of buying Russian bonds. We are aware of no sanctions by the U.S. on these Russian bonds. will you call your contact at Treasury and make sure that we're in the clear. This is what compliance does it at these high levels. Compliance calls Treasury. Treasurer says, correct, there are no sanctions that would prohibit you from buying these bonds,

but we highly recommend you don't. And that was the end of it. The fund did not buy the bonds, even though there were no specific sanctions, and even though they were superior and beneficial to their clients. carry that back to the Black Rock Records 2% to Bitcoin allocation. My read on that away from the career risk management,

which I think people well understood, for me, was an even bigger deal because I look at this and go, if the U.S. government did not want that to happen, that would not have happened. Full stop. Full stop.

I'm not saying all of the U.S. government does. I continue to think there are multiple parties of sort of, you know, the Ruben, Summers, you know, what's good for Goldman is good for America crowd. And I think there's a growing what's good for America is good for America crowd. What's good for DOD is good for America crowd.

And I think the what's good for America and DOD crowd has increasing sway. And I think the fact that BlackRock is talking about a 2% Bitcoin allocation is evidence of that. And so I thought it was a much bigger deal maybe than generally people sort of took it as, which is, like the Pope to Roman Catholics, which is valid in its own right. I'm not saying that I'm not downplaying that. But I think there's an even big. bigger, you know, once you sort of get the inside baseball of, you know, what Rickards talked about with Black Rock and what, you know, my own personal experience, you know, being in this business

for 30 years, I thought it was a bigger deal than that. So here's for people that are just listening to the show, this tweet that talks about Black Rock recommending the 2%. Luke had a reply, he said, okay, so is this a late stage bubble signpost? That's the first one. Is this a systemically important institution is advocating undermining the dollar? Is it that? Is this, it's not undermining the USDA?

It's supporting the USDA. Or they're trying to shift retail away from gold. Which one of these is it, Luke, in your opinion? That's the real question. Which one of those is it? Thank. You think it's the first one, I think. Well, I think there's elements of all of it, right?

There are elements of all of it. Right. Right. One of the benefits of having as many followers on Twitter is there's a two-way flow of information, right? Like, you know. Yeah. I can learn by what I read and I can learn by what I don't read and I do a lot.

Okay, late stage bubble in what? In Bitcoin? Or in treasuries? Yeah, in treasuries. I think it's the treasuries of the fiat system. Bubble on a nominal basis or bubble on a real basis? I'm in a real basis. I think treasuries will be fine.

You might actually make money. The dollar goes down next year. You're going to make money in long term treasuries in dollar terms. In Bitcoin and gold and stock terms, you're going to get killed. Right. And so. In Bitcoin terms, you're going to get killed in anything other than owning Bitcoin. So the second one was late stage bubble,

or first one was late stage bubble. What was the second one? Wow. It's undermining the US. Yeah, it's undermining the USDA. It's undermining the USDA. It's supporting the USDA,

which would be your tether discussion, right? It's one of my favorite. I know a lot of people ask me, like, aren't you worried that it was a creation of the CIA? Right. And like they always, have I ever thought about it? Absolutely.

I've thought about it. Yeah. Is it possible? Sure. I don't know. Yeah. But what I find fascinating, again, is no one ever.

pulls that thread. Like I say, pull that thread. Let's pull that thread. Let's pretend we know for fact it's a creation of the CIA. Okay. I don't. But let's explain to me like I'm a two-year-old why the CIA would create something that according to many economists undermines the US dollar. Why would they do that? It's a fascinating question because it completely... I mean, if you knew the dollar was going to die one way or the other, then you have to replace it. So maybe that would be the argument, right? That would be the argument. You could make the argument that What started as a small group is now a sizable group of professionals in the DoD and intelligence world that understand that this dollar system is actually crushing. It is a significant threat

to U.S. national security. It has crushed the U.S. defense industrial base that has been proven empirically by what happened in Ukraine, where we got out produced in key military technologies by a country with one-tenth our GDP in Russia. So yeah. And what's the fix to that? The fix to the dollar system and ending the Triffin's dilemma is what you and I've talked about ad nauseum, you have to have a neutral reserve asset that floats in all currencies. And arguably, if you're the CIA, using gold advantages the Russians and the Chinese, more. Or, you know, some gold, people say, look, the American gold's gone.

Well, look, if the American gold's gone, you frigging better create something new. So there's a lot of ways you can take it, none of which, you know, I don't know which one's right, but I know that all of them completely and directly contradict the sort of mainstream economist view of Bitcoin, which is interesting to me, right? The third one was getting people off of, I think there's an element where they are getting off a gold. It does redirect some flows away from gold. Sure. I mean, I think that's empirically, you can see that, right? That's a fact. You know, to what end? Who knows? Is it because we want to use Bitcoin and we don't have any gold left? Or is it because it empowers China and Russia more than us?

Or is it so that the U.S. government can wave it in or it can flow where it needs to go. And then they're going to revalue it later. I don't know. I can make a credible case all three. I don't know. And then I guess was there one other one? No, you got them all. Yeah, you got them.

Here's my final question for you. And it's super speculative. And I want you to give me a binary answer. You don't have to, but I want you to. Is the first day when Trump takes office on the 20th of January, is he going to use an executive order to establish a Bitcoin Reserve. If I was him, I wouldn't actually. Really?

Yeah, I wouldn't actually. Talk us through this. Why would you say that? Only because... And you, I mean, full disclosure, you're a Bitcoin or you have Bitcoin, right? Oh, my gosh. It's like full disclosure, Bitcoin is my biggest position. I love Bitcoin.

I think it's a lot higher. Okay. And I also full disclosures. I know all the Bitcoin are going to freaking hate me for saying that. No, I love that you have a, you know, a contra take. Let's hear it. For me, if I'm him, I want to leave my flexibility open. If I do it day one.

So what you're really saying is you want to basically do the reserve without announcing to the world that you're doing the reserve in the background and then announce it after you've acquired a real position size. I would do it that way. I would, it's hard to imagine a way where he could get more favorable to Bitcoin without taking that final step of actually out there buying Bitcoin. The other thing, again, I think moving. to a gold or Bitcoin neutral reserve asset, like I said, this administration very much seems to be

shifting toward Bitcoin, objectively, which I think makes a lot of sense. As I've long said, Bitcoin does a lot of things that gold does better than gold. It's an energy-linked neutral reserve asset. That's what we need to sort of have this global economic renaissance. So, like, however it happens, I'm not religious or dogmatic about whether it's gold or Bitcoin. Like, I just want what's best for my kids, for our country, for my compatriots, which is a neutral energy-linked reserve asset. Okay. If I'm him, yeah, A, I can do it quietly, but I think I just keep making positive noise about it. I mean, he's got a crypto czar, you know, the points are. Aren't you allowing everybody to frontrun you, if that's the approach? I'm hearing rumors that there are countries

already front running us. I hear the same rumors. I hear the same rumors. Yes. You are going to take heat for this online. I'm going to take heat for this one. That's okay. I think, I think ultimately, the reason I say I don't think he's doing it right way is I don't have confidence that's sort of the traditional economic advisors. I mean, get on Twitter and look at sort of every traditional economic person and what they're saying about whether strategic Bitcoin Reserve is a good idea or not. I'm not saying he won't ever do it. Day one, I just don't think he'll do it day one. But again, I would be happy to be a hundred. I don't have great connections on that.

I suspect he's going to sign something. type of executive order to establish it. But as far as like the teeth on the execution of it, that's what I don't know. You know, I'd have to go do a lot more research as to like, he can go out there, sign an executive order to basically encourage Congress to push something through. But I think Congress is the ultimate authority to get something like that established. Does that, would that be your? So two things.

And this is, I think, ties into why I think maybe he wouldn't is. Number one, like, he is a businessman, right? So he can do it as one of two ways. He can announce it day one and the market's going to run away from it. So how is that in the American interest, right? Hey, I'm going to do it day one and now the market's going to run away from me and enrich my training partner versus I've told Pugh that we're moving in this direction and then you can, you know, get more, you can wave more in in a way that paints a picture

for people. Like if he comes out and says, you know, I'm favorable Bitcoin, Bitcoin's good, all the things he's talked about in the last six months. And Bitcoin goes from 100 to 30. He looks like a frigging idiot. The market's saying, you're an idiot. In the meantime, if he talks more and more favorably about it and Bitcoin just goes up and up and up and up and up, he looks smart. It's like me saying the sun's about the rise at 6 a.m. and pointing my hand and I'm going to make the sunrise, right?

But I think from an optics and narrative perspective, it makes more sense to not announce at day one, continue to talk positively about it, buy it in the background and manage the chart as you talk positively about it. And then after the fact, say, hey, by the way, I have established the Bitcoin Reserve because then the market's going to run away from you versus doing it day one where the market, and there's some experience in this. And this also kind of informed my thought process is, let me help you out for the people online. Let me help you out for the people online. You're basically saying talk is cheap, show the proof of work in action first, and then talk

about what you did is what you're really saying, Luke. I'm saying it because if we saw it in the 70s with the Saudis, when the Saudis are like, we're going to start buying gold. Yeah. And they announce that they're going to start buying gold. Guess what the price of gold did. Yeah. They never got to buy any.

It ran away from them. Yeah. And so you're better off managing that process. It's a political process. It's, you know, it's, you can't just run it for the mean, so to speak, right? Like, you actually got to do something. And so now I don't think they're going to beat you up as much, Luke. I think that that's clear.

Yeah. So, yeah. No, that's kind of the, as I flush it out. Does he need Congress? I'm not as well versed on that. What I am. What I can say is he can do whatever he wants with the exchange stabilization fund. And the exchange stabilization fund releases a balance sheet once a year.

And so anybody curious, like number one, ESF can do whatever they want in support of the dollar subject to only the approval of the president and the secretary of the treasury. Okay, we know Bessent seems to be at least talking about Bitcoin because he just got He was just shown meeting with Loomis last week. Okay. If you can go back and look at the balance sheet of the ESF annually going back years, what they'll find is I'm going from memory here, but I'm pretty sure that during the COVID crisis,

the balance sheet of the ESF flexed up from $90 billion to like $600 billion in assets in a year, no approval, no nothing, do it. Subject to only the approval of the president and the secretary of the treasury. So I think you could do it with ESF. And then you're like, look, everybody loves tagging along on a winner, right? Like if I'm the president and I think Congress may or may not approve it, like, you know, Senator Warren will hold it up, blah, blah, blah, great. You know what I'll do?

I won't announce it day one. I'll buy a bunch in. I'll let it run up. I'll bleed out that I'm positive. I'll buy it up with the ESF. And then I'll turn around and announce it. It will have risen by that point to some really big number. And now if Congress says, well, this is a bad idea, they're going to look like frigging morons.

Why is it a bad idea? It's gone from 100 to 105 to 200 or 250 or 300 or 500 or 500. And the U.S. Reserve is this. It's actually weakening the dollar against the yuan while strengthening the dollar system because it's financing our T-Bill deficits, you know, creating balance sheet capacity to finance deficits. So it's lowering rates, lowering the dollar against the yuan and a way. we need to do to be more competitive while also strengthening the dollar system and pulling more global capital into the U.S.? How is this a bad deal, Senator Warren? Why is this bad? How's this hurt the United States? And she's going to go, uh, uh, she's not going to have an answer. Hey, so I did a little

bit of AI on this particular topic so people have a little bit of understanding of it. It says to stand up at Bitcoin Strategic Reserve akin to a gold reserve, the president would need more than an executive order. It would almost certainly require new legislation passed by Congress, providing both the legal framework and the necessary funding authorization. Without Congress buy-in, such a strategic reserve would not be legally or fiscally feasible. I said, how about, you know, what if it was an emergency declaration? And then the response came back, even if the president were to declare a national emergency or invoke certain emergency powers, the authority to create and fund a substantial Bitcoin strategic reserve would still be heavily constrained.

And it goes on and on and gives a bunch of pretty insane that we can ask these questions and just get answers popped out like that. And I have no idea if that answer is right. suspect it's pretty close. But for people that are curious, this is where the Lomas proposal for the bill, and it seems like they might be able to get support for this based on how many Republicans are in the House in the Senate. So, yeah, maybe you're right, Luke. Maybe this wouldn't be the best thing to come out and sign some executive order because in here, hold on, it was saying that the limited executive discretion, while the president can issue executive orders to direct agencies to study cryptocurrencies, develop regulations, or coordinate on digital asset policy,

such orders cannot legally compel agencies to undertake large purchases of Bitcoin. So basically, he can charge them to do more studies and this kind of thing through an executive order, but to basically stand up the strategic reserve, you can't do that by executive order. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, it's like, I have no reason to doubt that. That ESF has very wide latitude. Like, he can buy gold. He can buy, you know, if he can buy gold, if it's in the interest of the dollar dollar system. I don't know why he couldn't buy. You know, maybe it requires some sort of, you know, I don't know.

Maybe you could, maybe the commodity angle could work. I just don't know what their discretion is as far as like holding commodity. Does gold the terminology that used for them to buy gold is that that would be maybe an angle. Gold. Yeah. I mean, yeah, right, because SEC has defined Bitcoin as a commodity, right? So you could in theory, you go to the National Defense Production Act that Obama signed.

Like that executive order, that can literally commandeer factories. Commodities, your human labor. The National Production Act that Obama signed could literally force you and I into the army, like in a net. He just has to declare a national emergency. Like, it's incredible. There's some loopholes there, I think, that could be used. But to me, you know, the overall flow, I think stands.

Yeah, I ask that. But they can buy gold and it's a commodity so it could Bitcoin fit into that terminology. And then I got a whole other giant response here. Well, gold is often treated as a commodity or a monetary reserve asset by the U.S. government. And its status as a strategic reserve asset is grounded in longstanding legal framework and historical president. In other words, the authority to hold gold in reserves comes from laws and policies specifically enabling the U.S. Treasury to hold the gold. So it's not buying it. But, you know, these are some interesting questions. I think I like your points a whole lot more after kind of seeing

what would that even do if he did an executive order? Like what would it even enable? So maybe it isn't the smartest idea. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I don't think he needs to. I think he needs to. I think you need to keep talking positively and maintain flexibility. This is going to generate some good conversation, I think. If you're in the comments on, you know, after this comes out, we'd love to hear what you guys think. Luke, always a pleasure, brother. You know, I'm obviously a huge fan in your newsletter. I learned a ton, a ton from this thing.

What other things do you want to highlight to the audience? Oh, you know, just if you're interested in learning more about it, just FFTT-LOC.com for more information about institutional and mass market research products. And as you know, you can find me on X at Luke Grumman. All right. We'll have links to all this in the show notes. Luke, thank you so much for making time and coming on the show. It's great talk with you.

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